Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume VII Part 16

"'What would my poor Bertha think if she knew this!'

"At length the list of names amongst which mine appeared was removed from the post-office and replaced by others; and when, after obtaining the means of paying for the letter, I made inquiry after it, I was informed that it had been returned. I doubted not but that she would imagine I had forgotten her; and, as I turned away in disappointment and in hopelessness, I said unto myself, 'Farewell, my Bertha!'"

"Help us, doctor!" exclaimed Peter; "is it really possible that anybody can have been so put about for a thirteenpence matter! Yet, how do we fling away shilling after shilling, day after day, without ever thinking o' the road they are going! And how ready we are to say about anything, 'Oh, it was only a shilling!' But, doctor, when ye think what a relief 'only a shilling' would have given to your mind at that moment, surely ye will have considered weel the length and breadth o' every sixpence ye have spent since then. It will be a lesson to me, however, to be more cautious how I ever spend thirteenpence again; and, if I find myself ready to fling it away on any unwiselike or unprofitable purposes, I will just think--'What good will what I am going to do wi' my money do me?--and what would Doctor Musgrave have given for it, when he saw the letter from his sweetheart, and hadna the thirteenpence to open it?' As sure as death!--as we used to say at school, and that is gay sure--had any other body told me what ye have said but yoursel, I would have laughed at it. Had I read it in print, I wouldna have believed it. But there is one thing in it, and that is, it just shows us what poor dependent creatures we are one upon another. Doctor, ye had a sair trial there for a sma' matter."

"You, sir," continued Mr Musgrave, "no doubt consider London an immense, almost a limitless city; but, sir, it is too small for the bounds of misery. Often have I wandered from Knightsbridge to Mile End, yea, from Cheswick to the East India Docks, and slowly returned the way I came thinking that daylight would never break, and wondering how people spoke of London as a great city. They, sir, who would really know the limits of London, must shake hands with misery as I have done. They must wander its streets by night, without food and without hope, and they will marvel how short they are. People talk of losing themselves amongst the intricacies and many turnings of this city. It is nonsense, sir--sheer stupidity. Let them once be lost in misery, in penniless, houseless wretchedness, and should a purse show itself at their feet, they would discover where they were in a moment. The man who has no money never loses himself in London--none do but fools who have it to lose. But, sir, it was on the very night after I had attempted to sleep in Billingsgate, beneath the comfortable covering of a fishmonger's sign, and dreamed by the side of an artist in a drayman's cart, that I was wandering on the borough side of the river, and had proceeded nearly three miles beyond the Elephant and Castle, when cries for a.s.sistance roused me from my waking dream. I rushed forward. A gentleman in an open carriage, with his servant, were attacked by four footpads, armed with knives and bludgeons. I took up a stone from the road, and, hurling it at the head of one of the robbers, when within a few yards of them, stretched him on the ground. We were then man to man. I sprang upon another--I grappled with him, overpowered him, and wrenched the bludgeon from his hands, but not until he had plunged his knife into my side. It was a bad wound, but not a dangerous one. With the bludgeon which I had wrenched from the hand of the robber, I rushed upon another of his a.s.sociates, who, I found, had that moment overcome the gentleman to whose rescue I had providentially arrived. I dealt him a heavy and a hearty blow upon his busiest arm, which causing him to find that he had only his limbs left, he took to his heels and ran. The two whom I had already overthrown, had antic.i.p.ated him in his flight, and, on seeing him run, the fourth followed their example. I attempted to run after them, but fell upon the ground from loss of blood. The gentleman was himself wounded, but slightly; and he, with his servant, raising me from the ground, and placing me in his carriage, conveyed me to the nearest inn. There, after a surgeon had been sent for, and my wound dressed, he requested to know who I was, and to whom he was indebted for his liberty and his life. But in all that concerned myself I was silent; and, in answer to all questions as to whom or what I was, I was dumb. My wound was deep, though not dangerous; and all that I regretted was, that I should be left an invalid in an inn, while I had nothing to recompense those who attended on me. After earnestly entreating to know who I was, or what was my name--though I have reason to believe that, from my dejected appearance, he entertained a most sorry idea of me--the gentleman whom I had rescued proceeded onwards to London. But I was silent to all his inquiries. Pride sealed up my tongue, and I shook my head and said nothing. I could not speak--shame and poverty tortured me more than my wound.

