Kingsconnell, a tale

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KINGSCONNELL, A TALE. BY MRS. GORDON, AUTHOR Of "THE FORTUNES OI THE FALCON ARS." " The solemn curse of a widow _ad. Above the grave of her darling dead, Will fester and wither the joy and fame Of the fairest lands, and the proudest name : Nor years, nor tears, will efface the shame." Rev. J. C. Eable. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON : THOMAS CAUTLEY XEWBY, PUBLISHER, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE 185 0. TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF M. S. W. THE FOLLOWING TALE, BEGUN AT HER REQUEST, AND CONCLUDED IN HER SOCIETY, 3g 3nErrih& BY THE SISTER, WHOM HER DEPARTURE HAS TAUGHT THE FULL MEANING OF THOSE WORDS, " THE ONE SHALL BE TAKEN AND THE OTHER SHALL BE LEFT." "What 'vails the world should know That one poor garland, twined to deck thy hair, is hung upon thy heaese, to deoop and withee there." KINGSCONNELL, A TALE,

Chapter I

" 'Tis true, bright hours together told, And blissful dreams in secret shared Serene or solemn, gay or bold, Shall last in fancy unimpaired. Even round the death-bed ofthe good, Such dear remembrances will hover, And haunt us with no vexing mood, When all the cares of earth are over. But yet our craving spirits feel We shall live on, though fancy die; And seek a surer pledge — a seal Of love to last eternally." Christian Year. " How happy they are, Helen ! Look at them, innocent creatures ; like two little lambs at play, are they not ? How impossible it is to believe that we were once the same ! If poor Harry could but see the darlings now." VOL. I. ' B KINGSCONNELL. " And what shall you do, Beatrice, when I am gone as well as Harry ? My own Beatrice, why must I go and leave you ? Who will ever love me as you do ?

Who, next to Harry, will ever love you and these darlings like me?" The speaker, a lovely girl of two-and twenty, turned from the window at which both were seated, watching the gambols of two little children on the grass-plat in front of the house : and as her sister, who might be about four years her senior, entwined her arm around her, hid her face upon her bosom. " My own little Helen !" exclaimed the elder, " don't say so ; — don't make me think you regret. You do not mean that, Helen ? I trust you will be very happy, dearest. And it is not as if you were going to a very great distance. I shall miss you sadly, my Helen ; you know I shall ." She paused abruptly, then resumed in a faltering voice, "But to think of you as happy will be the greatest con solation I can have. To do otherwise would be too dreadful.

And yet at times I cannot help feeling so anxious ! My Helen, you have no one but me to advise you; — do not have any secrets from me. Tell me the whole truth KINGSCONNELL. whilst there is still time. You do not regret having accepted George Sempill." " No, Beatrice," replied the younger sister, raising her head, and wiping away the tears which had been silently falling during these words; "no, dearest, I do not indeed. I shall try all I can to be happy, and to make him so. I told him the whole truth, you know, and said I could never feel again as I had once felt ; but that was all over, all at an end; and I knew myself well enough to be sure that I could love him, and be happy with him ; and with this assurance he was satisfied : and I know I can. It is not difficult to gain my affections ; a little kindness goes a great way with me.

I don't think you need be uneasy about my future lot with him. But there are times, Beatrice, when such a choking recollection comes over me, that I must leave you and these children, and this house, where we have lived together, and never be to you again what I have been. And you so solitary — so sad ; Harry's return so uncertain ! To think of you sitting here alone, and I far away ! And my little darlings— dear, dear little ones ! Who will help you then to nurse and play with them ? I wish he had never b KINGSCONNELL. asked me to marry him. Beatrice, I cannot bear to leave you. There never were two sisters all we have been to each other. Why did I promise to leave you ?" As she uttered these broken sentences, the tears again burst forth, and were mingled with those which Beatrice could no longer restrain.

