by Walter Scott
At another time I should have been delighted with this change of destination. But now Osbaldistone Hall was accompanied with many painful recollections. Still, however, I thought that in that neighbourhood only I was likely to acquire some information respecting the fate of Diana Vernon. I had every reason to fear it must be far different from what I could have wished it. But I could obtain no precise information on the subject.
It was in vain that I endeavoured, by such acts of kindness as their situation admitted, to conciliate the confidence of some distant relations who were among the prisoners in Newgate. A pride which I could not condemn, and a natural suspicion of the Whig, Frank Osbaldistone, cousin to the double-distilled traitor Rashleigh, closed every heart and tongue, and I only received thanks, cold and extorted, in exchange for such benefits as I had power to offer. The arm of the law was also gradually abridging the numbers of those whom I endeavoured to serve, and the hearts of the survivors became gradually more contracted towards all whom they conceived to be concerned with the existing government. As they were led gradually, and by detachments, to execution, those who survived lost interest in mankind, and the desire of communicating with them. I shall long remember what one of them, Ned Shafton, by name, replied to my anxious enquiry, whether there was any indulgence I could procure him. ‘Mr. Frank Osbaldistone, I must suppose you mean me kindly, and therefore I thank you. But, by G—, men cannot be fattened like poultry, when they see their neighbours carried off day by day to the place of execution, and know that their own necks are to be twisted round in their turn.’
Upon the whole, therefore, I was glad to excape from London, from Newgate, and from the scenes which both exhibited, to breathe the free air of Northumberland. Andrew Fairservice had continued in my service more from my father’s pleasure than my own. At present there seemed a prospect that his local acquaintance with Osbaldistone Hall and its vicinity might be useful; and, of course, he accompanied me on my journey, and I enjoyed the prospect of getting rid of him, by establishing him in his old quarters. I cannot conceive how he could prevail upon my father to interest himself in him, unless it were by the art, which he possessed in no inconsiderable degree, of affecting an extreme attachment to his master, which theoretical attachment he made compatible in practice with playing all manner of tricks without scruple, providing only against his master being cheated by any one but himself.
We performed our journey to the North without any remarkable adventure, and we found the country, so lately agitated by rebellion, now peaceful and in good order. The nearer we approached to Osbaldistone Hall, the more did my heart sink at the thought of entering that deserted mansion; so that, in order to postone the evil day, I resolved first to make my visit at Mir. Justice Inglewood’s.
That venerable person had been much disturbed with thoughts of what he had been, and what he now was; and natural recollections of the past had interfered considerably with the active duty, which, in his present situation, might have been expected from him. He was fortunate, however, in one respect: he had got rid of his clerk, Jobson, who had finally left him in dudgeon at his inactivity, and become legal assistant to a certain Squire Standish, who had lately commenced operations in those parts as a justice, with a zeal for King George and the Protestant succession, which, very different from the feelings of his old patron, Mr. Jobson had more occasion to restrain within the bounds of the law, than to stimulate to exertion.
Old Justice Inglewood received me with great courtesy, and readily exhibited my uncle’s will, which seemed to be without a flaw. He was for some time in obvious distress, how he should speak and act in my presence; but when he found, that though a supporter of the present government upon principle, I was disposed to think with pity on those who had opposed it on a mistaken feeling of loyalty and duty, his discourse became a very diverting medley of what he had done, and what he had left undone,—the pains he had taken to prevent some squires from joining, and to wink at the escape of others, who had been so unlucky as to engage in the affair.
We were tête-à-tête, and several bumpers had been quaffed by the Justice’s special desire, when, on a sudden, he requested me to fill a bona fide brimmer to the health of poor dear Die Vernon, the rose of the wilderness, the heath-bell of Cheviot, and the blossom that’s transplanted to an infernal convent.
‘Is not Miss Vernon married then?’ I exclaimed, in great astonishment. ‘I thought his Excellency——’
‘Pooh! pooh! his Excellency and his Lordship’s all a humbug now, you know—mere St. Germains titles—Earl of Beauchamp, and ambassador plenipotentiary from France, when the Duke Regent of Orleans scarce knew that he lived, I daresay. But you must have seen old Sir Frederick Vernon at the hall, when he played the part of Father Vaughan?’
