Say from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?
Speak, I charge you.
Macbeth.
Upon the evening of the day when Bertram's examination had taken place,
Colonel Mannering arrived at Woodbourne from Edinburgh. He found his
family in their usual state, which probably, so far as Julia was
concerned, would not have been the case had she learned the news of
Bertram's arrest. But as, during the Colonel's absence, the two young
ladies lived much retired, this circumstance fortunately had not
reached Woodbourne. A letter had already made Miss Bertram acquainted
with the downfall of the expectations which had been formed upon the
bequest of her kinswoman. Whatever hopes that news might have
dispelled, the disappointment did not prevent her from joining her
friend in affording a cheerful reception to the Colonel, to whom she
thus endeavoured to express the deep sense she entertained of his
paternal kindness. She touched on her regret that at such a season of
the year he should have made, upon her account, a journey so fruitless.
'That it was fruitless to you, my dear,' said the Colonel, 'I do most
deeply lament; but for my own share, I have made some valuable
acquaintances, and have spent the time I have been absent in Edinburgh
with peculiar satisfaction; so that on that score there is nothing to
be regretted. Even our friend the Dominie is returned thrice the man he
was, from having sharpened his wits in controversy with the geniuses of
the northern metropolis.'
'Of a surety,' said the Dominie, with great complacency, 'I did
wrestle, and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his
art.'
'I presume,' said Miss Mannering, 'the contest was somewhat fatiguing,
Mr. Sampson?'
'Very much, young lady; howbeit I girded up my loins and strove against
him.'
'I can bear witness,' said the Colonel; 'I never saw an affair better
contested. The enemy was like the Mahratta cavalry: he assailed on all
sides, and presented no fair mark for artillery; but Mr. Sampson stood
to his guns notwithstanding, and fired away, now upon the enemy and now
upon the dust which he had raised. But we must not fight our battles
over again to-night; to-morrow we shall have the whole at breakfast.'
The next morning at breakfast, however, the Dominie did not make his
appearance. He had walked out, a servant said, early in the morning. It
was so common for him to forget his meals that his absence never
deranged the family. The housekeeper, a decent old-fashioned
Presbyterian matron, having, as such, the highest respect for Sampson's
theological acquisitions, had it in charge on these occasions to take
care that he was no sufferer by his absence of mind, and therefore
usually waylaid him on his return, to remind him of his sublunary
wants, and to minister to their relief. It seldom, however, happened
that he was absent from two meals together, as was the case in the
present instance. We must explain the cause of this unusual occurrence.
The conversation which Mr. Pleydell had held with Mr. Mannering on the
subject of the loss of Harry Bertram had awakened all the painful
sensations which that event had inflicted upon Sampson. The
affectionate heart of the poor Dominie had always reproached him that
his negligence in leaving the child in the care of Frank Kennedy had
been the proximate cause of the murder of the one, the loss of the
other, the death of Mrs. Bertram, and the ruin of the family of his
patron. It was a subject which he never conversed upon, if indeed his
mode of speech could be called conversation at any time; but it was
often present to his imagination. The sort of hope so strongly affirmed
and asserted in Mrs. Bertram's last settlement had excited a
corresponding feeling in the Dominie's bosom, which was exasperated
into a sort of sickening anxiety by the discredit with which Pleydell
had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson to himself, 'he is a man
of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but
he is also a man of humorous levity and inconsistency of speech, and
wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope
expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram of Singleside?'
All this, I say, the Dominie THOUGHT to himself; for had he uttered
half the sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the
unusual fatigue of such a continued exertion. The result of these
cogitations was a resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy
at Warroch Point, where he had not been for many years; not, indeed,
since the fatal accident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the
Point of Warroch lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property,
which was interposed between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie
went astray more than once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by
the melting of the snow, where he, honest man, had only the summer
recollection of little trickling rills.
At length, however, he reached the woods which he had made the object
of his excursion, and traversed them with care, muddling his disturbed
brains with vague efforts to recall every circumstance of the
catastrophe. It will readily be supposed that the influence of local
situation and association was inadequate to produce conclusions
different from those which he had formed under the immediate pressure
of the occurrences themselves. 'With many a weary sigh, therefore, and
many a groan,' the poor Dominie returned from his hopeless pilgrimage,
and weariedly plodded his way towards Woodbourne, debating at times in
his altered mind a question which was forced upon him by the cravings
of an appetite rather of the keenest, namely, whether he had
breakfasted that morning or no? It was in this twilight humour, now
thinking of the loss of the child, then involuntarily compelled to
meditate upon the somewhat incongruous subject of hung beef, rolls, and
butter, that his route, which was different from that which he had
taken in the morning, conducted him past the small ruined tower, or
rather vestige of a tower, called by the country people the Kaim of
Derncleugh.
