by Unknown
“I dinna pretend as it was Chirsty’s behaviour alone that sent me wandering through the land. I had a dread of that funeral for one thing, and for another I had twelve gold guineas about me. Moreover, the ambition to travel took hold of me, and I thocht Chirsty’s worst trials was over at ony rate, and that she was used to my being dead now.”
“But the well-wisher, Tammas?” we would say at this stage.
“Ay, I’m coming to that. I walked at a michty stride alang the hill and round by the road at the back of the three-cornered wood to near as far as the farm of Glassal, and there I sat down at the roadside. I was beginning to be mair anxious about Chirsty now, and to think I was fell fond of her for all her exasperating ways. I was torn with conflicting emotions, of which the one said, ‘Back ye go to Tillyloss,’ but the other says, ‘Ye’ll never have a chance like this again.’ Weel, I could not persuade mysel’, though I did my best, to gang back to my loom and hand ower the siller to Chirsty, and so, as ye all ken, I compromised. I hurried back to the hill—”
“But ye’ve forgotten the cheese?”
“Na, listen: I hurried back to the hill, wondering how I could send a guinea to Chirsty, and I minded that I had about half a pound of cheese in my pouch, the which I had got at a farm in Glen Quharity. Weel, I shoved a guinea into the cheese, and back I goes to the hill to D. Fittis.
“‘D. Fittis,’ I says, ‘I ken you’re an honest man, and I want ye to take this bit of cheese to Chirsty Todd.’
“‘Ay,’ he says, ‘I’ll take it, but no till it’s ower dark for me to see the whins.’
“What a busy critter D. Fittis was, and to no end! I left the cheese with him, and was off again, when he cries me back.
“‘Wha will I say sent the cheese?’ he asks. I considered a minute, and then I says, ‘Tell her,’ I says, ‘that it is frae a well-wisher.’
“These were my last words to D. Fittis, for I was feared other folk micht see me, and away I ran. Yes, lads, I covered twenty miles that day, never stopping till I got to Dundee.”
It was Haggart’s way, when he told his story, to pause now and again for comments, and this was a point where we all wagged our heads, the question being whether his assumption of the character of a well-wisher was not a clear proof of humour. “That there was humour in it,” Haggart would say, when summing up, ‘‘I can now see, but compared to what was to follow, it was neither here nor there. My humour at that time was like a laddie trying to open a stiff gate, and even when it did squeeze past, the gate closed again with a snap. Ay, lads, just listen, and ye’ll hear how it came about as the gate opened wide, never to close again.”
“Ye had the stuff in ye, though,” Lookaboutyou would say, ‘‘and therefore I’m of opinion that ye’ve been a humorist frae the cradle.”
“Little you ken about it,” Haggart would answer. “No doubt I had the material of humour in me, but it was raw. I’m thinking cold water and kail and carrots and a penny bone are the materials broth is made of?”
‘‘They are, they are.”
“Ay, but it’s no broth till it boils?”
“So it’s no. Ye’re richt, Tammas.”
““Weel, then, it’s the same with humour. Considering me as a humorist, ye micht say that when my travels began I had put mysel’ on the fire to boil.”
CHAPTER IV
THE WANDERINGS OF HAGGART
Not having a Haggart head on my shoulders I dare not attempt to follow the explorer step by step during his wanderings of the next five months. In that time he journeyed through at least one country, unconsciously absorbing everything that his conjurer’s want could turn to humour when the knack came to him. This admission he has himself signed in conversation.
“Ay,” he said, “I was like a blind beggar in these days, and the dog that led me by a string was my impulses.”
Most of us let this pass, with the reflection that Haggart could not have said it in his pre-humorous days, but Snecky Hobart put in his word.
“Ye were hardly like the blind beggar,” he said, “for ye didna carry a tanker for folk to put bawbees in.”
Snecky explained afterward, that he only spoke to give Haggart an opportunity. It was, indeed, the way of ‘all of us, when we saw an opening, to coax Tammas into it. So sportsmen of another kind can point out the hare to their dogs, and confidently await results.
