CHAPTER XXVII If thou hast any love of mercy in thee, Turn me upon my face that I may die.
JOANNA BALLIE.
Our traveller hired a post-chaise at the place where he separated fromDinmont, with the purpose of proceeding to Kippletringan, there toinquire into the state of the family at Woodbourne, before he shouldventure to make his presence in the country known to Miss Mannering. Thestage was a long one of eighteen or twenty miles, and the road lay acrossthe country. To add to the inconveniences of the journey, the snow beganto fall pretty quickly. The postilion, however, proceeded on his journeyfor a good many miles without expressing doubt or hesitation. It was notuntil the night was completely set in that he intimated his apprehensionswhether he was in the right road. The increasing snow rendered thisintimation rather alarming, for, as it drove full in the lad's face andlay whitening all around him, it served in two different ways to confusehis knowledge of the country, and to diminish the chance of hisrecovering the right track. Brown then himself got out and looked round,not, it may be well imagined, from any better hope than that of seeingsome house at which he might make inquiry. But none appeared; he couldtherefore only tell the lad to drive steadily on. The road on which theywere ran through plantations of considerable extent and depth, and thetraveller therefore conjectured that there must be a gentleman's house atno great distance. At length, after struggling wearily on for about amile, the post-boy stopped, and protested his horses would not budge afoot farther; 'but he saw,' he said, 'a light among the trees, which mustproceed from a house; the only way was to inquire the road there.'Accordingly, he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat anda pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the seven-foldshield of Ajax. As in this guise he was plodding forth upon his voyage ofdiscovery, Brown's impatience prevailed, and, jumping out of thecarriage, he desired the lad to stop where he was by the horses, and hewould himself go to the house; a command which the driver most joyfullyobeyed.
Our traveller groped along the side of the inclosure from which the lightglimmered, in order to find some mode of approaching in that direction,and, after proceeding for some space, at length found a stile in thehedge, and a pathway leading into the plantation, which in that place wasof great extent. This promised to lead to the light which was the objectof his search, and accordingly Brown proceeded in that direction, butsoon totally lost sight of it among the trees. The path, which at firstseemed broad and well marked by the opening of the wood through which itwinded, was now less easily distinguishable, although the whiteness ofthe snow afforded some reflected light to assist his search. Directinghimself as much as possible through the more open parts of the wood, heproceeded almost a mile without either recovering a view of the light orseeing anything resembling a habitation. Still, however, he thought itbest to persevere in that direction. It must surely have been a light inthe hut of a forester, for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of anignis fatuus. The ground at length became broken and declined rapidly,and, although Brown conceived he still moved along what had once at leastbeen a pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow concealing thosebreaches and inequalities, the traveller had one or two falls inconsequence. He began now to think of turning back, especially as thefalling snow, which his impatience had hitherto prevented his attendingto, was coming on thicker and faster.
Willing, however, to make a last effort, he still advanced a little way,when to his great delight he beheld the light opposite at no greatdistance, and apparently upon a level with him. He quickly found thatthis last appearance was deception, for the ground continued so rapidlyto sink as made it obvious there was a deep dell, or ravine of some kind,between him and the object of his search. Taking every precaution topreserve his footing, he continued to descend until he reached the bottomof a very steep and narrow glen, through which winded a small rivulet,whose course was then almost choked with snow. He now found himselfembarrassed among the ruins of cottages, whose black gables, renderedmore distinguishable by the contrast with the whitened surface from whichthey rose, were still standing; the side-walls had long since given wayto time, and, piled in shapeless heaps and covered with snow, offeredfrequent and embarrassing obstacles to our traveller's progress. Still,however, he persevered, crossed the rivulet, not without some trouble,and at length, by exertions which became both painful and perilous,ascended its opposite and very rugged bank, until he came on a level withthe building from which the gleam proceeded.
It was difficult, especially by so imperfect a light, to discover thenature of this edifice; but it seemed a square building of small size,the upper part of which was totally ruinous. It had, perhaps, been theabode in former times of some lesser proprietor, or a place of strengthand concealment, in case of need, for one of greater importance. But onlythe lower vault remained, the arch of which formed the roof in thepresent state of the building. Brown first approached the place fromwhence the light proceeded, which was a long narrow slit or loop-hole,such as usually are to be found in old castles. Impelled by curiosity toreconnoitre the interior of this strange place before he entered, Browngazed in at this aperture. A scene of greater desolation could not wellbe imagined. There was a fire upon the floor, the smoke of which, aftercircling through the apartment, escaped by a hole broken in the archabove. The walls, seen by this smoky light, had the rude and wasteappearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A cask or two, withsome broken boxes and packages, lay about the place in confusion. But theinmates chiefly occupied Brown's attention. Upon a lair composed ofstraw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still that,except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave,Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view heperceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one ortwo of those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs that precede dissolutionwhen the frame is tenacious of life. A female figure, dressed in a longcloak, sate on a stone by this miserable couch; her elbows rested uponher knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp besideher, was bent upon that of the dying person. She moistened his mouth fromtime to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a lowmonotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, insome parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgarand ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tollingof the bell in Catholic days. She accompanied this dismal sound with aslow rocking motion of her body to and fro, as if to keep time with hersong. The words ran nearly thus:--
Wasted, weary, wherefore stay, Wrestling thus with earth and clay? From the body pass away. Hark! the mass is singing.
