Sir Walter Scott

“ Not so Caleb Balderstone. If worldly profit could have consoled the old man, his age was better provided for than his earlier life had ever been; but life had lost to him its salt and its savour. His whole course of ideas, his feelings, whether of pride or of apprehension, of pleasure or of pain, had all arisen from his close connection with the family which was now extinguished. He held up his bead no longer—forsook all his usual haunts and occupations, and seemed only to find pleasure in mopeing about those apartments in the old castle, which the Master of Ravenswood had last inhabited. ”

“ God hateth the blood-thirsty man—he who striketh with the sword, shall perish with the sword."
"Do you take me for a dog, sir," said Colonel Ashton, turning fiercely upon him, "or something more brutally stupid, to endure this insult in my father's house?—Let me go, Bucklaw! He shall account to me, or, by heaven, I will stab him where he stands." ”

“ He planted himself full in the middle of the apartment, opposite to the table at which Lucy was seated, on whom, as if she had been alone in the chamber, he bent his eyes with a mingled expression of deep grief and deliberate indignation. His dark-coloured riding cloak, displaced from one shoulder, hung around one side of his person in the ample folds of the Spanish mantle. The rest of his rich dress was travel-soil'd, and deranged by hard riding. He had a sword by his side, and pistols in his belt. ”

“ After a long pause, only interrupted by the devil's tatoo, 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." ”

“ The very dead have arisen to warn me, and their warning has been despised. Are you prepared to pierce my heart for its fidelity, with the very weapon which my rash confidence entrusted to your grasp?"
"Master of Ravenswood," said Lady Ashton, "you have asked what questions you thought fit. You see the total incapacity of my daughter to answer you. But I will reply for her, and in a manner which you cannot dispute. You desire to know whether Lucy Ashton, of her own free-will, desires to annul the engagement into which she has been trepanned. ”

“ In most mothers this would have moved compassion, but Lady Ashton, compact and firm of purpose, saw these waverings of health and intellect with no greater sympathy than that with which the hostile engineer regards the towers of a beleaguered city as they reel under the discharge of his artillery, or rather she considered these starts and inequalities of temper as symptoms of Lucy's expiring resolution; as the angler, by the throws and convulsive exertions of the fish which he has hooked, becomes aware that he soon will be able to land him. ”

“ Bucklaw interposed, saying, "No man on earth should usurp his previous right in demanding an explanation from the Master.—Craigengelt," he added, in an under tone, "d—n ye, why do you stand staring as if you saw a ghost? fetch me my sword from the gallery."
"I will relinquish to no man," said Colonel Ashton, "my right of calling to account the man who has offered this unparalleled affront to my family."
"Be patient, gentlemen," said Ravenswood, turning sternly towards them, and waving his hand as if to impose silence on their altercation. ”

“ Only I must have a corner at the board end for a worthless old play fellow 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 Craigy, 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?" ”

“ Stories were told by her attendant so closely resembling her own in their circumstances, that she was gradually led to converse upon such tragic and mystical subjects with the beldame, and to repose a sort of confidence in the sybil, whom she still regarded with involuntary shuddering. Dame Gourlay knew how to avail herself of this imperfect confidence. She directed Lucy's thoughts to the means of enquiring into futurity,—the surest mode, perhaps, of shaking the understanding and destroying the spirits. ”

“ If you refuse me my open challenge, there is no advantage I will not take of you, no indignity with which I will not load you, until the very name of Ravenswood shall be the sign of every thing that is dishonourable, as it is already of all that is villainous. ”

“ Sun-rise to-morrow morning, on the Links to the east of Wolf's-hope."
The Master of Ravenswood held the paper in his hand, and seemed irresolute. At length he spoke—"Do not," he said, "urge to farther desperation a wretch who is already desperate. Enjoy your life while you can, and let me seek my death from another."
"That you never, never shall," said Ashton. "You shall die by my hand, or you shall complete the ruin of my family on taking my life. ”

“ In a private interview with Miss Ashton, he was deeply moved by her distress, and could not but admit the justice of her request to be permitted a direct communication with Ravenswood, upon the subject of their solemn contract. When she urged to him the great uncertainty under which she laboured, whether her letter had been ever forwarded, the old man paced the room with long steps, shook his grey head, rested repeatedly for a space on his ivory-headed staff, and after much hesitation, confessed that he thought her doubts so reasonable, that he would himself aid in the removal of them. ”

“ It usually happens that fortune aids the machinations of those who are prompt to avail themselves of every chance that offers. A report was wafted from the continent, founded, like others of the same sort, upon many plausible circumstances, but without any real basis, stating the Master of Ravenswood to be on the eve of marriage with a foreign lady of fortune and distinction. ”

“ With this stern and fixed purpose, she sounded every depth and shallow of her daughter's soul, assumed alternately every disguise of manner which could serve her purpose, and prepared at leisure every species of dire machinery, by which the human mind can be wrenched from its settled purpose. ”

“ 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—the 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." ”

“ The family of Ashton did not long survive that of Ravenswood. Sir William Ashton survived his eldest son, the Colonel, who was slain in a duel in Flanders; and Henry, by whom he was succeeded, died unmarried. Lady Ashton lived to the verge of extreme old age, the only survivor of the group of unhappy persons, whose misfortunes were owing to her implacability. That she might internally feel compunction, and reconcile herself with heaven whom she had offended, we will not, and we dare not deny ”

