Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 16

I looked on the countenance of the sufferer again. It was slightly distorted with pain, and all trace of the resemblance I had fancied was gone. An interval of ease succeeded. The real or imagined resemblance returned. Again I lost sight of it, and again I caught it; for it was only in some points of view I could detect it at all. At length, after marking for some time longer, with intense interest, the features of the sufferer, my conviction becoming every moment stronger and stronger, and my agitation in consequence extreme, I bent my head close to the dying man, and, taking his cold and clammy hand in mine, asked him, in a whisper, if his name was not Digby. His eyes were closed at the moment, but I saw he was not sleeping. On my putting the question, he opened them wide, and stared wildly upon me, but without saying a word. He seemed to be endeavouring to recognise me, but apparently in vain. I repeated the question. This time he answered. Still gazing earnestly at me, he said, and it was all he did say, "It is."

"Don't you know me?" I inquired.

He shook his head.

"My name is Lorimer," said I.

"Thank G.o.d," he exclaimed solemnly. "For one, at least, of my crimes it is permitted me to make some reparation. Haste, haste, get witnesses and hear my dying declaration. There's no time to lose, for I feel I am fast going!"

Without a moment's delay--- for I felt the importance of obtaining the declaration, which I had no doubt would establish my innocence--I ran for my father and Sergeant Lindsay, and, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, brought two of the privates also along with me. It was a striking scene of retributive justice,

On our entering the apartment where Digby lay, the wretched man raised himself upon his elbow. I ran and placed two pillows beneath him to support him. He thanked me. Then raising his hand impressively, and directing it towards me--

"That young man there," he said, "David Lorimer, is, as I declare on the word of a dying man, innocent of the crime for which he was banished to this country. I, and no other, am the guilty person. It was I who robbed my master, Mr. Wallscourt, of the silver plate for which this young man was blamed; and it was I who put the silver spoon in his pocket, in order to substantiate the charge I subsequently brought against him, and in which I was but too successful."

He then added, that in case his declaration should not be deemed sufficient to clear me of the guilt imputed to me, we should endeavour to find out a person of the name of Nareby--Thomas Nareby--who, he said, was in the colony under sentence of transportation for life for housebreaking; and that this person, who had been, at the time of the robbery for which I suffered, a receiver of stolen goods, and with whom he, Digby, had deposited Mr. Wallscourt's plate, would acknowledge--at least he hoped so--this transaction, and thus add to the weight of his dying testimony to my innocence.

Digby having concluded, I immediately committed what he had just said to writing, and having read it over to him, obtained his approval of it. He then, of his own accord, offered to subscribe the declaration, and with some difficulty accomplished the task. The signature was hardly legible, but it was quite sufficient when attested, as it was, by the signatures of all present excepting myself. Exhausted with the effort he had made, Digby now sank back on his pillow, and in less than three minutes after expired.

We now learned from the unhappy man's two wounded companions, who, the reader will recollect, were our prisoners, that, soon after my trial and condemnation, he, Digby, had left Mr. Wallscourt's service, not under any suspicion of the robbery of the plate, but with no very good general character; that he had the betaken himself entirely to live with the abandoned characters whose acquaintance he had formed, and to subsist by swindling and robbery; that he had proceeded from crime to crime, until he at length fell into the hands of justice; and his banishment to the colony where he had arrived about six months before, was the result; that he had not been more than a month in the country when he and several other convicts ran away from the master to whom they had been a.s.signed, and took to the bush. Such was the brief but dismal history of this wretched man.

On the following day we buried his remains in a lonely spot in the forest, at the distance of about half a mile from the house, and thereafter proceeded with our prisoners to Liverpool. On arriving there, I accompanied my father to the magistrate on whom he had waited on a former occasion, and having stated to this gentleman the extraordinary circ.u.mstance which had taken place--meaning Digby's declaration--he advised an immediate application to the governor, setting forth the circ.u.mstances of the case. This I lost no time in doing, enclosing within my memorial Digby's attested declaration, and pointing out Nareby as a person likely to confirm its tenor. The singularity and apparent hards.h.i.+p of the case, combined with the favourable knowledge of me previously existing, attracted the attention of the governor in a special manner, and excited in him so lively an interest, that he instantly had Nareby subjected to a judicial examination, the result of which was a full admission on the part of that person of the transaction to which Digby alluded.

Satisfied now of my innocence, and of the injustice which had been unwittingly done me, the governor not only immediately transmitted me a full and free pardon but offered me, by way of compensation, a lucrative government appointment. This appointment I accepted, and held for thirty years, I trust with credit to myself, and satisfaction to my superiors. At the end of this period, feeling my health giving way, my father and mother having both, in the meantime, died, and having all that time sc.r.a.ped together a competency, I returned to my native land, and have written these little memoirs in one of the pleasantest little retirements on the banks of the Tweed.

I have only now to add, that I had frequent opportunities of seeing both Lindsay and his wife after the establishment of my innocence, and that no persons would more sincerely rejoice in that event than they did. My poor mother, whom my father had made aware of my situation soon after my arrival, and who had borne the intelligence much better than we expected, it put nearly distracted with joy.

