CHAPTER XI.

CLERMISTONLEE AT HOME.

"Too long by love a wandering fire misled, My latter days in vain delusion fled; Day after day, year after year, withdrew, And beauty blessed the minutes as they flew, These hours consumed in joy, but lost to fame----" HAMILTON OF BANGOUR.

The town residence of Lord Clermistonlee was a lofty and narrow mansion of antique aspect; it stood immediately within the Craig-end-gate, that low-browed archway in the eastern flank of the city wall, which, from the foot of Leith Wynd still faces the bluff rock of the Calton. With high pedimented windows and Flemish gables, Clermiston-lodging towered above the mossy, grass-tufted, and time-worn rampart of the city--the aforesaid portal of which gave entrance to it on one side, while the more immediate path from the great central street was a steep and narrow close, the mansions of which were as black as the smoke of four centuries could make them. Their huge façades, plastered over with rough lime and oyster shells, completely intercepted the view to the south, while that to the north was shut in by the black cliffs of the bare Calton and the Multrees-hill with the ancient suburb of St. Ninian, straggling through the narrow chasm that yawned between them, and afforded a glimpse of Leith and the far-off hills of Fife. At the base of the hill lay the last fragments of the monastery of Greenside, and opposite a thatched hamlet crept close to the margin of the Loch, the broad sluice of which the irrascible Baillies of Edinburgh invariably shut, when they quarrelled with a colony of sturdy and "contumacious" weavers and tanners who had located there, and whose communication with Halkerstoune Wynd they could cut off at pleasure by damming up the waters of the Loch. Immediately under the windows of the mansion lay the park, hospital, and venerable church of the Holy Trinity, founded by the Queen of James II. about two hundred years before.

On the night described in the last chapter, a large fire burned cheerily in the chamber of dais; and the walls of wainscot, varnished and gilded, glittered in its glow. Supper was laid; carved crystal, plate, and snow-white napery gleamed in the light of the ruddy fire, and of four large wax candles that towered aloft in massive square holders of French workmanship. Over the mantel-piece, in an oak frame amid the carving of which, grapes, nymphs, and bacchanals were all entwined together, hung a portrait painted by Jamieson, representing a pale young lady in a ruff and fardingale of James VI. days, and having the pale blue eyes, exquisitely fair complexion and lint-white locks, which were then so much admired. It was his Lordship's mother, a lady of the house of Spynie.

Silver plate, a goodly row of labelled flasks (bottling wine was not then the custom) and various substantial viands formed a corps-de-reserve on a grotesquely carved buffet of black oak, for everything was fashioned after the grotesque in those days. The knobs of the red leather chairs, and the ponderous fire-irons, were strange and open-mouthed visages; the brackets supporting the cornices of the doors and the mantel-piece, were also strange bacchanalian faces grinning from wreaths of vine-leaves, clusters of grapes and crowns of acanthus. Three long silver-hilted rapiers with immense pommels, shells, and guards, pistols, steel caps, masks, foils, and a buff coat richly laced with silver, lay all huddled in a corner, while the broad mantel-piece presented quite an epitome of the proprietor's character.

The massive stone lintel displayed in bold relief the legend carved thereon by his pious forefathers,

Blyssit be God for al his giftis, 1540.

but above it lay Andro Hart's "Compendious Book of Godly Songs," beside the "Gaye Lady's Manuall," and the "Banqvet of Jests or change or cheare imprinted at the shoppe in Ivie Lane 1634," a book of ribbald ditties, another of farriery, another of falconry, obscene plays; Rosehaugh's "Disertations" sent by the author, and used by Clermistonlee to light his Dutch pipe; whistles, whips, hunting horns, and drinking flasks, cards, dice, hawks' hoods, an odd pistol, papers of council, warrants of search, arrest, and torture, mingled with challenges and frivolous billets-doux. A large wolfish dog, and a very frisky red-eyed Scottish terrier slept together on the warm hearth-rug.

Juden Stenton, the stout old butler, had stirred the fire and wiped the glasses for the tenth time, tasted the wine for the twentieth, and had made as many rounds of the table to snuff the candles, and re-examine everything; he was very impatient and sleepy, and listened intently with his head bent low, a practice which he had acquired in the great civil wars. The clock in the spire of the Netherbow-porte struck midnight.

