had been, which he never was, a thinker. All his thoughts were reduced
to a continued wild succession of burning images,--the mild face of his
mother, so far away, as it smiled upon him when he ran about among the
cane groves of the west; the negroes, with their "young massa" on their
tongues, jabbering their affection; his father scowling upon him as
undutiful; another, not so far away, in whose eyes--beautiful to
him--love dwelt as his worshipper, looking all endearment, only the next
moment to cast upon him the withering glance of her contempt, if not
hatred; admirers, toadies, satellites, and sycophants, all there in
groups and in succession, beslabbering him with praises, then exploding
in peals of laughter. Nor was another awanting in these saturnalia--the
form and face of her whose one word of sentence had been to him as a
doom, and who fixed that doom in his soul by her red glance of reproof.
Seemingly very indifferent objects assumed in the new lights of his
spirit gigantic and affraying features,--the sea-gull, with its torn
back, bleeding and quivering, and those diamond eyes so bright even in
its looks of agony--an object low indeed in the scale of nature, but
here elevated by some overruling power into the very heart of man's
actions and destinies, as if to show out of what humble things the
lightnings of retribution may come. Nay, these diamond eyes haunted him;
they were everywhere in these saturnalian reveries, following every
recurring image as an inevitable concomitant which he had no power to
drive away, entering into the orbits of the personages, gleaming out of
the heads of negroes, that of his father, that of his mother, even that
of his mistress, imparting to the looks and glances of the latter a
brilliancy which enhanced beauty, while it sharpened them into
poignancy. But most of all were they in some way associated with the
form of the unknown lady. She never appeared to him as the being on whom
his destiny was suspended; but, sooner or later, her own comparatively
lustreless orbs changed into those diamonds, which could fulminate scorn
not less than they could beam out supplication.
For several days and nights he had scarcely any intervals of peace from
these soul-penetrating fancies, and these moments were due to visits.
But who came to visit? Not the writer to the signet, the brother of his
affianced, whom he had expected to see first of all as a friend, if not
as a relation, ready to extend the hand that would save him; not any of
those with whom he had shared the folly of extravagance, if not
dissipation, on whom he had lavished favours in the wildness of his
generosity. The first was felicitating himself on his sister's escape;
the latter received the lesson that teaches prudence _a la distance_.
His only visitors were one or two heads of families where he had been
received as a fashionable friend, and these came only to look and
inquire. Their curiosity was satisfied when they got out of him the
amount of his debt, and pleased when they considered that their
daughters were at home, and under no chance of becoming allied to a
prisoner. One or two old associates, too, paid their respects to him,
but they were of those who had resisted his fascinations and found their
pleasures in their studies. We seek for the virtues, but we do not
always find them in the high places, where masks, copied from them and
bearing their beautiful lineaments and their effulgence, are worn in
their stead only to cover the vices which are their very antipodes. No:
more often in lowlier regions, lying _perdu_ behind vices, not
voluntary, but often, as it were, inflicted and peering out, ashamed to
be seen, because arrayed in the rags of poverty. A solitary female
stole in to him. Who was she? One with whom he had formed a connection
of not an honourable kind, only now interrupted by the walls of the
prison? No. One whom he had long before cast off, only because the vice
he had inoculated her with had cast off the beauty that had inflamed
him. Nor did he know the meaning of that stealthy visit, which lasted
only for a few minutes--so unexpected, for he had not seen her during
many months, so singular, so unnatural, so unlike the world, returning
gratitude for injury, benediction for infamy, until, after she had
suddenly slipped away, he found by the side of the wall a small bottle
of wine. That form and face, once more beautiful in his estimation than
were those even now of his honourable affianced, entered among the
imagery of his reveries; but the diamond eyes never displaced those of
her gentle nature. He had wronged her, but they never filled with the
fire of denunciation. She had looked her grief at him only through the
tears he had raised in them, and had never attempted to dry. Yes, the
diamond eyes entered everywhere, and into every form but that one where
the red heat of revenge might have been expected to shrivel up and
harden the issues of tears.
Further on in the same evening, the jailer, a good-natured sort of
fellow, came in to him while he was absorbed in these thoughts. He was
at the time sitting on his bed.
"A lady called in the dusk," he said, "and inquired if it was true you
were here. I told her it was."
"And what more?" asked the youth, as he started out of his day-dream.
"But, stay--what like was she?"
"I could scarcely see her," replied the man; "middling tail, rather
young, as I thought--with a veil, through which I could see a pair of
pretty, bright eyes."
"Were they like diamonds?" cried the student, absolutely forgetting that
he was speaking to an ordinary mortal about very ordinary things.
"Ha, ha! I never saw diamond eyes," answered the jailer; "but I've seen
glass ones in a doll's head looking very bright. Why, you 'aven't got
mad, like some of the chicken-hearted birds in our cage?"
"Yes," cried the youth, "I'm frantic-mad; but stay, have patience. Did
she want to see me?"
"Yes, she asked if she could; but when I told her she might, she seemed
to get afeared to come into a jail, and said she would call again
to-morrow night at the same hour."
"Can you tell me nothing more of what she was like?--not she who was
here this evening?"
"Why, no; don't you think I know her kind? Oh, we see many o' them. They
stick closest to the unfortunate, but 'tis because they are unfortunate
themselves. Common thing, sir. Never feel for others till we have
something to feel for ourselves. The visitor is a lady, sir."
"Can you tell me nothing more?" said the student eagerly. "How was she
dressed?"
"A large, elegant cloak, sir; can scarcely say more."
"Was it trimmed with fur?"
"Not sure; but now, when I think, there was some lightish trimming--I
mean lighter than the cloak."
"And the bonnet?"
"Why, I think velvet; but you'll maybe see her yourself to-morrow. The
like o' her may do you good. The unfortunates who stick so close to the
unfortunate do no good--they're a plaster that don't cure."
"It is Maria!" ejaculated Dewhurst, as the jailer shut the door. "She
feels for me, and has come in spite of her hard-hearted brother. Her
diamond eyes are of another kind. They speak wealth, and love to bestow
it. Her fortune is her own, and with that I may yet turn that wayward
destiny, and laugh at my persecutors."
That ray of hope, illuminating his soul, changed almost in an instant
the whole tenor of his mind. It might be compared to a stream of nervous
energy, emanating from the brain, and shooting down through the network
of chords, confirming convulsed muscles, and; imparting to trembling
members consistency of action and graces of motion. His reveries were
scared by it, as owls under the influence of a sunbeam, and retreated
into the dark recesses from which they had been charmed by the
enchantment of despair. The personages of these visions were no longer
avengers, casting upon him the burning beams of the diamond eyes. They
were hopeful, pitiful; the flatterers and fawners were at their old work
again, and Pleasure, with her siren face, smiled blandishments on him.
Then he would justify the favours of the heaven he made for himself. He
would be a logician, for once, in that kind of dialectics called the
"wish-born."
"What was I afraid of?" he said to himself. "There is no turpitude, no
shame in a fair bet. I was worsted in an honourable contest. What crazy
power mocked me into the belief that all this that has befallen me was
connected with the flaying of a bird? Don't we break the necks of
innocent, yea, gentle fowls, not depredators like gulls, every day for
our dinners? And don't ladies, as delicate as the unknown censor who
dared to chastise me with her eyes, eat of the same, with a relish
delightful to the tongues that pronounce the fine words of pity and
philanthropy? But, even admitting there was cruelty in the act, where is
the link that binds it with the consequences which have brought me
here? The bet upon the maternity was not an effect of the flaying of the
bird. If it followed the prior bet, it would have followed another, in
which I was gainer, equally the same. The mad energy which weaves in my
head these day-dreams, and pursues me with these diamond eyes of wrath,
is a lying power, and I shall master it by the strength of my reason,
which at least is God's gift. Come, my Maria, as my good angel, and
enable me to free my mind from illusions. I will sit and look into your
eyes, as I have done so often. Yes, I will satisfy myself that they
shine still with the lustre of love, hope, and happiness; and oh, let
these, and these only, enter into my dreams."
And thus he satisfied himself, as all do, whose hope weaves the
syllogisms of their wishes, and sits to see pleasure caught on the wing.
The day passed apace to usher in the evening with its messenger of
peace. Where, in that squalid place, would he seat her, whose peculiar
province was the drawing-room? How would he receive her first look of
sympathy? how repay it? with what words express his emotions? with what
fervour kiss those lips redolent of forgiveness? with what ecstasy look
into those eyes refulgent with love? He would control himself, and be
calm. He would rehearse, that he might not fail in the forms of an
interview on which hung his destiny, almost his life. The hour of seven
arrived. He heard the heavy foot of the jailer come tramp, tramp along
the lobby. There was a softer step behind, as if the echo of the heavier
tread. A stern voice and a softer one mingled their notes. The door
opened.
"My Mar--! O God! these scornful eyes again."
"Not scornful now," replied the soft voice of a woman, as she came
forward, and stood before him in the dusk.
"Were there light enough," she continued, "I would lift my veil and
show you that they are capable of a kindlier light than even that they
now carry, for the offering I made to heaven has been more than
answered."
"Ah, you come to retract," he said, "to speak the truth at last. It is
not too late to say you _are_ the mother--the mother of the boy. Nor
need you be ashamed: there may be reasons; but many a woman lives to
repent--"
"Hold, sir," she cried with indignation, as she fixed upon him a look
even more penetrating than that he so well remembered. "I have nothing
to retract--nothing to be ashamed of. I came here out of pure sympathy,
to make amends to one who has fallen for a prayer which burst from me in
my anger. Your friend, who called for me, told me that you were a
prisoner, and that your imprisonment was the consequence of the wager
which it fell to me to decide. I did not come to repeat to you what I
said before, that I am not the mother of the boy, but to make an
explanation."
"And I have one to ask," said he.
"I am ready to answer."
"How could I be deceived?" said he. "I heard the boy address you as his
mother."
"And that is what I came to explain. I have taxed my memory since Mr.
Campbell insisted, in my presence, that Frederick did address me in the
manner you have stated. Shall I tell you the precise words he used?"
"I wait for them."
"Well, they were, 'See ma.'"
"The very words; and were they not enough for proof and belief?"
"Yes, sir; but there are words which have two significations. Ma' is
the contraction, as you know, for mamma, but it is pronounced the same
as _maw_, which is a word which we use to designate those birds
otherwise called gulls. I recollect that while I was unable to bear the
sight of the tortured bird, and had turned my head in another direction,
my nephew kept looking over the rails, and that, as he saw the
struggling creature, he cried out to me the words you misconstrued. And
thus the mystery is cleared up."
"Miserable and fatal error," he gasped out, as he staggered back. "And
the connection!--the connection! There _was_ retribution in those
diamond eyes."
"What mean you, sir?"
"The bird's eyes that haunt me in my reveries, and enter into the
sockets of my dream-beings!"
"Are you mad?"
"No; or the heavens are mad, with their swirling orbs and blazing
comets, that rush sighing through space before some terrible power that
will give them no respite, except with the condition that when they rest
they die."
"Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you."
"Ay, pity those who have no pity--those are the truly wretched; for
pity, in the world's life, is the soul of reason's action. Ah, madam, it
is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are
generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs
pity."
"But you have been punished, I admit, in a very strange and mysterious
way; for the word used by the boy was the joining link of the two
transactions, and you were led to misconstrue it--ay, and to take
advantage of your misconstruction to get the better of your friend."
"I see it all."
"But I say you have been punished," continued she, consolingly; "and I
perceive you are penitent--perhaps justice is satisfied; and when you
are liberated, you may be the better for the lesson. I shall now reverse
my prayer, and say to one I shall perhaps never see again, May God deal
mercifully by you."
And with these words, she retreated. But her prayer was never answered,
so far as man can judge of heaven's mysterious ways. The conviction
settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair
of killing a bird--which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty
exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to
be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation--which,
if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior
retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at--was the cause of all
the ills that had befallen him. The diamond eyes proved to him no fancy.
