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

“Go to, sir!” said Nigel; “speak out your mind—only remember to whom you speak it.”

“Weel, weel, my lord—I speak it with humility;” (never did Richie look with more starched dignity than when he uttered the word;) “but do you think this dicing and card-shuffling, and haunting of taverns and playhouses, suits your lordship—for I am sure it does not suit me?”

“Why, you are not turned precisian or puritan, fool?” said Lord Glenvarloch, laughing, though, betwixt resentment and shame, it cost him some trouble to do so.

“My lord,” replied the follower, “I ken the purport of your query. I am, it may be, a little of a precisian, and I wish to Heaven I was mair worthy of the name; but let that be a pass-over.—I have stretched the duties of a serving-man as far as my northern conscience will permit. I can give my gude word to my master, or to my native country, when I am in a foreign land, even though I should leave downright truth a wee bit behind me. Ay, and I will take or give a slash with ony man that speaks to the derogation of either. But this chambering, dicing, and play-haunting, is not my element—I cannot draw breath in it—and when I hear of your lordship winning the siller that some poor creature may full sairly miss—by my saul, if it wad serve your necessity, rather than you gained it from him, I wad take a jump over the hedge with your lordship, and cry 'Stand!' to the first grazier we met that was coming from Smithfield with the price of his Essex calves in his leathern pouch!”

“You are a simpleton,” said Nigel, who felt, however, much conscience-struck; “I never play but for small sums.”

“Ay, my lord,” replied the unyielding domestic, “and—still with reverence—it is even sae much the waur. If you played with your equals, there might be like sin, but there wad be mair warldly honour in it. Your lordship kens, or may ken, by experience of your ain, whilk is not as yet mony weeks auld, that small sums can ill be missed by those that have nane larger; and I maun e'en be plain with you, that men notice it of your lordship, that ye play wi' nane but the misguided creatures that can but afford to lose bare stakes.”

“No man dare say so!” replied Nigel, very angrily. “I play with whom I please, but I will only play for what stake I please.”

“That is just what they say, my lord,” said the unmerciful Richie, whose natural love of lecturing, as well as his bluntness of feeling, prevented him from having any idea of the pain which he was inflicting on his master; “these are even their own very words. It was but yesterday your lordship was pleased, at that same ordinary, to win from yonder young hafflins gentleman, with the crimson velvet doublet, and the cock's feather in his beaver—him, I mean, who fought with the ranting captain—a matter of five pounds, or thereby. I saw him come through the hall; and, if he was not cleaned out of cross and pile, I never saw a ruined man in my life.”

“Impossible!” said Lord Glenvarloch—“Why, who is he? he looked like a man of substance.”

“All is not gold that glistens, my lord,” replied Richie; “'broidery and bullion buttons make bare pouches. And if you ask who he is—maybe I have a guess, and care not to tell.”

“At least, if I have done any such fellow an injury,” said the Lord Nigel, “let me know how I can repair it.”

“Never fash your beard about that, my lord,—with reverence always,” said Richie,—“he shall be suitably cared after. Think on him but as ane wha was running post to the devil, and got a shouldering from your lordship to help him on his journey. But I will stop him, if reason can; and so your lordship needs asks nae mair about it, for there is no use in your knowing it, but much the contrair.”

“Hark you, sirrah,” said his master, “I have borne with you thus far, for certain reasons; but abuse my good-nature no farther—and since you must needs go, why, go a God's name, and here is to pay your journey.” So saying, he put gold into his hand, which Richie told over piece by piece, with the utmost accuracy.

“Is it all right—or are they wanting in weight—or what the devil keeps you, when your hurry was so great five minutes since?” said the young lord, now thoroughly nettled at the presumptuous precision with which Richie dealt forth his canons of morality.

“The tale of coin is complete,” said Richie, with the most imperturbable gravity; “and, for the weight, though they are sae scrupulous in this town, as make mouths at a piece that is a wee bit light, or that has been cracked within the ring, my sooth, they will jump at them in Edinburgh like a cock at a grosart. Gold pieces are not so plenty there, the mair the pity!”

“The more is your folly, then,” said Nigel, whose anger was only momentary, “that leave the land where there is enough of them.”

“My lord,” said Richie, “to be round with you, the grace of God is better than gold pieces. When Goblin, as you call yonder Monsieur Lutin,—and you might as well call him Gibbet, since that is what he is like to end in,—shall recommend a page to you, ye will hear little such doctrine as ye have heard from me.—And if they were my last words,” he said, raising his voice, “I would say you are misled, and are forsaking the paths which your honourable father trode in; and, what is more, you are going—still under correction—to the devil with a dishclout, for ye are laughed at by them that lead you into these disordered bypaths.”

“Laughed at!” said Nigel, who, like others of his age, was more sensible to ridicule than to reason—“Who dares laugh at me?”

“My lord, as sure as I live by bread—nay, more, as I am a true man—and, I think, your lordship never found Richie's tongue bearing aught but the truth—unless that your lordship's credit, my country's profit, or, it may be, some sma' occasion of my ain, made it unnecessary to promulgate the haill veritie,—I say then, as I am a true man, when I saw that puir creature come through the ha', at that ordinary, whilk is accurst (Heaven forgive me for swearing!) of God and man, with his teeth set, and his hands clenched, and his bonnet drawn over his brows like a desperate man, Goblin said to me, 'There goes a dunghill chicken, that your master has plucked clean enough; it will be long ere his lordship ruffle a feather with a cock of the game.' And so, my lord, to speak it out, the lackeys, and the gallants, and more especially your sworn brother, Lord Dalgarno, call you the sparrow-hawk.—I had some thought to have cracked Lutin's pate for the speech, but, after a', the controversy was not worth it.”

“Do they use such terms of me?” said Lord Nigel. “Death and the devil!”

“And the devil's dam, my lord,” answered Richie; “they are all three busy in London.—And, besides, Lutin and his master laughed at you, my lord, for letting it be thought that—I shame to speak it—that ye were over well with the wife of the decent honest man whose house you but now left, as not sufficient for your new bravery, whereas they said,