The Antiquary — Complete by Walter Scott (fun to read .txt) 📕

about invalided pots and pans and tobacco-stoppers past service—all these things put me out of patience. I have something of Hotspur in me, sister, I must confess.”

“Too much, too much, my dear brother! Into how many risks, and, forgive me for saying, some of them little creditable, has this absolute and violent temper led you! Do not let such clouds darken the time you are now to pass in our neighbourhood, but let our old benefactor see his kinsman as he is—generous, kind, and lively, without being rude, headstrong, and impetuous.”

“Well,” answered Captain M’Intyre, “I am schooled—good-manners be my speed! I’ll do the civil thing by your new friend—I’ll have some talk with this Mr. Lovel.”

With this determination, in which he was for the time perfectly sincere, he joined the party who were walking before them. The treble disquisition was by this time ended; and Sir Arthur was speaking on the subject of foreign news, and the political and military situation of the country, themes upon which every man thinks himself qualified to give an opinion. An action of the preceding year having come upon the tapis, Lovel, accidentally mingling in the conversation, made some assertion concerning it, of the accuracy of which Captain M’Intyre seemed not to be convinced, although his doubts were politely expressed.

“You must confess yourself in the wrong here, Hector,” said his uncle, “although I know no man less willing to give up an argument; but you were in England at the time, and Mr. Lovel was probably concerned in the affair.”

“I am speaking to a military man, then?” said M’Intyre; “may I inquire to what regiment Mr. Lovel belongs?”—Mr. Lovel gave him the number of the regiment. “It happens strangely that we should never have met before, Mr. Lovel. I know your regiment very well, and have served along with them at different times.”

A blush crossed Lovel’s countenance. “I have not lately been with my regiment,” he replied; “I served the last campaign upon the staff of General Sir——.”

“Indeed! that is more wonderful than the other circumstance!—for although I did not serve with General Sir——, yet I had an opportunity of knowing the names of the officers who held situations in his family, and I cannot recollect that of Lovel.”

At this observation Lovel again blushed so deeply as to attract the attention of the whole company, while, a scornful laugh seemed to indicate Captain M’Intyre’s triumph. “There is something strange in this,” said Oldbuck to himself; “but I will not readily give up my phoenix of post-chaise companions—all his actions, language, and bearing, are those of a gentleman.”

Lovel in the meanwhile had taken out his pocket-book, and selecting a letter, from which he took off the envelope, he handed it to Mlntyre. “You know the General’s hand, in all probability—I own I ought not to show these exaggerated expressions of his regard and esteem for me.” The letter contained a very handsome compliment from the officer in question for some military service lately performed. Captain M’Intyre, as he glanced his eye over it, could not deny that it was written in the General’s hand, but drily observed, as he returned it, that the address was wanting. “The address, Captain M’Intyre,” answered Lovel, in the same tone, “shall be at your service whenever you choose to inquire after it!”

“I certainly shall not fail to do so,” rejoined the soldier.

“Come, come,” exclaimed Oldbuck, “what is the meaning of all this? Have we got Hiren here?—We’ll have no swaggering youngsters. Are you come from the wars abroad, to stir up domestic strife in our peaceful land? Are you like bull-dog puppies, forsooth, that when the bull, poor fellow, is removed from the ring, fall to brawl among themselves, worry each other, and bite honest folk’s shins that are standing by?”

Sir Arthur trusted, he said, the young gentlemen would not so far forget themselves as to grow warm upon such a trifling subject as the back of a letter.

Both the disputants disclaimed any such intention, and, with high colour and flashing eyes, protested they were never so cool in their lives. But an obvious damp was cast over the party;—they talked in future too much by the rule to be sociable, and Lovel, conceiving himself the object of cold and suspicious looks from the rest of the company, and sensible that his indirect replies had given them permission to entertain strange opinions respecting him, made a gallant determination to sacrifice the pleasure he had proposed in spending the day at Knockwinnock.

He affected, therefore, to complain of a violent headache, occasioned by the heat of the day, to which he had not been exposed since his illness, and made a formal apology to Sir Arthur, who, listening more to recent suspicion than to the gratitude due for former services, did not press him to keep his engagement more than good-breeding exactly demanded.

When Lovel took leave of the ladies, Miss Wardour’s manner seemed more anxious than he had hitherto remarked it. She indicated by a glance of her eye towards Captain M’Intyre, perceptible only by Lovel, the subject of her alarm, and hoped, in a voice greatly under her usual tone, it was not a less pleasant engagement which deprived them of the pleasure of Mr. Lovel’s company. “No engagement had intervened,” he assured her; “it was only the return of a complaint by which he had been for some time occasionally attacked.”

“The best remedy in such a case is prudence, and I—every friend of Mr. Lovel’s will expect him to employ it.”

Lovel bowed low and coloured deeply, and Miss Wardour, as if she felt that she had said too much, turned and got into the carriage. Lovel had next to part with Oldbuck, who, during this interval, had, with Caxon’s assistance, been arranging his disordered periwig, and brushing his coat, which exhibited some marks of the rude path they had traversed. “What, man!” said Oldbuck, “you are not going to leave us on account of that foolish Hector’s indiscreet curiosity and vehemence? Why, he is a thoughtless boy—a spoiled child from the time he was in the nurse’s arms—he threw his coral and bells at my head for refusing him a bit of sugar; and you have too much sense to mind such a shrewish boy: aequam servare mentem is the motto of our friend Horace. I’ll school Hector by and by, and put it all to rights.” But Lovel persisted in his design of returning to Fairport.

The Antiquary then assumed a graver tone.—“Take heed, young man, to your present feelings. Your life has been given you for useful and valuable purposes, and should be reserved to illustrate the literature of your country, when you are not called upon to expose it in her defence, or in the rescue of the innocent. Private war, a practice unknown to the civilised ancients, is, of all the absurdities introduced by the Gothic tribes, the most gross, impious, and cruel. Let me hear no more of these absurd quarrels, and I will show you the treatise upon the duello, which I composed when the town-clerk and provost Mucklewhame chose to assume the privileges of gentlemen, and challenged each other. I thought of printing my Essay, which is signed Pacificator; but there was no need, as the matter was taken up by the town-council of the borough.”

“But I assure you, my dear sir, there is nothing between Captain M’Intyre and me that can render such respectable interference necessary.”

“See it be