From thee doff thy mortal weed, Mary Mother be thy speed, Saints to help thee at thy need. Hark! the knell is ringing.
Fear not snow-drift driving fast, Sleet, or hail, or levin blast. Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast, And the sleep be on thee cast That shall ne'er know waking.
Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone, Earth flits fast, and time draws on. Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan, Day is near the breaking.
The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and hollowgroans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the mortal strife.'It will not be,' she muttered to herself; 'he cannot pass away with thaton his mind, it tethers him here--
Heaven cannot abide it, Earth refuses to hide it.
[Footnote: See Note 6.]
I must open the door'; and, rising, she faced towards the door of theapartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and,withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable appearanceof the place, the door was cautiously secured), she lifted the latch,saying,
Open lock, end strife, Come death, and pass life.
Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her as sheopened the door. She stepped back a pace, and he entered, instantlyrecognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the
same gipsy woman whomhe had met in Bewcastle. She also knew him at once, and her attitude,figure, and the anxiety of her countenance, assumed the appearance of thewell-disposed ogress of a fairy tale, warning a stranger not to enter thedangerous castle of her husband. The first words she spoke (holding upher hands in a reproving manner) were, 'Said I not to ye, Make not,meddle not? Beware of the redding straik! [Footnote: The redding straik,namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt twocombatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the mostdangerous blow a man can receive.] You are come to no house o' fair-straedeath.' So saying, she raised the lamp and turned its light on the dyingman, whose rude and harsh features were now convulsed with the lastagony. A roll of linen about his head was stained with blood, which hadsoaked also through the blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under nonatural disease that the wretch was suffering. Brown started back fromthis horrible object, and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, 'Wretchedwoman, who has done this?'
'They that were permitted,' answered Meg Merrilies, while she scannedwith a close and keen glance the features of the expiring man. 'He hashad a sair struggle; but it's passing. I kenn'd he would pass when youcame in. That was the death-ruckle; he's dead.'
Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices. 'They are coming,'said she to Brown; 'you are a dead man if ye had as mony lives as hairs.'Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of defence. There was nonenear. He then rushed to the door with the intention of plunging among thetrees, and making his escape by flight from what he now esteemed a den ofmurderers, but Merrilies held him with a masculine grasp. 'Here,' shesaid, 'here, be still and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see orhear, and nothing shall befall you.'
Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman'sintimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but inobeying her. She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw on theopposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him carefully,and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay about the place.Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown arranged as softly as hecould the means of peeping from under the coverings by which he washidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange andmost unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set aboutarranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms byits side. 'Best to do this,' she muttered, 'ere he stiffen.' She placedon the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set onecandle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both.Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voiceshad been heard without.
Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at thismoment his fears mastered his courage so completely that the cold dropsburst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserableconcealment by wretches whose trade was that of midnight murder, withoutweapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which wouldbe only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach otherear than their own; his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion ofa being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine andimposture must have hardened her against every human feeling--thebitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read inher withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon herfeatures, something that promised those feelings of compassion whichfemales, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogethersmother. There was no such touch of humanity about this woman. Theinterest, whatever it was, that determined her in his favour arose notfrom the impulse of compassion, but from some internal, and probablycapricious, association of feelings, to which he had no clue. It rested,perhaps, on a fancied likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her fatherin the sleeping monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapidsuccession through Brown's mind as he gazed from his hiding-place uponthis extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, andhe was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting anescape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, whichhad consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room forresistance nor flight.
Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to everysound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to thedead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position.'He's a bonny corpse,' she muttered to herself, 'and weel worth thestreaking.' And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort ofprofessional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutiae, as if withthe skill and feelings of a connoisseur. A long, dark-coloured sea-cloak,which she dragged out of a corner, was disposed for a pall. The face sheleft bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the capes ofthe cloak so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the body, as shemuttered, 'a mair decent appearance.'
At once three or four men, equally ruffians in appearance and dress,rushed into the hut. 'Meg, ye limb of Satan, how dare you leave the dooropen?' was the first salutation of the party.
'And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in thedead-thraw? how d'ye think the spirit was to get awa through bolts andbars like thae?'
'Is he dead, then?' said one who went to the side of the couch to look atthe body.
'Ay, ay, dead enough,' said another; 'but here's what shall give him arousing lykewake.' So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a corner,while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the activity withwhich she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope of her fidelitytowards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to engage the ruffiansin their debauch, to prevent the discovery which might take place if byaccident any of them should approach too nearly the place of Brown'sconcealment.