Lady Jean's Son. A novel

Front matter

LADY JEAN'S SON A Uniform with " Lady Jean's Son," Crown 8vo, Art Linen, Gilt Top, price 6/- each. THE INN BY THE SHORE. By Florence Warden, Author of " The House on the Marsh," "Pretty Miss Smith," " A Wilful Ward," " A Perfect Fool," etc. (Fourth Edition.) THE POWER OF THE DOG. By Rowland Grey, Author of " In Sunny Switzerland," "By Virtue of His Office," " Lindenblumen," " Chris." (Second Edition.) BLACK DIAMONDS. (Third Edition.) By Maurus Jokai, Author of '" Eyes like the Sea," " Dr. Dumany's Wife," "Midst the Wild Carpathians," "In Love with the Czarina. " Translated into English by Frances A. Gerard, Author of "Some Irish Beauties," etc. THE GREEN BOOK; or, FREEDOM UNDER THE SNOW. (Authorised Edition.) By Maurus J<5kai, Author of ' ' Black Diamonds, " etc. Translated into English by Mrs. Ellen Waugh.

With Portrait ofDr.JSkai. JUD Y, A JIL T. By M RS. Conney, Author of "A Lady Housebreaker," " Pegg's Perversity," " Gold for Dross," "A Line of her Own," etc. LAD Y JEAN'S SON. By Sarah Tytler, Author of " Lady Jean's Vagaries" " Citoyenne Jacqueline," "St. Mungo 's City," etc. COLOUR SERGEANT No. I COMPANY. By Mrs. Leith Adams, Author of " Bonnie Kate," " Louis Draycoll," " The Peyton Romance," " Geoffrey Stirling? etc. London : Jarrold & Sons io and ii Warwick Lane E.C. And of all Booksellers Tady Jean's Son A NOVEL BY Sarah Tytler author of "Lady Jean's Vagaries," " Citoyenne Jacqueline," " St. Mungo's City," etc. sans PEUR. ET SANS REPROCHE LONDON: JARROLD & SONS io and ii warwick lane e.c. all rights reserved " Four times five hours, Mrs. Harriet, did I spend in the Session House upon the Douglas Cause, and heard them speak about it and about it, and prove a thing till all men doubt it !

There's nothing else spoke of in Town." Mrs. Cockburn's " Letters." CONTENTS. CHAPTER pAGE I. "As I gaed up the Canongate" ... ,., 7 II. In the Parliament House ... ... ig III. The Pursuer and the Defender ... ... 41 IV. Nanzie Boyd's III News ... ... 65 V. Lady Teviotdale's Drum ... ... ... 91 VI. The Supper in Blair's Close ... ... 105 VII. A Visit to Davie Elphinstone's Chambers... 129 VIII. Mother and Son ... ... ... 138 IX. The Verdict ... ... ... ... 161 X. The Mob's Amendment ... ... ... 176 XL The Old Assembly Rooms and their Company 186 XII. Long Farewells ... ... ... ... 199 XIII. The Suit that was Destined to Fail ... 217 XIV. The Suit that Prospered ... ... ... 230 XV. The Tide Turns : the Announcement at the Cross ... ... ... ... ... 242 XVI. Lady Marget's Bond ... ... ... 262 XVII. "Douglas, Douglas, Tender and True" ...

Chapter I

"AS I GAED up the canongate." The Canongate of Edinburgh was lying in the full sunshine of a summer morning, which brought out in bold relief its high lights and deep shadows, its stateliness and its squalor. In its promiscuous and often incongruous life and movement, there figured freely lords and ladies ; douce burghers and their thrifty spouses ; learned lawyers and divines ; caddies and fishwives ; members of the City Guard, in their cocked hats — coats, waistcoats, and breeches of a " muddy-coloured red," with their gruesome Lochaber axes ; incorrigible vagrants and still more incorrigible randies — now a stray Englishman bewildered and scandalized, now a wild Highlander equally amazed and disgusted, but from an entirely different point of view. The wheeled vehicles ranged from family coaches, though these were comparatively rare, to carrier's carts, cadger's carts, carts of peat, and salt barrows.

