makes ample apology, and explains the mistake in a feasible way, it is my
humble opinion that he ought to be summoned before his betters. That is
the legal way to make him smart for his sins."
At last a thought struck me, and I saw farther through my difficulties
than ever mortal man did through a millstone; but, like a politician, I
minted not the matter to James. Keeping my tongue cannily within my
teeth, I then laid the head, wrapped up in the bit towel, in a corner
behind the counter; and turning my face round again to James, I put my
hands into my breeches-pockets, as if nothing in the world had happened,
and ventured back to the story of the mermaid. I asked him how she
looked--what kind of dress she wore--if she swam with her corsets--what
was the colour of her hair--where she would buy the tortoise-shell
comb--and so on; when, just as he was clearing his pipe to reply, who
should burst open the shop-door like a clap of thunder, with burning
cat's een, and a face as red as a soldier's jacket, but Cursecowl
himself, with the new killing-coat in his hand,--which, giving a
tremendous curse, the words of which are not essentially necessary for me
to repeat, being an elder of our kirk, he made play flee at me with such
a birr, that it twisted round my neck, and, mostly blinding me, made me
doze like a tottum. At the same time, to clear his way, and the better
to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that
made him stotter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing
tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at
the same blessed moment--"Hold out o' my road, ye long withered wabster.
Ye'er a pair of havering idiots; but I'll have pennyworths out of both
your skins, as I'm a sinner!"
[Picture: The waiting girl, Jeanie Amos]
What was to be done? There was no time for speaking, for Cursccowl,
foaming like a mad dog with passion, seized hold of the ell-wand, which
he flourished round his head like a Highlander's broadsword, and stamping
about, with his stockings drawn up his thighs, threatened every moment to
commit bloody murder.
If James Batter never saw service before, he learned a little of it that
day, being in a pickle of bodily terror not to be imagined by living man;
but his presence of mind did not forsake him, and he cowered for safety
and succour into a far corner, holding out a web of buckram before
him--me crying all the time, "Send for the town officer! will ye not send
for the town-officer?"
You may talk of your general Moores, and your Lord Wellingtons, as ye
like; but never, since I was born, did I ever see or hear tell of
anything braver than the way Tammie Bodkin behaved, in saving both our
precious lives, at that blessed nick of time, from touch-and-go jeopardy:
for, when Cursecowl was rampauging about, cursing and swearing like a
Russian bear, hurling out volleys of oaths that would have frighted John
Knox, forbye the like of us, Tammie stole in behind him like a wild-cat,
followed by Joseph Breekey, Walter Cuff, and Jack Thorl, the three
apprentices on their stocking soles; and, having strong and dumpy arms,
pinned back his elbows like a flash of lightning, giving the other
callants time to jump on his back, and hold him like a vice; while,
having got time to draw my breath, and screw up my pluck, I ran forward
like a lion, and houghed the whole concern--Tammie Bodkin, the three
faithful apprentices, Cursecowl and all, coming to the ground like a
battered castle.
It was now James Batter's time to come up in line, and, though a douce
man (being savage for the insulting way that Cursecowl had dared to use
him), he dropped down like mad, with his knees on Cursecowl's breast, who
was yelling, roaring, and grinding his buck-teeth like a mad bull,
kicking right and spurring left with fire and fury; and, taking his
Kilmarnock off his head, thrust it, like a battering-ram, into
Cursecowl's mouth, to hinder him from alarming the neighbourhood, and
bringing the whole world about our ears. Such a stramash of tumbling,
roaring, tearing, swearing, kicking, pushing, cuffing, rugging and riving
about the floor!! I thought they would not have left one another with a
shirt on: it seemed a combat even to the death. Cursecowl's breath was
choked up within him like wind in an empty bladder, and when I got a
gliskie of his face, from beneath James's cowl, it was growing as black
as the crown of my hat. It feared me much that murder would be the
upshot, the webs being all heeled over, both of broad cloth, buckram,
cassimir, and Welsh flannel; and the paper shapings and worsted runds
coiled about their throats and bodies like fiery serpents. At long and
last, I thought it became me, being the head of the house, to sound a
parley, and bid them give the savage a mouthful of fresh air, to see if
he had anything to say in his defence.
