The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete by Walter Scott (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

Madge stood sulky for a minute; but she had been too often taught submission to the beadle’s authority by ungentle means to feel courage enough to dispute it.

“And my mother—my puir auld mother, is in the stocks at Barkston!—This is a’ your wyte, Miss Jeanie Deans; but I’ll be upsides wi’ you, as sure as my name’s Madge Wildfire—I mean Murdockson—God help me, I forget my very name in this confused waste!”

So saying, she turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the mischievous imps of the village, some crying, “Madge, canst thou tell thy name yet?” some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to exasperate her into frenzy.

Jeanie saw her departure with infinite delight, though she wished that, in some way or other, she could have requited the service Madge had conferred upon her.

In the meantime, she applied to the beadle to know whether “there was any house in the village where she could be civilly entertained for her money, and whether she could be permitted to speak to the clergyman?”

“Ay, ay, we’se ha’ reverend care on thee; and I think,” answered the man of constituted authority, “that, unless thou answer the Rector all the better, we’se spare thy money, and gie thee lodging at the parish charge, young woman.”

“Where am I to go then?” said Jeanie, in some alarm.

“Why, I am to take thee to his Reverence, in the first place, to gie an account o’ thysell, and to see thou comena to be a burden upon the parish.”

“I do not wish to burden anyone,” replied Jeanie; “I have enough for my own wants, and only wish to get on my journey safely.”

“Why, that’s another matter,” replied the beadle, “and if it be true—and I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder—Thou wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better. Come thou away, then—the Rector is a good man.”

“Is that the minister,” said Jeanie, “who preached”

“The minister? Lord help thee! What kind o’ Presbyterian art thou?—Why, ‘tis the Rector—the Rector’s sell, woman, and there isna the like o’ him in the county, nor the four next to it. Come away—away with thee—we maunna bide here.”

“I am sure I am very willing to go to see the minister,” said Jeanie; “for though he read his discourse, and wore that surplice, as they call it here, I canna but think he must be a very worthy God-fearing man, to preach the root of the matter in the way he did.”

The disappointed rabble, finding that there was like to be no farther sport, had by this time dispersed, and Jeanie, with her usual patience, followed her consequential and surly, but not brutal, conductor towards the rectory.

This clerical mansion was large and commodious, for the living was an excellent one, and the advowson belonged to a very wealthy family in the neighbourhood, who had usually bred up a son or nephew to the church for the sake of inducting him, as opportunity offered, into this very comfortable provision. In this manner the rectory of Willingham had always been considered as a direct and immediate appanage of Willingham Hall; and as the rich baronets to whom the latter belonged had usually a son, or brother, or nephew, settled in the living, the utmost care had been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and commodious, but even dignified and imposing.

It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures, or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price’s appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that of the present Rector, who, “being a bookish man,” as the beadle was at the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms.

“Mony men would hae scrupled such expense,” continued the parochial officer, “seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look on two sides of a penny.”

Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the “Manses” in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry, must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for more than a century at least.

Behind the Rector’s house the ground sloped down to a small river, which, without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing accompaniment to the landscape. “It was the best trouting stream,” said the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered rather communicative, “the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi’ fly-fishing.”

Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and dignified clergyman.

“How dost do, Tummas?” said the beadle—“and how’s young Measter Staunton?”

“Why, but poorly—but poorly, Measter Stubbs.—Are you wanting to see his Reverence?”

“Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha’ brought up the young woman as came to service to-day with mad Madge