|
A few years before the
pride of Scotland had been prostrated by English bows and bills, on the
disastrous day of Flodden, the holding of Balmeny, in the county of
Fife, was possessed by Walter Colville, then considerably advanced in
years. Walter Colville had acquired this small estate by the usual title
to possession in the days in which he lived. When a mere stripling, he
had followed the latest Earl of Douglas, when the banner of the bloody
heart floated defiance to the Royal Stuart. But the wavering conduct of
Earl James lost him at Abercorn the bravest of his adherents, and Walter
Colville did not disdain to follow the example of the Knight of Cadzow.
He was rewarded with the hand of the heiress of Balmeny, then a ward of
Colville of East Wemyss. That baron could not of course hesitate to
bestow her on one who brought the king’s command to that effect; and in
the brief wooing space of a summer day, Walter saw and loved the lands
which were to reward his loyal valour, and wooed and wedded the maiden
by law appended to the enjoyment of them. The marriage proved fruitful;
for six bold sons sprung up in rapid succession around his table, and
one "fair May ” being added at a considerable interval after, Walter
felt, so far as his iron nature could feel, the pure and holy joys of
parental love, as his eye lighted on the stalwart frames and glowing
aspects of his boys, and on the mild blue eyes and blooming features of
the young Edith, who, like a fair pearl set in a carcanet of jaspers,
received an added lustre from her singleness. But alas for the stability
of human happiness! The truth of the deep-seated belief that the
instrument of our prosperity shall also be that of our decay, was
mournfully displayed in the house of Walter Colville. By the sword had
he cut his way to the station and wealth he now enjoyed ; by the sword
was his habitation rendered desolate, and his gray hairs whitened even
before their time. On the field of Bannockburn—once the scene of a more
glorious combat—three of his sons paid with their lives for their
adherence to the royal cause. Two more perished with Sir Andrew Wood,
when Steven Bull was forced to strike to the "Floure and Yellow Carvell."
The last, regardless of entreaties and commands, followed the fortunes
of the "White Rose of York," when Perkin Warbeck, as history malignantly
continues to style the last Plantagenet, carried his fair wire and
luckless cause to Ireland; and there young Colville found an untimely
fate and bloody grave near Dublin.
Thus bereft of so many goodly objects of his secret pride, the heart of
Walter Colville naturally sought to compensate the losses which it had
sustained in an increased exercise of affection towards his daughter.
The beauties of infancy had now been succeeded by those of ripening
maidenhood. The exuberant laugh, which had so often cheered his hours of
care or toil, while she was yet a child, had given place to a smile
still more endearing to his time-stricken feelings; face and form had
been matured into their most captivating proportions, and nothing
remained of the blue-eyed, fair-haired child, that had once clung round
his knee, save the artless openness of her disposition, and the
unsullied purity of her heart. Yet, strange to tell, the very intensity
of his affection was the source of bitter sorrow to her who was its
object, and his misdirected desire to secure her happiness, threatened
to blench, with the paleness of secret sorrow, the cheek it was his
dearest wish to deck with an ever-during smile of happiness.
Edith Colville was but an infant when her three brothers fell at Sauchie,
and had scarcely completed her eighteenth year, when the death of her
youngest brother made her at once the object of her father’s undivided
regard, and of pursuit to many who saw and were smitten with charms in
the heiress of Balmeny, which had failed to attract their attention
while her brother yet stood between the maiden and that heritage. But
the heart they now deemed worth the winning was no longer hers to give.
The death of her mother while she was yet a child, had left her her own
mistress long before the period when maternal care is most essential;
and Edith’s love was sought and won by one who had little but youth and
a warm heart to recommend him.
Arthur Winton was the orphan son of a small proprietor in the
neighbourhood, who, having been deprived of the best part of his
property by what he conceived the injustice of King James III., and the
rapacity of his favourite Cochrane, was easily induced to join the
insurgent nobles who wrought the destruction of that monarch. He was,
however, disappointed in his expectations of personal reward, having
fallen in the conflict; and his son was too young to vindicate his claim
in an age so rude as that of which we write.