"Cocksnails!" muttered Juden, "twelve o'clock and nae sign o' him yet. What's the world coming to? My certie, what would his farther the douce Laird o' Drumsheugh hae thocht o' this kind of work? He (honest man!) was aye in his nest at the first tuck o' the ten o'clock drum."

Juden was verging on sixty years of age; his figure was short and paunchy, his face full and florid; his twinkling grey eyes wore always a cunning expression, and had generally a sotted appearance about them, which made it extremely difficult to determine whether he was drunk or sober. His large round head was bald, and his chin close shaven, according to the fashion for the lower classes, few but nobles and cavaliers retaining the manly moustaches and imperial. A clean white cravat fell over his doublet of dark-green cloth, the red braiding of which was neatly curved to suit his ample paunch; breeches of dark plush, black cotton stockings and heavy shoes, the instep of each being covered by a large brass buckle, completed his attire. A scar still remained on his shining scalp to attest the dangers he had dared in his younger days.

The last of a once numerous and splendid but now diminished household, old Juden Stenton was a faithful follower of Lord Clermistonlee, for whom he would have laid down his life without a sigh of regret. He acted by turns butler and baillie, cook and valet, groom, farrier, trooper, and factotum, being the beau ideal of the staunch but unscrupulous serving-man of the day, who changed sides in religion, politics, and everything just as the Laird did, and who knew no will or law save those of his leader and master. When Clermistonlee (then Sir Randal Clermont of Drumsheugh), ruined by the mad excesses into which he had plunged at the dissipated court of Charles II., in a fit of despair joined the insurgent Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge, Juden put a blue cockade in his bonnet, "girded up his loins," as he said, "and went forth to battle for Scotland's oppressed kirk and broken covenant." But when Sir Randal's name (in consequence of mistake, or of some friendly influence in the Scottish cabinet) was omitted in the list of the attainted, and he changed sides, obtaining--none knew how or why--rank and riches under the persecutors, Juden changed too, and donning the buff coat and scarlet, became a bitter foe to "all crop-eared and psalmsinging rebels," and riding as a royalist trooper, suppressed many a harmless conventicle, and hunted and hounded, slashed and shot, or dragged to prison those who had been his former comrades, for in political matters Juden's mind was as facile and easy as that of a German.

He had too often less honourably acted the pander to his lord, in many a vile intrigue and cruel seduction; for of all the wild rakes of the time (Rochester excepted) none had rushed so furiously on the career of fashionable vice and dissipation as Clermistonlee; and even now, when forty years of age, he continued the same kind of life from mere habit, perhaps, rather than inclination.

But there was one chapter of his life which memory brought like a cloud on his gayest hours, and which riot and revel could never efface,--a sad episode of domestic mystery and unhappiness. Clermistonlee, in the prime of his youth, had been wedded to a lady of beauty and rank, of extreme gentleness of manner and softness of disposition. Like many others, _the fancy_ passed away; repentance came, as his love cooled or changed to other objects. He took the lady to Paris, and there she died...... There were not wanting evil tongues, who said he had destroyed her. A kind of mystery enveloped her fate; and even in his most joyous moods, sad thoughts would suddenly cloud the lofty brow of Clermistonlee, a sign which his kind friends never failed to attribute to remorse. Many were the women who had trusted to his honour, and found they had believed in a phantom; until, at the era of our story, his name had become (like that of the Marquis de Laval) a bye-word in the mouths of the people for all that was wicked, irregular, and bad.

"Twelve o'clock," muttered Juden; "braw times--braw times, sirs! I warrant he'll be roistering in the change-house o' that runagate vintner, Hugh Blair, at the Pillars. A wanion on his sour Gascon and fushionless Hock! Waiting is sleepy work, and dry too. Gude claret this! My service to ye, Maister Juden Stenton," he continued, bowing to his reflection in an opposite mirror; "you're a gude and worthy servitor to ane that doesna ken your value. The members o' council maun a' be fu' as pipers by this time except Claverhouse, wha canna touch wine, and auld Binns, wham wine canna touch. Hech! here he comes; and now for a clamjamfray wi' the yett-wards."

