Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated - Sir Walter Scott
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"What I chiefly fear," said Edith, "is his having engaged in some of the
plots of this fluctuating and unhappy time. I know his heart is with that
dreadful Claverhouse and his army, and I believe he would have joined
them ere now but for my uncle's death, which gave him so much additional
trouble on our account. How singular that one so rational and so deeply
sensible of the errors of the exiled family should be ready to risk all
for their restoration!"
"What can I say?" answered Lady Emily,--"it is a point of honour with
Evandale. Our family have always been loyal; he served long in the
Guards; the Viscount of Dundee was his commander and his friend for
years; he is looked on with an evil eye by many of his own relations, who
set down his inactivity to the score of want of spirit. You must be
aware, my dear Edith, how often family connections and early
predilections influence our actions more than abstract arguments. But I
trust Evandale will continue quiet,--though, to tell you truth, I believe
you are the only one who can keep him so."
"And how is it in my power?" said Miss Bellenden.
"You can furnish him with the Scriptural apology for not going forth with
the host,--'he has married a wife, and therefore cannot come.'"
"I have promised," said Edith, in a faint voice; "but I trust I shall not
be urged on the score of time."
"Nay," said Lady Emily, "I will leave Evandale (and here he comes) to
plead his own cause."
"Stay, stay, for God's sake!" said Edith, endeavouring to detain her.
"Not I, not I," said the young lady, making her escape; "the third person
makes a silly figure on such occasions. When you want me for breakfast, I
will be found in the willow-walk by the river."
As she tripped out of the room, Lord Evandale entered. "Good-morrow,
Brother, and good-by till breakfast-time," said the lively young lady;
"I trust you will give Miss Bellenden some good reasons for disturbing
her rest so early in the morning."
And so saying, she left them together, without waiting a reply.
"And now, my lord," said Edith, "may I desire to know the meaning of your
singular request to meet you here at so early an hour?"
She was about to add that she hardly felt herself excusable in having
complied with it; but upon looking at the person whom she addressed, she
was struck dumb by the singular and agitated expression of his
countenance, and interrupted herself to exclaim, "For God's sake, what is
the matter?"
"His Majesty's faithful subjects have gained a great and most decisive
victory near Blair of Athole; but, alas! my gallant friend Lord Dundee--"
"Has fallen?" said Edith, anticipating the rest of his tidings.
"True, most true: he has fallen in the arms of victory, and not a man
remains of talents and influence sufficient to fill up his loss in King
James's service. This, Edith, is no time for temporizing with our duty. I
have given directions to raise my followers, and I must take leave of you
this evening."
"Do not think of it, my lord," answered Edith; "your life is--essential
to your friends,--do not throw it away in an adventure so rash. What can
your single arm, and the few tenants or servants who might follow you, do
against the force of almost all Scotland, the Highland clans only
excepted?"
"Listen to me, Edith," said Lord Evandale. "I am not so rash as you may
suppose me, nor are my present motives of such light importance as to
affect only those personally dependent on myself. The Life Guards, with
whom I served so long, although new-modelled and new-officered by the
Prince of Orange, retain a predilection for the cause of their rightful
master; and "--and here he whispered as if he feared even the walls of
the apartment had ears--"when my foot is known to be in the stirrup, two
regiments of cavalry have sworn to renounce the usurper's service, and
fight under my orders. They delayed only till Dundee should descend into
the Lowlands; but since he is no more, which of his successors dare take
that decisive step, unless encouraged by the troops declaring themselves!
Meantime, the zeal of the soldiers will die away. I must bring them to a
decision while their hearts are glowing with the victory their old leader
has obtained, and burning to avenge his untimely death."
"And will you, on the faith of such men as you know these soldiers to
be," said Edith, "take a part of such dreadful moment?"
"I will," said Lord Evandale,--"I must; my honour and loyalty are both
pledged for it."
"And all for the sake," continued Miss Bellenden, "of a prince whose
measures, while he was on the throne, no one could condemn more than Lord
Evandale?"
"Most true," replied Lord Evandale; "and as I resented, even during the
plenitude of his power, his innovations on Church and State, like a
freeborn subject, I am determined I will assert his real rights, when he
is in adversity, like a loyal one. Let courtiers and sycophants flatter
power and desert misfortune; I will neither do the one nor the other."
"And if you are determined to act what my feeble judgment must still term
rashly, why give yourself the pain of this untimely meeting?"
"Were it not enough to answer," said Lord Evandale, "that, ere rushing on
battle, I wished to bid adieu to my betrothed bride? Surely it is judging
coldly of my feelings, and showing too plainly the indifference of your
own, to question my motive for a request so natural."
