Redgauntlet: A Tale Of The Eighteenth Century

‘Mr. Alan Fairford,’ said Trumbull.

‘Aye, Mr. Alan Fairford – a good name for a fair trader – Mr. Alan Fairford; and may he be long withheld from the topmost round of ambition, which I take to be the highest round of a certain ladder.’

While he spoke, he seized the punch-ladle, and began to fill the glasses. But Mr. Trumbull arrested his hand, until he had, as he expressed himself, sanctified the liquor by a long grace; during the pronunciation of which he shut indeed his eyes, but his nostrils became dilated, as if he were snuffing up the fragrant beverage with peculiar complacency.

When the grace was at length over, the three friends sat down to their beverage, and invited Alan Fairford to partake. Anxious about his situation, and disgusted as he was with his company, he craved, and with difficulty obtained permission, under the allegation of being fatigued, heated, and the like, to stretch himself on a couch which was in the apartment, and attempted at least to procure some rest before high-water, when the vessel was to sail.

He was at length permitted to use his freedom, and stretched himself on the couch, having his eyes for some time fixed on the jovial party he had left, and straining his ears to catch if possible a little of their conversation. This he soon found was to no purpose for what did actually reach his ears was disguised so completely by the use of cant words and the thieves-latin called slang, that even when he caught the words, he found himself as far as ever from the sense of their conversation. At length he fell asleep.

It was after Alan had slumbered for three or four hours, that he was wakened by voices bidding him rise up and prepare to be jogging. He started up accordingly, and found himself in presence of the same party of boon companions; who had just dispatched their huge bowl of punch. To Alan’s surprise, the liquor had made but little innovation on the brains of men who were accustomed to drink at all hours, and in the most inordinate quantities. The landlord indeed spoke a little thick, and the texts of Mr. Thomas Trumbull stumbled on his tongue; but Nanty was one of those topers, who, becoming early what bon vivants term flustered, remain whole nights and days at the same point of intoxication; and, in fact, as they are seldom entirely sober, can be as rarely seen absolutely drunk. Indeed, Fairford, had he not known how Ewart had been engaged whilst he himself was asleep, would almost have sworn when he awoke, that the man was more sober than when he first entered the room.

He was confirmed in this opinion when they descended below, where two or three sailors and ruffian-looking fellows awaited their commands. Ewart took the whole direction upon himself, gave his orders with briefness and precision, and looked to their being executed with the silence and celerity which that peculiar crisis required. All were now dismissed for the brig, which lay, as Fairford was given to understand, a little farther down the river, which is navigable for vessels of light burden till almost within a mile of the town.

When they issued from the inn, the landlord bid them goodbye. Old Trumbull walked a little way with them, but the air had probably considerable effect on the state of his brain; for after reminding Alan Fairford that the next day was the honourable Sabbath, he became extremely excursive in an attempt to exhort him to keep it holy. At length, being perhaps sensible that he was becoming unintelligible, he thrust a volume into Fairford’s hand – hiccuping at the same time – ‘Good book – good book – fine hymn-book – fit for the honourable Sabbath, whilk awaits us to-morrow morning.’ Here the iron tongue of time told five from the town steeple of Annan, to the further confusion of Mr. Trumbull’s already disordered ideas. ‘Aye? Is Sunday come and gone already? Heaven be praised! Only it is a marvel the afternoon is sae dark for the time of the year – Sabbath has slipped ower quietly, but we have reason to bless oursells it has not been altogether misemployed. I heard little of the preaching – a cauld moralist, I doubt, served that out – but, eh – the prayer – I mind it as if I had said the words mysell.’ Here he repeated one or two petitions, which were probably a part of his family devotions, before he was summoned forth to what he called the way of business. ‘I never remember a Sabbath pass so cannily off in my life.’ Then he recollected himself a little, and said to Alan, ‘You may read that book, Mr. Fairford, to-morrow, all the same, though it be Monday; for, you see, it was Saturday when we were thegither, and now it’s Sunday and it’s dark night – so the Sabbath has slipped clean away through our fingers like water through a sieve, which abideth not; and we have to begin again to-morrow morning, in the weariful, base, mean, earthly employments, whilk are unworthy of an immortal spirit – always excepting the way of business.’

