Some reference has been made by Mr. Chambers, in his _Traditions of
Edinburgh_, to a story which looks very like fiction, but the foundation
of which, I dare to say, is the following, derived at most third-hand,
from George Gourlay, a blacksmith, whose shop was in the Luckenbooths,
his dwelling-house in Bell's Wynd, and who was himself an actor in the
drama.
It is not saying much for the topography of an Edinburgh wynd, to tell
that it contained a flat such as that occupied by this blacksmith; but
he who would describe one of these peculiar features of the Old Town,
would be qualified to come after him who gave a graphic account of the
Daedalian Labyrinth, or pictured Menander. Such a wynd has been likened
to the vestibule to a certain place, more hot than cozy--at another
time, to two long tiers of catacombs with living mummies piled row over
row; but, resigning such extravagances, we may be within the bounds of
moderation, and not beyond the attributes of fair similitude, when we
say that one of these wynds is like a perpendicular town where the long,
narrow, dark streets, in place of extending themselves, as they ought,
on the earth's surface, proceed upwards to the sky. And which sky is
scarcely visible--not that, if the perpendicular line were maintained,
the empyrean would be so very much obscured, but that the inhabitants,
in proportion as they rise away from mother earth and society, make
amends by jutting out their dwellings in the form of Dutch gables, so as
to be able to converse with their neighbours opposite on the affairs of
the world below--that world above, to which they are so much nearer,
being despised, on the principle of familiarity producing contempt. Then
the sky-line would so much delight a Gothic architect, composed as it is
of a long multiplicity on either side of pointed gables, lum-tops
venting reek and smoke, dried women's heads venting something of the
same kind. Next, the dark boles of openings to these perpendicular
passages--so like entries to coal cellars,--yet where myriads of human
beings pass and repass up to and down from these skyward streets, which
have no name; being the only streets in the wide world without a
nomenclature.
We picture the said George Gourlay and his wife, of an evening, at the
time of the history of Bell's Wynd, and other such wynds, when a change
was taking place among the masses there. The New Town was beginning to
hold out its aristocratic attractions to the grandees and wealthy
merchants, who had chosen to live so long in so pent-up a place. Ay,
many had left years before, or were leaving their lairs to be occupied
by those who never thought they would live in houses with armorial
bearings over the door. So it was that flats were shut up, and little
wonder was created by the circumstance of windows being closed by inside
shutters for years. The explanation simply was, that the good old
family would come back to its old _lares_, or that no tenant could be
got for the empty house. And then, of course, the furniture had flitted
to the palaces beyond the North Loch; and what interest could there be
in an empty house with the bare walls overhung by cobwebs, or gnawed
into sinuosities by hungry rats, thus cruelly deserted by the cooks who
ought to have fed them? Yet, in that same stair where Gourlay lived,
there was a _door_ with a history that could not be explained in that
easy way.
"I say it puzzles me, guidwife Christian, and has done for years."
"And mair it should me, George. You have been here only nine years, but
'tis now twenty-one since my father was carried to the West Kirk; and a
year afore that I heard him say the house was left o' a morning: nor
sound nor sigh o' human being has been heard in't since that hour."
"And then the changes," said Geordie, "hae ta'en awa the auld folk whase
gleg een would hae noticed it. As for Bailie or Dean o' Guild, nane o'
them hae ever tirled the padlock."
"But the factor, auld Dallas o' Lady Stair's Close, dee'd shortly after
my father, and that will partly account for't."
"It accounts for naething, guidwife Christian," rejoined he. "Whar's the
laird? Men are sometimes forgetfu'; but what man, or woman either, ever
forgets their property or heirlooms? Ye ken, love Christian," he
continued, looking askance at her, half in seriousness and half in
humour, "I am a blacksmith, and hae routh o' skeleton keys."
"And never ane o' them will touch that padlock while I'm in your
keeping, Geordie. I took ye for an honest man."
An opposition or check which Gourlay did not altogether like; for, in
secret truth, he had long contemplated an entry by these said skeleton
keys, and, like all people who want a justification for some act they
wish to perform, not altogether consistent with what is right, he had
often in serious playfulness knocked his foot against the old
worm-eaten, wood-rusted, dry-rotted door, as if he expected some
confined ghost to shriek, like that unhappy spirit of the Buchan Caves,
"Let me out, let me out!" whereupon Mr. Gourlay would have been, we
doubt not, more humane than his old father-god, who would not let the
pretty mother of love out of his iron net.
"Honest! there's twa-three kinds o' honesty, wife Christian. There's the
cauld iron or steel kind, that will neither brak nor bend--the lukewarm,
that is stiff--and the red hot, which canna be handled, but may be
twisted by a bribe o' the hammer, or the cajoling o' the nippers. What
kind would ye wish mine to be?"
"The cauld, that winna bend."
"And canna be fashioned to man's purposes, and made a picklock o'? Weel,
weel, Christian, I'm content."
But George Gourlay was not content, neither then nor for several nights;
nor even in that hour when, having watched guidwife Christian as she lay
on the liver side, and heard the "snurr, snurr," of her deepest sleep,
and listened to the corresponding knurr of the old timepiece as it beat
hoarsely the key-stone hour between the night and the day, he slipt
noiselessly out of bed, and listened again to ascertain whether his
stealthy movement had disturbed his wife. All safe--nor sound anywhere
within the house, or even in the Wynd, where midnight orgies of the
new-comers sometimes annoyed the remaining grandees not yet gone over
the Loch; no, nor rap, rap, upwards from the spirits in the deserted
house right below him, inviting him by the call of "Let me out." Most
opportune silence,--not even broken by guidwife Christian's Baudron
watching with brain-lighted eyes at some hole in a meat-press. And
dark too, not less than Cimmerian, save only for a small rule of
moonlight, which, penetrating a circular hole in the shutter, played
fitfully, as the clouds went over its source, on a point of the red
curtains--sometimes disappearing altogether. By a little groping he got
his hose; nor more would he venture to search for, but finding his way
by touch of the finger, he reached the kitchen, where he lighted the end
of a small dip. A sorry glimmer indeed; but it enabled him to lay his
hands on a bunch of crooked instruments, which he lifted so stealthily
that even a mouse would have continued nibbling forbidden cheese, and
been not a whit alarmed. Then there was the more dangerous opening of
the door leading to the tortuous stair--dangerous, for that quick ear
ben the house, which knew the creak as well as she did the accents of
Geordie Gourlay. Ah, _tutum silentii praemium_! has he not gone through
all this, and reached the stair without a sneeze or sigh of mortal to
disturb him!
