DEJECTION.
A mournful one am I, above whose head,
A day of perfect bliss hath never passed;
Whatever joys my soul have ravished,
Soon was the radiance of those joys o'ercast.
LAYS OF THE MINNESINGERS.
Walter was conducted back to the prison-house in Gourlay's Close, the
Heart of Mid Lothian being already filled with nonconforming culprits.
Preceded by Macer Maclutchy and the gudeman or governor of the
establishment, who wore the city livery, blue, laced with yellow, and
carried a bunch of ominous-like keys. Walter found himself before a
little archway, closed by a strong iron door, which opened under the
great turnpike stair of the edifice, and led to the lower regions--to
a superstructure of vaults, which, from their low and massive aspect,
might have been deemed coeval with the days of the Alexanders. The
light of the iron cruise borne by the gudeman failed to penetrate the
deep abyss which yawned before them on the door being opened, and the
cold wind of the subterranean chambers rushed upward in their faces.
Slowly descending the hollowed and time-worn steps of an ancient
stair, accompanied by his guard and conductors, poor Walter moved
mechanically: the lamp, as it flared in the chill atmosphere, shewed
the dark arches and green slimy walls of massive stonework forming
the basement story of the prison. He felt a horror creeping over his
heart. A profound and dismal silence reigned there; for these earthy
passages where the frog croaked, the shining beetle crawled, and the
many-legged spider span in undisturbed security, gave back no echo to
their footsteps. In the heart of a populous city, thought he, can
such a place be? Is it not a dream?
"Adonai! Adonai!" cried a voice in the distance, so loud, so shrill,
and unearthly, that the gudeman paused, and the macer started back.
"How long, O Lord, wilt thou permit these dragons to devour thy
people? Rejoice, ye bairns of the Covenant! Rejoice, O ye nations,
for He will avenge the blood of his chosen, and render vengeance on
his adversaries."
"Hoots! It's that fule-body Bummel blawing like a piper through the
key-hole," said the macer, and knocking thrice on the cell door with
his mace, added, "Gif your tongue had been bored with an elshin as it
deserved, my braw buckie, ye wadna hae crawn sae crouse. However,
gudeman, his rebellious yammering will not disturb you muckle."
"The vaults are gey far doon--we would be deeved wi' him else,"
replied the gudeman; "but he gangs to the Bass in the morning, and
there he can sing psalmody to the roaring waves and the cauld east
wind, wi' Trail, Bennet, Blackadder, and other brethren in
tribulation."
"By my word, keeping thae chields on the auld craig is just feeding
what ought to be hanged," responded the macer, for these underlings
affected to acquire the cavalier sentiments of the day. A door was
now opened, and Walter Fenton heard the voice of the gudeman saying,
"Kennel up there, my man. You will find the lodgings we gie to
conventiclers and enemies of the king are no just as braw as Gibbie
Runlet's, doon at the White Horse. There is a windlan o' gude straw
in that corner to sleep on, gif the rottons, and speeders, and asps,
will let ye, and a mouthfu' o' caller air can aye be got at the iron
grate, and sae my service t'ye."
"And keep up your spirits, Mr. Fenton," added the macer with a mock
bow, "for the toun smith, Deacon Macanvil, will be doun in the
morning to rivet round your craig the collar o' thrall wi'
Craighall's name on't, and sae my service t'ye too."
The sneers of these wretches stung Walter to the soul, and it was
with difficulty he restrained an impulse to rush upon them and dash
their heads together. But the door was instantly closed; he heard
the jarring of the bolts as they were shot into the stonework, the
clank of a chain as it was thrown across, and then the retreating
footsteps of his jailors growing fainter as they ascended the
circular staircase. A door closed in the distance, the echoes died
away, and then all became intensely still. He was now left utterly
to his own sad and mortifying reflections, amid silence, gloom, and
misery.
The darkness was oppressive; not the faintest ray of light could be
traced on any side, and he wondered how the chill March wind swept
through the vault, until, on groping about, he discovered on a level
with his face, a small barred aperture, which opened to the adjoining
close. In that high and narrow alley there was but little light even
during the day; consequently, by night, it was involved in the
deepest obscurity.
The cold, damp wind blew freely upon Walter's flushed face and waving
hair, as he moved cautiously round his prison, and feeling the dark
slimy walls on every side, discovered that it was a vault about
twelve feet square, faced with stone, destitute, damp, frightful, and
furnished only by a bundle of straw in a corner. On this he threw
himself, and endeavoured to reflect calmly upon the perils by which
he was surrounded.
He was naturally of an ardent and impetuous temper, and consequently
his reflections failed either to soothe or to console him. His
sentiments of hostility to Lord Clermistonlee were equalled only by
those of gratitude to the Laird of Claverhouse, by whose influence he
had, for a time, been spared a cruel and degrading maltreatment; but
that, alas! was yet to be endured, and the contemplation of it was
maddening. To be given as a bondsman or serf, girt with a collar of
thrall or slavery, to work in the pits and mines of certain
landholders, was a mode of punishment not uncommon in those
vindictive days.
When the Scottish troops, under Lieutenant-colonel Strachan, defeated
the brave cavaliers of Montrose in battle at Kerbister, in Ross, on
the 27th of April, 1650, hundreds who were taken captive were
disposed of in that manner. Some were given in thrall to
Lieutenant-general Lesly, many to the Marquis of Argyle, others to
Sir James Hope, to work as slaves in his lead mines, and the residue
were all sent to France, to recruit the Scottish regiments of the
Lord Angus and Sir Robert Murray.
Had his sentence been banishment to a foreign service, though it
would have wrung his heart to leave his native country, and forego
for ever the bright hopes and visions that had (though afar off)
begun to lighten the horizon of his fortunes, he would have hailed
the doom with joy; but to be gifted as a slave to another, to drudge
amid the filth, obscurity, and disgrace of a coal mine, O! he looked
forward to that with a horror inconceivable......
His mind became filled with dismal forebodings for the future.
Though he still remembered with sincere pleasure the services he had
rendered to the Napiers of Bruntisfield, his dreams of Lilian's mild
blue eyes and glossy ringlets were sadly clouded by the perils to
which they had hurried him.
All these proud and high aspirations, those intense longings for fame
and distinction, for happiness and power, in which the mind of an
ardent and enthusiastic youth is so prone to luxuriate, and which had
been for years the day dream of Walter Fenton, now suffered a chill
and fatal blight. It is a hard and bitter conviction, that one's
dearest prospects are blasted and withered for ever; and to the heart
of the young and proud, there is no agony equal to that of unmerited
disgrace and humiliation. Misery was Walter's companion, and further
miseries and degradations awaited him; but happily, the dark future
was involved in obscurity.