The Life of Mansie Wauch
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David Macbeth Moir >> The Life of Mansie Wauch
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"De'il's in the man," quo' Tammie, "horse and cart! that's a gude one!
Na, na, lads; fire away gin ye like; for as lang as I hae a drap o' bluid
in me, ye'll get neither. Better be killed than starve. Do your best,
ye thieves that ye are; and I'll hae baith of ye hanged neist week before
the Fifteen!"
Every moment I expected my head to be shot off, till I got my hand
clapped on Tammie's mouth, and could get cried to them--"Shoot him then,
lads; shoot him then, lads, if he wants it; but take my siller like
Christians, and let me away with my poor deeing bairn!"
The two men seemed a something dumfoundered with what they heard; and I
began to think them, if they were highway robbers, a wee slow at their
trade; when, what think ye did they turn out to be--only guess? Nothing
more nor less than two excise officers, that had got information of some
smuggled gin, coming up in a cart from Fisherrow Harbour, and were
lurking on the road-side, looking out for spuilzie!!
When they quitted us giggling, I could not keep from laughing too; though
the sights I had seen, and the fright I had got, made me nervish and
eerie; so blithe was I when the cart rattled on our own street, and I
began to waken Benjie, as we were not above a hundred yards from our own
door.
In this day's adventures, I saw the sin and folly of my conduct visibly,
as I jumped out of the cart at our close mouth. So I determined within
myself, with a strong determination, to behave more sensibly for the
future, and think no more about limekilns and coal-pits; but to trust,
for Benjie's recovery from the chincough, to a kind Providence, together
with Daffy's elixir, and warm blankets.
CHAPTER XVI.--THE BLOODY CARTRIDGE.
So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear;
And hears him in the rustling wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees;
And thinks--Here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight or I.
DRYDEN'S _Palamon and Arcite_.
Nay, never shake thy gory locks at me;
Thou canst not say I did it!
_Macbeth_.
It was on a fine summer morning, somewhere about four o'clock, when I
wakened from my night's rest, and was about thinking to bestir myself,
that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard stretching south from
our back windows. I listened--and I listened--and I better listened--and
still the sound of the argle-bargling became more distinct, now in a
fleeching way, and now in harsh angry tones, as if some quarrelsome
disagreement had taken place. I had not the comfort of my wife's company
in this dilemmy; she being away, three days before, on the top of Tammie
Trundle the carrier's cart, to Lauder, on a visit to her folks there; her
mother (my gudemother like) having been for some time ill with an income
in her leg, which threatened to make a lameter of her in her old age, the
two doctors there--not speaking of the blacksmith, and sundry skeely old
women--being able to make nothing of the business; so nobody happened to
be with me in the room saving wee Benjie, who was lying asleep at the
back of the bed, with his little Kilmarnock on his head, as sound as a
top. Nevertheless, I looked for my clothes; and, opening one half of the
window shutter, I saw four young birkies, well dressed--indeed three of
them customers of my own--all belonging to the town; two of them young
doctors, one of them a writer's clerk, and the other a grocer. The whole
appeared very fierce and fearsome, like turkey-cocks; swaggering about
with warlike arms as if they had been the king's dragoons; and priming a
pair of pistols, which one of the surgeons, a spirity, outspoken lad,
Maister Blister, was holding in his grip.
I jealoused at once what they were after, being now a wee up to
fire-arms; so I saw that scaith was to come of it; and that I would be
wanting in my duty on four heads,--first, as a Christian; second, as a
man; third, as a subject; and fourth, as a father; if I withheld myself
from the scene; nor lifted up my voice, however fruitlessly, against such
crying iniquity as the wanton letting out of human blood; so forth I
hastened, half dressed, with my grey stockings rolled up my thighs over
my corduroys, and my old hat above my cowl, to the kail-yard of
contention.
I was just in the nick of time; and my presence checked the effusion of
blood for a little--but wait a wee. So high and furious were at least
three of the party, that I saw it was catching water in a sieve to waste
words on them, knowing as clearly as the sun serves the world, that
interceding would be of no avail. Howsoever, I made a feint, and
threatened to bowl away for a magistrate, if they would not desist from
their barbarous and bloody purpose; but, i'fegs, I had better kept my
counsel till it was asked for.
