Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (books for students to read .txt) 📖

complaisance might be, that the House of Redgauntlet and I might lose both our heads at one blow.’

‘Alas!’ said she, ‘I had forgotten that danger. I have grown familiar with perilous intrigues, as the nurses in a pest-house are said to become accustomed to the air around them, till they forget even that it is noisome.’

‘And yet,’ said Darsie, ‘if I could free myself from him without coming to an open rupture. Tell me, Lilias, do you think it possible that he can have any immediate attempt in view?’

‘To confess the truth,’ answered Lilias, ‘I cannot doubt that he has. There has been an unusual bustle among the Jacobites of late. They have hopes, as I told you, from circumstances unconnected with their own strength. Just before you came to the country, my uncle’s desire to find you out became, if possible, more eager than ever—he talked of men to be presently brought together, and of your name and influence for raising them. At this very time your first visit to Brokenburn took place. A suspicion arose in my uncle’s mind, that you might be the youth he sought, and it was strengthened by papers and letters which the rascal Nixon did not hesitate to take from your pocket. Yet a mistake might have occasioned a fatal explosion; and my uncle therefore posted to Edinburgh to follow out the clue he had obtained, and fished enough of information from old Mr. Fairford to make him certain that you were the person he sought. Meanwhile, and at the expense of some personal and perhaps too bold exertion, I endeavoured, through your friend young Fairford, to put you on your guard.’

‘Without success,’ said Darsie, blushing under his mask when he recollected how he had mistaken his sister’s meaning.

‘I do not wonder that my warning was fruitless,’ said she; ‘the thing was doomed to be. Besides, your escape would have been difficult. You were dogged the whole time you were at the Shepherd’s Bush and at Mount Sharon, by a spy who scarcely ever left you.’

‘The wretch, little Benjie!’ exclaimed Darsie. ‘I will wring the monkey’s neck round, the first time we meet.’

‘It was he indeed who gave constant information of your motions to Cristal Nixon,’ said Lilias.

‘And Cristal Nixon—I owe him, too, a day’s work in harvest,’ said Darsie; ‘for I am mistaken if he was not the person that struck me down when I was made prisoner among the rioters.’

‘Like enough; for he has a head and hand for any villany. My uncle was very angry about it; for though the riot was made to have an opportunity of carrying you off in the confusion, as well as to put the fishermen at variance with the public law, it would have been his last thought to have injured a hair of your head. But Nixon has insinuated himself into all my uncle’s secrets, and some of these are so dark and dangerous, that though there are few things he would not dare, I doubt if he dare quarrel with him. And yet I know that of Cristal would move my uncle to pass his sword through his body.’

‘What is it, for Heaven’s sake?’, said Darsie. ‘I have a particular desire for wishing to know.’

‘The old, brutal desperado, whose face and mind are a libel upon human nature, has had the insolence to speak to his master’s niece as one whom he was at liberty to admire; and when I turned on him with the anger and contempt he merited, the wretch grumbled out something, as if he held the destiny of our family in his hand.’

‘I thank you, Lilias,’ said Darsie, eagerly,—‘I thank you with all my heart for this communication. I have blamed myself as a Christian man for the indescribable longing I felt from the first moment I saw that rascal, to send a bullet through his head; and now you have perfectly accounted for and justified this very laudable wish. I wonder my uncle, with the powerful sense you describe him to be possessed of, does not see through such a villain.’

‘I believe he knows him to be capable of much evil,’ answered Lilias—‘selfish, obdurate, brutal, and a man-hater. But then he conceives him to possess the qualities most requisite for a conspirator—undaunted courage, imperturbable coolness and address, and inviolable fidelity. In the last particular he may be mistaken. I have heard Nixon blamed for the manner in which our poor father was taken after Culloden.’

‘Another reason for my innate aversion,’ said Darsie, but I will be on my guard with him.’

‘See, he observes us closely,’ said Lilias. ‘What a thing is conscience! He knows we are now speaking of him, though he cannot have heard a word that we have said.’

It seemed as if she had guessed truly; for Cristal Nixon at that moment rode up to them, and said, with an affectation of jocularity, which sat very ill on his sullen features, ‘Come, young ladies, you have had time enough for your chat this morning, and your tongues, I think, must be tired. We are going to pass a village, and I must beg you to separate—you, Miss Lilias, to ride a little behind—and you, Mrs., or Miss, or Master, whichever you choose to be called, to be jogging a little before.’

Lilias checked her horse without speaking, but not until she had given her brother an expressive look, recommending caution; to which he replied by a signal indicating that he understood and would comply with her request.