line syne ever I was a callant, and not seeing the Adverteezer
Newspapers, or the Edinburgh Evening Courant, save and except at an orra
time,--so I shall say no more, nor pretend to be one of the
thousand-and-one wise men, able and willing to direct his Majesty's
Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One
thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his
loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as
their prop, support, and breadwinner;--so I shall stick to all three
(under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins.
But the truth is--and I will let it out and shame the de'il--that I could
not help making these general observations (as Maister Wiggie calls the
spiritualeezing of his discourses), as what I have to relate might well
make my principles suspected, were they not known to all the world to be
as firm as the foundations of the Bass Rock. Ye shall nevertheless judge
for yourselves.
It was sometime in the blasty month of March, the weather being rawish
and rainy, with sharp frosty nights that left all the window-soles
whitewashed over with frost rind in the mornings, that as I was going out
in the dark, before lying down in my bed, to give a look into the
hen-house, and lock the coal-cellar, so that I might hang the bit key on
the nail behind our room window-shutter, I happened to give a keek in,
and, lo and behold! the awful apparition of a man with a yellow jacket,
lying sound asleep on a great lump of parrot-coal in a corner!
In the first hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a
yellow jacket and a green foraging-cap in such a situation, I was like to
drop the good twopenny candle, and faint clean away; but, coming to
myself in a jiffie, I determined, in case it might be a highway robber,
to thraw about the key, and, running up for the firelock, shoot him
through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the
key, the lock, being in want of a feather of oil, made a noise, and
wakened the poor wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in
despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I
could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all
the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting through ither, and whiles
something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble
dabble." It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the
height of passion by a Hieland shearer.
"Oho!" thinks I, "friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo,
that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you're a Frenchy. Who
kens, keep us all, but ye may be Buonaparte himself in disguise, come
over in a flat-bottomed boat to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may
just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn's morning."
It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man in the course
of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal-neuk, and have
the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept
rampauging, fuffing, stamping, and _diabbling_ away, I went in and
brought out Benjie, with a blanket rowed round him, and my journeyman,
Tommy Staytape--who, being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour-boarder
of, he sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen-fire--to hold a
consultation, and be witness of the transaction.
I got my musket, and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose--a
deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it--and Benjie took the poker
in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly,
to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the
coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and
finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could
bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie
trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we
make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign
creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away,
like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was
completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of
French which I wanted to put to him, so I cried through, "Canna you speak
Scotcha, Mounseer?"
He had not the politeness to stop and make answer, but just went on with
his string of haivers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could
make neither top, tail, nor main of.
It was a sore trial to us all, putting us to our wit's end, and how to
come on was past all visible comprehension; when Tommy Staytape, giving
his elbow a rub, said, "Od, maister, I wager something that he's broken
loose frae Penicuik. We have him like a rotten in a fa'."
On Penicuik being mentioned, we heard the foreign creature in the
coal-house groaning out, "och," and "ochone," and "parbleu," and "Mysie
Rabble,"--that I fancy was his sweetheart at home, some bit French quean,
that wondered he was never like to come from the wars and marry her. I
thought on this, for his voice was mournful, though I could not
understand the words; and kenning he was a stranger in a far land, my
bowels yearned within me with compassion towards him.
I would have given half-a-crown at that blessed moment to have been able
to wash my hands free of him; but I swithered, and was like the cuddie
between the two bundles of hay. At long and last a thought struck me,
which was to give the deluded simple creature a chance of escape;
reckoning that, if he found his way home, he would see the shame and
folly of fighting against us any more; and, marrying Mysie Rabble, live a
contented and peaceful life, under his own fig and bay tree. So wishing
him a sound sleep, I cried through the door, "Mounseer, gooda nighta";
decoying away Benjie and Tommy Staytape into the house. Bidding them
depart to their beds, I said to them after shutting the door, "Now,
callants, we have the precious life of a fellow-creature in our hand, and
to account for. Though he has a yellow jacket on, and speaks nonsense,
yet, nevertheless, he is of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. Maybe
we may be all obliged to wear green foraging-caps before we die yet!
Mention what we have seen or heard to no living soul; for maybe, if he
were to escape, we would be all taken up on suspicion of being spies, and
hanged on a gallows as high as Haman."--After giving them this wholesome
advice, I dispatched them to their beds like lamplighters, binding them
to never fash their thumbs, but sleep like tops, as I would keep a sharp
look-out till morning.
