calling in the landlord, tendered me in his presence the expressive shilling.
The corps into which I had listed was the—-, then lying in the Tower, London, there being only the sergeant and two or three men of the regiment in Glasgow recruiting. The matter of listing settled, the sergeant bespoke me a bed for the night in the tavern in which we were, that being his own quarters.
On the following day I was informed, much to my surprise, although by no means to my regret, that a detachment of recruits for the—- were to be sent off that evening at nine o’clock by the track boat for Edinburgh, and from thence by sea to the headquarters of the regiment at London, and that I was to be of the number. At nine o’clock of the evening, accordingly, we were shipped at Port-Dundas.
Before leaving Glasgow, however, I made one last call at the police office to inquire whether any discoveries had been made regarding my pocket-book, but found that nothing whatever had been heard of it.
On the following day we reached Edinburgh; on the next we were embarked on board a Leith smack for London, where we arrived in safety on the fourth day thereafter, and were marched to the Tower, which was at the time the headquarters of the regiment. Amongst the young men who were of the party who came up with me from Scotland, there was one with whom I became particularly intimate, and who was subsequently my comrade. His name was John Lindsay, a native of Glasgow. He was about my own age, or perhaps a year older–a lively, active, warm-hearted lad, but of a restless, roving disposition.
It was, I think, about a fortnight after our arrival in London, that Lindsay one day, while rummaging a small trunk in the barrack-room, which had formed the entire of his travelling equipage from Scotland, stumbled on a letter, with whose delivery he had been entrusted by some one in Glasgow, but which he had entirely forgotten. It was addressed in a scrawling hand–“To Susan Blaikie, servant with Henry Wallscourt, Esq., 19, Grosvenor Square, London.”
“Here’s a job, Davy,” said Lindsay, holding up the letter. “I promised faithfully to deliver this within an hour after my arrival in London, and here it is still. But better late than never. Will you go with me and see the fair maiden to whom this is addressed? It contains, I believe, a kind of introduction to her, and may perhaps lead to some sport.”
I readily closed with Lindsay’s proposal, and in ten minutes after we set out for Grosvenor Square, which we had no difficulty in finding. Neither were we long in discovering No. 19, the residence of Henry Wallscourt, Esq. It was a magnificent house, everything about it bespeaking a wealthy occupant.
Leaving me on the flagstones, Lindsay now descended into the area; but in two or three minutes returned, and motioned me with his finger to come to him.
I did so, when he told me that he had seen Susan Blaikie, and that she had invited us to come in. Into the house we accordingly went, and were conducted by Susan, a lively, pretty girl, who welcomed us with great cordiality, into what appeared to be a housekeeper’s room.
My comrade, Lindsay, having given Susan all the Scotch, particularly Glasgow, news in his budget, the latter left the room for a few minutes, when she returned with a tray of cold provisions–ham, fowl, and roast beef.
Placing these before us, and adding a bottle of excellent porter, she invited us to fall-to. We did so, and executed summary justice on the good things placed before us.
After this we sat for about half an hour, when we rose to depart. This, however, she would not permit till we had promised that we would come, on the following night, and take tea with her and one or two of her fellow-servants. This promise we readily gave, and as willingly kept. One of the party, on the night of the tea-drinking, was the footman of the establishment, Richard Digby–a rakish, dissipated-looking fellow, with an affected air, and an excessively refined and genteel manner, that is, as he himself thought it. To others, at least to me, he appeared an egregious puppy; the obvious spuriousness of his assumed gentility inspiring a disgust which I found it difficult to suppress. Neither could I suppress it so effectually as to prevent the fellow discovering it. He did so; and the consequence was the rise of a hearty and mutual dislike, which, however, neither of us evinced by any overt act.
Having found the society of our fair countrywoman and her friends very agreeable, we–that is, Lindsay and myself–became frequent visitors; drinking tea with her and her fellow-servants at least two or three times a week. While this was going on, a detachment of the new recruits, of whom Lindsay was one, was suddenly ordered to Chatham. I missed my comrade much after his departure; but as I had by this time established an intimacy with Susan and her fellow-servants on my own account, I still continued visiting there, and drinking tea occasionally as formerly.
It was on one of these occasions, and about ten days after Lindsay had left London, that as I was leaving Mr. Wallscourt’s house at a pretty late hour–I think about eleven at night–I was suddenly collared by two men, just as I had ascended the area stair, and was about to step out on the pavement.
“What’s this for?” said I, turning first to the one and then to the other of my captors.
“We’ll tell you that presently,” replied one of the men, who had by this time begun to grope about my person, as if searching for something. In a moment after–“Ah! let’s see what’s this,” he said, plunging his hand into one of my coat-pockets, and pulling out a silver table-spoon. “All right,” he added. “Come away, my lad;” and the two forthwith began dragging me along.
The whole affair was such a mystery to me, and of such sudden occurrence, that it was some seconds before I could collect myself sufficiently to put any such calm and rational queries to my captors as might elicit an explanation of it. All that I could say was merely to repeat my inquiry as to the meaning of the treatment I was undergoing–resisting instinctively, the while, the efforts of the men to urge me forward. This last, however, was vain; for they were two powerful fellows, and seemed scarcely to feel the resistance I made. To my reiterated demand of explanation they merely replied that I should have it presently, but that they rather thought I did not stand greatly in need of it.
Obliged to rest satisfied, in the meantime, with such evasive answers, and finding resistance useless, indeed uncalled for, as I was unconscious of any crime, I now went peaceably along with the men. Whither they were conducting me the reader will readily guess; it was to Bow Street.
On being brought into the office, the men conducted me up to a person who, seated at a desk, was busily employed making entries in a large book. One of my captors having whispered something into this person’s ear, he turned sharply round and demanded my name. I gave it him.
“The others?” he said.
“What others?” I replied. “I have only one name, and I have given it.”
“Pho, pho!” exclaimed he. “Gentlemen of your profession have always a dozen. However, we’ll take what you have given in the meantime.” And he proceeded to make some entries in his book. They related to me, but I was not permitted to see what they were. The table-spoon which had been found in my pocket, and which had been placed on the desk before the official already spoken of, was now labelled and put past, and I was ordered to be removed.
During all this time I had been loudly protesting my innocence of any crime; but no attention whatever was paid to me. So little effect, indeed, had my protestations, that one would have thought, judging by the unmoved countenances around me, that they did not hear me at all, for they went on speaking to each other, quite in the same way as if I had not been present. The only indication I could perceive of a consciousness of my being there, and of their hearing what I said, was an occasional faint smile of incredulity. At one time, provoked by my importunity and my obstinate iteration of my innocence, the official who was seated at the desk turned fiercely round, exclaiming–
“The spoon, the spoon, friend; what do you say to that–found in your pocket, eh?”
I solemnly protested that I knew not how it came there; that I had never put it there, nor had the least idea of its being in my possession till it was produced by those that searched me.
“A very likely story,” said the official, turning quietly round to his book; “but we’ll see all about that by-and-by. Remove him, men.”
And I was hurried away, and locked up in a cell for the night.
I cannot say that, when left to myself, I felt much uneasiness regarding the result of the extraordinary matter that had occurred. I felt perfectly satisfied that, however awkward and unpleasant my situation was in the meantime, the following day would clear all up, and set me at liberty with an unblemished character. From all that had taken place, I collected that I was apprehended on a charge of robbery; that is, of abstracting property from Mr. Wallscourt’s house, of which the silver spoon found in my possession was considered a proof. There was much, however, in the matter of painful and inexplicable mystery. How came the constables to be so opportunely in the way when I left the house? and, more extraordinary still, how came the silver spoon into my possession? Regarding neither of these circumstances could I form the slightest plausible conjecture; but had no doubt that, whether they should ever be explained or not, my entire innocence of all such guilt as the latter of them pointed at, would clearly appear. But, as the saying has it, “I reckoned without my host.” On the following morning I was brought before the sitting magistrate, and, to my inexpressible surprise, on turning round a little, saw Richard Digby in the witness-box. Thinking at first that he was there to give some such evidence as would relieve me from the imputation under which I lay, I nodded to him; but he took no further notice of the recognition than by looking more stern than before.
Presently my case was entered on. Digby was called on to state what he had to say to the matter. Judge of my consternation, gentle reader, when I heard him commence the following statement:–
Having premised that he was servant with Mr. Wallscourt, of No. 19, Grosvenor Square, he proceeded to say that during the space of the three previous weeks he had from time to time missed several valuable pieces of plate belonging to his master; that this had happened repeatedly before he could form the slightest conjecture as to who the thief could possibly be. At last it occurred to him that the abstraction of the plate corresponded, in point of time, with the prisoner’s (my) introduction to the house–in other words, that it was from that date the robberies commenced, nothing of the kind having ever happened before; that this circumstance led him to suspect me; that in consequence he had on the previous night placed a silver table-spoon in such a situation in the servants’ hall as should render it likely to be seen by the prisoner when he came to tea, Susan Blaikie having previously informed him that he was coming; that, shortly after the prisoner’s arrival, he contrived, by getting Susan and some of the other servants out of the room, on various pretexts, to have the prisoner left alone for several minutes; that, on his return, finding the spoon gone, he had no longer any doubt of the prisoner’s guilt; that, on feeling satisfied of this, he immediately proceeded to the nearest station-house, and procuring two constables, or policemen, stationed them at the area gate, with instructions to seize the prisoner the moment he came out; and that if the spoon was found on him–of which he had no doubt–to carry him away to Bow Street.
Such, then, was Mr. Digby’s statement of the affair; and a very plausible and connected one, it must be allowed, it was. It carried conviction to all present, and elicited from the presiding magistrate a high encomium on that person’s fidelity, ability, and promptitude.
The silver spoon, labelled as I had seen it, was now produced, when Mr. Wallscourt, who was also present, was called on to identify it. This he at once did, after glancing at the crest and initials which were engraven on the handle. The charge against me thus laid and substantiated, I was asked if I had anything to say in my own defence.
Defence! what defence could I make against an accusation so strongly put, and so amply supported by circumstances? None. I could meet it only by denial, and by assertions of innocence. This, however, I did, and with such energy and earnestness–for horror and despair inspired me with both courage and eloquence–that a favourable impression was perceptible in the court. The circumstantial statement of Digby, however, with all its strong probabilities, was not to be overturned by my bare assertions; and the result was, that I was remanded to prison to stand trial at the ensuing assizes, Mr. Wallscourt being bound over to prosecute.
