Graham of Claverhouse Part 10

DUNDEE.

CHAPTER II

VISIONS OF THE NIGHT

Upon the highest floor of Blair Castle there was a long and s.p.a.cious apartment, like unto the gallery in Paisley Castle, where John Graham had been married to Jean Cochrane, and which to-day is the drawing-room. To this high place Claverhouse climbed from the room where he had examined the two Englishmen, and here he pa.s.sed the last hours of daylight on the day before the battle of Killiecrankie.

Seating himself at one of the windows, he looked out towards the west, through whose golden gates the sun had begun to enter.

Beneath lay a widespreading meadow which reached to the Garry; beyond the river the ground began to rise, and in the distance were the hills covered with heather, with lakes of emerald amid the purple. There are two hours of the day when the soul of man is powerfully affected by the physical world in which we live, and in which, indeed, the things we see become transparent, like a thin veil, and through them the things which are not seen stream in upon the soul. One is sunrise, when there is first a grayness in the east, and then the clouds begin to redden, and afterwards a joyful brightness heralds the appearing of the sun as he drives in rout the reluctant rearguard of the night. The most impressive moment is when all the high lands are bathed in soft, fresh, hopeful sunshine, but the glens are still lying in the cold and dank shadow, so that one may suddenly descend from a place of brightness, where he has been in the eye of the sun, to a land of gloom, which the sun has not yet reached. Sunrise quickens the power that has been sleeping, and calls a man in high hope to the labor of the day, for if there be darkness lingering in the glen, there is light on the lofty table-lands, and soon it will be shining everywhere, when the sun has reached his meridian. And it puts heart into a man to come over the hill and down through the hollows when the sun is rising, for though the woods be dark and chill, the traveller is sure of the inevitable victory of the light.

Yet more imperious and irresistible is the impression of sunset as Dundee saw the closing pageant of the day on the last evening of his life. When first he looked the green plain was flooded with gentle light which turned into gold the brown, s.h.a.ggy Highland cattle scattered among the gra.s.s, and made the river as it flashed out and in among the trees a chain of silver, and took the hardness from the jagged rocks that emerged from the sides of the hills. As the sun entered in between high banks of cloud, the light began to fade from the plain, and it touched the river no more; but above the clouds were glowing and reddening like a celestial army clad in scarlet and escorting home to his palace a victorious general. In a few minutes the sun has disappeared, and the red changes into violet and delicate, indescribable shades of green and blue, like the color of Nile water. Then there is a faint flicker, sudden and transient, from the city into which the sun has gone, and the day is over. As the monarch of the day withdraws, the queen of the night takes possession, and Claverhouse, leaning his chin upon his hand and gazing from the sadness of his eyes across the valley, saw the silver light, clear, beautiful, awful, flood the mountains and the level ground below, till the outstanding hills above, and the cattle which had lain down to rest in the meadow, were thrown out as in an etching, with exact and distinct outlines. The day, with its morning promise, with its noontide heat, with its evening glory, was closed, completed and irrevocable. The night, in which no man can work, had come, and in the cold and merciless light thereof every man's work was revealed and judged. The weird influence of the hour was upon the imagination of an impressionable man, and before him he saw the history of his life. It seemed only a year or so since he was a gay-hearted lad upon the Sidlaw hills, and yesterday since he made his first adventure in arms, with the army of France.

Again he is sitting by the camp-fire in the Low Country, and crossing swords for the first time with Hugh MacKay, with whom he is to settle his warfare to-morrow. He is again pledging his loyalty to King James at Whitehall, whom he has done his best to serve, and who has been but a sorry master to him. His thoughts turn once more to the pleasaunce of Paisley Castle, he hears again the jingling of the horses' bits as he pledges his troth to his bride. Across the moss-hags, where the horses plunge in the ooze and the mist encircles the troopers, he is hunting his Covenanting prey, and catches the fearless face of some peasant zealot as he falls pierced with bullets.

