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Wilson's
Tales of the Borders
AND OF SCOTLAND.
HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.
WITH A GLOSSARY.
REVISED BY
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS.
VOL. IX.
LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
1885.
CONTENTS.
Page.
THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED
(_John Mackay Wilson_) 1
THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN OF KIRCONNEL
(_Alexander Leighton_) 23
TOM DUNCAN'S YARN (_Oliver Richardson_) 55
THE PROFESSOR'S TALES (_Professor Thomas Gillespie_)
THE THREE BRETHREN 87
THE MISTAKE RECTIFIED 97
DURA DEN; OR, SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BEST 106
THE LAIRD OF LUCKY'S HOW (_Alexander Campbell_) 119
THE ABDUCTION (_Alexander Leighton_) 151
SIR PATRICK HUME: A TALE OF THE HOUSE OF MARCHMONT
(_John Mackay Wilson_) 167
THE SERJEANT'S TALES (_John Howell_)
THE PACKMAN'S JOURNEY TO LONDON 178
CHARLES LAWSON (_John Mackay Wilson_) 210
BON GAULTIER'S TALES (_Theodore Martin_)
MRS. HUMPHREY GREENWOOD'S TEA-PARTY 217
THE RECLUSE OF THE HEBRIDES (_Walter Logan_) 230
ELLEN ARUNDEL (_Walter Logan_) 238
CHATELARD (_Alexander Campbell_) 243
CHRISTIE OF THE CLEEK (_Alexander Leighton_) 275
WILSON'S
TALES OF THE BORDERS,
AND OF SCOTLAND.
THE CRIPPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED.
It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or
habits of body, that May is a _trying_ month, and we have known what it
is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our
grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to
be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful
month, and the forerunner of the most healthy of the twelve. It is like
a timid maiden blushing into womanhood, wooing and yet shrinking from
the admiration which her beauty compels. The buds, the blossoms, the
young leaves, the tender flowers, the glittering dew-drops, and the song
of birds, burst from the grasp of winter as if the God of nature
whispered in the sunbeams--"Let there be life!" But it is in the morning
only, and before the business of the world summons us to its mechanical
and artificial realities, that the beauties of May can be felt in all
their freshness. We read of the glories of Eden, and that the earth was
cursed because of man's transgression; yet, when we look abroad upon the
glowing landscape, above us, and around us, and behold the pure heavens
like a sea of music floating over us, and hear the earth answer it back
in varied melody, while mountain, wood, and dale, seem dreaming in the
sound, and stealing into loveliness, we almost wonder that a bad man
should exist in the midst of a world that is still so beautiful, and
where every object around him is a representative of the wisdom, the
goodness, the mercy, the purity, and the omnipotence of his Creator.
There is a language in the very wild-flowers among our feet that
breathes a lesson of virtue. We can appreciate the feeling with which
the poet beheld
"The _last_ rose of summer left blooming alone;"
but in the firstlings of the spring, the primrose, the lily, and their
early train, there is an appeal that passes beyond our senses. They are
like the lispings and the smiles of infancy--lowly preachers, emblems of
our own immortality, and we love them like living things. They speak to
us of childhood and the scenes of youth, and _memory_ dwells in their
very fragrance. Yes, May is a beautiful month--it is a month of fair
sights and of sweet sounds. To it belongs the lowly primrose blushing by
the brae-side in congregated beauty, with here and there a cowslip
bending over them like a lover among the flowers; the lily hanging its
head by the brook that reflects its image, like a bride at the altar, as
if conscious of its own loveliness; the hardy daisy on the green sward,
like a proud man struggling in penury with the storms of fate. Now, too,
the blossoms on a thousand trees unfold their rainbow hues; the tender
leaves seem instinct with life, and expand to the sunbeams; and the
bright fields, like an emerald sea, wave their first undulations to the
breeze. The lark pours down a flood of melody on the nest of its mate,
and the linnet trills a lay of love to its partner from the yellow
furze. The chaffinch chants in the hedge its sweet but unvaried _line of
music_; the thrush hymns his bold roundelay; and the blackbird swells
the chorus; while the bird of spring sends its voice from the glens,
like a wandering echo lost between love and sadness; and the swallow,
newly returned from warmer climes or its winter sleep,
"Twitters from the straw-built shed."
The insect tribe leap into being, countless in numbers and matchless in
livery, and their low hum swims like the embodiment of a dream in the
air. The May-fly invites the angler to the river, while the minnow
gambols in the brook; the young salmon sports and sparkles in the
stream, and the grey trout glides slowly beneath the shadow of a rock in
the deep pool. To enjoy for a single hour in a May morning the luxuries
which nature spreads around--to wander in its fields and in its
woods--to feel ourselves a part of God's glad creation--to _feel_ the
gowan under our feet, and health circulating through our veins with the
refreshing breeze, is a recipe worth all in the Materia Medica.
