Part 22

"Uve! uve!" said Ian under his breath; then he moved, hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, looked at the stranger as if he would have penetrated him, plaid and all, to the very soul; then he shifted his position--yet still he did not quit the chamber, but stood and threw an imploring look of remonstrance towards the laird.

"Begone, Ian!" said Ballindalloch in a voice of impatience; and Ian at last vanished at the word.

"Sir stranger!" said Ballindalloch, "I hope I may now ask thee to rid me of all this mystery."

"I am most ready to do so, Ballindalloch," said the other, laying aside his bonnet and plaid, and showing himself, to all appearance, entirely unarmed.

"Lachlan Dhu Grant of Tullochcarron?" exclaimed the laird with astonishment; "what stirring errand has moved thee hither at such an hour?"

"I come to thee but on peaceful private conference," replied Lachlan Dhu, with a respectful obeisance: "and I use this secrecy because it is for the interest of both of us, that what I have to treat of should reach no other ears but our own."

"Proceed," said Ballindalloch, "thou mayest speak safely here, for in this place we are beyond all earshot."

"I need not tell thee, Ballindalloch," continued Lachlan Dhu, "I need not tell thee, I say, that which is sufficiently notour to all, that mine uncle, old Tullochcarron's patrimony, would have been mine as a fair succession, had he not married on purpose to disappoint me."

"I know this much," said Ballindalloch, not altogether dissatisfied to see something like discontent in what he naturally held to be the enemy's camp. "Perhaps thou hast had but scrimp justice in this matter."

"Justice!" exclaimed Lachlan Dhu, catching eagerly at his words. "Justice! I have been deeply wronged. Bred up and cockered by the old man for a time as his successor, as if it had been with the very intent of throwing me the more cruelly off, and rendering the blasting of my hopes the more bitter, from the very fairness of those blossoms which his pretended warmth of affection had fostered!"

"'Twas not well done in the old man," said Ballindalloch; "but now, methinks, 'tis past all cure."

"Nay," said Lachlan Dhu sternly, "I hope there is yet ample room for remede."

"As how, I pr'ythee?" said Ballindalloch.

"Mark me, and thou shalt quickly learn," said Lachlan Dhu. "But first of all I must tell thee, that I now come to offer myself to thee as thy vassal on this simple condition, that thou wilt give me thine aid and countenance against all questioners to help me to keep what shall be mine own after I shall have fairly won it."

"And how dost thou propose to win it?" demanded Ballindalloch, with a grave and serious air that seemed to argue a most attentive consideration of a proposal in itself so inviting to him.

"By secretly ridding myself of mine uncle's sickly stripling boy, whenever favouring fortune may yield me fitting opportunity," replied Lachlan Dhu, approaching his head nearer to Ballindalloch, and sinking his voice to a low sepulchral tone, and with a coolness that might have befitted a practised murderer.

"What!" exclaimed Ballindalloch, with an air of surprise. "What hath the youth done to deserve so much of thy hatred?"

"Twice hath he crossed my path," continued Lachlan Dhu, his features blackening, and his dark eyeballs rolling as he spoke. "He hath twice crossed my path; first when he came into this world, and now a second time by thwarting me in my love."

"And what have I to do with all this?" demanded Ballindalloch.

"Much," replied Lachlan Dhu earnestly. "I am now thy sworn vassal. The feudal superiority of Tullochcarron will henceforth insure to thee friendship and strength, where thou hast long had to deal with open or secret foes, and"----

"Thou speakest as if thou wert already Laird of Tullochcarron," said Ballindalloch, interrupting him.

"That young foulmart once disposed of, I soon shall be," said Lachlan Dhu, with fiend-like expression. "Mine uncle's time cannot now be long, even were nature left to take its course; or,--it may be shortened. Sudden death to a man of his gross form and purfled habit could never seem strange; and then"----

"True," said Ballindalloch calmly; "but how can I aid thee in thy scheme?"

