my slender ability extends;--and I am honoured by the preference, whether
it arises from choice, or is prompted by chance. But this is a matter
to be ripely considered. May I ask what are your principal views at
present?”
“To ascertain the fate of my child,” said the Earl, “be the consequences
what they may, and to do justice to the honour of Eveline, which I
have only permitted to be suspected to avoid discovery of the yet more
horrible taint to which I was made to believe it liable.”
“And the memory of your mother?”
“Must bear its own burden,” answered the Earl with a sigh: “better that
she were justly convicted of deceit, should that be found necessary,
than that others should be unjustly accused of crimes so much more
dreadful.”
“Then, my lord,” said Oldbuck, “our first business must be to put the
information of the old woman, Elspeth, into a regular and authenticated
form.”
“That,” said Lord Glenallan, “will be at present, I fear, impossible.
She is exhausted herself, and surrounded by her distressed family.
To-morrow, perhaps, when she is alone--and yet I doubt, from her
imperfect sense of right and wrong, whether she would speak out in any
one’s presence but my own. I am too sorely fatigued.”
“Then, my lord,” said the Antiquary, whom the interest of the moment
elevated above points of expense and convenience, which had generally
more than enough of weight with him, “I would propose to your lordship,
instead of returning, fatigued as you are, so far as to Glenallan House,
or taking the more uncomfortable alternative of going to a bad inn at
Fairport, to alarm all the busybodies of the town--I would propose,
I say, that you should be my guest at Monkbarns for this night. By
to-morrow these poor people will have renewed their out-of-doors
vocation--for sorrow with them affords no respite from labour,--and we
will visit the old woman Elspeth alone, and take down her examination.”
After a formal apology for the encroachment, Lord Glenallan agreed to
go with him, and underwent with patience in their return home the whole
history of John of the Girnel, a legend which Mr. Oldbuck was never
known to spare any one who crossed his threshold.
The arrival of a stranger of such note, with two saddle-horses and a
servant in black, which servant had holsters on his saddle-bow, and a
coronet upon the holsters, created a general commotion in the house of
Monkbarns. Jenny Rintherout, scarce recovered from the hysterics which
she had taken on hearing of poor Steenie’s misfortune, chased about
the turkeys and poultry, cackled and screamed louder than they did,
and ended by killing one-half too many. Miss Griselda made many wise
reflections on the hot-headed wilfulness of her brother, who had
occasioned such devastation, by suddenly bringing in upon them a papist
nobleman. And she ventured to transmit to Mr. Blattergowl some hint of
the unusual slaughter which had taken place in the basse-cour, which
brought the honest clergyman to inquire how his friend Monkbarns had
got home, and whether he was not the worse of being at the funeral, at
a period so near the ringing of the bell for dinner, that the Antiquary
had no choice left but to invite him to stay and bless the meat. Miss
M’Intyre had on her part some curiosity to see this mighty peer, of
whom all had heard, as an eastern caliph or sultan is heard of by his
subjects, and felt some degree of timidity at the idea of encountering a
person, of whose unsocial habits and stern manners so many stories were
told, that her fear kept at least pace with her curiosity. The aged
housekeeper was no less flustered and hurried in obeying the numerous
and contradictory commands of her mistress, concerning preserves, pastry
and fruit, the mode of marshalling and dishing the dinner, the necessity
of not permitting the melted butter to run to oil, and the danger of
allowing Juno--who, though formally banished from the parlour, failed not
to maraud about the out-settlements of the family--to enter the kitchen.
The only inmate of Monkbarns who remained entirely indifferent on this
momentous occasion was Hector M’Intyre, who cared no more for an
Earl than he did for a commoner, and who was only interested in the
unexpected visit, as it might afford some protection against his uncle’s
displeasure, if he harboured any, for his not attending the funeral,
and still more against his satire upon the subject of his gallant but
unsuccessful single combat with the phoca, or seal.
To these, the inmates of his household, Oldbuck presented the Earl of
Glenallan, who underwent, with meek and subdued civility, the prosing
speeches of the honest divine, and the lengthened apologies of Miss
Griselda Oldbuck, which her brother in vain endeavoured to abridge.
Before the dinner hour, Lord Glenallan requested permission to retire
a while to his chamber. Mr. Oldbuck accompanied his guest to the Green
Room, which had been hastily prepared for his reception. He looked
around with an air of painful recollection.
