Part 20

With the exception of one unhappy failing, delicately hinted at in the title of this sketch, there was nothing really bad in the character of Mr. James Murdieston. He was an honest, civil, inoffensive, and obliging man; but--we neither can nor will conceal the fact--a most determined inventor. Yet his lies had no malevolence in them. They were all of the vainglorious kind, and never bore reference to any man or woman's character or affairs. On the whole, as defensible as lies can be, they were also as harmless. To profession, an enlightener of the world, not as a philosopher or teacher of science, but simply as a candle-maker, he was so far a benefactor of mankind, but on a very humble scale--having only the wants of a very small village to supply with the produce of his manufacture.

With this preamble, we proceed to say, that it happened once upon a time that Jamie Murdieston had to go to Glasgow, on some particular business--we believe it was to make a purchase of tallow. On this occasion, as on all others when his presence was necessary in the western metropolis, Jamie took the coach--an opportunity which he always prized highly, as affording him admirable scope for the exercise of his talent for romancing. At home, where his propensity was well known, he could get few listeners and still fewer believers; but, on the top of a coach, where he was not known, he was always sure of finding both; and he never failed to make an excellent use of his advantage. It was a great comfort and satisfaction to Jamie, when he stumbled on an unwincing believer. It was a perfect treat to him, since it was one which he rarely enjoyed. On the occasion of which we are speaking--namely, Jamie's visit to Glasgow--he found himself, on ascending the coach, seated beside a very engaging young lady, who had preferred the outside to the inside, on account of the extreme warmth of the weather, and also for the purpose, as she herself informed Jamie, of more fully enjoying the scenery through which they might pass.

"Quite richt, mem," replied Jamie, on his fair and frank fellow-traveller informing him of this last particular, as they rolled along. "Quite right, mem; for the kintra hereawa is just uncommon beautifu--just uncommon. Do ye see, mem, that bit glisk o' the Clyde, there?--that's a spot I should mind weel, and I will mind it till the day o' my death."

"Indeed, sir!" said the young lady to whom these remarks were addressed. "Pray, what circumstance is it, may I ask, which so solemnly binds your recollections to that particular locality?"

"A melancholy aneugh are, I assure ye mem; that's to say, it micht hae been melancholy, an it warna that Providence had sent me just in time to save the life o' a fellow-cratur."

On this communication being made to her, the young lady for whose edification it was intended discovered a degree of agitation and surprise, for which the circumstance itself would hardly account. As it escaped Jamie's notice, however, and she was aware that it did so, she merely said--"Dear me, sir, what was the occurrence you allude to, and when did it happen?" But there was an eagerness and an anxiety in her manner, when putting these queries, which she could not altogether conceal. Jamie observed it with inward satisfaction, hailing it as an assurance that whatever he might communicate would be at once taken for gospel. Feeling thus encouraged, Jamie replied--

"I'll tell ye a' aboot it, mem. Ye see it was just aboot this time twelmonth, I think--yes, just exactly aboot this time--that, as I was ae day fishin in the Clyde, at the spot I pointed oot to ye, I was suddenly startled by hearin an awful scream, and, immediately after, a tremendous splash in the water. 'Somebody fa'en in!' says I; and I instantly flang doon my rod, on which I had, at the moment, a saumont fifty pun wecht, if he was an unce--and ran roun the bit projectin bank that had keepit me frae actually seein what had happened. A weel, on doin this, doesna I see a woman's bonnet floatin on the water--it was a' I could see--and gann fast doun wi' the stream, which was geyley swelled at the time. Soon becomin aware that the bonnet was on the head o' some unfortunate person, and that she maun perish in a few seconds, if no attempt was made to rescue her, I, without a moment's thocht, threw aff my coat and shoon, and jumped in after her; and, as gude luck wad hae't, was the means o' savin her life; but it was a teuch job, for, by the time I reached her, she had sunk, and it wasna till I had dived three times that I got haud o' her. But I _did_ get a grup o' her; and I assure ye I held it, and never let it go till I had her safely on the bank, puir thing, and a bit bonny cratur she was."

Thus far had Jamie got in his interesting story, and much further he would have gone, had he not been suddenly interrupted by his fair auditor, who, seizing him by the hand, in a transport of joy and surprise, exclaimed--

"O my deliverer, my deliverer!--_I_ was the person whom you saved; and delighted will my father, who's inside the coach, be, when he learns we have found you at last. But why, why," continued the grateful girl, looking all the gratitude she felt in Jamie's face--"why did you so abruptly and suddenly withdraw yourself, after having done such a generous and noble deed? We could never find you out, nor obtain the smallest trace of you, although hardly a day has passed since then that we have not made some attempt to accomplish either the one or the other. It was cruel of you not to afford us an opportunity of evincing the deep and everlasting gratitude we felt towards you."

