Legendary Tales of the Highlands (Volume 2 of 3) / A sequel to Highland Rambles

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

“Oh, say!—speak!” said Alice, greatly agitated. “What—what wouldst thou say?”

“What—what have I said?” continued Sir Walter, sinking in tone and manner into those of deep despondency. “What!—said I that we should yet be happy?—that thou shouldst yet be my wife. Alas!—no, no, no—I forgot. It cannot be. My vow—my vow—my solemn vow, already registered in Heaven! Would that I had known all this ere I had made it! Would that I had but known that thou wer’t still alive! But now, even these regrets and repinings become sinful. The hand of Providence is in it, and God’s holy will be done. The vow—the solemn vow which I recorded in Heaven must be fulfilled. Alice, dearest of human beings, I cannot now be thine! I have henceforth dedicated myself to the service of the Most High. I depart this very day to make good my vow, by throwing myself into a foreign monastery.”

“The will of the Lord be done!” said Alice Asher, in a hollow voice of intense suffering, whilst, pale and trembling, she bowed her head and sank into a chair, where a deluge of tears gave vent to her emotions. “The will of the Lord be done! And why should it be otherwise? I have more than deserved all those sufferings and trials, which God, in his justice and wisdom, hath been pleased to bring upon me, and why should I wickedly murmur? As thou sayest, the finger of God is in it. May he sanctify his chastisement for our salvation, and so let me cheerfully kiss the rod of his fatherly correction.”

“Angel that thou art!” cried Sir Walter, greatly moved. “Oh, what wouldst thou not have been, but for me, villain that I was! Thy sin was mine. On my head must fall the whole of thy guilt. Thou wert young and pure, as a creature of heaven. On my head must fall all the wrath of an offended God; and mine, therefore, must be the penance. Return then to resume thine innocent and peaceful life. Thou hast a firm and able protector in thy son, whose strong arm, and upright heart, shall shield thee from all harm. In due time, he must marry Rosa MacDermot, and thou mayst yet live happily to see thy grandchildren growing up, like goodly plants, around thee. Pray for me in thy private hours of converse with the Almighty, that he may yet extend his mercy to me, a repentant sinner. My orisons shall never cease to rise for thee. And now, this last holy kiss, may, without guilt, be permitted to us. May God for ever bless and preserve thee! And—now—now—farewell for ever!”

Alice flew into his arms with a frantic hysterical laugh; and after a long, a silent, and a last embrace, Sir Walter Stewart, gently unfolding himself from her, rushed with a broken heart from the apartment, followed by his son and Lord Huntly, leaving Alice Asher, who sank helpless into a chair, pale, motionless, and silent, as if death had suddenly fallen upon her. The Knight sprang into his saddle; Huntly silently but warmly squeezed his hand; Charley Stewart embraced his manly limb, as he put his foot into the stirrup—and his father stooped from his seat, and tenderly kissed his brow, and blessed him, ere he dashed his spur-rowels into the sides of his steed, and galloped out of the court-yard, with his followers behind him.

