Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume II Part 22

"Then," said I, "my hopes of happiness are fled for ever. So young, so beautiful, with a soul so elevated as I know yours to be, you can have done nothing to render you unworthy of me. For heaven's sake, tell me what that fatal barrier is. Is it love?"

"I thank you," she replied. "You do me but justice. A thought has never dwelt upon my mind for which I have cause to blush; but Nature has placed a gulf between you and me, you will not pa.s.s." She paused, and the tears swam in her eyes.

"For mercy's sake, proceed!" I said.

"_There is black blood in these veins_," she cried, in agony.

A load was at once removed from my mind. I raised her hand to my lips:--"Mary, my love, this is no bar. I come from a country where the aristocracy of blood is unknown, where nothing degrades man in the eyes of his fellow-man but vice."

Why more? Mary consented to be mine, and we were shortly after wed. I was blessed in the possession of one of the most gentle of beings.

We had been married about six or seven weeks, when business called me from Charleston to one of the northern States. I resolved to take Mary with me, as I was to go by sea; and our arrangements were completed. The vessel was to sail on the following day. I was seated with her, enjoying the cool of the evening, when a stranger called and requested to see me on business of importance. I immediately went to him, and was struck with the coa.r.s.eness of his manners, and his vulgar importance. I bowed, and asked his business.

"You have a woman in this house," said he, "called Mary De Lyle, I guess."

"I do not understand the purport of your question," said I. "What do you mean?"

"My meaning is pretty clear," said he. "Mary De Lyle is in this house, and she is my property. If you offer to carry her out of the State, I will have her sent to jail, and you fined. That is right ahead, I guess."

"Wretch," said I, in a voice hoa.r.s.e with rage, "get out of my house, or I will crush you to death. Begone!"

I believe I would have done him some fearful injury, had he not precipitately made his escape. In a frame of mind I want words to express, I hurried to Mary, and sank upon a seat, with my face buried in my hands. She, poor thing, came trembling to my side, and implored me to tell her what was the matter. I could only answer by my groans. At length, I looked imploringly in her face:--

"Mary, is it possible that you are a slave?" said I.

She uttered a piercing shriek, and sank inanimate at my feet. I lifted her upon the sofa; but it was long before she gave symptoms of returning life.

As soon as I could leave her, I went to a friend to ask his advice and a.s.sistance. Through him, I learned that what I feared was but too true.

By the usages and laws of the State, she was still a slave, and liable to be hurried from me and sold to the highest bidder, or doomed to any drudgery her master might put her to, and even flogged at will. There was only one remedy that could be applied; and the specific was dollars.

My friend was so kind as to negotiate with the ruffian. One thousand was demanded, and cheerfully paid. I carried the manumission home to my sorrowing Mary. From her I learned, as she lay in bed--her beautiful face buried in the clothes, and her voice choked by sobs--that the wretch who had called on me was her own father, whose avarice could not let slip this opportunity of extorting money. With an inconsistency often found in man, he had given Mary one of the best of educations, and for long treated her as a favoured child, during the life of her mother, who was one of his slaves, a woman of colour, and with some accomplishments, which she had acquired in a genteel family. At her death, Mary had gone as governess to my landlady; but, until the day of her father's claim, she had never dreamed of being a slave. I allowed the vessel to sail without me, wound up my affairs, and bade adieu for ever to the slave States. 'Tis now twenty years since I purchased a wife, after I had won her love, and I bless the day she was made mine; for I have had uninterrupted happiness in her and her offspring. The slave is now the happy wife and mother of five lovely children, who rejoice in their mother. After remaining some years in Leeds, I returned to Edinburgh. Widow Neil was dead; but one day I discovered, by mere chance, that the murder I committed in her house was on a _sheep_.

MY BLACK COAT;

OR,

THE BREAKING OF THE BRIDE'S CHINA.

