Part 2

Treading deep among the last year's crisp and withered leaves, I proceeded down the sombre and winding avenue, with a heart that beat quicker as I drew near a man, whose figure I remembered instantly, for he was my early friend, my second father, my maternal uncle, good old Sir Nigel Calderwood. Occupied with a weeder, which he always carried, and with which the ends of all his walking-sticks were furnished, he was intent on up-rooting some obnoxious weed; thus I could approach him unobserved. He seemed as stout and hale as when I saw him last. The grey hair, that was wont to escape under his well-worn wide-awake, was thinner and more silvery, perhaps; but the old hat had its usual row of flies and fishhooks, and his face was as ruddy as ever, and spoke of high health and spirits. He stooped a little more, certainly; but his figure was still sturdy, and clad, as usual, in a rough suit of grey tweed, with his stout legs encased in long brown leather leggings, that had seen much service in their time among the turnips and heather in the shooting season, and in the trouting streams that traverse the fertile Howe of Fife.

An old, half-blind, and wheezing otter terrier crept close to his heels as I came up. With a polite bow the worthy baronet surveyed, but failed to recognise me, and waited, with a glance of inquiry, until I should speak; for, sooth to say, in the tall, rather well-knit figure, bronzed face, and heavy moustaches I exhibited, he could scarcely be expected to recognise the slender and beardless lad, whose heart was so heavy when he was conveyed away from his mother's arms, to push his way in the world as a cornet of cavalry some six years before.

"Uncle--Sir Nigel!" said I, in a voice that became tremulous.

"Newton--my dear boy, Newton--am I blind that I did not recognise you?" he exclaimed, while he grasped my hand and threw an arm round me; "welcome back to Calderwood--welcome home--and on the second day of the New Year, too! may many many joyous returns of the season be yours, Newton! What a manly fellow you have become since I saw you last in London--quite a dragoon!"

"And how is Cora--she is with you, of course?"

"Cora is well; and though not a dashing girl, she has grown up an amiable and gentle little pet, who is worth her weight in gold; but you shall see--you shall see, and judge for yourself. The house is full of visitors just now--I have some nice people to present you to."

"Thanks, uncle; but you and Cora were all I cared to see."

"But how came you to be here alone, and on foot too?"

"I left the train at Calderwood station, and wished to come quietly back to the old house, without any fuss."

"To steal a march upon us, in fact?"

"Yes, uncle, you understand me," said I, looking into his clear dark eyes, which were regarding me with an expression of great affection, which recalled the memory of my mother, his youngest and favourite sister. "Pitblado will drive over with my traps before dinner."

"Ah, Willie, the old keeper's son?"

"Yes."

"And how is he?"

"Quite well, and become so smart a lancer, that I fear there will be a great pulling of caps among the housemaids. I am loth to keep him out of the ranks, but the worthy fellow won't leave me."

"Many a good bag of grouse from yonder fields and the Lomonds, and many a good basket of trout from the Eden, has poor Willie carried for me. But, come this way; we shall take the near cut by the keeper's lodge to the house; you have not forgotten the way?"

"I should think not, uncle; by the Adder's Craig and the old Battle Stone."

"Exactly. I am so glad you have come at this time; I have such news for you, Newton--such news, boy."

"Indeed, uncle?"

"Yes," he continued, laughing heartily.

"How?"

"Calderwood Glen is a mere man-trap at present."

"In what manner?"

"We have here old General Rammerscales, of the Bengal army, who has come home with the liver complaint, and a face as yellow as a buttercup, and his pale niece--a girl worth heaven knows how many sacks or lacs of rupees (though, for the life of me, I never knew what or how much a lac is.) We have also Spittal of Lickspittal and that Ilk, M.P. for the Liberal interest (and more particularly for his own), with his two daughters, rather pretty girls; and we have that beautiful blonde, Miss Wilford, who has a cousin in your regiment--a Yorkshire heiress, whom all the men agree would make such a wife! We have also the Countess of Chillingham, and her daughter, Lady Louisa Loftus, really a very charming girl; so, as I told you, Newton, the old house is baited like a regular man-trap for you."

