{Continued from page 415.)
"And what does Adie say? Adie will have forgotten me
and George Heriot's, amid the stour of bloody war, lang syne."
"Not so; Adie does not forget; he leaves that to
those more thoughtful and brodent on their own designs. I'm feared I've
sometimes forgotten Adie, but Adie has not forgotten me."
"It is easy for a soldier to fleech, mistress."
"Adie does not fleech. I can prove it, for I have the
paper upon me—that and the letter he writ years syne, when I was still a
lass with Mrs. Jonet, and an epistle that my Lady Ormeslaw deigned to
indite to me from London itsel', and it contained gude wishes from all
the household, even from the laird and Master George—I beg your pardon,
Master Mark, if I was bragging, but I am a little proud of my lady's
letter—these are all the letters I ever received. Poor Adie confesses,
'I cannot say yet that I've won George Heriot credit, Euphame, as I
promised. I fear I've slipped much of the wise master's counsel and a
gude lass's words—a fault I hoped never to commit again; but the wise
masters, and you, Euphame, and mysel', could not read all that was
written in my heart, and all that would lie in my path ; but see,
Euphame, woman, if I've erred—and I have erred with or without my
neighbours, whiles grievously, grievously, poor Euphame—still I can say
I will not do it again,— no, I will not do it again.' "
" Till the time comes, madam."
"Fie for shame!" cried Euphame, highly, and read
on:—"'I've taken a wife, Euphame. You might not like her, but I liked
her, and she liked me, and we like ilk other yet, and we'll do the best
we can for ilk other; and I'm brave in believing, Euphame, that the
swords were forged for God's service, as the books were written; and if
I'm spared, I'll maybe some day get nearer my duty, and do credit to
gude auld George Heriot, and send you the guilders.'"
"Poor Adie; poor simple Adie," cried Mark Crichton
briskly, and even fondly, with the ineffable softening which some
strong, rugged natures experience to weak, kindly ones, single-hearted
and in trouble.
"I chase swords enow, if I do not forge them,"
subjoined Mark, after a pause. "Master Paul declares there has not been
so great a push in working basket-bandies and polishing scabbards, since
he took refuge in this country."
"That is strange," remarked Euphame; "for Adie writes
further, that there is a rumour of the wars being ended, since the great
French king, who wrought them for his ambition, is lying stiff and still
in his gold-mounted coffin—if kings submit to be enclosed in coffins,
like the rest of mankind, it might be the last assertion of their might
and pride and will to He free in the royal mantle, which they wore with
their sceptre and their crown."
"What might yon proceeding mean?" inquired
Mark, when a gentleman, mounted on a fleet horse, galloped past them
within the moment, and, after scanning them narrowly, as if satisfied
that they were an ordinary company of city folks abroad for their
diversion, or despising danger from such a quarter supposing his
movements excited suspicions of secrecy and peril, alighted at no more
than a stone's throw from this pair, led his horse by the bridle to a
little heap of stones, stooped down, rapidly displaced them, plainly
withdrew a paper packet, stored it into one of the deep pockets of his
coat, demolished the cairn, remounted his horse, clapped spurs into its
sides, and was out of sight ere they could gather breath to interchange
another word. [History of the Rebellion.]
"He has come to reclaim a hidden treasure,' suggested
Euphame.
"They are not wont to be dropped lightly on moors,
and there maun be hundreds of them, for they do say most of the feal
dykes and mosses in Scotland are thus visited this summer by them who
ken their recesses, and use them too for their own purposes. This one
will be needed no more, I guess."
"Are they the clippers and coiners that you and
Master Paul are able to detect?"
"No, they dare not face broad daylight, they burrow
for ever in the dark, and they do not for ordinary wear conspicuous
feathers in their cocked hats, or are mounted on mettle beasts, with
silver plates on their bridles, when they are about their dishonest
work—though they have reaped big fortunes in the past ere King William's
statute checked them."
Mark said no more. Euphame's speech was not like the
usual tattle of the womankind he had known; but just because she would
ponder his words, and lay them to heart, he was not disposed to tell a
girl distinctly the storm which every discerning eye descried hanging
over Scotland.
"I'm in affright about Adie's wife," continued
Euphame, recurring to their former conversation. ''You may take tent he
does not venture to do more than advert to her ; and he seems to
consider that she would not be sure of the regard of me, his nearest
kinswoman. What if she should wreck Adie's stout resolve?"
"Why should she," demanded Mark, with unwonted
charity, "if she pleases him?"
"Men are poor judges of women," explained Euphame.
