The Antiquary Part 9

"He took his leave, uncle, while Miss Wardour was putting on her things; but I don't think you observed him."

"The devil's in the people! This is all one gets by fussing and bustling, and putting one's self out of one's way in order to give dinners, besides all the charges they are put to!--O Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia!" said he, taking up a cup of tea in the one hand, and a volume of the Rambler in the other,--for it was his regular custom to read while he was eating or drinking in presence of his sister, being a practice which served at once to evince his contempt for the society of womankind, and his resolution to lose no moment of instruction,--"O Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia! well hast thou spoken--No man should presume to say, This shall be a day of happiness."

Oldbuck proceeded in his studies for the best part of an hour, uninterrupted by the ladies, who each, in profound silence, pursued some female employment. At length, a light and modest tap was heard at the parlour door. "Is that you, Caxon?--come in, come in, man."

The old man opened the door, and thrusting in his meagre face, thatched with thin grey locks, and one sleeve of his white coat, said in a subdued and mysterious tone of voice, "I was wanting to speak to you, sir."

"Come in then, you old fool, and say what you have got to say."

"I'll maybe frighten the ladies," said the ex-friseur.

"Frighten!" answered the Antiquary,--"what do you mean?--never mind the ladies. Have you seen another ghaist at the Humlock-knowe?"

"Na, sir--it's no a ghaist this turn," replied Caxton;--"but I'm no easy in my mind."

"Did you ever hear of any body that was?" answered Oldbuck;--"what reason has an old battered powder-puff like you to be easy in your mind, more than all the rest of the world besides?"

"It's no for mysell, sir; but it threatens an awfu' night; and Sir Arthur, and Miss Wardour, poor thing"--

"Why, man, they must have met the carriage at the head of the loaning, or thereabouts; they must be home long ago."

"Na, sir; they didna gang the road by the turnpike to meet the carriage, they gaed by the sands."

The word operated like electricity on Oldbuck. "The sands!" he exclaimed; "impossible!"

"Ou, sir, that's what I said to the gardener; but he says he saw them turn down by the Mussel-craig. In troth, says I to him, an that be the case, Davie, I am mis...o...b..ing"--

"An almanac! an almanac!" said Oldbuck, starting up in great alarm--"not that bauble!" flinging away a little pocket almanac which his niece offered him.--"Great G.o.d! my poor dear Miss Isabella!--Fetch me instantly the Fairport Almanac."--It was brought, consulted, and added greatly to his agitation. "I'll go myself--call the gardener and ploughman--bid them bring ropes and ladders--bid them raise more help as they come along--keep the top of the cliffs, and halloo down to them--I'll go myself."

"What is the matter?" inquired Miss Oldbuck and Miss M'Intyre.

"The tide!--the tide!" answered the alarmed Antiquary.

"Had not Jenny better--but no, I'll run myself," said the younger lady, partaking in all her uncle's terrors--"I'll run myself to Saunders Mucklebackit, and make him get out his boat."

"Thank you, my dear, that's the wisest word that has been spoken yet--Run! run!--To go by the sands!" seizing his hat and cane; "was there ever such madness heard of!"

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

--Pleased awhile to view The watery waste, the prospect wild and new; The now receding waters gave them s.p.a.ce, On either side, the growing sh.o.r.es to trace And then returning, they contract the scene, Till small and smaller grows the walk between.

Crabbe.

The information of Davie Dibble, which had spread such general alarm at Monkbarns, proved to be strictly correct. Sir Arthur and his daughter had set out, according to their first proposal, to return to Knockwinnock by the turnpike road; but when they reached the head of the loaning, as it was called, or great lane, which on one side made a sort of avenue to the house of Monkbarns, they discerned, a little way before them, Lovel, who seemed to linger on the way as if to give him an opportunity to join them. Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her father that they should take another direction; and, as the weather was fine, walk home by the sands, which, stretching below a picturesque ridge of rocks, afforded at almost all times a pleasanter pa.s.sage between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns than the high-road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour]

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. "It would be unpleasant," he said, "to be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr. Oldbuck had taken the freedom to introduce them to." And his old-fas.h.i.+oned politeness had none of the ease of the present day which permits you, if you have a mind, to cut the person you have a.s.sociated with for a week, the instant you feel or suppose yourself in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him.

Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon of one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary despatched, the knight and his daughter left the high-road, and following a wandering path among sandy hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long gra.s.s called bent, soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out as they had computed but this gave them no alarm;--there were seldom ten days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a dry pa.s.sage. But, nevertheless, at periods of spring-tide, or even when the ordinary flood was accelerated by high winds, this road was altogether covered by the sea; and tradition had recorded several fatal accidents which had happened on such occasions. Still, such dangers were considered as remote and improbable; and rather served, with other legends, to amuse the hamlet fireside, than to prevent any one from going between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns by the sands.

As Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour paced along, enjoying the pleasant footing afforded by the cool moist hard sand, Miss Wardour could not help observing that the last tide had risen considerably above the usual water-mark. Sir Arthur made the same observation, but without its occurring to either of them to be alarmed at the circ.u.mstance. The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the acc.u.mulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now a.s.sembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch.

Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the ma.s.sive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting.

Nearer to the beach the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.

With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps on some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her father's side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they pa.s.sed one projecting point of headland or rock after another, and now found themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under water and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by pilots and s.h.i.+p-masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on sh.o.r.e. The ma.s.s of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder.

Appalled by this sudden change of weather, Miss Wardour drew close to her father, and held his arm fast. "I wish," at length she said, but almost in a whisper, as if ashamed to express her increasing apprehensions, "I wish we had kept the road we intended, or waited at Monkbarns for the carriage."

Sir Arthur looked round, but did not see, or would not acknowledge, any signs of an immediate storm. They would reach Knockwinnock, he said, long before the tempest began. But the speed with which he walked, and with which Isabella could hardly keep pace, indicated a feeling that some exertion was necessary to accomplish his consolatory prediction.

They were now near the centre of a deep but narrow bay or recess, formed by two projecting capes of high and inaccessible rock, which shot out into the sea like the horns of a crescent;--and neither durst communicate the apprehension which each began to entertain, that, from the unusually rapid advance of the tide, they might be deprived of the power of proceeding by doubling the promontory which lay before them, or of retreating by the road which brought them thither.

As they thus pressed forward, longing doubtless to exchange the easy curving line, which the sinuosities of the bay compelled them to adopt, for a straighter and more expeditious path, Sir Arthur observed a human figure on the beach advancing to meet them. "Thank G.o.d," he exclaimed, "we shall get round Halket-head!--that person must have pa.s.sed it;" thus giving vent to the feeling of hope, though he had suppressed that of apprehension.

"Thank G.o.d, indeed!" echoed his daughter, half audibly, half internally, as expressing the grat.i.tude which she strongly felt.

The figure which advanced to meet them made many signs, which the haze of the atmosphere, now disturbed by wind and by a drizzling rain, prevented them from seeing or comprehending distinctly.--Some time before they met, Sir Arthur could recognise the old blue-gowned beggar, Edie Ochiltree. It is said that even the brute creation lay aside their animosities and antipathies when pressed by an instant and common danger. The beach under Halket-head, rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng in extent by the encroachments of a spring-tide and a north-west wind, was in like manner a neutral field, where even a justice of peace and a strolling mendicant might meet upon terms of mutual forbearance.

"Turn back! turn back!" exclaimed the vagrant; "why did ye not turn when I waved to you?"

"We thought," replied Sir Arthur, in great agitation, "we thought we could get round Halket-head."

"Halket-head!--the tide will be running on Halket-head by this time like the Fall of Fyers!--it was a' I could do to get round it twenty minutes since--it was coming in three feet abreast. We will maybe get back by Bally-burgh Ness Point yet. The Lord help us!--it's our only chance. We can but try."

