NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD
The reader ought, by this time, to have formed some idea of the
character of Alan Fairford. He had a warmth of heart which the study
of the law and of the world could not chill, and talents which they had
rendered unusually acute. Deprived of the personal patronage enjoyed by
most of his contemporaries, who assumed the gown under the protection of
their aristocratic alliances and descents, he early saw that he should
have that to achieve for himself which fell to them as a right of birth.
He laboured hard in silence and solitude, and his labours were crowned
with success. But Alan doted on his friend Darsie, even more than he
loved his profession, and, as we have seen, threw everything aside when
he thought Latimer in danger; forgetting fame and fortune, and hazarding
even the serious displeasure of his father, to rescue him whom he loved
with an elder brother’s affection. Darsie, though his parts were more
quick and brilliant than those of his friend, seemed always to the
latter a being under his peculiar charge, whom he was called upon
to cherish and protect in cases where the youth’s own experience was
unequal to the exigency; and now, when, the fate of Latimer seeming
worse than doubtful, Alan’s whole prudence and energy were to be exerted
in his behalf, an adventure which might have seemed perilous to most
youths of his age had no terrors for him. He was well acquainted with
the laws of his country, and knew how to appeal to them; and, besides
his professional confidence, his natural disposition was steady, sedate,
persevering, and undaunted. With these requisites he undertook a quest
which, at that time, was not unattended with actual danger, and had much
in it to appal a more timid disposition.
Fairford’s first inquiry concerning his friend was of the chief
magistrate of Dumfries, Provost Crosbie, who had sent the information
of Darsie’s disappearance. On his first application, he thought he
discerned in the honest dignitary a desire to get rid of the subject.
The provost spoke of the riot at the fishing station as an ‘outbreak
among those lawless loons the fishermen, which concerned the sheriff,’
he said, ‘more than us poor town council bodies, that have enough to do
to keep peace within burgh, amongst such a set of commoners as the town
are plagued with.’
‘But this is not all, Provost Crosbie,’ said Mr. Alan Fairford; ‘A young
gentleman of rank and fortune has disappeared amongst their hands--you
know him. My father gave him a letter to you--Mr. Darsie Latimer.’
‘Lack-a-day, yes! lack-a-day, yes!’ said the provost; ‘Mr. Darsie
Latimer--he dined at my house--I hope he is well?’
‘I hope so too,’ said Alan, rather indignantly; ‘but I desire more
certainty on that point. You yourself wrote my father that he had
disappeared.’
‘Troth, yes, and that is true,’ said the provost. ‘But did he not go
back to his friends in Scotland? it was not natural to think he would
stay here.’
‘Not unless he is under restraint,’ said Fairford, surprised at the
coolness with which the provost seemed to take up the matter.
‘Rely on it, sir,’ said Mr. Crosbie, ‘that if he has not returned to his
friends in Scotland, he must have gone to his friends in England.’
‘I will rely on no such thing,’ said Alan; ‘if there is law or justice
in Scotland, I will have the thing cleared to the very bottom.’
‘Reasonable, reasonable,’ said the provost, ‘so far as is possible; but
you know I have no power beyond the ports of the burgh.’
‘But you are in the commission besides, Mr. Crosbie; a justice of peace
for the county.’
‘True, very true--that is,’ said the cautious magistrate, ‘I will not
say but my name may stand on the list, but I cannot remember that I have
ever qualified.’ [By taking the oaths to government.]
‘Why, in that case,’ said young Fairford, ‘there are ill-natured people
might doubt your attachment to the Protestant line, Mr. Crosbie.’
‘God forbid, Mr. Fairford! I who have done and suffered in the
Forty-five. I reckon the Highlandmen did me damage to the amount of
100l. Scots, forby all they ate and drank--no, no, sir, I stand beyond
challenge; but as for plaguing myself with county business, let them
that aught the mare shoe the mare. The commissioners of supply would see
my back broken before they would help me in the burgh’s work, and all
the world kens the difference of the weight between public business in
burgh and landward. What are their riots to me? have we not riots enough
of our own?--But I must be getting ready, for the council meets this
forenoon. I am blithe to see your father’s son on the causeway of our
ancient burgh, Mr. Alan Fairford. Were you a twelve-month aulder, we
would make a burgess of you, man. I hope you will come and dine with
me before you go away. What think you of to-day at two o’clock--just a
roasted chucky and a drappit egg?’