"Within an hour he proceeded on his journey; and, on the following day, he returned with a medical gentleman to visit me. It was with difficulty that I could sit up in my bed to welcome them. The man of surgery began by asking many questions, which I answered like a true Scotsman, by asking others which startled him; and I heard him whisper to him whom I had rescued--

"'Sir, he is, without doubt, a member of my profession.'

"The gentleman--I mean him whom I rescued from the ruffians--came forward to me; he took my hand in his--most earnestly he took it--and, as he held it, there was something like a tear--a tear of grat.i.tude--rolling in his eyes.

"'Sir,' said he, 'to your courage I owe my life. Allow me to ask by what name I shall call my deliverer. It is evident that you are not, or that you have not always been, what your present appearance bespeaks. Let me know, therefore, how I am to thank you--how I can reward you as I ought.'

"'Sir,' answered I, 'you are a stranger to me; so am I to you. Let us remain so. If you speak of reward, you will cause me to regret what I did in attempting your rescue. Whatever I am, whatever I have been, matters not. I saw a fellow-man attacked and overpowered, and I attempted to deliver him. The humblest animal, prompted by its instinct, would have done the same. I am ent.i.tled to no thanks for what I have done--and, above all, I wish no questions asked of me.'"

"Faith, doctor, ye answered n.o.bly, and just as ye ought to have, if ye had had a hundred pounds in your pocket; but, man, ye stood in your ain light. There is nae saying what he might have done for you. It might hae been the king or the prime minister for onything ye kenned."

"He might," resumed the scholar; "but he rejoined, 'Sir, I admire the independence of your spirit, but wherefore should you, without cause, reject the acquaintance of one who seeks your friendship? You have endangered your life to save mine--what stronger claim could you have on my everlasting grat.i.tude? If common feeling prompted you to rescue me, suffer me not to leave you until I have testified that I am actuated by such feelings, in common with yourself. You refuse to tell me your name; mine is William Forster, a colonel in the service of the East India Company.'

"At the mention of his name my heart leaped within me. The brother of my Bertha, and of whom I have spoken, was in the service of the East India Company. I dreaded that he and the individual I had saved might be the same person; and I resolved, more determinedly than before, to conceal from him my name and circ.u.mstances. But, finding he could learn nothing from me, he offered me money. O sir! at that time I could have taken his life--I could have taken my own. To what have I sunk, I thought, or what am I now, that I should be treated as the veriest beggar that crawls upon the streets! 'Sir,' I exclaimed, wildly, 'keep your gold--your dross--your insulting dross. I did not a.s.sist you in your hour of need, that you should insult my situation by a mendicant's reward. I, sir, have the feelings of a gentleman as well as you, whatever I may now seem--therefore torment me not.' He informed me that he had to leave London on the following day; and he entreated that I would tell him who I was, that he might show that he was grateful for what I had done, in a way that might not be painful to my feelings. But the thought that he was the brother of my Bertha haunted me, maddened me, and I waved my hand to him and cried, 'Away! away!' His countenance bespoke him to be a man to whom I could have poured forth my whole soul; but even in that countenance I read her lineaments, and my soul moved like an agitated thing that I could feel within me, as I gazed on them.

"'Go, sir,' I exclaimed; 'and if you will be grateful, be so to one who rejoices in having been instrumental in a.s.sisting you. Leave me. I ask no more, for your questions torture me, and your pecuniary offers insult me.'

"He left me, but never did I behold a man part from another more reluctantly, or one who was more under the influence of strong emotion.

My wound confined me to the inn for five weeks, and, during much of that time, my thoughts were distracted regarding the bill of the innkeeper.

But one day he came to me and said--

"'Sir, I don't know how you and the gentleman whom you rescued from the highwaymen stand; but one thing I know, he is a gentleman every inch of him. He has paid for all that you have had, or may have for a month to come; and here, master, are fifty pounds which he left me to give to you in as delicate a way as I could, for, as he said, you were rather proud-spirited. Now, master, here is the money, and he was as safe in trusting it in my hands as if he had put it in the bank.'

"I knew not what to do; but, after a struggle, and a severe one, I accepted the money. You may despise me for what I did----"

"Me despise you!" cried the farmer; "for what, I would like to ken? It is the only wiselike action I have heard you say that you did. The man that would despise another for taking fifty pounds where it was deserved, is a being that doesna understand what money is, or what it was made for. They may despise ye that like, doctor, upon that account, but it winna be me."