Had my uncle's perception been clearer, or had he been less vigorously using his weeder, as he ran on thus, he could not have failed to observe how powerfully the last name he uttered affected me.

After a pause--"In none of your letters," said I, "did you mention that Lady Loftus was here."

"Did I not? But Cora is your chief correspondent, and no no doubt she did."

"On the contrary, my cousin never once referred to her."

"Strange! Lord Chillingham left us a week ago in haste to attend a meeting of the Cabinet; but his women folks have been rusticating here for nearly three months. Charming person the countess--charming, indeed; but the daughter is quite a Diana. You have met her before--she told us so, and I have made up my mind--ah, you know for what, you rogue--eh?"

What my uncle had made up his mind for was not very apparent; but he concluded his sentence by poking the weeder under my short ribs.

"To have me marry in haste and repent at leisure, eh, uncle--is it for this that your mind is made up?"

"I am a man of the old school, Newton; yet I hate proverbs, and everything old, except wine and good breeding."

"You are aware, uncle," said I, to change the subject, "that the lancers are under orders for Turkey?"

"Where women are kept under lock and key, bought, and secluded from society; just as in Britain they are thrust into it for sale."

"And so, my dear uncle, supposing that a lively young lancer will make a most excellent husband for your noble and beautiful _protegee_, you are resolved to make a victim of me, is it not so?"

"Precisely; but according to the old use and wont in drama and romance, you must not be a willing one; you must be prepared to hate her cordially at first sight, and to prefer some one else--of course, some amiable village damsel, of humble but respectable parentage," replied Sir Nigel, laughing.

"Hate _her_--prefer another!" I exclaimed; "on the contrary, I--I----"

I know not what I was about to say, or how far I might have betrayed myself. The blood rushed to my temples, and I felt giddy and confused, for the kind old baronet knew little of the hopeless passion with which the fair one of whom he spoke had inspired me already.

"You have met the Lady Lousia before, you say?"

"Nay, 'twas she who said she had met me," said I, glad to recall by this trifling remark that I was not forgotten by her.

"Ah, indeed--indeed; where?"

"Oh, at Canterbury, at Tunbridge Wells, Bath; all those places where people are to be met. In London, too, I saw her presented at Court."

"The deuce! You and she seem to have gone in a leash," said Sir Nigel, laughing, while the colour deepened on my cheek again; "but you must look sharp, for one of your fellows who is here is for ever dangling after her."

"One of _ours_?" I exclaimed, with astonishment.

"Yes; a solemn, dreary, dandified fellow, whom I met at Chillingham's shootings in the north, and invited to spend the last weeks of his leave of absence here, as we were to have you with us; and he spared no pains to impress upon me that he was a particular chum of yours."

"Is he Captain Travers--Vaughan Travers? He is on leave."

"No; he is Lieutenant De Warr Berkeley."

"Berkeley!" I repeated, with some disgust, and with an emotion of such inconceivable annoyance that I could scarcely conceal it; for decidedly he was the last man of ours whom I should have liked to find domesticated at Calderwood Glen.

Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. He became a wealthy brewer, and somehow his son like all such _parvenus_, despising his name, was gazetted to the lancers as De Warr Berkeley, and as such his name figured in the "Army List."

The carefully-acquired fortune of the plodding old brewer he spent freely, and without being lavish, though as an Eton boy, and afterwards as a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, he had plunged into dissipation that made his name proverbial. He was one of those systematic _roues_ whom prudent mothers would carefully exclude from the society of their daughters, nathless his commission, his cavalry uniform, his fortune, his decidedly handsome person and bearing, which had all the "tone of society"--whatever that may mean.

Hence I was rather provoked to find that the kind and well-meaning but blundering old baronet had, as a favour to me, installed him at Calderwood, as a friend for my pretty cousin Cora, and an admirer of Lady Louisa. As I thought over all this, her name must have escaped me, for my uncle roused me from a reverie by saying--

"Yes; she is a charming, a splendid girl, really! A little too stately, perhaps; but I would rather have my little rosebud, Cora, with her peculiar winning ways. Lady Louisa may be all head--as I believe she is; but our Cora is all heart, Newton--all heart!"

