of my aunt precluded all hope of getting her statement recalled. I felt
a horrible load upon my heart, and gasped for breath. The thought that I
had _already_ allowed to pass the proper opportunity of stating the
truth burned my brain with the pain of a seething iron. The force of
truth was strong in me, and I struggled at this late period to tell all
that had occurred; but, when I looked up in the face of my malicious
tormentor, I could not speak, and I now felt that those sensibilities
which made me so exquisitely alive to the sense of virtue had become my
enemies. The thought of being suspected--and my confession that the
jewels were in my trunk would amount almost to a conviction--seemed
worse than death in its direst form; yet I essayed again and again to
tell the truth, and still I failed to pronounce one intelligible word of
explanation. Mrs Ball, finding me recovered, left me, as she said, with
her accustomed satire, to the attentions of Augustus Merling, who at
that moment entered the room with the surgeon. He was delighted to see
me recovered, and asked me, in tones that sounded in my ears more
grating than risped iron, how I felt. I answered, with difficulty, that
I was better. The doctor gave me some stimulant, and he and Augustus sat
down by my side, talking on the subject of the sudden change that had
taken place in my aunt's disease, which no one had thought fatal. I sat
silent, and expected every moment that Augustus would have mentioned
something regarding the statement made by my aunt in reference to her
jewels; but he never approached the subject--a circumstance which seemed
to me extraordinary; for it was impossible, I thought, that so striking
an incident could have escaped his memory; and as the presence of the
doctor could form no reason (but rather the opposite) against a
recurrence to the subject in his presence, I thought I had grounds for
supposing that my presence formed the cause. The moment this thought
entered my mind, I shook throughout my whole system. The question rose
incessantly upon me, Why does my presence prevent him from disclosing so
startling and important a circumstance? The answer appeared plain and
simple--Because he suspects me. At the time these thoughts were passing
through my mind, my eye caught again my trunk, and I now saw very
plainly, from the position of the key, which, having been handled
carelessly, was hanging from the keyhole, that some one had been there.
I recollected that, when my aunt grew worse, I ran to her, and left the
key in the lock, and now suspected that Mrs Ball had opened it while I
was in a state of insensibility. As I fixed my eye on the trunk, I heard
Augustus stop in the middle of a sentence; and, turning upon him a
timid, furtive glance, I thought I saw him look at me earnestly, with a
different expression of countenance from any I had ever yet seen him
assume. The doctor seemed to notice the break in the conversation, and
to take it as a hint to retire, which he did almost immediately, to the
great increase of my misery. I was now left alone with Augustus, and my
whole mind became, as it were, concentrated in my ear, to hear him break
the subject which had become so awfully interesting to me. I was silent,
and he, too, apparently, was inclined to be gloomy--a state of mind so
inconsistent with the usual habitudes of a spirit ever in the
contemplation of the fair side of human nature, that I looked upon it as
inauspicious. I had forgotten entirely--so completely was my mind
absorbed by the frightful subject before me--that he might respect the
sorrow incident to my situation, and hold it too sacred for an abrupt
and officious condolence. At length the soft accents of sympathy stole
from his lips; and had they been as "the ointment of spikenard," they
would have aggravated my pain; for he avoided--it appeared to me
studiously--all reference to the conduct of my aunt. I knew not what
words to use in my inane replies; and the more studiously he seemed to
avoid the subject, the more difficult, the more certainly impossible, I
felt the task of approaching it myself. I felt now, more heavily than
when in the presence of Mrs Ball, the weight of the _time_ that had
already been allowed to elapse without an explanation; and every minute
that passed added to it immeasurably. My aunt's statement, standing
alone, was powerful, almost insuperable; but, joined to the lapse of
time between the charge and the denial--for what could it be now but a
denial?--it would appear to be proof strong as holy writ. All this I
felt with such soul-prostrating effect, that every effort I made to
broach the subject was strangled in my throat, by the sympathetic power
of a heart loaded with the shame of a suspicion that _never_ could be
disproved. In addition to all this, what I had already suffered had
produced indications of a coming accession of my nervous affections; and
thus overcome by shame, terror, and physical debility, I sat beside my
comforter as one in whose ears are knelling the strokes of the hour of
execution.
