As Mr. Eadie found he could not conveniently get away from his parish,
and the health of his lady requiring that she should travel by easy
stages, it was arranged, after Walkinshaw’s departure, that his sister
should take the spare corner of the carriage. Accordingly, on the day
following his arrival at Glengael, they all made their appearance at
the castle.
Mrs. Eadie’s malady had, in the meantime, undergone no change. On the
contrary, she was become more constantly mystical, and the mournful
feelings awakened by the sight of her early home, desolated by time
and the ravages of war, rather served to increase her superstitious
reveries. Every feature of the landscape recalled some ancient domestic
tradition; and as often as she alluded to the ghostly stories that were
blended with her ancestral tales, she expatiated in the loftiest and
wildest flights of seeming inspiration and prophecy.
But still she enjoyed lucid intervals of a serene and tender
melancholy. On one occasion, while she was thus walking with the young
ladies in the environs of the castle, she stopped abruptly, and,
looking suddenly around, burst into tears.
‘It was here,’ said she--‘on this spot, that the blossoms of my early
hopes fell, and were scattered for ever.’
At that moment, a gentleman, some ten or twelve years older than
Walkinshaw, dressed in the Highland garb, was seen coming towards the
castle, and the majestic invalid uttered a terrific shriek, and fainted
in the arms of her companions. The stranger, on hearing the scream, and
seeing her fall, ran to the assistance of the ladies.
When Mrs. Eadie was so far recovered as to be able to look up, the
stranger happened to be standing behind Ellen, on whose lap her head
was laid, and, not seeing him, she lay, for some time after the entire
restoration of her faculties, in a state of profound solemnity and
sorrow. ‘O Frazer!’ she exclaimed pathetically.
‘I have seen him,’ she added; ‘and my time cannot now be long.’
At that instant her eye lighted on the stranger as he moved into
another position. She looked at him for some time with startled
amazement and awe; and, turning round to one of the young ladies, said,
with an accent of indescribable grief, ‘I have been mistaken.’ She
then rose, and the stranger introduced himself. He was the same person
in whom, on his arrival from France, she had fourteen years before
discovered the son of her early lover. Seeing him on the spot where she
had parted from his father, and dressed in the garb and tartan of the
clan which her lover wore on that occasion, she had, in her visionary
mood, believed he was an apparition.
Saving these occasional hallucinations, her health certainly received
new energy from her native air; and, by her presence at the castle, she
was of essential service to the recruiting of her young friend.
In the meantime, Glengael being informed of the attachment between
Walkinshaw and Ellen, had espoused his interests with great ardour;
and French Frazer, as the stranger was called, also raising men for
promotion, the castle became a scene of so much bustle as materially to
disturb the shattered nerves of the invalid. With a view, therefore,
to change the scene, and to enable Mrs. Eadie to enjoy the benefit of
sea-bathing, an excursion was proposed to Caithness and Sutherland,
where Glengael was desirous of introducing the officers to certain
political connexions which he had in these counties, and it was
proposed that, while the gentlemen went to pay their visits, the ladies
should take up their residence at the little town of Wick.
The weather had, for some days before their departure from Glengael,
been bright and calm, and the journey to Wick was performed with
comparative ease and comfort. The party had, however, scarcely
alighted at the house, which a servant sent on before had provided
for their accommodation, when the wind changed, and the skies were
overcast. For three days it raged a continual tempest; the rain fell
in torrents, and the gentlemen, instead of being able to proceed on
their visit, were confined to the house. At the end of the third
day the storm subsided, and, though the weather was broken, there
were intervals which allowed them to make little excursions in the
neighbourhood.
The objects they visited, and the tales and traditions of the country,
were alike new and interesting to the whole party; and it was agreed,
that, before leaving Wick, the gentlemen should conduct the ladies to
some of the remarkable spots which they had themselves visited;--among
other places, Girnigo Castle, the ancient princely abode of the Earls
of Caithness, the superb remains of which still obtain additional
veneration in the opinion of the people, from the many guilty and
gloomy traditions that fear and fancy have exaggerated in preserving
the imperfect recollections of its early history.
Mrs. Eadie had agreed to accompany them, the walk not exceeding three
or four miles; but on the evening preceding the day which they had
fixed for the excursion, when the weather had all the appearance of
being settled, she saw, or imagined that she saw, at sunset, some awful
prodigy which admonished her not to go.
‘I beheld,’ said she, ‘between me and the setting sun, a shadowy
hand bearing an hour-glass, run out; and when I looked again, I saw
the visionary semblance of Walkinshaw’s uncle pass me with a pale
countenance. Twice have I witnessed the same apparition of his wraith,
and I know from the sign, that either his time is not to be long, or
to-morrow we shall hear strange tidings.’
It was useless to reason or to argue with her sublime and
incomprehensible pretensions; but as it was deemed not prudent to leave
her alone, Glengael and Mrs. Frazer agreed to remain at Wick, while
French Frazer and the young ladies, with Walkinshaw and his sister,
went to inspect the ruins of Girnigo, and the rocks, caverns, and
precipices of Noss-head.
Of all places in the wild and withered region of Caithness, the
promontory of Noss-head presents, alike to the marine voyager and the
traveller by land, one of the most tremendous objects. The waves of
the universal sea have, from the earliest epochs, raged against it.
Huge rocks, torn from the cliffs, stand half hid in the waters, like
the teeth and racks of destruction grinning for shipwrecks. No calm
of the ocean is there without a swell, and no swell without horror.
The sea-birds, that love to build on the wildest cliffs and precipices
of that coast of ruins, shun Noss-head, for the ocean laves against
it in everlasting cataracts, and the tides, whether in ebb or flow,
hurl past in devouring whirlpools. To the pilots afar at sea it is a
lofty landmark and a beacon,--but the vessel embayed either within
its northern or its southern cliffs, may be known by the marks on her
sails, or the name on the pieces of her stern,--but none of her crew
ever escape to tell the circumstances of her fate. Even there the
miserable native earns no spoils from the waves;--whatever reaches the
shore consists of fragments, or splinters, or corses, or limbs,--all
are but the crumbs and the surfeit-relics of destruction.