Part 8 (1/2)
”Beating, ma'am!--no”--(very shortly)--”no man alive shall beatas you happen tolady is so unbecoe your tone, I shall think it worth while to chastise you myself”
”Chastise, sir? and--me, sir?--Do you knohom you speak to, sir?”
”Yes, sir,” I replied; ”you say yourself you are clerk of peace to the county; and Gaffer Rutledge says you are a pettifogger; and in neither capacity are you entitled to be i lady of fashi+on”
Miss Vernon laid her hand on my arm, and exclaimed, ”Come, Mr Osbaldistone, I will have no assaults and battery on Mr Jobson; I ale touch of your whip--why, he would live on it for a ters sufficiently--you have called hie, Miss,” said the clerk, somewhat crestfallen: ”besides, ier is slander in the highest degree, and that I will e know to his cost, and all who maliciously repeat the sa away of ood name”
”Never mind that, Mr Jobson,” said Miss Vernon; ”you knohere there is nothing, your o allows that the king hiood naets it, and wish you joy of losing it with all , ainst papists, which it would be well for the land were they better executed There's third and fourth Edward VI, of antiphoners, ends, pies, portuasses, and those that have such trinkets in their possession, Miss Vernon--and there's su of papists to take the oaths--and there are popish recusant convicts under the first of his present Majesty--ay, and there are penalties for hearing mass--See twenty-third of Queen Elizabeth, and third James First, chapter twenty-fifth And there are estates to be registered, and deeds and wills to be enrolled, and double taxes to beto the acts in that case made and provided”-- ”See the new edition of the Statutes at Large, published under the careful revision of Joseph Jobson, Gent, Clerk of the Peace,” said Miss Vernon
”Also, and above all,” continued Jobson,--”for I speak to your warning--you, Diana Vernon, spinstress, not being a fe a convict popish recusant, are bound to repair to your oelling, and that by the nearest way, under penalty of being held felon to the king--and diligently to seek for passage at common ferries, and to tarry there but one ebb and flood; and unless you can have it in such places, to walk every day into the water up to the knees, assaying to pass over”
”A sort of Protestant penance for --”Well, I thank you for the information, Mr Jobson, and will hie me home as fast as I can, and be a better housekeeper in tiht, my dear Mr Jobson, thou ht, ma'am, and remember the law is not to be trifled with”
And we rode on our separate ways
”There he goes for a troublesolance after him; ”it is hard that persons of birth and rank and estate should be subjected to the official impertinence of such a paltry pickthank as that,as the whole world believed not o--for certainly our Catholic Faith has the advantage of antiquity at least”
”I was much tempted to have broken the rascal's head,” I replied
”You would have acted very like a hasty young man,” said Miss Vernon; ”and yet, had my own hand been an ounce heavier than it is, I think I should have laid its weight upon hi, but there are three things for which I aht it worth while to waste any cos, Miss Vernon, may I ask?”
”Will you promise me your deepest sympathy, if I tell you?”
”Certainly;--can you doubt it?” I replied, closing my horse nearer to hers as I spoke, with an expression of interest which I did not atte to be pitied, after all; so here are irl, and not a young fellow, and would be shut up in a s that I have aas you list, wouldme”
”I can't quite afford you the sympathy you expect upon this score,” I replied; ”the s to one half of the species; and the other half”-- ”Are so atives,” interrupted Miss Vernon--”I forgot you were a party interested Nay,” she said, as I was going to speak, ”that soft smile is intended to be the preface of a very pretty coes which Die Vernon's friends and kins born one of their Helots; but spare ood friend, and let us try whether we shall agree better on the second count ofpuppy would call it I belong to an oppressed sect and antiquated religion, and, instead of getting credit for irls beside, lewood, may sendGod in the way of my ancestors, and say, as old Pembroke did to the Abbess of Wilton, when he usurped her convent and establishment, 'Go spin, you jade,--Go spin'”
Note F The Abbess of Wilton
”This is not a cureless evil,” said I gravely ”Consult some of our learned divines, or consult your own excellent understanding, Miss Vernon; and surely the particulars in which our religious creed differs from that in which you have been educated”-- ”Hush!+” said Diana, placing her fore-finger on her allant fathers! I would as soon, were I a man, forsake their banner when the tide of battle pressed hardest against it, and turn, like a hireling recreant, to join the victorious enemy”
”I honour your spirit, Miss Vernon; and as to the inconveniences to which it exposes you, I can only say, that wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow”
”Ay; but they are fretful and irritating, for all that But I see, hard of heart as you are,out flax into marvellous coarse thread, affects you as little as my condemnation to coif and pinners, instead of beaver and cockade; so I will sparemy third cause of vexation”
”Nay, my dear Miss Vernon, do not withdraw your confidence, and I will promise you, that the threefold sympathy due to your very unusual causes of distress shall be all duly and truly paid to account of the third, providing you assure me, that it is one which you neither share with all woland, who, God bless you, are still a sect more numerous than we Protestants, in our zeal for church and state, would desire thereatly altered, and more serious than I had yet seen her assume, ”a misfortune that well merits compassion I am by nature, as you may easily observe, of a frank and unreserved disposition--a plain true-hearted girl, ould willingly act openly and honestly by the whole world, and yet fate has involved lements, that I dare hardly speak a word for fear of consequences--not to myself, but to others”
”That is indeed a misfortune, Miss Vernon, which I do most sincerely compassionate, but which I should hardly have anticipated”
”O, Mr Osbaldistone, if you but knew--if any one knehat difficulty I so heart with a s, perhaps, in speaking to you even thus far onto ask me a hundred questions on the events of this day--on the share which Rashleigh has in your deliverance from this petty scrape--upon many other points which cannot but excite your attention; and I cannot bring myself to ansith the necessary falsehood and finesse--I should do it aardly, and lose your good opinion, if I have any share of it, as well as my own It is best to say at once, Ask me no questions,--I have it not in my power to reply to the which could not butimpression uponher with i to answer those which ht in themselves be reasonable, or at least natural
”I was too ed,” I said, ”by the interest she had taken in oodness had affordedinto hers--I only trusted and entreated, that if my services could at any time be useful, she would command them without doubt or hesitation”
”Thank you--thank you,” she replied; ”your voice does not ring the cuckoo chime of complies himself If--but it is impossible--but yet, if an opportunity should occur, I will ask you if you rery if I find you have forgotten it, for it is enough that you are sincere in your intentions just now--much may occur to alter them ere I call upon you, should that moment ever come, to assist Die Vernon, as if you were Die Vernon's brother”
”And if I were Die Vernon's brother,” said I, ”there could not be less chance that I should refuse my assistance--And now I aly accessory to my deliverance?”
