Oliphant

“ The moonlight fell upon the water, white as silver where that line of darkness lay, shining, as if it tried, and tried in vain, to penetrate Semur; and between that and the blue sky overhead lay the city out of which we had been driven forth—the city of the dead. 'O God,' I cried, 'whom I know not, am not I to Thee as my little Jean is to me, a child and less than a child? Do not abandon me in this darkness. Would I abandon him were he ever so disobedient? And God, if thou art God, Thou art a better father than I.' When I had said this, my heart was a little relieved. ”

“ And he would not speak to Master Melville again for many a day.
"And wha but her should be the heir?" said Mistress Marjory, the old nurse, who had long been the housekeeper at Kellie, and to whom Jean was as the light of her eyes. "Waes me for all the bonnie lads that are away! and no an Oliphant left to keep up the honour of the old house. But though she's but a lass she has the blood as well as any one, knight or lord, that ever owned the name. And wherefore should she not get a good man and raise up the race?" ”

“ He pointed again in silence to the fireplace, where Jean's lighter eyes caught the rough carving with a flutter of volatile observation. "Eh!" she cried, "but it's ill done! But all this mocking, and I want a true man. What are these auld words—if I kent what they meant—to you, Peter Oliphant, and me?"
"They are just the o'erword of the race," he said, "that our fathers have left to us—the best they could, and the most meaning in the least buik. ”

“ I hear that yonder wild lassie, hot with her race and her youth, is for defending the auld Castle by force of arms. She will call out every Oliphant in the Kingdom of Fife, you the captain: she will fill the stores with provender, and furbish up the auld armour, and hold the place against lord and loon. It's over the whole countryside already, and the lads at St Monance all alow. There needs but a spark to fall, and there will be a blaze to light up Fife. Pate, do you think what that would be? ”

“ And I doubt not he's laying his furrows and sowing his grain as if there was no such person as Jean Oliphant shut up in Kellie," the girl cried, glowing with rage and curiosity and eagerness. "You can tell him that it's he that is the land-louper, and no credit to his gentle blood, to turn his back on the auld house and upon me."
"No back of his has been turned on any lawful risk," said the minister; "on certain destruction no brave man will run if he is other than a fool. Ken you what your kinsman is doing, Mistress Jean? ”

“ They looked at me with the utmost wonder. 'M. le Maire has seen—nothing?' said Riou. 'Ah, I see! you say so to spare us. We have proved ourselves cowards; but if you will pardon me, M. le Maire, you, too, re-entered precipitately—you too! There are facts which may appal the bravest—but I implore you to tell us what you have seen.'
'I have seen nothing,' I said. As I spoke, my natural calm composure returned, my heart resumed its usual tranquil beating. 'There is nothing to be seen—it is dark, and one can perceive the line of the road for but a little way—that is all. ”

“ Nevertheless, perhaps, had it not been for the steady backing of the minister and one or two of the elder men, the position of Pate would have been a disagreeable one; for the sympathies of the gentry were more with the Master of Oliphant than with the humbler youth, whose blood they acknowledged, but whose breeding had been that of a yeoman rather than of a landed gentleman. Pate himself, however, proved his gentility by a bearing much more noble than that of the intruder. ”

“ Her voice was husky and hoarse by nature, and she was out of breath either with fretting or with the unusual rapidity of motion, which had brought her in like a heavy barge, tugged in the wake of a little bustling steamboat. She cast a glance round to see if there was a comfortable chair, and dropped heavily into that which was sacred to the vicar on the other side of the fire, from which she looked round, contemplating the shabby parlor and the figure of Mary in her shawl against the window. ”

“ There drifted past him at intervals, hurried, flushed, and breathless, with her cloak hanging from her shoulders, her bonnet blown back from her head, her eyes always far in front of her, investigating every corner, a woman so instinct with keen suspicion and what looked like a thirst for blood that she attracted the looks even of the careless passers-by, and was followed, till she outstripped him, by more than one languid gendarme. ”

“ The house was more still than usual, and all slept to a later hour because of the agitation of the past night. I had been seated, like old sister Mariette, with my eyes turned rather towards the hills than to the valley, being so deep in my thoughts that I did not look, as it was our constant wont to look, if any change had happened over Semur. Thus blessings come unawares when we are not looking for them. Suddenly I lifted my eyes—but not with expectation—languidly, as one looks without thought. ”

“ It seemed to me that I had spoken to some one who knew all of us, whether we were dead or whether we were living. That is a wonderful thing to think of, when it appears to one not as a thing to believe, but as something that is real. It gave me courage. I got up and went to meet the patrol which was coming in, and found that great good-for-nothing Jacques running close after me, holding my cloak. 'Do not send me away, M. le Maire,' he said, 'I dare not stay by myself with them so near.' Instead of his money, in which he had trusted, it was I who had become his god now. ”

“ It was a clamour of notes all run together, tone upon tone, without time or measure, as though a multitude had seized upon the bells and pulled all the ropes at once. If it was joy, what strange and terrible joy! It froze the very blood in our veins. M. le Curé became quite pale. He stepped down hurriedly from the piece of wood. We all made a hurried movement farther off from the gate.
It was now that I perceived the necessity of doing something, of getting this crowd disposed of, especially the women and the children. I am not ashamed to own that I trembled like the others ”

“ Oliphant’s position. A man ought to consult his wife about the house in which she is to spend more of her time than he. It is eminently proper, right and just that he should do [94] so; but I beg to call the attention of the critic to my unfortunate position. Lilian was an angel (in my estimation) ; her mother was not an angel. The daughter was a mere doll—I am writing after the lapse of years. She was completely under the control of her mother. What I suspected then, I knew afterwards—that Mrs. Oliphant intended to have us as permanent boarders. ”

