Tales from Blackwood Volume Iii Part 15

At length the Professor roused himself, and, prompted by a friendly wish to draw out a more explanatory conclusion, he put the leading question, "Had he, then, _no_ alternative?"

"You forget, my dear sir," replied Julius, rallying with sudden effort, "that by the French laws the son of an executioner _must_ succeed his father, or see the family estate transferred to strangers. When the old headsman was near his end, his son-in-law pledged himself by oath to train a son as his own successor. His eldest boy, who blended with his father's gentle manners some portion of his mother's courage, evinced, from an early age, such determined antipathy to this vocation, that the appointment was transferred to the second son, who had inherited the masculine spirit and prompt decision of his mother. Unhappily, however, soon after his nomination, he died of a malignant fever. His sorrowing mother, who had for some time observed symptoms of declining health in her husband, and was indescribably solicitous to see him relieved from his official duties, prevailed upon her youngest son, in absence of her first-born, to accept the appointment. But this youth, not then nineteen, and in mind and person the counterpart of his timid father, was equally unsuited to this formidable calling. Well knowing, however, that his refusal would deprive his parents of the home and the support so essential to their growing infirmities, he strung his nerves to the appalling task, and, at the next execution, he mounted the scaffold as his father's subst.i.tute. But, alas! at the decisive moment his strength and resolution failed him. His sight grew dim with horror, and he performed his trying duty so unskilfully, that the people groaned with indignation at the protracted sufferings of the unfortunate criminal, and the town authorities p.r.o.nounced him unqualified. The consequence of this disastrous failure was an immediate summons to the eldest son, who had for several years thought himself finally released from this terrible appointment. So unexpected a change in his destination fell upon him like a death-blow; and, as he read the fatal summons, he felt the sword and axe grating on his very soul."

"And do you think it possible," exclaimed one of the students, "that after such long exemption he will submit to a life so horrible?"

"Too probably," replied Julius, mournfully, "he _must_ submit to it.

Indeed, I see no alternative. His refusal would not only deprive his drooping and unhappy parents of every means of support, but too probably expose their lives to the fury of a bigoted and ferocious populace. None but a childless headsman can hold his property during life without a qualified successor; and, when he dies, the magistrates appoint another."

Here Julius paused again. He gazed for some moments in melancholy abstraction upon the dying embers in the stove--the tears again started to his eyes, and he rose abruptly to depart; nor could the joint efforts of the kind Professor, and the now warmly-interested students, prevail on him to stay out another bowl of punch.

"To-morrow early," said he, in unsteady tones, to the Professor, "I will claim your promised introduction to the lieutenant. Till then, farewell!"

"Promise me, then, my dear Julius," rejoined his host, "that you will give us your company to-morrow evening. After so trying a spectacle, a bowl of punch, and the society of four friends, will recruit and cheer you."

The students successively grasped his hand, and cordially urged him to comply. Overcome by this unexpected sympathy, the agitated youth could not restrain his tears, and in a voice tremulous with emotion, he said, "I shall never forget your kindness, and, if I know my heart, I shall prove myself not unworthy of it. If in my power, I will join your friendly circle to-morrow night; but"--he hesitatingly added--"I have never yet faced an execution, and I know not how far such strong excitement may unfit me for society."

The Professor and his friends accompanied him to the street, where they again shook hands and separated.

On the following evening the three students were again a.s.sembled in the Professor's study, and the conversation turned more upon their new friend and his interesting narrative, than upon the tragedy of that morning. The Professor told them that Julius had called early, and been introduced by him to the lieutenant, since which he had not seen or heard of him. One of the students said, that his curiosity to observe the deportment of their mysterious friend had led him early to the ground, where he had seen Julius standing, with folded arms, and pale as death, within a few feet of the scaffold; but that, unable to subdue his own loathing of the approaching catastrophe, he had left the ground before the arrival of the criminal.

An hour elapsed in momentary expectation of the young student's arrival, but he came not. The conversation gradually dropped into monosyllables, and the Professor could no longer disguise his anxiety, when a gentle tap was heard, like that of the preceding night, and without any previous sound of approaching footsteps. "Come in!" cheerfully shouted the relieved Professor, but the door was not unclosed. Again he called, but vainly as before. Then starting from his chair, he opened the door, but discovered no one. The students, who also fancied they had heard a gentle knock, looked at each other in silent amazement; and the warm-hearted Professor, unable to reason down his boding fears, determined to seek Julius at his lodgings, and requested one of the students to accompany him.