Wretched, however, as my situation was, I had not been many hours in prison when I regained my composure; soothed by the reflection that, however disgraceful or unhappy my position might be, it was one in which I had not deserved being placed. I was further supported by the conviction, which even the result of my late examination before the magistrate had not in the least weakened, that my innocence would yet appear, and that in sufficient time to save me from further legal prosecution. Buoyed up by these reflections, I became, if not cheerful, at least comparatively easy in my mind. I thought several times during my imprisonment of writing to my father,–to whom, by the way, as I should have mentioned before, I wrote from Edinburgh, when on my way to London, in order to relieve the minds of my mother and himself from any apprehensions of anything more serious having happened me, telling them of my loss, and the way it had occurred, but without telling them that I had listed, or where I was going,–I say I thought several times during my confinement of writing to my father, and informing him of the unhappy circumstances in which I was placed; but, on reflection, it occurred to me that such a proceeding would only give him and the rest of the family needless pain, seeing that he could be of no service to me whatever. I therefore dropped the idea, thinking it better that they should know nothing about the matter–nothing, at least, until my trial was over, and my innocence established; concomitant events, as I had no doubt they would prove. In the meantime the day of trial approached. It came, and I stood naked and defenceless; for I had no money to employ counsel, no friends to assist me with advice. I stood at the bar of the Old Bailey shielded only by my innocence; a poor protection against evidence so strong and circumstantial as that which pointed to my guilt.
My trial came on. It was of short duration. Its result, what every one who knew anything of the matter foresaw but myself. I was found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation.
As on a former occasion, I will leave it to the reader himself to form a conception of what my feelings were when this dreadful sentence rung in my ears–so horrible, so unexpected. A sudden deafness struck me that, commingling all sounds, rendered them unintelligible; a film came over my eyes; my heart fluttered strangely, and my limbs trembled so that I thought I should have sunk on the floor; but, making a violent effort, I supported myself; and in a few seconds these agitating sensations so far subsided as to allow of my retiring from the bar with tolerable steadiness and composure.
It was several days, however, before I regained entire possession of myself, and before I could contemplate my position in all its bearings with anything like fortitude or resignation. On attaining this state, a thousand wild schemes for obtaining such a reconsideration of my case as might lead to the discovery of my innocence presented themselves to my mind. I thought of addressing a letter to the judge who had tried me; to the foreman of the jury who had found me guilty; to the prosecutor, Mr. Wallscourt; to the Secretary of State; to the King. A little subsequent reflection, however, showed me the utter hopelessness of any such proceeding, as I had still only my simple, unsupported assertions to oppose to the strong array of positive and circumstantial evidence against me; that, therefore, no such applications as I contemplated could be listened to for a moment. Eventually satisfied of this, I came to the resolution of submitting quietly to my fate in the meantime, trusting that some circumstance or other would, sooner or later, occur that would lead to a discovery of the injustice that had been done me.
Writing to my father I considered now out of the question. The same reasons that induced me to abstain from writing him before my trial, presented themselves in additional force to prevent me writing him after. I resolved that he should never know of the misfortune, however undeserved, that had befallen me. I had all along–that is, since my confinement–looked for some letter or other communication from Lindsay. Sometimes I even hoped for a visit from him. But I was disappointed. I neither saw nor heard anything of him; and from this circumstance concluded that he, too, thought me guilty, and that this was the cause of his desertion of me. Friendless and despised, I at once abandoned myself to fate.
Of poor Susan Blaikie, however, I did hear something; and that was, that she was discharged from her situation. This intelligence distressed me much, although I had foreseen that it must necessarily happen.
In the apartment or cell into which I was placed after having received sentence, there were five or six young men in similar circumstances with myself–not as regarded innocence of crime, but punishment. They were all under sentence of banishment for various terms.
From these persons I kept as much aloof as possible. My soul sickened at the contamination to which I was exposed by the society of such ruffians, for they were all of the very worst description of London characters, and I did all I could to maintain the distinction between myself and them, which my innocence of all crime gave me a right to observe.
Under this feeling, it was my habit to sit in a remote part of the cell, and to take no share whatever either in the conversation or in the coarse practical jokes with which they were in the habit of beguiling the tedium of their confinement.
There was one occasion, however, on which I felt myself suddenly caught by an interest in their proceedings.
Seeing them one day all huddled together, listening with great delight to one of their number who was reading a letter aloud, I gradually approached nearer, curious to know what could be in this letter to afford them so much amusement.
Conceive my astonishment and surprise when, after listening for a few minutes, I discovered that the subject which tickled my fellow-prisoners so highly was a description of my own robbery; that is, of the robbery in Glasgow of which I had been the victim.
It was written with considerable humour, and contained such a minute and faithful account of the affair, that I had no doubt it had been written by Lancaster. Indeed it could have been written by no one else.
The letter in question, then, was evidently one from that person to a companion in crime who was amongst those with whom I was associated–no doubt he who was reading it. The writer, however, seemed also well known to all the other parties.
In the letter itself, as well as in the remarks of the audience on it, there was a great deal of slang, and a great many cant phrases which I could not make out. But, on the whole, I obtained a pretty correct knowledge of the import of both.
The writer’s description of me and of my worldly wisdom was not very flattering. He spoke of me as a regular flat, and the fleecing me as one of the easiest and pleasantest operations he had ever performed. He concluded by saying that as he found there was nothing worth while to be done in Scotland, he intended returning to London in a few days.
“More fool he,” said one of the party, on this passage being read. “That affair at Blackwall, in which Bob was concerned, has not yet blown over, and he’ll be lagged, as sure as he lives, before he’s a week in London.”
“Well, so much the better,” said another. “In that case we’ll have him across the water with us, and be all the merrier for his company.”
It was, I think, somewhat less than a month after this–for we were detained in prison altogether about two-months after sentence till a sufficient number had accumulated for transportation–that we, meaning myself and those in the ward in which I was confined, were favoured with a new companion.
Throwing open the door of our ward one afternoon, the turnkey ushered in amongst us a person dressed out in the first style of fashion, and immediately again secured the door. At first I could not believe that so fine a gentleman could possibly be a convict; I thought rather that he must be a friend of some one of my fellow-prisoners. But I was quickly undeceived in this particular, and found that he was indeed one of _us_.
On the entrance of this convict dandy, the whole of my fellow-prisoners rushed towards him, and gave him a cordial greeting.
“Glad to see you, Nick,” said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. “Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be nabbed. What have you got?”
“Fourteen,” replied the new-comer, with a shrug of his shoulders.
During all this time I had kept my eyes fixed on the stranger, whom I thought I should know. For a while, however, I was greatly puzzled to fix on any individual as identical with him; but at length it struck me that he bore a wonderful resemblance to my Glasgow friend Lancaster.
His appearance was now, indeed, greatly changed. He was, for one thing, splendidly attired, as I have already said, while at the time I had the pleasure of knowing him first he was very indifferently dressed. His face, too, had undergone some alterations. He had removed a bushy pair of whiskers which he sported in Glasgow, and had added to his adventitious characteristics a pair of green spectacles. It was these last that perplexed me most, in endeavouring to make out his identity. But he soon laid them aside, as being now of no further use–an operation which he accompanied by sundry jokes on their utility, and the service they had done him in the way of preventing inconvenient recognitions. Notwithstanding all these changes, however, in the new-comer’s appearance, I soon became quite convinced that he was no other than Lancaster; and, under this impression, I took an opportunity of edging towards him, and putting the question plumply to him, although under breath, for I did not care that the rest should hear it.
“Your name, sir, is Lancaster, I think?” said I.
He stared in my face for a second or two without making any reply, or seeming to recognise me. At length–
“No, youngster, it isn’t,” he said with the most perfect assurance.
“But you have taken that name on an occasion?” said I.
“Oh, perhaps I may,” he replied coolly. “I have taken a great many names in my day. I’ll give you a hundred of them at a penny a dozen. But, Lancaster, let me see,” and he kept looking hard at me as he spoke. “Why, it can’t be,” he added, with a sudden start. “Impossible! eh?” and he looked still more earnestly at me. “Are you from Glasgow, young un?”
I said I was.
“Did you ever see me there?”
I shook my head, and said, to my cost I had.
How my friend Mr. Lancaster received this intimation of our former acquaintance I must reserve for another number, as I must also do the sequel of my adventures; for I have yet brought the reader but half through the history of my chequered life.
THE CONVICT;
BEING THE SEQUEL TO “DAVID LORIMER.”
The reader will recollect that when he and I parted, at the conclusion of the last number, I had just intimated to Mr. Lancaster my conviction of our having had a previous acquaintance. Does the reader imagine that that gentleman was in any way discomposed at this recognition on my part, or at the way in which it was signified? that he felt ashamed or abashed? The sequel will show whether he did or not.
On my replying to his inquiry whether I had ever seen him in Glasgow, by shaking my head, and saying that I had to my cost, he burst into a loud laugh, and, striking his thigh with as much exultation as if he had just made one of the most amusing discoveries imaginable, exclaimed–
“All right. Here, my pals,” turning to the other prisoners. “Here’s a queer concern. Isn’t this the very flat, Dick,” addressing one of their number, “that I did so clean in Glasgow, and about whom I wrote you! The fellow whom I met in the show.”
“No! Possible!” exclaimed several voices, whose owners now crowded about me with a delighted curiosity, and began bantering me in those slang terms in which they could best express their witticisms.
I made no reply to either their insolences or their jokes; but, maintaining an obstinate silence, took an early opportunity of withdrawing to a remote part of the apartment. Nor did I–seeing how idle it would be to say a word more on the subject of the robbery which had been committed on me in Glasgow, as it would only subject me to ridicule and abuse–ever afterwards open my lips to Lancaster on the matter: neither did he to me, and there the affair ended; for, in a few days after, he was removed, for what reason I know not, to another cell, and I never saw him again.
Let me here retrograde for a moment. In alluding, in the preceding number, to the various wild ideas that occurred to me after my condemnation, on the subject of obtaining a reconsideration of my case, I forgot to mention that of applying to the colonel of my regiment; but, on reflection, this seemed as absurd as the others, seeing that I had been little more than three weeks in the corps, and could therefore lay claim to no character at the hands of any one belonging to it. I was still a stranger amongst them. Besides, I found, from no interference whatever having been made in my behalf, that I had been left entirely in the hands of the civil law. Inquiries had no doubt been made into my case by the commanding officer of my regiment, but with myself no direct communication had taken place. My connection with the corps, therefore, I took it for granted, was understood to be completely severed, and that I was left to undergo the punishment the sentence of the civil law had awarded.
To resume. In about a week after the occurrence of the incident with Lancaster above described, I was removed to the hulks, where I remained for somewhat more than a month, when I was put on board a convict ship, about to sail for New South Wales, along with a number of other convicts, male and female; none of them, I hope, so undeserving their fate as I was.
All this time I had submitted patiently to my destiny, seeing it was now inevitable, and said nothing to any one of my innocence; for, in the first place, I found that every one of my companions in misfortune were, according to their own accounts, equally innocent, and, in the next, that nobody believed them.