So far was he fortunate; and slipshod in worsted of wife Christian's own
working, who so little thought, as she pleased herself with the
reflection of the softness for his feet, that she was to be cheated
thereby, he slipped gently down the steps on this enterprise he had
revolved in his mind for years and years of bygone time. Come to the
identical old door. He had examined it often by candle-light before; and
as for the rusty hasp and staple, and appended padlock, he knew them
well, with all their difficulties to even smith's hands of his horny
manipulation. He laid down the glimmering candle and paused. What a
formidable object of occlusion, that door by which no one had entered
for twenty years! Geordie knew nothing of the old notion, that time
fills secret and vacant recesses with terrified ghosts, frightened away
from the haunts of men; yet he had strange misgivings, which, being the
instinctive suggestions of a rude mind, had a better chance for being
true to nature. Perhaps the cold night air, to which his shirt offered
small impediment, helped his tremulousness; and that was not diminished
when, on seizing the padlock, a scream from some drunken unfortunate in
the Wynd struck on his ear and died away in the midnight silence. Nor
was he free from the pangs of conscience, as he thought of the
injunctions of guidwife Christian, and, more than these, the sanctions
of morality and the laws; but then he was not a thief,--only an
antiquary, searching into a dungeon of time-hallowed curiosities and
relics. He laid his hard hand on the rusty padlock. He was accustomed to
the screech of old bolts, but that now was as if it came from some of
Vulcan's chains whereby he caught the old thieves. The key-hole was
entirely filled up with red rust, which, like silence stuffing up the
mouth, had kept the brain-works unimpaired; so it needed no long time
till, through his cunning crooks, he heard the nick of the receding
bolt. A tug brought up the hasp, and now all ought to have been clear;
but it was otherwise. Time, with his warpings and accumulating glues,
had been there too long--the door would not give way, even to a smith's
right hand; but Geordie had a potency in his back, before which other
unwilling impediments of the same kind, sometimes with a debtor's
resistance at the other side, had given way. That potency he applied;
and the groan of the hinges responding fearfully to his ears, the vision
was at length realized, of that door standing open for the passage of
human beings.
So far committed, Geordie's courage came with a drawing up of his
muscles; and muttering between his teeth, which risped like files, "I
will face any one except the devil," he lifted the candle, the glimmer
of which paled in the thick air of the opening. He waved it up and down
before he entered; but it seemed as if the weak rays could not find
their way in the dense atmosphere--enough, notwithstanding, to show him
dimly a long lobby. He snorted as the accumulated must stimulated his
nostrils; but there was more than must--the smell was that of an opened
grave which had been covered with moil for a century. Yet his step was
instinctively forward,--the small light flitting here and there like the
fitful gleam of a magic lantern. Half groping with the left hand, as he
held the candle with his right, he soon began to discover particulars.
There were three doors, opening no doubt to rooms, on his left; and as
the light--becoming accustomed, like men's eyes, to the dark--shone
forwards towards the end, he saw another door, which was open. Desperate
men--and Geordie was now wound up--aim at the farthest extremities. He
made his way forward, laying down each stocking-clad foot as if in fear
of being heard by the family below, whose hysterics at a tread above
them at midnight, and in that house, would lead to inquiry and
detection.
He came at length to the open door at the end of the lobby, and ventured
in. He was presently in the middle of the kitchen, holding the candle up
to see as far around him as he could. Geordie had never read of those
scenes of enchantment where veritable men and women, with warm blood in
their veins, were, on being touched by a wand, changed into statues with
the very smile on their faces which they wore at the moment of
transmutation; in which state they were to remain for a hundred years,
till the wand was broken by a fairy, when they would all start into
their old life. No matter if he had not, for here there was no change:
the kitchen was as it had been left, twenty years before. The
plate-rack, with the china set all along in regular order--no change
there; nor on the row of pewter jugs, one of which stood on the dresser,
with a bottle alongside, and a screw with the cork still on its spiral
end. No doubt some one had been drinking just on the eve of the
cessation of the living economy. A square fir-table stood in the middle,
supplied with plates ready to be carried to the dining-room; and these
plates were certainly not to have been supplied with imaginary meals,
like those in the Eastern tale, for, as he held the candle down towards
the grate, yet half filled with cinders, he saw the horizontal spit with
the skeleton of a goose stuck on it. The motion of the spit had been
suspended when the works ran out, and Baudron had feasted upon the flesh
when it became cold. Nay, that cat, no doubt cherished, lay extended in
anatomy before the fireplace. Nor could it be doubted that the roast had
not been ready; for the axe lay beside a piece of coal half splintered,
for the necessities of the diminished fire. An industrious house too,
wherein the birr of the wheel and the sneck of the reel had sounded: the
pirn was half filled, and the wisp, from which the thread had been
drawn, lay over the back of a chair, as it had been taken from the waist
of the servant maid. But why should not the sluttish girl's bed have
been made at a time of the day when a goose was roasting for dinner? Nor
did Geordie try to answer, because the question was as far from his
wondering mind, as the time when he stood there himself enchanted was
from the period of that marvellous dereliction.
With eyes rounder, and wider, and considerably glegger, than when he
left goodwife Christian snoring in her bed, so unconscious of what her
husband was to see, he retraced his steps to the kitchen-door, and
turning to the right, opened that next to him. It was the dining-room.
