The Bride of Lammermoor

But, without heeding this intimation, Lucy took him at his word. “Oh, if you be a man,” she said – “if you be a gentleman, assist me to find my father! You shall not leave me – you must go with me; he is dying perhaps while we are talking here!”

Then, without listening to excuse or apology, and holding fast by the stranger’s arm, though unconscious of anything save the support which it gave, and without which she could not have moved, mixed with a vague feeling of preventing his escape from her, she was urging, and almost dragging, him forward when Sir William Ashton came up, followed by the female attendant of blind Alice, and by two woodcutters, whom he had summoned from their occupation to his assistance. His joy at seeing his daughter safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another time have beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as she might have done upon his own.

“Lucy, my dear Lucy, are you safe? – are you well?” were the only words that broke from him as he embraced her in ecstasy.

“I am well, sir, thank God! and still more that I see you so; but this gentleman,” she said, quitting his arm and shrinking from him, “what must he think of me?” and her eloquent blood, flushing over neck and brow, spoke how much she was ashamed of the freedom with which she had craved, and even compelled, his assistance.

“This gentleman,” said Sir William Ashton, “will, I trust, not regret the trouble we have given him, when I assure him of the gratitude of the Lord Keeper for the greatest service which one man ever rendered to another – for the life of my child – for my own life, which he has saved by his bravery and presence of mind. He will, I am sure, permit us to request – ” “Request nothing of ME, my lord,” said the stranger, in a stern and peremptory tone; “I am the Master of Ravenswood.”

There was a dead pause of surprise, not unmixed with less pleasant feelings. The Master wrapt himself in his cloak, made a haughty inclination toward Lucy, muttering a few words of courtesy, as indistinctly heard as they seemed to be reluctantly uttered, and, turning from them, was immediately lost in the thicket.

“The Master of Ravenswood!” said the Lord Keeper, when he had recovered his momentary astonishment. “Hasten after him – stop him – beg him to speak to me for a single moment.”

The two foresters accordingly set off in pursuit of the stranger. They speedily reappeared, and, in an embarrassed and awkward manner, said the gentleman would not return.

The Lord Keeper took one of the fellows aside, and questioned him more closely what the Master of Ravenswood had said.

“He just said he wadna come back,” said the man, with the caution of a prudent Scotchman, who cared not to be the bearer of an unpleasant errand.

“He said something more, sir,” said the Lord Keeper, “and I insist on knowing what it was.”

“Why, then, my lord,” said the man, looking down, “he said – But it wad be nae pleasure to your lordship to hear it, for I dare say the Master meant nae ill.”

“That’s none of your concern, sir; I desire to hear the very words.”

“Weel, then,” replied the man, “he said, ‘Tell Sir William Ashton that the next time he and I forgather, he will nto be half sae blythe of our meeting as of our parting.’”

“Very well, sir,” said the Lord Keeper, “I believe he alludes to a wager we have on our hawks; it is a matter of no consequence.”

He turned to his daughter, who was by this time so much recovered as to be able to walk home. But the effect, which the various recollections connected with a scene so terrific made upon a mind which was susceptible in an extreme degree, was more permanent than the injury which her nerves had sustained. Visions of terror, both in sleep and in waking reveries, recalled to her the form of the furious animal, and the dreadful bellow with which he accompanied his career; and it was always the image of the Master of Ravenswood, with his native nobleness of countenance and form, that seemed to interpose betwixt her and assured death. It is, perhaps, at all times dangerous for a young person to suffer recollection to dwell repeatedly, and with too much complacency, on the same individual; but in Lucy’s situation it was almost unavoidable. She had never happened to see a young man of mien and features so romantic and so striking as young Ravenswood; but had she seen an hundred his equals or his superiors in those particulars, no one else would have been linked to her heart by the strong associations of remembered danger and escape, of gratitude, wonder, and curiosity. I say curiosity, for it is likely that the singularly restrained and unaccommodating manners of the Master of Ravenswood, so much at variance with the natural expression of his features and grace of his deportment, as they excited wonder by the contrast, had their effect in riveting her attention to the recollections. She knew little of Ravenswood, or the disputes which had existed betwixt her father and his, and perhaps could in her gentleness of mind hardly have comprehended the angry and bitter passions which they had engendered. But she knew that he was come of noble stem; was poor, though descended from the noble and the wealthy; and she felt that she could sympathise with the feelings of a proud mind, which urged him to recoil from the proffered gratitude of the new proprietors of his father’s house and domains. Would he have equally shunned their acknowledgments and avoided their intimacy, had her father’s request been urged more mildly, less abruptly, and softened with the grace which women so well know how to throw into their manner, when they mean to mediate betwixt the headlong passions of the ruder sex? This was a perilous question to ask her own mind – perilous both in the idea and its consequences.

Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of scene and new faces, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her instance, as it has done in many others; but her residence remained solitary, and her mind without those means of dissipating her pleasing visions. This solitude was chiefly owing to the absence of Lady Ashton, who was at this time in Edinburgh, watching the progress of some state-intrigue; the Lord Keeper only received society out of policy or ostentation, and was by nature rather reserved and unsociable; and thus no cavalier appeared to rival or to obscure the ideal picture of chivalrous excellence which Lucy had pictured to herself in the Master of Ravenswood.

While Lucy indulged in these dreams, she made frequent visits to old blind Alice, hoping it would be easy to lead her to talk on the subject which at present she had so imprudently admitted to occupy so large a portion of her thoughts. But Alice did not in this particular gratify her wishes and expectations. She spoke readily, and with pathetic feeling, concerning the family in general, but seemed to observe an especial and cautious silence on the subject of the present representative. The little she said of him was not altogether so favourable as Lucy had anticipated. She hinted that he was of a stern and unforgiving character, more ready to resent than to pardon injuries; and Lucy combined, with great alarm, the hints which she now dropped of these dangerous qualities with Alice’s advice to her father, so emphatically given, “to beware of Ravenswood.”

But that very Ravenswood, of whom such unjust suspicions had been entertained, had, almost immediately after they had been uttered, confuted them by saving at once her father’s life and her own. Had he nourished such black revenge as Alice’s dark hints seemed to indicate, no deed of active guilt was necessary to the full gratification of that evil passion. He needed but to have withheld for an instant his indispensable and effective assistance, and the object of his resentment must have perished, without any direct aggression on his part, by a death equally fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore, that some secret prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and misfortune, had led Alice to form conclusions injurious to the character, and irreconcilable both with the generous conduct and noble features, of the Master of Ravenswood. And in this belief Lucy reposed her hope, and went on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue, as beautiful and transient as the film of the gossamer when it is pearled with the morning dew and glimmering to the sun.

Her father, in the mean while, as well as the Master of Ravenswood, were making reflections, as frequent though more solid than those of Lucy, upon the singular event which had taken place. The Lord Keeper’s first task, when he returned home, was to ascertain by medical advice that his daughter had sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarming situation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy council the necessity of using conciliatory measures with young men, whose blood and temper were hot, and their experience of life limited. He did not hesitate to attribute some censure to the conduct of the officer, as having been unnecessarily irritating.

These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters which he wrote to those private friends into whose management the matter was likely to fall were of a yet more favourable tenor. He represented that lenity in this case would be equally politic and popular, whereas, considering the high respect with which the rites of interment are regarded in Scotland, any severity exercised against the Master of Ravenswood for protecting those of his father from interruption, would be on all sides most unfavourably construed. And, finally, assuming the language of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his particular request that this affair should be passed over without severe notice. He alluded with delicacy to the predicament in which he himself stood with young Ravenswood, as having succeeded in the long train of litigation by which the fortunes of that noble house had been so much reduced, and confessed it would be most peculiarly acceptable to his own feelings, could he find in some sort to counterbalance the disadvantages which he had occasioned the family, though only in the prosecution of his just and lawful rights. He therefore made it his particular and personal request that the matter should have no farther consequences, an insinuated a desire that he himself should have the merit of having put a stop to it by his favourable report and intercession. It was particularly remarkable that, contrary to his uniform practice, he made no special communication to Lady Ashton upon the subject of the tumult; and although he mentioned the alarm which Lucy had received from one of the wild cattle, yet he gave no detailed account of an incident so interesting and terrible.

