St. Ronan's Well Part 25

"They happened before my time, Doctor," replied the traveller.

"You are to understand that my curiosity refers to the geography of the countries where these events took place," answered Mr. Cargill.

"O! as to that matter, you are lighted on your feet," said Mr.

Touchwood; "for the time present I can fit you. Turk, Arab, Copt, and Druse, I know every one of them, and can make you as well acquainted with them as myself. Without stirring a step beyond your threshold, you shall know Syria as well as I do.--But one good turn deserves another--in that case, you must have the goodness to dine with me."

"I go seldom abroad, sir," said the minister, with a good deal of hesitation, for his habits of solitude and seclusion could not be entirely overcome, even by the expectation raised by the traveller's discourse; "yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of waiting on a gentleman possessed of so much experience."

"Well then," said Mr. Touchwood, "three be the hour--I never dine later, and always to a minute--and the place, the Cleik.u.m Inn, up the way; where Mrs. Dods is at this moment busy in making ready such a dinner as your learning has seldom seen, Doctor, for I brought the receipts from the four different quarters of the globe."

Upon this treaty they parted; and Mr. Cargill, after musing for a short while upon the singular chance which had sent a living man to answer those doubts for which he was in vain consulting ancient authorities, at length resumed, by degrees, the train of reflection and investigation which Mr. Touchwood's visit had interrupted, and in a short time lost all recollection of his episodical visitor, and of the engagement which he had formed.

Not so Mr. Touchwood, who, when not occupied with business of real importance, had the art, as the reader may have observed, to make a prodigious fuss about nothing at all. Upon the present occasion, he bustled in and out of the kitchen, till Mrs. Dods lost patience, and threatened to pin the dish-clout to his tail; a menace which he pardoned, in consideration, that in all the countries which he had visited, which are sufficiently civilized to boast of cooks, these artists, toiling in their fiery element, have a privilege to be testy and impatient. He therefore retreated from the torrid region of Mrs.

Dods's microcosm, and employed his time in the usual devices of loiterers, partly by walking for an appet.i.te, partly by observing the progress of his watch towards three o'clock, when he had happily succeeded in getting an employment more serious. His table, in the blue parlour, was displayed with two covers, after the fairest fashion of the Cleik.u.m Inn; yet the landlady, with a look "civil but sly," contrived to insinuate a doubt whether the clergyman would come, "when a' was dune."

Mr. Touchwood scorned to listen to such an insinuation until the fated hour arrived, and brought with it no Mr. Cargill. The impatient entertainer allowed five minutes for difference of clocks, and variation of time, and other five for the procrastination of one who went little into society. But no sooner were the last five minutes expended, than he darted off for the Manse, not, indeed, much like a greyhound or a deer, but with the momentum of a corpulent and well-appetized elderly gentleman, who is in haste to secure his dinner. He bounced without ceremony into the parlour, where he found the worthy divine clothed in the same plaid nightgown, and seated in the very elbow-chair, in which he had left him five hours before. His sudden entrance recalled to Mr.

Cargill, not an accurate, but something of a general, recollection, of what had pa.s.sed in the morning, and he hastened to apologize with "Ha!--indeed--already?--upon my word, Mr. A--a--, I mean my dear friend--I am afraid I have used you ill--I forgot to order any dinner--but we will do our best.--Eppie--Eppie!"

Not at the first, second, nor third call, but _ex intervallo_, as the lawyers express it, Eppie, a bare-legged, shock-headed, thick-ankled, red-armed wench, entered, and announced her presence by an emphatic "What's your wull?"

"Have you got any thing in the house for dinner, Eppie?"

"Naething but bread and milk, plenty o't--what should I have?"

"You see, sir," said Mr. Cargill, "you are like to have a Pythagorean entertainment; but you are a traveller, and have doubtless been in your time thankful for bread and milk."

"But never when there was any thing better to be had," said Mr.

Touchwood. "Come, Doctor, I beg your pardon, but your wits are fairly gone a wool-gathering; it was _I_ invited _you_ to dinner, up at the inn yonder, and not you me."

"On my word, and so it was," said Mr. Cargill; "I knew I was quite right--I knew there was a dinner engagement betwixt us, I was sure of that, and that is the main point.--Come, sir, I wait upon you."