He peered about as his wonder still grew. The long oak-table, in place
of the modern sideboard, ran along the farther end, whereon were
decanters and two silver cups; and not far from these a salver, with a
shrivelled lump, hard as whinstone, and of the form of a loaf, with a
knife lying alongside. The very cushion of the settee opposite to the
fireplace had preserved upon it the indentation of a human head. But
much less wonderful was the cloth-covered table, with salt-cellars and
spice-boxes, and plates, with knives and forks appropriated to each; for
had not Geordie seen the goose at the fire in the kitchen! The
indispensable pictures, too, were all round on the dingy walls--every
one a portrait--staring through dust; and a special one of a female,
with voluminous silks, and a high flour-starched toupee, claimed the
charmed eye of the blacksmith. Even in the vertigo of his wonder, he
looked stedfastly at that beautiful face; nor did the painted eye look
less stedfastly at him, as if, after twenty years, it was again charmed
by the vision of a living man, to the withdrawing of that eye from the
figure alongside of her, so clearly that of her husband. That they were
master and mistress of this very house he would have concluded, if he
had been calm enough to think; but he was, alas, still under the souffle
of the bellows of romantic wonder.
Where next, if he could take his eye off that beautiful countenance?
There was a middle door leading into another room: he would persevere
and still explore. Holding up the fast-diminishing candle, he looked in.
There was a female figure there, standing in the dark, beside a bed. It
was arrayed in a long gown, reaching to the feet, of pure white (as
accords). It moved. Geordie could see it plainly: it was the only thing
with living motion in all that still and dreary habitation. Hitherto his
hair had kept wonderfully flat and sleek, but now it began to crisp, and
swirm, and rise on end; while his legs shook, and the trembling had made
the glimmer oscillate in every direction, whereby sometimes it turned
away from the figure, again to illuminate it sparingly, and again to
vibrate off. He could not, notwithstanding his terror, recede; nay, he
tried ineffectually to fix the ray on the very thing that thrilled him
through every nerve. Verily, he would even go forward, under the charm
of his fear, which, like other morbid feelings, would feed on the object
which produced it. First a step, and then a step. The glimmer was again
off the mark; and when he got to the bed, the figure was gone--according
to the old law.
But the bed was too certainly there, with its deep green curtains, which
were drawn close, indicating midnight; and yet the goose at the fire,
and the table laid! Nor could Geordie explain the physical anomaly,
probably for the reason that he did not try. His candle was wasting away
with those endless oscillations: the figure in white itself had run off
with the half of the short stump; and he feared again to be left in the
dark, where he would have a difficulty in finding his way out. Yet he
felt he must draw these deep green curtains: the broad hand of Fate was
upon his shoulders. He seized them hysterically, and pulled them aside
far enough to let in his head and the candle hand. A dark counterpane
was covered quarter-inch thick with dust; but the odour was not now of
must, it was a choking flesh and bone rot, scarcely bearable; even the
light felt the heaviness, and almost died away in his tremulous fingers.
There were clothes beneath the counterpane, and a long, narrow tumulus
down the middle, as if a body were there, of half its usual size; but
little more was visible, till the eye was turned to the top where the
pillow lay, half up which the dark counterpane was drawn. There was a
head on the pillow, partly covered by the coverlet, partly by a
round-eared mutch--once, no doubt, white as snow, now brown as a Norway
rat's back; yet Geordie would peer, and peer, till he saw an orbless
socket of pure white bone, and a portion of two rows of white teeth
clenched. An undoing of the clothes would have shown him--how much more?
But his shaking was now a palsy of the brain, and he could not undo the
suspected horror. He turned suddenly; and, as the green curtain fell
with a flap, the dip lost its flame, and a black reek vied with that
heavy cadaverousness. He was in the dark.
Such is the effect of degrees, that, as he groped and groped in a place
where he had lost all landmarks, and the topography had become a
confusion, he could have wished to see again the figure in white; which,
from its own light, could surely, as a spirit, lead him out. His brain
got into a swirl. If the white figure was the spirit of that thing which
he had seen so partially in the bed, would it not return to flit about
its own old tenement? yet not a trail of that white light cast a glance
anywhere. Groping and groping, knocking his head against unknown things,
he turned and turned, but could not find the lobby. He had got through
another door, but not that leading outwards. He must have got into
another room; for he felt and grasped things he had not heretofore seen.
Then the noise he had made had such a dreary sound, falling on his
strained, nerve-strung ear! His hand shrunk at everything he touched, as
if it had been a deaf adder, or deadly nag--above all, a shock of hair,
from which he recoiled more than ever yet, till the devious turns round
and round obliterated every recollection of what he had understood of
localities. So far he must have retraced his steps; for he had again the
green curtain in his left hand without knowing it, and the right went
slap upon that round-eared mutch, and the bone that was under the same.
Recalled a little to his senses, he got at length to the kitchen,
circumambulated and circummanipulated the table, and groped his way to
the door in the end of the lobby, through which he had first entered.
All safe now by the lines of the two walls, he hugged the outer door as
if it had been a twenty years' absent friend, a father, or a wife.
Nor did he take time to relock the padlock. He had, besides, lost his
crooked instruments. Ah! how sweet to get into a warm bed safe and
sound, after having fancied that from such a white figure hovering round
dry bones he had heard--for Geordie had read plays--
"I am that body's spirit,
Doomed for a certain time to walk the night;
And for the day confined, to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away."
How delightful to Geordie was that snore of wife Christian, as she still
lay on the liver side, perhaps dreaming of seraphim!
The adventure of that midnight hour dated the beginning of a change on
George Gourlay. One might have said of him, with the older playwright
who never pictured a ghost, _quod scis nescis_; for then never a word
scarcely would he speak to man or beast, nay, not even to a woman, who
has a power of breaking the charm of that silence in others of which
their sex are themselves incapable--even, we say, wife Christian. There
are many Trophonian caves in the world about us, only known to
ourselves, out of which, when we come, we are mute, because we have seen
something different from the objects of the sunlight; yea, if, as the
Indians say, the animals are the dumb of earth, these are the dumb of
heaven. Certain at least it is, that while Geordie did not hesitate
before that night to use his voice in asking an extravagant price for an
old lock, or even damning him who below made more noise than nails, he
never now used that tongue in such dishonesties and irreverences. But,
what was even more strange, wife Christian did not seem to have any
inclination to break his silent mood; nay, if he was moody, so was she.
Then her eyelight was so changed to him, that he could not thereby, as
formerly, read her thoughts. Perhaps she took all this on from
imitation; but she was not one of the imitative children of
genius--rather a hard-grained Cameronian, to whom others' thoughts are
only as a snare; yet, might she not have had suspicions of her husband's
silence? All facts were against such a supposition, except one: that, on
the following morning, she observed dryly, that the dip she had left in
the kitchen had burnt away of its own special accord. Vain thoughts all.