Walter Colville, whose family had been so sadly thinned in the battle we
have mentioned, though they had fought on the other side, naturally bore
no good-will to the boy; but his younger son, who was nearly of the same
age, viewed him with different feelings. He was much about the house of
Balmeny ; and, to be brief, he won the affections of the young Edith
long before she knew either their nature or their value. Until the
departure of young Walter Colville, Arthur’s visits were attributed by
the old man to his friendship for his son, but when Edith had unhappily
become his heiress, he at once attributed them to their proper cause. A
stern prohibition of their repetition was the consequence, and the
lovers were henceforth reduced to hurried and sorrowful meetings in
secret.
On the morning wherein we have chosen to begin the following veritable
narrative, the youthful pair had met un-observed, as they imagined, in a
shady corner of Balmeny wood, and had begun, the one to lament, and the
other to listen, when the sudden apparition of the angry father checked
the pleasing current of their imaginings.
He drew his sword as he approached, but the recollection of his seventy
years, and his now enfeebled arm, crossing his mind, he replaced the
useless weapon, and contented himself with demanding how the youth had
dared thus clandestinely to meet his daughter.
Arthur attempted to allay his anger, and to plead his passion as he best
could; but the grim and angry frown that sat on Walter Colville’s brow,
as he listened to him, soon showed how vainly he was speaking, and he
ceased in confusion.
"Have you finished, young master?” said Colville, with a sneer. "Then
listen: you are not the wooer I look for to Edith. I should prefer him
something richer, something wiser, and something truer to the king, than
any son of your father is likely ever to prove; so set your heart at
rest on that matter. And you giglot, sooth! to your rock and your
chisart. But stay ; before you go, tell this gallant gay to prowl no
longer about my dwelling. By St Bride, an he does, he may chance to meet
a fox’s fate!"
"Dear father,” said the weeping girl, "upbraid us not. Never will
disobey you, never be his, without your own consent."
"Hold there, " replied Colville, smiling grimly, "I ask no more.” And he
led away the maiden, who dared not so much as steal a parting look.
Arthur Winton bore this fiat of the old man, and the dutiful
acquiescence of his daughter (though he doubtless thought the latter
pushed to the very extreme of filial obedience), if not with equanimity,
at least with so much of it as enabled him to leave the presence of his
mistress and her father with something like composure. He wandered
slowly to the beach, which lay at no great distance, as if he had hoped
to inhale with the cool breeze that floated from off the waters, some
portion of the calmness in which they then lay bound, his mind occupied
in turning over ill-assorted plans for the future, ever broken in upon
by some intruding recollection of the past. The place where he now
walked was one well calculated, according to the creed of those who
believe in the power exercised over the mind by the face of external
nature, to instil soothing and tranquillizing feelings. It was a smooth
grassy lawn, forming the bottom of a gentle eminence, undulating and
stretching downwards to the pebbly beach, among whose round white stones
the quiet waters of the Firth fell kissingly. The view was bounded to
the north by the rising eminences we have mentioned, and shut in on the
west by the woody promontory which is still crowned by Wemyss Castle. To
the eastward several rocky eminences stretch into the Firth, the more
distant still increasing their seaward march until the bay is closed by
the distant point of Kincraig. Before him lay the silver Firth, and,
half-veiled in distance, the green fields and hills of Lothian,
terminated by the picturesque Law of North Berwick, and the great Bass,
frowning like some vast leviathan awakening from his sleep. One or two
white-sailed barks lay motionless upon the water. The effect of the
whole was so stilling and sedative, that Arthur, half forgetting his
recent disappointment, stretched himself upon the sward, abandoned
himself to contemplation.
