stranger was to be their guest for the night; and such was the surprise
with which she was struck by a proposal so uncommon, that, had the
superincumbent weight of her head-dress, such as we before described,
been less preponderant, her grey locks must have started up on end, and
hurled it from its position.
“Lord haud a care o’ us!” exclaimed the astounded maiden.
“What’s the matter now, Grizel?”
“Wad ye but just speak a moment, Monkbarns?”
“Speak!--what should I speak about? I want to get to my bed--and this poor
young fellow--let a bed be made ready for him instantly.”
“A bed?--The Lord preserve us!” again ejaculated Grizel.
“Why, what’s the matter now?--are there not beds and rooms enough in the
house?--was it not an ancient hospitium, in which, I am warranted to say,
beds were nightly made down for a score of pilgrims?”
“O dear, Monkbarns! wha kens what they might do lang syne?--but in our
time--beds--ay, troth, there’s beds enow sic as they are--and rooms enow
too--but ye ken yoursell the beds haena been sleepit in, Lord kens the
time, nor the rooms aired.--If I had kenn’d, Mary and me might hae gaen
down to the manse--Miss Beckie is aye fond to see us--(and sae is the
minister, brother)--But now, gude save us!”--
“Is there not the Green Room, Grizel?”
“Troth is there, and it is in decent order too, though naebody has
sleepit there since Dr. Heavysterne, and”--
“And what?”
“And what! I am sure ye ken yoursell what a night he had--ye wadna expose
the young gentleman to the like o’ that, wad ye?”
Lovel interfered upon hearing this altercation, and protested he would
far rather walk home than put them to the least inconvenience--that the
exercise would be of service to him--that he knew the road perfectly,
by night or day, to Fairport--that the storm was abating, and so
forth--adding all that civility could suggest as an excuse for escaping
from a hospitality which seemed more inconvenient to his host than he
could possibly have anticipated. But the howling of the wind, and the
pattering of the rain against the windows, with his knowledge of the
preceding fatigues of the evening, must have prohibited Oldbuck, even
had he entertained less regard for his young friend than he really felt,
from permitting him to depart. Besides, he was piqued in honour to show
that he himself was not governed by womankind--“Sit ye down, sit ye down,
sit ye down, man,” he reiterated;--“an ye part so, I would I might never
draw a cork again, and here comes out one from a prime bottle of--strong
ale--right anno domini--none of your Wassia Quassia decoctions, but brewed
of Monkbarns barley--John of the Girnel never drew a better flagon to
entertain a wandering minstrel, or palmer, with the freshest news from
Palestine.--And to remove from your mind the slightest wish to depart,
know, that if you do so, your character as a gallant knight is gone
for ever. Why, ‘tis an adventure, man, to sleep in the Green Room
at Monkbarns.--Sister, pray see it got ready--And, although the bold
adventurer, Heavysterne, dree’d pain and dolour in that charmed
apartment, it is no reason why a gallant knight like you, nearly twice
as tall, and not half so heavy, should not encounter and break the
spell.”
“What! a haunted apartment, I suppose?”
“To be sure, to be sure--every mansion in this country of the slightest
antiquity has its ghosts and its haunted chamber, and you must not
suppose us worse off than our neighbours. They are going, indeed,
somewhat out of fashion. I have seen the day, when if you had doubted
the reality of a ghost in an old manor-house you ran the risk of being
made a ghost yourself, as Hamlet says.--Yes, if you had challenged
the existence of Redcowl in the Castle of Glenstirym, old Sir Peter
Pepperbrand would have had ye out to his court-yard, made you betake
yourself to your weapon, and if your trick of fence were not the better,
would have sticked you like a paddock, on his own baronial midden-stead.
I once narrowly escaped such an affray--but I humbled myself, and
apologised to Redcowl; for, even in my younger days, I was no friend to
the monomachia, or duel, and would rather walk with Sir Priest than with
Sir Knight--I care not who knows so much of my valour. Thank God, I am
old now, and can indulge my irritabilities without the necessity of
supporting them by cold steel.”
Here Miss Oldbuck re-entered, with a singularly sage expression of
countenance.--“Mr. Lovel’s bed’s ready, brother--clean sheets--weel aired--a
spunk of fire in the chimney--I am sure, Mr. Lovel,” (addressing him),
“it’s no for the trouble--and I hope you will have a good night’s
rest--But”--
“You are resolved,” said the Antiquary, “to do what you can to prevent
it.”
“Me?--I am sure I have said naething, Monkbarns.”
“My dear madam,” said Lovel, “allow me to ask you the meaning of your
obliging anxiety on my account.”
“Ou, Monkbarns does not like to hear of it--but he kens himsell that the
room has an ill name. It’s weel minded that it was there auld Rab Tull
the town-clerk was sleeping when he had that marvellous communication
about the grand law-plea between us and the feuars at the Mussel-craig.
