The Fortunes of Nigel by Walter Scott (good summer reads txt) 📕

Benedict. This looks not like a nuptial. Much Ado About Nothing.

Master George Heriot had no sooner returned to the king's apartment, than James inquired of Maxwell if the Earl of Huntinglen was in attendance, and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, desired that he should be admitted. The old Scottish Lord having made his reverence in the usual manner, the king extended his hand to be kissed, and then began to address him in a tone of great sympathy.

“We told your lordship in our secret epistle of this morning, written with our ain hand, in testimony we have neither pretermitted nor forgotten your faithful service, that we had that to communicate to you that would require both patience and fortitude to endure, and therefore exhorted you to peruse some of the most pithy passages of Seneca, and of Boethius de Consolatione, that the back may be, as we say, fitted for the burden—This we commend to you from our ain experience.

sayeth Dido, and I might say in my own person, non ignarus; but to change the gender would affect the prosody, whereof our southern subjects are tenacious. So, my Lord of Huntinglen, I trust you have acted by our advice, and studied patience before ye need it—venienti occurrite morbo—mix the medicament when the disease is coming on.”

“May it please your Majesty,” answered Lord Huntinglen, “I am more of an old soldier than a scholar—and if my own rough nature will not bear me out in any calamity, I hope I shall have grace to try a text of Scripture to boot.”

“Ay, man, are you there with your bears?” said the king; “The Bible, man,” (touching his cap,) “is indeed principium et fons—but it is pity your lordship cannot peruse it in the original. For although we did ourselves promote that work of translation,—since ye may read, at the beginning of every Bible, that when some palpable clouds of darkness were thought like to have overshadowed the land, after the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth; yet our appearance, like that of the sun in his strength, instantly dispelled these surmised mists,—I say, that although, as therein mentioned, we countenanced the preaching of the gospel, and especially the translation of the Scriptures out of the original sacred tongues; yet nevertheless, we ourselves confess to have found a comfort in consulting them in the original Hebrew, whilk we do not perceive even in the Latin version of the Septuagint, much less in the English traduction.”

“Please your Majesty,” said Lord Huntinglen, “if your Majesty delays communicating the bad news with which your honoured letter threatens me, until I am capable to read Hebrew like your Majesty, I fear I shall die in ignorance of the misfortune which hath befallen, or is about to befall, my house.”

“You will learn it but too soon, my lord,” replied the king. “I grieve to say it, but your son Dalgarno, whom I thought a very saint, as he was so much with Steenie and Baby Charles, hath turned out a very villain.”

“Villain!” repeated Lord Huntinglen; and though he instantly checked himself, and added, “but it is your Majesty speaks the word,” the effect of his first tone made the king step back as if he had received a blow. He also recovered himself again, and said in the pettish way which usually indicated his displeasure—“Yes, my lord, it was we that said it—non surdo canis—we are not deaf—we pray you not to raise your voice in speech with us—there is the bonny memorial—read, and judge for yourself.”

The king then thrust into the old nobleman's hand a paper, containing the story of the Lady Hermione, with the evidence by which it was supported, detailed so briefly and clearly, that the infamy of Lord Dalgarno, the lover by whom she had been so shamefully deceived, seemed undeniable. But a father yields not up so easily the cause of his son.

“May it please your Majesty,” he said, “why was this tale not sooner told? This woman hath been here for years—wherefore was the claim on my son not made the instant she touched English ground?”

“Tell him how that came about, Geordie,” said the king, dressing Heriot.

“I grieve to distress my Lord Huntinglen,” said Heriot; “but I must speak the truth. For a long time the Lady Hermione could not brook the idea of making her situation public; and when her mind became changed in that particular, it was necessary to recover the evidence of the false marriage, and letters and papers connected with it, which, when she came to Paris, and just before I saw her, she had deposited with a correspondent of her father in that city. He became afterwards bankrupt, and in consequence of that misfortune the lady's papers passed into other hands, and it was only a few days since I traced and recovered them. Without these documents of evidence, it would have been imprudent for her to have preferred her complaint, favoured as Lord Dalgarno is by powerful friends.”

“Ye are saucy to say sae,” said the king; “I ken what ye mean weel eneugh—ye think Steenie wad hae putten the weight of his foot into the scales of justice, and garr'd them whomle the bucket—ye forget, Geordie, wha it is whose hand uphaulds them. And ye do poor Steenie the mair wrang, for he confessed it ance before us and our privy council, that Dalgarno would have put the quean aff on him, the puir simple bairn, making him trow that she was a light-o'-love; in whilk mind he remained assured even when he parted from her, albeit Steenie might hae weel thought ane of thae cattle wadna hae resisted the like of him.”

“The Lady Hermione,” said George Heriot, “has always done the utmost justice to the conduct of the duke, who, although strongly possessed with prejudice against her character, yet scorned to avail himself of her distress, and on the contrary supplied her with the means of extricating herself from her difficulties.”

“It was e'en like himsell—blessings on his bonny face!” said the king; “and I believed this lady's tale the mair readily, my Lord Huntinglen, that she spake nae ill of Steenie—and to make a lang tale short, my lord, it is the opinion of our council and ourself, as weel as of Baby Charles and Steenie, that your son maun amend his wrong by wedding this lady, or undergo such disgrace and discountenance as we can bestow.”

The person to whom he spoke was incapable of answering him. He stood before the king motionless, and glaring with eyes of which even the lids seemed immovable, as if suddenly converted into an ancient statue of the times of chivalry, so instantly had his hard features and strong limbs been arrested into rigidity by the blow he had received—And in a second afterwards, like the same statue when the lightning breaks upon it, he sunk at once to the ground with a heavy groan. The king was in the utmost alarm, called upon Heriot and Maxwell for help, and, presence of mind not being his forte, ran to and fro in his cabinet, exclaiming—“My ancient and beloved servant—who saved our anointed self! vae atque dolor! My Lord of Huntinglen, look up—look up, man, and your son may marry the Queen of Sheba if he will.”

By this time Maxwell and Heriot had raised the old nobleman, and placed him on a chair; while the king, observing that he