Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century by Walter Scott (classic romance novels txt) 📗

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