Cursecowl, by this time, had forcible assurance of our ability to
overpower him, and finding he had by far the worst of it, was obliged to
grow tamer, using the first breath he got to cry out, "A barley, ye
thieves! a barley! I tell ye, give me wind. There's not a man in nine
of ye."
Finding our own strength, we saw, by this time, that we were masters of
the field; nevertheless, we took care to make good terms when they were
in our power; nor would we allow Cursecowl to sit upright, till after he
had said, three times over, on his honour as a gentleman, that he would
behave as became one. After giving his breeches-knees a skuff with his
loof, to dad off the stoure, he came, right foot foremost, to the counter
side, while the laddies were dighting their brows, and stowing away the
webs upon their ends round about, saying, "Maister Wauch, how have ye the
conscience to send hame such a piece o' wark as that coat to ony decent
man? Do ye dare to imagine that I am a Jerusalem spider, that I could be
crammed, neck and heels, into such a thing as that? Fye, shame--it would
not button on yourself, man, scarecrow-looking mortal though ye be!"
James Batter's blood was now up, and boiling like an old Roman's; so he
was determined to show Cursecowl that I had a friend in court, able and
willing to keep him at stave's-end. "Keep a calm sough," said James
Batter, interfering, "and not miscall the head of the house in his own
shop; or, to say nothing of present consequences, byway of showing ye the
road to the door, perhaps Maister Sneckdrawer, the penny-writer, 'll give
ye a caption-paper with a broad margin, to claw your elbow with at your
leisure, my good fellow."
"Pugh, pugh," cried Cursecowl, snapping his finger and thumb at James's
beak, "I do not value your threatening an ill halfpenny. Come away out
your ways to the crown of the causey, and I'll box any three of ye, over
the bannys, for half-a-mutchkin. But 'od-sake, Batter, my man, nobody's
speaking to you," added Cursecowl, giving a hack now and then, and a bit
spit down on the floor; "go hame, man, and get your cowl washed; I dare
say you have pushioned me, so I have no more to say to the like of you.
But now, Maister Wauch, just speaking holy and fairly, do you not think
black burning shame of yourself, for putting such an article into any
decent Christian man's hand, like mine?"
"Wait a wee--wait a wee, friend, and I'll give ye a lock salt to your
broth," answered I, in a calm and cool way; for, being a confidential
elder of Maister Wiggie's, I kept myself free from the sin of getting
into a passion, or fighting, except in self-defence, which is forbidden
neither by law nor gospel; and, stooping down, I took up the towel from
the corner, and, spreading it upon the counter, bade him look, and see if
he knew an auld acquaintance!
Cursecowl, to be such a dragoon, had some rational points in his
character; so, seeing that he lent ear to me with a smirk on his rough
red face, I went on: "Take my advice as a friend, and make the best of
your way home, killing-coat and all; for the most perfect will sometimes
fall into an innocent mistake, and, at any rate, it cannot be helped now.
But if ye show any symptom of obstrapulosity, I'll find myself under the
necessity of publishing you abroad to the world for what you are, and
show about that head in the towel for a wonder to broad Scotland, in a
manner that will make customers flee from your booth, as if it was
infected with the seven plagues of Egypt."
At sight of the goat's-head, Cursecowl clapped his hand on his thigh two
or three times, and could scarcely muster good manners enough to keep
himself from bursting out a-laughing.
"Ye seem to have found a fiddle, friend," said I; "but give me leave to
tell you, that ye'll may be find it liker a hanging-match than a musical
matter. Are you not aware that I could hand you over to the sheriff, on
two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault
and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked
killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler,
imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on
false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they
were perfect Pagans."
Heathen though Cursecowl was, this oration alarmed him in a jiffie, soon
showing him, in a couple of hurries, that it was necessary for him to be
our humble servant: so he said, still keeping the smirk on his face,
"Keh, keh, it's not worth making a noise about after all. Gie me the
jacket, Mansie, my man, and it'll maybe serve my nephew, young Killim,
who is as lingit in the waist as a wasp. Let us take a shake of your paw
over the counter, and be friends. Bye-ganes should be bye-ganes."
Never let it be said that Mansie Wauch, though one of the king's
volunteers, ever thrust aside the olive branch of peace; so, ill-used
though I had been, to say nothing of James Batter, who had got his pipe
smashed to crunches, and one of the eyes of his spectacles knocked out, I
gave him my fist frankly.
