Bodle of Kilmarkeckle, like all the lairds of that time, was come of an
ancient family, in some degree related to the universal stock of Adam,
but how much more ancient, no historian has yet undertaken to show.
Like his contemporaries of the same station, he was, of course, proud
of his lineage; but he valued himself more on his own accomplishments
than even on the superior purity of his blood. We are, however, in
doubt, whether he ought to be described as an artist or a philosopher,
for he had equal claims to the honour of being both, and certainly
without question, in the art of delineating hieroglyphical resemblances
of birds and beasts on the walls of his parlour with snuff, he had
evinced, if not talent or genius, at least considerable industry. In
the course of more than twenty years, he had not only covered the walls
with many a curious and grotesque form, but invented,--and therein
lay the principle of his philosophy--a particular classification, as
original and descriptive as that of Linnaeus.
At an early age he had acquired the habit of taking snuff, and in
process of time became, as all regular snuff-takers are, acute in
discriminating the shades and inflexions of flavour in the kind to
which he was addicted. This was at once the cause and the principle of
his science. For the nature of each of the birds and beasts which he
modelled resembled, as he averred, some peculiarity in the tobacco
of which the snuff that they severally represented had been made; and
really, to do him justice, it was quite wonderful to hear with what
ingenuity he could explain the discriminative qualities in which the
resemblance of attributes and character consisted. But it must be
confessed, that he sometimes fell into that bad custom remarkable among
philosophers, of talking a great deal too much to every body, and on
every occasion, of his favourite study. Saving this, however, the Laird
of Kilmarkeckle was in other respects a harmless easy-tempered man, of
a nature so kind and indulgent, that he allowed all about him to grow
to rankness. The number of cats of every size and age which frisked
in his parlour, or basked at the sunny side of the house, exceeded
all reasonable credibility, and yet it was a common saying among the
neighbours, that Kilmarkeckle’s mice kittled twice as often as his cats.
In nothing was his easy and indulgent nature more shown than in his
daughter, Miss Betty, who having, at an early age, lost her mother,
he had permitted to run unbridled among the servants, till the habits
which she had acquired in consequence rendered every subsequent
attempt to reduce her into the requisite subjection of the sex totally
unavailing.
She had turned her twentieth year, and was not without beauty, but of
such a sturdy and athletic kind, that, with her open ruddy countenance,
laughing eyes, white well-set teeth, and free and joyous step and
air, justly entitled her to the nickname of Fun, bestowed by Charles
Walkinshaw. She was fond of dogs and horses, and was a better shot than
the Duke of Douglas’s gamekeeper. Bold, boisterous, and frank, she made
no scruple of employing her whip when rudely treated either by master
or man; for she frequently laid herself open to freedoms from both,
and she neither felt nor pretended to any of her sex’s gentleness nor
delicacy. Still she was not without a conciliatory portion of feminine
virtues, and perhaps, had she been fated to become the wife of a
sportsman or a soldier, she might possibly have appeared on the turf
or in the tent to considerable advantage.
Such a woman, it may be supposed, could not but look with the most
thorough contempt on Walter Walkinshaw; and yet, from the accidental
circumstance of being often his playmate in childhood, and making him,
in the frolic of their juvenile amusements, her butt and toy, she had
contracted something like an habitual affection for the creature; in
so much, that, when her father, after Claud’s visit, proposed Walter
for her husband, she made no serious objection to the match; on the
contrary, she laughed, and amused herself with the idea of making
him fetch and carry as whimsically as of old, and do her hests and
biddings as implicitly as when they were children. Every thing thus
seemed auspicious to a speedy and happy union of the properties of
Kilmarkeckle and Grippy,--indeed, so far beyond the most sanguine
expectations of Claud, that, when he saw the philosophical Laird coming
next morning, with a canister of snuff in his hand, to tell him the
result of his communication to Miss Betty, his mind was prepared to
hear a most decided, and even a menacing refusal, for having ventured
to make the proposal.
‘Come away, Kilmarkeckle,’ said he, meeting him at the door; ‘come in
by--what’s the best o’ your news this morning? I hope nothing’s wrang
at hame, to gar you look sae as ye were fasht?’