Alan Fairford resolved that his friend’s hospitality should not, as it
seemed the inviter intended, put a stop to his queries. ‘I must delay
you for a moment,’ he said, ‘Mr. Crosbie; this is a serious affair; a
young gentleman of high hopes, my own dearest friend, is missing--you
cannot think it will be passed over slightly, if a man of your high
character and known zeal for the government do not make some active
inquiry. Mr. Crosbie, you are my father’s friend, and I respect you as
such--but to others it will have a bad appearance.’
The withers of the provost were not unwrung; he paced the room in much
tribulation, repeating, ‘But what can I do, Mr. Fairford? I warrant
your friend casts up again--he will come back again, like the ill
shilling--he is not the sort of gear that tynes--a hellicat boy, running
through the country with a blind fiddler and playing the fiddle to
a parcel of blackguards, who can tell where the like of him may have
scampered to?’
‘There are persons apprehended, and in the jail of the town, as I
understand from the sheriff-substitute,’ said Mr. Fairford; ‘you
must call them before you, and inquire what they know of this young
gentleman.’
‘Aye, aye--the sheriff-depute did commit some poor creatures, I
believe--wretched ignorant fishermen bodies, that had been quarrelling
with Quaker Geddes and his stake-nets, whilk, under favour of your gown
be it spoken, Mr. Fairford, are not over and above lawful, and the town
clerk thinks that they may be lawfully removed VIA FACTI--but that is by
the by. But, sir, the creatures were a’ dismissed for want of evidence;
the Quaker would not swear to them, and what could the sheriff and me
do but just let them loose? Come awa, cheer up, Master Alan, and take a
walk till dinner-time--I must really go to the council.’
‘Stop a moment, provost,’ said Alan; ‘I lodge a complaint before you as
a magistrate, and you will find it serious to slight it over. You must
have these men apprehended again.’
‘Aye, aye--easy said; but catch them that can,’ answered the provost;
‘they are ower the march by this time, or by the point of Cairn.--Lord
help ye! they are a kind of amphibious deevils, neither land nor water
beasts neither English nor Scots--neither county nor stewartry, as we
say--they are dispersed like so much quicksilver. You may as well try to
whistle a sealgh out of the Solway, as to get hold of one of them till
all the fray is over.’
‘Mr. Crosbie, this will not do,’ answered the young counsellor; ‘there
is a person of more importance than such wretches as you describe
concerned in this unhappy business--I must name to you a certain Mr.
Herries.’
He kept his eye on the provost as he uttered the name, which he did
rather at a venture, and from the connexion which that gentleman, and
his real or supposed niece, seemed to have with the fate of Darsie
Latimer, than from any distinct cause of suspicion which he entertained.
He thought the provost seemed embarrassed, though he showed much desire
to assume an appearance of indifference, in which he partly succeeded.
‘Herries!’ he said--‘What Herries?--There are many of that name--not
so many as formerly, for the old stocks are wearing out; but there is
Herries of Heathgill, and Herries of Auchintulloch, and Herries’--
‘To save you further trouble, this person’s designation is Herries of
Birrenswork.’
‘Of Birrenswork?’ said Mr. Crosbie; ‘I have you now, Mr. Alan. Could you
not as well have said, the Laird of Redgauntlet?’
Fairford was too wary to testify any surprise at this identification of
names, however unexpected. ‘I thought,’ said he, ‘he was more generally
known by the name of Herries. I have seen and been in company with him
under that name, I am sure.’
‘Oh aye; in Edinburgh, belike. You know Redgauntlet was unfortunate a
great while ago, and though he was maybe not deeper in the mire than
other folk, yet, for some reason or other, he did not get so easily
out.’
‘He was attainted, I understand; and has no remission,’ said Fairford.
The cautious provost only nodded, and said, ‘You may guess, therefore,
why it is so convenient he should hold his mother’s name, which is also
partly his own, when he is about Edinburgh. To bear his proper name
might be accounted a kind of flying in the face of government, ye
understand. But he has been long connived at--the story is an old
story--and the gentleman has many excellent qualities, and is of a very
ancient and honourable house--has cousins among the great folk--counts
kin with the advocate and with the sheriff--hawks, you know, Mr. Alan,
will not pike out hawks’ een--he is widely connected--my wife is a
fourth cousin of Redgauntlet’s.’
HINC ILLAE LACHRYMAE! thought Alan Fairford to himself; but the hint
presently determined him to proceed by soft means and with caution. ‘I
beg you to understand,’ said Fairford, ‘that in the investigation I am
about to make, I design no harm to Mr. Herries, or Redgauntlet--call him
what you will. All I wish is, to ascertain the safety of my friend. I
know that he was rather foolish in once going upon a mere frolic, in
disguise, to the neighbourhood of this same gentleman’s house. In his
circumstances, Mr. Redgauntlet may have misinterpreted the motives, and
considered Darsie Latimer as a spy. His influence, I believe, is great
among the disorderly people you spoke of but now?’
