evidence to establish so absurd a claim; and if he had, his circumstances, as an attainted traitor excepted from pardon, would void such a right if it existed. I do therefore desire you, Mr. Justice, and you, his clerk, to consider my situation, and afford me relief at your peril.’
‘Here is a young fellow now,’ said the Justice, with much- embarrassed looks, ‘thinks that I carry the whole statute law of England in my head, and a POSSE COMITATUS to execute them in my pocket! Why, what good would my interference do?–but–hum–eh –I will speak to your guardian in your favour.’
He took Mr. Herries aside, and seemed indeed to urge something upon him with much earnestness; and perhaps such a species of intercession was all which, in the circumstances, I was entitled to expect from him.
They often looked at me as they spoke together; and as Cristal Nixon entered with a huge four-pottle tankard, filled with the beverage his master had demanded, Herries turned away from Mr. Foxley somewhat impatiently, saying with emphasis, ‘I give you my word of honour, that you have not the slightest reason to apprehend anything on his account.’ He then took up the tankard, and saying aloud in Gaelic, ‘SLAINT AN REY,’ [The King’s health.] just tasted the liquor, and handed the tankard to Justice Foxley, who, to avoid the dilemma of pledging him to what might be the Pretender’s health, drank to Mr. Herries’s own, with much pointed solemnity, but in a draught far less moderate.
The clerk imitated the example of his principal, and I was fain to follow their example, for anxiety and fear are at least as thirsty as sorrow is said to be. In a word, we exhausted the composition of ale, sherry, lemon-juice, nutmeg, and other good things, stranded upon the silver bottom of the tankard the huge toast, as well as the roasted orange, which had whilom floated jollily upon the brim, and rendered legible Dr. Byrom’s celebrated lines engraved thereon–
God bless the King!–God bless the Faith’s defender! God bless–No harm in blessing–the Pretender. Who that Pretender is, and who that King,– God bless us all!–is quite another thing.
I had time enough to study this effusion of the Jacobite muse, while the Justice was engaged in the somewhat tedious ceremony of taking leave. That of Mr. Faggot was less ceremonious; but I suspect something besides empty compliment passed betwixt him and Mr. Herries; for I remarked that the latter slipped a piece of paper into the hand of the former, which might perhaps be a little atonement for the rashness with which he had burnt the warrant, and imposed no gentle hand on the respectable minion of the law by whom it was exhibited; and I observed that he made this propitiation in such a manner as to be secret from the worthy clerk’s principal.
When this was arranged, the party took leave of each other with much formality on the part of Squire Foxley, amongst whose adieus the following phrase was chiefly remarkable: ‘I presume you do not intend to stay long in these parts?’
‘Not for the present, Justice, you may be sure; there are good reasons to the contrary. But I have no doubt of arranging my affairs so that we shall speedily have sport together again.’
He went to wait upon the Justice to the courtyard; and, as he did so, commanded Cristal Nixon to see that I returned into my apartment. Knowing it would be to no purpose to resist or tamper with that stubborn functionary, I obeyed in silence, and was once more a prisoner in my former quarters.
CHAPTER VIII
LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION
I spent more than an hour, after returning to the apartment which I may call my prison, in reducing to writing the singular circumstances which I had just witnessed. Methought I could now form some guess at the character of Mr. Herries, upon whose name and situation the late scene had thrown considerable light–one of those fanatical Jacobites, doubtless, whose arms, not twenty years since, had shaken the British throne, and some of whom, though their party daily diminished in numbers, energy, and power, retained still an inclination to renew the attempt they had found so desperate. He was indeed perfectly different from the sort of zealous Jacobites whom it had been my luck hitherto to meet with. Old ladies of family over their hyson, and grey- haired lairds over their punch, I had often heard utter a little harmless treason; while the former remembered having led down a dance with the Chevalier, and the latter recounted the feats they had performed at Preston, Clifton, and Falkirk.
The disaffection of such persons was too unimportant to excite the attention of government. I had heard, however, that there still existed partisans of the Stuart family of a more daring and dangerous description; men who, furnished with gold from Rome, moved, secretly and in disguise, through the various classes of society, and endeavoured to keep alive the expiring zeal of their party.
I had no difficulty in assigning an important post among this class of persons, whose agency and exertion are only doubted by those who look on the surface of things, to this Mr. Herries, whose mental energies, as well as his personal strength and activity, seemed to qualify him well to act so dangerous a part; and I knew that all along the Western Border, both in England and Scotland, there are so many nonjurors, that such a person may reside there with absolute safety, unless it becomes, in a very especial degree, the object of the government to secure his person; and which purpose, even then, might be disappointed by early intelligence, or, as in the case of Mr. Foxley, by the unwillingness of provincial magistrates to interfere in what is now considered an invidious pursuit of the unfortunate.
There have, however, been rumours lately, as if the present state of the nation or at least of some discontented provinces, agitated by a variety of causes but particularly by the unpopularity of the present administration, may seem to this species of agitators a favourable period for recommencing their intrigues; while, on the other hand, government may not, at such a crisis, be inclined to look upon them with the contempt which a few years ago would have been their most appropriate punishment.
That men should be found rash enough to throw away their services and lives in a desperate cause, is nothing new in history, which abounds with instances of similar devotion–that Mr. Herries is such an enthusiast is no less evident; but all this explains not his conduct towards me. Had he sought to make me a proselyte to his ruined cause, violence and compulsion were arguments very unlikely to prevail with any generous spirit. But even if such were his object, of what use to him could be the acquisition of a single reluctant partisan, who could bring only his own person to support any quarrel which he might adopt? He had claimed over me the rights of a guardian; he had more than hinted that I was in a state of mind which could not dispense with the authority of such a person. Was this man, so sternly desperate in his purpose–he who seemed willing to take on his own shoulders the entire support of a cause which had been ruinous to thousands–was he the person that had the power of deciding on my fate? Was it from him those dangers flowed, to secure me against which I had been educated under such circumstances of secrecy and precaution?
And if this was so, of what nature was the claim which he asserted?–Was it that of propinquity? And did I share the blood, perhaps the features, of this singular being?–Strange as it may seem, a thrill of awe, which shot across my mind at that instant, was not unmingled with a wild and mysterious feeling of wonder, almost amounting to pleasure. I remembered the reflection of my own face in the mirror at one striking moment during the singular interview of the day, and I hastened to the outward apartment to consult a glass which hung there, whether it were possible for my countenance to be again contorted into the peculiar frown which so much resembled the terrific look of Herries. But I folded my brows in vain into a thousand complicated wrinkles, and I was obliged to conclude, either that the supposed mark on my brow was altogether imaginary, or that it could not be called forth by voluntary effort; or, in fine, what seemed most likely, that it was such a resemblance as the imagination traces in the embers of a wood fire, or among the varied veins of marble, distinct at one time, and obscure or invisible at another, according as the combination of lines strikes the eye or impresses the fancy.
While I was moulding my visage like a mad player, the door suddenly opened, and the girl of the house entered. Angry and ashamed at being detected in my singular occupation, I turned round sharply, and, I suppose, chance produced the change on my features which I had been in vain labouring to call forth.
The girl started back, with her ‘Don’t ya look so now–don’t ye, for love’s sake–you be as like the ould squoire as–But here a comes,’ she said, huddling away out of the room; ‘and if you want a third, there is none but ould Harry, as I know of, that can match ye for a brent broo!’
As the girl muttered this exclamation, and hastened out of the room, Herries entered. He stopped on observing that I had looked again to the mirror, anxious to trace the look by which the wench had undoubtedly been terrified. He seemed to guess what was passing in my mind, for, as I turned towards him, he observed, ‘Doubt not that it is stamped on your forehead–the fatal mark of our race; though it is not now so apparent as it will become when age and sorrow, and the traces of stormy passions and of bitter penitence, shall have drawn their furrows on your brow.’
‘Mysterious man,’ I replied, ‘I know not of what you speak; your language is as dark as your purposes!’
‘Sit down, then,’ he said, ‘and listen; thus far, at least, must the veil of which you complain be raised. When withdrawn, it will only display guilt and sorrow–guilt followed by strange penalty, and sorrow which Providence has entailed upon the posterity of the mourners.’
He paused a moment, and commenced his narrative, which he told with the air of one, who, remote as the events were which he recited, took still the deepest interest in them. The tone of his voice, which I have already described as rich and powerful, aided by its inflections the effects of his story, which I will endeavour to write down, as nearly as possible, in the very words which he used.
‘It was not of late years that the English learned that their best chance of conquering their independent neighbours must be by introducing amongst them division and civil war. You need not be reminded of the state of thraldom to which Scotland was reduced by the unhappy wars betwixt the domestic factions of Bruce and Baliol, nor how, after Scotland had been emancipated from a foreign yoke by the conduct and valour of the immortal Bruce, the whole fruits of the triumphs of Bannockburn were lost in the dreadful defeats of Dupplin and Halidon; and Edward Baliol, the minion and feudatory of his namesake of England, seemed, for a brief season, in safe and uncontested possession of the throne so lately occupied by the greatest general and wisest prince in Europe. But the experience of Bruce had not died with him. There were many who had shared his martial labours, and all remembered the successful efforts by which, under circumstances as disadvantageous as those of his son, he had achieved the liberation of Scotland.
‘The usurper, Edward Baliol, was feasting with a few of his favourite retainers in the castle of Annan, when he was suddenly surprised by a chosen band of insurgent patriots. Their chiefs were, Douglas, Randolph, the young Earl of Moray, and Sir Simon Fraser; and their success was so complete, that Baliol was obliged to fly for his life scarcely clothed, and on a horse which there was no leisure to saddle. It was of importance to seize his person, if possible, and his flight was closely pursued by a valiant knight of Norman descent, whose family had been long settled in the marches of Dumfriesshire. Their Norman appellation was Fitz-Aldin, but this knight, from the great slaughter which he had made of the Southron, and the reluctance which he had shown to admit them to quarter during the former war of that bloody period, had acquired the name of Redgauntlet, which he transmitted to his posterity’–
‘Redgauntlet!’ I involuntarily repeated.
‘Yes, Redgauntlet,’ said my alleged guardian, looking at me keenly; ‘does that name recall any associations to your mind?’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘except that I had lately heard it given to the hero of a supernatural legend.’
‘There are many such current concerning the family,’ he answered; and then proceeded in his narrative.
