Part 6 (2/2)
”Pshaw, pshaw! deuce take the beef, and the gown, and table, and the neckcloth!--we shall doall very well.--Where's the Dominie, John?--(to a servant who was busy about the table)--where's the Dominie and little Harry?”
”Mr. Sampson's been at hame these twa hours and mair, but I dinna think Mr. Harry cam hame wi' him.”
”Not come hame wi' him?” said the lady; ”desire Mr. Sampson to step this way directly.”
”Mr. Sampson,” said she, upon his entrance, ”is it not the most extraordinary tiring in this world wide, that you, that have free up-putting--bed, board, and was.h.i.+ng--and twelve pounds sterling a year, just to look after that boy, should let him out of your sight for twa or three hours?”
Sampson made a bow of humble acknowledgment at each pause which the angry lady made in her enumeration of the advantages of his situation, in order to give more weight to her remonstrance, and then, in words which we will not do him the injustice to imitate, told how Mr. Francis Kennedy ”had a.s.sumed spontaneously the charge of Master Harry, in despite of his remonstrances in the contrary.”
”I am very little obliged to Mr. Francis Kennedy for his pains,”
said the lady peevishly; ”suppose he lets the boy drop from his horse, and lames him? or suppose one of the cannons comes ash.o.r.e and kills him?--or suppose--”
”Or suppose, my dear,” said Ellangowan, ”what is much more likely than anything else, that they have gone aboard the sloop or the prize, and are to come round the Point with the tide?”
”And then they may be drowned,” said the lady.
”Verily,” said Sampson, ”I thought M r. Kennedy had returned an hour since--Of a surety I deemed I heard his horse's feet.”
”That,” said John, with a broad grin, ”was Grizzel chasing the humble-cow [A cow without horns] out of the close.”
Sampson coloured up to the eyes--not at the implied taunt, which he would never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea which crossed his own mind. ”I have been in an error,” he said; ”of a surety I should have tarried for the babe.” So saying, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his bone-headed cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood, faster than he was ever known to walk before, or after.
The Laird lingered some time, debating the point with the lady. At length, he saw the sloop of war again make her appearance; but, without approaching the sh.o.r.e, she stood away to the westward with all her sails set, and was soon out of sight. The lady's state of timorous and fretful apprehension was so habitual, that her fears went for nothing with her lord and master; but an appearance of disturbance and anxiety among the servants now excited his alarm, especially, when he was called out of the room, and told in private that Mr. Kennedy's horse had come to the stable door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly, and the reins of the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them in pa.s.sing, that there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on the other side of the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come through the wood, he had seen or heard nothing of Kennedy or the young Laird, ”only there was Dominie Sampson, gaun rumpaugin about, like mad, seeking for them.”
All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in the neighbourhood lent their a.s.sistance, partly out of zeal, partly from curiosity. Boats were manned to search the seash.o.r.e, which, on the other side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks. A vague suspicion was entertained, though too horrible to be expressed, that the child might have fallen from one of these cliffs.
The evening had begun to close when the parties entered the wood, and dispersed different ways in quest of the boy and his companion. The darkening of the atmosphere, and the hoa.r.s.e sighs of the November wind through the naked trees, the rustling of the withered leaves which strewed the glades, the repeated halloos of the different parties, which often drew them together in expectation of meeting the objects of their search, gave a cast of dismal sublimity to the scene.
At length, after a minute and fruitless investigation through the wood, the searchers began to draw together into one body, and to compare notes. The agony of the father grew beyond concealment, yet it scarcely equalled the anguish of the tutor. ”Would to G.o.d I had died for him!” the affectionate creature repeated, in notes of the deepest distress. Those who were less interested, rushed into a tumultuary discussion of chances and possibilities. Each gave his opinion, and each was alternately swayed by that of the others. Some thought the objects of their search had gone aboard the sloop; some that they had gone to a village at three miles'
distance; some whispered they might have been on board the lugger, a few planks and beams of which the tide now drifted ash.o.r.e.
At this instant a shout was heard from the beach, so loud, so shrill, so piercing, so different from every sound which the woods that day had rung to, that n.o.body hesitated a moment to believe that it conveyed tidings, and tidings of dreadful import. All hurried to the place, and, venturing without scruple upon paths, which, at another time, they would have shuddered to lock at, descended towards a cleft of the rock, where one boat's crew was already landed. ”Here, sirs!--here!--this way, for G.o.d's sake!--this way! this way!” was the reiterated cry. Ellangowan broke through the throng which had already a.s.sembled at the fatal spot, and beheld the object of their terror. It was the dead body of Kennedy. At first sight he seemed to have perished by a fall from the rocks, which rose above the spot on which he lay, in a perpendicular precipice of a hundred feet above the beach. The corpse was lying half in, half out of the water; the advancing tide, raising the arm and stirring the clothes, had given it at some distance the appearance of motion, so that those who first discovered the body thought that life remained. But every spark had been long extinguished.
”My bairn! my bairn!” cried the distracted father, ”where can he be?”--A dozen mouths were opened to communicate hopes which no one felt. Some one at length mentioned--the gipsies! In a moment Ellangowan had reascended the cliffs, flung himself upon the first horse he met, and rode furiously to the huts at Derncleugh. All was there dark and desolate; and, as he dismounted to make more minute search, he stumbled over fragments of furniture which had been thrown out of the cottages, and the broken wood and thatch which had been pulled down by his orders. At that moment the prophecy, or anathema, of Meg Merrilies fell heavy on his mind.
”You have stripped the thatch from seven cottages, see that the roof-tree of your own house stand the surer!”
”Restore,” he cried, ”restore my bairn! bring me back my son, and all shall be forgot and forgiven!” As he uttered these words in a sort of frenzy, his eye caught a glimmering of light in one of the dismantled cottages--it was that in which Meg Merrilies formerly resided. 'The light, which seemed to proceed from fire, glimmered not only through the window, but also through the rafters of the hut where the roofing had been torn off.
He flew to the place; the entrance was bolted despair gave the miserable father the strength of ten men; he rushed against the door with such violence, that it gave way before the momentum of his weight and force. The cottage was empty, but bore marks of recent habitation He flew to the place; the entrance was bolted there was fire on the hearth, a kettle, and some preparation for food. As he eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope that his child yet lived, although in the power of those strange people, a man entered the hut.
It was his old gardener. ”O sir!” said the old man, ”such a night as this I trusted never to live to see!--ye maun come to the Place directly!”
”Is my boy found? is he alive? have ye found Harry Bertram? Andrew, have ye found Harry Bertram?”
”No, sir; but--”
”Then he is kidnapped!. I am sure of it, Andrew as sure as that I tread upon earth! She has stolen him--and I will never stir from this place till I have tidings of my bairn!”
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