“ Gradually, however, they assumed a darker and more mysterious character, and became such as, told by the midnight lamp, and enforced by the tremulous tone, the quivering and livid lip, the uplifted skinny fore-finger, and the shaking head of the ugly blue-eyed hag, might have appalled a less credulous imagination, in an age more hard of belief. ”

“ The old man thought that the morning, for which he longed, would never have dawned; but time, whose course rolls on with equal current, however it may seem more rapid or more slow to mortal apprehension, brought the dawn at last, and spread a ruddy light on the broad verge of the glistening ocean. ”

“ Miss Lucy," be said, "that your worshipful lady mother hath in this matter an eagerness, whilk, although it ariseth doubtless from love to your best interests here and hereafter,—for the man is of persecuting blood, and himself a persecutor, a cavalier or malignant, and a scoffer, who hath no inheritance in Jesse,—nevertheless we are commanded to do justice unto all, and to fulfil our bond and convenant, as well to the stranger, as to him who is in brotherhood with us. ”

“ And I am glad the broad seas are between us this day, for I shall never forget how frightened I was when I took him for the picture of old Sir Malise walked out of the canvass. Tell me true, are you not glad to be fairly shot of him?"
"Ask me no questions, Henry," said his unfortunate sister; "there is little more can happen to make me either glad or sorry in this world." ”

“ With one of her sweetest smiles, she took Lucy's arm under her own, and led her to the apartment where her presence was expected.
There were only present, Sir William Ashton, and Colonel Douglas Ashton, the last in full regimentals—Bucklaw in bridegroom trim—Craigengelt freshly equipt from top to toe by the bounty of his patron, and bedizened with as much lace as might have become the dress of the Copper Captain, together with the Rev. Mr Bide-the-bent; the presence of a minister being, in strict presbyterian families, an indispensable requisite upon all occasions of unusual solemnity. ”

“ Alas! the workings of the ancient Adam are strong even in the regenerate—surely we should have long suffering with those who, being yet in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, are swept forward by the uncontroulable current of worldly passion. ”

“ He prayed further, that the bridegroom might be weaned from those follies which seduce youth from the path of knowledge; that he might cease to take delight in vain and unprofitable company, scoffers, rioters, and those who sit late at the wine, (here Bucklaw winked to Craigengelt) , and cease from the society that causeth to err. A suitable supplication in behalf of Sir William and Lady Ashton, and their family, concluded this religious address, which thus embraced every individual present, excepting Craigengelt, whom the worthy divine probably considered as past all hopes of grace. ”

“ It is not known how the Master of Ravenswood disposed of the rest of that unhappy day. Late at night, however, he arrived at Wolf's Crag, and aroused his old domestic, Caleb Balderstone, who had ceased to expect his return. Confused and flying rumours of the late tragical death of Miss Ashton, and of its mysterious cause, had already reached the old man, who was filled with the utmost anxiety, on account of the probable effect these events might produce upon the mind of his master. ”

“ All recoiled at the sound of his voice, and the determined action by which it was accompanied; for the ecstasy of real desperation seldom fails to overpower the less energetic passions by which it may be opposed. The clergyman was the first to speak. "In the name of God," he said, "receive an overture of peace from the meanest of his servants. What this honourable person demands, albeit it is urged with over violence, hath yet in it something of reason. Let him hear from Miss Lucy's own lips that she hath dutifully acceded to the will of her parents, and repenteth her of her covenant with him ”

“ The health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a person more skilled in the office of a sick nurse than the female domestics of the family. Ailsie Gourlay, sometimes called the Wise Woman of Bowden, was the person whom, for her own strong reasons, Lady Ashton selected as an attendant upon her daughter. ”

“ And he scampered away with the thoughtless gaiety of boyhood, leaving his sister to the bitterness of her own reflections.
"It is decreed," she said, "that every living creature, even those who owe me most kindness, are to shun me, and leave me to those by whom I am beset. ”

“ In private, however, she traded more deeply in the occult sciences; for, notwithstanding the dreadful punishments inflicted upon the supposed crime of witchcraft, there wanted not those who, steeled by want and bitterness of spirit, were willing to adopt the hateful and dangerous character, for the sake of the influence which its terrors enabled them to exercise in the vicinity, and the wretched emolument which they could extract by the practice of their supposed art. ”

“ If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth, and her father hear her vow and her bond, wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her, then all her vow shall stand. ”

“ I'll be bound Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bits, martingals, 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 ”

“ Young women of the higher ranks seldom mingled in society until after marriage, and, both in law and fact, were held to be under the strict tutelage of their parents, who were too apt to enforce the views for their settlement in life, without paying any regard to the inclination of the parties chiefly interested. ”

“ Colonel Ashton joining the rest of the mourners, and the Master of Ravenswood taking his horse, which was tied to a tree behind the church. Colonel Ashton returned to the castle with the funeral guests, but found a pretext for detaching himself from them in the evening, when, changing his dress to a riding habit, he rode to Wolf's-hope that night, and took up his abode in the little inn, in order that he might be ready for his rendezvous in the morning. ”