Chapter 2

My comrades round about that heard this answer, could not refrain from giving three cheers in admiration of the bravery of the laddie's spirit; and the cheering attracting the attention of the officers, one of them came forward to us, to inquire into its cause; and, on its being explained to him, he took Robin by the hand, and congratulated me upon having such a son. I confess that I did feel an emotion of pride and gratification glowing in my breast at the time; nevertheless, the fears and the anxiety of a parent predominated, and I thought what a dreadful thing it would be for me, his father, to see him shot or pierced through the body with a bayonet, at my very side; and what account, thought I, could I give of such a transaction to his bereaved and sorrowing mother? For I felt a something within my breast, which whispered, that, if evil befell him in the warfare in which we were about to engage, I would not be able to look her in the face again. I fancied that I heard her upbraiding me with having instilled into his mind a love of war, and I fancied that I heard her voice requiring his life at my hands, and crying--"Where is my son?"

At length we arrived at Haddington; and there, in the course of the day, it was discovered, to the gratification of some and the disappointment of many, that our march had originated in a _false alarm_. I do confess that I was amongst those who felt gratified that the peace of the land was not to be endangered, but that we were to return every man to his own fireside, and to sit down beneath our vine and our fig tree, with the olive branches twining between them. But amongst those who were disappointed, and who shewed their chagrin by the gnashing of their teeth, was my silly laddie, my only son Robert. When he saw the people laughing in the marketplace, and heard that the whole Borders had been aroused by an accidental light upon a hill, his young brow lowered as black as midnight--his whole body trembled with a sort of smothered rage--and his eyebrows drew together until the shape of a horse-shoe was engraven between them.

"Robie, my captain," said I, "wherefore are ye looking sae dour? Man, ye ought to rejoice that no invader as yet has dared to set his foot upon our coast, and that you and I will return to your mother, who, no doubt, will be distracted upon your account beyond measure. But, oh, when she meets you again, I think that I see her now springing up from the chair, where she is sitting rocking and mourning, and flinging her arms round your neck, crying--'Robie!--Robie, my son! where have ye been?--how could ye leave your mother?' Then she will sob upon your breast, and wet your cheek with her tears; and I will lift her arms from your neck, and say--'Look ye, Agnes, woman, your husband is restored to ye safe and sound, as well as your son?' And then I will tell her all about your bravery, and your following us over the moors, and the cowardice of Jonathan Barlowman, and of your coming up to him, where he groaned behind us on the road--of your becoming his substitute, and of your getting his greatcoat, his knapsack, and his gun--and of your marching an hour by your father's side without him finding out who you were. I will tell her all about my discovering you, and about your answers, and the cheering of the volunteers; and the officers coming up and taking your hand, and congratulating me upon having such a son. O Robie, man! I will tell her everything! It will be such a meeting as there has not been in the memory of man. Therefore, as the French are neither landed nor like to land, I will speak to the superior officer, and you and I Will set off for Dunse immediately."

We went into a public-house, to have a bottle of ale and baps; and I think I never in my life partook of anything more refreshing or more delicious. Even Robie, notwithstanding the horse-shoe of angry disappointment on his brow, made a hearty repast; but that was natural to a growing laddie, and especially after such a tramp as we had had in the death and darkness of night, over moor and heather.

"Eat well, Robie, lad," said I; "it's a long road over again between here and Dunse, and there is but little to be got on it. Take another glass of ale; ye never tasted anything from Clockmill to match that. It is as delicious as honey, and as refreshing as fountain water."

That really was the case; though whether the peculiar excellence of the ale arose from anything extraordinarily grateful in its flavour, or from my long march, my thirst, and sharp appetite--added to the joy I felt in the unexpected prospect of returning home in peace and happiness with my son, instead of slaughtering at enemies, or being slaughtered by them--I cannot affirm. There might be something in both. Robin, however, drank an entire bottle to his own head--that was three parts of a choppin, and a great deal too much for a laddie of his years. But in the temper he was in, and knowing by myself that he must be both thirsty and hungry, I did not think it prudent to restrain him. It was apparent that the liquor was getting uppermost in his brain, and he began to speak and to argue in company, and to strike his hand upon the table like an angry man; in short, he seemed forgetful of my presence, and those were exhibitions which I had never observed in him before.

I was exceedingly anxious to get home, upon his mother's account; for she was a woman of a tender heart and a nervous temperament; and I knew that she would be in a state bordering on distraction on account of his absence. I therefore said to him--"Robin, I am going to speak to the commanding officer; ye will sit here until I come back, but do not drink any more."

"Very weel, faither," said he.

So I went out and spoke to the officer, and told him my reasons for wishing to return home immediately; urging the state of anxiety and distress that Agnes would be in on account of the absence of our son.

