St. Ronan's Well

“I know wealth makes itself wings,” answered the cynical stranger; “but I am not quite sure we have it even now. You make a great show, indeed, with building and cultivation; but stock is not capital, any more than the fat of a corpulent man is health or strength.”

“Surely, Mr. Touchwood,” said Bindloose, who felt his own account in the modern improvements, “a set of landlords, living like lairds in good earnest, and tenants with better housekeeping than the lairds used to have, and facing Whitsunday and Martinmas as I would face my breakfast – if these are not signs of wealth, I do not know where to seek for them.”

“They are signs of folly, sir,” replied Touchwood; “folly that is poor, and renders itself poorer by desiring to be thought rich; and how they come by the means they are so ostentatious of, you, who are a banker, perhaps can tell me better than I can guess.”

“There is maybe an accommodation bill discounted now and then, Mr. Touchwood; but men must have accommodation, or the world would stand still – accommodation is the grease that makes the wheels go.”

“Ay, makes them go down hill to the devil,” answered Touchwood. “I left you bothered about one Ayr bank, but the whole country is an Air bank now, I think – And who is to pay the piper? – But it's all one – I will see little more of it – it is a perfect Babel, and would turn the head of a man who has spent his life with people who love sitting better than running, silence better than speaking, who never eat but when they are hungry, never drink but when thirsty, never laugh without a jest, and never speak but when they have something to say. But here, it is all run, ride, and drive – froth, foam, and flippancy – no steadiness – no character.”

“I'll lay the burden of my life,” said Dame Dods, looking towards her friend Bindloose, “that the gentleman has been at the new Spaw-waal yonder!”

“Spaw do you call it, madam? – If you mean the new establishment that has been spawned down yonder at St. Ronan's, it is the very fountain-head of folly and coxcombry – a Babel for noise, and a Vanity-fair for nonsense – no well in your swamps tenanted by such a conceited colony of clamorous frogs.”

“Sir, sir!” exclaimed Dame Dods, delighted with the unqualified sentence passed upon her fashionable rivals, and eager to testify her respect for the judicious stranger who had pronounced it, – “will you let me have the pleasure of pouring you out a dish of tea?” And so saying, she took bustling possession of the administration which had hitherto remained in the hands of Mr. Bindloose himself.

“I hope it is to your taste, sir,” she continued, when the traveller had accepted her courtesy with the grateful acknowledgment, which men addicted to speak a great deal usually show to a willing auditor.

“It is as good as we have any right to expect, ma'am,” answered Mr. Touchwood; “not quite like what I have drunk at Canton with old Fong Qua – but the Celestial Empire does not send its best tea to Leadenhall Street, nor does Leadenhall Street send its best to Marchthorn.”

“That may be very true, sir,” replied the dame; “but I will venture to say that Mr. Bindloose's tea is muckle better than you had at the Spaw-waal yonder.”

“Tea, madam! – I saw none – Ash leaves and black-thorn leaves were brought in in painted canisters, and handed about by powder-monkeys in livery, and consumed by those who liked it, amidst the chattering of parrots and the squalling of kittens. I longed for the days of the Spectator, when I might have laid my penny on the bar, and retired without ceremony – But no – this blessed decoction was circulated under the auspices of some half-crazed blue-stocking or other, and we were saddled with all the formality of an entertainment, for this miserable allowance of a cockle-shell full of cat-lap per head.”

“Weel, sir,” answered Dame Dods, “all I can say is, that if it had been my luck to have served you at the Cleikum Inn, which our folk have kept for these twa generations, I canna pretend to say ye should have had such tea as ye have been used to in foreign parts where it grows, but the best I had I wad have gi'en it to a gentleman of your appearance, and I never charged mair than six-pence in all my time, and my father's before me.”

“I wish I had known the Old Inn was still standing, madam,” said the traveller; “I should certainly have been your guest, and sent down for the water every morning – the doctors insist I must use Cheltenham, or some substitute, for the bile – though, d – n them, I believe it's only to hide their own ignorance. And I thought this Spaw would have been the least evil of the two; but I have been fairly overreached – one might as well live in the inside of a bell. I think young St. Ronan's must be mad, to have established such a Vanity-fair upon his father's old property.”

“Do you ken this St. Ronan's that now is?” enquired the dame.

