Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,'
or he would have christened us daughters of Eve by a very different
name."
"O you little rogue! you are too hard upon this devotee to your dear
deluding sex. It is only his excess of politeness that has made him
forget his historical reading."
"His politeness! Fiddlestick! I would as soon have a troop of boys
inflict the intolerable tediousness of their calf-love upon me as endure
the rhapsodies of a booby, who strips us of our good flesh and blood,
frailties and all, to etherealize us into an incomprehensible compound
of tears, sighs, moonshine, music, love, flowers, and hysterics."
"Emily, how you run on!" broke in Mrs. Cheesham. "My dear Mr. Stukeley,
really you must not encourage the girl in her nonsense. I declare, I
sometimes think her tongue runs away with her wits."
"Better that, I'm sure, madam, than have it run away without them,"
responded Stukeley, in a deprecating tone, which threw Mrs. Cheesham,
whose intellect was none of the acutest, completely out.
"Girls, there are Mr. Blowze and Mr. Lilylipz," said Mrs. Cheesham,
looking in the direction of the friends, Adolph and Eugene; "you had
better arrange with them about coming this evening."
Emily advanced, with her sister, to the engaging pair, who received them
with that peculiar contortion of the body, between a jerk and a shuffle,
which young men are in the habit of mistaking for a bow, and was soon
deep in the heart of a flirtation with Adolph, while Fanny stood
listening to the vapid nothings of Eugene, a very model of passive
endurance. Frank Preston was anything but an easy spectator of this
movement; nor was Emily blind to this; but, like a wilful woman, she
could not forbear playing the petty tyrant, and exercising freely the
power to torment which she saw that she possessed.
"You will be of our party to-night, gentlemen," continued Mrs. Cheesham.
"We are to have a little music. You are fond of music, Mr. Stukeley, I
know; and no pressing can be necessary to an ama_toor_ like you, Mr.
Francis. I can assure you, you'll meet some very nice people. Mr. and
Mrs. M'Skrattachan, highly respectable people--an old Highland family,
and with very high connections. Mr. M'Skrattachan's mother's sister's
aunt--no, his aunt's mother's sister--yes, that was it--Mr.
M'Skrattachan's aunt's mother's sister; and yet I don't know--I dare say
I was right before--at all events, it was one or other of them--married
a second cousin--something of that kind--of the Duke of Argyle, by the
mother's side. They had a large estate in Skye or Ross-shire--I am not
sure which, but it was somewhere thereabout."
Stukeley and Preston were glad to cover their retreat by acceptance of
Mrs. Cheesham's invitation; and, leaving her to empty the dregs of the
details which she had begun into the willing ears of some of her more
submissive friends, they made their escape from the pump-room.
Slopbole Cottage, where the Cheesham's were domiciliated during their
sojourn at Potterwell, was situated upon the banks of the Wimpledown, at
a distance of somewhat less than a quarter of a mile from the burgh. It
had, at one time, been a farm-house; but, within a few years, it had
been recast: and, by the addition of a bow window, a trellised door, and
a few of the usual et ceteras, it had been converted into what is by
courtesy termed a cottage ornee. It was an agreeable place, for all
that, shaded by the remnants of a fine old wood--the rustling of whose
foliage made pleasant music, as it blended with the ever-sounding plash
and rushing of the stream.
When Frank Preston arrived at Slopbole Cottage that evening, he found
the drawing-room already well stocked with the usual components of a
tea-party. The two exquisites of the morning he saw, to his dismay, were
already there. Adolph was assiduously sacrificing to the charms and wit
of Miss Emily, while his shadow, Eugene, was--but Preston did not care
about that--as much engaged in Macadamising his great conceptions into
small talk suitable for the intellectual capacity of Miss Fanny. Mrs.
Cheesham regarded these proceedings with entire satisfaction. The
friends, to her mind, were men of birth, fashion, and fortune, and the
very men for her daughters. Besides, there was a mystery about them that
was charming. Nobody knew exactly who they were, although everybody was
sure they were somebody. None but great people ever travel _incog_. They
were evidently struck by her daughters. Things were in a fair train;
and, if she could but make a match of it, Mrs. Cheesham thought she
might then fold her hands across, and make herself easy for life. Her
daughters would be the wives of great men, and she was their mother, and
every one knows what an important personage a wife's mother is.
