Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XI Part 10

"I wadna hae shown you that," he continued, as I sat down, "but that it is my wish to tell you the warst; for nae man can expect a.s.sistance, if he is ashamed or afraid to show his necessities and his danger. I didna send for you to cure my body, but to examine my mind, and tell me if it is sound and healthy, or weak and diseased, and therefore I will conceal naething frae ye that may show you its state and condition."

I was pleased to find I had so tractable a patient. I paused for a moment, to consider in what way I should draw him out, and on what side I should attack him--whether I should argue calmly with him, and endeavour to stimulate his feelings of duty to his Maker, to himself and his poor daughter; or shake him roughly as a vain and sinful dreamer who had voluntarily swallowed a pernicious soporific, and try to awaken him, and keep him awake, after the manner of our remedial endeavours to save those who have attempted to poison themselves by laudanum. I saw, in an instant, that he was by far too strong-minded a man to be operated upon effectually by the mere charm of the imputed reach and strength of our cabalistic lore--an agent, if well employed, of great good in our profession--and too determined (for such resolutions are always, in some degree, a false result of reasoning powers) to be put from his purpose either by a firm pressure of logical authority, or the subtle and more dangerous means of good-humoured or severe satire. My course was clearly to endeavour to affect the form of his own reasoning, and, if possible, to invest it with a character which might be recognised as true by the peculiar, and, no doubt, morbid perceptions he possessed of moral truth. I began by securing his eye, which I saw was, at times, inclined to wander, or take on that unmeaning, dull, glazed aspect which people in the act of brooding over intense sorrows--as if the optic nerves were thereby paralysed--so often exhibit.

"What train of mind are you in generally," said I, "when the wish to die, accompanied with the fort.i.tude you have mentioned, comes upon you in its strongest form?"

"I first fall into a state of low spirits," said he, "and then nae effort I can use will tak my mind aff my dead wife. I think for whole hours--sometimes on the hills, sometimes in the house, and sometimes in my bed--of our courts.h.i.+p, our marriage, our happy life, and her miserable, painful, untimely death. This feeds my sorrow, which grows stronger, and descends deeper and deeper, till it reaches my brain, and I am sunk in the darkness o' despair. To escape frae thoughts o'

past sorrows that are owre strong to be borne, I try to look forward to the future; but, alas! I see naething there but the pain o' livin for a number o' comfortless years o' auld age, draggin after me, a memory clogged wi' past ills, and naething afore me but a jail, and want, and lingerin death."

"These are false views of life," said I--"overstrained and morbid. I must teach you to think better. You have a daughter who will comfort you, and whom you are bound to support and protect."

"True, true," he cried; "I hae a dochter, and a better never sacrificed her ain thochts and feelins to the comforts o' a faither.

The idea o' leavin her, young, faitherless, poor, and full o' sorrow, in the midst o' a bad world, has before this" (lowering his voice) "brought down that rebellious hand from this throat. But, alas for the inconsistency and mutability o' man's fancies!--dearly as I love that creature, and she is now my only comfort, my very affection for her sometimes sinks me deeper into that sorrow which produces the dreadfu purpose o' takin awa my ain life; for I think--oh! how weak is man's proud reason, when the heart is broken wi' grief!--that an auld parent under the ban o' poverty is a burden to a child. His death (so in these unhappy moments do I think) relieves the unhappy bairn o' twa evils--that o' toilin maybe in vain to support him, and that o'

witnessin age, decrepitude, pain, misery, and want, wringin frae his shrivelled and diseased body groans o' agony, strikin the heart o' his child wi' mair pain than would be caused by the knell o' his death."

