The Billow and the Rock Part 4

When the building they were approaching came in view, the poor lady wondered how it could ever be made warm and comfortable. It was a little old tower, the top of which was in ruins, and the rest as dreary looking as possible. Cold and bare it stood on a waste hill-side. It would have looked like a mere grey pillar set down on the scanty pasture, but for a square patch behind, which was walled in by a hard ugly wall of stones. A thin grey smoke arose from it, showing that someone was within; and dogs began to bark as the party drew near.

One woman was here as at the last resting place. She showed the way by the narrow winding stair, up which Lady Ca.r.s.e was carried like a corpse, and laid on a little bed in a _very_ small room, whose single window was boarded up, leaving only a square of gla.s.s at the top to admit the light. Mr Forster stood at the bedside, and said firmly, "Now, Lady Ca.r.s.e, listen to me for a moment, and then you will be left with such freedom as this room and this woman's attendance can afford you. You are so exhausted, that we have changed our plan of travel. You will remain here, in this room, till you have so recruited yourself by food and rest as to be able to proceed to a place where all restraint will be withdrawn. When you think yourself able to proceed, and declare your willingness to do so, I, or a friend of mine, will be at your service-- at your call at any hour. Till then this room is your abode; and till then I bid you farewell."

He unfastened the bandage, and was gone before she could speak to him.

What she wanted to say was, that on such terms she would never leave this room again. She desired the woman to tell him so; but the woman said she had orders to carry no messages.

Where there is no help and no hope, any force of mere temper is sure to give way, as Mr Forster well knew. Injured people who have done no wrong, and who bear no anger against their enemies, have an inward strength and liberty of mind which enable them to bear on firmly, and to be immovable in their righteous purposes; so that, as has been shown by many examples, they will be torn limb from limb sooner than yield. Lady Ca.r.s.e was an injured person--most deeply injured, but she was not innocent. She had a purpose; but it was a vindictive one; and her soul was all tossed with pa.s.sion, instead of being settled in patience. So her intentions of starving herself--of making Mr Forster miserable by killing herself through want of sleep and food, gave way; and then she was in a rage with herself for having given way. When all was still in the tower, and the silent woman who attended her knitted on for hours together, as if she was a machine; and there was nothing to be seen from the boarded window; and the smouldering peats in the fireplace looked as if they were asleep, Lady Ca.r.s.e could not always keep awake, and, once asleep, she did not wake for many hours.

When, at length, she started up and looked around her, she was alone, and the room was lighted only by a flickering blaze from the fireplace.

This dancing light fell on a little low round table, on which was a plate with some slices of mutton-ham, some oatcake, three or four eggs, and a pitcher. She was ravenously hungry, and she was alone. She thought she would take something--so little as to save her pride, and not to show that she had yielded. But, once yielding, this was impossible. She ate, and ate, till all was gone--even the eggs; and it would have been the same if they had been raw. The pitcher contained ale, and she emptied it. When she had done, she could have died with shame. She was just thinking of setting her dress on fire, when she heard the woman's step on the stair. She threw herself on the bed, and pretended to be asleep. Presently she was so, and she had another long nap. When she woke the table had nothing on it but the woman's knitting; the woman was putting peats on the fire, and she made no remark, then or afterwards, on the disappearance of the food. From that day forward food was laid out while the lady slept; and when she awoke, she found herself alone to eat it. It was served without knife or fork, with only bone spoons. It would have been intolerable shame to her if she had known that she was watched, through a little hole in the door, as a precaution against any attempt on her life.

But her intentions of this kind too gave way. She was well aware that though not free to go where she liked she could, any day, find herself in the open air with liberty to converse, except on certain subjects; and that she might presently be in some abode--she did not know what-- where she could have full personal liberty, and her present confinement being her own choice made it much less dignified, and this caused her to waver about throwing off life and captivity together. The moment never came when she was disposed to try.

At the end of a week she felt great curiosity to know whether Mr Forster was at the tower all this time waiting her pleasure. She would not enquire lest she should be suspected of the truth--that she was beginning to wish to see him. She tried one or two distant questions on her attendant, but the woman knew nothing. There seemed to be no sort of question that she could answer.

