Chapter One - Tilbert and Terres Graeme

by Amelia A. Barr
Edited by Amber Moeller

"Away to the bonnie green hills
Where the sunshine sleeps on the brae,
And the heart of the greenwood thrills
To the hymn of the bird on the spray.
Away where the sky shines clear,
And the light breeze wanders at the will,
And the dark pine wood nods near
To the light-plumed birch on the hill."
Prof. Blackie

Every one has heard of Hawick, of its fine manufactures, its outspoken liberals, and its quick-footed poachers. But who in this generation remembers Mosskirtle, an old resting place of the Carlisle and Edinburgh coaches on the same high road? For the railway has left it some miles on the other side, and thus consigned its comfortable inn to oblivion, and the little town itself to the primitive condition of the last century.

Yet Mosskirtle is the entrance to the district rich in natural beauty and local tradition—the gateway to the "Land of Spearman," to the homes of the moss-troopers and the tak'ing men of Eskdale, Liddisdale and Teviotdale; border riders who loved their Jeddart lances and heavy swords, and who were emphatically what our fathers called "men of their hands."

This ruffling element kept possession of the borders until nearly two centuries ago. Then the Covenanting martyrs sought refuge among their mountains and mosses, and it was these "chased and tossed men" who first brought "the Riders" to reason and to religion. They had remained Roman Catholic longer than the rest of the lowlands; Catholic without faith, without respect for faith, and full of superstition; but the prescribed and hunted Richard Cameron, Peden, and Balfour, preached righteousness to them so effectually that a national poet of the day complains:

"If their doctrines should get rooting,
Farewell theft, the best of booting!
For instance, lately on the Borders,
Where there was naught but theft and murders,
These rebels more prevail with words,
Than dragoons do with guns and swords;
So that their simple preaching now,
Makes the rush bush to keep the cow,
Better than Scots or English kings,
Could do by kilting them in strings." Cleland's poem, 1697

And as the doctrines did get rooting, the moss troopers became honest shepherds and farmers, stern and uncompromising moralists, men ready to die for their faith, yet possessing a character singularly marbled with veins from anterior lives altogether diverse—daring, poetical, not devoid of superstition—for it takes centuries to wear out traits that have been growing for centuries; since over the larger part of every generation may be written, "what the cradle rocked, the spade buried."

Civilization indeed advanced very slowly in these lonely valleys. Only forty years ago, a cart came out of Selkirk three days in the week, traversed the district and went back on the alternate days; and upon this cart, the people depended for their mail, and for such necessaries of life as their own farms did not supply. But the wheel hummed then on every hearth, and the women's fingers deftly threaded the shuttles, and sent them flying to their own pleasant clickity-clickity music. So the world beyond the dales, and the waters troubled them very little; they traveled life's common way in cheerful godliness, in peace, in the innocence of a pure religion, and a simple pastoral life.

Still the type of any community has its variations; it runs back, it turns aside, it anticipates. There were cattle drovers in Mosskirtle who were only the cattle lifters of the seventeenth century under the retraints of the nineteenth century. In many a moorland farm the dour enthusiasm and the unflinching principles of Richard Cameron still dwelt. The straitest bands of Calvinism hardly restrained in others the transmitted love for adventure. Lilting Border songs sprang naturally to their lips, songs that went spontaneously to the gallop of horses, and the jingling of spurs and spears. For who ever listened to "Kenmuir's on an' awa' Willie," without longing to mount and gallop by Kenmuir's side? So then, the singers took to a horse like gypsies and loved dearly to shake the bridle free, and in a mad gallop find the Solway moss, and the Solway Firth, and the little black smacks that brought French brandy and tea from the Isle of Man where they could be run in free of duty.

Physically, they have always been a fine race. From Eskdale to Annandale, men of the most colossal and stately figures Britain has to show were plentiful. The women also were generally handsome, and here and there were lovelier faces could be met than one could ever hope to see again: fresh as the dawn, with an expression of wondering innocence that was charming. And in this lonely land, as in the busy highroads of life, there were human beings defying all classification; faces that, even in youth, had the atmosphere of measureless antiquity; tempers that compelled speculation as to whether "possession" was not even at this day a fact.

Such were Lord Tilbert Graeme and his sister, Terres. They had come shrieking into the world together, and their mother's life had been the price of their existence. Left, then, to the care of servants for many years, they had ruled them with the unreason of passionate childhood. In youth they were seldom apart, and both alike were restless and unhappy, when circumstances compelled such an arrangement. And yet their daily intercourse with each other was frequently marked by dissensions whose violence terrified every one but themselves. Neither had married, although Lord Graeme was reputed a gallant, and Miss Terres had certainly had many lovers.

