The Bride of Lammermoor

“MARGARET DOUGLAS,

“otherwise ASHTON.”

About two days after he had received this very unsatisfactory epistle, the Master of Ravenswood, while walking up the High Street of Edinburgh, was jostled by a person, in whom, as the man pulled off his hat to make an apology, he recognized Lockhard, the confidential domestic of Sir William Ashton. The man bowed, slipt a letter into his hand, and disappeared. The packet contained four close-written folios, from which, however, as is sometimes incident to the compositions of great lawyers, little could be extracted, excepting that the writer felt himself in a very puzzling predicament.

Sir William spoke at length of his high value and regard for his dear young friend, the Master of Ravenswood, and of his very extreme high value and regard for the Marquis of A – , his very dear old friend; he trusted that any measures that they might adopt, in which he was concerned, would be carred on with due regard to the sanctity of decreets and judgments obtained in foro contentioso; protesting, before men and angels, that if the law of Scotland, as declared in her supreme courts, were to undergo a reversal in the English House of Lords, the evils which would thence arise to the public would inflict a greater wound upon his heart than any loss he might himself sustain by such irregular proceedings. He flourished much on generosity and forgiveness of mutual injuries, and hinted at the mutability of human affairs, always favourite topics with the weaker party in politics. He pathetically lamented, and gently censured, the haste which had been used in depriving him of his situation of Lord Keeper, which his experience had enabled him to fill with some advantage to the public, without so much as giving him an opportunity of explaining how far his own views of general politics might essentially differ from those now in power. He was convinced the Marquis of A – had as sincere intentions towards the public as himself or any man; and if, upon a conference, they could have agreed upon the measures by which it was to be pursued, his experience and his interest should have gone to support the present administration. Upon the engagement betwixt Ravenswood and his daughter, he spoke in a dry and confused manner. He regretted so premature a step as the engagement of the young people should have been taken, and conjured the Master to remember he had never given any encouragement thereunto; and observed that, as a transaction inter minores, and without concurrence of his daughter’s natural curators, the engagement was inept, and void in law. This precipitate measure, he added, had produced a very bad effect upon Lady Ashton’s mind, which it was impossible at present to remove. Her son, Colonel Douglas Ashton, had embraced her prejudices in the fullest extent, and it was impossible for Sir William to adopt a course disagreeable to them without a fatal and irreconcilable breach in his family; which was not at present to be thought of. Time, the great physician, he hoped, would mend all.

In a postscript, Sir William said something more explicitly, which seemed to intimate that, rather than the law of Scotland should sustain a severe wound through his sides, by a reversal of the judgment of her supreme courts, in the case of the barony of Ravenswood, through the intervention of what, with all submission, he must term a foreign court of appeal, he himself would extrajudically consent to considerable sacrifices.

From Lucy Ashton, by some unknown conveyance, the Master received the following lines: “I received yours, but it was at the utmost risk; do not attempt to write again till better times. I am sore beset, but I will be true to my word, while the exercise of my reason is vouchsafed to me. That you are happy and prosperous is some consolation, and my situation requires it all.” The note was signed “L.A.”

This letter filled Ravenswood with the most lively alarm. He made many attempts, notwithstanding her prohibition, to convey letters to Miss Ashton, and even to obtain an interview; but his plans were frustrated, and he had only the mortification to learn that anxious and effectual precautions had been taken to prevent the possibility of their correspondence. The Master was the more distressed by these circumstances, as it became impossible to delay his departure from Scotland, upon the important mission which had been confided to him. Before his departure, he put Sir William Ashton’s letter into the hands of the Marquis of A – , who observed with a smile, that Sir William’s day of grace was past, and that he had now to learn which side of the hedge the sun had got to. It was with the greatest difficulty that Ravenswood extorted from the Marquis a promise that he would compromise the proceedings in Parliament, providing Sir William should be disposed to acquiesce in a union between him and Lucy Ashton.

“I would hardly,” said the Marquis, “consent to your throwing away your birthright in this manner, were I not perfectly confident that Lady Ashton, or Lady Douglas, or whatever she calls herself, will, as Scotchmen say, keep her threep; and that her husband dares not contradict her.”

