Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century

How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; but when he came to himsell, he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly beside the minister’s twa cows. Steenie would have thought the whole was a dream, but he had the receipt in his hand, fairly written and signed by the auld laird; only the last letters of his name were a little disorderly, written like one seized with sudden pain.

Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary place, rode through the mist to Redgauntlet Castle, and with much ado he got speech of the laird.

‘Well, you dyvour bankrupt,’ was the first word, ‘have you brought me my rent?’

‘No,’ answered my gudesire, ‘I have not; but I have brought your honour Sir Robert’s receipt for it.’

‘Wow, sirrah? Sir Robert’s receipt! You told me he had not given you one.’

‘Will your honour please to see if that bit line is right?’

Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, with much attention; and at last, at the date, which my gudesire had not observed, – ‘FROM MY APPOINTED PLACE,’ he read, ‘THIS TWENTY-FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.’ – ‘What! That is yesterday! – Villain, thou must have gone to hell for this!’

‘I got it from your honour’s father – whether he be in heaven or hell, I know not,’ said Steenie.

‘I will delate you for a warlock to the Privy Council!’ said Sir John. ‘I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a torch!’

‘I intend to delate mysell to the Presbytery,’ said Steenie, ‘and tell them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for them to judge of than a borrel man like me.’

Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full history; and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have told it you – word for word, neither more nor less.

Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very composedly, ‘Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honour of many a noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a redhot iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as scauding your fingers wi’ a redhot chanter. But yet it may be true, Steenie; and if the money cast up I shall not know what to think of it. But where shall we find the Cat’s Cradle? There are cats enough about the old house, but I think they kitten without the ceremony of bed or cradle.’

‘We were best ask Hutcheon,’ said my gudesire; ‘he kens a’ the odd corners about as weel as – another serving-man that is now gane, and that I wad not like to name.’

Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them, that a ruinous turret, lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder, for the opening was on the outside, and far above the battlements, was called of old the Cat’s Cradle.

‘There will I go immediately,’ said Sir John; and he took (with what purpose, Heaven kens) one of his father’s pistols from the hall-table, where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened to the battlements.

It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail, and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered at the turret-door, where his body stopped the only little light that was in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi’ a vengeance, maist dang him back ower – bang gaed the knight’s pistol, and Hutcheon, that held the ladder, and my gudesire that stood beside him, hears a loud skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape down to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should come up and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneugh, and mony orra thing besides, that had been missing for mony a day. And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into the dining-parlour, and took him by the hand and spoke kindly to him, and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word and that he would hereafter be a good master to him to make amends.

‘And now, Steenie,’ said Sir John, ‘although this vision of yours tend, on the whole, to my father’s credit, as an honest man, that he should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might make bad constructions upon it, concerning his soul’s health. So, I think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taken ower muckle brandy to be very certain about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt’ (his hand shook while he held it out), – ‘it’s but a queer kind of document, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly in the fire.’

‘Od, but for as queer as it is, it’s a’ the voucher I have for my rent,’ said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of Sir Robert’s discharge.

‘I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give you a discharge under my own hand,’ said Sir John, ‘and that on the spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter, you shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent.’

‘Mony thanks to your honour,’ said Steenie, who saw easily in what corner the wind was; ‘doubtless I will be comformable to all your honour’s commands; only I would willingly speak wi’ some powerful minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of sommons of appointment whilk your honour’s father’ —

‘Do not call the phantom my father!’ said Sir John, interrupting him.

‘Weel, then, the thing that was so like him,’ said my gudesire; ‘he spoke of my coming back to see him this time twelvemonth, and it’s a weight on my conscience.’

‘Aweel, then,’ said Sir John, ‘if you be so much distressed in mind, you may speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the honour of our family, and the mair that he may look for some patronage from me.’

Wi’ that, my father readily agreed that the receipt should be burnt, and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi’ a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.

My gudesire gaed down to the Manse, and the minister, when he had heard the story, said it was his real opinion that though my gudesire had gaen very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet, as he had refused the devil’s arles (for such was the offer of meat and drink) and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped, that if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang foreswore baith the pipes and the brandy – it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle, or drink usquebaugh or tippeny.

Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell; and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye’ll no hinder some to threap that it was nane o’ the auld Enemy that Dougal and my gudesire saw in the laird’s room, but only that wanchancy creature, the major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the laird’s whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister’s wife, after Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the moulds. And then my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgement or memory – at least nothing to speak of – was obliged to tell the real narrative to his friends, for the credit of his good name. He might else have been charged for a warlock. [See Note 3.]

The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor finished his long narrative with this moral – ‘Ye see, birkie, it is nae chancy thing to tak a stranger traveller for a guide, when you are in an uncouth land.’

‘I should not have made that inference,’ said I. ‘Your grandfather’s adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and distress; and fortunate for his landlord also, whom it prevented from committing a gross act of injustice.’

‘Aye, but they had baith to sup the sauce o’t sooner or later,’ said Wandering Willie – ‘what was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died before he was much over three-score; and it was just like of a moment’s illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fullness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at first; for Sir Redwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the oye of auld Sir Robert, and, waes me! the last of the honourable house, took the farm aff our hands, and brought me into his household to have care of me. He liked music, and I had the best teachers baith England and Scotland could gie me. Mony a merry year was I wi’ him; but waes me! he gaed out with other pretty men in the Forty-five – I’ll say nae mair about it – My head never settled weel since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will I have the heart to play the night. – Look out, my gentle chap,’ he resumed in a different tone, ‘ye should see the lights at Brokenburn glen by this time.’

LETTER XII

THE SAME TO THE SAME

Tam Luter was their minstrel meet,
Gude Lord as he could lance,
He play’d sae shrill, and sang sae sweet,
Till Towsie took a trance.
Auld Lightfoot there he did forleet,
And counterfeited France;
He used himself as man discreet,
And up took Morrice danse sae loud,
At Christ’s Kirk on the Green that day.

    KING JAMES I.
I continue to scribble at length, though the subject may seem somewhat deficient in interest. Let the grace of the narrative, therefore, and the concern we take in each other’s matters, make amends for its tenuity. We fools of fancy who suffer ourselves, like Malvolio, to be cheated with our own visions, have, nevertheless, this advantage over the wise ones of the earth, that we have our whole stock of enjoyments under our own command, and can dish for ourselves an intellectual banquet with most moderate assistance from external objects. It is, to be sure, something like the feast which the Barmecide served up to Alnaschar; and we cannot expect to get fat upon such diet. But then, neither is there repletion nor nausea, which often succeed the grosser and more material revel. On the whole, I still pray, with the Ode to Castle Building —

Give me thy hope which sickens not the heart;
Give me thy wealth which has no wings to fly;
Give me the bliss thy visions can impart:
Thy friendship give me, warm in poverty!

And so, despite thy solemn smile and sapient shake of the head, I will go on picking such interest as I can out of my trivial adventures, even though that interest should be the creation of my own fancy; nor will I cease to indict on thy devoted eyes the labour of perusing the scrolls in which I shall record my narrative.

My last broke off as we were on the point of descending into the glen at Brokenburn, by the dangerous track which I had first travelled EN CROUPE, behind a furious horseman, and was now again to brave under the precarious guidance of a blind man.

It was now getting dark; but this was no inconvenience to my guide, who moved on, as formerly, with instinctive security of step, so that we soon reached the bottom, and I could see lights twinkling in the cottage which had been my place of refuge on a former occasion. It was not thither, however, that our course was directed. We left the habitation of the laird to the left, and turning down the brook, soon approached the small hamlet which had been erected at the mouth of the stream, probably on account of the convenience which it afforded as a harbour to the fishing-boats. A large, low cottage, full in our front, seemed highly illuminated; for the light not only glanced from every window and aperture in its frail walls, but was even visible from rents and fractures in the roof, composed of tarred shingles, repaired in part by thatch and divot.

While these appearances engaged my attention, that of my companion was attracted by a regular succession of sounds, like a bouncing on the floor, mixed with a very faint noise of music, which Willie’s acute organs at once recognized and accounted for, while to me it was almost inaudible. The old man struck the earth with his staff in a violent passion. ‘The whoreson fisher rabble! They have brought another violer upon my walk! They are such smuggling blackguards, that they must run in their very music; but I’ll sort them waur than ony gauger in the country. – Stay – hark – it ‘s no a fiddle neither – it’s the pipe and tabor bastard, Simon of Sowport, frae the Nicol Forest; but I’ll pipe and tabor him! – Let me hae ance my left hand on his cravat, and ye shall see what my right will do. Come away, chap – come away, gentle chap – nae time to be picking and waling your steps.’ And on he passed with long and determined strides, dragging me along with him.

I was not quite easy in his company; for, now that his minstrel pride was hurt, the man had changed from the quiet, decorous, I might almost say respectable person, which he seemed while he told his tale, into the appearance of a fierce, brawling, dissolute stroller. So that when he entered the large hut, where a great number of fishers, with their wives and daughters, were engaged in eating, drinking, and dancing, I was somewhat afraid that the impatient violence of my companion might procure us an indifferent reception.

But the universal shout of welcome with which Wandering Willie was received – the hearty congratulations – the repeated ‘Here’s t’ ye, Willie!’ – ‘Where hae ya been, ye blind deevil?’ and the call upon him to pledge them – above all, the speed with which the obnoxious pipe and tabor were put to silence, gave the old man such effectual assurance of undiminished popularity and importance, as at once put his jealousy to rest, and changed his tone of offended dignity into one better fitted to receive such cordial greetings. Young men and women crowded round, to tell how much they were afraid some mischance had detained him, and how two or three young fellows had set out in quest of him.

‘It was nae mischance, praised be Heaven,’ said Willie, ‘but the absence of the lazy loon Rob the Rambler, my comrade, that didna come to meet me on the Links; but I hae gotten a braw consort in his stead, worth a dozen of him, the unhanged blackguard.’

‘And wha is’t tou’s gotten, Wullie, lad?’ said half a score of voices, while all eyes were turned on your humble servant, who kept the best countenance he could, though not quite easy at becoming the centre to which all eyes were pointed.

‘I ken him by his hemmed cravat,’ said one fellow; ‘it’s Gil Hobson, the souple tailor frae Burgh. Ye are welcome to Scotland, ye prick-the-clout loon,’ he said, thrusting forth a paw; much the colour of a badger’s back, and of most portentous dimensions.

‘Gil Hobson? Gil whoreson!’ exclaimed Wandering Willie; ‘it’s a gentle chap that I judge to be an apprentice wi’ auld Joshua Geddes, to the quaker-trade.’