St. Ronan's Well Part 11

"But you have spoke to none of the company--how can you be so odd, my love?" said her ladyship.

"Why, I spoke to them all when I spoke to you and Lady Binks--but I am a good girl, and will do as I am bid."

So saying, she looked round the company, and addressed each of them with an affectation of interest and politeness, which thinly concealed scorn and contempt.

"Mr. Winterblossom, I hope the gout is better--Mr. Robert Rymar--(I have escaped calling him Thomas for once)--I hope the public give encouragement to the muses--Mr. Keelavine, I trust your pencil is busy--Mr. Chatterly, I have no doubt your flock improves--Dr.

Quackleben, I am sure your patients recover--These are all the especials of the worthy company I know--for the rest, health to the sick, and pleasure to the healthy!"

"You are not going in reality, my love?" said Lady Penelope; "these hasty rides agitate your nerves--they do, indeed--you should be cautious--Shall I speak to Quackleben?"

"To neither Quack nor quackle, on my account, my dear lady. It is not as you would seem to say, by your winking at Lady Binks--it is not, indeed--I shall be no Lady Clementina, to be the wonder and pity of the spring of St. Ronan's--No Ophelia neither--though I will say with her, Good-night, ladies--Good night, sweet ladies!--and now--not my coach, my coach--but my horse, my horse!"

So saying, she tripped out of the room by a side pa.s.sage, leaving the ladies looking at each other significantly, and shaking their heads with an expression of much import.

"Something has ruffled the poor unhappy girl," said Lady Penelope; "I never saw her so very odd before."

"Were I to speak my mind," said Lady Binks, "I think, as Mrs. Highmore says in the farce, her madness is but a poor excuse for her impertinence."

"Oh fie! my sweet Lady Binks," said Lady Penelope, "spare my poor favourite! You, surely, of all others, should forgive the excesses of an amiable eccentricity of temper.--Forgive me, my love, but I must defend an absent friend--My Lady Binks, I am very sure, is too generous and candid to

'Hate for arts which caused herself to rise.'"

"Not being conscious of any high elevation, my lady," answered Lady Binks, "I do not know any arts I have been under the necessity of practising to attain it. I suppose a Scotch lady of an ancient family may become the wife of an English baronet, and no very extraordinary great cause to wonder at it."

"No, surely--but people in this world will, you know, wonder at nothing," answered Lady Penelope.

"If you envy me my poor quiz, Sir Bingo, I'll get you a better, Lady Pen."

"I don't doubt your talents, my dear, but when I want one, I will get one for myself.--But here comes the whole party of quizzes.--Joliffe, offer the gentlemen tea--then get the floor ready for the dancers, and set the card-tables in the next room."

FOOTNOTES:

[I-15] The late Dr. Gregory is probably intimated, as one of the celebrated Dr. Cullen's personal habits is previously mentioned. Dr.

Gregory was distinguished for putting his patients on a severe regimen.

[I-16] A fur pouch for keeping tobacco.

CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER DINNER.

They draw the cork, they broach the barrel, And first they kiss, and then they quarrel.

PRIOR.

If the reader has attended much to the manners of the canine race, he may have remarked the very different manner in which the individuals of the different s.e.xes carry on their quarrels among each other. The females are testy, petulant, and very apt to indulge their impatient dislike of each other's presence, or the spirit of rivalry which it produces, in a sudden bark and snap, which last is generally made as much at advantage as possible. But these ebullitions of peevishness lead to no very serious or prosecuted conflict; the affair begins and ends in a moment. Not so the ire of the male dogs, which, once produced and excited by growls of mutual offence and defiance, leads generally to a fierce and obstinate contest; in which, if the parties be dogs of game, and well-matched, they grapple, throttle, tear, roll each other in the kennel, and can only be separated by choking them with their own collars, till they lose wind and hold at the same time, or by surprising them out of their wrath by sousing them with cold water.

The simile, though a currish one, will hold good in its application to the human race. While the ladies in the tea-room of the Fox Hotel were engaged in the light snappish velitation, or skirmish, which we have described, the gentlemen who remained in the parlour were more than once like to have quarrelled more seriously.

We have mentioned the weighty reasons which induced Mr. Mowbray to look upon the stranger whom a general invitation had brought into their society, with unfavourable prepossessions; and these were far from being abated by the demeanour of Tyrrel, which, though perfectly well-bred, indicated a sense of equality, which the young Laird of St. Ronan's considered as extremely presumptuous.

As for Sir Bingo, he already began to nourish the genuine hatred always entertained by a mean spirit against an antagonist, before whom it is conscious of having made a dishonourable retreat. He forgot not the manner, look, and tone, with which Tyrrel had checked his unauthorized intrusion; and though he had sunk beneath it at the moment, the recollection rankled in his heart as an affront to be avenged. As he drank his wine, courage, the want of which was, in his more sober moments, a check upon his bad temper, began to inflame his malignity, and he ventured upon several occasions to show his spleen, by contradicting Tyrrel more flatly than good manners permitted upon so short an acquaintance, and without any provocation. Tyrrel saw his ill humour and despised it, as that of an overgrown schoolboy, whom it was not worth his while to answer according to his folly.

One of the apparent causes of the Baronet's rudeness was indeed childish enough. The company were talking of shooting, the most animating topic of conversation among Scottish country gentlemen of the younger cla.s.s, and Tyrrel had mentioned something of a favourite setter, an uncommonly handsome dog, from which he had been for some time separated, but which he expected would rejoin him in the course of next week.

