“I see your game, Mr. Eddy,” said Johnson: “but you aint going to get the better of me. Be done with that stuff, and come out and let us have a bit of serious talk. You know as well as I do what’s hanging over your head. If you can’t bring him something to stop his mouth, that old cove will—— or give him security as you’re to be married before a certain day. I don’t mind who I speak before. If you’ll not listen to me one time, you’ll have to listen another!” cried Johnson, working himself up into energy. Eddy stood facing the light with the ruddy glow of the flames playing over him, his somewhat worn and pale young face broadened with laughter. The effect of his youth, and perhaps a special impishness of nature, gave him a delight in mischief which the most serious emergency could not destroy.
“I told you,” he said, “this man’s always got his thoughts filled with marrying—especially in Scotland, where you can always do it at a moment’s notice. When he’s not in terror for himself he’s in terror for me.”
“Ye may deliver your soul o’ a’ such terrors,” said Rankin angrily. “There’s naebody will marry ye here but the minister, and him no afore a’ inquiry’s made. There’s an awfu’ deal o’ nonsense prevalent about Scotch marriages. It’s a question I would have no objection to argue oot with ye, if ye prefer that to a mair learned subject,” said the gamekeeper with a disdainful wave of his hand.
“I argue!” cried Johnson; “I’ll not argue; it aint my line. I’m not a parson, nor I aint a lawyer; I’m a plain man, by Jove! I’ve got my own business, and I know how to do it; and this I tell you, Master Eddy, if you aint ready with that cash, and before the month’s out, come by it as ye will——”
“Can’t you hold your d——d tongue! Can’t you see what’s expected of you!” said Eddy in a rapid whisper.—“Rankin,” he said, raising his voice, “I’m ashamed of my man. He hasn’t pluck enough to come up to the scratch. The sight of you has routed him hand and foot. There’s no spirit left in him at all.”
“He never said a truer word,” said Rankin, “than when he said he couldna argue. I’m glad he has that much knowledge o’ himsel’. It was aye a wonder to me that the editor let him in wi’ his disjectae membrae and hotchpotch o’ reasoning. I’m no surprised, for my pairt; but after this exheebition, I’m thinking it would be just as weel to tak’ the cratur away. It’s a’e thing to ha’e the gift o’ sound argument, which is no given to everybody, and it’s anither thing to be ceevil to a man in his ain house. Maybe, however, he thinks because I’m here in a cottage and no able for any exertion, that it’s no me. But I can gi’e him evidence that it’s me.” Rankin put up his hand to a box of papers fastened within his reach by the wall, and dived into it, much as, on the other hand, he dived into the nest of his dogs. “There’s the editor’s ain hand of write addressed to John Rankin, Esquire, which will maybe convince him. No that it matters a brass bodle to me, if a man, when he’s worsted in arguments, forgets his mainners. It’s just of as little consequence as the yelping of thae beasties of dogues.” Rankin took the puppies, who had been stumbling, with little whines and sniffs, over the heights and hollows of his own person, and dropped them one after another into what seemed some invisible pocket, their disappearance acting as a sort of energetic punctuation to his words. The letter, which he had flung towards the stranger, was indeed directed as he had said, and disclosed as it fell on the bed a number of proof-sheets or cuttings, very conclusive to the instructed eye. But Mr. Johnson did not look at them at all. He said, “What have I to do with the old—gentleman’s letters,” substituting that word for “fool,” which he had intended to use, on the compulsion of Eddy’s eye.
“Then, good-bye, Rankin, I’ll soon come back,” said Eddy, shaking the old gamekeeper’s hand; “but, look here, I’ll bring no more of my grand friends to see you from the Universities, if you are going to crumple them up like this.”
Rankin laughed the satisfied laugh of the controversialist who has demolished his adversary. “He hadna a word to say for himself, no’ a word. It’s one thing compiling nonsense out o’ books in a library, and meeting a man face to face. Ye just saw for yoursel’ that the beggar hadna a word to say.”
“Eh me,” said Janet, who had gone out to the door to see the visitors fairly off, “that was an awfu’ like man to be one of your great scholars, as ye call them. I’ve seen the college gentlemen in my young days, and fine lads some o’ them were. I wadna have believed that was a college gentleman if it had been tell’t to me.”
“And what do you know about it?” said Rankin, scornfully. “There’s the evidence that he just would not face me, the moment he heard who I was. I never thought he had the root of the maitter in him. Just a blethering retailer o’ other men’s opinions, no fit to haud his ain in any real controversy. I’m a wee disappointed, for it would have been a grand sensation to have it oot with ane of those Oxford ignoramuses in my ain house; but ye see he could not put out a finger without his authorities at his back.—I think I’ll maybe take a pickle mair broth.”