The Heart of Mid Lothian, Volume 2, Illustrated - Sir Walter Scott
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They were now close by the village, one of those beautiful scenes which
are so often found in merry England, where the cottages, instead of being
built in two direct lines on each side of a dusty high-road, stand in
detached groups, interspersed not only with large oaks and elms, but with
fruit-trees, so many of which were at this time in flourish, that the
grove seemed enamelled with their crimson and white blossoms. In the
centre of the hamlet stood the parish church, and its little Gothic
tower, from which at present was heard the Sunday chime of bells.
"We will wait here until the folk are a' in the church--they ca' the kirk
a church in England, Jeanie, be sure you mind that--for if I was gaun
forward amang them, a' the gaitts o' boys and lasses wad be crying at
Madge Wildfire's tail, the little hell-rakers! and the beadle would be as
hard upon us as if it was our fault. I like their skirting as ill as he
does, I can tell him; I'm sure I often wish there was a het peat doun
their throats when they set them up that gate."
Conscious of the disorderly appearance of her own dress after the
adventure of the preceding night, and of the grotesque habit and
demeanour of her guide, and sensible how important it was to secure an
attentive and impatient audience to her strange story from some one who
might have the means to protect her, Jeanie readily acquiesced in Madge's
proposal to rest under the trees, by which they were still somewhat
screened, until the commencement of service should give them an
opportunity of entering the hamlet without attracting a crowd around
them. She made the less opposition, that Madge had intimated that this
was not the village where her mother was in custody, and that the two
squires of the pad were absent in a different direction.
She sate herself down, therefore, at the foot of an oak, and by the
assistance of a placid fountain, which had been dammed up for the use of
the villagers, and which served her as a natural mirror, she began--no
uncommon thing with a Scottish maiden of her rank--to arrange her
toilette in the open air, and bring her dress, soiled and disordered as
it was, into such order as the place and circumstances admitted.
She soon perceived reason, however, to regret that she had set about this
task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society.
Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most
overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her
misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven
about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to
arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes
and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than
with imitative zeal she began to bedizen and trick herself out with
shreds and remnants of beggarly finery, which she took out of a little
bundle, and which, when disposed around her person, made her appearance
ten times more fantastic and apish than it had been before.
Jeanie groaned in spirit, but dared not interfere in a matter so
delicate. Across the man's cap or riding hat which she wore, Madge placed
a broken and soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been
shed from the train of a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of
riding-habit, she stitched, pinned, and otherwise secured, a large
furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which
had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail,
and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow
silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service,
and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one
shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or
baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she
wore, and replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and
embroidered to match the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She
had cut a willow switch in her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's
fishing-rod. This she set herself seriously to peel, and when it was
transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer or High Steward bears on
public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they now looked
decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that, as
the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the
Interpreter's house.
Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day,
and during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village
with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since,
without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the
circumstances, would have been very unadvisable, she could see no means
of shaking herself free of her society.
As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and
the most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and
superior appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed,
except by one old woman, who, being nearly "high-gravel blind," was only
conscious that something very fine and glittering was passing by, and
dropped as deep a reverence to Madge as she would have done to a
countess. This filled up the measure of Madge's self-approbation. She
minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and waved Jeanie Deans
forward with the condescension of a noble _chaperone,_ who has undertaken
the charge of a country miss on her first journey to the capital.
Jeanie followed in patience, and with her eyes fixed on the ground, that
she might save herself the mortification of seeing her companion's
absurdities; but she started when, ascending two or three steps, she
found herself in the churchyard, and saw that Madge was making straight
for the door of the church. As Jeanie had no mind to enter the
congregation in such company, she walked aside from the pathway, and said
in a decided tone, "Madge, I will wait here till the church comes
out--you may go in by yourself if you have a mind."
As she spoke these words, she was about to seat herself upon one of the
grave-stones.
Madge was a little before Jeanie when she turned aside; but, suddenly
changing her course, she followed her with long strides, and, with every
feature inflamed with passion, overtook and seized her by the arm. "Do ye
think, ye ungratefu' wretch, that I am gaun to let you sit doun upon my
father's grave? The deil settle ye doun, if ye dinna rise and come into
the Interpreter's house, that's the house of God, wi' me, but I'll rive
every dud aft your back!"
