I. THE EARL’S SECRET
ON the seashore not far from the mansion-house of Monkbarns stood the little fisherman’s cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit. Saunders it was who had rigged the mast, by which Sir Arthur and his daughter were pulled to the top of the cliffs on the night of the storm. His wife came every day to the door of Monkbarns to sell fish to Miss Griselda, the Antiquary’s sister, when the pair of them would stand by the hour “skirling and flyting beneath his window like so many seamaws,” as Oldbuck himself said.
Besides Steenie Mucklebackit, the eldest son, the same who had assisted Edie Ochiltree to bestow a well-deserved chastisement upon Dousterswivel, and a number of merry half-naked urchins, the family included the grandmother, Elspeth Mucklebackit—a woman old, but not infirm, whose understanding appeared at most times to be asleep, but the stony terror of whose countenance often frightened the bairns more than their mother’s shrill tongue and ready palm.
Elspeth seldom spoke. Indeed, she had done little for many years except twirl the distaff in her corner by the fire. Few cared to have much to do with her. She was thought to be “far from canny,” and certainly she knew more about the great family of Glenallan than it was safe to speak aloud.
It chanced on the very night when Edie and Steenie had given a skinful of sore bones to the German impostor Dousterswivel, that the Countess of Glenallan, mother of the Earl, was brought to be buried at midnight among the ruins of St. Ruth.
Such had been the custom of the family from ancient times—indeed, ever since the Great Earl fell fighting at the Red Harlaw against Donald of the Isles. More recently there had been another reason for such a strange fashion of burial. For the family were Catholics, and there had long been laws in Scotland against the holding of popish ceremonials even on an occasion so solemn.
The news of the death of her ancient mistress, coming at last to the ears of old Elspeth, took such hold upon her, that she could not rest till she had sent off Edie Ochiltree to the Earl of Glenallan, at Glenallan House, with a ring for a token and the message that Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot must see him before she died. She had, Edie was to say, a secret on her soul, without revealing which she could not hope to die in peace.
Accordingly Edie set off for the castle of Glenallan, taking the ring with him, but with very little hope of finding his way into the Earl’s presence; for Lord Glenallan had been long completely withdrawn from the world. His mother was Countess in her own right, and so long as she lived, her son had been wholly dependent upon her. In addition to which some great sorrow or some great crime, the countryside was not sure which, pressed sore upon his mind, and being a strict Catholic he passed his time in penance and prayer.
However, by the help of an old soldier, one Francie Macraw, who had been his rear-rank man at Fontenoy, Edie Ochiltree was able after many delays to win a way to the Earl’s presence—though the priests who were about his person evidently tried to keep everything connected with the outer world from his knowledge. The Earl, a tall, haggard, gloomy man, whose age seemed twice what it really was, stood holding the token ring in his hand. At first he took Edie for a father of his own church, and demanded if any further penance were necessary to atone for his sin. But as soon as Edie declared his message, at the very first mention of the name of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, the Earl’s cheek became even more deathlike than it had been at Edie’s entrance.
“Ah,” he said, “that name is indeed written on the darkest page of a terrible history. But what can the woman want with me? Is she dead or living?”
“She is living in the body,” said Edie, “and at times her mind lives too—but she is an awfu’ woman.”
“She always was so,” said the Earl, answering almost unconsciously. “She was different from other women—likest, perhaps, to her who is no more—”
Edie knew that he meant his own mother, so lately dead.
“She wishes to see me,” continued the Earl; “she shall be gratified, though the meeting will be a pleasure to neither of us.”
Lord Glenallan gave Edie a handful of guineas, which, contrary to his usage, Edie had not the courage to refuse. The Earl’s tone was too absolute.
Then, as an intimation that the interview was at an end, Lord Glenallan called his servant.
“See this old man safe,” he said; “let no one ask him any questions. And you, my friend, be gone, and forget the road that leads to my house!”
“That would indeed be difficult,” said the undaunted Edie, “since your lordship has given me such good cause to remember it.”
Lord Glenallan stared, as if hardly comprehending the old man’s boldness in daring to bandy words with him. Then, without answering, he made him another signal to depart by a simple movement of his hand, which Edie, awed far beyond his wont, instantly obeyed.
