IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP
It chanced in the year 1813 that Archie
strayed one day into the Justiciary Court. The
macer made room for the son of the presiding judge.
In the dock the centre of men’s eyes there
stood a whey-coloured misbegotten caitiff Duncan
Jopp on trial for his life. His story as it
was raked out before him in that public scene was
one of disgrace and vice and cowardice the very nakedness
of crime; and the creature heard and it seemed at
times as though he understood as if at
times he forgot the horror of the place he stood in
and remembered the shame of what had brought him there.
He kept his head bowed and his hands clutched upon
the rail; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times
he flung it back; and now he glanced about the audience
in a sudden fellness of terror and now looked in
the face of his judge and gulped. There was pinned
about his throat a piece of dingy flannel; and this
it was perhaps that turned the scale in Archie’s
mind between disgust and pity. The creature stood
in a vanishing point; yet a little while and he was
still a man and had eyes and apprehension; yet a little
longer and with a last sordid piece of pageantry
he would cease to be. And here in the meantime
with a trait of human nature that caught at the beholder’s
breath he was tending a sore throat.
Over against him, my Lord Hermiston
occupied the Bench in the red robes of criminal jurisdiction,
his face framed in the white wig. Honest all
through, he did not affect the virtue of impartiality;
this was no case for refinement; there was a man to
be hanged, he would have said, and he was hanging
him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship,
and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain
he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties,
in the clear sight which pierced at once into the
joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with
which he demolished every figment of defence.
He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn
place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the
rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted
gallowsward with jeers.
Duncan had a mistress, scarce less
forlorn and greatly older than himself, who came up,
whimpering and curtseying, to add the weight of her
betrayal. My lord gave her the oath in his most
roaring voice, and added an intolerant warning.
“Mind what ye say now, Janet,”
said he. “I have an e’e upon ye, I’m
ill to jest with.”
Presently, after she was tremblingly
embarked on her story, “And what made ye do
this, ye auld runt?” the Court interposed.
“Do ye mean to tell me ye was the panel’s
mistress?”
“If you please, ma loard,” whined the
female.
“Godsake! ye made a bonny couple,”
observed his lordship; and there was something so
formidable and ferocious in his scorn that not even
the galleries thought to laugh.
The summing up contained some jewels.
“These two peetiable creatures
seem to have made up thegither, it’s not for
us to explain why.” “The panel,
who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally
ill set-out in mind and boady.” “Neither
the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had
so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it
was necessary.” And in the course of sentencing,
my lord had this obiter dictum: “I
have been the means, under God, of haanging a great
number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as
yourself.” The words were strong in themselves;
the light and heat and detonation of their delivery,
and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task,
made them tingle in the ears.
When all was over, Archie came forth
again into a changed world. Had there been the
least redeeming greatness in the crime, any obscurity,
any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood.
But the culprit stood, with his sore throat, in the
sweat of his mortal agony, without defence or excuse:
a thing to cover up with blushes: a being so much
sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might
seem harmless. And the judge had pursued him
with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be
conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing
to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are
æsthetics even of the slaughter-house; and the loathsomeness
of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the image of
his judge.
Archie passed by his friends in the
High Street with incoherent words and gestures.
He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance
awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old
radiant stories, of Queen Mary and Prince Charlie,
of the hooded stag, of the splendour and crime, the
velvet and bright iron of the past; and dismissed them
with a cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the
Hunter’s Bog, and the heavens were dark above
him and the grass of the field an offence. “This
is my father,” he said. “I draw my
life from him; the flesh upon my bones is his, the
bread I am fed with is the wages of these horrors.”
He recalled his mother, and ground his forehead in
the earth. He thought of flight, and where was
he to flee to? of other lives, but was there any life
worth living in this den of savage and jeering animals?
The interval before the execution
was like a violent dream. He met his father;
he would not look at him, he could not speak to him.
It seemed there was no living creature but must have
been swift to recognise that imminent animosity; but
the hide of the Justice-Clerk remained impenetrable.
Had my lord been talkative, the truce could never have
subsisted; but he was by fortune in one of his humours
of sour silence; and under the very guns of his broadside,
Archie nursed the enthusiasm of rebellion. It
seemed to him, from the top of his nineteen years’
experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the
perpetrator of some signal action, to set back fallen
Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned
and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments,
which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam
up in his mind and startled him as with voices:
and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an
almost tangible presence of new beliefs and duties.
On the named morning he was at the
place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble,
the flinching wretch produced. He looked on for
a while at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed
to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood.
Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and
the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping-jack.