"Very well, Mr Goldie," said he; "it is all very right and proper; I have a regard to the feelings of a husband and a parent; and as this has proved but a false alarm, there is no obstacle to your returning home immediately."

I thanked him very gratefully for his civility, and stepped away up to the George Inn, where I took two outside places on the heavy coach to Dunbar, intending to walk from there to Broxmouth, and to strike up there by the west to Innerwick, and away over the hills, down by Preston, and home.

I am certain I was not twenty minutes or half an hour absent at the farthest. When I entered the public-house again, I looked for my son, but he was not there.

"What have ye made of Robie?" said I to my comrades.

"Has he no been wi' ye?" answered they; "he left the house just after ye."

Mortal man cannot describe the fear, agony, and consternation that fell upon me. The sweat burst upon my brow as though it had been the warmest day in summer. A thousand apprehensions laid their hands upon me in a moment.

"With me!" said I; "he's not been with me: have none of you an idea where he can have gone?"

"Not the smallest," said they; "but he canna be far off--he will soon cast up. He will only be out looking at the town."

"Or showing off gallant Jonathan Barlowman's gun, big-coat, and knapsack," said one.

"Keep yoursel at ease, Mr Goldie," said another, laughing; "there is no danger of his passing the advanced posts, and falling into the hands of the French."

It was easy for those to jest who were ignorant of a father's fears and a father's feelings. I sat down for the space of five minutes, and to me they seemed five hours; but I drank nothing, and I said nothing, but I kept my eyes fixed upon the door. Robin did not return. I thought the ale might have overcome the laddie, and that he had gone out and lain down in a state of sickness; and "That," thought I, "will be a _becoming_ state for me to take him home in to his distressed mother. Or it will cause us to stop a night upon the road."

My anxiety became insupportable, and I again left my comrades, and went out to seek him. I sought him in every street, in every public-house in the town, amongst the soldiers, and amongst the townspeople; but all were too much occupied in discussing the cause of the alarm, to notice him who was to me as the apple of my eye. For three hours I wandered in search of him, east, west, north, and south, making inquiries at every one I met; but no one had seen or heard tell of him. I saw the coach drive off for Dunbar. I beheld also my comrades muster on the following morning, and prepare to return home, but I wandered up and down disconsolate, seeking my son, but finding him not.

The most probable, and the fondest conjecture that I could indulge in, was, that he had returned home. I, therefore, shouldered my musket, and followed my companions to Dunse, whom I overtook upon the moors. It would be impossible for me to describe my feelings by the way--they were torture strained to its utmost extremity, and far more gloomy and dreary than the gloomiest and dreariest parts of the moors over which we had to pass. Every footstep increased my anxiety, every mile the perturbation and agony of my spirit. Never, I believe, did a poor parent endure such misery before, and I wished that I had never been one. I kept looking for him to the right and to the left every minute; and though it was but few travellers that we met upon the road, every one that we did meet I described him to them, and asked them if they had seen him. But, "No!" "No!" was their unvaried answer, and my wretchedness increased.

At length we arrived at Dunse, and a great crowd was there to meet us--wives to welcome their husbands, parents to greet their children, and children their parents. The first that my eyes singled out, was a sister of my Agnes. She ran up to me.

"Roger," she cried, "hae ye seen onything o' Robie?"

The words went through my breast as if it had received the fire of a whole French battalion. I stood stock-still, petrified with despair. My looks told my answer to her question.

"Oh, dear me! dear me!" I heard her cry; "what will his puir mother do noo--for she already is like ane clean out o' her judgment about him."

I did not stop for the word "halt," or for the breaking of the lines; and I went home, I may say by instinct, for neither bird, bush, house nor tree, man nor bairn, was I capable of discerning by the road. Grief and heart-bursting anxiety were as scales upon my eyes. I remember of rushing into the house, throwing down my gun, and crying--"O Agnes! Agnes!" And as well do I remember her impatient and piteous inquiry--"Where is my Robie?--Oh, where is my son?--hae ye no seen him?"

It was long before I could compose myself, so as to tell her all that I knew concerning him; and it was even longer before she was sufficiently calm to comprehend me. Never did unhappy parents before experience greater bitterness of soul. I strove to comfort her, but she would not listen to my words; for oh, they were as the blind leading the blind; we both were struggling in the slough of despair--both were in the pit of dark, bewildering misery. We sometimes sat looking at each other, like criminals whose last hour is come; and even when our grief wore itself into a "calm sough," there was something in our silence as dismal and more hopeless than the silence of the grave itself. But, every now and then, she would burst into long, loud lamentations, mourning and crying for "her son!--her son!" Often, too, did we sit, suppressing our very breath, listening to every foot that approached, and as one disappointment followed another, her despair became deeper and deeper, louder and louder, and its crushing weight sank heavier and heavier upon my spirit.

