Kitabı oku: «Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters», sayfa 30

CHAPTER LXXIX

It is surely a most strange matter, that whenever I come to think and to write of the events of that period, and of my sickness at Kingswell, my thoughts relapse into infirmity, and all which then passed move, as it were, before me in mist, disorderly and fantastical. But wherefore need I thus descant of my own estate, when so many things of the highest concernment are pressing upon my tablets for registration? Be it therefore enough that I mention here how much I was refreshed by the prayers of Mr Cargill, who was brought into my sick-chamber, where he wrestled with great efficacy for my recovery; and that after he had made an end, I felt so much strengthened that I caused myself to be raised from my bed and placed in a chair at the open window, that I might see the men who had been heartened from on high by the sense of their sufferings, to proclaim war against the man-sworn King, our common foe.

They were scattered before the house, to the number of more than fifty, some sitting on stones, others stretched on the heather, and a few walking about by themselves, ruminating on mournful fancies. Their appearance was a thought wild and raised, – their beards had not been shaven for many a day, – their apparel was also much rent, and they had all endured great misfortunes in their families and substance. Their homes had been made desolate; some had seen their sons put to death, and not a few the ruin of their innocent daughters and the virtuous wives of their bosoms, – all by the fruit of laws and edicts which had issued from the councils of Charles Stuart, and were enforced by men drunken with the authority of his arbitrary will.

But though my spirit clove to theirs, and was in unison with their intent, I could not but doubt of so poor a handful of forlorn men, though it be written, that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, and I called to my son to bring me the Book, that I might be instructed from the Word what I ought at that time to do; and when he had done so I opened it, and the twenty-second chapter of Genesis met my eye, and I was awed and trembled, and my heart was melted with sadness and an agonising grief. For the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac his only son, whom he so loved, on the mountains in the land of Moriah, required of me to part with my son, and to send him with the Cameronians; and I prayed with a weeping spirit and the imploring silence of a parent's heart, that the Lord would be pleased not to put my faith to so great a trial.

I took the Book again, and I opened it a second time, and the command of the sacred oracle was presented to me in the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of Ecclesiastes, —

"Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay."

But still the man and the father were powerful with my soul; and the weakness of disease was in me, and I called my son towards me, and I bowed my head upon his hands as he stood before me, and wept very bitterly, and pressed him to my bosom, and was loath to send him away.

He knew not what caused the struggle wherewith he saw me so moved, and he became touched with fear lest my reason was again going from me. But I dried my eyes, and told him it was not so, and that maybe I would be better if I could compose myself to read a chapter. So I again opened the volume, and the third command was in the twenty-sixth verse of the eight chapter of St Matthew, —

"Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"

But still notwithstanding my rebellious heart would not consent; – and I cried, "I am a poor, infirm, desolate, and destitute man, and he is all that is left me. O that mine eyes were closed in death, and that this head, which sorrow and care and much misery have made untimely grey, were laid on its cold pillow, and the green curtain of the still kirk yard were drawn around me in my last long sleep."

Then again the softness of a mother's fondness came upon my heart, and I grasped the wondering stripling's hands in mine, and shook them, saying, "But it must be so. It is the Lord's will; thrice has he commanded, and I dare not rebel thrice."

"What has He commanded, father?" said the boy, "what is His will? for ye ken it maun be done."

"Read," said I, "the twenty-second chapter of Genesis."

"I ken't, father; it's about Abraham and wee Isaac; but though ye tak me into the land of Moriah, and up to the top of the hill, maybe a ram will be catched by the horns in a whin-bush for the burnt-offering, and ye'll no hae ony need to kill me."

At that moment Mr Cargill came again into the room to bid me farewell; but seeing my son standing with a tear of simplicity in his eye, and me in the weakness of my infirm estate weeping upon his hands, he stopped and inquired what then had so moved us; whereupon I looked towards him and said, —

"When I was taken with the malady that has thus changed the man in me to more than the gentleness of woman, ye ken, as I have already told you, we were bowne to seek your folk out and to fight on your side. But when I beheld your dejected and much-persecuted host, a doubt came to me, that surely it could not be that the Lord intended through them to bring about the deliverance of the land; and under this doubt as to what I should now do, and my limbs being moreover still in the fetters of sickness, I consulted the oracle of God."

