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(Continued from page 110)
V.
The stroke had fallen—a
greater stroke to Euphame than the events of war, vicissitudes of
politics, strategies, plots, and blunders, and literary enterprises, which
march so brilliantly across the field of Anne's life. The old mother in
the Trinity was gone from this world—and although Euphame was a girl of
much promise, who had made a lively impression on her friends and
acquaintances, who had fast friends for her years and portionless
condition, she was nobody's darling now; she had no beloved figure for
ever hovering in her mind's eye; she had struggled through that rebellion
of yearning, bereaved affection—that chill of lonely orphanhood; she was
strong, and fearless, and faithful again, but—accept it with merciful
forbearance—that Euphame's heart was a little harder when the wound had
cicatriced which had bled so profusely. It should not be so. Misfortune
should soften, not steel; but it was the dangerous tendency of that
composed, calm, unworldly spirit, when its living outlet was for ever
closed, not to forget or forsake its Maker, not to abjure the heaven which
had deprived it of its treasure on earth, but to draw off more and more
from its fellows—to give warnings of undergoing a gradual ossification to
the common joys and sorrows, troubles and cares of humanity; and even
while it labours sedulously among them, in itself seems to stand apart
from their sources. An excellent man or woman, but above ordinary wants
and weaknesses—an insensibility about the individual—too superior for
mortals in general—a little cold, a little high-minded, with all his or
her meekness—a suspicion of superciliousness lurking beneath the brother's
or sister's charity.
What flaw is it, in good
men and women, which causes their very virtue to "lean" to error's "side?"
—which conjures a failing and a stumbling-block out of their merits
themselves? It is not so with angels, who are able to minister to the
humblest son or daughter of salvation—who have much joy over one sinner
who repenteth; and we thank God reverently it was not so seen in the
pattern and perfection of all righteousness—the Son of God and man.
But Euphame was much
esteemed in the Hospital, and in her seventeenth year she was as staid,
and true, and kind, though not as tender a maiden, as had ever worn its
laurels. In this her closing season, she was employed in many offices of
trust and responsibility, notwithstanding Mrs Jonet had never been known
to devolve any special duty or toil upon another. One honourable
distinction awarded to Euphame was that, on the completion of a
masterpiece of embroidery, while Katie Crichton was left in the hall to
pick out and spoil still further her section of the work, Euphame was
despatched, under the plaid, which fell so prettily over her head and
shoulders compared with their ordinary garniture of cap and tippet, to
display the performance to their foundress, Lady Somerville. Euphame had
been seen and noticed by Lady Somerville frequently, and had gone
occasionally to her house in the Queen's Close, but never by herself, or
on an individual mission.
Euphame, in her grave way,
liked the progress through the streets, and the ideas which were suggested
to her. Up the clattering, dark, rugged Bow, safe, and only safe, in broad
sunshine; crossing with a thrill before the high, black-browed house where
the burgher's wife saw the gigantic woman join her comrades, heard the
immeasurable laughter, watched the wildly-waving torches, and asked nest
day, when she had recovered from her trance of terror, who lived in that
mansion, and was answered, Major Weir. In Euphame's day, the black staff
which "suffered" with its owner was still said to tap up and down the
disused stairs, and attend as a porter at the closed doors, the wretched
Grizel Weir's wheel to hum within the untenanted house, and unhallowed
lights to light up its darkness. Euphame was not before her time— she was
not very superstitious, but she was not incredulous; and Mrs Jonet as
implicitly believed in "Satan's Kingdom Unmasked," as in "Peden's
Prophecies."
There Euphame was scared a
second time. A Highlander in his dusky tartan and nodding plumes brushed
past her—a John Highlandman with keen eyes and unkempt locks; and not the
uncouth goodwill and barbarous fidelity of their Highland Bawby in the
cellar-like kitchen of Bristo Street—scarcely the broad daylight could
reconcile Euphame to the clans. The city guard, enrolled for the peace and
protection of the lieges, were notoriously fierce; and a Macdiar-mid or
Macdonald, fresh from his awful haunts, from a Glen of Weeping, or Corrie
of the Mist, who had placed a dead man's head on the board, and stuffed
the mouth with bread and cheese; who had tortured an enemy by horrid
hunger and thirst; who had marched down into the Lowlands in many a foray,
his banner waving, his bagpipes playing in triumph, amidst the smoke of
burning houses, the groans of wounded men, and the shrieks of abducted
women—what was to be expected of him? Remember, it was in years to come
that Lord Lovat's Highlanders marched into Edinburgh, surrounded a
citizen's dwelling-house, and carried off, upon the warrant of their
chief's instructions, by stages, to that "rock in the ocean," lone St
Kilda, the raving, foaming daughter of Chiesly of Dalry, and wife of Lord
Grange. Euphame Napier had some grounds for her palpitation, though she
scolded herself immediately on the rational ground—"What would a wild John
Highlandman want with a poor body like me? How could I provoke him?" And
she might have spared a portion of her dread and aversion for the
gallants, three deep, ruffling along the street; their laced coats, with
the deep cuffs terminating in the knots of riband at their elbows, the
knots of riband at their knees, the knots of riband at their sword-hilts,
the knots of riband in their cocked hats—these knots of riband, and the
fashion of them ; the powdered full-bottom wigs; the pale or flushed faces
were imported from London; the serious, offended Presbyterians, their
fellow-subjects, would have it that they commissioned, also quarterly, a
catalogue of wicked oaths from London. But the gallants were customary
nuisances; and Euphame, even unattended, by her quiet, pure, unflinching
face, disarmed their ogling and swaggering, and almost induced some bold,
but not shameless eyes to sink abashed.
Euphame was in the High
Street—the pride of the old metropolis—passing rich in the black,
stanchioned, grim Tolbooth; Edinburgh's beloved St Giles's, fresh from one
of its many last touches, fair in shaft, arch, and keystone, where the
clock from the Abbey of Lindores was now tolling the hour, where, in the
Old Kirk above, Jenny Geddes arrested the astounded Dean, and in the vault
below, the dust of Euphame's ancestors, the Napiers of the Wrichtishouse,
mingled in loving communion with that of the Napiers of Merchiston; the
cross and its unicorn, where Montrose and the Argyles met the same violent
death, ascending to where the tall houses sent terraced pleasure-gardens
down to the Nor Loch, on whose waters citizens boated on the summer
evenings, and across whose ford fugitives fled red-handed,—all ending in
the frowning Castle, with its grand hill.
Booths and stairs,
water-carriers' barrels, and carters' bags of yellow sand, hucksters,
caddies, chairs and their bearers, and fat sows trotting in and out below
—signs and clothes-lines swinging from upper stories, and impeding the
light above—Euphame needed more than modern dexterity to tread her way
seathless. But here was a sight which meets living eyes—the George Heriot
boys, with their governors, as they are to defile for centuries. Adie
Napier was no longer among them. Adie's time was expired; and in the
licence of his liberty, poor Adie had plunged headlong into reckless
courses, and, without friends or money, had found himself enlisted as a
soldier, almost before he had time to look about him and bethink himself,
and come to a proper mind, and settle on a sober footing. And so it seemed
that poor Adie's careful education had proved worse than useless, and that
he had been very far from responding to the wise, liberal, large-hearted
goldsmith's aim. Yonder where he stands in his ruff, with the jewel in his
hand—would that it could have been a boy's heart, and that he could have
so traced its mysterious workings, that he could have made all provision
for its manifold wanderings, if such foresight had been within human ken.
But here still was Mark Crichton among the foremost boys—the fifth or
sixth form of the hospital—with broadening chest and towering head, and
after the picture of Hardyknute, with "dark-brown cheek" and "dark-brown
brow." Euphame had her old slight acquaintance with him, and her old
impression of him —a diligent lad, and likely to be an indefatigable man,
but of a somewhat hard and bitter consistence. Euphame did not consider
that she herself was cold as well as spotless —"as snow on Rona's crest."
Euphame had not the coveted faculty which we all want sorely—"To see
oursel's as ithers see us."
