Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XX Part 18

"By my right hand," said he, "I speak seriously, and the truth. She believes, and you believe that she is the niece of old Hastings, your master. She is his daughter--the only daughter of a fair but frail wife, who eloped from him while his child was yet an infant, leaving it to his care. In order to forget the shame which his frail partner had brought upon him, he, from that day, refused to see his child, lest her features should remind him of her mother. The girl was sent to Boulogne, where she remained till within two months of the time when you saw her on board of my good privateer. You look astonished," added he--"does my narrative surprise you?"

"It does indeed surprise me," I replied; "but how come you to know these things?"

"Oh," replied he, "I know them, and require but small help from divination. Nine years ago, I was commander of one of old Hasting's vessels; and because I was a native of the Borders, forsooth, I, like you, was a favourite with him. He entrusted me with the secret of his having a daughter. Frequently, when I had occasion to put into Boulogne, I carried her presents from him. He also ordered me to bring him over her portrait, and when the old boy took it in his hands, and held it before his face, he wept as though he had been a child. He used me crookedly at last, however; for he accused me of dishonesty, and attempted to bring me to punishment. I was then as honest as noonday, and on land I am honest still, although I have done some bold business upon the high seas. I made a vow that I would be revenged upon him, and, but that you thwarted me, I would have been revenged. I ran my brig into Boulogne. I pretended that I had a message to Miss Hastings from her father, or, as I termed him, her uncle, and that she was to accompany me to England. As I had frequently been the bearer of communications from him before, my tale was believed. She accompanied me on board the brig; and we sailed, not for England, but on a roving cruise, as a king of the open sea. I was resolved that no harm should befal her; but I had also determined that she should not again set her foot upon land, until her father came down with a thousand pounds as a ransom. Of that thousand pounds you deprived me. But on your marriage day--at the very altar--payment will be demanded. It is not for myself that I desire it,"

said he, seriously, "for I am a careless fellow, and am content with what the sea gives to me; but I have a son in c.u.mberland, who will now be about seven years of age. His mother is dead, for my forsaking her broke the poor thing's heart, and hurried her to the grave. My son, I believe, is now the inmate of a workhouse. It is better that he should remain there, than be trained to the gallows by his father. Yet I should wish to see him provided for, and your wife's ransom shall be his inheritance. Give me your bond, and when you again see this dagger, be ready to fulfil it."

As he spoke, he exhibited a small poniard, which he carried concealed beneath his coat. I conceived that his brain was affected, and merely to humour him I agreed to his strange demand.

His words gave birth to wild thoughts, and with an anxious heart I hastened to return to England. My employer received me as though I had not been absent for a week.

"You have done well," he said; "I am satisfied with your undertaking.

You did not this time meet with pirates, nor captive damsels to rescue."

I hesitated to reply, and I mentioned that I had met and spoken with the pirate commander at Genoa.

He glanced at me sharply for a moment, and added--"Merchants should not converse with robbers."

He sat thoughtful for the s.p.a.ce of half an hour, and then requested me to accompany him into his private office. When there, he said--

"You inform me that you have again seen Belford, the pirate, and that you have spoken with him. What said he to you? Tell me all--conceal nothing."

I again hesitated, and sought to evade the subject. But he added, more decisively--"Speak on--hide nothing--fear nothing."

I did tell him all, and he sat and heard me unmoved.

When I concluded, he took my hand and said--"It well you have spoken honestly. Listen to me. Charlotte is indeed my daughter. Time has not diminished your affection for each other, which I was afraid was too romantic in its origin to endure. I have put your attachment to each other to severe trials; let it now triumph. Follow me," he added, "and I will conduct you to her."

I was blind with happiness, and almost believed that what I heard was but a dream--the fond whispering of an excited brain. I will not describe to you my interview with my Charlotte; I could not--words could not. It was an hour of breathless, of measureless joy. She was more beautiful than ever, and love and joy beamed from her eyes.

Our wedding-day came--her father placed her hands in mine, and blessed us. We were leaving the church, when a person in the porch, whose figure was rapt up in a cloak, approached me, and revealing the point of a dagger, whispered--"Remember your bond!"

It was Belford, the daring pirate. I kept faith with him, and he received the money.

