THE RETURNED EXILE.
Then, Mary, turn awa'
That bonnie face o' thine;
Oh, dinna shew the breast
That never can be mine.
Wi' love's severest pangs
My heart is laden sair;
And owre my breast the grass maun grow,
Ere I am free from care.
In the gloaming of an evening in the autumn of 1693 a man left the
western gate of Edinburgh, and, skirting the suburb of the Highriggs,
struck into the roadway between the fields.
The sickly rays of a yellow sun shining faintly through the mist
after throwing the shadows of the gigantic castle far to the
eastward, had died away, and a deeper gloom succeeding, denoted the
close of the day as the fall of the fluttering leaves did that of the
dreary year.
The stranger was Walter Fenton; but how changed in aspect and attire!
His form was thin and emaciated, his cheek pale, his eyes sunken from
the pain of his wound and the toil of campaigning; but his step was
as free, and his bearing erect as ever. His attire was of the
plainest grey freize, with great horn buttons; a brown scratch wig
and a plain beaver hat concealed the dark locks that curled beneath
them; he carried a walking staff in lieu of a sword, and appeared to
lean on it a little at times. He was now in the character of a Low
Country merchant, and, favoured by a passport from the conservator of
Scottish privileges at Campvere, had an hour before landed from the
good ship Fame of Queensferry, at the ancient wooden pier of Leith.
Often he made brief pauses to view the desolate scene around him; for
in that year a heavy curse seemed to have fallen upon the desolate
kingdom of Scotland.
On an evening in the preceding summer, when everything was blooming
and smiling--when the land was rich with verdure and the woods were
heavy with foliage, a cold wind came from the eastward, and,
accompanied by a dense and sulphureous mist, swept over the face of
the country, blighting whatsoever was touched by its pestilential
breath.
The fields seemed to whiten under its baleful influence; the ripening
corn withered, and the land was struck with a barrenness. Dense,
opaque, and palpable, like a chain of hills, this strange and horrid
vapour lay floating in the valleys for many successive months, and
there its effects were more disastrous. The heat of the sun seemed
to diminish, the insects disappeared from the air and the birds from
the withered woods, which, long ere the last month of summer, became
divested of their faded foliage. The cattle became dwarfish and
meagre, and the flocks perished by scores on the decaying heather of
the blasted mountains. The people became sickly, ghastly, and
prostrated in spirit; for a curse seemed to have fallen upon the land
and all that was in it.
This terrible visitation continued until the year 1701, and the _dear
years_ were long remembered with horror in Scotland.
In some places, January and February became the months of harvest,
and, amid ice and snow, and the sleet that drizzled through that
everlasting and sulphureous mist, the half famished people reaped in
grief and misery a small part of their scanty produce, while the
other was left to rot in the ground. Famine, the lord of all,
stalked grimly over the land, and strong men and wailing women, yea,
and feeble children, fought like wild beasts for a handful of meal in
the desolate market places.
"There was many a blank and pale face in Scotland," says Walker, the
famous Presbyterian pedlar, "and as the famine waxed sore, wives
thought not of their husbands, nor husbands of their wives," and the
gloomy superstition and fanatical intolerance of the time added fresh
horrors to this ghastly scourge.
The famine was not yet at its height; but there was a desolation in
the aspect of the land that deeply impressed the mind of the returned
exile, and he sighed in unison with the dreary wind as it swept over
the blasted muir, shaking down the crisped leaves and acorns of
stately old oaks of Drumsheugh. Save the solitary heron, wading as
of old in the lake, not a bird was to be seen, not an insect buzzing
about the leafless hedges. The air was dense and cold, and all was
very still.
The country seemed to be wasting like a beautiful woman decaying in
consumption. Walter felt that the manners of the people were
changed; intense gravity and moroseness, real or affected, were
visible in every face, while sad coloured garments, Geneva cloaks,
and Dutch fashions were all the rage. Every trace of the smart
mustache had disappeared, and with it the slashed doublets, the
waving feathers and dashing airs of the gallant cavaliers.
Even the sentinels at the palace gates and the portes of the city,
might have passed for those before the Town House or _Rasp Haus_ at
Amsterdam. The smart steel cap of the old Scottish infantry had now
given place to a vast overshadowing beaver looped up on three sides,
and the scarlet doublet slashed with blue, and the jacket of spotless
buff, to square tailed and voluminous coats of brick-red, with yellow
breeches and belts worn saltier-wise.
Bitterly the reflection came home to the heart of the poor Cavalier,
that
"The times were changed, old manners gone,
And a _stranger_ filled the Stuarts' throne!"
Though confident of succeeding in his diplomacy with the loyal lords
and chieftains of the Jacobite faction, he was well aware how arduous
and difficult was the task to overthrow two Governments so well
arranged, ably constituted and supported, as those of England and
Scotland. It had long been the policy of William III. to conciliate
domestic enemies, and, in pursuance of it, he had bestowed several
lucrative offices on the leaders of the discontented and kirk-party.
The Scottish Parliament, which had recently met, received from him an
able and cunning letter, replete with flattering and cajoling
expressions, which put all the Presbyterian Lords in such excellent
humour, that they returned a most dutiful and affectionate
address--granted him a supply of six new battalions of infantry, a
body of seamen, and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to enable
him to carry on his useless wars with new vigour; but though the
Parliament was thus obsequious, the people were far from being
pleased; and the Jacobites, numerous, enthusiastic, and determined,
every where fanned the flames of discord and dissension.
