The Fortunes of Nigel by Walter Scott (bookreader .txt) 📖

articles, a small sample of that good-breeding which the French are so renowned for.”

“It is not kind of you,” said Nigel, “to bestow the first use of it on an old and obliged friend.”

Heriot only answered to this observation with a short dry cough, and then proceeded.

“Hem! hem! I say, ahem! My lord, as my French politeness may not carry me far, I would willingly know whether I am to speak as a friend, since your lordship is pleased to term me such; or whether I am, as befits my condition, to confine myself to the needful business which must be treated of between us.”

“Speak as a friend by all means, Master Heriot,” said Nigel; “I perceive you have adopted some of the numerous prejudices against me, if not all of them. Speak out, and frankly—what I cannot deny I will at least confess.”

“And I trust, my lord, redress,” said Heriot.

“So far as in my power, certainly,” answered Nigel.

“Ah I my lord,” continued Heriot, “that is a melancholy though a necessary restriction; for how lightly may any one do an hundred times more than the degree of evil which it may be within his power to repair to the sufferers and to society! But we are not alone here,” he said, stopping, and darting his shrewd eye towards the muffled figure of the disguised maiden, whose utmost efforts had not enabled her so to adjust her position as altogether to escape observation. More anxious to prevent her being discovered than to keep his own affairs private, Nigel hastily answered—“'Tis a page of mine; you may speak freely before him. He is of France, and knows no English.”

“I am then to speak freely,” said Heriot, after a second glance at the chair; “perhaps my words may be more free than welcome.”

“Go on, sir,” said Nigel, “I have told you I can bear reproof.”

“In one word, then, my lord—why do I find you in this place, and whelmed with charges which must blacken a name rendered famous by ages of virtue?”

“Simply, then, you find me here,” said Nigel, “because, to begin from my original error, I would be wiser than my father.”

“It was a difficult task, my lord,” replied Heriot; “your father was voiced generally as the wisest and one of the bravest men of Scotland.”

“He commanded me,” continued Nigel, “to avoid all gambling; and I took upon me to modify this injunction into regulating my play according to my skill, means, and the course of my luck.”

“Ay, self opinion, acting on a desire of acquisition, my lord—you hoped to touch pitch and not to be defiled,” answered Heriot. “Well, my lord, you need not say, for I have heard with much regret, how far this conduct diminished your reputation. Your next error I may without scruple remind you of—My lord, my lord, in whatever degree Lord Dalgarno may have failed towards you, the son of his father should have been sacred from your violence.”

“You speak in cold blood, Master Heriot, and I was smarting under a thousand wrongs inflicted on me under the mask of friendship.”

“That is, he gave your lordship bad advice, and you,” said Heriot—

“Was fool enough to follow his counsel,” answered Nigel—“But we will pass this, Master Heriot, if you please. Old men and young men, men of the sword and men of peaceful occupation, always have thought, always will think, differently on such subjects.”

“I grant,” answered Heriot, “the distinction between the old goldsmith and the young nobleman—still you should have had patience for Lord Huntinglen's sake, and prudence for your own. Supposing your quarrel just—”

“I pray you to pass on to some other charge,” said Lord Glenvarloch.

“I am not your accuser, my lord; but I trust in heaven, that your own heart has already accused you bitterly on the inhospitable wrong which your late landlord has sustained at your hand.”

“Had I been guilty of what you allude to,” said Lord Glenvarloch,—“had a moment of temptation hurried me away, I had long ere now most bitterly repented it. But whoever may have wronged the unhappy woman, it was not I—I never heard of her folly until within this hour.”

“Come, my lord,” said Heriot, with some severity, “this sounds too much like affectation. I know there is among our modern youth a new creed respecting adultery as well as homicide—I would rather hear you speak of a revision of the Decalogue, with mitigated penalties in favour of the privileged orders—I would rather hear you do this than deny a fact in which you have been known to glory.”

“Glory!—I never did, never would have taken honour to myself from such a cause,” said Lord Glenvarloch. “I could not prevent other idle tongues, and idle brains, from making false inferences.”

“You would have known well enough how to stop their mouths, my lord,” replied Heriot, “had they spoke of you what was unpleasing to your ears, and what the truth did not warrant.—Come, my lord, remember your promise to confess; and, indeed, to confess is, in this case, in some slight sort to redress. I will grant you are young—the woman handsome—and, as I myself have observed, light-headed enough. Let me know where she is. Her foolish husband has still some compassion for her—will save her from infamy—perhaps, in time, receive her back; for we are a good-natured generation we traders. Do not, my lord, emulate those who work mischief merely for the pleasure of doing so—it is the very devil's worst quality.”

“Your grave remonstrances will drive me mad,” said Nigel. “There is a show of sense and reason in what you say; and yet, it is positively insisting on my telling the retreat of a fugitive of whom I know nothing earthly.”

“It is well, my lord,” answered Heriot, coldly. “You have a right, such as it is, to keep your own secrets; but, since my discourse on these points seems so totally unavailing, we had better proceed to business. Yet your father's image rises before me, and seems to plead that I should go on.”

“Be it as you will, sir,” said Glenvarloch; “he who doubts my word shall have no additional security for it.”

“Well, my lord.—In the Sanctuary at Whitefriars—a place of refuge so unsuitable to a young man of quality and character—I am told a murder was committed.”

“And you believe that I did the deed, I suppose?”

“God forbid, my lord!” said Heriot. “The coroner's inquest hath sat, and it appeared that your lordship, under your assumed name of Grahame, behaved with the utmost bravery.”

“No compliment, I pray you,” said Nigel; “I am only too happy to find, that I did not murder, or am not believed to have murdered, the old man.”

“True, my lord,” said Heriot; “but even in this affair there lacks explanation. Your lordship embarked this morning in a wherry with a female, and, it is said, an immense sum of money, in specie and other valuables—but