R. C.
PAY YOUR DEBT!
Jock Colquhoun was a clever journeyman painter of the famous Old Town of Edinburgh, very much given, unfortunately, to Saturday evening potations, which was the cause why he never found himself, poor fellow, any richer one Monday than another, and generally lived during the rest of the week in, to say the least of it, a very desultory manner. Jock was a long slip of a lad, with a bright intelligent face and a wofully battered hat, and the whole man of him was encased, from neck to heel, in one glazed suit—I was going to say, of clothes, but I should rather say, of oil-paint; for, to tell the truth, his attire consisted rather more of the one material than the other. He was universally reputed as a very clever workman; but, then, every body said, what matters it that he can make five shillings a-week more than any of his fellow-journeymen, if he is sure every Saturday, when he gets his wages, to go upon the scuff, and so pass the half of the week in spending, not in gaining? Jock, however, had many good points about him; and it was, perhaps, less owing to his own dispositions than to the influence of evil company, that he got into such bad habits. He was such a good fellow that he would at any time part his money with an old crony out of bread, or treat to a can or a bottle any working brother who had got through his money a little before him, and who happened to feel rather dry upon some sunshiny Wednesday. In his profession he was matchless at all superior kinds of work. If his employers had any thing to do that required an extraordinary degree of taste or dexterity, Jock was set to it, and he invariably managed it (beer and whisky aside) to their entire satisfaction. Jock might have long ago been foreman to his masters: nay, he might have set up as a general artist, and, with perseverance equal to his talent, would have been sure to do well. But gill-stoups were his lions in the way, and the deceitfulness of drink had beset him; and Jock, from year to year, was just the same glazed and battered, but withal rather spruce-looking fellow, as ever.
It would have been altogether impossible for any such man as Jock to carry on the war, if he had not had one howff,[4] above all others, where he enjoyed a little credit. This was an eating-house in the Canongate, kept by one Luckie Wishart, a decent widow of about forty, with four or five children, who had been pleased to cast an eye of particular favour upon the shining exterior of our hero. A pot sable upon a ground argent pointed out this house to the passers by, even if they had not been informed of its character by the savoury steam which always proceeded from it between the hours of one and five P. M., and certain spectral and unfinished pies which ran in a row along the sole of her little window, level with the street, as well as a larger display of the same article on a board half way down her somewhat steep and whitewashed stair. Luckie Wishart also sold liquors; but she was far too respectable a person to let Jock spend his wages at one bouse in her house. She always, as she said, shanked him off, whenever he came there of a Saturday night, and it was only when his pockets were empty, and no provisions to be had for the working days of the week, that he resorted to her. Generally about the Tuesdays, Jock came briskly down into her culinary Tartarus, quite sobered and hungry, sending his voice briskly along the passage before him, as if defending himself by anticipation from a shower of reproaches which he knew she would bestow upon him:—“Nothing of the kind,” he would cry; “nothing of the kind—all a mistake—’pon my honour.” There was generally, it may be supposed, fully as much scolding and railing as he could have anticipated; but the end of the jest always was, that Jock got snug into some corner of Luckie’s own particular den, where he was regaled with a plate of something or other, garnished always with a few last words of rebuke from the lady, like the droppings after a thunderstorm, which he always contrived, however, to stomach with his beef, without manifesting any very great degree of irritation. There is something ominous in the act of drawing in one’s stool at the fireside of a comfortable widow. It is apt to make a young man feel rather ticklish, even although he may never have thought of her before, except as a good cook. So it was with Jock, and the idea might have been fatal to his visits to Luckie Wishart’s (for, to speak the truth, she was no great beauty), if dire hunger, which tames lions, had not absolutely compelled him to continue the practice. In general, when Jock came in with his week’s gains, he flung a few shillings upon the dresser, as part payment of what he had ate and drank during the past few days, reserving the rest for the bouse-royal. But, notwithstanding all these occasional deposits to account, his score got always the longer the longer, until it at last went fairly off at the bottom of a cupboard door, and had to be “brought forward” on the end of a chest of drawers.
“That’s a shocking bad hat you’ve got,” said Luckie to him one day, without any idea that she was anticipating a favourite English phrase by some years. “Of course, there’s nae chance of such a drucken blackguard as you ever being able to buy a new ane. But what wad you say, John, if I were to gie ye ane mysel’?”
“I would say, much oblige t’ye, ma’am,” answered Jock, now for the first time in his life called by his proper Christian name.
“Here is one, then,” said the widow, and at the same time produced a decent-looking chapeau, which, she said, had belonged to him that was away—meaning her late husband—and had only been three times on his head at the kirk, when, puir man, he was carried without it to the kirk-yard.
Jock accepted the hat with great thankfulness, and made his old one skimmer into Luckie’s fire, where, it is needless to say, it was speedily roasted in its own grease.
“Dear sake, Jock, man,” said Mrs Wishart, some days afterwards, “what kind o’ a landlady hae ye got at hame? She maun be nae hand at the shirts, I reckon; for fient a bit can ane ken ye on a Monday frae what ye are on a Saturday. Ye may be as touzly as ye like i’ the outside o’ your claes, but I wad aye like to see a man decent-like next the skin.”
“Deed, mistress,” said Jock, “to let ye into a secret, I have nae great stock o’ linen, and whiles Mrs Ormiston’s a wee hurried in getting a shirt ready for me. I’m a gude deal between the hand and the mouth in that respect.”