Вальтер Скотт - Rob Roy — Volume 02

"Yet this is still too general an account of yourself, to say the least of it, to establish your credit with a stranger."

"It is all I mean to give, howsoe'er; you may choose to follow me, or to remain without the information I desire to afford you."

"Can you not give me that information here?" I demanded.

"You must receive it from your eyes, not from my tongue — you must follow me, or remain in ignorance of the information which I have to give you."

There was something short, determined, and even stern, in the man's manner, not certainly well calculated to conciliate undoubting confidence.

"What is it you fear?" he said impatiently. "To whom, think ye, is your life of such consequence, that they should seek to bereave ye of it?"

"I fear nothing," I replied firmly, though somewhat hastily. "Walk on — I attend you."

We proceeded, contrary to my expectation, to re-enter the town, and glided like mute spectres, side by side, up its empty and silent streets. The high and gloomy stone fronts, with the variegated ornaments and pediments of the windows, looked yet taller and more sable by the imperfect moonshine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my conductor spoke.

"Are you afraid?"

"I retort your own words," I replied: "wherefore should I fear?"

"Because you are with a stranger — perhaps an enemy, in a place where you have no friends and many enemies."

"I neither fear you nor them; I am young, active, and armed."

"I am not armed," replied my conductor: "but no matter, a willing hand never lacked weapon. You say you fear nothing; but if you knew who was by your side, perhaps you might underlie a tremor."

"And why should I?" replied I. "I again repeat, I fear nought that you can do."

"Nought that I can do? — Be it so. But do you not fear the consequences of being found with one whose very name whispered in this lonely street would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him — on whose head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar — the sound of whose apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news of a field stricken and won in Flanders?"

"And who then are you, whose name should create so deep a feeling of terror?" I replied.

"No enemy of yours, since I am conveying you to a place, where, were I myself recognised and identified, iron to the heels and hemp to the craig would be my brief dooming."

I paused and stood still on the pavement, drawing back so as to have the most perfect view of my companion which the light afforded me, and which was sufficient to guard against any sudden motion of assault.

"You have said," I answered, "either too much or too little — too much to induce me to confide in you as a mere stranger, since you avow yourself a person amenable to the laws of the country in which we are — and too little, unless you could show that you are unjustly subjected to their rigour."

As I ceased to speak, he made a step towards me. I drew back instinctively, and laid my hand on the hilt of my sword.

"What!" said he — "on an unarmed man, and your friend?"

"I am yet ignorant if you are either the one or the other," I replied; "and to say the truth, your language and manner might well entitle me to doubt both."

"It is manfully spoken," replied my conductor; "and I respect him whose hand can keep his head. — I will be frank and free with you — I am conveying you to prison."

"To prison!" I exclaimed — "by what warrant or for what offence? — You shall have my life sooner than my liberty — I defy you, and I will not follow you a step farther."

"I do not," he said, "carry you there as a prisoner; I am," he added, drawing himself haughtily up, "neither a messenger nor sheriff's officer. I carry you to see a prisoner from whose lips you will learn the risk in which you presently stand. Your liberty is little risked by the visit; mine is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for I care not for risk, and I love a free young blood, that kens no protector but the cross o' the sword."

While he spoke thus, we had reached the principal street, and were pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I could perceive, with gratings of iron before the windows.

"Muckle," said the stranger, whose language became more broadly national as he assumed a tone of colloquial freedom — "Muckle wad the provost and bailies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting with iron garters to his hose within their tolbooth that now stands wi' his legs as free as the red-deer's on the outside on't. And little wad it avail them; for an if they had me there wi' a stane's weight o' iron at every ankle, I would show them a toom room and a lost lodger before to-morrow — But come on, what stint ye for?"

As he spoke thus, he tapped at a low wicket, and was answered by a sharp voice, as of one awakened from a dream or reverie, — "Fa's tat? — Wha's that, I wad say? — and fat a deil want ye at this hour at e'en? — Clean again rules — clean again rules, as they ca' them."

The protracted tone in which the last words were uttered, betokened that the speaker was again composing himself to slumber. But my guide spoke in a loud whisper — "Dougal, man! hae ye forgotten Ha nun Gregarach?"

"Deil a bit, deil a bit," was the ready and lively response, and I heard the internal guardian of the prison-gate bustle up with great alacrity. A few words were exchanged between my conductor and the turnkey in a language to which I was an absolute stranger. The bolts revolved, but with a caution which marked the apprehension that the noise might be overheard, and we stood within the vestibule of the prison of Glasgow, — a small, but strong guard-room, from which a narrow staircase led upwards, and one or two low entrances conducted to apartments on the same level with the outward gate, all secured with the jealous strength of wickets, bolts, and bars. The walls, otherwise naked, were not unsuitably garnished with iron fetters, and other uncouth implements, which might be designed for purposes still more inhuman, interspersed with partisans, guns, pistols of antique manufacture, and other weapons of defence and offence.

At finding myself so unexpectedly, fortuitously, and, as it were, by stealth, introduced within one of the legal fortresses of Scotland, I could not help recollecting my adventure in Northumberland, and fretting at the strange incidents which again, without any demerits of my own, threatened to place me in a dangerous and disagreeable collision with the laws of a country which I visited only in the capacity of a stranger.

At my first entrance I turned an eager glance towards my conductor; but the lamp in the vestibule was too low in flame to give my curiosity any satisfaction by affording a distinct perusal of his features. As the turnkey held the light in his hand, the beams fell more full on his own scarce less interesting figure. He was a wild shock-headed looking animal, whose profusion of red hair covered and obscured his features, which were otherwise only characterised by the extravagant joy that affected him at the sight of my guide. In my experience I have met nothing so absolutely resembling my idea of a very uncouth, wild, and ugly savage, adoring the idol of his tribe. He grinned, he shivered, he laughed, he was near crying, if he did not actually cry. He had a "Where shall I go? — What can I do for you?" expression of face; the complete, surrendered, and anxious subservience and devotion of which it is difficult to describe, otherwise than by the awkward combination which I have attempted. The fellow's voice seemed choking in his ecstasy, and only could express itself in such interjections as "Oigh! oigh! — Ay! ay! — it's lang since she's seen ye!" and other exclamations equally brief, expressed in the same unknown tongue in which he had communicated with my conductor while we were on the outside of the jail door. My guide received all this excess of joyful gratulation much like a prince too early accustomed to the homage of those around him to be much moved by it, yet willing to requite it by the usual forms of royal courtesy. He extended his hand graciously towards the turnkey, with a civil inquiry of "How's a' wi' you, Dougal?"