Читать книгу Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875 - Various - Страница 6

It was Christmas Day. Christmas Day is not solemnized and festivalized in Scotland as it is in England; still, the observance of it in some shape is creeping in more and more. It was Christmas, and Mr. and Mrs. Ormiston had gone to be present at a feast from which they were not expected to return till the following day. There were left at home the Rose, as head of the family for the time being; her sisters, Bell and Jessie, supposed to be little girls still, although the supposition made them very indignant; and her two brothers, John and William. A guest aad two servants made up the known inhabitants of the house.

The guest was a young man who had arrived before the heads of the house left, and had been laughingly charged by them to see that the children did not work mischief. He was an old friend of the family; at least as old a friend as he was a man, and she had been in the world a quarter of a century. We shall call him Edwin: that name will do as well as another; indeed, better, for he might not like his own made public. It need hardly be said that among the rest young Edwin loved, and, like his namesake in the ballad, he never talked of love. This might be stupid, but the stupidity which springs from true modesty is not to be classed with the stupidity which springs from want of brains, even when, as is quite likely, the consequences are to the full as disastrous. Now, how is a young lady to understand or bring things to a bearing in a case like this? The Rose could not go up to Edwin and tell him she was not a goddess; neither could she say, "Although I have five thousand pounds—and you know it, and I know that you know it, and you know that I know that you know it—I am quite ready to believe that you love me, and would love me if I hadn't a farthing:" she could not say this, but she thought it, she worried herself thinking over it, and, being a sensible girl with a humble opinion of herself, she came to the conclusion that she had been altogether mistaken—that Edwin did not care for her, at least not as she cared for him, otherwise why should he not say so? "If," she thought—"if I were in his place and he in mine, neither money nor pride, nor anything else, would keep me silent." And the roses in her face deepened in color as she thought of her own silly folly in allowing her feelings to be drawn in, and she determined her folly should cease from that hour; which determination had the effect of bringing sharp, short speeches about Edwin's ears tinged with sarcasm that were meant to convey to him the conviction that she did not care a pin about him; and they answered the purpose admirably.

Edwin was at Cockhoolet that Christmas Day by the same fatality that causes a moth to hover round a brilliant light; and when her sister told Bessie that Edwin had come and was putting his horse into the stable, she said, "Is Mr. Forrester here again? He must surely be dull at home." But of course she received him with friendly civility.

Edwin employed the forenoon out of doors with the boys and two other visitors. A Mr. and Mrs. Parker arriving unexpectedly, who were anxious to see the castle, the afternoon was spent in going through every part of it from dungeon to roof.

Bessie carried the keys: she was châtelaine, seneschal and cicerone, all rolled in one.

Going up the narrow stairs, the party had to climb Indian file: in the passages they could spread out a little, and in some of the rooms in the uninhabited portion they had to walk circumspectly, as if they were crossing water on stepping-stones, for the flooring was wanting in some places, leaving a stretch of bare rafters. Bessie tripped lightly over them, and then turned to wait for the others. "Don't be frightened," she said: "these rafters are as sound as the day they were laid down. The flooring has not rotted: it must have been taken up for some purpose. They did not know how to scamp work in those days."

"If we fall through, where shall we go?" inquired Mrs. Parker, looking down into what seemed deep mysterious darkness.

"Oh, not very far; but don't fall: it won't be pleasant," said Bessie: "you would alight on very hard stones."

Mr. Forrester got on the roof first, and handed up the ladies; and they all stood looking out over the country. It was not a cold, bleak, snowy day, as Christmas in northern latitudes has a right to be. The winter had been mild—one of a series of mild winters, overturning the old traditions of frosts and snow-storms that lasted for months, and to a great extent stopped traffic and labor, and made traveling difficult and wearisome. This Christmas was different. The year was dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature. Cockhoolet stood high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much of it moorland.

Strike out the vineyards and that description will apply very well to Cockhoolet; and in addition you ought to have seen from its roof Edinburgh and the sea; but on this day the sea wore a garment of mist, and had wrapped the metropolis in it also, as it not unfrequently does. You ought to have seen more than one range of hills too, yet except by eyes well acquainted with them their outlines could hardly be distinguished from the leaden gray clouds lying in bands along the horizon.

But as the party stood on the roof the clouds began to rise, tower upon tower, against the sky, and the sun, who retires early at this season, went behind them, when, instead of the pale, wistful gleam he had been keeping up all day, he suddenly threw a deep bright golden border on all the edges of the dark misty battlements which had piled themselves like castles of the Titans: a big rift appearing at their base, there poured through it, filling up the space, a great belt of crimson rays streaked with gray, as if from burning ashes falling into it, and like the dense glow from a furnace, giving the idea that the cloud-building was on fire, and that the flames from below, shooting up inside the dark walls, were the cause of the brilliant illumination that shone round every pinnacle and coign of vantage. It was a grand and a curious sight. You could fancy the sun looking across to the old Castle of Edinburgh standing on its rock, and saying, "Can you do anything like this with all the gas and paddelle you can lay your hands on?" Precisely this idea struck Mrs. Parker, for she said, "I think that is as good a sight as the castle the night the prince was married."