Some of his young companions informed us, that Robin had long expressed a determination to be a soldier; and, on the following day, I set out for Edinburgh to seek for him there, and to buy him off at any price, if he had enlisted.

There, however, I could gather no tidings concerning him; and all that I could learn was, that a regiment had left the Castle that morning at two o'clock, and embarked at Leith for Chatham, from whence they were to proceed direct abroad; and that several recruits were attached to it, some of them only sworn in an hour before they embarked; but whether my poor Robie was among them or not, no one could tell.

I left Edinburgh no wiser, no happier, and in no way more comforted than I entered it, and returned to his mother a sad and sorrowing-hearted man. She wrung her hands the instant she beheld me, and, in a tone that might have touched the heart of a stone, cried aloud--"Oh, my lost! lost bairn! Ye hae made a living grave o' yer mother's breast."

I would have set off immediately for London, and from thence down to Chatham, to inquire for him there; but the wind was favourable when the vessel sailed, and it was therefore certain, that, by the time I got back to Dunse, she was at the place of her destination; and moreover, I had no certainty or assurance that he was on board. Therefore, we spent another day in fruitless lamentations and tears, and in vain inquiries around our own neighbourhood, and amongst his acquaintances.

But my own heart yearned continually, and his mother's moaning was unceasing in my ear, as the ticking of a spider, or the beating of a stop-watch to a person that is doomed to die. I could find no rest. I blamed myself for not proceeding direct from Edinburgh to Chatham; and, next day, I went down to Berwick, to take my place in the mail to London.

By the way I met several of the yeomanry, who were only returning from Dunbar, where they had been summoned by the alarm; and I found that Berwick also had been in arms. But taking my place on the mail, I proceeded, without sleep or rest, to London, and from thence hastened to Chatham. There again I found that the regiment which I sought was already half way down the Channel; but I ascertained also that my poor thoughtless boy was one of the recruits, and even that was some consolation, although but a poor one.

Again I returned to his mother, and told her of the tidings. They brought her no comfort, and, night and day, she brooded on the thought of her fair son lying dead and mangled on the field of slaughter, or of his returning helpless and wounded to his native land. And often it was wormwood to my spirit, and an augmentation of my own sorrows, to find that, in secret, she murmured against me as the author of her bereavement, and as having instilled into my son a liking for a soldier's life. She said it was all owing to my getting him, from the time that he was able to read, to take the newspaper in his hand and read it aloud to my cronies, and in which there were accounts of nothing but wars and battles, of generals and captains, and Bonaparte, of whom enough was foretold and enough could be read in the Revelations. These murmurings grieved me the more, inasmuch as my mind was in no way satisfied that they were without foundation. No man knew better than I did, how easily the twig is bent; a passing breeze, the lighting of a bird upon it, may do it; and as it is bent, so the branch or the tree will be inclined. I, therefore, almost resolved not to permit another newspaper to be brought within my door. But, somehow or other, it became more necessary than ever. Every time it came it was like a letter from Robie; and we read it from beginning to end, expecting always to hear something of him or of his regiment. Even Agnes grew fond of it, and was uneasy on the Saturdays if the postman was half-an-hour behind the time in bringing it.

Full twelvemonths passed before we received a letter from him; and never will I forget the delightful sensations that gushed into my bosom at the sight of that letter. I trembled from head to foot with joy. I knew his handwriting at the first glance, and so did his mother--just as well as if he had begun "_dear parents_" on the back of it. It was only to be a penny, and his mother could hardly get her hand into her pocket to give the copper to the postman, she shook so excessively with joy and with agitation, and kept saying to me--"Read, Roger! read! Oh, let me hear what my bairn says."

I could hardly keep my hand steady to open it; and, when I did break the seal, I burst into tears at the same moment, and my eyes became as though I were blind; and still his mother continued saying to me--"Oh, read! read!"

Twice, thrice, did I draw my sleeve across my eyes, and at last I read as follows:--

