Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVII Part 20

"Thank G.o.d!" cried William; "he is, I trust, then, still alive." And he pressed the stranger's hand with a warmth that surprised him. "Where do you mean to stay," resumed William, "until the vessel sails?"

"I have no relations," replied he, "in Edinburgh. I meant to stay at an inn in the Canongate, where I have lived before; but it is all one to me--I may as well tarry in the White Hart with you."

When they arrived, William sent a cadie to give notice to Colonel Gordon that he was arrived in town; but was detained upon business with a stranger, to whom he would be happy to introduce him, as he was an acquaintance of his father's, and had seen him within the last few years.

Soon after dinner, they were all seated at their wine, and deep in conversation. The stranger had been, from what he said, well acquainted with the exiled party in France, and, more particularly, with Colonel Seaton; but he knew nothing of his history, further than that he had lost a beloved wife and child at the time of his expatriation, and had, both by friends here and every other means, endeavoured in vain to get any information of where she was buried, or what had become of a faithful servant who had not embarked with him in the confusion of his flight--that on this account he was often oppressed by a lowness of spirits, and had many suspicions that all had not been as it ought to have been. This subject discussed, they would have had recourse to politics; but each seemed cautious of betraying his opinions, and the stranger, who did not seem to relish much some of the sentiments that occasionally escaped the Colonel, appeared to be a Tory. After the Colonel departed, the conversation of William and Mr Graham--for this was the gentleman's name--became more pointed, and it appeared that he was on business connected with the exiles. He had a.s.sumed that William was of his own way of thinking in politics, and was evidently much disappointed when he discovered that he was not. He became much more reserved, but not less attached to him; for William gave him a general outline of his misfortunes and early education, and they parted for the night with the best opinion of each other. Next morning both proceeded to Leith, where Graham expected to find a messenger from the north with a packet of letters for him. When they reached Leith, they found that the messenger had arrived on the previous day, and was waiting for Mr Graham, who, having several persons to visit in the neighbourhood, William and he parted, agreeing to meet in the Colonel's to supper. They met in the evening.

"I have been making some inquiries," said Mr Graham, "about Colonel Henry Seaton, on your account, and am happy to say that he is well. I fear I shall not have the pleasure of your company to France. I have every reason to believe that he is now in Scotland, or will be very soon. Excuse me if I am not more particular. I shall, I hope, to-morrow, or at least before the vessel sails, be able to give you more particular information. I can rely, I think, upon your honour, that no harm shall come from my confidence."

Both thanked him for the interest he took, and the good news he had communicated. They parted for the night, all in the best spirits--William antic.i.p.ating the joy he should feel at the sight of his parent, and the Colonel anxious to see his old friend. Afterwards Mr Graham and William occasionally met. Their evenings were spent with the Colonel, and all party discussion carefully avoided. On the evening of the fourth day after Mr Graham's last information, William had begun to fear that the vessel might sail before any certainty could be obtained; and he was in doubt whether to proceed with her or remain. Upon Mr Graham's arrival, which was later than usual, he went directly up to William--

"I have good news for you," said he. "Colonel Seaton is at present in Scotland--somewhere in Inverness-s.h.i.+re. He is the bearer of intelligence that will render it unnecessary for me to proceed at present to France. I am, I confess, much disappointed; but you, I perceive, are not."

"From my soul I thank you," said William. "Where shall I find my father?"

"That is more than I can tell you," answered the other--"I cannot even tell the name he has at present a.s.sumed; all I know is, that he is the bearer of intelligence from the Prince that crushes for a time our sanguine hopes.

The fickle and promise-breaking Louis has again deceived us. The Prince, and the lukewarm, timid part of his adherents, the wors.h.i.+ppers of the ascendant, refuse to act without his powerful aid. His concurrence we have, and a prospect of future aid at a more convenient season; but, bah! for a Frenchman's promise! I am off from ever taking a leading part again. I will wait the convenient season. I may be led, but shall never lead again. He does not deserve a crown that will not dare for it; nor does he deserve the hearts of a generous people that would not dare everything to free them from the yoke of a foreign tyrant. Excuse me, gentlemen,--I go too far, and am giving you offence; but I a.s.sure you it is not meant. My heart is full of bitterness, and I forget what I say."

The Colonel, whose blood had begun to inflame when Graham checked himself, cooled and felt rather gratified at the intelligence thus so unexpectedly communicated. He felt for a generous mind crossed in its favourite object, however much he thought that mind misled, from education and early prejudice, and a.s.sured him he had already forgot his expressions. A different turn was given to the conversation, by William's continued inquiries after his father. Graham meant to set off for the north in a few days, for a secret meeting of the heads of the disaffected, at which Colonel Seaton was to communicate the message he had to them from France.

