Give me a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red. For I must
speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein.
--Henry IV, part I.
Mannering, with Sampson for his companion, lost no time in his journey to
Edinburgh. They travelled in the Colonel’s post-chariot, who, knowing his
companion’s habits of abstraction, did not choose to lose him out of his
own sight, far less to trust him on horseback, where, in all probability,
a knavish stable-boy might with little address have contrived to mount
him with his face to the tail. Accordingly, with the aid of his valet,
who attended on horseback, he contrived to bring Mr. Sampson safe to an
inn in Edinburgh--for hotels in those days there were none--without any
other accident than arose from his straying twice upon the road. On one
occasion he was recovered by Barnes, who understood his humour, when,
after engaging in close colloquy with the schoolmaster of Moffat
respecting a disputed quantity in Horace’s 7th Ode, Book II, the dispute
led on to another controversy concerning the exact meaning of the word
malobathro in that lyric effusion. His second escapade was made for the
purpose of visiting the field of Rullion Green, which was dear to his
Presbyterian predilections. Having got out of the carriage for an
instant, he saw the sepulchral monument of the slain at the distance of
about a mile, and was arrested by Barnes in his progress up the Pentland
Hills, having on both occasions forgot his friend, patron, and
fellow-traveller as completely as if he had been in the East Indies. On
being reminded that Colonel Mannering was waiting for him, he uttered his
usual ejaculation of ‘Prodigious! I was oblivious,’ and then strode back
to his post. Barnes was surprised at his master’s patience on both
occasions, knowing by experience how little he brooked neglect or delay;
but the Dominie was in every respect a privileged person. His patron and
he were never for a moment in each other’s way, and it seemed obvious
that they were formed to be companions through life. If Mannering wanted
a particular book, the Dominie could bring it; if he wished to have
accounts summed up or checked, his assistance was equally ready; if he
desired to recall a particular passage in the classics, he could have
recourse to the Dominie as to a dictionary; and all the while this
walking statue was neither presuming when noticed nor sulky when left to
himself. To a proud, shy, reserved man, and such in many respects was
Mannering, this sort of living catalogue and animated automaton had all
the advantages of a literary dumb-waiter.
As soon as they arrived in Edinburgh, and were established at the George
Inn, near Bristo Port, then kept by old Cockburn (I love to be
particular), the Colonel desired the waiter to procure him a guide to Mr.
Pleydell’s, the advocate, for whom he had a letter of introduction from
Mr. Mac-Morlan. He then commanded Barnes to have an eye to the Dominie,
and walked forth with a chairman, who was to usher him to the man of law.
The period was near the end of the American war. The desire of room, of
air, and of decent accommodation had not as yet made very much progress
in the capital of Scotland. Some efforts had been made on the south side
of the town towards building houses WITHIN THEMSELVES, as they are
emphatically termed; and the New Town on the north, since so much
extended, was then just commenced. But the great bulk of the better
classes, and particularly those connected with the law, still lived in
flats or dungeons of the Old Town. The manners also of some of the
veterans of the law had not admitted innovation. One or two eminent
lawyers still saw their clients in taverns, as was the general custom
fifty years before; and although their habits were already considered as
old-fashioned by the younger barristers, yet the custom of mixing wine
and revelry with serious business was still maintained by those senior
counsellors who loved the old road, either because it was such or because
they had got too well used to it to travel any other. Among those
praisers of the past time, who with ostentatious obstinacy affected the
manners of a former generation, was this same Paulus Pleydell, Esq.,
otherwise a good scholar, an excellent lawyer, and a worthy man.
Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering, after
threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then clanging with
the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pye-men; for it had, as his
guide assured him, just’ chappit eight upon the Tron.’ It was long since
Mannering had been in the street of a crowded metropolis, which, with its
noise and clamour, its sounds of trade, of revelry, and of license, its
variety of lights, and the eternally changing bustle of its hundred
groups, offers, by night especially, a spectacle which, though composed
of the most vulgar materials when they are separately considered, has,
when they are combined, a striking and powerful effect on the
imagination. The extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights,
which, glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among
the attics that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky. This
coup d’aeil, which still subsists in a certain degree, was then more
imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on each side,
which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge joins the main
street, formed a superb and uniform place, extending from the front of
the Lucken-booths to the head of the Canongate, and corresponding in
breadth and length to the uncommon height of the buildings on either
side.
