ROMANCES OF THE OLD TOWN
OF
EDINBURGH.
BY
ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
AUTHOR OF “MYSTERIOUS LEGENDS OF EDINBURGH,” “CURIOUS STORIED
TRADITIONS OF SCOTTISH LIFE,” ETC.
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM P. NIMMO.
1867.
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
The stories in this volume owe their publication to the favour
extended to my Book of Legends. If I had any apology to make it could
only--independently of what is due for demerits which the cultivators
of “the gay science” will not fail to notice--consist in an answer to
the charge that books of this kind feed a too natural appetite for
images and stimulants which tends to voracity, and which again tends
to that attenuation of the mental constitution deserving of the name
of _marasmus_. I may be saved the necessity of such an apology by
reminding the reader that, although I plead guilty to the charge of
invention, I have generally so much of a foundation for these stories
as to entitle them to be withdrawn from the category of fiction. On
this subject the reader may be inclined to be more particular in his
inquiry than suits the possibility of an answer which may at once be
safe and satisfactory. I would prefer to repose upon the generous
example of that philanthropic showman, who leaves to those who look
through his small windows the choice of selecting his great duke out
of two personages, both worthy of the honour. The reader may believe,
or not believe, but it is not imperative that he should do either;
for even at the best--begging pardon of my fair readers for the
Latin--_fides semper est inevidens in re testificata_.
A. L.
YORK LODGE, TRINITY,
_January 1867_.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE STORY OF THE TWO RED SLIPPERS, 1
THE STORY OF THE DEAD SEAL, 13
THE STORY OF MRS HALLIDAY, 35
THE STORY OF MARY BROWN, 60
THE STORY OF THE MERRILLYGOES, 88
THE STORY OF THE SIX TOES, 115
THE STORY OF MYSIE CRAIG, 137
THE STORY OF PINCHED TOM, 160
THE STORY OF THE IRON PRESS, 177
THE STORY OF THE GIRL FORGER, 190
THE STORY OF MARY MOCHRIE AND THE MIRACLE OF THE COD, 214
THE STORY OF THE PELICAN, 238
THE STORY OF DAVIE DEMPSTER’S GHAIST, 255
THE STORY OF THE GORTHLEY TWINS, 277
THE STORY OF THE CHALK LINE, 299
[Illustration]
ROMANCES
OF THE
OLD TOWN OF EDINBURGH.
The Story of the Two Red Slippers.
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’s
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 eerieness 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 bed-room 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
bed-room.
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 storytellers, 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 may be 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Dead Seal.
Among Lord Kames’s session papers there are two informations or written
pleadings upon the competency of an action of damages. The law point
was strange enough, but the facts set forth in explanation were much
more so, amounting indeed to a story so unprecedented, that I cannot
help being surprised how they have escaped the curiosity of those who
love “to chronicle the strong beer” of human life and action. Mr John
Dalrymple, merchant, had passed his honeymoon with his wife (whose
maiden name was Jean Bisset) in his house in Warrender’s Close, and was
about to proceed next morning to Glasgow, to execute some commission
business. They had a cheerful supper; they were both young, both
healthy, and both hopeful, and surely if under these conditions they
could not extract some sweets out of the orange of life, they might
have little chance afterwards, when the pulp would diminish to the
bitter skin which is inevitable. But the truth is, they had both very
good powers of suction, and will enough to use them; and if it were not
that death and life play upon the same string, one might have said that
the new-married couple stood no apparent risk of any fatal interruption
to their happiness.
