ADVENTURES OF THE NIGHT CONCLUDED.
COUNT. What an unaccountable being! But it won't do. Steinfort, we
will take the ladies home, and then you will try once again to see
him. You can talk to these oddities better than I can.
THE STRANGER.
Rage, mortification, and love (if so his passion can be named),
possessed by turns the proud heart of Clermistonlee; but every idea
soon became absorbed in one deep and concentrated longing for
revenge--revenge upon Douglas of Finland and Walter Fenton,
especially the latter, as being the most dangerous and hated--his
rival.
He considered and re-considered every charge upon which he could
possibly subject their conduct to the scrutiny of the council, and
their persons to its torture and dungeons. It was in vain. The high
character of Finland on one hand, and the influence of Dunbarton on
the other, rendered all such attempts utterly futile; and with a
savage exultation, the baffled Lord resolved to trust to his own
unerring hand for disabling, maiming, and perhaps slaying the young
Ensign: and he resolved, on the first opportunity, to put in practice
a species of outrage, which was far from being uncommon in those
unsettled times, when our bold forefathers fought to the last gasp,
rather than yield one inch of the causeway to a man of a family or a
faction whom they held at feud.
While the _dénouement_ (recorded in the preceding chapter) was taking
place at the desolate old mansion of Drumsheugh, gay Annie Laurie,
with her usual vivacity and wit, was relating to the Earl and his
beautiful Countess, and to Lilian, who, with Walter Fenton, had
tarried in the bower or boudoir after all the other guests had
departed, the plot of the famous roué; and how, by her contrivance,
Douglas had been carried off in the sedan to mortify and disappoint
him.
Poor Lilian trembled and changed colour as she felt alternately fear
and indignation at the lure that had been laid for her; but Walter
kindled up into a red-hot passion; the Countess became agitated; and
the Earl hurriedly buckled on his walking sword, saying,--
"This must be looked to. My fair but thoughtless Laurie, mischief
will come of this, Douglas is a brave spark, and somewhat too prompt
in the use of his hands; while Clermistonlee is wary as a wolf, and
blood will be drawn. Fenton, order the household guard to horse: we
will ride round and arrest them, ere worse come of it."
"Yes, yes," exclaimed the little Countess, clasping her white hands;
"away, away--but oh, will it not make both your deadly enemies?
Heavens! what a land is this for blows and outrage!"
"Fear not, dear Lady Dunbarton," said Annie. "When Douglas left me,
he pledged his sacred word of honour not to fight Clermistonlee until
I gave permission. That promise ties his sword to its sheath, unless
his honour requires it should be drawn, and then ill would it become
a Laurie of Maxwelton to fetter the hand of any brave cavalier."
"You are a perfect enchantress, fair Annie," said the Earl, pressing
one of her silken ringlets to his lips; "one that can rule our
wildest gallants, and bend them to your will like the Urganda of
Amadis."
"Nay, my Lord, if you talk much thus, I shall be deemed a witch in
earnest. You Lords of Council deem suspicion equal to guilt. Is not
the poor creature who is to be burned to-morrow merely _suspected_ of
sorcery?"
"On application of the boot, she confessed all the Lord Advocate
asked her; but let us not canvass the decrees of the High Court or
Privy Council. In these our days, the decisions of such tribunals
will not brook much scrutiny. But Clermistonlee shall answer to me
for this attempt. S'death! to abduct my guest, and the fairest that
ever graced our roof-tree: but say, Madam Lilian, what punishment
doth he deserve?"
"Good, my Lord, leave him to the reproaches of his own evil
conscience."
"The answer beseems your artless gentleness, fair Napier; but you
know not the infamy he intended for you. 'Tis horrid! 'tis damnable."
"And, belted Baron though he be," began Walter, handling his rapier,
for his wrath increased while the Earl spoke, "a day shall come----"
"Tush, my boy. Art beginning to ruffle it already. His Lordship is
the best hand either with rapier or dagger, single or double
falchion, in all broad Scotland, while you are but a new-fledged
soldier, whose burganet is bright as a new carolus. When you have
followed the drum as long as I, you will learn to view everything
with more coolness; though I ever loved a young gallant that was
ready witted and quick-handed in defence of his mistress and honour.
Clermistonlee is a thorough-paced rascal, and, though invited here
for State purposes, God wot he is the only unwelcome guest under the
roof-tree of Dunbarton. When I bethink me how he treated his wife,
and kinswoman Alison Gifford, my blood bubbles up to boiling heat.
Poor Alison! I used to love thee in my boyish days; but--hah! 'tis
past like a tale that is told."
