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The Bride of Lammermoor

by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #471 · 744,287 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Bride of Lammermoor

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: January 16, 2006 [eBook #471]
                Most recently updated: May 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/471

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR ***




The Bride of Lammermoor

by Sir Walter Scott


Contents

 INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR
 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
 CHAPTER XIX.
 CHAPTER XX.
 CHAPTER XXI.
 CHAPTER XXII.
 CHAPTER XXIII.
 CHAPTER XXIV.
 CHAPTER XXV.
 CHAPTER XXVI.
 CHAPTER XXVII.
 CHAPTER XXVIII.
 CHAPTER XXIX.
 CHAPTER XXX.
 CHAPTER XXXI.
 CHAPTER XXXII.
 CHAPTER XXXIII.
 CHAPTER XXXIV.
 CHAPTER XXXV.




[Illustration: cover]


[Illustration]




INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR


The author, on a former occasion, declined giving the real source from
which he drew the tragic subject of this history, because, though
occurring at a distant period, it might possibly be unpleasing to the
feelings of the descendants of the parties. But as he finds an account
of the circumstances given in the Notes to Law’s Memorials, by his
ingenious friend, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., and also indicated
in his reprint of the Rev. Mr. Symson’s poems appended to the Large
Description of Galloway, as the original of the Bride of Lammermoor,
the author feels himself now at liberty to tell the tale as he had it
from connexions of his own, who lived very near the period, and were
closely related to the family of the bride.

It is well known that the family of Dalrymple, which has produced,
within the space of two centuries, as many men of talent, civil and
military, and of literary, political, and professional eminence, as any
house in Scotland, first rose into distinction in the person of James
Dalrymple, one of the most eminent lawyers that ever lived, though the
labours of his powerful mind were unhappily exercised on a subject so
limited as Scottish jurisprudence, on which he has composed an
admirable work.

He married Margaret, daughter to Ross of Balneel, with whom he obtained
a considerable estate. She was an able, politic, and high-minded woman,
so successful in what she undertook, that the vulgar, no way partial to
her husband or her family, imputed her success to necromancy. According
to the popular belief, this Dame Margaret purchased the temporal
prosperity of her family from the Master whom she served under a
singular condition, which is thus narrated by the historian of her
grandson, the great Earl of Stair: “She lived to a great age, and at
her death desired that she might not be put under ground, but that her
coffin should stand upright on one end of it, promising that while she
remained in that situation the Dalrymples should continue to flourish.
What was the old lady’s motive for the request, or whether she really
made such a promise, I shall not take upon me to determine; but it’s
certain her coffin stands upright in the isle of the church of
Kirklistown, the burial-place belonging to the family.” The talents of
this accomplished race were sufficient to have accounted for the
dignities which many members of the family attained, without any
supernatural assistance. But their extraordinary prosperity was
attended by some equally singular family misfortunes, of which that
which befell their eldest daughter was at once unaccountable and
melancholy.

Miss Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and Dame
Margaret Ross, had engaged herself without the knowledge of her parents
to the Lord Rutherford, who was not acceptable to them either on
account of his political principles or his want of fortune. The young
couple broke a piece of gold together, and pledged their troth in the
most solemn manner; and it is said the young lady imprecated dreadful
evils on herself should she break her plighted faith. Shortly after, a
suitor who was favoured by Lord Stair, and still more so by his lady,
paid his addresses to Miss Dalrymple. The young lady refused the
proposal, and being pressed on the subject, confessed her secret
engagement. Lady Stair, a woman accustomed to universal submission, for
even her husband did not dare to contradict her, treated this objection
as a trifle, and insisted upon her daughter yielding her consent to
marry the new suitor, David Dunbar, son and heir to David Dunbar of
Baldoon, in Wigtonshire. The first lover, a man of very high spirit,
then interfered by letter, and insisted on the right he had acquired by
his troth plighted with the young lady. Lady Stair sent him for answer,
that her daughter, sensible of her undutiful behaviour in entering into
a contract unsanctioned by her parents, had retracted her unlawful vow,
and now refused to fulfil her engagement with him.

The lover, in return, declined positively to receive such an answer
from any one but his mistress in person; and as she had to deal with a
man who was both of a most determined character and of too high
condition to be trifled with, Lady Stair was obliged to consent to an
interview between Lord Rutherford and her daughter. But she took care
to be present in person, and argued the point with the disappointed and
incensed lover with pertinacity equal to his own. She particularly
insisted on the Levitical law, which declares that a woman shall be
free of a vow which her parents dissent from. This is the passage of
Scripture she founded on:

“If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul
with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all
that proceedeth out of his mouth.

“If a woman also vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond,
being in her father’s house in her youth; And her father hear her vow,
and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall
hold his peace at her: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond
wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand.

“But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of
her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall
stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed
her.”—Numbers xxx. 2-5.

While the mother insisted on these topics, the lover in vain conjured
the daughter to declare her own opinion and feelings. She remained
totally overwhelmed, as it seemed—mute, pale, and motionless as a
statue. Only at her mother’s command, sternly uttered, she summoned
strength enough to restore to her plighted suitor the piece of broken
gold which was the emblem of her troth. On this he burst forth into a
tremendous passion, took leave of the mother with maledictions, and as
he left the apartment, turned back to say to his weak, if not fickle,
mistresss: “For you, madam, you will be a world’s wonder”; a phrase by
which some remarkable degree of calamity is usually implied. He went
abroad, and returned not again. If the last Lord Rutherford was the
unfortunate party, he must have been the third who bore that title, and
who died in 1685.

The marriage betwixt Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar of Baldoon now
went forward, the bride showing no repugnance, but being absolutely
passive in everything her mother commanded or advised. On the day of
the marriage, which, as was then usual, was celebrated by a great
assemblage of friends and relations, she was the same—sad, silent, and
resigned, as it seemed, to her destiny. A lady, very nearly connected
with the family, told the Author that she had conversed on the subject
with one of the brothers of the bride, a mere lad at the time, who had
ridden before his sister to church. He said her hand, which lay on his
as she held her arm around his waist, was as cold and damp as marble.
But, full of his new dress and the part he acted in the procession, the
circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered with bitter sorrow
and compunction, made no impression on him at the time.

The bridal feast was followed by dancing. The bride and bridegroom
retired as usual, when of a sudden the most wild and piercing cries
were heard from the nuptial chamber. It was then the custom, to prevent
any coarse pleasantry which old times perhaps admitted, that the key of
the nuptial chamber should be entrusted to the bridesman. He was called
upon, but refused at first to give it up, till the shrieks became so
hideous that he was compelled to hasten with others to learn the cause.
On opening the door, they found the bridegroom lying across the
threshold, dreadfully wounded, and streaming with blood. The bride was
then sought for. She was found in the corner of the large chimney,
having no covering save her shift, and that dabbled in gore. There she
sat grinning at them, mopping and mowing, as I heard the expression
used; in a word, absolutely insane. The only words she spoke were, “Tak
up your bonny bridegroom.” She survived this horrible scene little more
than a fortnight, having been married on the 24th of August, and dying
on the 12th of September 1669.

The unfortunate Baldoon recovered from his wounds, but sternly
prohibited all inquiries respecting the manner in which he had received
them. “If a lady,” he said, “asked him any question upon the subject,
he would neither answer her nor speak to her again while he lived; if a
gentleman, he would consider it as a mortal affront, and demand
satisfaction as having received such.” He did not very long survive the
dreadful catastrophe, having met with a fatal injury by a fall from his
horse, as he rode between Leith and Holyrood House, of which he died
the next day, 28th March 1682. Thus a few years removed all the
principal actors in this frightful tragedy.

Various reports went abroad on this mysterious affair, many of them
very inaccurate, though they could hardly be said to be exaggerated. It
was difficult at that time to become acquainted with the history of a
Scottish family above the lower rank; and strange things sometimes took
place there, into which even the law did not scrupulously inquire.

The credulous Mr. Law says, generally, that the Lord President Stair
had a daughter, who, “being married, the night she was bride in, was
taken from her bridegroom and harled through the house (by spirits, we
are given to understand) and afterward died. Another daughter,” he
says, “was supposed to be possessed with an evil spirit.”

My friend, Mr. Sharpe, gives another edition of the tale. According to
his information, it was the bridegroom who wounded the bride. The
marriage, according to this account, had been against her mother’s
inclination, who had given her consent in these ominous words: “Weel,
you may marry him, but sair shall you repent it.”

I find still another account darkly insinuated in some highly
scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They
are docketed as being written “Upon the late Viscount Stair and his
family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William
Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of Househill, and
nephew to the said Sir William Hamilton.” There was a bitter and
personal quarrel and rivalry betwixt the author of this libel, a name
which it richly deserves, and Lord President Stair; and the lampoon,
which is written with much more malice than art, bears the following
motto:

Stair’s neck, mind, wife, songs, grandson, and the rest,
Are wry, false, witch, pests, parricide, possessed.


This malignant satirist, who calls up all the misfortunes of the
family, does not forget the fatal bridal of Baldoon. He seems, though
his verses are as obscure as unpoetical, to intimate that the violence
done to the bridegroom was by the intervention of the foul fiend, to
whom the young lady had resigned herself, in case she should break her
contract with her first lover. His hypothesis is inconsistent with the
account given in the note upon Law’s Memorials, but easily reconcilable
to the family tradition.

In all Stair’s offspring we no difference know,
They do the females as the males bestow;
So he of one of his daughters’ marriages gave the ward,
Like a true vassal, to Glenluce’s Laird;
He knew what she did to her master plight,
If she her faith to Rutherfurd should slight,
Which, like his own, for greed he broke outright.
Nick did Baldoon’s posterior right deride,
And, as first substitute, did seize the bride;
Whate’er he to his mistress did or said,
He threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed,
Into the chimney did so his rival maul,
His bruised bones ne’er were cured but by the fall.


One of the marginal notes ascribed to William Dunlop applies to the
above lines. “She had betrothed herself to Lord Rutherfoord under
horrid imprecations, and afterwards married Baldoon, his nevoy, and her
mother was the cause of her breach of faith.”

The same tragedy is alluded to in the following couplet and note:

What train of curses that base brood pursues,
When the young nephew weds old uncle’s spouse.


The note on the word “uncle” explains it as meaning “Rutherfoord, who
should have married the Lady Baldoon, was Baldoon’s uncle.” The poetry
of this satire on Lord Stair and his family was, as already noticed,
written by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw, a rival of Lord Stair for
the situation of President of the Court of Session; a person much
inferior to that great lawyer in talents, and equally ill-treated by
the calumny or just satire of his contemporaries as an unjust and
partial judge. Some of the notes are by that curious and laborious
antiquary, Robert Milne, who, as a virulent Jacobite, willingly lent a
hand to blacken the family of Stair.

Another poet of the period, with a very different purpose, has left an
elegy, in which he darkly hints at and bemoans the fate of the
ill-starred young person, whose very uncommon calamity Whitelaw,
Dunlop, and Milne thought a fitting subject for buffoonery and
ribaldry. This bard of milder mood was Andrew Symson, before the
Revolution minister of Kirkinner, in Galloway, and after his expulsion
as an Episcopalian following the humble occupation of a printer in
Edinburgh. He furnished the family of Baldoon, with which he appears to
have been intimate, with an elegy on the tragic event in their family.
In this piece he treats the mournful occasion of the bride’s death with
mysterious solemnity.

The verses bear this title, “On the unexpected death of the virtuous
Lady Mrs. Janet Dalrymple, Lady Baldoon, younger,” and afford us the
precise dates of the catastrophe, which could not otherwise have been
easily ascertained. “Nupta August 12. Domum Ducta August 24. Obiit
September 12. Sepult. September 30, 1669.” The form of the elegy is a
dialogue betwixt a passenger and a domestic servant. The first,
recollecting that he had passed that way lately, and seen all around
enlivened by the appearances of mirth and festivity, is desirous to
know what had changed so gay a scene into mourning. We preserve the
reply of the servant as a specimen of Mr. Symson’s verses, which are
not of the first quality:

Sir, ’tis truth you’ve told.
We did enjoy great mirth; but now, ah me!
Our joyful song’s turn’d to an elegie.
A virtuous lady, not long since a bride,
Was to a hopeful plant by marriage tied,
And brought home hither. We did all rejoice,
Even for her sake. But presently our voice
Was turn’d to mourning for that little time
That she’d enjoy: she waned in her prime,
For Atropus, with her impartial knife,
Soon cut her thread, and therewithal her life;
And for the time we may it well remember,
It being in unfortunate September;
Where we must leave her till the resurrection.
’Tis then the Saints enjoy their full perfection.


Mr. Symson also poured forth his elegiac strains upon the fate of the
widowed bridegroom, on which subject, after a long and querulous
effusion, the poet arrives at the sound conclusion, that if Baldoon had
walked on foot, which it seems was his general custom, he would have
escaped perishing by a fall from horseback. As the work in which it
occurs is so scarce as almost to be unique, and as it gives us the most
full account of one of the actors in this tragic tale which we have
rehearsed, we will, at the risk of being tedious, insert some short
specimens of Mr. Symson’s composition. It is entitled:

“A Funeral Elegie, occasioned by the sad and much lamented death of
that worthily respected, and very much accomplished gentleman, David
Dunbar, younger, of Baldoon, only son and apparent heir to the right
worshipful Sir David Dunbar of Baldoon, Knight Baronet. He departed
this life on March 28, 1682, having received a bruise by a fall, as he
was riding the day preceding betwixt Leith and Holyrood House; and was
honourably interred in the Abbey Church of Holyrood House, on April 4,
1682.”

Men might, and very justly too, conclude
Me guilty of the worst ingratitude,
Should I be silent, or should I forbear
At this sad accident to shed a tear;
A tear! said I? ah! that’s a petit thing,
A very lean, slight, slender offering,
Too mean, I’m sure, for me, wherewith t’attend
The unexpected funeral of my friend:
A glass of briny tears charged up to th’ brim.
Would be too few for me to shed for him.


The poet proceeds to state his intimacy with the deceased, and the
constancy of the young man’s attendance on public worship, which was
regular, and had such effect upon two or three other that were
influenced by his example:

So that my Muse ’gainst Priscian avers,
He, only he, _were_ my parishioners;
Yea, and my only hearers.


He then describes the deceased in person and manners, from which it
appears that more accomplishments were expected in the composition of a
fine gentleman in ancient than modern times:

His body, though not very large or tall,
Was sprightly, active, yea and strong withal.
His constitution was, if right I’ve guess’d,
Blood mixt with choler, said to be the best.
In’s gesture, converse, speech, discourse, attire,
He practis’d that which wise men still admire,
Commend, and recommend. What’s that? you’ll say.
’Tis this: he ever choos’d the middle way
’Twixt both th’ extremes. Amost in ev’ry thing
He did the like, ’tis worth our noticing:
Sparing, yet not a niggard; liberal,
And yet not lavish or a prodigal,
As knowing when to spend and when to spare;
And that’s a lesson which not many are
Acquainted with. He bashful was, yet daring
When he saw cause, and yet therein not sparing;
Familiar, yet not common, for he knew
To condescend, and keep his distance too.
He us’d, and that most commonly, to go
On foot; I wish that he had still done so.
Th’ affairs of court were unto him well known;
And yet meanwhile he slighted not his own.
He knew full well how to behave at court,
And yet but seldom did thereto resort;
But lov’d the country life, choos’d to inure
Himself to past’rage and agriculture;
Proving, improving, ditching, trenching, draining,
Viewing, reviewing, and by those means gaining;
Planting, transplanting, levelling, erecting
Walls, chambers, houses, terraces; projecting
Now this, now that device, this draught, that measure,
That might advance his profit with his pleasure.
Quick in his bargains, honest in commerce,
Just in his dealings, being much adverse
From quirks of law, still ready to refer
His cause t’ an honest country arbiter.
He was acquainted with cosmography,
Arithmetic, and modern history;
With architecture and such arts as these,
Which I may call specifick sciences
Fit for a gentleman; and surely he
That knows them not, at least in some degree,
May brook the title, but he wants the thing,
Is but a shadow scarce worth noticing.
He learned the French, be’t spoken to his praise,
In very little more than fourty days.


Then comes the full burst of woe, in which, instead of saying much
himself, the poet informs us what the ancients would have said on such
an occasion:

A heathen poet, at the news, no doubt,
Would have exclaimed, and furiously cry’d out
Against the fates, the destinies and starrs,
What! this the effect of planetarie warrs!
We might have seen him rage and rave, yea worse,
’Tis very like we might have heard him curse
The year, the month, the day, the hour, the place,
The company, the wager, and the race;
Decry all recreations, with the names
Of Isthmian, Pythian, and Olympick games;
Exclaim against them all both old and new,
Both the Nemaean and the Lethaean too:
Adjudge all persons, under highest pain,
Always to walk on foot, and then again
Order all horses to be hough’d, that we
Might never more the like adventure see.


Supposing our readers have had enough of Mr. Symson’s woe, and finding
nothing more in his poem worthy of transcription, we return to the
tragic story.

It is needless to point out to the intelligent reader that the
witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a powerful
mind over a weak and melancholy one, and that the harshness with which
she exercised her superiority in a case of delicacy had driven her
daughter first to despair, then to frenzy. Accordingly, the Author has
endeavoured to explain the tragic tale on this principle. Whatever
resemblance Lady Ashton may be supposed to possess to the celebrated
Dame Margaret Ross, the reader must not suppose that there was any idea
of tracing the portrait of the first Lord Viscount Stair in the tricky
and mean-spirited Sir William Ashton. Lord Stair, whatever might be his
moral qualities, was certainly one of the first statesmen and lawyers
of his age.

The imaginary castle of Wolf’s Crag has been identified by some lover
of locality with that of Fast Castle. The Author is not competent to
judge of the resemblance betwixt the real and imaginary scenes, having
never seen Fast Castle except from the sea. But fortalices of this
description are found occupying, like ospreys’ nests, projecting rocks,
or promontories, in many parts of the eastern coast of Scotland, and
the position of Fast Castle seems certainly to resemble that of Wolf’s
Crag as much as any other, while its vicinity to the mountain ridge of
Lammermoor renders the assimilation a probable one.

We have only to add, that the death of the unfortunate bridegroom by a
fall from horseback has been in the novel transferred to the no less
unfortunate lover.




CHAPTER I


By Cauk and keel to win your bread,
Wi’ whigmaleeries for them wha need,
Whilk is a gentle trade indeed
To carry the gaberlunzie on.

Old Song.


Few have been in my secret while I was compiling these narratives, nor
is it probable that they will ever become public during the life of
their author. Even were that event to happen, I am not ambitious of the
honoured distinction, _digito monstrari_. I confess that, were it safe
to cherish such dreams at all, I should more enjoy the thought of
remaining behind the curtain unseen, like the ingenious manager of
Punch and his wife Joan, and enjoying the astonishment and conjectures
of my audience. Then might I, perchance, hear the productions of the
obscure Peter Pattieson praised by the judicious and admired by the
feeling, engrossing the young and attracting even the old; while the
critic traced their fame up to some name of literary celebrity, and the
question when, and by whom, these tales were written filled up the
pause of conversation in a hundred circles and coteries. This I may
never enjoy during my lifetime; but farther than this, I am certain, my
vanity should never induce me to aspire.

I am too stubborn in habits, and too little polished in manners, to
envy or aspire to the honours assigned to my literary contemporaries. I
could not think a whit more highly of myself were I found worthy to
“come in place as a lion” for a winter in the great metropolis. I could
not rise, turn round, and show all my honours, from the shaggy mane to
the tufted tail, “roar you an’t were any nightingale,” and so lie down
again like a well-behaved beast of show, and all at the cheap and easy
rate of a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter as thin as a
wafer. And I could ill stomach the fulsome flattery with which the lady
of the evening indulges her show-monsters on such occasions, as she
crams her parrots with sugar-plums, in order to make them talk before
company. I cannot be tempted to “come aloft” for these marks of
distinction, and, like imprisoned Samson, I would rather remain—if such
must be the alternative—all my life in the mill-house, grinding for my
very bread, than be brought forth to make sport for the Philistine
lords and ladies. This proceeds from no dislike, real or affected, to
the aristocracy of these realms. But they have their place, and I have
mine; and, like the iron and earthen vessels in the old fable, we can
scarce come into collision without my being the sufferer in every
sense. It may be otherwise with the sheets which I am now writing.
These may be opened and laid aside at pleasure; by amusing themselves
with the perusal, the great will excite no false hopes; by neglecting
or condemning them, they will inflict no pain; and how seldom can they
converse with those whose minds have toiled for their delight without
doing either the one or the other.

