The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott (best story books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“I do not know,” answered the Laird, doggedly, “whether I should conclude or not, if it was not that I am too far forwards to leap back.”
“Leap back!” exclaimed Craigengelt, with a well-assumed air of astonishment, “that would be playing the back-game with a witness! Leap back! Why, is not the girl’s fortune——”
“The young lady’s, if you please,” said Hayston, interrupting him.
“Well—well, no disrespect meant. Will Miss Ashton’s tocher not weigh against any in Lothian?”
“Granted,” answered Bucklaw; “but I care not a penny for her tocher; I have enough of my own.”
“And the mother, that loves you like her own child?”
“Better than some of her children, I believe,” said Bucklaw, “or there would be little love wared on the matter.”
“And Colonel Sholto Douglas Ashton, who desires the marriage above all earthly things?”
“Because,” said Bucklaw, “he expects to carry the county of —— through my interest.”
“And the father, who is as keen to see the match concluded as ever I have been to win a main?”
“Ay,” said Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, “it lies with Sir William’s policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches.”
“What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.”
“I’ll tell you my meaning in a word,” answered Bucklaw, getting up and walking through the room; “I want to know what the devil is the cause of Miss Ashton’s changing her mind so suddenly?”
“And what need you care,” said Craigengelt, “since the change is in your favour?”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” returned his patron, “I never knew much of that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as capricious as the devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton’s change a devilish deal too sudden and too serious for a mere flisk of her own. I’ll be bound, Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and cavessons for young colts.”
“And if that were not the case,” said Craigengelt, “how the devil should we ever get them into training at all?”
“And that’s true too,” said Bucklaw, suspending his march through the dining-room, and leaning upon the back of a chair. “And besides, here’s Ravenswood in the way still, do you think he’ll give up Lucy’s engagement?”
“To be sure he will,” answered Craigengelt; “what good can it do him to refuse, since he wishes to marry another woman and she another man?”
“And you believe seriously,” said Bucklaw, “that he is going to marry the foreign lady we heard of?”
“You heard yourself,” answered Craigengelt, “what Captain Westenho said about it, and the great preparation made for their blythesome bridal.”
“Captain Westenho,” replied Bucklaw, “has rather too much of your own cast about, Craigie, to make what Sir William would call a ‘famous witness.’ He drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the freebooter to make a figure in a court of evidence.”
“Well, then,” said Craigengelt, “will you believe Colonel Douglas Ashton, who heard the Marquis of A—— say in a public circle, but not aware that he was within ear-shot, that his kinsman had made a better arrangement for himself than to give his father’s land for the pale-cheeked daughter of a broken-down fanatic, and that Bucklaw was welcome to the wearing of Ravenswood’s shaughled shoes.”
“Did he say so, by heavens!” cried Bucklaw, breaking out into one of those incontrollable fits of passion to which he was constitutionally subject; “if I had heard him, I would have torn the tongue out of his throat before all his peats and minions, and Highland bullies into the bargain. Why did not Ashton run him through the body?”
“Capot me if I know,” said the Captain. “He deserved it sure enough; but he is an old man, and a minister of state, and there would be more risk than credit in meddling with him. You had more need to think of making up to Miss Lucy Ashton the disgrace that’s like to fall upon her than of interfering with a man too old to fight, and on too high a tool for your hand to reach him.”
“It shall reach him, though, one day,” said Bucklaw, “and his kinsman Ravenswood to boot. In the mean time, I’ll take care Miss Ashton receives no discredit for the slight they have put upon her. It’s an awkward job, however, and I wish it were ended; I scarce know how to talk to her,—but fill a bumper, Craigie, and we’ll drink her health. It grows late, and a night-cowl of good claret is worth all the considering-caps in Europe.”
It was the copy of our conference.
In bed she slept not, for my urging it;
At board she fed not, for my urging it;
Alone, it was the subject of my theme;
In company I often glanced at it.
Comedy of Errors.
The next morning saw Bucklaw and his faithful Achates, Craigengelt, at Ravenswood Castle. They were most courteously received by the knight and his lady, as well as by their son and heir, Colonel Ashton. After a good deal of stammering and blushing—for Bucklaw, notwithstanding his audacity in other matters, had all the sheepish bashfulness common to those who have lived little in respectable society—he contrived at length to explain his wish to be admitted to a conference with Miss Ashton upon the subject of their approaching union. Sir William and his son looked at Lady Ashton, who replied with the greatest composure, “That Lucy would wait upon Mr. Hayston directly. I hope,” she added with a smile, “that as Lucy is very young, and has been lately trepanned into an engagement of which she is now heartily ashamed, our dear Bucklaw will excuse her wish that I should be present at their interview?”
“In truth, my dear lady,” said Bucklaw, “it is the very thing that I would have desired on my own account; for I have been so little accustomed to what is called gallantry, that I shall certainly fall into some cursed mistake unless I have the advantage of your ladyship as an interpreter.”
