less than ten minutes, he returned, hauling along old Doctor Peelbox,
whom he had waukened out of his bed, in a camblet morning-gown, and a
pair of red slippers, by the lug and horn, at the very time I was trying
to quiet young Benjie, who was following me up and down the house, as I
was pacing to and fro in distraction, girning and whingeing for his
breakfast.
"Bad business, bad business; bless us, what is this?" said the old
Doctor, who was near-sighted, staring at Magneezhy's bloody face through
his silver spectacles--"what's the matter?"
The poor patient knew at once his master's tongue, and lifting up one of
his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down, said in a melancholy
voice, "Ah, master, do you think I'll get better?"
Doctor Peelbox, old man as he was, started back as if he had been a
French dancing-master, or had stramped on a hot bar of iron. "Tom, Tom,
is this you? what, in the name of wonder, has done this?" Then feeling
his wrist--"but your pulse is quite good. Have you fallen, boy? Where
is the blood coming from?"
"Somewhere about the hairy scalp," answered Magneezhy, in their own queer
sort of lingo. "I doubt some artery's cut through!"
The Doctor immediately bade him lie quiet and hush, as he was getting a
needle and silken thread ready to sew it up; ordering me to have a basin
and water ready, to wash the poor lad's physog. I did so as hard as I
was able, though I was not sure about the blood just; old Doctor Peelbox
watching over my shoulder with a lighted penny candle in one hand, and
the needle and thread in the other, to see where the blood spouted from.
But we were as daft as wise; so he bade me take my big shears, and cut
out all the hair on the fore part of the head as bare as my loof; and
syne we washed, and better washed; so Magneezhy got the other eye up,
when the barkened blood was loosed; looking, though as pale as a clean
shirt, more frighted than hurt; until it became plain to us all, first to
the Doctor, syne to me, and syne to Tammie Bodkin, and last of all to
Magneezhy himself, that his skin was not so much as peeled. So we helped
him out of the bed, and blithe was I to see the lad standing on the
floor, without a hold, on his own feet.
I did my best to clean his neckcloth and shirt of the blood, making him
look as decentish as possible, considering circumstances; and lending
him, as the scripture commands, my tartan mantle to hide the infirmity of
his bloody trowsers and waistcoat. Home went he and his master together;
me standing at our close mouth, wishing them a good-morning, and blithe
to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his
neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands
yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over,
could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same
blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil's rear marching out of
Paradise, if one may be allowed to think such a thing.
The whole business, tag-rag and bob-tail, soon, however, spunked out, and
was the town talk for more than one day.--But you'll hear.
At the first I pitied the poor lads, that I thought had fled for ever and
aye from their native country, to Bengal, Seringapatam, Copenhagen,
Botany Bay, or Jamaica, leaving behind them all their friends and old
Scotland, as they might never hear of the goodness of Providence in their
behalf. But wait a wee.
Would you believe it? As sure's death, the whole was but a wicked trick
played by that mischievous loon Blister and his cronies, upon one that
was a simple and soft-headed callant. De'il a hait was in the one pistol
but a pluff of powder; and in the other, a cartridge-paper, full of
blood, was rammed down upon the charge; the which, hitting Magneezhy on
the ee-bree, had caused a business that seemed to have put him out of
life, and nearly put me (though one of the volunteers) out of my seven
senses.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN--MANSIE WAUCH--HIS FIRST AND LAST PLAY
The time of Tammie Bodkin's apprenticeship being nearly worn through, it
behoved me, as a man attentive to business, and the interests of my
family, to cast my eyes around me in search of a callant to fill his
place; as it is customary in our trade for young men, when their time is
out, taking a year's journeymanship in Edinburgh, to perfect them in the
more intricate branches of the business, and learn the newest manner of
the French and London fashions, by cutting cloth for the young advocates,
the college students, the banking-house clerks, the half-pay ensigns, and
the rest of the principal tip-top bucks.
Having, though I say it myself, the word of being a canny maister, more
than one brought their callants to me, on reading the bill of "An
apprentice wanted," pasted on my shop-window.