"Will you not first change your dress?" said the visitor, seeing with astonishment that the divine proposed to attend him in his plaid nightgown; "why, we shall have all the boys in the village after us--you will look like an owl in sunshine, and they will flock round you like so many hedge-sparrows."

"I will get my clothes instantly," said the worthy clergyman; "I will get ready directly--I am really ashamed to keep you waiting, my dear Mr.--eh--eh--your name has this instant escaped me."

"It is Touchwood, sir, at your service; I do not believe you ever heard it before," answered the traveller.

"True--right--no more I have--well, my good Mr. Touchstone, will you sit down an instant until we see what we can do?--strange slaves we make ourselves to these bodies of ours, Mr. Touchstone--the clothing and the sustaining of them costs us much thought and leisure, which might be better employed in catering for the wants of our immortal spirits."

Mr. Touchwood thought in his heart that never had Bramin or Gymnosophist less reason to reproach himself with excess in the indulgence of the table, or of the toilet, than the sage before him; but he a.s.sented to the doctrine, as he would have done to any minor heresy, rather than protract matters by farther discussing the point at present. In a short time the minister was dressed in his Sunday's suit, without any farther mistake than turning one of his black stockings inside out; and Mr.

Touchwood, happy as was Boswell when he carried off Dr. Johnson in triumph to dine with Strahan and John Wilkes, had the pleasure of escorting him to the Cleik.u.m Inn.

In the course of the afternoon they became more familiar, and the familiarity led to their forming a considerable estimate of each other's powers and acquirements. It is true, the traveller thought the student too pedantic, too much attached to systems, which, formed in solitude, he was unwilling to renounce, even when contradicted by the voice and testimony of experience; and, moreover, considered his utter inattention to the quality of what he eat and drank, as unworthy of a rational, that is, of a cooking creature, or of a being who, as defined by Johnson, holds his dinner as the most important business of the day. Cargill did not act up to this definition, and was, therefore, in the eyes of his new acquaintance, so far ignorant and uncivilized. What then? He was still a sensible, intelligent man, however abstemious and bookish.

On the other hand, the divine could not help regarding his new friend as something of an epicure or belly-G.o.d, nor could he observe in him either the perfect education, or the polished bearing, which mark the gentleman of rank, and of which, while he mingled with the world, he had become a competent judge. Neither did it escape him, that in the catalogue of Mr.

Touchwood's defects, occurred that of many travellers, a slight disposition to exaggerate his own personal adventures, and to prose concerning his own exploits. But then, his acquaintance with Eastern manners, existing now in the same state in which they were found during the time of the Crusades, formed a living commentary on the works of William of Tyre, Raymund of Saint Giles, the Moslem annals of Abulfaragi, and other historians of the dark period, with which his studies were at present occupied.

A friendship, a companionship at least, was therefore struck up hastily betwixt these two originals; and to the astonishment of the whole parish of St. Ronan's, the minister thereof was seen once more leagued and united with an individual of his species, generally called among them the Cleik.u.m Nabob. Their intercourse sometimes consisted in long walks, which they took in company, traversing, however, as limited a s.p.a.ce of ground, as if it had been actually roped in for their pedestrian exercise. Their parade was, according to circ.u.mstances, a low haugh at the nether end of the ruinous hamlet, or the esplanade in the front of the old castle; and, in either case, the direct longitude of their promenade never exceeded a hundred yards. Sometimes, but rarely, the divine took share of Mr. Touchwood's meal, though less splendidly set forth than when he was first invited to partake of it; for, like the owner of the gold cup in Parnell's Hermit, when cured of his ostentation,

----"Still he welcomed, but with less of cost."

On these occasions, the conversation was not of the regular and compacted nature, which pa.s.ses betwixt men, as they are ordinarily termed, of this world. On the contrary, the one party was often thinking of Saladin and Coeur de Lion, when the other was haranguing on Hyder Ali and Sir Eyre Coote. Still, however, the one spoke, and the other seemed to listen; and, perhaps, the lighter intercourse of society, where amus.e.m.e.nt is the sole object, can scarcely rest on a safer and more secure basis.

It was on one of the evenings when the learned divine had taken his place at Mr. Touchwood's social board, or rather at Mrs. Dods's,--for a cup of excellent tea, the only luxury which Mr. Cargill continued to partake of with some complacence, was the regale before them,--that a card was delivered to the Nabob.

