It is a common thing for writers of a certain class, when they want to
produce the feeling of wonder in their readers, to introduce some
frantic action, and then to account for it by letting out the secret
that the actor was mad. The trick is not so necessary as it seems, for
the strength of human passions is a potentiality only limited by
experience; and so it is that a sane person may under certain stimulants
do the maddest thing in the world. The passion itself is always true--it
is only the motive that may be false; and therefore it is that in
narrating for your amusement, perhaps I may add instruction, the
following singular story--traces of the main parts of which I got in the
old books of a former procurator-fiscal--I assume that there was no more
insanity in the principal actor, Euphemia, or, as she was called, Effie
Carr, when she brought herself within the arms of the law, than there is
in you, when now you are reading the story of her strange life. She was
the only daughter of John Carr, a grain merchant, who lived in Bristo
Street. It would be easy to ascribe to her all the ordinary and
extraordinary charms that are thought so necessary to embellish
heroines; but as we are not told what these were in her case, we must be
contented with the assurance that nature had been kind enough to her to
give her power over the hearts of men. We shall be nearer our purpose
when we state, what is necessary to explain a peculiar part of our
story, that her father, in consequence of his own insufficient
education, had got her trained to help him in keeping his accounts with
the farmers, and in writing up his books; nay, she enjoyed the privilege
of writing his drafts upon the Bank of Scotland, which the father
contrived to sign, though in his own illiterate way, and with a
peculiarity which it would not have been easy to imitate.
But our gentle clerk did not consider these duties imposed upon her by
her father as excluding her either from gratifying her love of domestic
habits, by assisting her mother in what at that time was denominated
hussyskep or housekeeping, or from a certain other gratification, which
might without a hint from us be anticipated--no other than the luxury of
falling head and ears, and heart too we fancy, in love with a certain
dashing young student of the name of Robert Stormonth, then attending
the University, more for the sake of polish than of mere study, for he
was the son of the proprietor of Kelton, and required to follow no
profession. How Effie got entangled with this youth we have no means of
knowing, so we must be contented with the Scotch proverb--
"Tell me where the flea may bite,
And I will tell where love may light."
The probability is, that from the difference of their stations and the
retiring nature of our gentle clerk, we shall be safe in assuming that
he had, as the saying goes, been smitten by her charms in some of those
street encounters, where there is more of love's work done than in
"black-footed" tea coteries expressly held for the accommodation of
Cupid. And that the smiting was a genuine feeling we are not left to
doubt; for in addition to the reasons we shall afterwards have too good
occasion to know, he treated Effie not as those wild students who are
great men's sons do "the light o' loves" they meet in their escapades,
for he entrusted his secrets to her, he took such small counsel from her
poor head as a "learned clerk" might be supposed able to give; nay, he
told her of his mother, and how one day he hoped to be able to introduce
her at Kelton as his wife. All which Effie repaid with the devotedness
of that most wonderful affection called the first or virgin love--the
purest, the deepest, the most thorough-going of all the emotions of the
human heart. But as yet he had not conceded to her wish that he should
consent to their love being made known to Effie's father and mother.
Love is only a leveller to itself and its object: the high-born youth,
inured to refined manners, shrank from a family intercourse, which put
him too much in mind of the revolt he had made against the presumed
wishes and intentions of his proud parents. Wherein, after all, he was
only true to the instincts of that institution, apparently so inhumane
as well as unchristian in its exclusiveness, called aristocracy, and yet
with the excuse that its roots are pretty deeply set in human nature.
But, proud as he was, Bob Stormonth, the younger of Kelton, was amenable
to the obligations of a necessity, forged by his own imprudent hands. He
had, by a fast mode of living, got into debt--a condition from which his
father, a stern man, had relieved him twice before, but with a threat on
the last occasion, that if he persevered in his prodigality, he would
withdraw from him his yearly allowance, and throw him upon his own
resources. The threat proved ineffectual, and this young heir of entail,
with all his pride, was once in the grasp of low-born creditors; nay,
things in this evil direction had gone so far that writs were out
against him, and one in the form of a caption was already in the hands
of a messenger-at-arms. That the debts were comparatively small in
amount, was no amelioration where the purse was all but empty; and he
had exhausted the limited exchequers of his chums, which with college
youths was, and is, not difficult to do. So the gay Bob was driven to
his last shift, and that, as is generally the case, was a mean one; for
necessity, as the mother of inventions, does not think it proper to
limit her births to genteel or noble devices to please her proud
consort. He even had recourse to poor Effie to help him; and, however
ridiculous this may seem, there were reasons that made the application
appear not so desperate as some of his other schemes. It was only the
caption that as yet quickened his fears; and as the sum for which the
writ was issued was only twenty pounds, it was not, after all, so much
beyond the power of a clerk.
