Oh the superb pride and insolence of these fine ladies
of an essentially coarse time!—the ghastly dissipation, the fantastic
folly! Miss Peggy and Miss Clara were gaunt, skinny, worn women, yet they
appeared in the full dress and flaunting costume which would not have
become Euphame's dewy teens at that hour and in private precincts. The
strange, unhome-like look of their brocades, faded and stained, the open
trains setting off the tarnished borders of the petticoats—the indecorous,
undignified, almost irreverent effect of the square-cut bodices, and the
bony arms exposed to the elbow—the hair, artificial at their time of life,
in heavy curls falling back from the haggard, lined, high-coloured faces
far down the shoulders! No fashion could have been more unkindly to the
autumn of life, more opposed to simplicity, self-respect, and seriousness.
"Sister, I'm tired of the game. I'll rather bet a crown
that you don't hold three spades and throw down the cards."
"Pooh! Peggy, I've four. There, I've won your money
without any trouble," cried Miss Clara, cackling with joy, though the
crown was nothing to her.
Miss Peggy grumbled in an equal degree at losing it,
and scolded furiously her sister, her maid, the weather, the hour, her
megrim, and the intruder on their amusement, inducing her to resign her
good hand. "But it is time I was looking after my puppets; they've slept
since morning. I must have them up and dressed, the darlings."
" And I must examine Phillis's eye. It has got a clour
as black as my shoe, sister."
And both ladies turned to a settee, on which was placed
a large wooden tray, containing rows of Dutch dolls in various costumes
and stages of the toilette ; and each selecting her favourite, began to
dandle and talk to it, and condole with it on its distresses, or
congratulate it on its charms, with an amazing assumption of earnestness
and fondness. "Hush-a-ba, Phillis —forget your dolour; go to sleep on my
breast." "My bonnie Amarantha, you're fairer than Mrs Susannah; you 're my
heart's delight." And, "Look, sister, what think you of Phillis's eye, is
it not a wee better?" asks the one lady, anxiously. And "I trow not,
Clara, I would ca' in the boom' body of a doctor," answers the other,
decidedly. And they are not clean demented, as Euphame almost concludes,
only fools after their whimsical folly. If either actors had appealed to
Euphame, she would have put a summary end to the play, and enraged them
beyond measure by the abrupt declaration, "Madam, it is but a doll!"
Lady Somerville had some of her numerous applicants
already installed into her private chamber, so that she had to come down
to Euphame, and content herself with conducting her into the little recess
where stood her work-table, her inlaid desk, her high-backed chair, her
hand-bell, and her foreign screen. Lady Somerville was fair to Euphame
Napier—she was a little woman in weeds, with a wan, somewhat harassed
face. Her fardingale was modest, her powdered hair under lappets, her
juste-au-corps as much a covering as the mantle of Mrs Jonet of Bristo
Street, her ivory-headed stick for use, because she was stiff from
feebleness and sickness rather than from age. Lady Somerville had stood
alone in her family. Moreover, she had been of a meek spirit, and she had
been overwhelmed by some of the deep spiritual researches of her guides;
and what tortures she had undergone, and how much arrogance was left in
her, that drooping figure and that downcast face were there to tell. Mrs
Jonet could have walked over her, Euphame could have struck her down with
a straw, and yet she was stanch as the conscientious weak ones can be—to a
point that ever touches the generous and strong to the quick— she resisted
the taunts of her sisters, she combated her own fears, she fought with her
heaviness and weariness of heart, she took counsel with the godly of her
generation, and, greatest feat of all, she attempted to sift their
opinions, and cleave to those of God, and reject those of man. No wonder
that she was crushed, and bruised, and beaten in the experience, so
appalling to her fine, frail powers; but for good, trembling, pensive,
heroic Lady Somerville there was abounding consolation—on the heavenly
shore was the well of life for her infirmities, and the light neither of
sun nor moon which would no longer dazzle her shrinking vision.