He knew the street, but not the house, in which the young man resided; and as soon as they had entered the street, their attention was excited by a tumultuous a.s.semblage of people at no great distance. Hastening to the spot, the Professor ascertained from a bystander that the crowd had been collected by the loud report of a gun or pistol in the apartments of a student. Struck with an appalling presentiment, the Professor and his companion forced a pa.s.sage to the house-door, and were admitted by the landlord, to whom the former was well known. "Tell me!" exclaimed the Professor, gasping with terror and suspense--"Is it Julius Arenbourg?"

"Alas! it is indeed," replied the other. "Follow me up-stairs, and you shall see him."

They found the body of the ill-fated youth extended on the bed, and a pistol near him, the ball of which had gone through his heart. His fine features, although somewhat contracted by the peculiar action of a gunshot wound, still retained much of their bland and melancholy character. The landlord and his family wept as they related that Julius, who was their favourite lodger, had returned home after the execution with hurried steps, and a countenance of death-like paleness.

Without speaking to the children, as was his wont, he had locked the door of his apartment, where he remained several hours, and then hastened with some letters to the post-office. In a few minutes after his return, the fatal shot summoned them to his room, where they found him dying and speechless. "But I had nearly forgotten," concluded the landlord, "that he left upon his table a letter addressed to Professor N."

The worthy man opened the letter with a trembling hand, and, in a voice husky with emotion, read the contents to his companion.

"From you, my dear Professor, and from my younger friends, although but friends of yesterday, I venture to solicit the last kindness which human sympathy can offer. If, as I dare to hope, I have some hold upon your good opinion, you will not refuse to see my remains interred with as much decency as the magistrates will permit. In my purse will be found enough to meet the amount of this and every other claim upon me.

"I have yet another boon to ask, and one of vital moment to my unhappy relatives. I have prepared them to expect intelligence of my death by fever; and surely my request, that the subjoined notice of my decease may be inserted in the papers of Metz and Strasbourg, will not be disregarded by those whose kindness taught me the value of existence when I had no alternative but to resign it.

"That those earthly blessings, which were denied to me and mine, may be abundantly vouchsafed to you, is the fervent prayer of the unhappy

"JULIUS.

"Died of fever, at ----, in Germany, Julius Florian Laroche, a native of Champagne, aged 22."

"Alas!" exclaimed the deeply affected Professor, "the mystery is solved, and my suspicions were too well founded. Sad indeed was thy destiny, my Julius, and sacred shall be thy last wishes."

Kissing the cold brow of the deceased, he hung over his remains in silent sorrow, and breathed a fervent prayer for mercy to the suicide; then giving brief directions for the funeral, the Professor and his friend paced slowly homeward, in silence and in tears.

THE WEARYFUL WOMAN.

BY JOHN GALT.

[_MAGA._ MAY 1821.]

"It happened," said Mr M'Waft, "that there were in the smack many pa.s.sengers, and among others a talkative gentlewoman of no great capacity, sadly troubled with a weakness of parts about her intellectuals. She was indeed a real weak woman; I think I never met with her like for weakness, just as weak as water. Oh but she was a weak creature as ever the hand of the Lord put the breath of life in, and from morning to night, even between the bockings of the sea-sickness, she was aye speaking; na, for that matter, it's a G.o.d's truth, that at the dead hour of midnight, when I happened to be wakened by a noise on the decks, I heard her speaking to herself for want of other companions; and yet for all that, she was vastly entertaining, and in her day had seen many a thing that was curious, so that it was no wonder she spoke a great deal, having seen so much; but she had no command of her judgment, so that her mind was always going round and round and pointing to nothing, like a weatherc.o.c.k in a squally day.

"'Mrs M'Adam,' quoth I to her one day, 'I am greatly surprised at your ability in the way of speaking.' But I was well afflicted for the hypocritical compliment, for she then fastened upon me, and whether it was at meal-time or on the deck, she would come and sit beside me, and talk as if she was trying how many words her tongue could utter without a single grain of sense. I was for a time as civil to her as I could be, but the more civility I showed, the more she talked, and the weather being calm, the vessel made but little way. Such a prospect in a long voyage as I had before me!

