Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
but, impelled by the delirium that was rapidly mounting to his brain,
a devouring longing to touch, to embrace her, possessed him; and,
kneeling before his sleeping divinity, he kissed both her hands
repeatedly and affectionately. Then he became giddy, and his heart
beat furiously; pulses rang in his ears, and all his senses began to
wander wildly; he gently encircled her with his arms, pressed her to
his breast, and kissed her soft cheek again and again. A blindness
seemed to come over him.
"Oh, beautiful, indeed, thou art, and most adorable, too; but proud
and pitiless to me--to poor me, that loves thee so well!" he
murmured, becoming almost maudlin; "why hast thou so great a horror
of a poor being that would kiss the very dust whereon thou treadest?
Oh, this love is bewildering me--I am not the same man--oh, no,--'tis
a torment--a frenzy."
His hot, dry eyes became moistened, and one large tear fell upon the
cheek of Jane.
She suddenly opened her large startled eyes, and fixed them upon him
with an expression of terror and stupefaction; while his own
astonishment was so great that he forgot to release her from his
embrace.
The draught had been less potent than the apothegar intended.
"'Tis a dream!" she muttered, and closed her eyes; "another dream,
but always that face of horror!"
Then, becoming more awake, and more alive to her situation, and
feeling that the arms of some one encircled her, she shuddered, and,
in great alarm, attempted to rise, but her limbs were powerless, and
a strange numbness tied her to her chair. She made a superhuman
effort to cry, but her tongue was powerless.
"Mother! mother! what is this? Assist me, for I am wholly at his
mercy! I am in the power of a demon, who will fascinate me with his
eyes."
Laying her gently back, his first impulse was to retreat before
perfect consciousness returned; but she seemed so agitated, so
woe-begone, and so frightfully pale, that he dared not leave her;
and, on his knees, began to chafe in his her soft and dimpled hands.
Gradually, the truth forced itself upon Jane. Her actual tormentor,
and no vision, was before her. She began to weep, and covered her
face with her snow-white hands, over which her hair fell like a
glossy veil.
"Oh, despair! despair! am I abandoned for ever? Roland, Roland! come
to me, dearest Roland!" she exclaimed, incoherently. "Oh, man, man!
why dost thou persecute me thus?"
Sir Adam Otterburn was stung to the heart by her words; but, sighing
deeply, he gently parted her dishevelled hair, and said--
"Lady Jane, I am aware that I am guilty of great wrong towards you;
but it is the guilt of love, and love should pardon the frenzy it has
caused."
"I can pardon your love, but can I pardon the misery it hath caused
me? It is not the love of a sane man, but the fantasy of a madman.
I am thy prisoner, lawlessly thy prisoner; but thou hast infamously
violated the ties of honour and hospitality in breaking the privacy
of a helpless woman. Fie upon thee, man! for I will raise upon thee
even thine own detested household!"
She rose, staggering, and more than once passed her hand across her
forehead, for her faculties were as yet obscured by the potion.
"Oh, deem me not so vile!" said Redhall, clasping his hands, and
looking upon her with the most sad and solemn earnestness. "I came
but to see, to touch, to be near you, to breathe but the same air
with you, to look upon you without being repulsed, to sit by and
worship you; and I have done so with such adoration as I have never
felt even before the altar of my God; and I call Him to witness, if
in my mind there was kindled one impure or one unholy thought."
"Fool!" said Jane, bitterly, for she was full of angry alarm; "thou
ravest like one of Lindesay's playmen. Thy purity of thought should
have made thee respect as sacred the chamber to which I am consigned.
Sir Adam, in all thy love-making there is a fustian sophistry, which
shows thou art immensely inferior to my Vipont; and he, though but a
rough soldier, never dared resort to blasphemy in expressing his love
for me."
Jane saw the agony that Vipont's name always occasioned her
tormentor, and could not forbear to sting him with it. A cold
moisture studded his pale forehead with diamond-like drops; a satanic
smile lit up with a gleam of undisguised jealousy his dark and
homicidal eyes.
In this taunt she felt her strength; but saw not the danger of
driving to despair a heart so fierce, so proud, so jealous and
resentful. He approached, but she drew back with a haughty look.
"Beware, Sir Adam," said she; "for even if the king and his court
forget that I am the daughter of John, Earl of Ashkirk, I have a dear
brother, and a dearer _friend_, who, if they cannot at present
protect, will one day surely and fearfully avenge me!"
"Proud lady," he replied, with calm fury, "if neither Heaven nor hell
can protect thee, dost think that thy brother, who is my prisoner,
and whose life is in my hands; or that other miserable moth--that
holiday captain, in steel plates and gilded scales--will succour,
save, or avenge thee?"
"They will, they will, I tell thee, false baron and craven man; thou
corrupt counsellor and cowardly Otterburn! And when Vipont returns,
thou and all thy kindred may tremble, for neither the Otterburns of
Redhall, nor Redford of Auldhame or Avondoune, will be able to
withstand him."
He smiled sourly; and she uttered a scornful laugh.
"Woman, how pitilessly thou plantest poniards in a heart that loves
thee well. Oh, beware! beware! for a single drop will make the cup
that brims to overflow. My heart can know no medium; it is capable
of only two extremes. Love the most blind, hatred the most insane;
and at times I feel that it vibrates between them. Beware of the
last; and, oh! beware of thrusting this rival in my face, for slowly,
but surely, drop by drop, as it were, a savage longing for revenge
will gather in my heart; yea, drop by drop, till it swells into a
flood--a fierce, a furious flood, that, bearing all before it (like a
mountain torrent), will drown alike the stings of conscience and of
pity, and, like a feather on its surface, will sweep you away with
it."
