Old Friends Part 11

_Foide Mac.u.mazahn_, the Zulus say, meaning as true as a yarn of Allan Quatermain's. Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan Quatermain a liar. The fellow was going on with a prodigious palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the Land of Absolute Negation, and I don't know what, but I signified to him that if he did not believe my yarns I did not want his company. "I'm sorry to turn you out," I said, "for there are lions around"-indeed they were roaring to each other-"and you will have a parroty time. But you apologise, or you go!"

He laughed his short thick laugh. "I am a man who hopes nothing, feels nothing, fears nothing, and believes nothing that you tell me!"

I got up and went for him with my fists, and whether he feared nothing or not I don't know; but he scooted, dropping a yellow French novel, by one Catulle Mendes, that I could make neither head nor tail of. I afterwards heard that there was something about this stranger in a book called "The Story of an African Farm," which I once began, but never finished, not being able to understand most of it, and being vexed by the gross improbability of the girl not marrying the baby's father, he being ready and willing to make her an honest woman. However, I am no critic, but a plain man who tells a plain tale, and I believe persons of soul admire the book very much. Any way, it does not say who the Stranger was-an allegorical kind of bagman I fancy; but I am not done with him yet.

Out he went into the dark, where hundreds of lions could be plainly seen making love (at which season they are very dangerous) by the flashes of lightning.

It was a terrific yet beautiful spectacle, and one which I can never forget. The black of night would suddenly open like a huge silver flower, deep within deep, till you almost fancied you could see within the gates of heaven. The hills stood out dark against the illimitable splendour, and on every koppie you saw the huge lions, like kittens at play, roaring till you could scarcely hear the thunder. The rain was rus.h.i.+ng like a river, all glittering like diamonds, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, all was black as a wolf's mouth till the next flash.

The lightning, coming from all quarters, appeared to meet above me, and now was red, now golden, now silver again, while the great cat-like beasts, as they leaped or lay, looked like gold, red, and silver lions, reminding me of the signs of public-houses in old England, far away.

Meantime the donga beneath roared with the flooded torrent that the rain was bringing down from the heights of Umbopobekatankts.h.i.+u.

I stood watching the grand spectacle for some time, rather pitying the Stranger who was out in it, by no fault of mine. Then I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, ate a mealy or two, and crept into my _kartel_, {184} and slept the sleep of the just.

About dawn I woke. The thunder had rolled away like a bad dream. The long level silver shafts of the dawn were flooding the heights, raindrops glittered like diamonds on every kopje and karroo bush, leaving the deep donga bathed in the solemn pall of mysterious night.

My thoughts went rapidly over the millions of leagues of land and sea, where life, that perpetual problem, was now awaking to another day of struggle and temptation. Then the golden arrows of the day followed fast. The silver and blue sky grew roseate with that wide wild blush which testifies to the modest delight of nature, satisfied and grateful for her silent existence and her amorous repose. I breakfasted, went down into the donga with a black boy, poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of my plain story. I began poking among the rocks in the dry basin of the donga, {185} and had just picked up a pebble-I knew it by the soapy feel for a diamond. Uncut it was about three times the size of the koh-i-noor, say 1,000 carats, and I was rejoicing in my luck when I heard the scream of a human being in the last agony of terror. Looking up, I saw that on either side of the donga, which was about twenty feet wide, a great black lion and lioness were standing with open jaws, while some fifty yards in front of me an alligator, in a deep pool of the flooded donga, was stretching his open snout and gleaming teeth greedily upwards.

Over head flew an eagle, and _in mid-air between_, as I am a living and honourable man, a human being was leaping the chasm. He had been pursued by the lion on my left, and had been driven to attempt the terrible leap; but if he crossed he was certain to fall into the jaws of the lion on my right, while if he fell short in his jump, do you see, the alligator was ready for him below, and the great golden eagle watched the business from above, in case he attempted to escape _that_ way.

All this takes long to tell, though it was pa.s.sing in a flash of time.

