Chapter I.
A few years before the pride of Scotland had been prostrated by English bows and bills, on the disastrous day of Flodden, the holding of Balmeny, in the county of Fife, was possessed by Walter Colville, then considerably advanced in years. Walter Colville had acquired this small estate by the usual title to possession in the days in which he lived. When a mere stripling, he had followed the latest Earl of Douglas, when the banner of the bloody heart floated defiance to the Royal Stuart. But the wavering conduct of Earl James lost him at Abercorn the bravest of his adherents, and Walter Colville did not disdain to follow the example of the Knight of Cadzow. He was rewarded with the hand of the heiress of Balmeny, then a ward of Colville of East Wemyss. That baron could not of course hesitate to bestow her on one who brought the king’s command to that effect; and in the brief wooing space of a summer day, Walter saw and loved the lands which were to reward his loyal valour, and wooed and wedded the maiden by law appended to the enjoyment of them. The marriage proved fruitful; for six bold sons sprung up in rapid succession around his table, and one “fair May” being added at a considerable interval after, Walter felt, so far as his iron nature could feel, the pure and holy joys of parental love, as his eye lighted on the stalwart frames and glowing aspects of his boys, and on the mild blue eyes and blooming features of the young Edith, who, like a fair pearl set in a carcanet of jaspers, received an added lustre from her singleness. But alas for the stability of human happiness! The truth of the deep-seated belief that the instrument of our prosperity shall also be that of our decay, was mournfully displayed in the house of Walter Colville. By the sword had he cut his way to the station and wealth he now enjoyed; by the sword was his habitation rendered desolate, and his gray hairs whitened even before their time. On the field of Bannockburn—once the scene of a more glorious combat—three of his sons paid with their lives for their adherence to the royal cause. Two more perished with Sir Andrew Wood, when Steven Bull was forced to strike to the “Floure and Yellow Carvell.” The last, regardless of entreaties and commands, followed the fortunes of the “White Rose of York,” when Perkin Warbeck, as history malignantly continues to style the last Plantagenet, carried his fair wife and luckless cause to Ireland; and there young Colville found an untimely fate and bloody grave near Dublin.
Thus bereft of so many goodly objects of his secret pride, the heart of Walter Colville naturally sought to compensate the losses which it had sustained in an increased exercise of affection towards his daughter. The beauties of infancy had now been succeeded by those of ripening maidenhood. The exuberant laugh, which had so often cheered his hours of care or toil, while she was yet a child, had given place to a smile still more endearing to his time-stricken feelings; face and form had been matured into their most captivating proportions, and nothing remained of the blue-eyed, fair-haired child, that had once clung round his knee, save the artless openness of her disposition, and the unsullied purity of her heart. Yet, strange to tell, the very intensity of his affection was the source of bitter sorrow to her who was its object, and his misdirected desire to secure her happiness, threatened to blench, with the paleness of secret sorrow, the cheek it was his dearest wish to deck with an ever-during smile of happiness.
Edith Colville was but an infant when her three brothers fell at Sauchie, and had scarcely completed her eighteenth year, when the death of her youngest brother made her at once the object of her father’s undivided regard, and of pursuit to many who saw and were smitten with charms in the heiress of Balmeny, which had failed to attract their attention while her brother yet stood between the maiden and that heritage. But the heart they now deemed worth the winning was no longer hers to give. The death of her mother while she was yet a child, had left her her own mistress long before the period when maternal care is most essential; and Edith’s love was sought and won by one who had little but youth and a warm heart to recommend him.
Arthur Winton was the orphan son of a small proprietor in the neighbourhood, who, having been deprived of the best part of his property by what he conceived the injustice of King James III., and the rapacity of his favourite Cochrane, was easily induced to join the insurgent nobles who wrought the destruction of that monarch. He was, however, disappointed in his expectations of personal reward, having fallen in the conflict; and his son was too young to vindicate his claim in an age so rude as that of which we write.
