CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE CRAPE SCARF OF M'ALPINE.

While relating the adventures of Gabrielle, as I afterwards learned them, I must not lose sight of my own.

With sixty Highland soldiers, accompanied by Angus Roy M'Alpine, Kildon, and one or two other officers, I had formed a little bivouac at a small clump of trees, about three or four miles from the castle of Helnœs; there we waited anxiously the result of Bernhard's mission, and made many resolutions, if it failed, to bring on the whole regiment, and, though we had only twelve hours to spare, set the king's commands at naught, and--if Ian consented--take the Merodeurs by storm.

We lay in concealment near the thicket, and our advanced sentinels sat among the long grass beyond it, rolled up in their green plaids, and were quite invisible; for we made use of every precaution that Scottish warfare and Highland hunting made familiar to us, to approach Helnœs as near as possible without being seen.

Our _Weywacht_, as the Germans would call it, was made on a spot of the greenest turf; there we piled our loaded muskets; opened our havresacks, and every man who had been able to procure a bottle containing spirit of any kind, from Neckar down to plain Odenzee beer, produced it, and the quaighs of wood and horn were passed round from man to man without distinction, in the good old northern fashion; for the patriarchal system, and the acknowledged relationship of the lowest in station to the highest in rank, is one of the finest features in social Highland life. Every Gordon is the kinsman of Lord Huntly, and every Campbell is a cousin to Breadalbane and Macallum Mhor, as the humblest gilly is the kinsman of his chief.

Different from many a bivouac I have seen--where (like the camps of the Egyptians of Scotland, or the gitanos of Spain) it seemed to be little better than systematic vagabondizing in the cold and rain, with no covering but a blanket, nestling together for warmth--on this summer evening our halt near that fiörd, which is formed by the long narrow promontory of Helnœs, resembled a pleasure party.

We saw the sun set in the amber west, and the moon rise in all her silver glory; the soft night wind rustled the leaves above our heads, and bore on its breath that peculiar fragrance which night exhales from the teeming land and darkened sea. Afar off, several beacons of turf and wood were burning on distant promontories, to mark the shoals and sands; and, amid the summer haze, they gleamed on the trembling waters of the Belt like flickering _ignes fatui_.

In the lower parts of the level landscape, large pools of water glittered here and there in the rushy hollows; a shower of rain had fallen about mid-day, and now a bright silver haze floated over the enamelled meadows. Near our bivouac a stream gurgled on its way almost noiselessly to the sea, unlike our mountain burns at home, which, after a shower, rush in fury sheeted with foam, and bearing at times rocks, trees, and stones, to the German ocean or the Caledonian sea.

As the time wore slowly on, and I did nothing in the way of conversation to lighten its tedium, but sat at the foot of a tree lost in thought, old Kildon, as he filled the quaighs of all around him, proposed that we should have a song or a story after the good old fashion at home; and he forthwith set the example by singing, in very good style, that old and dirge-like song which Ossian has addressed to _The Owl_, and which elicited a burst of applause from our soldiers.

"_Aire Muire!_ let us have a story now," said he, "or we shall all mope here like the owls of the song; come, Phadrig Mhor--a story; or do you, Rollo, tell us something. You did not study at the King's College for naught--and, faith! that same study must have cost the old Laird of the Craig a good many silver bonnet-pieces."

"He is in the region of clouds," said M'Alpine, "and has nothing to tell or propose."

"Except your health, Angus," said I; "and that you will please to tell us why you wear that crape scarf on your arm."

Red Angus started, and a fierce gleam shot athwart his fiery eyes and darkening face.

A murmur of dissent among those near us, warned me that I had broached an unfortunate subject, which some of them knew.

"Pardon my thoughtlessness, Angus," said I, grasping his hand; "if I have probed an old wound, or awakened a bitter memory, by my soul it was done unwittingly."

"You have probed an old and a deep wound, Philip, and referred to a badge which I never can behold without bitterness and regret. Had you come from among the clans in the west, instead of from those of the north, you had known the story. Kildon, M'Coll, Sir Donald the chief, all knew it, and might a hundred times have told it; but they respected the sorrow and shame of their comrade--said I shame? Nay, there is in it none to me; then why should I refrain from relating what I have so little reason to conceal."

