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

This extraordinary resolution of a female devotee put me in mind of the immolating custom of her countrywomen, called the _suttee_. It was a complete _ultima ratio_, and put all my remedial plans at fault in an instant. Her extreme weakness, or her devoted resolution, prevented her from speaking, and I sat by her bedside totally at a loss what to do, whether to persevere in my attempt to get her to renounce her husband's medicine and to conform to my prescriptions, or to leave her to the fate she seemed to court. I put several more questions to her, but received no other answer than a wave of the hand--a plain token of her wish that I should leave her to the tender mercies of her husband. I had now no alternative; and, rising, I bowed to her, and took my leave. I had some difficulty in finding my way out of the house; but, after several ineffectual turns through wrong pa.s.sages, I reached the door through which I had entered, and returned home.

The extraordinary scene I had witnessed engaged my attention during the evening, but all my efforts at clearing up the mystery that enveloped the proceedings of these individuals were met by difficulties which for a time seemed insuperable. I sat cogitating and recogitating various theories and probabilities, and had several times examined the iron powder, which, for better observation, I had scattered on a sheet of white paper that lay on my table. My intention was to test it, and I waited the incoming of my a.s.sistant to aid me in my experiment. As I looked at it at intervals between my trains of thought, I was struck with a kind of glittering appearance it exhibited, and which was more observable when it caught my eye obliquely and collaterally, during the partial suspension of my perception by my cogitations. Roused by this circ.u.mstance, I proceeded instantly to a more minute investigation; and having, by means of a magnet, removed all the particles of iron, what was my surprise to find a residuum of triturated gla.s.s--one of the most searching and insidious poisons known in toxicology. Good G.o.d! what were my thoughts and feelings when the first flash of this discovery flared upon my mind--solving, in an instant, by the intensity of its painful light, all my doubts, and realizing all my suspicions. Every circ.u.mstance of this mysterious affair stood now revealed in clear relief--a dark scheme of murder, more revolting in its features than any recorded in the malefactor's journal, was illumined and exposed by a light which exhibited not only the workings of the design itself, but the reason which led to its perpetration. This man had married the confiding and devoted foreigner for the sake of her immense wealth, which raised him in an instant from mediocrity to magnificence; and, having attained the object of his ambition, he had resolved--with a view to the concealment of the means whereby he effected his purpose, and regardless of the sacred obligation of grat.i.tude he owed to her who had left her country, her relations, and friends, to trust herself to his protection and love--to immolate the faithful, kind-hearted, and affectionate creature, by a cruel and protracted murder. In her own country the cowardly wretch could not have braved the vengeance of her countrymen; but, in a distant land, where few might be expected to stand up for the rights of the injured foreigner, he had thought he might execute his scheme with secrecy and success. But now it was discovered!

By one of those extraordinary detached traces of the finger of the Almighty, exposed to the convicting power of divine intellect, it was discovered!

The great excitement produced in my mind by this miraculous discovery prevented me for some time from calmly deliberating on the steps I ought to pursue, with the view of saving the poor foreigner from the designs of her murderer. The picture of the devoted being lying, like a queen, in the midst of the wealth she had brought to her husband, and trembling at the very thought of rejecting his poison, for fear of giving him the slightest pain--yet on the very point of being sacrificed; her wealth, love, confidence, and gentleness, repaid by death, and her body consigned, unlamented by friends--who might never hear of her fate--to foreign dust, rose continually on my imagination, and interested my feelings to a degree incompatible with the exercise of a calm judgment.

In proportion as my emotion subsided, the difficulty of my situation appeared to increase. I was, apparently, the only person who knew anything of this extraordinary purpose, and I saw the imprudence of taking upon myself the total responsibility of a report to the public authorities in a case where the chances of conviction would be diminished to nothing by the determination of the victim to save her destroyer, whom she never would believe guilty, and by the want of evidence of a direct nature that the powder I had tested was truly destined for her reception; while, in the event of an impeachment and acquittal of the culprit, I would be exposed to his vengeance, and his poor wife would be for ever subjected to his tyranny and oppression. On the other hand, I was at a loss to know how I could again get access to the sick victim, whom I had left without being requested to repeat my visit; and, even if that could be accomplished, I had many doubts whether she would pay the slightest attention or regard to my statement, that her husband, whom she seemed to prefer to her own divine Brama, designed to poison her. Yet it was clear that the poor victim behoved to be saved, in some way, from the dreadful fate which impended over her; and the necessity of some steps being taken with rapidity and efficacy, behoved to resolve scruples and doubts which otherwise might have been considered worthy of longer time and consideration.