“But yet,” said the Master, “I trust your lordship will consider my engagement as sacred.”

“Believe my word of honour,” said the Marquis, “I would be a friend even to your follies; and having thus told you MY opinion, I will endeavour, as occasion offers, to serve you according to your own.”

The master of Ravenswood could but thank his generous kinsman and patron, and leave him full power to act in all his affairs. He departed from Scotland upon his mission, which, it was supposed, might detain him upon the continent for some months.

CHAPTER XXVIII

     Was ever woman in this humor wooed?Was ever woman in this humour won?I’ll have her.Richard III.

TWELVE months had passed away since the Master of Ravenswood’s departure for the continent, and, although his return to Scotland had been expected in a much shorter space, yet the affairs of his mission, or, according to a prevailing report, others of a nature personal to himself, still detained him abroad. In the mean time, the altered state of affairs in Sir William Ashton’s family may be gathered from the following conversation which took place betwixt Bucklaw and his confidential bottle companion and dependant, the noted Captain Craigengelt. They were seated on either side of the huge sepulchral-looking freestone chimney in the low hall at Girnington. A wood fire blazed merrily in the grate; a round oaken table, placed between them, supported a stoup of excellent claret, two rummer glasses, and other good cheer; and yet, with all these appliances and means to boot, the countenance of the patron was dubious, doubtful, and unsatisfied, while the invention of his dependant was taxed to the utmost to parry what he most dreaded, a fit, as he called it, of the sullens, on the part of his protector. After a long pause, only interrupted by the devil’s tattoo, which Bucklaw kept beating against the hearth with the toe of his boot, Craigengelt at last ventured to break silence. “May I be double distanced,” said he, “if ever I saw a man in my life have less the air of a bridegroom! Cut me out of feather, if you have not more the look of a man condemned to be hanged!”

“My kind thanks for the compliment,” replied Bucklaw; “but I suppose you think upon the predicament in which you yourself are most likely to be placed; and pray, Captain Craigengelt, if it please your worship, why should I look merry, when I’m sad, and devilish sad too?”

“And that’s what vexes me,” said Craigengelt. “Here is this match, the best in the whole country, and which were so anxious about, is on the point of being concluded, and you are as sulky as a bear that has lost its whelps.”

“I do not know,” answered the Laird, doggedly, “whether I should conclude or not, if it was not that I am too far forwards to leap back.”

“Leap back!” exclaimed Craigengelt, with a well-assumed air of astonishment, “that would be playing the back-game with a witness! Leap back! Why, is not the girl’s fortune – ”

“The young lady’s, if you please,” said Hayston, interrupting him.

“Well – well, no disrespect meant. Will Miss Ashton’s tocher not weigh against any in Lothian?”

“Granted,” answered Bucklaw; “but I care not a penny for her tocher; I have enough of my own.”

“And the mother, that loves you like her own child?”

“Better than some of her children, I believe,” said Bucklaw, “or there would be little love wared on the matter.”

“And Colonel Sholto Douglas Ashton, who desires the marriage above all earthly things?”

“Because,” said Bucklaw, “he expects to carry the county of – through my interest.”

“And the father, who is as keen to see the match concluded as ever I have been to win a main?”

“Ay,” said Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, “it lies with Sir William’s policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches.”

“What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.”

“I’ll tell you my meaning in a word,” answered Bucklaw, getting up and walking through the room; “I want to know what the devil is the cause of Miss Ashton’s changing her mind so suddenly?”

“And what need you care,” said Craigengelt, “since the change is in your favour?”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” returned his patron, “I never knew much of that sort of fine ladies, and I believe they may be as capricious as the devil; but there is something in Miss Ashton’s change a devilish deal too sudden and too serious for a mere flisk of her own. I’ll be bound, Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and cavessons for young colts.”

“And if that were not the case,” said Craigengelt, “how the devil should we ever get them into training at all?”

“And that’s true too,” said Bucklaw, suspending his march through the dining-room, and leaning upon the back of a chair. “And besides, here’s Ravenswood in the way still, do you think he’ll give up Lucy’s engagement?”

