THE RING AND THE SECRET.
See the cypress wreath of saddest hue,
The twining destiny threading through;
And the serpent coil is twisting there--
While regardless of the victim's prayer,
The fiend laughs out o'er the mischief done,
And the canker-worm makes the heart his throne.
THE PROPHECY.
Twelve o'clock tolled heavily and sadly from the steeple of St. Giles.
It was a bleak and cold night. The Lords of the Privy Council,
muffled up in their well-furred rocquelaures, with their hats flapped
over their periwigs, ascended from the subterranean vaults under the
Parliament House where they held their dreaded conclaves, and hurried
away to their residences in the various deep and steep wynds of the
ancient city. Mersington, who, overcome by sleep and wine, had
remained at the table until roused by Macer Maclutchy, was the last
to come forth, and he stood rubbing his eyes in the Parliament
Square, and watching the black gigantic statue of King Charles with
steady gravity, for he could have sworn at that moment that it seemed
to be trotting hard towards him. His rallying faculties were
scattered again by a stranger violently jostling him.
"Haud ye dyvour loon!" exclaimed the incensed Senator; "I am the Lord
Mersington."
"And what art doing here, pumpkinhead?" asked Clermistonlee, who was
quite breathless by having rushed up the Back Stairs, as those
flights of steps which ascended from the Cowgate to the Parliament
Square were named. "Are the proceedings over? Hath the villain
confessed? Is he to die?"
"They are over, and he shall die conform to the Act."
"And how went the proceedings?"
"Deil kens; I sleepit the haill time."
"Driveller!" cried Clermistonlee in a towering passion; "'tis like
thee; your head is as empty as my purse----"
"Hee, hee, ye seem a bonnie temper to-night. But what detained you
frae the board, when ye knew you were principal witness?"
"The sudden indisposition of Lady Clermistonlee made it impossible
for me to leave Bruntisfield--but I have this moment galloped in from
The Place."
"You are a kind and considerate gudeman," said Mersington drily.
"And what did this fellow confess?"
"His abhorrence of you----"
"Ha! ha!"
"His hatred of the present government, and his weariness o' this
life. He spoke unco dreich and sadly, puir callant,--and sae I fell
fast asleep and dozed like a top."
"And did not that goosecap, the King's Advocate, give him a twinge or
two of the torture?"
"We brought some braw things to light without the help o' rack or
screw. The tails o' his coat were as fu' o' treason as an egg's fu'
o' meat. There were five and twenty autograph letters frae the
bluidy and papistical Duke James----"
"Stuff! But lately he was styled His most Sacred Majesty, by the
grace of God, and so forth."
"I speak as we wrote it in the council minutes. Five and twenty
letters to the cut-throat Hieland chiefs, to the Murrays of Stormont,
the Drummonds and others, some slee tod lowries we have long had our
een on. But maist of a' was a notable plot of that d----ned jaud
Madame Maintenon to assassinate King William."
"Hah!"
"From a paper found, it appears that a certain Monsieur Dumont is now
disguised as a soldier in our confederate army in Flanders, watching
an opportunity to shoot the King and escape."
"By St. George, I hope the aforesaid Monsieur Dumont is a good
shot--a regular candle-snuffer!"
"Our culprit, Fenton, knew not of Maintenon's plot, or of her papers
being among those on his person. He looked black dumbfoundered when
Maclutchy drew them frae a neuk in his coat tail."
"And to whom were they directed?"
"To one _Widow Douglas_, whilk the King's advocate avers to be no
other than the Lady Dunbarton. Fenton grew red with anger on their
being read, and smote his forehead, saying, '_Dupe that I have been!
the noble Duc de Chartres warned me to beware of De Maintenon; but
let it pass:_' and here, as I said, I fell fast asleep, until a
minute ago. But come, let us have a pint of sack; I am clean
brainbraised wi' drouth, and I warrant Lucky Dreep, in the
Kirk-o'-field Wynd, keeps open door yet."
"And he dies?" said Clermistonlee, who could think of nothing but
glutting his revenge.
"Early to-morrow morning, by the bullet."
"I would rather it had been by the cord. How came our considerate
councillors to shoot instead of hang him?"
"Soldiers, ye ken, are often soft-hearted when other men are in stern
mood; so auld General Livingstone, after pleading hard for Fenton's
life, and failing, procured what he called an honourable commutation
of the sentence, for which the puir gomeral cavalier thanked him as
if it had been a reprieve."
"Cord or bullet it matters not. So perish all who would cross the
purposes of Randal of Clermistonlee."
His Lordship for once resisted the importunities of his friend, and
instead of adjourning to a tavern, rode slowly and reluctantly back
to his own house. He felt a strange and unaccountable presentiment
of impending evil, for which he could not account, but endeavoured to
throw it from him. The effort was vain.
