Rob Roy (31 page)

Evening had now closed, and the growing darkness gave
to the broad, still, and deep expanse of the brimful river, first a hue sombre and uniform, then a dismal and turbid appearance, partially lighted by a waning and pallid moon. The massive and ancient bridge which stretches across the Clyde, was now but dimly visible, and resembled that which Mirza, in his unequalled vision, has described as traversing the valley of Bagdad. The low-browed arches, seen as imperfectly as the dusky current which they bestrode, seemed rather caverns which swallowed up the gloomy waters of the river, than apertures contrived for their passage. With the advancing night the stillness of the scene increased. There was yet a twinkling light occasionally seen to glide along by the stream, which conducted home one or two of the small parties, who, after the abstinence and religious duties of the day, had partaken of a social supper, the only meal at which the rigid presbyterians made some advance to sociality on the Sabbath. Occasionally, also, the hoofs of a horse were heard, whose rider, after spending the Sunday in Glasgow, was directing his steps towards his residence in the country. These sounds and sights became gradually of more rare occurrence. At length they altogether ceased, and I was left to enjoy my solitary walk on the shores of the Clyde in solemn silence, broken only by the tolling of the successive hour from the steeples of the churches.

But as the night advanced, my impatience at the uncertainty of the situation in which I was placed increased every moment, and became nearly ungovernable. I began to question whether I had been imposed upon by the trick of a fool, the raving of a madman, or the studied machination of a villain, and paced the little quay or pier adjoining the entrance to the bridge in a state of incredible anxiety and vexation. At length the hour of twelve o'clock swung its summons over the city from the belfry of the metropolitan
church of St. Mungo, and was answered and vouched by all the others like dutiful diocesans. The echoes had scarcely ceased to repeat the last sound, when a human form—the first I had seen for two hours—appeared passing along the bridge from the southern shore of the river. I advanced to meet him with a feeling as if my fate depended on die result of the interview, so much had my anxiety been wound up by protracted expectation. All that I could remark of die passenger as we advanced towards each other was, that his frame was rather beneath than above the middle size, but apparently strong, thick-set, and muscular; his dress a horseman's wrapping coat. I slackened my pace, and almost paused as I advanced, in expectation that he would address me. But to my inexpressible disappointment, he passed without speaking, and I had no pretence for being the first to address one, who, notwithstanding his appearance at the very hour of the appointment, might nevertheless be an absolute stranger. I stopped when he had passed me, and looked after him, uncertain whether I ought not to follow him. The stranger walked on till near the northern end of the bridge, then paused, looked back, and, turning round, again advanced towards me. I resolved that this time he should not have die apology for silence proper to apparitions, who, it is vulgarly supposed, cannot speak until they are spoken to. ‘You walk late, sir,' said I, as we met a second time.

‘I bide tryst,' was the reply, ‘and so I think do you. Mr. Osbaldistone.'

‘You are then the person who requested to meet me here at this unusual hour?'

‘I am,' he replied. ‘Follow me, and you shall know my reasons.'

‘Before following you, I must know your name and purpose,' I answered.

‘I am a man,' was the reply; ‘and my purpose is friendly to you.'

‘A man !' I repeated. ‘That is a very brief description.'

‘It will serve for one who has no other to give,' said the stranger. ‘He that is without name, without friends, without coin, without country, is still at least a man; and he that has all these is no more.'

‘Yet this is still too general an account of yourself, to say the least of it, to establish your credit with a stranger.'

‘It is all I mean to give, howsoe'er; you may choose to follow me, or to remain without the information I desire to afford you.'

‘Can you not give me that information here?' I demanded.

‘You must receive it from your eyes, not from my tongue —you must follow me, or remain in ignorance of the information which I have to give to you.'

There was something short, determined, and even stern in the man's manner, not certainly well calculated to conciliate undoubting confidence.

‘What is it you fear?' he said impatiently. ‘To whom, think ye, is your life of such consequence, that they should seek to bereave ye of it?'

‘I fear nothing,' I replied firmly, though somewhat hastily.' Walk on—I attend you.'

We proceeded, contrary to my expectation, to re-enter the town, and glided like mute spectres, side by side, up its empty and silent streets. The high and gloomy stone fronts, with the variegated ornaments and pediments of the windows, looked yet taller and more sable by the imperfect moonshine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my conductor spoke.

‘Are you afraid?'

‘I retort your own words,' I replied; ‘wherefore should I fear?'

‘Because you are with a stranger—perhaps an enemy, in a place where you have no friends and many enemies.'

‘I neither fear you nor them; I am young, active, and armed.'

‘I am not armed,' replied my conductor; ‘but no matter, a willing hand never lacked weapon. You say you fear nothing; but if you knew who was by your side, perhaps you might underlie a tremor.'

‘And why should I?' replied I. ‘I again repeat, I fear nought that you can do.'

‘Nought that Fnot I can do?—Be it so. But do you not fear the consequences of being found with one, whose very name whispered in this lonely street would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him—on whose head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar—the sound of whose apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news of a field stricken and won in Flanders?'

‘And who then are you, whose name should create so deep a feeling of terror?' I replied.

‘No enemy of yours, since I am conveying you to a place, where, were I myself recognised and identified, iron to the heels, and hemp to the craig, would be my brief dooming.'

I paused and stood still on the pavement, drawing back so as to have the most perfect view of my companion which the light afforded, and which was sufficient to guard me against any sudden motion of assault.

‘You have said,' I answered, ‘either too much or too little—too much to induce me to confide in you as a mere stranger, since you avow yourself a person amenable to die laws of die country in which we are—and too little, unless you could show that you are unjusdy subjected to their rigour.'

As I ceased to speak, he made a step towards me. I drew back instinctively, and laid my hand on the hilt of my sword.

‘What,' said he, ‘on an unarmed man, and your friend?'

‘I am yet ignorant if you are either the one or the other,' I replied; ‘and, to say the truth, your language and manner might well entitle me to doubt both.'

‘It is manfully spoken,' replied my conductor; ‘and I respect him whose hand can keep his head.—I will be frank and free with you—I am conveying you to prison.'

‘To prison!' I exclaimed; ‘by what warrant, or for what offence?—You shall have my life sooner than my liberty—I defy you, and I will not follow you a step farther.'

‘I do not,' he said, ‘carry you there as a prisoner. I am,' he added, drawing himself up, ‘neither a messenger nor sheriff‘s officer; I carry you to see a prisoner from whose lips you will learn die risk in which you presendy stand.
Your
liberty is little risked by die visit; mine is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for I care not for risk, and I love a free young blood, and kens no protector but the cross o‘the sword.'

While he spoke thus, we had reached die principal street, and were pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I could perceive, with gratings of iron before die windows.

‘Muckle,' said die stranger, whose language became more broadly national as he assumed a tone of colloquial freedom—‘Muckle wad die provost and bailies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting widi iron garters to his hose within their tolbooth, that now stands wi‘his legs as free as the reddeer's on die outside on't. And little wad it avail them; for an if they had me there wi' a stane's weight o' iron at every ancle, I would show them a toom room and a lost lodger before to-morrow—But come on, what stint ye for?'

As he spoke thus, he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered by a sharp voice, as of one awakened from a dream or reverie,—‘Fa's tat?—Wha‘s that, I wad say?—and fat a deil want ye at this hour at e‘en?—Clean again rules—clean again rules, as they ca' them.'

The protracted tone in which the last words were uttered, betokened that the speaker was again composing himself to slumber. But my guide spoke in a loud whisper, ‘Dougal, man! hae ye forgotten Ha nun Gregarach?'

