Nor did they love him less. You know that his house was left to him, and that his “poor people” served him until his death—or theirs. Hear now how they served.
“The butler,” says Lockhart, visiting Abbotsford in 1827, “instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of the house, at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman-in-ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done before. Their good conduct had given every one of them a new elevation in his own mind; and yet their demeanour had gained, in place of losing, in simple humility of observance. The great loss was that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the estate being all but a fragment in the hands of the trustees and their agent) there was now no occupation here. The cottage which his taste had converted into a loveable retreat had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was living a dozen miles off, on the farm of a relation in the Vale of Yarrow. Every week, however, he came down to have a ramble with Sir Walter over their old haunts, to hear how the pecuniary atmosphere was darkening or brightening, and to read, in every face at Abbotsford, that it could never be itself again until circumstances should permit his re-establishment at Kaeside.
“All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had a preciously soothing influence on the mind of Scott, who may be said to have lived upon love. No man cared less about popular admiration and applause; but for the least chill on the affection of any near and dear to him, he had the sensitiveness of a maiden. I cannot forget, in particular, how his eyes sparkled when he first pointed out to me Peter Mathieson guiding the plough on the haugh. ‘Egad,’ said he, ‘auld Pepe’ (this was the children’s name for their good friend), ‘auld Pepe’s whistling at his darg. The honest fellow said a yoking in a deep field would do baith him and the blackies good. If things get round with me, easy shall be Pepe’s cushion.’ ”
You see there is not the least question about striking for wages on the part of Sir Walter’s servants. The law of supply and demand is not consulted, nor are their wages determined by the great principle of competition—so rustic and absurd are they; not but that they take it on them sometimes to be masters instead of servants:—
“March 21.—Wrote till twelve, then out upon the heights, and faced the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not with me; he would have obliged me to keep the sheltered ground.”[17]
You are well past all that kind of thing, you think, and know better how to settle the dispute between Capital and Labour.
“What has that to do with domestic servants?” do you ask? You think a house with a tall chimney, and two or three hundred servants in it, is not properly a house at all; that the sacred words, Domus, Duomo, cannot be applied to it; and that Giotto would have refused to build a Buzzing Tower, by way of belfry, in Lancashire?
Well, perhaps you are right. If you are merely unlucky Williams—borrowing colossal planes—instead of true servants, it may well be that Pepe’s own whistling at his darg must be very impossible for you, only manufactured whistling any more possible. Which are you? Which will you be?
I am afraid there is little doubt which you are;—but there is no doubt whatever which you would like to be, whether you know your own minds or not. You will never whistle at your dargs more, unless you are serving masters whom you can love. You may shorten your hours of labour as much as you please;—no minute of them will be merry, till you are serving truly: that is to say, until the bond of constant relationship—service to death—is again established between your masters and you. It has been broken by their sin, but may yet be recovered by your virtue. All the best of you cling to the least remnant or shadow of it. I heard but the other day of a foreman, in a large house of business, discharged at a week’s warning on account of depression in trade,—who thereupon went to one of the partners, and showed him a letter which he had received a year before, offering him a situation with an increase of his salary by more than a third; which offer he had refused without so much as telling his masters of its being made to him, that he might stay in the old house. He was a Scotchman—and I am glad to tell the story of his fidelity with that of Pepe and Tom Purdie. I know not how it may be in the south; but I know that in Scotland, and the northern Border, there still remains something of the feeling which fastened the old French word ‘loial’ among the dearest and sweetest of their familiar speech; and that there are some souls yet among them, who, alike in labour or in rest, abide in, or will depart to, the Land of the Leal.
“Sire, moult me plaist vostre escole