“The scart bears weel wi’ the winter’s cauld,
The aik wi’ the gurly win’;
But the bonny wee burds, and the sweet wee flowers,
Were made for the calm an’ the sun.”--OLD BALLAD.
[Sidenote: THE CHAPLAIN’S LAIR.]
The southern Sutor terminates, where it overhangs the junction of
the Cromarty and Moray Firths, in a noble precipice, which, planting
its iron feet in the sea, rears its ample forehead a hundred yards
over it. On the top there is a moss-covered, partially wooded knoll,
which, commanding from its abrupt height and semi-insular situation a
wide and diversified prospect, has been known from time immemorial to
the town’s-people as “the Look-out.” It is an exquisite little spot,
sweet in itself, and sublime in what it commands;--a fine range of
forest scenery stretches along the background, while in front the eye
may wander over the hills of seven different counties, and so vast an
extent of sea, that, on the soberest calculation, we cannot estimate it
under a thousand square miles. Nor need there be any lack of pleasing
association to heighten the effect of a landscape which, among its
other scenes of the wild and the wonderful, includes the bleak moor
of Culloden, and the “heath near Forres.” It is, however, to the
immense tract of sea which it overlooks that the little knoll owes its
deepest interest, and when, after a storm from the west has scattered
the shipping bound for port, and day after day has gone by without
witnessing their expected return--there are wistful eyes that turn from
it to the wide waste below, and anxious hearts that beat quicker and
higher, as sail after sail starts up, spark-like, on the dim horizon,
and grows into size and distinctness as it nears the shore. Nor is the
rock beneath devoid of an interest exclusively its own.
It is one of those magnificent objects which fill the mind with
emotions of the sublime and awful; and the effect is most imposing when
we view it from below. The strata, strangely broken and contorted, rise
almost vertically from the beach. Immense masses of a primary trap crop
out along their bases, or wander over the face of the precipice in
broad irregular veins, which contrast their deep olive-green with the
ferruginous brown of the mass. A whitened projection, which overhangs
the sea, has been for untold ages the haunt of the cormorant and the
sea-mew; the eagle builds higher up, and higher still there is a broad
inaccessible ledge in a deep angle of the rock, on which a thicket of
hip and sloethorn bushes and a few wild apple-trees have taken root,
and which, from the latter circumstance, bears among the town’s-boys
the name of the _apple-yardie_. The young imagination delights to dwell
amid the bosky recesses of this little spot, where human foot has never
yet trodden, and where the crabs and the wild berries ripen and decay
unplucked and untasted. There was a time, however, when the interest
which attached to it owed almost all its intensity to the horrible.
The eastern turret of the old castle of Cromarty has, with all its
other turrets, long since disappeared; but the deep foliage of the
ledge mantles as thickly as ever, and the precipice of the Look-out
rears its dark front as proudly over the beach. They were frightfully
connected--the shelf and the turret--in the associations of the
town’s-people for more than a hundred years; the one was known as the
Chaplain’s Turret--the other as the Chaplain’s Lair; but the demolition
of the castle has dissolved the union, and there are now scarcely a
dozen in the country who know that it ever existed.
I have said that the proprietor of the lands of Cromarty, in the
early part of the reign of Charles II., was a Sir John Urquhart of
Craigfintrie, celebrated by Wodrow, though the celebrity be of no
enviable character, as the person whose advice, strengthened by that of
Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat, led Commissioner Middleton to introduce
the unhappy Act which overturned Presbyterianism in Scotland. He was
a shrewd, strong-minded man, thoroughly acquainted with all the worse
and some of the better springs of human action--cool, and cautious, and
skilful, in steering himself through the difficulties of so unsettled
a period by the shifts and evasions of a well-balanced expediency. The
current of the age had set in towards religion, and Sir John was by
much too prudent to oppose the current. There were few men who excelled
him in that most difficult art of computation, the art of estimating
the strength of parties; perhaps he was all the more successful in his
calculations from his never suffering himself to be disturbed in them
by an over-active zeal; and believing, with Tamerlane and Sir Thomas,
that the Deity usually declares for the stronger party, Sir John was
always religious enough to be of the stronger party too.