In a few days more the desire for some conversation with somebody became very pressing, and Lady Ca.r.s.e was not in the habit of denying herself anything she wished for. Still, her pride pulled the other way. The plan she thought of was to sit apparently musing or asleep by the fire while her attendant swept the floor of her room, and suddenly to run downstairs while the door was open. This she did one day, when she was pretty sure she had heard an unusual sound of horses' feet below. If Mr Forster should be going without her seeing him it would be dreadful.

If he should have arrived after an absence this would afford a pretext for renewing intercourse with him. So she watched her moment, sprang to the door, and was down the stair before her attendant could utter a cry of warning to those below.

Lady Ca.r.s.e stood on the last stair, gazing into the little kitchen, which occupied the ground floor of the tower. Two or three people turned and gazed at her, as startled, perhaps, as herself; and she _was_ startled, for one of them was Lord Lovat.

Mr Forster recovered himself, bowed, and said that perhaps she found herself able to travel; in which case, he was at her service.

"O dear, no!" she said. She had no intention whatever of travelling further. She had heard an arrival of hors.e.m.e.n, and had merely come down to know if there was any news from Edinburgh.

Lord Lovat bowed, said he had just arrived from town, and would be happy to wait on her upstairs with any tidings that she might enquire for.

"By no means," she said, haughtily. She would wait for tidings rather than learn them from Lord Lovat. She turned, and went upstairs again, stung by hearing Lord Lovat's hateful laugh behind her as she went.

As she sat by the fire, devouring her shame and wrath, her attendant came up with a handful of newspapers, and Lord Lovat's compliments, and he had sent her the latest Edinburgh news to read, as she did not wish to hear it from him. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the papers, meaning to thrust them into the fire in token of contempt for the sender; but a longing to read them came over her, and she might convey sufficient contempt by throwing them on the bed--and this she accordingly did.

She watched them, however, as a cat does a mouse. The woman seemed to have no intention of going down any more to-day. Whether the lady was watched, and her impatience detected, through the hole in the door, or whether humanity suggested that the unhappy creature should be permitted an hour of solitude on such an occasion, the woman was called down, and did not immediately return.

How impatiently, then, were the papers seized! How unsettled was the eye which ran over the columns, while the mind was too feverish to comprehend what it read! In a little while, however, the ordinary method of newspaper reading established itself, and she went on from one item to another with more amus.e.m.e.nt than anxiety. In this mood, and with the utmost suddenness, she came upon the announcement, in large letters, of "The Funeral of Lady Ca.r.s.e!" It was even so! In one paper was a paragraph intimating the threatening illness of Lady Ca.r.s.e; in the next, the announcement of her death; in the third, a full account of her funeral, as taking place from her husband's house.

Her fate was now clear. She was lost to the world for ever! In the midst of the agony of this doom she could yet be stung by the thought that this was the cause of Lord Lovat's complaisance in sending her the newspapers; that here was the reason of the only indulgence which had been permitted her!

As for the rest, her mind made short work of it. Her object must now be to confound her foes--to prove to the world that she was not dead and buried. From this place she could not do this. Here there was no scope and no hope. In travelling, and in her future residence, there might be a thousand opportunities. She could not stay here another hour, and so she sent word to Mr Forster. His reply was that he should be happy to escort her that night. From the stair-head she told him that she could not wait till night. He declared it impossible to make provision for her comfort along the road without a few hours' notice by a horseman sent forward. The messenger was already saddling his horse, and by nine in the evening the rest of the party would follow.

At nine the lady was on her pillion, but now comfortably clad in a country dress--homely, but warm. It was dark, but she was informed that the party thoroughly knew their road, and that in four or five days they should have the benefit of the young moon.

So, after four or five days, they were to be still travelling! Where could they be carrying her?

CHAPTER FIVE.

CROSS ROADS AND SHORT SEAS.