Offering to bind them for the regular time, yet not wishing to take but
one, I thought best not to fix in a hurry, and make choice of him that
seemed more exactly cut out for my purpose. In the course of a few weeks
three or four cast up, among whom was a laddie of Ben Aits the
mealmonger, and a son of William Burlings the baker; to say little of the
callant of Saunders Broom the sweep, that would fain have put his
blackit-looking bit creature with the one eye and the wooden leg under my
wing; but I aye looked to respectability in these matters; so glad was I
when I got the offer of Mungo Glen.--But more of this in half a minute.
I must say I was glad of any feasible excuse to make to the sweep, to get
quit of him and his laddie, the father being a drucken ne'er-do-weel,
that I wonder did not fall long ere this time of day from some
chimney-head, and get his neck broken. So I told him at long and last,
when he came papping into my shop, plaguing me every time he passed, that
I had fitted myself; and that there would be no need of his taking the
trouble to call again. Upon which he gave his blacked nieve a desperate
thump on the counter, making the observation, that out of respect for him
I might have given his son the preference. Though I was a wee puzzled
for an answer, I said to him for want of a better, that having a timber
leg, he could not well creuk his hough to the shop-board for our trade.
"Hout, touts," said Saunders, giving his lips a smack--"Creuk his hough,
ye body you! Do you think his timber leg canna screw off?--That'll no
pass."
I was a little dumfoundered at this cleverness. So I said, more on my
guard--"True, true, Saunders, but he's ower little."
"Ower little, and be hanged to ye!" cried the disrespectful fellow,
wheeling about on his heel, as he grasped the sneck of the shop-door, and
gave a girn that showed the only clean parts of his body--to wit the
whites of his eyes, and his sharp teeth:--"Ower little!--Pu, pu!--He's
like the blackamoor's pig, then, Maister Wauch--he's like the
blackamoor's pig--he may be ver' leetle, but he be tam ould"; and with
this he showed his back, clapping the door at his tail without wishing a
good-day; and I am scarcely sorry when I confess, that I never cut cloth
for either father or son from that hour to this one, the losing of such a
customer being no great matter at best, and almost clear gain compared
with saddling myself with a callant with only one eye and one leg; the
one having fallen a victim to the dregs of the measles, and the other
having been harled off by a farmer's threshing-mill. However, I got
myself properly suited;--but ye shall hear.
Our neighbour Mrs Grassie, a widow woman, unco intimate with our wife,
and very attentive to Benjie when he had the chincough, had a far-away
cousin of the name of Glen, that held out among the howes of the
Lammermoor hills--a distant part of the country, ye observe. Auld Glen,
a decent-looking body of a creature, had come in with his sheltie about
some private matters of business--such as the buying of a horse, or
something to that effect, where he could best fall in with it, either at
our fair, or the Grassmarket, or suchlike; so he had up-pitting, free of
expense, from Mrs Grassie, on account of his relationship; Glen being
second cousin to Mrs Grassie's brother's wife, which is deceased. I
might, indeed, have mentioned, that our neighbour herself had been twice
married, and had the misery of seeing out both her gudemen; but such was
the will of fate, and she bore up with perfect resignation.
Having made a bit warm dinner ready, for she was a tidy body, and knew
what was what, she thought she could not do better than ask in a
reputable neighbour to help her friend to eat it, and take a cheerer with
him; as, maybe, being a stranger here, he would not like to use the
freedom of drinking by himself--a custom which is at the best an unsocial
one--especially with none but women-folk near him; so she did me the
honour to make choice of me--though I say it, who should not say it;--and
when we got our jug filled for the second time, and began to grow better
acquainted, ye would really wonder to see how we became merry, and
cracked away just like two pen-guns. I asked him, ye see, about sheep
and cows, and corn and hay, and ploughing and threshing, and horses and
carts, and fallow land, and lambing-time, and har'st, and making cheese
and butter, and selling eggs, and curing the sturdie, and the snifters,
and the batts, and such like;--and he, in his turn, made enquiry
regarding broad and narrow cloth, Kilmarnock cowls, worsted comforters,
Shetland hose, mittens, leather-caps, stuffing and padding, metal and
mule buttons, thorls, pocket-linings, serge, twist, buckram, shaping and
sewing, back-splaying, cloth-runds, goosing the labroad, botkins, black
thread, patent shears, measuring, and all the other particulars belonging
to our trade, which he said, at long and last after we had joked
together, was a power better one than the farming line.