“I think,” at length he observed, “I think, Mr. Oldbuck, that I have
been in this apartment before.”
“Yes, my lord,” answered Oldbuck, “upon occasion of an excursion hither
from Knockwinnock--and since we are upon a subject so melancholy, you may
perhaps remember whose taste supplied these lines from Chaucer, which
now form the motto of the tapestry.”
“I guess”, said the Earl, “though I cannot recollect. She excelled me,
indeed, in literary taste and information, as in everything else; and it
is one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence, Mr. Oldbuck, that
a creature so excellent in mind and body should have been cut off in so
miserable a manner, merely from her having formed a fatal attachment to
such a wretch as I am.”
Mr. Oldbuck did not attempt an answer to this burst of the grief
which lay ever nearest to the heart of his guest, but, pressing Lord
Glenallan’s hand with one of his own, and drawing the other across his
shaggy eyelashes, as if to brush away a mist that intercepted his sight,
he left the Earl at liberty to arrange himself previous to dinner.
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH
--Life, with you,
Glows in the brain and dances in the arteries;
‘Tis like the wine some joyous guest hath quaffed,
That glads the heart and elevates the fancy:
Mine is the poor residuum of the cup,
Vapid, and dull, and tasteless, only soiling,
With its base dregs, the vessel that contains it.
Old Play.
“Now, only think what a man my brother is, Mr. Blattergowl, for a
wise man and a learned man, to bring this Yerl into our house
without speaking a word to a body! And there’s the distress of thae
Mucklebackits--we canna get a fin o’ fish--and we hae nae time to send
ower to Fairport for beef, and the mutton’s but new killed--and that
silly fliskmahoy, Jenny Rintherout, has taen the exies, and done
naething but laugh and greet, the skirl at the tail o’ the guffaw, for
twa days successfully--and now we maun ask that strange man, that’s as
grand and as grave as the Yerl himsell, to stand at the sideboard! and I
canna gang into the kitchen to direct onything, for he’s hovering there,
making some pousowdie* for my Lord, for he doesna eat like ither folk
neither--And how to sort the strange servant man at dinner time--I am
sure, Mr. Blattergowl, a’thegither, it passes my judgment.”
* Pousowdie,--Miscellaneous mess.
“Truly, Miss Griselda,” replied the divine, “Monkbarns was
inconsiderate. He should have taen a day to see the invitation, as they
do wi’ the titular’s condescendence in the process of valuation and
sale. But the great man could not have come on a sudden to ony house in
this parish where he could have been better served with vivers--that I
must say--and also that the steam from the kitchen is very gratifying
to my nostrils;--and if ye have ony household affairs to attend to, Mrs.
Griselda, never make a stranger of me--I can amuse mysell very weel with
the larger copy of Erskine’s Institutes.”
And taking down from the window-seat that amusing folio, (the Scottish
Coke upon Littleton), he opened it, as if instinctively, at the tenth
title of Book Second, “of Teinds or Tythes,” and was presently deeply
wrapped up in an abstruse discussion concerning the temporality of
benefices.
The entertainment, about which Miss Oldbuck expressed so much anxiety,
was at length placed upon the table; and the Earl of Glenallan, for the
first time since the date of his calamity, sat at a stranger’s board,
surrounded by strangers. He seemed to himself like a man in a dream,
or one whose brain was not fully recovered from the effects of an
intoxicating potion. Relieved, as he had that morning been, from the
image of guilt which had so long haunted his imagination, he felt his
sorrows as a lighter and more tolerable load, but was still unable
to take any share in the conversation that passed around him. It was,
indeed, of a cast very different from that which he had been accustomed
to. The bluntness of Oldbuck, the tiresome apologetic harangues of
his sister, the pedantry of the divine, and the vivacity of the young
soldier, which savoured much more of the camp than of the court, were
all new to a nobleman who had lived in a retired and melancholy state
for so many years, that the manners of the world seemed to him equally
strange and unpleasing. Miss M’Intyre alone, from the natural politeness
and unpretending simplicity of her manners, appeared to belong to that
class of society to which he had been accustomed in his earlier and
better days.
