Read Ebook: The Rhymer by McAulay Allan

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Ebook has 1183 lines and 84558 words, and 24 pages

''Tis a fine morning for the time of the year, and grand for lifting the neeps,' began the laird, with a cough.

Mr. Cheape snorted. 'I'm not here,' he remarked, with plainness, 'to discuss the weather and turnips. I'm come, ma'am, to be presented to your daughters;' and he ignored the laird, and addressed himself to the lady.

'To my Daughter Alison, doubtless?' said Mrs. Graham, with polite firmness.

'Hum,' said Mr. Cheape, 'I understood there were seven of them.'

'We are blessed with seven girls, indeed,' said Mrs. Graham, majestically. 'But our daughter Alison is the only one from whom we could think of parting ourselves at this time. The rest'--coolly--'are bairns.'

'I should like to see them all,' objected the suitor, who felt himself being 'done.'

'You will see Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, composedly. 'You must e'en take them as the Lord gave them--or want!' she added, with spirit.

'Mr. Cheape is pleased to be plain and to the point,' here interrupted the laird, not without sarcasm in his tone, which, however, was quite lost upon his visitor. 'We have, indeed, seven lasses, and little to give them, sir, and cannot therefore be over nice in the matter of their wooing. Alison is at her turkeys in the east meadow, wife. Supposing we conduct this gentleman to the spot, and see if he is inclined to make a bargain of it?'

So Alison's fate approached her in this quaint fashion, Mr. Cheape stumping at her mother's side, and the laird bringing up the rear, with a comical eye on the suitor's burly back. They paused at a gate where Alison could not see them, but they could see her in a patch of sun, with the turkeys picking and cheeping at her feet. 'Is that the one?' said Mr. Cheape, pointing at the object of his wooing with his whip.

'Our daughter Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, complacently, with an introductory wave of the hand. 'But twenty, come the New Year time,' for she much feared that Alison looked older.

Mr. Cheape seemed lost in thought and calculation. 'A knowledge of fowls,' he said at last, heavily, 'is useful in a female.'

''Tis indispensable in the lady of a country mansion,' said Mrs. Graham, cheerfully. 'And none beats Alison at that, let me tell you!'

'Alison, come here!' called her father. Alison turned round and obeyed. When she approached the group which held her suitor, she curtseyed, but the behaviour of Mr. Cheape at this juncture was so singular and so disconcerting, that there was no time for a formal introduction between the two. Whether it was the wide, all-too-frankly astonished gaze of Alison's grey eyes, or the young lady's imposing height, or simply a fit of bashfulness that overpowered him, cannot be said. But merely the fact can be given, that at this delicate juncture the gallant wooer, with a fiercer grunt than usual, and some muttered exclamation which no one caught, incontinently turned tail and fled towards the house, the distracted matron almost running in his wake. Alison and her father were left together.

'Is that Mr. Cheape, sir?' enquired the daughter, gravely.

'Ay, lass,' said the laird. ''Tis even the great Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, in the county of Fife!'

Alison said nothing, but with her chin in the air, and lilting the flounces of her good dress above the wet grass she went back to her turkeys. Her father laughed his jolly laugh. 'He will have none of you, Ally, that's plain!' he called after her. 'So don't you be losing your heart to his bonny face, I warn you!'

But so very far was the laird of The Mains from being accurate in his assertion of Mr. Cheape's indifference to his daughter's charms, that when he re-entered the library, which he presently did, he found that gentleman and his wife in the closest confabulation, the subject of their discourse being no other than that of a contract of marriage between Miss Graham of The Mains, and Mr. Cheape of Kincarley. The latter gentleman appeared now to be much easier of demeanour.

'These matters,' he observed, almost jocularly, 'are better settled without the presence of the lady!'

'But, God bless my soul!' cried the laird, 'you hardly saw the girl, or she you--'

'Saw ever man the like of that!' ejaculated the master of the house, gazing after man and horse.

'Saw ever woman the like o' you!' retorted his spouse, furiously, 'staring like a stuck pig after an honest gentleman that's done you the honour to speir your penniless daughter, instead of shaking him warmly by the hand!'

'I'd as lief shake the tatty-bogle by the hand,' said the laird, provokingly. 'Wife, you're clever, but you'll never get Ally to stomach yon,' and he indicated the disappearing Mr. Cheape with a derisive finger.

'Will I not?' retorted the lady, with a defiant eye, 'ye sumph, John, to take the bread out of a lassie's mouth like that, afore she's bitten on it. Ye are even a bigger fool than I thocht ye!'

'What is to become of these lasses? Are they all to hang upon their brother?' was the eternal burden of her cry. Twenty-four hours of unremitted harping upon this subject, under all its aspects, reduced the laird to a frame of mind in which he would have dined with Beelzebub, had the dinner promised him a solution of his difficulties, and peace with his wife. Needless to say, therefore, he dined with Mr. Cheape, of Kincarley, on the appointed day and hour; and, moreover, did not come home until past two o'clock on the following morning.

For, let it be remembered, these were the jolly days of the bottle, when a man was no man who could not carry his port, and carry it home, too. The laird of The Mains was no drunkard, but he had a head of iron and a stomach of leather in the good old style of our ancestors. He was a four-bottle-man with the best of them, and he chanced to find in Mr. Cheape of Kincarley just such another hardened elderly cask as himself. The two sat hour after hour, swallowing glass after glass, at first in gloomy silence; but presently each began to mellow in his own way. The laird's tongue was loosened, and he began to talk about his daughters and his difficulties. Mr. Cheape lost his shyness, became genial and generous; at any time, to do him justice, he was a man not niggardly in money-matters. The settlements he proposed to make upon his bride were more than handsome: to the impoverished laird they sounded princely. And it is a fact--such are the wonder-working powers of the rosy god of wine--that before the night was out, not only were the preliminaries of a marriage contract agreed upon, but the laird had become a borrower on his own account, and Mr. Cheape a lender, of certain sums that the laird had been at his wits' end, for many a day, to lay his hands on. When he got home, which he managed to do upon his horse with the utmost propriety, he was not precisely in a condition to explain complicated money transactions with absolute perspicacity. But the morning brought explanations which were eminently satisfactory to the wife of his bosom. Certain twinges of conscience indeed assailed the laird, and during the morning's narration, he was not quite so comfortable in his mind as he had been over-night. What about Alison's part of the bargain? But he reflected that he was the father of seven penniless girls, and must harden his heart.

Alison, meanwhile, made fun of Mr. Cheape in the attics, among her sisters. True, there was a prick of disappointment at her heart, for her mother had dangled a wedding before her eyes, and a wedding meant a lover, of course. But the happy heart of twenty is sound and light, and by next morning Alison had forgotten her disappointment, and Mr. Cheape along with it. Her mother's early summons gave her no misgiving.

'Come with me to the big press in the east passage, Alison,' said the dame, jingling a bunch of keys, and with the light of battle in her eye. ''Tis time we looked at something there, and I have a mind to have a talk with you, besides.' And at this Alison's heart did certainly jump--not pleasantly.

The big press in the east passage smelt agreeably of dried lavender and rose leaves. Here was store of fine linen, and a few of the more valued articles of personal apparel.

'Get out my wedding-silk, Ally,' commanded Mrs. Graham. Alison reached up long arms, and got down the silk, which was laid by, with layers of fine muslin between its folds. It was a superb brocade of sweet floral bunches on a ground of greenish-grey; the flounces of Mechlin on it were fragile as a fairy's web, and ivory-tinted with age. Mrs. Graham fingered and examined the fabric; then she said, significantly:

'So, 'tis you that's going to rob me of my fine silk, after all, Ally? 'Tis just as it should be--my eldest girl!' Alison shook in her shoes, for she knew well that determined inflection of the maternal voice.

'I don't understand, mother,' she managed to stammer.

'Tuts, nonsense!' said Mrs. Graham, sharply, 'you're no fool, Ally: you understand fine. That honest gentleman you saw yesterday is to marry you, and lucky you are to get him!'

