Chapter VIII: Part 8

"But he'll see the sun to-morrow, and will sleep in his own bed to-morrow night too; that he shall. Now eat, mother, for you will be hungry; and see you this!" as she took from her pocket a very tiny bottle, which would hold somewhere about a glass.

"Take that," filling out a little whisky.

"Oh dear, dear bairn, where learnt ye a' that witchery?" said the mother, looking at her.

But the sly look, sometimes without a trace of laughter in her face, was the only answer.

And now they are stretched in bed in each other's arms; but it was a restless night for both. And how different the manifestations of the restlessness! The groans of the elder for the fate of her only boy, now suspended on the scales of justice--one branch of the balance to be lopt off by Nemesis, and the other left with a noose in the string whereon to hang that erring, yet still beloved son; hysterical laughs from Jeannie in her dreams, as she saw herself undo the kench, and Charlie let out, clapping his hands, and praying too, and kissing Jeannie, and other fantastic tricks of fancy in her own domain, unburdened with heavy clay which soils and presses upon her wings and binds her to earth, and to these monstrous likenesses of things, which she says are all a lying nature under the bonds of a blind fate, from where she cannot get free, even though she screams of murder and oppression and cruelty, and all the ills that earth-born flesh inherits from the first man.

Yet, for all these deductions from the sleep they needed, Jeannie was up in the morning early, infusing tea for herself and mother, muttering, as she whisked about,

"No breakfast for him made by me, who love him so dearly; but in this very house, ay, this night, he will have supper; and such a supper!"

In the midst of these scenes in the little room, a knock came to the door. It was a policeman, to say that she and her mother must be up to the office by ten.

"And shall we not?" said Jeannie, laughing; "wouldn't I have been there at any rate?"

Then, a little after, came the stern Henderson, still ignorant of who robbed him. Mrs. S--th got up trembling, and looking at him with terror, so dark he appeared.

"Where is Charles?" he said.

"We don't know," said Jeannie, turning a side-glance at her mother. It was true she hated her uncle mortally, for the reason that, though he was to an extent generous to them, he was harsh too, and left them often poorly off, when from his wealth, which he concealed, he might have made them happy; and then how could they help the conduct of the son whose earnings ought to have relieved the uncle of even his small advances?

But though Jeannie hated the curmudgeon, who was, if he could, to hang her brother--worth to her all the world and a bit of heaven--the mother saw some change in the girl's conduct towards her uncle. Though pure as snow, she flew to him and hugged him with the art of one of the denizens of rougedom, and kissed him, and all the time was acting some by-play with her nimble fingers.

"Where is your box, you naughty uncle? Doesn't my mother like her eyes opened in the morning? Ah, here it is."

And getting the box, she carried it to her mother, who was still more surprised; for she never had got a pinch from Mr. Henderson nor any one, though she sometimes, for her breathing, took a draught of a pipe at night.

"It is empty, you witch," cried Henderson.

"Ah! then, my mother will not get her eyes opened." And she returned it into his pocket with these said subtle fingers.

The mother got dressed, and took a cup of Jeannie's tea, and in a few minutes they were all on their way to the police office. They found Captain Stewart in his room, and along with him the procurator-fiscal.

"Come away, Mr. Henderson; this is a bad business," said Stewart.

"The villain!" cried Henderson; "I hope he will hang for it."

"Ay, if guilty though, only," replied the captain.

"Would you know the man?" said the fiscal.

"No, he had a napkin over his face; but I could guess something from his size and voice."

"He admits the robbery," said Stewart; "but he has an absurd qualification about a frolic, which yet, I am bound to say, is supported by his accomplices."

"Then the money, five pounds, has not been got," said the fiscal. "This is a great want; for without it, I don't see what we can make of the case."

"Money here or money there, I've lost it anyhow; and if he isn't hanged, I'll not be pleased."

"Was there any but one man engaged in the affair?"

"Just one, and plenty."

"He had a gun?"

"Yes."

"Would you know it?"

"No. I was, to say the truth, too frightened to examine the instrument that was to shoot me."

"Then we have nothing but the admission and the testimony of the accomplices, who say it was a frolic," said Stewart.

"No frolic to me," cried Henderson. "Why then didn't they return the money?"

"They say they called and ran after you, and that you would not wait to get it back."

"Then why didn't they produce it to you?" said Henderson. "The money is appropriated."

"A circumstance," said the fiscal, "in itself sufficient to rebut the frolic. Yes, the strength of the case is there."

"So I thought," growled the man.

"You wasn't in liquor?"

"No."

"Are you ever?"

"I don't deny that in town I take a glass, but seldom so much as to affect my walking; never so much as make me dream I was robbed of money, and that too money gone from my pocket."

"Where do you carry your money?"

"In my waistcoat pocket. Sometimes I have carried a valuable bill home in my snuff-mull, when it was empty by chance."

"Where had you the five pounds?"

"I am not sure, but I think in my left waistcoat pocket."

"And you gave it on demand? It was not rifled from you?"

"I thrust it into the villain's hand, and ran."

