Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume I Part 4

"For your sake!--for Heaven's sake! Laird Clennel! save my bairn!"

He turned hastily aside, and, seizing the hound by the throat, tore it from the lacerated girl, who sank, bleeding, terrified, and exhausted, upon the ground. Her features were beautiful, and her yellow hair contrasted ill with the tawny hue of her countenance and the snowy whiteness of her bosom, which in the struggle had been revealed. The elder gipsy woman approached. She knelt by the side of the wounded girl.

"O my bairn!" she exclaimed, "what has this day brought upon me!--they have murdered you! This is rueing, indeed; and I rue too!"

"Susan!" exclaimed Clennel, as he listened to her words, and his eyes had been for several seconds fixed upon her countenance.

"Yes!--Susan!--guilty Susan!" cried the gipsy.

"Wretch!" he exclaimed, "my child!--where is my child?--is _this_"----and he gazed on the poor girl, his voice failed him, and he burst into tears.

"Yes!--yes!" replied she bitterly, "it is her--there lies your daughter--look upon her face."

He needed, indeed, but to look upon her countenance--disfigured as it was, and dyed with weeds to give it a sallow hue--to behold in it every lineament of her mother's, lovely as when they first met his eye and entered his heart. He flung himself on the ground by her side, he raised her head, he kissed her cheek, he exclaimed, "My child!--my child!--my lost one! I have destroyed thee!"

He bound up her lacerated arms, and applied a flask of wine, which he carried with him, to her lips, and he supported her on his knee, and again kissing her cheek, sobbed, "My child!--my own!"

Andrew Smith also bent over her and said, "Oh, it is her! there isna the smallest doubt o' that. I could swear to her among a thousand. She's her mother's very picture." And, turning to Susan, he added, "O Susan, woman, but ye hae been a terrible hypocrite!"

Clennel having placed his daughter on horseback before him, supporting her with his arm, Susan was set between two of his followers, and conducted to the Hall.

Before the tidings were made known to Lady Clennel, the wounds of her daughter were carefully dressed, the dye that changed the colour of her countenance was removed, and her gipsy garb was exchanged for more seemly apparel.

Clennel anxiously entered the apartment of his lady, to reveal to her the tale of joy; but when he entered, he wist not how to introduce it.

He knew that excess of sudden joy was not less dangerous than excess of grief, and his countenance was troubled, though its expression was less sad than it had been for many years.

"Eleanor," he at length began, "cheer up."

"Why, I am not sadder than usual, dear," replied she, in her wonted gentle manner; "and to be more cheerful would ill become one who has endured my sorrows."

"True, true," said he, "but our affliction may not be so severe as we have thought--there may be hope--there may be joy for us yet."

"What mean ye, husband?" inquired she, eagerly; "have ye heard aught--aught of my children?--you have!--you have!--your countenance speaks it."

"Yes, dear Eleanor," returned he, "I have heard of our daughter."

"And she lives?--she lives?--tell me that she lives!"

"Yes, she lives."

"And I shall see her--I shall embrace my child again?"

"Yes, love, yes," replied he, and burst into tears.

"When--oh, when?" she exclaimed, "can you take me to her now?"

"Be calm, my sweet one. You shall see our child--our long-lost child.

You shall see her now--she is here."

"Here!--my child!" she exclaimed, and sank back upon her seat.

Words would fail to paint the tender interview--the mother's joy--the daughter's wonder--the long, the pa.s.sionate embrace--the tears of all--the looks--the words--the moments of unutterable feeling.

I shall next notice the confession of Susan. Clennel promised her forgiveness if she would confess the whole truth; and he doubted not, that from her he would also obtain tidings of his son, and learn where he might find him, if he yet lived. I shall give her story in her own words.

"When I came amongst you," she began, "I said that I was an orphan, and I told ye truly, so far as I knew myself. I have been reared amongst the people ye call gipsies from infancy. They fed me before I could provide for myself. I have wandered with them through many lands. They taught me many things; and, while young, sent me as a servant into families, that I might gather information to a.s.sist them in upholding their mysteries of fortune-telling, I dared not to disobey them--they kept me as their slave--and I knew that they would destroy my life for an act of disobedience. I was in London when ye cruelly burned down the bit town between the Keyheugh and Clovencrag. That night would have been your last, but Elspeth Faa vowed more cruel vengeance than death on you and yours. After our king had carried away your son, I was ordered from London to a.s.sist in the plot o' revenge. I at length succeeded in getting into your family, and the rest ye know. When ye were a' busy wi'

your company, I slipped into the woods wi' the bairn in my arms, where others were ready to meet us; and long before ye missed us, we were miles across the hills, and frae that day to this your daughter has pa.s.sed as mine."