Jean weaves her arms round his neck, for once in her life a tender and fearful woman, pleading that he should withdraw from the fight and live quietly with her at home, and then, more like herself, she rages in the moment of his mad jealousy and her unquenchable anger. To-morrow he would submit to the final arbitrament of arms the cause for which he had lived, and for which the presentiment was upon him that he would die, and the quarrel begun between him and MacKay fifteen years ago, between the sides they represent centuries ago, would be settled. If the years had been given back to him to live again, he would not have had them otherwise. Destiny had settled for him his politics and his principles, for he could not leave the way in which Montrose had gone before, or be the comrade of Covenanting Whigs. It would have been a thing unnatural and impossible. And yet he feared that the future was with them and not with the Jacobites. He only did his part in arresting fanatical hillmen and executing the punishment of the law upon them, but he would have been glad that night if he had not been obliged to shoot John Brown of Priest Hill before his wife's eyes, and keep guard at the scaffold from which Pollock went home to G.o.d. He had never loved any other woman than Jean Cochrane, and they were well mated in their high temper of nature, but their marriage had been tempestuous, and he was haunted with vague misgivings. What light was given him he had followed, but there was little to show for his life. His king had failed him, his comrades had distrusted him, his nation hated him. His wife--had she forgiven him, and was she true-hearted to him still? Behind high words of loyalty and hope his heart had been sinking, and now it seemed to him in the light of eternal judgment, wherein there is justice but no charity, that his forty years had failed and were leaving behind them no lasting good to his house or to his land. The moonlight shining full upon Claverhouse shows many a line now on the smoothness of his fair girl face, and declares his hidden, inextinguishable sorrow, who all his days had been an actor in a tragedy. He had written to the chiefs that all the world was with him, but in his heart he knew that it was against him, and perhaps also G.o.d.

Once and again Grimond had come into the gallery to summon his master to rest, but seeing him absorbed in one of his reveries had quietly withdrawn. Full of anxiety, for he knows what the morrow will mean, that faithful servitor at last came near and rustled to catch his master's ear.

"Jock," said Claverhouse, startling and rising to his feet, "is that you, man, coming to coax me to my bed as ye did lang syne, when ye received me first from my nurse's hands? It's getting late, and I am needing rest for to-morrow's work, if I can get it. We have come to Armageddon, as the preachers would say, and mony things for mony days hang on the issue. All a man can do, Jock, is to walk in the road that was set before him from a laddie, and to complete the task laid to his hand. What will happen afterwards doesna concern him, so be it he is faithful. Where is my room? And, hark ye, Jock, waken me early, and be not far from me through the night, for I can trust you altogether. And there be not mony true."

Worn out with a long day in the saddle, and the planning of the evening together with many anxieties, and the inward tumult of his mind, Claverhouse fell asleep. He was resting so quietly that Grimond, who had gone to the door to listen, was satisfied and lay down to catch an hour or two of sleep for himself, for he could waken at any hour he pleased, and knew that soon after daybreak he must be stirring. While he was nearby heavy with sleep, his master, conscious or unconscious, according as one judges, was in the awful presence of the unseen. He woke suddenly, as if he had been called, and knew that someone was in the room, but also in the same instant that it was not Grimond or any visitor of flesh and blood. Twice had the wraith of the Grahams appeared to him, and always before a day of danger, but this time it was no sad, beautiful woman's face, carrying upon its weird grace the sorrows of his line, but the figure of a man that loomed from the shadow. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the room was so dark that he could only see that someone was there, but could not tell who it was or by what name he would be called. Then the moon struggled out from behind her covering, and sent a shaft of light into the gloomy chamber, with its dark draping and heavy carved furniture. With the coming of the light Claverhouse, who was not unaccustomed to ghostly sights, for they were his heritage, raised himself in bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ears and beard uncared for, his face bore all the signs of hunger and suffering, as of one who had wanted right food and warmth and every comfort of life for months on end. In his eyes glowed the fire of an intense and honest, but fierce and narrow piety, and with that expression was mingled another, not of anger nor of sorrow, but of reproach, of judgment and of sombre triumph. His hands were strapped in front of him with a stirrup leather, and his head was bare. As the moon shone more clearly, Claverhouse saw other stains than those of peat upon his chest, and while he looked the red blood seemed to rise from wounds that pierced his heart and lungs, it flowed out again in a trickling stream, and dripped upon the whiteness of his hands. More awful still, there was a wound in his forehead, and part of his head was shattered. The scene had never been absent long from Claverhouse's memory, and now he reacted it again. How this man had been caught after a long pursuit, upon the moor, how he had stood bold and unrepentant before the man that had power of life and death over him, how he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the king, how he had been shot dead before his cottage, and how his wife had been spectator of her husband's death.

"Ye have not forgot me, John Graham of Claverhouse, nor the deed which ye did at Priest Hill in the West Country. I am John Brown, whom ye caused to be slain for the faith of the saints and their testimony, and whom ye set free from the bondage of man forever. Behold, I have washed my robes and made them white in better blood than this, but I am sent in the garment o' earth, sair stained wi' its defilement, and in my ain unworthy blude, that ye may ken me and believe that I am sent."