”Not of me; but you may ask it of himself, and depend upon it, he will say yes; for rather than any good action should walk through the world like an unappropriated adjective in an ill-arranged sentence, he is alilling to stand noun substantive to it himself”
”And I must not ask whether this Campbell be himself the party who eased Mr Morris of his portmanteau,--or whether the letter, which our friend the attorney received, was not a finesse to withdraw him from the scene of action, lest he should have marred the happy event ofof o on putting cases You are to think just as well of me as if I had answered all these queries, and twenty others besides, as glibly as Rashleigh could have done; and observe, whenever I touch n that I cannot speak upon the topic which happens to occupy your attention I nals of correspondence with you, because you are to bewhatever ofcan be ; ”and the extent of your confidence will, you acity of ht us, in the highest good-humour with each other, to Osbaldistone Hall, where we found the fa
”Get some dinner for Mr Osbaldistone and me in the library,” said Miss Vernon to a servant--”Itoin this mansion of brutal abundance; otherwise I am not sure that I should show you my private haunts This same library is my den--the only corner of the Hall-house where I as, my cousins They never venture there, I suppose for fear the folios should fall down and crack their skulls; for they will never affect their heads in any other way--So follow h hall and bower, vaulted passage and winding stair, until we reached the room where she had ordered our refreshments
CHAPTER TENTH
In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot, Whose glooer food, and cures for moral pain Anonylooht of the ponderous folios so dear to the seventeenth century, from which, under favour be it spoken, we have distilled matter for our quartos and octavos, and which, once more subjected to the alembic, may, should our sons be yet more frivolous than ourselves, be still farther reduced into duodecimos and pamphlets The collection was chiefly of the classics, as well foreign as ancient history, and, above all, divinity It was in wretched order The priests, who in succession had acted as chaplains at the Hall, were, for many years, the only persons who entered its precincts, until Rashleigh's thirst for reading had led him to disturb the venerable spiders, who had muffled the fronts of the presses with their tapestry His destination for the church rendered his conduct less absurd in his father's eyes, than if any of his other descendants had betrayed so strange a propensity, and Sir Hildebrand acquiesced in the library receiving so-room Still an air of dilapidation, as obvious as it was uncolect froe which its walls contained had not been able to exee and clurate, seldoots, intimated the conte, and for the volumes which record its treasures
”You think this place solanced my eye round the forlorn apartment; ”but to me it seems like a little paradise, for I call it h was joint proprietor with er so?” was er immediately touched her dimpled chin, with an arch look of prohibition
”We are still allies,” she continued, ”bound, like other confederate powers, by circumstances of mutual interest; but I am afraid, as will happen in other cases, the treaty of alliance has survived the ain At any rate, we live less together; and when he coh this door here; and so, having made the discovery that ere one too h, whose occasions frequently call hihts in my favour; so that I now endeavour to prosecute alone the studies in which he used foruide”
”And what are those studies, if I may presume to ask?”
”Indeed you er raised to my chin Science and history are my principal favourites; but I also study poetry and the classics”
”And the classics? Do you read theh, who is no conteht es of to sub between his teeth, ”Ower mony maisters,--ower mony maisters, as the paddock said to the harrohen every tooth gae her a tig”
Apparently he found no difficulty in getting rid of Supple Ta possession of his forpaid any sain
We now set forward, but had not reached the top of the street in which Mr Jarvie dwelt, when a loud hallooing and breathless call of ”Stop, stop!” was heard behind us We stopped accordingly, and were overtaken by Mr Jarvie's two lads, who bore two parting tokens of Mattie's care for her master The first was conveyed in the form of a voluminous silk handkerchief, like the mainsail of one of his own West-Indiamen, which Mrs Mattie particularly desired he would put about his neck, and which, thus entreated, he added to his other integue (I thought I saw the rogue disposed to laugh as he delivered it) on the part of the housekeeper, that her master would take care of the waters ”Pooh! pooh! silly hussy,” answered Mr Jarvie; but added, turning to h--it shows a kind heart in sae young a quean--Mattie's a carefu' lass” So speaking, he pricked the sides of his palfrey, and we left the toithout farther interruption