‘Really,’ said the Leddy, after Walkinshaw had told her the news, and
that only the wetness of the road had prevented his sister and Ellen
from coming with him to town,--‘Really, Jamie, to tell you the gude’s
truth, though I would hae been blithe to see Mary, and that weel-bred
lassie, your joe Nell Frizel--I’m very thankful they hae na come--for,
unless I soon get some relief, I’ll be herrit out o’ house and hall
wi’ Beenie and Walky,--twa thoughtless wantons,--set them up wi’ a
clandestine marriage in their teens! it’s enough to put marriages out
of fashion.’
‘I thought,’ replied Walkinshaw, playing with her humours, ‘that the
marriage was all your own doing.’
‘My doing, Jamie Walkinshaw! wha daurs to say the like o’ that?
I’m as clear o’t as the child unborn--to be sure they were married
here, but that was no fault o’ mine--my twa grandchildren, it
could ne’er be expected that I would let them be married on the
crown-o’-the-causey--But, wasna baith his mother and father
present, and is that no gospel evidence, that I was but an innocent
onlooker?--No, no, Jamie, whomsoever ye hear giving me the wyte o’ ony
sic Gretna Green job, I redde ye put your foot on the spark, and no let
it singe my character.--I’m abundantly and overmuch punished already,
for the harmless jocosity, in the cost and cumbering o’ their keeping.’
‘Well, but unless you had sanctioned their marriage, and approved o’t
beforehand, they would never have thought of taking up their residence
with you.’
‘Ye’re no far wrang there, Jamie; I’ll no deny that I gied my
approbation, and I would hae done as muckle for your happiness, had ye
been o’ a right conforming spirit and married Beenie, by the whilk a’
this hobbleshaw would hae been spare’t; but there’s a awful difference
between approving o’ a match, and providing a living and house-room,
bed, board, and washing, for two married persons--and so, although it
may be said in a sense, that I had a finger in the pye, yet every body
who kens me, kens vera weel that I would ne’er hae meddled wi’ ony sic
gunpowder plot, had there been the least likelihood that it would bring
upon me sic a heavy handful. In short, nobody, Jamie, has been more
imposed upon than I hae been--I’m the only sufferer. De’il-be-lickit
has it cost Dirdumwhamle, but an auld Muscovy duck, that he got sent
him frae ane o’ your uncle’s Jamaica skippers two years ago, and it was
then past laying--we smoor’t it wi’ ingons the day afore yesterday, but
ye might as soon hae tried to mak a dinner o’ a hesp o’ seven heere
yarn, for it was as teugh as the grannie of the cock that craw’t to
Peter.’
‘But surely,’ said Walkinshaw, affecting to condole with her, ‘surely
my uncle, when he has had time to cool, will come forward with
something handsome.’
‘Surely--Na, an he dinna do that, what’s to become o’ me?--Oh! Jamie,
your uncle’s no a man like your worthy grandfather,--he was a saint o’
a Christian disposition--when your father married against both his will
and mine, he did na gar the house dirl wi’ his stamp to the quaking
foundation; but on the Lord’s day thereafter, took me by the arm--oh!
he was o’ a kindly nature--and we gaed o’er thegither, and wis’d your
father and mother joy, wi’ a hunder pound in our hand--that was acting
the parent’s part!’
‘But, notwithstanding all that kindness, you know he disinherited my
father,’ replied Walkinshaw seriously, ‘and I am still suffering the
consequences.’
‘The best o’ men, Jamie,’ said the Leddy, sympathisingly, ‘are no
perfect, and your grandfather, I’ll ne’er maintain, was na a no mere
man--so anent the disinheritance, there was ay something I could na
weel understand; for, although I had got an inkling o’ the law frae
my father, who was a deacon at a plea--as a’ the Lords in Embro’
could testificate, still there was a because in that act of sederunt
and session, the whilk, in my opinion, required an interlocutor frae
the Lord Ordinary to expiscate and expone, and, no doubt, had your
grandfather been spare’t, there would hae been a rectification.--But,
waes me, the Lord took him to himsel; in the very hour when Mr.