She adapted the action to the phrase; for with one clutch she stripped
Jeanie of her straw bonnet and a handful of her hair to boot, and threw
it up into an old yew-tree, where it stuck fast. Jeanie's first impulse
was to scream, but conceiving she might receive deadly harm before she
could obtain the assistance of anyone, notwithstanding the vicinity of
the church, she thought it wiser to follow the madwoman into the
congregation, where she might find some means of escape from her, or at
least be secured against her violence. But when she meekly intimated her
consent to follow Madge, her guide's uncertain brain had caught another
train of ideas. She held Jeanie fast with one hand, and with the other
pointed to the inscription on the grave-stone, and commanded her to read
it. Jeanie obeyed, and read these words:--
"This Monument was erected to the Memory of Donald
Murdockson of the King's xxvi., or Cameronian
Regiment, a sincere Christian, a brave Soldier, and
a faithful Servant, by his grateful and sorrowing
master, Robert Staunton."
"It's very weel read, Jeanie; it's just the very words," said Madge,
whose ire had now faded into deep melancholy, and with a step which, to
Jeanie's great joy, was uncommonly quiet and mournful, she led her
companion towards the door of the church.
[Illustration: Madge and Jennie--103]
It was one of those old-fashioned Gothic parish churches which are
frequent in England, the most cleanly, decent, and reverential places of
worship that are, perhaps, anywhere to be found in the Christian world.
Yet, notwithstanding the decent solemnity of its exterior, Jeanie was too
faithful to the directory of the Presbyterian kirk to have entered a
prelatic place of worship, and would, upon any other occasion, have
thought that she beheld in the porch the venerable figure of her father
waving her back from the entrance, and pronouncing in a solemn tone,
"Cease, my child, to hear the instruction which causeth to err from the
words of knowledge." But in her present agitating and alarming situation,
she looked for safety to this forbidden place of assembly, as the hunted
animal will sometimes seek shelter from imminent danger in the human
habitation, or in other places of refuge most alien to its nature and
habits. Not even the sound of the organ, and of one or two flutes which
accompanied the psalmody, prevented her from following her guide into the
chancel of the church.
No sooner had Madge put her foot upon the pavement, and become sensible
that she was the object of attention to the spectators, than she resumed
all the fantastic extravagance of deportment which some transient touch
of melancholy had banished for an instant. She swam rather than walked up
the centre aisle, dragging Jeanie after her, whom she held fast by the
hand. She would, indeed, have fain slipped aside into the pew nearest to
the door, and left Madge to ascend in her own manner and alone to the
high places of the synagogue; but this was impossible, without a degree
of violent resistance, which seemed to her inconsistent with the time and
place, and she was accordingly led in captivity up the whole length of
the church by her grotesque conductress, who, with half-shut eyes, a prim
smile upon her lips, and a mincing motion with her hands, which
corresponded with the delicate and affected pace at which she was pleased
to move, seemed to take the general stare of the congregation, which such
an exhibition necessarily excited, as a high compliment, and which she
returned by nods and half-courtesies to individuals amongst the audience,
whom she seemed to distinguish as acquaintances. Her absurdity was
enhanced in the eyes of the spectators by the strange contrast which she
formed to her companion, who, with dishevelled hair, downcast eyes, and a
face glowing with shame, was dragged, as it were in triumph after her.
Madge's airs were at length fortunately cut short by her encountering in
her progress the looks of the clergyman, who fixed upon her a glance, at
once steady, compassionate, and admonitory. She hastily opened an empty
pew which happened to be near her, and entered, dragging in Jeanie after
her. Kicking Jeanie on the shins, by way of hint that she should follow
her example, she sunk her head upon her hand for the space of a minute.
Jeanie, to whom this posture of mental devotion was entirely new, did not
attempt to do the like, but looked round her with a bewildered stare,
which her neighbours, judging from the company in which they saw her,
very naturally ascribed to insanity. Every person in their immediate
vicinity drew back from this extraordinary couple as far as the limits of
their pew permitted; but one old man could not get beyond Madge's reach,
ere, she had snatched the prayer-book from his hand, and ascertained the
lesson of the day. She then turned up the ritual, and with the most
overstrained enthusiasm of gesture and manner, showed Jeanie the passages
as they were read in the service, making, at the same time, her own
responses so loud as to be heard above those of every other person.
