Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

genealogical history, upon which much of Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other trifles, whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium. If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over the dry deduction of his line of ancestors, with their various intermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protracted accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires, to whom they stood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wiverns, and its dragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications interested his fancy and rewarded his attention. The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return on the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which the crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring cloister that peace which passeth not away ;*to these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye glistened. Nor was he less affected, when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the great civil war. The benevo

lent features of the venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression as she told how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at WaverleyHonour, and how, when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed

3 VOL. I.

Miss

her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king might have that space for escape. "And, God help her," would Mrs. Rachel continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, "full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her darling child. They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded, and you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall-door, along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his desperate defence was attained-Ah! I remember," she continued, "I remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him. Lucy St. Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran after her, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poor William, for they were betrothed though not married, and died inI cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November of that very year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to be brought to Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the places where she had been with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets to be raised that she might trace the impression of his blood, and if tears could have washed it out, it had not been there now; for there was not a dry eye in the house. You would have thought, Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, for their leaves dropped around her without a gust of wind; and indeed she looked like one that would never see them green again."

From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, to the eye of the muser.

Then

arose in long and fair array the splendour of the bridal feast at Waverley-Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its real lord, as he stood in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of the festivities of his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical shock occasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms; the astonishment of the bridegroom'; the terror and confusion of the bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed, that her heart as well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yet of deep feeling with which he flung down the half-drawn sword, and turned away for ever from the house of his ancestors. Then would he change the scene, and fancy would at his wish represent Aunt Rachel's tragedy. He saw the Lady

Waverley seated in her bower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart throbbing with double agony; now listening to the decaying echo of the hoofs of the king's horse, and when that had died away, hearing in every breeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remote skirmish. A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swoln stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the hall. The lady starts up-a terrified menial rushes in-But why pursue such a description.

As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero, interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and still, though broken by extensive glades in which the young deer were sporting, retained. its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brushwood, where the beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag coursed with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the cross-bow. In one spot distinguished by a moss-grown gothic monument,

which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows. This was a very favourite haunt of Edward Waverley. At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, which, perhaps, served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and small lake, named, from the same cause, MirkwoodMere. There stood in former times a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because, in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family. There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory warfare, till the strong-hold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of Gloucester. Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to "chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy," and, like a child among his toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgence upon his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V.

Choice of a Profession.

FROM the minuteness with which I have traced Waverley's pursuits, and the bias which these unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in the supposition. My intention is not to follow the steps of that inimitable author, in describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues the objects actually presented to the senses, but that more common aberration from sound judgment, which apprehends occurrences indeed in their reality, but communicates to them a tincture of its own romantic tone and colouring. So far was Edward Waverley from expecting general sympathy with his own feelings, or concluding that the present state of things was calculated to exhibit the reality of those visions in which he loved to indulge, that he dreaded nothing more than the detection of such sentiments as were dictated by his musings. He neither had nor wished to have a confidant, with whom to communicate his reveries; and so sensible was he of the ridicule attached to them, that, had he been to choose between any punishment short of ignominy, and the necessity of giving a cold and composed account of the ideal world in which he lived the better part of his days, I think he would not have hesitated to prefer the former infliction. This secrecy became doubly precious, as he felt in advancing life the influence of the awakening passions. Female forms of exquisite grace and beauty began to mingle in his mental adven.3* VOL. I

« AnteriorContinuar »