Part 6 (1/2)

Yourself, too, the Jean within that body, with your courage, your pride, your scorn, your temper, your fierce desires, your fiery jealousies, your changing moods. And your pa.s.sion, with its demands, with its surrenders, with its caresses, with its pain. You, Jean Cochrane, as you are and as you shall be, with all my heart and with all my body, with all my loyalty, next to that I give my king, I love you, Jean.” He leaned towards her as he spoke, and all the pa.s.sion that was hidden behind his girl face and Court manner--the pa.s.sion that had made him the most daring of soldiers, and was to make him the most successful of leaders--poured from his eyes, from his lips, from his whole self, like a hot stream, enveloping, overwhelming and captivating her. Strong as she was in will and character, she could not speak nor move, but only looked at him, with eyes wide open, from the midst of the wealth of her golden hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She could not speak nor move, but only looked at him.

Page 166.]

”Do I not know the sacrifice I am asking if you should consent to be my wife? Jean, I will tell you true: not for my love even and your bonnie self will I lie or palter with my faith. You will have to come to me, I will not go to you; you will have to break with the Covenant, leave your father's house and face your mother's anger, and be denounced by the G.o.dly, up and down the land, because ye married the man of blood and the persecutor of the saints. I will not change, ye understand that? No, not for the warm, soft clasp of your white arms round my neck; no, not though ye tie me with the meshes of your s.h.i.+ning hair. I judge that ye will not be a temptress, but I give you warning I am no Sampson, in his weakness to a woman's witchery, when it comes to my faith and my duty. I will love you night and day as a man loveth a woman, but I will do what I am told to do, even though it be against your own people, till the evil days be over. And it may be, Jean, that I shall have to lead a hopeless cause. Ye must be willing to give me to death without a grudge, and send me with a kiss to serve the king.

”Can you do this”--and now his voice sank almost to a whisper, and he stretched his hands towards her--”for the sake of love, for love's sake only, for the sight of my face, for the touch of my lips, for the clasp of my arms, for the service of my heart, for myself? If ye should, I will be a true man to you, Jean, till death us do part. I have not been better than other men, but women have never made me play the fool, and even your own folk, who hate me, will tell you that I have been a clean liver. And now I will never touch or look on any other woman in the way of love save you. If I have to leave your side to serve the king, I will return when the work is done, and all the time I am away my love will be returning to you. If you be not in my empty arms, you shall ever be in my heart; if I win honor or wealth, it will now be for you. If I can shelter you from sorrows and trouble, I will do so with my life, and if I die my last thought, after the cause, will be of you, my lady and my love.

”Jean Cochrane, can you trust yourself to me; will you be the wife of John Graham of Claverhouse?”

They had risen as by an instinct, and were facing one another where the light of the setting sun fell softly upon them through the fretted greenery of the beech tree.

”For life, John Graham, and for death,” and as she said ”death” he clasped her in his arms. The brown hair mingled with the gold, they looked into one another's eyes, and their lips met in a long, pa.s.sionate kiss, renewed again and again, as if their souls had flowed together. Then she disentangled herself and stood a pace away, and laying her hands upon his shoulders and looking steadfastly at him, she said: ”Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge, thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d.”

The sooner they were married the better pleased John Graham and Jean Cochrane would be, for life in Paisley Castle could not be a paradise for Jean after that betrothal. Three weeks later Claverhouse rode down one Sat.u.r.day from Edinburgh to Paisley against his marriage day on the following Tuesday. His love for Jean had steadily grown during those days, and now was in a white heat of antic.i.p.ation, for she was no nun, but a woman to stir a man's senses. Yet there were many things to chasten and keep him sober. No sooner was it known that he was to marry Lady Cochrane's daughter and the granddaughter of Lord Ca.s.sillis than his rivals in the high places of Scotland and at Whitehall did their best to injure him, setting abroad stories that he was no longer loyal, and that in future he would play into the hands of the enemy.

