The John Macpherson of whom I speak lived in the very beginning of
the seventeenth century. He was the same laird who is well known
as having got the Crown charter of the lands of Invereshie. He
was a tall handsome Highlander, with a somewhat melancholy cast
of countenance. His manners were simple and unassuming, and though
untaught by any instructor but nature, they were so much the reverse
of vulgar that they might have even been called elegant. He was
warm in his affections, kind in his intercourse with all around him,
extremely bold and determined in any difficult or desperate juncture,
and resolute and stern in his purpose when suddenly called on to deal
with a matter of deep or stirring moment, and further--though that
belonged to him less as anything peculiar than as a characteristic
of the time he lived in--he was superstitiously alive to all those
incidents or appearances that might chance to wear the semblance of
ominous or fatal portent; and such as these did not unfrequently
present themselves in days when the fables of Highland demonology
reigned over the strongest minds with an absolute despotism.
Living, as Macpherson did, almost entirely among his native mountains,
his time was very happily as well as prudently divided between the
chase of the red-deer, in which he particularly delighted, and those
attentions which he found it necessary to bestow on the concerns of
his landed territory; in looking to the well-being of his people,
and the health, prosperity, and multiplication of those large herds
of cattle which spread themselves over the broad sides of his hills,
and brushed through the ancient fir forests or the birchen groves
that shaded his glens. In this way his worldly means so increased,
that he became an object of no inconsiderable solicitude to such of the
neighbouring lairds and ladies as happened to have unmarried daughters;
and so many were the fair parties presented to his choice, that,
being attracted in all directions, he remained hanging, like a bunch
of ripe grapes, in the fluctuating breezes of doubt and indecision,
that threatened in time to dry and shrivel him up into an old bachelor.
Whilst Macpherson was still in this negative condition, he happened
to visit the castle of a certain chief. The company were assembling in
the great hall to wait for the banquet, and he stood ensconced within
the deep recess of one of its antique windows, where he had vainly
endeavoured to retreat from the assaults of some three or four most
agreeable spinsters, who, being of a certain age, less scrupulously
adopted measures which were much too bold for their younger rivals
to have ventured upon. Having brought him to bay in a place whence
he could not retreat without rudeness, each commenced the discharge
of her own independent fire against him, whilst, at the same time,
little spiteful shots of malice, both from their tongues and their
eyes, were every now and then interchanged from one fair competitor
to another. This scene was going on, much to the amusement of the
spectators, but very much to the annoyance of the victim of this
persecution, when a sudden buzz from the company directed Macpherson's
attention to the door of the hall, where entered a lady of surprising
beauty and grace of mien. By a natural impulse, which he could neither
explain nor command, Macpherson burst unceremoniously from among his
tormentors, and stepped forward to gaze upon her as she moved easily up
the hall. The intelligent eyes of the lovely stranger fell upon him,
and fixed themselves upon him with a species of fascination which
touched him to the soul. He was sensibly conscious of the resistless
power of this influence, but at the same time he felt that it was a
fascination of much too agreeable a nature for him to allow himself
to struggle against it. He at once abandoned his heart to all its
ecstasies, as a thirsty fly would yield itself up to the delicious
temptation of quaffing the nectar from the cup of some beauteous
and fragrant flower; and he gazed on her face with a rapture which
he had never before experienced. Nor was all this very surprising,
for she who thus attracted him had been born and educated in the
metropolis,--had even mixed in the gay and splendid scenes of a court,
and her dress and manners lent so dazzling an air to the lustre of her
natural charms, that, compared to her, the native beauties congregated
from all parts of the vast strath of the Spey, fresh and lovely,
graceful and intelligent, as fame has ever held its ladies to be,
appeared before her as so many dim and feeble fixed stars in the path
of some brilliant and glorious planet.
Invereshie's natural modesty made him shrink from asking for that
very introduction for which his whole heart burned. But the lady was
the niece of his host; she had recently arrived with the intention of
residing with him for some months, and the introduction came in the
ordinary course of etiquette. He was seated by her during the greater
part of that evening. Something more than mortal as she at first
appeared to be in his eyes, he soon found, on a nearer approach, that
she had nothing about her either overawing or repulsive. He listened
to her Syren tongue with an eagerness which until then had been quite
a stranger to him. The hours flew like minutes. He suddenly perceived
that every guest was gone but himself. He hurried away in confusion,
and rode home in a delirium of delight so perfectly novel to him,
that he two or three times seriously questioned himself by the way
whether reason was still really holding her dominion over his brain,
and the continual presence of the lady's image there almost convinced
him that she had usurped the throne of that judicious goddess.
Macpherson was soon drawn back to the castle of his friend by an
attraction which was quite irresistible. The impression made upon
him by a first acquaintance was powerfully strengthened by a second
meeting,--a third and a fourth visit soon succeeded,--and their
interviews became more and more frequent, as he began to perceive,
with a certain air of triumph, that his attentions, offered at
first with becoming deference, were much more graciously received
than those which came from any of his brother lairds. His hunting
expeditions became less numerous, and even his wonted prudential
daily superintendence of his rural concerns gave way to a new and
much more seductive occupation. He gradually became almost a constant
inmate in his friend's castle. But, in devoting so much of his time
to attendance on her who had thus gained so overwhelming a dominion
over his heart, he consoled himself for this unusual neglect of his
affairs, by reflecting that the prize he coveted was so rare as to be
universally considered beyond all price--a gem far richer than any
of those that adorned his brooch; and that besides all its glitter
and sparkle, it was not without considerable intrinsic value also,
seeing that, in addition to her other advantages, the lady's tocher
was such as might well satisfy a much more avaricious man than he
knew himself to be.
