Whence cometh Smith, be he knight, lord, or squire,
But from the smith that forged in the fire?
VERSTEGAN.
The armourer’s heart swelled big with various and contending sensations,
so that it seemed as if it would burst the leathern doublet under which
it was shrouded. He arose, turned away his head, and extended his hand
towards the glover, while he averted his face, as if desirous that his
emotion should not be read upon his countenance.
“Nay, hang me if I bid you farewell, man,” said Simon, striking the flat
of his hand against that which the armourer expanded towards him. “I
will shake no hands with you for an hour to come at least. Tarry but
a moment, man, and I will explain all this; and surely a few drops of
blood from a scratch, and a few silly words from a foolish wench’s
lips, are not to part father and son when they have been so long without
meeting? Stay, then, man, if ever you would wish for a father’s blessing
and St. Valentine’s, whose blessed eve this chances to be.”
The glover was soon heard loudly summoning Dorothy, and, after some
clanking of keys and trampling up and down stairs, Dorothy appeared
bearing three large rummer cups of green glass, which were then esteemed
a great and precious curiosity, and the glover followed with a huge
bottle, equal at least to three quarts of these degenerate days.
“Here is a cup of wine, Henry, older by half than I am myself; my
father had it in a gift from stout old Crabbe, the Flemish engineer,
who defended Perth so stoutly in the minority of David the Second. We
glovers could always do something in war, though our connexion with
it was less than yours who work in steel and iron. And my father had
pleased old Crabbe, some other day I will tell you how, and also how
long these bottles were concealed under ground, to save them from the
reiving Southron. So I will empty a cup to the soul’s health of my
honoured father--May his sins be forgiven him! Dorothy, thou shalt drink
this pledge, and then be gone to thy cock loft. I know thine ears are
itching, girl, but I have that to say which no one must hear save Henry
Smith, the son of mine adoption.”
Dorothy did not venture to remonstrate, but, taking off her glass, or
rather her goblet, with good courage, retired to her sleeping apartment,
according to her master’s commands.
The two friends were left alone.
“It grieves me, friend Henry,” said Simon, filling at the same time his
own glass and his guest’s--“it grieves me from my soul that my daughter
retains this silly humor; but also methinks, thou mightst mend it. Why
wouldst thou come hither clattering with thy sword and dagger, when the
girl is so silly that she cannot bear the sight of these? Dost thou not
remember that thou hadst a sort of quarrel with her even before thy
last departure from Perth, because thou wouldst not go like other honest
quiet burghers, but must be ever armed, like one of the rascally jackmen
that wait on the nobility? Sure it is time enough for decent burgesses
to arm at the tolling of the common bell, which calls us out bodin in
effeir of war.”
“Why, my good father, that was not my fault; but I had no sooner quitted
my nag than I run hither to tell you of my return, thinking, if it
were your will to permit me, that I would get your advice about being
Mistress Catharine’s Valentine for the year; and then I heard from
Mrs. Dorothy that you were gone to hear mass at the Black Friars. So I
thought I would follow thither, partly to hear the same mass with you,
and partly--Our Lady and St. Valentine forgive me!--to look upon one who
thinks little enough of me. And, as you entered the church, methought
I saw two or three dangerous looking men holding counsel together, and
gazing at you and at her, and in especial Sir John Ramorny, whom I knew
well enough, for all his disguise, and the velvet patch over his eye,
and his cloak so like a serving man’s; so methought, father Simon, that,
as you were old, and yonder slip of a Highlander something too young to
do battle, I would even walk quietly after you, not doubting, with the
tools I had about me, to bring any one to reason that might disturb you
in your way home. You know that yourself discovered me, and drew me into
the house, whether I would or no; otherwise, I promise you, I would not
have seen your daughter till I had donn’d the new jerkin which was made
at Berwick after the latest cut; nor would I have appeared before her
with these weapons, which she dislikes so much. Although, to say truth,
so many are at deadly feud with me for one unhappy chance or another,
that it is as needful for me as for any man in Scotland to go by night
with weapons about me.”
