Her air, her manners, all who saw admired,
Courteous, though coy, and gentle, though retired;
The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed;
And ease of heart her every look conveyed.
Crabbe.
The visits of the Laird thus again sunk into matters of ordinary course,
from which nothing was to be expected or apprehended. If a lover could
have gained a fair one as a snake is said to fascinate a bird, by
pertinaciously gazing on her with great stupid greenish eyes, which began
now to be occasionally aided by spectacles, unquestionably Dumbiedikes
would have been the person to perform the feat. But the art of
fascination seems among the _artes perditae,_ and I cannot learn that
this most pertinacious of starers produced any effect by his attentions
beyond an occasional yawn.
In the meanwhile, the object of his gaze was gradually attaining the
verge of youth, and approaching to what is called in females the middle
age, which is impolitely held to begin a few years earlier with their
more fragile sex than with men. Many people would have been of opinion,
that the Laird would have done better to have transferred his glances to
an object possessed of far superior charms to Jeanie's, even when
Jeanie's were in their bloom, who began now to be distinguished by all
who visited the cottage at St. Leonard's Crags.
Effie Deans, under the tender and affectionate care of her sister, had
now shot up into a beautiful and blooming girl. Her Grecian shaped head
was profusely rich in waving ringlets of brown hair, which, confined by a
blue snood of silk, and shading a laughing Hebe countenance, seemed the
picture of health, pleasure, and contentment. Her brown russet short-gown
set off a shape, which time, perhaps, might be expected to render too
robust, the frequent objection to Scottish beauty, but which, in her
present early age, was slender and taper, with that graceful and easy
sweep of outline which at once indicates health and beautiful proportion
of parts.
These growing charms, in all their juvenile profusion, had no power to
shake the steadfast mind, or divert the fixed gaze of the constant Laird
of Dumbiedikes. But there was scarce another eye that could behold this
living picture of health and beauty, without pausing on it with pleasure.
The traveller stopped his weary horse on the eve of entering the city
which was the end of his journey, to gaze at the sylph-like form that
tripped by him, with her milk-pail poised on her head, bearing herself so
erect, and stepping so light and free under her burden, that it seemed
rather an ornament than an encumbrance. The lads of the neighbouring
suburb, who held their evening rendezvous for putting the stone, casting
the hammer, playing at long bowls, and other athletic exercises, watched
the motions of Effie Deans, and contended with each other which should
have the good fortune to attract her attention. Even the rigid
Presbyterians of her father's persuasion, who held each indulgence of the
eye and sense to be a snare at least if not a crime, were surprised into
a moment's delight while gazing on a creature so exquisite,--instantly
checked by a sigh, reproaching at once their own weakness, and mourning
that a creature so fair should share in the common and hereditary guilt
and imperfection of our nature, which she deserved as much by her
guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon
loveliness of face and person.
Yet there were points in Effie's character which gave rise not only to
strange doubt and anxiety on the part of Douce David Deans, whose ideas
were rigid, as may easily be supposed, upon the subject of youthful
amusements, but even of serious apprehension to her more indulgent
sister. The children of the Scotch of the inferior classes are usually
spoiled by the early indulgence of their parents; how, wherefore, and to
what degree, the lively and instructive narrative of the amiable and
accomplished authoress of "Glenburnie"* has saved me and all future
scribblers the trouble of recording.
* [The late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.]
Effie had had a double share of this inconsiderate and misjudged
kindness. Even the strictness of her father's principles could not
condemn the sports of infancy and childhood; and to the good old man, his
younger daughter, the child of his old age, seemed a child for some years
after she attained the years of womanhood, was still called the "bit
lassie," and "little Effie," and was permitted to run up and down
uncontrolled, unless upon the Sabbath, or at the times of family worship.
Her sister, with all the love and care of a mother, could not be supposed
to possess the same authoritative influence; and that which she had
hitherto exercised became gradually limited and diminished as Effie's
advancing years entitled her, in her own conceit at least, to the right
of independence and free agency. With all the innocence and goodness of
disposition, therefore, which we have described, the Lily of St.
