To hail the king in seemly sort
The ladie was full fain,
But King Arthur, all sore amazed,
No answer made again
‘What wight art thou,’ the ladie said,
‘That will not speak to me?
Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain,
Though I be foul to see’
The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.
The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of
her wicked step-mother, was more decrepit probably, and what is commonly
called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that
wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features
marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the
gestures of a form which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic.
Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more
terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between ‘an oak and
a green holly,’ than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the
appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan.
‘For God’s sake,’ said Julia, pulling out her purse, ‘give that dreadful
woman something and bid her go away.’
‘I cannot,’ said Bertram; ‘I must not offend her.’
‘What keeps you here?’ said Meg, exalting the harsh and rough tones of
her hollow voice. ‘Why do you not follow? Must your hour call you twice?
Do you remember your oath? “Were it at kirk or market, wedding or
burial,”’--and she held high her skinny forefinger in a menacing
attitude.
Bertram--turned round to his terrified companions. ‘Excuse me for a
moment; I am engaged by a promise to follow this woman.’
‘Good Heavens! engaged to a madwoman?’ said Julia.
‘Or to a gipsy, who has her band in the wood ready to murder you!’ said
Lucy.
‘That was not spoken like a bairn of Ellangowan,’ said Meg, frowning upon
Miss Bertram. ‘It is the ill-doers are ill-dreaders.’
‘In short, I must go,’ said Bertram, ‘it is absolutely necessary; wait
for me five minutes on this spot.’
‘Five minutes?’ said the gipsy, ‘five hours may not bring you here
again.’
‘Do you hear that?’ said Julia; ‘for Heaven’s sake do not go!’
‘I must, I must; Mr. Dinmont will protect you back to the house.’
‘No,’ said Meg, ‘he must come with you; it is for that he is here. He
maun take part wi’ hand and heart; and weel his part it is, for redding
his quarrel might have cost you dear.’
‘Troth, Luckie, it’s very true,’ said the steady farmer; ‘and ere I turn
back frae the Captain’s side I’ll show that I haena forgotten ‘t.’
‘O yes,’ exclaimed both the ladies at once, ‘let Mr. Dinmont go with you,
if go you must, on this strange summons.’
‘Indeed I must,’ answered Bertram; ‘but you see I am safely guarded.
Adieu for a short time; go home as fast as you can.’
He pressed his sister’s hand, and took a yet more affectionate farewell
of Julia with his eyes. Almost stupefied with surprise and fear, the
young ladies watched with anxious looks the course of Bertram, his
companion, and their extraordinary guide. Her tall figure moved across
the wintry heath with steps so swift, so long, and so steady that she
appeared rather to glide than to walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall
men, apparently scarce equalled her in height, owing to her longer dress
and high head-gear. She proceeded straight across the common, without
turning aside to the winding path by which passengers avoided the
inequalities and little rills that traversed it in different directions.
Thus the diminishing figures often disappeared from the eye, as they
dived into such broken ground, and again ascended to sight when they were
past the hollow. There was something frightful and unearthly, as it were,
in the rapid and undeviating course which she pursued, undeterred by any
of the impediments which usually incline a traveller from the direct
path. Her way was as straight, and nearly as swift, as that of a bird
through the air. At length they reached those thickets of natural wood
which extended from the skirts of the common towards the glades and brook
of Derncleugh, and were there lost to the view.
‘This is very extraordinary,’ said Lucy after a pause, and turning round
to her companion; ‘what can he have to do with that old hag?’
‘It is very frightful,’ answered Julia, ‘and almost reminds me of the
tales of sorceresses, witches, and evil genii which I have heard in
India. They believe there in a fascination of the eye by which those who
possess it control the will and dictate the motions of their victims.
What can your brother have in common with that fearful woman that he
should leave us, obviously against his will, to attend to her commands?’
‘At least,’ said Lucy, ‘we may hold him safe from harm; for she would
never have summoned that faithful creature Dinmont, of whose strength,
courage, and steadiness Henry said so much, to attend upon an expedition
where she projected evil to the person of his friend. And now let us go
back to the house till the Colonel returns. Perhaps Bertram may be back
first; at any rate, the Colonel will judge what is to be done.’
Leaning, then, upon each other’s arm, but yet occasionally stumbling,
between fear and the disorder of their nerves, they at length reached the
head of the avenue, when they heard the tread of a horse behind. They
started, for their ears were awake to every sound, and beheld to their
great pleasure young Hazlewood. ‘The Colonel will be here immediately,’
he said; ‘I galloped on before to pay my respects to Miss Bertram, with
the sincerest congratulations upon the joyful event which has taken place
in her family. I long to be introduced to Captain Bertram, and to thank
him for the well-deserved lesson he gave to my rashness and
indiscretion.’
‘He has left us just now,’ said Lucy, ‘and in a manner that has
frightened us very much.’