I will not detain you longer with my history, with my Trials and Triumphs. One of the first acts of my Charlotte was to purchase the estate which had been torn from my father, and she presented it to him as his daughter's gift. On retiring from business, I came to reside on it, and built on it this house, which has sheltered you from the storm.

"And your name," said the listener, "is Mr Melvin?"

"It is," replied the host.

"Then startle not," continued the stranger, "when you hear that mine is Belford! I am the son of the pirate. My father died not as he had lived.

When upon his deathbed he sent for me, and on leaving me his treasure, which was considerable, he commanded me to repay you the thousand pounds which he so strangely exacted from you. From the day on which he received it, he abandoned his desperate course, and through honest dealings became rich. I have brought you your money, with interest up to the present time."

So saying, the stranger placed a pocketbook in the hands of his entertainer, and hastily exclaiming "Farewell!" hurried from the house, and was no more heard of.

THE MISER OF NEWABBEY.

In the pretty little village of Newabbey, in the south of Scotland, there lived one of those individuals which society sometimes casts up, as the sea does its secret monsters, formed apparently for no other purpose than to show how curiously operose nature can be in her productions, though mankind, ever in search for final causes, may attempt to wrest out of such eccentricities some moral to suit their self-love, and, by producing a contrast, elevate themselves in the scale of moral or physical being. That strange person, Cuthbert Grandison--or, as he was generally termed, Cubby Grindstane, by the corruptive ingenuity of his neighbours--occupied a small mud cottage near the centre of the village we have mentioned. He was considerably advanced in age, and, having come to Newabbey at a late period of his life, the people in that part of the country knew little of his history--a circ.u.mstance they regretted in proportion to the interest excited by the strange habits of the individual. He was in person a little man; extremely spare; with a sharp keen, hungry look; a grey hawk's eye, which, like the cat's, seemed to enjoy the best vision collaterally, for the pupil was almost always at the junction of the eyelids. On his back there was a large hump, which being the only rotundity which his spare body presented, gave him the appearance of a skeleton carrying a lump of beef; and, as his mode of walking was quick and hurried, a quaint fancy could not resist the additional suggestion, that he was running home with it in order to satisfy the hunger that shone through his fleshless form. The extraordinary appearance of such a wild and grotesque-looking individual, in so small a village, could not fail to produce the usual speculation among the high-mutched gossips, who, having in vain made inquiries and exerted their wits as to his origin, directed their attention to his habits, and especially to the mode in which he earned his livelihood--for no one could say he was ever seen to beg. But they were not much more successful in these secondary inquiries and investigations; because, (although it was certain that he had a signboard, exhibiting the characters, "Cuthbert Grandison, Cobbler"--an unusual and somewhat affected and gratuitous depreciation of the votary of St Crispin--and sometimes sat at his small window, perforating soles with his awl, and filling up the holes with "tackets,") no one in the village employed him, and he never condescended to ask any one for work.

If his operations thus afforded no proper clue to his means of life, his conversation was, if possible, still more sterile; for, in place of a.s.sociating with the other "snabs" of the village, or joining the quidnunes who a.s.sembled in Widow Cruickshanks', to drink beer and "twine political arguments"--a much harder labour than their day's work, though they thought it a recreation--he locked himself, and another individual now to be mentioned, into the house at an early hour of the evening, and refused to open it again to however urgent a visiter.

The other individual who lived in Cuthbert's house, was no other than a daughter, about eighteen years of age, called Jean, as unlike her grotesque and mysterious parent as any of G.o.d's creatures could be; though every effort was exerted, on his part, to make her as silent and incommunicative as himself. She appeared to have received no education; her dress was of the most wretched kind; and it was even alleged by the neighbours, whose espionage extended even to the calculation of the quant.i.ty of meal and milk purchased for the support of the father and the daughter, that she did not get sufficient food. These circ.u.mstances regarding the girl were the more readily remarked, that, as all admitted, Jean, or, as she was familiarly called, Jeanie Grandison, would, if she had been treated like other individuals of her age, have excelled the greater number of young women of the village, not only in personal appearance, but in the qualities of her mind and heart. She apparently stood in great awe of her strange parent, and uniformly rejected all solicitations, on the part of the villagers, to join them in their sports, or partake of their little entertainments. The story of the mysterious treatment to which she was subjected, excited the sympathies of the neighbours; and her own amiable manners and meek deportment, exhibiting the indications of a crushed spirit, riveted the regard which had been first elicited by her apparent misfortunes.