Leonard's possessed a little fund of self-conceit and obstinacy, and some
warmth and irritability of temper, partly natural perhaps, but certainly
much increased by the unrestrained freedom of her childhood. Her
character will be best illustrated by a cottage evening scene.
The careful father was absent in his well-stocked byre, foddering those
useful and patient animals on whose produce his living depended, and the
summer evening was beginning to close in, when Jeanie Deans began to be
very anxious for the appearance of her sister, and to fear that she would
not reach home before her father returned from the labour of the evening,
when it was his custom to have "family exercise," and when she knew that
Effie's absence would give him the most serious displeasure. These
apprehensions hung heavier upon her mind, because, for several preceding
evenings, Effie had disappeared about the same time, and her stay, at
first so brief as scarce to be noticed, had been gradually protracted to
half-an-hour, and an hour, and on the present occasion had considerably
exceeded even this last limit. And now, Jeanie stood at the door, with
her hand before her eyes to avoid the rays of the level sun, and looked
alternately along the various tracks which led towards their dwelling, to
see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister. There was a
wall and a stile which separated the royal domain, or King's Park, as it
is called, from the public road; to this pass she frequently directed her
attention, when she saw two persons appear there somewhat suddenly, as if
they had walked close by the side of the wall to screen themselves from
observation. One of them, a man, drew back hastily; the other, a female,
crossed the stile, and advanced towards her--It was Effie. She met her
sister with that affected liveliness of manner, which, in her rank, and
sometimes in those above it, females occasionally assume to hide surprise
or confusion; and she carolled as she came--
"The elfin knight sate on the brae,
The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair;
And by there came lilting a lady so gay,
And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair."
"Whisht, Effie," said her sister; "our father's coming out o' the byre."
--The damsel stinted in her song.--"Whare hae ye been sae late at e'en?"
"It's no late, lass," answered Effie.
"It's chappit eight on every clock o' the town, and the sun's gaun down
ahint the Corstorphine hills--Whare can ye hae been sae late?"
"Nae gate," answered Effie.
"And wha was that parted wi' you at the stile?"
"Naebody," replied Effie once more.
"Nae gate?--Naebody?--I wish it may be a right gate, and a right body,
that keeps folk out sae late at e'en, Effie."
"What needs ye be aye speering then at folk?" retorted Effie. "I'm sure,
if ye'll ask nae questions, I'll tell ye nae lees. I never ask what
brings the Laird of Dumbiedikes glowering here like a wull-cat (only his
een's greener, and no sae gleg), day after day, till we are a' like to
gaunt our charts aft."
"Because ye ken very weel he comes to see our father," said Jeanie, in
answer to this pert remark.
"And Dominie Butler--Does he come to see our father, that's sae taen wi'
his Latin words?" said Effie, delighted to find that by carrying the war
into the enemy's country, she could divert the threatened attack upon
herself, and with the petulance of youth she pursued her triumph over her
prudent elder sister. She looked at her with a sly air, in which there
was something like irony, as she chanted, in a low but marked tone, a
scrap of an old Scotch song--
"Through the kirkyard
I met wi' the Laird,
The silly puir body he said me nae harm;
But just ere 'twas dark,
I met wi' the clerk"
Here the songstress stopped, looked full at her sister, and, observing
the tears gather in her eyes, she suddenly flung her arms round her neck,
and kissed them away. Jeanie, though hurt and displeased, was unable to
resist the caresses of this untaught child of nature, whose good and evil
seemed to flow rather from impulse than from reflection. But as she
returned the sisterly kiss, in token of perfect reconciliation, she could
not suppress the gentle reproof--"Effie, if ye will learn fule sangs, ye
might make a kinder use of them."
"And so I might, Jeanie," continued the girl, clinging to her sister's
neck; "and I wish I had never learned ane o' them--and I wish we had
never come here--and I wish my tongue had been blistered or I had vexed
ye."
"Never mind that, Effie," replied the affectionate sister; "I canna be
muckle vexed wi' ony thing ye say to me--but O, dinna vex our father!"