"Ye should make your son ane, then," said I, "if ye think so. Have ye
any bairns?"
"Ye've hit the nail on the head.--'Od, man, if ye wasna so far away, I
would bind our auldest callant to yoursell, I'm sae weel pleased wi' your
gentlemanly manners. But I'm speaking havers."
"Havers here or havers there, what," said I, "is to prevent ye boarding
him, at a cheap rate, either with our friend Mrs Grassie, or with the
wife? Either of the two would be a sort of mother to him."
'"Deed I daur say would they," answered Maister Glen, stroking his chin,
which was gey rough, and had not got a clean since Sunday, having had
four days of sheer growth--our meeting, you will observe by this, being
on the Thursday afternoon--"'Deed would they.--'Od, I maun speak to the
mistress about it."
On the head of this we had another jug, three being cannie, after which
we were both a wee tozy-mozy; and I daresay Mrs Grassie saw plainly that
we were getting into a state where we would not easily make a halt; so,
without letting on, she brought in the tea-things before us, and showed
us a playbill, to tell us that a company of strolling playactors had come
in a body in the morning, with a whole cartful of scenery and grand
dresses; and were to make an exhibition at seven o'clock, at the ransom
of a shilling a-head, in Laird Wheatley's barn.
Many a time and often had I heard of playacting; and of players making
themselves kings and queens, and saying a great many wonderful things;
but I had never before an opportunity of making myself a witness to the
truth of these hearsays. So Maister Glen, being as full of nonsense, and
as fain to have his curiosity gratified as myself, we took upon us the
stout resolution to go out together, he offering to treat me; and I
determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for
the transgression, hoping it would make no lasting impression on his
mind, being for the first and only time. Folks should not on all
occasions be over scrupulous.
After paying our money at the door, never, while I live and breathe, will
I forget what we saw and heard that night; it just looks to me, by all
the world, when I think on it, like a fairy dream. The place was crowded
to the full; Maister Glen and me having nearly got our ribs dung in
before we found a seat, the folks behind being obliged to mount the back
benches to get a sight. Right to the forehand of us was a large green
curtain, some five or six ells wide, a good deal the worse of the wear,
having seen service through two-three summers; and, just in the front of
it, were eight or ten penny candles stuck in a board fastened to the
ground, to let us see the players' feet like, when they came on the
stage--and even before they came on the stage--for the curtain being
scrimpit in length, we saw legs and sandals moving behind the scenes very
neatly; while two blind fiddlers they had brought with them played the
bonniest ye ever heard. 'Od, the very music was worth a sixpence of
itself.
The place, as I said before, was choke-full, just to excess; so that one
could scarcely breathe. Indeed, I never saw any part so crowded, not
even at a tent preaching, when the Rev. Mr Roarer was giving his
discourses on the building of Solomon's Temple. We were obligated to
have the windows opened for a mouthful of fresh air, the barn being as
close as a baker's oven, my neighbour and me fanning our red faces with
our hats, to keep us cool; and, though all were half stewed, we certainly
had the worst of it, the toddy we had taken having fermented the blood of
our bodies into a perfect fever.
Just at the time that the two blind fiddlers were playing the Downfall of
Paris, a handbell rang, and up goes the green curtain; being hauled to
the ceiling, as I observed with the tail of my eye, by a birkie at the
side, that had hold of a rope. So, on the music stopping, and all
becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a
decent old gentleman at his leisure, well powdered, with an old-fashioned
coat on, waistcoat with flap-pockets, brown breeches with buckles at the
knees, and silk stockings with red gushats on a blue ground. I never saw
a man in such distress; he stamped about, and better stamped about,
dadding the end of his staff on the ground, and imploring all the powers
of heaven and earth to help him to find out his runaway daughter, that
had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain, that
keppit her in his arms from her bedroom-window, up two pair of stairs.