Next day I found I had made little progress in coming to a resolution what step to pursue, yet every hour and minute that pa.s.sed reproached me with cruelty, and my imagination brought continually before my eyes the poor victim swallowing the stated periodical quota of her death-drug. I could have no rest or peace of mind till something was done, at least to the extent of putting her on her guard against the schemes of her cruel destroyer; and, after all my cogitations, resolutions, and schemes, I found myself compelled to rest satisfied with seeing her, laying before her the true nature of her danger, and leaving to the operation of the instinctive principle of self-preservation the working out of her ultimate safety. At the same hour of the evening at which my former visit was made, I repaired to the back entrance of the large mansion, and, upon rapping at the door, was fortunate enough to be answered by the young woman who acted formerly as my guide. She led me, at my request, instantly to the sickroom of her lady, who, having immediately before been seized with an attack of vomiting, was lying in a state of exhaustion approaching to the inanity of death. I spoke to her, and she languidly opened her eyes. I saw no prospect of being able to impress upon her comatose mind the awful truth I had come to communicate; yet I had no alternative but to make the attempt; and I accordingly proceeded, with as few words as possible, and in a tone of voice suited to the lethargic state of her mind and senses, to inform her that the medicines she was getting from the hands of her husband were fraught with deadly poison, which was alone the cause of all her sufferings and agonies, and would soon be the means of a painful death. These words I spoke slowly and impressively, and watched the effect of them with anxiety and solicitude. A convulsive shudder pa.s.sed over her, and shook her violently. She opened her eyes, which I saw fill with tears, and fixed a steady look on my countenance.

"_It is impossible_," she said, with a low, guttural tone, but with much emphasis; "and if it _were_ possible, I would still take his medicine, and die, rather than outlive the consciousness of love and fidelity."

These words she accompanied with a wave of her hand, as if she wished me to depart. I could not get her to utter another syllable. I had discharged a painful duty; and, casting a look upon her, which I verily believed would be the last I would have it in my power to bestow on this personification of fidelity and gentleness, I took my departure.

I felt myself placed in a very painful position for two or three days after this interview, arising from a conviction that I had not done enough for the salvation of this poor victim, and yet without being able to fix upon any other means of rendering her any a.s.sistance, unless I put into execution a resolution that floated in my mind, to admonish her husband, by an anonymous communication, and threaten to divulge the secret of his guilt, unless he instantly desisted from his nefarious purpose--a plan that did not receive the entire sanction of my honour, however much it enlisted the approbation of my feelings. Some further time pa.s.sed, and added, with its pa.s.sing minutes, to my mental disquietude. One evening, when I was sitting meditating painfully on this sombre subject, a lackey, superbly dressed, was introduced to me by my servant, and stated that he had been commanded by his master Colonel P----, to request my attendance at his house without delay. I started at the mention of the name, and the nature of the message; and the man stared at me, as I exhibited the irresolution of doubt and the perturbation of surprise, in place of returning him a direct answer.

Recovering myself, I replied, that I would attend upon the instant; and, indeed, I felt a greater anxiety to fly to that house on which my thoughts were painfully fixed, than I ever did to visit the most valued friend I ever attended in distress. As I hurried along, I took little time to think of the object of my call; but I suspected, either that Colonel P---- had got some notice of my having secretly visited, in my professional capacity, his wife, and being therefore privy to his design--a state of opposing circ.u.mstances, which he was now to endeavour in some way to counteract--or that, finding, from the extremity to which his wife was reduced, that he was necessitated to call a doctor, as a kind of cloak or cover to his cruel act, he had thus made a virtue of necessity, when, alas! it would be too late for my rendering the unfortunate creature any service. "He shall not, however, escape," muttered I, vehemently, through my teeth, as I proceeded. "He little knows that he is now calling to his a.s.sistance the man that shall hang him."

