The Antiquary — Complete, Walter Scott [best novels for beginners .TXT] 📗

Regular for a fortnight were the inquiries of the Antiquary at the veteran Caxon, whether he had heard what Mr. Lovel was about; and as regular were Caxon’s answers, “that the town could learn naething about him whatever, except that he had received anither muckle letter or twa frae the south, and that he was never seen on the plainstanes at a’.”

“How does he live, Caxon?”

“Ou, Mrs. Hadoway just dresses him a beefsteak or a muttonchop, or makes him some Friar’s chicken, or just what she likes hersell, and he eats it in the little red parlour off his bedroom. She canna get him to say that he likes ae thing better than anither; and she makes him tea in a morning, and he settles honourably wi’ her every week.”

“But does he never stir abroad?”

“He has clean gi’en up walking, and he sits a’ day in his room reading or writing; a hantle letters he has written, but he wadna put them into our post-house, though Mrs. Hadoway offered to carry them hersell, but sent them a’ under ae cover to the sheriff; and it’s Mrs. Mailsetter’s belief, that the sheriff sent his groom to put them into the post-office at Tannonburgh; it’s my puir thought, that he jaloused their looking into his letters at Fairport; and weel had he need, for my puir daughter Jenny”—

“Tut, don’t plague me with your womankind, Caxon. About this poor young lad.—Does he write nothing but letters?”

“Ou, ay—hale sheets o’ other things, Mrs. Hadoway says. She wishes muckle he could be gotten to take a walk; she thinks he’s but looking very puirly, and his appetite’s clean gane; but he’ll no hear o’ ganging ower the door-stane—him that used to walk sae muckle too.”

“That’s wrong—I have a guess what he’s busy about; but he must not work too hard neither. I’ll go and see him this very day—he’s deep, doubtless, in the Caledoniad.”

Having formed this manful resolution, Mr. Oldbuck equipped himself for the expedition with his thick walking-shoes and gold-headed cane, muttering the while the words of Falstaff which we have chosen for the motto of this CHAPTER; for the Antiquary was himself rather surprised at the degree of attachment which he could not but acknowledge be entertained for this stranger. The riddle was notwithstanding easily solved. Lovel had many attractive qualities, but he won our Antiquary’s heart by being on most occasions an excellent listener.

A walk to Fairport had become somewhat of an adventure with Mr. Oldbuck, and one which he did not often care to undertake. He hated greetings in the market-place; and there were generally loiterers in the streets to persecute him, either about the news of the day, or about some petty pieces of business. So, on this occasion, he had no sooner entered the streets of Fairport, than it was “Good-morrow, Mr. Oldbuck—a sight o’ you’s gude, for sair een: what d’ye think of the news in the Sun the day?—they say the great attempt will be made in a fortnight.”

“I wish to the Lord it were made and over, that I might hear no more about it.”

“Monkbarns, your honour,” said the nursery and seedsman, “I hope the plants gied satisfaction?—and if ye wanted ony flower-roots fresh frae Holland, or” (this in a lower key) “an anker or twa o’ Cologne gin, ane o’ our brigs cam in yestreen.”

“Thank ye, thank ye,—no occasion at present, Mr. Crabtree,” said the Antiquary, pushing resolutely onward.

“Mr. Oldbuck,” said the town-clerk (a more important person, who came in front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), “the provost, understanding you were in town, begs on no account that you’ll quit it without seeing him; he wants to speak to ye about bringing the water frae the Fairwell-spring through a part o’ your lands.”

“What the deuce!—have they nobody’s land but mine to cut and carve on?—I won’t consent, tell them.”

“And the provost,” said the clerk, going on, without noticing the rebuff, “and the council, wad be agreeable that you should hae the auld stones at Donagild’s chapel, that ye was wussing to hae.”

“Eh!—what?—Oho! that’s another story—Well, well, I’ll call upon the provost, and we’ll talk about it.”

“But ye maun speak your mind on’t forthwith, Monkbarns, if ye want the stones; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks the carved through-stanes might be put with advantage on the front of the new council-house—that is, the twa cross-legged figures that the callants used to ca’ Robin and Bobbin, ane on ilka door-cheek; and the other stane, that they ca’d Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu’, the Deacon says, and just in the style of modern Gothic.”

“Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation!” exclaimed the Antiquary,—“A monument of a knight-templar on each side of a Grecian porch, and a Madonna on the top of it!—O crimini!—Well, tell the provost I wish to have the stones, and we’ll not differ about the water-course. It’s lucky I happened to come this way to-day.”

They parted mutually satisfied; but the wily clerk had most reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since the whole proposal of an exchange between the monuments (which the council had determined to remove as a nuisance, because they encroached three feet upon the public road), and the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh through the estate of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated with himself upon the pressure of the moment.

Through these various entanglements, Monkbarns (to use the phrase by which he was distinguished in the country) made his way at length to Mrs. Hadoway’s. This good woman was the widow of a late clergyman at Fairport, who had been reduced by her husband’s untimely death, to that state of straitened and embarrassed circumstances in which the widows of the Scotch clergy are too often found. The tenement which she occupied, and the furniture of which she was possessed, gave her the means of letting a part of her house; and as Lovel had been a quiet, regular, and profitable lodger, and had qualified the necessary intercourse which they had together with a great deal of gentleness and courtesy, Mrs. Hadoway, not, perhaps, much used to such kindly treatment, had become greatly attached to her lodger, and was profuse in every sort of personal attention which circumstances permitted her to render him. To cook a dish somewhat better than ordinary for “the poor young gentleman’s dinner;” to exert her interest with those who remembered her husband, or loved her for her own sake and his, in order to procure scarce vegetables, or something which her simplicity supposed might tempt her lodger’s appetite, was a labour in which she delighted, although she anxiously concealed it from the person who was its object. She did not adopt this secrecy of benevolence to avoid the laugh of those who might suppose that an oval face and dark eyes, with a clear brown complexion, though belonging to a woman of five-and-forty, and enclosed within a widow’s close-drawn pinners, might possibly still aim at making conquests; for, to say truth, such a ridiculous suspicion having never entered into her own head, she could not anticipate its having birth in that of any one else. But she concealed her attentions solely out of delicacy to her guest, whose power of repaying them she doubted as much as she believed in his inclination to do so, and in his