We return to the party at Woodbourne. After the departure of Mannering, the conversation related chiefly to the fortunes of the Ellangowan family, their domains, and their former power. "It was, then, under the towers of my fathers," said Bertram, "that I landed some days since, in circumstances much resembling those of a vagabond? Its mouldering turrets and darksome arches even then awakened thoughts of the deepest interest, and recollections which I was unable to decipher. I will now visit them again with other feelings, and, I trust, other and better hopes.""Do not go there now," said his sister. "The house of our ancestors is at present the habitation of a wretch as insidious as dangerous, whose arts and villainy accomplished the ruin and broke the heart of our unhappy father.""You increase my anxiety," replied her brother, "to confront this miscreant, even in the den he has constructed for himself--I think I have seen him.""But you must consider," said Julia, "that you are now left under Lucy's guard and mine, and are responsible to us for all your motions--consider I have not been a lawyer's mistress twelve hours for nothing, and I assure you it would be madness to attempt to go to Ellangowan just now.--The utmost to which I can consent is, that we shall walk in a body to the head of the Woodbourne avenue, and from that perhaps we may indulge you with our company as far as a rising ground in the common, whence your eyes may be blessed with a distant prospect of those gloomy towers, which struck so strongly your sympathetic imagination."The party was speedily agreed upon; and the ladies, having taken their cloaks, followed the route proposed, under the escort of Captain Bertram. It was a pleasant winter morning, and the cool breeze served only to freshen, not to chill, the fair walkers. Asecret though unacknowledged bond of kindness combined the two ladies, and Bertram, now hearing the interesting accounts of his own family, now communicating his adventures in Europe and in India, repaid the pleasure which he received. Lucy felt proud of her brother, as well from the bold and manly turn of his sentiments, as from the dangers he had encountered, and the spirit with which he had surmounted them. And Julia, while she pondered on her father's words, could not help entertaining hopes, that the independent spirit which had seemed to her father presumption in the humble and plebeian Brown, would have the grace of courage, noble bearing, and high blood, in the far-descended heir of Ellangowan.
They reached at length the little eminence or knoll upon the highest part of the common, called Gibbie's-knowe--a spot repeatedly mentioned in this history, as being on the skirts of the Ellangowan estate. It commanded a fair variety of hill and dale, bordered with natural woods, whose naked boughs at this season relieved the general colour of the landscape with a dark purple hue; while in other places the prospect was more formally intersected by lines of plantation, where the Scotch firs displayed their variety of dusky green. At the distance of two or three miles lay the bay of Ellangowan, its waves rippling under the influence of the western breeze. The towers of the ruined castle, seen high over every object in the neighbourhood, received--a brighter colouring from the wintry sun.
"There," said Lucy Bertram, pointing them out in the distance, "there is the seat of our ancestors. God knows, my dear brother, I do not covet in your behalf the extensive power which the lords of these ruins are said to have possessed so long, and sometimes to have used so ill. But, oh that I might see you in possession of such relics of their fortune as should give you an honourable independence, and enable you to stretch your hand for the protection of the old and destitute dependants of our family, whom our poor father's death--""True, my dearest Lucy," answered the young heir of Ellangowan;"and I trust, with the assistance of Heaven, which has so far guided us, and with that of these good friends, whom their own generous hearts have interested in my behalf, such a consummation of my hard adventures is now not unlikely.--But as a soldier, Imust look with some interest upon that worm-eaten hold of ragged stone; and if this undermining scoundrel, who is now in possession, dare to displace a pebble of it--"He was here interrupted by Dinmont, who came hastily after them up the road, unseen till he was near the party :--"Captain, Captain!
ye're wanted--Ye're wanted by her ye ken o'."And immediately Meg Merrilies, as if emerging out of the earth, ascended from the hollow way, and stood before them. "I sought ye at the house," she said, "and found but him (pointing to Dinmont), but ye are right, and I was wrang. It is here we should meet, on this very spot, where my eyes last saw your father. Remember your promise, and follow me."CHAPTER LIII.
To hail the king in seemly sort The ladie was full fain;But King Arthur, all sore amazed, No answer made again.
'What wight art thou," the ladie said "That will not speak to me?
Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain, Though I be foul to see."The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.
The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features, marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the gestures of a form, which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic. Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between "an oak and a green holly," than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan.