St. Ronan's Well
by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #20749 · 1,059,122 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: St. Ronan's Well
Author: Walter Scott
Release date: March 6, 2007 [eBook #20749]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
_Standard Edition_
St. Ronan's Well
By
Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
[Illustration]
With Introductory Essay and Notes
by Andrew Lang
_Illustrated_
Dana Estes and Company
Publishers ... Boston
The Standard Edition
of the Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott. Limited to one thousand
numbered and registered sets, of which this is
No. 835
_Copyright, 1894._
BY ESTES AND LAURIAT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. RONAN'S WELL
VOLUME I.
PAGE
Meg Dods (p. 13) _Frontispiece_
The Meeting in the Wood 137
Preparing for the Duel 198
* * * * *
VOLUME II.
Reappearance of Tyrrel 127
Clara entering Tyrrel's Room 307
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
TO
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
"'St. Ronan's Well' is not so much my favourite as certain of its
predecessors," Lady Louisa Stuart wrote to Scott on March 26, 1824. "Yet
still I see the author's hand in it, _et c'est tout dire_. Meg Dods, the
meeting" (vol. i. chap. ix.), "and the last scene between Clara and her
brother, are marked with the true stamp, not to be matched or mistaken.
Is the Siege of Ptolemais really on the anvil?" she goes on, speaking of
the projected Crusading Tales, and obviously anxious to part company
with "St. Ronan's Well." All judgments have not agreed with Lady
Louisa's. There is a literary legend or fable according to which a
number of distinguished men, all admirers of Scott, wrote down
separately the name of their favourite Waverley novel, and all, when the
papers were compared, had written "St. Ronan's." Sydney Smith, writing
to Constable on Dec. 28, 1823, described the new story as "far the best
that has appeared for some time. Every now and then there is some
mistaken or overcharged humour--but much excellent delineation of
character, the story very well told, and the whole very interesting.
Lady Binks, the old landlady, and Touchwood are all very good. Mrs.
Blower particularly so. So are MacTurk and Lady Penelope. I wish he
would give his people better names; Sir Bingo Binks is quite
ridiculous.... The curtain should have dropped on finding Clara's
glove. Some of the serious scenes with Clara and her brother are very
fine: the knife scene masterly. In her light and gay moments Clara is
very vulgar; but Sir Walter always fails in well-bred men and women, and
yet who has seen more of both? and who, in the ordinary intercourse of
society, is better bred? Upon the whole, I call this a very successful
exhibition."
We have seldom found Sydney Smith giving higher praise, and nobody can
deny the justice of the censure with which it is qualified. Scott
himself explains, in his Introduction, how, in his quest of novelty, he
invaded modern life, and the domain of Miss Austen. Unhappily he proved
by example the truth of his own opinion that he could do "the big
bow-wow strain" very well, but that it was not his _celebrare domestica
facta_. Unlike George Sand, Sir Walter had humour abundantly, but, as
the French writer said of herself, he was wholly destitute of _esprit_.
We need not linger over definition of these qualities; but we must
recognise, in Scott, the absence of lightness of touch, of delicacy in
the small sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done,
the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the
wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore,
are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the
word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more
conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The
insults lavished on Lady Binks are violent and cruel; even Clara Mowbray
taunts her. Now Lady Binks is in the same parlous case as the
postmistress who dreed penance "for ante-nup," as Meg Dods says in an
interrupted harangue, and we know that, to the author's mind, Clara
Mowbray had no right to throw stones. All these jeers are offensive to
generous feeling, and in the mouth of Clara are intolerable. Lockhart
remarked in Scott a singular bluntness of the sense of smell and of
taste. He could drink corked wine without a suspicion that there was
anything wrong with it. This curious obtuseness of a physical sense, in
one whose eyesight was so keen, who, "aye was the first to find the
hare" in coursing, seems to correspond with his want of lightness in the
invention of _badinage_. He tells us that, for a long while at least, he
had been unacquainted with the kind of society, the idle, useless
underbred society, of watering-places. Are we to believe that the
company at Gilsland, for instance, where he met and wooed Miss
Charpentier, was like the company at St. Ronan's? Lockhart vouches for
the snobbishness, "the mean admiration of mean things," the devotion to
the slimmest appearances of rank. All this is credible enough, but, if
there existed a society as dull and base as that which we meet in the
pages of "Mr. Soapy Sponge," and Surtees's other novels, assuredly it
was no theme for the great and generous spirit of Sir Walter. The worst
kind of manners always prevail among people whom moderns call "the
second-rate smart," and these are drawn in "St. Ronan's Well." But we
may believe that, even there, manners are no longer quite so hideous as
in the little Tweedside watering-place. The extinction of duelling has
destroyed, or nearly destroyed, the swaggering style of truculence;
people could not behave as Mowbray and Sir Bingo behave to Tyrrel, in
the after-dinner scene. The Man of Peace, the great MacTurk, with his
harangues translated from the language of Ossian, is no longer needed,
and no longer possible. Supposing manners to be correctly described in
"St. Ronan's," the pessimist himself must admit that manners have
improved. But it is not without regret that we see a genius born for
chivalry labouring in this unworthy and alien matter.
The English critics delighted to accuse Scott of having committed
literary suicide. He had only stepped off the path to which he presently
returned. He was unfitted to write the domestic novel, and even in "St.
Ronan's" he introduces events of romantic improbability. These enable
him to depict scenes of the most passionate tragedy, as in the meeting
of Clara and Tyrrel. They who have loved so blindly and so kindly should
never have met, or never parted. It is like a tragic rendering of the
scene where Diana Vernon and Osbaldistone encounter each other on the
moonlit moor. The wild words of Clara, "Is it so, and was it even
yourself whom I saw even now?... And, all things considered, I do carry
on the farce of life wonderfully well,"--all this passage, with the
silence of the man, is on the highest level of poetic invention, and
Clara ranks with Ophelia. To her strain of madness we may ascribe,
perhaps, what Sydney Smith calls the vulgarity of her lighter moments.
But here the genius of Shakspeare is faultless, where Scott's is most
faulty and most mistaken.
Much confusion is caused in "St. Ronan's Well" by Scott's concession to
the delicacy of James Ballantyne. What has shaken Clara's brain? Not her
sham marriage, for that was innocent, and might be legally annulled.
Lockhart writes (vii. 208): "Sir Walter had shown a remarkable degree of
good-nature in the composition of this novel. When the end came in view,
James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular feature in
the heroine's history. In the original conception, and in the book as
actually written and printed, Miss Mowbray's mock marriage had not
halted at the profane ceremony of the church; and the delicate printer
shrank from the idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the
possibility of any personal contamination having occurred to a high-born
damsel of the nineteenth century." Scott answered: "You would never
have quarrelled with it had the thing happened to a girl in gingham--the
silk petticoat can make little difference." "James reclaimed with double
energy, and called Constable to the rescue; and, after some pause, the
author very reluctantly consented to cancel and re-write about
twenty-four pages, which was enough to obliterate, to a certain extent,
the dreaded scandal--and, in a similar degree, as he always persisted,
to perplex and weaken the course of his narrative, and the dark effect
of its catastrophe."
From a communication printed in the "Athenæum" of Feb. 4, 1893, extracts
from the original proof-sheets, it seems that Lockhart forgot the
original plan of the novel. The mock marriage _did_ halt at the church
door, but Clara's virtue had yielded to her real lover, Tyrrel, before
the ceremony. Hannah Irwin had deliberately made opportunities for the
lovers' meeting, and at last, as she says, in a cancelled passage, "the
devil and Hannah Irwin prevailed." There followed remorse, and a
determination not to meet again before the Church made them one, and, on
the head of this, the mock marriage shook Clara's reason. This was the
original plan; it declares itself in the scene between Tyrrel and Clara
(vol. i. chap, ix.): "Wherefore should not sorrow be the end of sin and
folly?" The reviewer in the "Monthly Review" (1824) says "there is a
hint of some deeper cause of grief (see the confession to the brother),
but it is highly problematical." For all this the delicacy of James
Ballantyne is to blame--his delicacy, and Scott's concessions to a
respectable man and a bad critic.
The origin of "St. Ronan's Well" has been described by Lockhart in a
familiar passage. As Laidlaw, Scott, and Lockhart were riding along the
brow of the triple-peaked Eildon Hills, Scott mentioned "the row" that
was going on in Paris about "Quentin Durward." "I can't but think I
could make better play still with something German," he said. Laidlaw
grumbled at this: "You are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your
foot is on your native heath; and I have often thought that if you were
to write a novel, and lay the scene _here_ in the very year you were
writing it, you would exceed yourself." "Hame's hame," quoth Scott,
smiling, "be it ever sae hamely," and Laidlaw bade him "stick to Melrose
in 1823." It was now that Scott spoke of the village tragedy, the
romance of every house, of every cottage, and told a tale of some
horrors in the hamlet that lies beyond Melrose, on the north side of
Tweed. Laidlaw and Lockhart believed that this conversation suggested
"St. Ronan's Well," the scene of which has been claimed as their own by
the people of Innerleithen. This little town is beautifully situated
where the hills of Tweed are steepest, and least resemble the _bosses
verdâtres_ of Prosper Mérimée. It is now a manufacturing town, like its
neighbours, and contributes its quota to the pollution of "the
glittering and resolute streams of Tweed." The pilgrim will scarce rival
Tyrrel's feat of catching a clean-run salmon in summer, but the scenes
are extremely pleasing, and indeed, from this point to Dryburgh, the
beautiful and fabled river is at its loveliest. It is possible that a
little inn farther up the water, "The Crook," on the border of the
moorland, and near Tala Linn, where the Covenanters held a famous
assembly, may have suggested the name of the "Cleikum." Lockhart
describes the prosperity which soon flowed into Innerleithen, and the
St. Ronan's Games, at which the Ettrick Shepherd presided gleefully.
They are still held, or were held very lately, but there will never come
again such another Shepherd, or such contests with the Flying Tailor of
Ettrick.
Apart from the tragedy of Clara, doubtless the better parts of "St.
Ronan's Well" are the Scotch characters. Even our generation remembers
many a Meg Dods, and he who writes has vividly in his recollection just
such tartness, such goodness of heart, such ungoverned eloquence and
vigour of rebuke as made Meg famous, successful on the stage, and
welcome to her countrymen. These people, Mrs. Blower and Meg, are
Shakspearean, they live with Dame Quickly and Shallow, in the hearts of
Scots, but to the English general they are possibly caviare. In the
gallant and irascible MacTurk we have the waning Highlander: he
resembles the Captain of Knockdunder in "The Heart of Mid Lothian," or
an exaggerated and ill-educated Hector of "The Antiquary." Concerning
the women of the tale, it may be said that Lady Binks has great
qualities, and appears to have been drawn "with an eye on the object,"
as Wordsworth says, and from the life. Lady Penelope seems more
exaggerated now than she probably did at the time, for the fashion of
affectation changes. The Winterblossoms and Quacklebens are accurate
enough in themselves, but are seen through a Blackwoodian atmosphere, as
it were, through a mist of the temporary and boisterous Scotch humour of
the day. The author occasionally stoops to a pun, and, like that which
Hood made in the hearing of Thackeray, the pun is not good. Indeed the
novel, in its view of the decay of the Border, the ruined Laird, the
frivolous foolish society of the Well, taking the place of sturdy
William of Deloraine, and farmers like Scott's grandfather, makes a
picture of decadence as melancholy as "Redgauntlet." "Not here, O
Apollo, are haunts meet for thee!" Strangely enough, among the features
of the time, Scott mentions reckless borrowings, "accommodation," "Banks
of Air." His own business was based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital,"
as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about
to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid
power is visible in Scott's second picture of _la mauvaise pauvre_, the
hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of
rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He
has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling,
as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Ruinous at all times and in every shape,
gambling, in Scott's lifetime, during the Regency, had crippled or
destroyed many an historical Scottish family. With this in his mind he
drew the portrait of Mowbray of St. Ronan's. His picture of duelling is
not more seductive; he himself had lost his friend, Sir Alexander
Boswell, in a duel; on other occasions this institution had brought
discomfort into his life, and though he was ready to fight General
Gourgaud with Napoleon's pistols, he cannot have approved of the
practices of the MacTurks and Bingo Binkses. A maniac, as his
correspondence shows, challenged Sir Walter, insisting that he was
pointed at and ridiculed in the character of MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.)
It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from
Scott's hand--Meg Dods remains among his immortal portraits; but a novel
in which the absurd will of fiction and the conventional Nabob are
necessary machinery can never be ranked so high as even "The Monastery"
and "Peveril." In Scotland, however, it was infinitely more successful
than its admirable successor "Redgauntlet."
ANDREW LANG.
_December 1893._
INTRODUCTION
TO
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
The novel which follows is upon a plan different from any other that the
author has ever written, although it is perhaps the most legitimate
which relates to this kind of light literature.
It is intended, in a word--_celebrare domestica facta_--to give an
imitation of the shifting manners of our own time, and paint scenes, the
originals of which are daily passing round us, so that a minute's
observation may compare the copies with the originals. It must be
confessed that this style of composition was adopted by the author
rather from the tempting circumstance of its offering some novelty in
his compositions, and avoiding worn-out characters and positions, than
from the hope of rivalling the many formidable competitors who have
already won deserved honours in this department. The ladies, in
particular, gifted by nature with keen powers of observation and light
satire, have been so distinguished by these works of talent, that,
reckoning from the authoress of Evelina to her of Marriage, a catalogue
might be made, including the brilliant and talented names of Edgeworth,
Austin, Charlotte Smith, and others, whose success seems to have
appropriated this province of the novel as exclusively their own. It was
therefore with a sense of temerity that the author intruded upon a
species of composition which had been of late practised with such
distinguished success. This consciousness was lost, however, under the
necessity of seeking for novelty, without which, it was much to be
apprehended, such repeated incursions on his part would nauseate the
long indulgent public at the last.
The scene chosen for the author's little drama of modern life was a
mineral spring, such as are to be found in both divisions of Britain,
and which are supplied with the usual materials for redeeming health, or
driving away care. The invalid often finds relief from his complaints,
less from the healing virtues of the Spa itself, than because his system
of ordinary life undergoes an entire change, in his being removed from
his ledger and account-books--from his legal folios and progresses of
title-deeds--from his counters and shelves,--from whatever else forms
the main source of his constant anxiety at home, destroys his appetite,
mars the custom of his exercise, deranges the digestive powers, and
clogs up the springs of life. Thither, too, comes the saunterer, anxious
to get rid of that wearisome attendant _himself_, and thither come both
males and females, who, upon a different principle, desire to make
themselves double.
The society of such places is regulated, by their very nature, upon a
scheme much more indulgent than that which rules the world of fashion,
and the narrow circles of rank in the metropolis. The titles of rank,
birth, and fortune, are received at a watering-place without any very
strict investigation, as adequate to the purpose for which they are
preferred; and as the situation infers a certain degree of intimacy and
sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been
carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of
the season. No intimacy can be supposed more close for the time, and
more transitory in its endurance, than that which is attached to a
watering-place acquaintance. The novelist, therefore, who fixes upon
such a scene for his tale, endeavours to display a species of society,
where the strongest contrast of humorous characters and manners may be
brought to bear on and illustrate each other with less violation of
probability, than could be supposed to attend the same miscellaneous
assemblage in any other situation.
In such scenes, too, are frequently mingled characters, not merely
ridiculous, but dangerous and hateful. The unprincipled gamester, the
heartless fortune-hunter, all those who eke out their means of
subsistence by pandering to the vices and follies of the rich and gay,
who drive, by their various arts, foibles into crimes, and imprudence
into acts of ruinous madness, are to be found where their victims
naturally resort, with the same certainty that eagles are gathered
together at the place of slaughter. By this the author takes a great
advantage for the management of his story, particularly in its darker
and more melancholy passages. The impostor, the gambler, all who live
loose upon the skirts of society, or, like vermin, thrive by its
corruptions, are to be found at such retreats, when they easily, and as
a matter of course, mingle with those dupes, who might otherwise have
escaped their snares. But besides those characters who are actually
dangerous to society, a well-frequented watering-place generally
exhibits for the amusement of the company, and the perplexity and
amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by
the newspapers eccentric characters--individuals, namely, who, either
from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much more
frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing
themselves by some striking peculiarity in dress or address,
conversation or manners, and perhaps in all. These affectations are
usually adopted, like Drawcansir's extravagances, to show _they dare_;
and I must needs say, those who profess them are more frequently to be
found among the English, than among the natives of either of the other
two divisions of the united kingdoms. The reason probably is, that the
consciousness of wealth, and a sturdy feeling of independence, which
generally pervade the English nation, are, in a few individuals,
perverted into absurdity, or at least peculiarity. The witty Irishman,
on the contrary, adapts his general behaviour to that of the best
society, or that which he thinks such; nor is it any part of the shrewd
Scot's national character unnecessarily to draw upon himself public
attention. These rules, however, are not without their exceptions; for
we find men of every country playing the eccentric at these independent
resorts of the gay and the wealthy, where every one enjoys the license
of doing what is good in his own eyes.
It scarce needed these obvious remarks to justify a novelist's choice of
a watering-place as the scene of a fictitious narrative. Unquestionably,
it affords every variety of character, mixed together in a manner which
cannot, without a breach of probability, be supposed to exist elsewhere;
neither can it be denied that in the concourse which such miscellaneous
collections of persons afford, events extremely different from those of
the quiet routine of ordinary life may, and often do, take place.
It is not, however, sufficient that a mine be in itself rich and easily
accessible; it is necessary that the engineer who explores it should
himself, in mining phrase, have an accurate knowledge of the _country_,
and possess the skill necessary to work it to advantage. In this
respect, the author of Saint Ronan's Well could not be termed fortunate.
His habits of life had not led him much, of late years at least, into
its general or bustling scenes, nor had he mingled often in the society
which enables the observer to "shoot folly as it flies." The consequence
perhaps was, that the characters wanted that force and precision which
can only be given by a writer who is familiarly acquainted with his
subject. The author, however, had the satisfaction to chronicle his
testimony against the practice of gambling, a vice which the devil has
contrived to render all his own, since it is deprived of whatever pleads
an apology for other vices, and is founded entirely on the cold-blooded
calculation of the most exclusive selfishness. The character of the
traveller, meddling, self-important, and what the ladies call fussing,
but yet generous and benevolent in his purposes, was partly taken from
nature. The story, being entirely modern, cannot require much
explanation, after what has been here given, either in the shape of
notes, or a more prolix introduction.
It may be remarked, that the English critics, in many instances, though
none of great influence, pursued Saint Ronan's Well with hue and cry,
many of the fraternity giving it as their opinion that the author had
exhausted himself, or, as the technical phrase expresses it, written
himself out; and as an unusual tract of success too often provokes many
persons to mark and exaggerate a slip when it does occur, the author was
publicly accused, in prose and verse, of having committed a literary
suicide in this unhappy attempt. The voices, therefore, were, for a
time, against Saint Ronan's on the southern side of the Tweed.
In the author's own country, it was otherwise. Many of the characters
were recognised as genuine Scottish portraits, and the good fortune
which had hitherto attended the productions of the Author of Waverley,
did not desert, notwithstanding the ominous vaticinations of its
censurers, this new attempt, although out of his ordinary style.
_1st February, 1832._
ST. RONAN'S WELL.
CHAPTER I.
AN OLD-WORLD LANDLADY.
But to make up my tale,
She breweth good ale,
And thereof maketh sale.
SKELTON.
Although few, if any, of the countries of Europe, have increased so
rapidly in wealth and cultivation as Scotland during the last half
century, Sultan Mahmoud's owls might nevertheless have found in
Caledonia, at any term within that flourishing period, their dowery of
ruined villages. Accident or local advantages have, in many instances,
transferred the inhabitants of ancient hamlets, from the situations
which their predecessors chose with more respect to security than
convenience, to those in which their increasing industry and commerce
could more easily expand itself; and hence places which stand
distinguished in Scottish history, and which figure in David M'Pherson's
excellent historical map,[I-A][I-1] can now only be discerned from the wild
moor by the verdure which clothes their site, or, at best, by a few
scattered ruins, resembling pinfolds, which mark the spot of their
former existence.
The little village of St. Ronan's, though it had not yet fallen into the
state of entire oblivion we have described, was, about twenty years
since, fast verging towards it. The situation had something in it so
romantic, that it provoked the pencil of every passing tourist; and we
will endeavour, therefore, to describe it in language which can scarcely
be less intelligible than some of their sketches, avoiding, however, for
reasons which seem to us of weight, to give any more exact indication of
the site, than that it is on the southern side of the Forth, and not
above thirty miles distant from the English frontier.
A river of considerable magnitude pours its streams through a narrow
vale, varying in breadth from two miles to a fourth of that distance,
and which, being composed of rich alluvial soil, is, and has long been,
enclosed, tolerably well inhabited, and cultivated with all the skill of
Scottish agriculture. Either side of this valley is bounded by a chain
of hills, which, on the right in particular, may be almost termed
mountains. Little brooks arising in these ridges, and finding their way
to the river, offer each its own little vale to the industry of the
cultivator. Some of them bear fine large trees, which have as yet
escaped the axe, and upon the sides of most there are scattered patches
and fringes of natural copsewood, above and around which the banks of
the stream arise, somewhat desolate in the colder months, but in summer
glowing with dark purple heath, or with the golden lustre of the broom
and gorse. This is a sort of scenery peculiar to those countries, which
abound, like Scotland, in hills and in streams, and where the traveller
is ever and anon discovering in some intricate and unexpected recess, a
simple and silvan beauty, which pleases him the more, that it seems to
be peculiarly his own property as the first discoverer.
