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

The dame was well apprised of their proceeding; and the open frankness of the youth dispelled all the fears of wrong which the innocence of the daughter, undefended by experience, might have scarcely guaranteed to one who, at least, had heard something of the ways of the world. The income from Whitecraigs, somewhere about seven hundred a-year, was more than sufficient for the expenditure of the older Haystons; and Hector, at this time, did not seem inclined to alter the line of life followed by his fathers. He had not spoken of marriage to the mother; but he had not hesitated to breathe into the ear of Alice all that was necessary to lead her to the conclusion, to which her heart jumped, that she was to be the lady of the stately white mansion that, at one time, had appeared to her as a great temple where humble wors.h.i.+ppers of the glen and the wood might not lay their sandals at the doorway. She had entered the vestibule only as an alms-seeker, and trembled to think she might have been observed throwing a side glance into the interior, where pier-gla.s.ses might have reflected the form of the russet-clad child of the valley and hill. The tale has been told a thousand times, and the world is not mended by it. The young master pressed her to his bosom, imprinted a kiss, and was away into the mazes of life in the metropolis, whither some affairs, left unsettled by his father, carried him. Six months pa.s.sed away, and the rents of the succeeding term were collected by Mr. Pringle, the agent of the family, in Peebles. There was no word for poor Alice, though the small allowance was handed in by the agent, who, ignorant of the state of matters between the young couple, informed the mother that the master of Whitecraigs was on the eve of being married to a young lady of some wealth in the metropolis. The statement was heard by the daughter; and what henceforth but that of Thekla's song:--

"The clouds are flying, the woods are sighing-- The maiden is walking the gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e; And as the wave breaks with might, with might, She singeth aloud through the darksome night; But a tear is in her troubled eye."

Alice Scott was changed; yet, who shall tell what that change was? If the slow and even progress of the spirit may defy the eye of the metaphysician, who may describe its moods of disturbance? Poetry is familiar with these things, and we have fair rhymes to tell us of the wanderings, and the lonely musings by mountain streams, and the eye that looks and sees not, and the wasting form, and the words that come like the sounds from deep caves; yet, after all, they tell us but little, and that little is but to tickle us with the resonance of spoken sentiment, leaving the sad truth as little understood as before. True it was, that Alice Scott did all these things, and more too: the charm of the hills and the water banks was gone: the light spirit that carried her along, as if borne on the winds, was quenched; the songs by which she gladdened the ears of her mother, as she plied her portable handwork on the green, was no more heard mingling its notes with the music of the Lyne; and the face that shone transparently, like painted alabaster, as if part of the light came from within, was as the poet says--

"Like an April morn Clad in a wintry cloud."

Nor did additional time seem to possess any power save that of increasing the pain of the heart-stroke. Most of the griefs of mortals have their appointed modes of alleviation--some are complaining griefs, some are talkative, and some sorrows are sociable for selfishness. But the heart-wound of her who has only those scenes of nature which were a.s.sociated with the image of the unkind one, to wear off the impressions of which, under other hues, they form a part, is a silent mourner. There is enough of a painful eloquence around her, and her voice would be only the small whisper that is lost in the wailings of the storm in the glen.

Yet painful as the language is, she courts it in silence, even while it mixes and blends with the poison which consumes her. It was in vain that her mother, who saw with a parental eye the malady which is the best understood by those of her cla.s.s and age, urged her with kindness to betake herself to her household duties. She was seldom to be prevailed upon to remain within doors; the hill-side, or the bosom of the glen, or the back of the willows by the water-side, were her choice. Ordinary meal times were forgotten or unheeded, where Nature had renounced her cravings, or given all her energies to the heart.

The next intelligence received at Homestead was that of the marriage of Hector Hayston, and his departure for France. The servants at Whitecraigs were discharged, as if there had been no expectation, for a long period, of the return of the young laird. The supply to the two females was increased, and paid by Mr. Pringle, who, now probably aware of the situation of Alice, delicately avoided any allusion to his employer. Report, however, was busy with her tales; and the absence of the youth was attributed to the workings of conscience or of shame.

