The Antiquary Part 35

"I do swear to you," said the adept, whose suspicions were now fully awake, "that if you have played me one big trick, I will give you one big beating, Mr. Edies."

"Hear till him now!" said Ochiltree, "he kens how to gar folk find out the gear--Od, I'm thinking he's been drilled that way himsell some day."

At this insinuation, which alluded obviously to the former scene betwixt himself and Sir Arthur, the philosopher lost the slender remnant of patience he had left, and being of violent pa.s.sions, heaved up the truncheon of the broken mattock to discharge it upon the old man's head.

The blow would in all probability have been fatal, had not he at whom it was aimed exclaimed in a stern and firm voice, "Shame to ye, man!--do ye think Heaven or earth will suffer ye to murder an auld man that might be your father?--Look behind ye, man!"

Dousterswivel turned instinctively, and beheld, to his utter astonishment, a tall dark figure standing close behind him. The apparition gave him no time to proceed by exorcism or otherwise, but having instantly recourse to the voie de fait, took measure of the adept's shoulders three or four times with blows so substantial, that he fell under the weight of them, and remained senseless for some minutes between fear and stupefaction. When he came to himself, he was alone in the ruined chancel, lying upon the soft and damp earth which had been thrown out of Misticot's grave. He raised himself with a confused sensation of anger, pain, and terror, and it was not until he had sat upright for some minutes, that he could arrange his ideas sufficiently to recollect how he came there, or with what purpose. As his recollection returned, he could have little doubt that the bait held out to him by Ochiltree, to bring him to that solitary spot, the sarcasms by which he had provoked him into a quarrel, and the ready a.s.sistance which he had at hand for terminating it in the manner in which it had ended, were all parts of a concerted plan to bring disgrace and damage on Herman Dousterswivel. He could hardly suppose that he was indebted for the fatigue, anxiety, and beating which he had undergone, purely to the malice of Edie Ochiltree singly, but concluded that the mendicant had acted a part a.s.signed to him by some person of greater importance. His suspicions hesitated between Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour. The former had been at no pains to conceal a marked dislike of him--but the latter he had deeply injured; and although he judged that Sir Arthur did not know the extent of his wrongs towards him, yet it was easy to suppose he had gathered enough of the truth to make him desirous of revenge.

Ochiltree had alluded to at least one circ.u.mstance which the adept had every reason to suppose was private between Sir Arthur and himself, and therefore must have been learned from the former. The language of Oldbuck also intimated a conviction of his knavery, which Sir Arthur heard without making any animated defence. Lastly, the way in which Dousterswivel supposed the Baronet to have exercised his revenge, was not inconsistent with the practice of other countries with which the adept was better acquainted than with those of North Britain. With him, as with many bad men, to suspect an injury, and to nourish the purpose of revenge, was one and the same movement. And before Dousterswivel had fairly recovered his legs, he had mentally sworn the ruin of his benefactor, which, unfortunately, he possessed too much the power of accelerating.

But although a purpose of revenge floated through his brain, it was no time to indulge such speculations. The hour, the place, his own situation, and perhaps the presence or near neighbourhood of his a.s.sailants, made self-preservation the adept's first object. The lantern had been thrown down and extinguished in the scuffle. The wind, which formerly howled so loudly through the aisles of the ruin, had now greatly fallen, lulled by the rain, which was descending very fast.

The moon, from the same cause, was totally obscured, and though Dousterswivel had some experience of the ruins, and knew that he must endeavour to regain the eastern door of the chancel, yet the confusion of his ideas was such, that he hesitated for some time ere he could ascertain in what direction he was to seek it. In this perplexity, the suggestions of superst.i.tion, taking the advantage of darkness and his evil conscience, began again to present themselves to his disturbed imagination. "But bah!" quoth he valiantly to himself, "it is all nonsense all one part of de d.a.m.n big trick and imposture. Devil! that one thick-skulled Scotch Baronet, as I have led by the nose for five year, should cheat Herman Dousterswivel!"