"Tailor Mansie," blustered out Maister Thomas Blister with a furious cock
of his eye--he was a queer Eirish birkie, come over for his
education--"since ye have ventured to thrust your nose, ma vourneen,"
said he, "where nobody invited ye, you must just stay," added he, "and
abide by the consequences. This is an affair of honour, you take, don't
ye? and if ye venture to stir one foot from the spot, och then, ma
bouchal," said he, "by the poker of St Patrick, but whisk through ye goes
one of these leaden playthings, as sure as ye ever spoiled a coat, or
cabbaged broadcloth! Ye have now come out, ye observe,--hark ye," said
he, "and are art and part in the business; and if one, or both, of the
principals be killed, poor devils," said he, "we are all alike liable to
take our trial before the Justiciary Court, hark ye; and by the powers,"
said he, "I doubt not but, on proper consideration, machree, that they
will allow us to get off mercifully, on this side of swinging, by a
verdict of manslaughter--and be hanged to them!"
'Od, I found myself immediately in a scrape; but how to get out of it
baffled my gumption. It set me all a shivering; yet I thought that, come
the worst when it should, they surely would not hang the father of a
helpless small family, that had nothing but his needle for their support,
if I made a proper affidavy, about having tried to make peace between the
youths. So, conscience being a brave supporter, I abode in silence,
though not without many queer and qualmish thoughts, and a pit-patting of
the heart, not unco pleasant in the tholing.
"Blood and wounds!" bawled Maister Thomas Blister, "it would be a
disgrace for ever on the honourable profession of physic," egging on poor
Maister Willy Magneezhy, whose face was as white as double-bleached
linen, "to make an apology for such an insult. Arrah, my honey! you not
fit to doctor a cat,--you not fit to bleed a calf,--you not fit to
poultice a pig,--after three years' apprenticeship," said he, "and a
winter with Doctor Monro? By the cupping-glasses of 'Pocrates," said he,
"and by the pistol of Gallon, but I would have caned him on the spot if
he had just let out half as much to me! Look ye, man," said he, "look
ye, man, he is all shaking," (this was a God's truth;) "he'll turn tail.
At him like fire, Willie."
Magneezhy, though sadly frightened, looked a thought brighter; and made a
kind of half step forward. "Say that ye'll ask my pardon once more,--and
if not," whined the poor lad, with a voice broken and trembling, "then we
must just shoot one another."
"Devil a bit," answered Maister Bloatsheet, "devil a bit. No, sir; you
must down on your bare knees, and beg ten thousand pardons for calling me
out here, in a raw morning; or I'll have a shot at you, whether you will
or not."
"Will you stand that?" said Blister, with eyes like burning coals. "By
the living jingo, and the holy poker, Magneezhy, if you stand that,--if
you stand that, I say, I stand no longer your second, but leave you to
disgrace and a caning. If he likes to shoot you like a dog, and not as a
gentleman, then, cuishla machree,--let him do it, and be done!"
"No, sir," replied Magneezhy with a quivering voice, which he tried in
vain, poor fellow, to render warlike, (he had never been in the
volunteers like me.) "Hand us the pistols, then; and let us do or die!"
"Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the
sight of your own blood, as at that of your patients," said Blister.
"Hand over the pistols."
It was an awful business. Gude save us, such goings on in a Christian
land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of cocking
the bloody weapon, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a
word edgeways. Magneezhy was in an awful case; if he had been already
shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; so I took up a
douce earnest confabulation, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody
conclusion, with Mr Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was
standing behind Bloatsheet with a large mahogany box under his arm,
something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from
house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or
niffering plaited ear-rings, and suchlike, with young lasses, for old
silver coins or cracked teaspoons.
"Oh!" answered he, very composedly, as if it had been a canister full of
black-rapee or black-guard, that he had just lifted down from his top-
shelf, "it's just Doctor Blister's saws, whittles, and big knives, in
case any of their legs or arms be blown away, that he may cut them off."
Little would have prevented me sinking down through the ground, had I not
remembered at the preceese moment, that I myself was a soldier, and
liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching-
order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the
hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a
hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on
oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way,
the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the
principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the use
of arms; on which account, I scougged myself behind a big pear-tree; both
being to fire when Blister gave the word "Off!"
I had scarcely jouked into my hidy-hole, when "crack--crack" played the
pistols like lightning; and as soon as I got my cowl taken from my eyes,
and looked about, woes me! I saw Magneezhy clap his hand to his brow,
wheel round like a peerie, or a sheep seized with the sturdie, and then
play flap down on his broadside, breaking the necks of half-a-dozen
cabbage-stocks--three of which were afterwards clean lost, as we could
not put them all into the pot at one time. The whole of us ran forward,
but foremost was Bloatsheet, who seizing Magneezhy by the hand, cried,
with a mournful face, "I hope you forgive me? Only say this as long as
you have breath; for I am off to Leith harbour in half a minute."
