In detailing the curious circumstances of the following story, I am
again only reporting a real law case to be found in the Court of Session
Records, the turning-point of which was as invisible to the judges as to
the parties themselves--that is, until the end came; a circumstance
again which made the case a kind of developed romance. But as an end
implies a beginning, and the one is certainly as necessary as the other,
we request you to accompany us--taking care of your feet--up the narrow
spiral staircase of a tenement called Corbet's Land, in the same old
town where so many wonderful things in the complicated drama--or dream,
if you are a Marphurius--of human life have occurred. Up which spiral
stair having got by the help of our hands, almost as indispensable as
that of the feet, we find ourselves in a little human dovecot of two
small rooms, occupied by two persons not unlike, in many respects, two
doves--Widow Craig and her daughter, called May, euphuized by the Scotch
into Mysie. The chief respects in which they might be likened, without
much stress, to the harmless creatures we have mentioned, were their
love for each other, together with their total inoffensiveness as
regarded the outside world; and we are delighted to say this, for we see
so many of the multitudinous sides of human nature dark and depraved,
that we are apt to think there is no bright side at all. Nor shall we
let slip the opportunity of saying, at the risk of being considered very
simple, that of all the gifts of felicity bestowed, as the Pagan Homer
tells, upon mankind by the gods, no one is so perfect and beautiful as
the love that exists between a good mother and a good daughter.
For so much we may be safe by having recourse to instinct, which is
deeper than any secondary causes we poor mortals can see. But beyond
this, there were special reasons tending to this same result of mutual
affection, which come more within the scope of our observation. In
explanation of which, we may say that the mother, having something in
her power during her husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of
using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an
art of far more importance then than now--that of artistic, needlework.
Nay, of so much importance was this beautiful art, and to such
perfection was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, embroidered
by the hand, with its profuse imitations of natural objects, flowers,
and birds, and strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds Scots,
that a sight of one of those operose achievements of genius would make
us blush for our time and the labours of our women. Nor was the
perfection in this ornamental industry a new thing, for the daughters of
the Pictish kings confined in the castle were adepts in it; neither was
it left altogether to paid sempstresses, for great ladies spent their
time in it, and emulation quickened both the genius and the diligence.
So we need hardly say it became to the mother a thing to be proud of,
that her daughter Mysie proved herself so apt a scholar that she became
an adept, and was soon known as one of the finest embroideresses in the
great city. So, too, as a consequence, it came to pass that great ladies
employed her; and often the narrow spiral staircase of Corbet's Land was
brushed on either side by the huge masses of quilted and emblazoned silk
that, enveloping the belles of the day, were with difficulty forced up
to and down from the small room of the industrious Mysie.
But we are now speaking of art, while we should have more to say (for it
concerns us more) of the character of the young woman who was destined
to figure in a stranger way than in making beautiful figures on silk.
Mysie was one of a class: few in number they are indeed, but on that
account more to be prized. Her taste and fine manipulations were but
counterparts of qualities of the heart--an organ to which the pale face,
with its delicate lines and the clear liquid eyes, was a suitable index.
The refinement which enabled her to make her imitation of beautiful
objects on the delicate material of her work was only another form of a
sensibility which pervaded her whole nature--that gift which is only
conceded to peculiar organizations, and is such a doubtful one, too, if
we go, as we cannot help doing, with the poet, when he sings that
"chords that vibrate sweetest pleasures," often also "thrill the deepest
notes of woe." Nay, we might say that the creatures themselves seem to
fear the gift, for they shrink from the touch of the rough world, and
retire within themselves as if to avoid it, while they are only courting
its effects in the play of an imagination much too ardent for the duties
of life; and, as a consequence, how they seek secretly the support of
stronger natures, clinging to them as do those strange plants called
parasites, which, with their tender arms and something so like fingers,
cling to the nearest stem of a stouter neighbour, and embracing it, even
though hollow and rotten, cover it, and choke it with a flood of
flowers. So true is it that woman, like the generous vine, lives by
being supported and held up; yet equally true that the strength she
gains is from the embrace she gives; and so it is also that goodness, as
our Scottish poet Home says, often wounds itself, and affection proves
the spring of sorrow.
