CHAPTER XXX.
What doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy, Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, And at her heel, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?
Comedy of Errors.
AS some vindication of the ease with which Bucklaw (who otherwise, ashe termed himself, was really a very good-humoured fellow) resigned hisjudgment to the management of Lady Ashton, while paying his addressesto her daughter, the reader must call to mind the strict domesticdiscipline which, at this period, was exercised over the females of aScottish family.
The manners of the country in this, as in many other respects, coincidedwith those of France before the Revolution. Young women of the higherrank seldom mingled in society until after marriage, and, both in lawand fact, were held to be under the strict tutelage of their parents,who were too apt to enforce the views for their settlement in lifewithout paying any regard to the inclination of the parties chieflyinterested. On such occasions, the suitor expected little more from hisbride than a silent acquiescence in the will of her parents; and as fewopportunities of acquaintance, far less of intimacy, occurred, he madehis choice by the outside, as the lovers in the Merchant of Veniceselect the casket, contented to trust to chance the issue of the lotteryin which he had hazarded a venture.
It was not therefore surprising, such being the general manners of theage, that Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw, whom dissipated habits had detachedin some degree from the best society, should not attend particularly tothose feelings in his elected bride to which many men of more sentiment,experience, and reflection would, in all probability, have been equallyindifferent. He knew what all accounted the principal point, that herparents and friends, namely, were decidedly in his favour, and thatthere existed most powerful reasons for their predilection.
In truth, the conduct of the Marquis of A----, since Ravenswood'sdeparture, had been such as almost to bar the possibility of hiskinsman's union with Lucy Ashton. The Marquis was Ravenswood's sincerebut misjudging friend; or rather, like many friends and patrons,he consulted what he considered to be his relation's true interest,although he knew that in doing so he ran counter to his inclinations.
The Marquis drove on, therefore, with the plentitude of ministerialauthority, an appeal to the British House of Peers against thosejudgments of the courts of law by which Sir William became possessed ofRavenswood's hereditary property. As this measure, enforced with all theauthority of power, was new in Scottish judicial proceedings, though nowso frequently resorted to, it was exclaimed against by the lawyerson the opposite side of politics, as an interference with the civiljudicature of the country, equally new, arbitrary, and tyrannical. Andif it thus affected even strangers connected with them only by politicalparty, it may be guessed what the Ashton family themselves saidand thought under so gross a dispensation. Sir William, still moreworldly-minded than he was timid, was reduced to despair by the lossby which he was threatened. His son's haughtier spirit was exalted intorage at the idea of being deprived of his expected patrimony. But toLady Ashton's yet more vindictive temper the conduct of Ravenswood, orrather of his patron, appeared to be an offence challenging the deepestand most immortal revenge. Even the quiet and confiding temper of Lucyherself, swayed by the opinions expressed by all around her, could notbut consider the conduct of Ravenswood as precipitate, and even unkind."It was my father," she repeated with a sigh, "who welcomed him to thisplace, and encouraged, or at least allowed, the intimacy between us.Should he not have remembered this, and requited it with at least somemoderate degree of procrastination in the assertion of his own allegedrights? I would have forfeited for him double the value of these lands,which he pursues with an ardour that shows he has forgotten how much Iam implicated in the matter."
Lucy, however, could only murmur these things to herself, unwilling toincrease the prejudices against her lover entertained by all aroundher, who exclaimed against the steps pursued on his account as illegal,vexatious, and tyrannical, resembling the worst measures in the worsttimes of the worst Stuarts, and a degradation of Scotland, the decisionsof whose learned judges were thus subjected to the review of a courtcomposed indeed of men of the highest rank, and who were not trained tothe study of any municipal law, and might be supposed specially to holdin contempt that of Scotland. As a natural consequence of the allegedinjustice meditated towards her father, every means was restored to, andevery argument urged to induce Miss Ashton to break off her engagementwith Ravenswood, as being scandalous, shameful, and sinful, formed withthe mortal enemy of her family, and calculated to add bitterness to thedistress of her parents.