"And Lady Louisa is all head, you think, uncle?"

"I could see that at a glance--yes, with half an eye; and yet there are times when I wish Cora had been a boy----"

My uncle leaned on his stick, and sighed.

His eldest son had been killed in the 12th Lancers, at the battle of Goojerat; the other had died prematurely at College--a double loss, which had a most fatal effect on their delicate mother, then in the last stage of a mortal disease. Now the affection of the lonely Sir Nigel was centred in Cora, his only daughter, the child of his declining years; and thus he had a great regard for me as the son of his youngest sister; but he sorrowed in secret that his baronetcy--one of the oldest in Scotland, having been created in 1625 by Charles I.--should pass out of his family.

Sir Norman Calderwood of the Glen, who had attended the Scottish princess, Elizabeth Stuart, to Bohemia, was the first patented among the baronets of Nova Scotia; and was therefore styled _Primus Baronettorum Scotiae_, a prefix of which my uncle, as his ancestors had been, was not a little vain.

"The estates are entailed," said he, pursuing this line of thought; "they were among the first that were so, when the Scottish parliament passed the Entail Act in 1685; and though they go, as you know, to a remote collateral branch, the baronetcy ends with myself. Cora shall be well and handsomely left; for she shall have the Pitgavel property, which, with its coal and iron mines, yields two thousand per annum clear. And you, my boy, Newton, shall find that, tide what may, you are not forgotten."

"Uncle, you have already done so much for me----"

"Much, Newton?"

"Yes, my dear sir."

"Stuff! fitted you out for the lancers--that is all."

"You have done more than that, uncle----"

"I have lodged the purchase money for your troop with Messrs. Cox and Co.; but most of this money must, under other circumstances, have been spent on your cousins, had they lived. So, thank fate and the fortune of war, not me, boy, not me. But there are times, especially when I am alone, that it grieves me to think that instead of leaving an heir to the old title, one boy lies in his grave in the old kirk yonder; and the other, far, far away on the battle-field of Goojerat."

He shook his white head, and his voice became tremulous, his chin sank on his breast, and he added--

"My poor Nigel!--my bonnie Archie!"

The baronet was a handsome man, above six feet in height, and, though he stooped a little now, had been erect as a pike. He possessed fine aquiline features, a ruddy and healthy complexion; clear, and bright dark grey eyes; a well-shaped, though not very small, mouth; and a Scottish chin, of a curve that evinced perseverance and decision. His hair was nearly white, but there was plenty of it; his hands, though browned by exposure and seldom gloved--for the gun, the rod, the riding-whip, and the curling stone were ever in them by turns--were well shaped, and showed by their form and nails that he was a gentleman of good blood and breeding. His plain costume I have described, and he was without ornament, save a silver dog-whistle at his button-hole, and a large gold signet-ring, which belonged to his grandfather, Sir Alexander Calderwood, who commanded a frigate under Admiral Hawke, in the fleet which, in 1748, fought and vanquished the Spanish galleons between Tortuga and the Havannah.

A sturdy old Fifeshire laird, proud of a long line of warlike Scottish ancestors, uncrossed by any taint of foreign blood, he was fond of boasting that neither Dane nor Norman--the Englishman's strange vaunt and pride--could be found among them; but that he came of a race, which--as our Highlanders forcibly phrase it--had sprung from the soil, and were indigenous to it.

But, indeed, the alleged foreign descent of nearly the whole Scottish aristocracy is a silly sham, existing in their own imagination, having arisen from the ignorance of the monkish Latin writers, who in rolls and histories prefixed the Norman _de_ or _le_, in many instances, to the most common Celtic patronymics and surnames.

Sir Nigel had "paraded," to use a barrack phrase, more than one man in his youth, and enjoyed the reputation of being an unpleasantly good shot with his pistol. He could remember sharing in the rage of the high-flying Tory party among the Fife lairds, when Sir Alexander Boswell, of Auchinleck, was shot by James Stuart, of Dunearn, in a solemn duel, where personal and political rancour were combined, at Balmuto, for which the victor had to fly to England, and from thence to France.

"It seemed strange on reflection, Newton," I have frequently heard Sir Nigel, say, "that poor Boswell was the first to propose in Parliament the repeal of our old Scottish statutes anent duelling, and that, after all, he should fall by the pistol for a mere newspaper squib, in which Sir Walter Scott was, perhaps, as much to blame as he."

*CHAPTER III.*

Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy song to the ev'ning, Thou'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood Glen; Sae dear to this bosom, sae heartless and winning, Is charming young Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane. TANNAHILL.

"Here is the old house, and here we are at last, Newton," said my uncle, as an abrupt turn of the private path through the woodlands brought us suddenly in front of the ancient mansion, in which, after the early death of my father, I had spent my boyhood.

It stands in a well-wooded hollow, or glen, overlooked by the three Lomonds of Fife--a county which, though not renowned for its picturesque scenery, can show us many peaceful and beautiful landscapes.

Calderwood is simply an old manor-house, or fortalice, like some thousand others in Scotland, having a species of keep, with adjacent buildings, erected during quieter or more recent periods of Scottish history than the first dwelling, which had suffered severely during the wars between Mary of Guise and the Lords of the Congregation, when the soldiers of Desse d'Epainvilliers blew up a portion of it by gunpowder--an act terribly revenged by Sir John Calderwood of the Glen, who had been chamberlain of Fife and captain of the castle of St. Andrew's for Cardinal Beaton. Overtaking a party of the Bandes Francaises in Falkland Woods, he routed them with considerable slaughter, and hung at least a dozen of them on the oak trees in the park of the palace.

The latest additions had been made under the eye of Sir William Bruce of Kinross, the architect of Holyrood--the Scottish Inigo Jones--about a hundred and ninety years before the present period, and thus were somewhat florid and Palladian in their style, their fluted pilasters and Roman cornices and capitals contrasting singularly with the grim severity and strongly-grated windows of the old tower, which was founded on a mass of grey rock, round which a terraced garden lies.

Within this, the older portion, the rooms were strange and quaint in aspect, with arched roofs, wainscoted walls, and yawning fireplaces, damp, rusty, cold, and forlorn, where the atmosphere felt as if the dead Calderwoods of other times visited them, and lingered there apart from the fashionable friends of their descendants in the more modern mansion; and within the tower Sir Nigel treasured many old relics of the palace of Dunfermline, which, when its roof fell in, in 1708, was literally plundered by the people.

Thus, in one room, he had the cradle of James VI., and the bed in which his son, Charles I., had been born; in another, a cabinet of Anne of Denmark, a chair of Robert III., and a sword of the Regent Albany.

The demesne (Scotice, "policy") around this picturesque old house was amply studded with glorious old timber, under which browsed herds of deer, of a size, strength, and ferocity unknown in England. The stately entrance-gate, bearing the palm-tree of the Calderwoods, a crusading emblem, and the long avenue, of two Scottish miles, and the half-castellated mansion which terminated its leafy vista, well befitted the residence of one whose fathers had ridden forth to uphold Mary's banner at Langside, and that of James VIII. at the battle of Dunblane.

Here was the well where the huntsman and soldier, James V., had slaked his thirst in the forest; and there was the oak under which his father--who fell at Flodden--shot the monarch of the herd by a single bolt from his crossbow.

In short, Calderwood, with all its memories, was a complete epitome of the past.

The Eastern Lomond (so called, like its brothers, from Laomain, a Celtic hero), now reddened by the setting sun, seemed beautiful with the green verdure that at all seasons covers it to the summit, as we approached the house.

Ascending to the richly-carved entrance-door, where one, whilom of oak and iron, had given place to another of plate-glass, a footman, powdered, precise, liveried, and aiguilletted, with the usual amplitude of calf and acute facial angle of his remarkable fraternity, appeared; but ere he could touch the handle it was flung open, and a handsome young girl, with a blooming complexion, sparkling eyes, and a bright and joyous smile, rushed down the steps to meet us.

