One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
unhappy in another sense. Annora heard his pious love-making with
averted ear, and he might as well have poured forth his texts, his
dreary talk, and intoned homilies, to the waves that beat at the rocky
basement of the tower--at once Annora's prison and her home.
Meanwhile, she grew pale, and thin, and sickly. Her younger brother,
Philip, pitied her in his heart, and, after making inquiries, learned
that Willie Calderwood was now in France, where he had been wounded in a
duel by the Abbe Gondy, but had become his friend, and now adhered to
him when he had become famous as the Cardinal de Retz; and, as such,
served and defended him in the wars of the Fronde, with a hundred other
cavaliers of Montrose.
"Oh, waly, waly, my mother dear!" she exclaimed, using the bitterest old
Scottish exclamation of grief, as she threw herself on the bosom of the
unflinching Lady Grizel. "Pity me--pity me, for none love me here, and
Willie is far far awa' in France owre the sea."
"A' the better, bairn--a' the better."
"But I may never see him mair!"
"A' the better still, bairn."
"Oh, mother dear," urged the weeping girl, "dinna say sae; ye'll rive my
puir heart in twain amang ye. And this Fronde, and these Frondeurs,
what is _it_, what are _they_?"
"What would it be but some Papist devilry, or a Calderwood wadna be in
the middle o't?" was the angry response.
Poor Annora knew not what to think, for there were no newspapers in
those days, and rumours of events in distant lands came vaguely by
chance travellers, and at long intervals. Lothian and Fife were almost
farther apart in those days than Scotland and France are now, in the
matters of news and travel.
She felt like Juliet in the feud between the families--
"Tis but thy _name_ that is my enemy;--
Though art thyself though, not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is not hand or foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
----Doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Even as water dropping on a granite rock will wear that rock away in
course of time, so, by the systematic tyranny of her parents, and by
their reiterated assurances, and even forged proofs, that Willie
Calderwood had fallen, sword in hand, at the battle of the Barricades,
was Annora worn and wearied into a state of acquiescence, in which she
accepted Mr. Elijah Howler as her husband.
This was the climax of years of a gloomy, sabbatical life, during which
the Judaical rigidity of religious observance made Sunday a periodical
horror, and Seafield Tower a daily hell.
So they were married, and he removed her from the tower to the adjacent
manse, from the more cheerful and ungrated windows of which she could
see in the distance the roofless turrets and open walls of Piteadie,
where the crows clustered and flapped their black wings, for the ruin
had become a veritable rookery.
The king was dead; he had perished on the scaffold, and Scotland, under
Cromwell and the false Argyle, was quiet, as we are told in that
poetical romance by Macaulay, entitled "The History of England."
On a Sunday in summer, in the year of Glencairn's rising in the north
for King Charles II., Annora sat in the Kirk of Calderwood about the
beginning of sermon. The reverend Elijah, with straight, lank hair, and
upturned eyes, Geneva bands and gown, after a glance at the dark oak pew
where his young bride and victim sat, like the spectre of her former
self, so pale, so crushed and heartbroken, twice repeated, in a dreary
and quavering tone, the text upon which he was about to preach, with
special reference to the rising in the north, inviting all sons of the
Kirk to arm against the loyal Highlanders--
"_He saith among the trumpets, Ha! ha! and he smelleth the battle afar
off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting! He is not affrighted,
neither turneth he back from the sword; he goeth forth to meet the armed
men._"--Job xxxix.
Having given this warlike text, he adjusted his cloak, and turned the
sand-glass, which, according to the fashion of those days, stood on the
reading-desk. The rustle of Bible leaves, as of those that lie strewn
in autumn, when gently stirred by the wind, passed through all the
church; but from Annora's trembling and wan fingers, her Bible fell
heavily to the ground.
At that moment a gaily-dressed young man, with the white rose in his
plumed hat and on his laced mantle, with slashed doublet and boots, as
he passed slowly up the aisle--the observed of all observers--as such
cavalier fripperies were supposed to have passed away with Montrose and
the king, stooped, and presented her with the fallen book.
Their haggard eyes met. He was pale even as death. A great wound, a
sword-cut that traversed his face like a livid streak, in healing, had
distorted the features; but like a glance of lightning that flashed into
her soul, she recognized Willie Calderwood!
She would have shrieked, but lacked the power; a little sigh could only
escape her, and so she swooned away.
There was a great commotion in the village kirk. She was borne forth
into the air, and laid for a time upon a throchstane, or altar tomb, and
was then conveyed to the manse, where she remained long as one on the
verge of madness or the grave. The face of Willie, so sweet, so sad and
earnest, but, alas! so sorely distorted, seemed ever before her,
together with his gallant air and courtly bearing, all of which were so
different from those of the sour-featured Whigs by whom she was
surrounded.
But she was informed by her younger brother, Philip, that she should
never see that face or bearing more, as her lover had come home, sorely
wounded and broken in health, not to seek vengeance on her or hers, but
only to die among his kinsmen, the Calderwoods of the Glen; and that he
had died there, three days after their meeting in the kirk; and was
buried at Eglise Marie, in the tomb of the lairds of Piteadie.
