The sea-pink and the rock saxifrage were making the rugged rocks gay,
the bluebell was nodding on the moor, and Nelly had not died, as she
foolishly fancied she should. She had learned to wander out along the
shore or over the trackless moor for hours and hours, and often returned
footsore and exhausted. She who had been accustomed only to the
Canongate and High Street of Edinburgh, the tall houses with their
occasional armorial bearings, the convenient huckster shops--their
irregular line intersected by the strait closes, the traffic and gossip;
or to the forsaken royal palace, and the cowslips of the King's
Park--could now watch the red sunset burnishing miles on miles of waving
heather, and the full moon hanging above the restless tide. She could
listen to the surf in the storm, and the ripple in the calm, to the cry
of the gull and the wh-r-r of the moorcock; pull wild thyme, and pick up
rose-tinted shells and perforated stones; and watch shyly her hardy
cottar servants cutting peats and tying up flax, and even caught
snatches of their rude Border lore of raid and foray under doughty
Homes, who wore steel cap and breastplate.
The coast-line at Staneholme was high and bold, but in place of
descending sheerly and precipitately to the yellow sands, it sloped in a
green bank, broken by gullies, where the long sea-grass grew in tangled
tufts, interspersed with the yellow leaves of the fern, and in whose
sheltered recesses Nelly Carnegie so often lingered, that she left them
to future generations as "Lady Staneholme's Walks."
There she could see the London smacks and foreign luggers beating up to
ride at the pier of Leith. There she could sit for hours, half-hidden,
and protected from the sea blast, mechanically pulling to pieces the
dried, blackened seaweed blown up among the small, prickly blush roses.
In her green quilted petticoat and spencer she might have been one of
the "good people's changelings," only the hue of her cheek was more like
that of a brownie of the wold; and, truly, to her remote world there was
an impenetrable mystery about the young mistress of Staneholme, in her
estrangement and mournfulness. Some said that she had favoured another
lover, whom Staneholme had slain in a duel or a night-brawl; some that
the old Staneholmes had sold themselves to the Devil, and a curse was on
their remotest descendants; for was not the young laird _fey_ at times,
and would not the blithe sisters pass into care-worn wives and matrons?
There sat Nelly, looking at the sea, musing dreamily and drearily on Old
Edinburgh, or pondering with sluggish curiosity over the Homes, and
what, from casual looks and words, she could not help gathering of their
history. The Lairds of Staneholme had wild moss-trooper blood in their
veins, and they had vindicated it to the last generation by unsettled
lives, reckless intermeddling with public affairs, and inveterate feuds
with their brother lairds.
Adam Home's was a hot heart, constant in its impetuosity, buried beneath
an icy crust which he strove to preserve, but which hissed and crackled
when outward motives failed, or when opposition fanned the inner glow.
With the elements of a despot but half tamed, and like many another
tyrant, unchallenged master of his surroundings, Staneholme wielded his
authority with fair result. Tenant and servant, hanger-on and sprig of
the central tree, bore regard as well as fear for the young laird--all
save Staneholme's whilom love and wedded wife.
Nelly did not wish to understand this repressed, ardent nature, although
its developments sometimes forced themselves upon her. She had heard
Staneholme hound on a refractory tyke till he shouted himself hoarse,
and yet turn aside before the badger was unearthed; she had seen him
climb the scaurs, and hang dizzily in mid-air over the black water, to
secure the wildfowl he had shot, and it was but carrion; and once, Joan
and Madge, to whom he was wont to be indulgent in a condescending,
superior way, trembled before the stamp of his foot and the kindling
flash of his eye. Some affair abroad had disturbed him and he came into
the hall, when his sisters' voices were raised giddily as they played
off an idle, ill-thought-of jest on grave, cold Nelly. "Queans and
fools," he termed them, and bade them "end their steer" so harshly, that
the free, thoughtful girls did not think of pouting or crying, but
shrank back in affright. Nelly Carnegie, whom he had humbled to the
dust, was below his anger.
When the grey mansion of Staneholme basked in the autumn sun, an
auspicious event gladdened its chambers. Joan was matched with a gay,
gallant young cousin from Teviotdale, and from the commencement of the
short wooing to the indefatigable dance which the young bride herself
led off right willingly, all was celebrated with smiles and blessings,
and harvest-home fulness of joy and gratitude. But a dark shadow moved
among the merrymakers. A young heart robbed of its rights, like an
upbraiding ghost, regarded the simple, loving, trusting pair, and
compared their consecrated vows with the mockery of a rite into which it
had been driven.
The only change time brought to Nelly, was the progress of an
unacknowledged bond between her and good old Lady Staneholme. The
obstacle to any interchange of ideas and positive confidence between
them, was the inducement to the tacit companionship adopted by the sick,
wayward heart, with its malady of wrong and grief. Influenced by an
instinctive, inexplicable attraction, Nelly's uncertain footsteps
followed Lady Staneholme, and kept pace with her soft tread, when she
overlooked her spinners and knitters, gave out her linen and spices,
turned over her herbs, and visited her sick and aged. There they were
seen--the smiling, deaf old lady, fair in her wrinkles, and her mute,
dark, sad daughter whom in patient ignorance she folded in her mantle of
universal charity.