It was accordingly in very good spirits that Mr Dalrymple set forth in
the morning on his journey. We might perhaps say, that the inspiration
of her love lent force to his mercantile enterprise, for somehow it
would seem that all the actions of man beyond the purely selfish play
round the great passion, just as the gaudy petals of the flowers are
a kind of acted marriage-song round what is going on in the core of
the plants; and so having arrived in Glasgow, he would be thinking
about his Jean, to whom, when he got home again, he would recount the
wonderful triumphs he had achieved over his competing worshippers in
the Temple of Mammon. He was to be eight days away, and no doubt,
according to a moderate calculation, they would appear as so many
months, were it not that his business engagements would keep these
days to their normal length. He was to write her every day, but as
he did not know at what inn he might put up, she was not to write
to him until she knew where to address him. On the day after his
arrival he accordingly sent her a very loving letter, containing, we
presume, as many of those kisses _à la distance_ as is usual in such
cases, and which in our day would make some noise in the post-office
receiving-box, if they were endowed with sound. Having performed this
loving duty, he continued his exertions re-inspired with the hope of
receiving an answer on the morning of the day following. Then--as happy
people, like the other animals, are playful--he amused himself at
intervals, by conjecturing as to what kind of a letter he would get,
how endearingly expressed it would be, how many “dears” there would
be in it, what warmth of feeling the words would convey, and how many
sighs had already been wasted for his return. We might smile at such
frivolities if we were not called to remember that the most of our
pleasures, if looked at through the spectacle-glass of Reason, would
appear to be ridiculous.
The morning came; and, according to the statement of the waiter, the
letter would arrive about breakfast time. He would thus have two
or three pleasures rolled up in the same hour; he would sip coffee
and nectar at the same time; his ham and egg would be sweetened by
ambrosia; the pleasures of sense would be heightened by those of the
fancy. All which were promises made by himself, and to himself, while
he was dressing, and we cannot be sure that he did not make himself
more sprightly, that he had to appear before the letter of his dear
Jean. Did not Rousseau blush in presence of the great lady’s dog?
Do what we may, we cannot get quit of the moral influence exercised
over us by even inanimate things having the power of suggesting
associations. But the breakfast was set, all the eatables and
drinkables were on the table, and the last thing served by the waiter
was the communication that the postman had passed and had left no
letter.
The circumstance was rendered more than awkward by his prior hopes and
anticipations, and it had the effect, moreover, which it surely ought
not to have had upon a sensible man, of taking away his appetite. That
it was strange there could be no doubt, for where is the loving wife
who at the end of the honeymoon would allow a post to pass without
replying to a loving husband’s letter?--but then he contrived to
make it more strange by his efforts to satisfy himself that it was
not strange at all. His reasons did not satisfy him; the humming of
a Scotch air carried no conviction and produced no appetite; and
the result was increased anxiety, evidenced by the hanging head and
heavy eye. Again the main argument was that his or her letter had
miscarried,--how _could_ there be any other mode of accounting for
it?--and then he hummed the air again--the breakfast standing all the
time. All to be again counter-argued by the fact that during all the
period he had corresponded with Glasgow, there had been no miscarriage
of a letter, either to or from him. This was the doctrine of chances
in the form of a stern logic, and the effect was apparent in another
relapse into fear and anxiety. But Mr Dalrymple, though made a moral
coward by the intensity of his affection, was withal a sensible man--a
fact which he gave a good proof of, by placing more faith in brandy
than logic, for having called for a little of that cordial, he put
a glassful into his coffee, and thereupon felt, almost as soon as
the liquor had got into his stomach, that there was really a great
deal less to fear than he had thought, if the whole affair was not
a mere bugbear; and what was not less remarkable, if not fortunate,
the brandy, by dismissing his fears, brought back his appetite, and
although he required a little longer time, he contrived to make nearly
as good a breakfast as if he had been favoured with the ambrosial
accompaniment which he had so hopefully promised himself.
Nor was this a small matter, for the meal served as ballast to enable
him to encounter something very different from the slight adverse wind
he had experienced for the last hour. He was still sitting at the
table, rather pleased that he had triumphed over morbid fears, and
laying out his scheme for the day, when the words, coming from behind,
“A letter, sir,” struck his ear as if by a slap. His hand nervously
seized the proffered gift, his eyes “flew” as it were to meet the
superscription. He did not know the handwriting. It was directed to the
care of Messrs Robert Fleming & Co., one of the houses with which he
had been doing business. So far he was relieved, even when disappointed
by the absence of his wife’s hand on the address. He turned it with
the view to break it open, and then stopped and trembled as his eye
fixed itself on a large black seal, exhibiting the death’s head and
cross-bones of a funeral letter. Even this he soon got over, under the
supposition that it was an invitation to some acquaintance’s funeral
sent through to him, likely, by the recommendation of his wife before
she had received his true address. At length he broke it open, and read
the following words:--
“DEAR SIR,--I am sorry to be under the necessity of informing you
that your wife died this afternoon, between three and four, from
the bursting of a blood-vessel in the lungs. You will see the
propriety of starting for home as soon as you receive this melancholy
intelligence.--Yours,
“A. MORGAN, F.R.C.S.”
No sooner had he read this terrible communication than he was rendered
as rigid as a statue. The only movement that could have been observed
in him was in the fingers of the right hand, as it crumpled up the
paper by the spasm of the muscles acting involuntarily. His eye was
fixed without an object to claim it, and his teeth were clenched as if
he had been seized by lockjaw. Conditions which we use strong words to
describe, as we toil in vain after an expression which must always be
inadequate, even though the words are furnished by the unhappy victim
himself. We try a climax by using such expressions as “palsied brain”
and so forth, all the while forgetting that we are essaying to convey
a condition of inward feeling by external signs, the thing and the
sign being in different categories. As he still sat under the stunning
effect of the letter, the waiter entered to clear the table, but when
he saw the letter in the clenched hand he retreated from the scene of
a private grief, which a foreign interference would only have tended
to irritate; but probably the noise of the closing door helped the
reaction which comes sooner or later to all victims of moral assaults,
and by and by he began to think--to see the whole details of the
tragedy--to be conscious of the full extent of his misery. It was not
yet time for the beginning of relief, for these conditions are subject
to the law of recurrence. Like the attacks of an ague they exhaust
themselves by repetition, and Nature’s way is at best but a cruel
process of wearing out the sensibility of the palpitating nerve.
How long these oscillations lasted before the unhappy victim was able
to leave his seat, we cannot tell. But as all thought is motion, so is
all motion action. He could not retreat from the inevitable destiny.
He must move on in the maze of the puppets. He must face the dead body
of his wife. He must bury her, if he should never be able to lay the
haunting spirit of memory. All business must be suspended, to leave the
soul to the energies necessary for encountering the ordeal. A certain
hardness, which belongs to the last feelings of despair, enabled him,
even with something like deliberation, to go through the preparations
of departure; but in this he exhibited merely the regularity of a
machine, which obeys the imposed power behind. At eleven o’clock he was
seated in the coach, as one placed there to be moved on and on, mile
by mile, to see the dead body of a wife, whose smiling face, as he had
seen it last, was still busy with his fancy, and whose voice, as he had
heard her sing at the parting supper, still rang in his ears.
Nor were his feelings ameliorated by the journey, to remove the
tediousness of which, at that slow time, the passengers were obliged
to talk even against sheer Scotch taciturnity. He sat and heard,
whether he would or not, the account of one who was going to bring home
a wife; of another who had been away for ten years, and who was to be
met at the coach-door by one who was dying to clasp him in her arms.
All which were to him as sounds in another world wide apart from that
one occupied by him, where he was, as he could not but think, the one
solitary inhabitant, with one dead companion by his side. By and by, as
the conversation flagged, he fell into that species of monomania where
the brooding spirit, doomed to bear a shock, conjures up and holds
before its view the principal feature of a tragedy. That feature was
the image of his Jean’s face. It was paler than the palest of corpses,
to suit the condition of the disease of which she had died. The lips
were tinged with the blood of the fatal hemorrhage. The eyes were
blank and staring, as if filled with the surprise and terror of the
sudden attack. Over all, the fixedness of the muscles,--the contrast of
death to the versatile movements, which were obedient to the laugh of
pleasure when he last drew indescribable joy from the changes of her
humour. No effort could relieve him from that one haunting image. The
conversation of the party seemed to render it more steadfast--more
bright--more harrowing. Nor when he tried to realise his feelings, in
the personal encounter of facing the reality, could he find in himself
any promise of a power to enable him to bear up against the terrible
sight. It seemed to him, as the coach moved slowly on, as if he were
being dragged towards a scaffold draped in black, where he was to
suffer death.