"And what has been the answer?"

"It has instructed me to send my son with you. But O, it is a terrible probation."

"You have done well, my friend," replied the godly man, "to seek advice from the Word; but apply again, and maybe – maybe, Ringan, ye'll no be put to so great a trial."

To this I could only say, "Alas! sir, twice have I again consulted the oracle, and twice has the answer been an exhortation and a reproach that I should be so loath to obey."

"But what for, father," interposed my son, "need ye be sae fashed about it. I would ne'er refuse; – I'm ready to gang if ye were na sae weakly; – and though the folk afore the house are but a wee waff-like, ye ken it is written in the Book that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."

Mr Cargill looked with admiration at the confidence of this young piety, and, laying his hand on the boy's head, said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. The Lord is in this, Ringan, put your trust in Him."

Whereupon I took my son's hand, and I placed it in the martyr's hand, and I said, "Take him, lead him wheresoever ye will. I have sinned almost to disobedience, but the confidence has been renewed within me."

"Rejoice," said Mr Cargill, in words that were as the gift of health to my enfeebled spirit, "rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

As he pronounced the latter clause I felt my thoughts flash with a wild remembrance of the desolation of my house; but he began to return thanks for the comfort that he himself enjoyed in his outcast condition, of beholding so many proofs of the unshaken constancy of faith still in the land, and prayed for me in words of such sweet eloquence, that even in the parting from my son, – my last, whom I loved so well, they cherished me with a joy passing all understanding.

At the conclusion of his inspired thanksgiving, I kissed my Joseph on the forehead, and bidding him remember what his father's house had been, bade him farewell.

His young heart was too full to reply; and Mr Cargill too was so deeply affected that he said nothing; so, after shaking me by the hand, he led him away.

And if I did sin when they were departed, in the complaint of my childless desolation, for no less could I account it, it was a sin that surely will not be heavily laid against me. "O Absalom, my son, my son, – would I had died for thee," cried the warlike King David, when Absalom was slain in rebellion against him, and he had still many children; but my innocent Absalom was all that I had left.

CHAPTER LXXX

During the season that the malady continued upon me, through the unsuspected agency of Robin Brown, a paction was entered into with certain of my neighbours, to take the lands of Quharist on tack among them, and to pay me a secret stipend, by which means were obtained to maintain me in a decency when I was able to be removed into Glasgow. And when my strength was so far restored that I could bear the journey, the same good man entered into a stipulation with Mrs Aird, the relict of a Gospel minister, to receive me as a lodger, and he carried me in on his cart to her house at the foot of the Stockwell.

With that excellent person I continued several months unmolested, but without hearing any tidings of my son. Afflicting tales were however of frequent occurrence, concerning the rigour wherewith the Cameronians were hunted; so that what with anxiety, and the backwardness of nature to rally in ailments ayont fifty, I continued to languish, incapable of doing anything in furtherance of the vow of vengeance that I had vowed. Nor should I suppress, that in my infirmity there was often a wildness about my thoughts, by which I was unfitted at times to hold communion with other men.

On these occasions I sat wondering if the things around me were not the substanceless imageries of a dream, and fancying that those terrible truths whereof I can yet only trust myself to hint, might be the fallacies of a diseased sleep. And I contested as it were with the reality of all that I saw, touched, and felt, and struggled like one oppressed with an incubus, that I might awake and find myself again at Quharist in the midst of my family.

At other times I felt all the loneliness of the solitude into which my lot was then cast, and it was in vain that I tried to appease my craving affections with the thought, that in parting with my son I had given him to the Lord. I durst not say to myself there was aught of frenzy in that consecration; but when I heard of Cameronians shot on the hills or brought to the scaffold, I prayed that I might receive some token of an accepted offering in what I had done.

Sterner feelings too had their turns of predominance. I recalled the manifold calamities which withered my native land – the guilty provocations that the people had received – the merciless avarice and rapacious profligacy that had ruined so many worthies – the crimes that had scattered so many families – and the contempt with which all our wrongs and woes were regarded; and then I would remember my avenging vow, and supplicate for health.

At last, one day Mrs Aird, who had been out on some household cares, returned home in great distress of mind, telling me that the soldiers had got hold of Mr Cargill, and had brought him into the town.