Mannering had not much time to look and to admire. His conductor hurried
him across this striking scene, and suddenly dived with him into a very
steep paved lane. Turning to the right, they entered a scale staircase,
as it is called, the state of which, so far as it could be judged of by
one of his senses, annoyed Mannering’s delicacy not a little. When they
had ascended cautiously to a considerable height, they heard a heavy rap
at a door, still two stories above them. The door opened, and immediately
ensued the sharp and worrying bark of a dog, the squalling of a woman,
the screams of an assaulted cat, and the hoarse voice of a man, who cried
in a most imperative tone, ‘Will ye, Mustard? Will ye? down, sir, down!’
‘Lord preserve us!’ said the female voice, ‘an he had worried our cat,
Mr. Pleydell would ne’er hae forgi’en me!’
‘Aweel, my doo, the cat’s no a prin the waur. So he’s no in, ye say?’
‘Na, Mr. Pleydell’s ne’er in the house on Saturday at e’en,’ answered the
female voice.
‘And the morn’s Sabbath too,’ said the querist. ‘I dinna ken what will be
done.’
By this time Mannering appeared, and found a tall, strong countryman,
clad in a coat of pepper-and-salt-coloured mixture, with huge metal
buttons, a glazed hat and boots, and a large horsewhip beneath his arm,
in colloquy with a slipshod damsel, who had in one hand the lock of the
door, and in the other a pail of whiting, or camstane, as it is called,
mixed with water--a circumstance which indicates Saturday night in
Edinburgh.
‘So Mr. Pleydell is not at home, my good girl?’ said Mannering.
‘Ay, sir, he’s at hame, but he’s no in the house; he’s aye out on
Saturday at e’en.’
‘But, my good girl, I am a stranger, and my business express. Will you
tell me where I can find him?’
‘His honour,’ said the chairman, ‘will be at Clerihugh’s about this time.
Hersell could hae tell’d ye that, but she thought ye wanted to see his
house.’
‘Well, then, show me to this tavern. I suppose he will see me, as I come
on business of some consequence?’
‘I dinna ken, sir,’ said the girl; ‘he disna like to be disturbed on
Saturdays wi’ business; but he’s aye civil to strangers.’
‘I’ll gang to the tavern too,’ said our friend Dinmont, ‘for I am a
stranger also, and on business e’en sic like.’
‘Na,’ said the handmaiden, ‘an he see the gentleman, he’ll see the simple
body too; but, Lord’s sake, dinna say it was me sent ye there!’
‘Atweel, I am a simple body, that’s true, hinny, but I am no come to
steal ony o’ his skeel for naething,’ said the farmer in his honest
pride, and strutted away downstairs, followed by Mannering and the cadie.
Mannering could not help admiring the determined stride with which the
stranger who preceded them divided the press, shouldering from him, by
the mere weight and impetus of his motion, both drunk and sober
passengers. ‘He’ll be a Teviotdale tup tat ane,’ said the chairman,
‘tat’s for keeping ta crown o’ ta causeway tat gate; he ‘ll no gang far
or he ‘ll get somebody to bell ta cat wi’ him.’
His shrewd augury, however, was not fulfilled. Those who recoiled from
the colossal weight of Dinmont, on looking up at his size and strength,
apparently judged him too heavy metal to be rashly encountered, and
suffered him to pursue his course unchallenged. Following in the wake of
this first-rate, Mannering proceeded till the farmer made a pause, and,
looking back to the chairman, said, ‘I’m thinking this will be the close,
friend.’
‘Ay, ay,’ replied Donald, ‘tat’s ta close.’
Dinmont descended confidently, then turned into a dark alley, then up a
dark stair, and then into an open door. While he was whistling shrilly
for the waiter, as if he had been one of his collie dogs, Mannering
looked round him, and could hardly conceive how a gentleman of a liberal
profession and good society should choose such a scene for social
indulgence. Besides the miserable entrance, the house itself seemed
paltry and half ruinous. The passage in which they stood had a window to
the close, which admitted a little light during the daytime, and a
villainous compound of smells at all times, but more especially towards
evening. Corresponding to this window was a borrowed light on the other
side of the passage, looking into the kitchen, which had no direct
communication with the free air, but received in the daytime, at second
hand, such straggling and obscure light as found its way from the lane
through the window opposite. At present the interior of the kitchen was
visible by its own huge fires--a sort of Pandemonium, where men and
women, half undressed, were busied in baking, broiling, roasting oysters,
and preparing devils on the gridiron; the mistress of the place, with her
shoes slipshod, and her hair straggling like that of Megaera from under a
round-eared cap, toiling, scolding, receiving orders, giving them, and
obeying them all at once, seemed the presiding enchantress of that gloomy
and fiery region.
