CHAPTER I

SHOWS HOW BARBARA STEWART LEFT SCHOOL

’Twas in the early hours of a dark December morning in the year 1714 that I was awakened suddenly by the cautious opening of the chamber door, and saw with blinking eyes the bare room where I slept with three of my school companions. The wavering flicker of a candle carried by a cautious hand showed me the night-capped heads upon their pillows, the bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, the staring, black, uncurtained window, and, the sight arousing no interest in my mind, I closed my eyes against the intruding light. Little Miss Gordon, the youngest girl in the school, who slept in the bed with me, raised a protesting arm across her face, and called out in accents sleepy and petulant, “Oh, Betsy, take that horrid light away. ’Tis not morning yet, I am but just fallen asleep!”

Now it has always been my custom to awake up instantly with all my senses on the alert. I say it not to boast, though the faculty hath served me well once or twice in my life, for some are born so, just as others are drowsy-heads from the cradle to the grave; but this being my habit, I had seen with the first opening of my eyes that it was not Betsy, the maid, who had entered our room, but no less a personage than Mistress Marget Lindsay, the younger of the two sisters who kept a boarding-school for young ladies in Paterson’s Court, off the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Now, Mistress Marget, besides being the younger of our school-mistresses, was the one least feared by their pupils; I had almost said the best loved, but in those days (I know not if it be so still), anything so gentle as love scarce entered into the training of young ladies at school. That she had a kind heart, however, I have been sure ever since that dark, winter morn, as, shading the candle with her hand, she came quickly to my bed-side and bent down to discover if I were still asleep.

“Miss Stewart, my dear--Barbara. Are you awake?” she cried softly.

I sat up in bed and untied my cap-strings, the better to hear what she had to say.

“I am awake, madam; what is it you want of me? Sure, ’tis not time yet for me to be at my exercises!” said I, a little alarmed at the gravity of her face.

She shook her head and sat down beside me on the bed.

“No, no, child; do not be alarmed! And yet I fear I have news that will disquiet you. A man-servant has come from Rosyth to take you home. You must rise at once and attire yourself for the journey.”

“A man-servant?” I repeated, obediently putting one foot out of bed. “Old Robert, belike. Oh, Mistress Marget!” I cried, stopping suddenly, “pray tell me at once what is wrong.”

With the truest kindness the good woman did not attempt to turn my thoughts aside from their fear. She answered immediately and without circumlocution.

“Your grandfather, Miss Stewart, has met with an accident, and ’tis feared he cannot live. He would see you, dear bairn, before he dies.”

There may be some who think this stern announcement to a young maid of sixteen somewhat wanting in tenderness and compassion. They may consider that to hint at a possible calamity, mentioning a severe illness or the like, but holding out hopes of a speedy recovery, would have been the kinder way. If so, I cannot agree with them. The progress of “preparing the mind” of any poor creature to receive a blow hath always seemed to me both cruel and useless. In many cases, the more sudden the shock, the more strongly is the mind braced to bear it for the moment; and so it was in my own case. I leapt from my bed and began hurriedly to put on my clothes.

“My grandpapa dying, and asking for me? Oh, Mistress Marget, I must hasten; I pray you, assist me with this lace. Will you not kindly tie these strings? Hath Robert brought the carriage? Ah no! the snow is too deep. I am to ride pillion? Yes, I must wear my thickest shawl and hood. Oh, do not hinder me, dear madam, I must be going now; I cannot keep Robert waiting another moment.”

“My dear Miss Stewart,” said my mistress, quietly detaining me while she tied a thick veil over my face, and searched for scarf and mits, “Robert is in the kitchen being warmed and fed. The good creature was almost lifeless from the cold. And do you think, my dear girl, that my sister would suffer you to leave her house at this hour fasting? There is no speed in such senseless haste as you know, and while I admire your courage and fortitude, and the eagerness you exhibit to do your grandfather’s behest, I must counsel you, my dear, to remember that patience is one of the highest virtues a woman can possess, and self-control is another.”

Tears rose in my eyes, not so much at the rebuke as in rebellion against it; for Barbara Stewart was ever hot and hasty in those young days, and indeed hath scarce yet learned to exercise the virtues extolled by good Mistress Marget in all the years that she hath lived. But chafe as I would at the delay, I was forced to go into the parlour, where the elder sister Lindsay, hastily attired, and with a shawl over her night-cap, waited for me in the candle-light with hot chocolate and buttered oatcake.

I think the strangeness of that morning scene, and the unwonted consideration with which I was treated, took my mind a little from the gravity of the situation. I know that it was not till I was mounted behind Robert, and clinging to the broad belt he wore as we paced along the stony street, that it entered into my head to ask him for news of my poor grandpapa. It was then that I heard how, in riding not many days before, his horse had slipped upon a piece of ice, and had thrown the poor gentleman with such violence that an old wound, got near twenty years before at the siege of Namur, had opened, and inflammation having set in, the doctor now gave little hope of his recovery.

“I’m thinkin’, mem, the Colonel’s juist waitin’ tae bid ye gude-bye,” said honest Robert very sadly.