He had been prepared for something terrible, not for
this tragic meanness. He stood a moment silent,
and then “I denounce this God-defying
murder,” he shouted; and his father, if he must
have disclaimed the sentiment, might have owned the
stentorian voice with which it was uttered.
Frank Innes dragged him from the spot.
The two handsome lads followed the same course of
study and recreation, and felt a certain mutual attraction,
founded mainly on good looks. It had never gone
deep; Frank was by nature a thin, jeering creature,
not truly susceptible whether of feeling or inspiring
friendship; and the relation between the pair was
altogether on the outside, a thing of common knowledge
and the pleasantries that spring from a common acquaintance.
The more credit to Frank that he was appalled by Archie’s
outburst, and at least conceived the design of keeping
him in sight, and, if possible, in hand for the day.
But Archie, who had just defied was it God
or Satan? would not listen to the word
of a college companion.
“I will not go with you,”
he said. “I do not desire your company,
sir; I would be alone.”
“Here, Weir, man, don’t
be absurd,” said Innes, keeping a tight hold
upon his sleeve. “I will not let you go
until I know what you mean to do with yourself; it’s
no use brandishing that staff.” For indeed
at that moment Archie had made a sudden perhaps
a warlike movement. “This has
been the most insane affair; you know it has.
You know very well that I’m playing the good
Samaritan. All I wish is to keep you quiet.”
“If quietness is what you wish,
Mr. Innes,” said Archie, “and you will
promise to leave me entirely to myself, I will tell
you so much, that I am going to walk in the country
and admire the beauties of nature.”
“Honour bright?” asked Frank.
“I am not in the habit of lying,
Mr. Innes,” retorted Archie. “I have
the honour of wishing you good-day.”
“You won’t forget the Spec.?” asked
Innes.
“The Spec.?” said Archie. “O
no, I won’t forget the Spec.”
And the one young man carried his
tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day
long, by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage
of misery; while the other hastened smilingly to spread
the news of Weir’s access of insanity, and to
drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative,
where further eccentric developments might certainly
be looked for. I doubt if Innes had the least
belief in his prediction; I think it flowed rather
from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal
as great as possible; not from any ill-will to Archie from
the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces.
But for all that his words were prophetic. Archie
did not forget the Spec.; he put in an appearance
there at the due time, and, before the evening was
over, had dealt a memorable shock to his companions.
It chanced he was the president of the night.
He sat in the same room where the Society still meets only
the portraits were not there: the men who afterwards
sat for them were then but beginning their careers.
The same lustre of many tapers shed its light over
the meeting; the same chair, perhaps, supported him
that so many of us have sat in since. At times
he seemed to forget the business of the evening, but
even in these periods he sat with a great air of energy
and determination. At times he meddled bitterly,
and launched with defiance those fines which are the
precious and rarely used artillery of the president.
He little thought, as he did so, how he resembled
his father, but his friends remarked upon it, chuckling.
So far, in his high place above his fellow-students,
he seemed set beyond the possibility of any scandal;
but his mind was made up he was determined
to fulfil the sphere of his offence. He signed
to Innes (whom he had just fined and who had just
impeached his ruling) to succeed him in the chair,
stepped down from the platform, and took his place
by the chimney-piece, the shine of many wax tapers
from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of
the great red fire relieving from behind his slim
figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to
the next subject in the case-book, “Whether
capital punishment be consistent with God’s will
or man’s policy?”
A breath of embarrassment, of something
like alarm, passed round the room, so daring did these
words appear upon the lips of Hermiston’s only
son. But the amendment was not seconded; the previous
question was promptly moved and unanimously voted,
and the momentary scandal smuggled by. Innes
triumphed in the fulfilment of his prophecy. He
and Archie were now become the heroes of the night;
but whereas every one crowded about Innes, when the
meeting broke up, but one of all his companions came
to speak to Archie.
“Weir, man! That was an
extraordinary raid of yours!” observed this
courageous member, taking him confidentially by the
arm as they went out.
“I don’t think it a raid,”
said Archie grimly. “More like a war.
I saw that poor brute hanged this morning, and my
gorge rises at it yet.”
“Hut-tut,” returned his
companion, and, dropping his arm like something hot,
he sought the less tense society of others.
