The Antiquary — Complete by Walter Scott (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

threads and specks from his patron’s habit. “The body, God help us! was sae broken against the rocks that they’re fain to hurry the burial. The sea’s a kittle cast, as I tell my daughter, puir thing, when I want her to get up her spirits; the sea, says I, Jenny, is as uncertain a calling”—

“As the calling of an old periwig-maker, that’s robbed of his business by crops and the powder-tax. Caxon, thy topics of consolation are as ill chosen as they are foreign to the present purpose. Quid mihi cum faemina? What have I to do with thy womankind, who have enough and to spare of mine own?—I pray of you again, am I expected by these poor people to attend the funeral of their son?”

“Ou, doubtless, your honour is expected,” answered Caxon; “weel I wot ye are expected. Ye ken, in this country ilka gentleman is wussed to be sae civil as to see the corpse aff his grounds; ye needna gang higher than the loan-head—it’s no expected your honour suld leave the land; it’s just a Kelso convoy, a step and a half ower the doorstane.”

“A Kelso convoy!” echoed the inquisitive Antiquary; “and why a Kelso convoy more than any other?”

“Dear sir,” answered Caxon, “how should I ken? it’s just a by-word.”

“Caxon,” answered Oldbuck, “thou art a mere periwig-maker—Had I asked Ochiltree the question, he would have had a legend ready made to my hand.”

“My business,” replied Caxon, with more animation than he commonly displayed, “is with the outside of your honour’s head, as ye are accustomed to say.”

“True, Caxon, true; and it is no reproach to a thatcher that he is not an upholsterer.”

He then took out his memorandum-book and wrote down “Kelso convoy—said to be a step and a half over the threshold. Authority—Caxon.—Quaere— Whence derived? Mem. To write to Dr. Graysteel upon the subject.”

Having made this entry, he resumed—“And truly, as to this custom of the landlord attending the body of the peasant, I approve it, Caxon. It comes from ancient times, and was founded deep in the notions of mutual aid and dependence between the lord and cultivator of the soil. And herein I must say, the feudal system—(as also in its courtesy towards womankind, in which it exceeded)—herein, I say, the feudal usages mitigated and softened the sternness of classical times. No man, Caxon, ever heard of a Spartan attending the funeral of a Helot—yet I dare be sworn that John of the Girnel—ye have heard of him, Caxon?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Caxon; “naebody can hae been lang in your honour’s company without hearing of that gentleman.”

“Well,” continued the Antiquary, “I would bet a trifle there was not a kolb kerl, or bondsman, or peasant, ascriptus glebae, died upon the monks’ territories down here, but John of the Girnel saw them fairly and decently interred.”

“Ay, but if it like your honour, they say he had mair to do wi’ the births than the burials. Ha! ha! ha!” with a gleeful chuckle.

“Good, Caxon, very good!—why, you shine this morning.”

“And besides,” added Caxon, slyly, encouraged by his patron’s approbation, “they say, too, that the Catholic priests in thae times gat something for ganging about to burials.”

“Right, Caxon! right as my glove! By the by, I fancy that phrase comes from the custom of pledging a glove as the signal of irrefragable faith— right, I say, as my glove, Caxon—but we of the Protestant ascendency have the more merit in doing that duty for nothing, which cost money in the reign of that empress of superstition, whom Spenser, Caxon, terms in his allegorical phrase,

—The daughter of that woman blind, Abessa, daughter of Corecca slow—

But why talk I of these things to thee?—my poor Lovel has spoiled me, and taught me to speak aloud when it is much the same as speaking to myself. Where’s my nephew, Hector M’Intyre?”

“He’s in the parlour, sir, wi’ the leddies.”

“Very well,” said the Antiquary, “I will betake me thither.”

“Now, Monkbarns,” said his sister, on his entering the parlour, “ye maunna be angry.”

“My dear uncle!” began Miss M’Intyre.

“What’s the meaning of all this?” said Oldbuck, in alarm of some impending bad news, and arguing upon the supplicating tone of the ladies, as a fortress apprehends an attack from the very first flourish of the trumpet which announces the summons—“what’s all this?—what do you bespeak my patience for?”

“No particular matter, I should hope, sir,” said Hector, who, with his arm in a sling, was seated at the breakfast table;—“however, whatever it may amount to I am answerable for it, as I am for much more trouble that I have occasioned, and for which I have little more than thanks to offer.”

“No, no! heartily welcome, heartily welcome—only let it be a warning to you,” said the Antiquary, “against your fits of anger, which is a short madness—Ira furor brevis—but what is this new disaster?”

“My dog, sir, has unfortunately thrown down”—

“If it please Heaven, not the lachrymatory from Clochnaben!” interjected Oldbuck.

“Indeed, uncle,” said the young lady, “I am afraid—it was that which stood upon the sideboard—the poor thing only meant to eat the pat of fresh butter.”

“In which she has fully succeeded, I presume, for I see that on the table is salted. But that is nothing—my lachrymatory, the main pillar of my theory on which I rested to show, in despite of the ignorant obstinacy of Mac-Cribb, that the Romans had passed the defiles of these mountains, and left behind them traces of their arts and arms, is gone—annihilated—reduced to such fragments as might be the shreds of a broken-flowerpot!

—Hector, I love thee, But never more be officer of mine.”

“Why, really, sir, I am afraid I should make a bad figure in a regiment of your raising.”

“At least, Hector, I would have you despatch your camp train, and travel expeditus, or relictis impedimentis. You cannot conceive how I am annoyed by this beast—she commits burglary, I believe, for I heard her charged with breaking into the kitchen after all the doors were locked, and eating up a shoulder of mutton. “—(Our readers, if they chance to remember Jenny Rintherout’s precaution of leaving the door open when she went down to the fisher’s cottage, will probably acquit poor Juno of that aggravation of guilt which the lawyers call a claustrum fregit, and which makes the distinction between burglary and privately stealing. )

“I am truly sorry, sir,” said Hector, “that Juno has committed so much disorder; but Jack Muirhead, the breaker, was never able to bring her under command. She has more travel than any bitch I ever knew, but”—