Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVII Part 2

"P.S." said his mother; "who does that mean?"

"Oh!" said I, "it means n.o.body. It means that we have not read all the letter."

"Read it a', then--read it a'!" she cried.

And I turned to the last page, on the fold above the direction, and read--

"P.S.--But how am I to ask the forgiveness of my dear mother, for all the distress and anxiety that my folly and disobedience must have occasioned her. I start in my very sleep, and think that I hear her yearning and upbraiding. If she knew how deep my repentance is, and how keen my misery for the grief which I have caused her, I would not have to ask her forgiveness twice. Dear father! dear mother!--both, both of you forgive your thoughtless son."

These last lines of his letter drowned us both in tears, and, for the s.p.a.ce of several minutes, neither of us were able to speak. I was the first to break silence, and I said--"Agnes, our dear Robin is now a soldier, and he seems to like that way of life. But I dislike the thought of his being only a corporal, and I would wish to see him an officer. We have n.o.body in the world but him to care for. He is our only son and heir, and I trust that all that we have will one day be his. Now, I believe that the matter of four or five hundred pounds will buy him a commission, and make him an officer, with a sword by his side, a sash round his waist, and a gold epaulette on his shoulder, with genteel pay and provision for life; besides setting him on the high road to be a general. Therefore, if ye approve of it, I will sell out stock to the amount that will buy him commission."

"Oh," replied she, "ye needna ask me if I approve, for weel do ye ken that I will approve o' onything that will be for my bairn's benefit."

I accordingly lifted five hundred pounds, and through the influence of a Parliament man, succeeded in procuring him a commission as an ensign. I thought the money well spent, as it tended to promote the respectability and prospects of my son.

Four years afterwards, his mother and I had the satisfaction of reading in the public papers, that he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant upon the field, for his bravery. On the following day we received a letter from himself, confirming the tidings, which gave us great joy. Nevertheless, our joy was mingled with fears; for we were always apprehensive that some day or other we would find his name among the list of killed and wounded. And always the first thing that his mother said to me, when I took up the papers, was--"Read the list of the killed and wounded." And I always did so, with a slow, hesitating, and faltering voice, fearful that the next I should mention would be that of my son, Lieutenant Goldie.

There was very severe fighting at the time; and every post was bringing news concerning the war. One day, (I remember it was a King's fast-day,) several neighbours and myself were leaning upon the dike, upon the footpath opposite to my house, and waiting for the postman coming from Ayton, to hear what was the news of the day. As he approached us, I thought he looked very demure-like, which was not his usual; for he was as cheerful, active-looking a little man as you could possibly see.

"Well, Hughie," said I to him, holding out my hand for the papers, "ye look dull like to-day; I hope ye have no bad news?"

"I would hope not, Mr Goldie," said he; and, giving me the paper, walked on.

The moment that Agnes saw that I had got it, she came running out of the house, across the road, to hear as usual, the list of the killed and wounded read, and my neighbours gathered round about me. There had been, I ought to tell ye, a severe battle, and both the French and our army claimed the victory; from which we may infer, that there was no great triumph on either side. But, agreeably to my wife's request, I first read over the list of the killed, wounded, and _missing_. I got over the two first mentioned; but, oh! at the very sight of the first name upon the missing list, I clasped my hands together, and the paper dropped upon the ground.

"O Robie! my son! my son!" I cried aloud.

Agnes uttered a piercing scream, and cried, "O my bairn--what has happened my bairn? Is he dead! Tell me, is my Robie dead?"

Our neighbours gathered about her, and tried to comfort her; but she was insensible to all that they could say. The first name on the missing list was that of my gallant son. When the first shock was over, and I had composed myself a little, I also strove to console Agnes; but it was with great difficulty that we could convince her that Robin was not dead, and that the papers did not say he was wounded.

"Oh, then!" she cried, "what do they say about him. Tell me at once. Roger Goldie! how can ye, as the faither o' my bairn, keep me in suspense."

"O, dear Agnes," said I, "endeavour, if it be possible, to moderate your grief; I am sure ye know that I would not keep ye in suspense if I could avoid it. The papers only say that Robin is _amissing_."

"And what mean they by that?" she cried.

"Why," said I to her, "they mean that he, perhaps, pursued the enemy too far--or possibly that he may have fallen into their hands, and be a prisoner--but that he had not cast up when the accounts came away."

"Yes! yes!" she exclaimed with great bitterness, "and it perhaps means that his body is lying dead upon the field, but hasna been found."

And she burst out into louder lamentations, and all our endeavours to comfort her were in vain; though, in fact, my sufferings were almost as great as hers.

