Some time ago I made inquiry at the editor of _Notes and Queries_ for
information as to the whereabouts of an old mansion called Bell's Tower,
and whether it was occupied by a family of the name of Bower; but my
inquiry was not attended with any success beyond the usual production of
surmises and speculations. There was a place so called in Perthshire;
but then it never was occupied by people of that name,--the Bowers being
an old family in Angus, whose principal messuage was Kincaldrum. Yet I
cannot be mistaken in the name, either of the house or the family, as
connected with the occurrences of the tradition, the essentials of which
have floated in my mind ever since I heard them from one to whom they
were also traditional. Then the story has something of an antique air
about it, as may be noticed from the application of adjectives to
baptismal names, as Devil Isobel and Sweet Marjory,--by no means a
modern usage, but easily recognised in analogues of our old poetry. We
may say, at least, that whether the Bowers were a very or only a
moderately ancient family, Bell's Tower was an old structure--the name
being applied to the mansion, which was an addition to a peel or
castle-house of many centuries--not without its battlements and barnkin,
and all the other appurtenances of a strength, as such places were
called.
Had we more to do than our subject requires with the _physique_ of this
mansion--and we have something; for what romance in the moral world is
independent of a _locale_, and of those lights and shadows that play
where men live and act all the wondrous things they do?--we might be
particular in our description; but our narrator's shade will be
sufficiently conciliated, if we say that there was room enough, and
ill-lighted chambers enough, and sufficiently tortuous breakneck stairs
here and there, as well as those peculiar to castles, lobbies in all
conscience long enough--not forgetting a blue parlour with some
mysterious associations--to supply elements for genius to weave the
many-coloured web of fiction. But we have a humbler part to play; and it
begins here,--that Mrs. Bower had in the said blue parlour, a fortnight
before our incidents, told her eldest daughter, whom we are, for the
sake of the antique nomenclature--discriminative, and therefore kindly,
if also sometimes harsh--to call Sweet Marjory, a piece of information,
to her unexpected and strange,--no other than that Isobel, her sister,
was the accepting and accepted of the rich and chivalrous youth, Hector
Ogilvy, a neighbouring laird's son. Nor would it have appeared
wonderful, if we had known more of the inside of that heaving breast,
wherein a heart was too obedient to those magic chords, with their
minute capillaries spread over the tympanum, that Marjory was as mute
and pale as a statue of marble. But the truth really was, that Ogilvy
had courted Marjory, and won her heart, and Isobel--Devil Isobel--had
contrived means to win him to herself, at the expense of a sister's
reputation for all the beautiful qualities that adorn human nature. And
as all the world knows that both men and women hate those they injure,
we may be at no loss to ascertain the feelings by which Isobel regarded
Marjory. Nor shall those who know the nature of woman have any
difficulty in supposing that not more carefully does nature guard in the
bosom the physical organ of the affections, than she concealed the
feelings which had for that fortnight eaten into the vital tissues of
her being.
How swiftly that fortnight had flown for Isobel! how charged with heavy
hours for Marjory! and to-morrow was the eventful day. What doings in
Bell's Tower during this intervening time! what pattering of feet along
the sombre lobbies! what gossiping among servants! what applications to
the gate--comings and goings! and the rooms, how bestrewn with clippings
of silk, and stray bits of artificial flowers! And, amidst all the
triumphing, Isobel displayed her nature in spite of old saws and maxims,
which lay upon brides conditions of reserve and humility, held to be so
becoming in those who, as it were, occupy the place of a sacrifice; yea,
if some tears are shed, so much better is custom obeyed. Then where
could Marjory go, in the midst of this confusion of gaiety?--where, as
the poet says, "weep her woes" in secret, and listen to the throbbings
of a broken heart? Not in her own room, in the lower part of the castle
tower, where her mother had still the privilege of chiding her for
throwing the shadows of melancholy over a scene of happiness, and where
Isobel would force an entrance, to show her, in the very spite of her
evil nature, some bridal present from him who was still to the deserted
one the idol of her heart. There was scarcely a refuge for grief, where
joy was impatient of check, and, like all tyrants, would force reluctant
conditions into a unanimity of compliance; but up these castle stairs,
in the second room, there was one whom time had shut out from the
sympathies of the world, so old, as to be almost forgotten, except by
Marjory herself, who, all gentleness and love, delighted to supply
vacant hearts with the fervours of her friendship, and to ameliorate
evils by the appliances of her humanity.
With languid step she ascended the stair, and was presently beside her
great-grandaunt, Patricia Bower. Twilight was dropping her wing, and the
shadows were fast collecting round the square windows, which, narrow and
grated, would scarcely at noonday let in light enough to enliven the
human eye. There, solitary and in the gloom, sat the creature of the
prior century, whose birth could only be arrived at by going through
generations back ninety and five years before; but not gloom to her, to
whom the light of memory was as a necromancer, arraying before the gleg
eye of her spirit the images of persons and things and circumstances of
the far past, with all the vividness of enchantment, and still even
raising again those very loves and sympathies they elicited when they
were of the passing hour. Yet the doings in this house of Bell's Tower
at the time, so far removed from the period of the living archetypes of
her dreams, had got to her ear, where still the word marriage was a
charm, against which the dry impassable nerve resisted in vain.
"I will go to this marriage, Marjory," she said, as the maiden entered,
and without appearing to notice her distress.
"No, aunt," replied Marjory, as she sat down opposite to her.
"And shall I not?" continued the ancient maiden, as her eyes seemed to
come forward out of the deep sockets into which they had long sunk, and
emitted an unearthly lustre. "And shall I not? It is four times a score
of years bating five since I was at a bridal; and when all were waiting,
ay, Marjory, expecting the young bridegroom, the door was opened, and
four men carried in Walter Ogilvy's bleeding corpse, and laid him in
the bridal hall; for he had been stabbed by a rival in the Craig Glen,
down by there; and where could they take the body but to Bell's Tower,
where his bride waited for him? But she did not go mad, Sweet Marjory;
no, no."
