Old Mortality, Volume 2.

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER XX.

  Where's the jolly host You told me of? 'T has been my custom ever To parley with mine host. Lover's Progress.

  Morton reached the borough town without meeting with any remarkableadventure, and alighted at the little inn. It had occurred to him morethan once, while upon his journey, that his resumption of the dress whichhe had worn while a youth, although favourable to his views in otherrespects, might render it more difficult for him to remain incognito. Buta few years of campaigns and wandering had so changed his appearance thathe had great confidence that in the grown man, whose brows exhibited thetraces of resolution and considerate thought, none would recognise theraw and bashful stripling who won the game of the popinjay. The onlychance was that here and there some Whig, whom he had led to battle,might remember the Captain of the Milnwood Marksmen; but the risk, ifthere was any, could not be guarded against.

  The Howff seemed full and frequented as if possessed of all its oldcelebrity. The person and demeanour of Niel Blane, more fat and lesscivil than of yore, intimated that he had increased as well in purse asin corpulence; for in Scotland a landlord's complaisance for his guestsdecreases in exact proportion to his rise in the world. His daughter hadacquired the air of a dexterous barmaid, undisturbed by the circumstancesof love and war, so apt to perplex her in the exercise of her vocation.Both showed Morton the degree of attention which could have been expectedby a stranger travelling without attendants, at a time when they wereparticularly the badges of distinction. He took upon himself exactly thecharacter his appearance presented, went to the stable and saw his horseaccommodated, then returned to the house, and seating himself in thepublic room (for to request one to himself would, in those days, havebeen thought an overweening degree of conceit), he found himself in thevery apartment in which he had some years before celebrated his victoryat the game of the popinjay,--a jocular preferment which led to so manyserious consequences.

  He felt himself, as may well be supposed, a much changed man since thatfestivity; and yet, to look around him, the groups assembled in the Howffseemed not dissimilar to those which the same scene had formerlypresented. Two or three burghers husbanded their "dribbles o' brandy;"two or three dragoons lounged over their muddy ale, and cursed theinactive times that allowed them no better cheer. Their cornet did not,indeed, play at backgammon with the curate in his cassock, but he dranka little modicum of /aqua mirabilis/ with the grey-cloaked Presbyterianminister. The scene was another, and yet the same, differing only inpersons, but corresponding in general character.

  Let the tide of the world wax or wane as it will, Morton thought as helooked around him, enough will be found to fill the places which chancerenders vacant; and in the usual occupations and amusements of life,human beings will succeed each other as leaves upon the same tree, withthe same individual difference and the same general resemblance.

  After pausing a few minutes, Morton, whose experience had taught him thereadiest mode of securing attention, ordered a pint of claret; and as thesmiling landlord appeared with the pewter measure foaming fresh from thetap (for bottling wine was not then in fashion), he asked him to sit downand take a share of the good cheer. This invitation was peculiarlyacceptable to Niel Blane, who, if he did not positively expect it fromevery guest not provided with better company, yet received it from many,and was not a whit abashed or surprised at the summons. He sat down,along with his guest, in a secluded nook near the chimney; and while hereceived encouragement to drink by far the greater share of the liquorbefore them, he entered at length, as a part of his expected functions,upon the news of the country,--the births, deaths, and marriages; thechange of property; the downfall of old families, and the rise of new.But politics, now the fertile source of eloquence, mine host did not careto mingle in his theme; and it was only in answer to a question of Mortonthat he replied, with an air of indifference, "Um! ay! we aye hae sodgersamang us, mair or less. There's a wheen German horse down at Glasgowyonder; they ca' their commander Wittybody, or some sic name, though he'sas grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e'er I saw."

  "Wittenbold, perhaps?" said Morton,--"an old man, with grey hair andshort black moustaches; speaks seldom?"

  "And smokes for ever," replied Niel Blane. "I see your honour kens theman. He may be a very gude man too, for aught I see,--that is,considering he is a sodger and a Dutchman; but if he were ten generals,and as mony Wittybodies, he has nae skill in the pipes; he gar'd me stopin the middle of Torphichen's Rant,--the best piece o' music that everbag gae wind to."