“By report only,” said Mr. Touchwood; “but I have heard of the family, and I think I have read of them, too, in Scottish history. I am sorry to understand they are lower in the world than they have been. This young man does not seem to take the best way to mend matters, spending his time among gamblers and black-legs.”

“I should be sorry if it were so,” said honest Meg Dods, whose hereditary respect for the family always kept her from joining in any scandal affecting the character of the young Laird – “My forbears, sir, have had kindness frae his; and although maybe he may have forgotten all about it, it wad ill become me to say ony thing of him that should not be said of his father's son.”

Mr. Bindloose had not the same motive for forbearance; he declaimed against Mowbray as a thoughtless dissipater of his own fortune, and that of others. “I have some reason to speak,” he said, “having two of his notes for L.100 each, which I discounted out of mere kindness and respect for his ancient family, and which he thinks nae mair of retiring, than he does of paying the national debt – And here has he been raking every shop in Marchthorn, to fit out an entertainment for all the fine folk at the Well yonder; and tradesfolk are obliged to take his acceptances for their furnishings. But they may cash his bills that will; I ken ane that will never advance a bawbee on ony paper that has John Mowbray either on the back or front of it. He had mair need to be paying the debts which he has made already, than making new anes, that he may feed fules and flatterers.”

“I believe he is likely to lose his preparations, too,” said Mr. Touchwood, “for the entertainment has been put off, as I heard, in consequence of Miss Mowbray's illness.”

“Ay, ay, puir thing!” said Dame Margaret Dods: “her health has been unsettled for this mony a day.”

“Something wrong here, they tell me,” said the traveller, pointing to his own forehead significantly.

“God only kens,” replied Mrs. Dods; “but I rather suspect the heart than the head – the puir thing is hurried here and there, and down to the Waal, and up again, and nae society or quiet at hame; and a' thing ganging this unthrifty gait – nae wonder she is no that weel settled.”

“Well,” replied Touchwood, “she is worse they say than she has been, and that has occasioned the party at Shaws-Castle having been put off. Besides, now this fine young lord has come down to the Well, undoubtedly they will wait her recovery.”

“A lord!” ejaculated the astonished Mrs. Dods; “a lord come down to the Waal – they will be neither to haud nor to bind now – ance wud and aye waur – a lord! – set them up and shute them forward – a lord! – the Lord have a care o' us! – a lord at the hottle! – Maister Touchwood, it's my mind he will only prove to be a Lord o' Session.”

“Nay, not so, my good lady,” replied the traveller “he is an English lord, and, as they say, a Lord of Parliament – but some folk pretend to say there is a flaw in the title.”

“I'll warrant is there – a dozen of them!” said Meg, with alacrity – for she could by no means endure to think on the accumulation of dignity likely to accrue to the rival establishment, from its becoming the residence of an actual nobleman. “I'll warrant he'll prove a landlouping lord on their hand, and they will be e'en cheap o' the loss – And he has come down out of order it's like, and nae doubt he'll no be lang there before he will recover his health, for the credit of the Spaw.”

“Faith, madam, his present disorder is one which the Spaw will hardly cure – he is shot in the shoulder with a pistol-bullet – a robbery attempted, it seems – that is one of your new accomplishments – no such thing happened in Scotland in my time – men would have sooner expected to meet with the phœnix than with a highwayman.”

“And where did this happen, if you please, sir?” asked the man of bills.

“Somewhere near the old village,” replied the stranger; “and, if I am rightly informed, on Wednesday last.”

“This explains your twa shots, I am thinking, Mrs. Dods,” said Mr. Bindloose; “your groom heard them on the Wednesday – it must have been this attack on the stranger nobleman.”

“Maybe it was, and maybe it was not,” said Mrs. Dods; “but I'll see gude reason before I give up my ain judgment in that case. – I wad like to ken if this gentleman,” she added, returning to the subject from which Mr. Touchwood's interesting conversation had for a few minutes diverted her thoughts, “has heard aught of Mr. Tirl?”

