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Chapter Three
The old burial-ground,
the spirit’s trysting-place, was a fair but a lonely spot. All around
lay scenes renowned in tradition for blood, and broil, and secret
violence. The parish was formerly a land of warrior’s towers, and of
houses for penance, and vigil, and mortification. But the Reformation
came, and sacked and crushed down the houses of devotion; while the
peace between the two kingdoms curbed the courage, and extinguished for
ever the military and predatory glory of those old Galwegian chieftains.
It was in a burial-ground pertaining to one of those ancient churches,
and where the peasants still loved to have their dust laid, that Ezra
trusted to meet again the shadowy representative of the fierce old Laird
of Bonshaw.
The moon, he computed, had a full hour to travel before her beams would
be shed on the place of conference, and to that eerie and deserted spot
Ezra was observed to walk like one consecrating an evening hour to
solitary musing on the rivulet side. No house stood within half a mile;
and when he reached the little knoll on which the chapel formerly stood,
he sat down on the summit to ponder over the way to manage this singular
conference. A firm spirit, and a pure heart, he hoped, would confound
and keep at bay the enemy of man’s salvation ; and he summed up, in a
short historical way, the names of those who had met and triumphed over
the machinations of fiends. Thus strengthened and reassured, he rose and
looked around, but he saw no approaching shape. The road along which he
expected the steed and rider to come was empty; and he walked towards
the broken gate, to cast himself in the way, and show with what
confidence he abode his coming.
Over the wall of the churchyard, repaired with broken and carved stones
from the tombs and altar of the chapel, he now looked, and it was with
surprise that he saw a new made widow kneeling over her husbands grave,
and about to pour out her spirit in lamentation and sorrow. He knew her
form and face, and the deepest sorrow came upon him. She was the
daughter of an old and a faithful elder : she had married a seafaring
youth, and borne him one fair child. Her husband was returning from a
distant voyage; had entered the sea of Solway ; his native hills—his own
home—rose to his view, and he saw the light streaming from the little
chamber window, where his wife and his sweet child sat awaiting his
return. But it was not written that they were to meet again in life. She
heard the sweep of a whirlwind, and she heard a shriek, and going to her
chamber-door, she saw the ship sinking, and her husband struggling in
the agitated water. It is needless to lengthen a sorrowful story : she
now threw herself weeping over his grave, and poured out the following
wail:-
"He was the fairest among men, yet the sea swept him away: he was the
kindest hearted, yet he was not to remain. What were all other men
compared to him,—his long curling hair, and his sweet hazel eyes, and
his kind and gladsome tongue? He loved me long, and he won me from many
rivals; for who could see his face, and not love him? who could listen
to his speech, and refuse him aught? When he danced, maids stood round,
and thought his feet made richer music than the instruments. When he
sang, the maids and matrons blessed him; and high-born dames loved the
song of my frank and gentle sailor. But there is no mercy in the ocean
for the sons of men; and there is nought but sorrow for their daughters.
Men go gray-headed to the grave, who, had they trusted the unstable
deeps, would have perished in their prime, and left fatherless babes,
and sorrowing widows. Alas, alas! in lonely night, on this eerie spot,
on thy low and early grave, I pour forth my heart ! Who now shrill speak
peace to my mind, and open the latch of my little lonely home with thy
kind and anxious hand? Who now shall dandle my sweet babe on his knee,
or love to go with me to kirk and to preaching,—to talk over our old
tales of love and courtship,—of the secret tryst and the bridal joy!"
And, concluding her melancholy chant, she looked sorrowfully and
steadfastly at the grave, and recommenced anew her wailing and her
tears.
The widow’s grief endured so long that the moon began to make her
approach manifest by shooting up a long and a broad stream of thin,
lucid, and trembling light over the eastern ridge of the Cumberland
hills. She rose from her knees, shed back her moist and disordered
locks, showing a face pale but lovely, while the watery light of two
large dark eyes, of liquid and roving blue, was cast mournfully on the
way homewards, down which she now turned her steps to be gone. Of what
passed in the pastor’s mind at this moment, tradition, which sometimes
mocks, and at other times deifies, the feelings of men, gives a very
unsatisfactory account. He saw the hour of appointment with his shadowy
messenger from the other world arrive and pass without his appearance;
and he was perhaps persuaded that the pure, and pious, and overflowing
grief of the fair young widow had prevented the intrusion of a form so
ungracious and unholy. As she advanced from the burial-ground, the
pastor of her parish stood mute and sorrowful before her. She passed him
as one not wishing to be noticed, and glided along the path with a slow
step and a downcast eye.
She had reached the side of a little lonely stream, which glided half
seen, half hid, underneath its banks of broom and honeysuckle, sprinkled
at that hour with wild daisies, and spotted with primroses—when the
voice of Ezra reached her ears. She made a full stop, like one who hears
something astounding, and turned round on the servant of the altar a
face radiant with tears, to which her tale of woe, and the wild and
lonely place, added an interest and a beauty.