It was in the evening we were embarked on board the convict ship; with the next tide we dropped down the river; and, ere the sun of the following day had many hours risen, found ourselves fairly at sea.
For upwards of three weeks we pursued our course prosperously, nothing in that time occurring of the smallest consequence; and as the wind had been all along favourable, our progress was so great, that many of us began thinking of the termination of our voyage. These, however, were rather premature reflections, as we had yet as many months to be at sea as we had been weeks.
It was about the end of the period just alluded to, that as I was one night restlessly tossing on my hard straw mattress, unable to sleep, from having fallen into one of those painful and exciting trains of thought that so frequently visit and so greatly add to the miseries of the unfortunate, my ear suddenly caught the sounds of whispering. Diverted from my reflections by the circumstance, I drew towards the edge of my sleeping berth, and thrusting my head a little way out–the place being quite dark–endeavoured, by listening attentively, to make out who the speakers were, and what was the subject of their conversation. The former, after a little time, I discovered to be three of my fellow-convicts–one of them a desperate fellow, of the name of Norcot, a native of Middlesex, who had been transported for a highway robbery, and who had been eminently distinguished for superior dexterity and daring in his infamous profession. The latter, however–namely, the subject of their conversation–I could not make out; not so much from a difficulty of overhearing what they said, as from the number of slang words they employed. Their language was to me all but wholly unintelligible; for although my undesired association with them had enabled me to pick up a few of their words, I could make nothing of their jargon when spoken colloquially.
Unable, therefore–although suspecting something wrong–to arrive at any conclusion regarding the purpose or object of this midnight conversation, I took no notice of it to any one, but determined on watching narrowly the future proceedings of Norcot and his council.
On the following night the whispering was again repeated. I again listened, but with nearly as little success as before. From what I did make out, however, I was led to imagine that some attempt on the ship was contemplated; and in this idea I was confirmed, when Norcot, on the following day, taking advantage of a time when none of the seamen or soldiers, who formed our guard, were near, slapped me on the shoulder with a–
“Well, my pal, how goes it?”
Surprised at this sudden familiarity on the part of a man from whom I had always most especially kept aloof, and who, I was aware, had marked my shyness, as he had never before sought to exchange words with me, it was some seconds before I could make him any answer. At length–
“If you mean as to my health,” said I, “I am very well.”
“Ay, ay; but I don’t mean that,” replied Norcot. “How do you like your quarters, my man? How do you like this sort of life, eh?”
“Considering all circumstances, it’s well enough; as well as ought reasonably to be expected,” said I, in a tone meant to discourage farther conversation on the subject. But he was not to be so put off.
“Ay, in the meantime,” said he; “but wait you till we get to New South Wales; you’ll see a difference then, my man, I’m thinking. You’ll be kept working, from sunrise till sunset, up to the middle in mud and water, with a chain about your neck. You’ll be locked up in a dungeon at night, fed upon mouldy biscuit, and, on the slightest fault, or without any fault at all, be flogged within an inch of your life with a cat-o’-nine-tails. How will ye like that, eh?”
“_That_ I certainly should not like,” I replied. “But I hope you’re exaggerating a little.” I knew he was.
“Not a bit of it,” said Norcot. “Come here, Knuckler;” and he motioned to a fellow-convict to come towards him. “I’ve been telling this young cove here what he may expect when we reach our journey’s end, but he won’t believe me.” Having repeated the description of convict life which he had just given me–
“Now, Knuckler, isn’t that the truth?” he said.
“True as gospel,” exclaimed Knuckler, with a hideous oath; adding–“Ay, and in some places they are still worse used.”
“You hear that?” said Norcot. “I wasn’t going to bamboozle you with any nonsense, my lad. We’re all in the same lag, you know, and must stick by one another.”
My soul revolted at this horrible association, but I took care to conceal my feelings.
Norcot went on:–“Now, seeing what we have to expect when we get to t’other side of the water, wouldn’t he be a fool who wouldn’t try to escape it if he could, eh? Ay, although at the risk of his life?”
At this moment we were interrupted by a summons to the deck, it being my turn, with that of several others, to enjoy the luxury of inhaling the fresh sea breeze above. Norcot had thus only time to add, as I left him–
“I’ll speak to you another time, my cove.”
Having now no doubt that some mischief was hatching amongst the convicts, and that the conversation that had just passed was intended at once to sound my disposition and to incline me towards their projects, I felt greatly at a loss what to do. That I should not join in their enterprise, of whatsoever nature it might be, I at once determined. But I felt that this was not enough, and that I was bound to give notice of what I had seen and heard to those in command of the vessel, and that without loss of time, as there was no saying how wild or atrocious might be the scheme of these desperadoes, or how soon they might put it in execution.
Becoming every moment more impressed with the conviction that this was my duty, I separated myself as far as I could from my companions, and, watching an opportunity, said, in a low tone, to the mate of the vessel, whom a chance movement brought close to where I stood–
“Mischief going on. Could I have a moment’s private speech of the captain?”
The man stared at me for an instant with a look of non-comprehension, as I thought; and, without saying a word, he then resumed the little piece of duty he had been engaged in when I interrupted him, and immediately after went away, still without speaking, and indeed without taking any further notice of me.
I now thought he had either not understood me, or was not disposed to pay any attention to what I said. I was mistaken in my conjectures, and in one of them did injustice to his intelligence.
A moment after he left me I saw the captain come out of the cabin, and look hard at me for a second or two. I observed him then despatch the steward towards me. On that person’s approach–
“I say, my lad,” he exclaimed, so as to be heard by the rest of the convicts on deck, “can you wipe glasses and clean knives, eh? or brush shoes, or anything of that kind?”
Not knowing his real purpose in thus addressing me, I said I had no experience in that sort of employment, but would do the best I could.
“Oh, if you be willing,” he said, “we’ll soon make you able. I want a hand just now; so come aft with me, and I’ll find you work, and show you how to do it too.”
I followed him to the cabin; but I had not been there a minute when the captain came down, and, taking me into a state room, said–
“Well, my lad, what’s all this? You wanted a private word of me, and hinted to the mate that you knew of some mischief going on amongst the convicts. What is it?”
I told him of the secret whisperings at night I had overheard, and of the discourse Norcot had held with me; mentioning, besides, several expressions which I thought pointed to a secret conspiracy of some kind or other.
The captain was of the same opinion, and after thanking me for my information, and telling me that he would take care that the part I had acted should operate to my advantage on our arrival in the colony, he desired me to take no notice of what had passed, but to mingle with my associates as formerly, and to leave the whole matter to him.
To cover appearances, I was subsequently detained in the steward’s room for about a couple of hours, when I was sent back to my former quarters; not, however, without having been well entertained by the steward, by the captain’s orders.
What intermediate steps the captain took I do not know, but on that night Norcot and other ten of the most desperate of the convicts were thrown into irons.
Subsequent inquiry discovered a deep-laid plot to surprise the guard, seize their arms, murder the captain and crew and all who resisted, and take possession of the ship.
Whether such a desperate attempt would have been successful or not, is doubtful; but there is no question that a frightful scene of bloodshed would have taken place; nor that, if the ruffians had managed well, and judiciously timed their attack, they had some chance, and probably not a small one, of prevailing.
As it was, however, the matter was knocked on the head; for not only were the leaders of the conspiracy heavily ironed, but they were placed in different parts of the ship, wholly apart, and thus could neither act nor hold the slightest communication with each other.
Although the part I had acted in this affair did not operate in my favour with the greater part of my fellow-convicts,–for, notwithstanding all our caution, a strong suspicion prevailed amongst them that I was the informer,–it secured me the marked favour of all others on board the ship, and procured me many little indulgences which would not otherwise have been permitted, and, generally, much milder treatment than was extended to the others; and I confess I was not without an idea that I deserved it.
On our arrival at Sydney, whither I now hurry the reader, nothing subsequent to the incident just recorded having occurred in the interval with which I need detain him, I was immediately assigned, with several others, to a farmer, a recently arrived emigrant, who occupied a grant of land of about a thousand acres in the neighbourhood of the town of Maitland.
Before leaving the ship, the captain added to his other kindnesses an assurance that he would not fail to represent my case–meaning with reference to the service I had done him in giving information of the conspiracy amongst the convicts–to the governor, and that he had no doubt of its having a favourable effect on my future fortunes, provided I seconded it by my own good conduct.
The person to whom we had been assigned, an Englishman, being on the spot waiting us, we were forthwith clapped into a covered waggon, and driven off to our destination, our new master following us on horseback.
The work to which we were put on the farm was very laborious, consisting, for several weeks, in clearing the land of trees; felling, burning, and grubbing up the roots. But we were well fed, and, on the whole, kindly treated in other respects; so that, although our toil was severe, we had not much to complain of.
In this situation I remained for a year and a half, and had the gratification of enjoying, during the greater part of that time, the fullest confidence of my employer, whose good opinion I early won by my orderly conduct, and–an unusual thing amongst convicts–by my attention to his interests.
On leaving him, he gave me, unasked, a testimonial of character, written in the strongest terms.
I was now again returned on the hands of Government, to await the demand of some other settler for my services.
In the meantime I had heard nothing of the result of the captain’s representation in my behalf to the governor, but had no doubt I would reap the benefit of it on the first occasion that I should have a favour to ask. The first thing in this way that I had to look for was what is called a ticket of leave; that is, a document conferring exemption for a certain period from Government labour, and allowing the party possessing it to employ himself in any lawful way he pleases, and for his own advantage, during the time specified by the ticket. My sentence, however, having been for fourteen years, I could not, in the ordinary case, look for this indulgence till the expiration of six years, such being the colonial regulations.
But imagining the good service I had done in the convict ship would count for something, and probably induce the governor to shorten my term of probation, I began now to think of applying for the indulgence. This idea I shortly after acted upon, and drew up a memorial to the personage just alluded to; saying nothing, however, of my innocence of the crime for which I had been transported, knowing that, as such an assertion would not be believed, it would do much more harm than good. In this memorial, however, I enclosed the letter of recommendation given me by my last master.
It was eight or ten days before I heard anything of my application. At the end of that time, however, I received a very gracious answer. It said that my “praiseworthy conduct” on board the ship in which I came to the colony had been duly reported by the captain, and that it would be remembered to my advantage; that, at the, expiry of my second year in the colony, of which there were six months yet to run, a ticket of leave would be granted me–thus abridging the period by four years; and that, if I continued to behave as well as I had done, I might expect the utmost indulgence that Government could extend to one in my situation.
With this communication, although it did not immediately grant the prayer of my petition, I was much gratified, and prepared to submit cheerfully to the six months’ compulsory labour which were yet before me.