"Mr. and Miss Mowbray see company at Shaws-Castle on the twentieth current, at two o'clock--a _dejener_--dresses in character admitted--A dramatic picture."

"See company? the more fools they," he continued by way of comment. "See company?--choice phrases are ever commendable--and this piece of pasteboard is to intimate that one may go and meet all the fools of the parish, if they have a mind--in my time they asked the honour, or the pleasure, of a stranger's company. I suppose, by and by, we shall have in this country the ceremonial of a Bedouin's tent, where every ragged Hadgi, with his green turban, comes in slap without leave asked, and has his black paw among the rice, with no other apology than Salam Alic.u.m.--'Dresses in character--Dramatic picture'--what new tomfoolery can that be?--but it does not signify.--Doctor! I say Doctor!--but he is in the seventh heaven--I say, Mother Dods, you who know all the news--Is this the feast that was put off until Miss Mowbray should be better?"

"Troth is it, Maister Touchwood--they are no in the way of giving twa entertainments in one season--no very wise to gie ane maybe--but they ken best."

"I say, Doctor, Doctor!--Bless his five wits, he is charging the Moslemah with stout King Richard--I say, Doctor, do you know any thing of these Mowbrays?"

"Nothing extremely particular," answered Mr. Cargill, after a pause; "it is an ordinary tale of greatness, which blazes in one century, and is extinguished in the next. I think Camden says, that Thomas Mowbray, who was Grand-Marshal of England, succeeded to that high office, as well as to the Dukedom of Norfolk, as grandson of Roger Bigot, in 1301."

"Pshaw, man, you are back into the 14th century--I mean these Mowbrays of St. Ronan's--now, don't fall asleep again until you have answered my question--and don't look so like a startled hare--I am speaking no treason."

The clergyman floundered a moment, as is usual with an absent man who is recovering the train of his ideas, or a somnambulist when he is suddenly awakened, and then answered, still with hesitation,--

"Mowbray of St. Ronan's?--ha--eh--I know--that is--I did know the family."

"Here they are going to give a masquerade, a _bal pare_, private theatricals, I think, and what not," handing him the card.

"I saw something of this a fortnight ago," said Mr. Cargill; "indeed, I either had a ticket myself, or I saw such a one as that."

"Are you sure you did not attend the party, Doctor?" said the Nabob.

"Who attend? I? you are jesting, Mr. Touchwood."

"But are you quite positive?" demanded Mr. Touchwood, who had observed, to his infinite amus.e.m.e.nt, that the learned and abstracted scholar was so conscious of his own peculiarities, as never to be very sure on any such subject.

"Positive!" he repeated with embarra.s.sment; "my memory is so wretched that I never like to be positive--but had I done any thing so far out of my usual way, I must have remembered it, one would think--and--I _am_ positive I was not there."

"Neither could you, Doctor," said the Nabob, laughing at the process by which his friend reasoned himself into confidence, "for it did not take place--it was adjourned, and this is the second invitation--there will be one for you, as you had a card to the former.--Come, Doctor, you must go--you and I will go together--I as an Imaum--I can say my Bismillah with any Hadgi of them all--You as a cardinal, or what you like best."

"Who, I?--it is unbecoming my station, Mr. Touchwood," said the clergyman--"a folly altogether inconsistent with my habits."

"All the better--you shall change your habits."

"You had better gang up and see them, Mr. Cargill," said Mrs. Dods; "for it's maybe the last sight ye may see of Miss Mowbray--they say she is to be married and off to England ane of thae odd-come-shortlies, wi' some of the gowks about the Waal down-by."

"Married!" said the clergyman; "it is impossible!"

"But where's the impossibility, Mr. Cargill, when ye see folk marry every day, and buckle them yoursell into the bargain?--Maybe ye think the puir la.s.sie has a bee in her bannet; but ye ken yoursell if naebody but wise folk were to marry, the warld wad be ill peopled. I think it's the wise folk that keep single, like yoursell and me, Mr. Cargill.--Gude guide us!--are ye weel?--will ye taste a drap o' something?"

"Sniff at my ottar of roses," said Mr. Touchwood; "the scent would revive the dead--why, what in the devil's name is the meaning of this?--you were quite well just now."

"A sudden qualm," said Mr. Cargill, recovering himself.