Archie found himself alone. The
last of the faithful or was it only the
boldest of the curious? had fled. He
watched the black huddle of his fellow-students draw
off down and up the street, in whispering or boisterous
gangs. And the isolation of the moment weighed
upon him like an omen and an emblem of his destiny
in life. Bred up in unbroken fear himself, among
trembling servants, and in a house which (at the least
ruffle in the master’s voice) shuddered into
silence, he saw himself on the brink of the red valley
of war, and measured the danger and length of it with
awe. He made a détour in the glimmer and shadow
of the streets, came into the back stable lane, and
watched for a long while the light burn steady in
the judge’s room. The longer he gazed upon
that illuminated window-blind, the more blank became
the picture of the man who sat behind it, endlessly
turning over sheets of process, pausing to sip a glass
of port, or rising and passing heavily about his book-lined
walls to verify some reference. He could not combine
the brutal judge and the industrious, dispassionate
student; the connecting link escaped him; from such
a dual nature it was impossible he should predict
behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well
to plunge into a business of which the end could not
be foreseen? and presently after, with a sickening
decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to strike
his father? For he had struck him defied
him twice over and before a cloud of witnesses struck
him a public buffet before crowds. Who had called
him to judge his father in these precarious and high
questions? The office was usurped. It might
have become a stranger; in a son there
was no blinking it in a son, it was disloyal.
And now, between these two natures so antipathetic,
so hateful to each other, there was depending an unpardonable
affront: and the providence of God alone might
foresee the manner in which it would be resented by
Lord Hermiston.
These misgivings tortured him all
night and arose with him in the winter’s morning;
they followed him from class to class, they made him
shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his
companions, they sounded in his ears through the current
voice of the professor; and he brought them home with
him at night unabated and indeed increased. The
cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with
the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood looking
vaguely in the lighted window of a book-shop, trying
to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal. My
lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they
had now done for long, with scarcely the ordinary
civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that
nothing had yet reached the father’s ears.
Indeed, when he recalled the awful countenance of
my lord, a timid hope sprang up in him that perhaps
there would be found no one bold enough to carry tales.
If this were so, he asked himself, would he begin
again? and he found no answer. It was at this
moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice
said in his ear, “My dear Mr. Archie, you had
better come and see me.”
He started, turned round, and found
himself face to face with Dr. Gregory. “And
why should I come to see you?” he asked, with
the defiance of the miserable.
“Because you are looking exceedingly
ill,” said the doctor, “and you very evidently
want looking after, my young friend. Good folk
are scarce, you know; and it is not every one that
would be quite so much missed as yourself. It
is not every one that Hermiston would miss.”
And with a nod and a smile, the doctor passed on.
A moment after, Archie was in pursuit,
and had in turn, but more roughly, seized him by the
arm.
“What do you mean? what did
you mean by saying that? What makes you think
that Hermis my father would have missed
me?”
The doctor turned about and looked
him all over with a clinical eye. A far more
stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have guessed the
truth; but ninety-nine out of a hundred, even if they
had been equally inclined to kindness, would have
blundered by some touch of charitable exaggeration.
The doctor was better inspired. He knew the father
well; in that white face of intelligence and suffering,
he divined something of the son; and he told, without
apology or adornment, the plain truth.
“When you had the measles, Mr.
Archibald, you had them gey and ill; and I thought
you were going to slip between my fingers,” he
said. “Well, your father was anxious.
How did I know it? says you. Simply because I
am a trained observer. The sign that I saw him
make, ten thousand would have missed; and perhaps perhaps,
I say, because he’s a hard man to judge of but
perhaps he never made another. A strange thing
to consider! It was this. One day I came
to him: ‘Hermiston,’ said I, ‘there’s
a change.’ He never said a word, just glowered
at me (if ye’ll pardon the phrase) like a wild
beast. ‘A change for the better,’
said I. And I distinctly heard him take his breath.”
The doctor left no opportunity for
anti-climax; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of antiquity
to which he clung) and repeating “Distinctly”
with raised eyebrows, he took his departure, and left
Archie speechless in the street.
The anecdote might be called infinitely
little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense.
“I did not know the old man had so much blood
in him.” He had never dreamed this sire
of his, this aboriginal antique, this adamantine Adam,
had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the
least degree for another and that other
himself, who had insulted him! With the generosity
of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the
other side: had instantly created a new image
of Lord Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron
without and all sensibility within. The mind of
the vile jester, the tongue that had pursued Duncan
Jopp with unmanly insults, the unbeloved countenance
that he had known and feared for so long, were all
forgotten; and he hastened home, impatient to confess
his misdeeds, impatient to throw himself on the mercy
of this imaginary character.
