CHAPTER III
THE LAST BLOW
It is said that those stories are best liked which present a hero and sing his achievements from beginning to end. And the more faultless and brilliant the hero, the better goes the tale, and the louder the applause. Certainly John Graham is the central figure in this history, and so rich is the color of the man and so intense his vitality, that other personages among whom he moves become pale and uninteresting. They had, if one takes the long result, a larger share in affairs, and their hand stretches across the centuries, but there was not in them that charm of humanity which captivates the heart. One must study the work of William of Orange if he is to understand the history of his nation, but one would not go round the corner to meet him. Claverhouse, if one faces the facts and sweeps away the glamour, was only a dashing cavalry officer, who happened to win an insignificant battle by obvious local tactics, 217 and yet there are few men whom one would prefer to meet. One would make a long journey to catch a sight of Claverhouse riding down the street, as one to-day is caught by the fascination of his portrait. But the reader has already discovered that Graham can hardly be called a hero by any of the ordinary tests except beauty of personal appearance. He was not an ignorant man, as certain persons have concluded from the varied and picturesque habits of his spelling, but his friends cannot claim that he was endowed with rich intellectual gifts. He had sense enough to condemn the wilder excesses of his colleagues in the government of the day, but he had not force enough to replace their foolishness by a wiser policy. Had his powers been more commanding, or indeed if he had had any talent for constructive action, with his unwavering integrity and masterful determination, he might have ousted Lauderdale and saved Scotland for King James. But accomplished intriguers and trained politicians were always too much for Claverhouse, and held him as a lithe wild animal is caught in the meshes of a net.
Wild partisans, to whom every man is either white as snow or black as pitch, have gone mad over Graham, making him out, according 218 to their craze, either an angel or a devil, and forgetting that most men are half and between. But it must be also said that those who hold John Graham to have been a Jacobite saint are the more delirious in their minds, and hysterical in their writing, for they will not hear that he ever did anything less than the best, or that the men he persecuted had any right upon their side. He is from first to last a perfect paladin of romance whom everyone is bound to praise. Then artists rush in and not only make fine trade of his good looks, but lend his beauty to the clansmen who fought at Killiecrankie, till the curtain falls upon “Bonnie Dundee” being carried to his grave by picturesque and broken-hearted Highlanders dressed in the costly panoply of the Inverness Gathering, and with faces of the style of George MacDonald or Lord Leighton. Whatever Claverhouse was, and this story at least suggests that he was brave and honorable, he was in no sense a saint, and would have been the last to claim this high degree. It is open to question whether he deserved to be called a good man, for he was ambitious of power and, perhaps for public ends, of wealth; he had no small measure of pride and jealousy in him; he was headstrong and unmanageable, 219 and for his own side he was unrelenting and cruel. There are things he would not have done to advance his cause, as, for instance, tell lies, or stain his honor, but he never would have dreamed of showing mercy to his opponent. Nor did he ever try to enter into his mind or understand what the other man was feeling.
It is sometimes judged enough for a hero that he succeed without being clever or good, but neither did Graham pass this doubtful and dangerous test. For when you clear away the romance which heroic poetry and excited prose have flung around him, you were an optimist if you did not see his life was one long failure as well as a disappointment and a sorrow. He did bravely with the Prince of Orange, and yet somehow he missed promotion; he was the best officer the government had in Scotland, and yet it was only in the last resort he became commander-in-chief. He was the only honest man among a gang of rascals in the Scots council, and yet he was once dismissed from it; he was entitled to substantial rewards, and yet he had to make degrading appeals to obtain his due. He was loyal to foolishness, yet he was represented to the Court as a man who could not be trusted. He had only two love affairs; 220 the first brought him the reputation of mercenary aims, and the second almost ruined his life. He embarked on a contest which was hopeless from the beginning, and died at the close of a futile victory. Except winning the heart of Jean Cochrane, he failed in everything which he attempted. With the exception of his wife he was betrayed on every hand, while a multitude hated him with all their strength and thirsted for his blood. If Jean were not true to him there would not be one star in the dark sky of Claverhouse’s life.