In the better and wiser tone of feeling, which Ovid only expresses in
one line to retract in that which follows, I can address these quires—

Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.


Nor do I join the regret of the illustrious exile, that he himself
could not in person accompany the volume, which he sent forth to the
mart of literature, pleasure, and luxury. Were there not a hundred
similar instances on record, the rate of my poor friend and
school-fellow, Dick Tinto, would be sufficient to warn me against
seeking happiness in the celebrity which attaches itself to a
successful cultivator of the fine arts.

Dick Tinto, when he wrote himself artist, was wont to derive his origin
from the ancient family of Tinto, of that ilk, in Lanarkshire, and
occasionally hinted that he had somewhat derogated from his gentle
blood in using the pencil for his principal means of support. But if
Dick’s pedigree was correct, some of his ancestors must have suffered a
more heavy declension, since the good man his father executed the
necessary, and, I trust, the honest, but certainly not very
distinguished, employment of tailor in ordinary to the village of
Langdirdum in the west. Under his humble roof was Richard born, and to
his father’s humble trade was Richard, greatly contrary to his
inclination, early indentured. Old Mr. Tinto had, however, no reason to
congratulate himself upon having compelled the youthful genius of his
son to forsake its natural bent. He fared like the school-boy who
attempts to stop with his finger the spout of a water cistern, while
the stream, exasperated at this compression, escapes by a thousand
uncalculated spurts, and wets him all over for his pains. Even so fared
the senior Tinto, when his hopeful apprentice not only exhausted all
the chalk in making sketches upon the shopboard, but even executed
several caricatures of his father’s best customers, who began loudly to
murmur, that it was too hard to have their persons deformed by the
vestments of the father, and to be at the same time turned into
ridicule by the pencil of the son. This led to discredit and loss of
practice, until the old tailor, yielding to destiny and to the
entreaties of his son, permitted him to attempt his fortune in a line
for which he was better qualified.

There was about this time, in the village of Langdirdum, a peripatetic
brother of the brush, who exercised his vocation sub Jove frigido, the
object of admiration of all the boys of the village, but especially to
Dick Tinto. The age had not yet adopted, amongst other unworthy
retrenchments, that illiberal measure of economy which, supplying by
written characters the lack of symbolical representation, closes one
open and easily accessible avenue of instruction and emolument against
the students of the fine arts. It was not yet permitted to write upon
the plastered doorway of an alehouse, or the suspended sign of an inn,
“The Old Magpie,” or “The Saracen’s Head,” substituting that cold
description for the lively effigies of the plumed chatterer, or the
turban’d frown of the terrific soldan. That early and more simple age
considered alike the necessities of all ranks, and depicted the symbols
of good cheer so as to be obvious to all capacities; well judging that
a man who could not read a syllable might nevertheless love a pot of
good ale as well as his better-educated neighbours, or even as the
parson himself. Acting upon this liberal principle, publicans as yet
hung forth the painted emblems of their calling, and sign-painters, if
they seldom feasted, did not at least absolutely starve.

To a worthy of this decayed profession, as we have already intimated,
Dick Tinto became an assistant; and thus, as is not unusual among
heaven-born geniuses in this department of the fine arts, began to
paint before he had any notion of drawing.

His talent for observing nature soon induced him to rectify the errors,
and soar above the instructions, of his teacher. He particularly shone
in painting horses, that being a favourite sign in the Scottish
villages; and, in tracing his progress, it is beautiful to observe how
by degrees he learned to shorten the backs and prolong the legs of
these noble animals, until they came to look less like crocodiles, and
more like nags. Detraction, which always pursues merit with strides
proportioned to its advancement, has indeed alleged that Dick once upon
a time painted a horse with five legs, instead of four. I might have
rested his defence upon the license allowed to that branch of his
profession, which, as it permits all sorts of singular and irregular
combinations, may be allowed to extend itself so far as to bestow a
limb supernumerary on a favourite subject. But the cause of a deceased
friend is sacred; and I disdain to bottom it so superficially. I have
visited the sign in question, which yet swings exalted in the village
of Langdirdum; and I am ready to depone upon the oath that what has
been idly mistaken or misrepresented as being the fifth leg of the
horse, is, in fact, the tail of that quadruped, and, considered with
reference to the posture in which he is delineated, forms a
circumstance introduced and managed with great and successful, though
daring, art. The nag being represented in a rampant or rearing posture,
the tail, which is prolonged till it touches the ground, appears to
form a _point d’appui_, and gives the firmness of a tripod to the
figure, without which it would be difficult to conceive, placed as the
feet are, how the courser could maintain his ground without tumbling
backwards. This bold conception has fortunately fallen into the custody
of one by whom it is duly valued; for, when Dick, in his more advanced
state of proficiency, became dubious of the propriety of so daring a
deviation to execute a picture of the publican himself in exchange for
this juvenile production, the courteous offer was declined by his
judicious employer, who had observed, it seems, that when his ale
failed to do its duty in conciliating his guests, one glance at his
sign was sure to put them in good humour.

It would be foreign to my present purpose to trace the steps by which
Dick Tinto improved his touch, and corrected, by the rules of art, the
luxuriance of a fervid imagination. The scales fell from his eyes on
viewing the sketches of a contemporary, the Scottish Teniers, as Wilkie
has been deservedly styled. He threw down the brush took up the
crayons, and, amid hunger and toil, and suspense and uncertainty,
pursued the path of his profession under better auspices than those of
his original master. Still the first rude emanations of his genius,
like the nursery rhymes of Pope, could these be recovered, will be dear
to the companions of Dick Tinto’s youth. There is a tankard and
gridiron painted over the door of an obscure change-house in the Back
Wynd of Gandercleugh——But I feel I must tear myself from the subject,
or dwell on it too long.

Amid his wants and struggles, Dick Tinto had recourse, like his
brethren, to levying that tax upon the vanity of mankind which he could
not extract from their taste and liberality—on a word, he painted
portraits. It was in this more advanced state of proficiency, when Dick
had soared above his original line of business, and highly disdained
any allusion to it, that, after having been estranged for several
years, we again met in the village of Gandercleugh, I holding my
present situation, and Dick painting copies of the human face divine at
a guinea per head. This was a small premium, yet, in the first burst of
business, it more than sufficed for all Dick’s moderate wants; so that
he occupied an apartment at the Wallace Inn, cracked his jest with
impunity even upon mine host himself, and lived in respect and
observance with the chambermaid, hostler, and waiter.

Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his honour the
Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister,
the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some
round dozen of the feuars and farmers, had been consigned to
immortality by Tinto’s brush, custom began to slacken, and it was
impossible to wring more than crowns and half-crowns from the hard
hands of the peasants whose ambition led them to Dick’s painting-room.

Still, though the horizon was overclouded, no storm for some time
ensued. Mine host had Christian faith with a lodger who had been a good
paymaster as long as he had the means. And from a portrait of our
landlord himself, grouped with his wife and daughters, in the style of
Rubens, which suddenly appeared in the best parlour, it was evident
that Dick had found some mode of bartering art for the necessaries of
life.

Nothing, however, is more precarious than resources of this nature. It
was observed that Dick became in his turn the whetstone of mine host’s
wit, without venturing either at defence or retaliation; that his easel
was transferred to a garret-room, in which there was scarce space for
it to stand upright; and that he no longer ventured to join the weekly
club, of which he had been once the life and soul. In short, Dick
Tinto’s friends feared that he had acted like the animal called the
sloth, which, heaving eaten up the last green leaf upon the tree where
it has established itself, ends by tumbling down from the top, and
dying of inanition. I ventured to hint this to Dick, recommended his
transferring the exercise of his inestimable talent to some other
sphere, and forsaking the common which he might be said to have eaten
bare.

“There is an obstacle to my change of residence,” said my friend,
grasping my hand with a look of solemnity.

“A bill due to my landlord, I am afraid?” replied I, with heartfelt
sympathy; “if any part of my slender means can assist in this
emergence——”

“No, by the soul of Sir Joshua!” answered the generous youth, “I will
never involve a friend in the consequences of my own misfortune. There
is a mode by which I can regain my liberty; and to creep even through a
common sewer is better than to remain in prison.”

I did not perfectly understand what my friend meant. The muse of
painting appeared to have failed him, and what other goddess he could
invoke in his distress was a mystery to me. We parted, however, without
further explanation, and I did not see him until three days after, when
he summoned me to partake of the _foy_ with which his landlord proposed
to regale him ere his departure for Edinburgh.

I found Dick in high spirits, whistling while he buckled the small
knapsack which contained his colours, brushes, pallets, and clean
shirt. That he parted on the best terms with mine host was obvious from
the cold beef set forth in the low parlour, flanked by two mugs of
admirable brown stout; and I own my curiosity was excited concerning
the means through which the face of my friend’s affairs had been so
suddenly improved. I did not suspect Dick of dealing with the devil,
and by what earthly means he had extricated himself thus happily I was
at a total loss to conjecture.

He perceived my curiosity, and took me by the hand. “My friend,” he
said, “fain would I conceal, even from you, the degradation to which it
has been necessary to submit, in order to accomplish an honourable
retreat from Gandercleaugh. But what avails attempting to conceal that
which must needs betray itself even by its superior excellence? All the
village—all the parish—all the world—will soon discover to what poverty
has reduced Richard Tinto.”

A sudden thought here struck me. I had observed that our landlord wore,
on that memorable morning, a pair of bran new velveteens instead of his
ancient thicksets.

“What,” said I, drawing my right hand, with the forefinger and thumb
pressed together, nimbly from my right haunch to my left shoulder, “you
have condescended to resume the paternal arts to which you were first
bred—long stitches, ha, Dick?”

He repelled this unlucky conjecture with a frown and a pshaw,
indicative of indignant contempt, and leading me into another room,
showed me, resting against the wall, the majestic head of Sir William
Wallace, grim as when severed from the trunk by the orders of the
Edward.

The painting was executed on boards of a substantial thickness, and the
top decorated with irons, for suspending the honoured effigy upon a
signpost.

“There,” he said, “my friend, stands the honour of Scotland, and my
shame; yet not so—rather the shame of those who, instead of encouraging
art in its proper sphere, reduce it to these unbecoming and unworthy
extremities.”

I endeavoured to smooth the ruffled feelings of my misused and
indignant friend. I reminded him that he ought not, like the stag in
the fable, to despise the quality which had extricated him from
difficulties, in which his talents, as a portrait or landscape painter,
had been found unavailing. Above all, I praised the execution, as well
as conception, of his painting, and reminded him that, far from feeling
dishonoured by so superb a specimen of his talents being exposed to the
general view of the public, he ought rather to congratulate himself
upon the augmentation of his celebrity to which its public exhibition
must necessarily give rise.

“You are right, my friend—you are right,” replied poor Dick, his eye
kindling with enthusiasm; “why should I shun the name of an—an—(he
hesitated for a phrase)—an out-of-doors artist? Hogarth has introduced
himself in that character in one of his best engravings; Domenichino,
or somebody else, in ancient times, Morland in our own, have exercised
their talents in this manner. And wherefore limit to the rich and
higher classes alone the delight which the exhibition of works of art
is calculated to inspire into all classes? Statues are placed in the
open air, why should Painting be more niggardly in displaying her
masterpieces than her sister Sculpture? And yet, my friend, we must
part suddenly; the carpenter is coming in an hour to put up the—the
emblem; and truly, with all my philosophy, and your consolatory
encouragement to boot, I would rather wish to leave Gandercleugh before
that operation commences.”

We partook of our genial host’s parting banquet, and I escorted Dick on
his walk to Edinburgh. We parted about a mile from the village, just as
we heard the distant cheer of the boys which accompanied the mounting
of the new symbol of the Wallace Head. Dick Tinto mended his pace to
get out of hearing, so little had either early practice or recent
philosophy reconciled him to the character of a sign-painter.

In Edinburgh, Dick’s talents were discovered and appreciated, and he
received dinners and hints from several distinguished judges of the
fine arts. But these gentlemen dispensed their criticism more willingly
than their cash, and Dick thought he needed cash more than criticism.
He therefore sought London, the universal mart of talent, and where, as
is usual in general marts of most descriptions, much more of each
commodity is exposed to sale than can ever find purchasers.

Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have considerable
natural talents for his profession, and whose vain and sanguine
disposition never permitted him to doubt for a moment of ultimate
success, threw himself headlong into the crowd which jostled and
struggled for notice and preferment. He elbowed others, and was elbowed
himself; and finally, by dint of intrepidity, fought his way into some
notice, painted for the prize at the Institution, had pictures at the
exhibition at Somerset House, and damned the hanging committee. But
poor Dick was doomed to lose the field he fought so gallantly. In the
fine arts, there is scarce an alternative betwixt distinguished success
and absolute failure; and as Dick’s zeal and industry were unable to
ensure the first, he fell into the distresses which, in his condition,
were the natural consequences of the latter alternative. He was for a
time patronised by one or two of those judicious persons who make a
virtue of being singular, and of pitching their own opinions against
those of the world in matters of taste and criticism. But they soon
tired of poor Tinto, and laid him down as a load, upon the principle on
which a spoilt child throws away its plaything. Misery, I fear, took
him up, and accompanied him to a premature grave, to which he was
carried from an obscure lodging in Swallow Street, where he had been
dunned by his landlady within doors, and watched by bailiffs without,
until death came to his relief. A corner of the Morning Post noticed
his death, generously adding, that his manner displayed considerable
genius, though his style was rather sketchy; and referred to an
advertisement, which announced that Mr. Varnish, a well-known
printseller, had still on hand a very few drawings and paintings by
Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry who
might wish to complete their collections of modern art were invited to
visit without delay. So ended Dick Tinto! a lamentable proof of the
great truth, that in the fine arts mediocrity is not permitted, and
that he who cannot ascend to the very top of the ladder will do well
not to put his foot upon it at all.

The memory of Tinto is dear to me, from the recollection of the many
conversations which we have had together, most of them turning upon my
present task. He was delighted with my progress, and talked of an
ornamented and illustrated edition, with heads, vignettes, and _culs de
lampe_, all to be designed by his own patriotic and friendly pencil. He
prevailed upon an old sergeant of invalids to sit to him in the
character of Bothwell, the lifeguard’s-man of Charles the Second, and
the bellman of Gandercleugh in that of David Deans. But while he thus
proposed to unite his own powers with mine for the illustration of
these narratives, he mixed many a dose of salutary criticism with the
panegyrics which my composition was at times so fortunate as to call
forth.

“Your characters,” he said, “my dear Pattieson, make too much use of
the _gob box;_ they _patter_ too much (an elegant phraseology which
Dick had learned while painting the scenes of an itinerant company of
players); there is nothing in whole pages but mere chat and dialogue.”

“The ancient philosopher,” said I in reply, “was wont to say, ‘Speak,
that I may know thee’; and how is it possible for an author to
introduce his _personæ dramatis_ to his readers in a more interesting
and effectual manner than by the dialogue in which each is represented
as supporting his own appropriate character?”

“It is a false conclusion,” said Tinto; “I hate it, Peter, as I hate an
unfilled can. I grant you, indeed, that speech is a faculty of some
value in the intercourse of human affairs, and I will not even insist
on the doctrine of that Pythagorean toper, who was of opinion that over
a bottle speaking spoiled conversation. But I will not allow that a
professor of the fine arts has occasion to embody the idea of his scene
in language, in order to impress upon the reader its reality and its
effect. On the contrary, I will be judged by most of your readers,
Peter, should these tales ever become public, whether you have not
given us a page of talk for every single idea which two words might
have communicated, while the posture, and manner, and incident,
accurately drawn, and brought out by appropriate colouring, would have
preserved all that was worthy of preservation, and saved these
everlasting ‘said he’s’ and ‘said she’s,’ with which it has been your
pleasure to encumber your pages.”

I replied, “That he confounded the operations of the pencil and the
pen; that the serene and silent art, as painting has been called by one
of our first living poets, necessarily appealed to the eye, because it
had not the organs for addressing the ear; whereas poetry, or that
species of composition which approached to it, lay under the necessity
of doing absolutely the reverse, and addressed itself to the ear, for
the purpose of exciting that interest which it could not attain through
the medium of the eye.”

Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended was
founded on misrepresentation. “Description,” he said, “was to the
author of a romance exactly what drawing and tinting were to a painter:
words were his colours, and, if properly employed, they could not fail
to place the scene which he wished to conjure up as effectually before
the mind’s eye as the tablet or canvas presents it to the bodily organ.
The same rules,” he contended, “applied to both, and an exuberance of
dialogue, in the former case, was a verbose and laborious mode of
composition which went to confound the proper art of fictitious
narrative with that of the drama, a widely different species of
composition, of which dialogue was the very essence, because all,
excepting the language to be made use of, was presented to the eye by
the dresses, and persons, and actions of the performers upon the stage.
But as nothing,” said Dick, “can be more dull than a long narrative
written upon the plan of a drama, so where you have approached most
near to that species of composition, by indulging in prolonged scenes
of mere conversation, the course of your story has become chill and
constrained, and you have lost the power of arresting the attention and
exciting the imagination, in which upon other occasions you may be
considered as having succeeded tolerably well.”

I made my bow in requital of the compliment, which was probably thrown
in by way of _placebo_, and expressed myself willing at least to make
one trial of a more straightforward style of composition, in which my
actors should do more, and say less, than in my former attempts of this
kind. Dick gave me a patronising and approving nod, and observed that,
finding me so docile, he would communicate, for the benefit of my muse,
a subject which he had studied with a view to his own art.

“The story,” he said, “was, by tradition, affirmed to be truth,
although, as upwards of a hundred years had passed away since the
events took place, some doubts upon the accuracy of all the particulars
might be reasonably entertained.”

When Dick Tinto had thus spoken, he rummaged his portfolio for the
sketch from which he proposed one day to execute a picture of fourteen
feet by eight. The sketch, which was cleverly executed, to use the
appropriate phrase, represented an ancient hall, fitted up and
furnished in what we now call the taste of Queen Elizabeth’s age. The
light, admitted from the upper part of a high casement, fell upon a
female figure of exquisite beauty, who, in an attitude of speechless
terror, appeared to watch the issue of a debate betwixt two other
persons. The one was a young man, in the Vandyke dress common to the
time of Charles I., who, with an air of indignant pride, testified by
the manner in which he raised his head and extended his arm, seemed to
be urging a claim of right, rather than of favour, to a lady whose age,
and some resemblance in their features, pointed her out as the mother
of the younger female, and who appeared to listen with a mixture of
displeasure and impatience.

Tinto produced his sketch with an air of mysterious triumph, and gazed
on it as a fond parent looks upon a hopeful child, while he anticipates
the future figure he is to make in the world, and the height to which
he will raise the honour of his family. He held it at arm’s length from
me—he held it closer—he placed it upon the top of a chest of
drawers—closed the lower shutters of the casement, to adjust a downward
and favourable light—fell back to the due distance, dragging me after
him—shaded his face with his hand, as if to exclude all but the
favourite object—and ended by spoiling a child’s copy-book, which he
rolled up so as to serve for the darkened tube of an amateur. I fancy
my expressions of enthusiasm had not been in proportion to his own, for
he presently exclaimed with vehemence: “Mr. Pattieson, I used to think
you had an eye in your head.”

I vindicated my claim to the usual allowance of visual organs.

“Yet, on my honour,” said Dick, “I would swear you had been born blind,
since you have failed at the first glance to discover the subject and
meaning of that sketch. I do not mean to praise my own performance, I
leave these arts to others; I am sensible of my deficiencies, conscious
that my drawing and colouring may be improved by the time I intend to
dedicate to the art. But the conception—the expression—the
positions—these tell the story to every one who looks at the sketch;
and if I can finish the picture without diminution of the original
conception, the name of Tinto shall no more be smothered by the mists
of envy and intrigue.”

I replied: “That I admired the sketch exceedingly; but that to
understand its full merit, I felt it absolutely necessary to be
informed of the subject.”

“That is the very thing I complain of,” answered Tinto; “you have
accustomed yourself so much to these creeping twilight details of
yours, that you are become incapable of receiving that instant and
vivid flash of conviction which darts on the mind from seeing the happy
and expressive combinations of a single scene, and which gathers from
the position, attitude, and countenance of the moment, not only the
history of the past lives of the personages represented, and the nature
of the business on which they are immediately engaged, but lifts even
the veil of futurity, and affords a shrewd guess at their future
fortunes.”

