CHAPTER X.

Let us think how our ancestors rose. Let us think how our ancestors fell; The rights they defended, and those They bought with their blood, we'll ne'er sell. Let the love of our king's sacred cause To the love of our country succeed, Let friendship and honour unite, And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

_Jacobite Relics._

The messenger returned from Edinburgh, and brought with him such a reply as the Earl of Nithsdale had anticipated. Towards evening, therefore, he made ready for his departure.

The Lords Athol, Huntley, Traquhair, Seaforth, and others, were already gathered round the Earl of Mar, under pretence of joining in a hunting expedition; but, after his refusal to attend the commissioners at Edinburgh, Lord Nithsdale's making one of the famous "Hunt of Braemar" would have betrayed the nature of the meeting. He therefore resolved to seek the Earl of Derwentwater at his castle in Northumberland.

Lord Derwentwater was perhaps of all the Jacobite lords the one with whom his feelings and sentiments were most in unison: even his enemies have never ventured to cast any imputation on the motives and the character of a nobleman of such known integrity: with him Lord Nithsdale felt he could ever conscientiously act in unison.

Lady Nithsdale assisted her lord in all his arrangements, listened to all his instructions: it was indeed fitting she should do so. The time was past when the wife needed only to be the gentle housewife, the graceful hostess, the dignified countess. Her husband knew well the enduring courage, the calm resolution, which were latent in the soul of his wife; and in her he reposed entire confidence, on her he placed implicit reliance. But she herself was not aware of the qualities which slumbered within her; qualities which, had her life been passed in the common routine of polished existence, would never have been awakened and called into action. She trembled as she heard her lord give the directions which he deemed necessary for the security of the castle; and she shrank instinctively when she saw him gird on his sword, and prepare the pistols which he carried in his holster.

Such precautions, although not unusual in these times, struck her as the real actual commencement of war,--of civil war; and an icy chill ran through her veins when she heard the balls rattle down the iron barrels of the pistols.

The shades of evening had now gathered around: the four domestics who were to attend their lord were ready mounted in the court-yard; his own stout horse was there, bridled and saddled. Lord Nithsdale, with a firm and stately step, traversed the dimly lighted apartments. The time for doubt or hesitation was past. There was sadness, but no wavering in his eye. His wife was on his arm, but she pressed it lightly; she dared not cling to him as her heart would have prompted her to do, neither durst he unman himself by giving way to the tenderness he felt.

When he reached the door, he paused for a moment; and turning back, he looked slowly round the hall, where hung the portraits of his forefathers, the battle-axe of Eugene Maxwell, the helmet of Lord Eustace, the banner of good Earl Robert.

His eye rested for a moment on the family motto, "Reviresco." "Not here, my love, not in these ancient halls, will the Earls of Nithsdale flourish again!" and gently pressing both the cold trembling hands of his wife between his own, he descended the steps, and, mounting his horse, he rode resolutely from out the castle gate.

It was a glorious summer night. Lord Nithsdale felt, painfully felt to his heart's core, the beauty of the scene, as he traversed the valley from which he took his title, and the lands endeared to him by early recollections, as well as by that consciousness of possession, which assuredly has for the mind of man a charm almost magic in its influence.

The moonbeams slept calmly on the towers of Terreagles,--of his home! and they sparkled on the waters of the Nith as it bounded through the smiling vale with its green sheep-walks and its wild copses.

Avoiding the town of Dumfries, he followed the banks of the stream, till he found himself under the very walls of his own far-famed Castle of Caerlaverock. It was with a pardonable feeling of pride that the fifth Earl of Nithsdale surveyed, for the last time, the noble edifice which had been the seat of his ancestors for nearly seven hundred years, and which they had rendered famous by many an act of prowess.

The two circular towers which flanked the northern entrance stood out, bold and dark, against the deep blue of the moonlight sky; the rippling waves were tipped with silver as they broke against the walls of the castle, which, built in a triangular form on the point of land where the Nith throws itself into the Irish Sea, rose on two sides abruptly from the waters.

But though he might cast towards the ruined walls a glance of regret, and might bid them in his heart a long and sad adieu, he reminded himself that the Lord Eustace had in his zeal for King Robert Bruce demolished the ancient fortifications of this same castle, lest the English might garrison it themselves; and he thought of Robert, the eighth Lord Maxwell, and first Earl of Nithsdale, who had so gallantly defended it for his unfortunate master Charles the First: and in the glorious recollections of former deeds of loyalty, and in resolutions to emulate such deeds, he attempted to drown the sad anticipations which crowded on his soul.