The reader may recollect the description of this ruin in the
twenty-seventh chapter, as the vault in which young Bertram, under the
auspices of Meg Merrilies, witnessed the death of Hatteraick's
lieutenant. The tradition of the country added ghostly terrors to the
natural awe inspired by the situation of this place, which terrors the
gipsies who so long inhabited the vicinity had probably invented, or at
least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the
times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother
to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and
sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew,
and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and
retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he
was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in
his crime, to this impregnable tower called the Kaim of Derucleugh,
where he defended himself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting
fire to the place, he and the small remaining garrison desperately
perished by their own swords, rather than fall into the hands of their
exasperated enemies. This tragedy, which, considering the wild times
wherein it was placed, might have some foundation in truth, was larded
with many legends of superstition and diablerie, so that most of the
peasants of the neighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen
to make a considerable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The
lights, often seen around the tower, when used as the rendezvous of the
lawless characters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were
accounted for, under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner
at once convenient for the private parties concerned and satisfactory
to the public.
Now it must be confessed that our friend Sampson, although a profound
scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to
doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born, indeed, at a time
when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent
to a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such
legends had been impressed upon the Dominie as an article indivisible
from his religious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally
difficult to have induced him to doubt the one as the other. With these
feelings, and in a thick misty day, which was already drawing to its
close, Dominie Sampson did not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some
feelings of tacit horror.
What, then, was his astonishment when, on passing the door--that door
which was supposed to have been placed there by one of the latter
Lairds of Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring
the dangers of the haunted vault--that door, supposed to be always
locked, and the key of which was popularly said to be deposited with
the presbytery--that door, that very door, opened suddenly, and the
figure of Meg Merrilies, well known, though not seen for many a
revolving year, was placed at once before the eyes of the startled
Dominie! She stood immediately before him in the footpath, confronting
him so absolutely that he could not avoid her except by fairly turning
back, which his manhood prevented him from thinking of.
'I kenn'd ye wad be here,' she said, with her harsh and hollow voice;
'I ken wha ye seek; but ye maun do my bidding.'
'Get thee behind me!' said the alarmed Dominie. 'Avoid ye! Conjuro te,
scelestissima, nequissima, spurcissima, iniquissima atque miserrima,
conjuro te!!!'
Meg stood her ground against this tremendous volley of superlatives,
which Sampson hawked up from the pit of his stomach and hurled at her
in thunder. 'Is the carl daft,' she said, 'wi' his glamour?'
'Conjuro,' continued the Dominie, 'abjuro, contestor atque viriliter
impero tibi!'
'What, in the name of Sathan, are ye feared for, wi' your French
gibberish, that would make a dog sick? Listen, ye stickit stibbler, to
what I tell ye, or ye sail rue it while there's a limb o' ye hings to
anither! Tell Colonel Mannering that I ken he's seeking me. He kens,
and I ken, that the blood will be wiped out, and the lost will be found,
And Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Shall meet on Ellangowan height.
Hae, there's a letter to him; I was gaun to send it in another way. I
canna write mysell; but I hae them that will baith write and read, and
ride and rin for me. Tell him the time's coming now, and the weird's
dreed, and the wheel's turning. Bid him look at the stars as he has
looked at them before. Will ye mind a' this?'
'Assuredly,' said the Dominie, 'I am dubious; for, woman, I am
perturbed at thy words, and my flesh quakes to hear thee.'
'They'll do you nae ill though, and maybe muckle gude.'
'Avoid ye! I desire no good that comes by unlawful means.'
'Fule body that thou art,' said Meg, stepping up to him, with a frown
of indignation that made her dark eyes flash like lamps from under her
bent brows--'Fule body! if I meant ye wrang, couldna I clod ye ower
that craig, and wad man ken how ye cam by your end mair than Frank
Kennedy? Hear ye that, ye worricow?'
'In the name of all that is good,' said the Dominie, recoiling, and
pointing his long pewter-headed walking cane like a javelin at the
supposed sorceress--'in the name of all that is good, bide off hands! I
will not be handled; woman, stand off, upon thine own proper peril!
Desist, I say; I am strong; lo, I will resist!' Here his speech was cut
short; for Meg, armed with supernatural strength (as the Dominie
asserted), broke in upon his guard, put by a thrust which he made at
her with his cane, and lifted him into the vault, 'as easily,' said he,
'as I could sway a Kitchen's Atlas.'
'Sit down there,' she said, pushing the half-throttled preacher with
some violence against a broken chair--'sit down there and gather your
wind and your senses, ye black barrow-tram o' the kirk that ye are. Are
ye fou or fasting?'
'Fasting, from all but sin,' answered the Dominie, who, recovering his
voice, and finding his exorcisms only served to exasperate the
intractable sorceress, thought it best to affect complaisance and
submission, inwardly conning over, however, the wholesome conjurations
which he durst no longer utter aloud. But as the Dominie's brain was by
no means equal to carry on two trains of ideas at the same time, a word
or two of his mental exercise sometimes escaped and mingled with his
uttered speech in a manner ludicrous enough, especially as the poor man
shrunk himself together after every escape of the kind, from terror of
the effect it might produce upon the irritable feelings of the witch.