We waited in the deepest anxiety for several days, always hoping that we would hear some tidings concerning him, but none came. I therefore wrote to the War-Office, and I wrote also to his Colonel. From the War-Office I received a letter from a clerk, saying that he was commanded to inform me, that they could give me no information relative to Lieutenant Goldie, beyond what was contained in the public prints. The whole letter did not exceed three lines. You would have said that the writer had been employed to write a certain number of letters in a day, at so much a day, and the sooner he got through his work the better. I set it down in my mind that he had never had a son amissing on the field of battle, or he never would have written an anxious and sorrowing father such a cold scrawl. He did not even say that, if they got any tidings concerning my son, they would make me acquainted with them. He was only commanded to tell me that they did not know what I was, beyond every thing on earth, desirous to ascertain. Though perhaps, I ought to admit that, in a time of war, the clerks in the War-Office had something else to do than enter particularly into the feelings of every father that had a son in the army, and to answer all his queries.

From the Colonel, however, I received a long, and a very kind letter. He said many flattering things in praise of my gallant laddie, and a.s.sured me that the whole regiment deplored his being separated from them. He, however, had no doubt but that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and that, in some exchange of prisoners, or in the event of a peace, he would be restored to his parents and country again.

This letter gave us some consolation. It encouraged us to cherish the hope of pressing our beloved son again to our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and of looking on his features, weeping and wondering at the alterations which time, war, and imprisonment had wrought upon them. But more than three years pa.s.sed away, and not a syllable did we hear concerning him, that could throw the least light upon where he was, or whether he was dead or living. Anxiety preyed sadly upon his mother's health as well as upon her spirits, and I could not drive away a settled melancholy.

About that time a brother of mine, who was a bachelor, died in the East Indies, and left me four thousand pounds. This was a great addition to our fortune, and we hardly knew what to do with it. I may say that it made us more unhappy, for we thought that we had n.o.body to leave it to; and he who ought to have inherited it, and whom it would have made independent, we knew not whether he was in the land of the living, or a strange corpse in a foreign grave. Yet I resolved that, for his sake, I would not spend one farthing of it, but let it lie at interest; and I even provided in a will which I made, that unless he cast up, and claimed it, no one should derive any benefit from either princ.i.p.al or interest until fifty years after my death.

I have said, that the health of Agnes had broken down beneath her weight of sadness, and as she had a relation, who was a gentleman of much respectability, that then resided in the neighbourhood of Kelso, it was agreed that we should spend a few weeks in the summer at his house. I entertained the hope that society, and the beautiful scenery around Kelso, with the white chalky braes[A] overhung with trees, and the bonny islands in the Tweed, with mansions, palaces, and ruins, all embosomed in a paradise as fair and fertile as ever land could boast of, would have a tendency to cheer her spirits, and ease, if not remove, the one heavy and continuing sorrow, which lay like an everlasting nightmare upon her heart, weighing her to the grave.

Her relation was a well-educated man, and he had been an officer in the army in his youth, and had seen foreign parts. He was also quite independent in his worldly circ.u.mstances, and as hospitable as he was independent. There were at that period a number of French officers, prisoners, at Kelso, and several of them, who were upon their parole, were visiters at the house of my wife's relation.

There was one amongst them, a fine, though stern-looking man of middle age, and who was addressed by the appellation of Count Berthe. He spoke our language almost as well as if he had been a native. He appeared to be interested when he heard that my name was Goldie, and one day after dinner, when the cloth was withdrawn, and my wife's relation had ordered the punch upon the table--"Ha! Goldie! Goldie!" said the Count, repeating my name--"I can tell one story--which concerns me much--concerning, one Monsieur Goldie. When I was governor of the castle La----, (he called it by some foreign name, which I cannot repeat to you), there was brought to me, (he added), to be placed under my charge, a young British officer, whose name was Goldie. I do not recollect the number of his regiment, for he was not in uniform when brought to me. He was a handsome man, but represented as a terrible one, who had made a violent attempt to escape after being taken prisoner, and his desperate bravery in the field was also recorded. I was requested to treat him with the respect due to a brave man, but, at the same time, to keep a strict watch over him, and to allow him even less liberty than I might do to an ordinary prisoner. His being a captive did not humble him; he treated his keepers and his guards with as much contempt as though he had been their conqueror on the field. We had confined his body, but there was no humbling of his spirit. I heard so much of him, that I took an interest in the haughty Briton. But he treated me with the same sullen disdain that he showed towards my inferiors. I had a daughter, who was as dear to me as life itself, for she had had five brothers, and they had all fallen in the cause of the great emperor, with the tricolor on their brow, and the wing of the eagle over them. She was beautiful--beautiful as her sainted mother, than whom Italy boasted not a fairer daughter, (for she was a native of Rome.) Hers was not a beauty that you may see every day amongst a thousand in the regions of the north--hers was the rare beauty amongst ten thousand of the daughters of the sunny south, with a face beaming with as bright a loveliness, and I would say divinity, as the Medici. Of all the children which that fair being bore unto me, I had but one, a daughter, left--beautiful as I have said--beautiful as her mother. I had a garden beneath the castle, and over it was a terrace, in which the British prisoner, Goldie, was allowed to walk. They saw each other. They became acquainted with each other. He had despised all who approached; he had even treated me, who had his life in my hand, as a dog. But he did not so treat my daughter. I afterwards learned, when it was too late, that they had been seen exchanging looks, words, and signs with each other. He had been eighteen months my prisoner; and one morning when I awoke, I was told that my daughter was not to be found, and that the English prisoner, Lieutenant Goldie, also had escaped. I cursed both in my heart; for they had robbed me of my happiness--he had robbed me of my child; though she only could have accomplished it. Shortly after this, (and perhaps because of it,) I was again called into active service, where, in my first engagement, it was my lot to be made a prisoner, and sent here; and since then I have heard nothing of my daughter--my one, dear child--the image of her mother; and nothing of him--the villain who seduced her from me."

