Read the book: «The Entail», page 13

CHAPTER XXXVII

In the meantime, Charles and Isabella had enjoyed a large share of domestic felicity, rendered the more endearingly exquisite by their parental anxiety, for it had pleased Heaven at once to bless and burden their narrow circumstances with two beautiful children, James and Mary. Their income arising from the share which the old man had assigned of the business had, during the first two or three years subsequent to their marriage, proved sufficient for the supply of their restricted wants; but their expenses began gradually to increase, and about the end of the third year Charles found that they had incurred several small debts above their means of payment. These, in the course of the fourth, rose to such a sum, that, being naturally of an apprehensive mind, he grew uneasy at the amount, and came to the resolution to borrow two hundred pounds to discharge them. This, he imagined, there could be no difficulty in procuring; for, believing that he was the heir of entail to the main part of the estate which his father had so entirely redeemed, he conceived that he might raise the money on his reversionary prospects, and, with this view, he called one morning on Mr. Keelevin to request his agency in the business.

‘I’m grieved, man,’ said the honest lawyer, ‘to hear that ye’re in such straits; but had na ye better speak to your father? It might bring on you his displeasure if he heard ye were borrowing money to be paid at his death. It’s a thing nae frien’, far less a father, would like done by himsel.’

‘In truth,’ replied Charles, ‘I am quite sensible of that; but what can I do? for my father, ever since my brother Watty’s marriage, has been so cold and reserved about his affairs to me, that every thing like confidence seems as if it were perished from between us.’

Mr. Keelevin, during this speech, raised his left arm on the elbow from the table at which he was sitting, and rested his chin on his hand. There was nothing in the habitual calm of his countenance which indicated what was passing in his heart, but his eyes once or twice glimmered with a vivid expression of pity.

‘Mr. Walkinshaw,’ said he, ‘if you dinna like to apply to your father yoursel, could na some friend mediate for you? Let me speak to him.’

‘It’s friendly of you, Mr. Keelevin, to offer to do that; but really, to speak plainly, I would far rather borrow the money from a stranger, than lay myself open to any remarks. Indeed, for myself, I don’t much care; but ye ken my father’s narrow ideas about household charges; and maybe he might take it on him to make remarks to my wife that I would na like to hear o’.’

‘But, Mr. Charles, you know that money canna be borrow’t without security.’

‘I am aware of that; and it’s on that account I want your assistance. I should think that my chance of surviving my father is worth something.’

‘But the whole estate is strictly entailed, Mr. Charles,’ replied the lawyer, with compassionate regard.

‘The income, however, is all clear, Mr. Keelevin.’

‘I dinna misdoubt that, Mr. Charles, but the entail – Do you ken how it runs?’

‘No; but I imagine much in the usual manner.’

‘No, Mr. Charles,’ said the honest writer, raising his head, and letting his hand fall on the table, with a mournful emphasis; ‘No, Mr. Charles, it does na run in the usual manner; and I hope ye’ll no put ony reliance on’t. It was na right o’ your father to let you live in ignorance so long. Maybe it has been this to-look that has led you into the debts ye want to pay.’

The manner in which this was said affected the unfortunate first-born more than the meaning; but he replied, —

‘No doubt, Mr. Keelevin, I may have been less scrupulous in my expenses than I would have been, had I not counted on the chance of my birthright.’

‘Mr. Charles, I’m sorry for you; but I would na do a frien’s part by you, were I to keep you ony langer in the dark. Your father, Mr. Charles, is an honest man; but there’s a bee in his bonnet, as we a’ ken, anent his pedigree. I need na tell you how he has warslet to get back the inheritance o’ his forefathers; but I am wae to say, that in a pursuit so meritorious, he has committed ae great fault. Really, Mr. Charles, I have na hardly the heart to tell you.’

‘What is it?’ said Charles, with emotion and apprehension.

