Walter, having no opportunity of asking what she meant (though, indeed,
she meant nothing more than that the property might be large enough to
serve both), continued to mutter the words for a time, with a view to
ask her for an explanation.
"Gilmanscleugh may serve them both," he repeated. "The woman hath gone
mad. It is not enough for one of them. Has she lost the spirit of our
house, and brought down her ambition to a mailing? By my faith, Dryhope
itself will make up the deficiency; and, if nothing else can be got,
Dryhope shall be taken for my youngest."
After this manner old Walter ruminated on the unexplained statement of
his wife; and, by repeating it again and again, roused the pride that
lay at the bottom of his heart, and made him wax even angry with the
wife of his bosom, and she the Flower of Yarrow, and the mother of his
six sons. But, angry as he was, he was also weary, having been hunting
in the forest during the day; and he went to sleep, muttering, as he
struggled ineffectually with the drowsy god, some oaths peculiar to
himself, and to the effect that, take Gilmanscleugh when he chose, it
should not suffice for the portion of two sons.
In the morning he awoke, but did not forget the statement of Mary, that
had given a momentary impulse to his bile, and, repairing to the
breakfast-room, he found there his six sons and his wife, who, from some
fugitive indications of face and manner, appeared to be engaged in some
by-plot, in which she was the exclusive actor. Her original beauty,
which acquired for her the poetical soubriquet by which she was so well
known, still vindicated a place among the ravages of advanced ago, and
her spirit, in place of falling with her bodily strength, had increased,
and was continually breaking forth in expressions of vivacity and
humour, which sustained the heart of the old chief, and made her the sun
of the domestic circle which she had so long graced with her beauty. She
was now in the very height of her most delightful occupation--serving up
with her own hands the morning meal of her brave Wat and her six gallant
sons, the parallel of whom, for make and manhood, might not again be
found in broad Scotland. So happy was she, and so full of the joyous and
soul-cheering fire of a woman's humour, that the six youths sat and
looked at her with mute expressions of sons whose filial eyes saw, in
the Flower of Yarrow, more beauties of mind and person than even
exuberant nature had bestowed; and old Wat himself smiled as he gazed
upon her, and finally relinquished his _malice prepense_, which had been
urging him forward to ask her for an explanation of what she had said on
the previous evening--that Gilmanscleugh would suffice for a portion to
the two sons of proud Harden. The parties sat down to the morning meal;
and as the old chief took off the cover of the first dish, a loud laugh,
in which he heartily joined, announced the fulfilment of the spirited
dame's promise of the previous evening, for there was nothing beneath it
but a pair of spurs, made of shining Rippon steel, and presenting, in
their sharp rowels, little power of assuaging the hunger of the youths,
who had been hunting in the neighbouring dells, and could have eat, as
the saying goes, the horse behind the saddle. Harden knew the meaning of
the manoeuvre; for he recollected the statement of the dame, that she
would present to him the feast of spurs, to send him to Gilmanscleugh
for a portion to her sons, and, nothing loth to receive the sharp hint,
he exhibited, through his rough growling laugh, the fire and keenness of
his rieving spirit, which was now to be gratified by the luxury of an
adventure.
"What game shall these Rippon rowels prick us to, Mary?" cried the
chief, still laughing.
"A good portion for our youngest," replied she; "the broad acres of
Gilmanscleugh, and all the kye thereon, and eke the kist that holds the
parchment; which last is to be placed in my safe keeping."
"And why not for our _two_ youngest?" rejoined Harden, recollecting with
a slight bitterness mixed with his good humour, her former statement.
"May not Gilmanscleugh serve both of our unprovided sons? What right
have the sons of the Flower of Yarrow to more than the half of what hath
served one Scott of Gilmanscleugh? By my faith, Mary! if I had not so
good a breakfast before me, I would quarrel with my Flower for her
depreciation of the honour of Harden, and were it not for that contract
thy father wheedled out of me, I'd seize Dryhope in revenge."
"And forfeit the five pledges," replied she, laughing. "But, Wat, had we
not better measure Gilmanscleugh first, before we quarrel about its
proportions."