It was during one of their ordinary walks in the Meadows that the
pressing necessity was opened by Stormonth to the vexed and terrified
girl. He told her that, but for the small help he required in the
meantime, he would be ruined. The wrath of his father would be excited
once more, and probably to the exclusion of all reconciliation; and he
himself compelled to flee, but whither he knew not. He had his plan
prepared, and proposed to Effie, who had no means of her own, _to take a
loan_ of the sum out of her father's cash-box--words very properly
chosen according to the euphemistic policy of the devil; but Effie's
genuine spirit was roused and alarmed.
"Dreadful!" she whispered, as if afraid that the night wind would carry
her words to honest ears. "Besides," she continued, "my father, who is a
hard man, keeps his desk lockit."
Words which took Stormonth aback, for even he saw there was here a
necessity as strong as his own; yet the power of invention went to work
again.
"Listen, Effie," said he. "If you cannot help me, it is not likely we
shall meet again. I am desperate, and will go into the army."
The ear of Effie was chained to a force which was direct upon the heart.
She trembled and looked wistfully into his face, even as if by that look
she could extract from him some other device less fearful, by which she
might have the power of retaining him for so short a period as a day.
"You draw out your father's drafts on the bank, Effie," he continued.
"Write one out for me, and I will put your father's name to it. You can
draw the money. I will be saved from ruin; and your father will never
know."
A proposal which again brought a shudder over the girl.
"Is it Robert Stormonth who asks me to do this thing?" she whispered
again.
"No," said he; "for I am not myself. Yesterday, and before the messenger
was after me, I would have shrunk from the suggestion. I am not myself,
I say, Effie. Ay or no; keep me or lose me--that is the alternative."
"Oh, I cannot," was the language of her innocence, and for which he was
prepared; for the stimulant was again applied in the most powerful of
all forms--the word farewell was sounded in her ear.
"Stop, Robert! let me think." But there was no thought, only the heart
beating wildly. "I will do it; and may the penalty be mine, and mine
only."
So it was: "even virtue's self turns vice when misapplied." What her
mind shrank from was embraced by the heart as a kind of sacred duty of a
love making a sacrifice for the object of its first worship. It was
arranged; and as the firmness of a purpose is often in proportion to the
prior disinclination, so Effie's determination to save her lover from
ruin was forthwith put in execution; nay, there was even a touch of the
heroine in her, so wonderfully does the heart, acting under its primary
instincts, sanctify the device which favours its affection. That same
evening Effie Carr wrote out the draft for twenty pounds on the Bank of
Scotland, gave it to Stormonth, who, from a signature of the father's,
also furnished by her, perpetrated the forgery--a crime at that time
punishable by death. The draft so signed was returned to Effie. Next
forenoon she went to the bank, as she had often done for her father
before; and the document being in her handwriting, as prior ones of the
same kind had also been, no scrutinizing eye was turned to the
signature. The money was handed over, but _not counted_ by the
recipient, as before had been her careful habit--a circumstance with its
effect to follow in due time. Meanwhile Stormonth was at a place of
appointment out of the reach of the executor of the law, and was soon
found out by Effie, who gave him the money with trembling hands. For
this surely a kiss was due. We do not know; but she returned with the
satisfaction, overcoming all the impulses of fear and remorse, that she
had saved the object of her first and only love from ruin and flight.
But even then the reaction was on the spring; the rebound was to be
fearful and fatal. The teller at the bank had been struck with Effie's
manner; and the non-counting of the notes had roused a suspicion, which
fought its way even against the improbability of a mere girl
perpetrating a crime from which females are generally free. He examined
the draft, and soon saw that the signature was a bad imitation.
