no delation--no breach of trust on your part; and as he wishes me to take
her evidence down on some important family matters, I chose to bring
you with me, because in her situation, hovering between dotage and
consciousness, it is possible that your voice and appearance may
awaken trains of recollection which I should otherwise have no means of
exciting. The human mind--what are you about, Hector?”
“I was only whistling for the dog, sir,” replied the Captain “she always
roves too wide--I knew I should be troublesome to you.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his
disquisition--“the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled
silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make
any progress in disentangling it.”
“I ken naething about that,” said the gaberlunzie; “but an my auld
acquaintance be hersell, or anything like hersell, she may come to wind
us a pirn. It’s fearsome baith to see and hear her when she wampishes
about her arms, and gets to her English, and speaks as if she were a
prent book, let a-be an auld fisher’s wife. But, indeed, she had a grand
education, and was muckle taen out afore she married an unco bit beneath
hersell. She’s aulder than me by half a score years--but I mind weel
eneugh they made as muckle wark about her making a half-merk marriage
wi’ Simon Mucklebackit, this Saunders’s father, as if she had been
ane o’ the gentry. But she got into favour again, and then she lost it
again, as I hae heard her son say, when he was a muckle chield; and then
they got muckle siller, and left the Countess’s land, and settled here.
But things never throve wi’ them. Howsomever, she’s a weel-educate
woman, and an she win to her English, as I hae heard her do at an orra
time, she may come to fickle us a’.”
CHAPTER NINETEENTH
Life ebbs from such old age, unmarked and silent,
As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley.--
Late she rocked merrily at the least impulse
That wind or wave could give; but now her keel
Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta’en
An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not.
Each wave receding shakes her less and less,
Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain
Useless as motionless.
Old Play.
As the Antiquary lifted the latch of the hut, he was surprised to hear
the shrill tremulous voice of Elspeth chanting forth an old ballad in a
wild and doleful recitative.
“The herring loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredging sang,
For they come of a gentle kind.”
A diligent collector of these legendary scraps of ancient poetry, his
foot refused to cross the threshold when his ear was thus arrested, and
his hand instinctively took pencil and memorandum-book. From time to
time the old woman spoke as if to the children--“Oh ay, hinnies, whisht!
whisht! and I’ll begin a bonnier ane than that--
“Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,
And listen, great and sma’,
And I will sing of Glenallan’s Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.
“The cronach’s cried on Bennachie,
And doun the Don and a’,
And hieland and lawland may mournfu’ be
For the sair field of Harlaw.--
I dinna mind the neist verse weel--my memory’s failed, and theres unco
thoughts come ower me--God keep us frae temptation!”
Here her voice sunk in indistinct muttering.
“It’s a historical ballad,” said Oldbuck, eagerly, “a genuine and
undoubted fragment of minstrelsy! Percy would admire its simplicity--
Ritson could not impugn its authenticity.”
“Ay, but it’s a sad thing,” said Ochiltree, “to see human nature sae
far owertaen as to be skirling at auld sangs on the back of a loss like
hers.”
“Hush! hush!” said the Antiquary--“she has gotten the thread of the story
again. “--And as he spoke, she sung--
“They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse’s head,
And a good knight upon his back. “--
“Chafron!” exclaimed the Antiquary,--“equivalent, perhaps, to
cheveron;--the word’s worth a dollar,”--and down it went in his red book.
“They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae
Wi’ twenty thousand men.
“Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
Their pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen ye to hear.
“The great Earl in his stirrups stood
That Highland host to see:
Now here a knight that’s stout and good
May prove a jeopardie:
“What wouldst thou do, my squire so gay,
That rides beside my reyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl the day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?
“To turn the rein were sin and shame,
To fight were wondrous peril,
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl?’
Ye maun ken, hinnies, that this Roland Cheyne, for as poor and auld as
I sit in the chimney-neuk, was my forbear, and an awfu’ man he was that
dayin the fight, but specially after the Earl had fa’en, for he blamed
himsell for the counsel he gave, to fight before Mar came up wi’ Mearns,
and Aberdeen, and Angus.”
Her voice rose and became more animated as she recited the warlike
counsel of her ancestor--
“Were I Glenallan’s Earl this tide,
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spur should be in my horse’s side,
And the bridle upon his mane.