Nor did Lord Glenallan’s deportment less surprise the company. Though a
plain but excellent family-dinner was provided (for, as Mr. Blattergowl
had justly said, it was impossible to surprise Miss Griselda when her
larder was empty), and though the Antiquary boasted his best port, and
assimilated it to the Falernian of Horace, Lord Glenallan was proof to
the allurements of both. His servant placed before him a small mess
of vegetables, that very dish, the cooking of which had alarmed Miss
Griselda, arranged with the most minute and scrupulous neatness. He ate
sparingly of these provisions; and a glass of pure water, sparkling from
the fountain-head, completed his repast. Such, his servant said, had
been his lordship’s diet for very many years, unless upon the high
festivals of the Church, or when company of the first rank were
entertained at Glenallan House, when he relaxed a little in the
austerity of his diet, and permitted himself a glass or two of wine. But
at Monkbarns, no anchoret could have made a more simple and scanty meal.
The Antiquary was a gentleman, as we have seen, in feeling, but blunt
and careless in expression, from the habit of living with those before
whom he had nothing to suppress. He attacked his noble guest without
scruple on the severity of his regimen.
“A few half-cold greens and potatoes--a glass of ice-cold water to wash
them down--antiquity gives no warrant for it, my lord. This house used
to be accounted a hospitium, a place of retreat for Christians; but your
lordship’s diet is that of a heathen Pythagorean, or Indian Bramin--nay,
more severe than either, if you refuse these fine apples.”
“I am a Catholic, you are aware,” said Lord Glenallan, wishing to escape
from the discussion, “and you know that our church”----
“Lays down many rules of mortification,” proceeded the dauntless
Antiquary; “but I never heard that they were quite so rigorously
practised--Bear witness my predecessor, John of the Girnel, or the jolly
Abbot, who gave his name to this apple, my lord.”
And as he pared the fruit, in spite of his sister’s “O fie, Monkbarns!”
and the prolonged cough of the minister, accompanied by a shake of his
huge wig, the Antiquary proceeded to detail the intrigue which had
given rise to the fame of the abbot’s apple with more slyness and
circumstantiality than was at all necessary. His jest (as may readily be
conceived) missed fire, for this anecdote of conventual gallantry failed
to produce the slightest smile on the visage of the Earl. Oldbuck then
took up the subject of Ossian, Macpherson, and Mac-Cribb; but Lord
Glenallan had never so much as heard of any of the three, so little
conversant had he been with modern literature. The conversation was
now in some danger of flagging, or of falling into the hands of Mr.
Blattergowl, who had just pronounced the formidable word, “teind-free,”
when the subject of the French Revolution was started--a political event
on which Lord Glenallan looked with all the prejudiced horror of a
bigoted Catholic and zealous aristocrat. Oldbuck was far from carrying
his detestation of its principles to such a length.
“There were many men in the first Constituent Assembly,” he said, “who
held sound Whiggish doctrines, and were for settling the Constitution
with a proper provision for the liberties of the people. And if a set
of furious madmen were now in possession of the government, it was,”
he continued, “what often happened in great revolutions, where extreme
measures are adopted in the fury of the moment, and the State resembles
an agitated pendulum which swings from side to side for some time ere it
can acquire its due and perpendicular station. Or it might be likened to
a storm or hurricane, which, passing over a region, does great damage
in its passage, yet sweeps away stagnant and unwholesome vapours, and
repays, in future health and fertility, its immediate desolation and
ravage.”
The Earl shook his head; but having neither spirit nor inclination for
debate, he suffered the argument to pass uncontested.
This discussion served to introduce the young soldier’s experiences; and
he spoke of the actions in which he, had been engaged, with modesty,
and at the same time with an air of spirit and zeal which delighted the
Earl, who had been bred up, like others of his house, in the opinion
that the trade of arms was the first duty of man, and believed that to
employ them against the French was a sort of holy warfare.
“What would I give,” said he apart to Oldbuck, as they rose to join the
ladies in the drawing-room, “what would I give to have a son of such
spirit as that young gentleman!--He wants something of address and
manner, something of polish, which mixing in good society would soon
give him; but with what zeal and animation he expresses himself--how
fond of his profession--how loud in the praise of others--how modest when
speaking of himself!”
