Discipline Part 24

'A note that Jemmy willed to his mother,' answered Cecil; 'and I never had convenience to send her yet.'

She spoke with perfect simplicity, as if wholly unconscious of the generous fidelity which her words implied.

I had so long been accustomed to riches that I could not always remember my poverty. In five minutes I had glided through the crowd, purchased Cecil's treasure, restored it to its owner, and recollected that, without doing her any real service, I had spent what I could ill afford to spare.

The time had been when I could have mistaken this impulse of const.i.tutional good nature for an act of virtue; but I had learnt to bestow that t.i.tle with more discrimination. I was more embarra.s.sed than delighted by the blessings which Cecil, half in Gaelic, half in English, uttered with great solemnity. 'Is it enough,' asked conscience, 'to humour the prejudices of this poor creature, and leave her real wants unrelieved?'--'But can they,' replied selfishness, 'spare relief to the wants of others, who are themselves upon the brink of want?'--'She is like you, alone in the land of strangers,' whispered sympathy.--'She is the object,' said piety, 'of the same compa.s.sion to which you are indebted for life--life in its highest, n.o.blest sense!'--'Is it right,'

urged worldly-wisdom, 'to part with your only visible means of subsistence?'--'You have but little to give,' pleaded my better reason; 'seize then the opportunity which converts the mite into a treasure.'

The issue of the debate was, that I purchased for poor Cecil the more indispensable articles of her furniture; secured for her a shelter till a milder season might permit her to travel more conveniently; and found my wealth diminished to a sum which, with economy, might support my existence for another week.

Much have I heard of the rewards of an approving conscience, but I am obliged to confess, that my own experience does not warrant my recommending them as motives of conduct. I have uniformly found my best actions, like other fruits of an ungenial climate, less to be admired because they were good, than tolerated because they were no worse. I suspect, indeed, that the comforts of self-approbation are generally least felt when they are most needed; and that no one, who in depressing circ.u.mstances enters on a serious examination of his conduct, ever finds his spirits raised by the review. If this suspicion be just, it will obviously follow, that the boasted dignity of conscious worth is not exactly the sentiment which has won so many n.o.ble triumphs over adversity. For my part, as I shrunk into my lonely chamber, and sighed over my homely restricted meal, I felt more consolation in remembering the goodness which clothes the unprofitable lily of the field, and feeds the improvident tenants of the air, than in exulting that I could bestow 'half my goods to feed the poor.'

That recollection, and the natural hilarity of temper which has survived all the buffetings of fortune, supported my spirits during the lonely days which pa.s.sed in waiting Mrs Murray's reply. At length it came; to inform me, that the state of Captain Murray's health would induce my patroness to shun in a milder climate the chilling winds of a Scotch spring; to express her regrets for my unavailing journey, and for her own inability to further my plans; and, as the best subst.i.tute for her own presence, to refer me once more to the erect Mrs St Clare. This reference I at first vehemently rejected; for I had not yet digested the courtesies which I already owed to this lady's urbanity. But, moneyless and friendless as I was, what alternative remained? I was at last forced to submit, and that only with the worse grace for my delay.

To Mrs St Clare's then I went; in a humour which will be readily conceived by any one who remembers the time when sobbing under a sense of injury he was forced to kiss his hand and beg pardon. The lady's mien was nothing sweetened since our last interview. While I was taking uninvited possession of a seat, she leisurely folded up her work, pulled on her gloves, and crossing her arms, drew up into the most stony rigidity of aspect. Willing to despatch my business as quickly as possible, I presented Mrs Murray's letter, begging that she would consider it as an apology for my intrusion. 'I have heard from Mrs Murray,' said my gracious hostess, without advancing so much as a finger towards the letter which I offered. I felt myself redden, but I bit my lip and made a new attempt.

'Mrs Murray,' said I, 'gives me reason to hope that I may be favoured with your advice.'

'You are a much better judge of your own concerns, Miss Percy, than I can be.'

'I am so entirely a stranger here, madam, that I should be indebted to any advice which might a.s.sist me in procuring respectable employment.'

'I really know n.o.body just now that wants a person in your line, Miss Percy.' In my line! The phrase was certainly not conciliating. 'Indeed I rather wonder what could make my friend Mrs Murray direct you to me.'

'A confidence in your willingness to oblige her, I presume, madam,'

answered I; no longer able to brook the cool insolence of my companion.

'I should be glad to oblige her,' returned the impenetrable Mrs St Clare; without discomposing a muscle except those necessary to articulation; 'so if I happen to hear of any thing in your way I will let you know. In the mean time, it may be prudent to go home to your friends, and remain with them till you find a situation.'

'Had it been possible for me to follow this advice, madam,' cried I, the scalding tears filling my eyes, 'you had never been troubled with this visit.'

'Hum. I suppose you have not money to carry you home. Eh?'

I would have retorted the insolent freedom of this question with a burst of indignant reproof; but my utterance was choked; I had not power to articulate a syllable.

'Though I am not fond of advancing money to people I know nothing about,' continued the lady, 'yet upon Mrs Murray's account here are five pounds, which I suppose will pay your pa.s.sage to London.'

