Chapter 23

The Lord Hume of the latter period of the seventeenth century, had a natural son, Patrick, an arch rogue, inheriting the fire of the blood of the Humes, along with that which burnt in the black eyes of the gipsies of Yetholm. He was brought up by his father; and, true to the principles of his education, would acknowledge no patrons of the heart, save the three ruling powers of love, laughter, and war--Cupid, Momus, and Mars--a trio chosen from all the gods, (the remainder being sent to Hades,) as being alone worthy of the worship of a gentleman. How Patrick got acquainted, and, far less, how he got in love with the Mayor of Berwick's daughter, Isabella, we cannot say, nor need antiquarians try to discover; for where there was a Southron to be slain or a lady to be won, Patrick Hume cared no more for bar, buttress, battlement, fire, or water, than did Jove for his own thunder-cloud, under the shade of which he courted the daughter of Inachus. Letting alone the recondite subject of "love's beginning," we shall tread safer ground in stating, that the affection had been very materially increased on both sides by the walls of Berwick; for, although Patrick was a great despiser of fortifications, he had felt, in the affair of his love for Isabella, the fair daughter of the Mayor of Berwick, that there is no getting a damsel through a _loop-hole_, though there might be poured as much sentimental and pathetic speech and sigh-breath through the invidious opening, as ever passed through the free air that fills the breeze under the trysting thorn.

What we have now said requires the explanation, that at the period of our story, the town of Berwick belonged to the English; and the Mayor, being himself either an Englishman, or connected by strong ties of relationship with the English, had a strong antipathy towards the Scottish Border raiders, whom he denominated as gentlemen-robbers, headed by the noble robber Hume. But, above all, he hated young Patrick--into whose veins, he said, there had been poured the distilled raid-venom and love-poison of all the gentlemen-scaumers that ever infested the Borders. The origin of this hatred had some connection with an affair of the Newmilne, belonging to Berwick; the dam-dike of which, Patrick alleged, prevented the salmon from getting up the river, and hence destroyed all his angling sport, as well as that of all the noblemen and gentlemen that resorted to the river for the purpose of practising the "gentle art." He had therefore threatened to pull it down, to let up the fish; and sounded his threat in the ears of the indignant Mayor, in terms that were, peradventure, made stronger and bitterer by the thought that dikes and walls were his greatest bane upon earth: by the walls of Berwick the Mayor kept from his arms the fair Isabella, and by the dam-dike of Newmilne the same Mayor deprived him of the pleasure of angling. Was such power on the part of a Mayor to be borne by the high-spirited youth who had been trained to look upon mason-work as a mere stimulant to love or war--a thing that raised the value of what it enclosed by the opposition it offered to the young blood that raged for entrance? The youth thought not. He vowed that he would neither lose his Isabella nor his salmon; and, as fate would have it, the old Mayor had heard the vow, and vowed also that young Patrick should lose both.

Having fished one day to no purpose, in consequence of the obstruction of "that most accursed of all dam-dikes, the Newmilne dike," as Patrick styled it, he threw down his rod, and lay down upon the bank of the river, to wait the hour when the moon should summon and lighten him to the loop-hole in the other of his hated obstructions, the walls of Berwick--where that evening he expected to meet his beloved Isabella, and commune with her in the eloquent language of their mutual passion. The bright luminary burst in the midst of his reveries from behind an autumn cloud, and flashed a long silver beam upon the rolling waters. He started to his feet.

"It is beyond my time," he said, self-accusingly. "My Isabella is on Berwick Wall, and I am still lingering here by the banks of the river, three miles from where my love and honour require me to be. The loiterer in love is a laggard in war; and shame on the Hume who is either!"

In a short time the young Hume was standing beneath a buttress of the old walls of the town, looking earnestly through a small opening, in which he expected to see the face of the fair daughter of the Mayor.

"Art there at last, love?" said he, in a soft voice, as he saw, with palpitating heart, the pretty but arch face of the bewitching heiress of all the wealth of the old burgher lord peering through the aperture. "What, in the name of him who got his wings in the lap of Venus, and useth them to this hour as cleverly as doth our pretty messenger of Spring, hath kept thee, wench?"

"Ha! ha! hush! hush, man!" responded she, whose spirit equalled that of the boldest Hume that ever headed a raid. "Thou'rt the laggard. I've waited for thee an hour, until I've sighed this little love-hole into an oven-heat, waiting thee, thou lover of broken troth! Some gipsy queen in Haugh of the Tweed hath wooed thee out of thy affection for thy Isabel; and now thou askest what hath kept me. Ha! ha! Good--for a Hume."

"The moon cheated me, and went skulking under a cloud," responded Hume.

"And the cloud threw thy love in the shade," added quickly the gay girl. "Methought love kept his own dial, and was independent of sun or moon. What if a rebel vapour cometh over the queen of heaven that night thou art to make me free? My hope of liberty, I fancy, would be clouded; and I would be remitted again to the care of Captain Wallace, who keepeth the town and the Mayor's daughter from the spoiling arms of the robber Humes."

"Ha! ha!" replied he--"thy father wanteth not a Mayor's wits, Isabella, in offering thee as a prize to the Governor of the town. Excellent device, i'faith! The old burgher lord knew he could not keep thee, mad-cap wench as thou art, from a hated Hume's arms, unless he gave the Captain an interest as a _lover_ in guarding thee, like a piece of the old wall of Berwick."

"And therein thou'rt well complimented," replied she; "for my father could not get, in all Berwick, a man that could keep me from thee, but he who guardeth town, and Mayor, and maiden together. Since the Governor, as a lover, got charge of me, I am more firmly caged than ever was the old countess, who was so long confined in the grated wing-cage of the old castle. When art thou to free me from the Governor's love and surveillance, good Patrick? If what I have now to tell thee hath no power to quicken thy wits and nerve thine arm, thou art indeed thyself no better than one of those stones, to which, in thy wit, thou hast likened me. Knowest that a day is fixed for Captain Wallace being my _legal_ governor?"

"Ha!" cried Hume, in agitation. "This soundeth differently from the playful hammer of thy wit, Bell. What day is fixed? Thou hast fired me with high purposes."

"How high tower they?" cried the maiden, laughing. "Do they reach thy former threat, to pull down the Newmilne dam-dike, and let _up_ the salmon, in revenge for the letting _down_ of the Mayor's daughter?"

"Another time for thy wit, Bell," replied Patrick, in a more serious tone. "Thou hast put to flight my spirits. The grey owl Meditation is flapping his dingy wing over my heart. The time--the time--when is the day?"

"This day se'ennight," answered Isabel. "Hush! hush! here cometh the Governor, blowing like a Tweedmouth grampus, fresh from the German Sea, in full run after a lady-fish of the queen of rivers."

And now Hume heard the hoarse voice of the redoubted Governor, Captain Wallace--that fat overgrown _bellygerent_ son of Mars, so famous, in his day, for vaunting of feats of arms, at Bothwell, (where he never was,) over the Mayor's wine, and in presence of his fair daughter, whom he thus courted after the manner of the noble Moor, with a slight difference as to the truth of his feats scarce worth mentioning. It appeared to Hume, as he listened, that Wallace, and the Mayor, who was with him, had sallied out, after the fourth bottle, in search of Isabel--a suspicion verified by the speech of the warlike Captain.

"Did I not tell thee, Mr Mayor," said the Governor, in a voice that reverberated among the walls, and fell distinctly on Hume's ear, "that she would be about the fortifications? Ha!--anything appertaining to war delighteth the fair creature as much as it did that rare author, Will Shakspeare's Desdemona. If I had been as black as the Moor--ay, or as the devil himself--my prowess at Bothwell would have given this person of mine, albeit somewhat enlarged, the properties of beauty in the eyes of noble-spirited women--so much do our bodies borrow from the qualities of our souls."

"Where is she?" rejoined the Mayor. "I like not that love of the fortifications. It is the outside of the walls she loves. See, she flies, conscience-smitten. I like not this, my noble Captain--see, there is Patrick Hume beyond the wall, if thou hast courage, drive thy pike through that loop, and, peradventure, ye may blind a Hume for life."

"I like to strike a man fair--body to body--as we did on the Bridge of Bothwell," responded the Captain. "Ha! ha! Give me the loop-hole of a good bilbo-thrust, out of which the soul wings its flight in a comfortable manner. Nevertheless, to please my noble friend the mayor, and to get quit of a rival, I may" (lowering his voice to a whisper) "as well kill him in the way thou hast propounded; but I assure thee, upon my honour, I would much rather have the fellow before me, without the intervention of these plaguey walls, that come thus in the way and march of one's valour. There goes!"

On looking-up, Hume saw the Captain's bilbo thrusting manfully through the night air, as if it would pierce the night gnomes and spirits that love to hang over old battlements. Taking out his handkerchief, he wrapped it round his hand, and seizing the point of the sword, gave it a jerk, which (and the consequent terror) disengaged it from the hand of the pot-valiant hero of Bothwell. A shout of fear was heard from within.

"Stop! stop! mine good Mr Mayor!" cried the Captain to the Mayor, who had begun to fly; "I do not see, as yet, any very great, that is, serious cause of apprehension; but, I forget, thou wert not at Bothwell. By my honour, I've done for him! He hath carried off my sword in his body. Was it Patrick Hume, saidst thou? Then is he dead as my grandmother, and no more shall he follow after my betrothed, or threaten thee with the downfall of the Newmilne dam-dike. All I sorrow for is my good sword, which, but for that accursed loop, I might have redrawn from his vile carcass, and thus saved my property at the same time that I gave the carrion crows of old Berwick a dinner."

"Ah! but he's a devil that Hume," responded the Mayor. "Long has he hounded after my daughter Bell; and though it is now likely near an end with him, I should not like to come in the way of the dying tiger. Let us home."

The sound of the retreating warriors brought back Hume to the loop-hole, to see if Isabel was still there, to whom he was anxious to propose a plan, whereby he might (with the gay romp's most cheerful good-will and hearty co-operation) carry her off from the contaminating embrace of the pot-valiant Governor, with whom she was to be wed on that day se'ennight. He waited a long time, but no Isabel came. He suspected that the Mayor, after having caught her speaking to him, (Hume,) his most inveterate foe, would, as he had often done before, lock her up, and set the noble Captain as a guard upon his lady-love. Cursing his unlucky fate, that brought them out to interrupt his converse with the mistress of his heart, and prevent the arrangement of an elopement, he bent the Captain's bilbo hilt to point till it rebounded with a loud twang, and stepping away up the Tweed, fell into a deep meditation as to the manner by which he should secure Isabel. As he went along, his eye fell upon that source of so much contention between the men of Berwick and the border barons, the dam-dike of the Newmilne, and against which the Lord Hume, as well as himself and many of the neighbouring knights and lairds, had vowed destruction. A thought flashed across his mind, and his eye sparkled in the moonbeam, as brightly as did the Captain's sword, which he still held in his hand.

"I have hit it!" he cried, as he clapped his hand on his limb, and the sound echoed back from the mill-walls. "For spearing a salmon or a Southron, dissolving that old foolish tenure between a proprietor and his cattle, or cutting the tie of forced duty between a rich old Mayor and his daughter, where shall the bastard of Hume be equalled on the Borders? My fair Bell, thou wouldst spring with the elasticity of this bent blade, and dance like these moonbeams in the Tweed, if thou wert in the knowledge of this thought that now tickles the wild fancy of thy lover, whom thou equallest in all that belongest to the gay heart and the bounding spirit."

Occupied with these thoughts, Patrick went home to the castle of the Humes; and, next morning, he bent his way to Foulden, where he sought Lord Ross's baillie, James Sinclair, a man who had a very hearty spite against the obstruction to the passage of the Tweed salmon. With him he communed for a considerable time, and thereafter he proceeded to Paxton and to others of the gentlemen in the vicinity. The subject of these interviews will perhaps best be explained by the following placard, which appeared in various parts of Berwick in two days thereafter:--

