Chapter 7

William returned to college, with a heart softened both by grief and love. Strange, that out of this wholesome state of mind should have sprung the elements of wretchedness and vice! Yet so it was. He had written a poem on the subject of his late affliction, and had breathed into it the very soul of sorrow. The wild and beautiful scenery amid which he dwelt, and which he loved and knew so well, had also given its hues to the language and the thoughts of his muse: his rich and now cultivated taste imparted elegance and harmony to his numbers; the poem was at once original, chaste, and imaginative; it gained him the esteem of the highest literary circles in Edinburgh, and he became a cherished guest in the houses of many distinguished men for whom he had never hoped to indulge any feelings save those of distant and respectful admiration. He emerged into a new world, too beautiful and dazzling for him at first to see his way clearly through its mazes. His undoubted genius commanded the respect of the men--his manly feeling, and the ingenious eloquence of his address, presently made him a distinguished favourite with the female portion of his acquaintance. The tone of his thoughts and feelings underwent a perfect revolution. Once introduced into the society of the polite and the learned, the bashfulness and awkwardness of the shepherd-lad seemed to fall off from him, without effort of his own, but naturally, like the crustaceous envelope in the metamorphosis of insects. He felt as if he were a denizen of the clime in which he now luxuriated, and as if, till now, he had been living in a foreign land. He discovered, to his amazement, that those great men, whose very names he had been wont to utter with reverence, and before whose glance his eye had been accustomed to fall abashed, were the most easy, familiar, and communicative companions possible--that scarcely one of them was so severe in their morality as his old father--that they listened to his opinions with attention, and replied to them with respect. Then, again, among the satellites of these literary luminaries--those whom, till now, in the reflected light of their primaries, he had been wont to behold with respect, and almost with envy--he presently perceived weakness, dimness, and aberration; and he perceived, also, how capable he was of outshining them all; or, to speak in less metaphorical phrase, he found among the less distinguished literary persons who haunted the tables of the great, a degree of ignorance on subjects of general science, a slavishness of demeanour, and a petty jealousy, which he could not but despise, and which it required very little penetration to perceive that the great man despised also. He soon acquired, therefore, a confidence in his own powers, and a conscious respect for, I had almost said pride in, the rectitude of his feelings, to which, till now, he had been an entire stranger. And if such was his success with the men, his conquest over his own timidity, in the presence of women, struck him with yet greater surprise. He who had been accustomed to blush and look down before a peasant girl, presently found himself able to gaze steadily into the eyes of a noble matron or maiden, undazzled by the jewelled coronet upon her head, or yet more brilliant charms in which nature and art had arrayed her brow, and neck, and bosom. The witchery of woman in all her loveliness, instead of, as he had often imagined, causing his heart to sink, and his cheek to burn, and his tongue to be dumb in his mouth, awoke the latent powers of his nature--it thrilled his heart with exulting admiration, and filled his eyes with a bold, steady radiance, and poured from his lips the eloquence which female loveliness can alone call forth. His nature was changed--that is, the external development of his nature, for his heart remained the same; and often, amid crowded assemblies and rich peals of concerted music, it called on his imagination to portray the old solitary shepherd, amid the hills of his boyhood, or to recall the simple strains which his father had taught him to play upon the rude Scottish pipe.

At the period to which we refer, the literary society of Edinburgh was by no means distinguished for its abstemiousness. A "good" fellow, and a clever one, were almost synonymous terms. Sir Walter Scott, in his novel of "Guy Mannering," has matchlessly described the convivial habits of the Scottish advocates: the habits of the whole literary society of Edinburgh were pretty similar. Why should I detail the circumstances of William's seduction from sobriety? The example of those whom he had been accustomed to admire, respect, and love; the gay sallies of his younger associates; the witchery of the society of genius; the flowing feeling which followed the circulation of the bowl; the song, the speech, the story, the flash of wit, the jocose roll of humour, and, above all, the forgiving approval (for how else should we designate it?) of the ladies--all assailed him at once, and, beneath their attacks, his reason and resolve,

