Loe raamatut: «St. Ronan's Well», lehekülg 11

CHAPTER XI.
FRATERNAL LOVE

 
Nearest of blood should still be next in love;
And when I see these happy children playing,
While William gathers flowers for Ellen's ringlets,
And Ellen dresses flies for William's angle,
I scarce can think, that in advancing life,
Coldness, unkindness, interest, or suspicion,
Will e'er divide that unity so sacred,
Which Nature bound at birth.
 

Anonymous.

When Mowbray had left his dangerous adviser, in order to steer the course which his agent had indicated, without offering to recommend it, he went to the little parlour which his sister was wont to term her own, and in which she spent great part of her time. It was fitted up with a sort of fanciful neatness; and in its perfect arrangement and good order, formed a strong contrast to the other apartments of the old and neglected mansion-house. A number of little articles lay on the work-table, indicating the elegant, and, at the same time, the unsettled turn of the inhabitant's mind. There were unfinished drawings, blotted music, needlework of various kinds, and many other little female tasks; all undertaken with zeal, and so far prosecuted with art and elegance, but all flung aside before any one of them was completed.

Clara herself sat upon a little low couch by the window, reading, or at least turning over the leaves of a book, in which she seemed to read. But instantly starting up when she saw her brother, she ran towards him with the most cordial cheerfulness.

“Welcome, welcome, my dear John; this is very kind of you to come to visit your recluse sister. I have been trying to nail my eyes and my understanding to a stupid book here, because they say too much thought is not quite good for me. But, either the man's dulness, or my want of the power of attending, makes my eyes pass over the page, just as one seems to read in a dream, without being able to comprehend one word of the matter. You shall talk to me, and that will do better. What can I give you to show that you are welcome? I am afraid tea is all I have to offer, and that you set too little store by.”

“I shall be glad of a cup at present,” said Mowbray, “for I wish to speak with you.”

“Then Jessy shall make it ready instantly,” said Miss Mowbray, ringing, and giving orders to her waiting-maid – “but you must not be ungrateful, John, and plague me with any of the ceremonial for your fête – ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’ I will attend, and play my part as prettily as you can desire; but to think of it beforehand, would make both my head and my heart ache; and so I beg you will spare me on the subject.”

“Why, you wild kitten,” said Mowbray, “you turn every day more shy of human communication – we shall have you take the woods one day, and become as savage as the Princess Caraboo. But I will plague you about nothing if I can help it. If matters go not smooth on the great day, they must e'en blame the dull thick head that had no fair lady to help him in his need. But, Clara, I had something more material to say to you – something indeed of the last importance.”

“What is it?” said Clara, in a tone of voice approaching to a scream – “in the name of God, what is it? You know not how you terrify me!”

“Nay, you start at a shadow, Clara,” answered her brother. “It is no such uncommon matter neither – good faith, it is the most common distress in the world, so far as I know the world – I am sorely pinched for money.”

“Is that all?” replied Clara, in a tone which seemed to her brother as much to underrate the difficulty, when it was explained, as her fears had exaggerated it before she heard its nature.

“Is that all? Indeed it is all, and comprehends a great deal of vexation. I shall be hard run unless I can get a certain sum of money – and I must e'en ask you if you can help me?”

“Help you?” replied Clara; “Yes, with all my heart – but you know my purse is a light one – more than half of my last dividend is in it, however, and I am sure, John, I shall be happy if it can serve you – especially as that will at least show that your wants are but small ones.”

“Alas, Clara, if you would help me,” said her brother, half repentant of his purpose, “you must draw the neck of the goose which lays the golden eggs – you must lend me the whole stock.”

“And why not, John,” said the simple-hearted girl, “if it will do you a kindness? Are you not my natural guardian? Are you not a kind one? And is not my little fortune entirely at your disposal? You will, I am sure, do all for the best.”

“I fear I may not,” said Mowbray, starting from her, and more distressed by her sudden and unsuspicious compliance, than he would have been by difficulties, or remonstrance. In the latter case, he would have stifled the pangs of conscience amid the manœuvres which he must have resorted to for obtaining her acquiescence; as matters stood, there was all the difference that there is between slaughtering a tame and unresisting animal, and pursuing wild game, until the animation of the sportsman's exertions overcomes the internal sense of his own cruelty.²⁰ The same idea occurred to Mowbray himself.