As for the lady, I have only to say of her, that she was a woman. There
are few of the fair sex whose bosoms have not been visited by a certain
spirit of romance at one period or other, and, indeed, it may be matter
of doubt whether those who have altogether escaped from this visitation
are much to be envied. It is that which makes many a town-bred girl
sigh for love and a cottage, until such fancies are extinguished
by maturer judgment. The soul of her of whom I speak had been deeply
embued with this poetry of life, and as yet she had seen no good reason
for ridding herself of it. She was all enthusiasm. Invereshie's gay
white tartan--his plumed bonnet and jewelled ornaments--his gallant,
though unobtrusive, bearing--his firm tread and independent gait--the
resolute and heroic character that sat upon his brow, and yielded a
calm illumination to his pensive eye--and, above all, the enchanting
scenery of his river--the sparkling Feshie--its wild glen, and the
prospective witchery of a Highland life, painted as it was with all the
glowing colours of her fervid fancy, and with a thousand adventitious
attractions which that fancy threw around it, had conspired to do as
much execution on her heart as her manifold charms had wrought upon
his. The visions of town gaiety and grandeur, which had hitherto
filled her young mind, speedily melted away. Rural circumstances
and rural imagery occupied it entirely. She suddenly became fond of
moonlight walks, of wandering on the banks of the magnificent river
that wound majestically through the wide vale where she then resided,
and of musing amid the checkered shadows which evening threw over the
ruins of an ancient chapel and burial-ground, embraced by one bold
and beautiful sweep of the stream at no great distance from the castle.
She was one night seated on a grey moss-covered stone, one of the
many frail memorials of the dead which were scattered through this
retired spot, her eyes now lifted in admiration of the glorious orb
that silently held its way through the skies above, and now thrown
downwards to its image trembling in the mimic heaven then floating
on the broad bosom of the stream below, when Invereshie, who had been
called away by some express affair, was returning at a late hour to the
castle. These were times, be it again remembered, when superstition
held all mankind under her thrall, and when the boldest Highlander,
who would have fearlessly rushed on death in the battlefield, would
have quailed before the idle phantoms of his own imagination.
Invereshie's nurse had early embued his mind with a firm faith in
all the wildest of these imaginings, and with him this belief, then
so common to all, had grown with his growth and strengthened with
his strength. The horse that he rode started aside and snorted with
affright when, on bursting from the deep shade of the grove that
partly embosomed the burial-ground, he first saw the white figure
of the lady before him; and it argued a more than common courage in
the horseman, therefore, that he should have checked the flight of
the terrified animal in order to ascertain the nature of the object
he beheld. The moonbeams shone fully and clearly on a face which he
could not for a moment mistake; yet their pale light shed so chilling
and unearthly a lustre over its well-known features, that, taken in
combination with the hour and the place, it made him hesitate for
a moment whether he really beheld the form of her whom he so much
loved, or whether that which presented itself to him was one of those
unsubstantial appearances which he believed evil spirits had power to
assume for the bewilderment and destruction of mortals. But the sound
of the trampling of his horse's hoof had fallen upon the lady's ear
while it was yet afar off; as it drew nearer, the fluttering of her
heart had whispered to her that it was Invereshie who came; and ere
he had recovered from his surprise, she arose and saluted him in that
voice which had now become as music to his ear. His blood, chilled
and arrested as it had for a moment been by superstitious dread, now
went dancing to his heart in a rushing tide of joy. He sprang from his
horse, and eagerly availing himself of so favourable an opportunity,
where all eyes but those of God were absent, he made a full and
animated confession of his passion; and that little solitary field
of the dead, which had been accustomed for so many ages to scenes
of woe and bereavement alone, was now once more doomed to witness
the pure effusions of two as happy hearts as had ever been united
together before its neighbouring altar, now so long dilapidated.
"Macpherson!" said the lady, with that enthusiasm which so strongly
characterised her, "never forget this solemn hour and place, and
let the image of that bright moon be ever in your memory; for it has
witnessed your vows, and beheld thee pledge thyself to me for ever!"
"Never! never can I forget it, lady!" replied Invereshie, with a
depth of feeling equal to her own.
"Tis well!" said the lady. "And now it were better to shun the
observation of prying eyes. This private converse of ours, at the
witching hour of night, when none but spirits of the moon are abroad,
might be misinterpreted. We must part here!" And ere he wist, she
had disappeared among the brushwood.
"The witching hour of night!" muttered Invereshie to himself,
as he stood rivetted to the spot, overpowered by the surprise in
which he was left by the strange and sudden manner in which she had
vanished from his sight. There was something, he thought, marvellous
and supernatural in it. His eyes wandered round the silent churchyard
where he had found her seated. A thousand superstitious tales connected
with that spot rushed upon his memory. It was there that in popular
belief the wicked spirit of the waters often appeared to bewilder
lated travellers, and to lure them to their destruction. He thought
of the power which evil beings were supposed to have in re-animating
the remains of the dead, or of thrusting forth human souls from their
earthly habitations, in order that they might themselves become the
tenants of the fairest and most angelic forms. His reason and his
judgment were in vain opposed to these terrific phantoms of the brain.
"The witching hour of night!" groaned he deeply.
The hand which he had but a moment before so warmly pressed, and
which had sent a fever of joy through every fibre of his frame, now
seemed to have conveyed to him an icy chillness that ran through every
vein till it froze his very heart; and as he hurriedly and almost
unconsciously mounted his horse to prosecute his way towards the
castle, his mind was perplexed and tortured by strange and mysterious
doubts and misgivings, which continued to haunt both his waking and
his sleeping dreams during the remainder of that eventful night.
But as the dawn of morning swept away the fogs which hung upon the
mountain-tops, so did it dissipate the gloomy visions which had
thus for a few hours shrouded the lofty soul of Invereshie. Reason
resumed her judgment-seat, and a little calm reflection brought a
blush of shame into his cheek, occasioned by what he was now disposed
to believe to have been his own weakness. Every manly feeling within
him was aroused. Arraying himself in his richest attire, he sought
for an audience of his friend the chief, and readily gained from him
an uncle's and a guardian's consent to his union with her to whom his
vows of love had been so recently plighted. Overjoyed at Invereshie's
disclosure, the chief led him to the great hall, at that time thronged
with guests, and having taken his seat to preside over the morning's
meal, he called for a grace cup, and, drinking to the health of the
happy pair, he publicly announced the alliance which had been that
morning agreed on.
All eyes were instantly turned on her to whom the flowing goblet
had been so joyfully drained. But whether it was from the sudden
swelling of those emotions naturally enough arising from this
public declaration, or whether it was owing to some fortuitous cause
altogether unconnected with what was then passing, no one could say;
but, whatever might be the cause, her brilliant eyes had become fixed
and glazed, the roses had fled from her cheeks, and she fell gently
back in her chair, her lovely features exhibiting the ghastly hue of
death. A chill shudder came over Invereshie's heart. Pushing back
the seat in which he sat, he gazed with horror upon the spectacle
before him. Again was his mind unmanned, and a vision of the unearthly
appearance which the lady had presented to him when he first beheld
her seated among the graves beneath the moonlight of the previous
night rushed upon his imagination. Overpowered by his feelings,
he remained as if unconscious of what was passing around him. Nor
was he at all observed amidst the general panic. The women shrieked,
the guests arose in confusion, they crowded around the lady, and she
was borne off to her apartment by the attendants.
For several hours the lady lay on her couch so perfectly exanimate,
that every individual in the castle believed that she was dead, and
mournful preparations were begun to be made for the funereal obsequies
of her in whose animating smiles they had so recently rejoiced, and in
whose bridal festivities they had anticipated that they were so soon
to participate. Eloquent was the silence of that grief which reigned
everywhere within the walls, unbroken save by the sobbing of those who
hung around the couch of her who had already lived long enough among
them to have gained the hearts of all who had approached her. But ere
long it happily gave way to unrestrained joy; for, to the amazement of
her attendants, the warm blush of life gradually began to revisit her
cheeks,--the heaving of her bosom gently returned,--her eyelids slowly
unsealed themselves,--the pulse resumed its former action,--the tide
of life speedily carried renewed vigour into every limb,--her eyes
regained their wonted brightness,--and, to the unspeakable surprise
and delight of every one, she returned to the hall with a light and
airy step, and with a sensible accession to her usual gaiety of heart,
apparently resulting from its temporary slumber.
But hers was a gaiety that touched no responsive chords in Macpherson's
bosom. He had stood as it were appalled, a motionless spectator of
the various wonderful changes which had been so strangely produced
upon her; and he remained for some time sunk in silent abstraction,
ill befitting an ardent lover who had thus had his soul's idol so
miraculously restored to him from the very jaws of the grave. Those who
were about him marvelled and whispered together. But his moody musings
were quickly overcome by the lady's enchanting voice of gladness. The
laughing sunshine that darted from her eyes soon dissipated those
sombre clouds that overshadowed his brow. He again became the willing
slave of every word and glance that fell from her. The fascination
under which he was held increased every moment; and not many days
went by ere the Laird of Invereshie, surrounded by a great gathering
of his clansmen and followers, and proudly riding by her bridle-rein,
led her home as his bride to the blithe sound of the bagpipe.
As he approached the mansion of his fathers, Invereshie was met by
crowds of women and children and old men, who thronged about the
cavalcade with eager curiosity to behold their future lady, whom they
greeted with shouts of gratulation that suffused her lovely cheek
with blushes of joy, and flushed her husband's brow with a pride
which he had never felt before. An event so interesting to all his
dependants had made even the most aged and infirm to leave their humble
dwellings. Some of those who had come from great distances were mounted
on the shaggy little horses common to the country. The creatures
were caparisoned in the rudest and most characteristic manner; and
they formed many picturesque groups, which every now and then called
forth expressions of surprise and delight from her who was the fair
cause of their assemblage. One of these was peculiarly striking.
