SAINT MUNGO’S CITY
A Novel
By SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF ‘THE BRIDE’S PASS,’ ‘WHAT SHE CAME THROUGH,’
‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,’ ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1884
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
XIII. THE COMMON ENEMY 1
XIV. ATHOLE MURRAY COMES TO THE RESCUE 28
XV. YOUNG TAM’S PARTNERSHIP--GAY DOINGS 42
XVI. THE DINNER-PARTY 65
XVII. THE COMMON TEMPTATION, WITH ITS
USUAL ACCOMPANIMENT 97
XVIII. DR. PETER AND ATHOLE MURRAY MAKE
THEIR STAND 117
XIX. SIR HUGO WILLOUGHBY ENTERS THE
LISTS, AND IS CAPTIVATED BY THE
MERCHANT PRINCES 139
XX. ‘A YOUNG THING JUST COME FRAE HER
MAMMY’ 160
XXI. SIR HUGO DRAWN BY ‘LE GRAND
SIMPLE’ 200
XXII. RORY OF THE SHELTIES COME ALIVE AGAIN 219
XXIII. THE CONTENTS OF THE KNAPSACK 235
XXIV. THE DEATH OF FENTON OF STRATHDIVIE 255
XXV. STRATHDIVIE 282
XXVI. THE READING OF THE WILL--JEAN MACKINNON’S
TOCHER 300
SAINT MUNGO’S CITY.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COMMON ENEMY.
That winter there was one of the most terrible outbreaks of typhoid
fever, which had stricken Rory of the Shelties, ever known in St.
Mungo’s City. The sickness extended to the suburbs, and sent long arms
into the country, reaching to the Aytoun Water, which was so valuable an
auxiliary of Drysdale Haugh, creeping up and down its banks in foul
malaria, which prostrated alike strong men and weak women, robbed
families of their breadwinners, or slew the strapping lads and blooming
lasses who were the hope and pride of elderly fathers and mothers.
There was no doubt the first signs of the plague had made their
appearance after the excesses and exposure of the Fair week. There had
been no spell of short hours and starvation wages to induce such a low
state of body and mind as to form a fit foundation for the mischief. But
whatever its origin, it soon extended far beyond the defaulters whose
deeds had wrought their doom. The fever, after a certain course,
appeared to strike impartially the sober, industrious workman, and the
idle, dissipated hanger-on for a day’s ‘turn’ to relieve his most
pressing wants. The evil rose in the scale of society, and fell upon the
well-to-do, scattering sickness and distress among the rich, while
naturally its vantage-ground was the quarters of the poor. It clove to
them as to its fitting haunts, and, like a cowardly assailant, did
deadliest injury where there was least power of resistance.
It was a busy time for Dr. Peter and Athole Murray, who acted from the
first as her father’s indefatigable assistant, feeling no fear to go on
the call of duty where he went with his life in his hand, day and night.
Auld Tam took the greatest interest in the nature of the outbreak, and
showed not the slightest shrinking from a contact with which, indeed, he
had been familiar in his early days. It was a mortification to him to
discover that his best cottages were not spared; but he fell back on the
comfort that there the remedies were applied with the least difficulty
and the greatest average of success.
But the tug of war came when the epidemic raged so fiercely in the worst
Glasgow slums that it roused an apathetic public. Tam Drysdale was not
the man to stand and gape and groan or merely moralize or sermonize over
the calamity, far less was he the heartless egotist who would employ
his resources to flee from the foe, leaving a helpless multitude in its
clutches. He was ready to fight it hand to hand, as he had fought all
the early obstacles in his career. He was not only foremost in
appointing and attending meetings of men in high enough places to cope
with sanitary mischief; but when a house-to-house visitation was
started, he, who might have pleaded that his interests were at Drysdale
Haugh, was one of the first to put down his name as a visitor in the
darkest places of the city. His strong firm step was the readiest to
enter the infected dwellings, where there was not a breath of air that
was not heavy with poison. He was known to pull off his coat, on an
emergency, and carry a patient--a man mad with delirium, whom it would
have required two ordinary men to master--on his back from one room to
another; and where he found none save exhausted, half-distracted women
to watch the sick, he sometimes sent the watchers to bed, and took
their vigil till some other good Samaritan relieved him in turn.
Every morning the two Eppies--not to be deceived, knowing too well the
expeditions on which auld Tam was bent--clung to him at parting with
prayers and tears. He put the woman and the girl gently from him, and
went his way; and on his return, for the first time in his life, he
would not permit them to hang about him till he had passed through such
processes of bathing and changing his clothes as should ensure his wife
and daughter’s safety. His obduracy would have half-broken their hearts
if the stayers at home had not been encouraged to be as busy as bees in
Tam’s absence, concocting such stores of jellies and soups, and
manufacturing such loads of sick-room clothes, as not the most
accomplished cook and housekeeper in the world could have achieved
single-handed--even if she had condescended to employ her talents day
after day--not for the dining-room or the linen-presses at Drysdale
Hall, but for afflicted sections of the Gallowgate and the Sautmarket.
The strait was so great that everybody with time and means and a heart
to feel was called into requisition. Neither did Claribel Drysdale
refuse to obey the call, but she worked in the ranks of Lady Semple, to
whom she was an available auxiliary, while the two Eppies were
sufficient for themselves at home.
The first thing that staggered Tam Drysdale was stumbling on his son Tam
engaged in the same work as himself. The father’s hale colour sensibly
paled, and a troubled look came into his eyes.
‘What are you seeking here, Tam?’ he asked almost roughly. ‘This is not
a place for a student fellow like you. You are not used to the ways of
the poor folk; you’ll only add to the trouble if you come to grief; you
can do no possible good. Go home to your books, but take care you do
not come near your mother and sisters in that coat and these breeks.’
Young Tam looked his father more fully in the face than he had done for
some time, with more of an answering challenge in the brown eyes which
were so like his mother’s in tint, and yet had his father’s determined
glance. There was no sullenness in Tam’s face at this moment--rather a
sense of grim amusement and something that might have stood for
fellow-feeling.
‘I’m not such a mere bookworm as you think me, sir. How should I not
know the ways of the working people, among whom I have dwelt all my
life? I’ll not come to grief any more than you will. What are _you_
seeking here, may I ask, father?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, Tam,’ said his father testily; ‘you know it is my
place, as the maister of a public work, to see into the condition of the
people, both here and at Drysdale Haugh, on an occasion like the
present. Forbye, I am familiar with the situation. I mind the last bad
outbreak of the fivver. It was when I was in my ‘prenticeship and
staying with my uncle Geordie. There were five in the hoose laid down
with it. My cousin Nancy deed, poor lass! and there was nobody to look
after Sandy during the night, and keep him from louping over the windy,
but me. I had a regular training to such scenes.’
Young Tam hesitated for a moment.
‘I have not quite understood hitherto what duties a master’s position is
supposed to include,’ he said at last, a little stiffly; ‘but if I am
ever to undertake them, I should say my training had better begin.’
Auld Tam’s whole aspect brightened indescribably.
‘Plenty of time for that,’ he said gruffly, but heartily, ‘and your
experience should come by degrees, Tam, not in a dunt [sudden blow], as
it comes to working lads bred hardily as I was, and called to face the
best and the worst all round from the beginning. It is not easy, but it
is in the day’s work--part of their lives. Besides, they say,’ added Tam
hastily, ‘the fivver is more catching for the young than for the auld.’
‘You’re not old,’ said young Tam hastily, with a quick sharp denial that
sent a glow through his progenitor’s veins. ‘You are hardly middle-aged.
People should call stages of existence by their right names.’
‘Anyway, I’m auld Tam when you are to the fore,’ said his father, much
as he would have spoken to his daughter Eppie, ‘and it is richt the
young should be spared to take the place of the auld.’
‘It is nothing of the kind,’ answered young Tam doggedly. ‘Take your
place! very likely. I wonder which would be most missed. You know very
well, father, you could ill be spared. You ought not to run risks like
these, while it does not matter for a fellow like me.’
‘Lad, you are tempting the Almichty!’ cried Tam almost fiercely; ‘are
you so left to yoursel’ as to think you could well be spared by your
mither--and me?’ he ended with a gulp of the words, and a grip as of
iron of young Tam’s shoulder. ‘But it is all nonsense!’ he said, putting
force upon himself the next moment. ‘We’ve got a trick of disagreeing;
that is what it is.’
‘And I am afraid there is little prospect of our doing anything else, if
the alternative is my keeping out of Glasgow, and your going on as you
have been doing for the last ten days,’ retorted young Tam, defying his
father openly.
