Soon after the marriage of Miss Meg, George, the third son, and
youngest of the family, was placed in the counting-house of one of the
most eminent West Indian merchants at that period in Glasgow. This
incident was in no other respect important in the history of the Lairds
of Grippy, than as serving to open a career to George, that would lead
him into a higher class of acquaintance than his elder brothers: for
it was about this time that the general merchants of the royal city
began to arrogate to themselves that aristocratic superiority over the
shopkeepers, which they have since established into an oligarchy as
proud and sacred, in what respects the reciprocities of society, as
the famous Seignories of Venice and of Genoa.
In the character, however, of George, there was nothing ostensibly
haughty, or rather his pride had not shown itself in any strong colour,
when he first entered on his mercantile career. Like his father, he
was firm and persevering; but he wanted something of the old man’s
shrewdness; and there was more of avarice in his hopes of wealth than
in the sordidness of his father, for they were not elevated by any such
ambitious sentiment as that which prompted Claud to strive with such
constancy for the recovery of his paternal inheritance. In fact, the
young merchant, notwithstanding the superiority of his education and
other advantages, we may safely venture to assert, was a more vulgar
character than the old pedlar. But his peculiarities did not manifest
themselves till long after the period of which we are now speaking.
In the meantime, every thing proceeded with the family much in the same
manner as with most others. Claud and his wife had daily altercations
about their household affairs. Charles and Isabella narrowed themselves
into a small sphere, of which his grandmother, the venerable Lady
Plealands, now above fourscore, was their principal associate, and
their mutual affection was strengthened by the birth of a son. Walter
and Betty Bodle resided at the Divethill; and they, too, had the
prospect of adding, as a Malthusian would say, to the mass of suffering
mankind. The philosophical Kilmarkeckle continued his abstruse
researches as successfully as ever into the affinities between snuff
and the natures of beasts and birds, while the Laird of Dirdumwhamle
and his Leddy struggled on in the yoke together, as well as a father
and step-mother, amidst fifteen children, the progeny of two prior
marriages, could reasonably be expected to do, where neither party was
particularly gifted with delicacy or forbearance. In a word, they all
moved along with the rest of the world during the first twelve months,
after the execution of the deed of entail, without experiencing any
other particular change in their relative situations than those to
which we have alluded.
But the epoch was now drawing near, when Mrs. Walter Walkinshaw was
required to prepare herself for becoming a mother, and her husband
was no less interested than herself in the event. He did nothing
for several months, from morning to night, but inquire how she felt
herself, and contrive, in his affectionate simplicity, a thousand
insufferable annoyances to one of her disposition, for the purpose of
affording her ease and pleasure; all of which were either answered by
a laugh, or a slap, as the humour of the moment dictated. Sometimes,
when she, regardless of her maternal state, would, in walking to Grippy
or Kilmarkeckle, take short cuts across the fields, and over ditches,
and through hedges, he would anxiously follow her at a distance, and
when he saw her in any difficulty to pass, he would run kindly to her
assistance. More than once, at her jocular suggestion, he has lain down
in the dry ditches to allow her to step across on his back. Never had
wife a more loving or obedient husband. She was allowed in every thing,
not only to please herself, but to make him do whatever she pleased;
and yet, with all her whims and caprice, she proved so true and so
worthy a wife, that he grew every day more and more uxorious.
Nor was his mother less satisfied with Betty Bodle. They enjoyed
together the most intimate communion of minds on all topics
of household economy; but it was somewhat surprising, that,
notwithstanding the care and pains which the old leddy took to instruct
her daughter-in-law in all the mysteries of the churn and cheeseset,
Mrs. Walter’s butter was seldom fit for market, and the hucksters of
the royal city never gave her near so good a price for her cheese as
Leddy Grippy regularly received for hers, although, in the process of
the making, they both followed the same recipes.
The conjugal felicities of Walter afforded, however, but little
pleasure to his father. The obstreperous humours of his
daughter-in-law jarred with his sedate dispositions, and in her fun and
freaks she so loudly showed her thorough knowledge of her husband’s
defective intellects, that it for ever reminded him of the probable
indignation with which the world would one day hear of the injustice
he had done to Charles. The effect of this gradually led him to shun
the society of his own family, and having neither from nature nor habit
any inclination for general company, he became solitary and morose.
He only visited Glasgow once a week, on Wednesday, and generally sat
about an hour in the shop, in his old elbow-chair, in the corner; and,
saving a few questions relative to the business, he abstained from
conversing with his son. It would seem, however, that, under this
sullen taciturnity, the love which he had once cherished for Charles
still tugged at his heart; for, happening to come into the shop, on the
morning after Isabella had made him a grandfather, by the birth of a
boy, on being informed of that happy event, he shook his son warmly by
the hand, and said, in a serious and impressive manner,--
‘An it please God, Charlie, to gie thee ony mair childer, I redde thee,
wi’ the counsel o’ a father, to mak na odds among them, but remember
they are a’ alike thine, and that t’ou canna prefer ane aboon anither
without sin;’--and he followed this admonition with a gift of twenty
pounds to buy the infant a christening frock.
But from that day he never spoke to Charles of his family; on the
contrary, he became dark and more obdurate in his manner to every one
around him. His only enjoyment seemed to be a sort of doating delight
in contemplating, from a rude bench which he had constructed on a
rising ground behind the house of Grippy, the surrounding fields of
his forefathers. There he would sit for hours together alone, bending
forward with his chin resting on the ivory head of his staff, which he
held between his knees by both hands, and with a quick and eager glance
survey the scene for a moment, and then drop his eyelids and look only
on the ground.
Whatever might be the general tenor of his reflections as he sat on
that spot, they were evidently not always pleasant; for one afternoon,
as he was sitting there, his wife, who came upon him suddenly and
unperceived, to tell him a messenger was sent to Glasgow from Divethill
for the midwife, was surprised to find him agitated and almost in tears.
‘Dear me, gudeman,’ said she, ‘what’s come o’er you, that ye’re sitting
here hanging your gruntel like a sow playing on a trump? Hae na ye
heard that Betty Bodle’s time’s come? I’m gaun ower to the crying, and
if ye like ye may walk that length wi’ me. I hope, poor thing, she’ll
hae an easy time o’t, and that we’ll hae blithes-meat before the sun
gangs doun.’
‘Gang the gait thysel, Girzy Hypel,’ said Claud, raising his head, ‘and
no fash me with thy clishmaclavers.’
‘Heh, gudeman! but ye hae been eating sourrocks instead o’ lang-kail.
But e’en’s ye like, Meg dorts, as “Patie and Rodger” says, I can gang
mysel;’ and with that, whisking pettishly round, she walked away.
Claud being thus disturbed in his meditations, looked after her as
she moved along the footpath down the slope, and for the space of a
minute or two, appeared inclined to follow her, but relapsing into some
new train of thought, before she had reached the bottom, he had again
resumed his common attitude, and replaced his chin on the ivory head of
his staff.