Sir, stay at home and take an old man’s counsel;
Seek not to bask you by a stranger’s hearth;
Our own blue smoke is warmer than their fire.
Domestic food is wholesome, though ’tis homely,
And foreign dainties poisonous, though tasteful.
The French Courtezan.
The Master of Ravenswood took an opportunity to leave his guests to
prepare for their departure, while he himself made the brief
arrangements necessary previous to his absence from Wolf’s Crag for a
day or two. It was necessary to communicate with Caleb on this
occasion, and he found that faithful servitor in his sooty and ruinous
den, greatly delighted with the departure of their visitors, and
computing how long, with good management, the provisions which had been
unexpended might furnish the Master’s table. “He’s nae belly god,
that’s ae blessing; and Bucklaw’s gane, that could have eaten a horse
behind the saddle. Cresses or water-purpie, and a bit ait-cake, can
serve the Master for breakfast as weel as Caleb. Then for
dinner—there’s no muckle left on the spule-bane; it will brander,
though—it will brander very weel.”
His triumphant calculations were interrupted by the Master, who
communicated to him, not without some hesitation, his purpose to ride
with the Lord Keeper as far as Ravenswood Castle, and to remain there
for a day or two.
“The mercy of Heaven forbid!” said the old serving-man, turning as pal
as the table-cloth which he was folding up.
“And why, Caleb?” said his master—“why should the mercy of Heaven
forbid my returning the Lord Keeper’s visit?”
“Oh, sir!” replied Caleb—“oh, Mr. Edgar! I am your servant, and it ill
becomes me to speak; but I am an auld servant—have served baith your
father and gudesire, and mind to have seen Lord Randal, your
great-grandfather, but that was when I was a bairn.”
“And what of all this, Balderstone?” said the Master; “what can it
possibly have to do with my paying some ordinary civility to a
neighbour.”
“Oh, Mr. Edgar,—that is, my lord!” answered the butler, “your ain
conscience tells you it isna for your father’s son to be neighbouring
wi’ the like o’ him; it isna for the credit of the family. An he were
ance come to terms, and to gie ye back your ain, e’en though ye suld
honour his house wi’ your alliance, I suldna say na; for the young
leddy is a winsome sweet creature. But keep your ain state wi’ them—I
ken the race o’ them weel—they will think the mair o’ ye.”
“Why, now, you go father than I do, Caleb,” said the Master, drowning a
certain degree of consciousness in a forced laugh; “you are for
marrying me into a family that you will not allow me to visit, how
this? and you look as pale as death besides.”
“Oh, sir,” repeated Caleb again, “you would but laugh if I tauld it;
but Thomas the Rhymer, whose tongue couldna be fause, spoke the word of
your house that will e’en prove ower true if you go to Ravenswood this
day. Oh, that it should e’er have been fulfilled in my time!”
“And what is it, Caleb?” said Ravenswood, wishing to soothe the fears
of his old servant.
Caleb replied: “He had never repeated the lines to living mortal; they
were told to him by an auld priest that had been confessor to Lord
Allan’s father when the family were Catholic. But mony a time,” he
said, “I hae soughed thae dark words ower to myself, and, well-a-day!
little did I think of their coming round this day.”
“Truce with your nonsense, and let me hear the doggerel which has put
it into your head,” said the Master, impatiently.
With a quivering voice, and a cheek pale with apprehension, Caleb
faltered out the following lines:
“When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride,
And woo a dead maiden to be his bride,
He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie’s flow,
And his name shall be lost for evermoe!”
“I know the Kelpie’s flow well enough,” said the Master; “I suppose, at
least, you mean the quicksand betwixt this tower and Wolf’s Hope; but
why any man in his senses should stable a steed there——”
“Oh, ever speer ony thing about that, sir—God forbid we should ken what
the prophecy means—but just bide you at hame, and let the strangers
ride to Ravenswood by themselves. We have done eneugh for them; and to
do mair would be mair against the credit of the family than in its
favour.”
