At last comes the troop, by the word of command
Drawn up in our court, where the Captain cries,
Stand!
Swift
Major Bellenden’s ancient valet, Gideon Pike as he adjusted his master’s
clothes by his bedside, preparatory to the worthy veteran’s toilet,
acquainted him, as an apology for disturbing him an hour earlier than his
usual time of rising, that there was an express from Tillietudlem.
“From Tillietudlem?” said the old gentleman, rising hastily in his bed,
and sitting bolt upright,--“Open the shutters, Pike--I hope my
sister-in-law is well--furl up the bed-curtain.--What have we all here?”
(glancing at Edith’s note.) “The gout? why, she knows I have not had a
fit since Candlemas.--The wappen-schaw? I told her a month since I was
not to be there.--Paduasoy and hanging sleeves? why, hang the gipsy
herself!--Grand Cyrus and Philipdastus?--Philip Devil!--is the wench gone
crazy all at once? was it worth while to send an express and wake me
at five in the morning for all this trash?--But what says her
postscriptum?--Mercy on us!” he exclaimed on perusing it,--“Pike, saddle
old Kilsythe instantly, and another horse for yourself.”
“I hope nae ill news frae the Tower, sir?” said Pike, astonished at his
master’s sudden emotion.
“Yes--no--yes--that is, I must meet Claverhouse there on some express
business; so boot and saddle, Pike, as fast as you can.--O, Lord! what
times are these!--the poor lad--my old cronie’s son!--and the silly wench
sticks it into her postscriptum, as she calls it, at the tail of all this
trumpery about old gowns and new romances!”
In a few minutes the good old officer was fully equipped; and having
mounted upon his arm-gaunt charger as soberly as Mark Antony himself
could have done, he paced forth his way to the Tower of Tillietudlem.
On the road he formed the prudent resolution to say nothing to the old
lady (whose dislike to presbyterians of all kinds he knew to be
inveterate) of the quality and rank of the prisoner detained within her
walls, but to try his own influence with Claverhouse to obtain Morton’s
liberation.
“Being so loyal as he is, he must do something for so old a cavalier as I
am,” said the veteran to himself; “and if he is so good a soldier as the
world speaks of, why, he will be glad to serve an old soldier’s son. I
never knew a real soldier that was not a frank-hearted, honest fellow;
and I think the execution of the laws (though it’s a pity they find it
necessary to make them so severe) may be a thousand times better
intrusted with them than with peddling lawyers and thick-skulled country
gentlemen.”
Such were the ruminations of Major Miles Bellenden, which were terminated
by John Gudyill (not more than half-drunk) taking hold of his bridle, and
assisting him to dismount in the roughpaved court of Tillietudlem.
“Why, John,” said the veteran, “what devil of a discipline is this you
have been keeping? You have been reading Geneva print this morning
already.”
“I have been reading the Litany,” said John, shaking his head with a look
of drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major’s
address to him; “life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field,
sir--hiccup--and lilies of the valley.”
“Flowers and lilies? Why, man, such carles as thou and I can hardly be
called better than old hemlocks, decayed nettles, or withered rag-weed;
but I suppose you think that we are still worth watering.”
“I am an old soldier, sir, I thank Heaven--hiccup”--
“An old skinker, you mean, John. But come, never mind, show me the way to
your mistress, old lad.”
John Gudyill led the way to the stone hall, where Lady Margaret was
fidgeting about, superintending, arranging, and re-forming the
preparations made for the reception of the celebrated Claverhouse, whom
one party honoured and extolled as a hero, and another execrated as a
bloodthirsty oppressor.
“Did I not tell you,” said Lady Margaret to her principal female
attendant--“did I not tell you, Mysie, that it was my especial pleasure
on this occasion to have every thing in the precise order wherein it was
upon that famous morning when his most sacred majesty partook of his
disjune at Tillietudlem?”
“Doubtless, such were your leddyship’s commands, and to the best of my
remembrance”--was Mysie answering, when her ladyship broke in with, “Then
wherefore is the venison pasty placed on the left side of the throne, and
the stoup of claret upon the right, when ye may right weel remember,
Mysie, that his most sacred majesty with his ain hand shifted the pasty
to the same side with the flagon, and said they were too good friends to
be parted?”
“I mind that weel, madam,” said Mysie; “and if I had forgot, I have heard
your leddyship often speak about that grand morning sin’ syne; but I
thought every thing was to be placed just as it was when his majesty, God
bless him, came into this room, looking mair like an angel than a man, if
he hadna been sae black-a-vised.”
