The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott (highly recommended books TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Walter Scott
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“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.
I do too ill in this,
And must not think but that a parent’s plaint
Will move the heavens to pour forth misery
Upon the head of disobediency.
Yet reason tells us, parents are o’erseen,
When with too strict a rein they do hold in
Their child’s affection, and control that love,
Which the high powers divine inspire them with.
The Hog hath lost his Pearl.
The feast of Ravenswood Castle was as remarkable for its profusion as that of Wolf’s Crag had been for its ill-veiled penury. The Lord Keeper might feel internal pride at the contrast, but he had too much tact to suffer it to appear. On the contrary, he seemed to remember with pleasure what he called Mr. Balderstone’s bachelor’s meal, and to be rather disgusted than pleased with the display upon his own groaning board.
“We do these things,” he said, “because others do them; but I was bred a plain man at my father’s frugal table, and I should like well would my wife and family permit me to return to my sowens and my poor-man-of-mutton.”
This was a little overstretched. The Master only answered, “That different ranks—I mean,” said he, correcting himself, “different degrees of wealth require a different style of housekeeping.”
This dry remark put a stop to further conversation on the subject, nor is it necessary to record that which was substituted in its place. The evening was spent with freedom, and even cordiality; and Henry had so far overcome his first apprehensions, that he had settled a party for coursing a stag with the representative and living resemblance of grim Sir Malise of Ravenswood, called the Revenger. The next morning was the appointed time. It rose upon active sportsmen and successful sport. The banquet came in course; and a pressing invitation to tarry yet another day was given and accepted. This Ravenswood had resolved should be the last of his stay; but he recollected he had not yet visited the ancient and devoted servant of his house, Old Alice, and it was but kind to dedicate one morning to the gratification of so ancient an adherent.
To visit Alice, therefore, a day was devoted, and Lucy was the Master’s guide upon the way. Henry, it is true, accompanied them, and took from their walk the air of a tête-à -tête, while, in reality, it was little else, considering the variety of circumstances which occurred to prevent the boy from giving the least attention to what passed between his companions. Now a rook settled on a branch within shot; anon a hare crossed their path, and Henry and his greyhound went astray in pursuit of it; then he had to hold a long conversation with the forester, which detained him a while behind his companions; and again he went to examine the earth of a badger, which carried him on a good way before them.
The conversation betwixt the Master and his sister, meanwhile, took an interesting, and almost a confidential, turn. She could not help mentioning her sense of the pain he must feel in visiting scenes so well known to him, bearing now an aspect so different; and so gently was her sympathy expressed, that Ravenswood felt it for a moment as a full requital of all his misfortunes. Some such sentiment escaped him, which Lucy heard with more of confusion than displeasure; and she may be forgiven the imprudence of listening to such language, considering that the situation in which she was placed by her father seemed to authorise Ravenswood to use it. Yet she made an effort to turn the conversation, and she succeeded; for the Master also had advanced farther than he intended, and his conscience had instantly checked him when he found himself on the verge of speaking of love to the daughter of Sir William Ashton.
They now approached the hut of Old Alice, which had of late been rendered more comfortable, and presented an appearance less picturesque, perhaps, but far neater than before. The old woman was on her accustomed seat beneath the weeping birch, basking, with the listless enjoyment of age and infirmity, in the beams of the autumn sun. At the arrival of her visitors she turned her head towards them. “I hear your step, Miss Ashton,” she said, “but the gentleman who attends you is not my lord, your father.”
“And why should you think so, Alice?” said Lucy; “or how is it possible for you to judge so accurately by the sound of a step, on this firm earth, and in the open air?”
“My hearing, my child, has been sharpened by my blindness, and I can now draw conclusions from the slightest sounds, which formerly reached my ears as unheeded as they now approach yours. Necessity is a stern but an excellent schoolmistress, and she that has lost her sight must collect her information from other sources.”
“Well, you hear a man’s step, I grant it,” said Lucy; “but why, Alice, may it not be my father’s?”
“The pace of age, my love, is timid and cautious: the foot takes leave of the
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