“Ye’re wrang, Snecky,” replied Haggart.
As ever, before shooting his bolt, he then paused. His mouth was open, and he had the appearance of a man hearkening intensely for some communication from below. There were those who went the length of hinting that on these occasions something inside jumped to his month and told him what to say.
“Yes, Snecky,” he said at last, “ye’re wrang. My mouth was the tanker, and the folk I met had all to pay toll, as ye may say, for they dropped things into my mouth that my humour turns to as muckle account as though they were bawbees. I’m no sure—”
‘‘There’s no many things ye ‘re no sure of, Tammas.”
“And this is no one of them. It’s just a form of expression, and if ye interrupt me again, Snecky Hobart, I’ll say a sarcastic thing about you that instant. “What I was to say was that I’m no sure but what a humorist swallows everything whole that he falls in with.”
The impossibility of telling everything that befell Haggart in his wanderings is best proved in his own words:
“My adventures,” he said, “was so surprising thick that when I cast them over in my mind I’m like a man in a cornfield, and every stalk of corn an adventure. Lads, it’s useless to expect me to give you the history of ilka stalk. I wrax out my left hand, and I grip something, namely, an adventure; or I wrax out my right hand and grip something, namely, another adventure. Well, by keeping straight on in ony direction we wade through adventures till we get out of the field, that is to say, till we land back at Thrums. Ye say my adventures sounds different on different nichts. Precisely, for it all depends on which direction I splash off in.”
Without going the length of saying that Haggart splashed more than was necessary, I may perhaps express regret that he never saw his way to clearing up certain disputed passages in his wanderings. I would, I know, be ill-thought of among the friends who survive him if I stated for a fact that he never reached London. There was a general wish that he should have taken London in his travels, and if Haggart had a weakness it was his reluctance to disappoint an audience. I must own that he trod down his cornfield pretty thoroughly before his hand touched the cornstalk called London, and that his London reminiscences never seemed to me to have quite the air of reality that filled his recollections of Edinburgh. Admitted that he confirmed glibly as an eye-witness the report that London houses have no gardens (except at the back), it remains undoubted that Craigiebuckle confused him with the question: —
“What do they charge in London for half-a-pound of boiling beef and a penny bone?”
Haggart answered, but after a pause, as if he had forgotten the price, which scarcely seems natural. However, I do not say that he was never in London, and certainly his curious adventures in it are still retailed, especially one with an ignorant policeman who could not tell him which was the road to Thrums, and another with the doorkeeper of the House of Parliament, who, on being asked by Haggart “How much was to pay?” foolishly answered “What you please.” But though I heartily approve the feeling in Thrums against those carping critics who would slice bits off the statue which we may be said to have reared to Haggart’s memory, some of the stories now fondly cherished are undoubtedly mythical. For instance, whatever Lookaboutyou may say, I do not believe that Haggart once flung a clod of earth at the Pope. It is perfectly true that some such story got abroad, but if countenanced by Haggart it was only because Chirsty had her own reasons for wanting him to stand well with the Auld Licht minister. Often Haggart was said in his own presence to have had adventures in such places as were suddenly discovered by us in the newspapers, places that had acquired a publ
ic interest, say, because of a murder; and then he neither agreed that he had been there nor allowed that he had not. Thus it is reasonable to believe that his less discriminating admirers splashed out of Haggart’s cornfield into some other body’s, without noticing that they had crossed the dyke. His silence at those times is a little aggravating to his chronicler now, but I would be the first to defend it against detractors. Unquestionably the length of time during which Haggart would put his under lip over the upper one, and so shut the door on words, was one of the grandest proofs of his humour. However plentiful the water in the dam may be, there are occasions when it is handy to let down the sluice.