Three of the fellows were now returning to the town, and, at Ewart’s command, they cut short the patriarch’s exhortation, by leading him back to his own residence. The rest of the party then proceeded to the brig, which only waited their arrival to get under weigh and drop down the river. Nanty Ewart betook himself to steering the brig, and the very touch of the helm seemed to dispel the remaining influence of the liquor which he had drunk, since, through a troublesome and intricate channel, he was able to direct the course of his little vessel with the most perfect accuracy and safety.

Alan Fairford, for some time, availed himself of the clearness of the summer morning to gaze on the dimly seen shores betwixt which they glided, becoming less and less distinct as they receded from each other, until at length, having adjusted his little bundle by way of pillow, and wrapped around him the greatcoat with which old Trumbull had equipped him, he stretched himself on the deck, to try to recover the slumber out of which he had been awakened. Sleep had scarce begun to settle on his eyes, ere he found something stirring about his person. With ready presence of mind he recollected his situation, and resolved to show no alarm until the purpose of this became obvious; but he was soon relieved from his anxiety, by finding it was only the result of Nanty’s attention to his comfort, who was wrapping around him, as softly as he could, a great boatcloak, in order to defend him from the morning air.

‘Thou art but a cockerel,’ he muttered, ‘but ‘twere pity thou wert knocked off the perch before seeing a little more of the sweet and sour of this world – though, faith, if thou hast the usual luck of it, the best way were to leave thee to the chance of a seasoning fever.’

These words, and the awkward courtesy with which the skipper of the little brig tucked the sea-coat round Fairford, gave him a confidence of safety which he had not yet thoroughly possessed. He stretched himself in more security on the hard planks, and was speedily asleep, though his slumbers were feverish and unrefreshing.

It has been elsewhere intimated that Alan Fairford inherited from his mother a delicate constitution, with a tendency to consumption; and, being an only child, with such a cause for apprehension, care, to the verge of effeminacy, was taken to preserve him from damp beds, wet feet, and those various emergencies to which the Caledonian boys of much higher birth, but more active habits, are generally accustomed. In man, the spirit sustains the constitutional weakness, as in the winged tribes the feathers bear aloft the body. But there is a bound to these supporting qualities; and as the pinions of the bird must at length grow weary, so the VIS ANIMI of the human struggler becomes broken down by continued fatigue.

When the voyager was awakened by the light of the sun now riding high in heaven, he found himself under the influence of an almost intolerable headache, with heat, thirst, shooting across the back and loins, and other symptoms intimating violent cold, accompanied with fever. The manner in which he had passed the preceding day and night, though perhaps it might have been of little consequence to most young men, was to him, delicate in constitution and nurture, attended with bad and even perilous consequences. He felt this was the case, yet would fain have combated the symptoms of indisposition, which, indeed, he imputed chiefly to sea-sickness. He sat up on deck, and looked on the scene around, as the little vessel, having borne down the Solway Firth, was beginning, with a favourable northerly breeze, to bear away to the southward, crossing the entrance of the Wampool river, and preparing to double the most northerly point of Cumberland.

But Fairford felt annoyed with deadly sickness, as well as by pain of a distressing and oppressive character; and neither Criffel, rising in majesty on the one hand, nor the distant yet more picturesque outline of Skiddaw and Glaramara upon the other, could attract his attention in the manner in which it was usually fixed by beautiful scenery, and especially that which had in it something new as well as striking. Yet it was not in Alan Fairford’s nature to give way to despondence, even when seconded by pain. He had recourse, in the first place, to his pocket; but instead of the little Sallust he had brought with him, that the perusal of a classical author might help to pass away a heavy hour, he pulled out the supposed hymn-book with which he had been presented a few hours before, by that temperate and scrupulous person, Mr. Thomas Trumbull, ALIAS Turnpenny. The volume was bound in sable, and its exterior might have become a psalter. But what was Alan’s astonishment to read on the title page the following words: – ‘Merry Thoughts for Merry Men; or Mother Midnight’s Miscellany for the Small Hours;’ and turning over the leaves, he was disgusted with profligate tales, and more profligate songs, ornamented with figures corresponding in infamy with the letterpress.

‘Good God!’ he thought, ‘and did this hoary reprobate summon his family together, and, with such a disgraceful pledge of infamy in his bosom, venture to approach the throne of his Creator? It must be so; the book is bound after the manner of those dedicated to devotional subjects, and doubtless the wretch, in his intoxication, confounded the books he carried with him, as he did the days of the week.’ Seized with the disgust with which the young and generous usually regard the vices of advanced life, Alan, having turned the leaves of the book over in hasty disdain, flung it from him, as far as he could, into the sea. He then had recourse to the Sallust, which he had at first sought for in vain. As he opened the book, Nanty Ewart, who had been looking over his shoulder, made his own opinion heard.