‘Deil a bit, deil a bit,' was the ready and lively response, and I heard the internal guardian of the prison-gate bustle up with great alacrity. A few words were exchanged between my conductor and the turnkey, in a language to which I was an absolute stranger. The bolts revolved, but with a caution which marked the apprehension that the noise might be overheard, and we stood within the vestibule of the prison of Glasgow, a small, but strong guardroom, from which a narrow staircase led upwards, and one or two low entrances conducted to apartments on the same level with the outward gate, all secured with the jealous strength of wickets, bolts, and bars. The walls, otherwise naked, were not unsuitably garnished with iron fetters, and other uncouth implements, which might be designed for purposes still more inhuman, interspersed with partisans, guns, pistols of antique manufacture, and other weapons of defence and offence.

At finding myself so unexpectedly, fortuitously, and, as it were, by stealth, introduced within one of the legal fortresses of Scotland, I could not help recollecting my adventure in Northumberland, and fretting at the strange incidents which again, without any demerits of my own, threatened to place me in a dangerous and disagreeable collision with the laws of a country, which I visited only in the capacity of a stranger.

Look round thee, young Astolpho: Here's the place
Which men (for being poor) are sent to starve in;—
Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease,
Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench,
Doth Hope's fair torch expire; and at the snuff,
Ere yet'tis quite extinct, rude wild, and wayward,
The desperate revelries of wild despair,
Kindling their hell-born cressets, light to deeds
That the poor captive would have died ere practised,
Till bondage sunk his soul to his condition.

The Prison, Scene III. Act I

A
T
my first entrance I turned an eager glance towards my conductor; but the lamp in the vestibule was too low in flame to give my curiosity any satisfaction by affording a distinct perusal of his features. As the turnkey held the light in his hand, the beams fell more full on his own scarce less interesting figure. He was a wild shock–headed looking animal, whose profusion of red hair covered and obscured his features, which were otherwise only characterised by the extravagant joy that affected him at the sight of my guide. In my experience I have met nothing so absolutely resembling my idea of a very uncouth, wild, and ugly savage, adoring the idol of his tribe. He grinned, he shivered, he laughed, he was near crying, if he did not actually cry. He had a ‘Where shall I go?—What can I do for you?' expression of face; the complete, surrendered, and anxious subservience and devotion of which it is difficult to describe, otherwise than by the awkward combination which I have attempted. The fellow's voice seemed choking in his ecstasy, and only could express itself in such interjections as ‘Oigh, oigh,—Ay, ay—it's lang since she's seen ye!' and other exclamations equally brief, expressed in the same
unknown tongue in which he had communicated with my conductor while we were on the outside of the jail door. My guide received all this excess of joyful gratulation much like a prince too early accustomed to the homage of those around him to be much moved by it, yet willing to requite it by the usual forms of royal courtesy. He extended his hand graciously towards the turnkey, with a civil enquiry of ‘How‘s a' wi' you, Dougal?'

‘Oigh, oigh !' exclaimed Dougal, softening the sharp exclamations of his surprise as he looked around with an eye of watchful alarm—‘Oigh, to see you here—to see you here—Oigh, what will come o' ye gin the bailies suld come to get witting—ta filthy, gutty hallions, tat they are?'

My guide placed his finger on his lip, and said, ‘Fear nothing, Dougal; your hands shall never draw a bolt on me.'

‘Tat sall they no,' said Dougal; ‘she suld—she wad—that is, she wishes them hacked aff by the elbows first—But when are ye gaun yonder again? and ye'll no forget to let her ken—she's your puir cousin, God kens, only seven times removed.'

‘I will let you ken, Dougal, as soon as my plans are settled.'

‘And, by her sooth, when you do, an it were twal o' the Sunday at e'en, she'll fling her keys at the provost's head or she gie them anither turn, and that or ever Monday morning begins—see if she winna.'

My mysterious stranger cut his acquaintance's ecstasies short by again addressing him, in what I afterwards understood to be the Irish, Earse, or Gaelic, explaining, probably, the services which he required at his hand. The answer, ‘Wi' a' her heart—wi' a' her soul,' with a good deal of indistinct muttering in a similar tone, intimated the turnkey's acquiescence in what he proposed. The fellow trimmed his dying lamp, and made a sign to me to follow him.