In one of these recesses, and so near its opening as to command the
prospect of the river, the broader valley, and the opposite chain of
hills, stood, and, unless neglect and desertion have completed their
work, still stands, the ancient and decayed village of St. Ronan's. The
site was singularly picturesque, as the straggling street of the village
ran up a very steep hill, on the side of which were clustered, as it
were, upon little terraces, the cottages which composed the place,
seeming, as in the Swiss towns on the Alps, to rise above each other
towards the ruins of an old castle, which continued to occupy the crest
of the eminence, and the strength of which had doubtless led the
neighbourhood to assemble under its walls for protection. It must,
indeed, have been a place of formidable defence, for, on the side
opposite to the town, its walls rose straight up from the verge of a
tremendous and rocky precipice, whose base was washed by Saint Ronan's
burn, as the brook was entitled. On the southern side, where the
declivity was less precipitous, the ground had been carefully levelled
into successive terraces, which ascended to the summit of the hill, and
were, or rather had been, connected by staircases of stone, rudely
ornamented. In peaceful periods these terraces had been occupied by the
gardens of the Castle, and in times of siege they added to its security,
for each commanded the one immediately below it, so that they could be
separately and successively defended, and all were exposed to the fire
from the place itself--a massive square tower of the largest size,
surrounded, as usual, by lower buildings, and a high embattled wall. On
the northern side arose a considerable mountain, of which the descent
that lay between the eminence on which the Castle was situated seemed a
detached portion, and which had been improved and deepened by three
successive huge trenches. Another very deep trench was drawn in front of
the main entrance from the east, where the principal gateway formed the
termination of the street, which, as we have noticed, ascended from the
village, and this last defence completed the fortifications of the
tower.
In the ancient gardens of the Castle, and upon all sides of it excepting
the western, which was precipitous, large old trees had found root,
mantling the rock and the ancient and ruinous walls with their dusky
verdure, and increasing the effect of the shattered pile which towered
up from the centre.
Seated on the threshold of this ancient pile, where the "proud porter"
had in former days "rear'd himself,"[I-2] a stranger had a complete and
commanding view of the decayed village, the houses of which, to a
fanciful imagination, might seem as if they had been suddenly arrested
in hurrying down the precipitous hill, and fixed as if by magic in the
whimsical arrangement which they now presented. It was like a sudden
pause in one of Amphion's country-dances, when the huts which were to
form the future Thebes were jigging it to his lute. But, with such an
observer, the melancholy excited by the desolate appearance of the
village soon overcame all the lighter frolics of the imagination.
Originally constructed on the humble plan used in the building of Scotch
cottages about a century ago, the greater part of them had been long
deserted; and their fallen roofs, blackened gables, and ruinous walls,
showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters,
varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like
skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed
still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the
peat-fires, which prepared the humble meal of the indwellers, stole
upwards, not only from the chimneys, its regular vent, but from various
other crevices in the roofs. Nature, in the meanwhile, always changing,
but renewing as she changes, was supplying, by the power of vegetation,
the fallen and decaying marks of human labour. Small pollards, which had
been formerly planted around the little gardens, had now waxed into huge
and high forest trees; the fruit-trees had extended their branches over
the verges of the little yards, and the hedges had shot up into huge and
irregular bushes; while quantities of dock, and nettles, and hemlock,
hiding the ruined walls, were busily converting the whole scene of
desolation into a picturesque forest-bank.
Two houses in St. Ronan's were still in something like decent repair;
places essential--the one to the spiritual weal of the inhabitants, the
other to the accommodation of travellers. These were the clergyman's
manse, and the village inn. Of the former we need only say, that it
formed no exception to the general rule by which the landed proprietors
of Scotland seem to proceed in lodging their clergy, not only in the
cheapest, but in the ugliest and most inconvenient house which the
genius of masonry can contrive. It had the usual number of
chimneys--two, namely--rising like asses' ears at either end, which
answered the purpose for which they were designed as ill as usual. It
had all the ordinary leaks and inlets to the fury of the elements, which
usually form the subject of the complaints of a Scottish incumbent to
his brethren of the presbytery; and, to complete the picture, the
clergyman being a bachelor, the pigs had unmolested admission to the
garden and court-yard, broken windows were repaired with brown paper,
and the disordered and squalid appearance of a low farm-house, occupied
by a bankrupt tenant, dishonoured the dwelling of one, who, besides his
clerical character, was a scholar and a gentleman, though a little of a
humourist.
Beside the manse stood the kirk of St. Ronan's, a little old mansion
with a clay floor, and an assemblage of wretched pews, originally of
carved oak, but heedfully clouted with white fir-deal. But the external
form of the church was elegant in the outline, having been built in
Catholic times, when we cannot deny to the forms of ecclesiastical
architecture that grace, which, as good Protestants, we refuse to their
doctrine. The fabric hardly raised its grey and vaulted roof among the
crumbling hills of mortality by which it was surrounded, and was indeed
so small in size, and so much lowered in height by the graves on the
outside, which ascended half way up the low Saxon windows, that it might
itself have appeared only a funeral vault, or mausoleum of larger size.
Its little square tower, with the ancient belfry, alone distinguished it
from such a monument. But when the grey-headed beadle turned the keys
with his shaking hand, the antiquary was admitted into an ancient
building, which, from the style of its architecture, and some monuments
of the Mowbrays of St. Ronan's, which the old man was accustomed to
point out, was generally conjectured to be as early as the thirteenth
century.
These Mowbrays of St. Ronan's seem to have been at one time a very
powerful family. They were allied to, and friends of the house of
Douglas, at the time when the overgrown power of that heroic race made
the Stewarts tremble on the Scottish throne. It followed that, when, as
our old _naïf_ historian expresses it, "no one dared to strive with a
Douglas, nor yet with a Douglas's man, for if he did, he was sure to
come by the waur," the family of St. Ronan's shared their prosperity,
and became lords of almost the whole of the rich valley of which their
mansion commanded the prospect. But upon the turning of the tide, in the
reign of James II., they became despoiled of the greater part of those
fair acquisitions, and succeeding events reduced their importance still
farther. Nevertheless, they were, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, still a family of considerable note; and Sir Reginald Mowbray,
after the unhappy battle of Dunbar, distinguished himself by the
obstinate defence of the Castle against the arms of Cromwell, who,
incensed at the opposition which he had unexpectedly encountered in an
obscure corner, caused the fortress to be dismantled and blown up with
gunpowder.
After this catastrophe the old Castle was abandoned to ruin; but Sir
Reginald, when, like Allan Ramsay's Sir William Worthy, he returned
after the Revolution, built himself a house in the fashion of that later
age, which he prudently suited in size to the diminished fortunes of his
family. It was situated about the middle of the village, whose vicinity
was not in those days judged any inconvenience, upon a spot of ground
more level than was presented by the rest of the acclivity, where, as we
said before, the houses were notched as it were into the side of the
steep bank, with little more level ground about them than the spot
occupied by their site. But the Laird's house had a court in front and a
small garden behind, connected with another garden, which, occupying
three terraces, descended, in emulation of the orchards of the old
Castle, almost to the banks of the stream.
The family continued to inhabit this new messuage until about fifty
years before the commencement of our history, when it was much damaged
by a casual fire; and the Laird of the day, having just succeeded to a
more pleasant and commodious dwelling at the distance of about three
miles from the village, determined to abandon the habitation of his
ancestors. As he cut down at the same time an ancient rookery, (perhaps
to defray the expenses of the migration,) it became a common remark
among the country folk, that the decay of St. Ronan's began when Laird
Lawrence and the crows flew off.
The deserted mansion, however, was not consigned to owls and birds of
the desert; on the contrary, for many years it witnessed more fun and
festivity than when it had been the sombre abode of a grave Scottish
Baron of "auld lang syne." In short, it was converted into an inn, and
marked by a huge sign, representing on the one side St. Ronan catching
hold of the devil's game leg with his Episcopal crook, as the story may
be read in his veracious legend, and on the other the Mowbray arms. It
was by far the best frequented public-house in that vicinity; and a
thousand stories were told of the revels which had been held within its
walls, and the gambols achieved under the influence of its liquors. All
this, however, had long since passed away, according to the lines in my
frontispiece,
"A merry place, 'twas said, in days of yore;
But something ail'd it now,--the place was cursed."
The worthy couple (servants and favourites of the Mowbray family) who
first kept the inn, had died reasonably wealthy, after long carrying on
a flourishing trade, leaving behind them an only daughter. They had
acquired by degrees not only the property of the inn itself, of which
they were originally tenants, but of some remarkably good meadow-land by
the side of the brook, which, when touched by a little pecuniary
necessity, the Lairds of St. Ronan's had disposed of piecemeal, as the
readiest way to portion off a daughter, procure a commission for the
younger son, and the like emergencies. So that Meg Dods, when she
succeeded to her parents, was a considerable heiress, and, as such, had
the honour of refusing three topping-farmers, two bonnet-lairds, and a
horse-couper, who successively made proposals to her.
Many bets were laid on the horse-couper's success, but the knowing ones
were taken in. Determined to ride the fore-horse herself, Meg would
admit no helpmate who might soon assert the rights of a master; and so,
in single blessedness, and with the despotism of Queen Bess herself, she
ruled all matters with a high hand, not only over her men-servants and
maid-servants, but over the stranger within her gates, who, if he
ventured to oppose Meg's sovereign will and pleasure, or desire to have
either fare or accommodation different from that which she chose to
provide for him, was instantly ejected with that answer which Erasmus
tells us silenced all complaints in the German inns of his time, _Quære
aliud hospitium_;[I-3] or, as Meg expressed it, "Troop aff wi' ye to
another public." As this amounted to a banishment in extent equal to
sixteen miles from Meg's residence, the unhappy party on whom it was
passed, had no other refuge save by deprecating the wrath of his
landlady, and resigning himself to her will. It is but justice to Meg
Dods to state, that though hers was a severe and almost despotic
government, it could not be termed a tyranny, since it was exercised,
upon the whole, for the good of the subject.
The vaults of the old Laird's cellar had not, even in his own day, been
replenished with more excellent wines; the only difficulty was to
prevail on Meg to look for the precise liquor you chose;--to which it
may be added, that she often became restiff when she thought a company
had had "as much as did them good," and refused to furnish any more
supplies. Then her kitchen was her pride and glory; she looked to the
dressing of every dish herself, and there were some with which she
suffered no one to interfere. Such were the cock-a-leeky, and the
savoury minced collops, which rivalled in their way even the veal
cutlets of our old friend Mrs. Hall, at Ferrybridge. Meg's table-linen,
bed-linen, and so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality,
and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in
which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness
which she constantly enforced. Indeed, considering Meg's country and
calling, we were never able to account for her extreme and scrupulous
nicety, unless by supposing that it afforded her the most apt and
frequent pretext for scolding her maids; an exercise in which she
displayed so much eloquence and energy, that we must needs believe it to
have been a favourite one.[I-4]
We have only further to commemorate, the moderation of Meg's reckonings,
which, when they closed the banquet, often relieved the apprehensions,
instead of saddening the heart, of the rising guest. A shilling for
breakfast, three shillings for dinner, including a pint of old port,
eighteenpence for a snug supper--such were the charges of the inn of St.
Ronan's, under this landlady of the olden world, even after the
nineteenth century had commenced; and they were ever tendered with the
pious recollection, that her good father never charged half so much, but
these weary times rendered it impossible for her to make the lawing
less.[I-5]
Notwithstanding all these excellent and rare properties, the inn at
Saint Ronan's shared the decay of the village to which it belonged. This
was owing to various circumstances. The high-road had been turned aside
from the place, the steepness of the street being murder (so the
postilions declared) to their post-horses. It was thought that Meg's
stern refusal to treat them with liquor, or to connive at their
exchanging for porter and whisky the corn which should feed their
cattle, had no small influence on the opinion of those respectable
gentlemen, and that a little cutting and levelling would have made the
ascent easy enough; but let that pass. This alteration of the highway
was an injury which Meg did not easily forgive to the country gentlemen,
most of whom she had recollected when children. "Their fathers," she
said, "wad not have done the like of it to a lone woman." Then the decay
of the village itself, which had formerly contained a set of feuars and
bonnet-lairds, who, under the name of the Chirupping Club, contrived to
drink twopenny, qualified with brandy or whisky, at least twice or
thrice a-week, was some small loss.
The temper and manners of the landlady scared away all customers of that
numerous class, who will not allow originality to be an excuse for the
breach of decorum, and who, little accustomed perhaps to attendance at
home, loved to play the great man at an inn, and to have a certain
number of bows, deferential speeches, and apologies, in answer to the
G--d d--n ye's which they bestow on the house, attendance, and
entertainment. Unto those who commenced this sort of barter in the
Clachan of Saint Ronan's, well could Meg Dods pay it back, in their own
coin; and glad they were to escape from the house with eyes not quite
scratched out, and ears not more deafened than if they had been within
hearing of a pitched battle.
Nature had formed honest Meg for such encounters; and as her noble soul
delighted in them, so her outward properties were in what Tony Lumpkin
calls a concatenation accordingly. She had hair of a brindled colour,
betwixt black and grey, which was apt to escape in elf-locks from under
her mutch when she was thrown into violent agitation--long skinny hands,
terminated by stout talons--grey eyes, thin lips, a robust person, a
broad, though flat chest, capital wind, and a voice that could match a
choir of fishwomen. She was accustomed to say of herself in her more
gentle moods, that her bark was worse than her bite; but what teeth
could have matched a tongue, which, when in full career, is vouched to
have been heard from the Kirk to the Castle of Saint Ronan's?
These notable gifts, however, had no charms for the travellers of these
light and giddy-paced times, and Meg's inn became less and less
frequented. What carried the evil to the uttermost was, that a fanciful
lady of rank in the neighbourhood chanced to recover of some imaginary
complaint by the use of a mineral well about a mile and a half from the
village; a fashionable doctor was found to write an analysis of the
healing waters, with a list of sundry cures; a speculative builder took
land in feu, and erected lodging-houses, shops, and even streets. At
length a tontine subscription was obtained to erect an inn, which, for
the more grace, was called a hotel; and so the desertion of Meg Dods
became general.[I-6]
She had still, however, her friends and well-wishers, many of whom
thought, that as she was a lone woman, and known to be well to pass in
the world, she would act wisely to retire from public life, and take
down a sign which had no longer fascination for guests. But Meg's spirit
scorned submission, direct or implied. "Her father's door," she said,
"should be open to the road, till her father's bairn should be streekit
and carried out at it with her feet foremost. It was not for the
profit--there was little profit at it;--profit?--there was a dead loss;
but she wad not be dung by any of them. They maun hae a hottle,[I-7] maun
they?--and an honest public canna serve them! They may hottle that
likes; but they shall see that Lucky Dods can hottle on as lang as the
best of them--ay, though they had made a Tamteen of it, and linkit aw
their breaths of lives, whilk are in their nostrils, on end of ilk other
like a string of wild-geese, and the langest liver bruick a', (whilk was
sinful presumption,) she would match ilk ane of them as lang as her ain
wind held out." Fortunate it was for Meg, since she had formed this
doughty resolution, that although her inn had decayed in custom, her
land had risen in value in a degree which more than compensated the
balance on the wrong side of her books, and, joined to her usual
providence and economy, enabled her to act up to her lofty purpose.
She prosecuted her trade too with every attention to its diminished
income; shut up the windows of one half of her house, to baffle the
tax-gatherer; retrenched her furniture; discharged her pair of
post-horses, and pensioned off the old humpbacked postilion who drove
them, retaining his services, however, as an assistant to a still more
aged hostler. To console herself for restrictions by which her pride was
secretly wounded, she agreed with the celebrated Dick Tinto to re-paint
her father's sign, which had become rather undecipherable; and Dick
accordingly gilded the Bishop's crook, and augmented the horrors of the
Devil's aspect, until it became a terror to all the younger fry of the
school-house, and a sort of visible illustration of the terrors of the
arch-enemy, with which the minister endeavoured to impress their infant
minds.
Under this renewed symbol of her profession, Meg Dods, or Meg Dorts, as
she was popularly termed, on account of her refractory humours, was
still patronised by some steady customers. Such were the members of the
Killnakelty Hunt, once famous on the turf and in the field, but now a
set of venerable grey-headed sportsmen, who had sunk from fox-hounds to
basket-beagles and coursing, and who made an easy canter on their quiet
nags a gentle induction to a dinner at Meg's. "A set of honest decent
men they were," Meg said; "had their sang and their joke--and what for
no? Their bind was just a Scots pint over-head, and a tappit-hen to the
bill, and no man ever saw them the waur o't. It was thae cockle-brained
callants of the present day that would be mair owerta'en with a puir
quart than douce folk were with a magnum."
Then there was a set of ancient brethren of the angle from Edinburgh,
who visited Saint Ronan's frequently in the spring and summer, a class
of guests peculiarly acceptable to Meg, who permitted them more latitude
in her premises than she was known to allow to any other body. "They
were," she said, "pawky auld carles, that kend whilk side their bread
was buttered upon. Ye never kend of ony o' them ganging to the spring,
as they behoved to ca' the stinking well yonder.--Na, na--they were up
in the morning--had their parritch, wi' maybe a thimblefull of brandy,
and then awa up into the hills, eat their bit cauld meat on the heather,
and came hame at e'en with the creel full of caller trouts, and had them
to their dinner, and their quiet cogue of ale, and their drap punch, and
were set singing their catches and glees, as they ca'd them, till ten
o'clock, and then to bed, wi' God bless ye--and what for no?"
Thirdly, we may commemorate some ranting blades, who also came from the
metropolis to visit Saint Ronan's, attracted by the humours of Meg, and
still more by the excellence of her liquor, and the cheapness of her
reckonings. These were members of the Helter Skelter Club, of the
Wildfire Club, and other associations formed for the express purpose of
getting rid of care and sobriety. Such dashers occasioned many a racket
in Meg's house, and many a _bourasque_ in Meg's temper. Various were the
arts of flattery and violence by which they endeavoured to get supplies
of liquor, when Meg's conscience told her they had had too much already.
Sometimes they failed, as when the croupier of the Helter Skelter got
himself scalded with the mulled wine, in an unsuccessful attempt to coax
this formidable virago by a salute; and the excellent president of the
Wildfire received a broken head from the keys of the cellar, as he
endeavoured to possess himself of these emblems of authority. But little
did these dauntless officials care for the exuberant frolics of Meg's
temper, which were to them only "pretty Fanny's way"--the _dulces
Amaryllidis iræ_. And Meg, on her part, though she often called them
"drunken ne'er-do-weels, and thoroughbred High-street blackguards,"
allowed no other person to speak ill of them in her hearing. "They were
daft callants," she said, "and that was all--when the drink was in, the
wit was out--ye could not put an auld head upon young shouthers--a young
cowt will canter, be it up-hill or down--and what for no?" was her
uniform conclusion.
Nor must we omit, among Meg's steady customers, "faithful amongst the
unfaithful found," the copper-nosed sheriff-clerk of the county, who,
when summoned by official duty to that district of the shire, warmed by
recollections of her double-brewed ale, and her generous Antigua, always
advertised that his "Prieves," or "Comptis," or whatever other business
was in hand, were to proceed on such a day and hour, "within the house
of Margaret Dods, vintner in Saint Ronan's."
We have only farther to notice Meg's mode of conducting herself towards
chance travellers, who, knowing nothing of nearer or more fashionable
accommodations, or perhaps consulting rather the state of their purse
than of their taste, stumbled upon her house of entertainment. Her
reception of these was as precarious as the hospitality of a savage
nation to sailors shipwrecked on their coast. If the guests seemed to
have made her mansion their free choice--or if she liked their
appearance (and her taste was very capricious)--above all, if they
seemed pleased with what they got, and little disposed to criticise or
give trouble, it was all very well. But if they had come to Saint
Ronan's because the house at the Well was full--or if she disliked what
the sailor calls the cut of their jib--or if, above all, they were
critical about their accommodations, none so likely as Meg to give them
what in her country is called a _sloan_. In fact, she reckoned such
persons a part of that ungenerous and ungrateful public, for whose sake
she was keeping her house open at a dead loss, and who had left her, as
it were, a victim to her patriotic zeal.
Hence arose the different reports concerning the little inn of Saint
Ronan's, which some favoured travellers praised as the neatest and most
comfortable old-fashioned house in Scotland, where you had good
attendance, and good cheer, at moderate rates; while others, less
fortunate, could only talk of the darkness of the rooms, the homeliness
of the old furniture, and the detestable bad humour of Meg Dods, the
landlady.
