CHAPTER XVII Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.
Macbeth.
Upon the evening of the day when Bertram's examination had taken place,Colonel Mannering arrived at Woodbourne from Edinburgh. He found hisfamily in their usual state, which probably, so far as Julia wasconcerned, would not have been the case had she learned the news ofBertram's arrest. But as, during the Colonel's absence, the two youngladies lived much retired, this circumstance fortunately had not reachedWoodbourne. A letter had already made Miss Bertram acquainted with thedownfall of the expectations which had been formed upon the bequest ofher kinswoman. Whatever hopes that news might have dispelled, thedisappointment did not prevent her from joining her friend in affording acheerful reception to the Colonel, to whom she thus endeavoured toexpress the deep sense she entertained of his paternal kindness. Shetouched on her regret that at such a season of the year he should havemade, upon her account, a journey so fruitless.
'That it was fruitless to you, my dear,' said the Colonel, 'I do mostdeeply lament; but for my own share, I have made some valuableacquaintances, and have spent the time I have been absent in Edinburghwith peculiar satisfaction; so that on that score there is nothing to beregretted. Even our friend the Dominie is returned thrice the man he was,from having sharpened his wits in controversy with the geniuses of thenorthern metropolis.'
'Of a surety,' said the Dominie, with great complacency, 'I did wrestle,and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his art.'
'I presume,' said Miss Mannering, 'the contest was somewhat fatiguing,Mr. Sampson?'
'Very much, young lady; howbeit I girded up my loins and strove againsthim.'
'I can bear witness,' said the Colonel; 'I never saw an affair bettercontested. The enemy was like the Mahratta cavalry: he assailed on allsides, and presented no fair mark for artillery; but Mr. Sampson stood tohis guns notwithstanding, and fired away, now upon the enemy and now uponthe dust which he had raised. But we must not fight our battles overagain to-night; to-morrow we shall have the whole at breakfast.'
The next morning at breakfast, however, the Dominie did not make hisappearance. He had walked out, a servant said, early in the morning. Itwas so common for him to forget his meals that his absence never derangedthe family. The housekeeper, a decent old-fashioned Presbyterian matron,having, as such, the highest respect for Sampson's theologicalacquisitions, had it in charge on these occasions to take care that hewas no sufferer by his absence of mind, and therefore usually waylaid himon his return, to remind him of his sublunary wants, and to minister totheir relief. It seldom, however, happened that he was absent from twomeals together, as was the case in the present instance. We must explainthe cause of this unusual occurrence.
The conversation which Mr. Pleydell had held with Mr. Mannering on thesubject of the loss of Harry Bertram had awakened all the painfulsensations which that event had inflicted upon Sampson. The affectionateheart of the poor Dominie had always reproached him that his negligencein leaving the child in the care of Frank Kennedy had been the proximatecause of the murder of the one, the loss of the other, the death of Mrs.Bertram, and the ruin of the family of his patron. It was a subject whichhe never conversed upon, if indeed his mode of speech could be calledconversation at any time; but it was often present to his imagination.The sort of hope so strongly affirmed and asserted in Mrs. Bertram's lastsettlement had excited a corresponding feeling in the Dominie's bosom,which was exasperated into a sort of sickening anxiety by the discreditwith which Pleydell had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson tohimself, 'he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weightymatters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity andinconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra,as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram ofSingleside?'
All this, I say, the Dominie THOUGHT to himself; for had he uttered halfthe sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the unusualfatigue of such a continued exertion. The result of these cogitations wasa resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy at Warroch Point,where he had not been for many years; not, indeed, since the fatalaccident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warrochlay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposedbetween it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more thanonce, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow,where he, honest man, had only the summer recollection of littletrickling rills.
At length, however, he reached the woods which he had made the object ofhis excursion, and traversed them with care, muddling his disturbedbrains with vague efforts to recall every circumstance of thecatastrophe. It will readily be supposed that the influence of localsituation and association was inadequate to produce conclusions differentfrom those which he had formed under the immediate pressure of theoccurrences themselves. 'With many a weary sigh, therefore, and many agroan,' the poor Dominie returned from his hopeless pilgrimage, andweariedly plodded his way towards Woodbourne, debating at times in hisaltered mind a question which was forced upon him by the cravings of anappetite rather of the keenest, namely, whether he had breakfasted thatmorning or no? It was in this twilight humour, now thinking of the lossof the child, then involuntarily compelled to meditate upon the somewhatincongruous subject of hung beef, rolls, and butter, that his route,which was different from that which he had taken in the morning,conducted him past the small ruined tower, or rather vestige of a tower,called by the country people the Kaim of Derncleugh.
The reader may recollect the description of this ruin in thetwenty-seventh chapter, as the vault in which young Bertram, under theauspices of Meg Merrilies, witnessed the death of Hatteraick'slieutenant. The tradition of the country added ghostly terrors to thenatural awe inspired by the situation of this place, which terrors thegipsies who so long inhabited the vicinity had probably invented, or atleast propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during thetimes of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother tothe reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother andsovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, andthat, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers ofthe house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled toretreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to thisimpregnable tower called the Kaim of Derucleugh, where he defendedhimself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting fire to the place,he and the small remaining garrison desperately perished by their ownswords, rather than fall into the hands of their exasperated enemies.This tragedy, which, considering the wild times wherein it was placed,might have some foundation in truth, was larded with many legends ofsuperstition and diablerie, so that most of the peasants of theneighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen to make aconsiderable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The lights, oftenseen around the tower, when used as the rendezvous of the lawlesscharacters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were accounted for,under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner at onceconvenient for the private parties concerned and satisfactory to thepublic.