‘Alberick Redgauntlet, the first of his house so termed, was, as may be supposed from his name, of a stern and implacable disposition, which had been rendered more so by family discord. An only son, now a youth of eighteen, shared so much the haughty spirit of his father, that he became impatient of domestic control, resisted paternal authority, and finally fled from his father’s house, renounced his political opinions, and awakened his mortal displeasure by joining the adherents of Baliol. It was said that his father cursed, in his wrath, his degenerate offspring, and swore that if they met he should perish by his hand. Meantime, circumstances seemed to promise atonement for this great deprivation. The lady of Alberick Redgauntlet was again, after many years, in a situation which afforded her husband the hope of a more dutiful heir.
‘But the delicacy and deep interest of his wife’s condition did not prevent Alberick from engaging in the undertaking of Douglas and Moray. He had been the most forward in the attack of the castle, and was now foremost in the pursuit of Baliol, eagerly engaged in dispersing or cutting down the few daring followers who endeavoured to protect the usurper in his flight.
‘As these were successively routed or slain, the formidable Redgauntlet, the mortal enemy of the House of Baliol, was within two lances’ length of the fugitive Edward Baliol, in a narrow pass, when a, youth, one of the last who attended the usurper in his flight, threw himself between them, received the shock of the pursuer, and was unhorsed and overthrown. The helmet rolled from his head, and the beams of the sun, then rising over the Solway, showed Redgauntlet the features of his disobedient son, in the livery, and wearing the cognizance, of the usurper.
‘Redgauntlet beheld his son lying before his horse’s feet; but he also saw Baliol, the usurper of the Scottish crown, still, as it seemed, within his grasp, and separated from him only by the prostrate body of his overthrown adherent. Without pausing to inquire whether young Edward was wounded, he dashed his spurs into his horse, meaning to leap over him, but was unhappily frustrated in his purpose. The steed made indeed a bound forward, but was unable to clear the body of the youth, and with its hind foot struck him in the forehead, as he was in the act of rising. The blow was mortal. It is needless to add, that the pursuit was checked, and Baliol escaped.
‘Redgauntlet, ferocious as he is described, was yet overwhelmed with the thoughts of the crime he had committed. When he returned to his castle, it was to encounter new domestic sorrows. His wife had been prematurely seized with the pangs of labour upon hearing the dreadful catastrophe which had taken place. The birth of an infant boy cost her her life. Redgauntlet sat by her corpse for more than twenty-four hours without changing either feature or posture, so far as his terrified domestics could observe. The Abbot of Dundrennan preached consolation to him in vain. Douglas, who came to visit in his affliction a patriot of such distinguished zeal, was more successful in rousing his attention. He caused the trumpets to sound an English point of war in the courtyard, and Redgauntlet at once sprang to his arms, and seemed restored to the recollection which had been lost in the extent of his misery.
‘From that moment, whatever he might feel inwardly, he gave way to no outward emotion. Douglas caused his infant to be brought; but even the iron-hearted soldiers were struck with horror to observe that, by the mysterious law of nature, the cause of his mother’s death, and the evidence of his father’s guilt, was stamped on the innocent face of the babe, whose brow was distinctly marked by the miniature resemblance of a horseshoe. Redgauntlet himself pointed it out to Douglas, saying, with a ghastly smile, “It should have been bloody.”
‘Moved, as he was, to compassion for his brother-in-arms, and steeled against all softer feelings by the habits of civil war, Douglas shuddered at this sight, and displayed a desire to leave the house which was doomed to be the scene of such horrors. As his parting advice, he exhorted Alberick Redgauntlet to make a pilgrimage to Saint Ninian’s of Whiteherne, then esteemed a shrine of great sanctity; and departed with a precipitation which might have aggravated, had that been possible, the forlorn state of his unhappy friend. But that seems to have been incapable of admitting any addition. Sir Alberick caused the bodies of his slaughtered son and the mother to be laid side by side in the ancient chapel of his house, after he had used the skill of a celebrated surgeon of that time to embalm them; and it was said that for many weeks he spent; some hours nightly in the vault where they reposed.
‘At length he undertook the proposed pilgrimage to Whiteherne, where he confessed himself for the first time since his misfortune, and was shrived by an aged monk, who afterwards died in the odour of sanctity. It is said that it was then foretold to the Redgauntlet, that on account of his unshaken patriotism his family should continue to be powerful amid the changes of future times; but that, in detestation of his unrelenting cruelty to his own issue, Heaven had decreed that the valour of his race should always be fruitless, and that the cause which they espoused should never prosper.
‘Submitting to such penance as was there imposed, Sir Alberick went, it is thought, on a pilgrimage either to Rome, or to the Holy Sepulchre itself. He was universally considered as dead; and it was not till thirteen years afterwards, that in the great battle of Durham, fought between David Bruce and Queen Philippa of England, a knight, bearing a horseshoe for his crest, appeared in the van of the Scottish army, distinguishing himself by his reckless and desperate valour; who being at length overpowered and slain, was finally discovered to be the brave and unhappy Sir Alberick Redgauntlet.’
‘And has the fatal sign,’ said I, when Herries had ended his narrative, ‘descended on all the posterity of this unhappy house?’
‘It has been so handed down from antiquity, and is still believed,’ said Herries. ‘But perhaps there is, in the popular evidence, something of that fancy which creates what it sees. Certainly, as other families have peculiarities by which they are distinguished, this of Redgauntlet is marked in most individuals by a singular indenture of the forehead, supposed to be derived from the son of Alberick, their ancestor, and brother to the unfortunate Edward, who had perished in so piteous a manner. It is certain there seems to have been a fate upon the House of Redgauntlet, which has been on the losing side in almost all the civil broils which have divided the kingdom of Scotland from David Bruce’s days, till the late valiant and unsuccessful attempt of the Chevalier Charles Edward.’
He concluded with a deep sigh, as one whom the subject had involved in a train of painful reflections.
‘And am I then,’ I exclaimed, ‘descended from this unhappy race? Do you belong to it? And if so, why do I sustain restraint and hard usage at the hands of a relation?’
‘Inquire no further for the present,’ he said. ‘The line of conduct which I am pursuing towards you is dictated, not by choice but by necessity. You were withdrawn from the bosom of your family and the care of your legal guardian, by the timidity and ignorance of a doting mother, who was incapable of estimating the arguments or feelings of those who prefer honour and principle to fortune, and even to life. The young hawk, accustomed only to the fostering care of its dam, must be tamed by darkness and sleeplessness, ere it is trusted on the wing for the purposes of the falconer.’
I was appalled at this declaration, which seemed to threaten a long continuance, and a dangerous termination, of my captivity. I deemed it best, however, to show some spirit, and at the same time to mingle a tone of conciliation. ‘Mr. Herries,’ I said ‘(if I call you rightly by that name), let us speak upon this matter without the tone of mystery and fear in which you seem inclined to envelop it. I have been long, alas! deprived of the care of that affectionate mother to whom you allude–long under the charge of strangers–and compelled to form my own resolutions upon the reasoning of my own mind. Misfortune–early deprivation–has given me the privilege of acting for myself; and constraint shall not deprive me of an Englishman’s best privilege.’
‘The true cant of the day,’ said Herries, in a tone of scorn. ‘The privilege of free action belongs to no mortal–we are tied down by the fetters of duty–our mortal path is limited by the regulations of honour–our most indifferent actions are but meshes of the web of destiny by which we are all surrounded.’
He paced the room rapidly, and proceeded in a tone of enthusiasm which, joined to some other parts of his conduct, seems to intimate an over-excited imagination, were it not contradicted by the general tenor of his speech and conduct.
‘Nothing,’ he said, in an earnest yet melancholy voice–‘nothing is the work of chance–nothing is the consequence of free-will– the liberty of which the Englishman boasts gives as little real freedom to its owner as the despotism, of an Eastern sultan permits to his slave. The usurper, William of Nassau, went forth to hunt, and thought, doubtless, that it was by an act of his own royal pleasure that the horse of his murdered victim was prepared for his kingly sport. But Heaven had other views; and before the sun was high, a stumble of that very animal over an obstacle so inconsiderable as a mole-hillock, cost the haughty rider his life and his usurped crown, Do you think an inclination of the rein could have avoided that trifling impediment? I tell you, it crossed his way as inevitably as all the long chain of Caucasus could have done. Yes, young man, in doing and suffering, we play but the part allotted by Destiny, the manager of this strange drama, stand bound to act no more than is prescribed, to say no more than is set down for us; and yet we mouth about free-will and freedom of thought and action, as if Richard must not die, or Richmond conquer, exactly where the Author has decreed it shall be so!’
He continued to pace the room after this speech, with folded arms and downcast looks; and the sound of his steps and tone of his voice brought to my remembrance, that I had heard this singular person, when I met him on a former occasion, uttering such soliloquies in his solitary chamber. I observed that, like other Jacobites, in his inveteracy against the memory of King William, he had adopted the party opinion, that the monarch, on the day he had his fatal accident, rode upon a horse once the property of the unfortunate Sir John Friend, executed for high treason in 1698.
It was not my business to aggravate, but, if possible, rather to soothe him in whose power I was so singularly placed. When I conceived that the keenness of his feelings had in some degree subsided, I answered him as follows:–‘I will not–indeed I feel myself incompetent to argue a question of such metaphysical subtlety, as that which involves the limits betwixt free-will and predestination. Let us hope we may live honestly and die hopefully, without being obliged to form a decided opinion upon a point so far beyond our comprehension.’
‘Wisely resolved,’ he interrupted, with a sneer–‘there came a note from some Geneva, sermon.’
‘But,’ I proceeded, ‘I call your attention to the fact that I, as well as you, am acted upon by impulses, the result either of my own free will, or the consequences of the part which is assigned to me by destiny. These may be–nay, at present they are–in direct contradiction to those by which you are actuated; and how shall we decide which shall have precedence?–YOU perhaps feel yourself destined to act as my jailer. I feel myself, on the contrary, destined to attempt and effect my escape. One of us must be wrong, but who can say which errs till the event has decided betwixt us?’
‘I shall feel myself destined to have recourse to severe modes of restraint,’ said he, in the same tone of half jest, half earnest which I had used.
‘In that case,’ I answered, ‘it will be my destiny to attempt everything for my freedom.’
‘And it may be mine, young man,’ he replied, in a deep and stern tone, ‘to take care that you should rather die than attain your purpose.’
This was speaking out indeed, and I did not allow him to go unanswered. ‘You threaten me in vain,’ said I; ‘the laws of my country will protect me; or whom they cannot protect, they will avenge.’
