Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXIII Part 9

"Horrible mystery!" again e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aminadab. "But 'the wicked shall perish; they shall consume into smoke, they shall consume away.'"

Occasions make heroes of very ordinary men; and Aminadab felt that he could be one of these worthies that night. He soon left after these words of Janet; but he was now more upon his guard against watchers.

Perhaps Janet had mentioned them to induce him to avoid too minute an examination where there was danger of another kind; and this rather encouraged him. The only fault of his heroism was the strange feelings which arose in his mind when he thought of the Indian spirit. Somehow this vision could not be got rid of, or a.n.a.lyzed by the small philosophy he had. As for Fletcher, he viewed him merely as a human monster,--no uncommon phenomenon at a time when, although there might not be any greater evil than now, men were more reckless of consequences, more dead to shame, less under the control of public opinion, probably not less under the fear of G.o.d. He cleared the wicket. It was again a bright moonlight night. He pa.s.sed again the Cradle, and was bold enough to listen again. Alas! the wail was weaker, the bright lamp of these eyes was fast losing its oil. So he thought; for he could hear only now and then a very inaudible sob, and occasionally a very weak wail, shrill and yet low. He could not stay, for Janet would be coming stealthily with her cruse,--yes, her cruse; for, so far as he could see by the narrow slips, all was darkness around the dying stranger, in a proud land of liberty and humanity--the proudest seen on the face of the earth, or perhaps ever will be seen; yet by-and-by to have more reason to be proud--by-and-by, when Kalee would be asleep in the bosom of Brahma, her body only the monument of the shams of that proud land of liberty and humanity, and the true religion of G.o.d's covenant from the beginning.

Retreating quickly, he proceeded over the green hollow, and got into the skirt of Balgay wood. There he stood patiently, still fearful, but with the new-born zeal of curiosity and sympathy. By-and-by he saw Janet come out with her cruse, and walk as lightly as her huge body would permit.

She looked round and round, as if in great fear of Fletcher, probably of the Indian spirit; for it was clear she had a conviction of the truth of the real presence of Brahma. All is still; no Fletcher seen, nor watch.

But in about half an hour the dark Aditi came trotting out, clothed in pure white, looking also fearfully about her; but it was more clear that she expected some one. Stranger still, she made for the very spot where Aminadab was watching. He studied her direction to the breadth of a line, and stepped aside. There was plenty of foliage and some thick bushes. He threw himself down on the ground, and heard the sighing of Ady as if almost close to him. By-and-by she was joined by the mystery--yes, that being who had so long been the terror of Logie House to all but the master, who knew nothing of him. He was there; but Aminadab could not see more of him than his head, which was, as usual, enveloped in the same white cloth. He heard their conversation, of which not a word could he understand. But oh, that natural language of the heart, which is the same in all lands, and will be the same in heaven--those quick utterances, deep sighs, shakings of the frame as if the beings were convulsed! It seemed to be the last meeting; it was so eloquent of heart loves, so mysterious in religious aspirations. But here occurred a strange incident. Even at the distance where they were, a loud, shrill scream was heard, as if the last of expiring human nature. How it shook these two, till the very leaves rustled, and the night-hawks and owls screamed their terrible discord! All was still again. The male ran, as if moved by the frenzy of a dervish, forward towards the Cradle; then, as he saw the door half open, retreated.

Aminadab could make nothing of the figure, beyond the conviction that it was the same he had seen by fitful glimpses before. It was altogether indescribable, unlike anything he had ever seen or read of. On his return, Ady met him and caught him in her arms, as if to lead him back to the wood. Yet he was fitful, anxious, and flighty, as if he knew not where to go, or what to do. Again the rapid whisperings, so sharp and intense as sometimes to appear like hissing of strange foreign creatures. It seemed as if his soul was on fire, and urged him he knew not whither. At that instant the door of the Cradle opened altogether, and Janet came out with the light. Ady darted forward like a moonbeam in the midst of another moonbeam, and seen by its superior whiteness. An instant served for some communication between her and Janet. Then a shrill scream from Ady, a running hither and thither on the part of the male figure, and at length, darting into the wood, he disappeared.

Aminadab now saw Janet go into the house. Was all over? Aminadab could not tell. Ady still hung round the Cradle. She even circled it like a hovering ghost. At length she neared the door. The key had been left, and she entered.

