CHAPTER XVII.

The less I may be blest with her company, the more I will retire to God, and my owne heart, whence no malice can banish her. My enemies may envy, but they can never deprive me of the enjoyment of her virtues, while I enjoy myself.--_Eikon Basiliké._

As the day began to dawn, and the grey winter light gradually illumed the narrow dirty streets, which the remains of snow rendered more than usually dreary, the Countess of Nithsdale wound her way to the Tower.

It was still too early to gain admittance, or even to be allowed to speak with the porter. The gates were not yet opened: she stood and gazed till her feelings were almost intolerably excited, and then she paced up and down with a quick and hurried step, till, abruptly stopping, she pressed the arm of her faithful companion, Amy, and pointing to the antique building, she cried, in an accent of despair, "He is there, Amy, he is there, and I cannot be with him!"

Amy looked with awe and vague fear at the spot, which, from our cradle, is united in our minds with the ideas of murder, the scaffold, open executions, and secret assassination. She trembled at the certainty that her dear master actually lay within its fearful precincts; and she turned an eye of commiseration on her lady, to think that she was, in sober truth, an actress in one of those tragedies of which we are apt to hear and read as of fictitious horrors.

They gazed upon the thick and muddy water of the moat, upon the lofty wall which rose on the other side, and in which the inhabitants, of whose dwellings it formed a part, had here and there opened windows, added gabled roofs, and pieced the ancient rough stone-work with brick additions of their own. This patch-work took off from its antiquity and solemnity, without imparting to such a building any air of comfort. On the contrary, it spoke of long residence within the narrow limits of a prison.

At length the clock struck the appointed hour, and she hastened to the gates to solicit an interview with the Lieutenant of the Tower.

After some delay, the request was granted, when she received the answer the Duchess of Montrose had led her to anticipate. The orders were most strict that none should be allowed to visit the prisoners before the day appointed for pronouncing sentence upon them; but hopes were held out to her that she might obtain permission to share Lord Nithsdale's confinement.

Had it not been for the duchess's caution, it is more than probable she would gladly have accepted the conditions: for to feel herself so near him, and yet to be withheld from seeing him;--to know that he was in solitude and sadness, looking only for her company to cheer him, and to refuse to share his prison;--to turn away when she had it in her power to look upon his face, to hear again that soft, deep, melodious voice,--alas! it was a sore trial! But she was firm in adhering to her resolution. Such, however, was her agitation, that as she tottered from the lieutenant's apartments, some of the soldiers, moved with compassion, offered her a seat for a few moments in the guard-room. One kindly brought her a cup of water, for which she did not fail to show her gratitude by deeds as well as words. He accompanied her to the outer gate; and she succeeded so well in working on his feelings of kindness and of self-interest, that she obtained from him a promise to exert himself in her behalf, and an assurance that when he was on guard, he would not watch too narrowly which way she passed.

With many a lingering look towards the dismal edifice, she tore herself away, but it was not without a hope of compassing by stealth the interview which she had been refused.

She hastened to her appointment with the duchess, when she did not fail to tell her how faithfully she had obeyed her injunctions, how resolutely she had even turned from his prison gates, when her heart burned to rush to her husband; but at the same time she imparted to her the hopes she entertained of seeing him through the means of the kind-hearted guard.

"If all that is said be true," answered the duchess archly, "it is not so difficult to gain access to the prisoners; a golden key is often more potent than an iron bar! Meantime, I would advise your exerting all the influence you may possess with my Lord Townshend and the Duke of Richmond. My husband tells me they are both likely to advocate measures of severity; and yet I should hope the Duke of Richmond would remember that the Earl of Derwentwater is his kinsman. The Earls of Danby and of Nottingham I spoke with last night, and I trust with good effect. They both promised they would second any petition from the prisoners. Some will certainly be pardoned; but, dearest cousin, we must exert ourselves to the utmost, and yet our zeal must be tempered with discretion. The earl your husband has, as I told you, many enemies; and I should be a false friend did I not confess to you that he is not one of those who are likely to be most leniently dealt with." Lady Nithsdale clasped her hands with such an expression of anguish that the duchess hastened to add, "But I know not, neither can any one know, in truth, what will be the sentence of the court. 'Tis all conjecture."

"But why, O why, should conjecture be unfavourable to my lord?"

"Nay, I cannot say. It may be--a Catholic,--his property on the very borders of the two countries,--his family so long attached to the Stuarts;--but all may yet be well. Circumstances may arise in his favour. Should the sentence be--be such as to blast our hopes,--they speak of a petition to be signed by the prisoners."