"That column of true majesty in man,"

fell. Age, wisdom, youth, wit, humour, friendship, love, and beauty--what could a raw shepherd lad oppose to all these? "The request of his aged father, the injunction of the moral law, the direct command of God!" some stern, _perhaps_ good man may reply. William tried to control his career by means of these; but the attacks were unceasing, various, distracting--the defence was in the hands of one, and he, alas! too often disposed to admit the enemy. We will pass rapidly over this part of our departed friend's career. He mingled, at first sparingly, at length more freely, in the convivial habits of his new friends; he felt the thrill of friendship; he was keenly alive to the social glow which the bowl awakens; his heart also was elated by the love of men of genius, and his vanity gratified by their loudly-expressed admiration. Unfortunately, he engaged to write for a new periodical which some of his friends were then attempting to establish. Amid the solitude of his native hills he had experienced the grateful and rapid awakening of noble ideas; he was surprised to find that, in the city, amid the distractions of ambition, music, love, and wine, he could only now and then call up his natural powers to his aid. He had pledged himself to support the new periodical to a certain extent; and, in order to fulfil his promise, at the instigation of an acquaintance, he stimulated himself to its accomplishment by means of brandy. This was the first time he had ever drank ardent spirits for the sake of the effects which they produce. The paper which he had written was universally admired, the sale of the periodical was very much increased by its influence, and he was plied by the proprietors with new and lucrative engagements.

On the very morning on which he had received these proposals, he also received a letter from his aged father, informing him, that the brother of the old man, who was engaged in commerce, and for whom he had some time ago become surety, had failed, and that the whole of the little earnings of his past life would be required to liquidate the debt.

William closed with the proposal of the proprietors of the magazine, and wrote to the old man a letter, partly of condolence, but more of triumph. He was almost glad that the resources of his father were destroyed, now that he himself had the means of supporting him; and it was with a joyous heart that he sat down to write his paper for the new periodical. But alas! he felt what all who have so occupied themselves have felt, how the mind becomes weak, and the fancy flags, when compelled to action. He rushed into society, to escape from the dreadful depression which follows high mental excitement; the warmth of friendship with which he was met fell gratefully on his spirit; the glee and glory of social intercourse first relieved his wearied faculties, and then pleasantly excited them; the titillation of gratified vanity, and the exercise of intellectual power, combined to make the scene fascinating; he went more and more into society; it became more and more necessary to him--he was a _social man_. His father was a strange, I had almost said a stubborn man in some respects, and he might in some measure be blamed for this gradual sliding from sobriety of his son. To the affectionate letter of William, which beseeched him, now that his little hoard had been carried away, and now that his years were above fourscore, to come to Edinburgh, and dwell with his son, the old man answered, that God had yet left him vigour to mount the hills, and thread the valleys; and that, so long as this was the case, he would consider it unjust to become a burden to others. There was a stern independence and lofty resolve in the determination of the aged shepherd which harmonised well with his character; but it fell like lead upon the bright dreams of William--it strangled many of his best resolutions of future virtue and industry. He did not know that his father had already heard of his relaxed habits, and had even had reported to him, in exaggerated phrase, the detail of some of his midnight carousals. William went on, gaining fame, but losing virtue. In the popular use of the word, it was _impossible_ for him to resist the importunities of those who pressed him to partake of their bottle or their bowl. They grasped his hand cordially; they sang the songs which he loved, or perhaps had written; they drank his health with cheers of enthusiasm. It was _impossible_ for him to resist the entreaties of those persons--it was _impossible_ for him not to believe them sincere. Nor were they otherwise; but the value of the sincerity of the intemperate and the immoral, what is it?

"Ashes within beautiful fruit."

William Riddell passed the whole of his examinations, and was, as the students say, "ready for a church." Nor was he long in procuring one. Among the friends to whom his genius and character had recommended him was a nobleman, who had the gift of the very kirk to which William and his father had been accustomed to resort. The incumbent died; the nobleman presented the living to William. With the new duties which now devolved upon him, came a crowd of new feelings and springs of action. He gave up his engagement with the literary periodical, he retired from his social companions, and he devoted himself to grave and worthy study and contemplation. The struggle was severe; but he bore up against it under the excitement of the new responsibility which had fallen upon him. He went down to the country with some of the most distinguished members of the Scottish Church, who officiated at his ordination. A proud, a tumultuously happy day was it for old David Riddell, who, with wonder and awe, felt his horny hand grasped by the great men whose very names he had considered subservient to his happiness of old time, and beheld his son, little William, the boy whom he had taught the alphabet upon Scaurhope Hill, with the pebbles that lie there--beheld him holding high discourse with these same dignitaries, saw that his opinions were listened to with respect, and that his thoughts, according as they were solemn or ludicrous, were responded to by these great men with gravity or broad grins. A delightful day was it to the old shepherd, as he beheld the first man in the General Assembly--the greatest man in the Scottish Kirk--lay his hand upon the youthful head of his beloved son, and consecrate him to the care of the souls who dwelt in the very valley where he had been born and reared, in which his genius was known, and his family, though humble, respected.