He offered to be William's guide. The Colonel, whose shoulder was now quite well, requested to accompany them; and on the Monday morning after, they crossed at Kinghorn, and proceeded by the most direct route, pa.s.sing through Perths.h.i.+re to the Highlands. They arrived at Glengarry, and found that Colonel Seaton was at the time on a visit, with the chief, to Glenelg, but would be back on the following day. There were a number of visiters at the castle, with all whom Graham was on the most intimate terms. Gordon and William were introduced, and the latter was most cordially received, from the strong resemblance he bore to his father. They got a guide to conduct them to see the beautiful scenery around the house, and they were amusing themselves admiring the grandeur of the mountain scenes, when the guide said, pointing to a bend in the road--

"Gentlemen, there is Glengarry."

They looked towards the spot, and could perceive two persons on horseback, approaching in earnest conversation. William's heart beat quick--the reins almost dropped from his hand--he felt giddy, and his temples throbbed as if they would have burst. They approached--they bowed to each other--William's eyes were fixed upon the countenance of his father, who returned his gaze, but neither spoke a word. The Colonel said, in answer to the polite salutation, that he and his young friend had had the honour to accompany Mr Graham on a visit.

"Has Graham come back so soon?" he said, with surprise, "I feared as much; but, gentlemen, you are kindly welcome." And he shook hands with them.

"Macdonald, what is this?" he said, turning to Seaton, who was absorbed in thought. "Here is a youthful counterpart of yourself!"

"My father!" exclaimed William, as he leaped from his horse, and clasped his leg, leaning his face upon it, and bedewing it with his tears.

"Young man," said Seaton, coldly, "you are mistaken; I have no son."

William lifted his hands in an imploring manner, and the ring met his father's eye. "Good heavens! what do I see!" he exclaimed, and sank forward, overpowered by his feelings, upon his horse's neck. The chief and the Colonel raised him up--the tears were streaming from his eyes. "A thousand painful remembrances," said he, "have quite unmanned me. Young man, you just now called me father--where, for mercy's sake tell me, did you get that ring?"

"It was found on the bosom of my dead mother," faltered William.

"Then you are my son!"

And the next moment they were locked in each other's embrace. The chief and Gordon were moved. They pa.s.sed their hands hastily across their eyes.

"Dear father," said William, "have you forgot your old friend and a.s.sociate in arms--my best of friends?"

Seaton for the first time looked to him, and, extending his disengaged hand, grasped the Colonel's, saying--

"Excuse me, Gordon--I am now too happy. I have found a son and a brother."

They walked to the castle, and William detailed to his father his mournful story. Often had he to stop, to allow his father to give vent to his anguish.

"Ah, I often feared," said he, "that my Helen had been hardly dealt with; but this I never did suspect. Cursed villain! and, oh! my poor murdered Helen!"

They returned to the castle. It was agreed that Seaton should still retain the name of Macdonald, until the Colonel should obtain, through the influence of his friends, a pardon for him. He also had lost all hopes of success for the Prince, and wished to enjoy the company of his son, visit the grave of his beloved wife, and, at death, be buried by her side. All was obtained; and Henry Seaton lived for many years, blessed in the society of his son, who studied the law, at the suggestion of the Colonel, and became distinguished in his profession.

HUME AND THE GOVERNOR OF BERWICK.

It has been a.s.serted by at least one historian, that it has been observed, that the inhabitants of towns which have undergone a cruel siege, and experienced all the horrors of storm and pillage, have retained for ages the traces of the effects of their sufferings, in a detestation of war, indications of pusillanimity, and decline of trade. If there be any truth in this observation, what caitiffs must the inhabitants of Berwick be! No town in the world has been so often exposed to the "ills that wait on the red chariot of war;" for Picts, Romans, Danes, Saxons, English, and Scotch have, in their turn, wasted their rage and their strength upon her broken ribs. Her boasted "barre," (barrier,) from which her name, Barrewick, is derived, has never been able to save her effectually, either from her enemies of land or water. From the reign of Osbert, the king of Northumberland, down to the time when Lord Sidmouth saw treason in her big guns, she has been devoted to the harpies of foreign and intestine war and discord. Yet who shall say, that the hearts or spirits of the inhabitants of this extraordinary town lost either blood or buoyancy from their misfortunes? No sooner were her bulwarks raised than they appeared renascent; the inhabitants defended the new fortifications with a spirit that received a salient power from the depression produced by the demolition of the old; and her s.h.i.+ps, that one day were shattered by engines of war, sailed in a state of repair with the next fair wind, to fetch from distant ports articles of merchandise, not seldom for those who were fighting or had fought against her liberties. Such was Berwick; and her sons of to-day inherit too much of the n.o.bility and generosity of her old children, to find fault with us for telling them a tale which, while it exhibits some shades of the warlike spirit of their ancestors, shews also that war and citizen warriors have their foibles, and are not always exempt from the harmless laugh that does the heart more good than the touch of an old spear.

The Lord Hume of the latter period of the seventeenth century, had a natural son, Patrick, an arch rogue, inheriting the fire of the blood of the Humes, along with that which burnt in the black eyes of the gipsies of Yetholm. He was brought up by his father; and, true to the principles of his education, would acknowledge no patrons of the heart, save the three ruling powers of love, laughter, and war--Cupid, Momus, and Mars--a trio chosen from all the G.o.ds, (the remainder being sent to Hades,) as being alone worthy of the wors.h.i.+p of a gentleman. How Patrick got acquainted, and, far less, how he got in love with the Mayor of Berwick's daughter, Isabella, we cannot say, nor need antiquarians try to discover; for where there was a Southron to be slain or a lady to be won, Patrick Hume cared no more for bar, b.u.t.tress, battlement, fire, or water, than did Jove for his own thunder-cloud, under the shade of which he courted the daughter of Inachus. Letting alone the recondite subject of "love's beginning," we shall tread safer ground in stating, that the affection had been very materially increased on both sides by the walls of Berwick; for, although Patrick was a great despiser of fortifications, he had felt, in the affair of his love for Isabella, the fair daughter of the Mayor of Berwick, that there is no getting a damsel through a _loop-hole_, though there might be poured as much sentimental and pathetic speech and sigh-breath through the invidious opening, as ever pa.s.sed through the free air that fills the breeze under the trysting thorn.

What we have now said requires the explanation, that at the period of our story, the town of Berwick belonged to the English; and the Mayor, being himself either an Englishman, or connected by strong ties of relations.h.i.+p with the English, had a strong antipathy towards the Scottish Border raiders, whom he denominated as gentlemen-robbers, headed by the n.o.ble robber Hume. But, above all, he hated young Patrick--into whose veins, he said, there had been poured the distilled raid-venom and love-poison of all the gentlemen-scaumers that ever infested the Borders. The origin of this hatred had some connection with an affair of the Newmilne, belonging to Berwick; the dam-dike of which, Patrick alleged, prevented the salmon from getting up the river, and hence destroyed all his angling sport, as well as that of all the n.o.blemen and gentlemen that resorted to the river for the purpose of practising the "gentle art." He had therefore threatened to pull it down, to let up the fish; and sounded his threat in the ears of the indignant Mayor, in terms that were, peradventure, made stronger and bitterer by the thought that dikes and walls were his greatest bane upon earth: by the walls of Berwick the Mayor kept from his arms the fair Isabella, and by the dam-dike of Newmilne the same Mayor deprived him of the pleasure of angling. Was such power on the part of a Mayor to be borne by the high-spirited youth who had been trained to look upon mason-work as a mere stimulant to love or war--a thing that raised the value of what it enclosed by the opposition it offered to the young blood that raged for entrance? The youth thought not. He vowed that he would neither lose his Isabella nor his salmon; and, as fate would have it, the old Mayor had heard the vow, and vowed also that young Patrick should lose both.

Having fished one day to no purpose, in consequence of the obstruction of "that most accursed of all dam-dikes, the Newmilne dike," as Patrick styled it, he threw down his rod, and lay down upon the bank of the river, to wait the hour when the moon should summon and lighten him to the loop-hole in the other of his hated obstructions, the walls of Berwick--where that evening he expected to meet his beloved Isabella, and commune with her in the eloquent language of their mutual pa.s.sion. The bright luminary burst in the midst of his reveries from behind an autumn cloud, and flashed a long silver beam upon the rolling waters. He started to his feet.

"It is beyond my time," he said, self-accusingly. "My Isabella is on Berwick Wall, and I am still lingering here by the banks of the river, three miles from where my love and honour require me to be. The loiterer in love is a laggard in war; and shame on the Hume who is either!"

In a short time the young Hume was standing beneath a b.u.t.tress of the old walls of the town, looking earnestly through a small opening, in which he expected to see the face of the fair daughter of the Mayor.

"Art there at last, love?" said he, in a soft voice, as he saw, with palpitating heart, the pretty but arch face of the bewitching heiress of all the wealth of the old burgher lord peering through the aperture. "What, in the name of him who got his wings in the lap of Venus, and useth them to this hour as cleverly as doth our pretty messenger of Spring, hath kept thee, wench?"

