Misfortunes never come alone. While Ochiltree, pensively leaning upon his
staff, added his regrets to those of the hamlet which bewailed the young
man's sudden death, and internally blamed himself for the transaction in
which he had so lately engaged him, the old man's collar was seized by a
peace-officer, who displayed his baton in his right hand, and exclaimed,
"In the king's name."
The gauger and schoolmaster united their rhetoric, to prove to the
constable and his assistant that he had no right to arrest the king's
bedesman as a vagrant; and the mute eloquence of the miller and smith,
which was vested in their clenched fists, was prepared to give Highland
bail for their arbiter; his blue gown, they said, was his warrant for
travelling the country.
"But his blue gown," answered the officer, "is nae protection for
assault, robbery, and murder; and my warrant is against him for these
crimes."
"Murder!" said Edie, "murder! wha did I e'er murder?"
"Mr. German Doustercivil, the agent at Glen-Withershins mining-works."
"Murder Doustersnivel?--hout, he's living, and life-like, man."
"Nae thanks to you if he be; he had a sair struggle for his life, if a'
be true he tells, and ye maun answer for't at the bidding of the law."
The defenders of the mendicant shrunk back at hearing the atrocity of the
charges against him, but more than one kind hand thrust meat and bread
and pence upon Edie, to maintain him in the prison, to which the officers
were about to conduct him.
"Thanks to ye! God bless ye a', bairns!--I've gotten out o' mony a snare
when I was waur deserving o' deliverance--I shall escape like a bird from
the fowler. Play out your play, and never mind me--I am mair grieved for
the puir lad that's gane, than for aught they can do to me."
Accordingly, the unresisting prisoner was led off, while he mechanically
accepted and stored in his wallets the alms which poured in on every
hand, and ere he left the hamlet, was as deep-laden as a government
victualler. The labour of bearing this accumulating burden was, however,
abridged, by the officer procuring a cart and horse to convey the old man
to a magistrate, in order to his examination and committal.
The disaster of Steenie, and the arrest of Edie, put a stop to the sports
of the village, the pensive inhabitants of which began to speculate upon
the vicissitudes of human affairs, which had so suddenly consigned one of
their comrades to the grave, and placed their master of the revels in
some danger of being hanged. The character of Dousterswivel being pretty
generally known, which was in his case equivalent to being pretty
generally detested, there were many speculations upon the probability of
the accusation being malicious. But all agreed, that if Edie Ochiltree
behaved in all events to suffer upon this occasion, it was a great pity
he had not better merited his fate by killing Dousterswivel outright.
CHAPTER NINTH
Who is he?--One that for the lack of land
Shall fight upon the water--he hath challenged
Formerly the grand whale; and by his titles
Of Leviathan, Behemoth, and so forth.
He tilted with a sword-fish--Marry, sir,
Th' aquatic had the best--the argument
Still galls our champion's breech.
Old Play.
"And the poor young fellow, Steenie Mucklebackit, is to be buried this
morning," said our old friend the Antiquary, as he exchanged his quilted
night-gown for an old-fashioned black coat in lieu of the snuff-coloured
vestment which he ordinarily wore, "and, I presume, it is expected that I
should attend the funeral?"
"Ou, ay," answered the faithful Caxon, officiously brushing the white
threads and specks from his patron's habit. "The body, God help us! was
sae broken against the rocks that they're fain to hurry the burial. The
sea's a kittle cast, as I tell my daughter, puir thing, when I want her
to get up her spirits; the sea, says I, Jenny, is as uncertain a
calling"--
"As the calling of an old periwig-maker, that's robbed of his business by
crops and the powder-tax. Caxon, thy topics of consolation are as ill
chosen as they are foreign to the present purpose._Quid mihi cum
faemina_? What have I to do with thy womankind, who have enough and to
spare of mine own?--I pray of you again, am I expected by these poor
people to attend the funeral of their son?"
"Ou, doubtless, your honour is expected," answered Caxon; "weel I wot ye
are expected. Ye ken, in this country ilka gentleman is wussed to be sae
civil as to see the corpse aff his grounds; ye needna gang higher than
the loan-head--it's no expected your honour suld leave the land; it's
just a Kelso convoy, a step and a half ower the doorstane."
"A Kelso convoy!" echoed the inquisitive Antiquary; "and why a Kelso
convoy more than any other?"
"Dear sir," answered Caxon, "how should I ken? it's just a by-word."
"Caxon," answered Oldbuck, "thou art a mere periwig-maker--Had I asked
Ochiltree the question, he would have had a legend ready made to my
hand."
"My business," replied Caxon, with more animation than he commonly
displayed, "is with the outside of your honour's head, as ye are
accustomed to say."
"True, Caxon, true; and it is no reproach to a thatcher that he is not an
upholsterer."
He then took out his memorandum-book and wrote down "Kelso convoy--said
to be a step and a half over the threshold. Authority--Caxon.--_Quaere_--
Whence derived? _Mem._ To write to Dr. Graysteel upon the subject."
