Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 9

"Well, they were, 'See ma.'"

"The very words; and were they not enough for proof and belief?"

"Yes, sir; but there are words which have two significations. Ma' is the contraction, as you know, for mamma, but it is p.r.o.nounced the same as _maw_, which is a word which we use to designate those birds otherwise called gulls. I recollect that while I was unable to bear the sight of the tortured bird, and had turned my head in another direction, my nephew kept looking over the rails, and that, as he saw the struggling creature, he cried out to me the words you misconstrued. And thus the mystery is cleared up."

"Miserable and fatal error," he gasped out, as he staggered back. "And the connection!--the connection! There _was_ retribution in those diamond eyes."

"What mean you, sir?"

"The bird's eyes that haunt me in my reveries, and enter into the sockets of my dream-beings!"

"Are you mad?"

"No; or the heavens are mad, with their swirling orbs and blazing comets, that rush sighing through s.p.a.ce before some terrible power that will give them no respite, except with the condition that when they rest they die."

"Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you."

"Ay, pity those who have no pity--those are the truly wretched; for pity, in the world's life, is the soul of reason's action. Ah, madam, it is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs pity."

"But you have been punished, I admit, in a very strange and mysterious way; for the word used by the boy was the joining link of the two transactions, and you were led to misconstrue it--ay, and to take advantage of your misconstruction to get the better of your friend."

"I see it all."

"But I say you have been punished," continued she, consolingly; "and I perceive you are penitent--perhaps justice is satisfied; and when you are liberated, you may be the better for the lesson. I shall now reverse my prayer, and say to one I shall perhaps never see again, May G.o.d deal mercifully by you."

And with these words, she retreated. But her prayer was never answered, so far as man can judge of heaven's mysterious ways. The conviction settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair of killing a bird--which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation--which, if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at--was the cause of all the ills that had befallen him. The diamond eyes proved to him no fancy.

But for all this, we are afforded, by what subsequently occurred, some means of explanation, which will be greedily laid hold of by minute philosophers. Even then it was to have been feared that the seeds of consumption had been deposited in favourable soil. In our difficulties about explanations of mental phenomena, we readily flee to diseases of the body, which, after all, only removes the mystery a step or two back in the dark.

It remains for me to add some words of personal experience. A considerable period after these occurrences, I had occasion--by a connection with a medium through which Dewhurst received from his father, whose fortunes had in the meantime failed, a petty allowance--to be the bearer to him, now liberated, of a quarter's payment. I forget the part of the town where I found him, but I have a distinct remembrance of the room. It was a garret, almost entirely empty. He was lying on a kind of bed spread upon the floor. There was a small grate, with a handful of red cinders in it; only one chair, and a pot or pan or two. There was a woman moving between him and the fireplace, as if she had been preparing some warm drink or medicine of some kind for him. I did not know then, but I knew afterwards, that that woman was she who called upon him in prison, and deposited the small bottle of wine. Her love for him had always overcome any of those feelings of enmity, or something stronger, generally deemed so natural in one who has been robbed of her dearest treasure, and ruined. She alone had indeed not a.s.sumed the diamond eyes. The diamonds were elsewhere,--yea, in her heart, where she nourished pity for him who had so cruelly deserted her, and left her to a fate so common, and requiring only a hint to be understood by those who know the nature of women. After he had got out of prison, she sought him out, got the room for him, collected the paltry articles, procured food for him, and continued to nurse him till his death, with all the tenderness of a lover who had not only not been cast off, but cherished. He betrayed the ordinary symptoms of consumption, and the few words he muttered were those of thanks. I think he was buried in the Canongate Churchyard.

DAVID LORIMER.

"There is a history in all men's lives."--SHAKSPEARE.

It has been often said, and, I believe, with truth, that there are few persons, however humble in station, whose life, if it has been of any duration, does not present some incidents of an interesting, if not instructive, nature.

Induced by a belief in this a.s.sertion as a general truth, and yet further by an opinion that, in my own particular case, there are occurrences which will be considered somewhat extraordinary, I venture to lay the following sketch of my life before the reader, in the hope that it will not be found altogether devoid of interest.