Augustus rose to depart; and, at this moment, his mother, who had been
occupied dressing the dead body, came in to ascertain how I was. She
looked wistfully at me as I sat pale and trembling, and I thought I saw
her motion to Augustus to leave us together. He went out, and shortly
after, my fit came upon me, and retained me in its ruthless grasp for a
considerable period. I never had recovered from an attack to a
perception of such realities as were now before me; and the more
conscious I became, the more dreadful seemed my condition. My first
thoughts were directed to the speech of Mrs Merling; and I soon found
that she too avoided making the slightest allusion to my aunt's
death-bed declaration. If the circumstance was strange in Augustus, it
was more so in his mother, a female, not so apt to be forgetful of a
matter where curiosity might have been expected to be roused to the
highest pitch. I was now more and more convinced that both acted from a
sense of delicacy towards me, on whom the whole weight of the suspicion
of my aunt's declaration doubtless rested. I felt the same load on my
breast as before--the same difficulty to approach the fearful subject;
but now my energies were overcome by another cause, for the moment I
began to struggle with myself, with a view to overcome the choking
impediment presented to a declaration, I was attacked by my nervous
ailment, and laid senseless in the arms of my friend. This occurred
several times within an hour, at the end of which period--with the fatal
secret still in my bosom--I was so overcome with misery and pain, that I
was obliged to be consigned to my night-couch.
I lay for several days in a state of weakness, which was continued by
occasional attacks of my complaint, by the weight of the peculiar misery
with which I was affected, and, by the disturbing effects of horrid
dreams, the consequence of the states of both my mind and body. These
last assumed often the character of nightmare, in which the form of my
aunt was always (though dreadfully distorted) apparent among others;
but, dreadful as these were, I would have borne all their weight, and
endured all their agony, rather than have suffered what always awaited
me when I succeeded in wrenching my consciousness out of the grasp of
the nocturnal fiend. Mrs Merling attended me, and Augustus was incessant
in his requests to know how I was. My aunt was, in the meantime, buried;
and Mrs Merling, who communicated to me the intelligence, seated herself
by my bedside, with the view, apparently, of opening to me some subject
that lay near her heart. I looked at her and trembled.
"Martha," said she, "I am going to speak to you on a subject of great
delicacy; and it is because I know you are possessed of as much good
sense as generous feeling, that I will take the liberty of doing it
after the manner of a friend."
She paused, and looked at me, as if her heart had been overpowered with
pity. I expected now the long-dreaded announcement, and lay motionless,
almost senseless, to hear the pronunciation of my doom.
"Your aunt was no sooner laid under the ground," began Mrs Merling,
"than her heir-at-law--who is, as you know, your uncle by the mother's
side, James Battie, one of the worst men that our part of the country
has ever seen--came and demanded possession of the house, with the
articles therein; to all which, and indeed to everything which belonged
to the good old lady, he has an undoubted right, seeing that she left no
will. The keys are accordingly to be delivered this evening to his
agent, who, by the by, is Mr George Ball, and who has likely been
selected in consequence of his having acted in that capacity for your
aunt, and therefore acquainted with her concerns. Every lock and drawer
in the other parts of the house was sealed up before the funeral; and it
was only on the representation that you were lying here in a state of
distress, that this room has not been entered. It is therefore necessary
that you remove from this house this evening; and as I and my son know
you have no home, no friends, and, I fear, no means, we have resolved to
take from you no denial to our request that you permit yourself to be
removed to our house, where, allow me to say, my dear Martha, I hope to
see you in the character of a respected and beloved daughter-in-law."
This announcement satisfied me that neither Mrs Merling nor her son had
any suspicions of my being possessed of my aunt's jewels; and, so far as
regarded these individuals, I had no reason for the apprehensions that
had assailed me; but alas! how long could they remain in that state of
mind, when, as it had appeared, Mrs Ball's son was appointed the
attorney of the heir-at-law? That fact appeared decisive of my ruin. I
could not contemplate the probable evils that might result from it,
without exposing myself to the danger of another fit of my ailment; and
making an effort to reply suitably to Mrs Merling, I, with great
difficulty, rose and got myself dressed, and removed with my trunks to
the residence of my new benefactress, where I might have enjoyed all the
happiness of which my nature was capable of, had I not taken with me the
burden that still pressed upon my heart. Augustus seemed to realise some
fond dream in having me under his mother's roof as his intended wife. He
renewed our former studies and conversations; wooed my heart, in many
forms, and with numerous allurements, to the calm, virtuous enjoyments
of love; and seemed to make a total sacrifice of himself, his pursuits
and feelings, to the reclamation of me to my wonted participation in his
sentiments, and sympathy with his high-souled aspirations. These
benefits, this worship, that offer of happiness, only tended to render
me from hour to hour more incapable to unburden to him my mind. The
burden pressed upon me with the weight and horror of an incubus. I
forced myself repeatedly from the presence of him I loved above all
earthly things, and wept in my closet over a fate which held before my
eyes a fair heaven, imparted the capabilities of enjoying it, and the
burning wish to reach it--and yet guarded it with a demon whose visage
was the chosen birthplace of terror. My struggles to impart the
intelligence had become weaker and weaker, as the lapse of time rendered
any declaration I could make less and less worthy of credit. If I had
had the feeling of guilt, I would have naturally taken means, by
removing the articles, to avoid detection; but, filled though I was with
the forebodings of ruin and shame, none of the ordinary means of
avoiding my fate ever occurred to me; and, though they had, my mind,
filled with pure and elevated sentiments, would have shrank aghast at
the devices of guilt.
