"He is an old peer of a good Anglo-Norman line, as the name imports;
rich as a Jew, and sails one of the best yachts that ever loosed canvas
at Cowes; a house in Piccadilly; a box at the opera; another of a
different kind in the Highlands; a moor in Ireland--bog, some people
call it; an excellent stud, and pack of hounds; a glorious cellar. Rich
old fellow, indeed; a great chum of my father's. His dinners are said
to be--haw--perfection, from the caviare on sliced bread, _a la Russe_,
to the coffee and curacoa, the mocha and maraschino."
The ladies were all busy with their crossed and recrossed epistles from
friends, gossips, and correspondents. My uncle was put in excellent
humour by a missive from a meeting of the heritors and others interested
in the county hunt, assigning to him the mastership of the hounds, with
a couple of thousands per annum towards his expenses, and the defray of
damages, if he undertook to hunt the country between the Firths of Forth
and Tay.
"You have some jolly good hunters in the--haw--stables, Sir Nigel," said
Berkeley, who was somewhat of a sporting man.
"Yes, fairish."
"Dunearn is a clean-limbed animal," said the general.
"Yes; but he was not improved by your gallop among the melon beds,"
replied Sir Nigel, laughing. "Cost me four hundred and fifty pounds,
that horse did. Saline, the grey, with the dark fetlocks, is a better
hunter for clearing fences, and crossing a stiff country, and yet cost
me only two hundred and ten pounds."
After opening his third or fourth letter, Berkeley evidently received
news that was not pleasant, for I heard him mutter almost an oath, as he
said, uneasily--
"Jockeyed! Sold by the jockey, Trayner! A cheque on his bank for the
amount; about as good as one on the Banks of Newfoundland."
"No bad news, Berkeley, I hope," said my uncle.
"Oh--haw--nothing, Sir Nigel," said he, and retiring into an oriel, he
drew forth a memorandum book, and proceeded to consider the weights for
a forthcoming race; and so absorbed was he that Cora laughed aloud on
hearing him mutter in this fashion, pulling his long moustaches the
while--
"Mail-train, five years, eight stone two pounds. Swish-tail, three
years, six stone four pounds. Queen Victorina, aged, rather, six stone
four pounds," and so on.
As we rose from the breakfast-table, and broke into groups, he dropped a
letter in a female handwriting. I picked it up, and followed him. It
was open, and the signature, "_Agnes Auriol_," caught my eye.
By that name I knew the writer, and could have crushed Berkeley's
chances, perhaps, for ever; but as no such use could be honourably made
of it, I touched him on the shoulder, simply saying--
"Pardon me, you have dropped this."
He changed colour painfully as he received the letter, walked to the
fire, cast it in, and carefully waited until it was consumed.
I was not without hopes of luring Lady Louisa into the library, the
conservatory, or some quiet nook, as a ride or a ramble out of doors was
not to be thought of; but my uncle destroyed my chances, by suddenly
announcing, with one of his loud and merry laughs, that the glass was
rising, the day would yet be fine, and that gentlemen must kill their
next day's dinner or go without. He was going to beat the thickets for
a few birds, and he had guns for all the party.
The old general grumbled an unmistakable dissent, and Berkeley pocketed
his betting-book, drawling out, as he looked at the snowy landscape and
left the room--
"A horrid bore!"
"Come, general," said my hearty old uncle, who had not heard Berkeley's
uncivil response, "don't think yet of substituting flannel bags for
top-boots; Ascension turtle and pink champagne for patience and water
gruel; hot fomentations for hot whisky-toddy! Come! put on your
shot-belt; the gout is a long way off yet."
"Gad! I am not so sure of that, Sir Nigel; and then there is this
cursed jungle-fever, which I got when up the country with the 3rd
Bengal, and I have a horror of toast and water, even when flavoured with
pale dry sherry."
"Where is Mr. Berkeley loitering; what is he about?"
"Making up his mind, papa, or what he considers to be such," said Cora.
"Fie, Cora," said the old baronet, "you should never quiz a guest."
Berkeley, re-entering, urged that he had letters to write, and so must
remain behind; so said Mr. Spittal, the M.P. Thus the shooting party
was reduced to Sir Nigel, the keeper, and myself.
Cora brought us each a flask of brandy, then a little packet of
sandwiches cut by her own pretty hands in the housekeeper's pantry.
These she stuffed into our pockets, and away we went to the keeper's
lodge, I, for cogent reasons of my own, most unwillingly, though Lady
Louisa smilingly kissed her hand twice to me from the drawing-room
window; but as Cora and all the ladies did so at the same time, and
waved their handkerchiefs, I could gather but little from that mark of
her attention.
Pitblado's cottage was more than a mile distant. The snow was thawing
fast, in the sunshine; but we were accoutred in stout leather leggings,
and thick, warm shooting coats and caps.
My uncle's manner was fidgety, as we walked onward. He had evidently
something on his mind, which he could not express in words, and I could
give him no aid. After a pause--
"Newton, lad," said he, "I don't think that you take to your gun very
willingly to-day."
"What leads you to think so, uncle?"
"You continued to look back at the house, as long as even the vanes of
it were in view, as if the game there had more attractions than the
birds out of doors."
"I merely looked back to bow to Lady Loftus and the others," said I,
laughing.
"There it is! Why do you put Lady Loftus first?"