I the more readily grant that certain of the Haggart stories may have been plucked from the wrong fields, because there still remain a sufficient number of authenticated ones to fill the mind with rapture. A statistician could tell how far they would reach round the world, supposing they were represented by a brick apiece, or how long they would take to pass through a doorway on each other’s heels. We never attempted to count them. Being only average men we could not conveniently carry beyond a certain number of the stories about with us, and thus many would doubtless now be lost were it not that some of us loaded ourselves with one lot and others with another. Each had his favourites, and Haggart supplied us with the article we wanted, just as if he and we were on opposite sides of a counter. Thus when we discuss him now we may have new things to tell of him; nay, even the descendants of his friends are worth listening to on Haggart, for the stories have been passed on from father to son.
Some enjoyed most his reminiscences of how he felt each time he had to cut off another button.
“Lads,” he said, “I wasna unlike a doctor. Ye mind Dr. Skene saying as how the young doctors at the college grew faint like at first when they saw blood gushing, but by-and-by they became so michty hardy that they could off with a leg as cool as though they were just hacking sticks?”
“Ay, he said that.”
“Weel, that was my sensations. When I cut off the first button it was like sticking the knife into mysel’, and I did it in the dark because I hadna the heart to look on. Ay, the next button was a stiff job too, but after that I grew what ye may call hardhearted, and it’s scarce going beyond the truth to say that a time came when I had a positive pleasure in sending the siller flying. I dinna ken, thinking the thing out calmly now, but what I was like a wild beast drunk with blood.”
“What was the most ye ever spent in a week?”
“I could tell ye that, but I would rather ye wanted to ken what was the most I ever spent in a nicht.”
“How muckle?”
“Try a guess.”
“Twa shillings?”
“Twa shillings!” cried Haggart, with a contempt that would have been severe had the coins been pennies; “ ay, sax shillings is nearer the mark.”
“In one nicht?”
“Ay, in one single nicht.”
“Ye must have lost some of it?”
“Not a bawbee. Ah, T’nowhead, man, ye little ken how money goes in grand towns. Them as lives like lords must spend like lords.”
“That’s reasonable enough, but I would like to hear the price of ilka thing ye got that nicht?”
“And I could tell ye. What do ye say to a shilling and saxpence for a bed?”
“I say it was an intake.”
“Of course it was, but I didna grudge it.”
“Ye didna?”
“No, I didna. It was in Edinburgh, and my last nicht in the place, and also my last button, so I thinks to mysel’ I’ll have one tremendous, memorable nicht, and then I’ll go hame. Lads, I was a sort of wearying for Chirsty.”
“Ay, but there’s four shillings and saxpence to account for yet.”
“There is so. Saxpence of it goes for a glass of whisky in the smoking-room. Lads, that smoking-room was a sight utterly baffling imagination. There was no chairs in it except great muckle saft ones, a hantle safter than a chaff bed, and in ilka chair some nobleman or other with his feet up in the air. Ay, I a sort of slipped the first time I tried a chair, but I wasna to be beat, for thinks I, ‘Lords ye may be, but I have paid one and sax for my bed as weel as you, and this nicht I ‘ll be a lord too!’ Keeping the one and sax before me made me bold, and soon I was sprawling in a chair with my legs sticking ower the arm with the best of them. Ay, it wasna so much enjoyable as awe-inspiring.”
“That just brings ye up to twa shillings.”
“Weel, there was another one and sax for breakfast.”
“Astounding!”
“Oh, a haver, of course, but we got as muckle as we liked, and I assure ye it’s amazing how much ye can eat, when ye ken ye have to pay for it at ony rate. Then there was ninepence for a luncheon.”
“What’s that?”
“I didna ken mysel’ when I heard them speaking about it, but it turned out to be a grand name for a rabbit.”
“Man, is there rabbits in Edinburgh?”
“Next there was threepence of a present to the waiter-loon, and I finished up with a shilling’s worth of sandwiches.”
“Na, that’s just five and saxpence.”
Haggart, however, would not always tell how the remaining sixpence went. At first he admitted having squandered it on the theatre, but after he was landed by Chirsty in the Auld Licht kirk he withdrew this reminiscence, and put another sixpence-worth in the smoking-room in its place.