The blood was running over poor Magneezhy's eyes, and drib-dribbling from
the neb of his nose, so he was truly in a pitiful state; but he said with
more strength than I thought he could have mustered,--"Yes, yes, fly for
your life. I am dying without much pain--fly for your life, for I am a
gone man!"
Bloatsheet bounced through the kail-yard like a maukin, clamb over the
bit wall, and off like mad; while Blister was feeling Magneezhy's pulse
with one hand, and looking at his doctor's watch, which he had in the
other. "Do ye think that the poor lad will live, doctor?" said I to him.
He gave his head a wise shake, and only observed, "I dare say, it will be
a hanging business among us. In what direction do you think, Mansie, we
should all take flight?"
But I answered bravely, "Flee them that will, I'se flee nane. If I am
taken prisoner, the town-officers maun haul me from my own house; but,
nevertheless, I trust the visibility of my innocence will be as plain as
a pikestaff to the eyes of the Fifteen!"
"What, then, Mansie, will we do with poor Magneezhy? Give us your advice
in need."
"Let us carry him down to my own bed," answered I; "I would not desert a
fellow-creature in his dying hour! Help me down with him, and then flee
the country as fast as you are able!"
We immediately proceeded, and lifted the poor lad, who had now dwalmed
away, upon our wife's hand-barrow--Blister taking the feet, and me the
oxters, whereby I got my waistcoat all japanned with blood; so, when we
got him laid right, we proceeded to carry him between us down the close,
just as if he had been a sticked sheep, and in at the back door, which
cost us some trouble, being narrow, and the barrow getting jammed in;
but, at long and last, we got him streeked out above the blankets, having
previously shooken Benjie, and wakened him out of his morning's nap.
All this being accomplished and got over, Blister decamped, leaving me my
leeful lane, excepting Benjie, who was next to nobody, in the house with
the dying man. What a frightful face he had, all smeared over with blood
and powder--and I really jealoused, that if he died in that room it would
be haunted for evermair, he being in a manner a murdered man; so that,
even should I be acquitted of art and part, his ghost might still come to
bother us, making our house a hell upon earth, and frighting us out of
our seven senses. But in the midst of my dreadful surmises, when all was
still, so that you might have heard a pin fall, a knock-knock-knock, came
to the door, on which, recovering my senses, I dreaded first that it was
the death-chap, and syne that the affair had got wind, and that it was
the beagles come in search of me; so I kissed little Benjie, who was
sitting on his creepie, blubbering and greeting for his parritch, while a
tear stood in my own eye as I went forward to lift the sneck to let the
officers, as I thought, harrie our house, by carrying off me, its master;
but it was, thank Heaven, only Tammie Bodkin, coming in whistling to his
work, with some measuring papers hanging round his neck.
"Ah, Tammie," said I to him, my heart warming at a kent face, and making
the laddie, although my bounden servant by a regular indenture of five
years, a friend in my need, "come in, my man. I fear yell hae to take
charge of the business for some time to come; mind what I tell'd ye about
the shaping and the cutting, and no making the goose ower warm; as I
doubt I am about to be harled away to the tolbooth."
Tammie's heart swelled to his mouth. "Ah, maister," he said, "ye're
joking. What should ye have done that ye should be ta'en to sic an ill
place?"
"Ay, Tammie, lad," answered I, "it is but ower true."
"Weel, weel," quo' Tammie--I really thought it a great deal of the
laddie--"weel, weel, they canna prevent me coming to sew beside ye; and
if I can take the measure of customers without, ye can cut the claith
within. But what is't for, maister?"
"Come in here," said I to him, "and believe your ain een, Tammie, my
man."
"Losh me!" cried the poor laddie, glowring at the bloody face of the man
in the bed, and starting back on his tip-toes. "Ay--ay--ay! maister;
save us, maister; ay--ay--ay--you have na cloured his harnpan with the
guse? Ay, maister, maister! whaten an unearthly sight!! I doubt they'll
hang us a'; you for doing't--and me on suspicion--and Benjie as art and
part, puir thing! But I'll rin for a doctor. Will I, maister?"
The thought had never struck me before, being in a sort of a manner dung
stupid; but catching up the word, I said with all my pith and birr, "Rin,
rin, Tammie, rin for life and death!"
