THE DIAMOND EYES.
When I entered Edinburgh College the students were tolerably free from any of those clubs or parties into which some factitious subject—often a whim—divides them. In the prior year the spirit of wager had seized a great number of them with the harpy talons of the demon of gambling, giving rise to consequences prejudicial to their morals, as well as to their studies. A great deal of money among the richer of them changed hands upon the result of bets, often the most frivolous, if not altogether ridiculous. Now, we are not to say that, abstracted from the love of money, the act of betting is unqualifiedly bad, if rather we may not be able to say something for it, insomuch as it sometimes brings out, and stamps ingenuity or sagacity, while it represses and chastises arrogance. But the practice at the College at that time was actually wild. They sought out subjects; the aye and the no of ordinary converse was followed by the gauntlet, which was taken up on the instant; and they even had an umpire in the club, a respectable young man of the name of Hawley, who was too wise to bet himself, but who was pleased with the honour of being privileged to decide the bets of the others.
In the heat of this wild enthusiasm, it happened that two of these youths, one called Henry Dewhurst, and the other Frank Hamilton, were walking on the jetty which runs out from the harbour of Leith a full mile into the Forth. Dewhurst was the son of a West India planter, who allowed him £300 a year, every penny of which was spent in paying only a part of his bills long before the year was done; one of which bills I had an opportunity of seeing, to my wonder—how any one could eat £15 worth of tarts and sweetmeats in the course of not many months! Hamilton was the son of a west country proprietor, and enjoyed the privilege of using, to his ruin, a yearly allowance of £250. In the midst of their sauntering they hailed two of their friends,—one Campbell, a sworn companion of the young West Indian; and the other Cameron, as closely allied to Hamilton;—all the four being, as the saying goes, "birds of a feather," tossing their wings in the gale of sprees, and not always sleeping in their own nests at night.
As they approached the end of the jetty, they met a lad who had wounded one of these large gulls called Tom Norries,—a beautiful creature, with its fine lead-coloured wings and charming snow-white breast, and eye like a diamond.
"I will give you a shilling for the bird," said Dewhurst.
"But what are you to do with it?" replied the lad. "I would not like it to be killed. It is only hurt in the wing; and I will get half-a-crown for it from one who has a garden to keep it in."
"No, no," said Dewhurst, "I'll not kill it. Here's your half-crown."
And the bargain was struck. Dewhurst, with the struggling bird in his hand, went down, followed by his friends, one of the side stairs to the stone rampart, by which the jetty is defended on the east. There they sat down. The sun was throwing a blaze of glory over a sea which repaid the gift with a liquid splendour scarcely inferior to his of fire; and the companions of the bird, swirling in the clear air, seemed to be attracted by the sharp cries of the prisoner; but all its efforts were vain to gratify its love of liberty and their yearning. It was in the hands of those who had neither pity for its sufferings, consideration for the lessons it carried in its structure, nor taste for estimating its beauties. One of another kind of students might have detected adaptations in the structure of that creature sufficient to have raised his thoughts to the great Author of design and the source of all beauty,—that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply the beak—that beak, too, so admirably formed—for taking up entire, or perforating the backs of the silly fishes that gambol too near the surface. Ay, even in these fishes, which, venturing too far from their natural depths, and becoming amorous of the sun, and playful in their escapades, he might see the symbol of man himself, who, when he leaves the paths of prudence, and gets top-light with pleasure, is ready, in every culmination of his delirium, to be caught by a waiting retribution. Ah! but our student, who held the bird, was not incurious—only cold and cruel in his curiosity.
"Hamilton," said he, "that bird could still swim on the surface of that sea, though deprived of every feather on its body."
"I deny it," replied Hamilton. "It will not swim five minutes,"
"What do you bet?"—- The old watchword.
"Five pounds."
"Done."
And getting Campbell to hold the beak, which the bird was using with all its vigour, he grasped its legs and wings together by his left hand, and began to tear from the tender living skin the feathers. Every handful showed the quivering flesh, and was followed by spouts of blood; nor did he seem to care—although the more carefully the flaying operation was performed, the better chance he had of carrying his wager—whether he brought away with the torn tips portions of the skin. The writhing of the tortured creature was rather an appeal to his deliberate cruelty, and the shrill scream only quickened the process. The back finished and bloody, the belly, snow-white and beautiful, was turned up, the feathers torn away, the breast laid bare, and one wing after the other stript of every pinion. Nothing in the shape of feathers, in short, was left, except the covering of the head, which resisted his fingers.