“Well, Caleb,” said the Master, “I give you the best possible credit
for your good advice on this occasion; but as I do not go to Ravenswood
to seek a bride, dead or alive, I hope I shall choose a better stable
for my horse than the Kelpie’s quicksand, and especially as I have
always had a particular dread of it since the patrol of dragoons were
lost there ten years since. My father and I saw them from the tower
struggling against the advancing tide, and they were lost long before
any help could reach them.”
“And they deserved it weel, the southern loons!” said Caleb; “what had
they ado capering on our sands, and hindering a wheen honest folk frae
bringing on shore a drap brandy? I hae seen them that busy, that I wad
hae fired the auld culverin or the demi-saker that’s on the south
bartizan at them, only I was feared they might burst in the ganging
aff.”
Caleb’s brain was now fully engaged with abuse of the English soldiery
and excisemen, so that his master found no great difficulty in escaping
from him and rejoining his guests. All was now ready for their
departure; and one of the Lord Keeper’s grooms having saddled the
Master’s steed, they mounted in the courtyard.
Caleb had, with much toil, opened the double doors of the outward gate,
and thereat stationed himself, endeavouring, by the reverential, and at
the same time consequential, air which he assumed, to supply, by his
own gaunt, wasted, and thin person, the absence of a whole baronial
establishment of porters, warders, and liveried menials.
The Keeper returned his deep reverence with a cordial farewell,
stooping at the same time from his horse, and sliding into the butler’s
hand the remuneration which in those days was always given by a
departing guest to the domestics of the family where he had been
entertained. Lucy smiled on the old man with her usual sweetness, bade
him adieu, and deposited her guerdon with a grace of action and a
gentleness of accent which could not have failed to have won the
faithful retainer’s heart, but for Thomas the Rhymer, and the
successful lawsuit against his master. As it was, he might have adopted
the language of the Duke in “As You Like It”:
Thou wouldst have better pleased me with this deed,
If thou hadst told me of another father.
Ravenswood was at the lady’s bridle-rein, encouraging her timidity, and
guiding her horse carefully down the rocky path which led to the moor,
when one of the servants announced from the rear that Caleb was calling
loudly after them, desiring to speak with his master. Ravenswood felt
it would look singular to neglect this summons, although inwardly
cursing Caleb for his impertinent officiousness; therefore he was
compelled to relinquish to Mr. Lockhard the agreeable duty in which he
was engaged, and to ride back to the gate of the courtyard. Here he was
beginning, somewhat peevishly, to ask Caleb the cause of his clamour,
when the good old man exclaimed: “Whisht, sir!—whisht, and let me speak
just ae word that I couldna say afore folk; there (putting into his
lord’s hand the money he had just received)—there’s three gowd pieces;
and ye’ll want siller up-bye yonder. But stay, whisht, now!” for the
Master was beginning to exclaim against this transference, “never say a
word, but just see to get them changed in the first town ye ride
through, for they are bran new frae the mint, and ken-speckle a wee
bit.”
“You forget, Caleb,” said his master, striving to force back the money
on his servant, and extricate the bridle from his hold—“you forget that
I have some gold pieces left of my own. Keep these to yourself, my old
friend; and, once more, good day to you. I assure you, I have plenty.
You know you have managed that our living should cost us little or
nothing.”
“Aweel,” said Caleb, “these will serve for you another time; but see ye
hae eneugh, for, doubtless, for the credit of the family, there maun be
some civility to the servants, and ye maun hae something to mak a show
with when they say, ‘Master, will you bet a broad piece?’ Then ye maun
tak out your purse, and say, ‘I carena if I do’; and tak care no to
agree on the articles of the wager, and just put up your purse again,
and——”
“This is intolerable, Caleb; I really must be gone.”
