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

“Damn the tailzie!” said Mowbray; “if they had meant to keep up their estate, they should have entailed it when it was worth keeping: to tie a man down to such an insignificant thing as St. Ronan's, is like tethering a horse on six roods of a Highland moor.”

“Ye have broke weel in on the mailing by your feus down at the Well,” said Meiklewham, “and raxed ower the tether maybe a wee bit farther than ye had ony right to do.”

“It was by your advice, was it not?” said the Laird.

“I'se ne'er deny it, St. Ronan's,” answered the writer; “but I am such a gude-natured guse, that I just set about pleasing you as an auld wife pleases a bairn.”

“Ay,” said the man of pleasure, “when she reaches it a knife to cut its own fingers with.—These acres would have been safe enough, if it had not been for your d——d advice.”

“And yet you were grumbling e'en now,” said the man of business, “that you have not the power to gar the whole estate flee like a wild-duck across a bog? Troth, you need care little about it; for if you have incurred an irritancy—and sae thinks Mr. Wisebehind, the advocate, upon an A. B. memorial that I laid before him—your sister, or your sister's goodman, if she should take the fancy to marry, might bring a declarator, and evict St. Ronan's frae ye in the course of twa or three sessions.”

“My sister will never marry,” said John Mowbra[Pg 157]y.

“That's easily said,” replied the writer; “but as broken a ship's come to land. If ony body kend o' the chance she has o' the estate, there's mony a weel-doing man would think little of the bee in her bonnet.”

“Harkye, Mr. Meiklewham,” said the Laird, “I will be obliged to you if you will speak of Miss Mowbray with the respect due to her father's daughter, and my sister.”

“Nae offence, St. Ronan's, nae offence,” answered the man of law; “but ilka man maun speak sae as to be understood,—that is, when he speaks about business. Ye ken yoursell, that Miss Clara is no just like other folk; and were I you—it's my duty to speak plain—I wad e'en gie in a bit scroll of a petition to the Lords, to be appointed Curator Bonis, in respect of her incapacity to manage her own affairs.”

“Meiklewham,” said Mowbray, “you are a”——and then stopped short.

“What am I, Mr. Mowbray?” said Meiklewham, somewhat sternly—“What am I? I wad be glad to ken what I am.”

“A very good lawyer, I dare say,” replied St. Ronan's, who was too much in the power of his agent to give way to his first impulse. “But I must tell you, that rather than take such a measure against poor Clara, as you recommend, I would give her up the estate, and become an ostler or a postilion for the rest of my life.”

“Ah, St. Ronan's,” said the man of law, “if you had wished to keep up the auld house, you should have taken another trade, than to become an ostler [Pg 158]or a postilion. What ailed you, man, but to have been a lawyer as weel as other folk? My auld Maister had a wee bit Latin about rerum dominos gentemque togatam, whilk signified, he said, that all lairds should be lawyers.”

“All lawyers are likely to become lairds, I think,” replied Mowbray; “they purchase our acres by the thousand, and pay us, according to the old story, with a multiplepoinding, as your learned friends call it, Mr. Meiklewham.”

“Weel—and mightna you have purchased as weel as other folk?”

“Not I,” replied the Laird; “I have no turn for that service, I should only have wasted bombazine on my shoulders, and flour upon my three-tailed wig—should but have lounged away my mornings in the Outer-House, and my evenings at the play-house, and acquired no more law than what would have made me a wise justice at a Small-debt Court.”

“If you gained little, you would have lost as little,” said Meiklewham; “and albeit ye were nae great gun at the bar, ye might aye have gotten a Sheriffdom, or a Commissaryship, amang the lave, to keep the banes green; and sae ye might have saved your estate from deteriorating, if ye didna mend it muckle.”

“Yes, but I could not have had the chance of doubling it, as I might have done,” answered Mowbray, “had that inconstant jade, Fortune, but stood a moment faithful to me. I tell you, Mick, that I have been, within this twelvemonth, worth a hundred thousand—worth fifty thousand—worth nothing, but the remnant of this wretched estate, which is too little to do one good while it is mine, though, were it sold, I could start again, and mend my hand a little.”[Pg 159]

“Ay, ay, just fling the helve after the hatchet,” said his legal adviser—“that's a' you think of. What signifies winning a hundred thousand pounds, if you win them to lose them a' again?”

“What signifies it?” replied Mowbray. “Why, it signifies as much to a man of spirit, as having won a battle signifies to a general—no matter that he is beaten afterwards in his turn, he knows there is luck for him as well as others, and so he has spirit to try it again. Here is the young Earl of Etherington will be amongst us in a day or two—they say he is up to every thing—if I had but five hundred to begin with, I should be soon up to him.”

“Mr. Mowbray,” said Meiklewham, “I am sorry for ye. I have been your house's man-of-business—I may say, in some measure, your house's servant—and now I am to see an end of it all, and just by the lad that I thought maist likely to set it up again better than ever; for, to do ye justice, you have aye had an ee to your ain interest, sae far as your lights gaed. It brings tears into my auld een.”

“Never weep for the matter, Mick,” answered Mowbray; “some of it will stick, my old boy, in your pockets, if not in mine—your service will not be altogether gratuitous, my old friend—the labourer is worthy of his hire.”

“Weel I wot is he,” said the writer; “but double fees would hardly carry folk through some wark. But if ye will have siller, ye maun have siller—but, I warrant, it goes just where the rest gaed.”

