The Heart of Midlothian (Unabridged). Walter Scott

at long bowls, and other athletic exercises, watched the motions of Effie Deans, and contended with each other which should have the good fortune to attract her attention. Even the rigid Presbyterians of her father’s persuasion, who held each indulgence of the eye and sense to be a snare at least if not a crime, were surprised into a moment’s delight while gazing on a creature so exquisite — instantly checked by a sigh, reproaching at once their own weakness, and mourning that a creature so fair should share in the common and hereditary guilt and imperfection of our nature, which she deserved as much by her guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of face and person.

Yet there were points in Effie’s character which gave rise not only to strange doubt and anxiety on the part of Douce David Deans, whose ideas were rigid, as may easily be supposed, upon the subject of youthful amusements, but even of serious apprehension to her more indulgent sister. The children of the Scotch of the inferior classes are usually spoiled by the early indulgence of their parents; how, wherefore, and to what degree, the lively and instructive narrative of the amiable and accomplished authoress of “Glenburnie”¹ has saved me and all future scribblers the trouble of recording.

      Effie had had a double share of this inconsiderate and misjudged kindness. Even the strictness of her father’s principles could not condemn the sports of infancy and childhood; and to the good old man, his younger daughter, the child of his old age, seemed a child for some years after she attained the years of womanhood, was still called the “bit lassie,” and “little Effie,” and was permitted to run up and down uncontrolled, unless upon the Sabbath, or at the times of family worship. Her sister, with all the love and care of a mother, could not be supposed to possess the same authoritative influence; and that which she had hitherto exercised became gradually limited and diminished as Effie’s advancing years entitled her, in her own conceit at least, to the right of independence and free agency. With all the innocence and goodness of disposition, therefore, which we have described, the Lily of St. Leonard’s possessed a little fund of self-conceit and obstinacy, and some warmth and irritability of temper, partly natural perhaps, but certainly much increased by the unrestrained freedom of her childhood. Her character will be best illustrated by a cottage evening scene.

      The careful father was absent in his well-stocked byre, foddering those useful and patient animals on whose produce his living depended, and the summer evening was beginning to close in, when Jeanie Deans began to be very anxious for the appearance of her sister, and to fear that she would not reach home before her father returned from the labour of the evening, when it was his custom to have “family exercise,” and when she knew that Effie’s absence would give him the most serious displeasure. These apprehensions hung heavier upon her mind, because, for several preceding evenings, Effie had disappeared about the same time, and her stay, at first so brief as scarce to be noticed, had been gradually protracted to half-an-hour, and an hour, and on the present occasion had considerably exceeded even this last limit. And now, Jeanie stood at the door, with her hand before her eyes to avoid the rays of the level sun, and looked alternately along the various tracks which led towards their dwelling, to see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister. There was a wall and a stile which separated the royal domain, or King’s Park, as it is called, from the public road; to this pass she frequently directed her attention, when she saw two persons appear there somewhat suddenly, as if they had walked close by the side of the wall to screen themselves from observation. One of them, a man, drew back hastily; the other, a female, crossed the stile, and advanced towards her — It was Effie. She met her sister with that affected liveliness of manner, which, in her rank, and sometimes in those above it, females occasionally assume to hide surprise or confusion; and she carolled as she came —

      “The elfin knight sate on the brae,

      The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair;

      And by there came lilting a lady so gay,

      And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair.”

      “Whisht, Effie,” said her sister; “our father’s coming out o’ the byre.” — The damsel stinted in her song. —“Whare hae ye been sae late at e’en?”

      “It’s no late, lass,” answered Effie.

      “It’s chappit eight on every clock o’ the town, and the sun’s gaun down ahint the Corstorphine hills — Whare can ye hae been sae late?”

      “Nae gate,” answered Effie.

      “And wha was that parted wi’ you at the stile?”

      “Naebody,” replied Effie once more.

      “Nae gate? — Naebody? — I wish it may be a right gate, and a right body, that keeps folk out sae late at e’en, Effie.”

      “What needs ye be aye speering then at folk?” retorted Effie. “I’m sure, if ye’ll ask nae questions, I’ll tell ye nae lees. I never ask what brings the Laird of Dumbiedikes glowering here like a wull-cat (only his een’s greener, and no sae gleg), day after day, till we are a’ like to gaunt our charts aft.”

      “Because ye ken very weel he comes to see our father,” said Jeanie, in answer to this pert remark.

      “And Dominie Butler — Does he come to see our father, that’s sae taen wi’ his Latin words?” said Effie, delighted to find that by carrying the war into the enemy’s country, she could divert the threatened attack upon herself, and with the petulance of youth she pursued her triumph over her prudent elder sister. She looked at her with a sly air, in which there was something like irony, as she chanted, in a low but marked tone, a scrap of an old Scotch song —

      “Through the kirkyard

      I met wi’ the Laird,

      The silly puir body he said me nae harm;

      But just ere ’twas dark,

      I met wi’ the clerk”

      Here the songstress stopped, looked full at her sister, and, observing the tears gather in her eyes, she suddenly flung her arms round her neck, and kissed them away. Jeanie, though hurt and displeased, was unable to resist the caresses of this untaught child of nature, whose good and evil seemed to flow rather from impulse than from reflection. But as she returned the sisterly kiss, in token of perfect reconciliation, she could not suppress the gentle reproof —“Effie, if ye will learn fule sangs, ye might make a kinder use of them.”

      “And so I might, Jeanie,” continued the girl, clinging to her sister’s neck; “and I wish I had never learned ane o’ them — and I wish we had never come here — and I wish my tongue had been blistered or I had vexed ye.”

      “Never mind that, Effie,” replied the affectionate sister; “I canna be muckle vexed wi’ ony thing ye say to me — but O, dinna vex our father!”

      “I will not — I will not,” replied Effie; “and if there were as mony dances the morn’s night as there are merry dancers in the north firmament on a frosty e’en, I winna budge an inch to gang near ane o’ them.”

      “Dance!” echoed Jeanie Deans in astonishment. “O Effie, what could take ye to a dance?”

It is very possible, that, in the communicative mood into which the Lily of St. Leonard’s was now surprised, she might have given her sister her unreserved confidence, and saved me the pain of telling a melancholy tale; but at the moment the word dance was uttered, it reached the ear of old David Deans, who had turned the corner of the house, and came upon his daughters ere they were aware of his presence. The word prelate, or even the word pope, could hardly have produced so appalling an effect upon David’s ear; for, of all exercises, that of dancing, which he termed a voluntary and regular fit of distraction, he deemed most destructive of serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness; and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath.