"Never!" cried Grimond hotly. "And I canna bear that ye should treat this maitter as a jest. Many a faithful dog has been scolded--aye, and maybe struck, by his maister when he had quicker ears than the foolish man, and was giving warning of danger.
"Ye think me, my lord, a silly and cankered auld haveril, and that my head is full of prejudices and fancies. Would to G.o.d that I were wrong. If I were, I would go down on my knees to her ladyship and ask her pardon and serve her like a dog all the days of my life; but, waes me, I"m ower richt. When my lady is loyal to you I"ll be loyal to her, but no an hour sooner, say ye as ye like, laugh ye as ye will. But my lady is false, and ye are deceived in your own home."
"Do you know what you are saying, Grimond, and to whom you are speaking? We have carried this jest too far, and it is my blame, but ye may not again speak this way of your mistress in my presence. I know you mean nothing by it, and it is all your love of me and dislike of Covenanters that makes you jealous; but never again, Grimond, remember, or else, old servant though you be, you leave me that hour.
It"s a madness with you; ye must learn to control it," said Dundee sternly.
"It"s nae madness, my lord," answered Grimond doggedly, "and has naethin" to do with my lady being a Cochrane. Maybe I would rather she had been a Graham or a Carnegie, but that was nae business o"
mine. Even if I didna like her, it"s no for a serving-man to complain o" his mistress. I ken when to speak and when to hold my tongue, but there are things I canna see and forbear. My lord, it"s time you were at Dudhope, for the sake, o" your honor."
"Grimond," said Dundee, and his words were as morsels of ice, "if it were any other man who spoke of my wife and dishonor in the same breath I would kill him where he stood; but ye are the oldest and faithfullest follower of our house. For the work ye have done and the risks ye have run I pardon you so far as to hear any excuse ye have to make for yourself; but make it plain and make it quick, for ye know I am not a man to be trifled with."
"I will speak plainly, my lord, though they be the hardest words I have ever had to say. I ken the risk. It is not the first time I have taken my life in my hand for the Grahams and their good name. My suspicions were aroused by that little besom Kirsty, when I saw her ane day comin" oot from the quarters of Colonel Livingstone, wha commands the dragoons at Dundee. I kent she could be doing nae good there, for she"s as full o" mischief as an egg is full o" meat. So I wheeped up by the near road and met her coming up to the castle. When she saw me she hid a letter in her breast, and, question her as I like, I could get nothing from her but impudence. But it was plain to me that communication was pa.s.sing between someone in Dudhope and the commander o" William"s soldiers."
"Go on," said Dundee quietly.
"Putting two and two together, my lord, I watched in the orchard below the castle that nicht and the next, and on the next, when it was dark, a man m.u.f.fled in a cloak came up the road from the town and waited below the apple trees, near where I was lying in the hollow among the gra.s.s. After a while a woman in a plaid so that ye couldna see her face came down from the direction of the castle. They drew away among the trees, so that I could only see that they were there, but couldna hear what they were saying. After a while, colloguing together, they parted, and I jaloused who the two were, but that nicht I could not be certain."
"Go on," said Dundee, "till you have finished."
"Three nichts later they met again, and I crept a little nearer, and the moon coming out for a minute I saw their faces. It was her ladyship and Colonel Livingstone. She was pleading wi" him, and he was half yielding, half consenting. Her voice was so low I couldna catch her words, but I heard him say: "G.o.d knows ye have my heart; but my honor, my honor." "I will be content wi" your heart," I heard her answer. "When will you be ready? For if Dundee hear of it, he will ride south night and day, tho" the whole English army be in his road!"
""For eight days," said Livingstone, "I am engaged on duty and can do nothing, on the ninth I am at your service for ever." Then I saw him kiss her hand, and they parted. Within an hour I was riding north. Ye may shoot me if you please, but I have cleared my conscience."
Dundee"s face was white as death, and his eyes glittered as when the light shines on steel. Twice he laid his hand upon his pistol, and twice withdrew it.
"If an angel from heaven told me that Lady Dundee was untrue I would not believe him, and you, you I take to be rather a devil from h.e.l.l.
