CHAPTER XXVII
If thou hast any love of mercy in thee,
Turn me upon my face that I may die.
JOANNA BALLIE.
Our traveller hired a post-chaise at the place where he separated from Dinmont, with the purpose of proceeding to Kippletringan, there to inquire into the state of the family at Woodbourne, before he should venture to make his presence in the country known to Miss Mannering. The stage was a long one of eighteen or twenty miles, and the road lay across the country. To add to the inconveniences of the journey, the snow began to fall pretty quickly. The postilion, however, proceeded on his journey for a good many miles without expressing doubt or hesitation. It was not until the night was completely set in that he intimated his apprehensions whether he was in the right road. The increasing snow rendered this intimation rather alarming, for, as it drove full in the lad’s face and lay whitening all around him, it served in two different ways to confuse his knowledge of the country, and to diminish the chance of his recovering the right track. Brown then himself got out and looked round, not, it may be well imagined, from any better hope than that of seeing some house at which he might make inquiry. But none appeared; he could therefore only tell the lad to drive steadily on. The road on which they were ran through plantations of considerable extent and depth, and the traveller therefore conjectured that there must be a gentleman’s house at no great distance. At length, after struggling wearily on for about a mile, the post-boy stopped, and protested his horses would not budge a foot farther; ‘but he saw,’ he said, ‘a light among the trees, which must proceed from a house; the only way was to inquire the road there.’ Accordingly, he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat and a pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the seven-fold shield of Ajax. As in this guise he was plodding forth upon his voyage of discovery, Brown’s impatience prevailed, and, jumping out of the carriage, he desired the lad to stop where he was by the horses, and he would himself go to the house; a command which the driver most joyfully obeyed.
Our traveller groped along the side of the inclosure from which the light glimmered, in order to find some mode of approaching in that direction, and, after proceeding for some space, at length found a stile in the hedge, and a pathway leading into the plantation, which in that place was of great extent. This promised to lead to the light which was the object of his search, and accordingly Brown proceeded in that direction, but soon totally lost sight of it among the trees. The path, which at first seemed broad and well marked by the opening of the wood through which it winded, was now less easily distinguishable, although the whiteness of the snow afforded some reflected light to assist his search. Directing himself as much as possible through the more open parts of the wood, he proceeded almost a mile without either recovering a view of the light or seeing anything resembling a habitation. Still, however, he thought it best to persevere in that direction. It must surely have been a light in the hut of a forester, for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of an ignis fatuus. The ground at length became broken and declined rapidly, and, although Brown conceived he still moved along what had once at least been a pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow concealing those breaches and inequalities, the traveller had one or two falls in consequence. He began now to think of turning back, especially as the falling snow, which his impatience had hitherto prevented his attending to, was coming on thicker and faster.
Willing, however, to make a last effort, he still advanced a little way, when to his great delight he beheld the light opposite at no great distance, and apparently upon a level with him. He quickly found that this last appearance was deception, for the ground continued so rapidly to sink as made it obvious there was a deep dell, or ravine of some kind, between him and the object of his search. Taking every precaution to preserve his footing, he continued to descend until he reached the bottom of a very steep and narrow glen, through which winded a small rivulet, whose course was then almost choked with snow. He now found himself embarrassed among the ruins of cottages, whose black gables, rendered more distinguishable by the contrast with the whitened surface from which they rose, were still standing; the side-walls had long since given way to time, and, piled in shapeless heaps and covered with snow, offered frequent and embarrassing obstacles to our traveller’s progress. Still, however, he persevered, crossed the rivulet, not without some trouble, and at length, by exertions which became both painful and perilous, ascended its opposite and very rugged bank, until he came on a level with the building from which the gleam proceeded.
It was difficult, especially by so imperfect a light, to discover the nature of this edifice; but it seemed a square building of small size, the upper part of which was totally ruinous. It had, perhaps, been the abode in former times of some lesser proprietor, or a place of strength and concealment, in case of need, for one of greater importance. But only the lower vault remained, the arch of which formed the roof in the present state of the building. Brown first approached the place from whence the light proceeded, which was a long narrow slit or loop-hole, such as usually are to be found in old castles. Impelled by curiosity to reconnoitre the interior of this strange place before he entered, Brown gazed in at this aperture. A scene of greater desolation could not well be imagined. There was a fire upon the floor, the smoke of which, after circling through the apartment, escaped by a hole broken in the arch above. The walls, seen by this smoky light, had the rude and waste appearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A cask or two, with some broken boxes and packages, lay about the place in confusion. But the inmates chiefly occupied Brown’s attention. Upon a lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still that, except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave, Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view he perceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one or two of those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs that precede dissolution when the frame is tenacious of life. A female figure, dressed in a long cloak, sate on a stone by this miserable couch; her elbows rested upon her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying person. She moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling of the bell in Catholic days. She accompanied this dismal sound with a slow rocking motion of her body to and fro, as if to keep time with her song. The words ran nearly thus: -
Wasted, weary, wherefore stay,
Wrestling thus with earth and clay?