II. THE MOTHER’S VENGEANCE
The day of Lord Glenallan’s visit to the cottage where dwelt old Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot seemed at first ill timed. That very day Steenie Mucklebackit, the young, the gallant, the handsome eldest son of the house had been carried to his grave. He had been drowned while at the fishing, though his father had risked his life in vain to save him. The family had now returned home, and were sitting alone in the first benumbing shock of their grief.
It was some time before the Earl could make good his entrance into the cottage. It was still longer before he could convince the old woman Elspeth that he was really Lord Glenallan, and so obtain an opportunity of speaking with her. But at last they were left alone in the cottage, and the thick veil which had fallen upon Elspeth’s spirit seemed for a while to be drawn aside. She spoke like one of an education far superior to her position, clearly and calmly, even when recounting the most terrible events.
Her very first words recalled to the Earl the fair young wife, whom he had married long ago, against his mother’s will and without her knowledge.
“Name not her name,” he cried, in agony, “all that is dead to me—dead long ago!”
“I MUST!” said the old woman; “it is of her I have to speak.”
And in the fewest and simplest words she told him how, when his mother the Countess had found means to separate husband and wife, while he himself was fleeing half mad, none knew whither, the young wife had thrown herself in a fit of frenzy over the cliffs into the sea. It was to Elspeth’s cottage that she and her babe had been brought.
“And here,” said the terrible old woman, suddenly thrusting a golden bodkin into his hand, “is the very dagger which your mother the Countess gave me in order that with it I might slay your infant son.”
The Earl looked at the gold bodkin or dagger, as if in fancy he saw the blood of his child still red upon it.
“Wretch!” he cried; “and had you the heart?”
“I kenna whether I would or not,” said Elspeth. “My mistress commanded and I obeyed. So did I ever. But my obedience was not to be tried that time. For when I returned, the babe had gone. Your younger brother had been called up to the castle. The child had been left in the care of the Countess’s Spanish maid, and when I returned to my cottage, both she and the babe were gone. The dead body of your young wife alone remained. And now,” concluded Elspeth, abruptly, “can you forgive me?”
Lord Glenallan was going out of the hut, overwhelmed by the disclosure to which he had been listening. He saw his young wife hounded to death by his fierce and revengeful mother. He thought of the living child so wonderfully left to him as a legacy from the dead. Yet he turned at Elspeth’s last words.
“May God forgive thee, miserable woman,” he said. “Turn for mercy to Him. He will forgive you as sincerely as I do.”
As Lord Glenallan went out into the sunlight, he met face to face with the Antiquary himself, who was on his way to the cottage to offer what consolation or help might be in his power. The Earl and he recognised one another, but the Antiquary’s greeting was hard and cold. As a magistrate he had made, on his own responsibility and against all the power of the Glenallan family, the legal inquiries into the death of the Earl’s young wife. Indeed, during a residence which she had made at Knockwinnock Castle with the Wardour family twenty years ago, and while she was still only known as Miss Eveline Neville, the Antiquary had loved her and had asked her to be his wife. It was, indeed, chiefly on her account that he had never married. Mr. Oldbuck had never ceased to mourn her, and now, believing as he had good reason to do, that the Earl was the cause of her untimely death, and of the stigma which rested upon her name, it was little wonder that he should wish to have no dealings with him.
But the Earl had a great need in his heart to speak to some one. In a moment the whole World seemed to have changed for him. For the first time he knew the truth about a dark deed of cruelty. For the first time, also, he knew that he had a son. He desired above all else the wise counsel of a true friend. In his heart he had admired the fearlessness of the Antiquary in the bold inquiry he had made at the time of Eveline Neville’s death, and now, refusing to be rebuffed, he followed Mr. Oldbuck as he was turning away, and demanded that he should not deny him his counsel and assistance at a most terrible and critical moment.
It was not in the good Antiquary’s nature to refuse such a request from Earl or beggar, and their interview ended in the Earl’s accepting the hospitality of Monkbarns for the night, in order that they might have plenty of time to discuss the whole subject of Elspeth’s communication.
On his own part Mr. Oldbuck had some comfort to give Lord Glenallan. He had kept the papers which concerned the inquiry carefully, and he was able to assure his lordship that his brother had carried off the babe with him, probably for the purpose of having it brought up and educated upon the English estates he had inherited from his father, and on which he had ever afterward lived.
