Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XII Part 20

"Is not that a dreadful sight, sir?" whispered Mrs G---- in my ear, with a woful countenance. "He has stood in that awful position since six o'clock this morning. He can come no speed; and see you how his apprentices are biting their lips, and holding down their heads to conceal their merriment?"

I was too much occupied studying the motions and appearance of the invalid, to reply to the statement of his wife. He was standing in such a situation that no one could get behind him. There was a deep melancholy over his countenance, which was grotesquely relieved by the nervous light of his grey twinkling eye, as he lifted it at times from the piece of cloth he was busy with, and threw it fearfully in the direction of the apprentices, as if he watched their motions. It was clear that he laboured under an apprehension that some effort would be made to get him to sit, and that he was, _mordicus_, determined that he would not be broken and immolated in that way--from all which I was satisfied that his wife, or some other person, had been already that day making some attempt upon him to get him to sit down, and thus roused him to the state in which I now saw him. He looked as if he felt the truth of the motto, _nusquam tuta fides_. He had faith in none, and was on the quick watch to guard and save himself. The sight was undoubtedly an interesting one, in more respects than as a scientific study of one strange phase of human nature; but the only feature in it that surprised me was, that the patient was working with so much ardour--because lethargy, with a total prostration of spirit, is the prevailing symptom of the disease. I could only account for this anomaly, by supposing that the old excitement of a job of mournings had, for a time, overcome the depressing energies of his complaint.

I had meditated a curative process to be applied when he got out of bed; but he was now evidently too much on the quick alert from his alarm, for its application at that time--his studied proximity to the wall excluding all hope of getting behind him; and I augured, besides, some relief from his application to business. I therefore told Mrs G---- that it would be improper to rouse his fears farther by any unsuccessful attempt at dislodging, from his addled brain, his false belief, and that I would call next day, when his confidence in those around him might, in some measure, be restored.

On my calling next day at the same hour, Mrs G---- informed me that he had continued working on his feet for the greater part of the preceding day--turned himself fearfully round when he required to move, so as to keep the supposed brittle region out of the reach of all danger; when he retired to bed, he had laid himself on his face; and he was again working a.s.siduously, in a standing position, in the same way as when I saw him last. I again applied myself to the opening, and satisfied myself that the statement I had received was correct. The scene presented all the extraordinary features--the same standing position, cadaverous face, and nervous watchful eye, in the patient, and the same look of mystery, wonder, and repressed risibility on the part of the apprentices. I opened the door, and entered, requesting Mrs G---- to bring me a chair, on which I sat down right opposite to the patient, who, almost simultaneously with these movements, retreated back, and, coming in contact with the wall of the room, uttered a sudden scream of fear, and again resumed his position. His wife looked at him with pity and affection; but the rebellious apprentices broke forth into a cachinnation, which I instantly repressed by a look, which conveyed a serious reproof, as sincere as it was strong and stern. I proceeded to endeavour to acquire his confidence; but he exhibited great shyness, and kept up a studied system of eyeing me askant, placing his back as near to the wall as he thought consistent with his safety, and keeping a sharp look-out for intruders in that direction. To my inquiry how he felt, he replied, peevishly, that he was so utterly beyond the powers of medicine, that he did not see the use of my visits.

"Heaven help me!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "I am safe nowhere but in my bed. No necessity will draw me from it, if I'm once there again. My ungrateful wife may starve. I will turn off these rebellious, unfeeling scoundrels.

I am sure rounded by enemies, murderers, who would laugh if they saw me cracked in a thousand pieces. They gloat on my screams, as they take every opportunity to pa.s.s behind me and jostle me. Better be dashed at once like a potsherd among stones, than exposed to this horrible state of eternal apprehension."