He was not to be long without a rude
awakening. It was in the gloaming when he drew
near the doorstep of the lighted house, and was aware
of the figure of his father approaching from the opposite
side. Little daylight lingered; but on the door
being opened, the strong yellow shine of the lamp
gushed out upon the landing and shone full on Archie,
as he stood, in the old-fashioned observance of respect,
to yield precedence. The judge came without haste,
stepping stately and firm; his chin raised, his face
(as he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined, his
mouth set hard. There was never a wink of change
in his expression; without looking to the right or
left, he mounted the stair, passed close to Archie,
and entered the house. Instinctively, the boy,
upon his first coming, had made a movement to meet
him; instinctively he recoiled against the railing,
as the old man swept by him in a pomp of indignation.
Words were needless; he knew all perhaps
more than all and the hour of judgment
was at hand.
It is possible that, in this sudden
revulsion of hope and before these symptoms of impending
danger, Archie might have fled. But not even that
was left to him. My lord, after hanging up his
cloak and hat, turned round in the lighted entry,
and made him an imperative and silent gesture with
his thumb, and with the strange instinct of obedience,
Archie followed him into the house.
All dinner-time there reigned over
the judge’s table a palpable silence, and as
soon as the solids were despatched he rose to his feet.
“M’Killop, tak’
the wine into my room,” said he; and then to
his son: “Archie, you and me has to have
a talk.”
It was at this sickening moment that
Archie’s courage, for the first and last time,
entirely deserted him. “I have an appointment,”
said he.
“It’ll have to be broken,
then,” said Hermiston, and led the way into
his study.
The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed
to a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly documents,
the backs of law-books made a frame upon all sides
that was only broken by the window and the doors.
For a moment Hermiston warmed his
hands at the fire, presenting his back to Archie;
then suddenly disclosed on him the terrors of the Hanging
Face.
“What’s this I hear of ye?” he asked.
There was no answer possible to Archie.
“I’ll have to tell ye,
then,” pursued Hermiston. “It seems
ye’ve been skirling against the father that
begot ye, and one of his Maijesty’s judges in
this land; and that in the public street, and while
an order of the Court was being executit. Forbye
which, it would appear that ye’ve been airing
your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin’ Society”;
he paused a moment: and then, with extraordinary
bitterness, added: “Ye damned eediot.”
“I had meant to tell you,”
stammered Archie. “I see you are well informed.”
“Muckle obleeged to ye,”
said his lordship, and took his usual seat. “And
so you disapprove of caapital punishment?” he
added.
“I am sorry, sir, I do,” said Archie.
“I am sorry, too,” said
his lordship. “And now, if you please, we
shall approach this business with a little more parteecularity.
I hear that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp and,
man! ye had a fine client there in the
middle of all the riffraff of the ceety, ye thought
fit to cry out, ’This is a damned murder, and
my gorge rises at the man that haangit him.’”
“No, sir, these were not my words,” cried
Archie.
“What were yer words, then?” asked the
judge.
“I believe I said, ‘I
denounce it as a murder!’” said the son.
“I beg your pardon a God-defying
murder. I have no wish to conceal the truth,”
he added, and looked his father for a moment in the
face.
“God, it would only need that
of it next!” cried Hermiston. “There
was nothing about your gorge rising, then?”
“That was afterwards, my lord,
as I was leaving the Speculative. I said I had
been to see the miserable creature hanged, and my gorge
rose at it.”
“Did ye, though?” said
Hermiston. “And I suppose ye knew who haangit
him?”
“I was present at the trial;
I ought to tell you that, I ought to explain.
I ask your pardon beforehand for any expression that
may seem undutiful. The position in which I stand
is wretched,” said the unhappy hero, now fairly
face to face with the business he had chosen.
“I have been reading some of your cases.
I was present while Jopp was tried. It was a
hideous business. Father, it was a hideous thing!
Grant he was vile, why should you hunt him with a
vileness equal to his own? It was done with glee that
is the word you did it with glee; and I
looked on, God help me! with horror.”
“You’re a young gentleman
that doesna approve of caapital punishment,”
said Hermiston. “Weel, I’m an auld
man that does. I was glad to get Jopp haangit,
and what for would I pretend I wasna? You’re
all for honesty, it seems; you couldn’t even
steik your mouth on the public street. What for
should I steik mines upon the Bench, the King’s
officer, bearing the sword, a dreid to evil-doers,
as I was from the beginning, and as I will be to the
end! Mair than enough of it! Heedious!
I never gave twa thoughts to heediousness, I have
no call to be bonny. I’m a man that gets
through with my day’s business, and let that
suffice.”
The ring of sarcasm had died out of
his voice as he went on; the plain words became invested
with some of the dignity of the Justice-seat.
“It would be telling you if
you could say as much,” the speaker resumed.