The quadrupeds ran from a race-horse or a dragoon's charger, to a yelping cur or a brood sow — sows affecting the streets of Edinburgh to a remarkable extent at this time. The garbage — who shall sum up the garbage discharged at night fall on the " plain stanes " and the causeway, and only partially cleared away in the morning, unless in the words which a modern poet applied to a very different scene — " Tin kettles, rotten eggs, Cabbage stalks, and wooden legs "? For the time referred to was prior to the memor able arrival of the great Dr. Johnson at the White Horse in the High Street. The fine old palace of Holyrood was destitute of the shadow of royalty. The Duke and Duchess of York's visit was a thing of the past. Even poor Prince Charlie's romantic, doomed Court, which had been held for a few delirious weeks under the muttered thunder of the Castle guns, had vanished like their smoke, though that was an alarming episode which was comparatively of yesterday.

But if royalty was gone over the borders and was never again to dwell, for a permanency, in Holyrood or the Castle, at Scone or at Stirling, Falkland or Linlithgow ; if there were to be no more magnificent pageants to and from the Parlia ment House, yet the old nobility and gentry had not unanimously followed the King and Parliament. There were still great mansions tenanted by their old owners, rubbing shoulders with little shops in tall " lands," containing every kind of sample of the population — from the cobbler or the tailor drawing out his thread on the first floor, to the laird of gentle bluid, the doctor, or the writer, with their families, on the second and third, the trades man on the fourth, the mechanic, or the semp stress, or the penniless gentlewoman on the fifth and sixth. These lands were like blocks of buildings borrowed, with their inhabitants, from old Paris.

There was still a cluster of duchesses and countesses — Douglas, Queensberry, Dunbar, Eglin ton, Teviotdale, Morton — whose town-houses were in the Canongate. As for the narrow, black browed closes, so narrow in some instances that the light of day was but dimly seen in them, and neighbourly hands could have been stretched across in neighbourly greeting, they still bore the names of many a highly honourable baron, knight, bishop, and judge, and the tenements in them con tinued to be crammed with sprigs of quality and their kindred, or respectable merchants and their retainers. It was not an Edinburgh greedy of elbow-room, or of breathing space ; not a dainty or fastidious Edin burgh, according to nineteenth-century notions ; but it was a marvellously picturesque Edinburgh, full of strong characters, strange stories, wit, wisdom, prejudice, and passion.

Two girls of birth and position were wending their way up the Canongate, in the direction of the High Street. They should have been in their sedan-chairs, if not in the coach which one of them could claim as her father's, any intelligent observer might suggest, and probably they would have been if they had been older, and matrons, not maidens. Yet even matrons were not too high-minded and squeamish to traverse, on foot, the homely, encumbered, grand old streets, with their very mixed company, whenever business or pleasure called them forth. The ladies of Edin burgh belonging to that generation were, from youth to age, hardy, independent to daring, not too sensitive to the roughness and slatternliness, with its reverse of old-fashioned dignity and mag nificence, among which they had been bred.

But n at the core they were as honest-hearted and pure-minded as the most refined of their suc cessors. The two young ladies were not unattended in their walk. They were followed, at a discreet distance, by an elderly waiting-gentlewoman, Lady Teviotdale's maid, and at two or three paces farther off still, as in a sliding scale of degree, by a staid manservant. The girls were dressed in the universal fashion of their day, with hoops, trained skirts — drawn through the pocket-holes for walking, and open in front, in order to show petticoats trimmed with gold or silver lace — and high-heeled shoes. They wore muslin fichus, and their powdered hair was surmounted both by round-eared mob-caps and by straw hats. But the hats, with flowing ribands to mix with the flowing hair and match the gowns, were different.

In the one case, the hat was so small as to require to be poised with care above the softly falling Mechlin lace border ; and in the other, it was extravagantly large, forming a flapping shield to the youthful face within it. This huge hat was surmounted by a huge plume of feathers, such as has not been seen, even as part of the decorations of a hearse, in recent years. But the wearer carried her head so high, and with such natural nobility, that it could bear even the absurd bunch of tall, nodding feathers, without fatal injury to her general appearance. The girls did not present the contrast of tall and slender, short and plump, dark and fair. They were both about the middle height, though the one looked inches taller than the other, because of that majestic trick of bearing, which, whether it is found in man or woman, is calculated to deceive the spectator.

