by Walter Scott
So saying, he conducted Darsie into the house, interposing at the same time his person betwixt the supposed young lady and the stranger of whom he was suspicious, so as to make communication by signs impossible. As they entered, they heard the sound of a fiddle in the stone-floored and well-sanded kitchen, through which they were about to follow their corpulent host, and where several people seemed engaged in dancing to its strains.
'D—n thee,' said Nixon to Crackenthorp, 'would you have the lady go through all the mob of the parish? Hast thou no more private way to our sitting-room?'
'None that is fit for my travelling,' answered the landlord, laying his hand on his portly stomach. 'I am not Tom Turnpenny, to creep like a lizard through keyholes.'
So saying, he kept moving on through the revellers in the kitchen; and Nixon, holding Darsie by his arm, as if to offer the lady support but in all probability to frustrate any effort at escape, moved through the crowd, which presented a very motley appearance, consisting of domestic servants, country fellows, seamen, and other idlers, whom Wandering Willie was regaling with his music.
To pass another friend without intimation of his presence would have been actual pusillanimity; and just when they were passing the blind man's elevated seat, Darsie asked him with some emphasis, whether he could not play a Scottish air? The man's face had been the instant before devoid of all sort of expression, going through his performance like a clown through a beautiful country, too much accustomed to consider it as a task, to take any interest in the performance, and, in fact, scarce seeming to hear the noise that he was creating. In a word, he might at the time have made a companion to my friend Wilkie's inimitable blind crowder. But with Wandering Willie this was only an occasional and a rare fit of dullness, such as will at times creep over all the professors of the fine arts, arising either from fatigue, or contempt of the present audience, or that caprice which so often tempts painters and musicians and great actors, in the phrase of the latter, to walk through their part, instead of exerting themselves with the energy which acquired their fame. But when the performer heard the voice of Darsie, his countenance became at once illuminated, and showed the complete mistake of those who suppose that the principal point of expression depends upon the eyes. With his face turned to the point from which the sound came, his upper lip a little curved, and quivering with agitation, and with a colour which surprise and pleasure had brought at once into his faded cheek, he exchanged the humdrum hornpipe which he had been sawing out with reluctant and lazy bow, for the fine Scottish air,
You're welcome, Charlie Stuart,
which flew from his strings as if by inspiration and after a breathless pause of admiration among the audience, was received with a clamour of applause, which seemed to show that the name and tendency, as well as the execution of the tune, was in the highest degree acceptable to all the party assembled.
In the meantime, Cristal Nixon, still keeping hold of Darsie, and following the landlord, forced his way with some difficulty through the crowded kitchen, and entered a small apartment on the other side of it, where they found Lilias Redgauntlet already seated. Here Nixon gave way to his suppressed resentment, and turning sternly on Crackenthorp, threatened him with his master's severest displeasure, because things were in such bad order to receive his family, when he had given such special advice that he desired to be private. But Father Crackenthorp was not a man to be brow-beaten.
'Why, brother Nixon, thou art angry this morning,' he replied; 'hast risen from thy wrong side, I think. You know, as well as I, that most of this mob is of the squire's own making—gentlemen that come with their servants, and so forth, to meet him in the way of business, as old Tom Turnpenny says—the very last that came was sent down with Dick Gardener from Fairladies.'
'But the blind scraping scoundrel yonder,' said Nixon, 'how dared you take such a rascal as that across your threshold at such a time as this? If the squire should dream you have a thought of peaching—I am only speaking for your good, Father Crackenthorp.'
'Why, look ye, brother Nixon,' said Crackenthorp, turning his quid with great composure, 'the squire is a very worthy gentleman, and I'll never deny it; but I am neither his servant nor his tenant, and so he need send me none of his orders till he hears I have put on his livery. As for turning away folk from my door, I might as well plug up the ale-tap, and pull down the sign—and as for peaching, and such like, the squire will find the folk here are as honest to the full as those he brings with him.'
'How, you impudent lump of tallow,' said Nixon, 'what do you mean by that?'