Shortly after this I was assigned to another settler, in the neighbourhood of Paramatta. This was a different sort of person from the last I had served, and, I am sorry to say, a countryman. His name I need not give; for although the doing so could no longer affect him, he being long dead, it might give pain to his relatives, several of whom are alive both here and in New South Wales. This man was a tyrant, if ever there was one, and possessed of all the passion and caprice of the worst description of those who delight in lording it over their fellow-creatures. There was not a week that he had not some of my unhappy fellow-servants before a magistrate, often for the most trivial faults–a word, a look–and had them flogged by sentence of the court, by the scourger of the district, till the blood streamed from their backs. Knowing how little consideration there is for the unhappy convict in all cases of difference with his taskmaster, and that however unjust or unreasonable the latter’s complaints may be, they are always readily entertained by the subordinate authorities, and carefully recorded against the former to his prejudice, I took care to give him no offence. To say nothing of his positive orders, I obeyed his every slightest wish with a promptitude and alacrity that left him no shadow of ground to complain of me. It was a difficult task; but it being for my interest that no complaint of me, just or unjust, should be put on record against me, I bore all with what I must call exemplary patience and fortitude.
I have already said that my new master was a man of the most tyrannical disposition–cruel, passionate, and vindictive. He was all this; and his miserable fate–a fate which overtook him while I was in his employment–was, in a great measure, the result of his ungovernable and merciless temper.
Some of the wretched natives of the country–perhaps the most miserable beings on the face of the earth, as they are certainly the lowest in the scale of intellect of all the savage tribes that wander on its surface–used to come occasionally about our farm, in quest of a morsel of food. Amongst these were frequently women with infants on their backs. If my master was out of the way when any of these poor creatures came about the house, his wife, who was a good sort of woman, used to relieve them; and so did we, also, when we had anything in our power. Their treatment, however, was very different when our master happened to be at home. The moment he saw any of these poor blacks approaching, he used to run into the house for his rifle, and on several occasions fired at and wounded the unoffending wretches. At other times he hounded his dogs after them, himself pursuing and hallooing with as much excitement as if he had been engaged in the chase of some wild beasts instead of human beings–beings as distinctly impressed as himself with the image of his God.
It is true that these poor creatures were mischievous sometimes, and that they would readily steal any article to which they took a fancy. But in beings so utterly ignorant, and so destitute of all moral perceptions, such offences could hardly be considered as criminal; not one, at any rate, deserving of wounds and death at the caprice of a fellow-creature acting on his own impulses, unchecked by any legal or judicial control. Besides, it were easy to prevent the depredations of these poor creatures–easy to drive them off without having recourse to violence.
The humanity and forbearance, however, which such a mode of proceeding with the aborigines would require was not to be found in my master. Fierce repulsion and retaliation were the only means he would have recourse to in his mode of treating them; and the consequence was, his inspiring the natives with a hatred of him, and a desire of vengeance for his manifold cruelties towards them, which was sure, sooner or later, to end in his destruction. It did so. One deed of surpassing cruelty which he perpetrated accomplished his fate.
One day, seeing two or three natives, amongst whom was a woman with a young infant on her back, passing within a short distance of the house, not approaching it–for he was now so much dreaded by these poor creatures that few came to the door–my master, as usual, ran in for his rifle, and calling his dogs around him, gave chase to the party.
The men being unencumbered, fled on seeing him, and being remarkably swift of foot, were soon out of his reach. Not so the poor woman with the child on her back: she could not escape; and at her the savage ruffian fired, killing both her and the infant with the same murderous shot.
This double murder was of so unprovoked, so cold-blooded, and atrocious a nature, that it is probable, little as the life of a native was accounted in those days, that my master would have been called upon to answer for his crime before the tribunals of the colony; but retribution overtook him by another and a speedier course.
On the following day my master came out of the house, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, with an axe in one hand, and the fatal rifle, his constant companion, with which he had perpetrated the atrocious deed on the preceding day, in the other, and coming up to me, told me that he was going to a certain spot in an adjoining wood to cut some timber for paling, and that he desired I should come to him two hours after with one of the cars or sledges in use on the farm, to carry home the cut wood. Having said this, he went off, little dreaming of the fate that awaited him.
At the time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood, but was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he said he would be;–a surprise which was not a little increased by perceiving, from two or three felled sticks that lay around, that he had been there, but had done little–so little, that he could not have been occupied, as I calculated, for more than a quarter of an hour. Thinking, however, that wherever he had gone he would speedily return, I sat down to await him; but he came not. An entire hour elapsed, and still he did not make his appearance. Beginning now to suspect that some accident had happened him, I hurried home to inquire if they had seen or heard anything of him there. They had not. His family became much alarmed for his safety–a feeling in which my conscience forbids me to say that I participated.
Two of my fellow-servants now accompanied me back to the wood, which it was proposed we should search. This, so soon as we had reached the spot where my master had appointed to meet me, and where, as already mentioned, he had evidently been, we began to do, whooping and hallooing at the same time to attract his attention should he be anywhere within hearing.
For a long while our searching and shouting were vain. At length one of my companions, who had entered a tangled patch of underwood which we had not before thought of looking, suddenly uttered a cry of horror. We ran up to him, and found him gazing on the dead body of our master, who lay on his face, transfixed by a native spear, which still stood upright in his back. It was one of those spears which the aborigines of New South Wales use, on occasion, as missiles, and which they throw with an astonishing force and precision.
Such, then, was the end of this cruel man; and that it exceeded his deserts can hardly be maintained.
Luckily for me, my period of service with my late master was at this time about out. A few days more, and I became entitled to my ticket of leave. For this indulgence I applied when the time came, and it was immediately granted me for one year. On obtaining my ticket I proceeded to Sydney, as the most likely place to fall in with some employment. On this subject, however, I felt much at a loss; for not having been bred to any mechanical trade, I could do nothing in that way. Farming was the only business of which I knew anything; and in this, my father having been an excellent farmer, I was pretty well skilled. My hope, therefore, was, that I would find some situation as a farm overseer, and thought Sydney, although a town, the likeliest place to fall in with or hear of an employer. On arriving in Sydney, I proceeded to the house of a countryman of the name of Lawson, who kept a tavern, and to whom I brought a letter of introduction from a relative of his own who had been banished for sedition, and who was one of my fellow-labourers in the last place where I had served. On reading the letter, Lawson, who was a kind-hearted man, exclaimed–
“Puir Jamie, puir fallow; and hoo is he standin’t oot?”
I assured him that he was bearing his fate manfully, but that he had been in the service of a remorseless master.
“Ay, I ken him,” said Lawson. “A man that’s no gude to his ain canna be gude to ithers.”
“You must speak of him now, however, in the past tense,” said I. “Mr.—– is dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed Lawson, with much surprise. “When did he die?”
I told him, and also of the manner of his death.
“Weel, that is shockin’,” he remarked; “but, upon my word, better couldna hae happened him, for he was a cruel-hearted man.” Then, reverting to his relative, “Puir Jamie,” he said; “but I think we’ll manage to get Jamie oot o’ his scrape by-and-by. I hae gude interest wi’ the governor, through a certain acquaintance, and houpe to be able to get him a free pardon in a whily. But he maun just submit a wee in the meantime.”
“But anent yoursel, my man,” continued Lawson, “what can I do for ye? Jamie, here, speaks in the highest terms o’ ye, and begs me to do what I can for ye; and that I’ll willingly do on his account. What war’ ye bred to?”
I told him that I had been bred to the farming business, and that I should like to get employment as a farm overseer or upper servant, to engage for a year.
“Ay, just noo, just noo,” said honest Lawson. “Weel, I’ll tell you what it is, and it’s sae far lucky: there was a decent, respectable-looking man here the day, a countryman o’ our ain–and I believe he’ll sleep here the nicht–wha was inquirin’ if I kent o’ ony decent, steady lad who had been brocht up in the farmin’ line. I kenna hoo they ca’ the man, but he has been in my house, noo, twa or three times. He’s only twa or three months arrived in the colony, and is settled somewhere in the neighbourhood o’ Liverpool–our Liverpool, ye ken, no the English Liverpool. He seems to be in respectable circumstances. Noo, if he comes to sleep here the nicht, as I hae nae doot he will, seein’ there’s nae coach for Liverpool till the morn’s mornin’–I’ll mention you till him, and maybe ye may mak a bargain.”
I thanked Lawson for his kindness, and was about leaving the house, with a promise to call back in the evening, when he stopped me, and insisted on my taking some refreshment. This, which consisted of some cold roast fowl and a glass of brandy and water, I readily accepted. When I had partaken of his hospitality I left the house, repeating my promise to call again in the evening. The interval, knowing nobody in Sydney, I spent in sauntering about the town.
On the approach of evening, I again returned to Lawson’s. He was standing in the doorway when I came forward.
“Come awa, lad,” he said, with a glad face, on seeing me. “Your frien’s here, and I hae been speakin’ to him aboot ye, and he seems inclined to treat wi’ you. But he’s takin’ a bit chack o’ dinner ‘enoo, sae we’ll let him alane for twa or three minutes. Stap ye awa in there to the bar, in the meanwhile, and I’ll let him ken in a wee that ye’re here.”
I did so. In about ten minutes after, Lawson came to me, and said the gentleman up stairs would be glad to see me. I rose and followed him. We entered the room, the worthy landlord leading the way. The stranger, with his elbow resting on the table, was leaning his head thoughtfully on his hand when we entered. He gazed at me for an instant wildly; he sprang from his chair; he clasped me in his arms. I returned the embrace. Reader, it was my own father!
“Davie, my son,” he exclaimed, so soon as his surprise and emotion would permit him to speak, “how, in the name of all that’s wonderful, has this come about? Where are you from? how came you here? and where on earth have you been all this weary time, since you left us?”
It was several minutes before I could make any reply. At length–
“I have much to tell you, father,” I said, glancing at the same time towards Lawson, who stood with open mouth and staring eyes, lost in wonder at the extraordinary scene, which he yet could not fully comprehend.
Understanding, however, the hint conveyed in that look, the worthy man instantly quitted the apartment, leaving us to ourselves. On his doing so, I sat down at table with my father, and related to him the whole history of my misfortunes, without reserve or extenuation.
The narrative grieved and distressed him beyond measure; for, until I told him, he had no idea I stood before him a convicted felon; his first impression naturally being that I had come to the colony of my own free will.
Unlike all others, however, he, my poor father, believed implicitly my assertions of entire innocence of the crime for which I had been transported. But he felt bitterly for the degrading situation in which I stood, and from which neither my own conscious innocence nor his convictions, he was but too sensible, could rescue me in so far as regarded the opinion of the world.
