Lovel. “Forgive me if I interrupt you, Miss Wardour; you need not
fear my intruding upon a subject where I have been already severely
repressed;--but do not add to the severity of repelling my sentiments the
rigour of obliging me to disavow them.”
“I am much embarrassed, Mr. Lovel,” replied the young lady, “by your--I
would not willingly use a strong word--your romantic and hopeless
pertinacity. It is for yourself I plead, that you would consider the
calls which your country has upon your talents--that you will not waste,
in an idle and fanciful indulgence of an ill-placed predilection, time,
which, well redeemed by active exertion, should lay the foundation
of future distinction. Let me entreat that you would form a manly
resolution”--
“It is enough, Miss Wardour;--I see plainly that”--
“Mr. Lovel, you are hurt--and, believe me, I sympathize in the pain
which I inflict; but can I, in justice to myself, in fairness to you,
do otherwise? Without my father’s consent, I never will entertain the
addresses of any one, and how totally impossible it is that he should
countenance the partiality with which you honour me, you are yourself
fully aware; and, indeed”--
“No, Miss Wardour,” answered Lovel, in a tone of passionate entreaty;
“do not go farther--is it not enough to crush every hope in our present
relative situation?--do not carry your resolutions farther--why urge what
would be your conduct if Sir Arthur’s objections could be removed?”
“It is indeed vain, Mr. Lovel,” said Miss Wardour, “because their
removal is impossible; and I only wish, as your friend, and as one who
is obliged to you for her own and her father’s life, to entreat you to
suppress this unfortunate attachment--to leave a country which affords
no scope for your talents, and to resume the honourable line of the
profession which you seem to have abandoned.”
“Well, Miss Wardour, your wishes shall be obeyed;--have patience with me
one little month, and if, in the course of that space, I cannot show you
such reasons for continuing my residence at Fairport, as even you shall
approve of, I will bid adieu to its vicinity, and, with the same breath,
to all my hopes of happiness.”
“Not so, Mr. Lovel; many years of deserved happiness, founded on a more
rational basis than your present wishes, are, I trust, before, you.
But it is full time, to finish this conversation. I cannot force you to
adopt my advice--I cannot shut the door of my father’s house against the
preserver of his life and mine; but the sooner Mr. Lovel can teach his
mind to submit to the inevitable disappointment of wishes which have
been so rashly formed, the more highly he will rise in my esteem--and, in
the meanwhile, for his sake as well as mine, he must excuse my putting
an interdict upon conversation on a subject so painful.”
A servant at this moment announced that Sir Arthur desired to speak to
Mr. Oldbuck in his dressing-room.
“Let me show you the way,” said Miss Wardour, who apparently dreaded
a continuation of her tete-a-tete with Lovel, and she conducted the
Antiquary accordingly to her father’s apartment.
Sir Arthur, his legs swathed in flannel, was stretched on the couch.
“Welcome, Mr. Oldbuck,” he said; “I trust you have come better off than
I have done from the inclemency of yesterday evening?”
“Truly, Sir Arthur, I was not so much exposed to it--I kept terra
firma--you fairly committed yourself to the cold night-air in the most
literal of all senses. But such adventures become a gallant knight
better than a humble esquire,--to rise on the wings of the night-wind--to
dive into the bowels of the earth. What news from our subterranean Good
Hope!--the terra incognita of Glen-Withershins?”
“Nothing good as yet,” said the Baronet, turning himself hastily, as if
stung by a pang of the gout; “but Dousterswivel does not despair.”
“Does he not?” quoth Oldbuck; “I do though, under his favour. Why, old
Dr. H--n* told me, when I was in Edinburgh, that we should never find
copper enough, judging from the specimens I showed him, to make a pair
of sixpenny knee-buckles--and I cannot see that those samples on the
table below differ much in quality.”
* Probably Dr. Hutton, the celebrated geologist.
“The learned doctor is not infallible, I presume?”
“No; but he is one of our first chemists; and this tramping philosopher
of yours--this Dousterswivel--is, I have a notion, one, of those learned
adventurers described by Kirchner, Artem habent sine arte, partem sine
parte, quorum medium est mentiri, vita eorum mendicatum ire; that is to
say, Miss Wardour”--
“It is unnecessary to translate,” said Miss Wardour--“I comprehend your
general meaning; but I hope Mr. Dousterswivel will turn out a more
trustworthy character.”
