If the reader of what I am going to relate for his or her edification,
or for perhaps a greater luxury, viz. wonder, should be so unreasonable
as to ask for my authority, I shall be tempted, because a little piqued,
to say that no one should be too particular about the source of
pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing but what you can prove
to be a reality, you will, under good philosophical leadership, have no
great faith in the sun--a thing which you never saw, the existence of
which you are only assured of by a round figure of light on the back of
your eye, and which may be likened to tradition; so all you have to do
is to believe like a good Catholic, and be contented, even though I
begin so poorly as to try to interest you in two very humble beings who
have been dead for many years, and whose lives were like a steeple
without a bell in it, the intention of which you cannot understand till
your eye reaches the weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder at so
great an erection for so small an object. The one bore the name of
William Halket, a young man, who, eight or nine years before he became
of much interest either to himself or any other body, was what in our
day is called an Arab of the City--a poor street boy, who didn't know
who his father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her by a pretty
sharp experience, insomuch as she took from him every penny he made by
holding horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in return. But Bill
got out of this bondage by the mere chance of having been taken a fancy
to by Mr. Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St. Mary's Wynd (an
ancestor, we suspect, of the Ramsays of Barnton), who thought he saw in
the City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs to the Bedouin, and
who accordingly elevated him to the position of a stable-boy, with board
and as many shillings a week as there are days in that subdivision of
time.
Nor did William Halket--to whom for his merits we accord the full
Christian name--do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if
it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he
was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything
that came in his way. Then, to render the connection reciprocal, William
was gratefully alive to the conviction that if he had not been, as it
were, taken from the street, the street might have been taken from him,
by his being locked up some day in the Heart of Midlothian. So things
went on in St. Mary's Wynd for five or six years, and might have gone on
for twice that period, had it not been that at a certain hour of a
certain day William fell in love with a certain Mary Brown, who had come
on that very day to be an under-housemaid in the inn; and strange
enough, it was a case of "love at first sight," the more by token that
it took effect the moment that Mary entered the stable with a glass of
whisky in her hand sent to him by Mrs. Ramsay. No doubt it is seldom
that a fine blooming young girl, with very pretty brown hair and very
blue eyes, appears to a young man with such a recommendation in her
hand; but we are free to say that the whisky had nothing to do with an
effect which is well known to be the pure result of the physical
attributes of the individual. Nay, our statement might have been proved
by the counterpart effect produced upon Mary herself, for she was struck
by William at the same moment when she handed him the glass; and we are
not to assume that the giving of a pleasant boon is always attended with
the same effect as the receiving of it.
But, as our story requires, it is the love itself between these two
young persons, whose fates were so remarkable, we have to do with--not
the causes, which are a mystery in all cases. Sure it is, humble in
position as they were, they could love as strongly, as fervently,
perhaps as ecstatically, as great people--nay, probably more so, for
education has a greater chance of moderating the passion than increasing
it; and so, notwithstanding of what Plutarch says of the awfully
consuming love between Phrygius and Picrea, and also what Shakespeare
has sung or said about a certain Romeo and a lady called Juliet, we are
certain that the affection between these grand personages was not _more_
genuine, tender, and true, than that which bound the simple and
unsophisticated hearts of Will Halket and Mary Brown. But at best we
merely play on the surface of a deep subject when we try with a pen to
describe feelings, and especially the feelings of love. We doubt, if
even the said pen were plucked from Cupid's wing, whether it would help
us much. We are at best only left to a choice of expressions, and
perhaps the strongest we could use are those which have already been
used a thousand times--the two were all the world to each other, the
world outside nothing at all to them; so that they could have been as
happy on the top of Mount Ararat, or on the island of Juan Fernandez,
provided they should be always in each other's company, as they were in
St. Mary's Wynd. And as for whispered protestations and chaste kisses--
for really their love had a touch of romance about it you could hardly
have expected, but which yet kept it pure, if not in some degree
elevated above the loves of common people--these were repeated so often
about the quiet parts of Arthur's Seat and the King's Park, and the
fields about the Dumbiedykes and Duddingstone Loch, that they were the
very moral aliments on which they lived. In short, to Mary Brown the
great Duke of Buccleuch was as nothing compared to Willie Halket, and to
Willie Halket the beautiful Duchess of Grammont would have been as
nothing compared to simple Mary Brown. All which is very amiable and
very necessary; for if it had been so ordained that people should feel
the exquisite sensations of love in proportion as they were beautiful,
or rich, or endowed with talent (according to a standard), our world
would have been even more queer than that kingdom described by Gulliver,
where the ugliest individual is made king or queen.