"On Friday last, the tenant of Newmilne, belonging to the toun of Baricke, gave information to our honourable Mayor, who has communicated the same to our gallant Governor, Captain Wallace, that the Lord Hume and other the Scotch gentlemen, our neighbours, do, on Monday next, intend to be at the Newmilne aforesaid, by tenn of the clock of the morninge; and that they had summoned their tenants to be then and there present, alsoe, to assist in the breaking downe and demolishing the dam of the said Newmilne; and that the Lord Ross his bailiffe of Foulden had given out in speeches, that he was desired to summon the said Lord Ross, his tenants, and inhabitants of Foulden barronry, to be then and there aiding and assisting them, alsoe, for better effecting the same: Whereupon, it is necessary, that, at a ringing of a belle, our tounsmen, headed by our Mayor, and directed by the warlike genius of Captain Wallace, should proceed to the said Newmilne, and give battle in defence of the said dike, which is indispensable to the existence of the toun's property. God save the Mayor!"

The effect produced by this proclamation was rapid and stirring. The English, at that period, had contrived to raise a strong prejudice in the minds of the Berwick burghers against the Border Scots; and the intelligence that the daring robbers intended to demolish their property, inflamed them to the high point of resolution to fight under their valorous Captain, while one stone of the dike remained on another, and one drop of blood was left in their bodies. Hume, who had a greater part in the occasion of these preparations than had been made apparent, got secret intelligence, on all that was going on within the town; but none of his vigils at the loop-hole were rewarded with a sight of his spirited Isabel, who, he understood, had been confined in her father's house since the night on which she had been discovered upon the wall. Meanwhile, the preparations for the defence of the town's property proceeded; and, on the Monday morning, a bell, whose loud tongue spoke "war's alarums," sounded over town and walls, spreading fear among the timid, and rousing in the noble breasts of the valorous proud and swelling resolutions to give battle to the Border robbers, in the style of their ancestors. Ever since the first announcement, they had been drilled by the Captain, whose loud command of voice, proud bearing, bent back (bent in self-defence against the counterpoise of his stomach), and martial strut, filled them with great awe of his power, and great confidence in his abilities. Many hundred people, "on horse and foote," (we use the language of our old chronicle), "were gathered together, considerably armed with swordes, pistolles, firelocks, blunderbushes, foalingpieces, bowes and arrowes of the tyme of the first Edward, and uther powerful ammunition, fit to resist the ryot of the Scotch; and away they marched to the newe miln, with Mr Mayor and the Governor (a verrie terrible man of war--to be married the morn to the Mayor's dochter Isabel, if he come back with lyffe), and the sergeants with their halberts, and constables with their staves, going before them." In front, there was beat some thundering engines of warlike music, which was cut occasionally by sharp screams of small fifes, blown into by the burgher amateurs of that lively musical machine. Altogether, the cavalcade presented many appearances of a stern and warlike nature, which might well have prevented the Scotch raiders from proceeding with their felonious intention of driving down the obstruction to the salmon, and forced them to remain content with the angling of trout and parr. The "verrie sight" of the brave Wallace was deemed sufficient by those who followed him, "to put an end to the fraye before it was begunne."

This extraordinary cavalcade was seen passing along the road by Patrick Hume, who had, with his companions, retired behind some brushwood, the better to enjoy the sight. The warriors passed on, and every now and then the loud voice of the captain was heard commanding and exhorting his troops to keep up their courage for the coming strife. When the last file was disappearing, Hume and his companions made the woods resound with a loud laugh, and, starting up, and crying, "For Berwick, ho!" they hurried away in the direction of the town, which the Governor, in his anxiety to form a large assemblage, had left without a guard. Meanwhile the burgher army pushed on for Newmilne; "and, when they came there," (says the chronicle), "they pitched their camp; and nae doubt butt they were well disciplined, seeing theye had the advantage of the Captain's training, with the great blessing attour of weapons suitable--viz., rusty ould swords and pistolles; and they continued about three or foure houres on the bankes and about the milne: still there was nae appearance of the Scotch coming to fecht with them." For a long time the Captain was solemn and quiet; but when it appeared that the Scots "were not to come to show fecht," he got as wordy as a blank-verse poet, and stood up in the face of a neighbouring wood, from which it was expected the enemy would emanate, and called upon the cowards (as he styled them) to come out "and dare to touche one stone of the milne dam-dike."

