Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVII Part 11

"It is on Dr M----'s table!" cried the youth, starting to his feet, and again throwing himself violently on the chair. "I purchased it; paid the price for it; and recognised it only when the dissecting-knife was in my hand!" Every one started aghast; terror froze up the issues of speech; a deep groan issued from the bed-ridden patient; he beckoned me to his ear.

"Tell the women to go out," he whispered, as he twisted his body convulsively among the bedclothes.

I complied with his request; and the aunt, seizing Martha, who stood as if she had been transfixed to the floor, dragged her out of the room. In the pa.s.sage, I heard a loud scream; and, in a moment, all was again silence. Mr B----, without uttering a word, raised his feeble body from the bed, and came forth, the spectre of what he was only a few weeks before. His limbs, which were reduced to bony shanks, covered with shrivelled skin, seemed totally unable to support even the decayed, emaciated frame. He staggered as he reached the floor; but, recovering himself, stood firm, and then proceeded to his wardrobe, from which he drew his vestments, and proceeded to attire himself.

"An hour since," he said, in a slow, solemn voice, "I thought these clothes would never again be on my body. My only hope was the winding-sheet, and that grave which has been robbed."

"George may have been deceived," said I, as he was proceeding to dress himself. "I have often thought that I saw resemblances to deceased friends in the features of subjects in the dissecting-room."

"The grave will test it," answered he, with a deep groan, as he proceeded slowly, but resolutely, to put one garment after another on his skeleton body.

He was at length dressed; and, proceeding to the kitchen, he appeared again, in a short time, with a lighted lantern in his hand, the light of which, as it threw its beam on his sallow face--for the candle had, meanwhile, burned down into the socket--exhibited, in its lurid glare, the deep-sunken eyes and protruding bones of his emaciated countenance.

"Come, we shall proceed to the grave of my Isabella," said he.

"You are unable," said I. "Your limbs will not carry you that length; and you are, besides, unfitted by the state of your mind and feelings, for an investigation of this kind. Stay here with your son, and I will go to the churchyard and satisfy myself of the deception under which George, doubtless, labours."

"I feel now more than my former strength," he replied. "I am awakened from a death-stupor of the soul; and I feel that within me which will enable me to go through this trial. I will look into my Isabella's grave; will meet with those eyes again--that countenance through which I have read the workings of love in a spirit that is now far from the precincts of the clay. Deny me not; I will be satisfied of this, if I should come back from her grave to complete that which is begun, and is already visible in these shrunken members, that now obey a supernatural power."

There seemed to be no gainsaying him; his manner was inspired and resolute; and I proceeded to accompany him to C---- churchyard. George, who, in the meantime, had been tossing himself in the chair, rose to make one of the party. The agitation under which he still laboured was in direct contrast to the cold stillness of his father; yet the one was a more living expression than the other; and, while my eye shrunk not from the ordinary indications of suffering, I--maugre all the experience of misery I had had--could scarcely look on the animated corpse thus preparing to visit the grave where the object of all his hopes and affections in this world had been buried, and might now be found to have been desecrated by the knife of the anatomist. We went forth together. George's horse still stood at the door, reeking and b.l.o.o.d.y. I requested Mr B---- to mount, as we had a full mile to go to the burying-ground, and I deemed it utterly impossible that he could accomplish the distance. He did not answer me, but proceeded onwards with a firm step, in the face of a cold, bleak, east wind, that moaned mournfully among a clump of trees that skirted the road. Some flakes of snow were winging through the air--driven now by the breeze, or lingering over our heads as if afraid to be soiled by the earth, which we were bent to open where the dead then lay--or some time before lay--a ma.s.s of putrefaction; yet dear to the feelings of the bereaved, and sought now with greater avidity than when the body was arrayed in the smiles of beauty, and filled with living, breathing love. The husband spoke nothing; and George was silent, save for the deep sobs that burst from him as he looked upon the woe-worn form of his father, who stalked away before us like a creature hurrying to the grave to seek the home there from which a troubled spirit had removed him in the dark hour of night. In this way we wandered on. I was not in a mood to speak. The occasion and the scene depressed me more than ever did the prospect of a deathbed, or the sight of a patient about to submit to a painful and dangerous operation. My habits of thought are little conversant with the poetry of nature, or of man's condition in this stage of suffering--the duties of an arduous profession are exclusive of those dreamy moods of the mind, which have little in common with the doings of every-day life; yet, on this occasion, I felt all the inspiration of the sad muse; and, were I to endeavour to account for it, I could only seek for the cause in the aspect of the night, and the unusual nature of the vocation, operating, at the moment, on a mind loosened from the cares of my profession.

