The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott (best story books to read txt) 📗

a tall rock, which in some measure beetled over it, as if threatening to drop some detached fragment from its brow on the frail tenement beneath. The hut itself was constructed of turf and stones, and rudely roofed over with thatch, much of which was in a dilapidated condition. The thin blue smoke rose from it in a light column, and curled upward along the white face of the incumbent rock, giving the scene a tint of exquisite softness. In a small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-bushes, which formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the beehives, by the produce of which she lived, that “woman old” whom Lucy had brought her father hither to visit.

Whatever there had been which was disastrous in her fortune, whatever there was miserable in her dwelling, it was easy to judge by the first glance that neither years, poverty, misfortune, nor infirmity had broken the spirit of this remarkable woman.

She occupied a turf seat, placed under a weeping birch of unusual magnitude and age, as Judah is represented sitting under her palm-tree, with an air at once of majesty and of dejection. Her figure was tall, commanding, and but little bent by the infirmities of old age. Her dress, though that of a peasant, was uncommonly clean, forming in that particular a strong contrast to most of her rank, and was disposed with an attention to neatness, and even to taste, equally unusual. But it was her expression of countenance which chiefly struck the spectator, and induced most persons to address her with a degree of deference and civility very inconsistent with the miserable state of her dwelling, and which, nevertheless, she received with that easy composure which showed she felt it to be her due. She had once been beautiful, but her beauty had been of a bold and masculine cast, such as does not survive the bloom of youth; yet her features continued to express strong sense, deep reflection, and a character of sober pride, which, as we have already said of her dress, appeared to argue a conscious superiority to those of her own rank. It scarce seemed possible that a face, deprived of the advantage of sight, could have expressed character so strongly; but her eyes, which were almost totally closed, did not, by the display of their sightless orbs, mar the countenance to which they could add nothing. She seemed in a ruminating posture, soothed, perhaps, by the murmurs of the busy tribe around her to abstraction, though not to slumber.

Lucy undid the latch of the little garden gate, and solicited the old woman’s attention. “My father, Alice, is come to see you.”

“He is welcome, Miss Ashton, and so are you,” said the old woman, turning and inclining her head towards her visitors.

“This is a fine morning for your beehives, mother,” said the Lord Keeper, who, struck with the outward appearance of Alice, was somewhat curious to know if her conversation would correspond with it.

“I believe so, my lord,” she replied; “I feel the air breathe milder than of late.”

“You do not,” resumed the statesman, “take charge of these bees yourself, mother? How do you manage them?”

“By delegates, as kings do their subjects,” resumed Alice; “and I am fortunate in a prime minister. Here, Babie.”

She whistled on a small silver call which hung around her neck, and which at that time was sometimes used to summon domestics, and Babie, a girl of fifteen, made her appearance from the hut, not altogether so cleanly arrayed as she would probably have been had Alice had the use of her eyes, but with a greater air of neatness than was upon the whole to have been expected.

“Babie,” said her mistress, “offer some bread and honey to the Lord Keeper and Miss Ashton; they will excuse your awkwardness if you use cleanliness and despatch.”

Babie performed her mistress’s command with the grace which was naturally to have been expected, moving to and fro with a lobster-like gesture, her feet and legs tending one way, while her head, turned in a different direction, was fixed in wonder upon the laird, who was more frequently heard of than seen by his tenants and dependants. The bread and honey, however, deposited on a plantain leaf, was offered and accepted in all due courtesy. The Lord Keeper, still retaining the place which he had occupied on the decayed trunk of a fallen tree, looked as if he wished to prolong the interview, but was at a loss how to introduce a suitable subject.

“You have been long a resident on this property?” he said, after a pause.

“It is now nearly sixty years since I first knew Ravenswood,” answered the old dame, whose conversation, though perfectly civil and respectful, seemed cautiously limited to the unavoidable and necessary task of replying to Sir William.

“You are not, I should judge by your accent, of this country originally?” said the Lord Keeper, in continuation.

“No; I am by birth an Englishwoman.”

“Yet you seem attached to this country as if it were your own.”

“It is here,” replied the blind woman, “that I have drank the cup of joy and of sorrow which Heaven destined for me. I was here the wife of an upright and affectionate husband for more than twenty years; I was here the mother of six promising children; it was here that God deprived me of all these blessings; it was here they died, and yonder, by yon ruined chapel, they lie all buried. I had no country but theirs while they lived; I have none but theirs now they are no more.”

“But your house,” said the Lord Keeper, looking at it, “is miserably ruinous?”

“Do, my dear father,” said Lucy, eagerly, yet bashfully, catching at the hint, “give orders to make it better; that is, if you think it proper.”

