The Antiquary Part 12

This was the first intimation Miss Oldbuck had received that the young stranger was to be their guest for the night; and such was the surprise with which she was struck by a proposal so uncommon, that, had the superinc.u.mbent weight of her head-dress, such as we before described, been less preponderant, her grey locks must have started up on end, and hurled it from its position.

"Lord haud a care o' us!" exclaimed the astounded maiden.

"What's the matter now, Grizel?"

"Wad ye but just speak a moment, Monkbarns?"

"Speak!--what should I speak about? I want to get to my bed--and this poor young fellow--let a bed be made ready for him instantly."

"A bed?--The Lord preserve us!" again e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Grizel.

"Why, what's the matter now?--are there not beds and rooms enough in the house?--was it not an ancient hospitium, in which, I am warranted to say, beds were nightly made down for a score of pilgrims?"

"O dear, Monkbarns! wha kens what they might do lang syne?--but in our time--beds--ay, troth, there's beds enow sic as they are--and rooms enow too--but ye ken yoursell the beds haena been sleepit in, Lord kens the time, nor the rooms aired.--If I had kenn'd, Mary and me might hae gaen down to the manse--Miss Beckie is aye fond to see us--(and sae is the minister, brother)--But now, gude save us!"--

"Is there not the Green Room, Grizel?"

"Troth is there, and it is in decent order too, though naebody has sleepit there since Dr. Heavysterne, and"--

"And what?"

"And what! I am sure ye ken yoursell what a night he had--ye wadna expose the young gentleman to the like o' that, wad ye?"

Lovel interfered upon hearing this altercation, and protested he would far rather walk home than put them to the least inconvenience--that the exercise would be of service to him--that he knew the road perfectly, by night or day, to Fairport--that the storm was abating, and so forth--adding all that civility could suggest as an excuse for escaping from a hospitality which seemed more inconvenient to his host than he could possibly have antic.i.p.ated. But the howling of the wind, and the pattering of the rain against the windows, with his knowledge of the preceding fatigues of the evening, must have prohibited Oldbuck, even had he entertained less regard for his young friend than he really felt, from permitting him to depart. Besides, he was piqued in honour to show that he himself was not governed by womankind--"Sit ye down, sit ye down, sit ye down, man," he reiterated;--"an ye part so, I would I might never draw a cork again, and here comes out one from a prime bottle of--strong ale--right anno domini--none of your Wa.s.sia Qua.s.sia decoctions, but brewed of Monkbarns barley--John of the Girnel never drew a better flagon to entertain a wandering minstrel, or palmer, with the freshest news from Palestine.--And to remove from your mind the slightest wish to depart, know, that if you do so, your character as a gallant knight is gone for ever. Why, 'tis an adventure, man, to sleep in the Green Room at Monkbarns.--Sister, pray see it got ready--And, although the bold adventurer, Heavysterne, dree'd pain and dolour in that charmed apartment, it is no reason why a gallant knight like you, nearly twice as tall, and not half so heavy, should not encounter and break the spell."

"What! a haunted apartment, I suppose?"

"To be sure, to be sure--every mansion in this country of the slightest antiquity has its ghosts and its haunted chamber, and you must not suppose us worse off than our neighbours. They are going, indeed, somewhat out of fashion. I have seen the day, when if you had doubted the reality of a ghost in an old manor-house you ran the risk of being made a ghost yourself, as Hamlet says.--Yes, if you had challenged the existence of Redcowl in the Castle of Glenstirym, old Sir Peter Pepperbrand would have had ye out to his court-yard, made you betake yourself to your weapon, and if your trick of fence were not the better, would have sticked you like a paddock, on his own baronial midden-stead.

I once narrowly escaped such an affray--but I humbled myself, and apologised to Redcowl; for, even in my younger days, I was no friend to the monomachia, or duel, and would rather walk with Sir Priest than with Sir Knight--I care not who knows so much of my valour. Thank G.o.d, I am old now, and can indulge my irritabilities without the necessity of supporting them by cold steel."