They were nearly all the world to each other, these orphan sisters ; and it was little wonder that the idea of their approaching separation, though from a cause usually deemed matter of congratulation alone, should fill both their hearts with sadness. It was some time ere either could again command her voice to speak. The elder was the first to regain composure. " This will never do, Helen," she said. "It is weak in me to give way ; I, who ought to encourage you. Let us remember how much we have to be thaukful for : how dif ferent things might have been ! We have had many many happy days together since I was married, Helen, though some sad ones too; and now that you must leave us, it is not to any immeasurable distance, not as if you were going abroad. You will sometimes come down from London to visit us, as all George's friends KINGSCONNELL. are in Scotland too ; and think of the delight of meeting !

Poor Harry, too, may have returned by that time. I trust we have many happy days before us, Helen." " God grant it, dearest !" ejaculated the younger sister. " And I believe it too ; but there are times when one feels such strange forebodings : and why should we not relieve our hearts by speaking the truth to each other? We are alone, and we have not many nights to be alone now. The memories of our youth come crowding upon us at such a time ; and soon, very soon, Beatrice, neither you nor I will have any one near us to whom we can say, 'Do you remember?' A husband's affection may be very delightful ; I know it is, because I have seen what Harry is to you ; but in that respect, it cannot equal a sister's or a brother's, what I imagine a brother's love, and what I know a sister's to be." " It is very true, Helen.

Certainly it is not so with all sisters. How unlike Harry's sisters are to you and me in that respect, though I am sure they are attached to each other in their own way. How unlike they are to him ! But we two, orphans before we knew the meaning (i KINGSCONNELL. ofthe word, and meeting with so little tender ness, though much real kindness, there has been something in our situation which has drawn us so closely together. No after-tie can ever replace that one. And why should it? I cannot understand why it should be supposed, that because you love your husband with your whole heart, you are to cease to love your sister so dearly as before. Is one's heart not large enough for both affections, and many more besides ?" " Some people think not ;" said Helen . " How they mistake ! That selfish, exclusive affection which can love only one object, is not worth having; and no more is the affection which would have you sacrifice every other object to it ; and yet I suspect many men feel so, Beatrice.

It has been the great blessing of our lives that Harry is not one of them." " So it has ;" exclaimed Beatrice. " Harry is as much your brother as I am your sister, Helen. He does not know the meaning of the word jealousy." " And I am going from all this affection ! Can I hope to meet with its like again ?" was Helen's mournful rejoinder. She leant her KINGSCONNELL. head upon her hand, and sat in silence for a few minutes, her eyes brimfull of tears, which it wanted but a word to set a flowing, fixed upon the sports of her little nieces, as they rolled and tumbled over each other on the grass. Suddenly the little one tripped her feet and fell, uttering a loud cry. " My darling, my pet !" exclaimed the young aunt, springing out of the small French window of the little drawing-room where they sat, and catching up the crying infant.

" Did aunt Helen's pet hurt itself? Never mind; we'll kiss it and make it well. Come and have a romp with aunty." " Come and have a romp with aunty Elly," repeated the elder of the two little rosy children, jumping and clapping her hands: and while their mother sat watching them with a sweet sad smile, they chased their favourite playfellow, now laughing as gaily as themselves, from walk to walk of the little garden ; now playing at bo-peep behind a bush of fragrant lilac, now shaking down a shower of white and golden blossoms, as they scrambled through a miniature thicket of syringas and laburnums, loaded with the rich luxuriance of their KINGSCONNELL. lovely flowers ; and at last, panting and breath less, sinking all together on the grass-plat, the children clinging round the neck of Helen; their golden curls, as their little bonnets fell off in their sport, mingling in beautiful confusion with her long dark brown ringlets, and their soft cheeks, and bright red lips pressed to hers in innocent endearment.