“To be sure he will,” answered Craigengelt; “what good can it do him to refuse, since he wishes to marry another woman and she another man?”

“And you believe seriously,” said Bucklaw, “that he is going to marry the foreign lady we heard of?”

“You heard yourself,” answered Craigengelt, “what Captain Westenho said about it, and the great preparation made for their blythesome bridal.”

“Captain Westenho,” replied Bucklaw, “has rather too much of your own cast about, Craigie, to make what Sir William would call a ‘famous witness.’ He drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the freebooter to make a figure in a court of evidence.”

“Well, then,” said Craigengelt, “will you believe Colonel Douglas Ashton, who heard the Marquis of A – say in a public circle, but not aware that he was within ear-shot, that his kinsman had made a better arrangement for himself than to give his father’s land for the pale-cheeked daughter of a broken-down fanatic, and that Bucklaw was welcome to the wearing of Ravenswood’s shaughled shoes.”

“Did he say so, by heavens!” cried Bucklaw, breaking out into one of those incontrollable fits of passion to which he was constitutionally subject; “if I had heard him, I would have torn the tongue out of his throat before all his peats and minions, and Highland bullies into the bargain. Why did not Ashton run him through the body?”

“Capot me if I know,” said the Captain. “He deserved it sure enough; but he is an old man, and a minister of state, and there would be more risk than credit in meddling with him. You had more need to think of making up to Miss Lucy Ashton the disgrace that’s like to fall upon her than of interfering with a man too old to fight, and on too high a tool for your hand to reach him.”

“It SHALL reach him, though, one day,” said Bucklaw, “and his kinsman Ravenswood to boot. In the mean time, I’ll take care Miss Ashton receives no discredit for the slight they have put upon her. It’s an awkward job, however, and I wish it were ended; I scarce know how to talk to her, – but fill a bumper, Craigie, and we’ll drink her health. It grows late, and a night-cowl of good claret is worth all the considering-caps in Europe.”

CHAPTER XXIX

     It was the copy of our conference.In bed she slept not, for my urging it;At board she fed not, for my urging it;Alone, it was the subject of my theme;In company I often glanced at it.Comedy of Errors.

THE next morning saw Bucklaw and his faithful Achates, Craigengelt, at Ravenswood Castle. They were most courteously received by the knight and his lady, as well, as by their son and heir, Colonel Ashton. After a good deal of stammering and blushing – for Bucklaw, notwithstanding his audacity in other matters, had all the sheepish bashfulness common to those who have lived little in respectable society – he contrived at length to explain his wish to be admitted to a conference with Miss Ashton upon the subject of their approaching union. Sir William and his son looked at Lady Ashton, who replied with the greatest composure, “That Lucy would wait upon Mr. Hayston directly. I hope,” she added with a smile, “that as Lucy is very young, and has been lately trepanned into an engagement of which she is now heartily ashamed, our dear Bucklaw will excuse her wish that I should be present at their interview?”

“In truth, my dear lady,” said Bucklaw, “it is the very thing that I would have desired on my own account; for I have been so little accustomed to what is called gallantry, that I shall certainly fall into some cursed mistake unless I have the advantage of your ladyship as an interpreter.”

It was thus that Bucklaw, in the perturbation of his embarrassment upon this critical occasion, forgot the just apprehensions he had entertained of Lady Ashton’s overbearing ascendency over her daughter’s mind, and lost an opportunity of ascertaining, by his own investigation, the real state of Lucy’s feelings.

The other gentlemen left the room, and in a short time Lady Ashton, followed by her daughter, entered the apartment. She appeared, as he had seen her on former occasions, rather composed than agitated; but a nicer judge than he could scarce have determined whether her calmness was that of despair or of indifference. Bucklaw was too much agitated by his own feelings minutely to scrutinise those of the lady. He stammered out an unconnected address, confounding together the two or three topics to which it related, and stopt short before he brought it to any regular conclusion. Miss Ashton listened, or looked as if she listened, but returned not a single word in answer, continuing to fix her eyes on a small piece of embroidery on which, as if by instinct or habit, her fingers were busily employed. Lady Ashton sat at some distance, almost screened from notice by the deep embrasure of the window in which she had placed her chair. From this she whispered, in a tone of voice which, though soft and sweet, had something in it of admonition, if not command: “Lucy, my dear, remember – have you heard what Bucklaw has been saying?”

