Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (classic novels .TXT) 📕

answers all smell of new lords new lands, and do but spoil my appetite, which were a pity, since here comes Mrs. Crosbie to say our mutton’s ready.’

It was even so. Mrs. Crosbie had been absent, like Eve, ‘on hospitable cares intent,’ a duty which she did not conceive herself exempted from, either by the dignity of her husband’s rank in the municipality, or the splendour of her Brussels silk gown, or even by the more highly prized lustre of her birth; for she was born a Maxwell, and allied, as her husband often informed his friends, to several of the first families in the county. She had been handsome, and was still a portly, good-looking woman of her years; and though her peep into the kitchen had somewhat heightened her complexion, it was no more than a modest touch of rouge might have done.

The provost was certainly proud of his lady, nay, some said he was afraid of her; for of the females of the Redgauntlet family there went a rumour, that, ally where they would, there was a grey mare as surely in the stables of their husbands, as there is a white horse in Wouvermans’ pictures. The good dame, too, was supposed to have brought a spice of politics into Mr. Crosbie’s household along with her; and the provost’s enemies at the council-table of the burgh used to observe that he uttered there many a bold harangue against the Pretender, and in favour of King George and government, of which he dared not have pronounced a syllable in his own bedchamber; and that, in fact, his wife’s predominating influence had now and then occasioned his acting, or forbearing to act, in a manner very different from his general professions of zeal for Revolution principles. If this was in any respect true, it was certain, on the other hand, that Mrs. Crosbie, in all external points, seemed to acknowledge the ‘lawful sway and right supremacy’ of the head of the house, and if she did not in truth reverence her husband, she at least seemed to do so.

This stately dame received Mr. Maxwell (a cousin of course) with cordiality, and Fairford with civility; answering at the same time with respect, to the magisterial complaints of the provost, that dinner was just coming up. ‘But since you changed poor Peter MacAlpin, that used to take care of the town-clock, my dear, it has never gone well a single day.’

‘Peter MacAlpin, my dear,’ said the provost,’ made himself too busy for a person in office, and drunk healths and so forth, which it became no man to drink or to pledge, far less one that is in point of office a servant of the public, I understand that he lost the music bells in Edinburgh, for playing “Ower the Water to Charlie,” upon the tenth of June. He is a black sheep, and deserves no encouragement.’

‘Not a bad tune though, after all,’ said Summertrees; and, turning to the window, he half hummed, half whistled, the air in question, then sang the last verse aloud:

‘Oh I loe weel my Charlie’s name, Though some there be that abhor him; But oh to see the deil gang hame Wi’ a’ the Whigs before him! Over the water, and over the sea, And over the water to Charlie; Come weal, come woe, we’ll gather and go, And live or die with Charlie.’

Mrs. Crosbie smiled furtively on the laird, wearing an aspect at the same time of deep submission; while the provost, not choosing to hear his visitor’s ditty, took a turn through the room, in unquestioned dignity and independence of authority.

‘Aweel, aweel, my dear,’ said the lady, with a quiet smile of submission, ‘ye ken these matters best, and you will do your pleasure—they are far above my hand—only, I doubt if ever the town-clock will go right, or your meals be got up so regular as I should wish, till Peter MacAlpin gets his office back again. The body’s auld, and can neither work nor want, but he is the only hand to set a clock.’

It may be noticed in passing, that notwithstanding this prediction, which, probably, the fair Cassandra had the full means of accomplishing, it was not till the second council day thereafter that the misdemeanours of the Jacobite clock-keeper were passed over, and he was once more restored to his occupation of fixing the town’s time, and the provost’s dinner-hour.

Upon the present occasion the dinner passed pleasantly away. Summertrees talked and jested with the easy indifference of a man who holds himself superior to his company. He was indeed an important person, as was testified by his portly appearance; his hat laced with POINT D’ESPAGNE; his coat and waistcoat once richly embroidered, though now almost threadbare; the splendour of his solitaire, and laced ruffles, though the first was sorely creased, and the other sullied; not to forget the length of his silver-hilted rapier. His wit, or rather humour, bordered on the sarcastic, and intimated a discontented man; and although he showed no displeasure when the provost attempted a repartee, yet it seemed that he permitted it upon mere sufferance, as a fencing-master, engaged with a pupil, will sometimes permit the tyro to hit him, solely by way of encouragement. The laird’s own jests, in the meanwhile, were eminently successful, not only with the provost and his lady, but with the red-cheeked and red-ribboned servant-maid who waited at table, and who could scarce perform her duty with propriety, so effectual were the explosions of Summertrees. Alan Fairford alone was unmoved among all this mirth; which was the less wonderful, that, besides the important subject which occupied his thoughts, most of the laird’s good things consisted in sly allusions to little parochial or family incidents, with which the Edinburgh visitor was totally unacquainted: so that the laughter of the party sounded in his ear like the idle crackling of thorns under the pot, with this difference, that they did not accompany or second any such useful operation as the boiling thereof.

Fairford was glad when the cloth was withdrawn; and when Provost Crosbie (not without some points of advice from his lady touching the precise mixture of the ingredients) had accomplished the compounding of a noble bowl of punch, at which the old Jacobite’s eyes seemed to glisten, the glasses were pushed round it, filled, and withdrawn each by its owner, when the provost emphatically named the toast, ‘The King,’ with an important look to Fairford, which seemed to say, You can have no doubt whom I mean, and therefore there is no occasion to particularize the individual.

Summertrees repeated the toast, with a sly wink to the lady, while Fairford drank his glass in silence.

‘Well, young advocate,’ said the landed proprietor, ‘I am glad to see there is some shame, if there is little honesty, left in the Faculty. Some of your black gowns, nowadays, have as little of the one as of the other.’

‘At least, sir,’ replied Mr. Fairford, ‘I am so much of a lawyer as not willingly to enter into disputes which I am not retained to support—it would be but throwing away both time and argument.’

‘Come, come,’ said the lady, ‘we will have no argument in this house about Whig or Tory—the provost kens what he maun SAY, and I ken what he should THINK; and for a’ that has come and gane yet, there may be a time coming when honest men may say what they think, whether they be provosts or not.’

‘D’ye hear that, provost?’ said Summertrees; ‘your wife’s a witch, man; you should nail a horseshoe on your chamber door—Ha, ha, ha!’

This sally did not take quite so well as former efforts of