Now, it was before sunrise on such a morning in May as I have described,
that a traveller left the Black Bull in Wooler, and proceeded to the
Cheviots. He took his route by way of Earle and Langleeford; and, at the
latter place, leaving the long and beautiful glen, began to ascend the
mountain. On the cairn, which is perhaps about five hundred yards from
what is called the extreme summit of the mountain, he met an old and
intelligent shepherd, from whom he heard many tales, the legends of the
mountains--and amongst others, the following story:--
Near the banks of one of the romantic streams which take their rise
among the Cheviots, stood a small and pleasant, and what might be termed
respectable or genteel-looking building. It stood like the home of
solitude, excluded by mountains from the world. Beneath it, the rivulet
wandered over its rugged bed; to the east rose Cheviot, the giant of the
hills; to the west, lesser mountains reared their fantastic forms,
thinly studded here and there with dwarf alders, which the birds of
heaven had planted, and their progeny had nestled in their branches; to
the north and the south stretched a long and secluded glen, where beauty
blushed in the arms of wildness--and thick woods, where the young fir
and the oak of the ancient forest grew together, flourished beneath the
shelter of the hills. Fertility also smiled by the sides of the rivulet,
though the rising and setting sun threw the shadows of barrenness over
it. Around the cottage stood a clump of solitary firs, and behind it an
enclosure of alders, twisted together, sheltered a garden from the
storms that swept down the hills.
Now, many years ago, a stranger woman, who brought with her a female
domestic and a male infant, became the occupant of this house among the
hills. She lived more luxuriously than the sheep-farmers in the
neighbourhood, and her accent was not that of the Borders. She was
between forty and fifty years of age, and her stature and strength were
beyond the ordinary stature and strength of women. Her manners were
repulsive, and her bearing haughty; but it seemed the haughtiness of a
weak and uneducated mind. Her few neighbours, simple though they were,
and little as they saw or knew of the world, its inhabitants and its
manners, perceived that the stranger who had come amongst them had not
been habituated to the affluence or easy circumstances with which she
was then surrounded. The child also was hard-favoured, and of a
disagreeable countenance; his back was strangely deformed; his feet were
distorted, and his limbs of unequal length. No one could look upon the
child without a feeling of compassion, save the woman who was his
mother, his nurse, or his keeper (for none knew in what relation she
stood to him), and she treated him as a persecutor, who hated his sight,
and was weary of his existence.
She gave her name as Mrs Baird; and, as the child grew up, she generally
in derision called him "_AEsop_," or, in hatred, "the little monster!"
but the woman-servant called him Ebenezer, though she treated him with a
degree of harshness only less brutal than she whom he began to call
mother. We shall, therefore, in his history mention him by the name of
Ebenezer Baird. As he grew in years, the disagreeable expression of his
countenance became stronger, his deformity and lameness increased, and
the treatment he had experienced added to both.
When nine years of age, he was sent to a boarding-school about twelve
miles distant. Here a new series of persecutions awaited him. Until the
day of his entering the school, he was almost ignorant that there was an
alphabet. He knew not a letter. He had seen one or two books, but he
knew not their use: he had never seen any one look upon them; he
regarded them merely as he did a picture--a piece of useless furniture,
or a plaything. Lame as he was, he had climbed the steep and the
dripping precipice for the eggs of the water-ouzel, sought among the
crags for the young of the gorgeous kingfisher, or climbed the tallest
trees in quest of the crested wrens, which chirped and fluttered in
invisible swarms among the branches.[A] The birds were to him
companions; he wished to rear their young, that they might love him, for
there was a lack of something in his heart--he knew not what it was--but
it was the void of being beloved, of being regarded. It is said that
nature abhors a vacuum, and so did the heart of Ebenezer. He knew not
what name to give it, but he longed for something that would show a
liking for him, and to which he could show a liking in return. The heart
is wicked, but it is not unsocial--its affections wither in
solitariness. When he strolled forth on these rambles about the glen,
having asked the permission of his mother or keeper (call her what you
will) before he went, "Go, imp! AEsop!" she was wont to exclaim, "and I
shall pray that you may break your neck before you return." There were
no farmers' or shepherds' children within several miles: he had seen
some of them, and when they had seen him, they had laughed at his
deformity--they had imitated his lameness, and contorted their
countenances into a caricatured resemblance of his. Such were poor
Ebenezer's acquirements, and such his acquaintance with human nature,
when he entered the boarding-school. A primer was put into his hands.
"What must I do with it?" thought Ebenezer. He beheld the rod of
correction in the hands of the teacher, and he trembled--for his
misshapen shoulders were familiar with such an instrument. He heard
others read, he saw them write; and he feared, wondered, and trembled
the more. He thought that he would be called upon to do the same, and he
knew he could not. He had no idea of _learning_--he had never heard of
such a thing. He thought that he must do as he saw others doing at once,
and he cast many troubled looks at the lord of a hundred boys. When the
name of "Ebenezer Baird" was called out, he burst into tears, he sobbed,
terror overwhelmed him. But when the teacher approached him kindly, took
him from his seat, placed him between his knees, patted his head, and
desired him to speak after him, the heart of the little cripple was
assured, and more than assured; it was the first time he had experienced
kindness, and he could have fallen on the ground and hugged the knees of
his master. The teacher, indeed, found Ebenezer the most ignorant
scholar he had ever met with, but he was no tyrant of the birch, though
to his pupils
"A man severe he was, and stern to view;"
and though he had all the manners and austerity of the old school about
him, he did not lay his head upon the pillow with his arm tired by the
incessant use of the ferule. He was touched with the simplicity and the
extreme ignorance of his new boarder, and he felt also for his lameness
and deformity. Thrice he went over the alphabet with his pupil,
commencing, "_Big Aw_--_Little Aw_," and having got over _b_, he told
him to remember that _c_ was like a half-moon. "Ye'll aye mind _c_
again," added he; "think ye _see_ the moon." Thus they went on to _g_,
and he asked him what the carters said to their horses when they wished
them to go faster; but this Ebenezer could not tell--carts and horses
were sights that he had seen as objects of wonder. They are but seldom
seen amongst the hills now, and in those days they were almost unknown.