And as the image grew more distinct in the internal chambers, so did the
eyes shine more lustrously, like stars peering through between grey
clouds; and the shrivelled muscles, obeying once more the excited nerve,
imparted to her almost the appearance of youth. Gradually a humming tone
essayed to take form in words; but the wavering treble disconcerted her,
till, calming herself by some effort, she recited, in solemn see-saw--
"The guests they came from the grey mountain side,--
The bride she was fair, and the bride she was fain;
But where was the lover, who sought not his bride?
Oh! a maid she is now, as a maid she was then;
And her cheek it is pale, and her hair it is grey,
Since the long long time of her bridal day."
The last line descended into a quavering whisper.
With the effusion, adopted probably from an old ditty, and brought forth
from its long-retaining chamber of the brain by the inspiration of one
of her often-returning visions, the fervour of the tasked spirit died
away, and, reclining her head, she sat before the wondering Marjory--who
had heard, as a tale of the family, and applicable to Patricia herself,
the circumstances she had related--as one suspended between death and
life; nor did it seem that it required more than a rude vibration to
decide to which of the two worlds she would in a few minutes belong.
Only a short time sufficed to restore her to her ordinary composure,
and, waving her shrivelled hand, she said--
"Open the door to the bartisan, Marjory, that I may have air, and see
the moon, who, amidst all the changes of life, is ever the same to the
miserable and the happy."
Marjory obeyed her; and as she looked forth, the moon was rising over
the tops of the trees, as if to chase away the envious shades, ready to
follow the departure of twilight. There was solace in her soft splendour
for the melancholy of the youthful girl, which might be ameliorated by a
turn of fortune, as well as for the sadness of her aged friend, which
was not only beyond the influence of worldly change, but so like the
forecast gloom of the grave, as if the inexorable tyrant, long
disappointed, was already rejoicing in his victim. But no sooner was the
door casement opened, than the sound of voices entered. Then Marjory
stepped out on the bartisan, not to listen, for her spirit was superior
to artifice; and, leaning over the bartisan, she soon recognised the
voices of Isobel and Ogilvy; nor could she escape the words--
"I loved her for her own sake," said he, "before I loved you, Isobel;
and now I love her as your sister. But I shall have no peace in my
wedded life with you, save on the condition that you love her also; for
my conscience tells me I have not done by Sweet Marjory what is deemed
according to the honour of man. You see what your power has been,
Isobel. Nor would I have spoken thus on the very evening before our
wedding, were it not that I have heard you do not love her, nay, that
you hate her."
Then Marjory heard Devil Isobel reply; and she knew by the voice that
she was in anger, though she cunningly repressed her passion.
"Believe them not," said Isobel. "By the pale face of yonder moon, and
all those bright stars that are coming out one by one to add honour upon
honour to this evening, the last of my maiden life, I love sweet
Marjory Bower; and I swear by Him who made all these heavenly orbs, that
I shall love her as a sister ought."
"It pleases me much to hear my Isobel speak thus," said Ogilvy. "And
hark ye, love, I have here a valuable locket, set with diamonds and
opals--see, it contains the grey hair of my mother; and, will I or nill
I, she will send this by me to Marjory as a love-token. Now I want to
convey it to Sweet Marjory through you, because it will make you a party
to the love-gift, and so bind us all in a circle of affection."
"Give it me," cried Isobel, fixing her piercing eye on the diamonds as
they sparkled in the moonlight; "and, on the honour of a bride, I will
give it to my sister, whom I love so dearly."
And Isobel continued to speak; but the movement of the lovers as they
walked prevented Marjory from hearing more. Still she followed them with
her weeping eyes, as their figures, clearly revealed to her by the moon,
glided among the wide-standing trees of the lawn, and at length
disappeared. The moon had now less solace for her. Her wound had been
retouched by a hand of all others calculated to irritate, even by that
of Ogilvy himself, who, she now knew, felt compunction for the cruelty
of his desertion. His regret was too late to save her sorrow, but it was
not too late to increase that sorrow; for the words by which he had
uttered it reminded her, in their tone, of that unctuous luxury he had
so often poured into her heart, and which, in their sincerity, were so
unlike the dissimulation of her wicked sister. With a deep-drawn sigh
she entered the bartisan casement, shut it after her, and having spoken
some kindly words to her aunt, whom she kissed, she sought her way down
the bastle stair to her own room below. There she threw herself upon a
couch, not to seek assuagement, but only to give rest to limbs that
would scarcely support her. Nor did the closed door keep from her ear
those notes of preparation, coming in so many shapes; for there was, in
addition to the customary rites of the great sacrifice, to be a
sumptuous feast, at which, too, she would be expected to attend. Yet all
these noisy tokens did not keep from her mind the tones of that remorse
she had heard from the lips of Ogilvy, and she fondled them, in her
misery, as one would the dead body of a dear friend on whose face still
sat the look of love in which he died. By-and-by she heard once more the
voice of Isobel, who had returned; and she trembled as she expected the
visit in execution of her commission. The door opened, and there entered
her sister, with a face, as it appeared in the light of the lamp she
carried, beaming with the old exultation, mingled with the smile of a
soft deceit.
"Look here, Sweet Marjory," she said, as she held out the golden
trinket. "Saw you ever so lovely a piece of workmanship? But you cannot
discern its value till you know it contains a lock of the hair of _my_
mother-in-law-to-be--Mrs. Ogilvy. That locket was given to me even now
by my Hector, the bridegroom----"
"To give to me," sighed Marjory faintly.
"You lie for a false fiend," cried Devil Isobel. "He gave it to me, and
to me it belongs."
"You may keep it," said Marjory; "but I heard Hector Ogilvy say to you
that it was a gift from his mother to me, and you promised to him to
deliver it."
Isobel's lips turned white and whiter, as her eye flared with the
internal light struck out of the quivering nerve by the brain inflamed
by fury. Nor was it the detection alone that produced these effects:
she had construed Ogilvy's confession that he once loved Marjory into an
admission that the latter was still dear to him, and she considered
herself justified in her suspicion by the tones of his regret; then
there had shot through her the pang of envy, when she heard that there
was a gift for Marjory from the mother, and none to her. All these
pent-up passions had been quickened into expression by Marjory's gentle
detection; and as Marjory looked at her, she trembled.