Let us now return to the Castle of Drummin.—On that very night in which the depressed and repentant Sir Walter was solemnly dedicating himself, at Huntly Castle, to the service of God, she who had been his lady retired to rest in her chamber, with her infant child placed in a cradle beside her couch. A lamp, which burned on a table near her, enabled her to read over again the letter which she had received from Cochran, the new Earl of Mar; and, after she had done so, she laid her head back upon the pillow to ruminate upon its contents, and to resign herself to the enjoyment of those visions of ambition to which it had given birth. By degrees, sleep overpowered her, and her waking thoughts began gradually to resolve themselves into wild, floating, and ill-connected dreams. After many strange and abrupt changes, she imagined that she was led to the altar by the Earl of Mar. Both were dressed in all the pomp that befitted the rank of such a bridegroom and bride. The King and Queen were present; and all things were prepared for the nuptial ceremony. But, when the marriage service proceeded, both the Earl and Lady made vain and ineffectual efforts to join hands. As she struggled to accomplish this, she suddenly perceived, that the gorgeous golden collar which surrounded the Earl’s neck, was changed into a halter of horse hair. She stared with wonder upon him; and, as she did so, his coarse, ruddy features became pale, and fixed, and corpse-like, and he was lifted slowly from before her, as if some powerful and unseen hand had raised him from the ground by the halter, until he disappeared altogether from her sight. She struggled fearfully. The priests, the King, and the Queen, and the other personages who were present at the bridal, faded away before her. Her heart grew cold within her from fear and very loneliness. Suddenly the candles on the altar, and the other lights in the church, blazed up miraculously, till their pointed flames were blunted and flattened on the vaulted roof. She endeavoured to shriek aloud, but no utterance could she give to her voice, whilst horrid laughter echoed through the surrounding aisles, and demoniac faces mocked and gibbered at her from behind the massive pillars. A complete and most unaccountable change immediately took place; and she beheld a burning cottage before her. Screams were heard from within the walls, and she would have fain shut her eyes from the sight, and stopped her ears from the sound; but she could do neither. She was in an agony which no human tongue can describe. At length, the figure of a woman, of angelic beauty and expression of countenance, and ethereal airiness of form, shot upwards, as if borne to heaven by the rising column of fire. The screams continued from within the burning walls. They pierced her ears horribly, and the flames darted around her on all sides, scorching her face and hands, and setting fire to her garments; and still all her efforts were vain to move herself from the spot, so as to withdraw from their influence. Half suffocated, she struggled and toiled to escape from them; and being at last awakened by her efforts, she was, for one moment, conscious that she was in the midst of a real conflagration. In that one moment was concentrated the whole remorse of her wicked life—and it was terrible! She heard the cries of her perishing babe; and being herself so choked as to be unable for exertion, she speedily became an easy and helpless prey to the devouring element. The drapery of her bed, which she had put aside in order to read the letter, had fallen back into its place; and having thus caught fire from the lamp, the flames had thence communicated to the cradle and to the bed; and by the time the alarm of the conflagration had been given throughout the Castle, and traced to its source, the lady and her innocent babe, and every thing within the apartment, had been consumed to ashes.

After such an occurrence as this, it may easily be conceived that the gates of Drummin were thrown open to the Earl of Huntly, the moment he appeared with a strong force before it. He staid but a few days there, to arrange such business as his new possessions demanded of him. The most prominent and important part of this was, to see Charles Stewart regularly infeoffed in his property of Kilmaichly, after which he bestowed knighthood upon him; and having accomplished all this, the Earl hastened southwards, to lend his powerful aid in perfecting those plots which were then ripening among the discontented nobles, and which terminated with the summary execution of Cochran, and the other minions of King James the Third, over the Bridge of Lauder. That the life or person of Ramsay were preserved untouched, may have been in a great measure owing to the last parting injunctions of his friend Sir Walter Stewart.