Meg in the meanwhile went to a great black cauldron that was boiling on
a fire on the floor, and, lifting the lid, an odour was diffused
through the vault which, if the vapours of a witch's cauldron could in
aught be trusted, promised better things than the hell-broth which such
vessels are usually supposed to contain. It was, in fact, the savour of
a goodly stew, composed of fowls, hares, partridges, and moor-game
boiled in a large mess with potatoes, onions, and leeks, and from the
size of the cauldron appeared to be prepared for half a dozen of people
at least. 'So ye hae eat naething a' day?' said Meg, heaving a large
portion of this mess into a brown dish and strewing it savourily with
salt and pepper. [Footnote: See Note 4.]
'Nothing,' answered the Dominie, 'scelestissima!--that is, gudewife.'
'Hae then,' said she, placing the dish before him, 'there's what will
warm your heart.'
'I do not hunger, malefica--that is to say, Mrs. Merrilies!' for he
said unto himself,' the savour is sweet, but it hath been cooked by a
Canidia or an Ericthoe.'
'If ye dinna eat instantly and put some saul in ye, by the bread and
the salt, I'll put it down your throat wi' the cutty spoon, scaulding
as it is, and whether ye will or no. Gape, sinner, and swallow!'
Sampson, afraid of eye of newt, and toe of frog, tigers' chaudrons, and
so forth, had determined not to venture; but the smell of the stew was
fast melting his obstinacy, which flowed from his chops as it were in
streams of water, and the witch's threats decided him to feed. Hunger
and fear are excellent casuists.
'Saul,' said Hunger, 'feasted with the witch of Endor.' 'And,' quoth
Fear, 'the salt which she sprinkled upon the food showeth plainly it is
not a necromantic banquet, in which that seasoning never occurs.' 'And,
besides,' says Hunger, after the first spoonful, 'it is savoury and
refreshing viands.'
'So ye like the meat?' said the hostess.
'Yea,' answered the Dominie, 'and I give thee thanks,
sceleratissima!--which means, Mrs. Margaret.'
'Aweel, eat your fill; but an ye kenn'd how it was gotten ye maybe
wadna like it sae weel.' Sampson's spoon dropped in the act of
conveying its load to his mouth. 'There's been mony a moonlight watch
to bring a' that trade thegither,' continued Meg; 'the folk that are to
eat that dinner thought little o' your game laws.'
'Is that all?' thought Sampson, resuming his spoon and shovelling away
manfully; 'I will not lack my food upon that argument.'
'Now ye maun tak a dram?'
'I will,' quoth Sampson, 'conjuro te--that is, I thank you heartily,'
for he thought to himself, in for a penny in for a pound; and he fairly
drank the witch's health in a cupful of brandy. When he had put this
copestone upon Meg's good cheer, he felt, as he said, 'mightily
elevated, and afraid of no evil which could befall unto him.'
'Will ye remember my errand now?' said Meg Merrilies; 'I ken by the
cast o' your ee that ye're anither man than when you cam in.'
'I will, Mrs. Margaret,' repeated Sampson, stoutly; 'I will deliver
unto him the sealed yepistle, and will add what you please to send by
word of mouth.'
'Then I'll make it short,' says Meg. 'Tell him to look at the stars
without fail this night, and to do what I desire him in that letter, as
he would wish
That Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Should meet on Ellangowan height.
I have seen him twice when he saw na me; I ken when he was in this
country first, and I ken what's brought him back again. Up an' to the
gate! ye're ower lang here; follow me.'
Sampson followed the sibyl accordingly, who guided him about a quarter
of a mile through the woods, by a shorter cut than he could have found
for himself; then they entered upon the common, Meg still marching
before him at a great pace, until she gained the top of a small hillock
which overhung the road.
'Here,' she said, 'stand still here. Look how the setting sun breaks
through yon cloud that's been darkening the lift a' day. See where the
first stream o' light fa's: it's upon Donagild's round tower, the
auldest tower in the Castle o' Ellangowan; that's no for naething! See
as it's glooming to seaward abune yon sloop in the bay; that's no for
naething neither. Here I stood on this very spot,' said she, drawing
herself up so as not to lose one hair-breadth of her uncommon height,
and stretching out her long sinewy arm and clenched hand--'here I stood
when I tauld the last Laird o' Ellangowan what was coming on his house;
and did that fa' to the ground? na, it hit even ower sair! And here,
where I brake the wand of peace ower him, here I stand again, to bid
God bless and prosper the just heir of Ellangowan that will sune be
brought to his ain; and the best laird he shall be that Ellangowan has
seen for three hundred years. I'll no live to see it, maybe; but there
will be mony a blythe ee see it though mine be closed. And now, Abel
Sampson, as ever ye lo'ed the house of Ellangowan, away wi' my message
to the English Colonel, as if life and death were upon your haste!'
So saying, she turned suddenly from the amazed Dominie and regained
with swift and long strides the shelter of the wood from which she had
issued at the point where it most encroached upon the common. Sampson
gazed after her for a moment in utter astonishment, and then obeyed her
directions, hurrying to Woodbourne at a pace very unusual for him,
exclaiming three times, 'Prodigious! prodigious! pro-di-gi-ous!'