Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume VI Part 11

"Cadies are no cadies to coachmen," answered Geordie, dryly; "your brains maun be far spent, man, when they canna keep a house ower their head."

The coachman jumped down for his hat, and Geordie, applying the whip to the horses, was off in an instant. The coachman cried, "Stop the coach!"

Brodie, thinking it was a chase, cried to drive like the devil. Geordie obeyed to the letter, and dashed on like lightning.

The coach stopped, and was instantly surrounded by a number of people, who opened the door, and pulling the three inmates out, led them into a large building, the door of which was double-bolted, and made a tremendous noise as it revolved on its hinges. The party were taken up stairs, and introduced (Geordie leading the way with his hat in his hand) into a large room, where several people were present, apparently waiting for them.

"I beg leave to introduce," said Geordie, bowing low, "to yer lordship, the sheriff--wha has dune us the honour to receive us at this time in sae safe a place as the jail, whar we are perfectly free frae a'

interruption--his honour, Ludovic Brodie, Esq. o' Birkiehaugh, and her highness, Louise Grecourt, a French leddy o' repute. They are anxious to receive yer opinion on a point o' law, in whilk they are personally concerned, a favour, I doutna, yer honour will condescend to grant."

The sheriff immediately set about taking a precognition, for which he had been, by Geordie, previously prepared. Brodie was committed on a charge of abduction; but Louise, on the intercession of Geordie and his ward, was allowed to get off. Some time afterwards, Brodie was tried, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment.

Geordie had now occasion to call upon Lady Maitland for his yearly allowance. Louise having been liberated without trial, it had not yet reached the ears of her or Lady Maitland that Peter Finlayson was, in fact, Geordie Willison. Brodie had made no communication of that fact as yet, and neither Louise nor Lady Maitland could have any idea that Geordie knew of the hand they had in the attempted abduction, or of their knowledge or suspicion that Jessie Warriston was the intended victim of their cruelty.

"My leddy," began Geordie, with his accustomed bow, but with more than his usual significancy of look, "this is the first time for these seventeen years that I hae been awantin' in my attention and duty as yer leddyship's freend; for I am ae day ahint the usual time o' my veesit to yer leddyship, for whilk mark o' disrespect I beg leave to solicit yer leddyship's pardon, upon the condition that I offer, that I shall promise, as I here most solemnly do, that I shall not be again wantin'

in my duty to yer leddyship. Can I say I hae yer leddyship's pardon?"

Crucified by Geordie's cruel humour, but compelled to be silent, Lady Maitland signified her favour.

"Yer leddyship's condescension is a great relief to me," resumed Geordie. "They say Sir Marmaduke's nevey, Brodie o' Birkiehaugh, is in jail for attempting to rin awa' wi' a young la.s.sie. What he was to do wi' her, G.o.d only kens, but there can be nae doubt that he would get sma' favour and grace frae yer leddyship to ony attempt on the puir cratur's life. Na, na--a n.o.bility sae michtie as yer leddyship's, an' a saftness o' heart whilk far excels that o' the bleatin' ewe for the puir lambie that lies deein' by its side, couldna patroneeze onything like the takin' awa o' G.o.d's breath frae the nostrils o' innocence."

Geordie, whose cruelty was refined, paused, and fixed his eyes on the lady, who appeared to be in agony. She rose quickly, and went, as usual, to her bureau to give him money.

"Stop," said Geordie; "I haena asked ye for't yet. I dinna like awmous.

It's only when I want to favour yer leddyship that I tak siller fra ye, and naething I hae yet said could warrant yer leddyship in supposing that I was to confer sic a favour on ye, at least at the particular time when ye rose to open yer kist; and I dinna need to say, that favours quickly conferred are sune repented o'. Weel, the bit la.s.sie wham Birkiehaugh was after, is a young creature, ca'ed Jessie Warriston, wha lives wi' my mither. Few folk on earth ken meikle about her; but my mither swears that her mither maun hae been hanged, for she has a ring round her bonny white craig, like that on the neck o' the turtle doo. I laugh, an' say to the bonny bairn, that it will stan' in place o' a coral or cornelian necklace to her.--Ha! ha! I see your leddyship's inclined to laugh too--eh?"

And Geordie again eyed the lady, who was as far from laughing as the criminal at the stake.

"Weel," resumed the crucifier, "Birkiehaugh didna succeed--thanks to Peter Finlayson, honest fallow--and the la.s.sie is safe again; but I hae made a vow, and I hope sae gude a ane will be regularly recorded whar it should be, that the first person wha tries to lay sae meikle as a finger on that bonny bairn's head, or blaw a single breath o' suspicion against her reputation, will meet wi' the just indignation o' Geordie Willison.

