St. Ronan's Well by Walter Scott (top books to read .TXT) 📖

business with an empty stomach—and here comes your tea, and I hope Hannah has made it to your taste.”

Meg sipped her tea—confessed Hannah's skill in the mysteries of the Chinese herb—sipped again, then tried to eat a bit of bread and butter, with very indifferent success; and notwithstanding the lawyer's compliments to her good looks, seemed in reality, on the point of becoming ill.[Pg 211]

“In the deil's name, what is the matter!” said the lawyer, too well read in a profession where sharp observation is peculiarly necessary, to suffer these symptoms of agitation to escape him. “Ay, dame? ye are taking this business of yours deeper to heart than ever I kend you take ony thing. Ony o' your banded debtors failed, or like to fail? What then! cheer ye up—you can afford a little loss, and it canna be ony great matter, or I would doubtless have heard of it.”

“In troth, but it is a loss, Mr. Bindloose; and what say ye to the loss of a friend?”

This was a possibility which had never entered the lawyer's long list of calamities, and he was at some loss to conceive what the old lady could possibly mean by so sentimental a prolusion. But just as he began to come out with his “Ay, ay, we are all mortal, Vita incerta, mors certissima!” and two or three more pithy reflections, which he was in the habit of uttering after funerals, when the will of the deceased was about to be opened,—just then Mrs. Dods was pleased to become the expounder of her own oracle.

“I see how it is, Mr. Bindloose,” she said; “I maun tell my ain ailment, for you are no likely to guess it; and so, if ye will shut the door, and see that nane of your giggling callants are listening in the passage, I will e'en tell you how things stand with me.”

Mr. Bindloose hastily arose to obey her commands, gave a cautionary glance into the Bank-office, and saw that his idle apprentices were fast at their desks—turned the key upon them, as if it were in [Pg 212]a fit of absence, and then returned, not a little curious to know what could be the matter with his old friend; and leaving off all further attempts to put cases, quietly drew his chair near hers, and awaited her own time to make her communication.

“Mr. Bindloose,” said she, “I am no sure that you may mind, about six or seven years ago, that there were twa daft English callants, lodgers of mine, that had some trouble from auld St. Ronan's about shooting on the Springwell-head muirs.”

“I mind it as weel as yesterday, Mistress,” said the Clerk; “by the same token you gave me a note for my trouble, (which wasna worth speaking about,) and bade me no bring in a bill against the puir bairns—ye had aye a kind heart, Mrs. Dods.”

“Maybe, and maybe no, Mr. Bindloose—that is just as I find folk.—But concerning these lads, they baith left the country, and, as I think, in some ill blude wi' ane another, and now the auldest and the doucest of the twa came back again about a fortnight sin' syne, and has been my guest ever since.”

“Aweel, and I trust he is not at his auld tricks again, goodwife?” answered the Clerk. “I havena sae muckle to say either wi' the new Sheriff or the Bench of Justices as I used to hae, Mrs. Dods—and the Procurator-fiscal is very severe on poaching, being borne out by the new Association—few of our auld friends of the Killnakelty are able to come to the sessions now, Mrs. Dods.”

“The waur for the country, Mr. Bindloose,” replied the old lady—“they were decent, considerate men, that didna plague a puir herd callant muckle about a moorfowl or a mawkin, unless[Pg 213] he turned common fowler—Sir Robert Ringhorse used to say, the herd lads shot as mony gleds and pyots as they did game.—But new lords new laws—naething but fine and imprisonment, and the game no a feather the plentier. If I wad hae a brace or twa of birds in the house, as every body looks for them after the twelfth—I ken what they are like to cost me—And what for no?—risk maun be paid for.—There is John Pirner himsell, that has keepit the muir-side thirty year in spite of a' the lairds in the country, shoots, he tells me, now-a-days, as if he felt a rape about his neck.”

“It wasna about ony game business, then, that you wanted advice?” said Bindloose, who, though somewhat of a digresser himself, made little allowance for the excursions of others from the subject in hand.

“Indeed is it no, Mr. Bindloose,” said Meg; “but it is e'en about this unhappy callant that I spoke to you about.—Ye maun ken I have cleiket a particular fancy to this lad, Francis Tirl—a fancy that whiles surprises my very sell, Mr. Bindloose, only that there is nae sin in it.”

“None—none in the world, Mrs. Dods,” said the lawyer, thinking at the same time within his own mind, “Oho! the mist begins to clear up—the young poacher has hit the mark, I see—winged the old barren grey hen!—ay, ay,—a marriage-contract, no doubt—but I maun gie her line.—Ye are a wise woman, Mrs. Dods,” he continued aloud, “and can doubtless consider the chances and the changes of human affairs.”

“But I could never have considered what has befallen this puir lad, Mr. Bindloose,” said Mrs. Dods, “through the malice of wicked men.—He lived, then, [Pg 214]at the Cleikum, as I tell you, for mair than a fortnight, as quiet as a lamb on a lea-rig—a decenter lad never came within my door—ate and drank eneugh for the gude of the house, and nae mair than was for his ain gude, whether of body or soul—cleared his bills ilka Saturday at e'en, as regularly as Saturday came round.”

“An admirable customer, no doubt, Mrs. Dods,” said the lawyer.

“Never was the like of him for that matter,” answered the honest dame. “But to see the malice of men!—some of thae landloupers and gill-flirts down at the filthy puddle yonder, that they ca' the Waal, had heard of this puir lad, and the bits of pictures that he made fashion of drawing, and they maun cuitle him awa doun to the bottle, where mony a bonny story they had clecked, Mr. Bindloose, baith of Mr. Tirl and of mysell.”

