The Black Dwarf Page 7

  CHAPTER V.

  The bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath Feels, in its barrenness, some touch of spring; And, in the April dew, or beam of May, Its moss and lichen freshen and revive; And thus the heart, most sear'd to human pleasure, Melts at the tear, joys in the smile, of woman.--BEAUMONT

  As the season advanced, the weather became more genial, and the Reclusewas more frequently found occupying the broad flat stone in the front ofhis mansion. As he sate there one day, about the hour of noon, a partyof gentlemen and ladies, well mounted, and numerously attended, sweptacross the heath at some distance from his dwelling. Dogs, hawks, andled-horses swelled the retinue, and the air resounded at intervalswith the cheer of the hunters, and the sound of horns blown by theattendants. The Recluse was about to retire into his mansion atthe sight of a train so joyous, when three young ladies, with theirattendants, who had made a circuit, and detached themselves from theirparty, in order to gratify their curiosity by a sight of the Wise Wightof Mucklestane-Moor, came suddenly up, ere he could effect his purpose.The first shrieked, and put her hands before her eyes, at sight of anobject so unusually deformed. The second, with a hysterical giggle,which she intended should disguise her terrors, asked the Recluse,whether he could tell their fortune. The third, who was best mounted,best dressed, and incomparably the best-looking of the three, advanced,as if to cover the incivility of her companions.

  "We have lost the right path that leads through these morasses, and ourparty have gone forward without us," said the young lady. "Seeing you,father, at the door of your house, we have turned this way to--"

  "Hush!" interrupted the Dwarf; "so young, and already so artful? Youcame--you know you came, to exult in the consciousness of your ownyouth, wealth, and beauty, by contrasting them with age, poverty, anddeformity. It is a fit employment for the daughter of your father; but Ohow unlike the child of your mother!"

  "Did you, then, know my parents, and do you know me?"

  "Yes; this is the first time you have crossed my waking eyes, but I haveseen you in my dreams."

  "Your dreams?"

  "Ay, Isabel Vere. What hast thou, or thine, to do with my wakingthoughts?"

  "Your waking thoughts, sir," said the second of Miss Vere's companions,with a sort of mock gravity, "are fixed, doubtless, upon wisdom; follycan only intrude on your sleeping moments."

  "Over thine," retorted the Dwarf, more splenetically than became aphilosopher or hermit, "folly exercises an unlimited empire, asleep orawake."

  "Lord bless us!" said the lady, "he's a prophet, sure enough."

  "As surely," continued the Recluse, "as thou art a woman.--A woman!--Ishould have said a lady--a fine lady. You asked me to tell yourfortune--it is a simple one; an endless chase through life after folliesnot worth catching, and, when caught, successively thrown away--a chase,pursued from the days of tottering infancy to those of old age upon hiscrutches. Toys and merry-makings in childhood--love and its absurditiesin youth--spadille and basto in age, shall succeed each other asobjects of pursuit--flowers and butterflies in spring--butterfliesand thistle-down in summer--withered leaves in autumn and winter--allpursued, all caught, all flung aside.--Stand apart; your fortune issaid."

  "All CAUGHT, however," retorted the laughing fair one, who was a cousinof Miss Vere's; "that's something, Nancy," she continued, turning tothe timid damsel who had first approached the Dwarf; "will you ask yourfortune?"

  "Not for worlds," said she, drawing back; "I have heard enough ofyours."

  "Well, then," said Miss Ilderton, offering money to the Dwarf, "I'll payfor mine, as if it were spoken by an oracle to a princess."

  "Truth," said the Soothsayer, "can neither be bought nor sold;" and hepushed back her proffered offering with morose disdain.

  "Well, then," said the lady, "I'll keep my money, Mr. Elshender, toassist me in the chase I am to pursue."

  "You will need it," replied the cynic; "without it, few pursuesuccessfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.--Stop!" he said to MissVere, as her companions moved off, "With you I have more to say.You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought tohave,--beauty, wealth, station, accomplishments."

  "Forgive my following my companions, father; I am proof both to flatteryand fortune-telling."

  "Stay," continued the Dwarf, with his hand on her horse's rein, "I amno common soothsayer, and I am no flatterer. All the advantages Ihave detailed, all and each of them have their correspondingevils--unsuccessful love, crossed affections, the gloom of a convent,or an odious alliance. I, who wish ill to all mankind, cannot wish moreevil to you, so much is your course of life crossed by it."