About twelve years before his death, which took place in 1673, there
resided in his family a young licentiate of the Scottish Church, a
nephew of his own, who officiated as chaplain. Dallas Urquhart was
naturally a soft-tempered, amiable man, of considerable attainments,
and of no inferior powers of mind, but his character lacked the severer
virtues; and it was his fate to live in an age in which a good-natured
facility of disposition was of all qualities the worst fitted to supply
their place. He was deemed a person of more than ordinary promise in
an age when the qualifications of the Presbyterian minister were fixed
at least as high as in any after period;--there was a charm, too,
in his pliant and docile disposition, which peculiarly recommended
him to his older friends and advisers; for even the wise are apt
to overvalue whatever flatters themselves, and to decide regarding
that modest facility which so often proves in after life the curse
of its possessor, according to an estimate very different from that
by which they rate the wilful, because partially developed strength
which thwarts and opposes them. Dallas therefore had many friends;
but the person to whom he was chiefly attached was the young minister
of Cromarty--the “good Maister Hugh Anderson,” whose tombstone, a
dark-coloured slab, roughened with uncouth sculpture, and a neat
Latin inscription, may still be seen in the eastern gable of the
parish church, and to whom I have already referred as one of the few
faithful in this part of the country in a time of fiery trial. The
two friends had passed through college together, associates in study
and recreation, and, what is better still, for they were both devout
young men, companions in all those acts of religious fellowship which
renders Christianity so true a nurse of the nobler affections. And yet
no two persons could be less similar in the original structure of their
minds. Dallas was gentle-tempered and imaginative, and imbued, through
a nature decidedly intellectual, with a love of study for its own sake.
His friend, on the contrary, was of a bold energetic temperament, and a
plain, practical understanding, which he had cultivated rather from a
sense of duty than under the influence of any direct pleasure derived
in the process. But it is probable that had they resembled one another
more closely, they would have loved one another less. Friendship, if
I may venture the metaphor, is a sort of ball-and-socket connexion.
It seems to be a first principle in its economy that its agreements
should be founded in dissimilarity--the stronger with the weaker--the
softer with the more rugged. And perhaps, in looking round to convince
ourselves of the fact, we have but to note how the sexes--formed for
each other by God himself--have been created, not after a similar, but
after a diverse pattern--and that their natures piece together, not
because they were made to resemble, but to correspond with each other.
The friends were often together; the huge old castle, grey with the
lichens of a thousand years, towered on its wooded eminence immediately
over the town; and the little antique manse, with its narrow serrated
gables, and with the triangular tablets of its upper windows, rising
high in the roof, occupied, nest-like, an umbrageous recess so directly
below, that the chaplain in his turret was scarcely a hundred yards
distant from the minister in his study. There hardly passed a day
in which Dallas did not spend an hour or two in the manse; at times
speculating on some abstruse scholastic question with his friend the
clergyman, whom he generally found somewhat less than his match on
such occasions; at times still more pleasingly engaged in conversing,
though on somewhat humbler terms, with his friend’s only sister.
Mary Anderson was a sylph-looking young creature, rather below the
middle size, and slightly though finely formed. Her complexion, which
was pale and singularly transparent, indicated no great strength of
constitution; but there was an easy grace in all her motions, that
no one could associate with the weakness of positive indisposition,
and an expression in her bright speaking eyes and beautiful forehead,
that impressed all who knew her rather with the idea of an active
and powerful spirit than of a delicate or feeble frame. There was an
unpretending quietness in her manners, and a simple good sense in all
she said and did on ordinary occasions, that seemed to be as much
the result of correct feeling as of a discriminating intellect; but
there were depths in the character beyond the reach of the ordinary
observer--powers of abstract thought which only a superior mind could
fully appreciate, and a vigorous but well-regulated imagination that
could bedeck the perfections of the moral world with all that is
exquisite among the forms and colours of the natural. No one ever
seemed less influenced by the tender feelings than Mary Anderson; she
loved her brother’s friend--loved to study, to read, to converse with
him, but in no respect did her regard for him seem to differ from her
regard for her brother himself. She was his friend--a tender and
attached one, it is true--but his friend only. But the young chaplain,
whose nature it was to cleave to everything nobler and more powerful
than himself, was of a different temper, and he had formed a deep
though silent attachment to the highly-gifted maiden of the manse.
Troublesome times came on; the politic and strong-minded proprietor
was no longer known as the friend of the Presbyterian Church, and the
comparatively weak and facile chaplain wavered in all the agonies
of irresolution, under the fascinating influences of the massier
and wilier character. All the persuasive powers of Sir John were
concentrated on the conversion of his nephew. Acts of kindness,
expressions of endearment and good-will, and a well-counterfeited
zeal for the interests of true religion formed with him merely a sort
of groundwork for arguments of real cogency so far as they went, and
facts which, though of partial selection, could not be well disputed.