Twelve o' clock had rung from all the city bells, and the time was
waxing outrageously late according to the punctilious ideas of the
age. Lilian, in great anxiety to be gone, accepted the Countess's
chair, while Walter, muffled in his rocquelaure, and having his sword
girt close, followed as her escort, and bade adieu to their noble
friends whose suite of apartments now seemed deserted, sad, and
desolate, after the departure of all the gay and beautiful forms that
had thronged them but an hour before; and the only traces of whom
were here and there a faded or forgotten bouquet; a stray glove, a
scarf, a ribbon, or a fontange. The lights waxed dim and few, for,
like the joyous spirit of the fête, their lustre had passed away.
Walter had too much of the continental gallantry that then
distinguished the Scottish gentles, to act the mere part of escort.
He threw the chairman's slings over his own shoulders, and fairly
carried his lady-love home.
Dismissing the sedan at the barbican gate, he led Lilian up the steps
to the door of the house, lingering at each; for there was something
on his lips which he longed, but dared not to utter. Ere he pulled
the ring of the risp, he softly pressed her hand and said, in a very
gentle voice,--
"Lilian--dear Lilian--restore the glove of which you deprived me."
"Glove--glove?" reiterated Lilian in a great flutter.
"Forgive me, dear Madam--oh, you cannot have forgotten, when last we
walked by the loch yonder."
"Foh! what a droll request, Mr. Fenton."
"All night you have called me Walter. Alas, I shall be very wretched
if you refuse this little boon."
"I am sorry for that; but you must learn that Aunt Grisel's marmoset
carried it off from my toilet-table and quite tore it to pieces."
"Ah, the provoking ape! But, dear Lilian, do not be so cruel as to
cloud this dream of joy by dismissing me without a token of--of your
favour to-night. I will not see you often now--we leave Scotland
very soon, 'tis said."
Walter's voice trembled, for a first love (while it lasts) is always
a timid and a true one. His passion was rapidly mastering him.
Lilian soon began to tremble too, but had sufficient tact to answer
with a tone of raillery,--
"I owe you something for your chairman's fee--ah, rogue Walter, you
are pulling my glove off! Come, Sir! tirl the risp, or must I stand
here all night."
The risp rang; but first she permitted him to untie and remove a
glove from her hand, which he immediately pressed to his lips. His
heart glowed within him, his feelings became tumultuous and
impetuous--at all risks he would have pressed her to his heart and
transferred to her soft cheek that burning kiss--but unluckily the
door was opened at that instant by a sleepy old servant (who still
carried the pewter flagon which he had drained in the spence an hour
before), and Meinie Elshender, who appeared very coyly in a very
becoming dishabille, with all her fine hair gathered up, _en
papillotes_.
Pleased with all the passages of the night, Walter retired, and
preserved in his gauntlet the little blonde glove which his braced
corslet of steel prevented him from consigning to his bosom--the
romancer's grand emporium for all tokens of love and friendship,
save,--cash.
Happy Walter walked briskly forward between fields and hedges, shaded
by trees that were now clothed in the heaviest foliage of summer, and
skirted the western rhinns of the lake, where the scared coots
squattered among the sedges at his approach. The vast expanse of
water lay still as death; its dark unruffled bosom reflecting only
the occasional stars and the masses of flying cloud which by turns
revealed and obscured them.
The deep bark of a watchdog in some lonely cot made him start at
times, as it echoed among the copsewood; so did every distant sound,
and every peculiar shadow attracted his scrutiny. He kept his
sword-hilt ever at hand. Perilous to all, the times were especially
so to the soldiery, whose duties, dictated by the tyranny of the
Council, and the mistaken bigotry of James VII., made them obnoxious
to all--but more so to the oppressed Covenanters, whose vengeance and
hatred had been terribly evinced on several occasions.
It was the patrician regiment of Claverhouse they more particularly
reviled and abhorred; and several of his reckless cavaliers had
perished by the most villanous assassination. One was actually shot
dead in open day in the streets of Edinburgh; and soldiers were often
barbarously murdered in their solitary billets in the country. The
indiscriminate ferocity with which the guilty districts were
invariably scourged for those outrages, served but to make matters
worse. It has been remarked by some one, that though there were laws
for everything in Scotland, even to the shape of a woman's hood,
still it remained the most lawless kingdom in Europe.
Walter knew that his only personal enemy was Lord Clermistonlee, yet
every sound kept him on the qui vive, and interrupted the gayer
visions of his fancy, and his happy anticipations of the morrow, when
he had made an appointment to escort Lilian to the Castlehill and
Luckenbooths, then the favourite promenades of the loungers of the
time.