As soon, howsoever, as I heard them sleeping, and playing on the pipes
through their noses, I cried first "Tommy," and syne "Benjie," to be
sure; and, glad to receive no answer from either, I went to the aumrie
and took out a mutton-bone, gey sair pyked, but fleshy enough at the
mouse end; and, putting a penny row beside it, crap out to the coal-house
on my tiptaes. All was quiet as pussie,--so I shot them through the hole
at the corner made for letting the gaislings in by; and giving a tirl,
cried softly through, "Halloa, Mounseer, there's your suppera fora youa;
for I dara saya you are yauppa."
The poor chiel commenced again to grunt and grane, and groan and yelp,
and cry ochone;--and make such woful lamentations, that heart of man
could not stand it; and I found the warm tears prap-prapping to my een.
Before being put to this trial of my strength, I thought that, if ever it
was my fortune to foregather with a Frenchman, either him or me should do
or die; but, i'fegs, one should not crack so crouse before they are put
to the test; and, though I had taken a prisoner without fighting at
all--though he had come into the coal-hole of the Philistines of his own
accord as it were, and was as safe as the spy in the house of Rahab at
Jericho--and though we had him like a mouse beneath a firlet, snug under
custody of lock and key, yet I considered within myself, with a pitiful
consideration, that, although he could not speak well, he might yet feel
deeply; that he might have a father and mother, and sisters and brothers,
in his ain country, weeping and wearying for his return; and that his
true love Mysie Rabble might pine away like a snapped flower, and die of
a broken heart.
Being a volunteer, and so one of his Majesty's confidential servants, I
swithered tremendously between my duty as a man and a soldier; but, do
what you like, nature will aye be uppermost. The scale weighed down to
the side of pity. I hearkened to the scripture that promises a blessing
to the merciful in heart; and determined, come of it what would, to let
the Frenchy take his chance of falling into other hands.
Having given him a due allowance by looking at my watch, and thinking he
would have had enough of time to have taken his will of the mutton-bone
in the way of pyking, I went to the press and brought out a bottle of
swipes, which I also shoved through the hole; although, for lack of a
tanker, there being none at hand, he would be obliged to lift it to his
head, and do his best. To show the creature did not want sense, he
shoved, when he was done, the empty plate and the toom bottle through
beneath the door, mumbling some trash or other which no living creature
could comprehend, but which I dare say, from the way it was said, was the
telling me how much he was obliged for his supper and poor lodging. From
my kindness towards him, he grew more composed; but as he went back to
the corner to lie down, I heard him give two-three heavy sighs.--I could
not thole't, mortal foe though the man was of mine; so I gave the key a
canny thraw round in the lock, as it were by chance; and, wishing him a
good-night, went to my bed beside Nanse.
At the dawn of day, by cock-craw, Benjie and Tommy Staytape, keen of the
ploy, were up and astir, as anxious as if their life depended on it, to
see that all was safe and snug, and that the prisoner had not shot the
lock. They agreed to march sentry over him half an hour the piece, time
about, the one stretching himself out on a stool beside the kitchen fire,
by way of a bench in the guard-house, while the other went to and fro
like the ticker of a clock. I dare say they saw themselves marching him
after breakfast time, with his yellow jacket, through a mob of weans with
glowering een and gaping mouths, up to the Tolbooth.
The back window being up a jink, I heard the two confabbing. "We'll draw
cuts," said Benjie, "which is to walk sentry first; see, here's two
straws, the longest gets the choice."--"I've won," cried Tommy; "so gang
you in a while, and if I need ye, or grow frightened, I'll beat
leather-ty-patch wi' my buckles on the back-door. But we had better see
first what he is about, for he may be howking a hole through aneath the
foundations; thae fiefs can work like moudiwarts."--"I'll slip forret,"
said Benjie, "and gie a peep."--"Keep to a side," cried Tommy Staytape,
"for, dog on it, Moosey'll maybe hae a pistol; and, if his birse be up,
he would think nae mair o' shooting ye as dead as a red herring, than I
would do of taking my breakfast."
"I'll rin past, and gie a knock at the door wi' the poker to rouse him
up?" asked Benjie.
"Come away then," answered Tommy, "and ye'll hear him gie a yowl, and
commence gabbling like a goose."
As all this was going on, I rose and took a vizzy between the chinks of
the window-shutters; so, just as I got my neb to the hole, I saw Benjie,
as he flew past, give the door a drive. His consternation, on finding it
flee half open, may be easier imagined than described; especially, as on
the door dunting to again, it being soople in the hinges, they both
plainly heard a fistling within. Neither of them ever got such a fleg
since they were born; for expecting the Frenchman to bounce out like a
roaring lion, they hurried like mad into the house, couping the creels
over one another, Tommy spraining his thumb against the back-door, and
Benjie's foot going into Tommy's coat-pocket, which it carried away with
it, like a cloth-sandal.
