The Heart of Midlothian (Unabridged). Walter Scott

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she, that has no place among us, but has come foul with her sins, like the Evil One, among the children of God? — Where is she, Jeanie? — Bring her before me, that I may kill her with a word and a look!”

      All hastened around him with their appropriate sources of consolation — the Laird with his purse, Jeanie with burnt feathers and strong waters, and the women with their exhortations. “O neighbour — O Mr. Deans, it’s a sair trial, doubtless — but think of the Rock of Ages, neighbour — think of the promise!”

      “And I do think of it, neighbours — and I bless God that I can think of it, even in the wrack and ruin of a’ that’s nearest and dearest to me — But to be the father of a castaway — a profligate — a bloody Zipporah — a mere murderess! — O, how will the wicked exult in the high places of their wickedness! — the prelatists, and the latitudinarians, and the hand-waled murderers, whose hands are hard as horn wi’ handing the slaughter-weapons — they will push out the lip, and say that we are even such as themselves. Sair, sair I am grieved, neighbours, for the poor castaway — for the child of mine old age — but sairer for the stumbling-block and scandal it will be to all tender and honest souls!”

      “Davie — winna siller do’t?” insinuated the laird, still proffering his green purse, which was full of guineas.

      “I tell ye, Dumbiedikes,” said Deans, “that if telling down my haill substance could hae saved her frae this black snare, I wad hae walked out wi’ naething but my bonnet and my staff to beg an awmous for God’s sake, and ca’d mysell an happy man — But if a dollar, or a plack, or the nineteenth part of a boddle, wad save her open guilt and open shame frae open punishment, that purchase wad David Deans never make! — Na, na; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life, blood for blood — it’s the law of man, and it’s the law of God. — Leave me, sirs — leave me — I maun warstle wi’ this trial in privacy and on my knees.”

      Jeanie, now in some degree restored to the power of thought, joined in the same request. The next day found the father and daughter still in the depth of affliction, but the father sternly supporting his load of ill through a proud sense of religious duty, and the daughter anxiously suppressing her own feelings to avoid again awakening his. Thus was it with the afflicted family until the morning after Porteous’s death, a period at which we are now arrived.

1 [The late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.]

2 Peter Walker.

      This personage, whom it would be base ingratitude in the author to pass over without some notice, was by far the most zealous and faithful collector and recorder of the actions and opinions of the Cameronians. He resided, while stationary, at the Bristo Port of Edinburgh, but was by trade an itinerant merchant, or pedlar, which profession he seems to have exercised in Ireland as well as Britain. He composed biographical notices of Alexander Peden, John Semple, John Welwood, and Richard Cameron, all ministers of the Cameronian persuasion, to which the last mentioned member gave the name.

      It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be gathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into the burlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but always expressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed and sentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turn for the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is little room to doubt his veracity concerning whatever he quotes on his own knowledge. His small tracts now bring a very high price, especially the earlier and authentic editions. The tirade against dancing, pronounced by David Deans, is, as intimated in the text, partly borrowed from Peter Walker. He notices, as a foul reproach upon the name of Richard Cameron, that his memory was vituperated, “by pipers and fiddlers playing the Cameronian march — carnal vain springs, which too many professors of religion dance to; a practice unbecoming the professors of Christianity to dance to any spring, but somewhat more to this. Whatever,” he proceeds, “be the many foul blots recorded of the saints in Scripture, none of them is charged with this regular fit of distraction. We find it has been practised by the wicked and profane, as the dancing at that brutish, base action of the calf-making; and it had been good for that unhappy lass, who danced off the head of John the Baptist, that she had been born a cripple, and never drawn a limb to her. Historians say, that her sin was written upon her judgment, who some time thereafter was dancing upon the ice, and it broke, and snapt the head off her; her head danced above, and her feet beneath. There is ground to think and conclude, that when the world’s wickedness was great, dancing at their marriages was practised; but when the heavens above, and the earth beneath, were let loose upon them with that overflowing flood, their mirth was soon staid; and when the Lord in holy justice rained fire and brimstone from heaven upon that wicked people and city Sodom, enjoying fulness of bread and idleness, their fiddle-strings and hands went all in a flame; and the whole people in thirty miles of length, and ten of breadth, as historians say, were all made to fry in their skins and at the end, whoever are giving in marriages and dancing when all will go in a flame, they will quickly change their note.

      “I have often wondered thorow my life, how any that ever knew what it was to bow a knee in earnest to pray, durst crook a hough to fyke and fling at a piper’s and fiddler’s springs. I bless the Lord that ordered my lot so in my dancing days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bullets to my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumikens, and irons, cold and hunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head, and the wantonness of my feet. What the never-to-be-forgotten Man of God, John Knox, said to Queen Mary, when she gave him that sharp challenge, which would strike our mean-spirited, tongue-tacked ministers dumb, for his giving public faithful warning of the danger of the church and nation, through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubbling and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were fyking and dancing, he said, ‘O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would last, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that will seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling and flinging be then?’ Dancing being such a common evil, especially amongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate, has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish spring the Cameronian march!”— Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies, etc., collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727, 12mo, p. 59.

      It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameronians made a distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowed of it as a healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and women mingled in sport, it was then called promiscuous dancing, and considered as a scandalous enormity.

3 This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the party’s Bible, when a solemn resolution is formed, is still held to be, in some sense, an appeal to Heaven for his or her sincerity.

      Chapter 10

       Table of Contents

      Is all the counsel that we two have shared,

       The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent

       When we have chid the hasty-footed time

       For parting us — Oh! — and is all forgot?

      Midsummer Night’s Dream.

      We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage at St. Leonard’s; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding narrative does not СКАЧАТЬ