But for all this, we are afforded, by what subsequently occurred, some
means of explanation, which will be greedily laid hold of by minute
philosophers. Even then it was to have been feared that the seeds of
consumption had been deposited in favourable soil. In our difficulties
about explanations of mental phenomena, we readily flee to diseases of
the body, which, after all, only removes the mystery a step or two back
in the dark.
It remains for me to add some words of personal experience. A
considerable period after these occurrences, I had occasion--by a
connection with a medium through which Dewhurst received from his
father, whose fortunes had in the meantime failed, a petty allowance--to
be the bearer to him, now liberated, of a quarter's payment. I forget
the part of the town where I found him, but I have a distinct
remembrance of the room. It was a garret, almost entirely empty. He was
lying on a kind of bed spread upon the floor. There was a small grate,
with a handful of red cinders in it; only one chair, and a pot or pan or
two. There was a woman moving between him and the fireplace, as if she
had been preparing some warm drink or medicine of some kind for him. I
did not know then, but I knew afterwards, that that woman was she who
called upon him in prison, and deposited the small bottle of wine. Her
love for him had always overcome any of those feelings of enmity, or
something stronger, generally deemed so natural in one who has been
robbed of her dearest treasure, and ruined. She alone had indeed not
assumed the diamond eyes. The diamonds were elsewhere,--yea, in her
heart, where she nourished pity for him who had so cruelly deserted her,
and left her to a fate so common, and requiring only a hint to be
understood by those who know the nature of women. After he had got out
of prison, she sought him out, got the room for him, collected the
paltry articles, procured food for him, and continued to nurse him till
his death, with all the tenderness of a lover who had not only not been
cast off, but cherished. He betrayed the ordinary symptoms of
consumption, and the few words he muttered were those of thanks. I think
he was buried in the Canongate Churchyard.
DAVID LORIMER.
"There is a history in all men's lives."--SHAKSPEARE.
It has been often said, and, I believe, with truth, that there are few
persons, however humble in station, whose life, if it has been of any
duration, does not present some incidents of an interesting, if not
instructive, nature.
Induced by a belief in this assertion as a general truth, and yet
further by an opinion that, in my own particular case, there are
occurrences which will be considered somewhat extraordinary, I venture
to lay the following sketch of my life before the reader, in the hope
that it will not be found altogether devoid of interest.
With the earlier part of my history, which had nothing whatever
remarkable in it, I need not detain the reader further than to say that
my father was, though not a wealthy, a respectable farmer in
Lanarkshire; that he lived at----, within fourteen miles of Glasgow;
that I was well educated; and that, at the period when I take up my own
history, I was in the eighteenth year of my age.
Having given these two or three particulars, I proceed:
It was in the year 18--, and during the week of the Glasgow Fair, which
occurs in July, that my father, who had a very favourable opinion of my
intelligence and sagacity, resolved to entrust me with a certain
important mission. This was to send me to the fair of Glasgow to
purchase a good draught horse for him.
I am not sure, however, that, with all the good opinion my father
entertained of my shrewdness, he would have deputed me on the present
occasion had he been able to go himself; but he was not able, being
confined to bed by a severe attack of rheumatism. Be this as it may,
however, the important business was put into my hands; and great was the
joy it occasioned me, for it secured me in an opportunity of seeing
Glasgow Fair--a scene which I had long desired to witness, and which I
had seen only once when but a very young boy.
From the moment I was informed by my father of his intention of sending
me to the fair, and which was only on the day preceding that on which
the horse-market is held, my imagination became so excited that I could
attend to nothing. I indeed maintained some appearance of working--for
though the son of a farmer, I wrought hard--but accomplished little of
the reality.
The joys and the splendours of Glasgow Fair, of which I had a dim but
captivating recollection, rose before my mind's eye in brilliant
confusion, putting to rout all other thoughts, and utterly paralyzing
all my physical energies. Nor was the succeeding night less blessed with
happy imaginings. My dreams were filled with visions of shows, Punch's
opera, rope-dancers, tumblers, etc. etc., and my ears rang with the
music of fiddles, bugles, tambourines, and bass drums. It was a
delicious night with me; but the morning which brought an approach to
the reality was still more so.
