Chapter 15

In a few minutes more S----th was at his mother's door with the burning five pounds in his pocket. He had meditated throwing it away, but the hurrying concourse of thoughts had prevented the insufficient remedy from being carried into effect. When he opened the door he found his mother alone. The sister had not yet come from the warehouse where she earned five shillings a week, almost the only source of her and the mother's living; for the money which S----th earned as a mere copying clerk in a writer's office, went mostly in some other direction. The mother soon observed, as she cast her eye over him, that there was something more than ordinary out of even his irregular way. He was pale, woe-worn, haggard; nor did he seem able to stand, but hurried to a chair and flung himself down, uttering confusedly, "Something to drink, mother----whisky."

"I hae nane, Charlie, lad," said she. "Never hae I passed a day like this since your father died. I have na e'en got the bit meat that a' get that are under God's protection. But what ails ye, dear Charlie?"

"Never mind me," replied the youth in choking accents. "I am better. Starving, starving! O God! and my doing. Yes, I am better--a bitter cure--starving," he again muttered; and searching his pockets, and throwing the five pounds on the table--"There, there, there," he added.

The mother took up the notes, and counted them slowly; for she had been inured to grief, and was always calm, even when her heart beat fast with the throbs of anguish.

"And whaur fae, laddie?" she said, as she turned her grey eye and scanned deeply the pale face of her son.

Silent, even dogged! Where now his metaphysics, his gibes on the physicalities, the moralities, the spiritualities?--all bundled up in a vibrating chord.

"Whaur fae, Charlie," had she repeated, still looking at him.

"The devil!" cried he, stung by her searching look, which brought back a gleam of the old rebellion.

"A gude paymaster to his servants," she said; "but I'm no ane o' them yet; and may the Lord, wham I serve, even while his chastening hand is heavy upon me, preserve me frae his bribes!" And laying down the notes, she added, not lightly, as it might seem, but seriously, yet quietly,

"Nae wonder they're warm."

The notes had carried the heat of his burning hand.

"The auld story--billiards," said she again; "for they are the devil's cue and balls."

No answer; and the mother seating herself again, looked stedfastly and suspiciously at him; but she could not catch the eye of her son, who sat doggedly determined not to reveal his secret, and as determined also to elude her looks, searching as they were, and sufficient to enter his very soul. Yet she loved him too well to objurgate where she was only as yet suspicious; and in the quietness of the hour, she fell for a moment into her widowed habit of speaking as if none were present but herself.

"Wharfor bore I him--wharfor toiled and wrought for him for sae mony years, since the time he sat on my knee smiling in my face, as if he said, I will comfort you when you are old, and will be your stay and support? Was that smile then a lee, put there by the devil, wha has gi'en him the money to deceive me again?"

Then she paused.

"And how could that be? Love is not a cheat; and did ever bairn love a mither as he loved me? or did ever mither love her bairn as I hae loved him? Lord, deliver him frae his enemies, and mak him what he was in thae bygone days--sae innocent, sae cheerful, sae obedient; and I will meekly suffer a' Thou canst lay upon me."

The words reached the ears of the son, and the audible sobs seemed to startle the solemn spirit of the hour and the place. "What would she say," he thought, "if she heard me declare I had robbed my uncle?"

At that moment the door opened, and in rushed little Jeanie S----th,--her face pale, and her blue eyes lighted with fear, and the thin delicate nostril distended, and hissing with her quick breathings,--

"Oh mither, there's twa officers on the stair seeking Charlie!"

And the quick creature, darting her eye on the table where the notes lay, snatched them up, and secreted them in her bosom; and, what was more extraordinary, just as if she had divined something more from her brother's looks, which told her that that money would be sought for by these officers, she darted off like a bird with a crumb in its bill, which it has picked up from beneath your eyes; but not before depositing, as she passed, a paper on a chair near the door.

"That creature is a spirit," said the mother. "She sees the evil in the dark before it comes, and wards it off like a guardian angel; but oh! she has little in her power to be an angel."