"There now is Plato's definition of a man personified," said he as he laughed.
During all this time a lady looked over the parapet. Dewhurst caught her eye red with anger, but he only laughed the louder.
"Now, Hamilton," said he, "you take the bird, and we mount to the platform. When I give the sign, fling him in, and we shall see how the bet goes."
They accordingly mounted, and the lady turning her back, as if she had been unable to bear longer the sight of so much cold cruelty, directed her vision towards the west; but a little boy, who was along with her, seemed to watch the operation.
"Now," cried Dewhurst.
And Hamilton thiew the bird into the sea. The creature, still vivacious, true to its old instinct, spread out its bare wings in an attempt to fly, but it was in vain; down it came sinking below the surface, but rising quickly again to lash, with the bleeding wings, the water on which it used to swim so lightly and elegantly. The struggle between the effort to fly and the tendency to sink was continued for several minutes, its screams bringing closer around it many of its compeers, who looked as if with pity and amazement on the suffering victim, known to them now only by the well-known cry of distress.
Meanwhile these curious students of natural history stood looking over the rail, watch in hand; and the little boy, an important personage in our story, also intent upon the experiment, cried out two solitary words, very simple ones too, and yet fraught with a strange import, as regards consequences, that could not be gathered from them.
"See, ma'."
But the lady to whom they were addressed had still her head turned away.
"Six minutes," cried Dewhurst. "The time is up, and the bird is only this instant down. I win."
"I admit it," responded Hamilton, evidently disconcerted. "I shall pay you to-night at Stewart's, at seven o'clock. I got my remittance yesterday."
"Content," said Dewhurst, "That's the third bet I have gained off you within a fortnight,"
Hamilton bit his lip and scowled—- an act which only roused against him the raillery of his comrades, who were now collected in a circle, and symptoms of anger of a more expressive kind showed themselves.
"You have been at this trade of flaying before," said he, looking sternly at Dewhurst. "Your father, like the other West Indians, is well acquainted with the flaying of negroes, and you have been following his example with the Jamaica lungies. But, by G—d," he added, getting enraged, "next time we cross the rapiers of a bet, it shall be for ten times five."
"This instant," answered Dewhurst, on whom the imputations about his father acted as a fiery stimulant.
"Seek your subject," responded Hamilton.
"You see that lady there?" continued the West Indian. "She has a boy with her."
"I do."
"The mother of the boy, or not?" continued Dewhurst. "I say she is; and, in place of fifty, I'll make it a hundred."
"Have you ever seen them before?" asked Hamilton, trying to be calm.
"Never. I know no more of them than you do; and, besides, I give you your choice of mother, or not mother."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Campbell, as he looked intently at Dewhurst. "Are you mad, Dewhurst? Has your last triumph blinded you? The woman is too old by ten years."
Hamilton turned round without saying a word, and drew cautiously near the lady, whose eyes, as she stood looking at a foreign ship coming in, were still scornful, and it seemed as if she waited until some gentleman came up to inform him of the cruel act she had so recently witnessed. Resisting her fiery glances, he surveyed her calmly, looking by turns at her and the boy. A slight smile played on his lip in the midst of the indications of his wrath. One might have read in that expression—
"Not a feature in these two faces in the least similar, and the age is beyond all mortal doubt. I have the gull-flayer on the hip at last."
And returning to the companions with the same simulated coolness—
"Done for a hundred," he said. "That lady is not the mother of that boy."
"Agreed," answered Dewhurst, with a look of inward triumph. "How to be decided?"
"By the lips of the lady herself."
"Agreed."
"Yes," joined Campbell, "if you can get these lips to move. She looks angry, and now she is moving along probably for home, bequeathing to us the last look of her scorn. We shall give her time to cool down, and Cameron and I will then pay our respects to her. We shall get it out of the boy if she refuse to answer."
It was as Campbell said. The lady with the boy, who held her by the hand, had begun her return along the jetty. The companions kept walking behind; and of these, Campbell and Dewhurst fell back a little from the other two.
"Hark, Campbell," said Dewhurst. "Back me against Cameron for any sum you can get out of him. I'm sure of my quarry; and," laughing within the teeth, he added, "I'll gull him again."
"You're ruined, man," whispered his companion. "The woman is evidently too old, and I am satisfied you will catch some of her wrinkles."
A deeper whisper from Dewhurst conveyed to the ear of his friend—
"I heard the boy call her mother."
"The devil!" exclaimed Campbell in surprise; but, catching himself, "it might have been grandmother he meant."
