Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art fifth series no. 118 vol. III April 3 1886 by Various

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THE SCOTTISH BEADLE.

HALF A CENTURY AGO.

Just as the old familiar landmarks of a place undergo in the course of time that change and decay which are the common lot of all things earthly ere they are finally removed from sight, nevermore to exist save as a name or memory, so many of the features or characteristics of our social life are continually being submitted to that process of transformation, and, in many respects, of obliteration, which prevails alike in the moral and the physical world. That process is to be witnessed every day. It is a result of the inevitable law to which everything human, every institution of man's making or developing, is finally subservient. Assuredly, there is no feature or characteristic of life, whether viewed in a national or in an individual sense, but has to submit sooner or later to this universal order of things; and so, naturally, we may look, and look in vain to-day for that which but yesterday was an interesting and distinguishing trait in a certain aspect of the social life of those who then filled, as we do now, the measure of the time.

This reflection is irresistible in considering such a subject as that of 'Beadles,' a class of individuals who once filled a unique and peculiar place in the humbler walks of the social life of their time; for, as a class, they certainly cannot be said to form a feature in the social life of the present day. Of course, even yet the number of persons fulfilling the orthodox functions appertaining to the beadle is as large as ever--in all probability, larger. No minister surely, in Scotland at least, but enjoys his appurtenance in the person of his 'man' or officer. But the beadle of fifty years ago, the beadle with whom Dean Ramsay delighted to 'forgather,' where now is he? Sadly do we fear that he is at length sleeping his last long sleep within the quiet precincts of his 'ain kirkyard,' while another performs, after a fashion, those functions of his office which were ever his delight and pride, and which brought him in their performance not a little of that social renown which assuredly belonged to him, and to him alone.

Perhaps the time when the beadle flourished at his best and attracted to himself most of that social renown which made him a personage of no little importance--in rural districts at anyrate--was from half a century to a century ago. Of course many persons will yet vividly remember certain beadles of their acquaintance who were extant even within a decade or two ago, and enjoying in the flesh all that 'pride of place' to which their connection with ecclesiastical affairs had elevated them. Indeed, not a few may yet be living in various parts of the country who may not unworthily claim to share in that peculiar notorious regard which so many of their predecessors in office enjoyed; but it is to be feared that even they are every year becoming more and more a minus quantity, and the time is all but come, if it has not already come, when, so far as their social popularity as a class of characteristic individuals is concerned, they will soon, like the flowers of the forest, be 'a' wede away.'

Half a century ago or so, however, it was a poor country parish that had not within its confines some entertaining worthy in the person of the beadle; for where the parishioners lacked entertainment, whether of a social or a graver kind, in the efforts of their clergy, which, indeed, was rarely the case, then they were almost certain to obtain it in some form or other in the sayings and doings of the inferior but not less interesting functionaries, their beadles. In not a few places, the popularity of the latter far eclipsed that of the former: a fact which was once at least ludicrously emphasised by the story of the very jovial beadle who excused his too frequent indulgences in strong drink--a propensity which had merited the repeated rebukes of his minister, who naturally enough quoted his own sobriety as an example--on the ground of the greater popularity he enjoyed, and to which the minister could not, he declared, make anything like the same claim.

The office of beadle was frequently, in many country parishes, combined with that of sexton or gravedigger--an office which afforded considerable scope for the display of those pathetic, if oftentimes grotesque, traits of character. We remember one worthy who considered the latter office of much more interest and importance than the former. 'As beadle he only waited on the living; but as sexton and gravedigger, he waited on the dead!' Another worthy used to say that for performing the duties of beadle he only got the 'session's siller;' while for assisting at those more solemn and sad burial-rites, he got the 'deid's perquisites!'

Apropos of the sexton-beadle, the writer lately heard an excellent story--which has never before been printed--regarding Thomas Carlyle and a late beadle of Ecclefechan. In the churchyard, which has now been made famous by the fact that it contains the mortal remains of the great sage, there stood, and still stands, a very old and dilapidated tombstone, on which are engraven some illegible hieroglyphics, which the beadle pretended to decipher, translating their purport in such a way as to reflect very flatteringly on the moral and social qualities of the persons--his ancestors--to whom they referred. On one occasion, when Carlyle visited this place of the dead, the beadle showed him round, but first of all pointed to this mysterious stone, underneath which reposed all that was mortal of the beadle's supposed illustrious ancestors, and dilated with his well-known exaggeration on the very high characters which, according to the hieroglyphics of the stone, they bore when in the flesh. Carlyle, knowing the beadle's soft point with regard to his 'forebears,' listened for a time in silence to the glowing description of individuals who never had had any existence save in imagination, and at length quietly remarked as he passed on: 'Puir cratur, ye'll sune be gathered to them yersel'!'