"Ha! ha! hus.h.!.+ hush, man!" responded she, whose spirit equalled that of the boldest Hume that ever headed a raid. "Thou'rt the laggard. I've waited for thee an hour, until I've sighed this little love-hole into an oven-heat, waiting thee, thou lover of broken troth! Some gipsy queen in Haugh of the Tweed hath wooed thee out of thy affection for thy Isabel; and now thou askest what hath kept me. Ha! ha! Good--for a Hume."

"The moon cheated me, and went skulking under a cloud," responded Hume.

"And the cloud threw thy love in the shade," added quickly the gay girl.

"Methought love kept his own dial, and was independent of sun or moon. What if a rebel vapour cometh over the queen of heaven that night thou art to make me free? My hope of liberty, I fancy, would be clouded; and I would be remitted again to the care of Captain Wallace, who keepeth the town and the Mayor's daughter from the spoiling arms of the robber Humes."

"Ha! ha!" replied he--"thy father wanteth not a Mayor's wits, Isabella, in offering thee as a prize to the Governor of the town. Excellent device, i'faith! The old burgher lord knew he could not keep thee, mad-cap wench as thou art, from a hated Hume's arms, unless he gave the Captain an interest as a _lover_ in guarding thee, like a piece of the old wall of Berwick."

"And therein thou'rt well complimented," replied she; "for my father could not get, in all Berwick, a man that could keep me from thee, but he who guardeth town, and Mayor, and maiden together. Since the Governor, as a lover, got charge of me, I am more firmly caged than ever was the old countess, who was so long confined in the grated wing-cage of the old castle. When art thou to free me from the Governor's love and surveillance, good Patrick? If what I have now to tell thee hath no power to quicken thy wits and nerve thine arm, thou art indeed thyself no better than one of those stones, to which, in thy wit, thou hast likened me. Knowest that a day is fixed for Captain Wallace being my _legal_ governor?"

"Ha!" cried Hume, in agitation. "This soundeth differently from the playful hammer of thy wit, Bell. What day is fixed? Thou hast fired me with high purposes."

"How high tower they?" cried the maiden, laughing. "Do they reach thy former threat, to pull down the Newmilne dam-dike, and let _up_ the salmon, in revenge for the letting _down_ of the Mayor's daughter?"

"Another time for thy wit, Bell," replied Patrick, in a more serious tone.

"Thou hast put to flight my spirits. The grey owl Meditation is flapping his dingy wing over my heart. The time--the time--when is the day?"

"This day se'ennight," answered Isabel. "Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ here cometh the Governor, blowing like a Tweedmouth grampus, fresh from the German Sea, in full run after a lady-fish of the queen of rivers."

And now Hume heard the hoa.r.s.e voice of the redoubted Governor, Captain Wallace--that fat overgrown _bellygerent_ son of Mars, so famous, in his day, for vaunting of feats of arms, at Bothwell, (where he never was,) over the Mayor's wine, and in presence of his fair daughter, whom he thus courted after the manner of the n.o.ble Moor, with a slight difference as to the truth of his feats scarce worth mentioning. It appeared to Hume, as he listened, that Wallace, and the Mayor, who was with him, had sallied out, after the fourth bottle, in search of Isabel--a suspicion verified by the speech of the warlike Captain.

"Did I not tell thee, Mr Mayor," said the Governor, in a voice that reverberated among the walls, and fell distinctly on Hume's ear, "that she would be about the fortifications? Ha!--anything appertaining to war delighteth the fair creature as much as it did that rare author, Will Shakspeare's Desdemona. If I had been as black as the Moor--ay, or as the devil himself--my prowess at Bothwell would have given this person of mine, albeit somewhat enlarged, the properties of beauty in the eyes of n.o.ble-spirited women--so much do our bodies borrow from the qualities of our souls."

"Where is she?" rejoined the Mayor. "I like not that love of the fortifications. It is the outside of the walls she loves. See, she flies, conscience-smitten. I like not this, my n.o.ble Captain--see, there is Patrick Hume beyond the wall, if thou hast courage, drive thy pike through that loop, and, peradventure, ye may blind a Hume for life."

"I like to strike a man fair--body to body--as we did on the Bridge of Bothwell," responded the Captain. "Ha! ha! Give me the loop-hole of a good bilbo-thrust, out of which the soul wings its flight in a comfortable manner. Nevertheless, to please my n.o.ble friend the mayor, and to get quit of a rival, I may" (lowering his voice to a whisper) "as well kill him in the way thou hast propounded; but I a.s.sure thee, upon my honour, I would much rather have the fellow before me, without the intervention of these plaguey walls, that come thus in the way and march of one's valour. There goes!"