"Two very fine young men, Mr. Francis," said Mrs. Cheesham. "Extremely
intelligent people. And so good looking! Quite _distingue_, too. It is
not every day one meets such people."
Frank Preston threw in the necessary quantity of "yes's," "certainly's,"
and so forth, while Mrs. Cheesham continued--
"They seem rather taken with my girls, don't they? Mr. Blowze is never
away from Emily's side. His attentions are quite marked. Don't you
think, now, they'd make a nice pair? They're both so lively--always
saying such clever things. I never knew Emily so smart either; but that
girl's all animation--all spirits. I always said Emily would never do
but for a rattle of a husband--a man that could talk as much as herself.
It does not do, you know, really it does not do for the wife to have too
much of the talk to herself. I make that a principle; and, as I often
tell Cheesham, I let him have it all his own way, rather than argue a
point with him."
This was, of course, an exceedingly agreeable strain of conversation to
the lover, to whom it was no small relief, when Mrs. Cheesham quitted
his side to single out her musical friends for the performance of a
quartette. At her summons, these parties were seen to emerge from the
various recesses where they had been concealing themselves, in all the
majesty of silence, as is the way with musical amateurs in general. Miss
Fanny, who was really an accomplished performer, was called to preside
at the pianoforte, and Mr. Lilylipz rushed before to adjust the
music-stool and turn over the leaves for her. Mr. Blewitt got out his
flute, and, after screwing it together, commenced a series of blasts
upon it, which were considered necessary to the process of tuning. Mr.
Harrower, the violoncello player, turned up the wristbands of his coat,
placed his handkerchief on his left knee, and, after a preliminary
flourish or two of his hands, began to grind his violoncello into a
proper sharpness of pitch. Not to be behind the rest, Mr. Fogle screwed
his violin strings first up, and then he screwed them down, and then he
proceeded to screw them up again, with a waywardness of purpose that
might have been extremely diverting, if its effects had not been so very
distressing to the ears. Having thus begot a due degree of attention in
their audience, the performers thought of trying how the results of
their respective preparations tallied.
"Miss Fanny, will you be kind enough to sound your A?" lisped Mr.
Blewitt.
Miss Fanny did sound her A, and again a dissonance broke forth that
would have thrown Orpheus into fits. It was then discovered that the
damp had reduced the piano nearly a whole tone below pitch, and Mr.
Blewitt's flute could not be brought down to a level with it by any
contrivance. The musicians, however, were not to be baulked in their
purpose for this, and they agreed to proceed with the flute some half a
tone higher than the other instruments. But there was a world of
preliminary work yet to be gone through; tables had to be adjusted, and
books had to be built upon music stands. But the tables would not stand
conveniently, and the books would fall, and then all the work of
adjustment and library architecture had to be gone over again. At last
these matters were put to rights, and, after a few more indefinite
vagaries by Messrs. Blewitt, Harrower, and Fogle, the junto made a dash
into the heart of one of Haydn's quartetts. The piano kept steadily
moving through the piece. Miss Fanny knew her work, and she did it. The
others did not know theirs, and they _did for_ it. After a few faint
squeaks at the beginning, Mr. Blewitt's flute dropped out of hearing
altogether, and, just as everybody had set it down as defunct, it began
to give token of its existence by a wail or two rising through the storm
of sounds with which the performance closed, and then made up its leeway
by continuing to vapour away for some time after the rest had finished.
"Bless my heart, are you done?" cried Mr. Blewitt, breaking off in the
middle of a solo, which he found himself performing to his own
astonishment.
Mr. Harrower and Mr. Fogle threw up their eyes with an intensity of
contempt that defies description. To be sure, neither of them had kept
either time or tune all the way through. Mr. Harrower's violoncello had
growled and groaned, at intervals, in a manner truly pitiable; and Mr.
Fogle's bow had done nothing but dance and leap, in a perpetual staccato
from the first bar to the last, to the entire confusion of both melody
and concord. But they had both managed to be in at the death, and were
therefore entitled to sneer at the unhappy flutist. Mr. Eugene Lilylipz,
who had annoyed Miss Fanny throughout the performance, by invariably
turning over the leaf at the wrong place, now broke into a volley of
raptures, of which the words "Devaine" and "Chawming," were among the
principal symbols. A buzz of approbation ran round the room, warm in
proportion to the relief which the cessation of the Dutch concert
afforded. Mr. Harrower and his coadjutors grew communicative, and vented
an infinite quantity of the jargon of dilettanteism upon each other and
upon those about them. They soon got into a discussion upon the merits
of different composers, whose names served them to bandy to and fro in
the battledore and shuttlecock of conversation. Beethoven was cried up
to the seventh heaven by Mr. Harrower, for his grandeur and sublimity,
and all that sort of thing.