--It had cost a hantle siller, Mr. Lovel; for law-pleas were no carried
on without siller lang syne mair than they are now--and the Monkbarns of
that day--our gudesire, Mr. Lovel, as I said before--was like to be waured
afore the Session for want of a paper--Monkbarns there kens weel what
paper it was, but I’se warrant he’ll no help me out wi’ my tale--but it
was a paper of great significance to the plea, and we were to be waured
for want o’t. Aweel, the cause was to come on before the fifteen--in
presence, as they ca’t--and auld Rab Tull, the town-clerk, he cam ower to
make a last search for the paper that was wanting, before our gudesire
gaed into Edinburgh to look after his plea--so there was little time to
come and gang on. He was but a doited snuffy body, Rab, as I’ve heard
--but then he was the town-clerk of Fairport, and the Monkbarns heritors
aye employed him on account of their connection wi’ the burgh, ye ken.”
“Sister Grizel, this is abominable,” interrupted Oldbuck; “I vow to
Heaven ye might have raised the ghosts of every abbot of Trotcosey,
since the days of Waldimir, in the time you have been detailing the
introduction to this single spectre.--Learn to be succinct in your
narrative.--Imitate the concise style of old Aubrey, an experienced
ghost-seer, who entered his memoranda on these subjects in a terse
business-like manner; exempli gratia--At Cirencester, 5th March, 1670,
was an apparition.--Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, made
no answer, but instantly disappeared with a curious perfume, and a
melodious twang’--Vide his Miscellanies, p. eighteen, as well as I can
remember, and near the middle of the page.”
“O, Monkbarns, man! do ye think everybody is as book-learned as
yoursell?--But ye like to gar folk look like fools--ye can do that to Sir
Arthur, and the minister his very sell.”
“Nature has been beforehand with me, Grizel, in both these instances,
and in another which shall be nameless--but take a glass of ale, Grizel,
and proceed with your story, for it waxes late.”
“Jenny’s just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e’en wait till
she’s done.--Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that
then was, made wi’ auld Rab Tull’s assistance;--but ne’er-be-licket could
they find that was to their purpose. And sae after they had touzled out
mony a leather poke-full o’ papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at
e’en to wash the dust out of his throat--we never were glass-breakers in
this house, Mr. Lovel, but the body had got sic a trick of sippling and
tippling wi’ the bailies and deacons when they met (which was amaist
ilka night) concerning the common gude o’ the burgh, that he couldna
weel sleep without it--But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed; and in
the middle of the night he got a fearfu’ wakening!--he was never just
himsell after it, and he was strucken wi’ the dead palsy that very day
four years. He thought, Mr. Lovel, that he heard the curtains o’ his
bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might hae been the
cat--But he saw--God hae a care o’ us! it gars my flesh aye creep, though
I hae tauld the story twenty times--he saw a weel-fa’ard auld gentleman
standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress,
wi’ mony a button and band-string about it, and that part o’ his
garments which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith
side and wide, and as mony plies o’t as of ony Hamburgh skipper’s--He had
a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as
baudrons’--and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld
o’, but they are forgotten now--it’s an auld story. Aweel, Rab was a
just-living man for a country writer--and he was less feared than maybe
might just hae been expected; and he asked in the name o’ goodness what
the apparition wanted--and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue. Then
Rab said he tried him wi’ Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the braes
of Glenlivat--but it wadna do. Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him
of the twa or three words o’ Latin that he used in making out the town’s
deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit wi’ that, than out cam sic
a blatter o’ Latin about his lugs, that poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great
scholar, was clean overwhelmed. Od, but he was a bauld body, and he
minded the Latin name for the deed that he was wanting. It was something
about a cart, I fancy, for the ghaist cried aye, Carter, carter--”
“Carta, you transformer of languages!” cried Oldbuck;--“if my ancestor
had learned no other language in the other world, at least he would not
forget the Latinity for which he was so famous while in this.”
“Weel, weel, carta be it then, but they ca’d it carter that tell’d me
the story. It cried aye carta, if sae be that it was carta, and made a
sign to Rab to follow it. Rab Tull keepit a Highland heart, and banged
out o’ bed, and till some of his readiest claes--and he did follow the
thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca’ the high dow-cot--(a
sort of a little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was
a Rickle o’ useless boxes and trunks)--and there the ghaist gae Rab a
kick wi’ the tae foot, and a kick wi’ the tother, to that very auld
east-country tabernacle of a cabinet that my brother has standing beside
his library table, and then disappeared like a fuff o’ tobacco, leaving
Rab in a very pitiful condition.”