Captain M'Alpine filled twice his quaigh with wine, and twice he drained it, with the air of a man who requires false courage to tell his story, and after twirling his long mustaches, began thus in his native and forcible Gaëlic:--

"Though I am descended from that portion of the Siol nan Alpin which inhabit the frontier of the Highlands, forming one of the greatest barriers against the aggressive spirit of the Lowlander, an ancestor of mine, who had fought under Angus of the Isles, at the great sea battle of the Battle Bay, in Mull, obtained the isle of Gometra as a free gift from the Lord of the Ebudæ. There my people dwelt for several generations, and, without going back to the days of Fergus the son of Ere, that is enough to give one consequence in the west.

"The isle was poor and barren, for it lies between the tremendous mountains of Mull and the basaltic cliffs of Staffa, and is separated from the dark blue terraces of Ulva by a narrow strip of ocean. My father's people never took the field under less than a hundred claymores and forty bowmen; they were poor, but honest, brave, and industrious, clothing and feeding themselves by the fruits of their labour--by the loom and the forge, the breeding of sheep, cattle, and horses, and the manufacture of kelp.

"We held our lands of a M'Lean--Hector of Lochdon," added Angus, grinding his teeth; "he dwelt in a castle which had towers and gates; brass cannon and iron bombardes; we occupied a little mansion by the Sound of Ulva. By our tenure, we were required to have always a war-galley in the Sound, but M'Lean had never less than twelve; five hundred brass targets hung in his hall, and a thousand claymores; yet we cocked our bonnets as high as he did; and, unless when under his banner, would never yield an inch to him, at kirk or market--at hunting or hosting.

"To our family was entrusted the education of the successive heirs of Lochdon. We taught them the use of arms, the sword, the oar, the harp, and the bow; with every accomplishment becoming a duinewassal. All these, four successive generations had acquired at our little dwelling on the Sound of Ulva. I was twenty when my father died----"

"With an arrow in his throat," said M'Coll.

"Ay--shot in a quarrel with the McDonalds; but he bequeathed to me, as a sacred trust, the chieftain's motherless son, M'Garadh, then in his sixth year, a noble and beautiful boy.

"To enable me to fulfil my charge with honour, and in obedience to my father's special wish, as well as my own, I married the daughter of a kinsman, a brave and honourable gentleman of the isles, whose name I need not sully anew, by linking it with mine in this bitter revival of the past.

"Una, for she bore that fine old Highland name, was beautiful, and every harper between Isla and the Lewis sung of her beauty, and composed songs in her honour. These songs cost her father (for the old man doted on her) not less than a hundred brooches, silver quaighs, and carved dirk-handles; for no cunning harper of the Hebrides strung his harp to Una's praise in vain.

"Una was graceful and tall among the maids of the Isles; the proportion of her form, was so perfect, that her height could only be distinguished when she stood among others. Her hair was dark and luxuriant; parted over her forehead, and bound by a fillet of gold, it fell in silky waves upon her shoulders. Her eyes were dark and dangerously beautiful; they were like two stars; her cheek had a transparent olive tint, for her mother had a tinge of the Douglas' blood in her. Her eyes were as if a pencil had traced them, and her nose had that aquiline arch which is ever indicative of pride. When calm and thoughtful, she might have passed for the Malvina of Ossian, or the Goddess of the Parthenon; when smiling, for the Goddess of Love herself. I was proud of my beautiful bride, and I loved her for her gentleness, for the memory of the battles her forefathers had won, and for the lustre which their name, with all her charms and virtues, would cast around my island home.

"Una, alas! had no heart. Her bosom was high and spotless as the new-fallen snow; but it swelled only at the emotions of vanity.

"M'Lean visited us often; and when his great gilded birlinn, with his banner waving, the pipers playing in the prow, the oarsmen chanting as they bent to the wave, the axes of his Leine Chrios sparkling in the sun, swept down the Sound of Ulva, she more than once stung me to the soul by drawing a cold comparison between his state and mine.

"Una was not content. I redoubled my efforts to procure luxuries for her, and exacted a heavy kain from my poor tenants, that I might barter with the English traders for silks and velvets, and with the Norwegians for fine furs and broadcloths; the finest gloves from Perth, the finest laces from Glasgow, the fairest pearls from Cluny, the most sparkling stones from Cairngorm--our Scottish jaspers, topazes, and amethysts--were procured for her. I parted with my father's Spanish gun (which he received from Dunvegan, when he destroyed the _Florida_, the great Spanish treasure-ship)--I parted with my _Florida_, the great Spanish treasure-ship)--I parted with my best coat of harness--my polished lurich, with all its rings of steel--to procure for her ornaments and passements, such trumpery and trash as had not been seen in the Isles since the days of Alexander the Great Steward.