Lady Somerville knew Euphame personally, and viewed her
with great interest and satisfaction; she spoke very graciously to her,
she was not frank, she was a reserved woman, trained in a very formal
school, but there was an ineffable gentleness in her few words. "Euphame
Napier, they tell me you've been a guid scholar, and docile, and obedient,
and I see that your task is rarely done. Now that you are in your last
year, I will write and recommend you to my friend Lady Ormeslaw, who wants
a maid about her person. Euphame, I'm glad to do so."
How that low "I'm glad" sunk into Euphame's heart while
she thanked Lady Somerville in her composed way! She had looked forward to
promotion, and longed for change, with the inevitable youthful
restlessness; but she forgot the independence, the novel scene, the
country life, to listen to the echo of that "I'm glad." Euphame was the
least agitated of the two at the commencement of the interview, but her
heart was beginning to beat, and an enthusiasm for her mild, nervous
benefactress was welling up in her strong, tenacious heart.
Lady Somerville, like most shy persons, warmed and
opened with intercourse, and so she added in a sort of confidence and
commendation to Euphame— "My hospital in Bristo Street has been a trial;
you are one of the proofs that it has not failed. Now I'm sure that the
girls are thriving body and spirit, and like to carry the benefit of a
pious training into the vain world."
Lady Somerville ended quickly, and she looked in an
opposite direction from her sisters with their dolls; but her brows
contracted involuntarily, and she stifled a sigh.
What possessed Euphame to contradict her? unless the
girl was blunt in her straightforwardness, and exaggerated in her
scrupulousness.
"Madam, do not think better of me than I deserve. I've
sometimes rebelled in secret against the rules of the Hospital, among the
girls who cried out openly, when we ought to have been bowed down with
gratitude, and to have run with joyful feet to do your bidding." Euphame
ended remorsefully.
"What is this, lass?" asks Lady Somerville,
startled; "were they hard? did I oppress you? I hoped that you had done
well."
"Oh, never mind us, madam, that is, never think it was
your fault, and we will do well, we will reward you as I ken you would be
rewarded; the Lord forgive us for ever failing in our duty."
"But, Euphame Napier, what is wrong? are you not safe
and happy?"
"I ask your pardon, Lady Somerville, but safety and
happiness are surely not for this world. For aught more, I ween, it is ill
replacing the ties of nature, and driving heads from so many different
herds in the same gate."
"Well-a-wot it is, bairn. What did you want? Wherein
did we fail you?" cried Lady Somerville, impatiently; for though
she was unassuming and un-exacting, the sharp tooth of failure and
disappointment, where she was tempted to believe she deserved success,
piercing her thus unexpectedly, ruffled even her humility.
"I did not mean to complain—I never dreamt of
complaining. Oh, what have I done?" cried Euphame, moved to distress. "I
will never forget your kindness; I would go on my knees to serve you."
"You can never serve me. Serve the Lord and the
brethren, and that is far better than serving me—nay, that is serving me
as I would crave to be served, if I ken myself aright. I made a sacrifice
for this Hospital. I thought here, at least, would be no mistake—here was
a fair project—a good deed." And Lady Somerville wrung her slight,
drooping hands, and gave way to a heart-sick groan.
It might have been an act of will-worship—a mortifying
of the flesh, "which profiteth little;" but no question the cost had been
heavy—no question that conscientious, delicate woman had paid it with
drops of her heart's blood; and the moan came from the scarred wound,
burning like the French grenadier's, when he finds his hardships and his
losses all in vain, and his emperor, his emperor imprisoned!
Euphame's spirit responded to the sign—deep cried unto
deep. She caught hold of Lady Somerville's gown—she turned and pled as the
advocate on the opposite side of the cause. "It was a good deed, madam. I
could swear to it. I would not ask a better to set against a new name. Oh,
dinna you ken the spirit is willing though the flesh is weak; and the
spirit and flesh maun toil together, and bear with each other, till the
work is accomplished, and the world is free!"
