I.
Euphame Napier seeks her, fortune. Lady Somer-ville
has kept her word. The Lady of Ormeslaw is satisfied; and Euphame Napier
has paid her duty to her patroness, received Mr Durie's Messing, said
farewell to Mrs Jonet,—too stern to weep at so small a matter as a
parting in this world,—has turned her back on the old house in Bristo
Street, which henceforth shall be tinged to her with rosy morning
colours, and set out, bearing the badge of her diamond rose, for her
service in the Loudons—a waiting-woman's place in the family of the
Laird of Ormeslaw.
Waiting-women in Anne's reign were very frequently
poor gentlewomen, daughters of clergymen, of houses impoverished in the
last national struggle, of the limited professional men, of merchants,
like Euphame's father, more gently bred than savingly bent. They formed
a peculiar class in a peculiar position, divided from their employers by
a very narrow line, and, in their fairest colours, capable of filling
offices of great importance in the household, and of discharging the
most serious duties; excellent nurses in times of sickness, stewards on
occasions of absence, second mothers to orphan families, often fixtures
under the roof which had first sheltered them—firm and valuable family
friends.
Thus Lady Ormeslaw, sending in horses to Edinburgh
for Euphame and the spring supplies of merchandise, furnished her with a
proper escort, as careful as if she had been a young lady visiting the
house —the old serving-man and his wife, mounted on the same mare—very
available in such a case—their son, the farm lad, on the young
pack-horse, with pistols at his holster, and the black pony for Euphame.
You are well aware how difficult and treacherous travelling was a
hundred and fifty years ago, how the very mail-coach to London, running
then for a season, was stopped and exposed to robbery at least once a
month, and you perceive that Euphame was fortunate in such a mode of
conveying her youthful person from one locality to another. On a June
morning, then, when the dew-drops were on the corn, and the lark in the
sky, Euphame and her little train rode along high-roads, by warm
thatch-roofed farm-houses, and lowly clay-biggins, and squalid miners'
huts— through blossoming clover, and white-budding beans, and rich
plantations with the blue belt of the Forth and the hills of Fife
visible from every high ground, and the green Lammermoors, in long, low
swells shutting in the prospect.
Ormeslaw was strange to Euphame. The house in Bristo
Street had evidently been a "land" over whose "wa'" a countess might
have looked. The mansion of Lady Somerville was a decayed palace, but
Ormeslaw was a peel tower, passing from the hands of border chiefs to
yeoman lairds. It had a vaulted kitchen, a wool-room, and a few closets
for domestics in the tower; and in the house a black wainscoted
dining-room, my lady's room, which was hung with the Seasons in
tapestry, the nursery for the children, and the sleeping-rooms of the
family. Without were brew-house, malt-barn, and kiln, besides
straw-house, cow-house, stable, and kennel.
In this Ormeslaw dwelt a devout, sedate, sagacious,
silent laird, his more worldly and managing dame, their children, and
retainers. Euphame came down to fill a vacancy in the household. Lady
Ormeslaw was the reverse of slothful. She wanted no soft-spoken lass to
tie her hair, lace her stomacher, or "cast up" her accounts; but she was
reasonably ambitious,—she would have a set of worked chairs, such as we
see now with straight arms and backs, and covers in faded tent-stitch,
routed out of odd dusty corners, or fallen into humble cottages; she
would have the little lasses learn betimes straw-work, filigree-work,
and gimp-work; she would acquire the newest notion in vogue as to
washing gauzes and Flanders lace; she would see the last shapes for
pastry and butter-work; (which Euphame bore in her mails, as a young
lady will transport credentials, in the shape of a modern Battle of
Prague or an impossible song;) she would obtain the plan of boning fowls
without cutting the back, as well as securing for the bairns
writing-lessons in the most approved hand, and "the best end of
dancing—a good carriage." What aspiring matron could resist such a
catalogue of advantages, even though Euphame was a little in the way,
and invested with a degree of awkwardness and peril to some of her
neighbours ?