"Do not be angry at me, Isobel," she said. "I did not go out upon the
bartisan to hear you; and as for the gift, I do not want it."
But Marjory's simplicity and generosity, in place of appeasing her
passion, only gave it a turn into a forced stifling, which suited the
purpose of her dissimulation. In an instant the evil features, which, as
a moral expression, had changed her into hideousness, gave way, and she
stood before her sister the beautiful being who had enchanted Ogilvy out
of his first and purest love.
"Come, Marjory," she said, as she grasped the faint hand of the almost
unresisting girl. "Come."
And leading her by a half-dragging effort out of the room and along the
passages, she took her to the large hall, where servants were busy
laying the long table for the feast.
"There will be seventy here," she said, "and all to do honour to me. How
would _you_ have liked it, Sweet Marjory? You do not envy me, though you
look so sad? But oh! there is more honour for me. Come." And still, with
the application of something like force, she led Marjory out by the
front door towards the lawn, where a number of men were, with the light
of pine torches, piling up fagots over layers of pitch. The glare of the
torches was thrown over the dark bastle house, and under the relief of
the deep shadows, where the light of the moon did not penetrate, was
romantic enough even for the taste of Isobel, whose spirit ever panted
for display. To add to the effect, the men were jolly; for their supply
of ale had been ample, and the occasion of a marriage in the house of
the Bowers warranted a merriment which was acceptable to her for whom
all these expensive preparations were made.
"This is the marriage-pile, Marjory," said Isobel. "I am not to be put
upon it after the manner of Jephthah's daughter; but it will blaze up to
the sky, and tell the gods and goddesses that there is one to be
honoured here on earth. How would _you_ have liked that honour, Marjory?
But you are not envious. Come, there is more."
And as she was leading Marjory away, an exclamation from one of the men
attracted their attention. On turning round, they saw the men's faces,
lighted up by the torches, all directed to the bastle tower on which the
glare shone full and red. Their merriment was gone, to give place to the
feeling of awe; nor did a syllable escape from their lips. The eyes of
the sisters followed those of the men, and were in like manner riveted.
"It is the wraith bride o' the peel," said the old forester. "She gaes
round about and round about. My mither saw it thirty years syne, when
the laird brought hame his leddy; and we ken he broke his leg in coming
off his horse to help her down. I have heard her say
'There's evil for the house o' Bower,
When the bride gaes round the bastle tower.'"
"You are a lying knave," cried Isobel. "It is that old cantrup-working
witch, Patricia Bower, who should have been burnt with tar-barrels and
tormented by prickers fifty years ago. Nor ghost, nor ghoul, nor demon
or devil, shall come between me and my happy destiny."
A speech which, spoken in excitement, was cheered by all the men but the
unfortunate forester; for, as we have said, they were merry with ale.
And they knew by report, as they now saw with their eyes, the beauty of
the young woman, who, in addition to her natural charms, appeared, as
they whirled the torches round their heads, and the cheers rose and
echoed in the woods, to be invested with the dignity of a queen. But as
this natural enthusiasm died down, they turned again their wondering
eyes to the bastle house; and as the figure still went round the
bartisan and round the bartisan, they looked at each other, and shook
their heads with a motion which appeared very grotesque in the glare of
the torches. At length it disappeared, and they began again to pile the
fagots, now in silence, and not with the merry words and snatches of
their prior humour, as if each of them had foreseen some evil which he
could not define.
Meanwhile Isobel had again seized Marjory, to continue the round of her
triumphs.
"We will now go to my boudoir, nor mind that witch," she said, "and I
will show you all the presents I have got from my neighbours and
friends. Oh! they are so fine, that did I not know that you are not
envious, I would fear that you would tear my eyes out. Oh, but look,
there is Ogilvy's horse standing waiting for him to carry him home, and
I shall see him only this once before I am made his wife." Then, pausing
and becoming meditative, she led her sister into the shade of a gigantic
elm, the stem of which sufficed to conceal them from observers. "Kneel
down," she continued in a stern tone.
"Why so?" replied Marjory, trembling with fear, yet obeying
instinctively.
"Swear," cried Isobel, "that you will not, before Ogilvy, contradict
what I shall say to him about his mother's gift. Swear."
"I swear," replied the sister.
And rising up, her hand was again grasped by Isobel, as she led her
forward to where the horse stood. Nor had they proceeded many paces,
when Ogilvy himself was observed coming forward. He could see them by
the light of the torches, as they saw him; and upon the instant, Isobel,
clasping Marjory in her arms, kissed her with all the fervency of love.
"How pleasant this is to me," said Ogilvy, as he came up equipped and
spurred for his ride, "to see you so loving and sisterly!"
"Did I not swear by Dian and the stars I would love her?" said Devil
Isobel; "and is she not called Sweet Marjory?"
"Sweet she is," said he, as he timidly scanned the face of his first
love, and pressed her hand; but his countenance changed as he felt the
silky-skinned hand of the girl tremble within his, as if it shrunk from
the touch, and saw her blue eyes turned on the ground, and heard a sigh
steal from her breast. A feeling that was new to him thrilled through
the circle of his nerves, and made him tremble to the centre of his
being. He had never calculated upon that strange emotion, nor could he
analyze it: it was inscrutable, but it was terrible; it was not simply a
return of his own love under the restraint of the new one, neither was
it simple remorse, but a mixture of various thrills which induced no
purpose, but only rendered him uncertain, feeble, and miserable. So
engrossed for a moment was he, that he did not even seek the eye of
Isobel, who was watching him in every turn of his countenance. Then he
would seek some relief in words.
"You have my mother's love at least, Marjory," he said; and he could not
help saying it. "And I shall be pleased to see you wear her gift, which
she sent to you through me, who gave it to Isobel."
Marjory was silent, and Ogilvy turned his eye upon Isobel.
"She rejects it," said Isobel, "and wishes me to return it."
"Rejects it!" ejaculated the youth, as he again looked at Marjory.
Marjory was still silent, and her eyes were even more timidly turned to
the ground.
"I did not regard the gift as valuable for the brilliants and opals,"
continued he, "but as conveying the love of my mother; and surely
Marjory cannot reject that love."
Yet still was Marjory silent, for she had sworn.
