A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.
“Once a criminal, always a criminal,” is a pretty safe maxim. When a man—and more especially one of education—is degraded into a thief and a liar, who would believe him if he expressed a wish for a better life? Nay, if he actually did change, and became a very anchorite or saint, would not the whole world howl out “Hypocrite?”
In the present case there was neither the profession of repentance nor the desire for a different life. The “Rev. Alfred Johnston,” already alluded to in “A Lift on the Road,” [See page [218], ante] on being released from prison, was in bad health, bodily as well as mentally. Some of the wages of sin had been paid out to him during the last year in prison, and he went out into the world a mere wreck, the shadow of his former self. He cursed me as a cause, and the whole world besides—and he even at times, I suspect, cursed himself—but he had no power to retaliate or avenge his fancied wrongs.
The glory of man is strength, and when that is gone, the best bed and blanket are the grave and a green turf. There was still the genteel begging left to him, but somehow the returns were now poor compared with his former gains, and Johnston was impatient for a chance which should allow him to leave this country for the Cape with a good pocketful of money at his command. During his seclusion his consort had drifted out to that colony as a barmaid—his real wife had been laid in the grave years before by his brutality and dissipation—and the moment he learned the truth he conceived the plan of following and joining her there. The climate was just such a one as he needed to restore his health, and a bold rogue, he thought, might in that place realise a fortune in a very short time. He had been landed in Edinburgh, as being the scene of his capture and conviction, and so it was around on the Edinburgh citizens that he now cast his eyes with a view to his own welfare. What is really one’s welfare none can decide for himself, and Fate often steps in and with inexorable hand fixes that for him. I daresay Johnston had often, in his better days, preached that truth, but he had either ceased to believe it, or allowed it to become buried in his mind, for at the strange turn events were to take none could have been more surprised than himself.
By studying carefully the subscription lists of the various local charities, and making diligent inquiries, Johnston decided upon a Mr Samuel Cooper, a retired merchant, living at Bonnington, as the likeliest man to make an easy victim. Mr Cooper was old, and benevolent as well as wealthy, and what was more important, he did not read the newspapers much, and so was not likely to know of Johnston’s past misdeeds. He was indeed a quiet, modest, feeling-hearted man, and the greatest tribute to his goodness was this very selection of him as a victim by the shrewd and unscrupulous Johnston. For a wide radius around his home, and more especially among the poor of Leith, this good man had raised up to his name a hedge of blessings and prayers; and who knows but these were now to be his protection in the hour of need?
The appearance of Johnston at this time was interesting. He had been a good-looking man, and the strict prison life and diet had removed the bloated look from his features, while his cough, and weak chest, and gasping for breath, only served to make him a pitiable object for charity and help. His clothing was the same wretched garb in which I had taken him more than four years before, but that too helped to excite commiseration.
This was the spectacle which greeted Mr Cooper one afternoon at his own home, when he had been told that a visitor, in the person of the Rev. Alfred Johnston, wished to speak with him, and awaited him in the adjoining room. Instead of a gentleman in blacks, he saw before him a ragged outcast, coughing painfully and looking ready to drop into the grave, and he started and looked round the room in wonderment.
“I am the Rev. Alfred Johnston,” said the outcast, reading aright the expression of Mr Cooper’s face. “I am really a clergyman, reduced to this state by my own folly and the wicked persecution of others. I have heard of your goodness—of your great heart, and your truly Christ-like compassion, and therefore I have crawled here to implore your help. Christ did not turn away the greatest sinner, and if I have sinned you can see I have also suffered. Ah, sir! if my life were but given me to begin again, how different would be my condition!”
“But how do you come to be thus reduced?” cried the benevolent old man, exceedingly sceptical of the truth of the statement. “Surely you have friends to whom you could appeal before a stranger like me?”
“Friends!” echoed Johnston, in a choking voice, and with a bitterness which was not exactly assumed; “when did a friend cling to one in adversity? No, sir! Give me the cold, callous world—the most unfeeling stranger—before the dearest friend. But I do not ask you to trust to my statements being true. Write to some of the deacons of my former church—with all their prejudice and ill-will they will at least bear testimony to the truthfulness of my statements;” and at random he named a small town in the west, the furthest away he could think of on the spur of the moment.