James Batter's birse had been so fiercely put up, and no wonder, that it
was not so easily sleeked down; so, for a while he looked unco glum, till
Cursecowl insisted that our meeting should not be a dry one; nor would he
hear a single word on me and James Batter not accepting his treat of a
mutchkin of Kilbagie.
I did not think James would have been so doure and refractory--funking
and flinging like old Jeroboam; but at last, with the persuasion of the
treat, he came to, and, sleeking down his front hair, we all three took a
step down to the far end of the close, at the back street, where Widow
Thamson kept the sign of "The Tankard and the Tappit Hen"; Cursecowl,
when we got ourselves seated, ordering in the spirits with a loud rap on
the table with his knuckles, and a whistle on the landlady through his
fore-teeth, that made the roof ring. A bottle of beer was also brought;
so, after drinking one another's healths round, with a tasting out of the
dram glass, Cursecowl swashed the rest of the raw creature into the
tankard, saying--"Now take your will o't; there's drink fit for a king;
that's real 'Pap-in.'"
He was an awful body, Cursecowl, and had a power of queer stories, which,
weel-a-wat, did no lose in the telling. James Batter beginning to
brighten up, hodged and leuch like a nine-year-old; and I freely confess,
for another, that I was so diverted, that, I dare say, had it not been
for his fearsome oaths, which made our very hair stand on end, and were
enough to open the stone-wall, we would have both sate from that time to
this.
We got the whole story of the Willie-goat, out and out; it seeming to be,
with Cursecowl, a prime matter of diversion, especially that part of it
relating to the head, by which he had won a crown from Deacon Paunch, who
wagered that the wife and me would eat it, without ever finding out our
mistake. But, aha, lad!
The long and the short of the matter was this. The Willie-goat, had, for
eighteen year, belonged to a dragoon marching regiment, and, in its
better days, had seen a power of service abroad; till, being now old and
infirm, it had fallen off one of the baggage-carts, and got its leg
broken on the road to Piershill, where it was sold to Cursecowl, by a
corporal, for half-a-crown and a dram. The four quarters he had managed
to sell for mutton, like lightning--this one buying a jigget, that one a
back-ribs, and so on. However, he had to weather a gey brisk gale in
making his point good. One woman remarked, that it had an unearthly,
rank smell; to which he said, "No, no--ye do not ken your blessings,
friend,--that's the smell of venison, for the beast was brought up along
with the deers in the Duke's parks." And to another wife, that, after
smell-smelling at it, thought it was a wee humphed, he replied, "Faith
that's all the thanks folk gets for letting their sheep crop heather
among Cheviot Hills"; and such like lies. But as for the head, that had
been the doure business. Six times had it been sold and away, and six
times had it been brought back again. One bairn said, that her "mother
didna like a sheep's head with horns like these, and wanted it changed
for another one." A second one said, that, "it had tup's een, and her
father liked wether mutton." A third customer found mortal fault with
the colours, which, she said, "were not canny, or in the course of
nature." What the fourth one said, and the fifth one took leave to
observe, I have stupidly forgotten, though, I am sure, I heard both; but
I mind one remarked, quite off-hand, as she sought back her money, that
"unless sheep could do without beards, like their neighbours, she would
keep the pot boiling with a piece beef, in the meantime." After all
this, would any mortal man believe it, Deacon Paunch, the greasy Daniel
Lambert that he is, had taken the wager, as I before took opportunity to
remark, that our family would swallow the bait? But, aha, he was off his
eggs there!
James and me were so tickled with Cursecowl's wild, outrageous, off-hand,
humoursome way of telling his crack, that, though sore with neighering,
none of the two of us ever thought of rising; Cursecowl chapping in first
one stoup, and then another, and birling the tankard round the table, as
if we had been drinking dub-water. I dare say I would never have got
away, had I not slipped out behind Lucky Thamson's back--for she was a
broad fat body, with a round-eared mutch, and a full-plaited check
apron--when she was drawing the sixth bottle of small beer, with her
corkscrew between her knees; Cursecowl lecturing away, at the dividual
moment, like a Glasgow professor, to James Batter, whose een were
gathering straws, on a pliskie he had once, in the course of trade,
played on a conceited body of a French sicknurse, by selling her a lump
of fat pork to make beef-tea of to her mistress, who was dwining in the
blue Beelzebubs.