We leave the reader to conjecture what was Jamie's amazement on finding himself thus addressed by his fair companion; for we suppose we need hardly say that every word of his story about rescuing a young lady from drowning was a lie--an unmitigated, and, so far as he knew certainly, an utterly foundationless lie. Well may we then, we think, call on the reader to conceive, if he can, Jamie's surprise, when he found his narrative thus strangely converted into truth. He by no means liked it, for it threatened to lead to some awkward discoveries; and, under this impression, he endeavoured to back out, and to separate the two cases by some additional remarks.

"That's odd," he said, on the young lady's imposing on him the character of her deliverer--"verra odd," he repeated, but with considerable embarrassment in his manner; "but I dinna think ye're the young leddy I saved that day; she was a hantle stouter than you, and a guid deal aulder."

"The very same, the very same, I assure you, sir," rejoined his fair companion, laughingly. "There was no accident of the kind you mentioned, at the place you pointed out, during all last summer, but my own. This I know, from our having lived there from the month of March to October. So you must not attempt to balk me of the happiness of believing I have found my deliverer."

Here, then, was a poser for Jamie. The young lady, it seems, was familiar with the place, and knew that no accident, except the one which, by so odd and unhappy a coincidence for Jamie's veracity, had befallen herself, had occurred there at the period he stated. He must, therefore, either confess to a lie, or quietly pocket the compliments that were thrust on him. On the latter he naturally enough determined; but he wanted no more acknowledgments, as he found them sit on him rather awkwardly. In truth, he now began to show as great a reluctance to advert to the subject as he had before shown forwardness, and was most evidently desirous of waiving it altogether; but this his fair companion would by no means allow. She was by far too full of the extraordinary chance, and extraordinary good fortune, as she reckoned it, of having thus so strangely met with her deliverer, to allow the matter to drop.

Before going further, we may as well advert to a circumstance which may have a little startled the reader. This is, how it should have happened that Jamie's story of a rescue should have had a counterpart in fact. As to this matter, we can only vouch for its being perfectly true. It was a coincidence--certainly an odd one, but not more odd than many that have happened, and are daily occurring. The facts of the case, as we may say, were these:--The young lady's father, who was a wealthy Glasgow merchant, possessed a very pretty little cottage, which he and his family occasionally occupied during the summer months, at a short distance from the banks of the Clyde, and near to the very spot which Jamie had so unfortunately chosen as the scene of his exploit; and, still more unluckly for Jamie, it happened that the young lady in question had actually met with such an accident as that which formed the groundwork of his romance. Moreover, she had, in the case alluded to, been rescued from a watery grave by a person who chanced to be angling near the spot at the time; but this person had no sooner brought her on shore, being assured that her recovery was certain, although she appeared at the time insensible, and seen her safely in the charge of some people who had hurried to the scene of the accident, than he had suddenly and abruptly withdrawn, and was no more seen or heard of. These, then, were the facts of that case which so strangely tallied with Jamie's fiction. It is true that, had the fact and the fiction been carefully collated, a good many small discrepancies would have appeared, that would have at once stripped Jamie of his self-assumed honours; but this not having been done, and the leading incident being the same in both, no such result took place.

To resume our story. On the arrival of the coach at Glasgow--an event to which Jamie had been looking forward with great impatience, as the only occurrence that could relieve him from his present awkward predicament--he bade his fair companion a hurried good-by, and, heedless of her remonstrances and entreaties, was hastening down the side of the coach, to make his escape, when the father of the young lady, to whom the latter had hastily communicated the discovery of her deliverer, by leaning over the top of the coach, and speaking through the upper part of the doorway, suddenly intercepted him.

"Too bad, sir, too bad," said the old gentleman, smilingly, "to try and escape us again. But we have you this time, and will take care that you do not." Saying this, Mr. Alston held out his hand to Jamie, and, on grasping the latter's, shook it with the most cordial warmth, expressing, at the same time, the deepest sense of the mighty obligation under which he lay to him, for having so nobly saved his daughter from an untimely death--"An obligation," said the good old gentleman, "which I can never repay."

"Dinna speak o't, sir, dinna speak o't," said Jamie, in the greatest embarrassment, and wishing, the while, that his tongue had been blistered when he first opened his mouth on the ill-starred subject of the rescuing. "Dinna speak o't," he said, "it't just what ae fellow-cratur should do for anither." And, having said this, Jamie was about to make a sudden bolt, when the old gentleman, perceiving his intention, dexterously hooked his arm within Jamie's right; while his daughter, who had by this time joined them, did the same by his left, and thus secured him.

