ABONNY bride's sune buskit; eh, Nanny Swinton?"
"But ye're no bonny, Miss Nelly; na, na, ye cannot fill the shoon o' yer leddy mother; ye're snod, and ye may shak yer tails at the Assembly, but ye're far ahint Lady Carnegie."
"An' I've but to dance my set with young Berwickshire Home, I care not though I bide at home after all."
But Nelly Carnegie would have little liked that resource, though she now flung the powder out of her nut-brown hair, and tapped her little mirror with her fan.
In a low dark closet, up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined, dark-browed house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, one of the belles of 17—made her toilette. Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen, was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded, stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of Lochaber. Nelly Carnegie was no beauty;not fair as a red-and-white rose, like Lady Eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown—with nothing to distinguish her figure but its diminutiveness and the nimbleness of the shapely hands and feet; while her mother's lace lappets were higher by half a foot than the crown of many a manikin on whom she looked down, and her back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion, was straight as an arrow, as well as long. But Nelly, in her absurd, magnificent brocade, and her hoop, that made her small figure like a little russet cask, and with busk and breast-knot and top-knot, was admired, as odd people will choose what is irregular, strange, and racy, in preference to what is harmonious, orderly, and insipid.
Nelly had a cavalier to walk by her sedan, as her mother and she traversed the rough streets. He handed her out at the old Assembly door, but she flung away his hand, and followed her mother alone within the dignified precincts, leaving a gloom and a storm on a lowering brow, unshaded by the cocked hat, then carried under the wearer's arm.
The old Assembly Rooms where potent Jacky Murray presided, where urbane Duncan Forbes won all hearts,where a gentle laird wooed in sweet numbers—and in vain—the Annie Laurie of that well-known old song, are now almost forgotten. Other things have passed away in company with the wigs and ruffles, the patches and snuff. The grace may remain, and the refinement be thorough where then it was superficial, but the courtliness of conscious superiority, the picturesque contrarieties and broken natural land that lay below the heaths and craters, exist but as the black gloom and red glare of the past.
There the grave responsible Lord of Session, sober in mien as Scotchmen are wont to be, sat at midnight and roared over his claret in the mad orgies of the Hell-fire Club; here the pawky, penetrating lawyer, shrewd both from calling and character, played the reckless game of a correspondence with the stage Court of St. Germains; yonder mettle beauty sailed along on her high-heeled shoes to finish the night's triumph at an oyster supper in a den behind the Luckenbooths. And there again walked an imperial dowager, who still span her own linen and struck her serving-man with her ivory cane. Truly the old Edinburgh Assembly Rooms had their secrets, and contained exciting enough elements under their formal French polish.
The regular balls at the Assembly Rooms were eras in Nelly Carnegie's life, and yet she met always the same company. She knew every face and name, and what was worse, danced nightly with the same partner. The select society was constituted at the commencement of the season, and when once the individual fan was drawn from the cocked-hat of fate, there was no respite, no room forchange. Young Home of Staneholme had knowledge of the filigree circle through which Nelly was wont to insert her restless fingers, and Lady Carnegie furthered his advances; so that although Nelly hated him as she did the gloomy Nor' Loch, she received his escort to and from the Assembly Rooms, and walked with him her single minuet, as inevitably as she lilted Allan Ramsay's songs, or scalded her mouth with her morning's porridge.
Nelly's suitor was not ill to look upon, so far as flesh and blood went. He was a well-made, robust fellow, whose laced coat and deep vest showed the comely, vigorous proportions of youth. The face was manly, too, in spite of its beardless one-and-twenty, but the broad eyebrows sank, either in study or sullenness, and the jaw was hard and fixed.
Yet to see how Nelly strained her bonds, how she gecked and flouted and looked above him, and curtsied past him, and dropped his hand as if it were live coals, while the heavy brow grew darker, until it showed like a thunderstorm over the burning red of the passion-flushed cheek.
"Tak tent, Nelly," whispered a sedate companion, sensible, cautious, and canny, whose flaxen hair over its roll had the dead greyness of age, though the face below was round and dimpled; "young Staneholme drew his sword last night on the President's son because he speered if he had skill to tame a goshawk."
"Tak tent, yerself, Janet Erskine," Nelly responded wrathfully; "think twice ere you wed auld Auchtershiel."
Janet shrank, and her bright blue eye blinked uneasily,but no additional colour came into her cheek, nor did her voice shake, though it fell. "It must be, Nelly; I daurna deny my father, and mony mair drink forby Auchtershiel; and if he cursed his last wife out and in, and drove her son across the sea, they were thrawn and cankered, and he was their richtfu' head. I'll speak him fair, and his green haughs are a braw jointure. But, Nelly, do ye believe that the auld Laird—the auld ane before Auchtershiel himself, he that shot the Covenanter as he hung by the saugh over the Spinkie-water, and blasphemed when he prayed—walks at night on the burn bank?"
"I dinna ken; if I did not fear a livin' sorrow, I would daur a dead ane," Nelly protested, with a shade of scorn in her levity; "and ye can bide in the house on the soft summer nights. The Lady of Auchtershiel need not daunder by the burn side; she can be countin' her house purse in the still room; but if I were her, I would rather beg my bread."
"Whisht, for shame, Nelly Carnegie," was returned with a shrillness in the measured tones; "you would not; and ye'll learn yer own task, and say Yes to sour, dour Staneholme."
"I never will; I'll let myself be starved to death, I'll throttle myself with my own hands first," cried Nelly Carnegie, fire flashing in her large eyes and on her dark cheeks; and looking up in her defiance she met the glow for glow of Staneholme's star. Time-serving Janet Erskine moved off in unconcealed trepidation, and Nelly stood her ground alone, stamping her foot upon the boards, and struggling in vain against the cruel influence which she could not control, and to which she would not bend.
"He need not gloom and look at me; hearkeners never hear good of themselves," Nelly thought, with passionate vehemence; but her sparkling eyes fell slowly, and her proud panting heart quailed with a long throb.
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The next time Nelly saw Adam Home was by the landing in the Canongate, in whose shelter lay the draw-well wherein the proud, gently-born laird's daughter every afternoon dipped the Dutch porcelain jug which carried the fresh spring-water wherewith to infuse her mother's cherished, tiny cup of tea. Young Home was passing, and he stepped aside, and offered to take the little vessel from her hand, and stoop and fill it. He did this with a silent salutation and glance that, retaining its wonted downward aim, yet suddenly lightened as if it loved to rest upon the little girlish figure, in its homely tucked-up gown, the crimson hood drawn over the chestnut hair that turned back in a crisp wave from the bold, frank, innocent face. But she waved him off, and balancing her foot upon the edge-stone, saw herself reflected in the steel-like water. Then he begged with rare softness in a voice that was rough and gruff, unless it deepened with strong feeling—
"Will you suffer me, Nelly Carnegie? I would give my hand to pluck but a flower to serve you."
