A man that apprehends death to be no more dreadful but as a
drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what's
past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and
desperately mortal.
--Measure for Measure.
Glossin had made careful minutes of the information derived from these
examinations. They threw little light upon the story, so far as he
understood its purport; but the better-informed reader has received
through means of this investigation an account of Brown's proceedings,
between the moment when we left him upon his walk to Kippletringan and
the time when, stung by jealousy, he so rashly and unhappily presented
himself before Julia Mannering, and well-nigh brought to a fatal
termination the quarrel which his appearance occasioned.
Glossin rode slowly back to Ellangowan, pondering on what he had heard,
and more and more convinced that the active and successful prosecution
of this mysterious business was an opportunity of ingratiating himself
with Hazlewood and Mannering to be on no account neglected. Perhaps,
also, he felt his professional acuteness interested in bringing it to a
successful close. It was, therefore, with great pleasure that, on his
return to his house from Kippletringan, he heard his servants announce
hastily, 'that Mac-Guffog, the thief-taker, and twa or three
concurrents, had a man in hands in the kitchen waiting for his honour.'
He instantly jumped from horseback, and hastened into the house. 'Send
my clerk here directly, ye'll find him copying the survey of the estate
in the little green parlour. Set things to rights in my study, and
wheel the great leathern chair up to the writing-table; set a stool for
Mr. Scrow. Scrow (to the clerk, as he entered the presence-chamber),
hand down Sir George Mackenzie "On Crimes"; open it at the section "Vis
Publica et Privata," and fold down a leaf at the passage "anent the
bearing of unlawful weapons." Now lend me a hand off with my
muckle-coat, and hang it up in the lobby, and bid them bring up the
prisoner; I trow I'll sort him; but stay, first send up Mac-Guffog.
Now, Mac-Guffog, where did ye find this chield?'
Mac-Guffog, a stout, bandy-legged fellow, with a neck like a bull, a
face like a firebrand, and a most portentous squint of the left eye,
began, after various contortions by way of courtesy to the Justice, to
tell his story, eking it out by sundry sly nods and knowing winks,
which appeared to bespeak an intimate correspondence of ideas between
the narrator and his principal auditor. 'Your honour sees I went down
to yon place that your honour spoke o', that's kept by her that your
honour kens o', by the sea-side. So says she, "What are you wanting
here? ye'll be come wi' a broom in your pocket frae Ellangowan?"--So
says I, "Deil a broom will come frae there awa, for ye ken," says I,
"his honour Ellangowan himsell in former times--"'
'Well, well,' said Glossin, 'no occasion to be particular, tell the
essentials.'
'Weel, so we sat niffering about some brandy that I said I wanted, till
he came in.'
'Who?'
'He!' pointing with his thumb inverted to the kitchen, where the
prisoner was in custody. 'So he had his griego wrapped close round him,
and I judged he was not dry-handed; so I thought it was best to speak
proper, and so he believed I was a Manks man, and I kept ay between him
and her, for fear she had whistled. And then we began to drink about,
and then I betted he would not drink out a quartern of Hollands without
drawing breath, and then he tried it, and just then Slounging Jock and
Dick Spur'em came in, and we clinked the darbies on him, took him as
quiet as a lamb; and now he's had his bit sleep out, and is as fresh as
a May gowan, to answer what your honour likes to speir.' This
narrative, delivered with a wonderful quantity of gesture and grimace,
received at the conclusion the thanks and praises which the narrator
expected.
'Had he no arms?' asked the Justice.
'Ay, ay, they are never without barkers and slashers.'
'Any papers?'
'This bundle,' delivering a dirty pocket-book.
'Go downstairs then, Mac-Guffog, and be in waiting.' The officer left
the room.
The clink of irons was immediately afterwards heard upon the stair, and
in two or three minutes a man was introduced, handcuffed and fettered.
He was thick, brawny, and muscular, and although his shagged and
grizzled hair marked an age somewhat advanced, and his stature was
rather low, he appeared, nevertheless, a person whom few would have
chosen to cope with in personal conflict. His coarse and savage
features were still flushed, and his eye still reeled under the
influence of the strong potation which had proved the immediate cause
of his seizure. But the sleep, though short, which Mac-Guffog had
allowed him, and still more a sense of the peril of his situation, had
restored to him the full use of his faculties. The worthy judge and the
no less estimable captive looked at each other steadily for a long time
without speaking. Glossin apparently recognised his prisoner, but
seemed at a loss how to proceed with his investigation. At length he
broke silence.--'Soh, Captain, this is you? you have been a stranger on
this coast for some years.'
