Guy Mannering by Walter Scott (good beach reads TXT) 📖

with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle 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 voices had been heard without.

Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at this moment his fears mastered his courage so completely that the cold drops burst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserable concealment by wretches, whose trade was that of midnight murder, without weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which would be only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach other ear than their own—his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling—the bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of compassion, which, females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether smother. There was no such touch of humanity about this woman. The interest, whatever it was, that determined her in his favour, arose not from the impulse of compassion, but from some internal, and probably capricious, association of feelings, to which he had no clew. It rested, perhaps, on a fancied likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her father in the sleeping monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapid succession through Brown's mind, as he gazed from his hiding-place upon this extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, and he was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting an escape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, which had consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room for resistance nor flight.

Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to every sound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to the dead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position. "He's a bonny corpse, she muttered to herself, "and weel worth the streaking."—And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort of professional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutiae, as if with the 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 she left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the capes of the cloak so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the body, as she muttered, 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 door open?" was the first salutation of the party.

"And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in the dead-thraw?—how d'ye think the spirit was to get awa through bolts and bars like thae?

"Is he dead, then?" said one who went to the side of the couch to look at the body.

"Ay, ay—dead enough," said another—"but here's what shall give him a rousing lykewake." So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a corner, while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the activity with which she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope of her fidelity towards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to engage the ruffians in their debauch, to prevent the discovery which might take place if, by accident, any of their should approach too nearly the place of Brown's concealment.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

  Nor board nor garner own we now,
   Nor roof nor latched door,
  Nor kind mate, bound by holy vows
   To bless a good man's store.
  Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,
   And night is grown our day;
  Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
   And use it as ye may.
    JOANNA BAILLIE.

Brown could now reckon his foes—they were five in number; two of them were very powerful men, who appeared to be either real seamen, or strollers who assumed that character; the other three, an old man and two lads, were slighter made, and, from their black hair and dark complexion, seemed to belong to Meg's tribe. They passed from one to another the cup out of which they drank their spirits. "Here's to his good voyage!" said one of the seamen, drinking; "a squally night he's got, however, to drift through the sky in."

We omit here various execrations with which these honest gentlemen garnished their discourse, retaining only such of their expletives as are least offensive.

"'A does not mind wind and weather—'A has had many a north-easter in his day."

"He had his last yesterday," said another gruffly; "and now old Meg may pray for his last fair wind, as she's often done before."

"I'll pray for nane o' him," said Meg, "nor for you neither, you randy dog. The times are sair altered since I was a kinchin-mort. [*Girl.] Men were men then, and fought other in the open field, and there was nae milling in the darkmans. [*Murder by night.] And the gentry had kind hearts, and would have given baith lap and pannel [*Liquor and food] to ony puir gipsy; and there was not one, from Johnnie Faa the upright man, [*The leader (and greatest rogue) of the gang.] to little Christie that was in the panniers, would cloyed a dud [*Stolen a rag] from them. But ye are a' altered from the gude auld rules, and no wonder that you scour the cramp-ring, and trine to the cheat [*Get imprisoned and hanged.] sae often. Yes, ye are a' altered-you'll cat the gudeman's meat, drink his drink, sleep on the strammel [*Straw] in his barn, and break his house and cut his throat for his pains! There's blood on your hands, too, ye dogs—mair than ever came there by fair fighting. See how ye'll die then—lang it was ere he died—he strove, and strove sair, and could neither die nor live;—but you—half the country will see how ye'll grace the woodie."

The party set up a hoarse laugh at Meg's prophecy. "What made you come back here, ye auld beldame?" said one of the gipsies; "could ye not have staid where you were, and spaed fortunes to the Cumberland flats?—Bing out and tour, [*Go out and watch] ye auld devil, and see that nobody has scented; that's a' you're good for now."

"Is that a' I am good for now?" said the indignant matron. "I was good for mair than that in the great fight between our folk and Patrico Salmon's; if I had not helped you with these very fambles (holding up her hands), Jean Baillie would have frummagem'd you, [*Throttled you] ye feckless do-little!"

There was here another laugh at the expense of the hero who had received this amazon's assistance.

