by Walter Scott
CHAPTER THIRD.
The slack sail shifts from side to side, The boat, untrimm'd, admits the tide, Borne down, adrift, at random tost, The oar breaks short, the rudder's lost. Gay's _Fables._
I have tagged with rhyme and blank verse the subdivisions of thisimportant narrative, in order to seduce your continued attention bypowers of composition of stronger attraction than my own. The precedinglines refer to an unfortunate navigator, who daringly unloosed from itsmoorings a boat, which he was unable to manage, and thrust it off intothe full tide of a navigable river. No schoolboy, who, betwixt frolic anddefiance, has executed a similar rash attempt, could feel himself, whenadrift in a strong current, in a situation more awkward than mine, when Ifound myself driving, without a compass, on the ocean of human life.There had been such unexpected ease in the manner in which my fatherslipt a knot, usually esteemed the strongest which binds societytogether, and suffered me to depart as a sort of outcast from his family,that it strangely lessened the confidence in my own personalaccomplishments, which had hitherto sustained me. Prince Prettyman, now aprince, and now a fisher's son, had not a more awkward sense of hisdegradation. We are so apt, in our engrossing egotism, to consider allthose accessories which are drawn around us by prosperity, as pertainingand belonging to our own persons, that the discovery of our unimportance,when left to our own proper resources, becomes inexpressibly mortifying.As the hum of London died away on my ear, the distant peal of hersteeples more than once sounded to my ears the admonitory "Turn again,"erst heard by her future Lord Mayor; and when I looked back from Highgateon her dusky magnificence, I felt as if I were leaving behind me comfort,opulence, the charms of society, and all the pleasures of cultivatedlife.
But the die was cast. It was, indeed, by no means probable that a lateand ungracious compliance with my father's wishes would have reinstatedme in the situation which I had lost. On the contrary, firm and strong ofpurpose as he himself was, he might rather have been disgusted thanconciliated by my tardy and compulsory acquiescence in his desire that Ishould engage in commerce. My constitutional obstinacy came also to myaid, and pride whispered how poor a figure I should make, when an airingof four miles from London had blown away resolutions formed during amonth's serious deliberation. Hope, too, that never forsakes the youngand hardy, lent her lustre to my future prospects. My father could not beserious in the sentence of foris-familiation, which he had sounhesitatingly pronounced. It must be but a trial of my disposition,which, endured with patience and steadiness on my part, would raise me inhis estimation, and lead to an amicable accommodation of the point indispute between us. I even settled in my own mind how far I would concedeto him, and on what articles of our supposed treaty I would make a firmstand; and the result was, according to my computation, that I was to bereinstated in my full rights of filiation, paying the easy penalty ofsome ostensible compliances to atone for my past rebellion.
In the meanwhile, I was lord of my person, and experienced that feelingof independence which the youthful bosom receives with a thrillingmixture of pleasure and apprehension. My purse, though by no means amplyreplenished, was in a situation to supply all the wants and wishes of atraveller. I had been accustomed, while at Bourdeaux, to act as my ownvalet; my horse was fresh, young, and active, and the buoyancy of myspirits soon surmounted the melancholy reflections with which my journeycommenced.
I should have been glad to have journeyed upon a line of road bettercalculated to afford reasonable objects of curiosity, or a moreinteresting country, to the traveller. But the north road was then, andperhaps still is, singularly deficient in these respects; nor do Ibelieve you can travel so far through Britain in any other directionwithout meeting more of what is worthy to engage the attention. My mentalruminations, notwithstanding my assumed confidence, were not always of anunchequered nature. The Muse too,--the very coquette who had led me intothis wilderness,--like others of her sex, deserted me in my utmost need,and I should have been reduced to rather an uncomfortable state ofdulness, had it not been for the occasional conversation of strangers whochanced to pass the same way. But the characters whom I met with were ofa uniform and uninteresting description. Country parsons, jogginghomewards after a visitation; farmers, or graziers, returning from adistant market; clerks of traders, travelling to collect what was due totheir masters, in provincial towns; with now and then an officer goingdown into the country upon the recruiting service, were, at this period,the persons by whom the turnpikes and tapsters were kept in exercise. Ourspeech, therefore, was of tithes and creeds, of beeves and grain, ofcommodities wet and dry, and the solvency of the retail dealers,occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, inFlanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand.Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and thenames of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, andother Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as householdwords. At such tales, like children closing their circle round the firewhen the ghost story draws to its climax, the riders drew near to eachother, looked before and behind them, examined the priming of theirpistols, and vowed to stand by each other in case of danger; anengagement which, like other offensive and defensive alliances, sometimesglided out of remembrance when there was an appearance of actual peril.