"Welcome to Calderwood, Newton," she exclaimed; "may our new year be a happy one."

"Many happy ones be yours, Cora," said I, kissing her cheek. "Though I am changed since we last met, your eyes have proved clearer than those of uncle, for, really, he did not know me."

"Oh, papa, was it so?" she asked, while her fine eyes swam with fun and pleasure.

"A fact, my dear girl."

"Ah! I could never be so dull, though you have those new dragoon appendages," said she, laughingly, as I drew her arm through mine, and we passed into a long and stately corridor, furnished with cabinets, busts, paintings, and suits of mail, towards the drawing-room; "and I am not married yet, Newton," she added, with another bright smile.

"But there must be some favoured man, eh, Cora?"

"No," she said, with a tinge of hauteur over her playfulness, "none."

"Time enough to think of marrying, Cora; why, you are only nineteen, and I hope to dance at your wedding when I return from Turkey."

"Turkey," she repeated, while a cloud came over her pure and happy face; "oh, don't talk of that, Newton; I had forgotten it!"

"Yes; does it seem a long, or a doubtful time to look forward to?"

"It seems both, Newton."

"Well, cousin, with those soft violet eyes of yours, and those black, shining braids (the tempting mistletoe is just over your head), and with loves of bonnets, well-fitting gloves and kid boots, dresses ever new and of every hue, you cannot fail to conquer, whenever you please."

She gave me a full, keen glance, that seemed expressive of annoyance, and said, with a little sigh--

"You don't understand me, Newton. We have been so long separated that I think you have forgotten all the peculiarities of my character now."

"What the deuce can she mean?" thought I.

My cousin Cora was in her fullest bloom. She was pretty, remarkably pretty, rather than beautiful; and by some women she was quite eclipsed, even when her cheek flushed and her eyes, a deep violet grey, were most lighted up.

She was fully of the middle height, and finely rounded, with exquisite shoulders, arms, and hands. Her features were small, and perhaps not quite regular. Her eyes were alternately timid, inquiring, and full of animation; but, in fact, their expression was ever varying. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy; and while I looked upon her, and thought of her present charms and of past times--and more than all of my uncle's fatherly regard for me--I felt that, though very fond of her, but for another I might have loved her more dearly and tenderly. And now, as if to interrupt, or rather to confirm the tenor of such thoughts as these, she said, as a lady suddenly approached the door of the drawing-room, which we were about to enter--

"Here is one, a friend, to whom I must introduce you."

"No introduction is necessary," said the other, presenting her hand. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Norcliff before."

"Lady Louisa!" I exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and a heart that trembled with sudden emotion, as I touched her hand.

"I am so glad you have come before we leave. I shall have so much to ask you about our mutual friends--who are engaged, and who have quarrelled; who have come home, and who gone abroad. We have been no less than four months in Scotland. Meantime," she added, glancing at her tiny watch, "we must dress for dinner. Come, Cora; we have barely half an hour, and old General Rammerscales is so impatient--he studies 'military time,' and with a 'military appetite.'"

And with a bow and smile of great brightness and sweetness she passed on, taking with her Cora, who playfully kissed her hand to me as they glided up the great staircase into which the long corridor opened.

Lady Louisa was taller and larger in person than Cora. Her features were singularly beautiful, and clearly cut; her forehead was low; and her nose had the gentlest approach to the aquiline. She was without colour, her complexion being pale, perhaps creamy; while in strange contrast to this aristocratic pallor of delicacy, her thick, wavy hair, her long double eyelashes, and her ever-sparkling eyes, were black as those of a Spanish gitano or a Welsh gipsy.

To this pale loveliness was added a bearing alternately haughty and playful, but at all times completely self-possessed; an exquisite taste in dress and jewellery; a very alluring voice; a power of investing even trifles with interest, and of conversing fluently and gracefully on any subject--whether she was mistress of it or not mattered little to Lady Louisa.

She was about my own age, perhaps a few months younger; but in experience of the fashionable world, and in knowledge of the manners and ideas of the upper ten thousand, she was a hundred years my senior.