“Give me their names,” gravely returned Mr Cooper. “I may write, and I may not, but it can do no harm to leave the address. One is so liable to be imposed upon,” he soothingly added, afraid that he might have hurt the feelings of an unfortunate and injured man.
Thus cornered, Johnston gave two names, assuring Mr Cooper that the town was small, and that no other address was necessary to find these prominent deacons. He then launched out into a history of himself, partly real and partly imaginative. He had been unfortunate—exceedingly—in his congregation, and had roused opposition and animosity by his very bluntness and truthfulness. At length he had been forced to resign, and supported himself by tuition and other means till reduced to the verge of starvation. Then a wicked woman got up a plot against him, and, because he refused to marry her, lodged information with the police and had him arrested on a false charge. This charge she supported with gross perjury, and Johnston had been sent to prison a martyr to his own resolute goodness. The confession regarding the prison experience was thrown out merely in case the good man to whom he appealed might know something of it already. It would be quite impossible to convey in writing any idea of the plausible manner in which his story was concocted and narrated. As a preacher Johnston had been eloquent and persuasive; and now, when so much depended upon the exercise of these gifts, he carried all before him. It was not all false, and the hardships he had endured were not all imaginative. Several times Mr Cooper was moved to tears; and when Johnston concluded by saying he did not want money, but merely some decent clothing and his passage paid to the Cape, the good old man was on the point of giving him what he wished without a word of inquiry. Prudence prevailed, and in the end Johnston was delighted to hear him say—
“If all you have told me is true, I shall see that you are helped as you desire. I shall interest several members of our own church, and perhaps the pastor as well, in your unhappy circumstances, and possibly they may be disposed to give you help as well.”
“Excuse me, sir,” interposed Johnston, getting alarmed at the proposal; “spare a sensitive if a fallen man the degradation of having his sins and sufferings paraded before others. I had rather want their help than have to appear before these gentlemen and answer their questions. Let me creep out of the country unseen and unknown, to begin in a far-off land a nobler life, fearless alike of recognition and of censure.”
This seemed such a natural request that Mr Cooper hastily agreed, and promised strict secrecy to all in the city. He then dismissed him with a trifling sum for his immediate needs, and the request that he should come back in a day or two—as soon, indeed, as it was possible to receive answers from the deacons, whose addresses he had just taken down.
Those who do not know the boundless resources of the rogue of education will imagine that Johnston had got to the end of his tether, and would never again dare to look near the benevolent Mr Cooper, knowing that certain exposure would follow the written inquiries. Nothing of the kind. The circumstances were just such as roused Johnston to his keenest activity. From Mr Cooper’s house he went to a stationer’s and bought some notepaper and envelopes of different kinds, and, being accommodated with a pen and ink, he wrote out two polite notes, addressed to the postmaster of the town in the west he had named, in two different hands, and signed with the names he had given to Mr Cooper, requesting that any letters which might arrive for him should be re-addressed to two different addresses in Edinburgh. No one but an expert looking at these notes could have guessed that they were penned by the same man—the handwriting, the phraseology, the notepaper, and the style were entirely different. They were posted at once, and thus arrived one mail in advance of Mr Cooper’s two notes, which were at once re-addressed as directed, and duly delivered into Johnston’s hands. To write replies for the two imaginary deacons was then an easy matter; to get them duly authenticated with the post-mark of the town in question was more difficult. But during the interval, Johnston had called upon Mr Cooper, and made such rapid progress in his favour that he had not only been provided with a complete suit of clothes, but had been allowed to dine with Mr Cooper and his wife. So much familiarity implied also the gift of some money, and part of this money Johnston now hastened to use in a trip to the west. He left Edinburgh by an early train, posted the letters in the town, and took the first train back to Edinburgh, which he reached in time to take tea with the good man he had imposed upon. The same evening Mr Cooper chanced to mention that in a day or two he would have in his possession a large sum of money, out of which he intended to pay a steerage passage for Johnston to the Cape. The place where he kept his money was already known to Johnston, from the fact that a pound note had been taken from the drawer as a present to the broken-down minister. This place was a small parlour on the ground floor, easily accessible from a green behind the house. The window was fastened with an ordinary spring check, but that was no impediment to a man of Johnston’s experience; and the shutters were seldom closed, and certainly not fastened at night. A great scheme flashed upon Johnston’s brain. At first his only desire and concern had been to get clothing and a passage to the Cape; now, however, the bloodthirsty excitement of the old convict and jail-bird crept over his faculties, and goaded him on to a greater haul. He would empty the drawer the first night the money was there to take. There would be but one night in which the crime could be committed, for Mr Cooper had shown no reserve or concealment of his plans, and Johnston knew that on the following day most of the money would be paid away in quarterly accounts, &c. With part of the money given him by the benevolent man, he bought some housebreaking implements—a thin putty knife to force open the spring fastening of the window, a bracebit to cut an arm-hole in the shutters if they should happen to be closed and fastened; and lastly, a leaden-headed neddy or life-preserver with which to smash the skull of anyone who might oppose or attempt to capture him. Fate might order it that that victim should be the white-haired and warm-hearted man who had helped him in his sore plight—well, so be it; he had not the ordering of fate, and was content to risk even that. As to escaping after the crime, he trusted to his own experience and skill in disguising himself; and even if a swift flight were impossible, he knew several who would be only too glad to hide him, with such a sum in his possession, till the hue and cry were over.