He now sank his face in the bedclothes, which he grasped with a spasmodic hand, and groaned so deep and loud that the sounds might have reached the pa.s.sage. I again heard a noise from that quarter, as if of stifled sighs and hysterical sobs. I was placed between the groans of a father bent against his own judgment on self-destruction, and the terrors and griefs of a daughter listening to the horrible recital of her parent's designs against his life. The loneliness of the house, and the solitude of the unhappy pair--with no one to aid the young woman, in the event of any appalling extremity to which the unnatural purpose of her father might drive him--struck me forcibly. I had no recollection of ever experiencing a scene of grief so peculiar, with such fearful and uncertain issues, so irremediable and heart-stirring. The groans of the one and the sobs of the other seemed to vie with each other in the effect they produced upon me; but, great as the pain of the father was, the sufferings of the daughter, perhaps as peculiar and touching as any that could be conceived, engaged to the greatest extent my sympathy. It was my duty and wish to try to remove the fundamental cause of all this suffering; and I waited the end of the paroxysm of the father's sorrow in order to resume the conversation.

"These views," said I, as he calmed, "which you take of life, and its duties and affections, are all false and distorted. It is our duty to try to regulate our thoughts as well as our actions by some steady supporting principle, which mankind have agreed in considering as true, whether it be derived from the direct Word of G.o.d or from the written tablets of the heart. The taking away of our life--originally given to us as a trust, or imposed on us by the Author of all good, for certain ends and purposes which are veiled from our view--is undoubtedly in many respects, as regards G.o.d himself, ourselves, our children, and our neighbours, a great, flagrant, horrible crime. It is against the law of G.o.d, the law of our country, the organic law of our physical const.i.tution, and the moral law of our minds. It is indeed the only act that can be mentioned that is against _all_ these. It does not require me to tell you that suicide, with other murders, was denounced by G.o.d himself, speaking in words that all mankind have heard, from the 'thick cloud' that hung over Mount Sinai. You are, I presume, a Christian, and the Sacred Book containing that denunciation lies at your side; and yet you have made the dreadful confession to me, that you have dared to meditate on the breaking, the despising, the contemning of the command of Him who by less than a command--ay, than even a word, by the lifting up of his finger--may consign you to an eternity of agony, in comparison of which all the sorrow you now suffer is less than a grain of sand to the sandbanks of the sea."

"It is true, it is true!" replied the unhappy man. "I know, I _feel_ that every word you have uttered is true, maist true and undeniable as are the sentiments o' this holy book," grasping again the Bible; "but can ye--wha, by the command o' books and education, can dive farther into the nature o' the mind than ane like me--explain this mystery, that, when my soul is filled wi' the darkness o' sorrow, and my rebellious purpose o' self-murder whispers in my mind treachery and war against G.o.d, thae truths ye hae uttered, for they hae occurred to me before, tak flight like guid angels, and leave me to warsle wi' a power that subdues me? It is then that I am in danger, and the hand that has held up to my throat that fatal instrument I had under my pillow, has the moment before been lifted up vainly in prayer to G.o.d, to throw owre my mind the light o' thae grand truths. What avails it, then, that there are times when I love them, and am guided by them, and thank Heaven for the precious gift o' knowin, feelin, and appreciatin them, if there are other moments when they flee frae me, and I am left powerless in the grasp o' my enemy?" Pausing, and falling again into a fit of dejection. "I fear, I fear the best o' us are only the slaves o' some mysterious power. But"--starting up, as if recollecting himself--"I put a question to you--answer me in the name o' Heaven; for if I gie mysel up to the belief o' an all-powerful necessity, I am a lost man and a self-murderer."

He was now clearly approaching a rock whereon many a gallant bark has been s.h.i.+vered to atoms. Even healthy-minded men cannot look at the question of the necessity of the will without staggering and reeling; and hypochondriacs love to get drunk by inhaling the vapours of mysticism that rise from it, destroying as they do all moral responsibility, and concealing the vengeance of heaven and the terrors of h.e.l.l. It was necessary to lead him from this dangerous subject, which it was clear he had been studying and dreaming about, with all that love of subtlety and mysticism which melancholy generates.

"No sensible man," said I, "believes in the absolute necessity of the will. After the will is fixed, the liberty is already exercised, and there is indeed _no will_ in the mind at all, until it takes the form of an active, moving, propelling principle. But these are abstruse fancies, which you must fly, if you wish to possess a healthy mind.

