After paying our money at the door, never while I live and breathe will I forget what we saw and heard that night.It just looks to me, by all the world, when I think on it, like a fairy dream. The place was crowded to the full; Maister Glen and me having nearly got our ribs dung in before we found a seat, the folks behind being obliged to mount the back benches to get a sight. Right to the forehand of us was a large green curtain, some five or six ells wide, a good deal the worse of the wear, having seen service through two-three summers: and just in the front of it were eight or ten penny candles stuck in a board fastened to the ground, to let us see the players' feet like, when they came on the stage; and even before they came on the stage; for, the curtain being scrimpit in length, we saw legs and sandals moving behind the scenes very neatly; while two blind fiddlers they had brought with them played the bonniest ye ever heard. 'Od! the very music was worth a sixpence of itself.
The place, as I said before, was choke-full, just to excess; so that one could scarcely breathe. Indeed, I never saw any part so crowded, not even at a tent-preaching when the Rev. Mr. Roarer was giving his discourses on the building of Solomon's Temple. We were obligated to have the windows opened for a mouthful of fresh air, the barn being as close as a baker's oven, my neighbor and me fanning our red faces with our hats to keep us cool; and, though all were half stewed, we certainly had the worst of it, the toddy we had taken having fermented the blood of our bodies into a perfect fever.
Just at the time that the two blind fiddlers were playing the "Downfall of Paris" a hand-bell rang, and up goes the green curtain; being hauled to the ceiling, as I observed with the tail of my eye, by a birkie at the side, that had hold of a rope. So, on the music stopping, and all becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a decent old gentleman at his leisure, well powdered, with an old-fashioned coat on, waistcoat with flap-pockets, brown breeches with buckles at the knees, and silk stockings with red gushats on a blue ground. I never saw a man in such distress: he stamped about, and better stamped about, dadding the end of his staff on the ground, and imploring all the powers of heaven and earth to help him to find out his runaway daughter, that had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain, that keppit her in his arms from her bedroom-window, up two pair of stairs.
Every father and head of a family must have felt for a man in his situation, thus to be robbed of his dear bairn, and an only daughter too, as he told us over and over again, as the salt, salt tears ran gushing down his withered face, and he aye blew his nose on his clean calendered pocket-napkin. But, ye know, the thing was absurd to suppose that we should know any inkling about the matter, having never seen him or his daughter between the een before, and not kenning them by headmark: so, though we sympathized with him, as folks ought to do with a fellow-creature in affliction, we thought it best to hold our tongues, to see what might cast up better than he expected. So out he went stumping at the other side, determined, he said, to find them out, though he should follow them to the world's end, Johnny Groat's house, or something to that effect.
Hardly was his back turned, and almost before ye could cry Jack Robison, in comes the birkie and the very young lady the old gentleman described, arm-and-arm together, smoodging and laughing like daft. Dog on it! it was a shameless piece of business. As true as death, before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her waist, and called her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling, and every thing that is fine. If they had been courting in a close together on a Friday night, they could not have said more to one another, or gone greater lengths. I thought such shame to be an eye-witness to sic on-goings, that I was obliged at last to hold up my hat before my face, and look down; though, for all that, the young lad, to be such a blackguard as his conduct showed, was well enough faured, and had a good coat to his back, with double gilt buttons and fashionable lapels, to say little of a very well-made pair of buckskins, a thought the worse of the wear, to be sure, but which, if they had been well cleaned, would have looked almost as good as new. How they had come we never could learn, as we neither saw chaise nor gig; but, from his having spurs on his boots, it is more than likely that they had lighted at the back-door of the barn from a horse, she riding on a pad behind him, maybe, with her hand round his waist.
The father looked to be a rich old bool, both from his manner of speaking, and the rewards he seemed to offer for the apprehension of his daughter; but, to be sure, when so many of us were present that had an equal right to thespullaie, it would not be a great deal, a thousand pounds, when divided. Still it was worth the looking after: so we just bidit a wee.