Walter Colville, whose family had been so sadly thinned in the battle we have mentioned, though they had fought on the other side, naturally bore no goodwill to the boy; but his younger son, who was nearly of the same age, viewed him with different feelings. He was much about the house of Balmeny; and, to be brief, he won the affections of the young Edith long before she knew either their nature or their value. Until the departure of young Walter Colville, Arthur’s visits were attributed by the old man to his friendship for his son, but when Edith had unhappily become his heiress, he at once attributed them to their proper cause. A stern prohibition of their repetition was the consequence, and the lovers were henceforth reduced to hurried and sorrowful meetings in secret.
On the morning wherein we have chosen to begin the following veritable narrative, the youthful pair had met unobserved, as they imagined, in a shady corner of Balmeny wood, and had begun, the one to lament, and the other to listen, when the sudden apparition of the angry father checked the pleasing current of their imaginings.
He drew his sword as he approached, but the recollection of his seventy years, and his now enfeebled arm, crossing his mind, he replaced the useless weapon, and contented himself with demanding how the youth had dared thus clandestinely to meet his daughter.
Arthur attempted to allay his anger, and to plead his passion as he best could; but the grim and angry frown that sat on Walter Colville’s brow, as he listened to him, soon showed how vainly he was speaking, and he ceased in confusion.
“Have you finished, young master?” said Colville, with a sneer. “Then listen: you are not the wooer I look for to Edith. I should prefer him something richer, something wiser, and something truer to the king, than any son of your father is likely ever to prove; so set your heart at rest on that matter. And you giglot, sooth! to your rock and your chisart. But stay; before you go, tell this gallant gay to prowl no longer about my dwelling. By St Bride, an he does, he may chance to meet a fox’s fate!”
“Dear father,” said the weeping girl, “upbraid us not. Never will I disobey you, never be his, without your own consent.”
“Hold there,” replied Colville, smiling grimly, “I ask no more.” And he led away the maiden, who dared not so much as steal a parting look.
Arthur Winton bore this fiat of the old man, and the dutiful acquiescence of his daughter (though he doubtless thought the latter pushed to the very extreme of filial obedience), if not with equanimity, at least with so much of it as enabled him to leave the presence of his mistress and her father with something like composure. He wandered slowly to the beach, which lay at no great distance, as if he had hoped to inhale with the cool breeze that floated from off the waters, some portion of the calmness in which they then lay bound, his mind occupied in turning over ill-assorted plans for the future, ever broken in upon by some intruding recollection of the past. The place where he now walked was one well calculated, according to the creed of those who believe in the power exercised over the mind by the face of external nature, to instil soothing and tranquillizing feelings. It was a smooth grassy lawn, forming the bottom of a gentle eminence, undulating and stretching downwards to the pebbly beach, among whose round white stones the quiet waters of the Firth fell kissingly. The view was bounded to the north by the rising eminences we have mentioned, and shut in on the west by the woody promontory which is still crowned by Wemyss Castle. To the eastward several rocky eminences stretch into the Firth, the more distant still increasing their seaward march until the bay is closed by the distant point of Kincraig. Before him lay the silver Firth, and, half-veiled in distance, the green fields and hills of Lothian, terminated by the picturesque Law of North Berwick, and the great Bass, frowning like some vast leviathan awakening from his sleep. One or two white-sailed barks lay motionless upon the water. The effect of the whole was so stilling and sedative, that Arthur, half forgetting his recent disappointment, stretched himself upon the sward, and abandoned himself to contemplation.