Sorrow, or any other feeling of pain, will extinguish while it lasts the burning lights of principle or sentiment. The pain of the amputation of a limb prevents, while it lasts, the natural working of the mind; but _grief may be averted_, and the great healing secret of that is, that the mind _must_ be occupied. Renounce all abstruse thinking, all day-dreaming, all sorrowful remembering, all sentimental musing--look upon application, exercise, work, as a duty and a medicine, and I will answer for your expelling from your mind that dreadful purpose that entails upon you misery, and disgraces the nature of man."

"Your advice is excellent," replied he, somewhat roused; "but, unfortunately, I hae got the same frae my ain mind; and, what is mair, I hae tried it--I hae tried it again and again;--the medicine is worth nae mair to me than a bread pill. My efforts to exercise my mind, when a fit o' sorrow presses upon it, only mak the sorrow the heavier, by makin the mind less able to bear it. My soul is for ever bent on that question o' the necessity o' the will which you despise and avoid. I will, G.o.d is my witness, argue it with you, calmly and reasonably."

"Unless you agree to renounce that question," said I, "I can do you no good."

"Then," replied he, with a groan, "I am left to Heaven and my unavoidable fate. May G.o.d have mercy on my soul!"

And he again relapsed into a fit of dejection, his head leaning on his breast, and his eyes fixed on the bed.

I could, I found, make no more of him that day, and my other avocations required my departure. I told him I would call again, and bring or send him some medicine.

"It is an unnecessary waste o' your valuable time," he said, lifting up his head, "to call again upon a wretch like me. I am much obliged to you for advice; but the only medicine for me is--_death_."

He p.r.o.nounced the fearful word with an emphatic guttural tone, which gave it a terrific effect. I opened the door to depart, and was surprised to find that it would not go back sufficiently to allow me to pa.s.s freely. The probable cause of the interruption flashed upon my mind in an instant. Without speaking a word, I edged myself through, and saw, lying at the back of the door, the body of the unfortunate young woman, in a state of insensibility. I had presence of mind enough not to carry her into the room where her father lay; but, seeing the light of the kitchen at the further end of the long gloomy pa.s.sage, I s.n.a.t.c.hed her up in my arms, and hastened with her thither. Having laid her on a small truckle bed, whereon, I presume, she usually slept, I found she was in a deep swoon; and, notwithstanding that it was getting dark, and my time was expired, I waited her recovery. As she lay before me, pale as a corpse, and as I thought of the cause of her illness, and looked round in vain for any one to give her a.s.sistance or consolation (the groans of her father, which I indistinctly heard, being the only answer that would have been given to a call for aid in a house more like a haunt for ghosts and spectres than a residence for human beings), I felt the impression of her peculiar misery pa.s.s over me, making me shudder as if I had been seized with a fit of the ague. The frail, brittle creature lying there, a victim of hysterics, fit only to be cherished and guarded by a doting mother--placed in a large, empty, gousty mansion--doomed to guard alone a suicide and a father, and, perhaps, to wrestle with him through blood--her parent's blood!--for the preservation of a remaining spark of a self-taken life! She at length recovered, exhibiting the ordinary precursors of returning consciousness--convulsive s.h.i.+verings, rolling of the eyes, and beating about with the hands. On perceiving me indistinctly, she articulated--

"Death! death!--that was the word he spoke sae wildly.--Ah! I know it now!--James H---- has lang tried to conceal it frae me; but I hae discovered it at last. Can you save him, sir?--can you save the faither o' her wha has scarcely anither freend on earth?"

A flood of tears followed this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. She tore her hair like a maniac. I tried everything in my power to pacify her; but terror had completely mastered her weak nerves, and she shook as the successive frightful images suggested by her situation pa.s.sed through her excited and still confused mind.

"Is there no one in those parts," said I, "that can attend your father, and a.s.sist you? Who is the James H---- you just now mentioned?"

