The Entail. John Galt
to prevent the friends of the deceased from flocking in from every quarter. The assemblage that arrived far transcended all that can be imagined, in these economical days, of the attendance requisite on any such occasion. The gentry were shown into the dining-room, and into every room that could be fitted up with planks and deals for their reception. The barn received the tenantry, and a vast multitude – the whole clanjamphry from all the neighbouring parishes – assembled on the green in front of the house.
The Laird in his lifetime maintained a rough and free hospitality; and, as his kindred and acquaintance expected, there was neither scant nor want at his burial. The profusion of the services of seed-cake and wine to the in-door guests was in the liberalest spirit of the time; and tobacco-pipes, shortbread, and brandy, unadulterated by any immersion of the gauger’s rod, were distributed, with unmeasured abundance, to those in the barn and on the green.
Mr. Kilfuddy, the parish minister, said grace to the gentry in the dining-room; and the elders, in like manner, performed a similar part in the other rooms. We are not sure if we may venture to assert that grace was said to the company out of doors. Mr. Taws, the dominie of Bodleton, has indeed repeatedly declared, that he did himself ask a blessing; but he has never produced any other evidence that was satisfactory to us. Indeed, what with the drinking, the blast, and the sleet, it was not reasonable to expect much attention would be paid to any prayer; and therefore we shall not insist very particularly on this point.
The Braehill church-yard was at a considerable distance from Plealands-house, and hearses not being then in fashion in that part of the country, one of the Laird’s own carts was drawn out, and the coffin placed on it for conveyance, while the services were going round the company. How it happened, whether owing to the neglect of Thomas Cabinet, the wright, who acted the part of undertaker, and who had, with all his men, more to attend to than he could well manage, in supplying the multitude with refreshments; or whether John Drappie, the old servant that was to drive the cart, had, like many others, got a service overmuch, we need not pause to inquire: – it, however, so happened, that, by some unaccountable and never explained circumstance, the whole body of the assembled guests arranged themselves in funereal array as well and as steadily as the generality of them could, and proceeded towards the church-yard – those in the van believing that the cart with the coffin was behind, and their followers in the rear committing a similar mistake, by supposing that it was before them in front. Thus both parties, in ignorance of the simple fact, that the coffin and cart were still standing at the house door, proceeded, with as much gravity and decorum as possible, to the church-yard gate, where they halted. As the gentlemen in front fell back to the right and left, to open an avenue for the body to be brought up, the omission was discovered, and also that there was no other way of performing the interment but by returning, as expeditiously as possible, to the house for the body.
By this time the weather, which had been all the morning cold and blustering, was become quite tempestuous. The wind raved in the trees and hedges – the sleet was almost thickened into a blinding snow, insomuch, that, when the company reached the house, the greater number of them were so chilled that they stood in need of another service, and another was of course handed round on the green; of which the greater number liberally and freely partaking, were soon rendered as little able to wrestle against the wind as when they originally set out. However, when the procession was formed a second time, Thomas Cabinet taking care to send the cart with the coffin on before, the whole moved again towards the church-yard, it is said, with a degree of less decorum than in their former procession. Nay, there is no disguising the fact, that more than two or three of the company, finding themselves, perhaps, unable to struggle against the blast, either lay down of their own voluntary accord on the road, or were blown over by the wind.
When the procession had a second time reached the church-yard, and Thomas Cabinet, perspiring at every pore, was wiping his bald head with his coat sleeve, his men got the coffin removed from the cart, and placed on the spokes, and the relatives, according to their respective degrees of propinquity, arranged themselves to carry it. The bearers, however, either by means of the headstones and the graves over which their path lay, or by some other cause, walked so unevenly, that those on the one side pushed against their corresponding kindred on the other, in such a manner, that the coffin was borne rollingly along for some time, but without any accident, till the relations on the right side gave a tremendous lurch, in which they drew the spokes out of the hands of the mourners on the left, and the whole pageant fell with a dreadful surge to the ground.
This accident, however, was soon rectified; the neighbours, who were not bearers, assisted the fallen to rise, and Thomas Cabinet, with his men, carried the coffin to its place of rest, and having laid it on the two planks which were stretched across the grave, assembled the nearest kin around, and gave the cords into their hands, that they might lower the Laird into his last bed. The betherel and his assistant then drew out the planks, and the sudden jerk of the coffin, when they were removed, gave such a tug to those who had hold of the cords, that it pulled them down, head foremost, into the grave after it. Fortunately, however, none were buried but the body; for, by dint of the best assistance available on the spot, the living were raised, and thereby enabled to return to their respective homes, all as jocose and as happy as possible.
CHAPTER X
On examining the Laird’s papers after the funeral, Mr. Keelevin, the father of the celebrated town-clerk of Gudetoun, the lawyer present on the occasion, discovered, in reading over the deed which had been executed by the deceased, in favour of Walter, the second son of Claud, that it was, in some essential points, imperfect as a deed of entail, though in other respects valid as a testamentary conveyance. The opinion of counsel, as in all similar cases, was in consequence forthwith taken; and the suspicions of Mr. Keelevin being confirmed, Walter was admitted as heir to the estate, but found under no legal obligation to assume his grandfather’s name, – the very obligation which the old gentleman had been most solicitous to impose upon him.
How it happened that the clause respecting so important a point should have been so inaccurately framed, remains for those gentlemen of the law, who commit such inadvertencies, to explain. The discovery had the effect of inducing Claud to apply to our old master, the late Gilbert Omit, writer, to examine the entail of the Grippy, which he had himself drawn up; and it too was found defective, and easily to be set aside. Really, when one considers how much some lawyers profit by their own mistakes, one might almost be tempted to do them the injustice to suspect that they now and then have an eye to futurity, and carve out work for themselves. There have, however, been discoveries of legal errors, which have occasioned more distress than this one; for, instead of giving the old man any uneasiness, he expressed the most perfect satisfaction on being informed, in answer to a plain question on the subject, that it was still in his power to disinherit his first-born. Well do we recollect the scene, being seated at the time on the opposite side of Mr. Omit’s desk, copying a codicil which Miss Christiana Heritage, then in her ninety-second year, was adding to her will, for the purpose of devising, as heir-looms, the bedstead and blankets in which Prince Charles Edward slept, when he passed the night in her house, after having levied that contribution on the loyal and godly city of Glasgow, for which the magistrates and council were afterwards so laudably indemnified by Parliament. We were not then quite so well versed in the secrets of human nature as experience has since so mournfully taught us, and the words of Claud at the time sounded strangely and harshly in our ear, especially when he inquired, with a sharp, and as it were a greedy voice, whether it was practicable to get Walter to conjoin with him in a deed that would unite his inheritance of Plealands to the Grippy, and thereby make a property as broad and good as the ancestral estate of Kittlestonheugh?
‘Ye ken, Mr. Omit,’ said he, ‘how I was defrauded, as a bodie may say, of my patrimony, by my grandfather; and now, since it has pleased Providence to put it in my power, by joining the heritage of Plealands and Grippy, to renew my ancestry, I would fain mak a settlement with Watty to that effek.’
Mr. Omit, with all that calm and methodical manner which a long experience of those devices of the heart, to which lawyers in good practice, if at all men of observation, generally attain, replied, —
‘Nothing can be done in that way while Walter is under age. But certainly, when the lad comes to majority, if he be then so inclined, there is no legal impediment in the way of such an arrangement;