"I will not--I will not," replied Effie; "and if there were as mony
dances the morn's night as there are merry dancers in the north firmament
on a frosty e'en, I winna budge an inch to gang near ane o' them."
"Dance!" echoed Jeanie Deans in astonishment. "O Effie, what could take
ye to a dance?"
It is very possible, that, in the communicative mood into which the Lily
of St. Leonard's was now surprised, she might have given her sister her
unreserved confidence, and saved me the pain of telling a melancholy
tale; but at the moment the word dance was uttered, it reached the ear of
old David Deans, who had turned the corner of the house, and came upon
his daughters ere they were aware of his presence. The word _prelate,_ or
even the word _pope,_ could hardly have produced so appalling an effect
upon David's ear; for, of all exercises, that of dancing, which he termed
a voluntary and regular fit of distraction, he deemed most destructive of
serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness;
and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or
meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic
and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of
the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath. The
pronouncing of the word _dance_ by his own daughters, and at his own
door, now drove him beyond the verge of patience. "Dance!" he exclaimed.
"Dance!--dance, said ye? I daur ye, limmers that ye are, to name sic a
word at my door-cheek! It's a dissolute profane pastime, practised by the
Israelites only at their base and brutal worship of the Golden Calf at
Bethel, and by the unhappy lass wha danced aff the head of John the
Baptist, upon whilk chapter I will exercise this night for your farther
instruction, since ye need it sae muckle, nothing doubting that she has
cause to rue the day, lang or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a
limb on sic an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and
carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than
to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae
often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose,
should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and
fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter
Walker the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing
days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift
bullet, and trenchant swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and
hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my head, and the
wantonness of my feet.
* Note F. Peter Walker.
And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as name dancing, or
think there's sic a thing in this warld as flinging to fiddler's sounds,
and piper's springs, as sure as my father's spirit is with the just, ye
shall be no more either charge or concern of mine! Gang in, then--gang
in, then, hinnies," he added, in a softer tone, for the tears of both
daughters, but especially those of Effie, began to flow very fast,--"Gang
in, dears, and we'll seek grace to preserve us frae all, manner of
profane folly, whilk causeth to sin, and promoteth the kingdom of
darkness, warring with the kingdom of light."
The objurgation of David Deans, however well meant, was unhappily timed.
It created a division of feelings in Effie's bosom, and deterred her from
her intended confidence in her sister. "She wad hand me nae better than
the dirt below her feet," said Effie to herself, "were I to confess I hae
danced wi' him four times on the green down by, and ance at Maggie
Macqueens's; and she'll maybe hing it ower my head that she'll tell my
father, and then she wad be mistress and mair. But I'll no gang back
there again. I'm resolved I'll no gang back. I'll lay in a leaf of my
Bible,* and that's very near as if I had made an aith, that I winna gang
back."
* This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the party's Bible,
when a solemn resolution is formed, is still held to be, in some sense,
an appeal to Heaven for his or her sincerity.
And she kept her vow for a week, during which she was unusually cross and
fretful, blemishes which had never before been observed in her temper,
except during a moment of contradiction.
There was something in all this so mysterious as considerably to alarm
the prudent and affectionate Jeanie, the more so as she judged it unkind
to her sister to mention to their father grounds of anxiety which might
arise from her own imagination. Besides, her respect for the good old man
did not prevent her from being aware that he was both hot-tempered and
positive, and she sometimes suspected that he carried his dislike to
youthful amusements beyond the verge that religion and reason demanded.
Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden and severe curb upon her
sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather productive of harm
than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of youth, was
likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an
excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes,
a damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, and
subject to the surveillance of mammas and chaperons; but the country
girl, who snatches her moment of gaiety during the intervals of labour,
is under no such guardianship or restraint, and her amusement becomes so
much the more hazardous. Jeanie saw all this with much distress of mind,
when a circumstance occurred which appeared calculated to relieve her
anxiety.
