Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

J >> John Wilson >> Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2




During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons--the rescuer and
the rescued--and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were
lying embraced in speechless--almost senseless trances; for the agony of
such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be
endured.

The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been
miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of
the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and
among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For
days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited
Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a
shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him
subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its
hospitable door open to all the neighbours.

Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth--but too
apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of
poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or
carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its
ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and
distress. He did not keep evil society--but neither did he shun it: and
having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a
stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented
all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and
in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for
recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated
evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet
retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all
the Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It
was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the
Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon of
Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel," as he called Lawrie,
in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual
Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the
dust--nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose
provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready
School. Even now--as in an ugly dream--we see the combatants alternately
prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood.
All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such
unchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherds
and the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of the
Showmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick on
the King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which had
nearly been the gypsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie,
amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better
cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting
sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the
42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and the
bagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty's
service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at
Gretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold
could not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board a
transport.

Logan Braes was not the same place--indeed, the whole parish seemed
altered--after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth anything
but cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed to
be pining away--not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himself
knew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly
two years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemed
like a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring or
expired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues to
glimmer even steadily with a protracted light. Every week--nay, almost
every day, they feared to lose him--yet there he still was at morning
and evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother was
remarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened over
many woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful,
and expressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and some others of his
companions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-day.
There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best to
look cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had once been harsh and
forbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down by
the perpetual yearnings at his heart towards "the distant far and absent
long," nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child, whom every
hour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice.
Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hours
passed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our many-toned talk
and laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twittering
of the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing like
silver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bring
good tidings--or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to bless
the eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace.
"Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculated
Annie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know,
is with the dead!"--Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of the
door, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Logan
stepped again across his father's threshold, and, ere he well uttered
"God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. His
father and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, with
faces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted his
name aloud--while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on his
master breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him as
of yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us go
out and play," said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously into
the sunshine, we left the family within to themselves, and then walked
away, without speaking, down to the Bridge.

After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all considering
whether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburn
was seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlike
her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, to
beckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, as
we stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is worse," were the
only words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering the
room, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, but
with a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you--but he is
gone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld him
already _laid out_, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as if
she were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie--God was gracious
to let him live to this day, that he micht dee in his brither's arms."

The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreaming
away the hours--a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over,
since morning, along pleasant by-paths, where never dust lay, or from
gate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearless of those
threatening nonentities, spring-guns. There is the turnpike road--the
great north and south road--for it is either the one or the other,
according to the airt towards which you, choose to turn your face.
Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with white-washed
front, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted the
figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches,
shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals
is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these
strapping hens is good augury;--hark, a cackle from the barn--another
egg is laid--and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and
clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana
till the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please," quoth a
comely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an arm-chair, not
wearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and we
take no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in which
we shall put down a few jottings for MAY-DAY. Three boiled eggs--one to
each penny-roll--are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with the
same number fried with mutton ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman and
a Tory. Nor do we remember--when tea-cups have been on a proper scale,
ever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics,
we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we love
moderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie--ye needna keep keekin in
that gate fra ahint the door"--and in a few minutes the curly-pated
prattler is murmuring on our knee. The sonsy wife, well-pleased with
the sight, and knowing from our kindness to children, that we are on the
same side of politics with her gudeman--Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch,
and once Orderly to Garth himself--brings out her ain bottle from the
spence--a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its
honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously
letting fall a not inelegant curtsy--for she had, we now learned, been a
lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her
lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies,
and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she
said, Corfu. One of the children has been sent to the field, where her
husband is sowing barley, to tell him that there is fear lest dinner
cool; and the mistress now draws herself up in pride of his noble
appearance, as the stately Highlander salutes us with the respectful but
bold air of one who has seen some service at home and abroad. Never knew
we a man make other than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a charge
of bayonets.

Shenstone's lines about always meeting the warmest welcome in an inn,
are very natural and tender--as most of his compositions are, when he
was at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of ever
meeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we are
not obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed,
or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers),
we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn,
the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a civil one. When
that is not forthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet,
and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring us
to a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given us
opportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena--meteors--falling
and shooting stars--the Aurora Borealis, in her shifting
splendours--haloes round the moon, variously bright as the
rainbow--electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner so
wondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted for
by philosophers--one-half of the horizon blue, and without a cloud, and
the other driving tempestuously like the sea-foam, with waves
mountain-high--and divinest show of all for a solitary night-wandering
man, who has anything of a soul at all, far and wide, and high up into
the gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burning as if their urns
were newly fed with light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a
vapoury night, although then, too, are the softened or veiled luminaries
beautiful--but large, full, and free over the whole firmament--a galaxy
of shining and unanswerable arguments in proof of the Immortality of the
Soul.