“If they hae twenty thousand blades,
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.
“My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,
As through the moorland fern,
Then neer let the gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Highland kerne.’”
“Do you hear that, nephew?” said Oldbuck;--“you observe your Gaelic
ancestors were not held in high repute formerly by the Lowland
warriors.”
“I hear,” said Hector, “a silly old woman sing a silly old song. I
am surprised, sir, that you, who will not listen to Ossian’s songs of
Selma, can be pleased with such trash. I vow, I have not seen or heard
a worse halfpenny ballad; I don’t believe you could match it in any
pedlar’s pack in the country. I should be ashamed to think that the
honour of the Highlands could be affected by such doggrel. “--And,
tossing up his head, he snuffed the air indignantly.
Apparently the old woman heard the sound of their voices; for, ceasing
her song, she called out, “Come in, sirs, come in--good-will never halted
at the door-stane.”
They entered, and found to their surprise Elspeth alone, sitting
“ghastly on the hearth,” like the personification of Old Age in
the Hunter’s song of the Owl,* “wrinkled, tattered, vile, dim-eyed,
discoloured, torpid.”
* See Mrs. Grant on the Highland Superstitions, vol. ii. p. 260, for
this fine translation from the Gaelic.
“They’re a’ out,” she said, as they entered; “but an ye will sit a
blink, somebody will be in. If ye hae business wi’ my gude-daughter, or
my son, they’ll be in belyve,--I never speak on business mysell. Bairns,
gie them seats--the bairns are a’ gane out, I trow,”--looking around
her;--“I was crooning to keep them quiet a wee while since; but they hae
cruppen out some gate. Sit down, sirs, they’ll be in belyve;” and she
dismissed her spindle from her hand to twirl upon the floor, and soon
seemed exclusively occupied in regulating its motion, as unconscious of
the presence of the strangers as she appeared indifferent to their rank
or business there.
“I wish,” said Oldbuck, “she would resume that canticle, or legendary
fragment. I always suspected there was a skirmish of cavalry before the
main battle of the Harlaw.” *
* Note H. Battle of Harlaw.
“If your honour pleases,” said Edie, “had ye not better proceed to the
business that brought us a’ here? I’se engage to get ye the sang ony
time.”
“I believe you are right, Edie--Do manus--I submit. But how shall we
manage? She sits there the very image of dotage. Speak to her, Edie--try
if you can make her recollect having sent you to Glenallan House.”
Edie rose accordingly, and, crossing the floor, placed himself in the
same position which he had occupied during his former conversation with
her. “I’m fain to see ye looking sae weel, cummer; the mair, that the
black ox has tramped on ye since I was aneath your roof-tree.”
“Ay,” said Elspeth; but rather from a general idea of misfortune, than
any exact recollection of what had happened,--“there has been distress
amang us of late--I wonder how younger folk bide it--I bide it ill. I
canna hear the wind whistle, and the sea roar, but I think I see the
coble whombled keel up, and some o’ them struggling in the waves!--Eh,
sirs; sic weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and waking, before
they win to the lang sleep and the sound! I could amaist think whiles my
son, or else Steenie, my oe, was dead, and that I had seen the burial.
Isna that a queer dream for a daft auld carline? What for should ony o’
them dee before me?--it’s out o’ the course o’ nature, ye ken.”
“I think you’ll make very little of this stupid old woman,” said
Hector,--who still nourished, perhaps, some feelings of the dislike
excited by the disparaging mention of his countrymen in her lay--“I think
you’ll make but little of her, sir; and it’s wasting our time to sit
here and listen to her dotage.”
“Hector,” said the Antiquary, indignantly, “if you do not respect her
misfortunes, respect at least her old age and grey hairs: this is the
last stage of existence, so finely treated by the Latin poet--
--Omni
Membrorum damno major dementia, quae nec
Nomina, servorum, nec vultus agnoscit amici,
Cum queis preterita coenavit nocte, nec illos
Quos genuit, quos eduxit.”
“That’s Latin!” said Elspeth, rousing herself as if she attended to the
lines, which the Antiquary recited with great pomp of diction--“that’s
Latin!” and she cast a wild glance around her--“Has there a priest fund
me out at last?”
“You see, nephew, her comprehension is almost equal to your own of that
fine passage.”