“And you will go, then?” said Caleb, loosening his hold upon the
Master’s cloak, and changing his didactics into a pathetic and mournful
tone—“and you _will_ go, for a’ I have told you about the prophecy, and
the dead bride, and the Kelpie’s quicksand? Aweel! a wilful man maun
hae his way: he that will to Cupar maun to Cupar. But pity of your
life, sir, if ye be fowling or shooting in the Park, beware of drinking
at the Mermaiden’s Well—He’s gane! he’s down the path arrow-flight
after her! The head is as clean taen aff the Ravenswood family this day
as I wad chap the head aff a sybo!”
The old butler looked long after his master, often clearing away the
dew as it rose to his eyes, that he might, as long as possible,
distinguish his stately form from those of the other horsemen. “Close
to her bridle-rein—ay, close to her bridle-rein! Wisely saith the holy
man, ‘By this also you may know that woman hath dominion over all men’;
and without this lass would not our ruin have been a’thegither
fulfilled.”
With a heart fraught with such sad auguries did Caleb return to his
necessary duties at Wolf’s Crag, as soon as he could no longer
distinguish the object of his anxiety among the group of riders, which
diminished in the distance.
In the mean time the party pursued their route joyfully. Having once
taken his resolution, the Master of Ravenswood was not of a character
to hesitate or pause upon it. He abandoned himself to the pleasure he
felt in Miss Ashton’s company, and displayed an assiduous gallantry
which approached as nearly to gaiety as the temper of his mind and
state of his family permitted. The Lord Keeper was much struck with his
depth of observation, and the unusual improvement which he had derived
from his studies. Of these accomplishments Sir William Ashton’s
profession and habits of society rendered him an excellent judge; and
he well knew how to appreciate a quality to which he himself was a
total stranger—the brief and decided dauntlessness of the Master of
Ravenswood’s fear. In his heart the Lord Keeper rejoiced at having
conciliated an adversary so formidable, while, with a mixture of
pleasure and anxiety, he anticipated the great things his young
companion might achieve, were the breath of court-favour to fill his
sails.
“What could she desire,” he thought, his mind always conjuring up
opposition in the person of Lady Ashton to his new prevailing
wish—“what could a woman desire in a match more than the sopiting of a
very dangerous claim, and the alliance of a son-in-law, noble, brave,
well-gifted, and highly connected; sure to float whenever the tide sets
his way; strong, exactly where we are weak, in pedigree and in the
temper of a swordsman? Sure, no reasonable woman would hesitate. But
alas——!” Here his argument was stopped by the consciousness that Lady
Ashton was not always reasonable, in his sense of the word. “To prefer
some clownish Merse laird to the gallant young nobleman, and to the
secure possession of Ravenswood upon terms of easy compromise—it would
be the act of a madwoman!”
Thus pondered the veteran politician, until they reached Bittlebrains
House, where it had been previously settled they were to dine and
repose themselves, and prosecute their journey in the afternoon.
They were received with an excess of hospitality; and the most marked
attention was offered to the Master of Ravenswood, in particular, by
their noble entertainers. The truth was, that Lord Bittlebrains had
obtained his peerage by a good deal of plausibility, an art of building
up a character for wisdom upon a very trite style of commonplace
eloquence, a steady observation of the changes of the times, and the
power of rendering certain political services to those who could best
reward them. His lady and he, not feeling quite easy under their new
honours, to which use had not adapted their feelings, were very
desirous to procure the fraternal countenance of those who were born
denizens of the regions into which they had been exalted from a lower
sphere. The extreme attention which they paid to the Master of
Ravenswood had its usual effect in exalting his importance in the eyes
of the Lord Keeper, who, although he had a reasonable degree of
contempt for Lord Bittlebrains’s general parts, entertained a high
opinion of the acuteness of his judgment in all matters of
self-interest.
