Romances of the old town of Edinburgh

by Alexander Leighton

“And an unsteady one,” rejoined Mary. “And you may bring something else wi’ you besides the guineas; may be, a wife.”

“One of Mr Dreghorn’s black beauties,” said Will, laughing. “No, no, Mary, I am too fond of the flaxen ringlets, the rosy cheeks, and the blue eyes, and you know, Mary, you have all these, so you have me in your power. But to calm your fears and stop your tears I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

“Stay at hame, Will, and we’ll live and dee thegither.”

“No,” replied Will, “but, like the genteel lover I have read of, I will swear on your Bible that I will return to you within the year, and marry you at the Tron Kirk, and throw my guineas into the lap of your marriage-gown, and live with you until I die.”

For all which and some more we may draw upon our fancy, but certain it is, as the strange story goes, that Will did actually then and there—for Mary had been at the Tron Kirk and had her Bible in her pocket, (an article the want of which is not well supplied by the scent-bottle of our modern Marys,)—swear to do all he had said, whereupon Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up murmuring—perhaps no more than that. Certain also it is that before the month was done, Will, with his living kicking charges, and after more of these said tears from Mary than either of them had arithmetic enough to enable them to count, embarked at Leith for Richmond, at which place the sugar-planter had undertaken to meet him.

We need say nothing of the voyage across the Atlantic—somewhat arduous at that period—nor need we pick up Will again till we find him in Richmond with his horses all safe, and as fat and sleek as if they had been fed by Neptune’s wife, and had drawn her across in place of her own steeds. There he found directions waiting from Mr Dreghorn to the effect that he was to proceed with the horses to Peach Grove, his plantation, a place far into the heart of the country; but Will was content, for had he not time and to spare within the year, and he would see some more of the new world, which, so far as his experience yet went, seemed to him to be a good place for a freeman to live in. So off he went, putting up at inns by the way as well supplied with food and fodder as Mr Peter Ramsay’s, in St Mary’s Wynd, and showing off his nags to the planters, who wondered at their bone and muscle, the more by reason they had never seen Scotch horses before. As he progressed, the country seemed to Will more and more beautiful, and by the time he reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, passing like an angel—lovers will be poets—among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest country in the world.

Nor when the Scotsman reached Peach Grove did the rosy side of matters recede into the shady, for he was received in a great house by Mr Dreghorn with so much kindness, that, if the horses rejoiced in maize and oats, Will found himself, as the saying goes, in five-bladed clover. But more awaited him, even thus much more, that the planter, and his fine lady of a wife as well, urged him to remain on the plantation, where he would be well paid and well fed; and when Will pleaded his engagement to return to Scotland within the year, the answer was ready that he might spend eight months in Virginia at least, which would enable him to take home more money—an answer that seemed so very reasonable, if not prudent, that “Sawny” saw the advantage thereof and agreed. But we need hardly say that this was conceded upon the condition made with himself, that he would write to Mary all the particulars, and also upon the condition acceded to by Mr Dreghorn, that he would take the charge of getting the letter sent to Scotland.

All which having been arranged, Mr Halket—for we cannot now continue to take the liberty of calling him Will—was forthwith elevated to the position of driving negroes in place of horses, an occupation which he did not much relish, insomuch that he was expected to use the lash, an instrument of which he had been very chary in his treatment of four-legged chattels, and which he could not bring himself to apply with anything but a sham force in reference to the two-legged species. But this objection he thought to get over by using the sharp crack of his Jehu-voice, as a substitute for that of the whip; and in this he persevered, in spite of the jeers of the other drivers, who told him the thing had been tried often, but that the self-conceit of the negro met the stimulant and choked it at the very entrance to the ear; and this he soon found to be true. So he began to do as others did, and he was the sooner reconciled to the strange life into which he had been precipitated by the happy condition of the slaves themselves, who, when their work was over, and at all holiday hours, dressed themselves in the brightest colours of red and blue and white, danced, sang, ate corn-cakes and bacon, and drank coffee with a zest which would have done a Scotch mechanic, with his liberty to produce a lock-out, much good to see. True, indeed, the white element of the population was at a discount at Peach Grove. But in addition to the above source of reconciliation, Halket became day by day more captivated by the beauty of the country, with its undulating surface, its wooded clumps, its magnolias, tulip-trees, camellias, laurels, passion-flowers, and palms, its bright-coloured birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it is famous all over the world. But nature might charm as it might—Mary Brown was three thousand miles away.

Meanwhile the time passed pleasantly, for he was accumulating money, Mary’s letter would be on the way, and the hope of seeing her within the appointed time was dominant over all the fascinations which charmed the senses. But when the month came in which he ought to have received a letter, no letter came—not much this to be thought of, though Mr Dreghorn tried to impress him with the idea that there must be some change of sentiment in the person from whom he expected the much-desired answer. So Halket wrote again, giving the letter, as before, to his master, who assured him it was sent carefully away, and while it was crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improving his penmanship and arithmetic, under the hope held out to him by his master that he would, if he remained, be raised to a book-keeper’s desk; for the planter had seen early that he had got hold of a long-headed, honest, sagacious “Sawny,” who would be of use to him. On with still lighter wing the intermediate time sped again, but with no better result in the shape of an answer from her who was still the object of his day fancies and his midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. A third letter was despatched, but the returning period was equally a blank. We have been counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the termination of his year, and with growing changes too in himself, for as the notion began to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary was either dead or faithless, another power was quietly assailing him from within, no other than ambition in the most captivating of all shapes, Mammon. We all know the manner in which the golden deity acquires his authority, nor do we need to have recourse to the conceit of the old writer who tells us that the reason why gold has such an influence upon man lies in the fact that it is of the colour of the sun, which is the fountain of light, and life, and joy. Certain it is, at least, that Halket having been taken into the counting-house on a raised salary, began “to lay by,” as the Scotch call it, and by and by, with the help of a little money lent to him by his master, he began by purchasing produce from the neighbouring plantations, and selling it where he might, all which he did with advantage, yet with the ordinary result to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good account the king’s head, the king’s head began to turn his own.

And now in place of months we must begin to count by lustrums, and the first five years, even with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least, lost Mary, proved in Halket’s case the truth of the book written by a Frenchman, to prove that a man is a plant, for he had already thrown out from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and if that bore golden blossoms, so did he; yet, true to his first love, there was not among all these flowers one so fair as the fair-haired Mary. Nay, with all hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end of the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, when strangely enough, and sadly too, he was told by Mr Dreghorn that having had occasion to hear from Mr Peter Ramsay on the subject of some more horse dealings, that person had reported to him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old stable-boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it had been made at an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of the said god, Mammon, for as to the notion of putting any of those beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter’s house at Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power of the god increased with the offerings, one of which was his large salary as manager, a station to which he was elevated shortly after he had received the doleful tidings of Mary’s death. Another lustrum is added, and we arrive at ten years, and yet another, and we come to fifteen; at the end of which time Mr Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested. If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot—fortunate, save for one misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold—purchasing from the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under the condition of an annuity.