"Oh, she is frightened, poor Sweet Marjory," cried Isobel, with a
satirical laugh; "for she has seen the wraith bride on the bastle
tower."
"The wraith bride!" responded Ogilvy, relapsing into silence, and
instinctively looking round him, where only glared the torchlight among
the trees of the lawn, and the dark bodies of the fagot-pilers were
moving backwards and forwards. He had heard the couplet mentioned by the
forester, and had of course viewed it as a play of superstition; but
reason is a weak thing in the grasp of feeling, and now he was all
feeling. The remorse of which he had had premonitions, had now taken him
as a fit. His eye sought Marjory's down-turned face, and shrunk from
Isobel's watchful stare; but the direction of that organ did not form an
index to his mind, for his fancy was, even during these swift instants,
busy weaving the many-coloured web of the future of his married life,
and clouding it with sombre shades; nor did the active agent hesitate to
draw materials from the past fortunes of the house of Bell's Tower, and
mix them up as things yet to be repeated. Even the wraith bride
performed her part now, where she had feeling to help her weakness, and
set her up among realities.
At this critical juncture of Ogilvy's thoughts, there came up from the
mansion good Dame Bower herself, of portly corporation, often resonant
of a comfortable laugh; and now, when flushed with the exercise of her
domestic superintendence, looking the very picture of the joyous mother
of a happy bride.
"I had forgotten," she said as she approached, "to ask you to convey my
thanks to Dame Ogilvy for that beautiful locket with her hair
therein--more precious, I ween, than the diamonds and opals, though
these, I'm told, are worth five thousand good merks--which she has so
thoughtfully sent to Isobel."
"Isobel!" ejaculated Ogilvy, fixing his eye on the face of his bride,
where there were no blushes to reveal the consciousness of deceit. "To
Isobel!" he repeated; "and did Isobel say this?"
"Yes," replied the mother.
"It is false," cried the damsel, precipitated by anger into the terrible
imputation.
The mother stood aghast, and Marjory held her head away.
"Speak, Marjory," said Ogilvy, with lips that in an instant had become
white and parched.
"I have sworn," said Marjory.
"And dare not speak?" said Ogilvy. Then a deep gloom spread over his
face, his eye flashed with a sudden flame. He spoke not a word more;
but, vaulting into the saddle, he drove his spurs into the side of his
horse, and rode off. As he passed the fagot-hewers, he saw them
clustered together, and heard high words among them, with names of so
potent a charm to him, that, even in his confusion and speed, he could
not drive them from his mind. These names were, Sweet Marjory and Devil
Isobel.
And as if the words had entered the rowels and made them sharper, his
horse reared, and he sped on with a whirling tumult in his brain, but
yet without uttering a word--nor even to himself did he mutter a
remark--still urging his steed, yet unconscious that his journey's end
would bring no assuagement of that tumult, nor mean of extricating him
from his strange and perilous predicament. Nor was he aware of the speed
of his riding, or how far he had gone, till he came to some huts in the
outskirts of the Craigwood, which bounds the domain of Bell's Tower on
the west, where he saw some cottagers assembled at a door, and again
heard words which pierced his ear--no other than those of his own
marriage. Again urged by curiosity, he put the question,
"Whom do you speak of, good folks?"
"Sweet Marjory," said one; and another added, "Devil Isobel."
Fain would he have asked more--these were not to him more than
sufficient; but pride interposed, and fear aided pride, and away he
again sped even at a still quicker pace. Never before had he been so
agitated: fear, anger, or remorse had never ruffled the tenor of an
existence which passed amidst rural avocations and unsophisticated
pleasures,--knew nothing of intrigue, falsehood, or dissimulation--those
parasitic plagues that follow the societies of men. The moon that shone
over his head was as placid and beautiful, and forest and wold as
quiet, as they used to be when his mind was a reflection of the peace
that was without; but now, as he rode on and on, wild images arose from
the roused autonomy of the spirit, and seemed to be impressed by
fire,--the face of Isobel reflecting the light of the moon, and those
eyes which, looking up, were in their own expression an adjuration
similar to that pronounced by her lips, that she would obey him, and
deliver the diamond gift to its rightful owner; then the same eyes when,
inflamed by the fire of her wrath, she called her mother a liar, and
proved her own falsehood, while she cast off the duty of a daughter. But
through all glided the face of Sweet Marjory, with its mildness,
beneficence, and timidity; and the eye that, quailing under her sister's
tyranny, looked so lovingly in the face of the mother, but dared not
chide him who had been false to her. He felt within him that revolution
from one feeling to its opposite, which, when it begins in the mind, is
so energetic and startling. His love for Isobel--which had been a
frenzy, tearing him from another love which had been a sweet
dream--began to undergo the wonderful change: her beauty faded before a
moral expression which waxed hideous, and grew up in these passing
moments into a direct contrast with the gentle loveliness of her sister,
which, coming from the heart, beamed through features fitted to enhance
it. Nor could he stop this revolution of his sentiments, the full effect
of which, aggravated by remorse, shook his frame, as his horse bounded,
and added to the turmoil within him. Yet ever the words came from his
quivering lips--"Am I fated to be the husband of Devil Isobel? Is Sweet
Marjory destined to bless the nuptial bed of another?" And at every
repetition he unconsciously drove the spur into the sides of his now
foaming steed.
But whither all this hot haste--whither was he flying? To his home,
where he knew that his mother condemned his choice, though her delicacy
had limited her dissatisfaction to that strange but pregnant expression,
whereby she had sent her most valuable jewel to her whom she valued and
loved, and whom, in the madness of fascination, he had left to sorrow,
if not to heartbreaking--perhaps death. He felt that he behoved to be
home to make certain preparations for his appearance on the morrow, as a
bridegroom by the side of Isobel Bower; and yet he felt that he could
not face his mother under the feelings which now ruled him, and the very
weakness of his resolution prompted the device of tarrying by the way
until she should have gone to bed. He knew where to watch her chamber
light, and he began to draw the rein. Yet how unconscious he was of a
peculiarity of that power that had been for some time working within
him!--yea, even remorse, who, true to her unfailing purpose, was
moulding his heart into that yearning to visit the victim on which she
insists for ever as a condition of peace to the betrayer. He had come to
the cross-road leading eastwards; and even while muttering his purpose
of merely prolonging the period of his home-going, he was twitching the
rein to the right, so that the obedient steed turned and carried him
forward at the old speed. Whither now, versatile and remorseful youth?