"Well, we must confront you with the supposed robber," said the captain. "But you seem to be in choler, and I caution you against a precipitate judgment. You may naturally think the admission of the young men enough, and that may make you see what perhaps may not be to be seen. I confess the admission of _three_ to be more than the law wants or wishes; yet there are peculiarities in this case that take it out of the general rules." Stewart then nodded to an officer, who went out and returned.

"There stands the prisoner."

"Charles S----th!" ejaculated the uncle: "my own nephew! execrable villain!"

And he looked at the youth with bated breath and fiery eyes.

There was silence for a few minutes. The officials looked pitiful. The mother hung down her head; and little Jeannie leered significantly, while she took the strings of her bonnet, tied them, undid them again, and flung away the ends till they went round her neck; nay, the playful minx was utterly dead to the condition of her brother who stood there, ashamed to look any one in the face, if he was not rather like an exhumed corpse; and we would not be far out if we said that she even laughed as she saw the curmudgeon staring like an angry mastiff at the brother she loved so well. But then, was she not an eccentric thing, driven hither and thither by vagrant impulses, and with thoughts in her head which nobody could understand?

"Was this the man who robbed you, Mr. Henderson?"

"Yes, the very man; now when I recollect. Stay, was there any handkerchief found on him?"

"Yes; that," said an officer, producing a red silk handkerchief.

"Why, I gave him that," said Mr. Henderson. "It cost me 4s. 6d.; and it was that he had over his face when he robbed me of my hard-earned money!"

"It is true," said Charles; "and sorry am I for the frolic, which my companions forced me into."

"A frolic with five pounds at its credit," said Mr. Henderson. "Where is the money, sir?"

"Ah! I know, dear uncle," cried the watchful Jeannie, in a piercing treble of the clearest silver.

All eyes were turned on Jeannie.

"Then where is it, girl?"

"I saw him put it in his snuff-mull last night when he was at mother's."

"Examine your box, Mr. Henderson."

The man growled, took out the box, and there was the five pounds. He looked at Jeannie as if he would have devoured her with his nose at a single pinch.

"Was Mr. Henderson sober, Miss S----th?"

"No."

"Was he drunk?"

"No. Only he couldn't stand scarcely, though he could walk; and he called mother Jeannie, and me Peggy, and he said 'twas a shame in us to burn two candles at his expense, when one was enough."

"_Saved by a pinch_," cried Captain Stewart.

"Mr. Henderson," said the fiscal, "the case is done, and would never have come here if your nose had happened last night to be as itchy as your hand. The prisoner is discharged."

And no sooner had the words been uttered than Jeannie flew to her brother, hung round his neck, kissed him, blubbered and played such antics that the fiscal could not refrain searching for his handkerchief. He found it too; but just as if this article were no part of his official property, he returned it to his pocket; and then, as he saw Charles leaning on his mother's breast, and making more noise with his heart and lungs than he could have done if he had been hanged, he resolved, after due deliberation, to let the "hanging drop" have its own way in sticking on the top of his cheek, and determined not to fall for all his jerking.

"BARBADOES, _15th July_ 18--.

"MY DEAREST LITTLE JEANNIE,--I am at length settled the manager of a great sugar factory, with £400 a year. Tell your mother I will write her by next post; and all I can say meantime is, that Messrs. Coutts and Co. will pay her £100 a year, half-yearly, till I return to keep you, for saving me from the gallows. Accept the offer of the old man. He is worth £500 a year; and you're just the little winged spirit that will keep up a fire of life in a good heart only a little out of use.

"_P.S._--Tell uncle that I will send him five pounds of snuff, by next ship, in return for the five pounds I took out of his box on that eventful night, which was the beginning of my reformation.

"Tell Mrs. S----k and Mrs. W----pe that their sons arrived at Jamaica; but, poor fellows, they are both dead.

"The same vessel that carries the snuff will convey to mother a hogshead of sugar and a puncheon of rum. So that at night, in place of the tiny phial which held a glass, and which you used to draw out of your pocket so slily when mother was weakly, you may now mix for her a tumbler of rum-punch; and if you don't take some too, I'll send you no more. But, hark ye, Jeannie, don't give uncle a _drop_, though he tried to give me one that, I fear, would have made my head, like yours, a little giddy. Adieu, dear little Ariel."

THE PROCRASTINATOR.

Being overtaken by a shower in Kensington Gardens, I sought shelter in one of the alcoves near the palace. I was scarce seated, when the storm burst with all its fury; and I observed an old fellow, who had stood loitering till the hurricane whistled round his ears, making towards me, as rapidly as his apparently palsied limbs would permit. Upon his nearer approach, he appeared rather to have suffered from infirmity than years. He wore a brownish-black coat, or rather shell, which, from its dimensions, had never been intended for the wearer; and his inexpressibles were truly inexpressible. "So," said I, as he seated himself on the bench, and shook the rain from his old broad-brimmed hat, "you see, old boy, '_Procrastination is the thief of time_;' the clouds gave you a hint of what was coming, but you seemed not to take it." "It is," replied he, eagerly. "Doctor Young is in the right. Procrastination has been my curse since I was in leading-strings. It has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. It has ever been my besetting sin--my companion in prosperity and adversity; and I have slept upon it, like Samson on the lap of Delilah, till it has shorn my locks and deprived me of my strength. It has been to me a witch, a manslayer, and a murderer; and when I would have shaken it off in wrath and in disgust, I found I was no longer master of my own actions and my own house. It had brought around me a host of its blood relations--its sisters and its cousins-german--to fatten on my weakness, and haunt me to the grave; so that when I tore myself from the embrace of one, it was only to be intercepted by another. You are young, sir, and a stranger to me; but its effects upon me and my history--the history of a poor paralytic shoemaker--if you have patience to hear, may serve as a beacon to you in your voyage through life."