This happened about the ninth or tenth of July, in the afternoon; and the day being very sultry, the heat had oppressed me with langour, and I was all day as one laden with sleep. But no sooner had Mrs Aird told me this, than I felt the langour depart from me, as if a cumbrous cloak had been taken away, and I rose up a recruited and reanimated man. It was so much the end of my debility of body and sorrowing of mind, that she was loquacious with her surprise when she saw me, as it were, with a miraculous restoration, prepare myself to go out in order to learn, if possible, some account of my son.

When, however, I went into the street, and saw a crowd gathered around the guard-house, my heart failed me a little, not for fear, but because the shouts of the multitude were like the yells and derisions of insult; and I thought they were poured upon the holy sufferer. It was not, however, so; the Gospel-taught people of Glasgow were, notwithstanding their prelatic thraldom, moved far otherwise, and their shouts and scoffings were against a townsman of their own, who had reviled the man of God on seeing him a prisoner among the soldiers in the guard-house.

Not then knowing this I halted, dubious if I should go forward; and while standing in a swither at the corner of the Stockwell, a cart came up from the bridge, driven by a stripling. I saw that the cart and horse were Robin Brown's, and before I had time to look around, my son had me by the hand.

We said little, but rejoiced to see each other again. I observed, however, that his apparel was become old and that his eyes were grown quick and eager like those of the hunted Cameronians whom I saw at Kingswell.

"We hae ta'en Robin Brown's cart frae him," said he; "that I might come wi't unjealoused into the town, to hear what's to be done wi' the minister; but I maun tak it back the night, and maybe we'll fa' in thegither again when I hae done my errand."

With that he parted from me, and giving the horse a touch with his whip, drove it along towards the guard-house, whistling like a blithe country lad that had no care.

As soon as he had so left me I went back to Mrs Aird, and providing myself with what money I had in the house, I went to a shop and bought certain articles of apparel, which having made up into a bundle, I requested, the better to disguise my intent, the merchant to carry it himself to Robin Brown the Ayr carrier's cart, and give it to the lad who was with it, to take to Joseph Gilhaize, – a thing easy to be done, both the horse and cart being well known in those days to the chief merchants then in Glasgow.

When I had done this, I went to the bridge, and leaning over it, looked into the peaceful flowing tide, and there waited for nearly an hour before I saw my son returning; and when at last he came, I could perceive, as he was approaching, that he did not wish I should speak to him, while at the same time he edged towards me, and in passing, said as it were to himself, "The bundle's safe, and he's for Edinburgh;" by which I knew that the apparel I had bought for him was in his hands, and that he had learnt Mr Cargill was to be sent to Edinburgh.

This latter circumstance, however, opened to me a new light with respect to the Cameronians, and I guessed that they had friends in the town with whom they were in secret correspondence. But, alas! the espionage was not all on their part, as I very soon was taught to know by experience.

Though the interviews with Joseph my son passed, as I have herein narrated, they had not escaped observance. For some time before, though I was seen but as I was, an invalid man, somewhat unsettled in his mind, there were persons who marvelled wherefore it was that I dwelt in such sequestration with Mrs Aird; and their marvelling set the espial of the prelacy upon me. And it so fell out that some of those evil persons, who, for hire or malice, had made themselves the beagles of the persecutors, happened to notice the manner in which my son came up to me when he entered the city driving Robert Brown's cart, and they jealoused somewhat of the truth.

They followed him unsuspected, and saw in what manner he mingled with the crowd; and they traced him returning out of the town with seemingly no other cause for having come into it, than to receive the little store of apparel that I had provided for him. This was ground enough to justify any molestation against us, and accordingly the same night I was arrested, and carried next morning to Edinburgh. The cruel officers would have forced me to walk with the soldiers, but every one who beheld my pale face and emaciated frame, cried out against it, and a cart was allowed to me.

On reaching Edinburgh, I was placed in the tolbooth, where many other sufferers for the cause of the Gospel were then lying. It was a foul and an unwholesome den: many of the guiltless inmates were so wasted that they were rather like frightful effigies of death than living men. Their skins were yellow, and their hands were roped and warpt with veins and sinews in a manner very awful to see. Their eyes were vivid with a strange distemperature, and there was a charnel-house anatomy in the melancholy with which they welcomed a new brother in affliction, that made me feel, when I entered among them, as if I had come into the dark abode of spectres, and manes, and dismal shadows.

