THE MARCHES.
It was plainly of no use for the chief to attempt mollifying Mr.
Palmer. So long as it was possible for him to be what he was, it
must be impossible for him to understand the conscience that
compelled the chief to refuse participation in the results of his
life. Where a man's own conscience is content, how shall he listen
to the remonstrance of another man's! But even if he could have
understood that the offence was unavoidable, that would rather have
increased than diminished the pain of the hurt; as it was, the
chief's determination must seem to Mr. Palmer an unprovoked insult!
Thus reflecting, Alister tried all he could to be fair to the man
whom he had driven to cut his acquaintance.
It was now a lonely time for Alister, lonelier than any ever before.
Ian was not within reach even by letter; Mercy was shut up from him:
he had not seen or heard from her since writing his explanation; and
his mother did not sympathize with his dearest earthly desire: she
would be greatly relieved, yea heartily glad, if Mercy was denied
him! She loved Ian more than the chief, yet could have better borne
to see him the husband of Mercy; what was wanting to the equality of
her love was in this regard more than balanced by her respect for
the chief of the clan and head of the family. Alister's light was
thus left to burn in very darkness, that it might burn the better;
for as strength is made perfect through weakness, so does the light,
within grow by darkness. It was the people that sat in darkness that
saw a great light. He was brought closer than ever to first
principles; had to think and judge more than ever of the right thing
to do--first of all, the right thing with regard to Mercy. Of giving
her up, there was of course no thought; so long as she would be his,
he was hers as entirely as the bonds of any marriage could make him!
But she owed something to her father! and of all men the patriarchal
chief was the last to dare interfere with the RIGHTS of a father.
BUT THEY MUST BE RIGHTS, not rights turned into, or founded upon
wrongs. With the first in acknowledging true, he would not be with
the last even, in yielding to false rights! The question was, what
were the rights of a father? One thing was clear, that it was the
duty, therefore the right of a father, to prevent his child from
giving herself away before she could know what she did; and Mercy
was not yet of age. That one woman might be capable of knowing at
fifteen, and another not at fifty, left untouched the necessity for
fixing a limit. It was his own duty and right, on the other hand, to
do what he could to prevent her from being in any way deceived
concerning him. It was essential that nothing should be done,
resolved, or yielded, by the girl, through any misunderstanding he
could forestall, or because of any falsehood he could frustrate. He
must therefore contrive to hold some communication with her!
First of all, however, he must learn how she was treated! It was not
only in fiction or the ancient clan-histories that tyrannical and
cruel things were done! A tragedy is even more a tragedy that it has
not much diversity of incident, that it is acted in commonplace
surroundings, and that the agents of it are commonplace persons--fathers
and mothers acting from the best of low or selfish motives.
Where either Mammon or Society is worshipped, in love, longing, or
fear, there is room for any falsehood, any cruelty, any suffering.
There were several of the clan employed about the New House of whom
Alister might have sought information; but he was of another
construction from the man of fashion in the old plays, whose first
love-strategy is always to bribe the lady's maid: the chief scorned
to learn anything through those of a man's own household. He fired a
gun, and ran up a flag on the old castle, which brought Rob of the
Angels at full speed, and comforted the heart of Mercy sitting
disconsolate at her window: it was her chiefs doing, and might have
to do with her!
Having told Rob the state of matters between him and the New House--
"I need not desire you, Rob," he concluded, "to be silent! You may
of course let your father know, but never a soul besides. From this
moment, every hour your father does not actually need you, be
somewhere on the hills where you can see the New House. I want to
learn first whether she goes out at all. With the dark you must draw
nearer the house. But I will have no questioning of the servants or
anyone employed about it; I will never use a man's pay to thwart his
plans, nor yet make any man even unconsciously a traitor."
Rob understood and departed; but before he had news for his master
an event occurred which superseded his service.
The neighbours, Mr. Peregrine Palmer and Mr. Brander, had begun to
enclose their joint estates for a deer-forest, and had engaged men
to act as curators. They were from the neighbourhood, but none of
them belonged to Strathruadh, and not one knew the boundaries of the
district they had to patrol; nor indeed were the boundaries
everywhere precisely determined: why should they be, where all was
heather and rock? Until game-sprinkled space grew valuable, who
would care whether this or that lump of limestone, rooted in the
solid earth, were the actual property of the one or the other!
