Harper's New Monthly Magazine. No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III

CHAPTER THE THIRD

After her mother's death, Janet found her hands over-full of work, when her heart was, as she thought, over-full of care. She did not know how much more she could bear. There were two children now, and another coming. Fine children they were; and the eldest was her pride and comfort. He was beginning to prattle; and never was speech so pretty as his. His father loved to carry him about in his arms; and sometimes, when he was far from sober, this child seemed to set his wits straight, and soften his temper, in a sort of magical way. There was the drawback that Raven would sometimes insist on having the boy with him when he was by no means fit to have the charge of so young a child: but the mother tried to trust that all would be well; and that God would watch over an innocent little creature who was like an angel to his sinning parent. She had not considered (as too many do not consider) that the "promises" are given under conditions, and that it is impious to blame Providence for disasters when the conditions are not observed. The promises, as she had heard them at chapel, dwelt on her mind, and gave her great comfort in dark seasons; and it would have been a dreary word to her if any one had reminded her that they might fail through man's neglect and sin. She had some severe lessons on this head, however. It was pleasant to hear that day and night, seed-time and harvest, should not cease; and when difficulties pressed, she looked on the dear old fields, and thought of this: but, to say nothing of what day and night were often to her – the day as black to her spirits as night, and the night as sleepless as the day – seed-time was nothing, if her husband was too ill or too lazy to sow his land; and the harvest month was worse than nothing if there was no crop: and there was no true religion in trusting that her babes would be safe if she put them into the hands of a drunkard, who was as likely as not to do them a mischief. And so she too sadly learned. One day, Raven insisted on carrying the boy with him into the barn. He staggered, stumbled, dashed the child's head against the door-post, and let him fall. It was some minutes before the boy cried; and when he did, what a relief it was! But, O! that cry! It went on for days and nights, with an incessant prattle. When at last he slept, and the doctor hoped there would be no lasting mischief, the prattle went on in his sleep, till his mother prayed that he might become silent, and look like himself again. He became silent; but he never more looked like himself. After he seemed to be well, he dropped one pretty word after another – very slowly – week by week, for long months; but the end of it was that he grew up a dumb idiot.

His father had heart and conscience enough to be touched by this to the point of reformation. For some months, he never went down into the valley at all, except to church, for fear of being tempted to drink. He suffered cruelly, in body as well as mind, for a time; and Janet wished it had pleased God to take the child at once, as she feared her husband would never recover his spirits with that sad spectacle always before his eyes. Yet she did not venture to propose any change of scene or amusement, for fear of the consequences. She did her utmost to promote cheerfulness at home; but it was a great day to her when Backhouse, paying his Spring visit, with his pack, produced, among the hand-bills, of which he was the hawker, one which announced a Temperance meeting in the next vale. The Temperance movement had reached these secluded vales at last, where it was only too much wanted; and so retired had been the life of the family of the High House, that they had not even heard of it. They heard much of it now; for Backhouse had sold a good many ribbons and gay shawls among members who were about to attend Temperance festivals.

When he told of processions, and bands of music, and public tea-drinkings, and speeches, and clapping, with plenty of laughter, and here and there even dancing, or a pic-nic on a mountain, Janet thought it the gayest news she had ever heard. Here would be change and society, and amusement for her husband – not only without danger, but with the very object of securing him from danger. Raven was so heartily willing, that the whole household made a grand day of it – laborer, cow-boy, and all. The cows were milked early, and for once left for a few hours. The house was shut up, the children carried down by father and mother; and, after a merry afternoon, the whole party came home pledged teetotalers.

This event made a great change in Raven's life. He could go down among his old acquaintances now, for he considered himself a safe man; and Janet could encourage his going, and be easy about his return; for she, too, considered all danger over. Both were deceived as to the kind and degree of safety caused by a vow.

