to make the best of my way to Duntarkin, and my cicerone hung by me for a little way, giving loose to his love of talking—an opportunity which, situated as he was, the seneschal of a deserted castle, was not likely to occur frequently.
'Some folk think,' said my companion, 'that Mr. Treddles might as weel have put my wife as Christie Steele into the Treddles Arms; for Christie had been aye in service, and never in the public line, and so it's like she is ganging back in the world, as I hear. Now, my wife had keepit a victualling office.'
'That would have been an advantage, certainly,' I replied.
'But I am no sure that I wad ha' looten Eppie take it, if they had put it in her offer.'
'That's a different consideration.'
'Ony way, I wadna ha' liked to have offended Mr. Treddles. He was a wee toustie when you rubbed him again the hair; but a kind, weel-meaning man.'
I wanted to get rid of this species of chat, and finding myself near the entrance of a footpath which made a short cut to Duntarkin, I put half a crown into my guide's hand, bade him good-evening, and plunged into the woods.
'Hout, sir—fie, sir—no from the like of you. Stay, sir, ye wunna find the way that gate.—Odd's mercy, he maun ken the gate as weel as I do mysel'. Weel, I wad like to ken wha the chield is.'
Such were the last words of my guide's drowsy, uninteresting tone of voice and glad to be rid of him, I strode out stoutly, in despite of large stones, briers, and BAD STEPS, which abounded in the road I had chosen. In the interim, I tried as much as I could, with verses from Horace and Prior, and all who have lauded the mixture of literary with rural life, to call back the visions of last night and this morning, imagining myself settled in same detached farm of the estate of Glentanner,—
when I should have a cottage with a small library, a small cellar, a spare bed for a friend, and live more happy and more honoured than when I had the whole barony. But the sight of Castle Treddles had disturbed all my own castles in the air. The realities of the matter, like a stone plashed into a limpid fountain, had destroyed the reflection of the objects around, which, till this act of violence, lay slumbering on the crystal surface, and I tried in vain to re-establish the picture which had been so rudely broken. Well, then, I would try it another way. I would try to get Christie Steele out of her PUBLIC, since she was not striving in it, and she who had been my mother's governante should be mine. I knew all her faults, and I told her history over to myself.
She was grand-daughter, I believe—at least some relative—of the famous Covenanter of the name, whom Dean Swift's friend, Captain Creichton, shot on his own staircase in the times of the persecutions; [See Note 2.— Steele a Covenanter, shot by Captain Creichton.] and had perhaps derived from her native stock much both of its good and evil properties. No one could say of her that she was the life and spirit of the family, though in my mother's time she directed all family affairs. Her look was austere and gloomy, and when she was not displeased with you, you could only find it out by her silence. If there was cause for complaint, real or imaginary, Christie was loud enough. She loved my mother with the devoted attachment of a younger sister; but she was as jealous of her favour to any one else as if she had been the aged husband of a coquettish wife, and as severe in her reprehensions as an abbess over her nuns. The command which she exercised over her was that, I fear, of a strong and determined over a feeble and more nervous disposition and though it was used with rigour, yet, to the best of Christie Steele's belief, she was urging her mistress to her best and most becoming course, and would have died rather than have recommended any other. The attachment of this woman was limited to the family of Croftangry; for she had few relations, and a dissolute cousin, whom late in life she had taken as a husband, had long left her a widow.
To me she had ever a strong dislike. Even from my early childhood she was jealous, strange as it may seem, of my interest in my mother's affections. She saw my foibles and vices with abhorrence, and without a grain of allowance; nor did she pardon the weakness of maternal affection even when, by the death of two brothers, I came to be the only child of a widowed parent. At the time my disorderly conduct induced my mother to leave Glentanner, and retreat to her jointure-house, I always blamed Christie Steele for having influenced her resentment and prevented her from listening to my vows of amendment, which at times were real and serious, and might, perhaps, have accelerated that change of disposition which has since, I trust, taken place. But Christie regarded me as altogether a doomed and predestinated child of perdition, who was sure to hold on my course, and drag downwards whosoever might attempt to afford me support.
Still, though I knew such had been Christie's prejudices against me in other days, yet I thought enough of time had since passed away to destroy all of them. I knew that when, through the disorder of my affairs, my mother underwent some temporary inconvenience about money matters, Christie, as a thing of course, stood in the gap, and having sold a small inheritance which had descended to her, brought the purchase money to her mistress, with a sense of devotion as deep as that which inspired the Christians of the first age, when they sold all they had, and followed the apostles of the church. I therefore thought that we might, in old Scottish phrase, 'let byganes be byganes,' and begin upon a new account. Yet I resolved, like a skilful general, to reconnoitre a little before laying down any precise scheme of proceeding, and in the interim I determined to preserve my incognito.
CHAPTER IV
MR. CROFTANGRY BIDS ADIEU TO CLYDESDALE.
An hour's brisk walking, or thereabouts, placed me in front of Duntarkin, which had also, I found, undergone considerable alterations, though it had not been altogether demolished like the principal mansion. An inn-yard extended before the door of the decent little jointure-house, even amidst the remnants of the holly hedges which had screened the lady's garden. Then a broad, raw-looking, new-made road intruded itself up the little glen, instead of the old horseway, so seldom used that it was almost entirely covered with grass. It is a great enormity, of which gentlemen trustees on the highways are sometimes guilty, in adopting the breadth necessary for an avenue to the metropolis, where all that is required is an access to some sequestered and unpopulous district. I do not say anything of the expense—that the trustees and their constituents may settle as they please. But the destruction of silvan beauty is great when the breadth of the road is more than proportioned to the vale through which it runs, and lowers, of course, the consequence of any objects of wood or water, or broken and varied ground, which might otherwise attract notice and give pleasure. A bubbling runnel by the side of one of those modern Appian or Flaminian highways is but like a kennel; the little hill is diminished to a hillock—the romantic hillock to a molehill, almost too small for sight.
Such an enormity, however, had destroyed the quiet loneliness of Duntarkin, and intruded its breadth of dust and gravel, and its associations of pochays and mail-coaches, upon one of the most sequestered spots in the