His young wife would certainly get round him and shake his integrity, and it would not be wise to trust Claverhouse with secrets of grave affairs. It was prophesied that this amazing and incongruous marriage, the mating of opposites, would only work ruin to his career, and that indeed this was the beginning of the end for Claverhouse. Lady Cochrane, raging like a fiend in Paisley Castle, did not fail, in the interludes of invective against her daughter for disgracing their good name and giving herself into the hands of the cruelest enemy of the kirk, to remind Jean also that she was doing the worst injury to the man she professed to love, and that in the end Claverhouse would be twice d.a.m.ned--for his sin against the Covenanters and for his disloyalty to his own cause. Jean was, of all women, most capable of holding her own even with her masterful mother, and Claverhouse was perfectly confident that neither Lady Cochrane nor her family would be able to shake Jean's fidelity. But there were times, and they were her bitterest hours, when Jean was not sure whether she had not done selfishly and was not going to satisfy her love at the expense of her lover. On his part, he could not help being anxious, for it seemed as if every man of his own party had turned his hand against him. With all his severity, Claverhouse had a just mind, and he offended Queensberry by protesting against the severity of the law; while the Duke of Perth, an unprincipled vagabond, ready to play traitor to either king or religion, hated Claverhouse because he was an honorable man. Claverhouse thought it necessary to write to the Duke of York, explaining the circ.u.mstances of his marriage and a.s.suring him of his continued loyalty, and to the Duke of Hamilton, whose daughter was to be married to young Lord Cochrane, testifying to the integrity of Jean. ”For the young lady herself, I shall answer for her. Had she been right principled she would never in despyt of her mother and relations made choyse of a persecutor, as they call me. So, whoever think to misrepresent me on that head will find themselves mistaken; for both the king and the church's interest, dryve as fast as they think fit, they will never see me behind.”

Lord Dundonald himself was pleased because the marriage secured Claverhouse's influence, and so were his personal friends, such as Lord Ross, who knew and admired Jean; Claverhouse could not hide from himself, however, that the world judged the marriage an irreparable mistake, and Grimond, so far as he dared--but he had now to be very careful--rubbed salt into the wound. All the omens were against them, and when on the Sunday Claverhouse sat beside his bride in the Abbey church, the people gave them a cold countenance, and as they went up the street true Presbyterians turned their faces from Claverhouse. The marriage service was performed in the gallery of the castle, and the minister officiating was one who had taken the indulgence and was avoided by the stricter people of the kirk. The contract was signed by Lord Dundonald and the old countess with weak and feeble hands, but the bride and bridegroom placed their names with strong and unhesitating characters. Lord Ross stood beside his commanding officer as best man, and young Lord Cochrane was also present, full of good-will and sympathy, for was he not himself about to marry the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton? But neither Dundonald's weakly approval nor the gayety of the young men could lift the shadow that fell within and without, both in the gallery and in the courtyard of the castle, upon the marriage of Claverhouse and Jean Cochrane. News had come two days before that there had been a rising among the Covenanters, and Claverhouse was ordered to pursue them with his cavalry. His regiment was in the district, and while the service was going on in the castle, his horse was saddled in the courtyard, and a guard of troopers were making ready to start. The sound of the champing of bits and the clinking of spurs came up through the quiet summer air and mingled with the prayer of the minister. Lady Cochrane was not supposed to be present, but when the minister asked if anyone could show just cause why this marriage should not be performed, she appeared suddenly from an alcove where she had been sheltered behind the servants. Stepping forward, she said, with an unfaltering voice, vibrant with solemn indignation, ”_In the name of G.o.d_ and in my own, I, the mother of Jean Cochrane, forbid this marriage, because she is marrying against my will, and joining herself to the persecutor of G.o.d's people; because she is turning herself against her father's house and forsaking the faith of her father's G.o.d.” The minister paused for a moment, for he was a quiet man and stood in awe of Lady Cochrane; he looked anxiously at the bride and bridegroom. ”I have made my choice,” said Jean, ”and I adhere to it with my mind and heart,” and Claverhouse, with a smile and bow, bade the minister do his duty. When they were married there was a moment's stillness, during which the bridegroom kissed the bride, and then Lady Cochrane spoke again. ”Ye have gone your own way and done your own will, John Graham and Jean Cochrane, and the curse of G.o.d's kirk and of a mother goes with you. The veil is lifted from before my eyes, and I prophesy that neither the bridegroom nor the bride will die in their beds.