Having made this entry, he resumed--"And truly, as to this custom of the
landlord attending the body of the peasant, I approve it, Caxon. It comes
from ancient times, and was founded deep in the notions of mutual aid and
dependence between the lord and cultivator of the soil. And herein I must
say, the feudal system--(as also in its courtesy towards womankind, in
which it exceeded)--herein, I say, the feudal usages mitigated and
softened the sternness of classical times. No man, Caxon, ever heard of a
Spartan attending the funeral of a Helot--yet I dare be sworn that John
of the Girnel--ye have heard of him, Caxon?"
"Ay, ay, sir," answered Caxon; "naebody can hae been lang in your
honour's company without hearing of that gentleman."
"Well," continued the Antiquary, "I would bet a trifle there was not a
_kolb kerl,_ or bondsman, or peasant, _ascriptus glebae,_ died upon the
monks' territories down here, but John of the Girnel saw them fairly and
decently interred."
"Ay, but if it like your honour, they say he had mair to do wi' the
births than the burials. Ha! ha! ha!" with a gleeful chuckle.
"Good, Caxon, very good!--why, you shine this morning."
"And besides," added Caxon, slyly, encouraged by his patron's
approbation, "they say, too, that the Catholic priests in thae times gat
something for ganging about to burials."
"Right, Caxon! right as my glove! By the by, I fancy that phrase comes
from the custom of pledging a glove as the signal of irrefragable faith--
right, I say, as my glove, Caxon--but we of the Protestant ascendency
have the more merit in doing that duty for nothing, which cost money in
the reign of that empress of superstition, whom Spenser, Caxon, terms in
his allegorical phrase,
--The daughter of that woman blind,
Abessa, daughter of Corecca slow--
But why talk I of these things to thee?--my poor Lovel has spoiled me,
and taught me to speak aloud when it is much the same as speaking to
myself. Where's my nephew, Hector M'Intyre?"
"He's in the parlour, sir, wi' the leddies."
"Very well," said the Antiquary, "I will betake me thither."
"Now, Monkbarns," said his sister, on his entering the parlour, "ye
maunna be angry."
"My dear uncle!" began Miss M'Intyre.
"What's the meaning of all this?" said Oldbuck, in alarm of some
impending bad news, and arguing upon the supplicating tone of the ladies,
as a fortress apprehends an attack from the very first flourish of the
trumpet which announces the summons--"what's all this?--what do you
bespeak my patience for?"
"No particular matter, I should hope, sir," said Hector, who, with his
arm in a sling, was seated at the breakfast table;--"however, whatever it
may amount to I am answerable for it, as I am for much more trouble that
I have occasioned, and for which I have little more than thanks to
offer."
"No, no! heartily welcome, heartily welcome--only let it be a warning to
you," said the Antiquary, "against your fits of anger, which is a short
madness--_Ira furor brevis_--but what is this new disaster?"
"My dog, sir, has unfortunately thrown down"--
"If it please Heaven, not the lachrymatory from Clochnaben!" interjected
Oldbuck.
"Indeed, uncle," said the young lady, "I am afraid--it was that which
stood upon the sideboard--the poor thing only meant to eat the pat of
fresh butter."
"In which she has fully succeeded, I presume, for I see that on the table
is salted. But that is nothing--my lachrymatory, the main pillar of my
theory on which I rested to show, in despite of the ignorant obstinacy of
Mac-Cribb, that the Romans had passed the defiles of these mountains, and
left behind them traces of their arts and arms, is gone--annihilated--
reduced to such fragments as might be the shreds of a broken-flowerpot!
--Hector, I love thee,
But never more be officer of mine."
"Why, really, sir, I am afraid I should make a bad figure in a regiment
of your raising."
"At least, Hector, I would have you despatch your camp train, and travel
_expeditus,_ or _relictis impedimentis._ You cannot conceive how I am
annoyed by this beast--she commits burglary, I believe, for I heard her
charged with breaking into the kitchen after all the doors were locked,
and eating up a shoulder of mutton. "--(Our readers, if they chance to
remember Jenny Rintherout's precaution of leaving the door open when she
went down to the fisher's cottage, will probably acquit poor Juno of that
aggravation of guilt which the lawyers call a _claustrum fregit,_ and
which makes the distinction between burglary and privately stealing. )
"I am truly sorry, sir," said Hector, "that Juno has committed so much
disorder; but Jack Muirhead, the breaker, was never able to bring her
under command. She has more travel than any bitch I ever knew, but"--
"Then, Hector, I wish the bitch would travel herself out of my grounds."
"We will both of us retreat to-morrow, or to-day, but I would not
willingly part from my mother's brother in unkindness about a paltry
pipkin."
"O brother! brother!" ejaculated Miss M'Intyre, in utter despair at this
vituperative epithet.
"Why, what would you have me call it?" continued Hector; "it was just
such a thing as they use in Egypt to cool wine, or sherbet, or water;--I
brought home a pair of them--I might have brought home twenty."
"What!" said Oldbuck, "shaped such as that your dog threw down?"
"Yes, sir, much such a sort of earthen jar as that which was on the
sideboard. They are in my lodgings at Fairport; we brought a parcel of
them to cool our wine on the passage--they answer wonderfully well. If I
could think they would in any degree repay your loss, or rather that they
could afford you pleasure, I am sure I should be much honoured by your
accepting them."