A violent knocking at the city-gate close by announced the return of his master from a midnight ramble. The sentinel within opened the wicket of the barrier; and on demanding the usual toll required of belated citizens, a handful of pence, flung by the impatient lord, clattered about his steel cap. Clermistonlee entered, and, half dragging a little crooked man after him, rapidly ascended the flight of steps that led to the circular tower or staircase of his own house. In the low-pointed doorway, which was surmounted by an uncouth coronet, stood Juden with a candle flaring in each hand, bowing very low, though not in the best of humours.

"Od, that weary body Mersington is w' him!" he muttered. "The auld spunge--he'll drink the daylicht in!"

"Light the way there, Juden," cried his master. "My good Lord Mersington is generally short-sighted about this hour."

"Double-sighted, ye mean," chuckled the decrepit senator. "Sorrow tak' ye, Randal, ye maun aye hae your joke--he! he! A cauld nicht this, Juden," he added, while hobbling up the narrow stair, with an enormous wig and broad-brimmed beaver overshadowing his meagre figure.

"A cauld morning rather, please your lordship," replied Juden somewhat testily, as he ushered them into the chamber-of-dais, and stirred the fire as well as the chain which secured the poker to the jamb permitted him.

"Be seated, Mersington. This way, my Lord; take care of the table--devil! the man's blind," said Clermistonlee, as he somewhat unceremoniously pushed the half-intoxicated senator into one of the high-backed chairs of red maroquin.

Mersington was twenty years his senior, and never was there a pair of more ill-assorted gossips or friends. The one, a polished and fashionable cavalier roué; the other, a cranky and meagre compound of vulgarity, shrewdness, and ignorance, who was never sober, but had obtained a seat on the bench in consequence of his inflexible devotion to the Government, to please whom he would have sent the twelve apostles to "testify" at the Bow-foot, had it been required of him. Clermistonlee unbuckled his belt, and flung his empty scabbard to the one end of the room, his plumed beaver to the other, and drew his chair hastily forward to the table.

"Where is your braw bilbo, my Lord?" asked Juden.

"What the devil is it to thee?--'Tis broken. I will wear the steel-hilted backsword to-morrow."

"The auld blade ye wore at the Brigg?"

"D--n Bothwell Brigg! How is Meg?"

"Muckle the same, puir beastie."

"I hope, knave, thou gavest her the warm mash, and bathed her nostrils and fetlocks."

"Without fail. We maun tak' gude care o' her--the last o' a braw stud of sixty, my faith! But when a mear hath baith the wheezlock and the yeuk----"

"How! has she both?"

"Had ye, a month syne, tar-barrelled that auld carlin, Elshender, owre the muir at St. Rocque, Meg would hae been sound, wind and limb, frae that moment."

"'Sblood! Juden, dost think the cantrips of this old hag have really bedevilled my favourite nag?"

"I'm no just free to say, my Lord; but it is unco queer that Meg (puir beastie!) should fa' ill o' sae mony things just after Lucky Elshender flyted wi' ye for riding through her kail for a near cut to the Grange, the day ye dined wi' auld Fountainhall."

"By all the devils, Juden, if I thought this bearded hag had any hand in the mare's illness, I would have her under the hands of the pricker to-morrow," replied Clermistonlee, who was deeply imbued with the Scottish prejudice against old women. "We had before us to-day two hags, whom we consigned to the flames; one for confessing witchcraft, and the other for obstinately refusing to confess it."

Juden rubbed his hands.

"Ou aye--ou aye--he! he!" chuckled Mersington. "Hae her up before the fifteen--a full blawn case o' sorcery--on wi' the thumbikins! I have kent rack and screw bring mony a queer story to light:--riding to Banff on a besom-shank--sailing to the Inch in a milkbowie--bewitching wheels that ane minute flew round as if the mill was mad, and the next stood like the Bass rock--raising a storm o' wind in the lift by the damnable agency of a black beetle, 'ane golach,' as Rosehaugh called it in the indictment. We had a grand case o' that lately in the northern courts."

"But the gude auld fashion o' tar-barrelling is clean gaing out in thae fushionless days," said Juden, whom Mersington treated with considerable familiarity. "We havena had a respectable bleeze on the Castle-hill these aucht years and mair."

"You may chance to have one very shortly," replied his lord impatiently, "if Meg gets not the better of her ailings soon. But enough of this.--Let us to supper."