Keelevin, the lawyer, was doun on his knees reading a scantling
o’ a new last will and settlement.--Eh! Jamie, that was a moving
sight,--before I could get a pen, to put in your dying grandfather’s
hand, to sign the paper, he took his departal to a better world, where,
we are taught to hope, there are neither lawyers nor laws.’
‘But if my uncle will not make a settlement on Robina, what will you
do?’ said Walkinshaw, laughing.
‘Haud your tongue, and dinna terrify folk wi’ ony sic impossibility!’
exclaimed the Leddy--‘Poor man, he has something else to think o’
at present. Is na your aunty brought nigh unto the gates o’ death?
Would ye expek him to be thinking o’ marriage settlements and wedding
banquets, when death’s so busy in his dwelling? Ye’re an unfeeling
creature, Jamie--But the army’s the best place for sic graceless getts.
Whan do ye begin to spend your half-crown out o’ saxpence a day? And
is Nell Frizel to carry your knapsack? Weel, I ay thought she was a
cannonading character, and I’ll be none surprised o’ her fighting
the French or the Yanky Doodles belyve, wi’ a stone in the foot of a
stocking, for I am most creditably informed, that that’s the conduct o’
the soldier’s wives in the field o’ battle.’
It was never very easy to follow the Leddy, when she was on what the
sailors call one of her jawing tacks; and Walkinshaw, who always
enjoyed her company most when she was in that humour, felt little
disposed to interrupt her. In order, however, to set her off in a
new direction, he said,--‘But, when I get my appointment, I hope
you’ll give me something to buy a sword, which is the true bride o’ a
soldier.’
‘And a poor tocher he gets wi’ her,’ said the Leddy;--‘wounds and
bruises, and putrefying sores, to make up a pack for beggary. No doubt,
howsever, but I maun break the back o’ a guinea for you.’
‘Nay, I expect you’ll give your old friend, Robin Carrick, a forenoon’s
call. I’ll not be satisfied if you don’t.’
‘Well, if e’er I heard sic a stand-and-deliver-like speech since ever
I was born,’--exclaimed his grandmother. ‘Did I think, when I used to
send the impudent smytcher, wi’ my haining o’ twa-three pounds to the
bank, that he was contriving to commit sic a highway robbery on me at
last?’
‘But,’ said Walkinshaw, ‘I have always heard you say, that there should
be no stepbairns in families. Now, as you are so kind to Robina and
Walky, it can never be held fair if you tie up your purse to me.’
‘Thou’s a wheedling creature, Jamie,’ replied the Leddy, ‘and nae doubt
I maun do my duty, as every body knows I hae ay done, to a’ my family;
but I’ll soon hae little to do’t wi’, if the twa new married eating
moths are ordain’t to devour a’ my substance. But there’s ae thing I’ll
do for thee, the whilk may be far better than making noughts in Robin
Carrick’s books. I’ll gang out to the Kittlestonheugh, and speer for
thy aunty; and though thy uncle, like a bull of Bashan, said he would
not speak to me, I’ll gar him fin’ the weight o’ a mother’s tongue,
and maybe, through my persuadgeon, he may be wrought to pay for thy
sword and pistols, and other sinews o’ war. For, to speak the truth,
I’m wearying to mak a clean breast wi’ him, and to tell him o’ his
unnaturality to his own dochter; and what’s far waur, the sin, sorrow,
and iniquity, of allooing me, his aged parent, to be rookit o’ plack
and bawbee by twa glaikit jocklandys that dinna care what they burn,
e’en though it were themselves.’
But, before the Leddy got this laudable intention carried into effect,
her daughter-in-law, to the infinite consternation of Dirdumwhamle,
died; and, for some time after that event, no opportunity presented
itself, either for her to be delivered of her grudge, or for any mutual
friend to pave the way to a reconciliation. Young Mrs. Milrookit saw
her mother, and received her last blessing; but it was by stealth,
and unknown to her father. So that, altogether, it would not have
been easy, about the period of the funeral, to have named in all the
royal city a more constipated family, as the Leddy assured all her
acquaintance, the Walkinshaws and Milrookits, were, baith in root and
branch, herself being the wizent and forlorn trunk o’ the tree.