"I have driven too many of his cattle over it to Harden Glen, not to
know the breadth of it," said he, keeping up the humour. "But come, my
boys, we shall take a better gauge of its dimensions to-day. Harden
never rieves by day; but the light of the sun tells us best what the
moon may light us to."
And having breakfasted on something more substantial than the dish of
spurs, the old laird, and his sons were prepared to sally forth to take
a survey of Gilmanscleugh's flock, with a view to those ulterior
operations which might have the effect of precipitating its unlucky
proprietor into such a quarrel with his sturdy superior as might afford
the latter a pretext for carrying his object of ambition into effect. To
cover their proceedings, they took with them their hunting-graith,
without forgetting the stirrup-cup, or rather without being allowed, by
the provident solicitude of the spirited dame, to forget that essential
preparative to a Borderer's forth-going, whether he was bent on
hunting, rieving, or wooing. Mounted on their strong shaggy garrons,
with bows slung over their shoulders, swords by their sides, and the
accompaniment of two wolf-dogs of great size and strength, and a number
of stag-hounds, all yelling around, till their voices awakened the
sleeping echoes of the glen, and formed a rugged harmony with the long
shrill winding of the hunter-horns, they presented in the features of
the group, that mixture of the war and the chase, sport and spoliation,
which marked all the roving parties of that extraordinary period and
still more extraordinary place. The mother of six such sons had
presented to her a fair subject of exultation in the party that stood
before her; and her eye, which still retained the blue light of that of
the Flower of Yarrow, spoke the pride which swelled her bosom, as it
passed, in laughing intelligence, from one fair face and manly person to
another.
"It was as a hunter I first saw you, Walter, from Dryhope Tower," said
she; "and he who hunted for a wife, may well hunt for a portion to her
children."
"If I bring down Gilmanscleugh," replied Wat, laughing, "it will be a
higher quarry than the Flower of Yarrow."
"You thought not so then, Wat," rejoined she, in the same spirit; "but
love giveth way to ambition. That day thou callest Gilmanscleugh thine
own, I will busk me again, as I once busked thy bonny bride, and put thy
once-cherished Flower of Yarrow in fair competition with the broad acres
of Gilmanscleugh. By my troth, thou wouldst be a bold man to prefer the
new love to the old."
"I would not give thee, woman," rejoined he, "for all Branxholm's wide
domains, with the whole of Ettrick Forest to boot; so hold thy peace,
and apply thee to thy hussyskep; for, by my sword, we will come home
hungry men."
And old Wat's horn sounded again among the hills. The signal for
starting was well known, and away they dashed down the steep, with that
speed which the Borderers always exhibited--a consequence, perhaps, of
the habit of getting off with their booty in the fear of a rescue. They
were soon out of the sight of the fond dame, who long afterwards sat at
the small window on the east side of the tower, listening to the notes
of the horn, as they reverberated among the heights, and died away like
the parting notes of mountain spirits that seek their dark recesses in
the opening morn. A true Borderer's wife, she never feared for the
result of an expedition of either hunting or harrying; and, as yet, a
prosperous fate, by saving her husband and her six sons from the dangers
to which their mode of life exposed them, had visited her with no cause
of a wife's sorrow or a mother's affliction. But such was her heroic
spirit, that, much as she loved these objects of her affection, she
could have acted the Spartan dame over the dead body of the dearest
among them, and quelled the bursting heart with the thought that he had
died nobly in the vocation to which his fate had called him. It was not
that habit had worn out the ordinary solicitude of the female heart;
for, if custom had recognised the actions of a rieving female in the
affair of moveable property as well as of moveable hearts, we dare to be
bold enough to say that Mary Scott would have been as famous as an
amazon scaumer, as she was as the Flower of Yarrow. Many an expedition
she had planned; and it was often more easy for Harden to satisfy
himself as to the number of good cattle he might lodge in the glen, than
it was to come up to the expectations of his better half, who, as the
ballad says, if he had brought her less than ten, would not have "roosed
his braverie." Nor was Harden's wife singular in the possession of these
unfeminine feelings of Border heroism; for, as women are generally seen
to take on the hues and complexions of the minds of their lords, the
Border dames were generally remarkable for the spirit with which they
applauded the deeds of their husbands, and the fortitude with which they
bore the consequences, often lamentably tragic, which resulted from the
wild life they were habituated to lead. In her present situation, Mary
Scott thought only of the fair property of Gilmanscleugh, which she
conceived so well suited for the heirloom of her two sons that still
wanted provisions; and she had already in her mind's eye the bickering
flame that was to consume the parchment rights, and roast the oxen that
would serve for the celebration of the new acquisition to the wealth and
property of Harden.