Reader, if you come from the more sunny side of the Tweed--or even if,
being a Scot, you have had the advantage to be born within the last
twenty-five years, you may be induced to think this portrait of Queen
Elizabeth, in Dame Quickly's piqued hat and green apron, somewhat
overcharged in the features. But I appeal to my own contemporaries, who
have known wheel-road, bridle-way, and footpath, for thirty years,
whether they do not, every one of them, remember Meg Dods--or somebody
very like her. Indeed, so much is this the case, that, about the period
I mention, I should have been afraid to have rambled from the Scottish
metropolis, in almost any direction, lest I had lighted upon some one of
the sisterhood of Dame Quickly, who might suspect me of having showed
her up to the public in the character of Meg Dods. At present, though it
is possible that some one or two of this peculiar class of wild-cats may
still exist, their talons must be much impaired by age; and I think they
can do little more than sit, like the Giant Pope, in the Pilgrim's
Progress, at the door of their unfrequented caverns, and grin at the
pilgrims over whom they used formerly to execute their despotism.
FOOTNOTES:
[I-1] See Editor's Notes at the end of the Volume. Wherever a similar
reference occurs, the reader will understand that the same direction
applies.
[I-2] See the old Ballad of King Estmere, in PERCY'S _Reliques_.
[I-3] In a colloquy of Erasmus, called _Diversaria_, there is a very
unsavoury description of a German inn of the period, where an objection
of the guest is answered in the manner expressed in the text--a great
sign of want of competition on the road.
[I-4] This circumstance shows of itself, that the Meg Dods of the tale
cannot be identified with her namesake Jenny Dods, who kept the inn at
Howgate,[I-B] on the Peebles road; for Jenny, far different from our
heroine, was unmatched as a slattern.
[I-5] This was universally the case in Scotland forty or fifty years ago;
and so little was charged for a domestic's living when the author became
first acquainted with the road, that a shilling or eighteenpence was
sufficient board wages for a man-servant, when a crown would not now
answer the purpose. It is true the cause of these reasonable charges
rested upon a principle equally unjust to the landlord, and inconvenient
to the guest. The landlord did not expect to make any thing upon the
charge for eating which his bill contained; in consideration of which,
the guest was expected to drink more wine than might be convenient or
agreeable to him, "_for the good_," as it was called, "_of the house_."
The landlord indeed was willing and ready to assist, in this duty, every
stranger who came within his gates. Other things were in proportion. A
charge for lodging, fire, and candle, was long a thing unheard of in
Scotland. A shilling to the housemaid settled all such considerations. I
see, from memorandums of 1790, that a young man, with two ponies and a
serving-lad, might travel from the house of one Meg Dods to another,
through most parts of Scotland, for about five or six shillings a-day.
[I-6] Note I.--Building-Feus in Scotland.
[I-7] This Gallic word (hôtel) was first introduced in Scotland during the
author's childhood, and was so pronounced by the lower class.
CHAPTER II.
THE GUEST.
Quis novus hic hospes?
_Dido apud Virgilium._
Ch'am-maid! The Gemman in the front parlour!
BOOTS'S _free Translation of the Æneid_.
It was on a fine summer's day that a solitary traveller rode under the
old-fashioned archway, and alighted in the court-yard of Meg Dods's inn,
and delivered the bridle of his horse to the humpbacked postilion.
"Bring my saddle-bags," he said, "into the house--or stay--I am abler, I
think, to carry them than you." He then assisted the poor meagre groom
to unbuckle the straps which secured the humble and now despised
convenience, and meantime gave strict charges that his horse should be
unbridled, and put into a clean and comfortable stall, the girths
slacked, and a cloth cast over his loins; but that the saddle should not
be removed until he himself came to see him dressed.
The companion of his travels seemed in the hostler's eye deserving of
his care, being a strong active horse, fit either for the road or field,
but rather high in bone from a long journey, though from the state of
his skin it appeared the utmost care had been bestowed to keep him in
condition. While the groom obeyed the stranger's directions, the latter,
with the saddle-bags laid over his arm, entered the kitchen of the inn.
Here he found the landlady herself in none of her most blessed humours.
The cook-maid was abroad on some errand, and Meg, in a close review of
the kitchen apparatus, was making the unpleasant discovery, that
trenchers had been broken or cracked, pots and saucepans not so
accurately scoured as her precise notions of cleanliness required,
which, joined to other detections of a more petty description, stirred
her bile in no small degree; so that while she disarranged and arranged
the _bink_, she maundered, in an under tone, complaints and menaces
against the absent delinquent.
The entrance of a guest did not induce her to suspend this agreeable
amusement--she just glanced at him as he entered, then turned her back
short on him, and continued her labour and her soliloquy of lamentation.
Truth is, she thought she recognised in the person of the stranger, one
of those useful envoys of the commercial community, called, by
themselves and the waiters, _Travellers_, par excellence--by others,
Riders and Bagmen. Now against this class of customers Meg had peculiar
prejudices; because, there being no shops in the old village of Saint
Ronan's, the said commercial emissaries, for the convenience of their
traffic, always took up their abode at the New Inn, or Hotel, in the
rising and rival village called Saint Ronan's Well, unless when some
straggler, by chance or dire necessity, was compelled to lodge himself
at the Auld Town, as the place of Meg's residence began to be generally
termed. She had, therefore, no sooner formed the hasty conclusion, that
the individual in question belonged to this obnoxious class, than she
resumed her former occupation, and continued to soliloquize and
apostrophize her absent handmaidens, without even appearing sensible of
his presence.
"The huzzy Beenie--the jaud Eppie--the deil's buckie of a
callant!--Another plate gane--they'll break me out of house and ha'!"
The traveller, who, with his saddle-bags rested on the back of a chair,
had waited in silence for some note of welcome, now saw that, ghost or
no ghost, he must speak first, if he intended to have any notice from
his landlady.
"You are my old acquaintance, Mrs. Margaret Dods?" said the stranger.
"What for no?--and wha are ye that speers?" said Meg, in the same
breath, and began to rub a brass candlestick with more vehemence than
before--the dry tone in which she spoke, indicating plainly how little
concern she took in the conversation.
"A traveller, good Mistress Dods, who comes to take up his lodgings here
for a day or two."
"I am thinking ye will be mista'en," said Meg; "there's nae room for
bags or jaugs here--ye've mista'en your road, neighbour--ye maun e'en
bundle yoursell a bit farther down hill."
"I see you have not got the letter I sent you, Mistress Dods?" said the
guest.
"How should I, man?" answered the hostess; "they have ta'en awa the
post-office from us--moved it down till the Spa-well yonder, as they
ca'd."
"Why, that is but a step off," observed the guest.
"Ye will get there the sooner," answered the hostess.
"Nay, but," said the guest, "if you had sent there for my letter, you
would have learned"----
"I'm no wanting to learn ony thing at my years," said Meg. "If folk have
ony thing to write to me about, they may gie the letter to John Hislop,
the carrier, that has used the road these forty years. As for the
letters at the post-mistress's, as they ca' her, down by yonder, they
may bide in her shop-window, wi' the snaps and bawbee rows, till
Beltane, or I loose them. I'll never file my fingers with them.
Post-mistress, indeed!--Upsetting cutty! I mind her fu' weel when she
dree'd penance for ante-nup"----
Laughing, but interrupting Meg in good time for the character of the
post-mistress, the stranger assured her he had sent his fishing-rod and
trunk to her confidential friend the carrier, and that he sincerely
hoped she would not turn an old acquaintance out of her premises,
especially as he believed he could not sleep in a bed within five miles
of Saint Ronan's, if he knew that her Blue room was unengaged.
"Fishing-rod!--Auld acquaintance!--Blue room!" echoed Meg, in some
surprise; and, facing round upon the stranger, and examining him with
some interest and curiosity,--"Ye'll be nae bagman, then, after a'?"
"No," said the traveller; "not since I have laid the saddle-bags out of
my hand."
"Weel, I canna say but I am glad of that--I canna bide their yanking way
of knapping English at every word.--I have kent decent lads amang them
too--What for no?--But that was when they stopped up here whiles, like
other douce folk; but since they gaed down, the hail flight of them,
like a string of wild-geese, to the new-fashioned hottle yonder, I am
told there are as mony hellicate tricks played in the travellers' room,
as they behove to call it, as if it were fu' of drunken young lairds."
"That is because they have not you to keep good order among them,
Mistress Margaret."
"Ay, lad?" replied Meg, "ye are a fine blaw-in-my-lug, to think to
cuittle me off sae cleverly!" And, facing about upon her guest, she
honoured him with a more close and curious investigation than she had at
first designed to bestow upon him.
All that she remarked was in her opinion rather favourable to the
stranger. He was a well-made man, rather above than under the middle
size, and apparently betwixt five-and-twenty and thirty years of
age--for, although he might, at first glance, have passed for one who
had attained the latter period, yet, on a nearer examination, it seemed
as if the burning sun of a warmer climate than Scotland, and perhaps
some fatigue, both of body and mind, had imprinted the marks of care and
of manhood upon his countenance, without abiding the course of years.
His eyes and teeth were excellent, and his other features, though they
could scarce be termed handsome, expressed sense and acuteness; he bore,
in his aspect, that ease and composure of manner, equally void of
awkwardness and affectation, which is said emphatically to mark the
gentleman; and, although neither the plainness of his dress, nor the
total want of the usual attendants, allowed Meg to suppose him a wealthy
man, she had little doubt that he was above the rank of her lodgers in
general. Amidst these observations, and while she was in the course of
making them, the good landlady was embarrassed with various obscure
recollections of having seen the object of them formerly; but when, or
on what occasion, she was quite unable to call to remembrance. She was
particularly puzzled by the cold and sarcastic expression of a
countenance, which she could not by any means reconcile with the
recollections which it awakened. At length she said, with as much
courtesy as she was capable of assuming,--"Either I have seen you
before, sir, or some ane very like ye?--Ye ken the Blue room, too, and
you a stranger in these parts?"
"Not so much a stranger as you may suppose, Meg," said the guest,
assuming a more intimate tone, "when I call myself Frank Tyrrel."
"Tirl!" exclaimed Meg, with a tone of wonder--"It's impossible! You
cannot be Francie Tirl, the wild callant that was fishing and
bird-nesting here seven or eight years syne--it canna be--Francie was
but a callant!"
"But add seven or eight years to that boy's life, Meg," said the
stranger gravely, "and you will find you have the man who is now before
you."
"Even sae!" said Meg, with a glance at the reflection of her own
countenance in the copper coffee-pot, which she had scoured so brightly
that it did the office of a mirror--"Just e'en sae--but folk maun grow
auld or die.--But, Maister Tirl, for I mauna ca' ye Francie now, I am
thinking"----
"Call me what you please, good dame," said the stranger; "it has been so
long since I heard any one call me by a name that sounded like former
kindness, that such a one is more agreeable to me than a lord's title
would be."
"Weel, then, Maister Francie--if it be no offence to you--I hope ye are
no a Nabob?"
"Not I, I can safely assure you, my old friend;--but what an I were?"
"Naething--only maybe I might bid ye gang farther, and be waur
served.--Nabobs, indeed! the country's plagued wi' them. They have
raised the price of eggs and pootry for twenty miles round--But what is
my business?--They use amaist a' of them the Well down by--they need it,
ye ken, for the clearing of their copper complexions, that need scouring
as much as my saucepans, that naebody can clean but mysell."
"Well, my good friend," said Tyrrel, "the upshot of all this is, I hope,
that I am to stay and have dinner here?"
"What for no?" replied Mrs. Dods.
"And that I am to have the Blue room for a night or two--perhaps
longer?"
"I dinna ken that," said the dame.--"The Blue room is the best--and they
that get neist best, are no ill aff in this warld."
"Arrange it as you will," said the stranger, "I leave the whole matter
to you, mistress.--Meantime, I will go see after my horse."
"The merciful man," said Meg, when her guest had left the kitchen, "is
merciful to his beast.--He had aye something about him by ordinar, that
callant--But eh, sirs! there is a sair change on his cheek-haffit since
I saw him last!--He sall no want a good dinner for auld lang syne, that
I'se engage for."
Meg set about the necessary preparations with all the natural energy of
her disposition, which was so much exerted upon her culinary cares, that
her two maids, on their return to the house, escaped the bitter
reprimand which she had been previously conning over, in reward for
their alleged slatternly negligence. Nay, so far did she carry her
complaisance, that when Tyrrel crossed the kitchen to recover his
saddle-bags, she formally rebuked Eppie for an idle taupie, for not
carrying the gentleman's things to his room.
"I thank you, mistress," said Tyrrel; "but I have some drawings and
colours in these saddle-bags, and I always like to carry them myself."
"Ay, and are you at the painting trade yet?" said Meg; "an unco slaister
ye used to make with it lang syne."
"I cannot live without it," said Tyrrel; and taking the saddle-bags, was
formally inducted by the maid into a snug apartment, where he soon had
the satisfaction to behold a capital dish of minced collops, with
vegetables, and a jug of excellent ale, placed on the table by the
careful hand of Meg herself. He could do no less, in acknowledgment of
the honour, than ask Meg for a bottle of the yellow seal, "if there was
any of that excellent claret still left."
"Left?--ay is there, walth of it," said Meg; "I dinna gie it to every
body--Ah! Maister Tirl, ye have not got ower your auld tricks!--I am
sure, if ye are painting for your leeving, as you say, a little rum and
water would come cheaper, and do ye as much good. But ye maun hae your
ain way the day, nae doubt, if ye should never have it again."
Away trudged Meg, her keys clattering as she went, and, after much
rummaging, returned with such a bottle of claret as no fashionable
tavern could have produced, were it called for by a duke, or at a duke's
price; and she seemed not a little gratified when her guest assured her
that he had not yet forgotten its excellent flavour. She retired after
these acts of hospitality, and left the stranger to enjoy in quiet the
excellent matters which she had placed before him.
But there was that on Tyrrel's mind which defied the enlivening power of
good cheer and of wine, which only maketh man's heart glad when that
heart has no secret oppression to counteract its influence. Tyrrel found
himself on a spot which he had loved in that delightful season, when
youth and high spirits awaken all those flattering promises which are so
ill kept to manhood. He drew his chair into the embrasure of the
old-fashioned window, and throwing up the sash to enjoy the fresh air,
suffered his thoughts to return to former days, while his eyes wandered
over objects which they had not looked upon for several eventful years.
He could behold beneath his eye, the lower part of the decayed village,
as its ruins peeped from the umbrageous shelter with which they were
shrouded. Still lower down, upon the little holm which formed its
church-yard, was seen the Kirk of Saint Ronan's; and looking yet
farther, towards the junction of Saint Ronan's burn with the river which
traversed the larger dale or valley, he could see whitened, by the
western sun, the rising houses, which were either newly finished, or in
the act of being built, about the medicinal spring.
"Time changes all around us," such was the course of natural though
trite reflection, which flowed upon Tyrrel's mind; "wherefore should
loves and friendships have a longer date than our dwellings and our
monuments?" As he indulged these sombre recollections, his officious
landlady disturbed their tenor by her entrance.
"I was thinking to offer you a dish of tea, Maister Francie, just for
the sake of auld lang syne, and I'll gar the quean Beenie bring it
here, and mask it mysell.--But ye arena done with your wine yet?"
"I am indeed, Mrs. Dods," answered Tyrrel; "and I beg you will remove
the bottle."
"Remove the bottle, and the wine no half drank out!" said Meg,
displeasure lowering on her brow; "I hope there is nae fault to be found
wi' the wine, Maister Tirl?"
To this answer, which was put in a tone resembling defiance, Tyrrel
submissively replied, by declaring "the claret not only unexceptionable,
but excellent."
"And what for dinna ye drink it, then?" said Meg, sharply; "folk should
never ask for mair liquor than they can make a gude use of. Maybe ye
think we have the fashion of the table-dot, as they ca' their newfangled
ordinary down-by yonder, where a' the bits of vinegar cruets are put awa
into an awmry, as they tell me, and ilk ane wi' the bit dribbles of
syndings in it, and a paper about the neck o't, to show which of the
customers is aught it--there they stand like doctor's drogs--and no an
honest Scottish mutchkin will ane o' their viols haud, granting it were
at the fouest."
"Perhaps," said Tyrrel, willing to indulge the spleen and prejudice of
his old acquaintance, "perhaps the wine is not so good as to make full
measure desirable."
"Ye may say that, lad--and yet them that sell it might afford a gude
penniworth, for they hae it for the making--maist feck of it ne'er saw
France or Portugal. But as I was saying--this is no ane of their
newfangled places, where wine is put by for them that canna drink
it--when the cork's drawn the bottle maun be drank out--and what for
no?--unless it be corkit."
"I agree entirely, Meg," said her guest; "but my ride to-day has
somewhat heated me--and I think the dish of tea you promise me, will do
me more good than to finish my bottle."
"Na, then, the best I can do for you is to put it by, to be sauce for
the wild-duck the morn; for I think ye said ye were to bide here for a
day or twa."
"It is my very purpose, Meg, unquestionably," replied Tyrrel.
"Sae be it then," said Mrs. Dods; "and then the liquor's no lost--it has
been seldom sic claret as that has simmered in a saucepan, let me tell
you that, neighbour;--and I mind the day, when, headache or nae
headache, ye wad hae been at the hinder-end of that bottle, and maybe
anither, if ye could have gotten it wiled out of me. But then ye had
your cousin to help you--Ah! he was a blithe bairn that Valentine
Bulmer!--Ye were a canty callant too, Maister Francie, and muckle ado I
had to keep ye baith in order when ye were on the ramble. But ye were a
thought doucer than Valentine--But O! he was a bonny laddie!--wi' e'en
like diamonds, cheeks like roses, a head like a heather-tap--he was the
first I ever saw wear a crap, as they ca' it, but a' body cheats the
barber now--and he had a laugh that wad hae raised the dead!--What wi'
flyting on him, and what wi' laughing at him, there was nae minding ony
other body when that Valentine was in the house.--And how is your cousin
Valentine Bulmer, Maister Francie?"
Tyrrel looked down, and only answered with a sigh.
"Ay--and is it even sae?" said Meg; "and has the puir bairn been sae
soon removed frae this fashious warld?--Ay--ay--we maun a' gang ae
gate--crackit quart stoups and geisen'd barrels--leaky quaighs are we
a', and canna keep in the liquor of life--Ohon, sirs!--Was the puir lad
Bulmer frae Bu'mer bay, where they land the Hollands, think ye, Maister
Francie?--They whiles rin in a pickle tea there too--I hope that is good
that I have made you, Maister Francie?"
"Excellent, my good dame," said Tyrrel; but it was in a tone of voice
which intimated that she had pressed upon a subject that awakened some
unpleasant reflections.
"And when did this puir lad die?" continued Meg, who was not without her
share of Eve's qualities, and wished to know something concerning what
seemed to affect her guest so particularly; but he disappointed her
purpose, and at the same time awakened another train of sentiment in her
mind, by turning again to the window, and looking upon the distant
buildings of Saint Ronan's Well. As if he had observed for the first
time these new objects, he said to Mistress Dods in an indifferent tone,
"You have got some gay new neighbours yonder, mistress."
"Neighbours!" said Meg, her wrath beginning to arise, as it always did
upon any allusion to this sore subject--"Ye may ca' them neighbours, if
ye like--but the deil flee awa wi' the neighbourhood for Meg Dods!"
"I suppose," said Tyrrel, as if he did not observe her displeasure,
"that yonder is the Fox Hotel they told me of?"
"The Fox!" said Meg: "I am sure it is the fox that has carried off a' my
geese.--I might shut up house, Maister Francie, if it was the thing I
lived by--me, that has seen a' our gentlefolk bairns, and gien them
snaps and sugar-biscuit maist of them wi' my ain hand! They wad hae seen
my father's roof-tree fa' down and smoor me before they wad hae gien a
boddle a-piece to have propped it up--but they could a' link out their
fifty pounds ower head to bigg a hottle at the Well yonder. And muckle
they hae made o't--the bankrupt body, Sandie Lawson, hasna paid them a
bawbee of four terms' rent."
"Surely, mistress, I think if the Well became so famous for its cures,
the least the gentlemen could have done was to make you the priestess."
"Me priestess! I am nae Quaker, I wot, Maister Francie; and I never
heard of alewife that turned preacher, except Luckie Buchan in the
west.[I-8] And if I were to preach, I think I have mair the spirit of a
Scottishwoman, than to preach in the very room they hae been dancing in
ilka night in the week, Saturday itsell not excepted, and that till twal
o'clock at night. Na, na, Maister Francie; I leave the like o' that to
Mr. Simon Chatterly, as they ca' the bit prelatical sprig of divinity
from the town yonder, that plays at cards, and dances six days in the
week, and on the seventh reads the Common Prayer-book in the ball-room,
with Tam Simson, the drunken barber, for his clerk."
"I think I have heard of Mr. Chatterly," said Tyrrel.
"Ye'll be thinking o' the sermon he has printed," said the angry dame,
"where he compares their nasty puddle of a Well yonder to the pool of
Bethseda, like a foul-mouthed, fleeching, feather-headed fule as he is!
