The Antiquary Part 20

"I am much obliged, Mr. Oldbuck, but I am amply provided," said his mysterious young friend. "Excuse me--I really cannot sustain further conversation at present. I will write or see you, before I leave Fairport--that is, if I find myself obliged to go."

So saying, he shook the Antiquary's hand warmly, turned from him, and walked rapidly towards the town, "staying no longer question."

"Very extraordinary indeed!" said Oldbuck;--"but there's something about this lad I can never fathom; and yet I cannot for my heart think ill of him neither. I must go home and take off the fire in the Green Room, for none of my womankind will venture into it after twilight."

"And how am I to win hame?" blubbered the disconsolate express.

"It's a fine night," said the Blue-Gown, looking up to the skies; "I had as gude gang back to the town, and take care o' the wean."

"Do so, do so, Edie;" and rummaging for some time in his huge waistcoat pocket till he found the object of his search, the Antiquary added, "there's sixpence to ye to buy snees.h.i.+n."

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.

"I am bewitched with the rogue's company. If the rascal has not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it could not be else. I have drunk medicines."

Second Part of Henry IV.

Regular for a fortnight were the inquiries of the Antiquary at the veteran Caxon, whether he had heard what Mr. Lovel was about; and as regular were Caxon's answers, "that the town could learn naething about him whatever, except that he had received anither muckle letter or twa frae the south, and that he was never seen on the plainstanes at a'."

"How does he live, Caxon?"

"Ou, Mrs. Hadoway just dresses him a beefsteak or a muttonchop, or makes him some Friar's chicken, or just what she likes hersell, and he eats it in the little red parlour off his bedroom. She canna get him to say that he likes ae thing better than anither; and she makes him tea in a morning, and he settles honourably wi' her every week."

"But does he never stir abroad?"

"He has clean gi'en up walking, and he sits a' day in his room reading or writing; a hantle letters he has written, but he wadna put them into our post-house, though Mrs. Hadoway offered to carry them hersell, but sent them a' under ae cover to the sheriff; and it's Mrs. Mailsetter's belief, that the sheriff sent his groom to put them into the post-office at Tannonburgh; it's my puir thought, that he jaloused their looking into his letters at Fairport; and weel had he need, for my puir daughter Jenny"--

"Tut, don't plague me with your womankind, Caxon. About this poor young lad.--Does he write nothing but letters?"

"Ou, ay--hale sheets o' other things, Mrs. Hadoway says. She wishes muckle he could be gotten to take a walk; she thinks he's but looking very puirly, and his appet.i.te's clean gane; but he'll no hear o' ganging ower the door-stane--him that used to walk sae muckle too."

"That's wrong--I have a guess what he's busy about; but he must not work too hard neither. I'll go and see him this very day--he's deep, doubtless, in the Caledoniad."

Having formed this manful resolution, Mr. Oldbuck equipped himself for the expedition with his thick walking-shoes and gold-headed cane, muttering the while the words of Falstaff which we have chosen for the motto of this CHAPTER; for the Antiquary was himself rather surprised at the degree of attachment which he could not but acknowledge be entertained for this stranger. The riddle was notwithstanding easily solved. Lovel had many attractive qualities, but he won our Antiquary's heart by being on most occasions an excellent listener.

A walk to Fairport had become somewhat of an adventure with Mr. Oldbuck, and one which he did not often care to undertake. He hated greetings in the market-place; and there were generally loiterers in the streets to persecute him, either about the news of the day, or about some petty pieces of business. So, on this occasion, he had no sooner entered the streets of Fairport, than it was "Good-morrow, Mr. Oldbuck--a sight o'

you's gude, for sair een: what d'ye think of the news in the Sun the day?--they say the great attempt will be made in a fortnight."

"I wish to the Lord it were made and over, that I might hear no more about it."

