listen, but all was so still, even as the dead that lay around, that even
the breathing of the men sounded like strong whispers. Then away wrought
the reassured again, and anon the screwing, the jerking, the pulling, till
at last came the final pull, shewing, in the passing beam, the long white
shroud, with what it enveloped, extended on the green turf. At that moment
the whole area rang with a shout, something between a roar and a yelp, and
looking round they saw, behind a low head-stone, a tall figure in white
(of course), with its long arms tossed up as with a sudden fling. The
apparition was appalling even to men who had no more faith in ghosts than
they had in souls; and just as another toss announced the coming shout,
they took to flight, staggering as they flew over the numerous
inequalities, but making more speed under the spur of terror than ever
they had done under that of mammon. They were gone.
And now the apparition, after making some more strange movements,
proceeded to take off a white sheet, which he deliberately stuck into the
bottom of a coarse bag. Two or three giant steps brought him to the
spoiled place of rest.
"And you're there, Sarah Merrylees?" he said, in a voice sufficiently
hollow for the part he had so recently assumed. "The 'Spune' is without
its porridge this time; and shall not man live on the fruit of the earth?"
And one might have fancied there was a chuckle, as if the creature had
been satisfied with its own fun. But now came the part of this tragedy
which will for certain be scouted as the work of fiction, but which as
certainly made a part of the story. Merrylees,--for it was he, who,
having met David Cameron of the West Port on the previous night, had
learned the intention of his friends to visit Penicuik, and thereby came
to the conclusion that his presence there would be useful,--then took out
a rope, and, having gone through a process at which he was very expert, he
was soon standing by the side of the wall under his burden of Sarah
Merrylees. Nor was it long till he reached the high road, where, keeping
by the dark side of the hedge, he intended to proceed to a convenient spot
where he might leave his load till he could contrive to bring a
conveyance. He had not proceeded far when he heard the roll of the cart,
and saw his two friends alongside of it. There was no time to throw away
over the head of such an opportunity. So, depositing his burden at the
foot of the hedge, close by his side, he ran forward as far as was safe,
crying out, "Stop the robbers!"--_Nestor Graecos objurgavit_; whereupon
the terrified "Spune," with the white apparition still in his mind's eye,
fled with renewed precipitation, closely followed by Mowat, and leaving
David Cameron's cart with the donkey to whatever fate might overtake it.
The coast being thus once more clear, and being well satisfied that his
friends were too cowardly to return, he ran forward and stopped the
donkey; then returning for his burden, he carried it to the cart, wherein
he deposited it. A long sauntering journey brought him to town, where,
after going through many manoeuvres, he at last contrived to lodge his
capture in the hall of the Square.
This terrible story--which, we may add, was a favourite among the
students--was told by Merrylees, so far as pertained to him, as altogether
applicable to another body, whereby he afforded proof that there is no
hardness of heart to which man can attain that is utterly exclusive of a
spot where some permeating feeling still supplies the issues of shame.
About his part of it the "Spune" had small compunction; but, to confess
the truth, it was not till we knew what occurred afterwards that we could
bring ourselves to believe that it was possible for it to be true.
To those who know human nature, in the only proper way in which it can be
known, it is scarcely necessary to say that we are always under the
influence of that error which induces us to estimate the feelings of
others by our own. But there is something about these judgments of others
even more fallacious, in so far as it almost amounts to an impossibility
that we can, through a feeling present, fancy the total absence of it in
others. Unable to attain to a negative except in relation to the positive,
through which it is thought to be seen, we must either project in some way
the matter of our thoughts and feeling into the supposed non-existent, or
not think at all. If we could suppose a total death of the affections in
a brother as easily as the overwhelming domination of money, we would not
deny credit to this most wonderful story; but there lies the difficulty,
and you must get out of it the best way you can. Even if you don't succumb
in despair, you are far still from the Court of Cacus, so soon to be
opened to you by a pen, even as hell was opened to Virgil by the golden
_ramus_.
Resumption of the Great Drama.
The man whom, in our first chapter, we described as a neophyte, left the
students with his bashfulness, if we can so call it, supplied by
confidence. The power which we have already seen making such havoc among
feelings and affections deemed all but ineradicable, had produced the
first thrill in a heart long since dead to the pulses of pity. We may say
so much, that his life, prior to this day--when there opened to him a
vista through which he could see, amidst moving furies, the illuminated
figure of mammon, with the means of getting money without hard labour--had
been little else all through than a wrestle with poverty, often
degenerating into squalid misery; and we may thus estimate the state of
his mind, under the new-born hope of what, to such a man, might have the
appearance of a small fortune.
But even with the view which the information given him by the students
opened up of a new means of making money, we are not entitled to suppose
that, as he that night directed his steps to the Cowgate with the
intention of reaching the lodgings which he occupied in the West Port, he
had any prevision of the extent to which this new pursuit would lead him.