"No, no. Children in Scotland use grandma', never ma', to grandmother. I'm satisfied; and if you are not a fool, take advantage of my "—
"Dishonesty," added Campbell.
"No; all fair with that fellow Hamilton. Besides, all bets assume a retention of reasons, otherwise there could be no bets. In addition, I did not assert that I did not hear them address each other."
"That's something," said Campbell. "I do not say it is impossible, or even very improbable, that she may be the mother; and if you will assure me, on your honour, of what you heard, I will have a little speculative peculation on Cameron."
"I can swear; and if I couldn't, do you think I would have bet so high, as in the event of losing I should be ruined?"
"I'm content," said Campbell. "Ho, there, Cameron! I will back Dewhurst on the maternity for ten."
"That will just pay Nightingale," replied Cameron. "I accept. Now for the grand denouement. Let us accost the arbitress of our fortunes."
"Not yet," said Hamilton. "Wait till she gets to the lighthouse, where there are people. It is clear she has not a good opinion of us, and in this solitary place she might get alarmed."
Hanging back to wait their opportunity, now upon the verge of a decision which might be attended with disastrous results to some of them, the whole four appeared absorbed in anxiety. Not a word was spoken; and it seemed possible that, during these trying minutes, a hint would have broken up the imprudent and dangerous compact. The terror of the club was before them, and the false honour which ruled them, in place of obedience to their fathers, and humanity to dumb creatures, retained the ascendency. So has it ever been with the worship of false gods: their exactions have always been in proportion to the folly and credulity of their votaries. The moment was approaching. The die was to carry formidable issues. Dark shadows broke in through the resolution to be brave, as might have been observed in the features of both the principals. At length Campbell took the lead. They approached the lady, who at first seemed to shrink from them as monsters.
"We beg pardon," he said. "Be assured, madam, we have not the most distant intention to offend you. The truth is, that we have a bet among us as to whether you are the mother of this fine boy. We assure you, moreover, that it was the sport of betting that sought out the subject, and the nature of that subject cannot, we presume, be prejudicial either to your honour or your feelings. While I ask your pardon, allow me to add that the wager, foolish or not, is to be decided by your answer—yes or no."
"No."
After pronouncing, with a severe sternness, this monosyllable, she paused a little; and looking round upon the youths with a seriousness and dignity that sat upon her so well that they shrunk from her glance, she added, with a corresponding solemnity—
"Would to God, who sees all things—ay, and punishes all those who are cruel to the creatures He has formed with feelings suitable to their natures, and dear to them as ours are to us—that he who bet upon my being the mother of this boy may be he who tortured the unoffending bird!"
And, with these words, she departed, leaving the bewildered students looking at each other, with various emotions. It was, perhaps, fortunate for Dewhurst that the little sermon, contrary to the practice of the courts, came after, in place of preceding the condemnation, for he had been rendered all but insensible by the formidable monosyllable. He saw there was some mystery overhanging his present position. He doubted, and he did not doubt the lady; but he heard the boy use the word, and he took up the impression that he was, by some mistake on his part, to be punished for the flaying of the bird. The lady's eye, red and angry, had been fixed upon him, and now, when she was gone, he still saw it. But there were more lurid lights, playing round certain stern facts connected with his fortunes. He must pay this £100 on the decision of her who had burned him with her scorn. There was no relief for him. The club at the College had no mercy, and he had enraged Hamilton, whose spirit was relentless. He had been under rebuke from his father, who had threatened to cut him off; and, worse still, the remnant of the last yearly remittance was £110 in the Royal Bank, while debts stood against him in the books of tailors, confectioners, tavern-keepers, shoemakers—some already in the form of decrees, and one at least in the advanced stage of a warrant. To sum up all, he was betrothed to Miss M———- sh, the sister of a writer to the signet, who had already hinted doubts as the propriety of the marriage. He saw himself, in short, wrecked on the razor-backed shelving rocks of misery. In his extremity, he clutched at a floating weed: the woman, the lady, did not speak the truth. He had ears, and could hear, and he would trust to them. The boy could not be wrong.