"He is my cousin," replied she. "He lived with us for some time; but my father and he quarrelled about a _razor_, which he said James wanted to steal from him. But I see it now. There was nae theft.

James, poor James, was innocent, and wanted to save him; but they concealed it frae me, and my cousin was turned away."

The mention of the word razor made me start. I had left the instrument on the head of the drawers, and I had even now heard the wretched man's groans. I hurried to the room, and entered softly. He was in a fit of dejection, groaning, at intervals, deeply, like a man in bodily pain. I took up the instrument without being noticed, and returned to the kitchen. It was now almost dark. I had three miles to ride through wild hill paths, and I heard some threatening indications of a night-storm. The young woman was still lying on the couch, with her terrors undiminished; but I could do nothing more for her, and to have impressed her with the necessity of watching her parent would have created additional alarm, without increasing her zeal in a cause that concerned too nearly her own heart. I told her, therefore, that I required to depart, and was in the act of leaving to go to the door, when, in a paroxysm of terror, she started up, and seized me, clutching me firmly, and crying loudly--

"Will you leave me alone wi' him in this house, and throughout the dark night! He will do it when you are gone. Heaven preserve me frae the sight o' a father's blood!"

I tried to calm her, and to reason with her; but it was in vain. She still clung to me; and I found myself necessitated either to use some gentle force to detach myself from her grasp, or remain all night. I adopted the former expedient, and rus.h.i.+ng out, shut the door after me, mounted my horse, and proceeded home. She had come out after me; for I heard her cries for some time as I rode forward in the dark.

Though soon out of sight of the house, I felt myself unconsciously turning my head once or twice in the direction of the deserted mansion. With all my efforts to think of some other subject--and my own safety among these wild hills might have been sufficient to occupy my attention--I could not, for some time, take my mind off the scene I had witnessed, and the prospective misery that, in such different forms, waited these two individuals. When I had gone about a mile and a-half on my journey, I was accosted by a man, who asked me familiarly how George B---- was. I recognised in him at once the individual who had asked me to call for him. I told him that he was well enough in his body, but had taken some wild and distorted views of life, which might place him in danger of his own hands, while there was n.o.body in the house to watch him but his daughter, who did not seem to me to be well fitted for the task, seeing she was weakly, hysterical, and timid. He told me he knew all I had stated; that his name was James H----; that he was a cousin of the young woman's, George B---- having been married on his mother's sister; that he had resided in the house, and had discovered the tendency of his uncle's mind; and that, on one occasion, he had s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his hands a razor with which he intended to destroy himself--an act for which he was expelled the house, though he was the acknowledged suitor of the young woman, whom he intended to wed. I told him he should marry her, protect her, and save the father; but he replied that the old man would neither allow him to live in the house, nor take his daughter from him; so that she was compelled to remain in the dreadful condition in which I had found her. I told him to call upon me next day, and proceeded homewards.

Before James H---- called, which he did about two o'clock, I revolved in my mind what should be done for the unfortunate man. I recollected that, in a conversation I had with Dr D---- of Edinburgh, he told me of a case of melancholy, and accompanying determination to commit self-murder, which he had successfully treated by presenting to the mind of the patient such horrific stories and narratives of men who had taken their own lives, and suffered in their death inexpressible agonies, and such shocking pictures of murders where the wretched victims were brought back, by the hand of their offended Maker, from the gates of death, with their consciences seared by the burning iron of his vengeance, that the man got alarmed, was cured of his thirst for his own blood, and never again spoke of self-destruction. I resolved upon trying this expedient, and could not think of a better book for my purpose than that extraordinary record of human vice and suffering, the "Newgate Calendar." I fortunately possessed a copy, with those fearfully graphic pictures, that suit so well, in their coa.r.s.e, half-caricatured, grotesque delineations, with the dreadful narratives they are intended to ill.u.s.trate. I picked out the most fearful volume, that contained, at the same time, the greatest number of attempted self-murders, where the victims were s.n.a.t.c.hed from their own chosen death, and, after their wounds were healed, devoted to that pointed out by the law as due to their crimes. When James H---- called in the afternoon, I gave him the volume, and requested him to hand it to the patient's daughter, with directions to put it into the hands of her father, as having been sent to him by me. He said he would take the first opportunity of complying with my request.