There was much surprise among Sir William Ashton’s political friends and colleagues on receiving letters of a tenor so unexpected. On comparing notes together, one smiled, one put up his eyebrows, a third nodded acquiescence in the general wonder, and a fourth asked if they were sure these were ALL the letters the Lord Keeper had written on the subject. “It runs strangely in my mind, my lords, that none of these advices contain the root of the matter.”

But no secret letters of a contrary nature had been received, although the question seemed to imply the possibility of their existence.

“Well,” said an old grey-headed statesman, who had contrived, by shifting and trimming, to maintain his post at the steerage through all the changes of course which the vessel had held for thirty years, “I thought Sir William would hae verified the auld Scottish saying, ‘As soon comes the lamb’s skin to market as the auld tup’s’.”

“We must please him after his own fashion,” said another, “though it be an unlooked-for one.”

“A wilful man maun hae his way,” answered the old counsellor.

“The Keeper will rue this before year and day are out,” said a third; “the Master of Ravenswood is the lad to wind him a pirn.”

“Why, what would you do, my lords, with the poor young fellow?” said a noble Marquis present. “The Lord Keeper has got all his estates; he has not a cross to bless himself with.”

On which the ancient Lord Turntippet replied,

 
“If he hasna gear to fine,
He ha shins to pine.
 

“And that was our way before the Revolution: Lucitur cum persona, qui luere non potest cum crumena. Hegh, my lords, that’s gude law Latin.”

“I can see no motive,” replied the Marquis, “that any noble lord can have for urging this matter farther; let the Lord Keeper have the power to deal in it as he pleases.”

“Agree, agree – remit to the Lord Keeper, with any other person for fashion’s sake – Lord Hirplehooly, who is bed-ridden – one to be a quorum. Make your entry in the minutes, Mr. Clerk. And now, my lords, there is that young scattergood the Laird of Bucklaw’s fine to be disposed upon. I suppose it goes to my Lord Treasurer?”

“Shame be in my meal-poke, then,” exclaimed the Lord Turntippet, “and your hand aye in the nook of it! I had set that down for a bye-bit between meals for mysell.”

“To use one of your favourite saws, my lord,” replied the Marquis, “you are like the miller’s dog, that licks his lips before the bag is untied: the man is not fined yet.”

“But that costs but twa skarts of a pen,” said Lord Turntippet; “and surely there is nae noble lord that will presume to say that I, wha hae complied wi’ a’ compliances, taen all manner of tests, adjured all that was to be abjured, and sworn a’ that was to be sworn, for these thirty years bye-past, sticking fast by my duty to the state through good report and bad report, shouldna hae something now and then to synd my mouth wi’ after sic drouthy wark? Eh?”

“It would be very unreasonable indeed, my lord,” replied the Marquis, “had we either thought that your lordship’s drought was quenchable, or observed anything stick in your throat that required washing down.”

And so we close the scene on the privy council of that period.

CHAPTER VI

 
     For this are all these warriors come,
To hear an idle tale;
And o’er our death-accustom’d arms
Shall silly tears prevail?
 

HENRY MACKENZIE.

ON the evening of the day when the Lord Keeper and his daughter were saved from such imminent peril, two strangers were seated in the most private apartment of a small obscure inn, or rather alehouse, called the Tod’s Den [Hole], about three or four [five or six] miles from the Castle of Ravenswood and as far from the ruinous tower of Wolf’s Crag, betwixt which two places it was situated.

One of these strangers was about forty years of age, tall, and thin in the flanks, with an aquiline nose, dark penetrating eyes, and a shrewd but sinister cast of countenance. The other was about fifteen years younger, short, stout, ruddy-faced, and red-haired, with an open, resolute, and cheerful eye, to which careless and fearless freedom and inward daring gave fire and expression, notwithstanding its light grey colour. A stoup of wine (for in those days it was served out from the cask in pewter flagons) was placed on the table, and each had his quaigh or bicker before him. But there was little appearance of conviviality. With folded arms, and looks of anxious expectation, they eyed each other in silence, each wrapt in his own thoughts, and holding no communication with his neighbour. At length the younger broke silence by exclaiming: “What the foul fiend can detain the Master so long? He must have miscarried in his enterprise. Why did you dissuade me from going with him?”