“I doubt it not a little,” said the Antiquary,--“and we are a foul way
out if we cannot discover this infernal vein that he has prophesied
about these two years.”
“You have no great interest in the matter, Mr. Oldbuck,” said the
Baronet.
“Too much, too much, Sir Arthur; and yet, for the sake of my fair foe
here, I would consent to lose it all so you had no more on the venture.”
There was a painful silence of a few moments, for Sir Arthur was too
proud to acknowledge the downfall of his golden dreams, though he could
no longer disguise to himself that such was likely to be the termination
of the adventure. “I understand,” he at length said, “that the young
gentleman, to whose gallantry and presence of mind we were so much
indebted last night, has favoured me with a visit--I am distressed that I
am unable to see him, or indeed any one, but an old friend like you, Mr.
Oldbuck.”
A declination of the Antiquary’s stiff backbone acknowledged the
preference.
“You made acquaintance with this young gentleman in Edinburgh, I
suppose?”
Oldbuck told the circumstances of their becoming known to each other.
“Why, then, my daughter is an older acquaintance, of Mr. Lovel than you
are,” said the Baronet.
“Indeed! I was not aware of that,” answered Oldbuck somewhat surprised.
“I met Mr. Lovel,” said Isabella, slightly colouring, “when I resided
this last spring with my aunt, Mrs. Wilmot.”
“In Yorkshire?--and what character did he bear then, or how was he
engaged?” said Oldbuck,--“and why did not you recognise him when I
introduced you?”
Isabella answered the least difficult question, and passed over the
other--“He had a commission in the army, and had, I believe, served with
reputation; he was much respected, as an amiable and promising young
man.”
“And pray, such being the case,” replied the Antiquary, not disposed
to take one reply in answer to two distinct questions, “why did you not
speak to the lad at once when you met him at my house? I thought you had
less of the paltry pride of womankind about you, Miss Wardour.”
“There was a reason for it,” said Sir Arthur with dignity; “you know the
opinions--prejudices, perhaps you will call them--of our house concerning
purity of birth. This young gentleman is, it seems, the illegitimate
son of a man of fortune; my daughter did not choose to renew their
acquaintance till she should know whether I approved of her holding any
intercourse with him.”
“If it had been with his mother instead of himself,” answered Oldbuck,
with his usual dry causticity of humour, “I could see an excellent
reason for it. Ah, poor lad! that was the cause, then, that he seemed so
absent and confused while I explained to him the reason of the bend of
bastardy upon the shield yonder under the corner turret!”
“True,” said the Baronet, with complacency--“it is the shield of Malcolm
the Usurper, as he is called. The tower which he built is termed, after
him, Malcolm’s Tower, but more frequently Misticot’s Tower, which I
conceive to be a corruption for Misbegot. He is denominated, in the
Latin pedigree of our family, Milcolumbus Nothus; and his temporary
seizure of our property, and most unjust attempt to establish his own
illegitimate line in the estate of Knockwinnock, gave rise to such
family feuds and misfortunes, as strongly to found us in that horror and
antipathy to defiled blood and illegitimacy which has been handed down
to me from my respected ancestry.”
“I know the story,” said Oldbuck, “and I was telling it to Lovel this
moment, with some of the wise maxims and consequences which it has
engrafted on your family politics. Poor fellow! he must have been much
hurt: I took the wavering of his attention for negligence, and was
something piqued at it, and it proves to be only an excess of feeling.
I hope, Sir Arthur, you will not think the less of your life because it
has been preserved by such assistance?”
“Nor the less of my assistant either,” said the Baronet; “my doors and
table shall be equally open to him as if he had descended of the most
unblemished lineage.”
“Come, I am glad of that--he’ll know where he can get a dinner, then, if
he wants one. But what views can he have in this neighbourhood? I must
catechise him; and if I find he wants it--or, indeed, whether he does or
not--he shall have my best advice.” As the Antiquary made this liberal
promise, he took his leave of Miss Wardour and her father, eager to
commence operations upon Mr. Lovel. He informed him abruptly that Miss
Wardour sent her compliments, and remained in attendance on her father,
and then, taking him by the arm, he led him out of the castle.
