Macdonald's self congratulations were premature. He had more uneasiness
to undergo about the lady than he had suffered yet. When her screams of
rage had sunk into sobs and moans, and these again had been succeeded by
silence, he had left her undisturbed to cry herself to sleep. At
daylight he had gone to take a look, but she had, as he supposed,
muffled herself up in the plaids provided for her, so as to cover her
head, and thus conceal her face. But it soon after appeared that these
plaids had nothing under them--the lady was not there.
No one had seen her move; and it must have been done in the thickest
darkness of the night. One man had heard a splash in the water
alongside. A cotton handkerchief, which she had worn on her head, was
found floating. It was to be feared that the lady had drowned herself.
After searching about in the neighbourhood all day, Macdonald departed
in his vessel, leaving a man to watch, in case of the body being thrown
up among the rocks. He had now no doubt of her death; and with a heavy
heart he went to confide this event--unfortunate for him, whether so or
not for anyone else--first to friends on the island, and next to his
chief. He met the minister on his landing, and took the opportunity of
whispering his news to some of those who came down to greet the pastor,
to his own wife, and to Annie Fleming, desiring them not to inform the
pastor, without his permission, that such a person as Lady Carse had
been among them. Then he set sail for Skye, to tell Sir Alexander, with
what face he might, that the poor lady would trouble them no more. It
would have been a vast relief to him to have anticipated the way in
which his chief would receive the news--how he would say that a great
perplexity was thus solved--that no harm could ensue, as the lady was
buried so long ago at Edinburgh--and that he had himself many times
repented having gone into the affair, and that he never would, but for
political and party reasons, and that he was heartily glad now to be
quit of it, in any way--to say nothing of this being, after all, a happy
event for the wretched lady herself and all belonging to her.
Meanwhile Lady Carse was not yet out of their way. She had still voice
to utter political secrets, and temper all eager to punish her foes.
She had slipped away in the dark, thrown herself overboard when she
found Rollo below, got drenched with sea-water and bruised against the
rocks, but was safe in hiding again.
Rollo's trouble was, that she laughed so heartily and so incessantly for
some time, that there was danger of her merriment betraying her. He
told her at last that she must try if she would leave off laughing when
left to herself. If she could not, she would then, at any rate, cause
no one but herself to be taken. He should go by a way of his own to a
point whence he could look out and see what was doing at sea and ashore.
When he reappeared, it was with a face which would have stopped any
laughter on the side of the lady, if the laughter had not stopped of
itself long before. She must not hope to escape by the minister's boat.
Macdonald had so managed his plot as to allure the lady into his boat
just when she should have been attempting to get on board the other. It
was too late now.
The lady would not be finally convinced of this till, by Rollo's
assistance, she had reached the spot whence she could observe the facts
for herself. The knowledge that there was a watch set below, who would
not fail to take her alive, though his affair was to pick up her dead
body, kept her from yielding to audible grief, but never had she been
more convulsed with passion. She pulled up the heather by handfuls.
She dashed her head against the ground, till Rollo restrained her.
On the dun wintry sea a vessel was sailing northwards. It had deposited
the pastor and his lady, and had actually passed and repassed the very
shore where she had been concealed. The long looked for vessel had come
and gone. Another was sailing eastwards in the direction she longed to
go. This was Macdonald's; and seeing that it was going to Skye or the
main, she now bitterly lamented having left it. She would not believe a
word about the intention to carry her to Saint Kilda. She would rather
believe her own eyes, and passionately condemned herself for her haste
in returning to this dreary island.
Rollo next turned her attention to the little procession which appeared
upon the hills, bringing the pastor and his wife to their new abode.
She looked that way; she saw the group ascending the hill--a sight so
unusual in this place, that Rollo was much excited about it; but her
eyes kept filling with tears, and she was so heart-sick that she could
not bear any thoughts but of her own troubles. She desired Rollo to
leave her. She wanted to be alone; nobody had any feeling for her;
people might go and amuse themselves; all she wanted was to live and die
alone.
Rollo knew that she could not do that, but he wished to go where others
were going--said to himself that the lady would be the better for being
left to herself for awhile, and left her accordingly. He first asked
her whether he should help her down to the cave, but she made no answer,
so he walked off, leaving her lying on the heather in a cold and dreary
place.
She did not feel the cold, and she was too dreary within to be sensible
of the desolation without. How deserted she felt as she saw Rollo
walking away, quickening his pace to a run when he reached the down. It
might be said that she was without a hope in heaven or on earth, but
that passion always hopes for its own gratification--always expects it,
in defiance of all probability, and in opposition to all reason. This
is one chief mode in which the indulgence of any kind of passion is
corrupting. It injures the integrity of the faculties and the
truthfulness of the mind, inducing its victims to trust to chances
instead of likelihood, and to dwell upon extravagances till they become
incapable of seeing things as they are.
