These lodgers afforded copies for the Crichtons'
absurdities. Rich neighbours, bethink you of your double, who is to
revive your cast-off foibles with still more preposterous, still more
disastrous conclusions, and bear with the old-fashioned good sense, the
clear, pertinent humour of a few more quotations from the old essays
which writers turn up for their own purposes, and men at large agree to
call English classics and to leave to dust and decay. Mr. Homespun's
daughters have gone on a Christmas visit to my Lady------and have
returned much altered, having contracted a most infectious disease. "At
dinner, after a long morning preparation, they appeared with heads of
such is their behaviour less changed than their garb. Instead of joining
in the good-humoured cheerfulness we used to have among us before, my
two fine young ladies check every approach to mirth, by calling
it vulgar. One of them chid their brother the other day for laughing,
and told him it was monstrously ill-bred. In the evenings, when we were
wont, if we had nothing else to do, to fall to blind-man's-buff, or
cross-purposes, or sometimes to play at loo for cherry-stones, these two
get a pack of cards to themselves, and sit down to play for any little
money their visit has left them, at a game none of us know anything
about. It seems, indeed, the dullest of all amusements, as it consists a
parcel of phrases which they utter on all occasions as decisive ; French
I believe, though I can scarcely find any of them in the dictionary, and
am unable to put them upon paper ; but all of them mean something
extremely fashionable, and are constantly supported by the authority of
my Lady, or, the Countess, his Lordship, or Sir John."
"... But another doctrine they have learned is, that
a father and a parson may preach as they please, but are to be followed
only according to the inclination of their audience. Indeed, I could not
help observing that my Lady------ never mentioned her absent Lord (who I
understand is seldom of her parties), except sometimes to let them know
how much she differed in opinion from him."
"This contempt of authority, and affectation of
fashion has gone a step lower in my household. My gardener has tied his
hair behind, and stolen my flour to powder it, ever since he saw Mr.
Papillot; and yesterday, he gave me warning that he should leave me next
term, if I did not take him into the house, and provide another hand for
the work in the garden. I found a great hoyden, who washes my daughter's
linens, sitting the other afternoon, dressed in one of their fly-caps,
entertaining this same oaf of a gardener, and the wives of two of my
farm-servants, with tea, forsooth; and when I chid her for it, she
replied, that Mrs. Dimity, my Lady------'s gentlewoman, told her all the
maids at------had tea, and saw company of an afternoon."
After breakfast, in the lodging-house in the High
Street, there was a great ringing of bells, rat-tatting of ebony sticks
and scuttling to answer them, loud talk, make-believe work, sometimes
displeasure and recrimination, but more frequently right Epicurean
laughter. Then the great business of dressing began. Oh! that dressing,
that dressing. One has not the least ado in crediting the country
vicar's daughters cooking the wash half the day over the fire, when here
was the hairdresser daily—his time filled up till seven at night, and
sometimes detained two hours in this single house. The crimping, the
plaiting, the puffing, the frilling, the lacing, the knotting, besides
the powdering and painting that followed;—it was a sobering thought, to
consider that it took place,, on the least computation, once every
twenty-four hours. One is impressed with the determination of the
heroine, who would not appear in the comfortable undress of the silk
sacque, or the gauze nightgown; it was so tedious a matter, that we find
the shred of an apology for the justly-railed-at foreign fashion of
receiving company during the process; it was so serious an interest,
that we are a. little less astonished to hear that great Lady Mary did
not look into her glass for eleven years, because it had no pleasant
answer to convey to her.
After the dressing appeared the visitors, motley
enough here, and still inextricably entangled with the Crichtons, whose
work never interfered with their world, however their world might
confuse and impair their work. The very thronged and extraordinary
stage, where crashes, yells and howls, and shrill chatters, and
screeches, and general havoc, were no nuisance or interruption,—the
desultoriness, and above all, the half-tavern ease, when taverns were
frequented by everybody, made the lodging-house a favourite haunt for
the wags, the gay madams, the pretty fellows of the metropolis, when
they were not, alas ! more wickedly engaged in their insane gambling,
their gluttony and drunkenness, their riots and murders.