But this irredeemable and final disaster is surely incredible. Dundee, fooled as he had been both by his master and by his friends till he was alone and forsaken, was bound to put his whole trust in his wife. Had she not made the last sacrifices for him and through dark days stood bravely by his side? Their private life had not always run smoothly, for if in one way they were well mated, because both were of the eagle breed, in another way, they were ill-suited, because they were so like. John Graham and Jean Cochrane both came of proud houses which loved to rule, and were not accustomed to yield, they both had iron and determined wills, they shared the dubious gift of a lofty temper and fiery 221 affections. They were set upon their own ways, and so they had clashed many a time in plan and deed; hot words had passed between them, and they had been days without speech. But below the tumult of contending wills, and behind the flash of fiery hearts, they were bound together by the passion of their first love, which had grown and deepened, and by that respect which strong and honorable people have for one another. They could rage, but each knew that the other could not lie; they could be most unreasonable, but each knew that the other could never descend to dishonor, so their quarrels had always one ending, and seemed, after they were over, to draw them closer together and to feed their love. One could not think of them as timid and gentle creatures, billing and cooing their affection; one rather imagined the lion and his lioness, whose very love was fierce and perilous. No power from without could separate these two nor make them quail. Alone and united Dundee and his wife could stand undismayed and self-sufficient, with all Scotland against them. Nothing could ever break their bond except dishonor. But if one should charge the other with that foulest crime, then the end had come, beside which death would be welcome. 222 Where life is a comedy one writes with gayety not untouched by contempt; where life is a tragedy one writes with tears not unredeemed by pride. But one shrinks when the tragedy deepens into black night, and is terrified when strong passions, falling on an evil day, work their hot wills, with no restraining or favorable fate. There are people whose life is a primrose path along which they dance and prattle, whose emotions are a pose, whose thoughts are an echo, whose trials are a graceful luxury; there are others whose way lies through dark ravines and beside raging torrents, over whose head the black clouds are ever lowering, and whom any moment the lightning may strike. This was their destiny. Upon their marriage day one saw the way that these two would have to go, and it was inevitable that they should drink their cup to the dregs.
The blame of what happened must be laid at Graham’s door, and in his last hours he took it altogether to himself; but since it has to be written about, and he showed so badly, let us make from the first the best excuse we can for him, and try to appreciate his state of mind. It was a brave event and a taking scene when he set up the standard of King James above Dundee, and he left to raise the 223 North Country with a flush of hope. It soon passed away and settled down into dreary determination, as he made his toilsome journey with a handful of followers by Aboyne and Huntly, till he landed in Inverness. The Gordons had sent him a reënforcement, and certain of the chiefs had promised their support, but the only aid the Highlanders had given was of dubious value and very disappointing issue. The MacDonalds had hastened to Inverness by way of meeting Dundee, and then had seized the opportunity to plunder their old enemies, the Mackintoshes, and to extract a comfortable ransom out of Inverness. This was not his idea of war, and Dundee scolded Keppoch, who commanded the MacDonalds, most vigorously. Keppoch immediately returned homeward to his fastnesses with the accumulated spoil, partly because his fine, sensitive Highland nature was hurt by Dundee’s plain speech, and partly because whatever happened it was wise to secure what they had got. It is no reflection on Dundee’s manhood that he was cast down during those days at Inverness, for a ten times more buoyant man would have lost heart. His life was a romantic drama, and it seemed as if the Fates had constructed it for the stage, for now, after the 224 lapse of years, MacKay, his old rival in Holland, reappears, and they resume the duel, which this time is to be unto death. While Dundee was struggling in Edinburgh to save the throne for James, MacKay was on his way with regiments of the Scots Brigade to make sure of Scotland for William. A few days after Dundee left Edinburgh MacKay arrived, and now, as Dundee rode northward in hot haste, MacKay was on his track. Both were eager for a meeting, but the bitterness of it for Dundee was that he dared not run the risk. With all his appeals and all his riding, he had only a handful of mounted men, and the clans had not risen. It seemed as if his enterprise were futile, and that Scotland would not lift a hand for King James. He might be a commander-in-chief, but he was a commander of nobody; he might raise a standard, but it was only a vain show. It did not matter where he went or what he did; he was not a general, but a fugitive, a man to be neglected, and his following a handful of bandits. The rising was a thing to laugh at, and the report was current in the capital that he had absconded with one or two servants. This pretty description of his campaign had not reached his ears, but the humiliation of his situation burned into his 225 proud heart. Much as he would have liked to meet MacKay, there remained for him no alternative but flight. Flight was the only word which could describe his journey, and as he planned his course on the morrow, how he would ride to Invergarry, and then return on his course, and then make his way to Cluny, he started to his feet and paced the room in a fury of anger. What better was he than a hare with the hounds after him, running for his life, and doubling in his track, fleeing here and dodging there, a cowering, timid, panting animal of the chase? “Damnation!” and Dundee flung himself out of the room, and paced up and down the side of the river.
