SCOTCH MARRIAGES
I.
SCOTCH MARRIAGES
BY
SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF
‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1882
[_All rights reserved_]
‘Choose not alone a proper mate
But proper time to marry’
COWPER
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
_LADY PEGGY._
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND 3
II. PEGGY’S WEDDING 22
III. PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME 48
IV. THE LONG DAYS THAT FOLLOWED 71
V. THE REIGN OF MISRULE 92
VI. ‘LADY PEGGY’ 111
VII. ‘HUNTINGTOWER’ 133
VIII. PEGGY’S FRIENDS 158
IX. THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON 182
X. ‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN GIN JAMIE WERE COME BACK 209
_JEAN KINLOCH_
I. JEAN SCORNED 223
II. BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS 247
III. JEAN’S REPRISALS 275
LADY PEGGY
CHAPTER I.
BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND.
During the last century there was little real difference between
young Drumsheugh and young Balcairnie, the young laird and the young
yeoman,[1] who was also the laird’s chief tenant and chosen friend.
Jamie Ramsay, of Drumsheugh, and Jock Home, of Balcairnie, both
rejoicing in a territorial appellation, had sat together on the same
bench in the same parish school. For that matter Jock, though not
particularly scholarly, as the cleverer of the two, had generally sat
above his companion. The boys had played together in the same games
of ball and hockey. In company they had scoured the fields together
after birds’ nests, nuts, and haws. They had in their green youth worn
and torn the same corduroys little different in quality, and satisfied
their hearty appetites on the same wholesome porridge and kail, oatmeal
cakes, and ‘bannocks o’ barley,’ for the laird’s table was not much
more daintily supplied than the farmer’s.
Even the lads’ homes were on the outside not so different as might
have been expected. Drumsheugh had an avenue of crazy fir trees, and
the dignity of a ruined tower about a bow-shot from the high, narrow,
free-stone house which represented the modern mansion. Balcairnie was
just such another house, a storey lower, without the avenue and the
tower. It was not destitute of compensation for these deficiencies in
the comfortable-looking stack-yard, which sheltered it from every
wind that blew, and in the square of the farmyard which abutted on
the house, and was alive and cheerful with domestic animals, and the
constant work going on among them. Balcairnie was the livelier dwelling
of the two. Both houses had long gardens very similar, prolific in
hardy vegetables and primitive fruit, as well as in old-fashioned
flowers. The gardens found room for umbrageous bowers and Dutch
summer-houses, and included beech and holly hedges, which enclosed
washing-greens.
Inside, the best parlour of Balcairnie might have stood for the
dining-room of Drumsheugh--furnished as they both were with Scotch
carpets and oak, and adorned alike with silver cups, won in coursing
matches, and great Chinese punch-bowls brought home by friendly sea
captains. The chief difference lay in the fact that the dining-room
at Drumsheugh was in constant use, while the _pièce de résistance_
among the apartments in Balcairnie was the ordinary parlour, given
over to drugget and blue-and-white checked linen, with ornaments of no
more costly material than cherry-wood pipes, pink-lipped shells, and
peacocks’ feathers. Again, there was no drawing-room at Balcairnie,
with spindle-legged chairs in painted satin-wood and white chintz
covers, such as was the company room at Drumsheugh. But the boys’ bare
little garret dormitories were much alike.
On the rare occasions, when the lads went from home, unattended by
their parents, they journeyed by one conveyance which served the whole
neighbourhood, except on special occasions--Tam Fleemin’s carrier’s
cart.
True, on leaving school young Drumsheugh had gone to the Edinburgh
University, as became his birth and rank, while young Balcairnie had
entered on the apprenticeship implied in holding a plough and drawing a
straight furrow under the critical eyes of his father and his father’s
foreman, according to the standard for young men in his class; but on
the return of the one lad from the college and the promotion of the
other on the death of his father to the possession of all the pairs of
horses on the farm, instead of the obligation to work one pair, the
occupations and amusements of the old allies tallied once more at many
points.
