‘In solitude the sparks are struck that bid the world admire,
Though heart and brain must scorch the while in self-consuming fire.
In solitude the sufferer smiles, defiant of his doom,
And Madness sits aloof and waits, and gibbers in the gloom.
’Tis dazzling work to weave a web from Fancy’s brightest dyes,
And speed the task ungrudging all we have, and hope, and prize.
But it must make the devils laugh, to mark how, day by day,
The plague-spot widens out, and spreads, and eats it all away.
In vain the unwilling rebel writhes, so loth defeat to own,
And strives to pray, and turns away, and lays him down alone.
Oh! better far to moan aloud, on earth and heaven to cry,
Than like the panther in its lair, to grind his teeth and die.
Then help me, brother! Help me! for thy heart is made like mine;
The shaft that drains my life away is haply wing’d for thine.
It is not good to stand alone, to scorn the rest, and dare;
But two or three, like one must be, and God shall hear their prayer.’
Heated with wine, stung with jealousy, torn by conflicting feelings,
Earl Bothwell paced the stone-floor of his bed-chamber, as a wild
beast traverses to and fro between the sides of his cage. His step
had the same noiseless elasticity, his air the same subdued ferocity,
his eye the same lurid sparkle that seems struck from some quenchless
fire within. If there are indeed hours at which the master-fiend is
permitted to vex those human souls, who, for some wise purpose, are
delivered like Job into his hand, the Lord Warden must have been that
night a prey to the arch-enemy of our race. It needed but little
addition to the frenzy of his mood to imagine a dusky shape, defining
itself more and more distinctly in the gloom, stepping as he stepped,
turning as he turned, whispering in his ear suggestions that curdled
his very blood, while he pondered them, and yet were tinged with the
strange fascination which all frantic expedients possess for despair.
It takes a long apprenticeship to sorrow ere a man can bow his head in
resignation and cease to struggle, nay, even to quiver under the lash:
but he who has gained this faculty at the cost of anguished moments,
none but himself and one besides can count, is indeed master of his
fate.
Such, however, was far from the condition of the tameless border-lord.
He could have fought, struggled, died with the fiercest champion
that ever set his teeth in the grim smile of a death-grapple; but the
Hepburn blood was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and the
fiercest scion of all the bold, bad men that constituted the pride
of his line, was now, so to speak, like some demoniac of antiquity,
wrestling and striving against himself, torn, and rent, and infuriated
by the possessing spirit, which refused to be exorcised and come out
of him. That night in his lonely room at Hermitage, Bothwell learnt
many new and strange things, never to be forgotten whilst he had life.
Depths of guilt, into which, heretofore, he would not have dared
to look, were now opened up to him, and there was seduction in the
very immensity of the abyss. Crimes, dazzling from their boldness,
now seemed feasible, nay, almost justifiable, and entranced him by
the reckless daring with which they must be carried out. He had been
dreaming hitherto a soft sweet dream for years. He was awake now, broad
awake, and the vision should become reality, or he would never dream
again. He had been cozened long enough! What? The game was not yet
played out. Turn and turn about, fair dame! And it was Bothwell’s turn
now! He laughed a low hissing laugh within his beard, and then stopped,
startling in his walk, for it seemed to him that the laugh was echoed
by something in the room, and that the shape was close to his ear
now, whispering, whispering, one continuous stream of upbraiding, and
persuasion, and reproach, with maddening promise and stinging sarcasm,
and here and there a devilish scoff.
But these paroxysms wear themselves out. By degrees the earl became
calmer; by degrees he recalled the past and reviewed the present, and
looked steadily on the future. The whirl of contending passions passed
away to make room for a stern and gloomy resolve far more dangerous,
and the molten stream of thought that had seared his brain, cooled down
into the settled determination of the man.
There are seasons when the whole of our past lives seems presented to
us as on a stage, each scene distinct and vivid as when it actually
took place. Men are taught to believe that this occurs at the supreme
moment ere the spirit leaves its dwelling, and when the heart clings
so instinctively and so pitifully to its treasure _here_. Be this how
it may, there can be no doubt that at periods of strong excitement,
this _clairvoyance_, if we may so call it, acquires extraordinary
power. For a moment it seemed to Bothwell that the gloomy walls of his
chamber had disappeared, and he stood again beneath the sunny skies of
France. Again the towers of Joinville started from the smiling plain,
and he knelt once more to tender his homage to the fair widowed bride,
who looked so sweetly down upon him, with her pleading womanly beauty,
softening and enhancing the majesty of a Queen. It was the first time
he had ever looked on that face, which, despite of all his madness, all
his crimes, was imprinted thenceforth on his rebellious heart. He had
seen it since in sorrow, in triumph, in levity, nay, in bitter anger
and unjust displeasure against himself, but it was still the same face
to him, the type of all that was pure and good and lovely upon earth,
the charm that had wound itself into his whole being, that shed its
magic glow over every scene and action of his life; whether he laid
spear in rest, or flung his hawk aloft in air, or watched the last rays
of sunset gilding the broad brown moor on a peaceful summer’s evening,
still that face was ever present to him, with its quiet thoughtful
beauty, and the kind look in its deep winning eyes; then he thought of
the many, many times when he had vowed in his heart to cherish undying
love and loyalty for her alone, to ask no happier fate than to suffer
shame and sorrow for his Queen. Would he not have given his life-blood
for her, oh! so gladly that morning at Holyrood, when he alone of all
her nobles had grieved with her on her day of grief, when, overcome by
his faithful sympathy, and stung by the cold ingratitude of the rest,
she had turned her face away and wept? And was he so changed now that
he could be plotting treason against his sovereign and violence towards
his love? For a moment his better nature mastered him; the fierce set
features writhed, the strong frame shook, and though he was alone in
the room, in the hush of midnight, the proud noble bowed his head and
turned his face aside, ere he dashed away the drops that had stolen
unawares to his shaggy eyelashes.