When the coach at length stopped in the High Street, he was roused as
from a dream, but the consciousness was even worse than the monomaniac
condition in which he had been for hours. It was twelve at night; the
bell of St Giles’s sounded solemnly in the stillness of the sleeping
city. Every one of the passengers hurried off each to his home or inn,
all glad of the release. To him it was no release; he would have ridden
on and on, for days and weeks, if for nothing else than to prolong the
interval, at the end of which the ordeal he feared so much awaited
him. Whither now? He stood in the middle of the dark and silent street
with his portmanteau in his hand, for he was really uncertain whether
to proceed to his sister’s house in Galloway’s Close, and get her to
go with him to his own house, as a kind of medium, to break the effect
of the vision--or to proceed homewards alone. He turned his steps
towards Galloway’s Close, and soon found that the family had gone to
bed; at least, all was dark yet. Might not his sister be at his house
“sitting up” with the corpse? It was not unlikely, and so he turned and
proceeded towards home, his steps being forced, as if his will had no
part in his ambulation. Arriving at Warrender’s Close, he stood at the
foot of his own stair, and, looking up to the windows, he found here,
too, all dark; nor were there any neighbours astir who might address
to him some human speech, if not sympathy. The silence was as complete
as the darkness, and both seemed to derive the dull charm of their
power from the chamber of death. At length he forced himself, step by
step, up the stairs, every moment pausing, as well from the exhaustion
produced by his moral cowardice, as to listen for a stray sound of the
human voice. He had now got to the landing, and, entering the dark
passage leading to the door of his own flat, he groped his way along
by applying his unoccupied hand to the wall. He now felt his nerves
fast giving way, his heart beat audibly, his limbs shook, and though he
tried to correct this fear, he felt he had no power, though naturally a
man of great physical courage.
He must persevere, and a step or two more brought him to the door,
which he found partially open,--a circumstance he thought strange,
but could account for by supposing that there were neighbours
inside--gossips who meet round death-beds to utter wise saws with dry
eyes. Yet, though he listened, he heard no sounds. He now pushed open
the door, and so quietly, as if he feared that a grating hinge would
break the silence. The lobby was still darker than outside, and his
first step was towards the kitchen, the door of which he pushed back.
There was no one there,--a cruse which hung upon the wall was giving
forth the smallest glimmer of a dying light. There was a red peat in
the grate, smouldering into white ashes. Turning to the servant’s bed,
he found it unoccupied, with the clothes neatly folded down, no doubt
by Peggy’s careful hands, and no doubt, too, Peggy had solemn work to
do “ben the house.” He next crossed the lobby, partly by groping, and
reached a parlour, the door of which he opened gently. Dark too, and no
one within. The same process was gone through with the dining-room, and
with the same negative result. The last door was that of the bed-room,
where he was to encounter what he feared. It was partially open. He
placed his ear to the chink and listened, but he heard nothing. There
was no living voice there, and death speaks none. He pushed the door
open, and looked fearfully in. A small rushlight on the side-table
opposite the bed threw some flickering beams around the room, bringing
out indistinctly the white curtains of the bed. He approached a little,
and could discover vaguely the form of his wife lying there. Would he
take up the rushlight, and, with the necessary courage, go forward and
examine the features? He had arrived at the spot, and at the moment,
portrayed prospectively in his waking dream during his journey, and
a few steps, with the rushlight in his hand, would realise the image
he had brooded over so long. He struggled with himself, but without
avail. Any little courage he had been for the last few minutes trying
to summon up utterly gave way. There rushed into his mind vague fancies
and fears,--creatures of the darkness and the death-like stillness
around him, which he could neither analyse nor stay. He even thought he
heard some sound from the bed where the corpse lay,--the consequence of
all which was total loss of self-possession, approaching to something
like a panic, and the effect of this, again, was a retreat. He sought
the door, groped his way again through the inside lobby, got to the
outer door, along the outer passage, down the stair to the street.
Nor when he got there did he pull up and begin to think of the extreme
pusillanimity, if not folly, of his conduct. Even if he had tried,
he could only have wound up his self-crimination by the ordinary
excuse--that he could not help it. The house, with its stretched
corpse, deserted rooms, its darkness and silence, was frightful to
him. He could not return until he found some one to accompany him; and
he satisfied himself of the reasonableness of this condition by the
fact that the servant herself had fled in fear from the dismal scene.