"But why in this place, my lord," said Edith; "and why with such peculiar
circumstances of mystery?"
"Because," he replied, putting a letter into her hand, "I have yet
another request, which I dare hardly proffer, even when prefaced by these
credentials."
In haste and terror, Edith glanced over the letter, which was from her
grandmother.
"My dearest childe," such was its tenor in style and spelling, "I
never more deeply regretted the reumatizm, which disqualified me
from riding on horseback, than at this present writing, when I would
most have wished to be where this paper will soon be, that is at
Fairy Knowe, with my poor dear Willie's only child. But it is the
will of God I should not be with her, which I conclude to be the
case, as much for the pain I now suffer, as because it hath now not
given way either to cammomile poultices or to decoxion of wild
mustard, wherewith I have often relieved others. Therefore, I must
tell you, by writing instead of word of mouth, that, as my young
Lord Evandale is called to the present campaign, both by his honour
and his duty, he hath earnestly solicited me that the bonds of holy
matrimony be knitted before his departure to the wars between you
and him, in implement of the indenture formerly entered into for
that effeck, whereuntill, as I see no raisonable objexion, so I
trust that you, who have been always a good and obedient childe,
will not devize any which has less than raison. It is trew that the
contrax of our house have heretofore been celebrated in a manner
more befitting our Rank, and not in private, and with few witnesses,
as a thing done in a corner. But it has been Heaven's own free will,
as well as those of the kingdom where we live, to take away from us
our estate, and from the King his throne. Yet I trust He will yet
restore the rightful heir to the throne, and turn his heart to the
true Protestant Episcopal faith, which I have the better right to
expect to see even with my old eyes, as I have beheld the royal
family when they were struggling as sorely with masterful usurpers
and rebels as they are now; that is to say, when his most sacred
Majesty, Charles the Second of happy memory, honoured our poor house
of Tillietudlem by taking his _disjune_ therein," etc., etc., etc.
We will not abuse the reader's patience by quoting more of Lady
Margaret's prolix epistle. Suffice it to say that it closed by laying her
commands on her grandchild to consent to the solemnization of her
marriage without loss of time.
"I never thought till this instant," said Edith, dropping the letter from
her hand, "that Lord Evandale would have acted ungenerously."
"Ungenerously, Edith!" replied her lover. "And how can you apply such a
term to my desire to call you mine, ere I part from you, perhaps for
ever?"
"Lord Evandale ought to have remembered," said Edith, "that when his
perseverance, and, I must add, a due sense of his merit and of the
obligations we owed him, wrung from me a slow consent that I would one
day comply with his wishes, I made it my condition that I should not be
pressed to a hasty accomplishment of my promise; and now he avails
himself of his interest with my only remaining relative to hurry me with
precipitate and even indelicate importunity. There is more selfishness
than generosity, my lord, in such eager and urgent solicitation."
Lord Evandale, evidently much hurt, took two or three turns through the
apartment ere he replied to this accusation; at length he spoke: "I
should have escaped this painful charge, durst I at once have mentioned
to Miss Bellendon my principal reason for urging this request. It is one
which she will probably despise on her own account, but which ought to
weigh with her for the sake of Lady Margaret. My death in battle must
give my whole estate to my heirs of entail; my forfeiture as a traitor,
by the usurping Government, may vest it in the Prince of Orange or some
Dutch favourite. In either case, my venerable friend and betrothed bride
must remain unprotected and in poverty. Vested with the rights and
provisions of Lady Evandale, Edith will find, in the power of supporting
her aged parent, some consolation for having condescended to share the
titles and fortunes of one who does not pretend to be worthy of her."
Edith was struck dumb by an argument which she had not expected, and was
compelled to acknowledge that Lord Evandale's suit was urged with
delicacy as well as with consideration.
"And yet," she said, "such is the waywardness with which my heart reverts
to former times that I cannot," she burst into tears, "suppress a degree
of ominous reluctance at fulfilling my engagement upon such a brief
summons."
"We have already fully considered this painful subject," said Lord
Evandale; "and I hoped, my dear Edith, your own inquiries, as well as
mine, had fully convinced you that these regrets were fruitless."
"Fruitless indeed!" said Edith, with a deep sigh, which, as if by an
unexpected echo, was repeated from the adjoining apartment. Miss
Bellenden started at the sound, and scarcely composed herself upon Lord
Evandale's assurances that she had heard but the echo of her own
respiration.