Now was Aminadab's time. He rushed forward, opened the door, and entered the dungeon. A terrible sight met his eyes--sight! yes; even in the comparative darkness, there was enough in the small glimmer of moonlight entering by one of the holes to carry objects to eyes that would have pierced the deepest gloom. There is said to be no darkness in the world sufficient to conceal objects entirely; but here there was, in addition to the attenuated beam, the white dress of Ady, and the bed where Kalee lay. Janet had described it, and the table and the chair: what more than the bare walls was there to describe? Nothing. On that bed, covered by a thin white cloth, lay this Indian princess dead, with Ady hanging over her, and pulling at her, and offering to her blank eyes, once like diamonds, a small figure of an Indian G.o.d. Then the groans and suppressed shrieks of the faithful soul, as she still pulled and shook the corpse, as if she could get from it one last look directed to the wooden figure. Too late! Kalee had died, not only away from her people, but away from the G.o.ds of her people. All of a sudden the ayah ceased her endeavours, and directed her eagle eye, suffused with tears, up to the roof. Quick words followed the look. Aminadab could not understand them, but the motions and aspirations convinced him that she cried, "There, there, Brahma; there she goes, to be of thy eternal and infinite soul, from which she came, and to which she flies."

Then, suddenly, she rushed out of the dungeon. Aminadab looked after her. She did not go to Logie House, but in the direction of the wood, whither the indescribable figure had gone. Aminadab heard no more, scarcely saw more, if it was not the corpse lying before him. He was afraid of Janet, more of Fletcher, who might now at length come to pa.s.s his eyes over the body in the Cradle, where he was to cherish her as a father cherisheth his child; yet he would look, and look again. How shrivelled that face of darkness, yet how calm and loving-like; as if, even in the midst of the agony of the last hour, it smiled love to her destroyer!

By-and-by a light again approached. It was Janet with a white sheet.

"You here! Good heavens! Away, away! Fletcher is to look at her; yes, he is to look at her in the cradle he promised her. Away! no more."

"I saw Brahma," said Aminadab; "yes, true Brahma, Brahma!"

"Fool, fool! Man, I only told you it was Brahma to keep you from the Cradle for your own safety."

"Then who was the strange being?"

"I dare not tell you that; but I fear Ady's away with him, without hat, or cloak, or box, or supper."

"To where?"

"Nor that, lad. But I fear you will hear more of this Scotch tragedy some day. Get you gone; there is Fletcher."

Aminadab obeyed.

And Fletcher did see her. Some time after the departure of Aminadab he crossed the green. It seemed that night he had refrained from company, not through penitence, or any motive that man could divine in the nature of the man. Strangely-formed beings do things which do not seem to belong to their natures or to human nature, and it is this that makes them strange. Before he entered this, not, alas! Domdaniel, he called Janet to the door. He wanted to be alone. She gave him the cruse; and with the old gloom upon his face, perhaps he wanted to test his courage.

It could not be that he wanted to look once more on the face of the mother of his children; nor that he felt now that there had been one in the world who really did love him, as few women have ever loved. Then man measures woman's love by his own; but when was man's heart stirred by nature's strongest pa.s.sion like that of devoted woman? while now the world did not contain one heart that was moved to him by anything stronger than dithyrambic delirium. Who knows? But there was Fletcher looking on the corpse of his wife, and waving over her face the light of the small cruse he held in his hand! Was he moved, as he saw the still, death-bound features, that once could not contain the expression which the leaping heart, with that burning fire in it of that land of the sun, tried in vain to force into it; the eye, too, that flashed and leapt as never is seen in our country of humid fogs, stifling the inborn heat and blearing the vision; and those arms that entwined him so as the vine holds the olive in its grasp, as if it would give the juice which fires and inebriates, for the oil that calms, and fattens, and sustains? All over that lithe body which enabled her, when he saw her first in the land of her fathers, to bound and flee as if she had wings, and these beautiful as the monaul's, ay, and enabled her, too, to play round him in that Eastern gaiety which had charmed him, if he ever loved her, and even for a time made his home like Fairydom! Who shall say there was no movement in his stern features, no moisture in his eye, no trembling of the lip, no tremor of the body, as he might have read the last effort of nature in the expression of calm forgiveness or continued affection? Who could read _him_?

At midnight, two days after, Kalee slept in Logie kirkyard. There is no stone to point out the grave of the Indian princess, who lies--as becomes, too, in our boasted land of liberty, ent.i.tled to her boast in an equality at length, which even pride cannot deny--among the humble artisans and cottars of Lochee. Did Fletcher Read, on that after day, when Panmure blew the white iron trump, not expect to see Kalee rise up and seek judgment on the house of Logie? The blood was hereditary, and the heart that is fed by the blood, and which impels it.

If it had not been that Aminadab married the portly Janet, we might have heard no more of the fortunes of this man. But how true Aminadab's quotation, that G.o.d's vengeance never sleeps! Where, in all the scathed corpses of heaven's lightning, was there ever one that told its tale like that of Fletcher of Balinsloe, Lindertes, and Logie? He was recalled to India again.