I spoke this firmly, and he seemed for a moment silenced; and the scorn with which he at last answered me, had something of affectation in it.
‘The laws!’ he said; ‘and what, stripling, do you know of the laws of your country? Could you learn jurisprudence under a base-born blotter of parchment, such as Saunders Fairford; or from the empty pedantic coxcomb, his son, who now, forsooth, writer himself advocate? When Scotland was herself, and had her own king and legislature, such plebeian cubs, instead of being called to the bar of her supreme courts, would scarce have been admitted to the honour of bearing a sheepskin process-bag.’
Alan, I could not bear this, but answered indignantly, that he knew not the worth and honour from which he was detracting.
‘I know as much of these Fairfords as I do of you,’ he replied.
‘As much,’ said I, ‘and as little; for you can neither estimate their real worth nor mine. I know you saw them when last in Edinburgh.’
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, and turned on me an inquisitive look.
‘It is true,’ said I; ‘you cannot deny it; and having thus shown you that I know something of your motions, let me warn you I have modes of communication with which you are not acquainted. Oblige me not to use them to your prejudice.’
‘Prejudice me!’ he replied. ‘Young man, I smile at, and forgive your folly. Nay, I will tell you that of which you are not aware, namely, that it was from letters received from these Fairfords that I first suspected, what the result of my visit to them confirmed, that you were the person whom I had sought for years.’
‘If you learned this,’ said I, ‘from the papers which were about my person on the night when I was under the necessity of becoming your guest at Brokenburn, I do not envy your indifference to the means of acquiring information. It was dishonourable to’–
‘Peace, young man,’ said Herries, more calmly than I might have expected; ‘the word dishonour must not be mentioned as in conjunction with my name. Your pocket-book was in the pocket of your coat, and did not escape the curiosity of another, though it would have been sacred from mine, My servant, Cristal Nixon, brought me the intelligence after you were gone. I was displeased with the manner in which he had acquired his information; but it was not the less my duty to ascertain its truth, and for that purpose I went to Edinburgh. I was in hopes to persuade Mr. Fairford to have entered into my views; but I found him too much prejudiced to permit me to trust him. He is a wretched, yet a timid slave of the present government, under which our unhappy country is dishonourably enthralled; and it would have been altogether unfit and unsafe to have entrusted him with the secret either of the right which I possess to direct your actions, or of the manner in which I purpose to exercise it.’
I was determined to take advantage of his communicative humour, and obtain, if possible, more light upon his purpose. He seemed most accessible to being piqued on the point of honour, and I resolved to avail myself, but with caution, of his sensibility upon that topic. ‘You say,’ I replied, ‘that you are not friendly to indirect practices, and disapprove of the means by which your domestic obtained information of my name and quality– Is it honourable to avail yourself of that knowledge which is dishonourably obtained?’
‘It is boldly asked,’ he replied; ‘but, within certain necessary limits, I dislike not boldness of expostulation. You have, in this short conference, displayed more character and energy than I was prepared to expect. You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity when exposed for a season to the winter air. I will answer your question plainly. In business, as in war, spies and informers are necessary evils, which all good men detest; but which yet all prudent men must use, unless they mean to fight and act blindfold. But nothing can justify the use of falsehood and treachery in our own person.’
‘You said to the elder Mr. Fairford,’ continued I, with the same boldness, which I began to find was my best game, ‘that I was the son of Ralph Latimer of Langcote Hall? How do you reconcile this with your late assertion that my name is not Latimer?’
He coloured as he replied, ‘The doting old fool lied; or perhaps mistook my meaning. I said, that gentleman might be your father. To say truth, I wished you to visit England, your native country; because, when you might do so, my rights over you would revive.’
This speech fully led me to understand a caution which had been often impressed upon me, that, if I regarded my safety, I should not cross the southern Border; and I cursed my own folly, which kept me fluttering like a moth around the candle, until I was betrayed into the calamity with which I had dallied. ‘What are those rights,’ I said, ‘which you claim over me? To what end do you propose to turn them?’
‘To a weighty one, you may be certain,’ answered Mr. Herries; ‘but I do not, at present, mean to communicate to you either its nature or extent. You may judge of its importance, when, in order entirely to possess myself of your person, I condescended to mix myself with the fellows who destroyed the fishing station of yon wretched Quaker. That I held him in contempt, and was displeased at the greedy devices with which he ruined a manly sport, is true enough; but, unless as it favoured my designs on you, he might have, for me, maintained his stake-nets till Solway should cease to ebb and flow.’
‘Alas!’ I said, ‘it doubles my regret to have been the unwilling cause of misfortune to an honest and friendly man.’
‘Do not grieve for that,’ said Herries; ‘honest Joshua is one of those who, by dint of long prayers, can possess themselves of widow’s houses–he will quickly repair his losses. When he sustains any mishap, he and the other canters set it down as a debt against Heaven, and, by way of set-off, practise rogueries without compunction, till the they make the balance even, or incline it to the winning side. Enough of this for the present. –I must immediately shift my quarters; for, although I do not fear the over-zeal of Mr. Justice Foxley or his clerk will lead them to any extreme measure, yet that mad scoundrel’s unhappy recognition of me may make it more serious for them to connive at me, and I must not put their patience to an over severe trial. You must prepare to attend me, either as a captive or a companion; if as the latter, you must give your parole of honour to attempt no escape. Should you be so ill advised as to break your word once pledged, be assured that I will blow your brains out without a moment’s scruple.’
‘I am ignorant of your plans and purposes,’ I replied, ‘and cannot but hold them dangerous. I do not mean to aggravate my present situation by any unavailing resistance to the superior force which detains me; but I will not renounce the right of asserting my natural freedom should it favourable opportunity occur. I will, therefore, rather be your prisoner than your confederate.’
‘That is spoken fairly,’ he said; ‘and yet not without the canny caution of one brought up in the Gude Town of Edinburgh. On my part, I will impose no unnecessary hardship upon you; but, on the contrary, your journey shall be made as easy as is consistent with your being kept safely. Do you feel strong enough to ride on horseback as yet, or would you prefer a carriage? The former mode of travelling is best adapted to the country through which we are to travel, but you are at liberty to choose between them.’
I said, ‘I felt my strength gradually returning, and that I should much prefer travelling on horseback. A carriage,’ I added, ‘is so close’–
‘And so easily guarded,’ replied Herries, with a look as if he would have penetrated my very thoughts,–‘that, doubtless, you think horseback better calculated for an escape.’
‘My thoughts are my own,’ I answered; ‘and though you keep my person prisoner, these are beyond your control.’
‘Oh, I can read the book,’ he said, ‘without opening the leaves. But I would recommend to you to make no rash attempt, and it will be my care to see that you have no power to make any that is likely to be effectual. Linen, and all other necessaries for one in your circumstances, are amply provided, Cristal Nixon will act as your valet,–I should rather, perhaps, say, your FEMME DE CHAMBRE. Your travelling dress you may perhaps consider as singular; but it is such as the circumstances require; and, if you object to use the articles prepared for your use, your mode of journeying will be as personally unpleasant as that which conducted you hither.–Adieu–We now know each other better than we did–it will not be my fault if the consequences of further intimacy be not a more favourable mutual opinion.’
He then left me, with a civil good night, to my own reflections, and only turned back to say that we should proceed on our journey at daybreak next morning, at furthest; perhaps earlier, he said; but complimented me by supposing that, as I was a sportsman, I must always be ready for a sudden start.
We are then at issue, this singular man and myself. His personal views are to a certain point explained. He has chosen an antiquated and desperate line of politics, and he claims, from some pretended tie of guardianship or relationship, which he does not deign to explain but which he seems to have been able to pass current on a silly country Justice and his knavish clerk, a right to direct and to control my motions. The danger which awaited me in England, and which I might have escaped had I remained in Scotland, was doubtless occasioned by the authority of this man. But what my poor mother might fear for me as a child–what my English friend, Samuel Griffiths, endeavoured to guard against during my youth and nonage, is now, it seems, come upon me; and, under a legal pretext, I am detained in what must be a most illegal manner, by a person, foe, whose own political immunities have been forfeited by his conduct. It matters not–my mind is made up neither persuasion nor threats shall force me into the desperate designs which this man meditates. Whether I am of the trifling consequence which my life hitherto seems to intimate, or whether I have (as would appear from my adversary’s conduct) such importance, by birth or fortune, as may make me a desirable acquisition to a political faction, my resolution is taken in either case. Those who read this journal, if it shall be perused by impartial eyes, shall judge of me truly; and if they consider me as a fool in encountering danger unnecessarily, they shall have no reason to believe me a coward or a turncoat, when I find myself engaged in it. I have been bred in sentiments of attachment to the family on the throne and in these sentiments I will live and die. I have, indeed, some idea that Mr. Herries has already discovered that I am made of different and more unmalleable metal than he had at first believed. There were letters from my dear Alan Fairford, giving a ludicrous account of my instability of temper, in the same pocket-book, which, according to the admission of my pretended guardian, fell under the investigation of his domestic during the night I passed at Brokenburn, where, as I now recollect, my wet clothes, with the contents of my pockets, were, with the thoughtlessness of a young traveller, committed too rashly to the care of a strange servant. And my kind friend and hospitable landlord, Mr. Alexander Fairford, may also, and with justice, have spoken of my levities to this man. But he shall find he has made a false estimate upon these plausible grounds, since–
I must break off for the present.
CHAPTER IX
LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION
There is at length a halt–at length I have gained so much privacy as to enable me to continue my journal. It has become a sort of task of duty to me, without the discharge of which I do not feel that the business of the day is performed. True, no friendly eye may ever look upon these labours, which have amused the solitary hours of an unhappy prisoner. Yet, in the meanwhile, the exercise of the pen seems to act as a sedative upon my own agitated thoughts and tumultuous passions. I never lay it down but I rise stronger in resolution, more ardent in hope. A thousand vague fears, wild expectations, and indigested schemes, hurry through one’s thoughts in seasons of doubt and of danger. But by arresting them as they flit across the mind, by throwing them on paper, and even by that mechanical act compelling ourselves to consider them with scrupulous and minute attention, we may perhaps escape becoming the dupes of our own excited imagination; just as a young horse is cured of the vice of starting by being made to stand still and look for some time without any interruption at the cause of its terror.