Notwithstanding the shame and vexation which Jeanie felt in being thus
exposed in a place of worship, she could not and durst not omit rallying
her spirits so as to look around her, and consider to whom she ought to
appeal for protection so soon as the service should be concluded. Her
first ideas naturally fixed upon the clergyman, and she was confirmed in
the resolution by observing that he was an aged gentleman, of a dignified
appearance and deportment, who read the service with an undisturbed and
decent gravity, which brought back to becoming attention those younger
members of the congregation who had been disturbed by the extravagant
behaviour of Madge Wildfire. To the clergyman, therefore, Jeanie resolved
to make her appeal when the service was over.
It is true she felt disposed to be shocked at his surplice, of which she
had heard so much, but which she had never seen upon the person of a
preacher of the word. Then she was confused by the change of posture
adopted in different parts of the ritual, the more so as Madge Wildfire,
to whom they seemed familiar, took the opportunity to exercise authority
over her, pulling her up and pushing her down with a bustling assiduity,
which Jeanie felt must make them both the objects of painful attention.
But, notwithstanding these prejudices, it was her prudent resolution, in
this dilemma, to imitate as nearly as she could what was done around her.
The prophet, she thought, permitted Naaman the Syrian to bow even in the
house of Rimmon. Surely if I, in this streight, worship the God of my
fathers in mine own language, although the manner thereof be strange to
me, the Lord will pardon me in this thing.
In this resolution she became so much confirmed, that, withdrawing
herself from Madge as far as the pew permitted, she endeavoured to evince
by serious and composed attention to what was passing, that her mind was
composed to devotion. Her tormentor would not long have permitted her to
remain quiet, but fatigue overpowered her, and she fell fast asleep in
the other corner of the pew.
Jeanie, though her mind in her own despite sometimes reverted to her
situation, compelled herself to give attention to a sensible, energetic,
and well-composed discourse, upon the practical doctrines of
Christianity, which she could not help approving, although it was every
word written down and read by the preacher, and although it was delivered
in a tone and gesture very different from those of Boanerges Stormheaven,
who was her father's favourite preacher. The serious and placid attention
with which Jeanie listened, did not escape the clergyman. Madge
Wildfire's entrance had rendered him apprehensive of some disturbance, to
provide against which, as far as possible, he often turned his eyes to
the part of the church where Jeanie and she were placed, and became soon
aware that, although the loss of her head-gear, and the awkwardness of
her situation, had given an uncommon and anxious air to the features of
the former, yet she was in a state of mind very different from that of
her companion. When he dismissed the congregation, he observed her look
around with a wild and terrified look, as if uncertain what course she
ought to adopt, and noticed that she approached one or two of the most
decent of the congregation, as if to address them, and then shrunk back
timidly, on observing that they seemed to shun and to avoid her. The
clergyman was satisfied there must be something extraordinary in all
this, and as a benevolent man, as well as a good Christian pastor, he
resolved to inquire into the matter more minutely.
CHAPTER EIGHTH.
There governed in that year
A stern, stout churl--an angry overseer.
Crabbe.
While Mr. Staunton, for such was this worthy clergyman's name, was laying
aside his gown in the vestry, Jeanie was in the act of coming to an open
rupture with Madge.
"We must return to Mummer's barn directly," said Madge; "we'll be ower
late, and my mother will be angry."
"I am not going back with you, Madge," said Jeanie, taking out a guinea,
and offering it to her; "I am much obliged to you, but I maun gang my ain
road."
"And me coming a' this way out o' my gate to pleasure you, ye ungratefu'
cutty," answered Madge; "and me to be brained by my mother when I gang
hame, and a' for your sake!--But I will gar ye as good"
"For God's sake," said Jeanie to a man who stood beside them, "keep her
off!--she is mad."
"Ey, ey," answered the boor; "I hae some guess of that, and I trow thou
be'st a bird of the same feather.--Howsomever, Madge, I redd thee keep
hand off her, or I'se lend thee a whisterpoop."
Several of the lower class of the parishioners now gathered round the
strangers, and the cry arose among the boys that "there was a-going to be
a fite between mad Madge Murdockson and another Bess of Bedlam." But
while the fry assembled with the humane hope of seeing as much of the fun
as possible, the laced cocked-hat of the beadle was discerned among the
multitude, and all made way for that person of awful authority. His first
address was to Madge.
"What's brought thee back again, thou silly donnot, to plague this
parish? Hast thou brought ony more bastards wi' thee to lay to honest
men's doors? or does thou think to burden us with this goose, that's as
hare-brained as thysell, as if rates were no up enow? Away wi' thee to
thy thief of a mother; she's fast in the stocks at Barkston town-end--
Away wi' ye out o' the parish, or I'se be at ye with the ratan."
