We worldly men, when we see friends and kinsmen
Past hope sunk in their fortunes, lend no hand
To lift them up, but rather set our feet
Upon their heads to press them to the bottom,
As I must yield with you I practised it;
But now I see you in a way to rise,
I can and will assist you.
New Way to Pay Old Debts.
The Lord Keeper carried with him, to a couch harder than he was
accustomed to stretch himself upon, the same ambitious thoughts and
political perplexities which drive sleep from the softest down that
ever spread a bed of state. He had sailed long enough amid the
contending tides and currents of the time to be sensible of their
peril, and of the necessity of trimming his vessel to the prevailing
wind, if he would have her escape shipwreck in the storm. The nature of
his talents, and the timorousness of disposition connected with them,
had made him assume the pliability of the versatile old Earl of
Northampton, who explained the art by which he kept his ground during
all the changes of state, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
Elizabeth, by the frank avowal, that he was born of the willow, not of
the oak. It had accordingly been Sir William Ashton’s policy, on all
occasions, to watch the changes in the political horizon, and, ere yet
the conflict was decided, to negotiate some interest for himself with
the party most likely to prove victorious. His time-serving disposition
was well-known, and excited the contempt of the more daring leaders of
both factions in the state. But his talents were of a useful and
practical kind, and his legal knowledge held in high estimation; and
they so far counterbalanced other deficiencies that those in power were
glad to use and to reward, though without absolutely trusting or
greatly respecting, him.
The Marquis of A—— had used his utmost influence to effect a change in
the Scottish cabinet, and his schemes had been of late so well laid and
so ably supported, that there appeared a very great chance of his
proving ultimately successful. He did not, however, feel so strong or
so confident as to neglect any means of drawing recruits to his
standard. The acquisition of the Lord Keeper was deemed of some
importance, and a friend, perfectly acquainted with his circumstances
and character, became responsible for his political conversion.
When this gentleman arrived at Ravenswood Castle upon a visit, the real
purpose of which was disguised under general courtesy, he found the
prevailing fear which at present beset the Lord Keeper was that of
danger to his own person from the Master of Ravenswood. The language
which the blind sibyl, Old Alice, had used; the sudden appearance of
the Master, armed, and within his precincts, immediately after he had
been warned against danger from him; the cold and haughty return
received in exchange for the acknowledgments with which he loaded him
for his timely protection, had all made a strong impression on his
imagination.
So soon as the Marquis’s political agent found how the wind sate, he
began to insinuate fears and doubts of another kind, scarce less
calculated to affect the Lord Keeper. He inquired with seeming
interest, whether the proceedings in Sir William’s complicated
litigation with the Ravenswood family were out of court, and settled
without the possibility of appeal. The Lord Keeper answered in the
affirmative; but his interrogator was too well informed to be imposed
upon. He pointed out to him, by unanswerable arguments, that some of
the most important points which had been decided in his favour against
the house of Ravenswood were liable, under the Treaty of Union, to be
reviewed by the British House of Peers, a court of equity of which the
Lord Keeper felt an instinctive dread. This course came instead of an
appeal to the old Scottish Parliament, or, as it was technically
termed, “a protestation for remeid in law.”
The Lord Keeper, after he had for some time disputed the legality of
such a proceeding, was compelled, at length, to comfort himself with
the improbability of the young Master of Ravenswood’s finding friends
in parliament capable of stirring in so weighty an affair.
“Do not comfort yourself with that false hope,” said his wily friend;
“it is possible that, in the next session of Parliament, young
Ravenswood may find more friends and favour even than your lordship.”
“That would be a sight worth seeing,” said the Keeper, scornfully.
“And yet,” said his friend, “such things have been seen ere now, and in
our own time. There are many at the head of affairs even now that a few
years ago were under hiding for their lives; and many a man now dines
on plate of silver that was fain to eat his crowdy without a bicker;
and many a high head has been brought full low among us in as short a
space. Scott of Scotsarvet’s Staggering State of Scots Statesmen, of
which curious memoir you showed me a manuscript, has been outstaggered
in our time.”
The Lord Keeper answered with a deep sigh, “That these mutations were
no new sights in Scotland, and had been witnessed long before the time
of the satirical author he had quoted. It was many a long year,” he
said, “since Fordun had quoted as an ancient proverb, ‘_Neque dives,
neque fortis, sed nec sapiens Scotus, prædominante invidia, diu durabit
in terra_.’”
“And be assured, my esteemed friend,” was the answer, “that even your
long services to the state, or deep legal knowledge, will not save you,
or render your estate stable, if the Marquis of A—— comes in with a
party in the British Parliament. You know that the deceased Lord
Ravenswood was his near ally, his lady being fifth in descent from the
Knight of Tillibardine; and I am well assured that he will take young
Ravenswood by the hand, and be his very good lord and kinsman. Why
should he not? The Master is an active and stirring young fellow, able
to help himself with tongue and hands; and it is such as he that finds
friends among their kindred, and not those unarmed and unable
Mephibosheths that are sure to be a burden to every one that takes them
up. And so, if these Ravenswood cases be called over the coals in the
House of Peers, you will find that the Marquis will have a crow to
pluck with you.”