"I'm not inclined to grant that," objected
Mark, glancing sharply at the other women; "but you may be
right," he added, immediately darkening all over again. ''Men may
command but short time to sound their extreme madness. I can tell you,
Mistress Euphame, it is a dreary business to ettle at it for a
lifetime."
Euphame Napier was not offended. She was well
acquainted with Mark Crichton's peculiar temper and professed creed; but
she was silenced at the same time, while she quivered to tell Mark
openly, that he wanted a constant, strong, subtle sympathy, and a great
faith, to twist together ropes of flax thin as hairs. Euphame was quite
aware of the deficiency in his case, though she neglected the
desideratum in her own.
"So you've quarrelled with Mark," cries Katie. ''You
grave folk are aye quarrelling about your duty, I suppose. Master
Ludovic and me—we have not quarrelled."
"Na, na, bonnie Katie."
"He has only been calling me bonnie, as you hear, and
weaving for me wreaths of yellow segs and knots of blue forget-me-not,
and we have not quarrelled."
But before Katie reached home, after Master Ludovic
had dropped away to his end of the town, she began to complain that she
was half crazy with "a sore head," and "a stitch in her side," and
''blistered feet;" and indeed now that the excitement was withdrawn, the
child was prostrated; and as Mrs. Crichton supported thankless, fretful
Mrs. Hughes, and Mysie, the selfish, inconsiderate daughters of
Cauldacres, and Madge Haldane and her brother were fain to forswear
their huff and make up for lost time, by addressing a few assiduous
attentions which they had yet to spare for the haughty, sulky ladies of
quality,—Mark had to lend Katie his ungracious but firm arm, and trudge
along, gathering her flimsily trimmed "tail" out of the dust (Mark could
have fallen into the custom of dubbing that thing a "trollop" with all
his heart), and Euphame had to relieve the little lady of her fan, her
nosegays, her scent-bottle, her snuff-box, else, after all, she had
scarcely sufficient spirit abiding in her to have crept on to her covert
in the High Street.
IV.
"If you women folk have any humanity, you'll quit
your dogs, birds, and looking-glasses, and go and see after Madam Romieu,
for it is my belief Master Paul will find her dead of starvation or cold
in this hospitable town some day when he looks up from his sextant."
"Why can she not take care of herself?" And ''she'll
be in for the pox, Mark, keep out of her way, I charge you;" and ''I
cannot look after a sick body, it makes me sick myself to see them; I've
no turn for sick folk," cries Kate, as she practised before a cracked
mirror the curtsey and the recovery, "the genteel trip and the agreeable
jet," to be per formed, as she proclaimed flippantly, ''maybe when she
should be lady of the palace of Wintoun, the next thing to being queen
at St. James's,"—a brewer's daughter had been queen in
prospective at St. James's.
But Euphame covered up her embroidery, looking a
little discontentedly at its unfinished scene, which was to have been
completed to-day—and Euphame always burned to end her work, but she must
defer the satisfaction and the reward, for it was certainly laid upon
her to go and look after this forlorn Madam Romieu; if she was desolate,
if she was in danger, if it was somebody's duty to put herself about,
expose herself to trouble, responsibility, misconception in the
stranger's behalf, of course the office belonged to Euphame Napier— the
more that Euphame had been disposed to undervalue the refugee's wife,
the more that her cheeks had burned passionately at Katie's light
laughter and mockery. "You'll find Mark in the Bow as well. Mark's
almost established in the Bow. Eh! Euphame, are you really making up to
our Mark, and causing the fellow to look sweet on you? Mark's a skilled
workman for as crabbed as he is, but he is only a workman; tell me,
lass, whether am I to wish you or Mark joy of the conquest?" If this
idle speech were to deter Euphame Napier from duty, she might find a
lion in her path any day of the year. Euphame was a hundred-fold more
valiant and faithful. She put up a little packet of her clothes. "I'll
maybe have to bide with Madam, since she has no friends, but I'll send
word how she keeps, with Mark," she said to Mrs. Crichton.
"But your orders, Euphame,—your passimenting coming
in to-morrow,—Lady Windlestraw to call; you that are wont to be so
punctual, I cannot understand what makes you flee off in this
unaccountable fashion; you've had no trock with Madam Romieu that I've
heard tell of," remonstrated Mrs. Crichton.
"You maun say I was called away; that is the truth;
you can tell where, if you like, Mrs. Crichton."
"But I doubt if they'll be pleased, only you've never
offended them before; stay, bairn, I've some of the old plague water in
the house, carry that against infection."
"I'm not frighted, Mrs. Crichton; I do not think
there is any use; Madam Romieu has been ailing ever since I came to the
town."