In a much less time than I could have antic.i.p.ated, from the weak condition of Mr B----, we arrived at the churchyard--a solitary spot, surrounded with an old grey d.y.k.e, at the back of which rose in deep shade a wood of firs.

The snow lay on the top of the walls, and on the higher branches of the firs, reminding one of streaks of white clouds in the sky, as the darkness of the night, enveloping the lower portions, kept them almost from our view. From a small house at the ridge of the fir-belt, a slight ray of light beamed forth, and, striking upon the top of a monument placed against the wall, exhibited the left all around in deeper gloom. Without uttering a word, Mr B---- made up to the house, and, knocking at the door, a young female appeared. She uttered a scream, and ran back, doubtless from the pale and death-like appearance presented by the face of the visiter. Her place was momentarily supplied by the s.e.xton, who, the moment he saw Mr B----, shrunk back in what I conceived to be conscious fear. I was standing behind, and noticing, what I thought, the guilty expression of the man's face, concluded unfavourably for the sad hope of my friend.

"I have reason to believe that there have been resurrectionists in your churchyard, James," said Mr B---- mournfully.

"Impossible!" replied the s.e.xton; "we have been guarding the ground for some time past. It is a dream, Mr B----; many relations are troubled by the same fears. It was only yesterday that I opened a grave to satisfy the wishes of Mrs G----, whose husband was buried a week ago. The body was as safe as if it had been in her own keeping. Take my advice; be satisfied there is no cause of apprehension; you forget the sacred nature of my trust."

"I can only be satisfied by an examination of the grave," replied Mr B----.

"I insist upon having this satisfaction. The cemetery is my property, and I have a right to examine it."

The man hesitated, and said that his a.s.sistant was from home. But the bereaved husband was not to be thus diverted from his purpose. He stood resolutely with the lantern in his hand, and demanded admittance into the churchyard. The man at length reluctantly took down the key from a nail in the pa.s.sage, and bringing another lantern with him, led us to the door, which, in the midst of many grumblings, he opened. He then led the way over the snowy hillocks to nearly the middle of the burying-ground, where the grave of Mrs B----, headed by an ornamented stone, was exhibited to us. Mr B---- bent down, and, moving the lantern backwards and forwards, examined it slowly and carefully, casting his eye over the snow, which presented an unbroken appearance, and examining every c.h.i.n.k, as if he there found an evidence of the truth of George's statement.

"That grave has not been touched," said the man. "The head of it is the part to judge by. You will find the turf lies whole and unbroken under the wreath."

"It may be as you say," replied Mr B----, as he bent down in his examination; "but the late snow may have removed the traces of the opening.

I cannot return home till I am satisfied. My own bones must mix with those of my Isabella. Proceed to open the grave; I myself will a.s.sist you."

At that moment a figure was seen gliding alone amidst the tombstones. It had all the legitimate whiteness like the ideal spirit. I stood and gazed at it, and George's eyes were also fixed upon it; Mr B---- paid no attention; he was too intent upon the investigation he was engaged in; and the grave-digger, whose head was down, did not notice it. I said nothing; but George, pointing to it as it approached, cried--

"See, see! what is that?"

The s.e.xton looked up, and cried--"It is David. He has been out, and is covered with snow. He comes in good time."

It was even so. The man approached, and the implements having been procured, they set about opening the grave. Mr. B---- stood motionless, his head hanging down, and deep sighs occasionally coming from his breast, mixed with the quick breathing of the men, as they plied their shovels. He still held the lantern in his hand, by the light of which the group before me is brought out in faint relief. The silence around was signally that of a churchyard; for the fir belt shrouded the scene from the night breeze, and there was only occasionally heard a low, mournful gust, as it died among the branches of the trees. On that spot only there was quick breathing action. The men had got down pretty far into the grave; and, as they brought their heads within the ray of the lantern, in their acts of throwing up the earth, their flushed faces contrasted strongly with the cadaverous countenance of the husband, who leant over them, watching every motion, and intent upon the expected stroke of the shovel upon the coffin lid. The recollection of the attributes of the German ghoul came over me; nor did the difference between the beings, the motives, and the actions, prevent me from conjuring up the similitude, so unlike a human being did he appear in his complexion, his fixed, dead-like stare into the grave, and the perfect stillness of his body, as he crouched down to be nearer to the object of his search. At length, the sound was heard, the rattle on the coffin lid. The victim's ear seemed chained to the sound, as if he could have augured from it whether or not the chest was empty. In a short time,

"The heavy moil that shrouds the dead"

was entirely removed. The s.e.xton now took his own lamp down into the grave.