Here came the famous Kitty Hyde, first of a bevy of
beauties, whose very names are picturesque in our ears,—Kitty Hyde,
Dolly Walpole, Lady Bell Bentinck; the most famous, cheery and heartless
of duchesses, ere she had basely lied, and joined to her blythe, bad
presence, a gibbering ghost in the person of her rash and unhappy son,
Henry Lord Drumlanrig; and here astounding Euphame's vision, even after
Lady Morriston's story, tripped a blooming gentleman in velvet coat,
rolled-up silk stockings, cravat and cocked hat, who was known to visit
the newsrooms, and hang about the public meetings, for no other purpose
than to gratify her own unscrupulous levity, and gather political
scandal; a strange and unprofitable spy, whom Union Lockhart sent
out—his own wife, Lady Effie, daughter of Lord Eglintoun and
step-daughter of Mistress Susannah. To that arena unbanished, however
checked by Mark Crichton's scowl, flocked the idle gentlemen, like young
Master Ludovic, who found it a hard matter to learn the flute and study
verses—another writing them, and managing the musical glasses, and who
had no other resource when there was no hunt, no race, no cock-fight, no
game lasting forty-eight hours amid shattered bottles, scattered
guineas, guttered candles, and occasional sword clashes, and no certain
prospect of a rebellion. And if the quality had their meetings, the
Crichtons, ''sib" at a great distance to the old chancellor, moved among
their betters; if the quality attended their auctions, so did the
Crichtons, though they had more furniture than they could use, and far
more than they could pay. They also had their walks on the Castle Hill,
and the pier of Leith, and in the King's Park, or along the Duke's Walk;
they too had their junketings, their suppers sometimes under the
patronage of the reigning quality ; and proud women they were when it
was so, though they lay in bed half the next day, racked with headaches
and sick with vexation because some lord, or lady, or squire's daughter,
had forgotten them, slighted them, discountenanced them.
Oh! it was a life of strain and whirl and vanity, and
utter ignobleness and emptiness. No wonder Lady Loudon forsook it, and,
retreating to a remote estate in the wild Highlands, planted trees and
hedges till she was in her hundredth year; no wonder the Earl of Wintoun,
who, poor man, was reckoned cracked in his own day, loved to descant on
his happiness when he dwelt, unknown to his friends, with a blacksmith
in France, whom he served as a bellows-blower and under-servant for the
space of several years, and never once experienced the spleen or the
vapoury, womanish complaints very catching among his brethren; no wonder
Lady Mary forsook England, and watched bees and silkworms. No wonder, no
wonder, though, woe's me! this marvel was rare, Lady Huntingdon quitted
Vanity Fair and put her hand to Whitfield's plough. Good folks might
well weep to think of the Christian profession null; many may still well
weep to think of it, for the world is only more rational and more
false-seeming—vanity of vanities is written on hundreds and thousands of
its households.
And through all the turmoil and wear and tear, and
flimsiness and glare and dust of the lodging-house in the High Street,
sat one statuesque figure, save when Euphame Napier went abroad to see
her customers, or tempted by a remembrance of the country air of
Ormeslaw, trod with a gentle foot at some quiet hour as far as St.
Leonard's, or waited upon my Lady Somerville, or was carried in after
sermon to drink a dish of tea with Mrs. Jonet and good Mr. Drurie in the
old nursery filled with new plants in Bristo Street. Imagine Euphame,
composed, lofty, benign in her solitude in the crowd, stared at, spoken
of, teazed, but neither tempted out of the tenor of her way nor tired of
its consequences. It is granted that this was only probable of a girl
endowed with strength of mind as well as simplicity and godliness, but
treading on the heels of this concession, the reality itself is insisted
upon. Poor, great Lady Mary, with her characteristic coolness and
confidence, asserts, in her brilliant youth,—"Mr. Bickerstaff has very
wrong notions of our sex. I can say there are some of us that despise
charms of show, and all the pageantry of greatness perhaps with more
ease than any of the philosophers. In condemning the world, they seem to
take pains to condemn it; we despise it without taking pains to read
lessons of morality to make us do it." Whether Lady Mary would in other
circumstances have pointed her moral is very doubtful; she did
philosophically endure lonely exile, she was a philosopher; but Euphame
had a better portion. Euphame looked up into the blue sky and saw her
home, her Lord, her Father there, and believed that she had a commission
to work in the meantime—to work while it was day, and so she was never
unemployed, uninterested, listless, discontented, weak, worthless ; and
while she looked to the end, she did not despise the means. Work,
needle-work, worsted work was not despised in Euphame's generation, or
was only despised by the idle, gadding, dissipated pleasure-seekers. No
one dreamt of its insufficiency as a resource to the modest female mind;
the more virtuous and pious, and the wiser a maid or matron, the more
she was addicted to tapestry and embroidery. Writers did not rail
against it; they wrote to commend it heartily; and it is impossible to
make it plain as a great refuge and absorbing pursuit in itself without
quoting again from the half jesting, half serious, half gallant, half
sarcastic, wholly kindly notice of an author unknown, in an advanced
number of the well-beloved old Spectator.
''What a delightful entertainment must it be to the
fair sex, whom their native modesty, and the tenderness of men towards
them, exempts from public business, to pass their hours in imitating
fruits and flowers, and transplanting all the beauties of nature into
their own dress, or raising a new creation in their closets and
apartments?