But the devil was watching his opportunity, and what a picture did
he now conjure up! The beautiful Queen in her robes of ceremony,
with the crown upon her head and the orb and sceptre in her hands;
ambassadors from England, France, Spain, Austria, thronging with their
sovereigns’ congratulations; the nobility of Scotland proffering homage
before the throne; and these regal honours shared by a tall handsome
stripling, who would lift his lady-face scornfully, and stretch a weak
girlish hand for _him_, Bothwell, to kiss! Worse than all, amongst the
courtiers’ jeering faces, Moray’s cool sardonic smile, as of one who
had foreseen the degradation from which, had his advice been taken, it
would have been so easy to escape. And then the banquet and the wedded
pair, sitting side by side, and the subsequent revel and the customary
ceremonies, and the laughing guests departing one by one,--and then,
and then,--the stillness of night brooding over the old pile of
Holyrood, and Mary once more a bride, another’s bride, and Bothwell a
laughing-stock!
‘Perdition! it shall never be!’ exclaimed the earl, dashing down,
while he spoke, with the violence of his involuntary gesture, the
lamp that stood on the table by his side. The few moments consumed in
rekindling it gave him time to compose himself, and to determine on
his future conduct. It was but a brief period, yet was it long enough
for Bothwell to bid farewell, at once and for ever, to all the higher
and purer feelings of his nature; to change him from a man who, with
many faults and with ungovernable passions, yet possessed a certain
frank uprightness, a certain chivalrous devotion to the one idol of his
life, into an unscrupulous ruffian, prepared to commit any crimes, to
go any lengths in the prosecution of his schemes, and willing in brutal
selfishness to drag his idol down to the dust, rather than see it
enshrined upon the pedestal of another. One moment cannot indeed change
the whole character of a human being, though it may influence his whole
conduct; but as it is the last ounce that breaks the patient camel’s
back, so is it the one additional atom of sorrow, or unkindness, or
disappointment, added to the mass, that overwhelms the poor sufferer’s
powers of endurance, and drives him into the frenzy of despair, or
leaves him stunned and sick at heart, in the helpless apathy of a
ruined man. It would be well to think of this sometimes when we see
the bruised reed so nearly broken, the kind generous nature so wearied
and suffering and overladen. It is but an ignoble triumph to lend the
tottering mass that slight push which sends it crashing to destruction.
It is cowardly and un-English to ‘strike a man when he is down.’
Bothwell lit his lamp, and wrapping a furred bed-gown around him
whilst he thrust his feet into the _mules_ or slippers which would
best muffle their tread, proceeded with swift and stealthy strides
along the passages of his Castle, towards the eastern turret in which
his kinsman was disposed. All was hushed and silent within the walls
of Hermitage. The drowsy sentinels might have been sleeping on their
posts, for neither stir of arms nor measured tread of steel-shod foot
denoted their vigilance, yet, strange to say, the warden failed to
observe this unusual silence. Nevertheless, preoccupied as he was, he
marked a light still burning in Moray’s chamber, and instinctively he
shaded the lamp he carried with his hand when he passed the narrow
casements on the opposite side of the Castle-yard. Arrived at Maxwell’s
door, he listened for a while, and satisfied himself by the deep
breathing within that his kinsman was asleep; then shading his light
once more, he entered the room softly, and made at once for the small
travelling valise, in which he hoped to find the messenger had secured
his despatches. But Maxwell had travelled the Borders ere this, and had
profited by his experience. Ready dressed, booted and spurred, with his
sword by his side, he lay prepared for a start, sleeping indeed, yet
not so sound but that a sudden noise might waken him. Whatever he had
about him of value was concealed in his breast, and could not be taken
from him without disturbing his repose. Bothwell felt once for the haft
of his dagger, and smiled grimly to himself, as he thought how easily
he might possess himself of his guest’s despatches, and how lightly he
would think _now_ of such a crime as murder under his own roof. There
was even a wild devilish triumph in the reflection that he could have
so changed within an hour!
After a moment’s thought, however, he again passed unobserved from
the room, and returned to his own as stealthily as he had come. There
he spent the remainder of the night, still pacing up and down, up and
down, and an hour before dawn summoned ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ already
astir thus early, to a long and mysterious consultation, in which,
though he yielded eventually, for the first time in his life the
retainer presumed to remonstrate with his lord.