Wilt thou go on with me?
The moon is bright, the sea is calm,
And I know well the ocean paths . . .
Thou wilt go on with me!
Thalaba.
The fatigue and agitation of these various scenes had agitated Jeanie so
much, notwithstanding her robust strength of constitution, that Archibald
judged it necessary that she should have a day's repose at the village of
Longtown. It was in vain that Jeanie protested against any delay. The
Duke of Argyle's man of confidence was of course consequential; and as he
had been bred to the medical profession in his youth (at least he used
this expression to describe his having, thirty years before, pounded for
six months in the mortar of old Mungo Mangleman, the surgeon at
Greenock), he was obstinate whenever a matter of health was in question.
In this case he discovered febrile symptoms, and having once made a happy
application of that learned phrase to Jeanie's case, all farther
resistance became in vain; and she was glad to acquiesce, and even to go
to bed, and drink water-gruel, in order that she might possess her soul
in quiet and without interruption.
Mr. Archibald was equally attentive in another particular. He observed
that the execution of the old woman, and the miserable fate of her
daughter, seemed to have had a more powerful effect upon Jeanie's mind,
than the usual feelings of humanity might naturally have been expected to
occasion. Yet she was obviously a strong-minded, sensible young woman,
and in no respect subject to nervous affections; and therefore Archibald,
being ignorant of any special connection between his master's prote'ge'e
and these unfortunate persons, excepting that she had seen Madge formerly
in Scotland, naturally imputed the strong impression these events had
made upon her, to her associating them with the unhappy circumstances in
which her sister had so lately stood. He became anxious, therefore, to
prevent anything occurring which might recall these associations to
Jeanie's mind.
Archibald had speedily an opportunity of exercising this precaution. A
pedlar brought to Longtown that evening, amongst other wares, a large
broad-side sheet, giving an account of the "Last Speech and Execution of
Margaret Murdockson, and of the barbarous Murder of her Daughter,
Magdalene or Madge Murdockson, called Madge Wildfire; and of her pious
conversation with his Reverence Archdeacon Fleming;" which authentic
publication had apparently taken place on the day they left Carlisle, and
being an article of a nature peculiarly acceptable to such country-folk
as were within hearing of the transaction, the itinerant bibliopolist had
forthwith added them to his stock in trade. He found a merchant sooner
than he expected; for Archibald, much applauding his own prudence,
purchased the whole lot for two shillings and ninepence; and the pedlar,
delighted with the profit of such a wholesale transaction, instantly
returned to Carlisle to supply himself with more.
The considerate Mr. Archibald was about to commit his whole purchase to
the flames, but it was rescued by the yet more considerate dairy-damsel,
who said, very prudently, it was a pity to waste so much paper, which
might crepe hair, pin up bonnets, and serve many other useful purposes;
and who promised to put the parcel into her own trunk, and keep it
carefully out of the sight of Mrs. Jeanie Deans: "Though, by-the-bye, she
had no great notion of folk being so very nice. Mrs. Deans might have had
enough to think about the gallows all this time to endure a sight of it,
without all this to-do about it."
Archibald reminded the dame of the dairy of the Duke's particular charge,
that they should be attentive and civil to Jeanie as also that they were
to part company soon, and consequently would not be doomed to observing
any one's health or temper during the rest of the journey. With which
answer Mrs. Dolly Dutton was obliged to hold herself satisfied. On the
morning they resumed their journey, and prosecuted it successfully,
travelling through Dumfriesshire and part of Lanarkshire, until they
arrived at the small town of Rutherglen, within about four miles of
Glasgow. Here an express brought letters to Archibald from the principal
agent of the Duke of Argyle in Edinburgh.
He said nothing of their contents that evening; but when they were seated
in the carriage the next day, the faithful squire informed Jeanie, that
he had received directions from the Duke's factor, to whom his Grace had
recommended him to carry her, if she had no objection, for a stage or two
beyond Glasgow. Some temporary causes of discontent had occasioned
tumults in that city and the neighbourhood, which would render it
unadvisable for Mrs. Jeanie Deans to travel alone and unprotected betwixt
that city and Edinburgh; whereas, by going forward a little farther, they
would meet one of his Grace's subfactors, who was coming down from the
Highlands to Edinburgh with his wife, and under whose charge she might
journey with comfort and in safety.
