without duty; even white wine and claret were got for nothing, since the Duke’s extensive rights of admiralty gave him a title to all the wine in cask which is drifted ashore on the western coast and isles of Scotland, when shipping have suffered by severe weather. In short, as Duncan boasted, the entertainment did not cost MacCallummore a plack out of his sporran, and was nevertheless not only liberal, but overflowing.
The Duke’s health was solemnised in a /bona fide/ bumper, and David Deans himself added perhaps the first huzza that his lungs had ever uttered, to swell the shout with which the pledge was received. Nay, so exalted in heart was he upon this memorable occasion, and so much disposed to be indulgent, that, he expressed no dissatisfaction when three bagpipers struck up, “The Campbells are coming.” The health of the reverend minister of Knocktarlitie was received with similar honours; and there was a roar of laughter, when one of his brethren slily subjoined the addition of, “A good wife to our brother, to keep the Manse in order.” On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, “That the lad being now wedded to his spiritual bride, it was hard to threaten him with ane temporal spouse in the same day.” He then laughed a hoarse and brief laugh, and was suddenly grave and silent, as if abashed at his own vivacious effort.
After another toast or two, Jeanie, Mrs. Dolly, and such of the female natives as had honoured the feast with their presence, retired to David’s new dwelling at Auchingower, and left the gentlemen to their potations.
The feast proceeded with great glee. The conversation, where Duncan had it under his direction, was not indeed always strictly canonical, but David Deans escaped any risk of being scandalised, by engaging with one of his neighbours in a recapitulation of the sufferings of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, during what was called the invasion of the Highland Host; the prudent Mr. Meiklehose cautioning them from time to time to lower their voices, “for that Duncan Knock’s father had been at that onslaught, and brought back muckle gude plenishing, and that Duncan was no unlikely to hae been there himself, for what he kend.”
Meanwhile, as the mirth grew fast and furious, the graver members of the party began to escape as well as they could. David Deans accomplished his retreat, and Butler anxiously watched an opportunity to follow him. Knockdunder, however, desirous, he said, of knowing what stuff was in the new minister, had no intention to part with him so easily, but kept him pinned to his side, watching him sedulously, and with obliging violence filling his glass to the brim, as often as he could seize an opportunity of doing so. At length, as the evening was wearing late, a venerable brother chanced to ask Mr. Archibald when they might hope to see the Duke, /tam carum caput,/ as he would venture to term him, at the Lodge of Roseneath. Duncan of Knock, whose ideas were somewhat conglomerated, and who, it may be believed, was no great scholar, catching up some imperfect sound of the words, conceived the speaker was drawing a parallel between the Duke and Sir Donald Gorme of Sleat; and being of opinion that such comparison was odious, snorted thrice, and prepared himself to be in a passion.
To the explanation of the venerable divine the Captain answered, “I heard the word Gorme myself, sir, with my ain ears. D’ye think I do not know Gaelic from Latin?”
“Apparently not, sir;”–so the clergyman, offended in his turn, and taking a pinch of snuff, answered with great coolness.
The copper nose of the gracious Duncan now became heated like the Bull of Phalaris, and while Mr. Archibald mediated betwixt the offended parties, and the attention of the company was engaged by their dispute, Butler took an opportunity to effect his retreat.
He found the females at Auchingower very anxious for the breaking up of the convivial party; for it was a part of the arrangement, that although David Deans was to remain at Auchingower, and Butler was that night to take possession of the Manse, yet Jeanie, for whom complete accommodations were not yet provided in her father’s house, was to return for a day or two to the Lodge at Roseneath, and the boats had been held in readiness accordingly. They waited, therefore, for Knockdunder’s return, but twilight came, and they still waited in vain. At length Mr. Archibald, who was a man of decorum, had taken care not to exceed in his conviviality, made his appearance, and advised the females strongly to return to the island under his escort; observing, that, from the humour in which he had left the Captain, it was a great chance whether he budged out of the public-house that night, and it was absolutely certain that he would not be very fit company for ladies. The gig was at their disposal, he said, and there was still pleasant twilight for a party on the water.
Jeanie, who had considerable confidence in Archibald’s prudence, immediately acquiesced in this proposal; but Mrs. Dolly positively objected to the small boat. If the big boat could be gotten, she agreed to set out, otherwise she would sleep on the floor, rather than stir a step. Reasoning with Dolly was out of the question, and Archibald did not think the difficulty so pressing as to require compulsion. He observed, it was not using the Captain very politely to deprive him of his coach and six; “but as it was in the ladies’ service,” he gallantly said, “he would use so much freedom–besides the gig would serve the Captain’s purpose better, as it could come off at any hour of the tide; the large boat should, therefore, be at Mrs. Dolly’s service.”
They walked to the beach accordingly, accompanied by Butler. It was some time before the boatmen could be assembled, and ere they were well embarked, and ready to depart, the pale moon was come over the hill, and flinging a trembling reflection on the broad and glittering waves. But so soft and pleasant was the night, that Butler, in bidding farewell to Jeanie, had no apprehension for her safety; and what is yet more extraordinary, Mrs. Dolly felt no alarm for her own. The air was soft, and came over the cooling wave with something of summer fragrance. The beautiful scene of headlands, and capes, and bays, around them, with the broad blue chain of mountains, were dimly visible in the moonlight; while every dash of the oars made the waters glance and sparkle with the brilliant phenomenon called the sea fire.
This last circumstance filled Jeanie with wonder, and served to amuse the mind of her companion, until they approached the little bay, which seemed to stretch its dark and wooded arms into the sea as if to welcome them.
The usual landing-place was at a quarter of a mile’s distance from the Lodge, and although the tide did not admit of the large boat coming quite close to the jetty of loose stones which served as a pier, Jeanie, who was both bold and active, easily sprung ashore; but Mrs., Dolly positively refusing to commit herself to the same risk, the complaisant Mr. Archibald ordered the boat round to a more regular landing-place, at a considerable distance along the shore. He then prepared to land himself, that he might, in the meanwhile, accompany Jeanie to the Lodge. But as there was no mistaking the woodland lane, which led from thence to the shore, and as the moonlight showed her one of the white chimneys rising out of the wood which embosomed the building, Jeanie declined this favour with thanks, and requested him to proceed with Mrs. Dolly, who, being “in a country where the ways were so strange to her, had mair need of countenance.”
This, indeed, was a fortunate circumstance, and might even be said to save poor Cowslip’s life, if it was true, as she herself used solemnly to aver, that she must positively have expired for fear, if she had been left alone in the boat with six wild Highlanders in kilts.
The night was so exquisitely beautiful, that Jeanie, instead of immediately directing her course towards the Lodge, stood looking after the boat as it again put off from the side, and rowed into the little bay, the dark figures of her companions growing less and less distinct as they diminished in the distance, and the jorram, or melancholy boat-song of the rowers, coming on the ear with softened and sweeter sound, until the boat rounded the headland, and was lost to her observation.
Still Jeanie remained in the same posture, looking out upon the sea. It would, she was aware, be some time ere her companions could reach the Lodge, as the distance by the more convenient landing-place was considerably greater than from the point where she stood, and she was not sorry to have an opportunity to spend the interval by herself.
The wonderful change which a few weeks had wrought in her situation, from shame and grief, and almost despair, to honour, joy, and a fair prospect of future happiness, passed before her eyes with a sensation which brought the tears into them. Yet they flowed at the same time from another source. As human happiness is never perfect, and as well-constructed minds are never more sensible of the distresses of those whom they love, than when their own situation forms a contrast with them, Jeanie’s affectionate regrets turned to the fate of her poor sister–the child of so many hopes–the fondled nursling of so many years–now an exile, and, what was worse, dependent on the will of a man, of whose habits she had every reason to entertain the worst opinion, and who, even in his strongest paroxysms of remorse, had appeared too much a stranger to the feelings of real penitence.
While her thoughts were occupied with these melancholy reflections, a shadowy figure seemed to detach itself from the copsewood on her right hand. Jeanie started, and the stories of apparitions and wraiths, seen by solitary travellers in wild situations, at such times, and in such an hour, suddenly came full upon her imagination. The figure glided on, and as it came betwixt her and the moon, she was aware that it had the appearance of a woman. A soft voice twice repeated, “Jeanie–Jeanie!”– Was it indeed–could it be the voice of her sister?–Was she still among the living, or had the grave given uly its tenant?–Ere she could state these questions to her own mind, Effie, alive, and in the body, had clasped her in her arms and was straining her to her bosom, and devouring her with kisses. “I have wandered here,” she said, “like a ghaist, to see you, and nae wonder you take me for ane–I thought but to see you gang by, or to hear the sound of your voice; but to speak to yoursell again, Jeanie, was mair than I deserved, and mair than I durst pray for.”
“O Effie! how came ye here alone, and at this hour, and on the wild seabeach?–Are you sure it’s your ain living sell?” There was something of Effie’s former humour in her practically answering the question by a gentle pinch, more beseeming the fingers of a fairy than of a ghost. And again the sisters embraced, and laughed, and wept by turns.
“But ye maun gang up wi’ me to the Lodge, Effie,” said Jeanie, “and tell me a’ your story–I hae gude folk there that will make ye welcome for my sake.”
“Na, na, Jeanie,” replied her sister sorrowfully,–“ye hae forgotten what I am–a banished outlawed creature, scarce escaped the gallows by your being the bauldest and the best sister that ever lived–I’ll gae near nane o’ your grand friends, even if there was nae danger to me.”
“There is nae danger–there shall be nae danger,” said Jeanie eagerly. “O Effie, dinna be wilfu’–be guided for ance–we will be sae happy a’ thegither!”
“I have a’ the happiness I deserve on this side of the grave, now that I hae seen you,” answered Effie; “and whether there were danger to mysell or no, naebody shall ever say that I come with my cheat-the-gallows face to shame my sister among her grand friends.”
“I hae nae grand friends,” said Jeanie; “nae friends but what are friends of yours–Reuben Butler and my father.–O unhappy lassie, dinna be dour, and turn your back on your happiness again! We wunna see another acquaintance–Come hame to us, your ain dearest friends–it’s better sheltering under an auld hedge than under a new-planted wood.”
“It’s in vain speaking, Jeanie,–I maun drink as I hae brewed–I am married, and I maun follow my husband for better for worse.”
“Married, Effie!” exclaimed Jeanie–“Misfortunate creature! and to that awfu'”
“Hush, hush,” said Effie, clapping one hand on her mouth, and pointing to the thicket with the other, “he is yonder.” She said this in a tone which showed that her husband had found means to inspire her with awe, as well as affection. At this moment a man issued from the wood.
It was young Staunton. Even by the imperfect light of the moon, Jeanie could observe that he was handsomely dressed, and had the air of a person of rank.
“Effie,” he said, “our time is well-nigh spent–the skiff will be aground in the creek, and I dare not stay longer.–I hope your sister will allow me to salute her?” But Jeanie shrunk back from him with a feeling of internal abhorrence. “Well,” he said, “it does not much signify; if you keep up the feeling of ill-will, at least you do not act upon it, and I thank you for your respect to my secret, when a word (which in your place I would have spoken at once) would have cost me my life. People say, you should keep from the wife of your bosom the secret that concerns your neck–my wife and her sister both know mine, and I shall not sleep a wink the less sound.”
“But are you really married to my sister, sir?” asked Jeanie, in great doubt and anxiety; for the haughty, careless tone in which he spoke seemed to justify her worst apprehensions.
“I really am legally married, and by my own name,” replied Staunton, more gravely.
“And your father–and your friends?”
“And my father and my friends must just reconcile themselves to that which is done and cannot be undone,” replied Staunton. “However, it is my intention, in order to break off dangerous connections, and to let my friends come to their temper, to conceal my marriage for the present, and stay abroad for some years. So that you will not hear of us for some time, if ever you hear of us again at all. It would be dangerous, you must be aware, to keep up the correspondence; for all would guess that the husband of Effie was the–what shall I call myself?–the slayer of Porteous.”
Hard-hearted light man! thought Jeanie–to what a character she has intrusted her happiness!–She has sown the wind, and maun reap the whirlwind.
“Dinna think ill o’ him,” said Effie, breaking away from her husband, and leading Jeanie a step or two out of hearing–“dinna think very ill o’ him–he’s gude to me, Jeanie–as gude as I deserve–And he is determined to gie up his bad courses–Sae, after a’, dinna greet for Effie; she is better off than she has wrought for.–But you–oh, you!–how can you be happy eneugh! never till ye get to heaven, where a’body is as gude as yoursell.–Jeanie, if I live and thrive, ye shall hear of me–if not, just forget that sic a creature ever lived to vex ye–fare ye weel–fare –fare ye weel!”
She tore herself from her sister’s arms–rejoined her husband–they plunged into the copsewood, and she saw them no more. The whole scene had the effect of a vision, and she could almost have believed it such, but that very soon after they quitted her, she heard the sound of oars, and a skiff was seen on the firth, pulling swiftly towards the small smuggling sloop which lay in the offing. It was on board of such a vessel that Effie had embarked at Portobello, and Jeanie had no doubt that the same conveyance was destined, as Staunton had hinted, to transport them to a foreign country.
Although it was impossible to determine whether this interview, while it was passing, gave more pain or pleasure to Jeanie Deans, yet the ultimate impression which remained on her mind was decidedly favourable. Effie was married–made, according to the common phrase, an honest woman–that was one main point; it seemed also as if her husband were about to abandon the path of gross vice in which he had run so long and so desperately– that was another. For his final and effectual conversion he did not want understanding, and God knew his own hour.
Such were the thoughts with which Jeanie endeavoured to console her anxiety respecting her sister’s future fortune. On her arrival at the lodge, she found Archibald in some anxiety at her stay, and about to walk out in quest of her. A headache served as an apology for retiring to rest, in order to conceal her visible agitation of mind from her companions.
By this secession also she escaped a scene of a different sort. For, as if there were danger in all gigs, whether by sea or land, that of Knockdunder had been run down by another boat, an accident owing chiefly to the drunkenness of the Captain, his crew, and passengers. Knockdunder, and two or three guests, whom he was bringing along with him to finish the conviviality of the evening at the Lodge, got a sound ducking; but, being rescued by the crew of the boat which endangered them, there was no ultimate loss, excepting that of the Captain’s laced hat, which, greatly to the satisfaction of the Highland part of the district, as well as to the improvement of the conformity of his own personal appearance, he replaced by a smart Highland bonnet next day. Many were the vehement threats of vengeance which, on the succeeding morning, the gracious Duncan threw out against the boat which had upset him; but as neither she, nor the small smuggling vessel to which she belonged, was any longer to be seen in the firth, he was compelled to sit down with the affront. This was the more hard, he said, as he was assured the mischief was done on purpose, these scoundrels having lurked about after they had landed every drop of brandy, and every bag of tea they had on board; and he understood the coxswain had been on shore, making particular inquiries concerning the time when his boat was to cross over, and to return, and so forth.
“Put the neist time they meet me on the firth,” said Duncan, with great majesty, “I will teach the moonlight rapscallions and vagabonds to keep their ain side of the road, and pe tamn’d to them!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD.
Lord! who would live turmoiled in a court, And may enjoy such quiet walks as these? Shakespeare.
Within a reasonable time after Butler was safely and comfortably settled in his living, and Jeanie had taken up her abode at Auchingower with her father,–the precise extent of which interval we request each reader to settle according to his own sense of what is decent and proper upon the occasion,–and after due proclamation of banns, and all other formalities, the long wooing of this worthy pair was ended by their union in the holy bands of matrimony. On this occasion, David Deans stoutly withstood the iniquities of pipes, fiddles, and promiscuous dancing, to the great wrath of the Captain of Knockdunder, who said, if he “had guessed it was to be sic a tamn’d Quakers’ meeting, he wad hae seen them peyont the cairn before he wad hae darkened their doors.”
And so much rancour remained on the spirits of the gracious Duncan upon this occasion, that various “picqueerings,” as David called them, took place upon the same and similar topics and it was only in consequence of an accidental visit of the Duke to his Lodge at Roseneath, that they were put a stop to. But upon that occasion his Grace showed such particular respect to Mr. and Mrs. Butler, and such favour even to old David, that Knockdunder held it prudent to change his course towards the latter. He, in future, used to express himself among friends, concerning the minister and his wife, as “very worthy decent folk, just a little over strict in their notions; put it was pest for thae plack cattle to err on the safe side.” And respecting David, he allowed that “he was an excellent judge of nowte and sheep, and a sensible eneugh carle, an it werena for his tamn’d Cameronian nonsense, whilk it is not worth while of a shentleman to knock out of an auld silly head, either by force of reason or otherwise.” So that, by avoiding topics of dispute, the personages of our tale lived in great good habits with the gracious Duncan, only that he still grieved David’s soul, and set a perilous example to the congregation, by sometimes bringing his pipe to the church during a cold winter day, and almost always sleeping during sermon in the summer time.
Mrs. Butler, whom we must no longer, if we can help it, term by the familiar name of Jeanie, brought into the married state the same firm mind and affectionate disposition–the same natural and homely good sense, and spirit of useful exertion–in a word, all the domestic good qualities of which she had given proof during her maiden life. She did not indeed rival Butler in learning; but then no woman more devoutly venerated the extent of her husband’s erudition. She did not pretend to understand his expositions of divinity; but no minister of the Presbytery had his humble dinner so well arranged, his clothes and linen in equal good order, his fireside so neatly swept, his parlour so clean, and his books so well dusted.
If he talked to Jeanie of what she did not understand–and (for the man was mortal, and had been a schoolmaster) he sometimes did harangue more scholarly and wisely than was necessary–she listened in placid silence; and whenever the point referred to common life, and was such as came under the grasp of a strong natural understanding, her views were more forcible, and her observations more acute, than his own. In acquired politeness of manners, when it happened that she mingled a little in society, Mrs. Butler was, of course, judged deficient. But then she had that obvious wish to oblige, and that real and natural good-breeding depending on, good sense and good humour, which, joined to a considerable degree of archness and liveliness of manner, rendered her behaviour acceptable to all with whom she was called upon to associate. Notwithstanding her strict attention to all domestic affairs, she always appeared the clean well-dressed mistress of the house, never the sordid household drudge. When complimented on this occasion by Duncan Knock, who swore “that he thought the fairies must help her, since her house was always clean, and nobody ever saw anybody sweeping it,” she modestly replied, “That much might be dune by timing ane’s turns.”
Duncan replied, “He heartily wished she could teach that art to the huzzies at the Lodge, for he could never discover that the house was washed at a’, except now and then by breaking his shins over the pail– Cot tamn the jauds!”
Of lesser matters there is not occasion to speak much. It may easily be believed that the Duke’s cheese was carefully made, and so graciously accepted, that the offering became annual. Remembrances and acknowledgments of past favours were sent to Mrs. Bickerton and Mrs. Glass, and an amicable intercourse maintained from time to time with these two respectable and benevolent persons.
It is especially necessary to mention that, in the course of five years, Mrs. Butler had three children, two boys and a girl, all stout healthy babes of grace, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and strong-limbed. The boys were named David and Reuben, an order of nomenclature which was much to the satisfaction of the old hero of the Covenant, and the girl, by her mother’s special desire, was christened Euphemia, rather contrary to the wish both of her father and husband, who nevertheless loved Mrs. Butler too well, and were too much indebted to her for their hours of happiness, to withstand any request which she made with earnestness, and as a gratification to herself. But from some feeling, I know not of what kind, the child was never distinguished by the name of Effie, but by the abbreviation of Femie, which in Scotland is equally commonly applied to persons called Euphemia.
In this state of quiet and unostentatious enjoyment, there were, besides the ordinary rubs and ruffles which disturb even the most uniform life, two things which particularly chequered Mrs. Butler’s happiness. “Without these,” she said to our informer, “her life would have been but too happy; and perhaps,” she added, “she had need of some crosses in this world to remind her that there was a better to come behind it.”
The first of these related to certain polemical skirmishes betwixt her father and her husband, which, notwithstanding the mutual respect and affection they entertained for each other, and their great love for her– notwithstanding, also, their general agreement in strictness, and even severity, of Presbyterian principle–often threatened unpleasant weather between them. David Deans, as our readers must be aware, was sufficiently opinionative and intractable, and having prevailed on himself to become a member of a kirk-session under the Established Church, he felt doubly obliged to evince that, in so doing, he had not compromised any whit of his former professions, either in practice or principle. Now Mr. Butler, doing all credit to his father-in-law’s motives, was frequently of opinion that it were better to drop out of memory points of division and separation, and to act in the manner most likely to attract and unite all parties who were serious in religion. Moreover, he was not pleased, as a man and a scholar, to be always dictated to by his unlettered father-in-law; and as a clergyman, he did not think it fit to seem for ever under the thumb of an elder of his own kirk-session. A proud but honest thought carried his opposition now and then a little farther than it would otherwise have gone. “My brethren,” he said, “will suppose I am flattering and conciliating the old man for the sake of his succession, if I defer and give way to him on every occasion; and, besides, there are many on which I neither can nor will conscientiously yield to his notions. I cannot be persecuting old women for witches, or ferreting out matter of scandal among the young ones, which might otherwise have remained concealed.”
From this difference of opinion it happened that, in many cases of nicety, such as in owning certain defections, and failing to testify against certain backslidings of the time, in not always severely tracing forth little matters of scandal and /fama clamosa,/ which David called a loosening of the reins of discipline, and in failing to demand clear testimonies in other points of controversy which had, as it were, drifted to leeward with the change of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely to defend the other party.
She reminded her father that Butler had not “his experience of the auld and wrastling times, when folk were gifted wi’ a far look into eternity, to make up for the oppressions whilk they suffered here below in time. She freely allowed that many devout ministers and professors in times past had enjoyed downright revelation, like the blessed Peden, and Lundie, and Cameron, and Renwick, and John Caird the tinkler, wha entered into the secrets, and Elizabeth Melvil, Lady Culross, wha prayed in her bed, surrounded by a great many Christians in a large room, in whilk it was placed on purpose, and that for three hours’ time, with wonderful assistance; and Lady Robertland, whilk got six sure outgates of grace, and mony other in times past; and of a specially, Mr. John Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn, who, having a beloved child sick to death of the crewels, was free to expostulate with his Maker with such impatience of displeasure, and complaining so bitterly, that at length it was said unto him, that he was heard for this time, but that he was requested to use no such boldness in time coming; so that when he returned he found the child sitting up in the bed hale and fair, with all its wounds closed, and supping its parritch, whilk babe he had left at the time of death. But though these things might be true in these needful times, she contended that those ministers who had not seen such vouchsafed and especial mercies, were to seek their rule in the records of ancient times; and therefore Reuben was carefu’ both to search the Scriptures and the books written by wise and good men of old; and sometimes in this way it wad happen that twa precious saints might pu’ sundry wise, like twa cows riving at the same hayband.”
To this David used to reply, with a sigh, “Ah, hinny, thou kenn’st little o’t; but that saam John Scrimgeour, that blew open the gates of heaven as an it had been wi’ a sax-pund cannonball, used devoutly to wish that most part of books were burnt, except the Bible. Reuben’s a gude lad and a kind–I have aye allowed that; but as to his not allowing inquiry anent the scandal of Marjory Kittlesides and Rory MacRand, under pretence that they have southered sin wi’ marriage, it’s clear agane the Christian discipline o’ the kirk. And then there’s Aily MacClure of Deepheugh, that practises her abominations, spacing folks’ fortunes wi’ egg-shells, and mutton-banes, and dreams and divinations, whilk is a scandal to ony Christian land to suffer sic a wretch to live; and I’ll uphaud that, in a’ judicatures, civil or ecclesiastical.”
“I daresay ye are very right, father,” was the general style of Jeanie’s answer; “but ye maun come down to the Manse to your dinner the day. The bits o’ bairns, puir things, are wearying to see their luckie dad; and Reuben never sleeps weel, nor I neither, when you and he hae had ony bit outcast.”
“Nae outcast, Jeanie; God forbid I suld cast out wi’ thee, or aught that is dear to thee!” And he put on his Sundays coat, and came to the Manse accordingly.
With her husband, Mrs. Butler had a more direct conciliatory process. Reuben had the utmost respect for the old man’s motives, and affection for his person, as well as gratitude for his early friendship. So that, upon any such occasion of accidental irritation, it was only necessary to remind him with delicacy of his father-in-law’s age, of his scanty education, strong prejudices, and family distresses. The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they shall inherit the earth.
The second crook in Mrs. Butler’s lot, to use the language of her father, was the distressing circumstance, that she had never heard of her sister’s safety, or of the circumstances in which she found herself, though betwixt four and five years had elapsed since they had parted on the beach of the island of Roseneath. Frequent intercourse was not to be expected–not to be desired, perhaps, in their relative situations; but Effie had promised, that, if she lived and prospered, her sister should hear from her. She must then be no more, or sunk into some abyss of misery, since she had never redeemed her pledge. Her silence seemed strange and portentous, and wrung from Jeanie, who could never forget the early years of their intimacy, the most painful anticipation concerning her fate. At length, however, the veil was drawn aside.
One day, as the Captain of Knockdunder had called in at the Manse, on his return from some business in the Highland part of the parish, and had been accommodated, according to his special request, with a mixture of milk, brandy, honey, and water, which he said Mrs. Butler compounded “potter than ever a woman in Scotland,”–for, in all innocent matters, she studied the taste of every one around her,–he said to Butler, “Py the py, minister, I have a letter here either for your canny pody of a wife or you, which I got when I was last at Glasco; the postage comes to fourpence, which you may either pay me forthwith, or give me tooble or quits in a hit at packcammon.”
The playing at backgammon and draughts had been a frequent amusement of Mr. Whackbairn, Butler’s principal, when at Liberton school. The minister, therefore, still piqued himself on his skill at both games, and occasionally practised them, as strictly canonical, although David Deans, whose notions of every kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlour, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men. Indeed, Mrs. Butler was sometimes chidden for removing these implements of pastime into some closet or corner out of sight. “Let them be where they are, Jeanie,” would Butler say upon such occasions; “I am not conscious of following this, or any other trifling relaxation, to the interruption of my more serious studies, and still more serious duties. I will not, therefore, have it supposed that I am indulging by stealth, and against my conscience, in an amusement which, using it so little as I do, I may well practise openly, and without any check of mind–/Nil conscire sibi,/ Jeanie, that is my motto; which signifies, my love, the honest and open confidence which a man ought to entertain when he is acting openly, and without any sense of doing wrong.”
Such being Butler’s humour, he accepted the Captain’s defiance to a twopenny hit at backgammon, and handed the letter to his wife, observing the post-mark was York, but, if it came from her friend Mrs. Bickerton, she had considerably improved her handwriting, which was uncommon at her years.
Leaving the gentlemen to their game, Mrs. Butler went to order something for supper, for Captain Duncan had proposed kindly to stay the night with them, and then carelessly broke open her letter. It was not from Mrs. Bickerton; and, after glancing over the first few lines, she soon found it necessary to retire to her own bedroom, to read the document at leisure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH.
Happy thou art! then happy be, Nor envy me my lot;
Thy happy state I envy thee, And peaceful cot.
Lady Charlotte Campbell.
The letter, which Mrs. Butler, when retired into her own apartment, perused with anxious wonder, was certainly from Effie, although it had no other signature than the letter E.; and although the orthography, style, and penmanship, were very far superior not only to anything which Effie could produce, who, though a lively girl, had been a remarkably careless scholar, but even to her more considerate sister’s own powers of composition and expression. The manuscript was a fair Italian hand, though something stiff and constrained–the spelling and the diction that of a person who had been accustomed to read good composition, and mix in good society.
The tenor of the letter was as follows:–
“My Dearest Sister,–At many risks I venture to write to you, to inform you that I am still alive, and, as to worldly situation, that I rank higher than I could expect or merit. If wealth, and distinction, and an honourable rank, could make a woman happy, I have them all; but you, Jeanie, whom the world might think placed far beneath me in all these respects, are far happier than I am. I have had means of hearing of your welfare, my dearest Jeanie, from time to time–I think I should have broken my heart otherwise. I have learned with great pleasure of your increasing family. We have not been worthy of such a blessing; two infants have been successively removed, and we are now childless–God’s will be done! But, if we had a child, it would perhaps divert him from the gloomy thoughts which make him terrible to himself and others. Yet do not let me frighten you, Jeanie; he continues to be kind, and I am far better off than I deserve. You will wonder at my better scholarship; but when I was abroad, I had the best teachers, and I worked hard, because my progress pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to distress him, especially when he looks backward. When I look backward myself, I have always a ray of comfort: it is in the generous conduct of a sister, who forsook me not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of Dundee’s wars–that is, our Fr’s old friend Clavers, you know–and he says I was educated in a Scotch convent; indeed, I lived in such a place long enough to enable me to support the character. But when a countryman approaches me, and begins to talk, as they all do, of the various families engaged in Dundee’s affair, and to make inquiries into my connections, and when I see his eye bent on mine with such an expression of agony, my terror brings me to the very risk of detection. Good-nature and politeness have hitherto saved me, as they prevented people from pressing on me with distressing questions. But how long–O how long, will this be the case!–And if I bring this disgrace on him, he will hate me–he will kill me, for as much as he loves me; he is as jealous of his family honour now, as ever he was careless about it. I have been in England four months, and have often thought of writing to you; and yet, such are the dangers that might arise from an intercepted letter, that I have hitherto forborne. But now I am obliged to run the risk. Last week I saw your great friend, the D. of A. He came to my box, and sate by me; and something in the play put him in mind of you– Gracious Heaven! he told over your whole London journey to all who were in the box, but particularly to the wretched creature who was the occasion of it all. If he had known–if he could have conceived, beside whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!–I suffered with courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie–I fainted; and my agony was imputed partly to the heat of the place, and partly to my extreme sensibility; and, hypocrite all over, I encouraged both opinions–anything but discovery! Luckily, /he/ was not there. But the incident has more alarms. I am obliged to meet your great man often; and he seldom sees me without talking of E. D. and J. D., and R. B. and D. D., as persons in whom my amiable sensibility is interested. My amiable sensibility!!!–And then the cruel tone of light indifference with which persons in the fashionable world speak together on the most affecting subjects! To hear my guilt, my folly, my agony, the foibles and weaknesses of my friends–even your heroic exertions, Jeanie, spoken of in the drolling style which is the present tone in fashionable life– Scarce all that I formerly endured is equal to this state of irritation– then it was blows and stabs–now it is pricking to death with needles and pins.–He–I mean the D.–goes down next month to spend the shooting-season in Scotland–he says, he makes a point of always dining one day at the Manse–be on your guard, and do not betray yourself, should he mention me–Yourself, alas! /you/ have nothing to betray– nothing to fear; you, the pure, the virtuous, the heroine of unstained faith, unblemished purity, what can you have to fear from the world or its proudest minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands–it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!–The enclosure will reach you twice a-year–do not refuse it–it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it may do good–with me it never can.
“Write to me soon, Jeanie, or I shall remain in the agonising apprehension that this has fallen into wrong hands–Address simply to L. S., under cover, to the Reverend George Whiterose, in the Minster-Close, York. He thinks I correspond with some of my noble Jacobite relations who are in Scotland. How high-church and jacobitical zeal would burn in his checks, if he knew he was the agent, not of Euphemia Setoun, of the honourable house of Winton, but of E. D., daughter of a Cameronian cowfeeder!–Jeanie, I can laugh yet sometimes–but God protect you from such mirth.–My father–I mean your father, would say it was like the idle crackling of thorns; but the thorns keep their poignancy, they remain unconsumed. Farewell, my dearest Jeanie–Do not show this even to Mr. Butler, much less to any one else. I have every respect for him, but his principles are over strict, and my case will not endure severe handling.–I rest your affectionate sister, E.”
In this long letter there was much to surprise as well as to distress Mrs. Butler. That Effie–her sister Effie, should be mingling freely in society, and apparently on not unequal terms, with the Duke of Argyle, sounded like something so extraordinary, that she even doubted if she read truly. Not was it less marvellous, that, in the space of four years, her education should have made such progress. Jeanie’s humility readily allowed that Effie had always, when she chose it, been smarter at her book than she herself was, but then she was very idle, and, upon the whole, had made much less proficiency. Love, or fear, or necessity, however, had proved an able school-mistress, and completely supplied all her deficiencies.
What Jeanie least liked in the tone of the letter, was a smothered degree of egotism. “We should have heard little about her,” said Jeanie to herself, “but that she was feared the Duke might come to learn wha she was, and a’ about her puir friends here; but Effie, puir thing, aye looks her ain way, and folk that do that think mair o’ themselves than of their neighbours.–I am no clear about keeping her siller,” she added, taking up a L50 note which had fallen out of the paper to the floor. “We hae eneugh, and it looks unco like theftboot, or hushmoney, as they ca’ it; she might hae been sure that I wad say naething wad harm her, for a’ the gowd in Lunnon. And I maun tell the minister about it. I dinna see that she suld be sae feared for her ain bonny bargain o’ a gudeman, and that I shouldna reverence Mr. Butler just as much; and sae I’ll e’en tell him, when that tippling body the Captain has ta’en boat in the morning.–But I wonder at my ain state of mind,” she added, turning back, after she had made a step or two to the door to join the gentlemen; “surely I am no sic a fule as to be angry that Effie’s a braw lady, while I am only a minister’s wife?–and yet I am as petted as a bairn, when I should bless God, that has redeemed her from shame, and poverty, and guilt, as ower likely she might hae been plunged into.”
Sitting down upon a stool at the foot of the bed, she folded her arms upon her bosom, saying within herself, “From this place will I not rise till I am in a better frame of mind;” and so placed, by dint of tearing the veil from the motives of her little temporary spleen against her sister, she compelled herself to be ashamed of them, and to view as blessings the advantages of her sister’s lot, while its embarrassments were the necessary consequences of errors long since committed. And thus she fairly vanquished the feeling of pique which she naturally enough entertained, at seeing Effie, so long the object of her care and her pity, soar suddenly so high above her in life, as to reckon amongst the chief objects of her apprehension the risk of their relationship being discovered.
When this unwonted burst of /amour propre/ was thoroughly subdued, she walked down to the little parlour where the gentlemen were finishing their game, and heard from the Captain a confirmation of the news intimated in her letter, that the Duke of Argyle was shortly expected at Roseneath.
“He’ll find plenty of moor-fowls and plack-cock on the moors of Auchingower, and he’ll pe nae doubt for taking a late dinner, and a ped at the Manse, as he has done pefore now.”
“He has a gude right, Captain,” said Jeanie.
“Teil ane potter to ony ped in the kintra,” answered the Captain. “And ye had potter tell your father, puir body, to get his beasts a’ in order, and put his tamn’d Cameronian nonsense out o’ his head for twa or three days, if he can pe so opliging; for fan I speak to him apout prute pestil, he answers me out o’ the Pible, whilk is not using a shentleman weel, unless it be a person of your cloth, Mr. Putler.”
No one understood better than Jeanie the merit of the soft answer, which turneth away wrath; and she only smiled, and hoped that his Grace would find everything that was under her father’s care to his entire satisfaction.
But the Captain, who had lost the whole postage of the letter at backgammon, was in the pouting mood not unusual to losers, and which, says the proverb, must be allowed to them.
“And, Master Putler, though you know I never meddle with the things of your kirk-sessions, yet I must pe allowed to say that I will not be pleased to allow Ailie MacClure of Deepheugh to be poonished as a witch, in respect she only spaes fortunes, and does not lame, or plind, or pedevil any persons, or coup cadger’s carts, or ony sort of mischief; put only tells people good fortunes, as anent our poats killing so many seals and doug-fishes, whilk is very pleasant to hear.”
“The woman,” said Butler, “is, I believe, no witch, but a cheat: and it is only on that head that she is summoned to the kirk-session, to cause her to desist in future from practising her impostures upon ignorant persons.”
“I do not know,” replied the gracious Duncan, “what her practices or postures are, but I pelieve that if the poys take hould on her to duck her in the Clachan purn, it will be a very sorry practice–and I pelieve, moreover, that if I come in thirdsman among you at the kirk-sessions, you will be all in a tamn’d pad posture indeed.”
Without noticing this threat, Mr. Butler replied, “That he had not attended to the risk of ill-usage which the poor woman might undergo at the hands of the rabble, and that he would give her the necessary admonition in private, instead of bringing her before the assembled session.”
“This,” Duncan said, “was speaking like a reasonable shentleman;” and so the evening passed peaceably off.
Next morning, after the Captain had swallowed his morning draught of Athole brose, and departed in his coach and six, Mrs. Butler anew deliberated upon communicating to her husband her sister’s letter. But she was deterred by the recollection, that, in doing so, she would unveil to him the whole of a dreadful secret, of which, perhaps, his public character might render him an unfit depositary. Butler already had reason to believe that Effie had eloped with that same Robertson who had been a leader in the Porteous mob, and who lay under sentence of death for the robbery at Kirkcaldy. But he did not know his identity with George Staunton, a man of birth and fortune, who had now apparently reassumed his natural rank in society. Jeanie had respected Staunton’s own confession as sacred, and upon reflection she considered the letter of her sisteras equally so, and resolved to mention the contents to no one.
On reperusing the letter, she could not help observing the staggering and unsatisfactory condition of those who have risen to distinction by undue paths, and the outworks and bulwarks of fiction and falsehood, by which they are under the necessity of surrounding and defending their precarious advantages. But she was not called upon, she thought, to unveil her sister’s original history–it would restore no right to any one, for she was usurping none–it would only destroy her happiness, and degrade her in the public estimation. Had she been wise, Jeanie thought she would have chosen seclusion and privacy, in place of public life and gaiety; but the power of choice might not be hers. The money, she thought, could not be returned without her seeming haughty and unkind. She resolved, therefore, upon reconsidering this point, to employ it as occasion should serve, either in educating her children better than her own means could compass, or for their future portion. Her sister had enough, was strongly bound to assist Jeanie by any means in her power, and the arrangement was so natural and proper, that it ought not to be declined out of fastidious or romantic delicacy. Jeanie accordingly wrote to her sister, acknowledging her letter, and requesting to hear from her as often as she could. In entering into her own little details of news, chiefly respecting domestic affairs, she experienced a singular vacillation of ideas; for sometimes she apologised for mentioning things unworthy the notice of a lady of rank, and then recollected that everything which concerned her should be interesting to Effie. Her letter, under the cover of Mr. Whiterose, she committed to the post-office at Glasgow, by the intervention of a parishioner who had business at that city.
The next week brought the Duke to Roseneath, and shortly afterwards he intimated his intention of sporting in their neighbourhood, and taking his bed at the Manse; an honour which he had once or twice done to its inmates on former occasions.
Effie proved to be perfectly right in her auticipations. The Duke had hardly set himself down at Mrs. Butler’s right hand, and taken upon himself the task of carving the excellent “barn-door chucky,” which had been selected as the high dishes upon this honourable occasion, before he began to speak of Lady Staunton of Willingham, in Lincolnshire, and the great noise which her wit and beauty made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared–but Effie’s wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among their inferiors.
“She has been the ruling belle–the blazing star–the universal toast of the winter,” said the Duke; “and is really the most beautiful creature that was seen at court upon the birth-day.”
The birthday! and at court!–Jeanie was annihilated, remembering well her own presentation, all its extraordinary circumstances, and particularly the cause of it.
“I mention this lady particularly to you, Mrs. Butler,” said the Duke, “because she has something in the sound of her voice, and cast of her countenance, that reminded me of you–not when you look so pale though– you have over-fatigued yourself–you must pledge me in a glass of wine.”
She did so, and Butler observed, “It was dangerous flattery in his Grace to tell a poor minister’s wife that she was like a court-beauty.”
“Oho, Mr. Butler,” said the Duke, “I find you are growing jealous; but it’s rather too late in the day, for you know how long I have admired your wife. But seriously, there is betwixt them one of those inexplicable likenesses which we see in countenances, that do not otherwise resemble each other.”
“The perilous part of the compliment has flown off,” thought Mr. Butler.
His wife, feeling the awkwardness of silence, forced herself to say, “That, perhaps, the lady might be her countrywoman, and the language might have made some resemblance.”
“You are quite right,” replied the Duke. “She is a Scotch-woman, and speaks with a Scotch accent, and now and then a provincial word drops out so prettily, that it is quite Doric, Mr. Butler.”
“I should have thought,” said the clergyman, “that would have sounded vulgar in the great city.”
“Not at all,” replied the Duke; “you must suppose it is not the broad coarse Scotch that is spoken in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, or in the Gorbals. This lady has been very little in Scotland, in fact she was educated in a convent abroad, and speaks that pure court-Scotch, which was common in my younger days; but it is so generally disused now, that it sounds like a different dialect, entirely distinct from our modern /patois./”
Notwithstanding her anxiety, Jeanie could not help admiring within herself, how the most correct judges of life and manners can be imposed on by their own preconceptions, while the Duke proceeded thus: “She is of the unfortunate house of Winton, I believe; but, being bred abroad, she had missed the opportunity of learning her own pedigree, and was obliged to me for informing her, that she must certainly come of the Setons of Windygoul. I wish you could have seen how prettily she blushed at her own ignorance. Amidst her noble and elegant manners, there is now and then a little touch of bashfulness and conventual rusticity, if I may call it so, that makes her quite enchanting. You see at once the rose that had bloomed untouched amid the chaste precincts of the cloister, Mr. Butler.”
True to the hint, Mr. Butler failed not to start with his
“Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,” etc.,
while his wife could hardly persuade herself that all this was spoken of Effie Deans, and by so competent a judge as the Duke of Argyle; and had she been acquainted with Catullus, would have thought the fortunes of her sister had reversed the whole passage.
She was, however, determined to obtain some indemnification for the anxious feelings of the moment, by gaining all the intelligence she could; and therefore ventured to make some inquiry about the husband of the lady his Grace admired so much.
“He is very rich,” replied the Duke; “of an ancient family, and has good manners: but he is far from being such a general favourite as his wife. Some people say he can be very pleasant–I never saw him so; but should rather judge him reserved, and gloomy, and capricious. He was very wild in his youth, they say, and has bad health; yet he is a good-looking man enough–a great friend of your Lord High Commissioner of the Kirk, Mr. Butler.”
“Then he is the friend of a very worthy and honourable nobleman,” said Butler.
“Does he admire his lady as much as other people do?” said Jeanie, in a low voice.
“Who–Sir George? They say he is very fond of her,” said the Duke; “but I observe she trembles a little when he fixes his eye on her, and that is no good sign–But it is strange how I am haunted by this resemblance of yours to Lady Staunton, in look and tone of voice. One would almost swear you were sisters.”
Jeanie’s distress became uncontrollable, and beyond concealment. The Duke of Argyle was much disturbed, good-naturedly ascribing it to his having unwittingly recalled, to her remembrance her family misfortunes. He was too well-bred to attempt to apologise; but hastened to change the subject, and arrange certain points of dispute which had occurred betwixt Duncan of Knock and the minister, acknowledging that his worthy substitute was sometimes a little too obstinate, as well as too energetic, in his executive measures.
Mr. Butler admitted his general merits; but said, “He would presume to apply to the worthy gentleman the words of the poet to Marrucinus Asinius,
Manu
Non belle uteris in joco atque vino.”
The discourse being thus turned on parish business, nothing farther occurred that can interest the reader.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH.
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench’d by an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth.
After this period, but under the most strict precautions against discovery, the sisters corresponded occasionally, exchanging letters about twice every year. Those of Lady Staunton spoke of her husband’s health and spirits as being deplorably uncertain; her own seemed also to be sinking, and one of the topics on which she most frequently dwelt was their want of family. Sir George Staunton, always violent, had taken some aversion at the next heir, whom he suspected of having irritated his friends against him during his absence; and he declared, be would bequeath Willingham and all its lands to an hospital, ere that fetch-and-carry tell-tale should inherit an acre of it.
“Had he but a child,” said the unfortunate wife, “or had that luckless infant survived, it would be some motive for living and for exertion. But Heaven has denied us a blessing which we have not deserved.”
Such complaints, in varied form, but turning frequently on the same topic, filled the letters which passed from the spacious but melancholy halls of Willingham, to the quiet and happy parsonage at Knocktarlitie. Years meanwhile rolled on amid these fruitless repinings. John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, died in the year 1743, universally lamented, but by none more than by the Butlers, to whom his benevolence had been so distinguished. He was succeeded by his brother Duke Archibald, with whom they had not the same intimacy; but who continued the protection which his brother had extended towards them. This, indeed, became more necessary than ever; for, after the breaking out and suppression of the rebellion in 1745, the peace of the country, adjacent to the Highlands, was considerably disturbed. Marauders, or men that had been driven to that desperate mode of life, quartered themselves in the fastnesses nearest to the Lowlands, which were their scene of plunder; and there is scarce a glen in the romantic and now peaceable Highlands of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbartonshire, where one or more did not take up their residence.