Of all the fellows whom I ever saw haunted by terrors of this nature, onepoor man, with whom I travelled a day and a half, afforded me mostamusement. He had upon his pillion a very small, but apparently a veryweighty portmanteau, about the safety of which he seemed particularlysolicitous; never trusting it out of his own immediate care, anduniformly repressing the officious zeal of the waiters and ostlers, whooffered their services to carry it into the house. With the sameprecaution he laboured to conceal, not only the purpose of his journey,and his ultimate place of destination, but even the direction of eachday's route. Nothing embarrassed him more than to be asked by any one,whether he was travelling upwards or downwards, or at what stage heintended to bait. His place of rest for the night he scrutinised with themost anxious care, alike avoiding solitude, and what he considered as badneighbourhood; and at Grantham, I believe, he sate up all night to avoidsleeping in the next room to a thick-set squinting fellow, in a blackwig, and a tarnished gold-laced waistcoat. With all these cares on hismind, my fellow traveller, to judge by his thews and sinews, was a manwho might have set danger at defiance with as much impunity as most men.He was strong and well built; and, judging from his gold-laced hat andcockade, seemed to have served in the army, or, at least, to belong tothe military profession in one capacity or other. His conversation also,though always sufficiently vulgar, was that of a man of sense, when theterrible bugbears which haunted his imagination for a moment ceased tooccupy his attention. But every accidental association recalled them. Anopen heath, a close plantation, were alike subjects of apprehension; andthe whistle of a shepherd lad was instantly converted into the signal ofa depredator. Even the sight of a gibbet, if it assured him that onerobber was safely disposed of by justice, never failed to remind him howmany remained still unhanged.
I should have wearied of this fellow's company, had I not been still moretired of my own thoughts. Some of the marvellous stories, however, whichhe related, had in themselves a cast of interest, and another whimsicalpoint of his peculiarities afforded me the occasional opportunity ofamusing myself at his expense. Among his tales, several of theunfortunate travellers who fell among thieves, incurred that calamityfrom associating themselves on the road with a well-dressed andentertaining stranger, in whose company they trusted to find protectionas well as amusement; who cheered their journey with tale and song,protected them against the evils of over-charges and false reckonings,until at length, under pretext of showing a near path over a desolatecommon, he seduced his unsuspicious victims from the public road intosome dismal glen, where, suddenly blowing his whistle, he assembled hiscomrades from their l
urking-place, and displayed himself in his truecolours--the captain, namely, of the band of robbers to whom his unwaryfellow-travellers had forfeited their purses, and perhaps their lives.Towards the conclusion of such a tale, and when my companion had wroughthimself into a fever of apprehension by the progress of his ownnarrative, I observed that he usually eyed me with a glance of doubt andsuspicion, as if the possibility occurred to him, that he might, at thatvery moment, be in company with a character as dangerous as that whichhis tale described. And ever and anon, when such suggestions pressedthemselves on the mind of this ingenious self-tormentor, he drew off fromme to the opposite side of the high-road, looked before, behind, andaround him, examined his arms, and seemed to prepare himself for flightor defence, as circumstances might require.