“The silly wench never thinks of that,” said Simon Glover: “she never
has sense to consider, that in our dear native land of Scotland every
man deems it his privilege and duty to avenge his own wrong. But, Harry,
my boy, thou art to blame for taking her talk so much to heart. I have
seen thee bold enough with other wenches, wherefore so still and tongue
tied with her?”
“Because she is something different from other maidens, father
Glover--because she is not only more beautiful, but wiser, higher,
holier, and seems to me as if she were made of better clay than we that
approach her. I can hold my head high enough with the rest of the lasses
round the maypole; but somehow, when I approach Catharine, I feel myself
an earthly, coarse, ferocious creature, scarce worthy to look on her,
much less to contradict the precepts which she expounds to me.”
“You are an imprudent merchant, Harry Smith,” replied Simon, “and rate
too high the goods you wish to purchase. Catharine is a good girl, and
my daughter; but if you make her a conceited ape by your bashfulness and
your flattery, neither you nor I will see our wishes accomplished.”
“I often fear it, my good father,” said the smith; “for I feel how
little I am deserving of Catharine.”
“Feel a thread’s end!” said the glover; “feel for me, friend Smith--for
Catharine and me. Think how the poor thing is beset from morning to
night, and by what sort of persons, even though windows be down and
doors shut. We were accosted today by one too powerful to be named--ay,
and he showed his displeasure openly, because I would not permit him
to gallant my daughter in the church itself, when the priest was saying
mass. There are others scarce less reasonable. I sometimes wish that
Catharine were some degrees less fair, that she might not catch that
dangerous sort of admiration, or somewhat less holy, that she might sit
down like an honest woman, contented with stout Henry Smith, who
could protect his wife against every sprig of chivalry in the court of
Scotland.”
“And if I did not,” said Henry, thrusting out a hand and arm which might
have belonged to a giant for bone and muscle, “I would I may never bring
hammer upon anvil again! Ay, an it were come but that length, my fair
Catharine should see that there is no harm in a man having the trick of
defence. But I believe she thinks the whole world is one great minster
church, and that all who live in it should behave as if they were at an
eternal mass.”
“Nay, in truth,” said the father, “she has strange influence over those
who approach her; the Highland lad, Conachar, with whom I have been
troubled for these two or three years, although you may see he has the
natural spirit of his people, obeys the least sign which Catharine makes
him, and, indeed, will hardly be ruled by any one else in the house. She
takes much pains with him to bring him from his rude Highland habits.”
Here Harry Smith became uneasy in his chair, lifted the flagon, set it
down, and at length exclaimed: “The devil take the young Highland whelp
and his whole kindred! What has Catharine to do to instruct such a
fellow as he? He will be just like the wolf cub that I was fool enough
to train to the offices of a dog, and every one thought him reclaimed,
till, in an ill hour, I went to walk on the hill of Moncrieff, when he
broke loose on the laird’s flock, and made a havoc that I might well
have rued, had the laird not wanted a harness at the time. And I marvel
that you, being a sensible man, father Glover, will keep this Highland
young fellow--a likely one, I promise you--so nigh to Catharine, as
if there were no other than your daughter to serve him for a
schoolmistress.”
“Fie, my son--fie; now you are jealous,” said Simon, “of a poor young
fellow who, to tell you the truth, resides here because he may not so
well live on the other side of the hill.”
“Ay--ay, father Simon,” retorted the smith, who had all the narrow
minded feelings of the burghers of his time, “an it were not for fear
of offence, I would say that you have even too much packing and peiling
with yonder loons out of burgh.”
“I must get my deer hides, buckskins, kidskins, and so forth somewhere,
my good Harry, and Highlandmen give good bargains.”
“They can afford them,” replied Henry, drily, “for they sell nothing but
stolen gear.”
