pier of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been
urchins when he went away. The look of the old harbour revived the
image which had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the
running of the one image into the other produced the ordinary illusion
of all that long interval appearing as a day; but there was no illusion
in the change, that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and there
was no Mary Brown there now. Having called a coach he told the driver
to proceed up Leith Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay’s Inn, in St
Mary’s Wynd; but the man told him there was no inn there, nor had been
in his memory. The man added that he would take him to the White Horse
in the Canongate, and thither accordingly he drove him. On arriving at
the inn he required the assistance of the waiter to enable him to get
out of the coach, nor probably did the latter think this any marvel,
after looking into a face so furrowed with years, so pale with the
weakness of a languid circulation, so saddened with care. The rich man
had only an inn for a home, nor in all his native country was there one
friend whom he hoped to find alive. Neither would a search help him,
as he found on the succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he
essayed an infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The
houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and
figures, and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete
to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years--a
similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young
when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old
among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him as he was indeed
strange to them. True, too, as the coachman said, Peter Ramsay’s Inn,
where he had heard Mary singing at her work, and the stable where he
had whistled blithely among his favourite horses, were no longer to
be seen--_etiam cineres perierunt_--their very sites were occupied by
modern dwellings. What of that small half-sunk lodging in Big Lochend
Close, where Mary’s mother lived, and where Mary had been brought up,
where perhaps Mary had died. Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to
hobble down the Canongate to that little lodging, and might there
not be for him a sad pleasure even to enter and sit down by the same
fireplace where he had seen the dearly-beloved face, and listened to
her voice, to him more musical than the melody of angels?
And so after he had walked about till he was wearied, and his steps
became more unsteady and slow, and as yet without having seen a face
which he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big Close. There
was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised
the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes
tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often
been responded to by Mary’s finger on the glass, as a token that he
would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now
hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his
head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to
enter that house rose again like a yearning, and what more in the world
than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there
for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as
money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of
seeing the room where she was born--yea, where probably she had died.
In as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the
stair, which, in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a
bound, he was at the foot of it; there was there the old familiar dark
passage, with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that
was of any interest to him. Arrived at it he stood in doubt. He would
knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him,
and yet, what had he to fear, for half a century the inmates had been
changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing
as unknown? At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap,
and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by
him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the
half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power
of vision, see more of him, for the lobby was still darker.
“Who may live here?” said he, in the expectation of hearing some name
unknown to him.
The answer, in a broken cracked voice, was not slow--
“Mary Brown; and what may you want of her?”
“Mary Brown!” but not a word more could he say, and he stood as still
as a post, not a movement of any kind did he show for so long a time
that the woman might have been justified in her fear of a very spirit.
“And can ye say nae mair, sir?” rejoined she. “Is my name a bogle to
terrify human beings?”
But still he was silent, for the reason that he could not think--far
less speak, nor even for some minutes could he achieve more than the
repetition of the words, “Mary Brown.”
“But hadna ye better come in, good sir?” said she. “Ye may ken our auld
saying: ‘They that speak in the dark may miss their mark;’ for words
carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, to say the truth, I
am old and blind.”
And, moving more as an automaton than as one under a will, Halket was
seated on a chair with this said old and blind woman by his side, who
sat silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger to explain
what he wanted. Nor was the opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to
understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in
the obscure light of the room, to scrutinise her form and features,
and in doing this he went upon the presumption that this second Mary
Brown only carried the name of the first; but as he looked he began
to detect features which riveted his eyes; where the re-agent was so
sharp and penetrating, the analysis was rapid--it was also hopeful--it
was also fearful. Yes, it was true that that woman was _his_ Mary
Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin
hair; the blue eyes were gray, without light and without speculation;
the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of
the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral
body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed
only to cover a skeleton. Yet withal he saw in her that identical Mary
Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic of the idol he had
worshipped through life; it was the only remnant in the world which had
any interest for him; and he could on the instant have clasped her to
his breast, and covered her pale face with his tears. But how was he to
act? A sudden announcement might startle and distress her.
“There was a Mary Brown,” said he, “who was once a housemaid in Mr
Peter Ramsay’s Inn in St Mary’s Wynd.”
“And who can it be that can recollect that?” was the answer, as she
turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. “Ye maun be full o’ years.
Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever had in
this world.”
“And there was one William Halket there at that time also,” he
continued.
Words which, as they fell upon the ear, seemed to be a stimulant so
powerful as to produce a jerk in the organ; the dulness of the eyes
seemed penetrated with something like light, and a tremor passed over
her entire frame.