With the earlier part of my history, which had nothing whatever remarkable in it, I need not detain the reader further than to say that my father was, though not a wealthy, a respectable farmer in Lanarks.h.i.+re; that he lived at----, within fourteen miles of Glasgow; that I was well educated; and that, at the period when I take up my own history, I was in the eighteenth year of my age.

Having given these two or three particulars, I proceed:

It was in the year 18--, and during the week of the Glasgow Fair, which occurs in July, that my father, who had a very favourable opinion of my intelligence and sagacity, resolved to entrust me with a certain important mission. This was to send me to the fair of Glasgow to purchase a good draught horse for him.

I am not sure, however, that, with all the good opinion my father entertained of my shrewdness, he would have deputed me on the present occasion had he been able to go himself; but he was not able, being confined to bed by a severe attack of rheumatism. Be this as it may, however, the important business was put into my hands; and great was the joy it occasioned me, for it secured me in an opportunity of seeing Glasgow Fair--a scene which I had long desired to witness, and which I had seen only once when but a very young boy.

From the moment I was informed by my father of his intention of sending me to the fair, and which was only on the day preceding that on which the horse-market is held, my imagination became so excited that I could attend to nothing. I indeed maintained some appearance of working--for though the son of a farmer, I wrought hard--but accomplished little of the reality.

The joys and the splendours of Glasgow Fair, of which I had a dim but captivating recollection, rose before my mind's eye in brilliant confusion, putting to rout all other thoughts, and utterly paralyzing all my physical energies. Nor was the succeeding night less blessed with happy imaginings. My dreams were filled with visions of shows, Punch's opera, rope-dancers, tumblers, etc. etc., and my ears rang with the music of fiddles, bugles, tambourines, and ba.s.s drums. It was a delicious night with me; but the morning which brought an approach to the reality was still more so.

Getting up betimes, I arrayed myself in my best attire; which attire, as I well recollect, consisted of a white corduroy jacket, knee-breeches of the same colour and material, and a bright-red waistcoat. A "neat Barcelona," tied carelessly round my neck, and a pair of flaming-red garters, at least two inches broad, wound round my legs just below the knee, and ending in a knot with two dependent ends hanging down, that waved jauntily as I walked, completed my equipment.

Thus arrayed, and with thirty pounds in my pocket to purchase a horse for my father, I took the road, stick in hand, for Glasgow.

It was a fine summer morning. I was in high spirits; and, in my red waistcoat and red garters, looked, I believe, as tight and comely a lad as might be seen.

Pus.h.i.+ng on with a light heart and light step, I quickly reached the suburbs of the city, and in a few minutes more was within view and earshot of the sights and sounds of the fair. I saw the crowd; I got a glimpse of the canvas roofs of the shows at the end of the old bridge--the locality on which the fair was then held; and heard the screaming and braying of the cracked trumpets, the clanging of the cymbals, and the thunders of the ba.s.s drums.

My heart beat high on hearing these joyous sounds. I quickened my pace, and in a few seconds was in the thick of the throng that crowded the s.p.a.ce in front of the long line of shows extending from the bridge to the Bridgegate. As it was yet several hours to the height of the horse-market, I resolved on devoting that interval to seeing some of the interesting sights which stood in such tempting array before me.

The first that fixed my regard was "The Great Lancas.h.i.+re Giant," whose portrait at full length--that is, at the length of some fifteen or twenty feet--flapped on a sheet of canvas nearly as large as the mainsail of a Leith smack.

This extraordinary personage was represented, in the picture, as a youth of sixteen, dressed in a ruffled s.h.i.+rt, a red jacket, and white trousers; and his exhibitor a.s.sured the spectators that, though but a boy, he already measured nine feet in height and seven feet round the body; that each of his shoes would make a coffin for a child of five years old, and every stocking hold a sack of flour. Six full-grown persons, he added, could be easily b.u.t.toned within his waistcoat; and his tailor, he a.s.serted, was obliged to mount a ladder when he measured him for a jacket.

Deeply interested by the astounding picture of this extraordinary youth, and the still more astounding description given of him by his exhibitor, I ascended the little ladder that conducted to the platform in front of the show, paid my twopence--the price of admission--and in the next minute was in the presence of "The Great Lancas.h.i.+re Giant;" a position which enabled me to make discoveries regarding that personage that were not a little mortifying.