All which might truly be applied to Mysie Craig; but as yet the stronger
stem to which she clung was her mother, and it was not likely, nor was
it in reality, that that affection would prove to her anything but the
spring of happiness, for it was ripened by love; and the earnings of the
nimble fingers, moving often into the still hours of the night, not only
kept the wolf from the door, but let in the lambs of domestic harmony
and peace. Would that these things had so continued! But there are other
wolves than those of poverty, and the "ae lamb o' the fauld" cannot be
always under the protection of the ewe; and it so happened on a certain
night, not particularized in the calendar, that our Mysie, having
finished one of these floral petticoats on which she had been engaged
for many weeks, went forth with her precious burden to deliver the same
to its impatient owner, no other than the then famous Anabella Gilroy,
who resided in Advocate's Close--of which fine lady, by the way, we may
say, that of all the gay creatures who paraded between "the twa Bows,"
no one displayed such ample folds of brocaded silk, nodded her pon-pons
more jauntily, or napped with a sharper crack her high-heeled shoes, all
to approve herself to "the bucks" of the time, with their square coats
brocaded with lace, their three-cornered hats on the top of their
bob-wigs, their knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. And certainly not the
least important of those, both in his own estimation and that of the
sprightly Anabella, was George Balgarnie, a young man who had only a
year before succeeded to the property of Balgruddery, somewhere in the
north, and of whom we might say that, in forming him, Nature had taken
so much pains with the building up of the body, that she had forgotten
the mind, so that he had no more spiritual matter in him than sufficed
to keep his blood hot, and enable his sensual organs to work out their
own selfish gratifications; or, to perpetrate a metaphor, he was all the
polished mahogany of a piano, without any more musical springs than
might respond to one keynote of selfishness. And surely Anabella had
approved herself to the fop to some purpose; for when our sempstress
with her bundle had got into the parlour of the fine lady, she
encountered no other than Balgarnie--a circumstance apparently of very
small importance; but we know that a moment of time is sometimes like a
small seed, which contains the nucleus of a great tree--perhaps a
poisonous one. And so it turned out that, while Anabella was gloating
over the beautiful work of the timid embroideress, Balgarnie was busy
admiring the artist, but not merely--perhaps not at all--as an artist,
only as an object over whom he wished to exercise power.
This circumstance was not unobserved by the little embroideress, but it
was only observed to be shrunk from in her own timid way; and probably
it would soon have passed from her mind, if it had not been followed up
by something more direct and dangerous. And it was; for no sooner had
Mysie got to the foot of the stairs than she encountered Balgarnie, who
had gone out before her; and now began one of those romances in daily
life of which the world is full, and of which the world is sick.
Balgarnie, in short, commenced that kind of suit which is nearly as old
as the serpent, and therefore not to be wondered at; neither are we to
wonder that Mysie listened to it, because we have heard so much about
"lovely woman stooping to folly," that we are content to put it to the
large account of natural miracles. And not very miraculous either, when
we remember that if the low-breathed accents of tenderness awaken the
germ of love, they awaken at the same time faith and trust. And such was
the beginning of the romance which was to go through the normal
stages,--the appointment to meet again, the meeting itself, the others
that followed, the extension of the moonlight walks, sometimes to the
Hunter's Bog between Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, and sometimes to
the song-famed "Wells o' Weary,"--all which were just as sun and shower
to the germ of the plant. The love grew and grew, and the faith grew and
grew also which saw in him that which it felt in itself. Nay, if any of
those moonlight-loving elves that have left their foot-marks in the
fairy rings to be seen near St. Anthony's Well had whispered in Mysie's
ear, "Balgarnie will never make you his wife," she would have believed
the words as readily as if they had impugned the sincerity of her own
heart. In short, we have again the analogue of the parasitic plant. The
very fragility and timidity of Mysie were at once the cause and
consequence of her confidence. She would cling to him and cover him with
the blossoms of her affection; nay, if there were unsoundness in the
stem, these very blossoms would cover the rottenness.