The prison was crowded over-much, and though life was to many not worth the care of preservation, they yet esteemed it as the gift of their Maker, and as such considered it their duty to prolong for His sake. It was, therefore, a rule with them to stand in successive bands at the windows, in order that they might taste of the living air from without; and knowing from dismal experience, that those who came in the last suffered at first more than those who were before, it was a charitable self-denial among them to allow to such a longer period of the window, their only solace.

Thus it was that on the morning of the third day after I had been immured in that doleful place, I was standing with several others behind a party of those who were in possession of the enjoyment, in order that we might take their places when the hour expired; and while we were thus awaiting in patience the tedious elapse of the weary moments, a noise was heard in the streets, as of the approach of a multitude.

There was something in the coming sound of that tumult unlike the noise of any other multitude; – ever and anon a feeble shouting, and then the roll of a drum; but the general sough was a murmur of horror followed by a rushing as if the people were scared by some dreadful sight.

The noise grew louder and nearer, and hoarse bursts of aversion and anger, mingled with lamentations, were distinctly heard. Every one in the prison pressed to the window, wondering what hideous procession could occasion the expression of such contrarious feelings in the populace, and all eager to catch a glimpse of the dismal pageant, expecting that it was some devoted victim, who, according to the practice of the time, was treated as a sentenced criminal, even as he was conveyed to his trial.

"What do you see?" said I to one of the prisoners, who clung to the bars of iron with which the window near where I stood was grated, and who thereby saw farther down the street.

"I can see but the crowd coming," said he, "and every one is looking as if he grewed at something not yet in sight."

At that moment, and while he was speaking, there was a sudden silence in the street.

"What has happened?" said one of the sufferers near me: my heart beat so wildly that I would not myself inquire.

"They have stopped," was the answer; "but now they come. I see the magistrates. Their guard is before them, – the provost is first – they are coming two and two – and they look very sorrowful."

"Are there but the magistrates?" said I, making an effort to press in closer to the window.

"Aye, now it is at hand," said the man who was clinging to the grating of the window. "The soldiers are marching on each side – I see the prisoners; – their hands are tied behind, ilk loaded wi' a goad of iron – they are bareheaded – ane – twa – three – four – five – they are five fatherly-looking men."

"They are Cameronians," said I, somewhat released, I know not wherefore, unless it was because he spoke of no youth being among them.

"Hush!" said he, "here is another – He is on horseback – I see the horse's head – Oh! the sufferer is an old grey-headed minister – his head is uncovered – he is placed with his face to the horse's tail – his hands are tied, and his feet are fastened with a rope beneath the horse's belly. – Hush! they are passing under the window."

At that moment a shriek of horror rose from all then looking out, and every one recoiled from the window. In the same instant a bloody head on a halbert was held up to us. – I looked – I saw the ghastly features, and I would have kissed those lifeless lips; for, O! they were my son's.

CHAPTER LXXXI

I had laid that son, my only son, whom I so loved, on the altar of the Covenant, an offering unto the Lord; but still I did hope that maybe it would be according to the mercy of wisdom that He would provide a lamb in the bush for the sacrifice; and when the stripling had parted from me, I often felt as the mother feels when the milk of love is in her bosom, and her babe no longer there. I shall not, however, here relate how my soul was wounded at yon sight, nor ask the courteous reader to conceive with what agony I exclaimed, "Wherefore was it, Lord, that I was commanded to do that unfruitful thing!" for in that very moment the cry of my failing faith was rebuked, and the mystery of the required sacrifice was brought into wonderful effect, manifesting that it was for no light purpose I had been so tried.

My fellow-sufferer, who hung by the bars of the prison-window, was, like the other witnesses, so shaken by the woful spectacle, that he suddenly jerked himself aside to avoid the sight, and by that action the weight of his body loosened the bar, so that when the pageantry of horrors had passed by, he felt it move in his grip, and he told us that surely Providence had an invisible hand in the bloody scene; for, by the loosening of that stancher, a mean was given whereby we might all escape. Accordingly it was agreed that as soon as the night closed over the world, we should join our strengths together to bend the bar from its socket in the lintel.