Geordie was simply "born again;" and old women do not speak to infants,
until, at least, they can hear.
Nor did this mood promise amendment even up to that night, when a rap
having come to the door, Geordie started, while guidwife Christian went
undismayed to open the same; for, moody as she was, she was not affected
by evening raps as he was, and had been since that eventful midnight.
But if the sturdy blacksmith was afraid before she obeyed the call, he
was greatly more so after she had opened the door, and when she led into
the parlour an old man, with hair more than usually grey even for his
years, with a staff in his hand, bearing up, as he came in, a tall,
wasted body--so wasted, that he might have been supposed to have waited
all this time for a leg of that goose which had been so very long at the
fire. The grief of years had eaten up his face, and only left untouched
the corrugations itself had made. Yet withal he was a gentleman; for his
bow to Geordie was just that which the grandees of the Wynd made to each
other as they passed and repassed. No sooner was he seated, holding his
cane between his shrivelled legs, and his sharp grey eye fixed on the
blacksmith, than the latter became as one enchanted for a second time,
with all the horrors of the first catalepsy upon him, by the process of
the double sense insisted for by Abercromby, but thus known in Bell's
Wynd before his day. Yes, Geordie was entranced again, nor less guidwife
Christian--both staring at the stranger, as if their minds had gone back
through long bygone years to catch the features of a prototype for
comparison with that long, withered face, so yellow and grave-like; then
Christian looked stealthily, and concealed her face.
"You are a blacksmith, Mr. Gourlay?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long have you been here in Bell's Wynd?"
"Nine years, come Beltane Feast."
"Not so much as the half of twenty," said the stranger, more inwards
than outwards.
"Twenty!" ejaculated Christian, as if she could not just help herself.
And Geordie searched her rigid face for a stray sympathy, repeating
within the teeth that very same word--"Twenty."
"Then," continued the old man, "you cannot tell who occupied the flat
below at that long period back?"
"No."
"And who occupies it now?"
Geordie was as dumb as the white figure, or as the head on the pillow
with the rat-brown mutch; and this time Christian answered for him:
"It hasna been occupied for twenty years, sir; and it has been shut up
a' that lang time."
"Twenty years!" ejaculated the old man, pondering deeply, and sighing
heavily and painfully.
"Do any of you know Mr. Thomas Dallas, the Clerk to the Signet, who
lived once in Lady Stair's Close?"
"Dead eighteen years since," replied the wife.
"Ah, I see," rejoined the stranger; "and so the house has been thus long
closed!" Then musingly, "But then it will be empty--no furniture,
nothing but bare walls."
"Naebody kens," replied George, still busy examining the face of the
questioner, as if he could not get it to be steady alongside the image
in his own mind.
"You can, of course, open a padlock?"
"Ou ay, when it's no owre auld, and the brass slide has been well kept
on the key-hole." Then, as if recollecting himself, "I hinna tried an
auld ane for years."
"One twenty years unopened?" rejoined the stranger.
Geordie was again dumb and rigid.
"Indeed, sir," replied Christian, who saw that her husband was under
some strong feeling, "he can pick ony lock."
"The very man," said the mysterious visitor. "And now, madam, will you
allow me to take the liberty of requesting to be for a few moments the
only one present in this room with your husband, as I have some business
of a very secret nature to transact with him, which it would not be
proper for a woman, even of your evident discretion and confidence, to
be acquainted with?"
"I dinna want ye to gang," whispered George.
"And what for no?" muttered she. "Let evil-doers dree the shame o' their
deeds. Didna ye say to me ye were an honest man, ay, even as cauld iron
or steel, and what ought ye to hae to fear? And now, sir," turning
round, "I will e'en tak me to the kitchen, that what ye want wi' George
Gourlay you may do in secret, even as he has been secret wi' me."
Then guidwife Christian went out, casting, as she went, a look of
something like triumph at her husband.
"And now, George Gourlay," said the stranger, "the secret thing I have
to transact with you, and for which I have come three thousand miles, is
to ask you to go with me this night and open the padlock of the door of
that house below, which has not been opened for twenty years."
"I winna, I canna, I daurna, sir. Gang to the Dean o' Guild. There's a
dead body in the green bed, and there's a spirit in a lang white goun
that watches it."
The hand of the stranger shook, as he grasped spasmodically his staff;
his teeth for a moment were clenched; and he plainly showed a resolution
not to seem moved by that which as clearly did move him to the innermost
parts of his being. Nor did it now escape Gourlay, as he sat and gazed
at him, that he was the original of that picture in the dining-room,
which hung by the side of the beautiful lady.
"Then you must have been in?"
Geordie was silent, meditating on some new light gradually breaking in
upon him.
"You must have been in, and--and--know the secret?"
"I ken nae secret, except it be that the goose which has been at the
fire for twenty years is no roasted yet."
"That goose at the fire even yet!" ejaculated the stranger.
"Ay, and the thread still on the pirn."
"Pirn!" responded he mechanically.
"Ay, and the bottle standing on the dresser along by the pewter mug."
"Mug!"
"Ay, and the half-cut loaf on the oaken table, with alongside o't the
knife."
"Knife!"
"Ay, and to cap a', the green bed with the dark red counterpane, and in
it still the corpse."
"Corpse!"
"So, so," continued the stranger, "I have been wandering the wide world
for twenty years to escape from myself, as if a man could leave his
shadow in the east when he has gone to the west, and all that time found
the vanity of a forced forgetfulness where the touch of God's finger
still burned in the heart. Ay, nor long prairies, nor savannahs where
objects are cast behind and not seen, nor thick woods which exclude the
sun, nor rocky caves by the sea-shore, where there is only heard the
roaring of the waves, could untwine the dark soul from its
recollections. But other things of earth and human workmanship rot and
pass away, as if all were vanity, but man's spirit; and yet here it has
been decreed by Heaven, and wrought by miracle, that things of flesh,
and bone, and wood, and dried grass should be enchanted for duration,
yea, kept in the very place, and form, and lineaments they possessed in
a terrible hour, the memory of which they must conserve for a purpose.
