Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVII Part 10

When the party had seated themselves--"Shall I serve up some refreshment, sir?" said the servant to Mr Mowbray, with great respect of manner, but with that perplexing smile on his face.

"Yes, John, do," said Mr Mowbray; "and as quick's you like; for we are all, I fancy, pretty sharp-set; and some of us--I speak for myself at any rate--not a little thirsty."

The servant bowed and retired. When he had done so--"'Od, sir, ye seem to be greatly at your ease here," said Mr Adair, who was not a little surprised, with the others, as well he might, at the free and easy manner of his son-in-law in his friend's house, "You and your freen maun surely be unco intimate."

"Oh! we certainly are so," replied Mr Mowbray, laughing. "I can use any freedom here--the same as if I were in my own house."

"Weel, that's pleasant and friendly like," said Mr Adair. "But isna your freen himsel lang o' makin his appearance?"

"Rather, I confess; but he'll be here shortly, I daresay--something of a particular nature detaining him, I have no doubt; but, in the meantime, we'll make ourselves at home. I know it will please him if we do so." And Mr Mowbray proceeded to the bell-pull, and rung it violently.

A servant instantly appeared, and received an order, fearlessly given, from Mr Mowbray, to hasten the refreshment in preparation.

Mr Adair's countenance expressed increased amazement at this very unceremonious proceeding; and he felt as if he would have said that he thought it the most impertinent thing ever he had seen done in his life; but he refrained. In this feeling Mrs Adair also partook; and in this feeling Mr Mowbray's own wife shared, although not, perhaps, to the same extent. Not the least curious part, let us observe too, of this odd scene, was that Mr Mowbray seemed to delight in the perplexity of feeling which his proceedings excited in his friends, and appeared studiously to do everything he could think of to increase them.

By and by, the promised repast was served up; and an exceedingly handsome one it was. The party took their seats, no host or hostess having yet appeared--Mr Mowbray placing his wife at the head of the table, and himself taking the foot--and proceeded to do justice to the good things before them. The repast over, wine was introduced. This done, Mr Mowbray--who, to the now utterly inexpressible amazement, and even confusion, of both Mr and Mrs Adair, had all this while been ordering away, right and left, as if he had been in a common inn--desired all the attendants to retire. When they had done so, he filled up a b.u.mper of wine, lifted it, rose to his feet and, advancing with smiling countenance and extended hand towards his wife, bade her welcome to _her own house_!

"What!" shouted Mr Adair, leaping from his chair.

"Eh!" exclaimed his wife, doing precisely the same thing by hers.

"William," said Mrs Mowbray, in a voice faint with agitation, and endeavouring to rise from her chair, into which, however, she was obliged again to sink.

"True, my friends," said Mr Mowbray; "all true. This, Mr Adair, is your daughter's house; all that is within it and around it. Welcome again, my love, to your own fireside!" said Mr Mowbray, embracing his wife, "and long may you live to enjoy all the comfort and happiness which Malton House, and ten thousand a-year, are capable of affording!"

Here, then, ends our story, good reader; and as we do not think you would choose to be much longer detained, especially with dry details of explanation which are all that now remains to add, we shall be brief.

Mr Mowbray was a young man of large fortune, who, having been crossed in love, had imagined that he had been thereby weaned from the world and all its joys; and, under this impression, had sought to retire from the busy scenes of life, with a determination never to return to them again. How he kept to this resolution our story tells.

A HIGHLAND TRADITION.

On the summit of a bluff headland that projects into the Sound of Sky, there stand the grey ruins of an ancient castle, which was once the residence of a Highland chieftain of the name of M'Morrough--a man of fierce nature and desperate courage, but not without some traits of a generous disposition. When about middle age, M'Morrough married the daughter of a neighbouring chief--a lady of much sweetness of manner and gentleness of nature. On the part of the former, however, this connection was one in which love had little share: its chief purpose would have been attained by the birth of a male heir to the name and property of the feudal chieftain; and this was an event to which he looked anxiously forward.

When the accouchement of his lady arrived, M'Morrough retired to an upper apartment of the castle to await the result--having desired a trusty domestic to bring him instant intelligence when the child was born, whether it was a male or a female. The interval he employed in walking up and down the chamber in a fever of impatience. At length the door of the apartment opened, and Innes M'Phail entered. The chieftain turned quickly and fiercely round, glanced at the countenance of his messenger, and there read the disappointment of his hopes without a word being uttered.

"It is even so, then," roared out the infuriated chieftain. "It is a girl, Innes; a girl. My curses on her!"