“That name is no to be mentioned, sir,” she said, nervously, “except
aince, and nae mair; he was my ruin; for he pledged his troth to me,
and promised to come back and marry me, but he never came.”
“Nor wrote you?” said Halket.
“No, never,” replied she; “I would hae gien the world for a scrape o’
the pen o’ Will Halket; but it’s a’ past now, and I fancy he is dead
and gone to whaur there is neither plighted troth, nor marriage, nor
giving in marriage; and my time, too, will be short.”
A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, carrying the suspicion that
Mr Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never
forwarded the letters, whereto many circumstances tended.
“And what did you do when you found Will had proved false?” inquired
Halket. “Why should that have been your ruin?”
“Because my puir heart was bound up in him,” said she, “and I never
could look upon another man. Then what could a puir woman do? My mother
died, and I came here to work as she wrought: ay, fifty years ago, and
my reward has been the puir boon o’ the parish bread; ay, and, waur
than a’ the rest, blindness.”
“Mary,” said Halket, as he took her emaciated hand into his, scarcely
less emaciated, and divested of the genial warmth of life.
The words carried the old sound, and she started and shook.
“Mary!” he continued, “Will Halket still lives. He was betrayed, as you
have been betrayed. He wrote three letters to you, all of which were
kept back by his master, for fear of losing one who he saw would be
useful to him; and, to complete the conspiracy, he reported you dead
upon the authority of Peter Ramsay. Whereupon Will betook himself to
the making of money, but he never forgot his Mary, whose name has been
heard as often as the song of the birds in the groves of Virginia.”
“Ah, you are Will himself!” cried she. “I ken now the sound o’ your
voice in the word ‘Mary,’ even as you used to whisper it in my ear in
the fields at St Leonard’s. Let me put my hand upon your head, and move
my fingers ower your face. Yes, yes; oh, mercy, merciful God, how can
my poor worn heart bear a’ this!”
“Mary, my dear Mary!” ejaculated the moved man, “come to my bosom and
let me press you to my heart; for this is the only blissful moment I
have enjoyed for sixty years.”
Nor was Mary deaf to his entreaties, for she resigned herself as in
a swoon to an embrace, which an excess of emotion, working on the
shrivelled heart and the wasted form, probably prevented her from
feeling.
“But, O Willie!” she cried, “a life’s love lost; a lost life on both
our sides.”
“Not altogether,” rejoined he, in the midst of their mutual sobs. “It
may be--nay, it is--that our sands are nearly run. Yea, a rude shake
would empty the glass, so weak and wasted are both of us; but still
there are a few grains to pass, and they shall be made golden. You
are the only living creature in all this world I have any care for.
More thousands of pounds than you ever dreamt of are mine, and will
be yours. We will be married even yet, not as the young marry, but as
those marry who may look to their knowing each other as husband and
wife in heaven, where there are no cruel interested men to keep them
asunder; and for the short time we are here you shall ride in your
carriage as a lady, and be attended by servants; nor shall a rude
breath of wind blow upon you which it is in the power of man to save
you from.”
“Ower late, Willie; ower late,” sighed the exhausted woman, as she
still lay in his arms. “But if all this should please my Will--I canna
use another name, though you are now a gentleman--I will do even as you
list, and that which has been by a cruel fate denied us here we may
share in heaven.”
“And who shall witness this strange marriage?” said he. “There is no
one in Edinburgh now that I know or knows me. Has any one ever been
kind to you?”
“Few, few indeed,” answered she. “I can count only three.”
“I must know these wonderful exceptions,” said he, as he made an
attempt at a grim smile; “for those who have done a service to Mary
Brown have done a double service to me. I will make every shilling they
have given you a hundred pounds. Tell me their names.”
“There is John Gilmour, my landlord,” continued she, “who, though he
needed a’ his rents for a big family, passed me many a term, and forbye
brought me often, when I was ill and couldna work, many a bottle o’
wine; there is Mrs Paterson o’ the Watergate, too, who aince when I
gaed to her in sair need gave me a shilling out o’ three that she
needed for her bairns; and Mrs Galloway o’ Little Lochend, slipt in to
me a peck o’ meal ae morning when I had naething for breakfast.”
“And these shall be at our marriage, Mary,” said he. “They shall be
dressed to make their eyes doubtful if they are themselves. John
Gilmour will wonder how these pounds of his rent he passed you from
have grown to hundreds. Mrs Paterson’s shilling will have grown as
the widow’s mite never grew, even in heaven; and Mrs Galloway’s peck
of meal will be made like the widow’s cruse of oil--it will never be
finished while she is on earth.”