Every father and head of a family must have felt for a man in his
situation, thus to be robbed of his dear bairn, and an only daughter too,
as he told us over and over again, as the salt, salt tears ran gushing
down his withered face, and he aye blew his nose on his clean calendered
pocket-napkin. But, ye know the thing was absurd to suppose that we
should know, any inkling about the matter, having never seen him or his
daughter between the een before, and not kenning them by headmark; so,
though we sympathized with him, as folks ought to do with a
fellow-creature in affliction, we thought it best to hold our tongues, to
see what might cast up better than he expected. So out he went stumping
at the other side, determined, he said, to find them out, though he
should follow them to the world's end, Johnny Groat's House, or something
to that effect.
Hardly was his back turned, and almost before he could cry Jack Robison,
in comes the birkie and the very young lady the old gentleman described,
arm-and-arm together, smoodging and laughing like daft. Dog on it! it
was a shameless piece of business. As true as death, before all the
crowd of folk, he put his arm round her waist, and called her his
sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling, and everything that is
fine. If they had been courting in a close together on a Friday night,
they could not have said more to one another, or gone greater lengths. I
thought such shame to be an eye-witness to sic ongoings, that I was
obliged at last to hold up my hat before my face, and look down; though,
for all that, the young lad, to be such a blackguard as his conduct
showed, was well enough faured, and had a good coat to his back with
double gilt buttons and fashionable lapells, to say little of a very
well-made pair of buckskins, a thought the worse of the wear to be sure,
but which, if they had been well cleaned, would have looked almost as
good as new. How they had come we never could learn, as we neither saw
chaise nor gig; but, from his having spurs on his boots, it is more than
likely that they had lighted at the back-door of the barn from a horse,
she riding on a pad behind him, maybe, with her hand round his waist.
The father looked to be a rich old bool, both from his manner of
speaking, and the rewards he seemed to offer for the apprehension of his
daughter; but to be sure, when so many of us were present that had an
equal right to the spuilzie, it would not be a great deal a thousand
pounds, when divided, still it was worth the looking after; so we just
bidit a wee.
Things were brought to a bearing, howsoever, sooner than either
themselves, I daresay, or anybody else present, seemed to have the least
glimpse of; for, just in the middle of their fine goings-on, the sound of
a coming foot was heard, and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out,
"Hide me, hide me, for the sake of goodness, for yonder comes my old
father!"
No sooner said than done. In he stappit her into a closet; and, after
shutting the door on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be
asleep in the twinkling of a walking-stick. The old father came bouncing
in, and seeing the fellow as sound as a top, he ran forward and gave him
such a shake as if he would have shooken him all sundry; which soon made
him open his eyes as fast as he had steeked them. After blackguarding
the chield at no allowance, cursing him up hill and down dale, and
calling him every name but a gentleman, he held his staff over his crown,
and gripping him by the cuff of the neck, asked him, in a fierce tone,
what he had made of his daughter. Never since I was born did I ever see
such brazenfaced impudence! The rascal had the brass to say at once,
that he had not seen word or wittens of the lassie for a month, though
more than a hundred folk sitting in his company had beheld him dauting
her with his arm round her jimpy waist, not five minutes before. As a
man, as a father, as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised, for
I aye hated lying as a poor cowardly sin, and an inbreak on the ten
commandments; and I found my neighbour, Mr Glen, fidgeting on the seat as
well as me; so I thought, that whoever spoke first would have the best
right to be entitled to the reward; whereupon, just as he was in the act
of rising up, I took the word out of his mouth, saying, "Dinna believe
him, auld gentleman--dinna believe him, friend; he's telling a parcel of
lees. Never saw her for a month! It's no worth arguing, or calling
witnesses; just open that press-door, and ye'll see whether I'm speaking
truth or not!"
