"The messenger is returned, Mr. Oldbuck."
"Returned?—What the devil! he has not let the fellow go?"
"No—I understand he has carried him to confinement; and now he is returned to attend my father, and says he can wait no longer."
A loud wrangling was now heard on the staircase, in which the voice of Hector predominated. "You an officer, sir, and these ragamuffins a party! a parcel of beggarly tailor fellows—tell yourselves off by nine, and we shall know your effective strength."
The grumbling voice of the man of law was then heard indistinctly muttering a reply, to which Hector retorted—"Come, come, sir, this won't do;—march your party, as you call them, out of this house directly, or I'll send you and them to the right about presently."
"The devil take Hector," said the Antiquary, hastening to the scene of action; "his Highland blood is up again, and we shall have him fighting a duel with the bailiff. Come, Mr. Sweepclean, you must give us a little time—I know you would not wish to hurry Sir Arthur."
"By no means, sir," said the messenger, putting his hat off, which he had thrown on to testify defiance of Captain M'Intyre's threats; "but your nephew, sir, holds very uncivil language, and I have borne too much of it already; and I am not justified in leaving my prisoner any longer after the instructions I received, unless I am to get payment of the sums contained in my diligence." And he held out the caption, pointing with the awful truncheon, which he held in his right hand, to the formidable line of figures jotted upon the back thereof.
Hector, on the other hand, though silent from respect to his uncle, answered this gesture by shaking his clenched fist at the messenger with a frown of Highland wrath.
"Foolish boy, be quiet," said Oldbuck, "and come with me into the room— the man is doing his miserable duty, and you will only make matters worse by opposing him.—I fear, Sir Arthur, you must accompany this man to Fairport; there is no help for it in the first instance—I will accompany you, to consult what further can be done—My nephew will escort Miss Wardour to Monkbarns, which I hope she will make her residence until these unpleasant matters are settled."
"I go with my father, Mr. Oldbuck," said Miss Wardour firmly—"I have prepared his clothes and my own—I suppose we shall have the use of the carriage?"
"Anything in reason, madam," said the messenger; "I have ordered it out, and it's at the door—I will go on the box with the coachman—I have no desire to intrude—but two of the concurrents must attend on horseback."
"I will attend too," said Hector, and he ran down to secure a horse for himself.
"We must go then," said the Antiquary.
"To jail," said the Baronet, sighing involuntarily. "And what of that?" he resumed, in a tone affectedly cheerful—"it is only a house we can't get out of, after all—Suppose a fit of the gout, and Knockwinnock would be the same—Ay, ay, Monkbarns—we'll call it a fit of the gout without the d—d pain."
But his eyes swelled with tears as he spoke, and his faltering accent marked how much this assumed gaiety cost him. The Antiquary wrung his hand, and, like the Indian Banians, who drive the real terms of an important bargain by signs, while they are apparently talking of indifferent matters, the hand of Sir Arthur, by its convulsive return of the grasp, expressed his sense of gratitude to his friend, and the real state of his internal agony.—They stepped slowly down the magnificent staircase—every well-known object seeming to the unfortunate father and daughter to assume a more prominent and distinct appearance than usual, as if to press themselves on their notice for the last time.
At the first landing-place, Sir Arthur made an agonized pause; and as he observed the Antiquary look at him anxiously, he said with assumed dignity—"Yes, Mr. Oldbuck, the descendant of an ancient line—the representative of Richard Redhand and Gamelyn de Guardover, may be pardoned a sigh when he leaves the castle of his fathers thus poorly escorted. When I was sent to the Tower with my late father, in the year 1745, it was upon a charge becoming our birth—upon an accusation of high treason, Mr. Oldbuck;—we were escorted from Highgate by a troop of life-guards, and committed upon a secretary of state's warrant; and now, here I am, in my old age, dragged from my household by a miserable creature like that" (pointing to the messenger), "and for a paltry concern of pounds, shillings, and pence."
"At least," said Oldbuck, "you have now the company of a dutiful daughter, and a sincere friend, if you will permit me to say so, and that may be some consolation, even without the certainty that there can be no hanging, drawing, or quartering, on the present occasion. But I hear that choleric boy as loud as ever. I hope to God he has got into no new broil!—it was an accursed chance that brought him here at all."
In fact, a sudden clamour, in which the loud voice and somewhat northern accent of Hector was again preeminently distinguished, broke off this conversation. The cause we must refer to the next CHAPTER.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND.
The shout of triumph in Hector's warlike tones was not easily distinguished from that of battle. But as he rushed up stairs with a packet in his hand, exclaiming, "Long life to an old soldier! here comes Edie with a whole budget of good news!" it became obvious that his present cause of clamour was of an agreeable nature. He delivered the letter to Oldbuck, shook Sir Arthur heartily by the hand, and wished Miss Wardour joy, with all the frankness of Highland congratulation. The messenger, who had a kind of instinctive terror for Captain M'Intyre, drew towards his prisoner, keeping an eye of caution on the soldier's motions.
"Don't suppose I shall trouble myself about you, you dirty fellow," said the soldier; "there's a guinea for the fright I have given you; and here comes an old forty-two man, who is a fitter match for you than I am."
The messenger (one of those dogs who are not too scornful to eat dirty puddings) caught in his hand the guinea which Hector chucked at his face; and abode warily and carefully the turn which matters were now to take. All voices meanwhile were loud in inquiries, which no one was in a hurry to answer.
"What is the matter, Captain M'Intyre?" said Sir Arthur.
"Ask old Edie," said Hector;—"I only know all's safe and well."
"What is all this, Edie?" said Miss Wardour to the mendicant.
"Your leddyship maun ask Monkbarns, for he has gotten the yepistolary correspondensh."
"God save the king!" exclaimed the Antiquary at the first glance at the contents of his packet, and, surprised at once out of decorum, philosophy, and phlegm, he skimmed his cocked hat in the air, from which it descended not again, being caught in its fall by a branch of the chandelier. He next, looking joyously round, laid a grasp on his wig, which he perhaps would have sent after the beaver, had not Edie stopped his hand, exclaiming "Lordsake! he's gaun gyte!—mind Caxon's no here to repair the damage."
Every person now assailed the Antiquary, clamouring to know the cause of so sudden a transport, when, somewhat ashamed of his rapture, he fairly turned tail, like a fox at the cry of a pack of hounds, and ascending the stair by two steps at a time, gained the upper landing-place, where, turning round, he addressed the astonished audience as follows:—