"Campbell," he cried, "dog her home—she lies!" Hamilton and Campbell burst out into a laugh, but Campbell had been taken aback by the lady's answer: he had not £10 to pay Cameron, and the fear of the club was before him, with its stern decree of the brand of caste and rejection by his associates. Since the moment of the lady's answer, he had been conscious of obscure doubts as to her truthfulness, clustering round the suspicion that she might have known, by hearing something, that Dewhurst, the gull-flayer, was on the side of the maternity, and that she wanted to punish him—a notion which seemed to be favoured by the somewhat affected manner of her expressing her little sermon. These doubts, fluid and wavering, became, as it were, crystallized by Dewhurst's cry that she was a liar; and, the moment he felt the sharp angles of the idea, he set off after the lady.
This hope, which was nothing more than despair in hysterics, enabled Dewhurst to withstand, for a little, the looks of triumph in Hamilton and Cameron, in spite of their laugh, which still rung in his ears. The sermon had touched him but little, and if he could have got quit of this wildly contracted debt, he would likely be the same man again. He did not, as yet, feel even the dishonour of having taken advantage of the boy's statement—an act which he had subtlety enough to defend. Give him only relief from this debt, the fire of the club, the stabbing glances of Hamilton's eye. At least he was not bound to suffer the personal expression of his companions' triumph any longer than he could away.
"We will wait the issue of Campbell's inquiry," he said with affected calmness. "I have a call to make in the Links."
And he was retreating, even as he uttered these words.
"I owe you £5," cried Hamilton, "which, as a man of honour, I pay you to-night at seven o'clock, upon the instant, at Stewart's. I have no wish to be dragged before the club."
With this barb, touched with wararra poison, or ten times distilled kakodyle, and a layer of honey over all, Dewhurst hurried away, to make no call. He was hard to subdue, and a puppy, whose passion it was to strut, in the perfection of a refined toilette, among fashionable street-walkers. While he was abroad, his cares rankling within were overborne by the consciousness of being "in position." The dog's nose is cold even when his tongue is reeking; and as he walked slowly along, his exterior showed the proper thermo-metric nonchalance—it was not the time for a pyrometric measurement within the heart. On his way, he talked to a Leith merchant, who hailed him; yet he exhibited the required retenu, so expressive of confidence and ease within, and withal so fashionable. You might have said that he had the heart to wing a partridge,—to "wing it," a pretty phrase in the mouth of a polite sportsman, who, if a poacher were to break the bones of his leg, would, in his own case, think it a little different. Yes, Dewhurst might have been supposed to be able to "wing a partridge,"—not to "flay a gull."
It was while thus "in position"—not its master, but its slave—that curvation of the spine of society, which produces so much paralysis and death—that, when he came to Princes Street, he felt himself constrained and able to walk up South St. Andrew Street, direct to the door of the Royal Bank. He even entered; he even drew a draft; he even made that draft £110, all the money he had there in keeping for so many coming wants and exigencies; he even presented it to the teller, who knew his circumstances and his dangers—ay, and his father's anxieties while he sent the yearly remittance.
"All, Mr. Dewhurst?" said the teller, looking blank at the draft.
"All, sir; I require it all," answered the student, with such a mouthful of the vowel, that we might write the word requoire, and not be far from the pronunciation.
The teller gave his head a significant shake. If he had had a tail to shake, and had shaken that tail, it would have been much the same.
Having got the money, he was more than ever under the law of that proclivity, on the broad line to ruin, on which so many young men take stations; and still retaining his, he went at the hour of the hot joints, to dine at the Rainbow, where he met many others, in that refreshment house, of the same class, who, like himself, considered—that is, while the money was there—that guineas in the purse supersede the necessity of having ideas in the head. He took to such liquid accompaniments of the dinner, as would confirm the resolution he had formed, of paying at once his debt of honour. And why not? Was not he of that world whose code of laws draws the legitimate line of distinction between debts contracted to industrious tradesmen for the necessaries of life, and those which are the result of whim, pride, or vindictiveness? All recollections of the flaying of the bird, and of the lady's adjuration to heaven, had given way to the enthusiasm of the noble feeling to obey the dictates of that eternal and immutable code of honour. And by seven o'clock he was at Stewart's, where he found Hamilton and Cameron waiting for their respective "pounds of flesh."
"Here is the £5," cried Hamilton, as he entered; and, throwing the note upon the table, "it is for the gull trick."
"And here," responded the West Indian, "is your £100 for the woman trick."
And he cast from him the bundle of notes, with a grandeur of both honour and defiance. "But I have a reservation to make. Campbell has not reported to me the issue of his commission; and if it shall turn out that the woman retracts, I will reclaim the money."
"And get it too," said the other, laughing sneeringly, as he counted the notes. "But here comes Campbell."
"Campbell," cried Cameron, as his debtor entered, "I want my £10 to pay Nightingale."