“One man is enough to right his own wrong,” said the taller and older personage; “we venture our lives for him in coming thus far on such an errand.”

“You are but a craven after all, Craigengelt,” answered the younger, “and that’s what many folk have thought you before now.” “But what none has dared to tell me,” said Craigengelt, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword; “and, but that I hold a hasty man no better than a fool, I would – ” he paused for his companion’s answer.

“WOULD you?” said the other, coolly; “and why do you not then?”

Craigengelt drew his cutlass an inch or two, and then returned it with violence into the scabbard – “Because there is a deeper stake to be played for than the lives of twenty hare-brained gowks like you.”

“You are right there,” said his companion, “for it if were not that these forfeitures, and that last fine that the old driveller Turntippet is gaping for, and which, I dare say, is laid on by this time, have fairly driven me out of house and home, I were a coxcomb and a cuckoo to boot to trust your fair promises of getting me a commission in the Irish brigade. What have I to do with the Irish brigade? I am a plain Scotchman, as my father was before me; and my grand-aunt, Lady Girnington, cannot live for ever.”

“Ay, Bucklaw,” observed Craigengelt, “but she may live for many a long day; and for your father, he had land and living, kept himself close from wadsetters and money-lenders, paid each man his due, and lived on his own.”

“And whose fault is it that I have not done so too?” said Bucklaw – “whose but the devil’s and yours, and such-like as you, that have led me to the far end of a fair estate? And now I shall be obliged, I suppose, to shelter and shift about like yourself: live one week upon a line of secret intelligence from Saint Germains; another upon a report of a rising in the Highlands; get my breakfast and morning draught of sack from old Jacobite ladies, and give them locks of my old wig for the Chevalier’s hair; second my friend in his quarrel till he comes to the field, and then flinch from him lest so important a political agent should perish from the way. All this I must do for bread, besides calling myself a captain!”

“You think you are making a fine speech now,” said Craigengelt, “and showing much wit at my expense. Is starving or hanging better than the life I am obliged to lead, because the present fortunes of the king cannot sufficiently support his envoys?” “Starving is honester, Craigengelt, and hanging is like to be the end on’t. But what you mean to make of this poor fellow Ravenswood, I know not. He has no money left, any more than I; his lands are all pawned and pledged, and the interest eats up the rents, and is not satisfied, and what do you hope to make by meddling in his affairs?”

“Content yourself, Bucklaw; I know my business,” replied Craigengelt. “Besides that his name, and his father’s services in 1689, will make such an acquisition sound well both at Versailles and Saint Germains, you will also please be informed that the Master of Ravenswood is a very different kind of a young fellow from you. He has parts and address, as well as courage and talents, and will present himself abroad like a young man of head as well as heart, who knows something more than the speed of a horse or the flight of a hawk. I have lost credit of late, by bringing over no one that had sense to know more than how to unharbour a stag, or take and reclaim an eyas. The Master has education, sense, and penetration.”

“And yet is not wise enough to escape the tricks of a kidnapper, Craigengelt?” replied the younger man. “But don’t be angry; you know you will nto fight, and so it is as well to leave your hilt in peace and quiet, and tell me in sober guise how you drew the Master into your confidence?”

“By flattering his love of vengeance, Bucklaw,” answered Craigengelt. “He has always distrusted me; but I watched my time, and struck while his temper was red-hot with the sense of insult and of wrong. He goes now to expostulate, as he says, and perhaps thinks, with Sir William Ashton. I say, that if they meet, and the lawyer puts him to his defence, the Master will kill him; for he had that sparkle in his eye which never deceives you when you would read a man’s purpose. At any rate, he will give him such a bullying as will be construed into an assault on a privy councillor; so there will be a total breach betwixt him and government. Scotland will be too hot for him; France will gain him; and we will all set sail together in the French brig ‘L’Espoir,’ which is hovering for us off Eyemouth.”