“It will last my time, my dear Miss Lucy,” said the blind woman; “I would not have my lord give himself the least trouble about it.”

“But,” said Lucy, “you once had a much better house, and were rich, and now in your old age to live in this hovel!”

“It is as good as I deserve, Miss Lucy; if my heart has not broke with what I have suffered, and seen others suffer, it must have been strong enough, and the rest of this old frame has no right to call itself weaker.”

“You have probably witnessed many changes,” said the Lord Keeper; “but your experience must have taught you to expect them.”

“It has taught me to endure them, my lord,” was the reply.

“Yet you knew that they must needs arrive in the course of years?” said the statesman.

“Ay; as I knew that the stump, on or beside which you sit, once a tall and lofty tree, must needs one day fall by decay, or by the axe; yet I hoped my eyes might not witness the downfall of the tree which overshadowed my dwelling.”

“Do not suppose,” said the Lord Keeper, “that you will lose any interest with me for looking back with regret to the days when another family possessed my estates. You had reason, doubtless, to love them, and I respect your gratitude. I will order some repairs in your cottage, and I hope we shall live to be friends when we know each other better.”

“Those of my age,” returned the dame, “make no new friends. I thank you for your bounty, it is well intended undoubtedly; but I have all I want, and I cannot accept more at your lordship’s hand.”

“Well, then,” continued the Lord Keeper, “at least allow me to say, that I look upon you as a woman of sense and education beyond your appearance, and that I hope you will continue to reside on this property of mine rent-free for your life.”

“I hope I shall,” said the old dame, composedly; “I believe that was made an article in the sale of Ravenswood to your lordship, though such a trifling circumstance may have escaped your recollection.”

“I remember—I recollect,” said his lordship, somewhat confused. “I perceive you are too much attached to your old friends to accept any benefit from their successor.”

“Far from it, my lord; I am grateful for the benefits which I decline, and I wish I could pay you for offering them, better than what I am now about to say.” The Lord Keeper looked at her in some surprise, but said not a word. “My lord,” she continued, in an impressive and solemn tone, “take care what you do; you are on the brink of a precipice.”

“Indeed?” said the Lord Keeper, his mind reverting to the political circumstances of the country. “Has anything come to your knowledge—any plot or conspiracy?”

“No, my lord; those who traffic in such commodities do not call to their councils the old, blind, and infirm. My warning is of another kind. You have driven matters hard with the house of Ravenswood. Believe a true tale: they are a fierce house, and there is danger in dealing with men when they become desperate.”

“Tush,” answered the Keeper; “what has been between us has been the work of the law, not my doing; and to the law they must look, if they would impugn my proceedings.”

“Ay, but they may think otherwise, and take the law into their own hand, when they fail of other means of redress.”

“What mean you?” said the Lord Keeper. “Young Ravenswood would not have recourse to personal violence?”

“God forbid I should say so! I know nothing of the youth but what is honourable and open. Honourable and open, said I? I should have added, free, generous, noble. But he is still a Ravenswood, and may bide his time. Remember the fate of Sir George Lockhart.”

The Lord Keeper started as she called to his recollection a tragedy so deep and so recent. The old woman proceeded: “Chiesley, who did the deed, was a relative of Lord Ravenswood. In the hall of Ravenswood, in my presence and in that of others, he avowed publicly his determination to do the cruelty which he afterwards committed. I could not keep silence, though to speak it ill became my station. ‘You are devising a dreadful crime,’ I said, ‘for which you must reckon before the judgment seat.’ Never shall I forget his look, as he replied, ‘I must reckon then for many things, and will reckon for this also.’ Therefore I may well say, beware of pressing a desperate man with the hand of authority. There is blood of Chiesley in the veins of Ravenswood, and one drop of it were enough to fire him in the circumstances in which he is placed. I say, beware of him.”

The old dame had, either intentionally or by accident, harped aright the fear of the Lord Keeper. The desperate and dark resource of private assassination, so familiar to a Scottish baron in former times, had even in the present age been too frequently resorted to under the pressure of unusual temptation, or where the mind of the actor was prepared for such a crime. Sir William Ashton was aware of this; as also that young Ravenswood had received injuries sufficient to prompt him to that sort of revenge, which becomes a frequent though fearful consequence of the partial administration of justice. He endeavoured to disguise from Alice the nature of the apprehensions which he entertained; but so ineffectually, that a person even of less penetration than nature had endowed her with must necessarily have been aware that the subject lay near his bosom. His voice was changed in its accent as he replied to her, “That the Master of Ravenswood was a man of honour; and, were it otherwise, that the fate of Chiesley of Dalry was a sufficient warning to any one who should dare to assume the office of avenger of his own imaginary wrongs.” And having hastily uttered these expressions, he rose and left the place without waiting for a reply.