The other girl, who looked less than she was, had a willowy grace rather than a stately erectness of figure. Both girls were blondes. Their long curls were a light brown, and had been in childhood such "lint white locks," as had earned for their small owners the sobriquet of " lint tops." But the complexion, features, and eyes were totally un like. The complexion of the girl who carried herself with a frank consciousness of her claims, had been carefully preserved in its pure, vivid red and white. Her nose was aquiline, while there was more squareness in her forehead, her mouth, with its white, glancing teeth, and her chin, than is usually found with an aquiline nose. The eyes were steel-blue, with eyebrows and eyelashes darker than the hair. The other girl's complexion would have been very delicate, like that of the palest wild blush rose, which yet, by dint of its home in the June hedgerow, is, in its sweet faintness of hue, as full of breezy freshness and vigorous health as the ruddiest flower of the field or garden.

But sun and wind, even in the heart of the old town, had done to the human blossom what they refrain from doing to the hedge beauty — they had tanned her a little, and freckled her still more, whenever they had an opportunity. This was an injury in carping eyes, which was rendered more con spicuous and objectionable by the thinness of the face thus unceremoniously treated. The nose was small and fine, but of no particular order. The mouth had grave curves for so young a mouth, and had a habit of falling into a pout — not of temper, but of anxious consideration — an expres sion almost comically contradicted by the exceed ing girlishness of the little, peaked chin. The eyebrows and eyelashes were lighter in tint than the hair, without approaching to the insipid lightness which, with its corresponding defect of sight, used to be termed derisively " blind-fairness."

Brows and lashes matched here the hazel of the eyes. They were not so well defined and expressive as those of the other girl, but with the eyes they were softer and more tender. The one girl was the more beautiful and the more striking in her beauty ; the other was the lovelier and the more winning in her loveliness. The more beautiful girl was Lady "Marget" Elliot, only daughter of the Earl and Countess of Teviot dale ; the lovelier was Jeanie Erskine, eldest daughter of Mr. Simon Erskine, of the Hammer men's Close, who, although he had not attained to any great success in his profession, and was fain to act as clerk to the Lord Chief Justice, had been bred to the bar, and was sib to the Buchan Erskines. Those same Erskines, like the rival houses of Cockburn and Clarke, had already begun to supply to Edinburgh giants of wisdom and wit, who held the foremost place in their generation, whose full-flavoured memories linger yet among the glories of the old capital.

Though the girls' fortunes and prospects were widely contrasted, there was no idea of any radical inequality of rank between them. They were alike gently born and bred, and they had been neighbours, companions, and, latterly, intimate friends, whenever the Teviotdale family forsook the country house of Teviotside in Roxburghshire and came to occupy their town house in the Canongate, not very many yards higher up than the entrance to the Hammermen's Close. In the extreme simplicity which alternated with the elaborate state of the period, even a Lady Marget could traverse that little bit of street in deshabille and without an escort. This was when she flew to her " maiden cummer " and confidante, to give her in person the details of the last night's assembly at which Jeanie had not been present ; to ask her opinion of a new sacque or riding habit ; above all, to sound her on the merits and demerits of the rival suitors already buzzing about the sole daughter of the house of Teviotdale.

Not being entirely self-engrossed, and happening to possess both a kind heart and a lively inquiring mind, Lady Marget also sought to glean from her friend (though with greater difficulty, for Jeanie Erskine was more reserved and chary in her communications) the precise state of her "affair." Was there any chance of Jeanie's father changing his mind with regard to the suit of a certain young gentleman whom it was not necessary for them to mention by name ? If not, had Jeanie made up her mind to shut herself up like a nun for his sake ? Or did she mean to become the mere bondslave of the wild troop of younger brothers and sisters, for whom, in conjunction with her father, she had already sacrificed much ? Lady Marget was in the act of dragging Jeanie, half-reluctant, half-eager, to be present at a great public spectacle in which both girls were deeply interested.