"Indeed, my dear boy, I should be highly gratified by possessing them. To
trace the connection of nations by their usages, and the similarity of
the implements which they employ, has been long my favourite study.
Everything that can illustrate such connections is most valuable to me."
"Well, sir, I shall be much gratified by your acceptance of them, and a
few trifles of the same kind. And now, am I to hope you have forgiven
me?"
"O, my dear boy, you are only thoughtless and foolish."
"But Juno--she is only thoughtless too, I assure you--the breaker tells
me she has no vice or stubbornness."
"Well, I grant Juno also a free pardon--conditioned, that you will
imitate her in avoiding vice and stubbornness, and that henceforward she
banish herself forth of Monkbarns parlour."
"Then, uncle," said the soldier, "I should have been very sorry and
ashamed to propose to you anything in the way of expiation of my own
sins, or those of my follower, that I thought _worth_ your acceptance;
but now, as all is forgiven, will you permit the orphan-nephew, to whom
you have been a father, to offer you a trifle, which I have been assured
is really curious, and which only the cross accident of my wound has
prevented my delivering to you before? I got it from a French savant, to
whom I rendered some service after the Alexandria affair."
The captain put a small ring-case into the Antiquary's hands, which, when
opened, was found to contain an antique ring of massive gold, with a
cameo, most beautifully executed, bearing a head of Cleopatra. The
Antiquary broke forth into unrepressed ecstasy, shook his nephew
cordially by the hand, thanked him an hundred times, and showed the ring
to his sister and niece, the latter of whom had the tact to give it
sufficient admiration; but Miss Griselda (though she had the same
affection for her nephew) had not address enough to follow the lead.
"It's a bonny thing," she said, "Monkbarns, and, I dare say, a valuable;
but it's out o'my way--ye ken I am nae judge o' sic matters."
"There spoke all Fairport in one voice!" exclaimed Oldbuck "it is the
very spirit of the borough has infected us all; I think I have smelled
the smoke these two days, that the wind has stuck, like a _remora,_ in
the north-east--and its prejudices fly farther than its vapours. Believe
me, my dear Hector, were I to walk up the High Street of Fairport,
displaying this inestimable gem in the eyes of each one I met, no human
creature, from the provost to the town-crier, would stop to ask me its
history. But if I carried a bale of linen cloth under my arm, I could not
penetrate to the Horsemarket ere I should be overwhelmed with queries
about its precise texture and price. Oh, one might parody their brutal
ignorance in the words of Gray:
Weave the warp and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of wit and sense,
Dull garment of defensive proof,
'Gainst all that doth not gather pence."
The most remarkable proof of this peace-offering being quite acceptable
was, that while the Antiquary was in full declamation, Juno, who held him
in awe, according to the remarkable instinct by which dogs instantly
discover those who like or dislike them, had peeped several times into
the room, and encountering nothing very forbidding in his aspect, had at
length presumed to introduce her full person; and finally, becoming bold
by impunity, she actually ate up Mr. Oldbuck's toast, as, looking first
at one then at another of his audience, he repeated, with
self-complacency,
"Weave the warp and weave the woof,--
"You remember the passage in the Fatal Sisters, which, by the way, is not
so fine as in the original--But, hey-day! my toast has vanished!--I see
which way--Ah, thou type of womankind! no wonder they take offence at thy
generic appellation!"--(So saying, he shook his fist at Juno, who scoured
out of the parlour.)--"However, as Jupiter, according to Homer, could not
rule Juno in heaven, and as Jack Muirhead, according to Hector M'Intyre,
has been equally unsuccessful on earth, I suppose she must have her own
way." And this mild censure the brother and sister justly accounted a
full pardon for Juno's offences, and sate down well pleased to the
morning meal.
When breakfast was over, the Antiquary proposed to his nephew to go down
with him to attend the funeral. The soldier pleaded the want of a
mourning habit.
"O, that does not signify--your presence is all that is requisite. I
assure you, you will see something that will entertain--no, that's an
improper phrase--but that will interest you, from the resemblances which
I will point out betwixt popular customs on such occasions and those of
the ancients."
"Heaven forgive me!" thought M'Intyre;--"I shall certainly misbehave, and
lose all the credit I have so lately and accidentally gained."
When they set out, schooled as he was by the warning and entreating looks
of his sister, the soldier made his resolution strong to give no offence
by evincing inattention or impatience. But our best resolutions are
frail, when opposed to our predominant inclinations. Our Antiquary,--to
leave nothing unexplained, had commenced with the funeral rites of the
ancient Scandinavians, when his nephew interrupted him, in a discussion
upon the "age of hills," to remark that a large sea-gull, which flitted
around them, had come twice within shot. This error being acknowledged
and pardoned, Oldbuck resumed his disquisition.
"These are circumstances you ought to attend to and be familiar with, my
dear Hector; for, in the strange contingencies of the present war which
agitates every corner of Europe, there is no knowing where you may be
called upon to serve. If in Norway, for example, or Denmark, or any part
of the ancient Scania, or Scandinavia, as we term it, what could be more
convenient than to have at your fingers' ends the history and antiquities
of that ancient country, the _officina gentium,_ the mother of modern
Europe, the nursery of those heroes,
Stern to inflict, and stubborn to endure,
Who smiled in death?--
How animating, for example, at the conclusion of a weary march, to find
yourself in the vicinity of a Runic monument, and discover that you have
pitched your tent beside the tomb of a hero!"
