The Antiquary — Complete

though, my Lord, I married under my degree, yet an ancestor of yours never went to the field of battle, but an ancestor of the frail, demented, auld, useless wretch wha now speaks with you, carried his shield before him. But that was not a',' continued the beldam, her earthly and evil passions rekindling as she became heated in her narration—'that was not a'; I hated Miss Eveline Neville for her ain sake, I brought her frae England, and, during our whole journey, she gecked and scorned at my northern speech and habit, as her southland leddies and kimmers had done at the boarding-school, as they cald it'—(and, strange as it may seem, she spoke of an affront offered by a heedless school-girl without intention, with a degree of inveteracy which, at such a distance of time, a mortal offence would neither have authorized or excited in any well-constituted mind)—'Yes, she scorned and jested at me—but let them that scorn the tartan fear the dirk!'

She paused, and then went on—'But I deny not that I hated her mair than she deserved. My mistress, the Countess, persevered and said, Elspeth Cheyne, this unruly boy will marry with the false English blood. Were days as they have been, I could throw her into the Massymore[21] of Glenallan, and fetter him in the Keep of Strathbonnel.

But these times are past, and the authority which the nobles of the land should exercise is delegated to quibbling lawyers and their baser dependants. Hear me, Elspeth Cheyne! if you are your father's daughter as I am mine, I will find means that they shall not marry. She walks often to that cliff that overhangs your dwelling to look for her lover's boat—(ye may remember the pleasure ye then took on the sea, my Lord)—let him find her forty fathom lower than he expects!'—Yes! ye may stare and frown and clench your hand; but, as sure as I am to face the only Being I ever feared—and, oh that I had feared him mair!—these were your mother's words. What avails it to me to lie to you?—But I wadna consent to stain my hand with blood.—Then she said, By the religion of our holy Church they are ower sibb thegither. But I expect nothing but that both will become heretics as well as disobedient reprobates;'—that was her addition to that argument. And then, as the fiend is ever ower busy wi' brains like mine, that are subtle beyond their use and station, I was unhappily permitted to add—But they might be brought to think themselves sae sibb as no Christian law will permit their wedlock.''

Here the Earl of Glenallan echoed her words, with a shriek so piercing as almost to rend the roof of the cottage.—'Ah! then Eveline Neville was not the—the'—

'The daughter, ye would say, of your father?' continued Elspeth. 'No—be it a torment or be it a comfort to you—ken the truth, she was nae mair a daughter of your father's house than I am.'

'Woman, deceive me not!—make me not curse the memory of the parent I have so lately laid in the grave, for sharing in a plot the most cruel, the most infernal'—

'Bethink ye, my Lord Geraldin, ere ye curse the memory of a parent that's gane, is there none of the blood of Glenallan living, whose faults have led to this dreadfu' catastrophe?'

'Mean you my brother?—he, too, is gone,' said the Earl.

'No,' replied the sibyl, 'I mean yoursell, Lord Geraldin. Had you not transgressed the obedience of a son by wedding Eveline Neville in secret while a guest at Knockwinnock, our plot might have separated you for a time, but would have left at least your sorrows without remorse to canker them. But your ain conduct had put poison in the weapon that we threw, and it pierced you with the mair force because ye cam rushing to meet it. Had your marriage been a proclaimed and acknowledged action, our stratagem to throw an obstacle into your way that couldna be got ower, neither wad nor could hae been practised against ye.'

'Great Heaven!' said the unfortunate nobleman—'it is as if a film fell from my obscured eyes! Yes, I now well understand the doubtful hints of consolation thrown out by my wretched mother, tending indirectly to impeach the evidence of the horrors of which her arts had led me to believe myself guilty.'

'She could not speak mair plainly,' answered Elspeth, 'without confessing her ain fraud,—and she would have submitted to be torn by wild horses, rather than unfold what she had done; and if she had still lived, so would I for her sake. They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, male and female, and sae were a' that in auld times cried their gathering-word of Clochnaben—they stood shouther to shouther—nae man parted frae his chief for love of gold or of gain, or of right or of wrang. The times are changed, I hear, now.'