The suspicion implied on such occasions seemed to me only momentary, andtoo ludicrous to be offensive. There was, in fact, no particularreflection on my dress or address, although I was thus mistaken for arobber. A man in those days might have all the external appearance of agentleman, and yet turn out to be a highwayman. For the division oflabour in every department not having then taken place so fully as sincethat period, the profession of the polite and accomplished adventurer,who nicked you out of your money at White's, or bowled you out of it atMarylebone, was often united with that of the professed ruffian, who onBagshot Heath, or Finchley Common, commanded his brother beau to standand deliver. There was also a touch of coarseness and hardness about themanners of the times, which has since, in a great degree, been softenedand shaded away. It seems to me, on recollection, as if desperate men hadless reluctance then than now to embrace the most desperate means ofretrieving their fortune. The times were indeed past, when Anthony-a-Woodmourned over the execution of two men, goodly in person, and ofundisputed courage and honour, who were hanged without mercy at Oxford,merely because their distress had driven them to raise contributions onthe highway. We were still farther removed from the days of "the madPrince and Poins." And yet, from the number of unenclosed and extensiveheaths in the vicinity of the metropolis, and from the less populousstate of remote districts, both were frequented by that species ofmounted highwaymen, that may possibly become one day unknown, who carriedon their trade with something like courtesy; and, like Gibbet in theBeaux Stratagem, piqued themselves on being the best behaved men on theroad, and on conducting themselves with all appropriate civility in theexercise of their vocation. A young man, therefore, in my circumstanceswas not entitled to be highly indignant at the mistake which confoundedhim with this worshipful class of depredators.
Neither was I offended. On the contrary, I found amusement in alternatelyexciting, and lulling to sleep, the suspicions of my timorous companion,and in purposely so acting as still farther to puzzle a brain whichnature and apprehension had combined to render none of the clearest. Whenmy free conversation had lulled him into complete security, it requiredonly a passing inquiry concerning the direction of his journey, or thenature of the business which occasioned it, to put his suspicions oncemore in arms. For example, a conversation on the comparative strength andactivity of our horses, took such a turn as follows:--
"O sir," said my companion, "for the gallop I grant you; but allow me tosay, your horse (although he is a very handsome gelding--that must beowned,) has too little bone to be a good roadster. The trot, sir"(striking his Bucephalus with his spurs),--"the trot is the true pace fora hackney; and, were we near a town, I should like to try thatdaisy-cutter of yours upon a piece of level road (barring canter) for aquart of claret at the next inn."
"Content, sir," replied I; "and here is a stretch of ground veryfavourable."
"Hem, ahem," answered my friend with hesitation; "I make it a rule oftravelling never to blow my horse between stages; one never knows whatoccasion he may have to put him to his mettle: and besides, sir, when Isaid I would match you, I meant with even weight; you ride four stonelighter than I."
"Very well; but I am content to carry weight. Pray, what may thatportmanteau of yours weigh?"
"My p-p-portmanteau?" replied he, hesitating--"O very little--afeather--just a few shirts and stockings."
"I should think it heavier, from its appearance. I'll hold you the quartof claret it makes the odds betwixt our weight."
"You're mistaken, sir, I assure you--quite mistaken," replied my friend,edging off to the side of the road, as was his wont on these alarmingoccasions.
"Well, I am willing to venture the wine; or, I will bet you ten pieces tofive, that I carry your portmanteau on my croupe, and out-trot you intothe bargain."
This proposal raised my friend's alarm to the uttermost. His nose changedfrom the natural copper hue which it had acquired from many a comfortablecup of claret or sack, into a palish brassy tint, and his teeth chatteredwith apprehension at the unveiled audacity of my proposal, which seemedto place the barefaced plunderer before him in full atrocity. As hefaltered for an answer, I relieved him in some degree by a questionconcerning a steeple, which now became visible, and an observation thatwe were now so near the village as to run no risk from interruption onthe road. At this his countenance cleared up: but I easily perceived thatit was long ere he forgot a proposal which seemed to him so fraught withsuspicion as that which I had now hazarded. I trouble you with thisdetail of the man's disposition, and the manner in which I practised uponit, because, however trivial in themselves, these particulars wereattended by an important influence on future incidents which will occurin this narrative. At the time, this person's conduct only inspired mewith contempt, and confirmed me in an opinion which I alreadyentertained, that of all the propensities which teach mankind to tormentthemselves, that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful,and pitiable.