HOPE.
Thou art most fair; but could thy lovely face
Make slavery look more comely? could the touch
Of thy soft hand convey delight to mine
With servile fetters on.
BOADICEA, ACT IV.
Three days passed away. Three, and still there was no appearance of
the dreaded Deacon Macanvil with his hammer and rivets, and collar of
thrall.
The monotony of the prison had been unbroken save, each morning, by
the entrance of the gudeman of the Tolbooth and a soldier of the
Townguard, bearing a wooden luggie of fresh water and a slice of
coarse bread, or coarser oaten cake on a tin trencher, and to these
poor viands, the gudewife of the keeper, moved with pity for "such a
winsome young man," added a cutlet or two on the third day. For the
first four-and-twenty hours this mean fare remained untouched, but
anon, the cravings of a youthful appetite compelled him to regale on
it.
In a retired, or rather, a darker corner of this miserable place, he
reclined on his truss of damp straw, listening to the lively hum of
the city without, and the deep ding-dong of the Cathedral bells as
they marked the passing hours.
Slowly the interminable day wore on.
Shadows passed and repassed the wretched aperture which was level
with the pavement, and served for a window. Feet cased in white
funnel boots garnished with scarlet turnovers, gold spurs and red
morocco spur leathers, in clumsy Cromwellian calf-skins, or in
brogues of more humble pretensions, appeared and disappeared as the
passengers strode up and down the close; and many pretty feet and
taper ancles in tight stockings of green or scarlet silk set up on
"cork-heeled shoon," tripped past, the fair owners thereof
displaying, by their uplifted trains, rather more than they might
have done, if aware that a pair of curious eyes were looking upward
from the Cimmerian depth of that ghastly vault. Bare-footed children
gambolled about in the spring sunshine; with ruddy and laughing faces
they peeped fearfully into the dark hole, and on discerning a human
face through the gloom, cried "a bogle, a ghaist!" and fled away with
a shout.
Propped on his staff, the toiling water-carrier passed hourly,
conveying limpid water from the public wells, even to the lofty
"sixteenth story," for a bodle the measure. Lumbering sedans were
borne past by liveried carriers at a Highland trot; and the voices
that rang perpetually in the narrow alley, though enlivening the
prison of Walter, only served to make his sense of degradation and
captivity more acute.
Anon, all those sounds ceased one by one; the bells of evening
tolled, the ten o'clock drum was beat around the ancient royalty, and
died away in the depths of Close and Wynd, and night and silence
stole together over the dense and lofty city. The last wayfarer had
gone to his home, and a desolate sense of loneliness fell upon the
heart of Walter Fenton.
"Alas, alas!" he exclaimed, "had my dear friend Lady Dunbarton been
on this side of the border, I had not been thus persecuted and
forgotten. And Finland, why tarries he? Friendship should bring him
to me, for shame cannot withhold him; I have committed no crime."
So passed the fourth day.
Night came on again, and the poor lad felt an oppression of spirit, a
longing for freedom, and abhorrence of his dungeon; so bitter and
intense, that reflection became the most acute torment. He turned
restlessly among the straw, its very rustle fretted him, and he
started up to pace to and fro in the narrow compass of the vault. He
muttered, moaned, and communing with himself, pressed his face
against the rusty grating, while listening intently to catch a
passing sound, and inhale the cool fresh breeze of the spring night.
Though so many thousand souls were densely packed within the
fortifications of Edinburgh, and every house was like a beehive or a
tower of Babel, at that hour the city was still as the grave. Walter
heard only the throbbing of his heart. The last dweller in the close
had long since traversed the lofty stair that ascended to his home;
the heavy door at the foot of the Prison turnpike stair had long
since been closed, and its sentinel had withdrawn to smoke a pipe or
sip a can of twopenny by the gudeman's well-sanded ingle. From the
hollow recesses of its great rood spire St. Giles's bell tolled
eleven.
"Another night!--another--another!" exclaimed Walter, as he threw
himself upon the straw, and wrung his hands in rage, in bitterness,
and unavailing agony. "Another night!--Oh, to be taught patience, or
to be free!"
From a sleepy stupor that had sunk upon him, the very torpidity of
desperation, he was roused by a noise at the grating: a face appeared
dimly without, and a well known voice said,
"Harkee, Fenton,--art asleep, my boy?"
"_Me voila_--I am here!" he exclaimed, as he sprang to the grating
and pressed the hand of his friend.
"You forget, Walter, that I am not calling the roll," laughed the
officer; "but _me voila_ is very old fashioned, my lad, and hath not
been used by us these two hundred years, since the battle of Banje en
Anjou. By all the devils, 'tis a deuced unpleasant malheur this!"
