The Antiquary Part 54

"I hae heard," said the mendicant, taking his cue from what Oldbuck had told him of the family history--"I hae heard, c.u.mmer, that some ill tongue suld hae come between the Earl, that's Lord Geraldin, and his young bride."

"Ill tongue?" she said in hasty alarm; "and what had she to fear frae an ill tongue?--she was gude and fair eneugh--at least a' body said sae. But had she keepit her ain tongue aff ither folk, she might hae been living like a leddy for a' that's come and gane yet."

"But I hae heard say, gudewife," continued Ochiltree, "there was a clatter in the country, that her husband and her were ower sibb when they married."

"Wha durst speak o' that?" said the old woman hastily; "wha durst say they were married?--wha ken'd o' that?--Not the Countess--not I. If they wedded in secret, they were severed in secret--They drank of the fountains of their ain deceit."

"No, wretched beldam!" exclaimed Oldbuck, who could keep silence no longer, "they drank the poison that you and your wicked mistress prepared for them."

"Ha, ha!" she replied, "I aye thought it would come to this. It's but sitting silent when they examine me--there's nae torture in our days; and if there is, let them rend me!--It's ill o' the va.s.sal's mouth that betrays the bread it eats."

"Speak to her, Edie," said the Antiquary; "she knows your voice, and answers to it most readily."

"We shall mak naething mair out o' her," said Ochiltree. "When she has clinkit hersell down that way, and faulded her arms, she winna speak a word, they say, for weeks thegither. And besides, to my thinking, her face is sair changed since we cam in. However, I'se try her ance mair to satisfy your honour.--So ye canna keep in mind, c.u.mmer, that your auld mistress, the Countess Joscelin, has been removed?"

"Removed!" she exclaimed; for that name never failed to produce its usual effect upon her; "then we maun a' follow--a' maun ride when she is in the saddle. Tell them to let Lord Geraldin ken we're on before them.

Bring my hood and scarf--ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage wi' my leddy, and my hair in this fas.h.i.+on?"

She raised her shrivelled arms, and seemed busied like a woman who puts on her cloak to go abroad, then dropped them slowly and stiffly; and the same idea of a journey still floating apparently through her head, she proceeded, in a hurried and interrupted manner,--"Call Miss Neville--What do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville, not Lady Geraldin-- there's no Lady Geraldin; tell her that, and bid her change her wet gown, and no' look sae pale. Bairn! what should she do wi' a bairn?--maidens hae nane, I trow.--Teresa--Teresa--my lady calls us!--Bring a candle;--the grand staircase is as mirk as a Yule midnight--We are coming, my lady!"--With these words she sunk back on the settle, and from thence sidelong to the floor. *

* Note I. Elspeth's death.

Edie ran to support her, but hardly got her in his arms, before he said, "It's a' ower--she has pa.s.sed away even with that last word."

"Impossible," said Oldbuck, hastily advancing, as did his nephew. But nothing was more certain. She had expired with the last hurried word that left her lips; and all that remained before them were the mortal relics of the creature who had so long struggled with an internal sense of concealed guilt, joined to all the distresses of age and poverty.

"G.o.d grant that she be gane to a better place!" said Edie, as he looked on the lifeless body; "but oh! there was something lying hard and heavy at her heart. I have seen mony a ane dee, baith in the field o' battle, and a fair-strae death at hame; but I wad rather see them a' ower again, as sic a fearfu' flitting as hers!"

"We must call in the neighbours," said Oldbuck, when he had somewhat recovered his horror and astonishment, "and give warning of this additional calamity. I wish she could have been brought to a confession.

And, though of far less consequence, I could have wished to transcribe that metrical fragment. But Heaven's will must be done!"

They left the hut accordingly, and gave the alarm in the hamlet, whose matrons instantly a.s.sembled to compose the limbs and arrange the body of her who might be considered as the mother of their settlement. Oldbuck promised his a.s.sistance for the funeral.

"Your honour," said Alison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased, "suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the lykewake, for a' Saunders's gin, puir man, was drucken out at the burial o' Steenie, and we'll no get mony to sit dry-lipped aside the corpse.

Elspeth was unco clever in her young days, as I can mind right weel, but there was aye a word o' her no being that chancy. Ane suldna speak ill o' the dead--mair by token, o' ane's c.u.mmer and neighbour--but there was queer things said about a leddy and a bairn or she left the Craigburnfoot. And sae, in gude troth, it will be a puir lykewake, unless your honour sends us something to keep us cracking."

"You shall have some whisky," answered Oldbuck, "the rather that you have preserved the proper word for that ancient custom of watching the dead. You observe, Hector, this is genuine Teutonic, from the Gothic Leichnam, a corpse. It is quite erroneously called Late-wake, though Brand favours that modern corruption and derivation."