Either would make the other welcome to blast and cart it away!
There was just one person who knew all about the boundaries that was
to be known; he could not in places draw their lines with absolute
assurance, but he had better grounds for his conclusions than anyone
else could have; this was Hector of the Stags. For who so likely to
understand them as he who knew the surface within them as well as
the clay-floor of his own hut? If he did not everywhere know where
the marchline fell, at least he knew perfectly where it ought to
fall.
It happened just at this time that THE MISTRESS told Hector she
would be glad of a deer, intending to cure part for winter use; the
next day, therefore,--the first of Rob of the Angels' secret
service--he stalked one across the hill-farm, got a shot at it near
the cave-house, brought it down, and was busy breaking it, when two
men who had come creeping up behind, threw themselves upon him, and
managed, well for themselves, to secure him before he had a chance
of defending himself. Finding he was deaf and dumb, one of them knew
who he must be, and would have let him go; but the other, eager to
ingratiate himself with the new laird, used such, argument to the
contrary as prevailed with his companion, and they set out for the
New House, Hector between them with his hands tied. Annoyed and
angry at being thus treated like a malefactor, he yet found
amusement in the notion of their mistake. But he found it awkward to
be unable to use that readiest weapon of human defence, the tongue.
If only his EARS AND MOUTH, as he called Rob in their own speech,
had been with him! When he saw, however, where they were taking him,
he was comforted, for Rob was almost certain to see him: wherever he
was, he was watching the New House! He went composedly along with
them therefore, fuming and snorting, not caring to escape.
When Rob caught sight of the three, he could not think how it was
that his father walked so unlike himself. He could not be hurt, for
his step was strong and steady as ever; not the less was there
something of the rhythm gone out of his motion! there was "a broken
music" in his gait! He took the telescope which the chief had lent
him, and turned it upon him. Discovering then that his father's
hands were bound behind his back, fiercest indignation overwhelmed
the soul of Rob of the Angels. His father bound like a criminal!--his
father, the best of men! What could the devils mean? Ah, they were
taking him to the New House! He shut up his telescope, laid it down
by a stone, and bounded to meet them, sharpening his knife on his
hand as he went.
The moment they were near enough, signs, unintelligible to the
keepers, began to pass between the father and son: Rob's meant that
he must let him pass unnoticed; Hector's that he understood. So,
with but the usual salutation of a stranger, Rob passed them. The
same moment he turned, and with one swift sweep of his knife,
severed the bonds of his father. The old man stepped back, and
father and son stood fronting the enemy.
"Now," said Rob, "if you are honest men, stand to it! How dared you
bind Hector of the Stags?"
"Because he is not an honest man," replied one of them.
Rob answered him with a blow. The man made at him, but Hector
stepped between.
"Say that again of my father," cried Rob, "who has no speech to
defend himself, and I will drive my knife into you."
"We are only doing our duty!" said the other. "We came upon him
there cutting up the deer he had just killed on the new laird's
land."
"Who are you to say which is the stranger's, and which the
Macruadh's? Neither my father nor I have ever seen the faces of you
in the country! Will you pretend to know the marches better than my
father, who was born and bred in the heather, and knows every stone
on the face of the hills?"
"We can't help where he was born or what he knows! he was on our
land!"
"He is the Macruadh's keeper, and was on his own land. You will get
yourselves into trouble!"
"We'll take our chance!"
"Take your man then!"
"If he try to escape, I swear by the bones of my grandfather," said
the more inimical of the two, inheritor of a clan-feud with the
Macruadhs, "I will shoot him."
Rob of the Angels burst into a scornful laugh.
"You will! will you?"
"I will not kill him; I don't want to be hanged for him! but I will
empty my shot-barrel into the legs of him! So take your chance; you
are warned!"
They had Hector's gun, and Rob had no weapon but his knife. Nor was
he inclined to use either now he had cooled a little. He turned to
his father. The old man understood perfectly what had passed between
them, and signed to Rob that he would go on to the New House, and
Rob might run and let the chief know what had happened. The same
thing was in Rob's mind, for he saw how it would favour the desires
of his chief, bringing them all naturally about the place. But he
must first go with his father on the chance of learning something.
"We will go with you," he said.
"We don't want YOU!"
"But I mean to go!--My father is not able to speak for himself!"
"You know nothing."
"I know what he knows. The lie does not grow in our strath."