Under an old twisted mountain ash stood a ragged red-headed boy,
holding the withy that served as a halter to a pony, whose bones,
exhibiting many an angle beneath his rough white skin, showed that
he had arrived at an age but rarely reached by any of his long-lived
race. From either side of the wooden saddle that filled his hollow
back hung a huge pannier of the coarsest kind of wicker-work, and from
each of these arose the plaided head and pale parchment features of
an old woman. So very withered were these ancient crones, that, worn
down and weak as was the animal that bore them, their wasted frames
seemed scarcely to add anything, in his estimation, to the weight of
the baskets that contained them. There was something, at first sight,
indescribably ludicrous in the picture they presented; and the bride,
who was by no means insensible to such emotions, could not resist
giving way for an instant to the laughter which it excited in her as
she drew near to them. It so happened that the line of march of the
procession brought her close past the tree under which these strange
figures were stationed. No sooner had she come opposite to it, than
one of them, remarkable for the length of her grey elf-like locks,
which streamed from beneath the uncouth mutch that covered her head,
reared herself up from amidst the heap of tartan stuff that enveloped
her person. Stretching out her bare and skeleton arm, her red and gummy
eyelids expanded themselves so as to bring fully into action a pair
of piercing black eyes that flashed with a fire which even extreme
age had been unable to tame, and which now lent a fearful animation
to her otherwise spectral features. She glared into the lady's face
with a fixed gaze and a wild expression that blenched her cheek, and
at once banished everything like mirth or joy from her bosom. In vain
did the lady try to avert her eyes from an object which was now to
her terrific,--they seemed as if enchained to it by a power like that
of the basilisk; and to add to her misery some accidental obstacle
created at that very moment a stop in their onward march. Anxiously
did she wish to have taken refuge in conversation with her husband,
but he was just then employed in replying to the warm compliments of
some humble well-wisher, who addressed him from the opposite side of
the way. Meanwhile the bony and toothless jaws of the old woman seemed
to be moved by a temporary palsy, created by her anxiety to utter
something which the lady dreaded to hear. But her very eagerness
apparently deprived her of the power of speech; for though her
skinny lips were seen to move, no sound proceeded from them except
an inarticulate muttering, the import of which was lost amidst the
din and bustle of the crowd. But although the lady gathered not the
sense, the lurid lightnings that shot from the eyes of this miserable
looking wretch told her that the words, if words they were, could
have conveyed no prayer of benediction. A sudden failure of nature
came over the lady, and she must have dropped from her saddle to the
ground, had not her husband's attention been recalled to her at that
moment by the renewal of the onward movement of the march. Altogether
unconscious of what had caused this apparent faintness, nor indeed
being quite aware of the full extent of it, his arm was ready to
uphold her. Her vital spirits rallied at his touch. She recovered
her seat, and then calling his attention to the object of her alarm,
who was by this time left some short way behind them,--
"Tell me," said she, "tell me, I entreat thee, who is that fearful
looking old woman under yonder tree?"
"That," replied he, "is my old nurse Elspeth Macpherson, one who is
believed by all to be gifted with more than mortal powers."
"Her eye is indeed terrible!" replied the lady shuddering.
"Why shouldst thou be afraid of her?" said Macpherson, in a graver
tone. "She can never be terrible to thee? Great as her wisdom and
great as her powers undoubtedly are, they can never come to me or
to mine but to succour and to bless. From my cradle upwards hath she
been as a guardian spirit to me, averting all misfortunes that might
have assailed me; and, twined as thy future fate now is with mine,
my love," continued he with a forced smile, "trust me, dearest,
that her searching eye will be continually over it and on it."
An involuntary tremor seized the lady at the very thought of her fate
being under the control of an eye the piercing and unfriendly influence
of which was still so strong upon her mind. She forebore to reply;
but she could not exclude a train of very unpleasant reflections, which
even the rapidly succeeding circumstances of the gay Highland pageant,
in which she performed so prominent a part, failed for a while in
removing. For some time, too, her husband rode by her side wrapped up
in silence and abstraction, till rousing himself from what appeared
to be a dreaming fit, he addressed to her some kind expressions,
which fell on her soul like balm, and by degrees regaining her wonted
cheerfulness, she at length rode onwards distributing sunshine and
sweetness on all sides, in return for the many warm welcomes that
were showered on her, till she was finally lifted from her saddle
at the door of her future home, by the nervous arm of the enraptured
Invereshie, amidst the deafening shouts of his friends and retainers.
Invereshie's hospitable board was spread with more than its usual
liberality on this joyful occasion; and, according to the custom
of the time, its feast and revelry endured for many days. As his
lady's previous nurture and education had accustomed her to much
nicety of domestic arrangement, and to many luxuries then altogether
unknown in the Highlands, he exerted himself to the utmost to lessen
the disagreeable effect of that change which he was conscious she
must experience on her first entrance into his family. He strove
to anticipate every wish; and when he had failed in anticipating
her wishes, he spared neither pains nor expense to gratify them the
moment she had breathed them. He procured comforts and rarities of
all sorts from great distances, and at a cost which he would have
considered most alarming, had he not trusted that it would cease
with the departure of the guests who thronged his house to welcome
his newly married wife. But time wore on, and the lady seemed to have
no inclination to get rid of either.