"MY DEAR PARENTS,--I fear that my conduct has caused you many a miserable day, and many a sleepless night. But, even for my offence, cruel as it has been, I trust there is forgiveness in a parent's breast. I do not think that I ever spoke of it to you, but, from the very earliest period that I could think, the wish was formed in my mind to be a soldier. When I used to be spelling over the History of Sir William Wallace, or the lives of the Seven Champions of Christendom, I used to fancy myself Wallace or Saint George; and I resolved, that when I lived to be a man, that I would be a soldier and a hero like them; and I used to think what a grand thing it would be for you and my mother, and all my acquaintances, to be reading about me and my exploits! The continual talking about the war and the French, and of their intention to invade Britain, all strengthened my early desires. Often when I was reading the newspapers to you and your friends, and about the gallant deeds of any particular individual, though I used to read _his name_ aloud to you, I always read it in to myself as though it were my own. I had resolved to enlist before the false alarm took place; and, when you and the other volunteers marched out of Dunse to Haddington, I could not resist the temptation which it offered of seeing and being present at a battle. About half-an-hour after you left the town, I followed ye, and, as ye are already aware, overtook poor Jonathan Barlowman, who had fallen behind the corps, in great distress, apparently both of body and mind. He seemed to be in a swither whether to return home, to follow ye, or to lie down and die by the road. I knew him by the sound of the lamentation he was making, and, accosting him, I inquired--'What is the matter wi' ye, Jonathan! Has ony o' the French, concealed aboot the moors, shot ye already?' 'Oh,' he replied, 'I am ill--I am dying!--I am dying!--I will give any money for a substitute!' 'Gie me yer gun,' said I, 'and I will be yer substitute without money.' 'A thousand blessings upon yer head, Robie, lad!' said he; 'ye shall hae my gun, and ye may tak also my greatcoat and knapsack, for they only encumber me. Ye hae rescued a dying man.' I was nearly as tall as he; and, though his coat was loose about me, when I got it on, and his musket over my shoulder, and felt that I was marching like an armed knight of old against the invaders of my country, I felt as proud as an emperor; I would not have changed situations with a king. I overtook you, and you know the rest. At Haddington, the strong ale was too strong for me. I was also sorely mortified to find all my prospects of becoming a hero blasted. When, therefore, you went out to take our places in the coach to Dunbar, I slipped out of the room, and hiding Mr Barlowman's coat and gun in a closet, in the house, I took the road for Edinburgh; which city I reached within less than three hours; and before I had been in it twenty minutes I was a soldier. I was afraid to write home, lest ye would take steps to buy me off. On the fourth day after my enlisting I was landed at Chatham, where I was subjected to a perpetual drill; and within thirty hours after landing, I again embarked with my regiment; and when I wished to have written, I had not an opportunity. Since then, I have been in two general engagements and several skirmishes, in all of which I have escaped unwounded. I have found that to read of a battle, and to be engaged in a battle, are two very different things. The description is grand, but the sight dismal. I trust that my behaviour as a soldier has been unimpeachable. It has obtained for me the notice of our colonel, who has promoted me to the rank of corporal, with the promise of shortly making me a sergeant; and I am not without hopes, before the war is over, (of which there at present is no prospect), of obtaining a commission; though it certainly is not one in a thousand that has such fortune. Hoping, therefore, my dear parents, that, under the blessing of Providence, this will find you well, as it leaves me, and that I will live to return to ask your forgiveness, I remain your affectionate and dutiful son,

"ROBERT GOLDIE."

* * * * *

Such was Robin's letter. "Read it again," said mother--and I read it again; and when I had done so, she took it in her hand and pressed it to her lips and to her breast, and wept for "her poor bairn." At last, in a tone of despondency, she said--"But, oh, he doesna once particularly mention his mother's name in't."

"He surely does," said I; "I think he mentions us both."

So I took the letter again into my hand, and, at the foot corner of the third page, I saw what I had not observed before, the letters and words--"_P.S. Turn over_."

"P.S." said his mother; "who does that mean?"

"Oh!" said I, "it means nobody. It means that we have not read all the letter."

"Read it a', then--read it a'!" she cried.

And I turned to the last page, on the fold above the direction, and read--

"P.S.--But how am I to ask the forgiveness of my dear mother, for all the distress and anxiety that my folly and disobedience must have occasioned her. I start in my very sleep, and think that I hear her yearning and upbraiding. If she knew how deep my repentance is, and how keen my misery for the grief which I have caused her, I would not have to ask her forgiveness twice. Dear father! dear mother!--both, both of you forgive your thoughtless son."

These last lines of his letter drowned us both in tears, and, for the space of several minutes, neither of us were able to speak. I was the first to break silence, and I said--"Agnes, our dear Robin is now a soldier, and he seems to like that way of life. But I dislike the thought of his being only a corporal, and I would wish to see him an officer. We have nobody in the world but him to care for. He is our only son and heir, and I trust that all that we have will one day be his. Now, I believe that the matter of four or five hundred pounds will buy him a commission, and make him an officer, with a sword by his side, a sash round his waist, and a gold epaulette on his shoulder, with genteel pay and provision for life; besides setting him on the high road to be a general. Therefore, if ye approve of it, I will sell out stock to the amount that will buy him commission."

"Oh," replied she, "ye needna ask me if I approve, for weel do ye ken that I will approve o' onything that will be for my bairn's benefit."

I accordingly lifted five hundred pounds, and through the influence of a Parliament man, succeeded in procuring him a commission as an ensign. I thought the money well spent, as it tended to promote the respectability and prospects of my son.