Читать книгу The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare - Alexander Leighton - Страница 4

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When the gloaming was setting in of an evening in the autumn of 1827, and when the young students of Dr Knox’s class had covered up those remains of their own kind from which they had been trying to extract nature’s secrets, one was looking listlessly from the window into the Square. The place was as quiet as usual, silent and sad enough to gratify a fancy that there existed some connexion between the stillness and the work carried on from day to day and night to night in these mysterious recesses; for, strange enough, whatever curiosity might be felt by the inhabitants as to what was done there, few were ever seen within that area except those in some way connected with the rooms. So was it the more likely that our young student’s eye should have been attracted by the figure of a man moving stealthily under the shade of the houses. Then he looked more intently to ascertain whether he was not one of the regular staff of body-snatchers who supplied “the thing,” as they called it. But no; the stranger, whoever he might be, was neither “Merryandrew,” nor “the Spune,” nor “the Captain,” nor any other of the gouls,—some half-dozen,—yet he would have done no discredit to the fraternity either as to dress or manner: little and thick-set, with a firm round face, small eyes, and Irish nose, a down-looking sleazy dog, who, as he furtively turned his eye up to the window, seemed to think he had no right to direct his vision beyond the parallel of a man’s pocket.

The student, who could dissect living character no less than he could dead tissue, immediately suspected that this meditative “worshipper of the sweets of eve” was there upon business, but, being probably new to the calling, he was timid, if not bashful. Yes, bashful; we do not retract the word, comely as it is, for where, in all this wide world of sin and shamelessness, could we suppose it possible to find a man who lives upon it, and is shone on by its sun, and cheered by its flowers, capable of selling the body of his fellow-creature for gold without having his face suffused with blood, cast up by the indignant heart, at least for the first time? And perhaps it was the first time to this new-comer. But in whatever condition the strange man might be, the student had got over his weakness, that is, nature’s strength, and, resolving to test the lounger, he went down, and, shewing himself at the door, beckoned the bashful one forward.

“Were you looking for any one?” said he, as he peered into the down-looking face, where there never had been a blush.

“’Mph!—are you Dr Knox?”

“No; but I am one of his students,” was the reply of the young man, who was now nearly satisfied of the intention of the stranger.

“And, sure, I’m not far wrong thin, afther all.”

“And I may suit your purpose as well, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, speak out; don’t be afraid. Have you got ‘the thing?’”

“Doun’t know what you mean.”

“Ah! not an old hand, I perceive. You were never here before?”

“No.”

“And don’t know what to say?”

“No.”

And the bashful man again turned his gloomy eyes to the ground, and didn’t know what to do with those hands of his, which were not made for kid—perhaps for skin of another kind. And shouldn’t this hardened student have been sorry for a man in such confusion; but he wasn’t—nay, he had no sympathy with his refinement.

“Why, man, don’t you speak out?” he said impatiently.

“There’s some one coming through the Square there,” was the reply, as the man looked furtively to a side.

“Come in here, then,” said the student, as he pulled him into a large room where there were three young men who acted as Knox’s assistants.

And there they were in the midst of a great number of coarse tables, with one large one in the middle, whereon were deposited—each having its portion—masses or lumps of some matter which could not be seen by reason of all of them being covered with pieces of cloth—once white, but now dirty gray, as if they had been soiled with clammy hands for weeks or months. Nor were these signs, though unmistakeable to even the neophyte, all that there spoke with a terrible eloquence of man’s lowly destiny upon earth; ay, and of man’s pride too, even that pride of science which makes such a fool of him in the very midst of the evidences of his corruption; for although the windows were opened a little way, the choking air, thick with gases which, in other circumstances, the free wind carries off to dissipate and purify in the storm, pressed heavily upon the lungs, so that even the uninitiated shrank with unfeigned feeling, as if he shuddered under an awe that was perfectly foreign to his rough nature.

“Sure, and I’m among the dead,” said the man, whom the reader will have discovered to be an Irishman; “and I have something ov that kind to——”

“Sell,” added one assistant sharply, as, in his scientific ardour, he anticipated the merchant.

“Yes.”

And now the bashful man was relieved of his burden of shame, light or heavy as you please; but we verily say of some weight, as we have him at the beginning of a career which made the world ring till the echoes might have disturbed the gods, and we know that he was not otherwise without feelings pertaining to humanity; nay, we know, and shall tell, that on ONE occasion pity suffused an eye that was destined to be oftener and longer red with the fires of cruelty than was ever before in the world’s history the orb of a human being.

“And what do you give for wun?” he whispered, as he sidled up to the ear of the young anatomist who had been speaking to him.

“Sometimes as high as £10.”

And for certain, if the student had been curious enough to estimate the effect of such words upon such a man, to whom “ten pennies” would have been words of inspiration, he would have seen in that eye, no longer dull and muddy, the first access of that demon mammon, as by the touch upon the heart it raised the first pulses of a fever which was to grow and grow, till it dried up into a parched and senseless thing the fountain of pity; for, however inoperative, we are bound to say it was still there, as if abiding God’s judgments—and transform one nature altogether into another—for a purpose.

“And wouldn’t you give a pound more for a fresh wun?” said he, with that intoxication of hope which sometimes makes a beggar play with a new-born fortune.

“Sometimes more and sometimes less,” replied the other; “but ‘the thing’ must always be seen.”

“And by my sowl it is a good thing, and worth the money any how.”

“Where is it?”

“At home.”

“Then if you will bring it here about ten it will be examined, and you will get your money; and since you are a beginner, I may tell you, you had better bring it in a box.”

“And have we not a tea-chest all ready, which howlds it nate, and will not my friend help me to bring it?”

“Well, mind the hour, and be upon your guard that no one sees you.”

And so the man, however much an adult in the common immorality of the world, in this singular crime as yet an infant, left to complete his sale of merchandise. It would not be easy to figure his thoughts,—perhaps more difficult to estimate his feelings,—yet it might be for good that we could analyse these states of the mind, which are nought other than diseases, that we might apply the cure which God has vouchsafed to our keeping; even as that student strove to inquire into the secrets of the body, that he might learn how to deal with the living frame when it is out of order, or, perhaps, hastening to a premature dissolution.

That man was William Burke, and we say this as a historian might have said, that man was Alexander of Macedon, or that Julius Caesar, or that Napoleon—all equally great, or at least great with the difference that the first as yet only desecrated the temple for money, and the others took from it the deity for ambition. Ay, and with this difference also, which time was to shew, that while there have been many slaughtering kings, there never was but one William Burke.