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

till the trio were out of sight, then turned back with hasty steps to the door of the scrivener, which he had passed in his progress, knocked, and was admitted.

Lord Dalgarno found the man of law with the money-bags still standing before him; and it escaped not his penetrating glance, that Skurliewhitter was disconcerted and alarmed at his approach.

“How now, man,” he said; “what! hast thou not a word of oily compliment to me on my happy marriage?—not a word of most philosophical consolation on my disgrace at Court?—Or has my mien, as a wittol and discarded favourite, the properties of the Gorgon's head, the turbatae Palladis arma, as Majesty might say?”

“My lord, I am glad—my lord, I am sorry,”—answered the trembling scrivener, who, aware of the vivacity of Lord Dalgarno's temper, dreaded the consequence of the communication he had to make to him.

“Glad and sorry!” answered Lord Dalgarno. “That is blowing hot and cold, with a witness. Hark ye, you picture of petty-larceny personified—if you are sorry I am a cuckold, remember I am only mine own, you knave—there is too little blood in her cheeks to have sent her astray elsewhere. Well, I will bear mine antler'd honours as I may—gold shall gild them; and for my disgrace, revenge shall sweeten it. Ay, revenge—and there strikes the happy hour!”

The hour of noon was accordingly heard to peal from Saint Dunstan's. “Well banged, brave hammers!” said Lord Dalgarno, in triumph.—“The estate and lands of Glenvarloch are crushed beneath these clanging blows. If my steel to-morrow prove but as true as your iron maces to-day, the poor landless lord will little miss what your peal hath cut him out from.—The papers—the papers, thou varlet! I am to-morrow Northward, ho! At four, afternoon, I am bound to be at Camlet Moat, in the Enfield Chase. To-night most of my retinue set forward. The papers!—Come, dispatch.”

“My lord, the—the papers of the Glenvarloch mortgage—I—I have them not.”

“Have them not!” echoed Lord Dalgarno,—“Hast thou sent them to my lodgings, thou varlet? Did I not say I was coming hither?—What mean you by pointing to that money? What villainy have you done for it? It is too large to be come honestly by.”

“Your lordship knows best,” answered the scrivener, in great perturbation. “The gold is your own. It is—it is—”

“Not the redemption-money of the Glenvarloch estate!” said Dalgarno. “Dare not say it is, or I will, upon the spot, divorce your pettifogging soul from your carrion carcass!” So saying, he seized the scrivener by the collar, and shook him so vehemently, that he tore it from the cassock.

“My lord, I must call for help,” said the trembling caitiff, who felt at that moment all the bitterness of the mortal agony—“It was the law's act, not mine. What could I do?”

“Dost ask?—why, thou snivelling dribblet of damnation, were all thy oaths, tricks, and lies spent? or do you hold yourself too good to utter them in my service? Thou shouldst have lied, cozened, out-sworn truth itself, rather than stood betwixt me and my revenge! But mark me,” he continued; “I know more of your pranks than would hang thee. A line from me to the Attorney-General, and thou art sped.”

“What would you have me to do, my lord?” said the scrivener. “All that art and law can accomplish, I will try.”

“Ah, are you converted? do so, or pity of your life!” said the lord; “and remember I never fail my word.—Then keep that accursed gold,” he continued. “Or, stay, I will not trust you—send me this gold home presently to my lodging. I will still forward to Scotland, and it shall go hard but that I hold out Glenvarloch Castle against the owner, by means of the ammunition he has himself furnished. Thou art ready to serve me?” The scrivener professed the most implicit obedience.

“Then remember, the hour was past ere payment was tendered—and see thou hast witnesses of trusty memory to prove that point.”

“Tush, my lord, I will do more,” said Andrew, reviving—“I will prove that Lord Glenvarloch's friends threatened, swaggered, and drew swords on me.—Did your lordship think I was ungrateful enough to have suffered them to prejudice your lordship, save that they had bare swords at my throat?”

“Enough said,” replied Dalgarno; “you are perfect—mind that you continue so, as you would avoid my fury. I leave my page below—get porters, and let them follow me instantly with the gold.”

So saying, Lord Dalgarno left the scrivener's habitation.

Skurliewhitter, having dispatched his boy to get porters of trust for transporting the money, remained alone and in dismay, meditating by what means he could shake himself free of the vindictive and ferocious nobleman, who possessed at once a dangerous knowledge of his character, and the power of exposing him, where exposure would be ruin. He had indeed acquiesced in the plan, rapidly sketched, for obtaining possession of the ransomed estate, but his experience foresaw that this would be impossible; while, on the other hand, he could not anticipate the various consequences of Lord Dalgarno's resentment, without fears, from which his sordid soul recoiled. To be in the power, and subject both to the humours and the extortions of a spendthrift young lord, just when his industry had shaped out the means of fortune,—it was the most cruel trick which fate could have played the incipient usurer.

While the scrivener was in this fit of anxious anticipation, one knocked at the door of the apartment; and, being desired to enter, appeared in the coarse riding-cloak of uncut Wiltshire cloth, fastened by a broad leather belt and brass buckle, which was then generally worn by graziers and countrymen. Skurliewhitter, believing he saw in his visitor a country client who might prove profitable, had opened his mouth to request him to be seated, when the stranger, throwing back his frieze hood which he had drawn over his face, showed the scrivener features well imprinted in his recollection, but which he never saw without a disposition to swoon.

“Is it you?” he said, faintly, as the stranger replaced the hood which concealed his features.

“Who else should it be?” said his visitor.

“Thou son of parchment, got betwixt the inkhorn And the stuff'd process-bag—that mayest call The pen thy father, and the ink thy mother,

The wax thy brother, and the sand thy sister And the good pillory thy cousin allied— Rise, and do reverence unto me, thy better!”

“Not yet down to the country,” said the scrivener, “after every warning? Do not think your grazier's cloak will bear you out, captain—no, nor your scraps of stage-plays.”

“Why, what would you have me to do?” said the captain—“Would you have me starve? If I am to fly, you must eke my wings with a few feathers. You can spare them, I think.”

“You had means already—you have had ten pieces—What is become of them?”

“Gone,” answered Captain Colepepper—“Gone, no matter where—I had a mind to bite, and I was bitten, that's all—I think my hand shook at the thought of t'other night's work, for I trowled the doctors like a very baby.”

“And you have lost all, then?—Well, take this and be gone,” said