The provost answered with another sagacious shake of his head, that
would have done honour to Lord Burleigh in the CRITIC.
‘Well, then,’ continued Fairford,’ is it not possible that, in the
mistaken belief that Mr. Latimer was a spy, he may, upon such suspicion,
have caused him to be carried off and confined somewhere? Such things
are done at elections, and on occasions less pressing than when men
think their lives are in danger from an informer.’
‘Mr. Fairford,’ said the provost, very earnestly, ‘I scarce think such
a mistake possible; or if, by any extraordinary chance, it should have
taken place, Redgauntlet, whom I cannot but know well, being as I have
said my wife’s first cousin (fourth cousin, I should say) is altogether
incapable of doing anything harsh to the young gentleman--he might send
him ower to Ailsay for a night or two, or maybe land him on the north
coast of Ireland, or in Islay, or some of the Hebrides; but depend upon
it, he is incapable of harming a hair of his head.’
‘I am determined not to trust to that, provost,’ answered Fairford
firmly; ‘and I am a good deal surprised at your way of talking so
lightly of such an aggression on the liberty of the subject. You are
to consider, and Mr. Herries or Mr. Redgauntlet’s friends would do very
well also to consider, how it would sound in the ears of an English
Secretary of State, that an attainted traitor (for such is this
gentleman) has not only ventured to take up his abode in this
realm--against the king of which he has been in arms--but is suspected
of having proceeded, by open force and violence, against the person
of one of the lieges, a young man who is neither without friends nor
property to secure his being righted.’
The provost looked at the young counsellor with a face in which
distrust, alarm, and vexation seemed mingled. ‘A fashious job,’ he said
at last, ‘a fashious job; and it will be dangerous meddling with it.
I should like ill to see your father’s son turn informer against an
unfortunate gentleman.’
‘Neither do I mean it,’ answered Alan, ‘provided that unfortunate
gentleman and his friends give me a quiet opportunity of securing my
friend’s safety. If I could speak with Mr. Redgauntlet, and hear his own
explanation, I should probably be satisfied. If I am forced, to denounce
him to government, it will be in his new capacity of a kidnapper. I may
not be able, nor is it my business, to prevent his being recognized in
his former character of an attainted person, excepted from the general
pardon.’
‘Master Fairford,’ said the provost, ‘would ye ruin the poor innocent
gentleman on an idle suspicion?’
‘Say no more of it, Mr. Crosbie; my line of conduct is
determined--unless that suspicion is removed.’
‘Weel, sir,’ said the provost, ‘since so it be, and since you say that
you do not seek to harm Redgauntlet personally, I’ll ask a man to dine
with us to-day that kens as much about his matters as most folk. You
must think, Mr. Alan Fairford, though Redgauntlet be my wife’s near
relative, and though, doubtless, I wish him weel, yet I am not the
person who is like to be intrusted with his incomings and outgoings. I
am not a man for that--I keep the kirk, and I abhor Popery--I have stood
up for the House of Hanover, and for liberty and property--I carried
arms, sir, against the Pretender, when three of the Highlandmen’s
baggage-carts were stopped at Ecclefechan; and I had an especial loss of
a hundred pounds’--
‘Scots,’ interrupted Fairford. ‘You forget you told me all this before.’
‘Scots or English, it was too much for me to lose,’ said the provost;
so you see I am not a person to pack or peel with Jacobites, and such
unfreemen as poor Redgauntlet.’
‘Granted, granted, Mr. Crosbie; and what then?’ said Alan Fairford.
‘Why, then, it follows, that if I am to help you at this pinch, if
cannot be by and through my ain personal knowledge, but through some
fitting agent or third person.’
‘Granted again,’ said Fairford. ‘And pray who may this third person be?’
‘Wha but Pate Maxwell of Summertrees--him they call Pate-in-Peril.’
‘An old Forty-five man, of course?’ said Fairford.
‘Ye may swear that,’ replied the provost--‘as black a Jacobite as the
auld leaven can make him; but a sonsy, merry companion, that none of us
think it worth while to break wi’ for all his brags and his clavers.
