‘On the day we were let loose, there were four of us loitering near the coach stand in —— street. A gentleman was walking up and down before an inn, looking at his watch every now and then, and casting his eyes round to see if a coach was coming which he seemed to expect. Presently he met some one who knowed ’un, and I saw him take a letter and read it, and then say to the other “I can’t come this instant, because I expect a friend in half an hour, and must wait for her; but stay, I can write a note, and put her off,” when he stepped inside the inn, and came out in ten minutes, with a note in his hand. One of us had been servant in a cutting-up house in the Borough, and knowed him afore: stepping up, he asked if he could carry the note for him? The other was in a hurry, and said “yes,” giving him half-a-crown to take it into the Borough, then got into the coach and drove off. Instead of going with it, he had larnt to read, and breaking the note open, found some lady was coming to meet the gentleman by half-past two. “I tell ye what, my boys,” says he, “here’s a fish come to our net without looking for it, so we’ll have her first.” Shortly after, up comes the coach with a lady in it; meanwhile one of our gang had got another coach belonging to us for the purpose, which was in waiting; so the villain tells her that the gentleman had been obliged to go somewhere else, but he was an old servant, and if she would get into his coach, he would drive her to the house where the gemman was waiting to receive her. She, never suspecting, got in, and was driven off to the slaughter house, as we called it. She entered by a back yard, and frightened by the dark, dirty way, and lonely-looking rooms, and not seeing him she expected, she attempted to run off, but that was of no use, and taking her to a room for the purpose, in the middle of the house, where no one could hear her screaming, she was locked up for the night. Well, I was uncommon struck with her beautiful looks, and begged very hard to let her go: they said it would not do, because as how they would all be found out. So die she must, the next order they had for a corpse. That very night came an order, and they swore I should have the killing of her, for being spooney enough to beg her life. I swore I would not do it; but they said if I didn’t they would send me instead, and, frightened at their threats, I agreed.
‘In the room where she slept was a bed, with a sliding top to let down and smother the person who was lying beneath, while the chain which let it down was fastened in the room above. They had given her a small lamp in order to look at her through a hole, that they might see what she was about. After locking the door inside, (for they left the key there to keep ’em easy, while it was bolted on the out,) and looking to see there was no one in the room, nor any other door, she knelt by the bed-side, said her prayers, and then laid down in her clothes. This was at ten—they watched her till twelve; she was sleeping soundly, but crying too, they said, when they took me up into the room above, and with a drawn knife at my throat, insisted on my letting go the chain which was to smother her beneath—I did it! Oh, I did it!—hark!’ starting up, ‘don’t you hear that rustling of the clothes? a stifled cry? no, all is quiet! She is done for—take her and sell her!’ and from that he fell into his old raving manner once more.
The next day he was again lucid, and pulling from his bosom an old purse, he said, ‘I managed to get these things without their knowledge.’ It contained a ring with a locket engraven ‘E. S.’ and the silver plate of a dog’s collar with the name of ‘Emily’ on it; ‘that,’ he remarked, ‘came from a little spaniel which we sold.’
I made a finished miniature from the rough drawing taken on the first evening of my seeing Emily Smith. This had been set in the lid of a snuff-box, and anxious to see if he would recognise it, I brought it in my pocket. After looking an instant at the contents of the purse, I silently placed the snuff-box in his hand. His mind but barely took time to comprehend and know the face, when flinging it from him with a loud cry, his spirit took its flight to final judgment—and I vowed from that day a renunciation of the scalpel for ever.
SOME TERRIBLE LETTERS FROM SCOTLAND
James Hogg
DEAR SIR,—As I knew you once, and think you will remember me,—I having wrought on your farm for some months with William Colins that summer that Burke was hanged,*—I am going to write you on a great and trying misfortune that has befallen to myself, and hope you will publish it, before you leave London, for the benefit of all those concerned.
You must know that I have served the last three years with Mr Kemp, miller, of Troughlin;* and my post was to drive two carts, sometimes with corn to Dalkeith market, and sometimes with flour-meal to all the bakers in Musselburgh and the towns round about. I did not like this very well; for I often thought to myself, if I should take that terrible Cholera Morbus, what was to become of me, as I had no home to go to, and nobody would let me within their door. This constant fright did me ill, for it gave my constitution a shake: and I noticed, whenever I looked in my little shaving-glass, that my face was grown shilpit* and white, and blue about the mouth; and I grew more frightened than ever.
Well, there was one day that I was at Musselburgh with flour; and when I was there the burials were going by me as thick as droves of Highland cattle; and I thought I sometimes felt a saur* as if the air had thickened around my face. It is all over with me now, thought I, for I have breathed the Cholera! But when I told this to Davison, the baker’s man, he only laughed at me, which was very ungracious and cruel in him; for before I got home I felt myself manifestly affected, and knew not what to do.
When I came into the kitchen, there was none in it but Mary Douglas: she was my sweetheart like, and we had settled to be married. ‘Mary, I am not well at all to-night,’ said I, ‘and I am afraid I am taking that deadly Cholera Morbus.’