"Away from us you shall not get," said Mr. Alston.

"Indeed you shall not," interposed his daughter.

"You must go home with us," resumed the former, "and receive the thanks of my dear wife, who will be delighted to see you, and those of Ellen's brothers and sisters. They are all, I assure you, as grateful to you as either I or Ellen herself can possibly be."

"Much obleeged, sir, much obleeged," stammered out Jamie, in great distress of mind; "but, ye see, it's impossible--althegither oot o' the question; for I have some important business to do, that maun be dune before I go onywhaur."

And he struggled to free himself from his captors; but in vain. They held on with a determined gripe.

"No, no, you must not leave us," exclaimed Mr Alston, "we must not lose sight of you, now that we have you. I should be sorry to be the cause of any interruption to your business; but we will not detain you an instant. I merely wish, in the meantime, to show you the way to my house, that you may find it readily when you want it, which I expect will be the moment you get your business finished."

"Really, sir, really," exclaimed Jamie, despairingly, and holding back to repress the forward movements of Mr. Alston and his daughter--"really, sir, really I canna gang. I canna on no account. The business I hae on haun maun be instantly attended to, and winna admit o' the sma'est delay."

"Well, in that case," said the pertinacious Mr. Alston, "I'll accompany you, and wait your conveniency; and Ellen here will, in the meantime, go home and apprise her mother of her having met with you, and tell her that we shall be there in--in--in what time shall I say?"

"An hour--an hour--an hour," exclaimed the perplexed romancer, in great tribulation--"say an hour."

"Well, an hour, Ellen. Tell your mother we'll be home in an hour," said Mr. Alston; "and let her have a little supper prepared for us by that time, and let a bed be got in readiness for our dear friend here. You'll take up your quarters with us, of course," turning to Jamie.

"Oh, surely, surely--wi' great pleasure," exclaimed Jamie, hurriedly, and scarcely knowing what he said--"wi' great pleasure, but far owre meikle trouble."

"Trouble!" said Mr. Alston, contemptuously; "you, the preserver of my dear daughter's life, talk of trouble! No--no; we shall be but too happy to have you, to show you, as far as we can, the deep sense we all entertain of the unrequitable obligation we lie under to you."

"Don't lose sight of him, papa!" here exclaimed Miss Alston, in clear soft tones, as she tripped away.

"No fear, my dear--I'll hold him fast," replied her father; and, while he did so, he clutched Jamie with a still surer gripe.

Jamie now saw that the old boy was determined not to part with him until he should have run the gauntlet of the whole family's gratitude; and once more did he devoutly wish that his tongue had been anywhere but in his mouth when he first broached the unhappy story of the drowning adventure. He had never got into such a scrape before with any of his small _nouvelettes_, and he almost determined that he would never publish another--that he would henceforth deal in nothing but well-authenticated facts. The question, in the meantime, however, was, how to escape the threatened consequences of the one with which he was now entangled, and this question was a poser. There was but one way, and on this Jamie finally determined. This way was, to bolt for it--to show the old boy a pair of clean heels; and thus at once cut the connection. There was no other way of dealing with the dilemma. Having made up his mind to this proceeding, Jamie suddenly stopped at a certain close-mouth in the Trongate, and, intimating to his escort that he had a call to make there, requested him to wait an instant till he returned.

"I'll no keep ye a minnit," said Jamie, "no ae minnit."

And, leaving the old boy to mount guard till his return, he proceeded up the close, at first leisurely; but, on gaining a turn, which concealed him from his Cerberus, he fairly took to his heels, and emerged in a distant street, to which the close led. Here Jamie drew bridle and breath together, and thanked goodness for his escape; expressing, at the same time, a fervent hope that he would never again meet with Mr. Alston or any of his family. Having thus got his head out of the noose, Jamie adjourned to the quarters which he usually occupied when he went to Glasgow; and, on the following day, sallied out to transact the business which had brought him to the city. It was not, however, with a mind perfectly at ease that Jamie went about this business; for he dreaded every moment encountering Mr. Alston or his daughter; and, under this terror, he kept a sharp look-out as he went along, always cutting suddenly across the street, when he got his eyes on any person or persons of suspicious appearance--that is, on any old gentleman or young lady who bore a real or fancied resemblance to Mr. Alston or his fair daughter; and the sequel will show that his precaution was not an unnecessary, although, alas! a vain one.

