Part 7 (1/2)
”You are, I believe in my soul, the bravest woman in Scotland, and I wish to G.o.d the men on our side had only had the heart of my Lady Dundee. With a hundred men and your spirit in them, Jean, we had driven William of Orange into the sea, or, at the worst, we should certainly save Scotland for the king. Well and bravely have ye stood by me since our marriage day, and if I had ever consulted my own safety or sought after private ends, I believe ye would have been the first to cry shame upon me. Surely ye have been a true soldier's wife, and ye are the same this morning, and braver even than on our wedding day.
”Do not make little of yourself, Jean, because your heart is sore and ye canna keep back the tears. It is not given to a man to understand what a woman feels in your place but I am trying to imagine, and my love is suffering with you, sweetheart. I do pity you, and I could weep with you, but tears are strange to my eyes--G.o.d made me soft without and hard within--and I have a better medicine to help you than pity.” Still he was caressing her, but she felt his body straightening within the armor.
”When ye prophesy that the fanatics of the west will be at me in Edinburgh, I suspect ye are right, but I pray you not to trouble yourself overmuch. They have shot at me before with leaden bullets and with silver, trying me first as a man and next as a devil, but no bullet touched me, and now if they fall back upon the steel there are two or three trusty lads with me who can use the sword fairly well, and though your husband be not a large man, Jean, none has had the better of him when it came to sword-play. So cheer up, la.s.s, for I may fall some day, but it will not be at the hands of a skulking Covenanter in a street brawl.
”But if this should come to pa.s.s, Jean--and the future is known only to G.o.d--then I beseech you that ye be worthy of yourself, and show them that ye are my Lady Dundee. If I fall, then ye must live, and take good care that the unborn child shall live, too, and if he be a boy--as I am sure he will be--then ye have your life-work. Train him up in the good faith and in loyalty to the king; tell him how Montrose fought for the good cause and died for it, and how his own father followed in the steps of the Marquis. Train him for the best life a man can live and make him a soldier, and lay upon him from his youth that ye will not die till he has avenged his father's murder. That will be worthy of your blood and your rank, aye, and the love which has been between us, Jean Cochrane and John Graham.”
She held him in her arms till the very breastplate was warm, and she kissed him twice upon the lips. Then she raised herself to her full height--and she was as tall as Graham--and looking proudly at him, she said:
”Ye have put strength into me, as if the iron which covers your breast had pa.s.sed into my blood. Ye go to-day with my full will to serve the king, and G.o.d protect and prosper you, my husband and my Lord Dundee.”
For a s.p.a.ce the heat of Jean's high courage cheered her husband's heart, but as the day wore on, and hour by hour he rode through the cold gray mist which covered Fife, the temperature of his heart began to correspond with the atmosphere. While Dundee had always carried himself bravely before men, and had kept his misgivings to himself, and seemed the most indifferent of gay Cavaliers, he had really been a modest and diffident man. From the first he had had grave fears of the success of his cause, and more than doubts about the loyalty of his comrades. He was quite prepared not only for desperate effort, but for final defeat. No man could say he had embarked on the royal service from worldly ends, and now, if he had been a shrewd Lowland Scot, he had surely consulted his safety and changed his side, as most of his friends were doing. Graham did not do this for an imperative reason--because he had been so made that he could not. There are natures which are not consciously dishonest or treacherous, but which are flexible and accommodating. They are open to the play of every influence, and are sensitive to environment; they are loyal when others are loyal, but if there be a change in spirit round them they immediately correspond, and they do so not from any selfish calculation, but merely through a quick adaptation to environment.
People of this kind find themselves by an instinct on the winning side, but they would be mightily offended if they were charged with being opportunists. They are at each moment thoroughly convinced of their integrity, and are ever on the side which commends itself to their judgment; if it happens to be the side on which the sun is s.h.i.+ning, that is a felicitous accident. There are other natures, narrower possibly and more intractable, whose chief quality is a thoroughgoing and masterful devotion, perhaps to a person, perhaps to a cause. Once this devotion is given, it can never be changed by any circ.u.mstance except the last and most inexcusable treachery, and then it will be apt to turn into a madness of hatred which nothing will appease. There is no optimism in this character, very often a clear-sighted and painful acceptance of facts; faults are distinctly seen and difficulties are estimated at their full strength, sacrifice is discounted, and defeat is accepted. But the die is cast, and for weal or woe--most likely woe--they must go on their way and fight the fight to the end. This was the mould in which Dundee was cast, the heir of shattered hopes, and the descendant of broken men, the servant of a discredited and condemned cause. He faced the reality, and knew that he had only one chance out of a hundred of success; but it never entered his mind to yield to circ.u.mstances and accept the new situation. There was indeed a moment when he would have been willing, not to change his service, but to sheathe his sword and stand apart.