‘I think now, brother, if you are so much scandalized at a little piece of sculduddery, which, after all, does nobody any harm, you had better have given it to me than have flung it into the Solway.’

‘I hope, sir,’ answered Fairford, civilly, ‘you are in the habit of reading better books.’

‘Faith,’ answered Nanty, ‘with help of a little Geneva text, I could read my Sallust as well as you can;’ and snatching the book from Alan’s hand, he began to read, in the Scottish accent: – “‘IGITUR EX DIVITIIS JUVENTUTEM LUXURIA ATQUE AVARITIA CUM SUPERBILI INVASERE: RAPERE, CONSUMERE; SUA PARVI PENDERE, ALIENA CUPERE; PUDOREM, AMICITIAM, PUDICITIAM, DIVINA ATQUE HUMANA PROMISCUA, NIHIL PENSI NEQUE MODERATI HABERE.” [The translation of the passage is thus given by Sir Henry Steuart of Allanton: – ‘The youth, taught to look up to riches as the sovereign good, became apt pupils in the school of Luxury. Rapacity and profusion went hand in hand. Careless of their own fortunes, and eager to possess those of others, shame and remorse, modesty and moderation, every principle gave way.’ – WORKS OF SALLUST, WITH ORIGINAL ESSAYS, vol. ii. p.17.] – There is a slap in the face now, for an honest fellow that has been buccaneering! Never could keep a groat of what he got, or hold his fingers from what belonged to another, said you? Fie, fie, friend Crispus, thy morals are as crabbed and austere as thy style – the one has as little mercy as the other has grace. By my soul, it is unhandsome to make personal reflections on an old acquaintance, who seeks a little civil intercourse with you after nigh twenty years’ separation. On my soul, Master Sallust deserves to float on the Solway better than Mother Midnight herself.’

‘Perhaps, in some respects, he may merit better usage at our hands,’ said Alan; ‘for if he has described vice plainly, it seems to have been for the purpose of rendering it generally abhorred.’

‘Well,’ said the seaman, ‘I have heard of the Sortes Virgilianae, and I dare say the Sortes Sallustianae are as true every tittle. I have consulted honest Crispus on my own account, and have had a cuff for my pains. But now see, I open the book on your behalf, and behold what occurs first to my eye! – Lo you there – “CATILINA … OMNIUM FLAGITIOSORUM ATQUE FACINOROSORUM CIRCUM SE HABEBAT.” And then again – “ETIAM SI QUIS A CULPA VACUUS IN AMICITIAM EJUS INCIDIDERAT QUOTIDIANO USU PAR SIMILISQUE CAETERIS EFFICIEBATUR.” [After enumerating the evil qualities of Catiline’s associates, the author adds, ‘If it happened that any as yet uncontaminated by vice were fatally drawn into his friendship, the effects of intercourse and snares artfully spread, subdued every scruple, and early assimilated them to their conductors.’ – Ibidem, p. 19.] That is what I call plain speaking on the part of the old Roman, Mr. Fairford. By the way, that is a capital name for a lawyer.

‘Lawyer as I am,’ said Fairford, ‘I do not understand your innuendo.’

‘Nay, then,’ said Ewart, ‘I can try it another way, as well as the hypocritical old rascal Turnpenny himself could do. I would have you to know that I am well acquainted with my Bible-book, as well as with my friend Sallust.’ He then, in a snuffling and canting tone, began to repeat the Scriptural text – ‘"DAVID THEREFORE DEPARTED THENCE, AND WENT TO THE CAVE OF ADULLAM. AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DISTRESS, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DEBT, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS DISCONTENTED, GATHERED THEMSELVES TOGETHER UNTO HIM, AND HE BECAME A CAPTAIN OVER THEM.” What think you of that?’ he said, suddenly changing his manner. ‘Have I touched you now, sir?’

‘You are as far off as ever,’ replied Fairford.

‘What the devil! and you a repeating frigate between Summertrees and the laird! Tell that to the marines – the sailors won’t believe it. But you are right to be cautious, since you can’t say who are right, who not. But you look ill; it’s but the cold morning air. Will you have a can of flip, or a jorum of hot rumbo? or will you splice the mainbrace’ (showing a spirit-flask). ‘Will you have a quid – or a pipe – or a cigar? – a pinch of snuff, at least, to clear your brains and sharpen your apprehension?’