The screw-nails were undone, the lid was raised, and the body of Mrs B----, arrayed in her winding-sheet and scalloped sere-clothes, was seen, by the sickly, yellow gleam of the lantern, lying in the stillness and placidity of death--

"For still, still she lay, With a wreath on her bosom."

One of the men now came out, and Mr B---- descended into the grave. He lifted off the face-cloth, gazed on the clay-cold face, touched it, and now was opened the

"Sacred source of sympathetic tears."

He burst into a loud paroxysm; and, as if nature had been to take her revenge for her sufferings, under the freezing influence of his sorrow, he wept as if there had been to be no end of his weeping. It was latterly found necessary to force him out of the grave; though, as I was informed by George, he had shrunk from the view of the dead body of his wife, while it lay in the house, and before it was interred. The lid was again placed on the coffin, the screws fixed, and the grave filled up. Mr B---- slipped a guinea into the hand of the s.e.xton, and we took our way back to the town.

George informed us, as we went, that he had been for several nights haunted by the image of his mother; and could only thus account for the conviction that had seized him, that the body of the female he had seen in the dissecting-room was that of his parent. It is a remarkable fact, and the one which chiefly induced me to give this narrative, that the scene I have now described wrought so powerfully on the feelings of Mr B----, that the form of his grief was entirely changed. During the whole of the subsequent night, he wept intensely--nature was relieved--his sorrow was mollified into one of those

"Moods that speak their softened woes;"

and time soon wrought its accustomed amelioration. I never saw one who seemed more certainly doomed to the fate of the heart-stricken; and, however fanciful it may seem, I attribute to the mistake of his son the restoration of the father.

THE CONDEMNED.

I believe it was Fontenelle who said that, if he were to have been permitted to pa.s.s his life over again, he would have done everything he did in the world, and, of course, consented to suffer what he had suffered, in consideration of what he had enjoyed. I have heard the same statement from others. A very learned and ingenious professor in the north, whose lucubrations have often cast the effulgence of his rare genius over the pages of the Border Tales, has no hesitation in declaring that he would gladly consent to receive another tack of existence in this strange world, with all its pains and penalties, were it for nothing but to be allowed to witness the curious scenes, the startling occurrences, the humorous bizarrerie of cross-purposes, the conceits, the foibles, the triumphs of the creature man. Moore the poet has somewhere said, that he would not consent to live his life over again, except upon the condition that he were to be gifted with less love and more judgment--probably forgetting that in that case he would not have been the author of "Lallah Rookh;" though, mayhap, of a still drier life of Sheridan than that which came from his pen. I have often put the question to patients, and have found the answer to be regulated by the state of their disease. Upon the whole, it requires a very sharp, bitter pang, indeed, to extort the confession, that they would not accept another lease of life. If men were not Christians, they would choose, I think, to be Pythagoreans, were it for nothing but the slight chance they would enjoy of pa.s.sing into some state of existence not in a remote degree different from that which they have declared themselves sick of a thousand times before they died. Sick of it as many, however, say they are, they would all live "a little and a little longer still," when the dread hour comes that calls them home. These remarks have been suggested by the following pa.s.sage in my note-book:--"17th August, ----, case of Eugene D----, in the jail of ----. Extraordinary example of the _amor vitae_." I find I had jotted a number of the details; but such was the impression the scene of that tragedy of life produced in me, that even now, though many years have pa.s.sed, I recollect the minutiae of the drama as distinctly as if I had witnessed it yesterday. I was indeed interested in the case more than professionally; for the subject of it was an early companion of my own, and was, besides, calculated, from his acquirements, and a free, open generosity of spirit, to produce a deep interest in the fate which, in an unhappy hour, he brought upon himself. It was on the forenoon of the day I have mentioned, that the under turnkey of the prison of ---- came in breathless haste, and called me to a prisoner. It was Eugene D----. I was at the moment occupied in thinking of the youth. He had forged a bill upon his father, Mr. D----, a wealthy merchant; and it was very clearly brought out, in evidence that he applied the money to extricate a friend from pecuniary embarra.s.sments. The father had paid the bill; but the legal authorities had prosecuted the case; and he, at that moment, lay in jail a criminal, condemned to die. The gallows was standing ready to exact its victim within two hours; the post from London would arrive in an hour with or without a reprieve. His father and mother, what were they then doing, thinking, suffering? On them and him I was meditating when the words of the turnkey fell upon my ear.