"It sounded strangely distinct," she said, "and almost ominous; but my
feelings are so harassed that the slightest trifle agitates them."
Lord Evandale eagerly attempted to soothe her alarm, and reconcile her to
a measure which, however hasty, appeared to him the only means by which
he could secure her independence. He urged his claim in virtue of the
contract, her grandmother's wish and command, the propriety of insuring
her comfort and independence, and touched lightly on his own long
attachment, which he had evinced by so many and such various services.
These Edith felt the more, the less they were insisted upon; and at
length, as she had nothing to oppose to his ardour, excepting a causeless
reluctance which she herself was ashamed to oppose against so much
generosity, she was compelled to rest upon the impossibility of having
the ceremony performed upon such hasty notice, at such a time and place.
But for all this Lord Evandale was prepared, and he explained, with
joyful alacrity, that the former chaplain of his regiment was in
attendance at the Lodge with a faithful domestic, once a non-commissioned
officer in the same corps; that his sister was also possessed of the
secret; and that Headrigg and his wife might be added to the list of
witnesses, if agreeable to Miss Bellenden. As to the place, he had chosen
it on very purpose. The marriage was to remain a secret, since Lord
Evandale was to depart in disguise very soon after it was solemnized,--a
circumstance which, had their union been public, must have drawn upon him
the attention of the Government, as being altogether unaccountable,
unless from his being engaged in some dangerous design. Having hastily
urged these motives and explained his arrangements, he ran, without
waiting for an answer, to summon his sister to attend his bride, while he
went in search of the other persons whose presence was necessary.
When Lady Emily arrived, she found her friend in an agony of tears, of
which she was at some loss to comprehend the reason, being one of those
damsels who think there is nothing either wonderful or terrible in
matrimony, and joining with most who knew him in thinking that it could
not be rendered peculiarly alarming by Lord Evandale being the
bridegroom. Influenced by these feelings, she exhausted in succession all
the usual arguments for courage, and all the expressions of sympathy and
condolence ordinarily employed on such occasions. But when Lady Emily
beheld her future sister-in-law deaf to all those ordinary topics of
consolation; when she beheld tears follow fast and without intermission
down cheeks as pale as marble; when she felt that the hand which she
pressed in order to enforce her arguments turned cold within her grasp,
and lay, like that of a corpse, insensible and unresponsive to her
caresses, her feelings of sympathy gave way to those of hurt pride and
pettish displeasure.
"I must own," she said, "that I am something at a loss to understand all
this, Miss Bellenden. Months have passed since you agreed to marry my
brother, and you have postponed the fulfilment of your engagement from
one period to another, as if you had to avoid some dishonourable or
highly disagreeable connection. I think I can answer for Lord Evandale
that he will seek no woman's hand against her inclination; and, though
his sister, I may boldly say that he does not need to urge any lady
further than her inclinations carry her. You will forgive me, Miss
Bellenden; but your present distress augurs ill for my brother's future
happiness, and I must needs say that he does not merit all these
expressions of dislike and dolour, and that they seem an odd return for
an attachment which he has manifested so long, and in so many ways."
"You are right, Lady Emily," said Edith, drying her eyes and endeavouring
to resume her natural manner, though still betrayed by her faltering
voice and the paleness of her cheeks,--"you are quite right; Lord
Evandale merits such usage from no one, least of all from her whom he has
honoured with his regard. But if I have given way, for the last time, to
a sudden and irresistible burst of feeling, it is my consolation, Lady
Emily, that your brother knows the cause, that I have hid nothing from
him, and that he at least is not apprehensive of finding in Edith
Bellenden a wife undeserving of his affection. But still you are right,
and I merit your censure for indulging for a moment fruitless regret and
painful remembrances. It shall be so no longer; my lot is cast with
Evandale, and with him I am resolved to bear it. Nothing shall in future
occur to excite his complaints or the resentment of his relations; no
idle recollections of other days shall intervene to prevent the zealous
and affectionate discharge of my duty; no vain illusions recall the
memory of other days--"
As she spoke these words, she slowly raised her eyes, which had before
been hidden by her hand, to the latticed window of her apartment, which
was partly open, uttered a dismal shriek, and fainted. Lady Emily turned
her eyes in the same direction, but saw only the shadow of a man, which
seemed to disappear from the window, and, terrified more by the state of
Edith than by the apparition she had herself witnessed, she uttered
shriek upon shriek for assistance. Her brother soon arrived, with the
chaplain and Jenny Dennison; but strong and vigorous remedies were
necessary ere they could recall Miss Bellenden to sense and motion. Even
then her language was wild and incoherent.