Having told my father my story, he told me his. It was simply this–the story of hundreds, thousands. Tempted by the favourable accounts he had heard and read of Australia, he had come to the resolution of emigrating; had, with this view, sold off at home; and here he was. He added that he had obtained a grant of land, of about 500 acres, in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, on very favourable terms; that although he had not found everything quite so suitable or so well-ordered as he had expected, he had no doubt of being able to do very well when once he should have got matters put in proper train. He said he had already got a very good house erected on the farm, and that although their situation for the first two or three months was bad enough, they were now pretty comfortable; and he hoped that, with my assistance–seeing, as he interpolated with a faint smile, I had just cast up in the nick of time–they would soon make things still better.
“Your poor mother, Davie,” continued my father, recurring to a subject which we had already discussed–for my first inquiries had been after that dear parent, who, I was delighted to learn, was in perfect good health, although sunk in spirits in consequence of long mental suffering on my account,–“Your poor mother, Davie,” he said, “will go distracted with joy at the sight of you. Her thoughts by day, her dreams by night, have been of you, Davie. But,” he added, seeing the tears streaming down my cheeks, “I will not distress you by dwelling on the misery you have occasioned her. It’s all over now, I trust, and you will compensate for the past. Neither will I say a word as to the folly of your conduct in flying your father’s house as you did. You have paid dearly for that false step; and God forbid, my son, that I, your father, should add to the punishment. You are, I perceive, too sensible of the folly to render it necessary. So, of that no more.”
Of that folly I was indeed sensible–bitterly sensible; and could not listen to the calm, rational, and kind language of my father, without looking back with amazement at the stupidity of my conduct. It now seemed to me to have been the result of utter insanity–madness. I could neither recall nor comprehend the motives and impulses under which I had acted; and could only see the act itself standing forth in naked, inexplicable absurdity. Recurring again to the circumstances which had led to my present unhappy position, and which were always floating uppermost in my father’s mind–
“That scoundrel, Digby,” he said, “must have been at the bottom of the mischief, Davie. It must have been he who put the spoon into your pocket. What a fiendish contrivance!”
“I have always thought so, father,” I replied; “and on my trial ventured to hint it, as I also did to the turnkeys and jailers; but although none said so directly, I saw very clearly that all considered it as a ridiculous invention–a clumsy way of accounting for a very plain fact.”
My father now proposed that I should start with him on the following morning, per coach, for Liverpool, from which his farm was distant an easy walk of some six or seven miles. On the following morning, accordingly, after having duly acknowledged our worthy host’s kindness, we took our seats on the outside of the coach, and were soon whirling it away merrily toward our destination.
During our journey, it gave both my father and I much painful thought how we should break the matter of my unhappy position to my mother. It would be death to her to learn it. At first we thought of concealing the circumstances altogether; but the chances of her hearing it from others, or making the discovery herself when she was unprepared for it, through a hundred different means, finally determined us on communicating the unpleasant intelligence ourselves; that is, my father undertook the disagreeable task, meaning, however, to choose time and circumstance, and to allow a day or two to elapse before he alluded to it.
Having arrived at Liverpool, we started on foot for my father’s farm. Should I attempt it, I would not find it easy to describe what were my feelings at this moment, arising from the prospect of so soon beholding that dear parent, whose image had ever been present to my mind, whose kind tones were ever sounding in my ears like some heart-stirring and well-remembered melody. They were overpowering. But when my father, after we had walked for about an hour, raised his stick, and, pointing to a neat farm-steading on the slope of a hill, and on the skirt of a dense mountain forest that rose high behind it, said, “There’s the house, Davie,” I thought I should have sunk on the ground. I had never felt so agitated, excepting in that unhappy hour when I stood at the bar of the Old Bailey, and heard sentence of transportation awarded against me. But I compare the feelings on these two occasions only as regards their intensity: in nature they were very different indeed. On the former, they were those of excruciating agony; on the latter, those of excessive joy. As we approached the house, I descried one at the door. It was a female figure. It was my mother. I gasped for breath. I flew over the ground. I felt it not beneath my feet. I would not be restrained by my father, who kept calling to me. My mother fixed her gaze on me, wondering at my excited manner–wondering who I could be; all unconscious, as I could perceive by her vacant though earnest look, that I was her son— the darling of her heart. But a mother’s eye is quick. Another moment, and a shriek of wild joy and surprise announced that I was recognised; in the next, we were in each other’s arms, wrapt in a speechless agony of bliss!
My father, whom I had left a long way behind, came up to us while we were locked together in this silent embrace, and stood by us for a few seconds without speaking a word, then passed quietly into the house, leaving us to ourselves.
“My son, my son!” exclaimed my mother, so soon as the fulness of her feelings would allow of utterance, “you have been cruel, cruel to your mother. But I will not upbraid you. In seeing you again–in clasping you once more to my bosom–I am repaid a thousandfold for all you have made me suffer.”
With what further passed between us, I need not detain the reader.
The tender expressions of a mother and son meeting under such circumstances as we met, being the language of nature, the embodiment of feelings which all ran conceive, there is no occasion for dilating on them in my particular case. I pass on to other things of more general, or at least more uncommon interest.
The first day of my arrival at my father’s farm was passed entirely within doors in social communion, and in bringing up that arrear of interchange in thought and feeling which our separation for so long a period had created.
On the following day I commenced work with my father; and although I had done my duty faithfully by both the masters I had served since I came to New South Wales, I soon found the difference between compulsory and voluntary labour.
In the former case I certainly wrought diligently, but as certainly not cheerfully. There was an absence of spirit that quickly gave rise to listlessness and fatigue, and that left the physical energies weak and languid, in the latter case, it was far otherwise. Toil as I might, I felt no diminution of strength. I went from task to task, some of them far harder than any I had yet encountered, with unabated vigour, and accomplished with ease double the work I ever could get through with when in bondage.
The joint labours of my father and myself, assisted occasionally by hired service–for he could not endure the idea of having convicts about him–soon put a new and promising face on the farm.
We cleared, we drained, we enclosed, and we sowed and planted, until we left ourselves comparatively little to do–I mean in the way of hard labour–but to await the returns of our industry.
It was some time after we had got things into this state–that is, I think about three months after I had joined my father–that the latter received intelligence of a band of bushmen or bushrangers having been seen in the neighbourhood. He was assured that they were skulking in the adjoining forest, and that we might every night expect our house to be attacked, robbed, and ourselves, in all probability, murdered.
This information threw us into a most dreadful state of alarm; these bushrangers, as the reader probably knows, being runaway convicts, men of the most desperate characters, who take to the woods, and subsist by plundering the settlers–a crime to which they do not hesitate to add murder–many instances of fearful atrocities of this kind having occurred.
For some time we were quite at a loss what to do; for although we had firearms and ammunition in the house, there were only four men of us–my father, myself, and two servant lads–while the bushrangers, as we had been told, were at least ten or twelve in number. To have thought then of repelling them by force, was out of the question; it could only have ended in the murder of us all.
Under these circumstances, my father determined on applying to the authorities for constabulary or military protection; and with this view went to Liverpool, where the district magistrate resided.
On stating the case to the latter, he at once gave my father a note to the commanding officer of the garrison, enjoining him to send a small party of military along with him,–these to remain with us for our protection as long as circumstances should render it necessary, and, in the meanwhile, to employ themselves in scouring the adjoining woods, with a view to the apprehension of the bushrangers, and to fire on them without hesitation in all cases where they could not be captured.
The result was, that a party of twelve men, commanded by a sergeant, were immediately turned out, and marched off with my father.
I was sitting on an eminence close by the house, and which commanded a view of the road leading to and from Liverpool, looking out for my father’s return, when the party came in sight.
As they neared, I recognised the men, from certain particulars in their uniform, a party of the–th, the regiment into which I had enlisted.
The circumstance excited some curious feelings, and awakened a train of not very pleasing reflections.
I had never dreamt of meeting any of the corps in so distant a part of the world; yet there was nothing more likely or more natural, a large military force being always kept in New South Wales, and frequently changed.
I felt, however, no uneasiness on the subject, thinking that it was not at all probable, seeing the very short time I had been in the regiment, and the constant accession of new men it was receiving, I should be recognised by any of the party.
In the meantime, the party were rapidly approaching me, and were now so near, that I could perceive the sergeant to be a tall and handsome young man of about two or three and twenty. Little did I yet dream who this sergeant was. I descended to meet them. We came up to each other. The sergeant started on seeing me, and looked at me with a grave surprise and fixed gaze. I did precisely the same by him. We advanced towards each other with smiling faces and extended arms. “Lorimer!” exclaimed the sergeant. “Lindsay!” I replied. It was indeed Lindsay, my old comrade, promoted to a sergeantcy.
Our mutual astonishment and satisfaction at this extraordinary and unexpected meeting was, I need not say, very great, although I certainly thought I perceived a certain dryness and want of cordiality in Lindsay’s manner towards me. But for this I made every allowance, believing it to proceed from a doubt of my innocence, if not a conviction of my guilt, in the matter for which I had been transported. He in short, it seemed to me, could not forget that, in speaking to me, although an old comrade, he was speaking to a convicted felon. However, notwithstanding this feeling on his part, we talked freely of old stories; and as we were apart from the men, I did not hesitate, amongst other things, to allude to my misfortune, nor to charge the blame of it on Digby.
“Well,” said the sergeant, in reply to my remarks on this subject, “since you have mentioned the matter yourself, Lorimer, I am glad to hear you say so–that is, to hear you say that you are innocent of that rascally business; for, putting your assertions, so solemnly made, to what my wife says–for she has some queer stories of that fellow Digby–I have no doubt now of your innocence.”
“Your wife!” exclaimed I in some amazement. “In the first place, then, you are married; in the next, how on earth, if I may ask, should she know anything of Digby?”
“Why, man, Susan Blaikie is my wife,” replied the sergeant, laughing; “and she’s not, I take it, half a dozen miles from us at this moment. I left her safe and sound in my quarters in Liverpool not two hours ago; and right glad will she be to see you, when you can make it convenient to give us a call. But of that we will speak more hereafter.”
Like two or three other things recorded in this little history, this information gave me much surprise, but, like few of them, much gratification also; as I had feared the worst for poor Susan, seeing that she had been discharged from her situation, as I had no doubt without a character, probably under a suspicion of being concerned with me in the alleged robbery.
By the time I had expressed the surprise and satisfaction which Sergeant Lindsay’s communication had given me, we had reached the house, when all conversation between us of a private nature ceased for the time.
