The Waverley Novels | Page 8

usher both writes the
dominie's books and teaches the dominie's school. Ay, ay, ask maid,
wife, or widow, and she'll tell ye, the least gaitling among them all
comes to Paul Pattison with his lesson as naturally as they come to me
for their four-hours, puir things; and never ane things of applying to
you aboot a kittle turn or a crabbed word, or about ony thing else,
unless it were for licet exire, or the mending of an auld pen."
Now this address assailed me on a summer evening, when I was
whiling away my leisure hours with the end of a cutty pipe and
indulging in such bland imaginations as the Nicotian weed is wont to
produce, more especially in the case of the studious persons, devoted
_musis severioribus_. I was naturally loth to leave my misty sanctuary;
and endeavoured to silence the clamour of Mrs. Cleishbotham's tongue,
which has something in it peculiarly shrill and penetrating. "Woman,"
said I with a tone of domestic authority befitting the occasion, "_res
tuas agas_;--mind your washings and your wringings, your stuffings
and your physicking, or whatever concerns the outward persons of the
pupils, and leave the progress of their education to my usher, Paul
Pattison, and myself."

"I am glad to see," added the accursed woman, (that I should say so!)
"that ye have the grace to name him foremost, for there is little doubt,
that he ranks first of the troop, if ye wad but hear what the neighbours
speak--or whisper."
"What do they whisper, thou sworn sister of the Eumenides?" cried I,--
the irritating aestrum of the woman's objurgation totally
counterbalancing the sedative effects both of pipe and pot.
"Whisper?" resumed she in her shrillest note--"why, they whisper loud
enough for me at least to hear them, that the schoolmaster of
Gandercleuch is turned a doited auld woman, and spends all his time in
tippling strong drink with the keeper of the public-house, and leaves
school and book-making, and a' the rost o't, to the care of his usher; and,
also, the wives in Gandercleuch say, that you have engaged Paul
Pattison to write a new book, which is to beat a' the lave that gaed afore
it; and to show what a sair lift you have o' the job, you didna sae
muckle as ken the name o't--no nor whether it was to be about some
Heathen Greek, or the Black Douglas."
This was said with such bitterness that it penetrated to the very quick,
and I hurled the poor old pipe, like one of Homer's spears, not in the
face of my provoking helpmate, though the temptation was strong, but
into the river Gander, which as is now well known to tourists from the
uttermost parts of the earth, pursues its quiet meanders beneath the
bank on which the school-house is pleasantly situated; and, starting up,
fixed on my head the cocked hat, (the pride of Messrs. Grieve and
Scott's repository,) and plunging into the valley of the brook, pursued
my way upwards, the voice of Mrs. Cleishbotham accompanying me in
my retreat with something like the angry scream of triumph with which
the brood-goose pursues the flight of some unmannerly cur or idle boy
who has intruded upon her premises, and fled before her. Indeed, so
great was the influence of this clamour of scorn and wrath which hung
upon my rear, that while it rung in my ears I was so moved that I
instinctively tucked the skirts of my black coat under my arm, as if I
had been in actual danger of being seized on by the grasp of the
pursuing enemy. Nor was it till I had almost reached the well-known

burial-place, in which it was Peter Pattison's hap to meet the far-famed
personage called Old Mortality, that I made a halt for the purpose of
composing my perturbed spirits, and considering what was to be done;
for as yet my mind was agitated by a chaos of passions, of which anger
was predominant; and for what reason, or against whom, I entertained
such tumultuous displeasure, it was not easy for me to determine.
Nevertheless, having settled my cocked hat with becoming accuracy on
my well-powdered wig, and suffered it to remain uplifted for a moment
to cool my flushed brow--having, moreover, re-adjusted and shaken to
rights the skirts of my black coat, I came into case to answer to my own
questions, which, till these manoeuvres had been sedately
accomplished, I might have asked myself in vain.
In the first place, therefore, to use the phrase of Mr. Docket, the writer
(that is, the attorney) of our village of Gandercleuch, I became satisfied
that my anger was directed against all and sundry, or, in law Latin,
contre omnes mortales, and more particularly