be
found in any land; indeed Claverhouse was the only man of honor
amongst them. His battle to hold his own and achieve his legitimate
ambition was very hard, and certainly he needed no handicap. Jean
Graham was haunted with the reflection that Claverhouse's wife, instead
of being a help, was a hindrance to her husband, and that if it were not
for the burden of her Covenanting name, he would have climbed easily to
the highest place. Nor could she relish the change of attitude of the
common people towards her, and the difference in atmosphere between
Paisley and Dundee. Once she had been accustomed to receive a
respectful, though it might be awkward, salutation from the dour West
Country folk, and to know that, though in her heart she was not in
sympathy with them, the people in the town, where her mother reigned
supreme, felt kindly towards her, as the daughter of that godly
Covenanting lady. In Dundee, where the ordinary people sided with the
Presbyterians and only the minority were with the Bishops, men turned away
their faces when she passed through the place, and the women cried "Bloody
Claverse!" as she passed. She knew without any word of abuse that both she
and her husband were bitterly hated, because he was judged a persecutor
and she a renegade. They were two of the proudest people in Scotland,
but although Claverhouse gave no sign that he cared for the people's
loathing, she often suspected that he felt it, being a true Scots
gentleman, and although Jean pretended to despise Covenanting fanaticism,
she would rather have been loved by the folk round her than hated.
While she declared to Graham that her deliverance from her mother's
party, with their sermons, their denunciations, their narrowness and
that horrible Covenant, had been a passage from bondage to liberty, there
were times, as she paced the terrace alone and looked out on the gray
sea of the east coast, when the contradictory circumstances of her
life beset her and she was troubled. When she was forced to listen to
the interminable harangues of hill preachers, sheltering for a night in
the castle, and day by day was resisting the domination of her mother,
her mind rose in revolt against the Presbyterians and all their ways.
When she was among men who spoke of those hillmen as if they were
vermin to be trapped, and as if no one had breeding or honor or
intelligence or sincerity except the Cavaliers, she was again goaded
into opposition. Jean had made h