From the body pass away.
Hark! the mass is singing.
From thee doff thy mortal weed,
Mary Mother be thy speed,
Saints to help thee at thy need.
Hark! the knell is ringing.
Fear not snow-drift driving fast,
Sleet, or hail, or levin blast.
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast
That shall ne’er know waking.
Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone,
Earth flits fast, and time draws on.
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,
Day is near the breaking.
The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and hollow groans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the mortal strife. ‘It will not be,’ she muttered to herself; ‘he cannot pass away with that on his mind, it tethers him here-
Heaven cannot abide it,
Earth refuses to hide it.
[Footnote: See Note 6.]
I must open the door’; and, rising, she faced towards the door of the apartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and, withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable appearance of the place, the door was cautiously secured), she lifted the latch, saying,
Open lock, end strife, Come death, and pass life.
Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her as she opened the door. She stepped back a pace, and he entered, instantly recognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the same gipsy woman whom he had met in Bewcastle. She also knew him at once, and her attitude, figure, and the anxiety of her countenance, assumed the appearance of the well-disposed ogress of a fairy tale, warning a stranger not to enter the dangerous castle of her husband. The first words she spoke (holding up her hands in a reproving manner) were, ‘Said I not to ye, Make not, meddle not? Beware of the redding straik! [Footnote: The redding straik, namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt two combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the most dangerous blow a man can receive.] You are come to no house o’ fair-strae death.’ So saying, she raised the lamp and turned its light on the dying man, whose rude and harsh features were now convulsed with the last agony. A roll of linen about his head was stained with blood, which had soaked also through the blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under no natural disease that the wretch was suffering. Brown started back from this horrible object, and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, ‘Wretched woman, who has done this?’
‘They that were permitted,’ answered Meg Merrilies, while she scanned with a close and keen glance the features of the expiring man. ‘He has had a sair struggle; but it’s passing. I kenn’d he would pass when you came in. That was the death-ruckle; he’s dead.’
Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices. ‘They are coming,’ said she to Brown; ‘you are a dead man if ye had as mony lives as hairs.’ Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of defence. There was none near. He then rushed to the door with the intention of plunging among the trees, and making his escape by flight from what he now esteemed a den of murderers, but Merrilies held him with a masculine grasp. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘here, be still and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing shall befall you.’
Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman’s intimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but in obeying her. She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw on the opposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him carefully, and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay about the place. Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown arranged as softly as he could the means of peeping from under the coverings by which he was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by its side. ‘Best to do this,’ she muttered, ‘ere he stiffen.’ She placed on the dead man’s breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices had been heard without.
Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at this moment his fears mastered his courage so completely that the cold drops burst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserable concealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight murder, without weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which would be only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach other ear than their own; his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling-the bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether smother. There was no such touch of humanity about this woman. The interest, whatever it was, that determined her in his favour arose not from the impulse of compassion, but from some internal, and probably capricious, association of feelings, to which he had no clue. It rested, perhaps, on a fancied likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her father in the sleeping monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapid succession through Brown’s mind as he gazed from his hiding-place upon this extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, and he was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting an escape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, which had consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room for resistance nor flight.
Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to every sound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to the dead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position. ‘He’s a bonny corpse,’ she muttered to herself, ‘and weel worth the streaking.’ And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort of professional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutiae, as if with the skill and feelings of a connoisseur. A long, dark-coloured sea-cloak, which she dragged out of a corner, was disposed for a pall. The face she left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the capes of the cloak so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the body, as she muttered, ‘a mair decent appearance.’
At once three or four men, equally ruffians in appearance and dress, rushed into the hut. ‘Meg, ye limb of Satan, how dare you leave the door open?’ was the first salutation of the party.