He had passed, he said, over the ground which Dallas now occupied, and
was thus enabled to anticipate some of his opinions on the subject;
he, too, had once regarded Christianity and the Presbyterian form
of it as identical, and associated the excellencies of the one with
the peculiarities of the other. He now saw clearly, however; and his
nephew, he was assured, would soon see it too, that they were things
as essentially different as soul and body, and that the Presbyterian
form--the Presbyterian _body_, he might say--was by no means the best
which the true religion could inhabit! He pointed out what he deemed
the peculiar defects of Presbyterianism; and summed up with consummate
skill the various indications of the subdued and unresisting mood which
at this period formed that of the entire country.
“Men of all classes,” he said, “have been wearied in the long struggle
of twenty years, from which they have but just escaped, and stand in
need of rest. They see, too, that they have been contending, not for
themselves, but for others--striving to render kings less powerful,
that Churchmen might become more so. They see that they have thus
injured the character of a body of men, valuable in their own sphere,
but dangerous when invested with the power of the magistrate; and that
they have so weakened the hands of Government, that to escape from
anarchy they have to fling themselves into the arms of comparative
despotism. But there are better times coming; and the wiser sort of
men are beginning to perceive that religion must work more effectually
under the peaceable protection of a paternal Government, than when
united to a form which cannot exist without provoking political heats
and animosities. Not a few of our best men are more than prepared
for the movement. You already know something of Leighton; I need not
say what sort of a man _he_ is;--and young Burnet and Scougall are
persons of resembling character. But there are many such among the
belied and persecuted Episcopalians; and does it not augur well, that
since the one Church must fall, we should have materials of such value
for building up the other? I cannot anticipate much opposition to
the change. A few good men of narrow capacity, such as your friend
Anderson, will not acquiesce in it till they are made to distinguish
between form and spirit, which may take some time; and leaders in the
Church, who have become influential at the expense of their country’s
welfare, must necessarily be hostile to it for another cause; for no
man willingly parts with power. But certain I am it can meet with no
effectual opposition.”
Dallas had little to urge in reply. Sir John had ever been kind to him,
nor was his disposition a cold or ungrateful one; and, naturally facile
and diffident besides, he had been invariably in the habit of yielding
up his own judgment, in matters of a practical tendency, to the more
mature and powerful judgment of his uncle. He could feel, however, that
on this occasion there was something criminal in his acquiescence; but
his weakness overcame him. He passed sleepless nights, and days of
restless inquietude; at times half resolved to seek out Sir John and
say that, having cast in his lot with the sinking Church, he could not
quit her in the day of trouble--at times groaning under a despairing
sense of his thorough inability to oppose him--yielding to what seemed
to be the force of destiny, and summing up the various arguments so
often pressed upon him, less with the view of ascertaining their real
value, than of employing them in his own defence. Meanwhile whole
weeks elapsed ere he could muster up resolution enough to visit his
friend the clergyman; and the report had gone far and wide that he had
declared with his uncle for the court religion. He at length stole down
one evening to the manse with a sinking heart, and limbs that trembled
under him.
Mary was absent on a visit; her brother he found sitting moodily in
his study. The minister had but just returned from a Presbytery, at
which he had to contend single-handed against the arguments of Sir
John, and the votes of all the others; and, under the influence of
the angry feelings awakened in a conflict so hopeless and unequal,
and irritated by the gibes and taunts of his renegade brethren, he at
once denounced Dallas as a time-server and an apostate. The temper of
the chaplain gave way, and he retorted with a degree of spirit which
might have given a different colour to his after life, had it been
exerted during his earlier interviews with Sir John. The anger of the
friends, heightened by mutual reproaches, triumphed over the affection
of years; and, after a scene of bitter contention, they parted with the
determination of never meeting again. Dallas felt not the ground, as,
with throbbing pulses and a flushed brow, he hastily scaled the ascent
which led to the castle; and when, turning round from beside the wall
to look at the manse, he thought of Mary, and thought, too, that he
could now no longer visit her as before, his heart swelled almost to
bursting. “But I am like a straw on the current,” he said, “and must
drift wherever the force of events carries me. Coward that I am! Why do
I live in a world for which I am so wretchedly unfitted?”