"Oh, sir," exclaimed I, "do not call him a villain, for if it be he that I hope it was, who escaped through the intrumentality of your daughter, and took her with him, he has not a drop of villain's blood in his whole body.

Sir! sir! I have a son--a Lieutenant Goldie; and he has (as I hope) been a French prisoner from the time ye speak of. Therefore, tell me, I implore ye, what was he like. Was he six inches taller than his father, with light complexion, yellowish hair, an aqualine nose; full blue eyes, a mole upon his right cheek, and, at the time ye saw him, apparently, perhaps, from two-and-twenty to three-and-twenty years of age? Oh, sir--Count, or whatever they call ye--if it be my son that your daughter has liberated and gone away with, she has fallen upon her feet; she has married a good, a kind, and a brave lad; and, though I should be the last to say it, the son of an honest man, who will leave him from five to six thousand pounds, beside his commission."

By the description which he gave me, I had no doubt but that my poor Robie, and the laddie who had run away with his daughter, (or, I might say, the laddie with whom his daughter had run away,) were one and the same person.

I ran into the next room, crying, "Agnes! Agnes! hear, woman! I have got news of Robie!"

"News o' my bairn!" she cried, before she saw me. "Speak, Roger! speak!"

I could hardly tell her all that the French Count had told me, and I could hardly get her to believe what she heard. But I took her into the room to him, and he told her everything over again. A hundred questions were asked backward and forward upon both sides, and there was not the smallest doubt, on either of our parts, but that it was my Robie that his daughter had liberated from the prison, and run off with.

"But oh, sir," said Agnes, "where are they now--baith o my bairns--as you say I have twa? Where shall I find them?"

He said that he had but little doubt that they were safe, for his daughter had powerful friends in France, and that as soon as a peace took place, (which he hoped would not be long,) we should all see them again.

Well, the long-wished-for peace came at last--and in both countries the captives were released from the places of their imprisonment. I have already twice mentioned the infirm state of my wife's health; and we were residing at Spittal, for the benefit of the sea air and bathing, and the Spa Well, (though it had not then gained its present fas.h.i.+onable popularity,) when a post-chaise drove to the door of our lodgings. An elderly gentleman stepped off from the d.i.c.ky beside the driver, and out of the chaise came a young lady, a gentleman, and two bonny bairns. In a moment I discovered the elderly gentleman to be my old friend the French Count. But, oh! how--how shall I tell you the rest! I had hardly looked upon the face of the younger stranger, when I saw my own features in the countenance of my long lost Robie! The lady was his wife--the Count's bonny daughter; and the bairns were their bairns. It is in vain for me to describe to you the feelings of Agnes; she was at first speechless and senseless, and then she threw her arms round Robie, and she threw them round his wife, and she took his bairns on her knee--and, oh! but she was proud at seeing herself a grandmother! We have all lived together in happiness from that day to this; and the more I see of Robie's wife, the more I think she is like an angel; and so thinks his mother. I have only to inform you that bold Jonathan Barlowman was forced to leave the country-side shortly after his valiant display of courage, and since then n.o.body in Dunse has heard whether he be dead or living and n.o.body cares.

This is all I have to tell ye respecting the _false alarm_, and I hope ye are satisfied.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] It is evidently from the beautiful chalk cliff near Ednam House (though now not a very prominent object) that Kelso derives its name--as is proved by the ancient spelling.

HOGMANAY;

OR, THE LADY OF BALLOCHGRAY.

