Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century

‘You abuse your advantage over me, madam – I really dare not go – I am on guard over this other miss here; and if I should desert my post, my life were not worth five minutes’ purchase.’

‘Then know your post, sir,’ said Lilias, ‘and watch on the outside of the door. You have no commission to listen to our private conversation, I suppose? Begone, sir, without further speech or remonstrance, or I will tell my uncle that which you would have reason to repent be should know.’

The fellow looked at her with a singular expression of spite, mixed with deference. ‘You abuse your advantages, madam,’ he said, ‘and act as foolishly in doing so as I did in affording you such a hank over me. But you are a tyrant; and tyrants have commonly short reigns.’

So saying, he left the apartment.

‘The wretch’s unparalleled insolence,’ said Lilias to her brother, ‘has given me one great advantage over him. For knowing that my uncle would shoot him with as little remorse as a woodcock, if he but guessed at his brazen-faced assurance towards me, he dares not since that time assume, so far as I am concerned, the air of insolent domination which the possession of my uncle’s secrets, and the knowledge of his most secret plans, have led him to exert over others of his family.’

‘In the meantime,’ said Darsie, ‘I am happy to see that the landlord of the house does not seem so devoted to him as I apprehended; and this aids the hope of escape which I am nourishing for you and for myself. O Lilias! the truest of friends, Alan Fairford, is in pursuit of me, and is here at this moment. Another humble, but, I think, faithful friend, is also within these dangerous walls.’

Lilias laid her finger on her lips, and pointed to the door. Darsie took the hint, lowered his voice, and informed her in whispers of the arrival of Fairford, and that he believed he had opened a communication with Wandering Willie. She listened with the utmost interest, and had just begun to reply, when a loud noise was heard in the kitchen, caused by several contending voices, amongst which Darsie thought he could distinguish that of Alan Fairford.

Forgetting how little his own condition permitted him to become the assistant of another, Darsie flew to the door of the room, and finding it locked and bolted on the outside, rushed against it with all his force, and made the most desperate efforts to burst it open, notwithstanding the entreaties of his sister that he would compose himself and recollect the condition in which he was placed. But the door, framed to withstand attacks from excisemen, constables, and other personages, considered as worthy to use what are called the king’s keys, [In common parlance, a crowbar and hatchet.] ‘and therewith to make lockfast places open and patent,’ set his efforts at defiance. Meantime the noise continued without, and we are to give an account of its origin in our next chapter.

CHAPTER XX

NARRATIVE OF DARSIE LATIMER, CONTINUED

Joe Crackenthorp’s public-house had never, since it first reared its chimneys on the banks of the Solway, been frequented by such a miscellaneous group of visitors as had that morning become its guests. Several of them were persons whose quality seemed much superior to their dresses and modes of travelling. The servants who attended them contradicted the inferences to be drawn from the garb of their masters, and, according to the custom of the knights of the rainbow, gave many hints that they were not people to serve any but men of first-rate consequence. These gentlemen, who had come thither chiefly for the purpose of meeting with Mr. Redgauntlet, seemed moody and anxious, conversed and walked together apparently in deep conversation, and avoided any communication with the chance travellers whom accident brought that morning to the same place of resort.

As if Fate had set herself to confound the plans of the Jacobite conspirators, the number of travellers was unusually great, their appearance respectable, and they filled the public tap-room of the inn, where the political guests had already occupied most of the private apartments.

Amongst others, honest Joshua Geddes had arrived, travelling, as he said, in the sorrow of the soul, and mourning for the fate of Darsie Latimer as he would for his first-born child. He had skirted the whole coast of the Solway, besides making various trips into the interior, not shunning, on such occasions, to expose himself to the laugh of the scorner, nay, even to serious personal risk, by frequenting the haunts of smugglers, horse-jockeys, and other irregular persons, who looked on his intrusion with jealous eyes, and were apt to consider him as an exciseman in the disguise of a Quaker. All this labour and peril, however, had been undergone in vain. No search he could make obtained the least intelligence of Latimer, so that he began to fear the poor lad had been spirited abroad – for the practice of kidnapping was then not infrequent, especially on the western coasts of Britain – if indeed he had escaped a briefer and more bloody fate.

With a heavy heart, he delivered his horse, even Solomon, into the hands of the ostler, and walking into the inn, demanded from the landlord breakfast and a private room. Quakers, and such hosts as old Father Crackenthorp, are no congenial spirits; the latter looked askew over his shoulder, and replied, ‘If you would have breakfast here, friend, you are like to eat it where other folk eat theirs.’

