Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 7

"Never. I know no more of them than you do; and, besides, I give you your choice of mother, or not mother."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Campbell, as he looked intently at Dewhurst. "Are you mad, Dewhurst? Has your last triumph blinded you? The woman is too old by ten years."

Hamilton turned round without saying a word, and drew cautiously near the lady, whose eyes, as she stood looking at a foreign ship coming in, were still scornful, and it seemed as if she waited until some gentleman came up to inform him of the cruel act she had so recently witnessed.

Resisting her fiery glances, he surveyed her calmly, looking by turns at her and the boy. A slight smile played on his lip in the midst of the indications of his wrath. One might have read in that expression--

"Not a feature in these two faces in the least similar, and the age is beyond all mortal doubt. I have the gull-flayer on the hip at last."

And returning to the companions with the same simulated coolness--

"Done for a hundred," he said. "That lady is not the mother of that boy."

"Agreed," answered Dewhurst, with a look of inward triumph. "How to be decided?"

"By the lips of the lady herself."

"Agreed."

"Yes," joined Campbell, "if you can get these lips to move. She looks angry, and now she is moving along probably for home, bequeathing to us the last look of her scorn. We shall give her time to cool down, and Cameron and I will then pay our respects to her. We shall get it out of the boy if she refuse to answer."

It was as Campbell said. The lady with the boy, who held her by the hand, had begun her return along the jetty. The companions kept walking behind; and of these, Campbell and Dewhurst fell back a little from the other two.

"Hark, Campbell," said Dewhurst. "Back me against Cameron for any sum you can get out of him. I'm sure of my quarry; and," laughing within the teeth, he added, "I'll gull him again."

"You're ruined, man," whispered his companion. "The woman is evidently too old, and I am satisfied you will catch some of her wrinkles."

A deeper whisper from Dewhurst conveyed to the ear of his friend--

"I heard the boy call her mother."

"The devil!" exclaimed Campbell in surprise; but, catching himself, "it might have been grandmother he meant."

"No, no. Children in Scotland use grandma', never ma', to grandmother.

I'm satisfied; and if you are not a fool, take advantage of my "--

"Dishonesty," added Campbell.

"No; all fair with that fellow Hamilton. Besides, all bets a.s.sume a retention of reasons, otherwise there could be no bets. In addition, I did not a.s.sert that I did not hear them address each other."

"That's something," said Campbell. "I do not say it is impossible, or even very improbable, that she may be the mother; and if you will a.s.sure me, on your honour, of what you heard, I will have a little speculative peculation on Cameron."

"I can swear; and if I couldn't, do you think I would have bet so high, as in the event of losing I should be ruined?"

"I'm content," said Campbell. "Ho, there, Cameron! I will back Dewhurst on the maternity for ten."

"That will just pay Nightingale," replied Cameron. "I accept. Now for the grand _denouement_. Let us accost the arbitress of our fortunes."

"Not yet," said Hamilton. "Wait till she gets to the lighthouse, where there are people. It is clear she has not a good opinion of us, and in this solitary place she might get alarmed."

Hanging back to wait their opportunity, now upon the verge of a decision which might be attended with disastrous results to some of them, the whole four appeared absorbed in anxiety. Not a word was spoken; and it seemed possible that, during these trying minutes, a hint would have broken up the imprudent and dangerous compact. The terror of the club was before them, and the false honour which ruled them, in place of obedience to their fathers, and humanity to dumb creatures, retained the ascendency. So has it ever been with the worship of false G.o.ds: their exactions have always been in proportion to the folly and credulity of their votaries. The moment was approaching. The die was to carry formidable issues. Dark shadows broke in through the resolution to be brave, as might have been observed in the features of both the princ.i.p.als. At length Campbell took the lead. They approached the lady, who at first seemed to shrink from them as monsters.

