“I know the dim haunts of fever,
Where the blossoms of youth decay;
I know where your free broad river
Sweeps disease on its breast away.
“Yet despite your earnest pity,
And despite its own smoke and din,
I cling to you crowded city,
Though I shrink from its woe and sin.”
Hymns of Faith and Hate.
IT was the early summer of the year 1544, and the shadow of a dark cloud was already looming over every home in Dundee. God’s terrible angel of the pestilence stood with his sword outstretched, as of old over guilty Jerusalem; but no eye was opened to behold him; as yet no one suspected the danger and the anguish at hand.
In a small room of one of the high dark houses of the old town, a pretty, modest looking young girl sat spinning, and singing as she span, in a sweet though rather listless voice. Now and then she glanced anxiously at the door, or rose to pay some little attention to the “kail” for the mid day repast. Although the meal could scarcely have been intended for more than two persons, the fire necessary for its preparation increased uncomfortably the heat of the narrow room.
“Guid day, Mary,” said a girl about her own age, or a little older, entering without ceremony.
The new corner was tall and strongly made; and, without the smallest pretensions to beauty, had an honest, open countenance. She held in her hand a large bunch of the pretty field flowers so well known in Scotland as blue bells.
“Look what I hae brocht ye, sin ye tell me ye come frae the hills. I thocht ye’d like them, maybe, to mind ye of yer auld hame.”
Mary Wigton eagerly took the flowers, thanked her friend with many expressions of delight, and a moment or two afterward burst into tears.
Honest Janet Duncan was considerably disconcerted by the effect produced by her gift. “Weel, to be sure,” she ejaculated, “gin I didna think they’d hae pleasured ye!”
“Se they hae,” said Mary, recovering herself quickly. “It was naebut a wee thocht of the auld hame and the auld times, and the heather and gowans on the bonnie Sidlaw hills. But it’s nae use thinking lang. Noo father’s farm is sold, it’s no like we’ll ever ge back again. Where did ye get thae blue bells, Janet I”
“Archie, the ne’er-do-weel, played the truant frae his schule wi’ a wheen idle Gallants like himsel, and ged out ower the Law and Balgay Hill. I’m afeard when Jamie comes ben and hears it he’ll be sair angered. An’ it’s no wonnerfu’, when he’s focht as he has to keep the lad to his schuling, and he nae mair himsel but a puir journeyman baiter.”
“He’s a guid brither to ye, Janet.”
“Ye may say just that.” Then, as a new thought struck her, she contradicted herself energetically. “Na, he’s nae guid brither, but the best brither in a’ Dundee. Left but father, or mither, or friend in the wide warld, stiha wad hae thocht he could hae keepit us thegither, and fended for us se weel. I can turn rely hand to molly a thing, thank the saints, but there’s Archie and Effie, puir bairns; Archie naebut gaun threteen, and unco witless, and Effie a wee bit lassie. Eh, but we’ve seen hard times, Mary.”
Mary probably thought her own troubles had been greater than those of her friend; but she only said in a sympathizing tone, “Sit ye down, Janet, ye’re no hurried the day 1”
Janet replied in the negative, for she dearly loved half an hour’s chat with a friend, when it could be obtained without neglecting her duties to her paragon brother Jamie, or her youthful charges, Archie and Effie.
“Ye’re watching for your father?”
“Ay; but I’m in hopes he’s got a lift O’ wark, he’s se late. It’s unco little he brings tame,” she said sadly.
“It’s ill speiring after wark in this muckle town,”
answered Janet. “Why did ye no bide in the country pairts, whaur a’body kennel ye?”
“I tell ye. There’s a man here that owes father a matter o’ twa hundert merk―that Maister Wilson wha has the muckle shop in the Nethergate, and sells silks and ribbons and sic. He’s a rich man, but he’s no an honest man, Janet. When father loaned him the siller he was naebut a puir laddie, and father, helped him sin’ he was sib to his wife’s mither. Weel, father’s that careless he never took tent to get a bit writing, forbye his word o’ mouth, ye ken. Se when the Warld ged by ordinar ill wi’ him, and the oats failed, and the sheep dee’d, and he maun sell the bonnie farm his forbears held before him, he thocht o’ Maister Wilson and his twa hundert merk, and came here to look after the siller. But Maister Wilson, he says there’s nae debt ava’, and that father canna prove it. Whilk last is ower true, wae’s me I Gin John, that’s my brither, wad hae bided wi’ us, he’d hae been a brave lawyer the noo, and richted us.”
“I didna ken ye had a brither, Mary.”
“Oh, ay; there were five o’ us, and a’ dee’d bairns but John and mysel. He was the eldest, an’ I the youngest. He was twal year aulder than I. He was a clever bairn, vera. Father had siller to spare in thae days, se he thocht to make a man of him, and sent him to St. Andrews to study the law. And he was se guid and kind like, and loved his book se weel. A’ the maisters set muckle store by him, and as for father and mither, he was just the licht o’ their een. But he ged clean daft.”
“Ged daft, Mary?”
“I canna mind mysel, for I was a wee lassie the time; but father told me he wasna seventeen year auld full when sic’ a change came ower him. He grew dour and hard, and wad hae nocht to do wi’ archery, and goff, and putting the stave, and a’ thae ploys that young men use. He wad gang by himsel, and greet and talk of his sins. It was aye and aye his sins wi’ him. Gin he had been a thief or a murderer he couldna hae made mair to do on’t. Yet he vas aye a guid lad, and what he could hae done to gar him tak’ on se, nae mortal could speir. Let father say what he might, naething would serve him but to gie the law up, and tak’ the priest’s frock. Se that was the end on’t.”