He had now passed the Rubicon. His first impressions he had resisted;
and the feebler suggestions which afterwards arose in his mind, only
led him to entrench himself the more strongly in the arguments of Sir
John. Besides, he had declared himself a friend to Episcopacy, and thus
barred up his retreat by that shrinking dread of being deemed wavering
and inconsistent, which has so often merely the effect of rendering
such as lie openest to the imputation firm in the wrong place. There
was a secret bitterness in his spirit, that vented itself in caustic
remarks on all whom he had once admired and respected--all save Mary
and her brother, and of them he never spoke. His former habits of
application were broken up; yet, though no longer engrossed by the
studies which it had once seemed the bent of his nature to pursue, he
remained as indifferent as ever to the various pursuits of interest
and ambition which engaged his uncle. After passing a day of restless
inactivity among his books, he walked out a little before sunset in the
direction of the old chapel of St. Regulus, and, ere he took note of
where his wanderings led him, found himself among the graves.
It was a lovely evening of October. The ancient elms and wild
cherry-trees which surrounded the burying-ground still retained
their foliage entire, and the elms were hung in gold, and the wild
cherry-trees in crimson, and the pale yellow tint of the straggling
and irregular fields on the hill-side contrasted strongly with the
deepening russet of the surrounding moor. The tombs and the ruins were
bathed in the yellow light of the setting sun; but to the melancholy
and aimless wanderer the quiet and gorgeous beauty of the scene was
associated with the coming night and the coming winter, with the
sadness of inevitable decay and the gloom of the insatiable grave.
He passed moodily onward, and, on turning an angle of the chapel,
found Mary Anderson seated among the ruins, on the tombstone of her
mother, whom she had lost when a child. There was a slight flush on
her countenance as she rose to meet him, but she held out her hand as
usual, though the young man thought, but it might not be so, that the
grasp was less kindly.
“You have been a great stranger of late, Dallas,” she said; “how have
we been so unhappy as to offend you?”
The young chaplain looked as if he could have sunk into the ground, and
was silent.
“Can it be true,” resumed the maiden, “that you have left us in our
distress, and gone over to the prelates?”
Dallas stammered out an apology, and reminded her that Christianity,
not Presbyterianism, formed the basis of their friendship. “The
Church,” he said, “had too long paid an overweening regard to mere
forms; it was now full time to look to essentials. What mattered it
whether men went to heaven under the jurisdiction of a Presbyterian or
of an Episcopalian Church?” He passed rapidly over the arguments of Sir
John.
“You are deceived, my dear friend,” said Mary. “Look at these cottages
that glitter to the setting sun on the hill-side. Eighty years ago
their inmates were the slaves of gross superstition--creatures who
feared and worshipped they knew not what; and, with no discipline of
purity connected with their uncertain beliefs, they could, like mere
machines, be set in motion, either for good or ill, at the will of
their capricious masters. These cottages, Dallas, are now inhabited
by thinking men; there are Bibles in even the humblest of them--in
even yonder hovel where the old widow lives--and these Bibles are read
and understood. We may hear even now the notes of the evening psalm!
Wist ye how the change was wrought? or what it was that converted mere
animal men into rational creatures? Was it not that very Church which
you have, alas! so rashly forsaken, and now denounce as intolerant?
A strange intolerance, surely, that delivers men from the influence
of their grosser nature, and delights to arm its vassals with a
power before which all tyranny must eventually be overthrown. Be not
deceived, Dallas! Men sometimes suffer themselves to be misled by
theories of a perfect but impossible freedom--impossible, because
unsuited to the low natures and darkened minds of those on whom
they would bestow it--and then submit in despair to the quiet of a
paralysing despotism, because they cannot realize what they have so
fondly imagined. Know ye not that none but the wise and the good can
be truly free--that the vile and the ignorant are necessarily slaves
under whatever form of government they may chance to live? See you
not that the deprecated sway of the Scottish Church has been in truth
but a paternal tutelage--that her children were feeble in mind, and
rude and untoward, when she first laid the hand of her discipline upon
them--and that she has now well-nigh trained them up to be men? And
think you that these, our poor countrymen, already occupy that place
which He who died for them has willed they should attain to? or that
the _many_, no longer a brute herd, but moral and thoughtful, and with
the Bible in their hands, are to remain the willing, unresisting slaves
of the _few_? No, Dallas! when men increase in goodness and knowledge,
there must be also an onward progress towards civil liberty; and the
political bias which you denounce as unfavourable to religion, is
merely the onward groping of this principle. A strange intolerance,
surely, that has already broken the fetters of the bondsman; they
still clank about him, but being what he now is--intelligent and
conscientious--they must inevitably drop off, let his master fret as he
may, and leave him a freeman.”
