And now he knew that the latter scene was what Magdalen had always dreaded for him.
‘I have brought her more pain than joy,’ he thought, as he rode down into the peaceful plains, and saw the trees and towers of Kinnaird rise dark above the marshland.
Here was the hill where he had met her in the still white night only a little over a year ago, when his desperate enterprise was untried, and he had not yet put it to the touch to win and lose it all.
The country people were beginning to call it the Marquis’ hill, she had lately told him, though they knew no reason to do so. Perhaps their memories were reaching back to the days of his boyhood, when he used to ride out from Old Montrose to fly his hawks on the uplands above the marsh, and would stop his impatient horse on that hill, and wave his scarf in signal to any from Kinnaird who might join his party.
He came to the deer-park, the orchards, the garden below the house, where he had often sat and talked with the head gardener, Daniel, and watched his keen, triangular old eyes scan the clouds that raced by above the massive garden walls.
He rode into the courtyard, and there left his horse, and looked up at the great silent house that had always been in a bustle at his coming. He could not speak to the servants; but in the hall he saw Lord Southesk coming towards him, so slowly that his questions died on his lips. But the old man was merciful, and spoke quickly.
‘She is not yet dead,’ he said, and then a moment later, ‘I knew you would do it.’
In his eyes, as well as anguish for his daughter, was anxiety for the man he loved as his own son. Middleton’s dragoons were patrolling all this part of the country, but he had known that the boy would win his way through them. And he had known that Magdalen would not die until he came.
Now he led the way to her room, telling Montrose in jerky, dropped words, every few steps, as to the nature of her illness. The doctors could not explain it, but she had not been strong since the birth of her last child; in the last two weeks she had had severe pains, fever, then become unconscious, as far as they could tell. In the last few days it had been certain that she could not live.
Her husband stood by her bed once again; he saw her now only as she would be when dead – the thin features sharply cut, the mouth a compressed line, the eyelashes shut upon her cheeks, their two half-moons darker than he had ever seen them, against that white, grey-shadowed skin. She was fast escaping him; his touch could not recall her.
They thought those close-shut eyes would not open again; but before her death they did, and saw him by her.
In the now cloudy blue of those eyes he knew so well, he could discern a hovering smile, as though to the end her love was capable of mockery. She triumphed, because, in spite of all the hazards and fearful odds against him, she was dying first. Peace had come to her, not with his death, as once she had fearfully foreseen, but with hers.
Their married life had been led under the shadow of tragedy. It was in the nature of the unquiet times, and Jamie’s headlong spirit, that together they must wreck their home. Yet her love and her courage had grown in proportion to that necessity. Of late years she had learned to ask nothing more of life than their love, knowing that that was of a measure such as few are accorded. She had not hoped, not because she despaired, but because to hope is to fear.
And now, not in despair, but in joy, she could at last relinquish him, and be glad that in so doing he would be free of her – released by losing the thing he held most dear. Whatever of disaster or tragedy came to him now, he would not have the agony of giving it to her.
Her life slipped from her with that smile, more easily than she had ever parted with any of her possessions.
He found himself, an hour later, still standing by the empty shell of that once sad and then gallant spirit. Nothing he could do would ever hurt her more. He had lost his dear and only love, the thing most precious in all the world. It would not matter to him now what happened; it would hurt only himself.
They have most power to hurt us whom we love;
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.
He had tortured her sleeping life with the long nightmare of her fears for him. Now she was safe from him; and he was free of her, as of all the world – as the saint or seer or absolute artist is free, to dedicate himself utterly to his cause. Her death, suddenly as it had fallen upon him, seemed now a thing fated and inevitable, so deeply was it in accord with the unspoken wish that he had known in her ever since their love began.
Epilogue
THE ETERNAL THINGS
1651
James, second Marquis of Montrose, looked out of his window, and saw a courtyard paved with red and white flags that glistened as smoothly as if the sunlight on it were an extra polish added by the industrious housemaids. The sunlight poured into a covered alley, and was sliced off by a transverse section of shadow from the arched roof. At the other end of this tunnel was a glimpse of another courtyard, where the sunlight was broken by an occasional glancing movement from a child in a white apron playing with a white-and-brown spaniel. There was a splash of red from a flower in a tub; the walls that rose round these neat, minute scenes were of warm red bricks, arranged in patterns that had been remembered since the Romans.
‘I like this place,’ said James to himself, as he turned from the large windows that went right up to the grooved wooden ceiling, to the room where their light fell so clear and pleasantly. The floor was of white and black marble tiles, clean as a scrubbed plate. Even the fine Persian rug was not permitted to encumber it, but was spread over the table. A spinet stood in a convenient light. On the cool grey walls hung a mirror and one good picture. The chimney-piece had two pillars in front of it and curtains drawn across it like a puppet stage; there was a little carved head over the arched doorway; and all round the base of those demurely plain walls was a row of blue and white Delft tiles, with a miniature picture on each.