“I wish Lady Ashton had seen this,” was his internal reflection; “no
man knows so well as Bittlebrains on which side his bread is buttered;
and he fawns on the Master like a beggar’s messan on a cook. And my
lady, too, bringing forward her beetle-browed misses to skirl and play
upon the virginals, as if she said, ‘Pick and choose.’ They are no more
comparable to Lucy than an owl is to a cygnet, and so they may carry
their black brows to a farther market.”
The entertainment being ended, our travellers, who had still to measure
the longest part of their journey, resumed their horses; and after the
Lord Keeper, the Master, and the domestics had drunk _doch-an-dorroch_,
or the stirrup-cup, in the liquors adapted to their various ranks, the
cavalcade resumed its progress.
It was dark by the time they entered the avenue of Ravenswood Castle, a
long straight line leading directly to the front of the house, flanked
with huge elm-trees, which sighed to the night-wind, as if they
compassionated the heir of their ancient proprietors, who now returned
to their shades in the society, and almost in the retinue, of their new
master. Some feelings of the same kind oppressed the mind of the Master
himself. He gradually became silent, and dropped a little behind the
lady, at whose bridle-rein he had hitherto waited with such devotion.
He well recollected the period when, at the same hour in the evening,
he had accompanied his father, as that nobleman left, never again to
return to it, the mansion from which he derived his name and title. The
extensive front of the old castle, on which he remembered having often
looked back, was then “as black as mourning weed.” The same front now
glanced with many lights, some throwing far forward into the night a
fixed and stationary blaze, and others hurrying from one window to
another, intimating the bustle and busy preparation preceding their
arrival, which had been intimated by an avant-courier. The contrast
pressed so strongly upon the Master’s heart as to awaken some of the
sterner feelings with which he had been accustomed to regard the new
lord of his paternal domain, and to impress his countenance with an air
of severe gravity, when, alighted from his horse, he stood in the hall
no longer his own, surrounded by the numerous menials of its present
owner.
The Lord Keeper, when about to welcome him with the cordiality which
their late intercourse seemed to render proper, became aware of the
change, refrained from his purpose, and only intimated the ceremony of
reception by a deep reverence to his guest, seeming thus delicately to
share the feelings which predominated on his brow.
Two upper domestics, bearing each a huge pair of silver candlesticks,
now marshalled the company into a large saloon, or withdrawing-room,
where new alterations impressed upon Ravenswood the superior wealth of
the present inhabitants of the castle. The mouldering tapestry, which,
in his father’s time, had half covered the walls of this stately
apartment, and half streamed from them in tatters, had given place to a
complete finishing of wainscot, the cornice of which, as well as the
frames of the various compartments, were ornamented with festoons of
flowers and with birds, which, though carved in oak, seemed, such was
the art of the chisel, actually to swell their throats and flutter
their wings. Several old family portraits of armed heroes of the house
of Ravenswood, together with a suit or two of old armour and some
military weapons, had given place to those of King William and Queen
Mary, or Sir Thomas Hope and Lord Stair, two distinguished Scottish
lawyers. The pictures of the Lord Keeper’s father and mother were also
to be seen; the latter, sour, shrewish, and solemn, in her black hood
and close pinners, with a book of devotion in her hand; the former,
exhibiting beneath a black silk Geneva cowl, or skull-cap, which sate
as close to the head as if it had been shaven, a pinched, peevish,
Puritanical set of features, terminating in a hungry, reddish, peaked
beard, forming on the whole a countenance in the expression of which
the hypocrite seemed to contend with the miser and the knave. “And it
is to make room for such scarecrows as these,” thought Ravenswood,
“that my ancestors have been torn down from the walls which they
erected!” he looked at them again, and, as he looked, the recollection
of Lucy Ashton, for she had not entered the apartment with them, seemed
less lively in his imagination. There were also two or three Dutch
drolleries, as the pictures of Ostade and Teniers were then termed,
with one good painting of the Italian school. There was, besides, a
noble full-length of the Lord Keeper in his robes of office, placed
beside his lady in silk and ermine, a haughty beauty, bearing in her
looks all the pride of the house of Douglas, from which she was
descended. The painter, notwithstanding his skill, overcome by the
reality, or, perhaps, from a suppressed sense of humour, had not been
able to give the husband on the canvas that air of awful rule and right
supremacy which indicates the full possession of domestic authority. It
was obvious at the first glance that, despite mace and gold frogs, the
Lord Keeper was somewhat henpecked. The floor of this fine saloon was
laid with rich carpets, huge fires blazed in the double chimneys, and
ten silver sconces, reflecting with their bright plates the lights
which they supported, made the whole seem as brilliant as day.
