The Three Perils of Man Volume Ii Part 21

"What is that?" said I.

"It is the art," said he "that enables us to see things and people as they really are. There is scarcely any thing on this earth really what it appears to be; and this art I have yet to teach you."

From that day forward he began and performed feats that entirely bewildered my senses, but which furnished, wherever we were, a great fund of amus.e.m.e.nt; all the young people believed him to be in compact with the devil. I have forgot them all but one, which I will remember as long as I live.

We came to a wealthy yeoman's house on the river Urr, where we were to remain several days; and while he exercised the farmer's sons in fencing, I kept the young peasants in exercise--and then in the hall in the evenings he went on with his cantrips. There was a delicious shoulder of bacon hanging up on the farmer's brace, among many meaner hams and pieces of wretched dried flesh. I believe I had fixed my eyes on it, and perhaps my heart a little too. Whether the Gorb noticed this and dreaded the consequences or not, I cannot tell, but he began a speech about things not being what they appeared to be, and offered to give us a striking instance."

"Take down the choicest and best ham among all these above the fire,"

said he. I did so, taking down the shoulder of bacon with great alacrity.

"Take down the worst," said he. I did so; it was one of venison dried like a crooked stick.

"Which do you account the best?" said he. I told him. "Well, you are mistaken," said he; "and I'll convince you of it. Roll them both neatly up in straw, or as you will."

I did so.

"Now, do you know the one from the other?"

"Yes."

"Very well: heave them up again that you may not be mistaken in the weight. Now, cross your hands, and heave them with different hands.

Quite sensible they are the same?"

"Quite sensible."

"Very well. Take them aside by yourself and look at them. You will now see them as they really are, not as they appeared to your eyes."

I hastened and opened out the shoulder of bacon. It was nothing but three dried bones, hanging together by tendons, and stuffed up into the shape of an overgrown shoulder of bacon with brawn, which was covered round with a piece of a sow's hide. I shed some tears at this blighting discovery; for though the bacon was not mine, I felt in my heart that I did not know how matters were to come about. I hung the two hams up as they were, and was cured of my itching eye; but no man can tell how things will come round to the advantage of an acute and clever fellow.

While we were at that house, the country was raised to follow the Lord of Galloway into c.u.mberland. It was a great rising, the utmost quota being demanded of every yeoman in the country, in terms of his villanage. Our landlord got a charge to find five, whereas he had none to send save three, unless he and his eldest son both went, which would have been grievously against him at that time; so he applied to my master and me to go on his behoof, offering large conditions, which were soon accepted. The princ.i.p.al, if not the sole thing that induced me to go out on that raide, was the stipulation that I was to have my choice of all the meat in the house, to the amount of what I could conveniently carry on my back in a march. After a great deal of choosing, I fixed on a small beef-ham, because it was solid, and no bones in it, and blest my master's ingenuity that had let me into the secret of the deceitful shoulder of bacon. The next that came after me was a blade of endless frolic and humour, named Harestanes. He instantly snapped at the bacon-ham, and popped it into his goatskin wallet, nodding his head, and twisting his mouth at me, as much as if he had said, "What a taste you have! I am glad you had not the sense to take this." I could easily have prevented him, by revealing the secret; but he had always been trying to make a fool of me, therefore I could scarcely contain my mirth at his mistake, and resolved to enjoy his disappointment in full. He was a sprightly handsome youth, and had such a forward and impertinent manner that he contrived to make friends in every family that we pa.s.sed by, particularly with the women, so that he lacked nothing that he desired; and tho' I watched him night and day for fear of losing the sport, he never took out his bacon to break it up till the fourth day after our departure. My beef-ham was by that time more than half done. It was a most wretched piece of meat, being as hard as wood, and bitter as gall; but I was still comforted with this, that it was so much better than my comrade's.

It was about eight o'clock on a morning, on the English side of the Border, that Harestanes first loosed out his wallet to make a breakfast of his bacon; and he being very hungry, I sat down beside him to enjoy the sport, taking out my black beef likewise. All that I could do I could not retain my gravity while he was loosening the cords, and taking the straw from about his ham, which made him look wistfully at me, and ask what the fool meant? But when I saw him look seriously and greedily at it, and then take out his knife to cut off a great slice, I lost all power, and fell on the ground in a convulsion of laughter, while my voice went away to a perfect wheezle. He could not comprehend me in the least degree, and actually began to cut! yes, he actually began to cut through the bristly skin, while I lay spurring the ground, and screaming with antic.i.p.ation of the grand joke that was to ensue. Before I could recover my sight from amid the tears of extravagant mirth, the scene was changed; and I shall never forget the position in which the puppy sat, when my eyes cleared. No, it is impossible I ever can forget it!

Conceive a wicked impertinent frolicksome whelp of a tailor, for he was nothing better, who had been with Sir Robert Graham's maids all the night, and was so hungry that you might almost have cast a knot on him, sit down to take a hearty luncheon of his bacon ham; and then conceive his looks when he found he had nothing but rubbish and dry bones. If you conceive these, you will conceive the very scene that I saw, at least that I conceived and saw in my mind's eye. How could I but laugh?