‘And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in the dead-thraw? how d’ye think the spirit was to get awa through bolts and bars like thae?’
‘Is he dead, then?’ said one who went to the side of the couch to look at the body.
‘Ay, ay, dead enough,’ said another; ‘but here’s what shall give him a rousing lykewake.’ So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a corner, while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the activity with which she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope of her fidelity towards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to engage the ruffians in their debauch, to prevent the discovery which might take place if by accident any of them should approach too nearly the place of Brown’s concealment.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Nor board nor garner own we now,
Nor roof nor latched door,
Nor kind mate, bound, by holy vow,
To bless a good man’s store
Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,
And night is grown our day;
Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
And use it as ye may
JOANNA BAILLIE.
Brown could now reckon his foes: they were five in number; two of them were very powerful men, who appeared to be either real seamen or strollers who assumed that character; the other three, an old man and two lads, were slighter made, and, from their black hair and dark complexion, seemed to belong to Meg’s tribe. They passed from one to another the cup out of which they drank their spirits. ‘Here’s to his good voyage!’ said one of the seamen, drinking; ‘a squally night he’s got, however, to drift through the sky in.’
We omit here various execrations with which these honest gentlemen garnished their discourse, retaining only such of their expletives as are least offensive.
‘A does not mind wind and weather; ‘a has had many a north-easter in his day.’
‘He had his last yesterday,’ said another gruffly; ‘and now old Meg may pray for his last fair wind, as she’s often done before.’
‘I’ll pray for nane o’ him,’ said Meg, ‘nor for you neither, you randy dog. The times are sair altered since I was a kinchen-mort. Men were men then, and fought other in the open field, and there was nae milling in the darkmans. And the gentry had kind hearts, and would have given baith lap and pannel to ony puir gipsy; and there was not one, from Johnnie Faa the upright man to little Christie that was in the panniers, would cloyed a dud from them. But ye are a’ altered from the gude auld rules, and no wonder that you scour the cramp-ring and trine to the cheat sae often. Yes, ye are a’ altered: you ‘ll eat the goodman’s meat, drink his drink, sleep on the strammel in his barn, and break his house and cut his throat for his pains! There’s blood on your hands, too, ye dogs, mair than ever came there by fair righting. See how ye’ll die then. Lang it was ere he died; he strove, and strove sair, and could neither die nor live; but you-half the country will see how ye’ll grace the woodie.’
The party set up a hoarse laugh at Meg’s prophecy.
‘What made you come back here, ye auld beldam?’ said one of the gipsies; ‘could ye not have staid where you were, and spaed fortunes to the Cumberland flats? Bing out and tour, ye auld devil, and see that nobody has scented; that’s a’ you’re good for now.’
‘Is that a’ I am good for now?’ said the indignant matron. ‘I was good for mair than that in the great fight between our folk and Patrico Salmon’s; if I had not helped you with these very fambles (holding up her hands), Jean Baillie would have frummagem’d you, ye feckless do-little!’
There was here another laugh at the expense of the hero who had received this amazon’s assistance.
‘Here, mother,’ said one of the sailors, ‘here’s a cup of the right for you, and never mind that bully-huff.’
Meg drank the spirits, and, withdrawing herself from farther conversation, sat down before the spot where Brown lay hid, in such a posture that it would have been difficult for any one to have approached it without her rising. The men, however, showed no disposition to disturb her.
They closed around the fire and held deep consultation together; but the low tone in which they spoke, and the cant language which they used, prevented Brown from understanding much of their conversation. He gathered in general that they expressed great indignation against some individual. ‘He shall have his gruel,’ said one, and then whispered something very low into the ear of his comrade.
‘I’ll have nothing to do with that,’ said the other.
‘Are you turned hen-hearted, Jack?’
‘No, by G-d, no more than yourself, but I won’t. It was something like that stopped all the trade fifteen or twenty years ago. You have heard of the Loup?’
‘I have heard HIM (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he fetched him off the perch!’
‘Well, but it did up the trade for one while,’ said Jack.
‘How should that be?’ asked the surly villain.
‘Why,’ replied Jack, ‘the people got rusty about it, and would not deal, and they had bought so many brooms that-’
‘Well, for all that,’ said the other, ‘I think we should be down upon the fellow one of these darkmans and let him get it well.’
‘But old Meg’s asleep now,’ said another; ‘she grows a driveller, and is afraid of her shadow. She’ll sing out, some of these odd-come-shortlies, if you don’t look sharp.’