What I had already suffered produced such an effect upon me, that I was
reduced to the condition of a sickly, lingering creature, destitute of
the sustaining power that enables the most wretched of mortals to
support their existence, and continue on this stage of crime and misery.
Even my cherished views of the grace and beauty of my favourite ethics
ceased to yield me any pleasure; all my thoughts, hopes, and feelings
were absorbed by the one great and ever-present conviction, that I was
liable to be suspected--nay, proved--a robber; and every ring of the
door-bell sounded in my ears as the prelude to my ruin. My condition was
soon noticed by the solicitude of my benefactors, who, by inviting
company to the house, endeavoured to drive away what they termed my
sorrow for my aunt. Mrs Ball and Anne Ball were of these parties. They
looked at me as if they enjoyed some signal triumph; and though, by
crouching into the corner of the room, I tried to avoid them, they
seemed to take a delight in following me, and contrasting the hilarity
of their joy with the gloom of my melancholy. Shall I ever forget the
looks of these women? When shall their words fade from my ear? Anne Ball
put a question to me--Why did I not wear my aunt's diamond necklace? I
swooned, and was carried out. What a night was that!
In the morning I forced myself to the breakfast table, though I could
scarcely walk that length. Augustus had, for several hours, been
studying some portions of Plato, where that philosopher, as he said,
arrays, in the most beautiful language of any nation on earth, the most
exalted ideas of man's capabilities in the great field of
heaven-directed virtue that ever fired the brain of the philosophic
philanthropist. Ill as I was, I listened to his description of what he
had read; but every word was a dagger whose hilt was set with rubies,
whose point sought my heart. The thrilling and swelling emotions which
would, at one time, have obeyed the sounds of his voice, attuned to such
music of moral spheres, seemed to fall back upon my heart and suffocate
me. The bell of the outer door now rang with considerable vehemence, and
I heard the steps of several individuals enter. I thought I heard my own
name mentioned, and shortly the step of one person, the others
apparently remaining below, was heard upon the stair. The parlour-door
opened, and George Ball, holding in his hand a paper, stood before us.
He bowed to Augustus and his mother; but to me he threw only the glance
of a cunning, triumphant eye. My heart was still; every muscle,
voluntary and involuntary, seemed bound up in the grasp of a spasm; and
freezing fear, in place of breath, when my lungs played not, sustained
me as a statue is sustained. George Ball spoke--
"I trouble your family this morning, Mr Merling, on a matter of
business. I hold in my hand a warrant of the sheriff to search the
repositories of Miss Martha Ballingal, resident in your house, for
certain jewels of great value, which belonged to Mrs Greville, her aunt,
and an inventory of which was found in the empty box where the articles
were deposited. Mrs Greville, as you and your mother both know, declared
on her death-bed that she had been robbed of these jewels; there was
another witness who heard the same declaration; and the empty box, with
the inventory, corroborated the statement of Mrs Greville, who, indeed,
could not have been wrong in a matter which so nearly concerned herself.
Now, the heir-at-law has good reason to suppose that these jewels, and
particularly a diamond necklace, several pearl ones, and a number of
loose jewels, all as set forth in the inventory, are in the trunks of
Miss Ballingal; and the sheriff has accordingly granted a warrant for
the purpose of having her repositories examined. I have stated these
things to you at once, because the lady is under your protection, and I
would not have conceived it fair to search lockfast places in your
house, without first making this intimation to you personally."
Augustus looked at George Ball for some moments without speaking. He had
been taken by surprise, and the communication had roused in him such a
conflict of feelings, that he was entirely unmanned. A short time
brought him to the power of a reply. Mrs Merling sat as one entranced. I
was still able to maintain my position, but was ready to fall at a
single turn of this extraordinary ceremony.