Said Livingstone eight days? And two are pa.s.sed. I was proposing to go south for other ends, and now I shall not fail to be there before that appointment. But it may be, Grimond, I shall have to kill you."
CHAPTER IV
THOU ALSO FALSE
Dundee was a man of many trials, and one on whom fortune seldom smiled; but the most cruel days of his life were the ride from Inverness by the Pa.s.s of Corryarrack to Blair Athole, and from Blair Athole by Perth to Dundee. He learned then, as many men have done in times of their distress, the horror of the night time and the blessing of the light. Had his mind not been affected by the universal treachery of the time, and the disappointments he had met on every side, till it seemed that every man except himself was hunting after his own interest, and no one, high or low, could be trusted, he had from the beginning treated Grimond"s story with contempt and made it a subject of jest. He would no more have doubted Jean"s honor than that of his mother. He would have known that Grimond never lied, and that he did not often drink, but he also would have been sure that even if it was Jean who met Livingstone, that there was some good explanation, and he never would have allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the matter. If Jean had been told that Graham had been seen with a lady of the Court at Whitehall, she would have scorned to question him, and indeed she had often laughed at the snares certain frail beauties of that day had laid for him in London. For she knew him, and he also knew her. But he was sorely tried in spirit and driven half crazy by the disloyalty of his friends, and it is in those circ.u.mstances of morbid, unhealthy feeling that the seeds of suspicion find a root and grow, as the microbes settle upon susceptible and disordered organs of the body.
As it was, he was divided in his mind, and it was the alternation of dark and bright moods which made his agony. Spring had only reached the Highlands as he rode southwards, but its first touches had made everything winsome and beautiful. While patches of snow lingered on the higher hills, and glittered in the sunlight, the gra.s.s in the hollows between the heather was putting on the first greenness of the season, and the heather was sprouting bravely; the burns were full-bodied with the melting snow from the higher levels and rushing with a pleasant noise to join the river. As he came down from the bare uplands at Dalnaspidal into the sheltered glen at Blair Castle, the trees made an arch of the most delicate emerald over his head, for the buds were beginning to open, and the wind blew gently upon his face. The sight of habitations as he came nearer to the Lowlands, the sound of the horses" feet upon the road, the gayety of his band of troopers, the children playing before their humble cottages, the exhilarating air, and the hope of the season when winter was gone, told upon his heart and reenforced him. The despair of the night before, when he tossed to and fro upon a wretched bed or paced up and down before the farmhouse door, imagining everything that was horrible, pa.s.sed away as a nightmare. Was there ever such madness as that he, John Graham, should be doubting his wife, Jean Cochrane, whom he had won from the midst of his enemies, and who had left her mother and her mother"s house to be his bride? How brave she had been, how self-sacrificing, how uncomplaining, how proud in heart and high in spirit; she had given up the whole world for him; she was the bravest and purest of ladies. That his wife of those years of storm and the mother a few weeks ago of his child should forget her vows and her love, and condescend to a base intrigue; that she should meet a lover in the orchard where they often used to walk, where the blossom would now be opening on the trees, that Livingstone, whom he knew and counted in a sense a friend, though he held King William"s commission now, and had not stood by the right side, should take the opportunity of his absence to seduce his wife! It was a hideous and incredible idea, some mad mistake which could be easily explained. Dundee, throwing off his black and brooding burden of thought, would touch his horse with the spur and gallop for a mile in gayety of heart and then ride on his way, singing some Cavalier song, till Grimond, who kept away from his master those days and rode among the troopers, would shake his head, and say to himself, "G.o.d grant he be not fey"
(possessed). Dundee would continue in high spirits till the evening shadows began to fall, and then the other shadow would lengthen across his soul. The night before he met his wife he spent in Glamis Castle, and the grim, austere beauty of that ancient house affected his imagination. Up its winding stairs with their bare, stern walls men had gone in their armor, through the thickness of the outer walls secret stairs connected mysterious chambers one with another. Strange deeds had been done in those low-roofed rooms with their dark carved furniture, and there were secret places in the castle where ghosts of the past had their habitation. Weird figures were said to flit through the castle at night, restless spirits which revisited the scene of former tragedies and crimes, and the room in which Graham slept was known to be haunted. Alas! he needed no troubled ancestor of the Strathmore house to visit him, for