Had he tried that tone at first, before she was more than chilled by his sombre and imperious gravity, before her mother supported him unrelentingly and galled and exasperated her by persecution, he might have attracted, fascinated, conquered. As it was, she jeered at him.
"Serve me! he could do me no better service than 'mount and go.' A posy! it would be the stinging-nettle and dank dock if he gathered it."
The revenge he took was rude enough, but it was not unheard of in those days. He caught her by the wrist, and under the shadow of the abutting gable he kissed the knitted brow and curling lips, holding her the while with a grasp so tight that it gave her pain. When she wrung herself from him, she shook her little hand with a rage that quivered through every nerve, and had more of hate than of romping folly or momentary pique in its passion.
"Nelly Carnegie," said her mother, as she carefully pulled out the edge of a coil of yellow point-lace, which rested on her inlaid foreign work-table, and contrasted with her black mode cloak and white skinny fingers, and looking with her keen, cold, grey eyes on the rebellious daughter standing before her, went on, "I have word that Staneholme goes south in ten days."
Nelly could have said, "And welcome," but she knew the consequences, and forbore.
"He's willin' to take you with him, Nelly, and he shows his good blood when he holds that a Carnegie needs no tocher."
Still Nelly did not answer, though she started so violently that her loosely-crossed hands fell apart; and Nanny Swinton, who was about her housewifery in the cupboard off the lady's parlour, heard every word, and trembled at the pause.
"Your providing is not to buy," continued the mistress of the aristocratic family, whose attendance was so scantyand their wants so ill supplied that even in necessaries they were sometimes pinched; "we've but to bid the minister and them that are allied to us in the town, and Nanny will scour the posset dish, and bring out the big Indian bowl, and heap fresh rose-leaves in the sweet-pots. You'll wear my mother's white brocade that she first donned when she became a Leslie, sib to Rothes—no a bit housewife of a south-country laird. She was a noble woman, and you're but a heather lintie of a lass to come of a good kind. So God bless you, bairn; ye'll tak the blast of wind and gang."
As if the benediction had loosened the arrested tongue, Nelly burst out—"Oh, mother, mother! no."
Lady Carnegie, in her own person, had looked upon death with unblenching front, and had disowned her only son because, in what appeared to others a trifle, he had opposed her law. Nor did a muscle of her marked face now relax; her occupation went on without a check; she did not deign to show surprise or displeasure, although her voice rose in harsh, ironical emphasis—
"Nelly Carnegie, what's your will?"
"Not that man, mother; not that fearsome man!" pleaded Nelly, with streaming eyes and beseeching tones, her high spirit for the moment broken; her contempt gone, only her aversion and terror urging a hearing—"The lad that's blate and dull till he's braggit by his fellows, and then starker than ony carle, wild like a north-country cateran; even the haill bench o' judges would not stand to conter him."
"He'll need his stiff temper; I couldna thole a manbut had a mind of his own, my dear," ejaculated Lady Carnegie in unexpected, clear, cherry accents, as if her daughter's extremity was diversion to her.
"Oh, spare me, spare me, mother," Nelly began again.
"Hooly and fairly, Nelly Carnegie," interrupted the mother, still lightly and mockingly, "who are you that ye should pick and choose? What better man will speer your price? or think ye that I've groats laid by to buy a puggy or a puss baudrons for my maiden lady?"
"I'll work my fingers to the bone, mother; my brother Hugh will not see me want."
"Eat bite or sup of his victuals, or mint a Carnegie's working to me again, Nelly, and never see my face more."
The lady had lapsed into wrath, that burned a white heat on her wrinkled brow, and was doubly formidable because expressed by no hasty word or gesture.
"Leave my presence, and learn your duty, belyve, for before the turn of the moon Staneholme's wife ye sall be."
Do not think that Nelly Carnegie was beaten, because she uttered no further remonstrance. She did not sob, and beg and pray beyond a few minutes, but she opposed to the tyrannical mandate that disposed of her so summarily the dead weight of passive resistance. She would give no token of submission; would make no preparation; she would neither stir hand nor foot in the matter. A hundred years ago, however, the head of a family was paramount, and household discipline was wielded without mercy. Lady Carnegie acted like a sovereign: she wasted no time on arguments, threats or entreaties. She locked her wilful charge into a dark sleeping-closet, and fed her on bread andwater until she should consent to her fate. Sometimes Nelly shook the door until its hinges cracked, and sometimes she flung back the prisoner's fare doled out to her; and then her mother came with a firm, slow, step, and in her hard, haughty manner commanded her to cease, or she would tie her hand and foot, and pour meat and drink down her throat in spite of her. Then Nelly would lie down on the rough boards, and stretch out her hands as if to push the world from her and die in her despair. But the young life was fresh and strong within her. She panted for one breath of the breeze that blew round craggy Arthur's Seat, and one drink of St. Anthony's Well, and one look, if it were the last, of the golden sunshine, no beams of which could penetrate her high, little window. She would fain have gone again up the busy street, and watched the crowds of passengers, and listened to the bustling traffic, and greeted her friends and acquaintances. Silence and solitude, and the close air that oppressed her, were things very foreign to her nature. In the dark night, when her distempered imagination conjured up horrible dreams, Nanny Swinton stole to her door, and bemoaned her bird, her lamb, whispering hoarsely, "Do her biddin', Miss Nelly; she's yer leddy mother; neither man nor God will acquit you; your burden may be lichter than ye trow." And Nelly was weary, and had sinful, mad thoughts of living to punish her enemies more by the fulfilment of their desire than by the terrors of her early death. So the next time her mother tapped on the pannel with her undaunted, unwearied "Ay or no, Nelly Carnegie? Gin the bridal benot this week, I'll bid him tarry another; and gin he weary and ride awa', I'll keep ye steekit here till I'm carried out a corp before ye, and I'll leave ye my curse to be coal and candle, and sops and wine, for the lave o' yer ill days."
Nelly gasped out a husky, wailing "Ay," and her probation was at an end.
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There was brief space now for Nelly's buying pearlins and pinners, and sacques and mantles, and all a young matron's bravery, or for decorating a guest chamber for the ceremony. But Lady Carnegie was not to be balked for trifles. Nanny Swinton stitched night and day, with salt tears from aged eyes moistening her thread; and Nelly did not swerve from her compact, but acted mechanically with the others as she was told. With a strange pallor on the olive of her cheek, and swollen, burning lids, drooping over sunk violent lines beneath the hot eyeballs, and cold, trembling hands, she bore Staneholme's stated presence in these long, bleak March afternoons. He never addressed her particularly, although he took many a long, sore look. Few and formal then were the lover's devoirs expected or permitted.
The evening was raw and rainy; elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. The old city guard sputtered their Gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. The chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-agedwomen barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, had gazed on the white cockade, and the march of Prince Charlie Stuart and his Highlandmen. Down the narrow way, in the drizzly dusk, ran a slight figure, entirely muffled up. Fleet of foot was the runner, and blindly she held her course. Twice she came in contact with intervening obstacles—water-stoups on a threshold, gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. She was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the North, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing a knife from the first butcher's block and ending her misery.
