The Entail

CHAPTER XXXII

Although Claud had accomplished the great object of all his strivings, and although, from the Divethill, where the little castle of his forefathers once stood, he could contemplate the whole extent of the Kittlestonheugh estate, restored, as he said, to the Walkinshaws, and by his exertions, there was still a craving void in his bosom that yearned to be satisfied. He felt as if the circumstance of Watty having a legal interest in the property, arising from the excambio for the Plealands, made the conquest less certainly his own than it might have been, and this lessened the enjoyment of the self-gratulation with which he contemplated the really proud eminence to which he had attained.

But keener feelings and harsher recollections were also mingled with that regret; and a sentiment of sorrow, in strong affinity with remorse, embittered his meditations, when he thought of the precipitancy with which he had executed the irrevocable entail, to the exclusion of Charles; to whom, prior to that unjust transaction, he had been more attached than to any other human being. It is true that, when he adopted that novel resolution, he had, at the same time, appeased his conscience with intentions to indemnify his unfortunate first-born; but in this, he was not aware of the mysteries of the heart, nor that there was a latent spring in his breast, as vigorous and elastic in its energy, as the source of that indefatigable perseverance by which he had accomplished so much.

The constant animadversions of his wife, respecting his partiality for Charles and undisguised contempt for Watty, had the effect of first awakening the powers of that dormant engine. They galled the sense of his own injustice, and kept the memory of it so continually before him, that, in the mere wish not to give her cause to vex him for his partiality, he estranged himself from Charles in such a manner, that it was soon obvious and severely felt. Conscious that he had done him wrong, – aware that the wrong would probably soon be discovered, – and conscious, too, that this behaviour was calculated to beget suspicion, he began to dislike to see Charles, and alternately to feel, in every necessary interview, as if he was no longer treated by him with the same respect as formerly. Still, however, there was so much of the leaven of original virtue in the composition of his paternal affection, and in the general frame of his character, that this disagreeable feeling never took the decided nature of enmity. He did not hate because he had injured, – he was only apprehensive of being upbraided for having betrayed hopes which he well knew his particular affection must have necessarily inspired.

Perhaps, had he not, immediately after Walter’s marriage, been occupied with the legal arrangement consequent to an accepted proposal from Milrookit of Dirdumwhamle, to make Miss Meg his third wife, this apprehension might have hardened into animosity, and been exasperated to aversion; but the cares and affairs of that business came, as it were, in aid of the father in his nature, and while they seemingly served to excuse his gradually abridged intercourse with Charles and Isabella, they prevented such an incurable induration of his heart from taking place towards them, as the feelings at work within him had an undoubted tendency to produce. We shall not, therefore, dwell on the innumerable little incidents arising out of his estrangement, by which the happiness of that ill-fated pair was deprived of so much of its best essence, – contentment, – and their lives, with the endearing promise of a family, embittered by anxieties of which it would be as difficult to describe the importance, as to give each of them an appropriate name.

In the meantime, the marriage of Miss Meg was consummated, and we have every disposition to detail the rites and the revels, but they were all managed in a spirit so much more moderate than Walter’s wedding, that the feast would seem made up but of the cold bake-meats of the former banquet. Indeed, Mr. Milrookit, the bridegroom, being, as Leddy Grippy called him, a waster of wives, having had two before, and who knows how many more he may have contemplated to have, it would not have been reasonable to expect that he should allow such a free-handed junketing as took place on that occasion. Besides this, the dowry with Grippy’s daughter was not quite so liberal as he had expected; for when the old man was stipulating for her jointure, he gave him a gentle hint not to expect too much.

‘Two hundred pounds a-year, Mr. Milrookit,’ said Grippy, ‘is a bare eneugh sufficiency for my dochter; but I’ll no be overly extortionate, sin it’s no in my power, even noo, to gie you meikle in hand, and I would na lead you to expek any great deal hereafter, for ye ken it has cost me a world o’ pains and ettling to gather the needful to redeem the Kittlestonheugh, the whilk maun ay gang in the male line; but failing my three sons and their heirs, the entail gangs to the heirs-general o’ Meg, so that ye hae a’ to look in that airt; that, ye maun alloo, is worth something. Howsever, I dinna objek to the two hundred pounds; but I would like an ye could throw a bit fifty til’t, just as a cast o’ the hand to mak lucky measure.’