Thus provided for every emergency, Johnston went down to the house at Bonnington one evening after dark, ostensibly to hear the result of Mr Cooper’s letters to the imaginary deacons, but really to ascertain if the money was in the house, and to see how the room lay for his midnight attempt. He was shown into the very parlour he was most anxious to reconnoitre, and left there so long alone that he began to get alarmed, although the interval had given him the opportunity to draw back the spring fastening of the windows and reclose the shutters as he found them, adjusting the slender hook which fastened them so lightly that a mere touch from the outside would drive them open. At length Mr Cooper appeared, looking grave and concerned, but Johnston’s alarm was speedily dispelled by hearing his benefactor say—
“You will excuse me for keeping you waiting so long, but the truth is my grandchild—the little girl you saw at the table the other night—is not very well, and we have thought it advisable to send for a doctor. I thought she had only caught a little cold, but now she has lost her voice and can only speak in a whisper, and seems, besides, to be in a state of high fever as well. Oh, if anything should happen to her, I could never get over it. She is only ten, and the last one left to us.”
Johnston offered a few commonplace words of a soothing nature, and then adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the letters from the “deacons.”
“Oh, I have got answers from both, and they are satisfactory in every respect,” said Mr Cooper, rousing himself a little, and producing the two letters concocted and posted in the West by Johnston himself, and frankly placing them in the hands of that arch-rogue. “You may read them for yourself, and consider it settled that I shall give you the assistance you require—a passage to the Cape. Willingly would I give twice that sum to see that poor child well and strong as usual——”
A ring at the door-bell interrupted the speech, and Mr Cooper started up and again left Johnston alone, with the words, “Ah! at last, there is the doctor.”
The intending criminal sat there and heard the doctor admitted and led to the bedroom of the sick child. Then there was a long stillness, and at last the footsteps sounded in the lobby; the doctor whispered for a time with Mr Cooper, and finally the front door closed and the carriage drove off. Some slow and feeble footsteps then came in the direction of the parlour door, and in a moment or two Mr Cooper stood before Johnston, ghastly pale, and tottering, and with the tears gathering thick in his eyes.
“Oh, my friend, the worst of news!” he at length found voice to say, as he sank feebly into a seat and covered his face with his hands. “The doctor says it is not a simple ulceration of the throat, as we imagined—the trouble is diphtheria! and—and it is so far gone that he does not believe she will recover!”
Before that awful grief and those flowing tears Johnston was stricken dumb, and he uneasily began to wish himself a mile from the spot. In broken accents the stricken old man proceeded to describe the nature of the disease—how a kind of fungus had begun to grow across the windpipe, which would shortly choke the breath out of the young body as surely as if a strangulating cord had been tightened about the neck, and how the child, though still chatting cheerily and brightly in its hoarse whispers, was actually within a few hours of death and heaven. Johnston felt more uncomfortable than ever. He started round not to see the grief-stricken face, and something heavy hit him sharply on the leg. It was the leaden-headed neddy in his coat pocket, with which he had been prepared to deal out death to any one opposing him in robbing the man before him. The blow on the leg, however, was nothing to the knocking which was at that moment going on in his heart.
