“What means it, Janet, or whatever be your name, that the door was barred and I kept standing outside my own house? What were ye doing, and who is within the walls? 249 Speak out, and quickly, or I will make you do it at your pain. Have the dragoons been here, and are there any hid in this place? Is my Lady Dundee in the castle, and if so, where is she?” And then, when the panic-stricken woman could not find intelligible words before the unwonted fury of her master, he pushed her aside and, rushing up the stair, tore open the door of the familiar room where Jean and he usually sat––to find that she was not there nor anywhere else in the castle, that his wife and the child were gone. With this confirmation of his worst fears, his fever left him suddenly, and he came to himself, so far as the action of his mind and the passion of his manner were concerned. Sending for Janet, he expressed his regret, with more than his usual courtesy, that he had spoken roughly to her and for the moment had frightened her. Something, he said, had vexed him, but now she must not be afraid, but must tell him some things that he wished to know. Had everything been going well at Dudhope since he left, and had her ladyship and my little lord been in good health? That was excellent. He hoped that the dragoons had not been troublesome or come about the castle? They had not? Well, that was satisfactory. Their commander, 250 Colonel Livingstone, perhaps had called to pay his respects to Lady Dundee, and render any kindness he could? No, never been seen at the castle? That was strange. Her ladyship––where had she gone, for she did not appear to be in the castle, nor her maid nor the other servants? Where were they all? Had her ladyship taken refuge in Dundee for safety in those troubled times? And as his master asked this question with studied calmness and the gentlest of accents, Grimond shuddered, for this was the heart of the matter, and there was murder in the answer. Not to Dundee––where then? To Glenogilvie, only last night in great haste, as if afraid of someone or something happening. Of whom, of what? But Janet did not know, and could only say that Lady Dundee and the household had formed a sudden plan and departed at nightfall for the old home of the Grahams. Whereat Dundee smiled, and, crossing to a window and looking down upon the town, said to himself: “A cunning trap. I was to be taken at Dundee, when in my hot haste, and thinking I had an easy capture, I rushed the town without precautions, as I might have done. While in quiet Glenogilvie my lady waited for his triumphant coming, victor and lover. It was a saving mercy, as 251 her people would say, that our scouts drew their fire and brought out the situation. They might have baited the trap at Dudhope had they been cleverer, and I been taken in my home with her by my side––but that would have been dangerous. Now it is left for me to see whether the town could be rushed, and I have the last joy of one good stroke at Colonel Livingstone. But if that be beyond my reach, as I fear it may, then haste me to Glenogilvie.”
During the day Graham hung about the outskirts of the town searching for some weak spot where he could make a successful entrance with his troopers. Before evening he was driven to the conclusion that an assault could only mean defeat and likely his own death, and he wished to live at least for another day. So when the sun was setting he rode away from Dudhope, and on the crest of the hill that overhangs Dundee, he turned him in his saddle and looked down on the castle from which he had ruled the town, and where he had spent many glad days with Jean. The shadows of evening were now gathering, and when he reached the home of his boyhood in secluded Glenogilvie the night had fallen. It was contrary to his pride to practise any tactics in his own country, and 252 they rode boldly to the door from which he had gone out and in so often in earlier, happier days. They had been keeping watch, he noticed, for lights shifted in the rooms as they came near, and almost as soon as he had crossed the threshold his wife came out from her room to greet him. He marked in that instant that, though she was startled to see him, and had not looked for him so soon, she showed no sign of confusion or of guilt. Against his will he admired the courage of her carriage and her dignity in what he judged a critical hour of her life. It was not their way to rush into one another’s arms, though there burned in them the hottest and fiercest passion of love. In presence of others they never gave themselves away, but carried themselves with a stately grace. “We heard you were on your way, my lord,” she simply said, “but I did not expect so quick a meeting. Have ye come from the north or from Perth? A messenger went to Lord Perth’s house with news of the happenings at Dundee, but doubtless he missed you.” She gave him her hand, over which he bent, and which he seemed to kiss, but did not. “We left Perth two days ago,” he replied, with a cold, clear voice, which did not quite hide the underlying emotion, “and we have this day 253 paid our visit to Dundee––to get a chill welcome and find Dudhope empty. It was a pity that we missed the messenger, Lady Dundee, who doubtless sought for us diligently, for if we had known where you were when we left Glamis this morning, it had been easy––aye, and in keeping with my mind––to turn aside and visit Glenogilvie.” They were still standing in the hall, and Jean had begun to realize that Dundee was changed, and that behind this cold courtesy some fire was burning. When they were alone she would, in other circumstances, have cast herself in the proud surrender of a strong woman’s love into his arms, and he would have kissed her hair, her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her chin, and, last, her mouth; but at the sight of his eyes she stood apart, and straightening herself, Jean said: “What is the meaning of this look, John, and what ails you? Ye seem as if ye had suffered some cruel blow. Has aught gone wrong with you? Ye have come back in hot haste.”
“Yes, my Lady Dundee, something wrong with me, and maybe worse with you. I have come quicker than I intended, and have had a somewhat cold reception at Dundee, but I grant you that was not your blame, you had 254 doubtless prepared a warmer. Livingstone was the laggard.”
