Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 18

"Whaur fae, Charlie," had she repeated, still looking at him.

"The devil!" cried he, stung by her searching look, which brought back a gleam of the old rebellion.

"A gude paymaster to his servants," she said; "but I'm no ane o' them yet; and may the Lord, wham I serve, even while his chastening hand is heavy upon me, preserve me frae his bribes!" And laying down the notes, she added, not lightly, as it might seem, but seriously, yet quietly,

"Nae wonder they're warm."

The notes had carried the heat of his burning hand.

"The auld story--billiards," said she again; "for they are the devil's cue and b.a.l.l.s."

No answer; and the mother seating herself again, looked stedfastly and suspiciously at him; but she could not catch the eye of her son, who sat doggedly determined not to reveal his secret, and as determined also to elude her looks, searching as they were, and sufficient to enter his very soul. Yet she loved him too well to objurgate where she was only as yet suspicious; and in the quietness of the hour, she fell for a moment into her widowed habit of speaking as if none were present but herself.

"Wharfor bore I him--wharfor toiled and wrought for him for sae mony years, since the time he sat on my knee smiling in my face, as if he said, I will comfort you when you are old, and will be your stay and support? Was that smile then a lee, put there by the devil, wha has gi'en him the money to deceive me again?"

Then she paused.

"And how could that be? Love is not a cheat; and did ever bairn love a mither as he loved me? or did ever mither love her bairn as I hae loved him? Lord, deliver him frae his enemies, and mak him what he was in thae bygone days--sae innocent, sae cheerful, sae obedient; and I will meekly suffer a' Thou canst lay upon me."

The words reached the ears of the son, and the audible sobs seemed to startle the solemn spirit of the hour and the place. "What would she say," he thought, "if she heard me declare I had robbed my uncle?"

At that moment the door opened, and in rushed little Jeanie S----th,--her face pale, and her blue eyes lighted with fear, and the thin delicate nostril distended, and hissing with her quick breathings,--

"Oh mither, there's twa officers on the stair seeking Charlie!"

And the quick creature, darting her eye on the table where the notes lay, s.n.a.t.c.hed them up, and secreted them in her bosom; and, what was more extraordinary, just as if she had divined something more from her brother's looks, which told her that that money would be sought for by these officers, she darted off like a bird with a crumb in its bill, which it has picked up from beneath your eyes; but not before depositing, as she pa.s.sed, a paper on a chair near the door.

"That creature is a spirit," said the mother. "She sees the evil in the dark before it comes, and wards it off like a guardian angel; but oh!

she has little in her power to be an angel."

And rising, she took up the paper. It was only some bread and cheese, which the girl, knowing the privations of her mother, had bought with a part of her five s.h.i.+llings a week.

Thereafter, just as little Jeannie had intimated, came in two officers, with the usual looks of duty appearing through their professional sorrow.

"We want your son, good woman."

"He is there," said she; "but what want ye him for?"

"Not for going to church," said the man, forgetting said professional sorrow in his love of a joke, "but for robbery on the highway; and we must search the house for five pounds in British Linen Company notes."

And the men proceeded to search, even putting their hands in the mother's pockets, besides rifling those of the son. They of course found nothing except the powder and shot, which had still remained there, and a handkerchief.

"That is something, anyhow," said one of the men, "and a great deal too.

The one who is up in the office says true; he was not the man."

"No more he was," said Charles. "I am the man you ought to take; and take me."

"Sae, sae; just as I suspected," muttered the mother. "Lord, Lord! the cup runs over. It was e'en lipping when John died; but I will bear yet."

And she seemed to grasp firmly the back of a chair, and compressed her lips--an att.i.tude she maintained like a statue all the time occupied by the departure of her son. The door closed--he was gone; and she still stood, the _vivum cadaver_--the image of a petrified creature of misery.

Yet, overcome as her very calmness was, and enchanted for the moment into voicelessness and utter inaction, she was not that kind of women who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows the flash. She thought for a moment, "G.o.d does not absolutely and for ever leave his servants." Some thought had struck her. She put on her bonnet and cloak deliberately, even looking into the gla.s.s to see if she was tidy enough for where she intended going, and for whom she intended to see.