"Perhaps because her figure was tallest--I don't know--perhaps I should
have named Cora, as the Lady of Calderwood," said I laughing, to hide my
growing confusion.
"Newton Norcliff, you have a tenderness for Lady Chillingham's
daughter," said Sir Nigel, gravely.
"Have I? Don't know that I have, sir," I repeated, actually flushing.
"Of course you have, and you know it," said he, emphatically.
"But who told you of this?"
"Cora."
"Cora?"
"Yes, with tears in her eyes, this morning."
"Tears! This is incomprehensible. I have only been a single night
under the same roof with Lady Loftus."
"Yet Cora has discovered your secret. Girls are quick-sighted in such
matters, I can tell you."
"But why had Cora tears?"
"Don't for the life of me know, unless it be that she fears your love
will be but moonshine in the water. They are a cold, calculating, and
ambitious family, Lord Chillingham's, and will fly their hawk at higher
game than mere landed gentry."
"She is a good girl, Cora," said I, thoughtfully
"If you have any fancy for Louisa Loftus, I will back you to any
amount," said my blunt uncle, stoutly; "but I don't think my lady mother
would relish such a suitor as a lieutenant of cavalry. I have already
heard her hint that Lord Slubber has made proposals, with offers of a
brilliant settlement; but the man is older than I, and could no more
hunt a country or march up a snow-covered brae, as we do now, than fly
through the air. At all events, don't throw your heart away farther
than is necessary, and what is more, in the meantime, look sharp, I
say."
"Sharp!" I exclaimed, bewildered by this odd jumble of advice.
"How--why?"
"Don't you perceive what is going on?"
"What, uncle?"
"That yaw-hawing donkey, Berkeley, is doing all he can to take the wind
out of your sails."
"Uncle, I have indeed felt a dread of this. He has, you know, a
handsome fortune."
"I would not let a fellow like that go neck and neck with me," said Sir
Nigel. "I'd cut in and win at a hand gallop. It is your talking,
pushing, forward men--seeming always confident of what they say, never
acknowledging an error or confessing a defeat, that are too often
allowed to take the lead in life. With average ability, and ten times
the average amount of assurance, they often reach the goal that bashful
merit never gets a sight of. So cut in, I say, and win, if you want
her."
While he was running on thus, I could not but admire, at his years, the
hale, sturdy figure, and bluff, hearty bearing of Sir Nigel, in his old
shooting toggery. He was always a crack shot, and in youth and middle
life had been one of the keenest curlers and golfers between the West
and East Neuks of Fife.
It was his great boast that he could yet, if he chose, strike a golf
ball from the street over each of the tallest spires of St. Andrew's. A
fair hand, too, with the pistol, he had, as I have stated, winged more
than one political antagonist, in squabbles about the old Reform Bill,
in the days of Brougham, Grey, and Russell. Throw your glove in the
air, and he would shoot any finger off it you named; and he would hit a
cricket ball, were it cast ever so high, with a single rifle bullet.
Thus in his hands I was sent to join the lancers somewhat of a
master-of-arms, and certainly a complete horseman.
Sir Nigel, withal, had much the air of a Scotch man-about-town; in
Edinburgh a different style of man from he of the same genus in
London--he of the glazed boots and carefully-trimmed whiskers,
exquisitely solemn and unimpressionable, as if he had seen all the
world, and found there was nothing in it.
The "dandy" who hovers about the New Club in Princes-street is usually a
six-foot man, bronzed and sunburnt (he has served somewhere--in India
generally), and heavily moustached. He carries a huge stick; he wears
rough Tweed suits, and double-soled brogues, with toe-pieces and rows of
hobnails, as if ever ready for facing the hills and the frozen heather.
He may be a snob, like his English brother Dundreary; but he has
something rough and service-like in his bearing that is suggestive of
climbing rocks, fishing, hunting, and shooting.
But now Sir Nigel's warning, Cora's sharp discovery of my secret, and
the knowledge that Berkeley remained behind in full possession of the
field, filled me with anxiety and annoyance. The shooting excursion
bored me, and I looked for the end before we had well begun.
What might those hours of absence from her cost me?
We reached the gamekeeper's cottage, which was situated amid a dense
copsewood, beside a wimpling burn, and near King James's Well. Moss of
emerald hue covered all the thatched roof, and in summer green trailers
and scarlet-runners made all the white-washed walls and little windows
gay.
Now the former were ornamented by ghastly rows of half-decayed hawks,
wild cats, fiumarts, and weasels, while the white, bare skull of a stag,
with its gallant antlers outspread, was fixed above the door. Along the
garden paling the dead hawks hung in dozens, as a regular war was waged
between them and old Pitblado, who spent half his days in baiting traps;
thus the breeze that passed his cottage was laden with odours, but not
those of "a bank of violets."
He was a fine, hale old man, with a weather-beaten aspect, short,
grizzled hair, and keen grey eyes, that glistened and grew moist as he
warmly shook my hand, and welcomed me to the glen again.
Though respectful and kind, his bearing was not without a native
dignity, for he was proud of considering himself the last representative
of an old line of Fifeshire lairds, the Pitblados of Pitblado and that
ilk, who had lost their land and position long ago; but in his old
velveteen coat of no particular colour, his blue bonnet, network
game-bag, and long, greasy overalls, Pitblado looked just as I had seen
him last. Though "as soldiers in the march of life, we may never learn
to mark time, time never fails to mark us."