Hasty steps were treading fast upon her track. She distinguished them with morbid acuteness through the speed of her own flight. They were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. She threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. Not that black opening, Nelly Carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations a foul stain—the scene of a mystery no Scottish law-court could clear—the Begbie murder. But it was no seafaring man, with Cain's red right hand, that rushed after trembling, fainting Nelly Carnegie. The tender arms in which she had lain as an infant clutched her dress; and a kindly tongue faltered its faithful, distressed petition—
"Come back, come back, Miss Nelly, afore the Leddy finds out; ye hae nae refuge, an' ye're traced already by mair than me."
But in a moment strong hands were upon her, holdingher like a fluttering moth, or a wild panting leveret, or a bird beating its wings; doing her no violence, however, for who would brush off the down, or tear the soft fur, or break the ruffled feathers? She struggled so frantically that poor old Nanny interposed—
"Na, sir; let her be; she'll gae hame wi' me, her ain born serving-woman. And oh, Staneholme, be not hard, it's her last nicht."
That was Nelly Carnegie's marriage eve.
On the morrow the marriage was celebrated. The bridegroom might pass, in his manly prime and his scarlet coat, although a dowf gallant; but who would have thought that Nelly Carnegie in the white brocade which was her grandmother's the day that made her sib to Rothes—Nelly Carnegie who flouted at love and lovers, and sported a free, light, brave heart, would have made so dowie a bride? The company consisted only of Lady Carnegie's starched cousins, with their husbands and their daughters, who yet hoped to outrival Nelly with her gloomy Lauderdale laird.
The hurried ceremony excused the customary festivities. The family party could keep counsel, and preserve a discreet blindness when the ring dropped from the bride's fingers, and the wine stood untasted before her, while Lady Carnegie did the honours as if lonely age and narrow circumstances did not exist.
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The March sun shone clear and cold on grey Staneholme, standing on the verge of a wide moor, with thetroubled German Ocean for a background, and the piping east wind rattling each casement. There was haste and hurry in Staneholme, from the Laird's mother down through her buxom merry daughters to the bareheaded servant-lasses, and the substitutes for groom and lacquey, in coarse homespun, and honest, broad blue bonnets. There was bustle in the little dining-room with its high windows, which the sea-foam sometimes dimmed, and its spindle-legged chairs and smoked pictures. There was blithe work in the cheerful hall, in whose broad chimney great seacoal fires blazed—at whose humming wheels the young Mays of Staneholme, as well as its dependants, still took their morning turn. There was willing toil in the sleeping-rooms, with their black cabinets and heavy worsted curtains. And there was a throngedmêléein the court formed by the outhouses, over whose walls the small-leaved ivy of the coast clustered untreasured. Staneholme's favourite horse was rubbing down; and Staneholme's dogs were airing in couples. Even the tenantry of the never-failing pigeon-house at the corner of the old garden were in turmoil, for half-a-score of their number had been transferred to the kitchen this morning to fill the goodly pasties which were to anticipate the blackberry tarts and sweet puddings, freezing in rich cream. But the sun had sunk behind the moor where the broom was only budding, and the last sea-mew had flown to its scaur, and the smouldering whins had leaped up into the first yellow flame of the bonfires, and the more shifting, fantastic, brilliant banners of the aurora borealis shot across the frosty sky, before the first faint shout announced that Staneholme and his ladyhad come home. With his wife behind him on his bay, with pistols at his saddle-bow, and "Jock" on "the long-tailed yad" at his back, with tenant retainers and veteran domestics pressing round—and ringing shouts and homely huzzas and good wishes filling the air, already heavy with the smoke of good cheer—Staneholme rode in. He lifted down an unresisting burden, took in his a damp, passive hand, and throwing over his shoulder brief, broken thanks, hurried up the flight of stairs, through the rambling, crooked passages into the hall.
Staneholme was always a man of few words. He was taken up, as was right, with the little lady, whose habit trailed behind her, and who never raised her modest eyes. "Well-a-day! the Laird's bargain was of sma' buik," thought the retainers, but "Hurrah" for the fat brose and lumps of corned beef, and the ale and the whisky, with which they are now to be regaled!
In the hall stood Joan and Madge and Mysie, panting to see their grand Edinburgh sister. They were only hindered from running down into the yard by the deposed mistress of Staneholme, whose hair was as white as snow, and who wore no mode mantle nor furbelows nor laces, like proud Lady Carnegie. She was dressed in a warm plaiden gown and a close mob cap, with huge keys and huswife balancing each other at either pocket-hole, and her cracked voice was very sweet as she reiterated "Bide till he bring her here, my bairns," and her kindly smile was motherly to the whole world. But think you poor vanquished Nelly Carnegie's crushed heart leapt up to meet these Homes—that her eyes glanced cordially at Joan,and Madge, and Mysie—that her cheek was bent gratefully to receive old Lady Staneholme's caress? No, no; Nelly was too wretched to cry, but she stood there like a marble statue, and with no more feeling, or show of feeling. Was this colourless, motionless young girl, in her dusty, disarranged habit, and the feather of her hat ruffled by the wind, the gay Edinburgh beauty who had won Staneholme! What glamour of perverse fashion had she cast into his eyes!
"Wae's me, will dule never end in this weary warld? Adam lad, Adam, what doom have you dragged doon on yoursel'?" cried Lady Staneholme; and while the thoughtless, self-absorbed girls drew back in disappointment, she met her son's proud eyes, and stepping past him, let her hand press lightly for a second on his shoulder as she took in hers Nelly's lifeless fingers. She said simply to the bride, "You are cold and weary, my dear, and supper is served, and we'll no bide making compliments, but you're welcome hame to your ain gudeman's house and folk; and so I'll lead you to your chamber in Staneholme, and then to the table-head, your future place." And on the way she explained first with noble humility that she did not wait for a rejoinder, because she had been deaf ever since Staneholme rode post haste from Edinburgh from the last sitting of the Parliament; and that since she was growing old, although it was pleasant to her to serve the bairns, yet she would be glad to relinquish her cares, and retire to the chimney-corner to her wheel and her book; and she blessed the Lord that she had lived to see the young mistress of Staneholme who would guide the household when she was at her rest. Nelly heard not, did not care to recognise that the Lady of Staneholme, in her looks, words, and actions, was beautiful with the rare beauty of a meek, quiet, loving spirit which in those troublous days had budded and bloomed and been mellowed by time and trial. Nor did Nelly pause to consider that had she chosen, she whose own mother's heart had never melted towards her, might have been nestled in that bosom as in an ark of peace.
When Lady Staneholme conducted Nelly down the wide staircase into the chill dining-room, and to the chair opposite the claret-jug of the master of the house, Nelly drew back with sullen determination.
"Na, but, my bairn, I'm blithe for you to fill my place; Staneholme's mither may well make room for Staneholme's wife," urged the lady, gently.