There was little truth in the report. The object of his first affections might easily have been banished from Whitecraigs, and he who had been guilty of leaving her maybe supposed capable of removing her from scenes which could only add to her sorrow. A true solution of his conduct might have been found in the fact, that Hayston was now following his pleasures in the society of his wife's friends--a gay and lavish circle--and did not wish to detract from his enjoyment by adding banishment and dest.i.tution to a wrong now irremediable. Little more was heard of him for some time, with the exception of a floating report, that he had borrowed, through his agent, the sum of ten thousand pounds from a Mr. Colville, a neighbouring proprietor, and pledged to him Whitecraigs in security. The circ.u.mstance interested greatly the neighbouring proprietors, who shook their heads in significant augury of the probable fate of their young neighbour in the whirlpool of continental life. Yet the allowance to Dame Scott at the next term was regularly paid; and if there was a tear in her eye, as she looked, first at the money, and then at the thin, pallid creature who sat silent at the window, it was not that she dreaded its discontinuance from the result of the extravagance of the giver. The effect of the act of payment of the money had, on a former occasion, been noticed by Pringle on the conduct of Alice: it was on this occasion repeated. She rose from her seat, looked steadfastly for a moment at the gift as it lay on the table, placed her hand on her forehead, and flitted out of the room. The eye of the agent followed her from the window: her step was hurried, without an object of impulse. She might go--but whither? probably she knew not herself; yet on she sped till she was lost among the trees on the edge of the glen.

Thus longer time pa.s.sed, but there seemed no change to Alice, save in the continual decrease of the frame, under the pressure of a mind that communed with the past, and only looked to the future as containing some day that would witness the termination of her sorrows. The anglers on the Lyne became familiar with her figure, for they had seen it on the heights, with her garments floating in the breeze, and had come up to her as she sat by the waterside, but they pa.s.sed on. At the worst she could be but one whose spirit was not settled enough to admit of her according with the ways of honest maidens; and they might regret that the beauty that still lurked amidst the ravages of the disease of the heart, had not been turned to better account. It is thus that one part of mankind surveys another: they form their theory of a condition whose secret nature is only known to its possessor; draw their moral from false premises, formed as a compliment to their own conduct and situation, and pa.s.s on to their pleasure.

Yet there occurred an important exception to these remarks:--One day Alice had taken up her seat on the banks of a small pond in front of the house of Whitecraigs. She sat opposite to the front of the dwelling, and seemed to survey its closed windows and deserted appearance, with the long gra.s.s growing up through the gravel of the walks--the broken pailings and decayed out-houses; a scene that might be supposed to harmonize with the feelings of a mind broken and desolate. There might seem even a consanguinity in the causes of the condition of both. The scene might have suited the genius of a Danby. There was no living creature to disturb the silence. The house of faded white, among the dark trees, cheerless and forsaken; the face of Alice Scott emaciated and pale, with the l.u.s.tre of the loch, s.h.i.+ning in the sun, reflected on it, directed towards the habitation of which she should have been mistress; her eyes, which had forgotten the relief of tears, fixed on the scene so pregnant with unavailing reminiscences--with these we would aid the artist.

But the charm was gone, as a voice sounded behind her. She started, and, according to her custom, would have fled as the hare that remembers the snare; but she was detained. A man, advanced in years, poorly clad, with hair well smitten with snow tints, and a staff in his hand, stood beside her, holding her by the skirt of the gown.

"I am weary," said he; "I have walked from Moffat, and would sit here for a time, if you would speak to me of the scenes and people of these parts." And the application of his hand again to her gown secured a compliance, dictated more by fear than inclination. She sat, while she trembled. "You are fair," continued he; "but my experience of sorrow tells me that grief has been busier with your young heart than years. I will not pry into your secrets. To whom does Whitecraigs now belong?"

The name had not been breathed by her to mortal since that day she had heard of the intended marriage. She made an effort to p.r.o.nounce it, failed, and fixed her eyes on the pond. The stranger gazed on her, waiting for her reply.

"Hector Hayston," she at length muttered.

"And why has he left so fair a retreat to the desolation that has overtaken it?" rejoined he again. The question was still more unfortunate. She had no power to reply. Her face was turned from him, and repressed breathings heaved her bosom. "You may tell me, then, if one Dame Scott lives in these parts?" he said again, as he marked her strange manner, and probably augured that his prior question was fraught with pain.

"Yes--yes," she replied, with a sudden start, as if relieved from pain, while she regained her feet; "yonder lives my mother."

The stranger stood with his eyes fixed upon her, as if in deep scrutiny of the inexplicable features of her character and appearance; but he added not a word, till he saw her move as if she wished to be gone.

"You will go with me?" he said.