He began to move, though almost involuntarily, down the Canongate,
his step quick and hurried, after the manner of those who are pursued
by some danger, the precise nature of which they do not stop to
examine. He even found a slight relief in the muscular exertion, and
thus hurrying on, he reached the Duke’s Walk, and came to the heap of
stones called Muschet’s Cairn, from Nichol Muschet of Boghall, who
there murdered his wife. With no object but movement to dispel his
misery, it was indifferent to him whither he should go; and hurrying to
Arthur’s Seat, he began to climb the hill, regardless of the dangerous
characters often encountered there at night, any one of whom he had
courage enough to have throttled at the moment he was flying from what
was little more than a mere phantom.
Meanwhile the moon had risen, and was illuminating at intervals the
north-east side of the hill, leaving all in comparative darkness again
as she got behind the thick clouds which hung heavily in the sky; but
the light was of no value to one who was moved only by the impulse of
a distraction. Yet, as he stood for a moment, and looked back upon the
city, with that Warrender’s Close in the heart of it, and that house
in the close, and that room with the rushlight within the house, and
that bed in the room, and that figure so still and silent in the bed,
he became conscious of a circumstance which had escaped him. He found
that in his wild wandering, apparently without any other aim than
to allay unbearable feelings by exertion, he had been unconsciously
following, step by step, the very track which he and his now lost
Jean had taken in a walk of the afternoon of the Sunday preceding his
departure for Glasgow. The thought thus coming as a discovery was in
itself a mystery, and he felt it to be a kind of duty--though with what
sanction of a higher power he knew not--to continue that same track of
the Sunday walk which had been consecrated by the sweet intercourse of
two loving hearts. In execution of which purpose he kept moving towards
the east shoulder of the hill, and such hold had this religious fancy
taken of him, that he looked about for places in the track where some
part of their conversation had occurred, which, from some peculiarity
in it, had remained upon his memory. Nay, so weak did he become in his
devotion, that he threw himself down on the cold grass at spots where
Jean had required a rest, and had leant her head upon his shoulder,
and had been repaid by some note of endearment. But in these reclining
postures, which assumed the form of a species of worship, he remained
only till the terrible thought of his privation again rose uppermost in
his mind, forcing him to start to his feet by a sudden spring, and to
go on again, and brush through the whins that grew on the hill-side, as
if he courted their obstruction as a relief.
It is said that our ideas produce time, and our feelings devour it;
and this is true at least where the feelings are of apprehension and
fear of some inevitable event to occur in the future. He had still the
ordeal to pass through. The sun would rise, in the light of which he
would be forced to look on the dead face, and in place of considering
the time occupied by these wanderings to and fro long and weary, the
moments, minutes, hours, passed with such rapidity that the moon had
gone far on in her journey, and the gray streaks of dawn were opening
up a view to the east, before he could realise the passage of the time
which had been, as it were, swallowed up by his desire to postpone
what, by the laws of nature and society, he was bound to endure. How
many times he had gone round the hill and up to the top, and down to
Duddingstone, and along by the village road, and in through the bog,
to begin his rounds again, he could not have told. But at length the
sun glared threateningly in his face. Time defied him, and at length
he saw the smoke of the chimneys begin to rise from the city. The red
peat he had seen in the grate of his own kitchen would at least yield
none. The household gods had deserted his hearth. Death and silence now
reigned there. He heard eight o’clock sound from St Giles’s. The people
were beginning to move in all directions--all in search of pleasure,
the ultimate end of all man’s exertions--and he could no longer find a
refuge in darkness or distance; so he began to move in the direction
of the town with the weariness and lassitude of exhaustion rendering
his legs rigid and his feet heavy, in addition to the hopelessness of
a stricken heart. When he got to the Watergate, he began to see faces
of people whom he knew, and who knew him; but he felt no desire to
speak, and they doubtless from delicacy passed, without showing any
desire to stop him. At length he arrived at the head of Warrender’s
Close, and now he felt as if he were more submissive to the necessity
of what seemed to be fate, moving his limbs with more will--even with
something like a wish on his mind to put an end to a long agony. Down
and down step by step, the drooping head responsive in its nods to
the movement of his body; up the stair step after step deliberately,
resolutely; along the outer passage; now opposite his own door. That
door was now closed, giving indication that the servant, or some friend
or neighbour, had been in the house since he left. He tapped gently.
