post-chaise nor stage-coach was numbered among the luxuries of Glasgow. One of them happened to be the identical Mr. Kilfuddy of Braehill, who had lectured so learnedly about the Temple of Diana on the preceding Sunday in the Tron Church; and he, being acquainted with Claud, said, as he looked out and bade the driver to stop,—
‘Dear me, Mr. Walkinshaw, but ye hae gotten an unco cowp. I hope nae banes are broken?’
‘No,’ replied Claud a little pawkily, ‘no; thanks be and praise—the banes, I believe, are a’ to the fore; but it’s no to be expressed what I hae suffer’t in the flesh.’
Some further conversation then ensued, and the result was most satisfactory, for Claud was invited to take a seat in the cart with the ministers, and induced to send his horse back to Rob Wallace by Johnny Drizen the carrier. Thus, without any material augmentation of his calamity, was he conveyed to the gate which led to Plealands. The Laird, who had all the morning been anxiously looking out for him, on seeing the cart approaching, left the house, and was standing ready at the yett to give him welcome.
CHAPTER VI
Plealands House stood on the bleak brow of a hill. It was not of great antiquity, having been raised by the father of Malachi; but it occupied the site of an ancient fortalice, the materials of which were employed in its construction; and as no great skill of the sculptor had been exerted to change the original form of the lintels and their ornaments, it had an air of antiquity much greater than properly belonged to its years.
About as much as the habitation had been altered from its primitive character, the master too had been modernized. But, in whatever degree he may have been supposed to have declined from the heroic bearing of his ancestors, he still inherited, in unabated vigour, the animosity of their spirit; and if the coercive influence of national improvement prevented him from being distinguished in the feud and foray, the books of sederunt, both of the Glasgow Circuit and of the Court of Session, bore ample testimony to his constancy before them in asserting supposed rights, and in vindicating supposed wrongs.
In his personal appearance, Malachi Hypel had but few pretensions to the gallant air and grace of the gentlemen of that time. He was a coarse hard-favoured fresh-coloured carl, with a few white hairs thinly scattered over a round bald head. His eyes were small and grey, quick in the glance, and sharp in the expression. He spoke thickly and hurriedly, and although his words were all very cogently strung together, there was still an unaccountable obscurity in the precise meaning of what he said. In his usual style of dress he was rude and careless, and he commonly wore a large flat-brimmed blue bonnet; but on the occasion when he came to the gate to receive Claud, he had on his Sunday suit and hat.
After the first salutations were over, he said to Claud, on seeing him walking lamely and uneasily, ‘What’s the matter, Grippy, that ye seem sae stiff and sair?’
‘I met wi’ a bit accident,’ was Claud’s reply: ‘Rob Wallace, the horse-couper, gied me sic a deevil to ride as, I believe, never man before mounted. I would na wish my sworn enemy a greater ill than a day’s journey on that beast’s back, especially an he was as little used to riding as me.’
The latter clause of the sentence was muttered inwardly, for the Laird did not hear it; otherwise he would probably have indulged his humour a little at the expense of his guest, as he had a sort of taste for caustic jocularity, which the hirpling manner of Claud was, at the moment, well calculated to provoke.
On reaching the brow of the rising ground where the house stood, the leddy, as Mrs. Hypel was emphatically called by the neighbouring cottars, with Miss Girzy, came out to be introduced to their relative.
Whether the leddy, a pale, pensive, delicate woman, had been informed by the Laird of the object of Claud’s visit, we do not thoroughly know, but she received him with a polite and friendly respectfulness. Miss Girzy certainly was in total ignorance of the whole business, and was, therefore, not embarrassed with any virgin palpitations, nor blushing anxieties; on the contrary, she met him with the ease and freedom of an old acquaintance.
It might here be naturally expected that we should describe the charms of Miss Girzy’s person, and the graces of her mind; but, in whatever degree she possessed either, she had been allowed to reach the discreet years of a Dumbarton youth in unsolicited maidenhood; indeed, with the aid of all the prospective interest of the inheritance around her, she did not make quite so tender an impression on the heart of her resolved lover as he himself could have wished. But why should we expatiate on such particulars? Let the manners and virtues of the family speak for themselves, while we proceed to relate what ensued.
CHAPTER VII
‘Girzy,’ said the Laird to his daughter, as they entered the dining-room, ‘gae to thy bed and bring a cod for Mr. Walkinshaw, for he’ll no can thole to sit down on our hard chairs.’
Miss Girzy laughed as she retired to execute the order, while her mother continued, as she had done from the first introduction, to inspect Claud from head to foot, with a curious and something of a suspicious eye; there was even an occasional flush that gleamed through the habitual paleness of her thoughtful countenance, redder and warmer than the hectic glow of mere corporeal indisposition. Her attention, however, was soon drawn to the spacious round table, in the middle of the room, by one of the maids entering with a large pewter tureen, John Drappie, the manservant, having been that morning sent on some caption and horning business of the Laird’s to Gabriel Beagle, the Kilmarnock lawyer. But, as the critics hold it indelicate to describe the details of any refectionary supply, however elegant, we must not presume to enumerate the series and succession of Scottish fare, which soon crowned the board, all served on pewter as bright as plate. Our readers must endeavour, by the aid of their own fancies, to form some idea of the various forms in which the head and harigals of the sheep, that had been put to death for the occasion, were served up, not forgetting the sonsy, savoury, sappy haggis, together with the gude fat hen, the float whey, which, in a large china punch-bowl, graced the centre of the table, and supplied the place of jellies, tarts, tartlets, and puddings.
By the time the table was burdened, Miss Girzy had returned with the pillow, which she herself placed in one of the armchairs, shaking and patting it into plumpness, as she said,—
‘Come round here, Mr. Walkinshaw,—I trow ye’ll fin’ this a saft easy seat,—well do I ken what it is to be saddle-sick mysel’. Lordsake, when I gaed in ahint my father to see the robber hanged at Ayr, I was for mair than three days just as if I had sat doun on a heckle.’
When the cloth was removed, and the ladies had retired, the Laird opened his mind by stretching his arm across the table towards his guest, and, shaking him again heartily by the hand,—
‘Weel, Grippy,’ said he, ‘but am blithe to see you here; and, if am no mistaen, Girzy will no be ill to woo.—Is na she a coothy and kind creature?—She’ll make you a capital wife.—There’s no another in the parish that kens better how to manage a house.—Man, it would do your heart gude to hear how she rants among the servan’ lasses, lazy sluts, that would like nothing better than to live at heck and manger, and bring their master to a morsel; but I trow Girzy gars them keep a trig house and a birring wheel.’
‘No doubt, Laird,’ replied Claud, ‘but it’s a comfort to hae a frugal woman for a helpmate; but ye ken nowadays it’s