'Nothing,' said Crackenthorp, 'but that I can tour out as well as another—you understand me—keep good lights in my upper story—know a thing or two more than most folk in this country. If folk will come to my house on dangerous errands, egad they shall not find Joe Crackenthorp a cat's-paw. I'll keep myself clear, you may depend on it, and let every man answer for his own actions—that's my way. Anything wanted, Master Nixon?'
'No—yes—begone!' said Nixon, who seemed embarrassed with the landlord's contumacy, yet desirous to conceal the effect it produced on him.
The door was no sooner closed on Crackenthorp, than Miss Redgauntlet, addressing Nixon, commanded him to leave the room and go to his proper place.
'How, madam?' said the fellow sullenly, yet with an air of respect, 'Would you have your uncle pistol me for disobeying his orders?'
'He may perhaps pistol you for some other reason, if you do not obey mine,' said Lilias, composedly.
'You abuse your advantage over me, madam—I really dare not go—I am on guard over this other miss here; and if I should desert my post, my life were not worth five minutes' purchase.'
'Then know your post, sir,' said Lilias, 'and watch on the outside of the door. You have no commission to listen to our private conversation, I suppose? Begone, sir, without further speech or remonstrance, or I will tell my uncle that which you would have reason to repent be should know.'
The fellow looked at her with a singular expression of spite, mixed with deference. 'You abuse your advantages, madam,' he said, 'and act as foolishly in doing so as I did in affording you such a hank over me. But you are a tyrant; and tyrants have commonly short reigns.'
So saying, he left the apartment.
'The wretch's unparalleled insolence,' said Lilias to her brother, 'has given me one great advantage over him. For knowing that my uncle would shoot him with as little remorse as a woodcock, if he but guessed at his brazen-faced assurance towards me, he dares not since that time assume, so far as I am concerned, the air of insolent domination which the possession of my uncle's secrets, and the knowledge of his most secret plans, have led him to exert over others of his family.'
'In the meantime,' said Darsie, 'I am happy to see that the landlord of the house does not seem so devoted to him as I apprehended; and this aids the hope of escape which I am nourishing for you and for myself. O Lilias! the truest of friends, Alan Fairford, is in pursuit of me, and is here at this moment. Another humble, but, I think, faithful friend, is also within these dangerous walls.'
Lilias laid her finger on her lips, and pointed to the door. Darsie took the hint, lowered his voice, and informed her in whispers of the arrival of Fairford, and that he believed he had opened a communication with Wandering Willie. She listened with the utmost interest, and had just begun to reply, when a loud noise was heard in the kitchen, caused by several contending voices, amongst which Darsie thought he could distinguish that of Alan Fairford.
Forgetting how little his own condition permitted him to become the assistant of another, Darsie flew to the door of the room, and finding it locked and bolted on the outside, rushed against it with all his force, and made the most desperate efforts to burst it open, notwithstanding the entreaties of his sister that he would compose himself and recollect the condition in which he was placed. But the door, framed to withstand attacks from excisemen, constables, and other personages, considered as worthy to use what are called the kin
g's keys,[54] 'and therewith to make lockfast places open and patent,' set his efforts at defiance. Meantime the noise continued without, and we are to give an account of its origin in our next chapter.
CHAPTER XX
NARRATIVE OF DARSIE LATIMER, CONTINUED
Joe Crackenthorp's public-house had never, since it first reared its chimneys on the banks of the Solway, been frequented by such a miscellaneous group of visitors as had that morning become its guests. Several of them were persons whose quality seemed much superior to their dresses and modes of travelling. The servants who attended them contradicted the inferences to be drawn from the garb of their masters, and, according to the custom of the knights of the rainbow, gave many hints that they were not people to serve any but men of first-rate consequence. These gentlemen, who had come thither chiefly for the purpose of meeting with Mr. Redgauntlet, seemed moody and anxious, conversed and walked together apparently in deep conversation, and avoided any communication with the chance travellers whom accident brought that morning to the same place of resort.
As if Fate had set herself to confound the plans of the Jacobite conspirators, the number of travellers was unusually great, their appearance respectable, and they filled the public tap-room of the inn, where the political guests had already occupied most of the private apartments.
