Redgauntlet

by Walter Scott

  What could be the cause of such an attempt on the liberty of an inoffensive and amiable man? It was impossible it could be merely owing to Redgauntlet's mistaking Darsie for a spy; for though that was the solution which Fairford had offered to the provost, he well knew that, in point of fact, he himself had been warned by his singular visitor of some danger to which his friend was exposed, before such suspicion could have been entertained; and the injunctions received by Latimer from his guardian, or him who acted as such, Mr. Griffiths of London, pointed to the same thing. He was rather glad, however, that he had not let Provost Crosbie into his secret further than was absolutely necessary; since it was plain that the connexion of his wife with the suspected party was likely to affect his impartiality as a magistrate.

  When Alan Fairford arrived at Mount Sharon, Rachel Geddes hastened to meet him, almost before the servant could open the door. She drew back in disappointment when she beheld a stranger, and said, to excuse her precipitation, that 'she had thought it was her brother Joshua returned from Cumberland.'

  'Mr. Geddes is then absent from home?' said Fairford, much disappointed in his turn.

  'He hath been gone since yesterday, friend,' answered Rachel, once more composed to the quietude which characterizes her sect, but her pale cheek and red eye giving contradiction to her assumed equanimity.

  'I am,' said Fairford, hastily, 'the particular friend of a young man not unknown to you, Miss Geddes—the friend of Darsie Latimer—and am come hither in the utmost anxiety, having understood from Provost Crosbie, that he had disappeared in the night when a destructive attack was made upon the fishing-station of Mr. Geddes.'

  'Thou dost afflict me, friend, by thy inquiries,' said Rachel, more affected than before; 'for although the youth was like those of the worldly generation, wise in his own conceit, and lightly to be moved by the breath of vanity, yet Joshua loved him, and his heart clave to him as if he had been his own son. And when he himself escaped from the sons of Belial, which was not until they had tired themselves with reviling, and with idle reproach, and the jests of the scoffer, Joshua, my brother, returned to them once and again, to give ransom for the youth called Darsie Latimer, with offers of money and with promise of remission, but they would not hearken to him. Also, he went before the head judge, whom men call the sheriff, and would have told him of the youth's peril; but he would in no way hearken to him unless he would swear unto the truth of his words, which thing he might not do without sin, seeing it is written, Swear not at all—also, that our conversation shall be yea or nay. Therefore, Joshua returned to me disconsolate, and said, "Sister Rachel, this youth hath run into peril for my sake; assuredly I shall not be guiltless if a hair of his head be harmed, seeing I have sinned in permitting him to go with me to the fishing station when such evil was to be feared. Therefore, I will take my horse, even Solomon, and ride swiftly into Cumberland, and I will make myself friends with Mammon of Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the lad." But he answered and said, "I will not be controlled in this matter." And he is gone forth and hath not returned, and I fear me that he may never return; for though he be peaceful, as becometh one who holds all violence as offence against his own soul, yet neither the floods of water, nor the fear of the snare, nor the drawn sword of the adversary brandished in the path, will overcome his purpose. Wherefore the Solway may swallow him up, or the sword of the enemy may devour him—nevertheless, my hope is better in Him who directeth all things, and ruleth over the waves of the sea, and overruleth the devices of the wicked, and who can redeem us even as a bird from the fowler's net.'

  This was all that Fairford could learn from Miss Geddes; but he heard with pleasure that the good Quaker, her brother, had many friends among those of his own profession in Cumberland, and without exposing himself to so much danger as his sister seemed to apprehend, he trusted he might be able to discover some traces of Darsie Latimer. He himself rode back to Dumfries, having left with Miss Geddes his direction in that place, and an earnest request that she would forward thither whatever information she might obtain from her brother.

  On Fairford's return to Dumfries, he employed the brief interval which remained before dinner-time, in writing an account of what had befallen Latimer and of the present uncertainty of his condition, to Mr. Samuel Griffiths, through whose hands the remittances for his friend's service had been regularly made, desiring he would instantly acquaint him with such parts of his history as might direct him in the search which he was about to institute through the border counties, and which he pledged himself not; to give up until he had obtained news of his friend, alive or dead, The young lawyer's mind felt easier when he had dispatched this letter. He could not conceive any reason why his friend's life should be aimed at; he knew Darsie had done nothing by which his liberty could be legally affected; and although, even of late years, there had been singular histories of men, and women also, who had been trepanned, and concealed in solitudes and distant islands in order to serve some temporary purpose, such violences had been chiefly practised by the rich on the poor, and by the strong on the feeble; whereas, in the present case, this Mr. Herries, or Redgauntlet, being amenable, for more reasons than one, to the censure of the law, must be the weakest in any struggle in which it could be appealed to. It is true, that his friendly anxiety whispered that the very cause which rendered this oppressor less formidable, might make him more desperate. Still, recalling his language, so strikingly that of the gentleman, and even of the man of honour, Alan Fairford concluded, that though, in his feudal pride, Redgauntlet might venture on the deeds of violence exercised by the aristocracy in other times, he could not be capable of any action of deliberate atrocity. And in these convictions he went to dine with Provost Crosbie, with a heart more at ease than might have been expected.[See Note 7.]

