by Walter Scott
CHAPTER XXXIII
A man that apprehends death to be no more dreadful but as a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.
--Measure for Measure.
Glossin had made careful minutes of the information derived from theseexaminations. They threw little light upon the story, so far as heunderstood its purport; but the better-informed reader has receivedthrough means of this investigation an account of Brown's proceedings,between the moment when we left him upon his walk to Kippletringan andthe time when, stung by jealousy, he so rashly and unhappily presentedhimself before Julia Mannering, and well-nigh brought to a fataltermination the quarrel which his appearance occasioned.
Glossin rode slowly back to Ellangowan, pondering on what he had heard,and more and more convinced that the active and successful prosecutionof this mysterious business was an opportunity of ingratiating himselfwith Hazlewood and Mannering to be on no account neglected. Perhaps,also, he felt his professional acuteness interested in bringing it to asuccessful close. It was, therefore, with great pleasure that, on hisreturn to his house from Kippletringan, he heard his servants announcehastily, 'that Mac-Guffog, the thief-taker, and twa or threeconcurrents, had a man in hands in the kitchen waiting for his honour.'
He instantly jumped from horseback, and hastened into the house. 'Sendmy clerk here directly, ye'll find him copying the survey of the estatein the little green parlour. Set things to rights in my study, andwheel the great leathern chair up to the writing-table; set a stool forMr. Scrow. Scrow (to the clerk, as he entered the presence-chamber),hand down Sir George Mackenzie "On Crimes"; open it at the section "VisPublica et Privata," and fold down a leaf at the passage "anent thebearing of unlawful weapons." Now lend me a hand off with mymuckle-coat, and hang it up in the lobby, and bid them bring up theprisoner; I trow I'll sort him; but stay, first send up Mac-Guffog.Now, Mac-Guffog, where did ye find this chield?'
Mac-Guffog, a stout, bandy-legged fellow, with a neck like a bull, aface like a firebrand, and a most portentous squint of the left eye,began, after various contortions by way of courtesy to the Justice, totell his story, eking it out by sundry sly nods and knowing winks,which appeared to bespeak an intimate correspondence of ideas betweenthe narrator and his principal auditor. 'Your honour sees I went downto yon place that your honour spoke o', that's kept by her that yourhonour kens o', by the sea-side. So says she, "What are you wantinghere? ye'll be come wi' a broom in your pocket frae Ellangowan?"--Sosays I, "Deil a broom will come frae there awa, for ye ken," says I,"his honour Ellangowan himsell in former times--"'
'Well, well,' said Glossin, 'no occasion to be particular, tell theessentials.'
'Weel, so we sat niffering about some brandy that I said I wanted, tillhe came in.'
'Who?'
'He!' pointing with his thumb inverted to the kitchen, where theprisoner was in custody. 'So he had his griego wrapped close round him,and I judged he was not dry-handed; so I thought it was best to speakproper, and so he believed I was a Manks man, and I kept ay between himand her, for fear she had whistled. And then we began to drink about,and then I betted he would not drink out a quartern of Hollands withoutdrawing breath, and then he tried it, and just then Slounging Jock andDick Spur'em came in, and we clinked the darbies on him, took him asquiet as a lamb; and now he's had his bit sleep out, and is as fresh asa May gowan, to answer what your honour likes to speir.' Thisnarrative, delivered with a wonderful quantity of gesture and grimace,received at the conclusion the thanks and praises which the narratorexpected.
'Had he no arms?' asked the Justice.
'Ay, ay, they are never without barkers and slashers.'
'Any papers?'
'This bundle,' delivering a dirty pocket-book.
'Go downstairs then, Mac-Guffog, and be in waiting.' The officer leftthe room.
The clink of irons was immediately afterwards heard upon the stair, andin two or three minutes a man was introduced, handcuffed and fettered.He was thick, brawny, and muscular, and although his shagged andgrizzled hair marked an age somewhat advanced, and his stature wasrather low, he appeared, nevertheless, a person whom few would havechosen to cope with in personal conflict. His coarse and savagefeatures were still flushed, and his eye still reeled under theinfluence of the strong potation which had proved the immediate causeof his seizure. But the sleep, though short, which Mac-Guffog hadallowed him, and still more a sense of the peril of his situation, hadrestored to him the full use of his faculties. The worthy judge and theno less estimable captive looked at each other steadily for a long timewithout speaking. Glossin apparently recognised his prisoner, butseemed at a loss how to proceed with his investigation. At length hebroke silence.--'Soh, Captain, this is you? you have been a stranger onthis coast for some years.'