“In that case,” replied I, “Painting excels the ape of the renowned
Gines de Passamonte, which only meddled with the past and the present;
nay, she excels that very Nature who affords her subject; for I protest
to you, Dick, that were I permitted to peep into that
Elizabeth-chamber, and see the persons you have sketched conversing in
flesh and blood, I should not be a jot nearer guessing the nature of
their business than I am at this moment while looking at your sketch.
Only generally, from the languishing look of the young lady, and the
care you have taken to present a very handsome leg on the part of the
gentleman, I presume there is some reference to a love affair between
them.”

“Do you really presume to form such a bold conjecture?” said Tinto.
“And the indignant earnestness with which you see the man urge his
suit, the unresisting and passive despair of the younger female, the
stern air of inflexible determination in the elder woman, whose looks
express at once consciousness that she is acting wrong and a firm
determination to persist in the course she has adopted——”

“If her looks express all this, my dear Tinto,” replied I, interrupting
him, “your pencil rivals the dramatic art of Mr. Puff in The Critic,
who crammed a whole complicated sentence into the expressive shake of
Lord Burleigh’s head.”

“My good friend, Peter,” replied Tinto, “I observe you are perfectly
incorrigible; however, I have compassion on your dulness, and am
unwilling you should be deprived of the pleasure of understanding my
picture, and of gaining, at the same time, a subject for your own pen.
You must know then, last summer, while I was taking sketches on the
coast of East Lothian and Berwickshire, I was seduced into the
mountains of Lammermoor by the account I received of some remains of
antiquity in that district. Those with which I was most struck were the
ruins of an ancient castle in which that Elizabeth-chamber, as you call
it, once existed. I resided for two or three days at a farmhouse in the
neighbourhood, where the aged goodwife was well acquainted with the
history of the castle, and the events which had taken place in it. One
of these was of a nature so interesting and singular, that my attention
was divided between my wish to draw the old ruins in landscape, and to
represent, in a history-piece, the singular events which have taken
place in it. Here are my notes of the tale,” said poor Dick, handing a
parcel of loose scraps, partly scratched over with his pencil, partly
with his pen, where outlines of caricatures, sketches of turrets,
mills, old gables, and dovecots, disputed the ground with his written
memoranda.

I proceeded, however, to decipher the substance of the manuscript as
well as I could, and move it into the following Tale, in which,
following in part, though not entirely, my friend Tinto’s advice, I
endeavoured to render my narrative rather descriptive than dramatic. My
favourite propensity, however, has at times overcome me, and my
persons, like many others in this talking world, speak now and then a
great deal more than they act.




CHAPTER II.


Well, lord, we have not got that which we have;
’Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
Being opposites of such repairing nature.

Henry VI. Part II.


In the gorge of a pass or mountain glen, ascending from the fertile
plains of East Lothian, there stood in former times an extensive
castle, of which only the ruins are now visible. Its ancient
proprietors were a race of powerful and warlike barons, who bore the
same name with the castle itself, which was Ravenswood. Their line
extended to a remote period of antiquity, and they had intermarried
with the Douglasses, Humes, Swintons, Hays, and other families of power
and distinction in the same country. Their history was frequently
involved in that of Scotland itself, in whose annals their feats are
recorded. The Castle of Ravenswood, occupying, and in some measure
commanding, a pass betweixt Berwickshire, or the Merse, as the
southeastern province of Scotland is termed, and the Lothians, was of
importance both in times of foreign war and domestic discord. It was
frequently beseiged with ardour, and defended with obstinacy, and, of
course, its owners played a conspicuous part in story. But their house
had its revolutions, like all sublunary things: it became greatly
declined from its splendour about the middle of the 17th century; and
towards the period of the Revolution, the last proprietor of Ravenswood
Castle saw himself compelled to part with the ancient family seat, and
to remove himself to a lonely and sea-beaten tower, which, situated on
the bleak shores between St. Abb’s Head and the village of Eyemouth,
looked out on the lonely and boisterous German Ocean. A black domain of
wild pasture-land surrounded their new residence, and formed the
remains of their property.

Lord Ravenswood, the heir of this ruined family, was far from bending
his mind to his new condition of life. In the civil war of 1689 he had
espoused the sinking side, and although he had escaped without the
forfeiture of life or land, his blood had been attainted, and his title
abolished. He was now called Lord Ravenswood only in courtesy.

This forfeited nobleman inherited the pride and turbulence, though not
the fortune, of his house, and, as he imputed the final declension of
his family to a particular individual, he honoured that person with his
full portion of hatred. This was the very man who had now become, by
purchase, proprietor of Ravenswood, and the domains of which the heir
of the house now stood dispossessed. He was descended of a family much
less ancient than that of Lord Ravenswood, and which had only risen to
wealth and political importance during the great civil wars. He himself
had been bred to the bar, and had held high offices in the state,
maintaining through life the character of a skilful fisher in the
troubled waters of a state divided by factions, and governed by
delegated authority; and of one who contrived to amass considerable
sums of money in a country where there was but little to be gathered,
and who equally knew the value of wealth and the various means of
augmenting it and using it as an engine of increasing his power and
influence.

Thus qualified and gifted, he was a dangerous antagonist to the fierce
and imprudent Ravenswood. Whether he had given him good cause for the
enmity with which the Baron regarded him, was a point on which men
spoke differently. Some said the quarrel arose merely from the
vindictive spirit and envy of Lord Ravenswood, who could not patiently
behold another, though by just and fair purchase, become the proprietor
of the estate and castle of his forefathers. But the greater part of
the public, prone to slander the wealthy in their absence as to flatter
them in their presence, held a less charitable opinion. They said that
the Lord Keeper (for to this height Sir William Ashton had ascended)
had, previous to the final purchase of the estate of Ravenswood, been
concerned in extensive pecuniary transactions with the former
proprietor; and, rather intimating what was probable than affirming
anything positively, they asked which party was likely to have the
advantage in stating and enforcing the claims arising out of these
complicated affairs, and more than hinted the advantages which the cool
lawyer and able politician must necessarily possess over the hot,
fiery, and imprudent character whom he had involved in legal toils and
pecuniary snares.

The character of the times aggravated these suspicions. “In those days
there was no king in Israel.” Since the departure of James VI. to
assume the richer and more powerful crown of England, there had existed
in Scotland contending parties, formed among the aristocracy, by whom,
as their intrigues at the court of St. James’s chanced to prevail, the
delegated powers of sovereignty were alternately swayed. The evils
attending upon this system of government resembled those which afflict
the tenants of an Irish estate, the property of an absentee. There was
no supreme power, claiming and possessing a general interest with the
community at large, to whom the oppressed might appeal from subordinate
tyranny, either for justice or for mercy. Let a monarch be as indolent,
as selfish, as much disposed to arbitrary power as he will, still, in a
free country, his own interests are so clearly connected with those of
the public at large, and the evil consequences to his own authority are
so obvious and imminent when a different course is pursued, that common
policy, as well as common feeling, point to the equal distribution of
justice, and to the establishment of the throne in righteousness. Thus,
even sovereigns remarkable for usurpation and tyranny have been found
rigorous in the administration of justice among their subjects, in
cases where their own power and passions were not compromised.

It is very different when the powers of sovereignty are delegated to
the head of an aristocratic faction, rivalled and pressed closely in
the race of ambition by an adverse leader. His brief and precarious
enjoyment of power must be employed in rewarding his partizans, in
extending his influence, in oppressing and crushing his adversaries.
Even Abou Hassan, the most disinterested of all viceroys, forgot not,
during his caliphate of one day, to send a douceur of one thousand
pieces of gold to his own household; and the Scottish vicegerents,
raised to power by the strength of their faction, failed not to embrace
the same means of rewarding them.

The administration of justice, in particular, was infected by the most
gross partiality. A case of importance scarcely occurred in which there
was not some ground for bias or partiality on the part of the judges,
who were so little able to withstand the temptation that the adage,
“Show me the man, and I will show you the law,” became as prevalent as
it was scandalous. One corruption led the way to others still more
gross and profligate. The judge who lent his sacred authority in one
case to support a friend, and in another to crush an enemy, and whose
decisions were founded on family connexions or political relations,
could not be supposed inaccessible to direct personal motives; and the
purse of the wealthy was too often believed to be thrown into the scale
to weigh down the cause of the poor litigant. The subordinate officers
of the law affected little scruple concerning bribery. Pieces of plate
and bags of money were sent in presents to the king’s counsel, to
influence their conduct, and poured forth, says a contemporary writer,
like billets of wood upon their floors, without even the decency of
concealment.

In such times, it was not over uncharitable to suppose that the
statesman, practised in courts of law, and a powerful member of a
triumphant cabal, might find and use means of advantage over his less
skilful and less favoured adversary; and if it had been supposed that
Sir William Ashton’s conscience had been too delicate to profit by
these advantages, it was believed that his ambition and desire of
extending his wealth and consequence found as strong a stimulus in the
exhortations of his lady as the daring aim of Macbeth in the days of
yore.

Lady Ashton was of a family more distinguished than that of her lord,
an advantage which she did not fail to use to the uttermost, in
maintaining and extending her husband’s influence over others, and,
unless she was greatly belied, her own over him. She had been
beautiful, and was stately and majestic in her appearance. Endowed by
nature with strong powers and violent passions, experience had taught
her to employ the one, and to conceal, if not to moderate, the other.
She was a severe and strict observer of the external forms, at least,
of devotion; her hospitality was splendid, even to ostentation; her
address and manners, agreeable to the pattern most valued in Scotland
at the period, were grave, dignified, and severely regulated by the
rules of etiquette. Her character had always been beyond the breath of
slander. And yet, with all these qualities to excite respect, Lady
Ashton was seldom mentioned in the terms of love or affection.
Interest—the interest of her family, if not her own—seemed too
obviously the motive of her actions; and where this is the case, the
sharp-judging and malignant public are not easily imposed upon by
outward show. It was seen and ascertained that, in her most graceful
courtesies and compliments, Lady Ashton no more lost sight of her
object than the falcon in his airy wheel turns his quick eyes from his
destined quarry; and hence, something of doubt and suspicion qualified
the feelings with which her equals received her attentions. With her
inferiors these feelings were mingled with fear; an impression useful
to her purposes, so far as it enforced ready compliance with her
requests and implicit obedience to her commands, but detrimental,
because it cannot exist with affection or regard.

Even her husband, it is said, upon whose fortunes her talents and
address had produced such emphatic influence, regarded her with
respectful awe rather than confiding attachment; and report said, there
were times when he considered his grandeur as dearly purchased at the
expense of domestic thraldom. Of this, however, much might be
suspected, but little could be accurately known: Lady Ashton regarded
the honour of her husband as her own, and was well aware how much that
would suffer in the public eye should he appear a vassal to his wife.
In all her arguments his opinion was quoted as infallible; his taste
was appealed to, and his sentiments received, with the air of deference
which a dutiful wife might seem to owe to a husband of Sir William
Ashton’s rank and character. But there was something under all this
which rung false and hollow; and to those who watched this couple with
close, and perhaps malicious, scrutiny it seemed evident that, in the
haughtiness of a firmer character, higher birth, and more decided views
of aggrandisement, the lady looked with some contempt on her husband,
and that he regarded her with jealous fear, rather than with love or
admiration.

Still, however, the leading and favourite interests of Sir William
Ashton and his lady were the same, and they failed not to work in
concert, although without cordiality, and to testify, in all exterior
circumstances, that respect for each other which they were aware was
necessary to secure that of the public.

Their union was crowned with several children, of whom three survived.
One, the eldest son, was absent on his travels; the second, a girl of
seventeen, and the third, a boy about three years younger, resided with
their parents in Edinburgh during the sessions of the Scottish
Parliament and Privy Council, at other times in the old Gothic castle
of Ravenswood, to which the Lord Keeper had made large additions in the
style of the 17th century.

Allan Lord Ravenswood, the late proprietor of that ancient mansion and
the large estate annexed to it, continued for some time to wage
ineffectual war with his successor concerning various points to which
their former transactions had given rise, and which were successively
determined in favour of the wealthy and powerful competitor, until
death closed the litigation, by summoning Ravenswood to a higher bar.
The thread of life, which had been long wasting, gave way during a fit
of violent and impotent fury with which he was assailed on receiving
the news of the loss of a cause, founded, perhaps, rather in equity
than in law, the last which he had maintained against his powerful
antagonist. His son witnessed his dying agonies, and heard the curses
which he breathed against his adversary, as if they had conveyed to him
a legacy of vengeance. Other circumstances happened to exasperate a
passion which was, and had long been, a prevalent vice in the Scottish
disposition.

It was a November morning, and the cliffs which overlooked the ocean
were hung with thick and heavy mist, when the portals of the ancient
and half-ruinous tower, in which Lord Ravenswood had spent the last and
troubled years of his life, opened, that his mortal remains might pass
forward to an abode yet more dreary and lonely. The pomp of attendance,
to which the deceased had, in his latter years, been a stranger, was
revived as he was about to be consigned to the realms of forgetfulness.

Banner after banner, with the various devices and coats of this ancient
family and its connexions, followed each other in mournful procession
from under the low-browed archway of the courtyard. The principal
gentry of the country attended in the deepest mourning, and tempered
the pace of their long train of horses to the solemn march befitting
the occasion. Trumpets, with banners of crape attached to them, sent
forth their long and melancholy notes to regulate the movements of the
procession. An immense train of inferior mourners and menials closed
the rear, which had not yet issued from the castle gate when the van
had reached the chapel where the body was to be deposited.

Contrary to the custom, and even to the law, of the time, the body was
met by a priest of the Scottish Episcopal communion, arrayed in his
surplice, and prepared to read over the coffin of the deceased the
funeral service of the church. Such had been the desire of Lord
Ravenswood in his last illness, and it was readily complied with by the
Tory gentlemen, or Cavaliers, as they affected to style themselves, in
which faction most of his kinsmen were enrolled. The Presbyterian
Church judicatory of the bounds, considering the ceremony as a
bravading insult upon their authority, had applied to the Lord Keeper,
as the nearest privy councillor, for a warrant to prevent its being
carried into effect; so that, when the clergyman had opened his
prayer-book, an officer of the law, supported by some armed men,
commanded him to be silent. An insult which fired the whole assembly
with indignation was particularly and instantly resented by the only
son of the deceased, Edgar, popularly called the Master of Ravenswood,
a youth of about twenty years of age. He clapped his hand on his sword,
and bidding the official person to desist at his peril from farther
interruption, commanded the clergyman to proceed. The man attempted to
enforce his commission; but as an hundred swords at once glittered in
the air, he contented himself with protesting against the violence
which had been offered to him in the execution of his duty, and stood
aloof, a sullen and moody spectator of the ceremonial, muttering as one
who should say: “You’ll rue the day that clogs me with this answer.”

The scene was worthy of an artist’s pencil. Under the very arch of the
house of death, the clergyman, affrighted at the scene, and trembling
for his own safety, hastily and unwillingly rehearsed the solemn
service of the church, and spoke “dust to dust and ashes to ashes,”
over ruined pride and decayed prosperity. Around stood the relations of
the deceased, their countenances more in anger than in sorrow, and the
drawn swords which they brandished forming a violent contrast with
their deep mourning habits. In the countenance of the young man alone,
resentment seemed for the moment overpowered by the deep agony with
which he beheld his nearest, and almost his only, friend consigned to
the tomb of his ancestry. A relative observed him turn deadly pale,
when, all rites being now duly observed, it became the duty of the
chief mourner to lower down into the charnel vault, where mouldering
coffins showed their tattered velvet and decayed plating, the head of
the corpse which was to be their partner in corruption. He stept to the
youth and offered his assistance, which, by a mute motion, Edgar
Ravenswood rejected. Firmly, and without a tear, he performed that last
duty. The stone was laid on the sepulchre, the door of the aisle was
locked, and the youth took possession of its massive key.

As the crowd left the chapel, he paused on the steps which led to its
Gothic chancel. “Gentlemen and friends,” he said, “you have this day
done no common duty to the body of your deceased kinsman. The rites of
due observance, which, in other countries, are allowed as the due of
the meanest Christian, would this day have been denied to the body of
your relative—not certainly sprung of the meanest house in Scotland—had
it not been assured to him by your courage. Others bury their dead in
sorrow and tears, in silence and in reverence; our funeral rites are
marred by the intrusion of bailiffs and ruffians, and our grief—the
grief due to our departed friend—is chased from our cheeks by the glow
of just indignation. But it is well that I know from what quiver this
arrow has come forth. It was only he that dug the grave who could have
the mean cruelty to disturb the obsequies; and Heaven do as much to me
and more, if I requite not to this man and his house the ruin and
disgrace he has brought on me and mine!”

A numerous part of the assembly applauded this speech, as the spirited
expression of just resentment; but the more cool and judicious
regretted that it had been uttered. The fortunes of the heir of
Ravenswood were too low to brave the farther hostility which they
imagined these open expressions of resentment must necessarily provoke.
Their apprehensions, however, proved groundless, at least in the
immediate consequences of this affair.

The mourners returned to the tower, there, according to a custom but
recently abolished in Scotland, to carouse deep healths to the memory
of the deceased, to make the house of sorrow ring with sounds of
joviality and debauch, and to diminish, by the expense of a large and
profuse entertainment, the limited revenues of the heir of him whose
funeral they thus strangely honoured. It was the custom, however, and
on the present occasion it was fully observed. The tables swam in wine,
the populace feasted in the courtyard, the yeomen in the kitchen and
buttery; and two years’ rent of Ravenswood’s remaining property hardly
defrayed the charge of the funeral revel. The wine did its office on
all but the Master of Ravenswood, a title which he still retained,
though forfeiture had attached to that of his father. He, while passing
around the cup which he himself did not taste, soon listened to a
thousand exclamations against the Lord Keeper, and passionate
protestations of attachment to himself, and to the honour of his house.
He listened with dark and sullen brow to ebullitions which he
considered justly as equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the
brink of the goblet, or at least with the vapours which its contents
excited in the brains of the revellers around him.

When the last flask was emptied, they took their leave with deep
protestations—to be forgotten on the morrow, if, indeed, those who made
them should not think it necessary for their safety to make a more
solemn retractation.

Accepting their adieus with an air of contempt which he could scarce
conceal, Ravenswood at length beheld his ruinous habitation cleared of
this confluence of riotous guests, and returned to the deserted hall,
which now appeared doubly lonely from the cessation of that clamour to
which it had so lately echoed. But its space was peopled by phantoms
which the imagination of the young heir conjured up before him—the
tarnished honour and degraded fortunes of his house, the destruction of
his own hopes, and the triumph of that family by whom they had been
ruined. To a mind naturally of a gloomy cast here was ample room for
meditation, and the musings of young Ravenswood were deep and
unwitnessed.

The peasant who shows the ruins of the tower, which still crown the
beetling cliff and behold the war of the waves, though no more tenanted
saved by the sea-mew and cormorant, even yet affirms that on this fatal
night the Master of Ravenswood, by the bitter exclamations of his
despair, evoked some evil fiend, under whose malignant influence the
future tissue of incidents was woven. Alas! what fiend can suggest more
desperate counsels than those adopted under the guidance of our own
violent and unresisted passions?




CHAPTER III.


Over Gods forebode, then said the King,
That thou shouldst shoot at me.

William Bell, Clim ’o the Cleugh, etc.


On the morning after the funeral, the legal officer whose authority had
been found insufficient to effect an interruption of the funeral
solemnities of the late Lord Ravenswood, hastened to state before the
Keeper the resistance which he had met with in the execution of his
office.

The statesman was seated in a spacious library, once a banqueting-room
in the old Castle of Ravenswood, as was evident from the armorial
insignia still displayed on the carved roof, which was vaulted with
Spanish chestnut, and on the stained glass of the casement, through
which gleamed a dim yet rich light on the long rows of shelves, bending
under the weight of legal commentators and monkish historians, whose
ponderous volumes formed the chief and most valued contents of a
Scottish historian [library] of the period. On the massive oaken table
and reading-desk lay a confused mass of letters, petitions, and
parchments; to toil amongst which was the pleasure at once and the
plague of Sir William Ashton’s life. His appearance was grave and even
noble, well becoming one who held an high office in the state; and it
was not save after long and intimate conversation with him upon topics
of pressing and personal interest, that a stranger could have
discovered something vacillating and uncertain in his resolutions; an
infirmity of purpose, arising from a cautious and timid disposition,
which, as he was conscious of its internal influence on his mind, he
was, from pride as well as policy, most anxious to conceal from others.
He listened with great apparent composure to an exaggerated account of
the tumult which had taken place at the funeral, of the contempt thrown
on his own authority and that of the church and state; nor did he seem
moved even by the faithful report of the insulting and threatening
language which had been uttered by young Ravenswood and others, and
obviously directed against himself. He heard, also, what the man had
been able to collect, in a very distorted and aggravated shape, of the
toasts which had been drunk, and the menaces uttered, at the subsequent
entertainment. In fine, he made careful notes of all these particulars,
and of the names of the persons by whom, in case of need, an
accusation, founded upon these violent proceedings, could be witnessed
and made good, and dismissed his informer, secure that he was now
master of the remaining fortune, and even of the personal liberty, of
young Ravenswood.

