Hamlet: Has this fellow no feeling of his business? he sings at grave making.
Horatio: Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
Hamlet: ’Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.
THE sleep of Ravenswood was broken by ghastly and agitating visions, and his waking intervals disturbed by melancholy reflections on the past and painful anticipations of the future. He was perhaps the only traveller who ever slept in that miserable kennel without complaining of his lodgings, or feeling inconvenience from their deficiencies. It is when “the mind is free the body’s delicate.” Morning, however, found the Master an early riser, in hopes that the fresh air of the dawn might afford the refreshment which night had refused him. He took his way towards the solitary burial-ground, which lay about half a mile from the inn.
The thin blue smoke, which already began to curl upward, and to distinguish the cottage of the living from the habitation of the dead, apprised him that its inmate had returned and was stirring. Accordingly, on entering the little churchyard, he saw the old man labouring in a half-made grave. “My destiny,” thought Ravenswood, “seems to lead me to scenes of fate and of death; but these are childish thoughts, and they shall not master me. I will not again suffer my imagination to beguile my senses.” The old man rested on his spade as the Master approached him, as if to receive his commands; and as he did not immediately speak, the sexton opened the discourse in his own way.
“Ye will be a wedding customer, sir, I’se warrant?”
“What makes you think so, friend?” replied the Master.
“I live by twa trades, sir,” replied the blythe old man —“fiddle, sir, and spade; filling the world, and emptying of it; and I suld ken baith cast of customers by head-mark in thirty years’ practice.”
“You are mistaken, however, this morning,” replied Ravenswood.
“Am I?” said the old man, looking keenly at him, “troth and it may be; since, for as brent as your brow is, there is something sitting upon it this day that is as near akin to death as to wedlock. Weel — weel; the pick and shovel are as ready to your order as bow and fiddle.”
“I wish you,” said Ravenswood, “to look after the descent interment of an old woman, Alice Gray, who lived at the Graigfoot in Ravenswood Park.”
“Alice Gray!— blind Alice!” said the sexton; “and is she gane at last? that’s another jow of the bell to bid me be ready. I mind when Habbie Gray brought her down to this land; a likely lass she was then, and looked ower her southland nose at us a’. I trow her pride got a downcome. And is she e’en gane?”
“She died yesterday,” said Ravenswood; “and desired to be buried here beside her husband; you know where he lies, no doubt?”
“Ken where he lies!” answered the sexton, with national indirection of response. “I ken whar a’body lies, that lies here. But ye were speaking o’ her grave? Lord help us, it’s no an ordinar grave that will haud her in, if a’s true that folk said of Alice in her auld days; and if I gae to six feet deep — and a warlock’s grave shouldna be an inch mair ebb, or her ain witch cummers would soon whirl her out of her shroud for a’ their auld acquaintance — and be’t six feet, or be’t three, wha’s to pay the making o’t, I pray ye?”
“I will pay that, my friend, and all other reasonable charges.”
“Reasonable charges!” said the sexton; “ou, there’s grundmail — and bell-siller, though the bell’s broken, nae doubt — and the kist — and my day’s wark — and my bit fee — and some brandy and yill to the dirgie, I am no thinking that you can inter her, to ca’ decently, under saxteen pund Scots.”
“There is the money, my friend,” said Ravenswood, “and something over. Be sure you know the grave.”
“Ye’ll be ane o’ her English relations, I’se warrant,” said the hoary man of skulls; “I hae heard she married far below her station. It was very right to let her bite on the bridle when she was living, and it’s very right to gie her a secent burial now she’s dead, for that’s a matter o’ credit to yoursell rather than to her. Folk may let their kindred shift for themsells when they are alive, and can bear the burden fo their ain misdoings; but it’s an unnatural thing to let them be buried like dogs, when a’ the discredit gangs to the kindred. What kens the dead corpse about it?”
“You would not have people neglect their relations on a bridal occasion neither?” said Ravenswood, who was amused with the professional limitation of the grave-digger’s philanthropy.
The old man cast up his sharp grey eyes with a shrewd smile, as if he understood the jest, but instantly continued, with his former gravity: “Bridals — wha wad neglect bridals that had ony regard for plenishing the earth? To be sure, they suld be celebrated with all manner of good cheer, and meeting of friends, and musical instruments — harp, sackbut, and psaltery; or gude fiddle and pipes, when these auld-warld instruments of melody are hard to be compassed.”
“The presence of the fiddle, I dare say,” replied Ravenswood, “would atone for the absence of all the others.”
The sexton again looked sharply up at him, as he answered. “Nae doubt — nae doubt, if it were weel played; but yonder,” he said, as if to change the discourse, “is Halbert Gray’s lang hame, that ye were speering after, just the third bourock beyond the muckle through-stane that stands on sax legs yonder, abune some ane of the Ravenswoods; for there is mony of their kin and followers here, deil lift them! though it isna just their main burial-place.”
“They are no favourites, then, of yours, these Ravenswoods?” said the Master, no much pleased with the passing benediction which was thus bestowed on his family and name.
“I kenna wha should favour them,” said the grave-digger; “when they had lands and power, they were ill guides of them baith, and now their head’s down, there’s few care how lang they may be of lifting it again.”
“Indeed!” said Ravenswood; “I never heard that this unhappy family deserved ill-will at the hands of their country. I grant their poverty, if that renders them contemptible.”
“It will gang a far way till’t” said the sexton of Hermitage, “ye may tak my word for that; at least, I ken naething else that suld mak myself contemptible, and folk are far frae respecting me as they wad do if I lived in a twa-lofted sclated house. But as for the Ravenswoods, I hae seen three generations of them, and deil ane to mend other.”
“I thought they had enjoyed a fair character in the country,” said their descendant.
“Character! Ou, ye see, sir,” said the sexton, “as for the auld gudesire body of a lord, I lived on his land when I was a swanking young chield, and could hae blawn the trumpet wi’ ony body, for I had wind eneugh then; and touching this trumpeter Marine that I have heard play afore the lords of the circuit, I wad hae made nae mair o’ him than of a bairn and a bawbee whistle. I defy him to hae played ‘Boot and saddle,’ or ‘Horse and away,’ or ‘Gallants, come trot,’ with me; he hadna the tones.”
“But what is all this to old Lord Ravenswood, my friend?” said the Master, who, with an anxiety not unnatural in his circumstances, was desirous of prosecuting the musician’s first topic —“what had his memory to do with the degeneracy of the trumpet music?”
“Just this, sir,” answered the sexton, “that I lost my wind in his service. Ye see I was trumpeter at the castle, and had allowance for blawing at break of day, and at dinner time, and other whiles when there was company about, and it pleased my lord; and when he raised his militia to caper awa’ to Bothwell Brig against the wrang-headed westland Whigs, I behoved, reason or name, to munt a horse and caper awa’ wi’ them.”
“And very reasonable,” said Ravenswood; “you were his servant and vassal.”
“Servitor, say ye?” replied the sexton, “and so I was; but it was to blaw folk to their warm dinner, or at the warst to a decent kirkyard, and no to skirl them awa’ to a bluidy braeside, where there was deil a bedral but the hooded craw. But bide ye, ye shall hear what cam o’t, and how far I am bund to be bedesman to the Ravenswoods. Till’t, ye see, we gaed on a braw simmer morning, twenty-fourth of June, saxteen hundred and se’enty-nine, of a’ the days of the month............