"We had visited our chief; the splendour and luxuries of his mansion dwelt long in her mind, and my exertions were unavailing.

"Yet I redoubled my efforts and exchanged my wild ponies and short-legged cattle for the luxuries brought to the Clyde by the merchants of Bordeaux and the Flemings of the Dam. M'Lean came often to visit us--and always when I chanced to be absent, hunting in Mull, or in my birlinn on the Sound, looking after my fishermen.

"I saw little to suspect; but I dreaded much, and thought more. Una was often pensive, cold, and irritable. Then a pain gnawed my heart, and a whisper that seemed to come from hell ascended to my ear. I was jealous--jealous of this bright being, whom I loved with my whole heart: for, I could perceive that, though she sometimes smiled on me, her smile was ever brightest when the birlinn of M'Lean was seen upon the Sound, sweeping down between the isles, with banner flaunting, and oars, shields, and axes flashing in the sun.

"'Una!' said I, one day, making a terrible effort to suppress my rising passion; 'you look after M'Lean as if you had never seen him before.'

"'Ah!' said she with a smile, 'I know that a Highland matron should only have eyes for her husband--for the man she loves. Surely, dear Angus, you are not jealous of me?'

"'No, Una--true love has no jealousy.' (I knew that I spoke false.)

"'It has--it must--just to infuse a little life into it!'

"Then she playfully kissed my cheek, saying--

"'Now, Angus, I would never suspect you, though I have heard that dark men are more constant than fair.'

"'And fair women more constant than dark.'

"'Oh, fie! to say so, dear Angus Roy, after my pretty compliment.'

"My heart leaped within me; methought I was a wretch to suspect her; and, taking my gun, I climbed the western cliffs of the isle in quest of a great golden eagle, which had then built an eyry there, and the yellow pinions of which I resolved to bring Una, though at the risk of my neck.

"It was _Di Donich_, or St. Duncan's day, as we call the Sabbath in the west, from some great missionary of the olden time; and I remember it well, as if every hour of it had passed but yesterday. I was long away; when, descending towards my house on the beach, I heard the sound of pipes and the song of the rowers. A turn of the rocks brought me in view of the azure Sound, then tinged red with the flush of a western sun; the bannered barge of M'Lean was speeding across as fast as the broad flashing blades of twenty oars could carry it. M'Lean was at the stern, and a lady sat beside him. Anxiety and fear must have sharpened my vision; for, even at the vast distance between us, I could recognise the dark hair of Una, bound by its fillet of gold, and, among the green tartans of the M'Leans, her scarlet plaid, with its bridal brooch, that shone like a star. That brooch I had placed upon her shoulder at the altar. It was indeed my wife; she had left me! I was alone upon the rock--and the fury of a demon swelled up within me.

"I levelled my gun at Una, but my heart failed me; then I pointed it at M'Lean, but withdrew it from my shoulder; for the distance was too great. I sat down on the hillside and wept like a deserted child. Long I lingered there; the daylight faded from the ocean, and its tints of gold and blue deepened into black; the moon rose, and waned again; the shadows of night melted into the light of day--but, alas! I was still sitting there. The sun came out of the waters, and his rays shed a roseate tint on Ulva's brows of rock, and the loftier peaks of Mull; while that beautiful island, with its deep inlets, its rock-built castles, and grey old Scandinavian burghs, raised by the long-haired warriors of Ivar and Acho, were before me; but I saw only one spot in all that line of coast. It was the tall grim tower of M'Lean.

"Upon the solitary shore, with no eye upon me but the blessed one of God, with my knees on the sand, and the dirk on my lips--the Holy Iron--I swore by the black stones of Iona, by the grey rock of M'Gregor, by the four blessed Gospels, and by my own soul, a terrible vow, to revenge myself upon M'Lean, and to make his hand the means of punishing Una. I remembered the proverb--that deeds are men, and words are women; but I was resolved that my deeds should make me little less than a fiend.

"My people met me with shame, with anger, and with silent sorrow; there were some who showed the wounds they had received from the Leine Chrios of M'Lean, for they had manfully resisted the departure of my wife, and blows had been given and arrows shot before that abduction--to which she consented with a willingness she was at no pains to conceal--had been effected. A savage thought seized me.

"'By the soul of Mary! I have still a hostage!' said I; "'where is M'Garadh--the cub of yonder wolf?'