his own thoughts were sufficient torment, and through the brief summer night and then through the dawning light of the morning he threshed the question which gnawed his heart. Evil suggestions and suspicious remembrances of the past, which would have fled before the sunlight, surrounded him and looked out at him from the shadow with gibbering faces. Had he not been told that Jean laid traps for him in Paisley that she might secure the safety of her lover Pollock, and also of her kinsman, Sir John Cochrane? Had she not often spoken warmly of that Covenanting minister and expressed her bitter regret that her husband had compa.s.sed Pollock"s death? She had tried to keep him from attending the Convention, and of late days had often suggested that he had better be at peace and not stir up the country. After all, can you take out of the life what is bred in the bone?--and Jean Cochrane was of a Covenanting stock, and her mother a very harridan of bigotry. Might there not have been some sense in the fear of his friends that he would no longer be loyal to the good cause, and was Jock Grimond"s grudge against his marriage mere stupidity and jealousy? Everyone was securing his safety and adjusting himself to the new regime; there was hardly a Lowland gentleman who had irretrievably pledged himself to King James, and as for the chiefs, they would fight for their own hand as they had always done, and could only be counted on for one thing, and that was securing plunder. Was not he alone, and would not he soon be either on the scaffold or an exile? The Whigs would soon be reigning in their glory over Scotland, and it would be well with everyone that had their pa.s.sword. If he were out of the way, would there not be a strong temptation for her to make terms with her family and buy security by loyalty to their side? No doubt she was a strong woman, but, after all, she was only a woman, and was she able to stand alone and live forsaken at Glenogilvie, with friends neither among Cavaliers nor Covenanters? Could he blame her if she separated herself from a ruined cause and a discredited husband, for would she not be only doing what soldiers and courtiers had done, what everybody except himself was doing? Why should she, a young woman with life before her, tie herself up with a hopeless cause, and one who might be called commander-in-chief of James"s army, but who had nothing to show for it but a handful of reckless troopers and a few hundred Highland thieves, a man whom all sensible people would be regarding as a mad adventurer?
Would it not be a stroke of wisdom--the Whigs were a cunning crew, and he recalled that Lord Dundonald was an adroit schemer--to buy the future for herself and her child by selling him and returning to her old allegiance? There was enough reality in this ghost to give it, as it were, a bodily shape, and Graham, who had been flinging himself about, struck out with his fist as if at flesh and blood.
"d.a.m.n you, begone, begone!"
For a while he lay quietly and made as though he would have slept.
Then the ghosts began to gather around his bed again as if the Covenanters he had murdered had come from the other world and were having their day of vengeance. It must have been Jean who met Livingstone in the orchard, and it must have been an a.s.signation.
There was no woman in Dudhope had her height and carriage, and the vision of her proud face that he had loved so well brought scalding tears to his eyes. For what purpose had she met Livingstone, if not to arrange some base surrender, if not to give information about him so that MacKay might find him more easily? Was it worse than that, if worse could be when all was black as h.e.l.l? Livingstone had known her for years; it had been evident that he admired her; he was an attractive man of his kind. Nothing was more likely in that day, when unlawful love was not a shame, but a boast, than that he had been making his suit to Lady Dundee. Her husband was away, likely never to return; she was a young and handsome woman, and Livingstone had time upon his hands at Dundee. A month ago he had sworn that the virtue of his wife was una.s.sailable as that of the Blessed Virgin; he would have sworn it two days ago as he rode through Killiecrankie; but now, with the brooding darkness round him and its awful shapes peopling the room, he was not sure of anything that was good and true. Had he not lived at Court, had he not known the great ladies, had not they tried to seduce him, and flung themselves at his head? Was not Jean a woman like the rest, and why should his wife be faithful when every other woman of rank was an adulteress! This, then, was the end of it all, and he had suffered the last stroke of treachery, and the last stain of dishonor. How he had been befooled and bewitched; what an actress she had been, with a manner that would have deceived the wisest! What a stupid, blundering fool he had been! There are times, the black straits of life, when a man must either pray or curse. If he be a saint he will pray, but Dundee was not a saint, so he rose from his bed, and sweeping away the evil shapes from before him with his right arm, and then with his left, as one makes his road through high-standing corn that closes in behind him, he raged from side to side of the room in which the day was faintly breaking, while unaccustomed oaths poured from his mouth.