"There is a Miltonic greatness about the man!" he exclaimed, throwing
his eyes to the ceiling, in the contemplation of a visionary demigod. "A
vastness, a massiveness, an incomprehensible--eh, eh?--ah, I can't
exactly tell what, that places him far above all other writers."
"Every man to his taste," insinuated Mr. Blewitt; "but I certainly like
what I can understand best. Now I don't understand Beethoven; but I
_can_ understand Mozart, or Weber, or Haydn."
"It is very well if you do!" retorted the violoncellist, reflecting
probably on the recent specimen Mr. Blewitt had given of his powers. "It
is more than everybody does, I can tell you."
"Od, gentlemen, but it's grand music onyhow, and exceeding justice you
have done it, if I may speak my mind. But ye ken, I'm no great shakes of
a judge."
This was the opinion volunteered by Mr. Cheesham, who saw the musicians
were giving symptoms of that tendency to discord for which they are
proverbial, and threw out a sop to their vanity, which at once restored
them to order. As he said himself, Mr. Cheesham was no great judge of
music, nor, indeed, of any of the fine arts. He had read little, and
thought less; and yet, since he had become independent of the world, he
was fond of assuming an air of knowledge, that was exceedingly amusing.
There was nothing, for instance, that he liked better to be talking
about than history; and, nevertheless, that Hannibal was killed at the
battle of Drumclog, and Julius Caesar beheaded by Henry the Eighth, were
facts which he would probably have had no hesitation in admitting, upon
any reasonable representation.
By this time, Mr. Stukeley had joined the party, and was going his
rounds, chatting, laughing, quizzing, and prosing, according to the
different characters of the people whom he talked with. When he reached
Mr. Cheesham, he found him in earnest conversation with Mr. Lilylipz,
regarding the ruins of Tinglebury, an abbey not far from Potterwell, of
which the architecture was pronounced, by Mr. Lilylipz, to be
"_suttinly_ transcandent beyond anythin_k_. It is of that pure
Graeco-Gothic, which was brought over by William the Conqueror, and went
out with the Saxons."
Stukeley encouraged the conversation, drawing out the presumptuous
ignorance of Mr. Lilylipz, and the rusty nomeanings of the parent
Cheesham into strong relief.
"Gentlemen, excuse me for breaking up your _tete-a-tete_. Have you got
upon 'Shakspeare, taste, and the musical glasses?'" said Miss Emily,
joining the trio. "Mr. Lilylipz, your friend tells me you sing. Will you
break the dullness, and favour us?"
"Oh, I never do sing; and, besides, I am suffering from hoarseness."
"Come, come," replied Miss Emily, "none of these excuses, or we shall
expect to find a very Braham, at least."
"Now, _r_eally!" remonstrated Mr. Lilylipz.
"Oh, never mind his nonsense, Miss Cheesham," exclaimed Mr. Blowze, from
the other side of the room. "Lilylipz sings an uncommonly good song,
when he likes. Give us 'the Rose of Cashmere,' or 'She wore a wreath of
Roses.' Come away, now--no humbug!"
"Oh, that will be delightful!--pray, do sing!" were the exclamations of
a dozen voices, at least. "Mr. Lilylipz' song!" shouted the elderly
gentlemen of the party; and, forthwith, an awful stillness reigned
throughout the apartment. Upon this, Mr. Lilylipz blew his nose, coughed
thrice, and, throwing himself back in his chair, rivetted his eyes, with
the utmost intensity, upon a corner of the ceiling. Every one held back
his breath in expectation, and the interesting young man opened upon the
assemblage with a ballad all about an Araby maid, to whom a Christian
knight was submitting proposals of elopement, which the lady appeared to
be by no means averse to, for each stanza ended with the refrain, "Away,
away, away!" signifying that the parties meant to be off somewhere as
fast as possible. Mr. Lilylipz had just concluded verse the first, and
the "Away, away, away!" had powerfully excited the imagination of the
young ladies present, when the door opened, and the clinking of crystal
ware announced the inopportune entrance of a maidservant bearing a
trayful of glasses filled with that vile imbroglio of hot water and
sugar coloured with wine, which passes in genteel circles by the name of
negus. All eyes turned towards the door, and Mrs. Cheesham exclaimed,
"Sally, be quiet!" but Mr. Eugene was too much enrapt by his own
performance to feel the disturbance, and he tore away through verse the
second with kindling enthusiasm. "Away, away, away!" sang the vocalist,
when a crash and a scream arrested his progress. The servant maid had
dropped the tray, and the glasses were rolling to and fro upon the floor
in a confusion of fragments, while the delinquent, Sally, shrieking at
the top of her voice, was making her way out at the door with all the
speed she was mistress of.