For more than a year I had maintained a daily struggle with my pride; and I fancied that I had, in no small degree, prevailed. Alas! occasion only was wanting to show me the strength of my enemy. To be thus coa.r.s.ely offered an alms by a common stranger, roused at once the sleeping serpent. A sense of my dest.i.tute state, dependent upon compa.s.sion, defenceless from insult; a remembrance of my better fortune; pride, shame, indignation, and a struggle to suppress them all, entirely overcame me. A darkness pa.s.sed before my eyes; the blood sprang violently from my nostrils; I darted from the room without uttering a word; and, before I was sensible of my actions, found myself in the open air.

I was presently surrounded by persons of all ranks; for the people of Scotland have yet to learn that unity of purpose which carries forward my townsmen without a glance to the right hand or the left; and I know not if ever the indisposition of a court beauty was enquired after in such varied tones of sympathy as now reached my ear. In a few minutes the fresh air had so completely restored me, that the only disagreeable consequence of my indisposition was the notice which it had attracted. I took refuge from the awkwardness of my situation in the only shop which was then within sight; and soon afterwards proceeded unmolested to my lonely home.

There I had full leisure to reconsider my morning's adventure. The time had been when the bare suspicion of a wound would have made my conscience recoil from the probe. The time had been when I would have shaded my eye from the light which threatened to show the full form and stature of my bosom foe; for then, a treacherous will took part against me, and even my short conflicts were enfeebled by relentings towards the enemy. But now the will, though feeble, was honest; and I could bear to look my sin in the face, without fear, that lingering love should forbid its extermination. A review of my feelings and behaviour towards Mrs St Clare brought me to a full sense of the unsubdued and unchristian temper which they betrayed. I saw that whilst I had imagined my 'mountain to stand strong,' it was yet heaving with the wreckful fire. I felt, and shuddered to feel, that I had yet part in the spirit of the arch-rebel; and I wept in bitterness of heart, to see that my renunciation of my former self had spared so much to show that I was still the same.

Yet had this sorrow no connection with the fear of punishment. I had long since exchanged the horror of the culprit who trembles before his judge, for the milder anguish which bewails offence against the father and the friend; and when I considered that my offences would cease but with my life,--that the polluted mansion must be rased ere the incurable taint could be removed,--I breathed from the heart the language in which the patriarch deprecates an earthly immortality; and even at nineteen, when the youthful spirit was yet unbroken, and the warm blood yet bounded cheerily, I rejoiced from the soul that I should 'not live alway.' Nor had my sorrow any resemblance to despair. A sense of my obstinate tendency to evil did but rouse me to resolutions of exertion; for I knew that will and strength to continue the conflict were a pledge of final victory.

Considering that humility, like other habits, was best promoted by its own acts, I that very hour forced my unwilling spirit to submission, by despatching the following billet to Mrs St Clare:--

'Madam,--Strong, and I confess blamable, emotion prevented me this morning from acknowledging your bounty, for which I am not certainly the less indebted that I decline availing myself of it. I feel excused for this refusal, by the knowledge that circ.u.mstances, with which it is unnecessary to trouble you, preclude the possibility of applying your charity to the purpose for which it was offered.

'I am, &c.

'ELLEN PERCY.'

If others should be of opinion, as I now am, that the language of this billet inclined more to the stately than the conciliating, let them look back to the time when duty, compa.s.sion, and grat.i.tude, could not extort from me one word of concession to answer the parting kindness of my mother's friend. And let them learn to judge of the characters of others with a mercy which I do not ask them to bestow upon mine; let them remember that, while men's worst actions are necessarily exposed to their fellow-men, there are few who, like me, unfold their temptations, or record their repentance.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: No Highlander praises any living creature without adding this benediction. It is not confined, in its application, to human beings. If the subject of it belong to the speaker, this expression of dependence is intended to exclude boasting; if you commend what is the property of another, the Highland dread of an evil eye obliged you to intimate that you praise without envy. To be vain of a possession is justly considered as provoking Heaven to withdraw it, or to make it an instrument of punishment; and no true Highlander ever expected comfort in what had been envied or greedily desired by another.

Upon the same account, it is not judged polite to ask, nor safe to tell the number of a flock, or of a family. I once asked a countrywoman the number of a fine brood of chickens. 'They're as many as were gi'en,'

said she; 'I'm sure I never counted them.']

[Footnote 2: Mo cuilean ghaolach.--_Gaelic._]

CHAPTER XXI

_His years are young, but his experience old.

His head unmellowed,--but his judgment ripe.

And, in a word, (for far behind his worth, Come all the praises that I now bestow,) He is complete in feature and in mind, With all good grace to grace a gentleman._

Shakspeare.

I was now in a situation which might have alarmed the fears even of one born to penury and inured to hardship. Every day diminished a pittance which I had no means of replacing; and, in an isolation which debarred me alike from sympathy and protection, I was suffering the penalty of that perverse temper, which had preferred exile among strangers to an imaginary degradation among 'my own people.'

