Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (books for students to read .txt) 📖

the laird’s wit. The lady drew up, and the provost said, half aside, ‘The sooth bourd is nae bourd. [The true joke is no joke.] You will find the horseshoe hissing hot, Summertrees.’

‘You can speak from experience, doubtless, provost,’ answered the laird; ‘but I crave pardon—I need not tell Mrs. Crosbie that I have all respect for the auld and honourable House of Redgauntlet.’

‘And good reason ye have, that are sae sib to them,’ quoth the lady, ‘and kend weel baith them that are here, and them that are gane.’

‘In troth, and ye may say sae, madam,’ answered the laird; ‘for poor Harry Redgauntlet, that suffered at Carlisle, was hand and glove with me; and yet we parted on short leave-taking.’

‘Aye, Summertrees,’ said the provost; ‘that was when you played Cheat-the-woodie, and gat the by-name of Pate-in-Peril. I wish you would tell the story to my young friend here. He likes weel to hear of a sharp trick, as most lawyers do.’

‘I wonder at your want of circumspection, provost,’ said the laird,—much after the manner of a singer when declining to sing the song that is quivering upon his tongue’s very end. ‘Ye should mind there are some auld stories that cannot be ripped up again with entire safety to all concerned. TACE is Latin for a candle,’

‘I hope,’ said the lady, ‘you are not afraid of anything being said out of this house to your prejudice, Summertrees? I have heard the story before; but the oftener I hear it, the more wonderful I think it.’

‘Yes, madam; but it has been now a wonder of more than nine days, and it is time it should be ended,’ answered Maxwell.

Fairford now thought it civil to say, ‘that he had often heard of Mr. Maxwell’s wonderful escape, and that nothing could be more agreeable to him than to hear the right version of it.’

But Summertrees was obdurate, and refused to take up the time of the company with such ‘auld-warld nonsense.’

‘Weel, weel,’ said the provost, ‘a wilful man maun hae his way. What do your folk in the country think about the disturbances that are beginning to spunk out in the colonies?’

‘Excellent, sir, excellent. When things come to the worst; they will mend; and to the worst they are coming. But as to that nonsense ploy of mine, if ye insist on hearing the particulars,’—said the laird, who began to be sensible that the period of telling his story gracefully was gliding fast away.

‘Nay,’ said the provost, ‘it was not for myself, but this young gentlemen.’

‘Aweel, what for should I not pleasure the young gentlemen? I’ll just drink to honest folk at hame and abroad, and deil ane else. And then—but you have heard it before, Mrs. Crosbie?’

‘Not so often as to think it tiresome, I assure ye,’ said the lady; and without further preliminaries, the laird addressed Alan Fairford.

‘Ye have heard of a year they call the FORTY-FIVE, young gentleman; when the Southrons’ heads made their last acquaintance with Scottish claymores? There was a set of rampauging chields in the country then that they called rebels—I never could find out what for—Some men should have been wi’ them that never came, provost—Skye and the Bush aboon Traquair for that, ye ken.—Weel, the job was settled at last. Cloured crowns were plenty, and raxed necks came into fashion. I dinna mind very weel what I was doing, swaggering about the country with dirk and pistol at my belt for five or six months, or thereaway; but I had a weary waking out of a wild dream. When did I find myself on foot in a misty morning, with my hand, just for fear of going astray, linked into a handcuff, as they call it, with poor Harry Redgauntlet’s fastened into the other; and there we were, trudging along, with about a score more that had thrust their horns ower deep in the bog, just like ourselves, and a sergeant’s guard of redcoats, with twa file of dragoons, to keep all quiet, and give us heart to the road. Now, if this mode of travelling was not very pleasant, the object did not particularly recommend it; for, you understand, young man, that they did not trust these poor rebel bodies to be tried by juries of their ain kindly countrymen, though ane would have thought they would have found Whigs enough in Scotland to hang us all; but they behoved to trounce us away to be tried at Carlisle, where the folk had been so frightened, that had you brought a whole Highland clan at once into the court, they would have put their hands upon their een, and cried, “hang them a’,” just to be quit of them.’

‘Aye, aye,’ said the provost, ‘that was a snell law, I grant ye.’

‘Snell!’ said the wife, ‘snell! I wish they that passed it had the jury I would recommend them to!’

‘I suppose the young lawyer thinks it all very right,’ said Summertrees, looking at Fairford—‘an OLD lawyer might have thought otherwise. However, the cudgel was to be found to beat the dog, and they chose a heavy one. Well, I kept my spirits better than my companion, poor fellow; for I had the luck to have neither wife nor child to think about, and Harry Redgauntlet had both one and t’other.—You have seen Harry, Mrs. Crosbie?’

‘In troth have I,’ said she, with the sigh which we give to early recollections, of which the object is no more. ‘He was not so tall as his brother, and a gentler lad every way. After he married the great English fortune, folk called him less of a Scottishman than Edward.’

‘Folk lee’d, then,’ said Summertrees; ‘poor Harry was none of your bold-speaking, ranting reivers, that talk about what they did yesterday, or what they will do to-morrow; it was when something was to do at the moment that you should have looked at Harry Redgauntlet. I saw him at Culloden, when all was lost, doing more than twenty of these bleezing braggarts, till the very soldiers that took him cried not to hurt him—for all somebody’s orders, provost—for he was the bravest fellow of them all. Weel, as I went by the side of Harry, and felt him raise my hand up in the mist of the morning, as if he wished to wipe his eye—for he had not that freedom without my leave—my very heart was like to break for him, poor fellow. In the meanwhile, I had been trying and trying to make my hand as fine as a lady’s, to see if I could slip it out of my iron wristband. You may think,’ he said, laying his broad bony hand on the table, ‘I had work enough with such a shoulder-of-mutton fist; but if you observe, the shackle-bones are of the largest, and so they were obliged to keep the handcuff wide; at length I got my hand slipped out, and slipped in again; and poor Harry was sae deep in his ain thoughts, I could not make him sensible what I was doing.’

‘Why not?’ said Alan Fairford, for whom the tale began to have some interest.

‘Because there was an unchancy beast of a dragoon riding close beside us on the other side; and if I had let him into my confidence as well as Harry, it would not have been long before a pistol-ball slapped through my bonnet.—Well, I had little for it but to do the best I could for