“Oh, my friend! you—you are sent to me as a blessing from heaven in my hour of sore trial!” exclaimed Mr Cooper at last, starting up and clasping Johnston’s hand in his own, and welling it over with his warm tears. “Little did I dream of this when I first thought to help you. God has a purpose in everything. You will come with me to my darling child; you will pray with her and speak to her of heaven. How could I pray when my whole heart is rising in rebellion against God taking the dear child from us? Forgive me! forgive my wickedness—but she is the only one left—the only one!”
If Johnston had been asked to go up to a cannon’s mouth, that he might be blown into a thousand fragments, he would have gone more cheerfully than to the task required. His pale cheeks crimsoned—the first blush that had visited them for many a day—then he as swiftly became a ghastly white. He tried to speak, but the words choked him, and the hand which grasped that of his benefactor was nerveless and feeble, and cold as ice.
“Excuse me,” he at length managed to falter forth, “but I’d rather not. I had a girl of my own once who was taken away much in the same way, and to go through the same experience again would tear my heart open;” and he sank down in a chair and abjectly covered his face with his hands.
“Your are not in earnest—you cannot be!” cried the old man, opening his eyes in wonder. “You surely will not desert me in my hour of need? I cannot believe you are ungrateful, and your very experience in the same affliction should help you to console us. I do not care so much for myself, but my poor wife has set her whole heart upon that child. Come with me and speak to her—tell her of your own child—of all you endured, and how God blessed the calamity to your soul—come, for I fear she will go mad!”
Who could hold out against such an appeal? Johnston rose, and allowed the old man to lead him slowly to the sick chamber. He was in a dream—the present and much of the past had fallen away from him as by magic, and he was looking on a familiar little room, with a sick child and a tending mother, both of whom hung on his words with reverence and love. He saw the whole as vividly as if he had looked upon the real faces there and then, and a great cry struggled for utterance in his heart—
“My God! my God! have mercy upon me, a sinner!”
He felt some one place a book in his hand, and he opened it mechanically, and began to read part of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount; but all the words which fell, in such rich tones and eloquent accents from his lips, seemed to him to come from the mouth of his own visionary sick child. The gentle eyes seemed to flash out fire into his very soul as the words were uttered—“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.”
Johnston was a splendid reader. To listen to him reading was to be thrilled, but the one most thrilled in that little group was himself. He seemed for the moment to have been wrenched suddenly out of his degraded life into a holier, nobler one, long since buried in the past. They told him afterwards that his conversation with the sick child seemed inspired—that the very gates of heaven seemed to open before their eyes under his eloquence, but the man himself remembered nothing of it.
He saw those other faces all the time; and if his tender words seemed such as could only come from the lips of a father, it was simply because he seemed to be addressing his own child. But when his benefactor led him from the sick-room back to the little parlour the spell was broken, the vision vanished, and the stricken wretch fell on his knees and groaned out—
“I am a wretch! I am a scoundrel! Why has not God struck me dead before your eyes?”
Tears, groans, and imprecations against himself followed; and then, to the astonishment of his benefactor, Johnston poured forth an abject confession of the truth—how he had deceived him with the letters, and actually meditated a midnight robbery with violence against the very hand that was now pressing his own in such gratitude and affection.
Mr Cooper, though shocked and horrified, heard the narration as only a Christian man could. He could not believe that Johnston was half as depraved and wicked as he imagined himself, and gently and feelingly reminded the cowering wretch that he had already confessed to many faults and shortcomings. In the end Johnston was shown out, and grasped as warmly by the hand in parting as if what he had just confessed had raised him tenfold in his benefactor’s estimation. As they were thus bidding each other good night, in the expectation of meeting again in the morning to arrange for the passage to the Cape, I stepped out of the shade close by the doorway, and laying my hand on Johnston’s arm, said sharply to Mr Cooper—
“Do you know that this man is a released convict, and a thief and housebreaker?”
“I know all that, and more, for he has just confessed all to me,” was the mild reply.
“Let me warn you that he has this very day bought some housebreaking tools, which he may use at any moment, even upon your own house,” I continued, a little astonished that Johnston made no attempt to escape.
“I know that also, for he has already delivered the tools into my hands,” said Mr Cooper. “If you choose to come in, you may take them away with you.”
Quite nonplussed, I accepted the offer, allowing Johnston to depart, and in a few minutes was told all that had happened. I placed no reliance upon Johnston’s contrition, and while taking the implements, again warned Mr Cooper to be strictly on his guard in dealing with such a wretch.