The door was opened almost upon the instant, and Mr John Dalrymple
was immediately encompassed by the arms of a woman screaming in the
exultation of immoderate joy.
“John, dear John, how delighted I am to see you,--for oh, we have been
in such dreadful fear about you since Peggy found your portmanteau in
the lobby; but, thank God, you are come at last, and just in time for a
fine warm breakfast.”
The ejaculation, or rather screaming of which words was very easy,
because very natural, to Mrs Jean Dalrymple, in the happy circumstances
in which she found herself after so much apprehension produced by the
mystery connected with the portmanteau, but as for Mr John Dalrymple
speaking even to the extent of a single syllable was out of the
question, unless some angel other than she of the house had touched his
lips with the fire of inspiration, in place of his receiving the kisses
of his wife. And this was so far well, for he certainly would have
made a bungle of any attempt at the moment to express his feelings,
besides laying himself open to a heavier charge of folly than that
which already stood at the wrong side of his account of wisdom, or
even common sense. So quietly taking off his hat he led the way into
the breakfast-parlour, where he saw the breakfast things all neatly
laid, beside a glowing fire, before which lay his brindled cat, not the
least happy of the three; whilst Peggy, who had some forgotten thing to
put on the table, had a pleasant smile on her face, just modified in
a slight degree with a little apprehension which probably neither the
master nor mistress could comprehend.
“I will tell you, Jeannie, all about the portmanteau, and perhaps
something more, when we sit down to breakfast,” words which in the
meantime were satisfactory to Mrs Jean; and the event they conditioned
for soon arrived, for the wife was all curiosity and despatch, and
Peggy all duty and attention.
The story was very soon told, nor did Mrs Jean interrupt the narrative
by a single word as she sat with staring eyes and open mouth listening
to the strange tale.
“There is the letter with the dead seal,” said he, as he handed it over
to her.
Mrs Jean read it, and then began to examine it as if she was
scrutinising the form of the written words.
“That is the handwriting of Bob Balfour, my old admirer,” said she, at
length, with animation. “I know his hand as well as I know yours, and
he has done this in revenge for your having taken me from him. I will
show you proof.”
And going to a cabinet she took therefrom some letters, which she
handed to her husband. These proved two things: first, that the letter
with the black seal, purporting to be signed by Surgeon Morgan, was
in the handwriting of Balfour, though considerably disguised; and
secondly, that he had been an ardent lover of Jean, and, perhaps, on
that account an enemy to the man who had been fortunate enough to
secure her affections and her hand.
“All clear enough; but I shall have my revenge, too!” cried the
husband. “In the meantime there are some things to be explained. Why
did you not write?”
“I wrote to you last night,” said Jean. “You had posted your letter too
late.”
“And why was not Peggy in the house last night at twelve, when I came
home?”
“Peggy must answer that herself,” answered Mrs Jean, smiling, and
looking from her husband to Peggy, and from Peggy to her husband, as
she spoke; “but I think I know what her answer will be.”
And that answer was indeed very simple, amounting to no more than the
very natural fact that Peggy, after her mistress had retired to rest,
had gone up the common stair to Widow Henderson’s, whose son Jock
was courting Peggy at the time with all commendable assiduity, and
considerable chance of success.