At the noise of this stramash, I took opportunity to come fleeing down
the stair, with the gun in my hand; in the first place, to show them I
was not frightened to handle fire-arms; and, in the second, making
pretence that I thought it was Mounseer with his green foraging-cap
making an attempt at housebreaking. Benjie was in a terrible pickle;
and, though his nose was blooding with the drive he had come against
Tommy's teeth, he took hold of my arm like grim death, crying, "Take
tent, faither, take tent; the door is open, and the Penicuiker hiding
himself behind it. He'll brain some of us with a lump of coal--and will
he!"
I jealoused at once that this was nonsense; judging that, by all means of
rationality, the creature would be off and away like lightning to the
sea-shore, and over to France in some honest man's fishing boat, down by
at Fisherrow; but, to throw stoure in the een of the two callants, I
loaded with a wheen draps in their presence; and, warily priming the pan,
went forward with the piece at full-cock.
Tommy and Benjie came behind me, while, pushing the door wide open with
the muzzle, as I held my finger at the tricker, I cried, "Stand or be
shot"; when young Cursecowl's big ugly mastiff-dog, with the bare mutton
bone in its teeth, bolted through between my legs like a fury, and with
such a force as to heel me over on the braid of my back, while I went a
dunt on the causey that made the gun go off, and riddled Nanse's best
washing-tub, in a manner that laid it on the superannuated list as to the
matter of holding in water. The goose that was sitting on her eggs,
among clean straw, in the inside of it, was also rendered a lameter for
life.
What became of the French vagrant was never seen or heard tell of, from
that day to this. Maybe he was catched, and, tied neck and heels,
hurried back to Penicuik as fast as he left it; or maybe--as one of the
Fisherrow oyster-boats was amissing next morning--he succeeded in giving
our brave fleets the slip, and rowing night and day against wind and
tide, got home in a safe skin: but this is all matter of surmise--nobody
kens.
On making search in the coal-house at our leisure afterwards, we found a
boxful of things with black dots on them, some with one, some with two,
and four, and six, and so on, for playing at an outlandish game they call
the dominoes. It was the handiwork of the poor French creature, that had
no other Christian employment but making these and suchlike, out of
sheep-shanks and marrow bones. I never liked gambling all my life, it
being contrary to the Ten Commandments; and mind of putting on the back
of the fire the old pack of cards, with the Jack of Trumps among them,
that the deboshed journeymen tailors, in the shop with me in the
Grassmarket, used to play birkie with when the maister's back was turned.
This is the first time I have acknowledged the transaction to a living
soul; had they found me out at the time, my life would not have been
worth a pinch of snuff. But as to the dominoes, considering that the
Frenchy must have left them as a token of gratitude, and as the only
payment in his power for a bit comfortable supper, it behoved me--for so
I thought--not to turn the wrong side of my face altogether on his
present, as that would be unmannerly towards a poor stranger.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these reasons, the dominoes, after
everything that can be said of good anent them, were a black sight, and
for months and months produced a scene of riot and idleness after working
hours, that went far to render our housie that was before a picture of
decorum and decency a tabernacle of confusion and a hell upon earth.
Whenever time for stopping work came about, down we regularly all sat,
night after night, the wife, Benjie, and Tommy Staytape, and myself,
playing for a ha'penny the game, and growing as anxious, fierce, and keen
about it, as if we had been earning the bread of life. After two or
three months' trial, I saw that it would never do, for all subordination
was fast coming to an end in our bit house, and, for lack of looking
after, a great number of small accounts for clouting elbows, piecing
waistcoats, and mending leggins, remained unpaid; a great number of wauf
customers crowding about us, by way of giving us their change, but with
no intention of ever paying a single fraction. The wife, that used to
keep everything bein and snug, behaving herself like the sober mother of
a family, began to funk on being taken through hands, and grew
obstrapulous with her tongue. Instead of following my directions--who
was his born maister in the cutting and shaping line--Tommy Staytape
pretended to set up a judgment of his own, and disfigured some
ploughmen's jackets in a manner most hideous to behold; while, to crown
all, even Absalom, the very callant Benjie, my only bairn, had the
impudence to contradict me more than once, and began to think himself as
clever as his father. Save us all! it was a terrible business, but I
determined, come what would, to give it the finishing stitch.