"But tell me all, woman," cried Clennel, "as you hope for either pardon or protection--where is my son, my little Harry? Does he live?--where shall I find him?"

"As I live," replied Susan, "I cannot tell. There are but two know concerning him--and that is the king and his wife Elspeth; and there is but one way of discovering anything respecting him, which is by crossing Elspeth's loof, that she may betray her husband: and she would do it for revenge's sake, for an ill husband has he been to her, and in her old days he has discarded her for another."

"And where may she be found?" inquired Clennel, earnestly.

"That," added Susan, "is a question I cannot answer. She was with the people in the glen to-day, and was first to raise the laugh when your dog fastened its teeth in the flesh of your ain bairn. But she may be far to seek and ill to find now--for she is wi' those that travel fast and far, and that will not see her hindmost."

Deep was the disappointment of the laird when he found he could obtain no tidings of his son. But, at the intercession of his daughter (whose untutored mind her fond mother had begun to instruct), Susan was freely pardoned, promised protection from her tribe, and again admitted as one of the household.

I might describe the anxious care of the fond mother, as, day by day, she sat by her new-found and lovely daughter's side, teaching her, and telling her of a hundred things of which she had never heard before, while her father sat gazing and listening near them, rejoicing over both.

But the ray of sunshine which had penetrated the house of Clennel was not destined to be of long duration. At that period a fearful cloud overhung the whole land, and the fury of civil war seemed about to burst forth.

The threatening storm did explode; a bigoted king overstepped his prerogative, set at nought the rights and the liberties of the subject, and an indignant people stained their hands with blood. A political convulsion shook the empire to its centre. Families and individuals became involved in the general catastrophe; and the house of Clennel did not escape. In common with the majority of the English gentry of that period, Clennel was a stanch loyalist, and if not exactly a lover of the king, or an ardent admirer of his acts, yet one who would fight for the crown though it should (as it was expressed about the time) "hang by a bush." When, therefore, the parliament declared war against the king, and the name of Cromwell spread awe throughout the country, and when some said that a prophet and deliverer had risen amongst them, and others an ambitious hypocrite and a tyrant, Clennel armed a body of his dependants, and hastened to the a.s.sistance of his sovereign, leaving his wife and his newly-found daughter with the promise of a speedy return.

It is unnecessary to describe all that he did or encountered during the civil wars. He had been a zealous partizan of the first Charles, and he fought for the fortunes of his son to the last. He was present at the battle of Worcester, which Cromwell calls his "crowning mercy," in the September of 1651, where the already dispirited royalists were finally routed; and he fought by the side of the king until the streets were heaped with dead; and when Charles fled, he, with others, accompanied him to the borders of Staffordshire.

Having bid the young prince an affectionate farewell, Clennel turned back, with the intention of proceeding on his journey, on the following day, to Northumberland, though he was aware, that, from the part which he had taken in the royal cause, even his person was in danger. Yet the desire again to behold his wife and daughter overcame his fears, and the thought of meeting them in some degree consoled him for the fate of his prince, and the result of the struggle in which he had been engaged.

But he had not proceeded far when he was met by two men dressed as soldiers of the Parliamentary army--the one a veteran with grey hairs, and the other a youth. The shades of night had set in; but the latter he instantly recognized as a young soldier whom he had that day wounded in the streets of Worcester.

"Stand!" said the old man, as they met him; and the younger drew his sword.

"If I stand!" exclaimed Clennel, "it shall not be when an old man and a boy command me." And, following their example, he unsheathed his sword.

"Boy!" exclaimed the youth; "whom call ye boy?--think ye, because ye wounded me this morn, that fortune shall aye sit on your arm?--yield or try."

They made several thrusts at each other, and the old man, as an indifferent spectator, stood looking on. But the youth, by a dexterous blow, shivered the sword in Clennel's hand, and left him at his mercy.

"Now yield ye," he exclaimed; "the chance is mine now--in the morning it was thine."

"Ye seem a fair foe," replied Clennel, "and loath am I to yield, but that I am weaponless."

"Despatch him at once!" growled the old man. "If he spilled your blood in the morning, there can be no harm in spilling his the night--and especially after giein' him a fair chance."

"Father," returned the youth, "would ye have me to kill a man in cold blood?"

"Let him submit to be bound then, hands and eyes, or I will," cried the senior.

The younger obeyed, and Clennel, finding himself disarmed, submitted to his fate; and his hands were bound, and his eyes tied up, so that he knew not where they led him.