There is a prudent and useful old saying--"begin with a wife as you
mean to end with her." It would have been well for Macpherson that
he had acted upon this principle. Instead of boldly bringing down his
lady's ideas at once to that pitch which would have been in rational
harmony with his own habits, as well as with his circumstances, to
which her strong attachment to him would have most probably insured her
ready submission, he had himself done all in his power to give a false
colour to things, which he now felt it a very delicate and difficult
matter to attempt to remove. Meanwhile she went innocently enough on
in obedience to that bent which her education had given her, in the
full persuasion that she was only doing that which her duty, as his
wife, prescribed to her. Yielding to her resistless importunity and
attractions, the neighbouring gentry were drawn around her, as if by
some magic spell; and many of them became, in a manner, domesticated
at her husband's hearth. Then every succeeding day brought to the
old house some new friend from afar, whom she had been dying to
make acquainted with that man of whom she was so proud, and to whom
her whole heart was now devoted, that she might prove how much she
had gained by relinquishing the world for a prize so inestimable;
and for the entertainment of persons so cultivated as these were,
it naturally followed that more refined schemes of pleasure and
amusement were devised which, whilst they gratified Invereshie at
the time, by exciting universal admiration at the tasteful genius
of his lady who had conceived them, made him afterwards wince at
the large and repeated demands which were made on his treasury, for
purposes altogether foreign to the whole pursuits of his former life,
and which the whole tenour of it had led him to consider as vain and
unprofitable. He wondered that her ingenuity could be so enduring,
and still comforting himself with the hope that each particular
instance of it that occurred must necessarily be the last, he was
still doomed to be astonished every succeeding day by new and yet
more expensive projects. Amidst all this bustle and occupation,
her speech was ever of the delights of her Highland Solitude, as she
called their residence, whilst her thoughts seemed to be unceasingly
employed in endeavours to invent means of depriving it of all claim
to any such title, by filling it with as large a portion as she could
of the gay crowd and vanities of a city. Of all these vanities none
were so galling to the honest heart of Invereshie as the arrival of
a certain knot of gallant rufflers from the court--men of broad hats
jauntingly cocked to one side, and balanced by long feathers of various
hues--who flaunted it in silken cloaks, and strutted it in long-piked
shoes; all of which, in his eyes, seemed to sort but ill with the
manly Celtic garb worn by himself and his Highland friends. But much
as it irked him to be compelled to receive such popinjays as these,
and irritated as he frequently was by their unblushing impudence,
he submitted calmly to that which the rules of hospitality dictated,
and even repressed all outward appearance of his dissatisfaction; and
he was rendered the more ready to impose this restraint on himself,
by the reflection that most of these gay gallants were in some way
or other related to or connected with his wife; and he felt that,
as her kinsmen or friends, they claimed the full extent of a Highland
welcome. But these southern summerfly cousins were no sooner gone than
they were succeeded by clouds of fresh and yet more thirsty insects of
the same genus; and these tormentors not only contributed, in their
own persons, largely to augment the consumption of those luxuries
which had been so recently introduced into his house, and to the
promotion of those extravagancies which were conceived and executed
more especially for their amusement; but the more simple natives of
the glens also were soon taught by their infectious example to relish
them quite as much as they did.
Invereshie was long silent under all this; but he did not suffer the
less deeply in secret on that account. The ardent love with which
he adored his wife, and that certain mistaken chivalrous notion of
delicacy, which has been already noticed as operating so strongly
on his feelings, long prevented him from attempting to restrain the
expenses of so fascinating a woman, who had brought him money enough to
furnish at least some apology for the expenditure she occasioned. But
ample as her tocher had once appeared to him, he soon began to see
that it was melting rapidly away under those immense drains which she
was daily applying to it; and at length, with more of love than of
chiding in his tone, he ventured to speak to her on the painful subject
which had so long oppressed him. But alas! whilst he did speak to her,
her very eye unmanned him, and what he did bring himself to say was
couched in terms so gentle and so general, as neither to convey to
her any very useful or impressive lesson, nor even any very definite
idea of the extent to which she had erred. The lady flung her snowy
arms around his neck, bedewed his face with her tears, and made many
earnest and sincere protestations, all of which she sincerely intended
most sacredly to fulfil. Macpherson was enraptured. He blamed himself
for what he called his severity--kissed away the precious drops from
her eyes with a more than ordinary glow of affection. They were the
happiest pair in the universe, and in a few days her extravagance
was going on at its usual rapid pace, whilst she was all the while
in the most perfect belief that she was giving the fullest attention
to his wishes.
Many were the scenes of this description that afterwards, from time
to time, took place between Invereshie and his lady. The kind of
life into which he was now so unwittingly and unwillingly plunged,
allowed him few moments for sober reflection. But when such moments
did occur, they were bitter ones indeed. At such times gloomy and
harrowing recollections, and dreadful and appalling doubts would
steal over his soul, putting his very reason to flight before them,
and his flesh would creep, and his hair would bristle, whilst his
mind was thus yielding to its own speculative misgivings as to the
mysterious nature of that fascination which could thus drag him on
to certain ruin in despite of his own better judgment. But resolute
as was his natural character, and deep as were his determinations at
such times, they were all put to flight at once by the first bewitching
love-glance of his lady's eye.