Euphame was received in state by the lady, a
shrewd-eyed, light-footed, fresh woman, rather brisk than dignified, but
sufficiently authoritative. She melted, however, when she spoke of Lady
Somerville, "My lady is owre gude for this world," she said softly. She
flashed upon her waiting-woman in her brisk stomacher, apron, and
mittens—so constantly going out and in, in and out of the house, and
stepping about the kiln, the cows' park, the hens' nests, the herb-beds,
that her train was perpetually hung over her arm, and her silk and
whalebone caleche, folded back and laid on her shoulder ready for use,
or, in fact, drawn over the mob-cap worn above the fly-cap, whose lace
frill shaded her white but somewhat puckered brow. For Euphame, she had
put aside her uniform, had strewed it with lavender, packed it with more
than girlish sentiment, and stowed it away in an extreme recess of her
valise. She had come out in her gentlewoman's attire, her gauze or
chintz, with sleeves puckered and tight as armour, her satin pocket, in
which she carried none of the snuff often found in that handy
receptacle, her indispensable and innumerable knots of ribands, such as
the demurest" damsel found herself compelled to sport on breast and
back, shoulders and elbows, tucking up the skirt of her dress, and
fastening back her little hat instead of a jewelled button, when she
sallied abroad on business or for a wholesome airing—and in any guise,
Euphame was tall and straight, and fair and comely, as her old mother
had foreshadowed her.
Lady Ormeslaw received Lady Somerville's greeting,
and presented Euphame to her charges, all stalking boldly or stealing
slily across the threshold to stare at the stranger in my lady's room.
"This is Primrose, (hold up your head. Primrose,) and Sybilla, (Sybbie,
you hempie, where have you torn your frock?) and little Annie ; and yon
is Roger, with his feet from the plough, and Sandy,
who has been seeking birds' nests, (you took the spotted eggs,
but spared the wee gaping birds, as I telled you, ye little loon?) and
the laird will appear presently and preside at the evening exercise, and
we need not disturb Master George at his books."
Euphame lived weeks at Ormeslaw before she saw the
laird at other times than at meals and the morning and evening
"exercise," which he conducted with great solemnity and ability. The
grave, ardent Scotch lairds, on the covenanting side, had a wonderful
faculty for divulging their strong religious views, and developing those
of others, however quiet on other subjects, and the laird of Ormeslaw
was a notably quiet man. A canny housemate the lady owned him, yet a
formidable foe he had proved himself among men during the bygone
political and religious
troubles—far-sighted, energetic, determined, and invincible. A
big, stalwart man, his ruffled shirt and his signet ring contrasting
with the maud which at home he wore strapped across his broad breast,
like his hinds and shepherds; a rugged, thoughtful face, with a wild
gleam in the eye, answering to the fervour and the eloquence of his
preaching and his prayers; in his temporal affairs, sensible, patient,
and painstaking; in his personal behaviour, modest to bashfulness; the
quiet laird of Ormeslaw walked through life with a still, pondering,
reverent tread, and his foot had acquired its soft, prolonged fall, like
a deep key-note, played gently, but which could clang with a hoarse
thunder, where, after their direct fashion, many good men spent hours of
their leisure, and realised what was richest, most profound, and most
divine in their spiritual experience, either in their literal closets—
dark, narrow dens for devotion, in Presbyterian houses specially
provided for masters of families, where mighty prayers were prayed in
extremities, or out in the open fields where Isaac went forth to
meditate at eventide. Still, questionless, the laird of Ormeslaw had his
taint of the sins of his generation.
Master George, the laird's son, was another man from
his father—not a bad lad at heart, but, woe's me! he was of weaker thews
and sinews, as well as of different metal; he had been in London, had
seen the court, the clubs, the wits, had cultivated the pungent,
half-melancholy literature of the era, and the town's foppery and
affectation, and had grown ashamed of the plain profession of the
Presbyterianism of his country and his youth—only of the profession,
mind, he was not ashamed of his father, he had a private envy of him as
well as a secret reverence for him, a longing and pining for the old
laird's rod and staff, even when the Laird of Ormeslaw looked around him
in trouble and distress, as if it had been they which failed him. Master
George had not renounced his virtue though he had heard it suspected on
every side, and was almost tempted to suspect it himself, and, smart and
bitter though his tone was—and, alas, it was often the echo of his young
heart—every now and then there welled from it a gush of the sweetness of
domestic life, family affection, and rural occupations. Master George
was infected with fastidiousness, doubt, disgust, but the disease was
only in its incipient stage. The lady was very proud of Master George,
proud of his learning and accomplishments, of the fine gallooned coats,
and long vests, and cocked hats, he had brought home with him from
England; of his studious ways; it is not known whether he played the
flageolet or tried the musical glasses, but he was often to be seen
walking abroad with his finger in a volume of Dryden, Pope, or among the
airy fables of Mr Gay, according to the most approved literary coxcombry
of the period. Now, the laird read mostly one book, in short,
thoroughly-digested passages, and though, on account of his own
remaining blindness and brutishness, it did not save him from all
bruises, it never yet induced him to sneer, or yawn, or dally with
business, or desert duty. The lady was a little uneasy about Master
George, too, for a mother's instinct is very keen, and she had a pained
perception that Master George, for as fine a gentleman as he had
returned to Ormeslaw, for so much more refined as he had become, was
neither so safe a man, nor so happy a man as his father.
Master George scarcely deigned to notice Mrs Euphame,
his mother's waiting-woman, after he saw how sedately she sat at her
worsted work, and how unimpressed she was by his airs and quotations.
And here the Lady of Ormeslaw felt greatly relieved, for there was but a
shadowy barrier between Master George and Mrs Euphame, unless their
inclinations built it up a mountain, and it was a somewhat rash act to
bring them together. Scores of waiting-women besides Abigail Hill,
climbed into their mistress's seat and ended by being my lady; and Lady
Ormeslaw was not so disinterested as to wish Master George to find a
wife without fortune or available connexions. Lady Ormeslaw irked
herself a little with doubtful precautions, she nailed herself to
Euphame's side under the vague smiles of the faded females who
represented the Seasons, when the lady and her waiting-woman were not
wanted in the still-room or the kitchen, and when Master George chose to
display his book in my lady's room, and she always carefully qualified
her approval of Euphame Napier's personal and mental attractions, by a
few drawbacks, "a blooming madam, but unco big;" "a solid lass, only a
thought self-contained and dull." "With every pleasing, every prudent
part, Say, what does Chloe want? She wants a heart," declared Master
George; and, alack for female nature! his lady mother's bosom was
sensibly lightened, though she might live to regret the day that Master
George had not appreciated one of the noblest lasses she had ever
counted in her acquaintance, and she now felt herself forced to exclaim,
with tart majesty, " I should think so! what would a
waiting-woman want with a heart? A heart is not in her orders. Would you
have the lass that has to work for her bread, a silly, vain coquette?"
II.
Euphame liked Ormeslaw. She was not of the temper of
Master George, she was neither fastidious, nor exacting, nor
restless—she stood on a rock. She had a clear, benevolent, patient
spirit. She formed her observations, not remarkably accurate, and felt
her own prejudices, tolerably strenuous and defined, but they did not
greatly interfere with her general philanthropy, activity, and
intelligence. She was drawn to the laird, but she was decidedly repelled
by Master George, and she censured the busy, quick, hot-tempered,
cumbered lady. The foolish girl, sitting so calmly at her canvas or her
ruffles, was not great enough to fail to sit in judgment on the
harassed, tried house-mother. She called her covetous and crafty, she
lost sight of her self-denial, her self-sacrifices, and her mild
accents, when she would be musing in the silver gray of the gloaming,
and would break out about Lady Somerville—"Lady Somerville is ower gude
for this world—oh, that saint, Mrs Euphame! I have kenned but two, and I
would be blythe to see the sweetest een on earth again—they would calm
the like of me that is for ever fevered and fashed with bairns, and
beasts, and country markets. But I have had my refreshment, too, Mrs
Euphame, I will never deny it, I am bound to be thankful, I have coft a
coin that has never failed me by the way—the Lord forgive me for my
ingratitude and misimprovement of my talents—gude, sterling gold, lass;
I would not have been put off as a wife with aught less." The beam was
in our girl's eye when she would remove the mote from the lady's; but
let that unwearied foot be stilled, and that watchful eye be closed, and
Euphame would acknowledge with remorse, what Christian worth was in the
wheel which, "broken at the cistern," rendered heavy and helpless the
whole surrounding machinery.