“By G – ,” he said, “this is like shooting the bird sitting. – Clara,” he added, “I fear this money will scarce be employed as you would wish.”

“Employ it as you yourself please, my dearest brother,” she replied, “and I will believe it is all for the best.”

“Nay, I am doing for the best,” he replied; “at least, I am doing what must be done, for I see no other way through it – so all you have to do is to copy this paper, and bid adieu to bank dividends – for a little while at least. I trust soon to double this little matter for you, if Fortune will but stand my friend.”

“Do not trust to Fortune, John,” said Clara, smiling, though with an expression of deep melancholy. “Alas! she has never been a friend to our family – not at least for many a day.”

“She favours the bold, say my old grammatical exercises,” answered her brother; “and I must trust her, were she as changeable as a weathercock. – And yet – if she should jilt me! – What will you do – what will you say, Clara, if I am unable, contrary to my hope, trust, and expectation, to repay you this money within a short time?”

“Do?” replied Clara; “I must do without it, you know; and for saying, I will not say a word.”

“True,” replied Mowbray, “but your little expenses – your charities – your halt and blind – your round of paupers?”

“Well, I can manage all that too. Look you here, John, how many half-worked trifles there are. The needle or the pencil is the resource of all distressed heroines, you know; and I promise you, though I have been a little idle and unsettled of late, yet, when I do set about it, no Emmeline or Ethelinde of them all ever sent such loads of trumpery to market as I shall, or made such wealth as I will do. I dare say Lady Penelope, and all the gentry at the Well, will purchase, and will raffle, and do all sort of things to encourage the pensive performer. I will send them such lots of landscapes with sap-green trees, and mazareen-blue rivers, and portraits that will terrify the originals themselves – and handkerchiefs and turbans, with needlework scallopped exactly like the walks on the Belvidere – Why, I shall become a little fortune in the first season.”

“No, Clara,” said John, gravely, for a virtuous resolution had gained the upperhand in his bosom, while his sister ran on in this manner, – “We will do something better than all this. If this kind help of yours does not fetch me through, I am determined I will cut the whole concern. It is but standing a laugh or two, and hearing a gay fellow say, D – me, Jack, are you turned clodhopper at last? – that is the worst. Dogs, horses, and all, shall go to the hammer; we will keep nothing but your pony, and I will trust to a pair of excellent legs. There is enough left of the old acres to keep us in the way you like best, and that I will learn to like. I will work in the garden, and work in the forest, mark my own trees, and cut them myself, keep my own accounts, and send Saunders Meiklewham to the devil.”

“That last is the best resolution of all, John,” said Clara; “and if such a day should come round, I should be the happiest of living creatures – I should not have a grief left in the world – if I had, you should never see or hear of it – it should lie here,” she said, pressing her hand on her bosom, “buried as deep as a funereal urn in a cold sepulchre. Oh! could we not begin such a life to-morrow? If it is absolutely necessary that this trifle of money should be got rid of first, throw it into the river, and think you have lost it amongst gamblers and horse-jockeys.”

Clara's eyes, which she fondly fixed on her brother's face, glowed through the tears which her enthusiasm called into them, while she thus addressed him. Mowbray, on his part, kept his looks fixed on the ground, with a flush on his cheek, that expressed at once false pride and real shame.

At length he looked up: – “My dear girl,” he said, “how foolishly you talk, and how foolishly I, that have twenty things to do, stand here listening to you! All will go smooth on my plan – if it should not, we have yours in reserve, and I swear to you I will adopt it. The trifle which this letter of yours enables me to command, may have luck in it, and we must not throw up the cards while we have a chance of the game. – Were I to cut from this moment, these few hundreds would make us little better or little worse – so you see we have two strings to our bow. Luck is sometimes against me, that is true – but upon true principle, and playing on the square, I can manage the best of them, or my name is not Mowbray. Adieu, my dearest Clara.” So saying, he kissed her cheek with a more than usual degree of affection.

Ere he could raise himself from his stooping posture, she threw her arm kindly over his neck, and said with a tone of the deepest interest, “My dearest brother, your slightest wish has been, and ever shall be, a law to me – Oh! if you would but grant me one request in return!”