"Ask Dewhurst," said Campbell. "I have been cheated by him. He told me a lie. The woman speaks true, and I shall be revenged."
"I have nothing to do with Dewhurst," answered Cameron. "You are my debtor; and if I don't get the money to-night—you know my lodgings—the club will decide upon it to-morrow."
And, throwing a withering look upon his old friend—a word now changed for, and lost in that expressive vocable, debtor—he hurried out, followed by Hamilton, who had both his money and his revenge, and wished to be beyond the reach of a recall.
Left to themselves, the two remaining friends of the hour before, but now no longer friends, looked sternly at each other. The one considered himself duped; the other was burning under the imputation of being a cheat and a liar.
"Oh I don't retract," said Campbell, with increased fierceness. "It was upon the faith of your word that I ventured the bet against my own convictions. I have traced the lady to Great King Street, where she resides, as the aunt of the boy; and I am satisfied that, in a case where the boy's mother is alive, and now in her own house, he, of the age he is, never could have used the word mother or mamma, or any word of that import, to his father's sister. All power and energies are comparative. This £10 cracks the spine of my fortune as effectually as ten times the amount. I have not the money, and know no more where to find it than I do to get hold of the philosopher's stone. I repeat I have been cheated, and I demand of you the money."
"Which you shall never get," replied Dewhurst. "I can swear that I heard the words. They thrill on my ears now; and the best proof of my conviction is, that I am myself ruined. Yes," and he began to roll his eyes about, as the terrors of his situation came rushing upon him, on the wake of the now departing effects of the Rainbow wine—"Yes, the swell, the fop, the leader of the college ton, whose coat came from the artistic study of Willis, whose necktie could raise a furore, whose glove, without a wrinkle, would condescend only to be touched by friendship on the tip of the finger, is now at the mercy of any one of twenty sleasy dogs, who can tell the sheriff I owe them money. Money! why, I have only fifteen pounds in the wide world, and I must pay that to my landlady."
As he uttered these last words, the door opened, and there stood before him a man with a blue coat, surmounted by a red collar. He held a paper in his hand; his demeanour was deferential and exuberantly polite.
"That sum you have mentioned, sir," he said, looking to the student, "with £10 added, will save you and me much trouble. The debt to Mr. Reid is £25; and here is a certain paper which gives me the power to do an unpolite thing. You comprehend? I am an advocate for painless operations."
"Will you accept the £15?" said Dewhurst, now scarcely able to articulate.
"Yes, if this gentleman here, who is, I presume, your friend, will kindly add the £10. The expenses may stand."
Campbell could only grin at this strange conversation.
"Unwilling?" continued the messenger. "Ah, I see. It is strange that when I devote myself to a gentleman, his friends fly away. This is my misfortune. Well, there is no help for it. We must take a walk to the prison," addressing himself to his debtor. "You are a gentleman, and I shall be your servant in livery."
Dewhurst braced himself with a violent effort, like a spasm, and took his hat.
"Give me the £10," said Campbell. "It will make no difference now. There are no degrees in despair."
"I must take care of my master's money," said the officer, with an attempt at a smile; and without going the full length of imitating that most philanthropic of all executors of the law, Simpson, who patted his victims on the back while he adjusted the rope, he added, "And now, sir, I am at your humble service."