'Stranger?' replied the other. 'Strange enough, I think; for hold meder deyvil, if I been ever here before.'
'That won't pass, Mr. Captain.'
'That MUST pass, Mr. Justice, sapperment!'
'And who will you be pleased to call yourself, then, for the present,'said Glossin, 'just until I shall bring some other folks to refreshyour memory concerning who you are, or at least who you have been?'
'What bin I? donner and blitzen! I bin Jans Jansen, from Cuxhaven; whatsall Ich bin?'
Glossin took from a case which was in the apartment a pair of smallpocket pistols, which he loaded with ostentatious care. 'You mayretire,' said he to his clerk, 'and carry the people with you, Scrow;but wait in the lobby within call.'
The clerk would have offered some remonstrances to his patron on thedanger of remaining alone with such a desperate character, althoughironed beyond the possibility of active exertion, but Glossin waved himoff impatiently. When he had left the room the Justice took two shortturns through the apartment, then drew his chair opposite to theprisoner, so as to confront him fully, placed the pistols before him inreadiness, and said in a steady voice, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick ofFlushing, are you not?'
The prisoner turned his eye instinctively to the door, as if heapprehended some one was listening. Glossin rose, opened the door, sothat from the chair in which his prisoner sate he might satisfy himselfthere was no eavesdropper within hearing, then shut it, resumed hisseat, and repeated his question, 'You are Dirk Hatteraick, formerly ofthe Yungfrauw Haagenslaapen, are you not?'
'Tousand deyvils! and if you know that, why ask me?' said the prisoner.
'Because I am surprised to see you in the very last place where youought to be, if you regard your safety,' observed Glossin, coolly.
'Der deyvil! no man regards his own safety that speaks so to me!'
'What? unarmed, and in irons! well said, Captain!' replied Glossin,ironically. 'But, Captain, bullying won't do; you'll hardly get out ofthis country without accounting for a little accident that happened atWarroch Point a few years ago.'
Hatteraick's looks grew black as midnight.
'For my part,' continued Glossin, 'I have no particular wish to be hardupon an old acquaintance; but I must do my duty. I shall send you offto Edinburgh in a post-chaise and four this very day.'
'Poz donner! you would not do that?' said Hatteraick, in a lower andmore humbled tone; 'why, you had the matter of half a cargo in bills onVanbeest and Vanbruggen.'
'It is so long since, Captain Hatteraick,' answered Glossin,superciliously, 'that I really forget how I was recompensed for mytrouble.'
'Your trouble? your silence, you mean.'
'It was an affair in the course of business,' said Glossin, 'and I haveretired from business for some time.'
'Ay, but I have a notion that I could make you go steady about and trythe old course again,' answered Dirk Hatteraick. 'Why, man, hold me derdeyvil, but I meant to visit you and tell you something that concernsyou.'
'Of the boy?' said Glossin, eagerly.
'Yaw, Mynheer,' replied the Captain, coolly.
'He does not liv
e, does he?'
'As lifelich as you or I,' said Hatteraick.
'Good God! But in India?' exclaimed Glossin.
'No, tousand deyvils, here! on this dirty coast of yours,' rejoined theprisoner.
'But, Hatteraick, this,--that is, if it be true, which I do notbelieve,--this will ruin us both, for he cannot but remember your neatjob; and for me, it will be productive of the worst consequences! Itwill ruin us both, I tell you.'
'I tell you,' said the seaman, 'it will ruin none but you; for I amdone up already, and if I must strap for it, all shall out.'
'Zounds,' said the Justice impatiently, 'what brought you back to thiscoast like a madman?'
'Why, all the gelt was gone, and the house was shaking, and I thoughtthe job was clayed over and forgotten,' answered the worthy skipper.
'Stay; what can be done?' said Glossin, anxiously. 'I dare notdischarge you; but might you not be rescued in the way? Ay sure! a wordto Lieutenant Brown, and I would send the people with you by thecoast-road.'
'No, no! that won't do. Brown's dead, shot, laid in the locker, man;the devil has the picking of him.
'Dead? shot? At Woodbourne, I suppose?' replied Glossin.
'Yaw, Mynheer.'
Glossin paused; the sweat broke upon his brow with the agony of hisfeelings, while the hard-featured miscreant who sat opposite coollyrolled his tobacco in his cheek and squirted the juice into thefire-grate. 'It would be ruin,' said Glossin to himself, 'absoluteruin, if the heir should reappear; and then what might be theconsequence of conniving with these men? Yet there is so little time totake measures. Hark you, Hatteraick; I can't set you at liberty; but Ican put you where you may set yourself at liberty, I always like toassist an old friend. I shall confine you in the old castle forto-night, and give these people double allowance of grog. MacGuffogwill fall in the trap in which he caught you. The stancheons on thewindow of the strong room, as they call it, are wasted to pieces, andit is not above twelve feet from the level of the ground without, andthe snow lies thick.'
'But the darbies,' said Hatteraick, looking upon his fetters.
'Hark ye,' said Glossin, going to a tool chest, and taking out a smallfile,'there's a friend for you, and you know the road to the sea by thestairs.' Hatteraick shook his chains in ecstasy, as if he were alreadyat liberty, and strove to extend his fettered hand towards hisprotector. Glossin laid his finger upon his lips with a cautious glanceat the door, and then proceeded in his instructions. 'When you escape,you had better go to the Kaim of Derncleugh.'
'Donner! that howff is blown.'
'The devil! well, then, you may steal my skiff that lies on the beachthere, and away. But you must remain snug at the Point of Warroch tillI come to see you.'
'The Point of Warroch?' said Hatteraick, his countenance again falling;'what, in the cave, I suppose? I would rather it were anywhere else; esspuckt da: they say for certain that he walks. But, donner and blitzen!I never shunned him alive, and I won't shun him dead. Strafe michhelle! it shall never be said Dirk Hatteraick feared either dog ordevil! So I am to wait there till I see you?'
'Ay, ay,' answered Glossin, 'and now I must call in the men.' He did soaccordingly.
'I can make nothing of Captain Jansen, as he calls himself, Mac-Guffog,and it's now too late to bundle him off to the county jail. Is therenot a strong room up yonder in the old castle?'
'Ay is there, sir; my uncle the constable ance kept a man there forthree days in auld Ellangowan's time. But there was an unco dust aboutit; it was tried in the Inner House afore the Feifteen.'
'I know all that, but this person will not stay there very long; it'sonly a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till fartherexamination. There is a small room through which it opens; you maylight a fire for yourselves there, and I 'll send you plenty of stuffto make you comfortable. But be sure you lock the door upon theprisoner; and, hark ye, let him have a fire in the strong room too, theseason requires it. Perhaps he'll make a clean breast to-morrow.'
With these instructions, and with a large allowance of food and liquor,the Justice dismissed his party to keep guard for the night in the oldcastle, under the full hope and belief that they would neither spendthe night in watching nor prayer.
There was little fear that Glossin himself should that night sleepover-sound. His situation was perilous in the extreme, for the schemesof a life of villainy seemed at once to be crumbling around and abovehim. He laid himself to rest, and tossed upon his pillow for a longtime in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only to dream of hispatron, now as he had last seen him, with the paleness of death uponhis features, then again transformed into all the vigour and comelinessof youth, approaching to expel him from the mansion-house of hisfathers. Then he dreamed that, after wandering long over a wild heath,he came at length to an inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry;and that when he entered the first person he met was Frank Kennedy, allsmashed and gory, as he had lain on the beach at Warroch Point, butwith a reeking punch-bowl in his hand. Then the scene changed to adungeon, where he heard Dirk Hatteraick, whom he imagined to be undersentence of death, confessing his crimes to a clergyman. 'After thebloody deed was done,' said the penitent, 'we retreated into a caveclose beside, the secret of which was known but to one man in thecountry; we were debating what to do with the child, and we thought ofgiving it up to the gipsies, when we heard the cries of the pursuershallooing to each other. One man alone came straight to our cave, andit was that man who knew the secret; but we made him our friend at theexpense of half the value of the goods saved. By his advice we carriedoff the child to Holland in our consort, which came the following nightto take us from the coast. That man was--'
'No, I deny it! it was not I!' said Glossin, in half-uttered accents;and, struggling in his agony to express his denial more distinctly, heawoke.