"Bluid, as I live! Foul fa' the loon that shed it!" exclaimed Juden, in accents of intense concern, as his master drew off his perfumed gloves, and revealed the scar on his right hand. "Whatna collyshangie has this been, noo--and your braw mantle o' drab de Berrie--oh laddie, when will you learn to tak' care o' yoursel?" added honest Juden, who from force of habit still styled his lord as he had done thirty years ago.

"Pshaw! you have seen my blood ere now, I suppose."

"Owre often, owre often," groaned the old man. "You'll hae been keeping the croon o' the causeway, I warrant, majoring rapier in hand, as your faither was wont in his young days."

"No, no; I merely measured swords in Gourlay's close with one of the Scots' musqueteers."

"Aboot what? They're mad, unchancey chields, Dunbarton's men."

"A girl--the cursed baggage!"

"Burn my beard, if ever I saw dochter o' Eve that tempted me to encounter a slashed hide!" said Juden, with a tone of thankfulness, while his master tied a handkerchief round the wounded limb, and applied himself to the viands before him, attending to his friend with hospitality and politeness, and doing the honours of the table with peculiar grace.

A roasted capon, mutton and cutlets, oysters fried and raw, a gigantic silver mug of brandy and burnt sugar, a tankard of sack, and several tall silver-mouthed decanters of claret, with manchets of the whitest flour, oaten cakes, and fruit, composed the supper, on sitting down to which, Lord Mersington, with an affected air and half-closed eyes, by way of grace mumbled a distich then common among the cavaliers--

"From Covenanters with uplifted hands, From Remonstrators with associate bands, From such Committees as governed these nations, From Kirk Commissions and their protestations, Good Lord, deliver us!'

"Amen," said Clermistonlee, "d--n all Kirk Commissioners and Sessions too!"

"The last keepit a firm hand owre such gallants as you, before King Charles cam' hame," replied Mersington, who, like all meagre men, was a great gourmand, and was doing ample justice to all the good things before him. Clermistonlee, too, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, did his part fairly--but all times were alike to him, his irregular habits and debauched life had by long custom made them so, and he assailed the capon, the cutlets, the oysters, and sack tankard, in rapid succession, while Juden stood behind his chair, napkin in hand, with eyes half-closed, and nodding head.

"Mersington, some more of the cutlets? My Lord, you must permit me--do justice to my poor house, a bachelor's though it be. Juden, hand that dish of Crail capons from the buffet."

The butler hastily placed before his master an ample dish containing a pile of small haddocks prepared in a mode now disused and forgotten.

"Crail capons--allow me to help you; and don't spare the burnt sack, my Lord."

"Thank ye:--weel, then, Clermistonlee, anent this business of the Napiers," said Mersington, referring to a former conversation; "what mean ye to do now, eh?"

"Use every means to obtain their lands--and Lilian to boot," replied his friend, after a brief pause, and while a slight colour crossed his cheek. "I have taken a particular fancy for that old house of Bruntisfield--ha, ha! with the parks adjoining. Faith, the lands run from the Harestarie to my own gate at Drumsbeugh, and from the Links, where young Bruntisfield was slain long ago, to the house of the Chieslies, beside the devil only knows how many tofts and tenements within the walls of the city."

"A noble barony for a dowry!"

"It will form a seasonable subsidy to my exchequer, which is drained to its last plack at present. You know I have long loved this girl."

"Or _said_ so; but the lands, he, he! are forfeited to the King, man!"

"So were those of the Mures of Caldwell, yet Sir Thomas of Binns now holds them as a free gift from the Council--and holds fast, too."

"Auld Dame Bruntisfield is but a life-rentrix; thou knowest, man, that Captain Napier, of Buchan's regiment of Scots'-Dutch, is the next and last heir of entail."

"Tush! I will have _him_ under the nippers of the Lord Advocate ere long; when his head is on yonder battlements of the Nether Bow, the barony of Bruntisfield goes to Lilian Napier, and dost think, Mersington, that chitti-faced girl will stand in my way? I trow not. Maclutchy and some of our best-trained beagles are on the captain's track, and they will run him down somewhere in the west country, depend upon it. But 'tis neither hall nor holm, wood or water, that will satisfy me----"

"Odsfish, man! he, he! what mair would ye hae, Randal? There is the auld dame denounced a rebel, and in default of compearance, put to the horn; her moveable gudes and gear escheat to the King, conform to the acts thereanent, and sae are the heritable, but the Council will soon snap them up. What mair would ye hae?"