There are those here present who will witness one day that I have spoken true.”

Claverhouse led his bride to the wing of the castle, where she lived, and from which she could look down on the courtyard. At the door of her room he kissed her again and bade her good-by. ”This is what ye have got, Jean, by marrying me,” and his smile was dashed with sadness. Two minutes later he rode out from the courtyard of the castle to hunt the people of Lady Cochrane's faith, while her daughter and his bride waved him G.o.d speed from her window.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

ONE FEARLESS MAN

Above the town of Dundee, and built to command the place, stood, at the date of our tale, Dudhope Castle, a good specimen of Scots architecture, which in its severity and strength is, like architecture everywhere, the physical incarnation of national creed and character. The hardness of Dudhope was softened in those days by what was not usual in the case of keeps and other warlike buildings, for Dudhope was set in the midst of sloping fields where cattle browsed, and had also round it rising plantations of wood. Before the castle there was a terrace, and from it one looked down upon the little town, nestling under the shelter of the castle, and across the Firth of Tay to Fifes.h.i.+re, where so much Scots history had been made. It was to Dudhope Claverhouse brought his bride, after that stormy honeymoon which she had to spend under the shadow of her mother's hot displeasure in Paisley Castle, and he occupied with the weary hunt of Covenanters up and down the West Country. Their wedding day was the 10th of June, but it was not till August that Claverhouse and his wife came home to Dudhope. Since then four years have pa.s.sed, during which the monotony of his duty in hunting Covenanters had been relieved by the office of Provost of Dundee, in which it is said he ruled severely, and the sameness of Jean's life at Dudhope by a visit to the Court of London, where she produced a vast impression, and was said to have been adored in the highest quarter. There were hours when she felt very lonely, although she would not have confessed this, being a woman of invincible spirit and fortified by the courage of her love.

She never knew when her husband would be called away for one of his hunts, and though there were many Loyalist families in Forfars.h.i.+re, it was not a time for easy social intercourse, and Jean was conscious that the Carnegies and the rest of them of the old Cavalier stock looked askance at her, and suspected the black Covenanting taint in her blood.