Knockwinnock still preserved much of the external attributes of a
baronial castle. It had its drawbridge, though now never drawn up, and
its dry moat, the sides of which had been planted with shrubs, chiefly
of the evergreen tribes. Above these rose the old building, partly from
a foundation of red rock scarped down to the sea-beach, and partly from
the steep green verge of the moat. The trees of the avenue have been
already mentioned, and many others rose around of large size,--as if to
confute the prejudice that timber cannot be raised near to the ocean.
Our walkers paused, and looked back upon the castle, as they attained
the height of a small knoll, over which lay their homeward road; for it
is to be supposed they did not tempt the risk of the tide by returning
along the sands. The building flung its broad shadow upon the tufted
foliage of the shrubs beneath it, while the front windows sparkled in
the sun. They were viewed by the gazers with very different feelings.
Lovel, with the fond eagerness of that passion which derives its food
and nourishment from trifles, as the chameleon is said to live on the
air, or upon the invisible insects which it contains, endeavoured to
conjecture which of the numerous windows belonged to the apartment now
graced by Miss Wardour’s presence. The speculations of the Antiquary
were of a more melancholy cast, and were partly indicated by the
ejaculation of cito peritura! as he turned away from the prospect.
Lovel, roused from his reverie, looked at him as if to inquire the
meaning of an exclamation so ominous. The old man shook his head. “Yes,
my young friend,” said he, “I doubt greatly--and it wrings my heart to
say it--this ancient family is going fast to the ground!”
“Indeed!” answered Lovel--“you surprise me greatly.”
“We harden ourselves in vain,” continued the Antiquary, pursuing his own
train of thought and feeling--“we harden ourselves in vain to treat with
the indifference they deserve, the changes of this trumpery whirligig
world. We strive ineffectually to be the self-sufficing invulnerable
being, the teres atque rotundus of the poet;--the stoical exemption which
philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human
life, is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection
aimed at by some crazy enthusiasts.”
“And Heaven forbid that it should be otherwise!” said Lovel,
warmly--“Heaven forbid that any process of philosophy were capable so
to sear and indurate our feelings, that nothing should agitate them but
what arose instantly and immediately out of our own selfish interests!
I would as soon wish my hand to be as callous as horn, that it might
escape an occasional cut or scratch, as I would be ambitious of the
stoicism which should render my heart like a piece of the nether
millstone.”
The Antiquary regarded his youthful companion with a look half of pity,
half of sympathy, and shrugged up his shoulders as he replied--“Wait,
young man--wait till your bark has been battered by the storm of sixty
years of mortal vicissitude: you will learn by that time, to reef your
sails, that she may obey the helm;--or, in the language of this world,
you will find distresses enough, endured and to endure, to keep your
feelings and sympathies in full exercise, without concerning yourself
more in the fate of others than you cannot possibly avoid.”
“Well, Mr. Oldbuck, it may be so;--but as yet I resemble you more in your
practice than in your theory, for I cannot help being deeply interested
in the fate of the family we have just left.”
“And well you may,” replied Oldbuck. “Sir Arthur’s embarrassments have
of late become so many and so pressing, that I am surprised you have not
heard of them. And then his absurd and expensive operations carried on
by this High-German landlouper, Dousterswivel”--
“I think I have seen that person, when, by some rare chance, I
happened to be in the coffee-room at Fairport;--a tall, beetle-browed,
awkward-built man, who entered upon scientific subjects, as it appeared
to my ignorance at least, with more assurance than knowledge--was very
arbitrary in laying down and asserting his opinions, and mixed the terms
of science with a strange jargon of mysticism. A simple youth whispered
me that he was an Illumine’, and carried on an intercourse with the
invisible world.”
“O, the same--the same. He has enough of practical knowledge to speak
scholarly and wisely to those of whose intelligence he stands in awe;
and, to say the truth, this faculty, joined to his matchless impudence,
imposed upon me for some time when I first knew him. But I have since
understood, that when he is among fools and womankind, he exhibits
himself as a perfect charlatan--talks of the magisterium--of sympathies
and antipathies--of the cabala--of the divining-rod--and all the trumpery
with which the Rosicrucians cheated a darker age, and which, to our
eternal disgrace, has in some degree revived in our own. My friend
Heavysterne knew this fellow abroad, and unintentionally (for he, you
must know, is, God bless the mark! a sort of believer) let me into a
good deal of his real character. Ah! were I caliph for a day, as Honest
Abon Hassan wished to be, I would scourge me these jugglers out of the
commonwealth with rods of scorpions. They debauch the spirit of the
ignorant and credulous with mystical trash, as effectually as if they
had besotted their brains with gin, and then pick their pockets with the
same facility. And now has this strolling blackguard and mountebank put
the finishing blow to the ruin of an ancient and honourable family!”