"I am afraid, sir, our mess would be better supplied if it chanced to be
in the neighbourhood of a good poultry-yard."
"Alas, that you should say so! No wonder the days of Cressy and Agincourt
are no more, when respect for ancient valour has died away in the breasts
of the British soldiery."
"By no means, sir--by no manner of means. I dare say that Edward and
Henry, and the rest of these heroes, thought of their dinner, however,
before they thought of examining an old tombstone. But I assure you, we
are by no means insensible to the memoir of our fathers' fame; I used
often of an evening to get old Rory MAlpin to sing us songs out of Ossian
about the battles of Fingal and Lamon Mor, and Magnus and the Spirit of
Muirartach."
"And did you believe," asked the aroused Antiquary, "did you absolutely
believe that stuff of Macpherson's to be really ancient, you simple boy?"
"Believe it, sir?--how could I but believe it, when I have heard the
songs sung from my infancy?"
"But not the same as Macpherson's English Ossian--you're not absurd
enough to say that, I hope?" said the Antiquary, his brow darkening with
wrath.
But Hector stoutly abode the storm; like many a sturdy Celt, he imagined
the honour of his country and native language connected with the
authenticity of these popular poems, and would have fought knee-deep, or
forfeited life and land, rather than have given up a line of them. He
therefore undauntedly maintained, that Rory MAlpin could repeat the whole
book from one end to another;--and it was only upon cross-examination
that he explained an assertion so general, by adding "At least, if he was
allowed whisky enough, he could repeat as long as anybody would hearken
to him."
"Ay, ay," said the Antiquary; "and that, I suppose, was not very long."
"Why, we had our duty, sir, to attend to, and could not sit listening all
night to a piper."
"But do you recollect, now," said Oldbuck, setting his teeth firmly
together, and speaking without opening them, which was his custom when
contradicted--"Do you recollect, now, any of these verses you thought so
beautiful and interesting--being a capital judge, no doubt, of such
things?"
"I don't pretend to much skill, uncle; but it's not very reasonable to be
angry with me for admiring the antiquities of my own country more than
those of the Harolds, Harfagers, and Hacos you are so fond of."
"Why, these, sir--these mighty and unconquered Goths--_were_ your
ancestors! The bare-breeched Celts whom theysubdued, and suffered only to
exist, like a fearful people, in the crevices of the rocks, were but
their Mancipia and Serfs!"
Hector's brow now grew red in his turn. "Sir," he said, "I don't
understand the meaning of Mancipia and Serfs, but I conceive that such
names are very improperly applied to Scotch Highlanders: no man but my
mother's brother dared to have used such language in my presence; and I
pray you will observe, that I consider it as neither hospitable,
handsome, kind, nor generous usage towards your guest and your kinsman.
My ancestors, Mr. Oldbuck"--
"Were great and gallant chiefs, I dare say, Hector; and really I did not
mean to give you such immense offence in treating a point of remote
antiquity, a subject on which I always am myself cool, deliberate, and
unimpassioned. But you are as hot and hasty, as if you were Hector and
Achilles, and Agamemnon to boot."
"I am sorry I expressed myself so hastily, uncle, especially to you, who
have been so generous and good. But my ancestors"--
"No more about it, lad; I meant them no affront--none."
"I'm glad of it, sir; for the house of M'Intyre"--
"Peace be with them all, every man of them," said the Antiquary. "But to
return to our subject--Do you recollect, I say, any of those poems which
afforded you such amusement?"
"Very hard this," thought M'Intyre, "that he will speak with such glee of
everything which is ancient, excepting my family. "--Then, after some
efforts at recollection, he added aloud, "Yes, sir,--I think I do
remember some lines; but you do not understand the Gaelic language."
"And will readily excuse hearing it. But you can give me some idea of the
sense in our own vernacular idiom?"
"I shall prove a wretched interpreter," said M'Intyre, running over the
original, well garnished with _aghes, aughs,_ and _oughs,_ and similar
gutterals, and then coughing and hawking as if the translation stuck in
his throat. At length, having premised that the poem was a dialogue
between the poet Oisin, or Ossian, and Patrick, the tutelar Saint of
Ireland, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to render the
exquisite felicity of the first two or three lines, he said the sense was
to this purpose:
"Patrick the psalm-singer,
Since you will not listen to one of my stories,
Though you never heard it before,
I am sorry to tell you
You are little better than an ass"--
"Good! good!" exclaimed the Antiquary; "but go on. Why, this is, after
all, the most admirable fooling--I dare say the poet was very right. What
says the Saint?"
"He replies in character," said M'Intyre; "but you should hear MAlpin
sing the original. The speeches of Ossian come in upon a strong deep
bass--those of Patrick are upon a tenor key."
"Like MAlpin's drone and small pipes, I suppose," said Oldbuck. "Well?
Pray go on."
