PEGGY’S WEDDING.
There came a crisis to all those thoughtless daring doings, and it did
not proceed from the old Lady of Drumsheugh, much as she loved to lead
in life. She had ruled with a high hand her old husband, who, if all
tales were true, was not an easy person to guide; but his young son,
with his easy temper and pleasant speech to the world at large, though
he was a good son at home when he was let alone, threatened to prove
too much for her.
There was another mother in the case, as has been signified,--poor
old Luckie Hedderwick--who had never been considered more than a
sickly ‘feckless’ body in her best days, and who was now bed-ridden
and dependent on her daughter’s industry for her daily bread. Whether
Luckie had been from the first an accomplished and hardened deceiver
so that she could at last bring forward a strategy worthy of the rival
mother--the Lady of Drumsheugh; whether the approach of death began to
unseal her dim and dull eyes, and to teach the foolish, ignorant old
woman wisdom beyond all earthly sagacity; whether the former dominie
who visited his aged and sick parishioner at the cottage in Peggy’s
unavoidable absence, was secretly at the bottom of the manœuvre, Luckie
Hedderwick suddenly set an interdict on all future friendship and
love-making between Peggy and the laird. The old woman had been till
then as silly and inconsiderate as any lass in her teens in taking the
greatest pride and pleasure in Peggy’s triumphs and conquests, and in
encouraging the girl in what other people held to be Peggy’s sins of
vanity and unwarrantable ambition; but she now forbade her child, under
pain of her mother’s lamentations and reproaches--which were worse than
her wrath--so much as to have a meeting with the gentleman, if she
could possibly foresee and prevent it.
Peggy was broken-hearted and in despair, but she never dreamt of
defying, and still less of cheating, her mother.
The laird, arrested in the full force of his passion, was goaded
to the brink of madness and driven half beside himself. No more
well-understood foregatherings with Peggy; no more interceptings of
the girl on her way to the well, or the shop, or a neighbour’s house;
no more strolls among the whins and broom[3] in the twilight, careless
who saw; no more walking of his horse--or leaping from the saddle
and walking himself--beside her when he came up with her, which he
was pretty sure to do, on the return of both from Craigie market; no
more climbing of the breezy, heathery hill and descending on the other
side where the green trees shaded the road, throwing a white shower of
blossom there in the spring, being full of birds singing as they rifled
the fruit in summer, and in autumn dropping blood-shot leaves among
the mud and mire. The laird would gallantly insist on placing Peggy’s
basket before him on the saddle, or would carry it for her. Balcairnie
either trotting on with a passing nod, or falling discreetly into the
background, determined to show that he was not curious over much, or
bent on spoiling sport.
The spectacle had hardly been an improving one. The young laird had
been demeaning himself in some lights, trifling with a poor country
girl, and exposing her, as he ought not to have done, to serious
misconstruction and harm. Peggy, like a senseless girl, had been laying
herself open to scandal and slander and a hundred graver dangers.
Still the pair had been a pretty pair, however ill-matched--there is
no denying it. The laird in his riding-coat and boots and tops, gaily
flourishing his silver-mounted whip; Peggy in her blue-and-red striped
linsey-woolsey petticoat, white apron, blue-and-buff striped jacket,
and her duffle mantle if it chanced to be wintry weather; her fair
hair either bare and tied up with a riband--the relic of the old snood
or cockernonie, or else covered by a Bessie-kell-a quilted cotton or
woollen hood--under the curtains of which the bonnie face beamed with
the mingled shyness and gladness of a child’s face.
In a similar manner the larger groups, in which many minor figures had
been represented with varying effect, were effaced from the canvas.
These had shown Peggy on the harvest field where the laird, like
Boaz of old, shared the labour and the mid-day meal of his servants.