“Then ye thought nonsense, Mysie; for in whatever way his most sacred
majesty ordered the position of the trenchers and flagons, that, as weel
as his royal pleasure in greater matters, should be a law to his
subjects, and shall ever be to those of the house of Tillietudlem.”
“Weel, madam,” said Mysie, making the alterations required, “it’s easy
mending the error; but if every thing is just to be as his majesty left
it, there should be an unco hole in the venison pasty.”
At this moment the door opened.
“Who is that, John Gudyill?” exclaimed the old lady. “I can speak to no
one just now.--Is it you, my dear brother?” she continued, in some
surprise, as the Major entered; “this is a right early visit.”
“Not more early than welcome, I hope,” replied Major Bellenden, as he
saluted the widow of his deceased brother; “but I heard by a note which
Edith sent to Charnwood about some of her equipage and books, that you
were to have Claver’se here this morning, so I thought, like an old
firelock as I am, that I should like to have a chat with this rising
soldier. I caused Pike saddle Kilsythe, and here we both are.”
“And most kindly welcome you are,” said the old lady; “it is just what I
should have prayed you to do, if I had thought there was time. You see I
am busy in preparation. All is to be in the same order as when”--“The
king breakfasted at Tillietudlem,” said the Major, who, like all Lady
Margaret’s friends, dreaded the commencement of that narrative, and was
desirous to cut it short,--“I remember it well; you know I was waiting on
his majesty.”
“You were, brother,” said Lady Margaret; “and perhaps you can help me to
remember the order of the entertainment.”
“Nay, good sooth,” said the Major, “the damnable dinner that Noll gave us
at Worcester a few days afterwards drove all your good cheer out of my
memory.--But how’s this?--you have even the great Turkey-leather
elbow-chair, with the tapestry cushions, placed in state.”
“The throne, brother, if you please,” said Lady Margaret, gravely.
“Well, the throne be it, then,” continued the Major. “Is that to be
Claver’se’s post in the attack upon the pasty?”
“No, brother,” said the lady; “as these cushions have been once honoured
by accommodating the person of our most sacred Monarch, they shall never,
please Heaven, during my life-time, be pressed by any less dignified
weight.”
“You should not then,” said the old soldier, “put them in the way of an
honest old cavalier, who has ridden ten miles before breakfast; for, to
confess the truth, they look very inviting. But where is Edith?”
“On the battlements of the warder’s turret,” answered the old lady,
“looking out for the approach of our guests.”
“Why, I’ll go there too; and so should you, Lady Margaret, as soon as you
have your line of battle properly formed in the hall here. It’s a pretty
thing, I can tell you, to see a regiment of horse upon the march.”
Thus speaking, he offered his arm with an air of old-fashioned gallantry,
which Lady Margaret accepted with such a courtesy of acknowledgment as
ladies were wont to make in Holyroodhouse before the year 1642, which,
for one while, drove both courtesies and courts out of fashion.
Upon the bartizan of the turret, to which they ascended by many a winding
passage and uncouth staircase, they found Edith, not in the attitude of a
young lady who watches with fluttering curiosity the approach of a smart
regiment of dragoons, but pale, downcast, and evincing, by her
countenance, that sleep had not, during the preceding night, been the
companion of her pillow. The good old veteran was hurt at her appearance,
which, in the hurry of preparation, her grandmother had omitted to
notice.
“What is come over you, you silly girl?” he said; “why, you look like an
officer’s wife when she opens the News-letter after an action, and
expects to find her husband among the killed and wounded. But I know the
reason--you will persist in reading these nonsensical romances, day and
night, and whimpering for distresses that never existed. Why, how the
devil can you believe that Artamines, or what d’ye call him, fought
singlehanded with a whole battalion? One to three is as great odds as
ever fought and won, and I never knew any body that cared to take that,
except old Corporal Raddlebanes. But these d--d books put all pretty
men’s actions out of countenance. I daresay you would think very little
of Raddlebanes, if he were alongside of Artamines.--I would have the
fellows that write such nonsense brought to the picquet for
leasing-making.”
[Note: Romances of the Seventeenth Century. As few, in the present
age, are acquainted with the ponderous folios to which the age of
Louis XIV. gave rise, we need only say, that they combine the
dulness of the metaphysical courtship with all the improbabilities
of the ancient Romance of Chivalry. Their character will be most
easily learned from Boileau’s Dramatic Satire, or Mrs Lennox’s
Female Quixote.]