An' noo, my leddy, I will favour ye by accepting, at yer hands, twenty pund."

Geordie received, and counted the money, as usual, and, with a bow, retired.

The six months of Birkiehaugh's confinement expired, and, about the same time, Sir Marmaduke Maitland died. Having had no children by his wife, the t.i.tle and fine property of Castle Gower fell to Brodie, who was his brother's son--Brodie being the name of the family who had succeeded to the t.i.tle. No time was lost by Brodie's man of business to take out a brief from Chancery, for getting him served heir male of taillie to the estate and honours. The brief was published, and no doubt anywhere prevailed of the verdict which would be p.r.o.nounced under it.

About this time it was observed that Geordie Willison had long interviews with Advocate Carstairs; but neither his mother, nor his sister, nor, indeed, any person, could get him to say a word on the subject. His manner, in regard to the story of Jessie, had been all along quite uniform, and many years had pa.s.sed since his mother had given up in despair all attempts to get him to divulge it. He was, at present, apparently very absent, as if something of great importance occupied his mind.

One day, on leaving the advocate, he went direct for the house of Lady Maitland. He was admitted as usual. He said he wished to see her ladyship and Louise together.

"I hae heard," began Geordie, "that my worthy freend, Sir Marmaduke, is dead. He was a gude man, and may the Lord deal mercifully wi' him!

Ludovic Brodie, they say, is the heir, an' I dinna say he has nae richt to that t.i.tle--though, maybe, it may cost some wigs a pickle flour to mak that oot. Noo, ye see, my Leddy Maitland, I hae dune ye some favours, and I'm just to take the liberty to ask ane in return. You an'

yer freend, Louise, maun admit, in open court, that yer leddyship bore, upon the 19th day of February o' the year 16--, a dochter, and that that dochter is Jessie Warriston."

Geordie waited for an answer, fixing his eyes on Lady Maitland.

Louise immediately began to make indications of a spirit of opposition; and Lady Maitland herself, gathering up any traces of dignity, which the presence of Geordie generally dispersed, replied--

"Thou hast no proof, sir, of the extraordinary charge, thou hast now, for the first time, brought against me; and I cannot convict myself of a crime."

Louise bl.u.s.tered and supported her lady.

"Vat, in the name of G.o.d, is de meaning of dis fellow's demand?

_Parbleu!_ He is mad--_de fou_--bad--vicked--mechant. Vere I your ladyship, I would trust him out, and give him de grand kick, and tomble him down de marche de stairs. Vy, sir, could you have de grand impudence to tell my lady she be de bad woman."

Geordie heard all this with calmness and silence.

"It's o' sma importance to me," he resumed, "whether yer leddyship comply wi' my request or no; for, indeed, though politeness made me ca'

it a favour conferred upon me, the favour is a' the ither way. Let yer leddyship be silent, an' I'll prove that yer leddyship bore the bairn; but ye maun ken that Geordie Willison has nae power ower the law--when the seals are broken, the judgment will come; and I canna prove the birth o' the bairn without, at the same time, and by the same prufe, proving that ye attempted to strangle it, and left it for dead in the hedges o' Warriston. Here is yer leddyship's necklace, whilk I took fra the craig o' the struggling cratur, and here are the claes it had on, marked wi' draps o' blude that cam frae its little mouth. I show thae things no as proofs on whilk I mean a'thegither to rest, but only to testify to ye what ye sae weel ken, that what I say is true. Speak, noo, my leddies--your lives are i' the hands o' the idiot cratur Geordie Willison. If ye gang to the court, ye are saved--if ye winna, ye are lost. Will ye gang, or will ye hang?"

The women were both terrified by the statement of Geordie. Reluctant to make any such admission, they struggled with the various emotions of indignation, pride, and fear, which took, by turns, possession of their bosoms. Lady Maitland fainted, and Louise was totally unable to render her a.s.sistance; for she lay in a hysterical state of excitement on the floor. Geordie locked the door, and kept his eyes fixed on the females.

He yielded them no aid; but stood like a destroying angel, witnessing the effects of his desolation. Lady Maitland at last opened her eyes, and having collected her senses, resolved to comply with Geordie's request. She said to him, that, provided nothing was asked beyond the questions, whether she bore the child on the day mentioned, and whether Jessie Maitland, whom she had secretly seen, was that child--she would answer them in the affirmative. This satisfied Geordie, and he departed.

On the day of the service of Ludovic Brodie, a brief was taken out in name of Jessie Warriston or Maitland, as heir female of taillie to the estate and t.i.tle of Maitland of Castle Gower. Brodie and his agents had no notice of the brief until they came into court.

The briefs being read, Brodie's propinquity was proved, and no person had any idea that the existence of a nearer heir could be established.