Just as he turned the corner of a street, who should Jamie see coming towards him, and at the distance of about fifty or eighty yards, but the much-dreaded Mr. Alston, his daughter, and a brother, a young man of about four-and-twenty! On recognising them, Jamie instantly stopped short, and, after a moment's reflection, determined on having again recourse to his heels--no other way of escape, as in the former instance, appearing practicable. To this proceeding Jamie was further induced by an impression that he had not been seen, or at least recognised; but in this, as will appear, he was mistaken. However, not aware of the fact, Jamie turned quickly round, and fairly ran for it. But, as we have already hinted, he had been both seen and known by the Alstons, and they, believing his anxiety to avoid them proceeded from excessive modesty, and a timid nature that shrank from the noise of its own good deeds, resolved on compelling Jamie to submit to their acknowledgments; and, acting on this resolution, the young man (who, by the way, was provided with an admirable pair of legs for such purposes) was despatched by his father and sister in pursuit. The effect of this proceeding on Jamie, who had become aware of it, by happening to turn round for an instant during his flight, was to accelerate his speed. He flew like the wind, knocking about and overturning several people in his rapid and furious career. Thus the run continued for several minutes, when Jamie, feeling his wind failing him, and becoming thereby sensible that he could not hold out much longer, made a sudden dive up a close--one of those convenient retreats for "gentlemen in difficulties;" and, by this cleverly-executed movement, succeeded in fairly throwing out his pursuer, who, from the crowded state of the street, did not perceive the ruse, but held on his way vigorously, and afforded Jamie the inexpressible satisfaction of seeing him rush past the mouth of the entrance in which he was concealed. Feeling now in comparative safety, which, however, he further insured by going half-way up a stair, Jamie, who was a good deal blown by his exertion, took off his hat, and began wiping the perspiration from his face and forehead with his pocket-handkerchief, and doing all he could to recover his nearly exhausted breath.

"Hech," said Jamie, on beginning to respire more freely, and still wiping his face assiduously, "this has been athegither a deevil o' a job. Such a rumpus to be kicked up a' out o' nothing! Chased as if I was a mad dog! It was the maist unlucky _ane_ ever I tell't but catch me again savin onybody frae beein drooned! I'll no touch that style again in a hurry, I warrant." And with such disjointed remarks as these on his unhappy essay in his peculiar art, Jamie beguiled the short time which he thought it necessary to remain in his concealment. This expired--or, in other words, thinking the coast now clear--Jamie stole cautiously down the stair, and, on arriving at the bottom, peeped into the close before venturing out. The survey being satisfactory, Jamie emerged, and stealing down the close like a cat, repeated at the foot of it the operation of peeping round him, before taking the bold measure of stepping into the street. No enemy was in sight, Jamie drew his breath for a desperate adventure. It was a rush he meditated, which should at once carry him clear of the dangerous locality; and he accomplished it. From that hour, Jamie saw no more of the Alstons, and thus got out of the entangled web which he had woven for himself; but it was not long before he manufactured another, and a much more troublesome one.

The day on which the event in Jamie's life which we have just recorded took place, was one of great stir and excitation in Glasgow. It was the day of the execution of the Radical, Swan; whose death, on account of his crime having been a political one, was to be attended with some of the appalling ceremonies and peculiar proceedings that usually mark the execution of traitors.

Following the general current of the population which, as the hour appointed for the horrid exhibition was at hand, was drawing towards the jail, Jamie soon found himself at the place of execution. Here the general, and in some things the particular, appearance of the preparations for the approaching tragedy, showed that it was to be one of a very unusual kind. A strong party of foot-soldiers surrounded the gibbet, while the approaches at either end of the jail were occupied by dragoons, who, from the peremptory manner in which they performed their duty, in repelling all attempts at affecting a passage by the way which they guarded, sufficiently showed that their orders had been unusually strict. The crowd and general excitement was immense.

Amongst the other objects that attracted Jamie's notice in this imposing scene, was a man holding a white horse, and standing a little way aloof from the crowd. The animal was an ordinary cart-horse, and the person who held it seemed to be a carter by profession. The situation of both seemed an odd and unsuitable one, considering attendant circumstances; and they, of course, attracted some notice, and excited some curiosity; the more so that the man looked as if he and his horse had some business there, and waiting for something or other. Jamie, among the rest, was struck with these indications, and, making up to the man, bluntly but civilly said--

"What are ye gaun to be aboot wi' the horse here, frien?"

"A job I dinna like verra weel," replied the man, whose face was pale, and lips white, with some strong internal feeling.

"What sort o' a job may that be?" inquired Jamie, his curiosity still further excited by this answer.