And rising, she took up the paper. It was only some bread and cheese, which the girl, knowing the privations of her mother, had bought with a part of her five shillings a week.

Thereafter, just as little Jeannie had intimated, came in two officers, with the usual looks of duty appearing through their professional sorrow.

"We want your son, good woman."

"He is there," said she; "but what want ye him for?"

"Not for going to church," said the man, forgetting said professional sorrow in his love of a joke, "but for robbery on the highway; and we must search the house for five pounds in British Linen Company notes."

And the men proceeded to search, even putting their hands in the mother's pockets, besides rifling those of the son. They of course found nothing except the powder and shot, which had still remained there, and a handkerchief.

"That is something, anyhow," said one of the men, "and a great deal too. The one who is up in the office says true; he was not the man."

"No more he was," said Charles. "I am the man you ought to take; and take me."

"Sae, sae; just as I suspected," muttered the mother. "Lord, Lord! the cup runs over. It was e'en lipping when John died; but I will bear yet." And she seemed to grasp firmly the back of a chair, and compressed her lips--an attitude she maintained like a statue all the time occupied by the departure of her son. The door closed--he was gone; and she still stood, the _vivum cadaver_--the image of a petrified creature of misery.

Yet, overcome as her very calmness was, and enchanted for the moment into voicelessness and utter inaction, she was not that kind of women who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows the flash. She thought for a moment, "God does not absolutely and for ever leave his servants." Some thought had struck her. She put on her bonnet and cloak deliberately, even looking into the glass to see if she was tidy enough for where she intended going, and for whom she intended to see.

And now this quiet woman is on her way down Broughton Street at twelve o'clock of a cold winter night, which, like her own mind, had only that calmness which results from the exhaustion of sudden biting gusts from the north, and therefore right in her face. She drew her cloak round her. She had a long way to go, but her son was in danger of the gallows; and thoughtless, and as it now seemed, wicked as he was, he was yet her _son_. The very word is a volume of heart language--not the fitful expression of passion, but that quiet eloquence which bedews the eye and brings deep sighs with holy recollections of the child-time, and germinating hopes of future happiness up to the period when he would hang over her departing spirit. Much of all that had gone, and been replaced by dark forebodings of the future; and now there was before her the vision of an ignominious death as the termination of all these holy inspirations. But her faithful saying was always, "Wait, hope, and persevere;" and the saying was muttered a hundred times as she trudged weariedly, oh! how weariedly, for one who had scarcely tasted food for that day, and who had left untouched the gift brought by her loving daughter that night--for which, plain as it was, her heart yearned even amidst its grief, yea, though grief is said, untruly no doubt, to have no appetite. Perhaps not to those who are well fed; but nature is stronger than even grief, and she now felt the consequence of her disobedience to her behests in her shaking limbs and fainting heart. Yet she trudged and trudged on, shutting her mouth against her empty stomach to keep out the cold north wind. She is at the foot of Inverleith Row, and her face is to the west; she will now escape the desultory blasts by keeping close by the long running dyke. She passes the scene of the robbery without knowing it; else, doubtless, she would have stood and examined it by those instincts that force the spirit to such modes of satisfaction, as if the inanimate thing could calm the spiritual. She was now drawing to Davidson's Mains: a little longer, and much past midnight, she was rapping, still in her quiet way, at the door of her brother.

The family had had something else to do than to sleep. There were the sounds of tongues and high words. Mrs. S----th was surprised, as well she might; for though sometimes Mr. Henderson partook freely of the bottle when he met old friends in town, he and the whole household were peaceable, orderly, and early goers to bed. The door was opened almost upon the instant; and Mrs. S----th was presently before Mr. Henderson and two others, one of whom held in his hand a whip.

"What has brought you here, Margaret, at this hour?"

"I want to speak privately to you."

"Just here; out with it," said he. "These are my friends; and if it is more money you want, you have come at an unlucky time, for I have been robbed by a villain of five pounds, which I could ill spare."

