Rob Roy — Complete, Walter Scott [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

Andrew, between the double risk of losing all by asking too much, or a part, by stating his demand lower than what I might be willing to pay, stood gasping in the agony of doubt and calculation.

Out it came with a bolt, however, at my threat; as the kind violence of a blow on the back sometimes delivers the windpipe from an intrusive morsel.—“Aughteen pennies sterling per diem—that is, by the day—your honour wadna think unconscionable.”

“It is double what is usual, and treble what you merit, Andrew; but there's a guinea for you, and get about your business.”

“The Lord forgi'e us! Is your honour mad?” exclaimed Andrew.

“No; but I think you mean to make me so—I give you a third above your demand, and you stand staring and expostulating there as if I were cheating you. Take your money, and go about your business.”

“Gude safe us!” continued Andrew, “in what can I hae offended your honour? Certainly a' flesh is but as the flowers of the field; but if a bed of camomile hath value in medicine, of a surety the use of Andrew Fairservice to your honour is nothing less evident—it's as muckle as your life's worth to part wi' me.”

“Upon my honour,” replied I, “it is difficult to say whether you are more knave or fool. So you intend then to remain with me whether I like it or no?”

“Troth, I was e'en thinking sae,” replied Andrew, dogmatically; “for if your honour disna ken when ye hae a gude servant, I ken when I hae a gude master, and the deil be in my feet gin I leave ye—and there's the brief and the lang o't besides I hae received nae regular warning to quit my place.”

“Your place, sir!” said I;—“why, you are no hired servant of mine,—you are merely a guide, whose knowledge of the country I availed myself of on my road.”

“I am no just a common servant, I admit, sir,” remonstrated Mr. Fairservice; “but your honour kens I quitted a gude place at an hour's notice, to comply wi' your honour's solicitations. A man might make honestly, and wi' a clear conscience, twenty sterling pounds per annum, weel counted siller, o' the garden at Osbaldistone Hall, and I wasna likely to gi'e up a' that for a guinea, I trow—I reckoned on staying wi' your honour to the term's end at the least o't; and I account my wage, board-wage, fee and bountith,—ay, to that length o't at the least.”

“Come, come, sir,” replied I, “these impudent pretensions won't serve your turn; and if I hear any more of them, I shall convince you that Squire Thorncliff is not the only one of my name that can use his fingers.”

While I spoke thus, the whole matter struck me as so ridiculous, that, though really angry, I had some difficulty to forbear laughing at the gravity with which Andrew supported a plea so utterly extravagant. The rascal, aware of the impression he had made on my muscles, was encouraged to perseverance. He judged it safer, however, to take his pretensions a peg lower, in case of overstraining at the same time both his plea and my patience.

“Admitting that my honour could part with a faithful servant, that had served me and mine by day and night for twenty years, in a strange place, and at a moment's warning, he was weel assured,” he said, “it wasna in my heart, nor in no true gentleman's, to pit a puir lad like himself, that had come forty or fifty, or say a hundred miles out o' his road purely to bear my honour company, and that had nae handing but his penny-fee, to sic a hardship as this comes to.”

I think it was you, Will, who once told me, that, to be an obstinate man, I am in certain things the most gullable and malleable of mortals. The fact is, that it is only contradiction which makes me peremptory, and when I do not feel myself called on to give battle to any proposition, I am always willing to grant it, rather than give myself much trouble. I knew this fellow to be a greedy, tiresome, meddling coxcomb; still, however, I must have some one about me in the quality of guide and domestic, and I was so much used to Andrew's humour, that on some occasions it was rather amusing. In the state of indecision to which these reflections led me, I asked Fairservice if he knew the roads, towns, etc., in the north of Scotland, to which my father's concerns with the proprietors of Highland forests were likely to lead me. I believe if I had asked him the road to the terrestrial paradise, he would have at that moment undertaken to guide me to it; so that I had reason afterwards to think myself fortunate in finding that his actual knowledge did not fall very much short of that which he asserted himself to possess. I fixed the amount of his wages, and reserved to myself the privilege of dismissing him when I chose, on paying him a week in advance. I gave him finally a severe lecture on his conduct of the preceding day, and then dismissed him rejoicing at heart, though somewhat crestfallen in countenance, to rehearse to his friend the precentor, who was taking his morning draught in the kitchen, the mode in which he had “cuitled up the daft young English squire.”

Agreeable to appointment, I went next to Bailie Nicol Jarvie's, where a comfortable morning's repast was arranged in the parlour, which served as an apartment of all hours, and almost all work, to that honest gentleman. The bustling and benevolent magistrate had been as good as his word. I found my friend Owen at liberty, and, conscious of the refreshments and purification of brush and basin, was of course a very different person from Owen a prisoner, squalid, heart-broken, and hopeless. Yet the sense of pecuniary difficulties arising behind, before, and around him, had depressed his spirit, and the almost paternal embrace which the good man gave me, was embittered by a sigh of the deepest anxiety. And when he sate down, the heaviness in his eye and manner, so different from the quiet composed satisfaction which they usually exhibited, indicated that he was employing his arithmetic in mentally numbering up the days, the hours, the minutes, which yet remained as an interval between the dishonour of bills and the downfall of the great commercial establishment of Osbaldistone and Tresham. It was left to me, therefore, to do honour to our landlord's hospitable cheer—to his tea, right from China, which he got in a present from some eminent ship's-husband at Wapping—to his coffee, from a snug plantation of his own, as he informed us with a wink, called Saltmarket Grove, in the island of Jamaica—to his English toast and ale, his Scotch dried salmon, his Lochfine herrings, and even to the double-damask table-cloth, “wrought by no hand, as you may guess,” save that of his deceased father the worthy Deacon Jarvie.

Having conciliated our good-humoured host by those little attentions which are great to most men, I endeavoured in my turn to gain from him some information which might be useful for my guidance, as well as for the satisfaction of my curiosity. We had not hitherto made the least allusion to the transactions of the preceding night, a circumstance which made my question sound somewhat abrupt, when, without any previous introduction of the subject, I took advantage of a pause when the history of the table-cloth ended, and that of the napkins was about to commence, to inquire, “Pray, by the by, Mr. Jarvie, who may this Mr. Robert Campbell be, whom we met with last night?”