"Seeing that my civility had produced such a vexatious effect, I endeavoured to shun the woman, but she singled me out, and even when I pretended to be overwhelmed with the sickness, she would sit beside me, and never cease from talking. If I went below to my bed, she would come down and sit in the cabin, and tell a thousand stories about remedies for the sea-sickness, for her husband had been a doctor, and had a great reputation for skill. 'He was a worthy man,' quoth she, 'and had a world of practice, so that he was seldom at home, and I was obliged to sit by myself for hours in the day, without a living creature to speak to, and obliged to make the iron tongs my companions, by which silence and solitude I fell into low spirits; in the end, however, I broke out of them, and from that day to this, I have enjoyed what the doctor called a cheerful fecundity of words; but when he, in the winter following, was laid up with the gout, he fashed at my spirits, and worked himself into such a state of irritation against my endeavours to entertain him, that the gout took his head, and he went out of the world like a pluff of pouther, leaving me a very disconsolate widow; in which condition, it is not every woman who can demean herself with the discretion that I have done. Thanks be and praise, however, I have not been tempted beyond my strength; for when Mr Pawkie, the seceder minister, came shortly after the interment to catch me with the tear in my e'e, I saw through his exhortations, and I told him upon the spot that he might refrain, for it was my intent to spend the remainder of my days in sorrow and lamentation for my dear deceased husband. Don't you think, sir, it was a very proper rebuke to the first putting forth of his cloven foot? But I had soon occasion to fear that I might stand in need of a male protector; for what could I, a simple woman, do with the doctor's bottles and pots, pills and other doses, to say nothing of his brazen pestle and mortar, which of itself was a thing of value, and might be coined, as I was told, into a firlot of farthings; not however that farthings are now much in circulation, the pennies and new bawbees have quite supplanted them, greatly, as I think, to the advantage of the poor folk, who now get the one or the other, where, in former days, they would have been thankful for a farthing; and yet, for all that, there is a visible increase in the number of beggars, a thing which I cannot understand, and far less thankfulness on their part than of old, when alms were given with a scantier hand; but this, no doubt, comes of the spreading wickedness of the times. Don't you think so, sir? It's a mystery that I cannot fathom, for there was never a more evident pa.s.sion for church-building than at present; but I doubt there is great truth in the old saying, "The nearer the kirk, the farther from grace," which was well exemplified in the case of Provost Pedigree of our town, a decent man in his externals, and he keepit a hardware shop; he was indeed a merchant of "a' things," from a needle and a thimble down to a rattle and a spade. Poor man! he ran at last a ram-race, and was taken before the session; but I had always a jealousy of him, for he used to say very comical things to me in the doctor's lifetime; not that I gave him any encouragement farther than in the way of an innocent joke, for he was a jocose and jocular man, but he never got the better of that exploit with the session, and dwining away, died the year following of a decay, a disease for which my dear deceased husband used to say no satisfactory remedy exists in nature, except gentle laxatives, before it has taken root: but although I have been the wife of a doctor, and spent the best part of my life in the smell of drugs, I cannot say that I approve of them, except in a case of necessity, where, to be sure, they must be taken, if we intend the doctor's skill to take effect upon us; but many a word me and my dear deceased husband had about my taking of his pills, after my long affliction with the hypochondriacal affection, for I could never swallow them, but always gave them a check between the teeth, and their taste was so odious that I could not help spitting them out. It is indeed a great pity, that the Faculty cannot make their nostrums more palatable, and I used to tell the doctor, when he was making up doses for his patients, that I wondered how he could expect sick folk, unable to swallow savoury food, would ever take his nauseous medicines, which he never could abide to hear, for he had great confidence in many of his prescriptions, especially a bolus of flour of brimstone and treacle for the cold, one of the few of his compounds I could ever take with any pleasure.'

"In this way," said Mr M'Waft, "did that endless woman rain her words into my ear, till I began to fear that something like a gout would also take my head; at last I fell on a device, and, lying in bed, began to snore with great vehemence, as if I had been sound asleep, by which, for a time, I got rid of her; but being afraid to go on deck lest she should attack me again, I continued in bed, and soon after fell asleep in earnest. How long I had slept I know not, but when I awoke, there was she chattering to the steward, whom she instantly left the moment she saw my eye open, and was at me again. Never was there such a plague invented as that woman; she absolutely worked me into a state of despair, and I fled from her presence as from a serpent; but she would pursue me up and down, back and fore, till everybody aboard was like to die with laughing at us, and all the time she was as serious and polite as any gentlewoman could well be.