In a very short time after, the strange events of that day were terminated by the young man being placed in the debtor's prison of the Calton. Like other jail birds, he at first shunned his brethren in misfortune, fleeing to his room, and shrouding himself in solitude and partial darkness. The change from a life of gaiety, if not dissipation, to the experiences of prison squalor, had come upon him without preparation, if indeed preparation for evil ever diminishes or much ameliorates the inevitable effects of the visitation. Unfortunates exhibit wonderful diversities in their manifestations. Dewhurst became dejected, broken in spirits, sad, and remorseful. He scarcely stirred from the bed on which he had thrown himself when he entered; and his mind became a theatre where strange plays were acted, and strange personages performed strange parts, under the direction of stage managers over whom he had no control. Though some unhappy predecessor in the same cell had scribbled on the wall,
"A prison is a cannie place,
Though viewed with reprobation,
Where cheats and thieves, and scants o' grace,
Find time for cogitation,"
he did not find that he could properly cogitate or meditate, even if he had been, which he never was, a thinker. All his thoughts were reduced to a continued wild succession of burning images,—the mild face of his mother, so far away, as it smiled upon him when he ran about among the cane groves of the west; the negroes, with their "young massa" on their tongues, jabbering their affection; his father scowling upon him as undutiful; another, not so far away, in whose eyes—beautiful to him—love dwelt as his worshipper, looking all endearment, only the next moment to cast upon him the withering glance of her contempt, if not hatred; admirers, toadies, satellites, and sycophants, all there in groups and in succession, beslabbering him with praises, then exploding in peals of laughter. Nor was another awanting in these saturnalia—the form and face of her whose one word of sentence had been to him as a doom, and who fixed that doom in his soul by her red glance of reproof. Seemingly very indifferent objects assumed in the new lights of his spirit gigantic and affraying features,—the sea-gull, with its torn back, bleeding and quivering, and those diamond eyes so bright even in its looks of agony—an object low indeed in the scale of nature, but here elevated by some overruling power into the very heart of man's actions and destinies, as if to show out of what humble things the lightnings of retribution may come. Nay, these diamond eyes haunted him; they were everywhere in these saturnalian reveries, following every recurring image as an inevitable concomitant which he had no power to drive away, entering into the orbits of the personages, gleaming out of the heads of negroes, that of his father, that of his mother, even that of his mistress, imparting to the looks and glances of the latter a brilliancy which enhanced beauty, while it sharpened them into poignancy. But most of all were they in some way associated with the form of the unknown lady. She never appeared to him as the being on whom his destiny was suspended; but, sooner or later, her own comparatively lustreless orbs changed into those diamonds, which could fulminate scorn not less than they could beam out supplication.
For several days and nights he had scarcely any intervals of peace from these soul-penetrating fancies, and these moments were due to visits. But who came to visit? Not the writer to the signet, the brother of his affianced, whom he had expected to see first of all as a friend, if not as a relation, ready to extend the hand that would save him; not any of those with whom he had shared the folly of extravagance, if not dissipation, on whom he had lavished favours in the wildness of his generosity. The first was felicitating himself on his sister's escape; the latter received the lesson that teaches prudence a la distance. His only visitors were one or two heads of families where he had been received as a fashionable friend, and these came only to look and inquire. Their curiosity was satisfied when they got out of him the amount of his debt, and pleased when they considered that their daughters were at home, and under no chance of becoming allied to a prisoner. One or two old associates, too, paid their respects to him, but they were of those who had resisted his fascinations and found their pleasures in their studies. We seek for the virtues, but we do not always find them in the high places, where masks, copied from them and bearing their beautiful lineaments and their effulgence, are worn in their stead only to cover the vices which are their very antipodes. No: more often in lowlier regions, lying perdu behind vices, not voluntary, but often, as it were, inflicted and peering out, ashamed to be seen, because arrayed in the rags of poverty. A solitary female stole in to him. Who was she? One with whom he had formed a connection of not an honourable kind, only now interrupted by the walls of the prison? No. One whom he had long before cast off, only because the vice he had inoculated her with had cast off the beauty that had inflamed him. Nor did he know the meaning of that stealthy visit, which lasted only for a few minutes—so unexpected, for he had not seen her during many months, so singular, so unnatural, so unlike the world, returning gratitude for injury, benediction for infamy, until, after she had suddenly slipped away, he found by the side of the wall a small bottle of wine. That form and face, once more beautiful in his estimation than were those even now of his honourable affianced, entered among the imagery of his reveries; but the diamond eyes never displaced those of her gentle nature. He had wronged her, but they never filled with the fire of denunciation. She had looked her grief at him only through the tears he had raised in them, and had never attempted to dry. Yes, the diamond eyes entered everywhere, and into every form but that one where the red heat of revenge might have been expected to shrivel up and harden the issues of tears.
Further on in the same evening, the jailer, a good-natured sort of fellow, came in to him while he was absorbed in these thoughts. He was at the time sitting on his bed.
"A lady called in the dusk," he said, "and inquired if it was true you were here. I told her it was."
"And what more?" asked the youth, as he started out of his day-dream. "But, stay—what like was she?"
"I could scarcely see her," replied the man; "middling tail, rather young, as I thought—with a veil, through which I could see a pair of pretty, bright eyes."
"Were they like diamonds?" cried the student, absolutely forgetting that he was speaking to an ordinary mortal about very ordinary things.
"Ha, ha! I never saw diamond eyes," answered the jailer; "but I've seen glass ones in a doll's head looking very bright. Why, you 'aven't got mad, like some of the chicken-hearted birds in our cage?"
"Yes," cried the youth, "I'm frantic-mad; but stay, have patience. Did she want to see me?"
