The Antiquary — Complete by Walter Scott (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

“Nay,” answered Lord Glenallan, “in the name of Heaven, why was it that you requested so urgently to see me?—and why did you back your request by sending a token which you knew well I dared not refuse?”

As he spoke thus, he took from his purse the ring which Edie Ochiltree had delivered to him at Glenallan House. The sight of this token produced a strange and instantaneous effect upon the old woman. The palsy of fear was immediately added to that of age, and she began instantly to search her pockets with the tremulous and hasty agitation of one who becomes first apprehensive of having lost something of great importance;—then, as if convinced of the reality of her fears, she turned to the Earl, and demanded, “And how came ye by it then?—how came ye by it? I thought I had kept it sae securely—what will the Countess say?”

“You know,” said the Earl, “at least you must have heard, that my mother is dead.”

“Dead! are ye no imposing upon me? has she left a’ at last, lands and lordship and lineages?”

“All, all,” said the Earl, “as mortals must leave all human vanities.”

“I mind now,” answered Elspeth—“I heard of it before but there has been sic distress in our house since, and my memory is sae muckle impaired— But ye are sure your mother, the Lady Countess, is gane hame?”

The Earl again assured her that her former mistress was no more.

“Then,” said Elspeth, “it shall burden my mind nae langer!—When she lived, wha dared to speak what it would hae displeased her to hae had noised abroad? But she’s gane—and I will confess all.”

Then turning to her son and daughter-in-law, she commanded them imperatively to quit the house, and leave Lord Geraldin (for so she still called him) alone with her. But Maggie Mucklebackit, her first burst of grief being over, was by no means disposed in her own house to pay passive obedience to the commands of her mother-in-law, an authority which is peculiarly obnoxious to persons in her rank of life, and which she was the more astonished at hearing revived, when it seemed to have been so long relinquished and forgotten.

“It was an unco thing,” she said, in a grumbling tone of voice,—for the rank of Lord Glenallan was somewhat imposing—“it was an unco thing to bid a mother leave her ain house wi’ the tear in her ee, the moment her eldest son had been carried a corpse out at the door o’t.”

The fisherman, in a stubborn and sullen tone, added to the same purpose. “This is nae day for your auld-warld stories, mother. My lord, if he be a lord, may ca’ some other day—or he may speak out what he has gotten to say if he likes it; there’s nane here will think it worth their while to listen to him or you either. But neither for laird or loon, gentle or semple, will I leave my ain house to pleasure onybody on the very day my poor”—

Here his voice choked, and he could proceed no farther; but as he had risen when Lord Glenallan came in, and had since remained standing, he now threw himself doggedly upon a seat, and remained in the sullen posture of one who was determined to keep his word.

But the old woman, whom this crisis seemed to repossess in all those powers of mental superiority with which she had once been eminently gifted, arose, and advancing towards him, said, with a solemn voice, “My son, as ye wad shun hearing of your mother’s shame—as ye wad not willingly be a witness of her guilt—as ye wad deserve her blessing and avoid her curse, I charge ye, by the body that bore and that nursed ye, to leave me at freedom to speak with Lord Geraldin, what nae mortal ears but his ain maun listen to. Obey my words, that when ye lay the moulds on my head—and, oh that the day were come!—ye may remember this hour without the reproach of having disobeyed the last earthly command that ever your mother wared on you.”

The terms of this solemn charge revived in the fisherman’s heart the habit of instinctive obedience in which his mother had trained him up, and to which he had submitted implicitly while her powers of exacting it remained entire. The recollection mingled also with the prevailing passion of the moment; for, glancing his eye at the bed on which the dead body had been laid, he muttered to himself, “He never disobeyed me, in reason or out o’ reason, and what for should I vex her?” Then, taking his reluctant spouse by the arm, he led her gently out of the cottage, and latched the door behind them as he left it.

As the unhappy parents withdrew, Lord Glenallan, to prevent the old woman from relapsing into her lethargy, again pressed her on the subject of the communication which she proposed to make to him.

“Ye will have it sune eneugh,” she replied;—“my mind’s clear eneugh now, and there is not—I think there is not—a chance of my forgetting what I have to say. My dwelling at Craigburnfoot is before my een, as it were present in reality:—the green bank, with its selvidge, just where the burn met wi’ the sea—the twa little barks, wi’ their sails furled, lying in the natural cove which it formed—the high cliff that joined it with the pleasure-grounds of the house of Glenallan, and hung right ower the stream—Ah! yes—I may forget that I had a husband and have lost him— that I hae but ane alive of our four fair sons—that misfortune upon misfortune has devoured our ill-gotten wealth—that they carried the corpse of my son’s eldest-born frae the house this morning—But I never can forget the days I spent at bonny Craigburnfoot!”

“You were a favourite of my mother,” said Lord Glenallan, desirous to bring her back to the point, from which she was wandering.

“I was, I was,—ye needna mind me o’ that. She brought me up abune my station, and wi’ knowledge mair than my fellows—but, like the tempter of auld, wi’ the knowledge of gude she taught me the knowledge of evil.”

“For God’s sake, Elspeth,” said the astonished Earl, “proceed, if you can, to explain the dreadful hints you have thrown out! I well know you are confidant to one dreadful secret, which should split this roof even to hear it named—but speak on farther.”

“I will,” she said—“I will!—just bear wi’ me for a little;”—and again she seemed lost in recollection, but it was no longer tinged with imbecility or apathy. She was now entering upon the topic which had long loaded her mind, and which doubtless often occupied her whole soul at times when she seemed dead to all around her. And I may add, as a remarkable fact, that such was the intense operation of mental energy upon her physical powers and nervous system, that, notwithstanding her infirmity of deafness, each word that Lord Glenallan spoke during this remarkable conference, although in the lowest tone of horror or agony, fell as full and distinct upon Elspeth’s ear as it could have done at any period of her life. She spoke also herself clearly, distinctly, and slowly, as if anxious that the intelligence she communicated should be fully understood; concisely at the same time, and with none of the verbiage or circumlocutory additions natural to those of her sex and condition. In short, her language bespoke a better education, as well as