As a convincing proof of the size of Edinburgh, Haggart could tell us how he lost his first lodgings in it. They were next house to a shop which had a great show of vegetables on a board at the door, and Haggart trusted to this shop as a landmark. When he returned to the street, however, there were greengrocery shops everywhere, and after asking at a number of doors if it was here he lived, he gave up the search. This experience has been paralleled in later days by a Tilliedrum minister, who went for a holiday to London, and forgot the name of the hotel he was staying at; so he telegraphed to Tilliedrum to his wife, asking her to tell him what address he had given her when he wrote, and she telegraphed back to him to come home at once.
Like all the great towns Haggart visited, Edinburgh proved to be running with low characters, with whom, as well as with the flower of the place — for he was received everywhere — he had many strange adventures. His affair with the bailie would make a long story itself, if told in full as he told it; also what he did to the piper; how he climbed up the Castle rocks for a wager; why he once marched indignantly out of a church in the middle of the singing; the circumstances in which he cut off his sixth button; his heroic defence of a lady who had been attacked by a footpad; his adventures with the soldier who was in love and had a silver snuffbox; his odd meeting with James Stewart, lawful King of Great Britain and Ireland. With this personage, between whom and a throne there only stood the constables, Haggard of Thrums hobnobbed on equal terms. The way they met was this. Haggart was desirous of the sensation of driving in a carriage, but grudged much outlay on an experience that would soon be over. He accordingly opened the door of a street vehicle and stepped in, when the driver was not looking. They had a pleasant drive along famous Princes Street and would probably have gone farther had not Haggart become aware that someone was hanging on behind. In his indignation he called the driver’s attention to this, which led to his own eviction. The hanger-on proved to be no other than the hapless monarch, with whom Haggart subsequently broke a button. For a king, James Stewart, who disguised his royal person in corduroys, was, as Haggart allowed, very ill in order. The spite of the authorities had crushed that once proud spirit and darkened his intellect, and he took his friend to a gambling-house, where he nodded to the proprietor.
“Whether they were in company, with designs on my buttons,” Haggart has said, “I’m not in a position to say, but I bear no ill-will to them. They treated me most honourable. Ay, the king, as we may call him if we speak in a low voice, advises me strong to gamble a button at one go, for, says he, ‘You’re sure to win.’ Lads
, it’s no for me to say a word against him, but I thocht I saw him wink to the proprietor lad, and so I says in a loud voice, says I, ‘I’ll gamble half-a-crown first, and if I win, then I’ll put down a button.’ The proprietor a sort of nods to the king at that, and I plunks down my half-crown. Weel, lads, I won five shillings in a clink.”
“Ay, but they were just waiting for your guineas.”
“It may have been so, Andrew, but we have no proof of that; for, ye see, as soon as I got the five shillings and had buttoned it up in my pouch, I says, ‘I ‘ll be stepping hame now,’ I says, and away I goes. Ye canna say but what they treated me honourable.”
“They had looked thrawn?”
“On, they did; but a man’s face is his own to twist it as he pleases.”
“And ye never saw the king again?”
“Ay, I met him after that in a close. I gave the aristocratic crittur saxpence.”
“I’ll tell ye what, Tammas Haggart: if he was proclaimed king, he would very likely send for ye to the palace and make ye a knight.”
“Man, Snecky, I put him through his catechism on that very subject, but he had no hope. Ye canna think how complete despondent he was.”
“Ye’re sure he was a genuine Pretender?”
“Na faags! But when ye’re travelling it doesna do to let on what ye think and I own it’s a kind of satisfaction to me now to picture mysel’ diddling a king out of five shillings.”
“It’s a satisfaction to everybody in Thrums, Tammas, and more particular to Tillyloss.”
“Ay, Tilly has the credit of it in a manner of speaking. And it was just touch and go that I didna do a thing with the siller as would have commemorated that adventure among future ages.”
“Ay, man?”
“I had the notion to get bawbees for the money, namely, one hundred and thirty-twa bawbees, for of course I didna count the saxpence. Well, what was I to do with them?”