Mrs. Saddletree, with whom our readers have already been made acquainted,
chanced to be a distant relation of Douce David Deans, and as she was a
woman orderly in her life and conversation, and, moreover, of good
substance, a sort of acquaintance was formally kept up between the
families. Now, this careful dame, about a year and a half before our
story commences, chanced to need, in the line of her profession, a better
sort of servant, or rather shop-woman. "Mr. Saddletree," she said, "was
never in the shop when he could get his nose within the Parliament House,
and it was an awkward thing for a woman-body to be standing among bundles
o' barkened leather her lane, selling saddles and bridles; and she had
cast her eyes upon her far-awa cousin Effie Deans, as just the very sort
of lassie she would want to keep her in countenance on such occasions."
In this proposal there was much that pleased old David,--there was bed,
board, and bountith--it was a decent situation--the lassie would be under
Mrs. Saddletree's eye, who had an upright walk, and lived close by the
Tolbooth Kirk, in which might still be heard the comforting doctrines of
one of those few ministers of the Kirk of Scotland who had not bent the
knee unto Baal, according to David's expression, or become accessory to
the course of national defections,--union, toleration, patronages, and a
bundle of prelatical Erastian oaths which had been imposed on the church
since the Revolution, and particularly in the reign of "the late woman"
(as he called Queen Anne), the last of that unhappy race of Stuarts. In
the good man's security concerning the soundness of the theological
doctrine which his daughter was to hear, he was nothing disturbed on
account of the snares of a different kind, to which a creature so
beautiful, young, and wilful, might be exposed in the centre of a
populous and corrupted city. The fact is, that he thought with so much
horror on all approaches to irregularities of the nature most to be
dreaded in such cases, that he would as soon have suspected and guarded
against Effie's being induced to become guilty of the crime of murder. He
only regretted that she should live under the same roof with such a
worldly-wise man as Bartoline Saddletree, whom David never suspected of
being an ass as he was, but considered as one really endowed with all the
legal knowledge to which he made pretension, and only liked him the worse
for possessing it. The lawyers, especially those amongst them who sate as
ruling elders in the General Assembly of the Kirk, had been forward in
promoting the measures of patronage, of the abjuration oath, and others,
which, in the opinion of David Deans, were a breaking down of the carved
work of the sanctuary, and an intrusion upon the liberties of the kirk.
Upon the dangers of listening to the doctrines of a legalised formalist,
such as Saddletree, David gave his daughter many lectures; so much so,
that he had time to touch but slightly on the dangers of chambering,
company-keeping, and promiscuous dancing, to which, at her time of life,
most people would have thought Effie more exposed, than to the risk of
theoretical error in her religious faith.
Jeanie parted from her sister with a mixed feeling of regret, and
apprehension, and hope. She could not be so confident concerning Effie's
prudence as her father, for she had observed her more narrowly, had more
sympathy with her feelings, and could better estimate the temptations to
which she was exposed. On the other hand, Mrs. Saddletree was an
observing, shrewd, notable woman, entitled to exercise over Effie the
full authority of a mistress, and likely to do so strictly, yet with
kindness. Her removal to Saddletree's, it was most probable, would also
serve to break off some idle acquaintances, which Jeanie suspected her
sister to have formed in the neighbouring suburb. Upon the whole, then,
she viewed her departure from Saint Leonard's with pleasure, and it was
not until the very moment of their parting for the first time in their
lives, that she felt the full force of sisterly sorrow. While they
repeatedly kissed each other's cheeks, and wrung each other's hands,
Jeanie took that moment of affectionate sympathy, to press upon her
sister the necessity of the utmost caution in her conduct while residing
in Edinburgh. Effie listened, without once raising her large dark
eyelashes, from which the drops fell so fast as almost to resemble a
fountain. At the conclusion she sobbed again, kissed her sister, promised
to recollect all the good counsel she had given her, and they parted.
During the first weeks, Effie was all that her kinswoman expected, and
even more. But with time there came a relaxation of that early zeal which
she manifested in Mrs. Saddletree's service. To borrow once again from
the poet, who so correctly and beautifully describes living manners:--
Something there was,--what, none presumed to say,--
Clouds lightly passing on a summer's day;
Whispers and hints, which went from ear to ear,
And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear.
