For some time after the decision of Walter’s fatuity, nothing important
occurred in the history of the Grippy family. George pacified his own
conscience, and gained the approbation of the world, by fulfilling the
promise of settling fifty pounds per annum on his sister-in-law. The
house was enlarged and adorned, and the whole estate, under the ancient
name of Kittlestonheugh, began to partake of that general spirit of
improvement which was then gradually diffusing itself over the face of
the west country.
In the meantime, Mrs. Charles Walkinshaw, who had returned with
her children to reside with their grandmother, found her situation
comparatively comfortable; but an acute anxiety for the consequences
that would ensue by the daily expected death of that gentlewoman,
continued to thrill through her bosom, and chequer the sickly gleam of
the uncertain sunshine that glimmered in her path. At last the old lady
died, and she was reduced, as she had long foreseen, with her children,
to the parsimonious annuity. As it was impossible for her to live in
Glasgow, and educate her children, on so small a stipend, there, she
retired to one of the neighbouring villages, where, in the family of
the Reverend Mr. Eadie, the minister, she found that kind of quiet
intelligent society which her feelings and her misfortunes required.
Mrs. Eadie was a Highland lady, and, according to the living chronicles
of the region of clans and traditions, she was of scarcely less than
illustrious birth. But for the last attempt to restore the royal
line of the Stuarts, she would, in all probability, have moved in a
sphere more spacious and suitable to the splendour of her pedigree
than the humble and narrow orbit of a country clergyman’s wife. Nor
in her appearance did it seem that Nature and Fortune were agreed
about her destiny; for the former had adorned her youth with the
beauty, the virtues, and the dignity, which command admiration in the
palace,--endowments but little consonant to the lowly duties of the
rural manse.
At the epoch of which we are now speaking she was supposed to have
passed her fiftieth year; but something in her air and manner gave
her the appearance of being older--a slight shade of melancholy, the
pale cast of thought, lent sweetness to the benign composure of her
countenance; and she was seldom seen without inspiring interest, and
awakening sentiments of profound and reverential respect. She had
lost her only daughter about a year before; and a son, her remaining
child, a boy about ten years of age, was supposed to have inherited the
malady which carried off his sister. The anxiety which Mrs. Eadie, in
consequence, felt as a mother, partly occasioned that mild sadness of
complexion to which we have alluded; but there was still a deeper and
more affecting cause.
Before the ruin of her father’s fortune, by the part he took in the
Rebellion, she was betrothed to a youth who united many of the best
Lowland virtues with the gallantry and enthusiasm peculiar to the
Highlanders of that period. It was believed that he had fallen in the
fatal field of Culloden; and, after a long period of virgin widowhood
on his account, she was induced, by the amiable manners and gentle
virtues of Mr. Eadie, to consent to change her life. He was then tutor
in the family of a relation, with whom, on her father’s forfeiture
and death, she had found an asylum,--and when he was presented to the
parish of Camrachle, they were married.
The first seven years, from the date of their union, were spent in that
temperate state of enjoyment which is the nearest to perfect happiness;
during the course of which their two children were born. In that
time no symptom of the latent poison of the daughter’s constitution
appeared; but all around them, and in their prospects, was calm, and
green, and mild, and prosperous.
In the course of the summer of the eighth year, in consequence of an
often repeated invitation, they went, at the meeting of the General
Assembly, to which Mr. Eadie was returned a member, to spend a short
time with a relation in Edinburgh, and among the strangers with whom
they happened to meet at the houses of their friends were several from
France, children and relations of some of those who had been out in the
Forty-five.
A young gentleman belonging to these expatrioted visitors, one evening
interested Mrs. Eadie, to so great a degree, that she requested to be
particularly introduced to him, and, in the course of conversation, she
learnt that he was the son of her former lover, and that his father
was still alive, and married to a French woman, his mother. The shock
which this discovery produced was so violent that she was obliged to
leave the room, and falling afterwards into bad health, her singular
beauty began to fade with premature decay.
Her husband, to whom she disclosed her grief, endeavoured to soften it
by all the means and blandishments in his power; but it continued so
long inveterate, that he yielded himself to the common weakness of our
nature, and growing peevish at her sorrow, chided her melancholy till
their domestic felicity was mournfully impaired.
Such was the state in which Mrs. Charles Walkinshaw found Mrs. Eadie
at their first acquaintance; and the disappointments and shadows which
had fallen on the hopes of her own youth, soon led to an intimate and
sympathetic friendship between them, the influence of which contributed
at once to alleviate their reciprocal griefs, and to have the effect
of reviving, in some degree, the withered affections of the minister.
The gradual and irremediable progress of the consumption which preyed
on his son, soon, however, claimed from that gentle and excellent man
efforts of higher fortitude than he had before exerted, and from that
inward exercise, and the sympathy which he felt for his wife’s maternal
solicitude, Mrs. Walkinshaw had the satisfaction, in the course of a
year, to see their mutual confidence and cordiality restored. But in
the same period the boy died; and though the long foreseen event deeply
affected his parents, it proved a fortunate occurrence to the widow.
For the minister, to withdraw his reflections from the contemplation of
his childless state, undertook the education of James, and Mrs. Eadie,
partly from the same motives, but chiefly to enjoy the society of her
friend, proposed to unite with her in the education of Mary. ‘We cannot
tell,’ said she to Mrs. Walkinshaw, ‘what her lot may be; but let us
do our best to prepare her for the world, and leave her fortunes, as
they ever must be, in the hands of Providence. The penury and obscurity
of her present condition ought to be no objection to bestowing on her
all the accomplishments we have it in our power to give. How little
likely was it, in my father’s time, that I should have been in this
comparative poverty, and yet, but for those acquirements, which were
studied for brighter prospects, how dark and sad would often have been
my residence in this sequestered village!’