But the door of the court opened, and Lady Maitland and Louise Grecourt stood before the inquest. They swore to the birth of the child on the day mentioned, and that Jessie Maitland, who was presented to them in court by Geordie Willison himself, was that child.

An objection was taken by Brodie's agents, that the child was illegitimate, because it was born ten months, minus two days, after Sir Marmaduke went to the continent; but the judge overruled the objection, stating that it was the law of Scotland, that every child born within ten months of the husband's departure, is a legal child.

Jessie Warriston was, therefore, served heir, according to the terms of her brief. She went in her own carriage, in which sat Geordie Willison, to take possession of her estates and t.i.tles. She was now Lady Jessie Maitland of Castle Gower, and was soon afterwards united to William Forbes, her old lover.

THE SNOW STORM OF 1825.

Our readers will recollect the dreadful snow storm that occurred in the year 1825. Indeed, it is impossible that any one, who was above the years of childhood at the time, can have forgot it, or can ever forget it. It was the most tremendous with which this country has been visited for a century. For nearly six weeks, and in some places for a much longer period, every road, excepting those in the immediate vicinity of large towns, was blocked up, and rendered impa.s.sable, by either horse or foot; and one consequence was, that scores of travellers, of all descriptions, were suddenly arrested in their several places of temporary sojournment on the road, and held in durance during the whole period of the storm, without the possibility of communicating with their friends, or, in the case of mercantile travellers, with their employers.

It was a weary time, on the whole, to those who were thus laid under embargo; but not without its pleasures either; for each house thus situated, having perhaps a dozen strangers in it, from and going to all parts of the kingdom, became a distinct and independent little community, from which its local exclusion from the busy world had shut out, also, for the time at any rate, much of its cares and troubles--a philosophic spirit soon prevailing, after the first day or two's confinement, to make the most of what could not be helped.

The writer of this sheet happened to be one of nine who were shut up in the way alluded to, in an inn in the south of Scotland; and although, as already said, it was rather a weary thing on the whole, yet was it not without its enjoyments. Our _ennui_ was often delightfully relieved by the diversity of character as developed in our little community; for we had, if we may so speak, the salt, the pepper, and the vinegar of human dispositions, sprinkled throughout the party, which not only took from the cold insipidity of our confinement, but gave to it a rich and pleasant relish. Our host's cellar and larder happened to be well stored, while the house was, in all other respects, an excellent one; so, what with the produce of the former, and the roaring fires kept up by Jamie, the waiter, we had really nothing to complain of on the score of creature comforts--and it is amazing how far the possession of these will go to reconcile men to otherwise very unpleasant situations. In this case, they were enhanced by the dreary prospect from without--the howling storm, the drifting snow, and the wide, dismal, monotonous waste of dazzling white that lay all around us.

The consciousness of the comforts we enjoyed, in short, put us all in good humour with one another; while a fellowship in misfortune, and a community of feeling, as well as of persons, introduced a degree of friendliness and intimacy, to which few other circ.u.mstances, perhaps, would have given rise. We had our small round of standard jokes, peculiar to our situation, which few else could have understood, and fewer still have appreciated, though they did understand them. We had, too, a small round of harmless tricks, which we regularly played off every day on some one or other of the corps. But, notwithstanding all this--the larder, the cellar, the fire, the jokes, and the tricks--time did occasionally hang rather heavily upon our hands, especially in the evenings. To lessen this weight, we latterly fell upon the contrivance of telling stories, one or two of us each night, by turns. The idea is a borrowed one, as the reader will at once perceive, but we humbly think not a pin the worse on that account. There was no limitation, of course, as to the subject. Each was allowed to tell what story he liked; but it was the general understanding that these stories should be personal, if possible--that is, that each should relate the most remarkable circ.u.mstances in his own life. Those who had nothing of the kind to communicate, were, of course, allowed to get off with anything else they chose to subst.i.tute. The first to whose lot it fell to entertain us in this way, was a fat, good-humoured, good-natured, little, hunch-backed gentleman, with a short leg, and a bright yellow waistcoat. He was a mercantile traveller, and, if I recollect right, a native of Newcastle.