"Ay, Aminadab, he was forced to go by the Government; but maybe the Government was only like a thing that is moved by the storm, and cuts in twain, where its own silly power could do nothing. Before he went, he married a beautiful little woman,[*] perhaps the most spirited in the s.h.i.+re, white as Kalee was black, and come, too, of gentle blood. Why did she marry this man? Had she not heard of the fate of Kalee? Had she not seen the Cradle (still standing in the hollow of the hill)? No doubt; but woman will go through worse storms than man's pa.s.sion to get to the goal of wealth and honour. Then there is a frenzy in woman, Aminadab.

She is like the boys, who seek danger for its own sake, and will skim on skates the rim of the black pool that descends from the film of ice down to the bubbling well of death below. Women have an ambition to tame wild men; ay, even wild men have a charm for them, which the tame sons of prudence and industry cannot inspire. So it was: they were married, and he took her to India."

[note *: Afterwards, as I have heard, the wife of Milne of Milneford. She lived till nearly a hundred.]

"'So the Lord did lead him; and there was no strange G.o.d with them.'"

"Ay, but there was a G.o.d _before_ him, lad."

"What mean you, Janet?"

"Do you not recollect of Brahma?"

"Do not mention that strange figure, Janet. My blood runs cold."

Janet laughed.

"Runs cold, lad, at what? Brahma was just one of the Nawab's great men, whom he sent over here to watch the fate of his daughter. Why, man, he lodged next door to you, with Mrs. Lyon at the Scouring Burn."

"The black man the boys used to run after?"

"The very same. He returned with Ady, and was at the court of the Nawab and told all, ay, and more than we knew--that Fletcher would be obliged to visit Bombay again ere long after. He had got this from some of the authorities in England. For many a day did the prince weep for his Kalee; for many a day did he watch for the murderer's arrival, ay, as a tiger of his jungles watches in the night with fiery eyes for a beast even more cruel than himself. He had even all the coast of Coromandel, I think they call it, to give intelligence of the vessel. The very name of the vessel was known; the very paint of its sides, and the flag it bore--so well had he kept up his knowledge of what was going on in England."

"Wonderful!" cried Aminadab. "'And the fowler that did slay, falleth into his own net.'"

"And a terrible net, with meshes of sharp steel to hold and cut."

"Ah!" cried Aminadab, as he rubbed his hands, and chuckled like a big boy who sees the porridge boiling.

"You may well be anxious, lad; but you'll have more than you want."

"No, unless he is put into a fiery pit and burnt to a cinder, or into a den of tigers, or a nest of hooded snakes, or--"

"Peace, lad; better than all. But surely we are forgetting that we are Christians, that we have seen the new light of grace, Aminadab."

"Ay, true. Mercy pertaineth to the Lord. We belong to the furnace which trieth gold; not to the refining-pot of the Old Church, which is for silver."

"Ah, well! G.o.d's judgment was soon executed. The s.h.i.+p was recognised and hailed long before she arrived at Bombay. A crowd of black devils boarded her, seized Fletcher, and dragged him on sh.o.r.e. Not an instant was lost. Trial was a laughter. They danced round in joy, making the very Brahma hear their orgies. Four horses, ropes, victim between two and two, whip, yell, and Fletcher is in four quarters.

"Nor did they end here. They had forgotten the white wife. She too--justice demanded it. They did not ask why; but the sailors had suspected what was going on; and when they saw the devils coming back, they put Mrs. Fletcher into a big basket, and hoisted her to the top-mast. The poor woman could see from that height the mangled remains of her husband; but she was an extraordinary woman. She kept her place composedly as she heard the yells of the demons. They could not find her, and went away like wild animals deprived of their b.l.o.o.d.y prey. The s.h.i.+p went on. Mrs. Fletcher returned safe to Scotland, where she was known as the heroine who had gone through so much for the love of a villain."

The story of Fletcher has died away in Angus; but at one time it was in every mouth, and many a head was shaken as the Sunday loiterers from Dundee and Lochee pa.s.sed by the Cradle in their walks on Balgay Hill. I have heard that it was demolished as a disgrace to Scotland somewhere about 1810 or 1812. The hollow where the ruins stood is quite visible yet, and the old circ.u.mambulating ghost, which, by-the-bye, has unfortunately a white face, is not yet laid.

THE DEATH OF THE CHEVALIER DE LA BEAUTe.

It was near midnight, on the 12th of October 1516, when a horseman, spurring his jaded steed, rode furiously down the path leading to the strong tower of Wedderburn. He alighted at the gate, and knocked loudly for admission.

"What would ye?" inquired the warder from the turret.

"Conduct me to your chief," was the laconic reply of the breathless messenger.

"Is your message so urgent that ye must deliver it to-night?" continued the warder, who feared to kindle the fiery temper of his master, by disturbing him with a trifling errand.

"Urgent, babbler!" replied the other, impatiently; "to-day the best blood of the Homes has been lapped by dogs upon the street; and I have seen it."

The warder aroused the domestics in the tower, and the stranger entered.