Dropping the diamond (which must have rolled into a crevice of the rock, for I never saw it again), I caught up my double-barrelled rifle (one of Wesson & Smith's), aimed at the lion on the right hand of the donga with my right barrel, and then hastily fired my left at the alligator. When the smoke cleared away, the man had reached the right side of the donga safe and sound. Seeing that the alligator was dying, I loaded again, bowled over the lioness on the left, settled the eagle's business (he fell dead into the jaws of the dying alligator, which closed on him with a snap). I then climbed the wall of the donga, and there lay, fainting, the Stranger of last night-the man who feared nothing-the blood of the dead lion trickling over him. His celebrated allegorical walking-stick from the African Farm had been broken into two pieces by the bullet after it (the bullet) had pa.s.sed through the head of the lion. And, as the "Ingoldsby Legends" say, "n.o.body was one penny the worse," except the wild beasts. The man, however, had had a parroty time, and it was a good hour before I could bring him round, during which he finished my brandy.

He still wore gloves. What he was doing in Omuborumbunga's country I do not know to this day. I never found the diamond again, though I hunted long. But I must say that two better right and left shots, considering that I had no time to aim, and that they were really snapshots, I never remember to have made in my long experience.

This is the short and the long of the matter, which was talked of a good deal in the Colony, and about which, I am told, some inaccurate accounts have got into the newspapers. I hate writing, as you know, and don't pretend to give a literary colour to this little business of the shots, but merely tell a "plain, unvarnished tale," as the "Ingoldsby Legends"

say.

As to the Stranger, what he was doing there, or who he was, or where he is now, I can tell you nothing. He told me he was bound for "the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and Realities," which he kindly pointed out to me among the carvings of his walking-stick. He then sighed wearily, very wearily, and scooted. I think he came to no good; but he never came in my way again.

And now you know the yarn of the two stuffed lions and the alligator with the eagle in his jaws.

Ever yours,

ALLAN QUATERMAIN.

XXIII.

_From the Baron Bradwardine to Edward Waverley_, _Esq._, _of Waverley Honour_.

The Baron explains the mysterious circ.u.mstances of his affair with his third cousin, Sir Hew Halbert.-"Waverley," chap. xiv.

Tully Veolan, May 17, 1747.

SON EDWARD,-Touching my quarrel with Sir Hew Halbert, anent which I told you no more than that it was "settled in a fitting manner," you have long teased me for an ampler explanation. This I have withheld, as conceiving that it tended rather to vain quolibets and jesting, than to that respect in which the duello, or single combat, should be regarded by gentlemen of name and coat armour. But Sir Hew being dead, and buried with his fathers, the matter may be broached as among friends and persons of honour. The ground of our dispute, as ye know, was an unthinking scoff of Sir Hew's, he being my own third cousin by the mother's side, Anderson of Ettrick Hall having intermarried, about the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, with Anderson of Tus.h.i.+elaw, both of which houses are connected with the Halberts of Dinniewuddie and with the Bradwardines.

But _stemmata quid faciunt_? Sir Hew, being a young man, and the maut, as the vulgar say, above the meal, after a funeral of one of our kin in the Cathedral Kirkyard of St. Andrews, we met at Gla.s.s's Inn, where, in the presence of many gentlemen, occurred our unfortunate dissension.

We encountered betimes next morning, on a secluded spot of the sands hard by the town, at the Eden-mouth. {190} The weapons were pistols, Sir Hew, by a slight pa.s.sing infirmity, being disabled from the use of the sword.

Inchgrabbit was my second, and Strathtyrum did the same office for my kinsman, Sir Hew. The pistols being charged and primed, and we aligned forenent each other at the convenient distance of twelve paces, the word was given to fire, and both weapons having been discharged, and the smoke having cleared away, Sir Hew was discovered fallen to the ground, _proc.u.mbus humi_, and exanimate. The blood was flowing freely from a face-wound, and my unhappy kinsman was senseless. At this moment we heard a voice, as of one _clamantis in eremo_, cry "_Fore_!" to which paying no heed in the natural agitation of our spirits, we hurried to lift my fallen opponent and examine his wound. Upon a closer search it proved to be no shot-wound, but a mere clour, or bruise, whereof the reason was now apparent, he having been struck by the ball of a golfer (from us concealed by the _dunes_, or bunkers, of sand) and not by the discharge of my weapon. At this moment a plebeian fellow appeared with his _arma campestria_, or clubs, cleeks, irons, and the like, under his arm, who, without paying any attention to our situation, struck the ball wherewith he had felled my kinsman in the direction of the hole.