I soon arrived at the house, and rung the front door bell. The same powdered lackey who had preceded me, opened the door. I was led up two pair of stairs, and found myself in the same lobby with which I had already become somewhat familiar. I proceeded forward, thinking I was destined for the sick chamber of the lady; but the servant opened a door immediately next to that of her room, and ushered me into an apartment furnished in an elegant style, but much inferior to that occupied by his wife. In a bed lay a man of a genteel, yet sinister cast of countenance, with a large aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes. He appeared very pale and feverish, and threw upon me that anxious eye which we often find in patients who are under the first access of a serious disease; as if nature, while she kept her secret from the understanding, communicated it to the feelings, whose eloquence, expressed through the senses, we can often read with great facility. I knew, in an instant, that he was committed, by a relentless hand, to suffering, in all likelihood, in the form of a fever. He told me he was Colonel P----, and that, having been very suddenly taken ill, he had become alarmed for himself, and sent for me to administer to him my professional services.

I looked at him intently; but he construed my stare into the eagerness of professional investigation. At that instant, a piercing scream rang through the house, and made my ears tingle. I asked him who had uttered that scream, which must have come from some creature in the very extremity of agony, and made an indication as if I would hasten to administer relief to the victim. In an instant, I was close and firm in the trembling clutch of the sick man, who, with a wild and confused look, begged me not to sacrifice him to any attention to the cause of this disturbance, which was produced by a servant in the house habitually given, through fits of hysterics, to the utterance of these screams. I put on an appearance of being satisfied with this statement; but I fixed my eye relentlessly on him, as he still shook, from the combined effects of his incipient disease, and his fear of my investigating the cause of the scream. I proceeded to examine into the nature of his complaint. The symptoms described by him, and detected by my observation, satisfied me that he had been seized with an attack of virulent typhus; and from the intensity of some of the indications--particularly his languor and small pulse, his loss of muscular strength, violent pains in the head, the inflammation of his eyes, the strong throbbing of his temporal arteries, his laborious respiration, parched tongue, and hot breath--I was convinced he had before him the long sands of a rough and rapid race with death. At the close of my investigation he looked anxiously and wistfully in my face, and asked me what I conceived to be the nature of his complaint. I told him at once, and with greater openness and readiness than I usually practise, that I was very much afraid he was committed for a severe course of virulent typhus. He felt the full force of an announcement which, to those who have had any experience of this king of fevers, cannot fail to carry terror in every syllable; and falling back on his pillow, turned up his eye to heaven. At this moment, a succession of screams, or rather yells, sounded through the house; but as I now saw that I had a chance of saving the innocent sufferer, I pretended not to regard the dreadful sounds, and purposely averted my eyes to escape the inquiring, nervous look of the sick man. I gave him some directions, promised to send some medicines, and took my leave.

As I shut the door, the waiting-maid, whom I had seen before, was standing in the door of her mistress's apartment, and beckoned me in, with a look of terror and secrecy. I was as anxious to visit her gentle mistress as she was to call me. On entering, which I did slowly and silently, to escape the ear of her husband, I found the unfortunate creature in the most intense state of agony. The ground gla.s.s she had swallowed, and a great part of which, doubtless, adhered to the stomach, was too clearly the cause of her screams; but, to my surprise, I discovered, from her broken e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, that the grief of her husband's illness had been able, in its strength, to fight its way to her heart, through all her bodily agonies produced by his poison. My questions regarding her own condition were answered by hysterical sobs, mixed with e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of pity, and requests to know how he was, and what was the nature of the complaint by which he had been attacked--hinting, in dubious terms, that she had been the cause of his illness, by entailing upon him the necessity of attending her, and wounding his sensitive heart by her distress. My former communications to her concerning the poison, and my caution against her acceptance of it from the hands of her intended murderer, had produced no effect upon a mind predetermined to believe nothing against the man she loved and trusted beyond all mortals. She had received it again from him after my communication; the effects of it were now exhibited in her tortured, burning viscera; and yet, in the very midst of her agonies, her faith, confidence, and love stood unshaken; a n.o.ble yet melancholy emblem of the most elevated, yet often least valued and most abused virtues of her s.e.x. I endeavoured to answer her fevered inquiries about her husband, by telling her that he stood in great _need of her attendance_; and that, if she would agree to follow my precepts, and put herself entirely under my advice and direction, she might, in a very short time, be enabled to perform her duty of a faithful wife and a kind nurse to her distressed partner. The first perception she caught of the meaning of my communication, lighted up her eye, even in the midst of her wringing pains; and, starting up, she cried, that she would be the most abject slave to my will, and obey me in all things, if I could a.s.sure her of the blessing of being able to act as nurse and comforter to her husband.