He should hae kend that the place got a' its fame in the times of black
Popery; and though they pat it in St. Ronan's name, I'll never believe
for one that the honest man had ony hand in it; for I hae been tell'd by
ane that suld ken, that he was nae Roman, but only a Cuddie, or
Culdee,[I-C] or such like.--But will ye not take anither dish of tea,
Maister Francie? and a wee bit of the diet-loaf, raised wi' my ain fresh
butter, Maister Francie? and no wi' greasy kitchen-fee, like the
seedcake down at the confectioner's yonder, that has as mony dead flees
as carvy in it. Set him up for a confectioner!--Wi' a penniworth of
rye-meal, and anither of tryacle, and twa or three carvy-seeds, I will
make better confections than ever cam out of his oven."
"I have no doubt of that, Mrs. Dods," said the guest; "and I only wish
to know how these new comers were able to establish themselves against a
house of such good reputation and old standing as yours?--It was the
virtues of the mineral, I dare say; but how came the waters to recover a
character all at once, mistress?"
"I dinna ken, sir--they used to be thought good for naething, but here
and there for a puir body's bairn, that had gotten the cruells,[I-9] and
could not afford a penniworth of salts. But my Leddy Penelope Penfeather
had fa'an ill, it's like, as nae other body ever fell ill, and sae she
was to be cured some gate naebody was ever cured, which was naething
mair than was reasonable--and my leddy, ye ken, has wit at wull, and has
a' the wise folk out from Edinburgh at her house at Windywa's yonder,
which it is her leddyship's wull and pleasure to call Air-castle--and
they have a' their different turns, and some can clink verses, wi' their
tale, as weel as Rob Burns or Allan Ramsay--and some rin up hill and
down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi' hammers, like sae
mony road-makers run daft--they say it is to see how the warld was
made!--and some that play on all manner of ten-stringed instruments--and
a wheen sketching souls, that ye may see perched like craws on every
craig in the country, e'en working at your ain trade, Maister Francie;
forby men that had been in foreign parts, or said they had been there,
whilk is a' ane, ye ken; and maybe twa or three draggletailed misses,
that wear my Leddy Penelope's follies when she has dune wi' them, as her
queans of maids wear her second-hand claithes. So, after her leddyship's
happy recovery, as they ca'd it, down cam the hail tribe of wild-geese,
and settled by the Well, to dine thereout on the bare grund, like a
wheen tinklers; and they had sangs, and tunes, and healths, nae doubt,
in praise of the fountain, as they ca'd the Well, and of Leddy Penelope
Penfeather; and, lastly, they behoved a' to take a solemn bumper of the
spring, which, as I'm tauld, made unco havoc amang them or they wan
hame; and this they ca'd picknick, and a plague to them! And sae the jig
was begun after her leddyship's pipe, and mony a mad measure has been
danced sin' syne; for down cam masons and murgeon-makers, and preachers
and player-folk, and Episcopalians and Methodists, and fools and
fiddlers, and Papists and pie-bakers, and doctors and drugsters; by the
shop-folk, that sell trash and trumpery at three prices--and so up got
the bonny new Well, and down fell the honest auld town of Saint Ronan's,
where blithe decent folk had been heartsome eneugh for mony a day before
ony o' them were born, or ony sic vapouring fancies kittled in their
cracked brains."
"What said your landlord, the Laird of Saint Ronan's, to all this?" said
Tyrrel.
"Is't _my_ landlord ye are asking after, Maister Francie?--the Laird of
Saint Ronan's is nae landlord of mine, and I think ye might hae minded
that.--Na, na, thanks be to Praise! Meg Dods is baith land_lord_ and
land_leddy_. Ill eneugh to keep the doors open as it is, let be facing
Whitsunday and Martinmas--an auld leather pock there is, Maister
Francie, in ane of worthy Maister Bindloose the sheriff-clerk's
pigeon-holes, in his dowcot of a closet in the burgh; and therein is
baith charter and sasine, and special service to boot; and that will be
chapter and verse, speer when ye list."
"I had quite forgotten," said Tyrrel, "that the inn was your own; though
I remember you were a considerable landed proprietor."
"Maybe I am," replied Meg, "maybe I am not: and if I be, what for
no?--But as to what the Laird, whose grandfather was my father's
landlord, said to the new doings yonder--he just jumped at the ready
penny, like a cock at a grosert, and feu'd the bonny holm beside the
Well, that they ca'd the Saint-Well-holm, that was like the best land in
his aught, to be carved, and biggit, and howkit up, just at the pleasure
of Jock Ashler the stane-mason, that ca's himsell an arkiteck--there's
nae living for new words in this new warld neither, and that is another
vex to auld folk such as me.--It's a shame o' the young Laird, to let
his auld patrimony gang the gate it's like to gang, and my heart is sair
to see't, though it has but little cause to care what comes of him or
his."
"Is it the same Mr. Mowbray," said Mr. Tyrrel, "who still holds the
estate?--the old gentleman, you know, whom I had some dispute with"----
"About hunting moorfowl upon the Spring-well-head muirs?" said Meg. "Ah,
lad! honest Mr. Bindloose brought you neatly off there--Na, it's no that
honest man, but his son John Mowbray--the t'other has slept down-by in
Saint Ronan's Kirk for these six or seven years."
"Did he leave," asked Tyrrel, with something of a faltering voice, "no
other child than the present Laird?"
"No other son," said Meg; "and there's e'en eneugh, unless he could have
left a better ane."
"He died then," said Tyrrel, "excepting this son, without children?"
"By your leave, no," said Meg; "there is the lassie Miss Clara, that
keeps house for the Laird, if it can be ca'd keeping house, for he is
almost aye down at the Well yonder--so a sma' kitchen serves them at the
Shaws."
"Miss Clara will have but a dull time of it there during her brother's
absence?" said the stranger.
"Out no!--he has her aften jinketing about, and back and forward, wi' a'
the fine flichtering fools that come yonder; and clapping palms wi'
them, and linking at their dances and daffings. I wuss nae ill come o't,
but it's a shame her father's daughter should keep company wi' a' that
scauff and raff of physic-students, and writers' prentices, and bagmen,
and siclike trash as are down at the Well yonder."
"You are severe, Mrs. Dods," replied the guest. "No doubt Miss Clara's
conduct deserves all sort of freedom."
"I am saying naething against her conduct," said the dame; "and there's
nae ground to say onything that I ken of--But I wad hae like draw to
like, Maister Francie. I never quarrelled the ball that the gentry used
to hae at my bit house a gude wheen years bygane--when they came, the
auld folk in their coaches, wi' lang-tailed black horses, and a wheen
galliard gallants on their hunting horses, and mony a decent leddy
behind her ain goodman, and mony a bonny smirking lassie on her pownie,
and wha sae happy as they--And what for no? And then there was the
farmers' ball, wi' the tight lads of yeomen with the bran new blues and
the buckskins--These were decent meetings--but then they were a' ae
man's bairns that were at them, ilk ane kend ilk other--they danced
farmers wi' farmers' daughters, at the tane, and gentles wi' gentle
blood, at the t'other, unless maybe when some of the gentlemen of the
Killnakelty Club would gie me a round of the floor mysell, in the way of
daffing and fun, and me no able to flyte on them for laughing--I am sure
I never grudged these innocent pleasures, although it has cost me maybe
a week's redding up, before I got the better of the confusion."
"But, dame," said Tyrrel, "this ceremonial would be a little hard upon
strangers like myself, for how were we to find partners in these family
parties of yours?"
"Never you fash your thumb about that, Maister Francie," returned the
landlady, with a knowing wink.--"Every Jack will find a Jill, gang the
world as it may--and, at the warst o't, better hae some fashery in
finding a partner for the night, than get yoked with ane that you may
not be able to shake off the morn."
"And does that sometimes happen?" asked the stranger.
"Happen!--and is't amang the Well folk that ye mean?" exclaimed the
hostess. "Was it not the last season, as they ca't, no farther gane,
that young Sir Bingo Binks, the English lad wi' the red coat, that keeps
a mail-coach, and drives it himsell, gat cleekit with Miss Rachel
Bonnyrigg, the auld Leddy Loupengirth's lang-legged daughter--and they
danced sae lang thegither, that there was mair said than suld hae been
said about it--and the lad would fain hae louped back, but the auld
leddy held him to his tackle, and the Commissary Court and somebody else
made her Leddy Binks in spite of Sir Bingo's heart--and he has never
daured take her to his friends in England, but they have just wintered
and summered it at the Well ever since--and that is what the Well is
good for!"
"And does Clara,--I mean does Miss Mowbray, keep company with such women
as these?" said Tyrrel, with a tone of interest which he checked as he
proceeded with the question.
"What can she do, puir thing?" said the dame. "She maun keep the company
that her brother keeps, for she is clearly dependent.--But, speaking of
that, I ken what I have to do, and that is no little, before it darkens.
I have sat clavering with you ower lang, Maister Francie."
And away she marched with a resolved step, and soon the clear octaves of
her voice were heard in shrill admonition to her handmaidens.
Tyrrel paused a moment in deep thought, then took his hat, paid a visit
to the stable, where his horse saluted him with feathering ears, and
that low amicable neigh, with which that animal acknowledges the
approach of a loving and beloved friend. Having seen that the faithful
creature was in every respect attended to, Tyrrel availed himself of the
continued and lingering twilight, to visit the old Castle, which, upon
former occasions, had been his favourite evening walk. He remained while
the light permitted, admiring the prospect we attempted to describe in
the first chapter, and comparing, as in his former reverie, the faded
hues of the glimmering landscape to those of human life, when early
youth and hope have ceased to gild them.
A brisk walk to the inn, and a light supper on a Welsh rabbit and the
dame's home-brewed, were stimulants of livelier, at least more resigned
thoughts--and the Blue bedroom, to the honours of which he had been
promoted, received him a contented, if not a cheerful tenant.
FOOTNOTES:
[I-8] The foundress of a sect called Buchanites; a species of Joanna
Southcote, who long after death was expected to return and head her
disciples on the road to Jerusalem.
[I-9] _Escrouelles_, King's Evil.
CHAPTER III.
ADMINISTRATION.
There must be government in all society--
Bees have their Queen, and stag-herds have their leader;
Rome had her Consuls, Athens had her Archons,
And we, sir, have our Managing Committee.
_The Album of St. Ronan's._
Francis Tyrrel was, in the course of the next day, formally settled in
his old quarters, where he announced his purpose of remaining for
several days. The old-established carrier of the place brought his
fishing-rod and travelling-trunk, with a letter to Meg, dated a week
previously, desiring her to prepare to receive an old acquaintance. This
annunciation, though something of the latest, Meg received with great
complacency, observing it was a civil attention in Maister Tirl; and
that John Hislop, though he was not just sae fast, was far surer than
ony post of them a', or express either. She also observed with
satisfaction, that there was no gun-case along with her guest's baggage;
"for that weary gunning had brought him and her into trouble--the lairds
had cried out upon't, as if she made her house a howff for common
fowlers and poachers; and yet how could she hinder twa daft hempie
callants from taking a start and an ower-loup?[I-10] They had been ower
the neighbour's ground they had leave on up to the march, and they
werena just to ken meiths when the moorfowl got up."
In a day or two, her guest fell into such quiet and solitary habits,
that Meg, herself the most restless and bustling of human creatures,
began to be vexed, for want of the trouble which she expected to have
had with him, experiencing, perhaps, the same sort of feeling from his
extreme and passive indifference on all points, that a good horseman has
for the over-patient steed, which he can scarce feel under him. His
walks were devoted to the most solitary recesses among the neighbouring
woods and hills--his fishing-rod was often left behind him, or carried
merely as an apology for sauntering slowly by the banks of some little
brooklet--and his success so indifferent, that Meg said the piper of
Peebles[I-11] would have caught a creelfu' before Maister Francie made out
the half-dozen; so that he was obliged, for peace's sake, to vindicate
his character, by killing a handsome salmon.
Tyrrel's painting, as Meg called it, went on equally slowly: He often,
indeed, showed her the sketches which he brought from his walks, and
used to finish at home; but Meg held them very cheap. What signified,
she said, a wheen bits of paper, wi' black and white scarts upon them,
that he ca'd bushes, and trees, and craigs?--Couldna he paint them wi'
green, and blue, and yellow, like the other folk? "Ye will never mak
your bread that way, Maister Francie. Ye suld munt up a muckle square of
canvass, like Dick Tinto, and paint folks ainsells, that they like
muckle better to see than ony craig in the haill water; and I wadna
muckle objeck even to some of the Wallers coming up and sitting to ye.
They waste their time waur, I wis--and, I warrant, ye might make a
guinea a-head of them. Dick made twa, but he was an auld used hand, and
folk maun creep before they gang."
In answer to these remonstrances, Tyrrel assured her, that the sketches
with which he busied himself were held of such considerable value, that
very often an artist in that line received much higher remuneration for
these, than for portraits or coloured drawings. He added, that they were
often taken for the purpose of illustrating popular poems, and hinted as
if he himself were engaged in some labour of that nature.
Eagerly did Meg long to pour forth to Nelly Trotter, the
fishwoman,--whose cart formed the only neutral channel of communication
between the Auld Town and the Well, and who was in favour with Meg,
because, as Nelly passed her door in her way to the Well, she always had
the first choice of her fish,--the merits of her lodger as an artist.
Luckie Dods had, in truth, been so much annoyed and bullied, as it were,
with the report of clever persons, accomplished in all sorts of
excellence, arriving day after day at the Hotel, that she was overjoyed
in this fortunate opportunity to triumph over them in their own way; and
it may be believed, that the excellences of her lodger lost nothing by
being trumpeted through her mouth.
"I maun hae the best of the cart, Nelly--if you and me can gree--for it
is for ane of the best of painters. Your fine folk down yonder would gie
their lugs to look at what he has been doing--he gets gowd in goupins,
for three downright skarts and three cross anes--And he is no an
ungrateful loon, like Dick Tinto, that had nae sooner my good
five-and-twenty shillings in his pocket, than he gaed down to birl it
awa at their bonny hottle yonder, but a decent quiet lad, that kens when
he is weel aff, and bides still at the auld howff--And what for
no?--Tell them all this, and hear what they will say till't."
"Indeed, mistress, I can tell ye that already, without stirring my
shanks for the matter," answered Nelly Trotter; "they will e'en say that
ye are ae auld fule, and me anither, that may hae some judgment in
cock-bree or in scate-rumples, but mauna fash our beards about ony thing
else."
"Wad they say sae, the frontless villains! and me been a housekeeper
this thirty year!" exclaimed Meg; "I wadna hae them say it to my face!
But I am no speaking without warrant--for what an I had spoken to the
minister, lass, and shown him ane of the loose skarts of paper that
Maister Tirl leaves fleeing about his room?--and what an he had said he
had kend Lord Bidmore gie five guineas for the waur on't? and a' the
warld kens he was lang tutor in the Bidmore family."
"Troth," answered her gossip, "I doubt if I was to tell a' this they
would hardly believe me, mistress; for there are sae mony judges amang
them, and they think sae muckle of themsells, and sae little of other
folk, that unless ye were to send down the bit picture, I am no thinking
they will believe a word that I can tell them."
"No believe what an honest woman says--let abee to say twa o' them?"
exclaimed Meg; "O the unbelieving generation!--Weel, Nelly, since my
back is up, ye sall tak down the picture, or sketching, or whatever it
is, (though I thought sketchers[I-12] were aye made of airn,) and shame
wi' it the conceited crew that they are.--But see and bring't back wi'
ye again, Nelly, for it's a thing of value; and trustna it out o' your
hand, _that_ I charge you, for I lippen no muckle to their
honesty.--And, Nelly, ye may tell them he has an illustrated
poem--_illustrated_--mind the word, Nelly--that is to be stuck as fou o'
the like o' that, as ever turkey was larded wi' dabs o' bacon."
Thus furnished with her credentials, and acting the part of a herald
betwixt two hostile countries, honest Nelly switched her little
fish-cart downwards to St. Ronan's Well.
In watering-places, as in other congregated assemblies of the human
species, various kinds of government have been dictated, by chance,
caprice, or convenience; but in almost all of them, some sort of
direction has been adopted, to prevent the consequences of anarchy.
Sometimes the sole power has been vested in a Master of Ceremonies; but
this, like other despotisms, has been of late unfashionable, and the
powers of this great officer have been much limited even at Bath, where
Nash once ruled with undisputed supremacy. Committees of management,
chosen from among the most steady guests, have been in general resorted
to, as a more liberal mode of sway, and to such was confided the
administration of the infant republic of St. Ronan's Well. This little
senate, it must be observed, had the more difficult task in discharging
their high duties, that, like those of other republics, their subjects
were divided into two jarring and contending factions, who every day
eat, drank, danced, and made merry together, hating each other all the
while with all the animosity of political party, endeavouring by every
art to secure the adherence of each guest who arrived, and ridiculing
the absurdities and follies of each other, with all the wit and
bitterness of which they were masters.
At the head of one of these parties was no less a personage than Lady
Penelope Penfeather, to whom the establishment owed its fame, nay, its
existence; and whose influence could only have been balanced by that of
the Lord of the Manor, Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's, or, as he was called
usually by the company who affected what Meg called knapping English,
The Squire, who was leader of the opposite faction.
The rank and fortune of the lady, her pretensions to beauty as well as
talent, (though the former was something faded,) and the consequence
which she arrogated to herself as a woman of fashion, drew round her
painters and poets, and philosophers, and men of science, and lecturers,
and foreign adventurers, _et hoc genus omne_.
On the contrary, the Squire's influence, as a man of family and property
in the immediate neighbourhood, who actually kept greyhounds and
pointers, and at least talked of hunters and of racers, ascertained him
the support of the whole class of bucks, half and whole bred, from the
three next counties; and if more inducements were wanting, he could
grant his favourites the privilege of shooting over his moors, which is
enough to turn the head of a young Scottishman at any time. Mr. Mowbray
was of late especially supported in his pre-eminence, by a close
alliance with Sir Bingo Binks, a sapient English Baronet, who, ashamed,
as many thought, to return to his own country, had set him down at the
Well of St. Ronan's, to enjoy the blessing which the Caledonian Hymen
had so kindly forced on him in the person of Miss Rachel Bonnyrigg. As
this gentleman actually drove a regular-built mail-coach, not in any
respect differing from that of his Majesty, only that it was more
frequently overturned, his influence with a certain set was
irresistible, and the Squire of St. Ronan's, having the better sense of
the two, contrived to reap the full benefit of the consequence attached
to his friendship.
These two contending parties were so equally balanced, that the
predominance of the influence of either was often determined by the
course of the sun. Thus, in the morning and forenoon, when Lady Penelope
led forth her herd to lawn and shady bower, whether to visit some ruined
monument of ancient times, or eat their pic-nic luncheon, to spoil good
paper with bad drawings, and good verses with repetition--in a word,
"To rave, recite, and madden round the land,"
her ladyship's empire over the loungers seemed uncontrolled and
absolute, and all things were engaged in the _tourbillon_, of which she
formed the pivot and centre. Even the hunters, and shooters, and hard
drinkers, were sometimes fain reluctantly to follow in her train,
sulking, and quizzing, and flouting at her solemn festivals, besides
encouraging the younger nymphs to giggle when they should have looked
sentimental. But after dinner the scene was changed, and her ladyship's
sweetest smiles, and softest invitations, were often insufficient to
draw the neutral part of the company to the tea-room; so that her
society was reduced to those whose constitution or finances rendered
early retirement from the dining-parlour a matter of convenience,
together with the more devoted and zealous of her own immediate
dependents and adherents. Even the faith of the latter was apt to be
debauched. Her ladyship's poet-laureate, in whose behalf she was teazing
each new-comer for subscriptions, got sufficiently independent to sing
in her ladyship's presence, at supper, a song of rather equivocal
meaning; and her chief painter, who was employed upon an illustrated
copy of the Loves of the Plants, was, at another time, seduced into such
a state of pot-valour, that, upon her ladyship's administering her usual
dose of criticism upon his works, he not only bluntly disputed her
judgment, but talked something of his right to be treated like a
gentleman.
These feuds were taken up by the Managing Committee, who interceded for
the penitent offenders on the following morning, and obtained their
re-establishment in Lady Penelope's good graces, upon moderate terms.
Many other acts of moderating authority they performed, much to the
assuaging of faction, and the quiet of the Wellers; and so essential was
their government to the prosperity of the place, that, without them, St.
Ronan's spring would probably have been speedily deserted. We must,
therefore, give a brief sketch of that potential Committee, which both
factions, acting as if on a self-denying ordinance, had combined to
invest with the reins of government.
