using your ain words. But could we no speak about something else than
the 'five acres and thousand pounds' doctrine? I never could comprehend
it."
"And never can," was the tart reply. "You haven't capacity. It requires
deep thought to solve the problem of human happiness, and you needn't
try; but you might listen to instruction."
"I have listened lang aneugh," said the other, alike ruffled in his
turn, "and it comes aye to the same knotted thrum. Ye canna mak a gude
job o't by slicing aff the lords and the puir. Ye might as weel try to
fancy a sheep wi' nae mair body than a king's-hood and some trollops,
without head or trotters." And James laughed good-naturedly.
"Gibes again," retorted Wright, as (according to his account to me) the
vision of the dream came before him, and the anger which had accompanied
it flared upon his heart.
But he wrestled with it, occasionally looking at his friend, whom he
really loved, yet still fancying that the face of that friend, however
illuminated with the good humour probably inspired by the whisky, might
or would assume the demoniac expression it carried when he dreamed that
he had stabbed him to the heart. It signified little that James was
smiling,--the other expression would return when the smile left. It was
embodied in the muscles. It appeared as a phantasm, and the strength of
a morbid imagination gave it form and expression.
"Yes, the old gibes."
"No," replied James; "I canna jibe wi' an auld freend. But to end a'
this just never speak mair o' the new paradise."
"Worse and worse!" cried Wright. "You despise a subject that ought to
interest all people. What are you who laugh at the idea of being made a
proprietor of the rights of man--a poor wretch, who makes a shilling
a-day by carrying beef, and licks the hand that gives you a penny, which
by the rights of nature belongs to you; for is it not robbed from you
by your masters, who have made a forceful division of property, and then
you scoff at the man who would right you. I say, man, you're a born
idiot."
A word this that changed James's face into as much of ill-nature as the
poor fellow's naturally good and simple heart would permit. Wright at
that moment looked at him. He saw, as he thought, the very countenance
of the stabber, and his heart burned again, his eye flashed, and he
instinctively grasped the knife in his hand. The fit lasted for a moment
and went off, and the conversation was renewed at a point where I break
off my narrative, to resume it when Wright gave me the parting words.
All this time I was in my own house. It would be, I think, about nine
o'clock when I left to go up the High Street. I saw a number of people
collected at the mouth of the Fountain Close, and heard dreadful cries
of murder from the high windows of a house a little way down the entry.
I was not thinking of Wright, and pushing the people aside, I was
beginning to make my way down, when up the close comes running a man in
his shirt-sleeves. I caught him in an instant in my arms, while the
people were crying wildly, the women screaming, "Take care of the
knife!"
And to be sure the knife was in his hand, _all bloody_.
"Wright!" cried I, as I wrenched the weapon from him.
"Ay, Wright," replied he; "I have murdered James," and then drawing a
deep sigh he added, in choking accents, "Oh, that dream!"
Holding him tight I got him from amongst the crowd for indeed at the
time I thought him mad. In leading him up I began to recollect the story
he had told me before. I wished to speak, but when I turned to him I
beheld such a wild distortion of features that I shrunk from increasing
his agony. I heard him groaning, every groan getting into the
articulation, "My friend," "My best friend," "Surely I am mad," "Take
care of me, M'Levy--I'm a maniac." I didn't think so now, yet I was upon
my guard; and, as he was a strong man, I got a constable to take him by
the other arm.
On arriving at the Office, which we did in the midst of a dense crowd,
among whom the word "murder" sped from mouth to mouth, making open lips
and wide staring eyes, I led him in. The moment he entered, he flung
himself on a seat, and covering his eyes with his hands sent forth
gurgling sounds, as if his chest were convulsed--rolling meanwhile from
side to side, striking his head on the back of the seat, and still the
words, "James, James, my old friend--O God! what is this I have brought
upon me?"
"Is Imrie dead?" said I, watching him narrowly.
"Dead!" he cried, with a kind of wild satire, even light as a madman's
laugh; "up to the heft in his bowels."
"Was it connected with the dream, William?" I said again; "why, it was
James should have stabbed you."
"The dream," he ejaculated, as if his spirit had retired back into his
heart; "the dream--ay, the dream. It was that--it was that."