[Illustration: Uttered A Dismal Shriek, And Fainted--224]
"Press me no farther," she said to Lord Evandale,--"it cannot be; Heaven
and earth, the living and the dead, have leagued themselves against this
ill-omened union. Take all I can give,--my sisterly regard, my devoted
friendship. I will love you as a sister and serve you as a bondswoman,
but never speak to me more of marriage."
The astonishment of Lord Evandale may easily be conceived.
"Emily," he said to his sister, "this is your doing. I was accursed when
I thought of bringing you here; some of your confounded folly has driven
her mad!"
"On my word, Brother," answered Lady Emily, "you're sufficient to drive
all the women in Scotland mad. Because your mistress seems much disposed
to jilt you, you quarrel with your sister, who has been arguing in your
cause, and had brought her to a quiet hearing, when, all of a sudden, a
man looked in at a window, whom her crazed sensibility mistook either for
you or some one else, and has treated us gratis with an excellent tragic
scene."
"What man? What window?" said Lord Evandale, in impatient displeasure.
"Miss Bellenden is incapable of trifling with me; and yet what else could
have--"
"Hush! hush!" said Jenny, whose interest lay particularly in shifting
further inquiry; "for Heaven's sake, my lord, speak low, for my lady
begins to recover."
Edith was no sooner somewhat restored to herself than she begged, in a
feeble voice, to be left alone with Lord Evandale. All retreated,--Jenny
with her usual air of officious simplicity, Lady Emily and the chaplain
with that of awakened curiosity. No sooner had they left the apartment
than Edith beckoned Lord Evandale to sit beside her on the couch; her
next motion was to take his hand, in spite of his surprised resistance,
to her lips; her last was to sink from her seat and to clasp his knees.
"Forgive me, my lord!" she exclaimed, "forgive me! I must deal most
untruly by you, and break a solemn engagement. You have my friendship, my
highest regard, my most sincere gratitude; you have more,--you have my
word and my faith; but--oh, forgive me, for the fault is not mine--you
have not my love, and I cannot marry you without a sin!"
"You dream, my dearest Edith!" said Evandale, perplexed in the utmost
degree, "you let your imagination beguile you; this is but some delusion
of an over-sensitive mind. The person whom you preferred to me has been
long in a better world, where your unavailing regret cannot follow him,
or, if it could, would only diminish his happiness."
"You are mistaken, Lord Evandale," said Edith, solemnly; "I am not a
sleep-walker or a madwoman. No, I could not have believed from any one
what I have seen. But, having seen him, I must believe mine own eyes."
"Seen him,--seen whom?" asked Lord Evandale, in great anxiety.
"Henry Morton," replied Edith, uttering these two words as if they were
her last, and very nearly fainting when she had done so.
"Miss Bellenden," said Lord Evandale, "you treat me like a fool or a
child. If you repent your engagement to me," he continued, indignantly,
"I am not a man to enforce it against your inclination; but deal with me
as a man, and forbear this trifling."
He was about to go on, when he perceived, from her quivering eye and
pallid cheek, that nothing less than imposture was intended, and that by
whatever means her imagination had been so impressed, it was really
disturbed by unaffected awe and terror. He changed his tone, and exerted
all his eloquence in endeavouring to soothe and extract from her the
secret cause of such terror.
"I saw him!" she repeated,--"I saw Henry Morton stand at that window, and
look into the apartment at the moment I was on the point of abjuring him
for ever. His face was darker, thinner, and paler than it was wont to be;
his dress was a horseman's cloak, and hat looped down over his face; his
expression was like that he wore on that dreadful morning when he was
examined by Claverhouse at Tillietudlem. Ask your sister, ask Lady Emily,
if she did not see him as well as I. I know what has called him up,--he
came to upbraid me, that, while my heart was with him in the deep and
dead sea, I was about to give my hand to another. My lord, it is ended
between you and me; be the consequences what they will, she cannot marry
whose union disturbs the repose of the dead."
"Good Heaven!" said Evandale, as he paced the room, half mad himself with
surprise and vexation, "her fine understanding must be totally
overthrown, and that by the effort which she has made to comply with my
ill-timed, though well-meant, request. Without rest and attention her
health is ruined for ever."
At this moment the door opened, and Halliday, who had been Lord
Evandale's principal personal attendant since they both left the Guards
on the Revolution, stumbled into the room with a countenance as pale and
ghastly as terror could paint it.
"What is the matter next, Halliday?" cried his master, starting up. "Any
discovery of the--"
He had just recollection sufficient to stop short in the midst of the
dangerous sentence.