Jeanie remonstrated against this arrangement. "She had been lang," she
said, "frae hame--her father and her sister behoved to be very anxious to
see her--there were other friends she had that werena weel in health. She
was willing to pay for man and horse at Glasgow, and surely naebody wad
meddle wi' sae harmless and feckless a creature as she was.--She was
muckle obliged by the offer; but never hunted deer langed for its
resting-place as I do to find myself at Saint Leonard's."
The groom of the chambers exchanged a look with his female companion,
which seemed so full of meaning, that Jeanie screamed aloud--"O Mr.
Archibald--Mrs. Dutton, if ye ken of onything that has happened at Saint
Leonard's, for God's sake--for pity's sake, tell me, and dinna keep me in
suspense!"
"I really know nothing, Mrs. Deans," said the groom of the chambers.
"And I--I--I am sure, I knows as little," said the dame of the dairy,
while some communication seemed to tremble on her lips, which, at a
glance of Archibald's eye, she appeared to swallow down, and compressed
her lips thereafter into a state of extreme and vigilant firmness, as if
she had been afraid of its bolting out before she was aware.
Jeanie saw there was to be something concealed from her, and it was only
the repeated assurances of Archibald that her father--her sister--all her
friends were, as far as he knew, well and happy, that at all pacified her
alarm. From such respectable people as those with whom she travelled she
could apprehend no harm, and yet her distress was so obvious, that
Archibald, as a last resource, pulled out, and put into her hand, a slip
of paper, on which these words were written:--
"Jeanie Deans--You will do me a favour by going with Archibald and my
female domestic a day's journey beyond Glasgow, and asking them no
questions, which will greatly oblige your friend, 'Argyle & Greenwich.'"
Although this laconic epistle, from a nobleman to whom she was bound by
such inestimable obligations, silenced all Jeanie's objections to the
proposed route, it rather added to than diminished the eagerness of her
curiosity. The proceeding to Glasgow seemed now no longer to be an object
with her fellow-travellers. On the contrary, they kept the left-hand side
of the river Clyde, and travelled through a thousand beautiful and
changing views down the side of that noble stream, till, ceasing to hold
its inland character, it began to assume that of a navigable river.
"You are not for gaun intill Glasgow then?" said Jeanie, as she observed
that the drivers made no motion for inclining their horses' heads towards
the ancient bridge, which was then the only mode of access to St. Mungo's
capital.
"No," replied Archibald; "there is some popular commotion, and as our
Duke is in opposition to the court, perhaps we might be too well
received; or they might take it in their heads to remember that the
Captain of Carrick came down upon them with his Highlandmen in the time
of Shawfield's mob in 1725, and then we would be too ill received.* And,
at any rate, it is best for us, and for me in particular, who may be
supposed to possess his Grace's mind upon many particulars, to leave the
good people of the Gorbals to act according to their own imaginations,
without either provoking or encouraging them by my presence."
* In 1725, there was a great riot in Glasgow on account of the malt-tax.
Among the troops brought in to restore order, was one of the independent
companies of Highlanders levied in Argyleshire, and distinguished, in a
lampoon of the period, as "Campbell of Carrick and his Highland thieves."
It was called Shawfield's Mob, because much of the popular violence was
directed against Daniel Campbell, Esq. of Shawfield, M. P., Provost of
the town.
To reasoning of such tone and consequence Jeanie had nothing to reply,
although it seemed to her to contain fully as much self-importance as
truth.
The carriage meantime rolled on; the river expanded itself, and gradually
assumed the dignity of an estuary or arm of the sea. The influence of the
advancing and retiring tides became more and more evident, and in the
beautiful words of him of the laurel wreath, the river waxed--
A broader and yet broader stream.
The cormorant stands upon its shoals,
His black and dripping wings
Half open'd to the wind.