The idea of her mother’s presence seemed to have slipped from the unhappy girl’s recollection. She started, dropped her needle, and repeated hastily, and almost in the same breath, the contradictory answers: “Yes, madam – no, my lady – I beg pardon, I did not hear.”

“You need not blush, my love, and still less need you look so pale and frightened,” said Lady Ashton, coming forward; “we know that maiden’s ears must be slow in receiving a gentleman’s language; but you must remember Mr. Hayston speaks on a subject on which you have long since agreed to give him a favourable hearing. You know how much your father and I have our hearts set upon an event so extremely desirable.”

In Lady Ashton’s voice, a tone of impressive, and even stern, innuendo was sedulously and skilfully concealed under an appearance of the most affectionate maternal tenderness. The manner was for Bucklaw, who was easily enough imposed upon; the matter of the exhortation was for the terrified Lucy, who well knew how to interpret her mother’s hints, however skilfully their real purport might be veiled from general observation.

Miss Ashton sat upright in her chair, cast round her a glance in which fear was mingled with a still wilder expression, but remained perfectly silent. Bucklaw, who had in the mean time paced the room to and fro, until he had recovered his composure, now stopped within two or three yards of her chair, and broke out as follows: “I believe I have been a d – d fool, Miss Ashton; I have tried to speak to you as people tell me young ladies like to be talked to, and I don’t think you comprehend what I have been saying; and no wonder, for d – n me if I understand it myself! But, however, once for all, and in broad Scotch, your father and mother like what is proposed, and if you can take a plain young fellow for your husband, who will never cross you in anything you have a mind to, I will place you at the head of the best establishment in the three Lothians; you shall have Lady Girnington’s lodging in the Canongate of Edinburgh, go where you please, do what you please, and see what you please – and that’s fair. Only I must have a corner at the board-end for a worthless old playfellow of mine, whose company I would rather want than have, if it were not that the d – d fellow has persuaded me that I can’t do without him; and so I hope you won’t except against Craigie, although it might be easy to find much better company.”

“Now, out upon you, Bucklaw,” said Lady Ashton, again interposing; “how can you think Lucy can have any objection to that blunt, honest, good-natured creature, Captain Craigengelt?”

“Why, madam,” replied Bucklaw, “as to Craigie’s sincerity, honesty, and good-nature, they are, I believe, pretty much upon a par; but that’s neither here nor there – the fellow knows my ways, and has got useful to me, and I cannot well do without him, as I said before. But all this is nothing to the purpose; for since I have mustered up courage to make a plain proposal, I would fain hear Miss Ashton, from her own lips, give me a plain answer.”

“My dear Bucklaw,” said Lady Ashton, “let me spare Lucy’s bashfulness. I tell you, in her presence, that she has already consented to be guided by her father and me in this matter. Lucy, my love,” she added, with that singular combination of suavity of tone and pointed energy which we have already noticed – “Lucy, my dearest love! speak for yourself, is it not as I say?”

Her victim answered in a tremulous and hollow voice: “I HAVE promised to obey you – but upon one condition.”

“She means,” said Lady Ashton, turning to Bucklaw, “she expects an answer to the demand which she has made upon the man at Vienna, or Ratisbon, or Paris – or where is he? – for restitution of the engagement in which he had the art to involve her. You will not, I am sure, my dear friend, think it is wrong that she should feel much delicacy upon this head; indeed, it concerns us all.”

“Perfectly right – quite fair,” said Bucklaw, half humming, half speaking the end of the old song —

“It is best to be off wi’ the old loveBefore you be on wi’ the new.

But I thought,” said he, pausing, “you might have had an answer six times told from Ravenswood. D – n me, if I have not a mind to go fetch one myself, if Miss Ashton will honour me with the commission.”