But Nelly remained childishly rooted in her refusal to preside at his board, unless compelled; and her brow, knit at the remembrance of her fall, was set to meet the further encounter. Joan and Madge and Mysie, with their blooming cheeks, and their kissing-strings new for the occasion, stared as if their strange sister was but half endowed with mother wit; and Lady Staneholme hesitated until Adam Home uttered his short, emphatic "As she pleases, mother," while the flush flew to his forehead, and his firm lip shook.
Staneholme had resolved never to control the wife he had forced into his arms, beyond the cold, daily intercourse which men will interchange with a deadly foe, as well as with a trusty frere; never to approach her side, norattempt to assuage her malice nor court her frozen lips into a smile. This was his purpose, and he abode by it. He farmed his land, he hunted, and speared salmon, was rocked in his fishing-boat as far as St. Abbs, read political pamphlets, and sat late over his wine, and sometimes abetted the bold smuggling, much like his contemporaries. But no pursuit which he followed with fitful excess seemed to satisfy him as it did others, and he never sought to supplement it by courting his alien wife.
Lady Staneholme would fain have made her town-bred daughter-in-law enamoured with the duties of a country life, and cheered the strange joylessness of her honeymoon. Failing in this attempt, she, with a covert sigh, half-pain, half-pleasure, resumed the old oversight of larder and dairy. Such care was then the delight of many an unsophisticated laird's helpmate; and, to the contented Lady of Staneholme, it had quite made up for the partial deprivation of social intercourse to which her infirmity had subjected her. Joan, Madge, and Mysie, wearied of haughty Nelly after they had grown accustomed to the grand attire she wore, denied that they had ever been dazzled with it, and ceased to believe that she had danced minuets in the Assembly Rooms before Miss Jacky Murray. They had their own company and their own stories, into which they had no temptation to drag an interloper.
Nelly, in her desolation standing apart in the centre of the wholesome, happy family circle, grew to have her peculiar habits and occupations, her self-contained life into which none of the others could penetrate.
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The sea-pink and the rock saxifrage were making the rugged rocks gay, the bluebell was nodding on the moor, and Nelly had not died, as she foolishly fancied she should. She had learned to wander out along the shore or over the trackless moor for hours and hours, and often returned footsore and exhausted. She who had been accustomed only to the Canongate and High Street of Edinburgh, the tall houses with their occasional armorial bearings, the convenient huckster shops—their irregular line intersected by the strait closes, the traffic and gossip; or to the forsaken royal palace, and the cowslips of the King's Park—could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving heather, and the full moon hanging above the restless tide. She could listen to the surf in the storm, and the ripple in the calm, to the cry of the gull and the wh-r-r of the moorcock; pull wild thyme, and pick up rose-tinted shells and perforated stones; and watch shyly her hardy cottar servants cutting peats and tying up flax, and even caught snatches of their rude Border lore of raid and foray under doughty Homes, who wore steel cap and breastplate.
The coast-line at Staneholme was high and bold, but in place of descending sheerly and precipitately to the yellow sands, it sloped in a green bank, broken by gullies, where the long sea-grass grew in tangled tufts, interspersed with the yellow leaves of the fern, and in whose sheltered recesses Nelly Carnegie so often lingered, that she left them to future generations as "Lady Staneholme's Walks."
There she could see the London smacks and foreignluggers beating up to ride at the pier of Leith. There she could sit for hours, half-hidden, and protected from the sea blast, mechanically pulling to pieces the dried, blackened seaweed blown up among the small, prickly blush roses. In her green quilted petticoat and spencer she might have been one of the "good people's changelings," only the hue of her cheek was more like that of a brownie of the wold; and, truly, to her remote world there was an impenetrable mystery about the young mistress of Staneholme, in her estrangement and mournfulness. Some said that she had favoured another lover, whom Staneholme had slain in a duel or a night-brawl; some that the old Staneholmes had sold themselves to the Devil, and a curse was on their remotest descendants; for was not the young lairdfeyat times, and would not the blithe sisters pass into care-worn wives and matrons?
There sat Nelly, looking at the sea, musing dreamily and drearily on Old Edinburgh, or pondering with sluggish curiosity over the Homes, and what, from casual looks and words, she could not help gathering of their history. The Lairds of Staneholme had wild moss-trooper blood in their veins, and they had vindicated it to the last generation by unsettled lives, reckless intermeddling with public affairs, and inveterate feuds with their brother lairds.
Adam Home's was a hot heart, constant in its impetuosity, buried beneath an icy crust which he strove to preserve, but which hissed and crackled when outward motives failed, or when opposition fanned the inner glow. With the elements of a despot but half tamed, and likemany another tyrant, unchallenged master of his surroundings, Staneholme wielded his authority with fair result. Tenant and servant, hanger-on and sprig of the central tree, bore regard as well as fear for the young laird—all save Staneholme's whilom love and wedded wife.
Nelly did not wish to understand this repressed, ardent nature, although its developments sometimes forced themselves upon her. She had heard Staneholme hound on a refractory tyke till he shouted himself hoarse, and yet turn aside before the badger was unearthed; she had seen him climb the scaurs, and hang dizzily in mid-air over the black water, to secure the wildfowl he had shot, and it was but carrion; and once, Joan and Madge, to whom he was wont to be indulgent in a condescending, superior way, trembled before the stamp of his foot and the kindling flash of his eye. Some affair abroad had disturbed him and he came into the hall, when his sisters' voices were raised giddily as they played off an idle, ill-thought-of jest on grave, cold Nelly. "Queans and fools," he termed them, and bade them "end their steer" so harshly, that the free, thoughtful girls did not think of pouting or crying, but shrank back in affright. Nelly Carnegie, whom he had humbled to the dust, was below his anger.
When the grey mansion of Staneholme basked in the autumn sun, an auspicious event gladdened its chambers. Joan was matched with a gay, gallant young cousin from Teviotdale, and from the commencement of the short wooing to the indefatigable dance which the young bride herself led off right willingly, all was celebrated with smiles and blessings, and harvest-home fulness of joy and gratitude. But a dark shadow moved among the merrymakers. A young heart robbed of its rights, like an upbraiding ghost, regarded the simple, loving, trusting pair, and compared their consecrated vows with the mockery of a rite into which it had been driven.
The only change time brought to Nelly, was the progress of an unacknowledged bond between her and good old Lady Staneholme. The obstacle to any interchange of ideas and positive confidence between them, was the inducement to the tacit companionship adopted by the sick, wayward heart, with its malady of wrong and grief. Influenced by an instinctive, inexplicable attraction, Nelly's uncertain footsteps followed Lady Staneholme, and kept pace with her soft tread, when she overlooked her spinners and knitters, gave out her linen and spices, turned over her herbs, and visited her sick and aged. There they were seen—the smiling, deaf old lady, fair in her wrinkles, and her mute, dark, sad daughter whom in patient ignorance she folded in her mantle of universal charity.