Tammie bolted like a nine-year-old, never looking behind his tail; so, in
less than ten minutes, he returned, hauling along old Doctor Peelbox,
whom he had waukened out of his bed, in a camblet morning-gown, and a
pair of red slippers, by the lug and horn, at the very time I was trying
to quiet young Benjie, who was following me up and down the house, as I
was pacing to and fro in distraction, girning and whingeing for his
breakfast.
"Bad business, bad business; bless us, what is this?" said the old
Doctor, who was near-sighted, staring at Magneezhy's bloody face through
his silver spectacles--"what's the matter?"
The poor patient knew at once his master's tongue, and lifting up one of
his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down said in a melancholy
voice, "Ah, master, do you think I'll get better?"
Doctor Peelbox, old man as he was, started back as if he had been a
French dancing-master, or had stramped on a hot bar of iron. "Tom, Tom,
is this you? what, in the name of wonder, has done this?" Then feeling
his wrist--"but your pulse is quite good. Have you fallen, boy? Where
is the blood coming from?"
"Somewhere about the hairy scalp," answered Magneezhy, in their own queer
sort of lingo. "I doubt some artery's cut through!"
The Doctor immediately bade him lie quiet and hush, as he was getting a
needle and silken thread ready to sew it up; ordering me to have a basin
and water ready, to wash the poor lad's physog. I did so as hard as I
was able, though I was not sure about the blood just; old Doctor Peelbox
watching over my shoulder with a lighted penny candle in one hand, and
the needle and thread in the other, to see where the blood spouted from.
But we were as daft as wise; so he bade me take my big shears, and cut
out all the hair on the fore part of the head as bare as my loof; and
syne we washed, and better washed; so Magneezhy got the other eye up,
when the barkened blood was loosed; looking, though as pale as a clean
shirt, more frighted than hurt; until it became plain to us all, first to
the Doctor, syne to me, and syne to Tammie Bodkin, and last of all to
Magneezhy himself, that his skin was not so much as peeled. So we helped
him out of the bed, and blithe was I to see the lad standing on the
floor, without a hold, on his own feet.
I did my best to clean his neckcloth and shirt of the blood, making him
look as decentish as possible, considering circumstances; and lending
him, as the scripture commands, my tartan mantle to hide the infirmity of
his bloody trowsers and waistcoat. Home went he and his master together;
me standing at our close mouth, wishing them a good-morning, and blithe
to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his
neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands
yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over,
could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same
blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil's rear marching out of
Paradise, if one may be allowed to think such a thing.
The whole business, tag-rag and bob-tail, soon, however, spunked out, and
was the town talk for more than one day--But you'll hear.
At the first I pitied the poor lads, that I thought had fled for ever and
aye from their native country, to Bengal, Seringapatam, Copenhagen,
Botany Bay, or Jamaica, leaving behind them all their friends and old
Scotland, as they might never hear of the goodness of Providence in their
behalf. But wait a wee.
Would you believe it? As sure's death, the whole was but a wicked trick
played by that mischievous loon Blister and his cronies, upon one that
was a simple and soft-headed callant. De'il a hait was in the one pistol
but a pluff of powder; and in the other, a cartridge-paper, full of
blood, was rammed down upon the charge; the which, hitting Magneezhy on
the ee-bree, had caused a business that seemed to have put him out of
life, and nearly put me (though one of the volunteers) out of my seven
senses.
CHAPTER XVII.--MY FIRST AND LAST PLAY.
_Pla_. I' faith
I like the audience that frequenteth there
With much applause: a man shall not be chokt
With the stench of garlick, nor be pasted firm
To the barmy jacket of a beer-brewer.
_Bra_. 'Tis a good gentle audience, and I hope
The boys will come one day in great request.
_Jack Drum's Entertainment_. 1601.
Out cam the gudeman, and laigh he louted;
Out cam the gudewife, and heigh she shouted;
And a the toun-neibours gather'd about it;
And there he lay, I trow.
_The Cauldrife Wooer_.
The time of Tammie Bodkin's apprenticeship being nearly worn through, it
behoved me, as a man attentive to business, and the interests of my
family, to cast my eyes around me in search of a callant to fill his
place; as it is customary in our trade for young men, when their time is
out, taking a year's journeymanship in Edinburgh, to perfect them in the
more intricate branches of the business, and learn the newest manner of
the French and London fashions, by cutting cloth for the young advocates,
the college students, the banking-house clerks, the half-pay ensigns, and
the rest of the principal tip-top bucks.
Having, though I say it myself, the word of being a canny maister, more
than one brought their callants to me, on reading the bill of "An
apprentice wanted," pasted on my shop-window.