Where they were carrying her was more than Lady Ca.r.s.e herself could discover. To the day of her death she never knew what country she had traversed during the dreary and fatiguing week which ensued. She saw Stirling Castle standing up on its mighty rock against the dim sky; and she knew that before dawn they had entered the Highlands.

But beyond this she was wholly ignorant. In those days there were no milestones on the road she travelled. The party went near no town, stopped at no inn, and never permitted her an opportunity of speaking to anyone out of their own number. They always halted before daylight at some solitary house--left open for them, but uninhabited--or at some cowshed, where they shook down straw for her bed, made a fire, and cooked their food; and at night they always remounted, and rode for many hours, through a wild country, where the most hopeful of captives could not dream of rescue. Sometimes they carried torches while ascending a narrow ravine, where a winter torrent dashed down the steep rocks and whirled away below, and where the lady unawares showed her desire to live by clinging faster to the horseman behind whom she rode. Sometimes she saw the whole starry hemisphere resting like a dome on a vast moorland, the stars rising from the horizon here and sinking there, as at sea.

The party rarely pa.s.sed any farmsteads or other dwellings; and when they did silence was commanded, and the riders turned their horses on the gra.s.s or soft earth, in order to appear as little as possible like a cavalcade to any wakeful ears. Once, on such an occasion, Lady Ca.r.s.e screamed aloud; but this only caused her to be carried at a gallop, which instantly silenced her, and then to be gagged for the rest of the night. She would have promised to make no such attempt again, such a horror had she now of the m.u.f.fle which bandaged her mouth, but n.o.body asked her to promise. On the contrary, she heard one man say to another, that the lady might scream all night long now, if she liked; n.o.body but the eagles would answer her, now she was among the Frasers.

Among the Frasers! Then she was on Lord Lovat's estates. Here there was no hope for her; and all her anxiety was to get on, though every step removed her further from her friends, and from the protection of law. But this was exactly the place where she was to stop for a considerable time.

Having arrived at a solitary house among moorland hills, Mr Forster told her that she would live here till the days should be longer, and the weather warm enough for a more comfortable prosecution of her further journey. He would advise her to take exercise in the garden, small as it was, and to be cheerful, and preserve her health, in expectation of the summer, when she would reach a place where all restrictions on her personal liberty would cease. He would now bid her farewell.

"You are going back to Edinburgh," said she, rising from her seat by the fire. "You will see Lord Ca.r.s.e. Tell him that though he has buried his wife, he has not got rid of her. She will haunt him--she will shame him--she will ruin him yet."

"I see now--" observed a voice behind her. She turned and perceived Lord Lovat, who addressed himself to Mr Forster, saying, "I see now that it _is_ best to let such people live. If she were dead, we cannot say but that she might haunt him; though I myself have no great belief of it. As it is, she is safe out of his way--at any rate, till she dies first. I see now that his method is the right one."

"Why, I don't know, my lord," replied Lady Ca.r.s.e. "You should consider how little trouble it would have cost to put me out of the way in my grave; and how much trouble I am costing you now. It is some comfort to me to think of the annoyance and risk, and fatigue and expense, I am causing you all."

"You mistake the thing, madam. We rejoice in these things, as incurred for the sake of some people over the water. It gratifies our loyalty-- our loyalty, madam, is a sentiment which exalts and endears the meanest services, even that of sequestrating a spy, an informer."

"Come, come, Lovat, it is time we were off," said Mr Forster, who was at once ashamed of his companion's brutality, and alarmed at its effect upon the lady. She looked as if she would die on the spot. She had not been aware till now how her pride had been gratified by the sense of her own importance, caused by so many gentlemen of consequence entering into her husband's plot against her liberty. She was now rudely told that it was all for their own sakes. She was controlled not as a dignified and powerful person, but as a mischievous informer. She rallied quickly-- not only through pride, but from the thought that power is power, whencesoever derived, and that she might yet make Lord Lovat feel this.

She curtseyed to the gentlemen, saying, "It is your turn now to jeer, gentlemen; and to board up windows, and the like. The day may come when I shall sit at a window to see your heads fall."

