Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 08

by Unknown

"I cannot disobey Harden's commands," replied she, "though the face of this fair corpse seems to beckon me to the satisfaction of a mother's heart, at the price of a wife's rebellion. My Forester's glazed eyes are fixed on me, and say, 'Open, and let my brothers free, that my blood may be avenged.' I cannot obey. Three days you must remain there—three days must the Forester lie in his shroud—then will Harden be back, and he will bring with him the bloody doublet to hang on the point of your spears."

"Whither is our father gone?" rejoined the impatient youths.

"I know not, but these were his words," replied she. "I am to watch my Forester's body, and feed you through the west bole, for three days."

"We cannot survive three days unrevenged, mother," said another. "We will take on ourselves the responsibility of release. Send us Wat's John, and he will break down this door. Bethink ye, good mother, that Gilmanscleugh may fly, and the Forester's ghost may wander for twenty moons in Harden's Glen, upbraiding his five brothers for not avenging his death."

"I cannot disobey your father," again said she.

"Then we will force our freedom, mother," cried the third son.

"Disobedient boy, say not the word," answered she. "Wait the three days, and, if you will, nurse during that time your fire; for, if I am not deceived, your father will require of you as much avenging wrath as you have to bestow, when his horn sounds again his return to Harden."

With difficulty did Mary prevail on the impetuous youths to refrain from an effort to effect their freedom. For the three appointed days, she sat in the room by the side of her dead son; and at every meal-hour she handed in the food necessary for the sustenance of her prisoners. Nor did she conceive that she had any title to rest from her watchful labour, or to cease her care of the dead body, even during the hours of night, till she saw his death avenged. The midnight lamp was regularly trimmed, and hung upon the wall, that its glimmering flame might fall upon the pale face of the youth, as he lay rolled up in the shroud which his mother had prepared for him, while sitting by the bier. At the solemn hour of midnight, she sat silent and sad, looked now in the face of the dead, listened to hear if any sound of a horn without announced the approach of her husband, or of a messenger from him, and then inclined her ear, to catch the broken words of revenge muttered by her sons in their sleep, or the strains of mournful lamentations for the death of their brother, which the energy of their grief forced from them at those intervals when their revenge was overcome by the more intense feeling. Groans and sighs, muttered oaths, sobs, and expressions of impatience, mixed or separate, told continually the workings of their minds. The speech of the dreamer was often mixed with the conversation

of those awake; but so well acquainted was the mother with the sounds of their voices, that she could distinguish the one from the other. The question was often put by one who slept—"Are the three days past yet?" and those awake gave him the answer he could not hear. Then some of them seemed to clutch his neighbour in his dreams, and call out, that he had now caught him, and would avenge on him the death of the Forester, accompanying his speech with a struggle, as if he were in the act of stabbing Gilmanscleugh. Another would call to the mother, to know the hour; and, when she told him that it was midnight, or an hour past midnight, he would sigh deeply, as if he felt the hours of the three days winged with lead. Then again, a victim of nightmare groaned with fear, at the vision of the Forester's ghost, and cried, that it would not have long to walk the glen, for that the three days were fast on the wing. The shrill scream of a passing eagle or solitary owl, wakening those who slumbered in a half sleep, was mistaken for their father's horn, and an appeal to the mother was required to rectify the mistake. All these things passed in her hearing, and threw a gloom over her mind, which was not relieved by the look which she every moment stole at the dead face, as it shone white as the shroud in the light of the lamp: but she stood the trial, and continued her watch. The beam of a deadly revenge indicated the steadfastness with which she adhered to her resolution never to rest till she knew that Gilmanscleugh had expiated by his life the murder of her son.

Since the departure of Harden, no intelligence had come from him; and so strange had been his conduct when he went away, that his wife had often to combat the rising thought, that the fate of his favourite son had unsettled his intellects, and driven him away from the scene of his loss, in some wild dream of superstitious retribution. The locking up of his sons was the very reverse of the conduct which his revengeful nature might have dictated; and the taking with him the bloody doublet, through the sword-hole in which he declared he saw the lands of Gilmanscleugh his own, was far more like the act of a madman, than that of one who had duties to perform to himself, to his wife and children, on that sorrowful occasion, more serious and difficult than he had ever yet been called upon to fulfil. These thoughts rising throughout the dark night, when her ears were pained by the strange noises proceeding from the excitement of her sons, and her eye had nothing to rest on but the dead body of him who lay stretched by her side, stung her with anguish, and filled her heart with boding anticipations of terror. The third night was on the wing; and, though twelve o'clock had passed, there was no appearance of her husband. Her sons had become more than ordinarily restless, and said that, if their father did not make his appearance in the morning, they would disregard all authority, and call to the retainers to break down the door with battle-axes, and set them at liberty. She heard them in silence, and trembled to communicate to them the thoughts that had been passing through her mind as to the sanity and safety of their father. In a little, the restless prisoners began to fall over into their troubled sleep, and the moon, newly risen, sent in through the small windows a bright beam, that lay on the face of the corpse. She had wrought up her mind almost to a conviction that her husband had, in a fit of madness, thrown himself into the Borthwick, or otherwise committed suicide, and figured to her diseased fancy his body placed alongside of her son's, and with that same pale beam resting on it, and exhibiting to her the features which she had so long looked on with delight, made rigid by the grasp of death. Every sound was now hushed, with the exception of the occasional broken mutterings of her sons, and the notes of the winged inhabitants of the upper parts of the tower, who cawed their hoarse omens to the midnight wanderer in the forest. Every thought that rose in her mind was charged with a double portion of awe; and cold shivers, in opposition to her efforts to be firm, ran over her from head to heel, and precipitated her farther and farther into the depths of her fancied evils. Superstition might have borrowed a thousand aids from the circumstances in which she was placed; but, though she was beyond the influence of the direct operation of that power, the thoughts of evil which she had some reason for indulging, borrowed a part of their dark hue from the clouds in which the mystic goddess is generally enshrined: the individual would indeed have been more than woman who could have sat in the situation in which she was placed, and measured her evils with the gauge of calm reason.