Ohone, and woes me, for old Father Adam and the fall of man! Poor,
sober, good, honest James Batter was not, by a thousand miles, a match
for such company. Everything, however, has its moral, and the truth will
out. When Nanse and me were sitting at our breakfast next morning, we
heard from Benjie, who had been early up fishing for eels at the
water-side, that the whole town-talk was concerning the misfortunate
James Batter, who had been carried home, totally incapable, far in the
night, by Cursecowl and an Irish labourer--that sleeped in Widow
Thamson's garret--on a hand-barrow, borrowed from Maister Wiggie's
servant-lass, Jenny Jessamine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR--JAMES BATTER & THE MAID OF DAMASCUS
On the morning after the debosh with Mr Cursecowl, my respected friend,
James Batter, the pattern of steadiness and sobriety, awoke in a terrible
pliskie. The decent man came to the use of his senses as from a trance,
and scarcely knew either where he was, or whether his head or heels were
uppermost. He found himself lying without his Kilmarnock, from which he
might have received deadly damage, being subject to the rheumatics in the
cuff of the neck; and everything about him was in a most fearful and
disjaskit state. It was a long time before he could, for the life of
him, bring his mind or memory to a sense of his condition, having still
on his corduroy trowsers, and his upper and under vest, besides one of
his stockings:--his hat, his wig, his neckcloth, his shoes, his coat, his
snuff-box, his spectacles, and the other stocking, all lying on the
floor, together with a table, a chair, a candlestick, with a broken
candle, which had been knocked over;--the snuffers standing upright,
being sharp in the point, and having stuck in the deal floor.
It was a terrible business! and might have been a life-long lesson to
every one, of the truth of St Paul's maxim, that "evil communication
corrupts good manners";--Cursecowl being the most incomprehensible fellow
that ever breathed the breath of life. To add to his calamities, James
found, on attempting to rise, that he had, in some way or other, of which
he had not a shadow of recollection, dismally sprained his left ankle,
which, to his consternation, was swelled like a door-post, and as blue as
his apron. There was also a black ugly lump on his brow, as big as a
pigeon's egg, which was horrible to look at in the bit glass. Many a
gallant soldier escaped from Waterloo with less scaith--and that they
did. Poor innocent sowl! I pitied him from the very bottom of my
heart--as who would not?
Having got an inkling of the town-talk by breakfast time, and knowing
also that many a one--such is the corruption of human nature--would like
to have a hair in the neck of James, by taking up an evil report, I
remembered within myself that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and
cannily papped up the close, after I had got myself shaved, to see how
the land lay. And a humbling spectacle it was! James could scarcely yet
be said to be himself, for his eyes were like scored collops, and his
stomach was so sick that his face was like ill-bleached linen--pale as a
dishclout. When he tried to speak, it was between a bock and a hiccup
with him, and my feeling for his situation was such--knowing, as I did,
all the ins and outs of the business--that I could not help being very
wae for him. It therefore behoved me to make Nanse send him a cup of
well-made tea, to see if it would act as a settler, but his heart stood
at it, as if it had been 'cacuana, and do as he liked, he could not let a
drop of it down his craig. When the wife informed me of this, I at last
luckily remembered the old saying about giving one a hair of the dog that
bit him; and I made poor James swallow a thimbleful of malt spirits--the
real unadulterated creatur, with wonderfully good effects. Though then
in his sixty-first year, James declares on his honour as a gentleman,
that this was the first time he ever had fallen a victim to the
barley-fever!
How could we do otherwise! it afforded Nanse and I great pleasure--and no
mistake--in acting the part of good Samaritans, by pouring oil and wine
into his wounds; I having bound up his brow with a Sunday silk-napkin,
and she having fomented his unfortunate ankle with warm water and hog's
lard. The truth is, that I found myself in conscience bound and
obligated to take a deep interest in the decent man's distresses, he
having come to his catastrophe in a cause of mine, and having fallen a
victim to the snares and devices of Cursecowl, instead of myself, for
whom the vagabond's girn was set. Providence decided that, in this
particular case, I should escape; but a better man, James Batter, was
caught in it by the left ankle. What will a body say there?