'Stranger?' replied the other. 'Strange enough, I think; for hold me
der deyvil, if I been ever here before.'
'That won't pass, Mr. Captain.'
'That MUST pass, Mr. Justice, sapperment!'
'And who will you be pleased to call yourself, then, for the present,'
said Glossin, 'just until I shall bring some other folks to refresh
your memory concerning who you are, or at least who you have been?'
'What bin I? donner and blitzen! I bin Jans Jansen, from Cuxhaven; what
sall Ich bin?'
Glossin took from a case which was in the apartment a pair of small
pocket pistols, which he loaded with ostentatious care. 'You may
retire,' said he to his clerk, 'and carry the people with you, Scrow;
but wait in the lobby within call.'
The clerk would have offered some remonstrances to his patron on the
danger of remaining alone with such a desperate character, although
ironed beyond the possibility of active exertion, but Glossin waved him
off impatiently. When he had left the room the Justice took two short
turns through the apartment, then drew his chair opposite to the
prisoner, so as to confront him fully, placed the pistols before him in
readiness, and said in a steady voice, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick of
Flushing, are you not?'
The prisoner turned his eye instinctively to the door, as if he
apprehended some one was listening. Glossin rose, opened the door, so
that from the chair in which his prisoner sate he might satisfy himself
there was no eavesdropper within hearing, then shut it, resumed his
seat, and repeated his question, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick, formerly of
the Yungfrauw Haagenslaapen, are you not?'
'Tousand deyvils! and if you know that, why ask me?' said the prisoner.
'Because I am surprised to see you in the very last place where you
ought to be, if you regard your safety,' observed Glossin, coolly.
'Der deyvil! no man regards his own safety that speaks so to me!'
'What? unarmed, and in irons! well said, Captain!' replied Glossin,
ironically. 'But, Captain, bullying won't do; you'll hardly get out of
this country without accounting for a little accident that happened at
Warroch Point a few years ago.'
Hatteraick's looks grew black as midnight.
'For my part,' continued Glossin, 'I have no particular wish to be hard
upon an old acquaintance; but I must do my duty. I shall send you off
to Edinburgh in a post-chaise and four this very day.'
'Poz donner! you would not do that?' said Hatteraick, in a lower and
more humbled tone; 'why, you had the matter of half a cargo in bills on
Vanbeest and Vanbruggen.'
'It is so long since, Captain Hatteraick,' answered Glossin,
superciliously, 'that I really forget how I was recompensed for my
trouble.'
'Your trouble? your silence, you mean.'
'It was an affair in the course of business,' said Glossin, 'and I have
retired from business for some time.'
'Ay, but I have a notion that I could make you go steady about and try
the old course again,' answered Dirk Hatteraick. 'Why, man, hold me der
deyvil, but I meant to visit you and tell you something that concerns
you.'
'Of the boy?' said Glossin, eagerly.
'Yaw, Mynheer,' replied the Captain, coolly.
'He does not live, does he?'
'As lifelich as you or I,' said Hatteraick.
'Good God! But in India?' exclaimed Glossin.
'No, tousand deyvils, here! on this dirty coast of yours,' rejoined the
prisoner.
'But, Hatteraick, this,--that is, if it be true, which I do not
believe,--this will ruin us both, for he cannot but remember your neat
job; and for me, it will be productive of the worst consequences! It
will ruin us both, I tell you.'
'I tell you,' said the seaman, 'it will ruin none but you; for I am
done up already, and if I must strap for it, all shall out.'
'Zounds,' said the Justice impatiently, 'what brought you back to this
coast like a madman?'
'Why, all the gelt was gone, and the house was shaking, and I thought
the job was clayed over and forgotten,' answered the worthy skipper.
'Stay; what can be done?' said Glossin, anxiously. 'I dare not
discharge you; but might you not be rescued in the way? Ay sure! a word
to Lieutenant Brown, and I would send the people with you by the
coast-road.'