They were bound for the Parliament House where a famous trial was being held, the Tichborne trial of its day, with which the whole country was ringing. It divided chief friends, it split every class into factions, and was the cause of more than one popular tumult which assumed alarming proportions. It had lasted for the greater part of this month of July. Evidence had been taken for twenty-one days. Then, for five out of the remaining ten days, no less than fifteen sagacious and astute law-lords had pondered over and sifted the evidence presented to them. The trial turned upon the question whether " Lady Jean," sister of the Duke of Douglas, and her husband, Mr. Drummond, were really the parents of twin sons, as the couple had represented themselves to be. The alternative suggested by their opponents was that the pair had, during their stay in France, procured two infants from French peasants, and that these infants Lady Jean and Mr. Drummond had attempted to pass off as their own.

The supposed object of the deception was to impose the elder of the two children on the Duke of Douglas as the heir to the great Douglas estates. The case was tried before the Court of Session, and subsequently before the House of Lords. Jeanie Erskine did not yield even to Lady Marget in her burning interest in the case ; neither was Jeanie without the active curiosity of her sex ; but she was better accustomed to restrain her impulses and control her feelings, and she was still doubtful of more than one point that had to do with their expedition. "Are you certain, my lady, your mother is informed and approves of our going to the House?" Jeanie put the question anxiously to her companion. " Quite sure, Jeanie," Lady Marget answered confidently ; " I would not go without telling her, even though I thought she would conter me, which she seldom does, for my mother and I understand each other."

Jeanie knew that this was perfectly true. The Countess was a somewhat awful dame — stiff starched, and despotic. Most people — including her fiery old Earl, who had a lame knee from a wound incurred in his youth in the wars of " Hie Germanie," and from a choleric temper exasperated by the infirmity — deferred more or less to my lady But her daughter had no more fear of her mother B than of her father ; indeed, she was aware that, in the midst of their stormiest mood, she was as the apple of their eye. "You ken we have only to enter the door of the Parliament House to find more escorts than we want, and the best of places sought out for us. We are not singular in our tastes ; the court is crowded to the door day after day, there is no want of company. We shall be supported by gentle and simple, the pick of the town, both ladies and gentlemen.

I dare say Lady Teviot dale will be there with the rest as the day wears on, but she has always so much to settle before she goes out, that we might lose the best of the proceedings if we waited for her. And if it came to a decision, though I do not expect that yet, it would be a fell-like thing for the decree to be given and neither me nor you there, Jeanie. We are the most concerned of all the women in braid Scotland, far more than their Graces of Douglas and Queensberry, for all the steer they make."

Chapter II. In The Parliament House

LADY MARGET and Jeanie Erskine had passed through the Nether Bow and reached the High Street, where St. Giles's Saint's Crown was a reproach or a consolation, as the gazer might take it, to its neighbour opposite — the grim old Tol booth, with its turrets and grated windows. The Luckenbooths, with their stalls and promiscuous merchandise encumbering the width of the street, offered no attraction to the girls. They crossed by a side passage into the Parliament Square, which, early in the day as it was, had already far more than its ordinary loungers. These con sisted of strolling barristers, come out to take a turn and have a chat, walking in their wigs instead of their three-cornered hats, with their clasped hands and ruffled wrists under their professional black gowns, like so many solemn rooks or mis chievous jackdaws.

There were also country clients of weight, both literally and figuratively, in their riding-coats and long boots, hurrying up to learn the fortunes of their suits. There were lawyers' clerks, with their insignia of office, in the shape of blue bags stuffed with papers. There were poor pleaders, like the immortal " Peter Peebles," clutching their pleas as they shambled along, artlessly ready to accost passers by and pour forth their piteous tales. There were witnesses of both sexes, excited and bois terous, or timid and trembling, marshalled by special officials, that they might avail themselves of the accommodation and seclusion provided for them. To-day these formed but a fraction of the company, which was, even before noon, increased by many a public-spirited shopkeeper, journey man-baker and craftsman, truant schoolboy from the High School, serving-man and serving-woman of masters and mistresses prevented from joining the more privileged and select crowd within, who sent their retainers to gather the tidings of how the day was going, which drifted out from the inner tribunal to the waiting throng without.