Upon expressing my assent to his proposal--for the fluency and fervency of his manner had at once riveted my attention and excited curiosity--he continued:--

"I was born without a fortune, as many people are. When about five years of age, I was sent to a parish school in Roxburghshire, and procrastination went with me. Being possessed of a tolerable memory, I was not more deficient than my schoolfellows; but the task which they had studied the previous evening was by me seldom looked at till the following morning, and my seat was the last to be occupied of any other on the form. My lessons were committed to memory by a few hurried glances, and repeated with a faltering rapidity, which not unfrequently puzzled the ear of the teacher to follow me. But what was thus hastily learned, was as suddenly forgotten. They were mere surface impressions, each obliterated by the succeeding. And though I had run over a tolerable general education, I left school but little wiser than when I entered it.

"My parents--peace to their memory!"--here the old fellow looked most feelingly, and a tear of filial recollection glistened in his eyes: it added a dignity to the recital of his weakness, and I almost reverenced him--"My parents," continued he, "had no ambition to see me rise higher in society than an honest tradesman; and at thirteen I was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Yes, sir, I was--I am a shoemaker; and but for my curse--my malady--had been an ornament to my profession. I have measured the foot of a princess, sir; I have made slippers to his Majesty!" Here his tongue acquired new vigour from the idea of his own importance. "Yes, sir, I have made slippers to his Majesty; yet I am an unlucky--I am a bewitched--I am a ruined man. But to proceed with my history. During the first year of my apprenticeship, I acted in the capacity of errand boy; and, as such, had to run upon many an unpleasant message--sometimes to ask money, frequently to borrow it. Now, sir, I am also a _bashful_ man, and, as I was saying, _bashfulness_ is one of the blood relations which procrastination has fastened upon me. While acting in my last-mentioned capacity, I have gone to the house, gazed at every window, passed it and repassed it, placed my hand upon the rapper, withdrawn it, passed it and repassed it again, stood hesitating and consulting with myself, then resolved to defer it till the next day, and finally returned to my master, not with a direct lie, but a broad _equivocation_; and this was another of the cousins-german which procrastination introduced to my acquaintance.

"In the third year of my servitude, I became fond of reading; was esteemed a quick workman; and, having no desire for money beyond what was necessary to supply my wants, I gave unrestricted indulgence to my new passion. We had each an allotted quantity of work to perform weekly. Conscious of being able to complete it in half the time, and having yielded myself solely to my ruinous propensity to delay, I seldom did anything before the Thursday; and the remaining days were spent in hurry, bustle, and confusion. Occasionally I overrated my abilities--my task was unfinished, and I was compelled to count a _dead horse_. Week after week this grew upon me, till I was so firmly saddled, that, until the expiration of my apprenticeship, I was never completely freed from it. This was another of my curse's handmaidens."

Here he turned to me with a look of seriousness, and said, "Beware, young man, how you trust to your own strength and your own talents; for however noble it may be to do so, let it be in the open field, before you are driven into a corner, where your arms may come in contact with the thorns and the angles of the hedges.

"About this time, too, I fell in love--yes, _fell_ in love; for I just beheld the fair object, and I was a dead man, or a new man, or anything you will. Frequently as I have looked and acted like a fool, I believe I never did so so strikingly as at that moment. She was a beautiful girl--a very angel of light--about five feet three inches high, and my own age. Heaven knows how I ever had courage to declare my passion; for I put it off day after day, and week after week, always preparing a new speech against the next time of meeting her, until three or four rivals stepped forward before me. At length I did speak, and never was love more clumsily declared. I told her in three words; then looked to the ground, and again in her face most pitifully. She received my addresses just as saucily as a pretty girl could do. But it were useless to go over our courtship; it was the only happy period of my existence, and every succeeding day has been misery. Matters were eventually brought to a bearing, and the fatal day of final felicity appointed. I was yet young, and my love possessed all the madness of a first passion. She not only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else: it burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native indolence yet more indolent. However, the day came (and a bitter stormy day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to pass away in a fortnight.

"About twelve months after our marriage, Heaven (as authors say) blest our loves with a son and, I had almost said, heir. Deplorable patrimony!--heir of his mother's features--the sacrifice of his father's weakness." Kean could not have touched this last burst. The father, the miserable man, parental affection, agony, remorse, repentance, were expressed in a moment.