The vow was good, in as far as it prevented the introduction of drink at home, and gave opportunity for the smell, and the habit, and the thought of drink to die out. It was good as a reason for refusing, when a buyer or seller down in the vale, to seal a bargain with a dram. It was good as keeping all knowledge of drinking from the next generation in the house. It was good as giving a man character in the eyes of his neighbors and his pastor. But, was it certainly and invariably good in every crisis of temptation? Would it act as a charm when a weak man – a man weak in health, weak in old associations, weak in self-respect – should find himself in a merry company of old comrades, with fumes of grog rising on every side, intoxicating his mind before a drop had passed his lips? Raven came to know, as many have learned before him, that self-restraint is too serious a thing to be attained at a skip, in a moment, by taking an oath; and that reform must have gone deeper, and risen higher, than any process of sudden conversion, before a man should venture upon a vow; and in such a case, a vow is not needed. And if a man is not strong enough for the work of moral restraint, his vow may become a snare, and plunge him in two sins instead of one. A temperance-pledge is an admirable convenience for the secure; but it must always be doubtful whether it will prove a safeguard or a snare to the infirm. If they trust wholly to it, it will, too probably, become a snare – and thus it was with poor Raven. When the temperance-lecturer was gone, and the festival was over, and the flags were put away, and the enthusiasm passed, while his descents among his old companions were continued, without fear or precaution, he was in circumstances too hard for a vow, the newness of which had faded. He hardly knew how it happened. He was, as the neighbors said, "overcome." His senses once opened to the old charm, the seven devils of drink rushed into the swept and garnished house, and the poor sinner was left in a worse state than ever before.

Far worse; for now his self-respect was utterly gone. There is no need to dwell on the next years – the increase of the mortgage, the decrease of the stock – the dilapidation of house, barn, and stable – the ill-health and discomfort at home, and the growing moroseness of him who caused the misery.

No more festivals now! no talk to the children of future dances! and so few purchases of Backhouse, that he ceased to come, and the household were almost in rags. No more going to church, therefore, for any body! When the wind was in the right quarter for bringing to the uplands the din-dinning of the chapel-bell, Janet liked to hear it, though it was no summons to her to listen to the promises. The very sound revived the promises in her mind. But what could she make of them now? An incident, unspeakably fearful to her, suddenly showed her how she ought to view them. The eldest girl was nursing her idiot-brother's head in her lap while the younger children were at play, when the poor fellow nestled closer to her.

"Poor Dan!" said she. "You can't play about, and be merry, like the others: but I will always take care of you, poor Dan!"

Little Willy heard this, and stopped his play. In another moment his face flushed, his eyes flashed, he clenched his hands, he even stamped, as he cried out,

"Mother, it's too bad! Why did God make Dan different from the rest?"

His panic-stricken mother clapped her hand over his mouth. But this was no answer to his question. She thought she must be a wicked mother, that a child of hers should ask such a question as that. It was not often that she wept; but she wept sorely now. It brought her back to the old lesson of the seed-time and harvest. The promise here, too, failed, because the conditions were not fulfilled. The hope had been broken by a collision with the great natural laws, under which alone all promise can be fulfilled. But how explain this to Willy? How teach him that the Heavenly Father had made Dan as noble a little fellow as ever was seen, and that it was his own father there that had made him an idiot.

When Raven came in, he could not but see her state; and he happened to be in so mild a mood, that she ventured to tell him what her terror and sorrow were about. He was dumb for a time. Then he began to say that he was bitterly punished for what was no habit of his, but that he vowed —

"No, no – don't vow!" said his wife, more alarmed than ever. She put her arm round his neck, and whispered into his ear,

"I dare not hear you vow any more. You know how often – you know you had better not. I dare not hear you promise any more."

He loosened her arm from his neck, and called Willy to him. He held the frightened boy between his knees, and looked him full in the face, while he said,

"Willy, you must not say that God made Dan an idiot. God is very good, and I am very bad. I made Dan an idiot."

The stare with which Willy heard this was too much for his mother. She rushed up-stairs and threw herself upon the bed, where she was heard long afterward sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Father," said Willy, timidly, but curiously, "did you make mother cry too?"

"Yes, Willy, I did. It is all my doing."

"Then I think you are very wicked."

"So I am – very wicked. Take care that you are not. Take care you are never wicked."

"That I will. I can't bear that mother should cry."