‘Never fear,’ said the old gipsy man; ‘Meg’s true-bred; she’s the last in the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and often cuts queer words.’
With more of this gibberish they continued the conversation, rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark obscure dialect, eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing distinctly, or in plain language, the subject on which it turned. At length one of them, observing Meg was still fast asleep, or appeared to be so, desired one of the lads ‘to hand in the black Peter, that they might flick it open.’ The boy stepped to the door and brought in a portmanteau, which Brown instantly recognised for his own. His thoughts immediately turned to the unfortunate lad he had left with the carriage. Had the ruffians murdered him? was the horrible doubt that crossed his mind. The agony of his attention grew yet keener, and while the villains pulled out and admired the different articles of his clothes and linen, he eagerly listened for some indication that might intimate the fate of the postilion. But the ruffians were too much delighted with their prize, and too much busied in examining its contents, to enter into any detail concerning the manner in which they had acquired it. The portmanteau contained various articles of apparel, a pair of pistols, a leathern case with a few papers, and some money, etc., etc. At any other time it would have provoked Brown excessively to see the unceremonious manner in which the thieves shared his property, and made themselves merry at the expense of the owner. But the moment was too perilous to admit any thoughts but what had immediate reference to self-preservation.
After a sufficient scrutiny into the portmanteau, and an equitable division of its contents, the ruffians applied themselves more closely to the serious occupation of drinking, in which they spent the greater part of the night. Brown was for some time in great hopes that they would drink so deep as to render themselves insensible, when his escape would have been an easy matter. But their dangerous trade required precautions inconsistent with such unlimited indulgence, and they stopped short on this side of absolute intoxication. Three of them at length composed themselves to rest, while the fourth watched. He was relieved in this duty by one of the others after a vigil of two hours. When the second watch had elapsed, the sentinel awakened the whole, who, to Brown’s inexpressible relief, began to make some preparations as if for departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated. Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after some rummaging which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and shovel; another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still remained in garrison.
After the space of about half an hour, one of those who had departed again returned, and whispered the others. They wrapped up the dead body in the sea cloak which had served as a pall, and went out, bearing it along with them. The aged sibyl then arose from her real or feigned slumbers. She first went to the door, as if for the purpose of watching the departure of her late inmates, then returned, and commanded Brown, in a low and stifled voice, to follow her instantly. He obeyed; but, on leaving the hut, he would willingly have repossessed himself of his money, or papers at least, but this she prohibited in the most peremptory manner. It immediately occurred to him that the suspicion of having removed anything of which he might repossess himself would fall upon this woman, by whom in all probability his life had been saved. He therefore immediately desisted from his attempt, contenting himself with seizing a cutlass, which one of the ruffians had flung aside among the straw. On his feet, and possessed of this weapon, he already found himself half delivered from the dangers which beset him. Still, however, he felt stiffened and cramped, both with the cold and by the constrained and unaltered position which he had occupied all night. But, as he followed the gipsy from the door of the hut, the fresh air of the morning and the action of walking restored circulation and activity to his benumbed limbs.
The pale light of a winter’s morning was rendered more clear by the snow, which was lying all around, crisped by the influence of a severe frost. Brown cast a hasty glance at the landscape around him, that he might be able again to know the spot. The little tower, of which only a single vault remained, forming the dismal apartment in which he had spent this remarkable night, was perched on the very point of a projecting rock overhanging the rivulet. It was accessible only on one side, and that from the ravine or glen below. On the other three sides the bank was precipitous, so that Brown had on the preceding evening escaped more dangers than one; for, if he had attempted to go round the building, which was once his purpose, he must have been dashed to pieces. The dell was so narrow that the trees met in some places from the opposite sides. They were now loaded with snow instead of leaves, and thus formed a sort of frozen canopy over the rivulet beneath, which was marked by its darker colour, as it soaked its way obscurely through wreaths of snow. In one place, where the glen was a little wider, leaving a small piece of flat ground between the rivulet and the bank, were situated the ruins of the hamlet in which Brown had been involved on the preceding evening. The ruined gables, the insides of which were japanned with turf-smoke, looked yet blacker contrasted with the patches of snow which had been driven against them by the wind, and with the drifts which lay around them.