Claverhouse, like a faithful gentleman, had done his best to conceal from her the injury which his marriage had done him, but she knew that his cunning and bitter enemy, the Duke of Queensberry, had constantly insinuated into the mind of the Duke of York and various high personages in London that no one who had married Lady Cochrane's daughter could, in the nature of things, be perfectly loyal. It was really for this love that he had lost the post of commander-in-chief in Scotland, to which he was distinctly ent.i.tled, and had experienced the insult of having his name removed from the Scots Council. It might be her imagination, but it seemed as if his fellow officers and other friends, whom she met from time to time, were not at ease with her. She was angry when they refrained from their customary frank expressions about her mother's party, just as she would have been angry if they had said the things they were accustomed to say in her presence. Claverhouse a.s.sured her on those happy days when he was living at Dudhope, and when they could be lovers among the woods there, as they had been in the pleasaunce at Paisley Castle, that he never regretted his choice, and that she was the inspiration of his life. It was pleasant to hear him repeat his love vows, with a pa.s.sion as hot and words as moving as in the days of their courts.h.i.+p, and the very contrast between his unbending severity as a soldier and his grace as a lover made him the more fascinating to a woman who was herself of the lioness breed. All the same, she could not forget that Claverhouse would have done better for himself if he had married into one of the great Scots houses of his own party--and there were few in which he would not have been welcome--and that indeed he could not have done much worse for his future than in marrying her. It was a day of keen rivalry among the Royalists, and a more unprincipled and disreputable gang than the king's Scots ministers could not be found in any land; indeed Claverhouse was the only man of honor amongst them. His battle to hold his own and achieve his legitimate ambition was very hard, and certainly he needed no handicap. Jean Graham was haunted with the reflection that Claverhouse's wife, instead of being a help, was a hindrance to her husband, and that if it were not for the burden of her Covenanting name, he would have climbed easily to the highest place. Nor could she relish the change of att.i.tude of the common people towards her, and the difference in atmosphere between Paisley and Dundee. Once she had been accustomed to receive a respectful, though it might be awkward, salutation from the dour West Country folk, and to know that, though in her heart she was not in sympathy with them, the people in the town, where her mother reigned supreme, felt kindly towards her, as the daughter of that G.o.dly Covenanting lady. In Dundee, where the ordinary people sided with the Presbyterians and only the minority were with the Bishops, men turned away their faces when she pa.s.sed through the place, and the women cried ”b.l.o.o.d.y Claverse!” as she pa.s.sed. She knew without any word of abuse that both she and her husband were bitterly hated, because he was judged a persecutor and she a renegade. They were two of the proudest people in Scotland, but although Claverhouse gave no sign that he cared for the people's loathing, she often suspected that he felt it, being a true Scots gentleman, and although Jean pretended to despise Covenanting fanaticism, she would rather have been loved by the folk round her than hated.

While she declared to Graham that her deliverance from her mother's party, with their sermons, their denunciations, their narrowness and that horrible Covenant, had been a pa.s.sage from bondage to liberty, there were times, as she paced the terrace alone and looked out on the gray sea of the east coast, when the contradictory circ.u.mstances of her life beset her and she was troubled. When she was forced to listen to the interminable harangues of hill preachers, sheltering for a night in the castle, and day by day was resisting the domination of her mother, her mind rose in revolt against the Presbyterians and all their ways.

When she was among men who spoke of those hillmen as if they were vermin to be trapped, and as if no one had breeding or honor or intelligence or sincerity except the Cavaliers, she was again goaded into opposition. Jean had made her choice both of her man and of her cause--for they went together--with her eyes open, and she was not a woman to change again, nor to vex herself with vain regrets. It was rather her nature to decide once for all, and then to throw herself without reserve into her cause, and to follow without question her man through good report and ill, through right, and, if need be, wrong. Yet she was a shrewd and high-minded woman, and not one of those fortunate fanatics who can see nothing but good on one side, and nothing but ill on the other. Life had grown intolerable in her mother's house, and Jean had not in her the making of a convinced and thoroughgoing Covenanter, and in going over to the other party, she had, on the whole, fulfilled herself, as well as found a mate of the same proud spirit. But she was honest enough to admit to herself that those Ayrs.h.i.+re peasants were dying for conscience' sake, though she might think it a narrow conscience, and were sincere in their piety, though she might think it an unattractive religion. And she could not shut her eyes to the fact that there was little glory in shooting them down like muirfowl, or that the men of Claverhouse's side were too often drunken and evil-living bravos.

Jean was feeling the situation in its acuteness that evening as she read for the third time a letter which had come from Edinburgh by the hands of Grimond. At the sight of the writing her pulse quickened, and Grimond marked, with jealous displeasure (for that impracticable Scot never trusted Jean), the flush of love upon her cheek and its joy in her eyes. She now drew the letter from her bosom, and this is what she read, but in a different spelling from ours and with some slight differences in construction, all of which have been translated:

SWEETHEART: It is my one trouble when I must leave you, and save when I am engaged on the king's work my every thought is with you, for indeed it appeareth to me that if I loved you with strong desire on the day of our marriage, I love you more soul and body this day. When another woman speaks to me in the daytime, though they say that she is fair, her beauty coming into comparison with your's, is disparaged, beside the sheen of your hair and the richness of your lips, and though she may have a pleasant way with men, as they tell me, she hath no lure for me, as I picture you throw back your head and look at me with eyes that challenge my love. When the night cometh, and the task of the day is done, I hold you in my embrace, the proudest woman in Scotland, and you say again, as on that day in the pleasaunce, ”For life, John Graham, and for death.”