  "And if it be, father, let me enjoy the readiest solace of adversitywhile prosperity is in my power. You are old; you are poor; yourhabitation is far from human aid, were you ill, or in want; yoursituation, in many respects, exposes you to the suspicions of thevulgar, which are too apt to break out into actions of brutality. Letme think I have mended the lot of one human being! Accept of suchassistance as I have power to offer; do this for my sake, if not foryour own, that when these evils arise, which you prophesy perhaps tootruly, I may not have to reflect, that the hours of my happier time havebeen passed altogether in vain."

  The old man answered with a broken voice, and almost without addressinghimself to the young lady,--

  "Yes, 'tis thus thou shouldst think--'tis thus thou shouldst speak,if ever human speech and thought kept touch with each other! They donot--they do not--Alas! they cannot. And yet--wait here an instant--stirnot till my return." He went to his little garden, and returned with ahalf-blown rose. "Thou hast made me shed a tear, the first which haswet my eyelids for many a year; for that good deed receive this tokenof gratitude. It is but a common rose; preserve it, however, and do notpart with it. Come to me in your hour of adversity. Show me that rose,or but one leaf of it, were it withered as my heart is--if it should bein my fiercest and wildest movements of rage against a hateful world,still it will recall gentler thoughts to my bosom, and perhaps affordhappier prospects to thine. But no message," he exclaimed, risinginto his usual mood of misanthropy,--"no message--no go-between! Comethyself; and the heart and the doors that are shut against every otherearthly being, shall open to thee and to thy sorrows. And now pass on."

  He let go the bridle-rein, and the young lady rode on, after expressingher thanks to this singular being, as well as her surprise at theextraordinary nature of his address would permit, often turning back tolook at the Dwarf, who still remained at the door of his habitation,and watched her progress over the moor towards her father's castle ofEllieslaw, until the brow of the hill hid the party from his sight.

  The ladies, meantime, jested with Miss Vere on the strange interviewthey had just had with the far-famed wizard of the Moor. "Isabella hasall the luck at home and abroad! Her hawk strikes down the black-cock;her eyes wound the gallant; no chance for her poor companions andkinswomen; even the conjuror cannot escape the force of her charms. Youshould, in compassion, cease to be such an engrosser, my dear Isabel, orat least set up shop, and sell off all the goods you do not mean to keepfor your own use."

  "You shall have them all," replied Miss Vere, "and the conjuror to boot,at a very easy rate."

  "No! Nancy shall have the conjuror," said Miss Ilderton, "to supplydeficiencies; she's not quite a witch herself, you know."

  "Lord, sister," answered the younger Miss Ilderton, "what could I dowith so frightful a monster? I kept my eyes shut, after once glancing athim; and, I protest, I thought I saw him still, though I winked as closeas ever I could."

  "That's a pity," said her sister; "ever while you live, Nancy, choose anadmirer whose faults can be hid by winking at them.--Well, then, I musttake him myself, I suppose, and put him into mamma's Japan cabinet,in order to show that Scotland can produce a specimen of mortal claymoulded into a form ten thousand times uglier than the imaginations ofCanton and Pekin, fertile as they are in monsters, have immortalized inporcelain."

  "
There is something," said Miss Vere, "so melancholy in the situation ofthis poor man, that I cannot enter into your mirth, Lucy, so readily asusual. If he has no resources, how is he to exist in this waste country,living, as he does, at such a distance from mankind? and if he has themeans of securing occasional assistance, will not the very suspicionthat he is possessed of them, expose him to plunder and assassination bysome of our unsettled neighbours?"

  "But you forget that they say he is a warlock," said Nancy Ilderton.

  "And, if his magic diabolical should fail him," rejoined her sister, "Iwould have him trust to his magic natural, and thrust his enormous head,and most preternatural visage, out at his door or window, full in viewof the assailants. The boldest robber that ever rode would hardly bide asecond glance of him. Well, I wish I had the use of that Gorgon head ofhis for only one half hour."

  "For what purpose, Lucy?" said Miss Vere.

  "O! I would frighten out of the castle that dark, stiff, and stately SirFrederick Langley, that is so great a favourite with your father, and solittle a favourite of yours. I protest I shall be obliged to the Wizardas long as I live, if it were only for the half hour's relief from thatman's company which we have gained by deviating from the party to visitElshie."

  "What would you say, then," said Miss Vere, in a low tone, so as not tobe heard by the younger sister, who rode before them, the narrow pathnot admitting of their moving all three abreast,--"What would you say,my dearest Lucy, if it were proposed to you to endure his company forlife?"

  "Say? I would say, NO, NO, NO, three times, each louder than another,till they should hear me at Carlisle."

  "And Sir Frederick would say then, nineteen nay-says are half a grant."

  "That," replied Miss Lucy, "depends entirely on the manner in which thenay-says are said. Mine should have not one grain of concession in them,I promise you."