Gentle reader, the simple circ.u.mstances I am about to relate to you, hang upon what is termed--a bad omen. There are few amongst the uneducated who have not a degree of faith in omens; and even amongst the better educated and well informed there are many who, while they profess to disbelieve them, and, indeed, do disbelieve them, yet feel them in their hours of solitude. I have known individuals who, in the hour of danger, would have braved the cannon's mouth, or defied death to his teeth, who, nevertheless, would have buried their heads in the bedclothes at the howling of a dog at midnight, or spent a sleepless night from hearing the tick, tick, of the spider, or the untiring song of the kitchen-fire musician--the jolly little cricket. The age of omens, however, is drawing to a close; for truth in its progress is trampling delusion of every kind under its feet; yet, after all, though a belief in omens is a superst.i.tion, it is one that carries with it a portion of the poetry of our nature. But to proceed with our story.

Several years ago I was on my way from B---- to Edinburgh; and being as familiar with every cottage, tree, shrub, and whin-bush on the Dunbar and Lauder roads as with the face of an acquaintance, I made choice of the less-frequented path by Longformacus. I always took a secret pleasure in contemplating the dreariness of wild spreading desolation; and, next to looking on the sea when its waves dance to the music of a hurricane, I loved to gaze on the heath-covered wilderness, where the blue horizon only girded its purple bosom. It was no season to look upon the heath in the beauty of barrenness, yet I purposely diverged from the main road. About an hour, therefore, after I had descended from the region on the Lammermoors, and entered the Lothians, I became sensible I was pursuing a path which was not forwarding my footsteps to Edinburgh. It was December; the sun had just gone down; I was not very partial to travelling in darkness, neither did I wish to trust to chance for finding a comfortable resting-place for the night.

Perceiving a farm-steading and water-mill about a quarter of a mile from the road, I resolved to turn towards them, and make inquiry respecting the right path, or, at least, to request to be directed to the nearest inn.

The "town," as the three or four houses and mill were called, was all bustle and confusion. The female inhabitants were cleaning and scouring, and running to and fro. I quickly learned that all this note of preparation arose from the "maister" being to be married within three days. Seeing me a stranger, he came from his house towards me. He was a tall, stout, good-looking, jolly-faced farmer and miller. His manner of accosting me partook more of kindness than civility; and his inquiries were not free from the familiar, prying curiosity which prevails in every corner of our island, and, I must say, in the north in particular.

"Where do you come fra, na--if it be a fair question?" inquired he.

"From B----," was the brief and merely civil reply.

"An' hae ye come frae there the day?" he continued.

"Yes," was the answer.

"Ay, man, an' ye come frae B----, do ye?" added he; "then, nae doot, ye'll ken a person they ca' Mr. ----?"

"Did he come originally from Dunse?" returned I, mentioning also the occupation of the person referred to.

"The vera same," rejoined the miller; "are ye acquainted wi' him, sir?"

"I ought to be," replied I; "the person you speak of is merely my father."

"Your faither!" exclaimed he, opening his mouth and eyes to their full width, and standing for a moment the picture of surprise--"Gude gracious! ye dinna say sae!--is he really your faither? Losh, man, do you no ken, then, that I'm your cousin! Ye've heard o' your cousin, Willie Stewart."

"Fifty times," replied I.

"Weel, I'm the vera man," said he--"Gie's your hand; for, 'odsake, man, I'm as glad as glad can be. This is real extraordinar'. I've often heard o' you--it will be you that writes the buiks--faith ye'll be able to mak something o' this. But come awa' into the house--ye dinna stir a mile far'er for a week, at ony rate."

So saying, and still grasping my hand, he led me to the farm-house. On crossing the threshold--

"Here, la.s.sie," he cried, in a voice that made roof and rafters ring, "bring ben the speerits, and get on the kettle--here's a cousin that I ne'er saw in my life afore."

A few minutes served mutually to confirm and explain our newly-discovered relationship.

