St. Ronan's Well by Walter Scott (ebook offline reader .txt) 📕

Bryce—no master—the late John Blower of North Leith having pushed off his boat for the Stygian Creek, and left the vessel without a hand on board.”

[Pg 107]

“The Doctor,” said Lady Penelope, turning her glass towards them, “seems willing to play the part of pilot.”

“I dare say he will be willing to change her name and register,” said Mr. Chatterly.

“He can be no less in common requital,” said Winterblossom. “She has changed his name six times in the five minutes that I stood within hearing of them.”

“What do you think of the matter, my dear Lady Binks?” said Lady Penelope.

“Madam?” said Lady Binks, starting from a reverie, and answering as one who either had not heard, or did not understand the question.

“I mean, what think you of what is going on yonder?”

Lady Binks turned her glass in the direction of Lady Penelope's glance, fixed the widow and the Doctor with one bold fashionable stare, and then dropping her hand slowly, said with indifference, “I really see nothing there worth thinking about.”

“I dare say it is a fine thing to be married,” said Lady Penelope; “one's thoughts, I suppose, are so much engrossed with one's own perfect happiness, that they have neither time nor inclination to laugh like other folks. Miss Rachel Bonnyrigg would have laughed till her eyes ran over, had she seen what Lady Binks cares so little about—I dare say it must be an all-sufficient happiness to be married.”

“He would be a happy man that could convince your ladyship of that in good earnest,” said Mr. Winterblossom.

“Oh, who knows—the whim may strike me,” replied the lady; “but no—no—no;—and that is three times.”

[Pg 108]

“Say it sixteen times more,” said the gallant president, “and let nineteen nay-says be a grant.”

“If I should say a thousand Noes, there exists not the alchymy in living man that could extract one Yes out of the whole mass,” said her ladyship. “Blessed be the memory of Queen Bess!—She set us all an example to keep power when we have it—What noise is that?”

“Only the usual after-dinner quarrel,” said the divine. “I hear the Captain's voice, else most silent, commanding them to keep peace, in the devil's name and that of the ladies.”

“Upon my word, dearest Lady Binks, this is too bad of that lord and master of yours, and of Mowbray, who might have more sense, and of the rest of that claret-drinking set, to be quarrelling and alarming our nerves every evening with presenting their pistols perpetually at each other, like sportsmen confined to the house upon a rainy 12th of August. I am tired of the Peace-maker—he but skins the business over in one case to have it break out elsewhere.—What think you, love, if we were to give out in orders, that the next quarrel which may arise, shall be bona fide fought to an end?—We will all go out and see it, and wear the colours on each side; and if there should a funeral come of it, we will attend it in a body.—Weeds are so becoming!—Are they not, my dear Lady Binks? Look at Widow Blower in her deep black—don't you envy her, my love?”

Lady Binks seemed about to make a sharp and hasty answer, but checked herself, perhaps under the recollection that she could not prudently come to an open breach with Lady Penelope.—At the sa[Pg 109]me moment the door opened, and a lady dressed in a riding-habit, and wearing a black veil over her hat, appeared at the entry of the apartment.

“Angels and ministers of grace!” exclaimed Lady Penelope, with her very best tragic start—“my dearest Clara, why so late? and why thus? Will you step to my dressing-room—Jones will get you one of my gowns—we are just of a size, you know—do, pray—let me be vain of something of my own for once, by seeing you wear it.”

This was spoken in the tone of the fondest female friendship, and at the same time the fair hostess bestowed on Miss Mowbray one of those tender caresses, which ladies—God bless them!—sometimes bestow on each other with unnecessary prodigality, to the great discontent and envy of the male spectators.

“You are fluttered, my dearest Clara—you are feverish—I am sure you are,” continued the sweetly anxious Lady Penelope; “let me persuade you to lie down.”

“Indeed you are mistaken, Lady Penelope,” said Miss Mowbray, who seemed to receive much as a matter of course her ladyship's profusion of affectionate politeness:—“I am heated, and my pony trotted hard, that is the whole mystery.—Let me have a cup of tea, Mrs. Jones, and the matter is ended.”

“Fresh tea, Jones, directly,” said Lady Penelope, and led her passive friend to her own corner, as she was pleased to call the recess, in which she held her little court—ladies and gentlemen curtsying and bowing as she passed; to which civilities the new guest made no more return, than the most ordinary politeness rendered unavoidable.

Lady B[Pg 110]inks did not rise to receive her, but sat upright in her chair, and bent her head very stiffly; a courtesy which Miss Mowbray returned in the same stately manner, without farther greeting on either side.

“Now, wha can that be, Doctor?” said the Widow Blower—“mind ye have promised to tell me all about the grand folk—wha can that be that Leddy Penelope hauds such a racket wi'?—and what for does she come wi' a habit and a beaver-hat, when we are a' (a glance at her own gown) in our silks and satins?”

“To tell you who she is, my dear Mrs. Blower, is very easy,” said the officious Doctor. “She is Miss Clara Mowbray, sister to the Lord of the Manor—the gentleman who wears the green coat, with an arrow on the cape. To tell why she wears that habit, or does any thing else, would be rather beyond doctor's skill. Truth is, I have always thought she was a little—a very little—touched—call it nerves—hypochondria—or what you will.”