“What is it, you silly girl?” said Mowbray, gently disengaging himself from her hold. – “What is it you can have to ask that needs such a solemn preface? – Remember, I hate prefaces; and when I happen to open a book, always skip them.”

“Without preface, then, my dearest brother, will you, for my sake, avoid those quarrels in which the people yonder are eternally engaged? I never go down there but I hear of some new brawl; and I never lay my head down to sleep, but I dream that you are the victim of it. Even last night” —

“Nay, Clara, if you begin to tell your dreams, we shall never have done. Sleeping, to be sure, is the most serious employment of your life – for as to eating, you hardly match a sparrow; but I entreat you to sleep without dreaming, or to keep your visions to yourself. – Why do you keep such fast hold of me? – What on earth can you be afraid of? – Surely you do not think the blockhead Binks, or any other of the good folks below yonder, dared to turn on me? Egad, I wish they would pluck up a little mettle, that I might have an excuse for drilling them. Gad, I would soon teach them to follow at heel.”

“No, John,” replied his sister; “it is not of such men as these that I have any fear – and yet, cowards are sometimes driven to desperation, and become more dangerous than better men – but it is not such as these that I fear. But there are men in the world whose qualities are beyond their seeming – whose spirit and courage lie hidden, like metals in the mine, under an unmarked or a plain exterior. – You may meet with such – you are rash and headlong, and apt to exercise your wit without always weighing consequences, and thus” —

“On my word, Clara,” answered Mowbray, “you are in a most sermonizing humour this morning! the parson himself could not have been more logical or profound. You have only to divide your discourse into heads, and garnish it with conclusions for use, and conclusions for doctrine, and it might be preached before a whole presbytery, with every chance of instruction and edification. But I am a man of the world, my little Clara; and though I wish to go in death's way as little as possible, I must not fear the raw-head and bloody-bones neither. – And who the devil is to put the question to me? – I must know that, Clara, for you have some especial person in your eye when you bid me take care of quarrelling.”

Clara could not become paler than was her usual complexion; but her voice faltered as she eagerly assured her brother, that she had no particular person in her thoughts.

“Clara,” said her brother, “do you remember, when there was a report of a bogle²¹ in the upper orchard, when we were both children? – Do you remember how you were perpetually telling me to take care of the bogle, and keep away from its haunts? – And do you remember my going on purpose to detect the bogle, finding the cow-boy, with a shirt about him, busied in pulling pears, and treating him to a handsome drubbing? – I am the same Jack Mowbray still, as ready to face danger, and unmask imposition; and your fears, Clara, will only make me watch more closely, till I find out the real object of them. If you warn me of quarrelling with some one, it must be because you know some one who is not unlikely to quarrel with me. You are a flighty and fanciful girl, but you have sense enough not to trouble either yourself or me on a point of honour, save when there is some good reason for it.”

Clara once more protested, and it was with the deepest anxiety to be believed, that what she had said arose only out of the general consequences which she apprehended from the line of conduct her brother had adopted, and which, in her apprehension, was so likely to engage him in the broils that divided the good company at the Spring. Mowbray listened to her explanation with an air of doubt, or rather incredulity, sipped a cup of tea which had for some time been placed before him, and at length replied, “Well, Clara, whether I am right or wrong in my guess, it would be cruel to torment you any more, remembering what you have just done for me. But do justice to your brother, and believe, that when you have any thing to ask of him, an explicit declaration of your wishes will answer your purpose much better than any ingenious oblique attempts to influence me. Give up all thoughts of such, my dear Clara – you are but a poor manœuvrer, but were you the very Machiavel of your sex, you should not turn the flank of John Mowbray.”

He left the room as he spoke, and did not return, though his sister twice called upon him. It is true that she uttered the word brother so faintly, that perhaps the sound did not reach his ears. – “He is gone,” she said, “and I have had no power to speak out! I am like the wretched creatures, who, it is said, lie under a potent charm, that prevents them alike from shedding tears and from confessing their crimes – Yes, there is a spell on this unhappy heart, and either that must be dissolved, or this must break.”

CHAPTER XII.
THE CHALLENGE

A slight note I have about me, for the delivery of which you must excuse me. It is an office which friendship calls upon me to do, and no way offensive to you, as I desire nothing but right on both sides.