The social popularity which many beadles enjoyed not unfrequently encouraged them to take certain liberties, which, nowadays at all events, would not be permitted either within or without the 'sphere' in which they lived and worked. What would be thought of a beadle, for instance, who would presume to correct the precentor in announcing from his box a proclamation of marriage between parties, as once did a beadle of a parish near Arbroath? The precentor had somehow been provided with a 'proclaiming' paper, in which the name of one of the parties had been wrongly stated, as the beadle supposed; and as the precentor duly proceeded to make the announcement that 'there was a solemn purpose of marriage between Alexander Spink of Fisher's Loan and Elspeth Hackett of Burn Wynd,' he was unceremoniously interrupted by the beadle suddenly exclaiming: 'That's wrang, that's wrang! It's no Sanders Spink o' Fisher's Loan that's gaun to marry Elspeth Hackett, but Lang Sanders Spink o' Smithy Croft!'

The story of Watty Tinlin, the half-crazy beadle of Hawick parish, is another proof of this license, which was, on certain occasions, supposed to be due to his office. One day Wat got so tired of listening to the long sermon of a strange minister, that he went outside the church, and wandering in the direction of the river Teviot, saw the worshippers from the adjoining parish of Wilton grossing the bridge on their way home. Returning to the church and finding the preacher still thundering away, he shouted out, to the astonishment and relief of the exhausted congregation: 'Say amen, sir; say amen! Wulton's kirk's comin' ower Teyit Brig!' Such conduct on a Sunday in the present year of grace, if it did not relegate the offender to the police cell, would at anyrate result in a very solemn and serious sitting of the 'session' on the following Monday. But the times are changed; and not only have beadles, but ministers and churches, too, changed with them; and the living embodiments of the class whose peculiar and, on the whole, not unpleasant idiosyncrasies of character and 'calling' we have thus briefly indicated, are now few and far between.

IN ALL SHADES.

BY GRANT ALLEN,

'We'd better go, Tom,' Mr Dupuy said, almost pitying them. 'Upon my word, it's perfectly true; they neither of them knew a word about it.'

'No, by Jove, they didn't,' Tom Dupuy answered with a sneer, as he walked out into the piazza.--'What a splendid facer, though, it was, Uncle Theodore, for a confounded upstart nigger of a brown man.--But, I say,' as they passed out of the piazza and mounted their horses once more by the steps--for they were riding--'did you ever see anything more disgusting in your life than that woman there--a real white woman, and a born lady, Nora tells me--slobbering over and hugging that great, ugly, hulking, coloured fellow!'

'He's white enough to look at,' Mr Dupuy said reflectively. 'Poor soul, she married him without knowing anything about it. It'll be a terrible blow for her, I expect, finding out, now she's tied to him irrevocably, that he's nothing more than a common brown man.'

'She ought to be allowed to get a divorce,' Tom Dupuy exclaimed warmly. 'It's preposterous to think that a born lady, and the daughter of a General Somebody over in England, should be tethered for life to a creature of that sort, whom she's married under what's as good as false pretences!'

Meanwhile, the unhappy woman who had thus secured the high prize of Mr Tom Dupuy's distinguished compassion was sitting on the sofa in the big bare drawing-room, holding her husband's hand tenderly in hers and soothing him gently by murmuring every now and then in a soft undertone: 'My darling, how glad we are to know that, after all, it's nothing, nothing.'

Edward's stupor lasted for many minutes; not so much because he was deeply hurt or horrified, for there wasn't much at bottom to horrify him, but simply because he was stunned by the pure novelty and strangeness of that curious situation. A brown man--a brown man! It was too extraordinary! He could hardly awake himself from the one pervading thought that absorbed and possessed for the moment his whole nature. At last, however, he awoke himself slowly. After all, how little it was, compared with their worst fears and anticipations! 'Thomas,' he cried to the negro butler, 'bring round our horses as quick as you can saddle them.--Darling, we must ride up to Agualta this moment, and speak about it all to my father and mother.'