Thereupon a messenger was despatched to Bristo Street for inquiry. John
Carr, taken by surprise, declared that the draft, though written by his
daughter, was forged--the forgery being in his own mind attributed to
George Lindsay, his young salesman. Enough this for the bank, who had in
the first place only to do with the utterer, against whom their evidence
as yet only lay. Within a few hours afterwards Effie Carr was in the
Tolbooth, charged with the crime of forging a cheque on her father's
account-current.
The news soon spread over Edinburgh--at that time only an overgrown
village, in so far as regarded local facilities for the spread of
wonders. It had begun there, where the mother was in recurring faints,
the father in distraction and not less mystery, George Lindsay in terror
and pity. And here comes in the next strange turn of our story. Lindsay
all of a sudden declared he was the person who imitated the name--a
device of the yearning heart to save the girl of his affection from the
gallows, and clutched at by the mother and father as a means of their
daughter's redemption. One of those thinly-sown beings who are
cold-blooded by nature, who take on love slowly but surely, and seem
fitted to be martyrs, Lindsay defied all consequences, so that it might
be that Effie Carr should escape an ignominious death. Nor did he take
time for further deliberation: in less than half an hour he was in the
procurator-fiscal's office--the willing self-criminator; the man who did
the deed; the man who was ready to die for his young mistress and his
love. His story, too, was as ready as it was truth-seeming. He declared
that he had got Effie to write out the draft as if commissioned by John
Carr; that he took it away, and with his own hands added the name; that
he had returned the check to Effie to go with it to the bank, and had
received the money from her on her return. The consequence was his wish,
and it was inevitable. That same day George Lindsay was lodged also in
the Tolbooth, satisfied that he had made a sacrifice of his life for one
whom he had loved for years, and who yet had never shown him even a
symptom of hope that his love would be returned.
All which proceedings soon came on the wings of rumour to the ears of
Robert Stormonth, who was not formed to be a martyr even for a love
which was to him as true as his nature would permit. He saw his danger,
because he did not see the character of a faithful girl who would die
rather than compromise her lover. He fled--aided probably by that very
money he had wrung out of the hands of the devoted girl; nor was his
disappearance connected with the tragic transaction; for, as we have
said, the connection between him and Effie had been kept a secret, and
his flight could be sufficiently accounted for by his debt.
Meanwhile the precognitions or examination of the parties went on, and
with a result as strange as it was puzzling to the officials. Effie was
firm to her declaration, that she not only wrote the body of the cheque,
but attached to it the name of her father, and had appropriated the
money in a way which she declined to state. On the other hand, Lindsay
was equally staunch to his statement made to the procurator-fiscal, that
he had got Effie to write the draft, had forged the name to it, and got
the money from her. The authorities very soon saw that they had got more
than the law bargained for or wanted; nor was the difficulty likely soon
to be solved. The two parties could not both be guilty, according to the
evidence, nor could one of them be guilty to the exclusion of the other;
neither, when the balance was cast, was there much difference in the
weight of the scales, because, while it was in one view more likely that
Lindsay signed the false name, it was beyond doubt that Effie wrote the
body of the document, and she had, moreover, presented it. But was it
for the honour of the law that people should be hanged on a likelihood?
It was a new case without new heads to decide it, and it made no
difference that the body of the people, who soon became inflamed on the
subject, took the part of the girl and declared against the man. It was
easy to be seen that the tracing of the money would go far to solve the
mystery; and accordingly there was a strict search made in Lindsay's
lodgings, as well as in Effie's private repositories at home. We need
not say with what effect, where the money was over the Border and away.
It was thus in all views more a case for Astraea than common heads; but
then she had gone to heaven. The Lord Advocate soon saw that the law was
likely to be caught in its own meshes. The first glimpse was got of the
danger of hanging so versatile, so inconsistent, so unsearchable a
creature as a human being on a mere confession of guilt. That that had
been the law of Scotland in all time, nay, that it had been the law of
the world from the beginning, there was no doubt. Who could know the
murderer or the forger better than the murderer or the forger himself?
and would any one throw away his life on a false plea? The reasoning
does not exhaust the deep subject; there remains the presumption that
the criminal will, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, deny, and deny
boldly. But our case threw a new light on the old law, and the Lord
Advocate was slow to indict where he saw not only reasons for failure,
but also rising difficulties which might strike at the respect upon
which the law was founded.