And auld Tam gave in with the moisture in his eyes, and his hand still
on his son’s shoulder.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘have it your own way, laddie; you’ve always been
as kittle [ticklish] to deal with as a woman, Tam--far worse than your
sisters. But if we sail in the same boat for once, it will be some sma’
comfort.’
The sailing in the same boat through a crisis of life and death meant
from this moment a certain alteration of tone between father and son--a
certain fraternization--temporary, and only on one point as yet, but
never entirely lost sight of in their subsequent differences, when young
Tam was born to object, and auld Tam hated to be contradicted. For one
thing, they saw a good deal of each other during the next week or
two--more than they had seen since young Tam was a schoolboy. For
another, it was understood between them that there was a probability of
auld Tam’s gaining the desire of his heart, by his son’s becoming, under
whatever variety of opinion, his father’s partner and successor.
Some of the fever cases in Glasgow were of the most virulent kind.
Occasionally they assumed the form of the worst sewer-poisoning, from
which there was hardly a chance of escape. The inspector of nuisances
had neglected his duty. A man and wife--a helpless, handless,
poverty-stricken, though honest and sober couple--had been suffered to
live, with a large family, in a house which was not fit for a pigsty.
First one child sickened, and then another, and died in the briefest
interval of time, so that four little bodies were carried away in one
hearse, and the expense even of a combined funeral threatened to add
starvation to the other pangs of the living. The skin of the last child
attacked took green and livid hues before the breath went out of his
body.
Auld Tam bent his brows sternly, and swore it was social murder. He half
conceived the idea, if he lived and continued to prosper, of doing
something more than found a family, and bring Drysdale Haugh to
perfection--something to atone for the neglect by the better endowed
and better informed of the less qualified and more ignorant--something
in which young Tam might be with him heart and soul, till Glasgow should
speak of the father and son, as, indeed, they were speaking of them at
this moment, though auld Tam paid no heed to it.
The fever, as it raged, was turning up in the more respectable quarters,
in the old squares and streets, where the houses were good and spacious,
but the drains had been little thought of, and the sun seldom shone.
Young Tam Drysdale saw his father at the office one afternoon, and
remarked with consternation that he looked as if he had received a shock
to his whole system--at the same time he was deliberately delaying the
ordinary hour of his return to Drysdale Hall. He pooh-poohed the idea of
anything wrong with him physically, or of rest being desirable, at the
very moment that he was moving about in a perturbed manner, showing
signs of trouble and perplexity in every line of his usually strong,
sagacious face.
‘Shut the door, Tam; I do not want those fellies out there to catch a
sough [murmur] of what I have got to say. Yes, I have come across
something that has grieved me. Grieved is not the word. Gude Lord! it is
enough to shake a man’s faith in the established order of things. What
would your mither think? Her that was wont to stand in fear and
trembling before such gentlefolks. But, there, she said, only the other
day, that it was a mystery we should be so weel aff in the world’s
gudes, and others as gude--maybe a hantle better (she’s a humble lass,
your mither)--brought to want what they had been bred to from their
cradles. Well, well, it comes to this, I had speech with one of the
doctors, and he mentioned there were cases of fever in St. Mungo’s
Square.’
‘So I heard,’ said young Tam.
‘One of them was an auld Miss Mackinnon, and as I’m a living man, Tam,
he added that he did not believe the leddies had enough to eat, though
they put the best face on it to him; and it was a delicate matter to
propose to get parish or any other relief for them. The Lord preserve
us! the auld Mackinnons--Gavin Mackinnon’s aunties, come of the
Virginian Mackinnons--to be in want of food, very likely of clothing! Is
the end of the world come upon us? I mind of them being about Drysdale
Hall when their nephew had it--no very weel-faured [handsome], but
gallant, portly, gabby [talkative] leddies, as they had a gude title to
be, since they were real edicate leddies for generations back--none of
your upstarts that do not know their finger from their thoomb, while
they wear silks and velvets. I mind ane of them cracked [talked] like a
pen-gun--on things she did not ken muckle about, I must confess, but she
had the gift of conversation for a’ that; and another--an aulder woman
than mother is now--played the pianny better than Clary can do, at a
dance and supper that Mackinnon gave the men before trips down the water
were the order of the day; and now to say that the auld leddies have
come to want--Tam, it’s seeckening!’
Young Tam had not his father’s keen susceptibilities where real ladies
and gentlemen were concerned. His mind went off on another tack.
