CHAPTER XIX.

THE RETURNED EXILE.

Then, Mary, turn awa' That bonnie face o' thine; Oh, dinna shew the breast That never can be mine.

Wi' love's severest pangs My heart is laden sair; And owre my breast the grass maun grow, Ere I am free from care.

In the gloaming of an evening in the autumn of 1693 a man left the western gate of Edinburgh, and, skirting the suburb of the Highriggs, struck into the roadway between the fields.

The sickly rays of a yellow sun shining faintly through the mist after throwing the shadows of the gigantic castle far to the eastward, had died away, and a deeper gloom succeeding, denoted the close of the day as the fall of the fluttering leaves did that of the dreary year.

The stranger was Walter Fenton; but how changed in aspect and attire! His form was thin and emaciated, his cheek pale, his eyes sunken from the pain of his wound and the toil of campaigning; but his step was as free, and his bearing erect as ever. His attire was of the plainest grey freize, with great horn buttons; a brown scratch wig and a plain beaver hat concealed the dark locks that curled beneath them; he carried a walking staff in lieu of a sword, and appeared to lean on it a little at times. He was now in the character of a Low Country merchant, and, favoured by a passport from the conservator of Scottish privileges at Campvere, had an hour before landed from the good ship Fame of Queensferry, at the ancient wooden pier of Leith.

Often he made brief pauses to view the desolate scene around him; for in that year a heavy curse seemed to have fallen upon the desolate kingdom of Scotland.

On an evening in the preceding summer, when everything was blooming and smiling--when the land was rich with verdure and the woods were heavy with foliage, a cold wind came from the eastward, and, accompanied by a dense and sulphureous mist, swept over the face of the country, blighting whatsoever was touched by its pestilential breath.

The fields seemed to whiten under its baleful influence; the ripening corn withered, and the land was struck with a barrenness. Dense, opaque, and palpable, like a chain of hills, this strange and horrid vapour lay floating in the valleys for many successive months, and there its effects were more disastrous. The heat of the sun seemed to diminish, the insects disappeared from the air and the birds from the withered woods, which, long ere the last month of summer, became divested of their faded foliage. The cattle became dwarfish and meagre, and the flocks perished by scores on the decaying heather of the blasted mountains. The people became sickly, ghastly, and prostrated in spirit; for a curse seemed to have fallen upon the land and all that was in it.

This terrible visitation continued until the year 1701, and the _dear years_ were long remembered with horror in Scotland.

In some places, January and February became the months of harvest, and, amid ice and snow, and the sleet that drizzled through that everlasting and sulphureous mist, the half famished people reaped in grief and misery a small part of their scanty produce, while the other was left to rot in the ground. Famine, the lord of all, stalked grimly over the land, and strong men and wailing women, yea, and feeble children, fought like wild beasts for a handful of meal in the desolate market places.

"There was many a blank and pale face in Scotland," says Walker, the famous Presbyterian pedlar, "and as the famine waxed sore, wives thought not of their husbands, nor husbands of their wives," and the gloomy superstition and fanatical intolerance of the time added fresh horrors to this ghastly scourge.

The famine was not yet at its height; but there was a desolation in the aspect of the land that deeply impressed the mind of the returned exile, and he sighed in unison with the dreary wind as it swept over the blasted muir, shaking down the crisped leaves and acorns of stately old oaks of Drumsheugh. Save the solitary heron, wading as of old in the lake, not a bird was to be seen, not an insect buzzing about the leafless hedges. The air was dense and cold, and all was very still.

The country seemed to be wasting like a beautiful woman decaying in consumption. Walter felt that the manners of the people were changed; intense gravity and moroseness, real or affected, were visible in every face, while sad coloured garments, Geneva cloaks, and Dutch fashions were all the rage. Every trace of the smart mustache had disappeared, and with it the slashed doublets, the waving feathers and dashing airs of the gallant cavaliers.

Even the sentinels at the palace gates and the portes of the city, might have passed for those before the Town House or _Rasp Haus_ at Amsterdam. The smart steel cap of the old Scottish infantry had now given place to a vast overshadowing beaver looped up on three sides, and the scarlet doublet slashed with blue, and the jacket of spotless buff, to square tailed and voluminous coats of brick-red, with yellow breeches and belts worn saltier-wise.

Bitterly the reflection came home to the heart of the poor Cavalier, that

"The times were changed, old manners gone, And a _stranger_ filled the Stuarts' throne!"

Though confident of succeeding in his diplomacy with the loyal lords and chieftains of the Jacobite faction, he was well aware how arduous and difficult was the task to overthrow two Governments so well arranged, ably constituted and supported, as those of England and Scotland. It had long been the policy of William III. to conciliate domestic enemies, and, in pursuance of it, he had bestowed several lucrative offices on the leaders of the discontented and kirk-party. The Scottish Parliament, which had recently met, received from him an able and cunning letter, replete with flattering and cajoling expressions, which put all the Presbyterian Lords in such excellent humour, that they returned a most dutiful and affectionate address--granted him a supply of six new battalions of infantry, a body of seamen, and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to enable him to carry on his useless wars with new vigour; but though the Parliament was thus obsequious, the people were far from being pleased; and the Jacobites, numerous, enthusiastic, and determined, every where fanned the flames of discord and dissension.