While he lay thus chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, the sounds
of distant song and merriment occasionally broke upon his ear. He at
first regarded them as the mere offspring of imagination, but at length
the choral swell of a seemingly joyous ballad, followed by a hearty,
far-reverberated shout, convinced him that the merry-making was real,
and at no great distance. He started to his feet in some alarm, for his
first impression was that the Good Neighbours were holding their revels
near him, and he well knew the danger of being detected as a prying
overlooker of their mystic merriment. A moment served to dissipate this
fear. The voices which he had listened to were too rough and boisterous
ever to be mistaken for the singing of those tiny minstrels, whose
loudest notes never exceeded in sound the trumpet of the bee. There was
no fairy ring round the spot on which he had lain, nor was the hour
either the " eye of day ” or that of midnight, at which, as is well
known, the elfin power was most formidable. After looking and listening
for some time, he ascertained that the sounds proceeded from a cave,
which we have not yet mentioned, but which forms a striking ornament to
the beach, and an object of considerable interest to the geologist,
having been doubtless formed long before the Forth had found its present
modest limits. Being anxious to dispel the feelings that now preyed on
his peace, by a diversion of whatever kind, he walked towards the place.
As he approached, the mirth was renewed with increased vehemence, and he
perceived, at the western entrance of the cave, a female, from whose
swarthy hue and singular habiliments he at once divined the nature of
its present inmates. The woman, whose features were stern and somewhat
repulsive, wore a long gown, of some coarse dark-coloured material,
which fell almost to her feet, having short wide sleeves, which left the
arms at perfect liberty, and coming up to the neck, was there fastened
with a golden brooch. Her head-dress consisted of a red and yellow
coloured shawl, twisted fantastically into a conical shape. Pendants of
gold hung from her ears, and rings of the same metal, in many of which
were set rubies and other sparkling gems, garnished her tawny fingers.
Arthur at once recognised an Egyptian or gipsy in the dark-featured
damsel who stood before him, and hesitated a moment whether he should
pursue the determination of mixing with the revellers within, to which
his eager desire of escaping from his present unhappy feelings had
prompted him. The Egyptians were in those days of a much darker
character than the remnants of their descendants, which, in spite of
press-gangs and justice-warrants, still linger amongst us. Murder among
themselves was a thing of everyday occurrence, and desperate robberies,
committed upon the king’s lieges, by no means rare. The present gang,
from their vociferation, seemed in a state of excitement likely to
remove any little restraints which the fear of the law’s vengeance might
at another time have imposed on them, and the features of the woman,
contrary to their custom, wore no look of invitation, but rather seemed
to deepen into a warning frown the nearer he approached the door at
which she was posted. On the other hand, the honour of the race, to such
as trusted them, was proverbial. His curiosity to know more intimately
the manners of a people so remarkable as the Egyptians then were, and
still are—perhaps a latent wish of being able to extract from their
prophetic powers some favourable auspice to his almost expiring hopes,
or that nameless something which at times impels us to court the danger
we at other times shun with care, all conspired to induce him to enter
the cave, and he accordingly attempted to do so. In this, however, he
was opposed by the gipsy, who, stepping exactly in his way, waved her
arm in a repelling attitude; and, seeing him disinclined to obey this
silent injunction, coming still closer to him, whispered, "Get you gone;
your life will be endangered if you enter here." Before Arthur could
reply to this injunction, she who gave it was suddenly attacked by a
man, who, issuing from the entrance, struck her a smart blow across the
shoulders with a staff which he carried, and then, with a scowling look
and angry accent, spoke a few words to her in a language which Arthur
understood not. She muttered something in reply, and proceeded towards
the beach. "The woman is mad at times, young sir," said the man, now
addressing Arthur. "Heed her not, I beseech you. We are only a few
wandering puir folks, making merry, and if you wish to share our
revelry, enter, and welcome. Some of our women may be able to read your
weird, should you so incline; you have nothing to fear. "
Arthur was by no means satisfied either that the woman was mad, or that
the man meant him fairly; but as he could not now retreat without
betraying his fear to the dark searching eye which the gipsy bent on
him, and was besides conscious that he possessed a well-proved sword,
and considerable skill and strength in the handling of it, he signified
his wish to join the merry-making, and followed the gipsy into the cave. |