It was, however, conscience that had prepared this mentalphantasmagoria. The truth was that, knowing much better than any otherperson the haunts of the smugglers, he had, while the others weresearching in different directions, gone straight to the cave, evenbefore he had learned the murder of Kennedy, whom he expected to findtheir prisoner. He came upon them with some idea of mediation, butfound them in the midst of their guilty terrors, while the rage whichhad hurried them on to murder began, with all but Hatteraick, to sinkinto remorse and fear. Glossin was then indigent and greatly in debt,but he was already possessed of Mr. Bertram's ear, and, aware of thefacility of his disposition, he saw no difficulty in enriching himselfat his expense, provided the heir-male were removed, in which case theestate became the unlimited property of the weak and prodigal father.Stimulated by present gain and the prospect of contingent advantage, heaccepted the bribe which the smugglers offered in their terror, andconnived at, or rather encouraged, their intention of carrying away thechild of his benefactor who, if left behind, was old enough to havedescribed the scene of blood which he had witnessed. The onlypalliative which the ingenuity of Glossin could offer to his consciencewas, that the temptation was great, and came suddenly upon him,embracing as it were the very advantages on which his mind had so longrested, and promising to relieve him from distresses which must haveotherwise speedily overwhelmed him. Besides, he endeavoured to thinkthat self-preservation rendered his conduct necessary. He was, in somedegree, in the power of the robbers, and pleaded hard with hisconscience that, had he declined their offers, the assistance which hecould have called for, though not distant, might not have arrived intime to save him from men who, on less provocation, had just committedmurder.
Galled with the anxious forebodings of a guilty conscience, Glossin nowarose and looked out upon the night. The scene which we have alreadydescribed in the third chapter of this story, was now covered withsnow, and the brilliant, though waste, whiteness of the land gave tothe sea by contrast a dark and livid tinge. A landscape covered withsnow, though abstractedly it may be called beautiful, has, both fromthe association of cold and barrenness and from its comparativeinfrequency, a wild, strange, and desolate
appearance. Objects wellknown to us in their common state have either disappeared, or are sostrangely varied and disguised that we seem gazing on an unknown world.But it was not with such reflections that the mind of this bad man wasoccupied. His eye was upon the gigantic and gloomy outlines of the oldcastle, where, in a flanking tower of enormous size and thickness,glimmered two lights, one from the window of the strong room, whereHatteraick was confined, the other from that of the adjacent apartment,occupied by his keepers. 'Has he made his escape, or will he be able todo so? Have these men watched, who never watched before, in order tocomplete my ruin? If morning finds him there, he must be committed toprison; Mac-Morlan or some other person will take the matter up; hewill be detected, convicted, and will tell all in revenge!'
While these racking thoughts glided rapidly through Glossin's mind, heobserved one of the lights obscured, as by an opaque body placed at thewindow. What a moment of interest! 'He has got clear of his irons! heis working at the stancheons of the window! they are surely quitedecayed, they must give way. O God! they have fallen outward, I heardthem clink among the stones! the noise cannot fail to wake them. Furiesseize his Dutch awkwardness! The light burns free again; they have tornhim from the window, and are binding him in the room! No! he had onlyretired an instant on the alarm of the falling bars; he is at thewindow again, and the light is quite obscured now; he is getting out!'
A heavy sound, as of a body dropped from a height among the snow,announced that Hatteraick had completed his escape, and shortly afterGlossin beheld a dark figure, like a shadow, steal along the whitenedbeach and reach the spot where the skiff lay. New cause for fear! 'Hissingle strength will be unable to float her,' said Glossin to himself;'I must go to the rascal's assistance. But no! he has got her off, andnow, thank God, her sail is spreading itself against the moon; ay, hehas got the breeze now; would to heaven it were a tempest, to sink himto the bottom!'
After this last cordial wish, he continued watching the progress of theboat as it stood away towards the Point of Warroch, until he could nolonger distinguish the dusky sail from the gloomy waves over which itglided. Satisfied then that the immediate danger was averted, heretired with somewhat more composure to his guilty pillow.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Why dost not comfort me, and help me out From this unhallowed and blood-stained hole?
Titus Andronicus.