"What has occurred?" was my question to the messenger.

"Eugene D----, the condemned criminal, has taken some poisonous drug," said he, "and the provost has sent me for you to come to his relief."

I meditated a moment. It might have been as well, I thought, for all parties, that I had not been called, and that the drug, whatever it was, might be allowed to antic.i.p.ate the law, but I had no alternative; I was called in my official capacity; and then a messenger might still arrive from London. I provided myself with the necessary counteracting agents, and followed the man. I pa.s.sed the house of his father. The blinds were drawn, and all seemed wrapped in dead silence, as if there had been a corpse in the house. Several people were pa.s.sing the door, and cast, as they went, a melancholy look at the windows. They had, in all likelihood, seen the gallows; at least, they knew the precise posture of affairs within the house. I was inclined to have entered; but I could see no benefit to be derived from my visit, and hurried forwards to the jail, from the window of which the black apparatus projected in ghastly array. The post-office in ---- Street was in the neighbourhood, and an a.s.sembly of people was beginning to collect, to wait for the incoming of the mail. There was sympathy in every face; for the fate of the youth, who had been well esteemed over the town, for a handsome, generous-minded young man, and the situation of his parents--wealthy and respectable citizens--had called forth an extraordinary feeling in his favour. Indeed, thousands had signed the pet.i.tion to the King, but forgery was, at that time, a crime of frequent occurrence, and the doubts that were entertained as to the success of the application were apparently justified by the arrival of the eleventh hour. On pa.s.sing through the jail, I saw the various preparations in progress for the execution; the chaplain was in attendance; and, in a small cell, at the end of the apartment from which the fatal erection projected, there sat, guarded by an officer, from a fear that he would escape, the executioner himself--

"Grim as the mighty Polypheme."

My guide led me forward, and, in a few minutes, I stood beside Eugene, who, dressed in a suit of black, lay twisting his body in a chair, making the chains by which he was bound clank in a fearful manner. A small phial was on the floor. I took it up, and ascertained, in an instant, that he had betaken himself to the drug most commonly resorted to by suicides.

"Laudanum!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, yes--as much as would kill two men!" he cried wildly.

The poison had not had time to operate; or rather, its narcotic power had been suspended by the terrors of an awakened love and hope of life, that had followed close upon the prospect of death caused by his own act.

"You had a chance for life, Eugene," said I, hurriedly. "A courier may yet arrive, independently of the mail, which has not yet come."

"Chance or no chance," he cried, as I proceeded with my a.s.sistant, who now entered, to apply the remedies; "I would yet live the two hours! I had no sooner swallowed the drug, than I thought I had intercepted the mercy of heaven; life seemed--and, oh, it even now seems--sweeter than ever, and death still more dreadful! Quick--quick--quick! The poison is busy with my heart. I would give a world for even these two hours of life and hope--small, small as that is!"

I proceeded with the application of the usual remedies. A portion, but only a portion of the laudanum, had been taken off; and the next efficient remedy was motion, to keep off the sleepy lethargy that drinks up the fountain of life. Two men were got to drag him as violently as possible along the floor, leaving him enough of his own weight to force him to use his limbs. I noticed that he struggled with terrible energy against the onset of the subtle agent; exhibiting the most signal instance I ever beheld of the power of that hope which seems to be consistent with life itself. Already an eighth part of the apparent period of his sojourn upon earth had pa.s.sed. Seven quarters more would, in all likelihood, bring him to the scaffold, and, by resisting my energies to counteract the effects of the poison, he might have eluded the grim arm of the law, by a death a thousand times less dreadful. Every now and then, as the men dragged him along, he turned his eyes to me, and asked the hour. Sometimes he repeated the question within two minutes of my answer. As often was his ear directed to the street, to try to catch the sounds of a coach, or the feet of a horse; and then he redoubled his energies to keep off the onset of the lethargy, which I told him was most to be feared. The operation was persevered in; but the men informed me they thought he was gradually getting heavier on their hands, and I noticed his eye, at times, get so dull that he seemed to be on the eve of falling asleep and sinking. Another quarter of an hour soon pa.s.sed; and in a little further time, the bailies and chaplain would find it their duty to come and prepare him for his fate--alas! now indeed so certain, that no reasonable thought could suggest even the shadow of a hope; a reprieve, so near the time of execution, would not have been trusted to the mail, and a messenger would have arrived, by quick stages, long before; unless there had, indeed, been any fault in the government authorities, in tampering with a man's life within an hour of his execution. If I had not been under the strict law of professional discipline, I would certainly have allowed him to lie down and pa.s.s into death or oblivion. I had, however, my duty to perform; and, strange as it may appear, that duty quadrated with the wishes of the young man himself; who, as he struggled with the demon that threatened to overpower him, seemed to rise in hope as every minute diminished the chance of his salvation. By the increased energies of the men, he was again roused into a less dull perception of sounds, and I could perceive him start as the rattle of the wheels of a carriage was heard at the jail door. He fixed his half-dead, staring eye in my face, and muttered, with a difficult effort of his sinking jaws--

"Is that it--is that it?--I hear a carriage wheels, and they have stopped at the door."