The prime pest of the parish of Knocktarlitie was a certain Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, or Black Duncan the Mischievous, whom we have already casually mentioned. This fellow had been originally a tinkler, or /caird,/ many of whom stroll about these districts; but when all police was disorganised by the civil war, he threw up his profession, and from half thief became whole robber; and being generally at the head of three or four active young fellows, and he himself artful, bold, and well acquainted with the passes, he plied his new profession with emolument to himself, and infinite plague to the country.
All were convinced that Duncan of Knock could have put down his namesake Donacha any morning he had a mind; for there were in the parish a set of stout young men, who had joined Argyle’s banner in the war under his old friend, and behaved very well on several occasions. And as for their leader, as no one doubted his courage, it was generally supposed that Donacha had found out the mode of conciliating his favour, a thing not very uncommon in that age and country. This was the more readily believed, as David Deans’s cattle (being the property of the Duke) were left untouched, when the minister’s cows were carried off by the thieves. Another attempt was made to renew the same act of rapine, and the cattle were in the act of being driven off, when Butler, laying his profession aside in a case of such necessity, put himself at the head of some of his neighbours, and rescued the creagh, an exploit at which Deans attended in person, notwithstanding his extreme old age, mounted on a Highland pony, and girded with an old broadsword, likening himself (for he failed not to arrogate the whole merit of the expedition) to David, the son of Jesse, when he recovered the spoil of Ziklag from the Amalekites. This spirited behaviour had so far a good effect, that Donacha dhu na Dunaigh kept his distance for some time to come; and, though his distant exploits were frequently spoken of, he did not exercise any depredations in that part of the country. He continued to flourish, and to be heard of occasionally, until the year 1751, when, if the fear of the second David had kept him in check, fate released him from that restraint, for the venerable patriarch of St. Leonard’s was that year gathered to his fathers.
David Deans died full of years and of honour. He is believed, for the exact time of his birth is not known, to have lived upwards of ninety years; for he used to speak of events as falling under his own knowledge, which happened about the time of the battle of Bothwell Bridge. It was said that he even bore arms there; for once, when a drunken Jacobite laird wished for a Bothwell Brigg whig, that “he might stow the lugs out of his head,” David informed him with a peculiar austerity of countenance, that, if he liked to try such a prank, there was one at his elbow; and it required the interference of Butler to preserve the peace.
He expired in the arms of his beloved daughter, thankful for all the blessings which Providence had vouchsafed to him while in this valley of strife and toil–and thankful also for the trials he had been visited with; having found them, he said, needful to mortify that spiritual pride and confidence in his own gifts, which was the side on which the wily Enemy did most sorely beset him. He prayed in the most affecting manner for Jeanie, her husband, and her family, and that her affectionate duty to the puir auld man might purchase her length of days here, and happiness hereafter; then, in a pathetic petition, too well understood by those who knew his family circumstances, he besought the Shepherd of souls, while gathering his flock, not to forget the little one that had strayed from the fold, and even then might be in the hands of the ravening wolf.–He prayed for the national Jerusalem, that peace might be in her land, and prosperity in her palaces–for the welfare of the honourable House of Argyle, and for the conversion of Duncan of Knockdunder. After this he was silent, being exhausted, nor did he again utter anything distinctly. He was heard, indeed, to mutter something about national defections, right-hand extremes, and left-hand failings off; but, as May Hettly observed, his head was carried at the time; and it is probable that these expressions occurred to him merely out of general habit, and that he died in the full spirit of charity with all men. About an hour afterwards he slept in the Lord.
Notwithstanding her father’s advanced age, his death was a severe shock to Mrs. Butler. Much of her time had been dedicated to attending to his health and his wishes, and she felt as if part of her business in the world was ended, when the good old man was no more. His wealth, which came nearly to fifteen hundred pounds, in disposable capital, served to raise the fortunes of the family at the Manse. How to dispose of this sum for the best advantage of his family, was matter of anxious consideration to Butler. “If we put it on heritable bond, we shall maybe lose the interest; for there’s that bond over Lounsbeck’s land, your father could neither get principal nor interest for it–If we bring it into the funds, we shall maybe lose the principal and all, as many did in the South Sea scheme. The little estate of Craigsture is in the market–it lies within two miles of the Manse, and Knock says his Grace has no thought to buy it. But they ask L2500, and they may, for it is worth the money; and were I to borrow the balance, the creditor might call it up suddenly, or in case of my death my family might be distressed.”
“And so if we had mair siller, we might buy that bonny pasture-ground, where the grass comes so early?” asked Jeanie.
“Certainly, my dear; and Knockdunder, who is a good judge, is strongly advising me to it. To be sure it is his nephew that is selling it.”
“Aweel, Reuben,” said Jeanie, “ye maun just look up a text in Scripture, as ye did when ye wanted siller before–just look up a text in the Bible.”
“Ah, Jeanie,” said Butler, laughing and pressing her hand at the same time, “the best people in these times can only work miracles once.”
“We will see,” said Jeanie composedly; and going to the closet in which she kept her honey, her sugar, her pots of jelly, her vials of the more ordinary medicines, and which served her, in short, as a sort of store-room, she jangled vials and gallipots, till, from out the darkest nook, well flanked by a triple row of bottles and jars, which she was under the necessity of displacing, she brought a cracked brown cann, with a piece of leather tied over the top. Its contents seemed to be written papers, thrust in disorder into this uncommon /secre’taire./ But from among these Jeanie brought an old clasped Bible, which had been David Deans’s companion in his earlier wanderings, and which he had given to his daughter when the failure of his eyes had compelled him to use one of a larger print. This she gave to Butler, who had been looking at her motions with some surprise, and desired him to see what that book could do for him. He opened the clasps, and to his astonishment a parcel of L50 bank-notes dropped out from betwixt the leaves, where they had been separately lodged, and fluttered upon the floor. “I didna think to hae tauld you o’ my wealth, Reuben,” said his wife, smiling at his surprise, “till on my deathbed, or maybe on some family pinch; but it wad be better laid out on yon bonny grass-holms, than lying useless here in this auld pigg.”
“How on earth came ye by that siller, Jeanie?–Why, here is more than a thousand pounds,” said Butler, lifting up and counting the notes.
“If it were ten thousand, it’s a’ honestly come by,” said Jeanie; “and troth I kenna how muckle there is o’t, but it’s a’ there that ever I got.–And as for how I came by it, Reuben–it’s weel come by, and honestly, as I said before–And it’s mair folk’s secret than mine, or ye wad hae kend about it lang syne; and as for onything else, I am not free to answer mair questions about it, and ye maun just ask me nane.”
“Answer me but one,” said Butler. “Is it all freely and indisputably your own property, to dispose of it as you think fit?–Is it possible no one has a claim in so large a sum except you?”
“It /was/ mine, free to dispose of it as I like,” answered Jeanie; “and I have disposed of it already, for now it is yours, Reuben–You are Bible Butler now, as well as your forbear, that my puir father had sic an ill will at. Only, if ye like, I wad wish Femie to get a gude share o’t when we are gane.”
“Certainly, it shall be as you choose–But who on earth ever pitched on such a hiding-place for temporal treasures?”
“That is just ane o’ my auld-fashioned gates, as you ca’ them, Reuben. I thought if Donacha Dhu was to make an outbreak upon us, the Bible was the last thing in the house he wad meddle wi’–but an ony mair siller should drap in, as it is not unlikely, I shall e’en pay it ower to you, and ye may lay it out your ain way.”
“And I positively must not ask you how you have come by all this money?” said the clergyman.
“Indeed, Reuben, you must not; for if you were asking me very sair I wad maybe tell you, and then I am sure I would do wrong.”
“But tell me,” said Butler, “is it anything that distresses your own mind?”
“There is baith weal and woe come aye wi’ world’s gear, Reuben; but ye maun ask me naething mair–This siller binds me to naething, and can never be speered back again.”
“Surely,” said Mr. Butler, when he had again counted over the money, as if to assure himself that the notes were real, “there was never man in the world had a wife like mine–a blessing seems to follow her.”
“Never,” said Jeanie, “since the enchanted princess in the bairn’s fairy tale, that kamed gold nobles out o’ the tae side of her haffit locks, and Dutch dollars out o’ the tother. But gang away now, minister, and put by the siller, and dinna keep the notes wampishing in your hand that gate, or I shall wish them in the brown pigg again, for fear we get a black cast about them–we’re ower near the hills in these times to be thought to hae siller in the house. And, besides, ye maun gree wi’ Knockdunder, that has the selling o’ the lands; and dinna you be simple and let him ken o’ this windfa’, but keep him to the very lowest penny, as if ye had to borrow siller to make the price up.”
In the last admonition, Jeanie showed distinctly, that, although she did not understand how to secure the money which came into her hands otherwise than by saving and hoarding it, yet she had some part of her father David’s shrewdness, even upon worldly subjects. And Reuben Butler was a prudent man, and went and did even as his wife had advised him. The news quickly went abroad into the parish that the minister had bought Craigsture; and some wished him joy, and some “were sorry it had gane out of the auld name.” However, his clerical brethren, understanding that he was under the necessity of going to Edinburgh about the ensuing Whitsunday, to get together David Deans’s cash to make up the purchase-money of his new acquisition, took the opportunity to name him their delegate to the General Assembly, or Convocation of the Scottish Church, which takes place usually in the latter end of the month of May.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH.
But who is this? what thing of sea or land– Female of sex it seems–
That so bedeck’d, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing?
Milton.
Not long after the incident of the Bible and the bank-notes, Fortune showed that she could surprise Mrs Butler as well as her husband. The Minister, in order to accomplish the various pieces of business which his unwonted visit to Edinburgh rendered necessary, had been under the necessity of setting out from home in the latter end of the month of February, concluding justly that he would find the space betwixt his departure and the term of Whitsunday (24th May) short enough for the purpose of bringing forward those various debtors of old David Deans, out of whose purses a considerable part of the price of his new purchase was to be made good.
Jeanie was thus in the unwonted situation of inhabiting a lonely house, and she felt yet more solitary from the death of the good old man who used to divide her cares with her husband. Her children were her principal resource, and to them she paid constant attention.
It happened a day or two after Butler’s departure that, while she was engaged in some domestic duties, she heard a dispute among the young folk, which, being maintained with obstinacy, appeared to call for her interference. All came to their natural umpire with their complaints. Femie, not yet ten years old, charged Davie and Reubie with an attempt to take away her book by force; and David and Reuben replied, the elder, “That it was not a book for Femie to read,” and Reuben, “That it was about a bad woman.”
“Where did you get the book, ye little hempie?” said Mrs. Butler. “How dare ye touch papa’s books when he is away?” But the little lady, holding fast a sheet of crumpled paper, declared “It was nane o’ papa’s books, and May Hettly had taken it off the muckle cheese which came from Inverara;” for, as was very natural to suppose, a friendly intercourse, with interchange of mutual civilities, was kept up from time to time between Mrs. Dolly Dutton, now Mrs. MacCorkindale, and her former friends.
