Part 36 (2/2)

”Hold your tongue and be d-d, you--,” answered her loving husband, with two additional epithets of great energy, but which we beg to be excused from repeating. Then, addressing Bertram:

”Come, will you get out, my handy lad, or must we lend you a lift?”

Bertram came out of the carriage, and, collared by the constable as he put his foot on the ground, was dragged, though he offered no resistance, across the threshold, amid the continued shouts of the little sans-culottes, who looked on at such distance as their fear of Mrs. Mac-Guffog permitted. The instant his foot had crossed the fatal porch, the portress again dropped her chains, drew her bolts, and turning with both hands an immense key, took it from the lock, and thrust it into a huge side-pocket of red cloth.

Bertram was now in the small court already mentioned. Two or three prisoners were sauntering along the pavement, and deriving as it were a feeling of refreshment from the monetary glimpse with which the opening door had extended their prospect to the other side of a dirty street. Nor can this he thought surprising, when it is considered, that, unless on such occasions, their view was confined to the grated front of their prison, the high and sable walls of the courtyard, the heaven above them, and the pavement beneath their feet; a sameness of landscape, which, to use the poet's expression, ”lay like a load on the wearied eye,” and had fostered in some a callous and dull misanthropy, in others that sickness of the heart which induces him who is immured already in a living grave, to wish for a sepulchre yet more calm and sequestered.

Mac-Guffog, when they entered the courtyard, suffered Bertram to pause for a minute, and look upon his companions in affliction.

When he had cast his eye around, on faces on which guilt, and despondence, and low excess, had fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the ”moping idiot, and the madman gay,” whom a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the contamination of their society even for a moment.

”I hope, sir,” he said to the keeper ”you intend to a.s.sign me a place of confinement apart?

”And what should I be the better of that?”

”Why, sir I can but be detained here a day or two, and it would be very disagreeable to me to mix in the sort of company this place affords.”

”And what do I care for that?”

”Why, then, sir, to speak to your feelings,” said Bertram, ”I shall be willing to make you a handsome compliment for this indulgence.”

”Ay, but when, Captain? when and how? that's the question, or rather, the twa questions,” said the jailor.

”When I am delivered, and get my remittances from England,”

answered the prisoner.

Mac-Guffog shook his head incredulously. ”Why, friend, you do not pretend to believe that I am really a malefactor?” said Bertram.

”Why, I no ken,” said the fellow; ”but if you are on the account, ye're nae sharp ane, that's the daylight o't.”

”And why do you say I am no sharp one?”

”Why, wha but a crack-brained greenhorn wad hae let them keep up the siller that ye left at the Gordon Arms?” said the constable.

”Deil fetch me, but I wad have held it out o' their wames [*Bellies ] Ye had nae right to be strippit o' your money and sent to jail without a mark to pay your fees--; they might have keepit the rest o' the articles for evidence. But why, for a blind bottle-head, did not ye ask the guineas? and I kept winking and nodding a' the time, and the donnert [*Stupid] deevil wad never ance look my way!”

”Well, sir,” replied Bertram, ”if I have a t.i.tle to have that property delivered up to me, I shall apply for it; and there is a good deal more than enough to pay any demand you can set up.”

”I dinna ken a bit about that,” said Mac-Guffog; ”ye may be here lang eneugh. And then the giving credit maun be considered in the fees. But, however, as ye do seem to be a chap by common, though my wife says I lose by my good-nature, if ye gie me an order for my fees upon that money--I dare say Glossin will make it forthcoming--l ken something about an escape from Ellangowan--ay, ay, he'll be glad to carry me through, and be neighbour-like.”

”Well, sir,” replied Bertram,” if I am not furnished in a day or two otherwise, you shall have such--an order.”

”Weel, weel, then ye shall be put up like a prince,” said Mac-Guffog. ”But mark ye me, friend, that we may have nae colly-shangie [*Quarrel] afterhend, these are the fees I always charge a swell that must have his libken to himsell--Thirty s.h.i.+llings a week for lodgings, and a guinea for garnish; half-a-guinea a week for a single bed,--and I dinna get the whole of it, for I must gie half-a-crown out of it to Donald Laider that's in for sheep-stealing, that should sleep with you by rule, and he'll expect clean strae, and maybe some whisky beside. So I make little upon that.”

”Well, sir, go on.”

”Then for meat and liquor, ye may have the best, and I never charge abune twenty per cent. ower tavern price for pleasing a gentleman that way--and that's little eneugh for sending in and sending out, and wearing the la.s.sie's shoon out. And then if ye're dowie, I will sit wi' you a gliff [*Twinkling] in the evening mysell, man, and help ye out wi' your bottle.--I have drunk mony a gla.s.s wi'

Glossin, man, that did you up, though he's a justice now. And then I'se warrant ye'll be for fire thir cauld nights, or if ye want candle, that's an expensive article, for it's against the rules.

And now I've tell'd ye the head articles of the charge, and I dinna think there's muckle mair, though there will aye be some odd expenses ower and abune.”

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