Now I saw my opportunity. On the instant I called up and despatched the waiting-maid to my home, with directions to my a.s.sistant, to send me instantly an oleaginous mixture, and some powerful emetics, which I described in a _recipe_. I waited the return of the messenger, administered the medicines, and watched for a time their operation and effects. Notwithstanding the continued attacks that had been made on her system by the doses of an active poison, I was satisfied that, if my energies were not, in some unforeseen way, thwarted and opposed, I would be able to bring this deserving wife and pattern of her s.e.x from the brink of the grave that had been dug for her by the hand of her husband.

After leaving with the waiting-maid some directions, I proceeded home, for the purpose of preparing the necessary medicines for my other patient.

I now commenced a series of regular visits to my two patients--the illness of the husband affording me the most ample scope for saving his wife. As he gradually descended into the unavoidable depths of his inexorable disease, she, by the elastic force of youth and a good const.i.tution, operating in unison with my medicines, which were administered with the greatest regularity, gradually threw off the lurking poison, and advanced to a state of comparative safety and strength. I was much pleased to observe the salutary effects of my professional interference in behalf of my interesting patient; but could scarcely credit my own perceptions, as I had exhibited to me the most undoubted proofs, that the desire to minister to the wants and comforts of her sick husband, engrossed so completely every other feeling that might have been supposed consequent upon a restoration to health, that she seemed to disregard all other considerations. Her questions about the period when she might be able to attend him were unremitting; and every hour she was essaying to walk, though her efforts often ended in weak falls, or sinkings on the ground, when some one was required to a.s.sist her in getting up and returning to bed. She entreated me to allow her to be _carried_ to his bedside; where, she said, they might mix their tears and console each other; and all my arguments against the impropriety of such an obvious mode of increasing her husband's illness, and augmenting those sufferings she was so solicitous to ameliorate, were scarcely sufficient to prevent her from putting her design into execution.

The husband's disease, which often runs a course of two months, though the crisis occurs generally between the third and fourth week, progressed steadily and relentlessly, mocking, as the fevers of that type generally do, all the boasted art of our profession. His pulse rose to the alarming height of 120; he exhibited the oppression at the chest, increased thirst, blackfurred tongue, and inarticulate, muttering speech, which are considered to be unfavourable indications; and there was, besides, a clear tendency to delirium--a common, yet critical symptom--leaving, even after the patient has recovered, and often for years, its marks in the weakened intellect. One evening I was standing by his bedside, studying his symptoms; witnessing the excess of his sufferings, and listening to the bursts of incoherent speech which, from time to time, came from him, as if expelled from his sick spirit by some internal power. He spoke often of his wife, whom he called by the name of Espras; and, in the midst of his broken e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, gushes of intense feeling came on him, filling his yellow sunken eyes with rheumy tears, and producing heavy sobs, which, repressed by his loaded chest, a.s.sumed sounds unlike anything I ever heard, and beyond my power of description. I could not well understand these indications of the working of his spirit; but I fancied that, when he felt his own agonies, became conscious of what it is to suffer a certain extremity of pain, and learned, for the first time in his life, the sad experience of an inexorable disease, which presented to him the prospect of a lingering death, his mind recurred to the situation of his wife, who, as he thought, was, or might be, enduring tortures produced by his hand, transcending even his sufferings. There seemed to be less of conscience in his mental operations, than a new-born sorrow or sympathy, wrung out of a heart naturally obdurate, by the anguish of a personal experience of the pain he himself had produced in another, who had the strongest claims on his protection and love. His mind, though volatile and wandering, and not far from verging on delirium, was not yet deranged; and I was about to put a question to him concerning his wife, whom he had not directly mentioned to me, when the door opened, and the still pale and emaciated figure of Mrs. P----, dressed in a white morning gown, entered the apartment, struggling with her weakness to get forward, and clutching, in her breathless efforts, at whatever presented itself to her nerveless arms, to support her, and aid her in her progress to the sick-bed of her husband. The bed being in the middle of a large room, she was necessitated to trust partly to the weak powers of her limbs, which having failed her, she, in an attempt to spring forward and reach it before sinking, came short of her aim, and fell with a crash on the floor, uttering, as she stumbled, a scream of sorrow, wrung from her by the sight of her husband lying extended on a bed of sickness. The noise started the invalid, who turned his eyes wildly in the direction of the disturbance; and I rushed forwards to raise in my arms the exhausted victim. I had scarcely got her placed on her feet, when she again struggled to reach the bed; and having, by my a.s.sistance, got far enough forward, she threw herself on the body of the fever-ridden patient, ejaculating, as she seized him in her arms, and bedewed his pale face with tears--

