CHAPTER XII.
THE COTTAGE OF ELSIE.
"Ha! honest nurse, where were my eyes before?
I know thy faithfulness and need no more."
ALLAN RAMSAY.
Several days elapsed without our tyrannical voluptuary being able to do anything personally in the discovery, or persecution of the Napiers. His wounded hand from neglect became extremely painful, and his late debauch with Mersington had thrown him into a state so feverish, that luckily he was compelled to keep within his own apartments; but obstacles only inflamed his passion and exasperated his obstinacy. It would be difficult to analyze the sentiments he entertained towards Lilian Napier. Love, in the purer, nobler, and more exalted idea of the passion he assuredly had not. His overweening pride had been bitterly piqued by her hauteur. The beauty of her person, and the inexpressible charm of her manner had first attracted him, and, notwithstanding the studied coldness with which he was treated, the passion of the roué got the better of judgment. Lilian's great expectations, too, had farther inflamed his ardour; but all the attentions which he proffered on every occasion with inimitable address, were utterly unavailing, and for the first time the gay Lord Clermistonlee found himself completely baffled by a girl. Surprised at her opposition, his pride and constitutional obstinacy became powerfully enlisted in the affair, and he determined by forcible abduction, or some such coup-de-main, to subdue the haughty little beauty to his purpose. Although he had been unable to prosecute his amour in person, Juden and others had narrowly watched the cottage of old Elshender, and brought from thence such reports as convinced his Lordship that she alone could enlighten him as to the retreat of Lilian and Lady Grizel, if they were not actually concealed within her dwelling.
Though a munificent reward had been offered for their discovery, trusting to the well-known faith and long-tried worth of their aged vassal, the ladies had found a shelter in her humble residence, correctly deeming that a house so poor and so near the city walls would escape unsearched, when one at a distance might not. There they dwelt in the strictest seclusion and disguise on the very marge of their ample estates, and almost within view of the turrets of their ancient manor-house.
Since the torture to which the unhappy Ichabod Bummel had been subjected, and his subsequent imprisonment on the Bass Rock (where Peden of Glenluce, Scott of Pitlochie, Bennett of Chesters, Gordon of Earlston, Campbell of Cesnock, and others endured a strict captivity as the price of sedition), Lady Grizel and Lilian hoped that their involvement with the Orange spies, and their flight, would soon be alike forgotten, especially now, when they were so utterly ruined and impoverished by proscription, that they were forced to share the bounty of their humblest vassal.
Near the old ruined chapel of St. Rocque, and close under the outspread branches of a clump of lofty beech trees, by the side of the ancient loan that led to Saint Giles' Grange, nestled the little thatched cottage of Elsie Elshender. It was low-roofed, and its thick heavy thatch was covered with grass and moss of emerald green. The white-washed walls were massive, and perforated by four small windows, each about a foot square, but crossed by an iron bar; two faced the loan in front, and two overlooked the kailyard and byre to the back. The cottage had one great clay-built chimney, at the back of which was a little eyelet hole, affording from the stone ingle-seats a view of the arid hills of Braid, and the solitary path that wound over their acclivities to the peel of Liberton, then the patrimony of the loyal Winrams. On one side of the door was a turf seat, on the other a daddingstone, where (in the ancient fashion) the barley was cleansed every morning, for the use of the family. This humble residence contained only a but and a ben, or inner and outer apartment, and both were furnished with box-beds opening in front with doors. The first chamber, though floored with hard beaten clay, was as clean as whitening and sprinkled sand could make it; a large fire of wood and peats blazed on the rude hearth; and in its ruddy light the various rows of Flemish ware, beechwood luggies, milk-bowies, horn-spoons, and polished pewter arrayed above the wooden buffet or dresser, were all glittering in that shiny splendour which a smart housewife loves. Within the wide fireplace on a pivet hung a glowing Culross girdle, on which a vast cake was baking.
It was night, but neither lamp nor candle were required; the fire's warm blaze gave ample light, and a more comfortable little cottage than old Elsie's when viewed by that hospitable glow, was not to be found in the three Lothians. Three oak chairs of ancient construction, a table similar, a great meal girnel in one corner, flanked by a peat bunker in the other, and an odd variety of stoups, pitchers, and three-legged stools made up the background. On the table lay an old quarto bible from which Lilian read aloud certain passages every night, Andro Hart's "Psalmes in Scot's meter," and the "Hynd let loose" of the "Godly Mr. Sheils," who was then in the hands of the Phillistines, and keeping the Reverend Ichabod Bummel company in the towers of the Bass. Two kirn-babies decorated with blue ribbons, a quaint woodcut of our first parents' joining hands under what resembled a great cabbage in the Garden of Eden appeared over the mantel-piece, together with a long rusty partisan with which the umquhile John Elshender had laid about him like a Trojan on the battle-field of Dunbar.
Close by the ingle sat his widow Elsie enjoying its warmth, and listening to the birr of her wheel. She was a hale old woman of seventy years, with a nose and chin somewhat prominent; her grey hair was neatly disposed under a snowwhite cap of that Flemish fashion which is still common in Scotland, and over which a simple black ribbon marks widowhood. Her upper attire consisted of a coarse skirt of dark blue stuff, over which fell a short linen gown, reaching a little below her girdle, which bristled with keys, knitting wires, pincushion, and scissors. Similarly attired in a short Scottish gown, which showed to the utmost advantage the full outline of her buxom figure, her niece Meinie, a rosy, hazel-eyed, and dark-haired girl of twenty, stood by the meal girnel baking (Anglicé kneading), and as the sleeves of her dress came but a little below the shoulder, her fair round arms and dimpled elbows did not belie the pretty and merry face, which now and then peeped round at the group near the fire. Two of these ought perhaps to have been described first.
Disguised as a peasant, Lady Grisel no longer wore her white hair puffed out by Monsieur Pouncet's skill, but smoothed under a plain starched bigonet, coif, or mutch (which you will), and very ill at ease the stately old dame appeared in her hostess's coarse attire. By way of pre-eminence she occupied the great leathern chair, in which no mortal had been seated since the decease of John Elshender, who for forty consecutive years had hung his bonnet on a knob thereof, while taking his evening doze therein, after a day's ploughing or harrowing on the rigs of Drumdryan.