"It was kind ond thochtfu' o' you, Maister Newton, to bring my laddie,
Willie, hame to see me ere ye baith gaed to the wars; and when there, I
hope you ond he will tak' a' the care o' ilk ither ye can, for I could
as ill spare him as Sir Nigel could spare you; and gang where ye may,
Maister Newton, ye'll ne'er ha'e a truer or a sibber friend than Willie
Pitblado."
While the old man ran on thus, the dogs came bounding forth.
"Here," said my uncle, "is your old favourite pointer, the white and
tan, alive yet."
"But he's a _dis_-appointer noo, Maister Newton, being blind, or bleared
a bit; yet I ha'e na the heart, or rather want o' heart, to put the puir
beast awa'."
"And here is Keeper, too--brave old Keeper, that I played with when a
boy," I exclaimed, as a grand old mastiff, which knew my voice, sprang
upon me with joy, whining and barking the while--a dog that was always
gentle with children; that wagged his aristocratic tail at all ladies
and gentlemen, but howled and growled fearfully at all beggars and
poorly-clad folks.
There in that cottage old Willie now lived alone with his dogs and a
tame otter. This was a somewhat remarkable animal. He had found it as a
cub in a pond near Calderwood Glen, and gradually made it so
domesticated that it responded to his voice, followed him about, and
employed its talents in fishing for him, bringing each fish regularly to
his feet, and at a signal diving in for more; and, strange enough, the
terriers that hunted other otters never molested this one.
A pair of brisk young pointers were selected. We loaded, capped,
shouldered our guns, and set forth. This was but the beginning of the
day's sport, and I sighed with impatience for the end.
"Shall we try the belt of pines on the Standing Stane Rig?" said I.
"It used to be a braw cover for patricks (partridges), and in my
father's day for grouse," said Pitblado; "but those Roosians, the
weasels, the piots, the hawks, and the shepherd's collies, ha'e played
the de'il wi' it. At yon belt o' neeps, where ye see the shaws aboon
the snaw, the deer often come out o' the pine wood to ha'e a feed, so
that we may chance to get a pot shot at one to-day."
"Come on, then," said Sir Nigel, impatiently. "Blaze away while you
can, Newton. In the first week of next month partridge and pheasant
shooting ends."
"By that time, uncle, in these swift days of steam, I may be sabreing or
potting the Russians."
"Then sabre and pot with a will, boy."
It was from old Pitblado I had received all my early lessons in shooting
and fishing, in the art of casting bullets and making flies; and I
remember one special piece of advice he always gave me concerning
salmon.
"Aye _droon_ your salmon before ye land it, Maister Newton, for the dunt
on the heid spyles the quality o' the fish; ond if ye hook a grilse,
keep its tail up and well in the water till it's clean deid."
We saw no deer that day, and I shot so wildly and queerly, and generally
bang into the centre of every covey, without selecting or covering the
outside birds, that Sir Nigel was bewildered, and old Pitblado lost all
patience with me.
I traversed the snow-covered fields with them as one might do in a
dream. I heard an occasional shot from my uncle's gun, the birds rose
whirring in the air, and then one or two came tumbling down, to beat the
snow with their wings, and stain it with their blood, ere Pitblado
thrust them into his ample bag.
I heard his deep impressive voice saying from time to time, "Mark!" when
the coveys rose, and to watch where they alighted; then "Seek dead" to
the pointers usually followed the bang! bang! of Sir Nigel's barrels;
but my mind was completely absorbed in reverie. I saw only the face of
Louisa Loftus, with Berkeley hovering about her.
I imagined him having achieved the tete-a-tete I had failed to procure.
I imagined him opening the trenches by apologies, in set phraseology,
for the offence he had perpetrated in the conservatory; and if he
succeeded with such a basis for his operations, where might the matter
end? Heavens! for all I knew to the contrary, in a solemn engagement,
pending mamma Chillingham's consent, for his lordship, the earl, was
somewhat of a cypher in these matters, and in his own house generally.
How ingeniously one can torment oneself when afflicted by jealousy! and
thus much real misery was mine during that day's weary shooting, and
right glad was I when the sun of January, declining beyond the western
Lomond, warned my indefatigable uncle that it was time for us to return
homeward, after having traversed in our peregrinations some fifteen
miles of country.
He had shot four hares, and eighteen brace of birds, four of which were
beautiful golden pheasants; while I had knocked over only two
partridges--a result at which Cora and Lady Louisa laughed excessively,
and each declared they would have the said birds specially cooked for
themselves.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
The heavens were marked by many a filmy streak
E'en in the Orient, and the sun shone through
Those lines, as Hope upon a mourner's cheek
Sheds, meekly chastened, her delightful hue.
From groves and meadows, all empearled with dew,
Rose silvery mist, no eddying wind swept by;
The cottage chimneys, half concealed from view
By their embowering foliage, sent on high
Their pallid wreaths of smoke unruffled to the sky.
BARTON.
Next day the snow had entirely disappeared; the country again looked
fresh and green; and when we met for breakfast, and while the ladies
were exchanging their morning kisses lightly on each cheek--a la
Francaise, rather than a l'Ecossaise--various excursions were again
projected.
Among others, Cora urged that we should visit the ruined Castle of
Piteadie, which belonged of old to a branch of my uncle's family now
extinct.