"We beg pardon," he said. "Be a.s.sured, madam, we have not the most distant intention to offend you. The truth is, that we have a bet among us as to whether you are the mother of this fine boy. We a.s.sure you, moreover, that it was the sport of betting that sought out the subject, and the nature of that subject cannot, we presume, be prejudicial either to your honour or your feelings. While I ask your pardon, allow me to add that the wager, foolish or not, is to be decided by your answer--yes or no."

"No."

After p.r.o.nouncing, with a severe sternness, this monosyllable, she paused a little; and looking round upon the youths with a seriousness and dignity that sat upon her so well that they shrunk from her glance, she added, with a corresponding solemnity--

"Would to G.o.d, who sees all things--ay, and punishes all those who are cruel to the creatures He has formed with feelings suitable to their natures, and dear to them as ours are to us--that he who bet upon my being the mother of this boy may be he who tortured the unoffending bird!"

And, with these words, she departed, leaving the bewildered students looking at each other, with various emotions. It was, perhaps, fortunate for Dewhurst that the little sermon, contrary to the practice of the courts, came after, in place of preceding the condemnation, for he had been rendered all but insensible by the formidable monosyllable. He saw there was some mystery overhanging his present position. He doubted, and he did not doubt the lady; but he heard the boy use the word, and he took up the impression that he was, by some mistake on his part, to be punished for the flaying of the bird. The lady's eye, red and angry, had been fixed upon him, and now, when she was gone, he still saw it.

But there were more lurid lights, playing round certain stern facts connected with his fortunes. He must pay this 100 on the decision of her who had burned him with her scorn. There was no relief for him. The club at the College had no mercy, and he had enraged Hamilton, whose spirit was relentless. He had been under rebuke from his father, who had threatened to cut him off; and, worse still, the remnant of the last yearly remittance was 110 in the Royal Bank, while debts stood against him in the books of tailors, confectioners, tavern-keepers, shoemakers--some already in the form of decrees, and one at least in the advanced stage of a warrant. To sum up all, he was betrothed to Miss M------- sh, the sister of a writer to the signet, who had already hinted doubts as the propriety of the marriage. He saw himself, in short, wrecked on the razor-backed shelving rocks of misery. In his extremity, he clutched at a floating weed: the woman, the lady, did not speak the truth. He had ears, and could hear, and he would trust to them. The boy could not be wrong.

"Campbell," he cried, "dog her home--she lies!" Hamilton and Campbell burst out into a laugh, but Campbell had been taken aback by the lady's answer: he had not 10 to pay Cameron, and the fear of the club was before him, with its stern decree of the brand of caste and rejection by his a.s.sociates. Since the moment of the lady's answer, he had been conscious of obscure doubts as to her truthfulness, cl.u.s.tering round the suspicion that she might have known, by hearing something, that Dewhurst, the gull-flayer, was on the side of the maternity, and that she wanted to punish him--a notion which seemed to be favoured by the somewhat affected manner of her expressing her little sermon. These doubts, fluid and wavering, became, as it were, crystallized by Dewhurst's cry that she was a liar; and, the moment he felt the sharp angles of the idea, he set off after the lady.

This hope, which was nothing more than despair in hysterics, enabled Dewhurst to withstand, for a little, the looks of triumph in Hamilton and Cameron, in spite of their laugh, which still rung in his ears. The sermon had touched him but little, and if he could have got quit of this wildly contracted debt, he would likely be the same man again. He did not, as yet, feel even the dishonour of having taken advantage of the boy's statement--an act which he had subtlety enough to defend. Give him only relief from this debt, the fire of the club, the stabbing glances of Hamilton's eye. At least he was not bound to suffer the personal expression of his companions' triumph any longer than he could away.

"We will wait the issue of Campbell's inquiry," he said with affected calmness. "I have a call to make in the Links."

And he was retreating, even as he uttered these words.

"I owe you 5," cried Hamilton, "which, _as a man of honour_, I pay you to-night at seven o'clock, upon the instant, at Stewart's. I have no wish to be dragged before the club."

