which he heaved up with some difficulty, and then turned round to regain
his hut, the shouts of laughter being renewed behind him with treble
violence, and ringing far down the narrow valley. When Martin returned
to the hut, his first care, however much astonished with what he had
seen, was to dispose the kindled coal among the fuel so as might best
light the fire of his furnace; but after many efforts, and all exertions
of bellows and fire-prong, the coal he had brought from the demon’s fire
became totally extinct without kindling any of the others. He turned
about, and observed the fire still blazing on the hill, although those
who had been busied around it had disappeared. As he conceived the
spectre had been jesting with him, he gave way to the natural hardihood
of his temper, and, determining to see the adventure to an end, resumed
the road to the fire, from which, unopposed by the demon, he brought off
in the same manner a blazing piece of charcoal, but still without being
able to succeed in lighting his fire. Impunity having increased his
rashness, he resolved upon a third experiment, and was as successful as
before in reaching the fire; but when he had again appropriated a
piece of burning coal, and had turned to depart, he heard the harsh and
supernatural voice which had before accosted him, pronounce these words,
“Dare not return hither a fourth time!”
The attempt to kindle the fire with this last coal having proved as
ineffectual as on the former occasions, Martin relinquished the hopeless
attempt, and flung himself on his bed of leaves, resolving to delay till
the next morning the communication of his supernatural adventure to his
brothers. He was awakened from a heavy sleep into which he had sunk,
from fatigue of body and agitation of mind, by loud exclamations
of surprise and joy. His brothers, astonished at finding the fire
extinguished when they awoke, had proceeded to arrange the fuel in order
to renew it, when they found in the ashes three huge metallic masses,
which their skill (for most of the peasants in the Harz are practical
mineralogists) immediately ascertained to be pure gold.
It was some damp upon their joyful congratulations when they learned
from Martin the mode in which he had obtained this treasure, to which
their own experience of the nocturnal vision induced them to give full
credit. But they were unable to resist the temptation of sharing in
their brother’s wealth. Taking now upon him as head of the house, Martin
Waldeck bought lands and forests, built a castle, obtained a patent of
nobility, and, greatly to the indignation of the ancient aristocracy
of the neighbourhood, was invested with all the privileges of a man of
family. His courage in public war, as well as in private feuds, together
with the number of retainers whom he kept in pay, sustained him for some
time against the odium which was excited by his sudden elevation, and
the arrogance of his pretensions.
And now it was seen in the instance of Martin Waldeck, as it has been in
that of many others, how little mortals can foresee the effect of
sudden prosperity on their own disposition. The evil propensities in his
nature, which poverty had checked and repressed, ripened and bore their
unhallowed fruit under the influence of temptation and the means of
indulgence. As Deep calls unto Deep, one bad passion awakened another
the fiend of avarice invoked that of pride, and pride was to be
supported by cruelty and oppression. Waldeck’s character, always bold
and daring but rendered harsh and assuming by prosperity, soon made him
odious, not to the nobles only, but likewise to the lower ranks, who
saw, with double dislike, the oppressive rights of the feudal nobility
of the empire so remorselessly exercised by one who had risen from the
very dregs of the people. His adventure, although carefully concealed,
began likewise to be whispered abroad, and the clergy already
stigmatized as a wizard and accomplice of fiends, the wretch, who,
having acquired so huge a treasure in so strange a manner, had not
sought to sanctify it by dedicating a considerable portion to the use
of the church. Surrounded by enemies, public and private, tormented by
a thousand feuds, and threatened by the church with excommunication,
Martin Waldeck, or, as we must now call him, the Baron von Waldeck,
often regretted bitterly the labours and sports of his unenvied poverty.
But his courage failed him not under all these difficulties, and seemed
rather to augment in proportion to the danger which darkened around him,
until an accident precipitated his fall.
A proclamation by the reigning Duke of Brunswick had invited to a solemn
tournament all German nobles of free and honourable descent; and Martin
Waldeck, splendidly armed, accompanied by his two brothers, and a
gallantly-equipped retinue, had the arrogance to appear among the
chivalry of the province, and demand permission to enter the lists. This
was considered as filling up the measure of his presumption. A thousand
voices exclaimed, “We will have no cinder-sifter mingle in our games of
chivalry.” Irritated to frenzy, Martin drew his sword and hewed down the
herald, who, in compliance with the general outcry, opposed his entry
into the lists. An hundred swords were unsheathed to avenge what was in
those days regarded as a crime only inferior to sacrilege or regicide.