"Time will show," said Lord Lovat, with a smile, and an elegant bow.

And they left her alone.

They no longer feared to leave her alone. Her temper was well-known to them; and her purposes of ultimate revenge, once clearly announced, were a guarantee that she would, if possible, live to execute them. She would make no attempts upon her life henceforward. Weeks and months pa.s.sed on. The snow came, and lay long, and melted away. Beyond the garden wall she saw sprinklings of young gra.s.s among the dark heather; and now the bleat of a lamb, and now the scudding brood of the moor-fowl, told her that spring was come. Long lines of wild geese in the upper air, winging steadily northwards, indicated the advancing season. The whins within view burst into blossom; and the morning breeze which dried the dews wafted their fragrance. Then the brooding mists drew off under the increasing warmth of the sun; and the lady discovered that there was a lake within view--a wide expanse, winding away among mountains till it was lost behind their promontories. She strained her eyes to see vessels on this lake, and now and then she did perceive a little sail hoisted, or a black speck, which must be a rowboat traversing the waters when they were sheeny in the declining sun. These things, and the lengthening and warmth of the days, quickened her impatience to be removed. She often asked the people of the house whether no news and no messengers had come; but they did not improve in their knowledge of the English tongue any more than she did in that of the Gaelic, and she could obtain no satisfaction. In the sunny mornings she lay on the little turf plat in the garden, or walked restlessly among the cabbage-beds (being allowed to go no further), or shook the locked gate desperately, till someone came out to warn her to let it alone. In the June nights she stood at her window, only one small pane of which would open, watching the mists shifting and curling in the moonlight, or the sheet lightning which now and then revealed the lake in the bosom of the mountains, or appeared to lay open the whole sky. But June pa.s.sed away, and there was no change. July came and went--the sun was visibly shortening his daily journey, and leaving an hour of actual darkness in the middle of the night: and still there was no prospect of a further journey. She began to doubt Mr Forster as much as she hated Lord Lovat, and to say to herself that his promises of further personal liberty in the summer were mere coaxing words, uttered to secure a quiet retreat from her presence. If she could see him, for only five minutes, how she would tell him her mind!

She never again saw Mr Forster: but, one night in August, while she was at the window, and just growing sleepy, she was summoned by the woman of the house to dress herself for a night ride. She prepared herself eagerly enough, and was off presently, without knowing anything of the hors.e.m.e.n who escorted her.

It was with a gleam of pleasure that she saw that they were approaching the lake she had so often gazed at from afar: and her heart grew lighter still when she found that she was to traverse it. She began to talk, in her new exhilaration; and she did not leave off, though n.o.body replied.

But her exclamations about the sunrise, the clearness of the water, and the leaping of the fish, died away when she looked from face to face of those about her, and found them all strange and very stern. At last, the dip of the oars was the only sound; but it was a pleasant and soothing one. All went well this day. After landing, the party proceeded westwards--as they did nightly for nearly a week. It mattered little that they did not enter a house in all that time. The weather was so fine, that a sheepfold, or a gra.s.sy nook of the moorland, served all needful purposes of a resting place by day.