Getting over _h_, he strove to impress _i_ upon the memory of his pupil,
by touching the solitary grey orbit in his countenance (for Ebenezer had
but one), and asking him what he called it. "My _e'e_," answered
Ebenezer.
"No, sir, you must not say your _e'e_, but your _eye_--mind that; and
that letter is _I_."
The teacher went on, showing him that he could not forget round O, and
crooked S; and in truth, after his first lesson, Ebenezer was master of
these two letters. And, afterwards, when the teacher, in trying him
promiscuously through the alphabet, would inquire, "What letter is
this?"--"I no ken," the cripple would reply; "but I'm sure it's no O,
and it's no S." Within a week he was master of the six-and-twenty
mystical symbols, with the exception of four--and those four were _b_
and _d_, _p_ and _q_. Ebenezer could not for three months be brought to
distinguish the _b_ from the _d_, nor the _p_ from the _q_; but he had
never even heard that he had a right hand and a left until he came to
the school--and how could it be expected?
Scarce, however, had he mastered the alphabet, until the faculties of
the deformed began to expand. He now both understood and felt what it
was to learn. He passed from class to class with a rapidity that
astonished his teacher. He could not join in the boisterous sports of
his schoolfellows, and while they were engaged in their pastime, he
sought solitude, and his task accompanied him. He possessed strong
natural talents, and his infirmities gave them the assistance of
industry. His teacher noted these things in the cripple, and he was
gratified with them; but he hesitated to express his feelings openly,
lest the charge of partiality should be brought against him. Ebenezer,
however, had entered the academy as the butt of his schoolfellows--they
mocked, they mimicked, they tormented, they despised, or affected to
despise him; and his talents and progress, instead of abating their
persecutions, augmented them. His teacher was afraid to show him more
kindness than he showed to others; and his schoolfellows gloried in
annoying the cripple--they persecuted, they shunned, they hated him more
than even his mother did. He began to hate the world, for he had found
none that would love him. His teacher was the only human being that had
ever whispered to him words of praise or of kindness, and that had
always been in cold, guarded, and measured terms.
Before he was eighteen, he had acquired all the knowledge that his
teacher could impart, and he returned to the cottage among the
mountains. There, however, he was again subjected to a persecution more
barbarous than that which he had met with from his schoolfellows. Mrs
Baird mocked, insulted, and drove him from her presence; and her
domestic showed him neither kindness nor respect. In stature, he
scarcely exceeded five feet; and his body was feeble as well as
deformed. The cruelty with which he had been treated had given an
asperity to his temper, and made him almost a hater of the human race;
and these feelings had lent their character to his countenance, marking
its naturally harsh expression with suspicion and melancholy.
He was about five-and-twenty when the pangs and the terrors of death
fell upon her whom he regarded as his parent. She died--as a sinner
dies--with insulted eternity frowning to receive her. A few minutes
before her death, she desired the cripple to approach her bedside. She
fixed her closing eyes, which affection had never lighted, upon his. She
informed him that he was not her son.
"Oh, tell me, then, whose son I am! Who are my parents?" he exclaimed,
eagerly. "Speak! speak!"
"Your parents!" she muttered; and remorse and ignorance held her
departing soul in their grasp. She struggled; she again continued: "Your
parents! no, Ebenezer, no! I dare not name them! I have sworn--I have
sworn! and a death-bed is no time to break an oath!"
"Speak! speak! Tell me, as you hope for heaven!" cried the cripple, with
his thin, bony fingers grasping the wrists of the dying woman.
"Monster! monster!" she screamed, wildly, and in terror, "leave
me--leave me! You are provided for--open that chest--the chest--the
chest!"
Ebenezer loosed his grasp; he sprang towards a strong chest which stood
in the room. "The keys! the keys!" he exclaimed, wildly; and again
hurrying to the bed, he violently pulled a bunch of keys from beneath
her pillow. But while he applied them to the chest, the herald of death
rattled in the throat of its victim; and, with one agonising throe and a
deep groan, her spirit escaped, and her body lay a corpse upon the bed.
He opened the chest, and in it he found securities, which settled upon
him, under the name of Ebenezer Baird, five thousand pounds. But there
was nothing which threw light on his parentage--nothing to inform who he
was, or why he was there.