So Lady Carse now presently forgot that she was alone on a hill in a far
island of the Hebrides, with no means of getting away, and no chance of
letting any friend know that she was not buried long ago--and her
imagination was busy in London. She fancied herself there, and, if once
there, how she would accomplish her revenge. She imagined herself
talking to the minister, and repeating to him the things her husband had
written and said against himself and the royal family. She imagined
herself introduced to the king, and telling into his anxious ear the
tidings of the preparations made for driving him from the throne and
restoring the exiled family. She imagined the list made out of the
traitors to be punished, at the top of which she would put the names of
her own foes--her husband first, and Lord Lovat next. She imagined the
king's grateful command to her to accompany his messengers to Scotland,
that she might guide and help them to seize the offenders. She clasped
her hands behind her head in a kind of rapture when she pictured to
herself the party stealing a march upon her formal husband, presenting
themselves before him, and telling him what they came for--marking, and
showing him how they marked his deadly paleness, perhaps by making
courteous inquiries about his health. She feasted her fancy on scenes
in the presence of her old acquaintance, Duncan Forbes, when she would
distress him by driving home her charges against the friends of his
youth, and by appeals to his loyalty, which he could not resist. She
pictured to herself the trials and the sentences--and then the
executions--her slow driving through the streets in her coach in her
full triumph, people pointing her out all the way as the lady who was
pretended to be dead and buried, but who had come back, in favour with
the king, to avenge him and herself at once on their common enemies.
She wondered whether Lord Lovat's cool assurance would give way at such
a moment--she almost feared not--almost shrank already from the idea of
some wounding gibe--frowned and clenched her hands while fancying what
it would be, and then smiled at the thought of how she would smile, and
bow an eternal farewell to the dying man, reminding him of her old
promise to sit at a window and see his head fall.
But the astonishment to all Edinburgh would be when she should look on
triumphantly to see her husband die. He had played the widower in sight
of all Edinburgh, and now it would be seen how great was the lie, and
nobody could dispute that the widowhood was hers. She hoped that he
would turn his prim figure and formal face her way, that she might make
him, too, an easy bow, showing how she despised the hypocrite, and how
completely he had failed in breaking her spirit. She hoped she should
be in good looks at that time, not owning the power of her enemies by
looking worn and haggard. She must consider her appearance a little
more than she had done lately in view of this future time. Her being
somewhat weather-browned would not matter; it would be rather an
advantage, as testifying to her banishment; but she must be in
comfortable plight, and for this purpose--
Here her meditations were cut short by the approach of some people. She
heard a pony's feet on the rock, and caught sight of a woman's head,
wrapped in a plaid, as the party mounted directed towards her. It was
too late for escape--and there was no need. The woman on the pony was
Annie; and nobody else was there but Rollo.
"The wonder is that you are not frozen," said Rollo, "if you have been
lying here all this time. You look as red in the face, and as warm as
if you had been by the fire below in the snug sand. And that is where
we must go now directly; for mother cannot stand the cold up here. She
would come, as it happened she could have one of Macdonald's ponies
to-day. Well, I cannot but think how you could keep yourself warm,
unless you are a witch as Macdonald says you are."
"It is the mother's heart in her, Rollo, that keeps out the cold and the
harm," said Annie. "It may be a wonder to you; for how should you know
what it is to have had a hope of seeing one's children, to have dreamed
of nothing else, waking or sleeping, and then to find it nothing but a
dream. See her now, Rollo, as the cold comes over her heart. The heart
can live warm on its own thoughts, when it is chilling to hear another
voice speak of them."
Lady Carse was now very pale. She had once said, and then fully
believed it, that she had no shame. It was long since she had felt
shame. She felt it now, when it struck her that during all her long
reveries about her escape and her restoration to the world, not one
thought of her children had entered into the imagery of her dream. Like
all people of strong passions, she had taken for granted that there was
something grand and fine in the intensity of her feelings. Now, for a
moment, the clear mirror of Annie's mind was held up before her own, and
she saw herself as she was. For one instant she perceived that she was
worthy of her husband's detestation. But she was not one to tolerate
painful and humbling ideas long. She recurred to her unequalled wrongs,
and was proud and comforted. She walked down to her retreat without
looking behind her, leaving Rollo to tether the pony, and help his
mother down as he could.
When Annie entered the cave, the drops were standing on her face, so
great had been the pain to her rheumatic limbs on descending to the
shore.
"But," said she, as she sank down on the sand by the smouldering fire,
"I could not but come, when I heard from Rollo that you were still
breathing God's air."
"Do you mean that that was good news or bad?"
"Oh, good! Surely good news. At first, for a moment after Macdonald
told me you were drowned in the night, I felt thankful that your
troubles were over. But I soon saw it the right way; and when Rollo
whispered you were--"
"What do you mean by seeing it the right way? How do you know that your
first feeling was not the right one? I am sure it was the kindest to
me. You think yourself religious, and so you ought to be glad when an
unhappy person is `where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary
are at rest.'"
Annie did not reply. She was looking at the fire, and by its light it
might be seen that tears were gathering in her eyes.
"Ah!" said the irritable lady, "you, and such as you, who think you
abide in the Scriptures so that nothing can move you; what becomes of
you when you are answered by Scripture?"