"Young woman," he began, "it is unseemly in thee to bewail thy loss at
this lonely hour, and in this dreary spot: the youth was given to thee,
and ye became vain. I remarked the pride of thy looks, and the gaudiness
of thine apparel, even in the house of holiness; he is taken from thee,
perhaps, to punish thy pride. There is less meekness in thy sorrow than
there was reason in thy joy; but be ye not discomforted.”
Here the weeping lady turned the sidelong glance of her swimming eyes on
Ezra, shed back the locks which usurped a white brow and snowy temples,
and folding her hands over a bosom, the throbbings of which made the
cambric that concealed it undulate like water, stood still, and drank in
his words of comfort and condolence.
Tradition always conducts Ezra and the mariner’s widow to this seldom
frequented place. A hundred and a hundred times have I mused over the
scene in sunlight and moonlight; a hundred and a hundred times have I
hearkened to the wild and variable accounts of the peasantry, and sought
to make bank, and bush, and stream, and tree assist in unravelling the
mystery which must still hang over the singular and tragic catastrophe.
Standing in this romantic place, a pious man, not over-stricken in
years, conversing with a rosy young widow, a vain and a fair creature, a
bank of blossomed flowers beside them, and the new risen moon scattering
her slant and ineffectual beams on the thick budded branches above
them,--such is the picture which tradition invariably draws, while
imagination endeavours to take up the tender thread of the story, and
imagination must have this licence still. Truth contents herself with
the summary of a few and unsatisfactory particulars. The dawn of morning
came, says Truth, and Ezra had not returned to his manse. Something evil
hath happened, said Imagination, scattering as she spoke a thousand
tales of a thousand hues, many of which still find credence among the
pious people of Galloway.
Josiah, the old and faithful servant of Ezra, arrived in search of his
master at the lonely burial-ground, about the dawn of the morning. He
had become alarmed at his long absence, and his alarm was not abated by
the unholy voices which at midnight sailed round the manse and kirk,
singing, as he imagined, a wild and infernal hymn of joy and
thanksgiving. He traced his steps down the footpath by the rivulet side
till he came to the little primrose bank, and found it trodden upon and
pressed as if two persons had been seated among the flowers. Here all
further traces ceased, and Josiah stood pondering on the power of evil
spirits, and the danger of holding tryst with Beelzebub or any of the
lesser spirits of darkness.
He was soon joined by an old shepherd, who told a tale which pious men
refuse to believe, though they always listen to it. The bright moonlight
had made him imagine it was morning, and he arose and walked forth to
look at his lambs on the distant hill—the moon had been up for nearly an
hour. His way lay near the little lonely primrose bank, and as he walked
along he heard the whispering of tongues : he deemed it some idle piece
of lovemaking, and he approached to see who they might be. He saw what
ought not to be seen, even the reverend Ezra seated on the bank, and
conversing with a buxom young dame and a strange one. They were talking
wondrous kindly. He observed them for a little space; the young dame was
in widow’s weeds; the mariner’s widow wore the only weeds, praise be
blest, in the parish, but she was a raven to a swan compared to the
quean who conversed with the minister. She was indeed passing fair, and
the longer he looked on her she became the lovelier—ower lovely for mere
flesh and blood. His dog shrunk back and whimpered, and an owl that
chased a bird in the grove uttered a scream of terror as it beheld her,
and forsook its prey. At length she turned the light of her eyes on
himself; Will-o’-the-wisp was but a proverb to them ; they had a glance
he should never get the better of, and he hardly thought his legs
carried him home, he flew with such supernatural speed.
"But, indeed," added the cautious peasant, " I have some doubts that the
whole was a fiction of the auld enemy, to make me think ill of the douce
man and the godly; and if he be spared to come home, so I shall tell
him. But if Ezra, pious man, is heard of nae mair, I shall be free to
believe that what I heard I heard, and what I saw I saw. And Josiah,
man, I may as weel give you the benefit of my own opinion. I’ll amaist
aver on my Bible, that the minister, a daring man and a courageous, --ower
courageous, I doubt,--has been dared out to the lonely place by some he,
or, maybe, she-fiend—the latter maist likely; and there he has been
overcome by might or temptation, and now Satan may come atween the
stilts of the gospel plough, for the right hand of Ezra will hold it no
longer; or I shouldna wonder," added the shepherd, "but that the old
dour persecutor Bonshaw has carried him away on his fiend-steed Geordie
Johnstone; conscience ! nought mair likely; and I’ll warrant even now
they are ducking, him in the dub of perdition, or picking his banes
ahint the hallan o’ Hell.”
The whole of this rustic prediction was not fulfilled. In a little deep
wild dell, at the distance of a gunshot, they found Ezra Peden lying on
the ground, uttering words which will be pardoned, since they were the
words of a delirious tongue. He was carried home amid the sympathy and
sorrow of his parishioners ; he answered no question, nor seemed to
observe a single face, though the face of many a friend stood round him.
He only raved out words of tenderness and affection, addressed to some
imaginary person at his side ; and concluded by starting up, and raising
such an outcry of horror and amazement, as if the object of his regard
had become a demon: seven strong men could hardly hold him. He died on
the third day, after making a brief disclosure, which may be readily
divined from this hasty and imperfect narrative. |