During this interval, Mrs. Saddletree was sometimes displeased by Effie's
lingering when she was sent upon errands about the shop business, and
sometimes by a little degree of impatience which she manifested at being
rebuked on such occasions. But she good-naturedly allowed, that the first
was very natural to a girl to whom everything in Edinburgh was new and
the other was only the petulance of a spoiled child, when subjected to
the yoke of domestic discipline for the first time. Attention and
submission could not be learned at once--Holyrood was not built in a
day--use would make perfect.
It seemed as if the considerate old lady had presaged truly. Ere many
months had passed, Effie became almost wedded to her duties, though she
no longer discharged them with the laughing cheek and light step, which
had at first attracted every customer. Her mistress sometimes observed
her in tears, but they were signs of secret sorrow, which she concealed
as often as she saw them attract notice. Time wore on, her cheek grew
pale, and her step heavy. The cause of these changes could not have
escaped the matronly eye of Mrs. Saddletree, but she was chiefly confined
by indisposition to her bedroom for a considerable time during the latter
part of Effie's service. This interval was marked by symptoms of anguish
almost amounting to despair. The utmost efforts of the poor girl to
command her fits of hysterical agony were, often totally unavailing, and
the mistakes which she made in the shop the while, were so numerous and
so provoking that Bartoline Saddletree, who, during his wife's illness,
was obliged to take closer charge of the business than consisted with his
study of the weightier matters of the law, lost all patience with the
girl, who, in his law Latin, and without much respect to gender, he
declared ought to be cognosced by inquest of a jury, as _fatuus,
furiosus,_ and _naturaliter idiota._ Neighbours, also, and
fellow-servants, remarked with malicious curiosity or degrading pity, the
disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks, of the once beautiful and
still interesting girl. But to no one would she grant her confidence,
answering all taunts with bitter sarcasm, and all serious expostulation
with sullen denial, or with floods of tears.
At length, when Mrs. Saddletree's recovery was likely to permit her
wonted attention to the regulation of her household, Effie Deans, as if
unwilling to face an investigation made by the authority of her mistress,
asked permission of Bartoline to go home for a week or two, assigning
indisposition, and the wish of trying the benefit of repose and the
change of air, as the motives of her request. Sharp-eyed as a lynx (or
conceiving himself to be so) in the nice sharp quillits of legal
discussion, Bartoline was as dull at drawing inferences from the
occurrences of common life as any Dutch professor of mathematics. He
suffered Effie to depart without much suspicion, and without any inquiry.
It was afterwards found that a period of a week intervened betwixt her
leaving her master's house and arriving at St. Leonard's. She made her
appearance before her sister in a state rather resembling the spectre
than the living substance of the gay and beautiful girl, who had left her
father's cottage for the first time scarce seventeen months before. The
lingering illness of her mistress had, for the last few months, given her
a plea for confining herself entirely to the dusky precincts of the shop
in the Lawnmarket, and Jeanie was so much occupied, during the same
period, with the concerns of her father's household, that she had rarely
found leisure for a walk in the city, and a brief and hurried visit to
her sister. The young women, therefore, had scarcely seen each other for
several months, nor had a single scandalous surmise reached the ears of
the secluded inhabitants of the cottage at St. Leonard's. Jeanie,
therefore, terrified to death at her sister's appearance, at first
overwhelmed her with inquiries, to which the unfortunate young woman
returned for a time incoherent and rambling answers, and finally fell
into a hysterical fit. Rendered too certain of her sister's misfortune,
Jeanie had now the dreadful alternative of communicating her ruin to her
father, or of endeavouring to conceal it from him. To all questions
concerning the name or rank of her seducer, and the fate of the being to
whom her fall had given birth, Effie remained as mute as the grave, to
which she seemed hastening; and indeed the least allusion to either
seemed to drive her to distraction. Her sister, in distress and in
despair, was about to repair to Mrs. Saddletree to consult her
experience, and at the same time to obtain what lights she could upon
this most unhappy affair, when she was saved that trouble by a new stroke
of fate, which seemed to carry misfortune to the uttermost.