But the words were scarcely uttered, when she was away through the woods, leaving him to seek his way to the house of her mother, whither, accordingly, he directed his steps, from some prior knowledge he possessed of the locality about which he had been making inquiries. As he went along, he seemed wrapt in meditation--again and again looking back, to endeavour to get another sight of the girl, who was now seated on the edge of the stream, and again seized by some engrossing thought that claimed all the energies of his spirit. On coming up to the door of the cottage, he tapped gently with his long staff; and, upon being required by the dame to enter, he pa.s.sed into the middle of the floor, and stood and surveyed the house and its inmate.

"I have nothing for you," said the latter; "so you must pa.s.s on to those whom G.o.d has ordained as the distributors of what the needy require.

Alas! I am myself but a beggar."

The words seemed to have been wrung out of her by the meditative mood in which the stranger had found her, and, whether it was that the interest which had been excited in him by the appearance of the daughter had been increased by the confession of the mother, or that there was some secret cause working in his mind, he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, and for a moment turned away his head.

"I have been both a beggar and a giver in my day," he replied, as he laid down his hat and staff, and took a chair opposite to the dame; "and I am weary of the one character and of the other. I have got with a curse; and I have given for ingrat.i.tude. But I may here give, and you may receive, without either. There is an unoccupied bed; I am weary of wandering, and have enough to pay for rest."

"That is better than charity," rejoined the dame--"ay, even the charity of the stranger."

"And why of the _stranger_, dame?" added he. "I have hitherto thought that the charity of _friends_ was that which might be most easily borne.

And who may be your benefactor?"

"Hector Hayston of Whitecraigs," replied she, hanging her head, and drawing a deep breath.

The stranger detected the same symptoms of pain in the mother as those he had observed in the daughter.

"Then forgets he not his cottars in his absence," he added. "But why has he left a retreat fairer than any I have yet seen throughout a long pilgrimage over many lands?"

"We will not speak of that," she replied, rising slowly, and going to the window, where she stood for a time in silence.

"You have a daughter, dame," resumed the man, as he watched the indications of movement in the heart of the mother. "I saw her sitting looking at the mansion of Whitecraigs. I fear she can lend you small aid; yet, if her powers of mind and body were equal to the beauty that has too clearly faded from her cheeks, methinks you would have had small need to have taken the charity of either friends or strangers."

"Ay, poor Alice! poor Alice!" rejoined the mother, turning suddenly, and applying her hand to something which required not her care at that time--"Ay, poor Alice!" she added.

"Is it a bargain, then," said he, wis.h.i.+ng to retreat from a subject that so evidently pained her, "that I may remain here for a time, on your own terms of remuneration?"

"It may be as you say," replied she, again taking her seat; "but only on a condition."

"What is it?" inquired he.

"That you never mention the name of Hector Hayston, or of Whitecraigs, while Alice is by. She harms no one; and I would not see her harmed."

"I perceive," said he, muttering to himself, "that I am not the only one in the world who carries in his bosom a secret. But," he continued, in a louder tone, "your condition, dame, shall be fulfilled; and now I may hold myself to be your lodger." And he proceeded to take from the stuffed pockets of his coat some night-clothes of a homely character, and handed them to the dame. "And now," he said, "you may be, now or after, wondering who he may be who has thus come, like a weary bird from the waste that seeks refuge among the sere leaves, to live in the habitation of sorrow. But you must question me not; and farther than my name, which is Wallace, you may know nothing of me till after the 29th day of September--ay, ay," he continued, as if calculating, "the 29th day of September."

The dame started as she heard the mention of the day, looked steadfastly at him, and was silent.

"Yes," he continued, "that day past, and I will once more draw my breath freely in the land of my fathers; and my foot, which has only bowed the head of the heather-bell in the valley, may yet collect energy enough from my unstrung nerves to press fearlessly the sod of the mountain. How long is it since your husband died?"

"Seven years," replied she.

"Well, short as our acquaintance has yet been," said he, "our words have been only of unpleasant things. Now, I require refreshment; and here is some small pay in advance, to remove the ordinary prejudice against strangers. We shall be better acquainted by times. I will take, now, what is readiest in the house; for you may guess, from my attire, that I have been accustomed to that fare by which the poor contrive to spin out the weary term of their pilgrimage."

So much being arranged, the dame set about preparing a meal; and Mr.

Wallace, as he had called himself, proceeded to transform his staff into a fis.h.i.+ng-rod, and arrange his other small matters connected with his future residence. When the humble dish was prepared, the dame went out, and, taking her position on a green tumulus that rose between the cottage and the Lyne, stood, and, placing her hands over her eyes, looked down the water. Her eye, accustomed to the search, detected the form of her daughter far down the stream, and, waving her hand to her, she beckoned her home. But she came not; and the two inmates sat down to their repast.