'And why not that man, miss?' retorted the matron with a rising colour and an angry eye.

'He's as old as my father,' blurted out the reluctant bride, 'and has no liking for me, for-bye!'

'And why should he ask you when he's seen you, if he has no liking for you?' demanded the matron.

'Because no one else will have him, likely,' said Alison, in desperation. She had never spoken in rebellion to her mother before, and the effort it cost her was truly desperate. 'If I have to take that man,' she plunged on recklessly, 'I'll be the laughing-stock of the countryside and of my very sisters!'

'Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, in a more reasoning tone, for she felt her own strength, 'you are a silly lassie, and just don't know the grand chance you're wanting to throw away. Think what it will be to be a married woman, wi' a house and man of your own--a man of substance, too--and lord it over a whole countryside! Why, here, Ally, you're little better than a nurse-girl and a hen-wife!'

'And I'd rather be a nurse-girl and a hen-wife all my days, than married to that old man,' cried Alison, with a rising sob. 'He'll neither love me, nor I him!'

'You lived in a town,' said poor Alison, in weak defence, 'and saw the men.'

'Town or no town makes no difference,' said Mrs. Graham with lofty superiority. 'The men come down the lum to likely lasses, and them that's not likely may be thankful to get a chance at all. What's to become of you all,' she continued, her tone of reasoning degenerating into the high voice of the scold, 'you seven muckle, useless lasses? Are you all to sorn on Jacky, poor wee man, for all his days, and take the very bread out of his mouth?'

'I would not sorn on Jacky,' said Alison, with a quivering lip.

'Then get you a husband, and no nonsense!' said Mrs. Graham. ''Tis, indeed, a settled business,' she went on, coolly, 'settled by your father.'

'Oh, I'll not believe it!' cried Alison, fairly in tears. 'Let me see my father first.'

'Up you get to your room, and stay there, miss, till you are of a better mind,' said the stern mother of seven, who did not stick at trifles. She chased Alison up the garret stair, shut the door on her, and turned the key.

I no not wish, in the very opening of her story, to give the idea that Alison Graham was a girl of poor spirit. Perhaps she should have turned upon her mother on the stair, or, at any rate, stood up for her freedom with a bolder front. But the habit of Alison's life, up to this point, had been obedience, and, in the days of which I write, parental authority was no matter to be trifled with. It wanted a hundred years yet to the birth of the Revolted Daughter, and to Alison, even the tacit form of resistance which she was about to offer to her parents' wishes, seemed a very terrible and almost wicked line of conduct. She sat down on the creepie-stool by the little window, where she was wont to sing Jacky to sleep every night, and was too much puzzled and too heavy at the heart to cry. Presently her sisters came and tirled at the door, wanting to know what was the matter; but the key was safely in the maternal pocket, and Alison shut off from comfort and communion of these friendly spirits. Then her tears began to flow, in very pity for herself; but she was quite determined that she would have none of Mr. Cheape.

'The lass will never be got to thole him, I doubt,' said the laird, with a sigh. Now that there was a matter of money between him and Mr. Cheape, his position was complicated, and he could no longer openly side with his daughter.

'Leave that to me,' said Mrs. Graham, grimly. To her mind it was like the breaking in of a colt or filly--a fling up, a few kicks over the traces, and a little restiveness at first, to be treated with a firm hand, judiciously low diet, and a new bit.

'She's saucy,' said the mother of seven. 'She'll be cured of that in a day or two!'

'Do not be hard on poor Ally,' said the laird, sorely pricked with compunction.

''Tis for her own good,' the lady replied, with no doubt upon that point whatsoever.

In this awkward predicament it was lucky that the gallant wooer of Miss Graham of The Mains gave no trouble. Mr. Cheape of Kincarley having, in his opinion, safely secured a bride, was, in the meantime, returned to the county of Fife, doubtless to make preparation for the impending change in his condition. He required no silly assurances or fruitless antenuptial interviews with the lady herself.

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