(Continued from page 356.)
My friends, it is a small comfort to find that the
third ten were Englishmen. If you ever travel into Berwickshire, (for
this was one of the Border heroines.) and inquire into the localities of
the withering old ditty, you will be shewn the silver Tweed as the water
in question, as well as "the lang dyke-side," on the Scotch side of the
Border, down which the covetous "twal" defiled, though whether a stone
of Burncastle stands to this day, is altogether unknown. The tochered
maiden has gone the way of her less endowed sisters, and taken nothing
with her of her riches and honours, and the reader, very likely, judges
her case unworthy of grave consideration. But say, poor Tibbie, was your
difficulty a small matter in its little hour? You have left food for
much scorn and long-resounding laughter—have you bequeathed no quaint
moral also?
There is one tantalising doubt. Are Scotchmen
notoriously time-serving and mercenary? Is the desire for "a penny," in
addition to the gratification and consecration of their best earthly
affections, very conspicuous among their good qualities? Because there
is another literary laird's ironical effusion to the point—the melody
and chorus echoing faintly to this day by national hearths. Well, well,
doubtless the lairds were witty, and free with their wit, and attacked
this weakness, along with others, offering a fair aim for the feathered
shafts shot from their mischievous bent bows.
These ladies, to Euphame Napier, were merely ladies
of substance and discretion, in their brown lutestring skirts, white
silk bodices, and universal little lace caps, at their tatting and their
domestic details. The marvels of the next century are to the present
like the fine landscapes which we have never questioned, because our
sheep feed here, and our deer browse yonder, and they lie hard by our
door and are nothing out of the common, till a stranger appears and
falls into raptures over their beauty—their pastoral simplicity, or
their lofty sublimity. But Euphame saw the women with her mortal eyes,
ate and drank with them, must have gathered some scraps of their
peculiar experiences. Those visitors at Ormeslaw belonged mostly to the
ladies of the family, or to Master George. Happily, the presence of so
many women tempered what might have been the convivialities of the men,
and the laird had only to take them into his own hands during the
morning's farm-work or sport, and to smile a grave smile on their common
sports when he descended from his fastness to compose them for the
evening exercise. He was a reserved man, a rapt man, the laird, and in
those days the master of a family was a little king; he might be as
courteous as he choose, but he had a king's privileges of withdrawal, a
private, personal life, which no one dreamt of invading. Every guest
deferred to his habits—no elaborate or artificial system of being at the
service of his company, and a mere caterer for their pleasure, was
established to fritter away his valuable time and weighty engagements;
life was a serious thing, too serious a thing for politeness to trifle
with.
Lady Morriston took quite a fancy to staid Euphame,
perhaps on the count that she was a lively little woman herself, and
liked to instruct and amuse her quiet juniors. Lady Logan was much older
than her companion, a woman well advanced in the decline of life, and
you know she was always accustomed to receive attention, and, although
an upright, sound-hearted woman in the main, she was therefore
particular about trifles, and exacting in her requirements, particularly
from her husband, lazy, humorous, humane, George Logan, whom nothing had
rid of his inert sluggishness, fun, and kindness. It was a little
grievous to see how Lady Logan's plain, worn, sensible face would be
racked while she awaited her dues, especially the conspicuous display of
her husband's implied regard. Not that George Logan minded—he was one of
your philosophers, he took it as a trick in her temperament, a
tarnishing effect of worldly power, or else it was a growth of pure
warmth of feeling, and he simply pitied and humoured, as far as his
indolence and the temptation to his jests would allow him, the flaw in
the otherwise sagacious and generous-minded woman. Lady Morristou could
not overlook the little scandal—she could not resist commenting on it to
Euphame, but, to be sure, not unmercifully, for these were upright,
cordial people, honestly charged with charity. "O Euphame," she would
