Dick was come to high renown
Since he commenced physician;
Tom was held by all the town
The better politician.
TOM AND DICK.
At the same period when Dr. Gray took under his charge his youthful
lodger Richard Middlemas, he received proposals from the friends of one
Adam Hartley, to receive him also as an apprentice. The lad was the son
of a respectable farmer on the English side of the Border, who educating
his eldest son to his own occupation, desired to make his second a
medical man, in order to avail himself of the friendship of a great
man, his landlord, who had offered to assist his views in life, and
represented a doctor or surgeon as the sort of person to whose advantage
his interest could be most readily applied. Middlemas and Hartley were
therefore associated in their studies. In winter they were boarded in
Edinburgh, for attending the medical classes which were necessary for
taking their degree. Three or four years thus passed on, and, from being
mere boys, the two medical aspirants shot up into young men, who, being
both very good-looking, well dressed, well bred, and having money in
their pockets, became personages of some importance in the little town
of Middlemas, where there was scarce any thing that could be termed an
aristocracy, and in which beaux were scarce and belles were plenty.
Each of the two had his especial partizans; for though the young men
themselves lived in tolerable harmony together, yet, as usual in such
cases, no one could approve of one of them, without at the same time
comparing him with, and asserting his superiority over his companion.
Both were gay, fond of dancing, and sedulous attendants on the
_practeezings_, as he called them, of Mr. McFittoch, a dancing master,
who, itinerant during the summer, became stationary in the winter
season, and afforded the youth of Middlemas the benefit of his
instructions at the rate of twenty lessons for five shillings sterling.
On these occasions, each of Dr. Gray's pupils had his appropriate
praise. Hartley danced with most spirit--Middlemas with a better grace.
Mr. McFittoch would have turned out Richard against the country-side in
the minuet, and wagered the thing dearest to him in the world, (and that
was his kit,) upon his assured superiority; but he admitted Hartley was
superior to him in hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels.
In dress, Hartley was most expensive, perhaps because his father
afforded him better means of being so; but his clothes were neither so
tasteful when new, nor so well preserved when they began to grow old,
as those of Richard Middlemas. Adam Hartley was sometimes fine, at other
times rather slovenly, and on the former occasions looked rather too
conscious of his splendour. His chum was at all times regularly neat
and well dressed; while at the same time he had an air of good-breeding,
which made him appear always at ease; so that his dress, whatever it
was, seemed to be just what he ought to have worn at the time.
In their persons there was a still more strongly marked distinction.
Adam Hartley was full middle size, stout, and well limbed; and an open
English countenance, of the genuine Saxon mould, showed itself among
chestnut locks, until the hair-dresser destroyed them. He loved the
rough exercises of wrestling, boxing, leaping, and quarterstaff,
and frequented, when he could obtain leisure, the bull-baitings and
foot-ball matches, by which the burgh was sometimes enlivened.
Richard, on the contrary, was dark, like his father and mother, with
high features, beautifully formed, but exhibiting something of a foreign
character; and his person was tall and slim, though muscular and active.
His address and manners must have been natural to him, for they were, in
elegance and ease, far beyond any example which he could have found
in his native burgh. He learned the use of the small-sword while in
Edinburgh, and took lessons from a performer at the theatre, with the
purpose of refining his mode of speaking. He became also an amateur of
the drama, regularly attending the playhouse, and assuming the tone of
a critic in that and other lighter departments of literature. To fill up
the contrast, so far as taste was concerned, Richard was a dexterous
and successful angler--Adam, a bold and unerring shot. Their efforts
to surpass each other in supplying Dr. Gray's table, rendered his
housekeeping much preferable to what it had been on former occasions;
and, besides, small presents of fish and game are always agreeable
amongst the inhabitants of a country town, and contributed to increase
the popularity of the young sportsmen.
While the burgh was divided, for lack of better subject of disputation,
concerning the comparative merits of Dr. Gray's two apprentices, he
himself was sometimes chosen the referee. But in this, as on other
matters, the Doctor was cautious. He said the lads were both good lads,
and would be useful men in the profession, if their heads were not
carried with the notice which the foolish people of the burgh took of
them, and the parties of pleasure that were so often taking them away
from their business. No doubt it was natural for him to feel more
confidence in Hartley, who came of ken'd folk, and was very near as
good as a born Scotsman. But if he did feel such a partiality, he blamed
himself for it, since the stranger child, so oddly cast upon his hands,
had peculiar good right to such patronage and affection as he had to
bestow; and truly the young man himself seemed so grateful, that it was
impossible for him to hint the slightest wish, that Dick Middlemas did
not hasten to execute.
There were persons in the burgh of Middlemas who were indiscreet enough
to suppose that Miss Menie must be a better judge than any other person
of the comparative merits of these accomplished personages, respecting
which the public opinion was generally divided. No one even of her
greatest intimates ventured to put the question to her in precise terms;
but her conduct was narrowly observed, and the critics remarked, that
to Adam Hartley her attentions were given more freely and frankly. She
laughed with him, chatted with him, and danced with him; while to Dick
Middlemas her conduct was more shy and distant. The premises seemed
certain, but the public were divided in the conclusions which were to be
drawn from them.