It stands on the slope of a gentle eminence, some distance westward of
the famous "long town" of Kirkaldy, a pleasant ride of ten miles or so
from the glen; and was a place we frequently rode to in the days of my
boyhood, when my feats in the saddle were performed on a shaggy,
barrel-bellied Shetland pony; so I longed to see the old ruin again.
A message was sent to the stable-yard after luncheon, and horses were
ordered for the party, which was to consist of Lady Louisa, Cora, Miss
Wilford, Berkeley, the M.P., and myself.
The ladies soon appeared in their riding-habits; and, to my perhaps
partial fancy, there seemed something matchless in the grace with which
Louisa Loftus held, or draped up, the gathered folds of her ample dark
blue skirt in her tightly gloved left hand.
There was the faintest flush on her usually pale cheek, a furtive
glancing in her long-lashed dark eyes, as she threw her veil over her
shoulder, gave a last smoothing to the braids of her black hair, and
tripped down the front steps, leaning on the arm of her courteous old
host, to where our cavalry stood, pawing the gravel impatiently, arching
their necks, and champing their bright steel bits.
We were soon mounted and _en route_. Cora and Lady Louisa, who were
resolved on having a little private gossip, after merrily quizzing me
about my dragoon seat on the saddle, rode at first together; and, as we
paired off down the avenue, followed by my man, Willie Pitblado, and
another well-mounted groom, I found myself alongside of Berkeley, after
Sir Nigel, who had a county meeting to attend at Cupar, left us.
"Your uncle's stables make a good turn-out of cavalry," said Berkeley;
"this grey is a good bit of horseflesh."
"'Treads well above his pasterns,' is rather a favourite with Sir
Nigel," said I, coldly, for he had a patronizing tone about him that I
did not relish. I could laugh with Lady Louisa when she spoke of Sir
Nigel as "a queer old droll," or "a dear old thing;" but I could ill
tolerate Berkeley, when he ran on in the following fashion--
"He is certainly a trump, Sir Nigel, but droll, as Lady Loftus
says--exquisitely droll! If he--haw--spills salt, no doubt he remembers
Judas, and throws a pinch over his left shoulder; knocks the bottoms out
of his eggs, lest the fairies make tugs of'em; and--haw, haw--would
faint, I suppose, if he dined one of thirteen."
"I am not aware that Sir Nigel has any of the proclivities that you
mention," said I; but, heedless that I was staring at him, Berkeley,
with his bland, insipid smile, continued his impertinence.
"Things have--haw--changed so much within the last few years, that these
old fellows are actually ignorant of the world they live in; and
the--haw, haw--world goes so fast, that in three years _we_ learn more
of it, and of life (Gad! they know nothing of real life), than they did
in thirty. As a young man, Sir Nigel was, I have no doubt, a buck in
leather breeches and hair powder--haw--drove a Stanhope, perhaps, and
wore a Spenser, _ultimus Romanorum_; paid his first visit to London in
the old mail coach, with a brace of pistols in his pocket, and the
thorough conviction that every second Englishman was a thief."
I listened with growing indignation, for on this man, who quizzed him
thus, my poor uncle was lavishing his genuine, old-fashioned Scottish
hospitality. I had every disposition to quarrel with Berkeley, and had
we been with the regiment, or elsewhere, would undoubtedly have done so;
but in my uncle's house, a _fracas_ with a guest, more especially a
brother officer, was the last thing to be thought of.
"You are somewhat unfriendly in your remarks, Mr. Berkeley," said I,
haughtily.
"I am--haw--not much of a reader, Norcliff; but I greatly admire a
certain writer, who says that 'Friendship means the habit of meeting at
dinner--the highest nobility of the soul being his who pays the
reckoning!'" replied Berkeley.
"And you always thought that axiom----"
"To be doocid good! Slubber is the only old fellow I ever knew who kept
pace with the times."
"Indeed!" said I, with an affected air of perfect unconcern. "I have
heard of him--he is said to have proposed to our fair friend in front."
"Ah, may I ask which of them?"
"For Lady Louisa."
"It is very likely--the families are extremely intimate, and I know that
she has gone twice to the Continent in Slubber's yacht."
Berkeley said this with a bearing cooler even than mine; but I was aware
that the fellow was scanning me closely through his confounded eyeglass.
"His fortune is, I believe, handsome?"
"Magnificent! Sixty thousand a year, at least--haw! His father was a
reckless fellow in the days of the Regency, going double-quick to the
dogs; but luckily died in time to let the estates go to nurse during the
present man's minority. I have heard a good story told of the late Lord
Slubber de Gullion, who, having lost a vast sum on the Derby, applied to
a well-known broker in town to give him five thousand pounds on my Lady
Slubber's jewels.
"'Number the brilliants,' said he, 'and put false stones in their
places; she will never know the difference.'
"'You are mosh too late, my lord,' replied he of the three six-pounders,
with a grin.
"'Too late! What the devil do you mean, Abraham?'
"'My Lady Slubbersh shold the diamonds to me three years ago, and these
stones are all falsh!'
"So my lord retired, collapsed with rage, to find that a march had been
stolen upon him--doocid good, that!"