"'The M'Leans were too wary to trust the child among us after the deed of yesterday, and he is away with his father in the birlinn.'

"I gnashed my teeth with rage, for I knew that M'Lean loved the boy--the hope of his house--even as his own life, and more. But why protract this story? among you, there are many who know it but too well. It has an echo yet in Mull; for there my vengeance gave a name to a mountain which, as yet, had been unnamed since Time began.

"I was too true a son of Alpin to take unwary measures. I bided my time for revenge, and the time came, though slowly; for the passing fishermen of Aros, the traffickers of Tobermory, and the pilgrims who came to drink of St. Mary's well (from which that clachan took its name), told me how Una had lost all sense of shame and honour; and, to the eternal disgrace of her father's name and mine, was living with M'Lean, even as Fair Helen lived with Paris. Her aged father sent a duine-wassal, proposing to lend me four hundred swordsmen, three brass cannon, and ninety archers, if I wished to assail M'Lean under his roof-tree; but I declined, for the men of Mull were too many for us, and I brooded over a deeper revenge.

"M'Lean proclaimed a great hunting-match, and it took place on St. Duncan's day--exactly one year after Una had left me. All the men of Mull were there; M'Coll of that Ilk, the M'Donalds of Aros, the M'Leans of Duairt and those of Lochbuy. As a poor fisherman from Lochlinnhe, disguised in bonnet, kilt, and plaid of undyed wool, with a long beard, and a face so pale and wan, that not even Una would have known me, I mingled with the hunters. For three days the sport continued, and one great stag--the prince of the island--after escaping many a spear, bullet, and arrow--after flinging the strongest of the grey dogs aloft on its branching antlers--and after swimming Loch Uisc and Loch Ba; was slain by my foe at the foot of a great hill which overlooks a narrow valley, above which it rises on pillars of basalt, two hundred feet in height. He laid the horns at the feet of Una, who, regardless of the darkened brows, averted faces, and muttered reprehensions of the Highland chieftains, was queen of the chase, and presided at the feast on the greensward, where a thousand men sat down to banquet on the fruits of their prowess, while the war-pipe and harp, the uisquebaugh, the ale of the Lowland bodachs, and the wine of the Frenchman and Spaniard, made the merriment ring between the mountain peaks.

"I alone was sad. A snake was in my breast. Una sat beside M'Lean, and with painful acuteness my eye saw every movement of both. When their hands touched, or their eyes met, my heart seemed to burn, and my pulses beat like lightning. I knew that there was a glare in my eye, and a terrible expression in my face, that would discover me, and reveal the wild thoughts of murder and assassination that were rising in my heart; and yet my Una was so beautiful, her smile was so full of fascination, and her deportment so full of unstudied grace, that, though I might loathe, I could not wonder at M'Lean for loving her, and robbing me of a being so adorable. But Hector of Lochdon, with all his barbarous magnificence, could never love as I--her husband--loved her.

"His son, the little boy M'Garadh, recognised me through all my disguise, my agony of visage, and outward change; and, creeping to my side, he clambered into my arms. As if he had been my own, I loved this child; but now I felt something strange fluttering about my heart, and with a pang that hovered between the throb of pleasure and the thrill of rage, I clasped the boy to my breast; and then, holding him aloft in one hand and my naked dirk in the other, I sprang with a wild shout from, the sward where the hunters were carousing, and rushed up the side of the mountain.

"''Tis M'Alpine!' cried a hundred voices; ''tis Red Angus of Gometra!' I soon reached a shelf of overhanging rock, some ninety feet above the hunting-party, and there I paused.

"'M'Lean--Hector of Lochdon!' I cried with a wild voice, and the aspect of a madman, for I felt there was madness in my brain, and the emotions of a devil in my heart; 'from the summit of this rock I will dash your son to its foot, if you slay not the infamous woman who sits beside you!'

"'Shoot--shoot!' he exclaimed; 'to your bows and hand-guns! Aid me, M'Coll--Aros--Duairt, and Lochbuy!' But these chiefs looked darkly on, and made no response.