"You crow high, my cock!"
"No higher than I strike," answered Rob.
In the eyes of the men Rob was small and weak; but there was
something in him notwithstanding that looked dangerous, and, though
far from cowards, they thought it as well to leave him alone.
Mercy at her window, where was her usual seat now, saw them coming,
and instinctively connected their appearance with her father's new
measures of protection; and when the men turned toward the kitchen,
she ran down to learn what she could. Rob greeted her with a smile
as he entered.
"I am going to fetch the Macruadh," he whispered, and turning went
out again.
He told the chief that at the word her face lighted up as with the
rise of the moon.
One of the maids went and told her master that they had got a
poacher in the kitchen.
Mr. Palmer's eyes lightened under his black brows when he saw the
captive, whom he knew by sight and by report. His men told him the
story their own way, never hinting a doubt as to whose was the land
on which the deer had been killed.
"Where is the nearest magistrate?" he inquired with grand severity.
"The nearest is the Macruadh, sir!" answered a highlander who had
come from work in the garden to see what was going on.
"I cannot apply to him; the fellow is one of his own men!"
"The Macruadh does what is just!" rejoined the man.
His master vouchsafed him no reply. He would not show his wrath
against the chief: it would be undignified!
"Take him to the tool-house, and lock him up till I think what to do
with him. Bring me the key."
The butler led the way, and Hector followed between his captors.
They might have been showing him to his bed-room, so calm was he:
Rob gone to fetch the chief, his imprisonment could not last!--and
for the indignity, was he not in the right!
As Mr. Palmer left the kitchen, his eye fell on Mercy.
"Go to your room," he said angrily, and turned from her.
She obeyed in silence, consoling herself that from her window she
could see the arrival of the chief. Nor had she watched long when
she saw him coming along the road with Rob. At the gate she lost
sight of them. Presently she heard voices in the hall, and crept
down the stair far enough to hear.
"I could commit you for a breach of the peace, Mr. Palmer," she
heard the chief say. "You ought to have brought the man to me. As a
magistrate I order his release. But I give my word he shall be
forthcoming when legally required."
"Your word is no bail. The man was taken poaching; I have him, and I
will keep him."
"Let me see him then, that I may learn from himself where he shot
the deer."
"He shall go before Mr. Brander."
"Then I beg you will take him at once. I will go with him. But
listen a moment, Mr. Palmer. When this same man, my keeper, took
your guest poaching on my ground, I let Mr. Sercombe go. I could
have committed him as you would commit Hector. I ask you in return
to let Hector go. Being deaf and dumb, and the hills the joy of his
life, confinement will be terrible to him."
"I will do nothing of the kind. You could never have committed a
gentleman for a mistake. This is quite a different thing!"
"It is a different thing, for Hector cannot have made a mistake. He
could not have followed a deer on to your ground without knowing
it!"
"I make no question of that!"
"He says he was not on your property."
"Says!"
"He is not a man to lie!"
Mr. Palmer smiled.
"Once more I pray you, let us see him together."
"You shall not see him."
"Then take him at once before Mr. Brander."
"Mr. Brander is not at home."
"Take him before SOME magistrate--I care not who. There is Mr.
Chisholm!"
"I will take him when and where it suits me."
"Then as a magistrate I will set him at liberty. I am sorry to make
myself unpleasant to you. Of all things I would have avoided it. But
I cannot let the man suffer unjustly. Where have you put him?"
"Where you will not find him."
"He is one of my people; I must have him!"
"Your people! A set of idle, poaching fellows! By heaven, the strath
shall be rid of the pack of them before another year is out!"
"While I have land in it with room for them to stand upon, the
strath shall not be rid of them!--But this is idle! Where have you
put Hector of the Stags?"
Mr. Palmer laughed.
"In safe keeping. There is no occasion to be uneasy about him! He
shall have plenty to eat and drink, be well punished, and show the
rest of the rascals the way out of the country!"
"Then I must find him! You compel me!"
So saying, the chief, with intent to begin his search at the top of
the house in the hope of seeing Mercy, darted up the stair. She
heard him coming, went a few steps higher, and waited. On the
landing he saw her, white, with flashing eyes. Their hands clasped
each other--for a moment only, but the moment was of eternity, not
of time.
"You will find Hector in the tool-house," she said aloud.