Loud and repeated bursts of laughter from different quarters of the house
proved that her labours were acceptable, and not unrewarded by a generous
public. With some difficulty a waiter was prevailed upon to show Colonel
Mannering and Dinmont the room where their friend learned in the law held
his hebdomadal carousals. The scene which it exhibited, and particularly
the attitude of the counsellor himself, the principal figure therein,
struck his two clients with amazement.
Mr. Pleydell was a lively, sharp-looking gentleman, with a professional
shrewdness in his eye, and, generally speaking, a professional formality
in his manners. But this, like his three-tailed wig and black coat, he
could slip off on a Saturday evening, when surrounded by a party of jolly
companions, and disposed for what he called his altitudes. On the present
occasion the revel had lasted since four o’clock, and at length, under
the direction of a venerable compotator, who had shared the sports and
festivity of three generations, the frolicsome company had begun to
practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of HIGH JINKS. This game
was played in several different ways. Most frequently the dice were
thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to
assume and maintain for a time a certain fictitious character, or to
repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in a particular order. If
they departed from the characters assigned, or if their memory proved
treacherous in the repetition, they incurred forfeits, which were either
compounded for by swallowing an additional bumper or by paying a small
sum towards the reckoning. At this sport the jovial company were closely
engaged when Mannering entered the room.
Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, such as we have described him, was enthroned as
a monarch in an elbow-chair placed on the dining-table, his scratch wig
on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with
an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around
him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse as these:--
Where is Gerunto now? and what’s become of him? Gerunto’s drowned because
he could not swim, etc., etc.
Such, O Themis, were anciently the sports of thy Scottish children!
Dinmont was first in the room. He stood aghast a moment, and then
exclaimed, ‘It’s him, sure enough. Deil o’ the like o’ that ever I saw!’
At the sound of ‘Mr. Dinmont and Colonel Mannering wanting to speak to
you, sir,’ Pleydell turned his head, and blushed a little when he saw the
very genteel figure of the English stranger. He was, however, of the
opinion of Falstaff, ‘Out, ye villains, play out the play!’ wisely
judging it the better way to appear totally unconcerned. ‘Where be our
guards?’ exclaimed this second Justinian; ‘see ye not a stranger knight
from foreign parts arrived at this our court of Holyrood, with our bold
yeoman Andrew Dinmont, who has succeeded to the keeping of our royal
flocks within the forest of Jedwood, where, thanks to our royal care in
the administration of justice, they feed as safe as if they were within
the bounds of Fife? Where be our heralds, our pursuivants, our Lyon, our
Marchmount, our Carrick, and our Snowdown? Let the strangers be placed at
our board, and regaled as beseemeth their quality and this our high
holiday; to-morrow we will hear their tidings.’
‘So please you, my liege, to-morrow’s Sunday,’ said one of the company.
‘Sunday, is it? then we will give no offence to the assembly of the kirk;
on Monday shall be their audience.’
Mannering, who had stood at first uncertain whether to advance or
retreat, now resolved to enter for the moment into the whim of the scene,
though internally fretting at Mac-Morlan for sending him to consult with
a crack-brained humourist. He therefore advanced with three profound
congees, and craved permission to lay his credentials at the feet of the
Scottish monarch, in order to be perused at his best leisure. The gravity
with which he accommodated himself to the humour of the moment, and the
deep and humble inclination with which he at first declined, and then
accepted, a seat presented by the master of the ceremonies, procured him
three rounds of applause.
‘Deil hae me, if they arena a’ mad thegither!’ said Dinmont, occupying
with less ceremony a seat at the bottom of the table; ‘or else they hae
taen Yule before it comes, and are gaun a-guisarding.’
A large glass of claret was offered to Mannering, who drank it to the
health of the reigning prince. ‘You are, I presume to guess,’ said the
monarch, ‘that celebrated Sir Miles Mannering, so renowned in the French
wars, and may well pronounce to us if the wines of Gascony lose their
flavour in our more northern realm.’