"We were aware, sir," replied Augustus, "that Mrs Greville had lost or
been robbed of her jewels, because we heard her declare so; but, in duty
to the feelings of Miss Ballingal, who is beyond suspicion, we have
refrained from alluding to the subject, until some light should be
thrown upon the manner in which the articles were carried off. The
repositories of the maid should have been searched. As to Miss
Ballingal, that lady, I will take upon me to say, will cheerfully lay
hers open to your inspection."
I heard no more that I could understand. A confused sound of men's
voices, and of their feet passing and repassing, fell on my ear, and
stifled screams of a female mixed at times with them, and died away into
hollow moans. I do not know what time elapsed; but I found myself in my
own apartment alone. I tried to lift myself up and look around. My
trunks were open; the place where the jewels had been was ransacked; the
jewels themselves were gone. I went to the door, and tried to open it;
but it was locked, and the rough voice of a man answered by requesting
me to remain quiet. It was not the voice of Augustus or of George Ball.
I had never heard it before. Presently the door was opened with a loud
noise, and three men entered. They threw a shawl over me, and placed on
my head my bonnet, which was lying near me; for they said that I was
unable to do these offices for myself. They took hold of my arms, and
proceeded to direct me outwards. I passed through the room where we had
been breakfasting. Mrs Merling sat in one corner, with a handkerchief
over her face, and loud sobs burst from her. Augustus had buried his
face in his hands, and I heard heavy groans forcing themselves from his
convulsed bosom, in spite of all his efforts to restrain them. They
never looked at me. A feeble cry of "Augustus!" came involuntarily from
me as I was hurried forward, and I could see his hand waving as if he
disowned me in sorrow. In a few minutes more, I was lodged in a prison.
The cell to which I was consigned was dark and loathsome, as all Scotch
jails then were, and as many of them still are. A small grating looked
out into a yard, where sick debtors were allowed space to walk. A small
stream of light came in at this aperture, and exhibited to me all the
horrors of my place of confinement--the pallet of straw, a broken chair,
and fragments of iron chains, which had been used for the purpose of
binding felons. I cannot describe what I felt, as my eye glanced, in the
dim light of the cell, over these articles; yet they added nothing to my
pain. I may even say with truth, that they had rather the power of
diminishing it--the lowest condition of despair sometimes drawing from
an additional evil a species of frozen insensibility, which is felt as a
relief. For two or three days I scarcely moved; my meat lay by the side
of my pallet, and I saw crowds of hungry rats come and eat of
it--fighting with each other over the vessel, and turning, at times, and
looking at me, apparently without terror. The sight of these creatures
at one time would have made me fly and scream, from an involuntary fear
of them, to which I had all my life been subject; but I now sat and
looked at them with apathy, though they approached so near to me that I
could have seized them with my extended hand. This fit of inanity
gradually wore off; but it was succeeded by a condition a thousand times
more fearful; for, as if the restrained blood had obeyed some impulse
of reacting nature, my veins began to beat violently, my temples
throbbed, and the thoughts that had been frozen or fixed in one gloomy
direction began to career violently--touching all subjects in their
progress; retracing every painful circumstance of my lot; contrasting my
former happiness with my present misery; foreshadowing my trial, my
condemnation, my execution or banishment; and then, again, mixing up a
thousand images, leaving me in a state of wild confusion, incapable of
distinguishing one thing from another. This was the beginning of a
fever. I was insensible for many days--had been bled and
blistered--despaired of--and recovered from the brink of death, to meet
a fate a thousand times more dreadful. My trial, as I understood, was
put off until I should be in a condition to be able to sit upright in
the dock. When I became able to speak, I was waited on by a man of the
law. I knew not who sent him, but suspected that he came at the bidding
of Augustus, who probably thought I might yet be brought off. I told the
man the truth; and requested him to ascertain whether my aunt was in her
senses when she made the declaration on her death-bed. He answered, that
he had already made inquiries on that subject, but that none of the
witnesses would admit that she was otherwise than sane; and the
circumstance of her having been on her death-bed militated against me.
He seemed to pity me, but held out no hope. I asked to have one meeting
with Augustus, but knew not whether my message reached him. He never
came; and I had no relatives to take a part for me in my defence.
The day of trial came; and I was removed in a carriage to the
justice-hall, and placed at the bar. No one could have known me. I was
the mere ghost of what I was; and would have fallen from my seat, had I
not been supported by two officers who sat by my side. I answered the
judge's question of guilty or not guilty without rising, according to
custom; and the words were no sooner out of my mouth, than I fainted.