Upon this wintry and dismal scene Brown could only at present cast a very hasty glance; for his guide, after pausing an instant as if to permit him to indulge his curiosity, strode hastily before him down the path which led into the glen. He observed, with some feelings of suspicion, that she chose a track already marked by several feet, which he could only suppose were those of the depredators who had spent the night in the vault. A moment’s recollection, however, put his suspicions to rest. It was not to be thought that the woman, who might have delivered him up to her gang when in a state totally defenceless, would have suspended her supposed treachery until he was armed and in the open air, and had so many better chances of defence or escape. He therefore followed his guide in confidence and silence. They crossed the small brook at the same place where it previously had been passed by those who had gone before. The footmarks then proceeded through the ruined village, and from thence down the glen, which again narrowed to a ravine, after the small opening in which they were situated. But the gipsy no longer followed the same track; she turned aside, and led the way by a very rugged and uneven path up the bank which overhung the village. Although the snow in many places hid the pathway, and rendered the footing uncertain and unsafe, Meg proceeded with a firm and determined step, which indicated an intimate knowledge of the ground she traversed. At length they gained the top of the bank, though by a passage so steep and intricate that Brown, though convinced it was the same by which he had descended on the night before, was not a little surprised how he had accomplished the task without breaking his neck. Above, the country opened wide and uninclosed for about a mile or two on the one hand, and on the other were thick plantations of considerable extent.
Meg, however, still led the way along the bank of the ravine out of which they had ascended, until she heard beneath the murmur of voices. She then pointed to a deep plantation of trees at some distance. ‘The road to Kippletringan,’ she said, ‘is on the other side of these inclosures. Make the speed ye can; there’s mair rests on your life than other folk’s. But you have lost all-stay.’ She fumbled in an immense pocket, from which she produced a greasy purse-’Many’s the awmous your house has gi’en Meg and hers; and she has lived to pay it back in a small degree;’ and she placed the purse in his hand.
‘The woman is insane,’ thought Brown; but it was no time to debate the point, for the sounds he heard in the ravine below probably proceeded from the banditti. ‘How shall I repay this money,’ he said, ‘or how acknowledge the kindness you have done me?’
‘I hae twa boons to crave,’ answered the sibyl, speaking low and hastily: ‘one, that you will never speak of what you have seen this night; the other, that you will not leave this country till you see me again, and that you leave word at the Gordon Arms where you are to be heard of, and when I next call for you, be it in church or market, at wedding or at burial, Sunday or Saturday, mealtime or fasting, that ye leave everything else and come with me.’
‘Why, that will do you little good, mother.’
‘But ‘twill do yoursell muckle, and that’s what I’m thinking o’. I am not mad, although I have had eneugh to make me sae; I am not mad, nor doating, nor drunken. I know what I am asking, and I know it has been the will of God to preserve you in strange dangers, and that I shall be the instrument to set you in your father’s seat again. Sae give me your promise, and mind that you owe your life to me this blessed night.’
‘There’s wildness in her manner, certainly,’ thought Brown, ‘and yet it is more like the wildness of energy than of madness.’-’Well, mother, since you do ask so useless and trifling a favour, you have my promise. It will at least give me an opportunity to repay your money with additions. You are an uncommon kind of creditor, no doubt, but-’
‘Away, away, then!’ said she, waving her hand. ‘Think not about the goud, it’s a’ your ain; but remember your promise, and do not dare to follow me or look after me.’ So saying, she plunged again into the dell, and descended it with great agility, the icicles and snow-wreaths showering down after her as she disappeared.
Notwithstanding her prohibition, Brown endeavoured to gain some point of the bank from which he might, unseen, gaze down into the glen; and with some difficulty (for it must be conceived that the utmost caution was necessary) he succeeded. The spot which he attained for this purpose was the point of a projecting rock, which rose precipitously from among the trees. By kneeling down among the snow and stretching his head cautiously forward, he could observe what was going on in the bottom of the dell. He saw, as he expected, his companions of the last night, now joined by two or three others. They had cleared away the snow from the foot of the rock and dug a deep pit, which was designed to serve the purpose of a grave. Around this they now stood, and lowered into it something wrapped in a naval cloak, which Brown instantly concluded to be the dead body of the man he had seen expire. They then stood silent for half a minute, as if under some touch of feeling for the loss of their companion. But if they experienced such, they did not long remain under its influence, for all hands went presently to work to fill up the grave; and Brown, perceiving that the task would be soon ended, thought it best to take the gipsy woman’s hint and walk as fast as possible until he should gain the shelter of the plantation.