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Under a pale February sun Nelly was out on the sea-braes, where the sprays of the briar-roses were swept in circles, streaming far and wide. She lingered in the hollow, and strayed to the utmost limit of her path. As she was returning, her eye fell on the folds of an object fluttering among the tedded grass. It was Staneholme's plaid. This was the first time he had intruded upon her solitary refuge. When Nelly climbed the ascent, and saw themansion house, with its encumbered court, she could distinguish the sharp sound of a horse's hoof. Its rider was already out of sight on the bridle-road. Michael Armstrong, the laird's man, was mounting his own nag; Wat Pringle, the grieve, and other farm folk, stood looking after the vanished traveller; Liddel, the Tweedside retriever, paced discontentedly up and down; and old Lady Staneholme met her on the threshold, and as on the night of her arrival at Staneholme, led her up the staircase and into her sleeping-chamber. Nelly marked, with dim dread, the tear-stains on the pallid cheeks of placid age, and the trembling of the feeble hand that guided her. She had nothing to fear; but what was the news for which there was such solemn preparation?
"My puir bairn," Lady Staneholme began brokenly, "I've had an interview with my son, and I've learnt, late, some passages in the past; and I wonder not, but I maun lament, for I am a widow mother, Nelly, and my only son Adam who did you wrong and showed you no pity, has got his orders to serve with the soldiers in the Low Countries. He has not stayed to think; he has left without one farewell: he is off and away, to wash out the sins of him and his in his young blood. I will never see his face more: but you are a free woman; and, as the last duty he will receive at your hand, he bids you read his words."
Nelly's hand closed tightly over its enclosure. "Who says I told he did me wrang?" she said, proudly, her dilated eyes lifted up to the deprecating ones that did not avoid her gaze.
"Na, na, ye never stoopit to blame him. Weary fa'him! Nelly Carnegie," ejaculated honest Lady Staneholme, "although he is my ain that made you his, sair, sair against your woman's will, and so binged up blacker guilt at his doorstane, as if the lightest heritage o' sin werena' hard to step ower. But, God forgive me! It's old Staneholme risen up to enter afresh upon his straits, and may He send him pardon and peace in His ain time."
"Nelly" (Staneholme's letter said),—"formyNelly you'll never be, though the law has given me body and estate,—what garred me love you like life or death? I've seen bonnier, and you're no so good as my mother, or you would have forgiven me long syne. Why did you laugh, and mock, and scorn me, when I first made up to you among your fine Edinburgh folks? Had you turned your shoulder upon me with still steadfastness, I might have been driven to the wall—I would have believed you. When you said that you would lie in the grave sooner than in my arms, you roused the evil temper within me; and though I had mounted the Grassmarket, I swore I would make you my wife. What call or title had you, a young lass, to thwart your lady mother and the Laird of Staneholme? And when I had gone thus far—oh! Nelly, pity me—there was no room to repent or turn back. I dared not leave you to dree alane your mother's wrath: there was less risk in your wild heart beating itself to death against the other, that would have gladly shed its last drop for its captive's sake. But Heaven punished me. I found, Nelly, that the hand that had dealt the blow could not heal it. How could I approach you with soft words, that had good right to shed tears of blood formy deeds? So, as I cannot put my hand on my breast and die like my father, I'll quit my moors and haughs and my country; I'll cross the sea and bear the musquetoon, and never return—in part to atone to you, for you sall have the choice to rule with my mother in the routh and goodwill of Staneholme, or to take the fee for the dowager lands of Eweford, and dwell in state in the centre of the stone and lime, and reek, and lords and ladies of Edinburgh; in part because I can hold out no longer, nor bide another day in Tantalus, which is the book name for an ill place of fruitless longing and blighted hope. I'll no be near you in your danger, because when other wives cry for the strong, grieved faces of their gudemen, you will ban the day your een first fell upon me. Nelly Carnegie, why did my love bring no return; no ae sweet kiss; never yet a kind blink of your brown een, that ance looked at me in gay defiance, and now heavily and darkly, till they close on this world?"
Something more Staneholme raved of this undeserved, unwon love, whose possession had become an exaggerated good which he had continued to crave without word or sign, with a boy's frenzy and a man's stanchness. Nelly lost her power of will: she sat with the paper in her hand as if she had ceased to comprehend its contents—as if its release from bondage came too late.
"Dinna ye ken, Nelly woman, his presence will vex you no longer? you're at liberty to go your own gate, and be as you have been—that was his propine," whispered Lady Staneholme, in sorrowful perplexity, but without rousing Nelly from her stupor. They lifted her on her bed,and watched her until her trial took hold of her. No stand did Nelly make against pain and anguish. She was sinking fast into that dreamless sleep where the weary are at rest, when Lady Staneholme stood by her bed and laid an heir by her side, bidding her rejoice, in tones that fell off into a faint quivering sob of tenderness and woe; but Nelly's crushed, stunned heart had still some hidden spring among its withered verdure, and her Benoni called her back from the land of forgetfulness.
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Nelly recovered, at first slowly but cheeringly, latterly with a doubt and apprehension creeping over her brightening prospect—until, all too certainly and hopelessly, her noon, that had been disturbed with thunder-claps and dashing rain, was shrouded in grey twilight.
Nelly would live, but her limbs would never more obey her active spirit, for she had been attacked by a relentless malady. The little feet that had slid in courtly measure, and twinkled in blithe strathspeys, and wandered restlessly over moor and brae, were stretched out in leaden helplessness. When she was young, she "had girded herself and gone whither she would;" but now, ere she was old, while there was not one silver thread in those chestnut locks, "another would gird her and carry her whither she would not." And oh! to think how the young mother's heart, ready to bud and bloom anew, was doomed to drag out a protracted existence, linked to the corpse-like frameof threescore and ten, until the angel of death freed it from its tabernacle of clay.
Nelly never spoke of her affliction—never parted from her baby. Travelling with difficulty, she removed to Edinburgh, to the aspiring tenement in the busy Canongate, which she had quitted in her distraction. Lady Carnegie, in her rustling silk and with her clicking ivory shuttle, received her into her little household, but did not care to conceal that she did so on account of the aliment Staneholme had secured to his forsaken wife and heir. She did not endure the occasional sight of her daughter's infirmities without beshrewing them, as a reflection on her own dignity. She even sneered and scoffed at them, until Nanny Swinton began to fear that the judgment of God might strike her lady—a venerable grandame still without one weakness of bodily decay or human affection.
And did Nelly fret and moan over the invalid condition for which there was neither palliation nor remedy? Nay, a blessing upon her at last; she began to witness a good testimony to the original mettle and bravery of her nature. She accepted the tangible evil direct from God's hand, sighingly, submissively, and with a noble meekness of resignation. She rose above her hapless lot—the old Nelly Carnegie, though subdued and chastened, was in a degree restored.
"Nanny! Nanny Swinton!" called Nelly from her couch, as she managed to hold up, almost exultingly, the big crowing baby, in its quaintest of mantles and caps, "Staneholme's son's a braw bairn, well worthy Lady Carnegie's coral and bells."