The first business now was to set some refreshment before the men. This was quickly done; the sergeant, my father, and I taking care of ourselves in a similar way in another apartment. The next was to take the immediate matter in hand into consideration. Accordingly, we three formed ourselves into a council of war, and, after some deliberation, came to the following resolutions:–That we should, soldiers and all, keep closely within doors during the remainder of the afternoon; and that as it was more than probable the bushmen would make their attack that very night, and as it was likely they would know nothing of the military being in the house, seeing that they always kept at a distance during the day, or lay concealed in hidden places, we should take them by surprise; that, for this purpose, we should remain up all night, and place ourselves, with loaded arms, by the windows, and in such other situations as would enable us to see them approaching, without being seen by them.
Having determined on this plan of operations, we resumed our conversation on indifferent matters, and thus spent the time till it was pretty far on in the night, when Lindsay suggested that it was full time the men were distributed in the positions we intended them to occupy. Two were accordingly placed at each window of both the back and front of the house, the sergeant and I occupying one,–he with one of our muskets, and I with a rifle. It was a bright moonlight night; so that, as the vicinity of the house was completely cleared around, to the distance of at least 200 yards on every side, no one could approach it without being seen; although they could remain long enough invisible, and in safety, in the dense wood beyond, and by which the house was surrounded on all sides but one.
The sergeant and I had thus sat for, I think, about an hour and a half, looking intently towards the dark forest beyond the cleared ground, when we thought we saw several small, dark objects flitting about the skirts of the wood; but whether they were kangaroos or men, we could not tell.
Keeping our eyes fixed steadily on them, however, we by-and-by saw them unite, and could distinctly make out that they were approaching the house in a body. Soon they came sufficiently near to enable us to discern that it was a party of men, to the number of about eight or ten. There might be more, but certainly no fewer. We could now also see that they were armed–at least a part of them–with muskets.
Satisfied that they were the much dreaded bushrangers, of whose vicinity we had been apprised, the sergeant hastily left the window at which he and I had been seated, and, stealing with soft and cautious steps through the house, visited each of his posts to see that the men were on the alert. To each he whispered instructions to put their pieces on cock, to go down on their knees at the window, and to rest the muzzles of their muskets on the sill, but not project them out more than two or three inches. He concluded by telling them not to fire a shot until they heard the report of his musket; that then they were to pepper away as hard as they could pelt, taking, however, a sure and steady aim at every shot.
In the meantime the bushmen, whose advance had been, and still was, very slow and cautious, as if they dreaded an ambuscade, had approached to within seventy yards of the house. Thinking them yet too distant to make sure of them, we allowed them to come nearer. They did so; but they had now assumed a stealthy step, walking lightly, as if they feared that their footfalls should be heard. They were led on by one of their number; at least there was one man considerably in advance of his fellows. He was armed with a sword, as we saw it flashing in the moonlight.
The party, handling their guns in readiness to fire, on the slightest alarm, at any living object that might present itself, were now within thirty or forty yards of the house, and had halted to reconnoitre; when the sergeant, who had been on his knees for several minutes before, with his piece at his eye, said softly, “Now,” and fired. Whether he had aimed at the foremost man of the gang, I do not know; but if so, he had missed him, for he still stood firm. At this person, however, I now levelled, fired, and down he came. In the next instant the shots were rapping thick and fast from the different windows of the house.
The bushrangers, taken by surprise, paused for an instant, returned two or three straggling shots, and then fled in the utmost consternation and disorder. We kept pelting after them for a few minutes, and then, quitting the house, gave them chase, with a whooping and hallooing that must have added in no small degree to their terror. In this chase we overtook two that had been severely wounded, and came upon a third near the skirt of the wood, who, after running so far, had dropped down dead. The others, who had fled, some of whom, we had no doubt, were also wounded, escaped by getting into the forest, where it was no use looking for them. The two wounded men we made prisoners, and carried back to the house. As we were returning, we came upon the man whom I had brought down. Being extended motionless on the ground at full length, we thought him dead, and were about to pass on, intending to leave him where he lay till the morning, when I thought I heard him breathing. I knelt down beside him, looked narrowly into his face, and found that he was still living. On discovering this, we had the unfortunate man carried to the house; and having placed him on a mattress, staunched the bleeding of his wound, which was on the right breast, and administered a little brandy and water, which almost immediately revived him. He opened his eyes, began to breathe more freely, and in a short time was so far recovered as to be able to speak, although with difficulty.
The excitement of the fray over, if the late affair could be so called, my heart bled within me for the unhappy wretch who had been reduced by my hand to the deplorable condition in which he now lay before me. My conscience rose up against me, and would not be laid by any suggestions of the necessity that prompted the deed. In my anxiety to make what reparation I could for what now seemed to me my cruelty, I sat by the miserable sufferer, ready and eager to supply any want he might express, and to administer what comfort I could do him in his dying moments; for that he was dying, notwithstanding the temporary revival alluded to, was but too evident from his ghastly look and rapidly glazing eye.
It was while I thus sat by the unhappy man, and while silently contemplating his pallid countenance, by the faint light of a lamp that hung against the wall of the apartment, that I suddenly thought I perceived in that countenance some traces of features that I had seen before. Whose they were, or where I had seen them, I did not at first recollect. But the idea having once presented itself, I kept hunting it through all the recesses of my memory. At length Digby occurred to me. But no, Digby it could not be. Impossible.
I looked on the countenance of the sufferer again. It was slightly distorted with pain, and all trace of the resemblance I had fancied was gone. An interval of ease succeeded. The real or imagined resemblance returned. Again I lost sight of it, and again I caught it; for it was only in some points of view I could detect it at all. At length, after marking for some time longer, with intense interest, the features of the sufferer, my conviction becoming every moment stronger and stronger, and my agitation in consequence extreme, I bent my head close to the dying man, and, taking his cold and clammy hand in mine, asked him, in a whisper, if his name was not Digby. His eyes were closed at the moment, but I saw he was not sleeping. On my putting the question, he opened them wide, and stared wildly upon me, but without saying a word. He seemed to be endeavouring to recognise me, but apparently in vain. I repeated the question. This time he answered. Still gazing earnestly at me, he said, and it was all he did say, “It is.”
“Don’t you know me?” I inquired.
He shook his head.
“My name is Lorimer,” said I.
“Thank God,” he exclaimed solemnly. “For one, at least, of my crimes it is permitted me to make some reparation. Haste, haste, get witnesses and hear my dying declaration. There’s no time to lose, for I feel I am fast going!”
Without a moment’s delay— for I felt the importance of obtaining the declaration, which I had no doubt would establish my innocence–I ran for my father and Sergeant Lindsay, and, to make assurance doubly sure, brought two of the privates also along with me. It was a striking scene of retributive justice,
On our entering the apartment where Digby lay, the wretched man raised himself upon his elbow. I ran and placed two pillows beneath him to support him. He thanked me. Then raising his hand impressively, and directing it towards me–
“That young man there,” he said, “David Lorimer, is, as I declare on the word of a dying man, innocent of the crime for which he was banished to this country. I, and no other, am the guilty person. It was I who robbed my master, Mr. Wallscourt, of the silver plate for which this young man was blamed; and it was I who put the silver spoon in his pocket, in order to substantiate the charge I subsequently brought against him, and in which I was but too successful.”
He then added, that in case his declaration should not be deemed sufficient to clear me of the guilt imputed to me, we should endeavour to find out a person of the name of Nareby–Thomas Nareby–who, he said, was in the colony under sentence of transportation for life for housebreaking; and that this person, who had been, at the time of the robbery for which I suffered, a receiver of stolen goods, and with whom he, Digby, had deposited Mr. Wallscourt’s plate, would acknowledge–at least he hoped so–this transaction, and thus add to the weight of his dying testimony to my innocence.
Digby having concluded, I immediately committed what he had just said to writing, and having read it over to him, obtained his approval of it. He then, of his own accord, offered to subscribe the declaration, and with some difficulty accomplished the task. The signature was hardly legible, but it was quite sufficient when attested, as it was, by the signatures of all present excepting myself. Exhausted with the effort he had made, Digby now sank back on his pillow, and in less than three minutes after expired.
We now learned from the unhappy man’s two wounded companions, who, the reader will recollect, were our prisoners, that, soon after my trial and condemnation, he, Digby, had left Mr. Wallscourt’s service, not under any suspicion of the robbery of the plate, but with no very good general character; that he had the betaken himself entirely to live with the abandoned characters whose acquaintance he had formed, and to subsist by swindling and robbery; that he had proceeded from crime to crime, until he at length fell into the hands of justice; and his banishment to the colony where he had arrived about six months before, was the result; that he had not been more than a month in the country when he and several other convicts ran away from the master to whom they had been assigned, and took to the bush. Such was the brief but dismal history of this wretched man.
On the following day we buried his remains in a lonely spot in the forest, at the distance of about half a mile from the house, and thereafter proceeded with our prisoners to Liverpool. On arriving there, I accompanied my father to the magistrate on whom he had waited on a former occasion, and having stated to this gentleman the extraordinary circumstance which had taken place–meaning Digby’s declaration–he advised an immediate application to the governor, setting forth the circumstances of the case. This I lost no time in doing, enclosing within my memorial Digby’s attested declaration, and pointing out Nareby as a person likely to confirm its tenor. The singularity and apparent hardship of the case, combined with the favourable knowledge of me previously existing, attracted the attention of the governor in a special manner, and excited in him so lively an interest, that he instantly had Nareby subjected to a judicial examination, the result of which was a full admission on the part of that person of the transaction to which Digby alluded.
Satisfied now of my innocence, and of the injustice which had been unwittingly done me, the governor not only immediately transmitted me a full and free pardon but offered me, by way of compensation, a lucrative government appointment. This appointment I accepted, and held for thirty years, I trust with credit to myself, and satisfaction to my superiors. At the end of this period, feeling my health giving way, my father and mother having both, in the meantime, died, and having all that time scraped together a competency, I returned to my native land, and have written these little memoirs in one of the pleasantest little retirements on the banks of the Tweed.
I have only now to add, that I had frequent opportunities of seeing both Lindsay and his wife after the establishment of my innocence, and that no persons would more sincerely rejoice in that event than they did. My poor mother, whom my father had made aware of my situation soon after my arrival, and who had borne the intelligence much better than we expected, it put nearly distracted with joy.
“My puir laddie,” she exclaimed, “I aye kent to be innocent. But noo the world ‘ll ken it too, and I can die happy.”
THE AMATEUR ROBBERY.
