Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXI Part 19

"Both points are of easy adjustment, your Grace," said Sir Robert. "Your Grace has only to intimate a wish to our host, when he returns, that you would feel gratified by his introducing his lady to you; and as to the matter of decision, I would, with your Grace's permission and approval, put that into the hands of the gentlemen present. Of course, nothing need be said of the purpose of this proceeding to either host or hostess."

"Well, be it so," said James, urged on by the madcaps around him, who were delighted with the idea of the thing. "Now then, gentlemen," he continued, "the lady on whose beauty I stake my thousand merks is Jessie Craig, the merchant's daughter, of Glasgow, whom, I think, all of you have seen."

"Ha! my townswoman," exclaimed Sir Robert, with every appearance of surprise. "On my word, you have made mine a hard task of it; for a fairer maiden than Jessie Craig may not so readily be found.

Nevertheless, I adhere to the terms of my bet."

The Provost had just done speaking, when Sir James Crawford entered the apartment, and resumed his seat at table. Shortly after he had done so, James, addressing him, said--

"Sir James, it would complete the satisfaction of these gentlemen and myself with the hospitality you have this day shown us, were you to afford us an opportunity of paying our respects to your good lady; that is, if it be perfectly convenient for and agreeable to her."

"Lady Crawford will be but too proud of the honour, your Grace," replied Sir James, rising. "She shall attend your Grace presently."

Saying this, the latter again withdrew; and soon after returned, leading a lady, over whose face hung a long and flowing veil, into the royal presence.

It would require the painter's art to express adequately the looks of intense and eager interest with which James and his party gazed on the veiled beauty, as she entered the apartment and advanced towards them.

Their keen and impatient scrutiny seemed as if it would pierce the tantalizing obstruction that prevented them seeing those features on whose beauty so large a sum had been staked. In this state of annoying suspense, however, they were not long detained. On approaching within a few paces of the king, and at the moment Sir James Crawford said, with a respectful obeisance, "My wife, Lady Crawford, your Grace," she raised her veil, and exhibited to the astonished monarch and his courtiers a surpa.s.singly beautiful countenance indeed; but it was that of Jessie Craig.

"A trick! a trick!" exclaimed James, with merry shout, and amidst a peal of laughter from all present, and in which the fair cause of all this stir most cordially joined. "A trick, a trick, Provost! a trick!"

repeated James.

"Nay, no trick at all, your Grace, craving your Grace's pardon," replied the Provost gravely. "Your Grace betted that Jessie Craig was more beautiful than Lady Crawford. Now, is it so? I refer the matter, as agreed upon, to the gentlemen around us."

"Lost! lost!" exclaimed half a dozen gallants at once.

"Well, well, gentlemen, since you so decide," said James, "I will instantly give our good Provost here an order upon our treasurer for the sum."

"Nay, your Grace, not so fast. The money is as safe in your hands as mine. Let it there remain till I require it. When I do, I shall not fail to demand it."

"Be it so, then," said James, when, placing his fair hostess beside him, and after obtaining a brief explanation--which we will, in the sequel, give at more length--of the odd circ.u.mstance of finding Jessie Craig converted into Lady Crawford, the mirth and hilarity of the party were resumed, and continued till pretty far in the afternoon, when the king and his courtiers took horse,--the former at parting having presented his hostess with a ma.s.sive gold chain which he wore about his neck, in token of his good wishes,--and rode off for Stirling.

To our tale we have now only to add the two or three explanatory circ.u.mstances above alluded to.

In Sir James Crawford the reader is requested to recognise the young man who discovered Jessie Craig, then the unknown fair one, by the side of the fountain in the little elm grove at Woodlands.

Encouraged by and acting on the adage already quoted,--namely, that "faint heart never won fair lady,"--he followed up his first accidental interview with the fair fugitive from royal importunity with an a.s.siduity that in one short week accomplished the wooing and winning of her.

While the first was in progress, Sir James was informed by the young lady of the reasons for her concealment. On this and the part Sir Robert Lindsay had acted towards her being made known to him, he lost no time in opening a communication with that gentleman, riding repeatedly into Glasgow himself to see him on the subject of his fair charge; at the same time informing him of the attachment he had formed for her, and finally obtaining his consent, or at least approbation, to their marriage. The bet, we need hardly add, was a concerted joke between the Provost, Sir James, and his lady.