Now it must be confessed that our friend Sampson, although a profoundscholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as todoubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born, indeed, at a timewhen a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent toa justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends hadbeen impressed upon the Dominie as an article indivisible from hisreligious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally difficult to haveinduced him to doubt the one as the other. With these feelings, and in athick misty day, which was already drawing to its close, Dominie Sampsondid not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some feelings of tacithorror.
What, then, was his astonishment when, on passing the door--that doorwhich was supposed to have been pl
aced there by one of the latter Lairdsof Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring thedangers of the haunted vault--that door, supposed to be always locked,and the key of which was popularly said to be deposited with thepresbytery--that door, that very door, opened suddenly, and the figure ofMeg Merrilies, well known, though not seen for many a revolving year, wasplaced at once before the eyes of the startled Dominie! She stoodimmediately before him in the footpath, confronting him so absolutelythat he could not avoid her except by fairly turning back, which hismanhood prevented him from thinking of.
'I kenn'd ye wad be here,' she said, with her harsh and hollow voice; 'Iken wha ye seek; but ye maun do my bidding.'
'Get thee behind me!' said the alarmed Dominie. 'Avoid ye! Conjuro te,scelestissima, nequissima, spurcissima, iniquissima atque miserrima,conjuro te!!!'
Meg stood her ground against this tremendous volley of superlatives,which Sampson hawked up from the pit of his stomach and hurled at her inthunder. 'Is the carl daft,' she said, 'wi' his glamour?'
'Conjuro,' continued the Dominie, 'abjuro, contestor atque viriliterimpero tibi!'
'What, in the name of Sathan, are ye feared for, wi' your Frenchgibberish, that would make a dog sick? Listen, ye stickit stibbler, towhat I tell ye, or ye sail rue it while there's a limb o' ye hings toanither! Tell Colonel Mannering that I ken he's seeking me. He kens, andI ken, that the blood will be wiped out, and the lost will be found, And Bertram's right and Bertram's might Shall meet on Ellangowan height.Hae, there's a letter to him; I was gaun to send it in another way. Icanna write mysell; but I hae them that will baith write and read, andride and rin for me. Tell him the time's coming now, and the weird'sdreed, and the wheel's turning. Bid him look at the stars as he haslooked at them before. Will ye mind a' this?'
'Assuredly,' said the Dominie, 'I am dubious; for, woman, I am perturbedat thy words, and my flesh quakes to hear thee.'
'They'll do you nae ill though, and maybe muckle gude.'
'Avoid ye! I desire no good that comes by unlawful means.'
'Fule body that thou art,' said Meg, stepping up to him, with a frown ofindignation that made her dark eyes flash like lamps from under her bentbrows--'Fule body! if I meant ye wrang, couldna I clod ye ower thatcraig, and wad man ken how ye cam by your end mair than Frank Kennedy?Hear ye that, ye worricow?'
'In the name of all that is good,' said the Dominie, recoiling, andpointing his long pewter-headed walking cane like a javelin at thesupposed sorceress--'in the name of all that is good, bide off hands! Iwill not be handled; woman, stand off, upon thine own proper peril!Desist, I say; I am strong; lo, I will resist!' Here his speech was cutshort; for Meg, armed with supernatural strength (as the Dominieasserted), broke in upon his guard, put by a thrust which he made at herwith his cane, and lifted him into the vault, 'as easily,' said he, 'as Icould sway a Kitchen's Atlas.'
'Sit down there,' she said, pushing the half-throttled preacher with someviolence against a broken chair--'sit down there and gather your wind andyour senses, ye black barrow-tram o' the kirk that ye are. Are ye fou orfasting?'
'Fasting, from all but sin,' answered the Dominie, who, recovering hisvoice, and finding his exorcisms only served to exasperate theintractable sorceress, thought it best to affect complaisance andsubmission, inwardly conning over, however, the wholesome conjurationswhich he durst no longer utter aloud. But as the Dominie's brain was byno means equal to carry on two trains of ideas at the same time, a wordor two of his mental exercise sometimes escaped and mingled with hisuttered speech in a manner ludicrous enough, especially as the poor manshrunk himself together after every escape of the kind, from terror ofthe effect it might produce upon the irritable feelings of the witch.
Meg in the meanwhile went to a great black cauldron that was boiling on afire on the floor, and, lifting the lid, an odour was diffused throughthe vault which, if the vapours of a witch's cauldron could in aught betrusted, promised better things than the hell-broth which such vesselsare usually supposed to contain. It was, in fact, the savour of a goodlystew, composed of fowls, hares, partridges, and moor-game boiled in alarge mess with potatoes, onions, and leeks, and from the size of thecauldron appeared to be prepared for half a dozen of people at least. 'Soye hae eat naething a' day?' said Meg, heaving a large portion of thismess into a brown dish and strewing it savourily with salt and pepper.[Footnote: See Note 4.]
'Nothing,' answered the Dominie, 'scelestissima!--that is, gudewife.'
'Hae then,' said she, placing the dish before him, 'there's what willwarm your heart.'
'I do not hunger, malefica--that is to say, Mrs. Merrilies!' for he saidunto himself,' the savour is sweet, but it hath been cooked by a Canidiaor an Ericthoe.'
'If ye dinna eat instantly and put some saul in ye, by the bread and thesalt, I'll put it down your throat wi' the cutty spoon, scaulding as itis, and whether ye will or no. Gape, sinner, and swallow!'