by Walter Scott
'I tell you once more, my dear, you don't understand these things―and there's Frank Kennedy coming galloping up the avenue.'
'Aweel! aweel! Ellangowan,' said the lady, raising her voice as the Laird left the room, 'I wish ye may understand them yoursell, that's a'!'
From this nuptial dialogue the Laird joyfully escaped to meet his faithful friend, Mr. Kennedy, who arrived in high spirits. 'For the love of life, Ellangowan,' he said, 'get up to the castle! you'll see that old fox Dirk Hatteraick, and his Majesty's hounds in full cry after him.' So saying, he flung his horse's bridle to a boy, and ran up the ascent to the old castle, followed by the Laird, and indeed by several others of the family, alarmed by the sound of guns from the sea, now distinctly heard.
On gaining that part of the ruins which commanded the most extensive outlook, they saw a lugger, with all her canvass crowded, standing across the bay, closely pursued by a sloop of war, that kept firing upon the chase from her bows, which the lugger returned with her stern-chasers. 'They're but at long bowls yet,' cried Kennedy, in great exultation, 'but they will be closer by and by. D―n him, he's starting his cargo! I see the good Nantz pitching overboard, keg after keg! That's a d―d ungenteel thing of Mr. Hatteraick, as I shall let him know by and by. Now, now! they've got the wind of him! that's it, that's it! Hark to him! hark to him! Now, my dogs! now, my dogs! Hark to Ranger, hark!'
'I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 'the ganger's fie,' by which word the common people express those violent spirits which they think a presage of death.
Meantime the chase continued. The lugger, being piloted with great ability, and using every nautical shift to make her escape, had now reached, and was about to double, the headland which formed the extreme point of land on the left side of the bay, when a ball having hit the yard in the slings, the mainsail fell upon the deck. The consequence of this accident appeared inevitable, but could not be seen by the spectators; for the vessel, which had just doubled the headland, lost steerage, and fell out of their sight behind the promontory. The sloop of war crowded all sail to pursue, but she had stood too close upon the cape, so that they were obliged to wear the vessel for fear of going ashore, and to make a large tack back into the bay, in order to recover sea-room enough to double the headland.
'They 'll lose her, by―, cargo and lugger, one or both,' said Kennedy; 'I must gallop away to the Point of Warroch (this was the headland so often mentioned), and make them a signal where she has drifted to on the other side. Good-bye for an hour, Ellangowan; get out the gallon punch-bowl and plenty of lemons. I'll stand for the French article by the time I come back, and we'll drink the young Laird's health in a bowl that would swim the collector's yawl.' So saying, he mounted his horse and galloped off.
About a mile from the house, and upon the verge of the woods, which, as we have said, covered a promontory terminating in the cape called the Point of Warroch, Kennedy met young Harry Bertram, attended by his tutor, Dominie Sampson. He had often promised the child a ride upon his galloway; and, from singing, dancing, and playing Punch for his amusement, was a particular favourite. He no sooner came scampering up the path, than the boy loudly claimed his promise; and Kennedy, who saw no risk, in indulging him, and wished to tease the Dominie, in whose visage he read a remonstrance, caught up Harry from the ground, placed him before him, and continued his route; Sampson's 'Peradventure, Master Kennedy-' being lost in the clatter of his horse's feet. The pedagogue hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but Kennedy being a person in full confidence of the family, and with whom he himself had no delight in associating, 'being that he was addicted unto profane and scurrilous jests,' he continued his own walk at his own pace, till he reached the Place of Ellangowan.
The spectators from the ruined walls of the castle were still watching the sloop of war, which at length, but not without the loss of considerable time, recovered sea-room enough to weather the Point of Warroch, and was lost to their sight behind that wooded promontory. Some time afterwards the discharges of several cannon were heard at a distance, and, after an interval, a still louder explosion, as of a vessel blown up, and a cloud of smoke rose above the trees and mingled with the blue sky. All then separated on their different occasions, auguring variously upon the fate of the smuggler, but the majority insisting that her capture was inevitable, if she had not already gone to the bottom.
'It is near our dinner-time, my dear,' said Mrs. Bertram to her husband; 'will it be lang before Mr. Kennedy comes back?'
'I expect him every moment, my dear,' said the Laird; 'perhaps he is bringing some of the officers of the sloop with him.'
'My stars, Mr. Bertram! why did not ye tell me this before, that we might have had the large round table? And then, they're a' tired o' saut meat, and, to tell you the plain truth, a rump o' beef is the best part of your dinner. And then I wad have put on another gown, and ye wadna have been the waur o' a clean neck-cloth yoursell. But ye delight in surprising and hurrying one. I am sure I am no to baud out for ever against this sort of going on; but when folk's missed, then they are moaned.'
'Pshaw, pshaw! deuce take the beef, and the gown, and table, and the neck-cloth! we shall do all very well. Where's the Dominie, John? (to a servant who was busy about the table) where's the Dominie and little Harry?'
'Mr. Sampson's been at hame these twa hours and mair, but I dinna think Mr. Harry cam hame wi' him.'
'Not come hame wi' him?' said the lady; 'desire Mr. Sampson to step this way directly.'
'Mr. Sampson,' said she, upon his entrance, 'is it not the most extraordinary thing in this world wide, that you, that have free up-putting―bed, board, and washing―and twelve pounds sterling a year, just to look after that boy, should let him out of your sight for twa or three hours?'
Sampson made a bow of humble acknowledgment at each pause which the angry lady made in her enumeration of the advantages of his situation, in order to give more weight to her remonstrance, and then, in words which we will not do him the injustice to imitate, told how Mr. Francis Kennedy 'had assumed spontaneously the charge of Master Harry, in despite of his remonstrances in the contrary.'
'I am very little obliged to Mr. Francis Kennedy for his pains,' said the lady, peevishly; 'suppose he lets the boy drop from his horse, and lames him? or suppose one of the cannons comes ashore and kills him? or suppose―'
'Or suppose, my dear,' said Ellangowan, 'what is much more likely than anything else, that they have gone aboard the sloop or the prize, and are to come round the Point with the tide?'
'And then they may be drowned,' said the lady.
'Verily,' said Sampson, 'I thought Mr. Kennedy had returned an hour since. Of a surety I deemed I heard his horse's feet.'
'That,' said John, with a broad grin, 'was Grizzel chasing the humble-cow out of the close.'
Sampson coloured up to the eyes, not at the implied taunt, which he would never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea which crossed his own mind. 'I have been in an error,' he said; 'of a surety I should have tarried for the babe.' So saying, he snatched his bone-headed cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood faster than he was ever known to walk before or after.
The Laird lingered some time, debating the point with the lady. At length he saw the sloop of war again make her appearance; but, without approaching the shore, she stood away to the westward with all her sails set, and was soon out of sight. The lady's state of timorous and fretful apprehension was so habitual that her fears went for nothing with her lord and master; but an appearance of disturbance and anxiety among the servants now excited his alarm, especially when he was called out of the room, and told in private that Mr. Kennedy's horse had come to the stable door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly and the reins of the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them in passing that there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on the other side of the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come through the wood, he had seen or hear
d nothing of Kennedy or the young Laird, 'only there was Dominie Sampson gaun rampauging about like mad, seeking for them.'
All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in the neighbourhood lent their assistance, partly out of zeal, partly from curiosity. Boats were manned to search the sea-shore, which, on the other side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks. A vague suspicion was entertained, though too horrible to be expressed, that the child might have fallen from one of these cliffs.
The evening had begun to close when the parties entered the wood, and dispersed different ways in quest of the boy and his companion. The darkening of the atmosphere, and the hoarse sighs of the November wind through the naked trees, the rustling of the withered leaves which strewed the glades, the repeated halloos of the different parties, which often drew them together in expectation of meeting the objects of their search, gave a cast of dismal sublimity to the scene.