Detaching Peggy from the rest, he would act as ‘bandster’ to her
shearing, or he would sit at her feet, and decree that as an equivalent
to dipping her morsel in the vinegar, she should have her choice of the
scones in the basket and the first draught of ale from the pitcher. In
those days Peggy was the queen of the autumn fields--a gentle queen
who bore the honours thrust upon her meekly. Still she did not fail to
arouse animadversion, and the entire _tableau_ tended rather to the
entertainment than the edification of the spectators.
The sensations of the company were not of a much more generous or
amiable description when Peggy was persuaded to fling her handkerchief
to Drumsheugh in the coquettish old dance of ‘The Country Bumpkin;’ or
when, at the entreaty of her lover, she sang with her flute-like pipe
to a decorously hushed assembly, or sat as mute as a mouse while he
sang in his trumpet tones. Her song might be ‘Ye Banks and Braes,’ or
‘Aye wauken O! wauken aye and weary’--both of which ditties held tender
warnings to heedless girls, if they would but have taken the hints--or
it might be some blyther measure. But his song never varied. It was
always the bold, barefaced declaration--
Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her breath is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass
With early gems adorning.
with a peculiar emphasis on the verse--
Ye powers of honour, love, and truth,
From every ill defend her;
Inspire the highly-favoured youth
The destinies intend her.
The laird could not stand the abrupt, harsh interference which in the
twinkling of an eye dissolved these enchanting scenes. It would cost
him his wits. He would rather carry off Peggy, with or without her
will, where nobody should ever come between them. What did she mean by
giving him up at any third person’s word, be that person her mother
twice over? Had the two-faced lass no heart in her breast? He would be
upsides with her yet, for the pain and mortification she was causing
him. He confided all this to Balcairnie, who gave no further answer
than a shake of his head and a resolute ‘I’ll no be your man in sic an
ill job, Drumsheugh,’ so the laird went on fuming and storming if he
did not speak of ‘louping ower a linn.’
The comical side of the question was that he was his own master all the
time to do what he liked in the circumstances. He had been left the
Laird of Drumsheugh without limitation. He could marry Peggy Hedderwick
to-morrow, in spite of his mother, and it was not likely that Peggy or
her mother for her, would decline a plain offer of marriage from so
high a quarter, or that either would draw so fine a distinction as to
refuse the proposed honour, unless it were accompanied by the free and
full consent of the Lady to her son’s throwing himself away.
But, somehow, the laird stopped short of such rank insubordination
and thoroughgoing independence. There was a strain of weakness in his
wilfulness, or else the times were against him. People had not yet
shaken off the old feudal prejudices. Drumsheugh, in his simplicity
and homeliness, was still, both in his own estimation and in that of
other people, the Laird, the scion of the great house of Dalwolsie,
and Peggy was the cotter lass, come of hynds and nobodies. Balcairnie,
who was not so far before her in the last respect, might have married
her without reservation, though she was by no means his social equal;
but the most disinterested unworldly version of the affair which
the most single-hearted judges looked for from Drumsheugh was that
he should be found fond enough of Peggy, and faithful enough to her,
while he was sufficiently regardless of his own interests, to engage in
a secret ancient troth-plight equivalent to a marriage with her, and
right in the eyes of the law, though it was censurable by the Kirk.
It would be a contract which must hamper him all his days, and if he
were ever so far left to himself as to seek to evade it, might drag
him down to crime and misery. Why on such small temptation, out of two
courses--the one clear and above-board, the worst consequences of which
would be faced at once--the other a flattering more than half-cowardly
compromise done in the dark, and only coming to the light and
encountering the natural results after a long interval--a manly fellow
like the laird should inevitably, as if it were a matter of necessity,
have adopted the second and lower course, remains a testimony to the
force of habit and of one-sided reasoning.
The laird had been accustomed to set his mother at nought in what
seemed right in his own eyes. He was not dependent on her in money
matters, and did not give a thought to the risk of forfeiting the
savings of her jointure, since he was at this stage of his development
as free-handed as he was open-hearted. Still, he could not summon
up his courage to brave the high-spirited, determined old woman
altogether. In the same way he could not make up his mind to despise
the clamour and opposition of his circle of gentry, little as he had
hitherto prized the hereditary association with them.