'No, no! that won't do. Brown's dead, shot, laid in the locker, man;
the devil has the picking of him.
'Dead? shot? At Woodbourne, I suppose?' replied Glossin.
'Yaw, Mynheer.'
Glossin paused; the sweat broke upon his brow with the agony of his
feelings, while the hard-featured miscreant who sat opposite coolly
rolled his tobacco in his cheek and squirted the juice into the
fire-grate. 'It would be ruin,' said Glossin to himself, 'absolute
ruin, if the heir should reappear; and then what might be the
consequence of conniving with these men? Yet there is so little time to
take measures. Hark you, Hatteraick; I can't set you at liberty; but I
can put you where you may set yourself at liberty, I always like to
assist an old friend. I shall confine you in the old castle for
to-night, and give these people double allowance of grog. MacGuffog
will fall in the trap in which he caught you. The stancheons on the
window of the strong room, as they call it, are wasted to pieces, and
it is not above twelve feet from the level of the ground without, and
the snow lies thick.'
'But the darbies,' said Hatteraick, looking upon his fetters.
'Hark ye,' said Glossin, going to a tool chest, and taking out a small
file,'there's a friend for you, and you know the road to the sea by the
stairs.' Hatteraick shook his chains in ecstasy, as if he were already
at liberty, and strove to extend his fettered hand towards his
protector. Glossin laid his finger upon his lips with a cautious glance
at the door, and then proceeded in his instructions. 'When you escape,
you had better go to the Kaim of Derncleugh.'
'Donner! that howff is blown.'
'The devil! well, then, you may steal my skiff that lies on the beach
there, and away. But you must remain snug at the Point of Warroch till
I come to see you.'
'The Point of Warroch?' said Hatteraick, his countenance again falling;
'what, in the cave, I suppose? I would rather it were anywhere else; es
spuckt da: they say for certain that he walks. But, donner and blitzen!
I never shunned him alive, and I won't shun him dead. Strafe mich
helle! it shall never be said Dirk Hatteraick feared either dog or
devil! So I am to wait there till I see you?'
'Ay, ay,' answered Glossin, 'and now I must call in the men.' He did so
accordingly.
'I can make nothing of Captain Jansen, as he calls himself, Mac-Guffog,
and it's now too late to bundle him off to the county jail. Is there
not a strong room up yonder in the old castle?'
'Ay is there, sir; my uncle the constable ance kept a man there for
three days in auld Ellangowan's time. But there was an unco dust about
it; it was tried in the Inner House afore the Feifteen.'
'I know all that, but this person will not stay there very long; it's
only a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till farther
examination. There is a small room through which it opens; you may
light a fire for yourselves there, and I 'll send you plenty of stuff
to make you comfortable. But be sure you lock the door upon the
prisoner; and, hark ye, let him have a fire in the strong room too, the
season requires it. Perhaps he'll make a clean breast to-morrow.'
With these instructions, and with a large allowance of food and liquor,
the Justice dismissed his party to keep guard for the night in the old
castle, under the full hope and belief that they would neither spend
the night in watching nor prayer.
There was little fear that Glossin himself should that night sleep
over-sound. His situation was perilous in the extreme, for the schemes
of a life of villainy seemed at once to be crumbling around and above
him. He laid himself to rest, and tossed upon his pillow for a long
time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only to dream of his
patron, now as he had last seen him, with the paleness of death upon
his features, then again transformed into all the vigour and comeliness
of youth, approaching to expel him from the mansion-house of his
fathers. Then he dreamed that, after wandering long over a wild heath,
he came at length to an inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry;
and that when he entered the first person he met was Frank Kennedy, all
smashed and gory, as he had lain on the beach at Warroch Point, but
with a reeking punch-bowl in his hand. Then the scene changed to a
dungeon, where he heard Dirk Hatteraick, whom he imagined to be under
sentence of death, confessing his crimes to a clergyman. 'After the
bloody deed was done,' said the penitent, 'we retreated into a cave
close beside, the secret of which was known but to one man in the
country; we were debating what to do with the child, and we thought of
giving it up to the gipsies, when we heard the cries of the pursuers
hallooing to each other. One man alone came straight to our cave, and
it was that man who knew the secret; but we made him our friend at the
expense of half the value of the goods saved. By his advice we carried
off the child to Holland in our consort, which came the following night
to take us from the coast. That man was--'
'No, I deny it! it was not I!' said Glossin, in half-uttered accents;
and, struggling in his agony to express his denial more distinctly, he
awoke.