“Well--well, be that as it may, it is not my business where they get
the bestial, so I get the hides. But as I was saying, there are certain
considerations why I am willing to oblige the father of this young man,
by keeping him here. And he is but half a Highlander neither, and wants
a thought of the dour spirit of a ‘glune amie’ after all, I have seldom
seen him so fierce as he showed himself but now.”
“You could not, unless he had killed his man,” replied the smith, in the
same dry tone.
“Nevertheless, if you wish it, Harry, I’ll set all other respects aside,
and send the landlouper to seek other quarters tomorrow morning.”
“Nay, father,” said the smith, “you cannot suppose that Harry Gow cares
the value of a smithy dander for such a cub as yonder cat-a-mountain?
I care little, I promise you, though all his clan were coming down the
Shoegate with slogan crying and pipes playing: I would find fifty blades
and bucklers would send them back faster than they came. But, to speak
truth, though it is a fool’s speech too, I care not to see the fellow so
much with Catharine. Remember, father Glover, your trade keeps your eyes
and hands close employed, and must have your heedful care, even if this
lazy lurdane wrought at it, which you know yourself he seldom does.”
“And that is true,” said Simon: “he cuts all his gloves out for the
right hand, and never could finish a pair in his life.”
“No doubt, his notions of skin cutting are rather different,” said
Henry. “But with your leave, father, I would only say that, work he or
be he idle, he has no bleared eyes, no hands seared with the hot iron,
and welked by the use of the fore hammer, no hair rusted in the smoke,
and singed in the furnace, like the hide of a badger, rather than what
is fit to be covered with a Christian bonnet. Now, let Catharine be
as good a wench as ever lived, and I will uphold her to be the best in
Perth, yet she must see and know that these things make a difference
betwixt man and man, and that the difference is not in my favour.”
“Here is to thee, with all my heart, son Harry,” said the old man,
filling a brimmer to his companion and another to himself; “I see that,
good smith as thou art, thou ken’st not the mettle that women are made
of. Thou must be bold, Henry; and bear thyself not as if thou wert going
to the gallows lee, but like a gay young fellow, who knows his own worth
and will not be slighted by the best grandchild Eve ever had. Catharine
is a woman like her mother, and thou thinkest foolishly to suppose they
are all set on what pleases the eye. Their ear must be pleased too, man:
they must know that he whom they favour is bold and buxom, and might
have the love of twenty, though he is suing for theirs. Believe an
old man, woman walk more by what others think than by what they think
themselves, and when she asks for the boldest man in Perth whom can
she hear named but Harry Burn-the-wind? The best armourer that ever
fashioned weapon on anvil? Why, Harry Smith again. The tightest dancer
at the maypole? Why, the lusty smith. The gayest troller of ballads?
Why, who but Harry Gow? The best wrestler, sword and buckler player, the
king of the weapon shawing, the breaker of mad horses, the tamer of
wild Highlandmen? Evermore it is thee--thee--no one but thee. And shall
Catharine prefer yonder slip of a Highland boy to thee? Pshaw! she
might as well make a steel gauntlet out of kid’s leather. I tell thee,
Conachar is nothing to her, but so far as she would fain prevent the
devil having his due of him, as of other Highlandmen. God bless her,
poor thing, she would bring all mankind to better thoughts if she
could.”
“In which she will fail to a certainty,” said the smith, who, as the
reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. “I will
wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed
a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that
debate: the devil will have the tartan, that is sure enough.”
“Ay, but Catharine,” replied the glover, “hath a second thou knowest
little of: Father Clement has taken the young reiver in hand, and he
fears a hundred devils as little as I do a flock of geese.”
“Father Clement!” said the smith. “You are always making some new saint
in this godly city of St. Johnston. Pray, who, for a devil’s drubber,
may he be? One of your hermits that is trained for the work like
a wrestler for the ring, and brings himself to trim by fasting and
penance, is he not?”