"You shameless hussey!" cried her father, following the chief in a
fury.
Mercy ran up the stair. The chief turned and faced Mr. Palmer.
"You have no business in my house!"
"I have the right of a magistrate."
"You have no right. Leave it at once."
"Allow me to pass."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself--making a girl turn traitor to
her own father!"
"You ought to be proud of a daughter with the conscience and courage
to turn against you!"
The chief passed Mr. Palmer, and running down the stair, joined Rob
of the Angels where he stood at the door in a group composed of the
keepers and most of the servants.
"Do you know the tool-house?" he said to Rob.
"Yes, Macruadh."
"Lead the way then. Your father is there."
"On no account let them open the door," cried Mr. Palmer. "They may
hold through it what communication they please."
"You will not be saying much to a deaf man through inch boards!"
remarked the clansman from the garden.
Mr. Palmer hurried after them, and his men followed.
Alister found the door fast and solid, without handle. He turned a
look on his companion, and was about to run his weight against the
lock.
"It is too strong," said Rob. "Hector of the Stags must open it!"
"But how? You cannot even let him know what you want!"
Rob gave a smile, and going up to the door, laid himself against it,
as close as he could stand, with his face upon it, and so stood
silent.
Mr. Palmer coming up with his attendants, all stood for a few
moments in silence, wondering at Rob: he must be holding
communication with his father--but how?
Sounds began inside--first a tumbling of tools about, then an attack
on the lock.
"Come! come! this won't do!" said Mr. Palmer, approaching the door.
"Prevent it then," said the chief. "Do what you will you cannot make
him hear you, and while the door is between you, he cannot see you!
If you do not open it, he will!"
"Run," said Mr. Palmer to the butler; "you will find the key on my
table! I don't want the lock ruined!"
But there was no stopping the thing! Before the butler came back,
the lock fell, the door opened, and out came Hector, wiping his brow
with his sleeve, and looking as if he enjoyed the fun.
The keepers darted forward.
"Stand off!" said the chief stepping between. "I don't want to hurt
you, but if you attempt to lay hands on him, I will."
One of the men dodged round, and laid hold of Hector from behind;
the other made a move towards him in front. Hector stood motionless
for an instant, watching his chief, but when he saw him knock down
the man before him, he had his own assailant by the throat in an
instant, gave him a shake, and threw him beside his companion.
"You shall suffer for this, Macruadh!" cried Mr. Palmer, coming
close up to him, and speaking in a low, determined tone, carrying a
conviction of unchangeableness.
"Better leave what may not be the worst alone!" returned the chief.
"It is of no use telling you how sorry I am to have to make myself
disagreeable to you; but I give you fair warning that I will accept
no refusal of the hand of your daughter from any but herself. As you
have chosen to break with me, I accept your declaration of war, and
tell you plainly I will do all I can to win your daughter, never
asking your leave in respect of anything I may think it well to do.
You will find there are stronger forces in the world than money.
Henceforward I hold myself clear of any personal obligation to you
except as Mercy's father and my enemy."
From very rage Mr. Palmer was incapable of answering him. Alister
turned from him, and in his excitement mechanically followed Rob,
who was turning a corner of the house. It was not the way to the
gate, but Rob had seen Mercy peeping round that same corner--anxious
in truth about her father; she feared nothing for Alister.
He came at once upon Mercy and Rob talking together. Rob withdrew
and joined his father a little way off; they retired a few more
paces, and stood waiting their chief's orders.
"How AM I to see you again, Mercy?" said the chief hurriedly. "Can't
you think of some way? Think quick."
Now Mercy, as she sat alone at her window, had not unfrequently
imagined the chief standing below on the walk, or just beyond in the
belt of shrubbery; and now once more in her mind's eye suddenly
seeing him there, she answered hurriedly,
"Come under my window to-night."
"I do not know which it is."
"You see it from the castle. I will put a candle in it."
"What hour?"
"ANY time after midnight. I will sit there till you come."
"Thank you," said the chief, and departed with his attendants.
Mercy hastened into the house by a back door, but had to cross the
hall to reach the stair. As she ran up, her father came in at the
front door, saw her, and called her. She went down again to meet the
tempest of his rage, which now broke upon her in gathered fury. He
called her a treacherous, unnatural child, with every name he
thought bad enough to characterize her conduct. Had she been to him
as Began or Goneril, he could hardly have found worse names for her.