Here Miss Oldbuck re-entered, with a singularly sage expression of countenance.--"Mr. Lovel's bed's ready, brother--clean sheets--weel aired--a s.p.u.n.k of fire in the chimney--I am sure, Mr. Lovel," (addressing him), "it's no for the trouble--and I hope you will have a good night's rest--But"--

"You are resolved," said the Antiquary, "to do what you can to prevent it."

"Me?--I am sure I have said naething, Monkbarns."

"My dear madam," said Lovel, "allow me to ask you the meaning of your obliging anxiety on my account."

"Ou, Monkbarns does not like to hear of it--but he kens himsell that the room has an ill name. It's weel minded that it was there auld Rab Tull the town-clerk was sleeping when he had that marvellous communication about the grand law-plea between us and the feuars at the Mussel-craig.

--It had cost a hantle siller, Mr. Lovel; for law-pleas were no carried on without siller lang syne mair than they are now--and the Monkbarns of that day--our gudesire, Mr. Lovel, as I said before--was like to be waured afore the Session for want of a paper--Monkbarns there kens weel what paper it was, but I'se warrant he'll no help me out wi' my tale--but it was a paper of great significance to the plea, and we were to be waured for want o't. Aweel, the cause was to come on before the fifteen--in presence, as they ca't--and auld Rab Tull, the town-clerk, he cam ower to make a last search for the paper that was wanting, before our gudesire gaed into Edinburgh to look after his plea--so there was little time to come and gang on. He was but a doited snuffy body, Rab, as I've heard --but then he was the town-clerk of Fairport, and the Monkbarns heritors aye employed him on account of their connection wi' the burgh, ye ken."

"Sister Grizel, this is abominable," interrupted Oldbuck; "I vow to Heaven ye might have raised the ghosts of every abbot of Trotcosey, since the days of Waldimir, in the time you have been detailing the introduction to this single spectre.--Learn to be succinct in your narrative.--Imitate the concise style of old Aubrey, an experienced ghost-seer, who entered his memoranda on these subjects in a terse business-like manner; exempli gratia--At Cirencester, 5th March, 1670, was an apparition.--Being demanded whether good spirit or bad, made no answer, but instantly disappeared with a curious perfume, and a melodious tw.a.n.g'--Vide his Miscellanies, p. eighteen, as well as I can remember, and near the middle of the page."

"O, Monkbarns, man! do ye think everybody is as book-learned as yoursell?--But ye like to gar folk look like fools--ye can do that to Sir Arthur, and the minister his very sell."

"Nature has been beforehand with me, Grizel, in both these instances, and in another which shall be nameless--but take a gla.s.s of ale, Grizel, and proceed with your story, for it waxes late."

"Jenny's just warming your bed, Monkbarns, and ye maun e'en wait till she's done.--Weel, I was at the search that our gudesire, Monkbarns that then was, made wi' auld Rab Tull's a.s.sistance;--but ne'er-be-licket could they find that was to their purpose. And sae after they had touzled out mony a leather poke-full o' papers, the town-clerk had his drap punch at e'en to wash the dust out of his throat--we never were gla.s.s-breakers in this house, Mr. Lovel, but the body had got sic a trick of sippling and tippling wi' the bailies and deacons when they met (which was amaist ilka night) concerning the common gude o' the burgh, that he couldna weel sleep without it--But his punch he gat, and to bed he gaed; and in the middle of the night he got a fearfu' wakening!--he was never just himsell after it, and he was strucken wi' the dead palsy that very day four years. He thought, Mr. Lovel, that he heard the curtains o' his bed fissil, and out he lookit, fancying, puir man, it might hae been the cat--But he saw--G.o.d hae a care o' us! it gars my flesh aye creep, though I hae tauld the story twenty times--he saw a weel-fa'ard auld gentleman standing by his bedside, in the moonlight, in a queer-fashioned dress, wi' mony a b.u.t.ton and band-string about it, and that part o' his garments which it does not become a leddy to particulareeze, was baith side and wide, and as mony plies o't as of ony Hamburgh skipper's--He had a beard too, and whiskers turned upwards on his upper-lip, as lang as baudrons'--and mony mair particulars there were that Rab Tull tauld o', but they are forgotten now--it's an auld story. Aweel, Rab was a just-living man for a country writer--and he was less feared than maybe might just hae been expected; and he asked in the name o' goodness what the apparition wanted--and the spirit answered in an unknown tongue. Then Rab said he tried him wi' Erse, for he cam in his youth frae the braes of Glenlivat--but it wadna do. Aweel, in this strait, he bethought him of the twa or three words o' Latin that he used in making out the town's deeds, and he had nae sooner tried the spirit wi' that, than out cam sic a blatter o' Latin about his lugs, that poor Rab Tull, wha was nae great scholar, was clean overwhelmed. Od, but he was a bauld body, and he minded the Latin name for the deed that he was wanting. It was something about a cart, I fancy, for the ghaist cried aye, Carter, carter--"