With this barb, touched with wararra poison, or ten times distilled kakodyle, and a layer of honey over all, Dewhurst hurried away, to make no call. He was hard to subdue, and a puppy, whose pa.s.sion it was to strut, in the perfection of a refined toilette, among fashionable street-walkers. While he was abroad, his cares rankling within were overborne by the consciousness of being "in position." The dog's nose is cold even when his tongue is reeking; and as he walked slowly along, his exterior showed the proper thermo-metric nonchalance--it was not the time for a pyrometric measurement within the heart. On his way, he talked to a Leith merchant, who hailed him; yet he exhibited the required _retenu_, so expressive of confidence and ease within, and withal so fashionable. You might have said that he had the heart to wing a partridge,--to "wing it," a pretty phrase in the mouth of a polite sportsman, who, if a poacher were to break the bones of his leg, would, in his own case, think it a little different. Yes, Dewhurst might have been supposed to be able to "wing a partridge,"--not to "flay a gull."

It was while thus "in position"--not its master, but its slave--that curvation of the spine of society, which produces so much paralysis and death--that, when he came to Princes Street, he felt himself constrained and able to walk up South St. Andrew Street, direct to the door of the Royal Bank. He even entered; he even drew a draft; he even made that draft 110, all the money he had there in keeping for so many coming wants and exigencies; he even presented it to the teller, who knew his circ.u.mstances and his dangers--ay, and his father's anxieties while he sent the yearly remittance.

"All, Mr. Dewhurst?" said the teller, looking blank at the draft.

"All, sir; I require it all," answered the student, with such a mouthful of the vowel, that we might write the word _requoire_, and not be far from the p.r.o.nunciation.

The teller gave his head a significant shake. If he had had a tail to shake, and had shaken that tail, it would have been much the same.

Having got the money, he was more than ever under the law of that proclivity, on the broad line to ruin, on which so many young men take stations; and still retaining his, he went at the hour of the hot joints, to dine at the Rainbow, where he met many others, in that refreshment house, of the same cla.s.s, who, like himself, considered--that is, while the money was there--that guineas in the purse supersede the necessity of having ideas in the head. He took to such liquid accompaniments of the dinner, as would confirm the resolution he had formed, of paying at once his debt of honour. And why not? Was not he of that world whose code of laws draws the legitimate line of distinction between debts contracted to industrious tradesmen for the necessaries of life, and those which are the result of whim, pride, or vindictiveness? All recollections of the flaying of the bird, and of the lady's adjuration to heaven, had given way to the enthusiasm of the n.o.ble feeling to obey the dictates of that eternal and immutable code of honour. And by seven o'clock he was at Stewart's, where he found Hamilton and Cameron waiting for their respective "pounds of flesh."

"Here is the 5," cried Hamilton, as he entered; and, throwing the note upon the table, "it is for the gull trick."

"And here," responded the West Indian, "is your 100 for the woman trick."

And he cast from him the bundle of notes, with a grandeur of both honour and defiance. "But I have a reservation to make. Campbell has not reported to me the issue of his commission; and if it shall turn out that the woman retracts, I will reclaim the money."

"And get it too," said the other, laughing sneeringly, as he counted the notes. "But here comes Campbell."

"Campbell," cried Cameron, as his debtor entered, "I want my 10 to pay Nightingale."

"Ask Dewhurst," said Campbell. "I have been cheated by him. He told me a lie. The woman speaks true, and I shall be revenged."

"I have nothing to do with Dewhurst," answered Cameron. "You are my debtor; and if I don't get the money to-night--you know my lodgings--the club will decide upon it to-morrow."

And, throwing a withering look upon his old friend--a word now changed for, and lost in that expressive vocable, debtor--he hurried out, followed by Hamilton, who had both his money and his revenge, and wished to be beyond the reach of a recall.