When we have added that the circ.u.mstance of Sir Robert Lindsay's delay in returning for Jessie Craig, which excited so much surprise at Woodlands, was owing to the unlooked-for prolongation of the king's stay in Glasgow, we think we have left nothing unexplained that stood in need of such aid.

THE BRIDE OF BELL'S TOWER.

Some time ago I made inquiry at the editor of _Notes and Queries_ for information as to the whereabouts of an old mansion called Bell's Tower, and whether it was occupied by a family of the name of Bower; but my inquiry was not attended with any success beyond the usual production of surmises and speculations. There was a place so called in Perthshire; but then it never was occupied by people of that name,--the Bowers being an old family in Angus, whose princ.i.p.al messuage was Kincaldrum. Yet I cannot be mistaken in the name, either of the house or the family, as connected with the occurrences of the tradition, the essentials of which have floated in my mind ever since I heard them from one to whom they were also traditional. Then the story has something of an antique air about it, as may be noticed from the application of adjectives to baptismal names, as Devil Isobel and Sweet Marjory,--by no means a modern usage, but easily recognised in a.n.a.logues of our old poetry. We may say, at least, that whether the Bowers were a very or only a moderately ancient family, Bell's Tower was an old structure--the name being applied to the mansion, which was an addition to a peel or castle-house of many centuries--not without its battlements and barnkin, and all the other appurtenances of a strength, as such places were called.

Had we more to do than our subject requires with the _physique_ of this mansion--and we have something; for what romance in the moral world is independent of a _locale_, and of those lights and shadows that play where men live and act all the wondrous things they do?--we might be particular in our description; but our narrator's shade will be sufficiently conciliated, if we say that there was room enough, and ill-lighted chambers enough, and sufficiently tortuous breakneck stairs here and there, as well as those peculiar to castles, lobbies in all conscience long enough--not forgetting a blue parlour with some mysterious a.s.sociations--to supply elements for genius to weave the many-coloured web of fiction. But we have a humbler part to play; and it begins here,--that Mrs. Bower had in the said blue parlour, a fortnight before our incidents, told her eldest daughter, whom we are, for the sake of the antique nomenclature--discriminative, and therefore kindly, if also sometimes harsh--to call Sweet Marjory, a piece of information, to her unexpected and strange,--no other than that Isobel, her sister, was the accepting and accepted of the rich and chivalrous youth, Hector Ogilvy, a neighbouring laird's son. Nor would it have appeared wonderful, if we had known more of the inside of that heaving breast, wherein a heart was too obedient to those magic chords, with their minute capillaries spread over the tympanum, that Marjory was as mute and pale as a statue of marble. But the truth really was, that Ogilvy had courted Marjory, and won her heart, and Isobel--Devil Isobel--had contrived means to win him to herself, at the expense of a sister's reputation for all the beautiful qualities that adorn human nature. And as all the world knows that both men and women hate those they injure, we may be at no loss to ascertain the feelings by which Isobel regarded Marjory. Nor shall those who know the nature of woman have any difficulty in supposing that not more carefully does nature guard in the bosom the physical organ of the affections, than she concealed the feelings which had for that fortnight eaten into the vital tissues of her being.

How swiftly that fortnight had flown for Isobel! how charged with heavy hours for Marjory! and to-morrow was the eventful day. What doings in Bell's Tower during this intervening time! what pattering of feet along the sombre lobbies! what gossiping among servants! what applications to the gate--comings and goings! and the rooms, how bestrewn with clippings of silk, and stray bits of artificial flowers! And, amidst all the triumphing, Isobel displayed her nature in spite of old saws and maxims, which lay upon brides conditions of reserve and humility, held to be so becoming in those who, as it were, occupy the place of a sacrifice; yea, if some tears are shed, so much better is custom obeyed. Then where could Marjory go, in the midst of this confusion of gaiety?--where, as the poet says, "weep her woes" in secret, and listen to the throbbings of a broken heart? Not in her own room, in the lower part of the castle tower, where her mother had still the privilege of chiding her for throwing the shadows of melancholy over a scene of happiness, and where Isobel would force an entrance, to show her, in the very spite of her evil nature, some bridal present from him who was still to the deserted one the idol of her heart. There was scarcely a refuge for grief, where joy was impatient of check, and, like all tyrants, would force reluctant conditions into a unanimity of compliance; but up these castle stairs, in the second room, there was one whom time had shut out from the sympathies of the world, so old, as to be almost forgotten, except by Marjory herself, who, all gentleness and love, delighted to supply vacant hearts with the fervours of her friendship, and to ameliorate evils by the appliances of her humanity.

