THE MOUNTAIN LAKE AND HILL-SIDE COTTAGE.
We entered Scotland, travelling rapidly till we reached the mountains. I
do not speak of the scenes through which we passed, because this memoir
is already too long, and my hands are getting weary of the task. At a
little town in the highlands we found two gipsies that I had seen twice
on the way, evidently waiting for us. After an earnest conversation with
these men, Chaleco came to me, apparently somewhat elated.
“Well, child, we have found them out at last! Our people are used to
this kind of work, and a few gold-pieces from Papita’s box kept them on
the track.”
“And have you found them?” I inquired, rejoiced, and yet with a strange
aching pain at the heart, for Cora once found my promise of joining the
Spanish tribes must be redeemed.
“Behold,” he said, drawing me to a window of the public house, which
overlooked one of those pretty sheets of water that lie like mirrors in
the rugged frame-work of the Scottish mountains. “Look yonder on the
opposite hill.”
I saw a small dwelling perched above the lake, and sheltered by a vast
cedar tree.
“Well,” I said, “I see nothing but a farm-house, and some sheep in a
hollow of the mountains.”
“You will find the Gitanilla up yonder, I think,” he answered.
“What, Cora—my Cora? Come—come, it is but a walk, and we are with her.”
“Better than that,” he answered. “The distance is more than it looks; we
will be rowed across the lake by our people. Get your plaid and let us
be off.”
I went for the Tartan shawl which Chaleco had bought as we approached
the chilly north, and we descended to the lake.
It was early in the morning, and long shadows from the mountain fell
sheer across the little loch, letting in gleams of light only in one or
two places where the hills were cleft into fissures and valleys, their
sides rich with heath, through which the sunshine poured upon the waters
in purple and golden splendor.
Through these cool shadows and glowing ripples of light our boat passed
to the opposite shore. A footpath led from the public beach along the
side of a valley winding upward with gradual ascent, to the house we had
seen. It was a stone building, evidently the abode of a sheep-farmer,
whose flocks were scattered over the hill-side, cropping the short grass
from among the heath.
It was strange, but this scene seemed familiar to me; the old stone
house, the lake, the opposite mountains, bold and rugged, the very sheep
whitening the hollows, like masses of snow, reminded me of some foregone
impression vivid as the reality. I bethought myself, with a start, and
stood breathless, gazing upon the house. It was that house, those
mountains, and the quiet lake below that I had seen in my sleep that
night at Marston Court, where, amid storm and lightning, the history of
my parents was pictured in fragments like that before me.
I looked at Chaleco, but he was gazing indifferently around; evidently
the scene had no such associations for him. The power which he possessed
had been sufficient to awaken memory, not create belief in a thing that
had never existed.
A mountain vine, whose leaves were red with their autumnal death sap,
clambered up the front of the old house, hanging around the windows and
eaves, like fragments of hostile banners, in wild keeping with the
rugged scenery. Two or three narrow windows were almost choked up by its
red foliage; but from one, overlooking the lake, it had been forced back
in gorgeous festoons, revealing a lattice full of diamond-shaped glass,
upon which the sunbeams were shining.
As I stood looking at this window, it was gently opened. A face peered
out, and the lattice closed again, before the cry of surprise and joy
had left my lips.
“What is it?” said Chaleco, turning sharply at my exclamation.
“It is _she_! It is Cora!”
“Oh, is that all? I expected to find her here.”
“But she saw me, and shrunk away.”
“Very likely; but you shall see her, little one, nevertheless.”
“Oh, why should she avoid me?” I said, twinkling my tears away with the
lashes that could not keep them back.
“Come—come—don’t be a baby, Zana; weep when you can do nothing better,”
said the gipsy, out of patience with my childishness, “wait a moment,
and I will send the girl out to meet you.”
“No, no, only ask if I may come in—that is all,” I cried, breathless
with fear that he might be rough with the poor girl, “tell her that we
come from Mr. Clark; tell her anything that is kind.”