"My lord will never put his name to anything that may savour of dishonour. I know not what this petition may prove; but if it is such as should change any sentence that may have passed, I marvel if it can be such as it would become my lord to sign,--or such"--she added emphatically,--"or such as I could wish him to sign:" her voice broke, and she burst into tears at thus, as it were, with her own lips pronouncing his doom. "His life," she continued, as if to justify herself for what she had uttered, "must not be preserved at the price of honour!" and her delicate form reared itself, and her eye glanced upwards, as if to seek from Heaven the strength she so much needed.

The duchess sighed. "What a noble spirit," she thought, "is probably destined to be crushed! what a generous heart, in all probability, will be condemned to drink the bitter cup of sorrow to the very dregs!" She cast her dark bright eyes on the ground to conceal her emotion.

Lady Nithsdale saw the tears glistening in her eye-lashes: "You weep, cousin! you are weeping for me! Alas! alas! you know his doom. You know the counsels of those in power; and you know that they are his inveterate foes. You fear to tell me that you know it!"

"On my honour, I know nothing," repeated the duchess with solemnity; "but surely we all suspect and fear enough to draw tears from drier eyes and harder hearts than mine. My dear cousin knows of old, that a little thing will move me to smile, or to weep; so you must not augur ill from my childish weakness, but set it down to the account of Christian Montrose's variable temperament:" and she strove to smile through the tears which now flowed every moment faster down her cheeks.

After some farther consultation between the friends they parted, and at dusk Lady Nithsdale again repaired to the Tower. The accommodating guard was in attendance. He quickly and silently admitted her through the wicket. As she passed under the first archway, she fancied she perceived another muffled female figure who glided quietly on, as if accustomed to the way. The sight re-assured her, as it seemed to confirm what the duchess had told her of the potency of a golden key. In silence she crossed the bridge over the moat: she looked fearfully on all sides, dreading lest each form she saw might be that of some guard more strict in the performance of his duty; and doubting whether in a few moments she might be blessed with the sight of her husband, or whether she might be driven forth despairing to her desolate lodging.

When on the bridge, the masts of the vessels lying in the Thames were visible over the parapet. She could just distinguish them dark against the sky. She cast towards them a lingering look, and thought, "O that we were together on board the meanest of those vessels; together, on our way to life and liberty!"

They emerged from the gloom of the second archway, and keeping under the shadow of the southern wall, they passed, what seemed to her, a considerable distance between the lofty buildings. "Those are the warders' apartments," whispered the guard, pointing to the high wall to the north: "'Tis there that most of the rebels have their lodgings; go straight on, till you get to the Traitor's gate,--there, to the right,"--she shuddered as the word was uttered, and looked fearfully as he directed to the portals which are only opened to admit a prisoner, but never to send him forth to freedom;--"when you get there, turn to your left through the Bloody Tower,"--a more icy chill ran through her veins;--"then to your left again, up the steps, and you will see a girl who will lead you where you wish to go. I must not be seen any farther than this spot. I shall be on guard just an hour longer. Be sure you do not linger beyond that time, or you will never make your way out of this dismal place; and as for me! I shall pay a heavy price for my good-nature."

"Would I could adequately reward you for your charity!" answered the countess, pouring gold into his hand;--"but Heaven will not forget this deed of mercy!"

She found the girl upon the steps, as she had been led to expect, and she immediately followed her to a door about the centre of the building to the south of the court, when, bidding her wait for a moment, the girl disappeared. Lady Nithsdale trembled from head to foot: her heart seemed almost to stop its pulsations, so agonising was the fear that now, on the very threshold, something might occur to disappoint her hopes.

Intense as was her anxiety to see her husband, as the moment actually approached, a dread came over her at the notion of seeing him under such circumstances. Her thoughts were painfully broken in upon by the sounds of merriment and revelry which burst from one of the neighbouring windows--loud songs and shouts of laughter! They jarred upon her ear as something out of tune, unfitting for the place or season, and she wondered how gaolers could be so devoid of feeling as to indulge in noisy jollity, within hearing of their prisoners.

The young girl quickly returned.

"This is the moment, madam. The guards are all engaged; they are going to convey those prisoner lords, whom you may hear carousing within, back to their several apartments; and now you can slip up unperceived."

"The axe suspended over their heads," thought Lady Nithsdale, "and this unseemly recklessness! and shall such as they find mercy, while my lord----"

In a few seconds she had mounted the narrow stairs; passed the outer room, which was at that moment vacant; and the young maiden having gently unbolted the farther door, she found herself in her husband's presence!

He was reading by a dimly burning candle, and started at the sound of footsteps; but before he could ascertain the cause of this interruption, his wife was on his bosom, her arms were around his neck.

"I am here! I am with you at last! It is your own Winifred!" she exclaimed.

"Then Heaven has mercy still in store for me!" he replied.