Lucy's spirit, however, was high, and, although unaided and alone,she could have borne much: she could have endured the repinings of herfather; his murmurs against what he called the tyrannical usage of theruling party; his ceaseless charges of ingratitude against Ravenswood;his endless lectures on the various means by which contracts may bevoided and annulled; his quotations from the civil, municipal, and thecanon law; and his prelections upon the patria potestas.
She might have borne also in patience, or repelled with scorn, thebitter taunts and occasional violence of her brother, Colonel DouglasAshton, and the impertinent and intrusive interference of other friendsand relations. But it was beyond her power effectually to withstand orelude the constant and unceasing persecution of Lady Ashton, who, layingevery other wish aside, had bent the whol efforts of her powerfulmind to break her daughter's contract with Ravenswood, and to placea perpetual bar between the lovers, by effecting Lucy's union withBucklaw. Far more deeply skilled than her husband in the recesses of thehuman heart, she was aware that in this way she might strike a blow ofdeep and decisive vengeance upon one whom she esteemed as her mortalenemy; nor did she hesitate at raising her arm, although she knew thatthe wound must be dealt through the bosom of her daughter. With thisstern and fixed purpose, she sounded every deep and shallow of herdaughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner whichcould serve her object, and prepared at leisure every species of diremachinery by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settleddetermination. Some of these were of an obvious description, and requireonly to be cursorily mentioned; others were characteristic of the time,the country, and the persons engaged in this singular drama.
It was of the last consequence that all intercourse betwixt the loversshould be stopped, and, by dint of gold and authority, Lady Ashtoncontrived to possess herself of such a complete command of all who wereplaced around her daughter, that, if fact, no leaguered fortress wasever more completely blockaded; while, at the same time, to all outwardappearance Miss Ashton lay under no restriction. The verge of herparents' domains became, in respect to her, like the viewless andenchanted line drawn around a fairy castle, where nothing unpermittedcan either enter from without or escape from within. Thus every letter,in which Ravenswood conveyed to Lucy Ashton the indispensable reasonswhich detained him abroad, and more than one note which poor Lucy hadaddressed to him through what she thought a secure channel, fell intothe hands of her mother. It could not be but that the tenor of theseintercepted letters, especially those of Ravenswood, should containsomething to irritate the passions and fortify the obstinacy of her intowhose hands they fell; but Lady Ashton's passions were too deep-rootedto require this fresh food. She burnt the papers as regularly as sheperused them; and as they consumed into vapour and tinder, regarded themwith a smile upon her compressed lips, and an exultation in her steadyeye, which showed her confidence that the hopes of the writers shouldsoon be rendered equally unsubstantial.
It usually happens that fortune aids the machinations of those who areprompt to avail themselves of every chance that offers. A report waswafted from the continent, founded, like others of the same sort, uponmany plausible circumstances, but without any real basis, stating theMaster of Ravenswood to be on the eve of marriage with a foreign ladyof fortune and distinction. This was greedily caught up by both thepolitical parties, who were at once struggling for p
ower and for popularfavour, and who seized, as usual, upon the most private circumstancesin the lives of each other's partisans to convert them into subjects ofpolitical discussion.
The Marquis of A---- gave his opinion aloud and publicly, not indeed inthe coarse terms ascribed to him by Captain Craigengelt, but in a mannersufficiently offensive to the Ashtons. "He thought the report," he said,"highly probably, and heartily wished it might be true. Such a matchwas fitter and far more creditable for a spirited young fellow than amarriage with the daughter of an old Whig lawyer, whose chicanery had sonearly ruined his father."
The other party, of course, laying out of view the opposition which theMaster of Ravenswood received from Miss Ashton's family, cried shameupon his fickleness and perfidy, as if he had seduced the young ladyinto an engagement, and wilfully and causelessly abandoned her foranother.