“My brother,” said Lord Glenallan, “is recently dead, which makes our search the more difficult. Furthermore, I am not his heir. He has left his property to a stranger, as indeed he had every right to do. But as the heir is like himself a Protestant, he may be unwilling to aid the inquiry—”
“I trust,” interrupted Mr. Oldbuck, with some feeling, “that you will find a Protestant can be as honest and honourable as a Catholic.”
The Earl protested that he had no idea of supposing otherwise.
“Only,” he continued, “there was an old steward on the estate who in all probability is the only man now living who knows the truth. But it is not expected that any man will willingly disinherit himself. For if I have a living son, my father’s estates are entailed on him, and the steward may very likely stand by his master.”
“I have a friend in Yorkshire,” said Mr. Oldbuck, “to whom I can apply for information as to the character of your brother’s heir, and also as to the disposition of his steward. That is all we can do at present. But take courage, my lord. I believe that your son is alive.”
In the morning Lord Glenallan returned to the castle in his carriage, while Mr. Oldbuck, hearing from Hector that he was going down to Fairport, in order to see that old Edie Ochiltree had fair play before the magistrates, offered to bear him company.
Edie Ochiltree—in prison for thwacking the ribs of Dousterswivel, which he had done (or at least poor Steenie Mucklebackit for him), and for stealing the German’s fifty pounds, which he had not done—willingly revealed to Monkbarns what he had refused to breathe to Bailie Littlejohn of the Fairport magistracy. After some delay Edie was accordingly liberated on the Antiquary’s bail, and immediately accompanied his good friend to the cottage of old Elspeth Mucklebackit, where, by the Earl’s request, Oldbuck was to take down a statement from her lips, such as might be produced in a court of law. But no single syllable would the old beldame now utter against her ancient mistress.
“Ha,” she said, at the first question put to her by the Antiquary; “I thought it would come to this. It’s only sitting silent when they question me. There’s nae torture in our days, and if there was, let them rend me! It ill becomes a vassal’s mouth to betray the bread which it has eaten.”
Then they told her that her mistress, the Countess Jocelin, was dead, hoping this might bring her to confession. But the news had quite an opposite effect.
“Dead!” cried Elspeth, aroused as ever by the sound of her mistress’s name, “then, if she be gone before, the servant must follow. All must ride when she is in the saddle. Bring my scarf and hood! Ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage with my lady, and my hair all abroad in this fashion!”
She raised her withered arms, and her hands seemed busied like those of a woman who puts on a cloak to go a journey.
“Call Miss Neville,” she continued; “what do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville. There’s no Lady Geraldin. But tell her to change her wet gown and not to look so pale. Bairn—what should she do wi’ a bairn? She has nane, I trow! Teresa—Teresa—my lady calls us! Bring a candle! The grand staircase is as black before me as a Yule midnight! Coming, my lady, we are coming!”
With these words, and as if following in the train of her mistress, old Elspeth, once of the Craigburnfoot, sunk back on the settle, and from thence sidelong to the floor.
III. THE HEIR OF GLENALLAN
Meanwhile doom was coming fast upon poor Sir Arthur Wardour. He seemed to be utterly ruined. The treachery of Dousterswivel, the pressing and extortionate demands of a firm called Goldiebirds, who held a claim over his estate, the time-serving of his own lawyers, at last brought the officers of the law down upon him. He found himself arrested for debt in his own house. He was about to be sent to prison, when Edie Ochiltree, who in his day had been deep in many plots, begged that he might be allowed to drive over to Tannanburgh, and promised that he would certainly bring back some good news from the post-office there.
It was all that Oldbuck, with his best tact and wisdom, could do to keep Hector MacIntyre from assaulting the officers of the law during the absence of Edie. Two long hours they waited. The carriage had already been ordered round to the door to convey Sir Arthur to prison. Miss Wardour was in agony, her father desperate with shame and grief, when Edie arrived triumphantly grasping a packet. He delivered it forthwith to the Antiquary. For Sir Arthur, knowing his own weakness, had put himself unreservedly into the hands of his abler friend. The packet, being opened, was found to contain a writ stopping the proceedings, a letter of apology from the lawyers who had been most troublesome, and a note from Captain Wardour, Sir Arthur’s son, enclosing a thousand pounds for his father’s immediate needs. It also declared that ere long he himself would come to the castle along with a distinguished officer, Major Neville, who had been appointed to report to the War Office concerning the state of the defences of the country.