“By no means,” said Lady Ashton; “we have had the utmost difficulty of preventing Douglas, for whom it would be more proper, from taking so rash a step; and do you think we could permit you, my good friend, almost equally dear to us, to go to a desperate man upon an errand so desperate? In fact, all the friends of the family are of opinion, and my dear Lucy herself ought so to think, that, as this unworthy person has returned no answer to her letter, silence must on this, as in other cases, be held to give consent, and a contract must be supposed to be given up, when the party waives insisting upon it. Sir William, who should know best, is clear upon this subject; and therefore, my dear Lucy – ”

“Madam,” said Lucy, with unwonted energy, “urge me no farther; if this unhappy engagement be restored, I have already said you shall dispose of me as you will; till then I should commit a heavy sin in the sight of God and man in doing what you require.” “But, my love, if this man remains obstinately silent – ”

“He will NOT be silent,” answered Lucy; “it is six weeks since I sent him a double of my former letter by a sure hand.”

“You have not – you could not – you durst not,” said Lady Ashton, with violence inconsistent with the tone she had intended to assume; but instantly correcting herself, “My dearest Lucy,” said she, in her sweetest tone of expostulation, “how could you think of such a thing?”

“No matter,” said Bucklaw; “I respect Miss Ashton for her sentiments, and I only wish I had been her messenger myself.”

“And pray how long, Miss Ashton,” said her mother, ironically, “are we to wait the return of your Pacolet – your fairy messenger – since our humble couriers of flesh and blood could not be trusted in this matter?”

“I have numbered weeks, days, hours, and minutes,” said Miss Ashton; “within another week I shall have an answer, unless he is dead. Till that time, sir,” she said, addressing Bucklaw, “let me be thus far beholden to you, that you will beg my mother to forbear me upon this subject.”

“I will make it my particular entreaty to Lady Ashton,” said Bucklaw. “By my honour, madam, I respect your feelings; and, although the prosecution of this affair be rendered dearer to me than ever, yet, as I am a gentleman, I would renounce it, were it so urged as to give you a moment’s pain.”

“Mr. Hayston, I think, cannot comprehend that,” said Lady Ashton, looking pale with anger, “when the daughter’s happiness lies in the bosom of the mother. Let me ask you, Miss Ashton, in what terms your last letter was couched?”

“Exactly in the same, madam,” answered Lucy, “which you dictated on a former occasion.”

“When eight days have elapsed, then,” said her mother, resuming her tone of tenderness, “we shall hope, my dearest love, that you will end this suspense.”

“Miss Ashton must not be hurried, madam,” said Bucklaw, whose bluntness of feeling did not by any means arise from want of good-nature; “messengers may be stopped or delayed. I have known a day’s journey broke by the casting of a foreshoe. Stay, let me see my calendar: the twentieth day from this is St. Jude’s, and the day before I must be at Caverton Edge, to see the match between the Laird of Kittlegirth’s black mare and Johnston the meal-monger’s four-year-old-colt; but I can ride all night, or Craigie can bring me word how the match goes; and I hope, in the mean time, as I shall not myself distress Miss Ashton with any further importunity, that your ladyship yourself, and Sir William, and Colonel Douglas will have the goodness to allow her uninterrupted time for making up her mind.”

“Sir,” said Miss Ashton, “you are generous.”

“As for that, madam,” answered Bucklaw, “I only pretend to be a plain, good-humoured young fellow, as I said before, who will willingly make you happy if you will permit him, and show him how to do so.” Having said this, he saluted her with more emotion than was consistent with his usual train of feeling, and took his leave; Lady Ashton, as she accompanied him out of the apartment, assuring him that her daughter did full justice to the sincerity of his attachment, and requesting him to see Sir William before his departure, “since,” as she said, with a keen glance reverting towards Lucy, “against St. Jude’s day, we must all be ready to SIGN AND SEAL.”

“To sign and seal!” echoed Lucy, in a muttering tone, as the door of the apartment closed – “to sign and seal – to do and die!” and, clasping her extenuated hands together, she sunk back on the easy-chair she occupied, in a state resembling stupor.