“Would you choose any refreshment, Master?” said Sir William Ashton,
not unwilling to break the awkward silence.
[Illustration]
He received no answer, the Master being so busily engaged in marking
the various changes which had taken place in the apartment, that he
hardly heard the Lord Keeper address him. A repetition of the offer of
refreshment, with the addition, that the family meal would be presently
ready, compelled his attention, and reminded him that he acted a weak,
perhaps even a ridiculous, part in suffering himself to be overcome by
the circumstances in which he found himself. He compelled himself,
therefore, to enter into conversation with Sir William Ashton, with as
much appearance of indifference as he could well command.
“You will not be surprised, Sir William, that I am interested in the
changes you have made for the better in this apartment. In my father’s
time, after our misfortunes compelled him to live in retirement, it was
little used, except by me as a play-room, when the weather would not
permit me to go abroad. In that recess was my little workshop, where I
treasured the few carpenters’ tools which old Caleb procured for me,
and taught me how to use; there, in yonder corner, under that handsome
silver sconce, I kept my fishing-rods and hunting poles, bows and
arrows.”
“I have a young birkie,” said the Lord Keeper, willing to change the
tone of the conversation, “of much the same turn. He is never happy
save when he is in the field. I wonder he is not here. Here, Lockhard;
send William Shaw for Mr. Henry. I suppose he is, as usual, tied to
Lucy’s apron-string; that foolish girl, Master, draws the whole family
after her at her pleasure.”
Even this allusion to his daughter, though artfully thrown out, did not
recall Ravenswood from his own topic. “We were obliged to leave,” he
said, “some armour and portraits in this apartment; may I ask where
they have been removed to?”
“Why,” answered the Keeper, with some hesitation, “the room was fitted
up in our absence, and _cedant arma togæ_ is the maxim of lawyers, you
know: I am afraid it has been here somewhat too literally complied
with. I hope—I believe they are safe, I am sure I gave orders; may I
hope that when they are recovered, and put in proper order, you will do
me the honour to accept them at my hand, as an atonement for their
accidental derangement?”
The Master of Ravenswood bowed stiffly, and, with folded arms, again
resumed his survey of the room.
Henry, a spoilt boy of fifteen, burst into the room, and ran up to his
father. “Think of Lucy, papa; she has come home so cross and so
fractious, that she will not go down to the stable to see my new pony,
that Bob Wilson brought from the Mull of Galloway.”
“I think you were very unreasonable to ask her,” said the Keeper.
“Then you are as cross as she is,” answered the boy; “but when mamma
comes home, she’ll claw up both your mittens.”
“Hush your impertinence, you little forward imp!” said his father;
“where is your tutor?”
“Gone to a wedding at Dunbar; I hope he’ll get a haggis to his dinner”;
and he began to sing the old Scottish song:
“There was a haggis in Dunbar,
Fal de ral, &c.
Mony better and few waur,
Fal de ral,” &c.
“I am much obliged to Mr. Cordery for his attentions,” said the Lord
Keeper; “and pray who has had the charge of you while I was away, Mr.
Henry?”
“Norman and Bob Wilson, forbye my own self.”