"The person of little Lilian," said Clermistonlee, with a sinister smile, as he winked over the top of his great silver tankard.

"Hee, hee!" chuckled Mersington.

"I would give a thousand broad pieces----"

"If ye had them!"

"Crush me! yes.----to discover where the young damsel is in hiding at this moment. Accustomed to subdue women from very habit, her piquant coldness and hauteur have inflamed, surprised, and offended me, and by all the devils, I will have her, though I should be tumbled down the precipice of hell for it!" he continued, in the cavalier phraseology. "And this fellow, Fenton, this silken slave, who crossed me on the very night I had hoped to have her arrested (he ground his teeth), and that braggart, Douglas of Finland, who was so ready with his rapier to-night, let them look to it; my path shall not be crossed with impunity by man or devil."

"Nor is that of any Lord of Council, while a warrant of arrest and ward may be had from Mackenzie for the asking, like the _lettre-de-cachet_ o' our French friends."

"True, my Lord--our laws are severe; they are written in blood, like those of Draco, the Athenian. If this fellow, Finland, has the young lady concealed about Edinburgh, and if I thought he had a deeper aim in view, than merely crossing me, I vow to Heaven, I would make him a terrible example to all such rascally intermeddlers with the purposes of their betters."

His half-intoxicated companion looked slyly at him over his inverted tankard, and replied,

"Get a warrant of search, and send every macer, messenger-at-arms, and toun guardsman after your dearie--he, he! and proclaim at the cross by tuck of drum, that the Right Honourable the Lord Clermistonlee, Baron of Drumsheugh and Knight of the Thistle, will pay one thousand marks of our gude Scottish money to the discoverer, or producer----"

"Hush, Mersington, you jest too much on this matter. Withered be my tongue for speaking of this project to thee--but the deed is done, and I might as well have proclaimed it by sound of trumpet at the Tron."

"You have been a wild buckie in your day, Randal," said Lord Mersington; "and when I think o' all the braw queans, gentle as weel as simple, that you have loved and abandoned, gude-lackaday! I marvel that the whinger of some fierce brother or father hath not cut short your career o' gallantry. How about your fair one in Merlin's Wynd?"

"Pshaw! I tired of her long ago."

"And Lady Mary Charteris?"

"By all the devils, 'tis very droll to hear you speak of a noble lady and a poor bona-roba in the same breath. Mary is beautiful, magnificently so, but wary, proud, and poor--we would hate each other in a week. Now I really think little Lilian Napier is capable of fixing all my wandering fancies into one focus for life."

"He, he," chuckled Mersington, "I have heard you say the same o' twenty. But a peer of the realm, heir of--"

"The whole heraldic honours of the house of Clermont, which you see on yonder window-pane, or, three bars wavy embattled, surmounted by a lion _sable--argent_, a bend engrailed _gules_, and so forth. Ha, ha!"

"The coronet aboon them is a braw die, and ane that glitters weel in lassies' een."

"With Lilian Napier it has no more value than a peasant's bonnet. A thousand times I have endeavoured to gain her notice, by the most respectful attentions, which the little gipsy ever evaded, or affected to misunderstand, treating me with the most frigid coldness. The older lady, perhaps, is not indisposed towards me, but the memory of--Fury! always _that_ thought!..... I never was crossed in my purpose, and now I mean to hang Quentin Napier, and marry his cousin forthwith. Ha, ha!"

"What, if he should discover and carry her off in the meantime?"

"Ah--the devil! don't think of that. I would give a hundred French crowns to have the right scent after her."

"I could do sae for half the money, my lord," said Juden, suddenly waking up from his standing doze.

"The deuce! fellow, art _thou_ there?" exclaimed his master with stern surprise.

"Fellow, indeed!" reiterated the ancient servitor, indignantly. "Troth, I was the best o' gude fallows when I received on my ain croon here, the cloure that Claverse meant for yours, in that braw tulzie on Bothwell Brigg."