“A Commissary Court business,” said the writer, going off again upon a false scent. “I shall trim their jackets for them, Mrs. Dods, if you can but bring tight evidence of the facts—I will soon bring them to fine and palinode—I will make them repent meddling with your good name.”

“My gude name! What the sorrow is the matter wi' my name, Mr. Bindloose?” said the irritable client. “I think ye hae been at the wee cappie this morning, for as early as it is—My gude name!—if ony body touched my gude name, I would neither fash counsel nor commissary—I wad be down amang them, like a jer-falcon amang a wheen wild-geese, and the best amang them that dared to say ony thing of Meg Dods by what was honest and civil, I wad sune see if her cockernonnie was made of her ain hair or other folk's. My gude name, indeed!”

[Pg 215]

“Weel, weel, Mrs. Dods, I was mista'en, that's a',” said the writer, “I was mista'en; and I dare to say you would haud your ain wi' your neighbours as weel as ony woman in the land—But let us hear now what the grief is, in one word.”

“In one word, then, Clerk Bindloose, it is little short of—murder,” said Meg, in a low tone, as if the very utterance of the word startled her.

“Murder! murder, Mrs. Dods?—it cannot be—there is not a word of it in the Sheriff-office—the Procurator-fiscal kens nothing of it—there could not be murder in the country, and me not hear of it—for God's sake, take heed what you say, woman, and dinna get yourself into trouble.”

“Mr. Bindloose, I can but speak according to my lights,” said Mrs. Dods; “you are in a sense a judge in Israel, at least you are one of the scribes having authority—and I tell you, with a wae and bitter heart, that this puir callant of mine that was lodging in my house has been murdered or kidnapped awa amang thae banditti folk down at the New Waal; and I'll have the law put in force against them, if it should cost me a hundred pounds.”

The Clerk stood much astonished at the nature of Meg's accusation, and the pertinacity with which she seemed disposed to insist upon it.

“I have this comfort,” she continued, “that whatever has happened, it has been by no fault of mine, Mr. Bindloose; for weel I wot, before that bloodthirsty auld half-pay Philistine, MacTurk, got to speech of him, I clawed his cantle to some purpose with my hearth-besom.—But the poor simple bairn himsell, that had nae mair knowledge of the wickedness of human nature than a calf has of a fle[Pg 216]sher's gully, he threepit to see the auld hardened bloodshedder, and trysted wi' him to meet wi' some of the gang at an hour certain that same day, and awa he gaed to keep tryst, but since that hour naebody ever has set een on him.—And the mansworn villains now want to put a disgrace on him, and say that he fled the country rather than face them!—a likely story—fled the country for them!—and leave his bill unsettled—him that was sae regular—and his portmantle and his fishing-rod and the pencils and pictures he held sic a wark about!—It's my faithful belief, Mr. Bindloose—and ye may trust me or no as ye like—that he had some foul play between the Cleikum and the Buck-stane. I have thought it, and I have dreamed it, and I will be at the bottom of it, or my name is not Meg Dods, and that I wad have them a' to reckon on.—Ay, ay, that's right, Mr. Bindloose, tak out your pen and inkhorn, and let us set about it to purpose.”

With considerable difficulty, and at the expense of much cross-examination, Mr. Bindloose extracted from his client a detailed account of the proceedings of the company at the Well towards Tyrrel, so far as they were known to, or suspected by Meg, making notes, as the examination proceeded, of what appeared to be matter of consequence. After a moment's consideration, he asked the dame the very natural question, how she came to be acquainted with the material fact, that a hostile appointment was made between Captain MacTurk and her lodger, when, according to her own account, it was made intra parietes, and remotis testibus?

“Ay, but we victuallers ken weel eneugh what goes on in our ain houses,” said Meg—“And what for no?—If ye maun ken a' about it, I e'en listened through the keyhole of the door[Pg 217].”

“And do you say you heard them settle an appointment for a duel?” said the Clerk; “and did you no take ony measures to hinder mischief, Mrs. Dods, having such a respect for this lad as you say you have, Mrs. Dods?—I really wadna have looked for the like o' this at your hands.”

“In truth, Mr. Bindloose,” said Meg, putting her apron to her eyes, “and that's what vexes me mair than a' the rest, and ye needna say muckle to ane whose heart is e'en the sairer that she has been a thought to blame. But there has been mony a challenge, as they ca' it, passed in my house, when thae daft lads of the Wildfire Club and the Helter-skelter were upon their rambles; and they had aye sense eneugh to make it up without fighting, sae that I really did not apprehend ony thing like mischief.—And ye maun think, moreover, Mr. Bindloose, that it would have been an unco thing if a guest, in a decent and creditable public like mine, was to have cried coward before ony of thae landlouping blackguards that live down at the hottle yonder.”

“That is to say, Mrs. Dods, you were desirous your guest should fight for the honour of your house,” said Bindloose.

“What for no, Mr. Bindloose?—Isna that kind of fray aye about honour? and what for should the honour of a substantial, four-nooked, sclated house of three stories, no be foughten for, as weel as the credit of ony of these feckless callants that make such a fray about their reputation?—I promise you my house, the Cleikum, stood in the Auld Town of St. Ronan's before they were born, and it will stand there after they are hanged, as I trust some of them are like[Pg 218] to be.”

“Well, but perhaps your lodger had less zeal for