"You nourish vain fears," replied I. "Why not try to sit and compose yourself?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" he cried, with a shrill, sardonic movement of his lungs--"sit on a gla.s.s globe!--ha! ha!--all enemies together--murderers all. It is not three hours yet since that woman placed a chair for me, and one of these unfeeling ruffians asked me, with a sneaking, whining sympathy, to take my place on the board, while his ears were tingling for the crash. I'll swear a lawburrows against you all--every mother's son of you."

"You may at least try to sit," said I, calmly rising from the chair--a movement that operated upon him like magnetism--making him throw down the cloth he held in his hand, recoil still farther back, and scream again, loud and shrill.

I made a step forwards to him, which roused his fears still higher; for he was clearly possessed with the idea that I was to force him to sit, or to press him against the wall, and thus shatter him to pieces. The one mode of destruction was just as fearful as the other; and, as I took another step nearer him, he raised a yell that made the whole house ring, and, changing his position, with his back still to the wall, he glided swiftly aside, and seemed, by the furtive glance of his terrorstruck eye, to wish to make for the door--which, however, was guarded by his wife. By this time the two young men had started to their feet, so that he was surrounded by foes on every side; and as the utter desperation of his case thus seemed to increase, he became more and more terrified, repeating his screams at shorter intervals, and placing himself with a caution which, in his excited state, had a strange appearance, closer and closer to the wall. The sight was a grievous one to his wife, and far from an agreeable one to myself; but the apprentices--probably from a spirit of retaliation roused by a memory of former inflictions--enjoyed it with a cruel delight. Having thus far roused his terror, I thought it prudent not to stop short in an operation which, at whatever time performed, must necessarily be attended with all the pain he now suffered; and, throwing out a signal to one of the young men to stand by the chair, and to the other to come to my side, I made boldly towards him, and, notwithstanding of his heartrending screams and looks for pity, seized him by one arm, while the other was willingly laid hold of by my a.s.sistant.

At this period of the operation, I was rather importunately addressed by Mrs G----, whose feelings--for she was an irritable creature, and distractedly fond of her husband--overcame her.

"For heaven's sake, let him alone!" she cried. "The neighbours will think we are in reality murdering him. His screams go to my heart, and I cannot stand these wild looks. Heaven pity my unfortunate husband!"

"I am only performing my professional duty," I replied, loudly, to make myself heard in the midst of his screams. "You called me to him; and, if you really wish it, I will leave him to his fate. No man of his profession can do any good in the world by working on his legs. The disease is deep-rooted, and can only be overcome by strong remedies. I think I will cure him; and, if you stop us in the operation, the consequences will be entirely attributable to yourself."

I spoke at this length with the view, purposely, of keeping the patient for some time in the high state of terror to which he was roused; because I was satisfied that, in proportion to the height of his apprehension, was the chance of benefit to result from my expedient for curing him. The woman saw the affair in its proper light; and, though still greatly moved by his screams and pitiful looks, she forbore further entreaty or interference. The apprentices, meanwhile, were all alive and ready for action, expressing by their eloquent leers, which I could not repress, their pleasure in thus having an opportunity--such is human nature--of repaying their taskmaster for his severity, as well as of witnessing one of the most curious operations they had ever heard of.

All this time the patient continued his screams--having, at intervals, recourse to exclamatory expostulation.

"Cruel fiends!" he cried, "will you dash me to pieces? Will nothing less serve you than to see a poor harmless being, who never injured one of you, reduced to atoms? And you, too, hard-hearted wretch, whose duty it is to protect me, stand there a witness of my destruction! Unheard-of misery, to have the tenement of an immortal soul reduced to particles no bigger than a farthing!"

We proceeded to drag him forwards, in spite of a resistance strengthened by the energy of terror and despair, and heedless of his cries of "Save me, save me! Death, death in any form but being dashed to shivers!"