"True, Juden--though I like not being overheard in some matters," replied the lord more kindly; "but as Colonel Grahame and I are now the best of friends, it would be better to recall the memory of bygone days as little as possible. Dost hear me?"

"And Alison Gifford--my lady that is dead and gone now, puir thing," continued Juden, spitefully and mournfully, knowing well that her name stung Clermistonlee to the soul. "Often, and often, she used to say, 'you are a gude and leal servitor, Juden, and the laird (ye were but a laird then), can never think enough, or mak' enough o' ye, Juden--for ye are one that, come weal, come woe, peace or war, victory or defeat, will stick to the house o' Clermont, Juden, like a burr on a new bannet. But losh me! _he_ doesna ken the worth o' ye Juden!'" The pawkie butler raised his table napkin to hide "the tears he did _not_ shed;" but the face of Lord Clermistonlee, which had gradually grown darker as he continued to speak, now wore a terrible expression. "Puir young Lady Alison! sae kind and sae gentle, sae sweet-tempered, blooming and bonnie. You were aye owre rough and haughty wi' her, my lord----"

"Ten thousand curses!--wretch and varlet! whence all this insolence, and why this maudlin grief?" cried Clermistonlee, in a voice of thunder. "Why speak of Alison? she sleeps in peace in the old aisles of St. Marcel, in Paris, and are her ashes to be ever thrown upon me thus? S'death! away, sirrah. Get thee gone, or the sack tankard may follow _that_!"

And plucking off his long black wig, he flung it full in Juden's face.

Without making any immediate reply, the latter picked up the ample wig, carefully brushed the flowing curls with his hand, and hung it upon the knob of a chair. He then turned to leave the room, but pausing, said slyly--

"Then, my Lord, ye dinna want to ken where this bonnie bird could be netted. I could cast your hawk to the perch in a minute."

"Art sure of that, sirrah?"

"My thumb on't, Clermistonlee, I will."

"You are a pawkie auld carle, Juden," said his master, in an altered voice; "but tell with brevity what ye know of this matter."

"Lucky Elshender, a cottar body at St. Rocque, owre the Burghmuir yonder, was nurse to the Lady Lilian--yea, and to her mother before her. Though as wicked and cankered an auld carlin as ever tirled a spindle, or steered hell-kail, she was ane leal and faithful servitor to the house o' Bruntisfield, for her gudeman and his twa sons died in their stirrups by Sir Archibald's side, on that black day by the Keithing Burn. Sae, Clermistonlee, as she is a body mickle trusted by the family, if any woman or witch in a' braid Scotland can enlighten ye anent this matter, it is Lucky Elshender. And maybe my Lord Mersington (he's asleep, the gomeral body) will be sae gude as keep in memory, that there is not an auld wife in the three Lothians mair deserving o' a fat tar-barrel bleezing under her, in respect o' puir Meg's mischanter."

"Right, Juden," replied his master. "She may be brought to the stake yet, though the taste for such exhibitions is somewhat declining among our gentles. To-morrow I will have her dragged to the Laigh Chamber; and if there is any truth in her tongue, or blood in her fingers, I warrant Pate Pincer's screws will produce both. Take these, Juden, as earnest of the largess I will give if the scent holds good."

But Juden drew back from the proffered gold pieces.

"If I am to serve ye, my Lord, as a leal vassal and servitor ought, and as I served your honoured faither before ye, and my forbears did yours in better and braver times, ye will hold me excused from touching a bodle o' this reward, or ony other beyond my yearly fee and livery coat. Keep your gowd, Clermistonlee, for faith ye need it mair than auld Juden Stenton; and sae, as my een are gathering straws, I will bid your Lordship a gude morning, and hie cannily away to my nest, for, by my sooth! there's the Norloch shining through the window shutters like silver in the braid day light." And so saying, Juden withdrew with a jaunty step, pleased with his own magnanimous refusal.

Though a good-hearted man in the main, and one, who (where his master's honour, interest, fancy, or aggrandizement were not concerned) would not have injured a fly, then how much less a human being, Juden Stenton had thus without the slightest scruple set fire to a train which might end in the ruin and misery of an already unfortunate family, and the dishonour and destruction of an amiable and gentle girl, in whose fortunes and misfortunes we hope to interest the reader still more anon.