‘He has made a deed,’ said Mr. Keelevin, ‘whereby he has cut you off frae the succession, in order that Walter, your brother, might be in a condition to make an exchange of the Plealands for the twa mailings that were wanting to make up, wi’ the Grippy property, a restoration of the auld estate of Kittlestonheugh; and I doubt it’s o’ a nature in consequence, that, even were he willing, canna be easily altered.’

To this heart-withering communication Charles made no answer. He stood for several minutes astonished; and then giving Mr. Keelevin a wild look, shuddered and quitted the office.

Instead of returning home, he rushed with rapid and unequal steps down the Gallowgate, and, turning to the left hand in reaching the end of the street, never halted till he had gained the dark firs which overhang the cathedral and skirt the Molindinar Burn, which at the time was swelled with rains, and pouring its troubled torrent almost as violently as the tide of feelings that struggled in his bosom. Unconscious of what he did, and borne along by the whirlwind of his own thoughts, he darted down the steep, and for a moment hung on the rocks at the bottom as if he meditated some frantic leap. Recoiling and trembling with the recollections of his family, he then threw himself on the ground, and for some time shut his eyes as if he wished to believe that he was agitated only by a dream.

The scene and the day were in unison with the tempest which shook his frame and shivered his mind. The sky was darkly overcast. The clouds were rolling in black and lowering masses, through which an occasional gleam of sunshine flickered for a moment on the towers and pinnacles of the cathedral, and glimmered in its rapid transit on the monuments and graves in the church-yard. A gloomy shadow succeeded; and then a white and ghastly light hovered along the ruins of the bishop’s castle, and darted with a strong and steady ray on a gibbet which stood on the rising ground beyond. The gusty wind howled like a death-dog among the firs, which waved their dark boughs like hearse plumes over him, and the voice of the raging waters encouraged his despair.

He felt as if he had been betrayed into a situation which compelled him to surrender all the honourable intents of his life, and that he must spend the comfortless remainder of his days in a conflict with poverty, a prey to all its temptations, expedients, and crimes. At one moment, he clenched his grasp, and gnashed his teeth, and smote his forehead, abandoning himself to the wild and headlong energies and instincts of a rage that was almost revenge; at another, the image of Isabella, so gentle and so defenceless, rose in a burst of tenderness and sorrow, and subdued him with inexpressible grief. But the thought of his children in the heedless days of their innocence, condemned to beggary by a fraud against nature, again scattered these subsiding feelings like the blast that brushes the waves of the ocean into spindrift.

This vehemence of feeling could not last long without producing some visible effect. When the storm had in some degree spent itself, he left the wild and solitary spot where he had given himself so entirely up to his passion, and returned towards his home; but his limbs trembled, his knees faltered, and a cold shivering vibrated through his whole frame. An intense pain was kindled in his forehead; every object reeled and shuddered to him as he passed; and, before he reached the house, he was so unwell that he immediately retired to bed. In the course of the afternoon he became delirious, and a rapid and raging fever terrified his ill-fated wife.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Mr. Keelevin, when Charles had left him, sat for some time with his cheek resting on his hand, reflecting on what had passed; and in the afternoon, he ordered his horse, and rode over to Grippy, where he found the Laird sitting sullenly by himself in the easy-chair by the fire-side, with a white night-cap on his head, and grey worsted stockings drawn over his knees.

‘I’m wae, Mr. Walkinshaw,’ said the honest lawyer, as he entered the room, ‘to see you in sic an ailing condition; what’s the matter wi’ you, and how lang hae ye been sae indisposed?’

Claud had not observed his entrance; for, supposing the noise in opening the door had been made by the Leddy in her manifold household cares, or by some one of the servants, he never moved his head, but kept his eyes ruminatingly fixed on a peeling of soot that was ominously fluttering on one of the ribs of the grate, betokening, according to the most credible oracles of Scottish superstition, the arrival of a stranger, or the occurrence of some remarkable event. But, on hearing the voice of his legal friend, he turned briskly round.

‘Sit ye doun, Mr. Keelevin, sit ye doun forenent me. What’s brought you here the day? Man, this is sore weather for ane at your time o’ life to come so far afield,’ was the salutation with which he received him.

‘Aye,’ replied Mr. Keelevin, ‘baith you and me, Grippy, are beginning to be the waur o’ the wear; but I didna expek to find you in sic a condition as this. I hope it’s no the gout or the rheumatism.’

Claud, who had the natural horror of death as strong as most country gentlemen of a certain age, if not of all ages, did not much relish either the observation or the inquiries. He, however, said, with affected indifference, —

‘No! be thankit, it’s neither the t’ane nor the t’ither, but just a waff o’ cauld that I got twa nights ago; – a bit towt that’s no worth the talking o’.’

‘I’m extraordinar glad to hear’t; for, seeing you in sic a frail and feckless state, I was fear’t that ye were na in a way to converse on any concern o’ business. No that I hae muckle to say, but ye ken a’ sma’ things are a great fasherie to a weakly person, and I would na discompose you, Mr. Walkinshaw, unless you just felt yoursel in your right ordinar, for, at your time o’ life, ony disturbance’ —

‘My time o’ life?’ interrupted the old man tartly. ‘Surely I’m no sae auld that ye need to be speaking o’ my time o’ life? But what’s your will, Mr. Keelevin, wi’ me?’

Whether all this sympathetic condolence, on the part of the lawyer, was said in sincerity, or with any ulterior view, we need not pause to discuss, for the abrupt question of the invalid brought it at once to a conclusion.

‘In truth, Laird,’ replied Mr. Keelevin, ‘I canna say that I hae ony thing o’ a particular speciality to trouble you anent, for I came hither more in the way o’ friendship than o’ business, – having had this morning a visit frae your son Charles, a fine weel-doing young man as can be.’

‘He’s weel enough,’ said the old man gruffly, and the lawyer continued, —

‘’Deed, Mr. Walkinshaw, he’s mair than weel enough. He’s by common, and it was with great concern I heard that you and him are no on sic a footing of cordiality as I had thought ye were.’

‘Has he been making a complaint o’ me?’ said Claud looking sharply, and with a grim and knotted brow as if he was, at the same time, apprehensive and indignant.

‘He has mair sense and discretion,’ replied Mr. Keelevin; ‘but he was speaking to me on a piece of business, and I was surprised he did na rather confer wi’ you; till, in course of conversation, it fell out, as it were unawares, that he did na like to speak to you anent it; the which dislike, I jealouse, could only proceed o’ some lack o’ confidence between you, mair than should ever be between a father and a well-behaved son like Mr. Charles.’

‘And what was’t?’ said Grippy drily.

‘I doubt that his income is scant to his want, Mr. Walkinshaw.’

‘He’s an extravagant fool; and ne’er had a hand to thraw a key in a lock; – when I began the world I had na’ —

‘Surely,’ interrupted Mr. Keelevin, ‘ye could ne’er think the son o’ a man in your circumstances should hain and hamper as ye were necessitated to do in your younger years. But no to mak a hearing or an argument concerning the same – Mr. Charles requires a sma’ sum to get him free o’ a wee bit difficulty, for, ye ken, there are some folk, Mr. Walkinshaw, that a flea-bite molests like the lash o’ a whip.’

The old man made no answer to this; but sat for some time silent, drawing down his brows and twirling his thumbs. Mr. Keelevin waited in patience till he should digest the reply he so evidently meditated.

‘I hae ay thought Charlie honest, at least,’ said Grippy; ‘but I maun say that this fashes me, for if he’s in sic straits, there’s no telling what liberties he may be led to tak wi’ my property in the shop.’

Mr. Keelevin, who, in the first part of this reply, had bent eagerly forward, was so thunderstruck by the conclusion, that he threw himself back in his chair with his arms extended; but in a moment recovering from his consternation, he said, with fervour, —

‘Mr. Walkinshaw, I mind weel the reproof ye gave me when I remonstrated wi’ you against the injustice ye were doing the poor lad in the entail, but there’s no consideration on this earth will let me alloo you to gang on in a course of error and prejudice. Your son is an honest young man. I wish I could say his father kent his worth, or was worthy o’ him – and I’ll no see him wrangeously driven to the door, without taking his part, and letting the world ken wha’s to blame. I’ll no say ye hae defrauded him o’ his birthright, for the property was your ain – but if ye drive him forth the shop, and cast him wi’ his sma’ family on the scrimp mercy of mankind, I would be wanting to human nature in general, if I did na say it was most abominable, and that you yoursel, wi’ a’ your trumpery o’ Walkinshaws and Kittlestonheughs, ought to be scourged by the hands o’ the hangman. So do as ye like, Mr. Walkinshaw, ride to the deevil at the full gallop for aught I care, but ye’s no get out o’ this world without hearing the hue-and-cry that every Christian soul canna but raise after you.’

Claud was completely cowed both by the anger and menace of the honest lawyer, but still more by the upbraidings of his own startled conscience – and he said, in a humiliated tone, that almost provoked contempt, —

‘Ye’re oure hasty, Mr. Keelevin. I did na mint a word about driving him forth the shop. Did he tell you how muckle his defect was?’

‘Twa miserable hundred pounds,’ replied Mr. Keelevin, somewhat subsiding into his wonted equanimity.

‘Twa hundred pound o’ debt!’ exclaimed Claud.

‘Aye,’ said Mr. Keelevin, ‘and I marvel it’s no mair, when I consider the stinting and the sterile father o’ him.’

‘If I had the siller, Mr. Keelevin,’ replied Claud, ‘to convince baith you and him that I’m no the niggar ye tak me for, I would gi’e you’t wi’ hearty gude will; but the advance I made to get Geordie into his partnership has for the present rookit me o’ a’ I had at command.’

‘No possible!’ exclaimed Mr. Keelevin, subdued from his indignation; adding, ‘and heavens preserve us, Mr. Walkinshaw, an ony thing were happening on a sudden to carry you aff, ye hae made na provision for Charlie nor your dochter.’

There was something in this observation which made the old man shrink up into himself, and vibrate from head to heel. In the course, however, of less than a minute, he regained his self-possession, and said, —

‘’Deed, your observe, Mr. Keelevin, is very just, and I ought to do something to provide for what may come to pass. I maun try and get Watty to concur wi’ me in some bit settlement that may lighten the disappointment to Charlie and Meg, should it please the Lord to tak me to himsel without a reasonable warning. Can sic a paper be made out?’

‘Oh, yes,’ replied the worthy lawyer, delighted with so successful an issue to his voluntary mission; ‘ye hae twa ways o’ doing the business; either by getting Watty to agree to an aliment, or by making a bond of provision to Charles and Mrs. Milrookit.’

Claud said he would prefer the former mode; observing, with respect to the latter, that he thought it would be a cheating o’ the law to take the other course.

‘As for cheating the law,’ said the lawyer, ‘ye need gie yoursel no uneasiness about it, provided ye do honestly by your ain bairns, and the rest o’ the community.’

And it was in consequence agreed, that, in the course of a day or two, Claud should take Walter to Glasgow, to execute a deed, by which, in the event of surviving his father, he would undertake to pay a certain annuity for the behoof of Charles’s family, and that of his sister, Mrs. Milrookit.

CHAPTER XXXIX

In furtherance of the arrangement agreed upon, as we have described in the foregoing chapter, as soon as Mr. Keelevin had retired, Claud summoned Walter into the parlour. It happened, that the Leddy, during the period of the lawyer’s visit, had been so engaged in another part of the house, that she was not aware of the conference, till, by chance, she saw him riding down the avenue. We need not, therefore, say that she experienced some degree of alarm, at the idea of a lawyer having been with her husband, unknown to her; and particularly, when, so immediately after his departure, her darling was requested to attend his father.

The mother and son entered the room together. Walter came from the nursery, where he had been dandling his child, and his appearance was not of the most prepossessing kind. From the death of his wife, in whose time, under her dictation, he was brushed up into something of a gentlemanly exterior, he had become gradually more and more slovenly. He only shaved on Saturday night, and buttoned his breeches knees on Sunday morning. Nor was the dress of Leddy Grippy at all out of keeping with that of her hopeful favourite. Her time-out-of-mind red quilted silk petticoat was broken into many holes; – her thrice dyed double tabinet gown, of bottle-green, with large ruffle cuffs, was in need of another dip; for, in her various culinary inspections, it had received many stains, and the superstructure of lawn and catgut, ornamented with ribbons, dyed blae in ink, surmounting her ill-toiletted toupee, had every appearance of having been smoked into yellow, beyond all power of blanching in the bleacher’s art.

‘And so, gudeman,’ said she, on entering the room, ‘ye hae had that auld sneck-drawer, Keelevin, wi’ you? I won’er what you and him can hae to say in sic a clandestine manner, that the door maun be ay steekit when ye’re thegither at your confabbles. Surely there’s nae honesty that a man can hae, whilk his wife ought na to come in for a share of.’

‘Sit down, Girzy Hypel, and haud thy tongue,’ was the peevish command which this speech provoked.

‘What for will I haud my tongue? a fool posture that would be, and no very commodious at this time; for ye see my fingers are coomy.’

‘Woman, t’ou’s past bearing!’ exclaimed her disconcerted husband.

‘An it’s nae shame to me, gudeman; for every body kens I’m a grannie.’

The Laird smote his right thigh, and shook his left hand, with vexation; presently, however, he said, —

‘Weel, weel; but sit ye down, and Watty, tak t’ou a chair beside her; for I want to consult you anent a paper that I’m mindit to hae drawn out for a satisfaction to you a’; for nane can tell when their time may come.’

‘Ye ne’er made a mair sensible observe, gudeman, in a’ your days,’ replied the Leddy, sitting down; ‘and it’s vera right to make your will and testament; for ye ken what a straemash happened in the Glengowlmahallaghan family, by reason o’ the Laird holographing his codicil; whilk, to be sure, was a dreadfu’ omission, as my cousin, his wife, fand in her widowhood; for a’ the moveables thereby gaed wi’ the heritage to his auld son by the first wife – even the vera silver pourie that I gied her mysel wi’ my own hands, in a gift at her marriage – a’ gaed to the heir.’

‘T’ou kens,’ said Claud, interrupting her oration, ‘that I hae provided thee wi’ the liferent o’ a house o’ fifteen pounds a-year, furniture, and a jointure of a hundred and twenty over and aboon the outcoming o’ thy father’s gathering. So t’ou canna expek, Girzy, that I would wrang our bairns wi’ ony mair overlay on thy account.’

‘Ye’re grown richer, gudeman, than when we came thegither,’ replied the Leddy; ‘and ne’er a man made siller without his wife’s leave. So it would be a most hard thing, after a’ my toiling and moiling, to make me nae better o’t than the stricts o’ the law in my marriage articles and my father’s will; whilk was a gratus amous, that made me nane behauden to you. – No, an ye mean to do justice, gudeman, I’ll get my thirds o’ the conquest ye hae gotten sin the time o’ our marriage; and I’ll be content wi’ nae less.’

‘Weel, weel, Girzy, we’ll no cast out about a settlement for thee.’