At length, after a minute and fruitless investigation through the wood, the searchers began to draw together into one body, and to compare notes. The agony of the father grew beyond concealment, yet it scarcely equalled the anguish of the tutor. 'Would to God I had died for him!' the affectionate creature repeated, in notes of the deepest distress. Those who were less interested rushed into a tumultuary discussion of chances and possibilities. Each gave his opinion, and each was alternately swayed by that of the others. Some thought the objects of their search had gone aboard the sloop; some that they had gone to a village at three miles' distance; some whispered they might have been on board the lugger, a few planks and beams of which the tide now drifted ashore.
At this instant a shout was heard from the beach, so loud, so shrill, so piercing, so different from every sound which the woods that day had rung to, that nobody hesitated a moment to believe that it conveyed tidings, and tidings of dreadful import. All hurried to the place, and, venturing without scruple upon paths which at another time they would have shuddered to look at, descended towards a cleft of the rock, where one boat's crew was already landed. 'Here, sirs, here! this way, for God's sake! this way! this way!' was the reiterated cry. Ellangowan broke through the throng which had already assembled at the fatal spot, and beheld the object of their terror. It was the dead body of Kennedy. At first sight he seemed to have perished by a fall from the rocks, which rose above the spot on which he lay in a perpendicular precipice of a hundred feet above the beach. The corpse was lying half in, half out of the water; the advancing tide, raising the arm and stirring the clothes, had given it at some distance the appearance of motion, so that those who first discovered the body thought that life remained. But every spark had been long extinguished.
'My bairn! my bairn!' cried the distracted father, 'where can he be?' A dozen mouths were opened to communicate hopes which no one felt. Some one at length mentioned―the gipsies! In a moment Ellangowan had reascended the cliffs, flung himself upon the first horse he met, and rode furiously to the huts at Derncleugh. All was there dark and desolate; and, as he dismounted to make more minute search, he stumbled over fragments of furniture which had been thrown out of the cottages, and the broken wood and thatch which had been pulled down by his orders. At that moment the prophecy, or anathema, of Meg Merrilies fell heavy on his mind. 'You have stripped the thatch from seven cottages; see that the roof-tree of your own house stand the surer!'
'Restore,' he cried, 'restore my bairn! bring me back my son, and all shall be forgot and forgiven!' As he uttered these words in a sort of frenzy, his eye caught a glimmering of light in one of the dismantled cottages; it was that in which Meg Merrilies formerly resided. The light, which seemed to proceed from fire, glimmered not only through the window, but also through the rafters of the hut where the roofing had been torn off.
He flew to the place; the entrance was bolted. Despair gave the miserable father the strength of ten men; he rushed against the door with such violence that it gave way before the momentum of his weight and force. The cottage was empty, but bore marks of recent habitation: there was fire on the hearth, a kettle, and some preparation for food. As he eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope that his child yet lived, although in the power of those strange people, a man entered the hut.
It was his old gardener. 'O sir!' said the old man, 'such a night as this I trusted never to live to see! ye maun come to the Place directly!'
'Is my boy found? is he alive? have ye found Harry Bertram? Andrew, have ye found Harry Bertram?'
'No, sir; but-'
'Then he is kidnapped! I am sure of it, Andrew! as sure as that I tread upon earth! She has stolen him; and I will never stir from this place till I have tidings of my bairn!'
'O, but ye maun come hame, sir! ye maun come hame! We have sent for the Sheriff, and we'll seta watch here a' night, in case the gipsies return; but YOU―ye maun come hame, sir, for my lady's in the dead-thraw.'
Bertram turned a stupefied and unmeaning eye on the messenger who uttered this calamitous news; and, repeating the words 'in the dead-thraw!' as if he could not comprehend their meaning, suffered the old man to drag him towards his horse. During the ride home he only said, 'Wife and bairn baith―mother and son baith,―sair, sair to abide!'
It is needless to dwell upon the new scene of agony which awaited him. The news of Kennedy's fate had been eagerly and incautiously communicated at Ellangowan, with the gratuitous addition, that, doubtless, 'he had drawn the young Laird over the craig with him, though the tide had swept away the child's body; he was light, puir thing, and would flee farther into the surf.'