There was a pause, during which Dallas doggedly fixed his eyes on the
ground. “I have viewed the subject,” he at length said, “with different
eyes. And of this I am sure, there are in the Episcopal Church truly
excellent men who cannot exist without doing good.”
“But look round you,” said Mary, “and say whether the great bulk of
those who are now watching as on tiptoe to swell its ranks, are of the
class you describe? Can you shut your eyes to the fact, that there is
a winnowing process going on in the one Church, and that the chaff and
dust are falling into the other? But, Dallas,” she said, laying her
hand on her breast, “I can no longer dispute with you; and ’twould be
unavailing if I could, for it is not argument but strength that you
want--strength to resist the influence of a more powerful but less
honest mind than your own. There is assuredly a time of trouble coming;
but I feel, Dallas, that your escape from it cannot be more certain
than mine.”
Dallas, who had hitherto avoided her glance, now regarded her with an
expression of solicitude and alarm. She was thin--much thinner than
usual--and her cheeks were crimsoned by a flush of deadly beauty.
The anger which she had excited--for she had convinced him of his
error, despite of his determination not to be convinced, and he was
necessarily angry--vanished in a moment. He grasped her hand, and
bursting into tears, “O Mary!” he exclaimed, “I am a weak, worthless
thing--pity me--pray for me; but no, it were vain, it were vain; I am
lost, and for ever!”
The maiden was deeply affected, and strove to console him. “Retrace
your steps,” she said, “in the might of Him whose strength is perfected
in weakness, and all shall yet be well. My poor brother has mourned
for your defection as he would have done for your death; but he loves
you still, and deeply regrets that an unfortunate quarrel should have
estranged you from him. Come and see him as usual; he has a keen
temper, but need I tell you that he has an affectionate heart? And I
did not think, Dallas, that you could have so soon forgotten myself;
but come, that I may have my revenge.”
The friends parted, and at this time neither of them thought they had
parted for ever. But so it was. Facile and wavering as nature had
formed the young chaplain, he yet indulged in a pride that, conscious
of weakness, would fain solace itself with at least an outside show
of strength and consistency; and he could not forget that he had now
chosen his side. Weeks and months passed, and the day arrived on which,
at the instance of the Bishop of Ross, the nonconforming minister of
Cromarty was to be ejected from his parish.
It was early in December. There had been a severe and still increasing
snow-storm for the two previous days; the earth was deeply covered;
and a strong biting gale from the north-east was now drifting the snow
half-way up the side-walls of the manse. The distant hills rose like
so many shrouded spectres over the dark and melancholy sea--their
heads enveloped in broken wreaths of livid cloud; nature lay dead;
and the very firmament, blackened with tempest, seemed a huge burial
vault. The wind shrieked and wailed like an unhappy spirit among the
turrets and chimneys of the old castle. Dallas undid the covering of
the shot-hole that looked down on the manse, and then hastily shutting
it, flung himself on his bed, where he lay with his face folded in
the bedclothes. Ere he had risen, the shades of evening, deepened by
a furious snow-shower, had set in. He again unbolted the shot-hole
and looked out. The flakes flew so thickly that they obscured every
nearer object, and wholly concealed the more remote: even the manse
had disappeared; but there was a faint gleam of light flickering in
that direction through the shower; and as the air cleared, the chaplain
could see that it proceeded from two lighted candles placed in one of
the windows. Dreading he knew not what, he descended the turret stair,
and on entering the hall found one of the domestics, an elderly woman,
preparing to quit it. “This,” he said, addressing her, “is surely no
night for going abroad, Martha?” “Ah, no!” replied the woman, “but I
am going to the manse; there is distress there. Mary Anderson died
this morning, and it will be a thin lykewake.” “Mary Anderson! thin
lykewake!” said Dallas, repeating her words as if unconscious of their
meaning: “I’ll go with you.” And, as if moved by some impulse merely
mechanical, he followed the woman.