“No, by twenty devils!” exclaimed Mowbray, “to f[Pg 160]ail this time is impossible—Jack Wolverine was too strong for Etherington at any thing he could name; and I can beat Wolverine from the Land's-End to Johnnie Groat's—but there must be something to go upon—the blunt must be had, Mick.”

“Very likely—nae doubt—that is always provided it can be had,” answered the legal adviser.

“That's your business, my old cock,” said Mowbray. “This youngster will be here perhaps to-morrow, with money in both pockets—he takes up his rents as he comes down, Mick—think of that, my old friend.”

“Weel for them that have rents to take up,” said Meiklewham; “ours are lying rather ower low to be lifted at present.—But are you sure this Earl is a man to mell with?—are you sure ye can win of him, and that if you do, he can pay his losings, Mr. Mowbray?—because I have kend mony are come for wool, and gang hame shorn; and though ye are a clever young gentleman, and I am bound to suppose ye ken as much about life as most folk, and all that; yet some gate or other ye have aye come off at the losing hand, as ye have ower much reason to ken this day—howbeit”——

“O, the devil take your gossip, my dear Mick! If you can give no help, spare drowning me with your pother.—Why, man, I was a fresh hand—had my apprentice-fees to pay—and these are no trifles, Mick.—But what of that?—I am free of the company now, and can trade on my own bottom.”

“Aweel, aweel, I wish it may be sae,” said Meiklewham.

“It will be so, and it shall be so, my trusty friend,” replied Mowbray, cheerily, “so you will but help me to the stock to trade with.”

[Pg 161]

“The stock?—what d'ye ca' the stock? I ken nae stock that ye have left.”

“But you have plenty, my old boy—Come, sell out a few of your three per cents; I will pay difference—interest—exchange—every thing.”

“Ay, ay—every thing or naething,” answered Meiklewham; “but as you are sae very pressing, I hae been thinking—Whan is the siller wanted?”

“This instant—this day—to-morrow at farthest!” exclaimed the proposed borrower.

“Wh—ew!” whistled the lawyer, with a long prolongation of the note; “the thing is impossible.”

“It must be, Mick, for all that,” answered Mr. Mowbray, who knew by experience that impossible, when uttered by his accommodating friend in this tone, meant only, when interpreted, extremely difficult, and very expensive.

“Then it must be by Miss Clara selling her stock, now that ye speak of stock,” said Meiklewham; “I wonder ye didna think of this before.”

“I wish you had been dumb rather than that you had mentioned it now,” said Mowbray, starting, as if stung by an adder—“What, Clara's pittance!—the trifle my aunt left her for her own fanciful expenses—her own little private store, that she puts to so many good purposes—Poor Clara, that has so little!—And why not rather your own, Master Meiklewham, who call yourself the friend and servant of our family?”

“Ay, St. Ronan's,” answered Meiklewham, “that is a' very true—but service is nae inheritance; and as for friendship, it begins at hame, as wise folk have said lang before our time. And for that matter, I [Pg 162]think they that are nearest sib should take maist risk. You are nearer and dearer to your sister, St. Ronan's, than you are to poor Saunders Meiklewham, that hasna sae muckle gentle blood as would supper up an hungry flea.”

“I will not do this,” said St. Ronan's, walking up and down with much agitation; for, selfish as he was, he loved his sister, and loved her the more on account of those peculiarities which rendered his protection indispensable to her comfortable existence—“I will not,” he said, “pillage her, come on't what will. I will rather go a volunteer to the continent, and die like a gentleman.”

He continued to pace the room in a moody silence, which began to disturb his companion, who had not been hitherto accustomed to see his patron take matters so deeply. At length he made an attempt to attract the attention of the silent and sullen ponderer.

“Mr. Mowbray”—no answer—“I was saying, St. Ronan's”—still no reply. “I have been thinking about this matter—and”——

“And what, sir?” said St. Ronan's, stopping short, and speaking in a stern tone of voice.

“And, to speak truth, I see little feasibility in the matter ony way; for if ye had the siller in your pocket to-day, it would be a' in the Earl of Etherington's the morn.”

“Pshaw! you are a fool,” answered Mowbray.

“That is not unlikely,” said Meiklewham; “but so is Sir Bingo Binks, and yet he's had the better of you, St. Ronan's, this twa or three times.”

“It is false!—he has not,” answered St. Ronan's, fiercely.

“Weel I wot,” resumed Meiklewham, “he took you in about the saumon fish, and some other wager ye lost to him this very day.”

[Pg 163]

“I tell you once more, Meiklewham, you are a fool, and no more up to my trim than you are to the longitude.—Bingo is got shy—I must give him a little line, that is all—then I shall strike him to purpose—I am as sure of him as I am of the other—I know the fly they will both rise to—this cursed want of five hundred will do me out of ten thousand!”

“If you are so certain of being the bangster—so very certain, I mean, of sweeping stakes,—what harm will Miss Clara come to by your having the use of her siller? You can make it up to her for the risk ten times told.”

“And so I can, by Heaven!” said St. Ronan's. “Mick, you are right, and I am a scrupulous, chicken-hearted fool. Clara shall have a thousand for her poor five hundred—she shall, by ——. And I will carry her to Edinburgh for a season, or perhaps to London, and we will have the best advice for her case, and the best company to divert her. And if they think her a little odd—why, d—— me, I am her brother, and will bear her through it. Yes—yes—you're right; there can be no hurt in borrowing five hundred of her for a few days, when such profit may be made on't, both for her and me.—Here, fill the glasses, my old boy, and drink success to it, for you are right.”

“Here is success to it,