The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof of
that than this very wayside inn--ycleped the SALUTATION. What a
miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that
would neither open nor shut--neither let you out nor in--immovable and
intractable to foot or hand--or all at once, when you least expected it
to yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front during
rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry--roof partly thatched, partly
slated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its naked
rafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still older
pair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and better
plastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather--all labour in vain, as
crumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismal
ochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want,
mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement that
was never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkards
were old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk on
a Sabbath or a fast-day--regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers of
ordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when you
might, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of the
mother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemy
easiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by a
parent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head till
its eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency--what
neatness--what order--in this household--this private public! into which
customers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with a
heartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for they
are gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect does
that latticed window command--and the small panes cut objects into too
many parts--little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and a
hundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a few
budding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could
we sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, nor
hear the striking clock.

There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone--the more's
the pity--yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture to
say who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all her
innocent days.--A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red in
the face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as his
horse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and is
anxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats once
more.--Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may that
cloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, which
you seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where the
two-pounders lie.--Methinks we know that old woman, and of the first
novel we write she shall be the heroine.--Ha! a brilliant bevy of
mounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling
feathers"--sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom we
either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and
vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband
lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it
was _tout une autre chose_; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a more
delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath
her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn--such starlike
eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul--But phoo! phoo! phoo!
she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, in
self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.--There is a Head for a
painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's
countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms--those
sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as,
staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells
his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long
silvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternal
light.--A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden with
horn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be
surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads
the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the
misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred
cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing
about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made
for the wearer--long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in
huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails--a shambling gait,
notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night
prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to
awaken--so noiseless his stealthy advances--the unchained mastiff in his
kennel.

But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment
of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of
soldiers--and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their
movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been
gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation,
blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst as
they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and
with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is
called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these
fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some
unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die
in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition
of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall
suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine
clodhoppers, chaw-bacons _sans peur et sans reproche_, except that the
overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; add
one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the
spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain
fleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long known
by the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the
bounty-money during a protracted strike--not dungs they, but flints all
the nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, and
who, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army at
last; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of the
Seven Young Men--all that now survive--impatient of the drudgery of the
compting-house, and the injustice of the age--but they, we believe, are
in the band--the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at the
least; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels of
the earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble--flunkies long out of
place, and unable to live on their liveries--felons acquitted, or that
have dreed their punishment--picked men from the shilling galleries of
playhouses--and the elite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look
how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of
such materials that our conquering army was made?--were such the heroes
of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?

Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go,
are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years
ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into
courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become
patriots--members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step
out from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you not
studied sympathy and _l'esprit de corps_? An army fifty thousand strong
consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and
saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then,
that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to
victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work
with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing _Te Deum?_
You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition of
the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as
Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to
bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar.

The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the women
and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there--a
year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now
mothers, with babies at their breasts--happy still perhaps; but that
pretty face is woefully wan--that hair did not use to be so
dishevelled--and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay
so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer.

Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her
marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no
more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not
fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell.

The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides--driver and
guard excluded--rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages.
Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste and
hurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and a
half Protestants and Catholics--alike anxious for emancipation--should
be at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of the
twenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are we
that that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman--whose ample
rotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, a
spenser--needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to his
comfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honest
man's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge,
or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades.
But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats with
as many necks as Hydra--the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud of
dust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeled
onwards a mile on its destination.

But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us--a hearse
and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that
the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got
higher than a single-horse Chay--yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneys
must be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides a
race, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, and
another--all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, on
cart-horses in the Brooze--the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort of
notice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps its
snorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water--for well
may they be thirsty--the kirkyard being far among the hills, and the
roads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend," addressing ourself to the
hearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir--if you
are going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had always
thought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in the
month of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in that
month too--some in warm sheets--and some in cold--cold--cold--dripping
damp as the grave.

But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish--that
is to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabited
by persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know to
the contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather too
great an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, of
sufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of those
four, the one which we used to love best to look at was--THE MAINS. No
need to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed in
woods--holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thick
hedgerows and stately single trees--on--on--on--as far as the eye can
reach, a crowd of grove-tops--elms chiefly, or beeches--and a beautiful
boundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell,
Ma'am--farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-house
at the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed grey
walls of the MAINS, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by the
weather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house," quod Sergeant
Stewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune--so
the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had
been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could
do--and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand,
undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own
decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own
hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with
shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor--and that
bright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came all
the way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died a
Professor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what a
slight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumbling
into nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive;
and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselves
against our face, jerking out and in, through door and window, twenty
times in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows--and with
all that frequent crowing of a cock--and all that cawing of rooks--and
cooing of doves--and lowing of cattle along the holms--and bleating of
lambs along the braes--it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sit
we like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening in
the solitude to the voices of other years.

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