‘They must be relations of Mackinnon who stays so often at Semple Barns.
Why does he not look after his people? I suppose you would call him a
real gentleman?’ suggested Tam, somewhat sardonically.
‘It is a burning shame to him!’ auld Tam swore stoutly, ‘though a young
offisher has not much to spare. Maybe the lad does help them, and they
are ill managers, as these gentry often are. But that is neither here
nor there. Something must be done, I could not sleep in my bed with
such a burden on my mind; and if your mither were to hear of it, she
would not break bread for the next twal’ hours. I want you to come along
and call with me, Tam. We can pass ourselves off as sent on an
inspection among great and small throughout the town. The leddies cannot
be going much about to hear the story contradicted. We can see and judge
for ourselves. And it may be possible to put in a word about the
superiority of country provisions, and whether the Miss Mackinnons would
do me the honour to accept a specimen of meat and dairy produce and
vegetables and fruit from Drysdale Hall. I think it might be managed in
that way, and the favour could be repeated. I have been turning over in
my mind whether I could not get up an auld debt to Gauvin Mackinnon, but
sic a lee would stick in my throat; then the young lad Mackinnon might
interfere, and detection would be awkward.’
‘Upon my word, father, I never knew you were so accomplished a
deceiver,’ said young Tam, grave as he was, unable to keep from
laughter. ‘I never thought to pay visits with you under false
pretences.’
‘Do not gibe, Tam,’ said his father, as solemnly as he would have
rebuked a jest at a death-bed. ‘This is not a subject for gibing. You
heard what the doctor said--it is a most delicate matter to ask leddies
to take anything save a parcel of idle compliments from you. If
stratagems are ever allowable, it must be here.’
Indeed, death was very near, in more shapes than one, to the old
stripped house in St. Mungo’s Square. It was Miss Bethia, the youngest
and the most able-bodied sister who had been smitten, and when she was
‘sooming [swimming] for her life,’ as Miss Janet admitted brokenly, the
chief source of livelihood for the other sisters was withdrawn from
them. The moment the disease had declared itself, Miss Janet had
written to her grand-nephew, forbidding him to come near the house on
account of the infection. He broke through the prohibition, but he never
got beyond the front-door, where Miss Janet consented to parley with
him, solely on condition that he held his handkerchief to his mouth and
did not cross the door-step.
Such aid as the Lieutenant sent consisted of trifling delicacies, while,
alas! there was dismal lack of the commonest necessaries.
While Miss Bethia was at the worst, it seemed that her sisters needed
little more food than sufficed for the sick-room. They lived upon their
anxiety--hope and fear acted as stimulants to them. It was when the
patient had got the turn, and required more nourishment than milk and
beef-tea, that the exhausted state of Miss Janet and Miss Mackinnon
began to show itself plainly. But as people can grow accustomed to
abstinence up to a certain point, and cease to feel the cravings of
appetite, after they have failed by degrees to be appeased in anything
save the most partial and perfunctory manner, so the feeble, shaky, but
still dauntless scarecrow, Miss Janet, preserved an attitude of heroic
stoicism throughout her interview with the two Drysdales.
Miss Janet had two motives to nerve her to endure to the end. She had
never quite forgiven Tam Drysdale for having succeeded her late nephew
at Drysdale Haugh; therefore he was the last man in Glasgow to whom she
would have consented to be beholden in the direst extremity. It made no
difference that the grudge was groundless and utterly unreasonable. That
was one link in the argument; another, and still stronger, turned on the
fact that if she ever consented to waive her displeasure and accept the
overtures of the Drysdales, it must be, as before, on the plea of a
marriage, and she was not going to spoil Eneas’s chances by betraying
the poverty of the land in St. Mungo’s Square. No; there were still
some potatoes and oatmeal in the larder, and Miss Janet felt as
independent as Andrew Marvel with his mutton-bone.
Miss Bethia might have behaved differently, when she lay on her bed,
weakly crying, with the stirrings of new life in her, and the promptings
of a child’s fresh hunger, never satisfied; but she would have been the
first to feel ashamed of her infirmity when strength was restored to
her.
Tam Drysdale was nearer to breaking down in his manliness than he had
been in the whole course of his life, when he sat in the bare wreck of a
room, without a fire, on the chill autumn day, waiting for the
appearance of one of the ladies. He kept muttering, half under his
breath, ‘Gude Lord, Tam!’ and, ‘Have the leddies come to this?’ He
‘thought shame’ when he recalled the prized grandeur and substantial
comforts and luxuries of Drysdale Hall. He rubbed his forehead, and
screwed up his courage for the carrying out of his mission.
