Destiny (Ferrier)/Volume 1/Chapter 1

DESTINY.

CHAPTER I.

All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to a Highland Chief. He has his loch and his islands, his mountains and his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymores and Gaelic, and hot blood and dirks.

All these, and more, had the Chief of Glenroy; for he had a family tree upon which all the birds of the air might have roosted. Doctor Johnson, to be sure, has said that there are no such things as family trees in the Highlands; but the Doctor's calumnies against trees of every description, or rather of no description, throughout Scotland, are too well known to require refutation.

Glenroy, therefore, had a tree; and as for his rent-roll, it was like a journey in a fairy tale, "longer, and longer, and longer than I can tell." However, as the Chief himself was not particular in ascertaining the precise amount of his income, but lived as if the whole Highlands and Islands, with their kelp and black cattle, had been at his disposal, it would ill become his biographer to pry into the state of his affairs for the gratification of the curious. Suffice it therefore to say that the Chief of Glenroy lived in a style which was deemed suitable to his rank and fortune by all—and they were neither few nor far between— who partook of his hospitality. In person, as in fortune, Glenroy had been equally gifted. He was a tall handsome man, with fine regular features, a florid complexion, an open but haughty countenance, and a lofty though somewhat indolent air. The inward man was much what the outward man denoted. He was proud, prejudiced, and profuse; he piqued himself upon the antiquity of his family, the heroic deeds of his ancestors, the extent of his estates, the number of his followers, their physical strength, their devoted attachment. On the other hand, he was of an open temper, of a social disposition, liberal to his tenantry, generous to his dependants, and hospitable to all. His manners, though somewhat coarse, were by no means vulgar; and, when a little under control, he could be both pleasing and gentlemanly in his deportment.

His supremacy being universally acknowledged throughout the extensive district where his possessions lay, he bore his faculties with that sort of indolent pomp which betokens undisturbed power. He felt himself a great man; and though he did not say, even to himself, that he was the greatest man in the world, he certainly would have been puzzled to say who was greater.

Such was Glenroy; and with all these advantages, it was naturally expected that he would form an alliance worthy of himself and his clan, all of whom identified themselves with their Chief, and consequently looked upon his marriage as an event in which they had an undoubted interest. As it was impossible, however, that any one so great in himself could make a great marriage, his friends and followers, being reasonable people, merely expected that he would make the best marriage possible.

Greater speculation could scarcely have been excited at the court of King Ahasuerus as to a successor to the rebellious Vashti, than that which prevailed amongst the clan on the subject of forming a suitable alliance for their Chief. Each had his favourite and exalted fair, in one or other of the most illustrious Scottish families, on whom he conceived that Glenroy should place his affections. But vain are the schemes of man ! Instead of these glorions results, Glenroy did what many wiser men have done before him; he fell in love, and made what was called a "most unaccountable marriage;" for he married a merely pretty girl, of neither family nor fortune, the orphan daughter of a poor hundredth cousin of his own. The fact was, Glenroy was too proud to consider it a matter of much importance whom he married: he could derive no consequence from his wife; his wife must owe all her dignity to him. This was a blow to the clan, which all the youth, beauty, and sweetness of the lady could not reconcile them too; and it was not till the birth of an heir that they recovered their spirits. But then bonfires blazed, bagpipes played, tartans waved, whisky flowed—all, in short, was done to welcome to this vain world an heir to its vanities. Alas! how short-sighted are sometimes even second-sighted mortals!

At the end of two years a daughter was born, but far otherwise was her birth commemorated. A lifeless mother, a widowed father, a funeral procession, tears, regrets, lamentations, and woe—those were the symbols that marked her entrance into life, and cast a gloom upon her infant days. The child was christened Edith after its mother. And so ended Glenroy's first attempt at connubial happiness.