It was thus that Bucklaw, in the perturbation of his embarrassment upon this critical occasion, forgot the just apprehensions he had entertained of Lady Ashton’s overbearing ascendency over her daughter’s mind, and lost an opportunity of ascertaining, by his own investigation, the real state of Lucy’s feelings.
The other gentlemen left the room, and in a short time Lady Ashton, followed by her daughter, entered the apartment. She appeared, as he had seen her on former occasions, rather composed than agitated; but a nicer judge than he could scarce have determined whether her calmness was that of despair or of indifference. Bucklaw was too much agitated by his own feelings minutely to scrutinise those of the lady. He stammered out an unconnected address, confounding together the two or three topics to which it related, and stopt short before he brought it to any regular conclusion. Miss Ashton listened, or looked as if she listened, but returned not a single word in answer, continuing to fix her eyes on a small piece of embroidery on which, as if by instinct or habit, her fingers were busily employed. Lady Ashton sat at some distance, almost screened from notice by the deep embrasure of the window in which she had placed her chair. From this she whispered, in a tone of voice which, though soft and sweet, had something in it of admonition, if not command: “Lucy, my dear, remember—have you heard what Bucklaw has been saying?”
The idea of her mother’s presence seemed to have slipped from the unhappy girl’s recollection. She started, dropped her needle, and repeated hastily, and almost in the same breath, the contradictory answers: “Yes, madam—no, my lady—I beg pardon, I did not hear.”
“You need not blush, my love, and still less need you look so pale and frightened,” said Lady Ashton, coming forward; “we know that maiden’s ears must be slow in receiving a gentleman’s language; but you must remember Mr. Hayston speaks on a subject on which you have long since agreed to give him a favourable hearing. You know how much your father and I have our hearts set upon an event so extremely desirable.”
In Lady Ashton’s voice, a tone of impressive, and even stern, innuendo was sedulously and skilfully concealed under an appearance of the most affectionate maternal tenderness. The manner was for Bucklaw, who was easily enough imposed upon; the matter of the exhortation was for the terrified Lucy, who well knew how to interpret her mother’s hints, however skilfully their real purport might be veiled from general observation.
Miss Ashton sat upright in her chair, cast round her a glance in which fear was mingled with a still wilder expression, but remained perfectly silent. Bucklaw, who had in the mean time paced the room to and fro, until he had recovered his composure, now stopped within two or three yards of her chair, and broke out as follows: “I believe I have been a d—d fool, Miss Ashton; I have tried to speak to you as people tell me young ladies like to be talked to, and I don’t think you comprehend what I have been saying; and no wonder, for d—n me if I understand it myself! But, however, once for all, and in broad Scotch, your father and mother like what is proposed, and if you can take a plain young fellow for your husband, who will never cross you in anything you have a mind to, I will place you at the head of the best establishment in the three Lothians; you shall have Lady Girnington’s lodging in the Canongate of Edinburgh, go where you please, do what you please, and see what you please—and that’s fair. Only I must have a corner at the board-end for a worthless old playfellow of mine, whose company I would rather want than have, if it were not that the d—d fellow has persuaded me that I can’t do without him; and so I hope you won’t except against Craigie, although it might be easy to find much better company.”
“Now, out upon you, Bucklaw,” said Lady Ashton, again interposing; “how can you think Lucy can have any objection to that blunt, honest, good-natured creature, Captain Craigengelt?”
“Why, madam,” replied Bucklaw, “as to Craigie’s sincerity, honesty, and good-nature, they are, I believe, pretty much upon a par; but that’s neither here nor there—the fellow knows my ways, and has got useful to me, and I cannot well do without him, as I said before. But all this is nothing to the purpose; for since I have mustered up courage to make a plain proposal, I would fain hear Miss Ashton, from her own lips, give me a plain answer.”
“My dear Bucklaw,” said Lady Ashton, “let me spare Lucy’s bashfulness. I tell you, in her presence, that she has already consented to be guided by her father and me in this matter. Lucy, my love,” she added, with that singular combination of suavity of tone and pointed energy which we have already noticed—“Lucy, my dearest love! speak for yourself, is it not as I say?”
Her victim answered in a tremulous and hollow voice: “I have promised to obey you—but upon one condition.”
“She means,” said Lady Ashton, turning to Bucklaw, “she expects an answer to the demand which she has made upon the man at Vienna, or Ratisbon, or Paris—or where is he?—for restitution of the engagement in which he had the art to involve her. You will not, I am sure, my dear friend, think it is wrong that she should feel much delicacy upon this head; indeed, it concerns us all.”
“Perfectly right—quite fair,” said Bucklaw, half humming, half speaking the end of the old song—
“It is best to be off wi’ the old love
Before you be on wi’ the new.
But I thought,” said he, pausing, “you might have had an answer six times told from Ravenswood. D—n me, if I have not a mind to go fetch one myself, if Miss Ashton will honour me with the commission.”
“By
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