‘Good Heavens! then Vaughan was Miss Vernon’s father!’
‘To be sure he was,’ said the Justice coolly; ‘there’s no use in keeping the secret now, for he must be out of the country by this time—otherwise, no doubt, it would be my duty to apprehend him.—Come, off with your bumper to my dear lost Die!
‘And let her health go round, around, around,
And let her health go round;
For though your stocking be of silk,
Your knees near kiss the ground, aground, aground.’1
I was unable, as the reader may easily conceive, to join in the Justice’s jollity. My head swam with the shock I had received. ‘I never heard,’ I said, ‘that Miss Vernon’s father was living.’
‘It was not our government’s fault that he is,’ replied Inglewood, ‘for the devil a man there is whose head would have brought more money. He was condemned to death for Fenwick’s plot, and was thought to have had some hand in the Knightsbridge affair, in King William’s time; and as he had married in Scotland, a relation of the house of Breadalbane, he possessed great influence with all their chiefs. There was a talk of his being demanded to be given up at the Peace of Ryswick, but he shammed ill, and his death was given publicly out in the French papers. But when he came back here on the old score, we old cavaliers knew him well,—that is to say, I knew him not as being a cavalier myself, but no information being lodged against the poor gentleman, and my memory being shortened by frequent attacks of the gout, I could not have sworn to him, you know.’
‘Was he, then, not known at Osbaldistone Hall?’ I enquired.
‘To none but to his daughter, the old knight, and Rashleigh, who had got at that secret as he did at every one else, and held it like a twisted cord about poor Die’s neck. I have seen her one hundred times she would have spit at him, if it had not been fear for her father, whose life would not have been worth five minutes’ purchase if he had been discovered to the government—But don’t mistake me, Mr Osbaldistone; I say the government is a good, a gracious, and a just government; and if it has hanged one-half of the rebels, poor things, all will acknowledge they would not have been touched had they stayed peaceably at home.’
Waiving the discussion of these political questions, I brought back Mr. Inglewood to his subject, and I found that Diana, having positively refused to marry any of the Osbaldistone family, and expressed her particular detestation of Rashleigh, he had from that time begun to cool in zeal for the cause of the Pretender; to which, as the youngest of six brethren, and bold, artful, and able, he had hitherto looked forward as the means of making his fortune. Probably the compulsion with which he had been forced to render up the spoils which he had abstracted from my father’s counting-house by the united authority of Sir Frederick Vernon and the Scottish Chiefs, had determined his resolution to advance his progress by changing his opinions, and betraying his trust. Perhaps also, for few men were better judges where his interest was concerned, he considered their means and talents to be, as they afterwards proved, greatly inadequate to the important task of overthrowing an established government. Sir Frederick Vernon, or, as he was called among the Jacobites, his Excellency Viscount Beauchamp, had, with his daughter, some difficulty in escaping t
he consequences of Rashleigh’s information. Here Mr. Inglewood’s information was at fault; but he did not doubt, since we had not heard of Sir Frederick being in the hands of the government, he must be by this time abroad; where, agreeable to the cruel bond he had entered into with his brother-in-law, Diana, since she had declined to select a husband out of the Osbaldistone family, must be confined to a convent. The original cause of this singular agreement Mr. Inglewood could not perfectly explain; but he understood it was a family compact, entered into for the purpose of securing to Sir Frederick the rents of the remnant of his large estates, which had been vested in the Osbaldistone family by some legal manoeuvre; in short, a family compact, in which, like many of those undertaken at that time of day, the feelings of the principal parties interested were no more regarded than if they had been part of the live-stock upon the lands.