As Lady Marget had predicted, she and Jeanie Erskine found no difficulty in making their way. Lady Marget's aristocratic presence and her retinue, limited as it was, caused a passage to be opened for the girls. As they went through, they could catch the comments of the bystanders directed at the new arrivals, but always reverting to the centre of interest in the assembly. " A pair o' braw young leddies. They'll be friends of the t'ane or the t'ither in the business, the pursuer or the defender." " Eh, sirs, sich a business ! A fine young laud telled that he's no his faither and mither's son, and robbet of his just inheritance." "A douce, sponsible gentleman, deprived o' his richts by a beggar's brat from France, pawnded on my lord Duke while he was yet in the body, and his browster's wife o' a duchess."

The moment the two had crossed the rubicon and entered the House, it was " Come away, Lady Marget," from the more polite lips of a host of acquaintances and allies. " Good morning to you, Miss Erskine. The benches for the ladies are the farthest forward on the left side in the inner room. Let me conduct you. It is the domicile they are sitting on the now, whether Sir John and Lady Jean did bide the time asserted at Rheims, and which hotel they occupied in Paris." The great hall of the Parliament House, with its magnificent carved ceiling heavy with royal shields and coats-of-arms picked out in red, blue, and gold, with the consummate skill of an ancient artificer, a monument of national dignity, was, in those days, parted off, as a rule, into an outer and an inner court. The outer was given up to no more distinguished service than that of pro viding tables for the law-stationers and their wares.

The inner was the supreme court of justice for the country. But there was yet a sanctum within a sanctuary — a small room, into which the judges, sometimes to the number of fifteen, as on the present occasion, were crammed in order to hold their sittings. Under the pressing exigency of the notorious Douglas case, the temporary partition between the outer and inner courts had been removed ; so had the stationers' tables, and the empty space was utilised by rows of well-filled benches, be tween and behind which was a standing company. Sitters and standers consisted of the elite of the Scotch nobility and gentry, the Provost and Bailies, the leading representatives of the different guilds, the more potent and wealthy merchant burghers, accustomed to dwell at close quarters among the citizens proper, and at the time to receive all honour and courtesy at the hands of the legal fraternity, from his Majesty's judges downwards.

But Lady Marget and Jeanie penetrated to the sanctum of sanctums, the densely crowded, dingy little room, and were privileged to occupy ex cellent places, where they could see, and, if they chose, hear what was going on. Lady Marget was undisturbed, or only moved to a prouder carriage, a more commanding step and turn of the head, while she took every attention as her due. Jeanie Erskine was agitated and abashed, for she had gone less into society, and had led, by comparison, a retired, diligent, care-ridden life. The girls had scarcely seated themselves before the hawk's eye of Lady Marget detected the fact that the young man whose fortune and very name hung in the balance, together with that member of his junior counsel who meant to make a spoon or spoil a horn in the suit — the suns in the firma ment to these young women — were distinguished by their absence.

" They are not here," the sharp observer an nounced in an audaciously loud whisper to her companion — "neither Jock Douglas nor Davie Elphinstone. Where can they be hiding, or what have they withdrawn to confer about, think you ? However, it is just as well. We can rest a bit, and look about us till they turn up, or till a more critical point is reached in the story. I am sure, who cares, and what does it matter, how long Lady Jean and Sir John tarried in the provinces, or what hotel they put up at in the French capital ? " Jeanie gave a little sigh, half of relief, half of disappointment, and sat back. Lady Marget was more actively employed. She leant forward and even stood up, heedless of the muttered " Sit down, my lady ; " " Keep your seat, mem," the better to study the assembly, and make a rapid calculation whether the faction favourable or that hostile to Mr. John Douglas's claims preponderated.