Waldeck, after defending himself like a lion, was seized, tried on
the spot by the judges of the lists, and condemned, as the appropriate
punishment for breaking the peace of his sovereign, and violating the
sacred person of a herald-at-arms, to have his right hand struck from
his body, to be ignominiously deprived of the honour of nobility, of
which he was unworthy, and to be expelled from the city. When he had
been stripped of his arms, and sustained the mutilation imposed by this
severe sentence, the unhappy victim of ambition was abandoned to the
rabble, who followed him with threats and outcries levelled alternately
against the necromancer and oppressor, which at length ended in
violence. His brothers (for his retinue were fled and dispersed) at
length succeeded in rescuing him from the hands of the populace, when,
satiated with cruelty, they had left him half dead through loss
of blood, and through the outrages he had sustained. They were not
permitted, such was the ingenious cruelty of their enemies, to make use
of any other means of removing him, excepting such a collier’s cart as
they had themselves formerly used, in which they deposited their brother
on a truss of straw, scarcely expecting to reach any place of shelter
ere death should release him from his misery.
When the Waldecks, journeying in this miserable manner, had approached
the verge of their native country, in a hollow way, between two
mountains, they perceived a figure advancing towards them, which at
first sight seemed to be an aged man. But as he approached, his limbs
and stature increased, the cloak fell from his shoulders, his pilgrim’s
staff was changed into an uprooted pine-tree, and the gigantic figure of
the Harz demon passed before them in his terrors. When he came opposite
to the cart which contained the miserable Waldeck, his huge features
dilated into a grin of unutterable contempt and malignity, as he asked
the sufferer, “How like you the fire my coals have kindled?” The power
of motion, which terror suspended in his two brothers, seemed to be
restored to Martin by the energy of his courage. He raised himself
on the cart, bent his brows, and, clenching his fist, shook it at the
spectre with a ghastly look of hate and defiance. The goblin vanished
with his usual tremendous and explosive laugh, and left Waldeck
exhausted with this effort of expiring nature.
The terrified brethren turned their vehicle toward the towers of a
convent, which arose in a wood of pine-trees beside the road. They were
charitably received by a bare-footed and long-bearded capuchin, and
Martin survived only to complete the first confession he had made since
the day of his sudden prosperity, and to receive absolution from the
very priest whom, precisely on that day three years, he had assisted
to pelt out of the hamlet of Morgenbrodt. The three years of precarious
prosperity were supposed to have a mysterious correspondence with the
number of his visits to the spectral fire upon the bill.
The body of Martin Waldeck was interred in the convent where he expired,
in which his brothers, having assumed the habit of the order, lived and
died in the performance of acts of charity and devotion. His lands, to
which no one asserted any claim, lay waste until they were reassumed by
the emperor as a lapsed fief, and the ruins of the castle, which Waldeck
had called by his own name, are still shunned by the miner and forester
as haunted by evil spirits. Thus were the miseries attendant upon
wealth, hastily attained and ill employed, exemplified in the fortunes
of Martin Waldeck.
CHAPTER NINETEENTH.
Here has been such a stormy encounter
Betwixt my cousin Captain, and this soldier,
About I know not what!--nothing, indeed;
Competitions, degrees, and comparatives
Of soldiership!--
A Faire Qurrell.
The attentive audience gave the fair transcriber of the foregoing legend
the thanks which politeness required. Oldbuck alone curled up his nose,
and observed, that Miss Wardour’s skill was something like that of the
alchemists, for she had contrived to extract a sound and valuable moral
out of a very trumpery and ridiculous legend. “It is the fashion, as I
am given to understand, to admire those extravagant fictions--for me,
--I bear an English heart,
Unused at ghosts and rattling bones to start.”