Sufficient care was taken that this report should find its way toRavenswood Castle through every various channel, Lady Ashton beingwell aware that the very reiteration of the same rumour, from so manyquarters, could not but give it a semblance of truth. By some it wastold as a piece of ordinary news, by some communicated as seriousintelligence; now it was whispered to Lucy Ashton's ear in the tone ofmalignant pleasantry, and now transmitted to her as a matter of graveand serious warning.
Even the boy Henry was made the instrument of adding to his sister'storments. One morning he rushed into the room with a willow branch inhis hand, which he told her had arrived that instant from Germany forher special wearing. Lucy, as we have seen, was remarkably fond ofher younger brother, and at that moment his wanton and thoughtlessunkindness seemed more keenly injurious than even the studied insults ofher elder brother. Her grief, however, had no shade of resentment; shefolded her arms about the boy's neck, and saying faintly, "Poor Henry!you speak but what they tell you" she burst into a flood of unrestrainedtears. The boy was moved, notwithstanding the thoughtlessness of his ageand character. "The devil take me," said he, "Lucy, if I fetch you anymore of these tormenting messages again; for I like you better," saidhe, kissing away the tears, "than the whole pack of them; and you shallhave my grey pony to ride on, and you shall canter him if you like--ay,and ride beyond the village, too, if you have a mind."
"Who told you," said Lucy, "that I am not permitted to ride where Iplease?"
"That's a secret," said the boy; "but you will find you can never ridebeyond the village but your horse will cast a shoe, or fall lame, or thecattle bell will ring, or something will happen to bring you back. Butif I tell you more of these things, Douglas will nto get me the pair ofcolours they have promised me, and so good-morrow to you."
This dialogue plunged Lucy in still deeper dejection, as it tended toshow her plainly what she had for some time suspected, that she waslittle better than a prisoner at large in her father's house. We havedescribed her in the outset of our story as of a romantic disposition,delighting in tales of love and wonder, and readily identifying herselfwith the situation of those legendary heroines with whose adventures,for want of better reading, her memory had become stocked. The fairywand, with which in her solitude she had delighted to raise visions ofenchantment, became now the rod of a magician, the bond slave of evil_genii_, serving only to invoke spectres at which the exorcist trembled.She felt herself the object of suspicion, of scorn, of dislike at least,if not of hatred, to her own family; and it seemed to her that she wasabandoned by the very person on whose account she was exposed tothe enmity of all around her. Indeed, the evidence of Ravenswood'sinfidelity began to assume every day a more determined character.A soldier of fortune, of the name of Westenho, an old familiar ofCraigengelt's, chanced to arrive from abroad about this time. The worthyCaptain, though without any precise communication with Lady Ashton,always acted most regularly and sedulously in support of her plans,and easily prevailed upon his friend, by dint of exaggeration of realcircumstances and coming of others, to give explicit testimony to thetruth of Ravenswood's approaching marriage.
Thus beset on all hands, and in a manner reduced to despair, Lucy'stemper gave way under the pressure of constant affliction andpersecution. She became gloomy and abstracted, and, contrary to hernatural and ordinary habit of mind, sometimes turned with spirit, andeven fierceness, on those by whom she was long and closely annoyed. Herhealth also began to be shaken, and her hectic cheek and wanderingeye gave symptoms of what is called a fever upon the spirits. In mostmothers this would have moved compassion but Lady Ashton, compact andfirm of purpose, saw these waverings of health and intellect with nogreater sympathy than that with which the hostile engineer regards thetowers of a beleaguered city as they reel under the discharge of hisartillery; or rather, she considered these starts and inequalities oftemper as symptoms of Lucy's expiring resolution as the angler, by thethroes and convulsive exertions of the fish which he has hooked,becomes aware that he soon will be able to land him. To acceleratethe catastrophe in the present case, Lady Ashton had recourse to anexpedient very consistent with the temper and credulity of those times,but which the reader will probably pronounce truly detestable anddiabolical.