“A groom and a gamekeeper, and your own silly self—proper guardians for
a young advocate! Why, you will never know any statutes but those
against shooting red-deer, killing salmon, and——”
“And speaking of red-game,” said the young scapegrace, interrupting his
father without scruple or hesitation, “Norman has shot a buck, and I
showed the branches to Lucy, and she says they have but eight tynes;
and she says that you killed a deer with Lord Bittlebrains’s hounds,
when you were west away, and, do you know, she says it had ten tynes;
is it true?”
“It may have had twenty, Henry, for what I know; but if you go to that
gentleman, he can tell you all about it. Go speak to him, Henry; it is
the Master of Ravenswood.”
While they conversed thus, the father and son were standing by the
fire; and the Master, having walked towards the upper end of the
apartment, stood with his back towards them, apparently engaged in
examining one of the paintings. The boy ran up to him, and pulled him
by the skirt of the coat with the freedom of a spoilt child, saying, “I
say, sir, if you please to tell me——” but when the Master turned round,
and Henry saw his face, he became suddenly and totally disconcerted;
walked two or three steps backward, and still gazed on Ravenswood with
an air of fear and wonder, which had totally banished from his features
their usual expression of pert vivacity.
“Come to me, young gentleman,” said the Master, “and I will tell you
all I know about the hunt.”
“Go to the gentleman, Henry,” said his father; “you are not used to be
so shy.”
But neither invitation nor exhortation had any effect on the boy. On
the contrary, he turned round as soon as he had completed his survey of
the Master, and walking as cautiously as if he had been treading upon
eggs, he glided back to his father, and pressed as close to him as
possible. Ravenswood, to avoid hearing the dispute betwixt the father
and the overindulged boy, thought it most polite to turn his face once
more towards the pictures, and pay no attention to what they said.
“Why do you not speak to the Master, you little fool?” said the Lord
Keeper.
“I am afraid,” said Henry, in a very low tone of voice.
“Afraid, you goose!” said his father, giving him a slight shake by the
collar. “What makes you afraid?”
“What makes him to like the picture of Sir Malise Ravenswood then?”
said the boy, whispering.
“What picture, you natural?” said his father. “I used to think you only
a scapegrace, but I believe you will turn out a born idiot.”
“I tell you, it is the picture of old Malise of Ravenswood, and he is
as like it as if he had loupen out of the canvas; and it is up in the
old baron’s hall that the maids launder the clothes in; and it has
armour, and not a coat like the gentleman; and he has not a beard and
whiskers like the picture; and it has another kind of thing about the
throat, and no band-strings as he has; and——”
“And why should not the gentleman be like his ancestor, you silly boy?”
said the Lord Keeper.
“Ay; but if he is come to chase us all out of the castle,” said the
boy, “and has twenty men at his back in disguise; and is come to say,
with a hollow voice, _I bide my time;_ and is to kill you on the hearth
as Malise did the other man, and whose blood is still to be seen!”
“Hush! nonsense!” said the Lord Keeper, not himself much pleased to
hear these disagreeable coincidences forced on his notice. “Master,
here comes Lockhard to say supper is served.”
And, at the same instant, Lucy entered at another door, having changed
her dress since her return. The exquisite feminine beauty of her
countenance, now shaded only by a profusion of sunny tresses; the
sylph-like form, disencumbered of her heavy riding-skirt and mantled in
azure silk; the grace of her manner and of her smile, cleared, with a
celerity which surprised the Master himself, all the gloomy and
unfavourable thoughts which had for some time overclouded his fancy. In
those features, so simply sweet, he could trace no alliance with the
pinched visage of the peak-bearded, black-capped Puritan, or his
starched, withered spouse, with the craft expressed in the Lord
Keeper’s countenance, or the haughtiness which predominated in that of
his lady; and, while he gazed on Lucy Ashton, she seemed to be an angel
descended on earth, unallied to the coarser mortals among whom she
deigned to dwell for a season. Such is the power of beauty over a
youthful and enthusiastic fancy.