"I lack no present aid while I have this arm," replied Lachlan Dhu; "it is the support and defence of thy faithful vassal, Lachlan Dhu Grant, Laird of Tullochcarron, that I require of thee, if unhappily some unlucky circumstance should awaken idle suspicions against him."

"I trust I shall always know how to defend my vassals," said Ballindalloch proudly.

"Then am I safe," said Lachlan Dhu; "but in the meanwhile secrecy is essential to our purpose."

"I hope I have prudence enough to know how to conduct myself in all cases of delicacy," replied Ballindalloch.

"'Tis well," said Lachlan Dhu, again folding his plaid around him, and putting on his bonnet. "Now I must begone; for time presses. Farewell! I shall trust to thee, and thou mayest trust to me."

"I shall not forget what is due to thee, when thou art my vassal," said the laird, "nor shall I ever forget what ought at all times to be expected from Ballindalloch. Here, Ian Dhu, see this stranger safe beyond the walls and outposts."

The night I speak of seemed to be quite pregnant with strange visitations; for, at a still later hour, after old Tullochcarron had himself seen that the guard at the barbican of his small place of strength was on the alert, and had secured the iron doors of the entrance of the peel-tower, and had finally retired to his apartment to go to rest, he was surprised to see a packet lying on his table, of which no one of his attendants could give him any account. It was tied with a morsel of ribbon, the ends of which were secured with wax, but without any impression. It was simply addressed:--

"To Tullochcarron."

And on cutting it open, he found that it contained the following letter, with a broad seal at the end of it.

"Tullochcarron,--I write this private communication, to tell thee that thou hast a traitor in thy house, that thou dost nourish a viper in thy bosom that would sting thee. The life of thine only son is certain to be taken, if thou dost not secure it by the instant seizure of thy nephew, Lachlan Dhu. Thine own murder will speedily follow. The cold-blooded villain came to me secretly under the cloud of this night, and did unfold his devilish plans, offering to me the feudal superiority of thy lands of Tullochcarron, provided I should protect him as my vassal against all after question. I seemed to listen, and yet I evited direct promise; and I now hasten to certiorate thee of these facts through ane trusty messenger, who engages, by certain means best known to himself, to have these placed upon thine own private table before thou sleepest. This traitorie is as yet alone known to thee, to me, to the foul faitour who planned, and to the devil who prompted it. And that thou mayest have no doubt left in thee of the truth of what I have here written, I do hereto affix my sign-manual, as well as the seal, the which is attached to the last instrument of pacification that passed between our houses.--Ballindalloch."

You may conceive, gentlemen, that this letter, read alone, at midnight in his chamber, dreadfully alarmed old Tullochcarron. He started from the large oaken chair in which he had seated himself to peruse it, and snatching his lamp, he rushed to his son's apartment, where he held up the light, and gazed with fear and trembling on his son's couch, almost expecting to see his boy foully murdered, and weltering in his blood. Stretched on his bed, he did indeed find him; but his eyes were closed in the sweet slumbers that attend the pillow of pure and spotless youth. He gazed on him in silent anxiety for some time, till he was really certain that he breathed; and then the old man's lip quivered, and his eyes were dimmed by the big drops that rapidly distilled over his eyelids. Stooping gently down, he kissed Duncan's cheek, and then quitting the room upon tiptoe, he called up an old and tried domestic.

"Hamish," said he, "I had a strange and troubled dream, as I dozed in mine arm-chair."

"Thou didst sup somewhat of the heaviest, Tullochcarron," replied Hamish. "After so many pounds' weight of salmon, 'tis but little wonder if the foul hag on her nightmare should have been riding over and over thee."

"Psha!" said Tullochcarron in a vexed tone and manner that showed he was too seriously affected to be trifled with. "My dream touched the safety of thy young master. Hark ye! I bid thee watch his couch, and let no one approach it with impunity."

"My young master!" said Hamish with energy. "These grey hairs shall be trodden under foot ere the latch of his door shall be touched."

"I know thy fidelity," said Tullochcarron. "Be sure thou givest me the alarm if aught extraordinary should occur."

Having taken this hasty precaution, the old Laird of Tullochcarron again seated himself in his arm-chair to read over for the second time the alarming communication he had received. Ballindalloch's name and seal were the first things his eyes rested on after opening it. Doubts and suspicions instantly flashed across his mind.

"What a silly fool am I after all," said he, "to let any information from such a quarter so agitate me! What truth is to be expected from a house so full of hereditary enmity against mine of Tullochcarron! And is not Lachlan Dhu the son of that very brother of mine who worked so much sore evil to the house of Ballindalloch? And is he not at this moment the best, the stoutest, and the sharpest arrow I have in my quiver? And are not these reasons enough to prompt such a secret enemy to urge me to whet my knife against him? Dull old idiot that I was! but now I see it all! I see it all! What a trap was I about to run my head into! But stay, let me think what is best to be done. Prudent precautions with regard to my son can do no harm. I shall put him well on his guard; and that secured, the best thing I can do is to bury the contents of this paper in mine own bosom."

With such determinations as these, Tullochcarron retired to rest; but his repose was disturbed and put to flight by visions which were not altogether to be laid to the account of the heavy meal he had taken ere he retired to rest. He was early visited by his son Duncan.

"Father," said the young man, "how was it that old Hamish took post in my chamber last night? I found him sitting by my bedside at daybreak this morning, and all the explanation I could extract from him was that he had the laird's orders for being there."

"He had my orders my dear boy," said Tullochcarron, pressing his son to his bosom, and kissing his forehead. "A strange dream had come over me, that alarmed my foolish old heart about thy safety."

"A dream about me!" said the young man smiling. "What harm couldst thou dread for me, father?"

"I dreamed that thy life was threatened, boy," said his father; "and therefore it was that I made Hamish watch thee."

"My life in danger, father!" exclaimed Duncan, "and from whose hand?"

"From the hand of thy cousin Lachlan Dhu," replied his father. "Hast thou any cause to dread that my dream might have aught of reality in it?"

"My cousin Lachlan Dhu!" exclaimed Duncan, with unfeigned surprise. "Nay," continued he, after some little hesitation, during which he remembered the promise he had given to Anna Gordon; "why should I think that Lachlan should wish to injure me?"

"Why should we think it, indeed?" exclaimed the old man, with considerable emotion. "Both I and mine should look for anything but hostility from Lachlan Dhu, if there be any faith or gratitude left in man. Let us then think no more about it."

"Trust me, I shall think no more of it," said Duncan.

"Aye!" said the old man again; "but yet I'd have thee to be cautious. I would entreat thee to guard thyself as if there were danger. Thou hast a dirk and a hand to use it, boy! Thou hast a claymore and an arm that can wield it; and though thou art as yet but a stripling, still thou art the son of old Tullochcarron! But let faithful Hamish be thy constant henchman, and then my heart will be at ease."

"I will defend mine own head as a true Tullochcarron should do, if dirk or steel can do it," said the youth energetically, and by no means relishing the idea of his motions being watched, and his person eternally haunted by an attendant. "But I have nothing to fear, and Hamish might be better employed than in following me in all my idle wanderings."

Duncan thought with himself that he had perhaps better grounds for entertaining some suspicion of evil intentions against him on the part of his kinsman, than any which a dream could have afforded to his father; and yet we must not wonder, gentlemen, that, in such superstitious times, old Tullochcarron's alleged vision had also its own effect upon the young man, when taken in combination with that strange new light that had recently opened on his cousin's character. The gallant youth was above all fear, however; but he had prudence enough to resolve to expose himself to no unnecessary danger. As to old Hamish, Duncan thought it better to gratify his father by allowing that faithful servant to be his companion at all times, save and except only when he went to meet her, of his attachment to whom he still thought it wise to keep Tullochcarron ignorant. Then, indeed, the god of love inspired him with so much ingenuity in escaping from his attendant, that he baffled every attempt at discovery.