“If you mean the person to whom this paper relates,” said the stranger, taking a printed handbill from his pocket, “I heard of little else – the whole place rang of him, till I was almost as sick of Tyrrel as William Rufus was. Some idiotical quarrel which he had engaged in, and which he had not fought out, as their wisdom thought he should have done, was the principal cause of censure. That is another folly now, which has gained ground among you. Formerly, two old proud lairds, or cadets of good family, perhaps, quarrelled, and had a rencontre, or fought a duel after the fashion of their old Gothic ancestors; but men who had no grandfathers never dreamt of such folly – And here the folk denounce a trumpery dauber of canvass, for such I understand to be this hero's occupation, as if he were a field-officer, who made valour his profession; and who, if you deprived him of his honour, was like to be deprived of his bread at the same time. – Ha, ha, ha! it reminds one of Don Quixote, who took his neighbour, Samson Carrasco, for a knight-errant.”

The perusal of this paper, which contained the notes formerly laid before the reader, containing the statement of Sir Bingo, and the censure which the company at the Well had thought fit to pass upon his affair with Mr. Tyrrel, induced Mr. Bindloose to say to Mrs. Dods, with as little exultation on the superiority of his own judgment as human nature would permit, —

“Ye see now that I was right, Mrs. Dods, and that there was nae earthly use in your fashing yoursell wi' this lang journey – The lad had just ta'en the bent rather than face Sir Bingo; and troth, I think him the wiser of the twa for sae doing – There ye hae print for it.”

Meg answered somewhat sullenly, “Ye may be mista'en, for a' that, your ainsell, for as wise as ye are, Mr. Bindloose; I shall hae that matter mair strictly enquired into.”

This led to a renewal of the altercation concerning the probable fate of Tyrrel, in the course of which the stranger was induced to take some interest in the subject.

At length Mrs. Dods, receiving no countenance from the experienced lawyer for the hypothesis she had formed, rose, in something like displeasure, to order her whiskey to be prepared. But hostess as she was herself, when in her own dominions, she reckoned without her host in the present instance; for the humpbacked postilion, as absolute in his department as Mrs. Dods herself, declared that the cattle would not be fit for the road these two hours yet. The good lady was therefore obliged to wait his pleasure, bitterly lamenting all the while the loss which a house of public entertainment was sure to sustain by the absence of the landlord or landlady, and anticipating a long list of broken dishes, miscalculated reckonings, unarranged chambers, and other disasters, which she was to expect at her return. Mr. Bindloose, zealous to recover the regard of his good friend and client, which he had in some degree forfeited by contradicting her on a favourite subject, did not choose to offer the unpleasing, though obvious topic of consolation, that an unfrequented inn is little exposed to the accidents she apprehended. On the contrary, he condoled with her very cordially, and went so far as to hint, that if Mr. Touchwood had come to Marchthorn with post-horses, as he supposed from his dress, she could have the advantage of them to return with more despatch to St. Ronan's.

“I am not sure,” said Mr. Touchwood, suddenly, “but I may return there myself. In that case I will be glad to set this good lady down, and to stay a few days at her house if she will receive me. – I respect a woman like you, ma'am, who pursue the occupation of your father – I have been in countries, ma'am, where people have followed the same trade, from father to son, for thousands of years – And I like the fashion – it shows a steadiness and sobriety of character.”

Mrs. Dods put on a joyous countenance at this proposal, protesting that all should be done in her power to make things agreeable; and while her good friend, Mr. Bindloose, expatiated upon the comfort her new guest would experience at the Cleikum, she silently contemplated with delight the prospect of a speedy and dazzling triumph, by carrying off a creditable customer from her showy and successful rival at the Well.

“I shall be easily accommodated, ma'am,” said the stranger; “I have travelled too much and too far to be troublesome. A Spanish venta, a Persian khan, or a Turkish caravanserail, is all the same to me – only, as I have no servant – indeed, never can be plagued with one of these idle loiterers, – I must beg you will send to the Well for a bottle of the water on such mornings as I cannot walk there myself – I find it is really of some service to me.”

Mrs. Dods readily promised compliance with this reasonable request; graciously conceding, that there “could be nae ill in the water itsell, but maybe some gude – it was only the New Inn, and the daft haverils that they caa'd the Company, that she misliked. Folk had a jest that St. Ronan dookit the Deevil in the Waal, which garr'd it taste aye since of brimstane – but she dared to say that was a' papist nonsense, for she was tell't by him that kend weel, and that was the minister himsell, that St. Ronan was nane of your idolatrous Roman saunts, but a Chaldee,” (meaning probably a Culdee,) “whilk was doubtless a very different story.”