"My G.o.d, my child!"--"My father! my dear father!" exclaimed the parent and daughter, as, fear lending them strength and speed, they turned to retrace their steps, and endeavoured to double the point, the projection of which formed the southern extremity of the bay.

"I heard ye were here frae the bit callant ye sent to meet your carriage," said the beggar, as he trudged stoutly on a step or two behind Miss Wardour; "and I couldna bide to think o' the dainty young leddy's peril, that has aye been kind to ilka forlorn heart that cam near her. Sae I lookit at the lift and the rin o' the tide, till I settled it that if I could get down time eneugh to gie you warning, we wad do weel yet. But I doubt, I doubt, I have been beguiled! for what mortal ee ever saw sic a race as the tide is risening e'en now? See, yonder's the Ratton's Skerry--he aye held his neb abune the water in my day--but he's aneath it now."

Sir Arthur cast a look in the direction in which the old man pointed. A huge rock, which in general, even in spring-tides, displayed a hulk like the keel of a large vessel, was now quite under water, and its place only indicated by the boiling and breaking of the eddying waves which encountered its submarine resistance.

"Mak haste, mak haste, my bonny leddy," continued the old man--"mak haste, and we may do yet! Take haud o' my arm--an auld and frail arm it's now, but it's been in as sair stress as this is yet. Take haud o' my arm, my winsome leddy! D'ye see yon wee black speck amang the wallowing waves yonder? This morning it was as high as the mast o' a brig--it's sma' eneugh now--but, while I see as muckle black about it as the crown o' my hat, I winna believe but we'll get round the Ballyburgh Ness, for a' that's come and gane yet."

Isabella, in silence, accepted from the old man the a.s.sistance which Sir Arthur was less able to afford her. The waves had now encroached so much upon the beach, that the firm and smooth footing which they had hitherto had on the sand must be exchanged for a rougher path close to the foot of the precipice, and in some places even raised upon its lower ledges.

It would have been utterly impossible for Sir Arthur Wardour, or his daughter, to have found their way along these shelves without the guidance and encouragement of the beggar, who had been there before in high tides, though never, he acknowledged, "in sae awsome a night as this."

It was indeed a dreadful evening. The howling of the storm mingled with the shrieks of the sea-fowl, and sounded like the dirge of the three devoted beings, who, pent between two of the most magnificent, yet most dreadful objects of nature--a raging tide and an insurmountable precipice--toiled along their painful and dangerous path, often lashed by the spray of some giant billow, which threw itself higher on the beach than those that had preceded it. Each minute did their enemy gain ground perceptibly upon them! Still, however, loth to relinquish the last hopes of life, they bent their eyes on the black rock pointed out by Ochiltree. It was yet distinctly visible among the breakers, and continued to be so, until they came to a turn in their precarious path, where an intervening projection of rock hid it from their sight.

Deprived of the view of the beacon on which they had relied, they now experienced the double agony of terror and suspense. They struggled forward, however; but, when they arrived at the point from which they ought to have seen the crag, it was no longer visible: the signal of safety was lost among a thousand white breakers, which, das.h.i.+ng upon the point of the promontory, rose in prodigious sheets of snowy foam, as high as the mast of a first-rate man-of-war, against the dark brow of the precipice.

The countenance of the old man fell. Isabella gave a faint shriek, and, "G.o.d have mercy upon us!" which her guide solemnly uttered, was piteously echoed by Sir Arthur--"My child! my child!--to die such a death!"

"My father! my dear father!" his daughter exclaimed, clinging to him--"and you too, who have lost your own life in endeavouring to save ours!"

"That's not worth the counting," said the old man. "I hae lived to be weary o' life; and here or yonder--at the back o' a d.y.k.e, in a wreath o'

snaw, or in the wame o' a wave, what signifies how the auld gaberlunzie dies?"