  "But these fellows," said Morton, glancing his eye towards the soldiersthat were in the apartment, are not of his corps?"

  "Na, na, these are Scotch dragoons," said mine host,--"our ain auldcaterpillars; these were Claver'se's lads a while syne, and wad be again,maybe, if he had the lang ten in his hand."

  "Is there not a report of his death?" inquired Morton.

  "Troth is there," said the landlord; "your honour is right,--there is sica fleeing rumour; but, in my puir opinion, it's lang or the deil die. Iwad hae the folks here look to themsells. If he makes an outbreak, he'llbe doun frae the Hielands or I could drink this glass,--and whare arethey then? A' thae hell-rakers o' dragoons wad be at his whistle in amoment. Nae doubt they're Willie's men e'en now, as they were James's awhile syne; and reason good,--they fight for their pay; what else haethey to fight for? They hae neither lands nor houses, I trow. There's aegude thing o' the change, or the Revolution, as they ca' it,--folks mayspeak out afore thae birkies now, and nae fear o' being hauled awa to theguard-house, or having the thumikins screwed on your finger-ends, just asI wad drive the screw through a cork."

  There was a little pause, when Morton, feeling confident in the progresshe had made in mine host's familiarity, asked, though with the hesitationproper to one who puts a question on the answer to which rests somethingof importance, "Whether Blane knew a woman in that neighbourhood calledElizabeth Maclure?"

  "Whether I ken Bessie Maclure?" answered the landlord, with a landlord'slaugh,--"How can I but ken my ain wife's (haly be her rest!)--my ainwife's first gudeman's sister, Bessie Maclure? An honest wife she is, butsair she's been trysted wi' misfortunes,--the loss o' twa decent lads o'sons, in the time o' the persecution, as they ca' it nowadays; anddoucely and decently she has borne her burden, blaming nane andcondemning nane. If there's an honest woman in the world, it's BessieMaclure. And to lose her twa sons, as I was saying, and to hae dragoonsclinked down on her for a month bypast,--for, be Whig or Tory uppermost,they aye quarter thae loons on victuallers,--to lose, as I was saying--"

  "This woman keeps an inn, then?" interrupted Morton.

  "A public, in a puir way," replied Blane, looking round at his ownsuperior accommodations,--"a sour browst o' sma' ale that she sells tofolk that are over drouthy wi' travel to be nice; but naething to ca' astirring trade or a thriving changehouse."

  "Can you get me a guide there?" said Morton.

  "Your honour will rest here a' the night? Ye'll hardly get accommodationat Bessie's," said Niel, whose regard for his deceased wife's relative byno means extended to sending company from his own house to hers.

  "There is a friend," answered Morton, "whom I am to meet with there, andI only called here to take a stirrup-cup and inquire the way."

  "Your honour had better," answerd the landlord, with the perseverance ofhis calling, "send some ane to warn your friend to come on here."

  "I tell you, landlord," answered Morton, impatiently, "that will notserve my purpose; I must go straight to this woman Maclure's house, andI desire you to find me a guide."

  "Aweel, sir, ye'll choose for yoursell, to be sure," said Niel Blane,somewhat disconcerted; "but deil a guide ye'll need if ye gae doun thewater for twa mile or sae, as gin ye were bound for Milnwoodhouse, andthen tak the first broken disjasked-looking road that makes for thehills,--ye'll ken 't by a broken ash-tree that stands at the side o' aburn just where the roads meet; and
then travel out the path,--ye cannamiss Widow Maclure's public, for deil another house or hauld is on theroad for ten lang Scots miles, and that's worth twenty English. I amsorry your honour would think o' gaun out o' my house the night. But mywife's gude-sister is a decent woman, and it's no lost that a friendgets."

  Morton accordingly paid his reckoning and departed. The sunset of thesummer day placed him at the ash-tree, where the path led up towards themoors.

