CASTLE-BUILDING
I have already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious
taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading had not only rendered
our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted
him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged.
He was in his sixteenth year when his habits of abstraction and
love of solitude became so much marked as to excite Sir Everard's
affectionate apprehension. He tried to counterbalance these
propensities by engaging his nephew in field-sports, which had
been the chief pleasure of his own youthful days. But although
Edward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practice
had given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased to afford him
amusement.
In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton's
fascinating volume determined Edward to become 'a brother of the
angle.' But of all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for the
relief of idleness, fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a man
who is at once indolent and impatient; and our hero's rod was
speedily flung aside. Society and example, which, more than any
other motives, master and sway the natural bent of our passions,
might have had their usual effect upon the youthful visionary. But
the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the home-bred young
squires whom it afforded were not of a class fit to form Edward's
usual companions, far less to excite him to emulation in the
practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business of
their lives.
There were a few other youths of better education and a more
liberal character, but from their society also our hero was in
some degree excluded. Sir Everard had, upon the death of Queen
Anne, resigned his seat in Parliament, and, as his age increased
and the number of his contemporaries diminished, had gradually
withdrawn himself from society; so that when, upon any particular
occasion, Edward mingled with accomplished and well-educated
young men of his own rank and expectations, he felt an inferiority
in their company, not so much from deficiency of information, as
from the want of the skill to command and to arrange that which he
possessed. A deep and increasing sensibility added to this dislike
of society. The idea of having committed the slightest solecism in
politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agony to him; for
perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds so keen
a sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, and
inexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having
neglected etiquette or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease,
we cannot be happy; and therefore it is not surprising that Edward
Waverley supposed that he disliked and was unfitted for society,
merely because he had not yet acquired the habit of living in it
with ease and comfort, and of reciprocally giving and receiving
pleasure.
The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted in
listening to the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet even
there his imagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, was
frequently excited. Family tradition and genealogical history,
upon which much of Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very
reverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usually
includes flies, straws, and other trifles; whereas these studies,
being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do nevertheless
serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in
ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts which
could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium.
If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over the dry
deduction of his line of ancestors, with their various
intermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and
protracted accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed
the various degrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-
Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires to whom they
stood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the three
ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of
heraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its
dragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were
moments when these communications interested his fancy and
rewarded his attention.
The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long
absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his
return on the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded
the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during
his absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquished
his claims, and sought in a neighbouring cloister that peace which
passeth not away; [Footnote: See Note 2.]--to these and similar
tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye
glistened. Nor was he less affected when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel,
narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley
during the Great Civil War. The benevolent features of the
venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression as she
told how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day's
refuge at Waverley-Honour, and how, when a troop of cavalry were
approaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed her
youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to make
good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king might
have that space for escape. 'And, God help her,' would Mrs. Rachel
continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she
spoke, 'full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with
the life of her darling child. They brought him here a prisoner,
mortally wounded; and you may trace the drops of his blood from
the great hall door along the little gallery, and up to the
saloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother's feet. But
there was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew, from the
glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his desperate
defence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she continued, 'I remember
well to have seen one that knew and loved him. Miss Lucy Saint
Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most
beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran
after her, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poor
William, for they were betrothed though not married, and died in--
I cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November of
that very year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to be
brought to Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the places
where she had been with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets to
be raised that she might trace the impression of his blood, and if
tears could have washed it out, it had not been there now; for
there was not a dry eye in the house. You would have thought,
Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, for their leaves
dropt around her without a gust of wind, and, indeed, she looked
like one that would never see them green again.'
From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies
they excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with
no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its
ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that
internal sorcery by which past or imaginary events are presented
in action, as it were, to the eye of the muser. Then arose in long
and fair array the splendour of the bridal feast at Waverley-
Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its real lord, as he stood
in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of the festivities
of his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical shock
occasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms;
the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror and confusion of
the bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed that her heart
as well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yet
of deep feeling, with which he flung down the half-drawn sword,
and turned away for ever from the house of his ancestors. Then
would he change the scene, and fancy would at his wish represent
Aunt Rachel's tragedy. He saw the Lady Waverley seated in her
bower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart throbbing with
double agony, now listening to the decaying echo of the hoofs of
the king's horse, and when that had died away, hearing in every
breeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remote
skirmish. A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swoln
stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the
galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling
pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the Hall. The lady
starts up--a terrified menial rushes in--but why pursue such a
description?
As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our
hero, interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive
domain that surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the
dimensions of a park, was usually termed Waverley-Chase, had
originally been forest ground, and still, though broken by
extensive glades, in which the young deer were sporting, retained
its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by broad
avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where the
beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag
coursed with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the
crossbow. In one spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic
monument, which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth
herself was said to have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows.
This was a very favourite haunt of Waverley. At other times, with
his gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to others, and
with a book in his pocket, which perhaps served as an apology to
himself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, after
an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rude
and contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called
Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and small
lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, in
former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by
the water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of
Waverley, because in perilous times it had often been the refuge
of the family. There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the last
adherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause carried
on a harassing and predatory warfare, till the stronghold was
reduced by the celebrated Richard of Gloucester. Here, too, a
party of Cavaliers long maintained themselves under Nigel
Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt Rachel
commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to
'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child among
his toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless
imagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions
as brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect
of this indulgence upon his temper and character will appear in
the next chapter.