"Here, ettercap! Ye'll have to wait on yon Innes! I canna haud myself in.`Puir Erchie!' I'd `puir Erchie' him, if I had my way! And Hermiston with the deil's ain temper! God, let him take Hermiston's scones out of his mouth first.There's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale dwaibly body! Settin' up his snash to me! Let him gang to the black toon where he's mebbe wantit - birling in a curricle - wi' pimatum on his heid - making a mess o' himsel' wi' nesty hizzies - a fair disgrace!" It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie's graduated disgust, as she brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless charges.Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned again on her fascinated auditor."Do ye no hear me, tawpie?
Do ye no hear what I'm tellin' ye? Will I have to shoo ye in to him?
If I come to attend to ye, mistress!" And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes' wants in the front parlour.
TANTAENE IRAE? Has the reader perceived the reason? Since Frank's coming there were no more hours of gossip over the supper tray! All his blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for Mrs.Elliott's favour.
But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be genial.I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie's epithets as evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their accuracy.Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious.
Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly youth.
He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first sight and to improve the impression.And with all these advantages, he failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with the gardener and the gardener's sister - a pious, down-hearted woman with a shawl over her ears - he failed equally and flatly.They did not like him, and they showed it.The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie's tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie's buffets, and she had learned not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides.Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston;but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational.For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance.Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians.But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man.
It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one else.He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue against him before you knew how.Wonderful are the virtues of this process generally; but Frank's mistake was in the choice of the some one else.He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of irritation.Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences.
He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank's eye; and it was to his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy.Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists.Of my lord they were vastly proud.It was a distinction in itself to be one of the vassals of the "Hanging Judge," and his gross, formidable joviality was far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home.For Archie they had, one and all, a sensitive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of belittlement.
Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield.To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree.
Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane.Clem, who saw him but for a day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule's business was, and whether he meant to stay here all session time!
"Yon's a drone," he pronounced.As for Dand, it will be enough to describe their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.
"I'm told you're quite a poet," Frank had said.
"Wha tell't ye that, mannie?" had been the unconciliating answer.
"O, everybody!" says Frank.
"God! Here's fame!" said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his way.
Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank's failures.Had he met Mr.Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr.Scott would have been a friend worth making.
Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter.Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket by evening.
In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival;his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety.Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death.