"Monkbarns, your honour," said the nursery and seedsman, "I hope the plants gied satisfaction?--and if ye wanted ony flower-roots fresh frae Holland, or" (this in a lower key) "an anker or twa o' Cologne gin, ane o' our brigs cam in yestreen."

"Thank ye, thank ye,--no occasion at present, Mr. Crabtree," said the Antiquary, pus.h.i.+ng resolutely onward.

"Mr. Oldbuck," said the town-clerk (a more important person, who came in front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), "the provost, understanding you were in town, begs on no account that you'll quit it without seeing him; he wants to speak to ye about bringing the water frae the Fairwell-spring through a part o' your lands."

"What the deuce!--have they n.o.body's land but mine to cut and carve on?--I won't consent, tell them."

"And the provost," said the clerk, going on, without noticing the rebuff, "and the council, wad be agreeable that you should hae the auld stones at Donagild's chapel, that ye was wussing to hae."

"Eh!--what?--Oho! that's another story--Well, well, I'll call upon the provost, and we'll talk about it."

"But ye maun speak your mind on't forthwith, Monkbarns, if ye want the stones; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-stanes might be put with advantage on the front of the new council-house--that is, the twa cross-legged figures that the callants used to ca' Robin and Bobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek; and the other stane, that they ca'd Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu', the Deacon says, and just in the style of modern Gothic."

"Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation!" exclaimed the Antiquary,--"A monument of a knight-templar on each side of a Grecian porch, and a Madonna on the top of it!--O crimini!--Well, tell the provost I wish to have the stones, and we'll not differ about the water-course.

It's lucky I happened to come this way to-day."

They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily clerk had most reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole proposal of an exchange between the monuments (which the council had determined to remove as a nuisance, because they encroached three feet upon the public road), and the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh through the estate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated with himself upon the pressure of the moment.

Through these various entanglements, Monkbarns (to use the phrase by which he was distinguished in the country) made his way at length to Mrs. Hadoway's. This good woman was the widow of a late clergyman at Fairport, who had been reduced by her husband's untimely death, to that state of straitened and embarra.s.sed circ.u.mstances in which the widows of the Scotch clergy are too often found. The tenement which she occupied, and the furniture of which she was possessed, gave her the means of letting a part of her house; and as Lovel had been a quiet, regular, and profitable lodger, and had qualified the necessary intercourse which they had together with a great deal of gentleness and courtesy, Mrs.

Hadoway, not, perhaps, much used to such kindly treatment, had become greatly attached to her lodger, and was profuse in every sort of personal attention which circ.u.mstances permitted her to render him.

To cook a dish somewhat better than ordinary for "the poor young gentleman's dinner;" to exert her interest with those who remembered her husband, or loved her for her own sake and his, in order to procure scarce vegetables, or something which her simplicity supposed might tempt her lodger's appet.i.te, was a labour in which she delighted, although she anxiously concealed it from the person who was its object.

She did not adopt this secrecy of benevolence to avoid the laugh of those who might suppose that an oval face and dark eyes, with a clear brown complexion, though belonging to a woman of five-and-forty, and enclosed within a widow's close-drawn pinners, might possibly still aim at making conquests; for, to say truth, such a ridiculous suspicion having never entered into her own head, she could not antic.i.p.ate its having birth in that of any one else. But she concealed her attentions solely out of delicacy to her guest, whose power of repaying them she doubted as much as she believed in his inclination to do so, and in his being likely to feel extreme pain at leaving any of her civilities unrequited. She now opened the door to Mr. Oldbuck, and her surprise at seeing him brought tears into her eyes, which she could hardly restrain.

"I am glad to see you, sir--I am very glad to see you. My poor gentleman is, I am afraid, very unwell; and oh, Mr. Oldbuck, he'll see neither doctor, nor minister, nor writer! And think what it would be, if, as my poor Mr. Hadoway used to say, a man was to die without advice of the three learned faculties!"