The High Street was much
given over to traffic already; the gentle names of ancient proprietors
were beginning to hover like ghosts over warerooms and public offices; but
conspicuous then as now, outshining the tokens of prince and peer, proud
prelate and luxurious ambassador, where the Netherbow and the High Street
exchanged greetings, stood the house of Master John Knox, where the
magistrates presented him with his private study, "built of daillis,"
where he addressed the moved crowd from the broad window, and where, like
a man leal in every pulse, albeit stern, he fulfilled gallantly enough the
half-effaced inscription still helping to indicate his tenement, "Lufe God
above all, and ye neighbour as ye self." Euphame gazed at it lovingly;
and, though she was not much given to such reflections, not because of her
Presbyterianism, but because of the exceedingly still nature of the girl,
she thought of Mar-jorie Bowes of Berwick, and Margaret Stewart of
Ochiltree; and how he asked the one, whether she could aid him to bear his
heavy burden, and she engaged that she would shift the weight from his
broad shoulders to her slight back on an occasion—and Euphame counted her
favoured that she was literally enabled to carry the fainting traveller's
baggage for him in one day's weary trudge in the Low Countries— and
Euphame did not "dream that there was any sorcery or witchcraft in the
paction; or in the last suit he won, though the reformer rode, "with ane
great court on ane trim gelding, nocht like ane prophet or ane auld
decrepit priest, as he was, but like as he had been ane of the blood
royal, with his bands of taffetie, feschnit with golden rings and precious
stanes, .... and did sae allure that puir gentlewoman, that she could not
live without him."
At last Euphame was in the
Canongate, whose "lands" were still the pride and pleasure of all the
families of degree and substance who had not migrated at the Union. At the
head of the Canongate was the sign of the White Horse, whence, sixty years
later, the tavern was kept by Lucky Boyd, and there issued from it, late
on a hot Saturday night in August, the important note, which imparted such
gratification to the conceited, enthusiastic receiver, "Mr Johnson sends
his compliments to Mr Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd's;" and straight
before Euphame lay the noble quadrangle and the towers of Holyrood, where
John Knox rebuked Mary in vain—and the "sweet face," which all men had
bidden "God save!" when she came home to her rough, tumultuous Scots, in
the delicate bloom of her girlish widowhood, was all disfigured with
wounded pride and angry vexation, and, alas! anything but honest
conviction and brave repentance.
Within another stone's
throw was the Queen's Close, which some dowager Margaret or Mary had
honoured as a temporary residence, or where she had thought fit to drop
the shackles of state and ceremony in visiting a chosen waiting-woman or
an attached court adherent, and so had bequeathed the name of the
locality, all the same as if she had planted her body and train within its
limits. In Euphame Napier's memory the principal dwelling presiding over
the range—a clumsy mass of building, not so romantic as the house in
Bristo Street, and with but its rambling vastness, a mitre here, and a
star there, and the Virgin's pot of lilies above all, unshattered by the
professional spoilers of idols, to uphold its dignity— was occupied by
Lady Somerville and her maiden sisters, Miss Peggy and Miss Clara
Spottiswoode— their women, their boys, their dogs, popinjays, wardrobes,
and paint-pots.
VI.
Euphame was greeted civilly
by Lady Somerville's sober, punctilious waiting-woman, who was fully
forty, wore a close curch or cap, with a plain band, tight skirts, keys at
her girdle, and linen sleeves drawn over her ruffles; but while she sought
Lady Somerville's cabinet to discover whether she was at liberty to
receive her guest, she made Euphame be conducted through the gusty
passages and deposited in the matted parlour where Miss Peggy and Miss
Clara Spottiswoode, with the assistance of a young woman in a chintz gown
and fly-cap, with a half-impudent, half -frightened expression, were
playing their afternoon's game at ombre, sipping their little glasses of
citron-waters, fanning themselves, tapping with their high-heeled shoes on
the floor, languishing, as they had displayed their airs and graces to an
admiring world thirty years before, hugging their barking dogs, and
arranging their tray of images. It was clear that these ladies were of a
different order from Lady Somerville; and, indeed, save by a disdainful
glance round, and a loud ejaculation, "One of Lady Somerville's canaille,"
they did not deign to notice the panting, blushing girl, for Euphame was
but a primitive, rustic lass, with all her rare qualities and her town
breeding.
(To be continued.) |