From this eastern road there goes off, a couple of miles forward, a
rough track, leading to the mansion he had so recently left. And it was
not long ere he reached the point of turn. Nor was he even decided when
there, that he would again draw the rein to the right. But if he was
master of his horse, he was not master of himself: the rough track was
taken, and Ogilvy was in full swing to Bell's Tower. He did not know
that it is only when the act is accomplished that one thinks of the
decrees of Fate, though it is true that the purposes of man are equally
fated in their beginnings, when reason is battling against feeling, as
in their termination. In how short time was he in the pine wood, behind
the house, where were his bane, and perhaps his antidote, though he
could not divine the latter! And he trembled as through the trees he saw
the flitting lights, as they came and went past the windows, indicating
the joy of preparation: not for these he looked, only for one, sombre
and steady, like Melancholy's dull eye, wherein no tear glistens.
Leaving his horse tied to a pine stem, Ogilvy was in an instant kneeling
at the low casement at the foot of the bastle house, where glimmered
that light for which he had been so intensely looking.
Was it that grief, forced into an excitement foreign to its lonely,
self-indulgent nature, wooed the evening air, to cool by the open window
the fever of her slow-throbbing veins? Certain it is at least that
Marjory Bower expected no salutation from without at that hour.
"Sweet Marjory, will you listen to one who once dared to love you, and
who has now sorrow at his heart, yet Heaven's wrath will not send forth
lightnings to kill?"
"What terrible words are these?" replied the maiden, as she took her
hand from her brow and looked in the direction of the open casement.
"Not those," replied he, "which are winged with the hope of a
bridegroom. But I am miserable! Marjory Bower, I loved you, and you
returned my love; I deserted you, and you never even gloomed on me; and
I am now the bridegroom of your sister,--ay, your sister, Devil Isobel!
Will you give me hope if I break off this marriage?"
"Nay," rejoined she; "that cannot be. You have gone too far to go back
with honour."
"Or forward with any hope of happiness," said he. "But I will brave all
your father's anger, Isobel's revenge, and my loss of honour, if you
will consent to be mine within a year."
"Nay," repeated the maid with a sigh. "Out of my unhappiness may come
the happiness of others. Though I may not live to see it, I may die in
the hope that Isobel Bower may, in your keeping, come to deserve a name
better than that terrible one she has earned, and which just now sounded
so terrible from your lips."
"Is she not a liar, who falsified my words?" said he impassionedly. "Is
she not a thief, who appropriated the diamond gift of my mother,
intended for you? Is she not an undutiful daughter, who first deceived
her mother by a falsehood, and then denounced her as herself false? Is
that woman, with the form of an angel and the heart of a devil, to be my
wife? And does Marjory Bower counsel it? Then Marjory Bower hates Hector
Ogilvy!"
"Nay," replied she calmly, "I only love your honour. Night and day I
will pray for a blessing on your marriage, and that God, who made the
heart of my sister, may change it into love and goodness."
A repressed spasmodic laugh shook the frame of the youth. "What a hope,"
he said, "on which to found the happiness of a life, and for which to
barter such a creature as you! But, Marjory, you have roused the pride
of my honour, while you have appeased my remorse; and I will marry
Isobel because you have said that I should. It is thus I shall punish
myself by becoming a victim in turn to the honour I was false to."
As he pronounced these words, he fixed his eye on the face of Marjory,
which at the moment reflected brightly the light of the lamp. Her eyes
were swimming in tears. She seemed to struggle with herself, as if she
feared that, in thus counselling him, she incurred some heavy
responsibility. So Ogilvy thought. But he little knew that there was
mixed up with these emotions the keen anguish of a sacrifice; for she
had not as yet admitted to him how dear he had been to her, and how
bitterly she had felt the transference of his affections from her to her
sister. He waited for a few moments. He got no reply, except from these
swimming eyes. "Adieu! dear Marjory," he said; and hastened again to the
pine wood, where, having flung himself on his steed, he started for
home.
As he hurried along, he felt that he had appeased one feeling at the
expense of a life's happiness, and yet he was satisfied, according to
that law whereby the present evil always appears the greatest. About
half way up the rough track he met one of the servants of Bell's Tower
proceeding homewards, and suspecting that he had been with a message to
him or his mother, he stopped and questioned him.
"I have been to Dame Ogilvy with a letter from Dame Bower," said the
man; "and well I may," he added, as he sided up and whispered, "The
fagot-hewers have seen the bride to-night on the top bartisan of the
castle tower."
"And I now see a fool," replied Ogilvy, and rode on. Not that he thought
the man the fool he called him, but that he felt it necessary, as many
men do, to make a protest against the weakness of superstition at the
very moment when the mysterious power was busy with his heart; and,
repeating the word "fool," he went on auguring and condemning in the
double way of mortals. How strangely he had been led for the last hour!
The terms he had heard applied to his bride, justifying what he had
himself seen, had all but resolved him to remain absent from the
intended ceremony of the morrow. He had had some lurking hope that
Marjory would agree to his resolution, and again inspire him with hope;
and he knew that his mother would be pleased with a change which would
yield her a chance of having her favourite for her daughter-in-law. He
had been proposing as a weak mortal. Another power was purposing as a
God; and yet he considered himself as so much master of himself and the
occasion as to laugh with bitter scorn at the rustic diviner, and his
folly of the apparition bride. And now there was shining before him the
light of the lamp from the chamber of his mother, whom he had still
stronger reasons than ever for avoiding that night. But even these
reasons were unavailing. The spirit of his honour, which had been so
fragile a thing when opposed by the advent of a new love, had been
breathed upon and increased to a flame by her he had deserted; and he
for the moment felt he could face the mild reproof of a mother whom he
loved. What a versatile, incomprehensible creature is man, even in those
inspired moments, when, with the nerve trembling under the tension of
purpose, he appears to himself and others in his highest position! In a
few minutes more he was in the presence of his mother.