"Here, mother," said one of the sailors, "here's a cup of the right for you, and never mind that bully-huff."

Meg drank the spirits, and, withdrawing herself from further conversation, sat down before the spot where Brown lay bid, in such a posture that it would have been difficult for any one to have approached it without her rising. The men, however, showed no disposition to disturb her.

They closed around the fire, and held deep consultation together; but the low tone in which they spoke, and the cant language which they used, prevented Brown from understanding much of their conversation. He gathered in general, that they expressed great indignation against some individual. "He shall have his gruel,"—said one, and then whispered something very low into the ear of his comrade.

"I'll have nothing to do with that," said the other

"Are you turned hen-hearted, Jack?"

"No, by G-d, no more than yourself,—but I won't—it was something like that stopped all the trade fifteen or twenty years ago you have heard of the 'Loup'?"

"I have heard him (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head) tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us how he fetched him off the perch!"

"Well, but it did up the trade for one while," said Jack.

"How should that be?" asked the surly villain.

"Why," replied Jack, "the people got rusty about it, and would not deal, and they had bought so many brooms [*Got so many warrants out] that—"

"Well for all that," said the other. "I think we should be down upon the fellow one of these darkmans, and let him get it well."

"But old Meg's asleep now," said another; "she grows a driveller, and is afraid of her shadow. She'll sing out, [*To sing out or whistle in the cage, is when a rogue, being apprehended, peaches against his comrades.] some of these odd-come-shortlies, if you ,don't look sharp."

"Never fear," said the old gipsy man Meg's true-bred; she's the last in the gang that will start—but she has some queer ways, and often cuts queer words."

With more of this gibberish, they continued the conversation, rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark obscure dialect, eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing distinctly, or in plain language, the subject on which it turned. At length one of them, observing Meg was still fast asleep, or appeared to be so, desired one of the lads "to hand in the black Peter, that they might flick it open." The boy stepped to the door, and brought in a portmanteau, which Brown instantly recognised for his own. His thoughts immediately turned to the unfortunate lad he had left with the carriage. Had the ruffians murdered him? was the horrible doubt that crossed his mind. The agony of his attention grew yet keener, and while the villains pulled out and admired the different articles of his clothes and linen, he eagerly listened for some indication that might intimate the fate of the postilion. But the ruffians were too much delighted with their prize, and too much busied in examining its contents, to enter into any detail concerning the manner in which they had acquired it. The portmanteau contained various articles of apparel, a pair of pistols, a leathern cast with a few papers, and some money, etc. etc. At any other time it would have provoked Brown excessively to see the unceremonious manner in which the thieves shared his property, and made themselves merry at the expense or the owner. But the moment was too perilous to admit any thoughts but what had immediate reference to self-preservation.

After a sufficient scrutiny into the portmanteau, and an equitable division of its contents, the ruffians applied themselves more closely to the serious occupation of drinking, in which they spent the greater part of the night. Brown was for some time in great hopes that they would drink so deep as to render themselves insensible, when his escape would have been an easy matter. But their dangerous trade required precautions inconsistent with such unlimited indulgence, and they stopped short on this side of absolute intoxication. Three of them at length composed themselves to rest, while the fourth watched. He was relieved in—this duty by one of the others, after a vigil of two hours. When the second watch had elapsed, the sentinel awakened the whole, who, to Brown's inexpressible relief, began to make some preparations as if for departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated. Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after some rummaging, which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and shovel, another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still remained in garrison.

After the space of about half an hour, one of those who had departed again returned, and whispered the others. They wrapped up the dead body in the sea-cloak which had served as a pall, and went out, bearing it along with them. The aged sibyl then arose from her real or feigned slumbers. She first went to the door, as if for the purpose of watching the departure of her late inmates, then returned, and commanded Brown, in a low and stifled voice, to follow her instantly. He obeyed; but, on leaving the hut, he would willingly have repossessed himself of his money, or papers at least, but this she prohibited in the most peremptory manner. It immediately occurred to him that the suspicion of having removed anything, of which he might repossess himself, would fall upon this woman, by whom, in all probability, his life had been saved. He therefore immediately desisted from his attempt, contenting himself with seizing a cutlass, which one