The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete - Вальтер Скотт 17 стр.


Weel, weel, neibor, Ill no say that ye mayna be right, answered the submissive Judith. I am sure ye are right about the sawing and the mawing, the shearing and the leading, and what for suld ye no be right about kirkwark, too?But concerning my oe, Reuben Butler

Reuben Butler, gudewife, said David, with solemnity, is a lad I wish heartily weel to, even as if he were mine ain sonbut I doubt there will be outs and ins in the track of his walk. I muckle fear his gifts will get the heels of his grace. He has ower muckle human wit and learning, and thinks as muckle about the form of the bicker as he does about the healsomeness of the foodhe maun broider the marriage-garment with lace and passments, or its no gude eneugh for him. And its like hes something proud o his human gifts and learning, whilk enables him to dress up his doctrine in that fine airy dress. But, added he, at seeing the old womans uneasiness at his discourse, affliction may gie him a jagg, and let the wind out o him, as out o a cow thats eaten wet clover, and the lad may do weel, and be a burning and a shining light; and I trust it will be yours to see, and his to feel it, and that soon.

Widow Butler was obliged to retire, unable to make anything more of her neighbour, whose discourse, though she did not comprehend it, filled her with undefined apprehensions on her grandsons account, and greatly depressed the joy with which she had welcomed him on his return. And it must not be concealed, in justice to Mr. Deanss discernment, that Butler, in their conference, had made a greater display of his learning than the occasion called for, or than was likely to be acceptable to the old man, who, accustomed to consider himself as a person preeminently entitled to dictate upon theological subjects of controversy, felt rather humbled and mortified when learned authorities were placed in array against him. In fact, Butler had not escaped the tinge of pedantry which naturally flowed from his education, and was apt, on many occasions, to make parade of his knowledge, when there was no need of such vanity.

Jeanie Deans, however, found no fault with this display of learning, but, on the contrary, admired it; perhaps on the same score that her sex are said to admire men of courage, on account of their own deficiency in that qualification. The circumstances of their families threw the young people constantly together; their old intimacy was renewed, though upon a footing better adapted to their age; and it became at length understood betwixt them, that their union should be deferred no longer than until Butler should obtain some steady means of support, however humble. This, however, was not a matter speedily to be accomplished. Plan after plan was formed, and plan after plan failed. The good-humoured cheek of Jeanie lost the first flush of juvenile freshness; Reubens brow assumed the gravity of manhood, yet the means of obtaining a settlement seemed remote as ever. Fortunately for the lovers, their passion was of no ardent or enthusiastic cast; and a sense of duty on both sides induced them to bear, with patient fortitude, the protracted interval which divided them from each other.

In the meanwhile, time did not roll on without effecting his usual changes. The widow of Stephen Butler, so long the prop of the family of Beersheba, was gathered to her fathers; and Rebecca, the careful spouse of our friend Davie Deans, was also summoned from her plans of matrimonial and domestic economy. The morning after her death, Reuben Butler went to offer his mite of consolation to his old friend and benefactor. He witnessed, on this occasion, a remarkable struggle betwixt the force of natural affection and the religious stoicism which the sufferer thought it was incumbent upon him to maintain under each earthly dispensation, whether of weal or woe.

On his arrival at the cottage, Jeanie, with her eyes overflowing with tears, pointed to the little orchard, in which, she whispered with broken accents, my poor father has been since his misfortune. Somewhat alarmed at this account, Butler entered the orchard, and advanced slowly towards his old friend, who, seated in a small rude arbour, appeared to be sunk in the extremity of his affliction. He lifted his eyes somewhat sternly as Butler approached, as if offended at the interruption; but as the young man hesitated whether he ought to retreat or advance, he arose, and came forward to meet him with a self-possessed, and even dignified air.

Young man, said the sufferer, lay it not to heart, though the righteous perish, and the merciful are removed, seeing, it may well be said, that they are taken away from the evils to come. Woe to me were I to shed a tear for the wife of my bosom, when I might weep rivers of water for this afflicted Church, cursed as it is with carnal seekers, and with the dead of heart.

I am happy, said Butler, that you can forget your private affliction in your regard for public duty.