"Did I not tell thee, Mr Mayor," he cried, "that I killed Patrick Hume? If not, where is he now, and he the Lord Ross of Foulden, and he of Paxton, and all the rest of the Border heroes? Come forth from thy wood recesses, if there be as much pluck in thee as will enable thee to meet the fire of the eye of the Governor of Berwick! Ha! ha! The rascals must have been at Bothwell, where, doubtless, they felt the pith of this arm. There goeth the disadvantage of bravery! The devil a man will encounter one whose name is terrible, and I fear I may never have the luxury of a good fight again. This day I expected to have fleshed my good sword. To-morrow is my wedding-day. How glorious would it have been to have made it also a day of victory! I could almost hack these unconscious trees for very spite, and to give my sword the exercise it lacketh."

And he swung his falchion from side to side, cutting off the tops of the young firs, just as if they had been men's heads; but no Scotchman made his appearance. The whole bells of Berwick now began to swing and ring as if the town had been invaded; and messengers, breathless and panting, arrived at the camp, and communicated the intelligence that the Bastard of Hume had, with a body of men, got entrance to the Mayor's house, by shewing the guard the Governor's sword, and carried off Isabel, the Mayor's daughter, who was more willing to go than to stay. The route of the fugitives was distinctly laid down, and it was represented by the messengers that, by crossing over a couple of miles, they had every chance of overtaking them and reclaiming the disobedient maid. The recommendation was instantly seized by the distracted Mayor, and a shout of the burgher forces, and an accompanying peal from the drums and fifes, shewed the desire of the men to fulfil the wish of their master. The captain's spirit was changed. He burned to reclaim his bride; but he feared the Bastard of Hume, whose prowess was acknowledged far and wide from the Borders. Shame did what could not have been accomplished by love; and, putting himself, with a mock warlike air, at the head of the troops, away he posted as fast as sixteen stone of beef, penetrated by alternate currents of fear, shame, and valour, would permit. The musical instruments of war were hushed; and as the forces hurried on, panting and breathing, not a voice was heard but the occasional vaunts of the captain, who found it necessary to conceal his fear by these running shots of assumed valour. As fate would have it, the Berwickers came up with the Bastard's party, who, with the gay and laughing Isabel in the midst of them, were seated, as they thought securely, in the old Berwick wood, enjoying some wine, which she, with wise providence, had handed to one of the men as a refreshment when they should be beyond danger. The sounds of merriment struck on the ear of the invaders; they stopped, and thought it safer, in the first instance, to reconnoitre--a step highly eulogized by the Captain, who seemed to want breath as well from the toil of the chase as from some misgivings of his valour, which had come, like qualms of sickness, over his stout heart.

"Ha! traitor!" cried the Mayor, "the device of sending us to Newmilne will not avail thee. Give me my daughter, traitor!" addressing himself to the Bastard, who stood now in the front of the party, all prepared for a tough defence.

"In either of two events thou shalt have her," cried Hume--"if thou canst take her, or if she is willing to go with thee."

"No, no!" cried the sprightly maid herself, coming boldly forward. "I love my father and the good citizens of Berwick, and none of them shall lose a drop of their blood for Isabel. If we are to have battle, let it be between the two lovers who claim my hand. By the honour of a Mayor's daughter, I shall be his who gaineth the day! Stand forward, Patrick Hume and Governor Wallace."

"Bravo!" shouted the burghers, delighted with a scheme that smacked so sweetly of justice and safety.

All eyes were now turned on the Captain; and Isabel, delighted with her scheme, was seen concealing her face with the corner of her cloak, to suppress her laughter. The Captain saw, however, neither justice nor safety in the scheme, and, edging near the Mayor, whispered into his ear his intention not to fight. Palpable indications of fear were escaping from his trembling limbs, and the hero of Bothwell was on the eve of being discovered. Hume was prepared--he stood, sword in hand, ready for the combat.

"Come forward, Captain!" cried the Bastard.

"Come forward!" resounded from Isabel, and a hundred voices of the burghers.