Jeanie took the subject of contention out of the child’s hand, to satisfy herself of the propriety of her studies; but how much was she struck when she read upon the title of the broadside-sheet, “The Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words of Margaret MacCraw, or Murdockson, executed on Harabee Hill, near Carlisle, the day of 1737.” It was, indeed, one of those papers which Archibald had bought at Longtown, when he monopolised the pedlar’s stock, which Dolly had thrust into her trunk out of sheer economy. One or two copies, it seems, had remained in her repositories at Inverary, till she chanced to need them in packing a cheese, which, as a very superior production, was sent, in the way of civil challenge, to the dairy at Knocktarlitie.
The title of this paper, so strangely fallen into the very hands from which, in well-meant respect to her feelings, it had been so long detained, was of itself sufficiently startling; but the narrative itself was so interesting, that Jeanie, shaking herself loose from the children, ran upstairs to her own apartment, and bolted the door, to peruse it without interruption.
The narrative, which appeared to have been drawn up, or at least corrected, by the clergyman who attended this unhappy woman, stated the crime for which she suffered to have been “her active part in that atrocious robbery and murder, committed near two years since near Haltwhistle, for which the notorious Frank Levitt was committed for trial at Lancaster assizes. It was supposed the evidence of the accomplice Thomas Tuck, commonly called Tyburn Tom, upon which the woman had been convicted, would weigh equally heavy against him; although many were inclined to think it was Tuck himself who had struck the fatal blow, according to the dying statement of Meg Murdockson.”
After a circumstantial account of the crime for which she suffered, there was a brief sketch of Margaret’s life. It was stated that she was a Scotchwoman by birth, and married a soldier in the Cameronian regiment– that she long followed the camp, and had doubtless acquired in fields of battle, and similar scenes, that ferocity and love of plunder for which she had been afterwards distinguished–that her husband, having obtained his discharge, became servant to a beneficed clergyman of high situation and character in Lincolnshire, and that she acquired the confidence and esteem of that honourable family. She had lost this many years after her husband’s death, it was stated, in consequence of conniving at the irregularities of her daughter with the heir of the family, added to the suspicious circumstances attending the birth of a child, which was strongly suspected to have met with foul play, in order to preserve, if possible, the girl’s reputation. After this she had led a wandering life both in England and Scotland, under colour sometimes of telling fortunes, sometimes of driving a trade in smuggled wares, but, in fact, receiving stolen goods, and occasionally actively joining in the exploits by which they were obtained. Many of her crimes she had boasted of after conviction, and there was one circumstance for which she seemed to feel a mixture of joy and occasional compunction. When she was residing in the suburbs of Edinburgh during the preceding summer, a girl, who had been seduced by one of her confederates, was intrusted to her charge, and in her house delivered of a male infant. Her daughter, whose mind was in a state of derangement ever since she had lost her own child, according to the criminal’s account, carried off the poor girl’s infant, taking it for her own, of the reality of whose death she at times could not be persuaded.
Margaret Murdockson stated that she, for some time, believed her daughter had actually destroyed the infant in her mad fits, and that she gave the father to understand so, but afterwards learned that a female stroller had got it from her. She showed some compunction at having separated mother and child, especially as the mother had nearly suffered death, being condemned, on the Scotch law, for the supposed murder of her infant. When it was asked what possible interest she could have had in exposing the unfortunate girl to suffer for a crime she had not committed, she asked, if they thought she was going to put her own daughter into trouble to save another? She did not know what the Scotch law would have done to her for carrying the child away. This answer was by no means satisfactory to the clergyman, and he discovered, by close examination, that she had a deep and revengeful hatred against the young person whom she had thus injured. But the paper intimated, that, whatever besides she had communicated upon this subject was confided by her in private to the worthy and reverend Archdeacon who had bestowed such particular pains in affording her spiritual assistance. The broadside went on to intimate, that, after her execution, of which the particulars were given, her daughter, the insane person mentioned more than once, and who was generally known by the name of Madge Wildfire, had been very ill-used by the populace, under the belief that she was a sorceress, and an accomplice in her mother’s crimes, and had been with difficulty rescued by the prompt interference of the police.
Such (for we omit moral reflections, and all that may seem unnecessary to the explanation of our story) was the tenor of the broadside. To Mrs. Butler it contained intelligence of the highest importance, since it seemed to afford the most unequivocal proof of her sister’s innocence respecting the crime for which she had so nearly suffered. It is true, neither she nor her husband, nor even her father, had ever believed her capable of touching her infant with an unkind hand when in possession of her reason; but there was a darkness on the subject, and what might have happened in a moment of insanity was dreadful to think upon. Besides, whatever was their own conviction, they had no means of establishing Effie’s innocence to the world, which, according to the tenor of this fugitive publication, was now at length completely manifested by the dying confession of the person chiefly interested in concealing it.
After thanking God for a discovery so dear to her feelings, Mrs. Butler began to consider what use she should make of it. To have shown it to her husband would have been her first impulse; but, besides that he was absent from home, and the matter too delicate to be the subject of correspondence by an indifferent penwoman, Mrs. Butler recollected that he was not possessed of the information necessary to form a judgment upon the occasion; and that, adhering to the rule which she had considered as most advisable, she had best transmit the information immediately to her sister, and leave her to adjust with her husband the mode in which they should avail themselves of it. Accordingly, she despatched a special messenger to Glasgow with a packet, enclosing the Confession of Margaret Murdockson, addressed, as usual, under cover, to Mr. Whiterose of York. She expected, with anxiety, an answer, but none arrived in the usual course of post, and she was left to imagine how many various causes might account for Lady Staunton’s silence. She began to be half sorry that she had parted with the printed paper, both for fear of its having fallen into bad hands, and from the desire of regaining the document which might be essential to establish her sister’s innocence. She was even doubting whether she had not better commit the whole matter to her husband’s consideration, when other incidents occurred to divert her purpose.
Jeanie (she is a favourite, and we beg her pardon for still using the familiar title) had walked down to the sea-side with her children one morning after breakfast, when the boys, whose sight was more discriminating than hers, exclaimed, that “the Captain’s coach and six was coming right for the shore, with ladies in it.” Jeanie instinctively bent her eyes on the approaching boat, and became soon sensible that there were two females in the stern, seated beside the gracious Duncan, who acted as pilot. It was a point of politeness to walk towards the landing-place, in order to receive them, especially as she saw that the Captain of Knockdunder was upon honour and ceremony. His piper was in the bow of the boat, sending forth music, of which one half sounded the better that the other was drowned by the waves and the breeze. Moreover, he himself had his brigadier wig newly frizzed, his bonnet (he had abjured the cocked-hat) decorated with Saint George’s red cross, his uniform mounted as a captain of militia, the Duke’s flag with the boar’s head displayed–all intimated parade and gala.
As Mrs. Butler approached the landing-place, she observed the Captain hand the ladies ashore with marks of great attention, and the parties advanced towards her, the Captain a few steps before the two ladies, of whom the taller and elder leaned on the shoulder of the other, who seemed to be an attendant or servant.
As they met, Duncan, in his best, most important, and deepest tone of Highland civility, “pegged leave to introduce to Mrs. Putler, Lady–eh– eh–I hae forgotten your leddyship’s name!”
“Never mind my name, sir,” said the lady; “I trust Mrs. Butler will be at no loss. The Duke’s letter”–And, as she observed Mrs. Butler look confused, she said again to Duncan somethin sharply, “Did you not send the letter last night, sir?”
“In troth and I didna, and I crave your leddyship’s pardon; but you see, matam, I thought it would do as weel to-tay, pecause Mrs. Putler is never taen out o’sorts–never–and the coach was out fishing–and the gig was gane to Greenock for a cag of prandy–and–Put here’s his Grace’s letter.”
“Give it me, sir,” said the lady, taking it out of his hand; “since you have not found it convenient to do me the favour to send it before me, I will deliver it myself.”
Mrs. Butler looked with great attention, and a certain dubious feeling of deep interest, on the lady, who thus expressed herself with authority over the man of authority, and to whose mandates he seemed to submit, resigning the letter with a “Just as your leddyship is pleased to order it.”
The lady was rather above the middle size, beautifully made, though something /embonpoint,/ with a hand and arm exquisitely formed. Her manner was easy, dignified, and commanding, and seemed to evince high birth and the habits of elevated society. She wore a travelling dress–a grey beaver hat, and a veil of Flanders lace. Two footmen, in rich liveries, who got out of the barge, and lifted out a trunk and portmanteau, appeared to belong to her suite.
“As you did not receive the letter, madam, which should have served for my introduction–for I presume you are Mrs. Butler–I will not present it to you till you are so good as to admit me into your house without it.”
“To pe sure, matam,” said Knockdunder, “ye canna doubt Mrs. Putler will do that.–Mrs. Putler, this is Lady–Lady–these tamned Southern names rin out o’ my head like a stane trowling down hill–put I believe she is a Scottish woman porn–the mair our credit–and I presume her leddyship is of the house of”
“The Duke of Argyle knows my family very well, sir,” said the lady, in a tone which seemed designed to silence Duncan, or, at any rate, which had that effect completely.
There was something about the whole of this stranger’s address, and tone, and manner, which acted upon Jeanie’s feelings like the illusions of a dream, that tease us with a puzzling approach to reality. Something there was of her sister in the gait and manner of the stranger, as well as in the sound of her voice, and something also, when, lifting her veil, she showed features, to which, changed as they were in expression and complexion, she could not but attach many remembrances.
The stranger was turned of thirty certainly; but so well were her personal charms assisted by the power of dress, and arrangement of ornament, that she might well have passed for one-and-twenty. And her behaviour was so steady and so composed, that, as often as Mrs. Butler perceived anew some point of resemblance to her unfortunate sister, so often the sustained self-command and absolute composure of the stranger destroyed the ideas which began to arise in her imagination. She led the way silently towards the Manse, lost in a confusion of reflections, and trusting the letter with which she was to be there intrusted, would afford her satisfactory explanation of what was a most puzzling and embarrassing scene.
The lady maintained in the meanwhile the manners of a stranger of rank. She admired the various points of view like one who has studied nature, and the best representations of art. At length she took notice of the children.
“These are two fine young mountaineers–Yours, madam, I presume?”
Jeanie replied in the affirmative. The stranger sighed, and sighed once more as they were presented to her by name.
“Come here, Femie,” said Mrs. Butler, “and hold your head up.”
“What is your daughter’s name, madam?” said the lady.
“Euphemia, madam,” answered Mrs. Butler.
“I thought the ordinary Scottish contraction of the name had been Effie;” replied the stranger, in a tone which went to Jeanie’s heart; for in that single word there was more of her sister–more of /lang syne/ ideas–than in all the reminiscences which her own heart had anticipated, or the features and manner of the stranger had suggested.
When they reached the Manse, the lady gave Mrs. Butler the letter which she had taken out of the hands of Knockdunder; and as she gave it she pressed her hand, adding aloud, “Perhaps, madam, you will have the goodness to get me a little milk!”
“And me a drap of the grey-peard, if you please, Mrs. Putler,” added Duncan.
