DARSIE LATIMER’S JOURNAL, IN CONTINUATION
Two or three days, perhaps more, perhaps less, had been spent in bed,
where I was carefully attended, and treated, I believe, with as much
judgement as the case required, and I was at length allowed to quit
my bed, though not the chamber. I was now more able to make some
observation on the place of my confinement.
The room, in appearance and furniture, resembled the best apartment in
a farmer’s house; and the window, two stories high, looked into a
backyard, or court, filled with domestic poultry. There were the usual
domestic offices about this yard. I could distinguish the brewhouse and
the barn, and I heard, from a more remote building, the lowing of the
cattle, and other rural sounds, announcing a large and well-stocked
farm. These were sights and sounds qualified to dispel any apprehension
of immediate violence. Yet the building seemed ancient and strong, a
part of the roof was battlemented, and the walls were of great thickness;
lastly, I observed, with some unpleasant sensations, that the windows
of my chamber had been lately secured with iron stanchions, and that
the servants who brought me victuals, or visited my apartment to render
other menial offices, always locked the door when they retired.
The comfort and cleanliness of my chamber were of true English growth,
and such as I had rarely seen on the other side of the Tweed; the very
old wainscot, which composed the floor and the panelling of the room,
was scrubbed with a degree of labour which the Scottish housewife rarely
bestows on her most costly furniture.
The whole apartments appropriated to my use consisted of the bedroom, a
small parlour adjacent, within which was a still smaller closet having
a narrow window which seemed anciently to have been used as a shot-hole,
admitting, indeed, a very moderate portion of light and air, but without
its being possible to see anything from it except the blue sky, and
that only by mounting on a chair. There were appearances of a separate
entrance into this cabinet, besides that which communicated with the
parlour, but it had been recently built up, as I discovered by removing
a piece of tapestry which covered the fresh mason-work. I found some
of my clothes here, with linen and other articles, as well as my
writing-case, containing pen, ink, and paper, which enables me, at my
leisure (which, God knows, is undisturbed enough) to make this record of
my confinement. It may be well believed, however, that I do not trust
to the security of the bureau, but carry the written sheets about my
person, so that I can only be deprived of them by actual violence. I
also am cautious to write in the little cabinet only, so that I can
hear any person approach me through the other apartments, and have time
enough to put aside my journal before they come upon me.
The servants, a stout country fellow and a very pretty milkmaid-looking
lass, by whom I am attended, seem of the true Joan and Hedge school,
thinking of little and desiring nothing beyond the very limited sphere
of their own duties or enjoyments, and having no curiosity whatever
about the affairs of others. Their behaviour to me in particular, is,
at the same time, very kind and very provoking. My table is abundantly
supplied, and they seem anxious to comply with my taste in that
department. But whenever I make inquiries beyond ‘what’s for dinner’,
the brute of a lad baffles me by his ANAN, and his DUNNA KNAW, and if
hard pressed, turns his back on me composedly, and leaves the room. The
girl, too, pretends to be as simple as he; but an arch grin, which
she cannot always suppress, seems to acknowledge that she understands
perfectly well the game which she is playing, and is determined to keep
me in ignorance. Both of them, and the wench in particular, treat me
as they would do a spoiled child, and never directly refuse me anything
which I ask, taking care, at the same time, not to make their words good
by effectually granting my request. Thus, if I desire to go out, I am
promised by Dorcas that I shall walk in the park at night, and see the
cows milked, just as she would propose such an amusement to a child. But
she takes care never to keep her word, if it is in her power to do so.
In the meantime, there has stolen on me insensibly an indifference to
my freedom--a carelessness about my situation, for which I am unable to
account, unless it be the consequence of weakness and loss of blood. I
have read of men who, immured as I am, have surprised the world by the
address with which they have successfully overcome the most formidable
obstacles to their escape; and when I have heard such anecdotes, I
have said to myself, that no one who is possessed only of a fragment
of freestone, or a rusty nail to grind down rivets and to pick locks,
having his full leisure to employ in the task, need continue the
inhabitant of a prison. Here, however, I sit, day after day, without a
single effort to effect my liberation.
Yet my inactivity is not the result of despondency, but arises, in
part at least, from feelings of a very different cast. My story, long
a mysterious one, seems now upon the verge of some strange development;
and I feel a solemn impression that I ought to wait the course of
events, to struggle against which is opposing my feeble efforts to the
high will of fate. Thou, my Alan, wilt treat as timidity this passive
acquiescence, which has sunk down on me like a benumbing torpor; but if
thou hast remembered by what visions my couch was haunted, and dost but
think of the probability that I am in the vicinity, perhaps under the
same roof with G.M., thou wilt acknowledge that other feelings than
pusillanimity have tended in some degree to reconcile me to my fate.
Still I own it is unmanly to submit with patience to this oppressive
confinement. My heart rises against it, especially when I sit down to
record my sufferings in this journal, and I am determined, as the first
step to my deliverance, to have my letters sent to the post-house. ----
I am disappointed. When the girl Dorcas, upon whom I had fixed for a
messenger, heard me talk of sending a letter, she willingly offered her
services, and received the crown which I gave her (for my purse had not
taken flight with the more valuable contents of my pocket-book) with a
smile which showed her whole set of white teeth.