When Miss Janet entered, Tam’s heart was wrung anew. He would never have
known his old acquaintance--the gallant, portly lady of the past--in the
fallen away, haggard woman in the old-fashioned garments, that looked so
much too wide, they appeared to flap about the big-boned figure; only
the remembered ‘gabbiness’ of the lady remained as a present trait. For
if Miss Janet did not receive her late nephew’s former servant with
‘becks and bows and wreathed smiles,’ she treated him and his son with a
kind of brow-beating condescension. She made her explanations with
wonderfully little cutting short of her long tongue, considering the
small amount of fuel in the form of nourishment it and the rest of her
bodily powers had to work upon. But the voice was at once weaker and
shriller in what _timbre_ it possessed, and a little faltering
occasionally, while a tremulous movement passed from time to time over
the hard-favoured features; and the worn hands, which she had not been
sufficiently mistress of herself to encase in gloves, shook beyond the
power of control as they lay in her lap.
Miss Janet said she and her elder sister had been sitting in poor
Betheye’s room, and had dispensed with a fire elsewhere. Betheye was
doing very well now. Oh yes! she had every advantage--a good doctor, and
her grand-nephew the Lieutenant was constantly sending fruit, and what
not. They--the Miss Mackinnons--felt for the poor sufferers from the
sickness. It was quite right a fund should be raised for them. She would
look about, when she had time, and see if she could find any odds and
ends that might be useful. She spoke as if she and hers were as far
removed as the Drysdales themselves from the deprivations and dependence
of poverty.
Young Tam had never seen his father so deferential as to this ‘genteel,
half-crazy object of charity,’ the younger man was guilty of calling
poor Miss Janet. It was with absolute trepidation and a
doubly-respectful ‘Miss Mackinnon, mem,’ that auld Tam delivered the
sentence he had laboriously composed of the excellent unadulterated
character of all articles of food in the country, and the comfort to be
derived from availing one’s self of them in an unhealthy season. This
was the prelude to a petition that Miss Janet would permit him to send
her ‘a basket from Drysdale Haugh which might remind her of “auld lang
syne.”’
Perhaps the reference was not very happy; anyhow, Miss Janet gave a
quavering laugh, and told him she was greatly obliged, but he must not
trouble himself. The town and the country were brought so near now, they
were equally well supplied with victuals of every description; she and
her sisters had all they could wish. She did not think even the
Strathdivie curds and cream, new-laid eggs, and stubble chickens could
taste better than what could be found in Buchanan Street. She remembered
hearing that her grandfather would always have fowls from Strathdivie
when he wanted cockie-leekie or hen-broth, but farm troke [goods] were
rife everywhere now. She would offer the gentlemen wine (there was only
a thimbleful in Miss Bethia’s room), but she understood from her
grand-nephew that it was not the fashion now to taste anything after
luncheon; so Miss Janet, with flying colours, dismissed the intruders.
Neither father nor son was in the least degree deceived, and young Tam,
at this stage, felt as little inclined to gibe as his father.
‘The puir leddy is reduced to skin and bane,’ said auld Tam, with a
groan. ‘I do not believe she has had butcher meat, or any other support
than a bit bread and a blash [watery mixture] of tea, for a month. If
we do not get the better of her quickly, she’ll be past the reach of
mortal man. And there are three of them--one just out of the fivver--in
the same plight. Gude Lord! something must be done. Shall we drive to
the Barracks and break the story to that careless puppy of an offisher?
It is for him to interfere, and not suffer his aunties, who brought him
up, to perish, though he has to force meat and drink down their craigs
[throats].’
Certainly, if no other resource could be hit upon, Eneas Mackinnon must
be appealed to, however painful the appeal to both parties.
But young Tam had another idea which might obviate the disagreeable
step, for the present at least.
‘The Mackinnons and Murrays were old acquaintances when Gavin Mackinnon
and Dr. Peter’s father were partners. Send in Dr. Peter to see the
ladies, as a piece of attention from an old friend. That will save them
the expense of further medical attendance, if it does nothing else, and
he will make his observation and deliver his report.’
Auld Tam was only too thankful to take his son’s advice, and secure
another coadjutor in the ticklish business.