"Greatly better than with them," grumbled the cynical Antiquary. "I tell you, Mrs. Hadoway, the clergy live by our sins, the medical faculty by our diseases, and the law gentry by our misfortunes."

"O fie, Monkbarns!--to hear the like o' that frae you!--But yell walk up and see the poor young lad?--Hegh sirs? sae young and weel-favoured--and day by day he has eat less and less, and now he hardly touches onything, only just pits a bit on the plate to make fas.h.i.+on--and his poor cheek has turned every day thinner and paler, sae that he now really looks as auld as me, that might be his mother--no that I might be just that neither, but something very near it."

"Why does he not take some exercise?" said Oldbuck.

"I think we have persuaded him to do that, for he has bought a horse from Gibbie Golightly, the galloping groom. A gude judge o' horse-flesh Gibbie tauld our la.s.s that he was--for he offered him a beast he thought wad answer him weel eneugh, as he was a bookish man, but Mr. Lovel wadna look at it, and bought ane might serve the Master o' Morphie--they keep it at the Graeme's Arms, ower the street;--and he rode out yesterday morning and this morning before breakfast--But winna ye walk up to his room?"

"Presently, presently. But has he no visitors?"

"O dear, Mr. Oldbuck, not ane; if he wadna receive them when he was weel and sprightly, what chance is there of onybody in Fairport looking in upon him now?"

"Ay, ay, very true,--I should have been surprised had it been otherwise--Come, show me up stairs, Mrs. Hadoway, lest I make a blunder, and go where I should not."

The good landlady showed Mr. Oldbuck up her narrow staircase, warning him of every turn, and lamenting all the while that he was laid under the necessity of mounting up so high. At length she gently tapped at the door of her guest's parlour. "Come in," said Lovel; and Mrs. Hadoway ushered in the Laird of Monkbarns.

The little apartment was neat and clean, and decently furnished--ornamented, too, by such relics of her youthful arts of sempstress-s.h.i.+p as Mrs. Hadoway had retained; but it was close, overheated, and, as it appeared to Oldbuck, an unwholesome situation for a young person in delicate health,--an observation which ripened his resolution touching a project that had already occurred to him in Lovel's behalf. With a writing-table before him, on which lay a quant.i.ty of books and papers, Lovel was seated on a couch, in his night-gown and slippers. Oldbuck was shocked at the change which had taken place in his personal appearance. His cheek and brow had a.s.sumed a ghastly white, except where a round bright spot of hectic red formed a strong and painful contrast, totally different from the general cast of hale and hardy complexion which had formerly overspread and somewhat embrowned his countenance. Oldbuck observed, that the dress he wore belonged to a deep mourning suit, and a coat of the same colour hung on a chair near to him. As the Antiquary entered, Lovel arose and came forward to welcome him.

"This is very kind," he said, shaking him by the hand, and thanking him warmly for his visit--"this is very kind, and has antic.i.p.ated a visit with which I intended to trouble you. You must know I have become a horseman lately."

"I understand as much from Mrs. Hadoway--I only hope, my good young friend, you have been fortunate in a quiet horse. I myself inadvertently bought one from the said Gibbie Golightly, which brute ran two miles on end with me after a pack of hounds, with which I had no more to do than the last year's snow; and after affording infinite amus.e.m.e.nt, I suppose, to the whole hunting field, he was so good as to deposit me in a dry ditch--I hope yours is a more peaceful beast?"

"I hope, at least, we shall make our excursions on a better plan of mutual understanding."

"That is to say, you think yourself a good horseman?"

"I would not willingly," answered Lovel, "confess myself a very bad one."

"No--all you young fellows think that would be equal to calling yourselves tailors at once--But have you had experience? for, crede experto, a horse in a pa.s.sion is no joker."

"Why, I should be sorry to boast myself as a great horseman; but when I acted as aide-de-camp to Sir----in the cavalry action at--, last year, I saw many better cavaliers than myself dismounted."