One thing only remained for him, and at the thought peace began to come. He had planned weeks ago to visit Dundee again and give the chance to Livingstone"s dragoons to join him, for he had reason to believe that they were not unalterably loyal. He was on his way to Dundee now, and to-morrow he would be there, but he cared little what the dragoons would do; he had other folk to deal with. If he found he had been betrayed at home, and by her who had lain on his breast, and by a man whom he had counted his friend, they should know the vengeance of the Grahams. "Both of them--both of them to h.e.l.l, and then my work is done and I shall go to see them!"
It was characteristic of the man that, though he had no a.s.sistance from Grimond in the morning--for Jock dared not go near him--Dundee appeared in perfect order, even more carefully dressed than usual; but as he rode from the door of Glamis Castle through the beautiful domain of park and wood, Grimond was aghast at his pinched and drawn face and the gleam in his eye. "May the Lord hae mercy, but I doot sairly that he is aff his head, and that there will be wild work at Dudhope." And while Grimond had all the imperturbable self-satisfaction and unshaken dourness of the Lowland Scot, and never on any occasion acknowledged that he could be wrong or changed his way, he almost wished that he had left this affair alone and had not meddled between his master and his master"s wife. It was again a fair and sunny day, when the freshness of spring was feeling the first touch of summer, as Dundee and his men rode up the pa.s.s through the hills from Strathmore to Dundee. There were times when Graham would have breathed his horse at the highest point, from which you are able to look down upon the sea, and drunk in the pure, invigorating air, and gazed at the distant stretches of the ocean. But he had no time to lose that day; he had work to do without delay. With all his delirium--and Graham"s brain was hot, and every nerve tingling--he retained the instincts of a soldier, and just because he was so suspicious of his reception he took the more elaborate precautions. Before he entered the pa.s.s his scouts made sure that he would not be ambuscaded, for it might be that his approach was known, and that Livingstone, taking him at a disadvantage in the narrow way, by one happy stroke would complete his triumph. As he came near Dundee, he sent out a party to reconnoitre, while he remained with his troop to watch events. When the sound of firing was heard he knew that the garrison was on the alert, and that the town could only be taken by a.s.sault. The soldiers came galloping back with several wounded men, having left one dead. Livingstone was for the moment safe in his fastness, and it was evident that the dragoons were not in a mind to desert their colors. By this time it would be known at Dudhope that he was near, and the sooner he arrived the more chance of finding his wife. It was possible that Livingstone had garrisoned Dudhope, and that if he rode forward alone he might be snared. But this risk he would take in the heat of his mind, and summoning Grimond with a stern gesture to his side, and ordering the soldiers to follow at a slight interval and to surround the castle, he galloped forward to the door. The place appeared to be deserted, but at last, in answer to his knocking, as he beat on the door with the hilt of his sword, it was opened by an old woman who seemed the only servant left, and who was driven speechless by her master"s unexpected appearance and his wild expression. For, although John Graham had been a stern as well as just and kind master, and although he had often been angry, and was never to be trifled with, no one had ever seen him before other than cool and calm, smooth-spoken and master of himself.
"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? 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 pa.s.sion 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, 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 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 a.s.sault 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 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 pa.s.sion 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 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 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 t.i.tle 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 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 la.s.s."
"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 G.o.d 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 of heaven--upon a Covenanter, but I pray G.o.d 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 att.i.tude 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 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 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. G.o.d in heaven, what an accusation! A wife of five 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 G.o.d this day, he would rather die than insult her."
"Ye wished for some weapon wherewith to take a coward"s life. Here is my sword, Jean, and here is my heart. I would not be sorry to die, and I would rather take the last stroke from you than from my enemies. It is not worth while to live, for I have no friend, and soon shall have no possessions. My cause is forlorn, and my name is a byword, and now, by my own doing, I have lost my only love. Strike just here, and my blood will be an atonement to thee for my sin, and generations unborn will bless the hand which slew Claverhouse.
"Ye hesitate for a moment"--for she was holding the sword by the hilt, and her face was still clouded with gloom, although the fire was dying down. "Then I will use that moment, not to ask your pardon, for I judge you are not a woman to forgive--and neither should I be in your place--but to explain. I shall not speak of my love for you, for that now ye will not believe, nor of my shame in having received those evil thoughts for a moment into my heart. I have never known the bitterness of shame before, but I would fain tell how it happened, that the remembrance of me be less black after we have parted forever. Had I been in my natural state it had been impossible for me to doubt thee, Jean, and if I had seen thee sin before mine eyes, I would have thought it was another. But my mind has been distraught through weariness of the body on the long rides, and nights without sleep as I lay a-planning, and the desertion of friends in whom I trusted, and the refusals of men of whom I expected loyalty, and the humiliating helplessness before William"s general, my old rival MacKay. I was almost mad. In the night-time, I think, I was mad altogether. But I had always one comfort, like a single star shining in a dark sky, and that was the faithfulness of my wife. When a cloud obscured that solitary light, then a frenzy pa.s.sed into my blood. I ceased to reason, and according to the measure of my love was my foolish, groundless hate."
"Take back your sword, Dundee, for I am not now minded to use it. Five minutes ago it had been dangerous to give it me. If ye fall, it shall be by another hand than your wife"s, and in another place than your home. We have said words to one another this night which neither of us will lightly pardon, for we are not of the pardoning kind. I do not feel as I did: my anger has turned into sorrow; the idol of my idolatry is broken--my fair model of chivalry--and now I can only gather together the pieces. Even while I hated you I was loving you--this is the contradiction of a woman"s heart--and I knew that love of me had made you mad. Whatever happens, I will always remember that you loved me, but my dream has vanished--forever."
They spent next day walking quietly in the glen, and the following morning he left for his last campaign. They said farewell alone, but after he was in the saddle Lady Dundee lifted up the child for him to kiss--which was to die before the year was out. He turned as they were riding down the road and waved his plumed hat to his wife, where she stood, still holding the child in her arms. And that was the last Jean Cochrane saw of Claverhouse.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
TREASON IN THE CAMP
Since the day Dundee rode away from Glenogilvie, after the scene with Jean, he was a man broken in heart, but he hid his private wound bravely, and gave himself with the fiercer energy to the king"s business. Hither and thither through the Highlands he raced, so that he was described in letters of that day as "skipping from one hill to another like wildfire, which at last will vanish of itself for want of fuel," and "like an incendiary to inflame that cold country, yet he finds small encouragement." Anything more pathetic than this last endeavor of Dundee, except it be his death, cannot be imagined. The clans were not devoured with devotion to King James, and were not the victims of guileless enthusiasm; they were not the heroes of romance depicted by Jacobite poets and story-tellers: they were half-starved, entirely ignorant, fond of fighting, but largely intent on stealing.
If there was any chance of a foray in which they could gather spoil, they were ready to fling themselves into the fray, but as soon as they had gained their end, they would make for the glens and leave their general in the lurch. Whether they would rise or not depended neither on the merits of William or James, but in the last issue upon their chiefs--and the chiefs were not easy to move. Some of them were hostile, and most of them lukewarm; and Dundee drank the cup of humiliation as he canva.s.sed for his cause from door to door. By pleading, by arguing, by cajoling, by threatening, by promising and by bribing, he got together some two thousand men, more or less, and he had also the remains of his cavalry. His king had, as usual, left him to fend for himself, and sent him nothing but an incapable Irish officer called Cannon and some ragged Irish recruits, while MacKay was watching him and following him with a well-equipped force. Now and again the sun shone on him and he had glimpses of victory, driving MacKay for days before him, and keeping up communication with Livingstone, who had come from Dundee with his dragoons, and was playing the part of traitor in MacKay"s army--for Jean was still determined, with characteristic obstinacy and indifference to suspicion, to reap the fruit of her negotiation with Livingstone. It seemed as if Dundee would at least gain a few troops of cavalry, which would be a great advantage to him and a disquieting event for MacKay"s army. But again the Fates were hostile, and misfortune dogged the Jacobite cause. MacKay got wind of the plot, Livingstone and his fellow-officers were arrested, and Jean"s scheming, with all its weary expedients and bitter cost, came to naught.