Lady Somerville looked at her steadily, and was calmed
and comforted. She smiled a sweet, pleased, piteous smile. "I believe
you're a guid bairn, Euphame, and an honest, and I doubt not a faithful."
She opened her work-table. "I meant to give you a little token, to make
you a gift to mind you of me and help you in an extremity, and I'll let it
be this, Euphame, for though you've troubled me, I've faith in you." She
took out of a sandal-wood bos a small sparkling diamond rose, which had
formed the centre of a rose-knot, a portion of a precious flower. "The
provosts' wives of Edinburgh had these jewels as well as the ladies of Mar
and Crawfurd, who bore the sword and the sceptre before the crown in the
Old Ridings. When I wore this, Euphame, my gudeman, though he was but a
city knight of a gentle line, entertained King Charles. I do not tell it
in vain glory, lass, for I warn you there was muckle sorrow as well as
waste came of that dinner, and I mean to impress upon you, Euphame, that I
was a happier woman when I broke off the sprays and sold them to the
goldsmith for funds to support my Hospital, though dule went with every
bud—dule that was my ain, with which none may meddle. Now, there is the
wee central flower to you, Euphame, who are an orphan, and the ane of my
maidens who has pleased me the best, and who, I dare swear, will never
make an ill use of my propyne. May it bring better luck to you than to me,
my dear, and may it become a blessing in your hands! "
Euphame kissed Lady Somerville's hand, and cried, which
was a singular thing with the girl, but she did not decline the favour,
and as she took it the mantle of the giver seemed to descend on her braver
being. "I will not ware it on myself, madam. I will keep it till I can sow
your seed again by the waters like a maiden of Lady Somerville's."
Lady Somerville smiled very brightly this time, while a
pale, pink flush coloured her cheeks; so when she was young, she must have
had the soft, transparent bodily and spiritual beauty, which men called
angelic when they recognised it in Lady Glenorchy. Nevertheless, she
checked Euphame — "Bide a wee, Euphame Napier, look about you; make no
rash vows, for they cannot be binding on a young lass. You may form other
ties; you are a stately quean, and guid go with you, bairn; but if you
should live on, and God grant you the heart and the means to renew the
auld charity which reared you, or else to form another, in a new shape,
for weans, orphans, vagabonds, auld soldiers, or auld wives, my blessing
will be upon you, Euphame, though it be but a mist from the grave."
"Na, it will be dew from heaven, my Lady Somerville,"
answered Euphame.
Lady Somerville escorted Euphame to the door of the
chamber; as they passed the old women at play, she hastily lifted up a few
printed sheets from a side-table, and presented them also to her visitor;
she wanted to drown the mocking commentaries of Miss Peggy and Miss Clara.
"You are a scholar, Euphame, and these are some pretty
essays on manners—ane Donald Macstaff is to get up a Scotch version in
this city. They are very sensible and pleasant reading, only they do not
go to the root of the matter, lass."
To the students of the Marrow Doctrine, of Guthrie and
of Boston, the elegant Spectator, with all his geniality and inward piety,
was apt to seem but frivolous— somewhat of "a sounding brass and tinkling
cymbal." But Miss Peggy and Miss Clara would be heard— "A lesson for a
dyvour's daughter to read? Better a broom to teach her to sweep the
floor." "The wee diamond rose, quo' she, for a beggar's boon? My Lady
Somerville is red wud. A wylie coat is ower gude for her wench;" and so
with disgust at the extravagance of the world, and renewed zeal in their
own suitable, reasonable pursuits—once more to their dolls.