Amongst others, honest Joshua Geddes had arrived, travelling, as he said, in the sorrow of the soul, and mourning for the fate of Darsie Latimer as he would for his first-born child. He had skirted the whole coast of the Solway, besides making various trips into the interior, not shunning, on such occasions, to expose himself to the laugh of the scorner, nay, even to serious personal risk, by frequenting the haunts of smugglers, horse-jockeys, and other irregular persons, who looked on his intrusion with jealous eyes, and were apt to consider him as an exciseman in the disguise of a Quaker. All this labour and peril, however, had been undergone in vain. No search he could make obtained the least intelligence of Latimer, so that he began to fear the poor lad had been spirited abroad—for the practice of kidnapping was then not infrequent, especially on the western coasts of Britain—if indeed he had escaped a briefer and more bloody fate.
With a heavy heart, he delivered his horse, even Solomon, into the hands of the ostler, and walking into the inn, demanded from the landlord breakfast and a private room. Quakers, and such hosts as old Father Crackenthorp, are no congenial spirits; the latter looked askew over his shoulder, and replied, 'If you would have breakfast here, friend, you are like to eat it where other folk eat theirs.'
'And wherefore can I not,' said the Quaker, 'have an apartment to myself, for my money?'
'Because, Master Jonathan, you must wait till your betters be served, or else eat with your equals.'
Joshua Geddes argued the point no further, but sitting quietly down on the seat which Crackenthorp indicated to him, and calling for a pint of ale, with some bread, butter, and Dutch cheese, began to satisfy the appetite which the morning air had rendered unusually alert.
While the honest Quaker was thus employed, another stranger entered the apartment, and sat down near to the table on which his victuals were placed. He looked repeatedly at Joshua, licked his parched and chopped lips as he saw the good Quaker masticate his bread and cheese, and sucked up his thin chops when Mr. Geddes applied the tankard to his mouth, as if the discharge of these bodily functions by another had awakened his sympathies in an uncontrollable degree. At last, being apparently unable to withstand his longings, he asked, in a faltering tone, the huge landlord, who was tramping through the room in all corpulent impatience, whether he could have a plack-pie?'
'Never heard of such a thing, master,' said the landlord, and was about to trudge onward; when the guest, detaining him, said, in a strong Scottish tone, 'Ya will maybe have nae whey then, nor buttermilk, nor ye couldna exhibit a souter's clod?'
'Can't tell what ye are talking about, master,' said Crackenthorp.
'Then ye will have nae breakfast that will come within 'the compass of a shilling Scots?'
'Which is a penny sterling,' answered Crackenthorp, with a sneer. 'Why, no, Sawney, I can't say as we have—we can't afford it; But you shall have a bellyful for love, as we say in the bull-ring.'
'I shall never refuse a fair offer,' said the poverty-stricken guest; 'and I will say that for the English, if they were deils, that they are a ceeveleesed people to gentlemen that are under a cloud.'
'Gentlemen!—humph!' said Crackenthorp—'not a blue-cap among them but halts upon that foot.' Then seizing on a dish which still contained a huge cantle of what had been once a princely mutton pasty, he placed it on the table before the stranger, saying, 'There, master gentleman; there is what is worth all the black pies, as you call them, that were ever made of sheep's head.'
'Sheep's head is a gude thing, for a' that,' replied the guest; but not being spoken so loud as to offend his hospitable entertainer, the interjection might pass for a private protest against the scandal thrown out against the standing dish of Caledonia.
This premised, he immediately began to transfer the mutton and pie-crust from his plate to his lips, in such huge gobbets, as if he was refreshing after a three days' fast, and laying in provisions against a whole Lent to come.
Joshua Geddes in his turn gazed on him with surprise, having never, he thought, beheld such a gaunt expression of hunger in the act of eating. 'Friend,' he said, after watching him for some minutes, 'if thou gorgest thyself in this fashion, thou wilt assuredly choke. Wilt thou not take a draught out of my cup to help down all that dry meat?'