The snow, I have said, had entirely disappeared, save on the summits of
the hills; but, swollen by its melting, the wayside runnels bubbled
merrily along under the black whins and withered ferns, reflecting the
pure blue of the sky overhead. At a place where the road became wider,
by a dexterous use of the spurs, I contrived to get my horse between the
pads of Cora and Lady Louisa, and so rid myself of Berkeley.
We chatted away pleasantly as we rode on at an easy pace, and ere long,
on ascending the higher ground, saw the wide expanse of the Firth of
Forth shining with all its ripples under the clear winter sun, with the
hills of the Lothians opposite, half shrouded in white vapour.
I would have given all I possessed to have been alone for half an hour
with Louisa Loftus, but no such chance or fortune was given me; and
though our ride to the ruined castle was, in itself, of small
importance, it proved ultimately the means towards an end.
One old woman, wearing one of those peculiar caps which Mary of Gueldres
introduced in Scotland, with a black band--the badge of widowhood--over
it, appeared at the door of a little thatched cottage, and directed us
by a near bridle-path to the ruin, smiling pleasantly as she did so.
"Newton," said Cora, "you remember old Kirsty Jack?"
"Perfectly," said I; "many a luggie of milk I have had from her in past
years."
Cora always wondered why people loved her, and why all ranks were so
kind to her; but the good little soul was all unaware that her girlish
simplicity of manner, her softness of complexion and feature, her
winning sweetness of expression and modulation of voice, were so
alluring. Had she been so, the charm had, perhaps, vanished, or had
become more dangerous by the exercise of coquetry. Often when I looked
at her, the idea occurred to me that if I had not been dazzled by Lady
Louisa, I should certainly have loved Cora.
The cottage bore a signboard inscribed, "_Christian Jack--a callender[*]
by the hour or piece_," an announcement which caused some speculation
among our English friends; and ignorant alike of its origin and meaning,
or what is more probable, affecting to be so, Berkeley laughed
immoderately at the word, simply because it was not English.
[*] Literally a mangle, from _calandre_, the French. The term has been
common all over Scotland for centuries. In Paris there is a street
named Rue de la Calandre.
"Christian Jack--Presbyterian John, I should suggest," said he, as we
cantered along the bridle-path, in Indian file, Cora at our head, with a
firm little hand on her reins, her blue veil and her skirt, and two long
black ringlets, floating behind her.
Lady Louisa followed close, her jet hair gathered up in thick and
elaborate rolls by the artful fingers of her French _soubrette_; her
larger and more voluptuous figure displayed to the utmost advantage by
her tight riding-habit; and now, in a few minutes, the old ruin, with
all its gaping windows, loomed in sight.
It was not an object of much interest, save to Cora and myself, for it
had been the scene of many a picnic and visit in childhood, and had been
long the seat of a branch of the Calderwoods now extinct and passed
away.
Some strange and quaint legends were connected with it; and Willie
Pitblado, old Kirsty at the Loanend, and Cora's nurse, had told us tales
of the old lairds of Piteadie, and their "clenched hand," which was
carved above the gate, that made us feel far from comfortable in the
gloomy winter nights, when the vanes creaked overhead, and when the wind
that howled down the wooded glen shook the cawing rooks in their nests
and made the windows of old Calderwood House rattle in their sockets.
The little castle of Piteadie stands on the face of a sloping bank to
the westward of Kirkaldy, and a little to the north of Grange, the old
barony of the last champion of Mary Queen of Scots; and no doubt it is
founded on the basement of a more ancient structure, for in 1530, during
the reign of James V., John Wallanche, Laird of Piteadie, was slain near
it, in a feudal quarrel, by Sir John Thomson and John Melville of the
House of Raith.
The present edifice belongs to the next century, and is a high, narrow,
and turreted pile. The windows are small, and have all been thickly
grated, and access is given to the various stories by a narrow circular
stair.
Within a pediment, half covered with moss, above the arched gateway in
the eastern wall, is a mouldered escutcheon of the Calderwoods, bearing
a saltire, with three mullets in chief; and a helmet surmounted by a
clenched hand--the initials "W.C." and the date 1686.
Pit is a common prefix to Fifeshire localities. By some antiquarians it
is thought to mean Pict; by others a grave.
Cora drew our attention to the clenched hand, and assured us that it
grasped something that was meant to represent a lock or ringlet of hair.
Whether this was the case or not, it was impossible for us to say, so
much was it covered by the green moss and russet-hued lichens; but she
added that "it embodied a quaint little legend, which she would relate
to us after dinner."
"And why not now, dear Cora?" said Lady Loftus. "If it is a legend,
where so fitting a place as this old ruin, with its roofless walls and
shattered windows?"
"We have not time to linger, Louisa," said Cora, pointing with her whip
to the great hill of Largo, the cone of which was rapidly becoming
hidden by a grey cloud; while another mass of vapour, dense and gloomy,
laden with hail or snow, came heavily up from the German Sea, and began
to obscure the sun. "See, a wintry blast is coming on, and the sooner
we get back to the glen the better. Lead the way, Newton, and we shall
follow."
"With pleasure," said I; and giving a farewell glance at the old ruin I
might never see again, I turned my horse's head northward, and led the
way homeward at a smart canter; but we had barely entered Calderwood
avenue when the storm of hail and sleet came down in all its fury.
