Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume VIII Part 10

Those, only fix'd, they first and last obey-- The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.'

"Having now reached the house, Mr Darsy desired Willie to remain a minute in charge of the horses, until he went for his factotum, Sandy Ramsay, whom he wished to see the animals, and whose judgment he meant to consult, as to their purchase. Sandy he found, as usual, in the garden.

"'Here is a decent, honest, well-informed, and intelligent man, Sandy,'

said Mr Darsy, 'with a pair of horses for sale, which I wish you to come and look at.'

"'What ca' they him, sir?' inquired Sandy.

"'Why, I don't know; I didn't ask his name,' replied Mr Darsy.

"'I hope it's no Willie Craig,' said the former, drawing on his coat; 'for he's a slippery chiel, Willie; an' I wadna say that even my caution wad be a match for his cunning.'

"'Whether his name be Craig or not, I do not know,' replied Mr Darsy; 'but this I do know, that he seems to be a very intelligent and conscientious man. He is a great admirer of our favourite author, Sandy, and quotes him with great propriety and facility; and of such a man I would not willingly believe any ill.

"'He quotes Pope, sir, does he?' exclaimed Sandy. 'Then, sir, he's just the man. That's Willie Craig, beyond a' manner o' doot; and the biggest rogue this day in Scotland.'

"'Come, come, Sandy,' said Mr. Darsy, a little severely, shocked at the idea of a rogue quoting Pope, and disbelieving the existence of such a moral incongruity--'come, come, Sandy,' he said, 'you judge too harshly; you speak unguardedly. The man is, I doubt not, a very honest man; and "an honest man," you know, Sandy, "is the n.o.blest work of G.o.d."'

"'I've seen that disputed, sir,' said Sandy; 'an' I think, after a' wi'

some success. A man of great parts an' genius is surely a n.o.bler creature than a'.'

"'I'm grieved, Sandy, to find your moral perceptions so weak,' here interrupted Mr Darsy. 'Don't you see, or rather will you not see, that----'

"'I really canna see, sir,' interrupted Sandy, in his turn 'that----'

"'Well, but let me explain myself,' again interrupted Mr Darsy; and, having at length obtained this permission, he went on to expound the disputed text, after his own views of its bearings.

"Sandy replied; Mr Darsy rejoined; and a hot dispute, of a good half-hour's continuance, ensued between master and man, on the moral points involved in the quotation; such disputes, by the way, being a frequent occurrence between them; for, although they agreed most cordially on the general merits of Pope, there were many minute points--some as to the meaning of pa.s.sages; others as to their morality--on which they differed, as on the present occasion, and on which they spoke for hours on end.

"To return to the instance just now under notice: they were thus engaged--that is, settling the moral bearing of the quotation above given--and so earnest in their employment, as to be totally oblivious of everything else--and, amongst the rest, Willie Craig and his horses--when Miss Darsy came running into the garden, just as her brother had begun a new section of his defence of Pope, with--

"'Pope, sir--I say Pope distinctly means----'

"'Gracious heaven, Mr Darsy!' exclaimed Miss Sarah, 'are you at that odious Pope again? Have you forgotten that there has been a man with two horses waiting on you for this half-hour past? It is too bad--too bad, Mr Darsy.'

"'I acknowledge it, my dear--I acknowledge it,' replied the benevolent and good-natured Popite, smiling kindly on his sister; 'but I am sure the honest man will forgive me when I tell him the cause.'

"'Will he?' said his sister. 'I should rather think he will consider it an aggravation of the offence.'

"'There you are wrong, Sarah, my dear,' rejoined Mr Darsy; 'for the man understands these things.'

"'What!' exclaimed his sister, in alarm; 'does _he_ quote Pope, too? Do horse-jockeys quote Pope?'

"'And why not, my dear?' said Mr Darsy, gladly seizing on this general query to avoid making any discoveries on the particular one. 'Why not, my dear? Why may not a horse-jockey understand and appreciate Pope as well as any other man? There is nothing to hinder him.'