"Carta, you transformer of languages!" cried Oldbuck;--"if my ancestor had learned no other language in the other world, at least he would not forget the Latinity for which he was so famous while in this."

"Weel, weel, carta be it then, but they ca'd it carter that tell'd me the story. It cried aye carta, if sae be that it was carta, and made a sign to Rab to follow it. Rab Tull keepit a Highland heart, and banged out o' bed, and till some of his readiest claes--and he did follow the thing up stairs and down stairs to the place we ca' the high dow-cot--(a sort of a little tower in the corner of the auld house, where there was a Rickle o' useless boxes and trunks)--and there the ghaist gae Rab a kick wi' the tae foot, and a kick wi' the tother, to that very auld east-country tabernacle of a cabinet that my brother has standing beside his library table, and then disappeared like a fuff o' tobacco, leaving Rab in a very pitiful condition."

"Tenues secessit in auras," quoth Oldbuck. "Marry, sir, mansit odor--But, sure enough, the deed was there found in a drawer of this forgotten repository, which contained many other curious old papers, now properly labelled and arranged, and which seemed to have belonged to my ancestor, the first possessor of Monkbarns. The deed, thus strangely recovered, was the original Charter of Erection of the Abbey, Abbey Lands, and so forth, of Trotcosey, comprehending Monkbarns and others, into a Lordship of Regality in favour of the first Earl of Glengibber, a favourite of James the Sixth. It is subscribed by the King at Westminster, the seventeenth day of January, A. D. one thousand six hundred and twelve--thirteen. It's not worth while to repeat the witnesses' names."

"I would rather," said Lovel with awakened curiosity, "I would rather hear your opinion of the way in which the deed was discovered."

"Why, if I wanted a patron for my legend, I could find no less a one than Saint Augustine, who tells the story of a deceased person appearing to his son, when sued for a debt which had been paid, and directing him where, to find the discharge.*

*Note D. Mr. Rutherford's dream.

But I rather opine with Lord Bacon, who says that imagination is much akin to miracle-working faith. There was always some idle story of the room being haunted by the spirit of Aldobrand Oldenbuck, my great-great-great-grandfather--it's a shame to the English language that, we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently. He was a foreigner, and wore his national dress, of which tradition had preserved an accurate description; and indeed there is a print of him, supposed to be by Reginald Elstracke, pulling the press with his own hand, as it works off the sheets of his scarce edition of the Augsburg Confession. He was a chemist as well as a good mechanic, and either of these qualities in this country was at that time sufficient to const.i.tute a white witch at least. This superst.i.tious old writer had heard all this, and probably believed it, and in his sleep the image and idea of my ancestor recalled that of his cabinet, which, with the grateful attention to antiquities and the memory of our ancestors not unusually met with, had been pushed into the pigeon-house to be out of the way--Add a quantum sufficit of exaggeration, and you have a key to the whole mystery."

