Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23
General
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Fiction
"Nor that, lad. But I fear you will hear more of this Scotch tragedy
some day. Get you gone; there is Fletcher."
Aminadab obeyed.
And Fletcher did see her. Some time after the departure of Aminadab he
crossed the green. It seemed that night he had refrained from company,
not through penitence, or any motive that man could divine in the nature
of the man. Strangely-formed beings do things which do not seem to
belong to their natures or to human nature, and it is this that makes
them strange. Before he entered this, not, alas! Domdaniel, he called
Janet to the door. He wanted to be alone. She gave him the cruse; and
with the old gloom upon his face, perhaps he wanted to test his courage.
It could not be that he wanted to look once more on the face of the
mother of his children; nor that he felt now that there had been one in
the world who really did love him, as few women have ever loved. Then
man measures woman's love by his own; but when was man's heart stirred
by nature's strongest passion like that of devoted woman? while now the
world did not contain one heart that was moved to him by anything
stronger than dithyrambic delirium. Who knows? But there was Fletcher
looking on the corpse of his wife, and waving over her face the light of
the small cruse he held in his hand! Was he moved, as he saw the still,
death-bound features, that once could not contain the expression which
the leaping heart, with that burning fire in it of that land of the sun,
tried in vain to force into it; the eye, too, that flashed and leapt as
never is seen in our country of humid fogs, stifling the inborn heat and
blearing the vision; and those arms that entwined him so as the vine
holds the olive in its grasp, as if it would give the juice which fires
and inebriates, for the oil that calms, and fattens, and sustains? All
over that lithe body which enabled her, when he saw her first in the
land of her fathers, to bound and flee as if she had wings, and these
beautiful as the monaul's, ay, and enabled her, too, to play round him
in that Eastern gaiety which had charmed him, if he ever loved her, and
even for a time made his home like Fairydom! Who shall say there was no
movement in his stern features, no moisture in his eye, no trembling of
the lip, no tremor of the body, as he might have read the last effort of
nature in the expression of calm forgiveness or continued affection? Who
could read _him_?
At midnight, two days after, Kalee slept in Logie kirkyard. There is no
stone to point out the grave of the Indian princess, who lies--as
becomes, too, in our boasted land of liberty, entitled to her boast in
an equality at length, which even pride cannot deny--among the humble
artisans and cottars of Lochee. Did Fletcher Read, on that after day,
when Panmure blew the white iron trump, not expect to see Kalee rise up
and seek judgment on the house of Logie? The blood was hereditary, and
the heart that is fed by the blood, and which impels it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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