Waverley Novels — Volume 12. Вальтер Скотт

him welcome to bed and board within my mansion while he was thus engaged, only requiring his occasional assistance at hearing the more advanced scholars. This seemed to promise a close of our dispute, alike satisfactory to all parties, and the first act of Paul was to draw on me for a round sum, under pretence that his wardrobe must be wholly refitted. To this I made no objection, though it certainly showed like vanity to purchase garments in the extremity of the mode, when not only great part of the defunct's habiliments were very fit for a twelvemonth's use, but as I myself had been, but yesterday as it were, equipped in a becoming new stand of black clothes, Mr. Pattison would have been welcome to the use of such of my quondam raiment as he thought suitable, as indeed had always been the case with his deceased brother.

      The school, I must needs say, came tolerably on. My youngster was very smart, and seemed to be so active in his duty of usher, if I may so speak, that he even overdid his part therein, and I began to feel myself a cipher in my own school.

      I comforted myself with the belief that the publication was advancing as fast as I could desire. On this subject, Paul Pattison, like ancient Pistol, "talked bold words at the bridge," and that not only at our house, but in the society of our neighbours, amongst whom, instead of imitating the retired and monastic manner of his brother deceased, he became a gay visitor, and such a reveller, that in process of time he was observed to vilipend the modest fare which had at first been esteemed a banquet by his hungry appetite, and thereby highly displeased my wife, who, with justice, applauds herself for the plentiful, cleanly, and healthy victuals, wherewith she maintains her ushers and boarders.

      Upon the whole, I rather hoped than entertained a sincere confidence that all was going on well, and was in that unpleasant state of mind which precedes the open breach between two associates who have been long jealous of each other, but are as yet deterred by a sense of mutual interest from coming to an open rupture.

      The first thing which alarmed me was a rumour in the village, that Paul Pattison intended, in some little space, to undertake a voyage to the Continent — on account of his health, as was pretended, but, as the same report averred, much more with the view of gratifying the curiosity which his perusal of the classics had impressed upon him, than for any other purpose. I was, I say, rather alarmed at this susurrus, and began to reflect that the retirement of Mr. Pattison, unless his loss could be supplied in good time, was like to be a blow to the establishment; for, in truth, this Paul had a winning way with the boys, especially those who were gentle-tempered; so that I must confess my doubts whether, in certain respects, I myself could have fully supplied his place in the school, with all my authority and experience. My wife, jealous as became her station, of Mr. Pattison's intentions, advised me to take the matter up immediately, and go to the bottom at once; and, indeed, I had always found that way answered best with my boys.

      Mrs. Cleishbotham was not long before renewing the subject; for, like most of the race of Xantippe, (though my help-mate is a well-spoken woman,) she loves to thrust in her oar where she is not able to pull it to purpose. "You are a sharp-witted man, Mr. Cleishbotham," would she observe, "and a learned man, Mr. Cleishbotham — and the schoolmaster of Gandercleuch, Mr. Cleishbotham, which is saying all in one word; but many a man almost as great as yourself has lost the saddle by suffering an inferior to get up behind him' and though, with the world, Mr. Cleishbotham, you have the name of doing every thing, both in directing the school and in this new profitable book line which you have taken up, yet it begins to be the common talk of Gandercleuch, both up the water and down the water, that the usher both writes the dominie's books and teaches the dominie's school. Ay, ay, ask maid, wife, or widow, and she'll tell ye, the least gaitling among them all comes to Paul Pattison with his lesson as naturally as they come to me for their four-hours, puir things; and never ane things of applying to you aboot a kittle turn or a crabbed word, or about ony thing else, unless it were for licet exire, or the mending of an auld pen."

