Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 14

by Unknown

"I have told ye once, and I tell ye again," cried the old man, more wrathfully, "that my daughter shanna speak to ye while she breathes. I hope she has a spirit above it. It would be a fine story for folk to talk about, that she had married a blackguard that was mayor at Tweedmouth feast!"

"I deserve your censure," returned George; "but surely there is nothing so heinous in what I have done as to merit the epithet you apply to me. I acknowledge and am ashamed of my folly; what can I do more? And I have also suffered for it."

"Ye acknowledge your folly!" exclaimed the fisherman; "pray, sir, how could ye deny it? I saw it—the whole toun saw it—my poor daughter was a witness o' it; and yet ye have the impudence to stand there before me and say ye acknowledge it! And muckle mends it makes to say ye are sorry for it! I suppose, sir, the very murderer is sorry for his crime, when he stands condemned before the judge; but his sorrow, I reckon, is but a poor reason why he should be pardoned. Away wi' ye, I say—ye shall find no admission here. At ony rate, I have taken good care to have my silly bairn out o' your reach, and that she may be out o' the way o' the disgrace and the scandal that ye have brought upon us."

So saying, the speaker rudely closed the door in the face of his visiter.

George Mordington returned to his mother's house, gliding silently, as a ghost is said to move; for his cheek burned lest any one should look upon his face. On the following day, he prepared to set out for Gateshead; but before he went he placed the following letter, addressed to Marion Weatherly, into the hands of his sister, and which she was to give to her on her return:—

"Marion,—I cannot now call you my Marion—I have disgraced you, I have dishonoured myself. Your advice, which I deemed unnecessary, was not only forgotten, but you know how it was insulted. I know you must despise me; and I blame you not—you have a right to do so. I have made myself contemptible in your eyes, but not more contemptible than my conduct has rendered me in my own. I blush to think of you, and your excellence renders my folly more despicable. Call it madness—call it what you will—for it was the infatuation, the frenzy, the insanity of an hour. Yet, dear Marion, by all the hours and scenes of happiness that are gone, by all that we have known together, and that we might yet know, cast me not off for ever! Had I been familiar with the nightly debauch, my degradation would have been less, my conduct not so extravagant. Think of me as one degraded by folly, but not abandoned to it. I have sinned, and that deeply; but my repentance is as bitter as my crime was ridiculous. Its remembrance chokes me. Forgive me, Marion. I write the words, but I could not utter them, for I find that I could not stand in your presence, and support the weight of the debasement which presses upon me as a galling load. Your father has treated me cruelly—I would say that he has insulted me, if it were possible to insult one who has so insulted himself. The only apology I can, or should, offer for the part I have acted ought to be, and must be, found in my future conduct. It is on this ground only that I ask and hope for your forgiveness."

So ran his letter; and having delivered it to his sister, under the promise that it should be given to Marion immediately on her return, he left his mother's house, and took his journey towards Gateshead.

On arriving at the office of his employers, they looked upon him as though they knew him not, and he perceived that the place at the desk which he had formerly occupied was filled by another; for there the tale of his follies had already reached: so true is it that evil rideth upon wings which outstrip the wind. His late master sent one of the junior clerks to inform him that he had no farther occasion for his services. George stood as if a thunderbolt had smitten him; and he went forth disconsolate, and began to wander towards South Shields, while the thought haunted him what he should do, and to whom he should apply for assistance. He had ruined his character—he was without friends, almost without money, and he wandered in wretchedness, the martyr of his own folly. He thought of his mother, of his sister, and of the fair Marion, and wept; for he not only had drawn down misery upon his own head, but he had made them miserable also. He took up his lodgings in a mean public-house by the side of the river, and went round the public offices in Newcastle and Shields, seeking for employment, but without success. In all of them he was known; in each, the tale of his indiscretion seemed to have been heard, for his entrance was greeted with a smile.

In a short time he began to be in want; and, like the prodigal, he would have "arisen and gone unto his father"—but he had no father's roof to receive him—no home, save the lowly habitation of his widowed mother—and he found himself left as an outcast on the earth. In his despair he applied to the captain of a vessel which was about to sail for America. During his father's lifetime, he had made some voyages with him, and obtained a knowledge of a seaman's duty. The skipper of the American trader, also, to whom he applied, having known him when a clerk in the merchant's office at Gateshead, agreed to take him on board, and give him, as he called it, a trial. George Mordington, accordingly, sailed for America, and several years passed, and his mother heard nothing concerning him. The letter which he had left with his sister for Marion had been delivered to her, and as she read it she wept, and her heart whispered forgiveness. But days, months, and years dragged their slow course along, and no one heard tidings of him. She began to feel that, although she had forgiven him, he had forgotten her. Her father said she "was weel quit o' the ne'er-do-weel—that he had always determined that he should not speak to her again, and he was glad that he had not attempted it."

But his poor mother mourned for him as a stricken dove that is robbed of its young; the tears fell upon her pillow at midnight, as she wept for her son, her only son, the child of her heart and hopes. Anxious and fruitless were her inquiries after him. As the mist of morning vanisheth, so had he departed from her sight; and, like it, when the sun melteth it away, he was not.