Euphame, of all the women in the world, had pledged
herself to a work on impulse. Yet the impulse was far from uncongenial to
her temper and mind. It filled a vacuum in her spirit—it afforded an
earthly aim which had been wanting to her since the old mother slept away
in the sanctuary of the Trinity. An impulse, with another girl, might have
been momentary, and an impression evanescent, but with Euphame there was
from early years great fidelity of purpose and performance. She could not
even imagine drawing back. Had she not Lady Somerville's sparkling rose,
and was it not an earnest of her intention—arles of her service? God might
call her from the world, or lay her aside from active duty, but if she
retained health and strength—nay, what did she say? Even if dead and gone,
or sick and helpless, still by one of His wonderful providences He would
enable her to redeem her vow, as Hannah of old did not fail to bring her
son Samuel, her only son, with the three bullocks, and the ephah of flour,
and the bottle of wine, and leave him in God's house, and return very
solitary, though Elkanah bore her company, to her own house at Ramah.
The interview with Lady Somerville, her gift, whose
value was the least source of its power, though Euphame guessed that too,
and the promise she had voluntarily offered her, had a great effect on
Euphame Napier, who, while far more settled and resolute in principle than
most girls of her age, was at a time of life when the character is still
very plastic, and liable to receive strong biases to domestic or social
interests, personality or humanity, vivacity or reflection. It could
scarcely be that a good woman like Euphame, with the blessed seal of
godliness on her soul, enthusiastic, not with a frothy enthusiasm, but
with the still, sober-minded intentness of a strong, pure nature, could in
her tender youth adopt a generous plan, and pursue far off in the distance
a benevolent result, without advantage to her own growth in
single-heartedness, peace, heavenly-mindedness. Do not say such an
experience is impossible in a young woman—that depends on her
constitution. From Sarah Martin, the young dressmaker, who preached to the
spirits in prison, to Jeanne d'Arc, the innkeeper's daughter, who
delivered her country, there have been young women willing and able to
devote themselves to high causes and lofty conclusions. Remember the rich
man's wife, who relinquished her diamonds and wore the red and white
roses. Don't you think many a mean observer and malicious sneerer insisted
it was only for a time, a freak, an attempt to gain notoriety, a bit of
French renunciation of the world? Don't you believe they would say, "It
would not last long, only till she had ceased to care for this species of
renown, till the sensation she had created had passed away, till the
excitement women love should be over—until they arrived at the last
suggestion, (base from a man's lips—that seething the kid in its mother's
milk,) until some lover crossed the scene, some man appeared on the stage,
and played his part, and exerted his influence, and revealed the woman in
ail her natural folly?" Ah ! but the rich lady wore the red and white
roses without coquetry, be assured, till she was threescore and ten, and
their fragrance floated reverently, lovingly, over her grave. Good soul!
true heart! honour her even in fantasy.
To say that it is unbecoming and unwise this assumption
of wide charity and copy of a noble standard by those who are confessedly
weak, and ought to be conformably humble to timidity and submissive to
slavishness, is another argument, and can only be answered by statistics.
It was true that Euphame ran the risk of being spoiled as well as improved
by her adherence to this order of female chivalry—it was true that she was
actually injured by it, but it remained to be proved how far the benefit
exceeded the injury, and whether she was not led by sure paths to
counteract and control the evil tendencies of her position, and to rise a
conqueror.
What holy influence descending on earth is not liable
to abuse? What divine force in the hands of humanity is utterly free from
error? Look at the facts of the history of St Margaret, regard what was
false in her practise, and consider how poor Malcolm was sometimes worried
and sometimes chilled by her saintliness. Read the history of St Catherine
of Sienna, (there was a chapel to St Catherine as well as to St Roque on
Euphame's Borough Moor, somewhere near the Grange, "within a mile o'
Edinburgh town,") ponder over the abstraction of the young Italian girl
from her coarse and vicious family, and the elevation to which she did not
raise them, but from which she looked down upon their degradation. Attend
to modern literature and present life; sift the loud complaints against
busy or energetic charitable women. What is in fault? Is it a phase of
selfishness—the worm at the core of all pleasant fruit? Is it a want of
simplicity—not doing what the hand first finds to do, not accepting the
nearest, and the lowliest, and the commonest obligations as altogether
binding, and never set aside by the laws of the great God who founded
these natural ties? Is it, after all, a want of that humility and charity
greater than hope and faith?