Matters being thus arranged to the satisfaction of both parties, the post-chaise was ordered, and speedily appeared at the door of Mr. Bindloose's mansion. It was not without a private feeling of reluctance, that honest Meg mounted the step of a vehicle, on the door of which was painted, “Fox Inn and Hotel, St. Ronan's Well;” but it was too late to start such scruples.

“I never thought to have entered ane o' their hurley-hackets,” she said, as she seated herself; “and sic a like thing as it is – scarce room for twa folk! – Weel I wot, Mr. Touchwood, when I was in the hiring line, our twa chaises wad hae carried, ilk ane o' them, four grown folk and as mony bairns. I trust that doited creature Anthony will come awa back wi' my whiskey and the cattle, as soon as they have had their feed. – Are ye sure ye hae room eneugh, sir? – I wad fain hotch mysell farther yont.”

“O, ma'am,” answered the Oriental, “I am accustomed to all sorts of conveyances – a dooly, a litter, a cart, a palanquin, or a post-chaise, are all alike to me – I think I could be an inside with Queen Mab in a nutshell, rather than not get forward. – Begging you many pardons, if you have no particular objections, I will light my sheroot,” &c. &c. &c.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CLERGYMAN

A man he was to all the country dear,And passing rich with forty pounds a-year.Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Mrs. Dods's conviction, that her friend Tyrrel had been murdered by the sanguinary Captain MacTurk remained firm and unshaken; but some researches for the supposed body having been found fruitless, as well as expensive, she began to give up the matter in despair. “She had done her duty” – “she left the matter to them that had a charge anent such things” – and “Providence would bring the mystery to light in his own fitting time” – such were the moralities with which the good dame consoled herself; and, with less obstinacy than Mr. Bindloose had expected, she retained her opinion without changing her banker and man of business.

Perhaps Meg's acquiescent inactivity in a matter which she had threatened to probe so deeply, was partly owing to the place of poor Tyrrel being supplied in her blue chamber, and in her daily thoughts and cares, by her new guest, Mr. Touchwood; in possessing whom, a deserter as he was from the Well, she obtained, according to her view of the matter, a decided triumph over her rivals. It sometimes required, however, the full force of this reflection, to induce Meg, old and crabbed as she was, to submit to the various caprices and exactions of attention which were displayed by her new lodger. Never any man talked so much as Touchwood, of his habitual indifference to food, and accommodation in travelling; and probably there never was any traveller who gave more trouble in a house of entertainment. He had his own whims about cookery; and when these were contradicted, especially if he felt at the same time a twinge of incipient gout, one would have thought he had taken his lessons in the pastry-shop of Bedreddin Hassan, and was ready to renew the scene of the unhappy cream-tart, which was compounded without pepper. Every now and then he started some new doctrine in culinary matters, which Mrs. Dods deemed a heresy; and then the very house rang with their disputes. Again, his bed must necessarily be made at a certain angle from the pillow to the footposts; and the slightest deviation from this disturbed, he said, his nocturnal rest, and did certainly ruffle his temper. He was equally whimsical about the brushing of his clothes, the arrangement of the furniture in his apartment, and a thousand minutiæ, which, in conversation, he seemed totally to contemn.

It may seem singular, but such is the inconsistency of human nature, that a guest of this fanciful and capricious disposition gave much more satisfaction to Mrs. Dods, than her quiet and indifferent friend, Mr. Tyrrel. If her present lodger could blame, he could also applaud; and no artist, conscious of such skill as Mrs. Dods possessed, is indifferent to the praises of such a connoisseur as Mr. Touchwood. The pride of art comforted her for the additional labour; nor was it a matter unworthy of this most honest publican's consideration, that the guests who give most trouble, are usually those who incur the largest bills, and pay them with the best grace. On this point Touchwood was a jewel of a customer. He never denied himself the gratification of the slightest whim, whatever expense he might himself incur, or whatever trouble he might give to those about him; and all was done under protestation, that the matter in question was the most indifferent thing to him in the world. “What the devil did he care for Burgess's sauces, he that had eat his kouscousou, spiced with nothing but the sand of the desert? only it was a shame for Mrs. Dods to be without what every decent house, above the rank of an alehouse, ought to be largely provided with.”