Each of its members appeared to be selected, as Fortunio, in the
fairy-tale,[I-D] chose his followers, for his peculiar gifts. First on the
list stood the MAN OF MEDICINE, Dr. Quentin Quackleben, who claimed
right to regulate medical matters at the spring, upon the principle
which, of old, assigned the property of a newly discovered country to
the bucanier who committed the earliest piracy on its shores. The
acknowledgment of the Doctor's merit as having been first to proclaim
and vindicate the merits of these healing fountains, had occasioned his
being universally installed First Physician and Man of Science, which
last qualification he could apply to all purposes, from the boiling of
an egg to the giving a lecture. He was, indeed, qualified, like many of
his profession, to spread both the bane and antidote before a dyspeptic
patient, being as knowing a gastronome as Dr. Redgill himself, or any
other worthy physician who has written for the benefit of the _cuisine_,
from Dr. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, to the late Dr. Hunter of York, and
the present Dr. Kitchiner of London. But pluralities are always
invidious, and therefore the Doctor prudently relinquished the office of
caterer and head-carver to the Man of Taste, who occupied regularly, and
_ex officio_, the head of the table, reserving to himself the occasional
privilege of criticising, and a principal share in consuming, the good
things which the common entertainment afforded. We have only to sum up
this brief account of the learned Doctor, by informing the reader that
he was a tall, lean, beetle-browed man, with an ill-made black
scratch-wig, that stared out on either side from his lantern jaws. He
resided nine months out of the twelve at St. Ronan's, and was supposed
to make an indifferent good thing of it,--especially as he played whist
to admiration.
First in place, though perhaps second to the Doctor in real authority,
was Mr. Winterblossom; a civil sort of person, who was nicely precise in
his address, wore his hair cued, and dressed with powder, had
knee-buckles set with Bristol stones, and a seal-ring as large as Sir
John Falstaff's. In his heyday he had a small estate, which he had spent
like a gentleman, by mixing with the gay world. He was, in short, one of
those respectable links that connect the coxcombs of the present day
with those of the last age, and could compare, in his own experience,
the follies of both. In latter days, he had sense enough to extricate
himself from his course of dissipation, though with impaired health and
impoverished fortune.
Mr. Winterblossom now lived upon a moderate annuity, and had discovered
a way of reconciling his economy with much company and made dishes, by
acting as perpetual president of the table-d'hote at the Well. Here he
used to amuse the society by telling stories about Garrick, Foote,
Bonnel Thornton, and Lord Kelly, and delivering his opinions in matters
of taste and vertu. An excellent carver, he knew how to help each guest
to what was precisely his due; and never failed to reserve a proper
slice as the reward of his own labours. To conclude, he was possessed of
some taste in the fine arts, at least in painting and music, although it
was rather of the technical kind, than that which warms the heart and
elevates the feelings. There was, indeed, about Winterblossom, nothing
that was either warm or elevated. He was shrewd, selfish, and sensual;
the last two of which qualities he screened from observation, under a
specious varnish of exterior complaisance. Therefore, in his professed
and apparent anxiety to do the honours of the table, to the most
punctilious point of good breeding, he never permitted the attendants
upon the public taste to supply the wants of others, until all his own
private comforts had been fully arranged and provided for.
Mr. Winterblossom was also distinguished for possessing a few curious
engravings, and other specimens of art, with the exhibition of which he
occasionally beguiled a wet morning at the public room. They were
collected, "_viis et modis_," said the Man of Law, another distinguished
member of the Committee, with a knowing cock of his eye to his next
neighbour.
Of this person little need be said. He was a large-boned, loud-voiced,
red-faced man, named Meiklewham; a country writer, or attorney, who
managed the matters of the Squire much to the profit of one or
other,--if not of both. His nose projected from the front of his broad
vulgar face, like the stile of an old sun-dial, twisted all of one side.
He was as great a bully in his profession, as if it had been military
instead of civil: conducted the whole technicalities concerning the
cutting up the Saint's-Well-haugh, so much lamented by Dame Dods, into
building-stances, and was on excellent terms with Doctor Quackleben, who
always recommended him to make the wills of his patients.
After the Man of Law comes Captain Mungo MacTurk, a Highland lieutenant
on half-pay, and that of ancient standing; one who preferred toddy of
the strongest to wine, and in that fashion and cold drams finished about
a bottle of whisky _per diem_, whenever he could come by it. He was
called the Man of Peace, on the same principle which assigns to
constables, Bow-street runners, and such like, who carry bludgeons to
break folk's heads, and are perpetually and officially employed in
scenes of riot, the title of peace-officers--that is, because by his
valour he compelled others to act with discretion. The Captain was the
general referee in all those abortive quarrels, which, at a place of
this kind, are so apt to occur at night, and to be quietly settled in
the morning; and occasionally adopted a quarrel himself, by way of
taking down any guest who was unusually pugnacious. This occupation
procured Captain MacTurk a good deal of respect at the Well; for he was
precisely that sort of person who is ready to fight with any one,--whom
no one can find an apology for declining to fight with,--in fighting
with whom considerable danger was incurred, for he was ever and anon
showing that he could snuff a candle with a pistol ball,--and lastly,
through fighting with whom no eclat or credit could redound to the
antagonist. He always wore a blue coat and red collar, had a
supercilious taciturnity of manner, ate sliced leeks with his cheese,
and resembled in complexion a Dutch red-herring.
Still remains to be mentioned the Man of Religion--the gentle Mr. Simon
Chatterly, who had strayed to St. Ronan's Well from the banks of Cam or
Isis, and who piqued himself, first on his Greek, and secondly, on his
politeness to the ladies. During all the week days, as Dame Dods has
already hinted, this reverend gentleman was the partner at the
whist-table, or in the ball-room, to what maid or matron soever lacked a
partner at either; and on the Sundays, he read prayers in the public
room to all who chose to attend. He was also a deviser of charades, and
an unriddler of riddles; he played a little on the flute, and was Mr.
Winterblossom's principal assistant in contriving those ingenious and
romantic paths, by which, as by the zig-zags which connect military
parallels, you were enabled to ascend to the top of the hill behind the
hotel, which commands so beautiful a prospect, at exactly that precise
angle of ascent, which entitles a gentleman to offer his arm, and a lady
to accept it, with perfect propriety.
There was yet another member of this Select Committee, Mr. Michael
Meredith, who might be termed the Man of Mirth, or, if you please, the
Jack Pudding to the company, whose business it was to crack the best
joke, and sing the best song,--he could. Unluckily, however, this
functionary was for the present obliged to absent himself from St.
Ronan's; for, not recollecting that he did not actually wear the
privileged motley of his profession, he had passed some jest upon
Captain MacTurk, which cut so much to the quick, that Mr. Meredith was
fain to go to goat-whey quarters, at some ten miles' distance, and
remain there in a sort of concealment, until the affair should be made
up through the mediation of his brethren of the Committee.
Such were the honest gentlemen who managed the affairs of this rising
settlement, with as much impartiality as could be expected. They were
not indeed without their own secret predilections; for the lawyer and
the soldier privately inclined to the party of the Squire, while the
parson, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Winterblossom, were more devoted to the
interests of Lady Penelope; so that Doctor Quackleben alone, who
probably recollected that the gentlemen were as liable to stomach
complaints, as the ladies to nervous disorders, seemed the only person
who preserved in word and deed the most rigid neutrality. Nevertheless,
the interests of the establishment being very much at the heart of this
honourable council, and each feeling his own profit, pleasure, or
comfort, in some degree involved, they suffered not their private
affections to interfere with their public duties, but acted, every one
in his own sphere, for the public benefit of the whole community.
FOOTNOTES:
[I-10] The usual expression for a slight encroachment on a neighbour's
property.
[I-11] The said piper was famous at the mystery.
[I-12] Skates are called sketchers in Scotland.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INVITATION.
Thus painters write their names at Co.
PRIOR.
The clamour which attends the removal of dinner from a public room had
subsided; the clatter of plates, and knives and forks--the bustling
tread of awkward boobies of country servants, kicking each other's
shins, and wrangling, as they endeavour to rush out of the door three
abreast--the clash of glasses and tumblers, borne to earth in the
tumult--the shrieks of the landlady--the curses, not loud, but deep, of
the landlord--had all passed away; and those of the company who had
servants, had been accommodated by their respective Ganymedes with such
remnants of their respective bottles of wine, spirits, &c., as the said
Ganymedes had not previously consumed, while the rest, broken in to such
observance by Mr. Winterblossom, waited patiently until the worthy
president's own special and multifarious commissions had been executed
by a tidy young woman and a lumpish lad, the regular attendants
belonging to the house, but whom he permitted to wait on no one, till,
as the hymn says,
"All his wants were well supplied."
"And, Dinah--my bottle of pale sherry, Dinah--place it on this
side--there's a good girl;--and, Toby--get my jug with the hot
water--and let it be boiling--and don't spill it on Lady Penelope, if
you can help it, Toby."
"No--for her ladyship has been in hot water to-day already," said the
Squire; a sarcasm to which Lady Penelope only replied with a look of
contempt.
"And, Dinah, bring the sugar--the soft East India sugar, Dinah--and a
lemon, Dinah, one of those which came fresh to-day--Go fetch it from the
bar, Toby--and don't tumble down stairs, if you can help it.--And,
Dinah--stay, Dinah--the nutmeg, Dinah, and the ginger, my good
girl--And, Dinah--put the cushion up behind my back--and the footstool
to my foot, for my toe is something the worse of my walk with your
ladyship this morning to the top of Belvidere."
"Her ladyship may call it what she pleases in common parlance," said the
writer; "but it must stand Munt-grunzie in the stamped paper, being so
nominated in the ancient writs and evidents thereof."
"And, Dinah," continued the president, "lift up my handkerchief--and--a
bit of biscuit, Dinah--and--and I do not think I want any thing
else--Look to the company, my good girl.--I have the honour to drink the
company's very good health--Will your ladyship honour me by accepting a
glass of negus?--I learned to make negus from old Dartineuf's son.--He
always used East India sugar and added a tamarind--it improves the
flavour infinitely.--Dinah, see your father sends for some
tamarinds--Dartineuf knew a good thing almost as well as his father--I
met him at Bath in the year--let me see--Garrick was just taking leave,
and that was in," &c. &c. &c.--"And what is this now, Dinah?" he said,
as she put into his hand a roll of paper.
"Something that Nelly Trotter" (Trotting Nelly, as the company called
her) "brought from a sketching gentleman that lives at the woman's"
(thus bluntly did the upstart minx describe the reverend Mrs. Margaret
Dods) "at the Cleikum of Aultoun yonder"--A name, by the way, which the
inn had acquired from the use which the saint upon the sign-post was
making of his pastoral crook.
"Indeed, Dinah?" said Mr. Winterblossom, gravely taking out his
spectacles, and wiping them before he opened the roll of paper; "some
boy's daubing, I suppose, whose pa and ma wish to get him into the
Trustees' School, and so are beating about for a little interest.--But I
am drained dry--I put three lads in last season; and if it had not been
my particular interest with the secretary, who asks my opinion now and
then, I could not have managed it. But giff-gaff, say I.--Eh! What, in
the devil's name, is this?--Here is both force and keeping--Who can this
be, my lady?--Do but see the sky-line--why, this is really a little
bit--an exquisite little bit--Who the devil can it be? and how can he
have stumbled upon the dog-hole in the Old Town, and the snarling b----I
beg your ladyship ten thousand pardons--that kennels there?"
"I dare say, my lady," said a little miss of fourteen, her eyes growing
rounder and rounder, and her cheeks redder and redder, as she found
herself speaking, and so many folks listening--"O la! I dare say it is
the same gentleman we met one day in the Low-wood walk, that looked like
a gentleman, and yet was none of the company, and that you said was a
handsome man."
"I did not say handsome, Maria," replied her ladyship; "ladies never say
men are handsome--I only said he looked genteel and interesting."
"And that, my lady," said the young parson, bowing and smiling, "is, I
will be judged by the company, the more flattering compliment of the
two--We shall be jealous of this Unknown presently."
"Nay, but," continued the sweetly communicative Maria, with some real
and some assumed simplicity, "your ladyship forgets--for you said
presently after, you were sure he was no gentleman, for he did not run
after you with your glove which you had dropped--and so I went back
myself to find your ladyship's glove, and he never offered to help me,
and I saw him closer than your ladyship did, and I am sure he is
handsome, though he is not very civil."
"You speak a little too much and too loud, miss," said Lady Penelope, a
natural blush reinforcing the _nuance_ of rouge by which it was usually
superseded.
"What say you to that, Squire Mowbray?" said the elegant Sir Bingo
Binks.
"A fair challenge to the field, Sir Bingo," answered the squire; "when a
lady throws down the gauntlet, a gentleman may throw the handkerchief."
"I have always the benefit of _your_ best construction, Mr. Mowbray,"
said the lady, with dignity. "I suppose Miss Maria has contrived this
pretty story for your amusement. I can hardly answer to Mr. Digges, for
bringing her into company where she receives encouragement to behave
so."
"Nay, nay, my lady," said the president, "you must let the jest pass by;
and since this is really such an admirable sketch, you must honour us
with your opinion, whether the company can consistently with propriety
make any advances to this man."
"In my opinion," said her ladyship, the angry spot still glowing on her
brow, "there are enough of _men_ among us already--I wish I could say
gentlemen--As matters stand, I see little business _ladies_ can have at
St. Ronan's."
This was an intimation which always brought the Squire back to
good-breeding, which he could make use of when he pleased. He deprecated
her ladyship's displeasure, until she told him, in returning good
humour, that she really would not trust him unless he brought his sister
to be security for his future politeness.
"Clara, my lady," said Mowbray, "is a little wilful; and I believe your
ladyship must take the task of unharbouring her into your own hands.
What say you to a gipsy party up to my old shop?--It is a bachelor's
house--you must not expect things in much order; but Clara would be
honoured"----
The Lady Penelope eagerly accepted the proposal of something like a
party, and, quite reconciled with Mowbray, began to enquire whether she
might bring the stranger artist with her; "that is," said her ladyship,
looking to Dinah, "if he be a gentleman."
Here Dinah interposed her assurance, "that the gentleman at Meg Dods's
was quite and clean a gentleman, and an illustrated poet besides."
"An illustrated poet, Dinah?" said Lady Penelope; "you must mean an
illustrious poet."
"I dare to say your ladyship is right," said Dinah, dropping a curtsy.
A joyous flutter of impatient anxiety was instantly excited through all
the blue-stocking faction of the company, nor were the news totally
indifferent to the rest of the community. The former belonged to that
class, who, like the young Ascanius, are ever beating about in quest of
a tawny lion, though they are much more successful in now and then
starting a great bore;[I-13] and the others, having left all their own
ordinary affairs and subjects of interest at home, were glad to make a
matter of importance of the most trivial occurrence. A mighty poet, said
the former class--who could it possibly be?--All names were recited--all
Britain scrutinized, from Highland hills to the Lakes of
Cumberland--from Sydenham Common to St. James's Place--even the Banks of
the Bosphorus were explored for some name which might rank under this
distinguished epithet.--And then, besides his illustrious poesy, to
sketch so inimitably!--who _could_ it be? And all the gapers, who had
nothing of their own to suggest, answered with the antistrophe, "Who
could it be?"
The Claret-Club, which comprised the choicest and firmest adherents of
Squire Mowbray and the Baronet--men who scorned that the reversion of
one bottle of wine should furnish forth the feast of to-morrow, though
caring nought about either of the fine arts in question, found out an
interest of their own, which centred in the same individual.
"I say, little Sir Bingo," said the Squire, "this is the very fellow
that we saw down at the Willow-slack on Saturday--he was tog'd
gnostically enough, and cast twelve yards of line with one hand--the fly
fell like a thistledown on the water."
"Uich!" answered the party he addressed, in the accents of a dog choking
in the collar.
"We saw him pull out the salmon yonder," said Mowbray; "you
remember--clean fish--the tide-ticks on his gills--weighed, I dare say,
a matter of eighteen pounds."
"Sixteen!" replied Sir Bingo, in the same tone of strangulation.
"None of your rigs, Bing!" said his companion, "--nearer eighteen than
sixteen!"
"Nearer sixteen, by ----!"
"Will you go a dozen of blue on it to the company?" said the Squire.
"No, d---- me!" croaked the Baronet--"to our own set I will."
"Then, I say done!" quoth the Squire.
And "Done!" responded the Knight; and out came their red pocketbooks.
"But who shall decide the bet?" said the Squire, "The genius himself, I
suppose; they talk of asking him here, but I suppose he will scarce mind
quizzes like them."
"Write myself--John Mowbray," said the Baronet.
"You, Baronet!--you write!" answered the Squire, "d---- me, that cock
won't fight--you won't."
"I will," growled Sir Bingo, more articulately than usual.
"Why, you can't!" said Mowbray. "You never wrote a line in your life,
save those you were whipped for at school."
"I can write--I will write!" said Sir Bingo. "Two to one I will."
And there the affair rested, for the council of the company were in high
consultation concerning the most proper manner of opening a
communication with the mysterious stranger; and the voice of Mr.
Winterblossom, whose tones, originally fine, age had reduced to
falsetto, was calling upon the whole party for "Order, order!" So that
the bucks were obliged to lounge in silence, with both arms reclined on
the table, and testifying, by coughs and yawns, their indifference to
the matters in question, while the rest of the company debated upon
them, as if they were matters of life and death.
"A visit from one of the gentlemen--Mr. Winterblossom, if he would take
the trouble--in name of the company at large--would, Lady Penelope
Penfeather presumed to think, be a necessary preliminary to an
invitation."
Mr. Winterblossom was "quite of her ladyship's opinion, and would gladly
have been the personal representative of the company at St. Ronan's
Well--but it was up hill--her ladyship knew his tyrant, the gout, was
hovering upon the frontiers--there were other gentlemen, younger and
more worthy to fly at the lady's command than an ancient Vulcan like
him--there was the valiant Mars and the eloquent Mercury."
Thus speaking, he bowed to Captain MacTurk and the Rev. Mr. Simon
Chatterly, and reclined on his chair, sipping his negus with the
self-satisfied smile of one, who, by a pretty speech, has rid himself
of a troublesome commission. At the same time, by an act probably of
mental absence, he put in his pocket the drawing, which, after
circulating around the table, had returned back to the chair of the
president, being the point from which it had set out.
"By Cot, madam," said Captain MacTurk, "I should be proud to obey your
leddyship's commands--but, by Cot, I never call first on any man that
never called upon me at all, unless it were to carry him a friend's
message, or such like."
"Twig the old connoisseur," said the Squire to the Knight.--"He is
condiddling the drawing."
"Go it, Johnnie Mowbray--pour it into him," whispered Sir Bingo.
"Thank ye for nothing, Sir Bingo," said the Squire, in the same tone.
"Winterblossom is one of us--_was_ one of us at least--and won't stand
the ironing. He has his Wogdens still, that were right things in his
day, and can hit the hay-stack with the best of us--but stay, they are
hallooing on the parson."
They were indeed busied on all hands, to obtain Mr. Chatterly's consent
to wait on the Genius unknown; but though he smiled and simpered, and
was absolutely incapable of saying No, he begged leave, in all humility,
to decline that commission. "The truth was," he pleaded in his excuse,
"that having one day walked to visit the old Castle of St. Ronan's, and
returning through the Auld Town, as it was popularly called, he had
stopped at the door of the _Cleikum_," (pronounced _Anglicé_, with the
open diphthong,) "in hopes to get a glass of syrup of capillaire, or a
draught of something cooling; and had in fact expressed his wishes, and
was knocking pretty loudly, when a sash-window was thrown suddenly up,
and ere he was aware what was about to happen, he was soused with a
deluge of water," (as he said,) "while the voice of an old hag from
within assured him, that if that did not cool him there was another
biding him,--an intimation which induced him to retreat in all haste
from the repetition of the shower-bath."
All laughed at the account of the chaplain's misfortune, the history of
which seemed to be wrung from him reluctantly, by the necessity of
assigning some weighty cause for declining to execute the ladies'
commands. But the Squire and Baronet continued their mirth far longer
than decorum allowed, flinging themselves back in their chairs, with
their hands thrust into their side-pockets, and their mouths expanded
with unrestrained enjoyment, until the sufferer, angry, disconcerted,
and endeavouring to look scornful, incurred another general burst of
laughter on all hands.
When Mr. Winterblossom had succeeded in restoring some degree of order,
he found the mishaps of the young divine proved as intimidating as
ludicrous. Not one of the company chose to go Envoy Extraordinary to the
dominions of Queen Meg, who might be suspected of paying little respect
to the sanctity of an ambassador's person. And what was worse, when it
was resolved that a civil card from Mr. Winterblossom, in the name of
the company, should be sent to the stranger, instead of a personal
visit, Dinah informed them that she was sure no one about the house
could be bribed to carry up a letter of the kind; for, when such an
event had taken place two summers since, Meg, who construed it into an
attempt to seduce from her tenement the invited guest, had so handled a
ploughboy who carried the letter, that he fled the country-side
altogether, and never thought himself safe till he was at a village ten
miles off, where it was afterwards learned he enlisted with a recruiting
party, choosing rather to face the French than to return within the
sphere of Meg's displeasure.
Just while they were agitating this new difficulty, a prodigious clamour
was heard without, which, to the first apprehensions of the company,
seemed to be Meg, in all her terrors, come to anticipate the proposed
invasion. Upon enquiry, however, it proved to be her gossip, Trotting
Nelly, or Nelly Trotter, in the act of forcing her way up stairs,
against the united strength of the whole household of the hotel, to
reclaim Luckie Dods's picture, as she called it. This made the
connoisseur's treasure tremble in his pocket, who, thrusting a
half-crown into Toby's hand, exhorted him to give it her, and try his
influence in keeping her back. Toby, who knew Nelly's nature, put the
half-crown into his own pocket, and snatched up a gill-stoup of whisky
from the sideboard. Thus armed, he boldly confronted the virago, and
interposing a _remora_, which was able to check poor Nelly's course in
her most determined moods, not only succeeded in averting the immediate
storm which approached the company in general, and Mr. Winterblossom in
particular, but brought the guests the satisfactory information, that
Trotting Nelly had agreed, after she had slept out her nap in the barn,
to convey their commands to the Unknown of Cleikum of Aultoun.
