Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since — Volume 1

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER IV

  CASTLE-BUILDING

  I have already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidioustaste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading had not only renderedour hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgustedhim in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged.

  He was in his sixteenth year when his habits of abstraction andlove of solitude became so much marked as to excite Sir Everard'saffectionate apprehension. He tried to counterbalance thesepropensities by engaging his nephew in field-sports, which hadbeen the chief pleasure of his own youthful days. But althoughEdward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practicehad given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased to afford himamusement.

  In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton'sfascinating volume determined Edward to become 'a brother of theangle.' But of all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for therelief of idleness, fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a manwho is at once indolent and impatient; and our hero's rod wasspeedily flung aside. Society and example, which, more than anyother motives, master and sway the natural bent of our passions,might have had their usual effect upon the youthful visionary. Butthe neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the home-bred youngsquires whom it afforded were not of a class fit to form Edward'susual companions, far less to excite him to emulation in thepractice of those pastimes which composed the serious business oftheir lives.

  There were a few other youths of better education and a moreliberal character, but from their society also our hero was insome degree excluded. Sir Everard had, upon the death of QueenAnne, resigned his seat in Parliament, and, as his age increasedand the number of his contemporaries diminished, had graduallywithdrawn himself from society; so that when, upon any particularoccasion, Edward mingled with accomplished and well-educatedyoung men of his own rank and expectations, he felt an inferiorityin their company, not so much from deficiency of information, asfrom the want of the skill to command and to arrange that which hepossessed. A deep and increasing sensibility added to this dislikeof society. The idea of having committed the slightest solecism inpoliteness, whether real or imaginary, was agony to him; forperhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds so keena sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, andinexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of havingneglected etiquette or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease,we cannot be happy; and therefore it is not surprising that EdwardWaverley supposed that he disliked and was unfitted for society,merely because he had not yet acquired the habit of living in itwith ease and comfort, and of reciprocally giving and receivingpleasure.

  The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted inlistening to the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet eventhere his imagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, wasfrequently excited. Family tradition and genealogical history,upon which much of Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the veryreverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usuallyincludes flies, straws, and other trifles; whereas these studies,being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do neverthelessserve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable inancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts whichcould have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium.If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over the drydeduction of his line of ancestors, with their variousintermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless andprotracted accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsedthe various degrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires to whom theystood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the threeermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon ofheraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and itsdragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there weremoments when these communications interested his fancy andrewarded his attention.

  The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his longabsence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and hisreturn on the evening when the betrothed of his heart had weddedthe hero who had protected her from insult and oppression duringhis absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquishedhis claims, and sought in a neighbouring cloister that peace whichpasseth not away; [Footnote: See Note 2.]--to these and similartales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eyeglistened. Nor was he less affected when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel,narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverleyduring the Great Civil War. The benevolent features of thevenerable 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 heryoungest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to makegood with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king mighthave that space for escape. 'And, God help her,' would Mrs. Rachelcontinue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as shespoke, 'full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince withthe life of her darling child. They brought him here a prisoner,mortally wounded; and you may trace the drops of his blood fromthe great hall door along the little gallery, and up to thesaloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother's feet. Butthere was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew, from theglance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his desperatedefence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she continued, 'I rememberwell 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 ranafter her, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poorWilliam, for they were betrothed though not married, and died in--I cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November ofthat very year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to bebrought to Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the placeswhere she had been with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets tobe raised that she might trace the impression of his blood, and iftears could have washed it out, it had not been there now; forthere was not a dry eye in the house. You would have thought,Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, for their leavesdropt around her without a gust of wind, and, indeed, she lookedlike one that would never see them green again.'

  From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fanciesthey excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, withno other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on itsponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours thatinternal sorcery by which past or imaginary events are presentedin action, as it were, to the eye of the muser. Then arose in longand fair array the splendour of the bridal feast at Waverley-Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its real lord, as he stoodin his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of the festivitiesof his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical shockoccasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms;the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror and confusion ofthe bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed that her heartas well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yetof deep feeling, with which he flung down the half-drawn sword,and turned away for ever from the house of his ancestors. Thenwould he change the scene, and fancy would at his wish representAunt Rachel's tragedy. He saw the Lady Waverley seated in herbower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart throbbing withdouble agony, now listening to the decaying echo of the hoofs ofthe king's horse, and when that had died away, hearing in everybreeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remoteskirmish. A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swolnstream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish thegalloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with stragglingpistol-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 ourhero, interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensivedomain that surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding thedimensions of a park, was usually termed Wav
erley-Chase, hadoriginally been forest ground, and still, though broken byextensive glades, in which the young deer were sporting, retainedits pristine and savage character. It was traversed by broadavenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where thebeauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stagcoursed with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with thecrossbow. In one spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothicmonument, which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabethherself was said to have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows.This was a very favourite haunt of Waverley. At other times, withhis gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to others, andwith a book in his pocket, which perhaps served as an apology tohimself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, afteran ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rudeand contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass calledMirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and smalllake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, informer times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded bythe water, which had acquired the name of the Strength ofWaverley, because in perilous times it had often been the refugeof the family. There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the lastadherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause carriedon a harassing and predatory warfare, till the stronghold wasreduced by the celebrated Richard of Gloucester. Here, too, aparty of Cavaliers long maintained themselves under NigelWaverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt Rachelcommemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child amonghis toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet uselessimagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visionsas brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky. The effectof this indulgence upon his temper and character will appear inthe next chapter.