"How could that be?" I said again, for I was in a difficulty.
"His face, the very face he had when, in my dream, he plunged my own
knife in me, has haunted me ever since. I told you that morning it was
with me. I could not get rid of it, and when I saw him to-night sitting
by me, I observed the same scowl. I thought he was going to seize my
knife and stab me. I thought I would prevent him by being before him,
and plunged the knife into his body."
"Terrible delusion," said I. "Imrie, as I told you, couldn't have hurt a
fly."
"Too late, too late," he groaned. "I know it now, and, what is worst of
all, I'm not mad; I feel I am not, and I must be hanged. Nothing else
will satisfy my mind--I have said it. If not, I will destroy
myself--lend me my knife."
"No, no," said I, "no murders here; but perhaps James is not dead--he
may recover."
"Why do you say that?" he cried, as he slipt off the chair, and took me
by the knees; "who knows that? has any one seen him to tell you? I would
give the world and my existence to know that he has got one remnant of
life in him;" and then he added, as his head fell upon his chest, "Alas!
it is impossible. I took too good care of that. It would have done for
one of his master's oxen."
"Imrie's not dead," said a constable, as he came forward; "they've taken
him to the Infirmary."
I have seen a criminal with his whole soul in his ear as the jury took
their seats, and seen his eye after the transference of his spirit from
the one organ to the other, as he heard the words "Not guilty." So
appeared Wright. He rose up, and again seating himself, while his eye
was still fixed on the bearer of good news, he held up his hands in an
attitude of prayer, and kept muttering words which I could not hear.
On leading him to the cell, where he was in solitude to be left for the
night, I could not help thinking, as I have done on other occasions,
that the first night is the true period of torture to such a one as
Wright, with remorse in his heart. I suspect we cannot picture those
agonies of the spirit except by some comparisons with our experiences of
pain; but as pain changes its character with every pang, as it responds
to the ever-coming and varying thoughts, our efforts are simply
ineffectual. We give a shudder, and fly to some other thought for
relief. To a sufferer such as Wright, we can picture only one
alternative--the total renunciation of the spirit to God; and how
wonderfully the constitution of the mind is suited to this, the deepest
remorse finding the readiest way where we would think it might be
reversed. It is impossible to rid one's-self of the conviction from this
strange fact alone, that Christianity, which harmonises with this
instinct, so to call it, comes from the God of the instinct. It seemed
to me that Wright would, in the ensuing night, find the solace he seemed
to yearn for. He had already got some hope; and becoming calm, I sat
down beside him for a short time, for I had known him as a decent,
hard-working fellow, incapable, except under some frenzy, of committing
murder. I got from him the conversation with Imrie, which I have given
partly, I doubt not, in that incorrect way, as to the set form of words,
inseparable from such narratives.
"When I called James an idiot," he continued, "I saw the expression, as
I thought, coming over his face, and I had the feeling I had in my
dream, but I soon saw the old smile there again, and was soon
reconciled.
"'Weel, maybe I am an idiot,' said James, 'for I've been aye dangling my
bonnet in the presence o' customers, when maybe if I had clapt it on my
head wi' a gude thud o' my hand, and said, "I'm as gude as you," and
forced my way i' the warld, I wouldna, this day, be ca'd Jamie Imrie,
the flesher's porter.'
"And the good soul smiled again, so we took another glass of the
whisky,--a good thing when it works in a good heart, but a fearful one
when it rouses the latent corruption of a bad one. I fear it wrought so
with me, for although we were old friends, I got still moodier, thinking
more and more of my dream, while James became more humorous.
"'But, Willie, my dear Willie,' he said, 'idiot as I may be, I doot if I
would ha'e been better under your system, for I would ha'e been a daft
laird o' five acres, and gi'en awa' my snuff and my whisky, and maybe my
turnips, to my freends, and got in debt and been a bankrupt proprietor;
so, just to be plain wi' you, and I've thought o' tellin' ye this afore
nou, I would recommend you to gi'e up this new-fangled nonsense o'
yours, or rather, I should say, auld-fangled, for you've been at it
since ever I mind. Naebody seems to understand it, and here's a bit o' a
secret,' lowering his voice, 'the folks lauch at ye when you're walking
on the street, and say, "There's the political cobbler that's to cobble
up society."'