It was upon one of these occasions, when he had an especial wish to have an hour or two of private talk with Anna Gordon, that he, in the first place, contrived to escape from old Hamish, and afterwards to steal her from her dumb brother and little sister. Away tripped the pair together laughing, and rejoicing in their own cleverness. Duncan had his angle-rod in his hand, but he wandered with Anna through the groves, by the margin of the Aven, without ever thinking of casting a line into its waters. The subject of their conversation was one of peculiar interest to both of them, for Duncan had sought this interview for the purpose of informing her that, from certain circumstances which had recently occurred, he was led to believe that their secret attachment might now be safely divulged to the old laird his father, in the hope that he might be brought to consent to the speedy solemnisation of their marriage. The time they spent together was by no means short, though to them it appeared as trifling. At length they found out that it was time to part, and a more than usually lingering parting took place between them on the top of that vurra high and precipitous crag, where now rests the northern extremity of the noble bridge that spans the river Aven above Ballindalloch. When they did at last sever from each other, Anna took her way homeward by a footpath leading up the river through the thick oak copsewood that covered the ground behind it, and clustered to the very brink of the precipice where she left Duncan.

The young man stood entranced with his own happy thoughts for a moment after Anna had disappeared, and then bethinking him that he must hasten to make the best use of the time that now remained, if he would not return empty-handed to his father, he stood on the verge of the cliff, eyeing the stream below, and thoroughly occupied in preparing his tackle with all manner of expedition, previous to descending by a circuitous way to the water's edge to commence his sport. He was alone, as you may think, gentlemen; but there was an evil eye that watched him with the tiger's lurid and unvarying gaze, aye, with such a gaze as the tiger's fiery orbs assume when he has slowly and silently tracked his unconscious prey through all the mazes of the jungle, till he at last beholds it within his reach. As the head of the traitor Lachlan Dhu appeared from the thicket within three paces of the spot where young Tullochcarron stood, a fiendish smile of eager triumph gave a hellish expression to its features. It was but one desperate spring. One piercing shriek was uttered by the unhappy Duncan Bane, and in one instant his lifeless corse was floating, shattered and bleeding, on the crystal stream of the Aven.

That scream was heard by Anna Gordon, and from the moment it entered into her ears, it never left her mind. As it reached her, she happened to be passing round a turn of the river some little way above, whence the fatal crag was still visible.

"Merciful saints!" she cried, as she turned quickly round, "that was my Duncan's voice!"

She caught one instantaneous glimpse of the figure of Lachlan Dhu, as he fled from the summit of the crag. A dreadful suspicion shot across her mind. Winged by her agonising terrors, she flew back to the spot where she had parted with Duncan. There she met the poor dumb boy, her brother, pulling his little sister along by the arm. No sooner did he behold Anna, than with a wild animation of countenance, and with gesture so expressive, that no one but a creature deprived of the power of language could have employed, he imitated the action of one person pushing another over the face of the cliff, and then he ran down the path that followed the course of the stream. Anna rushed franticly after him; and when she had reached the margin of the Aven, her eyes rested on the lifeless corse of her beloved, which had been carried by the eddying current into a little quiet nook, where it lay half-stranded on a grassy bank.

It happened that old Hamish, who as usual had been anxiously seeking his young master, came a few moments afterwards accidentally to the same spot; and what a spectacle did he behold! Seated on the bank by the water's edge was the wretched Anna Gordon, with her lover's mangled and bleeding head upon her knee. Her eyes were fixed upon its livid and gory features, as if they had been gazing on vacancy. Not a tear flowed, not a groan nor a sigh was uttered. A monumental group could not have been more motionless or silent. Hamish was distracted. He tried to make her speak; for altogether ignorant of the powerful cause of interest which operated upon her, he viewed her but as an idle spectator, an indifferent person, from whom he anxiously desired to extract something that might enable him to guess as to how this dreadful calamity had occurred. His questions were rapid, urgent, and incessant; but still she minded him not, until he bent forward as if to attempt to lift the body from her knee. Then it was, that turning round with all the frenzied dignity of fixed insanity, she fastened the severe gaze of her unsettled eyes upon him, and spoke in a tone that froze his very heart.