"That was a very good sight in its way," said Mr. Parker, "but we can hardly hope to compete with the sun, my dear: he has all his materials within himself, and we have to pay for them."

"Do you know, Miss Ormiston," said Mrs. Parker, "one of the buildings they said had such a fine effect put me in mind of a trunk studded with brass nails—the initials of the happy pair in gas-jets looked like the name of the owner of the trunk. All the time I was on the street I could not get that notion out of my head; and I was sorry, for I am sure it cost a great deal of money to light it up, and I really wished to think it grand."

"We were all in town that night," said John Ormiston—"papa and mamma, and the whole of us, and Mr. Forrester, who made eight."

"I thought it a beautiful sight," said Bessie.

"I never enjoyed anything more in my life," said Mr. Forrester, who on that occasion had been Miss Ormiston's escort through the streets, in which they lost their party, and had the supreme bliss of wandering together in the crowd, when Mr. Forrester almost forgot that Miss Ormiston was a goddess with five thousand earthly charms, and Miss Ormiston had compared his merits as a guide and protector with those of her brothers, and found he was much more considerate, and made her wish law, which they were often far from doing. In point of fact, a thaw had been very imminent, but, alas! since then a sharp frost had set in between them, as unaccountably as frosts frequently do set in.

"I think, now," said Mrs. Parker, "a fine old castle like this ought to have had a grander name: don't you think so, Miss Ormiston?"

"Yes, I do, and it had, originally. There was a monastery here at one time, over in that field with the trees in the corner of it: it was called the abbey of Cakeholy, and when the castle was built it got the name of Cakeholy Castle, after the abbey. The name Cakeholy, tradition says, arose from the fact that an extraordinary saint, whose wants had been relieved at the monastery, blessed all the bread that should ever be baked there, and the bread ever after had a great sustaining power in it; so that pilgrims from Edinburgh and the North, going to the southern shrines, all passed this way to get themselves supplied with the holy cakes. At the Reformation the abbey was destroyed, and became a ruin haunted by owls, so that, partly in derision and partly as suiting the altered circumstances, the common people corrupted the name into Cockhoolet; and in process of time it was given to the castle also, and stuck to it. That is the history of a name which is certainly neither romantic, nor high-sounding."

"How interesting!" said Mrs. Parker. "If I were you, I would go back to the old name: there is a reverence about it there is not about the other. Only think of bands of pilgrims coming across the moor there!"

"Yes, in their gowns and rope girdles, with wallets and scallop-shells," said Bessie. "It must have been a curious old world then: one could sit here and muse by the hour on all that has come and gone. I often bring up my work or my book here in summer and think of it."

"I do like old things," said Mrs. Parker, "and old families and old names. Our name, for instance, has no smack of age about it, and it is so short and perky: it must have been given to some one who had to do with parks."

"But parks may be a very old institution," said Bessie, "if we looked into the thing, though not so old as Forrester: that is an ancient name," glancing at Edwin, who was leaning against a sentry-box listening and watching the sun putting out the lights in his bed-chamber; "yet not nearly so ancient as Ormiston. I always feel it is fitting we should live in an old castle, we are so ancient ourselves."

"Are we?" said John: "I never knew that before."

"Ormiston," she said, "is perhaps as pure a Saxon word as now exists. It was during the Roman invasion our ancestor led an army through a dense mist against the invaders: just as he came up with them the sun shone out and the mist. The legions were taken by surprise, for the advancing enemy had been hidden by the mist, and they were utterly routed. The Saxon king—"

"What was his name?" asked John.

"John," she said, "don't seek to be wise above what is revealed. The king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on the spot—'Gold-Mist-on;' that is, 'Be ever in the van;' and a proud race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name. But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William, laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood must be the bluest of the blue."

"Mine must be as blue," said Edwin, "for the Forresters came in with the trees, and the trees were early settlers."

"But the mists were first by a very long time," answered Bessie.

"I don't believe that story," said John. "I have read about the Cakeholy business somewhere, but you have made that Or-Mist-on affair out of your own head: isn't that true, Bessie?"

"I am not bound to answer unbelievers, John."

"Besides," said John, "Ormiston is far; liker French than Saxon."

"Mr. Parker," said Bessie, "there was an abbot John of Cakeholy who flourished in the thirteenth century: his ghost is said to revisit its old habitation, or rather the place where it stood. I should like to meet it and have a talk over things; it would be very interesting."

"Would you not be terrified?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"If I saw what I believed to be a ghost, I should die of terror," said Bessie; "especially if I was alone and it was the dead of night; but I have no faith whatever in ghosts."

"It is getting rather chilly," said Mrs. Parker.

"Perhaps we had better go down now, then," Miss Ormiston said. "Mr. Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let us pass?"

"Certainly. I'll see you all safe off the battlements. I wasn't in a brown study: I was in a mist."

"Then take care: people in a mist always think they are going the right way when they are going directly wrong."

"If I only knew the right way!" he said.

"That's true, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker. "If we only knew the right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;" and she threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the party.