For a few moments neither could speak. Words seemed all inadequate to express the strong emotions of joy, and of grief, which struggled in their hearts. The Earl of Nithsdale, whose mind was chastened, whose feelings were tempered by long confinement, was the first to recover his self-possession. "Now I see you, my love, I am indeed no longer comfortless! Oh, Winifred! I have passionately longed for this blessed moment! It is five long months since we parted, love;--I have counted the days, the hours;--there has not been one in which I have not required your gentle strength, your trusting patience, to support me or to soothe me. Thanks be to Heaven that has vouchsafed to me once more the joy of beholding you!"--and he lifted her gently from his shoulder, on which her head had sunk.--"And now let me look upon that dear face, and from those pure and holy eyes draw faith, submission, and resignation." He gazed upon her for some moments with a tenderness, which, as he gazed, increased in intensity. "Alas!" he suddenly exclaimed, and flinging his arms upon the table, he hid his face in his hands--"Alas! it is not thus I shall learn to submit cheerfully to my fate! To see you once again!--to hear that voice--to press that beloved form once more to my heart--to feel that if my life were spared, it would be to pass that life with you, for you! oh! this does not reconcile one to what must be----" Then checking himself, he added, in a calmer tone, "But are you well, my love? you have not suffered on your journey? And the children?--you hear of them? I know not how it has fared with them for many, many weeks. Poor innocents!"--And the thought that he should never see them more, made his voice quiver as he spoke.

"Oh, they are well, and safe, and happy, in health and freedom, in a more favoured land than this!"

He looked up, and a smile illumined his features; but by the dim light of the solitary taper his countenance looked wan, and the last few months had left deep traces of care upon his brow.

"You are ill!" she exclaimed in affright; "you must be ill."

"Nay," he replied, with gentleness, "my health is unimpaired; and now my Winifred is come, my spirits will soon be cheered."

"Alas! I have seen you pale before, and I have seen you sad; but never, never did I see you look thus!"

"Time will do its own work, dearest! and I am older by some months than when you saw me last. My Winifred must not quarrel with her husband," he added, smiling, "because age steals upon him with no gentle hand. Oh! is it not our wish, our most earnest wish, my love," he continued, with solemnity and tenderness, "to see each other grow old? And do you not think that if we should be spared to each other, years would only rivet still closer the bonds which unite us; that for every charm which may depart with youth, there would arise a thousand recollections of mutual kindnesses, mutual sufferings, ay, and mutual joys, (for we have known many days of happiness,) which would still render us more dear, one to the other? Methinks that when that delicate form shall have lost its roundness," and he passed his arm around her slender waist; "and when those eyes shall have lost their brilliancy, and that clear forehead its smoothness; when these soft curls," and he pressed to his lips one of the two or three long curls which, according to the fashion of the time, were suffered to fall on her neck,--"when these soft brown curls shall be mixed with grey--that my Winifred would be, if possible, more precious to my heart than she is even now; for I should remember that those eyes have been dimmed with tears for me, that smooth brow care-worn on my account." Lady Nithsdale wept softly, unresistingly; she struggled not against her tears, for she was almost unconscious that they flowed. "Should those blessed days ever come to us, Winifred, the recollection of this hour will be sweet; and should there be no future for me----"

"There will be none for me," she quickly interposed; "I feel assured," and she pressed her hand against her heart--"I feel assured, there would be none for me!"

"Hush, hush, dearest!--remember the children; they must not be orphans:--but we will not unnerve ourselves. I have still much to hear: as yet I have thought but of myself,--I blush that private feeling should so wholly have engrossed me. Did you see the king? for thus I must still call him, though I well see that he is fated never to rule over this land. And I begin to think that it might not be for the general weal that he should do so. The sight, the actual sight of civil war, makes one view matters in a different light."

"Yes, my dearest lord, I waited on his majesty at Scone; for I imagined you would have wished me so to do."

"Assuredly, assuredly!"

"Though many whom we believed to be his most faithful adherents heeded not the summons to attend him, I thought that my dear lord would be the more anxious I should not be backward in my service."

"My Winifred judged of my feelings as she is ever wont. And did the king receive you graciously?"

"Yes, graciously; they told me most graciously: but I know not how it was; he seemed ill at case, suffering in body and in mind. He said as much, I suppose, as is usual and fitting; and yet, methought, under the circumstances, there lacked something of that warmth which might have relighted the expiring flame of loyalty in one's bosom."

"The expiring flame of loyalty in your bosom, my Winifred? If I had spoken so, having seen all I have seen!"

"Oh! but I have seen enough! I passed through the blackened ruins of the burned villages,--burned by his own orders. I saw the houseless inhabitants of what once were flourishing and happy homes; I saw the helpless children perishing in the snow, the old and the infirm without a shelter; I saw the desolated fields; and I had heard--oh! I had heard how the noblest of the land had been treated on their approach to this city, and I felt that it was for his sake that my husband had been pinioned, that his hands hail been tied with cords; for his sake that he had been exposed to the gibes of the multitude! And there he stood, cold and unmoved, and 'hoped my good lord's health continued unimpaired!' Oh! at that moment my loyalty died within me! and I felt--oh! how agonisingly did I feel--that we had sacrificed all for one who was little worthy of the sacrifice!"

