Christie Johnstone Part 22

But this articulate dancing, compared with the loose, lawless diffluence of motion that goes by that name, gives me (I must confess it) as much more pleasure as articulate singing is superior to tunes played on the voice by a young lady:

Or the clean playing of my mother to the piano-forte splas.h.i.+ng of my daughter; though the latter does attack the instrument as a washerwoman her soapsuds, and the former works like a lady.

Or skating to sliding:

Or English verse to dactyls in English:

Or painting to daubing:

Or preserved strawberries to strawberry jam.

What says Goldsmith of the two styles? "They swam, sprawled, frisked, and languished; but Olivia's foot was as pat to the music as its echo."--_Vicar of Wakefield._

Newhaven dancing aims also at fun; laughter mingles with agility; grotesque yet graceful gestures are flung in, and little inspiring cries flung out.

His lords.h.i.+p soon entered into the spirit of it. Deep in the mystery of the hornpipe, he danced one or two steps Jean and Christie had never seen, but their eyes were instantly on his feet, and they caught in a minute and executed these same steps.

To see Christie Johnstone do the double-shuffle with her arms so saucily akimbo, and her quick elastic foot at an angle of forty-five, was a treat.

The dance became inspiriting, inspiring, intoxicating; and, when the fiddles at last left off, the feet went on another seven bars by the enthusiastic impulse.

And so, alternately spinning yarns, singing songs, dancing, and making fun, and mingling something of heart and brain in all, these benighted creatures made themselves happy instead of peevish, and with a day of stout, vigorous, healthy pleasure, refreshed, indemnified, and warmed themselves for many a day of toil.

Such were the two picnics of Inch Coombe, and these rival cliques, agreeing in nothing else, would have agreed in this: each, if allowed (but we won't allow either) to judge the other, would have p.r.o.nounced the same verdict:

_"Ils ne savent pas vivre ces gens-l'a."_

CHAPTER XI.

Two of our personages left Inch Coombe less happy than when they came to it.

Lord Ipsden encountered Lady Barbara with Mr.----, who had joined her upon the island.

He found them discoursing, as usual, about the shams of the present day, and the sincerity of Cromwell and Mahomet, and he found himself _de trop._

They made him, for the first time, regret the loss of those earnest times when, "to avoid the inconvenience of both addressing the same lady," you could cut a rival's throat at once, and be smiled on by the fair and society.

That a book-maker should blaspheme high civilization, by which alone he exists, and one of whose diseases and flying pains he is, neither surprised nor moved him; but that any human being's actions should be affected by such tempestuous twaddle was ridiculous.

And that the witty Lady Barbara should be caught by this chaff was intolerable; he began to feel bitter.

He had the blessings of the poor, the good opinion of the world; every living creature was prepossessed in his favor but one, and that one despised him; it was a diabolical prejudice; it was the spiteful caprice of his fate.

His heart, for a moment, was in danger of deteriorating. He was miserable; the Devil suggested to him, "make others miserable too;" and he listened to the advice.

There was a fine breeze, but instead of sailing on a wind, as he might have done, he made a series of tacks, and all were ill.

The earnest man first; and Flucker announced the skipper's insanity to the whole town of Newhaven, for, of course, these tacks were all marine solecisms.

The other discontented Picnician was Christie Johnstone. Gatty never came; and this, coupled with five or six days' previous neglect, could no longer pa.s.s unnoticed.

Her gayety failed her before the afternoon was ended; and the last two hours were spent by her alone, watching the water on all sides for him.

At last, long after the departure of his lords.h.i.+p's yacht, the Newhaven boat sailed from Inch Coombe with the wedding party. There was now a strong breeze, and the water every now and then came on board. So the men set the foresail with two reefs, and drew the mainsail over the women; and there, as they huddled together in the dark, Jean Carnie discovered that our gay story-teller's eyes were wet with tears.

Jean said nothing; she embraced her; and made them flow faster.

But, when they came alongside the pier, Jean, who was the first to get her head from under the sail, whipped it back again and said to Christie:

"Here he is, Christie; dinna speak till him."

And sure enough there was, in the twilight, with a pale face and an uneasy look--Mr. Charles Gatty!

He peered timidly into the boat, and, when he saw Christie, an "Ah!"

that seemed to mean twenty different things at once, burst from his bosom. He held out his arm to a.s.sist her.

She cast on him one glance of mute reproach, and, placing her foot on the boat's gunwale, sprang like an antelope upon the pier, without accepting his a.s.sistance.

Before going further, we must go back for this boy, and conduct him from where we left him up to the present point.

The moment he found himself alone with Jean Carnie, in his own house, he began to tell her what trouble he was in; how his mother had convinced him of his imprudence in falling in love with Christie Johnstone; and how she insisted on a connection being broken off which had given him his first glimpse of heaven upon earth, and was contrary to common sense.

Jean heard him out, and then, with the air of a lunatic-asylum keeper to a rhodomontading patient, told him "he was one fool, and his mother was another." First she took him up on the score of prudence.

"You," said she, "are a beggarly painter, without a rap; Christie has houses, boats, nets, and money; you are in debt; she lays by money every week. It is not prudent on her part to take up with you--the better your bargain, my lad."

Under the head of common sense, which she maintained was all on the same side of the question, she calmly inquired:

"How could an old woman of sixty be competent to judge how far human happiness depends on love, when she has no experience of that pa.s.sion, and the reminiscences of her youth have become dim and dark? You might as well set a judge in court, that has forgotten the law--common sense,"

said she, "the old wife is sixty, and you are twenty--what can she do for you the forty years you may reckon to outlive her? Who is to keep you through those weary years but the wife of your own choice, not your mother's? You English does na read the Bible, or ye'd ken that a lad is to 'leave his father and mother, and cleave until his wife,'" added she; then with great contempt she repeated, "common sense, indeed! ye're fou wi' your common sense; ye hae the name o' 't pat eneuch--but there's na muckle o' that mairchandise in your harns."

Gatty was astonished. What! was there really common sense on the side of bliss? and when Jean told him to join her party at Inch Coombe, or never look her in the face again, scales seemed to fall from his eyes; and, with a heart that turned in a moment from lead to a feather, he vowed he would be at Inch Coombe.

He then begged Jean on no account to tell Christie the struggle he had been subjected to, since his scruples were now entirely conquered.

Jean acquiesced at once, and said: "Indeed, she would be very sorry to give the la.s.s that muckle pain."

She hinted, moreover, that her neebor's spirit was so high, she was quite capable of breaking with him at once upon such an intimation; and she, Jean, was "nae mischief-maker."

In the energy of his grat.i.tude, he kissed this dark-browed beauty, professing to see in her a sister.

And she made no resistance to this way of showing grat.i.tude, but muttered between her teeth, "He's just a bairn!"

And so she went about her business.

On her retreat, his mother returned to him, and, with a sad air, hoped nothing that that rude girl had said had weakened his filial duty.