cry, "Lady Logan has not got over this old, old care. What for did she
not cast it with the lave? Better we kept the heavy anes that break our
backs, than the little foxes that eat our grapes, that sour our tempers,
and distract our spirits. She's gray-headed, and she has lost bairns,
yet she is still watching, lest her friends, and first of all, George
Logan, should fail her! It was a sore trial for her youth, that
suspicion of all who approached her, for you see she had not beauty to
divide her thoughts. I've heard she was hard-favoured for a well-grown,
well-disposed lass. You may look. She has a grand cast with her now. I
think the good and the true aye grow bonnier in one fashion or another
as they grow aulder. Her father was a fule—it is a great cross, Euphame,
to have a foolish father—worse than to be an orphan. I count it one of
my best blessings, that I was the daughter of Sir John; yet at the
cross-roads of her destiny, she was a magnanimous woman. Yes, Mistress
Euphame, yon auld lady was a magnanimous woman, and it is a vast pity,
that like many another person in this world, she could take a long step,
and make a mighty effort, and there her force was exhausted. She could
only halt after herself, like a shadow following the original for the
remainder of her life. Bairn, there is a text anent faith lifting
mountains—was it spoken alone for deathbeds, and conversions, and
pitched battles with the adversary—for gray beards and stately men think
you? or for weak maidens, and bridal roofs, and bairnies' cradles? Still
she's a most magnanimous woman. She deserves to be praised—women should
praise their neighbours, Mistress Euphame, when they've won the whole
sex credit for discretion and graciousness—it was written of the wise
woman, ye wis, 'She shall be praised.' What think you directed Lady
Logan to gift George Logan with her rowth of plenishing?"
"I cannot tell, madam."
"Then I will inform you, lass, and lay the lesson to
heart, it is the interpretation of the verse, 'Better are the wounds of
a friend than the kisses of an enemy.' You do not take me—bide a wee,
and I will make it clear. All the world was fleeching and fawning on
Tibbie Fowler till she was sick of their sycophancy, for she was s wise
lass in her generation, though she was hard-favoured, and had a foolish
father. Then George Logan writes the merry song, and aye comes down on
her at the end of ilka verse—
"Silly elf, it's for her pelf,
That a' the lads are wooing at her;"
and it finds its way fast enough into her hands, and
she reads it from end to end, and she goes right up to him, and she says
sweetly enough, ' Sir, you never wrote a truer word. Sir, in that you
are not false and do not flatter me, I proffer you my thanks; but I pray
you, be more merciful to a plain, rich wight, in time to come.' And what
says George Logan in reply, Euphame—tell me that ? What says lounging,
glib-tongued Geordie Logan to that gentle set down?
"I cannot tell, madam—that he thought shame of
himself, I dare say."
"Not so far amiss, Mrs Euphame. The tears came into
George Logan's dreamy, sly een, and he vowed she was the most gracious
woman that had ever given him a word, and he became her fast friend from
that hour, and he would fain have suppressed his idle song, and
threatened to draw on every man that sung it, (I trow that would have
filled his hands, and compelled him to exert himself,) but she forbade
it, and joined in the laugh, and ca'd it a charming diversion, (a
magnanimous, menseful woman, Lady Logan!) He was no more than her friend
for a time, for he was landless as well as thriftless, and sprung of a
house that would meet no favour. It is gude, Mrs Euphame, when equals in
fortune treat as principals in a purpose of marriage—but what do I say ?
love owns no inequalities, cummer—there are but three things that bridge
all obstacles, Mrs Euphame, love, and death, and grace. Well-a-day! he
soon saw she had no lover as trusty and tried as he, so he gaed in and
speered the lady, and spoke the foolish father.
"I believe that first my Lady Logan's heart gave a
great stound of joy at her victory, and wonder that she had gained
proud, fastidious George Logan—and then when she was blithe as any, the
poisoned suspicion crossed her inward vision, that George Logan was no
better than the lave—yes, far, far better and far more honourable, but
even his virtues bore a smack of the flavour of the twa-and-f orty
knaves whom we all agree to despise."
"Did she not believe in her gudeman, madam?"