The web of Lucky Caird, which James had promised to carry home to her on
the Saturday night, was still in the loom, and had I been up to the
craft, I would not have hesitated to have driven the shuttle myself till
I had got it off hand for him; but every man to his trade; so afraid of
consequences, I let the batter and the bobbin-box lie still, trusting to
Lucky Caird's discretion, and my friend's speedy recovery. But the
distress of James Batter was not the business of a day. In the course of
the next night, to be sure, he had some natural sleep, which cleared his
brain from the effects of that dangerous and deluding drink, the
"Pap-in"; but his ankle left him a grievous lameter, hirpling on a staff;
and, although his brown scratch and his Kilmarnock helped to hide the
bump upon his temple, the dregs of it fell down upon his e'e-bree, which,
to the consternation of everybody, became as green as a docken leaf.
My friend, however, be it added to this, was not more a sufferer in body
than in estate; for the illness, being of his own bringing on, he could
not make application to the Weavers' Society--of which he had been a
regular member for forty odd years--for his lawful sick-money. But,
being a philosopher, James submitted to his bed of thorns without a
murmur; Nanse and I soothing his calamities, as we best could, by a bowl
of sheep-head broth; a rizzar'd haddock; a tankard of broo-and-bread; a
caller egg; a swine's trotter; and other circumstantialities needless to
repeat--as occasion required.
As for Cursecowl, the invincible reprobate, so ashamed was he of his
infamous conduct, that he did not dare, for the life in his body, to show
himself before my shop-window--far less in my presence--for more than a
week; yet, would ye believe it! he made a perfect farce of the whole
business among his own wauf cronies; and, instead of repentance, I verily
believe, would not have cared twopence to have played me the same pliskie
that he did my douce and worthy friend. But away with him! he is not
worth speaking about; and ye'll get nothing from a sow but--grumph!
Being betimes on mending order, James sent down, one forenoon, to
request, with his compliments, that I would hand him up by the bearer old
Taffy with the Pigtail's bundle of old papers,--as having more leisure in
his hands than either he liked, or well knew how to dispose of, it might
afford him some diversion to take a reading of them, for the purpose of
enquiring farther into the particulars of the Welsh gentleman's
history--which undoubtedly was a wee mysterious; consisting of matters
lying heads and thraws; and of odds and ends, that no human skill could
dovetail into a Christian consistency.
On the night of the next day--I mind it weel, for it was on that dividual
evening that Willie, the minister's man, married Mysie Clouts, the keeper
of the lodging-house called the Beggars' Opera--it struck me, seeing the
general joy of the weans on the street, and the laughing, daffing, and
hallabuloo that they were making, that poor James must be lonely at his
ingle side, and that a drink of porter and a crack would do his old heart
good. Accordingly, I made Nanse send the bit lassie, our servant, Jenny
Heggins, for a couple of bottles of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout,
asking if he could pawn his word anent its being genuine, as it was for a
gentleman in delicate health. So, brushing the saw-dust off the doup of
one of them, and slipping it into my coat pocket, which was gey an'
large, I popped at leisure up the close to pay my neighbour a friendly
visit.
[Picture: Peter Farrel]
'Od, but comfort is a grand thing. If ever ye saw an ancient patriarch,
there was one. James was seated in his snug old easychair by the
fireside, as if he had been an Edinburgh Parliament House lawyer,
studying his hornings, duplies, and fugie warrants, with his left leg
paraded out on a stool, with a pillow smoothed down over it, and all the
Welshman's papers docketed on the bit table before him. The cat was
lying streaked out on the hearth, pur-purring away to herself, and the
kettle by the fire cheek was singing along with her, as if to cheer the
heart of their mutual master. As for Mr Batter, he looked as prejinct as
a pikestaff, and so taken up was he with his papers, that, when I asked
him how he felt, his answer, to my wonderment, was, that "in the Song of
Songs Solomon had likened the nose of his beloved to the tower of
Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus." So brown was he in his
studies, that, for a while, I feared the fall had produced some crack in
his pan, and that his seven senses had gone a wool-gathering; but the
story will out, as ye will hear, and being naturally a wee-camstairie, I
gave him time to gather the feet of his faculties before pressing him too
hard; but even the sight of the bottle of porter toasting by the cheek of
the fire, hardly brought him at once to his right mind.