“You are angry, John, and I now understand the cause. It was not my blame, for what woman could do I did, and maybe more than becometh your wife, to win him over. He almost consented, and I declare to you that Livingstone is with us. I could have sworn two days ago that the regiment would have joined us and been waiting for you. But that determined Whig, Captain Balfour, discovered the plot, and I had a message yesterday afternoon that it was hopeless. So for fear of arrest I hurried to Glenogilvie, and tried to intercept your coming. Blame not me, for I could do no more––and what mean you by calling me ever by my title and not by my name, after our parting for so long and dangerous a time?”
“You are right, Jean Cochrane, and I will do you this justice, ye could not do more than meet him in the orchard and in the dark of the night. Yes, ye were both seen, and word was brought me to the north by a faithful messenger––I judge the only true heart left. That was fine doing and fine pleading, when he confessed that you had won his heart, but his honor was hindering him. Ye cannot deny the words, they are graven on 255 my heart like fire, and are burning it to the core. You, my wife, and whom I made my Lady Dundee, as if you had been a lowborn country lass.”
“You are unjust, my lord, shamefully and cruelly unjust. It was not a pleasant thing for me to do, and I hated myself in the stooping to do it, but there was no other way for it, since he dared not come in the daylight, and I dared not go to him. Now I wish to God I had never troubled myself and never lifted my little finger to accomplish this thing for the cause, since spies have been going and coming between Dudhope and the north. What I did, I did for you and King James, and if I had succeeded ye would have praised me and said that a woman’s wiles had won a regiment of horse. But because I have failed ye fling my poor effort in my face, and make me angry with myself that I ever tried to serve you––you who stand here reproaching me for my condescension.”
“Well acted, my lady, and a very cunning tale. So it was to serve me ye crept out at night disguised, and it was to win his heart for King James that ye spoke so tenderly? I never expected the day would come when John Graham of Claverhouse would call down blessings––aye, the richest benediction 256 of heaven––upon a Covenanter, but I pray God to bless Captain Balfour with all things that he desires in this world and in that which is to come. Because, though he knew not what he was doing, and might have served his own cause better by letting things run their course, he saved, at least in the eyes of the world, my honor, and averted the public shame of a treacherous wanton.”
As the words fell slowly and quietly from his lips, like drops of vitriol, Jean’s face reflected the rapid succession of emotions in her heart. She was startled as one not grasping the meaning of his words: she was horrified as their shameful charge emerged: she was stricken to the heart as the man she had loved from out of all the world called her by the vilest of all names a woman can hear. Then, being no gentle and timid young wife who could be crushed by a savage and unexpected blow and find her relief in a flood of tears, but a proud and determined woman with the blood of two ancient houses in her veins, after the briefest pause she struck back at Dundee, carrying herself at her full height, throwing back her head with an attitude of scorn, her face pale because intense feeling had called the blood back to the heart, and her eyes blazing with fury, as when the 257 forked lightning bursts from the cloud and shatters a house or strikes a living person dead. And it was like her that she spoke almost as quietly as Graham, neither shrinking nor trembling.
“This, then, is the cause of your strange carriage, Lord Dundee, which I noted on your coming, and tried to explain in a simple and honorable way, for I had no key to your mind, and have not known you for what you are till this night. So that was the base thing you have been imagining in your heart, as you rode through the North Country, and that was the spur that drave you home with such haste––to guard your honor as a husband, and to put to shame an adulterous wife? Pardon me if I was slow in catching your meaning, the charge has taken me somewhat by surprise.” And already, before her face, Dundee began to weaken and to shrink for the first time in his life.
“And you are the man whom I, Jean Cochrane, have loved alone of all men in the world, and for whose love I forsook my mother and my house, and became a stranger in the land! You are the husband whom I trusted utterly, for whom I was willing to make the last sacrifice of life, of whom I boasted in my heart, in whom I placed all my joy! I knew you 258 were a bigot for your cause; I knew you were cruel in the doing of your work; I knew you had a merciless ambition; I knew you had an unmanageable pride; I have not lain in your arms nor lived by your side, I have not heard you speak nor seen you act, without understanding how obstinate is the temper of your mind, and how fiery is your heart. For those faults I did not love you less, and of them I did not complain, for they were my own also. That you were incapable of trusting, that you could suspect your wife of dishonor, that you would be moved by the report of a spy, a baseborn peasant man, that you could offer the last gross, unpardonable insult to a virtuous woman, is what I never could have even imagined. The Covenanters called you by many evil names, and I did not believe them. I believe every one of them now––they did not tell half the truth. They called you persecutor and murderer, they forgot to call you what I now do. As when one strikes a cur with a whip, so to your fair, false face I call you liar and coward. Peace till I be done, and then you may kill me, for it were better I should not live, and if I had the sword of one of my kinsfolk here I would kill you where you stand. God in heaven, what an accusation! A wife of five 259 years, and a mother of only a few weeks, that she should sin with an honorable man who is her friend and her husband’s friend! Did Livingstone say, according to that dastard hiding in the wood, that his heart was with us? That was with our cause, and not with me. Did he say honor hindered him? That was not honor towards you, it was honor towards his colors. But honor is a strange word in your ears now, my lord. I have never thought of Livingstone more than any other man who has a good name and has never betrayed a trust. This night my heart is favorable to him, for I saw him in an agony about his honor, and I judge if he were a woman’s husband, and she was such a woman as I am before God this day, he would rather die than insult her.”