“ This was the warrant upon which the minister brought Peter Oliphant to Kellie Castle. He had as much trouble with the young man as he had with the old. The house of Over-Kellie was still excited by the flying visit of Mistress Jean when the minister reached it; and the Leddy, or the Gudewife—for Marjory said truly that she was called sometimes one and sometimes the other, according to the courtesy or indifference of her rare visitors—could not be persuaded that the extraordinary mission of the minister had not something to do with that exciting incident. ”

“ He had believed that this would give him "plenty to think about" for the rest of his life—and that, especially for the time of his confinement, it would afford an excellent provision; but he did not find the solace that he had expected in musing upon Mons Meg and the Scottish Regalia. How dreadful four walls become when you are shut up within them; how the air begins to hum and buzz after a while with your thoughts that have escaped you, and swarm about like bees, all murmurous and unresting—these were the discoveries he made. Rolls grew nervous, almost hysterical, in the unusual quiet. ”

“ It came along steadily—nearer—nearer—waking every one to the most overpowering excitement. Miss Anastasia marched through the little parlour, with an echoing step, throwing her tall shadow on the blind, clasping her fingers tight. Mr Atheling rushed to the door; Marian ran to the kitchen to wake up Susan, and see that the tray was ready for Charlie’s refreshment; Mamma stirred the fire, and made it blaze; Agnes drew the blind aside, and looked out into the darkness from the window. ”

“ The colour went out of her face, and though she smiled still, yet the tears came to her eyes, and she would have wept with the other women, and with the wail of the weary children, and all the agitation, and the weariness, and the length of the way, had not I recalled her to herself. 'Courage!' I said to her. 'Courage, ma fille! We will throw open all the chambers. I will give up even that one in which my Martin Dupin, the father of thy husband, died.' 'Ma mère,' she said, holding my hand to her bosom, 'he is not dead—he is in Semur.' Forgive me, dear Lord! ”

“ It dispersed the haze of bewilderment that had gathered round the young men. The dust of the ruins falling round them might have blinded them but for this sudden call back to themselves. When all was over, Ben had so far recovered himself as to speak, though his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
‘We are much obliged to you all for joining us to-day,’ he said; ‘I am sure you will excuse my mother, and indeed all of us. She is never very strong. ”

“ There was another lawsuit, of which no better came; but Peter Oliphant of Over-Kellie, though no more than a bonnet-laird, no doubt, "with his bairns and his oyes all around him, oh," came to be more or less a contented man. He knew French to a certain degree, as has been said, thanks to Maister Melville, whose breeding and education had been much in foreign countries ”

“ But we judge it quite safe for the young leddy to come her ways hame."
"I will never cross the door," cried Jean, "as long as yon painted pyet, yon fause lord, is there."
"The popinjay," said Margaret, in the background, proud of the name her lover had given.
"He is nae lord," said Neil; "his father is the Lord Oliphant, and he is but the Master, and may never be a lord at all for ought that we can tell,—nor would it be, I'm thinking, ony great loss to the name, for a wilder or a wantoner I have never seen. Anyway, Mistress Jean, he is gane. ”

“ The rows of pinafored children rising and bobbing their little curtseys to the young lady of the manor were visible to her as through a mist. “My head aches so,” she said faintly. “Let me sit down for a little in the quiet; and oh, couldn’t you keep them quite still for two minutes? The sun is so hot outside.”
“Won’t you go and sit down in my room, Miss Clare?” said the schoolmistress. “The children will be moving and whispering. It is so cool in my room. You have never been there since you had it built for me; and the jasmine has grown so, you would not know it. ”

“ In 1873 Oliphant, with his wife and mother, returned to Brocton by Harris's orders. The wife and mother were employed in menial offices. Oliphant himself was directed to take part in various commercial enterprises for the benefit, apparently, of the community. He was in New York and Canada, and occasionally sent over to England. ”

“ It is hard upon a young man to be driven to protestations of what he would do if the occasion came, and Neil's tone was bitter to Pate, in the uneasy pride of his position, thus waved aside more or less offensively not only by the others, but by the very servants of the others, conscious of all the external differences between the place he claimed and that to which, notwithstanding his claims of blood, he had been barn. Might ill be the fate of that Oliphant who was first led away by love of a fair face, and married a farmer's daughter, and settled down on a yeoman's land! ”

“ This thought stung her very sorely. Upon the sands ploutering, as she said, in the salt water, his bonnet pushed back, his shirt open at the neck, his coat hanging loosely on his shoulders! Elsie would have liked to re-dress that apparition, to dust the yellow sand from him and the little ridges of shattered shells which showed on his rough clothes as they did on the sea-shore. But no hand could keep that figure in order, even in a dream. And alas! he would be no placed minister like her father, or like Marion’s husband, with a pleasant manse and a kirk in which all men would do him honour. ”

“ The elder men might look coldly upon so irreverent an assertion of the position; but the younger ones, who knew, or desired to know, the Master of Oliphant, were glad to push forward, to claim his acquaintance, and to accompany him back to Kellie Castle, where at least he had now the first right to be. Pate felt himself left behind to the company of the tenants and the smaller lairds, who, like himself, were rather patronised than on an equal footing with the great proprietors. Mr Melville made an effort to draw him into the quiet of the manse, which would have been safer ”

“ Her eyes were half closed, revealing still a glimmer under the long eyelashes, which had never showed as they did now, against the marble whiteness of her cheek. The kerchief on her head had fallen off, and the long dark hair framed the white face. The living woman had been beautiful with a beauty that was passing—the dead woman was sublime in a beauty that would last, in the eyes that saw her now, for ever. Richard thrust the doctor out of his way, who turned to speak to him. He put Val away with the other hand, and went up close to the bedside. ”