"This is, methinks, the most proper way wherein a
lady can show a fine genius, and I cannot forbear wishing that several
writers of that sex had chosen to apply themselves rather to tapestry
than to rhyme. Your pastoral poetesses may vent their fancy in rural
landscapes, and place despairing shepherds under silken willows, or
drown them in a stream of mohair. The heroic writers may work up battles
as successfully, and inflame them with gold, or stain them with crimson.
Even those who have only a turn to a song, or an epigram, may put many
valuable stitches into a purse, and crowd a thousand graces into a pair
of garters.
"If I may, without breach of good manners, imagine
that any pretty creature is void of genius, and would perform her part
herein but very awkwardly, I must nevertheless insist upon her working,
if it be only to keep her out of harm's way.
"Another argument for busying good women in works of
fancy is, because it takes them off from scandal, the usual attendant of
tea-tables, and all other inactive scenes of life.
"A third reason that I shall mention, is the profit
that is brought to the family where these pretty arts are encouraged. It
is manifest that this way of life not only keeps fair ladies from
running out into expenses, but is at the same time an actual
improvement. How memorable would that matron be who should have it
inscribed upon her monument, 'That she wrought out the whole Bible in
tapestry, and died in a good old age, after having covered three hundred
yards of wall in the mansion-house.'"
But Euphame had a generous object in view, and so she
acquired the stern Spartan's beautiful reverence for the hoary head, and
grew gentle even to jovial Mrs. Crichton, in the prospect of her
becoming infirm and in want of a sanctuary. Try Euphame's armour,—Euphame's
panacea, for that general sickening of a vague disease, for the fairy
glitter of frivolity; try it more wisely than Euphame did. If she was in
any respect starched or spasmodic, be not you starched or spasmodic, but
be godly and be good in your generation, that your godliness may have
thews and sinews, and may not prove a thin shadow or a pure phantom.
Look again at Euphame in her tall stature, her brown
hair darker, her grey eyes deeper; these full placid lips, so
distinguishing a feature in her face, slightly parted; constantly intent
and busy in the universal relaxation and absence of discipline and
design around her; saving money already after her little expenses and
charities, to store beside her unfading diamond rose. An indefatigable
servant of her master, she is not likely to be affected by this coarse,
commonplace, paltry, selfish ambition. Alas ! alas ! that sitting thus,
like Lucretia at her wheel among a rout of princes' trifling, luxurious
wives, as she imprinted herself on Mark Criehton's imagination, other
dangers should be hovering round her, other evil influences settling
down upon her, the conventual atmosphere closing in! Much need had the
wise man to teach the people knowledge, and search out and set in order
proverbs; for the weary scholar must con many a hard lesson, and the
sorrowful penitent lag back from a myriad of magniloquent devices, ere
he can be content simply to love God and keep His commandments, to do
justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God.
III.
The year wore on again to spring and summer, and the
Crichtons were prominent in holidays to Mutrie's Hill and Boughton. Mrs.
Crichton pressed Euphame to accompany them, from pure disinclination to
witness "such bondage," and the girl might have yielded a point to
breathe the fresh air, and try what sympathy would do, if it were only
out of love to her neighbour ; but she was full of her own purposes,
still tasking herself, bent more eagerly than ever on her mission and
her labour, since she saw that its accomplishment was difficult and
distant. Thus Mrs. Crichton was quite triumphant when, by Lady
Somerville's command, who said she was losing the living roses in her
cheeks, Euphame consented to go, for once in her life, across the moor,
where the lively promenade of Princes Street runs now, to have cakes and
cream at the bun-house of old Edinburgh;— cakes and cream Euphame
thought; but Mrs. Crichton had made private provision for ducks and
green pease, and little glasses of smuggled brandy. The Crichtons—Euphame
counted for company, with Mark, pressed into their service as an escort;
but Mrs. Crichton had her gossip, Mrs. Hughes, and Mysie had her friend
Madge Haldane, with her side-looking, plausible, sycophantish brother,
whom Mark could not abide; and Katie had picked up gay, idle Master
Ludovie, of the noble house of Wintoun, who happened to be in town, and
who did not disdain to form one in the waiting-woman Folly, so that it
provided him with amusement; and at the last moment Lady Cauld-aeres'
daughters fancied that they could undertake the walk, and consented to
grace the company: so it was quite a cavalcade which started through the
Port, to waken up the moor with their laughter, and frighten the bittern
by their flutter and flash and fume.
The end of the expedition was scarcely worth the cost
and fatigue to those who could not appreciate the broom, gorgeous even
with half its glory over, and hanging in black pods, the swift flight of
the lapwings, the golden motes in the sunbeams —though the air of the
brown moor blew fresh to the inhabitants of the High Street, whose
odours almost drove Dr. Johnson to regret his torn to Scotland on the
very night of his arrival, only they might have had it any day with far
less bustle. The cakes and cream, the ducks and peas, to those who
fancied them, would have been appetizing at the half-way house; but Mrs.