It has not been easy living for you, Jean, since that marriage-day, when the trumpets were our wedding-bells, and your mother's curse our benediction, and I take thought oftentimes that it has been harder for thee, Sweetheart, than for me. I had the encounters of the field with open enemies and of the Council with false friends, but thou hast had the loneliness of Dudhope, when I was not there to caress you and kiss away your cares. Faithful have you been to the cause, and to me, and I make boast that I have not been unfaithful myself to either, but the sun has not been always s.h.i.+ning on our side of the hedge and there have been some chill blasts. Yet they have ever driven us closer into one another's arms, and each coming home, if it has been like the first from the work of war, has been also like it a new marriage-day. Say you is it not true, Sweetheart, we be still bridegroom and bride, and shall be to the end?

When I asked you to be my wife, Jean, I told you that love even for you would not hinder me from doing the king's work, but this matter I have had on hand in Edinburgh has tried me sorely,--though one in the Council would guess at my heart. I have also the fear that it will vex you greatly. Mayhap you have heard, for such news flies fast, that we lighted upon Henry Pollock and a party of his people last week. They were going to some preaching and were taken unawares, and we captured them all, not without blows and blood. Pollock himself fought as ye might expect, like a man without fear, and was wounded. I saw that his cuts were bound up, and that he had meat and drink. We brought him on horseback to Edinburgh, treating him as well as we could, for while I knew what the end would be, and that he sought no other, I do not deny that he is an honest man and I do not forget that he loved you. Yesterday he was tried before the Council, and I gave strong evidence against him. Upon my word it was that he was declared guilty of rebellion against the king's authority, and was condemned to death. None other could I do, Jean, for he that spared so dangerous and stalwart an enemy as Pollock, is himself a traitor, but when the Council were fain to insult him I rebuked them sharply and told them to their face that among them there was no spirit so clean and brave.

This morning he was executed and since there was a fear lest the people who have greatly loved him should attempt to rescue, I was present with two troops of horse. It needeth not me to tell you that he died well, bidding farewell to earth and welcome to heaven in words I cannot forget, tho' they sounded strange to me.

Sweetheart, I will say something boldly in thine ear. I have had little time to think of heaven and little desire for such a place, but I would count myself fortunate if in the hour of death I were as sure of winning there as Henry Pollock. So he died for his side, and I helped him to his death; some day I may die for my side, and his friends will help me to my death. It is a dark day and a troubled nation. Henry Pollock and John Graham have both been thorough. G.o.d is our judge, wha kens but He may accept us baith? But I cannot deny he was a saint, as ye once said of him, and that I shall never be, neither shall you, Jean Graham, my love and my heart's delight

This is sore writing to me, but I would rather ye had it from my hand than from another's, and I fear me ye will hear bitter words in Dundee of what has been done. This is the cup we have to drink and worse things may yet be coming, for I have the misgiving that black danger is at hand and that the king will have to fight for his crown. Before long, if I be not a false prophet, my old general, the Prince of Orange, will do his part to wrest the throne from his own wife's father. If he does the crown will not be taken without one man seeing that other crowns be broken, but I fear me, Jean, I fear greatly. In Scotland the king's chief servants be mostly liars and cowards, seeking every man after his own interest, with the heart of Judas Iscariot, and in London I doubt if they be much better. These be dreary news, and I wish to heaven I had better to send thee. This I can ever give, unless ye answer me that it is yours before, the love of my inmost heart till I am able to give you it in the kiss of my lips, with your arms again flung about me, as on that day. Till our meeting and for evermore, my dearest lady and only Sweetheart first and last, I am your faithful lover and servant,