The taking down of the old house of four or five flats called
Gowanlock's Land, in that part of the High Street which used to be
called the Luckenbooths, has given rise to various stories connected
with the building. Out of these I have selected a very strange
legend--so strange indeed, that, if not true, it must have been the
production, _quod est in arte summa_, of a capital inventor; nor need I
say that it is of much importance to talk of the authenticity of these
things, for the most authentic are embellished by invention--and it is
certainly the best embellished that live the longest; for all which we
have very good reasons in human nature.
Gowanlock's Land, it would seem, merely occupied the site of an older
house, which belonged, at the time of Prince Charlie's occupation of the
city, to an old town councillor of the name of Yellowlees. This older
house was also one of many stories--an old form in Edinburgh, supposed
to have been adopted from the French; but it had, which was not
uncommon, an entry from the street running under an arch, and leading to
the back of the premises to the lower part of the tenement, that part
occupied by the councillor. There was a lower flat, and one above, which
thus constituted an entire house; and which, moreover, rejoiced in the
privilege of having an extensive garden, running down as far as the
sheet of water called the North Loch, that secret "domestic witness," as
the ancients used to say, of many of the dark crimes of the old city.
These gardens were the pride of the rich burghers of the time, decorated
by Dutch-clipped hollies and trim boxwood walks; and in our special
instance of Councillor Yellowlees' retreat, there was, in addition, a
summer-house or rustic bower standing at the bottom, that is, towards
the north, and close upon the loch. I may mention also that, in
consequence of the damp, this little bower was strewed with rushes for
the very special comfort of Miss Annie Yellowlees, the only and much
petted child of the good councillor.
All which you must take as introductory to the important fact that the
said Miss Annie, who, as a matter of course, was "very bonnie," as well
as passing rich to be, had been, somewhat previous to the prince's entry
to the town, pledged to be married to no less considerable a personage
than Maister John Menelaws, a son of him of the very same name who dealt
in pelts in a shop of the Canongate, and a student of medicine in the
Edinburgh University; but as the councillor had in his secret soul
hankerings after the prince, and the said student, John, was a red-hot
royalist, the marriage was suspended, all to the inexpressible grief of
our "bonnie Annie," who would not have given her John for all the
Charlies and Geordies to be found from Berwick to Lerwick. On the other
hand, while Annie was depressed, and forced to seek relief in solitary
musings in her bower by the loch, it is just as true that "it is an ill
wind that blaws naebody gude;" nay, the truth of the saying was verified
in Richard Templeton, a fellow-student of Menelaws, and a rival, too, in
the affections of Annie; who, being a Charlieite as well as an Annieite,
rejoiced that his companion was in the meantime foiled and disappointed.
Meanwhile, and, I may say, while the domestic affairs of the
councillor's house were still in this unfortunate position, the prince's
bubble burst in the way which history tells us of, and thereupon out
came proscriptions of terrible import, and, as fate would have it, young
Templeton's name was in the bloody register; the more by reason that he
had been as noisy as Edinburgh students generally are in the
proclamation of his partisanship. He must fly or secrete himself, or
perhaps lose a head in which there was concealed a considerable amount
of Scotch cunning. He at once thought of the councillor's house, with
that secluded back garden and summer-house, all so convenient for
secrecy, and the envied Annie there, too, whom he might by soft wooings
detach from the hated Menelaws, and make his own through the medium of
the pity that is akin to love. And so, to be sure, he straightway, under
the shade of night, repaired to the house of the councillor, who, being
a tender-hearted man, could not see a sympathiser with the glorious
cause in danger of losing his head. Templeton was received--a report set
abroad that he had gone to France--and all proper measures were taken
within the house to prevent any domestic from letting out the secret.
In this scheme, Annie, we need hardly say, was a favouring party; not
that she had any love for the young man, for her heart was still true to
Menelaws (who, however, for safety's sake, was now excluded from the
house), but that, with a filial obedience to a beloved father, she felt,
with a woman's heart, sympathy for one who was in distress, and a martyr
to the cause which her father loved. Need we wonder at an issue which
may already be looming on the vision of those who know anything of human
nature? The two young folks were thrown together. They were seldom out
of each other's company. Suffering is love's opportunity, and Templeton
had to plead for him not only his misfortune, but a tongue rendered
subtle and winning by love's action in the heart. As the days passed,
Annie saw some new qualities in the martyr prisoner which she had not
seen before; nay, the pretty little domestic attentions had the usual
reflex effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the
recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising
predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer
and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the
magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her
_protégé_, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and
ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red
slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so
very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the
distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be
applied anywhere but to the feet?
In the midst of all this secluded domesticity, there was all that
comfort which is said to come from stolen waters. Then was there not the
prospect of the proscription being taken off, and the two would be made
happy? Even in the meantime they made small escapades into free space.
When the moon was just so far up as not to be a tell-tale, Templeton
would, either with or without Annie, step out into the garden with these
very red slippers on his feet. That bower by the loch, too, was
favourable to the fondlings of a secret love; nor was it sometimes less
to the prisoner a refuge from the eeriness which comes of _ennui_--if it
is not the same thing--under the pressure of which strange feeling he
would creep out at times when Annie could not be with him; nay,
sometimes when the family had gone to bed.
And now we come to a very wonderful turn in our strange story. One
morning Templeton did not make his appearance in the breakfast parlour,
but of course he would when he got up and got his red slippers on. Yet
he was so punctual; and Annie, who knew that her father had to go to the
council chamber, would see what was the cause of the young man's delay.
She went to his bedroom door. It was open; but where was Templeton? He
was not there. He could not be out in the city; he could not be even in
the garden with the full light of a bright morning sun shining on it. He
was not in the house; he was not in the garden, as they could see from
the windows. He was nowhere to be found; and, what added to the wonder,
he had taken with him his red slippers, wherever he had gone. The
inmates were in wonderment and consternation, and, conduplicated evil!
they could make no inquiry for one who lay under the ban of a bloody
proscription.
But wonders, as we all know, generally ensconce themselves in some snug
theory, and die by a kind of pleasant euthanasia; and so it was with
this wonder of ours. The councillor came, as the days passed, to the
conclusion that Templeton, wearied out by his long confinement, had
become desperate, and had gone abroad. As good a theory as could be got,
seeing that he had not trusted himself in going near his friends; and
Annie, whose grief was sharp and poignant, came also to settle down with
a belief which still promised her her lover, though perhaps at a long
date. But, somehow or another, Annie could not explain why, even with
all the fondness he had to the work of her hands, he should have elected
to expose himself to damp feet by making the love-token slippers do the
duty of the pair of good shoes he had left in the bedroom.
Even this latter wonder wore away; and months and months passed on the
revolving wheel which casts months, not less than moments, into that
gulf we call eternity. The rigour of the Government prosecutions was
relaxed, and timid sympathisers began to show their heads out of doors,
but Richard Templeton never returned to claim either immunity or the
woman of his affections. Nor within all this time did John Menelaws
enter the house of the councillor; so that Annie's days were renounced
to sadness, and her nights to reveries. But at last comes the eventful
"one day" of the greatest of all story-tellers, Time, whereon happen his
startling discoveries. Verily one day Annie had wandered disconsolately
into the garden, and seated herself on the wooden form in the
summer-house, where in the moonlight she had often nestled in the arms
of her proscribed lover, who was now gone, it might be, for ever.
Objective thought cast her into a reverie, and the reverie brought up
again the images of these objects, till her heart beat with an affection
renewed through a dream. At length she started up, and, wishing to hurry
from a place which seemed filled with images at once lovable and
terrible, she felt her foot caught by an impediment whereby she
stumbled. On looking down she observed some object of a reddish-brown
colour; and becoming alarmed lest it might be one of the toads with
which the place was sometimes invaded, she started back. Yet curiosity
forced her to a closer inspection. She applied her hand to the object,
and brought away one of those very slippers which she had made for
Templeton. All very strange; but what maybe conceived to have been her
feelings when she saw, sticking up from beneath the rushes, the white
skeleton of a foot which had filled that very slipper! A terrible
suspicion shot through her mind. She flew to her father, and, hurrying
him to the spot, pointed out to him the grim object, and showed him the
slipper which had covered it. Mr. Yellowlees was a shrewd man, and soon
saw that, the foot being there, the rest of the body was not far away.
He saw, too, that his safety might be compromised either as having been
concerned in a murder or the harbourage of a rebel; and so, making
caution the better part of his policy, he repaired to a sympathiser, and
having told him the story, claimed his assistance. Nor was this refused.
That same night, by the light of a lamp, they exhumed the body of
Templeton, much reduced, but enveloped with his clothes; only they
observed that the other red slipper was wanting. On examining the body,
they could trace the evidence of a sword-stab through the heart. All
this they kept to themselves; and that same night they contrived to get
the sexton of the Canongate to inter the body as that of a rebel who had
been killed, and left where it was found.
This wonder also passed away, and, as time sped, old things began to get
again into their natural order. Menelaws began to come again about the
house; and as an old love, when the impediments are removed, is soon
rekindled again, he and Annie became even all that which they had once
been to each other. The old vows were repeated without the slightest
reference being made by either party to the cause which had interfered
to prevent them from having been fulfilled. It was not for Annie to
proffer a reason, and it did not seem to be the wish of Menelaws to ask
one. In a short time afterwards they were married.
The new-married couple, apparently happy in the enjoyment of an
affection which had continued so long, and had survived the crossing of
a new love, at least on one side, removed to a separate house farther up
in the Lawnmarket. Menelaws had previously graduated as a doctor, and he
commenced to practise as such, not without an amount of success.
Meanwhile the councillor died, leaving Annie a considerable fortune. In
the course of somewhere about ten years they had five children. They at
length resolved on occupying the old house with the garden, for Annie's
reluctance became weakened by time. It was on the occasion of the
flitting that Annie had to rummage an old trunk which Menelaws, long
after the marriage, had brought from the house of his father, the dealer
in pelts. There at the bottom, covered over by a piece of brown paper,
she found--what? The very slipper which matched the one she still
secretly retained in her possession. _Verbum sapienti_. You may now see
where the strange land lies; nor was Annie blind. She concluded in an
instant, and with a horror that thrilled through her whole body, that
Menelaws had murdered his rival. She had lain for ten years in the arms
of a murderer. She had borne to him five children. Nay, she loved him
with all the force of an ardent temperament. The thought was terrible,
and she recoiled from the very possibility of living with him a moment
longer. She took the fatal memorial and secreted it along with its
neighbour; and having a friend at a little distance from Edinburgh, she
hurried thither, taking with her her children. Her father had left in
her own power a sufficiency for her support, and she afterwards returned
to town. All the requests of her husband for an explanation she
resisted, and indeed they were not long persisted in, for Menelaws no
doubt gauged the reason of her obduracy--a conclusion the more likely
that he subsequently left Scotland. I have reason to believe that some
of the existing Menelaws' are descended from this strange union.