There was one care which approached Euphame, and that
was a sense—now dim, now vivid—that she remained apart from the family,
that she did not bridge over the gulf between them; that working in the
lady's room, or walking in the in-fields, or lying on her bed
remembering her mother and Lady Somerville, and Mrs Jonet, and flighty
Katie Crichton, and taking out and gazing upon her diamond rose, and
recalling her vow to feed and clothe the destitute, fancying how she
would dwell among them like Mrs Jonet,—but not their matron—no, the
strong, faithful daughter of her old women, rather than the anxious,
disregarded mother of a flock of giddy maidens,—she did not win
spontaneous regard in the house of Ormeslaw. The laird took her readily
under his patriarchal protection; but he did not begin to speak to her
with simple trust and fondness, as he addressed the lady and Master
George and the other bairns, and even sometimes the old nurse Mause, his
own man Steenie's wife, who had brought Euphame on her road to Ormeslaw.
The lady respected and praised her, but she never forgot that Euphame
was Mrs Euphame, her waiting-woman. Master George somewhat pointedly
ignored her existence; and the young bairns, they came to her to have
their strings tied and their " pieces spread" with butter or honey, but
they did not loiter near her or hang about her as they did round their
fault-finding or caressing mother. Euphame seemed to elude the grasp of
the whole household like a ghost, or a woman made of snow, though her
cheeks were warm and rosy, and the framework of her bones was covered
with full, fine flesh and blood. Euphame was conscious how the children
troubled her when they broke her reveries by irrelevant questions, and
delayed her progress by bold, mischievous little fingers. It was not
that Euphame grudged any amount of trouble, but she tasked herself in
her set employments as pertinaciously and devotedly as any Roman
Catholic building up her salvation. She said, "I must please my Lady
Ormeslaw, or she will not retain me; and then if I please her heartily,
she may raise my wages, and I will save more crowns, and sooner fulfil
my engagement. A solitary lass like me is set aside for such a work, and
sanctioned in its attainment. He setteth the solitary in families; and
this is a way of accomplishing His word, like the fire, hail, and snow,
and stormy vapour, and the whole grand creation." And Euphame was
absorbed, like all castle-builders, great and small, and blind and deaf
to other interests, and provoked by any interference with her efforts,
or disturbance of her economy, till she awoke scandal, and got the word
in the house of Ormeslaw of being "a proud peat, for all her
diligence—a hantle haughtier than the very lady hersel'."
The consciousness pained Euphame with an uncertain,
flitting pain, when it smote upon her as she listened to the young birds
fluttering and chirping among the ivy of the orchard, when she stood
watching the sheep inclosed in the fank, and the weaned lambs
driven to the hills, when the lady kissed the child she had chidden, and
allowed it to sob itself to sleep with its head against her knee. Even
at the tent-preaching, when a black cloud drifted across the sky, and
forked lightning played about the preacher and his awed congregation,
and torrents of rain scattered them for a season, when mothers tucked up
their little ones, and old men threw their plaids over their young
daughters, and young men sheltered infirm mothers, before they ran after
swift-footed maidens; and Euphame was pushed aside, lost sight of, and
forgotten, under the dripping churchyard wall; then a cold mantle seemed
to wrap Euphame round, and she shivered at the heart, while her jewel
and her hospital retreated into the far distance, whence they loomed,
figures at once disproportioned and spectral. Then Euphame felt it was
not so with her poor old mother, and cried for that mother's simple
kindliness as the greatest boon she could possess.
Perhaps, poor Euphame, pure, sympathetic abandonment
is the most enjoyable earthly feeling to the good, honest heart; but
there is more than enjoyment to be sought and bought in this daily
round, and Euphame soon recovered herself, and bethought her with shame
of her free pledge to my Lady Somer-ville, and her many prayers,
resolutions, and hopes, and how nothing great is ever done without
voluntary steadfastness and sacrifice. There was no Excelsior in
Euphame's day; no verse—
"In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan—
'Excelsior!'"