Drumsheugh, when he was compelled to a decision, never dreamed of a
more generous and honourable step than that of running away with Peggy,
and vowing that he was her husband before two available witnesses;
nay, the idea of anything less temporising and more magnanimous did
not even cross Balcairnie’s mind. It was in serene satisfaction with
the concession that he agreed to back the laird as usual in waylaying
Peggy, in spite of her mother’s commands, and in propounding to her the
grand yet sorry expedient for getting rid of all objections in future,
by establishing the couple in the sure, if unacknowledged, relations of
man and wife.
After some spying and picking up of floating information, the two
friends learnt that Peggy, while she now kept religiously indoors
with her mother, for the most part of her time, was in the custom of
recompensing the neighbour who went most of the girl’s errands. This
reward consisted in Peggy’s ‘ca’ing,’ or driving out, the neighbour’s
cow in the cool of the morning and late evening of the June season, to
feed for an hour or two on the grass by the dyke sides and ditches, or
on the short turf of a single knowe, which rose in solitary dignity
among the flat corn-fields. The road to the knowe was for a certain
distance that to Craigie, so often trodden in happier circumstances.
The knowe itself, with its patches of rushes, had been Peggy’s seat
when as a child she had played at plaiting the ‘thrashies’ into a crown
and sceptre. She was an only child like her lover, and had known few
playmates save her school companions. She had been used to lonely hours
and single-handed games. Her most intimate friend in later times had
been her ardent admirer the laird, whom she was now forbidden to see
or speak to. He had been with her on this knowe when the dew lay on
the grass and the corn-craik was ‘chirming,’ as it was at the present
moment. He had made a posy for her of what Peggy merely called ‘bonnie
floors,’ but which were in detail the dead white grass of Parnassus
that grew among the rushes, together with the crimson and pink fumitory
and the yellow avens which he had gathered idly as they came along,
leaving hedge-row and dyke-side behind them. He had shown the greatest
kindness and patience in helping her to draw out the pith of the rushes
and plait it--no longer into a mock crown and sceptre, but into a real
wick for her mother’s cruizie.
All these soft recollections proved too much for poor Peggy, as she
ca’d Hawkie; the girl put up her apron to her eyes to dry the blinding
tears which rendered her more incapable of detecting prowlers in her
vicinity.
Then with the practical agility of the riever of old, the laird ‘cam’
skipping ower the hill’ from the little hollow on the other side, to
which he and Balcairnie had ridden, and where the latter stayed with
the horses.
In a moment Jamie Ramsay was by the sorrowful girl’s side, detaining
her when she sought to retreat.
Peggy wore her summer house dress, the pretty light cotton jacket
which has been immortalised by Wilkie and Sir William Allen. It had a
little collar or ‘neck,’ turned over where the sunburn of the throat
met the whiteness of the bosom, and was only confined at the waist by
the string of her apron. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, the
sleeves of her jacket being rolled up for convenience’ sake. The arms
were mottled and dimpled like those of a child. Her brown little feet
too were bare. Her uncovered hair was arranged in the most primitive
style--after all it is the fashion of the great Greek statues. The
locks ‘which the wind used to blaw’ were ‘shed’ behind the ears, wound
round the head, rippling in natural ripples as they were wound, until
they were fastened in a knot at the back of the shapely head. Yet no
stately ball-room belle in flowing gauze or rustling brocade, with
high-heeled shoes and a higher powdered _tête_, had ever appeared half
so sweet as Peggy to the enamoured young laird. He was not caught in
undress. He came a-courting her--as he was bound to do, though she had
been a beggar maid, and not merely an industrious cotter lass, who
supported herself and her mother by the fruits of her honest industry.
He wore his best snuff-brown coat, his last flowered waistcoat, his
dress buckles in his shoes, with his dark hair combed carefully and
neatly back and tied in a _queue_, the riband of which, in skilfully
disposed bows and ends, hung half-way down his shoulders.
