Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XVII Part 4

And he held out the bottle to Rob, after having put it bodily to his mouth, and taking a long draught as an example to the latter, who was known to despise flasks. Rob turned up his eyes to the Virgin, and got from her some confidence, if not courage. He looked at the tempting bottle, beautiful in its fulness and total freedom from the contaminating society of flasks or tankards; then he turned a fearful eye on its laughing, rioting possessor, and anon sought again the face of the saint.

"Hast lost thine ancient spirit, Rob Paterson?" said the stranger. What hath that spare figure, made of dry wood, to do with the mellow fuddling of our noses? Come, man--Time flies; let us wet his wings, and keep him fluttering a while over our heads.

"'With an O and an I, Now are we furder found, Drink thou to me, and I to thee, And let the cup go round.'"

"But wha, in the Devil's name, are ye?" now said Rob Paterson, after many an ineffectual effort to put the question.

"Ha! ha!" answered the stranger, "does Rob Paterson ask a man who is introduced by this friend of n.o.ble red-blood, who he is? Why, man, I am Rob Paterson's tosspot. Isn't that enough?"

"No quite," answered Rob, drawing nearer the Virgin. "Satan himself might use the same words; and I crave the liberty to say in your presence, that I hae nae wish to be on drinking terms wi' his Majesty."

And Rob eyed him fearfully as he thus alluded to the subject of the town's fears, and again sought the face of the saint.

"Ah, Rob Paterson, my once cherished toper," replied the stranger, "I sorrow for thy change. Thine ancient spirit has left thee, and thou hast taken up with wooden idols, in place of the well-filled jolly bottle of thy and my former love. Well, may the Devil take on for't!--I care not. Thou mayst repent of thy folly when I am gone.

"'Robene thou has hard soung and say, In gesties and stories auld-- The man that will not quhen he may, Sall haif nocht quhen he wald.'"

Never mair, Rob Paterson, shalt thou have offer of spirit of wine. It shall go there first!"

And, taking a mouthful of the red liquor, the stranger squirted it in the fire, and raised a mighty flame that flared out into the very middle of the street, and produced another echoing cry or scream from the terrified inhabitants. He departed in an instant, and left Rob in a state of agitation he had never felt before at the departure of a guest with a well-filled bottle of good liquor.

The stranger pa.s.sed out at the door with his usual bold precipitude, and again plied his long limbs in making huge strides along the street, for the house of another crony. He took no notice of the extraordinary demeanour of the inhabitants, who were seen flying away from corners and angles where they had nestled, for the purpose of seeing him come out in a flame of fire from Rob Paterson's, as he had done from Will Pearson's. He strode on, neither looking to the right nor to the left, till he came to Widow Lindsay's.

"A good new year to thee, Dame Lindsay!" said he, as he entered the house by opening the door, which the widow thought she had barred when she shoved the bolt beyond the staple, and found her sitting by the fire counting her rosary, and muttering prayers, with eyes upturned to heaven.

"Holy Mary, save me!" she muttered, as she heard him enter by the supposed locked door. "He's come at last." And she retreated to a corner of the room, and prayed fervently for deliverance.

"Thy throat has doubtless good memory of me and mine," continued the stranger, as he placed on the table the same extraordinary bottle, the shape and dimensions of which were as vivid in the mind of Dame Lindsay as was the colour of the red cravat. "My male tosspots have forgot the taste of my red liquor," he continued; "but what wet gossip's throat ever forgot what nipped it. Come, dame, and let us have a right hearty jorum of this inimitable drink." And, for want of better measure, he seized l.u.s.tily a bicker that lay near him, and dashed a quant.i.ty of the liquor into it. "Ha!

I forgot. Get thee for Meg Johnston thy gossip, dame, and let us be merry together. Meg is a woman of a thousand. What a l.u.s.ty hold she takes of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g bicker, and how her eye lightens and brightens as she surveys the swimming heaven under her nose! Come, dame--what ails?"

The only reply he got was a groan, and the rustle of Dame Lindsay's quivering habiliments.

"By my own saint, this town of Christ's Kirk has a change upon it!" he continued. "Last time I was here, it was as merry as King James when he sang of it. The young and the old hailed me as the prince of good fellows, and the wenches and wives--ha! ha!

"'To dans thir damysells them dight, Thir la.s.ses light of laits; They were sae skych when I them nicht, They squeild like ony gaits.'"

Dame Lindsay, I perceive what thou wantest, to melt thee into thy former jollity. Thou'rt coquetting in the corner there for a kiss; and, by the holy rude, thou shalt not want it for the s.p.a.ce of the twinkling of thine eye."

He rose for the purpose of applying the emollient he had threatened; but a loud scream evinced that a woman, however much she may wors.h.i.+p his Satanic Majesty, cares not for his familiarities. The widow fainted; and what may be supposed her feelings, when she found, on coming to herself, that that identical and terrific red liquor had had a share in her recovery! Again she screamed; but no kindly neighbour came to rescue her from her perilous situation. Those who heard her cries, had many strange thoughts as to what species of punishment she was undergoing, for her sins. The conjectures were endless. "What could he be doing to Widow Lindsay?" was the universal question. Some supposed that she was in the act of being carried off, and was struggling to get out of his talons; some looked for the pa.s.sing flame, in the midst of which, the poor widow, clasped in his arms, would be seen on her luminous journey to the lower world; and there were not few who pretended to find, in the past life of the wretched victim, a very good legitimate cause for the visit of the stranger, and the severity he was clearly exercising towards her.