"My puir laddie," she exclaimed, "I aye kent to be innocent. But noo the world 'll ken it too, and I can die happy."

THE AMATEUR ROBBERY.

If there is anything more than another of which civilisation has reason to be proud, it is the amelioration that has been effected in punishment for crimes. Nor is it yet very long since we began to get quit of the shame of our folly and inhumanity, if we have not traces of these yet, coming out like sympathetic ink dried by the choler of self-perfection and a false philosophy, as in such writings as the latter-day pamphlets.

How a man who loves his species, and has a heart, will hang his head abashed as he turns his vision back no further than the sixteenth century, and sees the writhing creatures--often aged unhappy women--under the pilniewinkies, caschielaws, turkases, thumbikens, and other instruments of torture, frantically bursting out with the demanded confession that was to fit them for the stake or the rope! And even after these things in the curiosity shop of Nemesis were got rid of, the abettors of the law rushed with full swing into the operation of hanging, scarcely allowing a crime to escape, from cold-blooded murder down to the act of the famished wretch who s.n.a.t.c.hed a roll from a baker's basket. However insensible these strange lawgivers may have been to so much cruelty, however blind to the perversity, prejudices, and weaknesses incident to human testimony, however ignorant of the total inefficacy of their remedy to deter from crime, one might have imagined that they could not but have known, if they ever looked inwardly into their own hearts, how obscure are human motives, and especially those that instigate to breaches of the law; and yet their consistent rule was, to make the _corpus delicti_ prove the intention. These considerations have been suggested to me by the recollection of a wild adventure of some young men in Edinburgh, the circ.u.mstances of which, not belonging to fiction, will show better than a learned dissertation how easy it was for these Dracos to catch the fact and miss the motive.

The skeleton names--now, alas! the only representatives of skeleton bodies--Andrew W----pe, Henry S----k, and Charles S----th, may recall to the memory of some people in Edinburgh still, three young men, who, with good education, fair talents, and graces from nature, might have played a respectable _role_ in the drama of life, had it not been for a tendency to "fastness," a disease which seems to increase with civilisation. In their instance the old adage of Aristotle, _simile gaudet simili_, was exemplified to the letter; and the union confirmed in each a mind which, originally impatient of authority, fretted itself against the frame of society, simply because that frame was the result of order. They were never happy except when they went up to the palisades, struck upon them with their lath-blades, and when some orderly indweller looked over atop, ran away laughing. No doubt they had strong pa.s.sions to gratify too; but, as is usual with this peculiar race of beings, the gratification was the keener the more it owed to a rebellion against decorum. If they ever differed, it was only in their rivalry of success; or when they did not go a spree-hunting together, they recounted their exploits at their nightly meetings, and then the result was an increase of moral inflammation.

Sometimes, for a change, they would take strolls into the country, where they could extract as tribute the admiration or wrath of clodhoppers without being troubled with any fears of the police; not that on any of these occasions they perpetrated any great infringements on the law, for, like the rest of their kind, if they could make themselves objects of observation, they were regardless whether their bizarreries were paid with admiration or only anger or fear, though, if they could produce by any means a causeless panic, the very height of their ambition was attained. In regard to this last effect of their escapades, they were, in the instance I am about to record, more than satisfied. They had gone, on a fine, clear, winter day, along the coast of the Firth of Forth towards Cramond; and, to diversify their amus.e.m.e.nts, they took with them a gun, which was carried by S----th, with the intention of having a shot at any wild bird or barn-door fowl that might come conveniently within his range. Of this kind of game they had fewer chances, and the stroll would doubtless have appeared a very monotonous affair to a person fond of rational conversation. Nor was there much even to themselves of diversification till they got into a small change-house at Davidson's Mains, where, with a rampant authority, they contrived to get served up to them a kind of dinner, intending to make up for the want of better edibles by potations of whisky toddy.

If facts, as Quinctilian says, are the bones of conversation, opinions are certainly its sinews; and we might add, that whisky toddy is its nervous fluid. These youths, though unwilling to acquire solid information, could wrangle even to quarrelling; but such were their affinities, that they adhered again in a short time, and were as firm friends as ever. They had raised a subject--no other than the question whether highwaymen are necessarily or generally possessed of true courage. Very absurd, no doubt, but as good for a wrangle as any other that can be divided into affirmative and negative by the refracting medium of feeling or prejudice. S----th declared them all to be cowards.

"What say you to Cartouche?" said S----k; "was he a coward?"

"Not sure but he was," said S----th; "he kept a band of blackguards and received their pay, but he was seldom seen in the wild _melee_ himself.

He was fond of the name of terror he bore; but then, as he listened to the wonderful things the Parisian _blanchisseuses_ and _chiffonniers_ and _gamins_ said of him, he knew he was not recognisable, for the very reason that he kept out of sight."

"Oh yes," said W----pe, who joined S----k; "and so he was like Wallace, who kept out of the sight of the English, and yet delighted in Dundee to hear himself spoken of by the crowds who collected in these troublesome times to discuss public affairs. S----th, you know Wallace was a coward, don't you?"