It was in one of the last evenings of autumn, when after hearing this
sorrowful narrative, and with it the knowledge that the only heart that
ever truly loved her was cold in the grave, that Annora--in the craving
for solitude and to be alone, left the old ivy-covered manse, and
passing through the garden, issued into the glebe--a spacious park,
surrounded by venerable trees--and seating herself upon a moss-grown
stile, strove to think calmly, if possible, and pray.
Resplendent in gold and purple, the sky threw out in strong contour the
summits of the Lomonds, from which the last rays of sunset had faded;
and where she sat alone. The darkness had almost set in, the woods were
so leafy and dense; yet in some places the twilight was liquid and
clear. The trees were already yellowing fast, and the sear and russet
leaves that had fallen before the strong gales that swept through the
Howe, or great midland valley of Fife, were whirling about the place
where she sat, as if to remind her that the year was dying.
Often in happier times had she wandered here with Willie, and the bark
of more than one tree there bore their names and initials cut by his
knife or dagger. The woodcock was seeking his nest in the hedges, and
the snipe and the wild coot were among the reeds and rushes of the loch
and burn; and Annora, as she gazed around her, thought sadly that it was
the autumn of a year of married misery, and the winter of her aching
heart.
Suddenly some mysterious impulse--for there was no sound but the sense
of something being nigh, made her look round, and then a start, a
shudder, convulsed her, rooting her to the spot; for there by the stile
whereon she sat was Willie Calderwood, looking just as she had seen him
last, in his cavalier dress, with plumed beaver and white cockade, long
rapier and short velvet mantle: but his features, when viewed by the
calm, clear twilight, seemed paler, his eyes sadder, and the sword wound
on his cheek more livid and dark.
He was not dead--he lived yet, and her brother Philip had deceived her!
She made a start forward, and then drew back, withheld by an impulse of
terror, and holding up her poor thin hands deprecatingly, faltered out--
"Oh! come not nigh me, Willie. I am a wedded wife."
"And false to me, Annora. Is it not so?" he asked, with a voice that
thrilled through her.
She wept, and laid her hands upon her crushed heart, while Willie's sad
eyes, that had a glare in them, caused doubtless by his wound, seemed to
pierce her soul; they seemed so bright, so earnest, and beseeching in
the autumn twilight.
"They told you I was false to you, or slain in France, and you believed
them?"
"I did, Willie," she sobbed, as she covered her face.
"I have lain on many a field, lassie, where the rain of heaven and the
wind of night swept over me--fields where the living could scarce be
kenned frae the dead, yet I was never slain."
"But, oh," she urged, "Willie, never, never will ye ken----"
"I ken a'! They told you that I was dead, too, and graved in yonder
kirk."
"They did, Willie dear--they did."
"Yet I am here before you. I came home to wed you, lassie, and to join
my Lord Glencairn in the north, and to fight against this accursed
Cromwell and his Puritans, but it maunna be," he added, sadly, in a
hollow tone.
"Oh, leave me, Willie, leave me. If you should be seen wi' me----"
"Seen!" he exclaimed, with a bitter laugh.
"Oh, leave me; for what seek ye here?"
"But a lock o' your bonnie hair, lassie--a lock to lay beside my heart."
Her scissors were at the chatelaine that dangled from her girdle; she
glanced fearfully at the windows of the manse, where lights were
beginning to glimmer; but undoing her hair, she cut a long and ripply
tress, and handed it to Willie. As she drew near, the expression of his
eyes again froze her blood, they seemed so sadly earnest and glazed; and
as his fingers closed upon the coveted tress, and touched hers, they
felt icy cold and clammy, like those of a corpse.
Then a shriek of terror burst from her, and falling on the grass, she
became senseless, and oblivious of everything.
For days after this she raved of her meeting with Willie Calderwood, and
of the lock of hair she had given him. Some thought her mind wandered;
but others pointed significantly to the facts that her scissors had been
found by her side, and to where a large tress had been certainly cut
from her left temple.
The young laird of Piteadie was assuredly dead, and buried among his
kindred in St. Mary's Chapel; but the age was one of superstition, of
wraiths, and omens; and people whispered, and shook their heads, and
knew not what to think, save that she must have seen a spectre.
Ere a week elapsed, Annora died quietly in her mother's arms, forgiving
and blessing her; but adhering to the story of the gift to her dead
lover. So strong at last grew the excitement in the neighbourhood that
some began to aver that he was not dead at all, but was leading a troop
of horse, under Glencairn, in the north.
Even those who had seen the funeral cortege issue from the House of the
Glen were so sceptical on the subject, that the tomb was opened by order
of the next heir, and there, sure enough, was the body of Willie
Calderwood; but the leaden cerements were rent from top to bottom, the
grave-clothes were all in disorder, and in the right hand was clenched a
long and silky tress of Annora's hair![*]
[*] The plough has recently uprooted the last stone of this old chapel;
but its name, corrupted into "Legsmalie," is borne by the field where it
stood.
How it came there none could say, though many averred it had been buried