"What I did was according to law," answered Claverhouse, unshaken by the sight, "and in the fulfilling of my commission, though G.o.d knows I loved not the work, and have oftentimes regretted thy killing. For that and all the deeds of this life I shall answer to my judge and not to man. What wilt thou have with me, what hast thou to do with me? Had it been the other way and I had fallen at Drumclog, I had not troubled thee or any of thy kind."

"Nor had I been minded or allowed to visit thee, John Graham, if I had fallen in fair fight, contending for Christ's crown and the liberty of the Scots Kirk, but these wounds upon my head and breast speak not of war, but of murder. Because thou didst murder Christ's confessors, and the souls of the martyrs cry from beneath the altar, I am come to show thee things which are to be and the doing of Him who saith, 'I will avenge.' Ye have often said go, and he goeth, and come and he cometh, but this nicht ye will come with me, and see things that will shake even thy bold heart." And so in vision they went.

Claverhouse was standing in a country kirkyard, and at the hour of sunset. Round him were ancient graves with stones whose inscriptions had been worn away by rough weather, and upon which the gra.s.s was growing rank. They were the resting-places of past generations whose descendants had died out, and whose names were forgotten in the land where once they may have been mighty people. Before him was a burying-place he knew, for it belonged to his house. There lay his father, and there he had laid his mother, the Lady Magdalene Graham, to rest, taken as he often thought from the evil to come. The ground had been stirred again, and there was another grave. It was of tiny size, not that of a man or woman, but of a child, and one that had died in its infancy. It was carefully tended, as if the mother still lived and had not yet forgotten her child. At the sight of it Claverhouse turned to the figure by his side.

"Ye mean not----"

"Read," said the Covenanter, "for the writing surely is plain." And this is what Claverhouse saw:

"JAMES GRAHAME, Only son and child of my Lord Dundie.

Aged eight months."

"Ye longed for him and ye were proud of him, and if the sword of the righteous should slay thee, ye boasted in your heart that there was a man-child to continue your line. But there shall be none, and thine evil house shall die from out the land, like the house of Ahab, the son of Omri, who persecuted the saints. Fathers have seen their sons'

heads hung above the West Port to bleach in the sun for the sake of the Covenant, and mothers have wept for them who languished in the dungeon of the Ba.s.s and wearied for death. This is the cup ye are drinking this night before the time, for, behold, thou hast harried many homes, but thy house shall be left unto thee desolate."

For a brief s.p.a.ce Claverhouse bent his head, for he seemed to feel the child in his arms, as he had held him before leaving Glenogilvie. Then he rallied his manhood, who had never been given to quail before the hardest strokes of fortune.

"G.o.d rest his innocent soul, if this be his lot; but I live and with me my house."

"Yea, thou livest," said the shade, "and it has been a stumbling-block to many that thou wert spared so long, but the day of vengeance is at hand. Come again with me."

Claverhouse finds himself now on a plain with the hills above and a river beneath and an ancient house close at hand, and he knows that this is the battle-field of to-morrow. They are standing together on a mound which rises out of a garden, and on the gra.s.s the body of a man is lying. A cloth covers his face, but by the uniform and arms Claverhouse knows that it is that of an officer of rank, and one that has belonged to his own regiment of horse. A dint upon the cuira.s.s and the sight of the sword by his side catch his eye and he shudders.

"This--do I see myself?"

"Yes, thou seest thyself lying low as the humblest man and weaker now than the poorest of G.o.d's people thou didst mock."

"It is not other than I expected, nor does this make me afraid, and I judge thou art a lying spirit, for I see no wound. Lift up the cloth.

Nor any mark upon my face. I had not died for nothing."

"Nay, thou hadst been ready to die in the heat of battle facing thy foe, for there has ever been in thee a bold heart, but thy wound is not in front as mine is. See ye, Claverhouse, thou hast been killed from behind." And Claverhouse saw where the blood, escaping from a wound near the armpit, had stained the gra.s.s. "Aye, some one of thine own and riding near beside thee found that place, and as thou didst raise thine arm to call thy soldiers to the slaughter of them who are contending for the right, thou wast cunningly stricken unto death. By a coward's blow thou hast fallen, O valiant man, and there will be none to mourn thy doom, for thou hast been a man of blood from thy youth up, even unto this day."