When the door had closed upon the officer of the law, the Lord Keeper
remained for a moment in deep meditation; then, starting from his seat,
paced the apartment as one about to take a sudden and energetic
resolution. “Young Ravenswood,” he muttered, “is now mine—he is my own;
he has placed himself in my hand, and he shall bend or break. I have
not forgot the determined and dogged obstinacy with which his father
fought every point to the last, resisted every effort at compromise,
embroiled me in lawsuits, and attempted to assail my character when he
could not otherwise impugn my rights. This boy he has left behind
him—this Edgar—this hot-headed, hare-brained fool, has wrecked his
vessel before she has cleared the harbor. I must see that he gains no
advantage of some turning tide which may again float him off. These
memoranda, properly stated to the privy council, cannot but be
construed into an aggravated riot, in which the dignity both of the
civil and ecclesiastical authorities stands committed. A heavy fine
might be imposed; an order for committing him to Edinburgh or Blackness
Castle seems not improper; even a charge of treason might be laid on
many of these words and expressions, though God forbid I should
prosecute the matter to that extent. No, I will not; I will not touch
his life, even if it should be in my power; and yet, if he lives till a
change of times, what follows? Restitution—perhaps revenge. I know
Athole promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here is his son
already bandying and making a faction by his own contemptible
influence. What a ready tool he would be for the use of those who are
watching the downfall of our administration!”

While these thoughts were agitating the mind of the wily statesman, and
while he was persuading himself that his own interest and safety, as
well as those of his friends and party, depended on using the present
advantage to the uttermost against young Ravenswood, the Lord Keeper
sate down to his desk, and proceeded to draw up, for the information of
the privy council, an account of the disorderly proceedings which, in
contempt of his warrant, had taken place at the funeral of Lord
Ravenswood. The names of most of the parties concerned, as well as the
fact itself, would, he was well aware, sound odiously in the ears of
his colleagues in administration, and most likely instigate them to
make an example of young Ravenswood, at least, _in terrorem_.

It was a point of delicacy, however, to select such expressions as
might infer the young man’s culpability, without seeming directly to
urge it, which, on the part of Sir William Ashton, his father’s ancient
antagonist, could not but appear odious and invidious. While he was in
the act of composition, labouring to find words which might indicate
Edgar Ravenswood to be the cause of the uproar, without specifically
making such a charge, Sir William, in a pause of his task, chanced, in
looking upward, to see the crest of the family for whose heir he was
whetting the arrows and disposing the toils of the law carved upon one
of the corbeilles from which the vaulted roof of the apartment sprung.
It was a black bull’s head, with the legend, “I bide my time”; and the
occasion upon which it was adopted mingled itself singularly and
impressively with the subject of his present reflections.

It was said by a constant tradition that a Malisius de Ravenswood had,
in the 13th century, been deprived of his castle and lands by a
powerful usurper, who had for a while enjoyed his spoils in quiet. At
length, on the eve of a costly banquet, Ravenswood, who had watched his
opportunity, introduced himself into the castle with a small band of
faithful retainers. The serving of the expected feast was impatiently
looked for by the guests, and clamorously demanded by the temporary
master of the castle. Ravenswood, who had assumed the disguise of a
sewer upon the occasion, answered, in a stern voice, “I bide my time”;
and at the same moment a bull’s head, the ancient symbol of death, was
placed upon the table. The explosion of the conspiracy took place upon
the signal, and the usurper and his followers were put to death.
Perhaps there was something in this still known and often repeated
story which came immediately home to the breast and conscience of the
Lord Keeper; for, putting from him the paper on which he had begun his
report, and carefully locking the memoranda which he had prepared into
a cabinet which stood beside him, he proceeded to walk abroad, as if
for the purpose of collecting his ideas, and reflecting farther on the
consequences of the step which he was about to take, ere yet they
became inevitable.

In passing through a large Gothic ante-room, Sir William Ashton heard
the sound of his daughter’s lute. Music, when the performers are
concealed, affects us with a pleasure mingled with surprise, and
reminds us of the natural concert of birds among the leafy bowers. The
statesman, though little accustomed to give way to emotions of this
natural and simple class, was still a man and a father. He stopped,
therefore, and listened, while the silver tones of Lucy Ashton’s voice
mingled with the accompaniment in an ancient air, to which some one had
adapted the following words:

“Look not thou on beauty’s charming,
Sit thou still when kings are arming,
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
Speak not when the people listens,
Stop thine ear against the singer,
From the red gold keep thy finger,
Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.”


The sounds ceased, and the Keeper entered his daughter’s apartment.

The words she had chosen seemed particularly adapted to her character;
for Lucy Ashton’s exquisitely beautiful, yet somewhat girlish features
were formed to express peace of mind, serenity, and indifference to the
tinsel of worldly pleasure. Her locks, which were of shadowy gold,
divided on a brow of exquisite whiteness, like a gleam of broken and
pallid sunshine upon a hill of snow. The expression of the countenance
was in the last degree gentle, soft, timid, and feminine, and seemed
rather to shrink from the most casual look of a stranger than to court
his admiration. Something there was of a Madonna cast, perhaps the
result of delicate health, and of residence in a family where the
dispositions of the inmates were fiercer, more active, and energetic
than her own.

Yet her passiveness of disposition was by no means owing to an
indifferent or unfeeling mind. Left to the impulse of her own taste and
feelings, Lucy Ashton was peculiarly accessible to those of a romantic
cast. Her secret delight was in the old legendary tales of ardent
devotion and unalterable affection, chequered as they so often are with
strange adventures and supernatural horrors. This was her favoured
fairy realm, and here she erected her aerial palaces. But it was only
in secret that she laboured at this delusive though delightful
architecture. In her retired chamber, or in the woodland bower which
she had chosen for her own, and called after her name, she was in fancy
distributing the prizes at the tournament, or raining down influence
from her eyes on the valiant combatants: or she was wandering in the
wilderness with Una, under escort of the generous lion; or she was
identifying herself with the simple yet noble-minded Miranda in the
isle of wonder and enchantment.

But in her exterior relations to things of this world, Lucy willingly
received the ruling impulse from those around her. The alternative was,
in general, too indifferent to her to render resistance desirable, and
she willingly found a motive for decision in the opinion of her friends
which perhaps she might have sought for in vain in her own choice.
Every reader must have observed in some family of his acquaintance some
individual of a temper soft and yielding, who, mixed with stronger and
more ardent minds, is borne along by the will of others, with as little
power of opposition as the flower which is flung into a running stream.
It usually happens that such a compliant and easy disposition, which
resigns itself without murmur to the guidance of others, becomes the
darling of those to whose inclinations its own seem to be offered, in
ungrudging and ready sacrifice.

This was eminently the case with Lucy Ashton. Her politic, wary, and
worldly father felt for her an affection the strength of which
sometimes surprised him into an unusual emotion. Her elder brother, who
trode the path of ambition with a haughtier step than his father, had
also more of human affection. A soldier, and in a dissolute age, he
preferred his sister Lucy even to pleasure and to military preferment
and distinction. Her younger brother, at an age when trifles chiefly
occupied his mind, made her the confidante of all his pleasures and
anxieties, his success in field-sports, and his quarrels with his tutor
and instructors. To these details, however trivial, Lucy lent patient
and not indifferent attention. They moved and interested Henry, and
that was enough to secure her ear.

Her mother alone did not feel that distinguished and predominating
affection with which the rest of the family cherished Lucy. She
regarded what she termed her daughter’s want of spirit as a decided
mark that the more plebeian blood of her father predominated in Lucy’s
veins, and used to call her in derision her Lammermoor Shepherdess. To
dislike so gentle and inoffensive a being was impossible; but Lady
Ashton preferred her eldest son, on whom had descended a large portion
of her own ambitious and undaunted disposition, to a daughter whose
softness of temper seemed allied to feebleness of mind. Her eldest son
was the more partially beloved by his mother because, contrary to the
usual custom of Scottish families of distinction, he had been named
after the head of the house.

“My Sholto,” she said, “will support the untarnished honour of his
maternal house, and elevate and support that of his father. Poor Lucy
is unfit for courts or crowded halls. Some country laird must be her
husband, rich enough to supply her with every comfort, without an
effort on her own part, so that she may have nothing to shed a tear for
but the tender apprehension lest he may break his neck in a foxchase.
It was not so, however, that our house was raised, nor is it so that it
can be fortified and augmented. The Lord Keeper’s dignity is yet new;
it must be borne as if we were used to its weight, worthy of it, and
prompt to assert and maintain it. Before ancient authorities men bend
from customary and hereditary deference; in our presence they will
stand erect, unless they are compelled to prostrate themselves. A
daughter fit for the sheepfold or the cloister is ill qualified to
exact respect where it is yielded with reluctance; and since Heaven
refused us a third boy, Lucy should have held a character fit to supply
his place. The hour will be a happy one which disposes her hand in
marriage to some one whose energy is greater than her own, or whose
ambition is of as low an order.”

So meditated a mother to whom the qualities of her children’s hearts,
as well as the prospect of their domestic happiness, seemed light in
comparison to their rank and temporal greatness. But, like many a
parent of hot and impatient character, she was mistaken in estimating
the feelings of her daughter, who, under a semblance of extreme
indifference, nourished the germ of those passions which sometimes
spring up in one night, like the gourd of the prophet, and astonish the
observer by their unexpected ardour and intensity. In fact, Lucy’s
sentiments seemed chill because nothing had occurred to interest or
awaken them. Her life had hitherto flowed on in a uniform and gentle
tenor, and happy for her had not its present smoothness of current
resembled that of the stream as it glides downwards to the waterfall!

“So, Lucy,” said her father, entering as her song was ended, “does your
musical philosopher teach you to contemn the world before you know it?
That is surely something premature. Or did you but speak according to
the fashion of fair maidens, who are always to hold the pleasures of
life in contempt till they are pressed upon them by the address of some
gentle knight?”

Lucy blushed, disclaimed any inference respecting her own choice being
drawn from her selection of a song, and readily laid aside her
instrument at her father’s request that she would attend him in his
walk.

A large and well-wooded park, or rather chase, stretched along the hill
behind the castle, which, occupying, as we have noticed, a pass
ascending from the plain, seemed built in its very gorge to defend the
forest ground which arose behind it in shaggy majesty. Into this
romantic region the father and daughter proceeded, arm in arm, by a
noble avenue overarched by embowering elms, beneath which groups of the
fallow-deer were seen to stray in distant perspective. As they paced
slowly on, admiring the different points of view, for which Sir William
Ashton, notwithstanding the nature of his usual avocations, had
considerable taste and feeling, they were overtaken by the forester, or
park-keeper, who, intent on silvan sport, was proceeding with his
crossbow over his arm, and a hound led in leash by his boy, into the
interior of the wood.

“Going to shoot us a piece of venison, Norman?” said his master, as he
returned the woodsman’s salutation.

“Saul, your honour, and that I am. Will it please you to see the
sport?”

“Oh no,” said his lordship, after looking at his daughter, whose colour
fled at the idea of seeing the deer shot, although, had her father
expressed his wish that they should accompany Norman, it was probable
she would not even have hinted her reluctance.

The forester shrugged his shoulders. “It was a disheartening thing,” he
said, “when none of the gentles came down to see the sport. He hoped
Captain Sholto would be soon hame, or he might shut up his shop
entirely; for Mr. Harry was kept sae close wi’ his Latin nonsense that,
though his will was very gude to be in the wood from morning till
night, there would be a hopeful lad lost, and no making a man of him.
It was not so, he had heard, in Lord Ravenswood’s time: when a buck was
to be killed, man and mother’s son ran to see; and when the deer fell,
the knife was always presented to the knight, and he never gave less
than a dollar for the compliment. And there was Edgar Ravenswood—Master
of Ravenswood that is now—when he goes up to the wood—there hasna been
a better hunter since Tristrem’s time—when Sir Edgar hauds out, down
goes the deer, faith. But we hae lost a’ sense of woodcraft on this
side of the hill.”

There was much in this harangue highly displeasing to the Lord Keeper’s
feelings; he could not help observing that his menial despised him
almost avowedly for not possessing that taste for sport which in those
times was deemed the natural and indispensable attribute of a real
gentleman. But the master of the game is, in all country houses, a man
of great importance, and entitled to use considerable freedom of
speech. Sir William, therefore, only smiled and replied, “He had
something else to think upon to-day than killing deer”; meantime,
taking out his purse, he gave the ranger a dollar for his
encouragement. The fellow received it as the waiter of a fashionable
hotel receives double his proper fee from the hands of a country
gentleman—that is, with a smile, in which pleasure at the gift is
mingled with contempt for the ignorance of the donor. “Your honour is
the bad paymaster,” he said, “who pays before it is done. What would
you do were I to miss the buck after you have paid me my wood-fee?”

“I suppose,” said the Keeper, smiling, “you would hardly guess what I
mean were I to tell you of a _condictio indebiti?_”

“Not I, on my saul. I guess it is some law phrase; but sue a beggar,
and—your honour knows what follows. Well, but I will be just with you,
and if bow and brach fail not, you shall have a piece of game two
fingers fat on the brisket.”

As he was about to go off, his master again called him, and asked, as
if by accident, whether the Master of Ravenswood was actually so brave
a man and so good a shooter as the world spoke him.

“Brave!—brave enough, I warrant you,” answered Norman. “I was in the
wood at Tyninghame when there was a sort of gallants hunting with my
lord; on my saul, there was a buck turned to bay made us all stand
back—a stout old Trojan of the first head, ten-tyned branches, and a
brow as broad as e’er a bullock’s. Egad, he dashed at the old lord, and
there would have been inlake among the perrage, if the Master had not
whipt roundly in, and hamstrung him with his cutlass. He was but
sixteen then, bless his heart!”

“And is he as ready with the gun as with the couteau?” said Sir
William.

“He’ll strike this silver dollar out from between my finger and thumb
at fourscore yards, and I’ll hold it out for a gold merk; what more
would ye have of eye, hand, lead, and gunpowder?”

“Oh, no more to be wished, certainly,” said the Lord Keeper; “but we
keep you from your sport, Norman. Good morrow, good Norman.”

And, humming his rustic roundelay, the yeoman went on his road, the
sound of his rough voice gradually dying away as the distance betwixt
them increased:

“The monk must arise when the matins ring,
    The abbot may sleep to their chime;
But the yeoman must start when the bugles sing
    ’Tis time, my hearts, ’tis time.

There’s bucks and raes on Bilhope braes,
    There’s a herd on Shortwood Shaw;
But a lily-white doe in the garden goes,
    She’s fairly worth them a’.”


“Has this fellow,” said the Lord Keeper, when the yeoman’s song had
died on the wind, “ever served the Ravenswood people, that he seems so
much interested in them? I suppose you know, Lucy, for you make it a
point of conscience to record the special history of every boor about
the castle.”

“I am not quite so faithful a chronicler, my dear father; but I believe
that Norman once served here while a boy, and before he went to
Ledington, whence you hired him. But if you want to know anything of
the former family, Old Alice is the best authority.”

“And what should I have to do with them, pray, Lucy,” said her father,
“or with their history or accomplishments?”

“Nay, I do not know, sir; only that you were asking questions of Norman
about young Ravenswood.”

“Pshaw, child!” replied her father, yet immediately added: “And who is
Old Alice? I think you know all the old women in the country.”

“To be sure I do, or how could I help the old creatures when they are
in hard times? And as to Old Alice, she is the very empress of old
women and queen of gossips, so far as legendary lore is concerned. She
is blind, poor old soul, but when she speaks to you, you would think
she has some way of looking into your very heart. I am sure I often
cover my face, or turn it away, for it seems as if she saw one change
colour, though she has been blind these twenty years. She is worth
visiting, were it but to say you have seen a blind and paralytic old
woman have so much acuteness of perception and dignity of manners. I
assure you, she might be a countess from her language and behaviour.
Come, you must go to see Alice; we are not a quarter of a mile from her
cottage.”

“All this, my dear,” said the Lord Keeper, “is no answer to my
question, who this woman is, and what is her connexion with the former
proprietor’s family?”

“Oh, it was something of a nouriceship, I believe; and she remained
here, because her two grandsons were engaged in your service. But it
was against her will, I fancy; for the poor old creature is always
regretting the change of times and of property.”

“I am much obliged to her,” answered the Lord Keeper. “She and her folk
eat my bread and drink my cup, and are lamenting all the while that
they are not still under a family which never could do good, either to
themselves or any one else!”

“Indeed,” replied Lucy, “I am certain you do Old Alice injustice. She
has nothing mercenary about her, and would not accept a penny in
charity, if it were to save her from being starved. She is only
talkative, like all old folk when you put them upon stories of their
youth; and she speaks about the Ravenswood people, because she lived
under them so many years. But I am sure she is grateful to you, sir,
for your protection, and that she would rather speak to you than to any
other person in the whole world beside. Do, sir, come and see Old
Alice.”

And with the freedom of an indulged daughter she dragged the Lord
Keeper in the direction she desired.




CHAPTER IV.


Through tops of the high trees she did descry
A little smoke, whose vapour, thin and light,
Reeking aloft, uprolled to the sky,
Which cheerful sign did send unto her sight,
That in the same did wonne some living wight.

SPENSER.


Lucy acted as her father’s guide, for he was too much engrossed with
his political labours, or with society, to be perfectly acquainted with
his own extensive domains, and, moreover, was generally an inhabitant
of the city of Edinburgh; and she, on the other hand, had, with her
mother, resided the whole summer in Ravenswood, and, partly from taste,
partly from want of any other amusement, had, by her frequent rambles,
learned to know each lane, alley, dingle, or bushy dell,

And every bosky bourne from side to side.


We have said that the Lord Keeper was not indifferent to the beauties
of nature; and we add, in justice to him, that he felt them doubly when
pointed out by the beautiful, simple, and interesting girl who, hanging
on his arm with filial kindness, now called him to admire the size of
some ancient oak, and now the unexpected turn where the path,
developing its maze from glen or dingle, suddenly reached an eminence
commanding an extensive view of the plains beneath them, and then
gradually glided away from the prospect to lose itself among rocks and
thickets, and guide to scenes of deeper seclusion.

It was when pausing on one of those points of extensive and commanding
view that Lucy told her father they were close by the cottage of her
blind protégée; and on turning from the little hill, a path which led
around it, worn by the daily steps of the infirm inmate, brought them
in sight of the hut, which, embosomed in a deep and obscure dell,
seemed to have been so situated purposely to bear a correspondence with
the darkened state of its inhabitant.

The cottage was situated immediately under a tall rock, which in some
measure beetled over it, as if threatening to drop some detached
fragment from its brow on the frail tenement beneath. The hut itself
was constructed of turf and stones, and rudely roofed over with thatch,
much of which was in a dilapidated condition. The thin blue smoke rose
from it in a light column, and curled upward along the white face of
the incumbent rock, giving the scene a tint of exquisite softness. In a
small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-bushes, which
formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the beehives, by the
produce of which she lived, that “woman old” whom Lucy had brought her
father hither to visit.

Whatever there had been which was disastrous in her fortune, whatever
there was miserable in her dwelling, it was easy to judge by the first
glance that neither years, poverty, misfortune, nor infirmity had
broken the spirit of this remarkable woman.

She occupied a turf seat, placed under a weeping birch of unusual
magnitude and age, as Judah is represented sitting under her palm-tree,
with an air at once of majesty and of dejection. Her figure was tall,
commanding, and but little bent by the infirmities of old age. Her
dress, though that of a peasant, was uncommonly clean, forming in that
particular a strong contrast to most of her rank, and was disposed with
an attention to neatness, and even to taste, equally unusual. But it
was her expression of countenance which chiefly struck the spectator,
and induced most persons to address her with a degree of deference and
civility very inconsistent with the miserable state of her dwelling,
and which, nevertheless, she received with that easy composure which
showed she felt it to be her due. She had once been beautiful, but her
beauty had been of a bold and masculine cast, such as does not survive
the bloom of youth; yet her features continued to express strong sense,
deep reflection, and a character of sober pride, which, as we have
already said of her dress, appeared to argue a conscious superiority to
those of her own rank. It scarce seemed possible that a face, deprived
of the advantage of sight, could have expressed character so strongly;
but her eyes, which were almost totally closed, did not, by the display
of their sightless orbs, mar the countenance to which they could add
nothing. She seemed in a ruminating posture, soothed, perhaps, by the
murmurs of the busy tribe around her to abstraction, though not to
slumber.