And now this quiet woman is on her way down Broughton Street at twelve o'clock of a cold winter night, which, like her own mind, had only that calmness which results from the exhaustion of sudden biting gusts from the north, and therefore right in her face. She drew her cloak round her. She had a long way to go, but her son was in danger of the gallows; and thoughtless, and as it now seemed, wicked as he was, he was yet her _son_. The very word is a volume of heart language--not the fitful expression of pa.s.sion, but that quiet eloquence which bedews the eye and brings deep sighs with holy recollections of the child-time, and germinating hopes of future happiness up to the period when he would hang over her departing spirit. Much of all that had gone, and been replaced by dark forebodings of the future; and now there was before her the vision of an ignominious death as the termination of all these holy inspirations. But her faithful saying was always, "Wait, hope, and persevere;" and the saying was muttered a hundred times as she trudged weariedly, oh! how weariedly, for one who had scarcely tasted food for that day, and who had left untouched the gift brought by her loving daughter that night--for which, plain as it was, her heart yearned even amidst its grief, yea, though grief is said, untruly no doubt, to have no appet.i.te. Perhaps not to those who are well fed; but nature is stronger than even grief, and she now felt the consequence of her disobedience to her behests in her shaking limbs and fainting heart. Yet she trudged and trudged on, shutting her mouth against her empty stomach to keep out the cold north wind. She is at the foot of Inverleith Row, and her face is to the west; she will now escape the desultory blasts by keeping close by the long running d.y.k.e. She pa.s.ses the scene of the robbery without knowing it; else, doubtless, she would have stood and examined it by those instincts that force the spirit to such modes of satisfaction, as if the inanimate thing could calm the spiritual. She was now drawing to Davidson's Mains: a little longer, and much past midnight, she was rapping, still in her quiet way, at the door of her brother.

The family had had something else to do than to sleep. There were the sounds of tongues and high words. Mrs. S----th was surprised, as well she might; for though sometimes Mr. Henderson partook freely of the bottle when he met old friends in town, he and the whole household were peaceable, orderly, and early goers to bed. The door was opened almost upon the instant; and Mrs. S----th was presently before Mr. Henderson and two others, one of whom held in his hand a whip.

"What has brought you here, Margaret, at this hour?"

"I want to speak privately to you."

"Just here; out with it," said he. "These are my friends; and if it is more money you want, you have come at an unlucky time, for I have been robbed by a villain of five pounds, which I could ill spare."

Mrs. S----th's heart died away within her. She clenched her hands to keep her from shaking; for she recollected the old story about his own son--a story which had got him the character of being harsh and unnatural. She could not mention her errand, which was nothing else than to induce her brother to use his influence in some way to get Charles out of the hands of the law. She could not utter even the word Charles, and all she could say was--

"Robbed!"

"Ay, robbed by a villain, whom I shall hang three cubits higher than Haman."

And the stern man even laughed at the thought of retribution. Yet, withal, no man could deny his generosity and general kindliness, if, even immediately after, he did not show it by slipping a pound into the hands of his needy sister.

"There," said he; "no more at present. I will call up and see you to-morrow morning, as I go to the police office to identify the villain.

Meantime, take a dram, dear Peggy, and get home to bed. The night is cold, and see that you wrap yourself well up to keep _out_ the wind and _in_ the spirit; it's good whisky."

Shortly afterwards she was on her way home, with more than blasted hopes of what she had travelled for.

His uncle the man he had robbed! Even with all her forced composedness, this seemed too much--ay, so much too much, that she was totally overpowered. She paused to recover strength; and, looking forward, saw a thin flying shadow coming up to her, with a shriek of delight; and immediately she was hugged rapturously and kissed all over by little Jeannie, whose movements, as they ever were--so agile, so quick, so Protean--appeared to her, now that she was stolid with despair, as the postures and gestures of a creature appearing in a dream.

"Oh, I know all," she cried; "don't speak--nay, wait now till I return."

And the creature was off like a September meteor disappearing in the west, as if to make up again to the sun, far down away behind the hills from whence it had been struck off in the height of the day.

What can the strange creature mean? But she had had experience of her, and knew the instinctive divination that got at objects and results where reason in full-grown man would syllogize into the darkness of despair.

Nor was it long before she is running back, leaping with all the _abandon_ of a romp, crying--

"I will save dear Charlie yet; for I love him as much as I hate that old curmudgeon."

"What does the girl mean? Whaur was you, bairn?" said her mother.

"Oh mother, how cold it is for you! Wrap the cloak about you."

"But what _is_ it that you mean, Jeannie?"

"We shall be home by-and-by; come."

And, putting an arm round her mother's waist, she impelled her forward with the strength of her wythe of an arm.

"Come, come, there are ghosts about these woods;" and then she cowered, but still impelled.