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

The room was no sooner deprived of Mr. Maxwell of Summertrees’s presence, than the provost looked very warily above, beneath, and around the apartment, hitched his chair towards that of his remaining guest, and began to speak In a whisper which could not have startled ‘the smallest mouse that creeps on floor.’

‘Mr. Fairford,’ said he, ‘you are a good lad; and, what is more, you are my auld friend your father’s son. Your father has been agent for this burgh for years, and has a good deal to say with the council; so there have been a sort of obligations between him and me; it may have been now on this side and now on that; but obligations there have been. I am but a plain man, Mr. Fairford; but I hope you understand me?’

‘I believe you mean me well, provost; and I am sure,’ replied Fairford, ‘you can never better show your kindness than on this occasion.’

‘That’s it—that’s the very point I would be at, Mr. Alan,’ replied the provost; ‘besides, I am, as becomes well my situation, a stanch friend to kirk and king, meaning this present establishment in church and state; and so, as I was saying, you may command my best—advice.’

‘I hope for your assistance and co-operation also,’ said the youth.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said the wary magistrate. ‘Well, now, you see one may love the kirk, and yet not ride on the rigging of it; and one may love the king, and yet not be cramming him eternally down the throat of the unhappy folk that may chance to like another king better. I have friends and connexions among them, Mr. Fairford, as your father may have clients—they are flesh and blood like ourselves, these poor Jacobite bodies—sons of Adam and Eve, after all; and therefore—I hope you understand me?—I am a plain-spoken man.’

‘I am afraid I do not quite understand you,’ said Fairford; ‘and if you have anything to say to me in private, my dear provost, you had better come quickly out with it, for the Laird of Summertrees must finish his letter in a minute or two.’

‘Not a bit, man—Pate is a lang-headed fellow, but his pen does not clear the paper as his greyhound does the Tinwald-furs. I gave him a wipe about that, if you noticed; I can say anything to Pate-in-Peril—Indeed, he is my wife’s near kinsman.’

‘But your advice, provost,’ said Alan, who perceived that, like a shy horse, the worthy magistrate always started off from his own purpose just when he seemed approaching to it.

‘Weel, you shall have it in plain terms, for I am a plain man. Ye see, we will suppose that any friend like yourself were in the deepest hole of the Nith, sand making a sprattle for your life. Now, you see, such being the case, I have little chance of helping you, being a fat, short-armed man, and no swimmer, and what would be the use of my jumping in after you?’

‘I understand you, I think,’ said Alan Fairford. ‘You think that Darsie Latimer is in danger of his life?’

‘Me!—I think nothing about it, Mr. Alan; but if he were, as I trust he is not, he is nae drap’s blood akin to you, Mr. Alan.’

‘But here your friend, Summertrees,’ said the young lawyer, ‘offers me a letter to this Redgauntlet of yours—What say you to that?’

‘Me!’ ejaculated the provost, ‘me, Mr. Alan? I say neither buff nor stye to it—But ye dinna ken what it is to look a Redgauntlet in the face;—better try my wife, who is but a fourth cousin, before ye venture on the laird himself—just say something about the Revolution, and see what a look she can gie you.’

I shall leave you to stand all the shots from that battery, provost.’ replied Fairford. ‘But speak out like a man—Do you think Summertrees means fairly by me?’

‘Fairly—he is just coming—fairly? I am a plain man, Mr. Fairford—but ye said FAIRLY?’

‘I do so,’ replied Alan, ‘and it is of importance to me to know, and to you to tell me if such is the case; for if you do not, you may be an accomplice to murder before the fact, and that under circumstances which may bring it near to murder under trust.’

‘Murder!—who spoke of murder?’ said the provost; no danger of that, Mr. Alan—only, if I were you—to speak my plain mind’—Here he approached his mouth to the ear of the young lawyer, and, after another acute pang of travail, was safely delivered of his advice in the following abrupt words:—‘Take a keek into Pate’s letter before ye deliver it.’

Fairford started, looked the provost hard in the face, and was silent; while Mr. Crosbie, with the self-approbation of one who has at length brought himself to the discharge of a great duty, at the expense of a considerable sacrifice, nodded and winked to Alan, as if enforcing his advice; and then swallowing a large glass of punch, concluded, with the sigh of a man released from a heavy burden, ‘I am a plain man, Mr. Fairford.’

‘A plain man?’ said Maxwell, who entered the room at that moment, with the letter in his hand,—‘Provost, I never heard you make use of the word but when you had some sly turn of your own to work out.’

The provost looked silly enough, and the Laird of Summertrees directed a keen and suspicious glance upon Alan Fairford, who sustained it with professional intrepidity.—There was a moment’s pause.

‘I was trying,’ said the provost, ‘to dissuade our young friend from his wildgoose expedition.’

‘And I,’ said Fairford, ‘am determined to go through with it. Trusting myself to you, Mr. Maxwell, I conceive that I rely, as I before said, on the word of a gentleman.’

‘I will warrant you,’ said Maxwell, ‘from all serious consequences—some inconveniences you must look to suffer.’

‘To these I shall be resigned,’ said Fairford, ‘and stand prepared to run my risk.’

‘Well then,’ said Summertrees, ‘you must go’—

‘I will leave you to yourselves, gentlemen,’ said the provost, rising; ‘when you have done with your crack, you will find me at my wife’s tea-table.’

‘And a more accomplished old woman never drank catlap,’ said Maxwell, as he shut the door; ‘the last word has him, speak it who will—and yet because he is a whillywhaw body, and has a plausible tongue of his own, and is well enough connected, and especially because nobody could ever find out whether he is Whig or Tory, this is the third time they have made him provost!—But to the matter in hand. This letter, Mr. Fairford,’ putting a sealed one into his hand, ‘is addressed, you observe, to Mr. H—of B—, and contains your credentials for that gentlemen, who is also known by his family name of Redgauntlet, but less frequently addressed by it, because it is mentioned something invidiously in a certain Act of Parliament. I have little doubt he will assure you of your friend’s safety, and in a short time place him at freedom—that is, supposing him under present restraint. But the point is, to