The Fortunes of Nigel. Вальтер Скотт

a short time before amidst the jeers of the apprentices, was carried into the back shop of the artist, and there placed in an armed chair till the apothecary from over the way came to his assistance. This gentleman, as sometimes happens to those of the learned professions, had rather more lore than knowledge, and began to talk of the sinciput and occiput, and cerebrum and cerebellum, until he exhausted David Ramsay’s brief stock of patience.

      “Bell-um! bell-ell-um!” he repeated, with great indignation; “What signify all the bells in London, if you do not put a plaster on the child’s crown?”

      Master George, with better-directed zeal, asked the apothecary whether bleeding might not be useful; when, after humming and hawing for a moment, and being unable, upon the spur of the occasion, to suggest any thing else, the man of pharmacy observed, that it would, at all events, relieve the brain or cerebrum, in case there was a tendency to the depositation of any extravasated blood, to operate as a pressure upon that delicate organ.

      Fortunately he was adequate to performing this operation; and, being powerfully aided by Jenkin Vincent (who was learned in all cases of broken heads) with plenty of cold water, and a little vinegar, applied according to the scientific method practised by the bottle-holders in a modern ring, the man began to raise himself on his chair, draw his cloak tightly around him, and look about like one who struggles to recover sense and recollection.

      “He had better lie down on the bed in the little back closet,” said Mr. Ramsay’s visitor, who seemed perfectly familiar with the accommodations which the house afforded.

      “He is welcome to my share of the truckle,” said Jenkin, – for in the said back closet were the two apprentices accommodated in one truckle-bed, – “I can sleep under the counter.”

      “So can I,” said Tunstall, “and the poor fellow can have the bed all night.”

      “Sleep,” said the apothecary, “is, in the opinion of Galen, a restorative and febrifuge, and is most naturally taken in a truckle-bed.”

      “Where a better cannot be come by,” – said Master George; “but these are two honest lads, to give up their beds so willingly. Come, off with his cloak, and let us bear him to his couch – I will send for Dr. Irving, the king’s chirurgeon – he does not live far off, and that shall be my share of the Samaritan’s duty, neighbour Ramsay.”

      “Well, sir,” said the apothecary, “it is at your pleasure to send for other advice, and I shall not object to consult with Dr. Irving or any other medical person of skill, neither to continue to furnish such drugs as may be needful from my pharmacopeia. However, whatever Dr. Irving, who, I think, hath had his degrees in Edinburgh, or Dr. Any-one-beside, be he Scottish or English, may say to the contrary, sleep, taken timeously, is a febrifuge, or sedative, and also a restorative.”

      He muttered a few more learned words, and concluded by informing Ramsay’s friend in English far more intelligible than his Latin, that he would look to him as his paymaster, for medicines, care, and attendance, furnished, or to be furnished, to this party unknown.

      Master George only replied by desiring him to send his bill for what he had already to charge, and to give himself no farther trouble unless he heard from him. The pharmacopolist, who, from discoveries made by the cloak falling a little aside, had no great opinion of the faculty of this chance patient to make reimbursement, had no sooner seen his case espoused by a substantial citizen, than he showed some reluctance to quit possession of it, and it needed a short and stern hint from Master George, which, with all his good-humour, he was capable of expressing when occasion required, to send to his own dwelling this Esculapius of Temple Bar.

      When they were rid of Mr. Raredrench, the charitable efforts of Jenkin and Francis, to divest the patient of his long grey cloak, were firmly resisted on his own part. – “My life suner – my life suner,” he muttered in indistinct murmurs. In these efforts to retain his upper garment, which was too tender to resist much handling, it gave way at length with a loud rent, which almost threw the patient into a second syncope, and he sat before them in his under garments, the looped and repaired wretchedness of which moved at once pity and laughter, and had certainly been the cause of his unwillingness to resign the mantle, which, like the virtue of charity, served to cover so many imperfections.

      The man himself cast his eyes on his poverty-struck garb, and seemed so much ashamed of the disclosure, that, muttering between his teeth, that he would be too late for his appointment, he made an effort to rise and leave the shop, which was easily prevented by Jenkin Vincent and his comrade, who, at the nod of Master George, laid hold of and detained him in his chair.

      The patient next looked round him for a moment, and then said faintly, in his broad northern language – “What sort of usage ca’ ye this, gentlemen, to a stranger a sojourner in your town? Ye hae broken my head – ye hae riven my cloak, and now ye are for restraining my personal liberty! They were wiser than me,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “that counselled me to wear my warst claithing in the streets of London; and, if I could have got ony things warse than these mean garments,” – (“which would have been very difficult,” said Jin Vin, in a whisper to his companion,) – “they would have been e’en ower gude for the grips o’ men sae little acquented with the laws of honest civility.”

      “To say the truth,” said Jenkin, unable to forbear any longer, although the discipline of the times prescribed to those in his situation a degree of respectful distance and humility in the presence of parents, masters, or seniors, of which the present age has no idea – “to say the truth, the good gentleman’s clothes look as if they would not brook much handling.”

      “Hold your peace, young man,” said Master George, with a tone of authority; “never mock the stranger or the poor – the black ox has not trod on your foot yet – you know not what lands you may travel in, or what clothes you may wear, before you die.”

      Vincent held down his head and stood rebuked, but the stranger did not accept the apology which was made for him.

      “I am a stranger, sir,” said he, “that is certain; though methinks, that, being such, I have been somewhat familiarly treated in this town of yours; but, as for my being poor, I think I need not be charged with poverty, till I seek siller of somebody.”

      “The dear country all over,” said Master George, in a whisper, to David Ramsay, “pride and poverty.”

      But David had taken out his tablets and silver pen, and, deeply immersed in calculations, in which he rambled over all the terms of arithmetic, from the simple unit to millions, billions, and trillions, neither heard nor answered the observation of his friend, who, seeing his abstraction, turned again to the Scot.

      “I fancy now, Jockey, if a stranger were to offer you a noble, you would chuck it back at his head?”

      “Not if I could do him honest service for it, sir,” said the Scot; “I am willing to do what I may to be useful, though I come of an honourable house, and may be said to be in a sort indifferently weel provided for.”

      “Ay!” said the interrogator, “and what house may claim the honour of your descent?”

      “An ancient coat belongs to it, as the play says,” whispered Vincent to his companion.

      “Come, Jockey, out with it,” continued Master George, observing that the Scot, as usual with his countrymen, when asked a blunt, straightforward question, took a little time before answering it.

      “I am no more Jockey, sir, than you are John,” said the stranger, as if offended at being addressed by a name, which at that time was used, as Sawney now is, for a general appellative of the Scottish nation. “My name, if you must know it, is Richie Moniplies; and I come of the old and honourable house of Castle Collop, weel kend at the West-Port of Edinburgh.”

      “What is that you call the West-Port?” proceeded the interrogator.

      “Why, an it like your honour,” said Richie, who now, having recovered his senses sufficiently to observe the respectable exterior of Master George, threw more civility into his manner than at first, “the West-Port is a gate of our city, as yonder brick arches at Whitehall form the entrance of the king’s palace here,