Old Mortality, Complete by Walter Scott (my reading book .txt) 📖

We must not lose an instant.—Had not Edith and you, sister, better return to Charnwood, while we have the means of sending you there?”

“No, brother,” said Lady Margaret, looking very pale, but speaking with the greatest composure; “since the auld house is to be held out, I will take my chance in it. I have fled twice from it in my days, and I have aye found it desolate of its bravest and its bonniest when I returned; sae that I will e’en abide now, and end my pilgrimage in it.”

“It may, on the whole, be the safest course both for Edith and you,” said the Major; “for the whigs will rise all the way between this and Glasgow, and make your travelling there, or your dwelling at Charnwood, very unsafe.”

“So be it then,” said Lady Margaret; “and, dear brother, as the nearest blood-relation of my deceased husband, I deliver to you, by this symbol,”—(here she gave into his hand the venerable goldheaded staff of the deceased Earl of Torwood,)—“the keeping and government and seneschalship of my Tower of Tillietudlem, and the appurtenances thereof, with full power to kill, slay, and damage those who shall assail the same, as freely as I might do myself. And I trust you will so defend it, as becomes a house in which his most sacred majesty has not disdained”—

“Pshaw! sister,” interrupted the Major, “we have no time to speak about the king and his breakfast just now.”

And, hastily leaving the room, he hurried, with all the alertness of a young man of twenty-five, to examine the state of his garrison, and superintend the measures which were necessary for defending the place.

The Tower of Tillietudlem, having very thick walls, and very narrow windows, having also a very strong court-yard wall, with flanking turrets on the only accessible side, and rising on the other from the very verge of a precipice, was fully capable of defence against any thing but a train of heavy artillery.

Famine or escalade was what the garrison had chiefly to fear. For artillery, the top of the Tower was mounted with some antiquated wall-pieces, and small cannons, which bore the old-fashioned names of culverins, sakers, demi-sakers, falcons, and falconets. These, the Major, with the assistance of John Gudyill, caused to be scaled and loaded, and pointed them so as to command the road over the brow of the opposite hill by which the rebels must advance, causing, at the same time, two or three trees to be cut down, which would have impeded the effect of the artillery when it should be necessary to use it. With the trunks of these trees, and other materials, he directed barricades to be constructed upon the winding avenue which rose to the Tower along the high-road, taking care that each should command the other. The large gate of the court-yard he barricadoed yet more strongly, leaving only a wicket open for the convenience of passage. What he had most to apprehend, was the slenderness of his garrison; for all the efforts of the steward were unable to get more than nine men under arms, himself and Gudyill included, so much more popular was the cause of the insurgents than that of the government Major Bellenden, and his trusty servant Pike, made the garrison eleven in number, of whom one-half were old men. The round dozen might indeed have been made up, would Lady Margaret have consented that Goose Gibbie should again take up arms. But she recoiled from the proposal, when moved by Gudyill, with such abhorrent recollection of the former achievements of that luckless cavalier, that she declared she would rather the Castle were lost than that he were to be enrolled in the defence of it. With eleven men, however, himself included, Major Bellenden determined to hold out the place to the uttermost.

The arrangements for defence were not made without the degree of fracas incidental to such occasions. Women shrieked, cattle bellowed, dogs howled, men ran to and fro, cursing and swearing without intermission, the lumbering of the old guns backwards and forwards shook the battlements, the court resounded with the hasty gallop of messengers who went and returned upon errands of importance, and the din of warlike preparation was mingled with the sound of female laments.

Such a Babel of discord might have awakened the slumbers of the very dead, and, therefore, was not long ere it dispelled the abstracted reveries of Edith Bellenden. She sent out Jenny to bring her the cause of the tumult which shook the castle to its very basis; but Jenny, once engaged in the bustling tide, found so much to ask and to hear, that she forgot the state of anxious uncertainty in which she had left her young mistress. Having no pigeon to dismiss in pursuit of information when her raven messenger had failed to return with it, Edith was compelled to venture in quest of it out of the ark of her own chamber into the deluge of confusion which overflowed the rest of the Castle. Six voices speaking at once, informed her, in reply to her first enquiry, that Claver’se and all his men were killed, and that ten thousand whigs were marching to besiege the castle, headed by John Balfour of Burley, young Milnwood, and Cuddie Headrigg. This strange association of persons seemed to infer the falsehood of the whole story, and yet the general bustle in the Castle intimated that danger was certainly apprehended.

“Where is Lady Margaret?” was Edith’s second question.

“In her oratory,” was the reply: a cell adjoining to the chapel, in which the good old lady was wont to spend the greater part of the days destined by the rules of the Episcopal Church to devotional observances, as also the anniversaries of those on which she had lost her husband and her children, and, finally, those hours, in which a deeper and more solemn address to Heaven was called for, by national or domestic calamity.

“Where, then,” said Edith, much alarmed, “is Major Bellenden?”

“On the battlements of the Tower, madam, pointing the cannon,” was the reply.

To the battlements, therefore, she made her way, impeded by a thousand obstacles, and found the old gentleman in the midst of his natural military element, commanding, rebuking, encouraging, instructing, and exercising all the numerous duties of a good governor.

“In the name of God, what is the matter, uncle?” exclaimed Edith.

“The matter, my love?” answered the Major coolly, as, with spectacles on his nose, he examined the position of a gun—“The matter? Why,—raise her breech a thought more, John Gudyill—the matter? Why, Claver’se is routed, my dear, and the whigs are coming down upon us in force, that’s all the matter.”

“Gracious powers!” said Edith, whose eye at that instant caught a glance of the road which ran up the river, “and yonder they come!”

“Yonder? where?” said the veteran; and, his eyes taking the same direction, he beheld a large body of horsemen coming down the path. “Stand to your guns, my lads!” was the first exclamation; “we’ll make them pay toll as they pass the heugh.—But stay, stay, these are certainly the Life-Guards.”

“O no, uncle, no,” replied Edith; “see how disorderly they ride, and how ill they keep their ranks; these cannot be the fine soldiers who left us this morning.”

“Ah, my dear girl!” answered the Major, “you do not know the difference between men before a battle and after a defeat; but the Life-Guards it is, for I see the red and blue and the King’s colours. I am glad