"Say _girls_, M'Morrough," said Innes, despondingly. "There are twins."

"And both girls--both!" exclaimed the former, stamping the floor in the violence of his pa.s.sion. "To the battlements with them, Innes!--to the battlements with them instantly, and toss them over into the deep sea! Let the waves of Loch Sonoran rock them to sleep, and the winds that rush against Inch Caillach sing their lullaby. Let it be done--done instantly, Innes, as you value your own life; and I will witness the fidelity with which you serve me from this window. I will, with my own eyes, see the deed done. Go--go--quick--quick!"

Innes, who had been previously aware that such would be the fate of a female child, if such should unfortunately be born to his ruthless chief, and who had promised to be the instrument of that fate, now left the apartment to execute the atrocious deed. In less than ten minutes after, Innes M'Phail appeared on the battlements, carrying a large wicker basket.

From this depository he took out a child, swaddled in its first apparel, and raising it aloft, tossed it over to perish in the raging sea below. The little arms of the infant extended as it fell; but the sight was momentary.

It glanced white through the air like an ocean bird, and, in an instant after, disappeared in the dark waters of Loch Sonoran. The murderer followed with his eye the descent of his little victim, till the sea closed over it, when, returning to the basket, he took from it another child, and disposed of it as he had done the first.

During the whole of this dreadful exhibition, M'Morrough was standing at a window several yards lower down than the battlements, but so situated in an angle of the building that he could distinctly see what pa.s.sed on the former. Satisfied that his atrocious decree had been fully executed, he withdrew from the window; and, avoiding an interview with his wife, whom--stern and ruthless as he was--he dreaded to meet with the murder of her infants on his head, he left the castle on a hunting expedition, from which he did not return for three days. On his return, M'Morrough would have waited on his lady, whom he hoped now to find in some measure reconciled to her bereavement, but was told that she would see no one; that she had caused a small apartment at the top of the castle to be hung with black; and that, immuring herself in this dismal chamber, she spent both her nights and days in weeping and lamentation. On learning this, M'Morrough did not press his visit, but left it to time to heal, or, at least, to soothe the grief of his unhappy wife. In the expectation which he had formed from the silent but powerful operation of this infallible anodyne, M'Morrough was not mistaken. In about a month after the murder of her babes, the lady of M'Morrough, deeply veiled, and betraying every symptom of a profound but subdued grief, presented herself at the morning meal which was spread for her husband. It was the first time they had met since the occurrence of the tragical event recorded above. To that event, however, neither made even the slightest allusion; and, whether it was that time had weakened the impression of her late misfortune, or that she dreaded rousing the enmity of her husband towards herself by a longer estrangement, the lady of M'Morrough showed no violent disinclination to accept of the courtesies which, well-pleased with her having made her appearance of her own accord, he seemed anxious to press upon her. A footing of companionship having thus been restored between the chieftain and his lady, matters, from this day, went on at Castle Tulim much as they had done before, only that the latter long continued to wear a countenance expressive of a deeply wounded, but resigned spirit. Even this, however, gradually gave way beneath the influence of time; and, when seventeen years had pa.s.sed away, as they now did, unmarked by the occurrence, at Castle Tulim, of any event of the smallest importance, the lady of M'Morrough had long been in the possession of her wonted cheerfulness.

It was about the end of this period, that the haughty chieftain, now somewhat subdued by age, and no longer under the evil influence of those ungovernable pa.s.sions that had run riot with him in his more vigorous years, was invited, along with his lady, to a great entertainment which was about to be given by his father-in-law. M'Morrough and his lady proceeded to the castle of their relative. The banquet hall was lighted up; it was hung with banners, crowded with gay a.s.semblage, and filled with music.

There were many fair faces in that a.s.semblage; but the fairest of all, were those of two sisters, who sat apart by themselves. The beauty of countenance and elegance of form of these two girls, who seemed to be both about the same age--seventeen--were surpa.s.sing. M'Morrough marked them; he watched them during the dance; he could not keep his eyes off them. At length, turning to his lady, he asked who they were.

"They are _your_ daughters, M'Morrough," replied the former.

A deadly paleness overspread the countenance of the chief. He shook in every limb, and would have sunk on the floor had he not been supported. On recovering a little, he covered his face with his hands, burst into a flood of tears, and rushed out of the apartment. On gaining a retired and unoccupied chamber, M'Morrough sent for his daughters. When they came, they found him on his knees, fervently thanking G.o.d for this signal instance of his mercy and beneficence. He took his daughters in his arms, blessed them a thousand times over, buried his head between them, and wept like a child.

