Rachel, narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the Great Civil War.The benevolent features of the venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression, as she told how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at Waverley-Honour; and how, when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king might have that space for escape.
``And, God help her,'' would Mrs.Rachel continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, ``full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her darling child.They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded;and you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall door along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at his mother's feet.But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he knew from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his desperate defence was attained.Ah! I remember,'' she continued, ``I remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him.Miss Lucy St.Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most beautiful and wealthy matches in this country; all the world ran after her, but she wore widow's mourning all her life for poor William, for they were betrothed though not married, and died in---I cannot think of the date; but I remember, in the November of that very year, when she found herself sinking, she desired to be brought to Waverley-Honour once more, and visited all the places where she had been with my grand-uncle, and caused the carpets to be raised that she might trace the impression of his blood, and if tears could have washed it out, it had not been there now; for there was not a dry eye in the house.You would have thought, Edward, that the very trees mourned for her, for their leaves dropt around her without a gust of wind; and, indeed, she looked like one that would never see them green again.''
From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they excited.In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, to the eye of the muser.Then arose in long and fair array the splendour of the bridal feast at Waverley Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its real lord, as he stood in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of the festivities of his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical shock occasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms; the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror and confusion of the bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed that her heart as well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yet of deep feeling, with which he flung down the half-drawn sword, and turned away for ever from the house of his ancestors.Then would he change the scene, and fancy would at his wish represent Aunt Rachel's tragedy.He saw the Lady Waverley seated in her bower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart throbbing with double agony, now listening to the decaying echo of the hoofs of the king's horse, and, when that had died away, hearing in every breeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remote skirmish.A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swoln stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the hall.The lady starts up---a terrified menial rushes in---but why pursue such a description?
As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero, interruption was disagreeable in proportion.The extensive domain that surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was usually termed Waverley Chase, had originally been forest ground, and still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were sporting, retained its pristine and savage character.It was traversed by broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where the beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag coursed with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the cross-bow.In one spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows.This was a very favourite haunt of Waverley.At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, which perhaps served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood Mere.
There stood, in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because, in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family.There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of Gloucester.Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt Rachel commemorated.Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to ``chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,'' and, like a child among his toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky.The effect of this indulgence upon his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.