His expectations could only, as yet, be limited to the acquisition _in
some way_ of those objects required in the halls of the Square, and the
value of which had previously come to his ears through the medium of that
under-current of whispers to which the exploits of Merrylees, and the
others then in the full progress of their career, had given impulse and
meaning. Sure it was, at any rate, that he was utterly unconscious that he
was permitted to be an agent, selected after due care by the devil, to
push and force those passions by which a Christian country, with a name
renowned throughout the world for virtue, had been scourged and scathed to
a climax. Far less could he foresee the means--to our obscure vision of
the ways of Providence--so out of proportion to the evils (already set
forth by us) which they remedied, if not put an end to. So it has been
said. But by what right do we make out that want of proportion? We know
pretty nearly the amount of evil subsequently perpetrated by William
Burke,--name of fear, and which even yet only passes in a whisper,--but we
do not know (for all we have said is only an inkling,) and never will
know, the amount of that other evil which his deeds were to be the means
of bringing to an end. The cry had for years gone up to the great white
throne of the outraged feelings of a Christian nation. There was only the
exception of those who appealed to the pride of science, and man's natural
love of life and a sound living body. Meanwhile, those in power, to whom
Heaven had accorded the means of reconciliation, looked on with apathy, at
least without interest,--an observation which may lead us to the thought
that there was less of profanity than is generally supposed in the
suggestion which some have ventured, and some have approved, that this man
had a mission, yea, that the devil was permitted to tempt him to commit
deeds which would rouse the country to seek a remedy sufficient to stop
the violation of natural feelings, and at the same time provide for the
claims of science.
So, with the sordid thoughts suited to his mission, he trudged along,
looking about for some one he expected to see; and by and by there came
from behind, and joined him, an individual, in the shape of a spare
wretch, gruesome and goulish, of moderate height, with a cadaverous face,
in which were set, in the most whimsical manner, two gray eyes, so far
apart that it did not seem possible for him to look at you with both at
the same time. There was in these oblique orbs, too, a leer which seemed
to be the normal and unchangeable expression of a mind which not only
disregarded the humanities and rights of his species, but mocked and
laughed at them. Most creatures, even the wickedest, are at times
surprised into moments of _bonhommie_. Nature seems to demand this as a
kind of rest to the spirit, as if evil were a disturbance, which, to be
sure, it generally is; but the malignity of this wonderful being was so
thorough-going, smooth, and natural, that even what he might intend for a
bastard kind of love or friendship was only a modification of his
diabolism, so that his smile was merely a relaxation of his congenital
enmity towards all that was good and beautiful in nature. This man was
William Hare,--a name which, not less than that of William Burke, will
ever be as an apparition to the retina of the ear of mankind.
The forgathering of these men was followed instantly, but secretly, as if
they feared the chances of a whisper having a collateral fall, by the
reciprocation of confidences, in which, as a matter of course, was
included the success of the visitor to the Square, and over the face of
the listener there came merely a stronger phase of the ordinary expression
of the malign pleasure which less or more always played in those divergent
eyes. But these conferences cannot be understood without a knowledge of
what had taken place in the latter's house in Tanners' Close, to which
they were loungingly directing their steps, and where the former lodged.
And many others lodged there too, for it was one of those low
caravanseries or lodging-houses which are as well the refuge of trampers,
who would pass there a night, as of more permanent residenters, who,
deprived of a home by vagabondism, earned a desultory livelihood as
chance carriers or troggan-mongers, fish-hawkers, or peripatetic dealers
in small wares. Sometimes a lodger a little above these classes would find
his account in the cheap refuge, and three days before that night a tall
man, a pensioner, who ordinarily went by the name of Donald, had died, a
short time only before his pension became due. To that pension the master
of the establishment had looked forward as the means of being reimbursed
for several months' rent and advances, amounting to somewhere about £4.
This loss rankled in the mind of Hare, for though Donald was not without
some poor friends who would see him decently buried, they were without the
means, as well perhaps the will, to pay a debt for the justice of which
the bad character of the creditor could be no guarantee.
