Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 19

by Unknown

The conduct of Mary Lee had given rise to suspicions of her being in some way, connected with the death of Hector Ashley; and an investigation was, by the orders of the father, set about, with the view of ascertaining what grounds there existed for these suspicions. It was, however, clearly ascertained that Mary Lee had not been out of her father’s house for hours preceding the disappearance of the unfortunate boy, and the inquiry was relinquished. No hope was now entertained that any less disastrous fate had befallen him than being drowned, while in the act of bathing, a recreation he had been in the habit of indulging in unknown to his mother, who had enjoined the strictest prohibition against it.

The effect of this calamity, on the mind of Mrs Ashley, was such as to produce strong apprehensions of the most dangerous consequences. No consolation could be administered to her with the slightest chance of abating a grief which had sunk too deep for human aid to relieve. After some months, it was discovered that a hereditary tendency to consumption had received a fatal increase of strength, from the decayed state of her constitution; and the disease having progressed with that rapidity so often observed to be one of its most appalling symptoms, the bereaved mother breathed her last in the arms of the fate-stricken and inconsolable husband.

It was on a rainy day, in December, that the remains of Mrs Ashley were to be conveyed to her father’s vault, a few miles distant from “The Castle;” a large cavalcade of mourners attended; the funeral was conducted with a state and pomposity suited to the rank of the deceased; the procession glided silently along, by a road passing through the dark forests of “The Castle,” and by that spot where the unhappy victim of Ashley’s perfidy resigned her honour and her peace for ever. The trysting-tree was still there, with its branches bending under a load of December snows, which the thaw had not yet been able to dissolve. There Mary Lee took her station; and, as the mournful procession passed, the woods resounded with the same wild laugh that had met the ear of Ashley, on the disappearance of his son.

Years rolled on, but the bereaved husband and father finds little assuasive power in the effects of time. Robert Ashley experienced this melancholy truth, and sought assistance from a fountain, the perennial consolations of which flow over the hearts of the rich and the poor. The extraordinary manner in which the early victim of his heartless seduction had triumphed over his misfortunes, appeared to him as the supernatural effect of Divine retribution. The idea haunted him like the invertible companions of Orestes. A deep melancholy took possession of his spirits, and made its usual inroads upon a constitution which early vices and unprecedented bereavements had made susceptible of the despoiling ravages of disease. His mind became occupied with a presentiment that the death of every member of his family would alone atone for the ruin he had brought on that individual, whose fate seemed to have constituted her an avenger of wrongs, only to be expiated by the greatest of misfortunes, visited on the head of him who had blasted the prospects of one of God’s creatures, and expelled his victim from the sanctuary of grace.

It was in these states of bodily disease and mental dejection, that the proud lord of “The Castle” was brought to feel not only what it is to be a man, but a sinner. He felt how vain were all the advantages of fortune when they are not accompanied by peace of mind. The woods around the Castle used to afford him a retreat from the fevered excitements of gay life. The song of the blackbird, full, mellow, and sorrowful, soothed the ear which had been poisoned by the flatteries incident to favoured sons of fortune. The merry reveillé of the lark banished unpleasant recollections; many a sigh was drowned in the rich flow of the music of the thrush. All these things were experienced with joy and satisfaction, when the silent energies of health and youth made his muscular limbs jump with the exuberance of animal spirits. They were welcomed as good tidings when no pang of aroused conscience stung him with its peculiar pain, and no morbid fancy made to dance in the green woods the images of misery he had brought on the hearts of unsuspecting victims.

Now, all was changed when he rode out in those beautiful retreats—the pleasure he formerly derived from them was the parent of the evil he now felt. The contrast was itself a grievous pain; he would have been happier in the abodes of sorrow. Pleasure is not the soother of griefs, that ask the nourishment of a morbid appetite for an accession of woe. It is a cataplasm applied to a sore, under the mistaken idea that its softness will atone for the pungency produced, not from its own asperity, but the tenderness of the part diseased. The joys of “The Castle” were now dead to its lord. If the soothing influences of rural scenery, with its rough hills and soft valleys; its trees, plants, flowers, and tuneful birds, could not assuage the pangs of a diseased body, a bereaved heart, and an awakened conscience—what could be expected from the entertainments of the Castle? Ashley knew too well the vanity of these, even in the heyday of youth, health, and pleasure, to have recourse to them when his views were blasted, and his hopes had fallen. All company he avoided; and no attempt, on the part of the surrounding gentry, or his old friends, was available in getting him to relax the rigid discipline of sorrow which he had, in his despair, imposed on himself.

As he rode out, for the benefit of the air, he was always under an apprehension. Vague fears, the result of an evil conscience, haunted him. The rustle of a leaf disturbed him, and the slouching, fearful look he threw on intruders on his solitary walk, were in sad contrast with the proud bearing of the once eagle-eyed lord of the proudest castle on the western marches. His timidity rendered him incapable of managing his horse—a proud creature, which vindicated the untainted character of its stock, under the crestfallen demeanour of its once haughty master. In going over a small fence, he one day fell into an old ditch, and the weakness to which he was reduced prevented him from rising. In this condition, Mary Lee, in one of her wandering fits, came upon him.

“I wish ye joy,” she commenced, “o’ the elevated position ye occupy in the heart o’ yer ain wuds.”

“Away, woman!” cried Ashley, “art thou not already avenged?” and, trying to raise himself, he fell back with his eye still fixed on the fury.