‘It would be a fearful thing to hear tell o’ an we did,’ replied the Leddy: ‘Living as we hae lived, a comfort to ane anither for thirty years, and bringing up sic a braw family, wi’ so meikle credit. No, gudeman, I hae mair confidence in you than to misdoot your love and kindness, noo that ye’re drawing so near your latter end as to be seriously thinking o’ making a will. But, for a’ that, I would like to ken what I’m to hae.’

‘Very right, Girzy; very right,’ said Claud; ‘but, before we can come to a clear understanding, me and Watty maun conform in a bit paper by oursels, just that there may be nae debate hereafter about his right to the excambio we made for the Plealands.’

‘I’ll no put hand to ony drumhead paper again,’ said Watty, ‘for fear it wrang my wee Betty Bodle.’

Although this was said in a vacant heedless manner, it yet disturbed the mind of his father exceedingly, for the strange obstinacy with which the natural had persisted in his refusal to attend the funeral of his wife, had shown that there was something deeper and more intractable in his character than any one had previously imagined. But opposition had only the effect of making Claud more pertinacious, while it induced him to change his mode of operation. Perceiving, or at least being afraid that he might again call his obduracy into action, he accordingly shifted his ground, and, instead of his wonted method of treating Walter with commands and menaces, he dexterously availed himself of the Leddy’s auxiliary assistance.

‘Far be it, Watty, frae me, thy father,’ said he, ‘to think or wis wrang to thee or thine; but t’ou kens that in family settlements, where there’s a patch’t property like ours, we maun hae conjunk proceedings. Noo, as I’m fain to do something satisfactory to thy mother, t’ou’ll surely never objek to join me in the needfu’ instruments to gie effek to my intentions.’

‘I’ll do every thing to serve my mother,’ replied Walter, ‘but I’ll no sign ony papers.’

‘Surely, Watty Walkinshaw,’ exclaimed the old Leddy, surprised at this repetition of his refusal, ‘ye would na see me in want, and driven to a needcessity to gang frae door to door, wi’ a meal-pock round my neck, and an oaken rung in my hand?’

‘I would rather gie you my twa dollars, and the auld French half-a-crown, that I got long syne, on my birthday, frae grannie,’ said Watty.

‘Then what for will ye no let your father make a rightfu’ settlement?’ cried his mother.

‘I’m sure I dinna hinder him. He may mak fifty settlements for me; I’ll ne’er fin’ fau’t wi’ him.’

‘Then,’ said the Leddy, ‘ye canna objek to his reasonable request.’

‘I objek to no reasonable request; I only say, mother, that I’ll no sign ony paper whatsomever, wheresomever, howsomever, nor ever and ever – so ye need na try to fleetch me.’

‘Ye’re an outstrapolous ne’er-do-well,’ cried the Leddy, in a rage, knocking her neives smartly together, ‘to speak to thy mother in that way; t’ou sall sign the paper, an te life be in thy body.’

‘I’ll no wrang my ain bairn for father nor mother; I’ll gang to Jock Harrigals, the flesher, and pay him to hag aff my right hand, afore I put pen to law-paper again.’

‘This is a’ I get for my love and affection,’ exclaimed the Leddy, bursting into tears; while her husband, scarcely less agitated by the firmness with which his purpose was resisted, sat in a state of gloomy abstraction, seemingly unconscious of the altercation. ‘But,’ added Mrs. Walkinshaw, ‘I’m no in thy reverence, t’ou unnatural Absalom, to rebel sae against thy parents. I hae maybe a hoggar, and I ken whan I die, wha s’all get the gouden guts o’t – Wilt t’ou sign the paper?’

‘I’ll burn aff my right hand in the lowing fire, that I may ne’er be able to write the scrape o’ a pen;’ and with these emphatic words, said in a soft and simple manner, he rose from his seat, and was actually proceeding towards the fire-place, when a loud knocking at the door disturbed, and put an end to, the conversation. It was a messenger sent from old Lady Plealands, to inform her daughter of Charles’s malady, and to say that the doctor, who had been called in, was greatly alarmed at the rapid progress of the disease.