In the first place, I found that, instead of being a youth of sixteen, he was a man of at least six-and-thirty; in the next, that if it had not been for the raised dais on which he stood, the enormous thickness of the soles of his shoes, and the other palpably fict.i.tious contrivances and expedients by which his dimensions were enlarged, he would not greatly have exceeded the size of my own father. I found, in short, that the tremendous "Lancas.h.i.+re Giant" was merely a pretty tall man, and nothing more.

Quitting this exhibition, and not a little displeased at being so egregiously bitten, I pa.s.sed on to the next, which was "Mr.

Higgenbotham's Royal Menagerie. The n.o.blest Collection of Wild Beasts ever seen in the Civilised World."

This was a splendid affair. On a narrow stage in front were seated four fat red-faced musicians, in beef-eater coats, puffing and blowing on bugles and trombones. Close by these, stood a thin, sharp-eyed, sallow-complexioned man in plain clothes, beating a huge drum, and adding the music of a set of Pandean pipes, which were stuck into his bosom, to the general harmony. This was Mr. Higgenbotham himself.

But it was the paintings on the immense field of canvas above that particularly attracted my attention. On this field were exhibited an appalling collection of the most terrific monsters: lions, as large as cows, gambolling amongst rocks; ourang-outangs, of eight feet in height, walking with sticks in their hands, as grave and stately as drum-majors; and a serpent, as thick as a hogshead, and of interminable length--in truth, without any beginning, middle, or end--twining round an unfortunate black, and crus.h.i.+ng him to death in its enormous folds.

All this was irresistible. So up the stair I sprang, paid my sixpence, and in a moment after found myself in the centre of the well-saw dusted area in the interior, gazing on the various birds and beasts in the cages around me. It was by no means a perplexing task; for, as in the case of "The Great Lancas.h.i.+re Giant," the fulfilment of the inside but little corresponded with the promise of the out. The princ.i.p.al part of the collection I found to consist of half-a-dozen starved monkeys, as many parrots--grey and green, an indescribable monster, in a dark corner, strongly suspected by some of the spectators of being a boy in a polar bear's skin, a bird of paradise, and a hedgehog, which they dignified with the name of a porcupine.

"Whaur's the lions, and the teegers, and the elephants, and the boy instructor, and the black man?" said a disappointed countryman, addressing a fellow in a short canvas frock or overall, who was crossing the area with a bucket of water.

"Ah! them's all in the other caravan," replied the man, "vich should 'ave been here on Monday night, but hasn't coom yet, and we suppose has broken down by the way; but there's a hanimal worth 'em all," he added, pointing to the indescribable monster in the dark corner. "The most curiousest ever was seen. Take a look on him; and if you don't own he is, I'll heat him, skin and all. They calls him the great Guampa from South America."

Having said this, the fellow, desirous, for reasons best known to himself, to avoid further questioning, hurried away, and disappeared at a side door.

It was just as this man left us, and as the small crowd of spectators, of whom I was one, who had surrounded him, were dispersing, that a gentleman--or a person, at least, who had the air and manner of one, although somewhat broken down in his apparel--came close up to me, and whispered in my ear, in a perfectly calm and composed tone--

"My lad, you are robbed."

With a start of horror, and a face as pale as death, I clapped my hand on the outside of my b.u.t.toned jacket, to feel for my pocket-book, which I carefully deposited in an inside pocket. It was gone.

"Be calm--be composed, my lad," said the gentleman, marking my excessive agitation, and seeing that I was about to make some outcry. "The fellows will bolt on the least alarm; and as there are three or four of them, may force their way out, if driven to extremity. Leave the matter to me, and I'll manage it for you."

During all this time, the stranger, who had spoken in a very low tone, carefully abstained from looking towards those of whom he was speaking, and wore such an air of composure and indifference, that no one could possibly have suspected for a moment what was the subject of his communication to me.

Having made this communication, and desired me to remain where I was, and to exhibit no symptom of anything particular having happened, my friend, as I could not but reckon him, went out for an instant.