“Tenues secessit in auras,” quoth Oldbuck. “Marry, sir, mansit odor--But,
sure enough, the deed was there found in a drawer of this forgotten
repository, which contained many other curious old papers, now properly
labelled and arranged, and which seemed to have belonged to my ancestor,
the first possessor of Monkbarns. The deed, thus strangely recovered,
was the original Charter of Erection of the Abbey, Abbey Lands, and so
forth, of Trotcosey, comprehending Monkbarns and others, into a Lordship
of Regality in favour of the first Earl of Glengibber, a favourite
of James the Sixth. It is subscribed by the King at Westminster,
the seventeenth day of January, A. D. one thousand six hundred and
twelve--thirteen. It’s not worth while to repeat the witnesses’ names.”
“I would rather,” said Lovel with awakened curiosity, “I would rather
hear your opinion of the way in which the deed was discovered.”
“Why, if I wanted a patron for my legend, I could find no less a one
than Saint Augustine, who tells the story of a deceased person appearing
to his son, when sued for a debt which had been paid, and directing him
where, to find the discharge.*
*Note D. Mr. Rutherford’s dream.
But I rather opine with Lord Bacon, who says that imagination is much
akin to miracle-working faith. There was always some idle story of
the room being haunted by the spirit of Aldobrand Oldenbuck, my
great-great-great-grandfather--it’s a shame to the English language that,
we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we
have occasion to think and speak so frequently. He was a foreigner, and
wore his national dress, of which tradition had preserved an accurate
description; and indeed there is a print of him, supposed to be by
Reginald Elstracke, pulling the press with his own hand, as it works off
the sheets of his scarce edition of the Augsburg Confession. He was a
chemist as well as a good mechanic, and either of these qualities in
this country was at that time sufficient to constitute a white witch at
least. This superstitious old writer had heard all this, and probably
believed it, and in his sleep the image and idea of my ancestor recalled
that of his cabinet, which, with the grateful attention to antiquities
and the memory of our ancestors not unusually met with, had been pushed
into the pigeon-house to be out of the way--Add a quantum sufficit of
exaggeration, and you have a key to the whole mystery.”
“O brother! brother! but Dr. Heavysterne, brother--whose sleep was so
sore broken, that he declared he wadna pass another night in the Green
Room to get all Monkbarns, so that Mary and I were forced to yield our”--
“Why, Grizel, the doctor is a good, honest, pudding-headed German, of
much merit in his own way, but fond of the mystical, like many of his
countrymen. You and he had a traffic the whole evening in which you
received tales of Mesmer, Shropfer, Cagliostro, and other modern
pretenders to the mystery of raising spirits, discovering hidden
treasure, and so forth, in exchange for your legends of the green
bedchamber;--and considering that the Illustrissimus ate a pound and a
half of Scotch collops to supper, smoked six pipes, and drank ale and
brandy in proportion, I am not surprised at his having a fit of the
night-mare. But everything is now ready. Permit me to light you to your
apartment, Mr. Lovel--I am sure you have need of rest--and I trust my
ancestor is too sensible of the duties of hospitality to interfere with
the repose which you have so well merited by your manly and gallant
behaviour.”
So saying, the Antiquary took up a bedroom candlestick of massive silver
and antique form, which, he observed, was wrought out of the silver
found in the mines of the Harz mountains, and had been the property
of the very personage who had supplied them with a subject for
conversation. And having so said, he led the way through many a dusky
and winding passage, now ascending, and anon descending again, until he
came to the apartment destined for his young guest.
CHAPTER TENTH.
When midnight o’er the moonless skies
Her pall of transient death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise,
And none are wakeful but the dead;
No bloodless shape my way pursues,
No sheeted ghost my couch annoys,
Visions more sad my fancy views,--
Visions of long departed joys.
W. R. Spenser.
When they reached the Green Room, as it was called, Oldbuck placed the
candle on the toilet table, before a huge mirror with a black japanned
frame, surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same, and looked around him
with something of a disturbed expression of countenance. “I am seldom
in this apartment,” he said, “and never without yielding to a melancholy
feeling--not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel
was telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy
attachment. It is at such moments as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the
changes of time. The same objects are before us--those inanimate things
which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in
anxious and scheming manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when
we look upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our
temper, our pursuits, our feelings--changed in our form, our limbs, and
our strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather
look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as being
separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed
from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did
not choose a judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in
his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched with the
feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:*
*Probably Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.
My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what time takes away,
Than what he leaves behind.
Well, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and
occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is
felt no more.”--So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished
him good-night, and took his leave.
Step after step Lovel could trace his host’s retreat along the various
passages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound
more distant and dead. The guest, thus separated from the living world,
took up the candle and surveyed the apartment.