There was a dim light upon the running water, and his thoughts turned to the West Country, to the streams he had often crossed and along whose bed he had sometimes ridden, as he hunted for his Covenanting prey. The Fates were just, for now the Whigs were the hunters and he was the hunted. He began to understand what it was to be ever on the alert for the approach of the enemy, to escape at the first sign of danger, to cross hills in full flight, and to be listening for the sound of the pursuer. As yet he had not to hide, but before many days were over he also 226 may be skulking in moss-hags, and concealing himself in caves, and disguising himself in peasant’s garments, he, John Graham of Claverhouse, and my Viscount of Dundee. The tables had turned with a vengeance, and the day of the godly had come. The hillmen would laugh when they heard of it, and the Conventicles would rejoice together. MacKay would be sitting in his quarters at Elgin that night making his plans also, but not for flight, and hardly for fighting. When officers arrest an outlaw, it is not called a battle any more than when hounds run a fox to his lair. MacKay would be arranging how to trap him, anticipating his ways of escape, and stopping all the earths, so that say, to-morrow, he might be quietly taken. It would not be a surrender; it would be a capture, and he would be sent to Edinburgh in charge of half a dozen English dragoons, and tried at Edinburgh, and condemned for treason against King William––King William. They would execute him without mercy, and be only doing to him what he had done to the Whigs, and just as he had kept guard at Pollock’s execution, that new Cameronian Regiment, of which there was much talk, would keep guard at his. There would be little cause for precaution; no one need fear a rescue, for 227 the hillmen would be there in thousands with the other Whigs, to feast their eyes upon his shame, and cheer his death. He could not complain, for it would happen to him as it had to many of them, and what he had sown that would he reap. Would MacKay be laughing that night at Elgin, with his officers, and crying in his Puritanic cant, “Aha, aha, how is the enemy fallen and the mighty cast down! Where now is the boasting of his pride, where now is the persecutor of the saints?” No, far worse, MacKay would give orders in his cold, immovable manner, and treat the matter as of no account, as one who had never expected anything else from the beginning, and was only amazed at his opponent’s madness. That was the inner bitterness of it all; they had taken their sides fifteen years ago; MacKay had chosen wisely, and he had chosen foolishly, as the world would say. The conflict had been inevitable, and it was quite as inevitable that his would be the losing side. William saw what was coming afar off, so did MacKay; and it had all come to pass, year by year, act by act, and now MacKay was to give the last stroke. They had won, and they had been sure all the time they were going to win, and they would win with hardly an effort. He did not repent 228 of his loyalty, and he would not have done otherwise if he had had the choice over again. But their foresight, and their patience, and their capacity, and their thoroughness, and the madness of his own people, and their feebleness, and their cowardice, and their helplessness, infuriated him. “Curse MacKay and his master, and the whole crew of cold-blooded Whigs! But it is I and mine which are cursed.”
“Amen to the malediction on the Usurper and all his servants; it’s weel deserved, and may it sune be fulfilled, full measure and rinnin’ over, but for ony sake dinna curse yersel’, my lord, for it’s blessings ye’ve earned as a faithful servant o’ your king.” And Dundee turned round to find his faithful servant had arrived from home and had sought him out on the riverside.