It was an exquisite picture ; illuminated as it was by the warm beams of one of the loveliest sunsets of early June ; and enhanced by the atmosphere of fragrance around, the delicious scent of the flowers, and by the evening songs of the thrush and blackbird from amongst the shrubs aud trees of the garden. Long did its memory re main with her who sat gazing upon it ; long after the flowers had faded, the birds ceased to sing, and summer and sunshine departed with Helen. The game of play was brought to a conclusion by the appearance of the children's nurse, to announce the unwelcome arrival of bed time ; and the little Beatrice and Helen, one five, the other two years old, were dismissed with many a tender kiss, after each in turn bad knelt at her mother's knee, and lisped out the KINGSCONNELL. words of the simple evening prayer.

The sisters then drew their chairs to the little round tea table, placed near the window, which was their favourite seat, and lingered long over that pleasant meal, forgetting the time in talk half sad, half hopeful, as recollections of the past, and anticipations of the future in turn pre dominated. The removal of the tea equipage was at this sweet season the signal for the evening walk, which was the great enjoyment of their quiet day ; and it was not omitted on this night ; though from the hour being later than was customary with them, they did not extend it to its wonted length. Mrs. Henry Lockhart, the elder Beatrice of our narrative, occupied a small house at Morn ingside, one of the southern suburbs of Edin burgh, during the absence of her husband, a young naval officer on foreign service.

In these days — for we are speaking of six-and thirty years ago — this place, now so populous, was almost the country ; and the sisters loitered unmolested out of doors till long after moon light had succeeded to the lingering splendour of the sunset sky. Then they reluctantly turned b KINGSCONNELL. their steps to the house ; and after a visit to the nursery, to look at the innocent sleepers there, each in her little white nest, they re entered the sitting-room ; and with one consent agreeing that this was not a night to be shut out for candles, they placed themselves side by side on the small couch by the window, and while the moon looked in upon them through the tall shrubs round the grass-plat, sat talking there together, as those talk who feel that the hours of unrestricted intercourse are numbered for them.

Their conversation turned upon the children, that inexhaustible theme of interest to a mother's heart ; and scarcely less so to that of the youthful aunt, who almost regarded them as her own. " Strange, would it not be, Helen," said Beatrice, " if this second Beatrice and Helen were to resemble the first in more than their names ; if our fate were to be, as I sometimes cannot help fancying it will be, repeated, acted over again iu them \" " Our fate, my own Beatrice ! Orphans from early childhood— left to the kindness of, not strangers certainly, but something very KINGSCONNELL. 11 different from parents ! Our fate, in all the trials of motherless youth, — unloved, un guided as we were ! My fate, — in — in what I never can forget ! Oh, Beatrice ! why do you even dream of such things? Why, full of life and youth, and health, indulge for a moment in such causeless forebodings V " I don't indulge in them, dearest.

May God forbid they ever should be more than causeless forebodings. I know the future is in a Father's hand ; I am almost always able to leave it with Him. What, as my poor Harry says, would a sailor's wife be, if she could not trust in the protecting care of Providence ? But I do believe, Helen, that there is sometimes a prescience about a mother's heart, with regard to the future lot of her children, greater than can be accounted for by reason. This fancy, if it be so, of mine, though I never named it to you before, has come upon me many a time, with as little apparent cause as it has just now. I do not think, somehow, that I shall live to see my girls grow up to womanhood; and yet you know I have no reason to say so. Now don't cry, Helen darling ! your tears are very near your eyes to KINGSCONNELL. night.

It may be only a fancy. I never allow myself to dwell upon it, I assure you, dear." " Do not name it, Beatrice ! I will not think of such a thing. We know what it is to be motherless. Did it ever strike you, Beatrice, that while there are many promises in the Bible to the fatherless, no mention is ever made there of the motherless child. It would almost seem as if the one were an affliction occurring in the ordinary course of God's pro vidence ; the other an extraordinary manifesta tion of his judgments." " Perhaps, dearest, that is scarcely a safe or right thought," replied the sweet earnest voice of Beatrice. " There are many other afflictions of wliich no particular mention is made in the Bible ; but we are commanded to cast all our burdens upon the Lord, aud He shall sustain us. Certainly no heavier calamity can befall a young girl, or one involving consequences that may more completely affect her whole after life.