“Thus,” said the Antiquary, summing up the situation, “was the last siege of Knockwinnock House laid by Saunders Sweepclean, the bailiff, and raised by Edie Ochiltree, the King’s Blue-Gown!”
There was, at the time when the story of the Antiquary and his doings draws to a close, a daily expectation of a French invasion. Beacons had been prepared on every hill and headland, and men were set to watch. One of these beacons had been intrusted to old Caxon the hairdresser, and one night he saw, directly in the line of the hill to the south which he was to watch, a flame start suddenly up. It was undoubtedly the token agreed upon to warn the country of the landing of the French.
He lighted his beacon accordingly. It threw up to the sky a long wavering train of light, startling the sea-fowl from their nests, and reddening the sea beneath the cliffs. Caxon’s brother warders, equally zealous, caught and repeated the signal. The district was soon awake and alive with the tidings of invasion.
“ONE night he saw, directly in the line of the hill to the south which he was to watch, a flame start suddenly up. It was undoubtedly the token agreed upon to warn the country of the landing of the French.
“He lighted his beacon accordingly.”
From far and near the Lowland burghers, the country lairds, the Highland chiefs and clans responded to the summons. They had been drilling for long, and now in the dead of the night they marched with speed upon Fairport, eager to defend that point of probable attack.
Last of all the Earl of Glenallan came in with a splendidly mounted squadron of horse, raised among his Lowland tenants, and five hundred Highland clansmen with their pipes playing stormily in the van. Presently also Captain Wardour arrived in a carriage drawn by four horses, bringing with him Major Neville, the distinguished officer appointed to the command of the district. The magistrates assembled at the door of their town-house to receive him. The volunteers, the yeomanry, the Glenallan clansmen—all were there awaiting the great man.
What was the astonishment of the people of Fairport, and especially of the Antiquary, to see descend from the open door of the carriage,—who but the quiet Mr. Lovel.
He had brought with him the news that the alarm of invasion was false. The beacon which Caxon had seen was only the burning of the mining machinery in Glen Withershins which had been ordered by Oldbuck and Sir Arthur to make a final end of Dousterswivel’s plots and deceits.
But there was yet further and more interesting private news. The proofs that Lovel was indeed the son of the Earl of Glenallan were found to be overwhelming. His heirship to the title had been fully made out. The chaplain who had performed his father’s wedding had returned from abroad, exiled by the French Revolution. The witnesses also had been found. Most decisive of all, among the papers of the Earl’s late brother, there was discovered a duly authenticated account of his carrying off the child, and of how he had had him educated and pushed on in the army.
So that very night the Antiquary enjoyed in some degree the crowning pleasure of his whole life, in bringing together father and son for the first time. That is, if the marriage which took place soon after between his young friend Lovel (or Lord William Geraldin) and Miss Isabella Wardour of Knockwinnock Castle did not turn out to be a yet greater pleasure. Old Edie still travels from farm to farm, but mostly now confines himself to the short round between Monkbarns and Knockwinnock. It is reported, however, that he means soon to settle with old Caxon, who, since the marriage of his daughter to Lieutenant Taffril, has been given a cottage near the three wigs which he still keeps in order in the parish,—the minister’s, Sir Arthur’s, and best of all, that of our good and well-beloved Antiquary.
THE END OF THE LAST TALE FROM “THE ANTIQUARY.”
“Now,” said Sweetheart, nodding particular approval, “that is the way a story ought to end up—everything going on from chapter to chapter, with no roundabouts, and everything told about everybody right to the very end!”
“Hum,” said Hugh John, with a curl of his nose; “well, that’s done with! But it was good about the Storm and the Duel! The rest was—”
“Hush,” said Sweetheart, “remember, it was written by Sir Walter.”
“Sir,” said I to Hugh John, heavily parental, “The Antiquary may not now be much to your taste, but the day will come when you may probably prefer it to all the rest put together.”
At these words the young man assumed the expression common to boys who are bound to receive the wholesome advice of their elders, yet who do so with silent but respectful doubt, if not with actual disbelief.
“Well,” he said, after a long pause, “anyway, the Duel was good. And I’d jolly well like to find a treasure in Misticot’s grave. Can we have another snow fight?”