“Hector is much obliged to you, my lord,” replied his uncle, gratified,
yet not so much so as to suppress his consciousness of his own mental
superiority over the young soldier; “I believe in my heart nobody ever
spoke half so much good of him before, except perhaps the sergeant of
his company, when was wheedling a Highland recruit to enlist with him.
He is a good lad notwithstanding, although he be not quite the hero your
lordship supposes him, and although my commendations rather attest the
kindness than the vivacity of his character. In fact, his high spirit is
a sort of constitutional vehemence, which attends him in everything he
sets about, and is often very inconvenient to his friends. I saw him
to-day engage in an animated contest with a phoca, or seal (sealgh, our
people more properly call them, retaining the Gothic guttural gh), with
as much vehemence as if he had fought against Dumourier--Marry, my lord,
the phoca had the better, as the said Dumourier had of some other folks.
And he’ll talk with equal if not superior rapture of the good behaviour
of a pointer bitch, as of the plan of a campaign.”
“He shall have full permission to sport over my grounds,” said the Earl,
“if he is so fond of that exercise.”
“You will bind him to you, my lord,” said Monkbarns, “body and soul:
give him leave to crack off his birding-piece at a poor covey of
partridges or moor-fowl, and he’s yours for ever--I will enchant him by
the intelligence. But O, my lord, that you could have seen my phoenix
Lovel!--the very prince and chieftain of the youth of this age; and not
destitute of spirit neither--I promise you he gave my termagant kinsman
a quid pro quo--a Rowland for his Oliver, as the vulgar say, alluding to
the two celebrated Paladins of Charlemagne.”
After coffee, Lord Glenallan requested a private interview with the
Antiquary, and was ushered to his library.
“I must withdraw you from your own amiable family,” he said, “to involve
you in the perplexities of an unhappy man. You are acquainted with the
world, from which I have long been banished; for Glenallan House has
been to me rather a prison than a dwelling, although a prison which I
had neither fortitude nor spirit to break from.”
“Let me first ask your lordship,” said the Antiquary, “what are your own
wishes and designs in this matter?”
“I wish most especially,” answered Lord Glenallan, “to declare my
luckless marriage, and to vindicate the reputation of the unhappy
Eveline--that is, if you see a possibility of doing so without making
public the conduct of my mother.”
“Suum cuique tribuito,” said the Antiquary; “do right to everyone. The
memory of that unhappy young lady has too long suffered, and I think it
might be cleared without further impeaching that of your mother, than
by letting it be understood in general that she greatly disapproved and
bitterly opposed the match. All--forgive me, my lord--all who ever
heard of the late Countess of Glenallan, will learn that without much
surprise.”
“But you forget one horrible circumstance, Mr. Oldbuck,” said the Earl,
in an agitated voice.
“I am not aware of it,” replied the Antiquary.
“The fate of the infant--its disappearance with the confidential
attendant of my mother, and the dreadful surmises which may be drawn
from my conversation with Elspeth.”
“If you would have my free opinion, my lord,” answered Mr. Oldbuck, “and
will not catch too rapidly at it as matter of hope, I would say that it
is very possible the child yet lives. For thus much I ascertained, by my
former inquiries concerning the event of that deplorable evening, that
a child and woman were carried that night from the cottage at the
Craigburnfoot in a carriage and four by your brother Edward Geraldin
Neville, whose journey towards England with these companions I traced
for several stages. I believed then it was a part of the family compact
to carry a child whom you meant to stigmatize with illegitimacy, out of
that country where chance might have raised protectors and proofs of its
rights. But I now think that your brother, having reason, like yourself,
to believe the child stained with shame yet more indelible, had
nevertheless withdrawn it, partly from regard to the honour of his
house, partly from the risk to which it might have been exposed in the
neighbourhood of the Lady Glenallan.”
As he spoke, the Earl of Glenallan grew extremely pale, and had nearly
fallen from his chair.--The alarmed Antiquary ran hither and thither
looking for remedies; but his museum, though sufficiently well filled
with a vast variety of useless matters, contained nothing that could be
serviceable on the present or any other occasion. As he posted out
of the room to borrow his sister’s salts, he could not help giving a
constitutional growl of chagrin and wonder at the various incidents
which had converted his mansion, first into an hospital for a wounded
duellist, and now into the sick chamber of a dying nobleman. “And yet,”
said he, “I have always kept aloof from the soldiery and the peerage.