Whatever the root of the offence, the unwelcome shoots
appeared in Euphame. Always a firm, composed girl, she grew more and more
undemonstrative and indifferent, as far as an honest, right-hearted,
religious girl can be indifferent, to the tastes and feelings of her
neighbours. She was not indifferent to their welfare—she would have read
the Bible to them and discoursed and prayed with them, according to her
graces and gifts, and the habits of her training, until they had bidden
her cease; she would have sat up with them night after night while they
tossed under a fever, and tended them with the coolest and lightest hand;
she would have burned herself to the bone to extinguish a spark of fire
which threatened them — not only so, but, after her own task was done, she
would have stitched all day at their apparel, or baked and brewed at their
batch and brewst. But do not mistake, Euphame did not really care for
them—she did not listen to their conversation, she did not heed their
ways, she did not please and gratify them in trifles, she lost sight of
them altogether for those shadowy old women (Euphame had decided that her
regiment was to be made up of old women like the one fond old woman after
whom she yearned, but she was then and always, as might have been
expected, silent on her views and plans)—those shadowy old women, cold and
gray, for whom she was to work and save throughout her prime, and whom she
was at last to have the dear joy of feeding and clothing and comforting in
the name of her Lord and theirs, and in memory of Lady Somerville and her
mother.
In reality, many of Euphame's companions were weaklings
to herself, and she did not try to render them stronger. She had to work
out and fashion into credible proportions her hospital of the future.
There are everywhere peasant girls bearing baskets of eggs, and dreaming
of the hatched chickens, the hens, the lamb, the calf, the future little
farm or shop, in addition to the gay gown and bunch of ribbons, until, lo!
the great crash in the spiritual as well as the temporal world. Didst
never dream thy dream, friend, of a grand good work in expectation, and
fight to accomplish it with a feverishness that became self-will, conceit,
faithlessness, and impotency, and awake to find that thou hadst burnt thy
fingers and committed every imaginable mischief among the "little things,"
the eggs which were thine own? So Euphame, with the secret of her diamond
rose, which she only shewed as a hard duty to Mrs Jonet, and had it met
with the withering condemnation and derision of the dogmatic, one-sided,
harsh woman.
Euphame's clear atmosphere was gradually freezing. She
was literally undergoing a process of ossification, and it remained to be
proved whether the hardening would endure and leave her an estimable
woman, but singularly crippled and paralysed, and comparatively useless,
or whether the rays of God's sunbeams of providence would melt the crust
and let loose the floods of tenderness sealed up in the vigorous nature,
and make it warm and sweet as it was sound, and gracious as it was
righteous.
VII.
The aisle to the Assembly House of that juncture was
the busy street where royal commissioner, noble and gentle elders, learned
and pious divines, were apt to be jostled on the first days of their
meeting by interested spectators and friends, who greeted them by
appointment at the well-known door of St Giles's, itself a public walk, as
the London St Paul's of an earlier period, and bargains were concluded and
debts paid at an illustrious counter, even the tomb of the good Regent
Moray, in the old Holy Blude Aisle. The neighbouring windows were in
request, though the Assembly was a place of less stirring interest now
than in former years; and Mrs Jonet, who went rarely abroad on pleasure,
and might be said only to attend the kirk on Sabbath-day, and on the diets
of examination on Thursday mornings, to wait upon Lady Somerville and her
dependents, and to make markets, came expressly to her friend Mrs Lilias
Campbell's, and from the windows of her room above the hosiery shop viewed
the leaders of her cause, and brought with her Euphame Napier, who, as a
great girl, equivalent to a parlour border in modern acceptation, was
supposed to be able to see and profit by a little real life.