“I hope you think, sir, that I knew it to be Latin as well as she did?”
“Why, as to that--But stay, she is about to speak.”
“I will have no priest--none,” said the beldam, with impotent vehemence;
“as I have lived I will die--none shall say that I betrayed my mistress,
though it were to save my soul!”
“That bespoke a foul conscience,” said the mendicant;--“I wuss she wad
mak a clean breast, an it were but for her sake;” and he again assailed
her.
“Weel, gudewife, I did your errand to the Yerl.”
“To what Earl? I ken nae Earl;--I ken’d a Countess ance--I wish to Heaven
I had never ken’d her! for by that acquaintance, neighbour, their cam,”--
and she counted her withered fingers as she spoke “first Pride, then
Malice, then Revenge, then False Witness; and Murder tirl’d at the
door-pin, if he camna ben. And werena thae pleasant guests, think ye,
to take up their quarters in ae woman’s heart? I trow there was routh o’
company.”
“But, cummer,” continued the beggar, “it wasna the Countess of Glenallan
I meant, but her son, him that was Lord Geraldin.”
“I mind it now,” she said; “I saw him no that langsyne, and we had a
heavy speech thegither. Eh, sirs! the comely young lord is turned as
auld and frail as I am: it’s muckle that sorrow and heartbreak, and
crossing of true love, will do wi’ young blood. But suldna his mither
hae lookit to that hersell?--we were but to do her bidding, ye ken. I
am sure there’s naebody can blame me--he wasna my son, and she was my
mistress. Ye ken how the rhyme says--I hae maist forgotten how to sing,
or else the tune’s left my auld head--
“He turn’d him right and round again,
Said, Scorn na at my mither;
Light loves I may get mony a ane,
But minnie neer anither.
Then he was but of the half blude, ye ken, and her’s was the right
Glenallan after a’. Na, na, I maun never maen doing and suffering for
the Countess Joscelin--never will I maen for that.”
Then drawing her flax from the distaff, with the dogged air of one who
is resolved to confess nothing, she resumed her interrupted occupation.
“I hae heard,” said the mendicant, taking his cue from what Oldbuck
had told him of the family history--“I hae heard, cummer, that some ill
tongue suld hae come between the Earl, that’s Lord Geraldin, and his
young bride.”
“Ill tongue?” she said in hasty alarm; “and what had she to fear frae an
ill tongue?--she was gude and fair eneugh--at least a’ body said sae. But
had she keepit her ain tongue aff ither folk, she might hae been living
like a leddy for a’ that’s come and gane yet.”
“But I hae heard say, gudewife,” continued Ochiltree, “there was a
clatter in the country, that her husband and her were ower sibb when
they married.”
“Wha durst speak o’ that?” said the old woman hastily; “wha durst say
they were married?--wha ken’d o’ that?--Not the Countess--not I. If
they wedded in secret, they were severed in secret--They drank of the
fountains of their ain deceit.”
“No, wretched beldam!” exclaimed Oldbuck, who could keep silence
no longer, “they drank the poison that you and your wicked mistress
prepared for them.”
“Ha, ha!” she replied, “I aye thought it would come to this. It’s but
sitting silent when they examine me--there’s nae torture in our days;
and if there is, let them rend me!--It’s ill o’ the vassal’s mouth that
betrays the bread it eats.”
“Speak to her, Edie,” said the Antiquary; “she knows your voice, and
answers to it most readily.”
“We shall mak naething mair out o’ her,” said Ochiltree. “When she has
clinkit hersell down that way, and faulded her arms, she winna speak a
word, they say, for weeks thegither. And besides, to my thinking, her
face is sair changed since we cam in. However, I’se try her ance mair
to satisfy your honour.--So ye canna keep in mind, cummer, that your auld
mistress, the Countess Joscelin, has been removed?”
“Removed!” she exclaimed; for that name never failed to produce its
usual effect upon her; “then we maun a’ follow--a’ maun ride when she is
in the saddle. Tell them to let Lord Geraldin ken we’re on before them.
Bring my hood and scarf--ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage wi’ my
leddy, and my hair in this fashion?”