Very early next morning Johnston returned to the house at Bonnington, and spent nearly the whole day with the sick child, tending it, nursing it, and conversing as sweetly and gently as any mother could have done. This continued for some days, till at length the doctor pronounced the child out of danger, when Mr Cooper actually, in the height of his joy and gratitude, went down on his knees before the degraded minister, and blessed God aloud for sending the man to his house. A few days later a passage was taken for the apparently contrite and reformed rogue to one of the colonies, and Mr Cooper made no secret that he intended to give Johnston, when fairly aboard the vessel, £50 to start a new life with on the other side. But on the very morning when the passage-money was paid, Johnston discovered something wrong with his throat, and his pulse high and fevered, and went to the Infirmary to ask advice. The house surgeon looked at his throat, and told him he must remain as an indoor patient, as the trouble was diphtheria, and the case a serious one indeed. Before night Johnston had lost his voice, and next day the disease was in his windpipe. His last words were a written message to Mr Cooper and his grandchild, bidding them farewell, and adding—“I was asleep in sin, but God through you awakened me, and now I am not afraid to die.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with some exceptions noted below. Original printed page numbers have been removed. Both of the original footnotes have been converted to inline text surrounded by square brackets, and placed where the original footnote anchors were placed. The transcriber produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the public domain. Scottish or Irish proper names such as McGovan, McBain, McKendrick, etc. were originally printed with a turned comma, similar to the modern Unicode character [‹ʻ› U+02BB; MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA] in place of the superscripted c. This character is poorly supported in current browsers, and so these names have been rendered herein with superscript c. The author of this book is William Crawford Honeyman (1845–1919), whose pen name is “James McGovan”, as shown on the title page. Original page images are available from archive.org—search for “tracedtrackedorm00mgovrich”.
Page [19]. The phrase ‹and is the light onl at› was changed to ‹and is the light only at›.
Page [41]. Right double quotation mark was added after ‹something being “hidden safely there,›.
Page [53]. Full stop was added after ‹no Corny appeared›.
Page [57]. The full stop in ‹common streets of Stockbridge, close by. The Fin then decided› was changed to comma.
Page [69]. Right double quotation mark was added after ‹Oh, what will become of him when I’m away?›.
Page [85]. The phrase ‹point at which he had broken of,› was changed to ‹point at which he had broken off,›.
Page [86]. Comma in ‹as ordinary buyers with lots of money,› was changed to full stop.
Page [91]. The phrase ‹companion. I was there› was changed to ‹companion. “I was there›.
Page [96]. The phrase ‹prepaid—“Sent by James Paterson, to Robert Marshall, Linlithgow. To lie at station till called for.”› was changed to ‹prepaid—‘Sent by James Paterson, to Robert Marshall, Linlithgow. To lie at station till called for.’”›.
Page [111]. The phrase ‹paid a visit to Mr Baninster› was changed to ‹paid a visit to Mr Bannister›.
Page [116]. The phrase ‹but with your protrait always› was changed to ‹but with your portrait always›.
Page [122]. The phrase ‹id ntifying our man› was changed to ‹identifying our man›.
Page [133]. Changed ‹establishment in Princes Street,› to ‹establishment in Princes Street.›.
Page [155]. Changed ‹when I’m in you’re hands› to ‹when I’m in your hands›. Also changed ‹clumsy flatttery› to ‹clumsy flattery›.
Page [198]. Changed ‹Greenside was reached There a› to ‹Greenside was reached. There a›.
Page [225]. Left double quotation mark was added to ‹Alfred Johnston, I’ve›.
Page [233]. The phrase ‹who asisted me› was changed to ‹who assisted me›.
Page [262]. The phrase ‹and that John and she were soon to be made one.”› was printed with a right double quotation mark which has no matching left mark in the text. This mark has been removed in this edition. However, another possible interpretation might be ‹and that John and she were “soon to be made one.”›.
Page [300]. The phrase ‹with some biterness› was changed to ‹with some bitterness›.
Page [315]. The phrase ‹it’s a thing ane o⸲ the bairns› was printed with what would now be represented by the Unicode character [‹⸲› U+2E32 TURNED COMMA] after ‹o›. The phrase has been changed herein to ‹it’s a thing ane o’ the bairns›.
Page [337]. The phrase ‹that particular night. The› was changed to ‹that particular night.” The›.