The dead chamber was profusely lighted, according to the custom of the
country, and the bed, with every other piece of furniture which it
contained, was hung with white. The bereaved brother had shut himself
up in his room, where he might be heard at times as if struggling with
inexpressible anguish in the agony of prayer; and only two elderly
women, one of them the nurse of Mary, watched beside the corpse. With
an unsteady step and pallid countenance, on the lineaments of which
a quiescent but settled despair was frightfully impressed, Dallas
entered the apartment and stood fronting the bed. The nurse greeted
him in a few brief words, expressive of their mutual loss; but he saw
her not--heard her not. He saw only the long white shroud with its
fearfully significant outline--heard only the beatings of his own
heart. The eyes of the good old woman filled with tears as she gazed on
him, and, slowly rising, she uncovered the face of the dead. He bent
forward; _there_ was the open and beautiful forehead, and there the
exquisite features, thin and wasted ’tis true, but lovely as ever. A
faint smile still lingered on the lip; it was a smile that called upon
thoughts and feelings the most solemn and holy, and whispered of the
joys of immortality from amid the calm and awful sublimity of death.
“Ah, my bairn!” said the woman, “weel and lang did she loe you, and
meikle did she grieve for you and pray for you, when ye went o’er to
the prelates. But her griefs are a’ ended now. Ken ye, Dallas, that for
years an’ years she loed ye wi’ mair than a sister’s luve, an’ that
if she didna just meet wi’ your hopes, it was only because she kent
o’er weel she was to die young?” Dallas struck his open palm against
his forehead; a convulsive emotion shook his frame; and, bursting into
tears, he flung himself out of the room.
The funeral passed over; and the brother of Mary quitted the parish
a homeless and solitary man, with a grieving heart but an unbroken
spirit. He had to mourn both for the dead and the estranged; and found
that the low insults and cruel suspicions of the persecutor dogged
him wherever he went. But his state was one of comfort compared with
that of his hapless friend. Grief, terror, and remorse, lorded it over
the unfortunate chaplain by turns, and what was at first but mere
inquietude had become anguish. He was sitting a few weeks after the
interment in the eastern turret, his eyes fixed vacantly on the fire,
which was dying on the hearth at his feet, when Sir John abruptly
entered, and drew in his seat beside him.
“Your fire, nephew,” he said, as he trimmed it, “very much resembles
yourself. There is no lack of the right material, but it wants just a
little stirring, and is useless for want of it. It is no time, Dallas,
to be loitering away life when a bright prospect of honourable ambition
and extensive usefulness is opening full before you. Wot you not that
our neighbour the bishop, now a worn-out old man, has been confined
to his room for the last week? And should my cousin of Tarbat and
myself agree in recommending a successor, as we unquestionably shall,
where think you lies the influence powerful enough to thwart us? But a
diocese so important, nephew, can be the prize of no indolent dreamer.”
“Uncle,” said Dallas, in a tone of deep melancholy, “do you believe
that those who have been once awakened to the truth may yet fall away
and perish?”
“Why perplex yourself with such questions?” replied his uncle. “We are
creatures intended for both this world and the next; each demands that
certain duties be performed; and of all men, woe to him of a musing and
speculative turn, who, though not devoid of a sense of duty, fails in
the requirements of the present state. His thoughts become fiends to
torment him. But up, nephew, and act, and you will find that all will
be well.”
“Act! How?--to what purpose?--how read you the text--‘It is impossible
for those who were once enlightened, if they fall away, to renew them
to repentance?’ I have fallen--fallen for ever.”
“Dallas,” said Sir John, “what wild thought has now possessed you?--You
are but one of many thousands;--I know not a more hopeful clergyman of
your standing connected with the Church.”
“Wretched, wretched Church, if it be so! But what are her ministers?
Trees twice dead, plucked up by the roots--wandering stars, for whom
is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. Yes, I am as hopeful
as most of her ministers. Mary Anderson told me what was coming; and,
hypocrite that I am! I believed her, and yet denied that I did. I saw
her last night;--she was beautiful as ever--but ah! there was no love,
no pity in her eye--and the wide, wide gulf was between us.”
“Dearest nephew, why talk so wildly?” exclaimed Sir John.
“Uncle, you have ever been kind to me,” replied Dallas; “but you have
ruined--no, wretched creature! ’twas I, myself, who have ruined my
soul; and there is neither love nor gratitude in the place to which I
am going. O leave me to myself! my thoughts become more fearful when I
embody them in words;--leave me to myself! and, uncle, while there is
yet space, seek after that repentance which is denied to me. Avoid the
unpardonable sin.”