The affair hung loose for a time, and Lindsay's friends, anxious to save
him, got him induced to run his letters--the effect of which is to give
the prosecutor a period wherein to try the culprit, on failure of which
the person charged is free. The same was done by Effie's father; but
quickened as the Lord Advocate was, the difficulty still met him like a
ghost that would not be laid, that if he put Effie at the bar, Lindsay
would appear in the witness-box; and if he put Lindsay on his trial,
Effie would swear he was innocent; and as for two people forging _the
same name_, the thing had never been heard of. And so it came to pass
that the authorities at last, feeling they were in a cleft stick, where
if they relieved one hand the other would be caught, were inclined to
liberate both panels. But the bank was at that time preyed upon by
forgeries, and were determined to make an example now when they had a
culprit, or perhaps two. The consequence was, that the authorities were
forced to give way, vindicating their right of choice as to the party
they should arraign. That party was Effie Carr, and the choice justified
itself by two considerations: that she, by writing and uttering the
cheque, was so far committed by evidence exterior to her
self-inculpation; and secondly, that Lindsay might break down in the
witness-box under a searching examination. Effie was therefore indicted
and placed at the bar. She pleaded guilty, but the prosecutor,
notwithstanding, led evidence, and at length Lindsay appeared as a
witness for the defence. The people who crowded the court had been aware
from report of the condition in which Lindsay stood; but the deep
silence which reigned throughout the hall when he was called to answer,
evinced the doubt whether he would stand true to his self-impeachment.
The doubt was soon solved. With a face on which no trace of fear could
be perceived, with a voice in which there was no quaver, he swore that
it was he who signed the draft and sent Effie for the money. The
oscillation of sympathy, which had for a time been suspended, came round
again to the thin pale girl, who sat there looking wistfully and
wonderingly into the face of the witness, and the murmuring approbation
that broke out, in spite of the shrill "silence" of the crier, expressed
at once admiration of the man--criminal as he swore himself to be--and
pity for the accused. What could the issue be? Effie was acquitted, and
Lindsay sent back to gaol. Was he not to be tried? The officials felt
that the game was dangerous. If Lindsay had stood firm in the box, had
not Effie sat firm at the bar, with the very gallows in her eye, and
would not she, in her turn, be as firm in the box? All which was too
evident, and the consequence in the end came to be, that Lindsay was in
the course of a few days set at liberty.
And now there occurred proceedings not less strange in the house of John
Carr. Lindsay was turned off, because, though he had made a sacrifice of
himself to save the life of Effie, the sacrifice was only that due to
the justice he had offended. The dismissal was against the protestations
of Effie, who alone knew he was innocent; and she had to bear the
further grief of learning that Stormonth had left the city on the very
day whereon she was apprehended--a discovery this too much for a frame
always weak, and latterly so wasted by her confinement in prison, and
the anguish of mind consequent upon her strange position. And so it came
to pass in a few more days that she took to her bed, a wan, wasted,
heart-broken creature; but stung as she had been by the conduct of the
man she had offered to die to save, she felt even more the sting of
ingratitude in herself for not divulging to her mother as much of her
secret as would have saved Lindsay from dismissal, for she was now more
and more satisfied that it was the strength of his love for her that had
driven him to his great and perilous sacrifice. Nor could her mother, as
she bent over her daughter, understand why her liberation should have
been followed by so much sorrow; nay, loving her as she did, she even
reproached her as being ungrateful to God.
"Mother," said the girl, "I have a secret that lies like a stane upon my
heart. George Lindsay had nae mair to do with that forgery than you."
"And who had to do with it then, Effie, dear?"
"Myself," continued the daughter; "I filled up the cheque at the bidding
o' Robert Stormonth, whom I had lang loved. It was he wha put my
faither's name to it. It was to him I gave the money, to relieve him
from debt, and he has fled."
