hour. The order for the friends to quit the jail was about to be obeyed.
The father sent a messenger for me. I repaired to the cell; but to avoid
the appeals of the mother and daughter, I beckoned him forth to the lobby.
He asked me whether he should see his son now that he was all but
insensible, and could not probably recognise him. He feared that he could
not stand the scene, for that the calmness he assumed was false! I replied
that it certainly required no ordinary firmness; and yet the pain might in
some degree be even lessened by the state of stupor and insensibility in
which the youth still continued. He fixed his eyes on my face with an
expression of forced and unnatural calmness, that pained me more than the
death-like inanity of the still beautiful countenance of his son, or the
hysterical excitement of the mother. He at last seized my hand and
proceeded along to the cell hurriedly, as the turnkey was crying loudly for
the friends to depart. We entered and stood for a moment. He stood and
gazed at his son, as the latter was still kept moving by the men; but
Eugene was apparently unconscious of the presence of his parents. A loud
cry from the dense crowd who had assembled to witness the execution, struck
my ear. I ran to the window, and saw a man in the act of coming off a
horse, whose sides were covered with foam and blood. The cries of the crowd
continued, and I could distinctly hear the word "_reprieve_" mixed with the
shouts. Mr. D---- was at my back, and I felt his hands press me like a
vice. The two men who were supporting Eugene, had also heard the sound,
and, paralysed by the extraordinary announcement, they actually let the
prisoner sink on the floor. The sound of his fall made me turn; the father
had vanished, doubtless to meet the messenger, and communicate the tidings
to his wife and daughter. A great bustle in the neighbouring cells
succeeded. The two men stood and looked at me in silence. Eugene still lay
on the floor, to all appearance insensible. By my orders he was immediately
again lifted up, and dragged more violently than ever, backwards and
forwards. In a few seconds, the turnkey came in, and struck off the irons,
by which his ancle had been so severely torn that the blood flowed from it
on the floor. He informed me that he was indeed reprieved, and that the
fault of the delay was attributable to the authorities in London. I shouted
in the ear of the young man the electric word; he lifted his head, looked
wildly around him for a few seconds, and uttered a strange gurgling sound
unlike any expression of the human voice I ever heard. I was indeed
uncertain whether he understood me or not. In a few minutes more, the cell
was crowded--the father, mother, and daughter, the chaplain, the messenger,
and several of the officials, all bursting in, to see the condition of the
criminal. To this I was not averse; because the more excitement that could
be produced in the mind of the youth, the greater chance remained of our
being able to keep off the deadly effects of the drug. A thousand times did
the parent and mother sound into his dull ear the vocable pregnant with so
much relief to him and his friends; but it was not until two hours
afterwards that he was so far recovered as to understand perfectly the
narrow escape he had made from death. In the evening he was conveyed home
in a carriage; and, as they were leaving the jail, he looked out at the
grim apparatus which had been erected for him, and which the workmen were
removing in the midst of a dense crowd of citizens.
Some days afterwards, Eugene D---- had almost entirely recovered from the
effects of the poison. One day when I called, I found him lying on a sofa,
with his mother sitting by his side. She took her eyes off her son, and
bent them on me till tears filled them.
"Before you entered," she said, "I was talking to Eugene about the request
I made to you in the jail on that dreadful day, to let my son die.
Repeatedly since, have I thought of my wild words; but they know little of
human nature, at least little of the feelings of a mother in my situation,
who could brand them as unnatural, or doubt the sanity that recognised
fully their effect."
"I am too well apprised, madam," I replied, "of the workings of that organ,
whose changes often startle ourselves, to be surprised at the words you
then made use of. I knew not, after all, if you did not exhibit as much
heroism as Brutus, who condemned his son to death; certainly more than
Zaleucus, who condemned his to the loss of an eye, having first submitted
to the loss of his own, to make the love of a father quadrate with the
justice of the law-giver."
"And what say you to yourself, to whom I owe the safety of my Eugene?" she
added.
"An Acesias might have accomplished all that I accomplished, madam--for all
I did was to keep off sleep; but, if the secret must needs be told, I had
some doubts at least of the humanity of my proceedings, whatever I might
have thought of my duty."
Eugene afterwards went to the East Indies, where he made a fortune. Some
pecuniary embarrassments afterwards overtook the family, on which occasion
he sent them home the one half of the money he had made, whereby they were
again placed in a condition of affluence. A present was also sent to me. It
is not yet very many years ago since I saw Eugene. He had assumed another
name in India, where he had married a very beautiful woman, and to whom he
again returned.
THE UNBIDDEN GUEST,
OR, JEDBURGH'S REGAL FESTIVAL.
"In the mid revels, the first ominous night
Of their espousals, when the room shone bright
With lighted tapers--the king and the queen leading
The curious measures, lords and ladies treading
The self-same strains--the king looks back by chance,
And spies a strange intruder fill the dance;
Namely, a mere anatomy, quite bare,
His naked limbs both without flesh and hair,
(As we decipher Death,) who stalks about
Keeping true measure till the dance be out."
_Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels._
There is no river in this country which presents in its course, scenes more
beautifully romantic than the little Jed. Though it exhibits not the dizzy
cliffs where the eagles build their nests, the mass of waters, the
magnitude and the boldness, which give the character of sublimity to a
scene; yet, as it winds its course through undulating hills where the
forest trees entwine their broad branches, or steals along by the foot of
the red, rocky precipices, where the wild flowers and the broom blossom
from every crevice of their perpendicular sides, and from whose summits the
woods bend down, beautiful as rainbows, it presenteth pictures of
surpassing loveliness, which the eye delights to dwell upon. It is a fair
sight to look down from the tree-clad hills upon the ancient burgh, with
the river half circling it, and gardens, orchards, woods, in the beauty of
summer blossoming, or the magnificence of their autumnal hues, encompassing
it, while the venerable Abbey riseth stately in the midst of all, as a
temple in paradise. Such is the character of the scenery around Jedburgh
now; and, in former ages, its beauty rendered it a favourite resort of the
Scottish Kings.
About the year 1270, an orphan boy, named Patrick Douglas, herded a few
sheep upon the hills, which were the property of the monks of Melrose. Some
of the brotherhood, discovering him to be a boy of excellent parts,
instructed him to read and to write; and perceiving the readiness with
which he acquired these arts, they sought also to initiate him into all the
learning of the age, and to bring him up for their order. To facilitate and
complete his instructions, they had him admitted amongst them, as a
_convert_ or lay-brother. But, though the talents of the shepherd boy
caused him to be regarded as a prodigy by all within the monastery, from
the Lord Abbot down to the kitchener and his assistants; yet, with Patrick,
as with many others even now, gifts were not graces. He had no desire to
wear the white cassock, narrow scapulary, and plain linen hood of the
Cistertian brethren; neither did he possess the devoutness necessary for
performing his devotions seven times a-day; and when the bell roused him at
two in the morning, to what was called the _nocturnal_ service, Patrick
arose reluctantly; for, though compelled to wedge himself into a narrow bed
at eight o'clock in the evening, it was his wont to lie awake, musing on
what he had read or learned, until past midnight; and, when the _nocturnal_
was over, he again retired to sleep, until he was aroused at six for
_matins_; but, after these came other devotions, called _tierce_, the
_sexte_, the _none_, _vespers_, and the _compline_, at nine in the morning,
at noon, at three in the afternoon, at six in the evening and before eight.
These services broke in on his favourite studies; and, possessing more
talent than devotion, while engaged in them he thought more of his studies
than of them. Patrick, therefore, refused to take the monastic vow. He
"had heard of war,
And longed to follow to the field some warlike lord."
He, however, was beloved by all; and when he left the monastery, the Abbot
and the brethren gave him their benediction, and bestowed gifts upon him.
He also carried with him letters from the Lord Abbot and Prior, to men who
were mighty in power at the court of King Philip of France.
