If thou hast any love of mercy in thee,
Turn me upon my face that I may die.
JOANNA BALLIE.
Our traveller hired a post-chaise at the place where he separated from
Dinmont, with the purpose of proceeding to Kippletringan, there to
inquire into the state of the family at Woodbourne, before he should
venture to make his presence in the country known to Miss Mannering.
The stage was a long one of eighteen or twenty miles, and the road lay
across the country. To add to the inconveniences of the journey, the
snow began to fall pretty quickly. The postilion, however, proceeded on
his journey for a good many miles without expressing doubt or
hesitation. It was not until the night was completely set in that he
intimated his apprehensions whether he was in the right road. The
increasing snow rendered this intimation rather alarming, for, as it
drove full in the lad's face and lay whitening all around him, it
served in two different ways to confuse his knowledge of the country,
and to diminish the chance of his recovering the right track. Brown
then himself got out and looked round, not, it may be well imagined,
from any better hope than that of seeing some house at which he might
make inquiry. But none appeared; he could therefore only tell the lad
to drive steadily on. The road on which they were ran through
plantations of considerable extent and depth, and the traveller
therefore conjectured that there must be a gentleman's house at no
great distance. At length, after struggling wearily on for about a
mile, the post-boy stopped, and protested his horses would not budge a
foot farther; 'but he saw,' he said, 'a light among the trees, which
must proceed from a house; the only way was to inquire the road there.'
Accordingly, he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat
and a pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the
seven-fold shield of Ajax. As in this guise he was plodding forth upon
his voyage of discovery, Brown's impatience prevailed, and, jumping out
of the carriage, he desired the lad to stop where he was by the horses,
and he would himself go to the house; a command which the driver most
joyfully obeyed.
Our traveller groped along the side of the inclosure from which the
light glimmered, in order to find some mode of approaching in that
direction, and, after proceeding for some space, at length found a
stile in the hedge, and a pathway leading into the plantation, which in
that place was of great extent. This promised to lead to the light
which was the object of his search, and accordingly Brown proceeded in
that direction, but soon totally lost sight of it among the trees. The
path, which at first seemed broad and well marked by the opening of the
wood through which it winded, was now less easily distinguishable,
although the whiteness of the snow afforded some reflected light to
assist his search. Directing himself as much as possible through the
more open parts of the wood, he proceeded almost a mile without either
recovering a view of the light or seeing anything resembling a
habitation. Still, however, he thought it best to persevere in that
direction. It must surely have been a light in the hut of a forester,
for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of an ignis fatuus. The
ground at length became broken and declined rapidly, and, although
Brown conceived he still moved along what had once at least been a
pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow concealing those
breaches and inequalities, the traveller had one or two falls in
consequence. He began now to think of turning back, especially as the
falling snow, which his impatience had hitherto prevented his attending
to, was coming on thicker and faster.
Willing, however, to make a last effort, he still advanced a little
way, when to his great delight he beheld the light opposite at no great
distance, and apparently upon a level with him. He quickly found that
this last appearance was deception, for the ground continued so rapidly
to sink as made it obvious there was a deep dell, or ravine of some
kind, between him and the object of his search. Taking every precaution
to preserve his footing, he continued to descend until he reached the
bottom of a very steep and narrow glen, through which winded a small
rivulet, whose course was then almost choked with snow. He now found
himself embarrassed among the ruins of cottages, whose black gables,
rendered more distinguishable by the contrast with the whitened surface
from which they rose, were still standing; the side-walls had long
since given way to time, and, piled in shapeless heaps and covered with
snow, offered frequent and embarrassing obstacles to our traveller's
progress. Still, however, he persevered, crossed the rivulet, not
without some trouble, and at length, by exertions which became both
painful and perilous, ascended its opposite and very rugged bank, until
he came on a level with the building from which the gleam proceeded.
It was difficult, especially by so imperfect a light, to discover the
nature of this edifice; but it seemed a square building of small size,
the upper part of which was totally ruinous. It had, perhaps, been the
abode in former times of some lesser proprietor, or a place of strength
and concealment, in case of need, for one of greater importance. But
only the lower vault remained, the arch of which formed the roof in the
present state of the building. Brown first approached the place from
whence the light proceeded, which was a long narrow slit or loop-hole,
such as usually are to be found in old castles. Impelled by curiosity
to reconnoitre the interior of this strange place before he entered,
Brown gazed in at this aperture. A scene of greater desolation could
not well be imagined. There was a fire upon the floor, the smoke of
which, after circling through the apartment, escaped by a hole broken
in the arch above. The walls, seen by this smoky light, had the rude
and waste appearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A cask
or two, with some broken boxes and packages, lay about the place in
confusion. But the inmates chiefly occupied Brown's attention. Upon a
lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure,
so still that, except that it was not dressed in the ordinary
habiliments of the grave, Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse.