This change in the life of the little sempstress could not fail to
produce some corresponding change at home. We read smoothly the play we
have acted ourselves; and so the mother read love in the daughter's
eyes, and heard it, too, in her long sighs; nor did she fail to read the
sign that the song which used to lighten her beautiful work was no
longer heard; for love to creatures so formed as Mysie Craig is too
serious an affair for poetical warbling. But she said nothing; for while
she had faith in the good sense and virtue of her daughter, she knew
also that there was forbearance due to one who was her support. Nor, as
yet, had she reason to fear, for Mysie still plied her needle, and the
roses and the lilies sprang up in all their varied colours out of the
ground of the silk or satin as quickly and as beautifully as they were
wont, though the lilies of her checks waxed paler as the days flitted.
And why the latter should have been, we must leave to the reader; for
ourselves only hazarding the supposition that, perhaps, she already
thought that Balgarnie should be setting about to make her his wife--an
issue which behoved to be the result of their intimacy sooner or later;
for that in her simple mind there should be any other issue, was just
about as impossible as that, in the event of the world lasting as long,
the next moon would not, at her proper time, again shine in that green
hollow, between the Lion's Head and Samson's Ribs, which had so often
been the scene of their happiness. Nay, we might say that though a doubt
on the subject had by any means got into her mind, it would not have
remained there longer than it took a shudder to scare the wild thing
away.
Of course, all this was only a question of time; but certain it is, that
by-and-by the mother could see some connection between Mysie's being
more seldom out on those moonlight nights than formerly, and a greater
paleness in her thin face, as if the one had been the cause of the
other. But still she said nothing, for she daily expected that Mysie
would herself break the subject to her; and so she was left only to
increasing fears that her daughter's heart and affections had been
tampered with, and perhaps she had fears that went farther. Still, so
far as yet had gone, there was no remission in the labours of Mysie's
fingers, as if in the midst of all--whatever that all might be--she
recognised the paramount necessity of bringing in by those fingers the
required and usual amount of the means of their livelihood. Nay, somehow
or other, there was at that very time, when her cheek was at the palest,
and her sighs were at their longest, and her disinclination to speak was
at the strongest, an increase of work upon her; for was not there a
grand tunic to embroider for Miss Anabella, which was wanted on a given
day; and were there not other things for Miss Anabella's friend, Miss
Allardice, which were not to be delayed beyond that same day? And so she
stitched and stitched on and on, till sometimes the little lamp seemed
to go out for want of oil, while the true cause of her diminished light
was really the intrusion of the morning sun, against which it had no
chance. It might be, too, that her very anxiety to get these grand
dresses finished helped to keep out of her mind ideas which could have
done her small good, even if they had got in.
But at length the eventful hour came when the gentle sempstress withdrew
the shining needle, made clear by long use, from the last touch of the
last rose; and doubtless, if Mysie had not been under the cloud of
sorrow we have mentioned, she would have been happier at the termination
of so long a labour than she had ever been, for the finishing evening
had always been celebrated by a glass of strong Edinburgh ale--a drink
which, as both a liquor and a liqueur, was as famous then as it is at
this day. But of what avail was this work-termination to her now? Was it
not certain that she had not seen Balgarnie for two moons? and though
the impossibility of his not marrying her was just as impossible as
ever, why were these two moons left to shine in the green hollow and on
the rising hill without the privilege of throwing the shadows of Mysie
Craig and George Balgarnie on the grass, where the fairies had left the
traces of their dances? Questions these which she was unable to answer,
if it were not even that she was afraid to put them to herself. Then,
when was it that she felt herself unable to tie up her work in order to
take it home, and that her mother, seeing the reacting effect of the
prior sleepless nights in her languid frame, did this little duty for
her, even as while she was doing it she looked through her tears at her
changed daughter? But Mysie would do so much. While the mother should go
to Miss Allardice, Mysie would proceed to Miss Anabella; and so it was
arranged. They went forth together, parting at the Nether Bow; and
Mysie, in spite of a weakness which threatened to bring her with her
burden to the ground, struggled on to her destination. At the top of
Advocate's Close she saw a man hurry out and increase his step even as
her eye rested on him; and if it had not appeared to her to be among the
ultimate impossibilities of things, natural as well as unnatural, she
would have sworn that that man was George Balgarnie; but then, it just
so happened that Mysie came to the conclusion that such a circumstance
was among these ultimate impossibilities.