"What the devil's that?" cried one. "The careless slut!" screamed
another. "Such thoughtlessness!" suggested a third. "What the deuce
could the woman mean?" asked a fourth. "It's the last night she sets
foot in my house!" exclaimed Mrs. Cheesham, thrown off her dignity by
the sudden shock.
"Bless me, you look unwell!" said Mr. Cheesham to Mr. Lilylipz, who had
turned deadly pale, and was altogether looking excessively unhappy.
"Oh, it is nothing. Only a constitutional nervousness. The start, the
surprise, that sort of thing, you know; but it will go off in a moment.
I shall just take a turn in the air for a little, and I'll be quite
better."
The ladies were engaged in the contemplation of the wreck at the other
end of the room, and Mr. Lilylipz, accompanied by his friend, stepped
out at one of the drawing-room windows, which opened out upon the lawn.
Frank Preston looked after them, and saw them in the moonlight, passing
down the banks of the river among the trees, apparently engaged in
earnest conversation.
"What do you think of this business, eh?" said Stukeley, rousing him
from a reverie, by a tap upon the shoulder. "Queerish a little, isn't
it?"
"Queerish _not_ a little, I think; and blow me if I don't get to the
bottom of it, or the devil's in it. That girl knows something of Mr.
Eugene, I'll be sworn. We must get out of her what it is."
"Oh, no doubt she does. It wasn't the song that threw her off, although
it was certainly vile enough for anything; it was himself; that is as
clear as day. Let us off, hunt out the wench, and get the secret from
her."
They left the room by the open window, and passing round the house to
the servants' entrance, walked into the kitchen, where they found Sally
labouring under strong excitement, as she narrated the incident which
had led to her precipitate retreat from the drawing-room.
"To think of seeing him here; the base deceitful wretch! Cocked up in
the drawing-room, forsooth, as if that were a place for him or the likes
of him. Set him up indeed--a pretty story. But I know'd as how he'd
never come to no good!"
"Who is he, my dear?" inquired Stukeley.
"Who is he, sir!--who should he be but Tom Newlands, the son of Dame
Newlands of our village."
"Oh, you must certainly be mistaken."
"Never a bit mistaken am I, sir. I have too good reason for remembering
him, the wretch! Oh, if I had him here, I wouldn't give it him, I
wouldn't? I'd sarve him out, the deludin' scoundrel. But he never was
good for nothing since he went into the haberdashery line."
"A haberdasher, is he? Capital!--capital! The man of fashion, eh,
Frank?"
"The young man of _distingue_ appearance!"
"And who's his friend, Sally?"
"What! the other chap? Oh, I don't know anything about him, except that
he's one of them man millinery fellows; and a precious bad lot they are,
I know."
"Glorious!--glorious!" cried Stukeley, crying with delight, as he walked
out of the place with his friend. "Here's a discovery for some folks,
isn't it? The brilliant alliance, the high family, et cetera, et cetera,
all dwindled into a measurer of tapes. Aren't you proud of having had
such a rival?"
"Oh, come, don't be too hard upon me on that point. Mum, here we are at
the drawing-room again. Not a word of what we have heard. If these
scamps have made themselves scarce, as I think they have, good and well.
But, if they venture to shew face here again, I shall certainly feel it
to be my duty to pull their noses, and eject them from the premises by a
summary process."
"Oh, never fear, they will not put you to the trouble. They are off for
good and all, or I am no prophet."
Stukeley was right. The evening passed on, and the friends returned not.