With languid step she ascended the stair, and was presently beside her great-grandaunt, Patricia Bower. Twilight was dropping her wing, and the shadows were fast collecting round the square windows, which, narrow and grated, would scarcely at noonday let in light enough to enliven the human eye. There, solitary and in the gloom, sat the creature of the prior century, whose birth could only be arrived at by going through generations back ninety and five years before; but not gloom to her, to whom the light of memory was as a necromancer, arraying before the gleg eye of her spirit the images of persons and things and circ.u.mstances of the far past, with all the vividness of enchantment, and still even raising again those very loves and sympathies they elicited when they were of the pa.s.sing hour. Yet the doings in this house of Bell's Tower at the time, so far removed from the period of the living archetypes of her dreams, had got to her ear, where still the word marriage was a charm, against which the dry impa.s.sable nerve resisted in vain.

"I will go to this marriage, Marjory," she said, as the maiden entered, and without appearing to notice her distress.

"No, aunt," replied Marjory, as she sat down opposite to her.

"And shall I not?" continued the ancient maiden, as her eyes seemed to come forward out of the deep sockets into which they had long sunk, and emitted an unearthly l.u.s.tre. "And shall I not? It is four times a score of years bating five since I was at a bridal; and when all were waiting, ay, Marjory, expecting the young bridegroom, the door was opened, and four men carried in Walter Ogilvy's bleeding corpse, and laid him in the bridal hall; for he had been stabbed by a rival in the Craig Glen, down by there; and where could they take the body but to Bell's Tower, where his bride waited for him? But she did not go mad, Sweet Marjory; no, no."

And as the image grew more distinct in the internal chambers, so did the eyes shine more l.u.s.trously, like stars peering through between grey clouds; and the shrivelled muscles, obeying once more the excited nerve, imparted to her almost the appearance of youth. Gradually a humming tone essayed to take form in words; but the wavering treble disconcerted her, till, calming herself by some effort, she recited, in solemn see-saw--

"The guests they came from the grey mountain side,-- The bride she was fair, and the bride she was fain; But where was the lover, who sought not his bride?

Oh! a maid she is now, as a maid she was then; And her cheek it is pale, and her hair it is grey, Since the long long time of her bridal day."

The last line descended into a quavering whisper.

With the effusion, adopted probably from an old ditty, and brought forth from its long-retaining chamber of the brain by the inspiration of one of her often-returning visions, the fervour of the tasked spirit died away, and, reclining her head, she sat before the wondering Marjory--who had heard, as a tale of the family, and applicable to Patricia herself, the circ.u.mstances she had related--as one suspended between death and life; nor did it seem that it required more than a rude vibration to decide to which of the two worlds she would in a few minutes belong.

Only a short time sufficed to restore her to her ordinary composure, and, waving her shrivelled hand, she said--

"Open the door to the bartisan, Marjory, that I may have air, and see the moon, who, amidst all the changes of life, is ever the same to the miserable and the happy."

Marjory obeyed her; and as she looked forth, the moon was rising over the tops of the trees, as if to chase away the envious shades, ready to follow the departure of twilight. There was solace in her soft splendour for the melancholy of the youthful girl, which might be ameliorated by a turn of fortune, as well as for the sadness of her aged friend, which was not only beyond the influence of worldly change, but so like the forecast gloom of the grave, as if the inexorable tyrant, long disappointed, was already rejoicing in his victim. But no sooner was the door cas.e.m.e.nt opened, than the sound of voices entered. Then Marjory stepped out on the bartisan, not to listen, for her spirit was superior to artifice; and, leaning over the bartisan, she soon recognised the voices of Isobel and Ogilvy; nor could she escape the words--

"I loved her for her own sake," said he, "before I loved you, Isobel; and now I love her as your sister. But I shall have no peace in my wedded life with you, save on the condition that you love her also; for my conscience tells me I have not done by Sweet Marjory what is deemed according to the honour of man. You see what your power has been, Isobel. Nor would I have spoken thus on the very evening before our wedding, were it not that I have heard you do not love her, nay, that you hate her."