‘I would na begrudge that, Grippy,’ replied the gausey widower of Dirdumwhamle; ‘but ye ken I hae a sma’ family: the first Mrs. Milrookit brought me sax sons, and the second had four, wi’ five dochters. It’s true that the bairns o’ the last clecking are to be provided for by their mother’s uncle, the auld General wi’ the gout at Lon’on; but my first family are dependent on mysel’, for, like your Charlie, I made a calf-love marriage, and my father was na sae kind as ye hae been to him, for he put a’ past me that he could, and had he no deet amang hands in one o’ his scrieds wi’ the Lairds o’ Kilpatrick, I’m sure I canna think what would hae come o’ me and my first wife. So you see, Grippy’ —

‘I wis, Dirdumwhamle,’ interrupted the old man, ‘that ye would either ca’ me by name or Kittlestonheugh, for the Grippy’s but a pendicle o’ the family property; and though, by reason o’ the castle being ta’en down when my grandfather took a wadset on’t frae the public, we are obligated to live here in this house that was on the land when I made a conquest o’t again, yet a’ gangs noo by the ancient name o’ Kittlestonheugh, and a dochter of the Walkinshaws o’ the same is a match for the best laird in the shire, though she had na ither tocher than her snood and cockernony.’

‘Weel, Kittlestonheugh,’ replied Dirdumwhamle, ‘I’ll e’en mak it better than the twa hunder and fifty – I’ll make it whole three hunder, if ye’ll get a paction o’ consent and conneevance wi’ your auld son Charles, to pay to Miss Meg, or to the offspring o’ my marriage wi’ her, a yearly soom during his liferent in the property, you yoursel’ undertaking in your lifetime to be as good. I’m sure that’s baith fair and a very great liberality on my side.’

Claud received this proposal with a convulsive gurgle of the heart’s blood. It seemed to him, that, on every occasion, the wrong which he had done Charles was to be brought in the most offensive form before him, and he sat for the space of two or three minutes without making any reply; at last he said, —

‘Mr. Milrookit, I ne’er rue’t any thing in my life but the consequence of twa-three het words that ance passed between me and my gudefather Plealands anent our properties; and I hae lived to repent my obduracy. For this cause I’ll say nae mair about an augmentation of the proposed jointure, but just get my dochter to put up wi’ the two hundred pounds, hoping that hereafter, an ye can mak it better, she’ll be none the waur of her father’s confidence in you on this occasion.’

Thus was Miss Meg disposed of, and thus did the act of injustice which was done to one child operate, through the mazy feelings of the father’s conscious spirit, to deter him, even in the midst of such sordid bargaining, not only from venturing to insist on his own terms, but even from entertaining a proposal which had for its object a much more liberal provision for his daughter than he had any reason, under all the circumstances, to expect.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Soon after the marriage of Miss Meg, George, the third son, and youngest of the family, was placed in the counting-house of one of the most eminent West Indian merchants at that period in Glasgow. This incident was in no other respect important in the history of the Lairds of Grippy, than as serving to open a career to George, that would lead him into a higher class of acquaintance than his elder brothers: for it was about this time that the general merchants of the royal city began to arrogate to themselves that aristocratic superiority over the shopkeepers, which they have since established into an oligarchy as proud and sacred, in what respects the reciprocities of society, as the famous Seignories of Venice and of Genoa.

In the character, however, of George, there was nothing ostensibly haughty, or rather his pride had not shown itself in any strong colour, when he first entered on his mercantile career. Like his father, he was firm and persevering; but he wanted something of the old man’s shrewdness; and there was more of avarice in his hopes of wealth than in the sordidness of his father, for they were not elevated by any such ambitious sentiment as that which prompted Claud to strive with such constancy for the recovery of his paternal inheritance. In fact, the young merchant, notwithstanding the superiority of his education and other advantages, we may safely venture to assert, was a more vulgar character than the old pedlar. But his peculiarities did not manifest themselves till long after the period of which we are now speaking.

In the meantime, every thing proceeded with the family much in the same manner as with most others. Claud and his wife had daily altercations about their household affairs. Charles and Isabella narrowed themselves into a small sphere, of which his grandmother, the venerable Lady Plealands, now above fourscore, was their principal associate, and their mutual affection was strengthened by the birth of a son. Walter and Betty Bodle resided at the Divethill; and they, too, had the prospect of adding, as a Malthusian would say, to the mass of suffering mankind. The philosophical Kilmarkeckle continued his abstruse researches as successfully as ever into the affinities between snuff and the natures of beasts and birds, while the Laird of Dirdumwhamle and his Leddy struggled on in the yoke together, as well as a father and step-mother, amidst fifteen children, the progeny of two prior marriages, could reasonably be expected to do, where neither party was particularly gifted with delicacy or forbearance. In a word, they all moved along with the rest of the world during the first twelve months, after the execution of the deed of entail, without experiencing any other particular change in their relative situations than those to which we have alluded.

But the epoch was now drawing near, when Mrs. Walter Walkinshaw was required to prepare herself for becoming a mother, and her husband was no less interested than herself in the event. He did nothing for several months, from morning to night, but inquire how she felt herself, and contrive, in his affectionate simplicity, a thousand insufferable annoyances to one of her disposition, for the purpose of affording her ease and pleasure; all of which were either answered by a laugh, or a slap, as the humour of the moment dictated. Sometimes, when she, regardless of her maternal state, would, in walking to Grippy or Kilmarkeckle, take short cuts across the fields, and over ditches, and through hedges, he would anxiously follow her at a distance, and when he saw her in any difficulty to pass, he would run kindly to her assistance. More than once, at her jocular suggestion, he has lain down in the dry ditches to allow her to step across on his back. Never had wife a more loving or obedient husband. She was allowed in every thing, not only to please herself, but to make him do whatever she pleased; and yet, with all her whims and caprice, she proved so true and so worthy a wife, that he grew every day more and more uxorious.

Nor was his mother less satisfied with Betty Bodle. They enjoyed together the most intimate communion of minds on all topics of household economy; but it was somewhat surprising, that, notwithstanding the care and pains which the old leddy took to instruct her daughter-in-law in all the mysteries of the churn and cheeseset, Mrs. Walter’s butter was seldom fit for market, and the hucksters of the royal city never gave her near so good a price for her cheese as Leddy Grippy regularly received for hers, although, in the process of the making, they both followed the same recipes.

The conjugal felicities of Walter afforded, however, but little pleasure to his father. The obstreperous humours of his daughter-in-law jarred with his sedate dispositions, and in her fun and freaks she so loudly showed her thorough knowledge of her husband’s defective intellects, that it for ever reminded him of the probable indignation with which the world would one day hear of the injustice he had done to Charles. The effect of this gradually led him to shun the society of his own family, and having neither from nature nor habit any inclination for general company, he became solitary and morose. He only visited Glasgow once a week, on Wednesday, and generally sat about an hour in the shop, in his old elbow-chair, in the corner; and, saving a few questions relative to the business, he abstained from conversing with his son. It would seem, however, that, under this sullen taciturnity, the love which he had once cherished for Charles still tugged at his heart; for, happening to come into the shop, on the morning after Isabella had made him a grandfather, by the birth of a boy, on being informed of that happy event, he shook his son warmly by the hand, and said, in a serious and impressive manner, —

‘An it please God, Charlie, to gie thee ony mair childer, I redde thee, wi’ the counsel o’ a father, to mak na odds among them, but remember they are a’ alike thine, and that t’ou canna prefer ane aboon anither without sin;’ – and he followed this admonition with a gift of twenty pounds to buy the infant a christening frock.

But from that day he never spoke to Charles of his family; on the contrary, he became dark and more obdurate in his manner to every one around him. His only enjoyment seemed to be a sort of doating delight in contemplating, from a rude bench which he had constructed on a rising ground behind the house of Grippy, the surrounding fields of his forefathers. There he would sit for hours together alone, bending forward with his chin resting on the ivory head of his staff, which he held between his knees by both hands, and with a quick and eager glance survey the scene for a moment, and then drop his eyelids and look only on the ground.