[From Southey's _Thalaba,_ Book xi. stanza 36.]
"Which way lies Inverary?" said Jeanie, gazing on the dusky ocean of
Highland hills, which now, piled above each other, and intersected by
many a lake, stretched away on the opposite side of the river to the
northward. "Is yon high castle the Duke's hoose?"
"That, Mrs. Deans?--Lud help thee," replied Archibald, "that's the old
castle of Dumbarton, the strongest place in Europe, be the other what it
may. Sir William Wallace was governor of it in the old war with the
English, and his Grace is governor just now. It is always entrusted to
the best man in Scotland."
"And does the Duke live on that high rock, then?" demanded Jeanie.
"No, no, he has his deputy-governor, who commands in his absence; he
lives in the white house you see at the bottom of the rock--His Grace
does not reside there himself."
"I think not, indeed," said the dairy-woman, upon whose mind the road,
since they had left Dumfries, had made no very favourable impression,
"for if he did, he might go whistle for a dairy-woman, an he were the
only duke in England. I did not leave my place and my friends to come
down to see cows starve to death upon hills as they be at that pig-stye
of Elfinfoot, as you call it, Mr. Archibald, or to be perched upon the
top of a rock, like a squirrel in his cage, hung out of a three pair of
stairs' window."
Inwardly chuckling that these symptoms of recalcitration had not taken
place until the fair malcontent was, as he mentally termed it, under his
thumb, Archibald coolly replied, "That the hills were none of his making,
nor did he know how to mend them; but as to lodging, they would soon be
in a house of the Duke's in a very pleasant island called Roseneath,
where they went to wait for shipping to take them to Inverary, and would
meet the company with whom Jeanie was to return to Edinburgh."
"An island?" said Jeanie, who, in the course of her various and
adventurous travels, had never quitted terra firma, "then I am doubting
we maun gang in ane of these boats; they look unco sma', and the waves
are something rough, and"
"Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Dutton, "I will not consent to it; I was never
engaed to leave the country, and I desire you will bid the boys drive
round the other way to the Duke's house."
"There is a safe pinnace belonging to his Grace, ma'am, close by,"
replied Archibald, "and you need be under no apprehensions whatsoever."
"But I am under apprehensions," said the damsel; "and I insist upon going
round by land, Mr. Archibald, were it ten miles about."
"I am sorry I cannot oblige you, madam, as Roseneath happens to be an
island."
"If it were ten islands," said the incensed dame, "that's no reason why I
should be drowned in going over the seas to it."
"No reason why you should be drowned certainly, ma'am," answered the
unmoved groom of the chambers, "but an admirable good one why you cannot
proceed to it by land." And, fixed his master's mandates to perform, he
pointed with his hand, and the drivers, turning off the high-road,
proceeded towards a small hamlet of fishing huts, where a shallop,
somewhat more gaily decorated than any which they had yet seen, having a
flag which displayed a boar's head, crested with a ducal coronet, waited
with two or three seamen, and as many Highlanders.
The carriage stopped, and the men began to unyoke their horses, while Mr.
Archibald gravely superintended the removal of the baggage from the
carriage to the little vessel. "Has the Caroline been long arrived?" said
Archibald to one of the seamen.
"She has been here in five days from Liverpool, and she's lying down at
Greenock," answered the fellow.
"Let the horses and carriage go down to Greenock then," said Archibald,
"and be embarked there for Inverary when I send notice--they may stand in
my cousin's, Duncan Archibald the stabler's.--Ladies," he added, "I hope
you will get yourselves ready; we must not lose the tide."
"Mrs. Deans," said the Cowslip of Inverary, "you may do as you
please--but I will sit here all night, rather than go into that there
painted egg-shell.--Fellow--fellow!" (this was addressed to a Highlander
who was lifting a travelling trunk), "that trunk is _mine,_ and that
there band-box, and that pillion mail, and those seven bundles, and the
paper-bag; and if you venture to touch one of them, it shall be at your
peril."
The Celt kept his eye fixed on the speaker, then turned his head towards
Archibald, and receiving no countervailing signal, he shouldered the
portmanteau, and without farther notice of the distressed damsel, or
paying any attention to remonstrances, which probably he did not
understand, and would certainly have equally disregarded whether he
understood them or not, moved off with Mrs. Dutton's wearables, and
deposited the trunk containing them safely in the boat.
The baggage being stowed in safety, Mr. Archibald handed Jeanie out of
the carriage, and, not without some tremor on her part, she was
transported through the surf and placed in the boat. He then offered the
same civility to his fellow-servant, but she was resolute in her refusal
to quit the carriage, in which she now remained in solitary state,
threatening all concerned or unconcerned with actions for wages and
board-wages, damages and expenses, and numbering on her fingers the gowns
and other habiliments, from which she seemed in the act of being
separated for ever. Mr. Archibald did not give himself the trouble of
making many remonstrances, which, indeed, seemed only to aggravate the
damsel's indignation, but spoke two or three words to the Highlanders in
Gaelic; and the wily mountaineers, approaching the carriage cautiously,
and without giving the slightest intimation of their intention, at once
seized the recusant so effectually fast that she could neither resist nor
struggle, and hoisting her on their shoulders in nearly a horizontal
posture, rushed down with her to the beach, and through the surf, and
with no other inconvenience than ruffling her garments a little,
deposited her in the boat; but in a state of surprise, mortification, and
terror, at her sudden transportation, which rendered her absolutely mute
for two or three minutes. The men jumped in themselves; one tall fellow
remained till he had pushed off the boat, and then tumbled in upon his
companions. They took their oars and began to pull from the shore, then
spread their sail, and drove merrily across the firth.
"You Scotch villain!" said the infuriated damsel to Archibald, "how dare
you use a person like me in this way?"
"Madam," said Archibald, with infinite composure, "it's high time you
should know you are in the Duke's country, and that there is not one of
these fellows but would throw you out of the boat as readily as into it,
if such were his Grace's pleasure."
"Then the Lord have mercy on me!" said Mrs. Dutton. "If I had had any on
myself, I would never have engaged with you."
"It's something of the latest to think of that now, Mrs. Dutton," said
Archibald; "but I assure you, you will find the Highlands have their
pleasures. You will have a dozen of cow-milkers under your own authority
at Inverary, and you may throw any of them into the lake, if you have a
mind, for the Duke's head people are almost as great as himself."
"This is a strange business, to be sure, Mr. Archibald," said the lady;
"but I suppose I must make the best on't.--Are you sure the boat will not
sink? it leans terribly to one side, in my poor mind."
"Fear nothing," said Mr. Archibald, taking a most important pinch of
snuff; "this same ferry on Clyde knows us very well, or we know it, which
is all the same; no fear of any of our people meeting with any accident.
We should have crossed from the opposite shore, but for the disturbances
at Glasgow, which made it improper for his Grace's people to pass through
the city."
"Are you not afeard, Mrs. Deans," said the dairy-vestal, addressing
Jeanie, who sat, not in the most comfortable state of mind, by the side
of Archibald, who himself managed the helm.--"are you not afeard of these
wild men with their naked knees, and of this nut-shell of a thing, that
seems bobbing up and down like a skimming-dish in a milk-pail?"
"No--no--madam," answered Jeanie with some hesitation, "I am not feared;
for I hae seen Hielandmen before, though never was sae near them; and for
the danger of the deep waters, I trust there is a Providence by sea as
well as by land."
"Well," said Mrs. Dutton, "it is a beautiful thing to have learned to
write and read, for one can always say such fine words whatever should
befall them."
Archibald, rejoicing in the impression which his vigorous measures had
made upon the intractable dairymaid, now applied himself, as a sensible
and good-natured man, to secure by fair means the ascendency which he had
obtained by some wholesome violence; and he succeeded so well in
representing to her the idle nature of her fears, and the impossibility
of leaving her upon the beach enthroned in an empty carriage, that the
good understanding of the party was completely revived ere they landed at
Roseneath.