There was another, and an equally strong reason, for William's giving up his convivial habits and boisterous companions. He was in love.

It was at that least romantic of all places for a lover, a ball in Edinburgh, that William Riddell, the new pastor of Mosskirk, had first met Ellen Ogilvie, the daughter of the principal heritor of his parish, the owner of the hills on which his father had watched the sheep for above threescore years. Ellen had beheld him moving, a gay and welcome visitant, in noble halls; her hand had met his in the dance, in exchange with those of countesses and duchesses; she had heard his praise echoed from house to house, and from mouth to mouth; she was now alone in the country, with nothing but ignorant or coarse men around her: let it not seem wonderful that she, though the only daughter of a wealthy landholder, should bestow her love on the poor, handsome, manly, eloquent pastor of Mosskirk. And if this does not seem wonderful, it will surely not appear singular that the proud, haughty, bigoted, and ignorant father of Ellen should forbid the match, and should threaten with his vengeance the usurper of his daughter's love.

His vengeance! How weak a word to such a being as William! Not that he would not have rejoiced, for Ellen's sake, and for the sake of decorum, to have had the old gentleman's approval; not that he would not have used every possible means, consistent with honour and the dignity of his own character, to have gained the good opinion of the father of his beloved; but the laird was a man of the world, of acres, and of hundreds; his litany lay in pounds, shillings, and pence; his affections were wrapped up in rents and lordships; and that a poor parson, however God had chosen to ennoble him by genius and generous sentiments--that a poor parson should have dared to look upon a child of his with the eyes of affection, upon the child who was the natural heir of all those riches which he had laboured for half-a-century to amass, smote him as a personal insult, as an indignity which nothing but blood could wipe out. The mother of Ellen had all along thought differently; and from the first moment in which she had perceived the affection that existed between them (and oh, how much quicker women are than men in discovering these things!) she had encouraged their intimacy.

William Riddell, the minister of Mosskirk, was out of the canons of the duello, and the laird, therefore, instead of calling him out, was compelled to be satisfied with disinheriting Ellen, who, under circumstances which fully exonerated her from her father's tyrannical wishes, became William's wife.

My friend William had always been one of those persons who abhorred the usual terms on which wives are sought and husbands achieved. "Keeping a wife," was a phrase of blasphemy to him, or at least it seemed desecrating women to the level of a dog, a horse, or a cow--the "keeping" of which appeared, according to their phraseology, a matter of the same general import as the cherishing a beloved partner of all in which the human heart takes an interest. Nor, although he was a shepherd's son, could he perceive much inequality in a minister who earned four hundred pounds a-year, by looking after the spiritual interests of some hundreds of individuals, and who was to become the confidant of their griefs, and the sharer of their joys, their supporter in sickness, and their guide in the common path of life--he could not perceive much presumption in such a man matching himself with the daughter of an ignorant and coarse person, whose worth lay only in his wealth, whose character was not esteemed by his neighbours, and whose sympathy for suffering human nature only developed itself now and then in his bestowal of a basin of hot soup upon a starving beggar at Christmas.

On the contrary, if William thought about the matter in this relation at all, he considered, and justly, that he was rather conferring an honour than receiving one from the father of Ellen. But the old gentleman thought, as the world thinks, differently; and accordingly, in his wrath, he disinherited her.

It was unfortunate for the full gratification of his malice, that William was impassible to this mode of punishment, and that he beheld the whole of the old gentleman's possessions conveyed over to a charitable institution, with as much pleasure as if he had signed them away of his own accord.