"Well then, Patrick replies to Ossian:
Upon my word, son of Fingal,
While I am warbling the psalms,
The clamour of your old women's tales
Disturbs my devotional exercises."
"Excellent!--why, this is better and better. I hope Saint Patrick sung
better than Blattergowl's precentor, or it would be hang--choice between
the poet and psalmist. But what I admire is the courtesy of these two
eminent persons towards each other. It is a pity there should not be a
word of this in Macpherson's translation."
"If you are sure of that," said M'Intyre, gravely, "he must have taken
very unwarrantable liberties with his original."
"It will go near to be thought so shortly--but pray proceed."
"Then," said M'Intyre, "this is the answer of Ossian:
Dare you compare your psalms,
You son of a--"
"Son of a what?" exclaimed Oldbuck.
"It means, I think," said the young soldier, with some reluctance, "son
of a female dog:
Do you compare your psalms,
To the tales of the bare-arm'd Fenians"
"Are you sure you are translating that last epithet correctly, Hector?"
"Quite sure, sir," answered Hector, doggedly.
"Because I should have thought the nudity might have been quoted as
existing in a different part of the body."
Disdaining to reply to this insinuation, Hector proceeded in his
recitation:
"I shall think it no great harm
To wring your bald head from your shoulders--
But what is that yonder?" exclaimed Hector, interrupting himself.
"One of the herd of Proteus," said the Antiquary--"a _phoca,_ or seal,
lying asleep on the beach."
Upon which M'Intyre, with the eagerness of a young sportsman, totally
forgot both Ossian, Patrick, his uncle, and his wound, and exclaiming--"I
shall have her! I shall have her!" snatched the walking-stick out of the
hand of the astonished Antiquary, at some risk of throwing him down, and
set off at full speed to get between the animal and the sea, to which
element, having caught the alarm, she was rapidly retreating.
Not Sancho, when his master interrupted his account of the combatants of
Pentapolin with the naked arm, to advance in person to the charge of the
flock of sheep, stood more confounded than Oldbuck at this sudden
escapade of his nephew.
"Is the devil in him," was his first exclamation, "to go to disturb the
brute that was never thinking of him!"--Then elevating his voice,
"Hector--nephew--fool--let alone the _Phoca_--let alone the _Phoca_!--
they bite, I tell you, like furies. He minds me no more than a post.
There--there they are at it--Gad, the _Phoca_ has the best of it! I am
glad to see it," said he, in the bitterness of his heart, though really
alarmed for his nephew's safety--"I am glad to see it, with all my heart
and spirit."
In truth, the seal, finding her retreat intercepted by the light-footed
soldier, confronted him manfully, and having sustained a heavy blow
without injury, she knitted her brows, as is the fashion of the animal
when incensed, and making use at once of her fore-paws and her unwieldy
strength, wrenched the weapon out of the assailant's hand, overturned him
on the sands, and scuttled away into the sea, without doing him any
farther injury. Captain M'Intyre, a good deal out of countenance at the
issue of his exploit, just rose in time to receive the ironical
congratulations of his uncle, upon a single combat worthy to be
commemorated by Ossian himself, "since," said the Antiquary, "your
magnanimous opponent has fled, though not upon eagle's wings, from the
foe that was low--Egad, she walloped away with all the grace of triumph,
and has carried my stick off also, by way of _spolia opima._"
M'Intyre had little to answer for himself, except that a Highlander could
never pass a deer, a seal, or a salmon, where there was a possibility of
having a trial of skill with them, and that he had forgot one of his arms
was in a sling. He also made his fall an apology for returning back to
Monkbarns, and thus escape the farther raillery of his uncle, as well as
his lamentations for his walking-stick.
"I cut it," he said, "in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did not
expect always to have been a bachelor--I would not have given it for an
ocean of seals--O Hector! Hector!--thy namesake was born to be the prop
of Troy, and thou to be the plague of Monkbarns!"
CHAPTER TENTH.
Tell me not of it, friend--when the young weep,
Their tears are luke-warm brine;--from your old eyes
Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North,
Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks,
Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling--
Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless--ours recoil,
Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.
Old Play.
The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been
retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had closed
them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at Mussel-crag.
They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and uncomfortable
appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of mourning. The boats
were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day was fine, and the
season favourable, the chant, which is used by the fishers when at sea,
was silent, as well as the prattle of the children, and the shrill song
of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the door. A few of the
neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, others
in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an expression of mournful
sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected, stood gathered around
the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till "the body was lifted."
As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made way for him to enter,
doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with an air of melancholy
courtesy, and he returned their salutes in the same manner.