"When we got to London, I was terrified she would fasten herself on me there, and therefore, the moment we reached the wharf, I leapt on sh.o.r.e, and ran as fast as I could for shelter to a public-house, till the steward had despatched her in a hackney. Then I breathed at liberty--never was I so sensible of the blessing before, and I made all my acquaintance laugh very heartily at the story; but my trouble was not ended. Two nights after, I went to see a tragedy, and was seated in an excellent place, when I heard her tongue going among a number of ladies and gentlemen that were coming in. I was seized with a horror, and would have fled, but a friend that was with me held me fast; in that same moment she recognised me, and before I could draw my breath, she was at my side, and her tongue rattling in my lug. This was more than I could withstand, so I got up and left the play-house. Shortly after, I was invited to dinner, and among other guests, in came that afflicting woman, for she was a friend of the family. Oh Lord! such an afternoon I suffered--but the worst was yet to happen.

"I went to St James's to see the drawing-room on the birthday, and among the crowd I fell in with her again, when, to make the matter complete, I found she had been separated from her friends. I am sure they had left her to shift for herself; she took hold of my arm as an old acquaintance, and humanity would not allow me to cast her off; but although I staid till the end of the ceremonies, I saw nothing; I only heard the continual murmur of her words, like the sound of a running river.

"When I got home to my lodging, I was just like a demented man; my head was bizzing like a bee-skep, and I could hear of nothing but the birr of that wearyful woman's tongue. It was terrible; and I took so ill that night, and felt such a loss of appet.i.te and lack of spirit the next day, that I was advised by a friend to take advice; and accordingly, in the London fashion, I went to a doctor's door to do so, but just as I put up my hand to the knocker, there within was the wearyful woman in the pa.s.sage, talking away to the servant-man. The moment I saw her I was seized with a terror, and ran off like one that has been bitten by a wud dog, at the sight and the sound of running water. It is indeed no to be described what I suffered from that woman; and I met her so often, that I began to think she had been ordained to torment me; and the dread of her in consequence so worked upon me, that I grew frightened to leave my lodgings, and I walked the streets only from necessity, and then I was as a man hunted by an evil spirit.

"But the worst of all was to come. I went out to dine with a friend that lives at a town they call Richmond, some six or eight miles from London, and there being a pleasant company, and me no in any terror of the wearyful woman, I sat wi' them as easy as you please, till the stage-coach was ready to take me back to London. When the stage-coach came to the door, it was empty, and I got in; it was a wet night, and the wind blew strong, but, tozy wi' what I had gotten, I laid mysel up in a corner, and soon fell fast asleep. I know not how long I had slumbered, but I was awakened by the coach stopping, and presently I heard the din of a tongue coming towards the coach. It was the wearyful woman; and before I had time to come to mysel, the door was opened, and she was in, chatting away at my side, the coach driving off.

"As it was dark, I resolved to say nothing, but to sleep on, and never heed her. But we hadna travelled half a mile, when a gentleman's carriage going by with lamps, one of them gleamed on my face, and the wearyful woman, with a great shout of gladness, discovered her victim.

"For a time, I verily thought that my soul would have leapt out at the croun of my head like a vapour; and when we got to a turn of the road, where was a public-house, I cried to the coachman for Heaven's sake to let me out, and out I jumped. But O waes me! that deevil thought I was taken ill, and as I was a stranger, the moment I was out and in the house, out came she likewise, and came talking into the kitchen, into which I had ran, perspiring with vexation.

"At the sight, I ran back to the door, determined to prefer the wet and wind on the outside of the coach to the clatter within. But the coach was off, and far beyond call. I could have had the heart, I verily believe, to have quenched the breath of life in that wearyful woman; for when she found the coach was off without us, her alarm was a perfect frenzy, and she fastened on me worse than ever--I thought my heart would have broken.

"By-and-by came another coach, and we got into it. Fortunately twa young London lads, clerks or siclike, were within. They endured her tongue for a time, but at last they whispered each other, and one of them giving me a nodge or sign, taught me to expect they would try to silence her.

Accordingly the other broke suddenly out into an immoderate doff-like laugh that was really awful. The mistress paused for a minute, wondering what it could be at; anon, however, her tongue got under way, and off she went; presently again the younker gave another gaffaw, still more dreadful than the first. His companion, seeing the effect it produced on Madam, said, 'Don't be apprehensive; he has only been for some time in a sort of deranged state; he is quite harmless, I can a.s.sure you.' This had the desired effect, and from that moment till I got her safe off in a hackney-coach from where the stage stoppit, there was nae word out of her head; she was as quiet as p.u.s.s.y, and cowered in to me in terrification o' the madman breaking out. I thought it a souple trick o'

the Londoners. In short," said Mr M'Waft, "though my adventures with the wearyful woman is a story now to laugh at, it was in its time nothing short of a calamity."