"'Deed is he," Nanny assented. "He'll grow up a stately man like his grandsire;" and recurring naturally to forbidden memories, she went on: "He'll be the marrow of Master Hugh. Ye dinna mind Master Hugh, Lady Staneholme?—the picture o' auld Lady Carnegie. That I sud call her auld!"
Nelly's brow contracted with something of its old indignation. "There's never a look of the Carnegies in my son; he has his father's brow and lip and hair, and you're but a gowk, Nanny Swinton!" and Nelly lay back and closed her eyes, and after a season opened them again, to tell Nanny Swinton that "she had been dreaming of a strange foreign city, full of pictures and carved woodwork, and of a high-road traversing a rich plain, shaded by apple and chestnut trees, and of something winding and glittering through the branches," leaving Nanny, who could not stand the sight of two magpies, or of a cuckoo, of a morning before she had broken her fast, sorely troubled to account for the vision.
The gloaming of a night in June was on the Canongate and the silent palace of the gallant, gentle King James. Lady Carnegie was gracing some rout or drum; Nanny Swinton was in her kitchen, burnishing her superannuated treasures, and crooning to herself as she worked; Nelly, in her solitary, shadowy room, lay plaiting and pinching the cambric and muslin gear whose manufacture was her daily occupation, with her child's clumsy cradle drawn within reach of her hand. Through the dim light, she distinguished a man's figure at the door. Nelly knew full well those lineaments, with their mingled fire and gloom.They did not exasperate her as they had once done; they appalled her with great shuddering; and sinking back, Nelly gasped—
"Are you dead and gone, Staneholme? Do you walk to seek my love that ye prigget for, but which canna gladden you now? Gae back to the bottom of the sea, or the bloody battle-field, and in the Lord's name rest there."
The figure stepped nearer; and Nelly, even in her blinding terror, distinguished that it was no shadowy apparition, but mortal like herself. The curdling blood rushed back to Nelly's face, flooding the colourless cheek, and firing her with a new impulse. She snatched her child from its slumber, and clasped it to her breast with her thin transparent hands.
"Have you come back to claim your son, Adam Home? But you'll have to tear him from me with your man's strength, for he's mine as well as yours; and he's my last, my only jewel."
And Nelly sat bolt upright, her rosy burden contrasting with her young, faded face, and her large eyes beginning to flame like those of a wild beast about to be robbed of its young.
"Oh no, Nelly, no," groaned Staneholme, covering his face; "I heard of your distress, and I came but to speer of your welfare." And he made a motion to withdraw.
But Nelly's heart smote her for the wrong her rash words had done him—a wayworn, conscience-smitten man—and she recalled him relentingly.
"Ye may have meant well. I bear you no ill-will; Iam stricken myself. Take a look at your laddie, Adam Home, before ye gang."
He advanced when she bade him, and received the child from her arms; but with such pause and hesitation that it might have seemed he thought more of his hands again meeting poor Nelly Carnegie's, and of her breath fanning his cheek, than of the precious load she magnanimously intrusted to him. He did look at the infant in his awkward grasp, but it was with a stifled sigh of disappointment.
"He may be a braw bairn, Nelly—I know not—but he has no look of yours."
"Na, he's a Home every inch of him, my bonny boy!" Nelly assented, eagerly. After a moment she turned her head, and added peevishly, "I'm a sick woman, and ye needna mind what I say; I'm no fit for company. Good day; but mind, I've forgotten and forgiven, and wish my bairn's father well."
"Nanny Swinton," called Nelly to her faithful nurse, as she lay awake on her bed, deep in the sober dimness of the summer night, "think you that Staneholme will be booted and spurred with the sun, riding through the Loudons to Lauderdale?"
"It's like, Lady Staneholme," answered Nanny, drowsily. "The keep o' man and beast is heavy in the town, and he'll be tain to look on his ain house, and greet the folk at home after these mony months beyond the seas. Preserve him and ilka kindly Scot from fell Popish notions rife yonder!"
"A miserable comforter are you, Nanny Swinton,"muttered her mistress, as she hushed her child, and pressed her fevered lips to each tiny feature.
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But Staneholme came again in broad light, the next day—the next—and the next, with half excuses and vague talk of business. Lady Carnegie did not interdict his visits, or blame his weakness and inconsistency, for they were seemly in the eyes of the world—which she honoured, after herself, although she washed her hands of the further concerns of these fools.
And Nelly talked to him with a grave friendliness, like one restored from madness or risen from another world. "Staneholme, you've never kissed the wean, and it's an ill omen," she said, suddenly, watching him intently as he dandled the child; and as if jealous of any omission regarding it, she appeared satisfied when he complied with her fancy.
"The curtain is drawn, and the shadow is on you; but is that a scar on your brow, Staneholme, and where did you get it?"
"A clour from a French pistol;" it was but skin deep—he was off his camp-bed in a few days.
He stooped forward, as he spoke slightingly, and pushed back the hair that half obscured the faint blue seam.
"Whisht!" said Nelly, reprovingly, "dinna scorn sickness; that bit stroke might have cost Lady Staneholme her son and my bairn his father;" and she bent towardshim in her turn, and passed her fingers curiously and pityingly over the healed wound, ignorant how it burned and throbbed under her touch. "When the bairn is grown, and can rin his lane, Staneholme," Nelly informed him in her new-found freedom of speech, "I will send him for a summer to Staneholme; I'll be lonesome without him, but Michael Armstrong will teach him to ride, and he'll stand by Lady Staneholme's knee." Staneholme expressed no gratitude for the offer, he was fastening the buckle of his beaver. The next time he came he twisted a rose in his hand, and Nelly felt that it must indeed be Beltane: she looked at the flower wistfully, and wondered "would the breezes be shaking the bear and the briar roses on the sea-braes at Staneholme, or were the grapes of southern vines bonnier than they?" He flung down the flower, and strode to her side.
"Come hame, Nelly," he prayed passionately; "byganes may be byganes now. I've deserted the campaign, I've left its honours and its dangers—and I could have liked them well—to free men, and am here to take you hame."
Nelly was thunderstruck. "Hame!" she said, at last, slowly, "where you compelled me to travel, where I gloomed on you day and night, as I vowed; I, who would not be a charge and an oppression to the farthest-off cousin that bears your name. Are you demented?"
"And this is the end," groaned Staneholme, in bitterness; "I dreamt that I would win at last. I did not love you for your health and strength, or your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is fairer to me,lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn, I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"
A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her choking heart; but she pressed her hands upon her breast, and strove against it for the sake of her womanhood.
"And I dreamed," she answered slowly and tremulously, "that it bude to be true, true love, however it had sinned, that neither slight nor hate, nor absence nor fell decay could uproot; and that could tempt me to break my plighted word, and lay my infirmity on the man that bargained for me like gear, and that I swore—Heaven absolve me!—I would gar rue his success till his deein' day. Adam Home, what are you seekin' at my hands?"