"'Laugh at me!' I cried, in my roused wrath, yet I had borne ten times
more from my old friend; 'laugh at me, you villain!'
"Then James's face grew dark--I watched it, it was the very face of my
dream. The drink deceived me, no doubt, but I was certain of what I saw.
I observed him move, as if he wanted the knife. Oh, terrible delusion! I
believe the good soul had no such intention; but I was carried away by
some mysterious agency. I thought I was called upon to defend myself
against murder; I grasped the knife, and in an instant plunged it into
his belly, and as I drew out the weapon, the blood gushed forth like a
well. 'Oh, Willie!' he cried, and fell at my feet.
"I immediately roared for help, and in ran my wife, followed by
neighbours. With the knife in my hand, I rushed out, and fell into your
arms. Now, can you read this story, and tell me the meaning of it? I
have already said I am not mad; but why was I led by a dream to stab my
friend? Is there any meaning in my conduct as directed by Providence?"
"I just fear, William," said I, "from what I observed in you that
morning when you told me your dream, that you had been drinking too much
whisky, which, fevering and distempering your mind, produced not only
the dream, but the subsequent notion that poor James was intent upon
killing you. You will now see the consequence of drink. One may trace
the effects of it for a time, but when, after a certain period, it
begins to work changes in the tormented and worried brain, no man can
calculate the results, or the crimes to which it may lead."
"I believe you are right," replied he; "and if James would just recover,
he would be dearer to me than ever, and whisky no longer a deceitful
friend; but, ah! I fear. And then how am I to pass this night in a dark
cell, with no one near me, and the vision of that bleeding body before
my eyes aye, and those words sounding in my ear, which torture and wring
my heart more than a thousand oaths--those simple words, 'Oh, Willie!'"
"You must trust where trust can find a bottom," said I; "perhaps Imrie
may live and recover."
"God grant!" groaned the prisoner.
And with a sorrowful heart, I turned the key in the lock.
Next day, it was ascertained that Imrie had passed a night of extreme
suffering, and then died. This information I conveyed to Wright. It was
needless to try modes of breaking it to him. His fear made him leap at
it as one under frenzy will leap down a precipice. I had no nerve for
what I have no doubt followed, and hurried out just as he had thrown
himself on his hard bed, and I heard his cries ringing behind the door
as I again closed it.
Wright was brought to trial on a charge of wilful murder, with a minor
charge of culpable homicide. It was a stretch to choose the latter; but
the men were known to be friends, and as no one witnessed the
catastrophe, the milder construction was put upon an act which, after
all, I suspect was simply one of temporary madness. I doubt if all the
strange particulars were ever known. Wright was sentenced to fourteen
years' penal servitude. I have often thought of this case, but never
diverged from the theory I mentioned to Wright himself. It does not
affect my opinion of dreams. The two friends had been in the habit of
getting into tilts, the result of their drinking. The dream was only an
impression caused by some angry look forced out of the simple victim.
The fever of the brain gave it consistency, and deepened it, and under
the apprehension that he himself was to be stabbed, he stabbed his
friend. This is the only dream-case in my book; and I'm not sorry for
it, otherwise I might have glided into the supernatural, as others have
done who have had more education than I, and are better able to separate
the world of dreams from the stern world of realities.
The Cock and Trumpet.
There are certain duties we perform of which we are scarcely aware, and
which consist in a species of strolling supervision among houses, which,
though not devoted to resetting, are often yet receptacles of stolen
goods, through a means of the residence there of women of the lowest
stratum of vice and profligacy. Though we have no charge against the
house at the time, and no suspicion that it contains stolen property, we
claim the privilege of going through it on the ostensible pretence that
we have in view a particular object of recovery. I have generally, I
think, been fonder of these _pleasant_ strolls than my brethren, perhaps
for the reason that on some occasions I have been fortunate in what may
be called chance waifs. Among these there was at the period I allude to,
a well-known house, known as the Cock and Trumpet, for the reason that a
bantam was represented on the sign as blowing the clarion of war in the
shape of a huge French horn--significant no doubt of the crowing of the
Gallic cockerel. It was a favourite of mine--the more by token that I
had several times brought off rather wonderful things. On one occasion
I issued triumphantly with a Dunlop cheese weighing thirty pounds, on
another with a dozen of Italian sausages, and on another with two live
geese.