Speak man: Have those sights and things taught you aught of a purpose?
Why look ye at me as if you saw into my heart, and grin as if you were
gifted with the right of revenge? What thoughts have you--what wishes?
What do you premeditate?"
"Just nae mair than that you'll no get me to enter that house again."
The stranger's head was bent down in heavy sorrow; and, after being
silent for a while, he rose, and bidding Gourlay good night, went away,
saying he would get another locksmith. The strange manner of Christian
was now made even more remarkable, as, taking her bonnet and cloak, she
sallied forth, late as the hour was, proceeding up the Wynd, and
muttering as she went, "The very man, the very man," she made direct for
Blackfriars Wynd, where she stopt, and looked up to a small window on
the right hand. There was light in it; and ascending a narrow stair she
reached a door, which she quietly opened. A woman was there, busily
spinning. The birr ceased as the door opened.
"Ann Hall," cried Christian, as she entered, "he is come, he is come! I
kent his face the moment I saw it."
"Patience, patience, Christian," replied the woman, "what are you to
do?"
"There maun be nae patience, when God says haste."
"Canny, canny. The wa's are thin and ears are gleg. I can hear a whisper
frae the next room. Now, I'll spin and you'll speak."
And so she began to produce the dirl by turning the wheel and plying the
thread.
"What although ye hae seen him? that maks nae difference. Your aith is
still afore the Lord; and though we are forbidden to swear, when we hae
sworn we hae nae right to brak that aith, as if it were a silly wand,
to be broken and cast awa' at the end o' our journey. And then ye maun
keep in mind, if you brak your word, ye stretch his neck."
"I carena," replied Christian. "The Lord maun hae His ain for reward,
and Satan maun hae his ain, too, for punishment. Sin' ever that eery
night when in my night-shirt I followed George into the house, and saw
what I saw, the Spirit o' the Lord has been busy in my heart; and my
aith has been to me nae mair than a windlestrae in the east wind, to be
blawn awa' where it listeth. Ye are, like mysel', o' the Auld Light, and
ken what it is to hae the finger o' command laid upon ye."
"We maun obey; but we maun ken whether the finger is for the will o' the
auld rebel o' pride, wha rebelled in heaven, or Him wha says to the
murderer, Get ye among the rocks or caves o' secrecy, and I will search
ye out, and rug ye into the licht."
"And what for should I no ken whase finger it is?" said wife Christian.
"Have I no seen what I have seen? For what are a' thae things keepit, as
man keeps the apple o' his e'e? Is na the rust and the worm, ay, and
Time's teeth, aye eating, and gnawing, and tearing, so that everything
passes awa' to make room for others, as if the hail warld were a
whirligig turning round like your ain wheel there for ever and ever?"
"Ay, the Lord's hand, na doubt. The deil doesna keep the instruments and
signs o' his evil, but shuffles them awa' in nooks and corners to be out
o' the een o' his victims."
"But hae I no laid my very hand on the fleshless head o' the bonny
misguided creature? Wae tak the man wha brought sae muckle beauty to the
earth to rot, and yet hae nae grave to cover it!"
"Weel mind I o' her," said Ann, as she still made the wheel go round.
"How she sailed up the Wynd wi' her load o' silks and satins, and the
ribbons that waved in the wind, as if to say, Look here; saw ye ever the
like among the daughters o' men?"
"It was left to testify, woman, naething else; but the glimmer o'
Geordie's candle showed me a' the lave. Ay, the very goose I plucked,
and drew, and singed, and put on the spit--what for is it there, think
ye, cummer, but to testify? and the pewter jug I drank out o' that
forenoon, and my ain bed I hadna time to mak--what for but to testify?"
"And punish. But oh, woman, he had sair provocations. Wha was that goose
for?"
"For her lover, nae doubt; for my master wasna expected hame for a week.
And was I no guilty mysel', wha played into her hands, and was fause to
him wha fed me?"
"Haud your peace, then, and say naething. The Lord will forgi'e you."
"Oh God, hae mercy on me, a sinner; and tak awa' frae me this
transgression, that I may lift up my voice in the tabernacle without
fear or trembling!"
The wheel turned with greater celerity and more noise, and wife
Christian was on her knees, beating her bosom and crying for mercy.
"Say nae mair, woman," cried the spinner, "and do nae mair. Let the
corpse lie in the green bed, and a' thing be in the wud-dream o' that
dreary house; do nae mair."
"But the Lord drives me."
"Just sae; and he wham you would hang on the wuddy will stand up against
ye, and swear ye were the cause o' the death o' his braw leddie, for
that ye concealed her trothlessness, and winked at her wickedness."
"Haud your tongue, cummer," cried the Old Light Sinner; "haud your
tongue, or you'll drive me mad. Is my heart no like aneugh to brak its
strings, but ye maun tug at them? Is my brain no het aneugh, but ye maun
set lowe to it, and burn it? And my conscience, ken ye na what it is to
hae that terrible thing within ye, when it's waukened up like a fiend o'
hell, chasing ye wi' a red-het brand, and nae escape, for the angel o'
the Lord hauds ye agen? Ann Hall, my auldest friend, will ye do this
thing for me?"
"What is it?"
"Gang to Mr B----, the fiscal, and tell him that the corpse is there,
and that the man is here, and say naething o' me; do this, or I'll never
haud up my hands again for grace and mercy."
Ann was silent, only driving the wheel, the sound of which in the silent
house--dark enough, too, in the small light of the oil cruise over the
fireplace--was all that was heard, save the occasional sobs of the
unhappy victim of conscience.
"I canna, Christian; I canna, lass. I'll hang nae man for the death o' a
light-o'-love limmer, and to save the conscience o' ane wha, if she
didna see something wrang when it _was_ wrang, ought to hae seen it."
"I repent and am sair in the spirit," replied Christian; "but if I had
tauld him what I suspected was wrang between Spynie--and ye ken he was a
lord, and titles cast glamour ower the een o' maidens--and my mistress,
it would hae been a' the same. But wae's me!" she added, as she sighed
from the depths of the heart, and wrung her hands, "I had a lichtness
about me myself. A woman's no in her ain keeping at wild happy nineteen.