"A setter!" retorted Sir Bingo, with a sneer; "a pointer I suppose you mean?"

"No, sir," said Tyrrel; "I am perfectly aware of the difference betwixt a setter and a pointer, and I know the old-fashioned setter is become unfashionable among modern sportsmen. But I love my dog as a companion, as well as for his merits in the field; and a setter is more sagacious, more attached, and fitter for his place on the hearth-rug, than a pointer--not," he added, "from any deficiency of intellects on the pointer's part, but he is generally so abused while in the management of brutal breakers and grooms, that he loses all excepting his professional accomplishments, of finding and standing steady to game."

"And who the d----l desires he should have more?" said Sir Bingo.

"Many people, Sir Bingo," replied Tyrrel, "have been of opinion, that both dogs and men may follow sport indifferently well, though they do happen, at the same time, to be fit for mixing in friendly intercourse in society."

"That is for licking trenchers, and scratching copper, I suppose," said the Baronet, _sotto voce_; and added, in a louder and more distinct tone,--"He never before heard that a setter was fit to follow any man's heels but a poacher's."

"You know it now then, Sir Bingo," answered Tyrrel; "and I hope you will not fall into so great a mistake again."

The Peace-maker here seemed to think his interference necessary, and, surmounting his tact.i.turnity, made the following pithy speech:--"By Cot!

and do you see, as you are looking for my opinion, I think there is no dispute in the matter--because, by Cot! it occurs to me, d'ye see, that ye are both right, by Cot! It may do fery well for my excellent friend Sir Bingo, who hath stables, and kennels, and what not, to maintain the six filthy prutes that are yelping and yowling all the tay, and all the neight too, under my window, by Cot!--And if they are yelping and yowling there, may I never die but I wish they were yelping and yowling somewhere else. But then there is many a man who may be as cood a gentleman at the bottom as my worthy friend Sir Bingo, though it may be that he is poor; and if he is poor--and as if it might be my own case, or that of this honest gentleman, Mr. Tirl--is that a reason or a law, that he is not to keep a prute of a tog, to help him to take his sports and his pleasures? and if he has not a stable or a kennel to put the crature into, must he not keep it in his pit of ped-room, or upon his parlour hearth, seeing that Luckie Dods would make the kitchen too hot for the paist--and so, if Mr. Tirl finds a setter more fitter for his purpose than a pointer, by Cot, I know no law against it, else may I never die the black death."

If this oration appear rather long for the occasion, the reader must recollect that Captain MacTurk had in all probability the trouble of translating it from the periphrastic language of Ossian, in which it was originally conceived in his own mind.

The Man of Law replied to the Man of Peace, "Ye are mistaken for ance in your life, Captain, for there is a law against setters; and I will undertake to prove them to be the 'lying dogs,' which are mentioned in the auld Scots statute, and which all and sundry are discharged to keep, under a penalty of"----

Here the Captain broke in, with a very solemn mien and dignified manner--"By Cot! Master Meiklewham, and I shall be asking what you mean by talking to me of peing mistaken, and apout lying togs, sir--because I would have you to know, and to pelieve, and to very well consider, that I never was mistaken in my life, sir, unless it was when I took you for a gentleman."

"No offence, Captain," said Mr. Meiklewham; "dinna break the wand of peace, man, you that should be the first to keep it.--He is as cankered," continued the Man of Law, apart to his patron, "as an auld Hieland terrier, that snaps at whatever comes near it--but I tell you ae thing, St. Ronan's, and that is on saul and conscience, that I believe this is the very lad Tirl, that I raised a summons against before the justices--him and another hempie--in your father's time, for shooting on the Spring-well-head muirs."

"The devil you did, Mick!" replied the Lord of the Manor, also aside;--"Well, I am obliged to you for giving me some reason for the ill thoughts I had of him--I knew he was some trumpery scamp--I'll blow him, by"----

"Whisht--stop--hush--haud your tongue, St. Ronan's,--keep a calm sough--ye see, I intended the process, by your worthy father's desire, before the Quarter Sessions--but I ken na--The auld sheriff-clerk stood the lad's friend--and some of the justices thought it was but a mistake of the marches, and sae we couldna get a judgment--and your father was very ill of the gout, and I was feared to vex him, and so I was fain to let the process sleep, for fear they had been a.s.soilzied.--Sae ye had better gang cautiously to wark, St. Ronan's, for though they were summoned, they were not convict."

"Could you not take up the action again?" said Mr. Mowbray.

"Whew! it's been prescribed sax or seeven year syne. It is a great shame, St. Ronan's, that the game laws, whilk are the very best protection that is left to country gentlemen against the encroachment of their inferiors, rin sae short a course of prescription--a poacher may just jink ye back and forward like a flea in a blanket, (wi'

pardon)--hap ye out of ae county and into anither at their pleasure, like pyots--and unless ye get your thum-nail on them in the very nick o'

time, ye may dine on a dish of prescription, and sup upon an absolvitor."

"It is a shame indeed," said Mowbray, turning from his confident and agent, and addressing himself to the company in general, yet not without a peculiar look directed to Tyrrel.

"What is a shame, sir?" said Tyrrel, conceiving that the observation was particularly addressed to him.

"That we should have so many poachers upon our muirs, sir," answered St.

Ronan's. "I sometimes regret having countenanced the Well here, when I think how many guns it has brought on my property every season."