But our story, though thus so satisfactorily explained, is not yet
done. Nay, as we have said, its termination was in the court, where
Mr Dalrymple sued Balfour for damages and _solatium_ for his cowardly
and cruel act. Nor was this action itself an ordinary matter, for it
interested the lawyers of the day, not by the romantic facts which
led to it, but the legal principles which flowed out of it. Balfour’s
counsel objected to the relevancy, that is, denied there was in a
lie or practical joke any cause of action. This defence gave rise to
the informations we have mentioned, for the point raised was new and
difficult. It was argued by Balfour that lies in the form of hoaxes
are told every day, some good and some bad. Men know this, and ought
to be upon their guard, which can be their only security,--for if
such lies were actionable, one-half of society would be at law with
the other. And as for any injury inflicted on Mr Dalrymple, it was
doubtful whether the pleasure he experienced that morning when enclosed
in the arms of his wife, did not more than compensate for his prior
sufferings. On the other hand the pursuer argued, that by the law of
Scotland there is no wrong without a legal remedy, and that having
suffered by the cruel deceit both in his feelings and in his purse,
(for he left his business unfinished,) he was entitled to recover. We
have been unable to find the judgment.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of Mrs Halliday.
There are little bits of romance spread here and there in the routine
of ordinary life, but for which we should be like the fairy Aline,
somewhat weary of always the same flowers blooming, and the same
birds singing, and the same play of human motives and passions. They
are something of the nature of episodes which, as in the case of
epic poems, are often the most touching and beautiful in the whole
work. Yet the beauty is seldom felt by the actors themselves, who are
frequently unfortunate; and so it is that they suffer that we may enjoy
the pathos of their suffering, after it has gone through the hands
of art. We are led to say this as a kind of prelude to one of those
episodical dramas which occurred some eighty years ago, and for twenty
of them formed a household story, as well from the singularity of the
principal circumstances as from the devotion of the personages. But
we must go back a little from the main incidents to introduce to the
reader a certain Patrick Halliday, a general agent for the sale of
English broadcloth, whose place of business was in the Lawnmarket, and
dwelling-house in a tenement long called Peddie’s Land, situated near
the Old Assembly Close. It belongs not much to our story to say that
Mr Halliday was pretty well-to-do in the world, though probably even
with youth and fair looks, if he had been a poor man, he would not have
secured as he did the hand of a certain young lady, at that time more
remarkable than he. Her name was Julia Vallance. We know no more of her
except one particular, which many people would rather be known by than
by wealth, or even family honours, and that was personal beauty--not
of that kind which catches the eye of the common people, and which is
of ordinary occurrence, but of that superior order which, addressing
itself to a cultivated taste, secures an admiration which can be
justified by principles. And so it came to pass that Julia had before
her marriage attained to the reputation--probably not a matter of great
ambition to herself, certainly not at all times very enviable--of being
the belle of the old city. Nor is this saying little, when we claim it
in the face of the world as a truth that Edinburgh, in spite of its
smoke, has at all times been remarkable for many varieties, dark and
fair, of fine women. A result this which, perhaps, we owe to a more
equal mixture of the two fine races, the Celt and Saxon, than ever
took place in England. But Julia had brought her price, and her market
having been made, she could afford to renounce the admiration of a
gaping public in consideration of the love of a husband who was as kind
to her as he was true. As regards their happiness as man and wife, we
will take that in the meantime as admitted, the more by reason that in
due time after the marriage they had a child; and, no doubt, they would
have had many in succession had it not been for the strange occurrence
which forms the fulcrum of our tale.
Apart from the family in Peddie’s Land, and in no manner connected with
it, either by blood or favour, was that of Mr Archibald Blair, a young
man living in Writers’ Court, of whom we can say little more than that
he was connected with the Borgue family in the Stewartry, an advocate,
and also married. We are not informed of either the name or lineage of
his young wife, and far less can we say aught of the perfections or
imperfections she derived from nature. We are only left to presume that
if there had been no love, there would probably have been no marriage,
and in this case, also, we have the fact of a child having been born
to help the presumption of that which, naturally enough, may be taken
as granted.
The two families, far asunder in point of grade, and equally far from
any chance of acquaintanceship, went on in their several walks; nor are
we entitled to say, from anything previously known of them, that they
even knew of each other’s existence--unless, to be sure, the reputation
of Julia for her personal perfections might have come to Blair’s ears
as it did to many who had perhaps never seen her; but, then, the
marriage of a beauty is generally the end of her fame, as it is of her
maiden career; and those who, before that event, are entitled to look
and admire, and, perhaps, wish to whisper their aspirations, not less
than to gaze on her beauty, leave the fair one to the happy man to whom
the gods have assigned her.