The heart is aye jumping against the head. But oh, how changed when the
Auld Licht shone ower me! And hae I no been a guid wife to Geordie
Gourlay? Will you no help me, woman?"
"I hae said it," replied Mrs Hall, as the energy of her resolution
passed into the moving power of the wheel, and the revolutions became
quicker and quicker.
The Cameronian stood for a moment looking at her--the lips compressed,
the brow knit, the hand firmly bound up, and striking it upon the wall.
"Ye're o' my faith," said she bitterly; "and may the Evil One help ye
when ye're in need o' the Lord!"
And with these words she left her old friend, drawing the door after her
with a clang, which shook the crazy tenement. In a moment she was in the
street, now beginning to be deserted. The wooden-pillared lamps, so
thinly distributed, and their small dreary spunk of life, showed only
the darkness they were perhaps intended to illumine; and here and there
was seen a gay-dressed sprig of aristocracy, with his gold-headed cane,
cocked hat, and braided vest, strolling unsteadily home, after having
drunk his couple of claret. Solitary city guardsmen were lounging about,
as if waiting for the peace being broken, when an encounter occurred
between some such ornamented braggadocio and a low Wynd
blackguard--ready to use his quarter-staff against the silver-handled
sword of the aristocrat; and here and there the high-pattened,
short-gowned light-o'-love, regardless of the loud-screamed "gardy-loo,"
frolicked with "gold lace and wine," or swore the Edinburgh oaths at
untrue and discarded lovers of their own degree. But guidwife Christian
saw none of all these things; only one engrossing vision was in her
mind, that of the sleeping scene of enchantment in the old flat,
associated with the figure of the stranger;--one feeling only was
paramount in her heart, the inspired awe of the conviction that these
petrified relics of another time, so long back, were there waiting for
her to touch them, that they should be disenchanted, and speak and tell
their tale, and then rot and depart, according to the usual law of
change, and corruption, and decay.
In this mood she got to the top of the Wynd, and was hurrying along the
first or covered portion, overspread by the front lands, and therefore
dark, when she encountered a man rolled up in a cloak. Even in the dim
light coming from the street lamp on the main pavement, she recognised
him in a moment. He was slouching down by the side of the wall, and did
not seem to notice her. So Christian held back, until he had got farther
on. She felt herself concentrated upon his movements, and observed that
he hung about her own stair, standing in the middle of the close, with
his eye fixed on the dark windows of the deserted flat. There was no
meaning in his action. It seemed simply that his eye was bound to that
house. So far Christian understood the ways of the world; but there are
deeper mysteries there than she wotted of or dreamed just then. A man
will examine a gangrene if it is hopeful; and will hope, and shrink, and
be alarmed, when the hope fails only but a little; nay, he will dread
the undoing of the bandages, lest the hope of the prior undoing should
be changed by the new aspect into a conviction of aggravation; but there
is a state of that ailment, as of moral ills, where all hope having
vanished, despair comes to be reconciled to its own terrors, and the eye
will peer into the hopeless thing, ay, and be charmed with it, and dally
with it, as an irremediable condition, which is his own peculium, a part
of his nature, so far changed. He then becomes a lover of pity, as
before he was a seeker for hope; and, like a desperate bankrupt, will
hawk the balance-sheet of his ills, to make up for the subtraction from
his credit by the sympathy of the world. So did that man look upon that
house, a hopeless sore, after twenty years pain and agony, with these
green spots, and the caustic-defying "proud flesh." Was not the
fleshless corpse of his dead wife still there? She was a skeleton; but
he could only fancy her as he had seen her twenty years before, a young
and beautiful woman. Nor was he alarmed as Christian, weary of waiting
but not unsteeled now for a recognition, stept forward and confronted
him.
"Mrs. Gourlay!" he said, as he peered into her hard face.
"Ay, guidwife Christian, as my husband says. Christian Gourlay that
is--Christian Dempster that was."
"Dempster!" ejaculated he, as he staggered and sustained himself against
the side of the close.
"Yes, sir--Patrick Guthrie that was when I was Dempster, and is--ay, and
will be till you are born again, and baptized with fire."
"Patrick Guthrie!" he repeated. "Yes, the man, the very man. And here,
too, is the evidence kept and preserved, perhaps more than once snatched
from death, to be here at this hour to see me, and lay your hand on me,
and be certain that I am the man, the very man. And," after a pause,
"you have kept your sworn promise?"
"Till this day. Look up there, and see thae closed shutters; go in, and
behold, and say whether or not."
"Too faithful!" groaned he.
"To an aith wrung out o' me by a money-bribe and terror."
"And to be repaid by a money-reward and penitence."
"The ane, sir, but never the other. Another day--another day," she
repeated, "will try a'."
"What mean you, Christian?"
"Mean I? Why are you here?"
"Because I am weary wandering over the face of the earth, an exile and a
criminal, for twenty long--oh long years!"
"And now want rest and peace! And how can ye get them but through the
fire of the law, and the waters of the gospel? Where are you living?"
"Why should I conceal from you, Christian?" said he, thoughtfully.
"No--at the White Horse in the Canongate, under the name of Douglas."
"_Her_ name! Then look ye to it; for there will be human voices where
none have been for twenty years, and cries o' wonder, and tears o' pity.
Yes, yes, the long sleep is ended, for the charm is broken. Good night."