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

Janet did all she could to arrest the ruin which all saw to be inevitable. Her great piece of success was the training she gave to her eldest daughter, little Sally. By the time she was twelve years old, she was the most efficient person in the house. Without her, they could hardly have kept their last remaining cow; and many a time she set her mother at liberty to attend upon her father and protect him, when otherwise the children must have engrossed her.

There was no cow-boy now; and her mother too often filled the place of the laborer, when the sowing or reaping season would otherwise have passed away unused. It was a thing unheard of in the district that a woman should work in the fields; but what else could be done? Raven's wasted and trembling limbs were unequal to the work alone; and, little as he could do at best, he could always do his best when his wife was helping him. So Sally took care of poor Dan and the four younger ones, and made the oaten bread with Willy's help, and boiled the potatoes, and milked and fed the cow, and knitted, at all spare minutes; for there was no prospect of stockings for any body, in the bitter winter, but from the knitting done at home. The children had learned to be thankful now, when they could eat their oat-bread and potatoes in peace. They seldom had any thing else; and they wanted nothing else when they could eat that without terror.

But their father was now sometimes mad. It was a particular kind of madness, which they had heard the doctor call by a long name (delirium tremens), and they thought it must be the most terrible kind of all, though it always went off, after a fit of it, which might last from a day to a week. The doctor had said that it would not always go off – that he would die in one of the attacks. The dread was lest he should kill somebody else before that day came; for he was as ungovernable as any man in bedlam at those times, and fearfully strong, though so weak before and after them.

When it was possible, the children went down into the valley, and sent up strong men to hold him; but if the weather was stormy, or if their father was in the way, they could only go and hide themselves out of his sight, among the rocks in the beck, or up in the loft, or somewhere; and then they knew what their mother must be suffering with him. By degrees they had scarcely any furniture left whole but their heavy old-fashioned bedsteads. The last of their crockery was broken by his overturning the lame old table at which they had been dining. Then their mother said, with a sigh, that they must somehow manage to buy some things before winter. There really was nothing now for any of them to eat out of. She must get some wooden trenchers and tin mugs; for she would have no more crockery. But how to get the money! for the whole of the land was mortgaged now.

A little money was owing for oats when November arrived; and the purchaser had sent word that he should be at a certain sale in Langdale, at Martinmas; and that if Raven should be there, they could then settle accounts. Now, this money had been destined to go as far as it would toward the payment of interest due at Christmas. But if Raven went to the sale (the usual occasions for social meetings in the lake-district, in spring and autumn), he would only waste or lose the money. He had long ceased to bring home any money, unless his wife was with him; and then it was she that brought it, and, if possible, without his knowledge. She must go with him, and lay out the money immediately, in necessaries for the house and the children, before her husband could make away with it, in a worse way than if he threw it into the sea.

They went, at dawn, in a clear cold November day. Raven had taken care of himself for a day or two, aware of the importance of the occasion, and anxious not to disable himself for the first social meeting he had enjoyed for long, and thinking, in spite of himself, of the glasses of spirits which are, unhappily, handed round very often indeed at these country-sales. As the walk was an arduous one for an infirm man, and the days were short, and the sale was to last two days, the children were to be left for one night. Oatmeal and potatoes enough were left out for two days, and peat, to dry within the house, for fuel. Willy engaged to nurse the baby, while Sally looked to the cow. Their mother promised the little ones some nice things for the winter, if they were good while she was gone; and their father kissed them all, and said he knew they would be good.

And so they were, all that first day; and a very good dinner they made, after playing about the whole morning; and they all went instantly to sleep at night, while Sally sat knitting for an hour longer by the dim red light of the peat fire. The next day was not so fine. The mountain ridges were clear; but the sky was full of very heavy gray clouds; and before dinner, at noon, there was some snow falling. It came on thicker and thicker; and the younger children began to grow cross, because they could not go out to play, and did not know what to do with themselves. Sally cheered them with talking about how soon mother would come home. Mother had not come, however, when the little things, worried and tired, went to bed. Nor had she come, hours after, when Sally herself wanted very much to be asleep. She had looked out at the door very often, and it was still snowing; and the last time, such a cloud of snow was driven against her face, that it was a settled matter in her mind at once that father and mother would not be home to-night. They would stay in the vale for daylight, and come up to breakfast. So she put on another peat, to keep in the fire, and went to bed.