This resolution was an effort which cost her more than the conviction
would have done, though doubtless she did not feel this at the time, and
so with a kind of forced step she mounted the stair; but when she got
into the presence of Miss Gilroy, she could scarcely pronounce the
words--
"I have brought you the dress, ma'am."
"And I am so delighted, Miss Craig, that I could almost take you into my
arms," said the lady; "but what ails ye, dear? You are as white as any
snow I ever saw, whereas you ought to have been as blithe as a
bridesmaid, for don't you know that you have brought me home one of my
marriage dresses? Come now, smile when I tell you that to-morrow is my
wedding-day."
"Wedding-day," muttered Mysie, as she thought of the aforesaid utter
impossibility of herself not being soon married to George Balgarnie; an
impossibility not rendered less impossible by the resolution she had
formed not to believe that within five minutes he had flown away from
her.
"Yes, Miss Craig, and surely you must have heard who the gentleman is;
for does not the town ring of it from the castle to the palace, from
Kirk-o'-Field to the Calton?"
"I have not been out," said Mysie.
"That accounts for it," continued the lady; "and I am delighted at the
reason, for wouldn't it have been terrible to think that my marriage
with George Balgarnie of Balgruddery was a thing of so small a note as
not to be known everywhere?"
If Mysie Craig had appeared shortly before to Miss Gilroy paler than any
snow her ladyship had ever seen, she must now have been as pale as some
other kind of snow that nobody ever saw. The dreadful words had indeed
produced the adequate effect, but not in the most common way, for we are
to keep in view that it is not the most shrinking and sensitive natures
that are always the readiest to faint; and there was, besides, the
aforesaid conviction of impossibility which, grasping the mind by a
certain force, deadened the ear to words implying the contrary. Mysie
stood fixed to the spot, as if she were trying to realize some certainty
she dared not think was possible, her lips apart, her eyes riveted on
the face of the lady--mute as that kind of picture which a certain
ancient calls a silent poem, and motionless as a figure of marble.
An attitude and appearance still more inexplicable to Anabella, perhaps
irritating as an unlucky omen, and therefore not possessing any claim
for sympathy--at least it got none.
"Are you the Mysie Craig," she cried, as she looked at the girl, "who
used to chat to me about the dresses you brought, and the flowers on
them? Ah, jealous and envious, is that it? But you forget, George
Balgarnie never could have made _you_ his wife--a working needlewoman;
he only fancied you as the plaything of an hour. He told me so himself
when I charged him with having been seen in your company. So, Mysie, you
may as well look cheerful. Your turn will come next with some one in
your own station."
There are words which stimulate and confirm; there are others that seem
to kill the nerve and take away the sense, nor can we ever tell the
effect till we see it produced; and so we could not have told
beforehand--nay, we would have looked for something quite opposite--that
Mysie, shrinking and irritable as she was by nature, was saved from a
faint (which had for some moments been threatening her) by the cruel
insult which thus had been added to her misfortune. She had even power
to have recourse to that strange device of some natures, that of
"affecting to be not affected;" and casting a glance at the fine lady,
she turned and went away without uttering a single word. But who knows
the pain of the conventional concealment of pain except those who have
experienced the agony of the trial? Even at the moment when she heard
that George Balgarnie was to be married, and that she came to know that
she had been for weeks sewing the marriage dress of his bride, she was
carrying under her heart the living burden which was the fruit of her
love for that man. Yet not the burden of shame and dishonour, as our
story will show, for she was justified by the law of her country--yea,
by certain words once written by an apostle to the Corinthians, all
which may as yet appear a great mystery; but as regards Mysie Craig's
agony, as she staggered down Miss Gilroy's stairs on her way home, there
could be no doubt or mystery whatever.