But he was alone! No eye was upon him! No enthusiastic Jacobite was by his side, before whom he might blush to own a thought which had reference to self. Each step, as he advanced, was full of the memorials of his ancestors. He passed the Tower of Repentance,--a monument of the ostentatious remorse of John Lord Herries. In the distance he saw the Castle of Hadham, which came into his family by the marriage of Sir John Maxwell to Agnes, heiress of the Lord Herries of Terreagles. "And the time will come," he thought, "when the Maxwells will be forgotten in a country where they have been known and where they have been honoured, where they have been feared and where they have been loved, for so many centuries! But if remembered, their name shall never be coupled with dishonour, with treachery, or with disloyalty:" and he spurred his gallant horse, hastening from scenes which, while they confirmed him in his devotion to the cause he had espoused, made him feel the extent of the sacrifice he was making.

Intelligence little calculated to raise the spirits of the Jacobites awaited him upon his arrival at Dilstone Castle, the seat of the Earl of Derwentwater. He there found the earl and all his adherents in the utmost consternation at the death of Louis the Fourteenth, and the refusal of the Regent to assist the Chevalier with arms, men, or money, or to do anything which might be considered an infraction of the treaty of Utrecht.

The Earl of Mar, although not yet provided with a legal commission as general, had set up the standard of King James, and had gathered around it at Braemar three hundred of his own followers. They had all advanced too far to retreat; but the most sanguine were dismayed and dispirited at the unfavourable aspect of affairs.

Lord Nithsdale alone did not appear affected by the intelligence. Most of the other insurgent nobles were actuated by motives either of ambition, or of revenge, by discontent with their present condition, and by the hope, in the changes consequent upon war, to improve the estates which they found inadequate to the support of their rank and station. But in Lord Nithsdale's mind no personal consideration mixed itself with his conscientious belief that honour demanded his adherence to the Stuart race, whether it might be for weal or for woe. His hopes were not blasted, for he had never entertained any; and on the present occasion it was he who sustained the resolution of those around, and reminded them that the change in the policy of France did not loosen the bonds of allegiance to their sovereign; that in union and in perseverance consisted their only chance of success; that to themselves alone they must look. "If," said he "the feeling of the people is really in favour of their lawful monarch, when once the standard is raised, when once the Earl of Mar can show his sovereign's commission, they will declare themselves: if, on the contrary, the mass of the people is satisfied with the present order of things; if Englishmen are indifferent whether a Stuart or a Guelph wear the crown of England, provided they may enjoy the comforts of life in security; if loyalty no longer survives in the hearts of those who are occupied only with selfish considerations, French gold, French arms, will never impose upon the British nation the sovereign that nation rejects. In that case we are traitors, and we must abide the consequences!"

It was not long, however, before the success which at first attended the Earl of Mar's strenuous exertions, elevated the drooping spirits of the English Jacobites to as high a pitch of exultation as they had before sunk low in despondency.

He had actually raised an army of ten thousand men; he had at length received, and read aloud at the head of each regiment, his commission as general-in-chief of the Scottish forces; and he had despatched to the Chevalier a numerously-signed address, urging the necessity of his immediate arrival in Scotland. Mr. Forster and Lord Derwentwater, with Lord Nithsdale, had proclaimed King James at Warkworth, Morpeth, and Alnwick. They advanced into Scotland as far as Kelso, where they were joined by Viscount Kenmure with two hundred horse, and the Earls of Carnwarth and Wintoun, who had already set up the Chevalier's standard at Moffat.

But these temporary successes could not blind Lord Nithsdale to the elements of discord which were found in the very union which gave the assembled forces a somewhat imposing aspect; and which, had they with one accord proceeded towards Dumfries, made themselves masters of that town, thus forcing a communication with the main army under the Earl of Mar, might have enabled them to furnish themselves with arms and ammunition at Glasgow, and finally to dislodge Argyle from Stirling.

But he saw and deplored, on one side, the obstinate infatuation of the English Jacobites, who seemed confident that an immediate and universal rising in the northern counties would be the consequence of their marching into England; and, on the other, the resolute wilfulness of the undisciplined Highlanders, who declared that they would not cross the border.

The town of Dumfries continued in the hands of government. The Countess of Nithsdale therefore kept herself in strict retirement, nor could she often receive direct communication from her husband. A thousand vague and unauthenticated rumours daily, nay, hourly, reached her; rumours, which, coming through the medium of the royalists, brought even exaggerated accounts of the disunion and the want of discipline which prevailed among the insurgent forces. Her heart sank within her when, through Amy, she heard how the Whigs had exulted at the confusion produced among the Jacobites by an incident in itself trifling.

Captain Wogan having mistaken some of their own troops for an advancing party of General Carpenter's, inadvertently discharged a pistol, the preconcerted signal to warn those behind of an approaching enemy; and, until the mistake was discovered, there ensued considerable tumult and disorder among the soldiers in the rear. On another occasion, the cavalry of the insurgents, which had just entered Jedburgh, were hastily marched out again to assist the foot in repelling--a party of their own friends who had joined them by another route! These, and other occurrences of a similar nature, were subjects of mockery and exultation to the Whigs in Dumfries, and failed not to be good-naturedly transmitted to the inhabitants of Terreagles. Nor did the letters which she occasionally received from her husband tend to cheer her. Although, partly from prudential motives, partly to spare her the feeling of blank and hopeless self-immolation which pervaded his own soul, he refrained from expressing his full conviction of the inadequacy of their means, the mismanagement of those means which they did possess, the futility of all their endeavours, still she could plainly perceive that his fears, rather than his hopes, had gathered strength since last they parted.