THE SURGEON'S TALES.

THE BEREAVED.

By looking over the memorial of my professional life; and writing out the extended details of my experience, I am, in effect, living my life over again. Most of the scenes I witnessed left such an impression upon my mind, that it requires only the touch of the _caduceus_ of the witching power of memory, to call them all up again with a vividness scarcely less than that by which they were formerly presented to me. There is only this difference, that my remembered experiences, now invested with a species of borrowed light, seem like scenery which one has seen in the glance of a mid-day sun, presented again to the dreamy "evening sense" under the soft blue effulgence of the waning harvest-moon; the trees with the sere leaf rustling under the fluttering wing of the night bird; and the dead silence, which is not broken by the internal voice speaking the words that have been spoken by those who lie under the yew tree. In an early leaf of my journal, I find some broken details of a visit I paid to Mr B----, a rich manufacturer in the town where I began my practice; but which I left when I had more confidence in those humble powers of ministering to the afflicted, which have raised me to an honourable station, and supplied me with the means of pa.s.sing my old age in affluence. This individual had lost his wife--a very amiable woman, with whom he had lived a period of twenty-five years--and took on grief so heavily, that he was unfit to attend the funeral. He lay in bed, and would not be comforted. Having attended his wife, I continued my attentions to the husband. Three days had pa.s.sed since his wife had been buried, and during all that time, he had eaten nothing; and, what augured gloomily for his fate, he had never been heard to speak, or sigh, or even to give vent to his sufferings in a single groan. There seemed to have fallen over him a heavy load, which, pressing with deadly force upon the issues of life, defied those reacting energies of nature, which usually struggle, by sighs and groans, to throw off the incubus of extraordinary griefs.

I have met with many wiseacre-sceptics who laugh at the idea of what is vulgarly called a "broken heart," as a direct consequence either of unrequited love or extraordinary grief--admitting, however, in their liberality, that death may ensue from great griefs operating merely as an inductive original cause, which destroying gradually the foundations of health, bring on a train of other ailments, that may, in the end, prove mortal. The admission cares for nothing, as a matter of every-day experience; and the original proposition to which it is objected as a qualification, remains as a truth which may humble the pride of man, and speak to the sceptic through the crushed heart of a fatal experience. I have seen many instances of the fatal effects of grief as a direct mortal agent, killing, by its own unaided energies, as certainly, though not in so short a time, as a blow or a wound in the vital organs of the human body.

The common nosologies contain no name for the disease, because, in truth, it cannot properly be called a disease, any more than a stab with a sword can deserve that name; and this, combined with the fact that it is only in a very few instances that the _coup_ works by itself, without the aid of some ailment generated by it, that young pract.i.tioners often h.o.m.ologate the vulgar notions that prevail upon this important subject.

Among all the many causes of grief to which mankind are daily exposed, I know not that there is one that strikes so deeply into the secret recesses of the vital principle as the loss of a dearly-beloved wife, who has lived with a man for a lengthened period, through early adversity and late prosperity--borne him a family which have bound closer the tie that was knitted by early affection, and who has left him to tread the last weary stages of existence alone, and without that support which almost all men derive from woman. The effects are often supposed to be proportioned to the affection; yet I doubt if this solves the curious problem of the diversity of consequences resulting from this great privation. There are many men of strong powers of mind, who are so const.i.tuted that they _cannot_ but press heavily on the support of another. They seem almost to live through the thoughts and feelings of their helpmates; and the energies they take credit for in the busy affairs of the world, have their source--unknown often to themselves--in the bosom of wedded affection. It is in proportion to the strength of the habit of this _leaning_, combined, doubtless, with the coexistent affection, that the effects of the loss of a helpmate, in the later period of life, work with such varied influence on the survivor. It may also seem a curious fact, and I have no doubt of the truth of it, that a man when advanced in years is much more apt to break suddenly down under this visitation than a woman; while, again, the consequence would seem to be reversed if the calamity has overtaken them in the more early stages of the connection. These are grounds for speculation. At present I have only to do with facts.