While he lay thus chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, the sounds of distant song and merriment occasionally broke upon his ear. He at first regarded them as the mere offspring of imagination, but at length the choral swell of a seemingly joyous ballad, followed by a hearty, far-reverberated shout, convinced him that the merry-making was real, and at no great distance. He started to his feet in some alarm, for his first impression was that the Good Neighbours were holding their revels near him, and he well knew the danger of being detected as a prying overlooker of their mystic merriment. A moment served to dissipate this fear. The voices which he had listened to were too rough and boisterous ever to be mistaken for the singing of those tiny minstrels, whose loudest notes never exceeded in sound the trumpet of the bee. There was no fairy ring round the spot on which he had lain, nor was the hour either the “eye of day” or that of midnight, at which, as is well known, the elfin power was most formidable. After looking and listening for some time, he ascertained that the sounds proceeded from a cave, which we have not yet mentioned, but which forms a striking ornament to the beach, and an object of considerable interest to the geologist, having been doubtless formed long before the Forth had found its present modest limits. Being anxious to dispel the feelings that now preyed on his peace, by a diversion of whatever kind, he walked towards the place. As he approached, the mirth was renewed with increased vehemence, and he perceived, at the western entrance of the cave, a female, from whose swarthy hue and singular habiliments he at once divined the nature of its present inmates. The woman, whose features were stern and somewhat repulsive, wore a long gown, of some coarse dark-coloured material, which fell almost to her feet, having short wide sleeves, which left the arms at perfect liberty, and coming up to the neck, was there fastened with a golden brooch. Her head-dress consisted of a red and yellow coloured shawl, twisted fantastically into a conical shape. Pendants of gold hung from her ears, and rings of the same metal, in many of which were set rubies and other sparkling gems, garnished her tawny fingers. Arthur at once recognised an Egyptian or gipsy in the dark-featured damsel who stood before him, and hesitated a moment whether he should pursue the determination of mixing with the revellers within, to which his eager desire of escaping from his present unhappy feelings had prompted him. The Egyptians were in those days of a much darker character than the remnants of their descendants, which, in spite of press-gangs and justice-warrants, still linger amongst us. Murder among themselves was a thing of everyday occurrence, and desperate robberies, committed upon the king’s lieges, by no means rare. The present gang, from their vociferation, seemed in a state of excitement likely to remove any little restraints which the fear of the law’s vengeance might at another time have imposed on them, and the features of the woman, contrary to their custom, wore no look of invitation, but rather seemed to deepen into a warning frown the nearer he approached the door at which she was posted. On the other hand, the honour of the race, to such as trusted them, was proverbial. His curiosity to know more intimately the manners of a people so remarkable as the Egyptians then were, and still are—perhaps a latent wish of being able to extract from their prophetic powers some favourable auspice to his almost expiring hopes—or that nameless something which at times impels us to court the danger we at other times shun with care—all conspired to induce him to enter the cave, and he accordingly attempted to do so. In this, however, he was opposed by the gipsy, who, stepping exactly in his way, waved her arm in a repelling attitude; and, seeing him disinclined to obey this silent injunction, coming still closer to him, whispered, “Get you gone; your life will be endangered if you enter here.”
Before Arthur could reply to this injunction, she who gave it was suddenly attacked by a man, who, issuing from the entrance, struck her a smart blow across the shoulders with a staff which he carried, and then, with a scowling look and angry accent, spoke a few words to her in a language which Arthur understood not. She muttered something in reply, and proceeded towards the beach. “The woman is mad at times, young sir,” said the man, now addressing Arthur. “Heed her not, I beseech you. We are only a few wandering puir folks, making merry, and if you wish to share our revelry, enter, and welcome. Some of our women may be able to read your weird, should you so incline; you have nothing to fear.”
Arthur was by no means satisfied either that the woman was mad, or that the man meant him fairly; but as he could not now retreat without betraying his fear to the dark searching eye which the gipsy bent on him, and was besides conscious that he possessed a well-proved sword, and considerable skill and strength in the handling of it, he signified his wish to join the merrymaking, and followed the gipsy into the cave.
On entering he found himself in the interior of a high-roofed cavern, of considerable extent, partly exposed to the seaward side by two arched openings between the lofty recesses of rock which support the roof, that towards the east being the smaller and lower of the two; and the other rising in height nearly to the roof, affording a view of the Firth, and admitting light to the place.
The inhabitants of the cave had ranged themselves along the north and inner side. Nearest the western entrance, stretched on sacks, sheepskins, cloaks, and other nondescript articles of clothing, sat, or rather lay, ten or twelve men, with rather more than double that number of women, all busily engaged in drinking; farther off, some ragged crones were busily superintending the operation of a wood fire on a suspended pot; while, farther off still, a few barebacked asses, and a plentiful variety of worse clad children, were enjoying their common straw.
Arthur was immediately introduced to the company of carousers, some of whom received him with a shout of welcome, but others with evident dissatisfaction; and he overheard, as he seated himself, what seemed an angry expostulation and reply pass between his conductor and one of the party. This individual, who was evidently the chief of the gang, was an aged man, with a beard of silver gray, which, as he sat, descended to his lap, entirely covering his breast. His head was quite bald, with the exception of a few hairs that still struggled for existence behind his ears, and this, added to the snowy whiteness of his eyebrows, and the deep wrinkles in his brow and cheeks, would have conferred an air of reverence on his countenance, had not the sinister expression of his small and fiery-looking eyes destroyed the charm. On each side of him sat a young girl—the prettiest of the company; and the familiar manner in which they occasionally lolled on the old man’s bosom, and fondled with his neck and beard, showed the intimate terms on which they lived with him. The rest of the men were of various ages, and though all of them were marked with that mixed expression of daring recklessness and extreme cunning which has long been “the badge of all their tribe,” they attracted (with one exception) little of Arthur’s attention. Of the women, the very young ones were extremely pretty, the middle-aged and old ones, more than equally ugly. Young and old, pretty and ill-favoured, all were alike deficient in that retiring modesty of expression without which no face can be accounted truly lovely, and the want of which darkens into hideousness the plainness of homely features. They joined freely in the draughts, which their male companions were making from the horns, which, filled with wine and ale, circulated among the company, and laughed as loud and joked as boldly as they did.
Arthur seated himself in silence, and, somewhat neglectful of the kindness of the female who sat next him, occupied himself in surveying the motley group before him. His eye soon rested on a man seated next the damsel who occupied the place immediately to the left of the chief, and the moment he did he became anxious and interested. The individual was a man of rather more than middle height, of a muscular, though by no means brawny frame. His countenance was ruddy, and of a pleasant mirthful expression; his eyes were full, of a dark hazel colour; his nose, though prominent, gracefully formed, and his mouth small and piquant. His beard was of a dark auburn hue, and he wore moustaches of the same colour. He was dressed in a hodden-gray doublet and hose, which were fastened round his body by a strong leathern girdle, from which hung a broad sword of the two-edged shape. The manner of this individual was evidently different from those of his present companions, and that from the very pains which he took to assimilate it. There was all their mirth without their grossness, and his kind, affable demeanour to the female part of the company differed widely from the blunt and sometimes brutal behaviour of his comrades.
“Who is that on the left of the old man?” whispered Arthur to the man who had introduced him.
“That—that’s his favourite dell,” replied the man.
“Nay, I mean not the woman—the man upon her left.”
“Why, I know not—he’s none of us—strayed in like you to share the revelry, I fancy,—though, if he takes not better care of his eyes and hands, an inch or two of cold iron will pay his reckoning. I think he dallies too much with the mort.”
The cool, even tone in which this annunciation of probable murder was uttered, rendered the communication more startling to Arthur than if it had been made with a vindictive exclamation or suppressed groan; and he looked anxiously and steadily on the stranger, whose gallant bearing more and more attracted him. The latter had observed him more than once bending his eyes on him, and was not apparently pleased with the strictness of his scrutiny. Twice, when their eyes met, the stranger had checked a rising frown by emptying the horn which he held in his hand; the third time he set it down untasted, and, fixing on Arthur a look of calm commanding dignity, which seemed more native to him than aught around, exclaimed, in a deep and powerful accent,—
“Friend, wherefore peer you so steadily this way? If you have aught to say, out with it—if not, reserve your ogling for some of the fair eyes near you.”
Arthur felt abashed beneath the rebuke which his solicitude for this individual had exposed him to, and he could only mutter in reply something about the young damsel beside him.
“Ah! ah!” replied the stranger, resuming his good humour, “it is to her your looks were sent? Soul of Bruce! but she is well worthy of your wonder. Never—and I have seen many bright eyes—have I lighted on a pair so witching.” Then, turning to the object of these praises, he took her hand, and whispered in her ear something, which, though inaudible to those present, was evidently of no unpleasing nature, as her dimpling cheek unquestionably testified.