"Frederick! my honoured husband, whom I am bound to cherish and nurse as becomes the fondest of wives, why is it that I have been deprived of this luxury of the grief-stricken heart--to watch your looks, and antic.i.p.ate your wants? Thanks to the blessed powers of your faith and of mine, I have you now in my arms, and no mortal shall come between me and my love! Night and day I will watch and tend you, till the a.s.siduities of my affection weary out the effects of your cruel disease brought on you--O G.o.d!--by your grief for me, your worthless Espras."

And she buried her head in the bosom of the sick man, and sobbed intensely. This scene, from the ant.i.thesis of its circ.u.mstances, appeared to me the most striking I had ever beheld; and, though it was my duty to prevent so exciting a cause of disturbance to the patient, I felt I had no power to stop this burst of true affection. I watched narrowly the eye of the patient; but it was too much clouded by the effects of the fever, and too nervous and fugacious, to enable me to distinguish between the effects of disease and the working of the natural affections. But that his mind and feelings were working, and were responding to this powerful moral impulse, was proved fearfully by his rapid indistinct muttering and jabbering, mixed with deep sighs, and the peculiar sound of the repressed sobs which I have already mentioned, but cannot a.s.similate to any sound I ever heard. All my efforts to remove the devoted wife by entreaty were vain; she still clung to him, as if he had been on the eve of being taken from her by death. Her sobbing continued unabated, and her tears fell on his cheek. These intense expressions of love and sorrow awoke the sympathy which I thought had previously been partially excited, for I now observed that he turned away his head, while a stream of tears flowed down his face.

It was now, I found, necessary, for the sake of the patient, to remove the excited lady; and I was obliged to apply a gentle force before I could accomplish my purpose. She insisted, however, upon remaining in the room, and beseeched me so piteously for this privilege, that I consented to a couch being made up for her at a little distance from the bed of her husband, whom it was her determination to tend and nurse, to the exclusion of all others. I was not, indeed, ill pleased at this resolution, for I antic.i.p.ated, from her unexampled love and devotedness, an effect on the heart of her husband which might cure its vices and regenerate its affections.

On the next occasion of my stated visit, I found my patient had at last fallen into a state of absolute delirium. On a soft arm-chair, situated by his bedside, sat his wife, the picture of despair, wringing her hands, and indulging in the most extravagant demonstrations of grief and affection. The wretched man exhibited the ordinary symptoms of that unnatural excitement of the brain under which he laboured--relapsing at times into silence, then uttering a multiplicity of confused words--jabbering wildly--looking about him with that extraordinary expression of the eye, as if every individual present was viewed as a murderer--then starting up, and, with an overstrained and choking voice, vociferating his frenzied thoughts, and then again relapsing into silence. It is but little we can do for patients in this extreme condition; but the faith his wife reposed in professional powers that had already saved her, suggested supplications and entreaties which I told her she had better direct to a higher Dispensator of hope and relief. The tumultuous thoughts of the raving victim were still at intervals rolling forth; and, all of a sudden, I was startled by a great increase of the intensity and connectedness of his speech. He had struck the chord that sounded most fearfully in his own ears. His attempt to murder the creature who now sat and heard his wild confession, was described by himself in intelligible, though broken sentences:--

"The fortune brought me by Espras," he vociferated, "is loaded by the burden of herself--that gla.s.s is not well ground--you are not so ill, my dear Espras, as to require a doctor--I cannot bear the thought of you labouring under that necessity--who can cure you so well as your devoted husband? Take this--fear not--why should love have suspicions? When she is gone, I shall have a wife of whom I may not be ashamed--yet, is she not a stranger in a foreign land? Has she not left her country, her relations, her friends, her G.o.ds, for me, whom she has raised to opulence? Cease, cease--I cannot stand these thoughts--there is a strife in this heart between the powers of h.e.l.l and heaven--when will it terminate, and who shall rule my destiny?"