Mannering, agreeably flattered by this allusion to the fame of his
celebrated ancestor, replied by professing himself only a distant
relation of the preux chevalier, and added, ‘that in his opinion the wine
was superlatively good.’
‘It’s ower cauld for my stamach,’ said Dinmont, setting down the
glass--empty however.
‘We will correct that quality,’ answered King Paulus, the first of the
name; ‘we have not forgotten that the moist and humid air of our valley
of Liddel inclines to stronger potations. Seneschal, let our faithful
yeoman have a cup of brandy; it will be more germain to the matter.’
‘And now,’ said Mannering, ‘since we have unwarily intruded upon your
majesty at a moment of mirthful retirement, be pleased to say when you
will indulge a stranger with an audience on those affairs of weight which
have brought him to your northern capital.’
The monarch opened Mac-Morlan’s letter, and, running it hastily over,
exclaimed with his natural voice and manner, ‘Lucy Bertram of Ellangowan,
poor dear lassie!’
‘A forfeit! a forfeit!’ exclaimed a dozen voices; ‘his majesty has forgot
his kingly character.’
‘Not a whit! not a whit!’ replied the king; ‘I’ll be judged by this
courteous knight. May not a monarch love a maid of low degree? Is not
King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid an adjudged case in point?’
‘Professional! professional! another forfeit,’ exclaimed the tumultuary
nobility.
‘Had not our royal predecessors,’ continued the monarch, exalting his
sovereign voice to drown these disaffected clamours,--‘had they not their
Jean Logies, their Bessie Carmichaels, their Oliphants, their Sandilands,
and their Weirs, and shall it be denied to us even to name a maiden whom
we delight to honour? Nay, then, sink state and perish sovereignty! for,
like a second Charles V, we will abdicate, and seek in the private shades
of life those pleasures which are denied to a throne.’
So saying, he flung away his crown, and sprung from his exalted station
with more agility than could have been expected from his age, ordered
lights and a wash-hand basin and towel, with a cup of green tea, into
another room, and made a sign to Mannering to accompany him. In less than
two minutes he washed his face and hands, settled his wig in the glass,
and, to Mannering’s great surprise, looked quite a different man from the
childish Bacchanal he had seen a moment before.
‘There are folks,’ he said, ‘Mr. Mannering, before whom one should take
care how they play the fool, because they have either too much malice or
too little wit, as the poet says. The best compliment I can pay Colonel
Mannering is to show I am not ashamed to expose myself before him; and
truly I think it is a compliment I have not spared to-night on your
good-nature. But what’s that great strong fellow wanting?’
Dinmont, who had pushed after Mannering into the room, began with a
scrape with his foot and a scratch of his head in unison. ‘I am Dandie
Dinmont, sir, of the Charlie’s Hope--the Liddesdale lad; ye’ll mind me?
It was for me ye won yon grand plea.’
‘What plea, you loggerhead?’ said the lawyer. ‘D’ye think I can remember
all the fools that come to plague me?’
‘Lord, sir, it was the grand plea about the grazing o’ the Langtae Head!’
said the farmer.
‘Well, curse thee, never mind; give me the memorial and come to me on
Monday at ten,’ replied the learned counsel.
‘But, sir, I haena got ony distinct memorial.’
‘No memorial, man?’ said Pleydell.
‘Na, sir, nae memorial,’ answered Dandie; ‘for your honour said before,
Mr. Pleydell, ye’ll mind, that ye liked best to hear us hill-folk tell
our ain tale by word o’ mouth.’
‘Beshrew my tongue, that said so!’ answered the counsellor; ‘it will cost
my ears a dinning. Well, say in two words what you’ve got to say. You see
the gentleman waits.’
‘Ou, sir, if the gentleman likes he may play his ain spring first; it’s
a’ ane to Dandie.’
‘Now, you looby,’ said the lawyer, ‘cannot you conceive that your
business can be nothing to Colonel Mannering, but that he may not choose
to have these great ears of thine regaled with his matters?’
‘Aweel, sir, just as you and he like, so ye see to my business,’ said
Dandie, not a whit disconcerted by the roughness of this reception.