Nor, when she got home, was there any comfort there for the daughter who
had been so undutiful as to depart from her mother's precepts, and
conceal from her not only her unfortunate connection with a villain, but
the condition into which that connection had brought her. But she was at
least saved from the pain of a part of the confession, for her mother
had learned enough from Miss Allardice to satisfy her as to the cause of
her daughter's change from the happy creature she once was, singing in
the long nights, as she wrought unremittingly at her beautiful work, and
the poor, sighing, pale, heart-broken thing she had been for months. Nor
did she fail to see, with the quick eye of a mother, that as Mysie
immediately on entering the house laid herself quietly on the bed, and
sobbed in her great agony, she had learned the terrible truth from Miss
Gilroy that the robe she had embroidered was to deck the bride of her
destroyer. Moreover, her discretion enabled her to perceive that this
was not the time for explanation, for the hours of grief are sacred, and
the heart must be left to do its work by opening the issues of Nature's
assuagement, or ceasing to beat. So the night passed, without question
or answer; and the following day, that of the marriage, was one of
silence, even as if death had touched the tongue that used to be the
medium of cheerful words and tender sympathies--a strange contrast to
the joy, if not revelry, in Advocate's Close.
It was not till after several days had passed that Mysie was able, as
she still lay in bed, to whisper, amidst the recurring sobs, in the ear
of her mother, as the latter bent over her, the real circumstances of
her condition; and still, amidst the trembling words, came the
vindication that she considered herself to be as much the wife of George
Balgarnie as if they had been joined by "Holy Kirk;" a statement which
the mother could not understand, if it was not to her a mystery,
rendered even more mysterious by a reference which Mysie made to the law
of the country, as she had heard the same from her cousin, George
Davidson, a writer's clerk in the Lawnmarket. Much of which, as it came
in broken syllables from the lips of the disconsolate daughter, the
mother put to the account of the fond dreams of a mind put out of joint
by the worst form of misery incident to young women. But what availed
explanations, mysteries or no mysteries, where the fact was patent that
Mysie Craig lay there, the poor heartbroken victim of man's perfidy--her
powers of industry broken and useless--the fine weaving genius of her
fancy, whereby she wrought her embroidered devices to deck and adorn
beauty, only engaged now on portraying all the evils of her future life;
and above all, was she not soon to become a mother?
Meanwhile, and in the midst of all this misery, the laid-up earnings of
Mysie's industry wore away, where there was no work by those cunning
fingers, now thin and emaciated; and before the days passed, and the
critical day came whereon another burden would be imposed on the
household, there was need for the sympathy of neighbours in that form
which soon wears out--pecuniary help. That critical day at length came.
Mysie Craig gave birth to a boy, and their necessities from that hour
grew in quicker and greater proportion than the generosity of friends.
There behoved something to be done, and that without delay. So when
Mysie lay asleep, with the innocent evidence of her misfortune by her
side, Mrs. Craig put on her red plaid and went forth on a mother's duty,
and was soon in the presence of George Balgarnie and his young wife. She
was under an impulse which made light of delicate conventionalities, and
did not think it necessary to give the lady an opportunity of being
absent: nay, she rather would have her to be present; for was she, who
had been so far privy to the intercourse between her husband and Mysie,
to be exempt from the consequences which she, in a sense, might have
been said to have brought about?
"Ye have ruined Mysie Craig, sir!" cried at once the roused mother. "Ye
have ta'en awa her honour. Ye have ta'en awa her health. Ye have ta'en
awa her bread. Ay, and ye have reduced three human creatures to want, it
may be starvation; and I have come here in sair sorrow and necessity to
ask when and whaur is to be the remeid?"