"Well, sir," resumed Musgrave, "with the fifty pounds in my pocket, I again appeared upon the streets of London. But a change had pa.s.sed over me. Even the policemen who before had ordered me to 'walk on' knew me not. I was another man--I was as one on whom fashion shed its sunning influence. I again endeavoured to obtain a situation as an a.s.sistant-surgeon, but the attempt was unsuccessful. I should have told you that it was owing to being confined with my wound that I was unable to meet my 'brother in misfortune,' the artist of whom I have spoken. I now tried my fortune as a writer for the magazines, and was paid for what I wrote even liberally, as I considered it. But there was one drawback attending this liberality: though I could write an article for which I received three, four, or seven guineas, in a day (for authors always calculate in guineas, though they are paid in pounds), yet it was not every day, neither was it every month, that I could get such an article accepted; and it was not every magazine that admitted me as a contributor. But by such writing I managed to live; and, as my name became known, I felt less of the misery which I endured when I first embarked in the precarious trade of authorship. Yet a precarious trade I still found it to be. I was enabled to live, but I lived between the hand and the mouth.

"The publisher whom I have already mentioned as having given a guinea towards the publishing of my works by subscription, engaged me to translate a novel from the French, and a small work from the Italian, of which language I had but a scanty knowledge. But it does not require the perfect knowledge of a language to be a translator which many consider necessary."

"I canna say," said Peter; "I must confess ye are out o' my depths there--but get on wi' your story, for I'm not sure but I may have something to tell ye."

"Well, sir," resumed the scholar, "after the translations had appeared, and when the seductions of a literary life, notwithstanding all its privations and all its uncertainty, had induced me to abandon all thoughts of pursuing my own profession, I determined to write for the stage. It would be tedious for me to tell you of all the difficulties I had to encounter before I could obtain an audience of the theatrical managers, or what was called the committee of management. I found them more difficult of access than the Cham of Tartary. As well might I have undertaken a mission to Pekin, with the intent of pulling the celestial emperor by the b.u.t.ton. But at length my object was attained. A tragedy that I had written was accepted, and announced for representation. The eventful night came. The new drama--my drama--was to be performed. The first scene went off in silence--in utter silence; and often the actors mangled the lines most miserably. They forgot Hamlet's advice. But, as the first act was concluded, pit, boxes, and gallery burst into a tumult of applause. I was seated in the pit. The sweat broke upon my brow.

Vanity wrought triumphantly in my bosom. I was the greatest man in London. The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth acts concluded in the same manner. The curtain fell, and the audience shouted, 'The author! the author!' For this tribute of public approbation I was not prepared. The stage-manager came to me, and still the audience in the gallery kept thundering and shouting, 'The author! the author!' He insisted that I should appear upon the stage, and before the audience.

Vain as I was, I sickened at his words; but he took my hand, and led me forth. I became as a thing that moves, without a consciousness of, or a power over, its moving. I had become pale as death. They led me to what they call the green-room, and they put rouge upon my face. But it was in vain, and the cold sweat swept it away, and left my countenance as if covered with wounds. I was led upon the stage as a sheep is led to the slaughter. The lights flashed on me, and I beheld twice a thousand eyes fixed upon me. I knew not how to act. I trembled--bowed--threw my eyes in bewilderment over the mult.i.tude; but, as I was about to address them, on whom amongst that mixed a.s.sembly should my eyes fall, but on my Bertha! I started. A frenzy came upon me. I sprang towards the pit. Yet it is in vain for me to tell you, for I knew not what I did. She sat in a box immediately facing me. I heard a woman's scream; I knew it came from where she was. The mult.i.tude seemed rising, and moving around me, and every eye was on me. But I cannot describe to you what I felt or what I saw. I became unconscious. I knew only that I had seen her--that she was somewhere. There was a noise like that of many waters in my ears. My head went round--my eyes were blind. When I recovered, I was seated in the green-room, and the actors in their strange dresses surrounded me. They endeavoured to restore me to consciousness, as though I had been a sickly maiden that had fainted in their arms; and when I did recover from the sickness and insanity that came over me--

"'Where--oh, where,' I cried, 'is my Bertha?'