I had no visits to make that required my presence in that part of the country for two or three days. On the second day after I had sent the book, I had another call from James H----, who said that he had been requested by the patient's daughter to return the volume, and to request another one, which the patient desired, above all things, to be sent to him that day. I accordingly sent him another volume, although I did not know whether to augur well or ill from this anxiety; but I was inclined to be of opinion that the symptom was an auspicious one. Two days afterwards, the messenger called again, with a repet.i.tion of his former request for another volume as soon as it could be sent. I complied with it instantly; sending, however, on this occasion, two--for I thought my medicine was operating beneficially, and it was of that kind that could be of no use unless administered in large doses, so, as it were, to surfeit and sicken the disease, and force it, by paralysing its energies, to relinquish its grasp of the patient's mind and body.

Two days more having elapsed, I felt anxious to ascertain the effect of my moral _emetocathartics_, and set out on the special errand of visiting my patient. The house, as I approached, exhibited the same still, dead-like aspect it possessed on my first visit. On knocking at the door, it was opened timidly and slowly by the daughter, who appeared to be paler, more sorrow-stricken, more weak and irritable, than on the occasion of my former visit. Her eye exhibited that terrorstruck look which nervous people, kept on the rack of a fearful apprehension, so often exhibit. Her voice was low, monotonous, and weak, as if she had been exhausted by mental anxiety, watching, and care. There was still no one in the house but her and her father; the same stillness reigned everywhere--the same air of dejection--the same goustiness in the large empty dwelling. On asking her how her father was, she replied, mournfully, that he had scarcely ever been out of his bed since my last visit; that he lay, night and day, reading the books I had sent him; that he had eaten very little meat, and had fallen several times into dreadful fits of groaning, and talking to himself. She added that he felt, at times, disinclined to see her; but at others, his affection for her rose to such a height, that he flung his arms about her neck, and wept like a child on her bosom. She had proposed to him, she said, to bring some person into the house; but he got into a violent rage when she mentioned it, and said he would expel the first intruder, whether man or woman. She had therefore been compelled to remain alone. She had lain at the back of his room-door every night, watching his motions, whereby, in addition to her grief, she had caught a violent rheumatism, which had stricken into her bones. When, for a short time, she had gone to sleep, she was awakened by terrific dreams and nightmares, which made her cry aloud for help, and exposed the situation she had taken, for the purpose of watching her parent, and defeating his purpose of self-murder.

I proceeded to the patient's room. When I entered, which I did softly, I found him lying in bed, with his head, as formerly, bound up in a handkerchief; a volume of the "Newgate Calendar" lying on his breast.

So occupied was he with his enjoyment of this _morceau_ of horrors, that he did not notice my entry or approach to his bedside. I stood and gazed at him. He had finished the page that was open before him--exhibiting John Torrance, the blacksmith of Hockley. His eye rested at least five minutes on this horrific picture; and, as he continued his rapt gaze, he drew deep sighs--his breast heaving with great force, as if to throw off an unbearable load. He turned the page, and noticed me.

"You are very intent upon that book," said I. "I hope it _interests_ you."

"Yes," replied he. "My mind has been dead or entranced for a year.

This is the only thing in the world I have met wi' during my sorrow capable o' putting life into my soul. It seems as if all the energies that have been lying useless for that period had risen at the magic power o' this wonderfu book, to pour their collected strength upon its pages."

"Then it has served its end," said I, doubting greatly the truth of my own statement. "I sent it for the purpose of entertaining you--that is--interesting you."