King and No King.

The intelligent reader may recollect, that Tyrrel departed from the Fox Hotel on terms not altogether so friendly towards the company as those under which he entered it. Indeed, it occurred to him, that he might probably have heard something farther on the subject, though, amidst matters of deeper and more anxious consideration, the idea only passed hastily through his mind; and two days having gone over without any message from Sir Bingo Binks, the whole affair glided entirely out of his memory.

The truth was, that although never old woman took more trouble to collect and blow up with her bellows the embers of her decayed fire, than Captain MacTurk kindly underwent for the purpose of puffing into a flame the dying sparkles of the Baronet's courage; yet two days were spent in fruitless conferences before he could attain the desired point. He found Sir Bingo on these different occasions in all sorts of different moods of mind, and disposed to view the thing in all shades of light, except what the Captain thought was the true one. – He was in a drunken humour – in a sullen humour – in a thoughtless and vilipending humour – in every humour but a fighting one. And when Captain MacTurk talked of the reputation of the company at the Well, Sir Bingo pretended to take offence, said the company might go to the devil, and hinted that he “did them sufficient honour by gracing them with his countenance, but did not mean to constitute them any judges of his affairs. The fellow was a raff, and he would have nothing to do with him.”

Captain MacTurk would willingly have taken measures against the Baronet himself, as in a state of contumacy, but was opposed by Winterblossom and other members of the committee, who considered Sir Bingo as too important and illustrious a member of their society to be rashly expelled from a place not honoured by the residence of many persons of rank; and finally insisted that nothing should be done in the matter without the advice of Mowbray, whose preparations for his solemn festival on the following Thursday had so much occupied him, that he had not lately appeared at the Well.

In the meanwhile, the gallant Captain seemed to experience as much distress of mind, as if some stain had lain on his own most unblemished of reputations. He went up and down upon the points of his toes, rising up on his instep with a jerk which at once expressed vexation and defiance – He carried his nose turned up in the air, like that of a pig when he snuffs the approaching storm – He spoke in monosyllables when he spoke at all; and – what perhaps illustrated in the strongest manner the depth of his feelings – he refused, in face of the whole company, to pledge Sir Bingo in a glass of the Baronet's peculiar cogniac.

At length, the whole Well was alarmed by the report brought by a smart outrider, that the young Earl of Etherington, reported to be rising on the horizon of fashion as a star of the first magnitude, intended to pass an hour, or a day, or a week, as it might happen, (for his lordship could not be supposed to know his own mind,) at St. Ronan's Well.

This suddenly put all in motion. Almanacks were opened to ascertain his lordship's age, enquiries were made concerning the extent of his fortune, his habits were quoted, his tastes were guessed at; and all that the ingenuity of the Managing Committee could devise was resorted to, in order to recommend their Spa to this favourite of fortune. An express was dispatched to Shaws-Castle with the agreeable intelligence, which fired the train of hope that led to Mowbray's appropriation of his sister's capital. He did not, however, think proper to obey the summons to the Spring; for, not being aware in what light the Earl might regard the worthies there assembled, he did not desire to be found by his lordship in any strict connexion with them.

Sir Bingo Binks was in a different situation. The bravery with which he had endured the censure of the place began to give way, when he considered that a person of such distinction as that which public opinion attached to Lord Etherington, should find him bodily indeed at St. Ronan's, but, so far as society was concerned, on the road towards the ancient city of Coventry; and his banishment thither, incurred by that most unpardonable offence in modern morality, a solecism in the code of honour. Though sluggish and inert when called to action, the Baronet was by no means an absolute coward; or, if so, he was of that class which fights when reduced to extremity. He manfully sent for Captain MacTurk, who waited upon him with a grave solemnity of aspect, which instantly was exchanged for a radiant joy, when Sir Bingo, in a few words, empowered him to carry a message to that d – d strolling artist, by whom he had been insulted three days since.