Lucy undid the latch of the little garden gate, and solicited the old
woman’s attention. “My father, Alice, is come to see you.”

“He is welcome, Miss Ashton, and so are you,” said the old woman,
turning and inclining her head towards her visitors.

“This is a fine morning for your beehives, mother,” said the Lord
Keeper, who, struck with the outward appearance of Alice, was somewhat
curious to know if her conversation would correspond with it.

“I believe so, my lord,” she replied; “I feel the air breathe milder
than of late.”

“You do not,” resumed the statesman, “take charge of these bees
yourself, mother? How do you manage them?”

“By delegates, as kings do their subjects,” resumed Alice; “and I am
fortunate in a prime minister. Here, Babie.”

She whistled on a small silver call which hung around her neck, and
which at that time was sometimes used to summon domestics, and Babie, a
girl of fifteen, made her appearance from the hut, not altogether so
cleanly arrayed as she would probably have been had Alice had the use
of her eyes, but with a greater air of neatness than was upon the whole
to have been expected.

“Babie,” said her mistress, “offer some bread and honey to the Lord
Keeper and Miss Ashton; they will excuse your awkwardness if you use
cleanliness and despatch.”

Babie performed her mistress’s command with the grace which was
naturally to have been expected, moving to and fro with a lobster-like
gesture, her feet and legs tending one way, while her head, turned in a
different direction, was fixed in wonder upon the laird, who was more
frequently heard of than seen by his tenants and dependants. The bread
and honey, however, deposited on a plantain leaf, was offered and
accepted in all due courtesy. The Lord Keeper, still retaining the
place which he had occupied on the decayed trunk of a fallen tree,
looked as if he wished to prolong the interview, but was at a loss how
to introduce a suitable subject.

“You have been long a resident on this property?” he said, after a
pause.

“It is now nearly sixty years since I first knew Ravenswood,” answered
the old dame, whose conversation, though perfectly civil and
respectful, seemed cautiously limited to the unavoidable and necessary
task of replying to Sir William.

“You are not, I should judge by your accent, of this country
originally?” said the Lord Keeper, in continuation.

“No; I am by birth an Englishwoman.”

“Yet you seem attached to this country as if it were your own.”

“It is here,” replied the blind woman, “that I have drank the cup of
joy and of sorrow which Heaven destined for me. I was here the wife of
an upright and affectionate husband for more than twenty years; I was
here the mother of six promising children; it was here that God
deprived me of all these blessings; it was here they died, and yonder,
by yon ruined chapel, they lie all buried. I had no country but theirs
while they lived; I have none but theirs now they are no more.”

“But your house,” said the Lord Keeper, looking at it, “is miserably
ruinous?”

“Do, my dear father,” said Lucy, eagerly, yet bashfully, catching at
the hint, “give orders to make it better; that is, if you think it
proper.”

“It will last my time, my dear Miss Lucy,” said the blind woman; “I
would not have my lord give himself the least trouble about it.”

“But,” said Lucy, “you once had a much better house, and were rich, and
now in your old age to live in this hovel!”

“It is as good as I deserve, Miss Lucy; if my heart has not broke with
what I have suffered, and seen others suffer, it must have been strong
enough, and the rest of this old frame has no right to call itself
weaker.”

“You have probably witnessed many changes,” said the Lord Keeper; “but
your experience must have taught you to expect them.”

“It has taught me to endure them, my lord,” was the reply.

“Yet you knew that they must needs arrive in the course of years?” said
the statesman.

“Ay; as I knew that the stump, on or beside which you sit, once a tall
and lofty tree, must needs one day fall by decay, or by the axe; yet I
hoped my eyes might not witness the downfall of the tree which
overshadowed my dwelling.”

“Do not suppose,” said the Lord Keeper, “that you will lose any
interest with me for looking back with regret to the days when another
family possessed my estates. You had reason, doubtless, to love them,
and I respect your gratitude. I will order some repairs in your
cottage, and I hope we shall live to be friends when we know each other
better.”

“Those of my age,” returned the dame, “make no new friends. I thank you
for your bounty, it is well intended undoubtedly; but I have all I
want, and I cannot accept more at your lordship’s hand.”

“Well, then,” continued the Lord Keeper, “at least allow me to say,
that I look upon you as a woman of sense and education beyond your
appearance, and that I hope you will continue to reside on this
property of mine rent-free for your life.”

“I hope I shall,” said the old dame, composedly; “I believe that was
made an article in the sale of Ravenswood to your lordship, though such
a trifling circumstance may have escaped your recollection.”

“I remember—I recollect,” said his lordship, somewhat confused. “I
perceive you are too much attached to your old friends to accept any
benefit from their successor.”

“Far from it, my lord; I am grateful for the benefits which I decline,
and I wish I could pay you for offering them, better than what I am now
about to say.” The Lord Keeper looked at her in some surprise, but said
not a word. “My lord,” she continued, in an impressive and solemn tone,
“take care what you do; you are on the brink of a precipice.”

“Indeed?” said the Lord Keeper, his mind reverting to the political
circumstances of the country. “Has anything come to your knowledge—any
plot or conspiracy?”

“No, my lord; those who traffic in such commodities do not call to
their councils the old, blind, and infirm. My warning is of another
kind. You have driven matters hard with the house of Ravenswood.
Believe a true tale: they are a fierce house, and there is danger in
dealing with men when they become desperate.”

“Tush,” answered the Keeper; “what has been between us has been the
work of the law, not my doing; and to the law they must look, if they
would impugn my proceedings.”

“Ay, but they may think otherwise, and take the law into their own
hand, when they fail of other means of redress.”

“What mean you?” said the Lord Keeper. “Young Ravenswood would not have
recourse to personal violence?”

“God forbid I should say so! I know nothing of the youth but what is
honourable and open. Honourable and open, said I? I should have added,
free, generous, noble. But he is still a Ravenswood, and may bide his
time. Remember the fate of Sir George Lockhart.”

The Lord Keeper started as she called to his recollection a tragedy so
deep and so recent. The old woman proceeded: “Chiesley, who did the
deed, was a relative of Lord Ravenswood. In the hall of Ravenswood, in
my presence and in that of others, he avowed publicly his determination
to do the cruelty which he afterwards committed. I could not keep
silence, though to speak it ill became my station. ‘You are devising a
dreadful crime,’ I said, ‘for which you must reckon before the judgment
seat.’ Never shall I forget his look, as he replied, ‘I must reckon
then for many things, and will reckon for this also.’ Therefore I may
well say, beware of pressing a desperate man with the hand of
authority. There is blood of Chiesley in the veins of Ravenswood, and
one drop of it were enough to fire him in the circumstances in which he
is placed. I say, beware of him.”

The old dame had, either intentionally or by accident, harped aright
the fear of the Lord Keeper. The desperate and dark resource of private
assassination, so familiar to a Scottish baron in former times, had
even in the present age been too frequently resorted to under the
pressure of unusual temptation, or where the mind of the actor was
prepared for such a crime. Sir William Ashton was aware of this; as
also that young Ravenswood had received injuries sufficient to prompt
him to that sort of revenge, which becomes a frequent though fearful
consequence of the partial administration of justice. He endeavoured to
disguise from Alice the nature of the apprehensions which he
entertained; but so ineffectually, that a person even of less
penetration than nature had endowed her with must necessarily have been
aware that the subject lay near his bosom. His voice was changed in its
accent as he replied to her, “That the Master of Ravenswood was a man
of honour; and, were it otherwise, that the fate of Chiesley of Dalry
was a sufficient warning to any one who should dare to assume the
office of avenger of his own imaginary wrongs.” And having hastily
uttered these expressions, he rose and left the place without waiting
for a reply.




CHAPTER V.


Is she a Capulet?
O dear account! my life is my foe’s debt.

SHAKESPEARE


The Lord Keeper walked for nearly a quarter of a mile in profound
silence. His daughter, naturally timid, and bred up in those ideas of
filial awe and implicit obedience which were inculcated upon the youth
of that period, did not venture to interrupt his meditations.

“Why do you look so pale, Lucy?” said her father, turning suddenly
round and breaking silence.

According to the ideas of the time, which did not permit a young woman
to offer her sentiments on any subject of importance unless required to
do so, Lucy was bound to appear ignorant of the meaning of all that had
passed betwixt Alice and her father, and imputed the emotion he had
observed to the fear of the wild cattle which grazed in that part of
the extensive chase through which they were now walking.

Of these animals, the descendants of the savage herds which anciently
roamed free in the Caledonian forests, it was formerly a point of state
to preserve a few in the parks of the Scottish nobility. Specimens
continued within the memory of man to be kept at least at three houses
of distinction—Hamilton, namely, Drumlanrig, and Cumbernauld. They had
degenerated from the ancient race in size and strength, if we are to
judge from the accounts of old chronicles, and from the formidable
remains frequently discovered in bogs and morasses when drained and
laid open. The bull had lost the shaggy honours of his mane, and the
race was small and light made, in colour a dingy white, or rather a
pale yellow, with black horns and hoofs. They retained, however, in
some measure, the ferocity of their ancestry, could not be domesticated
on account of their antipathy to the human race, and were often
dangerous if approached unguardedly, or wantonly disturbed. It was this
last reason which has occasioned their being extirpated at the places
we have mentioned, where probably they would otherwise have been
retained as appropriate inhabitants of a Scottish woodland, and fit
tenants for a baronial forest. A few, if I mistake not, are still
preserved at Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, the seat of the
Earl of Tankerville.

It was to her finding herself in the vicinity of a group of three or
four of these animals, that Lucy thought proper to impute those signs
of fear which had arisen in her countenance for a different reason. For
she had been familiarised with the appearance of the wild cattle during
her walks in the chase; and it was not then, as it may be now, a
necessary part of a young lady’s demeanour to indulge in causeless
tremors of the nerves. On the present occasion, however, she speedily
found cause for real terror.

Lucy had scarcely replied to her father in the words we have mentioned,
and he was just about to rebuke her supposed timidity, when a bull,
stimulated either by the scarlet colour of Miss Ashton’s mantle, or by
one of those fits of capricious ferocity to which their dispositions
are liable, detached himself suddenly from the group which was feeding
at the upper extremity of a grassy glade, that seemed to lose itself
among the crossing and entangled boughs. The animal approached the
intruders on his pasture ground, at first slowly, pawing the ground
with his hoof, bellowing from time to time, and tearing up the sand
with his horns, as if to lash himself up to rage and violence.

The Lord Keeper, who observed the animal’s demeanour, was aware that he
was about to become mischievous, and, drawing his daughter’s arm under
his own, began to walk fast along the avenue, in hopes to get out of
his sight and his reach. This was the most injudicious course he could
have adopted, for, encouraged by the appearance of flight, the bull
began to pursue them at full speed. Assailed by a danger so imminent,
firmer courage than that of the Lord Keeper might have given way. But
paternal tenderness, “love strong as death,” sustained him. He
continued to support and drag onward his daughter, until her fears
altogether depriving her of the power of flight, she sunk down by his
side; and when he could no longer assist her to escape, he turned round
and placed himself betwixt her and the raging animal, which, advancing
in full career, its brutal fury enhanced by the rapidity of the
pursuit, was now within a few yards of them. The Lord Keeper had no
weapons; his age and gravity dispensed even with the usual appendage of
a walking sword—could such appendage have availed him anything.

It seemed inevitable that the father or daughter, or both, should have
fallen victims to the impending danger, when a shot from the
neighbouring thicket arrested the progress of the animal. He was so
truly struck between the junction of the spine with the skull, that the
wound, which in any other part of his body might scarce have impeded
his career, proved instantly fatal. Stumbling forward with a hideous
bellow, the progressive force of his previous motion, rather than any
operation of his limbs, carried him up to within three yards of the
astonished Lord Keeper, where he rolled on the ground, his limbs
darkened with the black death-sweat, and quivering with the last
convulsions of muscular motion.

Lucy lay senseless on the ground, insensible of the wonderful
deliverance which she had experience. Her father was almost equally
stupefied, so rapid and unexpected had been the transition from the
horrid death which seemed inevitable to perfect security. He gazed on
the animal, terrible even in death, with a species of mute and confused
astonishment, which did not permit him distinctly to understand what
had taken place; and so inaccurate was his consciousness of what had
passed, that he might have supposed the bull had been arrested in its
career by a thunderbolt, had he not observed among the branches of the
thicket the figure of a man, with a short gun or musquetoon in his
hand.

This instantly recalled him to a sense of their situation: a glance at
his daughter reminded him of the necessity of procuring her assistance.
He called to the man, whom he concluded to be one of his foresters, to
give immediate attention to Miss Ashton, while he himself hastened to
call assistance. The huntsman approached them accordingly, and the Lord
Keeper saw he was a stranger, but was too much agitated to make any
farther remarks. In a few hurried words he directed the shooter, as
stronger and more active than himself, to carry the young lady to a
neighbouring fountain, while he went back to Alice’s hut to procure
more aid.

The man to whose timely interference they had been so much indebted did
not seem inclined to leave his good work half finished. He raised Lucy
from the ground in his arms, and conveying her through the glades of
the forest by paths with which he seemed well acquainted, stopped not
until he laid her in safety by the side of a plentiful and pellucid
fountain, which had been once covered in, screened and decorated with
architectural ornaments of a Gothic character. But now the vault which
had covered it being broken down and riven, and the Gothic font ruined
and demolished, the stream burst forth from the recess of the earth in
open day, and winded its way among the broken sculpture and moss-grown
stones which lay in confusion around its source.

Tradition, always busy, at least in Scotland, to grace with a legendary
tale a spot in itself interesting, had ascribed a cause of peculiar
veneration to this fountain. A beautiful young lady met one of the
Lords of Ravenswood while hunting near this spot, and, like a second
Egeria, had captivated the affections of the feudal Numa. They met
frequently afterwards, and always at sunset, the charms of the nymph’s
mind completing the conquest which her beauty had begun, and the
mystery of the intrigue adding zest to both. She always appeared and
disappeared close by the fountain, with which, therefore, her lover
judged she had some inexplicable connexion. She placed certain
restrictions on their intercourse, which also savoured of mystery. They
met only once a week—Friday was the appointed day—and she explained to
the Lord of Ravenswood that they were under the necessity of separating
so soon as the bell of a chapel, belonging to a hermitage in the
adjoining wood, now long ruinous, should toll the hour of vespers. In
the course of his confession, the Baron of Ravenswood entrusted the
hermit with the secret of this singular amour, and Father Zachary drew
the necessary and obvious consequence that his patron was enveloped in
the toils of Satan, and in danger of destruction, both to body and
soul. He urged these perils to the Baron with all the force of monkish
rhetoric, and described, in the most frightful colours, the real
character and person of the apparently lovely Naiad, whom he hesitated
not to denounce as a limb of the kingdom of darkness. The lover
listened with obstinate incredulity; and it was not until worn out by
the obstinacy of the anchoret that he consented to put the state and
condition of his mistress to a certain trial, and for that purpose
acquiesced in Zachary’s proposal that on their next interview the
vespers bell should be rung half an hour later than usual. The hermit
maintained and bucklered his opinion, by quotations from _Malleus
Malificarum, Sprengerus, Remigius_, and other learned demonologists,
that the Evil One, thus seduced to remain behind the appointed hour,
would assume her true shape, and, having appeared to her terrified
lover as a fiend of hell, would vanish from him in a flash of
sulphurous lightning. Raymond of Ravenswood acquiesced in the
experiment, not incurious concerning the issue, though confident it
would disappoint the expectations of the hermit.

At the appointed hour the lovers met, and their interview was
protracted beyond that at which they usually parted, by the delay of
the priest to ring his usual curfew. No change took place upon the
nymph’s outward form; but as soon as the lengthening shadows made her
aware that the usual hour of the vespers chime was passed, she tore
herself from her lover’s arms with a shriek of despair, bid him adieu
for ever, and, plunging into the fountain, disappeared from his eyes.
The bubbles occasioned by her descent were crimsoned with blood as they
arose, leading the distracted Baron to infer that his ill-judged
curiosity had occasioned the death of this interesting and mysterious
being. The remorse which he felt, as well as the recollection of her
charms, proved the penance of his future life, which he lost in the
battle of Flodden not many months after. But, in memory of his Naiad,
he had previously ornamented the fountain in which she appeared to
reside, and secured its waters from profanation or pollution by the
small vaulted building of which the fragments still remained scattered
around it. From this period the house of Ravenswood was supposed to
have dated its decay.

Such was the generally-received legend, which some, who would seem
wiser than the vulgar, explained as obscurely intimating the fate of a
beautiful maid of plebeian rank, the mistress of this Raymond, whom he
slew in a fit of jealousy, and whose blood was mingled with the waters
of the locked fountain, as it was commonly called. Others imagined that
the tale had a more remote origin in the ancient heathen mythology.
All, however, agreed that the spot was fatal to the Ravenswood family;
and that to drink of the waters of the well, or even approach its
brink, was as ominous to a descendant of that house as for a Grahame to
wear green, a Bruce to kill a spider, or a St. Clair to cross the Ord
on a Monday.

It was on this ominous spot that Lucy Ashton first drew breath after
her long and almost deadly swoon. Beautiful and pale as the fabulous
Naiad in the last agony of separation from her lover, she was seated so
as to rest with her back against a part of the ruined wall, while her
mantle, dripping with the water which her protector had used profusely
to recall her senses, clung to her slender and beautifully proportioned
form.

The first moment of recollection brought to her mind the danger which
had overpowered her senses; the next called to remembrance that of her
father. She looked around; he was nowhere to be seen. “My father, my
father!” was all that she could ejaculate.

“Sir William is safe,” answered the voice of a stranger—“perfectly
safe, and will be with you instantly.”

“Are you sure of that?” exclaimed Lucy. “The bull was close by us. Do
not stop me: I must go to seek my father!”

And she rose with that purpose; but her strength was so much exhausted
that, far from possessing the power to execute her purpose, she must
have fallen against the stone on which she had leant, probably not
without sustaining serious injury.

The stranger was so near to her that, without actually suffering her to
fall, he could not avoid catching her in his arms, which, however, he
did with a momentary reluctance, very unusual when youth interposes to
prevent beauty from danger. It seemed as if her weight, slight as it
was, proved too heavy for her young and athletic assistant, for,
without feeling the temptation of detaining her in his arms even for a
single instant, he again placed her on the stone from which she had
risen, and retreating a few steps, repeated hastily “Sir William Ashton
is perfectly safe and will be here instantly. Do not make yourself
anxious on his account: Fate has singularly preserved him. You, madam,
are exhausted, and must not think of rising until you have some
assistance more suitable than mine.”

Lucy, whose senses were by this time more effectually collected, was
naturally led to look at the stranger with attention. There was nothing
in his appearance which should have rendered him unwilling to offer his
arm to a young lady who required support, or which could have induced
her to refuse his assistance; and she could not help thinking, even in
that moment, that he seemed cold and reluctant to offer it. A
shooting-dress of dark cloth intimated the rank of the wearer, though
concealed in part by a large and loose cloak of a dark brown colour. A
montero cap and a black feather drooped over the wearer’s brow, and
partly concealed his features, which, so far as seen, were dark,
regular, and full of majestic, though somewhat sullen, expression. Some
secret sorrow, or the brooding spirit of some moody passion, had
quenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of youth in a countenance
singularly fitted to display both, and it was not easy to gaze on the
stranger without a secret impression either of pity or awe, or at least
of doubt and curiosity allied to both.

The impression which we have necessarily been long in describing, Lucy
felt in the glance of a moment, and had no sooner encountered the keen
black eyes of the stranger than her own were bent on the ground with a
mixture of bashful embarrassment and fear. Yet there was a necessity to
speak, or at last she thought so, and in a fluttered accent she began
to mention her wonderful escape, in which she was sure that the
stranger must, under Heaven, have been her father’s protector and her
own.

He seemed to shrink from her expressions of gratitude, while he replied
abruptly, “I leave you, madam,” the deep melody of his voice rendered
powerful, but not harsh, by something like a severity of tone—“I leave
you to the protection of those to whom it is possible you may have this
day been a guardian angel.”