“No, that is the marvel of it,” said Simon: “Father Clement eats,
drinks, and lives much like other folks--all the rules of the church,
nevertheless, strictly observed.”
“Oh, I comprehend!--a buxom priest that thinks more of good living than
of good life, tipples a can on Fastern’s Eve, to enable him to face
Lent, has a pleasant in principio, and confesses all the prettiest women
about the town?”
“You are on the bow hand still, smith. I tell you, my daughter and I
could nose out either a fasting hypocrite or a full one. But Father
Clement is neither the one nor the other.”
“But what is he then, in Heaven’s name?”
“One who is either greatly better than half his brethren of St. Johnston
put together, or so much worse than the worst of them, that it is sin
and shame that he is suffered to abide in the country.”
“Methinks it were easy to tell whether he be the one or the other,” said
the smith.
“Content you, my friend,” said Simon, “with knowing that, if you judge
Father Clement by what you see him do and hear him say, you will think
of him as the best and kindest man in the world, with a comfort for
every man’s grief, a counsel for every man’s difficulty, the rich man’s
surest guide, and the poor man’s best friend. But if you listen to what
the Dominicans say of him, he is--Benedicite!--(here the glover crossed
himself on brow and bosom)--a foul heretic, who ought by means of
earthly flames to be sent to those which burn eternally.”
The smith also crossed himself, and exclaimed: “St. Mary! father Simon,
and do you, who are so good and prudent that you have been called the
Wise Glover of Perth, let your daughter attend the ministry of one
who--the saints preserve us!--may be in league with the foul fiend
himself! Why, was it not a priest who raised the devil in the Meal
Vennel, when Hodge Jackson’s house was blown down in the great wind?
Did not the devil appear in the midst of the Tay, dressed in a priest’s
scapular, gambolling like a pellack amongst the waves, the morning when
our stately bridge was swept away?”
“I cannot tell whether he did or no,” said the glover; “I only know I
saw him not. As to Catharine, she cannot be said to use Father Clement’s
ministry, seeing her confessor is old Father Francis the Dominican, from
whom she had her shrift today. But women will sometimes be wilful, and
sure enough she consults with Father Clement more than I could wish; and
yet when I have spoken with him myself, I have thought him so good and
holy a man that I could have trusted my own salvation with him. There
are bad reports of him among the Dominicans, that is certain. But what
have we laymen to do with such things, my son? Let us pay Mother Church
her dues, give our alms, confess and do our penances duly, and the
saints will bear us out.”
“Ay, truly; and they will have consideration,” said the smith, “for any
rash and unhappy blow that a man may deal in a fight, when his party was
on defence, and standing up to him; and that’s the only creed a man can
live upon in Scotland, let your daughter think what she pleases. Marry,
a man must know his fence, or have a short lease of his life, in any
place where blows are going so rife. Five nobles to our altar have
cleared me for the best man I ever had misfortune with.”
“Let us finish our flask, then,” said the old glover; “for I reckon the
Dominican tower is tolling midnight. And hark thee, son Henry; be at the
lattice window on our east gable by the very peep of dawn, and make
me aware thou art come by whistling the smith’s call gently. I will
contrive that Catharine shall look out at the window, and thus thou wilt
have all the privileges of being a gallant Valentine through the rest of
the year; which, if thou canst not use to thine own advantage, I shall
be led to think that, for all thou be’st covered with the lion’s hide,
nature has left on thee the long ears of the ass.”
“Amen, father,” said the armourer, “a hearty goodnight to you; and God’s
blessing on your roof tree, and those whom it covers. You shall hear the
smith’s call sound by cock crowing; I warrant I put sir chanticleer to
shame.”
So saying, he took his leave; and, though completely undaunted, moved
through the deserted streets like one upon his guard, to his own
dwelling, which was situated in the Mill Wynd, at the western end of
Perth.