That moment was over, and now he had bidden his wife good-by and was riding through the cold gray mist to do his weary, hopeless best for an obstinate, foolish, impracticable king, and to put some heart, if it were possible, into a dwindling handful of unprincipled, self-seeking, double-minded men. The day was full of omens, and they were all against him. Twice a hare ran across the road, and Grimond muttered to himself as he rode behind his master, ”The ill-faured beast.” As they pa.s.sed through Glenfarg, a raven followed them for a mile, croaking weirdly. A trooper's horse stumbled and fell, and the man had to be left behind, insensible. When they halted for an hour at Kinross it spread among the people who they were, and they were watched by hard, unsympathetic faces. The innkeeper gave them what they needed, but with ill grace, and it was clear that only fear of Dundee prevented him refusing food both to man and beast. When they left a crowd had gathered, and as they rode out from the village a voice cried: ”Woe unto the man of blood--a double woe! He goeth, but he shall not return, his doom is fixed.” An approving murmur from the hearers showed what the Scots folk thought of John Graham. Grimond would fain have turned and answered this Jeremiah and his chorus with a touch of the sword, but his commander forbade him sharply. ”We have other men to deal with,” he said to Grimond, ”than country fanatics, and our work is before us in Edinburgh.” But he would not have been a Scot if he had been indifferent to signs, and this raven-croak the whole day long rang in his heart. The sun struggled for a little through the mist, and across Loch Leven they saw on its island the prison-house of Mary. ”Grimond,” said Graham, ”there is where they kept her, and by this road she went out on her last hopeless ride, and we follow her, Jock. But not to a prison, ye may stake your soul on that. It was enough that one Graham should die upon a scaffold. The next will die in the open field.”
It was late when they reached Edinburgh, and a murky night when they rode up Leith Wynd; the tall houses of Edinburgh hung over them; the few lights struggled against the thick, enveloping air. Figures came out of one dark pa.s.sage, and disappeared into another. A body of Highlanders, in the Campbell tartan, for a moment blocked the way.
Twice they were cursed by unknown voices, and when Claverhouse reached his lodging someone called out his name, and added: ”The day of vengeance is at hand. The blood of John Brown crieth from the altar!”
And Grimond kept four troopers on guard all night.
The next night Claverhouse and Balcarres were closeted together, the only men left to consult for the royal cause, and both knew what was going to be the issue.
”There is no use blinding our eyes, Balcarres,” said Graham, ”or feeding our hearts with vain hopes, the Convention is for the Prince of Orange, and is done with King James. The men who kissed his hand yesterday, when he was in power, and would have licked his feet if that had got them place and power, will be the first to cast him forth and cry huzza for the new king. There is a black taint in the Scots blood, and there always have been men in high position to sell their country. The lords of the congregation were English traitors in Mary's day, and on them as much as that wanton Elizabeth lay her blood. It was a Scots army sold Charles I to the Roundheads, and it would have been mair decent to have beheaded him at Edinburgh. And now they will take the ancient throne of auld Scotland and hand it over, without a stroke, to a cold-blooded foreigner who has taught his wife to turn her hand against her own father. G.o.d's ban is upon the land, Balcarres, for one party of us be raging fanatics, and the other party be false-hearted cowards. Lord, if we could set the one against the other, Argyle's Highlanders against the West Country Whigs, it were a bonnie piece of work, and if they fought till death the country were well rid o' baith, for I know not whether I hate mair bitterly a Covenanter or a Campbell. But it would set us better, Balcarres, to keep our breath to cool oor ain porridge. What is this I hear, that Athole is playing the knave, and that Gordon cannot be trusted to keep the castle? Has the day come upon us that the best names in Scotland are to be dragged in the mire? I sairly doot that for the time the throne is lost to the auld line, but if it is to be sold by the best blood of Scotland, then I wish their silver bullet had found John Graham's heart at Drumclog.”
”Ye maunna deal ower hardly with Athole, Dundee, for I will not say he isna true. His son, mind you, is on the other side, and Athole himself is a man broken in body. These be trying times, and it is not every ane has your heart. It may be that Athole and other men judge that everything has been done that can, and that a heavy burden o' guilt will rest on ony man that spills blood without reason. Mind you,” went on Balcarres hastily, as he saw the black gloom gathering on Dundee's face, ”I say not that is my way of it, for I am with you while ony hope remains, but we maun do justice.”