"Alas! I have, as you know, long feared that such was the case. His spirit has been early crushed, and it does not possess the elasticity to spring up again. They still retain Perth. Do they expect to hold it?"

"The proclamation orders that a public thanksgiving for King James's safe arrival should take place on the 26th; but there were vague rumours that the Earl of Mar had resolved to evacuate the town; still these were only rumours."

"A thanksgiving for his safe arrival!" Lord Nithsdale repeated with a faint sad smile; "one for his safe departure would be more to the purpose, I fear. Did you see the king but once?"

"It was on my return from Scone I received the good duchess's letter, and you may well imagine I did not linger on the way."

"Some one told me the roads were impassable from the snow; that all carriages were stopped, and that even the post was delayed; so I did not look for you to cheer me yet."

"I rode from York," she replied, "with Walter Elliot and our faithful Amy Evans."

"You, Winifred, who never could be persuaded to mount the gentlest and best-paced palfrey!"

"Oh! I forgot those foolish fears, those fears which were bred of too much happiness, and of being too tenderly cared for; I never thought of any fear but one--that of being delayed on my journey."

"My own love! that soul of thine will ever have the mastery over that fragile form."

"Hark! The clock strikes. I have but a few moments more. The hour is wearing away. I have seen the duchess, and she has told me to whom I must most strenuously apply; and she has warned me that I must not do what, as you may well believe, my heart would prompt,--share your prison. I must be at liberty to act in your service: but I have bribed a kindly guard, and he will admit me when it is possible. I understand others, without the holy claim I have, gain access to some within the walls: so trust me, I shall soon be here again; and, as I hope, with news to cheer us both." Lord Nithsdale shook his head slightly, but then, with an assumed cheerfulness, listened to what she had to communicate. "Lord Danby and Lord Nottingham are friendly; the Duke of Richmond, though not friendly, cannot be forward in the prosecution, related as he is to Lord Derwentwater; and I feel persuaded the next news from Scotland will be such as to quiet the fears of government."

"And is the time come when one calculates upon the failure of the cause to which oneself and all one's house have ever been devoted?"

"Nay! can I now think of any cause but my own dear lord's? such days are past, and gone forever! To accomplish all that may he compassed with honour is now my first, my only object!" and she tore herself from the husband who, whatever might be her devotion to him, repaid her with the love and reverence he might feel for a guardian angel.

She was gone! He remained in his solitude, gazing upon the door through which she had disappeared, and almost doubting whether he had been blessed with her actual presence, or whether it had not been a cheering vision vouchsafed to him in mercy.

How often had he thought that were she near to console and to support him, he could meet his fate without a murmur. He fancied that the bitterest part of his present condition was the entire separation from her who was the partner of all his feelings, the depositary of his sorrows, the sharer of his anxieties. But alas! while life was so dreary, so joyless, so irksome, it was far less precious to him than when the sight of her had brought before him all he was to lose. He was sad, hopeless, resigned before. He felt that, if wrong, he had not been wilfully so in the course he had pursued; he consoled himself with the reflection that no stain could rest on his fair fame; that, though his name might be attainted, he left behind him to his children a character of unblemished honour. He had deliberately, and with little hope of any better result than the present, upheld the pretensions of the prince for whom he was now suffering; and he felt it would not become him to repine at an event to which he had always looked forward as probable.

An honourable death in battle, a more awful one on the scaffold, or at best an eternal banishment, were the alternatives which he had ever contemplated; and he thought he had schooled his mind to acquiesce calmly in the fulfilment of that which awaited him, although it might be the least welcome of the three.

Once more to see his beloved wife, to pour forth all his thoughts and feelings into her bosom, to deliver to her his last injunctions concerning his children, to arrange with her some plan for her future life, to give and to receive the last adieux, and then placidly and composedly to lay his head upon the block,--such had been the course in which he had guided his feelings and his reflections.

He had seen her! He had felt how dearly he was loved! He had felt what charms life still possessed for him! He had also felt how utterly impossible it was that she could ever acquiesce as he did in his fate, how completely her happiness was bound up in his! And where were now the resignation,--the cheerful submission,--the philosophical indifference with which he had brought himself to anticipate his probable sentence?

Never since the first night he had become an inmate of the Tower, had he experienced such a struggle of conflicting feelings! The picture which he had himself drawn of the gradual approach of age, of the happiness of descending hand in hand into the vale of years, had awakened a desire of life which he had hoped no longer lurked within his bosom, and it required the aid of prayer to subdue, and all the pride of man to conceal, the agitation of his mind.