Things continued in this very comfortable state at the old inn in St.
Mary's Wynd for about a year, and it had come to enter into the
contemplation of Will that upon getting an increase of his wages he
would marry Mary, and send her to live with her mother, a poor,
hard-working washerwoman, in Big Lochend Close; whereunto Mary was so
much inclined, that she looked forward to the day as the one that
promised to be the happiest that she had yet seen, or would ever see.
But, as an ancient saying runs, the good hour is in no man's choice; and
about this time it so happened that Mr. Peter Ramsay, having had a
commission from an old city man, a Mr. Dreghorn, located as a planter in
Virginia, to send him out a number of Scottish horses, suggested to
William that he would do well to act as supercargo and groom. Mr.
Dreghorn had offered to pay a good sum to the man who should bring them
out safe, besides paying his passage over and home. And Mr. Ramsay would
be ready to receive Will into his old place again on his return. As for
Mary, with regard to whom the master knew his man's intentions, she
would remain where she was, safe from all temptation, and true to the
choice of her heart. This offer pleased William, because he saw that he
could make some money out of the adventure, whereby he would be the
better able to marry, and make a home for the object of his affections;
but he was by no means sure that Mary would consent; for women, by some
natural divining of the heart, look upon delays in affairs of love as
ominous and dangerous. And so it turned out that one Sabbath evening,
when they were seated beneath a tree in the King's Park, and William had
cautiously introduced the subject to her, she was like other women.
"The bird that gets into the bush," she said, as the tears fell upon her
cheeks, "sometimes forgets to come back to the cage again. I would
rather hae the lean lintie in the hand, than the fat finch on the wand."
"But you forget, Mary, love," was the answer of Will, "that you can feed
the lean bird, but you can't feed me. It is I who must support you. It
is to enable me to do that which induces me to go. I will come with
guineas in my pocket where there are now only pennies and placks; and
you know, Mary, the Scotch saying, 'A heavy purse makes a light heart.'"
"And an unsteady one," rejoined Mary. "And you may bring something else
wi' you besides the guineas; maybe a wife."
"One of Mr. Dreghorn's black beauties," said Will, laughing. "No, no,
Mary, I am too fond of the flaxen ringlets, the rosy cheeks, and the
blue eyes; and you know, Mary, you have all these, so you have me in
your power. But to calm your fears, and stop your tears, I'll tell you
what I'll do."
"Stay at hame, Will, and we'll live and dee thegither."
"No," replied Will; "but, like the genteel lover I have read of, I will
swear on your Bible that I will return to you within the year, and marry
you at the Tron Kirk, and throw my guineas into the lap of your
marriage-gown, and live with you until I die."
For all which and some more we may draw upon our fancy; but certain it
is, as the strange story goes, that Will did actually then and
there--for Mary had been at the Tron Kirk, and had her Bible in her
pocket (an article, the want of which is not well supplied by the
scent-bottle of our modern Maries)--swear to do all he had said,
whereupon Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up murmuring--perhaps
no more than that. Certain also it is, that before the month was done,
Will, with his living, kicking charges, and after more of these said
tears from Mary than either of them had arithmetic enough to enable them
to count, embarked at Leith for Richmond, at which place the
sugar-planter had undertaken to meet him.
We need say nothing of the voyage across the Atlantic, somewhat arduous
at that period, nor need we pick up Will again till we find him in
Richmond, with his horses all safe, and as fat and sleek as if they had
been fed by Neptune's wife, and had drawn her across in place of her own
steeds. There he found directions waiting from Mr. Dreghorn, to the
effect that he was to proceed with the horses to Peach Grove, his
plantation, a place far into the heart of the country. But Will was
content; for had he not time and to spare within the year, and he would
see some more of the new world, which, so far as his experience yet
went, seemed to him to be a good place for a freeman to live in? So off
he went, putting up at inns by the way, as well supplied with food and
fodder as Mr. Peter Ramsay's, in St. Mary's Wynd, and showing off his
nags to the planters, who wondered at their bone and muscle, the more by
reason they had never seen Scotch horses before. As he progressed, the
country seemed to Will more and more beautiful, and by the time he
reached Peach Grove he had come to the unpatriotic conclusion that all
it needed was Mary Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes,
passing like an angel--lovers will be poets--among these ebon beauties,
to make it the finest country in the world.
Nor when the Scotsman reached Peach Grove did the rosy side of matters
recede into the shady; for he was received in a great house by Mr.
Dreghorn with so much kindness, that, if the horses rejoiced in maize
and oats, Will found himself, as the saying goes, in five-bladed clover.
