Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 20

"Are you ever?"

"I don't deny that in town I take a gla.s.s, but seldom so much as to affect my walking; never so much as make me dream I was robbed of money, and that too money gone from my pocket."

"Where do you carry your money?"

"In my waistcoat pocket. Sometimes I have carried a valuable bill home in my snuff-mull, when it was empty by chance."

"Where had you the five pounds?"

"I am not sure, but I think in my left waistcoat pocket."

"And you gave it on demand? It was not rifled from you?"

"I thrust it into the villain's hand, and ran."

"Well, we must confront you with the supposed robber," said the captain.

"But you seem to be in choler, and I caution you against a precipitate judgment. You may naturally think the admission of the young men enough, and that may make you see what perhaps may not be to be seen. I confess the admission of _three_ to be more than the law wants or wishes; yet there are peculiarities in this case that take it out of the general rules." Stewart then nodded to an officer, who went out and returned.

"There stands the prisoner."

"Charles S----th!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the uncle: "my own nephew! execrable villain!"

And he looked at the youth with bated breath and fiery eyes.

There was silence for a few minutes. The officials looked pitiful. The mother hung down her head; and little Jeannie leered significantly, while she took the strings of her bonnet, tied them, undid them again, and flung away the ends till they went round her neck; nay, the playful minx was utterly dead to the condition of her brother who stood there, ashamed to look any one in the face, if he was not rather like an exhumed corpse; and we would not be far out if we said that she even laughed as she saw the curmudgeon staring like an angry mastiff at the brother she loved so well. But then, was she not an eccentric thing, driven hither and thither by vagrant impulses, and with thoughts in her head which n.o.body could understand?

"Was this the man who robbed you, Mr. Henderson?"

"Yes, the very man; now when I recollect. Stay, was there any handkerchief found on him?"

"Yes; that," said an officer, producing a red silk handkerchief.

"Why, I gave him that," said Mr. Henderson. "It cost me 4s. 6d.; and it was that he had over his face when he robbed me of my hard-earned money!"

"It is true," said Charles; "and sorry am I for the frolic, which my companions forced me into."

"A frolic with five pounds at its credit," said Mr. Henderson. "Where is the money, sir?"

"Ah! I know, dear uncle," cried the watchful Jeannie, in a piercing treble of the clearest silver.

All eyes were turned on Jeannie.

"Then where is it, girl?"

"I saw him put it in his snuff-mull last night when he was at mother's."

"Examine your box, Mr. Henderson."

The man growled, took out the box, and there was the five pounds. He looked at Jeannie as if he would have devoured her with his nose at a single pinch.

"Was Mr. Henderson sober, Miss S----th?"

"No."

"Was he drunk?"

"No. Only he couldn't stand scarcely, though he could walk; and he called mother Jeannie, and me Peggy, and he said 'twas a shame in us to burn two candles at his expense, when one was enough."

"_Saved by a pinch_," cried Captain Stewart.

"Mr. Henderson," said the fiscal, "the case is done, and would never have come here if your nose had happened last night to be as itchy as your hand. The prisoner is discharged."

And no sooner had the words been uttered than Jeannie flew to her brother, hung round his neck, kissed him, blubbered and played such antics that the fiscal could not refrain searching for his handkerchief.

He found it too; but just as if this article were no part of his official property, he returned it to his pocket; and then, as he saw Charles leaning on his mother's breast, and making more noise with his heart and lungs than he could have done if he had been hanged, he resolved, after due deliberation, to let the "hanging drop" have its own way in sticking on the top of his cheek, and determined not to fall for all his jerking.

"BARBADOES, _15th July_ 18--.

"MY DEAREST LITTLE JEANNIE,--I am at length settled the manager of a great sugar factory, with 400 a year. Tell your mother I will write her by next post; and all I can say meantime is, that Messrs. Coutts and Co.

will pay her 100 a year, half-yearly, till I return to keep you, for saving me from the gallows. Accept the offer of the old man. He is worth 500 a year; and you're just the little winged spirit that will keep up a fire of life in a good heart only a little out of use.

"_P.S._--Tell uncle that I will send him five pounds of snuff, by next s.h.i.+p, in return for the five pounds I took out of his box on that eventful night, which was the beginning of my reformation.

"Tell Mrs. S----k and Mrs. W----pe that their sons arrived at Jamaica; but, poor fellows, they are both dead.

"The same vessel that carries the snuff will convey to mother a hogshead of sugar and a puncheon of rum. So that at night, in place of the tiny phial which held a gla.s.s, and which you used to draw out of your pocket so slily when mother was weakly, you may now mix for her a tumbler of rum-punch; and if you don't take some too, I'll send you no more. But, hark ye, Jeannie, don't give uncle a _drop_, though he tried to give me one that, I fear, would have made my head, like yours, a little giddy.

Adieu, dear little Ariel."

THE PROCRASTINATOR.

Being overtaken by a shower in Kensington Gardens, I sought shelter in one of the alcoves near the palace. I was scarce seated, when the storm burst with all its fury; and I observed an old fellow, who had stood loitering till the hurricane whistled round his ears, making towards me, as rapidly as his apparently palsied limbs would permit. Upon his nearer approach, he appeared rather to have suffered from infirmity than years.

He wore a brownish-black coat, or rather sh.e.l.l, which, from its dimensions, had never been intended for the wearer; and his inexpressibles were truly inexpressible. "So," said I, as he seated himself on the bench, and shook the rain from his old broad-brimmed hat, "you see, old boy, '_Procrastination is the thief of time_;' the clouds gave you a hint of what was coming, but you seemed not to take it." "It is," replied he, eagerly. "Doctor Young is in the right. Procrastination has been my curse since I was in leading-strings. It has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. It has ever been my besetting sin--my companion in prosperity and adversity; and I have slept upon it, like Samson on the lap of Delilah, till it has shorn my locks and deprived me of my strength. It has been to me a witch, a manslayer, and a murderer; and when I would have shaken it off in wrath and in disgust, I found I was no longer master of my own actions and my own house. It had brought around me a host of its blood relations--its sisters and its cousins-german--to fatten on my weakness, and haunt me to the grave; so that when I tore myself from the embrace of one, it was only to be intercepted by another. You are young, sir, and a stranger to me; but its effects upon me and my history--the history of a poor paralytic shoemaker--if you have patience to hear, may serve as a beacon to you in your voyage through life."

Upon expressing my a.s.sent to his proposal--for the fluency and fervency of his manner had at once riveted my attention and excited curiosity--he continued:--

"I was born without a fortune, as many people are. When about five years of age, I was sent to a parish school in Roxburghs.h.i.+re, and procrastination went with me. Being possessed of a tolerable memory, I was not more deficient than my schoolfellows; but the task which they had studied the previous evening was by me seldom looked at till the following morning, and my seat was the last to be occupied of any other on the form. My lessons were committed to memory by a few hurried glances, and repeated with a faltering rapidity, which not unfrequently puzzled the ear of the teacher to follow me. But what was thus hastily learned, was as suddenly forgotten. They were mere surface impressions, each obliterated by the succeeding. And though I had run over a tolerable general education, I left school but little wiser than when I entered it.

"My parents--peace to their memory!"--here the old fellow looked most feelingly, and a tear of filial recollection glistened in his eyes: it added a dignity to the recital of his weakness, and I almost reverenced him--"My parents," continued he, "had no ambition to see me rise higher in society than an honest tradesman; and at thirteen I was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Yes, sir, I was--I am a shoemaker; and but for my curse--my malady--had been an ornament to my profession. I have measured the foot of a princess, sir; I have made slippers to his Majesty!" Here his tongue acquired new vigour from the idea of his own importance. "Yes, sir, I have made slippers to his Majesty; yet I am an unlucky--I am a bewitched--I am a ruined man. But to proceed with my history. During the first year of my apprentices.h.i.+p, I acted in the capacity of errand boy; and, as such, had to run upon many an unpleasant message--sometimes to ask money, frequently to borrow it. Now, sir, I am also a _bashful_ man, and, as I was saying, _bashfulness_ is one of the blood relations which procrastination has fastened upon me. While acting in my last-mentioned capacity, I have gone to the house, gazed at every window, pa.s.sed it and repa.s.sed it, placed my hand upon the rapper, withdrawn it, pa.s.sed it and repa.s.sed it again, stood hesitating and consulting with myself, then resolved to defer it till the next day, and finally returned to my master, not with a direct lie, but a broad _equivocation_; and this was another of the cousins-german which procrastination introduced to my acquaintance.

"In the third year of my servitude, I became fond of reading; was esteemed a quick workman; and, having no desire for money beyond what was necessary to supply my wants, I gave unrestricted indulgence to my new pa.s.sion. We had each an allotted quant.i.ty of work to perform weekly.

Conscious of being able to complete it in half the time, and having yielded myself solely to my ruinous propensity to delay, I seldom did anything before the Thursday; and the remaining days were spent in hurry, bustle, and confusion. Occasionally I overrated my abilities--my task was unfinished, and I was compelled to count a _dead horse_. Week after week this grew upon me, till I was so firmly saddled, that, until the expiration of my apprentices.h.i.+p, I was never completely freed from it. This was another of my curse's handmaidens."

Here he turned to me with a look of seriousness, and said, "Beware, young man, how you trust to your own strength and your own talents; for however n.o.ble it may be to do so, let it be in the open field, before you are driven into a corner, where your arms may come in contact with the thorns and the angles of the hedges.

"About this time, too, I fell in love--yes, _fell_ in love; for I just beheld the fair object, and I was a dead man, or a new man, or anything you will. Frequently as I have looked and acted like a fool, I believe I never did so so strikingly as at that moment. She was a beautiful girl--a very angel of light--about five feet three inches high, and my own age. Heaven knows how I ever had courage to declare my pa.s.sion; for I put it off day after day, and week after week, always preparing a new speech against the next time of meeting her, until three or four rivals stepped forward before me. At length I did speak, and never was love more clumsily declared. I told her in three words; then looked to the ground, and again in her face most pitifully. She received my addresses just as saucily as a pretty girl could do. But it were useless to go over our courts.h.i.+p; it was the only happy period of my existence, and every succeeding day has been misery. Matters were eventually brought to a bearing, and the fatal day of final felicity appointed. I was yet young, and my love possessed all the madness of a first pa.s.sion. She not only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else: it burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native indolence yet more indolent. However, the day came (and a bitter stormy day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to pa.s.s away in a fortnight.