"Begone, old man!" said she, "begone. What! wouldst thou rob me of my love on our bridal day? He is mine! he is mine! But hush," said she, suddenly lowering her voice and changing her expression, "hush! he sleeps! He slumbers sweetly now. But he will awake anon with smiles, and then our bridal revels will begin. Go, go, old man! go, bid the guests! Bid all!--bid all, I tell thee!--bid all, but--but--the murderer!" A shrill shriek, graduating into a violent hysterical laugh, followed these wild wandering words; and a convulsion shook her delicate frame till she fainted away, as if life itself had fled from her.

I must leave this heart-rending scene, gentlemen, to tell you what soon afterwards took place in the old peel-tower of Tullochcarron.

"What!" exclaimed the laird, as he was in the act of sitting down to one of those many meals which the craving of his naturally enormous appetite rendered so essentially necessary for him. "What!" said he, "still no salmon? Hath Duncan not yet returned, then? Why, methinks the boy must have tyned his luck altogether. But I trow that the fish have lost the way into our waters, they are so rare to be seen. Ha! who comes there with haste so impatient? Is it thou, Lachlan Dhu?"

"Alas, uncle!" cried the murderer, rushing in without his bonnet, and with a frantic air, "alas, uncle! alas! alas! Duncan! Duncan!"

"What--what of Duncan?" exclaimed the anxious and alarmed father, starting from the table.

"Duncan," cried the traitor, "my poor cousin Duncan is no more?"

"What! Duncan? Villain! accursed villain! you lie," cried the old man half-distracted, and grappling his nephew by the throat with his powerful gripe. "You lie, most accursed villain!"

"Alas! alas! I wish I did!" said Lachlan Dhu, with feigned sorrow. "But I grieve to say that what I tell is, alas, too true. I was walking accidentally by the banks of the Aven, about a bowshot above the high craig, when, on looking towards it, I beheld him standing carelessly on the very brink of the cliff; and whether it was that his foot had tripped upon some of those roots that scramble for a sustenance over the surface of the rock, or whether some sudden gust of wind had caught him, I know not; but I saw him fall headlong thence; and after being dashed horribly against the projecting points below, I could perceive his inanimate body borne off by the stream. Wild with despair, and scarcely knowing what I was doing, I ran directly home hither to tell thee the doleful news; and"----

"Villain!" shouted the old man in a voice like thunder. "Villain! thou art his murderer. Seize him, and drag him hence to the dungeon. He hath reft me of my boy! my only hope on earth! the solace of my old age! O fool! fool! Why did I not take the well-meant warning? Oh! I am now indeed bereft! But his murderer must die ere the sun goes down. Where is Hamish? He at least should have been at my poor Duncan's side!"

At that moment Hamish himself entered. He whose hypocritical acting I have just described, had taken so long to prepare it for exhibition that this old and faithful attendant had had full time to procure help to carry his young master's remains, and had now come on before the body, with the well-meant intention of breaking the afflicting intelligence as easily as he could to the bereaved father. He had been relieved of the task, as I have already told you; and the sad news had spread so, that all the vassals and dependants within reach had crowded to meet the body of their beloved Duncan Bane. The woeful wail of the pipes was heard at a distance. The old laird became dreadfully agitated. The sound drew nearer. Tullochcarron bit his nether lip, clenched his hands, and wound himself up to go through with the trying scene as he felt that Tullochcarron should do. He put on his bonnet with energy, wrapped his plaid tight around him, and descended with a resolute step into the court-yard. The clang of the pipes became louder; and yet a louder crash of their rude music burst forth, as they passed inwards from beneath the arched gateway. The old man strode two or three steps forcibly forwards, with his eyes fixed upon the spot where the rush of human figures came squeezing in. At length his sight fell on the bloody corse of his murdered son, his only earthly hope; and he became rooted to the ground he stood on.

And now a light airy figure appeared tripping fantastically beside the bier with her hair fancifully wreathed up with worthless weeds. She came dancing towards the old laird with gay smiles upon her face, and threw herself upon her knee before him.