A tear was hurrying down his withered cheek as he dashed it away with his dripping sleeve. "I am a weak old fool," said he, endeavouring to smile; for there was a volatile gaiety in his disposition, which his sorrows had subdued, but not extinguished. "Yet, my boy! my poor dear Willie!--I shall never--no, I shall never see him again!" Here he again wept; and had nature not denied me that luxury, I should have wept too, for the sake of company. After a pause, he again proceeded:--

"After the birth of my child, came the baptism. I had no conscientious objection to the tenets of the Established Church of my country; but I belonged to no religious community. I had never thought of it as an obligation beyond that of custom, and deferred it from year to year, till I felt ashamed to 'go forward' on account of my age. My wife was a Cameronian; and to them, though I knew nothing of their principles, I had an aversion. But for her to hold up the child while I was in the place, was worse than heathenism--was unheard-of in the parish. The nearest Episcopal chapel was at Kelso, a distance of ten miles. The child still remained unbaptized. 'It hasna a name yet,' said the ignorant meddlers, who had no higher idea of the ordinance. It was a source of much uneasiness to my wife, and gave rise to some family quarrelling. Months succeeded weeks, and eventually the child was carried to the Episcopal church. This choked up all the slander of the town, and directed it into one channel upon my devoted head. Some said I 'wasna sound,' and all agreed I 'was nae better than I should be,' while the zealous clergyman came to my father, expressing his fears that 'his son was in a bad way.' For this, too, am I indebted to procrastination. I thus became a martyr to supposed opinions, of which I was ignorant; and such was the unchristian bigotry of my neighbours, that, deeming it sinful to employ one whom they considered little other than a pagan, about five years after my marriage I was compelled to remove with my family to London.

"We were at this period what tradesmen term _miserably hard up_. Having sold off our little stock of furniture, after discharging a few debts which were unavoidably contracted, a balance of rather less than two pounds remained; and upon this, my wife, my child, and myself were to travel a distance of three hundred and fifty miles. I will not go over the journey: we performed it on foot in twenty days; and, including lodging, our daily expense amounted to one shilling and eightpence; so that, on entering the metropolis, all we possessed was five shillings and a few pence. It was the dead of winter, and nearly dark, when we were passing down St. John Street, Clerkenwell. I was benumbed, my wife was fainting, and our poor child was blue and speechless. We entered a public-house near Smithfield, where two pints of warm porter and ginger, with a crust of bread and cheese, operated as partial restoratives. The noisy scene of butchers, drovers, and coal-heavers was new to me. My child was afraid, my wife uncomfortable, and I, a gaping observer, forgetful of my own situation. My boy pulled my coat, and said, 'Come, father;' my wife jogged my elbow, and reminded me of a lodging; but my old reply, '_Stop a little_,' was my ninety and nine times repeated answer. Frequently the landlord made a long neck over the table, gauging the contents of our tardily emptied pint; and, as the watchman was calling 'Past eleven,' finally took it away, and bade us 'bundle off.' Now I arose, feeling at once the pride of my spirit and the poorness of my purse, vowing never to darken his door again, should I remain in London a hundred years.

"On reaching the street, I inquired at a half-grown boy where we might obtain a lodging; and after causing me to inquire twice or thrice--'I no ken, Sawney--haud awa' north,' said the brat, sarcastically imitating my accent. I next inquired of a watchman, who said there was no place upon his beat; but _beat_ was Gaelic to me; and I repeated my inquiry to another, who directed me towards the hells of Saffron Hill. At a third, I requested to be informed the way, who, after abusing me for seeking lodgings at such an hour, said he had seen me in the town six hours before, and bade us go to the devil. A fourth inquired if we had any money, took us to the bar of a public-house, called for a quartern of gin, drank our healths, asked if we could obtain a bed, which being answered in the negative, he hurried to the door, bawling 'Half-past eleven,' and left me to pay for the liquor. On reaching Saffron Hill, it was in an Irish uproar: policemen, thieves, prostitutes, and Israelites were brawling in a satanic mass of iniquity; blood and murder was the order of the night. My child screamed, my wife clung to my arm; she would not, she durst not, sleep in such a place. To be brief: we had to wander in the streets till the morning; and I believe that night, aided by a broken heart, was the forerunner of her death. It was the first time I had been compelled to walk trembling for a night without shelter, or to sit frozen on a threshold; and this, too, I owe to procrastination.

"For a time we rented a miserable garret, without furniture or fixture, at a shilling weekly, which was paid in advance. I had delayed making application for employment till our last sixpence was spent. We had passed a day without food; my child appeared dying; my wife said nothing, but she gazed upon her dear boy, and shook her head with an expression that wrung me to the soul. I rushed out almost in madness, and, in a state of unconsciousness, hurried from shop to shop in agitation and in misery. It was vain; appearances were against me. I was broken down and dejected, and my state of mind and manner appeared a compound of the maniac and the blackguard. At night I was compelled to return to the suffering victims of my propensity, penniless and unsuccessful. It was a dreadful and a sleepless night with us all; or if I did slumber upon the hard floor for a moment (for we had neither seat nor covering), it was to startle at the cries of my child wailing for hunger, or the smothered sighs of my unhappy partner. Again and again I almost thought them the voice of the Judge, saying, 'Depart from me, ye cursed.'