But Euphame had read hundreds of times of that wise
woman in Proverbs, how she rose ere it was yet day, how her candle went
not out by night, and thought how often she must have said to herself, "
A little more sleep, a little more slumber;" or, "Push aside the
distaff, lay by the merchandise;" "day is for mortal care; let us rest
now, and be thankful." "Tell the tale, sing the song, call out the
blythe laugh of youth, and the slow smile of age. Others have their
delights, and they thrive upon them; why should I thus stint myself, and
be styled an earthworm by common rumour, ere my children rise up and
call me blessed, or my husband praise me ? The field and the vineyard,
the scarlet, the tapestry, the silk and the purple, may be but mocking
rainbow delusions, and I may be giving my strength for nought—for
nought, in the moping, mournful end;" and how the wise woman must have
stood stanchly by her banner still, and stifled the pleading,
passionate, unbelieving voices.
Then Euphame wondered that she could have felt lonely
and weak, treading the path which pale, slight Lady Somerville had
walked before her, and was the braver and more determined in her
allegiance, because she had swerved from it for a moment, and listened
to natural voices and natural warnings.
Euphame and her diamond rose—if they had been seen
together half a century before, and even yet there was some danger—they
might have founded a tale of witchcraft or fairy power. A certain
glass-slipper had not more effect on the fortunes of its mistress, than
Euphame's crystal blossom (but drops of fossil gum. if a great
philosopher does not err) played with the luck of Lady Somerville's
maiden.
Perhaps old Mause measured Euphame most exactly, as
she twirled her thread and leant her head, with its peculiar, high-cauled
curch and black riband, to one side, and blinked half shrewdly, half
pathetically with her old eyes, and maundered half in her defence, half
in her condemnation. "She's of gentle-degree, our Mrs Euphame,
and she has grand principles and parts, (she would work, billies, till
she would dee,) and she's very helpful to the lady. May be, if ever she
meet wi' any great sickness or misfortune, or wed some dour or vehement
man, or be the mother of wild or silly bairns, she '11 grow open and
tender, and have a gentle word to every thoughtless speerer, and a soft
touch to every aching bane. But she 'a like a Miriam e'en now—and though
they were strapping women the Miriams and queens of Sheba, I think their
common neighbour men and women would not take to them so kindly as to
the patriarchs' wives,—Rebecca brodent on her peaceful lad, Leah and
Rachel contesting about their gudeman, or the poor lass Dinah, whom the
prince of Shechem lo'ed so wildly, or the gude lassie Ruth, who clave to
her fremyt gude-mither." If Mause had seen into Euphame's heart, and
beheld the elves of old women in its secret recesses, would it have
altered her judgment?
III.
Euphame's immobility was twice put to the test. On a
harvest afternoon, Euphame sat working in my lady's room, and an
angular, insipid, lazy symbol was the tapestry woman, with the sheaf of
pale, straw-coloured corn in one hand, and the leaden sickle in the
other, confronting Euphame within, as the representative of the autumn
without—the vivid blue sky, the golden oats, the busy, buxom, vigorous
men and women in striped jackets and shirt-sleeves, deep-coloured
petticoats, and olive knee-breeches, and scarlet or green gartered
stockings, and heavy shoes, and bare feet stained with the brown soil of
labour. But what says the poet?—
"Green is the colour of faith and truth,
And rose is the colour of love and youth,
And brown of the fruitful clay;"
and all. these tints met amongst the rich gold of the
oats, and the unsullied hue of the vault above, and a flavour of the
salt sea was in the wind, and the voices, though boisterous, were fresh
and hearty withal, and when the Laird of Ormeslaw moved among his
people, if these rough Scotchmen did not hail each other, even in those
days of quaint religious converse, with, "The Lord be with you," and
"The Lord bless thee" of gentle Boaz and his reapers — a bandster, not "lyart,
runkled, and gray," but in his manly prime, at the hour of the second
meal since breakfast—"the four-hours," when long shadows were on the
stubble, would quit the tubs of harvest beer and heaps of harvest bread,
and draw aside the Laird, and put to him, with the simplicity of intense
earnestness, a spiritual doubt, or a Scripture difficulty, or crave his
approval of the last action sermon, and the Laird would answer him as
man encounters man on a topic where there is no respect of persons.
So enticing was the scene, that even the lady was
attracted from her post of weary observation and watchful guard, the
bairns were gathering the dropped ears of corn, the servant-women had
hurried through with their work, eager to exert their skill and hear the
news on the next rigg to their companions from Cockenzie and Tranent.
Euphame sat almost alone in the house, save that Master George stood
before her, twisting between his long fingers one of the pale, creamy
pink roses, whose petals droop as if they were sick at heart, yet long
survive the blush of the red, red rose of June, the purple pride of the
damask rose of July, the fair innocence of the white rose—the saint of
the roses.
Perhaps it was unbecoming the hour and season,
unsuitable to her age and sex, that Euphame should sit thus in a misty,
breathless dream of work, almost "till benumbed the weary hand." But
Master George had penetrated to one discovery—he had been in error in
despising Euphame Napier, as she carried his mother's keys, and plied
her needle. There was a harmony in that completeness of life—narrow as
it was —that assiduity, that courage, that faith, as there was great
harmony in the tall, fine figure, in the youthful, blooming face, grave,
but cheerful in its ruddiness and roundness, with the full, peaceful
lips, and the rich chestnut hair. Kind reader, have you ever learnt the
solemnity of youth and strength in warm, bright colours, and
comprehended why the old Roman Catholics and the early Italian painters
rendered the orange marigold the Virgin Mary's flower?
Euphame Napier was working a green cloth cover for
the parish session-room table, [See the old table-cover in the
session-room of St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh.] sewing round the border, in
antique letters—
"The Lord is only my support,
And He that doth me feed;
How can I then lack aniething
Whereof I stand in need?
"He doth me fold in cotes most safe,
The tender grasse fast by,"
and repeating, with lingering pleasure,
"He doth me fold in cotes most safe,
The tender grasse fast by,"
when Master George interrupted her with a
remonstrance on her ill-timed, nay, rather unremitting industry. Master
George twisted his rose, and argued, though he was not such a student of
John Milton as of Mr Pope, much in the style of the evil spirit in "Comus,"
that it was
"For homely features to keep home,
They had their name thence;"
and anon, in the temper of Herrick, that old, old
heathen story,
"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
For time is still a-flying,"
as if time were the end! as if the rose-buds would
not perish in the using, yea, leave ashes in the reluctant hand!
Had Master George said bluntly that Euphame's
application was ill-timed, that all God's gifts are to be reverently and
thankfully accepted and enjoyed; had he undertaken to beg his mother to
grant her a holiday with the others, then he would have read her a
manly, brotherly lesson; but he spoke stale treason against earnestness,
obedience, truth—counselled Euphame to amuse herself, dissipate the
vapours, bask in the sunshine—suggested that she should avail herself of
the lady's absence, and break off from her confinement and drudgery—and
concluded with a hollow profession that he had no personal end to serve,
that he was indifferent and impartial in the matter—never hinted that he
was weary of himself, that he panted for change, excitement, and
diversion, that the fever goaded him on to interest himself with Euphame,
to interfere with Euphame, to enter himself, and decoy her to follow
him, upon a labyrinth, very easy to trace for the first few yards, but
whose further windings might be very steep, very slippery, and very
dark, and capable of filling them both with perplexity and wretchedness,
for anything Master George cared to ascertain beforehand.
Euphame was startled, and she stared at Master
George, twisting his rose, and speaking hurriedly and with perturbation,
for he was not a bad lad designedly, and he was uncomfortable when he
talked folly approaching to wickedness; and Euphame seemed to see her
own little diamond rose sparkling on in secret for years and years in
its box, as bright a thousand years ago in the black mine, as bright the
day she would draw it last forth as that on which she received it, as
bright in other hands than hers, continuing to exist, shining still as
ever, next in lustre to a star in the blue sky, when her body was
mouldering in the grave, and her spirit translated to heavenly
habitations ; and the girl said to herself, "That is duty, and this
withering rose of a day is pleasure;" and when Master George offered his
flower to her, she declined it, not in the fluttered tone which he had
used, but quietly, though with a long breath. " I'm much obliged to you,
sir; but the blossom is faint, and the leaves would fall fast on my
work. I'm free to pluck a posy for myself when I am not throng. I thank
you, all the same. My lady bade me make speed, that the table might be
covered come Sabbath; and, indeed, I'm fain to be done as she intended.
If you please, Master George, don't trouble yourself any longer about
me." And Master George flushed with shame, and tossed the powder out of
his hair by the abruptness with which he turned on his heel—and,
convinced of Mrs Euphame's bad taste, or converted to her good sense,
from this day onwards he slighted her, as he had done in the beginning.
(To be continued.)