“Content am I,” said Bucklaw; “Scotland has little left that I care about; and if carrying the Master with us will get us a better reception in France, why, so be it, a God’s name. I doubt our own merits will procure us slender preferment; and I trust he will send a ball through the Keeper’s head before he joins us. One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a year, just to keep the others on their good behaviour.”

“That is very true,” replied Craigengelt; “and it reminds me that I must go and see that our horses have been fed and are in readiness; for, should such deed be done, it will be no time for grass to grow beneath their heels.” He proceeded as far as the door, then turned back with a look of earnestness, and said to Bucklaw: “Whatever should come of this business, I am sure you will do me the justice to remember that I said nothing to the Master which could imply my accession to any act of violence which he may take it into his head to commit.”

“No, no, not a single word like accession,” replied Bucklaw; “you know too well the risk belonging to these two terrible words, ‘art and part.’” Then, as if to himself, he recited the following lines:

“The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs, And pointed full upon the stroke of murder.

“What is that you are talking to yourself?” said Craigengelt, turning back with some anxiety.

“Nothing, only two lines I have heard upon the stage,” replied his companion.

“Bucklaw,” said Craigengelt, “I sometimes think you should have been a stage-player yourself; all is fancy and frolic with you.”

“I have often thought so myself,” said Bucklaw. “I believe it would be safer than acting with you in the Fatal Conspiracy. But away, play your own part, and look after the horses like a groom as you are. A play-actor – a stage-player!” he repeated to himself; “that would have deserved a stab, but that Craigengelt’s a coward. And yet I should like the profession well enough. Stay, let me see; ay, I would come out in Alexander:

 

 
Thus from the grave I rise to save my love,
Draw all your swords, and quick as lightning move.
When I rush on, sure none will dare to stay:
‘Tis love commands, and glory leads the way.”
 

As with a voice of thunder, and his hand upon his sword, Bucklaw repeated the ranting couplets of poor Lee, Craigengelt re-entered with a face of alarm.

“We are undone, Bucklaw! The Master’s led horse has cast himself over his halter in the stable, and is dead lame. His hackney will be set up with the day’s work, and now he has no fresh horse; he will never get off.”

“Egad, there will be no moving with the speed of lightning this bout,” said Bucklaw, drily. “But stay, you can give him yours.”

“What! and be taken myself? I thank you for the proposal,” said Craigengelt.

“Why,” replied Bucklaw, “if the Lord Keeper should have met with a mischance, which for my part I cannot suppose, for the Master is not the lad to shoot an old and unarmed man – but IF there should have been a fray at the Castle, you are neither art not part in it, you know, so have nothing to fear.”

“True, true,” answered the other, with embarrassment; “but consider my commission from Saint Germains.”

“Which many men think is a commission of your own making, noble Captain. Well, if you will not give him your horse, why, d – n it, he must have mine.”

“Yours?” said Craigengelt.

“Ay, mine,” repeated Bucklaw; “it shall never be said that I agreed to back a gentleman in a little affair of honour, and neither helped him on with it nor off from it.”

“You will give him your horse? and have you considered the loss?”

“Loss! why, Grey Gilbert cost me twenty Jacobuses, that’s true; but then his hackney is worth something, and his Black Moor is worth twice as much were he sound, and I know how to handle him. Take a fat sucking mastiff whelp, flay and bowel him, stuff the body full of black and grey snails, roast a reasonable time, and baste with oil of spikenard, saffron, cinnamon, and honey, anoint with the dripping, working it in – ”

“Yes, Bucklaw; but in the mean while, before the sprain is cured, nay, before the whelp is roasted, you will be caught and hung. Depend on it, the chase will be hard after Ravenswood. I wish we had made our place of rendezvous nearer to the coast.”

“On my faith, then,” said Bucklaw, “I had best go off just now, and leave my horse for him. Stay – stay, he comes: I hear a horse’s feet.”

