Weir of Hermiston | Page 5

denner." Of
course this was but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a
man for being a Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful
minister, directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the

nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite sort; and uttered as they
were in his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression
which they called in the Parliament House "Hermiston's hanging face" -
they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless
and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward
my lord's countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence,
unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were complaint, the world
was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her
SISTER IN THE LORD. "O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing
that my lord can never be contented in his own house!" she would
begin; and weep and pray with the cook; and then the cook would pray
with Mrs. Weir; and the next day's meal would never be a penny the
better - and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if anything,
but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermiston bore it as
he did; indeed, he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound
wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed.
Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life - "Here!
tak' it awa', and bring me a piece bread and kebbuck!" he had
exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures.
None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested;
Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and
his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious
disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was
passing her chair on his way into the study.
"O, Edom!" she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to
him both hands, in one of which she held a sopping
pocket-handkerchief.
He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there
stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour.
"Noansense!" he said. "You and your noansense! What do I want with
a Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can
plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with these
words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed
on to his study and shut the door behind him.
Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston,
where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an
eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim

house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand,
clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a
blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and
colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle,
not without buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in those days
required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a
tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the
parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience,
Mary reposed on Martha's strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston
held Kirstie in a particular regard. There were few with whom he
unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured with so many pleasantries.
"Kirstie and me maun have our joke," he would declare in high
good-humour, as he buttered Kirstie's scones, and she waited at table. A
man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of
men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was
quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that
Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched;
hard, bandy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the
pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only
child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her
hands would sometimes itch for my lord's ears.
Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermiston, not only my lord,
but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the dreadful
looking-for of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read
her piety books, and take her walk (which was my lord's orders),
sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that
scarce