Perhaps, had he not, immediately after Walter’s marriage, been occupied with the legal arrangement consequent to an accepted proposal from Milrookit of Dirdumwhamle, to make Miss Meg his third wife, this apprehension might have hardened into animosity, and been exasperated to aversion; but the cares and affairs of that business came, as it were, in aid of the father in his nature, and while they seemingly served to excuse his gradually abridged intercourse with Charles and Isabella, they prevented such an incurable induration of his heart from taking place towards them, as the feelings at work within him had an undoubted tendency to produce. We shall not, therefore, dwell on the innumerable little incidents arising out of his estrangement, by which the happiness of that ill-fated pair was deprived of so much of its best essence,—contentment,—and their lives, with the endearing promise of a family, embittered by anxieties of which it would be as difficult to describe the importance, as to give each of them an appropriate name.
In the meantime, the marriage of Miss Meg was consummated, and we have every disposition to detail the rites and the revels, but they were all managed in a spirit so much more moderate than Walter’s wedding, that the feast would seem made up but of the cold bake-meats of the former banquet. Indeed, Mr. Milrookit, the bridegroom, being, as Leddy Grippy called him, a waster of wives, having had two before, and who knows how many more he may have contemplated to have, it would not have been reasonable to expect that he should allow such a free-handed junketing as took place on that occasion. Besides this, the dowry with Grippy’s daughter was not quite so liberal as he had expected; for when the old man was stipulating for her jointure, he gave him a gentle hint not to expect too much.
‘Two hundred pounds a-year, Mr. Milrookit,’ said Grippy, ‘is a bare eneugh sufficiency for my dochter; but I’ll no be overly extortionate, sin it’s no in my power, even noo, to gie you meikle in hand, and I would na lead you to expek any great deal hereafter, for ye ken it has cost me a world o’ pains and ettling to gather the needful to redeem the Kittlestonheugh, the whilk maun ay gang in the male line; but failing my three sons and their heirs, the entail gangs to the heirs-general o’ Meg, so that ye hae a’ to look in that airt; that, ye maun alloo, is worth something. Howsever, I dinna objek to the two hundred pounds; but I would like an ye could throw a bit fifty til’t, just as a cast o’ the hand to mak lucky measure.’
‘I would na begrudge that, Grippy,’ replied the gausey widower of Dirdumwhamle; ‘but ye ken I hae a sma’ family: the first Mrs. Milrookit brought me sax sons, and the second had four, wi’ five dochters. It’s true that the bairns o’ the last clecking are to be provided for by their mother’s uncle, the auld General wi’ the gout at Lon’on; but my first family are dependent on mysel’, for, like your Charlie, I made a calf-love marriage, and my father was na sae kind as ye hae been to him, for he put a’ past me that he could, and had he no deet amang hands in one o’ his scrieds wi’ the Lairds o’ Kilpatrick, I’m sure I canna think what would hae come o’ me and my first wife. So you see, Grippy’—
‘I wis, Dirdumwhamle,’ interrupted the old man, ‘that ye would either ca’ me by name or Kittlestonheugh, for the Grippy’s but a pendicle o’ the family property; and though, by reason o’ the castle being ta’en down when my grandfather took a wadset on’t frae the public, we are obligated to live here in this house that was on the land when I made a conquest o’t again, yet a’ gangs noo by the ancient name o’ Kittlestonheugh, and a dochter of the Walkinshaws o’ the same is a match for the best laird in the shire, though she had na ither tocher than her snood and cockernony.’
‘Weel, Kittlestonheugh,’ replied Dirdumwhamle, ‘I’ll e’en mak it better than the twa hunder and fifty—I’ll make it whole three hunder, if ye’ll get a paction o’ consent and conneevance wi’ your auld son Charles, to pay to Miss Meg, or to the offspring o’ my marriage wi’ her, a yearly soom during his liferent in the property, you yoursel’ undertaking in your lifetime to be as good. I’m sure that’s baith fair and a very great liberality on my side.’
Claud received this proposal with a convulsive gurgle of the heart’s blood. It seemed to him, that, on every occasion, the wrong which he had done Charles was to be brought in the most offensive form before him, and he sat for the space of two or three minutes without making any reply; at last he said,—
‘Mr. Milrookit, I ne’er rue’t any thing in my life but the consequence of twa-three het words that ance passed between me and my gudefather Plealands anent our properties; and I hae lived to repent my obduracy. For this cause I’ll say nae mair about an augmentation of the proposed jointure, but just get my dochter to put up wi’ the two hundred pounds, hoping that hereafter, an ye can mak it better, she’ll be none the waur of her father’s confidence in you on this occasion.’
Thus was Miss Meg disposed of, and thus did the act of injustice which was done to one child operate, through the mazy feelings of the father’s conscious spirit, to deter him, even in the midst of such sordid bargaining, not only from venturing to insist on his own terms, but even from entertaining a proposal which had for its object a much more liberal provision for his daughter than he had any reason, under all the circumstances, to expect.