Every night being worse than another, I did not wait long for an
opportunity of letting the whole of them ken my mind, and that, whenever
I chose, I could make them wheel to the right about. So it chanced, as
we were playing, that I was in prime luck, first rooking the one and syne
the other, and I saw them twisting and screwing their mouths about as if
they were chewing bitter aloes. Finding that they were on the point of
being beaten roop and stoop, they all three rose up from the chairs,
crying with one voice, that I was a cheat.--An elder of Maister Wiggie's
kirk to be called a cheat! Most awful!!! Flesh and blood could not
stand it, more especially when I thought on who had dared to presume to
call me such; so, in a whirlwind of fury, I swept up two nievefuls of
dominoes off the table, and made them flee into the bleezing fire; where,
after fizzing and cracking like a wheen squeebs, the whole tot, except
about half-a-dozen which fell into the porritch-pot, which was on boiling
at the time, were reduced to a heap of grey aizles. I soon showed them
who was the top of the tree, and what they were likely to make of
undutiful rebellion.
So much for a Mounseer's legacy; being in a kind of doubt whether,
according to the Riot Act and the Articles of War, I had a clear
conscience in letting him away, I could not expect that any favour
granted at his hands was likely to prosper. In fighting, it is well kent
to themselves and all the world, that they have no earthly chance with
us; so they are reduced to the necessity of doing what they can, by
coming to our firesides in sheep's clothing, and throwing ram-pushion
among the family broth. They had better take care that they do not get
their fingers scadded.
Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling
I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the
going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a
tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee,
there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteenpence, and so on;
but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round
sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were
entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had
not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascal-raggamuffins,
and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up
between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when
he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to
bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I
reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of
accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other
to Benjie, telling them by way of encouragement, that I would give them a
penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or crook.
[Picture: An old Dalkeith body]
After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon
off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up
trap-stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty
holes--what think ye did they collect? Not one bodle--not one coin of
copper! This one was out of work;--and that one had his house-rent to
pay;--and a third one had an income in his nose;--and a fourth was
bedridden with rheumatics;--and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin
was dead;--and a sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married
come Martymas;--and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see
his granny in the Hielands;--and so on. It was a terrible business, but
what wool can ye get by clipping swine?
The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a
natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, "that, for part-payment, he would
give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."--And
what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of
news? "He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he
cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a
living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a fortnight."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX--ANENT BENJIE IN HIS THIRTEENTH YEAR
It is a most wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make
observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles
of infancy--to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting;
and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years
produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee
bit smout of a wean, with long linty locks and docked petticoats, toddled
but and ben, with a coral gumstick tied round his waist with a bit
knitten; and now, after he had been at Dominie Threshem's for four years,
he had learned to read Barrie's Collection almost as well as the master
could do for his lugs; and was up to all manner of accounts, from simple
addition and the multiplication-table, even to vulgar fractions, and all
the lave of them.
At the yearly examination of the school-room by the Presbytery and
Maister Wiggie, he aye sat at the head of the form, and never failed
getting a clap on the head and a wheen carvies. They that are fathers
will not wonder that this made me as proud as a peacock; but when they
asked his name, and found whose son he was, then the matter seemed to
cease being a business of wonder, as nobody could suppose that an only
bairn, born to me in lawful wedlock, could be a dult. Folk's
cleverness--at least I should think so--lies in their pows; and, that
allowed, Benjie's was a gey droll one, being of the most remarkable sort
of a shape ye ever saw; but, what is more to the purpose both here and
hereafter, he was a real good-hearted callant, though as gleg as a hawk
and as sharp as a needle. Everybody that had the smallest gumption
prophesied that he would be a real clever one; nor could we grudge that
we took pains in his rearing--he having been like a sucking-turkey, or a
hot-house plant from far away, delicate in the constitution--when we saw
that the debt was likely to be paid with bank-interest, and that, by his
uncommon cleverality, the callant was to be a credit to our family.
Many and long were the debates between his fond mother and me, what trade
we would breed him up to--for the matter now became serious, Benjie being
in his thirteenth year; and, though a wee bowed in the near leg, from a
suppleness about his knee-joint, nevertheless as active as a hatter, and
fit for any calling whatsoever under the sun. One thing I had determined
in my own mind, and that was, that he should never with my will go
abroad. The gentry are no doubt philosophers enough to bring up their
bairns like sheep to the slaughter, and dispatch them as cadies to Bengal
and the Cape of Good Hope, as soon as they are grown up; when, lo and
behold! the first news they hear of them is in a letter, sealed with
black wax, telling how they died of the liver complaint, and were buried
by six blacks two hours after.
That was one thing settled and sealed, so no more need be said about it;
yet, notwithstanding of Nanse's being satisfied that the spaewife was a
deceitful gipsy, perfectly untrustworthy, she would aye have a finger in
the pie, and try to persuade me in a coaxing way. "I'm sure," she would
say, "ane with half an e'e may see that our son Benjie has just the
physog of an admiral. It's a great shame contradicting nature."