The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (popular romance novels txt) 📗

“Like enough,” said the glover, laughing at the idea; “his mother was a large boned woman, especially in the fingers and wrist.”

“And as for cattle,” continued Henry, “I reckon his father and brothers steal sheep by one at a time.”

“The less we say of them the better,” said the glover, becoming again grave. “Brothers he hath none; his father is a powerful man—hath long hands—reaches as far as he can, and hears farther than it is necessary to talk of him.”

“And yet he hath bound his only son apprentice to a glover in Perth?” said Henry. “Why, I should have thought the gentle craft, as it is called, of St. Crispin would have suited him best; and that, if the son of some great Mac or O was to become an artisan, it could only be in the craft where princes set him the example.”

This remark, though ironical, seemed to awaken our friend Simon’s sense of professional dignity, which was a prevailing feeling that marked the manners of the artisans of the time.

“You err, son Henry,” he replied, with much gravity: “the glovers’ are the more honourable craft of the two, in regard they provide for the accommodation of the hands, whereas the shoemakers and cordwainers do but work for the feet.”

“Both equally necessary members of the body corporate,” said Henry, whose father had been a cordwainer.

“It may be so, my son,” said the glover; “but not both alike honourable. Bethink you, that we employ the hands as pledges of friendship and good faith, and the feet have no such privilege. Brave men fight with their hands; cowards employ their feet in flight. A glove is borne aloft; a shoe is trampled in the mire. A man greets a friend with his open hand; he spurns a dog, or one whom he holds as mean as a dog, with his advanced foot. A glove on the point of a spear is a sign and pledge of faith all the wide world over, as a gauntlet flung down is a gage of knightly battle; while I know no other emblem belonging to an old shoe, except that some crones will fling them after a man by way of good luck, in which practice I avow myself to entertain no confidence.”

“Nay,” said the smith, amused with his friend’s eloquent pleading for the dignity of the art he practised, “I am not the man, I promise you, to disparage the glover’s mystery. Bethink you, I am myself a maker of gauntlets. But the dignity of your ancient craft removes not my wonder, that the father of this Conachar suffered his son to learn a trade of any kind from a Lowland craftsman, holding us, as they do, altogether beneath their magnificent degree, and a race of contemptible drudges, unworthy of any other fate than to be ill used and plundered, as often as these bare breeched dunnie wassals see safety and convenience for doing so.”

“Ay,” answered the glover, “but there were powerful reasons for—for—” he withheld something which seemed upon his lips, and went on: “for Conachar’s father acting as he did. Well, I have played fair with him, and I do not doubt but he will act honourably by me. But Conachar’s sudden leave taking has put me to some inconvenience. He had things under his charge. I must look through the booth.”

“Can I help you, father?” said Henry Gow, deceived by the earnestness of his manner.

“You!—no,” said Simon, with a dryness which made Henry so sensible of the simplicity of his proposal, that he blushed to the eyes at his own dulness of comprehension, in a matter where love ought to have induced him to take his cue easily up.

“You, Catharine,” said the glover, as he left the room, “entertain your Valentine for five minutes, and see he departs not till my return. Come hither with me, old Dorothy, and bestir thy limbs in my behalf.”

He left the room, followed by the old woman; and Henry Smith remained with Catharine, almost for the first time in his life, entirely alone. There was embarrassment on the maiden’s part, and awkwardness on that of the lover, for about a minute; when Henry, calling up his courage, pulled the gloves out of his pocket with which Simon had supplied him, and asked her to permit one who had been so highly graced that morning to pay the usual penalty for being asleep at the moment when he would have given the slumbers of a whole twelvemonth to be awake for a single minute.

“Nay, but,” said Catharine, “the fulfilment of my homage to St. Valentine infers no such penalty as you desire to pay, and I cannot therefore think of accepting them.”

“These gloves,” said Henry, advancing his seat insidiously towards Catharine as he spoke, “were wrought by the hands that are dearest to you; and see—they are shaped for your own.”

He extended them as he spoke, and taking her arm in his robust hand, spread the gloves beside it to show how well they fitted.

“Look at that taper arm,” he said, “look at these small fingers; think who sewed these seams of silk and gold, and think whether the glove and the arm which alone the glove can fit ought to remain separate, because the poor glove has had the misfortune to be for a passing minute in the keeping of a hand so swart and rough as mine.”

“They are welcome as coming from my father,” said Catharine; “and surely not less so as coming from my friend (and there was an emphasis on the word), as well as my Valentine and preserver.”

“Let me aid to do them on,” said the smith, bringing himself yet closer to her side; “they may seem a little over tight at first, and you may require some assistance.”

“You are skilful in such service, good Henry Gow,” said the maiden, smiling, but at the same time drawing farther from her lover.

“In good faith, no,” said Henry, shaking his head: “my experience has been in donning steel gauntlets on mailed knights, more than in fitting embroidered gloves upon maidens.”

“I will trouble you then no further, and Dorothy shall aid me, though there needs no assistance; my father’s eye and fingers are faithful to his craft: what work he puts through his hands is always true to the measure.”

“Let me be convinced of it,” said the smith—“let me see that these slender gloves actually match the hands they were made for.”

“Some other time, good Henry,” answered the maiden, “I will wear the gloves in honour of St. Valentine, and the mate he has sent me for the season. I would to Heaven I could pleasure my father as well in weightier matters; at present the perfume of the leather harms the headache I have had since morning.”

“Headache, dearest maiden!” echoed her lover.

“If you call it heartache, you will not misname it,” said Catharine, with a sigh, and proceeded to speak in a very serious tone.

“Henry,” she said, “I am going perhaps to be as bold as I gave you reason to think me this morning; for I am about to speak the first upon a subject on which, it may well be, I ought