He felt himself a villain. A load of long accumulated wickedness
oppressed his proud heart; it was not without its better traits, and
writhed as he reflected on some events in his past life.
"Alison! Alison!" he exclaimed, turning his dark eyes upwards to the
star-studded firmament, "now thy curse is coming heavily upon me."
His principal dread was the death of Lilian, for he had learned to
love her with tolerable sincerity, but he knew not the secret which
Walter had revealed to her, and the consequent intensity of her
horror, aversion, shame, and anger. He knew not the tempest it had
raised in her sensitive breast against him.
When he entered the chamber-of-dais she was seated near a tall silver
lamp. The glare of the untrimmed light fell full upon her face, and
its ghastly and altered expression struck a mortal chillness on the
heart of her husband. He said not a word, but walking straight to a
beauffet filled a large silver cup several times with wine, and
always drained it to the bottom. The liquor mounted rapidly to his
brain; he threw himself into a chair opposite Lilian, and heedless of
the perfect scorn that quivered in her beautiful nostrils, and
sparkled in her brilliant eyes, began leisurely to unbutton his
riding gambadoes of red stamped maroquin, whistling a merry hunting
tune while he did so.
It was easier for him to requite scorn with scorn than give
tenderness for love.
"Confusion on the buttons!" he exclaimed. "Juden! Juden! Tush, I
forgot; poor Juden hath been with the devil these three years. There
is none now of all my rascally household who will share with me the
morrow's glut of vengeance as thou wouldst have done, my faithful
Juden."
Lilian wrung her attenuated hands; Clermistonlee regarded her
sternly, and then bursting into a loud laugh, as he threw away his
boots and spurs, chanted a verse from the old black-letter ballad of
Gilderoy:--
"Beneath the left ear so fit for a cord,
A rope so charming a zone is;
Thy youth in his cart hath air of a Lord,
And we cry--there dies an Adonis!"
"Ha! ha! I shall see his head on the Bow Port to-morrow, madam."
"Infamous and wicked!" exclaimed Lilian, feeling all her old love
revived with double ardour, and no longer able to restrain her
sentiments of grief and indignation. "Walter, dear and beloved
Walter, how cruelly have I been deceived!" and drawing from her bosom
the ring--his mother's ring, the pledge of his betrothal, she pressed
it to her lips with fervour.
The brow of the proud Clermistonlee grew black as thunder, and he
grasped her slender arm with the tenacity of a falcon.
"Surrender this bauble, that I may commit it to the flames.
Surrender it, madam, lest I dash thee to the earth, for at this
moment I feel, by all the devils, my brain spinning like a jenny."
"Give him the ring, Lady Lilian; give it, for the sight of it will
arrest his vision even as the letters of fire arrested the eyes of
Belshazzar and smote him with dismay. Sweet lady, let him look upon
it," said the voice of a woman.
They turned, and beheld the pale, emaciated, and haggard visage of
Beatrix Gilruth, half shaded by a tattered tartan plaid. Taking
advantage of Lilian's momentary surprise, her husband snatched the
ring from her, and was about to hurl it into the fire, when, incited
by the woman's words, and impelled by some mysterious and
irresistible curiosity, he looked upon it, and the effect of his
single glance acted like magic upon him. He quitted his clutch of
Lilian's arm, trembled, grew pale, and turning the ring again and
again, surveyed it with intense curiosity.
"How came _he_ to have this ring?" he muttered; "what strange mystery
is here? If it should be so---- O, impossible!"
He pressed a spring that must have been known only to himself, for
Lilian had never discovered it in all the myriad times she had
surveyed it, and Walter himself was ignorant of the secret when he
bestowed the trinket upon her. The lapse of years had stiffened the
spring; but after a moment's pressure from the finger of
Clermistonlee, a little shield of gold unclosed, revealing a minute
and beautiful little miniature of himself, which in earlier days had
been one of the happiest efforts of the young Medina's pencil.
"'Twas my bridal gift to Alison," he exclaimed in a voice of
confusion and remorse. "Oh, Alison, Alison! many have I loved but
never one like thee. Never again did my heart feel the same ardour
that fired it when I placed this ring on your adorable hand.
Unfortunate Alison!"
"This ring was tied by a ribbon around the neck of Walter Fenton,
when a little child he was found by the side of his dead mother in
the Greyfriars churchyard," said Lilian in a breathless voice.
"Confusion and misery! 'tis impossible this can be true; there is
some diabolical mistake here. Woman, say forth."
Beatrix gave Clermistonlee a bitter and malicious smile, and
addressed Lilian.
"Walter's mother, sweet lady, gave that ring to Elspat Fenton, who,
next to myself, was the most trusted of her attendants, and bade her
travel from Paris to Scotland, and deliver the child and the bridal
gift together to her husband--to Randal of Clermistonlee."