There remains but one risk, which is that of discovery. But besides the small characters, in which my residence in Mr. Fairford’s house enabled me to excel, for the purpose of transferring as many scroll sheets as possible to a huge sheet of stamped paper, I have, as I have elsewhere intimated, had hitherto the comfortable reflection that if the record of my misfortunes should fall into the hands of him by whom they are caused, they would, without harming any one, show him the real character and disposition of the person who has become his prisoner–perhaps his victim. Now, however, that other names, and other characters, are to be mingled with the register of my own sentiments, I must take additional care of these papers, and keep them in such a manner that, in case of the least hazard of detection, I may be able to destroy them at a moment’s notice. I shall not soon or easily forget the lesson I have been taught, by the prying disposition which Cristal Nixon, this man’s agent and confederate, manifested at Brokenburn, and which proved the original cause of my sufferings.
My laying aside the last sheet of my journal hastily was occasioned by the unwonted sound of a violin, in the farmyard beneath my windows. It will not appear surprising to those who have made music their study, that, after listening to a few notes, I became at once assured that the musician was no other than the itinerant, formerly mentioned as present at the destruction of Joshua Geddes’s stake-nets, the superior delicacy and force of whose execution would enable me to swear to his bow amongst a whole orchestra. I had the less reason to doubt his identity, because he played twice over the beautiful Scottish air called Wandering Willie; and I could not help concluding that he did so for the purpose of intimating his own presence, since what the French called the nom de guerre of the performer was described by the tune.
Hope will catch at the most feeble twig for support in extremity. I knew this man, though deprived of sight, to be bold, ingenious, and perfectly capable of acting as a guide. I believed I had won his goodwill, by having, in a frolic, assumed the character of his partner; and I remembered that in a wild, wandering, and disorderly course of life, men, as they become loosened from the ordinary bonds of civil society, hold those of comradeship more closely sacred; so that honour is sometimes found among thieves, and faith and attachment in such as the law has termed vagrants. The history of Richard Coeur de Lion and his minstrel, Blondel, rushed, at the same time, on my mind, though I could not even then suppress a smile at the dignity of the example when applied to a blind fiddler and myself. Still there was something in all this to awaken a hope that, if I could open a correspondence with this poor violer, he might be useful in extricating me from my present situation.
His profession furnished me with some hope that this desired communication might be attained; since it is well known that, in Scotland, where there is so much national music, the words and airs of which are generally known, there is a kind of freemasonry amongst performers, by which they can, by the mere choice of a tune, express a great deal to the hearers. Personal allusions are often made in this manner, with much point and pleasantry; and nothing is more usual at public festivals, than that the air played to accompany a particular health or toast, is made the vehicle of compliment, of wit, and sometimes of satire. [Every one must remember instances of this festive custom, in which the adaptation of the tune to the toast was remarkably felicitous. Old Neil Gow, and his son Nathaniel, were peculiarly happy on such occasions.]
While these things passed through my mind rapidly, I heard my friend beneath recommence, for the third time, the air from which his own name had been probably adopted, when he was interrupted by his rustic auditors.
‘If thou canst play no other spring but that, mon, ho hadst best put up ho’s pipes and be jogging. Squoire will be back anon, or Master Nixon, and we’ll see who will pay poiper then.’
Oho, thought I, if I have no sharper ears than those of my friends Jan and Dorcas to encounter, I may venture an experiment upon them; and, as most expressive of my state of captivity, I sang two or three lines of the 137th Psalm–
By Babel’s streams we sat and wept.
The country people listened with attention, and when I ceased, I heard them whisper together in tones of commiseration, ‘Lack-a- day, poor soul! so pretty a man to be beside his wits!’
‘An he be that gate,’ said Wandering Willie, in a tone calculated to reach my ears, ‘I ken naething will raise his spirits like a spring.’ And he struck up, with great vigour and spirit, the lively Scottish air, the words of which instantly occurred to me —
Oh whistle and I’ll come t’ye, my lad, Oh whistle and I’ll come t’ye, my lad;
Though father and mother and a’ should gae mad, Oh whistle and I’ll come t’ye, my lad.
I soon heard a clattering noise of feet in the courtyard, which I concluded to be Jan and Dorcas dancing a jig in their Cumberland wooden clogs. Under cover of this din, I endeavoured to answer Willie’s signal by whistling, as loud as I could—
Come back again and loe me
When a’ the lave are gane.
He instantly threw the dancers out, by changing his air to
There’s my thumb, I’ll ne’er beguile thee.
I no longer doubted that a communication betwixt us was happily established, and that, if I had an opportunity of speaking to the poor musician, I should find him willing to take my letter to the post, to invoke the assistance of some active magistrate, or of the commanding-officer of Carlisle Castle, or, in short, to do whatever else I could point out, in the compass of his power, to contribute to my liberation. But to obtain speech of him, I must have run the risk of alarming the suspicions of Dorcas, if not of her yet more stupid Corydon. My ally’s blindness prevented his receiving any communication by signs from the window–even if I could have ventured to make them, consistently with prudence–so that notwithstanding the mode of intercourse we had adopted was both circuitous and peculiarly liable to misapprehension, I saw nothing I could do better than to continue it, trusting my own and my correspondent’s acuteness in applying to the airs the meaning they were intended to convey. I thought of singing the words themselves of some significant song, but feared I might, by doing so, attract suspicion. I endeavoured, therefore, to intimate my speedy departure from my present place of residence, by whistling the well-known air with which festive parties in Scotland usually conclude the dance:–
Good night and joy be wi’ ye a’,
For here nae langer maun I stay;
There’s neither friend nor foe, of mine But wishes that I were away.
It appeared that Willie’s powers of intelligence were much more active than mine, and that, like a deaf person accustomed to be spoken to by signs, he comprehended, from the very first notes, the whole meaning I intended to convey; and he accompanied me in the air with his violin, in such a manner as at once to show he understood my meaning, and to prevent my whistling from being attended to.
His reply was almost immediate, and was conveyed in the old martial air of ‘Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver.’ I ran over the words, and fixed on the following stanza, as most applicable to my circumstances:–
Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush; We’ll over the Border and give them a brush; There’s somebody there we’ll teach better behaviour, Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver.
If these sounds alluded, as I hope they do, to the chance of assistance from my Scottish friends, I may indeed consider that a door is open to hope and freedom. I immediately replied with:–
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands! farewell to the North! The birth-place of valour, the cradle of worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Willie instantly played, with a degree of spirit which might have awakened hope in Despair herself, if Despair could be supposed to understand Scotch music, the fine old Jacobite air,
For a’ that, and a’ that,
And twice as much as a’ that.
I next endeavoured to intimate my wish to send notice of my condition to my friends; and, despairing to find an air sufficiently expressive of my purpose, I ventured to sing a verse, which, in various forms, occurs so frequently in old ballads–
Whare will I get a bonny boy
That will win hose and shoon:
That will gae down to Durisdeer,
And bid my merry men come?
He drowned the latter part of the verse by playing, with much emphasis,
Kind Robin loes me.
Of this, though I ran over the verses of the song in my mind, I could make nothing; and before I could contrive any mode of intimating my uncertainty, a cry arose in the courtyard that Cristal Nixon was coming. My faithful Willie was obliged to retreat; but not before he had half played, half hummed, by way of farewell,
Leave thee–leave thee, lad–
I’ll never leave thee;
The stars shall gae withershins
Ere I will leave thee.
I am thus, I think, secure of one trusty adherent in my misfortunes; and, however whimsical it may be to rely much on a man of his idle profession and deprived of sight withal, it is deeply impressed on my mind that his services may be both useful and necessary. There is another quarter from which I look for succour, and which I have indicated to thee, Alan, in more than one passage of my journal. Twice, at the early hour of daybreak, I have seen the individual alluded to in the court of the farm, and twice she made signs of recognition in answer to the gestures by which I endeavoured to make her comprehend my situation; but on both occasions she pressed her finger on her lips, as expressive of silence and secrecy.
The manner in which G.M. entered upon the scene for the first time, seems to assure me of her goodwill, so far as her power may reach; and I have many reasons to believe it is considerable. Yet she seemed hurried and frightened during the very transitory moments of our interview, and I think was, upon the last occasion, startled by the entrance of some one into the farmyard, just as she was on the point of addressing me. You must not ask whether I am an early riser, since such objects are only to be seen at daybreak; and although I have never again seen her, yet I have reason to think she is not distant. It was but three nights ago, that, worn out by the uniformity of my confinement, I had manifested more symptoms of despondence than I had before exhibited, which I conceive may have attracted the attention of the domestics, through whom the circumstance might transpire. On the next morning, the following lines lay on my table; but how conveyed there, I cannot tell. The hand in which they were written is a beautiful Italian manuscript:–
As lords their labourers’ hire delay, Fate quits our toil with hopes to come, Which, if far short of present pay,
Still, owns a debt and names a sum.
Quit not the pledge, frail sufferer, then, Although a distant date be given;
Despair is treason towards man,
And blasphemy to Heaven.
That these lines were written with the friendly purpose of inducing me to keep up my spirits, I cannot doubt; and I trust the manner in which I shall conduct myself may show that the pledge is accepted.
The dress is arrived in which it seems to be my self-elected guardian’s pleasure that I shall travel; and what does it prove to be?–A skirt, or upper-petticoat of camlet, like those worn by country ladies of moderate rank when on horseback, with such a riding-mask as they frequently use on journeys to preserve their eyes and complexion from the sun and dust, and sometimes, it is suspected, to enable then to play off a little coquetry. From the gayer mode of employing the mask, however, I suspect I shall be precluded; for instead of being only pasteboard, covered with black velvet, I observe with anxiety that mine is thickened with a plate of steel, which, like Quixote’s visor, serves to render it more strong and durable.
This apparatus, together with a steel clasp for securing the mask behind me with a padlock, gave me fearful recollections of the unfortunate being, who, never being permitted to lay aside such a visor, acquired the well-known historical epithet of the Man in the Iron Mask. I hesitated a moment whether I should, so far submit to the acts of oppression designed against me as to assume this disguise, which was, of course, contrived to aid their purposes. But when I remembered Mr. Herries’s threat, that I should be kept close prisoner in a carriage, unless I assumed the dress which should be appointed for me; and I considered the comparative degree of freedom which I might purchase by wearing the mask and female dress as easily and advantageously purchased. Here, therefore, I must pause for the present, and await what the morning may bring forth.
[To carry on the story from the documents before us, we think it proper here to drop the journal of the captive Darsie Latimer, and adopt, instead, a narrative of the proceedings of Alan Fairford in pursuit of his friend, which forms another series in this history.]