"I do not feel myself answered," Annie quietly replied. "Oh, indeed!"
"I feel what you said out of Scripture to be quite true; and that it is
a great blessing that God has set the quiet grave before our eyes for
such as can find no other rest. But I would not forget that there is
another and a better rest, without waiting for the grave."
"You are so narrow, Annie! You judge of everybody by yourself!"
"That is a great danger I know," Annie agreed. "And I cannot speak from
my own knowledge of being troubled by the wicked. But I have read and
heard much of good men who were buffeted by the wicked for the best part
of their lives, and at last got over being troubled by it, and more than
that."
"Ah! gloried in it, no doubt. Everyone is proud of something; and they
were proud of that."
"Some such I fear there may have often been, madam; but I was not
thinking of those that could fall into such a snare as being proud of
the ill-will of their brethren. I was thinking of some who felt the ill
opinion of their brethren to be very humbling, and who humbled
themselves to bear it. Then in time they had comfort in forgiving their
enemies, and at last they grew fit for a sweeter pleasure still which
yet remained. Not that, as I believe, they spoke of it, unless at
moments when the joy would speak for itself; but then it has been known
to burst forth from the lips of the persecuted--from some as cruelly
persecuted as you, madam, that of all the thrillings that God's spirit
makes in men's hearts, there is none so sweet as the first stirrings of
the love of enemies."
There was no answer, and Annie went on.
"I could believe that there is no love so altogether good--at least for
us here. It is as yearning as that of a mother for her child, and as
tender as that of lovers; and I should say, more holy than either, for
theirs is natural to them in their mortal life, though it may be the
purest part of it; the other love is an instinct belonging to the
immortal life, a tongue of fire, sent down upon the head of a chosen one
here and there, gifting them with the language of angels, to tell us on
this side the grave what we shall find beyond. One must see that to
such as these the wicked have ceased from troubling, and their weariness
has long sunk into rest without help from death."
Lady Carse sighed.
"This was why I was glad, madam, to hear that death had not overtaken
you yet. If you may enter into a living rest which we may see, that
will, under God's blessing, be better than the blank rest of going away
from your enemies, when their old wrongs may be still in your heart,
making death a stinging serpent instead of a guiding dove."
Some sweet old words here occurred to Lady Carse, linked with a sweet
old psalm tune--words of longing to have wings like a dove, to flee away
and be at rest. She murmured these words; and they brought softening
tears.
"You see, madam," said Annie, "your nest is made for you. You have been
permitted to flee away from your enemies! now you are not to have wings,
for the sails of the vessels are out of sight, and this makes it plain
that here is to be your nest. It is but a stormy place to abide in, to
be sure; but if Christ be sought, He is here to command peace, and the
winds and the sea obey Him."
"I cannot stay here," sobbed Lady Carse. "I cannot give up my hopes and
my efforts--the only aim of my life."
"It _is_ hard," said the widow, with starting tears. "The last thing
that a mother can give up,--the very last thing she can lay freely into
God's hand is her yearning for her children. But you will--"
"It is not my children that I most want. You say falsely that they are
the last to be given up. There is--"
"Falsely!" cried Rollo, springing to his feet. "My mother speak
falsely! If you dare--"
"Gently, my boy," said Annie. "We have not heard what the lady means."
"Be quiet, Rollo," said Lady Carse. "Your mother speaks falsely as
regards me; but I do not say that it is not after her own kind that she
speaks. If God gives me to see my children, I will thank him devoutly;
but there is another thing that I want more--revenge on all my enemies,
and on my husband first."
Rollo looked breathlessly at his mother. Her face was calm; but he
could see in the dim red light its expression of infinite sorrow. She
asked her son to help her to rise and go.
"I came," said she to Lady Carse, "to entreat you to come among us, and
rest in a spirit of surrender to God, on His clear showing that He
chooses this to be your abiding place; and one reason for my coming was
to tell you that the minister has brought his children, lest the sight
of a child's face should move you too suddenly. But I see that your
thoughts are on other things; and that your spirit of surrender has yet
to be prayed for. Next Sabbath, we are to have worship once more,
and--"
"Where?"
"In the old chapel, if it can be enclosed by that time. If not, we must
wait another week: but I think it will be done. It needs but a word,
madam, and the minister will ask all our prayers for one under
affliction--"
"By no means. I forbid you to speak of me, in one way or another, to
the minister or his wife. I insist on my wishes being observed in
this."
"Certainly, madam. It is not for us to interfere with your plans."
"Then go; go both of you: and do not come near me without my leave. I
want to be alone--I want to be at rest; that is--"
"Ay--at rest," said Annie, half aloud. She was thinking that there
would be prayers from one heart at least in the chapel for peace to a
troubled spirit.
And she did not wait for the Sabbath to pray. As, assisted by her son,
she painfully ascended to the heights, she saw the birds fly in and out,
and hover round on the face of the precipice, as at a bidding she did
not hear, she could not but silently ask that God would send His dove to
harbour in the hollow of this rock with one who sorely needed a
visitation of His peace.