But to other uses or abuses of the country, Triptolemus Yellowley showed himself less tolerant. Long and wearisome were the discourses he held with Mordaunt, or (to speak much more correctly) the harangues which he inflicted upon him, concerning the changes which his own advent in these isles was about to occasion. Unskilled as he was in the modern arts by which an estate may be improved to such a high degree that it shall altogether slip through the proprietor’s fingers, Triptolemus had at least the zeal, if not the knowledge, of a whole agricultural society in his own person; nor was he surpassed by any who has followed him, in that noble spirit which scorns to balance profit against outlay, but holds the glory of effecting a great change on the face of the land, to be, like virtue, in a great degree its own reward.
No part of the wild and mountainous region over which Mordaunt guided him, but what suggested to his active imagination some scheme of improvement and alteration. He would make a road through yon scarce passable glen, where at present nothing but the sure-footed creatures on which they were mounted could tread with any safety. He would substitute better houses for the skeoes, or sheds built of dry stones, in which the inhabitants cured or manufactured their fish—they should brew good ale instead of bland—they should plant forests where tree never grew, and find mines of treasure where a Danish skilling was accounted a coin of a most respectable denomination. All these mutations, with many others, did the worthy factor resolve upon, speaking at the same time with the utmost confidence of the countenance and assistance which he was to receive from the higher classes, and especially from Magnus Troil.
“I will impart some of my ideas to the poor man,” he said, “before we are both many hours older; and you will mark how grateful he will be to the instructor who brings him knowledge, which is better than wealth.”
“I would not have you build too strongly on that,” said Mordaunt, by way of caution; “Magnus Troil’s boat is kittle to trim—he likes his own ways, and his country-ways, and you will as soon teach your sheltie to dive like a sealgh, as bring Magnus to take a Scottish fashion in the place of a Norse one; and yet, if he is steady to his old customs, he may perhaps be as changeable as another in his old friendships.”
“Heus, tu inepte!” said the scholar of Saint Andrews, “steady or unsteady, what can it matter?—am not I here in point of trust, and in point of power? and shall a Fowd, by which barbarous appellative this Magnus Troil still calls himself, presume to measure judgment and weigh reasons with me, who represent the full dignity of the Chamberlain of the islands of Orkney and Zetland?”
“Still,” said Mordaunt, “I would advise you not to advance too rashly upon his prejudices. Magnus Troil, from the hour of his birth to this day, never saw a greater man than himself, and it is difficult to bridle an old horse for the first time. Besides, he has at no time in his life been a patient listener to long explanations, so it is possible that he may quarrel with your purposed reformation, before you can convince him of its advantages.”
“How mean you, young man?” said the factor. “Is there one who dwells in these islands, who is so wretchedly blind as not to be sensible of their deplorable defects? Can a man,” he added, rising into enthusiasm as he spoke, “or even a beast, look at that thing there, which they have the impudence to call a corn-mill,[38] without trembling to think that corn should be intrusted to such a miserable molendinary? The wretches are obliged to have at least fifty in each parish, each trundling away upon its paltry mill-stone, under the thatch of a roof no bigger than a bee-skep, instead of a noble and seemly baron’s mill, of which you would hear the clack through the haill country, and that casts the meal through the mill-eye by forpits at a time!”
“Ay, ay, brother,” said his sister, “that’s spoken like your wise sell. The mair cost the mair honour—that’s your word ever mair. Can it no creep into your wise head, man, that ilka body grinds their ain nievefu’ of meal in this country, without plaguing themsells about barons’ mills, and thirls, and sucken, and the like trade? How mony a time have I heard you bell-the-cat with auld Edie Netherstane, the miller at Grindleburn, and wi’ his very knave too, about in-town and out-town multures—lock, gowpen, and knaveship,(i) and a’ the lave o’t; and now naething less will serve you than to bring in the very same fashery on a wheen puir bodies, that big ilk ane a mill for themselves, sic as it is?”
“Dinna tell me of gowpen and knaveship!” exclaimed the indignant agriculturist; “better pay the half of the grist to the miller, to have the rest grund in a Christian manner, than put good grain into a bairn’s whirligig. Look at it for a moment, Baby—Bide still, ye cursed imp!” This interjection was applied to his pony, which began to be extremely impatient, while its rider interrupted his journey, to point out all the weak points of the Zetland mill—“Look at it, I say—it’s just one degree better than a hand-quern—it has neither wheel nor trindle—neither cog nor happer—Bide still, there’s a canny beast—it canna grind a bickerfu’ of meal in a quarter of an hour, and that will be mair like a mash for horse than a meltith for man’s use—Wherefore—Bide still, I say—wherefore—wherefore—The deil’s in the beast, and nae good, I think!”
As he uttered the last words, the shelty, which had pranced and curvetted for some time with much impatience, at length got its head betwixt its legs, and at once canted its rider into the little rivulet, which served to drive the depreciated engine he was surveying; then emancipating itself from the folds of the cloak, fled back towards its own wilderness, neighing in scorn, and flinging out its heels at every five yards.
Laughing heartily at his disaster, Mordaunt helped the old man to arise; while his sister sarcastically congratulated him on having fallen rather into the shallows of a Zetland rivulet than the depths of a Scottish mill-pond. Disdaining to reply to this sarcasm, Triptolemus, so soon as he had recovered his legs, shaken his ears, and found that the folds of his cloak had saved him from being much wet in the scanty streamlet, exclaimed aloud, “I will have cussers from Lanarkshire—brood mares from Ayrshire—I will not have one of these cursed abortions left on the islands, to break honest folk’s necks—I say, Baby, I will rid the land of them.”
“Ye had better wring your ain cloak, Triptolemus,” answered Baby.
Mordaunt meanwhile was employed in catching another pony, from a herd which strayed at some distance; and, having made a halter out of twisted rushes, he seated the dismayed agriculturist in safety upon a more quiet, though less active steed, than that which he had at first bestrode.
But Mr. Yellowley’s fall had operated as a considerable sedative upon his spirits, and, for the full space of five miles’ travel, he said scarce a word, leaving full course to the melancholy aspirations and lamentations which his sister Baby bestowed on the old bridle, which the pony had carried off in its flight, and which, she observed, after having lasted for eighteen years come Martinmas, might now be considered as a castaway thing. Finding she had thus the field to herself, the old lady launched forth into a lecture upon economy, according to her own idea of that virtue, which seemed to include a system of privations, which, though observed with the sole purpose of saving money, might, if undertaken upon other principles, have ranked high in the history of a religious ascetic.
She was but little interrupted by Mordaunt, who, conscious he was now on the eve of approaching Burgh-Westra, employed himself rather in the task of anticipating the nature of the reception he was about to meet with there from two beautiful young women, than with the prosing of an old one, however wisely she might prove that small-beer was more wholesome than strong ale, and that if her brother had bruised his ankle bone in his tumble, cumfrey and butter was better to bring him round again, than all the doctor’s drugs in the world.