The individual whose case has suggested these observations, presented, when I saw him first after the funeral of his wife, the symptom--present in all cases of an utterly crushed spirit--of a wish to die. I was the first to whom he had uttered a syllable since the day on which she had been carried out of the house which she had so long filled with the spirit of cheerfulness and comfort. His only daughter, Martha, a fine young woman, had contributed but little to his relief--if she had not, indeed, increased his depression by her own emotions, which she had no power to conceal; and his only son had gone off to Edinburgh, to attend his cla.s.ses in the college, where he intended to graduate as a physician. He was thus, in a manner, left in a great degree alone; for his daughter sought her apartment at every opportunity, to weep over her sorrows un.o.bserved; and she had naturally thought that her father's grief, attended by no exacerbations of groaning or weeping like her own, presented less appearance of intensity than that which convulsed her own heart, and got relief by nature's appointed modes of alleviation. When the heart is stricken with a certain force, all forms of presenting less gloomy views of the condition of the individual, will generally be found to be totally unavailing in affording relief. Nay, I am satisfied that there was genuine philosophy in the custom of the Greeks and the ancient Germans, in _forcing_ victims of great sorrows to _weep_ out the rankling barbed shaft. These had a species of licensed mourners, whose duty it was to soften the heart by melting strains of mournful melody, whereby, as by the application of a bland liniment, the rigid issues of the feelings were softened and opened, and the oppressed organ, the heart, was relieved of the load which defies the force of argument, and even the condolence of friendship. The curing of cold-nips by the appliance of snow, and of burns by the application of heat, could not have appeared more fraught with ridicule to the old women of former days, than would the custom I have here cited to the comforters of modern times.

If I cannot say that, amongst some bold remedies, I have recommended it, I have, at least, avoided, on all occasions, officious endeavours to counteract the oppressing burden, by wrenching the mind from the engrossing thought--a process generally attended with no other result than making it adhere with increased force.

The greatest triumph that can be effected with the truly heart-stricken victim, to whom is denied the usual bursts that indicate a bearable misfortune, or, at least, one whose intensity is partly abated, is the bringing about of that more natural condition of the heart, which, indeed, is generally most feared by the ordinary paraclete. In the case of the bereaved husband, there is no charm so powerful in its effects as the vivid portrayment of the virtues of her who has gone down to the grave; and it may well be said, that the heart that will not give out its feelings to the impa.s.sioned description of the amiable properties of the departed helpmate, is all but incurable. The sister of Mr B----, who saw the necessity of administering relief, tried to awaken him to a sense of religious consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said, would be the pa.s.sport of her spirit to a sphere where he would again contemplate them unclouded by the dingy vapours of earthly feelings. She kept in the same strain for a lengthened period; but declared to me, when I visited him again, that he exhibited no signs of being moved by her discourse. He, once or twice, turned his eyes on her for a moment, drew occasionally a heavy sigh, that told, by the difficulty of the operation, the load with which he was oppressed; but his eyes were dry, no groan escaped from him, or any other sign of the heart being aided in an effort to restore the current of natural feeling. The _coup de peine_ had too clearly taken the very core of the heart; the lamp of hope had been dashed out violently, and, under the cloud of his great evil, all things that remained to him upon earth were tinged with its dark hues. He presented all the appearances--except the dilation of the pupil of the eye--of one whose brain had been concussed by a deep fall, or laboured under a fracture of the bones of the _cranium_. The few words he spoke to me came slowly, with a heavy oppressive sound, as if spoken through a hollow tube; and what may, to some, be remarkable, though certainly not to me, they embraced not the slightest allusion to his bereavement--a symptom almost invariably attendant upon those deeper strokes of grief, which, being but seldom witnessed, are much less understood in their effects than the more ordinary oppressions, whose intense demonstrations and allusions to the cause of the evil, mark the victims as objects for the portrayments of poets.

Two or three days pa.s.sed off in this way, without the slightest amelioration of his condition. The efforts of Miss B---- had been repeated often without effect. As she expressed herself to me, he would neither eat nor speak, sleep nor weep. "He has not," she added, "even muttered her name. His heart seems utterly broken; and time and the power of Heaven alone will effect a change." Such is the common philosophy of sorrow: time is held forth as all-powerful, all-saving; and while I admit its force, I only insist for the certainty of the existence of exceptions. The eighth day had pa.s.sed without any support having been taken to sustain the system.

A course of maceration, that had been going on during his wife's illness, was thus continued; yet, in the few words I occasionally drew from him, there was no indication of anything like the sullen determination of the suicide; the cause lay in the total cessation of the powers of the stomach--a consequence of the cerebral pressure, whose action is felt not where it operates primarily, but in the heart and other organs, where it works merely by sympathy.