The old man stared, and looked dumfoundered; and the young one, instead
of running forward with his double nieves to strike me, the only thing I
was feared for, began a-laughing, as if I had done him a good turn. But
never since I had a being, did I ever witness such an uproar and noise as
immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the scoundrel
had been exposed, that they set up siccan a roar of laughter, and thumped
away at siccan a rate at the boards with their feet, that at long and
last, with pushing and fidgeting, clapping their hands, and holding their
sides, down fell the place they call the gallery; all the folk in't being
hurl'd topsy-turvy, head foremost among the saw-dust on the floor below;
their guffawing soon being turned to howling, each one crying louder than
another at the top note of their voices, "Murder! murder! hold off me;
murder! my ribs are in; murder! I'm killed--I'm speechless!" and other
lamentations to that effect; so that a rush to the door took place, in
the which every thing was overturned--the door-keeper being wheeled away
like wildfire--the furms stramped to pieces--the lights knocked out--and
the two blind fiddlers dung head-foremost over the stage, the bass fiddle
cracking like thunder at every bruise. Such tearing, and swearing, and
tumbling, and squealing, was never witnessed in the memory of man since
the building of Babel: legs being likely to be broken, sides staved in,
eyes knocked out, and lives lost--there being only one door, and that a
small one; so that, when we had been carried off our feet that length, my
wind was fairly gone, and a sick dwalm came over me, lights of all manner
of colours, red, blue, green, and orange, dancing before me, that
entirely deprived me of common sense; till, on opening my eyes in the
dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the
opposite side of the close. It was some time before I minded what had
happened; so dreading skaith, I found first the one arm, and then the
other, to see if they were broken--syne my head--and finally both of my
legs; but all as well as I could discover, was skin-whole and scart-free.
On perceiving this, my joy was without bounds, having a great notion that
I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my hand, very
thankfully, to take out my pocket-napkin, to give my brow a wipe, when
lo, and behold! the tail of my Sunday's coat was fairly off and away,
docked by the hainch buttons.
So much for plays and playactors--the first and last, I trust in grace,
that I shall ever see. But indeed I could expect no better, after the
warning that Maister Wiggie had more than once given us from the pulpit
on the subject. Instead, therefore, of getting my grand reward for
finding the old man's daughter, the whole covey of them, no better than a
set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight
flitting; and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought from sunrise to
sunset for two days, fitting up their place by contract, instead of being
well paid for his trouble as he deserved, got nothing left him but a
ruckle of his own good deals, all dung to shivers.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN--MANSIE'S BARLEY-FEVER: AND THE REBUKE
On the morning after the business of the playhouse had happened, I had to
take my breakfast in my bed, a thing very uncommon to me, being generally
up by cock-craw, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one,
according to the bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a license to do
as he likes; having a desperate sore head, and a squeamishness at the
stomach, occasioned, I jealouse in a great measure, from what Mr Glen and
me had discussed at Widow Grassie's, in the shape of warm toddy, over our
cracks concerning what is called the agricultural and manufacturing
interests. So our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of brandy, Thomas
Mixem's real, into my first cup of tea, which had a wonderful virtue in
putting all things to rights; so that I was up and had shaped a pair of
lady's corsets, an article in which I sometimes dealt, before ten
o'clock, though, the morning being rather cold, I did not dispense with
my Kilmarnock.
At eleven in the forenoon, or thereabouts, maybe five minutes before or
after, but no matter, in comes my crony Maister Glen, rather dazed-like
about the een; and with a large piece of white sticking-plaister, about
half a nail wide, across one of his cheeks, and over the bridge of his
nose; giving him a wauf, outlandish, and rather blackguard sort of
appearance; so that I was a thought uneasy at what neighbours might
surmise concerning our intimacy; but the honest man accounted for the
thing in a very feasible manner, from the falling down on that side of
his head of one of the brass candlesticks, while he was lying on his
broadside before one of the furms in the stramash.