But more awaited him, even thus much more, that the planter, and his
fine lady of a wife as well, urged him to remain on the plantation,
where he would be well paid and well fed; and when Will pleaded his
engagement to return to Scotland within the year, the answer was ready,
that he might spend eight months in Virginia at least, which would
enable him to take home more money,--an answer that seemed so very
reasonable, if not prudent, that "Sawny" saw the advantage thereof and
agreed. But we need hardly say that this was conceded upon the condition
made with himself, that he would write to Mary all the particulars, and
also upon the condition, acceded to by Mr. Dreghorn, that he would take
the charge of getting the letter sent to Scotland.
All which having been arranged, Mr. Halket--for we cannot now continue
to take the liberty of calling him Will--was forthwith elevated to the
position of driving negroes in place of horses, an occupation which he
did not much relish, insomuch that he was expected to use the lash, an
instrument of which he had been very chary in his treatment of
four-legged chattels, and which he could not bring himself to apply with
anything but a sham force in reference to the two-legged species. But
this objection he thought to get over by using the sharp crack of his
Jehu-voice as a substitute for that of the whip; and in this he
persevered, in spite of the jeers of the other drivers, who told him the
thing had been tried often, but that the self-conceit of the negro met
the stimulant and choked it at the very entrance to the ear; and this he
soon found to be true. So he began to do as others did; and he was the
sooner reconciled to the strange life into which he had been
precipitated by the happy condition of the slaves themselves, who, when
their work was over, and at all holiday hours, dressed themselves in the
brightest colours of red and blue and white, danced, sang, ate
corn-cakes and bacon, and drank coffee with a zest which would have done
a Scotch mechanic, with his liberty to produce a lock-out, much good to
see. True, indeed, the white element of the population was at a discount
at Peach Grove. But in addition to the above source of reconciliation,
Halket became day by day more captivated by the beauty of the country,
with its undulating surface, its wooded clumps, its magnolias,
tulip-trees, camellias, laurels, passion-flowers, and palms, its
bright-coloured birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it is
famous all over the world. But nature might charm as it might--Mary
Brown was three thousand miles away.
Meanwhile the time passed pleasantly, for he was accumulating money;
Mary's letter would be on the way, and the hope of seeing her within the
appointed time was dominant over all the fascinations which charmed the
senses. But when the month came in which he ought to have received a
letter, no letter came--not much this to be thought of, though Mr.
Dreghorn tried to impress him with the idea that there must be some
change of sentiment in the person from whom he expected the much-desired
answer. So Halket wrote again, giving the letter, as before, to his
master, who assured him it was sent carefully away; and while it was
crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improving his penmanship and
arithmetic, under the hope held out to him by his master that he would,
if he remained, be raised to a book-keeper's desk; for the planter had
seen early that he had got hold of a long-headed, honest, sagacious
"Sawny," who would be of use to him. On with still lighter wing the
intermediate time sped again, but with no better result in the shape of
an answer from her who was still the object of his day fancies and his
midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. A third letter was
despatched, but the returning period was equally a blank. We have been
counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the
termination of his year, and with growing changes too in himself; for as
the notion began to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary was
either dead or faithless, another power was quietly assailing him from
within,--no other than ambition in the most captivating of all
shapes--Mammon. We all know the manner in which the golden deity
acquires his authority; nor do we need to have recourse to the conceit
of the old writer who tells us that the reason why gold has such an
influence upon man, lies in the fact that it is of the colour of the
sun, which is the fountain of light, and life, and joy. Certain it is,
at least, that Halket having been taken into the counting-house on a
raised salary, began "to lay by," as the Scotch call it; and by-and-by,
with the help of a little money lent to him by his master, he began by
purchasing produce from the neighbouring plantations, and selling it
where he might,--all which he did with advantage, yet with the ordinary
result to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good account the king's
head, the king's head began to turn his own.
And now in place of months we must begin to count by lustrums; and the
first five years, even with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least,
lost Mary, proved in Halket's case the truth of the book written by a
Frenchman, to prove that man is a plant; for he had already thrown out
from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was
bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and
if that bore golden blossoms, so did he; yet, true to his first love,
there was not among all these flowers one so fair as the fair-haired
Mary. Nay, with all hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end of
the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, when, strangely enough,
and sadly too, he was told by Mr. Dreghorn, that having had occasion to
hear from Mr. Peter Ramsay on the subject of some more horse-dealings,
that person had reported to him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old
stable-boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it had been made at
an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was
softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more
easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of
the said god, Mammon; for, as to the notion of putting any of those
beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter's house at
Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing
better than the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power of the god
increased with the offerings, one of which was his large salary as
manager, a station to which he was elevated shortly after he had
received the doleful tidings of Mary's death. Another lustrum is added,
and we arrive at ten years; and yet another, and we come to fifteen; at
the end of which time Mr. Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his
trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested.