Lady Margaret, herself somewhat attached to the perusal of romances, took
up the cudgels. “Monsieur Scuderi,” she said, “is a soldier, brother;
and, as I have heard, a complete one, and so is the Sieur d’Urfe.”
“More shame for them; they should have known better what they were
writing about. For my part, I have not read a book these twenty years
except my Bible, The Whole Duty of Man, and, of late days, Turner’s
Pallas Armata, or Treatise on the Ordering of the Pike Exercise, and I
don’t like his discipline much neither.
[Note: Sir James Turner. Sir James Turner was a soldier of fortune,
bred in the civil wars. He was intrusted with a commission to levy
the fines imposed by the Privy Council for non-conformity, in the
district of Dumfries and Galloway. In this capacity he vexed the
country so much by his exactions, that the people rose and made him
prisoner, and then proceeded in arms towards Mid-Lothian, where they
were defeated at Pentland Hills, in 1666. Besides his treatise on
the Military Art, Sir James Turner wrote several other works; the
most curious of which is his Memoirs of his own Life and Times,
which has just been printed, under the charge of the Bannatyne
Club.]
He wants to draw up the cavalry in front of a stand of pikes, instead of
being upon the wings. Sure am I, if we had done so at Kilsythe, instead
of having our handful of horse on the flanks, the first discharge would
have sent them back among our Highlanders.--But I hear the kettle-drums.”
All heads were now bent from the battlements of the turret, which
commanded a distant prospect down the vale of the river. The Tower of
Tillietudlem stood, or perhaps yet stands, upon the angle of a very
precipitous bank, formed by the junction of a considerable brook with the
Clyde.
[Note: The Castle of Tillietudlem is imaginary; but the ruins of
Craignethan Castle, situated on the Nethan, about three miles from
its junction with the Clyde, have something of the character of the
description in the text].
There was a narrow bridge of one steep arch, across the brook near its
mouth, over which, and along the foot of the high and broken bank, winded
the public road; and the fortalice, thus commanding both bridge and pass,
had been, in times of war, a post of considerable importance, the
possession of which was necessary to secure the communication of the
upper and wilder districts of the country with those beneath, where the
valley expands, and is more capable of cultivation. The view downwards is
of a grand woodland character; but the level ground and gentle slopes
near the river form cultivated fields of an irregular shape, interspersed
with hedgerow-trees and copses, the enclosures seeming to have been
individually cleared out of the forest which surrounds them, and which
occupies, in unbroken masses, the steeper declivities and more distant
banks. The stream, in colour a clear and sparkling brown, like the hue of
the Cairngorm pebbles, rushes through this romantic region in bold sweeps
and curves, partly visible and partly concealed by the trees which clothe
its banks. With a providence unknown in other parts of Scotland, the
peasants have, in most places, planted orchards around their cottages,
and the general blossom of the appletrees at this season of the year gave
all the lower part of the view the appearance of a flower-garden.
Looking up the river, the character of the scene was varied considerably
for the worse. A hilly, waste, and uncultivated country approached close
to the banks; the trees were few, and limited to the neighbourhood of the
stream, and the rude moors swelled at a little distance into shapeless
and heavy hills, which were again surmounted in their turn by a range of
lofty mountains, dimly seen on the horizon. Thus the tower commanded two
prospects, the one richly cultivated and highly adorned, the other
exhibiting the monotonous and dreary character of a wild and inhospitable
moorland.
The eyes of the spectators on the present occasion were attracted to the
downward view, not alone by its superior beauty, but because the distant
sounds of military music began to be heard from the public high-road
which winded up the vale, and announced the approach of the expected body
of cavalry. Their glimmering ranks were shortly afterwards seen in the
distance, appearing and disappearing as the trees and the windings of the
road permitted them to be visible, and distinguished chiefly by the
flashes of light which their arms occasionally reflected against the sun.
The train was long and imposing, for there were about two hundred and
fifty horse upon the march, and the glancing of the swords and waving of
their banners, joined to the clang of their trumpets and kettle-drums,
had at once a lively and awful effect upon the imagination. As they
advanced still nearer and nearer, they could distinctly see the files of
those chosen troops following each other in long succession, completely
equipped and superbly mounted.