Mr. Winterblossom, therefore, having authenticated his proceedings, by
inserting in the Minutes of the Committee, the authority which he had
received, wrote his card in the best style of diplomacy, and sealed it
with the seal of the Spa, which bore something like a nymph, seated
beside what was designed to represent an urn.
The rival factions, however, did not trust entirely to this official
invitation. Lady Penelope was of opinion that they should find some way
of letting the stranger--a man of talent unquestionably--understand that
there were in the society to which he was invited, spirits of a more
select sort, who felt worthy to intrude themselves on his solitude.
Accordingly, her ladyship imposed upon the elegant Mr. Chatterly the
task of expressing the desire of the company to see the unknown artist,
in a neat occasional copy of verses. The poor gentleman's muse, however,
proved unpropitious; for he was able to proceed no farther than two
lines in half an hour, which, coupled with its variations, we insert
from the blotted manuscript, as Dr. Johnson has printed the alterations
in Pope's version of the Iliad:
1. _Maids._ 2. _Dames._ unity joining.
The [nymphs] of St. Ronan's [in purpose combining]
1. _Swain._ 2. _Man._
To the [youth] who is great both in verse and designing,
......... dining.
The eloquence of a prose billet was necessarily resorted to in the
absence of the heavenly muse, and the said billet was secretly intrusted
to the care of Trotting Nelly. The same trusty emissary, when refreshed
by her nap among the pease-straw, and about to harness her cart for her
return to the seacoast, (in the course of which she was to pass the
Aultoun,) received another card, written, as he had threatened, by Sir
Bingo Binks himself, who had given himself this trouble to secure the
settlement of the bet; conjecturing that a man with a fashionable
exterior, who could throw twelve yards of line at a cast with such
precision, might consider the invitation of Winterblossom as that of an
old twaddler, and care as little for the good graces of an affected
blue-stocking and her _côterie_, whose conversation, in Sir Bingo's
mind, relished of nothing but of weak tea and bread and butter. Thus the
happy Mr. Francis Tyrrel received, considerably to his surprise, no less
than three invitations at once from the Well of St. Ronan's.
FOOTNOTE:
[I-13] The one or the other was equally _in votis_ to Ascanius,--
"Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem."
Modern Trojans make a great distinction betwixt these two objects of
chase.
CHAPTER V.
EPISTOLARY ELOQUENCE.
But how can I answer, since first I must read thee?
PRIOR.
Desirous of authenticating our more important facts, by as many original
documents as possible, we have, after much research, enabled ourselves
to present the reader with the following accurate transcripts of the
notes intrusted to the care of Trotting Nelly. The first ran thus:
"Mr. Winterblossom [of Silverhed] has the commands of Lady Penelope
Penfeather, Sir Bingo and Lady Binks, Mr. and Miss Mowbray [of St.
Ronan's], and the rest of the company at the Hotel and Tontine Inn
of St. Ronan's Well, to express their hope that the gentleman lodged
at the Cleikum Inn, Old Town of St. Ronan's, will favour them with
his company at the Ordinary, as early and as often as may suit his
convenience. The COMPANY think it necessary to send this intimation,
because, according to the RULES of the place, the Ordinary can only
be attended by such gentlemen and ladies as lodge at St. Ronan's
Well; but they are happy to make a distinction in favour of a
gentleman so distinguished for success in the fine arts as Mr. ----
----, residing at Cleikum. If Mr. ---- ---- should be inclined, upon
becoming further acquainted with the COMPANY and RULES of the
Place, to remove his residence to the Well, Mr. Winterblossom,
though he would not be understood to commit himself by a positive
assurance to that effect, is inclined to hope that an arrangement
might be made, notwithstanding the extreme crowd of the season, to
accommodate Mr. ---- ---- at the lodging-house, called
Lilliput-Hall. It will much conduce to facilitate this negotiation,
if Mr. ---- ---- would have the goodness to send an exact note of
his stature, as Captain Rannletree seems disposed to resign the
folding-bed at Lilliput-Hall, on account of his finding it rather
deficient in length. Mr. Winterblossom begs farther to assure Mr.
---- ---- of the esteem in which he holds his genius, and of his
high personal consideration.
"For ---- ----, Esquire,
Cleikum Inn, Old Town of St. Ronan's.
"_The Public Rooms,_
_Hotel and Tontine, St. Ronan's Well,_
_&c. &c. &c._"
The above card was written (we love to be precise in matters concerning
orthography) in a neat, round, clerk-like hand, which, like Mr.
Winterblossom's character, in many particulars was most accurate and
commonplace, though betraying an affectation both of flourish and of
facility.
The next billet was a contrast to the diplomatic gravity and accuracy of
Mr. Winterblossom's official communication, and ran thus, the young
divine's academic jests and classical flowers of eloquence being mingled
with some wild flowers from the teeming fancy of Lady Penelope.
"A choir of Dryads and Naiads, assembled at the healing spring of
St. Ronan's, have learned with surprise that a youth, gifted by
Apollo, when the Deity was prodigal, with two of his most esteemed
endowments, wanders at will among their domains, frequenting grove
and river, without once dreaming of paying homage to its tutelary
deities. He is, therefore, summoned to their presence, and prompt
obedience will insure him forgiveness; but in case of contumacy, let
him beware how he again essays either the lyre or the pallet.
"_Postscript._ The adorable Penelope, long enrolled among the
Goddesses for her beauty and virtues, gives Nectar and Ambrosia,
which mortals call tea and cake, at the Public Rooms, near the
Sacred Spring, on Thursday evening, at eight o'clock, when the Muses
never fail to attend. The stranger's presence is requested to
participate in the delights of the evening.
"_Second Postscript._ A shepherd, ambitiously aiming at more
accommodation than his narrow cot affords, leaves it in a day or
two.
'Assuredly the thing is to be hired.'
_As You Like It._
"_Postscript third._ Our Iris, whom mortals know as Trotting Nelly
in her tartan cloak, will bring us the stranger's answer to our
celestial summons."
This letter was written in a delicate Italian hand, garnished with fine
hair-strokes and dashes, which were sometimes so dexterously thrown off
as to represent lyres, pallets, vases, and other appropriate
decorations, suited to the tenor of the contents.
The third epistle was a complete contrast to the other two. It was
written in a coarse, irregular, schoolboy half-text, which, however,
seemed to have cost the writer as much pains as if it had been a
specimen of the most exquisite caligraphy. And these were the
contents:--
"SUR--Jack Moobray has betted with me that the samon you killed on
Saturday last weyd ni to eiteen pounds,--I say nyer sixteen.--So you
being a spurtsman, 'tis refer'd.--So hope you will come or send
me't; do not doubt you will be on honour. The bet is a dozen of
claret, to be drank at the hotel by our own sett, on Monday next;
and we beg you will make one; and Moobray hopes you will come
down.--Being, sir, your most humbel servant,--Bingo Binks Baronet,
and of Block-hall.
"_Postscript._ Have sent some loops of Indian gout, also some black
hakkels of my groom's dressing; hope they will prove killing, as
suiting river and season."
No answer was received to any of these invitations for more than three
days; which, while it secretly rather added to than diminished the
curiosity of the Wellers concerning the Unknown, occasioned much railing
in public against him, as ill-mannered and rude.
Meantime, Francis Tyrrel, to his great surprise, began to find, like the
philosophers, that he was never less alone than when alone. In the most
silent and sequestered walks, to which the present state of his mind
induced him to betake himself, he was sure to find some strollers from
the Well, to whom he had become the object of so much solicitous
interest. Quite innocent of the knowledge that he himself possessed the
attraction which occasioned his meeting them so frequently, he began to
doubt whether the Lady Penelope and her maidens--Mr. Winterblossom and
his grey pony--the parson and his short black coat and raven-grey
pantaloons--were not either actually polygraphic copies of the same
individuals, or possessed of a celerity of motion resembling
omnipresence and ubiquity; for nowhere could he go without meeting
them, and that oftener than once a-day, in the course of his walks.
Sometimes the presence of the sweet Lycoris was intimated by the sweet
prattle in an adjacent shade; sometimes, when Tyrrel thought himself
most solitary, the parson's flute was heard snoring forth Gramachree
Molly; and if he betook himself to the river, he was pretty sure to find
his sport watched by Sir Bingo or some of his friends.
The efforts which Tyrrel made to escape from this persecution, and the
impatience of it which his manner indicated, procured him, among the
Wellers, the name of the _Misanthrope_; and, once distinguished as an
object of curiosity, he was the person most attended to, who could at
the ordinary of the day give the most accurate account of where the
Misanthrope had been, and how occupied in the course of the morning. And
so far was Tyrrel's shyness from diminishing the desire of the Wellers
for his society, that the latter feeling increased with the difficulty
of gratification,--as the angler feels the most peculiar interest when
throwing his fly for the most cunning and considerate trout in the pool.
In short, such was the interest which the excited imaginations of the
company took in the Misanthrope, that, notwithstanding the unamiable
qualities which the word expresses, there was only one of the society
who did not desire to see the specimen at their rooms, for the purpose
of examining him closely and at leisure; and the ladies were
particularly desirous to enquire whether he was actually a Misanthrope?
Whether he had been always a Misanthrope? What had induced him to become
a Misanthrope? And whether there were no means of inducing him to cease
to be a Misanthrope?
One individual only, as we have said, neither desired to see nor hear
more of the supposed Timon of Cleikum, and that was Mr. Mowbray of St.
Ronan's. Through the medium of that venerable character John Pirner,
professed weaver and practical black-fisher in the Aultoun of St.
Ronan's, who usually attended Tyrrel, to show him the casts of the
river, carry his bag, and so forth, the Squire had ascertained that the
judgment of Sir Bingo regarding the disputed weight of the fish was more
correct than his own. This inferred an immediate loss of honour, besides
the payment of a heavy bill. And the consequences might be yet more
serious; nothing short of the emancipation of Sir Bingo, who had
hitherto been Mowbray's convenient shadow and adherent, but who, if
triumphant, confiding in his superiority of judgment upon so important a
point, might either cut him altogether, or expect that, in future, the
Squire, who had long seemed the planet of their set, should be content
to roll around himself, Sir Bingo, in the capacity of a satellite.
The Squire, therefore, devoutly hoped that Tyrrel's restive disposition
might continue, to prevent the decision of the bet, while, at the same
time, he nourished a very reasonable degree of dislike to that stranger,
who had been the indirect occasion of the unpleasant predicament in
which he found himself, by not catching a salmon weighing a pound
heavier. He, therefore, openly censured the meanness of those who
proposed taking further notice of Tyrrel, and referred to the unanswered
letters, as a piece of impertinence which announced him to be no
gentleman.
But though appearances were against him, and though he was in truth
naturally inclined to solitude, and averse to the affectation and
bustle of such a society, that part of Tyrrel's behaviour which
indicated ill-breeding was easily accounted for, by his never having
received the letters which required an answer. Trotting Nelly, whether
unwilling to face her gossip, Meg Dods, without bringing back the
drawing, or whether oblivious through the influence of the double dram
with which she had been indulged at the Well, jumbled off with her cart
to her beloved village of Scate-raw, from which she transmitted the
letters by the first bare-legged gillie who travelled towards Aultoun of
St. Ronan's; so that at last, but after a long delay, they reached the
Cleikum Inn and the hands of Mr. Tyrrel.
The arrival of these documents explained some part of the oddity of
behaviour which had surprised him in his neighbours of the Well; and as
he saw they had got somehow an idea of his being a lion extraordinary,
and was sensible that such is a character equally ridiculous, and
difficult to support, he hastened to write to Mr. Winterblossom a card
in the style of ordinary mortals. In this he stated the delay occasioned
by miscarriage of the letter, and his regret on that account; expressed
his intention of dining with the company at the Well on the succeeding
day, while he regretted that other circumstances, as well as the state
of his health and spirits, would permit him this honour very
infrequently during his stay in the country, and begged no trouble might
be taken about his accommodation at the Well, as he was perfectly
satisfied with his present residence. A separate note to Sir Bingo, said
he was happy he could verify the weight of the fish, which he had noted
in his diary; ("D--n the fellow, does he keep a diary?" said the
Baronet,) and though the result could only be particularly agreeable to
one party, he should wish both winner and loser mirth with their
wine;--he was sorry he was unable to promise himself the pleasure of
participating in either. Enclosed was a signed note of the weight of the
fish. Armed with this, Sir Bingo claimed his wine--triumphed in his
judgment--swore louder and more articulately than ever he was known to
utter any previous sounds, that this Tyrrel was a devilish honest
fellow, and he trusted to be better acquainted with him; while the
crestfallen Squire, privately cursing the stranger by all his gods, had
no mode of silencing his companion but by allowing his loss, and fixing
a day for discussing the bet.
In the public rooms the company examined even microscopically the
response of the stranger to Mr. Winterblossom, straining their ingenuity
to discover, in the most ordinary expressions, a deeper and esoteric
meaning, expressive of something mysterious, and not meant to meet the
eye. Mr. Meiklewham, the writer, dwelt on the word _circumstances_,
which he read with peculiar emphasis.
"Ah, poor lad!" he concluded, "I doubt he sits cheaper at Meg Dorts's
chimney-corner than he could do with the present company."
Doctor Quackleben, in the manner of a clergyman selecting a word from
his text, as that which is to be particularly insisted upon, repeated in
an under tone, the words, "_State of health?_--umph--state of
health?--Nothing acute--no one has been sent for--must be
chronic--tending to gout, perhaps.--Or his shyness to society--light
wild eye--irregular step--starting when met suddenly by a stranger, and
turning abruptly and angrily away--Pray, Mr. Winterblossom, let me have
an order to look over the file of newspapers--it's very troublesome that
restriction about consulting them."
"You know it is a necessary one, Doctor," said the president; "because
so few of the good company read any thing else, that the old newspapers
would have been worn to pieces long since."
"Well, well, let me have the order," said the Doctor; "I remember
something of a gentleman run away from his friends--I must look at the
description.--I believe I have a strait-jacket somewhere about the
Dispensary."
While this suggestion appalled the male part of the company, who did not
much relish the approaching dinner in company with a gentleman whose
situation seemed so precarious, some of the younger Misses whispered to
each other--"Ah, poor fellow!--and if it be as the Doctor supposes, my
lady, who knows what the cause of his illness may have been?--His
_spirits_ he complains of--ah, poor man!"
And thus, by the ingenious commentaries of the company at the Well, on
as plain a note as ever covered the eighth part of a sheet of foolscap,
the writer was deprived of his property, his reason, and his heart, "all
or either, or one or other of them," as is briefly and distinctly
expressed in the law phrase.
In short, so much was said _pro_ and _con_, so many ideas started and
theories maintained, concerning the disposition and character of the
Misanthrope, that, when the company assembled at the usual time, before
proceeding to dinner, they doubted, as it seemed, whether the expected
addition to their society was to enter the room on his hands or his
feet; and when "Mr. Tyrrel" was announced by Toby, at the top of his
voice, the gentleman who entered the room had so very little to
distinguish him from others, that there was a momentary disappointment.
The ladies, in particular, began to doubt whether the compound of
talent, misanthropy, madness, and mental sensibility, which they had
pictured to themselves, actually was the same with the genteel, and even
fashionable-looking man whom they saw before them; who, though in a
morning-dress, which the distance of his residence, and the freedom of
the place, made excusable, had, even in the minute points of his
exterior, none of the negligence, or wildness, which might be supposed
to attach to the vestments of a misanthropic recluse, whether sane or
insane. As he paid his compliments round the circle, the scales seemed
to fall from the eyes of those he spoke to; and they saw with surprise,
that the exaggerations had existed entirely in their own preconceptions,
and that whatever the fortunes, or rank in life, of Mr. Tyrrel might be,
his manners, without being showy, were gentlemanlike and pleasing. He
returned his thanks to Mr. Winterblossom in a manner which made that
gentleman recall his best breeding to answer the stranger's address in
kind. He then escaped from the awkwardness of remaining the sole object
of attention, by gliding gradually among the company,--not like an owl,
which seeks to hide itself in a thicket, or an awkward and retired man,
shrinking from the society into which he is compelled, but with the air
of one who could maintain with ease his part in a higher circle. His
address to Lady Penelope was adapted to the romantic tone of Mr.
Chatterly's epistle, to which it was necessary to allude. He was afraid,
he said, he must complain to Juno of the neglect of Iris, for her
irregularity in delivery of a certain ethereal command, which he had not
dared to answer otherwise than by mute obedience--unless, indeed, as the
import of the letter seemed to infer, the invitation was designed for
some more gifted individual than he to whom chance had assigned it.
Lady Penelope by her lips, and many of the young ladies with their eyes,
assured him there was no mistake in the matter; that he was really the
gifted person whom the nymphs had summoned to their presence, and that
they were well acquainted with his talents as a poet and a painter.
Tyrrel disclaimed, with earnestness and gravity, the charge of poetry,
and professed, that, far from attempting the art itself, he "read with
reluctance all but the productions of the very first-rate poets, and
some of these--he was almost afraid to say--he should have liked better
in humble prose."
"You have now only to disown your skill as an artist," said Lady
Penelope, "and we must consider Mr. Tyrrel as the falsest and most
deceitful of his sex, who has a mind to deprive us of the opportunity of
benefiting by the productions of his unparalleled endowments. I assure
you I shall put my young friends on their guard. Such dissimulation
cannot be without its object."
"And I," said Mr. Winterblossom, "can produce a piece of real evidence
against the culprit."
So saying, he unrolled the sketch which he had filched from Trotting
Nelly, and which he had pared and pasted, (arts in which he was
eminent,) so as to take out its creases, repair its breaches, and vamp
it as well as my old friend Mrs. Weir could have repaired the damages of
time on a folio Shakspeare.
"The vara _corpus delicti_," said the writer, grinning and rubbing his
hands.
"If you are so good as to call such scratches drawings," said Tyrrel, "I
must stand so far confessed. I used to do them for my own amusement; but
since my landlady, Mrs. Dods, has of late discovered that I gain my
livelihood by them, why should I disown it?"
This avowal, made without the least appearance either of shame or
_retenue_, seemed to have a striking effect on the whole society. The
president's trembling hand stole the sketch back to the portfolio,
afraid doubtless it might be claimed in form, or else compensation
expected by the artist. Lady Penelope was disconcerted, like an awkward
horse when it changes the leading foot in galloping. She had to recede
from the respectful and easy footing on which he had contrived to place
himself, to one which might express patronage on her own part, and
dependence on Tyrrel's; and this could not be done in a moment.
The Man of Law murmured, "Circumstances--circumstances--I thought so!"
Sir Bingo whispered to his friend the Squire, "Run out--blown up--off
the course--pity--d----d pretty fellow he has been!"
"A raff from the beginning!" whispered Mowbray.--"I never thought him
any thing else."
"I'll hold ye a poney of that, my dear, and I'll ask him."
"Done, for a poney, provided you ask him in ten minutes," said the
Squire; "but you dare not, Bingie--he has a d----d cross game look,
with all that civil chaff of his."
"Done," said Sir Bingo, but in a less confident tone than before, and
with a determination to proceed with some caution in the matter.--"I
have got a rouleau above, and Winterblossom shall hold stakes."
"I have no rouleau," said the Squire; "but I'll fly a cheque on
Meiklewham."
"See it be better than your last," said Sir Bingo, "for I won't be
skylarked again. Jack, my boy, you are had."
"Not till the bet's won; and I shall see yon walking dandy break your
head, Bingie, before that," answered Mowbray. "Best speak to the Captain
before hand--it is a hellish scrape you are running into--I'll let you
off yet, Bingie, for a guinea forfeit.--See, I am just going to start
the tattler."
"Start, and be d----d!" said Sir Bingo. "You are gotten, I assure you o'
that, Jack." And with a bow and a shuffle, he went up and introduced
himself to the stranger as Sir Bingo Binks.
"Had--honour--write--sir," were the only sounds which his throat, or
rather his cravat, seemed to send forth.
"Confound the booby!" thought Mowbray; "he will get out of leading
strings, if he goes on at this rate; and doubly confounded be this
cursed tramper, who, the Lord knows why, has come hither from the Lord
knows where, to drive the pigs through my game."
In the meantime, while his friend stood with his stop-watch in his hand,
with a visage lengthened under the influence of these reflections, Sir
Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to
dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world,
premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports.
With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of
fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like
enthusiasm; so that Sir Bingo began to hold him in considerable respect,
and to assure himself that he could not be, or at least could not
originally have been bred, the itinerant artist which he now gave
himself out--and this, with the fast lapse of the time, induced him thus
to address Tyrrel.--"I say, Mr. Tyrrel--why, you have been one of us--I
say"----
"If you mean a sportsman, Sir Bingo--I have been, and am a pretty keen
one still," replied Tyrrel.