“That would be an evil requital,” said the Lord Keeper, “for my long
services to the state, and the ancient respect in which I have held his
lordship’s honourable family and person.”
“Ay, but,” rejoined the agent of the Marquis, “it is in vain to look
back on past service and auld respect, my lord; it will be present
service and immediate proofs of regard which, in these sliddery times,
will be expected by a man like the Marquis.”
The Lord Keeper now saw the full drift of his friend’s argument, but he
was too cautious to return any positive answer.
“He knew not,” he said, “the service which the Lord Marquis could
expect from one of his limited abilities, that had not always stood at
his command, still saving and reserving his duty to his king and
country.”
Having thus said nothing, while he seemed to say everything, for the
exception was calculated to cover whatever he might afterwards think
proper to bring under it, Sir William Ashton changed the conversation,
nor did he again permit the same topic to be introduced. His guest
departed, without having brought the wily old statesman the length of
committing himself, or of pledging himself to any future line of
conduct, but with the certainty that he had alarmed his fears in a most
sensible point, and laid a foundation for future and farther treaty.
When he rendered an account of his negotiation to the Marquis, they
both agreed that the Keeper ought not to be permitted to relapse into
security, and that he should be plied with new subjects of alarm,
especially during the absence of his lady. They were well aware that
her proud, vindictive, and predominating spirit would be likely to
supply him with the courage in which he was deficient; that she was
immovably attached to the party now in power, with whom she maintained
a close correspondence and alliance; and that she hated, without
fearing, the Ravenswood family (whose more ancient dignity threw
discredit on the newly acquired grandeur of her husband) to such a
degree that she would have perilled the interest of her own house to
have the prospect of altogether crushing that of her enemy.
But Lady Ashton was now absent. The business which had long detained
her in Edinburgh had afterwards induced her to travel to London, not
without the hope that she might contribute her share to disconcert the
intrigues of the Marquis at court; for she stood high in favour with
the celebrated Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom, in point of
character, she bore considerable resemblance. It was necessary to press
her husband hard before her return; and, as a preparatory step, the
Marquis wrote to the Master of Ravenswood the letter which we rehearsed
in a former chapter. It was cautiously worded, so as to leave it in the
power of the writer hereafter to take as deep or as slight an interest
in the fortunes of his kinsmen as the progress of his own schemes might
require. But however unwilling, as a statesman, the Marquis might be to
commit himself, or assume the character of a patron, while he had
nothing to give away, it must be said to his honour that he felt a
strong inclination effectually to befriend the Master of Ravenswood, as
well as to use his name as a means of alarming the terrors of the Lord
Keeper.
As the messenger who carried this letter was to pass near the house of
the Lord Keeper, he had it in direction that, in the village adjoining
to the park-gate of the castle, his horse should lose a shoe, and that,
while it was replaced by the smith of the place, he should express the
utmost regret for the necessary loss of time, and in the vehemence of
his impatience give it to be understood that he was bearing a message
from the Marquis of A—— to the Master of Ravenswood upon a matter of
life and death.
This news, with exaggerations, was speedily carried from various
quarters to the ears of the Lord Keeper, and each reporter dwelt upon
the extreme impatience of the courier, and the surprising short time in
which he had executed his journey. The anxious statesman heard in
silence; but in private Lockhard received orders to watch the courier
on his return, to waylay him in the village, to ply him with liquor, if
possible, and to use all means, fair or foul, to learn the contents of
the letter of which he was the bearer. But as this plot had been
foreseen, the messenger returned by a different and distant road, and
thus escaped the snare that was laid for him.
After he had been in vain expected for some time, Mr. Dingwall had
orders to made especial inquiry among his clients of Wolf’s Hope,
whether such a domestic belonging to the Marquis of A——had actually
arrived at the neighbouring castle. This was easily ascertained; for
Caleb had been in the village one morning by five o’clock, to borrow
“twa chappins of ale and a kipper” for the messenger’s refreshment, and
the poor fellow had been ill for twenty-four hours at Luckie
Sma’trash’s, in consequence of dining upon “saut saumon and sour
drink.” So that the existence of a correspondence betwixt the Marquis
and his distressed kinsman, which Sir William Ashton had sometimes
treated as a bugbear, was proved beyond the possibility of further
doubt.