Reflection directed us to the conclusion that both pistols had missed their aim, and that Sir Hew had fallen beneath a chance blow from this fellow's golf-ball. But as my kinsman was still _hors de combat_, and incapable of further action, being unwitting, too, of the real cause of his disaster, Inchgrabbit and Strathtyrum, in their discretion as seconds, or _belli judices_, deemed it better that we should keep a still sough, and that Sir Hew should never be informed concerning the cause of his discomfiture. This resolution we kept, and Sir Hew wore, till the day of his late lamented decease, a bullet among the seals of his watch, he being persuaded by Strathtyrum that it had been extracted from his brain-pan, which certainly was of the thickest. But this was all a bam, or bite, among young men, and a splore to laugh over by our three selves, nor would I have it to go abroad now that Sir Hew is dead, as being prejudicial to the memory of a worthy man, and an honourable family connected with our own. Wherefore I pray you keep a still sough hereanent, as you love me, who remain-Your loving good father,

BRADWARDINE.

APPENDIX

Note on Letter of Mr. Surtees to Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, p. 64.

NO literary forgeries were ever much better done than the sham ballads which Surtees of Mainsforth imposed on Sir Walter Scott. The poems were spirited and good of their kind; and though we wonder now that some of them could take in an expert, it is by no means a.s.sured that we are even to-day acquainted with the whole of Surtees' frauds. Why a man otherwise honourable, kindly, charitable, and learned, exercised his ingenuity so cruelly upon a trusting correspondent and a staunch friend, it is hardly possible to guess. The biographers of Surtees maintain that he wanted to try his skill on Scott, then only known to him by correspondence; and that, having succeeded, he was afraid to risk Scott's friends.h.i.+p by a confession. This is plausible; and if good may come out of evil, we may remember that two picturesque parts of "Marmion" are due to one confessed and another certain _supercherie_ of Surtees. It cannot be said in his defence that he had no conception of the mischief of literary frauds; in more than one pa.s.sage of his correspondence he mentions Ritson's detestation of these practices. "To literary imposition, as tending to obscure the path of inquiry, Ritson gave no quarter," says this arch literary impostor.

A brief account of Surtees' labour in the field of sham ballad writing may be fresh to many people who merely know him as the real author of "Barthram's Dirge" and of "The Slaying of Anthony Featherstonhaugh." In an undated letter of 1806, Scott, writing from Ashestiel, thanks Surtees for his "obliging communications." Surtees manifestly began the correspondence, being attracted by the "Border Minstrelsy." Thus it appears that Surtees did _not_ forge "Hobbie n.o.ble" in the first edition of the "Minstrelsy"; for he makes some suggestions as to the "Earl of Whitfield," dreaded by the hero of that ballad, which Scott had already published. But he was already deceiving Scott, who writes to him about "Ralph Eure," or "Lord Eure," and about a "Goth, who melted Lord Eure's gold chain." This Lord Eure is doubtless the "Lord Eurie" of the ballad in the later editions of the "Border Minstrelsy," a ballad actually composed by Surtees. That wily person immediately sent Scott a ballad on "The Feud between the Ridleys and Featherstones," in which Scott believed to the day of his death. He introduced it in "Marmion."

The whiles a Northern harper rude Chaunted a rhyme of deadly feud, How the fierce Thirlwalls and Ridleys all, &c.

In his note ("Border Minstrelsy," second edition, 1808, p. xxi.) Scott says the ballad was taken down from an old woman's recitation at the Alston Moor lead-mines "by the agent there," and sent by him to Surtees.

Consequently, when Surtees saw "Marmion" in print he had to ask Scott not to print "_the_ agent," as he does not know even the name of Colonel Beaumont's chief agent there, but "an agent." Thus he hedged himself from a not impossible disclaimer by the agent at the mines.

Readers of "Marmion" will remember how

Once, near Norham, there did fight A spectre fell, of fiendish might, In likeness of a Scottish knight, With Brian Bulmer bold, And trained him nigh to disallow The aid of his baptismal vow.