Then Marjory heard Devil Isobel reply; and she knew by the voice that she was in anger, though she cunningly repressed her pa.s.sion.

"Believe them not," said Isobel. "By the pale face of yonder moon, and all those bright stars that are coming out one by one to add honour upon honour to this evening, the last of my maiden life, I love sweet Marjory Bower; and I swear by Him who made all these heavenly orbs, that I shall love her as a sister ought."

"It pleases me much to hear my Isobel speak thus," said Ogilvy. "And hark ye, love, I have here a valuable locket, set with diamonds and opals--see, it contains the grey hair of my mother; and, will I or nill I, she will send this by me to Marjory as a love-token. Now I want to convey it to Sweet Marjory through you, because it will make you a party to the love-gift, and so bind us all in a circle of affection."

"Give it me," cried Isobel, fixing her piercing eye on the diamonds as they sparkled in the moonlight; "and, on the honour of a bride, I will give it to my sister, whom I love so dearly."

And Isobel continued to speak; but the movement of the lovers as they walked prevented Marjory from hearing more. Still she followed them with her weeping eyes, as their figures, clearly revealed to her by the moon, glided among the wide-standing trees of the lawn, and at length disappeared. The moon had now less solace for her. Her wound had been retouched by a hand of all others calculated to irritate, even by that of Ogilvy himself, who, she now knew, felt compunction for the cruelty of his desertion. His regret was too late to save her sorrow, but it was not too late to increase that sorrow; for the words by which he had uttered it reminded her, in their tone, of that unctuous luxury he had so often poured into her heart, and which, in their sincerity, were so unlike the dissimulation of her wicked sister. With a deep-drawn sigh she entered the bartisan cas.e.m.e.nt, shut it after her, and having spoken some kindly words to her aunt, whom she kissed, she sought her way down the bastle stair to her own room below. There she threw herself upon a couch, not to seek a.s.suagement, but only to give rest to limbs that would scarcely support her. Nor did the closed door keep from her ear those notes of preparation, coming in so many shapes; for there was, in addition to the customary rites of the great sacrifice, to be a sumptuous feast, at which, too, she would be expected to attend. Yet all these noisy tokens did not keep from her mind the tones of that remorse she had heard from the lips of Ogilvy, and she fondled them, in her misery, as one would the dead body of a dear friend on whose face still sat the look of love in which he died. By-and-by she heard once more the voice of Isobel, who had returned; and she trembled as she expected the visit in execution of her commission. The door opened, and there entered her sister, with a face, as it appeared in the light of the lamp she carried, beaming with the old exultation, mingled with the smile of a soft deceit.

"Look here, Sweet Marjory," she said, as she held out the golden trinket. "Saw you ever so lovely a piece of workmanship? But you cannot discern its value till you know it contains a lock of the hair of _my_ mother-in-law-to-be--Mrs. Ogilvy. That locket was given to me even now by my Hector, the bridegroom----"

"To give to me," sighed Marjory faintly.

"You lie for a false fiend," cried Devil Isobel. "He gave it to me, and to me it belongs."

"You may keep it," said Marjory; "but I heard Hector Ogilvy say to you that it was a gift from his mother to me, and you promised to him to deliver it."

Isobel's lips turned white and whiter, as her eye flared with the internal light struck out of the quivering nerve by the brain inflamed by fury. Nor was it the detection alone that produced these effects: she had construed Ogilvy's confession that he once loved Marjory into an admission that the latter was still dear to him, and she considered herself justified in her suspicion by the tones of his regret; then there had shot through her the pang of envy, when she heard that there was a gift for Marjory from the mother, and none to her. All these pent-up pa.s.sions had been quickened into expression by Marjory's gentle detection; and as Marjory looked at her, she trembled.

"Do not be angry at me, Isobel," she said. "I did not go out upon the bartisan to hear you; and as for the gift, I do not want it."

But Marjory's simplicity and generosity, in place of appeasing her pa.s.sion, only gave it a turn into a forced stifling, which suited the purpose of her dissimulation. In an instant the evil features, which, as a moral expression, had changed her into hideousness, gave way, and she stood before her sister the beautiful being who had enchanted Ogilvy out of his first and purest love.