Mrs. S----th's heart died away within her. She clenched her hands to keep her from shaking; for she recollected the old story about his own son--a story which had got him the character of being harsh and unnatural. She could not mention her errand, which was nothing else than to induce her brother to use his influence in some way to get Charles out of the hands of the law. She could not utter even the word Charles, and all she could say was--

"Robbed!"

"Ay, robbed by a villain, whom I shall hang three cubits higher than Haman."

And the stern man even laughed at the thought of retribution. Yet, withal, no man could deny his generosity and general kindliness, if, even immediately after, he did not show it by slipping a pound into the hands of his needy sister.

"There," said he; "no more at present. I will call up and see you to-morrow morning, as I go to the police office to identify the villain. Meantime, take a dram, dear Peggy, and get home to bed. The night is cold, and see that you wrap yourself well up to keep _out_ the wind and _in_ the spirit; it's good whisky."

Shortly afterwards she was on her way home, with more than blasted hopes of what she had travelled for.

His uncle the man he had robbed! Even with all her forced composedness, this seemed too much--ay, so much too much, that she was totally overpowered. She paused to recover strength; and, looking forward, saw a thin flying shadow coming up to her, with a shriek of delight; and immediately she was hugged rapturously and kissed all over by little Jeannie, whose movements, as they ever were--so agile, so quick, so Protean--appeared to her, now that she was stolid with despair, as the postures and gestures of a creature appearing in a dream.

"Oh, I know all," she cried; "don't speak--nay, wait now till I return."

And the creature was off like a September meteor disappearing in the west, as if to make up again to the sun, far down away behind the hills from whence it had been struck off in the height of the day.

What can the strange creature mean? But she had had experience of her, and knew the instinctive divination that got at objects and results where reason in full-grown man would syllogize into the darkness of despair.

Nor was it long before she is running back, leaping with all the _abandon_ of a romp, crying--

"I will save dear Charlie yet; for I love him as much as I hate that old curmudgeon."

"What does the girl mean? Whaur was you, bairn?" said her mother.

"Oh mother, how cold it is for you! Wrap the cloak about you."

"But what _is_ it that you mean, Jeannie?"

"We shall be home by-and-by; come."

And, putting an arm round her mother's waist, she impelled her forward with the strength of her wythe of an arm.

"Come, come, there are ghosts about these woods;" and then she cowered, but still impelled.

Nor did the mother press the question she had already put twice; for, as we have said, she knew the nature of the girl, who ever took her own way, and had the art to make that way either filial obedience or loving conciliation.

"Oh, I'm so frightened for these ghosts!" she continued. "You know there was a murder here once upon a time. They're so like myself--wicked, and won't answer when they're spoken to, as I would not answer you, dear mother, just now; but wait till to-morrow, and you shall see that I am your own loving Jeannie."

"Weel, weel, bairn, we _will_ see. But, oh, I'm muckle afraid; d'ye know, Jeannie, Charlie has been robbing! And wha, think ye, was the man--wha but--"

"Hush, hush, mother, I know it all already; but let me beneath your cloak, I'm so frightened."

And the little sprite got in, keeping her head and the little cup of a bonnet protruding every moment to look round; yet if it could have been seen in the dark, with such a sly, half-humorous eye, as betokened one of those curiously-made creatures who seem to be formed for studies to the thoroughgoing decent pacers of the world's stage.

"Ah! now we're all safe, as poor Charlie will be to-morrow," she cried, as they got to the foot of the long row, and she emerged in the light of one of the lamps, so like a flash from a cloud, running before her mother to get her to walk faster and faster, as if some scheme she had in her head was loitering under the impediment of her mother's wearied, oh, wearied step.

Having at length reached home, Jeannie ran and got the fire as bright as her own eye, crying out occasionally, as she glanced about,

"Poor Charlie in a dungeon!" and again, a few minutes after, when puffing at the fire with the bellows,

"No fire for dear Charlie; all dark and dismal!"

And then, running for the little paper packet with the cheese and bread, and setting it down,

"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--.