Lucy was surprised at the ambiguity of his language, and, with a
feeling of artless and unaffected gratitude, began to deprecate the
idea of having intended to give her deliverer any offence, as if such a
thing had been possible. “I have been unfortunate,” she said, “in
endeavouring to express my thanks—I am sure it must be so, though I
cannot recollect what I said; but would you but stay till my
father—till the Lord Keeper comes; would you only permit him to pay you
his thanks, and to inquire your name?”

“My name is unnecessary,” answered the stranger; “your father—I would
rather say Sir William Ashton—will learn it soon enough, for all the
pleasure it is likely to afford him.”

“You mistake him,” said Lucy, earnestly; “he will be grateful for my
sake and for his own. You do not know my father, or you are deceiving
me with a story of his safety, when he has already fallen a victim to
the fury of that animal.”

When she had caught this idea, she started from the ground and
endeavoured to press towards the avenue in which the accident had taken
place, while the stranger, though he seemed to hesitate between the
desire to assist and the wish to leave her, was obliged, in common
humanity, to oppose her both by entreaty and action.

“On the word of a gentleman, madam, I tell you the truth; your father
is in perfect safety; you will expose yourself to injury if you venture
back where the herd of wild cattle grazed. If you will go”—for, having
once adopted the idea that her father was still in danger, she pressed
forward in spite of him—“if you _will_ go, accept my arm, though I am
not perhaps the person who can with most propriety offer you support.”

But, without heeding this intimation, Lucy took him at his word. “Oh,
if you be a man,” she said—“if you be a gentleman, assist me to find my
father! You shall not leave me—you must go with me; he is dying perhaps
while we are talking here!”

Then, without listening to excuse or apology, and holding fast by the
stranger’s arm, though unconscious of anything save the support which
it gave, and without which she could not have moved, mixed with a vague
feeling of preventing his escape from her, she was urging, and almost
dragging, him forward when Sir William Ashton came up, followed by the
female attendant of blind Alice, and by two woodcutters, whom he had
summoned from their occupation to his assistance. His joy at seeing his
daughter safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another time
have beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as she
might have done upon his own.

“Lucy, my dear Lucy, are you safe?—are you well?” were the only words
that broke from him as he embraced her in ecstasy.

“I am well, sir, thank God! and still more that I see you so; but this
gentleman,” she said, quitting his arm and shrinking from him, “what
must he think of me?” and her eloquent blood, flushing over neck and
brow, spoke how much she was ashamed of the freedom with which she had
craved, and even compelled, his assistance.

“This gentleman,” said Sir William Ashton, “will, I trust, not regret
the trouble we have given him, when I assure him of the gratitude of
the Lord Keeper for the greatest service which one man ever rendered to
another—for the life of my child—for my own life, which he has saved by
his bravery and presence of mind. He will, I am sure, permit us to
request——”

“Request nothing of ME, my lord,” said the stranger, in a stern and
peremptory tone; “I am the Master of Ravenswood.”

[Illustration]

There was a dead pause of surprise, not unmixed with less pleasant
feelings. The Master wrapt himself in his cloak, made a haughty
inclination toward Lucy, muttering a few words of courtesy, as
indistinctly heard as they seemed to be reluctantly uttered, and,
turning from them, was immediately lost in the thicket.

“The Master of Ravenswood!” said the Lord Keeper, when he had recovered
his momentary astonishment. “Hasten after him—stop him—beg him to speak
to me for a single moment.”

The two foresters accordingly set off in pursuit of the stranger. They
speedily reappeared, and, in an embarrassed and awkward manner, said
the gentleman would not return.

The Lord Keeper took one of the fellows aside, and questioned him more
closely what the Master of Ravenswood had said.

“He just said he wanda come back,” said the man, with the caution of a
prudent Scotchman, who cared not to be the bearer of an unpleasant
errand.

“He said something more, sir,” said the Lord Keeper, “and I insist on
knowing what it was.”

“Why, then, my lord,” said the man, looking down, “he said—But it wad
be nae pleasure to your lordship to hear it, for I dare say the Master
meant nae ill.”

“That’s none of your concern, sir; I desire to hear the very words.”

“Weel, then,” replied the man, “he said, ‘Tell Sir William Ashton that
the next time he and I forgather, he will not be half sae blythe of our
meeting as of our parting.’”

“Very well, sir,” said the Lord Keeper, “I believe he alludes to a
wager we have on our hawks; it is a matter of no consequence.”

He turned to his daughter, who was by this time so much recovered as to
be able to walk home. But the effect, which the various recollections
connected with a scene so terrific made upon a mind which was
susceptible in an extreme degree, was more permanent than the injury
which her nerves had sustained. Visions of terror, both in sleep and in
waking reveries, recalled to her the form of the furious animal, and
the dreadful bellow with which he accompanied his career; and it was
always the image of the Master of Ravenswood, with his native nobleness
of countenance and form, that seemed to interpose betwixt her and
assured death. It is, perhaps, at all times dangerous for a young
person to suffer recollection to dwell repeatedly, and with too much
complacency, on the same individual; but in Lucy’s situation it was
almost unavoidable. She had never happened to see a young man of mien
and features so romantic and so striking as young Ravenswood; but had
she seen an hundred his equals or his superiors in those particulars,
no one else would have been linked to her heart by the strong
associations of remembered danger and escape, of gratitude, wonder, and
curiosity. I say curiosity, for it is likely that the singularly
restrained and unaccommodating manners of the Master of Ravenswood, so
much at variance with the natural expression of his features and grace
of his deportment, as they excited wonder by the contrast, had their
effect in riveting her attention to the recollections. She knew little
of Ravenswood, or the disputes which had existed betwixt her father and
his, and perhaps could in her gentleness of mind hardly have
comprehended the angry and bitter passions which they had engendered.
But she knew that he was come of noble stem; was poor, though descended
from the noble and the wealthy; and she felt that she could sympathise
with the feelings of a proud mind, which urged him to recoil from the
proffered gratitude of the new proprietors of his father’s house and
domains. Would he have equally shunned their acknowledgments and
avoided their intimacy, had her father’s request been urged more
mildly, less abruptly, and softened with the grace which women so well
know how to throw into their manner, when they mean to mediate betwixt
the headlong passions of the ruder sex? This was a perilous question to
ask her own mind—perilous both in the idea and its consequences.

Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination
which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is
true, absence, change of scene and new faces, might probably have
destroyed the illusion in her instance, as it has done in many others;
but her residence remained solitary, and her mind without those means
of dissipating her pleasing visions. This solitude was chiefly owing to
the absence of Lady Ashton, who was at this time in Edinburgh, watching
the progress of some state-intrigue; the Lord Keeper only received
society out of policy or ostentation, and was by nature rather reserved
and unsociable; and thus no cavalier appeared to rival or to obscure
the ideal picture of chivalrous excellence which Lucy had pictured to
herself in the Master of Ravenswood.

[Illustration]

While Lucy indulged in these dreams, she made frequent visits to old
blind Alice, hoping it would be easy to lead her to talk on the subject
which at present she had so imprudently admitted to occupy so large a
portion of her thoughts. But Alice did not in this particular gratify
her wishes and expectations. She spoke readily, and with pathetic
feeling, concerning the family in general, but seemed to observe an
especial and cautious silence on the subject of the present
representative. The little she said of him was not altogether so
favourable as Lucy had anticipated. She hinted that he was of a stern
and unforgiving character, more ready to resent than to pardon
injuries; and Lucy combined, with great alarm, the hints which she now
dropped of these dangerous qualities with Alice’s advice to her father,
so emphatically given, “to beware of Ravenswood.”

But that very Ravenswood, of whom such unjust suspicions had been
entertained, had, almost immediately after they had been uttered,
confuted them by saving at once her father’s life and her own. Had he
nourished such black revenge as Alice’s dark hints seemed to indicate,
no deed of active guilt was necessary to the full gratification of that
evil passion. He needed but to have withheld for an instant his
indispensable and effective assistance, and the object of his
resentment must have perished, without any direct aggression on his
part, by a death equally fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore,
that some secret prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and
misfortune, had led Alice to form conclusions injurious to the
character, and irreconcilable both with the generous conduct and noble
features, of the Master of Ravenswood. And in this belief Lucy reposed
her hope, and went on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue, as
beautiful and transient as the film of the gossamer when it is pearled
with the morning dew and glimmering to the sun.

Her father, in the mean while, as well as the Master of Ravenswood,
were making reflections, as frequent though more solid than those of
Lucy, upon the singular event which had taken place. The Lord Keeper’s
first task, when he returned home, was to ascertain by medical advice
that his daughter had sustained no injury from the dangerous and
alarming situation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this
topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down
from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service
of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to
practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little
trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first
so anxious to exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy
council the necessity of using conciliatory measures with young men,
whose blood and temper were hot, and their experience of life limited.
He did not hesitate to attribute some censure to the conduct of the
officer, as having been unnecessarily irritating.

These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters which he
wrote to those private friends into whose management the matter was
likely to fall were of a yet more favourable tenor. He represented that
lenity in this case would be equally politic and popular, whereas,
considering the high respect with which the rites of interment are
regarded in Scotland, any severity exercised against the Master of
Ravenswood for protecting those of his father from interruption, would
be on all sides most unfavourably construed. And, finally, assuming the
language of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his particular
request that this affair should be passed over without severe notice.
He alluded with delicacy to the predicament in which he himself stood
with young Ravenswood, as having succeeded in the long train of
litigation by which the fortunes of that noble house had been so much
reduced, and confessed it would be most peculiarly acceptable to his
own feelings, could he find in some sort to counterbalance the
disadvantages which he had occasioned the family, though only in the
prosecution of his just and lawful rights. He therefore made it his
particular and personal request that the matter should have no farther
consequences, and insinuated a desire that he himself should have the
merit of having put a stop to it by his favourable report and
intercession. It was particularly remarkable that, contrary to his
uniform practice, he made no special communication to Lady Ashton upon
the subject of the tumult; and although he mentioned the alarm which
Lucy had received from one of the wild cattle, yet he gave no detailed
account of an incident so interesting and terrible.

There was much surprise among Sir William Ashton’s political friends
and colleagues on receiving letters of a tenor so unexpected. On
comparing notes together, one smiled, one put up his eyebrows, a third
nodded acquiescence in the general wonder, and a fourth asked if they
were sure these were _all_ the letters the Lord Keeper had written on
the subject. “It runs strangely in my mind, my lords, that none of
these advices contain the root of the matter.”

But no secret letters of a contrary nature had been received, although
the question seemed to imply the possibility of their existence.

“Well,” said an old grey-headed statesman, who had contrived, by
shifting and trimming, to maintain his post at the steerage through all
the changes of course which the vessel had held for thirty years, “I
thought Sir William would hae verified the auld Scottish saying, ‘As
soon comes the lamb’s skin to market as the auld tup’s’.”

“We must please him after his own fashion,” said another, “though it be
an unlooked-for one.”

“A wilful man maun hae his way,” answered the old counsellor.

“The Keeper will rue this before year and day are out,” said a third;
“the Master of Ravenswood is the lad to wind him a pirn.”

“Why, what would you do, my lords, with the poor young fellow?” said a
noble Marquis present. “The Lord Keeper has got all his estates; he has
not a cross to bless himself with.”

On which the ancient Lord Turntippet replied,

“If he hasna gear to fine,
He ha shins to pine.


“And that was our way before the Revolution: _Lucitur cum persona, qui
luere non potest cum crumena_. Hegh, my lords, that’s gude law Latin.”

“I can see no motive,” replied the Marquis, “that any noble lord can
have for urging this matter farther; let the Lord Keeper have the power
to deal in it as he pleases.”

“Agree, agree—remit to the Lord Keeper, with any other person for
fashion’s sake—Lord Hirplehooly, who is bed-ridden—one to be a quorum.
Make your entry in the minutes, Mr. Clerk. And now, my lords, there is
that young scattergood the Laird of Bucklaw’s fine to be disposed upon.
I suppose it goes to my Lord Treasurer?”

“Shame be in my meal-poke, then,” exclaimed the Lord Turntippet, “and
your hand aye in the nook of it! I had set that down for a bye-bit
between meals for mysell.”

“To use one of your favourite saws, my lord,” replied the Marquis, “you
are like the miller’s dog, that licks his lips before the bag is
untied: the man is not fined yet.”

“But that costs but twa skarts of a pen,” said Lord Turntippet; “and
surely there is nae noble lord that will presume to say that I, wha hae
complied wi’ a’ compliances, taen all manner of tests, abujred all that
was to be abjured, and sworn a’ that was to be sworn, for these thirty
years bye-past, sticking fast by my duty to the state through good
report and bad report, shouldna hae something now and then to synd my
mouth wi’ after sic drouthy wark? Eh?”

“It would be very unreasonable indeed, my lord,” replied the Marquis,
“had we either thought that your lordship’s drought was quenchable, or
observed anything stick in your throat that required washing down.”

And so we close the scene on the privy council of that period.




CHAPTER VI.


For this are all these warriors come,
    To hear an idle tale;
And o’er our death-accustom’d arms
    Shall silly tears prevail?

HENRY MACKENZIE.


On the evening of the day when the Lord Keeper and his daughter were
saved from such imminent peril, two strangers were seated in the most
private apartment of a small obscure inn, or rather alehouse, called
the Tod’s Den, about three or four miles from the Castle of Ravenswood
and as far from the ruinous tower of Wolf’s Crag, betwixt which two
places it was situated.

One of these strangers was about forty years of age, tall, and thin in
the flanks, with an aquiline nose, dark penetrating eyes, and a shrewd
but sinister cast of countenance. The other was about fifteen years
younger, short, stout, ruddy-faced, and red-haired, with an open,
resolute, and cheerful eye, to which careless and fearless freedom and
inward daring gave fire and expression, notwithstanding its light grey
colour. A stoup of wine (for in those days it was served out from the
cask in pewter flagons) was placed on the table, and each had his
quaigh or bicker before him. But there was little appearance of
conviviality. With folded arms, and looks of anxious expectation, they
eyed each other in silence, each wrapt in his own thoughts, and holding
no communication with his neighbour. At length the younger broke
silence by exclaiming: “What the foul fiend can detain the Master so
long? He must have miscarried in his enterprise. Why did you dissuade
me from going with him?”

“One man is enough to right his own wrong,” said the taller and older
personage; “we venture our lives for him in coming thus far on such an
errand.”

“You are but a craven after all, Craigengelt,” answered the younger,
“and that’s what many folk have thought you before now.”

“But what none has dared to tell me,” said Craigengelt, laying his hand
on the hilt of his sword; “and, but that I hold a hasty man no better
than a fool, I would——” he paused for his companion’s answer.

“_Would_ you?” said the other, coolly; “and why do you not then?”

Craigengelt drew his cutlass an inch or two, and then returned it with
violence into the scabbard—“Because there is a deeper stake to be
played for than the lives of twenty hare-brained gowks like you.”

“You are right there,” said his companion, “for if it were not that
these forfeitures, and that last fine that the old driveller Turntippet
is gaping for, and which, I dare say, is laid on by this time, have
fairly driven me out of house and home, I were a coxcomb and a cuckoo
to boot to trust your fair promises of getting me a commission in the
Irish brigade. What have I to do with the Irish brigade? I am a plain
Scotchman, as my father was before me; and my grand-aunt, Lady
Girnington, cannot live for ever.”

“Ay, Bucklaw,” observed Craigengelt, “but she may live for many a long
day; and for your father, he had land and living, kept himself close
from wadsetters and money-lenders, paid each man his due, and lived on
his own.”

“And whose fault is it that I have not done so too?” said
Bucklaw—“whose but the devil’s and yours, and such-like as you, that
have led me to the far end of a fair estate? And now I shall be
obliged, I suppose, to shelter and shift about like yourself: live one
week upon a line of secret intelligence from Saint Germains; another
upon a report of a rising in the Highlands; get my breakfast and
morning draught of sack from old Jacobite ladies, and give them locks
of my old wig for the Chevalier’s hair; second my friend in his quarrel
till he comes to the field, and then flinch from him lest so important
a political agent should perish from the way. All this I must do for
bread, besides calling myself a captain!”

“You think you are making a fine speech now,” said Craigengelt, “and
showing much wit at my expense. Is starving or hanging better than the
life I am obliged to lead, because the present fortunes of the king
cannot sufficiently support his envoys?”

“Starving is honester, Craigengelt, and hanging is like to be the end
on’t. But what you mean to make of this poor fellow Ravenswood, I know
not. He has no money left, any more than I; his lands are all pawned
and pledged, and the interest eats up the rents, and is not satisfied,
and what do you hope to make by meddling in his affairs?”

“Content yourself, Bucklaw; I know my business,” replied Craigengelt.
“Besides that his name, and his father’s services in 1689, will make
such an acquisition sound well both at Versailles and Saint Germains,
you will also please be informed that the Master of Ravenswood is a
very different kind of a young fellow from you. He has parts and
address, as well as courage and talents, and will present himself
abroad like a young man of head as well as heart, who knows something
more than the speed of a horse or the flight of a hawk. I have lost
credit of late, by bringing over no one that had sense to know more
than how to unharbour a stag, or take and reclaim an eyas. The Master
has education, sense, and penetration.”

“And yet is not wise enough to escape the tricks of a kidnapper,
Craigengelt?” replied the younger man. “But don’t be angry; you know
you will not fight, and so it is as well to leave your hilt in peace
and quiet, and tell me in sober guise how you drew the Master into your
confidence?”

“By flattering his love of vengeance, Bucklaw,” answered Craigengelt.
“He has always distrusted me; but I watched my time, and struck while
his temper was red-hot with the sense of insult and of wrong. He goes
now to expostulate, as he says, and perhaps thinks, with Sir William
Ashton. I say, that if they meet, and the lawyer puts him to his
defence, the Master will kill him; for he had that sparkle in his eye
which never deceives you when you would read a man’s purpose. At any
rate, he will give him such a bullying as will be construed into an
assault on a privy councillor; so there will be a total breach betwixt
him and government. Scotland will be too hot for him; France will gain
him; and we will all set sail together in the French brig ‘L’Espoir,’
which is hovering for us off Eyemouth.”

“Content am I,” said Bucklaw; “Scotland has little left that I care
about; and if carrying the Master with us will get us a better
reception in France, why, so be it, a God’s name. I doubt our own
merits will procure us slender preferment; and I trust he will send a
ball through the Keeper’s head before he joins us. One or two of these
scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a year, just to keep the others
on their good behaviour.”

“That is very true,” replied Craigengelt; “and it reminds me that I
must go and see that our horses have been fed and are in readiness;
for, should such deed be done, it will be no time for grass to grow
beneath their heels.” He proceeded as far as the door, then turned back
with a look of earnestness, and said to Bucklaw: “Whatever should come
of this business, I am sure you will do me the justice to remember that
I said nothing to the Master which could imply my accession to any act
of violence which he may take it into his head to commit.”

“No, no, not a single word like accession,” replied Bucklaw; “you know
too well the risk belonging to these two terrible words, ‘art and
part.’” Then, as if to himself, he recited the following lines:

“The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder.


“What is that you are talking to yourself?” said Craigengelt, turning
back with some anxiety.

“Nothing, only two lines I have heard upon the stage,” replied his
companion.

“Bucklaw,” said Craigengelt, “I sometimes think you should have been a
stage-player yourself; all is fancy and frolic with you.”

“I have often thought so myself,” said Bucklaw. “I believe it would be
safer than acting with you in the Fatal Conspiracy. But away, play your
own part, and look after the horses like a groom as you are. A
play-actor—a stage-player!” he repeated to himself; “that would have
deserved a stab, but that Craigengelt’s a coward. And yet I should like
the profession well enough. Stay, let me see; ay, I would come out in
Alexander:

Thus from the grave I rise to save my love,
Draw all your swords, and quick as lightning move.
When I rush on, sure none will dare to stay:
’Tis love commands, and glory leads the way.”


As with a voice of thunder, and his hand upon his sword, Bucklaw
repeated the ranting couplets of poor Lee, Craigengelt re-entered with
a face of alarm.

“We are undone, Bucklaw! The Master’s led horse has cast himself over
his halter in the stable, and is dead lame. His hackney will be set up
with the day’s work, and now he has no fresh horse; he will never get
off.”

“Egad, there will be no moving with the speed of lightning this bout,”
said Bucklaw, drily. “But stay, you can give him yours.”

“What! and be taken myself? I thank you for the proposal,” said
Craigengelt.

“Why,” replied Bucklaw, “if the Lord Keeper should have met with a
mischance, which for my part I cannot suppose, for the Master is not
the lad to shoot an old and unarmed man—but _if_ there should have been
a fray at the Castle, you are neither art not part in it, you know, so
have nothing to fear.”