"Nae mair than you'll grant, Nelly Carnegie—pardon and peace, and my young gudewife, the desire o' my eyes. I'll be feet to you, Nelly, as long's I'm to the fore."
"Big tramping feet, Staneholme," said Nelly, trying to jest, and pushing him back; "dinna promise ower fair. Na, Adam Home, you'll wauken the bairn!"
So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of the past storm.
There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.
"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"
Staneholme laughed, and retorted something perhaps neither quite modest nor wise; but the ready tongue that had learnt so speedily to pour itself out to his greedy ears did not now scold and contradict him, but sighed—
"Ah, Adam Home, you do not have the best of it; it is sweet to be beat; I didna ken—I never guessed that."
Gladly astounded were the retainers of Staneholme at their young laird's unannounced return, safe and sound, from the wars; but greater and more agreeable was their friendly surprise to find that his sick wife, who came back with him unstrengthened in body, was healed and hearty in spirit. Well might good old Lady Staneholme rejoice, and hush her bold grandson, for the change was not evanescent or its effects uncertain. As Staneholme drove out his ailing wife, or constructed a seat for her on the fresh moor, or looked at her stitching his frilled shirts as intently as the child's falling collars, and talked to her of his duties and his sports, his wildness was controlled and dignified. And when he sat, the head and protector of his deaf old mother, and his little frolicsome, fearless child, and hisNelly Carnegie, whose spirit had come again, but whose body remained but a sear relic of her blooming youth, his fitful melancholy melted into the sober tenderness of a penitent, believing man, who dares not complain, but who must praise God and be thankful, so long as life's greatest boons are spared to him.
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ACALM, pure summer moonlight fell upon the Ayrshire mosses and deans, but did not silver, as far as we are concerned, the Carrick Castle of Bruce, nor Cameron's lair amidst the heather, nor landward Tintock, nor even seagirt Ailsa Craig, but only the rolling waves of the Atlantic and a grey turreted mansion-house built on a promontory running abruptly into the water. The dim ivory light illuminated a gay company met in the dwelling with little thought of stillness or solemnity, but with their own sense of effect, grouped carelessly, yet not ungracefully, in an old-fashioned, though not unsuitable drawing-room.
They needed relief, these brilliant supple figures; they demanded the background of grey hangings, scant carpet, spindle-legged chairs, and hard sombre prints. To these very cultivated, very artificial and picturesque personages, a family sitting-room was but a stage, where lively, capricious, yet calculating actors were engaged in playing their parts.
The party were mostly French, from the mass of gallant,dauntless emigrants, many of whom were thus entertained with grateful, commiserating hospitality in households whose members had but lately basked in the sparkling geniality of the southern atmosphere, now lurid and surcharged with thunder.
There was a Marquise, worldly, light, and vain, whom adversity had not broken, and could not sour; an Abbé, bland and double, but gentle and kindly in his way; a soldier, volatile, hot-headed, brave as a lion, simple as a child; an older man, sad, sneering, indifferent to this world and the next, but with the wrecks of a noble head, and, God help him, a noble heart.
Of the three individuals present of a different nation and creed, two closely resembled the others with only that vague, impalpable, but perceptible distinction of those whose rearing affords a superficial growth which overspreads but does not annihilate the original plant. The one was a young man, buoyant, flippant, and reckless as the French soldier, but with a bold defiance in his tone which was all his own; the other a young girl, coquettish and vivacious as the Marquise, but with a deep consciousness under her feigning, an undercurrent of watchful pride and passion, of which her model was destitute. The last of the circle was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered lad, who stood apart from the others, big, shy, silent:—but he was earnest amid their shallowness, noble amid their hollowness, and devoted amid their fickleness. How he gazed on the arch, haughty girl, with her lilies and roses, her pencilled brows, her magnificent hair magnificently arranged, with her rich silk and airy lace, and muslin folded and gathered andfalling into lines which were the very poetry of attire, unless where a piquant provoking frill, band, or peak, reminded the gazer that the princess was a woman, a mocking mischievous woman, as well as a radiant lady! How he listened to her contradictory words, witty and liquid even in their most worthless accents! how he drank in her songs, the notes of her harp, the rustle of her dress, the fall of her foot! how he started if she moved! how he saw her, though his eyes were on the ground, and though his head was in his hands, while she marked him ceaselessly, half with cruel triumph, half with a flutter and faintness which she angrily and scornfully resisted and denied.
A few more gaybons motsand repartees, a last epigram from the Abbé, a court anecdote from the Marquise which might have figured in one of those letters of Madame de Sévigné where the freshness of the haymaker of Les Rochers survives the glare and the terrible staleness of the Versailles of Louis XV., a blunt camp jest from the soldier, a sarcasm from the philosopher, a joyous barcarole, strangely succeeded by a snatch from that lament of woe wrung forth by the fatal field of Flodden, and the company dispersed. The horse's hoofs of the single stranger of the evening rung on the causeway, as he made for the smooth sands of the bay, the lights one by one leaping out, and the pale moon remaining mistress of Earlscraig as when the warder on yon tower peered out over the waters for the boats of the savage Irish kern, or lit the bale-fire that summoned Montgomery and Muir to ride and run for the love or the fear of Boswell of Earlscraig.
Had these old-world times returned by magic? had acrazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity. No horn blew, no bugle sounded, no tramp of horse or hurrying feet broke the silence; the house lay in profound rest, and the sleepers slept on, though truly that was no phantom glare, no marsh gleam, but the near presence of an awful foe.
And the smoke burst forth in thicker, more suffocating volume; the red streamers shot up again and again, and the burning embers fell like thickest swarms of fire-flies, before a single hasty step roused an echo already lost in the roar and crackle of fire. A scared, half-dressed servant ran out into the court, flung up his hands as he looked around him, then hurried back, and suddenly the great bell pealed out its faithful alarum. "Good folk, good folk, danger is at the door! For Jesu's sake and your dear lives, up and flee! The angels hold out their hands, Sodom is around you—away, away!"
The summons was not in vain. Within a few seconds clamorous outcries, shrieks of dismay, the dashing open of doors and windows, answered the proclamation. A horror-struck crowd assembled rapidly in the court; but notwithstanding that the Abbé's wan face and shaven crown appeared speedily, and the soldier shouted, "Who is indanger?mes camarades, suivez-moi!" the philosopher instinctively elected himself commander; he rose, tall and erect, over the heads of his fellows; his face flushed and brightened; and he spoke words of wisdom and resolution whose spirit men recognised through the veil of his frozen tongue; while cravens shrank back, brave men rallied round him!
"Where is Boswell?Mon Dieu!the house is burning and the master is not found! Adolphe,sauve la Marquise, cet escalier n'est pas perdu. But where is Boswell? Show his room to me—the nearest way—quick, or he perishes.Ah, le voilà!"
Down a flight of side steps stumbled the butler and a favourite groom, bearing between them the young laird, motionless, senseless, his dress dishevelled, but unscathed by flame, and unstained by blood; still breathing, but his marked imperious features were unconscious, heavy, and lethargic.