"Thou'lt be the better for thy faint, Widow Lindsay," said the stranger, as she recovered, "seeing that what blood it has sent from thy heart, will be returned with the addition of that liquor which is truly the water of life.

Dost forget, good widow, that, when I was last here, thou and Meg Johnston would have fought for a can of it, if I had not made the can two? Come now, and let us fuddle our noses till they be as red as the liquor itself, and thy spectacles shew thee two noses, before they melt with the heat of their ruby supporter.

"'However this world do change and vary, Oh, let us in heart never more be sary.'"

"Avaunt ye! in the name o' the five holy wounds!" muttered the widow, as she held up the Sathanifuge crow in his face.

"Well, and if thou wilt not, here goes!" replied he, as he threw the contents of the bicker in the fire, which blazed up till the house seemed, to those waiting fearfully in the distance, to be in flames.

Many an eye was now directed to the door and windows, to see Widow Lindsay take her pyromantic flight through the flaming fields of ether; and they continued their gaze till they saw him of the red cravat sally forth, when fear closed up the vision, and they saw no more. Meanwhile he strode on, singing all the way--

"Full oft I muse, and be's in thocht; How this false world is aye on flocht,"

till he came to the door of Meg Johnston's cottage. He found it deserted; and then stalked on to honest John Simson's, which was in like manner empty.

"What can this mean?" he said to himself, as he bent his long steps to Wat Webster's, where fearful messengers, as we have seen, had already preceded him. "My person has lost its charm, my converse its interest, and my drink its spirit-stirring power. But we shall see what Wat Webster and his Dame Kitty, and the fair Marion, say to the residue of my authority. Ah, Marion, as I think of thee--

"'How heises and bleizes My heart wi' sic a fyre, As raises these praises That do to heaven aspire.'"

"Ha! ha! I will there outdevil all my devilries. My fire-chariots have as yet flown off without a pa.s.senger; but this night I shall not go home alone."

And he continued striding onwards in the deserted and silent pa.s.sage, till he came to Wat Webster's, where the collected inmates were all huddled together round the fire, in that state of alarm produced by the intelligence of Christy Lowry and Widow Lindsay, and already partly set forth by us heretofore. Bang up went the door.

"A good new year to ye all!" said he, as he stalked into the middle of the apartment.

There was a dead silence throughout the company. Marion was the only individual that dared to look him in the face; and there was an expression in her eye that seemed to have the effect of increasing the boisterous glee of his mysterious manner.

"Here we are once more, again," he continued, as he took out the eternal imp-shaped bottle, and clanged it on the table.

Every eye was fixed upon him as if watching his motions and evolutions. Meg Johnston was busy in a corner, defending herself, by drawing a circle round her; Widow Lindsay was clinging close to the figure of the Virgin that was placed against the wall by her side; Jenny Wilson sought refuge in the arms of honest John; Wat Webster himself got his hand placed upon an old Latin Bible, not one word of which he could read; and some followed one mode of self-defence, and some another, against the expected efforts of the stranger, whose proceedings at his other places of call had been all related at Wat Webster's, with an exaggeration they perhaps stood little in need of. The stranger cared nothing for these indications, not a cinder; and took no notice of them.

"I'll e'en begin our potations myself," said he, filling out a flaskful of his liquor, and drinking it off. "By him that brewed it, it tastes well after my long walk! Wat Webster, wilt thou pledge me, man--

"'And let us all, my friends, be merry, And set nocht by this world a cherry; Now while there is good wyne to sell, He that does on dry bread worry, I gif him to the devil of h.e.l.l.'"

And he trowled the flask upon the table while he sung, as a kind of ba.s.s chorus to his song.

"There's for thee, Wat!" continued he, filling out a flask.

Wat kept his hand upon the holy book.

"Wilt thou, honest John Wilson, pledge thy old friend in this red liquor, which formerly claimed so strong an acquaintances.h.i.+p with the secret power of the topers' hearts of merry Christ's Kirk?"

"For the luve o' heaven," whispered Jenny, as she clung closer to him, "touch it not!--it will scald yer liver like brimstone, and may, besides, be the price o' yer soul's purchase."

John looked at the liquor, and would have spoken; but his heart failed him.

"Wilt thou, Meg Johnston, empty this flask to the health of thy old friend?"

"Guid faith, I, lad," muttered Meg, safe as she thought within the walls of her necromantic circ.u.mvallation--"I ken ye owre weel. Ye needna think to cheat me. I'm no a s.p.u.n.k to be dipped in brimstone, and then set lowe to.

But [aside] how can he stand the look o' the haly rude! and the haly book?

The deevil o' sic a deevil I ever heard, saw, or read o'. Avaunt ye, avaunt ye, in the name o the seven churches! The deil a bane ye'll get here--yere owre weel kenned. Set aff in a flash o' yer ain fire to Falkland."

"Wilt thou, Christy Lowry, pledge thine old friend?" continued the stranger, without noticing Meg's recommendation.

"In guid troth na," replied Christy, to whom the cross afforded some confidence. "It's a' out, man--it's owre the hail town. There's nae use in concealin't langer. Just put a s.p.u.n.k to the neck o't and set aff. Wae! wae!

[aside] but it's an awfu thing to look the enemy i' the very face, and hauld converse wi' lips that mak nae gobs at cinders! Ave Maria! help Christy Lowry in this her trial and temptation?"