She was still a woman of perfect form and fine coloring; one that would have satisfied fully the usual conception of a noble lady fit to be the mistress of Graeme Castle. It was a very ancient place, and one of unusual size and magnificence for the Scotch marches, whose great families had generally preferred to defend themselves in their forests and fens, rather than build strongholds which might be taken from them by the English, and then used as a means of coercing their obedience. But the Graemes had been almost hereditary wardens of the country; they were royal favorites; they were reckless with money and life, and they had never yet found the time when their hands or their tongues could not keep the home which the first Lord Tilbert Graeme had built on the banks of Esk Water.

It stood upon a great rock overhanging the river. All the approaches to it were steep and stony and shagged with wood; but from its walled courtyard the dwellers within could see all the bleak, bright aspects of the border uplands--the hanging woods, the broomy braes, the heathery hills melting away into that charmful haze which envelopes the Cheviots with its faint blue mantle.

The interior had all the magnificence, the littleness, and the inconveniences of ancient ideals. There was one grand hall nearly eighty feet long, lofty and wide in proportion, ceiled with carved and polished woods, having in its walls one hundred and forty panels, each containing the likeness of some Graeme, male or female. But these portraits were mostly rude attempts to preserve faces full of sorrows or of sins. A gentle soul would have looked back with terror to such an ancestry; a pious one would have prayed that the future might be delivered from it.

With the exception of this stately apartment, the rooms were small and cheerless, for the great space enclosed was much broken by sixteen staircases, full of ascents and descents; and the windows were high and narrow, and the doors iron-cased, so that the appearance of the rooms was more prison-like than habitation of man ought to be. Terres Graeme had been sensitive to it from her earliest recollection; sometimes it saddened her, sometimes it irritated her, but she was rarely able to ignore its influence.

On one May evening, A.D. 1840, as she came slowly down the main stairway, the feeling terrified her. For that very reason, she walked deliberately, taking each step with a conscious effort. Her long silk robe trailed on the steps behind her, and she fancied she heard, above its rustling, footfalls at once stealthy and fearless. Once she turned around and looked boldly into the shadows she had passed, then with set lips she resumed her descent. As she did so, two servants began to close the doors. They were heavy, with iron bands; they moved ponderous hinges, and had massive bolts, and their clash and clangor echoed far down the winding passages.

It was impossible for her any longer to defy the feeling of terror. She hastened to the hall door, still standing open, and gazed outward with a sigh that was almost a sob. In the last slanting rays the crows were hurrying silently to their nests, and the black-faced moorland sheep, moving restlessly from hillock to hillock, were beginning to crowd together for the night. It was a mournful, misty, lonely world outside, and with a shiver she turned from it into a small parlor where there was a blazing fire of coals above a hearthstone of white tiles.

Lord Tilbert was later than usual, seeing that there was neither market, nor meeting of any kind to detain him. But Miss Terres neither wondered or feared at his absence. Graeme of castle Graeme was not one of those men whom women had little anxieties about, or to whom small services of affection are naturally offered. But she wanted his society to restore her courage. She had met very unexpectedly a very lonesome hour. Images from the past came streaming over her head. She was surrounded by a silent company that terrified her, that asked her dumb questions she could not answer. And she shrank from such soul interrogatories. The present moment was often hard enough to Terres Graeme, but when the hardest moments of all her past years came crowding into it, each one importuning for regrets or remembrance, it was too much to bear, especially in that solemn witching owl-light time.

So when at last she heard her brother's foot-steps she was glad, and she rose like one who throws off an evil dream, and snuffed the long wicks of the candles, and stirred into a brighter blaze the great blocks of soft coal. Then Lord Tilbert entered the ruddy light and his dark face and figure was like a shadow in it.

"I am so glad to see you, Tilbert."

He nodded appreciatively and came with slow and heavy steps toward the fireside. He had removed his hat and cloak, and the man stood fairly enough revealed in the light. He was not handsome, but he had an original face of much character, and a figure of great strength, tall, thick set, deep-chested. His eyes were of yellowish brown set in bistrous lids, and they seemed to lie in wait, and watch behind glasses. No one could doubt that he was capable of red-hot passion, perhaps even in letting it run away with him, but his usual manner was quietly dogmatic, wary, perceptive, cool. Terres had long known that if there were any feeling in her heart, she need hardly be at the trouble of confessing it; he was sure to find it out.