"I thought you had forgotten me, Finland."
"You did me great injustice; but, lackaday, with Wemyss and my party
I have been for these three days worrying all the old wives and
bonnetted carles on the Bruntisfield barony, to take certain
obnoxious tests under terror of thumbscrews and gunmatch. By my
honour, I would rather that my lord, the Earl of Perth, would march
with his mace on shoulder, anent such dirty work, for I aver that it
is altogether unbecoming the dignity and profession of a soldier.
And mark me, Walter, all this tyranny will end in a storm such as the
land hath not seen, since our father's days, when the banner of the
covenant was unfurled on the hill of Dunse."
"And are there no tidings of Dunbarton, our commander?"
"The deuce, no! there hath been no mail from London these fourteen
days; the rascal who brought the bag had only one letter, and getting
drunk, lost it in the neutral grounds, somewhere on the borders. The
earl was to have taken horse at Whitehall for the north, on the first
of this month; 'tis now the penult day only, and he cannot be here
for a week yet, so patience, Walter." Walter sighed.
"There are others here who have not forgotten thee, my dear Mr.
Fenton," said a soft voice, as a pretty female face, lighted by two
bright eyes, stooped down to that hideous grating. "But, forsooth,
our good friend the Laird of Finland, seems resolved to talk for us
all, which is not to be borne. I think he has acquired all the
loquacity of the French chevaliers, without an atom of their
gallantry."
"A thousand moustaches!" stammered the officer; "my fair Annie, I had
almost--"
"Forgotten me! you dare not say so; but O my poor boy Fenton, how
sorry I am I see thee there."
"I thank you, Mistress Laurie, but the honour of this visit would
gild the darkest prison in Scotland--even the whig-vault of Dunoter,"
said Walter, kissing the hand of the speaker, whom he knew to be the
betrothed of his friend, a gay and lively girl of twenty, whose
beauty was then the theme of a hundred songs, of which, unhappily,
but one has survived to us--the effusion of Finland's love and poesy.
Long had they loved each other; but the father of Annie, the old Whig
Baronet of Maxwelton, had engendered a furious hostility to Douglas,
in consequence of his soldiers having lived at free quarters on his
estates in Dumfriesshire, where they made very free, indeed, burned
down a few farms, shot and houghed the cattle, and extorted a month's
marching money thrice over, with cocked matches and drawn rapiers.
"This visit is as unexpected as it is welcome," continued Walter;
"and, for the honour it does me, I would not exchange--"
"Thy prison for a palace," interrupted Annie. "Now, Mr. Walter, I
know to an atom the value of this compliment, which means exactly
nothing. But we must not jest; I have to introduce a dear
friend--one who has come to thank you personally for those favours of
which you are now paying the price. Come, Lilian, love," continued
the lively young lady, "approach and speak. My life on't! how the
lassie trembles! Come, Finland, we understand this, and will keep
guard while little Lilian speaks with her captive paladin."
"You are a mad wag, Annie," said the cavalier, as he gave her his
ungloved hand; "but lower your voice, dear one, or, soft and sweet as
it is, it may bring down the gudeman and all his rascals about us in
a trice."
"How can I find words to thank you, Mr. Fenton?" said the tremulous
voice of Lilian Napier, whose small but beautiful face appeared
without the massive grating, peeping through a plaid of dark green
tartan, a mode of disguise then very common in Scotland, and which
continued to be so in the earlier part of the last century. Like a
hooded mantilla, it floated over her graceful shoulders, and a silver
brooch confined it beneath her dimpled chin.
"Lilian Napier here!" exclaimed Fenton with rapture; "ah, fool that I
was to repine, while my miseries were remembered by thee!"
"Ah, sir, the Lady Bruntisfield has lamented them bitterly. Never
can we repay you for the unmerited severity and humiliations to which
you have been subjected in our cause. Oh, can I forget that but for
you, Mr. Fenton, we might have become the occupants of that frightful
place, the air of which chills me even here!"
"Thee--O no, Lilian Napier, they could not have the heart to immure
thee here!"
"The lack of heart rather, Walter."
"The idea is too horrible--but now," he continued, in a voice of
delight, "you are speaking like my old companion and playfellow.
'Tis long--O, very, very long, Lilian, since last we conversed
together alone. Do you remember when we gathered flowers, and
rushes, and pebbles by the banks of the Loch, and berries at the
Heronshaw, and gambolled in the parks in the summer sunshine?"
"How could I forget them?"
"Never have I been so happy since. O, those were days of innocence
and joy!"
There was a pause, and both sighed deeply.