These words, which he accompanied with wild gestures, were followed by his usual indistinct muttering and jabbering. I directed my gaze upon his wife. She sat in the chair, motionless, with her eyes fixed on the ground as if she had been struck with death in that position, and been stiffened into a rigidity which retained her in her place. The issues of her tenderness and affection seemed to have been sent back upon the heart, whose pulses they stopped. The killing pain of an ingrat.i.tude, ingeniously heightened to the highest grade of that h.e.l.l-king of all human crimes, operating upon a mind rendered so sensitively susceptible of its influences, paralyzed the whole moral const.i.tution of the devoted creature, and realized the poetical creation of despair. I felt inclined to soften the sternness of her grief, by quickening her disbelief of the raving thoughts of a fever-maniac; but I paused as I thought of the probable necessity of her suspicion for her future safety from the schemes of a murderer, whose evil desires might be resuscitated by the return of health. I could do nothing more at that time for the dreadful condition of the wretched husband, and less for the more dreadful state of the miserable wife; and the personal pain I experienced in witnessing this high-wrought scene of terror, forced me to depart, leaving the one still raving in his madness, and the other bound in the stern grasp of the most awful of all moral visitations.

I expected that on my next visit I would find such a change on my patient as would enable me to decide whether he would live or die; but he was still delirious, with the crowded thoughts of the events of his past life careering through his fevered brain, as if their restlessness and agitation were produced by the burning fires that chased them from their legitimate territory of the mind. There was, however, a change in one quarter. His wife's confidence and affection had withstood and triumphed over the attack of the previous day, and she was again occupied in hanging over her raving husband, shedding on his unconscious face the tear of pity, and supplying, by antic.i.p.ation, every want that could be supposed incident to his miserable condition. This new and additional proof of the strength of this woman's steadfastness, in her unparalleled fidelity and love, struck me even more forcibly than the previous indications she had given of this extraordinary feature in her character. But I was uncertain yet whether to construe her conduct as salutary or dangerous to her own personal interests--a circ.u.mstance depending on the further development of the sentiments of her husband.

On that same evening the change suspected took place: the delirium abated, and consciousness, that had been driven forcibly from her throne, hastened to a.s.sume the sceptre of her authority. The crisis was past, and the patient began to be sensible of those attentions on the part of his devoted wife, which had not only the merit of being unremitting, but that of being sweetened by the tears of solicitude and the blandness of love. I marked attentively the first impressions made by her devotedness on the returning sense. I saw his look following her eye, which was continually inflamed and bedewed by the effects of her grief; and, after he had for a period of time fixed his half-conscious, half-wondering gaze on her, he turned it suddenly away, but not before he gave sufficient indications of sympathy and sorrow in a gush of tears. These manifestations were afterwards often repeated; but I thought I sometimes could perceive an abruptness in his manner, and a painful impatience of the minute, refined, and ingenious attentions of a highly-impa.s.sioned affection, which left me in doubt whether, after his disease was removed, sufficient reliance could be placed on the stability of his regeneration.

In my subsequent visits I kept up my study of the operations of his mind as well as the changes of his disease. His wife's attentions seemed rather to increase with the improvement of his health and her increased ability to discharge the duties of affection. He had improved so far as to be in a condition to receive medicines for the recovery of the tone of his stomach. I seized the opportunity of his wife leaving for a short time his sick room, and, as I seated myself on her chair by the bedside, I took from my pocket the powder of iron-filings and triturated gla.s.s he had prepared for the poisoning of her who had latterly been contributing all the energies of love to the saving of his life.

"A chalybeate mixture," said I, while I fixed my eyes on his countenance, "has been recommended for patients in your condition, for improving the power of the stomach weakened by the continued nausea of a protracted fever. Here is a powder composed of iron-filings, a good chalybeate, which I found lying in your wife's apartment. I have none better in my laboratory, and would recommend to you a full dose of it before I depart."

The electric effect of this statement was instantaneous and remarkable.

He seemed like one who had felt the sharp sting of a musket bullet sent into his body by a hand unseen--uncertain of the nature of the wound, or of the aim by which it is produced. A sudden suspicion relieved his still fevered eye, which threw upon me the full blaze of staring wonder and terror, while an accompanying uncertainty of my intention sealed his mouth and added curiosity to his look. But I followed up my intention resolutely and determinedly.