She was one day seated in the tapestried withdrawing-room, from whose large and deep-set windows the Earl had taken his last sad look over his vast possessions; her eye was also mechanically following the mazes of the Nith as it wound through the valley below; when Amy Evans hastily entered, with a joyful countenance, and a thick packet for her lady.

"News from my lord!" she exclaimed, all breathless; "and Walter Elliot, who is even now from the army, says they are coming to lay siege to Dumfries immediately, my lady; and we shall have my lord at home again in his own castle. And oh! how glad I shall be to see my lord's own noble bearing as he mounts the entrance-steps, and to hear his firm tread as he paces his own hall, and to see my own dear lady smile once more!"

Lady Nithsdale meanwhile had with trembling hands and a flushed cheek opened the packet which Amy hoped would have proved so welcome; but the words of gratulation died away on her lips while watching the fallen countenance, the blanched cheek of her mistress, as she perused the letter.

"Alas! my good Amy, you are a flattering, but most false, prophet. The English counsels have prevailed; they are even now withdrawing the troops towards the borders, and have sent to recall the horse which had advanced as far as Ecclefechan. I never knew my lord write so despondingly. How strange it is, Amy, that when he is there to tell them what had best be done, to point out to them the advantages of occupying all the west of Scotland, of gaining easy possession of Dumfries, of Glasgow, and of Stirling, they should persist in their infatuation. Oh! if the king were but in Scotland, he would surely know who were his true friends! Then my lord's counsels would be attended to, as it is fitting they should be."

"Indeed, my lady! And are they not coming to Dumfries after all? Why, Walter Elliot said it was the talk of all the army; and that the Highlanders said they would fight the enemy to the last in their own country, but that they never would be marched across the borders, to be kidnapped and made slaves of, as their forefathers had been in Cromwell's time! And can it be, my lady, that they will really turn back, when my lord says it is more advisable that they should advance?"

"Alas! it is only too true! My dear lord also says that all will be leaders, and that none will be led. But he adds at the same time, that, whether they follow his counsels or not, he will never desert the true cause from any personal pique. Oh! my own true noble lord!" she exclaimed, looking up with tearful yet beaming eyes; "there spoke your own high soul! The king in all his army has not another spirit, disinterested, uncompromising as yours!" Then resuming her letter, she continued, "My lord says that, notwithstanding all the Earl of Mar's confident hopes and assertions, he cannot find that the Duke of Ormond has landed yet. 'Tis strange! it seems as if all aid from foreign shores were spell-bound. He loves his cousin of Ormond! methinks if he were with them, my lord would have more heart and hope in what he undertakes!" Then, as she proceeded in the perusal of the letter: "Nay, did I say that there was not another noble spirit in all the king's army? Shame on my lips for uttering such treason! for here my lord writes that he and the Earl of Derwentwater think and feel alike on all things; and that were it not for his friendship, his support, he should indeed find himself alone. May Heaven bless the good Earl of Derwentwater, if it is only that my lord finds comfort in him! and moreover, I know full well that he is as brave and as kind a gentleman as ever trod this earth."

"And what is to become of us, madam, if my lord and all the army are gone into England?"

"We must e'en wait, as we have done, my good Amy; and abide the result, as we have done."

"And must I still see you pine, and pine, and grow thinner and thinner? Alas! alas! these are weary times! I almost think it would be best to let King George alone upon his throne, and see if we cannot be as happy under him as we were under Queen Anne."

"Amy! you would not be a turncoat, would you? You, Rachael Evans's daughter!" answered Lady Nithsdale, in a tone of half-playful, half-serious reproof.

"Indeed, my lady, I would fain be loyal, for you, and my master are so, and my poor mother was loyal also to the last; but I can never love any king, whether a Stuart or no, as I love my own dear lady, who has been to me as mother, sister, friend, and mistress!" and the warm-hearted Amy kissed the countess's hand with devoted affection.

"You are a good girl, dear Amy; and I do not know how I should bear my present anxiety, and the sorrows that may await me, did I not feel assured I should ever have one true friend to lean upon in every exigency. Let what will come to us, Amy, I think I may count on your affection as long as I live."

"While there is breath in this body, while the pulses beat in this heart, my lady, Amy Evans shall be true to you and yours, through woe and through weal, for life and for death!"

Lady Nithsdale wept soft tears of gratitude; they rolled down her cheeks, they dropped on Amy's hands as she pressed them in her own, and the true-hearted girl wished not for farther assurances of her lady's affection.