CASTLE-BUILDING
I have already hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste
acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero
unfit for serious and sober study, it had even disgusted him in some
degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged.
He was in his sixteenth year, when his habits of abstraction and love of
solitude became so much marked, as to excite Sir Everard's affectionate
apprehension. He tried to counterbalance these propensities, by engaging
his nephew in field sports, which had been the chief pleasure of his
own youthful days. But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for one
season, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastime
ceased to afford him amusement.
In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton's fascinating
volume determined Edward to become 'a brother of the angle.' But of
all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for the relief of idleness,
fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a man who is at once indolent
and impatient; and our hero's rod was speedily flung aside. Society and
example, which, more than any other motives, master and sway the
natural bent of our passions, might have had their usual effect upon the
youthful visionary: but the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the
homebred young squires whom it afforded, were not of a class fit to form
Edward's usual companions, far less to excite him to emulation in the
practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business of their
lives.
There were a few other youths of better education, and a more liberal
character; but from their society also our hero was in some degree
excluded. Sir Everard had, upon the death of Queen Anne, resigned his
seat in Parliament, and, as his age increased and the number of his
contemporaries diminished, had gradually withdrawn himself from
society; so that when, upon any particular occasion, Edward mingled
with accomplished and well-educated young men of his own rank and
expectations, he felt an inferiority in their company, not so much from
deficiency of information, as from the want of the skill to command and
to arrange that which he possessed. A deep and increasing sensibility
added to this dislike of society. The idea of having committed the
slightest solecism in politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agony
to him; for perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds
so keen a sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, and
inexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having neglected
etiquette, or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease, we cannot be
happy; and therefore it is not surprising, that Edward Waverley supposed
that he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he had
not yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, and of
reciprocally giving and receiving pleasure.
The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted in listening
to the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet even there his
imagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, was frequently
excited. Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much of
Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which,
itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other
trifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and
trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is
rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and
minute facts, which could have been preserved and conveyed through no
other medium. If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over
the dry deduction of his line of ancestors, with their various
intermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protracted
accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees
of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the
doughty barons, knights, and squires, to whom they stood allied; if
(notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) he
sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins,
its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons with all the bitterness of
Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications interested
his fancy and rewarded his attention.
The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and
perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return in the evening
when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected
her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with
which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring
cloister that peace which passeth not away; [1]--to these
and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his
eye glistened. Nor was he less affected, when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel,
narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during
the Great Civil War. The benevolent features of the venerable spinster
kindled into more majestic expression, as she told how Charles had,
after the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at Waverley-Honour;
and how, when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion,
Lady Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics,
charging them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that
the king might have that space for escape, 'And, God help her,' would
Mrs. Rachel continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she
spoke, 'full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the
life of her darling child. They brought him here a prisoner, mortally
wounded; and you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall
door along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid
him down to die at his mother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged
between them; for he knew from the glance of his mother's eye, that
the purpose of his desperate defence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she
continued, 'I remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him.
Miss Lucy St. Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of
the most beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world
ran after her, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poor
William, for they were betrothed though not married, and died in--I
cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November of that very
year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to be brought to
Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the places where she had been
with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets to be raised that she might
trace the impression of his blood, and if tears could have washed it
out, it had not been there now; for there was not a dry eye in the
house. You would have thought, Edward, that the very trees mourned for
her, for their leaves dropped around her without a gust of wind; and,
indeed, she looked like one that would never see them green again.'
From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they
excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other
light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and
ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by
which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, to
the eye of the muser. Then arose in long and fair array the splendour of
the bridal feast at Waverley Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its
real lord, as he stood in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of
the festivities of his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical
shock occasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms;
the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror and confusion of the
bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed that her heart as well as
consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yet of deep feeling,
with which he flung down the half-drawn sword, and turned away for ever
from the house of his ancestors. Then would he change the scene, and
fancy would at his wish represent Aunt Rachel's tragedy. He saw the Lady
Waverley seated in her bower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart
throbbing with double agony, now listening to the decaying echo of the
hoofs of the king's horse, and when that had died away, hearing in
every breeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remote
skirmish. A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swollen stream;
it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the galloping
of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling pistol-shots
between, rolling forwards to the Hall. The lady starts up--a terrified
menial rushes in--but why pursue such a description?
As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero,
interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that
surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was
usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and
still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were
sporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversed
by broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brushwood, where the
beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag course
with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the crossbow. In one
spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retained the
name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced
seven bucks with her own arrows. This was a very favourite haunt of
Waverley. At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served
as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, which perhaps
served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long
avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually
narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody
pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and
small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood Mere. There stood,
in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the
water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because,
in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family. There, in
the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose
who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory
warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of
Gloucester. Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves
under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt
Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to
'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child among his
toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and
emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and
as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgence upon
his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.