The fire blazed cheerfully. Mrs. Grizel’s attention had left some
fresh wood, should he choose to continue it, and the apartment had a
comfortable, though not a lively appearance. It was hung with tapestry,
which the looms of Arras had produced in the sixteenth century, and
which the learned typographer, so often mentioned, had brought with
him as a sample of the arts of the Continent. The subject was a
hunting-piece; and as the leafy boughs of the forest-trees, branching
over the tapestry, formed the predominant colour, the apartment had
thence acquired its name of the Green Chamber. Grim figures in the
old Flemish dress, with slashed doublets covered with ribbands,
short cloaks, and trunk-hose, were engaged in holding grey-hounds, or
stag-hounds, in the leash, or cheering them upon the objects of their
game. Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned guns, were
attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay. The branches of
the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each depicted
with its proper plumage. It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention
of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion, and
Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient
and excellent poet, to be embroidered in Gothic letters, on a sort of
border which he had added to the tapestry:--
Lo! here be oakis grete, streight as a line,
Under the which the grass, so fresh of line,
Be’th newly sprung--at eight foot or nine.
Everich tree well from his fellow grew,
With branches broad laden with leaves new,
That sprongen out against the sonne sheene,
Some golden red and some a glad bright green.
And in another canton was the following similar legend:--
And many an hart and many an hind,
Was both before me, and behind.
Of fawns, sownders, bucks and does,
Was full the wood and many roes,
And many squirrels that ysate
High on the trees and nuts ate.
The bed was of a dark and faded green, wrought to correspond with the
tapestry, but by a more modern and less skilful hand. The large and
heavy stuff-bottomed chairs, with black ebony backs, were embroidered
after the same pattern, and a lofty mirror, over the antique
chimney-piece, corresponded in its mounting with that on the
old-fashioned toilet.
“I have heard,” muttered Lovel, as he took a cursory view of the room
and its furniture, “that ghosts often chose the best room in the mansion
to which they attached themselves; and I cannot disapprove of the taste
of the disembodied printer of the Augsburg Confession.” But he found it
so difficult to fix his mind upon the stories which had been told him of
an apartment with which they seemed so singularly to correspond, that he
almost regretted the absence of those agitated feelings, half fear half
curiosity, which sympathise with the old legends of awe and wonder,
from which the anxious reality of his own hopeless passion at present
detached him. For he now only felt emotions like those expressed in the
lines,--
Ah! cruel maid, how hast thou changed
The temper of my mind!
My heart, by thee from all estranged,
Becomes like thee unkind.
He endeavoured to conjure up something like the feelings which would, at
another time, have been congenial to his situation, but his heart had
no room for these vagaries of imagination. The recollection of Miss
Wardour, determined not to acknowledge him when compelled to endure his
society, and evincing her purpose to escape from it, would have
alone occupied his imagination exclusively. But with this were
united recollections more agitating if less painful,--her hair-breadth
escape--the fortunate assistance which he had been able to render
her--Yet what was his requital? She left the cliff while his fate was yet
doubtful--while it was uncertain whether her preserver had not lost the
life which he had exposed for her so freely. Surely gratitude, at least,
called for some little interest in his fate--But no--she could not be
selfish or unjust--it was no part of her nature. She only desired to shut
the door against hope, and, even in compassion to him, to extinguish a
passion which she could never return.
But this lover-like mode of reasoning was not likely to reconcile him to
his fate, since the more amiable his imagination presented Miss Wardour,
the more inconsolable he felt he should be rendered by the extinction of
his hopes. He was, indeed, conscious of possessing the power of removing
her prejudices on some points; but, even in extremity, he determined
to keep the original determination which he had formed, of ascertaining
that she desired an explanation, ere he intruded one upon her. And, turn
the matter as he would, he could not regard his suit as desperate. There
was something of embarrassment as well as of grave surprise in her look
when Oldbuck presented him--and, perhaps, upon second thoughts, the one
was assumed to cover the other. He would not relinquish a pursuit which
had already cost him such pains. Plans, suiting the romantic temper of
the brain that entertained them, chased each other through his head,
thick and irregular as the motes of the sun-beam, and, long after he had
laid himself to rest, continued to prevent the repose which he greatly
needed. Then, wearied by the uncertainty and difficulties with which
each scheme appeared to be attended, he bent up his mind to the strong
effort of shaking off his love, “like dew-drops from the lion’s mane,”
and resuming those studies and that career of life which his unrequited
affection had so long and so fruitlessly interrupted. In this last
resolution he endeavoured to fortify himself by every argument which
pride, as well as reason, could suggest. “She shall not suppose,” he
said, “that, presuming on an accidental service to her or to her father,
I am desirous to intrude myself upon that notice, to which, personally,
she considered me as having no title. I will see her no more. I will
return to the land which, if it affords none fairer, has at least many
as fair, and less haughty than Miss Wardour. Tomorrow I will bid adieu
to these northern shores, and to her who is as cold and relentless
as her climate.” When he had for some time brooded over this sturdy
resolution, exhausted nature at length gave way, and, despite of wrath,
doubt, and anxiety, he sank into slumber.