CHAPTER X
NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD
The reader ought, by this time, to have formed some idea of the character of Alan Fairford. He had a warmth of heart which the study of the law and of the world could not chill, and talents which they had rendered unusually acute. Deprived of the personal patronage enjoyed by most of his contemporaries, who assumed the gown under the protection of their aristocratic alliances and descents, he early saw that he should have that to achieve for himself which fell to them as a right of birth. He laboured hard in silence and solitude, and his labours were crowned with success. But Alan doted on his friend Darsie, even more than he loved his profession, and, as we have seen, threw everything aside when he thought Latimer in danger; forgetting fame and fortune, and hazarding even the serious displeasure of his father, to rescue him whom he loved with an elder brother’s affection. Darsie, though his parts were more quick and brilliant than those of his friend, seemed always to the latter a being under his peculiar charge, whom he was called upon to cherish and protect in cases where the youth’s own experience was unequal to the exigency; and now, when, the fate of Latimer seeming worse than doubtful, Alan’s whole prudence and energy were to be exerted in his behalf, an adventure which might have seemed perilous to most youths of his age had no terrors for him. He was well acquainted with the laws of his country, and knew how to appeal to them; and, besides his professional confidence, his natural disposition was steady, sedate, persevering, and undaunted. With these requisites he undertook a quest which, at that time, was not unattended with actual danger, and had much in it to appal a more timid disposition.
Fairford’s first inquiry concerning his friend was of the chief magistrate of Dumfries, Provost Crosbie, who had sent the information of Darsie’s disappearance. On his first application, he thought he discerned in the honest dignitary a desire to get rid of the subject. The provost spoke of the riot at the fishing station as an ‘outbreak among those lawless loons the fishermen, which concerned the sheriff,’ he said, ‘more than us poor town council bodies, that have enough to do to keep peace within burgh, amongst such a set of commoners as the town are plagued with.’
‘But this is not all, Provost Crosbie,’ said Mr. Alan Fairford; ‘A young gentleman of rank and fortune has disappeared amongst their hands–you know him. My father gave him a letter to you– Mr. Darsie Latimer.’
‘Lack-a-day, yes! lack-a-day, yes!’ said the provost; ‘Mr. Darsie Latimer–he dined at my house–I hope he is well?’
‘I hope so too,’ said Alan, rather indignantly; ‘but I desire more certainty on that point. You yourself wrote my father that he had disappeared.’
‘Troth, yes, and that is true,’ said the provost. ‘But did he not go back to his friends in Scotland? it was not natural to think he would stay here.’
‘Not unless he is under restraint,’ said Fairford, surprised at the coolness with which the provost seemed to take up the matter.
‘Rely on it, sir,’ said Mr. Crosbie, ‘that if he has not returned to his friends in Scotland, he must have gone to his friends in England.’
‘I will rely on no such thing,’ said Alan; ‘if there is law or justice in Scotland, I will have the thing cleared to the very bottom.’
‘Reasonable, reasonable,’ said the provost, ‘so far as is possible; but you know I have no power beyond the ports of the burgh.’
‘But you are in the commission besides, Mr. Crosbie; a justice of peace for the county.’
‘True, very true–that is,’ said the cautious magistrate, ‘I will not say but my name may stand on the list, but I cannot remember that I have ever qualified.’ [By taking the oaths to government.]
‘Why, in that case,’ said young Fairford, ‘there are ill-natured people might doubt your attachment to the Protestant line, Mr. Crosbie.’
‘God forbid, Mr. Fairford! I who have done and suffered in the Forty-five. I reckon the Highlandmen did me damage to the amount of 100l. Scots, forby all they ate and drank–no, no, sir, I stand beyond challenge; but as for plaguing myself with county business, let them that aught the mare shoe the mare. The commissioners of supply would see my back broken before they would help me in the burgh’s work, and all the world kens the difference of the weight between public business in burgh and landward. What are their riots to me? have we not riots enough of our own?–But I must be getting ready, for the council meets this forenoon. I am blithe to see your father’s son on the causeway of our ancient burgh, Mr. Alan Fairford. Were you a twelve-month aulder, we would make a burgess of you, man. I hope you will come and dine with me before you go away. What think you of to-day at two o’clock–just a roasted chucky and a drappit egg?’
Alan Fairford resolved that his friend’s hospitality should not, as it seemed the inviter intended, put a stop to his queries. ‘I must delay you for a moment,’ he said, ‘Mr. Crosbie; this is a serious affair; a young gentleman of high hopes, my own dearest friend, is missing–you cannot think it will be passed over slightly, if a man of your high character and known zeal for the government do not make some active inquiry. Mr. Crosbie, you are my father’s friend, and I respect you as such–but to others it will have a bad appearance.’
The withers of the provost were not unwrung; he paced the room in much tribulation, repeating, ‘But what can I do, Mr. Fairford? I warrant your friend casts up again–he will come back again, like the ill shilling–he is not the sort of gear that tynes–a hellicat boy, running through the country with a blind fiddler and playing the fiddle to a parcel of blackguards, who can tell where the like of him may have scampered to?’
‘There are persons apprehended, and in the jail of the town, as I understand from the sheriff-substitute,’ said Mr. Fairford; ‘you must call them before you, and inquire what they know of this young gentleman.’
‘Aye, aye–the sheriff-depute did commit some poor creatures, I believe–wretched ignorant fishermen bodies, that had been quarrelling with Quaker Geddes and his stake-nets, whilk, under favour of your gown be it spoken, Mr. Fairford, are not over and above lawful, and the town clerk thinks that they may be lawfully removed VIA FACTI–but that is by the by. But, sir, the creatures were a’ dismissed for want of evidence; the Quaker would not swear to them, and what could the sheriff and me do but just let them loose? Come awa, cheer up, Master Alan, and take a walk till dinner-time–I must really go to the council.’
‘Stop a moment, provost,’ said Alan; ‘I lodge a complaint before you as a magistrate, and you will find it serious to slight it over. You must have these men apprehended again.’
‘Aye, aye–easy said; but catch them that can,’ answered the provost; ‘they are ower the march by this time, or by the point of Cairn.–Lord help ye! they are a kind of amphibious deevils, neither land nor water beasts neither English nor Scots–neither county nor stewartry, as we say–they are dispersed like so much quicksilver. You may as well try to whistle a sealgh out of the Solway, as to get hold of one of them till all the fray is over.’
‘Mr. Crosbie, this will not do,’ answered the young counsellor; ‘there is a person of more importance than such wretches as you describe concerned in this unhappy business–I must name to you a certain Mr. Herries.’
He kept his eye on the provost as he uttered the name, which he did rather at a venture, and from the connexion which that gentleman, and his real or supposed niece, seemed to have with the fate of Darsie Latimer, than from any distinct cause of suspicion which he entertained. He thought the provost seemed embarrassed, though he showed much desire to assume an appearance of indifference, in which he partly succeeded.
‘Herries!’ he said–‘What Herries?–There are many of that name –not so many as formerly, for the old stocks are wearing out; but there is Herries of Heathgill, and Herries of Auchintulloch, and Herries’–
‘To save you further trouble, this person’s designation is Herries of Birrenswork.’
‘Of Birrenswork?’ said Mr. Crosbie; ‘I have you now, Mr. Alan. Could you not as well have said, the Laird of Redgauntlet?’
Fairford was too wary to testify any surprise at this identification of names, however unexpected. ‘I thought,’ said he, ‘he was more generally known by the name of Herries. I have seen and been in company with him under that name, I am sure.’
‘Oh aye; in Edinburgh, belike. You know Redgauntlet was unfortunate a great while ago, and though he was maybe not deeper in the mire than other folk, yet, for some reason or other, he did not get so easily out.’
‘He was attainted, I understand; and has no remission,’ said Fairford.
The cautious provost only nodded, and said, ‘You may guess, therefore, why it is so convenient he should hold his mother’s name, which is also partly his own, when he is about Edinburgh. To bear his proper name might be accounted a kind of flying in the face of government, ye understand. But he has been long connived at–the story is an old story–and the gentleman has many excellent qualities, and is of a very ancient and honourable house–has cousins among the great folk–counts kin with the advocate and with the sheriff–hawks, you know, Mr. Alan, will not pike out hawks’ een–he is widely connected–my wife is a fourth cousin of Redgauntlet’s.’
HINC ILLAE LACHRYMAE! thought Alan Fairford to himself; but the hint presently determined him to proceed by soft means and with caution. ‘I beg you to understand,’ said Fairford, ‘that in the investigation I am about to make, I design no harm to Mr. Herries, or Redgauntlet–call him what you will. All I wish is, to ascertain the safety of my friend. I know that he was rather foolish in once going upon a mere frolic, in disguise, to the neighbourhood of this same gentleman’s house. In his circumstances, Mr. Redgauntlet may have misinterpreted the motives, and considered Darsie Latimer as a spy. His influence, I believe, is great among the disorderly people you spoke of but now?’
The provost answered with another sagacious shake of his head, that would have done honour to Lord Burleigh in the CRITIC.
‘Well, then,’ continued Fairford,’ is it not possible that, in the mistaken belief that Mr. Latimer was a spy, he may, upon such suspicion, have caused him to be carried off and confined somewhere? Such things are done at elections, and on occasions less pressing than when men think their lives are in danger from an informer.’
‘Mr. Fairford,’ said the provost, very earnestly, ‘I scarce think such a mistake possible; or if, by any extraordinary chance, it should have taken place, Redgauntlet, whom I cannot but know well, being as I have said my wife’s first cousin (fourth cousin, I should say) is altogether incapable of doing anything harsh to the young gentleman–he might send him ower to Ailsay for a night or two, or maybe land him on the north coast of Ireland, or in Islay, or some of the Hebrides; but depend upon it, he is incapable of harming a hair of his head.’
‘I am determined not to trust to that, provost,’ answered Fairford firmly; ‘and I am a good deal surprised at your way of talking so lightly of such an aggression on the liberty of the subject. You are to consider, and Mr. Herries or Mr. Redgauntlet’s friends would do very well also to consider, how it would sound in the ears of an English Secretary of State, that an attainted traitor (for such is this gentleman) has not only ventured to take up his abode in this realm–against the king of which he has been in arms–but is suspected of having proceeded, by open force and violence, against the person of one of the lieges, a young man who is neither without friends nor property to secure his being righted.’