Getting up betimes, I arrayed myself in my best attire; which attire, as
I well recollect, consisted of a white corduroy jacket, knee-breeches of
the same colour and material, and a bright-red waistcoat. A "neat
Barcelona," tied carelessly round my neck, and a pair of flaming-red
garters, at least two inches broad, wound round my legs just below the
knee, and ending in a knot with two dependent ends hanging down, that
waved jauntily as I walked, completed my equipment.
Thus arrayed, and with thirty pounds in my pocket to purchase a horse
for my father, I took the road, stick in hand, for Glasgow.
It was a fine summer morning. I was in high spirits; and, in my red
waistcoat and red garters, looked, I believe, as tight and comely a lad
as might be seen.
Pushing on with a light heart and light step, I quickly reached the
suburbs of the city, and in a few minutes more was within view and
earshot of the sights and sounds of the fair. I saw the crowd; I got a
glimpse of the canvas roofs of the shows at the end of the old
bridge--the locality on which the fair was then held; and heard the
screaming and braying of the cracked trumpets, the clanging of the
cymbals, and the thunders of the bass drums.
My heart beat high on hearing these joyous sounds. I quickened my pace,
and in a few seconds was in the thick of the throng that crowded the
space in front of the long line of shows extending from the bridge to
the Bridgegate. As it was yet several hours to the height of the
horse-market, I resolved on devoting that interval to seeing some of the
interesting sights which stood in such tempting array before me.
The first that fixed my regard was "The Great Lancashire Giant," whose
portrait at full length--that is, at the length of some fifteen or
twenty feet--flapped on a sheet of canvas nearly as large as the
mainsail of a Leith smack.
This extraordinary personage was represented, in the picture, as a youth
of sixteen, dressed in a ruffled shirt, a red jacket, and white
trousers; and his exhibitor assured the spectators that, though but a
boy, he already measured nine feet in height and seven feet round the
body; that each of his shoes would make a coffin for a child of five
years old, and every stocking hold a sack of flour. Six full-grown
persons, he added, could be easily buttoned within his waistcoat; and
his tailor, he asserted, was obliged to mount a ladder when he measured
him for a jacket.
Deeply interested by the astounding picture of this extraordinary youth,
and the still more astounding description given of him by his exhibitor,
I ascended the little ladder that conducted to the platform in front of
the show, paid my twopence--the price of admission--and in the next
minute was in the presence of "The Great Lancashire Giant;" a position
which enabled me to make discoveries regarding that personage that were
not a little mortifying.
In the first place, I found that, instead of being a youth of sixteen,
he was a man of at least six-and-thirty; in the next, that if it had not
been for the raised dais on which he stood, the enormous thickness of
the soles of his shoes, and the other palpably fictitious contrivances
and expedients by which his dimensions were enlarged, he would not
greatly have exceeded the size of my own father. I found, in short, that
the tremendous "Lancashire Giant" was merely a pretty tall man, and
nothing more.
Quitting this exhibition, and not a little displeased at being so
egregiously bitten, I passed on to the next, which was "Mr.
Higgenbotham's Royal Menagerie. The Noblest Collection of Wild Beasts
ever seen in the Civilised World."
This was a splendid affair. On a narrow stage in front were seated four
fat red-faced musicians, in beef-eater coats, puffing and blowing on
bugles and trombones. Close by these, stood a thin, sharp-eyed,
sallow-complexioned man in plain clothes, beating a huge drum, and
adding the music of a set of Pandean pipes, which were stuck into his
bosom, to the general harmony. This was Mr. Higgenbotham himself.
But it was the paintings on the immense field of canvas above that
particularly attracted my attention. On this field were exhibited an
appalling collection of the most terrific monsters: lions, as large as
cows, gambolling amongst rocks; ourang-outangs, of eight feet in height,
walking with sticks in their hands, as grave and stately as drum-majors;
and a serpent, as thick as a hogshead, and of interminable length--in
truth, without any beginning, middle, or end--twining round an
unfortunate black, and crushing him to death in its enormous folds.