Things had gone on in this way for months, growing worse and worse
every day, when Invereshie, oppressed by that gloom which now clung
more frequently and more closely to him, set out one morning very
early to join some of his neighbours in a distant chase of the deer. He
was that day more than usually successful; and his attendants having
been left behind to bring home the spoils, he was compelled to return
in the evening alone. The sun was getting low as he came down into
the upper part of his own deep and precipitous Glen Feshie, and the
shaggy faces of its eastern mountains were broadly lighted up by its
rays, thus rendering the crags on its western side, and the shadows
they threw across the wooded bottom, doubly obscured by the blazing
contrast. As the laird advanced, he came suddenly in view of a cottage
perched on the summit of a little knoll, and sheltered by one huge
twisted and scathed pine alone, the bared limbs of which permitted
the spot to be gladdened by a lingering sunbeam, to which the dense
forest that surrounded it forbade all entrance elsewhere. This was the
habitation of his nurse, whose strange appearance has been already
described. She and the old crone her sister, who was believed to
be scarcely less gifted than herself, were seated on settles at the
door, availing themselves of what yet remained of the glowing light
to twine a thrifty thread with distaff and spindle. The laird seldom
passed this way without visiting old Elspeth; and on this occasion he
turned from his direct path the more readily, because his conscience
accused him that he had somewhat neglected her of late. The continual
round of dissipation in which he had been for some time whirled, had
not permitted him once to see her since that accidental glance he had
had of her on the day she appeared at his marriage pageant. On that
occasion, too, he felt that she should have been a guest at that table
where his humbler friends were entertained; but he remembered that
although she had been invited, she did not appear. The recollection
of that joyous day shot across his mind like the gleaming lightning
of a summer night, only to be succeeded by a deeper gloom, arising
from the recurrence of all that had passed since. Unperceived by
the frail owners of the cottage, he wound his way towards it with a
sinking heart. In approaching it, he was compelled by the nature of
the ground to make a half circuit around the knoll, which thus brought
him up in rear of it; and he was about to discover himself to the two
old women, by turning the angle of the gable of the little building,
when his steps were almost unconsciously arrested by hearing his own
name pronounced, and he halted for a moment. It was his nurse who
was speaking to her sister emphatically and energetically in Gaelic;
and that which he heard might have been nearly interpreted thus:--
"Och hone, Invereshie!" exclaimed she in a shrill tone of lament,
as if she had been apostrophising him in his own presence. "Och
hone! what but the black art of hell itself could have so cast the
glamour o'er thee, my bonny bairn, that thou shouldst sit and see
thy newly-chartered hills and glens melt from thy grasp as calmly and
silently as yonder pine-clad rock beholds the sunshine creep away from
its bosom, and never once come to seek counsel, as thou wert wont,
from these lips which never lied to thine ear."
"Witchcraft!" muttered her sister; "wicked witchcraft is at work
with him."
"Witchcraft!" cried the nurse with an emotion so violent as fearfully
to agitate her whole frame; "witchcraft, said ye? The prince of
darkness is himself at work with him. The foul fiend, in a woman's
form, is linked to him. Bethink thee of her moonlight wanderings by the
waters,--her unhallowed midnight orgies among the graves of the dead,
where they say she is still seen to walk while he is sleeping,--her
sudden death, for death it was, on that ill-starred morning which
proclaimed their union,--the strange reanimation of the corpse by
the foul fiend that now possesses it,--the momentary sinking, and
terror, and confusion of that wicked spirit when he quailed before
the gaze of mine own gifted eye, shot from beneath the shade of the
spell-dispersing rowan-tree;--bethink thee of these things, sister
Marion, and wonder not that mine unwilling lips should have been
urged to mutter a curse where my heart would have fain poured forth
a blessing."
"I saw, I saw," replied the other crone, "thine eye was, indeed,
then most potently gifted, sister, and thy will was not thine own."
"Och hone, och hone!" wailed out the nurse again, "that I should
live to see my soul's darling thus rent away from the care of Heaven,
handed over to the powers of hell, and doomed to destruction both here
and hereafter! Och hone, willingly would I give my worthless life if
I could yet save him! Och hone, if I could but pour my burning words
into his ear, so that his eyes might be opened, and that he might
stent his heart-strings to the stern work of his own salvation."