‘We’re at the auld wark o’ the marches again, Jock o’ Dawston Cleugh and
me. Ye see we march on the tap o’ Touthop-rigg after we pass the
Pomoragrains; for the Pomoragrains, and Slackenspool, and Bloodylaws,
they come in there, and they belang to the Peel; but after ye pass
Pomoragrains at a muckle great saucer-headed cutlugged stane that they
ca’ Charlie’s Chuckie, there Dawston Cleugh and Charlie’s Hope they
march. Now, I say the march rins on the tap o’ the hill where the wind
and water shears; but Jock o’ Dawston Cleugh again, he contravenes that,
and says that it bauds down by the auld drove-road that gaes awa by the
Knot o’ the Gate ower to Keeldar Ward; and that makes an unco
difference.’
‘And what difference does it make, friend?’ said Pleydell. ‘How many
sheep will it feed?’
‘Ou, no mony,’ said Dandie, scratching his head; ‘it’s lying high and
exposed: it may feed a hog, or aiblins twa in a good year.’
‘And for this grazing, which may be worth about five shillings a year,
you are willing to throw away a hundred pound or two?’
‘Na, sir, it’s no for the value of the grass,’ replied Dinmont; ‘it’s for
justice.’
‘My good friend,’ said Pleydell, ‘justice, like charity, should begin at
home. Do you justice to your wife and family, and think no more about the
matter.’
Dinmont still lingered, twisting his hat in his hand. ‘It’s no for that,
sir; but I would like ill to be bragged wi’ him; he threeps he’ll bring a
score o’ witnesses and mair, and I’m sure there’s as mony will swear for
me as for him, folk that lived a’ their days upon the Charlie’s Hope, and
wadna like to see the land lose its right.’
‘Zounds, man, if it be a point of honour,’ said the lawyer, ‘why don’t
your landlords take it up?’
‘I dinna ken, sir (scratching his head again); there’s been nae
election-dusts lately, and the lairds are unco neighbourly, and Jock and
me canna get them to yoke thegither about it a’ that we can say; but if
ye thought we might keep up the rent--’
‘No! no! that will never do,’ said Pleydell. ‘Confound you, why don’t you
take good cudgels and settle it?’
‘Odd, sir,’ answered the farmer, ‘we tried that three times already,
that’s twice on the land and ance at Lockerby Fair. But I dinna ken;
we’re baith gey good at single-stick, and it couldna weel be judged.’
‘Then take broadswords, and be d--d to you, as your fathers did before
you,’ said the counsel learned in the law.
‘Aweel, sir, if ye think it wadna be again the law, it’s a’ ane to
Dandie.’
‘Hold! hold!’ exclaimed Pleydell, ‘we shall have another Lord Soulis’
mistake. Pr’ythee, man, comprehend me; I wish you to consider how very
trifling and foolish a lawsuit you wish to engage in.’
‘Ay, sir?’ said Dandie, in a disappointed tone. ‘So ye winna take on wi’
me, I’m doubting?’
‘Me! not I. Go home, go home, take a pint and agree.’ Dandie looked but
half contented, and still remained stationary. ‘Anything more, my
friend?’
‘Only, sir, about the succession of this leddy that’s dead, auld Miss
Margaret Bertram o’ Singleside.’
‘Ay, what about her?’ said the counsellor, rather surprised.
‘Ou, we have nae connexion at a’ wi’ the Bertrams,’ said Dandie; ‘they
were grand folk by the like o’ us; but Jean Liltup, that was auld
Singleside’s housekeeper, and the mother of these twa young ladies that
are gane--the last o’ them’s dead at a ripe age, I trow--Jean Liltup came
out o’ Liddel water, and she was as near our connexion as second cousin
to my mother’s half-sister. She drew up wi’ Singleside, nae doubt, when
she was his housekeeper, and it was a sair vex and grief to a’ her kith
and kin. But he acknowledged a marriage, and satisfied the kirk; and now
I wad ken frae you if we hae not some claim by law?’
‘Not the shadow of a claim.’
‘Aweel, we’re nae puirer,’ said Dandie; ‘but she may hae thought on us if
she was minded to make a testament. Weel, sir, I’ve said my say; I’se
e’en wish you good-night, and--’ putting his hand in his pocket.
‘No, no, my friend; I never take fees on Saturday nights, or without a
memorial. Away with you, Dandie.’ And Dandie made his reverence and
departed accordingly.