CHAPTER XI--THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
It chanced that as I went down the hill these last words of my
friend the drover echoed not unfruitfully in my head. I had never
told these men the least particulars as to my race or fortune, as
it was a part, and the best part, of their civility to ask no
questions: yet they had dubbed me without hesitation English.
Some strangeness in the accent they had doubtless thus explained.
And it occurred to me, that if I could pass in Scotland for an
Englishman, I might be able to reverse the process and pass in
England for a Scot. I thought, if I was pushed to it, I could make
a struggle to imitate the brogue; after my experience with Candlish
and Sim, I had a rich provision of outlandish words at my command;
and I felt I could tell the tale of Tweedie's dog so as to deceive
a native. At the same time, I was afraid my name of St. Ives was
scarcely suitable; till I remembered there was a town so called in
the province of Cornwall, thought I might yet be glad to claim it
for my place of origin, and decided for a Cornish family and a
Scots education. For a trade, as I was equally ignorant of all,
and as the most innocent might at any moment be the means of my
exposure, it was best to pretend to none. And I dubbed myself a
young gentleman of a sufficient fortune and an idle, curious habit
of mind, rambling the country at my own charges, in quest of
health, information, and merry adventures.
At Newcastle, which was the first town I reached, I completed my
preparations for the part, before going to the inn, by the purchase
of a knapsack and a pair of leathern gaiters. My plaid I continued
to wear from sentiment. It was warm, useful to sleep in if I were
again benighted, and I had discovered it to be not unbecoming for a
man of gallant carriage. Thus equipped, I supported my character
of the light-hearted pedestrian not amiss. Surprise was indeed
expressed that I should have selected such a season of the year;
but I pleaded some delays of business, and smilingly claimed to be
an eccentric. The devil was in it, I would say, if any season of
the year was not good enough for me; I was not made of sugar, I was
no mollycoddle to be afraid of an ill-aired bed or a sprinkle of
snow; and I would knock upon the table with my fist and call for
t'other bottle, like the noisy and free-hearted young gentleman I
was. It was my policy (if I may so express myself) to talk much
and say little. At the inn tables, the country, the state of the
roads, the business interest of those who sat down with me, and the
course of public events, afforded me a considerable field in which
I might discourse at large and still communicate no information
about myself. There was no one with less air of reticence; I
plunged into my company up to the neck; and I had a long cock-and-
bull story of an aunt of mine which must have convinced the most
suspicious of my innocence. 'What!' they would have said, 'that
young ass to be concealing anything! Why, he has deafened me with
an aunt of his until my head aches. He only wants you should give
him a line, and he would tell you his whole descent from Adam
downward, and his whole private fortune to the last shilling.' A
responsible solid fellow was even so much moved by pity for my
inexperience as to give me a word or two of good advice: that I
was but a young man after all--I had at this time a deceptive air
of youth that made me easily pass for one-and-twenty, and was, in
the circumstances, worth a fortune--that the company at inns was
very mingled, that I should do well to be more careful, and the
like; to all which I made answer that I meant no harm myself and
expected none from others, or the devil was in it. 'You are one of
those d-d prudent fellows that I could never abide with,' said I.
'You are the kind of man that has a long head. That's all the
world, my dear sir: the long-heads and the short-horns! Now, I am
a short-horn.' 'I doubt,' says he, 'that you will not go very far
without getting sheared.' I offered to bet with him on that, and
he made off, shaking his head.
But my particular delight was to enlarge on politics and the war.
None damned the French like me; none was more bitter against the
Americans. And when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with
holly, and the coachman and guard hoarse with shouting victory, I
went even so far as to entertain the company to a bowl of punch,
which I compounded myself with no illiberal hand, and doled out to
such sentiments as the following:-
'Our glorious victory on the Nivelle'! 'Lord Wellington, God bless
him! and may victory ever attend upon his arms!' and, 'Soult, poor
devil! and may he catch it again to the same tune!'
Never was oratory more applauded to the echo--never any one was
more of the popular man than I. I promise you, we made a night of
it. Some of the company supported each other, with the assistance
of boots, to their respective bedchambers, while the rest slept on
the field of glory where we had left them; and at the breakfast
table the next morning there was an extraordinary assemblage of red
eyes and shaking fists. I observed patriotism to burn much lower
by daylight. Let no one blame me for insensibility to the reverses
of France! God knows how my heart raged. How I longed to fall on
that herd of swine and knock their heads together in the moment of
their revelry! But you are to consider my own situation and its
necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic,
which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw
myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy. It
is possible that I sometimes allowed this impish humour to carry me
further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished for
it once.
