Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XX Part 6

"You are a n.o.ble fellow," said the lieutenant whom he had encountered, "and if you will join our service, I guess your merit shan't be long without promotion."

"What!" cried Peter, "raise my right hand against my ain country! Gude gracious, sir! I wud sooner eat it as my next meal!"

In a few weeks the vessel put into Boston for repairs; and, on her arrival, it was ascertained that peace had been concluded between the two countries. Peter found himself once more at liberty; but with liberty he found himself in a strange land, without a sixpence in his pocket. This was no enviable situation to be placed in, even in America, renowned as it is as the paradise of the unfortunate; and he was standing, on the second morning after his being put on sh.o.r.e, counting the picturesque islands which stud Boston harbour, for his breakfast, poor fellow, when a person accosted him--"Well, my lad, how is the new world using you?" Peter started round--it was his old adversary the lieutenant.

"A weel-filled pocket, sir," returned Peter, "will mak either the new warld or the auld use you weel; and without that, I reckon your usage in either the ane or the ither wad be naething to mak a sang about."

The lieutenant pulled out his purse--"I am not rich, Paterson," said he; "but, perhaps, I can a.s.sist a brave man in need." Peter was prevailed upon to accept a few dollars. He knew that to return to Berwickshire was again to throw himself into the power of his persecutor, and he communed with himself what to do. He could plough--he could manage a farm--he was master of all field-work; and, within a week, he engaged himself as a farm-servant to a proprietor in the neighbourhood of Charleston. He had small reason, however, to be in love with his new employment. Peter was proud and high-minded, (in the English, not the American acceptation of the word,) and he found his master an imperious, avaricious, republican tyrant. The man's conduct ill-accorded with his professions of universal liberty. His wish seemed to be, to level all down to his own standard, that he might the more easily trample on all beneath him.

His incessant cry, from the rising of the sun until its setting, was, "Work! work!" and with an oath he again called upon his servants to "work!" He treated them as beasts of burden. "Work! hang ye, work!" and a few oaths, seemed to be the princ.i.p.al words in the man's vocabulary.

Peter had not been overwrought in the frigate--he had been his own master at Foxlaw--and, when doing his utmost, he hated to hear those words everlastingly rung in his ear. But he had another cause for abhorring his employment; his master had a number of slaves, on whom he wreaked the full measure of his cruelty. There was one, an old man, in particular, on whom he almost every day gratified his savageness. Peter had beheld the brutal treatment of the old negro till he could stand it no longer; and one day, when he was vainly imploring the man who called himself the owner of his flesh for mercy, Peter rushed forward, he seized the savage by the breast, and exclaimed--"Confound ye, sir, if I see ye strike that poor auld black creature again, I'll cleave ye to the chin."

The slave-owner trembled with rage. "What!" said he--"it's a fine thing, indeed, if we've wollopped the English for liberty, and after all, a man an't to have the liberty of wollopping his own neeger!"

He drew out his purse, and flung Peter's wages contemptuously on the ground. Peter, stooping, placed the money in his pocket, and, turning towards Charleston, proceeded along the bridge to Boston. He had seen enough of tilling another man's fields in America, and resolved to try his fortune in some other way, but was at a loss how to begin. I have already told you how Peter's mother praised his delivery in his debate with the schoolmaster; and Peter himself thought that he could deliver a pa.s.sage from Shakspeare in a manner that would make the fortune of any hero of the sock and buskin; and he was pa.s.sing along the Mall, counting the number of trees on every row, much in the same manner, and for the same reason, as he had formerly counted the islands in the harbour, when the thought struck him that the Americans were fond of theatricals; and he resolved to try the stage. He called at the lodgings of the manager in Franklin Place. He gave a specimen of his abilities; and, at a salary of eighteen dollars a-week, Peter Paterson was engaged as leader of the "heavy business" of the Boston _corps dramatique_. The tidings would have killed his mother. Lear was chosen as the part in which he was to make his first appearance. The curtain was drawn up. "Peter, what would your mother say?" whispered his conscience, as he looked in the gla.s.s, just as the bell rung and the prompter called him; and what, indeed, would Betty Paterson have said to have seen her own son Peter, with a red cloak, a painted face, a grey wig, and a white beard falling on his breast! Lear--Peter--entered. He looked above, below, and around him.