She raised her shrivelled arms, and seemed busied like a woman who puts
on her cloak to go abroad, then dropped them slowly and stiffly; and the
same idea of a journey still floating apparently through her head, she
proceeded, in a hurried and interrupted manner,--“Call Miss Neville--What
do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville, not Lady Geraldin--
there’s no Lady Geraldin; tell her that, and bid her change her
wet gown, and no’ look sae pale. Bairn! what should she do wi’ a
bairn?--maidens hae nane, I trow.--Teresa--Teresa--my lady calls us!--Bring
a candle;--the grand staircase is as mirk as a Yule midnight--We are
coming, my lady!”--With these words she sunk back on the settle, and from
thence sidelong to the floor. *
* Note I. Elspeth’s death.
Edie ran to support her, but hardly got her in his arms, before he said,
“It’s a’ ower--she has passed away even with that last word.”
“Impossible,” said Oldbuck, hastily advancing, as did his nephew. But
nothing was more certain. She had expired with the last hurried word
that left her lips; and all that remained before them were the mortal
relics of the creature who had so long struggled with an internal sense
of concealed guilt, joined to all the distresses of age and poverty.
“God grant that she be gane to a better place!” said Edie, as he looked
on the lifeless body; “but oh! there was something lying hard and heavy
at her heart. I have seen mony a ane dee, baith in the field o’ battle,
and a fair-strae death at hame; but I wad rather see them a’ ower again,
as sic a fearfu’ flitting as hers!”
“We must call in the neighbours,” said Oldbuck, when he had somewhat
recovered his horror and astonishment, “and give warning of this
additional calamity. I wish she could have been brought to a confession.
And, though of far less consequence, I could have wished to transcribe
that metrical fragment. But Heaven’s will must be done!”
They left the hut accordingly, and gave the alarm in the hamlet, whose
matrons instantly assembled to compose the limbs and arrange the body of
her who might be considered as the mother of their settlement. Oldbuck
promised his assistance for the funeral.
“Your honour,” said Alison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased,
“suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the
lykewake, for a’ Saunders’s gin, puir man, was drucken out at the burial
o’ Steenie, and we’ll no get mony to sit dry-lipped aside the corpse.
Elspeth was unco clever in her young days, as I can mind right weel, but
there was aye a word o’ her no being that chancy. Ane suldna speak ill
o’ the dead--mair by token, o’ ane’s cummer and neighbour--but there
was queer things said about a leddy and a bairn or she left the
Craigburnfoot. And sae, in gude troth, it will be a puir lykewake,
unless your honour sends us something to keep us cracking.”
“You shall have some whisky,” answered Oldbuck, “the rather that you
have preserved the proper word for that ancient custom of watching the
dead. You observe, Hector, this is genuine Teutonic, from the Gothic
Leichnam, a corpse. It is quite erroneously called Late-wake, though
Brand favours that modern corruption and derivation.”
“I believe,” said Hector to himself, “my uncle would give away Monkbarns
to any one who would come to ask it in genuine Teutonic! Not a drop of
whisky would the old creatures have got, had their president asked it
for the use of the Late-wake.”
While Oldbuck was giving some farther directions, and promising
assistance, a servant of Sir Arthur’s came riding very hard along the
sands, and stopped his horse when he saw the Antiquary. “There had
something,” he said, “very particular happened at the Castle”--(he could
not, or would not, explain what)--“and Miss Wardour had sent him off
express to Monkbarns, to beg that Mr. Oldbuck would come to them without
a moment’s delay.”
“I am afraid,” said the Antiquary, “his course also is drawing to a
close. What can I do?”
“Do, sir?” exclaimed Hector, with his characteristic impatience,--“get on
the horse, and turn his head homeward--you will be at Knockwinnock Castle
in ten minutes.”
“He is quite a free goer,” said the servant, dismounting to adjust the
girths and stirrups,--“he only pulls a little if he feels a dead weight
on him.”
“I should soon be a dead weight off him, my friend,” said the
Antiquary.--“What the devil, nephew, are you weary of me? or do you
suppose me weary of my life, that I should get on the back of such a
Bucephalus as that? No, no, my friend, if I am to be at Knockwinnock
to-day, it must be by walking quietly forward on my own feet, which I
will do with as little delay as possible. Captain M’Intyre may ride that
animal himself, if he pleases.”