Whatever might be the general tenor of his reflections as he sat on that spot, they were evidently not always pleasant; for one afternoon, as he was sitting there, his wife, who came upon him suddenly and unperceived, to tell him a messenger was sent to Glasgow from Divethill for the midwife, was surprised to find him agitated and almost in tears.

‘Dear me, gudeman,’ said she, ‘what’s come o’er you, that ye’re sitting here hanging your gruntel like a sow playing on a trump? Hae na ye heard that Betty Bodle’s time’s come? I’m gaun ower to the crying, and if ye like ye may walk that length wi’ me. I hope, poor thing, she’ll hae an easy time o’t, and that we’ll hae blithes-meat before the sun gangs doun.’

‘Gang the gait thysel, Girzy Hypel,’ said Claud, raising his head, ‘and no fash me with thy clishmaclavers.’

‘Heh, gudeman! but ye hae been eating sourrocks instead o’ lang-kail. But e’en’s ye like, Meg dorts, as “Patie and Rodger” says, I can gang mysel;’ and with that, whisking pettishly round, she walked away.

Claud being thus disturbed in his meditations, looked after her as she moved along the footpath down the slope, and for the space of a minute or two, appeared inclined to follow her, but relapsing into some new train of thought, before she had reached the bottom, he had again resumed his common attitude, and replaced his chin on the ivory head of his staff.

CHAPTER XXXIV

There are times in life when every man feels as if his sympathies were extinct. This arises from various causes; sometimes from vicissitudes of fortune; sometimes from the sense of ingratitude, which, like the canker in the rose, destroys the germ of all kindness and charity; often from disappointments in affairs of the heart, which leave it incapable of ever again loving; but the most common cause is the consciousness of having committed wrong, when the feelings recoil inward, and, by some curious mystery in the nature of our selfishness, instead of prompting atonement, irritate us to repeat and to persevere in our injustice.

Into one of these temporary trances Claud had fallen when his wife left him; and he continued sitting, with his eyes riveted on the ground, insensible to all the actual state of life, contemplating the circumstances and condition of his children, as if he had no interest in their fate, nor could be affected by any thing in their fortunes.

In this fit of apathy and abstraction, he was roused by the sound of some one approaching; and on looking up, and turning his eyes towards the path which led from the house to the bench where he was then sitting, he saw Walter coming.

There was something unwonted in the appearance and gestures of Walter, which soon interested the old man. At one moment he rushed forward several steps, with a strange wildness of air. He would then stop and wring his hands, gaze upward as if he wondered at some extraordinary phenomenon in the sky; but seeing nothing, he dropped his hands, and, at his ordinary pace, came slowly up the hill.

When he arrived within a few paces of the bench, he halted and looked with such an open and innocent sadness that even the heart of his father, which so shortly before was as inert to humanity as case-hardened iron, throbbed with pity, and was melted to a degree of softness and compassion, almost entirely new to its sensibilities.

‘What’s the matter wi’ thee, Watty?’ said he, with unusual kindliness. The poor natural, however, made no reply, – but continued to gaze at him with the same inexpressible simplicity of grief.

‘Hast t’ou lost ony thing, Watty?’ – ‘I dinna ken,’ was the answer, followed by a burst of tears.

‘Surely something dreadfu’ has befallen the lad,’ said Claud to himself, alarmed at the astonishment of sorrow with which his faculties seemed to be bound up.

‘Can t’ou no tell me what has happened, Watty?’

In about the space of half a minute, Walter moved his eyes slowly round, as if he saw and followed something which filled him with awe and dread. He then suddenly checked himself, and said, ‘It’s naething; she’s no there.’

‘Sit down beside me, Watty,’ exclaimed his father, alarmed; ‘sit down beside me, and compose thysel.’

Walter did as he was bidden, and stretching out his feet, hung forward in such a posture of extreme listlessness and helpless despondency, that all power of action appeared to be withdrawn.

Claud rose, and believing he was only under the influence of some of those silly passions to which he was occasionally subject, moved to go away, when he looked up, and said, —