The audience clapped their hands, shouted, and clapped their hands again. It was to cheer the new performer. Peter thought they would bring down the theatre. The lights dazzled his eyes. The gallery began to swim--the pit moved--the boxes appeared to wave backward and forward.

Peter became pale through the very rouge that bedaubed his face, and sweat, cold as icicles, rained down his temples. The shouting and the clapping of hands was resumed--he felt a trembling about his limbs--he endeavoured to look upon the audience--he could discern only a confused ma.s.s. The noise again ceased.

"Attend----France----Burgundy----hem!----Gloster!" faltered out poor Peter. The laughter became louder than the clapping of hands had been before. The manager led Peter off the stage, paid him the half of his week's salary, and wished him good-by. It is unnecessary to tell you how Peter, after this disappointment, laid out eight dollars in the purchase of a pack, and how, as pedlar, he travelled for two years among the Indians and back-settlers of Canada, and how he made money in his new calling. He had written to his parents and to Ann Graham; but, in his unsettled way of life, it is no wonder that he had not received an answer. He had written again to say, that, in the course of four months, he would have to be in New York _in the way of business_--for Peter's pride would not permit him to acknowledge that he carried a pack--and if they addressed their letters to him at the Post-office there, he would receive them. He had been some weeks in New York, and called every day, with an anxious heart, at the Post-office. But his time was not lost; he had obtained many rare and valuable skins from the Indians, and, with his shop upon his back, he was doing more business than the most fashionable store-keeper in the Broadway. At length, a letter arrived.

Peter hastily opened the seal, which bore the impress of his mother's thimble, and read:--"My dear bairn,--This comes to inform ye that baith your faither and me are weel--thanks to the Giver o' a' good--and hoping to find ye the same. O Peter, hinny, could ye only come hame--did you only ken what sleepless nights I spend on your account, ye wad leave America as soon as ye get my letter. I wonder that ye no ken that Ann, poor woman, an' her faither an her mother, an' the family, a' gaed to about America mair than a year and a half syne, and I'm surprised ye haena seen them."

"Ann in America!" cried Peter. He was unable to read the remainder of his mother's letter. He again flung his pack upon his shoulder, but not so much to barter and to sell, as to seek his betrothed bride. He visited almost every city in the States, and in the provinces of British America. He advertised for her in more than fifty newspapers; but his search was fruitless--it was "Love's labour lost." Yet, during his search, the world prospered with Peter. His pack had made him rich. He opened a store in New York. He became also a shareholder in ca.n.a.ls, and a proprietor of steam-boats; in short he was looked upon as one of the most prosperous men in the city. But his heart yearned for his native land; and Peter Paterson, Esq., turned his property into cash, and embarked for Liverpool.

Ten long years had pa.s.sed since the eyes of Betty Paterson had looked upon her son; and she was busied, on a winter day, feeding her poultry in the barn-yard, when she observed a post-chaise drive through the village, and begin to ascend the hill towards Foxlaw.

"Preserve us, Robin!" she cried, as she bustled into the house, "there's a coach comin' here--what can folk in a coach want wi' the like o' us?

Haud awa out an' see what they want, till I fling on a clean mutch an'

an ap.r.o.n, an' mak mysel wiselike."

"I watna wha it can be," said Robin, as he rose and went towards the door.

The chaise drew up--a tall genteel-looking man alighted from it--at the first glance he seemed nearly forty years of age, but he was much younger. As he approached Robin started back--his heart sprang to his throat--his tongue faltered.

"Pe--Pe--Peter!" he exclaimed. The stranger leaped forward, and fell upon the old man's neck.

Betty heard the word _Peter!_--the clean cap fell from her hand, she uttered a scream of joy, and rushed to the door, her grey hairs falling over her face; and the next moment her arms encircled her son.

I need not tell you of the thousand anxious questions of the fond mother, and how she wept as he hinted at the misfortunes he had encountered, and smiled, and wept, and grasped his hand again, as he dwelt upon his prosperity.

"Did I no aye say," exclaimed she, "that I would live to see my Peter a gentleman?"

"Yet, mother," said Peter, "riches cannot bring happiness--at least not to me, while I can hear nothing of poor Ann. Can no one tell to what part of America her father went?--for I have sought them everywhere."

"Oh, forgie me, hinny," cried Betty, bitterly; "it was a mistake o' yer mother's a'thegither. I understand, now, it wasna Ameri_ca_, they gaed to; but it was Jamai_ca_, or some _ca_, and we hear they're back again."