As he uttered the words, it appeared as if he again exerted himself to keep the enemy, who still threatened him, at bay. I replied nothing; for I suspected that the carriage brought only some official, or, probably, some mourner, to see him, previous to the fatal scene--that scene which, in all likelihood, I was endeavouring to render more heart-rending to his friends and spectators, by keeping alive the vital spark, that might only serve to make him conscious of pain. It appeared to be too evident that he had increased tenfold the misery of his situation; for the stern law would admit of no excuse, and if he was not able to walk to the scaffold he would be carried; yet, if I remitted my endeavours to keep in life, I might, in the event of the looked-for reprieve still arriving, be liable to be accused, by my own conscience, of having been as cruel as the law itself.

The door of the jail now opened, and a turnkey told me that the usual time had arrived when the officials began their preparatory duties. I replied that it was in vain to attempt, at present, the performance of these sacred rites; the prisoner was wrestling with death; and, if the exertions of the men, who kept still dragging him backwards and forwards, were remitted, he would sink, in a few minutes, into insensibility. I noticed the eye of poor Eugene turned imploringly upon me, as if he wished to know who it was that had arrived in the carriage. I merely shook my head; and the sign was no sooner made than his chin fell down on his breast; his limbs became weaker, his knees bent, and if the supporters had not exerted themselves still farther, he would have sunk. But the men still performed their duty, and dragged him hurriedly along, scarcely now with any aid from his feet, which, obeying no impulse of the loose and flaccid muscles, were thrown about in every direction, with, a shuffling, lumbering noise, and a clanking of the chain, that must have produced an extraordinary effect on those who waited in the adjoining cells. The noise thus produced was indeed all that was heard; for the effect of the poison was such as to take away all power of groaning. I was now doubtful if all the working of the men would be able to keep off much longer the sleepy incubus, for he seemed to have lost almost all power of seconding their efforts; but the door of the jail again opened, and the sound of the grating hinges made him again lift his head. His eye seemed to indicate that he had lost all sense of the pa.s.sing of the moments, and I could not discover whether he looked for the entry of one bearing his letter of salvation, or of the jailor with his hammer, to knock the chain from his feet, and lead him forth to the scaffold. He again muttered some words as the turnkey was proceeding forward to where I was. I could not make them out, so faint had his voice now become; but one of the men said he wished to know the hour. I told him it was one o'clock--that was just one hour from the appointed termination of his life. The turnkey, meanwhile, whispered in my ear that his father, mother, and sister had arrived. It was the sound of their carriage wheels that we had heard. I enjoined upon the men the necessity of continuing their labours, and went out to prevent the entry of his parents to the witnessing of a scene transcending all their powers of bearing. I found the three standing in the recess where the executioner was sitting in gloomy silence. I took the father and mother by the arms, and hurried them away to the empty cell, where the chaplain and several officials were collected.

The turnkey saw his error, and excused himself, on the ground that he was confused by the extraordinary state of affairs within the prison. I ascertained that no notice had been made to his parents of his having taken the drug. They had come to take farewell of him. The mail had arrived, but had brought no intelligence--not even of the pet.i.tion having been disposed of; and, having given up all hope, their intention was that the mother and daughter should, after the last act of parting, fly to the country, to be as far as possible from the scene of the impending tragedy. I was the first who communicated the tidings of the condition of their son; and the noise in the prisoner's cell, as the men still continued their operations, was a sad commentary on my words. The sister, who was veiled, uttered a shrill scream, and fell back on the floor. The father stood like

"Wo's bleak, voiceless petrifaction,"

moving neither limb nor countenance; his eye was fixed steadfastly on the ground, and a deadly paleness was over his face. The mother, who was also veiled, staggered to a bench--recovering herself suddenly, as some thought, rising wildly, stung her to a broken utterance of some words. I approached her, while Mr H----, the chaplain, was a.s.sisting in getting Miss D---- to a chair.