"'Oh, certainly not,' replied Miss Darsy; 'but oh! if he was dosed with Pope as I am--if he had Pope! Pope! ringing in his ears night and day, in all situations and on all occasions, as I have--he would grow sick, sick, at the very name.'

"'Ah, Sarah, Sarah!' replied her brother, smiling--

'Believe me--good as well as ill-- Woman's at best----

"'Pope again!' screamed Miss Darsy, putting her fingers in her ears, and rus.h.i.+ng distractedly away from her Pope-mad brother.

"The latter looked after her with a smile of pity, and perhaps a very slight matter of contempt mingled with it, and began again, and finished with additional emphasis, the quotation in which he had been interrupted. Then, turning to Sandy--

"'Let us go and take a look at this honest man's horses, Sandy,' he said. 'We have used him rather ill, after all; but I'll explain.'

"In the next minute the parties had met, and the first thing Mr Darsy did was to explain to Willie, as he had proposed to do, the reason of his absence.

"'A' richt, sir--a' richt,' replied Willie, graciously. 'There's far frae bein ony harm dune; and, besides, your excuse is a guid ane, although ye had been an hour langer.'

"Willie, at the special request of Sandy Ramsay, now proceeded to put his horses through their paces; and, while the former was at a little distance in the performance of this duty--'Is that the man you meant, Sandy?' said Mr Darsy.

"'I dinna ken him by sight, sir--only by repute,' replied Sandy; 'but, if he quotes Pope to you, he maun be the man, for he's a cunning scoundrel, and doubtless kens you're fond o' the little crooked poet.'

"'Sandy, Sandy, you have a scurrilous tongue,' said Mr Darsy. 'You'll find the man prove an honest one, I have no doubt, and will, I am sure, feel then ashamed of what you are now saying to his prejudice.'

"'Maybe, sir; but I'll be surer o' my man after I hae heard a quotation or twa, and still surer after ye hae bocht the horses; for if he doesna _do_ ye, he's most a.s.suredly no Willie Craig.'

"Here the conversation was interrupted by the return of the horse-dealer, who approached them, leading one of his horses at a full trot. Both animals having been subjected to this display--

"'Now, my good friend,' said Mr Darsy, 'what's your price?'

"'Why, then, juist to be at a word wi' ye, sir,' replied Willie, taking off his hat with one hand, and scratching his head with the other, 'I'll take thirty guineas for the black ane, and twenty for the brown; and I'm sure that's a dead bargain--juist throwing the cattle awa. It's no a month since I was offered forty guineas in my loof for that black beast, but I wasna sae hard pressed for siller then as I'm noo, and I refused it.'

"'Sandy,' said Mr Darsy, turning to the farmer, 'what do you say to these prices? You have some knowledge of horses.'

"'I say, sir, that, as near as I can guess, they're juist aboot the dooble o' what they ocht to be. That black horse, if I'm no mista'en, is broken-winded, and 'll be dead lame in a week; and the brown ane's no a grain better.'

"Willie looked at Mr Darsy with a smile of conscious integrity, and of calm contempt at once of the slander and the judgment of the slanderer.

The unsuspecting Mr Darsy returned the look, attributing Sandy's decision to prejudice.

"'Come now, Sandy,' said the farmer, 'forget that you have any interest to serve in this matter, and deal fairly between man and man.'

"'But it's no between man and man, sir,' said Sandy; 'it's between man and a horse-jockey; and it's weel kent that's no a fair match. It wad tak the deil himsel to deal wi' a horse-couper.'

"Willie smiled again the smile of conscious innocence; and, turning to Mr. Darsy, said--

"'I rather think ye will agree wi' me, sir, that

'Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part'--

and he looked expressively at Sandy--

_there_ all the honour lies.'

"'Unquestionably,' replied Mr Darsy, 'it is

'Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather and prunello.'