In Trinidad, everybody rides; indeed, there is no other way of getting about from place to place among the mountains, for carriage-roads are there unknown, and only narrow winding horse-paths climb slowly round the interminable peaks and gullies. The Hawthorns' own house was on the plains just at the foot of the hills; but Agualta and most of the other surrounding houses were up high among the cooler mountains. So the very first thing Marian and Edward had had to do on reaching the island was to provide themselves with a couple of saddle-horses, which they did during their first week's stay at Agualta. In five minutes the horses were at the door; and Marian, having rapidly slipped on her habit, mounted her pony and proceeded to follow her agitated husband up the slender thread of mountain-road that led tortuously to his father's house. They rode along in single file, as one always must on these narrow, ledge-like, West Indian bridle-paths, and in perfect silence. At first, indeed, Marian tried to throw out a few casual remarks about the scenery and the tree-ferns, to look as if the disclosure was to her less than nothing--as, indeed, but for Edward's sake, was actually the case--but her husband was too much wrapped up in his own bitter thoughts to answer her by more than single monosyllables. Not that he spoke unkindly or angrily; on the contrary, his tenderness was profounder than ever, for he knew now to what sort of life he had exposed Marian; but he had no heart just then for talking of any sort; and he felt that until he understood the whole matter more perfectly, words were useless to explain the situation.

As for Marian, one thought mainly possessed her: had even Nora, too, turned against them and forsaken them?

Old Mr Hawthorn met them anxiously on the terrace of Agualta. He saw at once, by their pale and troubled faces, that they now knew at least part of the truth. 'Well, my boy,' he said, taking Edward's hand in his with regretful gentleness, 'so you have found out the ban that hangs over us?'

'In part, at least,' Edward answered, dismounting; and he proceeded to pour forth into his father's pitying and sympathetic ear the whole story of their stormy interview with the two Dupuys. 'What can they mean,' he asked at last, drawing himself up proudly, 'by calling such people as you and me "brown men," father?'

The question, as he asked it that moment, in the full sunshine of Agualta Terrace, did indeed seem a very absurd one. Two more perfect specimens of the fair-haired, blue-eyed, pinky-white-skinned Anglo-Saxon type it would have been extremely difficult to discover even in the very heart of England itself, than the father and son who thus faced one another. But old Mr Hawthorn shook his handsome gray old head solemnly and mournfully. 'It's quite true, my boy,' he answered with a painful sigh--'quite true, every word of it. In the eyes of all Trinidad, of all the West Indies, you and I are in fact coloured people.'

'But father, dear father,' Marian said pleadingly, 'just look at Edward! There isn't a sign or a mark on him anywhere of anything but the purest English blood! Just look at him, father; how can it be possible?'--and she took up, half unconsciously, his hand--that usual last tell-tale of African descent, but in Edward Hawthorn's case stainless and white as pure wax. 'Surely you don't mean to tell me,' she said, kissing it with wifely tenderness, 'there is negro blood--the least, the tiniest fraction, in dear Edward!'

'Listen to me, dear one,' the old man said, drawing Marian closer to his side with a fatherly gesture. 'My father was a white man. Mary's father was a white man. Our grandfathers on both sides were pure white, and our grandmothers on one side were white also. All our ancestors in the fourth degree were white, save only one--fifteen whites to one coloured out of sixteen quarters--and that one was a mulatto in either line--Mary's and my great-great-grandmother. In England or any other country of Europe, we should be white--as white as you are. But such external and apparent whiteness isn't enough by any means for our West Indian prejudices. As long as you have the remotest taint or reminiscence of black blood about you in any way--as long as it can be shown, by tracing your pedigree pitilessly to its fountainhead, that any one of your ancestors was of African origin--then, by all established West Indian reckoning, you are a coloured man, an outcast, a pariah.--You have married a coloured man, Marian; and your children and your grandchildren to the latest generations will all of them for ever be coloured also.'

'How cruel--how wicked--how abominable!' Marian cried, flushed and red with sudden indignation. 'How unjust so to follow the merest shadow or suspicion of negro blood age after age to one's children's children!'

'And how far more unjust still,' Edward exclaimed with passionate fervour, 'ever so to judge of any man not by what he is in himself, but by the mere accident of the race or blood from which he is descended!'

Marian flushed again with still deeper colour; she felt in her heart that Edward's indignation went further than hers, down to the very root and ground of the whole matter.

'But, O father,' she began again after a slight pause, clinging passionately both to her husband and to Mr Hawthorn, 'are they going to visit this crime of birth even on a man of Edward's character and Edward's position?'

'Not on him only,' the old man whispered with infinite tenderness--'not on him only, my daughter, my dear daughter--not on him only, but on you--on you, who are one of themselves, an English lady, a true white woman of pure and spotless lineage. You have broken their utmost and sacredest law of race; you have married a coloured man! They will punish you for it cruelly and relentlessly. Though you did it, as he did it, in utter ignorance, they will punish you for it cruelly; and that's the very bitterest drop in all our bitter cup of ignominy and humiliation.'