Young Drumsheugh--young only in years, for his father had died long
before Balcairnie’s father, and the laird had grown up under the rule
of a widowed mother--was a scion of the great house of Dalwolsie, the
representative of a family of respectable though not very wealthy
country gentry that had held up their heads among their equals for the
last three hundred years at least. Young Balcairnie, though his father,
grandfather and great-grandfather had been tenants of Balcairnie as
long as the oldest living man in the neighbourhood could recollect,
knew nothing further of his origin than what was to be deciphered on
a few mossy stones leaning over in Craigture kirk yard. These did not
condescend to mention whether the Homes of Balcairnie came of the great
Berwickshire Homes or not. The rude, half-effaced letters only gave
the brief, if graphic, statement that here lay ‘the cauld corp’ of
‘Dauvit,’ or Alexander, or John Home, as it might be.
But blue blood must have spoken out very unmistakably, if it had drawn
a sharp line between two lads whose rearing, casts of mind, tastes and
pursuits were so much in common. For the laird farmed the home farm,
and the yeoman was one of the first in the hunting field, though he
did not attend the hunt ball. The young men, like the boys, wore as a
rule the same every-day suits--no longer of corduroy, but of home-spun.
Good brown woollen stuff, shorn, spun, and woven in the district,
diversified by yellow buckskins, boots and tops, red waistcoats,
and three-cornered hats. The manly build of the pair rivalled each
that of the other. Both were deep-chested, broad-shouldered, long
and clean-limbed, with arms, not unused to fencing and boxing, quite
capable of keeping the owners’ heads. The corresponding legs came out
strong at coursing matches without the aid of riding horses, while
the feet beat the floor resoundingly in reels and country dances for
well-nigh a round of the clock at every merry-making, great and small,
far and near. The comely ruddy faces under the three-cornered hats
might almost have been those of brothers, except that Drumsheugh was
dark and Balcairnie fair in hair and complexion.
The men met at the kirk, they met at the market, they dined at the
same table in the George Inn of the little town of Craigie on the
market-day, they resorted to the same coffee-room to read the same
newspaper, with its chronicle of war prices, victories of His Majesty’s
forces abroad, and meal mobs at home, while the laird and the farmer
frequently rode home together, so long as their roads were one.
Balcairnie would dine several times at Drumsheugh in the course of the
winter, and if the Lady--Drumsheugh’s mother--was a thought stately,
and kept her visitors somewhat at a distance, all in a perfectly
courteous way, that was not the laird’s fault. He did his best to
make up for it by being ‘Jack-fellow-alike’ with his tenant when
Drumsheugh returned Balcairnie’s visits at the farm-house. Indeed it
was well known to the Lady herself that Drumsheugh, though he could
carry himself well enough in any society, was not guilty of offence
against any and was liked in all ranks, showed at this stage of his
development a perilous preference for humbler company than he had
been born to. He would rather accompany Balcairnie to a ‘maiden’[2]
or penny wedding, and enter with all his soul into the prevailing fun
and frolic, rendering himself the most acceptable guest in the motley
assemblage, than go where Balcairnie could not go with him, to what was
by comparison the high and dry hunt balls and subscription assemblies.
There is this to be said in excuse for Drumsheugh’s low tastes, that
the maidens and weddings--penny and otherwise--not less than the
markets of those days were freely frequented by guests--male guests
especially--many degrees higher than the mass of the company. Besides,
as is sometimes true in a thinly peopled district, it happened that
about the time Drumsheugh came of age, the county circle round him was
remarkably deficient in young people of his own age, above all in young
people endowed with such attractions as were likely to seize and retain
the laird.