The institution of fines and oaths of assurance upon absentees from Parliament, which had direct reference to certain Cavalier Lords and lesser Barons, exasperated them as much as the horrible massacre of Glencoe did the commonalty, who raised throughout the land a cry for vengeance on William and his Government.

Walter Fenton reflected on these things as he walked onward, and knew that he had come at a critical time. Other thoughts soon succeeded, and, grasping his staff as he had often done his sword, he pushed forward with a sparkling eye and reddening cheek.

Without impairing his nobler sentiments, suffering and misfortune had powerfully strengthened his loyalty and virtue, as much as campaigning had improved his bearing and lent a firmness and manly determination to his aspect; but often his brow saddened and the fire of his eye died away, when he thought of Finland and those he had been permitted to survive and to mourn.

Glowing with sensations of rapture, and eagerly anticipating the flush of joy that awaited him, he passed the rhinns of the beautiful loch, the curious gable-ended old house where once the Regent Murray dwelt, and approached the gate of Bruntisfield.

His heart beat painfully; he was deeply agitated. Five weary years had elapsed since he had stood on that spot, and it seemed only as yesterday. Through all the hurry of events that had swept over him, his memory went back to that memorable eve of September (of which this was now the anniversary) and to the glorious ardour that animated his heart on the day he marched for England, when the long line of the Scottish host wound over yonder hill before him. Oh, for one hour more of those fierce longings and brave impulses! But alas! the spirit seemed to have passed away for ever.

He approached the avenue. The old gate with its massive arch, its mossy carvings and loopholed wall, had given place to a handsome new erection of more modern architecture, surmounted by a rich coat of arms; and Walter felt every pulse grow still, and every fibre tremble as he surveyed the sculptured blazon.

It bore the saltire of Napier, engrailed between four roses, but quartered, collared, and coroneted with other bearings.

His heart became sick and palsied. Oh, it was a horrible sensation that came over him; he stood long irresolute and apprehensive.

"Of what am I afraid!" he suddenly exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a true and impassioned lover. "There is some mistake here; the house has been sold or gifted away like many another noble patrimony to the slaves of the Statholder. Lilian! Dear Lilian, when shall I hold thee in my arms?"

He was about to rush forward, when a horseman, the glittering lace on whose bright coloured suit of triple velvet, and waving ostrich feathers that fluttered in his diamond hat-band, formed a strong contrast to the sombre fashions of the time, dashed down the leaf-strewn avenue on a beautiful charger, with the perfumed ringlets of his white peruke dancing in the wind--for white perukes, from a spirit of opposition, were all the rage then, as _black_ had been under the three last princes of the old hereditary line. It was Lord Clermistonlee.

"Hollo, fellow!" he cried imperiously, "keep out of my horse's way--dost want thy bones broken!" and giving a keen but casual glance at the dejected wanderer, he spurred onward to the city.

Suddenly he reined up so sharply as almost to pull his pawing steed back upon its strained and bending haunches.

"'Tis he!" exclaimed the proud lord, as he thought aloud. "By the great father of confusion 'tis he! How could I mistake, though truly, poor devil, these last five years have sadly changed him. But on what fool's errand comes he here? By all the furies, I knew his lachrymose visage in a moment, though the despatches of Dalrymple of Stair, to our Lords of Council, had in some sort prepared me for his return, and for what?--to organize a plot for James's restoration. Poor fool! Infatuated in love as in politics. He believes in the faith of women and the word of Kings; let us see how they will avail him tonight."

He smiled scornfully, and twisted the heavy dark mustachios which he still cherished with more than Mahommedan veneration. Alternately sad and bitter thoughts swelled within him as he remembered the joyous revelry of King Charles's days, and the tyranny he could then exercise over all nonconformists, and the hunting and hosting-dragooning and drinking of the Covenanting wars; then came feelings of jealousy and revenge that, as they blazed up in his proud breast, bore all before them.

"How dares he now to prowl before my own gates? Gadso! if my Lady Lilian sees him once, there will be a pretty disturbance. A shipload of devils will be nothing to it. The girl will die, and my own house will become too hot to hold me. D----nation! too well have I seen the secret passion that has preyed upon her gentle and affectionate heart--the grief--the deep consuming grief that all my magnificent presents and gentle blandishments have failed to soothe. A thousand curses on this upstart beggar, and a thousand more on the mother of mischief, who has raised him up again to cross my path! By what power hath he escaped war and woe, and storm and every danger again to thwart and come in the way of Clermistonlee, whose purposes were never yet foiled by man, or woman either? 'S death! the time has come when the cord of the doomster, or the axe of the maiden, must rid me for ever of this old source of dark forebodings and secret inquietude. Ho, for a guard and a warrant of Council, and then Sir Walter Fenton, Knight Banneret, the Jacobite spy, Chevalier of St. Louis, ex-private soldier, and soi-disant ensign to the Lord Dunbarton, may look to himself! Ha, ha!" and dashing spurs into his horse he galloped madly into the city.