If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot--fortunate, save for one
misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold--purchasing from
the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under
the condition of an annuity.
And Halket was now rich, even beyond what he had ever wished; but the
chariot-wheels of Time would not go any slower--nay, they moved faster,
and every year more silently, as if the old Father had intended to cheat
the votary of Mammon into a belief that he would live for ever. The
lustrums still passed: another five, another, and another, till there
was scope for all the world being changed, and a new generation taking
the place of that with which William Halket and Mary Brown began. And he
was changed too, for he began to take on those signs of age which make
the old man a painted character; but in one thing he was not changed,
and that was the worshipful stedfastness, the sacred fidelity, with
which he still treasured in his mind the form and face, the words and
the smiles, the nice and refined peculiarities that feed love as with
nectared sweets, which once belonged to Mary Brown, the first creature
that had moved his affections, and the last to hold them, as the object
of a cherished memory for ever. Nor with time, so deceptive, need we be
so sparing in dealing out those periods of five years, but say at once
that at last William Halket could count twelve of them since first he
set his foot on Virginian soil; yea, he had been there for sixty
summers, and he had now been a denizen of the world for seventy-eight
years. In all which our narrative has been strange, but we have still
the stranger fact to set forth, that at this late period he was seized
with that moral disease (becoming physical in time) which the French
call _mal du pays_, the love of the country where one was born, and
first enjoyed the fresh springs that gush from the young heart. Nor was
it the mere love of country, as such, for he was seized with a
particular wish to be where Mary lay in the churchyard of the Canongate,
to erect a tombstone over her, to seek out her relations and enrich
them, to make a worship out of a disappointed love, to dedicate the last
of his thoughts to the small souvenirs of her humble life. Within a
month this old man was on his way to Scotland, having sold the
plantation, and taken bills with him to an amount of little less than a
hundred thousand pounds.
In the course of five weeks William Halket put his foot on the old pier
of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been urchins
when he went away. The look of the old harbour revived the image which
had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the running of the
one image into the other produced the ordinary illusion of all that long
interval appearing as a day; but there was no illusion in the change,
that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and there was no Mary Brown
there now. Having called a coach, he told the driver to proceed up Leith
Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay's inn, in St. Mary's Wynd; but the
man told him there was no inn there, nor had been in his memory. The man
added that he would take him to the White Horse in the Canongate, and
thither accordingly he drove him. On arriving at the inn, he required
the assistance of the waiter to enable him to get out of the coach; nor
probably did the latter think this any marvel, after looking into a face
so furrowed with years, so pale with the weakness of a languid
circulation, so saddened with care. The rich man had only an inn for a
home, nor in all his native country was there one friend whom he hoped
to find alive. Neither would a search help him, as he found on the
succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an infirm
walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The houses were not much
altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures; and as for
the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after
he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years--a similitude only true in
this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he
went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown,
who were unknown to him, as he was indeed strange to them. True, too, as
the coachman said, Peter Ramsay's inn, where he had heard Mary singing
at her work, and the stable where he had whistled blithely among his
favourite horses, were no longer to be seen--_etiam cineres
perierunt_--their very sites were occupied by modern dwellings. What of
that small half-sunk lodging in Big Lochend Close, where Mary's mother
lived, and where Mary had been brought up, where perhaps Mary had died?
Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to hobble down the Canongate to
that little lodging, and might there not be for him a sad pleasure even
to enter and sit down by the same fireplace where he had seen the
dearly-beloved face, and listened to her voice, to him more musical than
the melody of angels?
And so, after he had walked about till he was wearied, and his steps
became more unsteady and slow, and as yet without having seen a face
which he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big Close. There
was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised
the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes
tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often
been responded to by Mary's finger on the glass, as a token that he
would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now
hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his
head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to
enter that house rose again like a yearning; and what more in the world
than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there
for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as
money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of
seeing the room where she was born--yea, where probably she had died. In
as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair,
which in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he
was at the foot of it. There was there the old familiar dark passage,
with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any
interest to him. Arrived at it, he stood in doubt. He would knock, and
he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him; and yet,
what had he to fear? For half a century the inmates had been changed, no
doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown. At
length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was
opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming
between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window
in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see
more of him, for the lobby was still darker.
"Who may live here?" said he, in the expectation of hearing some name
unknown to him.