The body of her who had never shed a tear over him he accompanied to the
grave. But now a deeper gloom fell upon him. He met but few men, and the
few he met shunned him, for there was a wildness and a bitterness in his
words--a railing against the world--which they wished not to hear. He
fancied, too, that they despised him--that their eyes were ever
examining the form of his deformities; and he returned their glance with
a scowl, and their words with the accents of hatred. Even as he passed
the solitary farmhouse, the younger children fled in terror, and the
elder laughed, or pointed towards him the finger of curiosity. All these
things fell upon the heart of the cripple, and turned the human kindness
of his bosom into gall. His companions became the solitude of the
mountains, and the silence of the woods. They heard his bitter
soliloquies without reviling him, or echo answered him in tones of
sympathy more mournful than his own. He sought a thing that he might
love, that might unlock his prisoned heart, or give life to its blighted
feelings. He loved the very primrose, because it was a thing of beauty,
and shrank not from his deformity as man did. To him it gave forth its
sweetness, and its leaves withered not at his touch; and he bent and
kissed the flower that smiled upon him whom his kind avoided. He courted
the very storms of winter, for they shunned him not, but spent their
fury on his person, unconscious of its form. The only living thing that
regarded him, or that had ever evinced affection towards him, was a dog,
of the mastiff kind, which ever followed at his side, licked his hand,
and received its food from it. And on this living thing all the
affections that his heart ever felt were expended. He loved it as a
companion, a friend, and protector; and he knew it was not
ungrateful--it never avoided him; but, when mockery or insult was
offered to its master, it growled, and looked in his face, as if asking
permission to punish the offender.
Such was the life that he had passed until he was between thirty and
forty years of age. Still he continued his solitary rambles, having a
feeling for everything around him but man. Man only was his
persecutor--man only despised him. His own kind and his own kindred had
shut him out from them and disowned him--his sight had been hateful to
them, and his form loathsome. He avoided the very sun, for it revealed
his shadow; but he wandered in rapture, gazing on the midnight heavens,
calling the stars by name, while his soul was lifted up with their
glory, and his deformity lost and overshadowed in the depth of their
magnificence. He loved the flowers of day, the song of morning birds,
and the wildness or beauty of the landscape; but these dwindled, and
drew not forth his soul as did the awful gorgeousness of night, with its
ten thousand worlds lighted up, burning, sparkling, glimmering in
immensity--the gems that studded the throne of the Eternal. While others
slept, the deformed wandered on the mountains, holding communion with
the heavens.
About the period we refer to, a gay party came upon a visit to a
gentleman whose mansion was situated about three miles from the cottage
of the cripple. As they rode out, they frequently passed him in his
wanderings. And when they did so, some turned to gaze on him with a look
of prying curiosity, others laughed and called to their companions--and
the indignation of Ebenezer was excited, and the frown grew black upon
his face.
He was wandering in a wood in the glen, visiting his favourite
wild-flowers (for he had many that he visited daily, and each was
familiar to him as the face of man to man--he rejoiced when they budded,
blossomed, and laughed in their summer joy, and he grieved when they
withered and died away), when a scream of distress burst upon his ear.
His faithful mastiff started, and answered to the sound. He hurried from
the wood to whence the sound proceeded as rapidly as his lameness would
admit. The mastiff followed by his side, and, by its signs of
impatience, seemed eager to increase its speed, though it would not
forsake him. The cries of distress continued, and became louder. On
emerging from the wood, he perceived a young lady rushing wildly towards
it, and behind her, within ten yards, followed an infuriated bull. A few
moments more, and she must have fallen its victim. With an eager howl,
the dog sprang from the side of its master, and stood between the lady
and her pursuer. Ebenezer forgot his lameness and the feebleness of his
frame, and he hastened at his utmost speed to the rescue of a human
being. Even at that moment a glow of delight passed through his heart,
that the despised cripple would save the life of a fellow-mortal--of one
of the race that shunned him. Ere he approached, the lady had fallen,
exhausted and in terror, on the ground. The mastiff kept the enraged
animal at bay, and, with a strength such as he had never before
exhibited, Ebenezer raised the lady in his arms, and bore her to the
wood. He placed her against a tree: the stream passed by within a few
yards, and he brought water in the palms of his hands, and knelt over
her, to bathe her temples and her fair brow. Her brow was indeed fair,
and her face beautiful beyond all that he had looked upon. Her golden
hair in wavy ringlets fell upon her shoulders--but her deep blue eyes
were closed. Her years did not appear to be more than twenty.
"Beautiful!--beautiful!" exclaimed the cripple, as he dropped the water
on her face, and gazed on it as he spoke--"it is wondrous beautiful! But
she will open her eyes--she will turn from me as doth her race!--as from
the animal that pursued her!--yet, sure she is beautiful!" and again, as
he spoke, Ebenezer sighed.
The fair being recovered--she raised her eyes--she gazed on his face,
and turned not away from it. She expressed no false horror on beholding
his countenance--no affected revulsion at the sight of his deformity;
but she looked upon him with gratitude--she thanked him with tears. The
cripple started--his heart burned. To be gazed on with kindness, to be
thanked, and with tears, and by one so fair, so young, so beautiful, was
to him so strange, so new, he half doubted the reality of the scene
before him. Before the kindness and gratitude that beamed from her eyes,
the misanthropy that had frozen up his bosom began to dissolve, and the
gloom on his features died away, as a vapour before the face of the
morning sun. New thoughts fired his imagination--new feelings transfixed
his heart. Her smile fell like a sunbeam on his soul, where light had
never before dawned; her accents of gratitude, from the moment they were
delivered, became the music of his memory. He found an object on the
earth that he could love--or shall we say that he _did_ love; for he
felt as though already her existence were mysteriously linked to his. We
are no believers in what is termed _love at first sight_. Some
romance-writers hold it up as an established doctrine, and love-sick
boys and moping girls will make oath to the creed. But there never was
love at first sight that a week's perseverance could not wear away. It
holds no intercourse with the heart, but is a mere _fancy_ of the eye;
as a man would fancy a horse, a house, or a picture, which he desires to
purchase. Love is not the offspring of an hour or a day, nor is it the
_ignis fatuus_ which plays about the brain, and disturbs the sleep of
the youth and the maiden in their teens. It slowly steals and dawns upon
the heart, as day imperceptibly creeps over the earth, first with the
tinged cloud--the grey and the clearer dawn--the approaching, the
rising, and the risen sun--blending into each other a brighter and a
brighter shade; but each indistinguishable in their progress and
blending, as the motion of the pointers on a watch, which move
unobserved as time flies, and we mark not the silent progress of light
till it envelop us in its majesty. Such is the progress of pure, holy,
and enduring love. It springs not from mere sight, but its radiance
grows with esteem; it is the whisper of sympathy, unity of feeling, and
mutual reverence, which increases with a knowledge of each other, until
but one pulse seems to throb in two bosoms. The feelings which now
swelled in the bosom of Ebenezer Baird were not the true and only love
which springs from esteem, but they were akin to it. For though the
beauty of the fair being he had rescued had struck his eye, it was not
her beauty that melted the misanthropy of his heart, but the tear of
gratitude, the voice of thanks, the glance that turned not away from
him, the smile--the first that woman had bestowed on him--that entered
his soul. They came from the heart, and they spoke to the heart.
She informed him that her name was Maria Bradbury, and that she was one
of the party then on a visit to the gentleman in his neighbourhood. He
offered to accompany her to the house, and she accepted his offer. But
it was necessary to pass near the spot where he had rescued her from the
fury of the enraged bull. As they drew towards the side of the wood,
they perceived that the bull was gone, but the noble mastiff, the
friend, companion, and defender of the cripple, lay dead before them.
Ebenezer wrung his hands, he mourned over his faithful guardian.
"Friend! poor Friend!" he cried (the name of the mastiff was Friend),
"hast thou, too, left me? Thou, of all the things that lived, alone
didst love thy master! Pardon me, lady, pardon an outcast; but until
this hour I have never experienced friendship from man nor kindness from
woman. The human race have treated me as a thing that belonged not to
the same family with themselves; they have persecuted or mocked me, and
I have hated them. Start not--hatred is an alien to my soul--it was not
born there, it was forced upon it--but I hate not you--no! no! You have
spoken kindly to me, you have smiled on me!--the despised, the disowned
Ebenezer will remember you. That poor dog alone, of all living things,
showed affection for me. But he died in a good cause! Poor Friend! poor
Friend!--where shall I find a companion now?" and the tears of the
cripple ran down his cheeks as he spoke.
Maria wept also, partly for the fate of the noble animal that had died
in her deliverance, and partly from the sorrow of her companion; for
there is a sympathy in tears.
"Ha! you weep!" cried the cripple; "you weep for poor Friend and for me.
Bless thee--bless thee, fair one! they are the first that were ever shed
for my sake! I thought there was not a tear on earth for me."
He accompanied her to the lodge of the mansion where she was then
residing, and there he left her, though she invited him to accompany
her, that he might also receive the congratulations of her friends.
She related to them her deliverance. "Ha! little Ebenezer turned a
hero!" cried one; "Ebenezer the cripple become a knight-errant!" said
another. But they resolved to visit him in a body, and return him their
thanks.
But the soul of the deformed was now changed, and his countenance,
though still melancholy, had lost its asperity. His days became a dream,
his existence a wish. For the first time he entertained the hope of
happiness; it was vain, romantic, perhaps we might say absurd, but he
cherished it.
Maria spoke much of the courage, the humanity, the seeming loneliness,
and the knowledge of the deformed, to her friends; and their
entertainer, with his entire party of visiters, with but one exception,
a few days afterwards, proceeded to the cottage of Ebenezer, to thank
him for his intrepidity. The exception we have alluded to was a Lady
Helen Dorrington, a woman of a proud and haughty temper, and whose
personal attractions, if she ever possessed any, were now disfigured by
the attacks of a violent temper, and the _crow-feet_ and the _wrinkles_
which threescore years imprint on the fairest countenance. She excused
herself by saying, that the sight of deformed people affected her.
Amongst the party who visited the cripple was her son, Francis
Dorrington, a youth of two-and-twenty, who was haughty, fiery, and
impetuous as his mother. He sought the hand of Maria Bradbury, and he
now walked by her side.
Ebenezer received them coldly; amongst them were some who were wont to
mock him as they passed, and he now believed that they had come to
gratify curiosity, by gazing on his person as on a wild animal. But,
when he saw the smile upon Maria's lips, the benign expression of her
glance, and her hand held forth to greet him, his coldness vanished, and
joy, like a flash of sunshine, lighted up his features. Yet he liked not
the impatient scowl with which Francis Dorrington regarded her attention
towards him, nor the contempt which moved visibly on his lip, when she
listened delighted to the words of the despised cripple. He seemed to
act as though her eyes should be fixed on him alone--her words addressed
only to him. Jealousy entered the soul of the deformed; and shall we say
that the same feeling was entertained by the gay and the haughty
Dorrington? It was. He felt that, insignificant as the outward
appearance of the cripple was, his soul was that of an intellectual
giant, before the exuberance of whose power the party were awed, and
Maria lost in admiration. His tones were musical as his figure was
unsightly, and his knowledge universal as his person was diminutive. He
discoursed with a poet's tongue on the beauty of the surrounding
scenery; he defined the botany and geology of the mountains. He traced
effect to cause, and both to their Creator. The party marvelled while
the deformed spoke; and he repelled the scowl and contempt of his rival
with sarcasm that scathed like passing lightning. These things produced
feelings of jealousy also in the breast of Francis Dorrington; though
from Maria Bradbury he had never received one smile of encouragement. On
their taking leave, the entertainer of the party invited Ebenezer to his
house, but the latter refused; he feared to mingle with society, for oft
as he had associated with man, he had been rendered their sport--the
thing they persecuted--the butt of their irony.
For many days the cripple met, or rather sought, Maria in his solitary
rambles; for she, too, loved the solitude of the mountains or the
silence of the woods, which is broken only by the plaintive note of the
wood-pigeon, the _chirm_ of the linnet, the song of the thrush, the
twitter of the chaffinch, or the distant stroke of the woodman, lending
silence a charm. She had become familiar with his deformity, and as it
grew less singular to her eyes, his voice became sweeter to her ears.
Their conversation turned on many things--there was wisdom in his words,
and she listened to him as a pupil to a preceptor. His feelings deepened
with their interviews, his hopes brightened, and felicity seemed dawning
before him. As hope kindled, he acquired confidence. They were walking
together, he had pointed out the beauties and explained the properties
of the wild-flowers on their path, he had dwelt on the virtues of the
humblest weed, when he stopped short, and gazing in her face--"Maria!"
he added, "I have loved these flowers--I have cherished those simple
weeds, because they shunned me not--they shrank not from me, as did the
creatures of the human race--they spread their beauties before me--they
denied me not their sweetness. You only have I met with among the
children of Adam, who persecuted me not with ridicule, or who insulted
not my deformity with the vulgar gaze of curiosity. Who I am I know
not--from whence I was brought amongst these hills I cannot tell; I am a
thing which the world has laughed at, and of which my parents were
ashamed. But my wants have been few. I have gold to purchase flattery,
if I desired it--to buy tongues to tell me I am not deformed; but I
despise them. My soul partakes not of my body's infirmities--it has
sought a spirit to love, that would love it in return. Maria, has it
found one?"
Maria was startled--she endeavoured to speak, but her tongue
faltered--tears gathered in her eyes, and her looks bespoke pity and
astonishment.
"Fool! fool!" exclaimed the cripple, "I have been deceived! Maria
_pities_ me!--_only pities me_! Hate me, Maria--despise me as does the
world. I can bear hatred--I can endure scorn--I can repel them!--but
_pity_ consumes me!--and _pity_ from you! Fool! fool!" he added,
"wherefore dreamed I there was one that would look with love on deformed
Ebenezer? Farewell, Maria! farewell!--remember, but do not pity me!" and
he hurried from her side.
She would have detained him--she would have told him that she reverenced
him--that she esteemed him; but he hastened away, and she felt also that
she _pitied_ him--and _love_ and _pity_ can never dwell in the same
breast for the same object. Maria stood and wept.
Ebenezer returned to his cottage; but the hope which he had cherished,
the dream which he had fed, died reluctantly. He accused himself for
acting precipitately--he believed he had taken the tear of affection for
pity. His heart was at war with itself. Day after day he revisited the
mountainside, and the path in the wood where they had met; but Maria
wandered there no longer. His feelings, his impatience, his incertitude,
rose superior to the ridicule of man; he resolved to visit the mansion
of his neighbour, where Maria and her friends were residing. The
dinner-bell was ringing as he approached the house; but he knew little
of the etiquette of the world, and respected not its forms. The owner of
the mansion welcomed him with the right hand of cordiality, for his
discourse in the cottage had charmed him; others expressed welcome, for
some who before had mocked now respected him; and Maria took his hand
with a look of joy and her wonted sweetness. The heart of Ebenezer felt
assured. Francis Dorrington alone frowned, and rose not to welcome him.
The dinner-bell again rang; the Lady Helen had not arrived, and dinner
was delayed for her, but she came not. They proceeded to the
dining-room. Ebenezer offered his arm to Maria, and she accepted it.
Francis Dorrington muttered angry words between his teeth. The dinner
passed--the dessert was placed upon the table--Lady Helen entered the
room--she prayed to be excused for her delay--her host rose to introduce
her to Ebenezer.
