by Walter Scott
CHAPTER IV
CASTLE-BUILDING
I have already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious tasteacquired by a surfeit of idle reading had not only rendered our herounfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in somedegree with that in which he had hitherto indulged.
He was in his sixteenth year when his habits of abstraction and love ofsolitude became so much marked as to excite Sir Everard's affectionateapprehension. He tried to counterbalance these propensities by engaginghis nephew in field-sports, which had been the chief pleasure of hisown youthful days. But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for oneseason, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastimeceased to afford him amusement.
In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton's fascinatingvolume determined Edward to become 'a brother of the angle.' But of alldiversions which ingenuity ever devised for the relief of idleness,fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a man who is at once indolentand impatient; and our hero's rod was speedily flung aside. Society andexample, which, more than any other motives, master and sway thenatural bent of our passions, might have had their usual effect uponthe youthful visionary. But the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, andthe home-bred young squires whom it afforded were not of a class fit toform Edward's usual companions, far less to excite him to emulation inthe practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business oftheir lives.
There were a few other youths of better education and a more liberalcharacter, but from their society also our hero was in some degreeexcluded. Sir Everard had, upon the death of Queen Anne, resigned hisseat in Parliament, and, as his age increased and the number of hiscontemporaries diminished, had gradually withdrawn himself fromsociety; so that when, upon any particular occasion, Edward mingledwith accomplished and well-educated young men of his own rank andexpectations, he felt an inferiority in their company, not so much fromdeficiency of information, as from the want of the skill to command andto arrange that which he possessed. A deep and increasing sensibilityadded to this dislike of society. The idea of having committed theslightest solecism in politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agonyto him; for perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some mindsso keen a sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, andinexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having neglectedetiquette or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease, we cannot behappy; and therefore it is not surprising that Edward Waverley supposedthat he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he hadnot yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, andof reciprocally giving and receiving pleasure.
The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted in listeningto the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet even there hisimagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, was frequentlyexcited. Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much ofSir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which,itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and othertrifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant andtrifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what israre and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious andminute facts which could have been preserved and conveyed through noother medium. If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over thedry deduction of his line of ancestors, with their variousintermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protractedaccuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the variousdegrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and thedoughty barons, knights, and squires to whom they stood allied; if(notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) hesometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins, itsmoldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the bitterness ofHotspur himself, there were moments when these communicationsinterested his fancy and rewarded his attention.
The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absenceand perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return on theevening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who hadprotected her from insult and oppression during his absence; thegenerosity with which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and soughtin a neighbouring cloister that peace which passeth not away;[Footnote: See Note 2.]--to these and similar tales he would hearkentill his heart glowed and his eye glistened. Nor was he less affectedwhen his aunt, Mrs. Rachel, narrated the sufferings and fortitude ofLady Alice Waverley during the Great Civil War. The benevolent featuresof the venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression as shetold how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day'srefuge at Waverley-Honour, and how, when a troop of cavalry wereapproaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed her youngestson with a handful of domestics, charging them to make good with theirlives an hour's diversion, that the king might have that space forescape. 'And, God help her,' would Mrs. Rachel continue, fixing hereyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, 'full dearly did shepurchase the safety of her prince with the life of her darling child.They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded; and you may tracethe drops of his blood from the great hall door along the littlegallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at hismother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged between them; for heknew, from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of hisdesperate defence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she continued, 'Iremember well to have seen one that knew and loved him. Miss Lucy SaintAubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the mostbeautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran afterher, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poor William, forthey were betrothed though not married, and died in--I cannot think ofthe date; but I remember, in the November of that very year, when shefound herself sinking, she desired to be brought to Waverley-Honouronce more, and visited all the places where she had been with mygrand-uncle, and caused the carpets to be raised that she might tracethe impression of his blood, and if tears could have washed it out, ithad not been there now; for there was not a dry eye in the house. Youwould have thought, Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, fortheir leaves dropt around her without a gust of wind, and, indeed, shelooked like one that would never see them green again.'
From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies theyexcited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no otherlight than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous andample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery bywhich past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, tothe eye of the muser. Then arose in long and fair array the splendourof the bridal feast at Waverley-Castle; the tall and emaciated form ofits real lord, as he stood in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticedspectator of the festivities of his supposed heir and intended bride;the electrical shock occasioned by the discovery; the springing of thevassals to arms; the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror andconfusion of the bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed that herheart as well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yetof deep feeling, with which he flung down the half-drawn sword, andturned away for ever from the house of his ancestors. Then would hechange the scene, and fancy would at his wish represent Aunt Rachel'stragedy. He saw the Lady Waverley seated in her bower, her ear strainedto every sound, her heart throbbing with double agony, now listening tothe decaying echo of the hoofs of the king's horse, and when that haddied away, hearing in every breeze that shook the trees of the park,the noise of the remote skirmish. A distant sound is heard like therushing of a swoln stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainlydistinguish the galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, withstraggling pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the Hall. The ladystarts up--a terrified menial rushes in--but why pursue such adescription?
As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero,interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain thatsurrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, wasusually te
rmed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, andstill, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer weresporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversedby broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, wherethe beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stagcoursed with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the crossbow. Inone spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retainedthe name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to havepierced seven bucks with her own arrows. This was a very favouritehaunt of Waverley. At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, whichserved as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, whichperhaps served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of theselong avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, graduallynarrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woodypass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, andsmall lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, informer times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by thewater, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, becausein perilous times it had often been the refuge of the family. There, inthe wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose whodared to maintain her cause carried on a harassing and predatorywarfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard ofGloucester. Here, too, a party of Cavaliers long maintained themselvesunder Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate AuntRachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child among histoys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery andemblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant andas fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgenceupon his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.