“Are you sure there is only one?” said Craigengelt. “I fear there is a chase; I think I hear three or four galloping together. I am sure I hear more horses than one.”

“Pooh, pooh, it is the wench of the house clattering to the well in her pattens. By my faith, Captain, you should give up both your captainship and your secret service, for you are as easily scared as a wild goose. But here comes the Master alone, and looking as gloomy as a night in November.”

The Master of Ravenswood entered the room accordingly, his cloak muffled around him, his arms folded, his looks stern, and at the same time dejected. He flung his cloak from him as he entered, threw himself upon a chair, and appeared sunk in a profound reverie.

“What has happened? What have you done?” was hastily demanded by Craigengelt and Bucklaw in the same moment.

“Nothing!” was the short and sullen answer.

“Nothing! and left us, determined to call the old villain to account for all the injuries that you, we, and the country have received at his hand? Have you seen him?” “I have,” replied the Master of Ravenswood.

“Seen him – and come away without settling scores which have been so long due?” said Bucklaw; “I would not have expected that at the hand of the Master of Ravenswood.”

“No matter what you expected,” replied Ravenswood; “it is not to you, sir, that I shall be disposed to render any reason for my conduct.”

“Patience, Bucklaw,” said Craigengelt, interrupting his companion, who seemed about to make an angry reply. “The Master has been interrupted in his purpose by some accident; but he must excuse the anxious curiosity of friends who are devoted to his cause like you and me.”

“Friends, Captain Craigengelt!” retorted Ravenswood, haughtily; “I am ignorant what familiarity passed betwixt us to entitle you to use that expression. I think our friendship amounts to this, that we agreed to leave Scotland together so soon as I should have visited the alienated mansion of my fathers, and had an interview with its present possessor – I will not call him proprietor.”

“Very true, Master,” answered Bucklaw; “and as we thought you had in mind to do something to put your neck in jeopardy, Craigie and I very courteously agreed to tarry for you, although ours might run some risk in consequence. As to Craigie, indeed, it does not very much signify: he had gallows written on his brow in the hour of his birth; but I should not like to discredit my parentage by coming to such an end in another man’s cause.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Master of Ravenswood, “I am sorry if I have occasioned you any inconvenience, but I must claim the right of judging what is best for my own affairs, without rendering explanations to any one. I have altered my mind, and do not design to leave the country this season.”

“Not to leave the country, Master!” exclaimed Craigengelt. “Not to go over, after all the trouble and expense I have incurred – after all the risk of discovery, and the expense of freight and demurrage!”

“Sir,” replied the Master of Ravenswood, “when I designed to leave this country in this haste, I made use of your obliging offer to procure me means of conveyance; but I do not recollect that I pledged myself to go off, if I found occasion to alter my mind. For your trouble on my account, I am sorry, and I thank you; your expense,” he added, putting his hand into his pocket, “admits a more solid compensation: freight and demurrage are matters with which I am unacquainted, Captain Craigengelt, but take my purse and pay yourself according to your own conscience.” And accordingly he tendered a purse with some gold in it to the soi-disant captain.

But here Bucklaw interposed in his turn. “Your fingers, Craigie, seem to itch for that same piece of green network,” said he; “but I make my vow to God, that if they offer to close upon it, I will chop them off with my whinger. Since the Master has changed his mind, I suppose we need stay here no longer; but in the first place I beg leave to tell him – ”

“Tell him anything you will,” said Craigengelt, “if you will first allow me to state the inconveniences to which he will expose himself by quitting our society, to remind him of the obstacles to his remaining here, and of the difficulties attending his proper introduction at Versailles and Saint Germains without the countenance of those who have established useful connexions.”

“Besides forfeiting the friendship,” said Bucklaw, “of at least one man of spirit and honour.”

“Gentlemen,” said Ravenswood, “permit me once more to assure you that you have been pleased to attach to our temporary connexion more importance than I ever meant that it should have. When I repair to foreign courts, I shall not need the introduction of an intriguing adventurer, nor is it necessary for me to set value on the friendship of a hot-headed bully.” With these words, and without waiting for an answer, he left the apartment, remounted his horse, and was heard to ride off.