"Why, then, you did not always do them sort of things?"
"What sort of things do you mean, Sir Bingo?" said Tyrrel. "I have not
the pleasure of understanding you."
"Why, I mean them sketches," said Sir Bingo. "I'll give you a handsome
order for them, if you will tell me. I will, on my honour."
"Does it concern you particularly, Sir Bingo, to know any thing of my
affairs?" said Tyrrel.
"No--certainly--not immediately," answered Sir Bingo, with some
hesitation, for he liked not the dry tone in which Tyrrel's answers were
returned, half so well as a bumper of dry sherry; "only I said you were
a d----d gnostic fellow, and I laid a bet you have not been always
professional--that's all."
Mr. Tyrrel replied, "A bet with Mr. Mowbray, I suppose?"
"Yes, with Jack," replied the Baronet--"you have hit it--I hope I have
done him?"
Tyrrel bent his brows, and looked first at Mr. Mowbray, then at the
Baronet, and, after a moment's thought, addressed the latter.--"Sir
Bingo Binks, you are a gentleman of elegant enquiry and acute
judgment.--You are perfectly right--I was _not_ bred to the profession
of an artist, nor did I practise it formerly, whatever I may do now; and
so that question is answered."
"And Jack is diddled," said the Baronet, smiting his thigh in triumph,
and turning towards the Squire and the stake-holder, with a smile of
exultation.
"Stop a single moment, Sir Bingo," said Tyrrel; "take one word with you.
I have a great respect for bets,--it is part of an Englishman's
character to bet on what he thinks fit, and to prosecute his enquiries
over hedge and ditch, as if he were steeple-hunting. But as I have
satisfied you on the subject of two bets, that is sufficient compliance
with the custom of the country; and therefore I request, Sir Bingo, you
will not make me or my affairs the subject of any more wagers."
"I'll be d----d if I do," was the internal resolution of Sir Bingo.
Aloud he muttered some apologies, and was heartily glad that the
dinner-bell, sounding at the moment, afforded him an apology for
shuffling off in a different direction.
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE-TALK.
And, sir, if these accounts be true,
The Dutch have mighty things in view;
The Austrians--I admire French beans,
Dear ma'am, above all other greens.
* * * * *
And all as lively and as brisk
As--Ma'am, d'ye choose a game at whisk?
_Table-Talk._
When they were about to leave the room, Lady Penelope assumed Tyrrel's
arm with a sweet smile of condescension, meant to make the honoured
party understand in its full extent the favour conferred. But the
unreasonable artist, far from intimating the least confusion at an
attention so little to be expected, seemed to consider the distinction
as one which was naturally paid to the greatest stranger present; and
when he placed Lady Penelope at the head of the table, by Mr.
Winterblossom the president, and took a chair for himself betwixt her
ladyship and Lady Binks, the provoking wretch appeared no more sensible
of being exalted above his proper rank in society, than if he had been
sitting at the bottom of the table by honest Mrs. Blower from the
Bow-head, who had come to the Well to carry off the dregs of the
_Inflienzie_, which she scorned to term a surfeit.
Now this indifference puzzled Lady Penelope's game extremely, and
irritated her desire to get at the bottom of Tyrrel's mystery, if there
was one, and secure him to her own party. If you were ever at a
watering-place, reader, you know that while the guests do not always pay
the most polite attention to unmarked individuals, the appearance of a
stray lion makes an interest as strong as it is reasonable, and the
Amazonian chiefs of each coterie, like the hunters of Buenos-Ayres,
prepare their _lasso_, and manoeuvre to the best advantage they can,
each hoping to noose the unsuspicious monster, and lead him captive to
her own menagerie. A few words concerning Lady Penelope Penfeather will
explain why she practised this sport with even more than common zeal.
She was the daughter of an earl, possessed a showy person, and features
which might be called handsome in youth, though now rather too much
_prononcés_ to render the term proper. The nose was become sharper; the
cheeks had lost the roundness of youth; and as, during fifteen years
that she had reigned a beauty and a ruling toast, the right man had not
spoken, or, at least, had not spoken at the right time, her ladyship,
now rendered sufficiently independent by the inheritance of an old
relation, spoke in praise of friendship, began to dislike the town in
summer, and to "babble of green fields."
About the time Lady Penelope thus changed the tenor of her life, she was
fortunate enough, with Dr. Quackleben's assistance, to find out the
virtues of St Ronan's spring; and having contributed her share to
establish the _urbs in rure_, which had risen around it, she sat herself
down as leader of the fashions in the little province which she had in a
great measure both discovered and colonized. She was, therefore, justly
desirous to compel homage and tribute from all who should approach the
territory.
In other respects, Lady Penelope pretty much resembled the numerous
class she belonged to. She was at bottom a well-principled woman, but
too thoughtless to let her principles control her humour, therefore not
scrupulously nice in her society. She was good-natured, but capricious
and whimsical, and willing enough to be kind or generous, if it neither
thwarted her humour, nor cost her much trouble; would have chaperoned a
young friend any where, and moved the world for subscription tickets;
but never troubled herself how much her giddy charge flirted, or with
whom; so that, with a numerous class of Misses, her ladyship was the
most delightful creature in the world. Then Lady Penelope had lived so
much in society, knew so exactly when to speak, and how to escape from
an embarrassing discussion by professing ignorance, while she looked
intelligence, that she was not generally discovered to be a fool, unless
when she set up for being remarkably clever. This happened more
frequently of late, when, perhaps, as she could not but observe that the
repairs of the toilet became more necessary, she might suppose that new
lights, according to the poet, were streaming on her mind through the
chinks that Time was making. Many of her friends, however, thought that
Lady Penelope would have better consulted her genius by remaining in
mediocrity, as a fashionable and well-bred woman, than by parading her
new-founded pretensions to taste and patronage; but such was not her own
opinion, and doubtless, her ladyship was the best judge.
On the other side of Tyrrel sat Lady Binks, lately the beautiful Miss
Bonnyrigg, who, during the last season, had made the company at the Well
alternately admire, smile, and stare, by dancing the highest Highland
fling, riding the wildest pony, laughing the loudest laugh at the
broadest joke, and wearing the briefest petticoat of any nymph of St.
Ronan's. Few knew that this wild, hoydenish, half-mad humour, was only
superinduced over her real character, for the purpose of--getting well
married. She had fixed her eyes on Sir Bingo, and was aware of his
maxim, that to catch him, "a girl must be," in his own phrase, "bang up
to every thing;" and that he would choose a wife for the neck-or-nothing
qualities which recommend a good hunter. She made out her catch-match,
and she was miserable. Her wild good-humour was entirely an assumed part
of her character, which was passionate, ambitious, and thoughtful.
Delicacy she had none--she knew Sir Bingo was a brute and a fool, even
while she was hunting him down; but she had so far mistaken her own
feelings, as not to have expected that when she became bone of his bone,
she should feel so much shame and anger when she saw his folly expose
him to be laughed at and plundered, or so disgusted when his brutality
became intimately connected with herself. It is true, he was on the
whole rather an innocent monster; and between bitting and bridling,
coaxing and humouring, might have been made to pad on well enough. But
an unhappy boggling which had taken place previous to the declaration of
their private marriage, had so exasperated her spirits against her
helpmate, that modes of conciliation were the last she was likely to
adopt. Not only had the assistance of the Scottish Themis, so
propitiously indulgent to the foibles of the fair, been resorted to on
the occasion, but even Mars seemed ready to enter upon the tapis, if
Hymen had not intervened. There was, _de par le monde_, a certain
brother of the lady--an officer--and, as it happened, on leave of
absence,--who alighted from a hack-chaise at the Fox Hotel, at eleven
o'clock at night, holding in his hand a slip of well-dried oak,
accompanied by another gentleman, who, like himself, wore a military
travelling-cap and a black stock; out of the said chaise, as was
reported by the trusty Toby, was handed a small reise-sac, an Andrew
Ferrara, and a neat mahogany box, eighteen inches long, three deep, and
some six broad. Next morning a solemn _palaver_ (as the natives of
Madagascar call their national convention) was held at an unusual hour,
at which Captain MacTurk and Mr. Mowbray assisted; and the upshot was,
that at breakfast the company were made happy by the information, that
Sir Bingo had been for some weeks the happy bridegroom of their general
favourite; which union, concealed for family reasons, he was now at
liberty to acknowledge, and to fly with the wings of love to bring his
sorrowing turtle from the shades to which she had retired, till the
obstacles to their mutual happiness could be removed. Now, though all
this sounded very smoothly, that gall-less turtle, Lady Binks, could
never think of the tenor of the proceedings without the deepest feelings
of resentment and contempt for the principal actor, Sir Bingo.
Besides all these unpleasant circumstances, Sir Bingo's family had
refused to countenance her wish that he should bring her to his own
seat; and hence a new shock to her pride, and new matter of contempt
against poor Sir Bingo, for being ashamed and afraid to face down the
opposition of his kins-folk, for whose displeasure, though never
attending to any good advice from them, he retained a childish awe.
The manners of the young lady were no less changed than was her temper;
and, from being much too careless and free, were become reserved,
sullen, and haughty. A consciousness that many scrupled to hold
intercourse with her in society, rendered her disagreeably tenacious of
her rank, and jealous of every thing that appeared like neglect. She had
constituted herself mistress of Sir Bingo's purse; and, unrestrained in
the expenses of dress and equipage, chose, contrary to her maiden
practice, to be rather rich and splendid than gay, and to command that
attention by magnificence, which she no longer deigned to solicit by
rendering herself either agreeable or entertaining. One secret source of
her misery was, the necessity of showing deference to Lady Penelope
Penfeather, whose understanding she despised, and whose pretensions to
consequence, to patronage, and to literature, she had acuteness enough
to see through, and to contemn; and this dislike was the more grievous,
that she felt she depended a good deal on Lady Penelope's countenance
for the situation she was able to maintain even among the not very
select society of St. Ronan's Well; and that, neglected by her, she must
have dropped lower in the scale even there. Neither was Lady Penelope's
kindness to Lady Binks extremely cordial. She partook in the ancient and
ordinary dislike of single nymphs of a certain age, to those who made
splendid alliances under their very eye--and she more than suspected the
secret disaffection of the lady. But the name sounded well; and the
style in which Lady Binks lived was a credit to the place. So they
satisfied their mutual dislike with saying a few sharp things to each
other occasionally, but all under the mask of civility.
Such was Lady Binks; and yet, being such, her dress, and her equipage,
and carriages, were the envy of half the Misses at the Well, who, while
she sat disfiguring with sullenness her very lovely face, (for it was as
beautiful as her shape was exquisite,) only thought she was proud of
having carried her point, and felt herself, with her large fortune and
diamond bandeau, no fit company for the rest of the party. They gave
way, therefore, with meekness to her domineering temper, though it was
not the less tyrannical, that in her maiden state of hoyden-hood, she
had been to some of them an object of slight and of censure; and Lady
Binks had not forgotten the offences offered to Miss Bonnyrigg. But the
fair sisterhood submitted to her retaliations, as lieutenants endure the
bullying of a rude and boisterous captain of the sea, with the secret
determination to pay it home to their underlings, when they shall become
captains themselves.
In this state of importance, yet of penance, Lady Binks occupied her
place at the dinner-table, alternately disconcerted by some stupid
speech of her lord and master, and by some slight sarcasm from Lady
Penelope, to which she longed to reply, but dared not.
She looked from time to time at her neighbour Frank Tyrrel, but without
addressing him, and accepted in silence the usual civilities which he
proffered to her. She had remarked keenly his interview with Sir Bingo,
and knowing by experience the manner in which her honoured lord was wont
to retreat from a dispute in which he was unsuccessful, as well as his
genius for getting into such perplexities, she had little doubt that he
had sustained from the stranger some new indignity; whom, therefore, she
regarded with a mixture of feeling, scarce knowing whether to be pleased
with him for having given pain to him whom she hated, or angry with him
for having affronted one in whose degradation her own was necessarily
involved. There might be other thoughts--on the whole, she regarded him
with much though with mute attention. He paid her but little in return,
being almost entirely occupied in replying to the questions of the
engrossing Lady Penelope Penfeather.
Receiving polite though rather evasive answers to her enquiries
concerning his late avocations, her ladyship could only learn that
Tyrrel had been travelling in several remote parts of Europe, and even
of Asia. Baffled, but not repulsed, the lady continued her courtesy, by
pointing out to him, as a stranger, several individuals of the company
to whom she proposed introducing him, as persons from whose society he
might derive either profit or amusement. In the midst of this sort of
conversation, however, she suddenly stopped short.
"Will you forgive me, Mr. Tyrrel," she said, "if I say I have been
watching your thoughts for some moments, and that I have detected you?
All the while that I have been talking of these good folks, and that you
have been making such civil replies, that they might be with great
propriety and utility inserted in the 'Familiar Dialogues, teaching
foreigners how to express themselves in English upon ordinary
occasions'--your mind has been entirely fixed upon that empty chair,
which hath remained there opposite betwixt our worthy president and Sir
Bingo Binks."
"I own, madam," he answered, "I was a little surprised at seeing such a
distinguished seat unoccupied, while the table is rather crowded."
"O, confess more, sir!--Confess that to a poet a seat unoccupied--the
chair of Banquo--has more charms than if it were filled even as an
alderman would fill it.--What if 'the Dark Ladye'[I-14] should glide in
and occupy it?--would you have courage to stand the vision, Mr.
Tyrrel?--I assure you the thing is not impossible."
"_What_ is not impossible, Lady Penelope?" said Tyrrel, somewhat
surprised.
"Startled already?--Nay, then, I despair of your enduring the awful
interview."
"What interview? who is expected?" said Tyrrel, unable with the utmost
exertion to suppress some signs of curiosity, though he suspected the
whole to be merely some mystification of her ladyship.
"How delighted I am," she said, "that I have found out where you are
vulnerable!--Expected--did I say expected?--no, not expected.
'She glides, like Night, from land to land,
She hath strange power of speech.'
--But come, I have you at my mercy, and I will be generous and
explain.--We call--that is, among ourselves, you understand--Miss Clara
Mowbray, the sister of that gentleman that sits next to Miss Parker, the
Dark Ladye, and that seat is left for her.--For she was expected--no,
not expected--I forget again!--but it was thought _possible_ she might
honour us to-day, when our feast was so full and piquant.--Her brother
is our Lord of the Manor--and so they pay her that sort of civility to
regard her as a visitor--and neither Lady Binks nor I think of
objecting--She is a singular young person, Clara Mowbray--she amuses me
very much--I am always rather glad to see her."
"She is not to come hither to-day," said Tyrrel; "am I so to understand
your ladyship?"
"Why, it is past her time--even _her_ time," said Lady Penelope--"dinner
was kept back half an hour, and our poor invalids were famishing, as you
may see by the deeds they have done since.--But Clara is an odd
creature, and if she took it into her head to come hither at this
moment, hither she would come--she is very whimsical.--Many people think
her handsome--but she looks so like something from another world, that
she makes me always think of Mat Lewis's Spectre Lady."
And she repeated with much cadence,
"There is a thing--there is a thing,
I fain would have from thee;
I fain would have that gay gold ring,
O warrior, give it me!"
"And then you remember his answer:
'This ring Lord Brooke from his daughter took,
And a solemn oath he swore,
That that ladye my bride should be
When this crusade was o'er.'
You do figures as well as landscapes, I suppose, Mr. Tyrrel?--You shall
make a sketch for me--a slight thing--for sketches, I think, show the
freedom of art better than finished pieces--I dote on the first
coruscations of genius--flashing like lightning from the cloud!--You
shall make a sketch for my boudoir--my dear sulky den at Air Castle, and
Clara Mowbray shall sit for the Ghost Ladye."
"That would be but a poor compliment to your ladyship's friend," replied
Tyrrel.
"Friend? We don't get quite that length, though I like Clara very
well.--Quite sentimental cast of face--I think I saw an antique in the
Louvre very like her--(I was there in 1800)--quite an antique
countenance--eyes something hollowed--care has dug caves for them, but
they are caves of the most beautiful marble, arched with jet--a straight
nose, and absolutely the Grecian mouth and chin--a profusion of long
straight black hair, with the whitest skin you ever saw--as white as the
whitest parchment--and not a shade of colour in her cheek--none
whatever--If she would be naughty, and borrow a prudent touch of
complexion, she might be called beautiful. Even as it is, many think her
so, although surely, Mr. Tyrrel, three colours are necessary to the
female face. However, we used to call her the Melpomene of the Spring
last season, as we called Lady Binks--who was not then Lady Binks--our
Euphrosyne--did we not, my dear?"
"Did we not what, madam?" said Lady Binks, in a tone something sharper
than ought to have belonged to so beautiful a countenance.
"I am sorry I have started you out of your reverie, my love," answered
Lady Penelope. "I was only assuring Mr. Tyrrel that you were once
Euphrosyne, though now so much under the banners of Il Penseroso."
"I do not know that I have been either one or the other," answered Lady
Binks; "one thing I certainly am not--I am not capable of understanding
your ladyship's wit and learning."
"Poor soul," whispered Lady Penelope to Tyrrel; "we know what we are, we
know not what we may be.--And now, Mr. Tyrrel, I have been your sibyl to
guide you through this Elysium of ours, I think, in reward, I deserve a
little confidence in return."
"If I had any to bestow, which could be in the slightest degree
interesting to your ladyship," answered Tyrrel.
"Oh! cruel man--he will not understand me!" exclaimed the lady--"In
plain words, then, a peep into your portfolio--just to see what objects
you have rescued from natural decay, and rendered immortal by the
pencil. You do not know--indeed, Mr. Tyrrel, you do not know how I dote
upon your 'serenely silent art,' second to poetry alone--equal--superior
perhaps--to music."
"I really have little that could possibly be worth the attention of such
a judge as your ladyship," answered Tyrrel; "such trifles as your
ladyship has seen, I sometimes leave at the foot of the tree I have been
sketching."
"As Orlando left his verses in the Forest of Ardennes?--Oh, the
thoughtless prodigality!--Mr. Winterblossom, do you hear this?--We must
follow Mr. Tyrrel in his walks, and glean what he leaves behind him."
Her ladyship was here disconcerted by some laughter on Sir Bingo's side
of the table, which she chastised by an angry glance, and then proceeded
emphatically.
"Mr. Tyrrel--this must _not_ be--this is not the way of the world, my
good sir, to which even genius must stoop its flight. We must consult
the engraver--though perhaps you etch as well as you draw?"
"I should suppose so," said Mr. Winterblossom, edging in a word with
difficulty, "from the freedom of Mr. Tyrrel's touch."
"I will not deny my having spoiled a little copper now and then," said
Tyrrel, "since I am charged with the crime by such good judges; but it
has only been by way of experiment."
"Say no more," said the lady; "my darling wish is accomplished!--We have
long desired to have the remarkable and most romantic spots of our
little Arcadia here--spots consecrated to friendship, the fine arts, the
loves and the graces, immortalized by the graver's art, faithful to its
charge of fame--you shall labour on this task, Mr. Tyrrel; we will all
assist with notes and illustrations--we will all contribute--only some
of us must be permitted to remain anonymous--Fairy favours, you know,
Mr. Tyrrel, must be kept secret--And you shall be allowed the pillage of
the Album--some sweet things there of Mr. Chatterly's--and Mr. Edgeit, a
gentleman of your own profession, I am sure will lend his aid--Dr.
Quackleben will contribute some scientific notices.--And for
subscription"----
"Financial--financial--your leddyship, I speak to order!" said the
writer, interrupting Lady Penelope with a tone of impudent familiarity,
which was meant doubtless for jocular ease.
"How am I out of order, Mr. Meiklewham?" said her ladyship, drawing
herself up.
"I speak to order!--No warrants for money can be extracted before
intimation to the Committee of Management."
"Pray, who mentioned money, Mr. Meiklewham?" said her ladyship.--"That
wretched old pettifogger," she added in a whisper to Tyrrel, "thinks of
nothing else but the filthy pelf."
"Ye spake of subscription, my leddy, whilk is the same thing as money,
differing only in respect of time--the subscription being a contract _de
futuro_, and having a _tractus temporis in gremio_--And I have kend mony
honest folks in the company at the Well, complain of the subscriptions
as a great abuse, as obliging them either to look unlike other folk, or
to gie good lawful coin for ballants and picture-books, and things they
caredna a pinch of snuff for."
Several of the company, at the lower end of the table, assented both by
nods and murmurs of approbation; and the orator was about to proceed,
when Tyrrel with difficulty procured a hearing before the debate went
farther, and assured the company that her ladyship's goodness had led
her into an error; that he had no work in hand worthy of their
patronage, and, with the deepest gratitude for Lady Penelope's goodness,
had it not in his power to comply with her request. There was some
tittering at her ladyship's expense, who, as the writer slyly observed,
had been something _ultronious_ in her patronage. Without attempting for
the moment any rally, (as indeed the time which had passed since the
removal of the dinner scarce permitted an opportunity,) Lady Penelope
gave the signal for the ladies' retreat, and left the gentlemen to the
circulation of the bottle.
FOOTNOTE:
[I-14] Note II.--The Dark Ladye.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TEA-TABLE.