“Lord help us, puir thing!” said the compassionate widow.—“And troth it looks like it. But it's a shame to let her go loose, Doctor—she might hurt hersell, or somebody. See, she has ta'en the knife!—O, it's only to cut a shave of the diet-loaf. She winna let the powder-monkey of a boy help her. There's judgment in that though, Doctor, for she can cut thick or thin as she likes.—Dear me! she has not taken mair than a crumb, than ane would pit between the wires of a canary-bird's cage, after all.—I wish she would lift up that lang veil, or put off that riding-skirt, Doctor. She should really be showed the regulations, Doctor Kickelshin.”

“She care[Pg 111]s about no rules we can make, Mrs. Blower,” said the Doctor; “and her brother's will and pleasure, and Lady Penelope's whim of indulging her, carry her through in every thing. They should take advice on her case.”

“Ay, truly, it's time to take advice, when young creatures like her caper in amang dressed leddies, just as if they were come from scampering on Leith sands.—Such a wark as my leddy makes wi' her, Doctor! Ye would think they were baith fools of a feather.”

“They might have flown on one wing, for what I know,” said Dr. Quackleben; “but there was early and sound advice taken in Lady Penelope's case. My friend, the late Earl of Featherhead, was a man of judgment—did little in his family but by rule of medicine—so that, what with the waters, and what with my own care, Lady Penelope is only freakish—fanciful—that's all—and her quality bears it out—the peccant principle might have broken out under other treatment.”

“Ay—she has been weel-friended,” said the widow; “but this bairn Mowbray, puir thing! how came she to be sae left to hersell?”

“Her mother was dead—her father thought of nothing but his sports,” said the Doctor. “Her brother was educated in England, and cared for nobody but himself, if he had been here. What education she got was at her own hand—what reading she read was in a library full of old romances—what friends or company she had was what chance sent her—then no family-physician, not even a good surgeon, within ten miles! And so you cannot wonder if the poor thing became unsettled.”

“Puir thing[Pg 112]!—no doctor!—nor even a surgeon!—But, Doctor,” said the widow, “maybe the puir thing had the enjoyment of her health, ye ken, and, then”——

“Ah! ha, ha!—why then, madam, she needed a physician far more than if she had been delicate. A skilful physician, Mrs. Blower, knows how to bring down that robust health, which is a very alarming state of the frame when it is considered secundum artem. Most sudden deaths happen when people are in a robust state of health. Ah! that state of perfect health is what the doctor dreads most on behalf of his patient.”

“Ay, ay, Doctor?—I am quite sensible, nae doubt,” said the widow, “of the great advantage of having a skeelfu' person about ane.”

Here the Doctor's voice, in his earnestness to convince Mrs. Blower of the danger of supposing herself capable of living and breathing without a medical man's permission, sunk into a soft pleading tone, of which our reporter could not catch the sound. He was, as great orators will sometimes be, “inaudible in the gallery.”

Meanwhile, Lady Penelope overwhelmed Clara Mowbray with her caresses. In what degree her ladyship, at her heart, loved this young person, might be difficult to ascertain,—probably in the degree in which a child loves a favourite toy. But Clara was a toy not always to be come by—as whimsical in her way as her ladyship in her own, only that poor Clara's singularities were real, and her ladyship's chiefly affected. Without adopting the harshness of the Doctor's conclusions concerning the former, she was certainly unequal in her spirits; and her occasional fits of levity were chequered by very long intervals of sadness. Her levity al[Pg 113]so appeared, in the world's eye, greater than it really was; for she had never been under the restraint of society which was really good, and entertained an undue contempt for that which she sometimes mingled with; having unhappily none to teach her the important truth, that some forms and restraints are to be observed, less in respect to others than to ourselves. Her dress, her manners, and her ideas, were therefore very much her own; and though they became her wonderfully, yet, like Ophelia's garlands, and wild snatches of melody, they were calculated to excite compassion and melancholy, even while they amused the observer.

“And why came you not to dinner?—We expected you—your throne was prepared.”

“I had scarce come to tea,” said Miss Mowbray, “of my own freewill. But my brother says your ladyship proposes to come to Shaws-Castle, and he insisted it was quite right and necessary, to confirm you in so flattering a purpose, that I should come and say, Pray do, Lady Penelope; and so now here am I to say, Pray, do come.”

“Is an invitation so flattering limited to me alone, my dear Clara?—Lady Binks will be jealous.”

“Bring Lady Binks, if she has the condescension to honour us”—[a bow was very stiffly exchanged between the ladies]—“bring Mr. Springblossom—Winterblossom—and all the lions and lionesses—we have room for the whole collection. My brother, I suppose, will bring his own particular regiment of bears, which, with the usual assortment of monkeys seen in all caravans, will complete the menagerie. How you are to be entertained at Shaws-Castle, is, I thank Heaven, not my business, but John's.”

[Pg 114]

“We shall want no formal entertainment, my love,” said Lady Penelope; “a déjeûner à la fourchette—we know, Clara, you would die of doing the honours of a formal dinner.”

“Not a bit; I should live long enough to make my will, and bequeath all large parties to old Nick, who invented them.”

“Miss Mowbray,” said Lady Binks, who had been thwarted by this free-spoken young lady, both in her former character of a coquette and romp, and in that of a prude which she at present wore—“Miss Mowbray declares for