On the sixth night, a surprise, and a terrible surprise, awaited the poor lady. Her heart misgave her when the night wind brought the sound of the sea to her ears--the surging sea which tosses and roars in the rocky inlets of the western coast of Scotland. But her dismay was dreadful when she discovered that there was a vessel below, on board which she was to be carried without delay. On the instant, dreadful visions arose before her imagination, of her being carried to a foreign sh.o.r.e, to be delivered into the hands of the Stuarts, to be punished as a traitor and spy; and of those far off plantations and dismal colonies where people troublesome to their families were said to be sent, to be chained to servile labour with criminals and slaves. She wept bitterly: she clasped her hands--she threw herself at the feet of the conductor of the party--she appealed to them all, telling them to do what they would with her, if only they would not carry her to sea. Most of them looked at one another, and made no reply--not understanding her language. The conductor told her to fear nothing, as she was in the hands of the Macdonalds, who had orders from Sir Alexander Macdonald, of Skye, to provide for her safety. He promised that the voyage would not be a long one; and that as soon as the sloop should have left the loch she should be told where she was going. With that, he lifted her lightly, stepped into a boat, and was rowed to the sloop, where she was received by the owner, and half a dozen other Macdonalds. For some hours they waited for a wind; and sorely did the master wish it would come; for the lady lost not a glimpse of an opportunity of pleading her cause, explaining that she was stolen from Edinburgh, against the laws. He told her she had better be quiet, as nothing could be done. Sir Alexander Macdonald was in the affair. He, for one, would never keep her or anyone against their will unless Sir Alexander Macdonald were in it: but nothing could be done. He saw, however, that some impression was made on one person, who visited the sloop on business, one William Tolney, who had connexions at Inverness, from having once been a merchant there, and who was now a tenant of the Macleods, in a neighbouring island. This man was evidently touched; and the Macdonalds held a consultation in consequence, the result of which was that William Tolney was induced to be silent on what he had seen and heard. But for many a weary year after did Lady Ca.r.s.e turn with hope to the image of the stranger who had listened to her on board the sloop, taken the address of her lawyer, and said that in his opinion something must be done.

In the evening the wind rose, and the sloop moved down the loch. With a heavy heart the lady next morning watched the vanishing of the last of Glengarry's seats, on a green platform between the grey and bald mountains; then the last fishing hamlet on the sh.o.r.es; and, finally, a flock of herons come abroad to the remotest point of the sh.o.r.e from their roosting places in the tall trees that sheltered Glengarry's abode. After that all was wretchedness. For many days she was on the tossing sea--the sloop now scudding before the wind, now heaving on the troubled waters, now creeping along between desolate looking islands, now apparently lost amidst the boundless ocean. At length, soon after sunrise, one bright morning, the sail was taken in, and the vessel lay before the entrance of an harbour which looked like the mouth of a small river. At noon the sun beat hot on the deck of the sloop. In the afternoon the lady impatiently asked what they were waiting for--if this really was, as she was told, their place of destination. The wind was not contrary; what where they waiting for?

"No, madam; the wind is fair. But it is a curious circ.u.mstance about this harbour that it can be entered safely only at night. It is one of the most dangerous harbours in all the isles."

"And you dare to enter it at night? What do you mean?"

"I will show you, madam, when night comes."

Lady Ca.r.s.e suspected that the delay was on her account; that she was not to land by daylight, less too much sympathy should be excited by her among the inhabitants. Her indignation at this stimulated her to observe all she could of the appearance of the island, in case of opportunity occurring to turn to the account of an escape any knowledge she might obtain. On the rocky ledges which stretched out into the sea lay basking several seals; and all about them, and on every higher ledge, were myriads of puffins. Hundreds of puffins and fulmars were in the air, and skimming the waters. The fulmars poised themselves on their long wings; the fat little puffins poffled about in the water, and made a great commotion where everything else was quiet. From these lower ridges of rock vast ma.s.ses arose, black and solemn, some perpendicular, some with a slope too steep and smooth to permit a moment's dream of climbing them. Even on this warm day of August the clouds had not risen above the highest peaks; and they threw a gloom over the interior of the small island, while the skirting rocks and sea were glittering in the sunshine. Even the scanty herbage of the slopes at the top of the rocks looked almost a bright green where the sun fell upon it; and especially where it descended so far as to come into contrast with the blackness of the yawning caverns with which the rocky wall was here and there perforated.

The lady perceived no dwellings; but Macdonald, who observed her searching gaze, pointed his gla.s.s and invited her to look through it.

At first she saw nothing but a dim confusion of grey rocks and dull gra.s.s; but at length she made out a grey cottage, with a roof of turf, and a peat stack beside it.

"I see one dwelling," said the lady.

"You see it," observed Macdonald, satisfied, and resuming his gla.s.s.

Then, observing the lady was not satisfied, he added, "There are more dwellings, but they are behind yonder ridge, out of sight. That is where my place is."