The Abbé and his elder friend exchanged glances. The brow of the latter contracted in disgust and gloom.
"Adolphe and he played billiards against my desire, as if he were notbêteenough already," he said in an undertone. "Lay him here, my friends," to the servants, "and listen to me. If you love the Seigneur, let him never know that thus it happened this night. Cover him with a mantle; he will awake to see his chateau a ruin.Mais, n'importe, we will do our best. Carry out what is most precious; bring up buckets of water.Ma foi!there is enough at hand."
Yes; at their feet, but by a few fathoms unavailable,lay the broad sea, sufficient to extinguish the conflagration of a thousand cities, while the house above was rent with fierce heat, which reddened the sea like blood.
The Marquise was rescued sobbing and shivering, but she shared her blanket with one of the poor servant-girls. Even the old bed-ridden nurse, so blind and stupid with age that none could satisfy her of the cause of the tumult and din, was carried out, and placed on the grass terrace beside the master; where no sooner did she apprehend intuitively the neighbourhood of her proudly cherished nursling, than she left off her weak wailing, and began to croon over him as fondly and contentedly as when he lay an innocent babe in his cradle:
"Are you weary, Earlscraig? Have you come back sorely tired from the hunt or the race? Weary fa' the men folk that let you lie down with the dew-draps on your bonny curls—bonnier than Miss Alice's, for a' their fleechin'—as if it were high noon. No but noontide has its ills, too; but you would never heed a bonnet, neither for sun nor wind. A wild laddie, a wild laddie, Earlscraig!"
Eager but ignorant hands were piling up heaps of miscellaneous goods—pictures, feather-beds, old armour, plate, mirrors, harness, carpets, and wearing apparel. All were tossed together in wild confusion. The moon was hidden; air, earth, and water were lurid; a hot blast blew in men's faces, which alone remained white and haggard, when a murmur and question, a doubt and frenzy, first stirred and fast convulsed the mass. "Where is Miss Alice?" Ay, where was Miss Alice? Who had seen her? Speak, inGod's name!—shout her name until her voice replies, and men's shuddering souls are freed from this ghastly nightmare.
Miss Alice! Alice Boswell! are you safe, lamenting unseen the home of your fathers? Or are you within that turret whose foundation rock descends sheer into the sea—that turret close by which the demon began his work, where his forked tongue is now licking each loophole and outlet, where beams are bursting and the yawning jaws of hell are about to swallow up the rapid wreck—forgotten, forsaken—the queen of hearts, the wooed and worshipped beauty; fair and sweet, ripe and rare, the sole daughter of the race; the charm and delight of its grey heads?
Oh, Father, thou art terrible in thy decrees! Oh, men, ye are miserable fools! She is there by the blazing framework of the window of her chamber, which she has never quitted; her hair loose, some portion of her dress cast about her, her eyes wide open and glazing with terror, but strangely beautiful—with a glory behind and about her; an unearthly brightness upon brow and cheek, and white arms stretched out imploringly, despairingly for help in her utmost need.
They pressed forward; they looked up in anguish; old men who had followed her when a fairy child, friends of long standing, acquaintances of yesterday. Again and again the gallant soldier penetrated the low doorway; again and again he swerved and recoiled from the furnace fumes that met him—a more fearful encounter than the fury of the sans-culottes and the reeking pools beneath the guillotine.
"Courage, soldats! Vive la mort, pour la femme et pour la gloire!" and with a shout half-exulting, half-maddened, the Gallic blood again fired to the desperate feat. Then there was a diversion—a rush to the opposite side of the building—a ladder might be of use there. A notion of forcing open a closed-up and disused gallery of communication, seized hold of these agitated minds, and this afforded a vent to the pent-up sympathy and distress. New energy supplanted stupor; and through the deep hush of the fire could be distinguished the blows of axe and hammer, wielded lustily by stalwart and devoted arms, eager to clear a way of life and liberty for the captive.
But this was a work of time, and louder crackled and hissed the flames. A fiercer blaze filled the sky, and glittered back from the waves; the serpent tongues drew together, and shot up through the room in a yellow pyramid. In vain! in vain! The zealous labourers panted in the sickness of horror and the chill of great awe.
"A boat! a boat!" called a voice from the outer circle. The thinker, the scorner, stood on the verge of the rocks above the illuminated sea, his head bare, his coat stripped off. "Let Mademoiselle cast herself from the casement instantly; it is her only hope. I can swim; I will hold her up until a boat is launched.Courage, Mademoiselle!trust in God and in me."
"Yes, Marquise," he whispered for a second to his countrywoman near him; "I have lost God for many a day; I have found him again in this hour. ATe Deumfor my requiem!" and looking aghast upon his face in the great light, the Marquise crossed herself, and averred ever afterwards that it was transformed like unto that of his patron saint, St. Francis. The next moment he plunged into the midnight sea. Those who witnessed the action declared that the reflection of the burning was so strong that he seemed to sink into a lake of fire, where he rose again presently, and breasted the waters stoutly.
The girl saw the design; she comprehended it, and the hoarse murmur of encouragement that hailed its presence of mind. The concentration of the flames, which threatened every moment to bring down a portion of the ponderous roof in one destroying crash, left a freer passage. She advanced quickly—she put her foot on the smouldering sill; she paused, hesitated. It was a fearful alternative.
"Leap down, leap down, Miss Alice; a drowning man has two lives, a burning man but one. Down, down, or you are lost!"
But another cry mingled with the vehement appeal—a piercing, confident cry, that would have vibrated on the dull ear of the dying, though it said only, "I am coming. Alice Boswell: I am coming!"
He was there, on his panting, foam-flecked horse: he flung himself from his saddle; he heard her answer, "Hector Garret, save me, save me!"
He broke the circle as Samson burst the green withes: he paralysed all remonstrance; he vanished into the abyss which the great staircase presented. He must have borne a charmed life to reach thus far—when a mightier roar, a perfect column of fire, a thundering avalanche of glowing timber and huge stones descended with a shock of anearthquake, and rebounded into the sea, engulfing for ever the fair slight form within.
By daring and magnanimous effort and main force, other arms bore back Hector Garret from the tottering walls and shaken foundation: and the boat rowed out and delivered the heroic Frenchman. The sinking in of the turret roof satiated the destroyer, so that the further wing of the house was preserved. Its master lived unharmed, to rouse himself from his portentous slumber and face his calamity, while the lover lay writhing and raging in the clutch of wild fever.
But the summer sun shining down on the sea, once more blue and clear as heaven, fell on black yawning gaps and mounds of ashes; on shivered glass and strewn relics of former luxury; on the very grass of the promontory, brown and withered, and trodden into the earth for many a yard; on the horrible grave of the maiden who had watched her own image in the crystal pools, lilted her siren songs to the break of the waves, woven at once chains for her adorers and the web of that destiny which buried her there, unshrouded and uncoffined.