"Thou liest there, and art a false spirit. It may be that your a.s.sa.s.sins are in my army, and that I may have the fate of the good archbishop whom the saints slew in cold blood and before his daughter's eyes. But if I fall I shall be mourned deep and long by one who was of your faith, and had her name in your Covenant, but whose heart I won like goodly spoil taken from the mighty. If I die by the sword of my Lady Cochrane's men, her daughter will keep my grave green with her tears. If, living, I have been loved by one strong woman, and after I am dead am mourned by her, I have not lived in vain."

"Sayest thou," replied the shadowy figure, with triumphant scorn.

"That was a pretty catch-word to be repeated over the wine cup at the drinking of my lady's health. Verily thou didst deceive a daughter of the G.o.dly, and she was willing to be caught in the snare of thy fair face and soft words. Judge ye whether the child who breaks the bond of the Covenant and turns against the mother who bore her, is likely to be a true wife or a faithful widow. Again will I lift the veil, and thou wilt see with thine own eyes the things which are going to be, for as thou hast shown no mercy, mercy will not be shown to thee. Dost thou remember this place?"

Claverhouse is again within the gallery of Paisley Castle, and he is looking upon a marriage service. Before him are the people of five years ago, except that now young Lord Cochrane is Earl of Dundonald, and is giving away the bride, and my Lady Cochrane is not there either to bless or to ban. For a while he cannot see the faces of the bride or bridegroom, nor tell what they are, save that he is a soldier, and she is tall and proud of carriage.

"My marriage day!" exclaimed Claverhouse, his defiant note softening into tenderness, and the underlying sorrow rising into joy. "For this vision at least I bless thee, spirit, whoever thou mayest be, Brown or any other. That was the day of all my life, and I am ready now or any time in this world or the other to have it over again and pledge my troth to my one and only love, to my gallant lady and sweetheart, Jean."

"Thou wilt not be asked to take thy marriage vow again, Claverhouse, nor would thy presence be acceptable on this day. It is the wedding of my Lady Viscountess Dundee, but be not too sure that thou art the bridegroom. She that broke lightly the Covenant with her living heavenly bridegroom, will have little scruple in breaking the bond to a dead earthly bridegroom. Thy Jean hath found another husband."

From the faces of the bride and bridegroom the mysterious shadow, which hides the future from the present in mercy to us all, lifted.

It was Jean as majestic and as youthful as in the days when he wooed her in the pleasaunce, with her golden hair glittering as before in the sunshine, and the love-light again in her eye. And beside her, oh!

fickleness of a woman's heart, oh! irony of life, oh! cruelty to the most faithful pa.s.sion, Colonel Livingstone, now my Lord Kilsyth. And an expression of fierce satisfaction lit up the Covenanter's ghastly face.

"This then was thy revenge, Jean, for the insult I offered at Glenogilvie, and I was right in my fear that thy love was shattered.

Be it so," said Claverhouse, "I believe that thou wast loyal while I lived, and now, while I may have hoped other things of thee, I will not grudge thee in thy loneliness peace and protection. When this heart of mine, which ever beat for thee, lies cold in the grave, and my hair, that thou didst caress, has mingled with the dust, may joy be with thee, Jean, and G.o.d's sunshine ever rest upon thy golden crown.

Thou didst think, servant of the devil, to d.a.m.n my soul in the black depths of jealousy and hatred, as once I d.a.m.ned myself, but I have escaped, and I defy thee. Do as thou pleasest, thou canst not break my spirit or make me bend. Hast thou other visions?"

"One more," said the spirit, "and I have done with thee, proud and unrepentant sinner."

Before Claverhouse is a room in which there has been some sudden disaster, for the roof has fallen and buried in its ruins a bed whereon someone had been sleeping, and a cradle in which some child had been lying. In the foreground is a coffin covered by a pall.

"She was called before her judge without warning, prepared or unprepared, and thou hadst better see her for the last time ere she goes to the place of the dead." And then the cloth being lifted, Claverhouse looked on the face of his wife, with her infant child, not his, but Kilsyth's, lying at her feet. There was no abatement in the splendor of her hair, nor the pride of her countenance; the flush was still upon her cheek, and though her eyes were closed there was courage in the set of her lips. By an unexpected blow she had been stricken and perished, but in the fullness of her magnificent womanhood, and undismayed. Lying there she seemed to defy death, and her mother's curse, which had come true at last.