"Ebenezer!--the deformed!" she exclaimed, in a tone of terror, and,
dashing her hands before her eyes, as he rose before her, she fell back
in hysterics.
"Turn the monster from the house!" cried Francis Dorrington, springing
forward; "my mother cannot endure the sight of such."
"Whom call ye monster, young man?" said Ebenezer, angrily.
"You, wretch!" replied Dorrington, raising his hand, and striking the
cripple to the floor.
"Shame! shame!" exclaimed the company.
"Coward!" cried Maria, starting from her seat.
The cripple, with a rapidity that seemed impossible, sprang to his
feet--he gasped, he trembled, every joint shook, rage boiled in his
veins--he glanced at his insulter, who attempted to repeat the blow--he
uttered a yell of vengeance, he clutched a dessert-knife from the table,
and within a moment it was plunged in the body of the man who had
injured him.
A scream of horror burst from the company. Ebenezer, with the reeking
knife in his grasp, stood trembling from rage, not from remorse. But he
offered not to repeat the blow. A half-consciousness of what he had done
seemed to stay his hand. The sudden scream of the party aroused the Lady
Helen from her real or affected fit. She beheld her son bleeding on the
floor--she saw the vengeful knife in the hands of the cripple. She
screamed more wildly than before--she wrung her hands!
"Monster!--murderer!" she exclaimed, "he has slain--_he has slain his
brother_!"
"_My brother!_" shouted Ebenezer, still grasping the knife in his hand.
"Woman--woman! mother--mother!--who am I? Answer me--who are you?" and
he sprang forward, and held her by the arm. "Tell me," he continued,
"what mean ye--what mean ye? My _brother_--do ye say my _brother_? Art
thou my _mother_? Have I a _mother_? Speak--speak!" and he grasped her
arm more fiercely.
"Monster!" she repeated, "offspring of my shame!--away--away! _He is thy
brother!_ I have shunned thee, wretch, I have disowned thee; but thou
hast carried murder to my bosom!" and, tearing her arm from his grasp,
she threw it round the neck of her wounded son.
The company gazed upon each other. Ebenezer stood for a moment, his eyes
rolling, his teeth rattling together, the knife shaking in his hand. He
uttered a wild cry of agony--he tore the garments from his breast, as
though it were ready to burst, and, with the look and the howl of a
maniac, he sprang to the door, and disappeared. Some from an interest in
his fate, others from a desire to secure him, followed after him. But he
fled to the woods, and they traced him not.
It was found that the wound of Francis Dorrington was not mortal; and
the fears of the company were directed from him to Ebenezer, who they
feared had laid violent hands upon his own life.
On the following day, without again meeting the company, Lady Helen left
the house, having acknowledged the deformed Ebenezer to be her son--a
child of shame--whose birth had been concealed from the world.
On the third day, the poor cripple was found by a shepherd wandering on
the hills. His head was uncovered; his garments and his body were torn
by the brambles through which he had rushed; his eyes rolled wildly,
and, when accosted, he fled, exclaiming, "I am Cain! I am Cain! I have
slain my brother! Touch me not--the mark is on my forehead!" He was
secured, and taken to a place of safety.
The circumstances twined round Maria's heart; she heard no more of
Ebenezer the cripple, but she forgot him not. Several years passed, and
she, together with a friend, visited a lunatic asylum in a distant part
of the country, in which a female acquaintance, once the admired of
society, had become an inmate. They were shown round the different
wards; some of the inmates seemed happy, others melancholy, but all were
mild--all shrank from the eye of their keeper. The sound of the clanking
chains around their ankles filled Maria's soul with horror, and she
longed to depart; but the keeper invited them to visit the garden of his
asylum. They entered, and beheld several quiet-looking people engaged in
digging; others were pruning trees; and some sat upon benches on the
paths, playing with their fingers, striking their heels upon the ground,
or reading stray leaves of an old book or a newspaper. Each seemed
engaged with himself, none conversed with his neighbour. Upon a bench
near the entrance to a small arbour or summer-house sat a female,
conning an old ballad; and, as she perused it, she laughed, wept, and
sang by turns. Maria stopped to converse with her, and her friend
entered the arbour. In it sat a grey-headed and deformed man; he held a
volume of Savage in his hand, which had then been but a short time
published.
"I am reading the 'Bastard,' by Savage," said he, as the stranger
entered; "he is my favourite author. His fate was mine--he describes my
feelings. He had an unnatural mother--so had I. He was disowned--so was
I. He slew a man, and so did I; but I my brother."
The voice, the words, fell upon Maria's ear. She became pale, she
glanced towards the arbour, she cast an inquiring look upon the keeper.
"Fear not, ma'am," he replied; "he is an innocent creature. He does not
rave now; and but that there is an occasional wildness in his language,
he is as well as you are. Enter and converse with him, ma'am; he is a
great speaker, and to much purpose, too, as visiters tell me."
She entered the arbour. The cripple's eyes met hers--he threw down the
book.
"Maria--Maria!" he exclaimed, "this is kind! this is kind, indeed! But
do not _pity_ me--do not _pity me again_! Hate me, Maria! you saw me
slay my brother!"
She informed him that his brother was not dead--that he had recovered
within a few weeks.