"Man," said he, as we were filling a second gla.s.s, "ye've just come in the very nick o' time; an' I'll tell ye how. Ye see I'm gaun to be married the day after the morn; an' no haein' a friend o' ony kin-kind in this quarter, I had to ask an acquaintance to be the best man. Now, this was vexin' me mair than ye can think, particularly, ye see, because the sweetheart has aye been hinting to me that it wadna be lucky for me no to hae a bluid relation for a best man. For that matter, indeed, luck here, luck there, I no care the toss up o' a ha'penny about omens mysel'; but now that ye've fortunately come, I'm a great deal easier, an' it will be ae craik out o' the way, for it will please her; an' ye may guess, between you an' me, that she's worth the pleasin', or I wadna had her; so I'll just step ower an' tell the ither lad that I hae a cousin come to be my best man, an' he'll think naething o't."

On the morning of the third day, the bride and her friends arrived. She was the only child of a Lammermoor farmer, and was in truth a real mountain flower--a heath blossom; for the rude health that laughed upon her cheeks approached nearer the hue of the heather-bell, than the rose and vermillion of which poets speak. She was comely withal, possessing an appearance of considerable strength, and was rather above the middle size--in short, she was the very belle ideal of a miller's wife!

But to go on. Twelve couples accompanied the happy miller and his bride to the manse, independent of the married, middle-aged, and grey-haired visitors, who followed behind and by our side. We were thus proceeding onward to the house of the minister, whose blessing was to make a couple happy, and the arm of the blooming bride was through mine, when I heard a voice, or rather let me say a sound, like the croak of a raven, exclaim--

"Mercy on us! saw ye e'er the like o' that!--the best man, I'll declare, has a black coat on!"

"An' that's no lucky!" replied another.

"Lucky!" responded the raven voice--"just perfectly awfu'! I wadna it had happened at the weddin' o' a bairn o' mine for the king's dominions."

I observed the bride steal a glance at my shoulder; I felt, or thought I felt, as if she shrunk from my arm; and when I spoke to her, her speech faltered. I found that my cousin, in avoiding one omen, had stumbled upon another, in my black coat. I was wroth with the rural prophetess, and turned round to behold her. Her little grey eyes, twinkling through spectacles, were wink, winking upon my ill-fated coat. She was a crooked (forgive me for saying an ugly), little, old woman; she was "bearded like a pard," and walked with a crooked stick mounted with silver. (On the very spot[L] where she then was, the last witch in Scotland was burned.) I turned from the grinning sibyl with disgust.

[L] The last person burned for witchcraft in Scotland was at Spot--the scene of our present story.

On the previous day, and during part of the night, the rain had fallen heavily, and the Broxburn was swollen to the magnitude of a little river. The manse lay on the opposite side of the burn, which was generally crossed by the aid of stepping-stones, but on the day in question the tops of the stones were barely visible. On crossing the burn the foot of the bride slipped, and the bridegroom, in his eagerness to a.s.sist her, slipped also--knee-deep in the water. The raven voice was again heard--it was another omen.

The kitchen was the only room in the manse large enough to contain the spectators a.s.sembled to witness the ceremony, which pa.s.sed over smoothly enough, save that, when the clergyman was about to join the hands of the parties, I drew off the glove of the bride a second or two before the bridesmaid performed a similar operation on the hand of the bridegroom.

I heard the whisper of the crooked old woman, and saw that the eyes of the other women were upon me. I felt that I had committed another omen, and almost resolved to renounce wearing "blacks" for the future. The ceremony, however, was concluded; we returned from the manse, and everything was forgotten, save mirth and music, till the hour arrived for tea.

The bride's mother had boasted of her "daughter's double set o' real china" during the afternoon; and the female part of the company evidently felt anxious to examine the costly crockery. A young woman was entering with a tray and the tea equipage--another, similarly laden, followed behind her. The "sneck" of the door caught the handle of the tray, and down went china, waiting-maid, and all! The fall startled her companion--their feet became entangled--both embraced the floor, and the china from both trays lay scattered around them in a thousand shapes and sizes! This was an omen with a vengeance! I could not avoid stealing a look at the sleeve of my black coat. The bearded old woman seemed inspired. She declared the luck of the house was broken! Of the double set of real china not a cup was left--not an odd saucer. The bridegroom bore the misfortune as a man; and, gently drawing the head of his young partner towards him, said--