The institution of fines and oaths of assurance upon absentees from
Parliament, which had direct reference to certain Cavalier Lords and
lesser Barons, exasperated them as much as the horrible massacre of
Glencoe did the commonalty, who raised throughout the land a cry for
vengeance on William and his Government.
Walter Fenton reflected on these things as he walked onward, and knew
that he had come at a critical time. Other thoughts soon succeeded,
and, grasping his staff as he had often done his sword, he pushed
forward with a sparkling eye and reddening cheek.
Without impairing his nobler sentiments, suffering and misfortune had
powerfully strengthened his loyalty and virtue, as much as
campaigning had improved his bearing and lent a firmness and manly
determination to his aspect; but often his brow saddened and the fire
of his eye died away, when he thought of Finland and those he had
been permitted to survive and to mourn.
Glowing with sensations of rapture, and eagerly anticipating the
flush of joy that awaited him, he passed the rhinns of the beautiful
loch, the curious gable-ended old house where once the Regent Murray
dwelt, and approached the gate of Bruntisfield.
His heart beat painfully; he was deeply agitated. Five weary years
had elapsed since he had stood on that spot, and it seemed only as
yesterday. Through all the hurry of events that had swept over him,
his memory went back to that memorable eve of September (of which
this was now the anniversary) and to the glorious ardour that
animated his heart on the day he marched for England, when the long
line of the Scottish host wound over yonder hill before him. Oh, for
one hour more of those fierce longings and brave impulses! But alas!
the spirit seemed to have passed away for ever.
He approached the avenue. The old gate with its massive arch, its
mossy carvings and loopholed wall, had given place to a handsome new
erection of more modern architecture, surmounted by a rich coat of
arms; and Walter felt every pulse grow still, and every fibre tremble
as he surveyed the sculptured blazon.
It bore the saltire of Napier, engrailed between four roses, but
quartered, collared, and coroneted with other bearings.
His heart became sick and palsied. Oh, it was a horrible sensation
that came over him; he stood long irresolute and apprehensive.
"Of what am I afraid!" he suddenly exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a
true and impassioned lover. "There is some mistake here; the house
has been sold or gifted away like many another noble patrimony to the
slaves of the Statholder. Lilian! Dear Lilian, when shall I hold
thee in my arms?"
He was about to rush forward, when a horseman, the glittering lace on
whose bright coloured suit of triple velvet, and waving ostrich
feathers that fluttered in his diamond hat-band, formed a strong
contrast to the sombre fashions of the time, dashed down the
leaf-strewn avenue on a beautiful charger, with the perfumed ringlets
of his white peruke dancing in the wind--for white perukes, from a
spirit of opposition, were all the rage then, as _black_ had been
under the three last princes of the old hereditary line. It was Lord
Clermistonlee.
"Hollo, fellow!" he cried imperiously, "keep out of my horse's
way--dost want thy bones broken!" and giving a keen but casual glance
at the dejected wanderer, he spurred onward to the city.
Suddenly he reined up so sharply as almost to pull his pawing steed
back upon its strained and bending haunches.
"'Tis he!" exclaimed the proud lord, as he thought aloud. "By the
great father of confusion 'tis he! How could I mistake, though
truly, poor devil, these last five years have sadly changed him. But
on what fool's errand comes he here? By all the furies, I knew his
lachrymose visage in a moment, though the despatches of Dalrymple of
Stair, to our Lords of Council, had in some sort prepared me for his
return, and for what?--to organize a plot for James's restoration.
Poor fool! Infatuated in love as in politics. He believes in the
faith of women and the word of Kings; let us see how they will avail
him tonight."
He smiled scornfully, and twisted the heavy dark mustachios which he
still cherished with more than Mahommedan veneration. Alternately
sad and bitter thoughts swelled within him as he remembered the
joyous revelry of King Charles's days, and the tyranny he could then
exercise over all nonconformists, and the hunting and
hosting-dragooning and drinking of the Covenanting wars; then came
feelings of jealousy and revenge that, as they blazed up in his proud
breast, bore all before them.
"How dares he now to prowl before my own gates? Gadso! if my Lady
Lilian sees him once, there will be a pretty disturbance. A shipload
of devils will be nothing to it. The girl will die, and my own house
will become too hot to hold me. D----nation! too well have I seen
the secret passion that has preyed upon her gentle and affectionate
heart--the grief--the deep consuming grief that all my magnificent
presents and gentle blandishments have failed to soothe. A thousand
curses on this upstart beggar, and a thousand more on the mother of
mischief, who has raised him up again to cross my path! By what
power hath he escaped war and woe, and storm and every danger again
to thwart and come in the way of Clermistonlee, whose purposes were
never yet foiled by man, or woman either? 'S death! the time has
come when the cord of the doomster, or the axe of the maiden, must
rid me for ever of this old source of dark forebodings and secret
inquietude. Ho, for a guard and a warrant of Council, and then Sir
Walter Fenton, Knight Banneret, the Jacobite spy, Chevalier of St.
Louis, ex-private soldier, and soi-disant ensign to the Lord
Dunbarton, may look to himself! Ha, ha!" and dashing spurs into his
horse he galloped madly into the city.