"No, sir," said Halliday, "it is not that, nor anything like that; but I
have seen a ghost!"
"A ghost, you eternal idiot!" said Lord Evandale, forced altogether out
of his patience. "Has all mankind sworn to go mad in order to drive me
so? What ghost, you simpleton?"
"The ghost of Henry Morton, the Whig captain at Bothwell Bridge," replied
Halliday. "He passed by me like a fire-flaught when I was in the garden!"
"This is midsummer madness," said Lord Evandale, "or there is some
strange villainy afloat. Jenny, attend your lady to her chamber, while I
endeavour to find a clue to all this."
But Lord Evandale's inquiries were in vain. Jenny, who might have given
(had she chosen) a very satisfactory explanation, had an interest to
leave the matter in darkness; and interest was a matter which now weighed
principally with Jenny, since the possession of an active and
affectionate husband in her own proper right had altogether allayed her
spirit of coquetry. She had made the best use of the first moments of
confusion hastily to remove all traces of any one having slept in the
apartment adjoining to the parlour, and even to erase the mark of
footsteps beneath the window, through which she conjectured Morton's face
had been seen, while attempting, ere he left the garden, to gain one look
at her whom he had so long loved, and was now on the point of losing for
ever. That he had passed Halliday in the garden was equally clear; and
she learned from her elder boy, whom she had employed to have the
stranger's horse saddled and ready for his departure, that he had rushed
into the stable, thrown the child a broad gold piece, and, mounting his
horse, had ridden with fearful rapidity down towards the Clyde. The
secret was, therefore, in their own family, and Jenny was resolved it
should remain so.
"For, to be sure," she said, "although her lady and Halliday kend Mr.
Morton by broad daylight, that was nae reason I suld own to kenning him
in the gloaming and by candlelight, and him keeping his face frae Cuddie
and me a' the time."
So she stood resolutely upon the negative when examined by Lord Evandale.
As for Halliday, he could only say that as he entered the garden-door,
the supposed apparition met him, walking swiftly, and with a visage on
which anger and grief appeared to be contending.
"He knew him well," he said, "having been repeatedly guard upon him, and
obliged to write down his marks of stature and visage in case of escape.
And there were few faces like Mr. Morton's." But what should make him
haunt the country where he was neither hanged nor shot, he, the said
Halliday, did not pretend to conceive.
Lady Emily confessed she had seen the face of a man at the window, but
her evidence went no farther. John Gudyill deponed _nil novit in causa_.
He had left his gardening to get his morning dram just at the time when
the apparition had taken place. Lady Emily's servant was waiting orders
in the kitchen, and there was not another being within a quarter of a
mile of the house.
Lord Evandale returned perplexed and dissatisfied in the highest degree
at beholding a plan which he thought necessary not less for the
protection of Edith in contingent circumstances, than for the assurance
of his own happiness, and which he had brought so very near perfection,
thus broken off without any apparent or rational cause. His knowledge of
Edith's character set her beyond the suspicion of covering any capricious
change of determination by a pretended vision. But he would have set the
apparition down to the influence of an overstrained imagination, agitated
by the circumstances in which she had so suddenly been placed, had it not
been for the coinciding testimony of Halliday, who had no reason for
thinking of Morton more than any other person, and knew nothing of Miss
Bellenden's vision when he promulgated his own. On the other hand, it
seemed in the highest degree improbable that Morton, so long and so
vainly sought after, and who was, with such good reason, supposed to be
lost when the "Vryheid" of Rotterdam went down with crew and passengers,
should be alive and lurking in this country, where there was no longer
any reason why he should not openly show himself, since the present
Government favoured his party in politics. When Lord Evandale reluctantly
brought himself to communicate these doubts to the chaplain, in order to
obtain his opinion, he could only obtain a long lecture on demonology, in
which, after quoting Delrio and Burthoog and De L'Ancre on the subject of
apparitions, together with sundry civilians and common lawyers on the
nature of testimony, the learned gentleman expressed his definite and
determined opinion to be, either that there had been an actual apparition
of the deceased Henry Morton's spirit, the possibility of which he was,
as a divine and a philosopher, neither fully prepared to admit or to
deny; or else that the said Henry Morton, being still in _rerum natura_,
had appeared in his proper person that morning; or, finally, that some
strong _deceptio visus_, or striking similitude of person, had deceived
the eyes of Miss Bellenden and of Thomas Halliday. Which of these was the
most probable hypothesis, the doctor declined to pronounce, but expressed
himself ready to die in the opinion that one or other of them had
occasioned that morning's disturbance.