"Here is on the table," continued I, "a mucilaginous vehicle for its conveyance into the stomach. I shall prepare it instantly. To seize quickly the handle of an auspicious occasion is the soul of our art."--(Approaching the bed with the medicine in my hand.)

"I cannot, I cannot take that medicine," he cried, wildly. "What means this? Help me, Heaven, in this emergency! I cannot, I dare not take that medicine."

"Why?" said I, still eyeing him intently. "Is it because there is ground gla.s.s in it? That cannot be; because I understand it was intended for Espras, your loving, faithful wife; and who would administer so dreadful a poison to a creature so gentle and interesting? She is, besides, a foreigner in our land; and who would treat the poor unprotected stranger with the dainty that has concealed in it a lurking death? Is this the hospitality of Britain?"

Every word was a thunderstroke to his heart. All uncertainty fled before these flaming sarcasms, which carried, on the bolt of truth, the keenness of his own poison. His pain became intense, and exhibited the peculiarity of a mixture of extreme terror, directed towards me as one that had the power of hanging him, and of intense sorrow for the injury he had produced to the wife of his bosom, whose emaciated figure, hanging over him in his distress, must have been deeply imprinted on his soul. Yet it was plain that his sorrow overcame his fear; for I saw his bosom heaving with an acc.u.mulation of hysterical emotions, which convulsed his frame in the intense manner of the aerial ball that chokes the female victim of excited nerves. The struggle lasted for several minutes, and at last a burst of dissolving tenderness, removing all the obstructions of prudence or terror, and stunning my ear with its loud sound, afforded him a temporary relief. Tears gushed down his cheeks, and groans of sorrow filled the room, and might have been heard in the apartment of his wife, whose entry, I feared, might have interrupted the extraordinary scene. Looking at me wistfully, he held out his hands, and sobbed out, in a tone of despair--

"Are you my friend, or are you my enemy?"

I answered him that I was the friend of his wife--one of the brightest patterns of female fidelity I had ever seen; and if by declaring myself his friend I would save her from the designs of the poisoner, and him from the pains of the law and the fire of h.e.l.l, I would instantly sign the bond of amity.

"You have knocked from my soul the bonds of terror," he cried out, still sobbing; "and if I knew and were satisfied of one thing more, I would resign myself to G.o.d and my own breaking heart. Did Espras--yet why should I suspect one who rejects suspicion as others do the poison she would swallow from my hand, though labelled by the apothecary?--did Espras tell you what you have so darkly and fearfully hinted to me?"

I replied to him that, in place of telling me, the faithful unsuspecting creature had to that hour rejected and spurned the suspicion, as unworthy of her pure, confiding spirit.

"It is over!--it is over!" cried the changed man. "O G.o.d! How powerful is virtue! How strong is the force of those qualities of the heart which we men often treat as weak baubles to toy with, and throw away in our fits of proud spleen--the softness, the gentleness, the fidelity and devotedness of woman! How strangely, how wonderfully formed is the heart of man, which, disdaining the terrors of the rope of the executioner, breaks and succ.u.mbs at the touch of the thistle-down of a woman's love!

This creature, sir, gave me my fortune, made me what I am, left for me her country and her friends, adhered to me through good and evil report--and I prepared for her a cruel death! Dreadful contrast! Who shall describe the shame, the sorrow, the humiliation, of the ingrate whose crime has risen to the fearful alt.i.tude of this enormity; and who, by the tenderness and love of his devoted victim, is forced to turn his eye on the grim reward of death for love, riches, and life? Gentle, beloved, injured Espras! that emaciated form, these trembling limbs, these sunken eyes, and these weak and whispering sounds of pity and affection have touched my heart with a power that never was vouchsafed to the tongue of eloquence. Transcending the rod of Moses, they have brought from the rock streams of blood; and every pulse is filled with tenderness and pity. Wretched fool! I was ashamed of your nativity, and of the colour you inherited from nature, and never estimated the qualities of your heart; but when shall the red-and-white beauty of England transcend my Espras in her fidelity and love, as she does in the skin-deep tints of a beguiling, treacherous face? G.o.d! what a change has come over this heart! Thanks, and prayers, and tears of blood, never can express the grat.i.tude it owes to the great Author of our being for this miraculous return to virtue, effected by the simple means of a woman's confidence and love."