Mrs. Butler withdrew; but, deputing to May Hettly and to David the supply of the strangers’ wants, she hastened into her own room to read the letter. The envelope was addressed in the Duke of Argyle’s hand, and requested Mrs. Butler’s attentions and civility to a lady of rank, a particular friend of his late brother, Lady Staunton of Willingham, who, being recommended to drink goats’ whey by the physicians, was to honour the Lodge at Roseneath with her residence, while her husband made a short tour in Scotland. But within the same cover, which had been given to Lady Staunton unsealed, was a letter from that lady, intended to prepare her sister for meeting her, and which, but for the Captain’s negligence, she ought to have received on the preceding evening. It stated that the news in Jeanie’s last letter had been so interesting to her husband, that he was determined to inquire farther into the confession made at Carlisle, and the fate of that poor innocent, and that, as he had been in some degree successful, she had, by the most earnest entreaties, extorted rather than obtained his permission, under promise of observing the most strict incognito, to spend a week or two with her sister, or in her neighbourhood, while he was prosecuting researches, to which (though it appeared to her very vainly) he seemed to attach some hopes of success.
There was a postscript, desiring that Jeanie would trust to Lady S. the management of their intercourse, and be content with assenting to what she should propose. After reading and again reading the letter, Mrs. Butler hurried down stairs, divided betwixt the fear of betraying her secret, and the desire to throw herself upon her sister’s neck. Effie received her with a glance at once affectionate and cautionary, and immediately proceeded to speak.
“I have been telling Mr. ——, Captain , this gentleman, Mrs. Butler, that if you could accommodate me with an apartment in your house, and a place for Ellis to sleep, and for the two men, it would suit me better than the Lodge, which his Grace has so kindly placed at my disposal. I am advised I should reside as near where the goats feed as possible.”
“I have peen assuring my leddy, Mrs. Putler,” said Duncan, “that though it could not discommode you to receive any of his Grace’s visitors or mine, yet she had mooch petter stay at the Lodge; and for the gaits, the creatures can be fetched there, in respect it is mair fitting they suld wait upon her Leddyship, than she upon the like o’ them.”
“By no means derange the goats for me,” said Lady Staunton; “I am certain the milk must be much better here.” And this she said with languid negligence, as one whose slightest intimation of humour is to bear down all argument.
Mrs. Butler hastened to intimate, that her house, such as it was, was heartily at the disposal of Lady Staunton; but the Captain continued to remonstrate..
“The Duke,” he said, “had written”
“I will settle all that with his Grace”
“And there were the things had been sent down frae Glasco”
“Anything necessary might be sent over to the Parsonage–She would beg the favour of Mrs. Butler to show her an apartment, and of the Captain to have her trunks, etc., sent over from Roseneath.”
So she courtesied off poor Duncan, who departed, saying in his secret soul, “Cot tamn her English impudence!–she takes possession of the minister’s house as an it were her ain–and speaks to shentlemens as if they were pounden servants, and per tamned to her!–And there’s the deer that was shot too–but we will send it ower to the Manse, whilk will pe put civil, seeing I hae prought worthy Mrs. Putler sic a fliskmahoy.”– And with these kind intentions, he went to the shore to give his orders accordingly.
In the meantime, the meeting of the sisters was as affectionate as it was extraordinary, and each evinced her feelings in the way proper to her character. Jeanie was so much overcome by wonder, and even by awe, that her feelings were deep, stunning, and almost overpowering. Effie, on the other hand, wept, laughed, sobbed, screamed, and clapped her hands for joy, all in the space of five minutes, giving way at once, and without reserve, to a natural excessive vivacity of temper, which no one, however, knew better how to restrain under the rules of artificial breeding.
After an hour had passed like a moment in their expressions of mutual affection, Lady Staunton observed the Captain walking with impatient steps below the window. “That tiresome Highland fool has returned upon our hands,” she said. “I will pray him to grace us with his absence.”
“Hout no! hout no!” said Mrs. Butler, in a tone of entreaty; “ye maunna affront the Captain.”
“Affront?” said Lady Staunton; “nobody is ever affronted at what I do or say, my dear. However, I will endure him, since you think it proper.”
The Captain was accordingly graciously requested by Lady Staunton to remain during dinner. During this visit his studious and punctilious complaisance towards the lady of rank was happily contrasted by the cavalier air of civil familiarity in which he indulged towards the minister’s wife.
“I have not been able to persuade Mrs. Butler,” said Lady Staunton to the Captain, during the interval when Jeanie had left the parlour, “to let me talk of making any recompense for storming her house, and garrisoning it in the way I have done.”
“Doubtless, matam,” said the Captain, “it wad ill pecome Mrs. Putler, wha is a very decent pody, to make any such sharge to a lady who comes from my house, or his Grace’s, which is the same thing.–And speaking of garrisons, in the year forty-five, I was poot with a garrison of twenty of my lads in the house of Inver-Garry, whilk had near been unhappily, for”
“I beg your pardon, sir–But I wish I could think of some way of indemnifying this good lady.”
“O, no need of intemnifying at all–no trouble for her, nothing at all– So, peing in the house of Inver-Garry, and the people about it being uncanny, I doubted the warst, and”
“Do you happen to know, sir,” said Lady Staunton, “if any of these two lads, these young Butlers, I mean, show any turn for the army?”
“Could not say, indeed, my leddy,” replied Knockdunder–“So, I knowing the people to pe unchancy, and not to lippen to, and hearing a pibroch in the wood, I pegan to pid my lads look to their flints, and then”
“For,” said Lady Staunton, with the most ruthless disregard to the narrative which she mangled by these interruptions, “if that should be the case, it should cost Sir George but the asking a pair of colours for one of them at the War-Office, since we have always supported Government, and never had occasion to trouble ministers.”
“And if you please, my leddy,” said Duncan, who began to find some savour in this proposal, “as I hae a braw weel-grown lad of a nevoy, ca’d Duncan MacGilligan, that is as pig as paith the Putler pairns putten thegither, Sir George could ask a pair for him at the same time, and it wad pe put ae asking for a’.”
Lady Staunton only answered this hint with a well-bred stare, which gave no sort of encouragement.
Jeanie, who now returned, was lost in amazement at the wonderful difference betwixt the helpless and despairing girl, whom she had seen stretched on a flock-bed in a dungeon, expecting a violent and disgraceful death, and last as a forlorn exile upon the midnight beach, with the elegant, well-bred, beautiful woman before her. The features, now that her sister’s veil was laid aside, did not appear so extremely different, as the whole manner, expression, look, and bearing. In outside show, Lady Staunton seemed completely a creature too soft and fair for sorrow to have touched; so much accustomed to have all her whims complied with by those around her, that she seemed to expect she should even be saved the trouble of forming them; and so totally unacquainted with contradiction, that she did not even use the tone of self-will, since to breathe a wish was to have it fulfilled. She made no ceremony of ridding herself of Duncan as soon as the evening approached; but complimented him out of the house under pretext of fatigue, with the utmost /nonchalance./
When they were alone, her sister could not help expressing her wonder at the self-possession with which Lady Staunton sustained her part.
“I daresay you are surprised at it,” said Lady Staunton composedly; “for you, my dear Jeanie, have been truth itself from your cradle upwards; but you must remember that I am a liar of fifteen years’ standing, and therefore must by this time be used to my character.”
In fact, during the feverish tumult of feelings excited during the two or three first days, Mrs. Butler thought her sister’s manner was completely contradictory of the desponding tone which pervaded her correspondence. She was moved to tears, indeed, by the sight of her father’s grave, marked by a modest stone recording his piety and integrity; but lighter impressions and associations had also power over her. She amused herself with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long been assistant, and was so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort, as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound. There were moods and moments, in which her despondence seemed to exceed even that which she herself had described in her letters, and which too well convinced Mrs. Butler how little her sister’s lot, which in appearance was so brilliant, was in reality to be envied.
There was one source, however, from which Lady Staunton derived a pure degree of pleasure. Gifted in every particular with a higher degree of imagination than that of her sister, she was an admirer of the beauties of nature, a taste which compensates many evils to those who happen to enjoy it. Here her character of a fine lady stopped short, where she ought to have
Scream’d at ilk cleugh, and screech’d at ilka how, As loud as she had seen the worrie-cow.
On the contrary, with the two boys for her guides, she undertook long and fatiguing walks among the neighbouring mountains, to visit glens, lakes, waterfalls, or whatever scenes of natural wonder or beauty lay concealed among their recesses. It is Wordsworth, I think, who, talking of an old man under difficulties, remarks, with a singular attention to nature,
Whether it was care that spurr’d him, God only knows; but to the very last, He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale.
In the same manner, languid, listless, and unhappy, within doors, at times even indicating something which approached near to contempt of the homely accommodations of her sister’s house, although she instantly endeavoured, by a thousand kindnesses, to atone for such ebullitions of spleen, Lady Staunton appeared to feel interest and energy while in the open air, and traversing the mountain landscapes in society with the two boys, whose ears she delighted with stories of what she had seen in other countries, and what she had to show them at Willingham Manor. And they, on the other hand, exerted themselves in doing the honours of Dumbartonshire to the lady who seemed so kind, insomuch that there was scarce a glen in the neighbouring hills to which they did not introduce her.
Upon one of these excursions, while Reuben was otherwise employed, David alone acted as Lady Staunton’s guide, and promised to show her a cascade in the hills, grander and higher than any they had yet visited. It was a walk of five long miles, and over rough ground, varied, however, and cheered, by mountain views, and peeps now of the firth and its islands, now of distant lakes, now of rocks and precipices. The scene itself, too, when they reached it, amply rewarded the labour of the walk. A single shoot carried a considerable stream over the face of a black rock, which contrasted strongly in colour with the white foam of the cascade, and, at the depth of about twenty feet, another rock intercepted the view of the bottom of the fall. The water, wheeling out far beneath, swept round the crag, which thus bounded their view, and tumbled down the rocky glen in a torrent of foam. Those who love nature always desire to penetrate into its utmost recesses, and Lady Staunton asked David whether there was not some mode of gaining a view of the abyss at the foot of the fall. He said that he knew a station on a shelf on the farther side of the intercepting rock, from which the whole waterfall was visible, but that the road to it was steep and slippery and dangerous. Bent, however, on gratifying her curiosity, she desired him to lead the way; and accordingly he did so over crag and stone, anxiously pointing out to her the resting-places where she ought to step, for their mode of advancing soon ceased to be walking, and became scrambling.
In this manner, clinging like sea-birds to the face of the rock, they were enabled at length to turn round it, and came full in front of the fall, which here had a most tremendous aspect, boiling, roaring, and thundering with unceasing din, into a black cauldron, a hundred feet at least below them, which resembled the crater of a volcano. The noise, the dashing of the waters, which gave an unsteady appearance to all around them, the trembling even of the huge crag on which they stood, the precariousness of their footing, for there was scarce room for them to stand on the shelf of rock which they had thus attained, had so powerful an effect on the senses and imagination of Lady Staunton, that she called out to David she was falling, and would in fact have dropped from the crag had he not caught hold of her. The boy was bold and stout of his age–still he was but fourteen years old, and as his assistance gave no confidence to Lady Staunton, she felt her situation become really perilous. The chance was, that, in the appalling novelty of the circumstances, he might have caught the infection of her panic, in which case it is likely that both must have perished. She now screamed with terror, though without hope of calling any one to her assistance. To her amazement, the scream was answered by a whistle from above, of a tone so clear and shrill, that it was heard even amid the noise of the waterfall.
In this moment of terror and perplexity, a human face, black, and having grizzled hair hanging down over the forehead and cheeks, and mixing with mustaches and a beard of the same colour, and as much matted and tangled, looked down on them from a broken part of the rock above.
“It is the Enemy!” said the boy, who had very nearly become incapable of supporting Lady Staunton.