"Effie, Effie," cried the mother; "and we have done this thing to George
Lindsay--ta'en from him his basket and his store, yea, the bread o' his
mouth, in recompense for trying to save your life by offering his ain!"
"Yes, mother," added Effie; "but we must make that wrang richt."
"And mair, lass," rejoined the mother, as she rose abruptly and
nervously, and hurried to her husband, to whom she told the strange
intelligence. Then John Carr was a just man as well as a loving parent;
and while he forgave his unfortunate daughter, he went and brought back
George Lindsay to his old place that very night; nor did he or Mrs. Carr
know the joy they had poured into the heart of the young man, for the
reason that they did not know the love he bore to their daughter. But if
this was a satisfaction to Effie, in so far as it relieved her heart of
a burden, it brought to her a burden of another kind. The mother soon
saw how matters stood with the heart of Lindsay, and she, moreover, saw
that her or her daughter's gratitude could not be complete so long as he
was denied the boon of being allowed to marry the girl he had saved from
the gallows, and she waited her opportunity of breaking the delicate
subject to Effie. It was not time yet, when Effie was an invalid, and
even so far wasted and worn as to cause apprehensions of her ultimate
fate, even death; nor perhaps would that time ever come when she could
bear to hear the appeal without pain; for though Stormonth had ruined
her character and her peace of mind--nay, had left her in circumstances
almost unprecedented for treachery, baseness, and cruelty--he retained
still the niche where the offerings of a first love had been made: his
image had been indeed burned into the virgin heart, and no other form of
man's face, though representing the possessor of beauty, wealth, and
worldly honours, would ever take away that treasured symbol. It haunted
her even as a shadow of herself, which, disappearing at sundown, comes
again at the rising of the noon; nay, she would have been contented to
make other sacrifices equally great as that which she had made; nor wild
moors, nor streams, nor rugged hills, would have stopped her in an
effort to look upon him once more, and replace that inevitable image by
the real vision, which had first taken captive her young heart.
But time passed, bringing the usual ameliorations to the miserable.
Effie got so far better in health that she became able to resume, in a
languid way, her former duties, with the exception of those of "the
gentle clerk"--for of these she had had enough; even the very look of a
bank-draft brought a shudder over her; nor would she have entered the
Bank of Scotland again, even with a good cheque for a thousand pounds,
to have been all her own. Meanwhile the patient George had plied a suit
which he could only express by his eyes or the attentions of one who
worships, but he never alluded, even in their conversations, to the old
sacrifice. The mother too, and not less the father, saw the advantages
that might result as well to the health of her mind as that of her body.
They had waited--a vain waiting--for the wearing out of the traces of
the obdurate image; and when they thought they might take placidity as
the sign of what they waited for, they first hinted, and then expressed
in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. For a time all their efforts
were fruitless; but John Carr getting old and weak, wished to be
succeeded in his business by George; and the wife, when she became a
widow, would require to be maintained--reasons which had more weight
with Effie than any others, excepting always the act of George's
self-immolation at the shrine in which his fancy had placed her. The
importunities at length wore out her resistings, without effacing the
lines of the old and still endeared image, and she gave a cold, we may
say reluctant, consent. The bride's "ay" was a sigh, the rapture a tear
of sadness. But George was pleased even with this: Effie, the
long-cherished Effie, was at length his.
In her new situation, Effie Carr--now Mrs. Lindsay--performed all the
duties of a good and faithful wife; by an effort of the will no doubt,
though in another sense only a sad obedience to necessity, of which we
are all, as the creatures of motives, the very slaves. But the old image
resisted the appeals of her reason, as well as the blandishments of a
husband's love. She was only true, faithful, and kind, till the birth of
a child lent its reconciling power to the efforts of duty. Some time
afterwards John Carr died--an event which carried in its train the
subsequent death of his wife. There was left to the son-in-law a
dwindling business, and a very small sum of money, for the father had
met with misfortunes in his declining years, which impaired health
prevented him from resisting. Time wore on, and showed that the power of
the martyr-spirit is not always that of the champion of worldly success,
for it was now but a struggle between George Lindsay, with a stained
name, and the stern demon of misfortune. He was at length overtaken by
poverty, which, as affecting Effie, preyed so relentlessly upon his
spirits, that within two years he followed John Carr to the grave. Effie
was now left with two children to the work of her fingers, a poor weapon
wherewith to beat off the wolf of want, and even this was curtailed by
the effects of the old crime, which the public still kept in green
remembrance.