Fairford rejected all these friendly propositions.

‘Why, then,’ continued Ewart, ‘if you will do nothing for the free trade, I must patronize it myself.’

So saying, he took a large glass of brandy.

‘A hair of the dog that bit me,’ he continued, – ‘of the dog that will worry me one day soon; and yet, and be d – d to me for an idiot, I must always have hint at my throat. But, says the old catch’ – Here he sang, and sang well —

  ‘Let’s drink – let’s drink – while life we have;   We’ll find but cold drinking, cold drinking in the grave.

All this,’ he continued, ‘is no charm against the headache. I wish I had anything that could do you good. Faith, and we have tea and coffee aboard! I’ll open a chest or a bag, and let you have some in an instant. You are at the age to like such catlap better than better stuff.’

Fairford thanked him, and accepted his offer of tea.

Nanty Ewart was soon heard calling about, ‘Break open yon chest – take out your capful, you bastard of a powder-monkey; we may want it again. No sugar? all used up for grog, say you? knock another loaf to pieces, can’t ye? and get the kettle boiling, ye hell’s baby, in no time at all!’

By dint of these energetic proceedings he was in a short time able to return to the place where his passenger lay sick and exhausted, with a cup, or rather a canful, of tea; for everything was on a large scale on board of the JUMPING JENNY. Alan drank it eagerly, and with so much appearance of being refreshed that Nanty Ewart swore he would have some too, and only laced it, as his phrase went, with a single glass of brandy. [See Note 8.]

CHAPTER XIV

NARRATIVE OF ALAN FAIRFORD, CONTINUED

We left Alan Fairford on the deck of the little smuggling brig, in that disconsolate situation, when sickness and nausea, attack a heated and fevered frame, and an anxious mind. His share of sea-sickness, however, was not so great as to engross his sensations entirely, or altogether to divert his attention from what was passing around. If he could not delight in the swiftness and agility with which the ‘little frigate’ walked the waves, or amuse himself by noticing the beauty of the sea-views around him, where the distant Skiddaw raised his brow, as if in defiance of the clouded eminence of Criffel, which lorded it over the Scottish side of the estuary, he had spirits and composure enough to pay particular attention to the master of the vessel, on whose character his own safety in all probability was dependent.

Nanty Ewart had now given the helm to one of his people, a bald-pated, grizzled old fellow, whose whole life had been spent in evading the revenue laws, with now and then the relaxation of a few months’ imprisonment, for deforcing officers, resisting seizures, and the like offences.

Nanty himself sat down by Fairford, helped him to his tea, with such other refreshments as he could think of, and seemed in his way sincerely desirous to make his situation as comfortable as things admitted. Fairford had thus an opportunity to study his countenance and manners more closely.

It was plain, Ewart, though a good seaman, had not been bred upon that element. He was a reasonably good scholar, and seemed fond of showing it by recurring to the subject of Sallust and Juvenal; while, on the other hand, sea-phrases seldom chequered his conversation. He had been in person what is called a smart little man; but the tropical sun had burnt his originally fair complexion to a dusty red; and the bile which was diffused through his system, had stained it with a yellowish black – what ought to have been the white part of his eyes, in particular, had a hue as deep as the topaz. He was very thin, or rather emaciated, and his countenance, though still indicating alertness and activity, showed a constitution exhausted with excessive use of his favourite stimulus.

‘I see you look at me hard,’ said he to Fairford. ‘Had you been an officer of the d – d customs, my terriers’ backs would have been up. He opened his breast, and showed Alan a pair of pistols disposed between his waistcoat and jacket, placing his finger at the same time upon the cock of one of them. ‘But come, you are an honest fellow, though you’re a close one. I dare say you think me a queer customer; but I can tell you, they that see the ship leave harbour know little of the seas she is to sail through. My father, honest old gentleman, never would have thought to see me master of the JUMPING JENNY.’

Fairford said, it seemed very clear indeed that Mr. Ewart’s education was far superior to the line he at present occupied.

‘Oh, Criffel to Solway Moss!’ said the other. Why, man, I should have been an expounder of the word, with a wig like a snow-wreath, and a stipend like – like – like a hundred pounds a year, I suppose. I can spend thrice as much as that, though, being such as I am. Here he sang a scrap of an old Northumbrian ditty, mimicking the burr of the natives of that county: —

  ‘Willy Foster’s gone to sea,   Siller buckles at his knee,   He’ll come back and marry me —              Canny Willy Foster.’