Just at that moment the Colonel’s carriage drove up, and, on observing
the ladies, stopped, while Mannering and his learned counsel alighted and
joined them. They instantly communicated the new cause of alarm.
‘Meg Merrilies again!’ said the Colonel. ‘She certainly is a most
mysterious and unaccountable personage; but I think she must have
something to impart to Bertram to which she does not mean we should be
privy.’
‘The devil take the bedlamite old woman,’ said the Counsellor; ‘will she
not let things take their course, prout de lege, but must always be
putting in her oar in her own way? Then I fear from the direction they
took they are going upon the Ellangowan estate. That rascal Glossin has
shown us what ruffians he has at his disposal; I wish honest Liddesdale
maybe guard sufficient.’
‘If you please,’ said Hazlewood, ‘I should be most happy to ride in the
direction which they have taken. I am so well known in the country that I
scarce think any outrage will be offered in my presence, and I shall keep
at such a cautious distance as not to appear to watch Meg, or interrupt
any communication which she may make.’
‘Upon my word,’ said Pleydell (aside), ‘to be a sprig whom I remember
with a whey face and a satchel not so very many years ago, I think young
Hazlewood grows a fine fellow. I am more afraid of a new attempt at legal
oppression than at open violence, and from that this young man’s presence
would deter both Glossin and his understrappers.--Hie away then, my boy;
peer out--peer out, you ‘ll find them somewhere about Derncleugh, or very
probably in Warroch wood.’
Hazlewood turned his horse. ‘Come back to us to dinner, Hazlewood,’ cried
the Colonel. He bowed, spurred his horse, and galloped off.
We now return to Bertram and Dinmont, who continued to follow their
mysterious guide through the woods and dingles between the open common
and the ruined hamlet of Derncleugh. As she led the way she never looked
back upon her followers, unless to chide them for loitering, though the
sweat, in spite of the season, poured from their brows. At other times
she spoke to herself in such broken expressions as these: ‘It is to
rebuild the auld house, it is to lay the corner-stone; and did I not warn
him? I tell’d him I was born to do it, if my father’s head had been the
stepping-stane, let alane his. I was doomed--still I kept my purpose in
the cage and in the stocks; I was banished--I kept it in an unco land; I
was scourged, I was branded--my resolution lay deeper than scourge or red
iron could reach;--and now the hour is come.’
‘Captain,’ said Dinmont, in a half whisper, ‘I wish she binna uncanny!
her words dinna seem to come in God’s name, or like other folks’. Od,
they threep in our country that there ARE sic things.’
‘Don’t be afraid, my friend,’ whispered Bertram in return.
‘Fear’d! fient a haet care I,’ said the dauntless farmer; ‘be she witch
or deevil, it’s a’ ane to Dandie Dinmont.’
‘Haud your peace, gudeman,’ said Meg, looking sternly over her shoulder;
‘is this a time or place for you to speak, think ye?’
‘But, my good friend,’ said Bertram, ‘as I have no doubt in your good
faith or kindness, which I have experienced, you should in return have
some confidence in me; I wish to know where you are leading us.’
‘There’s but ae answer to that, Henry Bertram,’ said the sibyl. ‘I swore
my tongue should never tell, but I never said my finger should never
show. Go on and meet your fortune, or turn back and lose it: that’s a’ I
hae to say.’
‘Go on then,’ answered Bertram; ‘I will ask no more questions.’
They descended into the glen about the same place where Meg had formerly
parted from Bertram. She paused an instant beneath the tall rock where he
had witnessed the burial of a dead body and stamped upon the ground,
which, notwithstanding all the care that had been taken, showed vestiges
of having been recently moved. ‘Here rests ane,’ she said; ‘he’ll maybe
hae neibours sune.’
She then moved up the brook until she came to the ruined hamlet, where,
pausing with a look of peculiar and softened interest before one of the
gables which was still standing, she said in a tone less abrupt, though
as solemn as before, ‘Do you see that blackit and broken end of a
sheeling? There my kettle boiled for forty years; there I bore twelve
buirdly sons and daughters. Where are they now? where are the leaves that
were on that auld ash tree at Martinmas! The west wind has made it bare;
and I’m stripped too. Do you see that saugh tree? it’s but a blackened
rotten stump now. I’ve sate under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when
it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water. I’ve sat there, and,’
elevating her voice, ‘I’ve held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung
ye sangs of the auld barons and their bloody wars. It will ne’er be green
again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blythe or
sad. But ye’ll no forget her, and ye’ll gar big up the auld wa’s for her
sake? And let somebody live there that’s ower gude to fear them of
another warld. For if ever the dead came back amang the living, I’ll be
seen in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the
mould.’
The mixture of insanity and wild pathos with which she spoke these last
words, with her right arm bare and extended, her left bent and shrouded
beneath the dark red drapery of her mantle, might have been a study
worthy of our Siddons herself. ‘And now,’ she said, resuming at once the
short, stern, and hasty tone which was most ordinary to her, ‘let us to
the wark, let us to the wark.’