The provost looked at the young counsellor with a face in which distrust, alarm, and vexation seemed mingled. ‘A fashious job,’ he said at last, ‘a fashious job; and it will be dangerous meddling with it. I should like ill to see your father’s son turn informer against an unfortunate gentleman.’
‘Neither do I mean it,’ answered Alan, ‘provided that unfortunate gentleman and his friends give me a quiet opportunity of securing my friend’s safety. If I could speak with Mr. Redgauntlet, and hear his own explanation, I should probably be satisfied. If I am forced, to denounce him to government, it will be in his new capacity of a kidnapper. I may not be able, nor is it my business, to prevent his being recognized in his former character of an attainted person, excepted from the general pardon.’
‘Master Fairford,’ said the provost, ‘would ye ruin the poor innocent gentleman on an idle suspicion?’
‘Say no more of it, Mr. Crosbie; my line of conduct is determined–unless that suspicion is removed.’
‘Weel, sir,’ said the provost, ‘since so it be, and since you say that you do not seek to harm Redgauntlet personally, I’ll ask a man to dine with us to-day that kens as much about his matters as most folk. You must think, Mr. Alan Fairford, though Redgauntlet be my wife’s near relative, and though, doubtless, I wish him weel, yet I am not the person who is like to be intrusted with his incomings and outgoings. I am not a man for that–I keep the kirk, and I abhor Popery–I have stood up for the House of Hanover, and for liberty and property–I carried arms, sir, against the Pretender, when three of the Highlandmen’s baggage- carts were stopped at Ecclefechan; and I had an especial loss of a hundred pounds’–
‘Scots,’ interrupted Fairford. ‘You forget you told me all this before.’
‘Scots or English, it was too much for me to lose,’ said the provost; so you see I am not a person to pack or peel with Jacobites, and such unfreemen as poor Redgauntlet.’
‘Granted, granted, Mr. Crosbie; and what then?’ said Alan Fairford.
‘Why, then, it follows, that if I am to help you at this pinch, if cannot be by and through my ain personal knowledge, but through some fitting agent or third person.’
‘Granted again,’ said Fairford. ‘And pray who may this third person be?’
‘Wha but Pate Maxwell of Summertrees–him they call Pate-in- Peril.’
‘An old Forty-five man, of course?’ said Fairford.
‘Ye may swear that,’ replied the provost–‘as black a Jacobite as the auld leaven can make him; but a sonsy, merry companion, that none of us think it worth while to break wi’ for all his brags and his clavers. You would have thought, if he had had but his own way at Derby, he would have marched Charlie Stuart through between Wade and the Duke, as a thread goes through the needle’s ee, and seated him in Saint James’s before you could have said haud your hand. But though he is a windy body when he gets on his auld-warld stories, he has mair gumption in him than most people–knows business, Mr. Alan, being bred to the law; but never took the gown, because of the oaths, which kept more folk out then than they do now–the more’s the pity.’
‘What! are you sorry, provost, that Jacobitism is upon the decline?’ said Fairford.
‘No, no,’ answered the provost–‘I am only sorry for folks losing the tenderness of conscience which they used to have. I have a son breeding to the bar, Mr. Fairford; and, no doubt, considering my services and sufferings, I might have looked for some bit postie to him; but if the muckle tykes come in–I mean a’ these Maxwells, and Johnstones, and great lairds, that the oaths used to keep out lang syne–the bits o’ messan doggies, like my son, and maybe like your father’s son, Mr. Alan, will be sair put to the wall.’
‘But to return to the subject, Mr. Crosbie,’ said Fairford, ‘do you really think it likely that this Mr. Maxwell will be of service in this matter?’
‘It’s very like he may be, for he is the tongue of the trump to the whole squad of them,’ said the provost; ‘and Redgauntlet, though he will not stick at times to call him a fool, takes more of his counsel than any man’s else that I am aware of. If Fate can bring him to a communing, the business is done. He’s a sharp chield, Pate-in-Peril.’
‘Pate-in-Peril!’ repeated Alan; ‘a very singular name.’
‘Aye, and it was in as queer a way he got it; but I’ll say naething about that,’ said the provost, ‘for fear of forestalling his market; for ye are sure to hear it once at least, however oftener, before the punch-bowl gives place to the teapot.–And now, fare ye weel; for there is the council-bell clinking in earnest; and if I am not there before it jows in, Bailie Laurie will be trying some of his manoeuvres.’
The provost, repeating his expectation of seeing Mr. Fairford at two o’clock, at length effected his escape from the young counsellor, and left him at a considerable loss how to proceed. The sheriff, it seems, had returned to Edinburgh, and he feared to find the visible repugnance of the provost to interfere with this Laird of Birrenswork, or Redgauntlet, much stronger amongst the country gentlemen, many of whom were Catholics as well as Jacobites, and most others unwilling to quarrel with kinsmen and friends, by prosecuting with severity political offences which had almost run a prescription.
To collect all the information in his power, and not to have recourse to the higher authorities until he could give all the light of which the case was capable, seemed the wiser proceeding in a choice of difficulties. He had some conversation with the procurator-fiscal, who, as well as the provost, was an old correspondent of his father. Alan expressed to that officer a purpose of visiting Brokenburn, but was assured by him, that it would be a step attended with much danger to his own person, and altogether fruitless; that the individuals who had been ringleaders in the riot were long since safely sheltered in their various lurking-holes in the Isle of Man, Cumberland, and elsewhere; and that those who might remain would undoubtedly commit violence on any who visited their settlement with the purpose of inquiring into the late disturbances.
There were not the same objections to his hastening to Mount Sharon, where he expected to find the latest news of his friend; and there was time enough to do so, before the hour appointed for the provost’s dinner. Upon the road, he congratulated himself on having obtained one point of almost certain information. The person who had in a manner forced himself upon his father’s hospitality, and had appeared desirous to induce Darsie Latimer to visit England, against whom, too, a sort of warning had been received from an individual connected with and residing in his own family, proved to be a promoter of the disturbance in which Darsie had disappeared.
What could be the cause of such an attempt on the liberty of an inoffensive and amiable man? It was impossible it could be merely owing to Redgauntlet’s mistaking Darsie for a spy; for though that was the solution which Fairford had offered to the provost, he well knew that, in point of fact, he himself had been warned by his singular visitor of some danger to which his friend was exposed, before such suspicion could have been entertained; and the injunctions received by Latimer from his guardian, or him who acted as such, Mr. Griffiths of London, pointed to the same thing. He was rather glad, however, that he had not let Provost Crosbie into his secret further than was absolutely necessary; since it was plain that the connexion of his wife with the suspected party was likely to affect his impartiality as a magistrate.
When Alan Fairford arrived at Mount Sharon, Rachel Geddes hastened to meet him, almost before the servant could open the door. She drew back in disappointment when she beheld a stranger, and said, to excuse her precipitation, that ‘she had thought it was her brother Joshua returned from Cumberland.’
‘Mr. Geddes is then absent from home?’ said Fairford, much disappointed in his turn.
‘He hath been gone since yesterday, friend,’ answered Rachel, once more composed to the quietude which characterizes her sect, but her pale cheek and red eye giving contradiction to her assumed equanimity.
‘I am,’ said Fairford, hastily, ‘the particular friend of a young man not unknown to you, Miss Geddes–the friend of Darsie Latimer–and am come hither in the utmost anxiety, having understood from Provost Crosbie, that he had disappeared in the night when a destructive attack was made upon the fishing-station of Mr. Geddes.’
‘Thou dost afflict me, friend, by thy inquiries,’ said Rachel, more affected than before; ‘for although the youth was like those of the worldly generation, wise in his own conceit, and lightly to be moved by the breath of vanity, yet Joshua loved him, and his heart clave to him as if he had been his own son. And when he himself escaped from the sons of Belial, which was not until they had tired themselves with reviling, and with idle reproach, and the jests of the scoffer, Joshua, my brother, returned to them once and again, to give ransom for the youth called Darsie Latimer, with offers of money and with promise of remission, but they would not hearken to him. Also, he went before the head judge, whom men call the sheriff, and would have told him of the youth’s peril; but he would in no way hearken to him unless he would swear unto the truth of his words, which thing he might not do without sin, seeing it is written, Swear not at all–also, that our conversation shall be yea or nay. Therefore, Joshua returned to me disconsolate, and said, “Sister Rachel, this youth hath run into peril for my sake; assuredly I shall not be guiltless if a hair of his head be harmed, seeing I have sinned in permitting him to go with me to the fishing station when such evil was to be feared. Therefore, I will take my horse, even Solomon, and ride swiftly into Cumberland, and I will make myself friends with Mammon of Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance.” And I said, “Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the lad.” But he answered and said, “I will not be controlled in this matter.” And he is gone forth and hath not returned, and I fear me that he may never return; for though he be peaceful, as becometh one who holds all violence as offence against his own soul, yet neither the floods of water, nor the fear of the snare, nor the drawn sword of the adversary brandished in the path, will overcome his purpose. Wherefore the Solway may swallow him up, or the sword of the enemy may devour him–nevertheless, my hope is better in Him who directeth all things, and ruleth over the waves of the sea, and overruleth the devices of the wicked, and who can redeem us even as a bird from the fowler’s net.’
This was all that Fairford could learn from Miss Geddes; but he heard with pleasure that the good Quaker, her brother, had many friends among those of his own profession in Cumberland, and without exposing himself to so much danger as his sister seemed to apprehend, he trusted he might be able to discover some traces of Darsie Latimer. He himself rode back to Dumfries, having left with Miss Geddes his direction in that place, and an earnest request that she would forward thither whatever information she might obtain from her brother.
On Fairford’s return to Dumfries, he employed the brief interval which remained before dinner-time, in writing an account of what had befallen Latimer and of the present uncertainty of his condition, to Mr. Samuel Griffiths, through whose hands the remittances for his friend’s service had been regularly made, desiring he would instantly acquaint him with such parts of his history as might direct him in the search which he was about to institute through the border counties, and which he pledged himself not; to give up until he had obtained news of his friend, alive or dead, The young lawyer’s mind felt easier when he had dispatched this letter. He could not conceive any reason why his friend’s life should be aimed at; he knew Darsie had done nothing by which his liberty could be legally affected; and although, even of late years, there had been singular histories of men, and women also, who had been trepanned, and concealed in solitudes and distant islands in order to serve some temporary purpose, such violences had been chiefly practised by the rich on the poor, and by the strong on the feeble; whereas, in the present case, this Mr. Herries, or Redgauntlet, being amenable, for more reasons than one, to the censure of the law, must be the weakest in any struggle in which it could be appealed to. It is true, that his friendly anxiety whispered that the very cause which rendered this oppressor less formidable, might make him more desperate. Still, recalling his language, so strikingly that of the gentleman, and even of the man of honour, Alan Fairford concluded, that though, in his feudal pride, Redgauntlet might venture on the deeds of violence exercised by the aristocracy in other times, he could not be capable of any action of deliberate atrocity. And in these convictions he went to dine with Provost Crosbie, with a heart more at ease than might have been expected. [See Note 7.]