There sat in her painted chamber the fine gentlewoman, with her fixed
eye divining in the light of the gilded lamp, as the spirit cast upon
the dark curtain of the future the forms which were but as
re-adaptations of the signs of what had come and gone in her memory and
experience. The two families had been linked by the power of fate, and
the connection, which had never been dissolved; was to evolve in some
new form. She had grieved for her gentle favourite, Marjory Bower; and
had she been as stern as she was mild, she would have interposed a
parent's authority against her son's change of purpose. Yea, there might
have been true affection in that sternness; but such would have been the
resolution of a mental strength which she did not possess, for she was
as those whose parental love gratifies wilfulness from a fear of
producing pain. Nor even now, when she held in her hand a letter of, to
her, strange import, could she call up from her soft heart an energy to
save her son from the ruin which seemed to impend over him. He stood for
a moment before her, silent, pale, and resolved against all
chances,--verily a puppet under the reaction of affections and
principles he had dared to tamper with against the injunctions of
honour,--and yet he could not see that the soft and trembling hand of
her in Bell's Tower, which held the strings that bound him so, held them
and straitened them by a spasm. Nor was it of use to him now that the
strings trembled, and relaxed only for the time when the soft,
reproving, yet loving light of his mother's eye, as it turned from her
reverie, fell upon his soul; for his purpose came again, as his lip
quivered and he waxed more pale.
"What means this letter?" said she, as she held it forth in her hand.
"Mrs. Bower thanks me for the gift I sent to your bride."
"It means, dear mother," replied he firmly, "what it says. I was weak
enough to think that, if I committed your jewelled locket to Isobel's
hand as the mean whereby it would reach Marjory, I would do something to
cement their love. I saw Isobel's eye light up as she fixed it on the
diamonds--their glare had entered her soul and made it avaricious; and
envy threw her red glance to fire the passion. Yes, she appropriated
the gift. I have other evidence than this, even from my bride." And as
he pronounced the word "bride," a scornful laugh escaped from him, and
alarmed his mother.
"And yet she _is_ your bride, and will be your wife to-morrow?" said
she, looking inquiringly.
"She will," replied he, in a tone which, though soft, if not pitiful,
was firm, if a trait of sarcasm against himself might not have been
detected in it.
"Strange!" ejaculated the mother, as she still fixed her eyes on him.
Then, musing a little, "Do you know that the bride has been seen
to-night on the bastle tower?"
"Superstition."
"An ill-used word, Hector," said she; "as if God was not the Ruler of
his own world. When we see unnatural motives swaying men, and all
working to an event, are we not to suppose that that event shall also be
out of Nature's scheme? and that which is out of Nature's scheme must be
in God's immediate hand. What motives impel you to wed a woman with whom
you must be miserable, and have that misery enhanced by seeing every day
her who would have rendered you happy?"
"My honour pledged to the world, which must condemn and laugh at a
breach of faith, not to be justified except at the expense of Isobel."
"A false reason," continued the mother. "Is there more honour in
adhering to a breach of honour than in returning to the honour that was
broken?"
"There is another reason, mother," said Ogilvy, as he carried his hand
over his sorrowful face.
"What is that?"
"Sweet Marjory commands me."
"Ah, Hector, Hector, how little you know of the heart of woman! Know
you not that in a forsaken woman the heart has an irony even when it is
breaking? Ask her if you should wed her rival, and the breaking
heart-string will respond Yes, even as the cord of the harp will twang
when it is severed. Well do I know Sweet Marjory, and what she must have
felt when she uttered this command. The canker has begun, and she will
die. The worm does not seek always the withered leaf. You've heard the
song that Patricia used to sing--
"'The dainty worm, it loves the tomb,
And gnaws, and gnaws its nightly food;
But a daintier worm selects the bloom,
And a daintier still affects the bud.'"
"Oh, God forgive me!" ejaculated the miserable youth, as, holding his
hand on his brow, he rushed out of the room and sought his bed-chamber.
Was there ever such a night before the day, of all days auspicious to
mortals, of the culminating joy of human life! Could he not find refuge
in sleep, where the miserable so often seek to escape from the
vibrations of the leaping, palpitating nerve, inflamed by the fever of
life? A half-hour's dreamy consciousness, an hour's vision of returning
images, rest and unrest, haunting scenes woven by some secret power, so
varied, so ephialtic, so monstrous, yet all, somehow or another, however
unlike the reality, still vindicating a connection. Why should Sweet
Marjory be in the deep recesses of the pine wood, resting by his foaming
steed, with his mother sitting and breathing hope's accents in her ear,
and ever and again calling on him in sobbing vocables to return from his
pursuit of another? He would return. The charm of her sweet voice is
felt to be irresistible; yet it is resisted. And though he looks back
only to see her by the flaught of the lightning that plays among the
trees, his steps are forward, where Devil Isobel charms him with a song,
in comparison of which the magic of the sirens is but the rustle of the
reed as it swerves in the blast. He struggles, and seizes the stems of
the pines to hold him from his progress and keep him steady; and he
writhes as he finds he cannot obey the maternal appeal to a son's love.
All is still again, and there is rest, only to be alternated by the
recurring visions always assuming new forms, changing and disappearing,
flaring up again, and then the deep breast-riding oppression, and those
hollow moans, which never can be imitated by the waking sense, as if
Nature preserved this domain of the spirit as an evidence, in the night
of the soul, that there is another world where the limbo of agony is not
less certain than the heaven which is simulated by sweet dreams.