It was on the evening of the eighth day after the funeral, as I have it noted, that I called to see if any change for the better had been effected by the ministrations of his sister. She sat by his bedside, with the Bible placed before her, from which she had been reading pa.s.sages to him. His face was turned to the front of the bed, but he did not seem to be in any way moved by my entrance. All the efforts his sister had made to get him to enter into the spirit of the pa.s.sages she had been reading had been fruitless; nor had he as yet made the slightest allusion to the cause of his illness, or mentioned the name of his deceased partner. A few words of no importance, and not related to the circ.u.mstances of his grief, were wrung from him painfully by my questions; but it seemed as if the language that represents the things of the world had lost all power of charming the ear; the deadness that had overtaken the heart like a palsy, was felt from the fountain of feelings, to the minute endings of the nerves; and the external senses, which are the ministers of the soul, had renounced their ordinary ministrations to the spirit that heeded them not. Only once his sister had observed a slight moisture rise for a moment in his eye, as she touched some tender traits of the character of the departed; but it pa.s.sed away rather as an evidence of the utter powerlessness of nature, in a faint heave of the reactive energy, telling at once how little she could perform, yet how much was necessary to overcome the weight by which she was oppressed. I sat for some moments silent by the side of the bed, and meditated a recourse to some more strenuous effort directed to his sense of duty as a parent; though I was aware, that until the heart is in some degree relieved, all such appeals are too often vain, if not rather attended with unfavourable effects, but, in extreme cases, we are not ent.i.tled to rest upon the generality of theories where so various and mutable an essence as the human mind is the object to which they are to be applied. I was on the point of making a trial, by recurring to the position of his son and daughter, when I heard the sound of a horse's feet approaching, with great rapidity, the door. The sister started; and I could hear Martha open the window above, to ascertain who might be the visiter.

In another moment the outer door opened with a loud clang. Some one approached along the pa.s.sage, in breathless haste. He entered. It was George B----, under the excitement of some strong internal emotion; his eyes gleaming with a fearful light, and his limbs shaking violently. He stood for a moment as if he were gathering his energies to speak; but the words stuck in his throat, the sounds died away amidst the noise of an indistinct jabbering. I noticed the eye of his father fixed upon him, betraying only a very slight increase of animation; but even this extraordinary demeanour of his son did not draw from him a question; so utterly dead to all external impulses had his grief made him, that the harrowing cause of so much excitement in his son, remained unquestioned by the feelings of the parent. In another moment the youth was stretched across the bed, locking the father in his embrace, and sobbing out inarticulate words, none of which I could understand. The aunt was as much at a loss to solve the mystery of the violent paroxysm as myself; for some time neither of us could put a question; the sobbings of the youth seemed to chain up our tongues by the charm of the eloquence of nature's impa.s.sioned language. Meanwhile, Martha entered, ran forward to the bedside, lifted her brother from the position which he occupied, and seated him, by the application of some force, on the empty chair that stood by the side of the bed.

"What is the matter, George?" she cried; the question was repeated by the aunt, and the eyes of the parent sought languidly the face of the youth, which was, however, now covered by his hands. The question was more than once repeated by both the aunt and myself; the father never spoke, nor could I perceive a single ray of curiosity in his eye. He seemed to await the issue of the son's explanation, heedless what it might be--whether the announcement of a great or a lesser evil--its magnitude, though transcending the bounds of ordinary bearing, comprehending every other misfortune that fate could have in store for him, being, whatever its proportions, as nothing to the death-stricken heart of one whose hope was buried.

"This is scarcely a time or an occasion, George," said I, "for the manifestation of these emotions. If the cause lies in the grief, come back with increased force, for the death of your mother, you should have known that there is one lying there whose load is still greater, and who is, unfortunately, as yet, beyond the relief which, as your agitation indicates, nature in the young heart is working for you."

"The death!--the death!" he muttered in a choking voice; "but there is something after the death that is worse than the death itself."

"Are you distracted, George?" said the aunt. "This Bible was the hand-book and the rule of your mother's conduct in this world. A better woman never offered up her prayers at the fountain of the waters of immortal life; no one that ever lived had a better right to draw from the blessing, or better qualified for enjoying it as she now enjoys it. She is in heaven; and will you say that that is worse than death?"

"You speak of her spirit, aunt," replied he, as he still covered his face with his hands. "Her spirit is there!"--and he took away one of his hands from his face and pointed to heaven--"There, where the saints rest, does my mother's soul rest; but, O G.o.d, where--where is the body?"

A thought struck me on the instant. I was afraid to utter it. I looked at the father, and suspected, from the sudden light of animation that started to his eye, that the gloom of his mind had at last been penetrated by the thought which had suggested itself to me.

"Where is the body!" responded the aunt. "Why, George, where should it be but in C---- churchyard, beneath the stone that has told the virtues of her ancestors, and will, in a short time, declare her own, greater than those of her kindred that have gone before?"