"I believe," said Hector to himself, "my uncle would give away Monkbarns to any one who would come to ask it in genuine Teutonic! Not a drop of whisky would the old creatures have got, had their president asked it for the use of the Late-wake."

While Oldbuck was giving some farther directions, and promising a.s.sistance, a servant of Sir Arthur's came riding very hard along the sands, and stopped his horse when he saw the Antiquary. "There had something," he said, "very particular happened at the Castle"--(he could not, or would not, explain what)--"and Miss Wardour had sent him off express to Monkbarns, to beg that Mr. Oldbuck would come to them without a moment's delay."

"I am afraid," said the Antiquary, "his course also is drawing to a close. What can I do?"

"Do, sir?" exclaimed Hector, with his characteristic impatience,--"get on the horse, and turn his head homeward--you will be at Knockwinnock Castle in ten minutes."

"He is quite a free goer," said the servant, dismounting to adjust the girths and stirrups,--"he only pulls a little if he feels a dead weight on him."

"I should soon be a dead weight off him, my friend," said the Antiquary.--"What the devil, nephew, are you weary of me? or do you suppose me weary of my life, that I should get on the back of such a Bucephalus as that? No, no, my friend, if I am to be at Knockwinnock to-day, it must be by walking quietly forward on my own feet, which I will do with as little delay as possible. Captain M'Intyre may ride that animal himself, if he pleases."

"I have little hope I could be of any use, uncle, but I cannot think of their distress without wis.h.i.+ng to show sympathy at least--so I will ride on before, and announce to them that you are coming.--I'll trouble you for your spurs, my friend."

"You will scarce need them, sir," said the man, taking them off at the same time, and buckling them upon Captain Mlntyre's heels, "he's very frank to the road."

Oldbuck stood astonished at this last act of temerity, "are you mad, Hector?" he cried, "or have you forgotten what is said by Quintus Curtius, with whom, as a soldier, you must needs be familiar,--n.o.bilis equus umbra quidem virgae regitur; ignavus ne calcari quidem excitari potest; which plainly shows that spurs are useless in every case, and, I may add, dangerous in most."

But Hector, who cared little for the opinion of either Quintus Curtius or of the Antiquary, upon such a topic, only answered with a heedless "Never fear--never fear, sir."

With that he gave his able horse the head, And, bending forward, struck his armed heels Against the panting sides of his poor jade, Up to the rowel-head; and starting so, He seemed in running to devour the way, Staying no longer question.

"There they go, well matched," said Oldbuck, looking after them as they started--"a mad horse and a wild boy, the two most unruly creatures in Christendom! and all to get half an hour sooner to a place where n.o.body wants him; for I doubt Sir Arthur's griefs are beyond the cure of our light horseman. It must be the villany of Dousterswivel, for whom Sir Arthur has done so much; for I cannot help observing, that, with some natures, Tacitus's maxim holdeth good: Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur,--from which a wise man might take a caution, not to oblige any man beyond the degree in which he may expect to be requited, lest he should make his debtor a bankrupt in grat.i.tude."

Murmuring to himself such sc.r.a.ps of cynical philosophy, our Antiquary paced the sands towards Knockwinnock; but it is necessary we should outstrip him, for the purpose of explaining the reasons of his being so anxiously summoned thither.

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

So, while the Goose, of whom the fable told, Inc.u.mbent, brooded o'er her eggs of gold, With hand outstretched, impatient to destroy, Stole on her secret nest the cruel Boy, Whose gripe rapacious changed her splendid dream, --For wings vain fluttering, and for dying scream.

The Loves of the Sea-weeds.

From the time that Sir Arthur Wardour had become possessor of the treasure found in Misticot's grave, he had been in a state of mind more resembling ecstasy than sober sense. Indeed, at one time his daughter had become seriously apprehensive for his intellect; for, as he had no doubt that he had the secret of possessing himself of wealth to an unbounded extent, his language and carriage were those of a man who had acquired the philosopher's stone. He talked of buying contiguous estates, that would have led him from one side of the island to the other, as if he were determined to brook no neighbour save the sea. He corresponded with an architect of eminence, upon a plan of renovating the castle of his forefathers on a style of extended magnificence that might have rivalled that of Windsor, and laying out the grounds on a suitable scale. Troops of liveried menials were already, in fancy, marshalled in his halls, and--for what may not unbounded wealth authorize its possessor to aspire to?--the coronet of a marquis, perhaps of a duke, was glittering before his imagination. His daughter--to what matches might she not look forward? Even an alliance with the blood-royal was not beyond the sphere of his hopes. His son was already a general--and he himself whatever ambition could dream of in its wildest visions.