James’ books stood so that he could see at a glance which one he wanted; only one corner was untidy; his golf clubs (he had found he would never use them in Holland) were jumbled behind his bow, which had seen a good deal of service at the archery meetings of ladies competing with the gentlemen in polite society. Here the weapons of early warfare were tamed to a social function as pleasant as the music parties, where men and women played their chamber music together, their primitive interest in each other transformed, absorbed, into the harmony of their art.
James found himself at home in this clean bright world, when the men showed so much practical common-sense and kindly humour under their high black hats, and the placid women, with smooth plump faces and solid knobs of fair hair, busied themselves so contentedly with the arts of making a home. Never had he seen so much washing and rubbing and polishing as in Holland, such insistence on the importance of all the little details of daily life, from the perfect pastry and rich vegetable soups cooked by the maids in their tight white caps, to the well-brushed little spaniels who flounced about after their mistresses’ silken skirts through the shining rooms, and never behaved there in the distressingly natural fashion that had so frequently occurred in Scotland.
When that name came into James’ head, in however trivial or casual a fashion, something in him stiffened and braced itself as if to prepare him against another shock. His present quiet existence would shiver into unreality beside the wild memories of his childhood – that glittering chain of his father’s victories, and the shadow of his mother’s silent fears – his father’s lightning visits to his home – his own visit to his father in his barbaric camp of heroes – the long months he had spent in prison in the Castle of Edinburgh, and then at last his release from it to find his mother dead, his triumphant father defeated, and his guardians’ only hope of safety for himself in sending him to be educated abroad.
So quietly had his mother lived and died, that three years later, owing to the confused state of all public business in her chaotic country, the rent-roll of her estates referred to her as though still al
ive – a grotesque contrary reply to the frequent public mention of her husband in his lifetime as ‘the late Marquis of Montrose’.
But now that anomaly was removed. Five years after his defeat at Philiphaugh, James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose, had been hanged, drawn and quartered in Edinburgh.
And since all images or thoughts of Scotland, however casual or trivial, led towards that grim scene wherein his father had been hacked in pieces before the public gaze, young James, second Marquis of Montrose, now turned hastily to his spinet, opened it, looked for an instant at the pale scene of trees and clouds painted inside its lid, sat himself on a broad, comfortable chair with a square of blue velvet fastened by gilt nails on to its seat, and began to play a charming fantaisie by Jacobus Clemens non Papa, which pleased his purist ear better than any of these strident, assertive moderns.
Here he was secure from tragedy, among these tripping, perfect notes, in this room like a blue-and-white porcelain plate. The smooth enamel of its walls, of all those trim walls outside, enclosed him. Yet so insecure a thing is solid material, so penetrating and intrusive is the imagination, that not all James’ five senses could keep him where he sat on the velvet seat of his broad and comfortable chair. Through walls, and notes of music, and sunlight on the patterned tiles, there showed a scene that he had not witnessed, of those tall crazy houses in Edinburgh, rising higher and higher, tottering over each other’s shoulders, alive with the single intention of all the watchers that craned from their doors and windows, to see the Great Marquis go by to a felon’s death.
It was of no use to go on playing against that dark scene. He got up, walked round the room, twirled his globe on its axis till America was uppermost, then Europe again, said aloud in the cool dispassionate voice that his mother had always laughed at, calling it his legal judgement voice – ‘My country is a sow that eats her own farrow’; and then in a sudden fury, very rare to him, beating his hands against the revolving world, ‘Why was I not at Kinnaird instead of young Rob and Jean – a couple of children; they could do nothing – I might have helped him to escape!’
It was more than a year since his father had been led as a prisoner through the country on his way to death, and had been allowed to see his younger children and his father-in-law as he passed by Kinnaird. James was then as now abroad. But now, as then, he could not remain so. The last six years were in his head more often than the present moment.
This was what happened in those years.
In the winter that followed his defeat at Philiphaugh and the death of his wife, Montrose set to work to raise another army. No sooner had he begun to win to this, than the King sent to tell him that the best way he could serve his cause was to lay down his arms, dismiss his soldiers, and exile himself from his country – for the King had decided to give himself up to his enemies.
Montrose left Scotland, and went from Court to Court of Europe to try and get help for his King abroad. Charles rode into the Covenanters’ camp on their promise of safeguard. Argyll handed him over to Cromwell’s army, on the day that he received their cartloads of deferred pay from the English Parliament.
Two years later, Charles was beheaded by order of Cromwell and the Parliament.
Huntly and Hamilton were executed within two months of their King, whose cause they had damaged as badly as any enemy had done, by their selfish and spasmodic attempts to combine it with their own personal motives. Huntly, who would only win glory if he did not have to share it with Montrose, now died more nobly but no more usefully than he had lived. Hamilton, who had risen too late to try and save his King, now fulfilled the uncertain prophecy that had clouded his life; he succeeded to Charles’ crown, as had been predicted, but the crown was a martyr’s, not a King’s.
The King’s execution caused a revulsion of feeling in Scotland. Argyll and the Covenanters had Charles II proclaimed King in Edinburgh, and sent commissioners to him at The Hague. They could give him the support of the Covenant; Montrose could give him that of a soldier who ‘never had passion upon earth so strong as to do the King your father service.’ Charles II thought he could use both; so that people in Scotland did not know if he were chiefly backing Montrose or the Covenanters.