Throughout, our story has been the sensationalism of angry fate, and
even less likely to be believed than the work of fiction. Nor was the
vulture face of the Nemesis yet smoothed down. The grief of her
bereavement had only partially diverted Effie's mind from the
recollections of him who had ruined her, and yet could not be hated by
her, nay, could not be but loved by her. The sensitized nerve, which had
received the old image, gave it out fresh again to the reviving power of
memory, and this was only a continuation of what had been a corroding
custom of years and years. But, as the saying goes, it is a long road
that does not offer by its side the spreading bough of shade to the
way-worn traveller. One day, when Effie was engaged with her work, of
which she was as weary as of the dreaming which accompanied it, there
appeared before her, without premonition or foreshadowing sign, Robert
Stormonth of Kelton, dressed as a country gentleman, booted, and with a
whip in his hand.
"Are you Effie Carr?"
The question was useless to one who was already lying back in her chair
in a state of unconsciousness, from which she recovered only to open her
eyes and avert them, and shut them and open them again, like the victim
of epilepsy.
"And do you fear me?" said the excited man, as he took her in his strong
arms and stared wildly into her face; "I have more reason to fear you,
whom I ruined," he continued. "Ay, brought within the verge of the
gallows. I know it all, Effie. Open your eyes, dear soul, and smile once
more upon me. Nay, I have known it for years, during which remorse has
scourged me through the world. Look up, dear Effie, while I tell you I
could bear the agony no longer; and now opportunity favours the wretched
penitent, for my father is dead, and I am not only my own master, but
master of Kelton, of which you once heard me speak. Will you not look up
yet, dear Effie? I come to make amends to you, not by wealth merely, but
to offer you again that love I once bore to you, and still bear. Another
such look, dear--it is oil to my parched spirit. You are to consent to
be my wife; the very smallest boon I dare offer."
During which strange rambling speech Effie was partly insensible; yet
she heard enough to afford her clouded mind a glimpse of her condition,
and of the meaning of what was said to her. For a time she kept staring
into his face as if she had doubts of his real personality; nor could
she find words to express even those more collected thoughts that began
to gather into form.
"Robert Stormonth," at length she said, calmly, "and have you suffered
too? Oh, this is more wonderful to me than a' the rest o' these
wonderful things."
"As no man ever suffered, dear Effie," he answered. "I was on the eve of
coming to you, when a friend I retained here wrote me to London of your
marriage with the man who saved you from the fate into which I
precipitated you. How I envied that man who offered to die for you! He
seemed to take from me my only means of reparation; nay, my only chance
of happiness. But he is dead. Heaven give peace to so noble a spirit!
And now you are mine. It is mercy I come to seek in the first instance;
the love--if that, after all that is past, is indeed possible--I will
take my chance of that."
"Robert," cried the now weeping woman, "if that love had been aince
less, what misery I would have been spared! Ay, and my father, and
mother, and poor George Lindsay, a' helped awa to the grave by my crime,
for it stuck to us to the end." And she buried her head in his bosom,
sobbing piteously.
"_My_ crime, dear Effie, not yours," said he. "It was you who saved my
life; and if Heaven has a kindlier part than another for those who err
by the fault of others, it will be reserved for one who made a sacrifice
of love. But we have, I hope, something to enjoy before you go there,
and as yet I have not got your forgiveness."
"It is yours--it is yours, Robert," was the sobbing answer. "Ay, and
with it a' the love I ever had for you."
"Enough for this time, dear Effie," said he. "My horse waits for me.
Expect me to-morrow at this hour with a better-arranged purpose." And
folding her in his arms, and kissing her fervently, even as his remorse
were thereby assuaged as well as his love gratified, he departed,
leaving Effie to thoughts we should be sorry to think ourselves capable
of putting into words. Nor need we say more than that Stormonth kept his
word. Effie Carr was in a few days Mrs. Stormonth, and in not many more
the presiding female power in the fine residence of Kelton.