Neither could the step be called a great descent, when in mind and
manners so many were nearly on one level. For instance, not only had
Drumsheugh and Balcairnie been fellow-scholars at the same parish
school, but another contemporary scholar was little Peggy Hedderwick,
the daughter of a hedger-and-ditcher, who had brought her doubled-up
scone and whang of cheese tied up in a napkin for her dinner at school,
just as she had carried her father’s dinner daily when the field of
his operations was within a girl’s walk from home. Peggy, though she
was the junior of both the lads by some three to four years, had
darted nimbly ahead, with the precociously quick wit of girls, in all
learning, save sums. She had been ‘out of the Testament’ and ‘into
Proverbs’ before either of the boys, and she had been such an expert in
repeating the shorter catechism, from ‘man’s chief end’ to the Creed,
without halt or blunder, that the master himself could not ‘fichle’
(puzzle) her. She had frequently coached her seniors and betters in
that, to them, most difficult performance. As for the Psalms and
Paraphrases, she could repeat them by heart in her shrill sing-song,
till the master, though he was a licentiate of the Kirk, grew weary
of hearing her. It was even seriously believed in the school that she
had surmounted the Ass’s Bridge of the curriculum and could say right
off, if anybody would stay to listen to her, the whole of the Hundred
and Nineteenth Psalm. She could write a fine round hand, with an
occasional clerkly flourish at the tail of a letter. It was at sums
that Peggy hung her head. The multiplication table, with its barren
chart of commercial details, unbrightened by a green spot on which
fancy and sentiment could feed, had brought her to grief, and taken the
pride of intellect out of the white-headed lassie. The lads who came
through this test triumphantly had tried to help her in turn. But it
was in vain--poor Peggy would never make even a decent arithmetician.
It must only be by counting her fingers that she could ever reckon her
earnings and her spendings.
Peggy Hedderwick, grown up into the bonniest lass for many a mile,
was now the acknowledged belle of every rustic merry-making in the
parish of Craigture. She was a great deal more and better than such a
distinction often implies. She was something else than a blue-eyed,
white-skinned, red-cheeked maiden, with a slim yet well-rounded
figure, a pretty foot and ankle, though they went bare six days out
of the seven--unless in the depth of winter, a trim waist, a slender
throat, a delicate chin, a dainty mouth, as good a nose as if she
had been born a Ramsay--or, as far as that goes, a Stewart, and a
broad enough brow to explain her early attainments in the Psalms and
Paraphrases. She was even something more than an innocent creature in
whom there was little guile, a modest child to soil whose modesty would
be a gross sin and shame in the eyes of every man worthy of the name.
She was an industrious, upright, pious soul, the stay--by means of
Peggy’s busy wheel principally, of her widowed mother. For the hedger
and ditcher, exposed to every inclemency of the weather, had early paid
the debt of nature. Peggy discharged faithfully all obligations known
to her. She was a reverent, unfailing worshipper--one of the favourite
lambs of the flock with the elderly uncouth book-worm of a dominie,
who had progressed from the parish school to the parish kirk, and was
in either place an excellent man, master, and minister.
It was to this fair, sweet, and good young Peggy Hedderwick that
Drumsheugh, wilful and masterful in his simple condescension, paid
unfailing homage. He sought her out--for she never threw herself in
his way--wherever she was to be found. He went with Balcairnie under
a hundred pretexts to wherever the laird fancied there was the most
distant chance of meeting Peggy. To bleaching-greens, quilting-parties,
Handsel-Monday games, even kirk-preachings, her sorely-smitten swain
followed Peggy desperately. He made little disguise of his infatuation,
and put small restraint on his inclinations in scenes, where, as
a welcome visitor from another sphere, he was allowed, it must be
confessed, a considerable amount of license. He would dance with no
other, he would sit by no other, he would convoy Peggy home when the
play was ended.
Soon the state of the case was no secret in the neighbourhood, with
its various circles, among them that presided over by the old Lady
of Drumsheugh. The folly and the danger, with what would come of it
all, were commented on and canvassed everywhere. The sole cover to
his actions, which Drumsheugh chose to assume, was that he went about
in these lower regions under Balcairnie’s wing, as it were. The laird
insisted on taking the yeoman with him in all his excursions and
escapades.