‘I have no doubt,’ said Fairford, ‘your present occupation is more lucrative; ‘but I should have thought the Church might have been more’ —

He stopped, recollecting that it was not his business to say anything disagreeable.

‘More respectable, you mean, I suppose?’ said Ewart, with a sneer, and squirting the tobacco-juice through his front teeth; then was silent for a moment, and proceeded in a tone of candour which some internal touch of conscience dictated. ‘And so it would, Mr. Fairford – and happier, too, by a thousand degrees – though I have had my pleasures too. But there was my father (God bless the old man!) a true chip of the old Presbyterian block, walked his parish like a captain on the quarterdeck, and was always ready to do good to rich and poor – Off went the laird’s hat to the minister, as fast as the poor man’s bonnet. When the eye saw him – Pshaw! what have I to do with that now? – Yes, he was, as Virgil hath it, “VIR SAPIENTIA ET PIETATE GRAVIS.” But he might have been the wiser man, had he kept me at home, when he sent me at nineteen to study Divinity at the head of the highest stair in the Covenant Close. It was a cursed mistake in the old gentleman. What though Mrs. Cantrips of Kittlebasket (for she wrote herself no less) was our cousin five times removed, and took me on that account to board and lodging at six shillings instead of seven shillings a week? it was a d – d bad saving, as the case proved. Yet her very dignity might have kept me in order; for she never read a chapter excepting out of a Cambridge Bible, printed by Daniel, and bound in embroidered velvet. I think I see it at this moment! And on Sundays, when we had a quart of twopenny ale, instead of butter-milk, to our porridge, it was always served up in a silver posset-dish. Also she used silver-mounted spectacles, whereas even my father’s were cased in mere horn. These things had their impression at first, but we get used to grandeur by degrees. Well, sir! – Gad, I can scarce get on with my story – it sticks in my throat – must take a trifle to wash it down. Well, this dame had a daughter – Jess Cantrips, a black-eyed, bouncing wench – and, as the devil would have it, there was the d – d five-story stair – her foot was never from it, whether I went out or came home from the Divinity Hall. I would have eschewed her, sir – I would, on my soul; for I was as innocent a lad as ever came from Lammermuir; but there was no possibility of escape, retreat, or flight, unless I could have got a pair of wings, or made use of a ladder seven stories high, to scale the window of my attic. It signifies little talking – you may suppose how all this was to end – I would have married the girl, and taken my chance – I would, by Heaven! for she was a pretty girl, and a good girl, till she and I met; but you know the old song, “Kirk would not let us be.” A gentleman, in my case, would have settled the matter with the kirk-treasurer for a small sum of money; but the poor stibbler, the penniless dominie, having married his cousin of Kittlebasket, must next have proclaimed her frailty to the whole parish, by mounting the throne of Presbyterian penance, and proving, as Othello says, “his love a whore,” in face of the whole congregation.

‘In this extremity I dared not stay where I was, and so thought to go home to my father. But first I got Jack Radaway, a lad from the same parish, and who lived in the same infernal stair, to make some inquiries how the old gentleman had taken the matter. I soon, by way of answer, learned, to the great increase of my comfortable reflections, that the good old man made as much clamour as if such a thing as a man’s eating his wedding dinner without saying grace had never happened since Adam’s time. He did nothing for six days but cry out, “Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory is departed from my house!” and on the seventh he preached a sermon, in which he enlarged on this incident as illustrative of one of the great occasions for humiliation, and causes of national defection. I hope the course he took comforted himself – I am sure it made me ashamed to show my nose at home. So I went down to Leith, and, exchanging my hoddin grey coat of my mother’s spinning for such a jacket as this, I entered my name at the rendezvous as an able-bodied landsman, and sailed with the tender round to Plymouth, where they were fitting out a squadron for the West Indies. There I was put aboard the FEARNOUGHT, Captain Daredevil – among whose crew I soon learned to fear Satan (the terror of my early youth) as little as the toughest Jack on board. I had some qualms at first, but I took the remedy’ (tapping the case-bottle) ‘which I recommend to you, being as good for sickness of the soul as for sickness of the stomach – What, you won’t? – very well, I must, then – here is to ye.’