"I again hurried out with daybreak, for I was wretched, and resumed my inquiries; but night came, and I again returned equally successful. The yearnings of my child were now terrible, and the streaming eyes of his fond mother, as she pressed his head with her cold hand upon her lap, alone distinguished her from death. The pains of hunger in myself were becoming insupportable; my teeth gnashed against each other, and worms seemed gnawing my heartstrings. At this moment, my dear wife looked me in the face, and, stretching her hand to me, said, 'Farewell, my love, in a few hours I and our dear child shall be at rest! Oh! hunger, hunger!' I could stand no more. Reason forsook me. I could have died for them; but I could not beg. We had nothing to pledge. Our united wearing apparel would not have brought a shilling. My wife had a pair of pocket Bibles (I had once given them in a present): my eyes fell upon them--I snatched them up unobserved--rushed from the house, and--Oh heaven! let the cause forgive the act--pawned them for eighteenpence. It saved our lives, it obtained employment, and for a few weeks appeared to overcome my curse.

"I am afraid I grow tedious with particulars, sir; it is an old man's fault--though I am not old either; I am scarce fifty-five. After being three years in London, I was appointed foreman of an extensive establishment in the Strand. I remained in this situation about four years. It was one of respectability and trust, demanding, hourly, a vigilant and undivided attention. To another, it might have been attended with honour and profit; but to me it terminated in disgrace. Amongst other duties, I had the payment of the journeymen, and the giving out of the work. They being numerous, and their demands frequent, it would have required a clerk for the proper discharge of that duty alone. I delayed entering at the moment in my books the materials and cash given to each, until they, multiplying upon my hands, and begetting a consequent confusion, it became impossible for me to make their entry with certainty or correctness. The workmen were not slow in discovering this, and not a few of the more profligate improved upon it to their advantage. Thus I frequently found it impossible to make both ends of my account meet; and in repeated instances, where the week's expenditure exceeded the general average, though satisfied in my own mind of its accuracy, from my inability to state the particulars, in order to conceal my infirmity, I have accounted for the overplus from my own pocket. Matters went on in this way for a considerable time. You will admit I was rendered feelingly sensible of my error, and I resolved to correct it. But my resolutions were always made of paper; they were like a complaisant debtor--full of promises, praying for grace, and dexterously evading performance. Thus, day after day, I deferred the adoption of my new system to a future period. For, sir, you must be aware there is a pleasure in procrastination, of a nature the most alluring and destructive; but it is a pleasure purchased by the sacrifice of judgment: in its nature and results it resembles the happiness of the drunkard; for, in exact ratio as our spirits are raised above their proper level, in the same proportion, when the ardent effects have evaporated, they sink beneath that level.

"I was now too proud to work as a mere journeyman, and I commenced business for myself; but I began without capital, and a gourd of sorrow hung over me, while I stood upon sand. I had some credit; but, as my bills became payable, I ever found I had put off, till the very day they became due, the means of liquidating them; then had I to run and borrow five pounds from one, and five shillings from another, urged by despair, from a hundred quarters. My creditors grew clamorous; my wife upbraided me; I flew to the bottle--to the bottle!" he repeated; "and my ruin was complete--my family, business, everything, was neglected. Bills of Middlesex were served on me, declarations filed; I surrendered myself, and was locked up in Whitecross Street. It is a horrid place; the Fleet is a palace to it; the Bench, paradise! But, sir, I will draw my painful story to a close. During my imprisonment my wife died--died, not by my hands, but from the work of them! She was laid in a strange grave, and strangers laid her head in the dust, while I lay a prisoner in the city where she was buried. My boy--my poor Willie--who had been always neglected, was left without father and without mother! Sir! sir! my boy was left without food! He forsook visiting me in the prison; I heard he had turned the associate of thieves; and from that period five years have passed, and I have obtained no trace of him. But it is my doing--my poor Willie!"

Here the victim of procrastination finished his narrative. The storm had passed away, and the sun again shone out. The man had interested me, and we left the gardens together. I mentioned that I had to go into the city; he said he had business there also, and asked to accompany me. I could not refuse him. From the door by which we left the gardens, our route lay by way of Oxford Street. As we proceeded down Holborn, the church bell of St. Sepulchre's began to toll; and the crowd, collected round the top of Newgate Street, indicated an execution. As we approached the place, the criminal was brought forth. He was a young man about nineteen years of age, and had been found guilty of an aggravated case of housebreaking. As the unhappy being turned round to look upon the spectators, my companion gave a convulsive shriek, and, springing from my side, exclaimed, "Righteous Heaven! my Willie! my murdered Willie!" He had proceeded but a few paces, when he fell with his face upon the ground. In the wretched criminal he discovered his lost, his only son. The miserable old man was conveyed, in a state of insensibility, to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where I visited him the next day: he seemed to suffer much, and in a few hours he died with a shudder, and the word _procrastination_ on his tongue.