"Yes, she asked if she could; but when I told her she might, she seemed to get afeared to come into a jail, and said she would call again to-morrow night at the same hour."
"Can you tell me nothing more of what she was like?—not she who was here this evening?"
"Why, no; don't you think I know her kind? Oh, we see many o' them. They stick closest to the unfortunate, but 'tis because they are unfortunate themselves. Common thing, sir. Never feel for others till we have something to feel for ourselves. The visitor is a lady, sir."
"Can you tell me nothing more?" said the student eagerly. "How was she dressed?"
"A large, elegant cloak, sir; can scarcely say more."
"Was it trimmed with fur?"
"Not sure; but now, when I think, there was some lightish trimming—I mean lighter than the cloak."
"And the bonnet?"
"Why, I think velvet; but you'll maybe see her yourself to-morrow. The like o' her may do you good. The unfortunates who stick so close to the unfortunate do no good—they're a plaster that don't cure."
"It is Maria!" ejaculated Dewhurst, as the jailer shut the door. "She feels for me, and has come in spite of her hard-hearted brother. Her diamond eyes are of another kind. They speak wealth, and love to bestow it. Her fortune is her own, and with that I may yet turn that wayward destiny, and laugh at my persecutors."
That ray of hope, illuminating his soul, changed almost in an instant the whole tenor of his mind. It might be compared to a stream of nervous energy, emanating from the brain, and shooting down through the network of chords, confirming convulsed muscles, and; imparting to trembling members consistency of action and graces of motion. His reveries were scared by it, as owls under the influence of a sunbeam, and retreated into the dark recesses from which they had been charmed by the enchantment of despair. The personages of these visions were no longer avengers, casting upon him the burning beams of the diamond eyes. They were hopeful, pitiful; the flatterers and fawners were at their old work again, and Pleasure, with her siren face, smiled blandishments on him. Then he would justify the favours of the heaven he made for himself. He would be a logician, for once, in that kind of dialectics called the "wish-born."
"What was I afraid of?" he said to himself. "There is no turpitude, no shame in a fair bet. I was worsted in an honourable contest. What crazy power mocked me into the belief that all this that has befallen me was connected with the flaying of a bird? Don't we break the necks of innocent, yea, gentle fowls, not depredators like gulls, every day for our dinners? And don't ladies, as delicate as the unknown censor who dared to chastise me with her eyes, eat of the same, with a relish delightful to the tongues that pronounce the fine words of pity and philanthropy? But, even admitting there was cruelty in the act, where is the link that binds it with the consequences which have brought me here? The bet upon the maternity was not an effect of the flaying of the bird. If it followed the prior bet, it would have followed another, in which I was gainer, equally the same. The mad energy which weaves in my head these day-dreams, and pursues me with these diamond eyes of wrath, is a lying power, and I shall master it by the strength of my reason, which at least is God's gift. Come, my Maria, as my good angel, and enable me to free my mind from illusions. I will sit and look into your eyes, as I have done so often. Yes, I will satisfy myself that they shine still with the lustre of love, hope, and happiness; and oh, let these, and these only, enter into my dreams."
And thus he satisfied himself, as all do, whose hope weaves the syllogisms of their wishes, and sits to see pleasure caught on the wing. The day passed apace to usher in the evening with its messenger of peace. Where, in that squalid place, would he seat her, whose peculiar province was the drawing-room? How would he receive her first look of sympathy? how repay it? with what words express his emotions? with what fervour kiss those lips redolent of forgiveness? with what ecstasy look into those eyes refulgent with love? He would control himself, and be calm. He would rehearse, that he might not fail in the forms of an interview on which hung his destiny, almost his life. The hour of seven arrived. He heard the heavy foot of the jailer come tramp, tramp along the lobby. There was a softer step behind, as if the echo of the heavier tread. A stern voice and a softer one mingled their notes. The door opened.
"My Mar—! O God! these scornful eyes again."
"Not scornful now," replied the soft voice of a woman, as she came forward, and stood before him in the dusk.
"Were there light enough," she continued, "I would lift my veil and show you that they are capable of a kindlier light than even that they now carry, for the offering I made to heaven has been more than answered."