He did not hear half I said, but entered the house. Directly he
returned, and beckoned with his hand. I advanced into a large kitchen,
furnished comfortably, but rudely, after the Scottish fashion, in houses
of the kind.
“Go in yonder,” said Chaleco, pointing to an inner door, through which I
heard the faint rustle of a dress.
I entered a small room, fitted up with some attempt at elegance. A faded
carpet was on the floor, and some old-fashioned oak furniture stood
around. Two or three good cabinet pictures were on the walls, and some
dainty ornaments of antique and foreign manufacture stood upon a table
near the lattice. By this table stood Cora, stooping wearily forward,
and supporting herself by the window-frame, with her great, wild eyes,
black with excitement, bent upon the entrance. The long golden waves
which ended in ringlets on her shoulders, seemed to light up the pallor
of her cheeks, and I saw that she shrunk and trembled at my approach.
“Cora!” I said, with a gush of loving joy, “dear, dear Cora!”
She shrunk back, folding her arms, and eyeing me with a look of
affright.
“Cora, I came from your father; speak to me, I am so glad to see _you_.”
“But why have you come here? I did not ask it—I did not want it,” she
answered, her eyes filling, and her sweet lips quivering.
“I came to ask—to entreat—oh, Cora, come back, come back to your poor
father, or he will die.”
“I know it—I know that he will die without me; but how can I go? what
can I do?”
“Go home,” I answered imperatively; “why, oh, Cora Clark, why did you
leave us?”
“Don’t ask me—don’t speak to me on this subject; I will not be
questioned,” with a gleam of temper in her blue eyes, and a willful pout
of the lips, the remnants of her wayward infancy, “you have no right to
come here, Zana—none in the world. Oh, Zana, _he_ will be so angry.”
Something of the old love was in her voice. Encouraged by it, I went and
softly encircled her shrinking form in my arms, leaning my wet cheeks
against the golden thickness of her hair.
“Cora, dear, is it your husband that you speak of?” I said, with a heart
that trembled more than my voice.
She threw herself on my bosom, clasping me close in her shaking arms.
“Oh, Zana! Zana!”
I understood it all, and the heart, but an instant before trembling with
hope, lay heavy and still in my bosom.
“Cora,” I said, in a whisper, parting the hair from her forehead, and
kissing it with affection deeper than I had ever known before, and yet
with a shudder, for I knew that _his_ lips had touched that white brow
last, and spite of the knowledge, felt in my soul that he was dear to me
even then, traitor and villain as he was, “Cora, love, come home, the
little house is desolate without you; your father”——
“Don’t, oh, don’t; why will you speak that name so cruelly? I cannot
bear it,” she cried, struggling in my arms; “but—but tell me how he is,”
she added, clinging closer and closer, that I might not look in her
face.
“Ill, Cora, ill, and pining to death for the sight of his child.”
Her head fell heavily on my shoulder, and she gasped out, “No, no, he is
_not_ ill.”
I would not spare her one pang, she must feel all the desolation that
had fallen on her good parent, or my errand would fail.
“Yes, ill, Cora, helpless—stricken down like a child. I left him in the
old chair—that by which you and I stood to comfort him on the day of
your mother’s funeral; that was a mournful time, Cora, but the day when
you left him, think what it must have been—think of that noble man,
calling in anguish for his living child, and she silent as the dead—gone
not into the sweet peace of the grave, but”——
“Hold! oh, Zana, Zana! you are killing me—killing me, I say!”
She broke from my arms, and pushed back the hair from her face with both
hands as she spoke; then, as her eyes met mine, full of sorrowful
reproach and moist with compassion, she let the hair sweep down, and
clasping those two dimpled hands over her eyes, wept till her sobs
filled the room.
“Will you leave this bad man and go back to your father, Cora?” I said,
circling her waist with my arms again.
“He is not bad—I cannot—I _cannot_ leave him. It is of no use asking me.