"Whisht! Euphame, dinna be indignant, you are but a
silly chit; she believed and yet she didna believe—incredulity, dogged
credulity, she was smitten with a disease that attacks many in high
places—the king feel3 its touch in the burden of his crown, the
fair woman cowers under it when her beauty is on the wane, the sister
entertains it against the sister, the mother against the child; it is
the scum of much love, lass, the dregs of inordinate affection—it is
whiles inveterate, whiles intermittent. I'll not deny that I've groaned
from it myself, when I was heavy and unable to arouse and occupy Jock
Kerr as I was wont, and he aff anon to some other playfellow. But, Mrs
Euphame, we are safe to escape its misery, when we learn betimes to set
no store on ourselves, and when we have our conversation—friends and
foes, carping cares and fond delights—lifted up and laid down in heaven.
"Thus Tibbie Fowler wedded the heir of the ruined
Logans of Restalrig, and they dwelt in state and bounty in the town of
Leith—and there now George Logan enters, and there again she geeks her
head and screws her face to find what has detained him, and he bows low
and presents her with the white feathers of a sea-gull for her
knitting-sheath, which she may pin to her side. 0 George Logan, when
will you cease to be pawky and provoking. Oh! leeze me rather on a
hundred quiet lairds of Ormeslaw, and simple Jock Kerrs, if I am to
preserve my patience. And hark! she's pressing him to stop for the Whig
gathering tomorrow—that will interfere with her housewifeskep, and she
is fluttering her mother's wings to be hame to her bairns—but she would
not have him slip a duty or miss a pleasure for any cross of hers, if it
lay in her will—truly, they are a worthy, loving couple, only they have
their trials that a maiden like you is not expected to comprehend,
Euphame Napier—and she is a magnanimous woman, my Lady Logan. But,
lassie, never be so mad as to envy a fine duchess, or a great queen."
VII.
At another time Lady Morriston would pity Euphame for
her solitary state, and dwell tenderly on her father, Sir John, "whose
comrade I was, Euphame, from my tenth to my twentieth year. I had
brothers and sisters, but I was his favourite, his Joseph or his
Benjamin. Many a fox-hunt I have ridden to in his company; many a water
I've forded behind him, with my bit feet tucked laughingly into one of
his brown hands, lest they should be wet on the cork soles. Many a black
cock we started, and hare we rode down. Ah, these were merry games! But,
Euphame, I saw other sights, with Lady Cardross, and Lady Semple, and
Lady Buchanan, in the Highlands,—conventicles among hills and glens, in
the East and the West. Sir John concerned himself with politics, and
moved here and there, and he was wont to carry me with him to bear him
company, and lull suspicion, till his last fell journey to London. We've
ridden to the next moss-hag, or we've traversed three counties —we've
sat double on the black horse at the edge of the assembly, and the beast
would not paw the turf, or snort once, till the preacher had ended—or
we've tied him to a stake and stepped into the front ring; it might be
near the roar of a linn, and under the white moonlight—it might be among
the routing of cattle not so well trained as the Black Prince, and
sometimes it was by the flare of crazies and fir torches beneath the
brown cupples of the barn of some farm town; but we aye hearkened at
intervals, with our hearts in our mouths, for the tramp of armed men,
and the pistol shots, and huzzas and curses of our foes. We heard the
Cock of the Conscience, and the Gudeman, and the Prophet, and many mair;
and if we were not gude it was not their wyte.
"I had parted with my father when he went up to
London, whence, with Argyle and Sir Patrick Hume, and other honest
patriots, he was forced to take refuge in Holland. We had word one bonny
month of May, that they were coming back to their ain again— they had
landed in the North, and were marching southwards; but, woes me! their
gathering was soon scaled: and the next news, they were fleeing for
their lives, and Sir John—betrayed by the fause wife of Craigmuir,
because her brother Clellan was slain in the first tulzie between Sir
John's men and the militia — was taken and led through Edinburgh
streets, with his dear head bare to the winds, and lodged in the
Tolbooth to await his trial for treason. My grandfather, auld Dundonald,
had spoken for him. in vain,—we were certified that the death warrant
was to be whipped down from London ere another stroke could be struck in
his favour. His sons were forbidden to see him. My mother but to comfort
the bairns, and I ----- Did I sit down and greet, Euphame?"
"I cannot tell, madam."
(To be continued)