But when, with the purpose of gaining some intelligence respecting my
present place of abode, I asked to which post-town she was to send or
carry the letter, a stolid ‘ANAN’ showed me she was either ignorant of
the nature of a post-office, or that, for the present, she chose to seem
so.--‘Simpleton!’ I said, with some sharpness.
‘O Lord, sir!’ answered the girl, turning pale, which they always do
when I show any sparks of anger, ‘Don’t put yourself in a passion--I’ll
put the letter in the post.
‘What! and not know the name of the post-town?’ said I, out of patience.
‘How on earth do you propose to manage that?’
‘La you there, good master. What need you frighten a poor girl that is
no schollard, bating what she learned at the Charity School of Saint
Bees?’
‘Is Saint Bees far from this place, Dorcas? Do you send your letters
there?’ said I, in a manner as insinuating, and yet careless, as I could
assume.
‘Saint Bees! La, who but a madman--begging your honour’s pardon--it’s a
matter of twenty years since fader lived at Saint Bees, which is twenty,
or forty, or I dunna know not how many miles from this part, to the
West, on the coast side; and I would not have left Saint Bees, but that
fader’--
‘Oh, the devil take your father!’ replied I.
To which she answered, ‘Nay, but thof your honour be a little
how-come-so, you shouldn’t damn folk’s faders; and I won’t stand to it,
for one.’
‘Oh, I beg you a thousand pardons--I wish your father no ill in the
world--he was a very honest man in his way.’
‘WAS an honest man!’ she exclaimed; for the Cumbrians are, it would
seem, like their neighbours the Scotch, ticklish on the point of
ancestry,--‘He IS a very honest man as ever led nag with halter on head
to Staneshaw Bank Fair. Honest! He is a horse-couper.’
‘Right, right,’ I replied; ‘I know it--I have heard of your father-as
honest as any horse-couper of them all. Why, Dorcas, I mean to buy a
horse of him.’
‘Ah, your honour,’ sighed Dorcas, ‘he is the man to serve your honour
well--if ever you should get round again--or thof you were a bit off the
hooks, he would no more cheat you than’--
‘Well, well, we will deal, my girl, you may depend on’t. But tell me
now, were I to give you a letter, what would you do to get it forward?’
‘Why, put it into Squire’s own bag that hangs in hall,’ answered poor
Dorcas. ‘What else could I do? He sends it to Brampton, or to Carloisle,
or where it pleases him, once a week, and that gate.’
‘Ah!’ said I; ‘and I suppose your sweetheart John carries it?’
‘Noa--disn’t now--and Jan is no sweetheart of mine, ever since he danced
at his mother’s feast with Kitty Rutlege, and let me sit still; that a
did.’
‘It was most abominable in Jan, and what I could never have thought of
him,’ I replied.
‘Oh, but a did though--a let me sit still on my seat, a did.’
‘Well, well, my pretty May, you will get a handsomer fellow than
Jan--Jan’s not the fellow for you, I see that.’
‘Noa, noa,’ answered the damsel; ‘but he is weel aneugh for a’ that,
mon. But I carena a button for him; for there is the miller’s son, that
suitored me last Appleby Fair, when I went wi’ oncle, is a gway canny
lad as you will see in the sunshine.’
‘Aye, a fine stout fellow. Do you think he would carry my letter to
Carlisle?’
‘To Carloisle! ‘Twould be all his life is worth; he maun wait on clap
and hopper, as they say. Odd, his father would brain him if he went to
Carloisle, bating to wrestling for the belt, or sic loike. But I ha’
more bachelors than him; there is the schoolmaster, can write almaist as
weel as tou canst, mon.’
‘Then he is the very man to take charge of a letter; he knows the
trouble of writing one.’
‘Aye, marry does he, an tou comest to that, mon; only it takes him four
hours to write as mony lines. Tan, it is a great round hand loike, that
one can read easily, and not loike your honour’s, that are like midge’s
taes. But for ganging to Carloisle, he’s dead foundered, man, as cripple
as Eckie’s mear.’
‘In the name of God,’ said I, ‘how is it that you propose to get my
letter to the post?’
‘Why, just to put it into Squire’s bag loike,’ reiterated Dorcas; ‘he
sends it by Cristal Nixon to post, as you call it, when such is his
pleasure.’
Here I was, then, not much edified by having obtained a list of Dorcas’s
bachelors; and by finding myself, with respect to any information
which I desired, just exactly at the point where I set out. It was of
consequence to me, however, to accustom, the girl to converse with me
familiarly. If she did so, she could not always be on her guard,
and something, I thought, might drop from her which I could turn to
advantage.
‘Does not the Squire usually look into his letter-bag, Dorcas?’ said I,
with as much indifference as I could assume.
‘That a does,’ said Dorcas; ‘and a threw out a letter of mine to Raff
Miller, because a said’--
‘Well, well, I won’t trouble him with mine,’ said I, ‘Dorcas; but,
instead, I will write to himself, Dorcas. But how shall I address him?’
‘Anan?’ was again Dorcas’s resource.
‘I mean how is he called? What is his name?’
‘Sure you honour should know best,’ said Dorcas.
‘I know? The devil! You drive me beyond patience.’
‘Noa, noa! donna your honour go beyond patience--donna ye now,’
implored the wench. ‘And for his neame, they say he has mair nor ane
in Westmoreland and on the Scottish side. But he is but seldom wi’
us, excepting in the cocking season; and then we just call him Squoire
loike; and so do my measter and dame.’
‘And is he here at present?’ said I.
‘Not he, not he; he is a buck-hoonting, as they tell me, somewhere up
the Patterdale way; but he comes and gangs like a flap of a whirlwind,
or sic loike.’
I broke off the conversation, after forcing on Dorcas a little silver
to buy ribbons, with which she was so much delighted that she exclaimed,
‘God! Cristal Nixon may say his worst on thee; but thou art a civil
gentleman for all him; and a quoit man wi’ woman folk loike.’
There is no sense in being too quiet with women folk, so I added a kiss
with my crown piece; and I cannot help thinking that I have secured
a partisan in Dorcas. At least, she blushed, and pocketed her little
compliment with one hand, while, with the other, she adjusted her
cherry-coloured ribbons, a little disordered by the struggle it cost me
to attain the honour of a salute.
As she unlocked the door to leave the apartment, she turned back,
and looking on me with a strong expression of compassion, added the
remarkable words, ‘La--be’st mad or no, thou’se a mettled lad, after
all.’
There was something very ominous in the sound of these farewell words,
which seemed to afford me a clue to the pretext under which I was
detained in confinement, My demeanour was probably insane enough, while
I was agitated at once by the frenzy incident to the fever, and the
anxiety arising from my extraordinary situation. But is it possible they
can now establish any cause for confining me arising out of the state of
my mind?
If this be really the pretext under which I am restrained from my
liberty, nothing but the sedate correctness of my conduct can remove the
prejudices which these circumstances may have excited in the minds of
all who have approached me during my illness. I have heard--dreadful
thought!--of men who, for various reasons, have been trepanned into
the custody of the keepers of private madhouses, and whose brain,
after years of misery, became at length unsettled, through irresistible
sympathy with the wretched beings among whom they were classed. This
shall not be my case, if, by strong internal resolution, it is in human
nature to avoid the action of exterior and contagious sympathies.
Meantime I sat down to compose and arrange my thoughts, for my purposed
appeal to my jailer--so I must call him--whom I addressed in the
following manner; having at length, and after making several copies,
found language to qualify the sense of resentment which burned in
the first, drafts of my letter, and endeavoured to assume a tone more
conciliating. I mentioned the two occasions on which he had certainly
saved my life, when at the utmost peril; and I added, that whatever was
the purpose of the restraint, now practised on me, as I was given to
understand, by his authority, it could not certainly be with any view
to ultimately injuring me. He might, I said, have mistaken me for some
other person; and I gave him what account I could of my situation and
education, to correct such an error. I supposed it next possible, that
he might think me too weak for travelling, and not capable of taking
care of myself; and I begged to assure him, that I was restored to
perfect health, and quite able to endure the fatigue of a journey.
Lastly, I reminded him, in firm though measured terms, that the
restraint which I sustained was an illegal one, and highly punishable
by the laws which protect the liberties of the subject. I ended by
demanding that he would take me before a magistrate; or, at least, that
he would favour me with a personal interview and explain his meaning
with regard to me.
Perhaps this letter was expressed in a tone too humble for the
situation of an injured man, and I am inclined to think so when I again
recapitulate its tenor. But what could I do? I was in the power of one
whose passions seem as violent as his means of gratifying them appear
unbounded. I had reason, too, to believe (this to thee, Alan) that all
his family did not approve of the violence of his conduct towards me; my
object, in fine, was freedom, and who would not sacrifice much to attain
it?
I had no means of addressing my letter excepting ‘For the Squire’s
own hand.’ He could be at no great distance, for in the course of
twenty-four hours I received an answer. It was addressed to Darsie
Latimer, and contained these words: ‘You have demanded an interview with
me. You have required to be carried before a magistrate. Your first wish
shall be granted--perhaps the second also. Meanwhile, be assured that
you are a prisoner for the time, by competent authority, and that
such authority is supported by adequate power. Beware, therefore, of
struggling with a force sufficient to crush you, but abandon yourself to
that train of events by which we are both swept along, and which it is
impossible that either of us can resist.’
These mysterious words were without signature of any kind, and left
me nothing more important to do than to prepare myself for the meeting
which they promised. For that purpose I must now break off, and make
sure of the manuscript--so far as I can, in my present condition, be
sure of anything--by concealing it within the lining of my coat, so as
not to be found without strict search.