You would have thought, if he had had but his own way at Derby, he would
have marched Charlie Stuart through between Wade and the Duke, as a
thread goes through the needle’s ee, and seated him in Saint James’s
before you could have said haud your hand. But though he is a windy body
when he gets on his auld-warld stories, he has mair gumption in him than
most people--knows business, Mr. Alan, being bred to the law; but never
took the gown, because of the oaths, which kept more folk out then than
they do now--the more’s the pity.’
‘What! are you sorry, provost, that Jacobitism is upon the decline?’
said Fairford.
‘No, no,’ answered the provost--‘I am only sorry for folks losing the
tenderness of conscience which they used to have. I have a son breeding
to the bar, Mr. Fairford; and, no doubt, considering my services and
sufferings, I might have looked for some bit postie to him; but if the
muckle tykes come in--I mean a’ these Maxwells, and Johnstones, and
great lairds, that the oaths used to keep out lang syne--the bits o’
messan doggies, like my son, and maybe like your father’s son, Mr. Alan,
will be sair put to the wall.’
‘But to return to the subject, Mr. Crosbie,’ said Fairford, ‘do you
really think it likely that this Mr. Maxwell will be of service in this
matter?’
‘It’s very like he may be, for he is the tongue of the trump to the
whole squad of them,’ said the provost; ‘and Redgauntlet, though he will
not stick at times to call him a fool, takes more of his counsel than
any man’s else that I am aware of. If Fate can bring him to a communing,
the business is done. He’s a sharp chield, Pate-in-Peril.’
‘Pate-in-Peril!’ repeated Alan; ‘a very singular name.’
‘Aye, and it was in as queer a way he got it; but I’ll say naething
about that,’ said the provost, ‘for fear of forestalling his market;
for ye are sure to hear it once at least, however oftener, before the
punch-bowl gives place to the teapot.--And now, fare ye weel; for there
is the council-bell clinking in earnest; and if I am not there before it
jows in, Bailie Laurie will be trying some of his manoeuvres.’
The provost, repeating his expectation of seeing Mr. Fairford at two
o’clock, at length effected his escape from the young counsellor, and
left him at a considerable loss how to proceed. The sheriff, it seems,
had returned to Edinburgh, and he feared to find the visible repugnance
of the provost to interfere with this Laird of Birrenswork, or
Redgauntlet, much stronger amongst the country gentlemen, many of
whom were Catholics as well as Jacobites, and most others unwilling to
quarrel with kinsmen and friends, by prosecuting with severity political
offences which had almost run a prescription.
To collect all the information in his power, and not to have recourse
to the higher authorities until he could give all the light of which
the case was capable, seemed the wiser proceeding in a choice of
difficulties. He had some conversation with the procurator-fiscal, who,
as well as the provost, was an old correspondent of his father. Alan
expressed to that officer a purpose of visiting Brokenburn, but was
assured by him, that it would be a step attended with much danger to his
own person, and altogether fruitless; that the individuals who had
been ringleaders in the riot were long since safely sheltered in their
various lurking-holes in the Isle of Man, Cumberland, and elsewhere; and
that those who might remain would undoubtedly commit violence on any
who visited their settlement with the purpose of inquiring into the late
disturbances.
There were not the same objections to his hastening to Mount Sharon,
where he expected to find the latest news of his friend; and there
was time enough to do so, before the hour appointed for the provost’s
dinner. Upon the road, he congratulated himself on having obtained one
point of almost certain information. The person who had in a manner
forced himself upon his father’s hospitality, and had appeared desirous
to induce Darsie Latimer to visit England, against whom, too, a sort of
warning had been received from an individual connected with and residing
in his own family, proved to be a promoter of the disturbance in which
Darsie had disappeared.
What could be the cause of such an attempt on the liberty of an
inoffensive and amiable man? It was impossible it could be merely owing
to Redgauntlet’s mistaking Darsie for a spy; for though that was the
solution which Fairford had offered to the provost, he well knew that,
in point of fact, he himself had been warned by his singular visitor of
some danger to which his friend was exposed, before such suspicion could
have been entertained; and the injunctions received by Latimer from his
guardian, or him who acted as such, Mr. Griffiths of London, pointed to
the same thing. He was rather glad, however, that he had not let Provost
Crosbie into his secret further than was absolutely necessary; since it
was plain that the connexion of his wife with the suspected party was
likely to affect his impartiality as a magistrate.
When Alan Fairford arrived at Mount Sharon, Rachel Geddes hastened to
meet him, almost before the servant could open the door. She drew back
in disappointment when she beheld a stranger, and said, to excuse her
precipitation, that ‘she had thought it was her brother Joshua returned
from Cumberland.’
‘Mr. Geddes is then absent from home?’ said Fairford, much disappointed
in his turn.