"I remember not of having done so; but I have been told that I did. You may think, sir, that I acted wildly, as a madman, or as a fool; but, before you condemn, think of what I had endured--of my recent misery, and of my vanity when shout rose on shout, and the cry from the a.s.sembled thousands was--'The author! the author!' Such changes, sir, were enough to turn a steadier head than mine."

"For my part, doctor," said Peter, "I have no notion o' plays; I never saw one in my life, and I canna say that I a'thegither comprehend ye.

But let me hear about Miss Bertha."

"All that I could learn concerning her was," resumed Musgrave, "that a young lady in the boxes had uttered a sudden scream as she beheld me and the strange bewilderment that came over me, but that she had immediately been conveyed away by her friends in a coach. This only have I been able to learn. But it was she. Though all else that took place is as a wreck upon my memory, I see her before me now as I at that moment beheld her; I see still her one wild look that entered my soul, and I yet hear her heart-piercing cry, which brought delirium upon me, and rendered me dead to every other sound. But, from that night, I have been able to hear no more concerning her. I have sought her in church and in chapel, in the theatres and in the public walks, but never again have I beheld her.

Often also have I written to c.u.mberland; but my letters have remained unanswered or been returned. She had forsaken me, or she has been compelled to forsake me; for, when I last beheld her, her face still beamed with affection, and her wild and sudden cry was the offspring of an old but a still living affection."

"I hear, by what ye say, doctor," rejoined the farmer, "that ye are as fond o' Miss Bertha as ever. Now, as I said to ye before, I am not certain but what I have something that ye might wish to hear, to communicate to ye; and, before doing so, with your permission, I would just ask you one or two plain questions. Ye have told me a great deal of the miserable state ye was in after ye came to London, and I would just like to ask ye if ye are bettor off now, and how and in what respect ye are so? I trust, therefore, that ye will by no means think the question impertinent; for I a.s.sure you, it is for your sake that I ask it, and not for any gratification to mysel."

"Well, sir," answered the scholar, "to be as plain with you as you desire, I have shaken hands with privation, and left it upon the road, to form the acquaintance of those who may follow me; or, to be more plain with you, I found that literature was a good staff but a bad crutch; and, as I began to gather my feet, I used it accordingly. In a word, as my name became known amongst men, my labours became more and more profitable; and, three years ago, thinking that I had obtained the means of doing so, I made an attempt to resume my profession as a surgeon. For many months, it was but an attempt, and a hopeless one, too; but gradually practice dawned or crept upon me. I am now employed as well as other members of my profession are; and, with the a.s.sistance of my literary labours, I look back upon the penury with which I struggled, and wish it to remain where I left it. But, though I have known something of the moonshine of fame as it has scattered its rays upon my head, and felt also the influence of the warmer beams of profit as I began to bask in the sun of popularity, yet there was, and there is, one dark and unsunned spot in my heart--and that is, the remembrance of my Bertha. Still does imagination conjure up her sudden glance, her one wild cry and look of agony, as I came forward to receive the plaudits of the mult.i.tude, when, as the bay-leaves were circling my brow, the p.r.i.c.kly brier was rudely drawn across my bosom."

"Well, doctor," said Peter, "ye have not just spoken so plain as I could have wished; but I dare to say that I comprehend ye. When ye eat a meal now, ye ken where the next is to come from; and if Miss Bertha still thinks o' ye, and were to gie you her hand, there would be no likelihood o' her being brought in contact with the privations with which ye have manfully struggled, and which, I am happy to hear (and, I may say, more happy to perceive--for a person's own eyes are excellent witnesses), ye have overcome. Now, sir, hearken to me, for I have something to tell ye.

I had always a sort of liking for ye, doctor; and though I did see ye foolish and stupid in many things, yet I was sorry for ye, and I said I believed that ye was a lad o' real genius, and of a right heart at the bottom. More than that, I said, that, if ye minded your hand, ye would be heard tell of in the world--and I have not been mistaken, for, even down in c.u.mberland, we have seen your name in the papers; and a hundred times have I said to my neighbours--'I always told ye that lad would rise to something.' But now, sir--now to the main subject, the one in which you will feel the greatest interest. Ye say that ye again and again wrote to Miss Bertha to c.u.mberland, and never got an answer. I am in no way surprised at that at all; and for this simple reason, that old Colonel Forster left Eskside five years ago, and went to reside near a place they call Elstree, about ten miles from this city. Now, the way in which I am acquainted with the circ.u.mstance is this:--About a year after ye left, the old nabob, as we used to ca' him, bought the farm that I rented, and became my landlord. Therefore, when he came to live in this quarter, I had to send my rents here. But, sir, he understands that I am in London--for I just handed him my rent, being here, the other day--and he has invited me to dine wi' him at his house to-morrow. Now, sir, if ye hae nae objections, I will just tak you out wi' me as an old friend; and if ye're not made welcome, I shall not be welcome either. So, say the word--will ye go wi' me, or will ye not?"