Having brought him to the chair, the back of which was held firmly by the other apprentice, we turned him round so as to make the bottom of it (composed of hard wood) as fair a mark as our eyes could judge. He was now, as he thought, on the brink of utter extermination; and I was afraid that the terror might have the effect on him which I have noticed in criminals at the moment when the fatal drop is to fall, and, by inducing a fit of syncope, destroy all our labours. It was, however, otherwise, though I never saw a patient on the eve of undergoing the amputation of a limb in such a condition of terror and agony. We were bound to disregard all this; and, having made my a.s.sistant understand that it was necessary to lift him (for a simple seating, without a fall, I was satisfied, would do no good), we raised him a foot or two, by the application of considerable strength, and let him down upon the bottom of the chair, with a crash. A louder scream than he had yet uttered announced his fancied death-blow.

"I am murdered! it is all over now!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with a gasp, while his hands were busy groping about, to feel the pieces of broken gla.s.s, which must necessarily be scattered in every direction.

This operation, on his part, I wished to encourage, and liberated his arms, to give him greater scope, while we continued to hold him firmly down on the chair, till we satisfied him that he had received, and could receive, no injury, from pressing upon it with all the weight of his attenuated and sickly body. His groping was accompanied by a trembling that shook all his system; and I saw his terrorstruck eye wavering on the pivot of doubt, whether it might be inclined downwards to witness the wreck of his shivered body. Deep, convulsive sobs, the result of the restrained breath, broke from him in strange sounds, mixed with the groans of one who thought himself in the firm grasp of death. At length he ventured to add the testimony of his eyes to that of his hands; and, when he found that there were no pieces of gla.s.s lying about the chair and floor, he turned up the panicstruck orbs in my face, with an expression of mixed wonder and terror, that, to any one but myself, acting in a serious medical capacity, would have appeared ludicrous to an extent infringing upon the diaphragm. As we held him firmly down, in spite of his efforts to bound up, the false conviction, so firmly fixed in his brain, was apparently suffering a silent process of qualification; and the difficulty of reconciling the belief within with the actual state of safety without, was drawing him to the favourable condition of doubt, from which we might augur benefit. As the old conviction rose, at intervals, more strongly on him, his hands were again busy to ascertain the actual state of safety of his body; then his eye sought my face for an a.s.surance in favour of the evidence of touch, and he was for a moment reconciled; again the false conception seized him, again he groped, and felt, and looked, and thus was he precipitated into a state of perplexity, from which he could not get himself disentangled, but from which he might ultimately, as I hoped, rise into a natural belief.

"Where are your smashed gla.s.s organs now?" said I. He could reply nothing, but turned up his eye, filled with wonder and doubt, in my face. "You have been labouring under a wretched delusion of the mind.

There's no more gla.s.s about you than there is about me--and that is my watch-gla.s.s. Are you satisfied?"

"Heaven help me! I know not," he replied, in a melancholy tone. "I am perplexed. I cannot conceive why I'm not broken. How is it possible I could have stood the shock? Strange!--wonderful!" And he seemed for a moment lost in the mist of a confused amazement. This was his medicine, and we allowed it to work, by still holding him firm in his position.

"It cannot be!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, quickly, as he emerged from his dream of wonder. "It is impossible! I _am_ damaged! Let me up! let me up! and you will see the melancholy wreck."

This request was a fair one, and we removed our restraining hands. In a moment he started up, with a bound, to his feet, casting a fearful look on the bottom of the chair, and clasping the supposed brittle region with his hands, to ascertain whether he was in reality uninjured. The laugh of the apprentices, which I had hitherto restrained by my serious looks, now burst forth, in spite of all their efforts; and, averse as I am to such exhibitions of levity in cases of serious ailments, I could not help now looking upon this powerful ridicule as a necessary and salutary ingredient of the medicine administered to him.

"You are all safe, sir," said I; "not one jot of you injured. I hope to hear no more of your gla.s.s. Next time I call, I expect to see you seated at your work, as becomes the decorum of your profession."