"Poor Walter, how sincerely I pity thee!"
"Then I bless the chance that brought me here."
"In that cold dark pit--Oh, 'tis a place of horror. Would to Heaven
I could free you, Mr. Walter!"
"Ah, Lilian, call me Walter, without the _Mr_. Your voice sounds
then as it did in other days, ere cold conventionalities raised such
a gulf between us."
"They can do so no longer," said the young lady, weeping; "we are
landless and ruined now, and O! did not fear for my good aunt Grisel
make me selfish, I would surrender myself to the council to-morrow."
"S'death! do not think of it!"
"We both accuse ourselves of selfishness--of the very excess of
cowardice, and of blotting our honour for ever, by meanly flying and
transferring all our dangers to you."
"Do not permit yourself to think so," said Walter, moved to great
tenderness by her tears. "Dear Lilian, (allow me so to call you, in
memory of our happier days,) leave me now--to tarry here is full of
danger. If you are discovered by the rascals who guard this place,
the thought of what would ensue may drive me mad; threats,
imprisonment, discovery, and disgrace--oh, leave me, for God's sake,
Lilian!"
"Besides, I may be compromising the safety of those good friends who
so kindly have accompanied me hither to-night. Ah! there is a
terrible proclamation against us fixed to the city cross; they style
us those intercommuned traitors, the Napiers, umquhile of
Bruntisfield."
"Then leave me, Lilian--I can be happy now, knowing that you came----"
"From Lady Grisel," said Lilian, hastily, "to express her sincere
thanks for your kindness, and her deep sorrow for its sad requital,
which (from what you told us,) we could not have contemplated.
Indeed, Mr. Walter, we have been very unhappy on your account, and
so, impelled by a sense of gratitude, I came to--to--" and, pausing,
she covered her face with her hands and wept, for the new and
humiliating situation in which she found herself had deeply agitated
her. She did not perceive a dark figure that approached her softly,
unseen by her friends, who were gaily chatting under the gloomy
shadow of a projecting house, and quite absorbed in themselves.
"Lilian, you were ever good and gentle," said Walter, altogether
overcome by her tears, and pressing her hand between his own.
"Deeply, deeply do I feel the mortification you must endure; but do
not weep thus--it wrings my very heart!"
She permitted him to retain her hand, (there was no harm in that,)
but his thoughts became tumultuous; he kissed it; and as his lips
touched her for the first time, his whole soul seemed to rush to them.
"Oh, Lilian, were I rich, I feel that I could love you."
"And if one is poor, can they not love too?" she asked artlessly.
"Oh, yes, Lilian--dear Lilian," said Walter, quite borne away by his
passion, and greatly agitated; but his arm could not encircle her,
for the envious grating intervened: "deeply do I feel at this moment
how bitter, how hopeless, may be the love of the poor. But if I
dared to tell you that the little page, Walter, who so often carried
your mantle and led your horse's bridle--now, when a man, aspired so
far----"
The girl trembled violently, and said, in a feeble voice of alarm,
"Oh, hush--hush, some one approaches."
"Then away to Douglas, for he alone can protect you. One word ere
you go: you have found a secure and secret shelter?"
"Humble and secret, at least."
"With the Lauries of Maxwelton?"
"Oh, no, their house is already suspected. In the poor cottage of my
nurse, old Elsie Elshender, at St. Rocque--there we bide our fate in
poverty and obscurity."
"And your cousin, Napier, the captain?"
"Hath fled to the west--but that person--he is certainly
listening--adieu!"
"Remember me?"
"How can I forget?" she replied, naïvely, as she arose to withdraw;
but lo! the person started forward, and her hand, which was yet
glowing with Walter's kiss, was rudely seized in the rough grasp of
the intruder. Fear utterly deprived the poor girl of power to cry
out.
"Aunt Grisel--dear grand-aunt Grisel!" was all she could gasp, and
she would have sunk on the pavement had not the eavesdropper
supported her. He was a tall, stout gallant, and muffled, by having
the skirt of his cloak drawn over his right shoulder, so as to
conceal part of his face, then the fashionable mode of disguise for
roués and intriguantes.
"Lilian Napier, by all the devils!" cried Lord Clermistonlee, in a
tone of astonishment: he was considerably intoxicated, having just
left the neighbouring house, where he had been drinking for the last
six hours with the Lord President Lockhart. "Now I thought thee only
some poor mud-lark, or errant bona-roba. This is truly glorious.