From the testimonials which he brought with him, Patrick Douglas, the
Scottish orphan, speedily obtained favour in the eyes of King Philip and
his nobles, and became as distinguished on the field for his prowess and
the feats of his arms, as he had been in the Abbey of Melrose for his
attainments in learning. But a period of peace came; and he who was but a
few years before a shepherd boy by Tweedside, now bearing honours conferred
on him by a foreign monarch, was invited as a guest to the palace of the
illustrious Count of Dreux. A hundred nobles were there, each exhibiting
all the pageantry of the age; and there, too, were a hundred ladies, vying
with each other in beauty, and in the splendour of their array. But chief
of all was Jolande, the daughter of their host, the Count of Dreux, and the
fame of whose charms had spread throughout Christendom. Troubadours sang of
her beauty, and princes bent the knee before her. Patrick Douglas beheld
her charms. He gazed on them with a mixed feeling of awe, of regret, and of
admiration. His eyes followed her, and his soul followed them. He beheld
the devoirs which the great and the noble paid to her, and his heart was
heavy; for she was the fairest and the proudest flower among the French
nobility --he an exotic weed of desert birth. And, while princes strove for
her hand, he remembered, he felt, that he was an orphan of foreign and of
obscure parentage--a scholar by accident, (but to be a scholar was no
recommendation in those days, and it is but seldom that it is one even
now.) and a soldier of fortune, to whose name royal honours were not
attached, while his purse was light, and who, because his feet covered more
ground than he could call his own, his heels were denied the insignia of
knighthood. Yet, while he ventured not to breathe his thoughts or wishes
before her, he imagined that she looked on him more kindly, and that she
smiled on him more frequently than on his lordly rivals; and his heart
deceived itself, and rejoiced in secret.
Now, it was early in the year 1283, the evening was balmy for the season,
the first spring flowers were budding forth, and the moon, as a silver
crescent, was seen among the stars. The young scholar and soldier of
unknown birth walked in the gardens of the Count of Dreux, and the lovely
Jolande leaned upon his arm. His heart throbbed as he listened to the
silver tones of her sweet voice, and felt the gentle pressure of her soft
hand in his. He forgot that she was the daughter of a prince--he the son of
a dead peasant. In the delirium of a moment, he had thrown himself on his
knee before her, he had pressed her hand on his bosom, and gazed eagerly in
her face.
She was startled by his manner, and had only said--"Sir! what
means?"--though in a tone neither of reproach nor of pride, when what she
would have said was cut short by the sudden approach of a page, who, bowing
before her, stated that four commissioners having arrived from the King of
Scotland, the presence of the Princess Jolande was required at the palace.
Patrick Douglas started to his feet as he heard the page approach, and as
he listened to his words he trembled.
The princess blushed, and turning from Patrick, proceeded in confusion
towards the palace; while he followed at a distance, repenting of what he
had said, and of what he had done, or, rather, wishing that he had said
more, or said less.
"Yet," thought he, "she did not look on me as if I had spoken
presumptuously! I will hope, though it be against hope--even though it be
but the shadow of despair."
But an hour had not passed, although he sought to hide himself with his
thoughts in his chamber, when he heard that the commissioners who had
arrived from his native land, were Thomas Charteris, the High Chancellor;
Patrick de Graham, William de St Clair, and John de Soulis; and that their
errand was to demand the beautiful Jolande as the bride and queen of their
liege sovereign, Alexander the Third, yet called good.
Now, the praise of Alexander was echoed in every land. He was as a father
to his people, and as a husband to his kingdom. He was wise, just,
resolute, merciful. Scotland loved him--all nations honoured him. But
Death, that spareth not the prince more than the peasant, and which, to
short-sighted mortals, seemeth to strike alike at the righteous and the
wicked, had made desolate the hearths of his palaces, and rendered their
chambers solitary. Tribulation had fallen heavily on the head of a virtuous
King. A granddaughter, the infant child of a foreign prince, was all that
was left of his race; and his people desired that he should leave behind
him, as inheritor of the crown, one who might inherit also his name and
virtues. He was still in the full vigour of his manhood, and the autumn of
years was invisible on his brow. No "single silverings" yet marked the
raven ringlets which waved down his temples; and, though his years were
forty and three, his appearance did not betoken him to be above thirty.
His people, therefore, wished, and his courtiers urged, that he should
marry again; and fame pointed out the lovely Jolande, the daughter of the
Count of Dreux, as his bride.
When Patrick Douglas, the learned and honoured, but fortuneless soldier,
found that his new competitor for the hand of the gentle Jolande was none
other than his sovereign, he was dumb with despair, and the last, the
miserable _hope_ which it imparts, and which maketh wretched, began to
leave him. He now accused himself for having been made the sacrifice of a
wild and presumptuous dream, and again he thought of the kindly smile and
the look of sorrow which met together on her countenance, when, in a rash,
impassioned moment, he fell on his knee before her, and made known what his
heart felt.
But, before another sun rose, Patrick Douglas, the honoured military
adventurer of King Philip, was not to be found in the palace of the Count
de Dreux. Many were the conjectures concerning his sudden departure; and,
amongst those conjectures, as regarding the cause, many were right. But
Jolande stole to her chamber, and in secret wept for the brave stranger.
More than two years passed away, and the negotiations between the Courts of
Scotland and of France, respecting the marriage of King Alexander and Fair
Jolande, were continued; but, during that period, even the name of Patrick
Douglas, the Scottish soldier, began to be forgotten--his learning became a
dead letter, and his feats of arms continued no longer the theme of
tongues. It is seldom that kings are such tardy wooers; but between the
union of the good Alexander and the beautiful Jolande many obstacles were
thrown. When, however, their nuptials were finally agreed to, it was
resolved that they should be celebrated on a scale of magnificence such as
the world had not seen. Now, the loveliest spot in broad Scotland, where
the Scottish King could celebrate the gay festivities, was the good town of
Jedworth, or, as it is now called, Jedburgh. For it was situated, like an
Eden, in the depth of an impenetrable forest; gardens circled it; wooded
hills surrounded it; precipices threw their shadows over flowery glens;
wooded hills embraced it, as the union of many arms; waters murmured amidst
it; and it was a scene on which man could not gaze without forgetting, or
regretting his fallen nature. Yea, the beholder might have said--"If the
earth be yet so lovely, how glorious must it have been ere it was cursed
because of man's transgression!"
Thither, then, did the Scottish monarch, attended by all the well-affected
nobles of his realm, repair to meet his bride. He took up his residence in
the castle of his ancestors, which was situated near the Abbey, and his
nobles occupied their own, or other houses, in other parts of the town; for
Jedburgh was then a great and populous place, and, from the loveliness of
its situation, the chosen residence of royalty. (It is a pity but that our
princes and princesses saw it now, and they would hardly be again charmed
with the cold, dead, and bare beach of Brighton.) An old writer (I forget
whom) has stated, in describing the magnitude of Jedburgh in those days,
that it was six times larger than Berwick. This, however, is a mistake, for
Berwick, at that period, was the greatest maritime town in the kingdom, and
surpassed London, which strove to rival it.
On the same day that King Alexander and his splendid retinue reached
Jedburgh, his bride, escorted by the nobles of France and their attendants,
also arrived. The dresses of the congregated thousands were gorgeous as
summer flowers, and variegated as gorgeous. The people looked with wonder
on the glittering throng. The trees had lost the hues of their fresh and
living green--for brown October threw its deep shadows o'er the
landscape--but the leaves yet trembled on the boughs from which they were
loath to part; and, as a rainbow that had died upon the trees, and left its
hues and impression there, the embrowning forest appeared.
The marriage ceremony was performed in the Abbey, before Morel, the Lord
Abbot, and glad assembled thousands. The town and the surrounding hills
became a scene of joy. The bale-fires blazed from every hill; music echoed
in the streets; and from every house, while the light of tapers gleamed,
was heard the sounds of dance and song. The Scottish maiden and the French
courtier danced by the side of the Jed together. But chief of all the
festive scene was the assembly in the hall of the royal castle. At the
farther end of the apartment, elevated on a purpled covered dais, sat King
Alexander, with the hand of his bridal queen locked in his. On each side
were ranged, promiscuously, the Scottish and the French nobility, with
their wives, daughters, and sisters. Music lent its influence to the scene,
and the strains of a hundred instruments blended in a swell of melody.
Thrice a hundred tapers burned suspended from the roof, and on each side of
the hall stood twenty men with branches of blazing pine. Now came the
morris dance, with the antique dress and strange attitudes of the
performers, which was succeeded by a dance of warriors in their coats of
mail, and with their swords drawn. After these a masque, prepared by Thomas
the Rymer, who sat on the right hand of the King, followed; and the company
laughed, wept, and wondered, as the actors performed their parts before
them.
But now came the royal dance; the music burst into a bolder strain, and
lord and lady rose, treading the strange measure down the hall, after the
King and his fair Queen. Louder, and yet more loud the music pealed; and,
though it was midnight, the multitude without shouted at its enlivening
strains. Blithely the dance went on, and the King well nigh forgot the
measure as he looked enraptured in the fair face of his beauteous bride.
He turned to take her hand in the dance, and in its stead the bony fingers
of a skeleton were extended to him. He shrank back aghast; for royalty
shuddereth at the sight of Death as doth a beggar, and, in its presence,
feeleth his power to be as the power of him who vainly commanded the waves
of the sea to go back. Still the skeleton kept true measure before
him--still it extended to him its bony hand. He fell back, in horror,
against a pillar where a torch-bearer stood. The lovely Queen shrieked
aloud, and fell as dead upon the ground. The music ceased--silence fell on
the multitude--they stood still--they gazed on each other. Dismay caused
the cold damp of terror to burst from every brow, and timid maidens sought
refuge and hid their faces on the bosom of strangers. But still, visible to
all, the spectre stood before the king, its bare ribs rattling as it moved,
and its finger pointed towards him. The music, the dancers, became
noiseless, as if Death had whispered--"_Hush_!--_be still_!" For the figure
of death stood in the midst of them, as though it mocked them, and no sound
was heard save the rattling of the bones, the moving of its teeth, and the
motion of its fingers before the king.
The lord abbot gathered courage, he raised his crucifix from his breast, he
was about to exorcise the strange spectre, when it bent its grim head
before him, and vanished as it came--no man knew whither.
"Let the revels cease!" gasped the terror-stricken king; and they did
cease. The day had begun in joy, it was ended in terror. Fear spread over
the land, and while the strange tale of the marriage spectre was yet in the
mouths of all men, yea before six months had passed, the tidings spread
that the good King Alexander, at whom the figure of Death had pointed its
finger, was with the dead, and his young queen a widow in a strange land.
The appearance of the spectre became a tale of wonder amongst all men,
descending from generation to generation, and unto this day it remains a
mystery. But, on the day after the royal festival at Jedburgh, Patrick
Douglas, the learned soldier, took the vows, and became a monastic brother
at Melrose; and, though he spoke of Jolande in his dreams, he smiled, as if
in secret triumph, when the spectre that had appeared to King Alexander was
mentioned in his hearing.
THE SIMPLE MAN IS THE BEGGAR'S BROTHER.
"Many a time," said Nicholas Middlemiss, as he turned round the skirts and
the sleeve of his threadbare coat to examine them, "many a time have I
heard my mother say to my faither--'Roger, Roger (for that was my faither's
name,) _the simple man is the beggar's brother_.' But, notwithstanding my
mother's admonitions, my faither certainly was a very simple man. He
allowed people to take him in, even while they were laughing in his face at
his simplicity. I dinna think that ever there was a week but that somebody
or other owrereached him, in some transaction or other; for every knave,
kennin' him to be a simpleton, (a nosey-wax, as my mother said,) always
laid their snares to entrap Roger Middlemiss--and his family were the
sufferers. He had been a manufacturer in Langholm for many a long year, and
at his death he left four brothers, a sister and mysel', four hundred
pounds each. Be it remembered, however, that his faither before him left
him near to three thousand, and that was an uncommon fortune in those days,
a fortune I may say that my faither might have made his bairns dukes by.
Had he no been a simple man, his family might have said that they wouldna
ca' the Duke o' Buccleuch their cousin. But he was simple--simplicity's
sel'--(as my mother told him weel about it)--and he didna leave his bairns
sae meikle to divide among them, as he had inherited from their
grandfaither. Yet, if, notwithstanding his opportunities to make a fortune,
he did not even leave us even what he had got, he at least left us his
simpleness unimpaired. My brothers were honest men--owre honest, I am sorry
to say, for the every-day transactions of this world--but they always
followed the _obliging_ path, and kept their face in a direction, which, if
they had had foresight enough to see it, was sure to land them _in_, or
_on_,(just as ye like to take the expression,) their _native parish_. Now,
this is a longing after the place o' one's birth for which I have no
ambition; but on the parish it did land my brothers. My sister, too, was a
poor simple thing, that married a man who had a wife living when he married
her; and, after he had got every shilling that she had into his possession,
he decamped and left her.