As it became absolutely necessary to discover some means of immediate subsistence, I expended part of my slender finances in advertising my wishes and qualifications; but not one enquiry did the advertis.e.m.e.nt produce. Perhaps the Scottish mothers in those days insisted upon some acquaintance with the woman to whom they committed the education of their daughters, beyond what was necessary to ascertain her knowledge of the various arts of squandering time. I endeavoured to ward off actual want by such pastime work as had once ministered to my amus.e.m.e.nt, and afterwards to my convenience; but I soon found that my labours were as useless as they were light; for Edinburgh, at that time, contained no market for the fruits of feminine ingenuity.

In such emergency, it is not to be wondered if my spirits faltered. My improvident lightness of heart forsook me; and though I often resolved to face the storm bravely, I resolved it with the tears in my eyes. I asked myself a hundred times a day, what better dependence I could wish than on goodness which would never withhold, and power which could never be exhausted? And yet, a hundred times a day I looked forward as anxiously as if my dependence had been upon the vapour tossed by the wind. I felt that, though I had possessed the treasures of the earth, the blessing of Heaven would have been necessary to me; and I knew that it would be sufficient, although that earth should vanish from her place. Yet I often examined my decaying means of support as mournfully as if I had reversed the sentiment of the Roman; and 'to live,' had been the only thing necessary.

I was thus engaged one morning, when I heard the voice of Murray enquiring for me. Longing to meet once more the glance of a friendly eye, I was more than half tempted to retract my general order for his exclusion. I had only a moment to weigh the question, yet the prudent side prevailed; because, if the truth must be told, I chanced just then to look into my gla.s.s; and was ill satisfied with the appearance of my swoln eyes and colourless cheeks; so well did the motives of my unpremeditated actions furnish a clue to the original defects of my mind. However, though I dare not say that my decision was wise, I may at least call it fortunate; since it probably saved me from one of those frothy pa.s.sions which idleness, such as I was condemned to, sometimes engenders in the heads of those whose hearts are by nature placed in una.s.sailable security. This ordinary form of the pa.s.sion was certainly the only one in which it could then have affected me; for what woman, educated as I had been, early initiated like me into heartless dissipation, was ever capable of that deep, generous, self-devoting sentiment which, in retirement, springs amid mutual charities and mutual pursuits; links itself with every interest of this life; and twines itself even with the hopes of immortality? My affections and my imagination were yet to receive their culture in the native land of strong attachment, ere I could be capable of such a sentiment.

As I persevered in excluding Murray, the only being with whom I could now exchange sympathies was my new Highland friend, Cecil Graham. I often saw her; and when I had a little conquered my disgust at the filth and disorder of her dwelling, I found my visits there as amusing as many of more 'pomp and circ.u.mstance.' She was to me an entirely new specimen of human character; an odd mixture of good sense and superst.i.tion,--of minute parsimony and liberal kindness,--of shrewd observation, and a land of romantic abstraction from sensible objects. Every thing that was said or done, suggested to her memory an adventure of some 'gallant Graham,' or, to her fancy, the agency of some unseen being.

I had heard Maitland praise the variety, grace, and vigour of the Gaelic language. 'If we should ever meet again,' thought I, 'I should like to surprise him pleasantly;' so, in mere dearth of other employment, I obliged Cecil to instruct me in her mother-tongue. The undertaking was no doubt a bold one, for I had no access to Gaelic books; nor if I had, could Cecil have read one page of them, though she could laboriously decipher a little English. But I cannot recollect that I was ever deterred by difficulty. While Cecil was busy at her spinning, I made her translate every name and phrase which occurred to me; tried to imitate the uncouth sounds she uttered; and then wrote them down with vast expense of consonants and labour. My progress would, however, have been impossible, if Cecil's dialect had been as perplexing to me as that of the Lowlanders of her own rank. But though her language was not exactly English, it certainly was not Scotch. It was foreign rather than provincial. It was often odd, but seldom unintelligible. 'I learnt by book,' said she once when I complimented her on this subject; 'and I had a good deal of English; though I have lost some of it now, speaking among this uncultivate' people.'

Cecil, who had no idea that labour could be its own reward, was very desirous to unriddle my perseverance in the study of Gaelic. But she never questioned me directly; for, with all her honesty, Cecil liked to exert her ingenuity in discovering by-ways to her purpose. 'You'll be thinking of going to the North Country?' said she one day, in the tone of interrogation. I told her I had no such expectation. 'You'll may be get a good husband to take you there yet; and that's what I am sure I wish,' said Cecil; as if she thought she had invocated for me the sum of all earthly good.

'Thank you, Cecil; I am afraid I have no great chance.'

'You don't know,' answered Cecil, in a voice of encouragement. 'Lady Eredine hersel' was but a Southron, with your leave.'

I laughed; for I had observed that Cecil always used this latter form of apology when she had occasion to mention any thing mean or offensive.

'How came the laird,' said I, 'to marry one who was but a Southron?'

'Indeed, she was just his fortune, lady,' said Cecil, 'and he could not go past her. And Mr Kenneth himsel' too is ordained, if he live, save him, to one from your country.'

'Have you the second-sight, Cecil, that you know so well what is ordained for Mr Kenneth?'