The Fortunes of Nigel

These suggestions, however reasonable in the common case, gave no comfort to Lord Huntinglen, if indeed he fully comprehended them; but the blubbering of his good-natured old master, which began to accompany and interrupt his royal speech, produced more rapid effect. The large tear gushed reluctantly from his eye, as he kissed the withered hands, which the king, weeping with less dignity and restraint, abandoned to him, first alternately and then both together, until the feelings of the man getting entirely the better of the Sovereign's sense of dignity, he grasped and shook Lord Huntinglen's hands with the sympathy of an equal and a familiar friend.'

'Compone lachrymas,' said the Monarch; 'be patient, man, be patient; the council, and Baby Charles, and Steenie, may a' gang to the deevil- -he shall not marry her since it moves you so deeply.'

'He shall marry her, by God!' answered the earl, drawing himself up, dashing the tear from his eyes, and endeavouring to recover his composure. 'I pray your Majesty's pardon, but he shall marry her, with her dishonour for her dowry, were she the veriest courtezan in all Spain—If he gave his word, he shall make his word good, were it to the meanest creature that haunts the streets—he shall do it, or my own dagger shall take the life that I gave him. If he could stoop to use so base a fraud, though to deceive infamy, let him wed infamy.'

'No, no!' the Monarch continued to insinuate, 'things are not so bad as that—Steenie himself never thought of her being a streetwalker, even when he thought the worst of her.'

'If it can at all console my Lord of Huntinglen,' said the citizen, 'I can assure him of this lady's good birth, and most fair and unspotted fame.'

'I am sorry for it,' said Lord Huntinglen—then interrupting himself, he said—'Heaven forgive me for being ungrateful for such comfort!— but I am well-nigh sorry she should be as you represent her, so much better than the villain deserves. To be condemned to wed beauty and innocence and honest birth—'

'Ay, and wealth, my lord—wealth,' insinuated the king, 'is a better sentence than his perfidy has deserved.'

'It is long,' said the embittered father, 'since I saw he was selfish and hardhearted; but to be a perjured liar—I never dreaded that such a blot would have fallen on my race! I will never look on him again.'

'Hoot ay, my lord, hoot ay,' said the king; 'ye maun tak him to task roundly. I grant you should speak more in the vein of Demea than Mitio, vi nempe et via pervulgata patrum; but as for not seeing him again, and he your only son, that is altogether out of reason. I tell ye, man, (but I would not for a boddle that Baby Charles heard me,) that he might gie the glaiks to half the lasses of Lonnun, ere I could find in my heart speak such harsh words as you have said of this deil of a Dalgarno of yours.'

'May it please your Majesty to permit me to retire,' said Lord Huntinglen, 'and dispose of the case according to your own royal sense of justice, for I desire no favour for him.'

'Aweel, my lord, so be it; and if your lordship can think,' added the Monarch, 'of any thing in our power which might comfort you—' 

'Your Majesty's gracious sympathy,' said Lord Huntinglen, 'has already comforted me as far as earth can; the rest must be from the King of kings.'

'To Him I commend you, my auld and faithful servant,' said James with emotion, as the earl withdrew from his presence. The king remained fixed in thought for some time, and then said to Heriot, 'Jingling Geordie, ye ken all the privy doings of our Court, and have dune so these thirty years, though, like a wise man, ye hear, and see, and say nothing. Now, there is a thing I fain wad ken, in the way of philosophical inquiry—Did you ever hear of the umquhile Lady Huntinglen, the departed Countess of this noble earl, ganging a wee bit gleed in her walk through the world; I mean in the way of slipping a foot, casting a leglin-girth, or the like, ye understand me?'[24]

'On my word as an honest man,' said George Heriot, somewhat surprised at the question, 'I never heard her wronged by the slightest breath of suspicion. She was a worthy lady, very circumspect in her walk, and lived in great concord with her husband, save that the good Countess was something of a puritan, and kept more company with ministers than was altogether agreeable to Lord Huntinglen, who is, as your Majesty well knows, a man of the old rough world, that will drink and swear.'

'O Geordie!' exclaimed the king, 'these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free. But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie. The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet—

'Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 Nos nequiores—'

This Dalgarno does not drink so much, or swear so much, as his father; but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his word and oath baith. As to what you say of the leddy, and the ministers, we are a' fallible creatures, Geordie, priests and kings, as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us a' out—ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our council—till he heard of the tocher, and then, by my kingly crown, he lap like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott de secretis, and others.—Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal, hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your head, I could have touched on that matter to you at mair length.'

Heriot was too plain-spoken to express much concern for the loss of his grammar learning on this occasion; but after modestly hinting that he had seen many men who could not fill their father's bonnet, though no one had been suspected of wearing their father's nightcap, he inquired 'whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione justice.'

'Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will,' quoth the king; 'I gave him the schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and we allowed him half-an-hour to chew the cud upon that. It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him; and if he can resist doing what they desire him—why, I wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence!'

'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.'

'Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ye are not blate! I gie ye license to speak freely, and, by our saul, ye do not let the privilege become lost non utendo—it will suffer no negative prescription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye, that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen?— No—no—princes' thoughts are arcana imperii—Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare. Every liege subject is bound to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae reciprocity of obligation—and for Steenie having been whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum, to cast that up to him?'

Heriot did not feel himself called on to play the part of Zeno and sacrifice himself for upholding the cause of moral truth; he did not desert it, however, by disavowing his words, but simply expressed sorrow for having offended his Majesty, with which the placable king was sufficiently satisfied.

'And now, Geordie, man,' quoth he, 'we will to this culprit, and hear what he has to say for himself, for I will see the job cleared this blessed day. Ye maun come wi' me, for your evidence may be wanted.'

The king led the way, accordingly, into a larger apartment, where the Prince, the Duke of Buckingham, and one or two privy counsellors were seated at a table, before which stood Lord Dalgarno, in an attitude of as much elegant ease and indifference as could be expressed, considering the stiff dress and manners of the times.

All rose and bowed reverently, while the king, to use a north country word, expressive of his mode of locomotion, toddled to his chair or throne, making a sign to Heriot to stand behind