The patriarch had viewed, for some time, with ill-dissembled anger, the approaches of the stranger to the temporary sovereign of his affections. But whether he thought them becoming too close, or was enraged at the placidity with which they were received, his indignation now burst out, and as is usual in matters of violence, the weight of his vengeance fell heaviest on the weaker individual. He smote the girl violently on the cheek, and, addressing the stranger in a voice hoarse with passion, poured forth a torrent of words which were to Arthur utterly unintelligible.
The stranger, who did not seem to understand the expressions of this address, could not, however, mistake its meaning. The language of passion is universal—and the flashing eye and shrivelled brow of the Egyptian chief were too unequivocal to be misunderstood. He remained silent but a moment, and then, drawing from his bosom a purse, apparently well-filled, he took out a golden Jacobus, and proffered it to the patriarch, as a peace-offering to his awakened anger. The fire of indignation fled from the old man’s eyes as they lighted on the gold, but they were instantaneously lighted up by a fiercer and more deadly meaning. Arthur could observe significant looks circulating among the men, who also began to speak to one another in a jargon unintelligible to him. He felt convinced that the purse which the incautious stranger had produced had determined them to destroy him; and, prepossessed with this idea, he saw at once the necessity of the keenest observation, and of the danger which attended his scrutiny being detected. He pretended to begin to feel the influence of the potations in which he had indulged, and apparently occupied himself in toying with the willing dell who sat beside him. He now perceived one or two of the men rise, and proceed to the several openings of the cave, evidently to see that no one approached from without, or perhaps to cut off retreat. He saw, too, that they plied the stranger and himself with wine and ale; and, more convincing than all, he perceived on the darkening brow and gleaming eye of the hoary Egyptian, the awakening excitement of a murderous design. The stranger, in the meantime, apparently unconscious of the peril he was in, began again to bandy kind words and looks with the favourite of the chief. The old man looked grimly on, but did not now seem to wish to interrupt the dalliance. Suddenly he drew his hand from his bosom. It was filled with a dagger, which he raised high, evidently with the intention of slaying the unguarded stranger, who was too much occupied with the eyes and hands of the beauty to perceive his villanous intention.
Arthur, who at the moment was lifting to his mouth the ponderous pewter “stoup,” or flagon, containing the ale on which the Egyptians were regaling, saw the wretch’s intent, and on the impulse of the moment flung the vessel at the lifted hand. His aim was fortunately true; the villain’s arm fell powerless by his side, while the dagger flew to a considerable distance. Arthur then rose, and crying hastily to the stranger to defend himself, drew his blade and made towards him.
The stranger had perceived the intended blow, though, entangled as he at the moment was, he would unquestionably have fallen a victim to it. He now leaped hastily up, and exclaiming loudly, “Morte de ma vie!—Treason!” drew out his sword, and looked for the foe. Arthur now joined him, and, setting their backs to the rocky wall of the cave, they prepared to defend themselves against the enraged gipsies, who, now shouting wildly, drew from under their cloaks long sharp knives, which they brandished furiously in their faces.
The stranger swept his sword around him in a manner that proved him a practised master, and Arthur manfully seconding him, the Egyptians were kept completely at bay, for none seemed daring enough to trust himself within the sweep of the stranger’s sword, or that of his new companion. But it was only while they could keep their backs to the rocky wall that they could hope to cope with their savage enemies, who, though they did not come near enough to stab, surrounded them as nearly as they could, and yelled and shouted like so many disappointed fiends. There was apparently no means of escape, though there might be of resistance, as the moment they quitted the wall their backs would have been exposed to the daggers of the infuriated assassins. Arthur perceived, too, to his dismay, that sure means were taken to render their length of sword unavailing. Several women were clambering up the rock behind them carrying large blankets and other cloths, clearly for the purpose of throwing over their swords and themselves, and thus yielding them up a fettered prey to these ruffians. All hope of escape died in his bosom as he discovered the well-laid design, and he was about to rush on the savages, and at least sell his life dearly, when he observed the women who carried the blankets pause and look upwards. He too looked up, and saw, with a consternation that for a moment unmanned him, an immense fragment of loose rock in the very act of being removed from its immemorial resting-place, and precipitated on their heads.