"'Dost thou pause, villain?' I cried again; 'then hear me.--I swear by the four blessed gospels of God, by the Holy Iron, and by the grave of Alpin, that I will dash this screaming child brainless at your feet, if you do not--this instant--and with your own hand, slay the wretch who sits beside you!' I swung the fair-haired child above my head, and his cries came faintly downward to his father's ear. Then could I feast my eyes upon that father's agony; as trembling in every limb, with sword unsheathed, he gazed alternately upward at me and downward at his pallid and voiceless paramour, who bowed her beautiful head like a lily to the blast, and had bared her white bosom to the impending steel; for well she knew that M'Lean loved his boy, the hope of his house, better than her--the tool of guilty pleasure, the plaything of an hour.

"'Red Angus!' cried M'Lean, in a choking voice; 'I will restore your wife, and with her yield a thousand head of cattle, a hundred targets of brass, and as many Spanish guns; I will yield you the best farm I possess, with the salmon-fishings of Lochdon, to thee and thine for ever, freely and irredeemably, but spare my boy!'

"'Wretch!' I replied; and once more swung the unhappy child aloft; 'if thou and all thy posterity yielded to me their possessions on earth and their share of paradise, I would not spare thy whelp, nor will I now if thou sparest her who sits beside thee! _Once!_'

"'Shoot--shoot!' he cried to his Leine Chrios.

"Thirty archers bent their bows and drew their arrows to the ear, but relinquished them; thirty long-barrelled guns were levelled at me, but were lowered again, for the gillies feared to shoot the boy.

"'Dost them hear me?--_twice!_' I cried, swinging the child again, for I was mad, but had no intention of throwing the boy, alone at least. I intended to spring down with him, that we might perish together.

"Trembling with terror for the safety of his child, and urged by the fierce persuasions of his Leine Chrios, who considered the life of the heir of more value than the lives of a hundred adulterous women, M'Lean ran his sword into the heart of Una! She bent over the blade and died at his feet.

"From the edge of that frightful precipice I saw the white bosom of my wife, and the blood (red as the checks of her tartan plaid) that dyed her yellow kirtle. Then the light left my eyes, the strength of my hands relaxed, and the boy fell from them into the valley below. From that abyss I heard a terrible cry ascend to the summit of the basaltic columns; there was a confused discharge of fire-arms; bullets and arrows whistled about me; I reeled like a drunken man, a swoon came over me, and I remember no more.

"The poor child had been killed. In my madness and helplessness I destroyed him; and, to this hour, the men of Mull call that rocky hill which had no name before, _Ben Garadh_.*

* The Hill of Garadh. This is still a tradition of the Isle of Mull.

"Why prolong a tale so painful? Grey dawn was stealing along the narrow Sound and tumbling sea; and morning was reddening the summits of the hills when I awoke, or recovered, to find myself in silence, with honest M'Coll of that Ilk (who now commands our pikes), standing by me, while his men were in the valley below. All the other huntsmen had departed, and taken with them the bodies of the dead. He had protected me at the risk of his life; for our fathers had fought side by side in the same galley, at the battle of the Bloody Bay.

"'You must fly, Angus,' said he; 'for all the Isles cannot afford you long a hiding-place, and the Lowlanders will not receive you.'

"I knew the truth of this, and had no wish to remain, where every thing was hateful to me. I was outlawed by the Lord Justice-General of Scotland; I was proclaimed a fugitive by the High Court of Justiciary, and my lands were given to the Campbells (of course), for every thing in the west that is in want of an owner belongs to them. I hid me long in M'Kinnon's cave, and other recesses of the isle, until an opportunity occurred of leaving the place, and joining old Sir Andrew Gray, whose Scottish bands were sailing for Bohemia. The memory of that _Di Donich_ will never die but with myself; and in token of the sorrow, the bitterness, and remorse I have endured, for the barbarity of my revenge, and the unwitting death of the poor child I loved, I have worn this _scarf of crape_, and on many a field and in many a breach, since the battle of the White Mountain, where the walls of Prague rang to the slogan of the Scottish musketeers, down to the battle of Semigallia, when, under the gallant Gustavus, we cut the Poles to pieces, I have worn this mark of mourning. Now, gentlemen and brother soldiers," continued Angus, heaving a deep sigh as he filled his quaigh from Kildon's brandy bottle, "you have heard my story; pray tell me if ever--ha! what is that?"

A pistol-shot, followed by the low faint cry of a woman, came towards us on the night wind. Every man looked in his comrade's face, and listened.

The cry, with the impression made upon me by M'Alpine's horrid story, brought a deadly chill over my heart; but I unsheathed my claymore, exclaiming--

"To your arms, and follow me!"

The whole party snatched up their muskets, and rushed through the thicket, in the direction from whence the cry seemed to come.