Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (classic romance novels txt) 📗

almost fastidiously, delicate, he could only in reply stammer forth an acknowledgement of his companion’s goodness, and his own gratitude. She answered in a tone partly sorrowful and partly impatient, repeating, with displeased emphasis, the only distinct words he had been able to bring forth—‘Goodness—gratitude!—O Darsie! should these be the phrases between you and me? Alas! I am too sure you are displeased with me, though I cannot even guess on what account. Perhaps you think I have been too free in venturing upon my visit to your friend. But then remember, it was in your behalf, and that I knew no better way to put you on your guard against the misfortunes and restraint which you have been subjected to, and are still enduring.’

‘Dear Lady’—said Darsie, rallying his recollection, and suspicious of some error in apprehension,—a suspicion which his mode of address seemed at once to communicate to Lilias, for she interrupted him,—

‘LADY! dear LADY! For whom, or for what, in Heaven’s name, do you take me, that you address me so formally?’

Had the question been asked in that enchanted hall in fairyland, where all interrogations must be answered with absolute sincerity, Darsie had certainly replied, that he took her for the most frank-hearted and ultra-liberal lass that had ever lived since Mother Eve eat the pippin without paring. But as he was still on middle-earth, and free to avail himself of a little polite deceit, he barely answered that he believed he had the honour of speaking to the niece of Mr. Redgauntlet.

‘Surely,’ she replied; ‘but were it not as easy for you to have said, to your own only sister?’

Darsie started in his saddle, as if he had received a pistol-shot.

‘My sister!’ he exclaimed.

‘And you did NOT know it, then?’ said she. ‘I thought your reception of me was cold and indifferent!’

A kind and cordial embrace took place betwixt the relatives; and so light was Darsie’s spirit, that he really felt himself more relieved, by getting quit of the embarrassments of the last half-hour, during which he conceived himself in danger of being persecuted by the attachment of a forward girl, than disappointed by the vanishing of so many day-dreams as he had been in the habit of encouraging during the time when the green-mantled maiden was goddess of his idolatry. He had been already flung from his romantic Pegasus, and was too happy at length to find himself with bones unbroken, though with his back on the ground. He was, besides, with all his whims and follies, a generous, kind-hearted youth, and was delighted to acknowledge so beautiful and amiable a relative, and to assure her in the warmest terms of his immediate affection and future protection, so soon as they should be extricated from their present situation. Smiles and tears mingled on Lilias’s cheeks, like showers and sunshine in April weather.

‘Out on me,’ she said, ‘that I should be so childish as to cry at what makes me so sincerely happy! since, God knows, family-love is what my heart has most longed after, and to which it has been most a stranger. My uncle says that you and I, Darsie, are but half Redgauntlets, and that the metal of which our father’s family was made, has been softened to effeminacy in our mother’s offspring.’

‘Alas!’ said Darsie, ‘I know so little of our family story, that I almost doubted that I belonged to the House of Redgauntlet, although the chief of the family himself intimated so much to me.’

‘The chief of the family!’ said Lilias. ‘You must know little of your own descent indeed, if you mean my uncle by that expression. You yourself, my dear Darsie, are the heir and representative of our ancient House, for our father was the elder brother—that brave and unhappy Sir Henry Darsie Redgauntlet, who suffered at Carlisle in the year 1746. He took the name of Darsie, in conjunction with his own, from our mother, heiress to a Cumberland family of great wealth and antiquity, of whose large estates you are the undeniable heir, although those of your father have been involved in the general doom of forfeiture. But all this must be necessarily unknown to you.’

‘Indeed I hear it for the first time in my life,’ answered Darsie.

‘And you knew not that I was your sister?’ said Lilias. ‘No wonder you received me so coldly. What a strange, wild, forward young person you must have thought me—mixing myself in the fortunes of a stranger whom I had only once spoken to—corresponding with him by signs—Good Heaven! what can you have supposed me?’

‘And how should I have come to the knowledge of our connexion?’ said Darsie. ‘You are aware I was not acquainted with it when we danced together at Brokenburn.’

‘I saw that with concern, and fain I would have warned you,’ answered Lilias; ‘but I was closely watched, and before I could find or make an opportunity of coming to a full explanation with you on a subject so agitating, I was forced to leave the room. What I did say was, you may remember, a caution to leave the southern border, for I foresaw what has since happened. But since my uncle has had you in his power, I never doubted he had communicated to you our whole family history.’

‘He has left me to learn it from you, Lilias; and assure yourself that I will hear it with more pleasure from your lips than from his. I have no reason to be pleased with his conduct towards me.’

‘Of that,’ said Lilias, ‘you will judge better when you have heard what I have to tell you;’ and she began her communication in the following manner.