In the morning, it seemed dark when baby cried to get up; and well it might; for the window was blocked up with snow, almost to the very top. When the door was opened, a mass of snow fell in, though what remained was up to Willy's shoulders. The first thing to be done was to get to the cow, to give her her breakfast, and bring baby's. So Sally laid on her last dry peat, and filled the kettle; and then she and Willy set to work to clear a way to the cow. They were obliged to leave baby to the little ones; and it took an hour to cross the yard. Willy was to have brought in some fuel; but the peat-stack was at the end of the house, and, as they could see, so completely buried in snow, as to be hopelessly out of reach. Here was the milk, however, and there was a little of the oatmeal left, and some potatoes. Sally wished now they had brought in more from the barn; but who could have thought they would want any more? Father would get them presently, when he came.

But nobody came all that day. Late at night all the children but Sally were asleep at last though they had been too cold and too hungry to go to rest quietly as usual. The fire had been out since noon; and the last cold potatoes had been eaten in the afternoon. Sally was lying with the baby cuddled close to her for warmth; and, at last, she fell asleep too, though she was very unhappy. In the morning, she felt that their affairs were desperate. Willy must get down the mountain, be the snow what it might, and tell somebody what state they were in; for now there was no more food for the cow within reach, and she gave very little milk this morning; and there was nothing else. It had not snowed for some hours; and Willy knew the way so well that he got down to the valley, being wet to the neck, and having had a good many falls by the way. At the first farm-house he got help directly. The good woman took one of the laborers with her, with food, and a basket of dry peat, and a promise to clear the way to the oat-straw and hay for the relief of the cow. The farmer set off to consult the neighbors about where Raven and his wife could be; and the rest of the family dried the boy's clothes, and gave him a good bowl of porridge.

In a very short time, all the men in the valley, and their dogs, were out on the snow, their figures showing like moving specks on the white expanse. Two of them, who had been at the sale, knew that Raven and his wife had set out for home, long before dark on the second day. Raven was, as might be expected, the worse for liquor; but not so much so but that he could walk, with his wife to keep him in the path. They might possibly have turned back; but it was too probable that they were lost. Before night, it was ascertained that they had not been seen again in Langdale; and in two days more, during which the whole population was occupied in the search, or in taking care of the children, their fate was known. Raven's body was found a little way from the track, looking like a man in a drunken sleep. Some hours after, the barking of a dog brought the searchers to where Janet was lying, at the foot of a precipice about thirty feet deep. Her death must have been immediate.

It seemed that her husband, overcome by the effect of the cold (which, however, had not been excessive) on his tipsy brain, had fallen down in sleep or a stupor; and that Janet, unable to rouse him, had attempted to find her way back; and, by going three or four yards aside from the path, in the uniformity of the snow, had stepped over the rock. There was a strange and ghastly correspondence between the last day of her married life and the first; and so thought her old friend and bridesmaid, Sally, who came over to the funeral, and who, in turning over the poor remnants of Janet's wardrobe, found the bunches of orange flowers carefully papered up, and put away in the furthest corner of a drawer.

There was nothing left for the children, but the warning of their father's life, and the memory of their mother's trials. They were not allowed to go upon the parish – not even Dan. It was plain that he would not live very long; and neighborly charity was sure to last as long as he. The others were dispersed among the farms in that and the nearest vales, and they have grown up as laborers. The land and buildings had been mortgaged beyond their value, and they went at once into the hands of strangers.