As he had come to this conclusion, an incident occurred which tended greatly to shake the grounds on which he had adopted it. Amid the melancholy sough of the dying wind, and the plash of the rain-drops on leaves and stones, arose, and apparently at no great distance from the listener, a strain of vocal music so sad and solemn, as if the departed spirits of the churchmen who had once inhabited these deserted ruins were mourning the solitude and desolation to which their hallowed precincts had been abandoned. Dousterswivel, who had now got upon his feet, and was groping around the wall of the chancel, stood rooted to the ground on the occurrence of this new phenomenon. Each faculty of his soul seemed for the moment concentred in the sense of hearing, and all rushed back with the unanimous information, that the deep, wild, and prolonged chant which he now heard, was the appropriate music of one of the most solemn dirges of the Church of Rome. Why performed in such a solitude, and by what cla.s.s of choristers, were questions which the terrified imagination of the adept, stirred with all the German superst.i.tions of nixies, oak-kings, wer-wolves, hobgoblins, black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey, durst not even attempt to solve.

Another of his senses was soon engaged in the investigation. At the extremity of one of the transepts of the church, at the bottom of a few descending steps, was a small iron-grated door, opening, as far as he recollected, to a sort of low vault or sacristy. As he cast his eye in the direction of the sound, he observed a strong reflection of red light glimmering through these bars, and against the steps which descended to them. Dousterswivel stood a moment uncertain what to do; then, suddenly forming a desperate resolution, he moved down the aisle to the place from which the light proceeded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Funeral of the Countess]

Fortified with the sign of the cross, and as many exorcisms as his memory could recover, he advanced to the grate, from which, unseen, he could see what pa.s.sed in the interior of the vault. As he approached with timid and uncertain steps, the chant, after one or two wild and prolonged cadences, died away into profound silence. The grate, when he reached it, presented a singular spectacle in the interior of the sacristy. An open grave, with four tall flambeaus, each about six feet high, placed at the four corners--a bier, having a corpse in its shroud, the arms folded upon the breast, rested upon tressels at one side of the grave, as if ready to be interred--a priest, dressed in his cope and stole, held open the service book--another churchman in his vestments bore a holy-water sprinkler, and two boys in white surplices held censers with incense--a man, of a figure once tall and commanding, but now bent with age or infirmity, stood alone and nearest to the coffin, attired in deep mourning--such were the most prominent figures of the group. At a little distance were two or three persons of both s.e.xes, attired in long mourning hoods and cloaks; and five or six others in the same lugubrious dress, still farther removed from the body, around the walls of the vault, stood ranged in motionless order, each bearing in his hand a huge torch of black wax. The smoky light from so many flambeaus, by the red and indistinct atmosphere which it spread around, gave a hazy, dubious, and as it were phantom-like appearance to the outlines of this singular apparition, The voice of the priest--loud, clear, and sonorous--now recited, from the breviary which he held in his hand, those solemn words which the ritual of the Catholic church has consecrated to the rendering of dust to dust. Meanwhile, Dousterswivel, the place, the hour, and the surprise considered, still remained uncertain whether what he saw was substantial, or an unearthly representation of the rites to which in former times these walls were familiar, but which are now rarely practised in Protestant countries, and almost never in Scotland. He was uncertain whether to abide the conclusion of the ceremony, or to endeavour to regain the chancel, when a change in his position made him visible through the grate to one of the attendant mourners. The person who first espied him indicated his discovery to the individual who stood apart and nearest the coffin, by a sign, and upon his making a sign in reply, two of the group detached themselves, and, gliding along with noiseless steps, as if fearing to disturb the service, unlocked and opened the grate which separated them from the adept. Each took him by an arm, and exerting a degree of force, which he would have been incapable of resisting had his fear permitted him to attempt opposition, they placed him on the ground in the chancel, and sat down, one on each side of him, as if to detain him. Satisfied he was in the power of mortals like himself, the adept would have put some questions to them; but while one pointed to the vault, from which the sound of the priest's voice was distinctly heard, the other placed his finger upon his lips in token of silence, a hint which the German thought it most prudent to obey. And thus they detained him until a loud Alleluia, pealing through the deserted arches of St. Ruth, closed the singular ceremony which it had been his fortune to witness.

When the hymn had died away with all its echoes, the voice of one of the sable personages under whose guard the adept had remained, said, in a familiar tone and dialect, "Dear sirs, Mr. Dousterswivel, is this you?

could not ye have let us ken an ye had wussed till hae been present at the ceremony?--My lord couldna tak it weel your coming blinking and jinking in, in that fashion."

"In de name of all dat is gootness, tell me what you are?" interrupted the German in his turn.

"What I am? why, wha should I be but Ringan Aikwood, the Knockwinnock poinder?--and what are ye doing here at this time o' night, unless ye were come to attend the leddy's burial?"

"I do declare to you, mine goot Poinder Aikwood," said the German, raising himself up, "that I have been this vary nights murdered, robbed, and put in fears of my life."