“Under your favour, my goot Mr. Oldenbuck,” said the German, “Miss
Wardour has turned de story, as she does every thing as she touches,
very pretty indeed; but all the history of de Harz goblin, and how he
walks among de desolate mountains wid a great fir-tree for his walking
cane, and wid de great green bush around his head and his waist--that is
as true as I am an honest man.”
“There is no disputing any proposition so well guaranteed,” answered
the Antiquary, drily. But at this moment the approach of a stranger cut
short the conversation.
The new comer was a handsome young man, about five-and-twenty, in a
military undress, and bearing, in his look and manner, a good deal
of the martial profession--nay, perhaps a little more than is quite
consistent with the ease of a man of perfect good-breeding, in whom no
professional habit ought to predominate. He was at once greeted by the
greater part of the company. “My dear Hector!” said Miss M’Intyre, as
she rose to take his hand--
“Hector, son of Priam, whence comest thou?” said the Antiquary.
“From Fife, my liege,” answered the young soldier, and continued, when
he had politely saluted the rest of the company, and particularly Sir
Arthur and his daughter--“I learned from one of the servants, as I rode
towards Monkbarns to pay my respects to you, that I should find the
present company in this place, and I willingly embrace the opportunity
to pay my respects to so many of my friends at once.”
“And to a new one also, my trusty Trojan,” said Oldbuck. “Mr. Lovel,
this is my nephew, Captain M’Intyre--Hector, I recommend Mr. Lovel to
your acquaintance.”
The young soldier fixed his keen eye upon Lovel, and paid his compliment
with more reserve than cordiality and as our acquaintance thought his
coldness almost supercilious, he was equally frigid and haughty in
making the necessary return to it; and thus a prejudice seemed to arise
between them at the very commencement of their acquaintance.
The observations which Lovel made during the remainder of this pleasure
party did not tend to reconcile him with this addition to their society.
Captain M’Intyre, with the gallantry to be expected from his age and
profession, attached himself to the service of Miss Wardour, and offered
her, on every possible opportunity, those marks of attention which Lovel
would have given the world to have rendered, and was only deterred from
offering by the fear of her displeasure. With forlorn dejection at
one moment, and with irritated susceptibility at another, he saw this
handsome young soldier assume and exercise all the privileges of a
cavaliere servente. He handed Miss Wardour’s gloves, he assisted her
in putting on her shawl, he attached himself to her in the walks, had a
hand ready to remove every impediment in her path, and an arm to support
her where it was rugged or difficult; his conversation was addressed
chiefly to her, and, where circumstances permitted, it was exclusively
so. All this, Lovel well knew, might be only that sort of egotistical
gallantry which induces some young men of the present day to give
themselves the air of engrossing the attention of the prettiest women in
company, as if the others were unworthy of their notice. But he thought
he observed in the conduct of Captain M’Intyre something of marked and
peculiar tenderness, which was calculated to alarm the jealousy of
a lover. Miss Wardour also received his attentions; and although his
candour allowed they were of a kind which could not be repelled without
some strain of affectation, yet it galled him to the heart to witness
that she did so.
The heart-burning which these reflections occasioned proved very
indifferent seasoning to the dry antiquarian discussions with which
Oldbuck, who continued to demand his particular attention, was
unremittingly persecuting him; and he underwent, with fits of impatience
that amounted almost to loathing, a course of lectures upon monastic
architecture, in all its styles, from the massive Saxon to the florid
Gothic, and from that to the mixed and composite architecture of
James the First’s time, when, according to Oldbuck, all orders were
confounded, and columns of various descriptions arose side by side, or
were piled above each other, as if symmetry had been forgotten, and the
elemental principles of art resolved into their primitive confusion.
“What can be more cutting to the heart than the sight of evils,” said
Oldbuck, in rapturous enthusiasm, “which we are compelled to behold,
while we do not possess the power of remedying them?” Lovel answered by
an involulatary groan. “I see, my dear young friend, and most congenial
spirit, that you feel these enormities almost as much as I do. Have you
ever approached them, or met them, without longing to tear, to deface,
what is so dishonourable?”
“Dishonourable!” echoed Lovel--“in what respect dishonourable?”
“I mean, disgraceful to the arts.”
“Where? how?”
“Upon the portico, for example, of the schools of Oxford, where, at
immense expense, the barbarous, fantastic, and ignorant architect has
chosen to represent the whole five orders of architecture on the front
of one building.”
By such attacks as these, Oldbuck, unconscious of the torture he was
giving, compelled Lovel to give him a share of his attention,--as a
skilful angler, by means of his line, maintains an influence over the
most frantic movements of his agonized prey.
They were now on their return to the spot where they had left the
carriages; and it is inconceivable how often, in the course of that
short walk, Lovel, exhausted by the unceasing prosing of his worthy
companion, mentally bestowed on the devil, or any one else that would
have rid him of hearing more of them, all the orders and disorders of
architecture which had been invented or combined from the building of
Solomon’s temple downwards. A slight incident occurred, however, which
sprinkled a little patience on the heat of his distemperature.
Miss Wardour, and her self-elected knight companion, rather preceded
the others in the narrow path, when the young lady apparently became
desirous to unite herself with the rest of the party, and, to break off
her tete-a-tete with the young officer, fairly made a pause until
Mr. Oldbuck came up. “I wished to ask you a question, Mr. Oldbuck,
concerning the date of these interesting ruins.”
It would be doing injustice to Miss Wardour’s savoir faire, to suppose
she was not aware that such a question would lead to an answer of no
limited length. The Antiquary, starting like a war-horse at the trumpet
sound, plunged at once into the various arguments for and against the
date of 1273, which had been assigned to the priory of St. Ruth by a
late publication on Scottish architectural antiquities. He raked up the
names of all the priors who had ruled the institution, of the nobles who
had bestowed lands upon it, and of the monarchs who had slept their last
sleep among its roofless courts. As a train which takes fire is sure to
light another, if there be such in the vicinity, the Baronet, catching
at the name of one of his ancestors which occurred in Oldbuck’s
disquisition, entered upon an account of his wars, his conquests, and
his trophies; and worthy Dr. Blattergowl was induced, from the mention
of a grant of lands, cum decimis inclusis tam vicariis quam garbalibus,
et nunquan antea separatis, to enter into a long explanation concerning
the interpretation given by the Teind Court in the consideration of
such a clause, which had occurred in a process for localling his last
augmentation of stipend. The orators, like three racers, each pressed
forward to the goal, without much regarding how each crossed and jostled
his competitors. Mr. Oldbuck harangued, the Baronet declaimed, Mr.
Blattergowl prosed and laid down the law, while the Latin forms of
feudal grants were mingled with the jargon of blazonry, and the yet
more barbarous phraseology of the Teind Court of Scotland. “He was,”
exclaimed Oldbuck, speaking of the Prior Adhemar, “indeed an exemplary
prelate; and, from his strictness of morals, rigid execution of penance,
joined to the charitable disposition of his mind, and the infirmities
endured by his great age and ascetic habits”--
Here he chanced to cough, and Sir Arthur burst in, or rather
continued--“was called popularly Hell-in-Harness; he carried a shield,
gules with a sable fess, which we have since disused, and was slain at
the battle of Vernoil, in France, after killing six of the English with
his own”--
“Decreet of certification,” proceeded the clergyman, in that prolonged,
steady, prosing tone, which, however overpowered at first by the
vehemence of competition, promised, in the long run, to obtain the
ascendancy in this strife of narrators;--“Decreet of certification having
gone out, and parties being held as confessed, the proof seemed to be
held as concluded, when their lawyer moved to have it opened up, on the
allegation that they had witnesses to bring forward, that they had been
in the habit of carrying the ewes to lamb on the teind-free land; which
was a mere evasion, for”--
But here the Baronet and Mr. Oldbuck having recovered their wind,
and continued their respective harangues, the three strands of the
conversation, to speak the language of a rope-work, were again twined
together into one undistinguishable string of confusion.
Yet, howsoever uninteresting this piebald jargon might seem, it was
obviously Miss Wardour’s purpose to give it her attention, in preference
to yielding Captain M’Intyre an opportunity of renewing their private
conversation. So that, after waiting for a little time with displeasure,
ill concealed by his haughty features, he left her to enjoy her bad
taste, and taking his sister by the arm, detained her a little behind
the rest of the party.