It was a feature of the portly landlady that she never knew (not she)
that such things were in the house. "Some of thae rattling deevils o'
hizzies had done it. The glaikit limmers, will they no be content wi'
their ain game, but maun turn common thieves?" Then her surprise was
just as like the real astonishment as veritable wonder itself. "And got
ye that in _my_ house, Mr M'Levy? Whaur in a' the earth did it come
frae? and wha brought it to the Cock and Trumpet? I wish I kent the
gillet."
But the sound of _her_ trumpet was changed one morning after she had
taken to herself a certain Mr Alexander Dewar to be lord of her, her
establishment, and the crowing bantam. Sandy, who was himself a great
thief, had thus risen in the sliding scale. It is not often that thieves
rise to be the head of an establishment with a dozen of beds, though
without even a fir table by way of ordinary; but so true is the title of
my book, that Sandy's slide upwards was just the cause of a return
downwards with accelerated velocity.
One morning I happened to be earlier on my rounds than usual, and though
houses like the Cock and Trumpet do their business during night, and are
therefore late openers, I found the door open.
Something more than ordinary, I said to myself. The bantam must have
been roused by some cock that has seen the morning's light sooner than
it reaches the deep recesses of that wynd.
And going straight in, and passing through a room of sleeping beauties
reposing blissfully amidst a chorus of snorts, I came to the bed-room of
the new master himself. The mistress was enjoying in bed the repose due
to her midnight and morning labours, snoring as deep as a woman of her
size and suction could do, and beside her, in a chair, sat Sandy himself
plucking lustily at fowls. He had finished nine hens, and was busy with
the last of nine ducks. No wonder that the bantam had crown so early.
"What a fine show of poultry, Sandy, man," said I. "Where got you so
many hens and ducks?"
"A man has surely a right to what comes into his ain trap," replied the
rogue, as unmoved as one of the dead hens. "They flew in at the window."
And he proceeded with his operation of plucking.
My voice had in the meantime awakened his helpmate.
"Whaur can the hens hae come frae?" snorted the jolly woman. "Some o'
the hizzies, nae doot."
"No, mistress," said I; "they flew in at the window."
"Weel, maybe they did."
"Just in the way the Bologna sausages did," said I.
"Na, it was the jade Bess Brown did that job, but I'm an innocent
woman. Was I no sleeping when ye cam in? Does a sleeping woman catch
hens in her sleep as she does flees in her mooth?"
"Well," said I, turning to Sandy, "you're the man."
"The Lord's will be dune," said the wife, in a tone quite at variance
with her old system of asserting her innocence, (Sandy, her "husband,"
being bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh). "If Sandy has disgraced
the house I made him master o', ay, and a gentleman to boot, he maun
just dree the dregs."
Nor was I much surprised at this turn, for I had heard that she was
losing conceit of Sandy, and had been repenting that she had raised him
to the rank of a gentleman as well as lord of the Cock and Trumpet. Here
was a good opportunity for getting quit of him, and the shrewd Jezebel
saw her advantage.
"Now, Sandy," said I again to the cool rogue, still occupied with his
work, and who had now arrived at the head feathers of the last duck,
which head feathers (though generally left by poultry pluckers) I
observed he had carefully taken from every victim: "lay down the duck
and get a pillow-slip."
"Here's ane," cried his wife on the instant, as she began to undo the
strings of her head cushion, ay, even that which had been frequently
pressed by the head of her lord. "There," she added, as she threw the
article out of the bed.
"Put these feathers into that bag," said I; "every feather, and I'll
wait till I see the last put in."
"Ye'll find that a kittle job, Mr M'Levy. A fleeing feather's no easily
catched."
