CHAPTER XXII.

THE RING AND THE SECRET.

See the cypress wreath of saddest hue, The twining destiny threading through; And the serpent coil is twisting there-- While regardless of the victim's prayer, The fiend laughs out o'er the mischief done, And the canker-worm makes the heart his throne. THE PROPHECY.

Twelve o'clock tolled heavily and sadly from the steeple of St. Giles.

It was a bleak and cold night. The Lords of the Privy Council, muffled up in their well-furred rocquelaures, with their hats flapped over their periwigs, ascended from the subterranean vaults under the Parliament House where they held their dreaded conclaves, and hurried away to their residences in the various deep and steep wynds of the ancient city. Mersington, who, overcome by sleep and wine, had remained at the table until roused by Macer Maclutchy, was the last to come forth, and he stood rubbing his eyes in the Parliament Square, and watching the black gigantic statue of King Charles with steady gravity, for he could have sworn at that moment that it seemed to be trotting hard towards him. His rallying faculties were scattered again by a stranger violently jostling him.

"Haud ye dyvour loon!" exclaimed the incensed Senator; "I am the Lord Mersington."

"And what art doing here, pumpkinhead?" asked Clermistonlee, who was quite breathless by having rushed up the Back Stairs, as those flights of steps which ascended from the Cowgate to the Parliament Square were named. "Are the proceedings over? Hath the villain confessed? Is he to die?"

"They are over, and he shall die conform to the Act."

"And how went the proceedings?"

"Deil kens; I sleepit the haill time."

"Driveller!" cried Clermistonlee in a towering passion; "'tis like thee; your head is as empty as my purse----"

"Hee, hee, ye seem a bonnie temper to-night. But what detained you frae the board, when ye knew you were principal witness?"

"The sudden indisposition of Lady Clermistonlee made it impossible for me to leave Bruntisfield--but I have this moment galloped in from The Place."

"You are a kind and considerate gudeman," said Mersington drily.

"And what did this fellow confess?"

"His abhorrence of you----"

"Ha! ha!"

"His hatred of the present government, and his weariness o' this life. He spoke unco dreich and sadly, puir callant,--and sae I fell fast asleep and dozed like a top."

"And did not that goosecap, the King's Advocate, give him a twinge or two of the torture?"

"We brought some braw things to light without the help o' rack or screw. The tails o' his coat were as fu' o' treason as an egg's fu' o' meat. There were five and twenty autograph letters frae the bluidy and papistical Duke James----"

"Stuff! But lately he was styled His most Sacred Majesty, by the grace of God, and so forth."

"I speak as we wrote it in the council minutes. Five and twenty letters to the cut-throat Hieland chiefs, to the Murrays of Stormont, the Drummonds and others, some slee tod lowries we have long had our een on. But maist of a' was a notable plot of that d----ned jaud Madame Maintenon to assassinate King William."

"Hah!"

"From a paper found, it appears that a certain Monsieur Dumont is now disguised as a soldier in our confederate army in Flanders, watching an opportunity to shoot the King and escape."

"By St. George, I hope the aforesaid Monsieur Dumont is a good shot--a regular candle-snuffer!"

"Our culprit, Fenton, knew not of Maintenon's plot, or of her papers being among those on his person. He looked black dumbfoundered when Maclutchy drew them frae a neuk in his coat tail."

"And to whom were they directed?"

"To one _Widow Douglas_, whilk the King's advocate avers to be no other than the Lady Dunbarton. Fenton grew red with anger on their being read, and smote his forehead, saying, '_Dupe that I have been! the noble Duc de Chartres warned me to beware of De Maintenon; but let it pass:_' and here, as I said, I fell fast asleep, until a minute ago. But come, let us have a pint of sack; I am clean brainbraised wi' drouth, and I warrant Lucky Dreep, in the Kirk-o'-field Wynd, keeps open door yet."

"And he dies?" said Clermistonlee, who could think of nothing but glutting his revenge.

"Early to-morrow morning, by the bullet."

"I would rather it had been by the cord. How came our considerate councillors to shoot instead of hang him?"

"Soldiers, ye ken, are often soft-hearted when other men are in stern mood; so auld General Livingstone, after pleading hard for Fenton's life, and failing, procured what he called an honourable commutation of the sentence, for which the puir gomeral cavalier thanked him as if it had been a reprieve."

"Cord or bullet it matters not. So perish all who would cross the purposes of Randal of Clermistonlee."

His Lordship for once resisted the importunities of his friend, and instead of adjourning to a tavern, rode slowly and reluctantly back to his own house. He felt a strange and unaccountable presentiment of impending evil, for which he could not account, but endeavoured to throw it from him. The effort was vain.