"A thorough poltroon," cried S----th, laughing; "ay, and all the people in Scotland are wrong about him. Didn't he run off, after stabbing the governor's son? and he was always skulking about the Cartland Crags.

Then, didn't he flee at the battle of Falkirk; and was he not a robber when Scotland belonged to Longshanks? No doubt the fellow had a big body, strong bones, and good thews; but that he had the real pluck that nerved the little bodies of such men as Nelson, or Suwarrow, ay, or of Napoleon, I deny." Then he began a ludicrous singing, see-saw recitation of the English doggrel--

"The n.o.ble wight, The Wallace dight, Who slew the knight On Beltane night, And ran for fright Of English might, And English fight, And English right;"

and so on in drunken ribaldry.

"All very well for you who are a Shamite, Shmite, Shmith, Smith," said W----pe. "We happen to be j.a.phet.i.tes. Then what say you to Rob Roy?"

"That, in the first place," replied S----th, "he was a Shemite; for Gathelus, the first Scottish monarch, was a grandson of Nimrod, and, what is worse, he married Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian queen, so there was a spice of Ham in Rob; and as all the Hamites were robbers, Rob was a robber too;--as to whose cowardice there is no doubt whatever; for a man who steals another man's cattle in the dark must be a coward.

Did you ever hear one single example of Rob attacking when in good daylight, and fighting for them in the sun?"

"Ingenious, S----th, at any rate," roared S----k; "but I don't agree with you. A robber on the highway, must, in the general case, have courage. He braves public opinion, he laughs at the gallows, and he throws himself right against a man in bold compet.i.tion, without knowing often whether he is a giant or a dwarf."

"All the elements of a batter pudding," cried S----th, "without the battering principle. Ay, you forget the head-battering bludgeon, the instantaneous pistol, or the cunning knife; none of all which would a man with a spark of courage in him use against an unarmed, defenceless traveller. Another thing you forget, the robber acts upon surprises. He produces confusion by his very presentation, fear by his demand of life or money; and when the poor devil's head is running round, he runs away with his watch or his purse, perhaps both. 'Tis all selfishness, pure unadulterated selfishness; and will you tell me that a man without a particle of honesty or generosity can have courage?"

"Not moral courage, perhaps; but he may have physical."

"All the same, no difference," continued the doughty S----th. "Who ever heard of a bodily feeling except as something coming through the body?

There are only two physical feelings: pain in being wounded or starved, and pleasure in being relieved from pain, or fed when hungry or thirsty.

I know none other; all the others are moral feelings."

"You may be bold through drink acting on the stomach and head."

"Ay, but the boldness, though the effect of a physical cause, is itself a moral ent.i.ty."

"Whoever thought that S----th was such a metaphysician!" said W----pe, a little agoggled in his drunken eyes.

"But the same may be said of every feeling," rejoined S----k, somewhat roused to ambition by W----pe's remark.

"And so it may, my little Aristotle," continued the clever a.s.serter of his original proposition. "Why, man, look ye, what takes you into Miss F----'s shop in Princes Street for snuff, when you never produce a physical t.i.tillation in your nose by a single pinch? Why, it's something you call love, a terribly moral thing, though personified by a little fellow with pinions. Yes, wondrously moral; and sometimes, as in your case, immoral. Well, what is it produced by? The face of the said Miss F---- painted as a sun picture in the camera at the back of your eye, where there is a membrane without a particle of nitrate of silver in its composition, and which yet receives the image. Well, what is love but just the t.i.tillation produced by this image imprinted on your flesh, just as the pleasure of a pinch is the effect of a t.i.tillation of the nerves in the nose? Yet we don't say that snuff pleasure is a moral thing, but merely nasal or bodily. What makes the difference?"

"How S----th is coming it!" said W----pe, still more amazed. "Where the devil has he got all this?"

"Why, the difference lies here. You know, by manipulation and blowing it, that you have a nose; but you don't wipe the retina at the back of your eye when you are weeping for love--only the outside, where the puling tears are. In short, you know you have a nose, but you don't know you have a retina. D'ye catch me, my small Stagyrite, my pet.i.t Peripatetic, my comical Academician, eh? Take your toddy, and let's have a touch of moral drunkenness."

"You ray-ther have me on the hip, S----th."

"Ay, just so; and if I should kick you there, you would not say the pain was a moral thing. All through the same. It's just where and when we don't know the medium we say things are moral and spiritual, and poetical and rational, and all the rest of the humbug."

"But though you say all highwaymen are cowards, you won't try that trick with your foot," said S----k, boiling up a little under the fire of the toddy.

"Don't intend; though, if you were to produce moral courage in me by pinching my nose, I think I could, after making up my mind and putting you upon your guard with a stick in your hand if you chose. Eh! my Peripatetic." And S----th was clearly getting drunk too.

"D----n the fellow, his metaphysics are making him [Transcriber's Note: missing part of this word] dent," cried W----pe.

"Why, you don't see where they hit," said S----th drawlingly.