The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete by Walter Scott (uplifting book club books TXT) 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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All hastened around him with their appropriate sources of consolation—the Laird with his purse, Jeanie with burnt feathers and strong waters, and the women with their exhortations. “O neighbour—O Mr. Deans, it’s a sair trial, doubtless—but think of the Rock of Ages, neighbour—think of the promise!”
“And I do think of it, neighbours—and I bless God that I can think of it, even in the wrack and ruin of a’ that’s nearest and dearest to me—But to be the father of a castaway—a profligate—a bloody Zipporah—a mere murderess!—O, how will the wicked exult in the high places of their wickedness!—the prelatists, and the latitudinarians, and the hand-waled murderers, whose hands are hard as horn wi’ handing the slaughter-weapons—they will push out the lip, and say that we are even such as themselves. Sair, sair I am grieved, neighbours, for the poor castaway—for the child of mine old age—but sairer for the stumbling-block and scandal it will be to all tender and honest souls!”
“Davie—winna siller do’t?” insinuated the laird, still proffering his green purse, which was full of guineas.
“I tell ye, Dumbiedikes,” said Deans, “that if telling down my haill substance could hae saved her frae this black snare, I wad hae walked out wi’ naething but my bonnet and my staff to beg an awmous for God’s sake, and ca’d mysell an happy man—But if a dollar, or a plack, or the nineteenth part of a boddle, wad save her open guilt and open shame frae open punishment, that purchase wad David Deans never make!—Na, na; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life, blood for blood—it’s the law of man, and it’s the law of God.—Leave me, sirs—leave me—I maun warstle wi’ this trial in privacy and on my knees.”
Jeanie, now in some degree restored to the power of thought, joined in the same request. The next day found the father and daughter still in the depth of affliction, but the father sternly supporting his load of ill through a proud sense of religious duty, and the daughter anxiously suppressing her own feelings to avoid again awakening his. Thus was it with the afflicted family until the morning after Porteous’s death, a period at which we are now arrived.
CHAPTER TENTH. Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us—Oh!—and is all forgot? Midsummer Night’s Dream.
We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage at St. Leonard’s; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding narrative does not exceed in length that which he actually spent on Salisbury Crags on the morning which succeeded the execution done upon Porteous by the rioters. For this delay he had his own motives. He wished to collect his thoughts, strangely agitated as they were, first by the melancholy news of Effie Deans’s situation, and afterwards by the frightful scene which he had witnessed. In the situation also in which he stood with respect to Jeanie and her father, some ceremony, at least some choice of fitting time and season, was necessary to wait upon them. Eight in the morning was then the ordinary hour for breakfast, and he resolved that it should arrive before he made his appearance in their cottage.
Never did hours pass so heavily. Butler shifted his place and enlarged his circle to while away the time, and heard the huge bell of St. Giles’s toll each successive hour in swelling tones, which were instantly attested by those of the other steeples in succession. He had heard seven struck in this manner, when he began to think he might venture to approach nearer to St. Leonard’s, from which he was still a mile distant. Accordingly he descended from his lofty station as low as the bottom of the valley, which divides Salisbury Crags from those small rocks which take their name from Saint Leonard. It is, as many of my readers may know, a deep, wild, grassy valley, scattered with huge rocks and fragments which have descended from the cliffs and steep ascent to the east.
This sequestered dell, as well as other places of the open pasturage of the King’s Park, was, about this time, often the resort of the gallants of the time who had affairs of honour to discuss with the sword. Duels were then very common in Scotland, for the gentry were at once idle, haughty, fierce, divided by faction, and addicted to intemperance, so that there lacked neither provocation, nor inclination to resent it when given; and the sword, which was part of every gentleman’s dress, was the only weapon used for the decision of such differences. When, therefore, Butler observed a young man, skulking, apparently to avoid observation, among the scattered rocks at some distance from the footpath, he was naturally led to suppose that he had sought this lonely spot upon that evil errand. He was so strongly impressed with this, that, notwithstanding his own distress of mind, he could not, according to his sense of duty as a clergyman, pass this person without speaking to him. There are times, thought he to himself, when the slightest interference may avert a great calamity—when a word spoken in season may do more for prevention than the eloquence of Tully could do for remedying evil—And for my own griefs, be they as they may, I shall feel them the lighter, if they divert me not from the prosecution of my duty.
Thus thinking and feeling, he quitted the ordinary path, and advanced nearer the object he had noticed. The man at first directed his course towards the hill, in order, as it appeared, to avoid him; but when he saw that Butler seemed disposed to follow him, he adjusted his hat fiercely, turned round, and came forward, as if to meet and defy scrutiny.
Butler had an opportunity of accurately studying his features as they advanced slowly to meet each other. The stranger seemed about twenty-five years old. His dress was of a kind which could hardly be said to indicate his rank with certainty, for it was such as young gentlemen sometimes wore while on active exercise in the morning, and which, therefore, was imitated by those of the inferior ranks, as young clerks and tradesmen, because its cheapness rendered it attainable, while it approached more nearly to the apparel of youths of fashion than any other which the manners of the times permitted them to wear. If his air and manner could be trusted, however, this person seemed rather to be dressed under than above his rank; for his carriage was bold and somewhat supercilious, his step easy and free, his manner daring and unconstrained. His stature was of the middle size, or rather above it, his limbs well-proportioned, yet not so strong as to infer the reproach of clumsiness. His features were uncommonly handsome, and all about him
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