In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could
have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that characterises
his enchanting productions,
The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the
young fisher had occupied while alive. At a little distance stood the
father, whose ragged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his grizzled
hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day. He was apparently
revolving his loss in his mind, with that strong feeling of painful grief
peculiar to harsh and rough characters, which almost breaks forth into
hatred against the world, and all that remain in it, after the beloved
object is withdrawn. The old man had made the most desperate efforts to
save his son, and had only been withheld by main force from renewing them
at a moment when, without the possibility of assisting the sufferer, he
must himself have perished. All this apparently was boiling in his
recollection. His glance was directed sidelong towards the coffin, as to
an object on which he could not stedfastly look, and yet from which he
could not withdraw his eyes. His answers to the necessary questions which
were occasionally put to him, were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. His
family had not yet dared to address to him a word, either of sympathy or
consolation. His masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress
of the family, as she justly boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions,
was, by this great loss, terrified into silence and submission, and
compelled to hide from her husband's observation the bursts of her female
sorrow. As he had rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not
daring herself to approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate
artifice, employed the youngest and favourite child to present her
husband with some nourishment. His first action was to put it from him
with an angry violence that frightened the child; his next, to snatch up
the boy and devour him with kisses. "Yell be a bra' fallow, an ye be
spared, Patie,--but ye'll never--never can be--what he was to me!--He has
sailed the coble wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there wasna the
like o' him drew a net betwixt this and Buchan-ness.--They say folks maun
submit--I will try."
And he had been silent from that moment until compelled to answer the
necessary questions we have already noticed. Such was the disconsolate
state of the father.
In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by her apron, which
was flung over it, sat the mother--the nature of her grief sufficiently
indicated by the wringing of her hands, and the convulsive agitation of
the bosom, which the covering could not conceal. Two of her gossips,
officiously whispering into her ear the commonplace topic of resignation
under irremediable misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavouring to
stun the grief which they could not console.
The sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder at the preparations
they beheld around them, and at the unusual display of wheaten bread and
wine, which the poorest peasant, or fisher, offers to the guests on these
mournful occasions; and thus their grief for their brother's death was
almost already lost in admiration of the splendour of his funeral.
But the figure of the old grandmother was the most remarkable of the
sorrowing group. Seated on her accustomed chair, with her usual air of
apathy, and want of interest in what surrounded her, she seemed every now
and then mechanically to resume the motion of twirling her spindle; then
to look towards her bosom for the distaff, although both had been laid
aside. She would then cast her eyes about, as if surprised at missing the
usual implements of her industry, and appear struck by the black colour
of the gown in which they had dressed her, and embarrassed by the number
of persons by whom she was surrounded. Then, finally, she would raise her
head with a ghastly look, and fix her eyes upon the bed which contained
the coffin of her grandson, as if she had at once, and for the first
time, acquired sense to comprehend her inexpressible calamity. These
alternate feelings of embarrassment, wonder, and grief, seemed to succeed
each other more than once upon her torpid features. But she spoke not a
word--neither had she shed a tear--nor did one of the family understand,
either from look or expression, to what extent she comprehended the
uncommon bustle around her. Thus she sat among the funeral assembly like
a connecting link between the surviving mourners and the dead corpse
which they bewailed--a being in whom the light of existence was already
obscured by the encroaching shadows of death.
When Oldbuck entered this house of mourning, he was received by a general
and silent inclination of the head, and, according to the fashion of
Scotland on such occasions, wine and spirits and bread were offered round
to the guests. Elspeth, as these refreshments were presented, surprised
and startled the whole company by motioning to the person who bore them
to stop; then, taking a glass in her hand, she rose up, and, as the smile
of dotage played upon her shrivelled features, she pronounced, with a
hollow and tremulous voice, "Wishing a' your healths, sirs, and often may
we hae such merry meetings!"
All shrunk from the ominous pledge, and set down the untasted liquor with
a degree of shuddering horror, which will not surprise those who know how
many superstitions are still common on such occasions among the Scottish
vulgar. But as the old woman tasted the liquor, she suddenly exclaimed
with a sort of shriek, "What's this?--this is wine--how should there be
wine in my son's house?--Ay," she continued with a suppressed groan, "I
mind the sorrowful cause now," and, dropping the glass from her hand, she
stood a moment gazing fixedly on the bed in which the coffin of her
grandson was deposited, and then sinking gradually into her seat, she
covered her eyes and forehead with her withered and pallid hand.
At this moment the clergyman entered the cottage. Mr. Blattergowl, though
a dreadful proser, particularly on the subject of augmentations,
localities, teinds, and overtures in that session of the General
Assembly, to which, unfortunately for his auditors, he chanced one year
to act as moderator, was nevertheless a good man, in the old Scottish
presbyterian phrase, God-ward and man-ward. No divine was more attentive
in visiting the sick and afflicted, in catechising the youth, in
instructing the ignorant, and in reproving the erring. And hence,
notwithstanding impatience of his prolixity and prejudices, personal or
professional, and notwithstanding, moreover, a certain habitual contempt
for his understanding, especially on affairs of genius and taste, on
which Blattergowl was apt to be diffuse, from his hope of one day
fighting his way to a chair of rhetoric or belles lettres,--
notwithstanding, I say, all the prejudices excited against him by these
circumstances, our friend the Antiquary looked with great regard and
respect on the said Blattergowl, though I own he could seldom, even by
his sense of decency and the remonstrances of his womankind, be _hounded
out,_ as he called it, to hear him preach. But he regularly took shame to
himself for his absence when Blattergowl came to Monkbarns to dinner, to
which he was always invited of a Sunday, a mode of testifying his respect
which the proprietor probably thought fully as agreeable to the
clergyman, and rather more congenial to his own habits.
