"A bonny bride's sune buskit; eh, Nanny Swinton?"
"But ye're no bonny, Miss Nelly; na, na, ye cannot fill the shoon o' yer
leddy mother; ye're snod, and ye may shak yer tails at the Assembly, but
ye're far ahint Lady Carnegie."
"An' I've but to dance my set with young Berwickshire Home, I care not
though I bide at home after all."
But Nelly Carnegie would have little liked that resource, though she now
flung the powder out of her nut-brown hair, and tapped her little mirror
with her fan.
In a low dark closet, up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined,
dark-browed house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, one of the belles of
17--made her toilette. Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen,
was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded,
stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone
in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of
Lochaber. Nelly Carnegie was no beauty; not fair as a red-and-white
rose, like Lady Eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty,
like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady
Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or
fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily,
treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly
Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her
embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin,
eyes, and hair--the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown--with nothing to
distinguish her figure but its diminutiveness and the nimbleness of the
shapely hands and feet; while her mother's lace lappets were higher by
half a foot than the crown of many a manikin on whom she looked down,
and her back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion,
was straight as an arrow, as well as long. But Nelly, in her absurd,
magnificent brocade, and her hoop, that made her small figure like a
little russet cask, and with busk and breast-knot and top-knot, was
admired, as odd people will choose what is irregular, strange, and racy,
in preference to what is harmonious, orderly, and insipid.
Nelly had a cavalier to walk by her sedan, as her mother and she
traversed the rough streets. He handed her out at the old Assembly door,
but she flung away his hand, and followed her mother alone within the
dignified precincts, leaving a gloom and a storm on a lowering brow,
unshaded by the cocked hat, then carried under the wearer's arm.
The old Assembly Rooms where potent Jacky Murray presided, where urbane
Duncan Forbes won all hearts, where a gentle laird wooed in sweet
numbers--and in vain--the Annie Laurie of that well-known old song, are
now almost forgotten. Other things have passed away in company with the
wigs and ruffles, the patches and snuff. The grace may remain, and the
refinement be thorough where then it was superficial, but the
courtliness of conscious superiority, the picturesque contrarieties and
broken natural land that lay below the heaths and craters, exist but as
the black gloom and red glare of the past.
There the grave responsible Lord of Session, sober in mien as Scotchmen
are wont to be, sat at midnight and roared over his claret in the mad
orgies of the Hell-fire Club; here the pawky, penetrating lawyer, shrewd
both from calling and character, played the reckless game of a
correspondence with the stage Court of St. Germains; yonder mettle
beauty sailed along on her high-heeled shoes to finish the night's
triumph at an oyster supper in a den behind the Luckenbooths. And there
again walked an imperial dowager, who still span her own linen and
struck her serving-man with her ivory cane. Truly the old Edinburgh
Assembly Rooms had their secrets, and contained exciting enough elements
under their formal French polish.
The regular balls at the Assembly Rooms were eras in Nelly Carnegie's
life, and yet she met always the same company. She knew every face and
name, and what was worse, danced nightly with the same partner. The
select society was constituted at the commencement of the season, and
when once the individual fan was drawn from the cocked-hat of fate,
there was no respite, no room for change. Young Home of Staneholme had
knowledge of the filigree circle through which Nelly was wont to insert
her restless fingers, and Lady Carnegie furthered his advances; so that
although Nelly hated him as she did the gloomy Nor' Loch, she received
his escort to and from the Assembly Rooms, and walked with him her
single minuet, as inevitably as she lilted Allan Ramsay's songs, or
scalded her mouth with her morning's porridge.
Nelly's suitor was not ill to look upon, so far as flesh and blood went.
He was a well-made, robust fellow, whose laced coat and deep vest showed
the comely, vigorous proportions of youth. The face was manly, too, in
spite of its beardless one-and-twenty, but the broad eyebrows sank,
either in study or sullenness, and the jaw was hard and fixed.
Yet to see how Nelly strained her bonds, how she gecked and flouted and
looked above him, and curtsied past him, and dropped his hand as if it
were live coals, while the heavy brow grew darker, until it showed like
a thunderstorm over the burning red of the passion-flushed cheek.
"Tak tent, Nelly," whispered a sedate companion, sensible, cautious, and
canny, whose flaxen hair over its roll had the dead greyness of age,
though the face below was round and dimpled; "young Staneholme drew his
sword last night on the President's son because he speered if he had
skill to tame a goshawk."
"Tak tent, yerself, Janet Erskine," Nelly responded wrathfully; "think
twice ere you wed auld Auchtershiel."
Janet shrank, and her bright blue eye blinked uneasily, but no
additional colour came into her cheek, nor did her voice shake, though
it fell. "It must be, Nelly; I daurna deny my father, and mony mair
drink forby Auchtershiel; and if he cursed his last wife out and in, and
drove her son across the sea, they were thrawn and cankered, and he was
their richtfu' head. I'll speak him fair, and his green haughs are a
braw jointure. But, Nelly, do ye believe that the auld Laird--the auld
ane before Auchtershiel himself, he that shot the Covenanter as he hung
by the saugh over the Spinkie-water, and blasphemed when he
prayed--walks at night on the burn bank?"
"I dinna ken; if I did not fear a livin' sorrow, I would daur a dead
ane," Nelly protested, with a shade of scorn in her levity; "and ye can
bide in the house on the soft summer nights. The Lady of Auchtershiel
need not daunder by the burn side; she can be countin' her house purse
in the still room; but if I were her, I would rather beg my bread."
"Whisht, for shame, Nelly Carnegie," was returned with a shrillness in
the measured tones; "you would not; and ye'll learn yer own task, and
say Yes to sour, dour Staneholme."
"I never will; I'll let myself be starved to death, I'll throttle myself
with my own hands first," cried Nelly Carnegie, fire flashing in her
large eyes and on her dark cheeks; and looking up in her defiance she
met the glow for glow of Staneholme's star. Time-serving Janet Erskine
moved off in unconcealed trepidation, and Nelly stood her ground alone,
stamping her foot upon the boards, and struggling in vain against the
cruel influence which she could not control, and to which she would not
bend.
"He need not gloom and look at me; hearkeners never hear good of
themselves," Nelly thought, with passionate vehemence; but her sparkling
eyes fell slowly, and her proud panting heart quailed with a long throb.