It was, however, conscience that had prepared this mental
phantasmagoria. The truth was that, knowing much better than any other
person the haunts of the smugglers, he had, while the others were
searching in different directions, gone straight to the cave, even
before he had learned the murder of Kennedy, whom he expected to find
their prisoner. He came upon them with some idea of mediation, but
found them in the midst of their guilty terrors, while the rage which
had hurried them on to murder began, with all but Hatteraick, to sink
into remorse and fear. Glossin was then indigent and greatly in debt,
but he was already possessed of Mr. Bertram's ear, and, aware of the
facility of his disposition, he saw no difficulty in enriching himself
at his expense, provided the heir-male were removed, in which case the
estate became the unlimited property of the weak and prodigal father.
Stimulated by present gain and the prospect of contingent advantage, he
accepted the bribe which the smugglers offered in their terror, and
connived at, or rather encouraged, their intention of carrying away the
child of his benefactor who, if left behind, was old enough to have
described the scene of blood which he had witnessed. The only
palliative which the ingenuity of Glossin could offer to his conscience
was, that the temptation was great, and came suddenly upon him,
embracing as it were the very advantages on which his mind had so long
rested, and promising to relieve him from distresses which must have
otherwise speedily overwhelmed him. Besides, he endeavoured to think
that self-preservation rendered his conduct necessary. He was, in some
degree, in the power of the robbers, and pleaded hard with his
conscience that, had he declined their offers, the assistance which he
could have called for, though not distant, might not have arrived in
time to save him from men who, on less provocation, had just committed
murder.
Galled with the anxious forebodings of a guilty conscience, Glossin now
arose and looked out upon the night. The scene which we have already
described in the third chapter of this story, was now covered with
snow, and the brilliant, though waste, whiteness of the land gave to
the sea by contrast a dark and livid tinge. A landscape covered with
snow, though abstractedly it may be called beautiful, has, both from
the association of cold and barrenness and from its comparative
infrequency, a wild, strange, and desolate appearance. Objects well
known to us in their common state have either disappeared, or are so
strangely varied and disguised that we seem gazing on an unknown world.
But it was not with such reflections that the mind of this bad man was
occupied. His eye was upon the gigantic and gloomy outlines of the old
castle, where, in a flanking tower of enormous size and thickness,
glimmered two lights, one from the window of the strong room, where
Hatteraick was confined, the other from that of the adjacent apartment,
occupied by his keepers. 'Has he made his escape, or will he be able to
do so? Have these men watched, who never watched before, in order to
complete my ruin? If morning finds him there, he must be committed to
prison; Mac-Morlan or some other person will take the matter up; he
will be detected, convicted, and will tell all in revenge!'
While these racking thoughts glided rapidly through Glossin's mind, he
observed one of the lights obscured, as by an opaque body placed at the
window. What a moment of interest! 'He has got clear of his irons! he
is working at the stancheons of the window! they are surely quite
decayed, they must give way. O God! they have fallen outward, I heard
them clink among the stones! the noise cannot fail to wake them. Furies
seize his Dutch awkwardness! The light burns free again; they have torn
him from the window, and are binding him in the room! No! he had only
retired an instant on the alarm of the falling bars; he is at the
window again, and the light is quite obscured now; he is getting out!'
A heavy sound, as of a body dropped from a height among the snow,
announced that Hatteraick had completed his escape, and shortly after
Glossin beheld a dark figure, like a shadow, steal along the whitened
beach and reach the spot where the skiff lay. New cause for fear! 'His
single strength will be unable to float her,' said Glossin to himself;
'I must go to the rascal's assistance. But no! he has got her off, and
now, thank God, her sail is spreading itself against the moon; ay, he
has got the breeze now; would to heaven it were a tempest, to sink him
to the bottom!'
After this last cordial wish, he continued watching the progress of the
boat as it stood away towards the Point of Warroch, until he could no
longer distinguish the dusky sail from the gloomy waves over which it
glided. Satisfied then that the immediate danger was averted, he
retired with somewhat more composure to his guilty pillow.