"Ah, you come to retract," he said, "to speak the truth at last. It is not too late to say you are the mother—the mother of the boy. Nor need you be ashamed: there may be reasons; but many a woman lives to repent—"
"Hold, sir," she cried with indignation, as she fixed upon him a look even more penetrating than that he so well remembered. "I have nothing to retract—nothing to be ashamed of. I came here out of pure sympathy, to make amends to one who has fallen for a prayer which burst from me in my anger. Your friend, who called for me, told me that you were a prisoner, and that your imprisonment was the consequence of the wager which it fell to me to decide. I did not come to repeat to you what I said before, that I am not the mother of the boy, but to make an explanation."
"And I have one to ask," said he.
"I am ready to answer."
"How could I be deceived?" said he. "I heard the boy address you as his mother."
"And that is what I came to explain. I have taxed my memory since Mr. Campbell insisted, in my presence, that Frederick did address me in the manner you have stated. Shall I tell you the precise words he used?"
"I wait for them."
"Well, they were, 'See ma.'"
"The very words; and were they not enough for proof and belief?"
"Yes, sir; but there are words which have two significations. Ma' is the contraction, as you know, for mamma, but it is pronounced the same as maw, which is a word which we use to designate those birds otherwise called gulls. I recollect that while I was unable to bear the sight of the tortured bird, and had turned my head in another direction, my nephew kept looking over the rails, and that, as he saw the struggling creature, he cried out to me the words you misconstrued. And thus the mystery is cleared up."
"Miserable and fatal error," he gasped out, as he staggered back. "And the connection!—the connection! There was retribution in those diamond eyes."
"What mean you, sir?"
"The bird's eyes that haunt me in my reveries, and enter into the sockets of my dream-beings!"
"Are you mad?"
"No; or the heavens are mad, with their swirling orbs and blazing comets, that rush sighing through space before some terrible power that will give them no respite, except with the condition that when they rest they die."
"Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you."
"Ay, pity those who have no pity—those are the truly wretched; for pity, in the world's life, is the soul of reason's action. Ah, madam, it is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs pity."
"But you have been punished, I admit, in a very strange and mysterious way; for the word used by the boy was the joining link of the two transactions, and you were led to misconstrue it—ay, and to take advantage of your misconstruction to get the better of your friend."
"I see it all."
"But I say you have been punished," continued she, consolingly; "and I perceive you are penitent—perhaps justice is satisfied; and when you are liberated, you may be the better for the lesson. I shall now reverse my prayer, and say to one I shall perhaps never see again, May God deal mercifully by you."
And with these words, she retreated. But her prayer was never answered, so far as man can judge of heaven's mysterious ways. The conviction settled down and down into his heart, that that apparently simple affair of killing a bird—which, even with the aggravation of all the cruelty exhibited by the thoughtless, yet certainly pitiless youth, is so apt to be viewed carelessly, or only with an avowal of disapprobation—which, if too much insisted on as an act to be taken up by superior retribution, is more apt still to be laughed at—was the cause of all the ills that had befallen him. The diamond eyes proved to him no fancy. But for all this, we are afforded, by what subsequently occurred, some means of explanation, which will be greedily laid hold of by minute philosophers. Even then it was to have been feared that the seeds of consumption had been deposited in favourable soil. In our difficulties about explanations of mental phenomena, we readily flee to diseases of the body, which, after all, only removes the mystery a step or two back in the dark.
It remains for me to add some words of personal experience. A considerable period after these occurrences, I had occasion—by a connection with a medium through which Dewhurst received from his father, whose fortunes had in the meantime failed, a petty allowance—to be the bearer to him, now liberated, of a quarter's payment. I forget the part of the town where I found him, but I have a distinct remembrance of the room. It was a garret, almost entirely empty. He was lying on a kind of bed spread upon the floor. There was a small grate, with a handful of red cinders in it; only one chair, and a pot or pan or two. There was a woman moving between him and the fireplace, as if she had been preparing some warm drink or medicine of some kind for him. I did not know then, but I knew afterwards, that that woman was she who called upon him in prison, and deposited the small bottle of wine. Her love for him had always overcome any of those feelings of enmity, or something stronger, generally deemed so natural in one who has been robbed of her dearest treasure, and ruined. She alone had indeed not assumed the diamond eyes. The diamonds were elsewhere,—yea, in her heart, where she nourished pity for him who had so cruelly deserted her, and left her to a fate so common, and requiring only a hint to be understood by those who know the nature of women. After he had got out of prison, she sought him out, got the room for him, collected the paltry articles, procured food for him, and continued to nurse him till his death, with all the tenderness of a lover who had not only not been cast off, but cherished. He betrayed the ordinary symptoms of consumption, and the few words he muttered were those of thanks. I think he was buried in the Canongate Churchyard.