This was in the episcopal city of Durham. We sat down, a
considerable company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English
tories of that class which is often so enthusiastic as to be
inarticulate. I took and held the lead from the beginning; and,
the talk having turned on the French in the Peninsula, I gave them
authentic details (on the authority of a cousin of mine, an ensign)
of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia, in which no less a person
than General Caffarelli had taken a part. I always disliked that
commander, who once ordered me under arrest for insubordination;
and it is possible that a spice of vengeance added to the rigour of
my picture. I have forgotten the details; no doubt they were high-
coloured. No doubt I rejoiced to fool these jolter-heads; and no
doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping
faces encouraged me to proceed extremely far. And for my sins,
there was one silent little man at table who took my story at the
true value. It was from no sense of humour, to which he was quite
dead. It was from no particular intelligence, for he had not any.
The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, had rendered him
clairvoyant.
Dinner was no sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets
with some design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was
silently at my heels. A few doors from the inn, in a dark place of
the street, I was aware of a touch on my arm, turned suddenly, and
found him looking up at me with eyes pathetically bright.
'I beg your pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly
rich. He--he! Particularly racy,' said he. 'I tell you, sir, I
took you wholly! I SMOKED you! I believe you and I, sir, if we
had a chance to talk, would find we had a good many opinions in
common. Here is the "Blue Bell," a very comfortable place. They
draw good ale, sir. Would you be so condescending as to share a
pot with me?'
There was something so ambiguous and secret in the little man's
perpetual signalling, that I confess my curiosity was much aroused.
Blaming myself, even as I did so, for the indiscretion, I embraced
his proposal, and we were soon face to face over a tankard of
mulled ale. He lowered his voice to the least attenuation of a
whisper.
'Here, sir,' said he, 'is to the Great Man. I think you take me?
No?' He leaned forward till our noses touched. 'Here is to the
Emperor!' said he.
I was extremely embarrassed, and, in spite of the creature's
innocent appearance, more than half alarmed. I thought him too
ingenious, and, indeed, too daring for a spy. Yet if he were
honest he must be a man of extraordinary indiscretion, and
therefore very unfit to be encouraged by an escaped prisoner. I
took a half course, accordingly--accepted his toast in silence, and
drank it without enthusiasm.
He proceeded to abound in the praises of Napoleon, such as I had
never heard in France, or at least only on the lips of officials
paid to offer them.
'And this Caffarelli, now,' he pursued: 'he is a splendid fellow,
too, is he not? I have not heard vastly much of him myself. No
details, sir--no details! We labour under huge difficulties here
as to unbiassed information.'
'I believe I have heard the same complaint in other countries,' I
could not help remarking. 'But as to Caffarelli, he is neither
lame nor blind, he has two legs and a nose in the middle of his
face. And I care as much about him as you care for the dead body
of Mr. Perceval!'
He studied me with glowing eyes.
'You cannot deceive me!' he cried. 'You have served under him.
You are a Frenchman! I hold by the hand, at last, one of that
noble race, the pioneers of the glorious principles of liberty and
brotherhood. Hush! No, it is all right. I thought there had been
somebody at the door. In this wretched, enslaved country we dare
not even call our souls our own. The spy and the hangman, sir--the
spy and the hangman! And yet there is a candle burning, too. The
good leaven is working, sir--working underneath. Even in this town
there are a few brave spirits, who meet every Wednesday. You must
stay over a day or so, and join us. We do not use this house.
Another, and a quieter. They draw fine ale, however--fair, mild
ale. You will find yourself among friends, among brothers. You
will hear some very daring sentiments expressed!' he cried,
expanding his small chest. 'Monarchy, Christianity--all the
trappings of a bloated past--the Free Confraternity of Durham and
Tyneside deride.'
Here was a devil of a prospect for a gentleman whose whole design
was to avoid observation! The Free Confraternity had no charms for
me; daring sentiments were no part of my baggage; and I tried,
instead, a little cold water.
'You seem to forget, sir, that my Emperor has re-established
Christianity,' I observed.
'Ah, sir, but that was policy!' he exclaimed. 'You do not
understand Napoleon. I have followed his whole career. I can
explain his policy from first to last. Now for instance in the
Peninsula, on which you were so very amusing, if you will come to a
friend's house who has a map of Spain, I can make the whole course
of the war quite clear to you, I venture to say, in half an hour.'
This was intolerable. Of the two extremes, I found I preferred the
British tory; and, making an appointment for the morrow, I pleaded
sudden headache, escaped to the inn, packed my knapsack, and fled,
about nine at night, from this accursed neighbourhood. It was
cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry, with a touch of frost.
For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a long stage
of it; and about ten o'clock, spying on the right-hand side of the
way the lighted windows of an alehouse, I determined to bait there
for the night.
It was against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest
inns; and the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me
more particular in the future. A large company was assembled in
the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco smoke, and
brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal. Hard by the chimney
stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation,
whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to
take it, when the nearest of the company stopped me with his hand.
'Beg thy pardon, sir,' said he; 'but that there chair belongs to a
British soldier.'