“It’s a sight that makes me thirty years younger,” said the old cavalier;
“and yet I do not much like the service that these poor fellows are to be
engaged in. Although I had my share of the civil war, I cannot say I had
ever so much real pleasure in that sort of service as when I was employed
on the Continent, and we were hacking at fellows with foreign faces and
outlandish dialect. It’s a hard thing to hear a hamely Scotch tongue cry
quarter, and be obliged to cut him down just the same as if he called out
_misricorde_.--So, there they come through the Netherwood haugh; upon my
word, fine-looking fellows, and capitally mounted.--He that is gallopping
from the rear of the column must be Claver’se himself;--ay, he gets into
the front as they cross the bridge, and now they will be with us in less
than five minutes.”
[Illustration: Edith on the Battlements--frontispiece]
At the bridge beneath the tower the cavalry divided, and the greater
part, moving up the left bank of the brook and crossing at a ford a
little above, took the road of the Grange, as it was called, a large set
of farm-offices belonging to the Tower, where Lady Margaret had ordered
preparation to be made for their reception and suitable entertainment.
The officers alone, with their colours and an escort to guard them, were
seen to take the steep road up to the gate of the Tower, appearing by
intervals as they gained the ascent, and again hidden by projections of
the bank and of the huge old trees with which it is covered. When they
emerged from this narrow path, they found themselves in front of the old
Tower, the gates of which were hospitably open for their reception. Lady
Margaret, with Edith and her brother-in-law, having hastily descended
from their post of observation, appeared to meet and to welcome their
guests, with a retinue of domestics in as good order as the orgies of the
preceding evening permitted. The gallant young cornet (a relation as well
as namesake of Claverhouse, with whom the reader has been already made
acquainted) lowered the standard amid the fanfare of the trumpets, in
homage to the rank of Lady Margaret and the charms of her grand-daughter,
and the old walls echoed to the flourish of the instruments, and the
stamp and neigh of the chargers.
[Note: John Grahame of Claverhouse. This remarkable person united
the seemingly inconsistent qualities of courage and cruelty, a
disinterested and devoted loyalty to his prince, with a disregard of
the rights of his fellow-subjects. He was the unscrupulous agent of
the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless severities of
the government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles II. and
James II.; but he redeemed his character by the zeal with which he
asserted the cause of the latter monarch after the Revolution, the
military skill with which he supported it at the battle of
Killiecrankie, and by his own death in the arms of victory.
It is said by tradition, that he was very desirous to see, and be
introduced to, a certain Lady Elphinstoun, who had reached the
advanced age of one hundred years and upwards. The noble matron,
being a stanch whig, was rather unwilling to receive Claver’se, (as
he was called from his title,) but at length consented. After the
usual compliments, the officer observed to the lady, that having
lived so much beyond the usual term of humanity, she must in her
time have seen many strange changes. “Hout na, sir,” said Lady
Elphinstoun, “the world is just to end with me as it began. When I
was entering life, there was ane Knox deaving us a’ wi’ his clavers,
and now I am ganging out, there is ane Claver’se deaving us a’ wi’
his knocks.”
Clavers signifying, in common parlance, idle chat, the double pun
does credit to the ingenuity of a lady of a hundred years old.]
Claverhouse himself alighted from a black horse, the most beautiful
perhaps in Scotland. He had not a single white hair upon his whole body,
a circumstance which, joined to his spirit and fleetness, and to his
being so frequently employed in pursuit of the presbyterian recusants,
caused an opinion to prevail among them, that the steed had been
presented to his rider by the great Enemy of Mankind, in order to assist
him in persecuting the fugitive wanderers. When Claverhouse had paid his
respects to the ladies with military politeness, had apologized for the
trouble to which he was putting Lady Margaret’s family, and had received
the corresponding assurances that she could not think any thing an
inconvenience which brought within the walls of Tillietudlem so
distinguished a soldier, and so loyal a servant of his sacred majesty;
when, in short, all forms of hospitable and polite ritual had been duly
complied with, the Colonel requested permission to receive the report of
Bothwell, who was now in attendance, and with whom he spoke apart for a
few minutes. Major Bellenden took that opportunity to say to his niece,
without the hearing of her grandmother, “What a trifling foolish girl you
are, Edith, to send me by express a letter crammed with nonsense about
books and gowns, and to slide the only thing I cared a marvedie about
into the postscript!”
“I did not know,” said Edith, hesitating very much, “whether it would be
quite--quite proper for me to”--“I know what you would say--whether it
would be right to take any interest in a presbyterian. But I knew this
lad’s father well. He was a brave soldier; and, if he was once wrong, he
was once right too. I must commend your caution, Edith, for having said
nothing of this young gentleman’s affair to your grandmother--you may
rely on it I shall not--I will take an opportunity to speak to Claver’se.
Come, my love, they are going to breakfast. Let us follow them.”