Redgauntlet [211]
to have done much. The weakness and timidity of your mother sequestered you from my care, or it would have been my pride and happiness to have trained up the son of my unhappy brother in those paths of honour in which our ancestors have always trod.'
'Now comes the storm,' thought Darsie to himself, and began to collect his thoughts, as the cautious master of a vessel furls his sails and makes his ship snug when he discerns the approaching squall.
'My mother's conduct in respect to me might be misjudged,' he said, 'but it was founded on the most anxious affection.'
'Assuredly,' said his uncle, 'and I have no wish to reflect on her memory, though her mistrust has done so much injury, I will not say to me, but to the cause of my unhappy country. Her scheme was, I think, to have made you that wretched pettifogging being, which they still continue to call in derision by the once respectable name of a Scottish Advocate; one of those mongrel things that must creep to learn the ultimate decision of his causes to the bar of a foreign court, instead of pleading before the independent and august Parliament of his own native kingdom,'
'I did prosecute the study of law for a year or two, said Darsie, 'but I found I had neither taste nor talents for the science.'
'And left it with scorn, doubtless,' said Mr. Redgauntlet. 'Well, I now hold up to you, my dearest nephew, a more worthy object of ambition. Look eastward--do you see a monument standing on yonder plain, near a hamlet?'
Darsie replied that he did,
'The hamlet is called Burgh-upon-Sands, and yonder monument is erected to the memory of the tyrant Edward I The just hand of Providence overtook him on that spot, as he was leading his bands to complete the subjugation of Scotland whose civil dissensions began under his accursed policy. The glorious career of Bruce might have been stopped in its outset; the field of Bannockburn might have remained a bloodless turf, if God had not removed, in the very crisis, the crafty and bold tyrant who had so long been Scotland's scourge. Edward's grave is the cradle of our national freedom. It is within sight of that great landmark of our liberty that I have to propose to you an undertaking, second in honour and importance to none since the immortal Bruce stabbed the Red Comyn, and grasped with his yet bloody hand the independent crown of Scotland.'
He paused for an answer; but Darsie, overawed by the energy of his manner, and unwilling to commit himself by a hasty explanation, remained silent.
'I will not suppose,' said Hugh Redgauntlet, after a pause, that you are either so dull as not to comprehend the import of my words--or so dastardly as to be dismayed by my proposal--or so utterly degenerate from the blood and sentiments of your ancestors, as not to feel my summons as the horse hears the war- trumpet.'
'I will not pretend to misunderstand you, sir,' said Darsie; 'but an enterprise directed against a dynasty now established for three reigns requires strong arguments, both in point of justice and of expediency, to recommend it to men of conscience and prudence.'
'I will not,' said Redgauntlet, while his eyes sparkled with anger,--'I will not hear you speak a word against the justice of that enterprise, for which your oppressed country calls with the voice of a parent, entreating her children for aid--or against that noble revenge which your father's blood demands from his dishonoured grave. His skull is yet standing over the Rikargate, [The northern gate of Carlisle was long garnished with the heads of the Scottish rebels executed in 1746.] and even its bleak and mouldered jaws command you to be a man. I ask you, in the name of God and of your country, will you draw your sword and go with me to Carlisle, were it but to lay your father's head, now the perch of the obscene owl and carrion crow and the scoff of every ribald clown, in consecrated earth as befits his long ancestry?'
Darsie, unprepared to answer an appeal urged with so much passion, and not doubting a direct refusal would cost him his
'Now comes the storm,' thought Darsie to himself, and began to collect his thoughts, as the cautious master of a vessel furls his sails and makes his ship snug when he discerns the approaching squall.
'My mother's conduct in respect to me might be misjudged,' he said, 'but it was founded on the most anxious affection.'
'Assuredly,' said his uncle, 'and I have no wish to reflect on her memory, though her mistrust has done so much injury, I will not say to me, but to the cause of my unhappy country. Her scheme was, I think, to have made you that wretched pettifogging being, which they still continue to call in derision by the once respectable name of a Scottish Advocate; one of those mongrel things that must creep to learn the ultimate decision of his causes to the bar of a foreign court, instead of pleading before the independent and august Parliament of his own native kingdom,'
'I did prosecute the study of law for a year or two, said Darsie, 'but I found I had neither taste nor talents for the science.'
'And left it with scorn, doubtless,' said Mr. Redgauntlet. 'Well, I now hold up to you, my dearest nephew, a more worthy object of ambition. Look eastward--do you see a monument standing on yonder plain, near a hamlet?'
Darsie replied that he did,
'The hamlet is called Burgh-upon-Sands, and yonder monument is erected to the memory of the tyrant Edward I The just hand of Providence overtook him on that spot, as he was leading his bands to complete the subjugation of Scotland whose civil dissensions began under his accursed policy. The glorious career of Bruce might have been stopped in its outset; the field of Bannockburn might have remained a bloodless turf, if God had not removed, in the very crisis, the crafty and bold tyrant who had so long been Scotland's scourge. Edward's grave is the cradle of our national freedom. It is within sight of that great landmark of our liberty that I have to propose to you an undertaking, second in honour and importance to none since the immortal Bruce stabbed the Red Comyn, and grasped with his yet bloody hand the independent crown of Scotland.'
He paused for an answer; but Darsie, overawed by the energy of his manner, and unwilling to commit himself by a hasty explanation, remained silent.
'I will not suppose,' said Hugh Redgauntlet, after a pause, that you are either so dull as not to comprehend the import of my words--or so dastardly as to be dismayed by my proposal--or so utterly degenerate from the blood and sentiments of your ancestors, as not to feel my summons as the horse hears the war- trumpet.'
'I will not pretend to misunderstand you, sir,' said Darsie; 'but an enterprise directed against a dynasty now established for three reigns requires strong arguments, both in point of justice and of expediency, to recommend it to men of conscience and prudence.'
'I will not,' said Redgauntlet, while his eyes sparkled with anger,--'I will not hear you speak a word against the justice of that enterprise, for which your oppressed country calls with the voice of a parent, entreating her children for aid--or against that noble revenge which your father's blood demands from his dishonoured grave. His skull is yet standing over the Rikargate, [The northern gate of Carlisle was long garnished with the heads of the Scottish rebels executed in 1746.] and even its bleak and mouldered jaws command you to be a man. I ask you, in the name of God and of your country, will you draw your sword and go with me to Carlisle, were it but to lay your father's head, now the perch of the obscene owl and carrion crow and the scoff of every ribald clown, in consecrated earth as befits his long ancestry?'
Darsie, unprepared to answer an appeal urged with so much passion, and not doubting a direct refusal would cost him his