Transcriber’s note
Variable spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Minor punctuation
inconsistencies have been silently repaired. A list of the changes made
can be found at the end of the book. Formatting and special characters
are indicated as follows:
_italic_
HARRY MUIR.
A STORY OF SCOTTISH LIFE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND,”
“MERKLAND,” “ADAM GRAEME,” &C.
“God pardon thee! yet let me wonder, Harry,
At thy affections....
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruined; and the soul of every man,
Prophetically, does forethink thy fall.”
KING HENRY IV.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1853.
LONDON: Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.
HARRY MUIR.
CHAPTER I.
“Housekeeping youth have ever homely wits.”
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
“AND this is the pillar that Rob Roy hid behind, the Sabbath day that
he warned the young English gentleman in the kirk. It’s the very place
itsel. Here was the pulpit--and the seats were a’ here, and this is the
pillar that hid Rob Roy.”
A party of young men were in the crypt of Glasgow cathedral--the little
sleek, humble-looking man, who very unobtrusively acted as Cicerone,
was pointing out to them the notability, with these words.
One of the visitors turned away with a grave smile, and leaving
his companions, began to wander slowly down one of the long black
aisles. The dim withdrawing vistas--the pillars with their floral
chaplets--the singular grace and majesty of those dark and ponderous
arches--impressed him with very different associations. The young man’s
smile, slightly scornful at first, melted as he reached the lower end,
and looking up through this grand avenue, saw the little knot of dim
figures in the distance. He was glad to escape from their laughter,
and unsuitable merriment. These noble old cloisters were too grave and
solemn, to have their stillness so invaded.
But he was not suffered long to remain uninterrupted in his
contemplative mood. “What ails Cuthbert?” said one of the younger of
the party, a lad in the transition state between boy and man. “See
to him down yonder at the very end, like a craw in the mist--I say,
Cuthbert!”
As the piping shrill voice called out his name at its highest pitch,
the young man began slowly to advance again. The lad came forward to
meet him. “What are you smiling at--what did you go away for?”
“I was smiling at myself, John,” answered the accused.
John was curious. “What for?”
“For thinking there were things more interesting here, than the pillar
that hid Rob Roy. Come along--never mind. Where are they all bound for,
now?”
They were bound for a very dissimilar place--no other than the crowded
Broomielaw, where John’s brothers were bent upon showing their
Edinburgh cousin, Cuthbert Charteris, and an English stranger who
accompanied them, one or two fine ships belonging to “the house” then
in port. These young men were the sons of a prosperous merchant, all of
them already in harness in the office, and beginning to make private
ventures on their own behalf. There were three of them--Richard, Alick,
and John Buchanan; the two elder had reached the full dignity of young
manhood, and rejoiced in mighty whiskers, which John, poor fellow,
could only covet intensely, and cultivate with all his might; but even
John had begun to have the shrewd man of business engrafted on the boy,
and was sometimes precociously calculating, and commercial--sometimes
disagreeably swaggering and loud--though not unfrequently simple,
foolish, and generous, as better became his years.
“I say, Cuthbert,” said the communicative John, as he swung his arm
through his grave cousin’s, and followed his gay brothers on the way to
the river, “did you ever see Harry Muir? Dick says he’s going to make
him come and dine with us to-night.”
“And who is Harry Muir?” asked Charteris.
“Oh, he’s nobody--only a clerk in the office you know--but you never
saw such a clever chap. He can sing anything you like. He’s a grand
singer. And when Harry’s in a good humour, you should just hear him
with the fellows in the office. My father looks out of his own room
sometimes to see what’s the row, and there’s Gilchrist sucking his pen,
and Macauley and Alick close down over their books, writing for a race,
and Muir quite cool, and looking as innocent as can be. You should just
see them, and see how puzzled my father is, when he finds that there’s
no row at all!”
“And in such emergencies, how do you behave yourself, Johnnie?”
“Johnnie! I wish you’d just mind that I’m not a boy now.”
“Jack, then! Will that please you, young man,” said Charteris, smiling.
“Me? I behave the best way I can,” said the mollified John. “The best
plan is, to set to working, and never let on that you hear the door
open; but we like to get him among a lot of us when there’s nobody in
the way; and you’ll just see to-night, Cuthbert, what a grand fellow he
is for fun.”
Cuthbert did not look very much delighted. “And when is this famous
dinner to be?” he asked. “Is Dick to entertain us at home?”
Master John burst into a great laugh. “Man, Cuthbert, what a simple
fellow you are! You don’t think my mother would ask Harry Muir to dine.”
“And why not, my boy?” asked the Edinburgh advocate.