And hurrying away, she mounted the stair, leaving the man even more
amazed than he was heart-broken and miserable. Nor will we be far wrong
in supposing that Patrick Guthrie sought the White Horse probably not to
sleep, but if to sleep, as probably to dream. As for guidwife Christian,
she was soon on that side so propitious to her snoring; and as for her
dreams, they were not more of seraphim, nor of Urim and Thummim, than
they were on that night when she was the disembodied spirit of her who
had lain so long in the bed with green curtains. Yet, no doubt, Geordie
was just as certain that she slept as he was on that same night when he
saw the said disembodied spirit; and as for himself, there could be
little doubt that, sleeping or waking, his mind was occupied in tracing
the marked resemblance of the stranger to the picture on the wall, which
would lead him again to the beautiful lady, and which, again, would
remind him of the bones below the red coverlet; and then there is as
little doubt as there is about all these wonderful things, that he
would fancy himself beridden with a terrible nightmare. Oppressed and
tortured by thoughts which he could not bring to bear on any probable
event, he turned and turned; but all his restlessness would produce no
effect on guidwife Christian, who seemed as dead asleep as ever was he
of the Cretan cave in the middle of the seventy years. Nor could he
understand this: heretofore a slight cough, even slighter than that
which brought the Doctor in the "Devil on Two Sticks," used to awaken
the faithful wife; and now nothing would awaken her. He dodged, he
cried; but she wouldn't help to take off the nightmare, which, with its
old characteristic of tailor-folded legs and grinning aspect, sat upon
his chest, as it heaved, but could not throw off the imp. But what was
more extraordinary, this strange conduct of Christian was the
continuation of--nay, a climax to--her inexplicable conduct since ever
that night when he caught up in his mind, as in a prism, that midnight
vision which he had seen, and the fiery coruscations of which still
careered through his brain. Honest Geordie had no guile; and if he had
had any, the new birth he had undergone, with the consequent baptism,
would have taken it clean away, so that there was no chance of a
suspicion of the part which guidwife Christian had played on the said
occasion. Yet, wonder as he might, if he had known all, he would have
wondered more how any woman, even with the advantage of a "New Light,"
could have snored under the purpose she had revolved in her mind, and
which she had so darkly revealed to her old master. Ah yes, that female
member, of which so much has been said--even that it contains on the
subtle point thereof a little nerve which anatomists cannot find in the
corresponding organ in man--can swim lightly _tanquam suber_, and yet
never give an indication of the depths below. But Geordie became
wild;--was she dead outright? Dead people do not snore, but the dying do
in apoplexy. He took her by the shoulders, and shook her.
"Christian, woman, will ye no speak, when I can get nae rest? Wha was
that man wha called here yestreen?"
No, she wouldn't.
"And did I no see you look at him as ye never looked at man before?"
No avail.
"And what took ye out so soon after he was awa'?"
No reply.
"And what's mair"--the murder was now out,--"did ye no meet him secretly
at the stair-foot, and stand and speak to him in strange words and
strange signs?"
Not yet.
"And what, in the name o' Heaven, and a' the ither powers up and down
and round and round, was the aith that ye swore to him?"
Another pause.
"And what money-bribe was it ye spak o' sae secretly and darkly?"
All in vain. At length the knurr of the clock, and the most solemn of
all the hours, "one," sounded hoarsely. Wearied, exhausted, and sorely
troubled, Geordie fell asleep, greatly aided thereto by the eternal
oscillation of that little tongue at the back of the greater and mute
one, the sound of which ceased when the blacksmith was fairly and
certainly over, just as if its services had been no longer needed that
night.
Surely the next of these eventful days was destined, either by the
Furies or the good goddess, to be that day that "would try a'." Even
these words Geordie had heard, if he had not caught up many other
broken sentences, which showed to his distracted mind that guidwife
Christian was in some mysterious way mixed up with the events and things
of the charmed house. The comparatively sleepless night induced a later
than usual rising; but with what wonder did Geordie Gourlay ascertain,
that late as Christian had been out on the previous night, she was
already again forth of the house, leaving him to the bachelor work of
making his own breakfast! Where she had gone he could not even venture
to suppose; but certain he was that her absence was in some way
connected with that stranger with whom he had seen her in communication
the night before. The business did not admit of his waiting; so he took
his morning meal of porridge and milk, and with thoughts anxious and
deep, yet deeper in mere feeling than portrayment of outward coming
events, he sallied forth for the Luckenbooths. On descending the stair,
he found to his dire amazement the door of the portentous flat--that
grave above ground of so many things that should have been either under
the earth, in the sinless regions of mortality, or in the mendicant bag
of Time, rolled away beyond the ken of mortal--open. Yes, that door,
with the rusty padlock, and the creaking hinge, and the worm-eaten
panels, was open. He shuddered: yet he looked ben into the old dark
lobby, where he had groped and so nearly lost himself; and what did he
see? His wife, guidwife Christian, standing in the middle thereof in her
white short-gown, so like, to his imperfect vision, that spirit he had
encountered in that house before! There seemed to be others there also;
for he heard inside doors creaking, and by and by saw come out of the
far-end door that very man--yea, the very man. The reflection of a light
shone out upon him. To escape observation, he slipt to a side; and when
he peered in again, no one was to be seen. They had passed together
into some of the rooms, probably that bedroom where stood the bed with
the green curtains. Resolved as he had been never to enter that door-way
again, he would have rushed forward, had not a hand been laid on his
shoulder.
"George Gourlay," said a voice behind him.
"Ay, nae doubt I'm weel kenned."
"You are in the meantime my prisoner," said an officer, with the
indispensable blue coat, and the red collar, and the cocked hat.
"For what?" said Geordie.
"Ye'll ken that by and by," replied the officer; "the fiscal will tell
ye. Awa' wi' me to the office."
"Humph! for picking a lock," said the blacksmith. "The deil put my left
fingers between my hammer and the stiddy when I meddle again wi' rusty
padlocks."
"There's naething dune on earth but what is seen," said the man, as with
something like a smile on his left cheek, the other retaining its
gravity, he held up his finger as if pointing to heaven.
"Ay, ay, there's an e'e there."
"And to break open a house," continued the officer, "is death en the
wuddy up yonder at the 'Auld Heart.'"
"But wha, in God's name, is the witness against me?"
"Guidwife Christian," said the officer again, seriously enough at least
for Geordie's belief of his sincerity.
"And the woman has turned against her husband! This is the warst blow
ava. But, Lord, man, I stowe naething."
"Thieves are no generally at the trouble of picking locks, rummaging a
house, and going away empty-handed, as if out o' a kirk. But come, you
can tell the Lord Advocate's deputy a' that."
And George Gourlay was taken away, muttering to himself, as he went,
"This explains a'. Nae wonder she wadna speak to the man she intended
to hang. Woman, woman, verily from the beginning hae ye been we to man,
and will be to the end."
