Tell me not of it, friend--when the young weep, Their tears are luke-warm brine;--from your old eyes Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North, Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks, Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling--Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless--ours recoil, Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.
Old Play.
The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had closed them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at Mussel-crag.They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of mourning.The boats were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day was fine, and the season favourable, the chant, which is used by the fishers when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the children, and the shrill song of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the door.
A few of the neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an expression of mournful sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected, stood gathered around the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till ``the body was lifted.'' As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made way for him to enter, doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with an air of melancholy courtesy, and he returned their salutes in the same manner.
In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that characterises his enchanting productions, The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the young fisher had occupied while alive.At a little distance stood the father, whose ragged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his grizzled hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day.He was apparently revolving his loss in his mind, with that strong feeling of painful grief peculiar to harsh and rough characters, which almost breaks forth into hatred against the world, and all that remain in it, after the beloved object is withdrawn.The old man had made the most desperate efforts to save his son, and had only been withheld by main force from renewing them at a moment when, without the possibility of assisting the sufferer, he must himself have perished.All this apparently was boiling in his recollection.
His glance was directed sidelong towards the coffin, as to an object on which he could not stedfastly look, and yet from which he could not withdraw his eyes.His answers to the necessary questions which were occasionally put to him, were brief, harsh, and almost fierce.His family had not yet dared to address to him a word, either of sympathy or consolation.
His masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress of the family, as she justly boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions, was, by this great loss, terrified into silence and submission, and compelled to hide from her husband's observation the bursts of her female sorrow.As he had rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not daring herself to approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate artifice, employed the youngest and favourite child to present her husband with some nourishment.His first action was to put it from him with an angry violence that frightened the child;his next, to snatch up the boy and devour him with kisses.
``Yell be a bra' fallow, an ye be spared, Patie,--but ye'll never --never can be--what he was to me!--He has sailed the coble wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there wasna the like o'
him drew a net betwixt this and Buchan-ness.--They say folks maun submit--I will try.''
And he had been silent from that moment until compelled to answer the necessary questions we have already noticed.
Such was the disconsolate state of the father.
In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by her apron, which was flung over it, sat the mother--the nature of her grief sufficiently indicated by the wringing of her hands, and the convulsive agitation of the bosom, which the covering could not conceal.Two of her gossips, officiously whispering into her ear the commonplace topic of resignation under irremediable misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavouring to stun the grief which they could not console.
The sorrow of the children was mingled with wonder at the preparations they beheld around them, and at the unusual display of wheaten bread and wine, which the poorest peasant, or fisher, offers to the guests on these mournful occasions; and thus their grief for their brother's death was almost already lost in admiration of the splendour of his funeral.