The news made me grave and sober enough--sorrowful, too, and fearful, for my good grandpapa had been indulgent beyond the common, and, besides him, I knew of no other relative that I possessed in the world. My father, his only son, had been one of Webb’s most gallant officers, and had married in Flanders, after the Peace of Ryswick, Mademoiselle Jeanne de St. Pierre, the orphan niece of the French admiral of that name; for, as you know, love and peace grew and flourished between private individuals of the rival nations even while their countries were at daggers drawn. My mother, besides possessing wit and beauty, had a small fortune of her own, and she and my dear father lived very happily together, sometimes in Brussels, in Paris, or in London. But he, dying of fever, induced by wounds which he received at the taking of Liège in 1702, left his young widow and little daughter to the care of Colonel Stewart of Rosyth House in the county of Fife. My mother, fragile and broken-hearted, survived his death little more than a year. Thus, before I had reached my sixth birthday, was I bereft of both my parents.

Brought up with care and kindness in my grandpapa’s commodious house on the shore of the Forth, I had been sent at the age of thirteen to the Seminary for Young Ladies of Good Family, kept by the sisters Lindsay, and had just completed my third year in that select and fashionable school.

Such in brief was the story of my life down to that dismal winter morning which found me riding behind Robert Guthrie, my grandfather’s old servant, along the bare road that leads from Edinburgh to the Queen’s Ferry. Very bleak and cold it was, for the sun was not yet risen, and a chill wind blew right in our faces out of the north-west. The ground was covered with snow, and, though at another time I might have noticed with pleasure the purity of its whiteness in contrast to the grey sky and the black waters of the Firth (for all my life I have had open eyes and heart to the beauties of the earth) this day my mind was too full of anxious cares to allow me any such consolation. I was cold and cheerless enough with the nine miles ride when we reached the Hawse Inn, where we alighted to wait for the ferry-boat to take us across to the coast of Fife, and the good landlady bustled out with a cup of hot spiced claret to take the chill out of my bones, as she said. She brought me in to the warm fireside, and with many kind commiserating words she sought, in the fulness of her heart, to lighten my gloom. She had heard from Robert Guthrie how Colonel Stewart lay at the point of death, and, in her motherly way, she pitied the poor girl who was so soon to be left alone in the world. I thanked her with what courage I could muster, but when she saw that I could scarce restrain the trembling of my lips, she very wisely left me to myself and busied herself about her household tasks.

Almost at the moment when we stepped on board the ferry-boat, the sun, which was now some way above the horizon though wrapped in clouds, struggled forth from the enveloping mists, and in a very short time changed the aspect of the landscape from dismal gloom to sparkling radiance.

Before we were half-way across the Frith I was so far roused from my abstraction to note this change, and whether it was that, the day being a sort of landmark between the old life and the new, all impressions received then upon my mind retained a peculiar distinctness, I know not; but this I know, that though I have made the same crossing many scores of times since, whenever I think of the passage of the Forth, I see it as I saw it that winter morning. The noble river flowing between its ever widening shores sparkled in the early light, reflecting on its bosom the blue of the sky, broken here and there by little white waves that seemed to laugh to each other as they raced out to sea. The grey stone houses of the little town we had just left, with their red-tiled roofs, looked picturesque, all huddled down together to the water’s edge. Westward as I gazed, the tall thin masts of vessels moored at Charlestown and Borrowstownness, stood up slender and distinct in the clear air; and far away as a dream-like background the peaks of the majestic mountains, Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, Ben Muich Dhui, their summits crowned with gleaming snow, towered towards the pale blue sky. Near at hand, the fishing craft putting out from either coast, shot up their sails to catch the freshening breeze, and over all the sea-gulls flew restlessly, or dived into the water with wild, musical cries, their white wings gleaming in the sunlight.

For a moment I forgot my grief in the freshness and beauty of the morning, and turned for a sympathetic word from my companion, but at sight of his face I refrained. The old man was standing not far from where I sat, one hand upon the bridle of his horse, his head drooping, and his dim blue eyes fixed on vacancy. His kindly, weather-beaten face was very sorrowful, and I knew that he was looking far back into the past, when he and his beloved master had been young, for Robert had followed my grandfather to the wars, and they had been through many hardships and shared some triumphs together. Into my light and girlish mind came the thought that here was a grief ten times greater than my own, and in presence of it I felt strangely small and insignificant. Sandy, the horse, too used to the ferry-boat to be disturbed by the crossing, seemed to divine his old friend’s trouble in the curious way dumb animals have, for he rubbed his soft cheek against the groom’s shoulder with an affectionate, caressing motion.

My heart went out to the old man in his sorrow, and when two slow tears welled out of his eyes and rolled down his wrinkled face, I started up, impulsive as I too often was, and ran to his side to comfort him.

“Dinna greet, Robbie!” I cried, though softly, that the boatmen should not hear. “Dinna greet! I canna bear to see ye. You and me’ll aye be friends!”

He turned and smiled at my words, and I thought the smile was sadder than the tears.

“Eh, my bonnie wee leddie!” he said, as if I had been still but a bairn, “it’s Robbie has got a sair heart the day.”