David Deans had been alarmed at the state of health in which his daughter
had returned to her paternal residence; but Jeanie had contrived to
divert him from particular and specific inquiry. It was therefore like a
clap of thunder to the poor old man, when, just as the hour of noon had
brought the visit of the Laird of Dumbiedikes as usual, other and
sterner, as well as most unexpected guests, arrived at the cottage of St.
Leonard's. These were the officers of justice, with a warrant of
justiciary to search for and apprehend Euphemia, or Effie Deans, accused
of the crime of child-murder. The stunning weight of a blow so totally
unexpected bore down the old man, who had in his early youth resisted the
brow of military and civil tyranny, though backed with swords and guns,
tortures and gibbets. He fell extended and senseless upon his own hearth;
and the men, happy to escape from the scene of his awakening, raised,
with rude humanity, the object of their warrant from her bed, and placed
her in a coach, which they had brought with them. The hasty remedies
which Jeanie had applied to bring back her father's senses were scarce
begun to operate, when the noise of the wheels in motion recalled her
attention to her miserable sister. To ran shrieking after the carriage
was the first vain effort of her distraction, but she was stopped by one
or two female neighbours, assembled by the extraordinary appearance of a
coach in that sequestered place, who almost forced her back to her
father's house. The deep and sympathetic affliction of these poor people,
by whom the little family at St. Leonard's were held in high regard,
filled the house with lamentation. Even Dumbiedikes was moved from his
wonted apathy, and, groping for his purse as he spoke, ejaculated,
"Jeanie, woman!--Jeanie, woman! dinna greet--it's sad wark, but siller
will help it;" and he drew out his purse as he spoke.
The old man had now raised himself from the ground, and, looking about
him as if he missed something, seemed gradually to recover the sense of
his wretchedness. "Where," he said, with a voice that made the roof ring,
"where is the vile harlot, that has disgraced the blood of an honest
man?--Where is she, that has no place among us, but has come foul with
her sins, like the Evil One, among the children of God?--Where is she,
Jeanie?--Bring her before me, that I may kill her with a word and a
look!"
All hastened around him with their appropriate sources of
consolation--the Laird with his purse, Jeanie with burnt feathers and
strong waters, and the women with their exhortations. "O neighbour--O
Mr. Deans, it's a sair trial, doubtless--but think of the Rock of Ages,
neighbour--think of the promise!"
"And I do think of it, neighbours--and I bless God that I can think of
it, even in the wrack and ruin of a' that's nearest and dearest to
me--But to be the father of a castaway--a profligate--a bloody
Zipporah--a mere murderess!--O, how will the wicked exult in the high
places of their wickedness!--the prelatists, and the latitudinarians,
and the hand-waled murderers, whose hands are hard as horn wi' handing
the slaughter-weapons--they will push out the lip, and say that we are
even such as themselves. Sair, sair I am grieved, neighbours, for the
poor castaway--for the child of mine old age--but sairer for the
stumbling-block and scandal it will be to all tender and honest souls!"
"Davie--winna siller do't?" insinuated the laird, still proffering his
green purse, which was full of guineas.
"I tell ye, Dumbiedikes," said Deans, "that if telling down my haill
substance could hae saved her frae this black snare, I wad hae walked out
wi' naething but my bonnet and my staff to beg an awmous for God's sake,
and ca'd mysell an happy man--But if a dollar, or a plack, or the
nineteenth part of a boddle, wad save her open guilt and open shame frae
open punishment, that purchase wad David Deans never make!--Na, na; an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life, blood for blood--it's
the law of man, and it's the law of God.--Leave me, sirs--leave me--I
maun warstle wi' this trial in privacy and on my knees."
Jeanie, now in some degree restored to the power of thought, joined in
the same request. The next day found the father and daughter still in the
depth of affliction, but the father sternly supporting his load of ill
through a proud sense of religious duty, and the daughter anxiously
suppressing her own feelings to avoid again awakening his. Thus was it
with the afflicted family until the morning after Porteous's death, a
period at which we are now arrived.