Madge stood sulky for a minute; but she had been too often taught
submission to the beadle's authority by ungentle means to feel courage
enough to dispute it.
"And my mother--my puir auld mother, is in the stocks at Barkston!--This
is a' your wyte, Miss Jeanie Deans; but I'll be upsides wi' you, as sure
as my name's Madge Wildfire--I mean Murdockson--God help me, I forget my
very name in this confused waste!"
So saying, she turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the
mischievous imps of the village, some crying, "Madge, canst thou tell thy
name yet?" some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of
their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to
exasperate her into frenzy.
Jeanie saw her departure with infinite delight, though she wished that,
in some way or other, she could have requited the service Madge had
conferred upon her.
In the meantime, she applied to the beadle to know whether "there was any
house in the village where she could be civilly entertained for her
money, and whether she could be permitted to speak to the clergyman?"
"Ay, ay, we'se ha' reverend care on thee; and I think," answered the man
of constituted authority, "that, unless thou answer the Rector all the
better, we'se spare thy money, and gie thee lodging at the parish charge,
young woman."
"Where am I to go then?" said Jeanie, in some alarm.
"Why, I am to take thee to his Reverence, in the first place, to gie an
account o' thysell, and to see thou comena to be a burden upon the
parish."
"I do not wish to burden anyone," replied Jeanie; "I have enough for my
own wants, and only wish to get on my journey safely."
"Why, that's another matter," replied the beadle, "and if it be true--and
I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder--Thou
wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better.
Come thou away, then--the Rector is a good man."
"Is that the minister," said Jeanie, "who preached"
"The minister? Lord help thee! What kind o' Presbyterian art thou?--Why,
'tis the Rector--the Rector's sell, woman, and there isna the like o' him
in the county, nor the four next to it. Come away--away with thee--we
maunna bide here."
"I am sure I am very willing to go to see the minister," said Jeanie;
"for though he read his discourse, and wore that surplice, as they call
it here, I canna but think he must be a very worthy God-fearing man, to
preach the root of the matter in the way he did."
The disappointed rabble, finding that there was like to be no farther
sport, had by this time dispersed, and Jeanie, with her usual patience,
followed her consequential and surly, but not brutal, conductor towards
the rectory.
This clerical mansion was large and commodious, for the living was an
excellent one, and the advowson belonged to a very wealthy family in the
neighbourhood, who had usually bred up a son or nephew to the church for
the sake of inducting him, as opportunity offered, into this very
comfortable provision. In this manner the rectory of Willingham had
always been considered as a direct and immediate appanage of Willingham
Hall; and as the rich baronets to whom the latter belonged had usually a
son, or brother, or nephew, settled in the living, the utmost care had
been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and
commodious, but even dignified and imposing.
It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a
rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures,
or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which
were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended
together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the
house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions
indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and
beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was
irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the
residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made
considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own
age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of
architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far
from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw
nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which
they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer
staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and
chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed
beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price's
appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that
of the present Rector, who, "being a bookish man," as the beadle was at
the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the
person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and
parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms.
"Mony men would hae scrupled such expense," continued the parochial
officer, "seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will
it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look
on two sides of a penny."
Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and
commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own
country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the
devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment,
strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and
pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the
present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry,
must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their
descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely
employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for
more than a century at least.
Behind the Rector's house the ground sloped down to a small river, which,
without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern
stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the
ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing
accompaniment to the landscape. "It was the best trouting stream," said
the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance
that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered
rather communicative, "the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for
when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi' fly-fishing."
Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a
sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was
chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by
a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and
dignified clergyman.
"How dost do, Tummas?" said the beadle--"and how's young Measter
Staunton?"
"Why, but poorly--but poorly, Measter Stubbs.--Are you wanting to see his
Reverence?"
"Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha' brought up the young woman as came
to service to-day with mad Madge Murdockson seems to be a decentish koind
o' body; but I ha' asked her never a question. Only I can tell his
Reverence that she is a Scotchwoman, I judge, and as flat as the fens of
Holland."
Tummas honoured Jeanie Deans with such a stare, as the pampered domestics
of the rich, whether spiritual or temporal, usually esteem it part of
their privilege to bestow upon the poor, and then desired Mr. Stubbs and
his charge to step in till he informed his master of their presence.