  "But if your father," said Miss Vere, "were to say,--Thus do, or--"

  "I would stand to the consequences of his OR, were he the most cruelfather that ever was recorded in romance, to fill up the alternative."

  "And what if he threatened you with a catholic aunt, an abbess, and acloister?"

  "Then," said Miss Ilderton, "I would threaten him with a protestantson-in-law, and be glad of an opportunity to disobey him for conscience'sake. And now that Nancy is out of hearing, let me really say, Ithink you would be excusable before God and man for resisting thispreposterous match by every means in your power. A proud, dark,ambitious man; a caballer against the state; infamous for his avariceand severity; a bad son, a bad brother, unkind and ungenerous to all hisrelatives--Isabel, I would die rather than have him."

  "Don't let my father hear you give me such advice," said Miss Vere, "oradieu, my dear Lucy, to Ellieslaw Castle."

  "And adieu to Ellieslaw Castle, with all my heart," said her friend, "ifI once saw you fairly out of it, and settled under some kinder protectorthan he whom nature has given you. O, if my poor father had been in hisformer health, how gladly would he have received and sheltered you, tillthis ridiculous and cruel persecution were blown over!"

  "Would to God it had been so, my dear Lucy!" answered Isabella; "butI fear, that, in your father's weak state of health, he would bealtogether unable to protect me against the means which would beimmediately used for reclaiming the poor fugitive."

  "I fear so indeed," replied Miss Ilderton; "but we will consider anddevise something. Now that your father and his guests seem so deeplyengaged in some mysterious plot, to judge from the passing and returningof messages, from the strange faces which appear and disappear withoutbeing announced by their names, from the collecting and cleaning ofarms, and the anxious gloom and bustle which seem to agitate every malein the castle, it may not be impossible for us (always in case mattersbe driven to extremity) to shape out some little supplemental conspiracyof our own. I hope the gentlemen have not kept all the policy tothemselves; and there is one associate that I would gladly admit to ourcounsel."

  "Not Nancy?"

  "O, no!" said Miss Ilderton; "Nancy, though an excellent good girl,and fondly attached to you, would make a dull conspirator--as dull asRenault and all the other subordinate plotters in VENICE PRESERVED. No;this is a Jaffier, or Pierre, if you like the character better; and yetthough I know I shall please you, I am afraid to mention his name toyou, lest I vex you at the same time. Can you not guess? Somethingabout an eagle and a rock--it does not begin with eagle in English, butsomething very like it in Scotch."

  "You cannot mean young Earnscliff, Lucy?" said Miss Vere, blushingdeeply.

  "And whom else should I mean," said Lucy. "Jaffiers and Pierres are veryscarce in this country, I take it, though one could find Renaults andBedamars enow."

  "How call you talk so wildly, Lucy? Your plays and romances havepositively turned your brain. You know, that, independent of my father'sconsent, without which I never will marry any one, and which, in thecase you point at, would never be granted; independent, too, of ourknowing nothing of young Earnscliff's inclinations, but by your ownvivid conjectures and fancies--besides all this, there is the fatalbrawl!"

  "When his father was killed?" said Lucy. "But that was very long ago;and I hope we have outlived the time of bloody feud, when a quarrel wascarried down between two families from father to son, like a Spanishgame at chess, and a murder or two committed in every generation, justto keep the matter from going to sleep. We do with our quarrels nowadaysas with our clothes; cut them out for ourselves, and wear them out inour own day, and should no more think of resenting our fathers' feuds,than of wearing their slashed doublets and trunk-hose."

  "You treat this far too lightly, Lucy," answered Miss Vere.

  "Not a bit, my dear Isabella," said Lucy. "Consider, your father, thoughpresent in the unhappy affray, is never supposed to have struck thefatal blow; besides, in former times, in case of mutual slaughterbetween clans, subsequent alliances were so far from being excluded,that the hand of a daughter or a sister was the most frequent gage ofreconciliation. You laugh at my skill in romance; but, I assure you,should your history be written, like that of many a less distressed andless deserving heroine, the well-judging reader would set you down forthe lady and the love of Earnscliff; from the very obstacle which yousuppose so insurmountable."

  "But these are not the days of romance, but of sad reality, for therestands the castle of Ellieslaw."

  "And there stands Sir Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assistthe ladies from their palfreys. I would as lief touch a toad; I willdisappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master of thehorse."

  So saying, the lively young lady switched her palfrey forward, andpassing Sir Frederick with a familiar nod as he stood ready to takeher horse's rein, she cantered on, and jumped into the arms of the oldgroom. Fain would Isabella have done the same had she dared; but herfather stood near, displeasure already darkening on a countenancepeculiarly qualified to express the harsher passions, and she wascompelled to receive the unwelcome assiduities of her detested suitor.