‘I hope in God that is not the case!’ said Mary, letting the tongs fall out of her hand; ‘but we are all in the Almighty’s hands, and he may do with us as seemeth good in his sight.’
She had not well repeated this sweet, pious submission, before I fell a-retching most terribly, and the pains within were much the same as if you had thrust seven or eight redhot pokers through my stomach. ‘Mary, I am very ill,’ said I, ‘and I well know Mr Kemp will not let me abide here.’
‘Nay, that he will not,’ said she; ‘for he has not dared to come in contact with you for weeks past: but, rather than you should be hurried off to an hospital, if you think you could walk to my mother’s, I will go with you, and assist you.’
‘Alas! I cannot walk a step at present,’ said I; ‘but the horses are both standing yoked in the carts at the stable-door, as I was unable to loose them.’ In a few minutes she had me in a cart, and drove me to her mother’s cot, where I was put to bed, and continued very ill. There was never any trouble in this world like it: to be roasted in a fire, or chipped all to pieces with a butcher’s knife, is nothing to it. Mary soon had a doctor at me, who bled me terribly, as if I had been a bullock, and gave me great doses of something, which I suppose was laudanum; but neither of them did me any good: I grew worse and worse, and wished heartily that I were dead.
But now the rest of the adjoining cotters rose in a body, and insisted on turning me out. Is it not strange, Sir, that this most horrible of all pestilences should deprive others, not only of natural feeling, but of reason? I could make no resistance although they had flung me over the dunghill, as they threatened to do; but the two women acted with great decision, and dared them to touch me or any one in their house. They needed not have been so frightened; for no one durst have touched me more than if I had been an adder or a snake. Mary, and her mother, old Margaret, did all that they could for me: they bathed the pit of my stomach with warm camomile, and rubbed my limbs and hands with hard cloths, shedding many tears over me; but the chillness of death had settled on my limbs and arms, and all the blood in my body had retreated to its conquered citadel; and a little before daylight I died.
For fear of burying me alive, and for fear of any violence being done to my body by the affrighted neighbours, the two women concealed my death; but poo
r Mary took the sheets, which had been bought for her bridal bed, and made them into dead-clothes for me; and in the afternoon the doctor arrived, and gave charges that I should be coffined and buried without loss of time. At this order Mary wept abundantly, but there was no alternative; for the doctor ordered a coffin to be made with all expedition at the wright’s, as he went by, and carried the news through the parish, that poor Andrew, the miller’s man, had died of a most malignant Cholera.
The next morning very early, Johnie, the elder, came up with the coffin, his nose plugged with tobacco, and his mouth having a strong smell of whisky; and, in spite of all Mary’s entreaties, nailed me in the coffin. Now, Sir, this was quite terrible; for all the while I had a sort of half-consciousness of what was going on, yet had not power to move a muscle of my whole frame. I was certain that my soul had not departed quite away, although my body was seized with this sudden torpor, and refused to act. It was a sort of dream, out of which I was struggling to awake, but could not; and I felt as if a fall on the floor, or a sudden jerk of any kind, would once more set my blood a-flowing, and restore animation. I heard my beloved Mary Douglas weeping and lamenting over me, and expressing a wish that, if it were not for the dreadfulness of the distemper, that she had shared my fate. I felt her putting the robes of death on me, and tying the napkin round my face; and, O, how my spirit longed to embrace and comfort her! I had great hopes that the joiner’s hammer would awake me; but he only used it very slightly, and wrought with an inefficient screw-driver: yet I have an impression that if any human eye had then seen me, I should have been shivering; for the dread of being buried alive, and struggling to death in a deep grave below the mould, was awful in the extreme!
The wright was no sooner fairly gone, than Mary unscrewed the lid, and took it half off, letting it lie along the coffin on one side. O, how I wished that she would tumble me out on the floor, or dash a pail of water on me! but she did neither, and there I lay, still a sensitive corpse. I determined, however, to make one desperate effort, before they got me laid into the grave.
But between those who are bound together by the sacred ties of love, there is, I believe, a sort of electrical sympathy, even in a state of insensibility. At the still hour of midnight, as Mary and her mother were sitting reading a chapter of the New Testament, my beloved all at once uttered a piercing shriek,—her mother having fallen down motionless, and apparently lifeless. That heart-rending shriek awakened me from the sleep of death!—I sat up in the coffin, and the lid rattled on the floor. Was there ever such a scene in a cottage at midnight? I think never in this island. Mary shrieked again, and fainted, falling down motionless across her mother’s feet. These shrieks, which were hardly earthly, brought in John Brunton and John Sword, who came rushing forward towards the women, to render them some assistance; but when they looked towards the bed, and saw me sitting in my winding-sheet, struggling in the coffin, they simultaneously uttered a howl of distraction and betook them to their heels. Brunton fainted, and fell over the threshold, where he lay groaning till trailed away by his neighbour.