The alarm of the Lord Keeper became very serious; since the Claim of
Right, the power of appealing from the decisions of the civil court to
the Estates of Parliament, which had formerly been held incompetent,
had in many instances been claimed, and in some allowed, and he had no
small reason to apprehend the issue, if the English House of Lords
should be disposed to act upon an appeal from the Master of Ravenswood
“for remeid in law.” It would resolve into an equitable claim, and be
decided, perhaps, upon the broad principles of justice, which were not
quite so favourable to the Lord Keeper as those of strict law. Besides,
judging, though most inaccurately, from courts which he had himself
known in the unhappy times preceding the Scottish Union, the Keeper
might have too much right to think that, in the House to which his
lawsuits were to be transferred, the old maxim might prevail which was
too well recognised in Scotland in former times: “Show me the man, and
I’ll show you the law.” The high and unbiased character of English
judicial proceedings was then little known in Scotland, and the
extension of them to that country was one of the most valuable
advantages which it gained by the Union. But this was a blessing which
the Lord Keeper, who had lived under another system, could not have the
means of foreseeing. In the loss of his political consequence, he
anticipated the loss of his lawsuit. Meanwhile, every report which
reached him served to render the success of the Marquis’s intrigues the
more probable, and the Lord Keeper began to think it indispensable that
he should look round for some kind of protection against the coming
storm. The timidity of his temper induced him to adopt measures of
compromise and conciliation. The affair of the wild bull, properly
managed, might, he thought, be made to facilitate a personal
communication and reconciliation betwixt the Master and himself. He
would then learn, if possible, what his own ideas were of the extent of
his rights, and the means of enforcing them; and perhaps matters might
be brought to a compromise, where one party was wealthy and the other
so very poor. A reconciliation with Ravenswood was likely to give him
an opportunity to play his own game with the Marquis of A——. “And
besides,” said he to himself, “it will be an act of generosity to raise
up the heir of this distressed family; and if he is to be warmly and
effectually befriended by the new government, who knows but my virtue
may prove its own reward?”
Thus thought Sir William Ashton, covering with no unusual self-delusion
his interested views with a hue of virtue; and having attained this
point, his fancy strayed still farther. He began to bethink himself,
“That if Ravenswood was to have a distinguished place of power and
trust, and if such a union would sopite the heavier part of his
unadjusted claims, there might be worse matches for his daughter Lucy:
the Master might be reponed against the attainder. Lord Ravenswood was
an ancient title, and the alliance would, in some measure, legitimate
his own possession of the greater part of the Master’s spoils, and make
the surrender of the rest a subject of less bitter regret.”
With these mingled and multifarious plans occupying his head, the Lord
Keeper availed himself of my Lord Bittlebrains’s repeated invitation to
his residence, and thus came within a very few miles of Wolf’s Crag.
Here he found the lord of the mansion absent, but was courteously
received by the lady, who expected her husband’s immediate return. She
expressed her particular delight at seeing Miss Ashton, and appointed
the hounds to be taken out for the Lord Keeper’s special amusement. He
readily entered into the proposal, as giving him an opportunity to
reconnoitre Wolf’s Crag, and perhaps to make some acquaintance with the
owner, if he should be tempted from his desolate mansion by the chase.
Lockhard had his orders to endeavour on his part to make some
acquaintance with the inmates of the castle, and we have seen how he
played his part.
The accidental storm did more to further the Lord Keeper’s plan of
forming a personal acquaintance with young Ravenswood than his most
sanguine expectations could have anticipated. His fear of the young
nobleman’s personal resentment had greatly decreased since he
considered him as formidable from his legal claims and the means he
might have of enforcing them. But although he thought, not
unreasonably, that only desperate circumstances drove men on desperate
measures, it was not without a secret terror, which shook his heart
within him, that he first felt himself inclosed within the desolate
Tower of Wolf’s Crag; a place so well fitted, from solitude and
strength, to be a scene of violence and vengeance. The stern reception
at first given to them by the Master of Ravenswood, and the difficulty
he felt in explaining to that injured nobleman what guests were under
the shelter of his roof, did not soothe these alarms; so that when Sir
William Ashton heard the door of the courtyard shut behind him with
violence, the words of Alice rung in his ears, “That he had drawn on
matters too hardly with so fierce a race as those of Ravenswood, and
that they would bide their time to be avenged.”
The subsequent frankness of the Master’s hospitality, as their
acquaintance increased, abated the apprehensions these recollections
were calculated to excite; and it did not escape Sir William Ashton,
that it was to Lucy’s grace and beauty he owed the change in their
host’s behavior.
All these thoughts thronged upon him when he took possession of the
secret chamber. The iron lamp, the unfurnished apartment, more
resembling a prison than a place of ordinary repose, the hoarse and
ceaseless sound of the waves rushing against the base of the rock on
which the castle was founded, saddened and perplexed his mind. To his
own successful machinations, the ruin of the family had been in a great
measure owing, but his disposition was crafty, and not cruel; so that
actually to witness the desolation and distress he had himself
occasioned was as painful to him as it would be to the humane mistress
of a family to superintend in person the execution of the lambs and
poultry which are killed by her own directions. At the same time, when
he thought of the alternative of restoring to Ravenswood a large
proportion of his spoils, or of adopting, as an ally and member of his
own family, the heir of this impoverished house, he felt as the spider
may be supposed to do when his whole web, the intricacies of which had
been planned with so much art, is destroyed by the chance sweep of a
broom. And then, if he should commit himself too far in this matter, it
gave rise to a perilous question, which many a good husband, when under
temptation to act as a free agent, has asked himself without being able
to return a satisfactory answer: “What will my wife—what will Lady
Ashton say?” On the whole, he came at length to the resolution in which
minds of a weaker cast so often take refuge. He resolved to watch
events, to take advantage of circumstances as they occurred, and
regulate his conduct accordingly. In this spirit of temporising policy,
he at length composed his mind to rest.