He felt himself a villain. A load of long accumulated wickedness oppressed his proud heart; it was not without its better traits, and writhed as he reflected on some events in his past life.

"Alison! Alison!" he exclaimed, turning his dark eyes upwards to the star-studded firmament, "now thy curse is coming heavily upon me."

His principal dread was the death of Lilian, for he had learned to love her with tolerable sincerity, but he knew not the secret which Walter had revealed to her, and the consequent intensity of her horror, aversion, shame, and anger. He knew not the tempest it had raised in her sensitive breast against him.

When he entered the chamber-of-dais she was seated near a tall silver lamp. The glare of the untrimmed light fell full upon her face, and its ghastly and altered expression struck a mortal chillness on the heart of her husband. He said not a word, but walking straight to a beauffet filled a large silver cup several times with wine, and always drained it to the bottom. The liquor mounted rapidly to his brain; he threw himself into a chair opposite Lilian, and heedless of the perfect scorn that quivered in her beautiful nostrils, and sparkled in her brilliant eyes, began leisurely to unbutton his riding gambadoes of red stamped maroquin, whistling a merry hunting tune while he did so.

It was easier for him to requite scorn with scorn than give tenderness for love.

"Confusion on the buttons!" he exclaimed. "Juden! Juden! Tush, I forgot; poor Juden hath been with the devil these three years. There is none now of all my rascally household who will share with me the morrow's glut of vengeance as thou wouldst have done, my faithful Juden."

Lilian wrung her attenuated hands; Clermistonlee regarded her sternly, and then bursting into a loud laugh, as he threw away his boots and spurs, chanted a verse from the old black-letter ballad of Gilderoy:--

"Beneath the left ear so fit for a cord, A rope so charming a zone is; Thy youth in his cart hath air of a Lord, And we cry--there dies an Adonis!"

"Ha! ha! I shall see his head on the Bow Port to-morrow, madam."

"Infamous and wicked!" exclaimed Lilian, feeling all her old love revived with double ardour, and no longer able to restrain her sentiments of grief and indignation. "Walter, dear and beloved Walter, how cruelly have I been deceived!" and drawing from her bosom the ring--his mother's ring, the pledge of his betrothal, she pressed it to her lips with fervour.

The brow of the proud Clermistonlee grew black as thunder, and he grasped her slender arm with the tenacity of a falcon.

"Surrender this bauble, that I may commit it to the flames. Surrender it, madam, lest I dash thee to the earth, for at this moment I feel, by all the devils, my brain spinning like a jenny."

"Give him the ring, Lady Lilian; give it, for the sight of it will arrest his vision even as the letters of fire arrested the eyes of Belshazzar and smote him with dismay. Sweet lady, let him look upon it," said the voice of a woman.

They turned, and beheld the pale, emaciated, and haggard visage of Beatrix Gilruth, half shaded by a tattered tartan plaid. Taking advantage of Lilian's momentary surprise, her husband snatched the ring from her, and was about to hurl it into the fire, when, incited by the woman's words, and impelled by some mysterious and irresistible curiosity, he looked upon it, and the effect of his single glance acted like magic upon him. He quitted his clutch of Lilian's arm, trembled, grew pale, and turning the ring again and again, surveyed it with intense curiosity.

"How came _he_ to have this ring?" he muttered; "what strange mystery is here? If it should be so---- O, impossible!"

He pressed a spring that must have been known only to himself, for Lilian had never discovered it in all the myriad times she had surveyed it, and Walter himself was ignorant of the secret when he bestowed the trinket upon her. The lapse of years had stiffened the spring; but after a moment's pressure from the finger of Clermistonlee, a little shield of gold unclosed, revealing a minute and beautiful little miniature of himself, which in earlier days had been one of the happiest efforts of the young Medina's pencil.

"'Twas my bridal gift to Alison," he exclaimed in a voice of confusion and remorse. "Oh, Alison, Alison! many have I loved but never one like thee. Never again did my heart feel the same ardour that fired it when I placed this ring on your adorable hand. Unfortunate Alison!"

"This ring was tied by a ribbon around the neck of Walter Fenton, when a little child he was found by the side of his dead mother in the Greyfriars churchyard," said Lilian in a breathless voice.

"Confusion and misery! 'tis impossible this can be true; there is some diabolical mistake here. Woman, say forth."

Beatrix gave Clermistonlee a bitter and malicious smile, and addressed Lilian.

"Walter's mother, sweet lady, gave that ring to Elspat Fenton, who, next to myself, was the most trusted of her attendants, and bade her travel from Paris to Scotland, and deliver the child and the bridal gift together to her husband--to Randal of Clermistonlee."