  "Here," he said to himself, "my misfortunes commenced; for just here,when Burley and I were about to separate on the first night we ever met,he was alarmed by the intelligence that the passes were secured bysoldiers lying in wait for him. Beneath that very ash sate the old womanwho apprised him of his danger. How strange that my whole fortunes shouldhave become inseparably interwoven with that man's, without anything moreon my part than the discharge of an ordinary duty of humanity! Would toHeaven it were possible I could find my humble quiet and tranquillity ofmind upon the spot where I lost them!"

  Thus arranging his reflections betwixt speech and thought, he turned hishorse's head up the path.

  Evening lowered around him as he advanced up the narrow dell which hadonce been a wood, but was now a ravine divested of trees, unless where afew, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks,or clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of men andof cattle, like the scattered tribes of a conquered country, driven totake refuge in the barren strength of its mountains. These too, wastedand decayed, seemed rather to exist than to flourish, and only served toindicate what the landscape had once been. But the stream brawled downamong them in all its freshness and vivacity, giving the life andanimation which a mountain rivulet alone can confer on the barest andmost savage scenes, and which the inhabitants of such a country miss whengazing even upon the tranquil winding of a majestic stream through plainsof fertility, and beside palaces of splendour. The track of the roadfollowed the course of the brook, which was now visible, and now only tobe distinguished by its brawling heard among the stones or in the cleftsof the rock that occasionally interrupted its course.

  "Murmurer that thou art," said Morton, in the enthusiasm of his reverie,"why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment? There is asea to receive thee in its bosom; and there is an eternity for man whenhis fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased andover. What thy petty fuming is to the deep and vast billows of ashoreless ocean, are our cares, hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows to theobjects which must occupy us through the awful and boundless successionof ages!"

  Thus moralizing, our traveller passed on till the dell opened, and thebanks, receding from the brook, left a little green vale, exhibiting acroft, or small field, on which some corn was growing, and a cottage,whose walls were not above five feet high, and whose thatched roof, greenwith moisture, age, houseleek, and grass, had in some places suffereddamage from the encroachment of two cows, whose appetite this appearanceof verdure had diverted from their more legitimate pasture. An ill-speltand worse-written inscription intimated to the traveller that he mighthere find refreshment for man and horse,--no unacceptable intimation,rude as the hut appeared to be, considering the wild path he had trod inapproaching it, and the high and waste mountains which rose in desolatedignity behind this humble asylum.

  It must indeed have been, thought Morton, in some such spot as this thatBurley was likely to find a congenial confident.

  As he approached, he observed the good dame of the house herself, seatedby the door; she had hitherto been concealed from him by a hugealder-bush.

  "Good evening, Mother," said the traveller. "Your name is MistressMaclure?"

  "Elizabeth Maclure, sir, a poor widow," was the reply.

  "Can you lodge a stranger for a night?"

  "I can, sir, if he will be pleased with the widow's cake and the widow'scruse."

  "I have been a soldier, good dame," answered Morton, "and nothing cancome amiss to me in the way of entertainment."

  "A sodger, sir?" said the old woman, with a sigh,--"God send ye a bettertrade!"

  "It is believed to be an honourable profession, my good dame; I hope youdo not think the worse of me for having belonged to it?"

  "I judge no one, sir," replied the woman, "and your voice sounds likethat of a civil gentleman; but I hae witnessed sae muckle ill wi'sodgering in this puir land that I am e'en content that I can see naemair o't wi' these sightless organs."

  As she spoke thus, Morton observed that she was blind.

  "Shall I not be troublesome to you, my good dame?" said he,compassionately; "your infirmity seems ill calculated for yourprofession."

  "Na, sir," answered the old woman, "I can gang about the house readilyeneugh; and I hae a bit lassie to help me, and the dragoon lads will lookafter your horse when they come hame frae their patrol, for a sma'matter; they are civiller now than lang syne."

  Upon these assurances, Morton alighted.

  "Peggy, my bonny bird," continued the hostess, addressing a little girlof twelve years old, who had by this time appeared, "tak the gentleman'shorse to the stable, and slack his girths, and tak aff the bridle, andshake down a lock o' hay before him, till the dragoons come back.--Comethis way, sir," she continued; "ye'll find my house clean, though it's apuir ane."

  Morton followed her into the cottage accordingly.