‘He hath been gone since yesterday, friend,’ answered Rachel, once more
composed to the quietude which characterizes her sect, but her pale
cheek and red eye giving contradiction to her assumed equanimity.
‘I am,’ said Fairford, hastily, ‘the particular friend of a young man
not unknown to you, Miss Geddes--the friend of Darsie Latimer--and
am come hither in the utmost anxiety, having understood from Provost
Crosbie, that he had disappeared in the night when a destructive attack
was made upon the fishing-station of Mr. Geddes.’
‘Thou dost afflict me, friend, by thy inquiries,’ said Rachel, more
affected than before; ‘for although the youth was like those of the
worldly generation, wise in his own conceit, and lightly to be moved by
the breath of vanity, yet Joshua loved him, and his heart clave to him
as if he had been his own son. And when he himself escaped from the sons
of Belial, which was not until they had tired themselves with reviling,
and with idle reproach, and the jests of the scoffer, Joshua, my
brother, returned to them once and again, to give ransom for the
youth called Darsie Latimer, with offers of money and with promise of
remission, but they would not hearken to him. Also, he went before the
head judge, whom men call the sheriff, and would have told him of the
youth’s peril; but he would in no way hearken to him unless he would
swear unto the truth of his words, which thing he might not do without
sin, seeing it is written, Swear not at all--also, that our conversation
shall be yea or nay. Therefore, Joshua returned to me disconsolate,
and said, “Sister Rachel, this youth hath run into peril for my sake;
assuredly I shall not be guiltless if a hair of his head be harmed,
seeing I have sinned in permitting him to go with me to the fishing
station when such evil was to be feared. Therefore, I will take my
horse, even Solomon, and ride swiftly into Cumberland, and I will make
myself friends with Mammon of Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of
the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that
Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of
half my substance.” And I said, “Nay, my brother, go not, for they
will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the
scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall
free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy
soul shall be guiltless of evil towards the lad.” But he answered and
said, “I will not be controlled in this matter.” And he is gone forth
and hath not returned, and I fear me that he may never return; for
though he be peaceful, as becometh one who holds all violence as offence
against his own soul, yet neither the floods of water, nor the fear of
the snare, nor the drawn sword of the adversary brandished in the path,
will overcome his purpose. Wherefore the Solway may swallow him up, or
the sword of the enemy may devour him--nevertheless, my hope is better
in Him who directeth all things, and ruleth over the waves of the sea,
and overruleth the devices of the wicked, and who can redeem us even as
a bird from the fowler’s net.’
This was all that Fairford could learn from Miss Geddes; but he heard
with pleasure that the good Quaker, her brother, had many friends among
those of his own profession in Cumberland, and without exposing himself
to so much danger as his sister seemed to apprehend, he trusted he might
be able to discover some traces of Darsie Latimer. He himself rode back
to Dumfries, having left with Miss Geddes his direction in that
place, and an earnest request that she would forward thither whatever
information she might obtain from her brother.
On Fairford’s return to Dumfries, he employed the brief interval which
remained before dinner-time, in writing an account of what had befallen
Latimer and of the present uncertainty of his condition, to Mr. Samuel
Griffiths, through whose hands the remittances for his friend’s service
had been regularly made, desiring he would instantly acquaint him with
such parts of his history as might direct him in the search which he
was about to institute through the border counties, and which he pledged
himself not; to give up until he had obtained news of his friend, alive
or dead, The young lawyer’s mind felt easier when he had dispatched this
letter. He could not conceive any reason why his friend’s life should be
aimed at; he knew Darsie had done nothing by which his liberty could
be legally affected; and although, even of late years, there had been
singular histories of men, and women also, who had been trepanned,
and concealed in solitudes and distant islands in order to serve some
temporary purpose, such violences had been chiefly practised by the rich
on the poor, and by the strong on the feeble; whereas, in the present
case, this Mr. Herries, or Redgauntlet, being amenable, for more reasons
than one, to the censure of the law, must be the weakest in any struggle
in which it could be appealed to. It is true, that his friendly anxiety
whispered that the very cause which rendered this oppressor less
formidable, might make him more desperate. Still, recalling his
language, so strikingly that of the gentleman, and even of the man
of honour, Alan Fairford concluded, that though, in his feudal pride,
Redgauntlet might venture on the deeds of violence exercised by the
aristocracy in other times, he could not be capable of any action of
deliberate atrocity. And in these convictions he went to dine with
Provost Crosbie, with a heart more at ease than might have been
expected. [See Note 7.]