In the parish of Mosskirk, as in most of the country parishes in Scotland, there were a number of intelligent men who associated frequently together for the sake of cultivating scientific knowledge, and conversing on various subjects of interest in literature and philosophy. At the time when William was inducted into Mosskirk, all the ministers of the neighbouring parishes were members of this society, and it was generally held on a convivial footing. Some of the members came from a distance, others were jolly fellows naturally; and thus it happened that their discussions frequently dipped deep into the night, and sometimes were not settled until cock-crow.

Into this society William Riddell was welcomed with enthusiastic honours, and was at once made perpetual president. His fame as a poet had gone before him, and his genial warmth as a man followed up with general applause the sensation which he had created. He had natural powers capable of supporting him in the sphere to which his reputation had raised him. He had wit, humour, pathos, and fluency; and, eager to earn the opinion of his parishioners, he exerted himself to gain it, and he succeeded. Throughout the whole of his parish, he was admired as a man of genius and eloquence, he was respected as a man of irreproachable moral worth, and beloved as a friend, who shared sincerely in the gladness, and sympathised in the sorrows, of his flock. Unfortunately, the habits of many of his parishioners, as well as of those of the literary club to which I have alluded, were the very reverse of temperate. For a time the attraction of his young wife, and presently that of his infant son, kept him from indulging in nocturnal potations. But afterwards these attractions lost their force; the glory and the glee of the musical and literary conclave overcame all his resolves; and, night after night, it happened that he returned to his manse at unseasonable hours, and greeted his wife with the leer of intoxication, instead of the steady glance of affection. We should have said that, before this, old David Riddell, moved by his son's entreaties, had given up his duties among the hills, and had come to live with him at Mosskirk Manse. A weekly delight was it to the old man to behold his son arrayed in his black gown, and with the smooth white bands drooping decently upon his bosom, delivering from the pulpit of his native parish the words of eternal truth; and pleasant was it to the old shepherd ever and anon to recognise, in the elegant but simple language of the pastor, some of those sentiments which he himself had instilled into his mind, while he was yet a shepherd lad upon the moorlands.

But it could not long be concealed from him that William was irregular in his habits. When the fact first struck him, he almost swooned away; for the forebodings of Rachel rushed into his mind, and he saw, as it seemed, for the first time, that his son's destruction was sealed.

It was long, however, before he could bring himself to speak on the subject to William; he felt the shame which his son appeared to have abandoned; and his own temperate blood sent a blush into his withered cheek at the idea of addressing the child of his heart, the minister of God, on the subject of his intemperance. The miserable struggles of the old man before he gave utterance to his sentiments to William, we are utterly unable to describe--we leave them to our reader's imagination. At length, however, on a morning after the minister of Mosskirk had shamefully been supported home by two of his parishioners, in a state of deplorable intoxication, the old shepherd gathered up resolution to speak to his son. He did not denounce, insult, or even upbraid him; but, with tears in his eyes, delicately alluding to his misconduct, assured him that such another occurrence would cause him to leave the manse for ever; for that, though he might not be able to prevent, he was resolved never to sanction, the fearful immorality which drunkenness carries in its train, more hideous still when attached to a minister of the Gospel.

William, already disgusted with himself, and humbled before his own heart, was crushed to the earth by his old father's appeal. He threw himself upon his aged parent's neck, and entreated his forgiveness. "My forgiveness, my boy!" replied the shepherd; "you cannot offend me, and therefore it is vain to ask for my forgiveness. My heart is so utterly bound up in thee, that, though it may deplore, it cannot denounce any conduct of thine. It is as it were but a servant of thine, and in good or in evil report, will follow in its train. But, if my sufferings, and the sneers of men, have no influence over thee, think, oh, my dear boy! think on death, the judgment, eternity!"

Will it be believed, that, after this appeal, the remorse which he suffered, and the resolutions of reformation which he made, a single week saw the minister of Mosskirk reel into his manse, assisted by the pastor of the Methodist Chapel, at two o'clock in the morning? Such was the distressing reality; and the next morning, without speaking to his son, but giving, amid heart-broken sobs and sighs, his blessing to his daughter-in-law and her children, old David Riddell removed from his son's roof: nor could all his entreaties induce him to return.