“By Cot,” said the Captain, “my exceedingly goot and excellent friend, and I am happy to do such a favour for you! And it's well you have thought of it yourself; because, if it had not been for some of our very goot and excellent friends, that would be putting their spoon into other folk's dish, I should have been asking you a civil question myself, how you came to dine with us, with all that mud and mire which Mr. Tyrrel's grasp has left upon the collar of your coat – you understand me. – But it is much better as it is, and I will go to the man with all the speed of light; and though, to be sure, it should have been sooner thought of, yet let me alone to make an excuse for that, just in my own civil way – better late thrive than never do well, you know, Sir Bingo; and if you have made him wait a little while for his morning, you must give him the better measure, my darling.”

So saying, he awaited no reply, lest peradventure the commission with which he was so hastily and unexpectedly charged, should have been clogged with some condition of compromise. No such proposal, however, was made on the part of the doughty Sir Bingo, who eyed his friend as he hastily snatched up his rattan to depart, with a dogged look of obstinacy, expressive, to use his own phrase, of a determined resolution to come up to the scratch; and when he heard the Captain's parting footsteps, and saw the door shut behind him, he valiantly whistled a few bars of Jenny Sutton, in token he cared not a farthing how the matter was to end.

With a swifter pace than his half-pay leisure usually encouraged, or than his habitual dignity permitted, Captain MacTurk cleared the ground betwixt the Spring and its gay vicinity, and the ruins of the Aultoun, where reigned our friend Meg Dods, the sole assertor of its ancient dignities. To the door of the Cleikum Inn the Captain addressed himself, as one too much accustomed to war to fear a rough reception; although at the very first aspect of Meg, who presented her person at the half opened door, his military experience taught him that his entrance into the place would, in all probability, be disputed.

“Is Mr. Tyrrel at home?” was the question; and the answer was conveyed, by the counter-interrogation, “Wha may ye be that speers?”

As the most polite reply to this question, and an indulgence, at the same time, of his own taciturn disposition, the Captain presented to Luckie Dods the fifth part of an ordinary playing card, much grimed with snuff, which bore on its blank side his name and quality. But Luckie Dods rejected the information thus tendered, with contemptuous scorn.

“Nane of your deil's play-books for me,” said she; “it's an ill world since sic prick-my-dainty doings came in fashion – It's a poor tongue that canna tell its ain name, and I'll hae nane of your scarts upon pasteboard.”

“I am Captain MacTurk, of the – regiment,” said the Captain, disdaining further answer.

“MacTurk?” repeated Meg, with an emphasis, which induced the owner of the name to reply, “Yes, honest woman – MacTurk – Hector MacTurk – have you any objections to my name, goodwife?”

“Nae objections have I,” answered Meg; “it's e'en an excellent name for a heathen. – But, Captain MacTurk, since sae it be that ye are a captain, ye may e'en face about and march your ways hame again, to the tune of Dumbarton drums; for ye are ganging to have nae speech of Maister Tirl, or ony lodger of mine.”

“And wherefore not?” demanded the veteran; “and is this of your own foolish head, honest woman, or has your lodger left such orders?”

“Maybe he has and maybe no,” answered Meg, sturdily; “and I ken nae mair right that ye suld ca' me honest woman, than I have to ca' you honest man, whilk is as far frae my thoughts as it wad be from heaven's truth.”

“The woman is deleerit!” said Captain MacTurk; “but coom, coom – a gentleman is not to be misused in this way when he comes on a gentleman's business; so make you a bit room on the door-stane, that I may pass by you, or I will make room for myself, by Cot! to your small pleasure.”

And so saying he assumed the air of a man who was about to make good his passage. But Meg, without deigning farther reply, flourished around her head the hearth-broom, which she had been employing to its more legitimate purpose, when disturbed in her housewifery by Captain MacTurk.

“I ken your errand weel eneugh, Captain – and I ken yoursell. Ye are ane of the folk that gang about yonder setting folk by the lugs, as callants set their collies to fight. But ye sall come to nae lodger o' mine, let a-be Maister Tirl, wi' ony sic ungodly errand; for I am ane that will keep God's peace and the King's within my dwelling.”

So saying, and in explicit token of her peaceable intentions, she again flourished her broom.

The veteran instinctively threw himself under Saint George's guard, and drew two paces back, exclaiming, “That the woman was either mad, or as drunk as whisky could make her;” an alternative which afforded Meg so little satisfaction, that she fairly rushed on her retiring adversary, and began to use her weapon to fell purpose.