I now left him; but I was by no means satisfied that he would not pertinaciously account for his being uninjured, by a recourse to some fallacious reason--such as the strength of the gla.s.s--to satisfy his prior conviction; for, before I departed, I saw that his look was as furtive and nervous as before, and his old partiality for the wall was strong within him. My antic.i.p.ations were too well founded; for I ascertained, next morning, that he was not cured. He had given up work, and betaken himself to bed, where he had gradually relapsed into his old belief--accounting for his entireness by the strength alone of the crystal. I told the woman to call again, and tell me when he ventured up, and I would essay another experiment, which might turn out more successful. Three days pa.s.sed before I received the announcement that he had again betaken himself to work on his legs. I lost no time in getting two a.s.sistants who could work better to my plan than my former coadjutors, and went to the house. It was the dinner-hour of his apprentices, and I had arrived in the opportune moment when the door, which had been bolted all day, to keep me and others out, was still open, after the exit of the workmen. I went, with the a.s.sistants, straight in upon him, and got a chair handed to me, precisely as on the former occasion. I soon saw that he was still under the influence of the delusive fiend that had usurped the seat of reason.

"I am determined," said I, resolutely, "to break this brittle appendage.

I have made my calculations, and am satisfied that I can smash it and remove it without injury to the vital organs that lie within it. It is, I am satisfied, a mere gla.s.s covering, without the slightest connection, in an organic view, with the parts beyond it. Fear not when you hear the crash; for I pledge myself you will thank me for the operation after it is performed."

"No, no!" he vociferated, with screams; "I shall die, inevitably perish, if it is broken. You may as well break my head to pieces with an axe, and say that, because my heart will remain untouched, I will live. Oh, for the love of Heaven, have mercy on me!"

His screams and exclamations produced no effect upon us. We proceeded to take off a part of his garments, and led him, in spite of the most determined and tortuous struggles, to the chair.

"We must break it thoroughly," said I. "Lift him up as high as possible."

My a.s.sistant obeyed my directions; and, having raised him as high as our strength would permit, we brought him down with a hard crash, as formerly on the chair, at the very moment that my other a.s.sistant dashed, with great force, on the floor a large globular gla.s.s bottle, which he had, by my desire, brought with him for the purpose. The crash was tremendous, and rang in the victim's ear like a death-knell.

"Pick me up--pick me up!" cried the patient. "I'm all in atoms. You would not believe me once that I was made in these parts of gla.s.s. Ah, you see now the melancholy evidence of the fact!"

We held him steady, and he rolled his eyes from side to side, surveying the broken fragments of his vitrified substance with symptoms of horror.

I noticed the hair on his head rise and stand as stiff as porcupine quills, and all his body was shaken by tremors that seemed to reach his heart. After allowing the conviction that the appendage was absolutely broken to take proper root in his mind--

"You are cured," said I. "The gla.s.s lies about you, and your body is entire. I was right in my diagnosis. It is proved; the gla.s.s was a mere covering--a species of fourth skin over the epidermis; and, being gone, the natural body is freed from the enc.u.mbrance. Rise and judge for yourself."

These words, with the slow progress of his own mental workings, and, above all, the sound and sight of the gla.s.s, wrought wonders. He rose deliberately from his seat--examined himself--looked around him--turned and re-turned--looked at me and my a.s.sistants--at his wife, who had come in wondering at the noise and strange appearance of the gla.s.s--and at the broken evidence, at once of his disorder and his cure.

"This is most wonderful!" he at last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Margaret, woman, look at that! Where is your scepticism now, your laughs, and your jeers, and your vain efforts to shake my belief? This may teach you sobriety of thought, and inspire you with confidence in my opinions. I was never deceived in my life. Man never found me wrong: and here is my last victory over the foolish prejudices of all my neighbours."

Saying this, he took a part of the gla.s.s, and turned it round in his hand.

"Perfect, pure, brittle gla.s.s," he continued. "A pier-gla.s.s might have been made of it."

"I would rather say a _convex_ mirror, Mr G----," said I, laughing, contrary to my professional gravity.