‘And wherefore can I not,’ said the Quaker, ‘have an apartment to myself, for my money?’

‘Because, Master Jonathan, you must wait till your betters be served, or else eat with your equals.’

Joshua Geddes argued the point no further, but sitting quietly down on the seat which Crackenthorp indicated to him, and calling for a pint of ale, with some bread, butter, and Dutch cheese, began to satisfy the appetite which the morning air had rendered unusually alert.

While the honest Quaker was thus employed, another stranger entered the apartment, and sat down near to the table on which his victuals were placed. He looked repeatedly at Joshua, licked his parched and chopped lips as he saw the good Quaker masticate his bread and cheese, and sucked up his thin chops when Mr. Geddes applied the tankard to his mouth, as if the discharge of these bodily functions by another had awakened his sympathies in an uncontrollable degree. At last, being apparently unable to withstand his longings, he asked, in a faltering tone, the huge landlord, who was tramping through the room in all corpulent impatience, whether he could have a plack-pie?’

‘Never heard of such a thing, master,’ said the landlord, and was about to trudge onward; when the guest, detaining him, said, in a strong Scottish tone, ‘Ya will maybe have nae whey then, nor buttermilk, nor ye couldna exhibit a souter’s clod?’

‘Can’t tell what ye are talking about, master,’ said Crackenthorp.

‘Then ye will have nae breakfast that will come within ‘the compass of a shilling Scots?’

‘Which is a penny sterling,’ answered Crackenthorp, with a sneer. ‘Why, no, Sawney, I can’t say as we have – we can’t afford it; But you shall have a bellyful for love, as we say in the bull-ring.’

‘I shall never refuse a fair offer,’ said the poverty-stricken guest; ‘and I will say that for the English, if they were deils, that they are a ceeveleesed people to gentlemen that are under a cloud.’

‘Gentlemen! – humph!’ said Crackenthorp – ‘not a blue-cap among them but halts upon that foot.’ Then seizing on a dish which still contained a huge cantle of what had been once a princely mutton pasty, he placed it on the table before the stranger, saying, ‘There, master gentleman; there is what is worth all the black pies, as you call them, that were ever made of sheep’s head.’

‘Sheep’s head is a gude thing, for a’ that,’ replied the guest; but not being spoken so loud as to offend his hospitable entertainer, the interjection might pass for a private protest against the scandal thrown out against the standing dish of Caledonia.

This premised, he immediately began to transfer the mutton and pie-crust from his plate to his lips, in such huge gobbets, as if he was refreshing after a three days’ fast, and laying in provisions against a whole Lent to come.

Joshua Geddes in his turn gazed on him with surprise, having never, he thought, beheld such a gaunt expression of hunger in the act of eating. ‘Friend,’ he said, after watching him for some minutes, ‘if thou gorgest thyself in this fashion, thou wilt assuredly choke. Wilt thou not take a draught out of my cup to help down all that dry meat?’

‘Troth,’ said the stranger, stopping and looking at the friendly propounder, ‘that’s nae bad overture, as they say in the General Assembly. I have heard waur motions than that frae wiser counsel.’

Mr. Geddes ordered a quart of home-brewed to be placed before our friend Peter Peebles; for the reader must have already conceived that this unfortunate litigant was the wanderer in question.

The victim of Themis had no sooner seen the flagon, than he seized it with the same energy which he had displayed in operating upon the pie – puffed off the froth with such emphasis, that some of it lighted on Mr. Geddes’s head – and then said, as if with it sudden recollection of what was due to civility, ‘Here’s to ye, friend. What! are ye ower grand to give me an answer, or are ye dull o’ hearing?’

‘I prithee drink thy liquor, friend,’ said the good Quaker; ‘thou meanest it in civility, but we care not for these idle fashions.’

‘What! ye are a Quaker, are ye?’ said Peter; and without further ceremony reared the flagon to his head, from which he withdrew it not while a single drop of ‘barley-broo’ remained. ‘That’s done you and me muckle gude,’ he said, sighing as he set down his pot; ‘but twa mutchkins o’ yill between twa folk is a drappie ower little measure. What say ye to anither pot? or shall we cry in a blithe Scots pint at ance? The yill is no amiss.’

‘Thou mayst call for what thou wilt on thine own charges, friend,’ said Geddes; ‘for myself, I willingly contribute to the quenching of thy natural thirst; but I fear it were no such easy matter to relieve thy acquired and artificial drought.’