THE TEN OF DIAMONDS.

At length I reached the Moated Grange, on a visit to my friend Graeme. But since I am to speak a good deal of this place, I may as well explain that it was misnamed. There was no moat, nor had there been for a hundred years; but round the old pile--hoary, and shrivelled, and palsied enough, in all conscience, for delighting the mole-eye of any antiquarian hunks--- there was a visible trace of the old ditch in a hollow covered with green sward going all round the house, which hollow was the only place clear of trees. And these trees! They stood for a mile round, like an army of giants seventy feet high, all intent, it would seem, upon choking the poor old pile, throwing their big arms over the hollow, swinging them to and fro, and dashing their points against the panes as the wind listed. It would come by-and-by to be a hard task for the stone and lime victim to hold its place, with its sinews of run mortar, against these tyrants of the wood. And then they were as full of noises as Babel itself--noises a thousand times more heterogeneous--croaking, chirping, screeching, cawing, whistling, billing, cooing, cuckooing. "What a place to live in!" I thought, fresh as I was from town, "where, if there are noises, one knows something of their meaning--maledictory, yea, devilish as it often is, expressive of the passions of men which will never sleep. But these! what could one make of such a _tintamarre_? Nothing but the reflection--that is, if you happen to be a philosopher, which, thank God, I am not--that not one note of all this rural oratorio is without its intention; and thus we always satisfy ourselves. But when we run the matter up a little further, we find it a very small affair: two responses, one to each of two chords vibrating for ever and ever throughout all nature--pleasure and pain, pain and pleasure, turn by turn--the last pain being death!"

"How can you live here, Graeme?" I said, as we stood under the old porch, looking out, or rather having our look blocked up by the thickness, and our ears deaved by the eternal screeching and cawing of five thousand crows overhead.

"There's gloom everywhere where man is," he replied, "and screeching owls in every brain. You can't get quit." Then, lowering his voice, "I am haunted, and yet live here in this Moated Grange! The difference is this: in the town the gaslight and eternal clatter distract a man like me who is plagued from within; here I find some concord between the inside and the out, only the owls in the inside are more grotesque and horrible."

"Well, Graeme," said I, "it is needless to disguise what brought me here. The secret is out. The choke-damp has got wind. If the idiot had not blown his brains out, it would have been nothing. You could have paid him back, and he might now have had both his money and his brains."

"Got wind!" cried he, clutching me by the breast of the coat with the fury of a highwayman or a spasmodic actor. "Did the villain Ruggieri tell you?"

"No."

"So far well," he added, taking a long pull with his lungs, as if he had got quit of an attack of asthma; "but though I may satisfy the widow, how am I to appease Heaven? Come," he added, again seizing me with a force in which there was a tremble, "I want to ease my mind. You are my oldest friend, and a load divided is more easily carried."

And leading the way into the parlour, where the fire had got into a fine red heat, and was sending a glare through the ruby and golden contents of several strangely-shaped bottles on the table, he threw himself on a chair on the one side, I taking one on the other. A few minutes of silence intervened.

"If it be as painful for you," he continued, "to hear a confession as it is for me to make it, you may help yourself to bear the infliction by pouring into your stomach some of that Burgundy. I will take none. I have fire enough in my brain already;" and he pushed the bottle to me.

"You were a bit of a blackleg yourself," he continued, as he threw himself back in the arm-chair, and compressed his chest with his folded arms till the blood seemed to mount to his face. "You were present at that game where I took the five thousand by a trick from Gourlay. You know, as a gambler yourself, that all the tribe are by constitution cheats. It is folly to speak of an honest gambler. The passion is a ten thousand times distilled selfishness, with no qualm of obligation to God or religion to keep it in check--only a little fear of that bugbear, society. Our club at the 'Red Lion' all knew this in our souls; but every one of us knew also that the moment he would be discovered cheating, he would be scorched with our hatred and contempt. He must leave our pure society on the instant--not of course that he was any worse than the rest of us, but only that he was unfortunate in being discovered. That night Gourlay and I were demons. We had baffled each other, and drank till our brains seethed, though our countenances and speech betrayed nothing but the extreme of coolness. He had won a thousand of me, and hounded me from post to pillar, offering to be cleared out by my _skill_, as he called it sneeringly. The fellow, in short, hated me, because the year before, at Baden-Baden, I had taken two thousand out of him, and would not give him his revenge."

"He must have thought you honest," said I; "otherwise he would not have thus badgered you to play."

"No; he had not the generosity to think me honest. I repeat, no gambler ever thinks another gambler honest, and he lies when he says so. He knew himself to be a rogue, and thought it diamond in the teeth of diamond;" and, pausing and meditating, he repeated the word, "diamond--diamond--diamond."

I looked at him in surprise. He continued to keep up the cuckoo sound, trying to laugh, and yet totally unable to accomplish even a cackle, as if some internal force clutched the diaphragm and mocked him, so that his efforts were reduced to a gurgling as in cynanche--like a dog choking with a rope round his craig, the sounds coming jerking out in barks, and dying away again in yelps and whines.