The unfortunate nobleman was too much wrapped up in his own confused and distracted reflections, to notice the rude expressions of savage fidelity, in which, even in the latest ebb of life, the unhappy author of his misfortunes seemed to find a stern and stubborn source of consolation.

'Great Heaven!' he exclaimed, 'I am then free from a guilt the most horrible with which man can be stained, and the sense of which, however involuntary, has wrecked my peace, destroyed my health, and bowed me down to an untimely grave. Accept,' he fervently uttered, lifting his eyes upwards, 'accept my humble thanks! If I live miserable, at least I shall not die stained with that unnatural guilt!—And thou—proceed if thou hast more to tell— proceed, while thou hast voice to speak it, and I have powers to listen.'

'Yes,' answered the beldam, 'the hour when you shall hear, and I shall speak, is indeed passing rapidly away. Death has crossed your brow with his finger, and I find his grasp turning every day coulder at my heart. Interrupt me nae mair with exclamations and groans and accusations, but hear my tale to an end! And then—if ye be indeed sic a Lord of Glenallan as I hae heard of in my day—make your merrymen gather the thorn, and the brier, and the green hollin, till they heap them as high as the house-riggin', and burn! burn! burn! the auld witch Elspeth, and a' that can put ye in mind that sic a creature ever crawled upon the land!'

'Go on,' said the Earl, 'go on—I will not again interrupt you.'

He spoke in a half-suffocated yet determined voice, resolved that no irritability on his part should deprive him of this opportunity of acquiring proofs of the wonderful tale he then heard. But Elspeth had become exhausted by a continuous narration of such unusual length; the subsequent part of her story was more broken, and though still distinctly intelligible in most parts, had no longer the lucid conciseness which the first part of her narrative had displayed to such an astonishing degree. Lord Glenallan found it necessary, when she had made some attempts to continue her narrative without success, to prompt her memory by demanding—'What proofs she could propose to bring of the truth of a narrative so different from that which she had originally told?'

'The evidence,' she replied, 'of Eveline Neville's real birth was in the Countess's possession, with reasons for its being for some time kept private;—they may yet be found, if she has not destroyed them, in the left hand drawer of the ebony cabinet that stood in the dressing-room. These she meant to suppress for the time, until you went abroad again, when she trusted, before your return, to send Miss Neville back to her ain country, or to get her settled in marriage.'

'But did you not show me letters of my father's, which seemed to me, unless my senses altogether failed me in that horrible moment, to avow his relationship to—to the unhappy'—

'We did; and, with my testimony, how could you doubt the fact, or her either? But we suppressed the true explanation of these letters, and that was, that your father thought it right the young leddy should pass for his daughter for a while, on account o'some family reasons that were amang them.'

'But wherefore, when you learned our union, was this dreadful artifice persisted in?'

'It wasna,' she replied, 'till Lady Glenallan had communicated this fause tale, that she suspected ye had actually made a marriage—nor even then did you avow it sae as to satisfy her whether the ceremony had in verity passed atween ye or no—But ye remember, O ye canna but remember weel, what passed in that awfu' meeting!'

'Woman! you swore upon the gospels to the fact which you now disavow.'

'I did,—and I wad hae taen a yet mair holy pledge on it, if there had been ane—I wad not hae spared the blood of my body, or the guilt of my soul, to serve the house of Glenallan.'

'Wretch! do you call that horrid perjury, attended with consequences yet more dreadful—do you esteem that a service to the house of your benefactors?'

'I served her, wha was then the head of Glenallan, as she required me to serve her. The cause was between God and her conscience—the manner between God and mine—She is gane to her account, and I maun follow. Have I taulds you a'?'

'No,' answered Lord Glenallan—'you have yet more to tell—you have to tell me of the death of the angel whom your perjury drove to despair, stained, as she thought herself, with a crime so horrible. Speak truth—was that dreadful—was that horrible incident'—he could scarcely articulate the words—'was it as reported? or was it an act of yet further, though not more atrocious cruelty, inflicted by others?'