Lilian covered her face, and the fiery lord, whose first emotions were generally those of anger, surveyed Beatrix as if she had been a coiled up snake. She spoke slowly, and made long pauses, for aware that her words were as daggers, she dealt them sparingly.

"After long suffering and great peril by sea and land, this poor woman reached Edinburgh, but failed to meet the father of the infant committed to her care; for then he was in arms with the men of the Covenant, hoping by any civil broil or commotion to repair the splendid patrimony his excesses had dissipated. Elspat, being unable to give a very coherent account of herself, was declared a nonconformist by the authorities, and thrown with thousands of others into the Greyfriars kirkyard, where in that inclement season she perished; but the child was found and protected by the soldiers of Dunbarton. That child is Walter Fenton; he is your son, Lord Clermistonlee! the child of your once loved Alison Gilford. I call upon Heaven to witness the truth of my assertion! His own name was Walter, (ah! can you have forgotten that?) his nurse's Fenton. _I saw her die_, and I alone knew the secret, and have treasured it till this hour--this hour of vengeance upon thee, thou false and wicked lord! In my wicked spirit of revenge too long have I kept the secret; but now this blameless and noble youth is doomed to death, and fain would I save him, for he is innocent, and good, and generous; in all things, oh, how much the reverse of thee!"

"Maniac, thou liest!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, whose heart beat wildly. "I cannot believe this tale of a tub, which is told to affright me. And yet, how dare I reject it?--the ring--Walter--my God!"

"Ha! has Beatrix the wronged, the scorned, the despised, the neglected Beatrix, wrung your heart at last? Fool! fool! Did'st thou never suspect the volcano that slumbered here?" she exclaimed, laying her hand upon her heart. "Did'st thou never perceive the flame that smouldered in my breast--the yearnings, the throbbings, the fierce longing to be adequately revenged on thee who had brought me to ruin and madness, and had abandoned me to penury and privation? Wretch! 'tis twenty-five years since ye betrayed me. Time has rolled on--time, that soothes all sorrows and softens every affliction, and teaches us to forget the wrongs of the living--yea, and the virtues of the dead; and perhaps to wonder why we hated one and loved the other,--time, I say, has rolled on to many miserable years, until I have become the hideous thing I am, but it never lessened one tithe of my longing for vengeance for the thousand taunts and contumelies that succeeded my first sacrifice for thee. You say I am mad--perhaps I am--but mark me--_a woman's sorrow passes like a summer cloudy but her vengeance endureth for ever!_"

Clermistonlee smote his forehead, and Beatrix laughed like a hyæna.

"My God--unhappy Walter!" said Lilian in a voice that pierced the heart of him she abhorred to deem her husband. "Then she who saved and nursed thee on the field of Steinkirke was thy mother--_thy mother_, and she knew it not? Oh, this was the secret sentiment, the heaven-born thought that spoke within her and made her heart so mysteriously yearn towards thee. Unfortunate Walter! how deeply have we been wronged--how bitterly must we suffer!"

"And till now, thou accursed fiend, this terrible secret has been concealed from me!" said Clermistonlee furiously, as he half drew his sword.

Beatrix laughed and tossed her arms wildly.

"Oh, horror upon horror! woe upon woe!" said Lilian in a voice of the deepest anguish as she rung her hands, and, taking up her little infant from the cradle, kissed it tenderly on the forehead, and retired slowly from the room.

"Lilian--Lilian," cried her husband, "whither go ye, lady?"

"To solitude--to solitude," she murmured. "Any where to save me from my own terrible thoughts--anywhere to hide me from the deep disgrace you have brought upon me; to any place where never again the light of day shall find me."

Clermistonlee heard her light steps on the staircase, and they fell like a knell on his heart: impelled by some secret and mysterious impulse, he followed her to her own apartment, the door of which he had heard close behind her. There was no sound within it.

He entered softly; but she was not there; and from that moment she was never beheld again! Every ultimate search proved fruitless and unavailing. A veil of impenetrable mystery hung over her fate.......

A sudden thought flashed on the mind of Clermistonlee. The day dawn was breaking as he descended the staircase, after fruitlessly calling on Lilian through various apartments.

"I may, I must save him yet--unfortunate youth, a father's arms shall yet embrace him. Oh, my hapless and deeply wronged Alison! fortune may yet enable me in some sort to repair the atrocities of which I have been guilty. My horse! my horse!" and, rushing to the stable, he saddled and bridled a fleet steed, and in five minutes was galloping furiously back to the city, the walls and towers of which arose before him, red and sombre in the rays of the morning sun.