I cannot tell, such is the waywardness of the human heart, whether this intelligence gave me joy or sorrow. It seemed to me, that, in the knowledge that Miss Vernon was eternally divided from me, not by marriage with another, but by seclusion in a convent, in order to fulfil an absurd bargain of this kind, my regret for her loss was aggravated rather than diminished. I became dull, low-spirited, absent, and unable to support the task of conversing with Justice Inglewood, who in his turn yawned, and proposed to retire early. I took leave of him over night, determining the next day, before breakfast, to ride over to Osbaldistone Hall.
Mr. Inglewood acquiesced in my proposal. ‘It would be well,’ he said, ‘that I made my appearance there before I was known to be in the country, the more especially as Sir Rashleigh Osbaldistone was now, he understood, at Mr. Jobson’s house, hatching some mischief doubtless—They were fit company,’ he added, ‘for each other, Sir Rashleigh having lost all right to mingle in the society of men of honour; but it was hardly possible two such d—d rascals should collogue together without mischief to honest people.’
He concluded, by earnestly recommending a toast and tankard, and an attack upon his venison pasty, before I set out in the morning, just to break the cold air on the wolds.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
His master’s gone, and no one now
Dwells in the halls of Ivor;
Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead,
He is the sole survivor.
Wordsworth
THERE are few more melancholy sensations than those with which we regard scenes of past pleasure, when altered and deserted. In my ride to Osbaldistone Hall, I passed the same objects which I had seen in company with Miss Vernon on the day of our memorable ride from Inglewood Place. Her spirit seemed to keep me company on the way; and, when I approached the spot where I had first seen her, I almost listened for the cry of the hounds and the notes of the horn, and strained my eye on vacant space, as if to descry the fair huntress again descend like an apparition from the hill. But all was silent, and all was solitary. When I reached the Hall, the closed doors and windows, the grass-grown pavement, the courts, which were now so silent, presented a strong contrast to the gay and bustling scene I had so often seen them exhibit, when the merry hunters were going forth to their morning sport, or returning to the daily festival. The joyous bark of the fox-hounds as they were uncoupled, the cries of the huntsman, the clang of the horses’ hoofs, the loud laugh of the old knight at the head of his strong and numerous descendants, were all silenced now and for ever.
While I gazed round the scene of solitude and emptiness, I was inexpressibly affected, even by recollecting those, whom, when alive, I had no reason to regard with affection. But the thought that so many youths of goodly presence, warm with life, health, and confidence, were within so short a time cold in the grave, by various yet all violent and unexpected modes of death, afforded a picture of mortality at which the mind trembled. It was little consolation to me that I returned a proprietor to the halls, which I had left almost like a fugitive. My mind was not habituated to regard the scenes around as my property, and I felt myself an usurper, at least an intruding stranger, and could hardly divest myself of the idea, that some of the bulky forms of my deceased kinsmen were, like the gigantic spectres of a romance, to appear in the gateway, and dispute my entrance.
While I was engaged in these sad thoughts, my follower, Andrew, whose feelings were of a different nature, exerted himself in thundering alternately on every door in the building, calling, at the same time, for admittance, in a tone so loud as to intimate, that he, at least, was fully sensible of his newly acquired importance, as squire of the body to the new lord of the manor. At length, timidly and reluctantly, Anthony Syddall, my uncle’s aged butler and major-domo, presented himself at a lower window, well fenced with iron bars, and enquired our business.
‘We are come to tak your charge aff your hand, my auld friend,’ said Andrew Fairservice; ‘ye may gie up your keys as sune as ye like—ilka dog has his day. I’ll tak the plate and riapery aff your hand. Ye hae had your ain time o’t, Mr. Syddall; but ilka bean has its black, and ilka path has its puddle; and it will just set you henceforth to sit at the board-end, as weel as it did Andrew lang syne.’
Checking with some difficulty the forwardness of my follower, I explained to Syddall the nature of my right, and the title I had to demand admittance into the Hall, as into my own property. The old man seemed much agitated and distressed, and testified manifest reluctance to give me entrance, although it was couched in a humble and submissive tone. I allowed for the agitation of natural feelings, which really did the old man honour; but continued peremptory in my demand of admittance, explaining to him that his refusal would oblige me to apply for Mr. Inglewood’s warrant, and a constable.