Forget, Reuben? said poor Deans, putting his handkerchief to his eyesShes not to be forgotten on this side of time; but He that gives the wound can send the ointment. I declare there have been times during this night when my meditation hae been so rapt, that I knew not of my heavy loss. It has been with me as with the worthy John Semple, called Carspharn John,24 upon a like trialI have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there!

Notwithstanding the assumed fortitude of Deans, which he conceived to be the discharge of a great Christian duty, he had too good a heart not to suffer deeply under this heavy loss. Woodend became altogether distasteful to him; and as he had obtained both substance and experience by his management of that little farm, he resolved to employ them as a dairy-farmer, or cowfeeder, as they are called in Scotland. The situation he chose for his new settlement was at a place called Saint Leonards Crags, lying betwixt Edinburgh and the mountain called Arthurs Seat, and adjoining to the extensive sheep pasture still named the Kings Park, from its having been formerly dedicated to the preservation of the royal game. Here he rented a small lonely house, about half-a-mile distant from the nearest point of the city, but the site of which, with all the adjacent ground, is now occupied by the buildings which form the southeastern suburb. An extensive pasture-ground adjoining, which Deans rented from the keeper of the Royal Park, enabled him to feed his milk-cows; and the unceasing industry and activity of Jeanie, his oldest daughter, were exerted in making the most of their produce.

She had now less frequent opportunities of seeing Reuben, who had been obliged, after various disappointments, to accept the subordinate situation of assistant in a parochial school of some eminence, at three or four miles distance from the city. Here he distinguished himself, and became acquainted with several respectable burgesses, who, on account of health, or other reasons, chose that their children should commence their education in this little village. His prospects were thus gradually brightening, and upon each visit which he paid at Saint Leonards he had an opportunity of gliding a hint to this purpose into Jeanies ear. These visits were necessarily very rare, on account of the demands which the duties of the school made upon Butlers time. Nor did he dare to make them even altogether so frequent as these avocations would permit. Deans received him with civility indeed, and even with kindness; but Reuben, as is usual in such cases, imagined that he read his purpose in his eyes, and was afraid too premature an explanation on the subject would draw down his positive disapproval. Upon the whole, therefore, he judged it prudent to call at Saint Leonards just so frequently as old acquaintance and neighbourhood seemed to authorise, and no oftener. There was another person who was more regular in his visits.

When Davie Deans intimated to the Laird of Dumbiedikes his purpose of quitting wi the land and house at Woodend, the Laird stared and said nothing. He made his usual visits at the usual hour without remark, until the day before the term, when, observing the bustle of moving furniture already commenced, the great east-country awmrie dragged out of its nook, and standing with its shoulder to the company, like an awkward booby about to leave the room, the Laird again stared mightily, and was heard to ejaculate,Hegh, sirs! Even after the day of departure was past and gone, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, at his usual hour, which was that at which David Deans was wont to loose the pleugh, presented himself before the closed door of the cottage at Woodend, and seemed as much astonished at finding it shut against his approach as if it was not exactly what he had to expect. On this occasion he was heard to ejaculate, Gude guide us! which, by those who knew him, was considered as a very unusual mark of emotion. From that moment forward Dumbiedikes became an altered man, and the regularity of his movements, hitherto so exemplary, was as totally disconcerted as those of a boys watch when he has broken the main-spring. Like the index of the said watch did Dumbiedikes spin round the whole bounds of his little property, which may be likened unto the dial of the timepiece, with unwonted velocity. There was not a cottage into which he did not enter, nor scarce a maiden on whom he did not stare. But so it was, that although there were better farm-houses on the land than Woodend, and certainly much prettier girls than Jeanie Deans, yet it did somehow befall that the blank in the Lairds time was not so pleasantly filled up as it had been. There was no seat accommodated him so well as the bunker at Woodend, and no face he loved so much to gaze on as Jeanie Deanss. So, after spinning round and round his little orbit, and then remaining stationary for a week, it seems to have occurred to him that he was not pinned down to circulate on a pivot, like the hands of the watch, but possessed the power of shifting his central point, and extending his circle if he thought proper. To realise which privilege of change of place, he bought a pony from a Highland drover, and with its assistance and company stepped, or rather stumbled, as far as Saint Leonards Crags.

