To these, the inmates of his household, Oldbuck presented the Earl of Glenallan, who underwent, with meek and subdued civility, the prosing speeches of the honest divine, and the lengthened apologies of Miss Griselda Oldbuck, which her brother in vain endeavoured to abridge. Before the dinner hour, Lord Glenallan requested permission to retire a while to his chamber. Mr. Oldbuck accompanied his guest to the Green Room, which had been hastily prepared for his reception. He looked around with an air of painful recollection.
“I think,” at length he observed, “I think, Mr. Oldbuck, that I have been in this apartment before.”
“Yes, my lord,” answered Oldbuck, “upon occasion of an excursion hither from Knockwinnock—and since we are upon a subject so melancholy, you may perhaps remember whose taste supplied these lines from Chaucer, which now form the motto of the tapestry.”
“I guess”, said the Earl, “though I cannot recollect. She excelled me, indeed, in literary taste and information, as in everything else; and it is one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence, Mr. Oldbuck, that a creature so excellent in mind and body should have been cut off in so miserable a manner, merely from her having formed a fatal attachment to such a wretch as I am.”
Mr. Oldbuck did not attempt an answer to this burst of the grief which lay ever nearest to the heart of his guest, but, pressing Lord Glenallan’s hand with one of his own, and drawing the other across his shaggy eyelashes, as if to brush away a mist that intercepted his sight, he left the Earl at liberty to arrange himself previous to dinner.
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH
—Life, with you,
Glows in the brain and dances in the arteries;
‘Tis like the wine some joyous guest hath quaffed,
That glads the heart and elevates the fancy:
Mine is the poor residuum of the cup,
Vapid, and dull, and tasteless, only soiling,
With its base dregs, the vessel that contains it.
Old Play.
“Now, only think what a man my brother is, Mr. Blattergowl, for a wise man and a learned man, to bring this Yerl into our house without speaking a word to a body! And there’s the distress of thae Mucklebackits—we canna get a fin o’ fish—and we hae nae time to send ower to Fairport for beef, and the mutton’s but new killed—and that silly fliskmahoy, Jenny Rintherout, has taen the exies, and done naething but laugh and greet, the skirl at the tail o’ the guffaw, for twa days successfully—and now we maun ask that strange man, that’s as grand and as grave as the Yerl himsell, to stand at the sideboard! and I canna gang into the kitchen to direct onything, for he’s hovering there, making some pousowdie* for my Lord, for he doesna eat like ither folk neither—And how to sort the strange servant man at dinner time—I am sure, Mr. Blattergowl, a’thegither, it passes my judgment.”
* Pousowdie,—Miscellaneous mess.