“So I find, Mary, that your neighbour has neither become more lively nor
less learned during my absence.”
“We lacked your patience and wisdom to instruct us, Hector.”
“Thank you, my dear sister. But you have got a wiser, if not so lively
an addition to your society, than your unworthy brother--Pray, who is
this Mr. Lovel, whom our old uncle has at once placed so high in his
good graces?--he does not use to be so accessible to strangers.”
“Mr. Lovel, Hector, is a very gentleman-like young man.”
“Ay,--that is to say, he bows when he comes into a room, and wears a coat
that is whole at the elbows.”
“No, brother; it says a great deal more. It says that his manners and
discourse express the feelings and education of the higher class.”
“But I desire to know what is his birth and his rank in society, and
what is his title to be in the circle in which I find him domesticated?”
“If you mean, how he comes to visit at Monkbarns, you must ask my uncle,
who will probably reply, that he invites to his own house such company
as he pleases; and if you mean to ask Sir Arthur, you must know that
Mr. Lovel rendered Miss Wardour and him a service of the most important
kind.”
“What! that romantic story is true, then?--And pray, does the valorous
knight aspire, as is befitting on such occasions, to the hand of the
young lady whom he redeemed from peril? It is quite in the rule of
romance, I am aware; and I did think that she was uncommonly dry to me
as we walked together, and seemed from time to time as if she watched
whether she was not giving offence to her gallant cavalier.”
“Dear Hector,” said his sister, “if you really continue to nourish any
affection for Miss Wardour”--
“If, Mary?--what an if was there!”
“--I own I consider your perseverance as hopeless.”
“And why hopeless, my sage sister?” asked Captain M’Intyre: “Miss
Wardour, in the state of her father’s affairs, cannot pretend to much
fortune;--and, as to family, I trust that of Mlntyre is not inferior.”
“But, Hector,” continued his sister, “Sir Arthur always considers us as
members of the Monkbarns family.”
“Sir Arthur may consider what he pleases,” answered the Highlander
scornfully; “but any one with common sense will consider that the wife
takes rank from the husband, and that my father’s pedigree of fifteen
unblemished descents must have ennobled my mother, if her veins had been
filled with printer’s ink.”
“For God’s sake, Hector,” replied his anxious sister, “take care of
yourself! a single expression of that kind, repeated to my uncle by an
indiscreet or interested eavesdropper, would lose you his favour for
ever, and destroy all chance of your succeeding to his estate.”
“Be it so,” answered the heedless young man; “I am one of a profession
which the world has never been able to do without, and will far less
endure to want for half a century to come; and my good old uncle may
tack his good estate and his plebeian name to your apron-string if he
pleases, Mary, and you may wed this new favourite of his if you please,
and you may both of you live quiet, peaceable, well-regulated lives,
if it pleases Heaven. My part is taken--I’ll fawn on no man for an
inheritance which should be mine by birth.”
Miss M’Intyre laid her hand on her brother’s arm, and entreated him to
suppress his vehemence. “Who,” she said, “injures or seeks to injure
you, but your own hasty temper?--what dangers are you defying, but those
you have yourself conjured up?--Our uncle has hitherto been all that is
kind and paternal in his conduct to us, and why should you suppose he
will in future be otherwise than what he has ever been, since we were
left as orphans to his care?”
“He is an excellent old gentleman, I must own,” replied M’Intyre, “and
I am enraged at myself when I chance to offend him; but then his eternal
harangues upon topics not worth the spark of a flint--his investigations
about invalided pots and pans and tobacco-stoppers past service--all
these things put me out of patience. I have something of Hotspur in me,
sister, I must confess.”
“Too much, too much, my dear brother! Into how many risks, and, forgive
me for saying, some of them little creditable, has this absolute and
violent temper led you! Do not let such clouds darken the time you are
now to pass in our neighbourhood, but let our old benefactor see
his kinsman as he is--generous, kind, and lively, without being rude,
headstrong, and impetuous.”
“Well,” answered Captain M’Intyre, “I am schooled--good-manners be my
speed! I’ll do the civil thing by your new friend--I’ll have some talk
with this Mr. Lovel.”