A chorus of voices enforced and explained. It was one of Lord
Wellington's heroes. He had been wounded under Rowland Hill. He
was Colbourne's right-hand man. In short, this favoured individual
appeared to have served with every separate corps, and under every
individual general in the Peninsula. Of course I apologised. I
had not known. The devil was in it if a soldier had not a right to
the best in England. And with that sentiment, which was loudly
applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some
hopes of entertainment, the return of the hero. He proved, of
course, to be a private soldier. I say of course, because no
officer could possibly enjoy such heights of popularity. He had
been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm in a
sling. What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the
company had been plying him with drink. His honest yokel's
countenance blazed as if with fever, his eyes were glazed and
looked the two ways, and his feet stumbled as, amidst a murmur of
applause, he returned to the midst of his admirers.
Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the
highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble
the reader with a reminiscence of my services.
I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile. We were in close
touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against
smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice,
when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding
up his musket. I repeated it, and we both crept together in the
dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies. It
was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the
English had quite run out. He gave me the money, and I, as was the
custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the
canteen. When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had
pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the
outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for
nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.
Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of
courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so
gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and
you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile,
benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and
with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond
that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army. But my
Englishman was either a very honest fellow, or else extremely
thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position.
Now, the English sentry in Castile, and the wounded hero in the
Durham public-house, were one and the same person; and if he had
been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away,
the travels of M. St. Ives might have come to an untimely end.
I suppose this woke me up; it stirred in me besides a spirit of
opposition, and in spite of cold, darkness, the highwaymen and the
footpads, I determined to walk right on till breakfast-time: a
happy resolution, which enabled me to observe one of those traits
of manners which at once depict a country and condemn it. It was
near midnight when I saw, a great way ahead of me, the light of
many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and
the slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of
a sordid, silent, and lugubrious procession, such as we see in
dreams. Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in
unbroken silence; in their midst a cart, and in the cart, on an
inclined platform, the dead body of a man--the centre-piece of this
solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this
unusual hour to celebrate. It was but a plain, dingy old fellow of
fifty or sixty, his throat cut, his shirt turned over as though to
show the wound. Blue trousers and brown socks completed his
attire, if we can talk so of the dead. He had a horrid look of a
waxwork. In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and
mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of
speech. The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and
surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for
some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow it in
amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a
lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves
along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst
of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the
ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the
platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A
sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now
withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow
with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night)
drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled
with quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some
oppression, broke at once into a sound of whispered speech.
My shirt stuck to me, my heart had almost ceased beating, and I
found my tongue with difficulty.
'I beg your pardon,' I gasped to a neighbour, 'what is this? what
has he done? is it allowed?'
'Why, where do you come from?' replied the man.
'I am a traveller, sir,' said I, 'and a total stranger in this part
of the country. I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and
came by chance on this--this incredible scene. Who was the man?'
'A suicide,' said he. 'Ay, he was a bad one, was Johnnie Green.'
It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous
murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his
own hand. And the nightmare at the crossroads was the regular
punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the
Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to
prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather
prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the
bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to
myself in conscious superiority--and take a thimbleful of brandy
for the stomach's sake.
I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going
to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-
fashioned English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a
pretty chambermaid. We had a good many pleasant passages as she
waited table or warmed my bed for me with a devil of a brass
warming pan, fully larger than herself; and as she was no less pert
than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather better
than she took. I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of
her saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was
attached to a young lady in Scotland, and received the
encouragement of her sympathy, mingled and connected with a fair
amount of rustic wit. While I slept the down-mail stopped for
supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left behind a copy of
the EDINBURGH COURANT, and the next morning my pretty chambermaid
set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that there
was some news from my lady-love. I took it eagerly, hoping to find
some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I
was about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph
immediately concerning me. Faa was in hospital, grievously sick,
and warrants were out for the arrest of Sim and Candlish. These
two men had shown themselves very loyal to me. This trouble
emerging, the least I could do was to be guided by a similar
loyalty to them. Suppose my visit to my uncle crowned with some
success, and my finances re-established, I determined I should
immediately return to Edinburgh, put their case in the hands of a
good lawyer, and await events. So my mind was very lightly made up
to what proved a mighty serious matter. Candlish and Sim were all
very well in their way, and I do sincerely trust I should have been
at some pains to help them, had there been nothing else. But in
truth my heart and my eyes were set on quite another matter, and I
received the news of their tribulation almost with joy. That is
never a bad wind that blows where we want to go, and you may be
sure there was nothing unwelcome in a circumstance that carried me
back to Edinburgh and Flora. From that hour I began to indulge
myself with the making of imaginary scenes and interviews, in which
I confounded the aunt, flattered Ronald, and now in the witty, now
in the sentimental manner, declared my love and received the
assurance of its return. By means of this exercise my resolution
daily grew stronger, until at last I had piled together such a mass
of obstinacy as it would have taken a cataclysm of nature to
subvert.
'Yes,' said I to the chambermaid, 'here is news of my lady-love
indeed, and very good news too.'
All that day, in the teeth of a keen winter wind, I hugged myself
in my plaid, and it was as though her arms were flung around me.