  CHAPTER XI

  NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD, CONTINUED

  Five minutes had elapsed after the town clock struck two, before Alan Fairford, who had made a small detour to put his letter into the post-house, reached the mansion of Mr. Provost Crosbie, and was at once greeted by the voice of that civic dignitary, and the rural dignitary his visitor, as by the voices of men impatient for their dinner.

  'Come away, Mr. Fairford—the Edinburgh time is later than ours,' said the provost.

  And, 'Come away, young gentleman,' said the laird; 'I remember your father weel at the Cross thirty years ago—I reckon you are as late in Edinburgh as at London, four o'clock hours—eh?'

  'Not quite so degenerate,' replied Fairford; 'but certainly many Edinburgh people are so ill-advised as to postpone their dinner till three, that they may have full time to answer their London correspondents.'

  'London correspondents!' said Mr. Maxwell; 'and pray what the devil have the people of Auld Reekie to do with London correspondents?' [41]

  'The tradesmen must have their goods,' said Fairford.

  'Can they not buy our own Scottish manufactures, and pick their customers pockets in a more patriotic manner?'

  'Then the ladies must have fashions,' said Fairford.

  'Can they not busk the plaid over their heads, as their mothers did? A tartan screen, and once a year a new cockernony from Paris, should serve a countess. But ye have not many of them left, I think—Mareschal, Airley, Winton, Vemyss, Balmerino, all passed and gone—aye, aye, the countesses and ladies of quality will scarce take up too much of your ball-room floor with their quality hoops nowadays.'

  'There is no want of crowding, however, sir,' said Fairford; 'they begin to talk of a new Assembly room.'

  'A new Assembly room!' said t
he old Jacobite laird—'Umph—I mind quartering three hundred men in the old Assembly room[42]—But come, come—I'll ask no more questions—the 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 the laird's wit. The lady drew up, and the provost said, half aside, 'The sooth bourd is nae bourd.[43] You will find the horseshoe hissing hot, Summertrees.'

  'You can speak from experience, doubtless, provost,' answered the laird; 'but I crave pardon—I need not tell Mrs. Crosbie that I have all respect for the auld and honourable House of Redgauntlet.'

  'And good reason ye have, that are sae sib to them,' quoth the lady, 'and kend weel baith them that are here, and them that are gane.'

  'In troth, and ye may say sae, madam,' answered the laird; 'for poor Harry Redgauntlet, that suffered at Carlisle, was hand and glove with me; and yet we parted on short leave-taking.'

  'Aye, Summertrees,' said the provost; 'that was when you played Cheat-the-woodie, and gat the by-name of Pate-in-Peril. I wish you would tell the story to my young friend here. He likes weel to hear o
f a sharp trick, as most lawyers do.'

  'I wonder at your want of circumspection, provost,' said the laird,—much after the manner of a singer when declining to sing the song that is quivering upon his tongue's very end. 'Ye should mind there are some auld stories that cannot be ripped up again with entire safety to all concerned. TACE is Latin for a candle,'

  'I hope,' said the lady, 'you are not afraid of anything being said out of this house to your prejudice, Summertrees? I have heard the story before; but the oftener I hear it, the more wonderful I think it.'

  'Yes, madam; but it has been now a wonder of more than nine days, and it is time it should be ended,' answered Maxwell.

  Fairford now thought it civil to say, 'that he had often heard of Mr. Maxwell's wonderful escape, and that nothing could be more agreeable to him than to hear the right version of it.'

  But Summertrees was obdurate, and refused to take up the time of the company with such 'auld-warld nonsense.'

  'Weel, weel,' said the provost, 'a wilful man maun hae his way. What do your folk in the country think about the disturbances that are beginning to spunk out in the colonies?'

  'Excellent, sir, excellent. When things come to the worst; they will mend; and to the worst they are coming. But as to that nonsense ploy of mine, if ye insist on hearing the particulars,'—said the laird, who began to be sensible that the period of telling his story gracefully was gliding fast away.

  'Nay,' said the provost, 'it was not for myself, but this young gentlemen.'

  'Aweel, what for should I not pleasure the young gentlemen? I'll just drink to honest folk at hame and abroad, and deil ane else. And then—but you have heard it before, Mrs. Crosbie?'