The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott (e book free reading txt) 📖

sister, who rode before them, the narrow path not admitting of their moving all three abreast,—“What would you say, my dearest Lucy, if it were proposed to you to endure his company for life?”

“Say? I would say, NO, NO, NO, three times, each louder than another, till they should hear me at Carlisle.”

“And Sir Frederick would say then, nineteen nay-says are half a grant.”

“That,” replied Miss Lucy, “depends entirely on the manner in which the nay-says are said. Mine should have not one grain of concession in them, I promise you.”

“But if your father,” said Miss Vere, “were to say,—Thus do, or—”

“I would stand to the consequences of his OR, were he the most cruel father that ever was recorded in romance, to fill up the alternative.”

“And what if he threatened you with a catholic aunt, an abbess, and a cloister?”

“Then,” said Miss Ilderton, “I would threaten him with a protestant son-in-law, and be glad of an opportunity to disobey him for conscience’ sake. And now that Nancy is out of hearing, let me really say, I think you would be excusable before God and man for resisting this preposterous match by every means in your power. A proud, dark, ambitious man; a caballer against the state; infamous for his avarice and severity; a bad son, a bad brother, unkind and ungenerous to all his relatives—Isabel, I would die rather than have him.”

“Don’t let my father hear you give me such advice,” said Miss Vere, “or adieu, my dear Lucy, to Ellieslaw Castle.”

“And adieu to Ellieslaw Castle, with all my heart,” said her friend, “if I once saw you fairly out of it, and settled under some kinder protector than he whom nature has given you. O, if my poor father had been in his former health, how gladly would he have received and sheltered you, till this ridiculous and cruel persecution were blown over!”

“Would to God it had been so, my dear Lucy!” answered Isabella; “but I fear, that, in your father’s weak state of health, he would be altogether unable to protect me against the means which would be immediately used for reclaiming the poor fugitive.”

“I fear so indeed,” replied Miss Ilderton; “but we will consider and devise something. Now that your father and his guests seem so deeply engaged in some mysterious plot, to judge from the passing and returning of messages, from the strange faces which appear and disappear without being announced by their names, from the collecting and cleaning of arms, and the anxious gloom and bustle which seem to agitate every male in the castle, it may not be impossible for us (always in case matters be driven to extremity) to shape out some little supplemental conspiracy of our own. I hope the gentlemen have not kept all the policy to themselves; and there is one associate that I would gladly admit to our counsel.”

“Not Nancy?”

“O, no!” said Miss Ilderton; “Nancy, though an excellent good girl, and fondly attached to you, would make a dull conspirator—as dull as Renault and all the other subordinate plotters in VENICE PRESERVED. No; this is a Jaffier, or Pierre, if you like the character better; and yet though I know I shall please you, I am afraid to mention his name to you, lest I vex you at the same time. Can you not guess? Something about an eagle and a rock—it does not begin with eagle in English, but something very like it in Scotch.”

“You cannot mean young Earnscliff, Lucy?” said Miss Vere, blushing deeply.

“And whom else should I mean,” said Lucy. “Jaffiers and Pierres are very scarce in this country, I take it, though one could find Renaults and Bedamars enow.”

“How call you talk so wildly, Lucy? Your plays and romances have positively turned your brain. You know, that, independent of my father’s consent, without which I never will marry any one, and which, in the case you point at, would never be granted; independent, too, of our knowing nothing of young Earnscliff’s inclinations, but by your own vivid conjectures and fancies—besides all this, there is the fatal brawl!”

“When his father was killed?” said Lucy. “But that was very long ago; and I hope we have outlived the time of bloody feud, when a quarrel was carried down between two families from father to son, like a Spanish game at chess, and a murder or two committed in every generation, just to keep the matter from going to sleep. We do with our quarrels nowadays as with our clothes; cut them out for ourselves, and wear them out in our own day, and should no more think of resenting our fathers’ feuds, than of wearing their slashed doublets and trunk-hose.”

“You treat this far too lightly, Lucy,” answered Miss Vere.

“Not a bit, my dear Isabella,” said Lucy. “Consider, your father, though present in the unhappy affray, is never supposed to have struck the fatal blow; besides, in former times, in case of mutual slaughter between clans, subsequent alliances were so far from being excluded, that the hand of a daughter or a sister was the most frequent gage of reconciliation. You laugh at my skill in romance; but, I assure you, should your history be written, like that of many a less distressed and less deserving heroine, the well-judging reader would set you down for the lady and the love of Earnscliff; from the very obstacle which you suppose so insurmountable.”

“But these are not the days of romance, but of sad reality, for there stands the castle of Ellieslaw.”

“And there stands Sir Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assist the ladies from their palfreys. I would as lief touch a toad; I will disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master of the horse.”

So saying, the lively young lady switched her palfrey forward, and passing Sir Frederick with a familiar nod as he stood ready to take her horse’s rein, she cantered on, and jumped into the arms of the old groom. Fain would Isabella have done the same had she dared; but her father stood near, displeasure already darkening on a countenance peculiarly qualified to express the harsher passions, and she was compelled to receive the unwelcome assiduities of her detested suitor.