Crichton spilt the sauce on Mrs. Hughes' quilted petticoat, and Mrs.
Hughes would not be appeased for the accident, and the milk was turned,
and Mrs. Crichton had been too late in appointing the fresh batch of
cakes, so that the mistress of the house had fired them in a hurry, and
burnt one side black; and altogether, those who partook of the
legitimate fare required to make the best of it, and overlook the fact,
that the young ladies of Cauldacres sniffed scornfully at their
dainties, and feeling more wearied and less entertained than they
expected, immediately gave themselves airs, fanned themselves,
threatened to swoon,—which would not have been so very wonderful after
all, if the one "never walked on account of her corns," and the other
"had not walked since she caught a sore throat in one of the cold
evenings" of 1708 or 1709. It was more inexcusable that they would make
audible remarks on their inferiors while they talked apart, and wore
poor Mysie Crichton to distraction, trying to flatter them into better
humour, until Madge Haldane and her brother, smooth and complacent as
they were, grew affronted; and Katie would be giddy with Master Ludovic,
and aggrieved Mark, whom she recommended with pretty impudence, which
was impudence still, to look after Euphame Napier; for, quoth Katie, "Euphame
is as much bound to her stool and her frame as Gipsy Jean Gordon to
revenge the murder of her man, spending on it a lapful of gold which
might have bought her a belted knight, let alane a Faa; and sure that
will please you Mark, lad. More by token, you're a pair of kill-joys;
you dinna ken how to behave at a pleasure-party. Gae wa' with you, and
leave us to draw up with whom we will."
There was plenty of discomfort and worry, Euphame
found, in the so-called pleasure-party. It ought not to have been if
hearts had been true, and tempers sweet, and minds attuned to peace ;
but so it was in the actual circumstances, and Euphame settled, that
though her hospital was worth the dedication of her youth, this folly to
Mutrie was not worth one summer's afternoon.
Veritably, Euphame and Mark Crichton were, here as
elsewhere, linked by an invisible chain; and Euphame involuntarily
refreshed herself with the consideration, that it was healthful for the
strong man, shut up in the clockmaker's, poring over wheels and needles,
and curious instruments, and mysterious calculations with the
enthusiastic little Frenchman, as for herself from her tapestry, to be
thus loitering among the cool springs and breezy heights of the moor,
idle, if he were only unharassed for a few hours on a summer's clay.
Would the frown on Mark Crichton's brow lighten ? Would the rigidity of
his mouth soften? Euphame was curious, and she was willing that they
should tarry among the heather.
"This is as manful as constructing the wee engines,
and fixing the wire chains, Euphame," he said, with his sour melancholy.
But Euphame was not a melancholy woman; she went on
her way inwardly rejoicing, and in the strength of her lofty morality,
was accustomed to see every little attainment as bearing on a great
whole, every infinitesimal effort as a partial development of the motive
within her, and the might supplied to her. To Euphame, possessed of the
genius of the heart, ''concentration and application," there was nothing
common or unclean in any honest calling. "I would not slight the needles
and the chains. Think how they stand instead of the sun, moon, and
stars, for times and for seasons, for days and for years. A watchmaker
who minds men of the flight of time, may be next to a preacher, Mark
Crichton."
"At that rate, so may any man," responded Mark,
scoffingly. "The road-maker, who divides his work by miles, the tailor
who sorts his charges by suits, and, most of all, the hangman who draws
the pin, and cuts short the last hour."
"'Deed may they," assented Euphame, without being at
all disturbed in her opinion. "All trades may preach to those who like
to listen; but, Mark Crichton, I would have them preach about life, not
death; our reawakening and renewal in purity and joy, not our latter
end. And I'm troubled about that office of hangman, because it seems to
stop short now at the edge of the criminal's grave. What for should we
appoint an executioner, and then hunt him with our scorn till he leaps
from a crag, like the miserable gentleman in the King's Park ? If we
made him in his horror, must we madden him in our loathing?"
''I cannot tell, mistress; I dare to say there are
others as deserving of our execration; only we're time-serving, ye ken,
and false."
"We're to grow better, Mark Crichton, in the likeness
of the perfect man. Na, never shake your head, for that is to be an
unbeliever, sir, and I would rather cut off my right hand than that you
or any gallant man should sink into a cowardly unbeliever. Adie Napier
is more hopeful. I hear of Adie at times, Adie is a scholar as well as a
soldier, and when there has been word to Scotland, twice he has sent me
a line, which has found me out, for as little as you think of truth and
justice, Mark."
(To be continued.)