And then it was I told them that what they had seen was the last relic of my martyred family; and we made ourselves wroth with the recital of our several wrongs; for all there had endured the scourge of the persecutors; and we took each other by the hand, and swore a dreadful oath, never to desist in our endeavours till we had wrenched the sceptre from the tyrannical grasp of the Stuarts, and broken it into pieces for ever; and we burst into a wild strain of complaint and clamour, calling on the blood of our murdered friends to mount, with our cries, to the gates of Heaven; and we sang, as it were, with the voices of the angry waters and the winds, the hundred and ninth psalm; and at the end of every verse we joined our hands, crying, "Upon Charles and James Stuart, and all their guilty line, O Lord, let it be done;" and a vast multitude gathered around the prison, and the lamentations of many without was a chorus in unison with the dismal song of our vengeance and despair.

At last the shadows of the twilight began to darken in the town, and the lights of the windows were to us as the courses of the stars of that sky which, from our prison chamber, could not be seen. We watched their progress, from the earliest yellow glimmering of the lamp in the darksome wynd, till the last little twinkling light in the dwelling of the widow that sits and sighs companionless with her distaff in the summits of the city. And we continued our vigil till they were all one by one extinguished, save only the candles at the bedsides of the dying. Then we twined a portion of our clothes into a rope, and, having fastened it to the iron bar, soon drew it from its place in the stone; but just as we were preparing to take it in, by some accident it fell into the street.

The panic which this caused prevented us from attempting any thing more at that time; for a sentinel walked his rounds on the outside of the tolbooth, and we could not but think he must have heard the noise. A sullen despair in consequence entered into many of our hearts, and we continued for the remainder of the night silent.

But though others were then shaken in their faith, mine was now confident. I saw, by what had happened in the moment of my remonstrance, that there was some great deliverance in reservation; so I sat apart by myself, and I spent the night in inward thanksgiving for what had been already done. Nor was this confidence long without its reward.

In the morning a brother of one of my fellow-sufferers coming to condole with him, it being generally reported that we were all doomed to die, he happened to see the bar lying on the street, and, taking it up, hid it till he had gone into a shop and provided himself with a cord. He then hastened to us, gave us the cord, and making what speed he could, brought the iron in his plaid; and, we having lowered the string from the window, he fastened the bar to it, and we drew it up undiscovered, and reset it in its place, by which the defect could not be seen by any one, not even from the street.

That morning, by the providence which was visible in this, became, in our prison, a season indeed of light and gratulation; and the day passed with us as a Sabbath to our spirits. The anvils of Fear were hushed, and the shuttles in the looms of Anxiety were at rest, while Hope again walked abroad in those sunny fields where, amidst vernal blossoms and shining dews, she expatiates on the delights of the flowing cluster and the ripened fruit.

The young man, who had been so guided to find the bar of iron, concerted with another friend of his to be in readiness at night on a signal from us, to master the sentinel. And at the time appointed they did so; and it happened that the soldier was the same humane Englisher, Jack Windsor, who had allowed me to escape at Kilmarnock, and he not only remained silent, but even when relieved from his post, said nothing; so that, to the number of more than twenty, we lowered ourselves into the street and escaped.

But the city gates at that hour being shut, there was no egress from the town, and many of us knew not where to hide ourselves till the morning. Such was my condition; and wandering up and down for some time, at last I turned into the Blackfriars-wynd, where I saw a light in a window: on looking around I beheld, by that light, engraven on the lintel of an opposite door, "In the Lord is my Hope."

Heartened by the singular providence that was so manifest in that cheering text, I went to the door and knocked, and a maiden answered to the knocking.

I told her what I was, and whence I had come, and entreated her to have compassion, and shelter me for the night.

"Alas!" said she, "what can hae sent you here, for this is a bishop's house?"

I was astounded to hear that I had been so led into the lion's den; but I saw pity in the countenance of the damsel, and I told her that I was the father of the poor youth whose head had been carried by the executioner through the town the day before, and that I could not but believe Providence had sent me thither; for surely no one would ever think of searching for me in a bishop's house.

Greatly moved by what I said, she bade me softly follow her, and she led me to a solitary and ruinous chamber. She then retired, but presently returned with some refreshment, which having placed on an old chest, she bade God be with me, and went away.

With a spirit of inexpressible admiration and thanksgiving I partook of that repast, and then laying myself down on the bare floor, was blessed with the enjoyment of a downy sleep.