“But ye cannot. Ye’ve been reading
some of my cases, ye say. But it was not for
the law in them, it was to spy out your faither’s
nakedness, a fine employment in a son. You’re
splairging; you’re running at lairge in life
like a wild nowt. It’s impossible you should
think any longer of coming to the Bar. You’re
not fit for it; no splairger is. And another
thing: son of mines or no son of mines, you have
flung fylement in public on one of the Senators of
the Coallege of Justice, and I would make it my business
to see that ye were never admitted there yourself.
There is a kind of a decency to be observit. Then
comes the next of it what am I to do with
ye next? Ye’ll have to find some kind of
a trade, for I’ll never support ye in idleset.
What do ye fancy ye’ll be fit for? The
pulpit? Na, they could never get diveenity into
that bloackhead. Him that the law of man whammles
is no likely to do muckle better by the law of God.
What would ye make of hell? Wouldna your gorge
rise at that? Na, there’s no room for splairgers
under the fower quarters of John Calvin. What
else is there? Speak up. Have ye got nothing
of your own?”
“Father, let me go to the Peninsula,”
said Archie. “That’s all I’m
fit for to fight.”
“All? quo’ he!”
returned the judge. “And it would be enough
too, if I thought it. But I’ll never trust
ye so near the French, you that’s so Frenchifeed.”
“You do me injustice there,
sir,” said Archie. “I am loyal; I
will not boast; but any interest I may have ever felt
in the French ”
“Have ye been so loyal to me?” interrupted
his father.
There came no reply.
“I think not,” continued
Hermiston. “And I would send no man to be
a servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved
such a shauchling son to his own faither. You
can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and where’s
the hairm? It doesna play buff on me! And
if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself,
sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But
there’s no splairging possible in a camp; and
if you were to go to it, you would find out for yourself
whether Lord Well’n’ton approves of caapital
punishment or not. You a sodger!” he cried,
with a sudden burst of scorn. “Ye auld
wife, the sodgers would bray at ye like cuddies!”
As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie
was aware of some illogicality in his position, and
stood abashed. He had a strong impression, besides,
of the essential valour of the old gentleman before
him, how conveyed it would be hard to say.
“Well, have ye no other proposeetion?”
said my lord again.
“You have taken this so calmly,
sir, that I cannot but stand ashamed,” began
Archie.
“I’m nearer voamiting,
though, than you would fancy,” said my lord.
The blood rose to Archie’s brow.
“I beg your pardon, I should
have said that you had accepted my affront....
I admit it was an affront; I did not think to apologise,
but I do, I ask your pardon; it will not be so again,
I pass you my word of honour.... I should have
said that I admired your magnanimity with this offender,”
Archie concluded with a gulp.
“I have no other son, ye see,”
said Hermiston. “A bonny one I have gotten!
But I must just do the best I can wi’ him, and
what am I to do? If ye had been younger, I would
have wheepit ye for this rideeculous exhibeetion.
The way it is, I have just to grin and bear. But
one thing is to be clearly understood. As a faither,
I must grin and bear it; but if I had been the Lord
Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-Clerk, son or
no son, Mr. Erchibald Weir would have been in a jyle
the night.”
Archie was now dominated. Lord
Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was
aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation
of the man’s self in the man’s office.
At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord
Hermiston’s spirit struck more home; and along
with it that of his own impotence, who had struck and
perhaps basely struck at his own father,
and not reached so far as to have even nettled him.
“I place myself in your hands without reserve,”
he said.
“That’s the first sensible
word I’ve had of ye the night,” said Hermiston.
“I can tell ye, that would have been the end
of it, the one way or the other; but it’s better
ye should come there yourself, than what I would have
had to hirstle ye. Weel, by my way of it and
my way is the best there’s just the
one thing it’s possible that ye might be with
decency, and that’s a laird. Ye’ll
be out of hairm’s way at the least of it.
If ye have to rowt, ye can rowt amang the kye; and
the maist feck of the caapital punishment ye’re
like to come across’ll be guddling trouts.
Now, I’m for no idle lairdies; every man has
to work, if it’s only at peddling ballants;
to work, or to be wheeped, or to be haangit.
If I set ye down at Hermiston, I’ll have to see
you work that place the way it has never been workit
yet; ye must ken about the sheep like a herd; ye must
be my grieve there, and I’ll see that I gain
by ye. Is that understood?”
“I will do my best,” said Archie.
“Well, then, I’ll send
Kirstie word the morn, and ye can go yourself the
day after,” said Hermiston. “And just
try to be less of an eediot!” he concluded,
with a freezing smile, and turned immediately to the
papers on his desk.