If there is anything more than another of which civilisation has reason to be proud, it is the amelioration that has been effected in punishment for crimes. Nor is it yet very long since we began to get quit of the shame of our folly and inhumanity, if we have not traces of these yet, coming out like sympathetic ink dried by the choler of self-perfection and a false philosophy, as in such writings as the latter-day pamphlets. How a man who loves his species, and has a heart, will hang his head abashed as he turns his vision back no further than the sixteenth century, and sees the writhing creatures–often aged unhappy women–under the pilniewinkies, caschielaws, turkases, thumbikens, and other instruments of torture, frantically bursting out with the demanded confession that was to fit them for the stake or the rope! And even after these things in the curiosity shop of Nemesis were got rid of, the abettors of the law rushed with full swing into the operation of hanging, scarcely allowing a crime to escape, from cold-blooded murder down to the act of the famished wretch who snatched a roll from a baker’s basket. However insensible these strange lawgivers may have been to so much cruelty, however blind to the perversity, prejudices, and weaknesses incident to human testimony, however ignorant of the total inefficacy of their remedy to deter from crime, one might have imagined that they could not but have known, if they ever looked inwardly into their own hearts, how obscure are human motives, and especially those that instigate to breaches of the law; and yet their consistent rule was, to make the _corpus delicti_ prove the intention. These considerations have been suggested to me by the recollection of a wild adventure of some young men in Edinburgh, the circumstances of which, not belonging to fiction, will show better than a learned dissertation how easy it was for these Dracos to catch the fact and miss the motive.
The skeleton names–now, alas! the only representatives of skeleton bodies–Andrew W—-pe, Henry S—-k, and Charles S—-th, may recall to the memory of some people in Edinburgh still, three young men, who, with good education, fair talents, and graces from nature, might have played a respectable _role_ in the drama of life, had it not been for a tendency to “fastness,” a disease which seems to increase with civilisation. In their instance the old adage of Aristotle, _simile gaudet simili_, was exemplified to the letter; and the union confirmed in each a mind which, originally impatient of authority, fretted itself against the frame of society, simply because that frame was the result of order. They were never happy except when they went up to the palisades, struck upon them with their lath-blades, and when some orderly indweller looked over atop, ran away laughing. No doubt they had strong passions to gratify too; but, as is usual with this peculiar race of beings, the gratification was the keener the more it owed to a rebellion against decorum. If they ever differed, it was only in their rivalry of success; or when they did not go a spree-hunting together, they recounted their exploits at their nightly meetings, and then the result was an increase of moral inflammation.
Sometimes, for a change, they would take strolls into the country, where they could extract as tribute the admiration or wrath of clodhoppers without being troubled with any fears of the police; not that on any of these occasions they perpetrated any great infringements on the law, for, like the rest of their kind, if they could make themselves objects of observation, they were regardless whether their bizarreries were paid with admiration or only anger or fear, though, if they could produce by any means a causeless panic, the very height of their ambition was attained. In regard to this last effect of their escapades, they were, in the instance I am about to record, more than satisfied. They had gone, on a fine, clear, winter day, along the coast of the Firth of Forth towards Cramond; and, to diversify their amusements, they took with them a gun, which was carried by S—-th, with the intention of having a shot at any wild bird or barn-door fowl that might come conveniently within his range. Of this kind of game they had fewer chances, and the stroll would doubtless have appeared a very monotonous affair to a person fond of rational conversation. Nor was there much even to themselves of diversification till they got into a small change-house at Davidson’s Mains, where, with a rampant authority, they contrived to get served up to them a kind of dinner, intending to make up for the want of better edibles by potations of whisky toddy.
If facts, as Quinctilian says, are the bones of conversation, opinions are certainly its sinews; and we might add, that whisky toddy is its nervous fluid. These youths, though unwilling to acquire solid information, could wrangle even to quarrelling; but such were their affinities, that they adhered again in a short time, and were as firm friends as ever. They had raised a subject–no other than the question whether highwaymen are necessarily or generally possessed of true courage. Very absurd, no doubt, but as good for a wrangle as any other that can be divided into affirmative and negative by the refracting medium of feeling or prejudice. S—-th declared them all to be cowards.
“What say you to Cartouche?” said S—-k; “was he a coward?”
“Not sure but he was,” said S—-th; “he kept a band of blackguards and received their pay, but he was seldom seen in the wild _melee_ himself. He was fond of the name of terror he bore; but then, as he listened to the wonderful things the Parisian _blanchisseuses_ and _chiffonniers_ and _gamins_ said of him, he knew he was not recognisable, for the very reason that he kept out of sight.”
“Oh yes,” said W—-pe, who joined S—-k; “and so he was like Wallace, who kept out of the sight of the English, and yet delighted in Dundee to hear himself spoken of by the crowds who collected in these troublesome times to discuss public affairs. S—-th, you know Wallace was a coward, don’t you?”
“A thorough poltroon,” cried S—-th, laughing; “ay, and all the people in Scotland are wrong about him. Didn’t he run off, after stabbing the governor’s son? and he was always skulking about the Cartland Crags. Then, didn’t he flee at the battle of Falkirk; and was he not a robber when Scotland belonged to Longshanks? No doubt the fellow had a big body, strong bones, and good thews; but that he had the real pluck that nerved the little bodies of such men as Nelson, or Suwarrow, ay, or of Napoleon, I deny.” Then he began a ludicrous singing, see-saw recitation of the English doggrel–
“The noble wight,
The Wallace dight,
Who slew the knight
On Beltane night,
And ran for fright
Of English might,
And English fight,
And English right;”
and so on in drunken ribaldry.
“All very well for you who are a Shamite, Shmite, Shmith, Smith,” said W—-pe. “We happen to be Japhetites. Then what say you to Rob Roy?”
“That, in the first place,” replied S—-th, “he was a Shemite; for Gathelus, the first Scottish monarch, was a grandson of Nimrod, and, what is worse, he married Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian queen, so there was a spice of Ham in Rob; and as all the Hamites were robbers, Rob was a robber too;–as to whose cowardice there is no doubt whatever; for a man who steals another man’s cattle in the dark must be a coward. Did you ever hear one single example of Rob attacking when in good daylight, and fighting for them in the sun?”
“Ingenious, S—-th, at any rate,” roared S—-k; “but I don’t agree with you. A robber on the highway, must, in the general case, have courage. He braves public opinion, he laughs at the gallows, and he throws himself right against a man in bold competition, without knowing often whether he is a giant or a dwarf.”
“All the elements of a batter pudding,” cried S—-th, “without the battering principle. Ay, you forget the head-battering bludgeon, the instantaneous pistol, or the cunning knife; none of all which would a man with a spark of courage in him use against an unarmed, defenceless traveller. Another thing you forget, the robber acts upon surprises. He produces confusion by his very presentation, fear by his demand of life or money; and when the poor devil’s head is running round, he runs away with his watch or his purse, perhaps both. ‘Tis all selfishness, pure unadulterated selfishness; and will you tell me that a man without a particle of honesty or generosity can have courage?”
“Not moral courage, perhaps; but he may have physical.”
“All the same, no difference,” continued the doughty S—-th. “Who ever heard of a bodily feeling except as something coming through the body? There are only two physical feelings: pain in being wounded or starved, and pleasure in being relieved from pain, or fed when hungry or thirsty. I know none other; all the others are moral feelings.”
“You may be bold through drink acting on the stomach and head.”
“Ay, but the boldness, though the effect of a physical cause, is itself a moral entity.”
“Whoever thought that S—-th was such a metaphysician!” said W—-pe, a little agoggled in his drunken eyes.
“But the same may be said of every feeling,” rejoined S—-k, somewhat roused to ambition by W—-pe’s remark.
“And so it may, my little Aristotle,” continued the clever asserter of his original proposition. “Why, man, look ye, what takes you into Miss F—-‘s shop in Princes Street for snuff, when you never produce a physical titillation in your nose by a single pinch? Why, it’s something you call love, a terribly moral thing, though personified by a little fellow with pinions. Yes, wondrously moral; and sometimes, as in your case, immoral. Well, what is it produced by? The face of the said Miss F—- painted as a sun picture in the camera at the back of your eye, where there is a membrane without a particle of nitrate of silver in its composition, and which yet receives the image. Well, what is love but just the titillation produced by this image imprinted on your flesh, just as the pleasure of a pinch is the effect of a titillation of the nerves in the nose? Yet we don’t say that snuff pleasure is a moral thing, but merely nasal or bodily. What makes the difference?”
“How S—-th is coming it!” said W—-pe, still more amazed. “Where the devil has he got all this?”
“Why, the difference lies here. You know, by manipulation and blowing it, that you have a nose; but you don’t wipe the retina at the back of your eye when you are weeping for love–only the outside, where the puling tears are. In short, you know you have a nose, but you don’t know you have a retina. D’ye catch me, my small Stagyrite, my petit Peripatetic, my comical Academician, eh? Take your toddy, and let’s have a touch of moral drunkenness.”
“You ray-ther have me on the hip, S—-th.”
“Ay, just so; and if I should kick you there, you would not say the pain was a moral thing. All through the same. It’s just where and when we don’t know the medium we say things are moral and spiritual, and poetical and rational, and all the rest of the humbug.”
“But though you say all highwaymen are cowards, you won’t try that trick with your foot,” said S—-k, boiling up a little under the fire of the toddy.
“Don’t intend; though, if you were to produce moral courage in me by pinching my nose, I think I could, after making up my mind and putting you upon your guard with a stick in your hand if you chose. Eh! my Peripatetic.” And S—-th was clearly getting drunk too.
“D—-n the fellow, his metaphysics are making him [Transcriber’s Note: missing part of this word] dent,” cried W—-pe.
“Why, you don’t see where they hit,” said S—-th drawlingly. “Somewhere about the pineal; and therefore we say impudence is moral, sometimes immoral, as just now when you damned me. No more of your old junk, I say, sitting here in my cathedra, which by the way is spring-bottomed, which may account for my moral elasticity that a highwayman is a coward.”
“Well,” cried S—-k, starting up. “I’ll deposit a pound with W—-pe, on a bet that you’ll not take sixpence from the first bumpkin we meet on the road, by the old watchword, ‘Stand and deliver;’ and you’ll have the gun to boot.”
“Ay, that’s a physical bribe,” cried W—-pe; and, after pausing a little, “The fellow flinches.”
“And surely the reverse must hold,” added S—-k, “that, being a coward, he must be a highwayman.”
“Why, you see, gents,” said S—-th coolly, “I don’t mind a very great deal, you know, though I do take said sixpence from said bumpkin; but I won’t do it, you know, on compulsion.”
“If there’s no compulsion, there’s no robbery,” said S—-k.
“Oh, I mean _your_ compulsion. As for mine, exercised on said bumpkin, let me alone for that part of the small affair; but none of your compulsion, if you love me. I can do anything, but not upon compulsion, you know.”
“Done then!”
“Why, ye-e-s,” drawled S—-th, “done; I may say, gents, done; but I say with Sir John, don’t misunderstand me, not upon compulsion, you know.”
“Your own free will,” shouted both the others, now pretty well to do in the world of dithyrambics. “Here’s your instrument for extorting the sixpence by force or fear.”