To return from a digression which can only serve to introduce the honest
clergyman more particularly to our readers, Mr. Blattergowl had no sooner
entered the hut, and received the mute and melancholy salutations of the
company whom it contained, than he edged himself towards the unfortunate
father, and seemed to endeavour to slide in a few words of condolence or
of consolation. But the old man was incapable as yet of receiving either;
he nodded, however, gruffly, and shook the clergyman's hand in
acknowledgment of his good intentions, but was either unable or unwilling
to make any verbal reply.
The minister next passed to the mother, moving along the floor as slowly,
silently, and gradually, as if he had been afraid that the ground would,
like unsafe ice, break beneath his feet, or that the first echo of a
footstep was to dissolve some magic spell, and plunge the hut, with all
its inmates, into a subterranean abyss. The tenor of what he had said to
the poor woman could only be judged by her answers, as, half-stifled by
sobs ill-repressed, and by the covering which she still kept over her
countenance, she faintly answered at each pause in his speech--"Yes, sir,
yes!--Ye're very gude--ye're very gude!--Nae doubt, nae doubt!--It's our
duty to submit!--But, oh dear! my poor Steenie! the pride o' my very
heart, that was sae handsome and comely, and a help to his family, and a
comfort to us a', and a pleasure to a' that lookit on him!--Oh, my bairn!
my bairn! my bairn! what for is thou lying there!--and eh! what for am I
left to greet for ye!"
There was no contending with this burst of sorrow and natural affection.
Oldbuck had repeated recourse to his snuff-box to conceal the tears
which, despite his shrewd and caustic temper, were apt to start on such
occasions. The female assistants whimpered, the men held their bonnets to
their faces, and spoke apart with each other. The clergyman, meantime,
addressed his ghostly consolation to the aged grandmother. At first she
listened, or seemed to listen, to what he said, with the apathy of her
usual unconsciousness. But as, in pressing this theme, he approached so
near to her ear that the sense of his words became distinctly
intelligible to her, though unheard by those who stood more distant, her
countenance at once assumed that stern and expressive cast which
characterized her intervals of intelligence. She drew up her head and
body, shook her head in a manner that showed at least impatience, if not
scorn of his counsel, and waved her hand slightly, but with a gesture so
expressive, as to indicate to all who witnessed it a marked and
disdainful rejection of the ghostly consolation proffered to her. The
minister stepped back as if repulsed, and, by lifting gently and dropping
his hand, seemed to show at once wonder, sorrow, and compassion for her
dreadful state of mind. The rest of the company sympathized, and a
stifled whisper went through them, indicating how much her desperate and
determined manner impressed them with awe, and even horror.
In the meantime, the funeral company was completed, by the arrival of one
or two persons who had been expected from Fairport. The wine and spirits
again circulated, and the dumb show of greeting was anew interchanged.
The grandame a second time took a glass in her hand, drank its contents,
and exclaimed, with a sort of laugh,--"Ha! ha! I hae tasted wine twice in
ae day--Whan did I that before, think ye, cummers?--Never since"--and the
transient glow vanishing from her countenance, she set the glass down,
and sunk upon the settle from whence she had risen to snatch at it.
As the general amazement subsided, Mr. Oldbuck, whose heart bled to
witness what he considered as the errings of the enfeebled intellect
struggling with the torpid chill of age and of sorrow, observed to the
clergyman that it was time to proceed with the ceremony. The father was
incapable of giving directions, but the nearest relation of the family
made a sign to the carpenter, who in such cases goes through the duty of
the undertaker, to proceed in his office. The creak of the screw-nails
presently announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in
the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates
us for ever, even from the mortal relies of the person we assemble to
mourn, has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and
hard-hearted. With a spirit of contradiction, which we may be pardoned
for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish kirk rejected,
even on this most solemn occasion, the form of an address to the
Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the rituals
of Rome or of England. With much better and more liberal judgment, it is
the present practice of most of the Scottish clergymen to seize this
opportunity of offering a prayer, and exhortation, suitable to make an
impression upon the living, while they are yet in the very presence of
the relics of him whom they have but lately seen such as they themselves,
and who now is such as they must in their time become. But this decent
and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of which I am
treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it, and the
ceremony proceeded without any devotional exercise.
The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon hand-spikes by the
nearest relatives, now only waited the father to support the head, as is
customary. Two or three of these privileged persons spoke to him, but he
only answered by shaking his hand and his head in token of refusal. With
better intention than judgment, the friends, who considered this as an
act of duty on the part of the living, and of decency towards the
deceased, would have proceeded to enforce their request, had not Oldbuck
interfered between the distressed father and his well-meaning tormentors,
and informed them, that he himself, as landlord and master to the
deceased, "would carry his head to the grave." In spite of the sorrowful
occasion, the hearts of the relatives swelled within them at so marked a
distinction on the part of the laird; and old Alison Breck, who was
present among other fish-women, swore almost aloud, "His honour Monkbarns
should never want sax warp of oysters in the season" (of which fish he
was understood to be fond), "if she should gang to sea and dredge for
them hersell, in the foulest wind that ever blew." And such is the temper
of the Scottish common people, that, by this instance of compliance with
their customs, and respect for their persons, Mr. Oldbuck gained more
popularity than by all the sums which he had yearly distributed in the
parish for purposes of private or general charity.