Led up the High Street, yet in such a way as to avoid any suspicion that
he was in the hands of an officer, George Gourlay was placed safely in
the room of Mr. B----, the procurator-fiscal of that time, for reasons
unknown to us, in the Old Tolbooth. The entry through the thick
iron-knobbed door to the inside of this dark and dreary pile, which
borrowed its light only through openings left by the irregularities of
the high masses of St. Giles, and the parallel rows of overshadowing
houses, flanked by the booths and the Crames, was enough to vanquish the
heart of the strongest and the most innocent. Nor was it the darkness
and the squalor alone that were so formidable. Thick air, loaded with
the breath and exhalations from unhealthiness and disease itself, had
made livid faces and bloodshot eyes; drunken, uproarious voices, and
bacchanalian songs, oaths, denunciations, and peals of laughter, mixed
with groans. Only awanting that inscription seen by the Hermet shadow
who led the Florentine. Up a stair--through the midst of these children
of evil or victims of misfortune, the innocent rendered guilty by
infection, the condemned to death made drearily jolly by despair,
imitating the recklessness of mirth,--and now the unfortunate George
Gourlay is before his examinator.
"Mr. Gourlay," said the officer.
"Sit down, sir," said Mr. B----, "and wait till the others come. We
cannot want Mrs. Gourlay, though no doubt you can swear to the man. In
the meantime, hold your peace, lest you commit yourself. Say nothing
till you are asked. Most strange affair."
Thus at once doomed to silence, George sat and listened to the mixed
buzz of this misery become ludibund. Nor was his unhappiness thus
limited: a fearful conviction seized him, that long before he was hanged
he would take on the likeness of the wretches he had passed through;--he
would become sleazy; his eyes would be red, fiery, or bleared with
tears, dried up in the heat of his fevered blood; his cheeks would be
pale-yellow or blue, his voice husky, and his nose red; he would sing,
swear, dance--ay, douce Geordie would sing even as they. Better be
hanged at once than sent hence thus deteriorated,--an unpleasant
customer in the other world. Nay, one half of them had greasy, furzy,
red nightcaps; and the chance was therefore a half that he would be
thrown off in one of these, to the eternal disgrace of the Gourlays of
Gersholm, from whom he was descended.
A full hour passed, bringing no comfort on its heavy wings. At length
another red-necked official entered, and introduced guidwife Christian
herself, and--Patrick Guthrie.
When these parties entered, Geordie's eyes and mouth had relapsed into
that condition they presented on that occasion when he saw the wraith by
the bed with the green curtains.
"Mrs. Gourlay," said Mr. B----, "you are the wife of George Gourlay,
blacksmith?"
"Ay, and have been for nine years, come the time, the day, and the
hour."
"Please throw your mind back twenty years."
"It ower aften gaes back to that time o' its ain accord, sir."
"Well, tell us where you lived, and what you did about that time."
"I was servant to Mr. Patrick Guthrie,--this gentleman sitting at my
right hand."
"Was Mr. Guthrie a married man?"
"Ay, sir, he was married to a young lady, whose maiden name was
Henrietta Douglas, ane o' the Brigstons, as I hae heard."
"What kind of woman was she?"
"Bonny, sir, as ony that ever walked the High Street or the Canongate;
and the mair wae, sir. Cheerfu', too, and light-hearted and merry as the
lavrock when it rises in the morning; ay, and the mair wae!"
"Why do you add these words?" continued Mr. B----. "What do you mean?"
"Because thae things brought gay gallants about the house when master
was awa' in Angus, whaur he had a property near Gaigie; but he was nane,
I think, o' the four Guthries."
"Then you knew that they came without the knowledge and against the
wishes of your master?"
"Ower weel, sir, for my peace these twenty years bygane."
"Then you think there was more than indiscretion in Mrs. Guthrie?"
"Muckle mair, I doubt."
"Do you recollect the names of any of these gay gallants?"
"There was Lord Spynie, a wild dare-the-deil; but sae merry, and jovial,
and pleasant, that his very een were nets to catch women's hearts."
"Do you remember anything happening when Lord Spynie was in the house
in Bell's Wynd?"
"Ay; on the last day o' my service, yea, the last day o' my leddie's
life. My maister had gane to Gaigie, as I thought; but I aye doubted if
he had been farther than the White Horse. He wouldna return for a week,
not he; and so my leddie thought, for the next day she ordered me to get
a goose, and roast it on the spit; and weel I kenned wha the goose was
for. But I didna like the business, for I had my pirns to finish--no,
gude forgie me, that I was against this deception o' my master. The
goose was bought, and plucket, and singed, and put to the fire. The
dinner was to be at twa o'clock, and Lord Spynie was there by ane. In
half an hour after, wha comes rushing in but my master? And the moment
he saw Spynie, he drew his sword, and so did his lordship his. My
mistress screamed, and ran between them; and oh! sir, the sword that was
thrust at Spynie gaed clean through my mistress's fair body. She was
dead. Then Lord Spynie lost a' his courage, and flew out o' the house;
and just as he was passing through the door, my master thrust at him,
and his bluidy sword snapt and was broken clean through. He came back
and looked on my leddy, and kissed her, ay, and grat like a bairn; but
oh! he was composed too. 'Christy,' said he, 'lay your mistress on the
green bed.' And so I did, and streeked her, and drew the coverlet over
her, and put a mutch upon her head. Oh how fair she was in death!
'Christy,' said master, 'come hither.' I obeyed. 'Get the Bible,' he
said. I got it. 'Get on your knees,' he said. I knelt. 'Here,' said he,
'is twenty gowden guineas; and now swear upon the Laws and the Prophets,
and the four Gospels, that you will never, by word, or look, or pen,
reveal to man, or woman, or wean what has been done--in this house this
day.' I swore. 'Now go,' said he; 'for I am to lock up the house, and go
far away, where no man can know me.' So I took my little trunk, and went
away sobbing. Nor was he a moment after me. I saw him shut the shutters
and lock the door, and walk quickly away. Nor was he ever heard of more
till yesterday; and there he is."
"Is all this true, Mr. Guthrie?"
"All true as God's word."
"And all this happened twenty years ago?"
"Yes."
"Then by the law of Scotland you are a free man, even were this murder
or homicide; for twenty years is the period of our prescription. You may
all go."
Then they rose to depart.
"Mr. Guthrie," cried Mr. B----, "bury your wife. And, hark ye, the goose
has been at the fire for twenty years, and must now, I think, be
roasted."