”Justice!” broke in Claverhouse, irritated beyond control by Balcarres's apologies and his hint of compromise. ”If I had my way of it, every time-serving trickster in the land would have justice--a rope round his neck and a long drop, for a bullet would be too honorable a death. But let Athole pa.s.s. He was once a loyal man, and there may be reason in what ye say. I have never known sickness myself, and doubtless it weakens even strong men. But what is this I hear of Gordon? Is it a lie that he is trafficking with Hamilton and the Whig lords to surrender the castle? If so, he is the most d.a.m.nable traitor of them all, and will have his place with Judas Iscariot.”
”Na, na, Dundee, nae Gordon has ever been false, though I judge maist o' them, since Mary's day, have been foolish. Concerning the castle, this is how the matter stands, and I pray you to hear me patiently and not to fly out till I have finished.”
”For G.o.d's sake, speak out and speak on, and dinna sit watching me as if you were terrified for your life, and dinna pick your words, like a double-dealing, white-blooded Whig lawyer, or I will begin to think that the leprosy of cowardice has reached the Lindsays.”
”Weel, Dundee”--but Balcarres was still very careful with his word--”I have reason to believe, and, in fact, I may as well say I know, that there have been some goings and comings between Gordon and the Lords of Convention. I will not say that Gordon isna true to the king, and that he would not hold the castle if it would help the cause. But I am judging that he isna minded to be left alone and keep Edinburgh Castle for King James if all Scotland is for King William.” And Balcarres, plucking up courage in the face of his fierce companion, added: ”I will not say, Dundee, that the duke is wrong. What use would it be if he did? But mind you,” went on Balcarres hastily, ”he hasna promised to surrender his trust. He is just waiting to see what happens.”
”Which they have all been doing, every woman's son of them, instead of minding their duty whatever happens; but I grant there's no use raging, we maun make our plans. What does Gordon want if he's holding his hand? Out with it, Balcarres, for I see from your face ye ken.”
”If the duke,” replied Balcarres, ”had ony guarantee that a fight would be made for the auld line in Scotland, and that he would not be left alane, like a sparrow upon the housetop in Edinburgh Castle, I make certain he would stand fast; but if the royal standard is to be seen nowhere else except on one keep--strong though that be--the duke will come to terms wi' the Convention. There ye have the situation, mak' o' it what ye will.”
”By G.o.d, Balcarres, if that be true, and I jalouse that ye are richt, Gordon will get his a.s.surance this very nicht. It's a fair and just pledge he asks, and I know the man who'll give it to him. Edinburgh will no be the only place in the land where the good standard flies before many days are pa.s.sed. Man! Balcarres, this is good news ye have brought, and I am glad to ken that there is still red blood in Gordon's heart. I'm thinking ye've had your own communings wi' the duke, and that ye ken the by-roads to the castle. Settle it that he and I can meet this very nicht, and if need be I'll be ready to leave the morrow's morning. Aye, Balcarres, if the duke holds the fastness, I'll look after the open country.” And before daybreak there was a meeting between the Gordon and the Graham. They exchanged pledges, each to do his part, but both of them knew an almost hopeless part, for the king. Many a forlorn hope had their houses led, and this would be only one more.
While his master had been reenforcing the duke's determination and giving pledges of thoroughness, Grimond had been doing his part to secure Dundee's safety in the seat of his enemies. Edinburgh was swarming with West Country Whigs, whose day of victory had come, and who had hurried to the capital that they might make the most of it. No one could blame them for their exultation, least of all Claverhouse.
They had been hunted like wild beasts, they had been scattered when wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d according to the fas.h.i.+on of their fathers, they had been shot down without a trial, they had been shut up in noisome prisons--and all this because they would not submit to the most corrupt government ever known in Scotland, and that most intolerable kind of tyranny which tries, not only to coerce a man as a citizen, but also as a Christian. They had many persecutors, but, on the whole, the most active had been Graham, and it was Graham they hated most. It is his name rather than that of Dalzell or Lauderdale which has been pa.s.sed with execration from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation in Scotland. The tyrant James had fled, like the coward he was, and G.o.d's deliverer had come--a man of their own faith--in William of Orange. The iron doors had been burst and the fetters had been broken, there was liberty to hear the word of the Lord again, and the Kirk of Scotland was once more free. Justice was being done, but it would not be perfect till Claverhouse suffered the penalty of his crimes. It had been the hope of many a dour Covenanter, infuriated by the wrongs of his friends, if not his own, to strike down Claverhouse and avenge the sufferings of G.o.d's people. Satan had protected his own, but now the man of blood was given into their hands. Surely it was the doing of the Lord that Dundee should have left Dudhope, where he was in stronghold, and come up to Edinburgh, where his friends were few. That he should go at large upon the streets and take his seat in the Convention, that he should dare to plot against William and lift a hand for James in this day of triumph, was his last stroke of insolence--the drop which filled his cup to overflowing. He had come to Edinburgh, to which he had sent many a martyr of the Covenant, and where he had seen Henry Pollock die for Christ's crown and the Scots kirk. Behold! was it not a sign, and was it not the will of the Lord that in this high place, where G.o.dly men had been murdered by him, his blood should be spilled as an offering unto the Lord?