All the dangers against which a mother can warn her child, all the sins and follies of unbridled youth, which she may check in her, the motherless girl must too often encoun ter, unarmed, and learn to shun by harsh KINGSCONNELL. experience. And how few people ever consider this in judging of creatures so left to them selves." The sisters remained silent for some little space — a silence full of many thoughts. Their hearts were overflowing with all the painful tenderness called forth by the subject of their conversation, and the memories to which it gave rise ; but one hope, one prayer, predomi nated over all. If it were so ordained, that the creatures they so dearly loved were to tread in the paths they had done, might it be granted that the same alleviation of all its ills, the same fullness of sisterly love and union might also be bestowed on them !

" No one knows, my Helen," said Beatrice, " what we have been to each other. We must soon be parted now ; but is it not a blessing to be able to reflect that we have never embittered the time we have spent together by any un kindness, that we have done all we could to make each other happy ? Often shall I recall you, Helen, when I sit in this silent room, and you are far away ; and you, too, will recall me in your distant home, darling. Often may we have to weep over days of such unre- KINGSCONNELL. strained intercourse as never can return again ; but at least there will be no self-reproach — no remorse in our sorrow ; aud all sorrow can be patiently borne save that. Oh ! may such affection as ours be the portion of our 1 ttle ones ! and then they will possess a balm for every trouble that may be sent them."

The mother's foreboding heart had not de ceived her; but her prayers were not in vain. The blessing they called down bore witness to their efficacy, long after the loving lips which breathed them had mouldered in the dust. KINGSCONNELL.

Chapter II

" Spite of tempests, spite of danger, hostile man and hostile sea, Gory field of lost Culloden! I have come to gaze on thee!" Mrs. D. Ogilvy. " He was among the prime in worth, An object beauteous to behold ; Well born, well bred ; I sent him forth Ingenious, innocent, and bold. Wordsworth. Beatrice and Helen Alexander, were the de scendants of an ancient family in the north of Scotland, Episcopalians, and, of course, Jacob ites, for the terms in Scotland were in old days nearly synonimous. Their great grandfather, Alexander of Blair Alexander, already an old man when Prince Charles Edward's landing kindled the flames of war in the highlands, KINGSCONNELL. might have stood for the original of this noble picture. " He was the first that bent the knee when The Standard waved abroad, He was the first that charged the foe on Preston's bloody sod, And ever, in the van of fight, the foremost still he trod, Until, on bleak Culloden's heath, he gave his soul to GOD, Like a good old Scottish Cavalier, all of the olden time."* Happier than many equally devoted adhe rents to the cause, he did not survive the fatal day which witnessed its ruin.

He fell at Cul loden; and his eldest son, a young man of five-and-twenty, who had accompanied him to the field, managed, after innumerable perils, to effect his escape to France. Another son, then a mere boy, was protected and maintained, after the forfeiture of his father's property, by some distant relations, who subsequently placed him in a mercantile house in Glasgow. The exiled chief of the name meanwhile obtained a commision in Lord Ogilvie's regi ment. He was a man endowed with great attractions of person and manners, enhanced by the interest attaching to his romantic his- • W. E. Aytoun. KINGSCONNELL. tory, and the strange tale of his adventures and escapes, between the hour that saw him drag himself wounded and despairing from amongst the heap of slain around his father's body on the field of Culloden, to that in which he turned on the deck of the vessel which bore him away, to fix one last look on the hills of Scotland; and ere he had been above a few years in France these attractions had won him the heart and hand of a young widow, possessed of considerable fortune.

Part of her income died with herself, within ten years after their marriage ; but a sufficient portion had been secured to her husband and only son to support the former in a state of independance during the remainder of his own life, which enabled him not only to extend assistance to many of his less fortunate brothers in loyalty and in exile, but to procure for his son every advantage of education which was within the reach of one so situated. It is not necessary to our narrative to pursue his history further than merely to say that he died in Flanders, iu the year 1773 ; and that his son, Charles Louis Alexander, then a lad of twenty, shortly after arrived in Scotland ; having been recom- KINGSCONNELL. mended by his departed parent to the guardian ship of his brother, with whom he had kept up a frequent correspondence ; and who was now a wealthy partner in the firm already men tioned.