The last fifty years of mortal regeneration and improvement have effected more changes in the old fasts, and feasts, and merrymakings of Scotland, than twice and twice over that time of any other period since it became a nation. Every year we see the good old customs dying out, or strangled by the Protaean imp Fas.h.i.+on, who, in the grand march of improvement of which we are so proud, in the perking conceit of heirs-apparent of the millennium, seems to be the only creature that derives benefit from the eternal changes that, by-and-by, we fear, will turn our heads, and make us look _back_ for the true period of happiness and wisdom. But what enrageth us the more is, that, while all our fun of Beltane, Halloween, Hogmanay, Hanselmonday, and all our old merrymakings, are gone with our absentee lords and thanes--

"Wha will their tenants pyke and squeize, And purse up all their rent; Syne wallop it to far courts, and bleize Till riggs and schaws are spent"--

and to whose contempt of our old customs we attribute a great part of their decay--we, in the very midst of the glorious improvement that has succeeded, are still cheated, belied, robbed, and plundered on all hands by political adventurers, private jobbers, and saintly hypocrites, in an artful, clean-fingered, and beautiful style of the trade, a thousand times more provoking than the clumsy, old-fas.h.i.+oned, _honest_ kind of roguery that used to be in fas.h.i.+on, when folk were not too large for innocent mirth, and not too wise for enjoying what was liked by their ancestors. The people cry improvement--so do we; but we cherish a theory that has no charm, in these days of absolute faith in politics and parliament for the regeneration of man, that the true good of society--that is, the improvement of the heart and morals of a great country--lies in a sphere far humbler than the gorgeous recesses of Westminster--the fireside; a place that in former days, was revered, and honoured, and cherished, not only as the cradle of morals, but the abode of soul-stirring joys, and the scene of the celebration of many old and sacred amus.e.m.e.nts which humanized the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A political wrangle is a poor subst.i.tute for the old moral tales of the winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superst.i.tious fear carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject was changed for the duties of life, still retained its strength, and wrought for good. These things are all gone; and, dissatisfied as we are with the bold subst.i.tutes of modern wisdom, let us use that which they cannot take from us, our books of "auld lear," and refresh ourselves with a peep at Leslie, in the Hogmanay of 16--. Who has not heard of "Christ's Kirk" in the kingdom of Fife, that place so celebrated by King James, in his incomparable "Christ's Kirk on the Green," for the frolics of wooers and "kittys washen clean," and "damsels bright," and "maidens mild?" That celebrated town was no other than our modern Leslie; and, though we cannot say that that once favoured haunt of the satyrs of merrymaking has escaped the dull blight that comes from the sleepy eye of the owl of modern wisdom, we have good authority for a.s.serting that long after James celebrated the place for its unrivalled festivities, the character of the inhabitants was kept for many an after-day; and Hogmanay was a choice outlet for the exuberant spirits of the votaries of Momus.

The day we find chronicled as remarkable for an exhibition of the true spirit of the Leslieans, went off as all days that precede a glorious jubilee at night generally do. The ordinary work of the "yape" expectants was, no doubt, apparently going on; but the looking of "twa ways" for gloaming was, necessarily, exclusive of much interest in the work of the day. The sober matrons, as they sat at the door on the "stane settle,"

little inclined to work, considered themselves ent.i.tled to a _feast_ of gossip; and even the guidman did not feel himself ent.i.tled to curb the glib tongue of his dame, or close up her ears with prudential maxims against the bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every part of the body languid and lazy except the tongue. Around them the younkers, "hasty hensures" and "wanton winklots," were busy preparing the habiliments of the guysers--whose modes of masking and disguising were often regulated by the characters they were to a.s.sume, or the songs they had learned to chant for the occasion. Nor were these mimes limited to the urchin caste; for, in these days, wisdom had not got so conceited as to be ashamed of innocent mirth; and gaucy queens and stalwarth chiels exhibited their superiority only in acting a higher mask, and singing a loftier strain. The gossips did not hesitate to suspend the honeyed topic, to give sage counsel on the subject of the masking "bulziements;" and anon they turned a side look at the minor actors, the imps of devilry, who pa.s.sed along with their smoking horns often made of the stem or "runt" of a winter cabbage, wherewith that night they would inevitably smoke out of "house and hauld" every devil's lamb of every gossip that did not open her hand and "deal her bread" to the guysers. Both parties, gossips and urchins, understood each other--like two belligerent powers a.s.serting mutual rights, and contemplating each other with that look of half-concealed contention and defiance, which only tended to make the attack more inevitable.

The evening set in, and the witching hour--the keystone of night's black arch, twelve o'clock--was approaching. To go to bed on such an occasion, would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to s.h.i.+rk his bicker, a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his country's glory; neither would it have been safe, for no good guyser of the old school would take the excuse of being in bed in lieu of the b.u.t.tered pease-bannock--the true hogmanay cake, to which he was ent.i.tled, by "the auld use and wont" of Scotland; and far better breathe the smoke of the "smeikin horn" on foot, and with the means of self-defence at command, than lie choked in bed, and "deaved" by the stock and horn, the squalling bagpipe, and the eternal--