“True, true,” answered the other, with embarrassment; “but consider my
commission from Saint Germains.”

“Which many men think is a commission of your own making, noble
Captain. Well, if you will not give him your horse, why, d——n it, he
must have mine.”

“Yours?” said Craigengelt.

“Ay, mine,” repeated Bucklaw; “it shall never be said that I agreed to
back a gentleman in a little affair of honour, and neither helped him
on with it nor off from it.”

“You will give him your horse? and have you considered the loss?”

“Loss! why, Grey Gilbert cost me twenty Jacobuses, that’s true; but
then his hackney is worth something, and his Black Moor is worth twice
as much were he sound, and I know how to handle him. Take a fat sucking
mastiff whelp, flay and bowel him, stuff the body full of black and
grey snails, roast a reasonable time, and baste with oil of spikenard,
saffron, cinnamon, and honey, anoint with the dripping, working it
in——”

“Yes, Bucklaw; but in the mean while, before the sprain is cured, nay,
before the whelp is roasted, you will be caught and hung. Depend on it,
the chase will be hard after Ravenswood. I wish we had made our place
of rendezvous nearer to the coast.”

“On my faith, then,” said Bucklaw, “I had best go off just now, and
leave my horse for him. Stay—stay, he comes: I hear a horse’s feet.”

“Are you sure there is only one?” said Craigengelt. “I fear there is a
chase; I think I hear three or four galloping together. I am sure I
hear more horses than one.”

“Pooh, pooh, it is the wench of the house clattering to the well in her
pattens. By my faith, Captain, you should give up both your captainship
and your secret service, for you are as easily scared as a wild goose.
But here comes the Master alone, and looking as gloomy as a night in
November.”

The Master of Ravenswood entered the room accordingly, his cloak
muffled around him, his arms folded, his looks stern, and at the same
time dejected. He flung his cloak from him as he entered, threw himself
upon a chair, and appeared sunk in a profound reverie.

“What has happened? What have you done?” was hastily demanded by
Craigengelt and Bucklaw in the same moment.

“Nothing!” was the short and sullen answer.

“Nothing! and left us, determined to call the old villain to account
for all the injuries that you, we, and the country have received at his
hand? Have you seen him?”

“I have,” replied the Master of Ravenswood.

“Seen him—and come away without settling scores which have been so long
due?” said Bucklaw; “I would not have expected that at the hand of the
Master of Ravenswood.”

“No matter what you expected,” replied Ravenswood; “it is not to you,
sir, that I shall be disposed to render any reason for my conduct.”

“Patience, Bucklaw,” said Craigengelt, interrupting his companion, who
seemed about to make an angry reply. “The Master has been interrupted
in his purpose by some accident; but he must excuse the anxious
curiosity of friends who are devoted to his cause like you and me.”

“Friends, Captain Craigengelt!” retorted Ravenswood, haughtily; “I am
ignorant what familiarity passed betwixt us to entitle you to use that
expression. I think our friendship amounts to this, that we agreed to
leave Scotland together so soon as I should have visited the alienated
mansion of my fathers, and had an interview with its present
possessor—I will not call him proprietor.”

“Very true, Master,” answered Bucklaw; “and as we thought you had in
mind to do something to put your neck in jeopardy, Craigie and I very
courteously agreed to tarry for you, although ours might run some risk
in consequence. As to Craigie, indeed, it does not very much signify:
he had gallows written on his brow in the hour of his birth; but I
should not like to discredit my parentage by coming to such an end in
another man’s cause.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Master of Ravenswood, “I am sorry if I have
occasioned you any inconvenience, but I must claim the right of judging
what is best for my own affairs, without rendering explanations to any
one. I have altered my mind, and do not design to leave the country
this season.”

“Not to leave the country, Master!” exclaimed Craigengelt. “Not to go
over, after all the trouble and expense I have incurred—after all the
risk of discovery, and the expense of freight and demurrage!”

“Sir,” replied the Master of Ravenswood, “when I designed to leave this
country in this haste, I made use of your obliging offer to procure me
means of conveyance; but I do not recollect that I pledged myself to go
off, if I found occasion to alter my mind. For your trouble on my
account, I am sorry, and I thank you; your expense,” he added, putting
his hand into his pocket, “admits a more solid compensation: freight
and demurrage are matters with which I am unacquainted, Captain
Craigengelt, but take my purse and pay yourself according to your own
conscience.” And accordingly he tendered a purse with some gold in it
to the soi-disant captain.

But here Bucklaw interposed in his turn. “Your fingers, Craigie, seem
to itch for that same piece of green network,” said he; “but I make my
vow to God, that if they offer to close upon it, I will chop them off
with my whinger. Since the Master has changed his mind, I suppose we
need stay here no longer; but in the first place I beg leave to tell
him——”

“Tell him anything you will,” said Craigengelt, “if you will first
allow me to state the inconveniences to which he will expose himself by
quitting our society, to remind him of the obstacles to his remaining
here, and of the difficulties attending his proper introduction at
Versailles and Saint Germains without the countenance of those who have
established useful connexions.”

“Besides forfeiting the friendship,” said Bucklaw, “of at least one man
of spirit and honour.”

“Gentlemen,” said Ravenswood, “permit me once more to assure you that
you have been pleased to attach to our temporary connexion more
importance than I ever meant that it should have. When I repair to
foreign courts, I shall not need the introduction of an intriguing
adventurer, nor is it necessary for me to set value on the friendship
of a hot-headed bully.” With these words, and without waiting for an
answer, he left the apartment, remounted his horse, and was heard to
ride off.

“Mortbleu!” said Captain Craigengelt, “my recruit is lost!”

“Ay, Captain,” said Bucklaw, “the salmon is off with hook and all. But
I will after him, for I have had more of his insolence than I can well
digest.”

Craigengelt offered to accompany him; but Bucklaw replied: “No, no,
Captain, keep you the check of the chimney-nook till I come back; it’s
good sleeping in a haill skin.

Little kens the auld wife that sits by the fire,
How cauld the wind blaws in hurle-burle swire.”


And singing as he went, he left the apartment.




CHAPTER VII.


Now, Billy Berwick, keep good heart,
    And of thy talking let me be;
But if thou art a man, as I am sure thou art,
    Come over the dike and fight with me.

Old Ballad.


The Master of Ravenswood had mounted the ambling hackney which he
before rode, on finding the accident which had happened to his led
horse, and, for the animal’s ease, was proceeding at a slow pace from
the Tod’s Den towards his old tower of Wolf’s Crag, when he heard the
galloping of a horse behind him, and, looking back, perceived that he
was pursued by young Bucklaw, who had been delayed a few minutes in the
pursuit by the irresistable temptation of giving the hostler at the
Tod’s Den some recipe for treating the lame horse. This brief delay he
had made up by hard galloping, and now overtook the Master where the
road traversed a waste moor. “Halt, sir,” cried Bucklaw; “I am no
political agent—no Captain Craigengelt, whose life is too important to
be hazarded in defence of his honour. I am Frank Hayston of Bucklaw,
and no man injures me by word, deed, sign, or look, but he must render
me an account of it.”

“This is all very well, Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw,” replied the Master of
Ravenswood, in a tone the most calm and indifferent; “but I have no
quarrel with you, and desire to have none. Our roads homeward, as well
as our roads through life, lie in different directions; there is no
occasion for us crossing each other.”

“Is there not?” said Bucklaw, impetuously. “By Heaven! but I say that
there is, though: you called us intriguing adventurers.”

“Be correct in your recollection, Mr. Hayston; it was to your companion
only I applied that epithet, and you know him to be no better.”

“And what then? He was my companion for the time, and no man shall
insult my companion, right or wrong, while he is in my company.”

“Then, Mr. Hayston,” replied Ravenswood, with the same composure, “you
should choose your society better, or you are like to have much work in
your capacity of their champion. Go home, sir; sleep, and have more
reason in your wrath to-morrow.”

“Not so, Master, you have mistaken your man; high airs and wise saws
shall not carry it off thus. Besides, you termed me bully, and you
shall retract the word before we part.”

“Faith, scarcely,” said Ravenswood, “unless you show me better reason
for thinking myself mistaken than you are now producing.”

“Then, Master,” said Bucklaw, “though I should be sorry to offer it to
a man of your quality, if you will not justify your incivility, or
retract it, or name a place of meeting, you must here undergo the hard
word and the hard blow.”

“Neither will be necessary,” said Ravenswood; “I am satisfied with what
I have done to avoid an affair with you. If you are serious, this place
will serve as well as another.”

“Dismount then, and draw,” said Bucklaw, setting him an example. “I
always thought and said you were a pretty man; I should be sorry to
report you otherwise.”

“You shall have no reason, sir,” said Ravenswood, alighting, and
putting himself into a posture of defence.

Their swords crossed, and the combat commenced with great spirit on the
part of Bucklaw, who was well accustomed to affairs of the kind, and
distinguished by address and dexterity at his weapon. In the present
case, however, he did not use his skill to advantage; for, having lost
temper at the cool and contemptuous manner in which the Master of
Ravenswood had long refused, and at length granted, him satisfaction,
and urged by his impatience, he adopted the part of an assailant with
inconsiderate eagerness. The Master, with equal skill, and much greater
composure, remained chiefly on the defensive, and even declined to
avail himself of one or two advantages afforded him by the eagerness of
his adversary. At length, in a desperate lunge, which he followed with
an attempt to close, Bucklaw’s foot slipped, and he fell on the short
grassy turf on which they were fighting. “Take your life, sir,” said
the Master of Ravenswood, “and mend it if you can.”

“It would be but a cobbled piece of work, I fear,” said Bucklaw, rising
slowly and gathering up his sword, much less disconcerted with the
issue of the combat than could have been expected from the impetuosity
of his temper. “I thank you for my life, Master,” he pursued. “There is
my hand; I bear no ill-will to you, either for my bad luck or your
better swordsmanship.”

The Master looked steadily at him for an instant, then extended his
hand to him. “Bucklaw,” he said, “you are a generous fellow, and I have
done you wrong. I heartily ask your pardon for the expression which
offended you; it was hastily and incautiously uttered, and I am
convinced it is totally misapplied.”

“Are you indeed, Master?” said Bucklaw, his face resuming at once its
natural expression of light-hearted carelessness and audacity; “that is
more than I expected of you; for, Master, men say you are not ready to
retract your opinion and your language.”

“Not when I have well considered them,” said the Master.

“Then you are a little wiser than I am, for I always give my friend
satisfaction first, and explanation afterwards. If one of us falls, all
accounts are settled; if not, men are never so ready for peace as after
war. But what does that bawling brat of a boy want?” said Bucklaw. “I
wish to Heaven he had come a few minutes sooner! and yet it must have
been ended some time, and perhaps this way is as well as any other.”

As he spoke, the boy he mentioned came up, cudgelling an ass, on which
he was mounted, to the top of its speed, and sending, like one of
Ossian’s heroes, his voice before him: “Gentlemen—gentlemen, save
yourselves! for the gudewife bade us tell ye there were folk in her
house had taen Captain Craigengelt, and were seeking for Bucklaw, and
that ye behoved to ride for it.”

“By my faith, and that’s very true, my man” said Bucklaw; “and there’s
a silver sixpence for your news, and I would give any man twice as much
would tell me which way I should ride.”

“That will I, Bucklaw,” said Ravenswood; “ride home to Wolf’s Crag with
me. There are places in the old tower where you might lie hid, were a
thousand men to seek you.”

“But that will bring you into trouble yourself, Master; and unless you
be in the Jacobite scrape already, it is quite needless for me to drag
you in.”

“Not a whit; I have nothing to fear.”

“Then I will ride with you blythely, for, to say the truth, I do not
know the rendezvous that Craigie was to guide us to this night; and I
am sure that, if he is taken, he will tell all the truth of me, and
twenty lies of you, in order to save himself from the withie.”

They mounted and rode off in company accordingly, striking off the
ordinary road, and holding their way by wild moorish unfrequented
paths, with which the gentlemen were well acquainted from the exercise
of the chase, but through which others would have had much difficulty
in tracing their course. They rode for some time in silence, making
such haste as the condition of Ravenswood’s horse permitted, until
night having gradually closed around them, they discontinued their
speed, both from the difficulty of discovering their path, and from the
hope that they were beyond the reach of pursuit or observation.

“And now that we have drawn bridle a bit,” said Bucklaw, “I would fain
ask you a question, Master.”

“Ask and welcome,” said Ravenswood, “but forgive not answering it,
unless I think proper.”

“Well, it is simply this,” answered his late antagonist “What, in the
name of old Sathan, could make you, who stand so highly on your
reputation, think for a moment of drawing up with such a rogue as
Craigengelt, and such a scapegrace as folk call Bucklaw?”

“Simply, because I was desperate, and sought desperate associates.”

“And what made you break off from us at the nearest?” again demanded
Bucklaw.

“Because I had changed my mind,” said the Master, “and renounced my
enterprise, at least for the present. And now that I have answered your
questions fairly and frankly, tell me what makes you associate with
Craigengelt, so much beneath you both in birth and in spirit?”

“In plain terms,” answered Bucklaw, “because I am a fool, who have
gambled away my land in these times. My grand-aunt, Lady Girnington,
has taen a new tack of life, I think, and I could only hope to get
something by a change of government. Craigie was a sort of gambling
acquaintance; he saw my condition, and, as the devil is always at one’s
elbow, told me fifty lies about his credentials from Versailles, and
his interest at Saint Germains, promised me a captain’s commission at
Paris, and I have been ass enough to put my thumb under his belt. I
dare say, by this time, he has told a dozen pretty stories of me to the
government. And this is what I have got by wine, women, and dice,
cocks, dogs, and horses.”

“Yes, Bucklaw,” said the Master, “you have indeed nourished in your
bosom the snakes that are now stinging you.”

“That’s home as well as true, Master,” replied his companion; “but, by
your leave, you have nursed in your bosom one great goodly snake that
has swallowed all the rest, and is as sure to devour you as my
half-dozen are to make a meal on all that’s left of Bucklaw, which is
but what lies between bonnet and boot-heel.”

“I must not,” answered the Master of Ravenswood, “challenge the freedom
of speech in which I have set example. What, to speak without a
metaphor, do you call this monstrous passion which you charge me with
fostering?”

“Revenge, my good sir—revenge; which, if it be as gentle manlike a sin
as wine and wassail, with their _et cæteras_, is equally unchristian,
and not so bloodless. It is better breaking a park-pale to watch a doe
or damsel than to shoot an old man.”

“I deny the purpose,” said the Master of Ravenswood. “On my soul, I had
no such intention; I meant but to confront the oppressor ere I left my
native land, and upbraid him with his tyranny and its consequences. I
would have stated my wrongs so that they would have shaken his soul
within him.”

“Yes,” answered Bucklaw, “and he would have collared you, and cried
‘help,’ and then you would have shaken the soul _out_ of him, I
suppose. Your very look and manner would have frightened the old man to
death.”

“Consider the provocation,” answered Ravenswood—“consider the ruin and
death procured and caused by his hard-hearted cruelty—an ancient house
destroyed, an affectionate father murdered! Why, in our old Scottish
days, he that sat quiet under such wrongs would have been held neither
fit to back a friend nor face a foe.”

“Well, Master, I am glad to see that the devil deals as cunningly with
other folk as he deals with me; for whenever I am about to commit any
folly, he persuades me it is the most necessary, gallant, gentlemanlike
thing on earth, and I am up to saddlegirths in the bog before I see
that the ground is soft. And you, Master, might have turned out a
murd——a homicide, just out of pure respect for your father’s memory.”

“There is more sense in your language, Bucklaw,” replied the Master,
“than might have been expected from your conduct. It is too true, our
vices steal upon us in forms outwardly as fair as those of the demons
whom the superstitious represent as intriguing with the human race, and
are not discovered in their native hideousness until we have clasped
them in our arms.”

“But we may throw them from us, though,” said Bucklaw, “and that is
what I shall think of doing one of these days—that is, when old Lady
Girnington dies.”

“Did you ever hear the expression of the English divine?” said
Ravenswood—“‘Hell is paved with good intentions,’—as much as to say,
they are more often formed than executed.”

“Well,” replied Bucklaw, “but I will begin this blessed night, and have
determined not to drink above one quart of wine, unless your claret be
of extraordinary quality.”

“You will find little to tempt you at Wolf’s Crag,” said the Master. “I
know not that I can promise you more than the shelter of my roof; all,
and more than all, our stock of wine and provisions was exhausted at
the late occasion.”

“Long may it be ere provision is needed for the like purpose,” answered
Bucklaw; “but you should not drink up the last flask at a dirge; there
is ill luck in that.”

“There is ill luck, I think, in whatever belongs to me,” said
Ravenswood. “But yonder is Wolf’s Crag, and whatever it still contains
is at your service.”

The roar of the sea had long announced their approach to the cliffs, on
the summit of which, like the nest of some sea-eagle, the founder of
the fortalice had perched his eyrie. The pale moon, which had hitherto
been contending with flitting clouds, now shone out, and gave them a
view of the solitary and naked tower, situated on a projecting cliff
that beetled on the German Ocean. On three sides the rock was
precipitous; on the fourth, which was that towards the land, it had
been originally fenced by an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the
latter was broken down and ruinous, and the former had been in part
filled up, so as to allow passage for a horseman into the narrow
courtyard, encircled on two sides with low offices and stables, partly
ruinous, and closed on the landward front by a low embattled wall,
while the remaining side of the quadrangle was occupied by the tower
itself, which, tall and narrow, and built of a greyish stone, stood
glimmering in the moonlight, like the sheeted spectre of some huge
giant. A wilder or more disconsolate dwelling it was perhaps difficult
to conceive. The sombrous and heavy sound of the billows, successively
dashing against the rocky beach at a profound distance beneath, was to
the ear what the landscape was to the eye—a symbol of unvaried and
monotonous melancholy, not unmingled with horror.

Although the night was not far advanced, there was no sign of living
inhabitant about this forlorn abode, excepting that one, and only one,
of the narrow and stanchelled windows which appeared at irregular
heights and distances in the walls of the building showed a small
glimmer of light.

“There,” said Ravenswood, “sits the only male domestic that remains to
the house of Ravenswood; and it is well that he does remain there,
since otherwise we had little hope to find either light or fire. But
follow me cautiously; the road is narrow, and admits only one horse in
front.”

In effect, the path led along a kind of isthmus, at the peninsular
extremity of which the tower was situated, with that exclusive
attention to strength and security, in preference to every
circumstances of convenience, which dictated to the Scottish barons the
choice of their situations, as well as their style of building.

By adopting the cautious mode of approach recommended by the proprietor
of this wild hold, they entered the courtyard in safety. But it was
long ere the efforts of Ravenswood, though loudly exerted by knocking
at the low-browed entrance, and repeated shouts to Caleb to open the
gate and admit them, received any answer.

“The old man must be departed,” he began to say, “or fallen into some
fit; for the noise I have made would have waked the seven sleepers.”

At length a timid and hesitating voice replied: “Master—Master of
Ravenswood, is it you?”

“Yes, it is I, Caleb; open the door quickly.”

“But it is you in very blood and body? For I would sooner face fifty
deevils as my master’s ghaist, or even his wraith; wherefore, aroint
ye, if ye were ten times my master, unless ye come in bodily shape,
lith and limb.”

“It is I, you old fool,” answered Ravenswood, “in bodily shape and
alive, save that I am half dead with cold.”

The light at the upper window disappeared, and glancing from loophole
to loophole in slow succession, gave intimation that the bearer was in
the act of descending, with great deliberation, a winding staircase
occupying one of the turrets which graced the angles of the old tower.
The tardiness of his descent extracted some exclamations of impatience
from Ravenswood, and several oaths from his less patient and more
mecurial companion. Caleb again paused ere he unbolted the door, and
once more asked if they were men of mould that demanded entrance at
this time of night.

“Were I near you, you old fool,” said Bucklaw, “I would give you
sufficient proofs of _my_ bodily condition.”

“Open the gate, Caleb,” said his master, in a more soothing tone,
partly from his regard to the ancient and faithful seneschal, partly
perhaps because he thought that angry words would be thrown away, so
long as Caleb had a stout iron-clenched oaken door betwixt his person
and the speakers.