‘That is to say, in plain terms, ye are for withdrawing your caution with the folk of the house? You Quaker folk are but fause comforters; but since ye have garred me drink sae muckle cauld yill – me that am no used to the like of it in the forenoon – I think ye might as weel have offered me a glass of brandy or usquabae – I’m nae nice body – I can drink onything that’s wet and toothsome.’

‘Not a drop at my cost, friend,’ quoth Geddes. ‘Thou art an old man, and hast perchance a heavy and long journey before thee. Thou art, moreover, my countryman, as I judge from thy tongue; and I will not give thee the means of dishonouring thy grey hairs in a strange land.’

‘Grey hairs, neighbour!’ said Peter, with a wink to the bystanders, whom this dialogue began to interest, and who were in hopes of seeing the Quaker played off by the crazed beggar, for such Peter Peebles appeared to be. ‘Grey hairs! The Lord mend your eyesight, neighbour, that disna ken grey hairs frae a tow wig!’

This jest procured a shout of laughter, and, what was still more acceptable than dry applause, a man who stood beside called out, ‘Father Crackenthorp, bring a nipperkin of brandy. I’ll bestow a dram on this fellow, were it but for that very word.’

The brandy was immediately brought by a wench who acted as barmaid; and Peter, with a grin of delight, filled a glass, quaffed it off, and then saying, ‘God bless me! I was so unmannerly as not to drink to ye – I think the Quaker has smitten me wi’ his ill-bred havings,’ – he was about to fill another, when his hand was arrested by his new friend; who said at the same time, ‘No, no, friend – fair play’s a jewel – time about, if you please.’ And filling a glass for himself, emptied it as gallantly as Peter could have done. ‘What say you to that, friend?’ he continued, addressing the Quaker.

‘Nay, friend,’ answered Joshua, ‘it went down thy throat, not mine; and I have nothing to say about what concerns me not; but if thou art a man of humanity, thou wilt not give this poor creature the means of debauchery. Bethink thee that they will spurn him from the door, as they would do a houseless and masterless dog, and that he may die on the sands or on the common. And if he has through thy means been rendered incapable of helping himself, thou shalt not be innocent of his blood.’

‘Faith, Broadbrim, I believe thou art right, and the old gentleman in the flaxen jazy shall have no more of the comforter. Besides, we have business in hand to-day, and this fellow, for as mad as he looks, may have a nose on his face after all. Hark ye, father, – what is your name, and what brings you into such an out-of-the-way corner?’

‘I am not just free to condescend on my name,’ said Peter; ‘and as for my business – there is a wee dribble of brandy in the stoup – it would be wrang to leave it to the lass – it is learning her bad usages.’

‘Well, thou shalt have the brandy, and be d – d to thee, if thou wilt tell me what you are making here.’

‘Seeking a young advocate chap that they ca’ Alan Fairford, that has played me a slippery trick, and ye maun ken a’ about the cause,’ said Peter.

‘An advocate, man!’ answered the captain of the JUMPING JENNY – for it was he, and no other, who had taken compassion on Peter’s drought; ‘why, Lord help thee, thou art on the wrong side of the Firth to seek advocates, whom I take to be Scottish lawyers, not English.’

‘English lawyers, man!’ exclaimed Peter, ‘the deil a lawyer’s in a’ England.’

‘I wish from my soul it were true,’ said Ewart; ‘but what the devil put that in your head?’

‘Lord, man, I got a grip of ane of their attorneys in Carlisle, and he tauld me that there wasna a lawyer in England ony mair than himsell that kend the nature of a multiple-poinding! And when I told him how this loopy lad, Alan Fairford, had served me, he said I might bring an action on the case – just as if the case hadna as mony actions already as one case can weel carry. By my word, it is a gude case, and muckle has it borne, in its day, of various procedure – but it’s the barley-pickle breaks the naig’s back, and wi’ my consent it shall not hae ony mair burden laid upon it.’

‘But this Alan Fairford?’ said Nanty – ‘come – sip up the drop of brandy, man, and tell me some more about him, and whether you are seeking him for good or for harm.’

‘For my ain gude, and for his harm, to be sure,’ said Peter. ‘Think of his having left my cause in the dead-thraw between the tyneing and the winning, and capering off into Cumberland here, after a wild loup-the-tether lad they ca’ Darsie Latimer.’

‘Darsie Latimer!’ said Mr. Geddes, hastily; ‘do you know anything of Darsie Latimer?’