Things were brought to a bearing, howsoever, sooner than either themselves, I dare say, or anybody else present, seemed to have the least glimpse of: for, just in the middle of their fine goings-on, the sound of a coming foot was heard; and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for the sake of goodness! for yonder comes my old father!"
No sooner said than done. In he stappit her into a closet; and, after shutting the door on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep, in the twinkling of a walking-stick. The old father came bouncing in; and, seeing the fellow as sound as a top, he ran forward and gave him such a shake as if he would have shooken him all sundry; which soon made him open his eyes as fast as he had steeked them. After blackguarding the chield at no allowance, cursing him up hill and down dale, and calling him by every name but a gentleman, he held his staff over his crown, and, gripping him by the cuff of the neck, asked him, in a fierce tone, what he had made of his daughter. Never since I was born did I ever see such brazen-faced impudence! The rascal had the brass to say at once, that he had not seen word or wittens of the lassie for a month, though more than a hundred folk sitting in his company had beheld him dauting her with his arm round her jimpy waist not five minutes before. As a man, as a father, as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised; for I aye hated lying as a poor cowardly sin, and an inbreak on the Ten Commandments; and I found my neighbor, Mr. Glen, fidgeting on the seat as well as me. So I thought that whoever spoke first would have the best right to be entitled to the reward: whereupon, just as he was in the act of rising up, I took the word out of his mouth, saying, "Dinna believe him, auld gentleman; dinna believe him, friend: he's telling a parcel of lees. Never saw her for a month! It's no worth arguing, or calling witnesses: just open that press-door, and ye'll see whether I'm speaking truth or not!"
The old man stared, and looked dumfoundered; and the young one, instead of running forward with his double nieves to strike me, the only thing I was feared for, began a-laughing, as if I had done him a good turn. But neversince I had a being did I ever witness such an uproar and noise as immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the scoundrel had been exposed, that they set up siccan a roar of laughter, and thumped away at siccan a rate at the boards with their feet, that at long and last, with pushing and fidgeting, clapping their hands, and holding their sides, down fell the place they call the gallery, all the folk in't being hurled topsy-turvy, headforemost, among the sawdust on the floor below; their guffawing soon being turned to howling, each one crying louder than another at the top note of their voices, "Murder! murder! hold off me! murder! my ribs are in! murder! I'm killed! I'm speechless!" and other lamentations to that effect: so that a rush to the door took place, in the which every thing was overturned; the door-keeper being wheeled away like wildfire; the furms stramped to pieces; the lights knocked out; and the two blind fiddlers dung headforemost over the stage, the bass-fiddle cracking like thunder at every bruise. Such tearing and swearing, and tumbling and squealing, was never witnessed in the memory of man since the building of Babel; legs being likely to be broken, sides staved in, eyes knocked out, and lives lost,—there being only one door, and that a small one: so that, when we had been earned off our feet that length, my wind was fairly gone; and a sick dwalm came over me, lights of all manner of colors, red, blue, green, and orange, dancing before me, that entirely deprived me of common sense; till, on opening my eyes in the dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the opposite side of the close. It was some time before I minded what had happened: so, dreading skaith, I found first the one arm, and then the other, to see if they were broken; syne my head; and finally both of my legs; but all, as well as I could discover, was skin-whole and scart-free. On perceiving this, my joy was without bounds, having a great notion that I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my hand very thankfully to take out my pocket-napkin, to give my brow a wipe, when, lo and behold! the tail of my Sunday's coat was fairly off and away, docked by the hainch buttons.
So much for plays and play-actors,—the first and last, I trust in grace, that I shall ever see. But indeed I could expect no better, after the warning that Maister Wiggie had more than once given us from the pulpit on the subject.Instead, therefore, of getting my grand reward for finding the old man's daughter, the whole covey of them, no better than a set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight flitting; and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought from sunrise to sunset for two days, fitting up their place by contract, instead of being well paid for his trouble, as he deserved, got nothing left him but a ruckle of his own good deals, all dung to shivers.