"So thou also art to be cut off in the midst of thy days, Jean. Better this way both for you and me, than to grow old and become feeble, and be carried to and fro, and be despised. We were born to rule and not to serve, to conquer and not to yield, to persecute if need be, but not to be persecuted. Kilsyth loved thee, it was not his blame, who would not? He did his best to please thee. Mayhap it was not much he could do, but that was not his blame. He was thy husband for awhile, but I am thy man forever. Thou art mine and I am thine, for we are of the same creed and temper. I, John Graham of Claverhouse, and not Kilsyth, will claim thee on the judgment day, and thou shalt come with me, as the eagle follows her mate; together we shall go to Heaven or to h.e.l.l, for we are one. Slain we may be, Jean, but conquered never.

We have lived, we have loved, and neither in life or death can anyone make us afraid."

Outside the trumpets sounded and Claverhouse awoke, for the visions of the night had pa.s.sed and the light of the morning was pouring into his room.

CHAPTER III

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

It is written in an ancient book "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning," and with the brief darkness of the summer night pa.s.sed the shadow from Claverhouse's soul. According, also, to the brightness and freshness of the early sunshine was his high hope on the eventful day, which was to decide both the fate of his king and of himself. The powers of darkness had attacked him on every side, appealing to his fear and to his faith, to his love and to his hate, to his pride and to his jealousy, to see whether they could not shake his constancy and break his spirit. They had failed at every a.s.sault, and he had conquered; he had risen above his ghostly enemies and above himself, and now, having stood fast against princ.i.p.alities and powers of the other world, he was convinced that his earthly enemies would be driven before him as chaff before the wind. He knew exactly what MacKay and his army could do, and what he and his army could, in the place of issue, where, by the mercy of G.o.d, Who surely was on the side of His anointed, the battle would be fought. What would avail MacKay's parade-ground tactics and all the lessons of books, and what would avail the drilling and the manoeuvring of his hired automatons in the pa.s.s of Killiecrankie, with its wooded banks and swift running river, and narrow gorge and surrounding hills? This was no level plain for wheeling right and wheeling left, for bombarding with artillery and flanking by ma.s.ses of cavalry. Claverhouse remembers the morning of the battle of Seneffe, when he rode with Carleton and longed to be on the hills with a body of Highlanders, and have the chance of taking by surprise the lumbering army of the Prince of Orange and sweeping it away by one headlong charge. The day for this onslaught had come, and by an irony, or felicity, of Providence, he has the troops he had longed for and his rival has the inert and helpless regulars. News had come that MacKay was marching with phlegmatic steadiness and perfect confidence into the trap, and going to place himself at the greatest disadvantage for his kind of army. The Lord was giving the Whigs into his hand, and they would fall before the sun set, as a prey unto his sword. The pa.s.sion of battle was in his blood, and the laurels of victory were within his reach. Graham forgot his bitter disappointments and cowardly friends, the weary journeys and worse anxieties of the past weeks, the cunning cautiousness of the chiefs and their maddening jealousies. Even the pitiable scene at Glenogilvie and his gnawing vain regret faded for the moment from his memory and from his heart. If the Lowlands had been cold as death to the good cause, the Highlands had at last taken fire; if he had not one-tenth the army he should have commanded, had every Highlander shared his loyalty to the ancient line, he had sufficient for the day's work. If he had spoken in vain to the king at Whitehall and miserably failed to put some spirit into his timid mind, and been outvoted at the Convention, and been driven from Edinburgh by Covenanting a.s.sa.s.sins and hunted like a brigand by MacKay's troops, his day had now come. He was to taste for the first time the glorious cup of victory. He had not been so glad or confident since his marriage day, when he s.n.a.t.c.hed his bride from the fastness of his enemy, and as Grimond helped him to arm, and gave the last touches to his martial dress, he jested merrily with that solemn servitor, and sang aloud to Grimond's vast dismay, who held the good Scottish faith that if you be quiet Providence may leave you alone, but if you show any sign of triumph it will be an irresistible temptation to the unseen powers.

"I'm judging my lord, that we'll win the day, and that it will be a crownin' victory. I would like fine to see MacKay's army tumble in are great heap into the Garry, with their general on the top o' them. I'm expectin' to see ye ride into Edinburgh at the head o' the clans, and the Duke o' Gordon come oot frae the castle to greet you, as the king's commander-in-chief, and a' Scotland lyin' at yir mercy. But for ony sake be cautious, Maister John, and dinna mak a noise, it's juist temptin' Providence, an' the Lord forgie me for sayin' it, I never saw a hicht withoot a howe. I'm no wantin' you to be there afore the day is done. Dinna sing thae rantin' camp songs, and abune a' dinna whistle till a' things be settled; at ony rate, it's no canny."