No! It was impossible I could abstain from laughter;--but yet, for all that, things turned out quite the reverse. He had actually sliced off a rasher of bacon, the fattest, the whitest, and the most beautiful rasher of bacon ever I had seen in my life! There were three distinct layers of lire and fat, curving alternately through it like quarter moons. No man ever beheld such a sight! He sliced out another piece, which was still more perfectly beautiful than the preceding one. My eyes darkened. I had seen enough to shew me the enormity of my folly, and my irreparable loss! He roasted his rashers on the fire. The fat fried out of them, and flamed among the embers; and when he laid them on his bread, they soaked it all with pure liquid fat. And there was I sitting beside him, gnawing at my piece of infernal beef, the sinewy hip of some hateful Galloway stott that had died of the blackleg, and, having been unfit for ought else, had been dried till the hateful substance was out of it. Yet I had my choice of both, and took this. I shall never wish any friend of mine to suffer such pangs as I did that morning; for all that I had suffered in my dangers and disappointments was nothing to them. I would fain have slain the Gorb privately; but not daring to do that, I resolved never to see his face again, after the vile trick he had played. All my hopes and all my enjoyments of the foray being now ended, I resolved on taking my departure, and that by the time my enemy had the first slice of bacon eaten.

We had orders to halt all that day, for the Johnstons and the Jardines were a day's march before us. Their advanced columns had fallen back; and as the troops were sleeping or straggling about, I prepared for my departure. My comrade having been with the knight's women all the night, a set of creatures madder than himself, he was quite worn out; and as soon as he got his inside lined with the salutary beverage, he fell fast asleep. An inward light now began to dawn on my heart, brighter than the sun at noon day, and lighting my steps forward to future felicity. My breath cut short with ecstatic delight, and my knees trembled as I formed the resolution of changing hams with my hopeful comrade. His wallet was lying open--not so the tailor's eyes: I might have exchanged coats, and shoes too, for him. The great work was done in an instant. I whipped out his shoulder of bacon, and put my piece of black timber in its place. "Take you that, honest man," said I to myself: "Time about is fair play. I have given you something that will exercise your jaws for a while."

When I found that I had this most delicious of all morsels on my back, I was so light that I scarcely felt my feet touch the ground; and there being no time now to lose, I made straight away into England, for I durst not turn towards Scotland, the sentinels being so very thick on that quarter. Our advanced guard was composed of the Gordons from the Ken,--a set of desperate raggam.u.f.fins whom I durst not have gone among had it not been fair forenoon. I had my wallet on my back and my sword by my side; and when I saw any of them eying me, I went up to them and asked how far the Johnstons were before us?

"What the devil was I wanting with the Johnstons?"

"O, I was afraid there might be a battle fought before I saw it, which I would not should happen for any thing in the world."

"Hear to the coulter-nibbit piper," said one.

"He is as like supping a pint o' fat brose as killing an Englishman,"

said another.

"I wadna trust him wi' ought beyond a litter o' English pigs," said a third.

"Let him gang forrit, and fiend that he get his chafts clawn the first sword that's drawn! I wadna that his name were Gordon for a hunder civis."

Accordingly I got liberty to pa.s.s; but as soon as I got out of sight, I turned to the left, and escaped to the moors of Bewcastle. I had now found out the invaluable art of flint and frizzle, and could kindle a fire whenever I pleased. So I sought out a lonely wild dell, and lighting a fire of birns and strong heather, roasted two slas.h.i.+ng slices of my shoulder of bacon. I also took a good shave of bread from my friend the tailor's hearth-bannock; but after all I could not think of adulterating the savoury delicious fare by any unnatural intermixture,--so I ate up the dry bread by itself, and then smacked up the bacon afterwards. I cannot describe my sensations of delight, not only in my meal, but in contemplating the beauty of the object. I sat long feasting my eyes on the beauty of the slices before I committed them to the coals. They were curved so beautifully in semi-circles, the fat and the lire time about, that, unless for such an object, the term _beauty_ would have no meaning. They lay alternately, as if it were this way, and this way, and this way.

"I protest against your drawing of your pictures on my shoulder," cried Gibbie; "and also against the party being any longer mocked with such fulsome trash in place of a story. Do you not perceive, Sir Master, and do you not all perceive, that he is havering and speaking without end or aim? He is sensible that he has failed in his story; and that a dismal fate awaits him, and all that he is now intent on is driving of time."

"I confess that I am sick of the bacon and other fat things," said Charlie.

"My soul disdains the abject theme," said the poet: "Its tantalizing sight is like the marshfire's vacant gleam to the bewildered wight. 'Tis throwing meat to hungry souls, with fainting sore opprest; or drink unto the parched lips, whereof they may not taste."

"Let us show some spirit, wretched as we are," said Gibbie, "and protest with one a.s.sent against being farther sickened, as well as mocked by such loathsome stuff."

This is unfair, and using undue influence," cried Tam. "None of you were thus interrupted, but got time to finish your stories as you liked. Mine is not done; the best part of it is yet to come, and I say it is unfair. Great Master, you sit as judge; I appeal to you. My life has been varied. Let them chuse what sort of a theme they want, and I will fit them, only suffer me to relate one other exploit."

The Master, on whom hunger seemed to make no impression, thought the request was reasonable; but in making choice, every one of them, young and old, pitched on a different subject, so that Tam could not get proceeded; neither can this chapter, as an extraordinary incident befel, which naturally brings it to an end.

END OF VOL. II.