My ancles and knees being tied together with tapes, and my wrists bound to my sides, which you know is the custom here, I could not for a while get them extricated, to remove the napkin from my face, and must have presented a very awful appearance to the two men. Debilitated as I was, I struggled on, and in my efforts overturned the coffin, and, falling down upon the floor, my face struck against the flags, which stunned me, and my nose gushed out blood abundantly. I was still utterly helpless; and when the two women began to recover, there was I lying wallowing and struggling in my bloody sheet. I wonder that my poor Mary did not lose her reason that night; and I am sure she would, had she not received supernatural strength of mind from Heaven. On recovering from her swoon, she ran out, and called at every door and window in the hamlet; but not one would enter the cottage of the plague. Before she got me divested of my stained grave-clothes and put to bed, her mother was writhing in the Cholera, her mild countenance changed into the appearance of withered clay, and her hands and feet as if they had been boiled. It is amazing that the people of London should mock at the fears of their brethren for this terrible and anomalous plague; for though it begins with the hues and horrors of death, it is far more frightful than death itself; and it is impossible for any family or community to be too much on their guard against its baleful influence. Old Margaret died at nine next morning; and what could I think but that I had been her murderer, having brought infection to her homely and healthy dwelling? and the calamity will hang as a weight on my heart for ever. She was put into my coffin, and hurried away to interment; and I had no doubt that she would come alive again below the earth;—but the supposition is too horrible to cherish!
For my part, as far as I can remember, I did not suffer any more pain, but then I felt as if I had been pounded in a mill,—powerless, selfish, and insensible. I could not have remembered aught of the funeral, had it not been that my Mary wept incessantly, and begged of the people that they would suffer the body of her parent to remain in the house for one night; but they would not listen to her, saying that they dared not disobey the general order, and even for her own sake it was necessary the body should be removed.
Our cottage stood in the middle of a long row of labourers’ houses, all of the same description; and the day after the funeral of old Margaret, there were three people in the cottage next to ours seized with the distemper, and one of them died. It went through every one of the cottages in that direction, but all those in the other end of the row escaped. On the Monday of the following week my poor Mary fell down in it, having, like myself and her mother, been seized with it in its worst form; and in a little time her visage and proportions were so completely changed, that I could not believe they were those of my beloved. I for a long time foolishly imagined that she was removed from me, and a demon had taken her place; but reason at length resumed her sway and convinced me of my error. There was no one to wait on or assist Mary but me, and I was so feeble I could not do her justice: I did all that I was able, however; and the doctor gave me hopes that she would recover. She soon grew so ill, and her pangs, writhings, and contortions, became so terrible, that I wished her dead:—yes, I prayed that death would come and release her! but it was from a conviction that she would revive again, and that I should be able to wake her from the sleep of death. I did not conceive my own revival as any thing supernatural, but that which might occur to every one who was suddenly cut off by the plague of Cholera; and I prayed that my dear woman would die. She remained quite sensible; and, taking my hand, she squeezed it and said, ‘Do you really wish me dead, Andrew?’ I could make no reply; but she continued to hold my hand, and added, ‘Then you will not need to wish for it long. O Lord, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven!’
She repeated this last sentence in a whisper, and spoke no more, for the icy chillness had by this time reached the region of the heart; and she expired as in a drowsy slumber. Having no doubts of her revival I did not give the alarm of her death, but continued my exertions to restore animation. When the doctor arrived he was wroth with me, and laughed me to scorn, ordering the body to be directly laid out by matrons, preparatory for the funeral; and that night he sent two hired nurses for the purpose. They performed their task; but I would in no wise suffer the body to be coffined after what had happened to myself, until I saw the farthest. I watched her night and day, continuing my efforts to the annoyance of my neighbours until the third day, and then they would allow it no longer; but, despite all my entreaties, they took my beloved from me, nailed her in the coffin, and buried her; and now I am deprived of all I loved and valued in this world, and my existence is a burden I cannot bear, as I must always consider myself accessary to the deaths of those two valuable women.
The worst thing of all to suffer is the dreadful apprehension that they would come alive again below the earth, which I cannot get quit of; and though I tried to watch Mary’s grave, I was so feeble and far-spent,
that I could not but always fall asleep on it. There being funerals coming every day, when the people saw me lying on the grave with my spade beside me, they thought I had gone quite deranged, and, pitying me, they, half by force, took me away; but no one offered me an asylum in his house, for they called me the man that was dead and risen again, and shunned me as a being scarcely of this earth.
Still the thought that Mary would come alive haunts me,—a terror which has probably been engendered within me by the circumstances attending my own singular resuscitation. And even so late as the second night after her decease, as I was watching over her with prayers and tears, I heard a slight gurgling in her throat, as if she had been going to speak: there was also, I thought, a movement about the breast, and one of the veins of the neck started three or four times. How my heart leaped for joy as I breathed my warm breath into her cold lips! but movement there was no more. And now, Sir, if you publish this letter, let it be with an admonition for people to be on their guard when their friends are suddenly cut off by this most frightful of all diseases, for it is no joke to be buried alive.
I have likewise heard it stated, that one boy fell a-kicking the coffin on his way to the grave, who is still living and lifelike, and that a girl, as the doctors were cutting her up, threw herself off the table. I cannot vouch for the truth of these singular and cruel incidents, although I heard them related as facts; but with regard to my own case there can be no dispute.
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre Page 14
