have seen nothing to-day which can induce me to desire a more intimate correspondence with you than may be indispensable.”
While Lawford drew up a proper minute of this transaction, by which he himself and Gray were named trustees for the child, Mr. Gray attempted to restore to the lady the balance of the considerable sum of money which Tresham (if such was his real name) had formally deposited with him. With every species of gesture, by which hands, eyes, and even feet, could express rejection, as well as in her own broken French, she repelled the reimbursement, while she entreated that Gray would consider the money as his own property; and at the same time forced upon him a ring set with brilliants, which seemed of considerable value. The father then spoke to her a few stern words, which she heard with an air of mingled agony and submission.
“I have given her a few minutes to see and weep over the miserable being which has been the seal of her dishonour,” said the stern father. “Let us retire and leave her alone. – You,” to the messenger, “watch the door of the room on the outside.”
Gray, Lawford, and Moncada, retired to the parlour accordingly, where they waited in silence, each busied with his own reflections, till, within the space of half an hour, they received information that the lady was ready to depart.
“It is well,” replied Moncada; “I am glad she has yet sense enough left to submit to that which needs must be.”
So saying, he ascended the stair, and returned leading down his daughter, now again masked and veiled. As she passed Gray, she uttered the words – “My child, my child!” in a tone of unutterable anguish; then entered the carriage, which was drawn up as close to the door of the doctor’s house as the little enclosure would permit. The messenger, mounted on a led horse, and accompanied by a servant and assistant, followed the carriage, which drove rapidly off, taking the road which leads to Edinburgh. All who had witnessed this strange scene, now departed to make their conjectures, and some to count their gains; for money had been distributed among the females who had attended on the lady, with so much liberality, as considerably to reconcile them to the breach of the rights of womanhood inflicted by the precipitate removal of the patient.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
The last cloud of dust which the wheels of the carriage had raised was dissipated, when dinner, which claims a share of human thoughts even in the midst of the most marvellous and affecting incidents, recurred to those of Mrs. Gray.
“Indeed, Doctor, you will stand glowering out of the window till some other patient calls for you, and then have to set off without your dinner; – and I hope Mr. Lawford will take pot-luck with us, for it is just his own hour; and indeed we had something rather better than ordinary for this poor lady – lamb and spinage, and a veal Florentine.”
The surgeon started as from a dream, and joined in his wife’s hospitable request, to which Lawford willingly assented.
We will suppose the meal finished, a bottle of old and generous Antigua upon the table, and a modest little punch-bowl, judiciously replenished for the accommodation of the Doctor and his guest. Their conversation naturally turned on the strange scene which they had witnessed, and the Townclerk took considerable merit for his presence of mind.
“I am thinking, Doctor,” said he, “you might have brewed a bitter browst to yourself if I had not come in as I did.”
“Troth, and it might very well so be,” answered Gray; “for, to tell you the truth, when I saw yonder fellow vapouring with his pistols among the woman-folk in my own house, the old Cameronian spirit began to rise in me, and little thing would have made me cleek to the poker.”
“Hoot, hoot! that would never have done. Na, na,” said the man of law, “this was a case where a little prudence was worth all the pistols and pokers in the world.”
“And that was just what I thought when I sent to you, Clerk Lawford,” said the Doctor.
“A wiser man he could not have called on to a difficult case,” added Mrs. Gray, as she sat with her work at a little distance from the table.
“Thanks t’ye, and here’s t’ye, my good neighbour,” answered the scribe; “will you not let me help you to another glass of punch, Mrs. Gray?” This being declined, he proceeded. “I am jalousing that the messenger and his warrant were just brought in to prevent any opposition. Ye saw how quietly he behaved after I had laid down the law – I’ll never believe the lady is in any risk from him. But the father is a dour chield; depend upon it, he has bred up the young filly on the curb-rein, and that has made the poor thing start off the course. I should not be surprised that he took her abroad, and shut her up in a convent.”
“Hardly,” replied Doctor Gray, “if it be true, as I suspect, that both the father and daughter are of the Jewish persuasion.”
“A Jew!” said Mrs. Gray; “and have I been taking a’ this fyke about a Jew? – I thought she seemed to gie a scunner at the eggs and bacon that Nurse Simson spoke about to her. But I thought Jews had aye had lang beards, and yon man’s face is just like one of our ain folk’s – I have seen the Doctor with a langer beard himsell, when he has not had leisure to shave.”
“That might have been Mr. Moncada’s case,” said Lawford, “for he seemed to have had a hard journey. But the Jews are often very respectable people, Mrs. Gray – they have no territorial property, because the law is against them there, but they have a good hank in the money market – plenty of stock in the funds, Mrs. Gray, and, indeed, I think this poor young woman is better with her ain father, though he be a Jew and a dour chield into the bargain, than she would have been with the loon that wranged her, who is, by your account, Dr. Gray, baith a papist and a rebel. The Jews are well attached to government; they hate the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, as much as any honest man among ourselves.”
“I cannot admire either of the gentlemen,” said Gideon. “But it is but fair to say, that I saw Mr. Moncada when he was highly incensed, and to all appearance not without reason. Now, this other man Tresham, if that be his name, was haughty to me, and I think something careless of the poor young woman, just at the time when he owed her most kindness, and me some thankfulness. I am, therefore, of your opinion, Clerk Lawford, that the Christian is the worse bargain of the two.”
“And you think of taking care of this wean yourself, Doctor? That is what I call the good Samaritan.”
“At cheap cost. Clerk; the child, if it lives, has enough to bring it up decently, and set it out in life, and I can teach it an honourable and useful profession. It will be rather an amusement than a trouble to me, and I want to make some remarks on the childish diseases, which, with God’s blessing, the child must come through under my charge; and since Heaven has sent us no children” —
“Hoot, hoot!” said the Town-Clerk, “you are in ower great hurry now – you have na been sae lang married yet. – Mrs. Gray, dinna let my daffing chase you away – we will be for a dish of tea believe, for the Doctor and I are nae glass-breakers.”
Four years after this conversation took place, the event happened, at the possibility of which the Town-Clerk had hinted; and Mrs. Gray presented her husband with an infant daughter. But good and evil are strangely mingled in this sublunary world. The fulfilment of his anxious longing for posterity was attended with the loss of his simple and kind-hearted wife; one of the most heavy blows which fate could inflict on poor Gideon, and, his house was made desolate even by the event which had promised for months before to add new comforts to its humble roof. Gray felt the shock as men of sense and firmness feel a decided blow, from the effects of which they never hope again fully to raise themselves. He discharged the duties of his profession with the same punctuality as ever, was easy, and even to appearance, cheerful in his intercourse with society; but the sunshine of existence was gone. Every morning he missed the affectionate charges which recommended to him to pay attention to his own health while he was labouring to restore that blessing to his patients. Every evening, as he returned from his weary round, it was without the consciousness of a kind and affectionate reception from one eager to tell, and interested to hear, all the little events of the day. His whistle, which used to arise clear and strong so soon as Middlemas steeple was in view, was now for ever silenced,