‘Troth,’ replied Kilmarkeckle, ‘I hae got a thing this morning that’s
very vexatious. Last year, at Beltane, ye should ken, I coft frae
Donald M’Sneeshen, the tobacconist aboon the Cross of Glasgow, a
canister of a kind that I ca’d the Linty. It was sae brisk in the
smeddum, so pleasant to the smell, garring ye trow in the sniffling
that ye were sitting on a bonny green knowe in hay time, by the side
of a blooming whin-bush, hearkening to the blithe wee birdies singing
sangs, as it were, to pleasure the summer’s sun; and what would ye
think, Mr. Walkinshaw, here is another canister of a sort that I’ll
defy ony ordinary nose to tell the difference, and yet, for the life
o’ me, I canna gie’t in conscience anither name than the Hippopotamus.’
‘But hae ye spoken to your dochter?’ said Grippy, interrupting him, and
apprehensive of a dissertation.
‘O aye, atweel I hae done that.’
‘And what did Miss Betty say?’
‘Na, an ye had but seen and heard her, ye would just hae dee’t, Mr.
Walkinshaw. I’m sure I wonder wha the lassie taks her light-hearted
merriment frae, for her mother was a sober and sedate sensible woman; I
never heard her jocose but ance, in a’ the time we were thegither, and
that was when I expounded to her how Maccaba is like a nightingale, the
whilk, as I hae seen and read in print, is a feathert fowl that has a
great notion o’ roses.’
‘I was fear’t for that,’ rejoined Claud, suspecting that Miss Betty had
ridiculed the proposal.
‘But to gae back to the Linty and the Hippopotamus,’ resumed
Kilmarkeckle. ‘The snuff that I hae here in this canister--tak a pree
o’t, Mr. Walkinshaw--it was sent me in a present frae Mr. Glassford,
made out of the primest hogget in his last cargo--what think ye o’t?
Noo, I would just speer gin ye could tell wherein it may be likened
to a hippopotamus, the which is a creature living in the rivers of
Afrikaw, and has twa ivory teeth, bigger, as I am creditably informed,
than the blade o’ a scythe.’
Claud, believing that his proposal had been rejected, and not desirous
of reverting to the subject, encouraged the philosopher to talk, by
saying, that he could not possibly imagine how snuff could be said to
resemble any such creature.
‘That’s a’ that ye ken!’ said Kilmarkeckle, chuckling with pleasure,
and inhaling a pinch with the most cordial satisfaction. ‘This snuff is
just as like a hippopotamus as the other sort that was sae like it was
like a linty; and nothing could be plainer; for even now when I hae’t
in my nostril, I think I see the creature wallowing and wantoning in
some wide river in a lown sunny day, wi’ its muckle glad e’en, wamling
wi’ delight in its black head, as it lies lapping in the clear caller
water, wi’ its red tongue, twirling and twining round its ivory teeth,
and every now and then giving another lick.’
‘But I dinna see any likeness in that to snuff, Mr. Bodle,’ said Claud.
‘That’s most extraordinary, Mr. Walkinshaw; for surely there is a
likeness somewhere in every thing that brings another thing to mind;
and although as yet I’ll no point out to you the vera particularity in
a hippopotamus by which this snuff gars me think o’ the beast, ye must,
nevertheless, allow past a’ dispute, that there is a particularity.’
Claud replied with ironical gravity, that he thought the snuff much
more like a meadow, for it had the smell and flavour of new hay.
‘Ye’re no far frae the mark, Grippy; and now I’ll tell you wherein the
likeness lies. The hay, ye ken, is cut down by scythes in meadows;
meadows lie by water-sides: the teeth of the hippopotamus is as big as
scythes; and he slumbers and sleeps in the rivers of Afrikaw; so the
snuff, smelling like hay, brings a’ thae things to mind; and therefore
it is like a hippopotamus.’
After enjoying a hearty laugh at this triumph of his reasoning, the
philosopher alighted from his hobby, and proceeded to tell Claud that
he had spoken to his daughter, and that she had made no objection to
the match.
‘Heavens preserve us, Mr. Bodle!’ exclaimed Grippy; ‘what were ye
havering sae about a brute beast, and had sic blithsome news to tell
me?’
They then conversed somewhat circumstantially regarding the requisite
settlements, Kilmarkeckle agreeing entirely with every thing that the
sordid and cunning bargainer proposed, until the whole business was
arranged, except the small particular of ascertaining how the appointed
bridegroom stood affected. This, however, his father undertook to
manage, and also that Walter should go in the evening to Kilmarkeckle,
and in person make a tender of his heart and hand to the blooming,
boisterous, and bouncing Miss Betty.