"I will--yes, yes, I will!" answered Mr Musgrave, eagerly.

"Well, well," said Peter, "there need be no more about it, then--say that I meet you at this house to-morrow at two o'clock."

"Agreed," replied the other.

"But," returned Peter, "there is one thing I forgot to tell ye, and that is, that I understand Miss Bertha is on the eve of being married, and highly married, too, they say wi' us. Therefore, ye will not be surprised if ye find your former acquaintance forgotten, or seemingly forgotten, which, in such matters, amounts to somewhat about the same thing."

On the following day, Mr Peter Liddell and Robert Musgrave entered a cab in Fleet Street together, and proceeded towards Elstree.

"Now," said Peter, as they approached the residence of his landlord, "I believe that I may be running my head against a wall; for I am well aware that the old colonel never liked ye. Ye are one who would be unwelcome at any time, but doubly so at a time like this, when his daughter is on the point of being married. But I will tell ye what it is--I am just as independent as he is. I am as able to live without the help o' the landlord, as the landlord is to live without the help o' the tenant. Therefore, if he puts down his brows at you when we are introduced, I will show him the back o' my coat, and so good-day to him."

"I believe, then," said Musgrave, "that with him I shall be no welcome guest; but, if Bertha welcome me, it is enough. You have spoken to me of her intended marriage--be it so. If she has forgotten me, if she has ceased to care for me, I will look upon her and bless her, in remembrance of days which have pa.s.sed away as the shadow of a cloud pa.s.seth over the earth. But with that blessing hope will depart; for, sir, it was the remembrance of her that sustained me in all my struggles. It was the hope that she might, would one day be mine, that induced me to hope against hope, to wrestle with despair. For her sake only have I sought for fame, as a miser would seek after hidden treasure; and when it began to throw its light and its sunniness over me, she was the flower that rendered sunlight beautiful--for what is there lovely in light but as a thing which maketh the face of the earth fair to look upon?"

They drew up at the door of the colonel's residence, and were ushered into a room where he and a party of his friends sat. Peter, who was what people in the south would call a '_cute_ man, was beginning to make an apology, saying--

"I beg your pardon, colonel, for the liberty I have taken; but meeting with my old friend, Doctor Musgrave, yesterday, I prevailed on him to come out wi' me, as we were a' c.u.mberland folk together; and though he is a great man now----"

But, while Peter spoke, one of the company started forward. He grasped our hero by the hand, and exclaimed--

"My deliverer! Long and anxiously have I sought for you; but, until this hour, nothing have I been able to learn respecting you. Father," he added, "this is the gentleman of whom a hundred times you have heard me speak, as having at the peril of his own life saved mine. I have never known or met him again until now. Thank him with me." And, as he spoke, he held the doctor's hand between his.

The old man rose. He evidently laboured to speak to the stranger; but other feelings obtained the mastery. He stretched out his hand. He touched Robert Musgrave's--he coldly bowed to him. The blood left his face.

"Father," exclaimed the son, "you are ill. Hath grat.i.tude----" But he paused as he beheld the expression of his father's features. They betrayed anger and agony at the same moment.

"Son," said he, "I would speak with you: that man--that man;" and he pointed to the scholar impatiently, and, beckoning to his son, rose to leave the room.

"Sir," said Musgrave, proudly, "if my presence trouble you, I can withdraw."

"My friend, what mean you?--what means my father?" asked the brother of Bertha, who was, indeed, the same individual that the scholar had rescued.

"I dinna ken," answered Peter Liddle; "but, if Doctor Musgrave go the door, I go to the door too."

The father and the son looked at each other. The glance of the latter sought from the former an explanation.

At that instant the door opened, and the much-talked-of Bertha entered the room.