‘I mauna bide. Let me gang, laird. Oh! why are you here, when I canna
lichtlie my mither’s word?’ cried the faithful and despairing Peggy,
with streaming eyes and heaving bosom, torn as she was by conflicting
obligations.
‘Na, but hear me, Peggy,’ insisted Drumsheugh, strong to carry the day
in his confidence in the honesty of his intentions, and the truth of
what he was going to say. ‘Take a message from me to your mother, and
she will not stand in our gate, or make another thrawn rule to keep
us apart. Tell her I am willing to join hands with you and exchange
written lines. Lass, I’ll take the half-merk with you the morn if you
like; neither king nor minister has power to come between us after
that. You’ll be to all intents and purposes my wife and the young Leddy
of Drumsheugh from that moment.’
Peggy was not only staggered, she was deeply touched and proudly
joyful. She had it in her power to become the ‘Leddy of Drumsheugh.’
The laird had vindicated his sincerity and honour. There was no more
question of tampering with her affections and betraying her trust. He
had come out of the test nobly, as not one man in a thousand would have
come.
Peggy had not the least doubt that her mother would feel more than
satisfied--she would be greatly uplifted by her daughter’s wonderful
good fortune. Instead of thwarting Drumsheugh again in his wildest
fancy, Mrs. Hedderwick would now defer to his least whim, and consent
to pay him the humblest, most grateful homage. Peggy was ready to go
with the laird to her mother and see if it were not so--to settle for
life her grand and happy destiny.
The laird, carried out of himself by the excitement of the moment,
delighted with the effect of his words, thinking himself nearly as true
and kind as Peggy thought him--more in love with her than ever--was
prepared to start that instant to fulfil his pledge and knock the nail
on the head.
To Luckie Hedderwick, accordingly, the infatuated couple went
straightway, without an attempt at concealment, widely removed as they
were, in the exaltation of their feelings, from any consideration of
prudence. They only waited till Drumsheugh hallooed for Balcairnie to
come up and wish Peggy and the laird joy, and then to bring on the
horses to the Cotton.
Poor old Luckie, lying powerless in her box-bed, could hardly believe
her fast-failing eyes and ears, when Peggy came in (followed by
Drumsheugh in full feather), and when he sat down on the kist in the
window, which was the only disengaged seat, her own arm-chair being
occupied by the unmannerly cat, and Peggy’s stool at the wheel taken up
by the tray of reeled pirns of yarn.
There was no vow of vengeance on the laird’s smooth brow, or of
reprisal on his smiling lips. On the contrary, there was the most
abundant security and provision for Peggy Hedderwick in his presence
there in her mother’s cottage, and his frankly undertaking to marry
the lass at once, before competent witnesses. It was not from such a
good end as this that her conscience and her minister alike had begun
to frighten the widow. Her dear little Peggy would be a lady after
all, and some day she would take her stand among the best and be freely
acknowledged by the whole of the county side. She could not expect that
just at first, but anyway she would be kept an honest and innocent
woman. Her children, if she ever had children, would be born in lawful
wedlock. She need neither fear God nor man, and poverty would no longer
hover at her door, only held at bay by her courageous, diligent young
arm.
Of course, it was not for Mrs. Hedderwick to say the laird nay. It was
for her to thank him from a lowly, thankful heart for not merely doing
justly by her daughter, but for being minded to endow her with his
favour and with her share of his portion of the world’s goods, which
many people would reckon far beyond her deserts.
A glimpse of Balcairnie and the horses as they walked up and down the
road, which the old woman saw through the bole of a window at the
head of her bed, completed the dazzling of any sense Mrs. Hedderwick
possessed. She described the scene afterwards as too splendid for this
world--like a verse of the Bible, or a line of an ‘auld ballant.’