"When and where you may find it, woman!" said the lady, as she cast a
side-glance to her husband, probably by way of appeal for the truth of
what she thought it right to say. "Mr. Balgarnie never injured your
daughter. Let him who did the deed yield the remeid!"
"And do you stand by this?" said Mrs. Craig.
But the husband had been already claimed as free from blame by his wife,
who kept her eye fixed upon him; and the obligation to conscience, said
by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is sometimes weaker than what
is due to a wife, in the estimation of whom a man may wish to stand in a
certain degree of elevation.
"You must seek another father to the child of your daughter," said he
lightly. And not content with the denial, he supplemented it by a laugh
as he added, "When birds go to the greenwood, they must take the chance
of meeting the goshawk."
"And that is your answer?" said she.
"It is; and you need never trouble either my wife or me more on this
subject," was the reply.
"Then may the vengeance o' the God of justice light on the heads o'
baith o' ye!" added Mrs. Craig, as she went hurriedly away.
Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, for she held on her way
direct to the Lawnmarket, where she found George Davidson, to whom she
related as much as she had been able to get out of Mysie, and also what
had passed at the interview with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing
which, the young writer shook his head.
"You will get a trifle of aliment," said he; "perhaps half-a-crown a
week, but no more; and Mysie could have made that in a day by her
beautiful work."
"And she will never work mair," said the mother, with a sigh.
"For a hundred years," rejoined he, more to himself than to her, and
probably in congratulation of himself for his perspicacity, "and since
ever there was a College of Justice, there never was a case where a man
pulled up on oath for a promise of marriage admitted the fact. It is a
good Scotch law, only we want a people to obey it. But what," he added
again, "if we were to try it, though it were only as a grim joke and a
revenge in so sad and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig!"
Words which the mother understood no more than she did law Latin; and so
she was sent away as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did not
want to raise hopes which there was no chance of being fulfilled; but he
knew as a Scotchman that a man who trusts himself to a "strae rape" in
the hope of its breaking, may possibly hang himself; and so it happened
that the very next day a summons was served upon George Balgarnie, to
have it found and declared by the Lords of Session that he had promised
to marry Mysie Craig, whereupon a child had been born by her; or, in
fault of that, he was bound to sustain the said child. Thereupon,
without the ordinary law's delay, certain proceedings went on, in the
course of which Mysie herself was examined as the mother to afford what
the lawyers call a _semiplena probatio_, or half proof, to be
supplemented otherwise, and thereafter George Balgarnie stood before the
august fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with Mysie, except an
occasional walk in the Hunter's Bog; and this he would have denied also,
but he knew that he had been seen, and that it would be sworn to by
others. And then came the last question, which Mr. Greerson, Mysie's
advocate, put in utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem to try
to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put his head in a noose on the
pretence of seeing how it fitted his neck, that he smiled even as the
words came out of his mouth--
"Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig?"
Was prudence, the chief of the four cardinal virtues, ever yet
consistent with vice? Balgarnie waxed clever--a dangerous trick in a
witness. He stroked his beard with a smile on his face, and answered--
"_Yes, once--when I was drunk_!"
Words which were immediately followed by the crack of a single word in
the dry mouth of one of the advocates--the word "NICKED."
And nicked he was; for the presiding judge, addressing the witness,
said--
"The drunkenness may be good enough in its own way, sir; but it does not
take away the effect of your promise; nay, it is even an aggravation,
insomuch as having enjoyed the drink, you wanted to enjoy with impunity
what you could make of the promise also."
If Balgarnie had been a reader, he might have remembered Waller's
verse--
"That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high."
So Mysie gained her plea, and the marriage with Anabella, for whom she
had embroidered the marriage gown, was dissolved. How matters progressed
afterwards for a time, we know not; but the Scotch know that there is
wisdom in making the best of a bad bargain, and in this case it was a
good one; for, as the Lady of Balgruddery, Mysie Craig did no dishonour
to George Balgarnie, who, moreover, found her a faithful wife, and a
good mother to the children that came of this strange marriage.