It would kill him; oh, Zana, Zana! don’t call him bad—he is so kind, he
loves me so much!”
“And yet brings you here—steals you away from your innocent home,
to—to”——
I could not go on, grief and indignation stifled me.
“He does not deserve this—I will not hear it!” she cried, breaking from
me. Her sweet face flushed red and warm through the tears that streamed
over it, and her eyes flashed a defiant glance into mine. “Say what you
will of me, I am wicked, cruel, worse—worse, if it pleases you to say
it; but as for him, did I not tell you, Zana, that I loved him? I do—I
do better than life, better than my own soul, better than ten thousand
friends like you, than ten thousand fath——oh, my God, I did not say
that—no, no, I dare _not_ say that.”
I sat down by the table, shocked and almost in despair. She crept toward
me, and sinking down to the floor, laid her head upon my lap, exhausted
by this outbreak of passion.
“Hush, Cora, hush, and let us talk quietly a little,” I said, after a
pause, during which we both cried bitterly together, as we had often
done over our petty sorrows in childhood. “Tell me, darling—don’t, don’t
cry so—tell me why it is that this man does not make you his wife?”
“Don’t ask me about that—don’t, don’t—he is afraid of Lady Clare, he
expects everything from her.”
“I know it—I know it well; but”——
She interrupted the bitter speech on my lips.
“Oh, she is a terrible woman, Zana, and he fears her so much; she has
got everything that ought to be his, and would quite crush him if she
suspected anything before all is settled between them.”
How beautiful she looked with her pleading eyes, soft with love and dim
with tears—so unconscious, too, of her terrible position, so
confiding—my heart ached for her.
“You will go back and tell this to father,” she said, kissing my hands
and folding them to her bosom; “tell him only to have patience for a
little time; cheer him up, Zana, he loves you so much, almost as much,
you know, as he did poor me. Tell him I am quite comfortable here among
the hills; that I read some, and think of him more than is good for me.
Will you say all this, Zana?”
“Don’t ask me now, darling—take time, I shall stay here by the lake a
week yet; we will consult and think what is best to be done. Stop
crying, dear, it will do no good”——
She interrupted me, with a faint smile.
“I know it—if tears would help one, I should be very happy, for I do
think no human being ever shed so many. It is lonesome here sometimes,
Zana.”
“But you are not alone,” I said, with a gleam of hope; “he cannot find
much amusement here to take him away from you.”
“Oh, _he_ is scarcely ever here. They keep him so constantly occupied.”
“Who?” I inquired, surprised.
“Oh, the countess and the young lady they call Estelle. Do you think her
handsome, that Estelle? some people do, but”——
I interrupted her, sharply.
“Lady Clare—is she in the highlands, then?”
“Yes, they came up to a hunting-lodge, some miles back in the mountains,
that Lord Clare used to live in years ago; his death made them all too
gloomy for society, and they came quietly up here.”
“And does Lady Clare know—that is, does she consent that you reside so
near?”
“I never asked; he thought it best, and I could not endure to stay in
London alone; but after a little, no one will care if she does know.
When all is settled, you see, papa can come and live with us at Marston
Court.”
I shuddered; how cruelly each word went to my heart—they would live at
Marston Court then. A jealous pang shot through me at the bare idea; and
yet if her dream should prove unreal, how terrible must her fate be. The
interview was becoming painful beyond endurance. I arose, she clung to
me caressingly.
“You will come again, Zana; I have some things on my mind that trouble
me besides my poor father.”
“But shall I find you alone?”
“I am almost always alone,” she replied, sadly.
“To-morrow,” I said, “be ready and we will go out on the lake together,
and talk over everything. Would you like that, Cora?”
She smiled, and her soft eyes sparkled through their mistiness; poor,
young thing, she was half unconscious yet of the misery that lay before
her. She kissed me over and over again as I left, and when our boat was
upon the lake, I looked back and saw her standing in the little
casement, framed in, like a sorrowing cherub, by the crimsoned vines.