“But how could he impose upon Sir Arthur to any ruinous extent?”
“Why, I don’t know. Sir Arthur is a good honourable gentleman; but, as
you may see from his loose ideas concerning the Pikish language, he is
by no means very strong in the understanding. His estate is strictly
entailed, and he has been always an embarrassed man. This rapparee
promised him mountains of wealth, and an English company was found
to advance large sums of money--I fear on Sir Arthur’s guarantee. Some
gentlemen--I was ass enough to be one--took small shares in the concern,
and Sir Arthur himself made great outlay; we were trained on by specious
appearances and more specious lies; and now, like John Bunyan, we awake,
and behold it is a dream!”
“I am surprised that you, Mr. Oldbuck, should have encouraged Sir Arthur
by your example.”
“Why,” said Oldbuck, dropping his large grizzled eyebrow, “I am
something surprised and ashamed at it myself; it was not the lucre of
gain--nobody cares less for money (to be a prudent man) than I do--but I
thought I might risk this small sum. It will be expected (though I am
sure I cannot see why) that I should give something to any one who
will be kind enough to rid me of that slip of womankind, my niece, Mary
M’Intyre; and perhaps it may be thought I should do something to get
that jackanapes, her brother, on in the army. In either case, to treble
my venture, would have helped me out. And besides, I had some idea that
the Phoenicians had in former times wrought copper in that very spot.
That cunning scoundrel, Dousterswivel, found out my blunt side, and
brought strange tales (d--n him) of appearances of old shafts, and
vestiges of mining operations, conducted in a manner quite different
from those of modern times; and I--in short, I was a fool, and there
is an end. My loss is not much worth speaking about; but Sir Arthur’s
engagements are, I understand, very deep, and my heart aches for him and
the poor young lady who must share his distress.”
Here the conversation paused, until renewed in the next CHAPTER.
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne,
And all this day, an unaccustomed spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
Romeo and Juliet.
The account of Sir Arthur’s unhappy adventure had led Oldbuck somewhat
aside from his purpose of catechising Lovel concerning the cause of
his residence at Fairport. He was now, however, resolved to open the
subject. “Miss Wardour was formerly known to you, she tells me, Mr.
Lovel?”
“He had had the pleasure,” Lovel answered, “to see her at Mrs. Wilmot’s,
in Yorkshire.”
“Indeed! you never mentioned that to me before, and you did not accost
her as an old acquaintance.”
“I--I did not know,” said Lovel, a good deal embarrassed, “it was the
same lady, till we met; and then it was my duty to wait till she should
recognise me.”
“I am aware of your delicacy: the knight’s a punctilious old fool, but
I promise you his daughter is above all nonsensical ceremony and
prejudice. And now, since you have, found a new set of friends here, may
I ask if you intend to leave Fairport as soon as you proposed?”
“What if I should answer your question by another,” replied Lovel, “and
ask you what is your opinion of dreams?”
“Of dreams, you foolish lad!--why, what should I think of them but as
the deceptions of imagination when reason drops the reins? I know no
difference betwixt them and the hallucinations of madness--the unguided
horses run away with the carriage in both cases, only in the one the
coachman is drunk, and in the other he slumbers. What says our
Marcus Tullius--Si insanorum visis fides non est habenda, cur credatur
somnientium visis, quae multo etiam perturbatiora sunt, non intelligo.”
“Yes, sir; but Cicero also tells us, that as he who passes the whole day
in darting the javelin must sometimes hit the mark, so, amid the cloud
of nightly dreams, some may occur consonant to future events.”
“Ay--that is to say, you have hit the mark in your own sage opinion?