'Troth,' said the stranger, stopping and looking at the friendly propounder, 'that's nae bad overture, as they say in the General Assembly. I have heard waur motions than that frae wiser counsel.'
Mr. Geddes ordered a quart of home-brewed to be placed before our friend Peter Peebles; for the reader must have already conceived that this unfortunate litigant was the wanderer in question.
The victim of Themis had no sooner seen the flagon, than he seized it with the same energy which he had displayed in operating upon the pie—puffed off the froth with such emphasis, that some of it lighted on Mr. Geddes's head—and then said, as if with it sudden recollection of what was due to civility, 'Here's to ye, friend. What! are ye ower grand to give me an answer, or are ye dull o' hearing?'
'I prithee drink thy liquor, friend,' said the good Quaker; 'thou meanest it in civility, but we care not for these idle fashions.'
'What! ye are a Quaker, are ye?' said Peter; and without further ceremony reared the flagon to his head, from which he withdrew it not while a single drop of 'barley-broo' remained. 'That's done you and me muckle gude,' he said, sighing as he set down his pot; 'but twa mutchkins o' yill between twa folk is a drappie ower little measure. What say ye to anither pot? or shall we cry in a blithe Scots pint at ance? The yill is no amiss.'
'Thou mayst call for what thou wilt on thine own charges, friend,' said Geddes; 'for myself, I willingly contribute to the quenching of thy natural thirst; but I fear it were no such easy matter to relieve thy acquired and artificial drought.'
'That is to say, in plain terms, ye are for withdrawing your caution with the folk of the house? You Quaker folk are but fause comforters; but since ye have garred me drink sae muckle cauld yill—me that am no used to the like of it in the forenoon—I think ye might as weel have offered me a glass of brandy or usquabae—I'm nae nice body—I can drink onything that's wet and toothsome.'
'Not a drop at my cost, friend,' quoth Geddes. 'Thou art an old man, and hast perchance a heavy and long journey before thee. Thou art, moreover, my countryman, as I judge from thy tongue; and I will not give thee the means of dishonouring thy grey hairs in a strange land.'
'Grey hairs, neighbour!' said Peter, with a wink to the bystanders, whom this dialogue began to interest, and who were in hopes of seeing the Quaker played off by the crazed beggar, for such Peter Peebles appeared to be. 'Grey hairs! The Lord mend your eyesight, neighbour, that disn
a ken grey hairs frae a tow wig!'
This jest procured a shout of laughter, and, what was still more acceptable than dry applause, a man who stood beside called out, 'Father Crackenthorp, bring a nipperkin of brandy. I'll bestow a dram on this fellow, were it but for that very word.'
The brandy was immediately brought by a wench who acted as barmaid; and Peter, with a grin of delight, filled a glass, quaffed it off, and then saying, 'God bless me! I was so unmannerly as not to drink to ye—I think the Quaker has smitten me wi' his ill-bred havings,'—he was about to fill another, when his hand was arrested by his new friend; who said at the same time, 'No, no, friend—fair play's a jewel—time about, if you please.' And filling a glass for himself, emptied it as gallantly as Peter could have done. 'What say you to that, friend?' he continued, addressing the Quaker.
'Nay, friend,' answered Joshua, 'it went down thy throat, not mine; and I have nothing to say about what concerns me not; but if thou art a man of humanity, thou wilt not give this poor creature the means of debauchery. Bethink thee that they will spurn him from the door, as they would do a houseless and masterless dog, and that he may die on the sands or on the common. And if he has through thy means been rendered incapable of helping himself, thou shalt not be innocent of his blood.'
'Faith, Broadbrim, I believe thou art right, and the old gentleman in the flaxen jazy shall have no more of the comforter. Besides, we have business in hand to-day, and this fellow, for as mad as he looks, may have a nose on his face after all. Hark ye, father,—what is your name, and what brings you into such an out-of-the-way corner?'
'I am not just free to condescend on my name,' said Peter; 'and as for my business—there is a wee dribble of brandy in the stoup—it would be wrang to leave it to the lass—it is learning her bad usages.'