"Sir Roland Vipont is a gallant soldier, who will laugh alike at thy
vengeance and thy bombast. True, wretch! thou mayst murder him, as
thou didst M'Clellan of Bombie," she continued, with eyes full of
tears and fire; "but even then we will find hearts and hands to
avenge us."
Redhall remained for some moments speechless with passion and
confusion.
"Bombie!" he reiterated, turning ghastly pale; "what leads you to
suppose I ever committed a crime so frightful? Speak! But this is
the wordy anger of a woman. You talk of an affair which happened
eleven years ago, when you must have been but little more than a
child. Lady, these words are rash and unadvised. Oh! I implore
thee to beware of exciting in my heart the hatred of which I spoke,
and of which I feel it capable."
"Then I will repeat them a thousand and a thousand times, thou
murderer of the brave Sir Thomas M'Clellan, my father's long-loved
friend. I need care little for thy _hatred_, when thy mad love costs
me so dear."
"My hatred--beware, I implore thee once again--beware of it!"
Lady Seton laughed; and a gloomy expression gathered in the dark
solemn eyes of Redhall.
"Think, dear lady--think," said he, "of the ruin that hangs over thee
and thy house."
"Do thou rather reflect on that, and remember that, were I to wed
thee, for ever wouldst thou lose the favour of James, the cardinal,
and their obsequious parliament; destroying thyself without lessening
one iota the thousand pitiless severities to which the knights and
barons of our faction are subjected."
"Nay, lady, nay; I who have done, can _undo_. Many of those acts of
proscription and severity were enacted by my advice and by my
influence."
"Another incentive to abhor thee."
"But I can restore the banished to their homes,--the dishonoured to
honour--the unhappy to happiness--the ruined and despairing to wealth
and affluence; and to do all this by a word lies with thee alone."
"St. Mary! I know not whether to weep with vexation or laugh at thee
with scorn," said Jane, in great distress and perplexity, for she
could not but acknowledge mentally that he spoke the truth. "Oh,
Vipont! Vipont!" she added, in a low voice, "assuredly thou hast
abandoned me."
Another wild gleam passed over the eyes of Redhall.
"Rash woman, how thou bravest me! if thy heart, insensible as it is,
has neither love for me, nor pity for the knights and nobles of thy
race, surely at least it will tremble for thyself! Behold this
warrant," he continued, drawing a parchment from his bosom; "from
this house, Jane Seton, thou canst only pass to the castle of
Edinburgh. Here are accusations of treason; of conspiring with the
English; of resetting rebels; and worse, oh! worse a thousand times
than all--sorcery, and compassing, by spell and charm, the life of
Queen Magdalene."
He paused, and his lowering countenance assumed a diabolical
expression; for his stormy passions were wavering (as he had said)
between excess of love and excess of hate.
"Ponder well upon my offer, and deeper upon my threat; respect the
first, and--fear the second. Life, honour, power, and happiness are
in my right hand; trial and torture, disgrace and death, the stake
and the gibbet, are in my left. Here, love the most tender and most
true; there, revenge revelling like an unchained fiend! Think,
think, oh! for mercy's sake--for pity's sake; and for the love of
God, think, ere thou dost for the last time pause or repel me."
Trembling, and scarcely able to restrain her tears--
"Sir Adam Otterburn," she replied, "I despise alike these offers and
those threats; for if not a villain, and a cruel one, thou art (and,
Heaven protect me!) assuredly a madman."
His countenance became livid, and his eyes sad.
"Then so be it--a _madman_! Then, as a madman, let me have but one
soul, one thought, and one desire--vengeance! the deep, thirsty
vengeance of madness, of jealousy and despair!"
Terrified by his aspect and his fury, Jane had withdrawn to the
farthest end of the apartment, when a new gust of passion seized him,
and he sprang towards her.
"There is but one way left me now. Am I a child, a boy, a fool, that
I trifle with thee, who art pitiless as a panther, and inanimate as
marble?" he exclaimed, as he seized her, and endeavoured to encircle
her with his arms; "in this house thou art completely in my power as
in the midst of a desert, and now--and now----"
"Mercy!" cried Jane, filled with a sudden sense of new danger, as she
endeavoured to elude his wild grasp, and the gaze of his large, dark,
gloating eyes, and prayed aloud for safety and protection.
"Ay, invoke and cry, and pray to God or to man, as thou pleasest; but
will either hear thee?"
"Vipont! Vipont!
"Ha! ha! the hand of Birrel is in his heart."
"Archibald!" she panted, sinking down against the wall, and overcome
with terror. "Oh, Archibald, my brother, my brother!"
"_Here!_" cried a voice like a trumpet; the arras was torn aside, and
a man sprang forward--there was a flash as a poniard was buried in
the breast of Redhall, and the black velvet of his doublet was
stained with red, a cloud of darkness descended upon his eyes; and as
he fell weltering in his blood, Jane was borne away by the strong
intruder.
CHAPTER XXX.
SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY!
"A strange emotion stirs within him--more
Than mere compassion ever waked before;--
Unconsciously he opes his arms, while she
Springs forward, as with life's lost energy."--_Lalla Rookh_.