Offering to bind them for the regular time, yet not wishing to take but
one, I thought best not to fix in a hurry, and make choice of him that
seemed more exactly cut out for my purpose. In the course of a few weeks
three or four cast up, among whom was a laddie of Ben Aits the
mealmonger, and a son of William Burlings the baker; to say little of the
callant of Saunders Broom the sweep, that would fain have put his blackit-
looking bit creature with the one eye and the wooden leg under my wing;
but I aye looked to respectability in these matters; so glad was I when I
got the offer of Mungo Glen.--But more of this in half a minute.
I must say I was glad of any feasible excuse to make to the sweep, to get
quit of him and his laddie, the father being a drucken ne'er-do weel,
that I wonder did not fall long ere this time of day from some chimney-
head, and get his neck broken. So I told him at long and last, when he
came papping into my shop, plaguing me every time he passed, that I had
fitted myself; and that there would be no need of his taking the trouble
to call again. Upon which he gave his blacked nieve a desperate thump on
the counter, making the observation, that out of respect for him I might
have given his son the preference. Though I was a wee puzzled for an
answer, I said to him for want of a better, that having a timber leg, he
could not well creuk his hough to the shop-board for our trade.
"Hout, touts," said Saunders, giving his lips a smack--"Creuk his hough,
ye body you! Do you think his timber leg canna screw off?--That'll no
pass."
I was a little dumfoundered at this cleverness. So I said, more on my
guard--"True, true, Saunders, but he's ower little."
"Ower little, and be hanged to ye!" cried the disrespectful follow,
wheeling about on his heel, as he grasped the sneck of the shop-door, and
gave a girn that showed the only clean parts of his body--to wit the
whites of his eyes, and his sharp teeth:--"Ower little!--Pu, pu!--He's
like the blackamoor's pig, then, Maister Wauch--he's like the
blackamoor's pig--he may be ver' leetle, but he be tam ould;" and with
this he showed his back, clapping the door at his tail without wishing a
good-day; and I am scarcely sorry when I confess, that I never cut cloth
for either father or son from that hour to this one, the losing of such a
customer being no great matter at best, and almost clear gain compared
with saddling myself with a callant with only one eye and one leg; the
one having fallen a victim to the dregs of the measles, and the other
having been harled off by a farmer's threshing-mill. However, I got
myself properly suited;--but ye shall hear.
Our neighbour Mrs Grassie, a widow woman, unco intimate with our wife,
and very attentive to Benjie when he had the chin-cough, had a far-away
cousin of the name of Glen, that held out among the howes of the
Lammermoor hills--a distant part of the country, ye observe. Auld Glen,
a decent-looking body of a creature, had come in with his sheltie about
some private matters of business--such as the buying of a horse, or
something to that effect, where he could best fall in with it, either at
our fair, or the Grassmarket, or such like; so he had uppitting, free of
expense, from Mrs Grassie, on account of his relationship; Glen being
second cousin to Mrs Grassie's brother's wife, which is deceased. I
might, indeed, have mentioned, that our neighbour herself had been twice
married, and had the misery of seeing out both her gudemen; but such was
the will of fate, and she bore up with perfect resignation.
Having made a bit warm dinner ready, for she was a tidy body, and knew
what was what, she thought she could not do better than ask in a
reputable neighbour to help her friend to eat it, and take a cheerer with
him; as, maybe, being a stranger here, he would not like to use the
freedom of drinking by himself--a custom which is at the best an unsocial
one--especially with none but women-folk near him; so she did me the
honour to make choice of me--though I say it, who should not say it;--and
when we got our jug filled for the second time, and began to grow better
acquainted, ye would really wonder to see how we became merry, and
cracked away just like two pen-guns. I asked him, ye see, about sheep
and cows, and corn and hay, and ploughing and threshing, and horses and
carts, and fallow land, and lambing-time, and har'st, and making cheese
and butter, and selling eggs, and curing the sturdie, and the snifters,
and the batts, and such like;--and he, in his turn, made enquiry
regarding broad and narrow cloth, Kilmarnock cowls, worsted comforters,
Shetland hose, mittens, leather-caps, stuffing and padding, metal and
mule buttons, thorls, pocket-linings, serge, twist, buckram, shaping and
sewing, back-splaying, cloth-runds, goosing the labroad, botkins, black
thread, patent shears, measuring, and all the other particulars belonging
to our trade, which he said, at long and last after we had joked
together, was a power better one than the farming line.
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