"You will know presently why that word produces these strange effects upon me," he at length contrived to be able to say. "Nor less the form of the figure as painted in these hell-books. It is blazoned everywhere. The devil wears it in fiery lines on his face as he hounds me a-nights through these thick woods. Yet I am not afraid of it--rather court it, as if I yearned for the burning pain of its red signature in, and in, and in to my brain, as far as thought goes."

"Have you got mad, Graeme?" I ejaculated. "What has the figure of a diamond, or of ten diamonds----"

"_Ten_, you would say?" he immediately cried, as he started up, and immediately threw himself down; "_the_ ten, if you dared. You are commissioned by the powers yonder--you, you, too, along with the others, including the devil."

"I have no wish to be in the same commission with that great personage," said I, with a very poor attempt to laugh, for I felt anxious about my friend. "I gave him up when I threw his books into the fire, and swore never more to touch the unhallowed thing."

I perceived that my attempt at humour increased his excitement. "Repeat the words," he cried. "Say 'the ten of diamonds' right out with open mouth, and repeat them a thousand times, so as to give me ear-proof that the powers yonder," pointing to the roof, "are against me."

At this moment the door of the parlour was opened by some timid hand.

"Come hither, my pretty Edith," he said, in a calmer voice, as a little cherub-looking child, with a head so like as if, after the fashion of Danäe's, it had been powdered by Jupiter with gold dust, and a pair of blue eyes, as if the said god, in making them, had tried to emulate the wing of the Halcyon in a human orb, and intended, moreover, the light thereof to calm the storm in those of her father.

And so it did, to a certain extent; for Edith got upon his knee, and, putting her arms round his neck, kept peering with those eyes into the very pupils of her father's, till the light of innocence, softening the rigid nerve, enabled them to regain somewhat of their natural lustre.

"What did Trott, the crazy girl who spaes fortunes, give you, Edith?" and coruscations began again to mix with the softer light.

"A card," replied the girl, as she undid her embrace, and, casting her head to a side, viewed him timidly.

"She has been frightened," thought I, "by some consequences resulting from the same question put at some former time."

"And what was the name of the card?" he continued.

But the girl was now on her guard. She hesitated, and struggled to get away.

"Tell this gentleman, then."

"The ten of diamonds," cried she; and no sooner were the words out than she fled, like a beam of light chased by the shadow of a tombstone.

"You see how it is," continued Graeme, getting into his former expression: "through this channel, this innocent medium, this creature the fruit of my loins, the idol of my heart, is the lightning of reproof hurled. A wandering idiot is prompted by the very inspiration of her imbecility to put into the hands of my child the emblem of my wickedness, that she in her love might place it before my eyes, there to develop the sin-print in the dark camera of my mind. No wonder she is alarmed at the mention of the words, for she read the horror produced in me when she held up what she called the pretty picture in my face. But, thank God! thank God!"----

And he fell for a moment into meditation.

"For what?" said I, as my wonder increased.

"That her mother, who is within a week of her confinement, knows nothing of this mystery."

I was silent. I might have said, "What mystery?" but I would only have irritated him.

"Rymer!"

I started. I was looking into the fire, with my ear altogether his, yet the strange mention of my name startled me.

"What could infamy--infamy, with just a beam of consciousness to tell it was infamy, and no more but that beam--think and feel to be worshipped by purity and love? I have shrunk from the embrace of that woman with a recoil equal to that produced by the enfolding of a snake."

"Though she knows not, and may never know, anything of this affair which has taken such a hold of you?" said I, rather as a speaking automaton, forced to vocabulate.

"The very reason why I recoil and shudder."

I had made a mistake--I would not risk another. "The man has got into the enfolding arms of mania," I thought, "and I must be chary."

"Will you keep in your remembrance," he continued, "the words uttered by Edith, and how she came by them? Will you?"

"Yes."

"Then take another glass; you will need it, and another too."

I obeyed not quite so mechanically. The Burgundy was better than the conversation, and I made the pleasure of the palate compensate for the pain of the ear.

He now drew out his watch, and, going to the window, withdrew the curtains. The shades of night had fallen. It looked black as Tartarus, contrasted with the light within.

"Come here!" he cried; and when I had somewhat reluctantly obeyed what I considered the request of one whose internal sense had got a jerk from some mad molecule out of its orbit in the brain--"Do you see anything?"

"Yes," said I--"a big black negative; but as for anything positive, you might as well look into a coal-pit and find what philosophers do in the wells of truth. There's nothing to be seen."

"No? Look there--there! See," pointing with his finger, and clutching me tremulously, "once more--the traces as vivid as ever! See!"

I verily did think I saw something luminous, but it quickly disappeared. "Oh, probably the reflection of a lantern," I said.

"Yes, a magic one," he replied sneeringly.

"I know of no more magical lantern than a man's head," I replied, a little disconcerted by his sneer. "Chemists say there's more phosphorus in the brain than anywhere else; and so I sometimes think."