"Robbed! wha wad do sic a deed here?--Murdered! od ye speak pretty blithe for a murdered man--Put in fear! what put you in fear, Mr.

Dousterswivel?"

"I will tell you, Maister Poinder Aikwood Ringan, just dat old miscreant dog villain blue-gown, as you call Edie Ochiltrees."

"I'll neer believe that," answered Ringan;--"Edie was ken'd to me, and my father before me, for a true, loyal, and sooth-fast man; and, mair by token, he's sleeping up yonder in our barn, and has been since ten at e'en--Sae touch ye wha liket, Mr. Dousterswivel, and whether onybody touched ye or no, I'm sure Edie's sackless."

"Maister Ringan Aikwood Poinders, I do not know what you call sackless,-- but let alone all de oils and de soot dat you say he has, and I will tell you I was dis night robbed of fifty pounds by your oil and sooty friend, Edies Ochiltree; and he is no more in your barn even now dan I ever shall be in de kingdom of heafen."

"Weel, sir, if ye will gae up wi' me, as the burial company has dispersed, we'se mak ye down a bed at the lodge, and we'se see if Edie's at the barn. There was twa wild-looking chaps left the auld kirk when we were coming up wi' the corpse, that's certain; and the priest, wha likes ill that ony heretics should look on at our church ceremonies, sent twa o' the riding saulies after them; sae we'll hear a' about it frae them."

Thus speaking, the kindly apparition, with the a.s.sistance of the mute personage, who was his son, disenc.u.mbered himself of his cloak, and prepared to escort Dousterswivel to the place of that rest which the adept so much needed.

"I will apply to the magistrates to-morrow," said the adept; "oder, I will have de law put in force against all the peoples."

While he thus muttered vengeance against the cause of his injury, he tottered from among the ruins, supporting himself on Ringan and his son, whose a.s.sistance his state of weakness rendered very necessary.

When they were clear of the priory, and had gained the little meadow in which it stands, Dousterswivel could perceive the torches which had caused him so much alarm issuing in irregular procession from the ruins, and glancing their light, like that of the ignis fatuus, on the banks of the lake. After moving along the path for some short s.p.a.ce with a fluctuating and irregular motion, the lights were at once extinguished.

"We aye put out the torches at the Halie-cross Well on sic occasions,"

said the forester to his guest. And accordingly no farther visible sign of the procession offered itself to Dousterswivel, although his ear could catch the distant and decreasing echo of horses' hoofs in the direction towards which the mourners had bent their course.

CHAPTER FIFTH.

O weel may the boatie row And better may she speed, And weel may the boatie row That earns the bairnies' bread!

The boatie rows, the boatie rows, The boatie rows fu' weel, And lightsome be their life that bear The merlin and the creel!

Old Ballad.

We must now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher's cottage mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion,-- there was dilapidation,--there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this, there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and her family, an appearance of ease, plenty, and comfort, that seemed to warrant their old s.l.u.ttish proverb, "The clartier the cosier." A huge fire, though the season was summer, occupied the hearth, and served at once for affording light, heat, and the means of preparing food. The fishing had been successful, and the family, with customary improvidence, had, since unlading the cargo, continued an unremitting operation of broiling and frying that part of the produce reserved for home consumption, and the bones and fragments lay on the wooden trenchers, mingled with morsels of broken bannocks and shattered mugs of half-drunk beer. The stout and athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here and another now there, with an exclamation of "Get out o' the gate, ye little sorrow!" was strongly contrasted with the pa.s.sive and half-stupified look and manner of her husband's mother, a woman advanced to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair close by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed to be sensible of--now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the children as they pulled the strings of her toy or close cap, or twitched her blue checked ap.r.o.n. With her distaff in her bosom, and her spindle in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner. The younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured to interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those vagaries which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a spindle, and dying of the wound. Late as the hour was (and it was long past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from proposing to go to bed; the dame was still busy broiling car-cakes on the girdle, and the elder girl, the half-naked mermaid elsewhere commemorated, was preparing a pile of Findhorn haddocks (that is, haddocks smoked with green wood), to be eaten along with these relishing provisions.

While they were thus employed, a slight tap at the door, accompanied with the question, "Are ye up yet, sirs?" announced a visitor. The answer, "Ay, ay,--come your ways ben, hinny," occasioned the lifting of the latch, and Jenny Rintherout, the female domestic of our Antiquary, made her appearance.