Mr. Alexander was a Glasgow merchant of the old aristocratic school, existing at a time when cadets of the best families in the west of Scotland were to be found iu the mercantile houses of that city, but of which no trace is now left. Living in the very strong-hold of Presbyterianism and whig principles, he still cherished in his heart of hearts two separate mines of romance, which formed the elevating and softening elements in an otherwise stern and rigid character. These were loyalty to the House of Stuart, albeit now dwindled to the shadow of a shade, and devoted attachment to his own proscribed Communion. During these dark days for the Church in Scotland, which ensued after the victory at Culloden, and con tinued with little abatement of the rigour of persecution for many subsequent years ; when fine, imprisonment, outrage of every descrip tion, were the prices exacted from her sons for their allegiance to her, Mr. Alexander's house KINGSCONNELL. in Glasgow was a private rendezvous for all Episcopalians who chose to resort to it; and became, under cover of the most profound secrecy, the frequent scene of the ministrations of an Episcopal clergyman.

The same feelings and principles which actuated himself on this subject he sedulously inculcated on the son and daughter who comprised the whole of his family; the former about three years his cousin's junior, the latter, Miss Violet Alex ander, a year younger than he. Such being the sentiments of his uncle, it need scarcely be doubted that young Alexander, the living likeness of that brother who had so heroically devoted himself to the good cause, and now himself the head of their ancient house, met with a warm welcome under the roof to which his father's dying wish had con signed him as a home. It would, indeed, in dependently of such considerations, have been difficult to withhold affection and kindness from a youth who inherited all his father's fascination of person and address, heightened by the vivacious temperament of his mother's country.

Yet these very circumstances, after the first excitement of novelty was over, and KINGSCONNELL. the edge of grief for his father in some measure taken off, tended to revolt him—educated as he had been where the amenities of life are so much more studied than at home, — with the strict discipline, almost the gloom of a Scottish household in those days. He looked back to the fetes, the social intercourse, the sunshine of life upon the Continent, with the keenest regret ; and with something very like disgust upon the very different manners and habits around him; positively declined following his uncle's profession ; and as his political principles excluded him from that of arms, which would otherwise have been his choice, finally resolved upon repairing to Edinburgh for the purpose of studying for the Scottish bar, the only resource which appeared open to him, as to most young men of family at that period.

Departing, therefore, from the grave and sombre house in Glasgow, young Alexander turned his steps towards the ancient capital of Scotland, carrying with him, along with the warm interest which his uncle's reserve and austerity of demeanour obscured, but could not altogether conceal, many anxious fears and KINGSCONNELL. forebodings on his part respecting the future of one, beneath the charms of whose exterior he had not failed to discover the germs of strong passion, love of expense and show, and wilful impatience of restraint. Unconsciously to himself, he carried with him something more than this, the hidden, but not less intense affection of his cousin Violet. Nothing would more have amazed him than the discovery, had he ever chanced to make it, of the feelings with which he, by far the most attractive person she had ever beheld, had inspired this shy, plain, silent girl of sixteen, educated by a rigid mother in a sedulous discharge of domestic duties, and with a degree of reserve and stern ness which effectually implanted the habit of concealing every thought or feeling likely to call down reproof, as every thought and feeling at all out of the beaten track was certain to do.

Not even her mother ever penetrated her secret. Her father, strange to say, perhaps from a stronger sympathy between them on that point, had a deeper insight into his daughter's heart ; and at an after period he came to suspect it, though the subject was never breathed between them. It dwelt in KINGSCONNELL. silence within the very depths of her soul ; a passion whose roots struck farther down as its outward manifestations were restrained ; fed by brief occasional visits from its object to her father's house, after it ceased to be his home, and kept alive by the brooding dreams of memory more than of hope ; for of that element, from the first, it had contained little. But to see Charles Louis Alexander, to hear his voice, to hang upon his words, to catch his sunny smile, however limited their individual intercourse, was joy enough for Violet; to meditate over all these when he was absent, her dearest solace.