CHAPTER XI
NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD, CONTINUED
Five minutes had elapsed after the town clock struck two, before Alan Fairford, who had made a small detour to put his letter into the post-house, reached the mansion of Mr. Provost Crosbie, and was at once greeted by the voice of that civic dignitary, and the rural dignitary his visitor, as by the voices of men impatient for their dinner.
‘Come away, Mr. Fairford–the Edinburgh time is later than ours,’ said the provost.
And, ‘Come away, young gentleman,’ said the laird; ‘I remember your father weel at the Cross thirty years ago–I reckon you are as late in Edinburgh as at London, four o’clock hours–eh?’
‘Not quite so degenerate,’ replied Fairford; ‘but certainly many Edinburgh people are so ill-advised as to postpone their dinner till three, that they may have full time to answer their London correspondents.’
‘London correspondents!’ said Mr. Maxwell; ‘and pray what the devil have the people of Auld Reekie to do with London correspondents?’ [Not much in those days, for within my recollection the London post; was brought north in a small mail- cart; and men are yet as live who recollect when it came down with only one single letter for Edinburgh, addressed to the manager of the British Linen Company.]
‘The tradesmen must have their goods,’ said Fairford.
‘Can they not buy our own Scottish manufactures, and pick their customers pockets in a more patriotic manner?’
‘Then the ladies must have fashions,’ said Fairford.
‘Can they not busk the plaid over their heads, as their mothers did? A tartan screen, and once a year a new cockernony from Paris, should serve a countess. But ye have not many of them left, I think–Mareschal, Airley, Winton, Vemyss, Balmerino, all passed and gone–aye, aye, the countesses and ladies of quality will scarce take up too much of your ball-room floor with their quality hoops nowadays.’
‘There is no want of crowding, however, sir,’ said Fairford; ‘they begin to talk of a new Assembly room.’
‘A new Assembly room!’ said the old Jacobite laird–‘Umph–I mind quartering three hundred men in the old Assembly room [I remember hearing this identical answer given by an old Highland gentleman of the Forty-Five, when he heard of the opening of the New Assembly Rooms in George Street.]–But come, come–I’ll ask no more questions–the answers all smell of new lords new lands, and do but spoil my appetite, which were a pity, since here comes Mrs. Crosbie to say our mutton’s ready.’
It was even so. Mrs. Crosbie had been absent, like Eve, ‘on hospitable cares intent,’ a duty which she did not conceive herself exempted from, either by the dignity of her husband’s rank in the municipality, or the splendour of her Brussels silk gown, or even by the more highly prized lustre of her birth; for she was born a Maxwell, and allied, as her husband often informed his friends, to several of the first families in the county. She had been handsome, and was still a portly, good-looking woman of her years; and though her peep into the kitchen had somewhat heightened her complexion, it was no more than a modest touch of rouge might have done.
The provost was certainly proud of his lady, nay, some said he was afraid of her; for of the females of the Redgauntlet family there went a rumour, that, ally where they would, there was a grey mare as surely in the stables of their husbands, as there is a white horse in Wouvermans’ pictures. The good dame, too, was supposed to have brought a spice of politics into Mr. Crosbie’s household along with her; and the provost’s enemies at the council-table of the burgh used to observe that he uttered there many a bold harangue against the Pretender, and in favour of King George and government, of which he dared not have pronounced a syllable in his own bedchamber; and that, in fact, his wife’s predominating influence had now and then occasioned his acting, or forbearing to act, in a manner very different from his general professions of zeal for Revolution principles. If this was in any respect true, it was certain, on the other hand, that Mrs. Crosbie, in all external points, seemed to acknowledge the ‘lawful sway and right supremacy’ of the head of the house, and if she did not in truth reverence her husband, she at least seemed to do so.
This stately dame received Mr. Maxwell (a cousin of course) with cordiality, and Fairford with civility; answering at the same time with respect, to the magisterial complaints of the provost, that dinner was just coming up. ‘But since you changed poor Peter MacAlpin, that used to take care of the town-clock, my dear, it has never gone well a single day.’
‘Peter MacAlpin, my dear,’ said the provost,’ made himself too busy for a person in office, and drunk healths and so forth, which it became no man to drink or to pledge, far less one that is in point of office a servant of the public, I understand that he lost the music bells in Edinburgh, for playing “Ower the Water to Charlie,” upon the tenth of June. He is a black sheep, and deserves no encouragement.’
‘Not a bad tune though, after all,’ said Summertrees; and, turning to the window, he half hummed, half whistled, the air in question, then sang the last verse aloud:
‘Oh I loe weel my Charlie’s name,
Though some there be that abhor him; But oh to see the deil gang hame
Wi’ a’ the Whigs before him!
Over the water, and over the sea, And over the water to Charlie;
Come weal, come woe, we’ll gather and go, And live or die with Charlie.’
Mrs. Crosbie smiled furtively on the laird, wearing an aspect at the same time of deep submission; while the provost, not choosing to hear his visitor’s ditty, took a turn through the room, in unquestioned dignity and independence of authority.
‘Aweel, aweel, my dear,’ said the lady, with a quiet smile of submission, ‘ye ken these matters best, and you will do your pleasure–they are far above my hand–only, I doubt if ever the town-clock will go right, or your meals be got up so regular as I should wish, till Peter MacAlpin gets his office back again. The body’s auld, and can neither work nor want, but he is the only hand to set a clock.’
It may be noticed in passing, that notwithstanding this prediction, which, probably, the fair Cassandra had the full means of accomplishing, it was not till the second council day thereafter that the misdemeanours of the Jacobite clock-keeper were passed over, and he was once more restored to his occupation of fixing the town’s time, and the provost’s dinner-hour.
Upon the present occasion the dinner passed pleasantly away. Summertrees talked and jested with the easy indifference of a man who holds himself superior to his company. He was indeed an important person, as was testified by his portly appearance; his hat laced with POINT D’ESPAGNE; his coat and waistcoat once richly embroidered, though now almost threadbare; the splendour of his solitaire, and laced ruffles, though the first was sorely creased, and the other sullied; not to forget the length of his silver-hilted rapier. His wit, or rather humour, bordered on the sarcastic, and intimated a discontented man; and although he showed no displeasure when the provost attempted a repartee, yet it seemed that he permitted it upon mere sufferance, as a fencing-master, engaged with a pupil, will sometimes permit the tyro to hit him, solely by way of encouragement. The laird’s own jests, in the meanwhile, were eminently successful, not only with the provost and his lady, but with the red-cheeked and red- ribboned servant-maid who waited at table, and who could scarce perform her duty with propriety, so effectual were the explosions of Summertrees. Alan Fairford alone was unmoved among all this mirth; which was the less wonderful, that, besides the important subject which occupied his thoughts, most of the laird’s good things consisted in sly allusions to little parochial or family incidents, with which the Edinburgh visitor was totally unacquainted: so that the laughter of the party sounded in his ear like the idle crackling of thorns under the pot, with this difference, that they did not accompany or second any such useful operation as the boiling thereof.
Fairford was glad when the cloth was withdrawn; and when Provost Crosbie (not without some points of advice from his lady touching the precise mixture of the ingredients) had accomplished the compounding of a noble bowl of punch, at which the old Jacobite’s eyes seemed to glisten, the glasses were pushed round it, filled, and withdrawn each by its owner, when the provost emphatically named the toast, ‘The King,’ with an important look to Fairford, which seemed to say, You can have no doubt whom I mean, and therefore there is no occasion to particularize the individual.
Summertrees repeated the toast, with a sly wink to the lady, while Fairford drank his glass in silence.
‘Well, young advocate,’ said the landed proprietor, ‘I am glad to see there is some shame, if there is little honesty, left in the Faculty. Some of your black gowns, nowadays, have as little of the one as of the other.’
‘At least, sir,’ replied Mr. Fairford, ‘I am so much of a lawyer as not willingly to enter into disputes which I am not retained to support–it would be but throwing away both time and argument.’
‘Come, come,’ said the lady, ‘we will have no argument in this house about Whig or Tory–the provost kens what he maun SAY, and I ken what he should THINK; and for a’ that has come and gane yet, there may be a time coming when honest men may say what they think, whether they be provosts or not.’
‘D’ye hear that, provost?’ said Summertrees; ‘your wife’s a witch, man; you should nail a horseshoe on your chamber door–Ha, ha, ha!’
This sally did not take quite so well as former efforts of the laird’s wit. The lady drew up, and the provost said, half aside, ‘The sooth bourd is nae bourd. [The true joke is no joke.] You will find the horseshoe hissing hot, Summertrees.’
‘You can speak from experience, doubtless, provost,’ answered the laird; ‘but I crave pardon–I need not tell Mrs. Crosbie that I have all respect for the auld and honourable House of Redgauntlet.’
‘And good reason ye have, that are sae sib to them,’ quoth the lady, ‘and kend weel baith them that are here, and them that are gane.’
‘In troth, and ye may say sae, madam,’ answered the laird; ‘for poor Harry Redgauntlet, that suffered at Carlisle, was hand and glove with me; and yet we parted on short leave-taking.’
‘Aye, Summertrees,’ said the provost; ‘that was when you played Cheat-the-woodie, and gat the by-name of Pate-in-Peril. I wish you would tell the story to my young friend here. He likes weel to hear of a sharp trick, as most lawyers do.’
‘I wonder at your want of circumspection, provost,’ said the laird,–much after the manner of a singer when declining to sing the song that is quivering upon his tongue’s very end. ‘Ye should mind there are some auld stories that cannot be ripped up again with entire safety to all concerned. TACE is Latin for a candle,’
‘I hope,’ said the lady, ‘you are not afraid of anything being said out of this house to your prejudice, Summertrees? I have heard the story before; but the oftener I hear it, the more wonderful I think it.’
‘Yes, madam; but it has been now a wonder of more than nine days, and it is time it should be ended,’ answered Maxwell.
