The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 1 by Walter Scott (best classic romance novels TXT) 📖

on their burden, so soon as by any means they had compassed a new horse of somewhat superior strength to that which had broken down the day before. However reasonable this practice appeared to the Laird of Dumbiedikes, he ought to have observed, that it may be overdone, and that it infers, as a matter of course, the destruction and loss of both horse, and cart, and loading. Even so it befell when the additional "prestations" came to be demanded of Benjamin Butler. A man of few words, and few ideas, but attached to Beersheba with a feeling like that which a vegetable entertains to the spot in which it chances to be planted, he neither remonstrated with the Laird, nor endeavoured to escape from him, but, toiling night and day to accomplish the terms of his taskmaster, fell into a burning fever and died. His wife did not long survive him; and, as if it had been the fate of this family to be left orphans, our Reuben Butler was, about the year 1704-5, left in the same circumstances in which his father had been placed, and under the same guardianship, being that of his grandmother, the widow of Monk's old trooper.

The same prospect of misery hung over the head of another tenant of this hardhearted lord of the soil. This was a tough true-blue Presbyterian, called Deans, who, though most obnoxious to the Laird on account of principles in church and state, contrived to maintain his ground upon the estate by regular payment of mail-duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word rent. But the years 1700 and 1701, long remembered in Scotland for dearth and general distress, subdued the stout heart of the agricultural whig. Citations by the ground-officer, decreets of the Baron Court, sequestrations, poindings of outside and inside plenishing, flew about his ears as fast as the tory bullets whistled around those of the Covenanters at Pentland, Bothwell Brigg, or Airsmoss. Struggle as he might, and he struggled gallantly, "Douce David Deans" was routed horse and foot, and lay at the mercy of his grasping landlord just at the time that Benjamin Butler died. The fate of each family was anticipated; but they who prophesied their expulsion to beggary and ruin were disappointed by an accidental circumstance.

On the very term-day when their ejection should have taken place, when all their neighbours were prepared to pity, and not one to assist them, the minister of the parish, as well as a doctor from Edinburgh, received a hasty summons to attend the Laird of Dumbiedikes. Both were surprised, for his contempt for both faculties had been pretty commonly his theme over an extra bottle, that is to say, at least once every day. The leech for the soul, and he for the body, alighted in the court of the little old manor-house at almost the same time; and when they had gazed a moment at each other with some surprise, they in the same breath expressed their conviction that Dumbiedikes must needs be very ill indeed, since he summoned them both to his presence at once. Ere the servant could usher them to his apartment, the party was augmented by a man of law, Nichil Novit, writing himself procurator before the sheriff-court, for in those days there were no solicitors. This latter personage was first summoned to the apartment of the Laird, where, after some short space, the soul-curer and the body-curer were invited to join him.

Dumbiedikes had been by this time transported into the best bedroom, used only upon occasions of death and marriage, and called, from the former of these occupations, the Dead-Room. There were in this apartment, besides the sick person himself and Mr. Novit, the son and heir of the patient, a tall gawky silly-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a housekeeper, a good buxom figure of a woman, betwixt forty and fifty, who had kept the keys and managed matters at Dumbiedikes since the lady's death. It was to these attendants that Dumbiedikes addressed himself pretty nearly in the following words; temporal and spiritual matters, the care of his health and his affairs, being strangely jumbled in a head which was never one of the clearest.

"These are sair times wi' me, gentlemen and neighbours! amaist as ill as at the aughty-nine, when I was rabbled by the collegeaners.*

* Immediately previous to the Revolution, the students at the Edinburgh College were violent anti-catholics. They were strongly suspected of burning the house of Prestonfield, belonging to Sir James Dick, the Lord Provost; and certainly were guilty of creating considerable riots in 1688-9.

—They mistook me muckle—they ca'd me a papist, but there was never a papist bit about me, minister.—Jock, ye'll take warning—it's a debt we maun a' pay, and there stands Nichil Novit that will tell ye I was never gude at paying debts in my life.—Mr. Novit, ye'll no forget to draw the annual rent that's due on the yerl's band—if I pay debt to other folk, I think they suld pay it to me—that equals aquals.—Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping.*

* The Author has been flattered by the assurance, that this naive mode of recommending arboriculture (which was actually delivered in these very words by a Highland laird, while on his death-bed, to his son) had so much weight with a Scottish earl as to lead to his planting a large tract of country.

"My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I ne'er fand time to mind him—Jock, ne'er drink brandy in the morning, it files the stamach sair; gin ye take a morning's draught, let it be aqua mirabilis; Jenny there makes it weel—Doctor, my breath is growing as scant as a broken-winded piper's, when he has played for four-and-twenty hours at a penny wedding—Jenny, pit the cod aneath my head—but it's a' needless!—Mass John, could ye think o' rattling ower some bit short prayer, it wad do me gude maybe, and keep some queer thoughts out o' my head, Say something, man."

"I cannot use a prayer like a rat-rhyme," answered the honest clergyman; "and if you would have your soul redeemed like a prey from the fowler, Laird, you must needs show me your state of mind."

"And shouldna ye ken that without my telling you?" answered the patient. "What have I been paying stipend and teind, parsonage and vicarage, for, ever sin' the aughty-nine, and I canna get a spell of a prayer for't, the only time I ever asked for ane in my life?—Gang awa wi' your whiggery, if that's a' ye can do; auld Curate Kilstoup wad hae read half the prayer-book to me by this time—Awa wi' ye!—Doctor, let's see if ye can do onything better for me."

The doctor, who had obtained some information in the meanwhile from the housekeeper on the state of his complaints, assured him the medical art could not prolong his life many hours.

"Then damn Mass John and you baith!" cried the furious and intractable patient. "Did ye come here for naething but to tell me that ye canna help me at the pinch? Out wi' them, Jenny—out o' the house! and, Jock, my curse, and the curse of Cromwell, go wi' ye, if ye gie them either fee or bountith, or sae muckle as a black pair o' cheverons!"*

*Cheverons—gloves.

The clergyman and doctor made a speedy retreat out of the apartment, while Dumbiedikes fell into one of those transports of violent and profane language, which had procured him the surname of Damn-me-dikes. "Bring me the brandy bottle, Jenny, ye b—," he cried, with a voice in which passion contended with pain. "I can die as I have lived, without fashing ony o' them. But there's ae thing," he said, sinking his voice—"there's ae fearful thing hings about my heart, and an anker of brandy winna wash it away.—The Deanses at Woodend!—I sequestrated them in the dear years, and now they are to flit, they'll starve—and that Beersheba, and that auld trooper's wife and her oe, they'll starve—they'll starve! —Look out, Jock; what kind o' night is't?"

"On-ding o' snaw, father," answered Jock, after having opened the window, and looked out with great composure.

"They'll perish in the drifts!" said the expiring sinner—"they'll perish wi' cauld!—but I'll be het eneugh, gin a' tales be true."

This last observation was made under breath, and in a tone which made the very attorney shudder. He tried his hand at ghostly advice, probably for the first time in his life, and recommended as an opiate for the agonised conscience of the Laird, reparation of the injuries he had done to these distressed families, which, he observed by the way, the civil law called restitutio in integrum. But Mammon was struggling with Remorse for retaining his place in a bosom he had so long possessed; and he partly succeeded, as an old tyrant proves often too strong for his insurgent rebels.

"I canna do't," he answered, with a voice of despair. "It would kill me to do't—how can ye bid me pay back siller, when ye ken how I want it? or dispone Beersheba, when it lies sae weel into my ain plaid-nuik? Nature made Dumbiedikes and Beersheba to be ae man's land—She did, by