seizing the Laird's right hand, she drew it close to her unstable
eyes, and then perceiving the emerald ring chased in blood, she threw
up her arms with a jerk, opened her skinny jaws with a fearful gape,
and uttering a shriek that made all the house yell, and every one
within it to tremble, she fell back lifeless and rigid on the floor.
The gentlemen both fled, out of sheer terror; but a woman never
deserts her friends in extremity. The lady called her maids about her,
had her old nurse conveyed to bed, where every means were used to
restore animation. But, alas, life was extinct! The vital spark
had fled forever, which filled all their hearts with grief,
disappointment, and horror, as some dreadful tale of mystery was now
sealed up from their knowledge which, in all likelihood, no other
could reveal. But to say the truth, the Laird did not seem greatly
disposed to probe it to the bottom.
Not all the arguments of Captain Bryan and his lady, nor the simple
entreaties of Lady Luna, could induce Birkendelly to put off his
engagement to meet his love on the Birky Brow on the evening of the
9th of August; but he promised soon to return, pretending that some
business of the utmost importance called him away. Before he went,
however, he asked his sister if ever she had heard of such a lady in
Scotland as Jane Ogilvie. Mrs. Bryan repeated the name many times to
herself, and said that name undoubtedly was once familiar to her,
although she thought not for good, but at that moment she did not
recollect one single individual of the name. He then showed her the
emerald ring that had been the death of Lucky Black; but the moment
the lady looked at it, she made a grasp at it to take it off by force,
which she had very nearly effected. "Oh, burn it! burn it!" cried she;
"it is not a right ring! Burn it!"
"My dear sister, what fault is in the ring?" said he. "It is a very
pretty ring, and one that I set great value by."
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, burn it, and renounce the giver!" cried she.
"If you have any regard for your peace here or your soul's welfare
hereafter, burn that ring! If you saw with your own eyes, you would
easily perceive that that is not a ring befitting a Christian to
wear."
This speech confounded Birkendelly a good deal. He retired by himself
and examined the ring, and could see nothing in it unbecoming a
Christian to wear. It was a chased gold ring, with a bright emerald,
which last had a red foil, in some lights giving it a purple gleam,
and inside was engraven "_Elegit_," much defaced, but that his
sister could not see; therefore he could not comprehend her vehement
injunctions concerning it. But that it might no more give her offence,
or any other, he sewed it within his vest, opposite his heart, judging
that there was something in it which his eyes were withholden from
discerning.
Thus he left Ireland with his mind in great confusion, groping his
way, as it were, in a hole of mystery, yet with the passion that
preyed on his heart and vitals more intense than ever. He seems to
have had an impression all his life that some mysterious fate awaited
him, which the correspondence of his dreams and day visions tended
to confirm. And though he gave himself wholly up to the sway of one
overpowering passion, it was not without some yearnings of soul,
manifestations of terror, and so much earthly shame, that he never
more mentioned his love, or his engagements, to any human being, not
even to his friend M'Murdie, whose company he forthwith shunned.
It is on this account that I am unable to relate what passed between
the lovers thenceforward. It is certain they met at the Birky Brow
that St. Lawrence's Eve, for they were seen in company together; but
of the engagements, vows, or dalliance that passed between them I can
say nothing; nor of all their future meetings, until the beginning of
August, 1781, when the Laird began decidedly to make preparations for
his approaching marriage; yet not as if he and his betrothed had been
to reside at Birkendelly, all his provisions rather bespeaking a
meditated journey.
On the morning of the 9th he wrote to his sister, and then arraying
himself in his new wedding suit, and putting the emerald ring on his
finger, he appeared all impatience, until toward evening, when he
sallied out on horseback to his appointment. It seems that his
mysterious inamorata had met him, for he was seen riding through the
big town before sunset, with a young lady behind him, dressed in white
and green, and the villagers affirmed that they were riding at the
rate of fifty miles an hour! They were seen to pass a cottage called
Mosskilt, ten miles farther on, where there was no highway, at the
same tremendous speed; and I could never hear that they were any more
seen, until the following morning, when Birkendelly's fine bay horse
was found lying dead at his own stable door; and shortly after his
master was likewise discovered lying, a blackened corpse, on the Birky
Brow at the very spot where the mysterious but lovely dame had always
appeared to him. There was neither wound, bruise, nor dislocation in
his whole frame; but his skin was of a livid color, and his features
terribly distorted.
This woful catastrophe struck the neighborhood with great
consternation, so that nothing else was talked of. Every ancient
tradition and modern incident were raked together, compared, and
combined; and certainly a most rare concatenation of misfortunes was
elicited. It was authenticated that his father had died on the same
spot that day twenty years, and his grandfather that day forty years,
the former, as was supposed, by a fall from his horse when in liquor,
and the latter, nobody knew how; and now this Allan was the last of
his race, for Mrs. Bryan had no children.
It was, moreover, now remembered by many, and among the rest by the
Rev. Joseph Taylor, that he had frequently observed a young lady, in
white and green, sauntering about the spot on a St. Lawrence's Eve.
When Captain Bryan and his lady arrived to take possession of the
premises, they instituted a strict inquiry into every circumstance;
but nothing further than what was related to them by Mr. M'Murdie
could be learned of this Mysterious Bride, besides what the Laird's
own letter bore. It ran thus:
"DEAREST SISTER,--I shall before this time to-morrow be the most
happy, or most miserable, of mankind, having solemnly engaged myself
this night to wed a young and beautiful lady, named Jane Ogilvie, to
whom it seems I was betrothed before I was born. Our correspondence
has been of a most private and mysterious nature; but my troth is
pledged, and my resolution fixed. We set out on a far journey to the
place of her abode on the nuptial eve, so that it will be long before
I see you again. Yours till death,
"ALLAN GEORGE SANDISON.
"BIRKENDELLY, _August 8_, 1781."
That very same year, an old woman, named Marion Haw, was returned upon
that, her native parish, from Glasgow. She had led a migratory life
with her son--who was what he called a bell-hanger, but in fact a
tinker of the worst grade--for many years, and was at last returned
to the muckle town in a state of great destitution. She gave the
parishioners a history of the Mysterious Bride, so plausibly correct,
but withal so romantic, that everybody said of it (as is often said of
my narratives, with the same narrow-minded prejudice and injustice)
that it was a _made story_. There were, however, some strong
testimonies of its veracity.
She said the first Allan Sandison, who married the great heiress of
Birkendelly, was previously engaged to a beautiful young lady named
Jane Ogilvie, to whom he gave anything but fair play; and, as she
believed, either murdered her, or caused her to be murdered, in the
midst of a thicket of birch and broom, at a spot which she mentioned;
and she had good reason for believing so, as she had seen the red
blood and the new grave, when she was a little girl, and ran home and
mentioned it to her grandfather, who charged her as she valued her
life never to mention that again, as it was only the nombles and hide
of a deer which he himself had buried there. But when, twenty years
subsequent to that, the wicked and unhappy Allan Sandison was found
dead on that very spot, and lying across the green mound, then nearly
level with the surface, which she had once seen a new grave, she then
for the first time ever thought of a Divine Providence; and she added,
"For my grandfather, Neddy Haw, he dee'd too; there's naebody kens
how, nor ever shall."
As they were quite incapable of conceiving from Marion's description
anything of the spot, Mr. M'Murdie caused her to be taken out to the
Birky Brow in a cart, accompanied by Mr. Taylor and some hundreds of
the town's folks; but whenever she saw it, she said, "Aha, birkies!
the haill kintra's altered now. There was nae road here then; it gaed
straight ower the tap o' the hill. An' let me see--there's the thorn
where the cushats biggit; an' there's the auld birk that I ance fell
aff an' left my shoe sticking i' the cleft. I can tell ye, birkies,
either the deer's grave or bonny Jane Ogilvie's is no twa yards aff
the place where that horse's hind-feet are standin'; sae ye may howk,
an' see if there be ony remains."
The minister and M'Murdie and all the people stared at one another,
for they had purposely caused the horse to stand still on the very
spot where both the father and son had been found dead. They digged,
and deep, deep below the road they found part of the slender bones
and skull of a young female, which they deposited decently in the
church-yard. The family of the Sandisons is extinct, the Mysterious
Bride appears no more on the Eve of St. Lawrence, and the wicked
people of the great muckle village have got a lesson on divine justice
written to them in lines of blood.
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER [1]
[Footnote 1: From _The Money-diggers_.]
_Washington Irving_ (1783-1859)
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet
winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side
of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
rises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow
a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of
the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent
in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of
Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly
that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying
about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the
conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and
had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of
sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as
articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where
a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he
would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a
tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.
Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to
words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The
lonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor and
clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his
way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
neighborhood, he took what he considered a short-cut homeward, through
the swamp. Like most short-cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp
was thickly grown with great, gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them
ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat for
all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,
partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often
betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering mud; there
were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the
bull-frog, and the water-snake, where the trunks of pines and hemlocks
lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in
the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a
cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by
the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck,
rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a
firm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosom
of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during
their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of
fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used
as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the
level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks
and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the
dark pines and hemlocks of the swamps.
It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would
have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for
the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
down from the times of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the
savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the Evil Spirit.
Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of
the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen
hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving
with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something
hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull,
with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on
the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt from
it.
"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes and
beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the stump of
a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard nor seen
any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on observing, as
well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was
neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a rude Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his
face was neither black nor copper-color, but swarthy and dingy, and
begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires
and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from
his head in all directions, and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
"What are you doing on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse,
growling voice.
"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than
mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be damned," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he
will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those of
his neighbors. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man who had waxed
wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The
one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been
hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it
was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of
triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
winter."
"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's
timber?"
"The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged
to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the
soil."
"And, pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.
"Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries;
the black miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name
of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated this
spot, and in honor of whom they now and then roasted a white man,
by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the
persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and
prompter of slave-dealers and the grand-master of the Salem witches."
"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom,
sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."
"The same, at your service!" replied the black man, with a half-civil
nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;
though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonely
place would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded
fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant
wife that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest
conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told
him of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate under the
oak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
under his command, and protected by his power, so that none could find
them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place
within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for
him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed
them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to
think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money was
in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger
paused. "What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?"
said Tom. "There's my signature," said the black man, pressing his
finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets
of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into
the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and
so on, until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burned, as
it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
papers, with the usual flourish, that "A great man had fallen in
Israel."
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom;
"who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was
awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to
comply with the black man's terms, and secure what would make them
wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself
to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so
he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and
bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she
talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her.
At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and,
if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same
fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort
toward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When
she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke
something of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing at
the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it
was she forbore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron
heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight
came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night
returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
was said a great black man, with an axe on his shoulder, was seen late
that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a
check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker
grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he
set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long
summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was
to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be
heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming
by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At
length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls
began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted
by the clamor of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. He
looked up and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in
the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as
if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his
wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.
"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly, to himself,
"and we will endeavor to do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings and
sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
the checked apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and
liver tied up in it!