Weir of Hermiston | Page 7

a true enthusiast, and
might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none
but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen
her - her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering - glow with
gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you
come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the
mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like
a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon the sudden view of
it, her hand would tighten on the child's fingers, her voice rise like a
song. "I TO THE HILLS!" she would repeat. "And O, Erchie, are nae
these like the hills of Naphtali?" and her tears would flow.
Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty
accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety
passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it
was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature
and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow
once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in
the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a
considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and
unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for

Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord
was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous
composure with which she always greeted him. The judge was that day
in an observant mood, and remarked upon the absent teeth.
"I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of they blagyard
lads," said Mrs. Weir.
My lord's voice rang out as it did seldom in the privacy of his own
house. "I'll have norm of that, sir!" he cried. "Do you hear me? - nonn
of that! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty
raibble."
The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even
feared the contrary. And that night when she put the child to bed -
"Now, my dear, ye see!" she said, "I told you what your faither would
think of it, if he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you
and me pray to God that ye may be keepit from the like temptation or
strengthened to resist it!"
The womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be
welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were
not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long
been a stumbling-block to Archie, and with every year of his age the
difficulty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he
spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a
worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to
think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to be sins in
themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably
harsh. God was love; the name of my lord (to all who knew him) was
fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the place
was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to
pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named
reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands for the burning; and Archie
tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private
inference that the Lord Justice-Clerk was the chief of sinners.
The mother's honesty was scarce complete. There was one influence
she feared for the child and still secretly combated; that was my lord's;
and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to
undermine her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent,
she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and the child's

salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and
Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when
he brought the case up openly. If judging were sinful and forbidden,
how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the
name of it for a distinction?
"I can't see it," said the little Rabbi, and wagged his head.
Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace replies.
"No, I cannae see it," reiterated Archie. "And I'll tell you what, mamma,
I don't think you and me's justifeed in staying with him."
The woman awoke to remorse, she saw herself disloyal to her man, her
sovereign