Thou shalt come with me, my beauty. What, you will scream? Nay,
minx, then you have but a choice between the stone vaults of the
Tolbooth and the tapestried chambers of my poor old houses of
Drumsheugh and Clermistonlee--ha, ha!" and he began to sing the old
ditty:--
"There was a young lassie lo'ed by an auld man----"
"Help, Finland, help, for the love of God!" cried Lilian, dreadfully
agitated, but the Lord continued:--
"With a heylillelu and a how-lo-lan!
Her cheeks were rose red, and her eyne were sky-blue,
With a how-lo-lan and a heylillelu!
And this lassie was lo'ed by this canty old man,
With a heylillelu and a how-lo-lan!"
"By all the devils! I can sing as well as my Lord the President,
though he hath three crown bowls of punch under his doublet."
"Douglas, Douglas, your sword--your sword!" cried Walter, grasping
the massive grating, and swinging on the bars like a madman, essaying
in vain to wrench them from their solid wrests; but ere the words had
left his lips, Lord Clermistonlee was staggered by a blow from the
clenched hand of the cavalier, and Lilian was free.
"Fly, Annie," he exclaimed to his love; "away with Lilian Napier to
the coach at the close head. The devil, girl--art thou doited,--off
and leave me to deal with this tavern brawler. Fore George! I will
truss his points in first rate fashion." The girls retired in
terror, and Douglas unsheathed his rapier.
"Beware thee, villain," exclaimed the other, drawing his long bilbo
with prompt bravery, and wrapping his mantle round the left arm. "I
am a Lord of the Privy Council--to draw on me is treason."
"Were you King James himself, I would run you through the heart, for
applying such an epithet to a gentleman of the House of Douglas."
"You will have it then--come on, plated varlet, and look well to
guard and parry, for I am a first-rate swordsman."
Finland's cuirass rang with a rapier thrust from his assailant, who
fell furiously to work, lunging like a madman, and exclaiming every
time the fire sparked from their clanging blades,
"Bravo, bilbo! Excellent--come on again, Mr. Malapert, and I will
teach thee to measure swords with Randal of Clermistonlee. Gads-o,
fellow, thou art no novice in the science of fencing--crush me, what
a thrust! well parried--
"With a hey lillelu, and a how----'
Damnation seize thee, man! how came that about!"
The sword of Finland, by one lucky parry had broken the Lord's rapier
off by the hilt, and ripped up the skin of his sword-hand with such
force that he staggered against the wall.
"I hope your Lordship is not hurt!" exclaimed his antagonist,
supporting him by the arm.
"Zounds, no! a little only," replied Clermistonlee, whom the shock
had perfectly sobered. Full of rage, he tossed his embossed
sword-hilt over the house-tops, exclaiming, "Accursed blade, may the
hands that forged thee grill on the fires of eternity!"
It whistled through the air, and fell down the chimney of the dowager
Lady Drumsturdy, where it stuck midway, and so terrified that ancient
dame that, notwithstanding her hatred to "massemongers," she laid her
poker and shovel _crosswise_; but the mysterious noise in her
capacious "lum" formed a serious case for the investigation of
ghost-seers and gossips next day.
"Harkee, Laird of Finland," said Clermistonlee haughtily, "we must
enact this affair over again in daylight; meantime let us part, or
the Town-Guard will be upon us with their partisans, and I have no
wish that you should suffer for ripping up an inch or two of skin in
fair fight--you will hear from me anon."
"Whenever your Lordship pleases, I am your most obedient," replied
Douglas, bowing coldly as he hurried to join the terrified ladies,
with whom he had barely time to get into the hackney-coach and drive
off, when the door of the prison opened, and a few of the Town Guard,
who had heard the clashing of the rapiers, rushed forth with lanterns
and poleaxes; like modern police, exhibiting great alacrity when the
danger was over, they seized Clermistonlee.
"Dare ye lay hands on a gentleman," he exclaimed, fiercely shaking
them off. "Unhand me, villains, I am Randal Lord Clermistonlee! I
was assaulted----"
"By whom, my Lord, by whom?" replied the guardians of the peace,
cringing before this imperious noble.
"What is it to such rascals as thee?--oh, a knavish cloak snatcher,
or cut-purse, or something of that kind. Retire--I have always hands
to defend myself."
The guard with hurried and half audible apologies withdrew, and the
brawling lord was left to his own confused reflections. He tied a
handkerchief about his hand, and was about to withdraw, when a
thought struck him: he approached the grating of the low dungeon, and
placing close to it his face, which though unseen was pale with fury,
while his dark eyes gleamed like two red sparks,
"Art there, thou spawn of the Covenant?" he asked in a husky voice:
"Ah, dog of a Fenton, I will hang thee high as Haman for this night's
misadventure!"
The prisoner replied by a scornful laugh, and the exasperated roué
strode away.