“No, no,” she exclaimed, inaccessible to supernatural terrors, and restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the danger of her situation, “it is a man–For God’s sake, my friend, help us!”
The face glared at them, but made no answer; in a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the superstitious terror of her guide, he became incapable of supporting her. Her words were probably drowned in the roar of the falling stream, for, though she observed the lips of the young being whom she supplicated move as he spoke in reply, not a word reached her ear.
A moment afterwards it appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after lowered a ladder of twisted osiers, about eight feet in length, and made signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended. Despair gives courage, and finding herself in this fearful predicament, Lady Staunton did not hesitate to risk the ascent by the precarious means which this accommodation afforded; and, carefully assisted by the person who had thus providentially come to her aid, she reached the summit in safety. She did not, however, even look around her until she saw her nephew lightly and actively follow her examples although there was now no one to hold the ladder fast. When she saw him safe she looked round, and could not help shuddering at the place and company in which she found herself. They were on a sort of platform of rock, surrounded on every side by precipices, or overhanging cliffs, and which it would have been scarce possible for any research to have discovered, as it did not seem to be commanded by any accessible position. It was partly covered by a huge fragment of stone, which, having fallen from the cliffs above, had been intercepted by others in its descent, and jammed so as to serve for a sloping roof to the farther part of the broad shelf or platform on which they stood. A quantity of withered moss and leaves, strewed beneath this rude and wretched shelter, showed the lairs,–they could not be termed the beds,–of those who dwelt in this eyrie, for it deserved no other name. Of these, two were before Lady Staunton. One, the same who had afforded such timely assistance, stood upright before them, a tall, lathy, young savage; his dress a tattered plaid and philabeg, no shoes, no stockings, no hat or bonnet, the place of the last being supplied by his hair, twisted and matted like the /glibbe/ of the ancient wild Irish, and, like theirs, forming a natural thick-set stout enough to bear off the cut of a sword. Yet the eyes of the lad were keen and sparkling; his gesture free and noble, like that of all savages. He took little notice of David Butler, but gazed with wonder on Lady Staunton, as a being different probably in dress, and superior in beauty, to anything he had ever beheld. The old man, whose face they had first seen, remained recumbent in the same posture as when he had first looked down on them, only his face was turned towards them as he lay and looked up with a lazy and listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith’s tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay scattered around the fire, of which the red glare cast a ruddy tinge on the precipitous foam and mist of the cascade. The lad, when he had satisfied his curiosity with staring at Lady Staunton, fetched an earthen jar and a horn-cup, into which he poured some spirits, apparently hot from the still, and offered them successively to the lady and to the boy. Both declined, and the young savage quaffed off the draught, which could not amount to less than three ordinary glasses. He then fetched another ladder from the corner of the cavern, if it could be termed so, adjusted it against the transverse rock, which served as a roof, and made signs for the lady to ascend it, while he held it fast below. She did so, and found herself on the top of a broad rock, near the brink of the chasm into which the brook precipitates itself. She could see the crest of the torrent flung loose down the rock, like the mane of a wild horse, but without having any view of the lower platform from which she had ascended.
David was not suffered to mount so easily; the lad, from sport or love of mischief, shook the ladder a good deal as he ascended, and seemed to enjoy the terror of young Butler, so that, when they had both come up, they looked on each other with no friendly eyes. Neither, however, spoke. The young caird, or tinker, or gipsy, with a good deal of attention, assisted Lady Staunton up a very perilous ascent which she had still to encounter, and they were followed by David Butler, until all three stood clear of the ravine on the side of a mountain, whose sides were covered with heather and sheets of loose shingle. So narrow was the chasm out of which they ascended, that, unless when they were on the very verge, the eye passed to the other side without perceiving the existence of a rent so fearful, and nothing was seen of the cataract, though its deep hoarse voice was still heard.
Lady Staunton, freed from the danger of rock and river, had now a new subject of anxiety. Her two guides confronted each other with angry countenances; for David, though younger by two years at least, and much shorter, was a stout, well-set, and very bold boy.
“You are the black-coat’s son of Knocktarlitie,” said the young caird; “if you come here again, I’ll pitch you down the linn like a foot-ball.”
“Ay, lad, ye are very short to be sae lang,” retorted young Butler undauntedly, and measuring his opponent’s height with an undismayed eye; “I am thinking you are a gillie of Black Donacha; if you come down the glen, we’ll shoot you like a wild buck.”
“You may tell your father,” said the lad, “that the leaf on the timber is the last he shall see–we will hae amends for the mischief he has done to us.”
“I hope he will live to see mony simmers, and do ye muckle mair,” answered David.
More might have passed, but Lady Staunton stepped between them with her purse in her hand, and taking out a guinea, of which it contained several, visible through the net-work, as well as some silver in the opposite end, offered it to the caird.
“The white siller, lady–the white siller,” said the young savage, to whom the value of gold was probably unknown. Lady Staunton poured what silver she had into his hand, and the juvenile savage snatched it greedily, and made a sort of half inclination of acknowledgment and adieu.
“Let us make haste now, Lady Staunton,” said David, “for there will be little peace with them since they hae seen your purse.”
They hurried on as fast as they could; but they had not descended the hill a hundred yards or two before they heard a halloo behind them, and looking back, saw both the old man and the young one pursuing them with great speed, the former with a gun on his shoulder. Very fortunately, at this moment a sportsman, a gamekeeper of the Duke, who was engaged in stalking deer, appeared on the face of the hill. The bandits stopped on seeing him, and Lady Staunton hastened to put herself under his protection. He readily gave them his escort home, and it required his athletic form and loaded rifle to restore to the lady her usual confidence and courage.
Donald listened with much gravity to the account of their adventure; and answered with great composure to David’s repeated inquiries, whether he could have suspected that the cairds had been lurking there,–“Inteed, Master Tavie, I might hae had some guess that they were there, or thereabout, though maybe I had nane. But I am aften on the hill; and they are like wasps–they stang only them that fashes them; sae, for my part, I make a point not to see them, unless I were ordered out on the preceese errand by MacCallummore or Knockdunder, whilk is a clean different case.”
They reached the Manse late; and Lady Staunton, who had suffered much both from fright and fatigue, never again permitted her love of the picturesque to carry her so far among the mountains without a stronger escort than David, though she acknowledged he had won the stand of colours by the intrepidity he had displayed, so soon as assured he had to do with an earthly antagonist. “I couldna maybe hae made muckle o’ a bargain wi’ yon lang callant,” said David, when thus complimented on his valour; “but when ye deal wi’ thae folk, it’s tyne heart tyne a’.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH.
What see you there,
That hath so cowarded and chased your blood Out of appearance?
Henry the Fifth.
We are under the necessity of returning to Edinburgh, where the General Assembly was now sitting. It is well known, that some Scottish nobleman is usually deputed as High Commissioner, to represent the person of the King in this convocation; that he has allowances for the purpose of maintaining a certain outward show and solemnity, and supporting the hospitality of the representative of Majesty. Whoever are distinguished by rank, or office, in or near the capital, usually attend the morning levees of the Lord Commissioner, and walk with him in procession to the place where the Assembly meets.
The nobleman who held this office chanced to be particularly connected with Sir George Staunton, and it was in his train that he ventured to tread the High Street of Edinburgh for the first time since the fatal night of Porteous’s execution. Walking at the right hand of the representative of Sovereignty, covered with lace and embroidery, and with all the paraphernalia of wealth and rank, the handsome though wasted figure of the English stranger attracted all eyes. Who could have recognised in a form so aristocratic the plebeian convict, that, disguised in the rags of Madge Wildfire, had led the formidable rioters to their destined revenge? There was no possibility that this could happen, even if any of his ancient acquaintances, a race of men whose lives are so brief, had happened to survive the span commonly allotted to evil-doers. Besides, the whole affair had long fallen asleep, with the angry passions in which it originated. Nothing is more certain than that persons known to have had a share in that formidable riot, and to have fled from Scotland on that account, had made money abroad, returned to enjoy it in their native country, and lived and died undisturbed by the law.*
* See Arnot’s /Criminal Trials,/ 4to ed. p. 235.
The forbearance of the magistrate was, in these instances, wise, certainly, and just; for what good impression could be made on the public mind by punishment, when the memory of the offence was obliterated, and all that was remembered was the recent inoffensive, or perhaps exemplary conduct of the offender?
Sir George Staunton might, therefore, tread the scene of his former audacious exploits, free from the apprehension of the law, or even of discovery or suspicion. But with what feelings his heart that day throbbed, must be left to those of the reader to imagine. It was an object of no common interest which had brought him to encounter so many painful remembrances.
In consequence of Jeanie’s letter to Lady Staunton, transmitting the confession, he had visited the town of Carlisle, and had found Archdeacon Fleming still alive, by whom that confession had been received. This reverend gentleman, whose character stood deservedly very high, he so far admitted into his confidence, as to own himself the father of the unfortunate infant which had been spirited away by Madge Wildfire, representing the intrigue as a matter of juvenile extravagance on his own part, for which he was now anxious to atone, by tracing, if possible, what had become of the child. After some recollection of the circumstances, the clergyman was able to call to memory, that the unhappy woman had written a letter to George Staunton, Esq., younger, Rectory, Willingham, by Grantham; that he had forwarded it to the address accordingly, and that it had been returned, with a note from the Reverend Mr. Staunton, Rector of Willingham, saying, he knew no such person as him to whom the letter was addressed. As this had happened just at the time when George had, for the last time, absconded from his father’s house to carry off Effie, he was at no loss to account for the cause of the resentment, under the influence of which his father had disowned him. This was another instance in which his ungovernable temper had occasioned his misfortune; had he remained at Willingham but a few days longer, he would have received Margaret Murdockson’s letter, in which were exactly described the person and haunts of the woman, Annaple Bailzou, to whom she had parted with the infant. It appeared that Meg Murdockson had been induced to make this confession, less from any feelings of contrition, than from the desire of obtaining, through George Staunton or his father’s means, protection and support for her daughter Madge. Her letter to George Staunton said, “That while the writer lived, her daughter would have needed nought from any body, and that she would never have meddled in these affairs, except to pay back the ill that George had done to her and hers. But she was to die, and her daughter would be destitute, and without reason to guide her. She had lived in the world long enough to know that people did nothing for nothing;–so she had told George Staunton all he could wish to know about his wean, in hopes he would not see the demented young creature he had ruined perish for want. As for her motives for not telling them sooner, she had a long account to reckon for in the next world, and she would reckon for that too.”
The clergyman said that Meg had died in the same desperate state of mind, occasionally expressing some regret about the child which was lost, but oftener sorrow that the mother had not been hanged–her mind at once a chaos of guilt, rage, and apprehension for her daughter’s future safety; that instinctive feeling of parental anxiety which she had in common with the she-wolf and lioness, being the last shade of kindly affection that occupied a breast equally savage.
The melancholy catastrophe of Madge Wildfire was occasioned by her taking the confusion of her mother’s execution, as affording an opportunity of leaving the workhouse to which the clergyman had sent her, and presenting herself to the mob in their fury, to perish in the way we have already seen. When Dr. Fleming found the convict’s letter was returned from Lincolnshire, he wrote to a friend in Edinburgh, to inquire into the fate of the unfortunate girl whose child had been stolen, and was informed by his correspondent, that she had been pardoned, and that, with all her