And here we have the best evidence, that even on that day when Donald
died, and up to the morning of the funeral, and eight or ten hours
previous to this forgathering in the Cowgate, no thought had crossed the
mind of either of these men of taking the debt out of the body of the
pensioner. Allowing for all discrepancies as to the time when the tongue
of one of them gave expression to the dark purpose, it is clear that the
communication would not, on the supposition of the thought having been
slumbering in the mind, have been delayed till the morning of the funeral,
nor even to the hour of bringing in the coffin. No doubt they had been
both aware that such things had been done, and were being done, in
Edinburgh at that time, and the temptation had crossed them, not without
being accepted by their sordidness. The intention and the thought sprang
up together, and, by all accounts, it was the mind of Hare that produced
the birth; but the exclusiveness of the _credit_ was just so much the less
in proportion to the readiness by which it was on the instant adopted and
cherished by his friend. You may here mark an analogy, which it might be
of pregnant interest for all men, and women too, to ponder, as a _little_
sermon, and not the less that this entire history is a _big_ one:--The
tiny seed will lie in the ground for years, and though the soil may be
known to be congenial in the wealth of rottenness, it will not spring to
the expectation of the gardener. It may be tossed over and over, and
hither and thither for years, and appear above ground, shooting resolutely
its stem, when not only not looked for, but against all expectation. So it
is with the mind and its germs. The small shoot of an invention takes its
start from an agreement of circumstances unknown to us, and grows and
grows into branching horrors; nay, every branch, and leaflet, and
poisonous calyx has its secondary origin in a germ as mysteriously
stimulated as the one that lay so long perhaps in the earth. And what
then? Why, just this--that our practical philosophy is ever vexing itself
by tugging at the cords of Calvinism. Why and how did this thought arise
in the mind of Hare? Because he was a wicked man. And why was he a wicked
man? The old story of the scroll, whereon were marked in fire the names of
the reprobates. But reject it, and say that he made himself a wicked man.
Try that process upon yourself, if you happen to be a good one, or the
opposite, if you happen to be bad, and see how you will succeed by such
decree of your own.
The proposition was thus made that the body of the stalwart Donald should
be sold to the doctors, and at once agreed to by the listener, only with
the scruple that there was no time between the period of their
conversation and the funeral to get all matters arranged--a sorry
objection from such a man, and so accordingly made small account of by
either. And so they straightway set about getting the bag of tanner's
bark--a circumstance which shews us that the practices of Merry-Andrew and
his brethren had reached their ears. Nor are we to have the smallest
hesitation in assuming that Helen M'Dougal, with whom Burke lived in
concubinage, and Hare's wife--the two females in the house--joined to form
that quatern destined to the orgies of the Court of Cacus. The bag of bark
was speedily procured, the body of Donald hauled out of the coffin and
deposited on a bed, the bark was put in, the lid screwed down, and all
made decent and fair for the bearers. When the vice has fructified into an
act, how easy is the tribute paid to virtue! And so these men, according
to the normal course, joined with long faces the train of the mourners,
among whom--though some of them who loved the jolly old pensioner had
tears in their eyes--they could hold up, or rather down, their faces as
mournfully as the best.
The interlude of this play of the forenoon, and the melodrama of the
night, consisted in the appearance of Burke in the hall in Surgeons'
Square, and having forgathered in the Cowgate in the manner we have set
forth, the two friends, bound together by prior confidences, of which no
man ever knew the extent or nature, pursued their way to Tanners' Close,
where they were welcomed by the women with the remainder of the whisky got
for the funeral. The offering was to nerve them for the work in which they
were merely apprentices; nor was the offering given and participated in
less cheerfully by the women themselves, that they had both applied the
soft hand of feminine attentions to the gallant pensioner,--even hung over
his squalid couch tenderly, and wet his dry lips, and all the more,
surely, that he had been a soldier, had seen and mixed in battles in his
day, and therefore deserved something better than a bag for a winding
sheet, and the knife of the anatomist coming after, at so long a distance,
the bayonet of the enemy. Such gilt, which shews itself everywhere as
society gets more civilised, is easily rubbed off; and with the knowledge
of these tender nurses, the two men proceeded to their work, which,
coarse as it was, was easily executed. The bag was filled and hoisted on
the shoulders of Burke, who carried it in the dark as far as Bristo Port,
where Hare, as a relay, took up the burden. So well known along the
Grassmarket and Cowgate, where their figures might have excited attention,
they took then the round-about way of College Street, and, getting to the
Square, they felt some of that hesitation--shall we call it
bashfulness?--which Burke had betrayed at his prior visit. They
accordingly placed their load at the door of a cellar in the lower part of
the buildings, and mounting to the room where one of them had been before,
encountered the same three young assistants still engaged in their ardent
work.
"Bring it up," was the reply of more than one, when they had heard the
words of the merchants, as they hung fire in their mouths and tongues. Up
soon _it_ was, and drawn out and laid upon the table in the winding-sheet.
Yes, a piece of delicacy that which was soon to be dispensed with as
extravagant and unnecessary. And the covering partially drawn off, there
is that rapid and curious, yet never perfectly composed, scanning of the
eyes of even old students, but with no recoil on the part of the sellers,
who had sat and drank with the old soldier, and heard his stories of
Peninsular battles, and laughed at his jokes. Not the less racy these,
that he thought his companions kind and jolly souls--how far away from
the intention of selling his body for gold he never imagined, for the idea
could not have entered the mind of Suspicion herself, if there be any such
goddess in the mythology of poets. But all such reminiscences, if they
threatened to force an entry into the minds of these men, were quickly
sent back to the limbo of obliviousness by the obdurate mammon.