But, _lucidus die--nocte inutilis_. As the day dawned, and the morning
sun, fresh from the east, threw in between the chinks of the shutters
the virgin beams, Ogilvy felt the truth of the old saying, that every
day vindicates its two conditions of good and evil. There was again a
change in the versatile mind of the romantic youth; and Honour, pinkt
out in those gaudy decorations woven by the busy spirits that move so
cunningly the springs of man's thoughts in a conventional world,
appeared before him. If Isobel was still the Devil Isobel, Honour was a
smiling angel, even more beautiful than Sweet Marjory. Yet he was not
happy--only firm, as he confessed by that lying power of the mind, to
the strength of bonds he had himself imposed, and yet repented
of--setting necessity as a will-power amidst the wreck and ruin of his
affections. The hour advanced, and he must superinduce the happy
bridegroom on the dead statue. Unsteady and fitful even in the common
actions of life--lifting the wrong thing, and suddenly throwing it down
in the wrong place, again to snatch the right thing at the wrong
time--he was not so this morning. Every step and manipulation was like
the movement of a machine. Composedness was a luxury to him. Ornament
after ornament, at a time when a bridegroom's decorations were the
expression of a rude refinement, found its place with a steady, nay,
affectedly formal hand; yea, a more cool bridegroom had never been seen
in the world's history, since that eventful morning when the hero of
Baeotia put on his lion's skin, and took up his wooden club, to marry the
fifty daughters of the king, though among these, if the wise man is
right, there must have been forty-nine devils. As the solemn work went
on, he looked again and again into the mirror, where he saw none of the
wrinkles of care, no brow-knitting of fractiousness, no sternness of
resolute determination,--all quiet, smooth, even mild. Ay, such a mime
is man when he is a mome, that he even smiled as he felt his pulse,--how
cool was his blood, how regular the vibrations! And so the mummery went
on: the flowered-red vest, the braided coat of sky-blue, the cravat, the
ruffles, the wrist-bands scolloped and stiff, the indispensable ruff,
concealed behind by the long locks of auburn, so beautiful in Isobel's
eyes, that flowed over his broad shoulders.
The work was finished; Ogilvy was dressed--his body in all the colours
of the arc of hope--his mind in the dark midnight weeds of a concealed
misery, concealed even from himself. He sought the chamber of his
mother, and, taking her hand, kissed it fervently; but could not trust
himself to even a broken syllable of speech, and his silence was
sympathetic. She looked into the face of her son, and then threw her eye
solemnly over the array of his dress. The tear stood apparent, yet her
face seemed to have borrowed his composedness, as if she felt that the
old doom still followed the house of Ogilvy, and was inevitable, when
the evil genius of the Bowers was in the ascendant. There was no reproof
now, save that which lies in the dumb expression of sorrow--even that
reproof which, melting the obstruction of man's egotism, finds its way
to the heart, when even scorn would be only a hardening coruscation. Yet
even this he could bear for the sake of that conventionality which is a
tyrant. Turning away his head, he again kissed the soft hand, and
hurried away.
As he issued from the gate and mounted his steed, now refreshed from the
rough stress of the previous evening, the sun shone high and flaring,
and the face of the country, with its rising hills and heather-bloom,
and patches of waving corn, responded--as became it surely on a bridal
morning--to the clang of the bell in Bell's Tower,--so like in all but
the workings of the heart to the Sabbath morning when the union is to be
between the spirit of man and the Lamb without guile. Yet art,
self-confident and pragmatic, was not to be cajoled by the solicitations
of, to it, a lying nature, however beautiful; and Ogilvy found it
convenient, if not manly and heroic, to knit his eyebrows against the
sun. So does the Indian hurl his wooden spear against the lightning,
because he is a greater being than the Author of the thunder. So he rode
on to where the bells rung--for was not he specially called?--the gloom
on his countenance, with which his forced determination kept pace,
increasing as he proceeded. Nor had he ever ridden thus before. Even his
steed might have known, as he opened his nostrils, that there was
something more than common in the wind's eye, accustomed as he was to
the speed of enthusiasm, or the walk of exhaustion. He was now a solemn
stalking-horse, bearing a rigid, buckram-mailed showman, whose only
sound or movement resided in the plates of his armour, or his lath sword
or gilded spontoon.
As Ogilvy had thus enrolled himself among the chivalry of honour, and
was consequently, in his own estimation, as we have hinted, a personage
of romance, so was it only consistent with the indispensable gloom of
his dignity and sternness that he should ride alone: nor was it seeming
that he should accost the guests whom he saw on either side, obeying the
call of the bell, and riding along to the bridal and the feast. Yet the
scene might have enlivened somewhat a very gloomy knight, as, looking
around, he saw the lairds rounding the bases of the hills, and heard, as
others came into sight, the sound of bagpipes, however little these
might be associated with chivalric notions and aspirations. But then it
was not easy to act this solitary part; for what more natural than that
those passing to his own celebration should salute him? Nor could he
avoid those salutations.
"Joy to thee, Ogilvy," said one, as he rode up; "the nightshade is
sweeter than the rose;" and departed.
"A happy day," said another, "when the wolf becomes more innocent than
the lamb."
"Good morning, bridegroom," said a third. "The sun shines bright, and
the moss-brown tarn is more limpid than the running rill."
"All happiness," said a fourth rider, "when the merle nestles with the
jolly owl, and is not afraid when he sounds his horn."
But Ogilvy only compressed his lips the more, and looked the more
gloomy, solacing himself with the vision of Honour, the beautiful yet
stern virgin, and immaculate as she who shook her mailed petticoats
after getting out of Jupiter's head. Nor was the inspiration diminished
as he now saw rising before him the rugged pile of Bell's Tower, wherein
the bell rang still more lustily as the hour approached. The guests were
thronging in a multiform, many-coloured mass, all eager for the honour
of a Bower's smile. He was soon among the midst of them, repaying
neither compliment, nor salutation, nor mute nod, with a single sign of
acknowledgment. And now he entered the great hall, where already the
invited numbers were nearly completed. How grand the scene! What silks,
and satins, and taffetas, flowerings, braidings, and be-purflings, and
hooped inflations! what towering toupees, built up with horse-hair and
dyed hemp, stiffened with starch! what nosegays, redolent of
heather-bells, and roses, and orange blossoms! There sat Dame Bower
herself, fat and jolly, with her ruby dewlap, looking dignity; and
Bower, the laird, great in legend. Mess John, too, even fatter than
tradition will have him--the sleek bald head and face, where a thousand
slynesses could play together without jostling. But what were all these,
and the fairest and the proudest there, to Isobel Bower, as, arrayed in
her long white veil, she sailed about, heedless of all decorum,
showering her triumph upon envious damsels, as if she would blight all
their fond hopes to make a rich soil for the flowering of her own! If
others sat and looked for being looked at, and others stood for being
admired, she walked and moved for worship, as if she claimed the
peripatetic honour of the entire round of adoration. Not that she stared
for it: she was too intensely magnetized to doubt of the jumping of the
steel sparks to be all arranged _rayonnant_, like a horse-shoe, round
the centre of her glory. Then, as there is by the domestic law a wearock
in every nest, however speckled, and however redolent of balm-leaves or
resonant of chirpings, where was Sweet Marjory Bower? Where that law
ought to place her, by older legends than the date of Bower pride and
power--in a corner, plainly dressed, and trying with downcast eyes to
escape observation. But how pallid!--as if all the colours there had
vied to steal from her cheeks, not the rosy bloom--for it never was
there---but the fresh white of the lily, more beautiful than all the
flowers of the garden; and not the colour alone, but the light itself of
the lily's eye. Nay, it would seem that the greatest robber of all was
her sister, whose look turned upon her as if in scorn of her humility,
and in pleasure of her woe.