----While the cups,
Which cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each.
COWPER.
It was common at the Well, for the fair guests occasionally to give tea
to the company,--such at least as from their rank and leading in the
little society, might be esteemed fit to constitute themselves
patronesses of an evening; and the same lady generally carried the
authority she had acquired into the ball-room, where two fiddles and a
bass, at a guinea a night, with a _quantum sufficit_ of tallow candles,
(against the use of which Lady Penelope often mutinied,) enabled the
company--to use the appropriate phrase--"to close the evening on the
light fantastic toe."
On the present occasion, the lion of the hour, Mr. Francis Tyrrel, had
so little answered the high-wrought expectations of Lady Penelope, that
she rather regretted having ever given herself any trouble about him,
and particularly that of having manoeuvred herself into the patronage
of the tea-table for the evening, to the great expenditure of souchong
and congo. Accordingly, her ladyship had no sooner summoned her own
woman, and her _fille de chambre_, to make tea, with her page, footman,
and postilion, to hand it about, (in which duty they were assisted by
two richly-laced and thickly-powdered footmen of Lady Binks's, whose
liveries put to shame the more modest garb of Lady Penelope's, and even
dimmed the glory of the suppressed coronet upon the buttons,) than she
began to vilipend and depreciate what had been so long the object of her
curiosity.
"This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems
after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man, who,
she dared say, had considered his condition, in going to the old
alehouse, much better than they had done for him, when they asked him to
the Public Rooms. He had known his own place better than they did--there
was nothing uncommon in his appearance or conversation--nothing at all
_frappant_--she scarce believed he could even draw that sketch. Mr.
Winterblossom, indeed, made a great deal of it; but then all the world
knew that every scrap of engraving or drawing, which Mr. Winterblossom
contrived to make his own, was, the instant it came into his collection,
the finest thing that ever was seen--that was the way with
collectors--their geese were all swans."
"And your ladyship's swan has proved but a goose, my dearest Lady Pen,"
said Lady Binks.
"_My_ swan, dearest Lady Binks! I really do not know how I have deserved
the appropriation."
"Do not be angry, my dear Lady Penelope; I only mean, that for a
fortnight and more you have spoke constantly _of_ this Mr. Tyrrel, and
all dinner-time you spoke _to_ him."
The fair company began to collect around, at hearing the word _dear_ so
often repeated in the same brief dialogue, which induced them to expect
sport, and, like the vulgar on a similar occasion, to form a ring for
the expected combatants.
"He sat betwixt us, Lady Binks," answered Lady Penelope, with dignity.
"You had your usual headache, you know, and, for the credit of the
company, I spoke for one."
"For _two_, if your ladyship pleases," replied Lady Binks. "I mean," she
added, softening the expression, "for yourself and me."
"I am sorry," said Lady Penelope, "I should have spoken for one who can
speak so smartly for herself, as my dear Lady Binks--I did not, by any
means, desire to engross the conversation--I repeat it, there is a
mistake about this man."
"I think there is," said Lady Binks, in a tone which implied something
more than mere assent to Lady Penelope's proposition.
"I doubt if he is an artist at all," said the Lady Penelope; "or if he
is, he must be doing things for some Magazine, or Encyclopedia, or some
such matter."
"_I_ doubt, too, if he be a professional artist," said Lady Binks. "If
so, he is of the very highest class, for I have seldom seen a
better-bred man."
"There are very well-bred artists," said Lady Penelope. "It is the
profession of a gentleman."
"Certainly," answered Lady Binks; "but the poorer class have often to
struggle with poverty and dependence. In general society, they are like
commercial people in presence of their customers; and that is a
difficult part to sustain. And so you see them of all sorts--shy and
reserved, when they are conscious of merit--petulant and whimsical, by
way of showing their independence--intrusive, in order to appear
easy--and sometimes obsequious and fawning, when they chance to be of a
mean spirit. But you seldom see them quite at their ease, and therefore
I hold this Mr. Tyrrel to be either an artist of the first class, raised
completely above the necessity and degradation of patronage, or else to
be no professional artist at all."
Lady Penelope looked at Lady Binks with much such a regard as Balaam may
have cast upon his ass, when he discovered the animal's capacity for
holding an argument with him. She muttered to herself--
_"Mon ane parle, et même il parle bien!"_
But, declining the altercation which Lady Binks seemed disposed to enter
into, she replied, with good-humour, "Well, dearest Rachel, we will not
pull caps about this man--nay, I think your good opinion of him gives
him new value in my eyes. That is always the way with us, my good
friend! We may confess it, when there are none of these conceited male
wretches among us. We will know what he really is--he shall not wear
fern-seed, and walk among us invisible thus--what say you, Maria?"
"Indeed, I say, dear Lady Penelope," answered Miss Digges, whose ready
chatter we have already introduced to the reader, "he is a very handsome
man, though his nose is too big, and his mouth too wide--but his teeth
are like pearl--and he has such eyes!--especially when your ladyship
spoke to him. I don't think you looked at his eyes--they are quite deep
and dark, and full of glow, like what you read to us in the letter from
that lady, about Robert Burns."
"Upon my word, miss, you come on finely!" said Lady Penelope.--"One had
need take care what they read or talk about before you, I see--Come,
Jones, have mercy upon us--put an end to that symphony of tinkling cups
and saucers, and let the first act of the tea-table begin, if you
please."
"Does her leddyship mean the grace?" said honest Mrs. Blower, for the
first time admitted into this worshipful society, and busily employed in
arranging an Indian handkerchief, that might have made a mainsail for
one of her husband's smuggling luggers, which she spread carefully on
her knee, to prevent damage to a flowered black silk gown from the
repast of tea and cake, to which she proposed to do due honour--"Does
her leddyship mean the grace? I see the minister is just coming in.--Her
leddyship waits till ye say a blessing, an ye please, sir."
Mr. Winterblossom, who _toddled_ after the chaplain, his toe having
given him an alert hint to quit the dining-table, though he saw every
feature in the poor woman's face swoln with desire to procure
information concerning the ways and customs of the place, passed on the
other side of the way, regardless of her agony of curiosity.
A moment after, she was relieved by the entrance of Dr. Quackleben,
whose maxim being, that one patient was as well worth attention as
another, and who knew by experience, that the _honoraria_ of a godly
wife of the Bow-head were as apt to be forthcoming, (if not more so,) as
my Lady Penelope's, he e'en sat himself quietly down by Mrs. Blower, and
proceeded with the utmost kindness to enquire after her health, and to
hope she had not forgotten taking a table-spoonful of spirits burnt to a
_residuum_, in order to qualify the crudities.
"Indeed, Doctor," said the honest woman, "I loot the brandy burn as lang
as I dought look at the gude creature wasting itsell that gate--and
then, when I was fain to put it out for very thrift, I did take a
thimbleful of it, (although it is not the thing I am used to, Dr.
Quackleben,) and I winna say but that it did me good."
"Unquestionably, madam," said the Doctor, "I am no friend to the use of
alcohol in general, but there are particular cases--there are particular
cases, Mrs. Blower--My venerated instructor, one of the greatest men in
our profession that ever lived, took a wine-glassful of old rum, mixed
with sugar, every day after his dinner."
"Ay? dear heart, he would be a comfortable doctor that," said Mrs.
Blower. "He wad maybe ken something of my case. Is he leevin' think ye,
sir?"
"Dead for many years, madam," said Dr. Quackleben; "and there are but
few of his pupils that can fill his place, I assure ye. If I could be
thought an exception, it is only because I was a favourite. Ah!
blessings on the old red cloak of him!--It covered more of the healing
science than the gowns of a whole modern university."
"There is ane, sir," said Mrs. Blower, "that has been muckle recommended
about Edinburgh--Macgregor, I think they ca' him--folk come far and near
to see him."[I-15]
"I know whom you mean, ma'am--a clever man--no denying it--a clever
man--but there are certain cases--yours, for example--and I think that
of many that come to drink this water--which I cannot say I think he
perfectly understands--hasty--very hasty and rapid. Now I--I give the
disease its own way at first--then watch it, Mrs. Blower--watch the turn
of the tide."
"Ay, troth, that's true," responded the widow; "John Blower was aye
watching turn of tide, puir man."
"Then he is a starving doctor, Mrs. Blower--reduces diseases as soldiers
do towns--by famine, not considering that the friendly inhabitants
suffer as much as the hostile garrison--ahem!"
Here he gave an important and emphatic cough, and then proceeded.
"I am no friend either to excess or to violent stimulus, Mrs.
Blower--but nature must be supported--a generous diet--cordials
judiciously thrown in--not without the advice of a medical man--that is
my opinion, Mrs. Blower, to speak as a friend--others may starve their
patients if they have a mind."
"It wadna do for me, the starving, Dr. Keekerben," said the alarmed
relict,--"it wadna do for me at a'--Just a' I can do to wear through the
day with the sma' supports that nature requires--not a soul to look
after me, Doctor, since John Blower was ta'en awa.--Thank ye kindly,
sir," (to the servant who handed the tea,)--"thank ye, my bonny man,"
(to the page who served the cake)--"Now, dinna ye think, Doctor," (in a
low and confidential voice,) "that her leddyship's tea is rather of the
weakliest--water bewitched, I think--and Mrs. Jones, as they ca' her,
has cut the seedcake very thin?"
"It is the fashion, Mrs. Blower," answered Dr. Quackleben; "and her
ladyship's tea is excellent. But your taste is a little chilled, which
is not uncommon at the first use of the waters, so that you are not
sensible of the flavour--we must support the system--reinforce the
digestive powers--give me leave--you are a stranger, Mrs. Blower, and we
must take care of you--I have an elixir which will put that matter to
rights in a moment."
So saying, Dr. Quackleben pulled from his pocket a small portable case
of medicines--"Catch me without my tools,"--he said; "here I have the
real useful pharmacopoeia--the rest is all humbug and hard names--this
little case, with a fortnight or month, spring and fall, at St. Ronan's
Well, and no one will die till his day come."
Thus boasting, the Doctor drew from his case a large vial or small
flask, full of a high-coloured liquid, of which he mixed three
tea-spoonfuls in Mrs. Blower's cup, who, immediately afterwards, allowed
that the flavour was improved beyond all belief, and that it was "vera
comfortable and restorative indeed."
"Will it not do good to my complaints, Doctor?" said Mr. Winterblossom,
who had strolled towards them, and held out his cup to the physician.
"I by no means recommend it, Mr. Winterblossom," said Dr. Quackleben,
shutting up his case with great coolness; "your case is oedematous,
and you treat it your own way--you are as good a physician as I am, and
I never interfere with another practitioner's patient."
"Well, Doctor," said Winterblossom, "I must wait till Sir Bingo comes
in--he has a hunting-flask usually about him, which contains as good
medicine as yours to the full."
"You will wait for Sir Bingo some time," said the Doctor; "he is a
gentleman of sedentary habits--he has ordered another magnum."
"Sir Bingo is an unco name for a man o' quality, dinna ye think sae, Dr.
Cocklehen?" said Mrs. Blower. "John Blower, when he was a wee bit in the
wind's eye, as he ca'd it, puir fallow--used to sing a sang about a dog
they ca'd Bingo, that suld hae belanged to a farmer."
"Our Bingo is but a puppy yet, madam--or if a dog, he is a sad dog,"
said Mr. Winterblossom, applauding his own wit, by one of his own
inimitable smiles.
"Or a mad dog, rather," said Mr. Chatterly, "for he drinks no water;"
and he also smiled gracefully at the thoughts of having trumped, as it
were, the president's pun.
"Twa pleasant men, Doctor," said the widow, "and so is Sir Bungy too,
for that matter; but O! is nae it a pity he should bide sae lang by the
bottle? It was puir John Blower's faut too, that weary tippling; when he
wan to the lee-side of a bowl of punch, there was nae raising him.--But
they are taking awa the things, and, Doctor, is it not an awfu' thing
that the creature-comforts should hae been used without grace or
thanksgiving?--that Mr. Chitterling, if he really be a minister, has
muckle to answer for, that he neglects his Master's service."
"Why, madam," said the Doctor, "Mr. Chatterly is scarce arrived at the
rank of a minister plenipotentiary."
"A minister potentiary--ah, Doctor, I doubt that is some jest of yours,"
said the widow; "that's sae like puir John Blower. When I wad hae had
him gie up the lovely Peggy, ship and cargo, (the vessel was named after
me, Doctor Kittleben,) to be remembered in the prayers o' the
congregation, he wad say to me, 'they may pray that stand the risk,
Peggy Bryce, for I've made insurance.' He was a merry man, Doctor; but
he had the root of the matter in him, for a' his light way of speaking,
as deep as ony skipper that ever loosed anchor from Leith Roads. I hae
been a forsaken creature since his death--O the weary days and nights
that I have had!--and the weight on the spirits--the spirits,
Doctor!--though I canna say I hae been easier since I hae been at the
Wall than even now--if I kend what I was awing ye for elickstir, Doctor,
for it's done me muckle heart's good, forby the opening of my mind to
you."
"Fie, fie, ma'am," said the Doctor, as the widow pulled out a seal-skin
pouch, such as sailors carry tobacco in, but apparently well stuffed
with bank-notes,--"Fie, fie, madam--I am no apothecary--I have my
diploma from Leyden--a regular physician, madam,--the elixir is heartily
at your service; and should you want any advice, no man will be prouder
to assist you than your humble servant."
"I am sure I am muckle obliged to your kindness, Dr. Kickalpin," said
the widow, folding up her pouch; "this was puir John Blower's
_spleuchan_,[I-16] as they ca' it--I e'en wear it for his sake. He was a
kind man, and left me comfortable in warld's gudes; but comforts hae
their cumbers,--to be a lone woman is a sair weird, Dr. Kittlepin."
Dr. Quackleben drew his chair a little nearer that of the widow, and
entered into a closer communication with her, in a tone doubtless of
more delicate consolation than was fit for the ears of the company at
large.
One of the chief delights of a watering-place is, that every one's
affairs seem to be put under the special surveillance of the whole
company, so that, in all probability, the various flirtations,
_liaisons_, and so forth, which naturally take place in the society, are
not only the subject of amusement to the parties engaged, but also to
the lookers on; that is to say, generally speaking, to the whole
community, of which for the time the said parties are members. Lady
Penelope, the presiding goddess of the region, watchful over all her
circle, was not long of observing that the Doctor seemed to be suddenly
engaged in close communication with the widow, and that he had even
ventured to take hold of her fair plump hand, with a manner which
partook at once of the gallant suitor, and of the medical adviser.
"For the love of Heaven," said her ladyship, "who can that comely dame
be, on whom our excellent and learned Doctor looks with such uncommon
regard?"
"Fat, fair, and forty," said Mr. Winterblossom; "that is all I know of
her--a mercantile person."
"A carrack, Sir President," said the chaplain, "richly laden with
colonial produce, by name the Lovely Peggy Bryce--no master--the late
John Blower of North Leith having pushed off his boat for the Stygian
Creek, and left the vessel without a hand on board."
"The Doctor," said Lady Penelope, turning her glass towards them, "seems
willing to play the part of pilot."
"I dare say he will be willing to change her name and register," said
Mr. Chatterly.
"He can be no less in common requital," said Winterblossom. "She has
changed _his_ name six times in the five minutes that I stood within
hearing of them."
"What do you think of the matter, my dear Lady Binks?" said Lady
Penelope.
"Madam?" said Lady Binks, starting from a reverie, and answering as one
who either had not heard, or did not understand the question.
"I mean, what think you of what is going on yonder?"
Lady Binks turned her glass in the direction of Lady Penelope's glance,
fixed the widow and the Doctor with one bold fashionable stare, and then
dropping her hand slowly, said with indifference, "I really see nothing
there worth thinking about."
"I dare say it is a fine thing to be married," said Lady Penelope;
"one's thoughts, I suppose, are so much engrossed with one's own perfect
happiness, that they have neither time nor inclination to laugh like
other folks. Miss Rachel Bonnyrigg would have laughed till her eyes ran
over, had she seen what Lady Binks cares so little about--I dare say it
must be an all-sufficient happiness to be married."
"He would be a happy man that could convince your ladyship of that in
good earnest," said Mr. Winterblossom.
"Oh, who knows--the whim may strike me," replied the lady; "but
no--no--no;--and that is three times."
"Say it sixteen times more," said the gallant president, "and let
nineteen nay-says be a grant."
"If I should say a thousand Noes, there exists not the alchymy in living
man that could extract one Yes out of the whole mass," said her
ladyship. "Blessed be the memory of Queen Bess!--She set us all an
example to keep power when we have it--What noise is that?"
"Only the usual after-dinner quarrel," said the divine. "I hear the
Captain's voice, else most silent, commanding them to keep peace, in the
devil's name and that of the ladies."
"Upon my word, dearest Lady Binks, this is too bad of that lord and
master of yours, and of Mowbray, who might have more sense, and of the
rest of that claret-drinking set, to be quarrelling and alarming our
nerves every evening with presenting their pistols perpetually at each
other, like sportsmen confined to the house upon a rainy 12th of August.
I am tired of the Peace-maker--he but skins the business over in one
case to have it break out elsewhere.--What think you, love, if we were
to give out in orders, that the next quarrel which may arise, shall be
_bona fide_ fought to an end?--We will all go out and see it, and wear
the colours on each side; and if there should a funeral come of it, we
will attend it in a body.--Weeds are so becoming!--Are they not, my dear
Lady Binks? Look at Widow Blower in her deep black--don't you envy her,
my love?"
Lady Binks seemed about to make a sharp and hasty answer, but checked
herself, perhaps under the recollection that she could not prudently
come to an open breach with Lady Penelope.--At the same moment the door
opened, and a lady dressed in a riding-habit, and wearing a black veil
over her hat, appeared at the entry of the apartment.
"Angels and ministers of grace!" exclaimed Lady Penelope, with her very
best tragic start--"my dearest Clara, why so late? and why thus? Will
you step to my dressing-room--Jones will get you one of my gowns--we are
just of a size, you know--do, pray--let me be vain of something of my
own for once, by seeing you wear it."
This was spoken in the tone of the fondest female friendship, and at the
same time the fair hostess bestowed on Miss Mowbray one of those tender
caresses, which ladies--God bless them!--sometimes bestow on each other
with unnecessary prodigality, to the great discontent and envy of the
male spectators.
"You are fluttered, my dearest Clara--you are feverish--I am sure you
are," continued the sweetly anxious Lady Penelope; "let me persuade you
to lie down."
"Indeed you are mistaken, Lady Penelope," said Miss Mowbray, who seemed
to receive much as a matter of course her ladyship's profusion of
affectionate politeness:--"I am heated, and my pony trotted hard, that
is the whole mystery.--Let me have a cup of tea, Mrs. Jones, and the
matter is ended."
"Fresh tea, Jones, directly," said Lady Penelope, and led her passive
friend to her own corner, as she was pleased to call the recess, in
which she held her little court--ladies and gentlemen curtsying and
bowing as she passed; to which civilities the new guest made no more
return, than the most ordinary politeness rendered unavoidable.
Lady Binks did not rise to receive her, but sat upright in her chair,
and bent her head very stiffly; a courtesy which Miss Mowbray returned
in the same stately manner, without farther greeting on either side.
"Now, wha can that be, Doctor?" said the Widow Blower--"mind ye have
promised to tell me all about the grand folk--wha can that be that Leddy
Penelope hauds such a racket wi'?--and what for does she come wi' a
habit and a beaver-hat, when we are a' (a glance at her own gown) in our
silks and satins?"
"To tell you who she is, my dear Mrs. Blower, is very easy," said the
officious Doctor. "She is Miss Clara Mowbray, sister to the Lord of the
Manor--the gentleman who wears the green coat, with an arrow on the
cape. To tell why she wears that habit, or does any thing else, would be
rather beyond doctor's skill. Truth is, I have always thought she was a
little--a very little--touched--call it nerves--hypochondria--or what
you will."
"Lord help us, puir thing!" said the compassionate widow.--"And troth it
looks like it. But it's a shame to let her go loose, Doctor--she might
hurt hersell, or somebody. See, she has ta'en the knife!--O, it's only
to cut a shave of the diet-loaf. She winna let the powder-monkey of a
boy help her. There's judgment in that though, Doctor, for she can cut
thick or thin as she likes.--Dear me! she has not taken mair than a
crumb, than ane would pit between the wires of a canary-bird's cage,
after all.--I wish she would lift up that lang veil, or put off that
riding-skirt, Doctor. She should really be showed the regulations,
Doctor Kickelshin."
"She cares about no rules we can make, Mrs. Blower," said the Doctor;
"and her brother's will and pleasure, and Lady Penelope's whim of
indulging her, carry her through in every thing. They should take
advice on her case."
"Ay, truly, it's time to take advice, when young creatures like her
caper in amang dressed leddies, just as if they were come from
scampering on Leith sands.--Such a wark as my leddy makes wi' her,
Doctor! Ye would think they were baith fools of a feather."
"They might have flown on one wing, for what I know," said Dr.
Quackleben; "but there was early and sound advice taken in Lady
Penelope's case. My friend, the late Earl of Featherhead, was a man of
judgment--did little in his family but
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