"Weel," said Sandy, as he threw a wrathful glance at the mistress of his
affection, now about to be lost to him, a loss of fifteen stones of
solid beef--"I'll do your bidding," and then relaxing into a
chuckle--"but will you tell me hoo the devil ony judge or jury can tell,
after a' these feathers are mixed, which belongs to a duke, and which to
a hen, and which to ae duke, and no to anither, and which to ae hen, and
no to its neeghbour; and then after a' that, to whom the hens or the
dukes belang? Ye see there's no a head feather left."
I saw in a moment that the cunning rogue had caught me, and that I might
be in for an official scrape. But I had gone too far to recede, and I
had got out of as great a difficulty before. "Put in the feathers
quick," said I.
"The lasses will help him," cried the landlady, still bent on favouring
the apprehension of Sandy; and quickly a husky voice sounded through the
house, reaching, as it was intended, the hall of the sleeping
beauties--"Kate Semple, Jessie Lumsdaine, Flora Macdonald."
And straightway came rushing from their beds two or three of her
"children," as she used to call them. I need not describe the condition
they were in, nor their swollen, sleepless eyes, their dishevelled hair,
and their wondering looks, as they found their dreams probably changed
from a place where there was roasting to a place of plucking.
"Help Sandy to put thae feathers in that pillow-slip, for the deil ane
o' them will remain to tak' away the credit o' my house."
And thereupon the girls began the work, sprawling on their hands and
knees, and putting in handful by handful as Sandy held open the mouth of
the slip. The job was a difficult one, and the scene sufficiently
picturesque to occupy my attention, diverted as it sometimes was by my
anticipated difficulty in identifying the corpses; nor was it without a
brush that they could accomplish the entire clearance I insisted on.
Even the flying feathers I urged my nymphs to secure, an operation which
they undertook with agility, screaming and laughing in the midst of
their work with all that wild levity and recklessness for which their
tribe is remarkable.
"Here," cried Mrs Dewar, "there's some on my bed." And commencing to
pick them up, "Nae man shall say that a stown feather was left in my
house."
A degree of refinement in this honest woman's purity which produced a
smile from me, in spite of the difficulties of a case of evidence which
promised me some trouble. Nor were my fears unreasonable. Our honour is
at stake in such matters, and then we require to keep in view that while
little good may result from punishing so determined and hardened a rogue
as Sandy Dewar, the evil consequences of an acquittal are serious. It
emboldens the culprit himself, and affords a triumph to the whole
fraternity.
"And now, Sandy," said I, when there was scarcely a feather to be seen,
"you'll bind all the legs of the corpses together."
A command which was obeyed slowly and reluctantly.
"Throw them over your back," continued I, "and the bag will go over
all."
Having got my man laden with his dead spoil, "And now we'll march to the
Office," said I.
"And fareweel, Sandy," cried a voice from the bed; "we'll maybe never
see ane anither again. May the Lord prosper ye and mend ye!"
And finding matters in this favourable state, as I conceived, I bent my
head over the lump of innocence:--
"Now, Mrs Dewar," whispered I, "just tell me how Sandy came by the ducks
and hens."
"Aweel," said she in return, disappointing my hopes of an admission,
"I'll say naething against my lawfu' husband. If the dukes and hens
didna flee in at the window, it's now dead certain they'll no flee oot
at the door."
These were the last words of the sonsy landlady, and I marched Sandy,
with his burden, through an admiring crowd to the Office, where, having
locked him up, I began to examine the dead bodies. The heads, as I have
said, had been all taken care of, not a feather left upon one of them.
Every corpse was so provokingly like another, that I could see no way of
proving that they belonged to any one; and if, as was likely, Sandy had
not been observed by any person about the place, I had no evidence to
rest on but the equivocal words of Mrs Dewar, which pointed out no
proprietor. I was in difficulty, but my difficulty was a stimulant as
well; and there in the Office I sat, I know not how long, making my
_post mortem_ examination with all the assiduity of a doctor. My honour
was concerned. The bantam would crow if my hens were not identified; but
oh the inestimable virtue of perseverance! Were I to recount what this
power has yielded me, I would read a lesson to the sluggard better than
any imparted by Solomon. I had made my discoveries, and was the more
satisfied with the result, as, during all the time I had been engaged in
the examination of my eighteen dead bodies, I had become the theme of
much good-humoured laughter among my compeers, joined in by the
Superintendent and Lieutenant themselves.