"Entertaining me!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "You mean, binding my soul wi' iron bands: my heart now loves the misery it formerly loathed. But, sir, I am not _fed_ with this food. I devour it wi' a false and ravenous appet.i.te; and were there a thousand volumes, I think I could read them a' before I broke bread or closed an ee."

He rolled out these words with a volubility and an enthusiasm that surprised me. It was clear that I had poisoned the mind of this poor man. I had stimulated and partly fed his appet.i.te for horrors.

Familiarity with fearful objects kills the terror, and sometimes raises in its place a morbid affection--a fact established in France at the end of the last century by an empirical test of a horrific character, but which no knowledge of man's mind could have dreamed of _a priori_. Why had I forgotten this matter of history, and allowed myself to be led astray by vain theories and partial experiments? What was I now to do? The man's appet.i.te for the b.l.o.o.d.y narratives was so strong, that, even while I was thus cogitating, his greedy eye had again sought the page. It was necessary that I should conceal from him my apprehensions, and take up his words on a feigned construction.

"This kind of reading," said I, "interests you, I presume, because it fills your mind with a salutary disgust and terror--makes you loathe the act of the suicide--and mans your soul against the hateful purpose you entertained against your own life."

He looked to the door, and beckoned to me to see if it was shut. I went and satisfied him that it was, while I was myself a.s.sured that she whom he was so anxious to deceive was again at her post behind it.

"You ask me," he continued, "if this book has disgusted or terrified me against my purpose o' deein. Are we disgusted and terrified at what we love? I hae seen the day when thae stories had sma' attraction for me. But, alas! alas! I am a changed--a fearfully changed man. My soul now gloats owre tales o' crime and scenes o' blood. To me there is an interest, an indescribable, mysterious interest in this book, beyond the charm o' the miser's wealth, or the bridegroom's bride--ay, sir, or what I ance thocht was in life to the deein sinner. It is a medicine; but"--pausing, and eyeing me sorrowfully--"do you mean it to _kill_ or _cure_?"

"To save you from self-destruction," said I--"the most fearful and the most cowardly of all the terminations of human life."

"If you could keep me readin this _for ever_," he said, "yer object would be served."

"I can give you no more of it," said I, conscious that, by indulging his morbid appet.i.te for blood, I had been leading him to his ruin.

"Then I must read thae volumes owre, and owre, and owre again," said he; "and when I hae dune, I hae naething mair to interest me in this dark, bleak warld."

He fell now into one of his fits of dejection, a.s.suming his accustomed att.i.tude of folding his hands over his breast, and fixing his eyes on the bed, while deep sighs and groans were thrown from his heaving breast. It was necessary, I now saw, to take from him the book which had produced an effect the very opposite of what I had intended and expected. I took it up and placed it beside the other volume that was lying on a side-table, with a view to take them away with me--blaming myself sorely and deservedly for the injury I had done by experimenting so rashly on the life and eternal interests of a human being. As I moved away the volume, he observed me, and followed it wistfully and sorrowfully with his eye.

"Ye hae dune weel," he said--"ye hae whetted my appet.i.te for my ain life; and it matters naething that the whetter and the whet-stane are taen awa when they're nae mair needed!"

I felt keenly the reproach, for it was just. I might have taken credit for a good intention; but my sympathy for the wretched being restrained any wish I had to defend myself I endeavoured to change the subject of our conversation, and turn his mind to a subject which I knew engaged his interests and feelings more than anything else on earth.

"Your daughter," said I, "is unwell. She seems to be miserable. I know a change upon her both in mind and body, since I called here only a few days ago. Her body is thin and emaciated, her cheek is blanched, and her eye dimmed. These signs do not visit the young frame for nothing. I fear she has heard of the deadly intention you still persist in entertaining--to take away your own life. It is clear to me that her sickly const.i.tution cannot long stand against a terror and an apprehension which even the aged and the strong cannot endure without grievous injury to all the faculties of the body and mind. Sir, take heed"--pausing and looking at him seriously and impressively--"you may become _a daughter's murderer_ before your _cowardly_ courage enables you to become _your own_!"