This was the one ingredient of poetry in a prosaic existence, the one romance in her still and quiet life of needlework, housekeeping, formal intercourse with a limited circle, and devotional exercises. On this the repressed feelings of a strong character expended themselves ; its anxious fluctuations kept her mind for some years in a state of perpetual tension beneath her calm exterior ; and its final termination, the downfall of all her dreams, performed in a few days the work of many years ; and left her a stern, stately, prematurely-aged woman. How many such KINGSCONNELL. 23 histories of passionate devotion and bitter disappointment lie hidden beneath the surface which is all that meets tbe eye in daily life, and which is frequently so false an exponent of the depths beneath ! The unconscious object of her preference, from the period of his esta blishing himself in Edinburgh, was daily less likely either to discover it, or if he should do so, to value it as it deserved, for every day found him becoming more and more a magnet of attraction in the best circles there, and more and more involved in the gaiety and dis sipation of that time.

Aud however much, with our modern ideas, we may marvel how our grandfathers and grandmothers contrived to live through the day, and sleep at night within the narrow limits imposed upon them by the small size of their crowded dwellings in the Edinburgh of those days, however we may puzzle our brains over the most difficult problem of all, where a party of ladies collected in a sitting-room of that period, managed to find room for their hoop petticoats, — there is no question that the highest class of society then to be found within the walls of the Good Town, was of a stamp for which we may look KINGSCONNELL. in vain through the elegant abodes of modern Edinburgh. The unjust and pernicious system of centralization, which is fast reducing the metropolis of an ancient kingdom to the con dition of a provincial town, had not then begun to exert its evil influence; the wealth which increased so rapidly during the war, had not yet been poured forth upon the landholders of Scotland ; and her nobles, and the highest class of her gentry, were not as yet ashamed to take up their winter quarters regularly in her capital.

In such society, and entering freely into all the license sanctioned amongst young men by the manners of the day, Charles Alex ander shone as a star of the first magnitude ; and during his visits to his uncle's house, still diminishing in length and frequency, the latter perceived, and made many ineffectual efforts to arrest the rapid growth of lawless impulses in his character, aud the ascendancy of error and wrong principles over his mind. At last his wild and faulty career as an unmarried man came to an abrupt conclusion in his elopement with a young lady of family, whom he carried to France, as much in order to shield her from the indignation of her connexions, as to renew KINGSCONNELL. 25 his own acquaintance with the scenes of his youth. There they remained until the act for restoring the forfeited estates enabled them to return, not to Edinburgh, but to the north, to take possession of the mansion and lands of Blair Alexander.

Thus was fulfilled his uncle's fondest wish and prayer ; and in its fulfilment it did but afford another of the many striking lessons which this life reads to all, of the folly, to call it by no sterner name, of placing any worldly oi>jei_-*_ whatever before the mind, as one of inordinate desire ; for from the hour which restored the dispossessed heir to the in heritance of his ancestors, his doom appeared to be sealed. It were a painful and needless task to trace the progress of evil in one so richly endowed with natural good, — the down ward career by which the amiable and fasci nating youth gradually merged into the gambler, the profligate, the reckless spend thrift. Suffice it to say, that the wife who had sacrificed for his sake the regard of every one connected with her by ties of blood, and whose enduring affection had remained alive through all the shocks which his conduct had inflicted vol i. c KINGSCONNELL. upon it, only to render her trials more agoniz ingly severe, when she at last sank broken hearted into the grave, might, but for the bitter pang of leaving two helpless girls behind her, have echoed the last words of Margaret of Scotland, when mocked in similar circumstances with a prognostication of lengthened life : " Fi de la vie, ne m 'en parlez plus !"