"Not America," said Peter: "and back again!--then, where--where shall I find her?"

"When we wrote to you, that, after leaving here, they had gaen to America," said Robin, "it was understood they had gaen there--at ony rate, they went abroad someway--and we never heard, till the other week, that they were back to this country, and are now about Liverpool, where I'm very sorry to hear they are very ill off; for the warld, they say, has gaen a' wrang wi' the auld man."

This was the only information Peter could obtain. They were bitter tidings; but they brought hope with them.

"Ye were saying that ye was in Liverpool the other day," added his mother; "I wonder ye didna see some o' them!"

Peter's spirit was sad, yet he almost smiled at the simplicity of his parent; and he resolved to set out in quest of his betrothed on the following day.

Leaving Foxlaw, we shall introduce the reader to Sparling Street, in Liverpool. Amongst the miserable cellars where the poor are crowded together, and where they are almost without light and without air, one near the foot of the street was distinguished by its outward cleanliness; and in the window was a ticket with the words--"_A Girl's School kept here, by_ A. GRAHAM." Over this humble cellar was a boarding-house, from which, ever and anon, the loud laugh of jolly seamen rang boisterous as on their own element. By a feeble fire in the comfortless cellar, sat an emaciated, and apparently dying man; near him sat his wife, engaged in making such articles of apparel as the slop-dealers send to the West Indies, and near the window was a pale but beautiful young woman, instructing a few children in needle-work and the rudiments of education. The children being dismissed, she began to a.s.sist her mother; and, addressing her father, said--

"Come, cheer up, dear father--do not give way to despondency--we shall see better times. Come, smile now, and I will sing your favourite song."

"Heaven bless thee, my own sweet child!" said the old man, while the tears trickled down his cheeks. "Thou wilt sing to cheer me, wilt thou?--bless thee!--bless thee! It is enough that, in my old age, I eat thy bread, my child!--sing not!--sing not!--there is no music now for thy father's heart."

"Oh, speak not--think not thus," she cried, tenderly; "you make me sad, too."

"I would not make thee sad, love," returned he, "but it is hard--it is very hard--that, after cruising till I had made a fortune, as I may say, and after being anch.o.r.ed in safety, to be tempted to make another voyage, where my all was wrecked--and not only all wrecked, but my little ones too--thy brothers and thy sisters, Ann--to see them struck down one after another, and I hardly left wherewith to bury them--it is hard to bear, child!--and, worse than all, to be knocked up like a useless hulk, and see thee and thy mother toiling and killing themselves for me--it is more than a father's heart can stand, Ann."

"Nay, repine not, father," said she: "He who tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb, will not permit adversity to press on us more hardly than he gives us strength to endure it. Though we suffer poverty, our exertions keep us above want."

The old woman turned aside her head and wept.

"True, dear," added he, "thy exertions keep us from charity; but those exertions, my child, will not long be able to make--I see it--I feel it?

And, oh, Ann, shall I see thee and thy mother inmates of a workhouse--shall I hear men call thy father, Bill Graham, the old pauper?"

The sweat broke upon the old man's brow from his excitement; his daughter strove to soothe him, and, with an a.s.sumed playfulness, commenced singing Skinner's beautiful old man's song, beginning--

"Oh, why should old age so much wound us!"

Now, Peter Paterson had been several days in Liverpool anxiously inquiring for Captain Graham, but without obtaining any information of him or of his daughter, or where they dwelt. Again and again he had wandered along the docks; and he was disconsolately pa.s.sing up Sparling Street, when the loud revelry of the seamen in the boarding-house attracted his attention. It reminded him of old a.s.sociations; he paused for a moment, and glanced upon the house and, as the pealing laughter ceased, a low, sweet voice, pouring forth a simple Scottish air, reached his ear. Peter now stood still. He listened--"That voice!" he exclaimed audibly, and he shook as he spoke. He looked down towards the cellar--the ticket in the window caught his eye. He read the words, "_A Girl's School kept here, by_ A. GRAHAM." "I have found her!" he cried, clasping his hands together. He rushed down the few steps, he stood in the midst of them--"I have found her!" he repeated, as he entered. His voice fell like a sunbeam on the cheerless heart of the fair vocalist.