At length Caleb, with a trembling hand, undid the bars, opened the
heavy door, and stood before them, exhibiting his thin grey hairs, bald
forehead, and sharp high features, illuminated by a quivering lamp
which he held in one hand, while he shaded and protected its flame with
the other. The timorous, courteous glance which he threw around him,
the effect of the partial light upon his white hair and illumined
features, might have made a good painting; but our travellers were too
impatient for security against the rising storm to permit them to
indulge themselves in studying the picturesque. “Is it you, my dear
master?—is it you yourself, indeed?” exclaimed the old domestic. “I am
wae ye suld hae stude waiting at your ain gate; but wha wad hae thought
o’ seeing ye sae sune, and a strange gentleman with a—(Here he
exclaimed apart, as it were, and to some inmate of the tower, in a
voice not meant to be heard by those in the court)—Mysie—Mysie, woman!
stir for dear life, and get the fire mended; take the auld three-legged
stool, or ony thing that’s readiest that will make a lowe. I doubt we
are but puirly provided, no expecting ye this some months, when
doubtless ye was hae been received conform till your rank, as gude
right is; but natheless——”

“Natheless, Caleb,” said the Master, “we must have our horses put up,
and ourselves too, the best way we can. I hope you are not sorry to see
me sooner than you expected?”

“Sorry, my lord! I am sure ye sall aye be my lord wi’ honest folk, as
your noble ancestors hae been these three hundred years, and never
asked a Whig’s leave. Sorry to see the Lord of Ravenswood at ane o’ his
ain castles! (Then again apart to his unseen associate behind the
screen) Mysie, kill the brood-hen without thinking twice on it; let
them care that come ahint. No to say it’s our best dwelling,” he added,
turning to Bucklaw; “but just a strength for the Lord of Ravenswood to
flee until—that is, no to _flee_, but to retreat until in troublous
times, like the present, when it was ill convenient for him to live
farther in the country in ony of his better and mair principal manors;
but, for its antiquity, maist folk think that the outside of Wolf’s
Crag is worthy of a large perusal.”

“And you are determined we shall have time to make it,” said
Ravenswood, somewhat amused with the shifts the old man used to detain
them without doors until his confederate Mysie had made her
preparations within.

“Oh, never mind the outside of the house, my good friend,” said
Bucklaw; “let’s see the inside, and let our horses see the stable,
that’s all.”

“Oh yes, sir—ay, sir—unquestionably, sir—my lord and ony of his
honourable companions——”

“But our horses, my friend—our horses; they will be dead-founded by
standing here in the cold after riding hard, and mine is too good to be
spoiled; therefore, once more, our horses!” exclaimed Bucklaw.

“True—ay—your horses—yes—I will call the grooms”; and sturdily did
Caleb roar till the old tower rang again: “John—William—Saunders! The
lads are gane out, or sleeping,” he observed, after pausing for an
answer, which he knew that he had no human chance of receiving. “A’
gaes wrang when the Master’s out-bye; but I’ll take care o’ your cattle
mysell.”

“I think you had better,” said Ravenswood, “otherwise I see little
chance of their being attended to at all.”

“Whisht, my lord—whisht, for God’s sake,” said Caleb, in an imploring
tone, and apart to his master; “if ye dinna regard your ain credit,
think on mine; we’ll hae hard eneugh wark to make a decent night o’t,
wi’ a’ the lees I can tell.”

“Well, well, never mind,” said his master; “go to the stable. There is
hay and corn, I trust?”

“Ou ay, plenty of hay and corn”; this was uttered boldly and aloud,
and, in a lower tone, “there was some half fous o’ aits, and some taits
o’ meadow-hay, left after the burial.”

“Very well,” said Ravenswood, taking the lamp from his domestic’s
unwilling hand, “I will show the stranger upstairs myself.”

“I canna think o’ that, my lord; if ye wad but have five minutes, or
ten minutes, or, at maist, a quarter of an hour’s patience, and look at
the fine moonlight prospect of the Bass and North Berwick Law till I
sort the horses, I would marshal ye up, as reason is ye suld be
marshalled, your lordship and your honourable visitor. And I hae lockit
up the siller candlesticks, and the lamp is not fit——”

“It will do very well in the mean time,” said Ravenswood, “and you will
have no difficulty for want of light in the stable, for, if I
recollect, half the roof is off.”

“Very true, my lord,” replied the trusty adherent, and with ready wit
instantly added, “and the lazy sclater loons have never come to put it
on a’ this while, your lordship.”

“If I were disposed to jest at the calamities of my house,” said
Ravenswood, as he led the way upstairs, “poor old Caleb would furnish
me with ample means. His passion consists in representing things about
our miserable _menage_, not as they are, but as, in his opinion, they
ought to be; and, to say the truth, I have been often diverted with the
poor wretch’s expedients to supply what he thought was essential for
the credit of the family, and his still more generous apologies for the
want of those articles for which his ingenuity could discover no
substitute. But though the tower is none of the largest, I shall have
some trouble without him to find the apartment in which there is a
fire.”

As he spoke thus, he opened the door of the hall. “Here, at least,” he
said, “there is neither hearth nor harbour.”

It was indeed a scene of desolation. A large vaulted room, the beams of
which, combined like those of Westminster Hall, were rudely carved at
the extremities, remained nearly in the situation in which it had been
left after the entertainment at Allan Lord Ravenswood’s funeral.
Overturned pitchers, and black-jacks, and pewter stoups, and flagons
still cumbered the large oaken table; glasses, those more perishable
implements of conviviality, many of which had been voluntarily
sacrificed by the guests in their enthusiastic pledges to favourite
toasts, strewed the stone floor with their fragments. As for the
articles of plate, lent for the purpose by friends and kinsfolk, those
had been carefully withdrawn so soon as the ostentatious display of
festivity, equally unnecessary and strangely timed, had been made and
ended. Nothing, in short, remained that indicated wealth; all the signs
were those of recent wastefulness and present desolation. The black
cloth hangings, which, on the late mournful occasion, replaced the
tattered moth-eaten tapestries, had been partly pulled down, and,
dangling from the wall in irregular festoons, disclosed the rough
stonework of the building, unsmoothed either by plaster or the chisel.
The seats thrown down, or left in disorder, intimated the careless
confusion which had concluded the mournful revel. “This room,” said
Ravenswood, holding up the lamp—“this room, Mr. Hayston, was riotous
when it should have been sad; it is a just retribution that it should
now be sad when it ought to be cheerful.”

They left this disconsolate apartment, and went upstairs, where, after
opening one or two doors in vain, Ravenswood led the way into a little
matted ante-room, in which, to their great joy, they found a tolerably
good fire, which Mysie, by some such expedient as Caleb had suggested,
had supplied with a reasonable quantity of fuel. Glad at the heart to
see more of comfort than the castle had yet seemed to offer, Bucklaw
rubbed his hands heartily over the fire, and now listened with more
complacency to the apologies which the Master of Ravenswood offered.
“Comfort,” he said, “I cannot provide for you, for I have it not for
myself; it is long since these walls have known it, if, indeed, they
were ever acquainted with it. Shelter and safety, I think, I can
promise you.”

“Excellent matters, Master,” replied Bucklaw, “and, with a mouthful of
food and wine, positively all I can require to-night.”

“I fear,” said the Master, “your supper will be a poor one; I hear the
matter in discussion betwixt Caleb and Mysie. Poor Balderstone is
something deaf, amongst his other accomplishments, so that much of what
he means should be spoken aside is overheard by the whole audience, and
especially by those from whom he is most anxious to conceal his private
manœuvres. Hark!”

They listened, and heard the old domestic’s voice in conversation with
Mysie to the following effect:

“Just mak the best o’t—make the besto’t, woman; it’s easy to put a fair
face on ony thing.”

“But the auld brood-hen? She’ll be as teugh as bow-strings and
bend-leather!”

“Say ye made a mistake—say ye made a mistake, Mysie,” replied the
faithful seneschal, in a soothing and undertoned voice; “tak it a’ on
yoursell; never let the credit o’ the house suffer.”

“But the brood-hen,” remonstrated Mysie—“ou, she’s sitting some gate
aneath the dais in the hall, and I am feared to gae in in the dark for
the bogle; and if I didna see the bogle, I could as ill see the hen,
for it’s pit-mirk, and there’s no another light in the house, save that
very blessed lamp whilk the Master has in his ain hand. And if I had
the hen, she’s to pu’, and to draw, and to dress; how can I do that,
and them sitting by the only fire we have?”

“Weel, weel, Mysie,” said the butler, “bide ye there a wee, and I’ll
try to get the lamp wiled away frae them.”

Accordingly, Caleb Balderstone entered the apartment, little aware that
so much of his by-play had been audible there. “Well, Caleb, my old
friend, is there any chance of supper?” said the Master of Ravenswood.

“_Chance_ of supper, your lordship?” said Caleb, with an emphasis of
strong scorn at the implied doubt. “How should there be ony question of
that, and us in your lordship’s house? Chance of supper, indeed! But
ye’ll no be for butcher-meat? There’s walth o’ fat poultry, ready
either for spit or brander. The fat capon, Mysie!” he added, calling
out as boldly as if such a thing had been in existence.

“Quite unnecessary,” said Bucklaw, who deemed himself bound in courtesy
to relieve some part of the anxious butler’s perplexity, “if you have
anything cold, or a morsel of bread.”

“The best of bannocks!” exclaimed Caleb, much relieved; “and, for cauld
meat, a’ that we hae is cauld eneugh,—how-beit, maist of the cauld meat
and pastry was gien to the poor folk after the ceremony of interment,
as gude reason was; nevertheless——”

“Come, Caleb,” said the Master of Ravenswood, “I must cut this matter
short. This is the young Laird of Bucklaw; he is under hiding, and
therefore, you know——”

“He’ll be nae nicer than your lordship’s honour, I’se warrant,”
answered Caleb, cheerfully, with a nod of intelligence; “I am sorry
that the gentleman is under distress, but I am blythe that he canna say
muckle agane our housekeeping, for I believe his ain pinches may match
ours; no that we are pinched, thank God,” he added, retracting the
admission which he had made in his first burst of joy, “but nae doubt
we are waur aff than we hae been, or suld be. And for eating—what
signifies telling a lee? there’s just the hinder end of the mutton-ham
that has been but three times on the table, and the nearer the bane the
sweeter, as your honours weel ken; and—there’s the heel of the ewe-milk
kebbuck, wi’ a bit of nice butter, and—and—that’s a’ that’s to trust
to.” And with great alacrity he produced his slender stock of
provisions, and placed them with much formality upon a small round
table betwixt the two gentlemen, who were not deterred either by the
homely quality or limited quantity of the repast from doing it full
justice. Caleb in the mean while waited on them with grave
officiousness, as if anxious to make up, by his own respectful
assiduity, for the want of all other attendance.

But, alas! how little on such occasions can form, however anxiously and
scrupulously observed, supply the lack of substantial fare! Bucklaw,
who had eagerly eaten a considerable portion of the thrice-sacked
mutton-ham, now began to demand ale.

“I wanda just presume to recommend our ale,” said Caleb; “the maut was
ill made, and there was awfu’ thunner last week; but siccan water as
the Tower well has ye’ll seldome see, Bucklaw, and that I’se engage
for.”

“But if your ale is bad, you can let us have some wine,” said Bucklaw,
making a grimace at the mention of the pure element which Caleb so
earnestly recommended.

“Wine!” answered Caleb, undauntedly, “eneugh of wine! It was but twa
days syne—wae’s me for the cause—there was as much wine drunk in this
house as would have floated a pinnace. There never was lack of wine at
Wolf’s Crag.”

“Do fetch us some then,” said the master, “instead of talking about
it.” And Caleb boldly departed.

Every expended butt in the old cellar did he set a-tilt, and shake with
the desperate expectation of collecting enough of the grounds of claret
to fill the large pewter measure which he carried in his hand. Alas!
each had been too devoutly drained; and, with all the squeezing and
manoeuvring which his craft as a butler suggested, he could only
collect about half a quart that seemed presentable. Still, however,
Caleb was too good a general to renounce the field without a strategem
to cover his retreat. He undauntedly threw down an empty flagon, as if
he had stumbled at the entrance of the apartment, called upon Mysie to
wipe up the wine that had never been spilt, and placing the other
vessel on the table, hoped there was still enough left for their
honours. There was indeed; for even Bucklaw, a sworn friend to the
grape, found no encouragement to renew his first attack upon the
vintage of Wolf’s Crag, but contented himself, however reluctantly,
with a draught of fair water. Arrangements were now made for his
repose; and as the secret chamber was assigned for this purpose, it
furnished Caleb with a first-rate and most plausible apology for all
deficiencies of furniture, bedding, etc.

“For wha,” said he, “would have thought of the secret chaumer being
needed? It has not been used since the time of the Gowrie Conspiracy,
and I durst never let a woman ken of the entrance to it, or your honour
will allow that it wad not hae been a secret chaumer lang.”




CHAPTER VIII.


The hearth in hall was black and dead,
No board was dight in bower within,
Nor merry bowl nor welcome bed;
“Here’s sorry cheer,” quoth the Heir of Linne.

Old Ballad


The feelings of the prodigal Heir of Linne, as expressed in that
excellent old song, when, after dissipating his whole fortune, he found
himself the deserted inhabitant of “the lonely lodge,” might perhaps
have some resemblance to those of the Master of Ravenswood in his
deserted mansion of Wolf’s Crag. The Master, however, had this
advantage over the spendthrift in the legend, that, if he was in
similar distress, he could not impute it to his own imprudence. His
misery had been bequeathed to him by his father, and, joined to his
high blood, and to a title which the courteous might give or the
churlish withhold at their pleasure, it was the whole inheritance he
had derived from his ancestry. Perhaps this melancholy yet consolatory
reflection crossed the mind of the unfortunate young nobleman with a
breathing of comfort. Favourable to calm reflection, as well as to the
Muses, the morning, while it dispelled the shades of night, had a
composing and sedative effect upon the stormy passions by which the
Master of Ravenswood had been agitated on the preceding day. He now
felt himself able to analyse the different feelings by which he was
agitated, and much resolved to combat and to subdue them. The morning,
which had arisen calm and bright, gave a pleasant effect even to the
waste moorland view which was seen from the castle on looking to the
landward; and the glorious ocean, crisped with a thousand rippling
waves of silver, extended on the other side, in awful yet complacent
majesty, to the verge of the horizon. With such scenes of calm
sublimity the human heart sympathises even in its most disturbed moods,
and deeds of honour and virtue are inspired by their majestic
influence. To seek out Bucklaw in the retreat which he had afforded
him, was the first occupation of the Master, after he had performed,
with a scrutiny unusually severe, the important task of
self-examination. “How now, Bucklaw?” was his morning’s salutation—“how
like you the couch in which the exiled Earl of Angus once slept in
security, when he was pursued by the full energy of a king’s
resentment?”

“Umph!” returned the sleeper awakened; “I have little to complain of
where so great a man was quartered before me, only the mattress was of
the hardest, the vault somewhat damp, the rats rather more mutinous
than I would have expected from the state of Caleb’s larder; and if
there had been shutters to that grated window, or a curtain to the bed,
I should think it, upon the whole, an improvement in your
accommodations.”

“It is, to be sure, forlorn enough,” said the Master, looking around
the small vault; “but if you will rise and leave it, Caleb will
endeavour to find you a better breakfast than your supper of last
night.”

“Pray, let it be no better,” said Bucklaw, getting up, and endeavouring
to dress himself as well as the obscurity of the place would
permit—“let it, I say, be no better, if you mean me to preserve in my
proposed reformation. The very recollection of Caleb’s beverage has
done more to suppress my longing to open the day with a morning draught
than twenty sermons would have done. And you, master, have you been
able to give battle valiantly to your bosom-snake? You see I am in the
way of smothering my vipers one by one.”

“I have commenced the battle, at least, Bucklaw, and I have had a fair
vision of an angel who descended to my assistance,” replied the Master.

“Woe’s me!” said his guest, “no vision can I expect, unless my aunt,
Lady Grinington, should betake herself to the tomb; and then it would
be the substance of her heritage rather than the appearance of her
phantom that I should consider as the support of my good resolutions.
But this same breakfast, Master—does the deer that is to make the pasty
run yet on foot, as the ballad has it?”

“I will inquire into that matter,” said his entertainer; and, leaving
the apartment, he went in search of Caleb, whom, after some difficulty,
he found in an obscure sort of dungeon, which had been in former times
the buttery of the castle. Here the old man was employed busily in the
doubtful task of burnishing a pewter flagon until it should take the
hue and semblance of silver-plate. “I think it may do—I think it might
pass, if they winna bring it ower muckle in the light o’ the window!”
were the ejaculations which he muttered from time to time, as if to
encourage himself in his undertaking, when he was interrupted by the
voice of his master.

“Take this,” said the Master of Ravenswood, “and get what is necessary
for the family.” And with these words he gave to the old butler the
purse which had on the preceding evening so narrowly escaped the fangs
of Craigengelt.

The old man shook his silvery and thin locks, and looked with an
expression of the most heartfelt anguish at his master as he weighed in
his hand the slender treasure, and said in a sorrowful voice, “And is
this a’ that’s left?”

“All that is left at present,” said the Master, affecting more
cheerfulness than perhaps he really felt, “is just the green purse and
the wee pickle gowd, as the old song says; but we shall do better one
day, Caleb.”

“Before that day comes,” said Caleb, “I doubt there will be an end of
an auld sang, and an auld serving-man to boot. But it disna become me
to speak that gate to your honour, and you looking sae pale. Tak back
the purse, and keep it to be making a show before company; for if your
honour would just take a bidding, and be whiles taking it out afore
folk and putting it up again, there’s naebody would refuse us trust,
for a’ that’s come and gane yet.”

“But, Caleb,” said the Master, “I still intend to leave this country
very soon, and desire to do so with the reputation of an honest man,
leaving no debt behind me, at least of my own contracting.”

“And gude right ye suld gang away as a true man, and so ye shall; for
auld Caleb can tak the wyte of whatever is taen on for the house, and
then it will be a’ just ae man’s burden; and I will live just as weel
in the tolbooth as out of it, and the credit of the family will be a’
safe and sound.”

The Master endeavoured, in vain, to make Caleb comprehend that the
butler’s incurring the responsibility of debts in his own person would
rather add to than remove the objections which he had to their being
contracted. He spoke to a premier too busy in devising ways and means
to puzzle himself with refuting the arguments offered against their
justice or expediency.

“There’s Eppie Sma’trash will trust us for ale,” said Caleb to
himself—“she has lived a’ her life under the family—and maybe wi’ a
soup brandy; I canna say for wine—she is but a lone woman, and gets her
claret by a runlet at a time; but I’ll work a wee drap out o’ her by
fair means or foul. For doos, there’s the doocot; there will be poultry
amang the tenants, though Luckie Chirnside says she has paid the kain
twice ower. We’ll mak shift, an it like your honour—we’ll mak shift;
keep your heart abune, for the house sall haud its credit as lang as
auld Caleb is to the fore.”

The entertainment which the old man’s exertions of various kinds
enabled him to present to the young gentlemen for three or four days
was certainly of no splendid description, but it may readily be
believed it was set before no critical guests; and even the distresses,
excuses, evasions, and shifts of Caleb afforded amusement to the young
men, and added a sort of interest to the scrambling and irregular style
of their table. They had indeed occasion to seize on every circumstance
that might serve to diversify or enliven time, which otherwise passed
away so heavily.

Bucklaw, shut out from his usual field-sports and joyous carouses by
the necessity of remaining concealed within the walls of the castle,
became a joyless and uninteresting companion. When the Master of
Ravenswood would no longer fence or play at shovel-board; when he
himself had polished to the extremity the coat of his palfrey with
brush, curry comb, and hair-cloth; when he had seen him eat his
provender, and gently lie down in his stall, he could hardly help
envying the animal’s apparent acquiescence in a life so monotonous.
“The stupid brute,” he said, “thinks neither of the race-ground or the
hunting-field, or his green paddock at Bucklaw, but enjoys himself as
comfortably when haltered to the rack in this ruinous vault, as if he
had been foaled in it; and, I who have the freedom of a prisoner at
large, to range through the dungeons of this wretched old tower, can
hardly, betwixt whistling and sleeping, contrive to pass away the hour
till dinner-time.”

And with this disconsolate reflection, he wended his way to the
bartizan or battlements of the tower, to watch what objects might
appear on the distant moor, or to pelt, with pebbles and pieces of
lime, the sea-mews and cormorants which established themselves
incautiously within the reach of an idle young man.

Ravenswood, with a mind incalculably deeper and more powerful than that
of his companion, had his own anxious subjects of reflection, which
wrought for him the same unhappiness that sheer enui and want of
occupation inflicted on his companion. The first sight of Lucy Ashton
had been less impressive than her image proved to be upon reflection.
As the depth and violence of that revengeful passion by which he had
been actuated in seeking an i

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