In short, he fussed, fretted, commanded, and was obeyed; kept the house in hot water, and yet was so truly good-natured when essential matters were in discussion, that it was impossible to bear him the least ill-will; so that Mrs. Dods, though in a moment of spleen she sometimes wished him at the top of Tintock,26 always ended by singing forth his praises. She could not, indeed, help suspecting that he was a Nabob, as well from his conversation about foreign parts, as from his freaks of indulgence to himself, and generosity to others, – attributes which she understood to be proper to most “Men of Ind.” But although the reader has heard her testify a general dislike to this species of Fortune's favourites, Mrs. Dods had sense enough to know, that a Nabob living in the neighbourhood, who raises the price of eggs and poultry upon the good housewives around, was very different from a Nabob residing within her own gates, drawing all his supplies from her own larder, and paying, without hesitation or question, whatever bills her conscience permitted her to send in. In short, to come back to the point at which we perhaps might have stopped some time since, landlady and guest were very much pleased with each other.

But Ennui finds entrance into every scene, when the gloss of novelty is over; and the fiend began to seize upon Mr. Touchwood just when he had got all matters to his mind in the Cleikum Inn – had instructed Dame Dods in the mysteries of curry and mullegatawny – drilled the chambermaid into the habit of making his bed at the angle recommended by Sir John Sinclair – and made some progress in instructing the humpbacked postilion in the Arabian mode of grooming. Pamphlets and newspapers, sent from London and from Edinburgh by loads, proved inadequate to rout this invader of Mr. Touchwood's comfort; and, at last, he bethought himself of company. The natural resource would have been the Well – but the traveller had a holy shivering of awe, which crossed him at the very recollection of Lady Penelope, who had worked him rather hard during his former brief residence; and although Lady Binks's beauty might have charmed an Asiatic, by the plump graces of its contour, our senior was past the thoughts of a Sultana and a haram. At length a bright idea crossed his mind, and he suddenly demanded of Mrs. Dods, who was pouring out his tea for breakfast, into a large cup of a very particular species of china, of which he had presented her with a service on condition of her rendering him this personal good office, – “Pray, Mrs. Dods, what sort of a man is your minister?”

“He's just a man like other men, Maister Touchwood,” replied Meg; “what sort of a man should he be?”

“A man like other men? – ay – that is to say, he has the usual complement of legs and arms, eyes and ears – But is he a sensible man?”

“No muckle o' that, sir,” answered Dame Dods; “for if he was drinking this very tea that ye gat doun from London wi' the mail, he wad mistake it for common bohea.”

“Then he has not all his organs – wants a nose, or the use of one at least,” said Mr. Touchwood; “the tea is right gunpowder – a perfect nosegay.”

“Aweel, that may be,” said the landlady; “but I have gi'en the minister a dram frae my ain best bottle of real Coniac brandy, and may I never stir frae the bit, if he didna commend my whisky when he set down the glass! There is no ane o' them in the Presbytery but himsell – ay, or in the Synod either – but wad hae kend whisky frae brandy.”

“But what sort of man is he? – Has he learning?” demanded Touchwood.

“Learning? – eneugh o' that,” answered Meg; “just dung donnart wi' learning – lets a' things about the Manse gang whilk gate they will, sae they dinna plague him upon the score. An awfu' thing it is to see sic an ill-red-up house! – If I had the twa tawpies that sorn upon the honest man ae week under my drilling, I think I wad show them how to sort a lodging!”

“Does he preach well?” asked the guest.

“Oh, weel eneugh, weel eneugh – sometimes he will fling in a lang word or a bit of learning that our farmers and bannet lairds canna sae weel follow – But what of that, as I am aye telling them? – them that pay stipend get aye the mair for their siller.”

“Does he attend to his parish? – Is he kind to the poor?”

“Ower muckle o' that, Maister Touchwood – I am sure he makes the Word gude, and turns not away from those that ask o' him – his very pocket is picked by a wheen ne'er-do-weel blackguards, that gae sorning through the country.”

“Sorning through the country, Mrs. Dods? – what would you think if you had seen the Fakirs, the Dervises, the Bonzes, the Imaums, the monks, and the mendicants, that I have seen? – But go on, never mind – Does this minister of yours come much into company?”

“Company? – gae wa',” replied Meg, “he keeps nae company at a', neither in his ain house or ony gate else. He comes down in the morning in a lang ragged nightgown, like a potato bogle, and down he sits amang his books; and if they dinna bring him something to eat, the puir demented body has never the heart to cry for aught, and he has been kend to sit for ten hours thegither, black fasting, whilk is a' mere papistrie, though he does it just out o' forget.”