“I have little hope I could be of any use, uncle, but I cannot think of
their distress without wishing to show sympathy at least--so I will ride
on before, and announce to them that you are coming.--I’ll trouble you
for your spurs, my friend.”
“You will scarce need them, sir,” said the man, taking them off at the
same time, and buckling them upon Captain Mlntyre’s heels, “he’s very
frank to the road.”
Oldbuck stood astonished at this last act of temerity, “are you mad,
Hector?” he cried, “or have you forgotten what is said by Quintus
Curtius, with whom, as a soldier, you must needs be familiar,--Nobilis
equus umbra quidem virgae regitur; ignavus ne calcari quidem excitari
potest; which plainly shows that spurs are useless in every case, and, I
may add, dangerous in most.”
But Hector, who cared little for the opinion of either Quintus Curtius
or of the Antiquary, upon such a topic, only answered with a heedless
“Never fear--never fear, sir.”
With that he gave his able horse the head,
And, bending forward, struck his armed heels
Against the panting sides of his poor jade,
Up to the rowel-head; and starting so,
He seemed in running to devour the way,
Staying no longer question.
“There they go, well matched,” said Oldbuck, looking after them as they
started--“a mad horse and a wild boy, the two most unruly creatures in
Christendom! and all to get half an hour sooner to a place where nobody
wants him; for I doubt Sir Arthur’s griefs are beyond the cure of our
light horseman. It must be the villany of Dousterswivel, for whom Sir
Arthur has done so much; for I cannot help observing, that, with some
natures, Tacitus’s maxim holdeth good: Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt
dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium
redditur,--from which a wise man might take a caution, not to oblige any
man beyond the degree in which he may expect to be requited, lest he
should make his debtor a bankrupt in gratitude.”
Murmuring to himself such scraps of cynical philosophy, our Antiquary
paced the sands towards Knockwinnock; but it is necessary we should
outstrip him, for the purpose of explaining the reasons of his being so
anxiously summoned thither.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH.
So, while the Goose, of whom the fable told,
Incumbent, brooded o’er her eggs of gold,
With hand outstretched, impatient to destroy,
Stole on her secret nest the cruel Boy,
Whose gripe rapacious changed her splendid dream,
--For wings vain fluttering, and for dying scream.
The Loves of the Sea-weeds.
From the time that Sir Arthur Wardour had become possessor of the
treasure found in Misticot’s grave, he had been in a state of mind more
resembling ecstasy than sober sense. Indeed, at one time his daughter
had become seriously apprehensive for his intellect; for, as he had
no doubt that he had the secret of possessing himself of wealth to an
unbounded extent, his language and carriage were those of a man who
had acquired the philosopher’s stone. He talked of buying contiguous
estates, that would have led him from one side of the island to the
other, as if he were determined to brook no neighbour save the sea. He
corresponded with an architect of eminence, upon a plan of renovating
the castle of his forefathers on a style of extended magnificence that
might have rivalled that of Windsor, and laying out the grounds on
a suitable scale. Troops of liveried menials were already, in fancy,
marshalled in his halls, and--for what may not unbounded wealth authorize
its possessor to aspire to?--the coronet of a marquis, perhaps of a duke,
was glittering before his imagination. His daughter--to what matches
might she not look forward? Even an alliance with the blood-royal was
not beyond the sphere of his hopes. His son was already a general--and he
himself whatever ambition could dream of in its wildest visions.
In this mood, if any one endeavoured to bring Sir Arthur down to the
regions of common life, his replies were in the vein of Ancient Pistol--
A fico for the world, and worldlings base
I speak of Africa and golden joys!
The reader may conceive the amazement of Miss Wardour, when, instead of
undergoing an investigation concerning the addresses of Lovel, as she
had expected from the long conference of her father with Mr. Oldbuck,
upon the morning of the fated day when the treasure was discovered,
the conversation of Sir Arthur announced an imagination heated with the
hopes of possessing the most unbounded wealth. But she was seriously
alarmed when Dousterswivel was sent for to the Castle, and was closeted
with her father--his mishap condoled with--his part taken, and his
loss compensated. All the suspicions which she had long entertained
respecting this man became strengthened, by observing his pains to keep
up the golden dreams of her father, and to secure for himself, under
various pretexts, as much as possible out of the windfall which had so
strangely fallen to Sir Arthur’s share.