She then led the way to the promontory on which the Kaim of Derncleugh
was situated, produced a large key from her pocket, and unlocked the
door. The interior of this place was in better order than formerly. ‘I
have made things decent,’ she said; ‘I may be streekit here or night.
There will be few, few at Meg’s lykewake, for mony of our folk will blame
what I hae done, and am to do!’
She then pointed to a table, upon which was some cold meat, arranged with
more attention to neatness than could have been expected from Meg’s
habits. ‘Eat,’ she said--‘eat; ye’ll need it this night yet.’
Bertram, in complaisance, eat a morsel or two; and Dinmont, whose
appetite was unabated either by wonder, apprehension, or the meal of the
morning, made his usual figure as a trencherman. She then offered each a
single glass of spirits, which Bertram drank diluted, and his companion
plain.
‘Will ye taste naething yoursell, Luckie?’ said Dinmont.
‘I shall not need it,’ replied their mysterious hostess. ‘And now,’ she
said, ‘ye maun hae arms: ye maunna gang on dry-handed; but use them not
rashly. Take captive, but save life; let the law hae its ain. He maun
speak ere he die.’
‘Who is to be taken? who is to speak?’ said Bertram, in astonishment,
receiving a pair of pistols which she offered him, and which, upon
examining, he found loaded and locked.
‘The flints are gude,’ she said, ‘and the powder dry; I ken this wark
weel.’
Then, without answering his questions, she armed Dinmont also with a
large pistol, and desired them to choose sticks for themselves out of a
parcel of very suspicious-looking bludgeons which she brought from a
corner. Bertram took a stout sapling, and Dandie selected a club which
might have served Hercules himself. They then left the hut together, and
in doing so Bertram took an opportunity to whisper to Dinmont, ‘There’s
something inexplicable in all this. But we need not use these arms unless
we see necessity and lawful occasion; take care to do as you see me do.’
Dinmont gave a sagacious nod, and they continued to follow, over wet and
over dry, through bog and through fallow, the footsteps of their
conductress. She guided them to the wood of Warroch by the same track
which the late Ellangowan had used when riding to Derncleugh in quest of
his child on the miserable evening of Kennedy’s murder.
When Meg Merrilies had attained these groves, through which the wintry
sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a
moment as if to recollect the way. ‘We maun go the precise track,’ she
said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved
course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At
length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open
glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes,
which made a wild and irregular boundary. Even in winter it was a
sheltered and snugly sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of
spring, the earth sending forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs
spreading their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches,
which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to
intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to
study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first
mutual avowal of affection. Apparently it now awakened very different
recollections. Bertram’s brow, when he had looked round the spot, became
gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after uttering to herself, ‘This is the very
spot!’ looked at him with a ghastly side-glance--‘D’ye mind it?’
‘Yes!’ answered Bertram, ‘imperfectly I do.’
‘Ay!’ pursued his guide, ‘on this very spot the man fell from his horse.
I was behind that bourtree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove,
and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never
kenn’d the word! Now will I show you the further track; the last time ye
travelled it was in these arms.’
She led them accordingly by a long and winding passage, almost overgrown
with brushwood, until, without any very perceptible descent, they
suddenly found themselves by the seaside. Meg then walked very fast on
between the surf and the rocks, until she came to a remarkable fragment
of rock detached from the rest. ‘Here,’ she said in a low and scarcely
audible whisper--‘here the corpse was found.’
‘And the cave,’ said Bertram, in the same tone, ‘is close beside it; are
you guiding us there?’
‘Yes,’ said the gipsy in a decided tone. ‘Bend up both your hearts;
follow me as I creep in; I have placed the fire-wood so as to screen you.
Bide behind it for a gliff till I say, “The hour and the man are baith
come”; then rin in on him, take his arms, and bind him till the blood
burst frae his finger nails.’
‘I will, by my soul,’ said Henry, ‘if he is the man I suppose--Jansen?’
‘Ay, Jansen, Hatteraick, and twenty mair names are his.’
‘Dinmont, you must stand by me now,’ said Bertram, ‘for this fellow is a
devil.’
‘Ye needna doubt that,’ said the stout yeoman; ‘but I wish I could mind a
bit prayer or I creep after the witch into that hole that she’s opening.
It wad be a sair thing to leave the blessed sun and the free air, and
gang and be killed like a tod that’s run to earth, in a dungeon like
that. But, my sooth, they will be hard-bitten terriers will worry Dandie;
so, as I said, deil hae me if I baulk you.’ This was uttered in the
lowest tone of voice possible. The entrance was now open. Meg crept in
upon her hands and knees, Bertram followed, and Dinmont, after giving a
rueful glance toward the daylight, whose blessings he was abandoning,
brought up the rear.