Dinner over, I joined the ladies early in the drawing-room, leaving the
M.P. to take the place of Sir Nigel, who was still absent. The heavy
curtains, drawn closely over all the oriels, rendered us heedless of the
state of the weather without; and while Binns traversed the room with
his coffee-trays, a group was gathered in a corner round Cora, from whom
we claimed her story of the old castle we had just visited, and she
related it somewhat in the following manner.
*CHAPTER IX.*
"Is there any room at your head, Emma?
Is there any room at your feet?
Is there any room at your side, Emma,
Where I may sleep so sweet?
"There is no room at my side, Robin;
There is no room at my feet.
My bed is dark and narrow now;
But, oh! my sleep is sweet."
OLD BALLAD.
During the time of King Charles I. and the wars of the great Marquis of
Montrose, his captain-general in Scotland--that terrible period when the
civil war was waged in England, and Scotland was rent in twain between
the armies of the Covenant and of the Cavaliers--William Calderwood of
Piteadie was the lover of Annora Moultray,[*] daughter of Symon, the
Laird of Seafield; a tower which stands upon the seashore, not far from
Kinghorn.
[*] Pronounced "Moutrie" in Scotland.
Both were young and handsome; both were the pride of the district at
kirk, market, and merry-meeting; and a time had been fixed for their
marriage when the troubles of the Covenant came. Calderwood adhered to
the king, and the father of his bride to Cromwell, and the Puritan
English.
So the poor lovers were separated; their engagement deemed broken by the
parents of Annora, who were dark, gloomy, and stern religionists--true
old Whigs of Fife; but on the day before William Calderwood departed to
join the great Marquis, who was advancing from the north at the head of
his victorious Highlanders, he contrived to have a farewell interview
with his mistress at the little ruined chapel of Eglise Marie, which
stood, within a few years ago, at Tyrie, in the fields near Grange.
In those days of ecclesiastical tyranny and social espionage, little
could escape the parish minister; so the Reverend Elijah Howler promptly
apprised Symon of Moultray of his daughter's "foregathering" with the
ungodly one at that relic of Popery, the chapel of Mary. They were
surprised by the furious father, who exclaimed--
"Sackcloth and ashes! ye graceless limmer, begone to your spindle, and
thou, mansworn loon, draw!"
Unsheathing his sword, he rushed upon Calderwood, and would have slain
him, notwithstanding the sanctity of the place, but for the interference
of his youngest son, Philip, who accompanied him, and parried the
threatening sword.
He hurled, however, the deepest and most bitter reproaches upon
Calderwood, as "an apostate from the kirk of God; the adherent of a king
who had broken the Covenant; a leaguer with the mansworn and
God-forsaken James Grahame of Montrose, and his murdering gang of
Highland Philistines; the representative of a false brood, among whom no
daughter of his should ever mate without a father's curse resting on her
bridal-bed," with much more to the same purpose.
The young gentleman strove to deprecate his anger; but, "Away!" the
fiery old man resumed; "hence, ye troubler o' Israel, who hast hearkened
unto the devil and his prelates; and beware how ye cross the purpose o'
Symon o' Seafield, for all the powers o' hell may fail to balk my
vengeance!"
Under his shaggy brows his eyes glared at Calderwood as he spoke; and
fiercely he drew his blue bonnet over them, as he hurled his broadsword
into its scabbard, struck its basket-hilt significantly, and, grasping
his terrified daughter by the wrist, dragged her rudely away. A
farewell glance, mute and despairing, was all that the parted lovers
could exchange. As for the injurious reproaches of the irate old man,
Willie Calderwood heeded them not. He only mourned in his heart this
civil and religious war, that had engendered hate and rancour in the
breasts of those at whose board he had long been a welcome guest, and
who certainly, at one time, loved him well.
If Symon of Seafield was rancorous in his animosity, his wife, the Lady
Grizel Kirkaldie of Abden, was doubly so. Thus the poor Annora, as she
sat by her side, guiding the whirling spindle, or spinning monotonously
at her wheel, was compelled, in the intervals of prayer, bible reading,
catechizing, and mortification of the body and spirit, to hear the most
insulting epithets heaped upon the name of her young and handsome lover,
whose figure, as she saw him last at Eglise Marie, with his long, black
cavalier plume shading his saddened face, and his scarlet mantle
muffling the hilt of the rapier he dared not to draw on _her_ father,
seemed ever before her.
To prevent their meeting again, Annora was secluded and carefully
watched in the upper storey of Seafield Tower; and by her brothers'
fowling-pieces many a stray pigeon was shot, lest a note might be tied
under its wing. The tower forms a striking feature on the sea-beaten
shore, midway between the Kirkcaldy and Kinghorn-ness. It rests on one
side on a mass of red sandstone rock; on the other it was guarded by a
fosse and bridge, the remains of which can yet be traced. To the
seaward lie the Vows--some dangerous rocks, on which, on a terrific
night in the December of 1800, a great ship of Elbing perished with all
her crew.
A roofless and open ruin now, exposed to the blasts which sweep up the
Firth from the German Sea, it has long been abandoned to the seamew, the
bat, and the owl, or the ugla, as it was named of old in Fifeshire.
But the seclusion of Annora was not required; for, on the very day after
the interview which was so roughly interrupted at Eglise Marie, Willie
Calderwood, at the head of sixteen troopers, all sturdy "Kailsuppers of
Fife," well mounted and accoutred in half armour--_i.e._, back, breast,
and pot, with sword, pistol, and musketoon--had departed for the king's
host, and joined the Marquis of Montrose, whose troops, flushed with
their victorious battles at Tippermuir, Alford, Aldearn, and the Brig o'
Dee, came pouring over the Ochil mountains, to sack and burn the Castle
of Gloom.