In this mood, if any one endeavoured to bring Sir Arthur down to the regions of common life, his replies were in the vein of Ancient Pistol--

A fico for the world, and worldlings base I speak of Africa and golden joys!

The reader may conceive the amazement of Miss Wardour, when, instead of undergoing an investigation concerning the addresses of Lovel, as she had expected from the long conference of her father with Mr. Oldbuck, upon the morning of the fated day when the treasure was discovered, the conversation of Sir Arthur announced an imagination heated with the hopes of possessing the most unbounded wealth. But she was seriously alarmed when Dousterswivel was sent for to the Castle, and was closeted with her father--his mishap condoled with--his part taken, and his loss compensated. All the suspicions which she had long entertained respecting this man became strengthened, by observing his pains to keep up the golden dreams of her father, and to secure for himself, under various pretexts, as much as possible out of the windfall which had so strangely fallen to Sir Arthur's share.

Other evil symptoms began to appear, following close on each other.

Letters arrived every post, which Sir Arthur, as soon as he had looked at the directions, flung into the fire without taking the trouble to open them. Miss Wardour could not help suspecting that these epistles, the contents of which seemed to be known to her father by a sort of intuition, came from pressing creditors. In the meanwhile, the temporary aid which he had received from the treasure dwindled fast away. By far the greater part had been swallowed up by the necessity of paying the bill of six hundred pounds, which had threatened Sir Arthur with instant distress. Of the rest, some part was given to the adept, some wasted upon extravagances which seemed to the poor knight fully authorized by his full-blown hopes,--and some went to stop for a time the mouths of such claimants as, being weary of fair promises, had become of opinion with Harpagon, that it was necessary to touch something substantial. At length circ.u.mstances announced but too plainly, that it was all expended within two or three days after its discovery; and there appeared no prospect of a supply. Sir Arthur, naturally impatient, now taxed Dousterswivel anew with breach of those promises through which he had hoped to convert all his lead into gold. But that worthy gentleman's turn was now served; and as he had grace enough to wish to avoid witnessing the fall of the house which he had undermined, he was at the trouble of bestowing a few learned terms of art upon Sir Arthur, that at least he might not be tormented before his time. He took leave of him, with a.s.surances that he would return to Knockwinnock the next morning, with such information as would not fail to relieve Sir Arthur from all his distresses.

"For, since I have consulted in such matters, I ave never," said Mr.

Herman Dousterswivel, "approached so near de arcanum, what you call de great mystery,--de Panchresta--de Polychresta--I do know as much of it as Pelaso de Taranta, or Basilius--and either I will bring you in two and tree days de No. III. of Mr. Mishdigoat, or you shall call me one knave myself, and never look me in de face again no more at all."

The adept departed with this a.s.surance, in the firm resolution of making good the latter part of the proposition, and never again appearing before his injured patron. Sir Arthur remained in a doubtful and anxious state of mind. The positive a.s.surances of the philosopher, with the hard words Panchresta, Basilius, and so forth, produced some effect on his mind. But he had been too often deluded by such jargon, to be absolutely relieved of his doubt, and he retired for the evening into his library, in the fearful state of one who, hanging over a precipice, and without the means of retreat, perceives the stone on which he rests gradually parting from the rest of the crag, and about to give way with him.

The visions of hope decayed, and there increased in proportion that feverish agony of antic.i.p.ation with which a man, educated in a sense of consequence, and possessed of opulence,--the supporter of an ancient name, and the father of two promising children,--foresaw the hour approaching which should deprive him of all the splendour which time had made familiarly necessary to him, and send him forth into the world to struggle with poverty, with rapacity, and with scorn. Under these dire forebodings, his temper, exhausted by the sickness of delayed hope, became peevish and fretful, and his words and actions sometimes expressed a reckless desperation, which alarmed Miss Wardour extremely.

We have seen, on a former occasion, that Sir Arthur was a man of pa.s.sions lively and quick, in proportion to the weakness of his character in other respects; he was unused to contradiction, and if he had been hitherto, in general, good-humoured and cheerful, it was probably because the course of his life had afforded no such frequent provocation as to render his irritability habitual.

On the third morning after Dousterswivel's departure, the servant, as usual, laid on the breakfast table the newspaper and letters of the day.

Miss Wardour took up the former to avoid the continued ill-humour of her father, who had wrought himself into a violent pa.s.sion, because the toast was over-browned.

"I perceive how it is," was his concluding speech on this interesting subject,--"my servants, who have had their share of my fortune, begin to think there is little to be made of me in future. But while I am the scoundrel's master I will be so, and permit no neglect--no, nor endure a hair's-breadth diminution of the respect I am ent.i.tled to exact from them."

"I am ready to leave your honour's service this instant," said the domestic upon whom the fault had been charged, "as soon as you order payment of my wages."