When the little man was asked to open his budget, "Why, gentlemen," said he, "I do not see that I can do better than comply with the understood wish of the company, by giving you a sketch of my own life, which you will find to present, I think, as curious a race, or struggle, or whatever else you may choose to call it, between luck and misfortune, as perhaps you have heard of:--

You must know, then, my friends (went on the little gentleman in the bright yellow waistcoat), that the indications of my future good fortune began to exhibit themselves as early as they well could. I was born with a caul upon my head, gentlemen, which all of you know is an indubitable token that the little personage to whom it belongs will be singularly fortunate in life. Well, gentleman, I was favoured, as I have already said, with one of those desirable headpieces; and great was the joy the circ.u.mstance gave rise to amongst the female friends and gossips who were a.s.sembled on the occasion. The midwife said that everything I should put my hand to would prosper, and that I would be, to a certainty, at the very least, a general, a bishop, or a judge; the nurse to whom I was subsequently consigned, on the same ground, dubbed me a duke, and would never call me by any other t.i.tle; whilst my poor mother saw me, in perspective, sitting amongst the great ones of the earth, surrounded with power, wealth, and glory. Such were the bright visions of my future prosperity, to which my caul gave rise; and probably they might have been realized, had it not been for an unlucky counteracting or thwarting power that always stepped in, seemingly for no other purpose but to disappoint my own hopes and those of my friends; sometimes baulking my expectations altogether, when on the point of fruition--sometimes converting that to evil in me which would a.s.suredly have produced good to any other person. But to proceed with my history.

I grew up a fine, stout, well-made child. Ay, you may laugh, gentlemen (said the little man, good-humouredly, seeing a t.i.tter go round at this personal allusion, which so ill accorded with his present deformed appearance), but it was the case, I a.s.sure you, until I met with the accidents that altered my shape to what you now see it. Well, I repeat, that I grew a fine promising child, and, to the inexpressible amazement and delight of my parents, showed symptoms of taking unusually early to my legs.

Nor were these symptoms unfaithful. I took to my pins, on my own account, before I was ten months old; but, unfortunately, my first walk was into a draw-well, where I would infallibly have been drowned, if it had not been for a large Newfoundland dog which my father kept, and which was close by me at the time of the accident. The faithful creature leapt in after me, and kept me afloat, until my father came and extricated me. After this, I was never trusted a moment out of sight; and thus, instead of this precocious developement of my physical powers proving a blessing to me, it proved a curse; for it deprived me of all liberty. As I grew up, however, this restraint became less rigorous, and I was permitted to ramble in the garden; and one of my first feats, after obtaining this freedom, was, to climb a high wall, to come at an uncommonly fine apple that had long tempted me with its rosy cheeks, and I had just succeeded in getting near enough to the prize to grasp it, when, in making this effort, down I came; and this leg, gentlemen (said the little man, holding out his deformed limb), was the consequence. I fell and broke my leg, just as I was about to grasp the apple. Fatal type of all my subsequent misfortunes!

I have now, gentlemen (went on the little man), to account for the other deformity that disfigures me, viz.,--my hump-back. This befell me in the following manner. Playing one day with a number of boys, of about my own age, which was then six or seven, a big fellow, of double the size of any of us, came in amongst us, and began to plunder us of our playthings; and he was in the very act of robbing me of a hoop, when another lad, still stronger and bigger, who saw the attempted robbery, generously ran to my a.s.sistance, and aimed a tremendous blow with a stick at my a.s.sailant. The blow, however, missed him at whom it was aimed, and took me exactly on the small of the back, which it broke in two as if it had been a pipe shank; and the consequence was, as you see, gentlemen (said the little man in the bright yellow waistcoat, edging round, at the same time, to indicate his hump).

Well, then, gentlemen (he went on), up to my ninth year, this was all the good fortune that my caul brought me--that is, being first half-drowned, then breaking my leg, and lastly my back. To compensate, however, in some measure, for these mischances, I turned out an excellent scholar; and, especially, became a very expert Latinist--a circ.u.mstance which my father, who had a great veneration for the language, thought sufficient alone to make my fortune; and it certainly procured me--that is, very nearly procured me--in the meantime, some of the chief honours of the school. I say very nearly--for I did not actually obtain them; but it was only by the merest accident in the world that I did not. The misapprehension of a single word deprived me of a prize which was about to be awarded to me, and gave it to one of my compet.i.tors. This was reckoned a very hard case; but there was no help for it.

Still there was luck in the caul, gentlemen (continued the little man in the bright yellow waistcoat), as you shall hear. Going home from school one day, a distance of about a mile and a half, I found a very handsome gold watch, with valuable appendages, lying upon the road. I was at first afraid to lift the glittering treasure, hardly believing it possible that so rich and splendid a thing could be without an owner; but, gradually picking up courage, I seized on the watch, hurried it into my pocket, and ran onwards like a madman. I had not run far, however, when a man, respectably dressed, but who seemed the worse of liquor, or rather like one just recovering from a debauch, met me, and, seizing me by the breast, fiercely asked me if I had seen anything of a gold watch. I instantly confessed that I had found such a thing; and, trembling with apprehension, for the fellow continued to look furiously at me, produced the watch.

"Very well," said he, taking it from me. "Now, you little villain you, confess. You did not find the watch, but stole it from me whilst I slept on the roadside."