“Why not! Man, is that the way you do in the east country? He’s only a
clerk, and everybody knows you Edinburgh folk are as proud as proud
can be. Would you ask your clerk to dine with you?”
“I don’t possess such an appendage, Sir John,” said the briefless
barrister, “except it be a little scrubby boy like what you were the
last time I was west here--and he certainly would need some brushing
up. So he’s not a gentleman, this wit of yours? He would not be
presentable in the drawing-room?”
“Hum! I don’t know,” said honest John, hesitating. “He looks quite
as well as Dick or Alick, or that Liverpool man there.” The lad drew
himself up and arranged his neckcloth complacently. “There’s handsomer
men, to be sure; but I think Muir’s better looking than any of you,
Cuthbert.”
Charteris laughed: “Is he not well-bred, then?”
“Oh yes, he can behave himself well enough. He’s got a way of his own,
you know; but then he’s a clerk.”
“And so are you, Jack, my man,” said Charteris.
“Oh yes, but there’s a difference. He’s got no money--and more than
that,” said the juvenile merchant, “he’s got no enterprise, Cuthbert.
There’s Alick, he had a share in a plan, sending out a lot of things
to San Francisco on a venture, just when the news came about the gold,
you know, and he cleared a hundred pounds; that’s the way to do. But
then, that fellow Muir, he never tries a thing; and worse than that,
he went away and married somebody last year, and he had three sisters
before, and them all living with him. Just think of that. Four women
all dragging a young man down when he might be rising in the world.
Isn’t it awful?”
“A very serious burden,” said Charteris, smiling, “but what is his
salary, John?”
“His salary’s sixty pounds; my father gives very good salaries. He’s
just a clerk, you know. The cashier has two hundred.”
“Sixty pounds! and five people live on sixty pounds!” said the lawyer.
“And they’ve got a baby,” said John, solemnly.
It was the climax; there was no more said.
The respectable firm of George Buchanan and Sons had its office in a
dingy business street near the Exchange. The early darkness of the
February night had almost blotted out the high sombre houses opposite,
except for the gleaming gas-light streaming from office windows in
irregular patches from garret to basement. It was not a very busy time,
and at five o’clock the clerks were preparing to leave the office.
“I say, Muir,” cried Richard Buchanan, bursting in hastily, “come and
dine with us.”
Charteris was behind. The famous Harry Muir was certainly
handsome--very much better looking than any other of the party, and had
a fine, sparkling, joyous, intelligent face--but the lines of it had
everything in them but firmness.
“Not to-night,” said the clerk, “you must not ask me to-night.”
“Why not to-night?” said the young master. “Come along now, Harry. Do
be a good fellow. Why it’s just to-night of all nights that we want
you. There’s my cousin Charteris, and there’s an Englishman; and we’re
all as flat as the Clyde. Come along, Muir, don’t disoblige us.”
“I am very sorry,” said Muir, “but I can’t stay in town to-night. Let
me off to-night; I will be more obedient next time.”
“He wants to get home to nurse his wife,” said Buchanan, with a sneer.
“My wife is quite well,” answered Harry, with a quick flush of anger;
“she does not need my nursing, Mr. Buchanan.”
“_Mr._ Buchanan! don’t be ill-natured, Harry--come along.”
“No, no; I cannot go to-night. I don’t think I can stay to-night,” said
the brilliant facile clerk.
The entreaties continued a little longer; the resistance became feebler
and more feeble, and at last, stipulating that he was to leave them
early, the genius of the counting-house consented.
“Harry, my man, send a message to your wife,” said a grave snuffy
person, who enjoyed the two hundred pounds a year of which John had
boasted, and was cashier to the Messrs. Buchanan.
Harry wavered a moment. “Where is the boy?”
“Perhaps she’ll come for you, Harry,” suggested the malicious Buchanan.
The poor clerk threw down, angrily, the pen he had taken up, and lifted
his hat. In another minute, with quickly recovered gaiety, they went
out in a band to the adjacent square where they were to dine.
“There’s the makings of a capital man in that lad, and there’s the
makings of a blackguard,” said the grave Mr. Gilchrist, shaking
his head ruefully, and taking a pinch of snuff; “it’ll be a hard
race--which of them will win?”
The dinner in George’s-square went off very well, and the young
clerk, as he warmed, dazzled the little company; he was only a
clerk--they were inclined to patronize him at other times--but now
the unmistakeable, undesired, pre-eminence, which these young men
yielded to their poor companion, was a noticeable thing. The matter of
ambition now, was, who should seem most intimate with--who should most
attract the attention of the brilliant clerk.