The studied seclusion which Grindstane observed, and seemed determined to vindicate against all attempts on the part of the neighbours to "draw him out," rendered it difficult to obtain any insight into the domestic economy of his strange domicile; but accident, at last, brought about what might otherwise not have been easily accomplished. It was observed that, for a considerable time, his daughter had been ailing. She made no complaints to any one; but the quick eye of sympathy soon discovered what was apparently attempted to be concealed. The wife of John Monilaws, a grocer and meal-dealer, from whom Jeanie bought the small portion of provisions her father required, observed and noticed the change that had taken place upon her, and urged her to reveal her complaint, and apply to the surgeon of the village for relief. She smiled sorrowfully at the exhibition of a sympathy to which she was so much a stranger, and which she was not permitted to avail herself of; thanked Mrs Monilaws for her kind intentions; and a.s.sured her she was not much out of her usual condition of health. Two days afterwards, the good dame was astonished by the grotesque appearance of the mysterious Cubby himself, standing by the side of her counter. It was seldom he was to be seen, far less spoken to; and, as she looked on the man whom report had invested with attributes of an unusual kind, a shiver came over her, which the presence of her husband, who, having seen Cubby enter the shop, followed him from mere curiosity, was required to counteract.

"I want to buy some bread," said he, slowly.

"What kind?" said Mrs Monilaws.

"A kind I hae aften asked Jeanie to get," replied he; "but my een are never blessed wi' the sight o't."

"Te may hae't, if we hae't, Cuthbert Grindstane," said John.

"Hae ye ony auld, weathered bread," said he, "that has seen the sun for a week, and fules winna buy frae ye?"

"Ay hae we," replied the mistress--"owre muckle o that. There's some our John is to boil up for the pigs. It's moulded as green as turf-sod. But ye hae nae pigs, Cuthbert?"

"Pigs anew--pigs anew," replied he. "What's the price o' that?"

"It's scarce worth onything," replied the honest woman.

"It's seldom I sell whinstanes covered wi' green moss. Ye may hae't a'thegither for a penny."

"That's owre muckle, guid woman," said Cubby. "A bawbee, eke a farthin, is the hail value o't. I'll gie nae mair."

"I dinna deal in farthins," replied she.

"Dinna deal in farthins!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cubby with surprise. "Is a farthin no the fourth part o' yer ain price o' a' that bread, sufficient to keep a moderate man for a week?"

"He would be a very moderate man that wad eat it," said John. "I was even dootin if I wad hurt the stamach o' my pigs wi't, though boiled in whey."

"Whey!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cubby again--"do ye gie yer pigs whey? They maun hae a routhy stye. Will ye hae my bode?"

"Ye may tak it for naething," said the mistress. "Hoo is Jeanie?--she was complainin last time I saw her."

"Complainin!" said he, as he with the greatest avidity seized the bread, and stuffed it into his pockets. "Did the la.s.sie complain? What did she complain o'? No surely that she didna get her meat." And he looked fearfully and inquiringly into the face of Mrs Monilaws.

"She looked in an ailing way," said the mistress; "an' I thought she was ill."

"She's owre fat--an ill complaint," replied he, apparently wishing to get away.

"I dinna see that," said Mrs Monilaws.

"But I baith see't an' feel't," replied he with a grin. "Guid nicht."

"I pity the puir la.s.sie," said Mrs Monilaws, after Cubby went away, "wha's doomed to live wi' that man. That's a puir supper for the stamach o' an unweel cratur; an' I've a' my doots if she's no at this moment confined to her strae bed. Is there nae way o' getting her out o' his hands? The Laird o' Cubbertscroft wants a servant, an' I promised to get ane to him. Jeanie wad answer better than ony other la.s.s in Newabbey, but I canna see her to speak to her; for, though she comes here, naebody can gae to her."

"There seemed to be something strange," replied John, "in Cubby's manner, when ye asked him about Jeanie. If he gaes lang his ain errands, an' she doesna make her appearance, I'll conclude, frae what I hae seen and heard, that there's something wrang. That man has the heart to starve ane o' G.o.d's creatures--ay, his ain dochter--to death. What mortal could live on that meat he has taen hame wi' him this nicht? Keep an ee on them, Marion; an', if Jeanie doesna sune shew hersel, I'll mak sma' scruple in visitin the lion's den."