And this young man, half inebriated–with, we may here say parenthetically, a mother living in a garret in James’ Square, with one son and an only daughter of a respectable though poor man, and who trusted to her son for being the means of her support–qualified, as we have seen, by high parts to extort from society respect, and we may add, though that has not appeared, to conciliate love and admiration–took willingly into his hand the old rusty “Innes,” to perpetrate upon the highway a robbery. And would he do it? You had only to look upon his face for an instant to be certain that he would; for he had all the lineaments of a young man of indomitable courage and resolution–the steady eye, the firm lip, all under the high brows of intellect, nor unmixed with the beauty that belongs to these moral expressions which in the playfulness of the social hour he had been reducing to materialism, well knowing all the while that he was arguing for effect and applause from those who only gave him the return of stultified petulance. What if that mother and sister, who loved him, and wept day and night over the wild follies that consumed his energies and demoralized his heart, had seen him now!
The bill was paid by S—-k, who happened to have money, and who gave it on the implied condition of a similar one for all on another occasion. They went, or, as the phrase is often, sallied forth. The night had now come down with her black shadows. There was no moon. She was dispensing her favours among savages in another hemisphere, who, savages though they were, might have their devotions to their strange gods, resident with her up yonder, where no robbery is, save that of light from the pure fountain of heat and life. Yes, the darkness was auspicious to folly, as it often is to vice; and there was quietness too–no winds abroad to speak voices through rustling leaves, to terrify the criminal from his wild rebellion against the peace of nature. No night could have suited them better. Yes, all was favourable but God; and Him these wild youths had offended, as disobedient sons of poor parents, who had educated them well–as rebellious citizens among a society which would have hailed them as ornaments–as despisers of God’s temple, where grace was held out to them and spurned.
They were now upon the low road leading parallel to the beach, and towards the end of Inverleith Row. Nor had the devil left them with the deserted toddy-bowl. There was still pride for S—-th, and for the others the rankling sense of inferiority in talent and of injury from scorching irony. Nor had they proceeded two miles, till the fatal opportunity loomed in the dark, in the form of a figure coming up from Leith or Edinburgh.
Now, S—-th;
Now, the cowardly Cartouche;
Now, the poltroon Rob Roy;
Now, the braggart Wallace!
But S—-th did not need the taunts, nor, though many a patriotic cause wanted such a youth, was he left for other work, that night of devil-worship. The figure approached. Alas! the work so easy. S—-th was right; how easy and cowardly, where the stranger was, in the confidence of his own heart, unprepared, unweaponed! Yet those who urged him on leapt a dyke.
“Stand and deliver!” said S—-th, with a handkerchief over his face.
“God help me!” cried the man, in a fit of newborn fear. “I’m a father, have wife and bairns; but I canna spare my life to a highwayman. Here, here, here.”
And fumbling nervously in his pocket, and shaking all over, not at all like the old object of similitude, but rather like a branch of a tree driven by the wind, he thrust something into S—-th’s hand, and rushing past him, was off on the road homewards. Nor was it a quick walk under fear, but a run, as if he thought he was or would be pursued for his life, or brought down by the long range of the gun he had seen in the hands of the robber.
Yes, it was easily done, and it was done; but how to be undone at a time when the craving maw of the noose dangled from the post, in obedience to the Procrustes of the time!
And S—-th felt it was done. His hand still held what the man had pushed into it, but by-and-by it was as fire. His brain reeled; he staggered, and would have fallen, but for S—-k, who, leaping the dyke, came behind him.
“What luck?”
“This,” said S—-th,–“the price of my life,” throwing on the ground the paper roll.
“Pound-notes,” cried S—-k, taking them up. “One, two, three, four, five; more than sixpence.”
“Where is the man?” cried S—-th, as, seizing the notes from the hands of S—-k, he turned round. Then, throwing down the gun, he set off after his victim; but the latter was now ahead, though his pursuer heard the clatter of his heavy shoes on the metal road.
“Ho, there! stop! ’twas a joke–a bet.”
No answer, and couldn’t be. The man naturally thought the halloo was for further compulsion, under the idea that he had more to give, and on he sped with increased celerity and terror; nor is it supposed that he stopt till he got to his own house, a mile beyond Davidson’s Mains.
Smith gave up the pursuit, and with the notes in his hand, ready to be cast away at every exacerbation of his fear, returned to his cowardly companions with hanging head and, if they had seen, with eyes rolling, as if he did not know where to look or what to do.
“What is to be done?” he cried; and his fears shook the others.
“Yes, what is to be done? You urged me on. Try to help me out. Let us go back and seek out this man. To-morrow it may be too late, when the police have had this robbery in their hands as a thing intended.”
“We could not find the man though we went back,” said S—-k. And his companions agreed.
But W—-pe, who had some acquaintanceship with the police Captain Stewart, proposed that they should proceed homewards, go to him, give him the money, and tell the story out.
“That, I fear, would be putting one’s hand in the mouth of the hyaena at the moment he is laughing with hunger, as they say he does.”
An opinion which S—-th feared was too well founded. Nearly at their wits’ end, they stood all three for a little quite silent, till the sound of a horse’s clattering feet sounded as if coming from Davidson’s Mains. All under the conviction of crime, they became alarmed; and as the rider approached, they concealed themselves behind the dyke, which ran by the side of the road. At that moment a man came as if from Edinburgh, and they could hear the rider, who did not, from his voice, appear to be the man who had been robbed, inquiring if he had met a young man with a gun in his hand. The man answered no, and off set the rider towards town at the rate of a hard trot. The few hopeful moments when anything could have been done effectually as a palinode and expiation were past; and S—-th, releaping the dyke, was again upon the road in the depth of despair, and his companions scarcely less so. All his and their escapades had hitherto been at least within the bounds of the law; and though his heart had often misgiven him, when called upon for the nourishment of his wild humours, as he thought of his widowed mother at home, without the comfort of the son she loved in spite of his errors, he had not ever yet felt the pangs of deep regret as they came preluding amendment. A terrible influx of feelings, which had been accumulating almost unknown to him during months and months–for his father had been dead only for a year and a half–pushed up against all the strainings of a wild natural temperament, and seemed ready to choke him, depriving him of utterance, and making him appear the very coward he had been depicting so sharply an hour before. A deep gloom fell over him; nor was this rendered less inspissated by the recollection that came quick as lightning, that he was the only one known to the mistress of the inn. And now, worse and worse–for the same power that sent him that conviction threw a suspicion over his mind which made him strike his forehead with an energy alarming to his companions–no other–“O, merciful God!” he muttered–than that the man he had robbed was his maternal uncle; the only man among the friends of either his father or his mother who had shown any sympathy to the bereaved family, who had fed them and kept them from starvation, and by whom he had been himself nourished. He had no power to speak this: it was one of those thoughts that scathe the nerves that serve the tongue, and which flit and burn, and will not ameliorate their fierceness by the common means given to man in mercy. It now appeared to him as something miraculous why he did not recognise him; but the occasion was one of hurry and confusion, and so completely oblivious had he been in the agony which came on him in an instant, that he even thought that at the very moment he knew him, looking darkly, as he did, through the handkerchief over his eyes. In his despair, he meditated hurrying to Leith, and with the five pounds getting a passage over the sea somewhere, it signified nothing where, if away from the scene of his crime and ingratitude; and this resolution was confirmed by the additional thought that Mr. Henderson, however good and generous, was a stern man–so stern, that he had ten years before given up a beloved son into the hands of justice for stealing; yea, stern _ex corde_ as Cato, if generous _ex crumena_ as Codrus.
This resolution for a time brought back his love of freedom and adventure. He would go to Hudson’s Bay, and shoot bears or set traps for wild silver-foxes, that would bring him gold; or to Buenos Ayres, and catch the wild horse with the lasso; or to Lima, and become a soldier of fortune, and slay men with the sword. The gleam of wild hope was shortlived–his triumph over his present ill a temporary hallucination. The laurel is the only tree which burns and crackles when green. The intention fled, as once more the thought of his mother came, with that vigour which was only of half an hour’s birth, and begotten by young conscience on old neglect. They had been trailing their legs along till they came to Inverleith Row, where he behoved to have left his companions, if his resolution lasted; for the road there goes straight on to Leith Harbour. He hesitated, and made an effort; but S—-k, who knew him, and fancied from the wild look of his eye that he meditated throwing himself into the deep harbour of Leith, took him by an arm, motioning to W—-pe to take the other, and thus by a very small effort–for really his resolution had departed, and his mind, so far as his intention went, was gone–they half forced him up the long row. When they arrived at Canonmills, here is the rider again, hurrying on: he had executed his commission, whatever it was, and was galloping home. But the moment he came forward, he pulled up. He had, by a glance under the light of a lamp, caught a sight of the gun in the hands of S—-k, who had carried it when he took S—-th’s arm. The man shouted to a policeman,
“Seize that robber!”
“Which of them?”
“Him with the gun.”
And in an instant the cowardly dog who had done the whole business was laid hold of.
“The gun is mine,” cried S—-th. “It is I who am answerable for whatever was done by him who carried that weapon. Take me, and let the innocent off. I say this young man is innocent.”
“Very gallant and noble,” said the man; “but when we go to the hills, we like the deer that bears the horns.”
“We are up to them tricks,” said the policeman. And S—-k is borne along, with courage, if he ever had any, gone, and his eye looking terror.
S—-th wanted to go along with him; but W—-pe seized him by the arm again and dragged him up by the east side of Huntly Street, whereby they could get easily to James’ Square.
In a few minutes more S—-th was at his mother’s door with the burning five pounds in his pocket. He had meditated throwing it away, but the hurrying concourse of thoughts had prevented the insufficient remedy from being carried into effect. When he opened the door he found his mother alone. The sister had not yet come from the warehouse where she earned five shillings a week, almost the only source of her and the mother’s living; for the money which S—-th earned as a mere copying clerk in a writer’s office, went mostly in some other direction. The mother soon observed, as she cast her eye over him, that there was something more than ordinary out of even his irregular way. He was pale, woe-worn, haggard; nor did he seem able to stand, but hurried to a chair and flung himself down, uttering confusedly, “Something to drink, mother—-whisky.”
“I hae nane, Charlie, lad,” said she. “Never hae I passed a day like this since your father died. I have na e’en got the bit meat that a’ get that are under God’s protection. But what ails ye, dear Charlie?”
“Never mind me,” replied the youth in choking accents. “I am better. Starving, starving! O God! and my doing. Yes, I am better–a bitter cure–starving,” he again muttered; and searching his pockets, and throwing the five pounds on the table–“There, there, there,” he added.
The mother took up the notes, and counted them slowly; for she had been inured to grief, and was always calm, even when her heart beat fast with