The sad procession now moved slowly forward, preceded by the beadles, or
saulies, with their batons,--miserable-looking old men, tottering as if
on the edge of that grave to which they were marshalling another, and
clad, according to Scottish guise, with threadbare black coats, and
hunting-caps decorated with rusty crape. Monkbarns would probably have
remonstrated against this superfluous expense, had he been consulted;
but, in doing so, he would have given more offence than he gained
popularity by condescending to perform the office of chief-mourner. Of
this he was quite aware, and wisely withheld rebuke, where rebuke and
advice would have been equally unavailing. In truth, the Scottish
peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which
once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary
law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining
it; and I have known many in the lowest stations, who have denied
themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life,
in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving
friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their
faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn
to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon the
interment of the dead.
The procession to the churchyard, at about half-a-mile's distance, was
made with the mournful solemnity usual on these occasions,--the body was
consigned to its parent earth,--and when the labour of the gravediggers
had filled up the trench, and covered it with fresh sod, Mr. Oldbuck,
taking his hat off, saluted the assistants, who had stood by in
melancholy silence, and with that adieu dispersed the mourners.
The clergyman offered our Antiquary his company to walk homeward; but Mr.
Oldbuck had been so much struck with the deportment of the fisherman and
his mother, that, moved by compassion, and perhaps also, in some degree,
by that curiosity which induces us to seek out even what gives us pain to
witness, he preferred a solitary walk by the coast, for the purpose of
again visiting the cottage as he passed.
CHAPTER ELEVENTH
What is this secret sin, this untold tale,
That art cannot extract, nor penance cleanse?
--Her muscles hold their place;
Nor discomposed, nor formed to steadiness,
No sudden flushing, and no faltering lip.--
Mysterious Mother.
The coffin had been borne from the place where it rested. The mourners,
in regular gradation, according to their rank or their relationship to
the deceased, had filed from the cottage, while the younger male children
were led along to totter after the bier of their brother, and to view
with wonder a ceremonial which they could hardly comprehend. The female
gossips next rose to depart, and, with consideration for the situation of
the parents, carried along with them the girls of the family, to give the
unhappy pair time and opportunity to open their hearts to each other and
soften their grief by communicating it. But their kind intention was
without effect. The last of them had darkened the entrance of the
cottage, as she went out, and drawn the door softly behind her, when the
father, first ascertaining by a hasty glance that no stranger remained,
started up, clasped his hands wildly above his head, uttered a cry of the
despair which he had hitherto repressed, and, in all the impotent
impatience of grief, half rushed half staggered forward to the bed on
which the coffin had been deposited, threw himself down upon it, and
smothering, as it were, his head among the bed-clothes, gave vent to the
full passion of his sorrow. It was in vain that the wretched mother,
terrified by the vehemence of her husband's affliction--affliction still
more fearful as agitating a man of hardened manners and a robust frame--
suppressed her own sobs and tears, and, pulling him by the skirts of his
coat, implored him to rise and remember, that, though one was removed, he
had still a wife and children to comfort and support. The appeal came at
too early a period of his anguish, and was totally unattended to; he
continued to remain prostrate, indicating, by sobs so bitter and violent,
that they shook the bed and partition against which it rested, by
clenched hands which grasped the bed-clothes, and by the vehement and
convulsive motion of his legs, how deep and how terrible was the agony of
a father's sorrow.
"O, what a day is this! what a day is this!" said the poor mother, her
womanish affliction already exhausted by sobs and tears, and now almost
lost in terror for the state in which she beheld her husband--"O, what an
hour is this! and naebody to help a poor lone woman--O, gudemither, could
ye but speak a word to him!--wad ye but bid him be comforted!"
To her astonishment, and even to the increase of her fear, her husband's
mother heard and answered the appeal. She rose and walked across the
floor without support, and without much apparent feebleness, and standing
by the bed on which her son had extended himself, she said, "Rise up, my
son, and sorrow not for him that is beyond sin and sorrow and temptation.
Sorrow is for those that remain in this vale of sorrow and darkness--I,
wha dinna sorrow, and wha canna sorrow for ony ane, hae maist need that
ye should a' sorrow for me."
The voice of his mother, not heard for years as taking part in the active
duties of life, or offering advice or consolation, produced its effect
upon her son. He assumed a sitting posture on the side of the bed, and
his appearance, attitude, and gestures, changed from those of angry
despair to deep grief and dejection. The grandmother retired to her nook,
the mother mechanically took in her hand her tattered Bible, and seemed
to read, though her eyes were drowned with tears.
They were thus occupied, when a loud knock was heard at the door.
"Hegh, sirs!" said the poor mother, "wha is that can be coming in that
gate e'enow?--They canna hae heard o' our misfortune, I'm sure."
The knock being repeated, she rose and opened the door, saying
querulously, "Whatna gait's that to disturb a sorrowfu' house?"
A tall man in black stood before her, whom she instantly recognised to be
Lord Glenallan. "Is there not," he said, "an old woman lodging in this or
one of the neighbouring cottages, called Elspeth, who was long resident
at Craigburnfoot of Glenallan?"