He made no reply, but, seizing me by the coat, dragged me after him as he hurried out of the room, and making for a back door, led me out, bareheaded as I was, into the wood. The darkness had waxed to pitchiness, and the noises were hushed. The crows had gone to roost; and had it not been for some too-hoos of the jolly owl, sounding his horn as he rejoiced that the hated sun had gone to annoy other owls in the west, the silence would have been complete. But, in truth, I hate silence as well as darkness, and have no more sympathy with the followers of Pythagoras than I have with the triumph of the blind Roman who silenced the covey of pretty women, in the heat of their condolences for his blindness, by reminding them that they forgot he could feel in the dark. I thought more of the fire inside, and the bottle of Burgundy, on which I had made as yet only a small impression.

"If I want darkness, I can as well shut my eyes," said I peevishly, "and I would even have the advantage of some phosphorescent touches of the fancy."

"Will you see that with your eyes shut?" he exclaimed triumphantly, as he bent his body forward to an angle of forty-five, and pointed with his finger to an object clearly illumined, and exhibiting distinctly a large card, with ten red diamonds sharply traced upon it. The advantage he had got over me was lost in the rapture of his gaze; and he seemed to be charmed by the apparition, for he began to move slowly forward, still pointing his finger, and without apparently drawing a breath. Though a little taken by surprise for the instant, it was not easy for me to give up my practical wisdom, which, as a matter of course, pointed to a trick.

"You do see it, then?" said he.

"Surely," said I. "There is no mistake it is the figure of the ten of diamonds, probably stuck upon a turnip lantern."

"I did not ask you for a banter," he replied angrily. "I can draw my own conclusions. All I wanted was to satisfy myself that I was free from a monomaniacal illusion. We cannot both be mad; besides, you're a sceptic, and the testimony of a sceptic's eyes is better than the sneer of his tongue."

Still he proceeded, I following, and the apparition retreating. "I told you to remember what Edith said," he continued, as he still pointed his finger; "and I fancy you can never forget that before you. The two things are wide apart."

"And so are the two ends of a rope with which a man hangs himself," said I.

"It is gone!" cried my friend, without noticing my remark. "It has receded into that infinite from whence it was commissioned to earth to strike its lightning upon the eye of a falling, erring, miserable mortal."

"It is gone," said I; "and I am gone also--to finish my bottle of Burgundy, which I have as little doubt was commissioned from finitude to strike a little fire into the heart of another erring mortal, not at this moment perfectly happy."

And I made my way as quick as possible into the parlour, glad to get quit of the chill of the night air. Meanwhile, there appeared signs of some extraordinary movement in the other parts of the house, the nature of which Graeme probably ascertained as he came along the lobby, for I heard bustling and earnest conversation; and presently little Edith came stepping in beside me, with something very mysterious in her blue eyes, far too mysterious for being confided to loud words, and so a whisper told me that her mother was taken ill, and that Dr. Rogers had been sent for. This little bit of information carried more to my mind than it brought away from Edith's. I knew before that Mrs. Graeme was on the eve of confinement, and it now appeared she had been taken in labour. I saw, too, that my visit had not been very well timed, and the worse that Graeme himself was in the extraordinary frame of mind in which I found him--unfit for facing the dangers, repaying the affections, performing the duties, and receiving the honours or enjoying the hopes of his situation. A rap at the door was the signal for Edith's departure, with the words on her tongue that she knew the doctor's knock. I was now, I thought, to be left to myself; nor was I displeased, for I wanted a lounge and a meditation; though of the latter I could not see that I could make much, if any, more than confirming myself against all preternaturals as agents on earth, however certain their existence may be beyond the mystic veil that divides the two worlds. I had known Graeme's crime and Gourlay's self-murder; but the crime was a trick among blacklegs, and the suicide was the madness of a gambler, who had risked his money and was ruined at the moment he wanted to ruin another. Surely Heaven had something else to do with its retributive lightnings than employ them, in subversion of all natural laws, in a cause so inferior in turpitude to others that every hour pass into oblivion, with more of a mark of natural, and less or none of supernatural chastisement. I thought I might be contented with such a view of these prodigies as might quickly consign them to the limbo of men's machinations; yet somehow or other--perhaps the Burgundy bottle, if it could have spoken, like that of Asmodeus, might have helped the solution--I got dreamy, and of course foolish, raising objections against my own conclusions, and instituting an _alter ego_ to argue against myself for Graeme's theory. It has always seemed strange to me, that though mankind hate metaphysics, they are all natural metaphysicians, especially when a little _wined_. Perhaps the true reason may be, that as wine came from the gods, it is endued with the power of raising us to its source. At least, our aspirations, from being _devine_, become wonderfully _divine_, so that supernatural agencies wax less difficult to our imaginations; and while we are ten times more ready to meet a ghost, we are as many times more ready to admit their possibility. But the end of these grand and elevated conditions is generally sleep and an ugly nightmare; and though my case was an exception as regards the latter, I awoke in not a very happy mood, just as Graeme entered the room and told me it was twelve o'clock. As I rubbed my eyes, he sat down in his chair, and seemed inclined to court silence; but it was clear he could not achieve repose.