This was what the hillmen were saying among themselves as they gathered in their meetings and communed together in their lodgings.
They were not given to public vaporing, and were much readier to strike than to speak, but when there are so many, and their hearts are so hot, a secret cannot be easily kept. And Grimond, who concealed much shrewdness behind a stolid face--which is the way with Scots peasants--caught some suspicious words as two unmistakable Covenanters pa.s.sed him in the high street. If mischief was brewing for his master, it was his business to find it out and take a hand in the affair. He followed the pair as if he were a countryman gaping at the sights of the town and the stir of those days, when armed men pa.s.sed on every side and the air was thick with rumors. When the Covenanters, after glancing round, plunged down a dark entry and into an obscure tavern, Grimond, after a pause, followed cautiously, a.s.suming as best he could--and not unsuccessfully--the manner of a man from the west. The outer room was empty when he entered, and he was careful when he got his measure of ale to bend his head over it for at least five minutes by way of grace. The woman, who had glanced sharply at him on entry, was satisfied by this sign of G.o.dliness, and left him in a dark corner, from which he saw one after another of the saints pa.s.s into an inner chamber. Between the two rooms there was a wooden part.i.tion, and through a crack in the boarding Grimond was able to see and hear what was going on. It was characteristic of the men that they opened their conference of a.s.sa.s.sination with prayer, in which the sorrows of the past were mentioned with a certain pathos, and thanks given for the great deliverance which had been wrought. Then they asked wisdom and strength to finish the Lord's work, and to rid the land of the chief of the Amalekites, after which they made their plan. Although Grimond could not catch everything that was said, he gathered clearly that when Claverhouse left his lodging to attend the Convention on the morning of the fifteenth of March, they would be waiting in the narrow way, as if talking with friends, and would slay the persecutor before he could summon help. When it was agreed who should be present, and what each one should do, they closed their meeting, as they had opened it, with prayer. One of them glanced suspiciously round the kitchen as he pa.s.sed through, but saw no man, for Grimond had quietly departed.
He knew his master's obstinate temper and reckless courage, and was afraid if he told him of the plot that he would give no heed, or trust to his own sword. ”We'll run no risks,” said Grimond to himself, and next morning a dozen troopers of Claverhouse's regiment guarded the entry to his lodging, and a dozen more were scattered handily about the street. They followed him to the Convention and waited till he returned. That was how Claverhouse lived to fight the battle of Killiecrankie, but till that day came he had never been so near death as in that narrow way of Edinburgh.
Dundee was not a prudent man, and he was very fearless, but for once he consulted common-sense and made ready to leave Edinburgh. It was plain that the Convention would elect William to the throne of Scotland, and as the days pa.s.sed it was also very bitter to him that the Jacobites were not very keen about the rising. When he learned that his trusted friends were going to attend the Convention, and did not propose with undue haste to raise the standard for the king, Dundee concluded that if anything should be done, it would not be by such cautious spirits. As he seemed to be the sole hope of his cause, the sooner he was out of Edinburgh the better. When he was seen upon the street with fifty of his troopers, mounted and armed, there was a wild idea of arresting him, but it came to nothing. There was not time to gather the hillmen together, and there was no heart in the others to face this desperate man and his body-guard. With his men behind him, he rode down Leith Wynd unmolested, and when someone cried, ”Where art thou going, Lord Dundee?” he turned him round in the saddle and answered, ”Whither the spirit of Montrose will lead me.” A fortnight later, in front of his house at Dudhope, he raised the standard for King James, and Jean Cochrane, a mother now, holding their infant son in her arms, stood by his side before he rode north.
As he had left her on their marriage day with his troopers, so now he left her and their child, to see her only once again--a cruel meeting, before he fell. Verily, a life of storm and stress, of bitter conflicts and many partings. Verily, a man whom, right or wrong, the fates were treating as a victim and pursuing to his doom.
CHAPTER III