“Me drunk, ye scandalous blackguard!” (a blow with the broom interposed as parenthesis,) “me, that am fasting from all but sin and bohea!” (another whack.)

The Captain, swearing, exclaiming, and parrying, caught the blows as they fell, showing much dexterity in single-stick. The people began to gather; and how long his gallantry might have maintained itself against the spirit of self-defence and revenge, must be left uncertain, for the arrival of Tyrrel, returned from a short walk, put a period to the contest.

Meg, who had a great respect for her guest, began to feel ashamed of her own violence, and slunk into the house; observing, however, that she trewed she had made her hearth-broom and the auld heathen's pow right weel acquainted. The tranquillity which ensued upon her departure, gave Tyrrel an opportunity to ask the Captain, whom he at length recognised, the meaning of this singular affray, and whether the visit was intended for him; to which the veteran replied very discomposedly, that “he should have known that long enough ago, if he had had decent people to open his door, and answer a civil question, instead of a flyting madwoman, who was worse than an eagle,” he said, “or a mastiff-bitch, or a she-bear, or any other female beast in the creation.”

Half suspecting his errand, and desirous to avoid unnecessary notoriety, Tyrrel, as he showed the Captain to the parlour, which he called his own, entreated him to excuse the rudeness of his landlady, and to pass from the topic to that which had procured him the honour of this visit.

“And you are right, my good Master Tyrrel,” said the Captain, pulling down the sleeves of his coat, adjusting his handkerchief and breast-ruffle, and endeavouring to recover the composure of manner becoming his mission, but still adverting indignantly to the usage he had received – “By Cot! if she had but been a man, if it were the King himself – However, Mr. Tyrrel, I am come on a civil errand – and very civilly I have been treated – the auld bitch should be set in the stocks, and be tamned! – My friend, Sir Bingo – By Cot! I shall never forget that woman's insolence – if there be a constable or a cat-o'-nine-tails within ten miles” —

“I perceive, Captain,” said Tyrrel, “that you are too much disturbed at this moment to enter upon the business which has brought you here – if you will step into my bedroom, and make use of some cold water and a towel, it will give you the time to compose yourself a little.”

“I shall do no such thing, Mr. Tyrrel,” answered the Captain, snappishly; “I do not want to be composed at all, and I do not want to stay in this house a minute longer than to do my errand to you on my friend's behalf – And as for this tamned woman Dods” —

“You will in that case forgive my interrupting you, Captain MacTurk, as I presume your errand to me can have no reference to this strange quarrel with my landlady, with which I have nothing to” —

“And if I thought that it had, sir,” said the Captain, interrupting Tyrrel in his turn, “you should have given me satisfaction before you was a quarter of an hour older – Oh, I would give five pounds to the pretty fellow that would say, Captain MacTurk, the woman did right!”

“I certainly will not be that person you wish for, Captain,” replied Tyrrel, “because I really do not know who was in the right or wrong; but I am certainly sorry that you should have met with ill usage, when your purpose was to visit me.”

“Well, sir, if you are concerned,” said the man of peace, snappishly, “so am I, and there is an end of it. – And touching my errand to you – you cannot have forgotten that you treated my friend, Sir Bingo Binks, with singular incivility?”

“I recollect nothing of the kind, Captain,” replied Tyrrel. “I remember that the gentleman, so called, took some uncivil liberties in laying foolish bets concerning me, and that I treated him, from respect to the rest of the company, and the ladies in particular, with a great degree of moderation and forbearance.”

“And you must have very fine ideas of forbearance,” replied the Captain, “when you took my good friend by the collar of the coat, and lifted him out of your way as if he had been a puppy dog! My good Mr. Tyrrel, I can assure you he does not think that you have forborne him at all, and he has no purpose to forbear you; and I must either carry back a sufficient apology, or you must meet in a quiet way, with a good friend on each side. – And this was the errand I came on, when this tamned woman, with the hearth-broom, who is an enemy to all quiet and peaceable proceedings” —

“We will forget Mrs. Dods for the present, if you please, Captain MacTurk,” said Tyrrel – “and, to speak to the present subject, you will permit me to say, that I think this summons comes a little of the latest. You know best as a military man, but I have always understood that such differences are usually settled immediately after they occur – not that I intend to baulk Sir Bingo's inclinations upon the score of delay, or any other account.”