This legend is more of Surtees' fun. "The most singular tale of this kind," says Sir Walter, "is contained in an extract communicated to me by my friend Mr. Surtees, of Mainsforth, who copied it from a MS. note in a copy of Burthogge "On the Nature of Spirits, 1694, 8vo," which had been the property of the late Mr. Gill. It was not in Mr. Gill's own hand: but probably an hundred years older, and was said to be "E libro Convent.

Dunelm. per T. C. extract.;" this T. C. being Thomas Cradocke, Esq.

Scott adds, that the pa.s.sage, which he gives in the Latin, suggested the introduction of the tourney with the Fairy Knight in "Marmion." Well, _where_ is Cradocke's extract? The original was "lost" before Surtees sent his "copy" to Sir Walter. "The notes had been carelessly or injudiciously shaken out of the book." Surtees adds, another editor confirms it, that no such story exists in any MS. of the Dean and Chapter of Durham. No doubt he invented the whole story, and wrote it himself in mediaeval Latin.

Not content with two "whoppers," as Mr. Jo Gargery might call them, Surtees goes on to invent a perfectly incredible heraldic bearing. He found it in a MS. note in the "Gwillim's Heraldry" of Mr. Gyll or Gill-the name is written both ways. "He beareth per pale or and arg., over all a spectre pa.s.sant, _shrouded sable_"-"he" being Newton, of Beverley, in Yorks.h.i.+re. Sir Walter actually swallowed this amazing fib, and alludes to it in "Rob Roy" (1818). But Mr. Raine, the editor of Surtees' Life, inherited or bought his copy of Gwillim, that of Mr. Gill or Gyll; "and I find in it no trace of such an entry." "Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's Good-Night" is probably entirely by Surtees. "A friend of Mr. Taylor's" gave him a Tynedale ballad, "Hey, w.i.l.l.y Ridley, winna you stay?" which is also "aut Diabolus aut Robertus." As to "Barthram's Dirge," "from Ann Douglas, a withered crone who weeds my garden," copies with various tentative verses in Surtees' hand have been found. Oddly enough, Sir Walter had once discovered a small sepulchral cross, upset, in Liddesdale, near the "Nine Stane Rig;" and this probably made him more easily deceived. Surtees very cleverly put some lines, which _could_ not have been original, in brackets, as his own attempt to fill up lacunae.

Such are

[When the dew fell cold and still, When the aspen grey forget to play, And the mist clung to the hill.]

Any one reading the piece would say, "It must be genuine, for the _confessed_ interpolations are not in the ballad style, which the interpolator, therefore, could not write." An attempt which Surtees made when composing the song, and which he wisely rejected, could not have failed to excite Scott's suspicions. It ran-

They buried him when the bonny may Was on the flow'ring thorn; And she waked him till the forest grey Of every leaf was lorn;

Till the rowan tree of gramarye Its scarlet cl.u.s.ters shed, And the hollin green alone was seen With its berries glistening red.

Whether Surtees' "Brown Man of the Muirs," to which Scott also gave a place in his own poetry, was a true legend or not, the reader may decide for himself.

Concerning another ballad in the "Minstrelsy"-"Auld Maitland"-Professor Child has expressed a suspicion which most readers feel. What Scott told Ellis about it (Autumn, 1802) was, that he got it in the Forest, "copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd by a country farmer." Who was the farmer? Will Laidlaw had employed James Hogg, as shepherd.

Hogg's mother chanted "Auld Maitland." Hogg first met Scott in the summer of 1801. The shepherd had already seen the first volume of the "Minstrelsy." Did he, thereupon, write "Auld Maitland," teach his mother it, and induce Laidlaw to take it down from her recitation? The old lady said she got it from Andrew Moir, who had it "frae auld Baby Mettlin, who was said to have been another nor a gude ane." But we have Hogg's own statement that "aiblins ma gran'-mither was an unco leear," and this quality may have been hereditary. On the other side, Hogg could hardly have held his tongue about the forgery, if forgery it was, when he wrote his "Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott" (1834). The whole investigation is a little depressing, and makes one very shy of unauthenticated ballads.

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