Nothing cared Mrs Jonet for the Lord High Commissioner,
his coach, his guards, his gentlemen, his footmen, his coachmen, the last
with their powder, their cocked hats, their nosegays, nearly solitary
preserved specimens of the magnificent costumes contemporary with Queen
Anne. What was my lord, whether Annandale, Glasgow, or Atholl, to her but
a vain representative of majesty, whom she was strongly tempted to doubt
as tampering with the perfect freedom of her Kirk; though, apart from
religious matters, Mrs Jonet, like most women of her rank in that day, was
highly and stiffly aristocratic, and her friendships by no means disproved
the fact. Mrs Lilias Campbell was a spinster of many descents, and of a
distinguished coat of arms, though her tocher and its interest only
furnished her aumrie with oatmeal, salt pork, and herrings, except on
state occasions. It was the black coats—the black coats—the company of the
preachers, the godly men who fed them with the bread of life, and
preserved it pure from the tasteless leaven of prelacy and the deleterious
drugs of popery, the heirs and successors of the martyrs, nay, some of
them aged witnesses of "the black times," upon whom Mrs Jonet gazed with
her great, stern, deep-searching eyes, and for whom Euphame watched with
almost equal interest.
The Scotch Assembly meets in the sweet springtime, when
the beautiful city is at the height of its beauty, when tender green buds
are bursting on every hand, and tempering the romantic grandeur of its
crags, and making glad the blue of the Frith slumbering at its feet Old
Edinburgh was not without its visions of fresh, feathery twigs, pure
lily-cups, and purple buds of coming lilac. Though public gardens were
not, the old city gates opened abruptly upon country suburbs and country
fields pressing to its walls; and its private gardens were so extensive
and so generally appreciated that they were allowed to become in a measure
the people's property, so that my Lady Murray's garden was as well-favoured
an assignation as the King's Park or the Duke's Walk. Therefore there was
a sunshiny brightness and softness about the crowds in the old street, and
their office of considering the abjuration oath, and vindicating the right
to appoint national fasts.
Among the observers studying the well-known features of
the marked men of the Assembly were members of all classes, laity of every
degree, some of them famous in their turn, and a due proportion of them
women. Here were not the city belles. Mrs Susannah, whose paean little
Katie Crichton had sounded, or "Mally Lee," equally lovely and still more
favoured since,—in proud Holyrood,
"A prince came out frae 'mong them a' wi' garter at his
knee,
And danced a stately minuette wi' bonnie Mally Lee."
These were the future stars of Allan Ramsay's horizon
—poor, kindly, gifted Allan, with his cage for his bird (his faithful old
wife) on the Castlehill, and the roses blossoming in at the window, which
looked over Scotland's straths as far as the blue Grampians, where the
poet's dead body lay. [Chambers's "Traditions of Edinburgh."] Allan Ramsay
in his youth was already undergoing that divorce of his genius from the
expression of the religion of his country so fatal to greater than Allan.
And here, in presence this day, was an evil example of the letter and
spirit of the deed. Sir George Mackenzie sauntered out of the Parliament
Close, and chatted with one or other of his acquaintances. Granted Sir
George was the founder of our greatest national library, one whom Dryden
regarded as a friend, and the very first writer of classic English prose
in Scotland—he is "bluidy Mackenzie" past reprieve. A free man in mind, a
despot in heart, the unhesitating executor of his king's cruel measures
against his fellow-subjects, whom he might have regarded as bigoted
fanatics and troublesome rebels, but who were still his countrymen,
asserting presumed rights, and fighting from honest consciences. Give
freely to Mackenzie all intellectual height, endow his face with the
elegance which, by comparison, refined the expression of his thoughts and
fancies, bestow upon his figure the full dignity of cultivation and power,
and—surrounding him with the boots, the thumbscrews, and the lit matches
which he placed between the fingers of faithful peasants and fearless
students,—leave the picture to posterity.
(To be continued.)