To our tale we have now only to add the two or three explanatory circumstances above alluded to.
In Sir James Crawford the reader is requested to recognise the young man who discovered Jessie Craig, then the unknown fair one, by the side of the fountain in the little elm grove at Woodlands.
Encouraged by and acting on the adage already quoted,—namely, that "faint heart never won fair lady,"—he followed up his first accidental interview with the fair fugitive from royal importunity with an assiduity that in one short week accomplished the wooing and winning of her.
While the first was in progress, Sir James was informed by the young lady of the reasons for her concealment. On this and the part Sir Robert Lindsay had acted towards her being made known to him, he lost no time in opening a communication with that gentleman, riding repeatedly into Glasgow himself to see him on the subject of his fair charge; at the same time informing him of the attachment he had formed for her, and finally obtaining his consent, or at least approbation, to their marriage. The bet, we need hardly add, was a concerted joke between the Provost, Sir James, and his lady.
When we have added that the circumstance of Sir Robert Lindsay's delay in returning for Jessie Craig, which excited so much surprise at Woodlands, was owing to the unlooked-for prolongation of the king's stay in Glasgow, we think we have left nothing unexplained that stood in need of such aid.
THE BRIDE OF BELL'S TOWER.
Some time ago I made inquiry at the editor of Notes and Queries for information as to the whereabouts of an old mansion called Bell's Tower, and whether it was occupied by a family of the name of Bower; but my inquiry was not attended with any success beyond the usual production of surmises and speculations. There was a place so called in Perthshire; but then it never was occupied by people of that name,—the Bowers being an old family in Angus, whose principal messuage was Kincaldrum. Yet I cannot be mistaken in the name, either of the house or the family, as connected with the occurrences of the tradition, the essentials of which have floated in my mind ever since I heard them from one to whom they were also traditional. Then the story has something of an antique air about it, as may be noticed from the application of adjectives to baptismal names, as Devil Isobel and Sweet Marjory,—by no means a modern usage, but easily recognised in analogues of our old poetry. We may say, at least, that whether the Bowers were a very or only a moderately ancient family, Bell's Tower was an old structure—the name being applied to the mansion, which was an addition to a peel or castle-house of many centuries—not without its battlements and barnkin, and all the other appurtenances of a strength, as such places were called.
Had we more to do than our subject requires with the physique of this mansion—and we have something; for what romance in the moral world is independent of a locale, and of those lights and shadows that play where men live and act all the wondrous things they do?—we might be particular in our description; but our narrator's shade will be sufficiently conciliated, if we say that there was room enough, and ill-lighted chambers enough, and sufficiently tortuous breakneck stairs here and there, as well as those peculiar to castles, lobbies in all conscience long enough—not forgetting a blue parlour with some mysterious associations—to supply elements for genius to weave the many-coloured web of fiction. But we have a humbler part to play; and it begins here,—that Mrs. Bower had in the said blue parlour, a fortnight before our incidents, told her eldest daughter, whom we are, for the sake of the antique nomenclature—discriminative, and therefore kindly, if also sometimes harsh—to call Sweet Marjory, a piece of information, to her unexpected and strange,—no other than that Isobel, her sister, was the accepting and accepted of the rich and chivalrous youth, Hector Ogilvy, a neighbouring laird's son. Nor would it have appeared wonderful, if we had known more of the inside of that heaving breast, wherein a heart was too obedient to those magic chords, with their minute capillaries spread over the tympanum, that Marjory was as mute and pale as a statue of marble. But the truth really was, that Ogilvy had courted Marjory, and won her heart, and Isobel—Devil Isobel—had contrived means to win him to herself, at the expense of a sister's reputation for all the beautiful qualities that adorn human nature. And as all the world knows that both men and women hate those they injure, we may be at no loss to ascertain the feelings by which Isobel regarded Marjory. Nor shall those who know the nature of woman have any difficulty in supposing that not more carefully does nature guard in the bosom the physical organ of the affections, than she concealed the feelings which had for that fortnight eaten into the vital tissues of her being.
How swiftly that fortnight had flown for Isobel! how charged with heavy hours for Marjory! and to-morrow was the eventful day. What doings in Bell's Tower during this intervening time! what pattering of feet along the sombre lobbies! what gossiping among servants! what applications to the gate—comings and goings! and the rooms, how bestrewn with clippings of silk, and stray bits of artificial flowers! And, amidst all the triumphing, Isobel displayed her nature in spite of old saws and maxims, which lay upon brides conditions of reserve and humility, held to be so becoming in those who, as it were, occupy the place of a sacrifice; yea, if some tears are shed, so much better is custom obeyed. Then where could Marjory go, in the midst of this confusion of gaiety?—where, as the poet says, "weep her woes" in secret, and listen to the throbbings of a broken heart? Not in her own room, in the lower part of the castle tower, where her mother had still the privilege of chiding her for throwing the shadows of melancholy over a scene of happiness, and where Isobel would force an entrance, to show her, in the very spite of her evil nature, some bridal present from him who was still to the deserted one the idol of her heart. There was scarcely a refuge for grief, where joy was impatient of check, and, like all tyrants, would force reluctant conditions into a unanimity of compliance; but up these castle stairs, in the second room, there was one whom time had shut out from the sympathies of the world, so old, as to be almost forgotten, except by Marjory herself, who, all gentleness and love, delighted to supply vacant hearts with the fervours of her friendship, and to ameliorate evils by the appliances of her humanity.