Jeanie Deans, though so much accustomed to the Lairds staring that she was sometimes scarce conscious of his presence, had nevertheless some occasional fears lest he should call in the organ of speech to back those expressions of admiration which he bestowed on her through his eyes. Should this happen, farewell, she thought, to all chance of a union with Butler. For her father, however stouthearted and independent in civil and religious principles, was not without that respect for the laird of the land, so deeply imprinted on the Scottish tenantry of the period. Moreover, if he did not positively dislike Butler, yet his fund of carnal learning was often the object of sarcasms on Davids part, which were perhaps founded in jealousy, and which certainly indicated no partiality for the party against whom they were launched. And lastly, the match with Dumbiedikes would have presented irresistible charms to one who used to complain that he felt himself apt to take ower grit an armfu o the warld. So that, upon the whole, the Lairds diurnal visits were disagreeable to Jeanie from apprehension of future consequences, and it served much to console her, upon removing from the spot where she was bred and born, that she had seen the last of Dumbiedikes, his laced hat, and tobacco-pipe. The poor girl no more expected he could muster courage to follow her to Saint Leonards Crags than that any of her apple-trees or cabbages which she had left rooted in the yard at Woodend, would spontaneously, and unaided, have undertaken the same journey. It was therefore with much more surprise than pleasure that, on the sixth day after their removal to Saint Leonards, she beheld Dumbiedikes arrive, laced hat, tobacco-pipe, and all, and, with the self-same greeting of Hows a wi ye, Jeanie?Whares the gudeman? assume as nearly as he could the same position in the cottage at Saint Leonards which he had so long and so regularly occupied at Woodend. He was no sooner, however, seated, than with an unusual exertion of his powers of conversation, he added, JeanieI say, Jeanie, womanhere he extended his hand towards her shoulder with all the fingers spread out as if to clutch it, but in so bashful and awkward a manner, that when she whisked herself beyond its reach, the paw remained suspended in the air with the palm open, like the claw of a heraldic griffinJeanie, continued the swain in this moment of inspirationI say, Jeanie, its a braw day out-by, and the roads are no that ill for boot-hose.



The deils in the daidling body, muttered Jeanie between her teeth; wha wad hae thought o his daikering out this length? And she afterwards confessed that she threw a little of this ungracious sentiment into her accent and manner; for her father being abroad, and the body, as she irreverently termed the landed proprietor, looking unco gleg and canty, she didna ken what he might be coming out wi next.

Her frowns, however, acted as a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeders cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while Douce Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day.

CHAPTER NINTH

              Her air, her manners, all who saw admired,
              Courteous, though coy, and gentle, though retired;
              The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed;
              And ease of heart her every look conveyed.

                                                       Crabbe.

The visits of the Laird thus again sunk into matters of ordinary course, from which nothing was to be expected or apprehended. If a lover could have gained a fair one as a snake is said to fascinate a bird, by pertinaciously gazing on her with great stupid greenish eyes, which began now to be occasionally aided by spectacles, unquestionably Dumbiedikes would have been the person to perform the feat. But the art of fascination seems among the artes perditae, and I cannot learn that this most pertinacious of starers produced any effect by his attentions beyond an occasional yawn.

In the meanwhile, the object of his gaze was gradually attaining the verge of youth, and approaching to what is called in females the middle age, which is impolitely held to begin a few years earlier with their more fragile sex than with men. Many people would have been of opinion, that the Laird would have done better to have transferred his glances to an object possessed of far superior charms to Jeanies, even when Jeanies were in their bloom, who began now to be distinguished by all who visited the cottage at St. Leonards Crags.

Effie Deans, under the tender and affectionate care of her sister, had now shot up into a beautiful and blooming girl. Her Grecian shaped head was profusely rich in waving ringlets of brown hair, which, confined by a blue snood of silk, and shading a laughing Hebe countenance, seemed the picture of health, pleasure, and contentment. Her brown russet short-gown set off a shape, which time, perhaps, might be expected to render too robust, the frequent objection to Scottish beauty, but which, in her present early age, was slender and taper, with that graceful and easy sweep of outline which at once indicates health and beautiful proportion of parts.

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