My coenobitium has only next to be made a lying-in hospital, and then, I
trow, the transformation will be complete.”
When he returned with the remedy, Lord Glenallan was much better.
The new and unexpected light which Mr. Oldbuck had thrown upon the
melancholy history of his family had almost overpowered him. “You think,
then, Mr. Oldbuck--for you are capable of thinking, which I am not--you
think, then, that it is possible--that is, not impossible--my child may
yet live?”
“I think,” said the Antiquary, “it is impossible that it could come to
any violent harm through your brother’s means. He was known to be a gay
and dissipated man, but not cruel nor dishonourable; nor is it possible,
that, if he had intended any foul play, he would have placed himself so
forward in the charge of the infant, as I will prove to your lordship he
did.”
So saying, Mr. Oldbuck opened a drawer of the cabinet of his ancestor
Aldobrand, and produced a bundle of papers tied with a black ribband,
and labelled,--Examinations, etc., taken by Jonathan Oldbuck, J. P., upon
the 18th of February, 17--; a little under was written, in a small
hand, Eheu Evelina! The tears dropped fast from the Earl’s eyes, as
he endeavoured, in vain, to unfasten the knot which secured these
documents.
“Your lordship,” said Mr. Oldbuck, “had better not read these at
present. Agitated as you are, and having much business before you, you
must not exhaust your strength. Your brother’s succession is now, I
presume, your own, and it will be easy for you to make inquiry among
his servants and retainers, so as to hear where the child is, if,
fortunately, it shall be still alive.”
“I dare hardly hope it,” said the Earl, with a deep sigh. “Why should my
brother have been silent to me?”
“Nay, my lord, why should he have communicated to your lordship the
existence of a being whom you must have supposed the offspring of”--
“Most true--there is an obvious and a kind reason for his being silent.
If anything, indeed, could have added to the horror of the ghastly dream
that has poisoned my whole existence, it must have been the knowledge
that such a child of misery existed.”
“Then,” continued the Antiquary, “although it would be rash to conclude,
at the distance of more than twenty years, that your son must needs be
still alive because he was not destroyed in infancy, I own I think you
should instantly set on foot inquiries.”
“It shall be done,” replied Lord Glenallan, catching eagerly at the
hope held out to him, the first he had nourished for many years;--“I will
write to a faithful steward of my father, who acted in the same capacity
under my brother Neville--But, Mr. Oldbuck, I am not my brother’s heir.”
“Indeed!--I am sorry for that, my lord--it is a noble estate, and the
ruins of the old castle of Neville’s-Burgh alone, which are the most
superb relics of Anglo-Norman architecture in that part of the country,
are a possession much to be coveted. I thought your father had no other
son or near relative.”
“He had not, Mr. Oldbuck,” replied Lord Glenallan; “but my brother
adopted views in politics, and a form of religion, alien from those
which had been always held by our house. Our tempers had long differed,
nor did my unhappy mother always think him sufficiently observant
to her. In short, there was a family quarrel, and my brother, whose
property was at his own free disposal, availed himself of the power
vested in him to choose a stranger for his heir. It is a matter which
never struck me as being of the least consequence--for if worldly
possessions could alleviate misery, I have enough and to spare. But
now I shall regret it, if it throws any difficulty in the way of our
inquiries--and I bethink me that it may; for in case of my having a
lawful son of my body, and my brother dying without issue, my father’s
possessions stood entailed upon my son. It is not therefore likely
that this heir, be he who he may, will afford us assistance in making a
discovery which may turn out so much to his own prejudice.”
“And in all probability the steward your lordship mentions is also in
his service,” said the Antiquary.
“It is most likely; and the man being a Protestant--how far it is safe to
entrust him”--
“I should hope, my lord,” said Oldbuck gravely, “that a Protestant
may be as trustworthy as a Catholic. I am doubly interested in the
Protestant faith, my lord. My ancestor, Aldobrand Oldenbuck, printed the
celebrated Confession of Augsburg, as I can show by the original edition
now in this house.”
“I have not the least doubt of what you say, Mr. Oldbuck,” replied the
Earl, “nor do I speak out of bigotry or intolerance; but probably the
Protestant steward will favour the Protestant heir rather than the
Catholic--if, indeed, my son has been bred in his father’s faith--or,
alas! if indeed he yet lives.”