      Now this address assailed me on a summer evening, when I was whiling away my leisure hours with the end of a cutty pipe and indulging in such bland imaginations as the Nicotian weed is wont to produce, more especially in the case of the studious persons, devoted musis severioribus. I was naturally loth to leave my misty sanctuary; and endeavoured to silence the clamour of Mrs. Cleishbotham's tongue, which has something in it peculiarly shrill and penetrating. "Woman," said I with a tone of domestic authority befitting the occasion, "res tuas agas; — mind your washings and your wringings, your stuffings and your physicking, or whatever concerns the outward persons of the pupils, and leave the progress of their education to my usher, Paul Pattison, and myself."

      "I am glad to see," added the accursed woman, (that I should say so!) "that ye have the grace to name him foremost, for there is little doubt, that he ranks first of the troop, if ye wad but hear what the neighbours speak — or whisper."

      "What do they whisper, thou sworn sister of the Eumenides?" cried I, — the irritating aestrum of the woman's objurgation totally counterbalancing the sedative effects both of pipe and pot.

      "Whisper?" resumed she in her shrillest note — "why, they whisper loud enough for me at least to hear them, that the schoolmaster of Gandercleuch is turned a doited auld woman, and spends all his time in tippling strong drink with the keeper of the public-house, and leaves school and book-making, and a' the rost o't, to the care of his usher; and, also, the wives in Gandercleuch say, that you have engaged Paul Pattison to write a new book, which is to beat a' the lave that gaed afore it; and to show what a sair lift you have o' the job, you didna sae muckle as ken the name o't — no nor whether it was to be about some Heathen Greek, or the Black Douglas."

      This was said with such bitterness that it penetrated to the very quick, and I hurled the poor old pipe, like one of Homer's spears, not in the face of my provoking helpmate, though the temptation was strong, but into the river Gander, which as is now well known to tourists from the uttermost parts of the earth, pursues its quiet meanders beneath the bank on which the school-house is pleasantly situated; and, starting up, fixed on my head the cocked hat, (the pride of Messrs. Grieve and Scott's repository,) and plunging into the valley of the brook, pursued my way upwards, the voice of Mrs. Cleishbotham accompanying me in my retreat with something like the angry scream of triumph with which the brood-goose pursues the flight of some unmannerly cur or idle boy who has intruded upon her premises, and fled before her. Indeed, so great was the influence of this clamour of scorn and wrath which hung upon my rear, that while it rung in my ears I was so moved that I instinctively tucked the skirts of my black coat under my arm, as if I had been in actual danger of being seized on by the grasp of the pursuing enemy. Nor was it till I had almost reached the well-known burial-place, in which it was Peter Pattison's hap to meet the far-famed personage called Old Mortality, that I made a halt for the purpose of composing my perturbed spirits, and considering what was to be done; for as yet my mind was agitated by a chaos of passions, of which anger was predominant; and for what reason, or against whom, I entertained such tumultuous displeasure, it was not easy for me to determine.

      Nevertheless, having settled my cocked hat with becoming accuracy on my well-powdered wig, and suffered it to remain uplifted for a moment to cool my flushed brow — having, moreover, re-adjusted and shaken to rights the skirts of my black coat, I came into case to answer to my own questions, which, till these manoeuvres had been sedately accomplished, I might have asked myself in vain.

      In the first place, therefore, to use the phrase of Mr. Docket, the writer (that is, the attorney) of our village of Gandercleuch, I became satisfied that my anger was directed against all and sundry, or, in law Latin, contre omnes mortales, and more particularly against the neighbourhood of Gandercleuch, for circulating reports to the prejudice of my literary talents, as well as my accomplishments as a pedagogue, and transferring the fame thereof to mine own usher. Secondly, against my spouse, Dorothea Cleishbotham, for transferring the sad calumnious reports to my ears in a prerupt and unseemly manner, and without due respect either to the language which she made use of, or the person to whom she spoke, — treating affairs in which I was so intimately concerned as if they were proper subjects for jest among gossips at a christening, where the womankind claim the privilege of worshipping the Bona Dea according to their secret female rites.

      Thirdly, I became clear that I was entitled to respond to any whom it concerned to enquire, that my