The year after Charles I’s execution, Montrose landed in the north of Scotland, once more to raise it for the King, who all the time was negotiating with his enemies. At the outset of his campaign, his minute army, delayed by false hopes of reinforcements, was surprised and routed; Montrose had his horse killed under him; escaped into hills he did not know, and after three days of wandering, lost and starving, gave himself up to a man he had thought friendly to him. But the Laird of Assynt sold him to his enemies; he was taken by them to Edinburgh, to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Argyll hurried on the execution, without a trial, making use of the sentence that had been passed years ago upon his victorious enemy, who had then wandered free on the mountains and laughed at his threats. There was need of haste; a storm of protest and petitions against his death came from the different countries in Europe. They came too late.
Within a few weeks of Montrose’s death, Charles II went to Scotland to join the Covenanters, and was as much in Argyll’s power as if he had been a prisoner. But Cromwell returned from his destruction of Ireland, invaded Scotland with the whole force of his army, and smashed the Covenanters, first in their own country and then in his. Young Charles had again to fly into exile. Scotland was reduced to the state of a conquered province.
Old Lord Southesk, the moderate, was heavily fined ‘for wishing well to King and monarchy’. The Earl of Traquair, who had wobbled so anxiously in his efforts to be with the winners, was finally condemned as a loser, imprisoned, but set at liberty by Cromwell in ‘a kind of pity’, more cruel than any death sentence; he was deprived of all his estates, his son refused to help him, and he even begged for bread in the streets of Edinburgh.
The consequential Traquairs had become the most abject of poor relations. James’ letters from home were full of the trouble caused by their importunities; his grandfather and his uncle Carnegie refused to accord them even a pretence of sympathy.
‘They are like to go mad,’ wrote his young brother, Rob, whenever another begging letter came from their poor bewildered aunt, Catherine Traquair, who could not understand the cruelty of her father and brother, since she had flatly refused to believe in her husband’s treachery to Montrose. She had to ask her husband not to write any more to her father, since whatever he wrote was misinterpreted, and ‘let me say what I can to the contrary, it avails nothing.’
Sordid family quarrels which left an old man, who had been Lord Treasurer for Scotland, crawling in semi-starvation, like a winter fly about the streets he had known in his days of state – James could not bear the picture. He had longed to avenge his father on Traquair after Philiphaugh, but revenge should come swift and terrible, not through such slow degradation.
He was out of pocket as usual, his allowance had had to be cut very short since his father’s estates were destroyed and forfeit, and now there was this crippling fine on those of his mother’s family. But he began to look round on his possessions, which like his mother he treasured with such tender and precise care. His big globe, which already made him feel a traveller; his bow and spinet, equal links between him and the society of his friends; his books, essential to his pleasures as well as to his studies – it was agonizing to decide which of them all he could bear to part with. He had best do it by casting lots and then pretending that the object so chosen had been stolen, as though he had had no choice in the matter.
He was already pretending that his money would not help Traquair, but his aunt Catherine, whom he had always thought an objectionable woman, but she had once given him a tip and it was only fair now to pay it back. But how should he cast lots? He could think of no better way than standing in the middle of the room and pointing at everything in it while he said the old infantile counting game—
‘One-ery, two-ery, Diggor
y Davey,
Allabone, Crackabone, Henery Knavery,
Pin, Pan, Muskedan—’
It looked as though the spinet were going to be the one for ‘out goes he’; he had rather the picture went than that – he hurried it on breathlessly—
‘Twiddledy, Twaddledy, Twenty-one—’
There was the sound of flat, dragging steps; someone was coming down the passage through the open doorways. James’ voice dropped to a whisper, suddenly aware that he had been shouting, and his finger was still outstretched at arm’s length as he twirled it past the globe, and on to the chairs at
‘OUT spells out, and—’
A heavy slouching figure stood in the doorway.
There was still the Persian rug before the spinet. James dropped his finger, he uttered no further sound, but a smile of deep thankfulness did in place of the words ‘out goes he’.
Then he turned towards his visitor. He had never seen the man before, lumpish and shaggy – ‘a mangy bear’ were the words that shot into James’ mind. He held a parcel between his hands with the same clumsy care that a bear might hold a cake – an untidy parcel done up with knotted string and a torn copy of the French Gazette, while he peered at the youth before him under thick reddish-grey tufts of eyebrows. He said in a voice surprisingly musical and resonant like the deep melodious twang of a violoncello – ‘Are you my lord Marquis of Montrose? You are not like him.’
James felt himself flushing, and furious that he should do so. Why should he mind the testimony of this rude stranger with the face of a grotesque dummy? But he did mind, had always minded, that he was not like his father, as Johnnie had been. The man was too intent on some purpose of his own to notice his effect – he was pushing the parcel towards James, and his voice now almost muttering, was saying – ‘Take it – it is yours.’ His fingers pulled at the string, tore off the sheet of newspaper, and then a piece of rag, and James saw a pretty casket of fretted bold, and wondered where it was he had seen it before.
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