By and by, and after the exit of one of the students, there came in the
monoculus himself, Knox, and the covering was altogether withdrawn. It
seemed to him a fair mercantable commodity. That is, it was not too old
for any of the valuable tissues,--in the midst of which lay the secrets
these students were so anxious to reveal, not for the purpose of filling
their pockets in after-times, but for the benefit of mankind,--to have
been dissolved or injured. Seven pounds ten shillings is pronounced as the
price of the body of the veteran. A shadow passed over the faces of the
sellers; the sum did not come up to the hopes inspired by the reports
which had oozed out of the earnings of the Merry-Andrews and the "Spunes."
Yet the sum, to these wretched earners of pennies for vagrants' beds and
cobbled shoes, was a _coup_ of mammon sufficient to have made their
hardened hearts clatter upon their ribs, and scare away the last trace of
humanity inspired by the lips of a mother, kept otherwise, and up to this
time, unscathed by the temptations of the devil. But they could not refuse
the sum,--that is, they had not yet hardihood to chaffer; and, the money
being paid, they were on the eve of departing, when they were told that
they would be made welcome again, if they came with an equally good
recommendation. And as they went, they did not forget the shirt.
So, with the first spoil in his pocket--for Burke was the foremost man,
and got the money--he and his friend betook themselves to Tanners' Close,
keeping, no doubt, in remembrance, the words of the students, that they
would be welcome again. Nor can we have any doubt that when they arrived
at home, after a day of such novel and ingenious, and, we may surely add,
triumphant performance, they would celebrate, with the women, in an orgie
debauch of hours, this great event of a new birth of hope, the realisation
of which would elevate them even to an upper caste among the humble
inhabitants of Portsburgh. But even they themselves did not know what
progeny would come of this cockatrice's egg, laid in the dark corner of
the habitation of sin. Our story would not have carried that moral, which
is the eternal burden of all histories of crime, if the thought of murder
had come to them without that prelusive conciliation, under the condition
of which the devil is permitted to arrive at his greatest achievements.
Much, even at this early stage, was made of the conduct of Knox and his
assistants, but, we think, with little justice to these men. Why did they
not ask those dark and suspicious-looking ruffians, who did not belong to
their regular staff, where they got the object thus brought to them? The
answer appears to be satisfactory, whatever might be thought of their
subsequent defence and explanations. There was nothing here to excite
suspicion, except, as it was said, the absence of certain marks often made
by resurrectionists in their process of working, but the exception went
for nothing in the face of an assertion that such marks are seldom to be
seen; and then, as for the asserted naturalness--if we may use the
expression of an inquiry of such a kind--it was said, and may be repeated,
that that which appears to be natural is not always expedient. We are here
to keep in view that the medical men were aware that they were dealing in
smuggled goods, the participation on their part being, as they conceived,
justified by the necessities of their profession; and when was it ever
known that the dealer with a smuggler questioned him as to the whereabouts
and the manner of his contravention of the laws? It does not need even to
be remarked, that to discourage is not the best way to lay the foundation
of a new bargain; nay, there was weight in the observation, that the
prudent avoidance of such interrogation had become a habit, and though
they were perfectly aware that bodies had been brought to them which had
never been in graves, and, consequently, that there existed a practice of
sale and purchase between the men devoted to this profession, and the
friends or distant relatives of the dead, they still considered that all
such cases were covered by the claims of science, whereby society got
returned to it, in the shape of an increased knowledge and skill of cure,
that which had been taken from it against the sanction of human
affections. Then it was admitted, even by the "howlers," that never, up to
this time, had there been offered a body which could be said to have borne
marks of violence; and if the minds of at least these generous and
well-bred youths never entertained a suspicion of murder, the fact might
more properly have been adduced as honourable to their estimate of
mankind, than as an objection to their want of guard against an evil which
had not yet appeared in the world, and which was to become, unhappily, in
good old Scotland, a new species of crime.
The Quaternion.
We suspect there is scarcely a life of a great man, whether he has been
great for good or for evil, in which you will not find passages that are
analogous to some things in your own. As with the physical monsters,
described by such men as Dr Denham, in which there is always a natural
foundation out of which grow the amorphous excrescences which we call
monstrosities, so in the moral there is always something that pertains to
the natural, insomuch that we may say, that the abnormal beings who go by
the name of monsters are, as respects their unenvied peculiarity, the
result of a twist in the development of what was intended to be according
to the ordinary rule. The observation may serve as a _cave diabolum_ even
to those who think they are for certain out of the reprobatory decrees.