Meanwhile the hunting troop spread through the surrounding woods,
sounding their horns, but caring less for the dun deer of the Scotch
hills than for the black cattle of Gilmanscleugh. They had not proceeded
far, being still within the limits of Harden's lands, when they heard
the hunting-horn of some party in the distance; and the old chief
immediately despatched one of his sons--whom he styled the Forester,
from his love of the sports of woodcraft--to prick his garron forward,
and ascertain who it was that had the hardihood to drive the dun deer so
near to Harden's glen. The young man obeyed, and as he proceeded, he
found that the huntsman, whoever he was, had, probably from hearing the
sounds of the approaching chief, retired to the westward, with a view to
avoid the coming party. This construction on his conduct was the first
thought that arose on the mind of young Harden, and it came with the
suspicion that the sound of the stranger's horn indicated no other a
visitor to the Harden woods than that very Gilmanscleugh against whom
his father and mother had been nourishing the schemes which might
contribute to the gratification of their ambition. With these thoughts
came another--viz., that he, the young Harden, who was one of the
unprovided sons for whom Gilmanscleugh was intended, would contribute
to the satisfaction of both his father and mother, if he made short work
of the projected scheme, and, by urging the proprietor of the envied
property to a quarrel and battle, got quit of him by a bilbo thrust, and
thus settle in an instant an affair which apparently occupied a great
deal more thought than it was entitled to. The idea brought a whole
train of the most delightful cogitations that had ever yet fired his
young fancy. He would anticipate the views of his father; set off by
contrast the simplicity of his own act--a simple extension of the
sword-arm--with the intricate machinery of his parents' scheme of
ambition; enjoy the surprise of his father and the wonder of his mother
when he told them that he had, by an unlucky quarrel, killed
Gilmanscleugh, and asked, with affected simplicity, what would become of
the property? show himself the best of the six sons of Harden, and
worthy of the best smile of the Flower of Yarrow. The accumulation of
rising thoughts and stirring feelings inflamed his mind; and, striking
deep the rowels into his garron's side, he pricked forward at the rate
of a quick gallop, with the wolf-dog Grim bounding before him, baying
forth a deep yell, and his tongue hanging half-a-foot over his
bloodthirsty jaws. He kept his pace for a considerable time, and was
already far from his father's party, when he saw Gilmanscleugh's dog,
also a wolf-hound, and known to him by the peculiarity of his colour,
being almost white, bounding away to the left--in the track, doubtless,
of his master. The moment the dogs perceived each other in the
breathless, foaming condition into which their race had inflamed them,
they closed in a fell struggle, and made the wood ring with the sounds
of their wrath. Gilmanscleugh heard the affray, and returned to save his
favourite hound from the jaws of Harden's, which was so famous
throughout the forest, that no animal of its species, or indeed of any
other in the wood, could stand before it. Coming up, he struck the
fierce animal of his chief; and young Harden, coming from behind,
upbraided him for assaulting his dog, in such terms of galling abuse
that the insulted man turned and laid his hand on his sword. The act was
followed by a similar movement on the part of the Forester--in another
moment they were engaged in fight, and the period of a minute did not
pass away before the young and beautiful son of Harden lay upon the
ground, a bleeding corpse!
"Ho, for Gilmanscleugh!" cried the victor, as he sheathed his bloody
sword, and saw all the danger of his situation. "Ho, for Gilmanscleugh!
and that without blast o' horn; for every tree o' Harden woods will rise
up to avenge the death o' the Flower o' Yarrow's favourite son!"
And he struck his horse's sides, and urged him forward, calling out for
his dog Wolf, who was as anxious to get out of the clutches of Grim, as
his master was to get out of the reach of Harden.