SHOTS IN THE JUNGLE

It was late in the month of June, 1840, that myself and a friend (who had together hunted elk on the Newara plains, and shot snipe at Ratnapoora) finding ourselves at its capital, Jaffna, resolved to have a shot at the spotted deer of the Northern Province of Ceylon. The only difficulties to overcome were the want of a tent and guide. These the government agent of the province kindly supplied, giving us, besides, a peon, who, with him, had been over the country we intended to shoot in. When we left the fort, one of the prettiest pieces of Dutch fortification in existence, it was about half-past five – the morning, as usual, lovely. The process by which our horses were shipped was so primitive, that I will stop on my way to give an account of it: The boats in which we were to cross are of about three tons burthen, with a single tall mast shipped amidships, which carries a square yard. This is hoisted according to the weather, the reefs being taken in the bottom of the sail. To the top of the mast the crew had now made fast a lot of ropes, which were seized by all hands; and the vessel thus made to careen till its gunwale met the water-level. Then, by dint of great exertions, the horses were made to jump out of the sea, here only three feet deep, into the boats. Mine refused altogether until they put a bamboo under his girth, and fairly lifted his fore legs over the bulwark. In the embarkation, our horses lost their shoes; but as all our journey lay over sandy plains, we gave ourselves no trouble on that score.

Once on board, we lost no time in making sail, and by eleven o'clock had reached the other side, which is the northern coast of the island – Jaffna being, properly speaking, an island. The sun was now extremely hot, so we rode only a mile to a dilapidated old fort, and then breakfasted; after which we set to arranging all things for our expedition. Here the coolies were curiously deceived, by insisting on carrying the smallest loads, which contained our guns and ammunition, misjudging their weight by their size. After a good deal of talking, without which nothing Oriental can be achieved, we again got our party under-weigh, and proceeded due south, toward the village of Maniacolom, which was to be head-quarters for our first day's sport. The country through which we passed was a flat sandy plain, covered with low jungly brushwood, with occasional creeks and hollows, where the ancient tanks (whose builders are unknown) had once made fertile this now barren waste. No cultivation – no inhabitants; but every now and then a herd of deer, or a timid hare would dart away far ahead, disturbed by our noisy followers, or the uncouth cry of the tank-birds, break the monotony of the march. It was already dark when we made out the round roof of the village of Maniacolom, with its sugar-loaf ricks of paddy-straw, peeping above the stockade which incloses its area. The houses are built something in the fashion in which Catlin describes those of the now extinct Mandans. A hole is sunk in the ground, and a pole fixed in the centre, to which the rafters that support the roof are tied. In these small huts, perhaps only fifteen feet in diameter, whole families live together; but the climate is so fine, that few care to sleep in their houses – preferring the peelas or verandas to their smoky room. I am sorry to say our appearance was not by any means hailed by the natives with cordiality – perhaps a ripple of the severities of August, 1848, had reached their quiet spot, and the minds of its inhabitants may still have been filled with dread of the merciless aim of our riflemen.

At last an old man came up and told us not to encamp near the wells, as the women of the village could not come for water. He said all the young men were out shooting, so we could have no guides or gun-bearers; moreover, that there was neither milk nor rice for our horses; but that a few miles further on, there was plenty of all that was here deficient – in short, he begged to suggest the propriety of our moving on. Being quite up to the old gentleman's strategy, we answered, that the ladies need not fear us (they were certainly no beauties, as we found out afterward); that we could do without his young men, and had our own gun-bearers; that as to milk or paddy, we could do without the former, and had got enough of the latter; and, finally, that we meant to stay where we were. Having failed in his diplomatic embassy, the old gentleman retired. So we set to, pitching the tent; and soon the savory smell of a couple of hares we had shot by the way, gave the villagers an idea of the destructive propensities of their unwelcome visitors. While we were smoking our afternoon cheroots, a volunteer from the village, having heard, no doubt, that we were good pay, came in, and offered to show us the best ground and pools or tanks, and said he would bring a companion with him at gun-fire next morning. He was a small, well-made fellow, his hair fastened in a jaunty club on the side of his head, instead of behind it, as is the Cingalese fashion, which the Malabars of the Northern Province only adopt when married; his dress, as usual, nothing but a cloth bound round his loins, with the usual accompaniment of a betel-cracker and pouch. Having come to a satisfactory agreement with this hero, we rigged out our iron beds, blew up our air mattresses, and in less than ten minutes were deep in dreams of waltzes and polkas with the fair nymphs of our island capital.