When I recovered, the trial had begun. The sound of the witnesses'
voices seemed to come to me through some other medium than the ear; for,
though seemingly unconscious, I yet heard. Mrs Ball appeared, and swore
to the statement of Mrs Greville. The maid-servant identified the
jewels. Augustus Merling was put into the witness-box. He spoke the
truth--what he had heard my aunt declare. His mother was also there, and
she spoke the truth--what she had heard my aunt declare. What availed my
story against such evidence? What jury could hesitate on a point so
clear? I was condemned, and sentenced to transportation beyond seas for
seven years; but my sentence was commuted for a year's imprisonment. How
I bore that--where I have lived since my release--under what name, what
privations, what agency, what madness--is it necessary for me to say?
Twenty years have passed; and I am still a living, sensitive being. I
have seen the children of Anne Ball and Augustus Merling, and I have
also seen their parents, though they knew me not. O God! when shall I be
relieved?
Such is the narrative of Miss Ballingal. I have no reason to think she
was ever righted. I saw her die. I believe in the expression of an eye
fixed on a world of spirits. I have also often seen a smile of triumph
as the soul fluttered to depart.
THE WARNING.
Among the inhabitants of Blackenburn, which was once the scene of some
incidents in the following story, Nanny Ferly was perhaps the most
extraordinary. If man, woman, or child had caught a cold of a week's
standing, she never failed to discover a strong similarity between their
case and the case of some one else who had died of consumption. Whether
the complaint were toothache, or headache, or heartache, she seemed
always certain that the symptoms were fatal; though sometimes she rather
left people to infer the truth from certain significant hints which she
gave them, than told it plain out. Upon these occasions, she would shake
her head, turn up her eyes, groan audibly, and say, "Ay, ay, a fever
often begins that way; and I've kenned mony a ane carried to their end
by a sma' beginning." She believed as firmly in the existence of ghosts,
wraiths, warnings before death, and, in short, all sorts of supernatural
agency, as she believed in the truth of her Bible; and in these, along
with her talk of "illnesses," "deaths," and "burials" (births and
baptisms were not among her favourite subjects), she found the means of
satisfying the craving of a morbid appetite for excitement, which she
possessed in an eminent degree.
In the house which stood next to Nanny's lived Nelly Jackson, who was
rather a shrewd, thinking woman, and in some respects the very
antithesis of the former. She had brought her husband four children,
most of whom were grown up. They had, however, upon several occasions,
been seriously indisposed; but their mother, who already knew Nanny's
propensity for peopling the other world, and who, with a creditable
degree of penetration, guessed the effect which the ominous shake of her
head, and her usual "ay, ay," were likely to have upon the mind of a
distressed person, carefully prevented her from getting to their
presence while they were ill; and though Nanny did not fail to foretell
their fate, in her usual significant way, among her other neighbours, by
some mistake they all recovered. Nanny accounted herself not only
neglected but insulted, by not being allowed to exercise her benevolence
in visiting the sick at all seasons; Nelly, on the other hand, having
seen her predictions falsified in the case of her own children, began to
doubt that neither her foresight nor her piety were superior to those of
others; she even ventured to speak rather slightingly of both, affirming
that "nothing gave Nanny greater pleasure than to see her neighbours
dying;" which speeches were borne to the ears of Nanny; and thus, though
they neither came to fistycuffs nor high words, there was little love
between them.
Next to Nelly, on the other side, lived Margaret M'Kenzie, her husband,
and a daughter, whose name was Mary. Margaret was an honest,
industrious, and, in most respects, a sensible woman; but, from the
circumstance of having been accustomed to listen to it for a length of
time, her neighbour Nanny's belief in the preternatural had acquired a
considerable ascendency in her mind, and often influenced her thoughts;
so that she might be regarded as a sort of medium between the two
characters already described. She had born to her husband a son and a
daughter; the former of whom had learned a trade and left them: but
Mary, who when young was rather a delicate girl, had always been kept at
home. To accommodate and keep her as comfortable as possible, a small
apartment, with a chimney and a back window, had been fitted up in the
_ben end_ of the house; and in this little sanctum, besides assisting
her mother with the household concerns, she had earned her own
subsistence with her needle for several years. Her constitution, of
late, however, had greatly improved; and at nineteen--the time at which
our story commences--she was a healthy, handsome, and, upon the whole,
rather a good-looking young woman.