{Footnote 7: A lea or common near Edinburgh.}
One evening, after having finished his task of digging (for digging was now become a task), he was going to take a walk to Duddingstone lake, when Colin, who was at the same instant setting out for the Links, roughly insisted upon Forester’s accompanying him. Our hero, who was never much disposed to yield to the taste of others, positively refused the gardener’s son, with some imprudent expressions of contempt. From this moment Colin became his enemy, and, by a thousand malicious devices, contrived to show his vulgar hatred.
Forester now, to his great surprise, discovered that hatred could exist in a cottage. Female vanity, he likewise presently perceived, was not confined to the precincts of a ball-room; he found that Miss M’Evoy spent every leisure moment in the contemplation of her own coarse image in a fractured looking-glass. He once ventured to express his dislike of a many-coloured plaid in which Miss M’Evoy had arrayed herself for a dance; and the fury of her looks, and the loud-toned vulgarity of her conceit, were strongly contrasted with the recollection of Flora Campbell’s gentle manners and sweetness of temper. The painted flower-pot was present to his imagination, and he turned from the lady who stood before him with an air of disgust, which he had neither the wish nor the power to conceal. The consequences of offending this high-spirited damsel our hero had not sufficiently considered: the brother and sister, who seldom agreed in any thing else, now agreed, though from different motives, in an eager desire to torment Forester. Whenever he entered the cottage, either to rest himself, or to partake of those “savoury messes, which the neat-handed Phillis dresses,” he was received with sullen silence, or with taunting reproach. The old gardener, stupid as he was, Forester thought an agreeable companion, compared with his insolent son and his vixen daughter. The happiest hours of the day, to our hero, were those which he spent at his work; his affections, repressed and disappointed, became a source of misery to him.
“Is there nothing in this world to which I can attach myself?” said Forester, as he one day leaned upon his spade in a melancholy mood. “Must I spend my life in the midst of absurd altercations? Is it for this that I have a heart and an understanding? No one here comprehends one word I say—I am an object of contempt and hatred, whilst my soul is formed for the most benevolent feelings, and capable of the most extensive views. And of what service am I to my fellow-creatures? Even this stupid gardener, even a common labourer, is as useful to society as I am. Compared with Henry Campbell, what am I? Oh, Henry!—Flora!—could you see me at this instant, you would pity me.”
But the fear of being an object of pity wakened Forester’s pride; and though he felt that he was unhappy, he could not bear to acknowledge that he had mistaken the road to happiness. His imaginary picture of rural felicity was not, to be sure, realized; but he resolved to bear his disappointment with fortitude, to fulfil his engagements with his master, the gardener, and then to seek some other more eligible situation. In the meantime, his benevolence tried to expand itself upon the only individual in this family who treated him tolerably well: he grew fond of the old gardener, because there was nothing else near him to which he could attach himself, not even a dog or a cat. The old man, whose temper was not quite so enthusiastical as Forester’s, looked upon him as an industrious simple young man, above the usual class of servants, and rather wished to keep him in his service, because he gave him less than the current wages. Forester, after his late reflections upon digging, began to think, that, by applying his understanding to the business of gardening, he might perhaps make some discoveries, which should excite his master’s everlasting gratitude, and immortalize his own name. He pledged a shirt and a pair of stockings at a poor bookseller’s stall, for some volumes upon gardening; and these, in spite of the ridicule of Colin and Miss M’Evoy, he studied usually at his meals. He at length met with an account of some experiments upon fruit-trees, which he thought would infallibly make the gardener’s fortune.
“Did you not tell me,” said Forester to the gardener, “that cherries were sometimes sold very high in Edinburgh?”
“Five a penny,” said the gardener; and he wished, from the bottom of his heart, that he had a thousand cherry-trees, but he possessed only one.
He was considerably alarmed, when Forester proposed to him, as the certain means of making his fortune, to strip the bark off this cherry-tree, assuring him, that a similar experiment had been tried and had succeeded; that his cherry-tree would bear twice as many cherries, if he would only strip the bark from it. “Let me try one branch for an experiment—I will try one branch!”
But the gardener peremptorily forbade all experiments, and, shutting Forester’s book, bade him leave such nonsense, and mind his business.
Provoked by this instance of tyrannical ignorance, Forester forgot his character of a servant boy, and at length called his master an obstinate fool.