Fairford now thought it civil to say, ‘that he had often heard of Mr. Maxwell’s wonderful escape, and that nothing could be more agreeable to him than to hear the right version of it.’
But Summertrees was obdurate, and refused to take up the time of the company with such ‘auld-warld nonsense.’
‘Weel, weel,’ said the provost, ‘a wilful man maun hae his way. What do your folk in the country think about the disturbances that are beginning to spunk out in the colonies?’
‘Excellent, sir, excellent. When things come to the worst; they will mend; and to the worst they are coming. But as to that nonsense ploy of mine, if ye insist on hearing the particulars,’ –said the laird, who began to be sensible that the period of telling his story gracefully was gliding fast away.
‘Nay,’ said the provost, ‘it was not for myself, but this young gentlemen.’
‘Aweel, what for should I not pleasure the young gentlemen? I’ll just drink to honest folk at hame and abroad, and deil ane else. And then–but you have heard it before, Mrs. Crosbie?’
‘Not so often as to think it tiresome, I assure ye,’ said the lady; and without further preliminaries, the laird addressed Alan Fairford.
‘Ye have heard of a year they call the FORTY-FIVE, young gentleman; when the Southrons’ heads made their last acquaintance with Scottish claymores? There was a set of rampauging chields in the country then that they called rebels–I never could find out what for–Some men should have been wi’ them that never came, provost–Skye and the Bush aboon Traquair for that, ye ken.– Weel, the job was settled at last. Cloured crowns were plenty, and raxed necks came into fashion. I dinna mind very weel what I was doing, swaggering about the country with dirk and pistol at my belt for five or six months, or thereaway; but I had a weary waking out of a wild dream. When did I find myself on foot in a misty morning, with my hand, just for fear of going astray, linked into a handcuff, as they call it, with poor Harry Redgauntlet’s fastened into the other; and there we were, trudging along, with about a score more that had thrust their horns ower deep in the bog, just like ourselves, and a sergeant’s guard of redcoats, with twa file of dragoons, to keep all quiet, and give us heart to the road. Now, if this mode of travelling was not very pleasant, the object did not particularly recommend it; for, you understand, young man, that they did not trust these poor rebel bodies to be tried by juries of their ain kindly countrymen, though ane would have thought they would have found Whigs enough in Scotland to hang us all; but they behoved to trounce us away to be tried at Carlisle, where the folk had been so frightened, that had you brought a whole Highland clan at once into the court, they would have put their hands upon their een, and cried, “hang them a’,” just to be quit of them.’
‘Aye, aye,’ said the provost, ‘that was a snell law, I grant ye.’
‘Snell!’ said the wife, ‘snell! I wish they that passed it had the jury I would recommend them to!’
‘I suppose the young lawyer thinks it all very right,’ said Summertrees, looking at Fairford–“an OLD lawyer might have thought otherwise. However, the cudgel was to be found to beat the dog, and they chose a heavy one. Well, I kept my spirits better than my companion, poor fellow; for I had the luck to have neither wife nor child to think about, and Harry Redgauntlet had both one and t’other.–You have seen Harry, Mrs. Crosbie?’
‘In troth have I,’ said she, with the sigh which we give to early recollections, of which the object is no more. ‘He was not so tall as his brother, and a gentler lad every way. After he married the great English fortune, folk called him less of a Scottishman than Edward.’
‘Folk lee’d, then,’ said Summertrees; ‘poor Harry was none of your bold-speaking, ranting reivers, that talk about what they did yesterday, or what they will do to-morrow; it was when something was to do at the moment that you should have looked at Harry Redgauntlet. I saw him at Culloden, when all was lost, doing more than twenty of these bleezing braggarts, till the very soldiers that took him cried not to hurt him–for all somebody’s orders, provost–for he was the bravest fellow of them all. Weel, as I went by the side of Harry, and felt him raise my hand up in the mist of the morning, as if he wished to wipe his eye– for he had not that freedom without my leave–my very heart was like to break for him, poor fellow. In the meanwhile, I had been trying and trying to make my hand as fine as a lady’s, to see if I could slip it out of my iron wristband. You may think,’ he said, laying his broad bony hand on the table, ‘I had work enough with such a shoulder-of-mutton fist; but if you observe, the shackle-bones are of the largest, and so they were obliged to keep the handcuff wide; at length I got my hand slipped out, and slipped in again; and poor Harry was sae deep in his ain thoughts, I could not make him sensible what I was doing,’
‘Why not?’ said Alan Fairford, for whom the tale began to have some interest.
‘Because there was an unchancy beast of a dragoon riding close beside us on the other side; and if I had let him into my confidence as well as Harry, it would not have been long before a pistol-ball slapped through my bonnet.–Well, I had little for it but to do the best I could for myself; and, by my conscience, it was time, when the gallows was staring me in the face. We were to halt for breakfast at Moffat. Well did I know the moors we were marching over, having hunted and hawked on every acre of ground in very different times. So I waited, you see, till I was on the edge of Errickstane-brae–Ye ken the place they call the Marquis’s Beef-stand, because the Annandale loons used to put their stolen cattle in there?’
Fairford intimated his ignorance,
‘Ye must have seen it as ye came this way; it looks as if four hills were laying their heads together, to shut out daylight from the dark hollow space between them. A d–d deep, black, blackguard-looking abyss of a hole it is, and goes straight down from the roadside, as perpendicular as it can do, to be a heathery brae. At the bottom, there is a small bit of a brook, that you would think could hardly find, its way out from the hills that are so closely jammed round it.’
‘A bad pass, indeed,’ said Alan.
‘You may say that,’ continued the laird. ‘Bad as it was, sir, it was my only chance; and though my very flesh creeped when I thought what a rumble I was going to get, yet I kept my heart up all the same. And so, just when we came on the edge of this Beef-stand of the Johnstones, I slipped out my hand from the handcuff, cried to Harry Gauntlet, ‘Follow me!’–whisked under the belly of the dragoon horse–flung my plaid round me with the speed of lightning–threw myself on my side, for there was no keeping my feet, and down the brae hurled I, over heather and fern, and blackberries, like a barrel down Chalmer’s Close, in Auld Reekie. G–, sir, I never could help laughing when I think how the scoundrel redcoats must have been bumbazed; for the mist being, as I said, thick, they had little notion, I take it, that they were on the verge of such a dilemma. I was half way down– for rowing is faster wark than rinning–ere they could get at their arms; and then it was flash, flash, flash–rap, rap, rap– from the edge of the road; but my head was too jumbled to think anything either of that or the hard knocks I got among the stones. I kept my senses thegither, whilk has been thought wonderful by all that ever saw the place; and I helped myself with my hands as gallantly as I could, and to the bottom I came. There I lay for half a moment; but the thoughts of a gallows is worth all the salts and scent-bottles in the world for bringing a man to himself. Up I sprang, like a four-year-auld colt. All the hills were spinning round with me, like so many great big humming-tops. But there was nae time to think of that neither; more especially as the mist had risen a little with the firing. I could see the villains, like sae mony craws on the edge of the brae; and I reckon that they saw me; for some of the loons were beginning to crawl down the hill, but liker auld wives in their red cloaks, coming frae a field preaching, than such a souple lad as I was. Accordingly, they soon began to stop and load their pieces. Good-e’en to you, gentlemen, thought I, if that is to be the gate of it. If you have any further word with me, you maun come as far as Carriefraw-gauns. And so off I set, and never buck went faster ower the braes than I did; and I never stopped till I had put three waters, reasonably deep, as the season was rainy, half a dozen mountains, and a few thousand acres of the worst moss and ling in Scotland, betwixt me and my friends the redcoats.’
‘It was that job which got you the name of Pate-in-Peril,’ said the provost, filling the glasses, and exclaiming with great emphasis, while his guest, much animated with the recollections which the exploit excited, looked round with an air of triumph for sympathy and applause,–‘Here is to your good health; and may you never put your neck in such a venture again.’ [The escape of a Jacobite gentleman while on the road to Carlisle to take his trial for his share in the affair of 1745, took place at Errickstane-brae, in the singular manner ascribed to the Laird of Summertrees in the text. The author has seen in his youth the gentleman to whom the adventure actually happened. The distance of time makes some indistinctness of recollection, but it is believed the real name was MacEwen or MacMillan.]
‘Humph!–I do not know,’ answered Summertrees. ‘I am not like to be tempted with another opportunity–[An old gentleman of the author’s name was engaged in the affair of 1715, and with some difficulty was saved from the gallows by the intercession of the Duchess of Buccleugh and Monmouth. Her Grace, who maintained a good deal of authority over her clan, sent for the object of her intercession, and warning him of the risk which he had run, and the trouble she had taken on his account, wound up her lecture by intimating that in case of such disloyalty again, he was not to expect her interest in his favour. ‘An it please your Grace,’ said the stout old Tory, ‘I fear I am too old to see another opportunity.’] Yet who knows?’ And then he made a deep pause.
‘May I ask what became of your friend, sir?’ said Alan Fairford.
‘Ah, poor Harry!’ said Summertrees. ‘I’ll tell you what, sir, it takes time to make up one’s mind to such a venture, as my friend the provost calls it; and I was told by Neil Maclean,–who was next file to us, but had the luck to escape the gallows by some sleight-of-hand trick or other,–that, upon my breaking off, poor Harry stood like one motionless, although all our brethren in captivity made as much tumult as they could, to distract the attention of the soldiers. And run he did at last; but he did not know the ground, and either from confusion, or because he judged the descent altogether perpendicular, he fled up the hill to the left, instead of going down at once, and so was easily pursued and taken. If he had followed my example, he would have found enough among the shepherds to hide him, and feed him, as they did me, on bearmeal scenes and braxy mutton, till better days came round again.’ [BRAXY MUTTON.–The flesh of sheep that has died of disease, not by the hand of the butcher. In pastoral countries it is used as food with little scruple.]
‘He suffered then for his share in the insurrection?’ said Alan.
‘You may swear that,’ said Summertrees. ‘His blood was too red to be spared when that sort of paint was in request. He suffered, sir, as you call it–that is, he was murdered in cold blood, with many a pretty fellow besides. Well, we may have our day next–what is fristed is not forgiven–they think us all dead and buried–but’–Here he filled his glass, and muttering some indistinct denunciations, drank it off, and assumed his usual manner, which had been a little disturbed towards the end of the narrative.
‘What became of Mr. Redgauntlet’s child?’ said Fairford.