It was as when ‘Abraham’s servant baud the lassie munt and ride wi’
him to be the wife of his maister’s son. To be sure the horses were
camels then, whatever the odds. It was as when the auld knicht crossed
the sea to bring the king o’ Norrowa’s dochter ower the faem to be
his queen, and then the nags were boats--whilk it was a mercy they
were not here, lest the cobbles had coupet wi’ her Peggy among the
prood waves, as gude Sir Patrick Spens’s ship sank down, in forty
fathoms deep. Whatever, it was a maist fine ferlie for Drumsheugh to
come wooing and speering for her dochter at a puir body like her,
and for Balcairnie--with whose mither, worthy woman, she hersel had
been a servant lass for three year afore she and Simon Hedderwick
yoked thegither--to sit or stand at her door wi’ the beasts in braid
daylicht, in the sicht of the whole Cotton, as gin she were the leddy
and Balcairnie the serving-man.’
The entire arrangements were agreed on that evening, the laird chalking
them out very much according to his vagrant fancy, Peggy and her
mother assenting with meek, swelling hearts, simply entering a humble
protest and venturing on a mild amendment when he suggested a clean
impossibility. It would be far pleasanter as well as safer, since the
marriage was not to be made public immediately, for the affair to take
place from home. Peggy had a cousin--a decent man--a cow-keeper near
Edinburgh. She could go on a visit to his wife. Such a visit would be
made worth the couple’s while; in fact, they were likely to be filled
with importance at the part they were called on to play. Drumsheugh
and Balcairnie could easily take a ride to town treading on Peggy’s
heels early one fine morning, or late one propitious evening; Peggy,
with her cousins to bear her company, and the laird, with Balcairnie
as his supporter, would join in a stroll to look at the shop windows
or admire the big houses, until they reached the particular house the
laird spoke of as the Temple of Hymen, to the mystified ears hanging
on his words. There Peggy and he would take the half-merk together in
the most popular mode. They would acknowledge themselves man and wife,
and sign the lines before some queer sort of mass-John and a notary, as
well as before Peggy’s cousins and Balcairnie; and the knot would be
so securely tied that only death could sever it. Peggy would come back
to her mother and the Cotton, and he would return to his mother and
Drumsheugh. Nobody need be any wiser till the couple chose to proclaim
what had been accomplished, when he should be at liberty to put his
wife into his mother’s seat. But he felt sure his Peggy would not
refuse to bide a wee for her honours, and would not weary while she had
his love and care. And Mrs. Hedderwick would not seek to come between
the pair when they were man and wife.
Peggy would not weary, would not refuse to wait a hundred years--always
supposing she lived a century and retained Drumsheugh’s unshaken love
and faith while the years lasted. Was she to dictate terms and exact
favours which were far beyond her original estate? She would be well
off if Drumsheugh owned her for his wife, though it were but with his
dying breath. As for Luckie Hedderwick, she would no more interfere
with the laird’s rights when he had established them, than she would
challenge the prerogative of the King.
It all came to pass as Drumsheugh had ordained it. In an irregular
and yet in a deliberate, formal manner, quite legal according to the
liberal law of Scotland, and with ancient custom to justify the act,
by no mock marriage, but by a binding rite, as both knew, Jamie Ramsay
wedded Peggy Hedderwick. No exposure followed the event, though it
did not go unattended by vague suspicions and fitful rumours. Such
marriages were not so unheard of as to prevent the signs of their
recurrence from being quickly noted and eagerly caught up.
But as the Lady of Drumsheugh did not see fit to cause an
investigation, to cross-question her son, or to go out of her way to
assail and harass Peggy; as Peggy’s mother in her box-bed did not stir
in the matter by proxy; as it was the old daffing intercourse between
the laird and the lass, which was openly resumed, and went on much as
formerly to hoodwink the public, what was everybody’s business proved
nobody’s business. Nothing was said or done to clear up the mystery as
to the precise terms on which the Laird of Drumsheugh stood with the
lass of low degree.
FOOTNOTES:
[3]
He’s low down, he’s in the broom,
That’s waiting for me.