She stood pale, but looked him in the face. Her mother came
trembling as near as she dared, withered by her terror to almost
twice her age. Mr. Palmer in his fury took a step towards Mercy as
if he would strike her. Mercy did not move a muscle, but stood ready
for the blow. Then love overcame her fear, and the wife and mother
threw herself between, her arms round her husband, as if rather to
protect him from the deed than her daughter from its hurt.
"Go to your room, Mercy," she said.
Mercy turned and went. She could not understand herself. She used to
be afraid of her father when she knew no reason; now that all the
bad in his nature and breeding took form and utterance, she found
herself calm! But the thing that quieted her was in reality her
sorrow that he should carry himself so wildly. What she thought was,
if the mere sense of not being in the wrong made one able to endure
so much, what must not the truth's sake enable one to bear! She sat
down at her window to gaze and brood.
When her father cooled down, he was annoyed with himself, not that
he had been unjust, but that he had behaved with so little dignity.
With brows black as evil, he sat degraded in his own eyes, resenting
the degradation on his daughter. Every time he thought of her, new
rage arose in his heart. He had been proud of his family autocracy.
So seldom had it been necessary to enforce his authority, that he
never doubted his wishes had but to be known to be obeyed. Born
tyrannical, the characterless submission of his wife had nourished
the tyrannical in him. Now, all at once, a daughter, the ugly one,
from whom no credit was to be looked for, dared to defy him for a
clown figuring in a worn-out rag of chieftainship--the musty
fiction of a clan--half a dozen shepherds, crofters, weavers, and
shoemakers, not the shadow of a gentleman among them!--a man who ate
brose, went with bare knees, worked like any hind, and did not dare
offend his wretched relations by calling his paltry farm his
own!--for the sake of such a fellow, with a highland twang that
disgusted his fastidious ear, his own daughter made a mock of his
authority, treated him as a nobody! In his own house she had risen
against him, and betrayed him to the insults of his enemy! His
conscious importance, partly from doubt in itself, boiled and fumed,
bubbled and steamed in the caldron of his angry brain. Not one, but
many suns would go down upon such a wrath!
"I wish I might never set eyes on the girl again!" he said to his
wife. "A small enough loss the sight of her would be, the ugly,
common-looking thing! I beg you will save me from it in future as
much as you can. She makes me feel as if I should go out of my
mind!--so calm, forsooth! so meek! so self-sufficient!--oh, quite a
saint!--and so strong-minded!--equal to throwing her father over
for a fellow she never saw till a year ago!"
"She shall have her dinner sent up to her as usual," answered his
wife with a sigh. "But, really, Peregrine, my dear, you must compose
yourself! Love has driven many a woman to extremes!"
"Love! Why should she love such a fellow? I see nothing in him to
love! WHY should she love him? Tell me that! Give me one good reason
for her folly, and I will forgive her--do anything for her!--anything
but let her have the rascal! That I WILL NOT! Take for your
son-in-law an ape that loathes your money, calls it filthy
lucre--and means it! Not if I can help it!--Don't let me see her! I
shall come to hate her! and that I would rather not; a man must love
and cherish his own flesh! I shall go away, I must!--to get rid of
the hateful face of the minx, with its selfrighteous, injured look
staring at you!"
"If you do, you can't expect me to prevent her from seeing him!"
"Lock her up in the coal-hole--bury her if you like! I shall never
ask what you have done with her! Never to see her again is all I
care about!"
"Ah, if she were really dead, you would want to see her again--after
a while!"
"I wish then she was dead, that I might want to see her again! It
won't be sooner! Ten times rather than know her married to that
beast, I would see her dead and buried!"
The mother held her peace. He did not mean it, she said to herself.
It was only his anger! But he did mean it; at that moment he would
with joy have heard the earth fall on her coffin.
Notwithstanding her faculty for shutting out the painful, her
persistent self-assuring that it would blow over, and her confidence
that things would by and by resume their course, Mrs. Palmer was in
those days very unhappy. The former quiet once restored, she would
take Mercy in hand, and reasoning with her, soon persuade her to
what she pleased! It was her husband's severity that had brought it
to this!
The accomplice of her husband, she did not understand that influence
works only between such as inhabit the same spiritual sphere: the
daughter had been lifted into a region far above all the arguments
of her mother--arguments poor in life, and base in reach.