The strong mind of Sir John was prostrated before the fearfully excited
feelings of his nephew, as a massy barrier of iron may be beaten down
by a cannon-ball; and he descended the turret stair rebuked and humbled
by an energy more potent than his own--as if, for the time, he and the
young man had exchanged characters. Next morning Dallas was nowhere to
be found.
He was seen about sunrise, by a farmer of the parish, passing hurriedly
along the ridge of the hill. The man, a staid Presbyterian, with
whom he had once loved to converse, had saluted him as he passed, and
then paused for half a second in the expectation that, as usual, he
would address him in turn; but he seemed wholly unconscious of his
presence. His face, he said, was of a deadly paleness, and his pace,
though hurried, seemed strangely unequal, as if he were exhausted
by indisposition or fatigue. The day wore on; and towards evening,
Sir John, who could no longer conceal the anxiety which he felt,
ordered out all his domestics in quest of him. But the night soon
fell dark and rainy, and the party was on the eve of relinquishing
the search, when, in passing along the edge of the _Look-out_, one of
the servants observed something white lying on the little grassy bank
which surmounts the precipice. It was an open Bible--the gift, as the
title-page intimated, of Mary Anderson to Dallas Urquhart. Sir John
struck his clenched fist against his forehead.
“Gracious heaven!” he exclaimed, “he has destroyed himself--to the foot
of the rock--to the foot of the rock;--and haste! for the tide is fast
rising. But stay--let me forward--I will lead the way myself.”
And, passing through his terrified attendants, he began to descend by
a path nearly invisible in the darkness, and which, winding along the
narrow shelves of the precipice, seemed barely accessible even by day
to the light foot of the schoolboy. There was only one of the many who
now thronged the rock edge who had courage enough to follow him--a tall
spare man, wrapped up in a dark-coloured cloak. As the path became
narrower and more broken, and overhung still more and more fearfully
the dizzy descent, the stranger, who passed lightly and steadily
along, repeatedly extended his arm to the assistance of the knight,
who, through agitation and the stiffness incident to a period of life
considerably advanced, stumbled frightfully as he hurried down. They
reached the shore in safety together. All was dismally solitary. They
could see only the dark rock towering over them, and the line of white
waves which were tumbling over the beach, and had now begun to lash the
base of the precipice.
“Alas! my poor lost friend!” ejaculated the stranger--“lost, alas!
for ever, when I had hoped most for thy return. Wretched, unfortunate
creature! with little care of thine own for the things of this world,
and yet ever led away by those who worshipped them as their only
god--alas! alas! how hast thou perished!”
“Spare me, Hugh Anderson!” said Sir John, “spare me!--do not, I implore
you, add to the anguish of this miserable night!”
They walked together in silence to where the waves barred their further
progress, and then returned to the top of the precipice. The search
was renewed in the morning, but as ineffectually as on the preceding
night--there was no trace of the body. Seasons passed away; Sir John,
as has been already related, perished by his own act; Episcopacy fell;
and Hugh Anderson, now a greyheaded elderly man, was reappointed, after
the lapse of more than thirty years, to his old charge, the parish of
Cromarty.
He had quitted it amid the snow-wreaths of a severe and boisterous
winter; he returned to it after a storm of wind and snow from the sea
had heaped the beach with wrack and tangle, and torn their mantles
of ivy from some of the higher precipices. He revisited with anxious
solicitude the well-remembered haunts endeared to him by so many fond,
yet mournful recollections--Mary’s favourite walks--the cliffs which he
had so often scaled with Dallas--and the path which he had descended
in the darkness with the hapless Sir John. He paused at the foot of
the precipice--the storm had swept fiercely over its iron forehead,
and an immense bush of ivy, that had fallen from the ledge of the
_apple-yardie_, lay withering at its base. His eye caught something of
unusual appearance amid the torn and broken foliage--it was a human
skull, bleached white by the rains and the sunshine of many seasons,
and a few disjointed and fractured bones lay scattered near it.
Painfully did he gather them up, and painfully scooping out with his
pointed stick a hollow in the neighbouring bank, he shed, as he covered
them up from the sight, the last tears that have fallen to the memory
of the lost Dallas Urquhart.