‘We are come from Mr. Justice Inglewood’s this morning.’ said Andrew, to enforce the menace, ‘and I saw Archie Rutledge, the constable, as I came up by—the country’s no to be lawless as it has been, Mr. Syddall, letting rebels and papists gang on as they best listed.’
The threat of the law sounded dreadful in the old man’s ears, conscious as he was of the suspicion under which he himself lay, from his religion and his devotion to Sir Hildebrand and his sons. He undid, with tear and trembling, one of the postern entrances, which was secured with many a bolt and bar, and humbly hoped that I would excuse him for fidelity in the discharge of his duty.—I reassured him, and told him I had the better opinion of him for his caution.
‘Sae have not I,’ said Andrew; ‘Syddall is an auld sneck-drawer; he wadna be looking as white as a sheet, and his knees knocking thegither, unless it were for something mair than he’s like to tell us.’
‘Lord forgive you, Mr. Fairservice,’ replied the butler, ‘to say such things of an old friend and fellow-servant!— Where,’—following me humbly along the passage, ‘where would it be your honour’s pleasure to have a fire lighted? I fear me you will find the house very dull and dreary— But perhaps you mean to ride back to Inglewood Place to dinner?’
‘Light a fire in the library,’ I replied.
‘In the library!’—answered the old man; ‘nobody has sat there this many a day and the room smokes, for the daws have built in the chimney this spring, and there were no young men about the Hall to pull them down.’
‘Our ain reek’s better than other folk’s fire,’ said Andrew; ‘his honour likes the library. He’s nane o’ your Papishers, that delight in blinded ignorance, Mr. Syddall.’
Very reluctantly, as it appeared to me, the butler led the way to the library, and, contrary to what he had given me to expect, the interior of the apartment looked as if it had been lately arranged, and made more comfortable than usual. There was a fire in the grate, which burned clearly, notwithstanding what Syddall had reported of the vent. Taking up the tongs, as if to arrange the wood, but rather perhaps to conceal his own confusion, the butler observed, ‘it was burning clear now, but had smoked woundily in the morning.’
Wishing to be alone, till I recovered myself from the first painful sensations which every thing around me recalled, I desired old Syddall to call the
land-steward, who lived at about a quarter of a mile from the Hall. He departed with obvious reluctance. I next ordered Andrew to procure the attendance of a couple of stout fellows upon whom he could rely, the population around being Papists, and Sir Rashleigh, who was capable of any desperate enterprise, being in the neighbourhood. Andrew Fairservice undertook this task with great cheerfulness, and promised to bring me up from Trinlay-Knowe, ‘twa true-blue Presbyterians like himsell, that would face and out-face baith the Pope, the devil, and the Pretender—and blythe will I be o’ their company mysell, for the very last night that I was at Osbaldistone Hall, the blight be on ilka blossom in my bit yard, if I didna see that very picture’ (pointing to the full-length portrait of Miss Vernon’s grandfather) ‘walking by moonlight in the garden! I tauld your honour I was fleyed wi’ a bogle that night, but ye wadna listen to me—I aye thought there was witchcraft and deevilry amang the Papishers, but I ne’er saw’t wi’ bodily een till that awfu’ night.’
‘Get along, sir,’ said I, ‘and bring the fellows you talk of; and see they have more sense than yourself, and are not frightened at their own shadow.’
‘I hae been counted as gude a man as my neighbours ere now,’ said Andrew, petulantly; ‘but I dinna pretend to deal wi’ evil spirits.’ And so he made his exit, as Wardlaw the land-steward made his appearance.
He was a man of sense and honesty, without whose careful management my uncle would have found it difficult to have maintained himself a housekeeper so long as he did. He examined the nature of my right of possession carefully, and admitted it candidly. To any one else the succession would have been a poor one, so much was the land encumbered with debt and mortgage. Most of these, however, were already vested in my father’s person, and he was in a train of acquiring the rest; his large gains, by die recent rise of the funds, having made it a matter of ease and convenience for him to pay off the debt which affected his patrimony.