This was some small comfort to Mrs. Ramsay. Balcairnie was, if
anything, the wiser and more prudent of the two, and she felt he was,
in a sense, on his honour to protect his friend from the consequences
of Drumsheugh’s rashness. Perhaps the Lady also counted a little, in
the imminence of the peril--for Drumsheugh was already of age and his
own master, on a theory which was prevalent among the gossips. They
said Balcairnie had been the first captivated by the charms of young
Peggy, though he had at once drawn back from rivalry with his laird,
and that Peggy on her part had smiled on the farmer till a bigger star
appeared in her firmament.
Even Balcairnie’s marriage with Peggy would be a great _mésalliance_,
but it would not be so heinous an infringement of all social laws as
Drumsheugh’s stooping to a cotter lass, either honestly or in sin and
shame. Balcairnie’s mother as well as his father was dead, his sisters
were married, and his brothers out in the world, so that he was a lone
man--if a man can ever be called lone, able to disgrace nobody save
himself, by an unequal marriage.
The old Lady of Drumsheugh was particularly gracious to Balcairnie at
this time. She inquired after his house, if it was in good repair with
the plenishing in order? She hinted at the propriety, no less than
the probability, of his stiff old housekeeper being superseded by an
active young wife. After the next sentence or two, she went the length
of asking meaningly for bonnie Peggy Hedderwick, who was so good to
her mother and so clever with her hands. Had she not won the maiden at
the last harvest? Was not her yarn more in request in Craigie market
than that of any other girl or matron in Craigture? And the Lady had
heard that from Luckie Hedderwick’s couple of hens Peggy had reared
the finest brood of chickens that were to be seen that Candlemas.
Such qualities in a young woman were worth her weight in gold, Mrs.
Ramsay declared impressively, with her keen eyes fixed steadily on the
listener. She had the greatest respect for that girl. The Lady plainly
suggested that a farmer, whatever might be said of a laird, need seek
no richer dower with his wife than Peggy had to bestow. If the laird’s
mother were a consistent woman, no doubt she would call on Peggy and do
the Lady’s best to countenance her son’s tenant’s wife, should Peggy
receive the promotion of becoming the mistress of Balcairnie.
To this stroke of policy Balcairnie merely replied by returning the
lady’s fixed stare, with a full and grave stolid look from blue eyes
which were not unlike Peggy’s.
If Balcairnie had ever entertained a tender inclination towards Peggy,
it made no ill-blood between him and his friend the laird. It was
probably early nipped in the bud by the fact that Peggy’s favours had
been swiftly transferred, ere they were well bestowed, from Balcairnie
to Drumsheugh. Balcairnie was once heard reproaching her, more
waggishly than bitterly, ‘Ay, Peggy, when I gie you a turn in the reel,
fient a kiss you grant me now, gin the laird be by.’ For Peggy, with
all her virtues, was a woman still. She was caught while her fancy
was yet hovering in its flight, by the glamour of superior rank. Both
of her admirers were bonnie and fine lads to her, in the first blush
of their admiration, and while both were above her in station, there
was not much to choose between them. But the lairdship, and perhaps
the greater boldness of Drumsheugh, turned the scales, and after a
few months of ardent courtship Peggy was as far gone as her lover.
She would no more have permitted a comparison between the merits of
Drumsheugh and Balcairnie--though the latter was her very good friend
just as he was the laird’s--than she would have suffered the old
bed-ridden mother who had borne her and toiled for her to be matched
with any other woman in the kingdom, be she Queen Charlotte seated with
her golden sceptre in her hand by the side of King George on the throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Scotland the distinction between a yeoman farmer--one who owns
his farm--and a tenant farmer is not strictly preserved. The term
yeoman is, or was, employed indiscriminately to any farmer.
[2] A harvest-home, so called from the last sheaf of corn cut on
the farm for the season. It was allowed to fall to the share of the
best shearer or reaper, who tied it up with ribands so that it might
take the semblance of a doll. It was then hung conspicuously as
the chief adornment of the principal wall of the barn in which the
‘maiden’--called in the north of Scotland the ‘kirn,’ was held. The
decked-up sheaf was finally carried home by its proud winner, and
suspended on the wall of her cottage, where it was treasured as a token
of her prowess.