CHAPTER VII.

ADVENTURES OF THE NIGHT CONCLUDED.

COUNT. What an unaccountable being! But it won't do. Steinfort, we will take the ladies home, and then you will try once again to see him. You can talk to these oddities better than I can.

THE STRANGER.

Rage, mortification, and love (if so his passion can be named), possessed by turns the proud heart of Clermistonlee; but every idea soon became absorbed in one deep and concentrated longing for revenge--revenge upon Douglas of Finland and Walter Fenton, especially the latter, as being the most dangerous and hated--his rival.

He considered and re-considered every charge upon which he could possibly subject their conduct to the scrutiny of the council, and their persons to its torture and dungeons. It was in vain. The high character of Finland on one hand, and the influence of Dunbarton on the other, rendered all such attempts utterly futile; and with a savage exultation, the baffled Lord resolved to trust to his own unerring hand for disabling, maiming, and perhaps slaying the young Ensign: and he resolved, on the first opportunity, to put in practice a species of outrage, which was far from being uncommon in those unsettled times, when our bold forefathers fought to the last gasp, rather than yield one inch of the causeway to a man of a family or a faction whom they held at feud.

While the _dénouement_ (recorded in the preceding chapter) was taking place at the desolate old mansion of Drumsheugh, gay Annie Laurie, with her usual vivacity and wit, was relating to the Earl and his beautiful Countess, and to Lilian, who, with Walter Fenton, had tarried in the bower or boudoir after all the other guests had departed, the plot of the famous roué; and how, by her contrivance, Douglas had been carried off in the sedan to mortify and disappoint him.

Poor Lilian trembled and changed colour as she felt alternately fear and indignation at the lure that had been laid for her; but Walter kindled up into a red-hot passion; the Countess became agitated; and the Earl hurriedly buckled on his walking sword, saying,--

"This must be looked to. My fair but thoughtless Laurie, mischief will come of this, Douglas is a brave spark, and somewhat too prompt in the use of his hands; while Clermistonlee is wary as a wolf, and blood will be drawn. Fenton, order the household guard to horse: we will ride round and arrest them, ere worse come of it."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed the little Countess, clasping her white hands; "away, away--but oh, will it not make both your deadly enemies? Heavens! what a land is this for blows and outrage!"

"Fear not, dear Lady Dunbarton," said Annie. "When Douglas left me, he pledged his sacred word of honour not to fight Clermistonlee until I gave permission. That promise ties his sword to its sheath, unless his honour requires it should be drawn, and then ill would it become a Laurie of Maxwelton to fetter the hand of any brave cavalier."

"You are a perfect enchantress, fair Annie," said the Earl, pressing one of her silken ringlets to his lips; "one that can rule our wildest gallants, and bend them to your will like the Urganda of Amadis."

"Nay, my Lord, if you talk much thus, I shall be deemed a witch in earnest. You Lords of Council deem suspicion equal to guilt. Is not the poor creature who is to be burned to-morrow merely _suspected_ of sorcery?"

"On application of the boot, she confessed all the Lord Advocate asked her; but let us not canvass the decrees of the High Court or Privy Council. In these our days, the decisions of such tribunals will not brook much scrutiny. But Clermistonlee shall answer to me for this attempt. S'death! to abduct my guest, and the fairest that ever graced our roof-tree: but say, Madam Lilian, what punishment doth he deserve?"

"Good, my Lord, leave him to the reproaches of his own evil conscience."

"The answer beseems your artless gentleness, fair Napier; but you know not the infamy he intended for you. 'Tis horrid! 'tis damnable."

"And, belted Baron though he be," began Walter, handling his rapier, for his wrath increased while the Earl spoke, "a day shall come----"

"Tush, my boy. Art beginning to ruffle it already. His Lordship is the best hand either with rapier or dagger, single or double falchion, in all broad Scotland, while you are but a new-fledged soldier, whose burganet is bright as a new carolus. When you have followed the drum as long as I, you will learn to view everything with more coolness; though I ever loved a young gallant that was ready witted and quick-handed in defence of his mistress and honour. Clermistonlee is a thorough-paced rascal, and, though invited here for State purposes, God wot he is the only unwelcome guest under the roof-tree of Dunbarton. When I bethink me how he treated his wife, and kinswoman Alison Gifford, my blood bubbles up to boiling heat. Poor Alison! I used to love thee in my boyish days; but--hah! 'tis past like a tale that is told."

