There was, however, but little delay, in starting the cavalcade. Maxwell, who had been anxiously awaiting the spare horse prepared for him, was soon in the saddle exchanging a cheerful greeting with the troopers, to which Dick alone made no reply; and while it was yet scarcely light, the portcullis was raised, and the party filed out, intently watched from one of the narrow windows by a haggard eager face, that still looked and lingered after the croup of the last horseman had disappeared. Bothwell even made one hasty gesture, as if to recall his mandate, and order the party back, but changing his mind again on the instant, with a bitter laugh, he took a long draught from a wine-flagon that stood by his bed-side, and then flinging himself on the couch, turned doggedly to the wall and tried to force his senses into sleep.
Maxwell felt his sovereign’s letter lying safe within his doublet. He examined, too, the priming of his pistols, and turned his sword-belt a little more to the front. Then he proved the mouth and mettle of his charger with rein and spur, deriving from the experiment all the confidence felt by a good horseman on a well-bitted steed. Satisfied at length on these important points, his spirits rose with the morning air and the excitement of his mission. Even Mary Carmichael’s falsehood seemed less black in hue than it appeared yesterday. The future once more showed promise of something beside a dull apathetic response to the call of duty alone. He looked along its dim vistas, and saw the light shining, though faintly, at a distance. The mission was already in imagination half-fulfilled. He had made his journey prosperously through the rich districts of middle England, and gained the capital with unprecedented rapidity, thanks to good luck in procuring horses, and his own untiring powers in the saddle. He had delivered his credentials to Lady Lennox, and presented himself at Greenwich Palace to the Maiden Queen. He could even conjure up a picture in his mind of that redoubtable lady; could imagine the flaxen curls, the stately figure, the harsh yet not uncomely features, and the dignified gestures that veiled a woman’s vanity beneath the majestic bearing of a British sovereign. He became a courtier for the occasion, and thought how he could serve his own dear mistress with a well-timed compliment, and a little apt flattery to her rival ‘Good Sister.’ He saw himself dismissed with honour, and speeding back to the North, triumphant at the safe accomplishment of his mission. Then he fell to thinking of Mary’s kindly thanks, delivered with all that charm of manner which made a word from her better than a jewel from another, and his welcome reception at Holyrood by all the loyal and well-disposed party to whom it was of no small moment to see their Queen happily married.
Perhaps others, thought Maxwell, might not have served her so well. Perhaps one of her maidens, with whom, as with the rest, loyalty was still the master passion, might be inclined to give him a welcome far warmer and kinder than her proud and distant farewell: might think she had judged him harshly, prematurely: might wish when it was too late that she had not so scornfully rejected his devotion, nay, might long to possess now what she had valued so lightly when it was her own. Then he would teach her a lesson that it would do her good to learn; then how delicious would be the triumph of meeting her coldly, politely, with calm friendship and quiet good-will, far more cutting than any amount of assumed indifference and unconcern; then she would know that she had altered her mind too late, that a man of energy and action was not to be pulled hither and thither like a puppet by the weak hand of a woman holding the string; that she had flung the falcon from her wrist once, jesses and all, and he would soar his wing now, and never stoop to lure of hers again.
Oh! it would be a happy moment; and yet how much happier to forgive her freely, and without reproach to take her hand in his, look frankly in her face, and tell her he had loved her all along, even when she was most wilful and most unkind! Was he not a man—a bold strong man? What had he to do with pride as regarded her? Nay, was it not his pride to think that whilst he yielded an inch to no one else on earth, he would always be content to accept suffering, sorrow, even humiliation, for her dear sake?
Such is the usual conclusion of one of those love reveries in which men indulge whilst under the influence of the malady; such is the climax of an infinity of stem resolution and haughty self-reproach and bitter self-examination; we make ourselves very unkind and very uncomfortable, and after all leave off very much at the point from which we started, if anything, in a less rational frame of mind than at first.
Maxwell could not but compare himself at the moment to the horse of one of the leading files of his escort, which had got bogged up to the girths in a well-head, as those particularly soft pieces of morass are called, which abound on the Scottish moorland. The poor animal made two or three gallant efforts to extricate itself, stimulated not only by the great terror a horse entertains of such a catastrophe, but by a fierce application of its long-legged rider’s spurs; each plunge only hampered it more irrevocably, and at last amidst the loud jeers of his comrades and a volley of oaths from himself, the trooper abandoned the saddle and wisely allowed the beast to be still for a few moments and recover its wind.
Maxwell’s attention, which had hitherto been somewhat taken up with his own thoughts, was now directed towards the locality in which he found himself, and the mist clearing away as the day drew on, enabled him to recognise one or two of those acclivities and breaks of the sky-line which constitute the landmarks of an open moorland district, such as he was at present traversing.
Though he had been but once before at Hermitage, his soldier’s eye had not failed to acquaint itself with the general outline of the surrounding country. He now recognised a conical-shaped hill on his left hand, that he distinctly remembered to have passed yesterday in riding from Edinburgh on his right; the wind, too, which from the appearance of the weather he judged to be easterly, struck cold upon his right cheek; he was convinced they must be going north. His first impression was that the party had lost its way in the mist; his first impulse to jeer its leader, his old friend Dick, on such a want of moss-trooping sagacity.
‘How now, master Dick?’ said Maxwell, cheerily, looking round for his friend, who rode silent and sullen in the rear; ‘I should have thought you knew your way to the southern side better than this! If you wanted to drive Lord Scrope’s horses, or empty a byre or two in Cumberland, you wouldn’t take the road to Holyrood, as I am much mistaken if we are not doing, this morning. Why, man, I came by that very cairn on the green hill yesterday. Thou must be asleep, Dick, for I know the ale is not yet brewed that will make thee drunk!’
Dick shook himself sulkily in reply, and moving his horse alongside his questioner, laid his hand on the other’s bridle-rein as if to guide him into a sounder path.