"This shall be for my poor Alice," said the mother, as she laid aside a portion of the frugal fare; "but she will take it at her own time, or perhaps not at all."

"And yet how much she needs it," added the stranger, "her wasted form and pale face too plainly show."

"There is a sad change there, sir," rejoined she. "There was not a fairer or more gentle creature from Tweedscross to Tweedmouth than Alice Scott; nor did ever the foot of light-hearted innocence pa.s.s swifter over the hill or down the glen. You have seen her to-day where she is often to be seen--by the pond opposite the closed-up house of Whitecraigs--and may wonder to hear how one so wasted may still reach the hill-heads; yet there, too, she is sometimes seen. I have struggled sore to make her what she once was; but in vain. She will wander and wander, and return and wander again; nor will this cease till I some day find her dead body among the seggs of the Lyne, or in the lirk of the hill. When I know you better, I may tell you more. At present, I am eating the bread of one who is more connected with this sad subject than I may now confess; and I have never been accounted ungrateful."

The stranger was moved, and ate his meal in meditative silence. In an hour afterwards, Alice returned to the house, and, as she entered, started as her eye met that of him who had, by his questions, stirred to greater activity the feelings that were already too busy with her heart; but her fears were removed, by his avoidance of the subject which had pained her; and a few hours seemed to have rendered him as indifferent to her as seemed the other objects around her. Some days pa.s.sed, and the widow would have been as well satisfied with her lodger as he was with her, had it not been that he enjoined secrecy as to his residence in the house--retiring to the spence when any one entered; and if at any time he went along the Lyne in the morning, he avoided those whom he met; and betook himself to private acts in the inner apartment during the day. At times he left the cottage in the evening, and did not return for two days; but whither he went, the inmates knew not. The dame conjectured he had been as far as Peebles; but her reason was merely that he brought newspapers with him, and intelligence of matters transacting there. The secrecy was not suited to the open and simple manners to which she had been accustomed; but she recollected his words, that on the 29th of September, she would know all concerning him. Now these words were connected by a chain of a.s.sociations that startled her. The 29th of September had been set apart by her deceased husband as a day of prayer.

He had never allowed it to pa.s.s without an offering of the contrite heart to G.o.d; this practice he had continued till his death, and she had witnessed the act repeated for fifteen years. She was no more superst.i.tious than the rest of her cla.s.s; she was, indeed, probably less so; and her theories, formed for an adequate explanation of the startling coincidence, were probably as philosophical as if they had been formed by reason acting under the astute direction of scepticism.

Yet where is the mind, untutored or learned, that can throw away at all times, at all hours--when the heart is in the suns.h.i.+ne of the cheerful day of worldly intercourse, or in the deep shadow of the wing of eternity--all thoughts of all powers save those of natural causes, which are themselves a mystery? We may sport with the subject; but it comes again back on the heart, and we sigh in whispering words of fear, that in the hands of G.o.d we are nothing.

One day Mr. Wallace was seated at breakfast; he had been away for two nights; Alice was sitting by the side of the fire, looking into the heart of the red embers, and the mother was superintending the breakfast; he took out a newspaper from his pocket, and, without a word of premonition, read a paragraph in a deep, solemn voice.

"Died at ---- Street, London, Maria Knight, wife of Hector Hayston, Esq., of Whitecraigs, in the county of Peebles, in Scotland."

A peculiar sound struggled in the throat of Alice; but it pa.s.sed, and she was silent. The mother sat and looked Wallace in the face, to ascertain what construction to put upon the occurrence which he had thus read with an emphasis betokening a greater interest than it might demand from one, as yet, all but ignorant, as she thought, of the true circ.u.mstances of the condition of her daughter. He made no commentary on what he had read; but looking again at the paper, and turning it over, as if searching for some other news, he fixed his eyes on an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the fourth page. He then read--

"On the 1st day of October next, there will be exposed to public roup and sale, within the Town-Hall of Peebles, by virtue of the powers of sale contained in a mortgage granted by Hector Hayston, Esq., of Whitecraigs, in favour of George Colville of Haughton, all and hail the lands and estate of Whitecraigs, situated in the parish of ----, and s.h.i.+re of Peebles, with the mansion-house, offices, &c."

He then laid down the paper, and, looking the widow full in the face--