On a steadier view he perceived it was only on the point of becoming
so, for he heard one or two of those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs
that precede dissolution when the frame is tenacious of life. A female
figure, dressed in a long cloak, sate on a stone by this miserable
couch; her elbows rested upon her knees, and her face, averted from the
light of an iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying
person. She moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and
between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those prayers,
or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and the north of
England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed the passage of a
parting spirit, like the tolling of the bell in Catholic days. She
accompanied this dismal sound with a slow rocking motion of her body to
and fro, as if to keep time with her song. The words ran nearly thus:--
Wasted, weary, wherefore stay,
Wrestling thus with earth and clay?
From the body pass away.
Hark! the mass is singing.
From thee doff thy mortal weed,
Mary Mother be thy speed,
Saints to help thee at thy need.
Hark! the knell is ringing.
Fear not snow-drift driving fast,
Sleet, or hail, or levin blast.
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast
That shall ne'er know waking.
Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone,
Earth flits fast, and time draws on.
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,
Day is near the breaking.
The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and hollow
groans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the mortal
strife. 'It will not be,' she muttered to herself; 'he cannot pass away
with that on his mind, it tethers him here--
Heaven cannot abide it,
Earth refuses to hide it. [Footnote: See Note 6.]
I must open the door'; and, rising, she faced towards the door of the
apartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and,
withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable
appearance of the place, the door was cautiously secured), she lifted
the latch, saying,
Open lock, end strife,
Come death, and pass life.
Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her as
she opened the door. She stepped back a pace, and he entered, instantly
recognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the same gipsy woman
whom he had met in Bewcastle. She also knew him at once, and her
attitude, figure, and the anxiety of her countenance, assumed the
appearance of the well-disposed ogress of a fairy tale, warning a
stranger not to enter the dangerous castle of her husband. The first
words she spoke (holding up her hands in a reproving manner) were,
'Said I not to ye, Make not, meddle not? Beware of the redding straik!
[Footnote: The redding straik, namely, a blow received by a peacemaker
who interferes betwixt two combatants, to red or separate them, is
proverbially said to be the most dangerous blow a man can receive.] You
are come to no house o' fair-strae death.' So saying, she raised the
lamp and turned its light on the dying man, whose rude and harsh
features were now convulsed with the last agony. A roll of linen about
his head was stained with blood, which had soaked also through the
blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under no natural disease that
the wretch was suffering. Brown started back from this horrible object,
and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, 'Wretched woman, who has done
this?'
'They that were permitted,' answered Meg Merrilies, while she scanned
with a close and keen glance the features of the expiring man. 'He has
had a sair struggle; but it's passing. I kenn'd he would pass when you
came in. That was the death-ruckle; he's dead.'
Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices. 'They are coming,'
said she to Brown; 'you are a dead man if ye had as mony lives as
hairs.' Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of defence. There
was none near. He then rushed to the door with the intention of
plunging among the trees, and making his escape by flight from what he
now esteemed a den of murderers, but Merrilies held him with a
masculine grasp. 'Here,' she said, 'here, be still and you are safe;
stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing shall befall you.'
Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman's
intimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but in
obeying her. She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw on
the opposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him
carefully, and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay about
the place. Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown arranged as
softly as he could the means of peeping from under the coverings by
which he was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of
this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the
meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and
straighting the arms by its side. 'Best to do this,' she muttered, 'ere
he stiffen.' She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt
sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet
of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited
the approach of those whose voices had been heard without.
Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at
this moment his fears mastered his courage so completely that the cold
drops burst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his
miserable concealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight
murder, without weapons or the slightest means of defence, except
entreaties, which would be only their sport, and cries for help, which
could never reach other ear than their own; his safety entrusted to the
precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and
whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against
every human feeling--the bitterness of his emotions almost choked him.
He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the
lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those
feelings of compassion which females, even in their most degraded
state, can seldom altogether smother. There was no such touch of
humanity about this woman. The interest, whatever it was, that
determined her in his favour arose not from the impulse of compassion,
but from some internal, and probably capricious, association of
feelings, to which he had no clue. It rested, perhaps, on a fancied
likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her father in the sleeping
monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapid succession
through Brown's mind as he gazed from his hiding-place upon this
extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, and he
was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting an
escape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, which
had consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room for
resistance nor flight.
Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to every
sound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to the
dead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position.
'He's a bonny corpse,' she muttered to herself, 'and weel worth the
streaking.' And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort
of professional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutise, as if
with the skill and feelings of a connoisseur. A long, dark-coloured
sea-cloak, which she dragged out of a corner, was disposed for a pall.
The face she left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged
the capes of the cloak so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the
body, as she muttered, 'a mair decent appearance.'
At once three or four men, equally ruffians in appearance and dress,
rushed into the hut. 'Meg, ye limb of Satan, how dare you leave the
door open?' was the first salutation of the party.
'And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in the
dead-thraw? how d'ye think the spirit was to get awa through bolts and
bars like thae?'
'Is he dead, then?' said one who went to the side of the couch to look
at the body.
'Ay, ay, dead enough,' said another; 'but here's what shall give him a
rousing lykewake.' So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a
corner, while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the
activity with which she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope
of her fidelity towards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to
engage the ruffians in their debauch, to prevent the discovery which
might take place if by accident any of them should approach too nearly
the place of Brown's concealment.