"Ay, ay," exclaimed the mistress of the family--"Hegh, sirs! can this be you, Jenny?--a sight o' you's gude for sair een, la.s.s."

"O woman, we've been sae ta'en up wi' Captain Hector's wound up by, that I havena had my fit out ower the door this fortnight; but he's better now, and auld Caxon sleeps in his room in case he wanted onything. Sae, as soon as our auld folk gaed to bed, I e'en snodded my head up a bit, and left the house-door on the latch, in case onybody should be wanting in or out while I was awa, and just cam down the gate to see an there was ony cracks amang ye."

"Ay, ay," answered Luckie Mucklebackit, "I see you hae gotten a' your braws on; ye're looking about for Steenie now--but he's no at hame the night; and ye'll no do for Steenie, la.s.s--a f.e.c.kless thing like you's no fit to mainteen a man."

"Steenie will no do for me," retorted Jenny, with a toss of her head that might have become a higher-born damsel; "I maun hae a man that can mainteen his wife."

"Ou ay, hinny--thae's your landward and burrows-town notions. My certie!--fisherwives ken better--they keep the man, and keep the house, and keep the siller too, la.s.s."

"A wheen poor drudges ye are," answered the nymph of the land to the nymph of the sea. "As sune as the keel o' the coble touches the sand, deil a bit mair will the lazy fisher loons work, but the wives maun kilt their coats, and wade into the surf to tak the fish ash.o.r.e. And then the man casts aff the wat and puts on the dry, and sits down wi' his pipe and his gill-stoup ahint the ingle, like ony auld houdie, and neer a turn will he do till the coble's afloat again! And the wife she maun get the scull on her back, and awa wi' the fish to the next burrows-town, and scauld and ban wi'ilka wife that will scauld and ban wi'her till it's sauld--and that's the gait fisher-wives live, puir slaving bodies."

"Slaves?--gae wa', la.s.s!--ca' the head o' the house slaves? little ye ken about it, la.s.s. Show me a word my Saunders daur speak, or a turn he daur do about the house, without it be just to tak his meat, and his drink, and his diversion, like ony o' the weans. He has mair sense than to ca'

anything about the bigging his ain, frae the rooftree down to a crackit trencher on the bink. He kens weel eneugh wha feeds him, and cleeds him, and keeps a' tight, thack and rape, when his coble is jowing awa in the Firth, puir fallow. Na, na, la.s.s!--them that sell the goods guide the purse--them that guide the purse rule the house. Show me ane o' yer bits o' farmer-bodies that wad let their wife drive the stock to the market, and ca' in the debts. Na, na."

"Aweel, aweel, Maggie, ilka land has its ain lauch--But where's Steenie the night, when a's come and gane? And where's the gudeman?"*

* Note G. Gynecocracy.

"I hae putten the gudeman to his bed, for he was e'en sair forfain; and Steenie's awa out about some barns-breaking wi' the auld gaberlunzie, Edie Ochiltree: they'll be in sune, and ye can sit doun."

"Troth, gudewife" (taking a seat), "I haena that muckle time to stop--but I maun tell ye about the news. Yell hae heard o' the muckle kist o' gowd that Sir Arthur has fund down by at St. Ruth?--He'll be grander than ever now--he'll no can haud down his head to sneeze, for fear o' seeing his shoon."

"Ou ay--a' the country's heard o' that; but auld Edie says that they ca'

it ten times mair than ever was o't, and he saw them howk it up. Od, it would be lang or a puir body that needed it got sic a windfa'."

"Na, that's sure eneugh.--And yell hae heard o' the Countess o' Glenallan being dead and lying in state, and how she's to be buried at St. Ruth's as this night fa's, wi' torch-light; and a' the popist servants, and Ringan Aikwood, that's a papist too, are to be there, and it will be the grandest show ever was seen."

"Troth, hinny," answered the Nereid, "if they let naebody but papists come there, it'll no be muckle o' a show in this country, for the auld harlot, as honest Mr. Blattergowl ca's her, has few that drink o' her cup o' enchantments in this corner o' our chosen lands.--But what can ail them to bury the auld carlin (a rudas wife she was) in the night-time?--I dare say our gudemither will ken."

Here she exalted her voice, and exclaimed twice or thrice, "Gudemither!

gudemither!" but, lost in the apathy of age and deafness, the aged sibyl she addressed continued plying her spindle without understanding the appeal made to her.

"Speak to your grandmither, Jenny--Od, I wad rather hail the coble half a mile aff, and the nor-wast wind whistling again in my teeth."