What were the " Sit downs " and " Keep your seats " of the people behind, whose view she ob structed, to her ? If she had been called upon to defend her action, she would have coolly answered, " Honest folk, I am Lady Marget Elliot, Teviot dale's daughter. Your concern in the trial is, as doubtless you are aware, nothing to mine." When Lady Marget's curiosity was satisfied, she proceeded to enlighten her friend with regard to points on which she might be ignorant, con cerning the principal persons present. She first indicated the Bench, with its portentous double row of judges, writing and reading their notes, exchanging opinions on knotty questions in dispute, taking snuff and sneezing with a sonorous ness befitting the dignity of the sneezers. " Yon carle whispering under his neighbour's wig," said the irreverent young lady, "is Montboddo, who thinks we are all but a stage removed from the monkey tribe."

" Lord preserve us ! " cried orthodox Jeanie in horror. " He has been one of the commission sent over to France," went on Lady Marget, composedly, as if well accustomed to the vagaries of men. " He has been getting up evidence for Jock ; as if more evidence were wanted than that of his face and bearing ! His lordship must have been confirmed in his monkey notion when he was among the dancing-masters over the water. The man he is speaking to is Auchenleck, whose son wanted to marry a Dutch lady. Dutch ladies are all the fashion among the young advocates. If I were you, I would see that your Davie did not go near Leyden or Utrecht." " He may please himself," said Jeanie, with some show of spirit and an elevation of her little peaked chin. " The law-lord near us," continued Lady Marget, " is Kames.

He has drained a peat bog and written a book, forby doing his work here. They say he's as hard as he's diligent. But he's not so hard as thc stout black-visaged chield speaking to one of the counsel. That's Braxfield, the roughest tyke that ever wore the king's ermine. You ken the senior counsel on both sides. At least one of them was bound to be a Dundas or a Melville. Yonder is young Mackenzie," went on Lady Marget, her eyes roaming further afield. " He has just returned from London ; and yonder is wild Jamie Boswell, who wanted to marry the Dutch lady I was telling you about. They say he's on now with a Miss Blair, a west-country heiress. She'll not have all her sorrows to seek in one day, if she take Jamie." " What are the counsel reading ? ' inquired Jeanie, naturally. " Oh, some of the evidence taken on com mission in France, anent the domicile question.

You need not fash to listen." Lady Marget dis missed the suggestion carelessly. " They say young Mackenzie is meditating bringing out essays in the style of Addison. If so, he may shut his shop here. An advocate can ' dally with the Muses,' as literary folk say, for amusement or display of his intellectual tastes, but to take to writing history, like Mr. Hume, or plays, like John Home, is too much of a good thing, and more than his briefs are worth. The evidence ? Are you at the evidence again? They're just clattering about that weary Rheims — whether the Douglasses stayed there twice or thrice, and how long they abode each time." " Have they got no further than that ? " asked Jeanie, in surprise. "They've been sitting all this month of July." " Yes ; they began on the first. The pleading and the hearing of the evidence occupied twenty one days, and now the judges have been laying their heads together for the better part of a week.

It is no common case," declared Lady Marget, with a certain pride, "but they stand at straws. On the last occasion that I was here, it was Lady Jean's age, and whether she looked it, they were harping upon. As if they could not get at her age without more ado than opening the Bothwell Session books, and as if any two men or women were yet agreed on an elderly lady's age, and whether she set, or did not set it ! There's Buchan among the company. He's as daft as his brother Harry is wise. But I beg your pardon ! I forgot they're your cousins, Jeanie." " No offence, Lady Marget. They're but my father's cousins, and everybody kens Buchan is skeich. See to him ! how he crosses his long legs and shrugs his shoulders and makes faces, well favoured as he is, as if he really were sib to Montboddo's monkeys !

He's very saving as well as skeich," finished Jeanie with a sigh. " He would not spend a plack on his own kith and kin — not though it were to keep them from starvation, or save them from the Tolbooth across the road." "And yonder is Kelly, little better with his fiddling. Upon my word, I think the brains of our old nobility must be softening, or we would not have so many oddities to point to among us," said Lady Marget, who would have been mortally offended if anybody save herself had expressed the same opinion. " Tell me something about the ladies," requested Jeanie. " Who is the muckle wife in brocade on the ladies' bench opposite ? " " Muckle wife, indeed ! That's her Grace of Douglas. Do you not know her ? She has been very forward in this suit, and I'm bound to say she's been a real good auntie to Jock.