There was a moment's silence, and then Edward cried to him aloud: 'Father, father, you ought to have told me of this earlier!'

His father drew back at the word as though one had stung him. 'My boy,' he answered tremulously, 'how can you ever reproach me with that? You at least should be the last to reproach me. I sent you to England, and I meant to keep you there. In England, this disgrace would have been nothing--less than nothing. Nobody would ever have known of it, or if they knew of it, minded it in any way. Why should I trouble you with a mere foolish fact of family history utterly unimportant to you over in England? I tried my hardest to prevent you from coming here; I tried to send you back at once when you first came. But do you wonder, now, I shrank from telling you the ban that lies upon all of us here? And do you blame me for trying to spare you the misery I myself and your dear mother have endured without complaining for our whole lifetime?'

'Father,' Edward cried again, 'I was wrong; I was ungrateful. You have done it in all kindness. Forgive me--forgive me!'

'There is nothing to forgive, my boy--nothing to forgive, Edward. And now, of course, you will go back to England?'

Edward answered quickly: 'Yes, yes, father; they have conquered--they have conquered--I shall go back to England; and you, too, shall come with me. If it were for my own sake alone, I would stop here even so, and fight it out with them to the end till I gained the victory. But I can't expose Marian--dear, gently nurtured, tender Marian--to the gibes and scorn of these ill-mannered planter people. She shall never again submit to the insult and contumely she has had to endure this morning.--No, no, Marian darling, we shall go back to England--back to England--back to England!'

'And why,' Marian asked, looking up at her father-in-law suddenly, 'didn't you yourself leave the country long ago? Why didn't you go where you could mix on equal terms with your natural equals? Why have you stood so long this horrible, wicked, abominable injustice?'

The old man straightened himself up, and fire flashed from his eyes like an old lion's as he answered proudly: 'For Edward! First of all, I stopped here and worked to enable me to bring up my boy where his talents would have the fullest scope in free England. Next, when I had grown rich and prosperous here at Agualta, I stayed on because I wouldn't be beaten in the battle and driven out of the country by the party of injustice and social intolerance. I wouldn't yield to them; I wouldn't give way to them; I wouldn't turn my back upon the baffled and defeated clique of slave-owners, because, though my father was an English officer, my mother was a slave, Marian!' He looked so grand and noble an old man as he uttered simply and unaffectedly those last few words--the pathetic epitaph of a terrible dead and buried wrong, still surviving in its remote effects--that Marian threw her arms around his neck passionately, and kissed him with one fervent kiss of love and admiration, almost as tenderly as she had kissed Edward himself in the heat of the first strange discovery.

'My darling,' Edward answered, kissing her forehead tenderly, 'you don't know what you say; you don't realise what it would be like for us to live here. I can't expose you to so much misery and awkwardness. It would be wrong of me--unmanly of me--cowardly of me--to let my wife be constantly met with such abominable, undeserved insult!'

'Cowardly! Edward,' Marian cried, stamping her pretty little foot upon the ground impatiently with womanly emphasis, 'cowardly--cowardly! The cowardice is all the other way, I fancy. I'm not ashamed of my husband, here or anywhere. I love you; I admire you; I respect you. But I can never again respect you so much if you run away, even for my sake, from this unworthy prejudice. I don't want to live here always, for ever; God forbid! I hate and detest it; but I shall stay here a year--two years--three years, if I like, just to show the hateful creatures that I'm not afraid of them!'

'No, no, my child,' old Mr Hawthorn murmured tenderly, smoothing her forehead; 'this is no home for you, Marian. Go back to England--go back to England!'

Marian turned to him with feverish energy. 'Father,' she cried, 'dear, good, kind, gentle, loving father! You've taught me better yourself; your own words have taught me better. I won't give way to them; I'll stay in the land where you have stayed, and I'll show them I'm not ashamed of you or of Edward either! Ashamed! I'm only ashamed to say the word. What is there in either of you for a woman not to be proud of with all the deepest and holiest pride in her whole nature!'

'My darling,' Edward answered thoughtfully, 'we shall have to think and talk more with one another about this wretched, miserable business.'

The very next morning, as Edward and Marian were still loitering over the mangoes and bananas at eleven o'clock breakfast--the West Indies keep continental hours--they were surprised and pleased by hearing a pony's tramp cease suddenly at the front-door, and Nora Dupuy's well-known voice calling out as cheerily and childishly as ever: 'Marian, Marian! you dear old thing, please send somebody out here at once, to hold my horse for a minute, will you?'