"Not dead!" replied the cripple. "Thank Heaven! Ebenezer is not a
murderer! But I am well now--the fever of my brain is passed. Go, Maria,
do this for me--it is all I now ask--inquire why I am here immured, and
by whose authority. Suffer not my reason to be buried in reason's tomb,
and crushed among its wrecks. Your smile, your words of kindness, your
tears of gratitude, caused me to dream once, and its remembrance is
still as a speck of light amidst the darkness of my bosom; but these
grey hairs have broken the dream." And Ebenezer bent his head upon his
breast, and sighed.
Maria and her friend left the asylum, but in a few weeks they returned,
and when they again departed, Ebenezer Baird went with them. He now
sought not Maria's love, but he was gratified with her esteem, and that
of her friends. He outlived the persecution of his kindred and the
derision of the world; and in the forty-sixth year of his age he died in
peace, and bequeathed his property to Maria Bradbury--the first of the
human race that had looked on him with kindness, or cheered him with a
smile.
[Footnote A: The water-ouzel, the kingfisher, and the crested wren,
abound in the vicinity of the Cheviots, though the latter beautiful
little creature is generally considered as quite a _rara avis_; and last
year one being shot about Cumberland, the circumstance went the round of
the newspapers! But the bird is not rare, it is only difficult to be
seen, and generally flutters among the leaves and near the top
branches.]
THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN OF KIRCONNEL.
The seat of a branch of the Dumfries-shire Maxwells--Kirconnel--a
property lying not far distant from Dumfries, and surrounded by the
little pastoral stream, Kirtle--is one of the most beautiful that ever
gratified the taste or inspired the pride of a high family. It was not
until about the beginning of the seventeenth century that it came into
the possession of the Maxwells; for, during a long period, it belonged
to the old, though never illustrious, family of the Bells, who, amidst
all the turmoil and strife of the March territories, had the good sense
to prefer the quiet pleasures of the retreats of their own pure Kirtle,
to the tumultuous and cruel scenes which boasted no streamlet but the
heart's blood of contending foes. The power of Lord Maxwell, or the
threat of Douglas, were equally unavailing to force the old proprietor
of Kirconnel--though he ranked as a lesser baron, and might command
retainers to fight for his plea--to sacrifice the pleasures of domestic
peace on the altars of Laverna or Bellona: these conjunct goddesses who,
hand in hand, swayed the destinies of Border men, and regulated the
Border rights of mine and thine. He held his fine property directly of
the crown; and, so long as he fulfilled the conditions of his right, he
conceived himself entitled to the enjoyment of what had been fairly got
and honourably retained. One strong element in Kirconnel's determination
to live at home, in the enjoyment of what home may produce to a mind
capable of appreciating its sweets, was the fear of interrupting the
happiness of his lady--one of the family of Irvings in that quarter, who
latterly came to possess his property--and of one child, a daughter, the
Maid of Kirconnel, concerning whom, as all our readers know, more has
been said and sung by antiquarian minstrel than ever fell to the hapless
fame or treasured memory of fair woman. Ah, we need scarcely say, that
this young heiress of Kirconnel's name was Helen; for who that has read
the touching lines of Pinkerton can ever forget the appellation of one
whose fate has drawn more tears than ever did that of the heroine Lady
Margaret, in the old ballad of "Douglas' Tragedy?" The disasters of
ordinary women, though hallowed by the sanctifying power of love, have
seldom in this country inspired the harp of the minstrel; so far we are
forced to admit the power of beauty, abstracted from the qualities of
the mind and heart, that it has been a talisman to bardic genius in
every age; yet it is honourable to the character of our nation, that the
soul which illumines the "face divine" has called forth strains as
melting and triumphant as ever resulted from the effects of physical
beauty. It is, however, when the two qualities have been found combined
in a favoured daughter of Scotland, that an unhappy fate has called
forth a sympathy which has left no harp to sound fitfully in the
willow-tree, no heart in our true land untouched, no eye destitute of
sympathetic tears. Such has truly been the effect produced by the
fortune of Helen of Kirconnel--a fortune which came up on the revolving
wheel of the mutable goddess, notwithstanding all the efforts of her
father to make the course of her life happy, and its termination
blessed. Abstracted as the thoughts were of the three inhabitants of
Kirconnel--the lady, the laird, and the daughter--from the scenes that
were ever changing in the warlike world around them, so much greater was
the necessity for cultivating the opportunities of enjoyment that nature
and fortune had awarded to them; and so much greater also was the relish
for that enjoyment which has ever been found in minds and hearts
properly constituted and tuned to the harp of goodness, to increase with
possession as much as the false taste for stimulating avocations cloys
with the easy surfeit. It is not often, even in our virtuous land, and
even in these days when the blessings of a high civilisation have
inclined mankind to the cultivation of the social affections, that a
family is found with its different members so predisposed for the
harmony of exclusively domestic joys, that some chord does not
occasionally give forth a discordant sound when touched by an external
impulse; but, in the times of which we speak, and in the district where
the individuals resided, "the happy family" was a group that was more
often found in the lyrics of the poet or the creations of hope deferred
than in the real existences of the troubled and vexed world.