As he finished this impa.s.sioned speech, which I have repeated as correctly as my memory enabled me to commit to my note-book, he turned his eyes upwards, and remained for at least five minutes in silent prayer. As he was about finishing his wife entered. Her appearance called forth from his excited mind a burst of affection, and seizing her in his arms, he wept over her like a child. He was met as fervently by the gentle and affectionate creature, who, grateful to G.o.d for this renewed expression of her husband's love, turned up her eyes to heaven, and wept aloud. I never witnessed a scene like this. I left them to their enjoyment, and returned home.

I was subsequently a constant visitor at the house of Colonel P----; and, about eighteen months after his recovery, I officiated as accoucheur to his wife on the occasion of the birth of a son. Other children followed afterwards, and bound closer the bonds of that conjugal love which I had some hand in producing, and which I saw increase daily through a long course of years.

THE ADOPTED SON.

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF THE COVENANTERS.

"Oh, for the sword of Gideon, to rid the land of tyrants, to bring down the pride of apostates, and to smite the unG.o.dly with confusion!"

muttered John Brydone to himself, as he went into the fields in the September of 1645, and beheld that the greater part of a crop of oats, which had been cut down a few days before, was carried off. John was the proprietor of about sixty acres on the south bank of the Ettrick, a little above its junction with the Tweed. At the period we speak of, the talented and ambitious Marquis of Montrose, who had long been an apostate to the cause of the Covenant--and not only an apostate, but its most powerful enemy--having, as he thought, completely crushed its adherents in Scotland, in the pride of his heart led his followers towards England, to support the tottering cause of Charles in the south, and was now with his cavalry quartered at Selkirk, while his infantry were encamped at Philiphaugh, on the opposite side of the river.

Every reader has heard of Melrose Abbey--which is still venerated in its decay, majestic in its ruins--and they have read, too, of the abode of the northern wizard, who shed the halo of his genius over the surrounding scenery. But many have heard of Melrose, of Scott, and of Abbotsford, to whom the existence of Philiphaugh is unknown.

It, however, is one of those places where our forefathers laid the foundation of our freedom with the bones of its enemies, and cemented it with their own blood. If the stranger who visits Melrose and Abbotsford pursue his journey a few miles farther, he may imagine that he is still following the source of the Tweed, until he arrive at Selkirk, when he finds that for some miles he has been upon the banks of the Ettrick, and that the Tweed is lost among the wooded hills to the north. Immediately below Selkirk, and where the forked river forms a sort of island, on the opposite side of the stream, he will see a s.p.a.cious haugh, surrounded by wooded hills, and forming, if we may so speak, an amphitheatre bounded by the Ettrick, between the Yarrow and the Tweed. Such is Philiphaugh; where the arms of the Covenant triumphed, and where the sword of Montrose was blunted for ever.

Now, the sun had not yet risen, and a thick, dark mist covered the face of the earth, when, as we have said, John Brydone went out into his fields, and found that a quant.i.ty of his oats had been carried away. He doubted not but they had been taken for the use of Montrose's cavalry; and it was not for the loss of his substance that he grieved, and that his spirit was wroth, but because it was taken to a.s.sist the enemies of his country, and the persecutors of the truth; for than John Brydone, humble as he was, there was not a more dauntless or a more determined supporter of the Covenant in all Scotland. While he yet stood by the side of his field, and, from the thickness of the morning, was unable to discern objects at a few yards' distance, a party of hors.e.m.e.n rode up to where he stood. "Countryman," said one who appeared to be their leader, "can you inform us where the army of Montrose is encamped?"

John, taking them to be a party of the Royalists, sullenly replied--"There's mony ane asks the road they ken," and was proceeding into the field.

"Answer me!" demanded the horseman angrily, and raising a pistol in his hand--"Sir David Lesly commands you."

"Sir David Lesly!" cried John--"the champion of the truth!--the defender of the good cause! If ye be Sir David Lesly, as I trow ye be, get yer troops in readiness, and, before the mist vanish on the river, I will deliver the host o' the Philistines into your hand."

"See that ye play not the traitor," said Lesly, "or the nearest tree shall be unto thee as the gallows was to Haman which he prepared for Mordecai."

"Do even so to me, and more also," replied John, "if ye find me false.

But think ye that I look as though I bore the mark of the beast upon my forehead?" he continued, taking off his Lowland bonnet, and gazing General Lesly full in the face.