Lilian covered her face, and the fiery lord, whose first emotions
were generally those of anger, surveyed Beatrix as if she had been a
coiled up snake. She spoke slowly, and made long pauses, for aware
that her words were as daggers, she dealt them sparingly.
"After long suffering and great peril by sea and land, this poor
woman reached Edinburgh, but failed to meet the father of the infant
committed to her care; for then he was in arms with the men of the
Covenant, hoping by any civil broil or commotion to repair the
splendid patrimony his excesses had dissipated. Elspat, being unable
to give a very coherent account of herself, was declared a
nonconformist by the authorities, and thrown with thousands of others
into the Greyfriars kirkyard, where in that inclement season she
perished; but the child was found and protected by the soldiers of
Dunbarton. That child is Walter Fenton; he is your son, Lord
Clermistonlee! the child of your once loved Alison Gilford. I call
upon Heaven to witness the truth of my assertion! His own name was
Walter, (ah! can you have forgotten that?) his nurse's Fenton. _I
saw her die_, and I alone knew the secret, and have treasured it till
this hour--this hour of vengeance upon thee, thou false and wicked
lord! In my wicked spirit of revenge too long have I kept the
secret; but now this blameless and noble youth is doomed to death,
and fain would I save him, for he is innocent, and good, and
generous; in all things, oh, how much the reverse of thee!"
"Maniac, thou liest!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, whose heart beat
wildly. "I cannot believe this tale of a tub, which is told to
affright me. And yet, how dare I reject it?--the ring--Walter--my
God!"
"Ha! has Beatrix the wronged, the scorned, the despised, the
neglected Beatrix, wrung your heart at last? Fool! fool! Did'st
thou never suspect the volcano that slumbered here?" she exclaimed,
laying her hand upon her heart. "Did'st thou never perceive the
flame that smouldered in my breast--the yearnings, the throbbings,
the fierce longing to be adequately revenged on thee who had brought
me to ruin and madness, and had abandoned me to penury and privation?
Wretch! 'tis twenty-five years since ye betrayed me. Time has rolled
on--time, that soothes all sorrows and softens every affliction, and
teaches us to forget the wrongs of the living--yea, and the virtues
of the dead; and perhaps to wonder why we hated one and loved the
other,--time, I say, has rolled on to many miserable years, until I
have become the hideous thing I am, but it never lessened one tithe
of my longing for vengeance for the thousand taunts and contumelies
that succeeded my first sacrifice for thee. You say I am
mad--perhaps I am--but mark me--_a woman's sorrow passes like a
summer cloudy but her vengeance endureth for ever!_"
Clermistonlee smote his forehead, and Beatrix laughed like a hyæna.
"My God--unhappy Walter!" said Lilian in a voice that pierced the
heart of him she abhorred to deem her husband. "Then she who saved
and nursed thee on the field of Steinkirke was thy mother--_thy
mother_, and she knew it not? Oh, this was the secret sentiment, the
heaven-born thought that spoke within her and made her heart so
mysteriously yearn towards thee. Unfortunate Walter! how deeply have
we been wronged--how bitterly must we suffer!"
"And till now, thou accursed fiend, this terrible secret has been
concealed from me!" said Clermistonlee furiously, as he half drew his
sword.
Beatrix laughed and tossed her arms wildly.
"Oh, horror upon horror! woe upon woe!" said Lilian in a voice of the
deepest anguish as she rung her hands, and, taking up her little
infant from the cradle, kissed it tenderly on the forehead, and
retired slowly from the room.
"Lilian--Lilian," cried her husband, "whither go ye, lady?"
"To solitude--to solitude," she murmured. "Any where to save me from
my own terrible thoughts--anywhere to hide me from the deep disgrace
you have brought upon me; to any place where never again the light of
day shall find me."
Clermistonlee heard her light steps on the staircase, and they fell
like a knell on his heart: impelled by some secret and mysterious
impulse, he followed her to her own apartment, the door of which he
had heard close behind her. There was no sound within it.
He entered softly; but she was not there; and from that moment she
was never beheld again! Every ultimate search proved fruitless and
unavailing. A veil of impenetrable mystery hung over her fate.......
A sudden thought flashed on the mind of Clermistonlee. The day dawn
was breaking as he descended the staircase, after fruitlessly calling
on Lilian through various apartments.
"I may, I must save him yet--unfortunate youth, a father's arms shall
yet embrace him. Oh, my hapless and deeply wronged Alison! fortune
may yet enable me in some sort to repair the atrocities of which I
have been guilty. My horse! my horse!" and, rushing to the stable,
he saddled and bridled a fleet steed, and in five minutes was
galloping furiously back to the city, the walls and towers of which
arose before him, red and sombre in the rays of the morning sun.