"O brother! brother! but Dr. Heavysterne, brother--whose sleep was so sore broken, that he declared he wadna pa.s.s another night in the Green Room to get all Monkbarns, so that Mary and I were forced to yield our"--

"Why, Grizel, the doctor is a good, honest, pudding-headed German, of much merit in his own way, but fond of the mystical, like many of his countrymen. You and he had a traffic the whole evening in which you received tales of Mesmer, Shropfer, Cagliostro, and other modern pretenders to the mystery of raising spirits, discovering hidden treasure, and so forth, in exchange for your legends of the green bedchamber;--and considering that the Ill.u.s.trissimus ate a pound and a half of Scotch collops to supper, smoked six pipes, and drank ale and brandy in proportion, I am not surprised at his having a fit of the night-mare. But everything is now ready. Permit me to light you to your apartment, Mr. Lovel--I am sure you have need of rest--and I trust my ancestor is too sensible of the duties of hospitality to interfere with the repose which you have so well merited by your manly and gallant behaviour."

So saying, the Antiquary took up a bedroom candlestick of ma.s.sive silver and antique form, which, he observed, was wrought out of the silver found in the mines of the Harz mountains, and had been the property of the very personage who had supplied them with a subject for conversation. And having so said, he led the way through many a dusky and winding pa.s.sage, now ascending, and anon descending again, until he came to the apartment destined for his young guest.

CHAPTER TENTH.

When midnight o'er the moonless skies Her pall of transient death has spread, When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, And none are wakeful but the dead; No bloodless shape my way pursues, No sheeted ghost my couch annoys, Visions more sad my fancy views,-- Visions of long departed joys.

W. R. Spenser.

When they reached the Green Room, as it was called, Oldbuck placed the candle on the toilet table, before a huge mirror with a black j.a.panned frame, surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same, and looked around him with something of a disturbed expression of countenance. "I am seldom in this apartment," he said, "and never without yielding to a melancholy feeling--not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was telling you, but owing to circ.u.mstances of an early and unhappy attachment. It is at such moments as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the changes of time. The same objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our feelings--changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as being separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not choose a judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:*

*Probably Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.

My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay; And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what time takes away, Than what he leaves behind.

Well, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is felt no more."--So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished him good-night, and took his leave.

Step after step Lovel could trace his host's retreat along the various pa.s.sages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound more distant and dead. The guest, thus separated from the living world, took up the candle and surveyed the apartment.

The fire blazed cheerfully. Mrs. Grizel's attention had left some fresh wood, should he choose to continue it, and the apartment had a comfortable, though not a lively appearance. It was hung with tapestry, which the looms of Arras had produced in the sixteenth century, and which the learned typographer, so often mentioned, had brought with him as a sample of the arts of the Continent. The subject was a hunting-piece; and as the leafy boughs of the forest-trees, branching over the tapestry, formed the predominant colour, the apartment had thence acquired its name of the Green Chamber. Grim figures in the old Flemish dress, with slashed doublets covered with ribbands, short cloaks, and trunk-hose, were engaged in holding grey-hounds, or stag-hounds, in the leash, or cheering them upon the objects of their game. Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned guns, were attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay. The branches of the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each depicted with its proper plumage. It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion, and Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient and excellent poet, to be embroidered in Gothic letters, on a sort of border which he had added to the tapestry:--

Lo! here be oakis grete, streight as a line, Under the which the gra.s.s, so fresh of line, Be'th newly sprung--at eight foot or nine.

Everich tree well from his fellow grew, With branches broad laden with leaves new, That sp.r.o.ngen out against the sonne sheene, Some golden red and some a glad bright green.

And in another canton was the following similar legend:--

And many an hart and many an hind, Was both before me, and behind.

Of fawns, sownders, bucks and does, Was full the wood and many roes, And many squirrels that ysate High on the trees and nuts ate.