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

‘There can be no fault found to her manners or sentiments,’ answered Darsie; ‘I am happy in knowing a relative so amiable.’

‘I am glad of it,’ answered Mr. Redgauntlet. ‘I am no nice judge of women’s qualifications, and my life has been dedicated to one great object; so that since she left France she has had but little opportunity of improvement. I have subjected her, however, as little as possible to the inconveniences and privations of my wandering and dangerous life. From time to time she has resided for weeks and months with families of honour and respectability, and I am glad that she has, in, your opinion, the manners and behaviour which become her birth.’

Darsie expressed himself perfectly satisfied, and there was a little pause, which Redgauntlet broke by solemnly addressing his nephew.

‘For you, my nephew, I also hoped to have done much. The weakness and timidity of your mother sequestered you from my care, or it would have been my pride and happiness to have trained up the son of my unhappy brother in those paths of honour in which our ancestors have always trod.’

‘Now comes the storm,’ thought Darsie to himself, and began to collect his thoughts, as the cautious master of a vessel furls his sails and makes his ship snug when he discerns the approaching squall.

‘My mother’s conduct in respect to me might be misjudged,’ he said, ‘but it was founded on the most anxious affection.’

‘Assuredly,’ said his uncle, ‘and I have no wish to reflect on her memory, though her mistrust has done so much injury, I will not say to me, but to the cause of my unhappy country. Her scheme was, I think, to have made you that wretched pettifogging being, which they still continue to call in derision by the once respectable name of a Scottish Advocate; one of those mongrel things that must creep to learn the ultimate decision of his causes to the bar of a foreign court, instead of pleading before the independent and august Parliament of his own native kingdom.’

‘I did prosecute the study of law for a year or two, said Darsie, ‘but I found I had neither taste nor talents for the science.’

‘And left it with scorn, doubtless,’ said Mr. Redgauntlet. ‘Well, I now hold up to you, my dearest nephew, a more worthy object of ambition. Look eastward—do you see a monument standing on yonder plain, near a hamlet?’

Darsie replied that he did,

‘The hamlet is called Burgh-upon-Sands, and yonder monument is erected to the memory of the tyrant Edward I. The just hand of Providence overtook him on that spot, as he was leading his bands to complete the subjugation of Scotland whose civil dissensions began under his accursed policy. The glorious career of Bruce might have been stopped in its outset; the field of Bannockburn might have remained a bloodless turf, if God had not removed, in the very crisis, the crafty and bold tyrant who had so long been Scotland’s scourge. Edward’s grave is the cradle of our national freedom. It is within sight of that great landmark of our liberty that I have to propose to you an undertaking, second in honour and importance to none since the immortal Bruce stabbed the Red Comyn, and grasped with his yet bloody hand the independent crown of Scotland.’

He paused for an answer; but Darsie, overawed by the energy of his manner, and unwilling to commit himself by a hasty explanation, remained silent.

‘I will not suppose,’ said Hugh Redgauntlet, after a pause, that you are either so dull as not to comprehend the import of my words—or so dastardly as to be dismayed by my proposal—or so utterly degenerate from the blood and sentiments of your ancestors, as not to feel my summons as the horse hears the war-trumpet.’

‘I will not pretend to misunderstand you, sir,’ said Darsie; ‘but an enterprise directed against a dynasty now established for three reigns requires strong arguments, both in point of justice and of expediency, to recommend it to men of conscience and prudence.’

‘I will not,’ said Redgauntlet, while his eyes sparkled with anger,—‘I will not hear you speak a word against the justice of that enterprise, for which your oppressed country calls with the voice of a parent, entreating her children for aid—or against that noble revenge which your father’s blood demands from his dishonoured grave. His skull is yet standing over the Rikargate, [The northern gate of Carlisle was long garnished with the heads of the Scottish rebels executed in 1746.] and even its bleak and mouldered jaws command you to be a man. I ask you, in the name of God and of your country, will you draw your sword and go with me to Carlisle, were it but to lay your father’s head, now the perch of the obscene owl and carrion crow and the scoff of every ribald clown, in consecrated earth as befits his long ancestry?’

Darsie, unprepared to answer an appeal urged with so much passion, and not doubting a direct refusal would cost him his liberty or life, was again silent.

‘I see,’ said his uncle, in a more composed tone, ‘that it is not deficiency of spirit, but the grovelling habits of a confined education, among the poor-spirited class you were condemned to herd with, that keeps you silent. You scarce yet believe yourself a Redgauntlet; your pulse has not yet learned the genuine throb that answers to the summons of honour and of patriotism.’

‘I trust,’ replied Darsie, at last, ‘that I shall never be found indifferent to the call of either; but to answer them with effect—even were I convinced that they now sounded in my ear—I must see some reasonable hope of success in the desperate enterprise in which you would involve me. I look around me, and I see a settled government—an established authority—a born Briton on the throne—the very Highland mountaineers, upon whom alone the trust of the exiled family reposed, assembled into regiments which act under the orders of the existing dynasty. [The Highland regiments were first employed by the celebrated Earl of Chatham, who assumed to himself no small degree of praise for having called forth to the support of the country and the government, the valour which had been too often directed against both.] France has been utterly dismayed by the tremendous lessons of the last war, and will hardly provoke another. All without and within the kingdom is adverse to encountering a hopeless struggle, and you alone, sir, seem willing to undertake a desperate enterprise.’

‘And would undertake it were it ten times more desperate; and have agitated it when ten times the obstacles were interposed. Have I forgot my brother’s blood? Can I—dare I even now repeat the Pater Noster, since my enemies and the murderers remain unforgiven? Is there an art I have not practised—a privation to which I have not submitted, to bring on the crisis, which I now behold arrived? Have I not been a vowed and a devoted man, forgoing every comfort of social life, renouncing even the exercise of devotion unless when I might name in prayer my prince and country, submitting to everything to make converts to this noble cause? Have I done all this, and shall I now stop short?’ Darsie was about to interrupt him, but he pressed his hand affectionately upon his shoulder, and enjoining, or rather imploring, silence, ‘Peace,’ he said, ‘heir of my ancestors’ fame—heir of all my hopes and wishes. Peace, son of my slaughtered brother! I have sought for thee, and