The unhappy laird had already heard enough. He felt as if the deadly
juice of upas had found its way into his veins. His whole frame was,
as it were, paralysed. He leaned against the gable of the cottage for
some moments, during which he was almost unconscious of thought or of
existence; and then, with his limbs failing under him, he staggered,
giddy and confused, down the side of the knoll into the pathway below,
and sank exhausted upon a mossy bank, where he lay for a time in a
state nearly approaching to insensibility. Starting up at last with an
unnatural effort which he had no reason left to guide, and regardless
of all pathway, he hurried along by the brink of the stream with a fury
as wild as that which impelled its rushing waters. Slackening his pace
by degrees, as his bewildered recollection began to return to him, he
at length stopped, and resting against a rock, his scattered thoughts
returned thickly upon him. At first he resolved to go back to hold
converse with his nurse, but ere he had well conceived this idea, he
rejected it as an idle waste of time; for the fresh recurrence to his
recollection of all she had uttered flashed conviction too strongly
on his mind to render any further question necessary. Those dark and
mysterious doubts which had so long tortured him from time to time
during his moody musings, now reared themselves into one gigantic,
horrible, and overwhelming certainty, to dwell on which, even for an
instant, filled him with an agony that brought large drops of cold
perspiration to his brow. His jaws chattered against each other, and
a cold shudder ran through his whole system, like that which precedes
the last shiver of death. Again, a burning fever seized his brain,
and he struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, and he wept
and groaned aloud. Relieved by this sudden burst of affliction, he
started from his resting-place, and knocking violently on his breast,
as if to summon up all of man that was yet left within him,--
"Invereshie!" cried he, addressing himself in unconscious soliloquy,
"Invereshie! where is thy boasted resolution? Whither hath thy
courage fled? But it shall come to thee now!" said he, setting his
teeth together, and clenching his hands. "Hah! nor mortal nor demon
shall keep me in this unhallowed state of enchantment, if it be in
the power of fire or of water to break the spell. Let me think,"
said he again, striking his forehead, as if to rouse up his sharpest
intellect; and then after a pause, during which he strode for a few
turns backwards and forwards beneath the deep shadow of the rock,
"I have it!" he exclaimed, and he urged on his steps with reckless
haste towards his home.
The distant murmurs of its mirth and its revelry came on his ears
whilst he was yet above a bowshot off,--an arrow itself could not
have rent his heart more cruelly. He flew forward, and brushing
almost unnoticed through the crowd of serving-men in gay attire
that obstructed his entrance, he sought a lonely chamber, where,
in darkness and in silence, he sat brooding over his misery, and
nursing the terrible purpose that possessed him. Every now and
then his soul was stung to madness by the shouts of mirth, the
music, and the other sounds of jollity which, from time to time,
arose from the festal hall below, until, unable longer to bear the
torture he suffered, he rushed forth again into the woods. There he
wandered for some hours to and fro, torn by his contending passions;
for love was still powerful within him, and would, even yet, often
rise up for a time to wrestle hard with the wizard Superstition, who
had now so irrecoverably entangled and bemeshed his judgment. But
ever as the recurrence of the tender emotion was felt within him,
he summoned up his sterner nature to exorcise it forth as something
unholy. At length the broad moon arose, lighted up the bold front
of the lofty Craigmigavie, spread its beams over the far-stretched
surface of Loch Inch, shed a pale lustre on the distant Craigou,
the Macpherson's watch-hill, and fully illuminated the wild scenery
and the sparkling waters of the Feshie, and the noble birches that
wept over its roaring rapids, and its deep and pellucid pools.
It is not for me to say what were these mysterious associations
which came over the mind of Invereshie as he beheld the ample disc
of the glorious luminary arise over the mountain top, and launch
itself upward to hold its silent and undisturbed way through the
immensity of ethereal space. They seemed to bring an artificial calm
to his bosom. But it was the calm of a mind irrevocably wound up to
a determined purpose. And now, with his arms folded with convulsive
tightness over his breast, as if to prevent the possibility of that
purpose escaping thence, he stalked with a steady and resolute step
towards the house.
It was now midnight. The revelry which had raged within its walls was
silent, and the guests, wearied with the feast and the dance, and the
tired servants, were alike buried in sleep. John of Invereshie stole to
his lady's chamber. She, too, had retired to rest, and that deep and
quiet sleep which results from purity and innocence of soul had shed
its balm upon her pillow. Her lamp was extinguished, but the moonbeams
shone full through the casement directly on the bed where her beautiful
form was disposed, and touched her lovely features with the pale
polished glaze of marble. Had it not been for her long dark eyelashes,
and those raven ringlets that, escaping from their confinement,
had strayed over her snowy neck, she might, in very deed, have been
mistaken for some exquisitely sculptured monumental figure. For one
moment Invereshie's purpose was shaken. But it was for one moment only;
for as memory brought back to him the lonely churchyard, her appeal to
the moon, the mysterious events that followed their nocturnal meeting,
and all those after circumstances which had combined to produce that
awful and to him infallible judgment which accident had led him to
hear his old nurse pronounce, his dread purpose became firmly restored
to his mind. He stretched forth his hand and griped the wrist of the
delicately moulded arm that lay upon her bosom. The lady awoke in
alarm, but instantly recognising her husband, her fears were at once
tranquillised, and springing from her recumbent posture, she threw
herself on his neck. Surprised thus unexpectedly into her embrace,
Invereshie stood silent and motionless. Love thrilled through every
fibre with one last expiring effort. Aware of the potency of its
influence over his heart, he threw his eyes upwards, and--ignorant
and unhappy man!--blinded by the dark and bewildering mists of the
wild superstition that had dominion over him, he actually prayed to
Heaven to give him power to go through with his work; and then, with
a fixed composure, gained from that fancied aid which he imagined he
was thus experiencing, he calmly and quietly turned to the lady.
"Dost thou see yonder moon?" said he; "never was there sky so fair,
or scene so glorious. The night, too, is soft and balmy. Say, will
ye wander forth with me a little while to note how the eddies of the
Feshie are distilled into liquid silver by her beams?"