Mrs. Bertram heard the tidings; she was far advanced in her pregnancy; she fell into the pains of premature labour, and, ere Ellangowan had recovered his agitated faculties, so as to comprehend the full distress of his situation, he was the father of a female infant, and a widower.
CHAPTER X
But see, his face is black and full of blood;
His eye-balls farther out than when he lived,
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man,
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch d with struggling,
His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd
And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued
Henry VI, Part II
The Sheriff-depute of the county arrived at Ellangowan next morning by daybreak. To this provincial magistrate the law of Scotland assigns judicial powers of considerable extent, and the task of inquiring into all crimes committed within his jurisdiction, the apprehension and commitment of suspected persons, and so forth. [Footnote: The Scottish sheriff discharges, on such occasions as that now mentioned, pretty much the same duty as a coroner.]
The gentleman who held the office in the shire of―-at the time of this catastrophe was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this mysterious event, and make up the written report, proces verbal, or precognition, as it is technically called, which the practice of Scotland has substituted for a coroner's inquest. Under the Sheriff's minute and skilful inquiry, many circumstances appeared which seemed incompatible with the original opinion that Kennedy had accidentally fallen from the cliffs. We shall briefly detail some of these.
The body had been deposited in a neighbouring fisher-hut, but without altering the condition in which it was found. This was the first object of the Sheriff's examination. Though fearfully crushed and mangled by the fall from such a height, the corpse was found to exhibit a deep cut in the head, which, in the opinion of a skilful surgeon, must have been inflicted by a broadsword or cutlass. The experience of this gentleman discovered other suspicious indications. The face was much blackened, the eyes distorted, and the veins of the neck swelled. A coloured handkerchief, which the unfortunate man had worn round his neck, did n
ot present the usual appearance, but was much loosened, and the knot displaced and dragged extremely tight; the folds were also compressed, as if it had been used as a means of grappling the deceased, and dragging him perhaps to the precipice.
On the other hand, poor Kennedy's purse was found untouched; and, what seemed yet more extraordinary, the pistols which he usually carried when about to encounter any hazardous adventure were found in his pockets loaded. This appeared particularly strange, for he was known and dreaded by the contraband traders as a man equally fearless and dexterous in the use of his weapons, of which he had given many signal proofs. The Sheriff inquired whether Kennedy was not in the practice of carrying any other arms? Most of Mr. Bertram's servants recollected that he generally had a couteau de chasse, or short hanger, but none such was found upon the dead body; nor could those who had seen him on the morning of the fatal day take it upon them to assert whether he then carried that weapon or not.
The corpse afforded no other indicia respecting the fate of Kennedy; for, though the clothes were much displaced and the limbs dreadfully fractured, the one seemed the probable, the other the certain, consequences of such a fall. The hands of the deceased were clenched fast, and full of turf and earth; but this also seemed equivocal.
The magistrate then proceeded to the place where the corpse was first discovered, and made those who had found it give, upon the spot, a particular and detailed account of the manner in which it was lying. A large fragment of the rock appeared to have accompanied, or followed, the fall of the victim from the cliff above. It was of so solid and compact a substance that it had fallen without any great diminution by splintering; so that the Sheriff was enabled, first, to estimate the weight by measurement, and then to calculate, from the appearance of the fragment, what portion of it had been bedded into the cliff from which it had descended. This was easily detected by the raw appearance of the stone where it had not been exposed to the atmosphere. They then ascended the cliff, and surveyed the place from whence the stony fragment had fallen. It seemed plain, from the appearance of the bed, that the mere weight of one man standing upon the projecting part of the fragment, supposing it in its original situation, could not have destroyed its balance and precipitated it, with himself, from the cliff. At the same time, it appeared to have lain so loose that the use of a lever, or the combined strength of three or four men, might easily have hurled it from its position. The short turf about the brink of the precipice was much trampled, as if stamped by the heels of men in a mortal struggle, or in the act of some violent exertion. Traces of the same kind, less visibly marked, guided the sagacious investigator to the verge of the copsewood, which in that place crept high up the bank towards the top of the precipice.