The new Knight of Kilmaichly quickly proceeded to build himself a suitable dwelling, and that was no sooner in a habitable state, than he brought that courtship, which he began with Rosa MacDermot, before she was carried off from the harvest-rig by the eagle, to a proper period, by a mutual submission of the parties to that holy yoke, which was imposed upon them by the priest, who then lived at Dounan. The poor old Howlet’s prophecy was thus verified, by Rosa MacDermot thus becoming a landed lady, and marrying a man with a knight’s spurs at his heels, and this, too, precisely according to the happy interpretation which the Lady Kilmaichly had herself put upon it. Among the few people who were bidden to the marriage, and certainly one who was by no means the least happy or jovial among the company, was the good old knight Sir Piers Gordon. Nor was his niece, the Lady Marcella, absent, though, strange to say, she was very much metamorphosed from what she once was. Some time after those events, which caused the flight of Charley Stewart to Edinburgh, and which deprived her of all farther hope of him, she was one day riding with her uncle’s retainers, when they fell in accidentally with a party of Catteranes. She charged them boldly at the head of her people, and, in the midst of the mellée, she had one eye scooped out by the point of a lance, and half of her nose, and a considerable portion of one cheek, carried off by the slash of a claymore, and, had it not been for the intrepidity of an honest, stalwart, broad-shouldered, and wide-chested man-at-arms, who came to her rescue, beat off the enemy single-handed, and then carried her off in his brawny arms, it is probable that she might have died gloriously upon the battlefield. Recovering from her wounds, the bravery of this hero touched her heart; and, notwithstanding the loss of so many of her charms, the bold yeoman, declaring that there was quite enough left of her to make a very fine woman still, and being altogether undeterred by her Amazonian temper, he had no scruple in buckling with the heiress of Sir Piers Gordon. Although a good-natured fellow, he was by no means a man to be bullied. A very great reformation was therefore speedily worked upon her disposition; and by the time she appeared as a guest at the marriage of Sir Charles Stewart of Kilmaichly, she exhibited the countenance of a gorgon, with a temper and spirit subdued and gentle as those of a lamb.

I have little to add now, gentlemen, to this true history, except to recount to you a very curious occurrence, that took place soon after Sir Charles Stewart and his lady were married, and comfortably settled at Kilmaichly, and which threatened to interrupt the peacefulness of their lives for a time. A dispute arose between Sir Charles’s people and those of the Laird of Ballindalloch, about the march between the farm of Ballanluig, belonging to Kilmaichly, and Craigroy, which was the property of his powerful neighbour. The House of Ballindalloch being likely to prove too strong for him, in a matter which he foresaw must probably be determined by the arm of force, the prudent Sir Charles took the precaution to send a messenger into Athol, to his father’s relative, the Laird of Fincastle, craving his aid. To his no small comfort, his petition was readily granted, and Fincastle sent him sixty well-armed men, and a capital piper, to stir up their souls to battle. Sir Charles being now in every respect a match for his opponent, turned out bravely to make good his plea, whilst Ballindalloch came with an equal force to dispute the point. Each of the two parties reached its respective ground at night, with the intent of joining battle by the earliest dawn. That of Sir Charles Stewart took up its position in and about a kiln, whilst Ballindalloch’s little army was similarly posted at or near a house at no great distance. Both sides were breathing horrid war, and anticipating dreadful slaughter, when daylight should enable them to see each other, for the night was dark as pitch. Some time before daybreak, the lightning flashed, and a fearful peal of thunder crashed suddenly over their heads, so that every man present was stricken with awe. A water-spout then broke upon the hills, and came down upon them so tremendously, as to produce a roaring noise, as if a sea had been descending upon them. Both sides were appalled, and sinking in terror upon their knees, they remained in that position until the morning dawned. By that time the sky had cleared, and the sun rose smiling, and then it was, that they beheld by his light, that a large and frightful ravine had been cut out between them, by the water-spout, where nothing of the sort had existed before. Both parties felt that Providence had interfered to settle their dispute, and to save the effusion of human blood. Accordingly the two leaders at once agreed, that the ravine thus strangely and miraculously opened, by the sudden descent of this transient torrent, from the hills, should be the march between their properties in all time coming; and thus, they who came to the ground as deadly foes, separated as sworn brethren and allies.

Thus it seemed, that Heaven itself had ruled, that peace should be secured to those who so well merited it, and who so well knew how to enjoy it; and the felicity of Sir Charles Stewart and his lady was complete. Years rolled on, and still the sunshine of their countenances, aye, and the sunshine of the faces of their merry children, would often conjure up an angelic smile of gratitude, upon the pale and pensive features of Alice Asher. Nor were the grateful feelings of this highly favoured family expended in barren expressions, for all around them were loud in praise of their hospitality, benevolence, and charity.