"Let me but wrap me in my robe and my velvet mantle, and I will forth
with you with good will," replied the lady, quite overjoyed to be thus
gratified by her husband in the indulgence of her romantic propensity
for such walks. "How kind in you, my love, to think thus of my fancies
when rest must be so needful for you." And having hastily protected her
person from the night air, she slipped her arm within her husband's,
and with a short light step, that but ill accorded with the solemn
and funereal stride of him on whom she leaned, she tripped with him
down stairs and across the dewy lawn.
"It is, indeed, a most glorious scene!" exclaimed the enraptured
lady. "But, in truth, thou saidst not well, Invereshie, in saying
that never was there sky so fair or scene so glorious." Then smiling
in his face, and sportively kissing his cheek, she innocently added,
"I trust thou art no traitor."
"Traitor!" exclaimed Invereshie, with a sudden start that might have
betrayed him to any one less unsuspicious.
"Aye, traitor in very deed!" replied the lady laughing. "Traitor
truly art thou if thou canst forget the lonely churchyard where you
bound yourself to me for ever, and that broad moon which then shed
over us her magic influence!"
"Magic influence!" groaned Invereshie in a deep and hollow tone
of anguish.
"Alas! are you unwell, my dearest?" earnestly exclaimed his anxious
and affectionate wife. "I fear you have already done too much to-day;
and your kindness to me would make thee thus expose thyself when
thou wouldst most need repose. See yonder dark cloud, too, pregnant
with storm. Look how it careers towards the moon; might not one fancy
that some demon of the air bestrode it? Had we not better return to
bed? Thou art not well, my love. Come, come, let us return."
"No!" replied Invereshie, in a tone calculated to disguise his feelings
as much as possible. "I shall get better in the air. A sickness, a
slight sickness only; a little farther walk will rid me of my malady."
The lady said no more; and Invereshie walked onwards with a slow,
firm, but somewhat convulsive step, treading through the checkered
wood by a path that wound among green knolls covered with birches
of stupendous growth, and that led them to the rocky banks of the
Feshie. There they reached a crag that projected over a deep and rapid
part of the stream. Its waves were dancing in all the glories of that
silver light which they borrowed from the bright luminary that still
rode sublimely within a pure haven in the lowering sky, its brilliancy
increased by contrast with the dense, and pitchy, and portentous cloud
that came sailing sublimely down upon it, like a huge winged continent.
"Invereshie!" cried the lady, her feelings strongly excited by the
grandeur and beauty of the scene; and bursting forth in rapturous
ecstacy, "do we not seem like the beings of another world as we stand
on this giddy point, with the moon thus pouring out upon us all its
potent enchantment?"
"Now God and Jesu be my guides but I will try thine enchantment!" cried
Invereshie.
Steeling up his heart to the deed, and nerving his muscular arms to
the utmost, he lifted the light and sylph-like form of his lady. One
piercing shriek burst from her as he poised her aloft,--a benighted
traveller heard it at a distance, crossed himself, and hurried onwards
with trembling limbs,--and ere the lady had uttered another scream,
Invereshie had thrown her, like a breeze-borne snow-wreath, far
amid the bosom of the waves. The wretched man bent forward from the
rock, his fingers clenched, his teeth set together, and his eyeballs
stretching after the object which his hands had but just parted with.
"Holy Virgin, she floats!" cried he as he beheld her, by the light
of the moonbeam playing on the ripple that followed her form as it
was hurried down the stream, supported by her widespread mantle.
"Help! oh help! my love! my lord!--'twas madness!--'twas accident!--but
oh! mercy and save me!--save or I am lost for ever!"
"She floats!" hoarsely muttered Invereshie, drawing his breath rapidly,
and with a croaking sound in his throat that spoke the agonising
torture he was enduring. "Ha! she floats! by Saint Mary then was the
old woman right! Ha! she struggles at yonder tree!" He sprang from
the rock to the margin of the stream, and scrambled towards the spot
whither the eddy had whirled the already sinking lady. She had caught
with a death-grasp by one frail twig of an alder sapling, though her
strength was fast failing. Invereshie's eyes glared over her face as
her head and her long dripping hair half emerged from the water.
"Help!--oh save!--oh help!" was now all she could faintly utter,
whilst her expiring looked fixed itself upon her husband.
"Help, saidst thou? thou canst well help thyself by thy foul
enchantments!" cried Invereshie. "Blessed Saint Michael be mine
aid! thou hadst well-nigh taken from me my all, fiend that thou art;
thou may'st e'en take that twig with thee, too!" and drawing from
his belt his skian dhu, he sternly divided the sapling at its very
root. As it parted from its hold, the lady disappeared amid the rough
surges of the rapid stream, and the blindness which superstition had
thrown over him fell at once from her distracted husband.
"Holy angels, she sank!" exclaimed Invereshie with a maddening yell
that overwhelmed for a moment the very roar of the flood. "My love! my
wife! O murderer! murderer!"
He rushed wildly among the waters to save her. But the impenetrable
cloud which had been all this time careering onwards, at that very
instant blotted out the moon from the firmament, and left his soul
to the midnight darkness of remorse and despair.