Tidings of this advance spread rapidly from the West to the East Neuk of
Fife. Great numbers of the Whig lairds repaired to the standard of
Baillie, the covenanting general; and among others who drew their swords
under him at the battle of Kilsythe, were Symon of Seafield and his
three sons.
The latter, fiery and determined youths, had but one object or idea--to
single out and slay without mercy William Calderwood, on the first field
where swords were crossed.
The parting injunction of their father to Dame Grizel was to leave
nothing undone to urge on the marriage of Annora with the Reverend
Elijah Howler, a sour-visaged saint, in Geneva cloak and starched bands,
with the lappets of a calotte cap covering his grizzled hair and
cadaverous cheeks, who, during the troubles that seemed to draw nearer,
had taken up his residence in that gloomy tower, which was half
surrounded by the waves.
At another time, had she dared, Annora, who was really a merry-hearted
girl, with curling chestnut hair and clear bright hazel eyes, might have
laughed at such a lover as this "lean and slippered pantaloon," who now,
in scriptural phraseology, culled chiefly out of the Old Testament,
besought her to share his heart and fortunes; but the dangers that
overhung her affianced husband and her father's household, whichever
side conquered in the great battle that was impending, and the monotony
of her own existence, which was varied only by the long nasal prayers
and quavering psalmody in which the inhabitants of the tower (chiefly
old women now) lamented the iniquity of mankind, and "warsled wi' the
Lord"--prayers and psalms that mingled with the cries of the sea-birds,
and the boom of the ocean on the rocks around the tower, all tended to
crush her naturally joyous spirit, and corrode her young heart with
artificial gloom.
She was frequently discovered in tears by Dame Grizel; and then sharp,
indeed, was the rebuke that fell upon her.
"Oh, mother dear," she would exclaim, "pity me!"
"Silence! bairn, and greet nae mair," the lady would reply, sharply.
"Hearken to the voice of ane that loves ye; but not after the fashion of
this miserable world--the Reverend Elijah. Bethink ye on whom your
hellicate cavalier may e'en the now be showering his ungodly kisses.
Bethink ye--
That auld love is cauld love,
But new love is true love.
Elijah loves ye weel, and, though the man be auld, his love is new and
true."
Annora shuddered with anger and grief; while her stern mother, giving
additional impetus to her spinning-wheel, as she sat in the ingle by the
hall fire, eyed her grimly askance, and muttered--
"Calderwood, forsooth! There never cam' faith or truth frae one o' the
line o' Piteadie since the cardinal was stickit by Norman Leslie, a
hundred years ago. Are ye a daughter o' mine and o' Symon Moultray, and
yet are hen-hearted enough to renounce God and his covenanted kirk, and
adhere to bishops and curates?--to seek the fushionless milk that cometh
frae a yeld bosom, sic as the kirk o' prelacy hath? Fie! and awa' wi'
ye!"
"I forsake nae kirk, mother," urged the poor lassie; "but I will adhere
to my Willie. Falsehood never came o' his line, and the Calderwoods are
auld as the three trees o' Dysart."
"And shall be shunned like the de'il o' Dysart," replied her mother,
beating the hearthstone with the high heel of her red shoe.
The cornfields were yellowing in the fertile Howe of Fife, and the woods
were still green in all their summer beauty, when, about Old Lammas-day,
in the year 1645, there went a vague whisper through the land--none knew
how--that a bloody battle had been fought somewhere about the Fells of
Campsie; that many a helmet had been cloven, many a blue-bonneted head
lay on the purple heather; and that many a Whig Fife laird had perished
with his followers.
Sorely troubled in spirit, the Reverend Elijah Howler took his
ivory-handled staff, adjusted his bands and his beaver above his calotte
cap, and, in quest of sure tidings, set forth to Kinghorn, at the
market-cross of which he had heard the terrible intelligence, that the
sword of the ungodly had triumphed--that Montrose had burst into the
lowlands like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour; and all
along the Burntisland Road Elijah saw the Fife troopers come spurring,
with buff-coats slashed, and harness battered, bloody, dusty, and having
all the signs of discomfiture and fear.
Ere long he learned that Symon of Seafield and his three sons were in
safety (thanks to their horses' heels); but that the Marquis of Montrose
had encountered the army of the covenant on the field of Kilsythe, where
he had gained a great and terrible victory, slaying, by the edge of the
sword, six thousand soldiers; that the killing covered fourteen miles
Scottish--_i.e._, twenty-five miles English--and that on the men of the
Fifeshire regiments had fallen the most serious slaughter.
In fact, very few of them ever returned, for nearly all perished, and
the terror of that day is still a tradition in many a hamlet of Fife.
Annora felt joy in her heart when her father and brothers returned; yet
it was not without alloy, for where was he whom she had sworn to love,
and a lock of whose dark brown hair she wore in secret next her heart?
Lying cold and mangled, perhaps, on the field of Kilsythe!
There one of her father's men, Roger of Tyrie, had found a relic of
terrible import. It was a kilmaur's whittle; the blade was of fine
steel, hafted with tortoiseshell, adorned with silver circlets. It was
graven with the Calderwood arms, and spotted with blood; but whose
blood?