Lord! Lord! how this world is given to folly! Well, I will allow for
once the Oneirocritical science--I will give faith to the exposition of
dreams, and say a Daniel hath arisen to interpret them, if you can
prove to me that that dream of yours has pointed to a prudent line of
conduct.”
“Tell me, then,” answered Lovel, “why when I was hesitating whether to
abandon an enterprise, which I have perhaps rashly undertaken, I
should last night dream I saw your ancestor pointing to a motto which
encouraged me to perseverance?--why should I have thought of those words
which I cannot remember to have heard before, which are in a language
unknown to me, and which yet conveyed, when translated, a lesson which I
could so plainly apply to my own circumstances?”
The Antiquary burst into a fit of laughing. “Excuse me, my young
friend--but it is thus we silly mortals deceive ourselves, and look out
of doors for motives which originate in our own wilful will. I think I
can help out the cause of your vision. You were so abstracted in your
contemplations yesterday after dinner, as to pay little attention to the
discourse between Sir Arthur and me, until we fell upon the controversy
concerning the Piks, which terminated so abruptly;--but I remember
producing to Sir Arthur a book printed by my ancestor, and making
him observe the motto; your mind was bent elsewhere, but your ear had
mechanically received and retained the sounds, and your busy fancy,
stirred by Grizel’s legend I presume, had introduced this scrap of
German into your dream. As for the waking wisdom which seized on so
frivolous a circumstance as an apology for persevering in some course
which it could find no better reason to justify, it is exactly one of
those juggling tricks which the sagest of us play off now and then, to
gratify our inclination at the expense of our understanding.”
“I own it,” said Lovel, blushing deeply;--“I believe you are right, Mr.
Oldbuck, and I ought to sink in your esteem for attaching a moment’s
consequence to such a frivolity;--but I was tossed by contradictory
wishes and resolutions, and you know how slight a line will tow a boat
when afloat on the billows, though a cable would hardly move her when
pulled up on the beach.”
“Right, right,” exclaimed the Antiquary. “Fall in my opinion!--not a
whit--I love thee the better, man;--why, we have story for story against
each other, and I can think with less shame on having exposed myself
about that cursed Praetorium--though I am still convinced Agricola’s camp
must have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. And now, Lovel, my good
lad, be sincere with me--What make you from Wittenberg?--why have you left
your own country and professional pursuits, for an idle residence in
such a place as Fairport? A truant disposition, I fear.”
“Even so,” replied Lovel, patiently submitting to an interrogatory which
he could not well evade. “Yet I am so detached from all the world, have
so few in whom I am interested, or who are interested in me, that my
very state of destitution gives me independence. He whose good or evil
fortune affects himself alone, has the best right to pursue it according
to his own fancy.”
“Pardon me, young man,” said Oldbuck, laying his hand kindly on his
shoulder, and making a full halt--“sufflamina--a little patience, if you
please. I will suppose that you have no friends to share or rejoice in
your success in life--that you cannot look back to those to whom you owe
gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection;
but it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of
duty--for your active exertions are due not only to society, but in
humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers
to serve yourself and others.”
“But I am unconscious of possessing such powers,” said Lovel, somewhat
impatiently. “I ask nothing of society but the permission of walking
innoxiously through the path of life, without jostling others, or
permitting myself to be jostled. I owe no man anything--I have the means
of maintaining, myself with complete independence; and so moderate
are my wishes in this respect, that even these means, however limited,
rather exceed than fall short of them.”
“Nay, then,” said Oldbuck, removing his hand, and turning again to
the road, “if you are so true a philosopher as to think you have money
enough, there’s no more to be said--I cannot pretend to be entitled to
advise you;--you have attained the acme’--the summit of perfection. And
how came Fairport to be the selected abode of so much self-denying
philosophy? It is as if a worshipper of the true religion had set up his
staff by choice among the multifarious idolaters of the land of Egypt.
There is not a man in Fairport who is not a devoted worshipper of the
Golden Calf--the mammon of unrighteousness. Why, even I, man, am so
infected by the bad neighbourhood, that I feel inclined occasionally to
become an idolater myself.”
“My principal amusements being literary,” answered Lovel, “and
circumstances which I cannot mention having induced me, for a time at
least, to relinquish the military service, I have pitched on Fairport
as a place where I might follow my pursuits without any of those
temptations to society which a more elegant circle might have presented
to me.”