The words fell upon both their ears just then as an oasis in the desert of isolation from women's society, to which they had been condemned for the last ten days. The tears rose quickly into Marian's eyes at those familiar accents, and she ran out hastily, with arms outstretched, to meet her one remaining girl-acquaintance. 'O Nora, Nora, darling Nora!' she cried, catching the bright little figure lovingly in her arms, as Nora leapt with easy grace from her mountain pony, 'why didn't you come before, my darling? Why did you leave me so long alone, and make us think you had forgotten all about us?'

Nora flung herself passionately upon her friend's neck, and between laughing and crying, kissed her over and over again so many times without speaking, that Marian knew at once in her heart it was all right there at least, and that Nora, for one, wasn't going to desert them. Then the poor girl, still uncertain whether to cry or laugh, rushed up to Edward and seized his hand with such warmth of friendliness, that Marian half imagined she was going to kiss him fervently on the spot, in her access of emotion. And indeed, in the violence of her feeling, Nora very nearly did fling her arms around Edward Hawthorn, whom she had learned to regard on the way out almost in the light of an adopted brother.

'My darling,' Nora cried vehemently, as soon as she could find space for utterance, 'my pet, my own sweet Marian, you dear old thing, you darling, you sweetheart!--I didn't know about it; they never told me. Papa and Tom have been deceiving me disgracefully: they said you were away up at Agualta, and that you particularly wished to receive no visitors until you'd got comfortably settled in at your new quarters here at Mulberry. And I said to papa, nonsense; that that didn't apply to me, and that you'd be delighted to see me wherever and whenever I chose to call upon you. And papa said--O Marian, I can't bear to tell you what he said: it's so wicked, so dreadful--papa said that he'd met Mr Hawthorn--Edward, I mean--and that Edward had told him you didn't wish at present to see me, because--well, because, he said, you thought our circles would be so very different. And I couldn't imagine what he meant, so I asked him. And then he told me--he told me that horrid, wicked, abominable, disgraceful calumny. And I jumped up and said it was a lie--yes, I said a lie, Marian--I didn't say a story: I said it was a lie, and I didn't believe it. But if it was true--and I don't care myself a bit, whether it's true or whether it isn't--I said it was a mean, cowardly, nasty thing to go and rake it up now about two such people as you and Edward, darling. And whether it's true or whether it isn't, Marian, I love you both dearly with all my heart, and I shall always love you; and I don't care a pin who on earth hears me say so.' And then Nora broke down at once into a flood of tears, and flung herself once more with passionate energy on Marian's shoulder.

Nora's tears began afresh. 'Why, pet,' she said, 'I've been trying to get away to come and see you every day for the last week; and papa wouldn't let me have the horses; and I didn't know the way; and it was too far to walk; and I didn't know what on earth to do, or how to get to you. But last night papa and Tom came home'--here Nora's face burned violently, and she buried it in her hands to hide her vicarious shame--'and I heard them talking in the piazza; and I couldn't understand it all; but, O Marian, I understood enough to know that they had called upon you here without me, and that they had behaved most abominably, most cruelly to you and Edward. And I went out to the piazza, as white as a sheet, Rosina says, and I said: "Papa, you have acted as no gentleman would act; and as for you, Tom Dupuy, I'm heartily ashamed to think you're my own cousin!" and then I went straight up to my bedroom that minute, and haven't said a word to either of them ever since!'

Marian kissed her once more, and pressed the tearful girl tight against her bosom--that sisterly embrace seemed to her now such an unspeakable consolation and comfort. 'And how did you get away this morning, dear?' she asked softly.

'Oh,' Nora exclaimed, with a childish smile and a little cry of triumph, 'I was determined to come, Marian, and so I came here. I got Rosina--that's my maid, such a nice black girl--to get her lover, Isaac Pourtal?s, who isn't one of our servants, you know, to saddle the pony for me; because papa had told our groom I wasn't to have the horses without his orders, or to go to your house if the groom was with me, or else he'd dismiss him. So Isaac Pourtal?s, he saddled it for me; and Rosina ran all the way here to show me the road till she got nearly to the last corner; but she wouldn't come on and hold the pony for me, for if she did, she said, de massa would knock de very breff out of her body; and I really believe he would too, Marian, for papa's a dreadful man to deal with when he's in a passion.'

'But won't he be awfully angry with you, darling,' Marian asked, 'for coming here when he told you not to?'

'Of course he will,' Nora replied, drawing herself up and laughing quietly. 'But I don't care a bit, you know, for all his anger. I'm not going to keep away from a dear old darling like you, and a dear, good, kind fellow like Edward, all for nothing, just to please him. He may storm away as long as he has a mind to; but I tell you what, my dear, he shan't prevent me.'

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