“And do ye no see him whiles?”
“Na; we couldna gang to him, and he wouldna come to us. Father thinks he has clean forgot us. Thae holy men grow unco hard to their ain folk whiles. He’s no John Wigton ony mair, he’s Sir John Wigton the priest. I dinna ken whaur he is the noo, and gin we met in the street ane I’d pass the ither by.”
“When yer mither dee’d did ye no tell him I”
“How could we? We’re nae scholars, father nor I. But I trove he helped mither to her grave.”
“Weel, our Jamie’s no that religious; but he gaes to his kirk regular, and says his ayes and minds his puir soul as he can.”
“Seems to me,” said Mary, “it’s a hard case gin puir folks canna save their souls but they break their parents’ hearts. But here’s father!”
Janet stayed to exchange greetings with an elderly man of respectable appearance, but with something in his step, voice, and manner, that betrayed a certain weakness and indecision of character. Having answered his remark, “It’s by ordinar hot and heavy for the time o’ year,” with a heart felt, “Ye may weel say that,” she bade Mary goodbye, and hastened upstairs to the rooms in the same “land” which the Duncan family occupied.
While the father and daughter partake of their simple meal, a few words may be added in explanation of the religious history Which Mary had recounted to her friend, much as an ignorant person might describe the appearance of some curious piece of mechanism, the construction and uses of which he was alike unable to comprehend.
John Wigton was no very unusual character. There have been obscure Dominics and Loyolas, as well as village Hampdens and mute inglorious Miltons. Naturally of a thoughtful temperament, as he passed from boyhood into youth he began to ask himself some of those solemn questions which are the birthright of every human soul. He knew but little of the great realities of the eternal world, but that little sufficed to make him first anxious and then miserable. He knew that sin was hateful to God, and he felt himself a sinner. His convictions partook of the ardor and intensity of his character, he was willing to do or suffer anything so that he might escape from the wrath to come. At this time perhaps John Wigton was not very far from the kingdom of heaven. Had a copy of Tyndale’s New Testament fallen into his hands, had he heard some enlightened reformer preaching Christ and him crucified, his character, humanly speaking, might have differed from what it actually became as light differs from darkness. But Rome had him in her hands to mold, and out of such materials Rome molds fanatics — from this wine she distils her sourest vinegar. She did not seek to obliterate his convictions; she rather strengthened, though she did not, properly speaking, deepen them. She told him little of the holiness of God’s character and of the true nature of sin; but she told him much of the sinner’s awful doom, of the fire and brimstone and the never dying worm. She employed almost exclusively images of physical suffering, and employed them to terrify the imagination and to shake the nerves, rather than to touch the heart or the conscience. And when he sought for a way of escape from all these horrors, the path of penance and self mortification was opened before him. He was taught to torture himself here that God might not torture him forever hereafter; for it was in such an aspect that the Lord merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in goodness and truth, was presented to his mind. Being sincere and earnest, he did all, and more than all, that was required of him. He scourged himself, he starved himself, he deprived himself of necessary sleep, and in many other ways, which it would be neither pleasant nor profitable to enumerate, he practiced “will worship and neglecting of the body.” But it would not do. If the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, neither could a man’s own blood, though he were to pour it forth drop by drop, and in the most painful way that even the depraved imagination of monkish inquisitors could devise. John Wigton’s conscience, like that of many another miserable victim of Rome, bore sad witness to this truth. He was not at peace, he was not forgiven. On he went, further and further, upon the painful path prescribed to him, still pursuing a phantom that, like the mirage of the desert, always eluded his grasp. He did not find what he sought, but something he did find which, in the abnegation of all possible enjoyment, and the endurance of almost all possible suffering, still made life tolerable to him―he found excitement, he found employment for his powers, and food for his pride. Even apart from the praise it brought him (and he who knew himself a miserable unpardoned sinner liked to hear himself called a saint), he began to take a morbid but real pleasure in self infliction.
But there is an old and wise saying, “When water ceases to quench thirst, what will you drink after it?” It is the character of every unnatural excitement to pall with indulgence; and thus John Wigton found at length that his bodily austerities ceased to afford him even temporary relief and satisfaction. A stronger stimulant was required, and he found it. He set himself to mortify, not the nerves and muscles of his body, but the desires of his mind and the feelings of his heart. Family affection, friendship, the love of study, the free exercise of reason and judgment, all were ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of his faith. In process of time he came to regard an impulse of tenderness towards his parents or his little sister as a kind of sinful self indulgence, only greater than a soft bed or a luxurious meal. And there is this difference between the grosser and the more subtle forms of self torture, that while a man may perhaps educate himself into an unnatural insensibility to bodily pain without injury to the rest of his character, the process of hardening his soul is equivalent to a moral self murder. John Wigton dared not allow himself to love or to pity, and he succeeded (or thought he did) in conquering these weaknesses of human nature; but he paid a heavy price for his success. He soon learned to regard the sufferings of others with indifference, nay, with joy and triumph, when they advanced the interests of the Church. In her service he was willing (or thought he was) to give his own body to be burned, and it was quite as meritorious, and on the whole rather more convenient, to burn the bodies of other men. At this point his education may be considered finished. At thirty years of age he was a thorough fanatic, with conscience and feeling both absorbed in one master passion. And then cooler heads began to take note of him as a man who might make a useful tool when there was work to be done from which ordinary men would shrink in horror.
Is this a fancy sketch? Alas! history answers, No; and from amongst the dim and shadowy forms of that multitude whom Rome has crowned with her doubtful honors there rises before the memory more than one so called “saint” who might have sat for the portrait.