Fortunately for Claudia, the viscount found himself too much fatigued after about sixteen hours' ride to go farther that night. So he directed Mr. Frisbie to engage two cabs to take himself and his party to a hotel.
And when they were brought up he handed Claudia, who was scarcely able to stand, into the first one, and ordered Frisbie to put the "gorillas" into the other. And they drove to a fourth- or fifth-rate inn, a degree or two dirtier, dingier, and darker than the one they had left at Liverpool.
But Claudia was too utterly worn out in body, mind, and spirit to find fault with any shelter that promised to afford her the common necessaries of life, of which she had been deprived for so many hours.
She drank the tea that was brought her, without questioning its quality. And as soon as she laid her head on her pillow she sank into the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.
She awoke late the next morning to take her first look at the old town through a driving rain that lashed the narrow windows of her little bedroom. Lord Vincent had already risen and gone out.
She rang for her servants. Old Katie answered the bell, entering with uplifted hands and eyes, exclaiming:
"Well, my ladyship! if this ain't the outlandishest country as ever was! Coming over from t'other side we had the ocean unnerneaf of us, and now 'pears to me like we has got it overhead of us, by the fog and mist and rain perpetual! And if this is being of lords and ladyships, I'd a heap leifer be misters and mist'esses, myself."
"I quite agree with you, Katie," sighed Lady Vincent, as, with the old woman's assistance, she dressed herself.
"It seems to me like as if we was regerlerly sold, my ladyship," said old Katie mysteriously.
"Hush! Where are we to have breakfast—not in this disordered room,
I hope?"
"No, my ladyship. They let us have a little squeezed-up parlor that smells for all the world as if a lot of men had been smoking and drinking in it all night long. My lordship's down there, waiting for his breakfast now. Pretty place to fetch a 'spectable cullored pusson to, let alone a lady! Well, one comfort, we won't stay here long, cause I heard my lordship order Mr. Frisbie to go and take two inside places and four outside places in the stage-coach as leaves this mornin' for Ban. 'Ban,' 'Ban'; 'pears like it's been all ban and no blessin' ever since we done lef' Tanglewood."
Lady Vincent did not think it worth while to correct Katie. She knew by experience that all attempts to set her right would be lost labor.
She went downstairs and joined Lord Vincent in the little parlor, where a breakfast was laid of which it might be said that if the coffee was bad and the bannocks worse, the kippered herrings were delicious.
After breakfast they took their places in or on the Banff mail coach; Lord and Lady Vincent being the sole passengers inside; and all their servants occupying the outside. And so they set out through the drizzling rain and by the old turnpike road to Banff.
This road ran along the edge of the cliffs overhanging the sea—the sea, ever sublime and beautiful, even when dimly seen through the dull veil of a Scotch mist.
Claudia was not permitted to open the window; but she kept the glass polished that she might look out upon the wild scenery.
Late in the afternoon they reached the town of Banff, where they stopped only long enough to order a plain dinner and engage flies to take them on to their final destination, Castle Cragg, which in truth Claudia was growing very anxious to behold.
CHAPTER XV.
CASTLE CRAGG.
The wildest scene, but this, can show
Some touch of nature's genial glow;
But here, above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower.
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone.
—Scott.
Immediately after dinner they set out again on this last stage of their journey, Claudia and Vincent riding in the first fly and Frisbie and the "gorillas" in the second one. The road still lay along the cliffs above the sea. And Claudia still sat and gazed through the window of the fly as she had gazed through the window of the coach, at the wild, grand, awful scenery of the coast. Hour after hour they rode on until the afternoon darkened into evening.
The last object of interest that caught Claudia's attention, before night closed the scene, was far in advance of them up the coast. It was a great promontory stretching far out into the sea and lifting its lofty head high into the heavens. Upon its extreme point stood an ancient castle, which at that height seemed but a crow's nest in size.
Claudia called Lord Vincent's attention to it.
"What castle is that, my lord, perched upon that high promontory? I should think it an interesting place, an historical place, built perhaps in ancient times as a stronghold against Danish invasion," she said.
"That? Oh, ah, yes! That is a trifle historical, in the record of a score of sieges, storms, assaults, and so on; and a bit traditional, in legends of some hundred capital crimes and mortal sins; and in fact altogether, as you say, rather interesting, especially to you, Claudia. It is Castle Cragg, and it will have the honor to be your future residence."
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Claudia, gazing now in consternation upon that drear, desolate, awful rock. "Dread point of Dis" it seemed indeed to her.
"For a season only, my dear, of course," said the viscount, with the queerest of smiles, of which Claudia could make nothing satisfactory.
She continued to look out, but the longer she gazed upon that awful cliff and the nearer she approached it, the more appalled she became. She now saw, in turning a winding of the coast, that the point of the cliff stretched much farther out to sea than had at first appeared, and that only a low neck of land connected it with the main; and she knew that when the tide was high this promontory must be entirely cut off from the coast and become, to all intents and purposes, an island. Approaching nearer still, she saw that the cliff was but a huge, bare, barren rock, of which the castle, built and walled in of the same rock, seemed but an outgrowth and a portion.
If this rock-bound, sea-walled dwelling-place, which had evidently been built rather for a fortification than for a family residence, struck terror to the heart of Claudia, what effect must it have had upon the superstitious mind of poor old Katie, riding in the fly behind, when Mr. Frisbie was so good as to point it out to her with the agreeable information that it was to be her future home.
"What, dat!" exclaimed the old woman in consternation. "You don't mean dat! Well, lord! I'se offen hearn tell of de 'Debbil's Icy Peak,' but I nebber expected to cotch my eyes on it, much less lib on it, I tell you all good!"
"That's it, hows'ever, Mrs. Gorilla," said Mr. Frisbie.
"I keep a-telling you as my family name aint Gorilla, it's Mortimer; dough Gorilla is a perty name, too; it ralely is, on'y you see, chile, it aint mine," said unconscious Katie.
But the darkening night shut out from their view the awful cliff to which, however, they were every moment approaching nearer.
Fortunately as the carriages reached the base of this cliff the tide was low, and they were enabled to pass the neck of land that united the island to the coast and made it a promontory. After passing over this narrow strip they ascended the cliff by a road so steep that it had