Twelve o' clock had rung from all the city bells, and the time was waxing outrageously late according to the punctilious ideas of the age. Lilian, in great anxiety to be gone, accepted the Countess's chair, while Walter, muffled in his rocquelaure, and having his sword girt close, followed as her escort, and bade adieu to their noble friends whose suite of apartments now seemed deserted, sad, and desolate, after the departure of all the gay and beautiful forms that had thronged them but an hour before; and the only traces of whom were here and there a faded or forgotten bouquet; a stray glove, a scarf, a ribbon, or a fontange. The lights waxed dim and few, for, like the joyous spirit of the fête, their lustre had passed away. Walter had too much of the continental gallantry that then distinguished the Scottish gentles, to act the mere part of escort. He threw the chairman's slings over his own shoulders, and fairly carried his lady-love home.

Dismissing the sedan at the barbican gate, he led Lilian up the steps to the door of the house, lingering at each; for there was something on his lips which he longed, but dared not to utter. Ere he pulled the ring of the risp, he softly pressed her hand and said, in a very gentle voice,--

"Lilian--dear Lilian--restore the glove of which you deprived me."

"Glove--glove?" reiterated Lilian in a great flutter.

"Forgive me, dear Madam--oh, you cannot have forgotten, when last we walked by the loch yonder."

"Foh! what a droll request, Mr. Fenton."

"All night you have called me Walter. Alas, I shall be very wretched if you refuse this little boon."

"I am sorry for that; but you must learn that Aunt Grisel's marmoset carried it off from my toilet-table and quite tore it to pieces."

"Ah, the provoking ape! But, dear Lilian, do not be so cruel as to cloud this dream of joy by dismissing me without a token of--of your favour to-night. I will not see you often now--we leave Scotland very soon, 'tis said."

Walter's voice trembled, for a first love (while it lasts) is always a timid and a true one. His passion was rapidly mastering him. Lilian soon began to tremble too, but had sufficient tact to answer with a tone of raillery,--

"I owe you something for your chairman's fee--ah, rogue Walter, you are pulling my glove off! Come, Sir! tirl the risp, or must I stand here all night."

The risp rang; but first she permitted him to untie and remove a glove from her hand, which he immediately pressed to his lips. His heart glowed within him, his feelings became tumultuous and impetuous--at all risks he would have pressed her to his heart and transferred to her soft cheek that burning kiss--but unluckily the door was opened at that instant by a sleepy old servant (who still carried the pewter flagon which he had drained in the spence an hour before), and Meinie Elshender, who appeared very coyly in a very becoming dishabille, with all her fine hair gathered up, _en papillotes_.

Pleased with all the passages of the night, Walter retired, and preserved in his gauntlet the little blonde glove which his braced corslet of steel prevented him from consigning to his bosom--the romancer's grand emporium for all tokens of love and friendship, save,--cash.

Happy Walter walked briskly forward between fields and hedges, shaded by trees that were now clothed in the heaviest foliage of summer, and skirted the western rhinns of the lake, where the scared coots squattered among the sedges at his approach. The vast expanse of water lay still as death; its dark unruffled bosom reflecting only the occasional stars and the masses of flying cloud which by turns revealed and obscured them.

The deep bark of a watchdog in some lonely cot made him start at times, as it echoed among the copsewood; so did every distant sound, and every peculiar shadow attracted his scrutiny. He kept his sword-hilt ever at hand. Perilous to all, the times were especially so to the soldiery, whose duties, dictated by the tyranny of the Council, and the mistaken bigotry of James VII., made them obnoxious to all--but more so to the oppressed Covenanters, whose vengeance and hatred had been terribly evinced on several occasions.

It was the patrician regiment of Claverhouse they more particularly reviled and abhorred; and several of his reckless cavaliers had perished by the most villanous assassination. One was actually shot dead in open day in the streets of Edinburgh; and soldiers were often barbarously murdered in their solitary billets in the country. The indiscriminate ferocity with which the guilty districts were invariably scourged for those outrages, served but to make matters worse. It has been remarked by some one, that though there were laws for everything in Scotland, even to the shape of a woman's hood, still it remained the most lawless kingdom in Europe.

Walter knew that his only personal enemy was Lord Clermistonlee, yet every sound kept him on the qui vive, and interrupted the gayer visions of his fancy, and his happy anticipations of the morrow, when he had made an appointment to escort Lilian to the Castlehill and Luckenbooths, then the favourite promenades of the loungers of the time.