"Then she'll be the worse to mend. Saw you ever the
like of that?" protested Mrs. Crichton, when she was left alone, ''she
refused to take a dish of tea with Lady Cauldacres, who wanted to learn
the last stitch for the breasts of shirts, where they tack on the
ruffles, that she might pursue her embroidery, and my lady is affronted
at me, though I blinded myself showing her my plan, and I've never tried
it, for Mark, poor chield, luckily he does not care for sewed work, and
she would not hear of sparing an hour to attend the dancing academy,
though it is under an express license; but she will run at the first
notice to nurse the wife of the foreign clockmaker, who has no
acquaintance in the town, and no interest in her power, and is so
niggardly, that she will never think of recompensing her; it is past
belief."
If Mrs. Crichton had lived in later days, she would
have relieved herself by settling it in her own mind that Euphame was an
enthusiast, and so she was, like Captain Coram, who spent his fortune in
instituting the Foundling Hospital, and whom Hogarth painted before he
drew the Marriage à la Mode, and the
Two Apprentices; romance, enthusiasm, chivalry, are not such
bugbears as cautious folk have considered them.
The Romieus were French Protestants escaped from the
bloody wilds of the Cevennes, and Ro-mieu, who had inherited originally
a strong bent to science and art, had picked up enough of mechanical
dexterity and power to render him the first watchmaker resident in
Edinburgh, and the most enterprising goldsmith of the period within the
bounds of Scotland. Other Frenchmen had at various times settled in the
city, besides the soldiers who arrived in the train of the early
sovereigns and their spouses of Bourbon descent, and one fantastic
architect who had left a dying request to be buried in one of the lanes
of the old town, which bore his name. These strangers had all to bear,
more or less, the prejudices of rude, ignorant people, against
foreigners, odd in their language, and their few imported habits. "With
the Romieu family, the circumstance of their being suffering Protestants
had worked strongly in their favour here, as in every other northern
capital. The Scotch General Assembly had not yet done voting its mingled
sympathy with the last fruit of the Albigenses, and indignation at the
cruelty of their enemies; a persecution which resembled, even in
aggravated colours, the last intercourse of the Church of Scotland with
the Stuarts and their chosen councillors. Still, the sympathy and the
indignation soon died out in London itself; the subscription for the
crowd of haggard, scared, or frenzied men and women who were founding
the colony of Spitalfields was soon closed; the Government and the
country forgot the exiles to whom they had given shelter, lost sight of
how they had been robbed and wounded on their weary way for a common
creed and common rights, and only remembered them, and that sometimes
not very cordially, as aliens, intruders, isolated groups, families, and
individuals in the municipalities, which had their own quarrels to
arrange, their own hopes and fears into which to plunge, to the
exclusion of others' despair. Therefore the Romieus, though they had
been a number of years dwellers on the soil, and had learned to express
their wants in its tongue, and to accommodate themselves to its ways,
formed a household apart among the burghers of Edinburgh, and it might
seem that they had been unfortunate in the person of their
apprentice—the only individual incorporated with them—saturnine Mark
Crichton.
Euphame had seen Madam Romieu when she came very
rarely to the Crichtons, and had imbibed a little half-unconscious scorn
for her, though she honoured her sect. Yet poor Madam's faults were
pardonable. She wore a cherry-coloured gown and petticoat, and displayed
a bare grizzled head when it was not done up with ribbons. Think of a
martyr in a cherry-coloured gown and petticoat! —and forgive Euphame;
though these particular Cevennoises being neither of the melancholy,
mourning band observed near London by that indefatigable Mr. Spectator,
nor of the excited, raving rebels into which a great king's malice, and
their own weakness, drove an industrious, honest, pious race of
peasantry, Madam only dressed according to national practice and
individual inclination. Madam was possessed of a transparent simplicity,
and had a helpless longing for intercourse with new gossips, and was
prone to tell her own graphic, pathetic story, freely; she termed Master
Paul— her gudeman, that reverent character in the Scotch girl's eyes—her
son, or her little son; and she had once volunteered to recite and
translate for Euphame's benefit, a foolish fable of a sheep that spoke,
a cabbage that ran away, and a fir-tree that sat in judgment on the rest
of the party. Euphame was naturally large-minded as well as
large-hearted, but her education was what Lady Mary called the "worst in
the world, that of Clarissa Harlowe's," and with women grave, and a
little cold-mannered like Euphame, there is the same antipathy to
babbling extravagance and incongruity that is to be found in the
corresponding order of men.
(To he continued.)