"Wolf! Wolf!" he cried, as he turned round. "For
Gilmanscleugh--hame--hame--ho! I have killed a dun deer to-day, whose
umbles will tell the seer a sad tale o' our house, and whose corbin bane
will bring mony a Harden corbie to Gilmanscleugh."
But Wolf was too firmly in the fangs of Grim; and now Harden's horn was
sounding in shrill tones in the hollows, announcing to the unfortunate
victor the near approach of the fierce chief, but no longer awaking the
ear of the victim, who lay already stiff among the green leaves of the
forest. The dogs were still fast, and he must spend as much time in
disengaging them as would bring the father of the slain youth to the
scene of his sorrow and revenge, or he must braid on with the top-speed
of his favourite Sorrel, and leave his dog an evidence of the deed,
that, if traced to him, would bring ruin on his home, his wife, and his
children, and all the retainers of Gilmanscleugh. Springing off, and
nerved with the force of despair, he flung himself on the wrestling
dogs, and laying hold of the throat of Harden's, he clutched it with
such strength that the animal opened his jaws, gasping for breath, and
turning up his eyeballs beneath the lids, fell on his side; but his
revengeful opponent, no sooner free from the gripe which had bound him,
seized Grim in his turn; and Gilmanscleugh saw before him an alternation
of a process of choking that would consume more than his hurrying
moments. There was not an instant for deliberation: seizing his sword,
he stuck it into the heart of the dog, and, detaching Wolf, sprung to
his saddle, and flew through the forest with the speed of light; while
his faithful animal, seeing no longer life in his enemy, forsook his
prey and his revenge, and bounded away after his flying master. But too
much time had, unfortunately for Gilmanscleugh, been already lost in
disengaging the dogs; for the twang of a bow announced to him, as he
hurried on, that a messenger more fleet than Sorrel was after him, and,
looking round, he saw his faithful attendant fall to the ground, with a
long shaft quivering in his smoking side.
"There is my king's evidence left behind me," muttered he, as he stuck
the rowels deeper in the sides of his horse. "Wae to Gilmanscleugh when
Harden has to avenge the death o' a son slain by his arm! Braid on, good
Sorrel, to a flaming stable, and carry your master to what may be sune a
lordless ha'!"
The speed of his horse soon took him out of the reach of Harden and his
sons--but not before they had seen him in the act of flight, and brought
down his dog by an arrow sent from the unerring hand of the old chief's
namesake. On coming up to the place where his favourite lay extended
dead on the ground, with his face upturned to heaven, and, though partly
covered by his bonnet's plume that had fallen down in the flight,
displaying too evidently the rigid muscles of death, his father and his
brothers uttered a loud cry of astonishment and grief, and ran to
satisfy themselves of the terrible truth, that the beautiful youth was
indeed dead. The satisfaction was easy and ready: enough of blood lay in
a pool by his side to have carried in its stream two young lives; and a
single glance at his pale face struck the mind with the palsy which
death in the human countenance so strangely produces. His sword, firmly
grasped in his hand, told also a part of the story, which was eked out
by the body of the dead Grim and that of his lifeless antagonist, which
one of the sons had brought to the place where the group stood, and
looked at each other in mute grief. But that was only for a moment. The
heavy, tear-filled eye of sorrow of the father changed in an instant,
and flashed forth the fire of revenge, and, as every one of his five
sons clutched their swords, loud cries rent the air--"Ho! for
Gilmanscleugh with the sword and the fire-faggot!" So entirely were the
fiery youths led away by the impulse of the new feeling, that they had
all remounted their garrons, clanging their drawn swords, and uttering
their deep-mouthed cries, without reflecting for a moment that the body
of the dead youth had to be disposed of, and that all their party was
not able to take Gilmanscleugh Tower, and put its inmates to the sword.
"Hold! ho! my brave sons!" cried the father, as the fire of his revenge
beamed through his tears. "Why this hurry? A hundred years would not
cool our fire, and a sudden revenge lacketh the fulness of satisfaction.
We must take home the body of my dead son to his mother. It will be her
duty to swathe it and to lay it out. It is the first time she hath had
this work to do; and, as she does it, she will recollect her words of
yestreen when she said that Gilmanscleugh would serve for both of my
sons. Too true, alas! Gilmanscleugh hath satisfied one; Gilmanscleugh
shall satisfy the other."