Symon and his sons came home to the tower crestfallen, and with hearts
full of bitterness. Symon's steel cap, with its triple bars, had been
struck from his head by the marquis's own sword, and now he wore a broad
bonnet, with the blue cockade of the Covenant streaming from it, over
his left ear.
Long, lank, and grizzled, his hair flowed over his shoulders upon his
gorget and cuirass. His complexion was sallow, his expression fierce,
as he trod, spurred and jack-booted, into the vaulted hall of the tower,
and grimly kissed Dame Grizel on the forehead.
"The godless Philistines have been victorious, and yet ye have a' come
back to me without scratch or scar," she exclaimed, with Spartan
bitterness.
"Even sae, gudewife--even sae; but for that day at Kilsythe vengeance
shall yet be ours!"
"Yea, verily," groaned Elijah Howler; "for it was a day of woe, a day of
'wailing and of loud lamentation,' as the weeping of Jazer, when the
lords of the heathen had broken down her principal plants; and as the
mourning of Rachel, who wept for her children, and would not be
comforted."
"Get me a stoup o' ale," said Symon, with something like an oath, as he
flung aside his sword and gauntlets. "And thou, minion, after that day
o' bluid, will ye cling yet to that son o' Belial, Willie Calderwood?"
asked Symon, sternly, of his shrinking daughter. "Thrice I saw him in
the charge, and covered him ilk time wi' my petronel; but lead availed
not, and I hadna about me a siller coin that fitted the muzzle of my
weapon, else he had been i' the mools this nicht. But horse and spear
lads!" he added, turning to his sons. "Ere we sleep, we shall ride by
Grange, and rook out Calderwood Glen wi' a flaming lunt!"
So Symon and his sons had a deep carouse in the old hall with their
troopers, all sturdy "Kailsuppers of Fife," drinking confusion to their
enemies.
Now it is an open ruin; then it was crossed by a great oak beam, whereon
hung spears and bows. On the walls were the horns of many a buck from
Falkland Woods.
Many an oak almerie and meal-girnel stood round; and rows of pots and
pans, pell-mell among helmets and corslets, swords and bucklers, spits
and branders, made up the decorations and the furniture; while a great
fire of wood and coal from "my Lord Sinclair's heughs" blazed day and
night on the stone hearth, making the hall to seem in some places all
red and quivering in red light, or sunk in sable shadow elsewhere.
It had but two chairs--one for the laird, and one for the lady--for such
was then the etiquette in Scotland; thus even the Reverend Elijah had to
accommodate his lean shanks on a three-legged creepie.
Dogs of various kinds were always basking before the fire on dun
deer-skins; but the chief of them was Symon's great Scottish staghound,
which was exactly of the breed and appearance described in the old
rhyme--
Headed lyke a snake,
Necked lyke a drake.
Footed lyke a catte,
Tayled lyke a ratte,
Syded lyke a team,
Chyned lyke a beam.
On that night Symon and his sons, with Roger of Tyrie, and other
followers, crossed the hill to Piteadie, and sacked and set on fire the
dwelling of the Calderwoods, who, as adherents of the king, were deemed
beyond the pale of the law by the Scottish government.
In the murk midnight, from the tower head of Seafield, the heart-sticken
Annora could see the red flames of rapine wavering in the sky, beyond
the woods of Grange, in the direction where she knew so well her absent
lover's dwelling stood; and when her father and brothers came galloping
down the brae, and clattering over the drawbridge of the tower, they
laughingly boasted that, in passing Eglise Marie, they had defaced the
family tomb of the Calderwoods, and overthrown the throchstone that
marked where Willie's mother lay, under the shadow of an old yew tree.
"The nest is gane, Grizy," said Symon, grimly, as he unclasped his
corslet, and hung his sword on the wall; "the nest is scouthered weel,
and the black rooks can return to it nae mair."
"Would that we could lure the tassel to the gosshawk again," said Lady
Grizel, with a dark glance at her daughter.
"For what end, gudewife?" asked Symon, with surprise.
"To make him a tassel on the dule-tree there without," was the cruel
response.
Annora felt as if her heart was bursting; it seemed so strange and
unnatural that all this savage hate should exist because her poor Willie
adhered to the king rather than to the kirk.
A few weeks passed, and there was loud revelry, and many a stoup and
black-jack of ale and usquebaugh drained joyfully in Seafield, for
tidings came of the total rout of the Scottish Cavaliers at Philiphaugh,
and of the flight of the great marquis and all his followers none knew
whither; but rumour said to High Germanie.
Had Willie Calderwood escaped? asked Annora, in her trembling heart; or
had he fallen at the Slainmanslee, where the Covenanters butchered all
who fell into their hands, even mothers with their babes that hung at
their breasts?
And these acts, and many other such, did her new lover justify by many a
savage quotation from the wars of the Jews in the days of old. Now the
kirk was triumphant, and, Judas-like, had sold its king, as old Peter
Heylin said, even as it would have sold its Saviour could it have found
a purchaser.
Winter came on--a cold and bitter one--the soft spray of the sea froze
on the tower windows of Seafield, while the moss and the grass grew
together on the hearthstones of Piteadie, and the crows had built their
nests in the old chimneys and nooks of the ruined castle.