Infinite were the surmises which their absence occasioned, but the
general conclusion was, that the interesting Mr. Lilylipz had found
himself worse, and had retired to his inn for the night, along with his
faithful Achates. Morning came, but the friends did not make their
appearance at the pump-room as usual. They were not at their inn; they
were not in Potterwell. Whither they had wended, no one knew; but, like
the characters in the ballad, which had been so oddly broken off, they
were "away, away, away." They had come like shadows, and like shadows
they had departed.
Some months afterwards, Mrs. Cheesham and her daughter Emily entered one
of the extensive drapery warehouses of Edinburgh, to invest a portion of
their capital in the purchase of a _mousseline de laine_. They had seen
an advertisement which intimated that no lady ought, in justice to
herself, to buy a dress of this description without first inspecting
that company's stock of the article. They were determined to do
themselves justice, and they went accordingly.
"Eugene," said the superintendent of the place, "shew these ladies that
parcel of goods. A very superior article, indeed." Eugene! Eugene! the
ladies had good reason to remember the name; and what was their
surprise, on looking round, to see the exquisite of Potterwell bending
under a load of dress pieces? If their surprise was great, infinitely
greater was his dismay. His knees shook; his eyes grew dim; his head
giddy. His hands lost their power, and, dropping the bundle, the unhappy
Eugene stumbled over it in a manner painfully ignoble. Mrs. and Miss
Cheesham turned to quit the shop, when there, behind them, stood the
dashing Adolph. "The devil!" he exclaimed, and, ducking dexterously
under the counter, disappeared among sundry bales that were piled beyond
it. The lesson was not lost. Mrs. Cheesham had had quite enough of
quality-hunting to satisfy her; and Miss Emily found out that it was
desirable to be wise as well as witty, and gave her hand to Frank
Preston, who forgave her temporary apostacy, not only because it had
been smartly punished by the result, but for the sake of the many
estimable qualities which Miss Cheesham really possessed. Miss Fanny
still roams, "in maiden meditation, fancy free," but she cannot do so
long, or there is no skill in man. At all events, when she does want a
husband, she will not go in search of him to COUNTRY QUARTERS.
THE MONK OF ST. ANTHONY.
"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil grew well, the devil a monk was he."
In that very ancient and very filthy quarter of the town of Leith,
called the Coal Hill, there flourished, in days of yore, a certain
hostelrie kept by one David Wemyss. This house, which was distinguished
by the figure of a ship, carved in high relief in stone over the lintel
of the door, was one of good repute, and much resorted to by the
seafaring people who frequented the port.
But it was not alone the good cheer and reasonable charges, for both of
which "The Ship" was remarkable, that brought so many customers to David
Wemyss: for this patronage he was as much indebted to his own civil and
obliging manner, as to the considerations just mentioned, although,
doubtless, these had their due weight with all considerate and
reflecting men.
With all David's civility of manner, however, there was thought to be a
spice of the rogue in him; just the smallest thing possible; but it was
a sort of good-humoured roguery. In the small trickery he practised,
there was as much to laugh at as to deprecate; for, being a facetious
sort of personage himself, everything he did--good, bad, and
indifferent--had a touch, less or more, of this quality about it; so
that he could hardly be said to have been liked a bit the less for his
left-handed propensities; the more especially that these were never
exhibited in his dealings with his guests or customers, to whom he
always acted the part of an obliging and conscientious landlord. He knew
this to be for his interest, and therefore did he abide by it.
At the period at which our story opens, namely, the year 1559, the
Reformation, if it had not yet driven papacy entirely out of the land,
had, at least, compelled it to retire into holes and corners, and to
avoid, as much as possible, the public eye. One of the last retreats of
the denounced religion in its adversity, was the preceptory of St.
Anthony, in Leith. For the protection, or rather endurance, which it
found here, it was indebted to the circumstance of the town's being, in
an especial manner, under the patronage of Mary of Guise or Lorraine,
the mother of the unfortunate Scottish queen of that name.
Conceiving Leith to be, as it was, a convenient point from which to
correspond with France, and well situated for the reception of such
supplies as might be sent her from that country, to enable her to make
head against her discontented nobles, Mary made the town, as it were,
her own; and to identify herself still more closely with it, made it
also, for some time, her place of residence.
To this circumstance, then, was it owing, that after they had almost
wholly disappeared everywhere else, a few monks might still be seen
moving stealthily and crest-fallen through the streets of Leith. These
belonged to the preceptory of St. Anthony, which stood at the upper or
western end of the long, tortuous street, called the Kirkgate.