The youths, burning as they were for satisfaction, saw the necessity of
agreeing to the recommendation of their father; and, dismounting again,
they lifted the stiff body from among the clotted grass, and, wrapping
it in a mantle, laid it over the backs of two of their horses, and
proceeded in mournful procession towards home, where Mary Scott as yet
sat at the castle window indulging in the meditation to which the
expedition of her husband and her sons had given rise. The sounds of the
horn that had struck her ear had long ceased, and she pictured to
herself the bold party scouring over Gilmanscleugh, the intended
inheritance of her son, the Forester, the best beloved of her, as he was
of his father, for boldness, filial affection, and beauty. She did not
expect them till the evening was far gone, and then it would be her duty
and greatest delight to prepare for them the cheerful bickering fire,
and the warm refreshing meal, and welcome them to their home and their
pleasures with her accustomed looks of satisfaction, her well-chosen
words of good-humour, and her questions of success, put in such form as
might afford the opportunity of recounting their deeds of arms or
woodcraft. Many a time had she enjoyed these highest pleasures of the
dutiful wife, affectionate mother, and spirited companion; and there was
yet time and opportunity in store for her to enjoy them again with
undiminished relish. Casting her eyes over the side of the glen, she saw
the procession of her husband and five sons, with the dead body of the
sixth, coming slowly along the middle of the dell. This was not the way
in which old Wat of Harden usually returned to his castle; there were no
cattle driven before him, no winding of his horn among the hills, no
whoop of triumph from his rough throat. The slow tread of the horses'
feet, as they paced the sod, came upon her ear with a dead, hollow
sound; and her heart became busy with its mystic divinations, before her
eye could trace all the details of the unusual scene. But feature by
feature of this first representation of a mother's bereavement opened
gradually on her view; she ran over the faces of her sons and that of
her husband, and soon distinguished the beloved victim; the expressions
of the countenances of the bearers told her the extent of the calamity,
if the form of the extended body, where Death sat triumphant, and gave
forth those indications of his presence which cannot be misunderstood,
had left any doubt on her mind that her fair Forester was no more. But
her griefs knew no feminine paroxysms, the strength of her nerves
enabled her to contemplate even the scene of a dead son with that
strange calmness which the strongest feeling can draw from the depths of
the mental constitution, as its cover and panoply in the hour of
nature's greatest need. As the procession approached, she saw Harden
draw his hand over his eyes, and the sobs of the youths fell on her ear.
Yet she descended with firmness to meet a sight which, contemplated by a
mother, is perhaps the most harrowing that can be exhibited to mortal
eye--a dead son, and that son her hope and pride. At the entrance she
met her husband, who took her hand, and, as he held it, waved to the
conductors to pause in their progress.
"Let them come in, Wat," said she. "I know all--my Forester is dead.
Come forward, my sons, and let me see him who was once my pride, and
tell me what cruel cause hath reft me of my boy."
The sons came forward, and, taking the body by the head and feet,
carried it into the tower, where, having placed it, they stood around,
silently looking on what was, an hour before, their beloved brother, in
the heyday of youth and beauty.
"Who hath done this deed?" inquired the mother, as she looked on the
pale face of her son, with feelings too deep for tears.
"Gilmanscleugh," answered Walter.
The word operated like electricity on the minds of the sons, as they
stood silently looking at the corpse. Revenge had for a moment been
clouded by grief, and the talismanic influence of the name of the
destroyer drew aside the vapours, and exposed again the fiery sun of
their resentment. A simultaneous movement carried their hands to their
swords, and every face was turned to the door; but the eye of old
Walter, looking askance through a bush of shaggy grey brows, watched
keenly every motion; and, as they rushed out to raise the cry of
destruction to Gilmanscleugh and its master, he called them back, and
hurried them into a side-room with grated windows and a strong door,
where were contained, as in a stronghold, the title-deeds of Harden, and
other valuable things which required security. "Let us consult, my bold
youths, let us consult," he said, as he pushed the last one in; and the
moment they were all fairly enclosed, he turned the key in the lock, and
put it into his pocket.
"Give me the Forester's bloody doublet," he cried to his wife, "with the
hole made by Gilmanscleugh's sword in the right breast."