As Ogilvy entered, walking up direct and stedfastly to the midst of the
great hall, there arose the welcome buzz, like that humming which makes
musical the sphere where comes the reigning queen of the hive. But how
soon, as the bell in the tower ceased to ring, was all that noise hushed
into a death-like silence, as he stood without sign or movement, with
his arms crossed, and his gloomy eyes fixed on the only empty space in
that crowded assembly! Would he not look at the bride, or salute the
bride's mother, or shake hands with the bride's father, or do any one of
all those many things which lay to his duty--far more to his
inclination--as a happy bridegroom? Not one of them. And there he stood,
as a motionless Grecian god hewn out of veritable panthelion, with its
ivory eyes, and the mute worshippers all about. Nay, the likeness was
even more perfect; for as these worshippers, from the very fear of
reverence and the impression of awe, kept at a distance from that centre
of deity, so those guests who were nearest to the strange man moved
instinctively away, leaving him in the middle of the charmed ring. But
even this did not move him. Then there was business to be done. "Oh! he
was only meditative." The greatness of the occasion was the mother of a
hundred excuses. Still to all it was oppressive, killing enthusiasm, and
so unlike what these gay hopefuls had prefigured of that celestial state
in which they wished themselves to be. Only Isobel seemed unchanged. She
whispered to Mess John--most unseemly; but was she not the Devil Isobel?
Ogilvy, even as a statue, was hers, and could not get away. Then the
bridesmaids sought each other, by the clustering sympathy of their gay
wreaths and their office, and the bridesman stood in readiness. Mess
John was at the altar; and the bell was to ring the celebrating peal
after the ceremony was ended, and the guests should fall to their knives
and forks; and the retainers on the lawn, where the fire blazed wild to
roast the ox and honour the bride, should sit down to their marriage
feast.
As Solemnity is the mother of Angerona, with her finger on her lip, so
here reigned now the utmost stillness that could be enforced by heaving
hearts against the buzz of a crowd. Scarcely a sound was heard as the
altar was encircled. You might have detected a sigh, if it had not been
that every sigh was suppressed. Even Isobel was mute, but not from any
cessation of her triumph--rather from the impression of its culmination
in possession. She stood grandly, looking around her, in defiance of the
inexorable law of down-gazing on the ground, where brides see so much
which no one else sees. Nor had she yet expressed by a look any wonder
at the statue bridegroom, whose attitude was still unchanged. All is
eye, and ear, and throbbing heart, when of a sudden the door of the
great hall opened, calling the eye in the direction of the screech. Who
dared? Some one more daring than common humanity. A figure entered, in
the dress of another bride,--a tall figure, with surely nothing to be
covered by the white satin and the long lace mantilla, suspended from
the top of a wreathed head white as the driven snows of Salmon, but
bones, sheer bones. The face could scarcely be seen for the folds of the
veil: only two eyes, with no more light in them than what plays on the
surface of untransparent things, and fixed and immoveable as if they saw
nothing. The guests were breathless from stupefying amazement. They
beheld it pass into the middle of the hall, where, in the space that had
been deserted, it began a movement something like dancing. Strange
mutterings of a broken-voiced song, with words about long years having
passed away, rhyming with bridal day, and so forth, in the
cauldron-kettle-and-incantation style, came in snatches.
"It is that infernal old witch, Patricia Bower," screamed Devil Isobel.
And rushing forward, the impassioned creature threw the weight of her
body on the composition of bones and satin. It fell, with a loud shrill
scream from a windpipe dried by the breath of ninety-seven years.
Dame Bower and Sweet Marjory rushed forward and drew back the veil. It
was the antediluvian Patricia. She was dead. The last spark had been
offered to Hymen, and the incense canister was broken. Drops of blood
issued from her mouth and nose, and sat upon the marble face, with still
remains of the old beauty in it which had charmed Walter Ogilvy, like
dots on the tiger lily.
At this moment the bell began to clang. Devil Isobel was gone. She had
hurried out the moment she knew that the spark of life had fled. Nor
could she be found. The song says--
"They sought her here, they sought her there,
By lochs and streams that scent the main,
By forests dark, and gardens fair;
But she was never seen again."
A trick, this last line, of some of the old legend-mongers of the Bell's
Tower minstrels, no doubt to conceal the shame of the family; for Devil
Isobel had flown to the tower, where, having concealed herself till the
bell-ringers went away to join in the feast of the ox, which they never
tasted even after so much pulling and hauling, she mounted to the
belfry. Somehow she had contrived to cast the bell-rope round one of the
beams by which the bell was suspended, so as to produce no noise, and
then, having made a noose of a different kind from that she had that day
been busily twining, she suspended herself by the neck. It was some days
before she was discovered. The long white figure, still arrayed in the
marriage dress with the flowing veil, had been observed by some of the
searchers; and then, strange enough, it was remembered that one solitary
clang of the bell had been heard after the cessation of the ringing.
That was the death-peal of Isobel Bower. But, a year after, that same
bell had another peal to sound--no other than the celebration of the
marriage of Hector Ogilvy and Sweet Marjory. Some say that Bell's Tower
got its name from the contraction of Isobel. Names stick after the
things have passed away. They did well at least to change the
rope--_finis funis_.