Cuthbert Charteris was a more completely educated man than any other of
the party. The thorough literary training will not ally itself to the
commercial, as it seems. None of the young merchants had time for the
long discipline and athletic mental exercises of the student. They were
all making money before they should have been well emancipated from the
school-room--all independent men, when they should have been boys--and
the contrast was marked enough. There was a good deal of boisterousness
in their enjoyment, and they were enjoying themselves heartily, while
Cuthbert, getting very weary, felt himself only preserved from utter
impatience of their mirth by the interest with which the stranger
inspired him--this poor, clever, facile Harry Muir.
The quick mind of this young man seemed to have attained somehow to the
results of education without the training and discipline which form so
principal a part of it. He seemed to have been a desultory reader, a
devourer of everything which came in his way, and while the Buchanans
knew few books beyond the serial literature of the time, Harry threw
delicate allusions about him, which it seemed he made only for his own
enjoyment, since the arrows flew most innocently over the heads of all
the rest. Threads of connection with those great thoughts which form
the common country of imaginative minds, ideas radiating out from the
centre of these, like the lessening circles in the water--the student
Cuthbert heard and understood, and wondered--the Buchanans applauded,
and did not understand.
One of them at last proposed to go to the theatre--the rest chimed
in eagerly. Cuthbert, anxious to have the evening concluded as soon
as possible, and resolving to seek no more of the delectable society
of his young cousins except at home, where they were tolerable,
remonstrated only to be laughed at and overpowered. The grown-up,
mature, educated man resigned himself to their boyish guidance very
wearily--and what would their wit do now?
He said he would go home--he took up his hat, and played hesitatingly
with his gloves. He was excited with the company, the applause, and a
little with the wine, and was permitting himself to parley with the
tempter.
“Come along, Muir, it’s only for once; let us just have this one night.”
“No, no.” The noes grew faint; the hesitation increased. He consented
again.
And so, louder and more boisterous than before, they again entered
the busy streets. John Buchanan was a good deal inclined to be
obstreperous. It was all that Cuthbert could manage to keep him within
bounds.
They had reached the Trongate, and Cuthbert stopped his young companion
a moment to look down the long gleaming line of the crowded street.
It had been wet in the morning, and the brilliant light from the shop
windows glistened in the wet causeway in long lines, and the shifting
groups of passengers went and came, ceaselessly, and the hum and din of
the great thoroughfare was softened by the gloom and brightened by the
light of traffic that illuminated all.
“What are you looking at? See they’re all away across the street.
What’s the good of glowering down the Trongate? Man, Cuthbert, how slow
you are,” said John Buchanan, dragging the loiterer on.
There was a crowd on the opposite side which had absorbed the others.
Cuthbert and John crossed over.
The accident which attracted the crowd was a very common one--an
overtasked horse, wearied with the long day’s labour, had stumbled and
fallen; and now, the weight of the cart to which it was attached having
been removed, was making convulsive plunges in the effort to rise. The
carters, and the kindred class who are always to be found ready in such
small emergencies, were leaping aside themselves, and pressing back
the lookers on, as the poor animal struck out his great weary limbs,
endeavouring to raise himself from the ground.
Suddenly there was a shrill cry--“The wean--look at the wean; the
brute’s fit’ll kill the wean.”
John Buchanan had pushed his way into the crowd, dragging with him
the reluctant Cuthbert--and there indeed, close to the great hoofs
of the prostrate animal, stood one of those little pale, careworn,
withered children whom one sees only in the streets of great cities,
and oftenest only at this unwholesome hour of night. But the acuteness
peculiar to the class seemed to have forsaken the very little wrinkled
old man of the Trongate. He was standing where the next plunge would
inevitably throw him down, with the strange scared look which is not
fear, common to children in great peril, upon his small white puckered
face. Again the panting horse threw out his hoofs in another convulsive
exertion. The child was down.
A shadow shot across the light. There were several cries of women. The
child was thrown into somebody’s arms uninjured. The horse was on its
feet, and a man, indistinctly seen in the midst of the eager crowd,
struggled ineffectually to raise himself from the ground, where he had
fallen.
“I am hurt a little,” said the voice of Harry Muir. “Never mind, it is
not much, I dare say. Some of you help me up.”
There was a rush to assist him; a burst of eager inquiries.
“I got a blow from the hoof; ah! I can’t tell what it is,” gasped the
young man, over whose face the pallor of deadly sickness was stealing.
He could not stand. They carried him--these rough strong men, so
gently--with his friends crowding about him, to the nearest surgeon’s.
Everybody was sympathetic; every one interested. But Harry Muir’s head
had sunk upon his breast, and the fight had gone from his eyes. He was
conscious of nothing but pain.
The accident was a serious one; his leg was broken.