It was not possible for the young men to be the subject of such
discussions without being sensible that they existed; and thus,
contrasted together by the little society in which they moved, they must
have been made of better than ordinary clay, if they had not themselves
entered by degrees into the spirit of the controversy, and considered
themselves as rivals for public applause.
Nor is it to be forgotten, that Menie Gray was by this time shot up
into one of the prettiest young women, not of Middlemas only, but of the
whole county, in which the little burgh is situated. This, indeed, had
been settled by evidence, which could not be esteemed short of decisive.
At the time of the races, there were usually assembled in the burgh some
company of the higher classes from the country around, and many of the
sober burghers mended their incomes, by letting their apartments, or
taking in lodgers of quality for the busy week. All the rural thanes and
thanesses attended on these occasions; and such was the number of cocked
hats and silken trains, that the little town seemed for a time totally
to have changed its inhabitants. On this occasion persons of a certain
quality only were permitted to attend upon the nightly balls which were
given in the old Town-house, and the line of distinction excluded Mr.
Gray's family.
The aristocracy, however, used their privileges with some feelings of
deference to the native beaux and belles of the burgh, who were thus
doomed to hear the fiddles nightly, without being permitted to dance
to them. One evening in the race-week, termed the Hunter's ball,
was dedicated to general amusement, and liberated from the usual
restrictions of etiquette. On this occasion all the respectable families
in the town were invited to share the amusement of the evening, and to
wonder at the finery, and be grateful for the condescension, of their
betters. This was especially the case with the females, for the number
of invitations to the gentlemen of the town was much more limited. Now,
at this general muster, the beauty of Miss Gray's face and person had
placed her, in the opinion of all competent judges, decidedly at the
head of all the belles present, saving those with whom, according to the
ideas of the place, it would hardly have been decent to compare her.
The Laird of the ancient and distinguished house of Louponheight did not
hesitate to engage her hand during the greater part of the evening;
and his mother, renowned for her stern assertion of the distinctions of
rank, placed the little plebeian beside her at supper, and was heard
to say, that the surgeon's daughter behaved very prettily indeed, and
seemed to know perfectly well where and what she was. As for the young
Laird himself, he capered so high, and laughed so uproariously, as
to give rise to a rumour, that he was minded to “shoot madly from his
sphere,” and to convert the village Doctor's daughter into a lady of his
own ancient name.
During this memorable evening, Middlemas and Hartley, who had found room
in the music gallery, witnessed the scene, and, as it would seem, with
very different feelings. Hartley was evidently annoyed by the excess
of attention which the gallant Laird of Louponheight, stimulated by the
influence of a couple of bottles of claret, and by the presence of a
partner who danced remarkably well, paid to Miss Menie Gray. He saw from
his lofty stand all the dumb show of gallantry, with the comfortable
feelings of a famishing creature looking upon a feast which he is not
permitted to share, and regarded every extraordinary frisk of the jovial
Laird, as the same might have been looked upon by a gouty person, who
apprehended that the dignitary was about to descend on his toes. At
length, unable to restrain his emotion, he left the gallery and returned
no more.
Far different was the demeanour of Middlemas. He seemed gratified and
elevated by the attention which was generally paid to Miss Gray, and
by the admiration she excited. On the valiant Laird of Louponheight he
looked with indescribable contempt, and amused himself with pointing out
to the burgh dancing-master, who acted _pro tempore_ as one of the band,
the frolicsome bounds and pirouettes, in which that worthy displayed a
great deal more of vigour than of grace.
“But ye shouldna laugh sae loud, Master Dick,” said the master of
capers; “he hasna had the advantage of a real gracefu' teacher, as ye
have had; and troth, if he listed to tak some lessons, I think I could
make some hand of his feet, for he is a souple chield, and has a gallant
instep of his ain; and sic a laced hat hasna been seen on the causeway
of Middlemas this mony a day.--Ye are standing laughing there, Dick
Middlemas; I would have you be sure he does not cut you out with your
bonny partner yonder.”
“He be----!” Middlemas was beginning a sentence which he could not have
concluded with strict attention to propriety, when the master of
the band summoned McFittoch to his post, by the following ireful
expostulation:--“What are ye about, sir? Mind your bow-hand. How the
deil d'ye think three fiddles is to keep down a bass, if yin o' them
stands girning and gabbling as ye're doing? Play up, sir!”
Dick Middlemas, thus reduced to silence, continued, from his lofty
station, like one of the gods of the Epicureans, to survey what passed
below, without the gaieties which he witnessed being able to excite more
than a smile, which seemed, however, rather to indicate a good-humoured
contempt for what was passing, than a benevolent sympathy with the
pleasures of others.