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Having laid before our
readers a story the truth of which may be testified by the evidence of
living witnesses, we will now add an account of another supposed descent
into the infernal regions, performed by another individual belonging to
the same town, equally true as the adventure of Duncan Schulebred, but
unfortunately having a very different termination.
W— B— was a respectable
merchant in Dunfermline, where he had carried on business for a great many
years under the reputation of being, at least, in very easy circumstances,
if not wealthy. A good business, a comfortable wife, and a fair
reputation, were supposed to have conspired to produce in him as much
happiness and contentment as generally falls to the lot of the people of
this lower world; nor did the appearance of the man belie in the slightest
degree the supposition so naturally and legitimately formed: he was always
in good humour, active, bustling, cheerful, and loquacious; and if he did
not succeed in his attempts to produce mirth in the people who frequented
his place of business, he made up the deficiency by an ever ready chorus
of his own, the sound of which seemed to please him nearly as well as the
tributary laughter of others. In the very midst of all this apparent
contentedness, W-- B— disappeared all at once. No one could tell whither
he had gone; and his wife was just as ignorant of his destination or fate
as any one else. That he had left the country, could not be supposed,
because he had taken nothing with him; that he had made away with
himself, was almost as unlikely, seeing that it is not generally in the
midst of gaiety and good humour that people commit suicide. Every search,
however, was made for him, but all in vain,—no trace could be found of
him, except that a person who had been near the old ruin called the
Magazine, part of the old castle in the neighbourhood of the town,
reported that, on the night when he disappeared he, the narrator, heard in
that quarter a very extraordinary soliloquy from the lips of some one in
great agony; but that all his efforts (for it was dark) could not enable
him to ascertain who or where he was. So far as he could recollect, the
words of the person were as follows:—
"The self-destroyer has nae
richt to expect a better place. (Groans.) A’ is dark and dismal—a thousand
times mair sae than what my fancy ever pictured upon earth. But there will
be licht sune, ay, and scorchin fires, and a’ the ither terrors o’ the
place whar the wicked receive the reward o’ their sins. If I had again the
days to begin, which, when in the body, I spent sae fruitlessly and
sinfully, hoo wad I be benefited by this sicht o’ the very entrance to the
regions o’ the miserable? and yet does not the great author o’ guid
strive, wi’ a never-wearyin energy, by dreams and visions, and revelations
and thoughts, which vain man tries to measure and value by the gauge o’
his insignificant reason, to shew him what I now see, and turn him to the
practice o’ a better life. This is a narrow pit—there is neither room for
the voice o’ lamentation, nor for the struggle o’ the restless limbs o’
the miserable; the light and the air, and the space, and the view o’ the
blue heavens and the fair earth, which mak men proud, as if they were
proprietors o’ the upper world, and sinfu as it its joys were made for
them, are vanished, and a narrow cell, nae bigger than my body, wi’ nae
air, nae licht, nae warmth— cauld, dark, lonely, and dismal—is the last
and eternal place appointed for the wicked. (Groans.) On earth men though
sinners, hae the companionship o’ men; here my only companion is a gnawin
conscience, the true fire o’ the lower pit, and a thousand times waur then
a’ the imagined flames which haunt the minds o’ the doers o’ evil."
These dreadful words were
spoken at intervals, and loud groans bespoke the agony of the sufferer.
The individual who heard them, at a loss what to conceive, became alarmed,
ran away to get assistance, and, in a short time, returned with a
companion and a light, to search among the old ruins for the individual
who was thus apparently suffering under the imagined terrors of the last
place of punishment. They looked carefully up and down, throughout the
place called the Magazine, among the ruins of the castle, and in every
hole and cranny of the neighbourhood, but neither could they see any human
being, nor hear again any of the extraordinary sounds which had chained
the ear of the listener, and roused his terrors. The idea of a
supernatural presence, was the first that presented itself; and a ghost
giving its hollow utterance to the lamentation of its suffering spirit,
confined, doubtless in some of the vaults of the castle, and struggling
for that liberty which depends upon the performance of some penance upon
earth, was the ready solution of a difficulty which defied all recourse to
ordinary means of explanation. Having ascertained that nothing was to be
seen or heard, the two friends returned to the town, where they told what
had happened. The disappearance about that time of W—B—suggested to many a
more rational explanation of the mysterious affair; and a number of people
adjourned to the Magazine for the purpose of exploring its dark recesses
more thoroughly, under the conviction that the missing individual might be
concealed in some part that had not been searched. Every effort was
employed in vain. They penetrated all the holes, and explored all the dark
corners— nothing was to be seen, nothing heard and the conclusion was
arrived at, either that the narrator was deceiving or deceived, or that
the spirit had ceased to issue its lamentations.
For many days and many
years afterwards, no trace could be had of W —B—, nor was there ever even
so much as whispered, a single statement of any one who had seen him
either alive or dead. The food for speculation which the mysterious affair
afforded to the minds of the inhabitants, was for a time increased by the
total want of success which attended all the efforts of inquiry; and,
after the fancies of all had been exhausted by the vain work of
endeavouring to discover that which seemed to be hid by a higher power
from human knowledge, the circumstance degenerated into one of the wonders
of nature, supplying the old women with the material of a fire-side tale,
for the amusement or terror of children. But it would seem that the
energies of vulgar every-day life, are arrayed with invetrate hostility
against the luxury of a mystery so greedily grasped at by all people,
however thoroughly liberated from the prejudices of early education or of
late sanctification; and accordingly, one day, many years after the
occurrences now mentioned, as some boys were amusing themslves among the
ruins of the old castle, they discovered lying in a hole—called the
Piper’s Hole, from the circumstance of a piper having once entered it with
a pair of bagpipes, which he intended to play on till he reached the end
of it but never returned—the body of a man reduced to a skeleton, but
retaining on his bare bones the clothes which he had worn when in life. It
was the body of W—B—. On searching his pockets, there was found in one of
them a few pence, and in another a bottle, with a paper label marked
"Laudanum."
This discovery cleared up
all mystery. The unfortunate man had intended to kill himself in such a
way as would put his suicidal act beyond the knowledge of his friends, and
had resorted to the extraordinary plan of creeping up into the dark and
narrow passage, where the action of the fatal soporific had produced the
delusion that he was in the place appointed for the wicked, with the
soliloquy already detailed—and then death. The physical mystery was
cleared up; but a mystery of moral nature remains, which will bid defiance
to the revealing efforts of philosophers—the strength and peculiarity of a
feeling which, working on a sane mind, produced a purpose so
extraordinary, and the resolution to carry it into effect. |
