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

‘And now, Steenie,’ said Sir John, ‘although this vision of yours tend, on the whole, to my father’s credit, as an honest man, that he should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad constructions upon it, concerning his soul’s health. So, I think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taken ower muckle brandy to be very certain about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt’ (his hand shook while he held it out),—‘it’s but a queer kind of document, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly in the fire.’

‘Od, but for as queer as it is, it’s a’ the voucher I have for my rent,’ said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of Sir Robert’s discharge.

‘I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give you a discharge under my own hand,’ said Sir John, ‘and that on the spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent.’

‘Mony thanks to your honour,’ said Steenie, who saw easily in what corner the wind was; ‘doubtless I will be comformable to all your honour’s commands; only I would willingly speak wi’ some powerful minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of sommons of appointment whilk your honour’s father’—

‘Do not call the phantom my father!’ said Sir John, interrupting him.

‘Weel, then, the thing that was so like him,’ said my gudesire; ‘he spoke of my coming back to see him this time twelvemonth, and it’s a weight on my conscience.’

‘Aweel, then,’ said Sir John, ‘if you be so much distressed in mind, you may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the honour of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage from me.’

Wi’ that, my father readily agreed that the receipt should be burnt, and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi’ a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.

My gudesire gaed down to the Manse, and the minister, when he had heard the story, said it was his real opinion that though my gudesire had gaen very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet, as he had refused the devil’s arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink) and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped, that if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang foreswore baith the pipes and the brandy—it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle, or drink usquebaugh or tippeny.

Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell; and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye’ll no hinder some to threap that it was nane o’ the auld Enemy that Dougal and my gudesire saw in the laird’s room, but only that wanchancy creature, the major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the laird’s whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister’s wife, after Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the moulds. And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgement or memory—at least nothing to speak of—was obliged to tell the real narrative to his friends, for the credit of his good name. He might else have been charged for a warlock. [See Note 3.]

The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor finished his long narrative with this moral—‘Ye see, birkie, it is nae chancy thing to tak a stranger traveller for a guide, when you are in an uncouth land.’

‘I should not have made that inference,’ said I. ‘Your grandfather’s adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and distress; and fortunate for his landlord also, whom it prevented from committing a gross act of injustice.’

‘Aye, but they had baith to sup the sauce o’t sooner or later,’ said Wandering Willie—‘what was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died before he was much over three-score; and it was just like of a moment’s illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fullness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at first; for Sir Redwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the oye of auld Sir Robert, and, waes me! the last of the honourable house, took the farm aff our hands, and brought me into his household to have care of me. He liked music, and I had the best teachers baith England and Scotland could gie me. Mony a merry year was I wi’ him; but waes me! he gaed out with other pretty men in the Forty-five—I’ll say nae mair about it—My head never settled weel since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will I have the heart to play the night.—Look out, my gentle chap,’ he resumed in a different tone, ‘ye should see the lights at Brokenburn glen by this time.’