"But, doctor," said he, "why were you so hard of belief? It was long ere you would believe me. I have conquered you too; but, I must confess, you have conquered my disease."

"Yes; I have mastered it at last," said I; "it will never trouble you again. Would you have the goodness to allow me to take a part of the fragments home with me, to put in my museum."

"Most certainly," he replied; "but it's natural that I should have the liberty of retaining a considerable part, to evidence for my sincerity, and to exhibit as a great natural curiosity to the world."

This matter was easily arranged. The patient mended from that day. The joy of the relief he had experienced shot its rays through his heart and system, quickened his blood, and roused his lethargic nerves. His daydreams vanished, and his nervous fears were replaced by a healthy, firm confidence. He was, last time I saw him, a very healthy person, saw through the gla.s.s clearly, and laughed heartily at my ingenuity in overcoming his complaint.

WE'LL HAVE ANOTHER.

When the gla.s.s, the laugh, and the social "crack" go round the convivial table, there are few who may not have heard the words, "_We'll have another!_" It is an oft-repeated phrase, and it seems a simple one; yet, simple as it appears, it has a magical and fatal influence. The lover of sociality yieldeth to the friendly temptation it conveys, nor dreameth that it is a whisper from which scandal catcheth its thousand echoes--that it is a phrase which has blasted reputation--withered affection's heart--darkened the fairest prospects--ruined credit--conducted to the prison-house, and led to the grave. When our readers again hear the words, let them think of our present story.

Adam Brown was the eldest son of a poor widow, who kept a small shop in a village near the banks of the Teviot. From infancy, Adam was a mild, retiring boy, and he was seldom seen to join in the sports of his schoolmates. On the winter evenings, he would sit poring over a book by the fire, while his mother would say, "Dinna stir up the fire, bairn; ye dinna mind that coals are dear; and I'm sure ye'll hurt yoursel wi'

pore, porin owre yer books--for they're never oot o' yor hand." In the summer, too, Adam would steal away from the noise of the village to some favourite shady nook by the river-side; and there, on the gowany brae, he would, with a standard author in his hand, "crack wi' kings," or "hold high converse with the mighty dead." He was about thirteen when his father died; and the Rev. Mr Douglas, the minister of the parish, visiting the afflicted widow, she said, "She had had a sair bereavement; yet she had reason to be thankfu that she had ae comfort left, for her poor Adam was a great consolation to her; every nicht he had read a chapter to his younger brothers; and oh, sir," she added, "it wad mak your heart melt to have heard my bairn pray for his widowed mother." Mr Douglas became interested in the boy, and finding him apt to learn, he placed him for another year at the parish school, at his own expense.

Adam's progress was all that his patron could desire. He became a frequent visiter at the manse, and was allowed the use of the minister's library. Mr Douglas had a daughter, who was nearly of the same age as his young _protege_. Mary Douglas was not what could be called beautiful, but she was a gentle and interesting girl. She and Adam read and studied together. She delighted in a flower-garden, and he was wont to dress it; and he would often wander miles, and consider himself happy when he obtained a strange root to plant in it.

Adam was now sixteen. It was his misfortune, as it has been the ruin of many, to be _without an aim_. His mother declared that she was at a loss what to make him; "but," added she, "he is a guid scholar, that is ae thing--and CAN DO is easy carried about." Mr Douglas himself became anxious about Adam's prospects: he evinced a dislike to be apprenticed to any mechanical profession, and he was too old to remain longer a burden upon his mother. At the suggestion of Mr Douglas, therefore, when about seventeen, he opened a school in a neighbouring village. Some said that he was too young; others that he was too simple--that he allowed the children to have all their own way; and a few even hinted that he went too much back and forward to the manse in the adjoining parish, to pay attention to his school. However these things might be, certain it is the school did not succeed; and, after struggling with it for two years, he resolved to try his fortune in London.