"Peter!--My own"----she exclaimed, starting to her feet. She could not utter more; she would have fallen to the ground, but Peter caught her in his arms.

I need not describe the scene that followed: that night they left the hovel which had served as a grave for their misfortunes. Within a week they had arrived at Foxlaw, and within a week old and young in the village danced at a joyful wedding. I may only add, that, a few weeks after his marriage, Peter read in the papers an advertis.e.m.e.nt, headed--"UPSET PRICE GREATLY REDUCED.--_Desirable Property in the neighbourhood of Foxlaw, &c._" It was the very farm now offered for sale of which Peter was to have become a tenant some twelve years before, and was the remnant of the estates of the hopeful Laird Horslie; and Peter became the purchaser. The old skipper regained his wonted health and cheerfulness; and Betty Paterson lived to tell her grandchildren, "she aye said their faither wad be a gentleman, and her words cam true." Even the old schoolmaster, who had styled him "Ne'er-do-weel Peter," said, he "had aye predicted o' Mr Paterson, even when a callant, that he would turn out an extraordinary man."

THE HEROINE.

A LEGEND OF THE CANONGATE.

After it became known that the wily Sir Robert Carey had hurried away from the deathbed of Queen Elizabeth, to announce to the delighted monarch of Scotland his succession to the crown of England, a great many English n.o.blemen and gentlemen came north on much the same errand that brings so many of them at this day--viz., to hunt; the game, in the one case, being place and favour, and in the other, blackc.o.c.k and grouse.

Among the rest, was one Sir Willoughby Somerset, of Somerset-Hall, in Devonshire, a knight of gay and chivalric manners, excellently set off by an exterior on which nature and art had expended their best favours, but exhibiting, at same time, in his total want of true honour and mental acquirements, that tendency to a fair distribution, which nature, in all her departments, delights to display--suggesting, as it did, to an ancient philosopher, that the _pulchrum_ and the _utile_ are dealt out in equal portions under a whimsical law against their union in one person.

Having arrived, with his gay suit of servants and splendid equipage, at the palace of Holyrood, Sir Willoughby was informed that there were no apartments close to the palace which could be given to him for his accommodation, in consequence of the great influx of n.o.ble visiters who had come from all parts of Scotland and England to testify their allegiance, and express their satisfaction, whether real or a.s.sumed, on the occasion of King James' succession. Sir Willoughby, therefore, took up his abode in a house in the Canongate, which was pulled down more than a hundred years ago--at that time known by the name of the House of Gordon, in consequence, it is supposed, of having at one time been occupied by the ducal family of that name. It was situated on the south side of the street, and nearly opposite to the close called Big Loch-end Close, which possessed at that time a very different appearance from what it does at present; for the double row of low Flemish-looking huts which lined the narrow entry, have given place to modern buildings, which do not look half so well as their more humble predecessors.

Now, in one of these little huts there lived, at that time--unconscious, doubtless, that their names would thus become of historical interest centuries after they were gathered to their fathers--a man called Adam Hunter, and his wife, Janet, both of some importance in the small sphere of their own little gossiping world; but, if these humble individuals had been all that their lowly mansion contained, the chronicler would scarcely have stooped to notice either it or its inhabitants. There was a third inmate in that house--an orphan girl, called Margaret Williamson--a young, slender, azure-eyed creature, about seventeen years of age, of bewitching beauty, and of a simplicity, kindness, and meekness of disposition, that endeared her to thousands. Producing that kind of interest and sensation in her own limited circle, which is so often found to be the effect of the mysterious power of beauty, though allied to poverty, which, indeed, sometimes enhances it, Margaret seemed as unconscious of the magic influence of her charms, as she was of the singular fate that awaited her. She had been heard of where she was not seen; and, innocent and harmless as she was, she had not been pa.s.sed unheeded by the "wise women" of her day, who, in spite of fire and King James' wrath, provided her, according to their love or their spite, with a prison or a palace, as her lot upon earth. As already hinted, Margaret was represented as being an orphan, brought up by the gratuitous kindness of Adam Hunter and his wife, though there were not wanting some who thought that her parentage was not of the equivocal kind that was represented.

Scotland was not, at that time, so far behind in the love and practice of gossiping, as that there should be any want of the usual kind and number of remarks on the new-comers to the house of Gordon; and the family of Adam Hunter were not behind their neighbours in their curiosity.