“Holy Virgin! help us, or we are lost!” exclaimed the youth; and the prayer had hardly left his lips ere the threatened engine of their destruction was converted into the means of their immediate escape. The ponderous stone dropped so far directly on its fatal errand, that Arthur instinctively crouched beneath the apparently inevitable blow; but encountering a few feet only above his head a projecting piece of rock, it rebounded from the side of the cave in a slanting direction, and, falling clear of its intended victims, smote to the earth the hoary head of the patriarch. He fell beneath the huge fragment, which hid from their sight the face and neck of the Egyptian; but the convulsive writhings of the unhappy man, which for a moment contorted his frame, only to leave it in utter stillness, told plainly that his long career had ceased, and that the man of blood had become the victim of his own pitiless design.
The Egyptians, panic-struck by this sudden death-blow, set up a loud and stunning wail, as they crowded round the body of their chief; but the stranger and Arthur stayed not to observe their farther demeanour, and, taking advantage of the opening among their enemies, which was now afforded them, sprang out of the cave, and ascended at the top of their speed to the brow of the eminence behind it.
They continued their rapid walk for some time in silence, induced, no doubt, by the tumultuous nature of their feelings, and the violence of their present exertion. At length, having entered a few yards into a wood, which then decorated the place, though soon after to be converted into keel and timbers for the “Great Michael,” the stranger halted, and, taking Arthur by the hand, said breathlessly,—
“By Saint Andrew, young sir, you have done us this day good service. I never thought to have been so indebted to a pint-stoup, trow me.”
“But what sorrow tempted you, man,” replied Arthur, rather crossly, “to play the fool with the old villain’s dearie in yon wild sort of fashion; and, above all, what induced you to flourish your well-filled purse in the eyes of those who love gold better than anything else save blood?”
“Whim—chance—fate—I thought at one time. It is long since cunning men have told me that I shall die for a woman, and, by the Bruce’s soul! I thought the hour had come. As for my Jacobuses, I rejoice I saved them from the filching crew, as they will serve for an earnest—a poor one, to be sure—of my thankfulness to my brave deliverer;” and so saying, he drew from his bosom the purse which had excited the fatal cupidity of the Egyptians, and gracefully proffered it to the youth.
Arthur had all along suspected—nay, felt assured—that his companion was of a rank superior to his appearance; and, had it not been so, his present conduct would have convinced him.
“Whoever you are, sir,” said he, “that in this lowly guise speak the language and the sentiments of a noble-born, your own heart will, I know, convince you that I dare not accept your gold. The service I rendered you I would have rendered to the poorest carle in Fife, but were it ten times greater than it was, it must not be repaid with coin.”
“All are not carles who wear hodden gray and blue bonnets with you, I find,” replied the stranger, smiling approvingly. “But come, if gold cannot repay the service you have done me, tell me what can.”
“Nothing in your power to perform,” replied Arthur, calmly.
“Try,” continued the stranger; “I bear with me a talisman which can command all objects which men in general desire. Choose, then—wealth, worship, or a fair wife!”
There was something so frank, open, yet condescending, in the tone and appearance of this extraordinary stranger, that Arthur could not resist their fascinating influence, and although he could not imagine that any interference on the part of his new friend would produce the slightest change in the stern sentence of Walter Colville, he communicated to him a general outline of his present situation.
The stranger listened attentively to the detail—then demanded how far distant the dwelling of Colville was; and, on being informed of its near vicinity to the spot on which they then stood, declared his intention of immediately proceeding thither and using his influence in Arthur’s behalf.
The latter opposed this resolution but faintly; for, though he was, as we have said, utterly at a loss to conceive how his cause was to be benefited by the proffered kindness of the stranger, yet a vague and almost latent hope of still obtaining Edith never entirely forsook him.
He conducted the stranger through the wood, therefore, by the path which led most directly to the house of Balmeny. On reaching the skirt of the forest, it was agreed that the former should proceed alone to the dwelling of Colville, and that Arthur should remain where he was, and await the result.