Whereupon Mary raised her head. The blank eyes were turned upon him,
and something like a smile played over the thin and wasted face. At the
same moment a fair-haired girl of twelve years came jumping into the
room, and only stopped when she saw a stranger.
“That is Helen Kemp,” said Mary, who knew her movements. “I forgot
Helen; she lights my fire, and when I was able to gae out used to lead
me to the park.”
“And she shall be one of the favoured ones of the earth,” said he, as
he took by the hand the girl, whom the few words from Mary had made
sacred to him, adding, “Helen, dear, you are to be kinder to Mary than
you have ever been;” and, slipping into the girl’s hand a guinea, he
whispered, “You shall have as many of these as will be a bigger tocher
to you than you ever dreamed of, for what you have done for Mary Brown.”
And thus progressed to a termination a scene perhaps more extraordinary
than ever entered into the head of a writer of natural things
and events not beyond the sphere of the probable. Nor did what
afterwards took place fall short of the intentions of a man whose
intense yearnings to make up for what had been lost led him into the
extravagance of a vain fancy. He next day took a great house and
forthwith furnished it in proportion to his wealth. He hired servants
in accordance, and made all the necessary arrangements for the
marriage. Time which had been so cruel to him and his sacred Mary was
put under the obligation of retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs Paterson,
Mrs Galloway, and Helen Kemp were those, and those alone, privileged
to witness the ceremony. We would not like to describe how they were
decked out, nor shall we try to describe the ceremony itself. But vain
are the aspirations of man when he tries to cope with the Fates! The
changed fortune was too much for the frail and wasted bride to bear.
She swooned at the conclusion of the ceremony, and was put into a
silk-curtained bed. Even the first glimpse of grandeur was too much for
the spirit whose sigh was vanity, all is vanity, and, with the words on
her lips, “A life’s love lost,” she died.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Merrillygoes.
The world has been compared to many things,--a playhouse, a madhouse,
a penitentiary, a caravanserai, and so forth; but I think a show-box
wherein all, including man, is turned by machinery, is better than any
of them. And every one looks through his own little round hole at all
the rest, he being both object and subject. How the scenes shift too!
the belief of one age being the laughing-stock of the next. Witches and
brownies and fairies and ghosts and bogles have lost their quiddity,
and given birth to quips and laughs; but I have here, as a simple
storyteller, to do with one example of these vanished beliefs, what was
in folk-lore called the “Merrillygoes,” sometimes in the old Scotch
dictionaries spelled “Mirrligoes.” It was a supposed affection of the
eyes, in which the victim or patient, as you suppose the visitation
brought on by natural or supernatural powers, fancied he saw men and
women and inanimate things which were not at the time before him.
I think the affection was different from the “glamour” which was
generally attributed to the wrath of fairies; and both indeed might,
after all, be resolved into the pseudoblepsy of the old, and the
monomania of the new nosologies. But dismissing all learning--which,
however potent to puff up man’s pride, and then prick the bladder of
his conceit, has no concern with a story--I at once introduce to you Mr
David Tweedie. He was one of those Davids who, for some Scotch reason,
are called Dauvit; and, like other simple men, he had a wife, whose
name, I think, was Semple, Robina Semple, certainly not Simple. These
worthies figured in Berenger’s Close of Edinburgh some time about the
provostship of the unfortunate Alexander Wilson; and were not only man
and wife by holy Kirk, but a copartnership, insomuch as, Dauvit being
a tailor, she after marriage, and having no children to “fash her,”
became a tailor also, sitting on the same board with him, using the
same goose, yea, pricking the same flea with emulous needle.
Yet our couple were in some respects the most unlike each other in the
world; Robina being a sharp, clear-witted, nay, ingenious woman--Dauvit
a mere big boy. I do not know if I could give the reader a better
explanation of the expression I have used than by referring him to the
notion he might form of Holbein’s picture of his son, whom he quaintly
and humorously painted as a man, but retaining all the features, except
size, of a boy: the chubby cheeks, small snub nose, pinking eyes, and
delicate colours. Nor was Dauvit a big chubby man merely as respected
the body, for he was also little better than chubby in mind; at least
in so far as regards credulity, passiveness, and softness. He had
a marvellous appetite for worldly wonders, the belief being in the
direct ratio of the wonderfulness, and he gave credit to the last thing
he heard, for no other reason than that it was the last thing; one
impression thus effacing another, so that the soft round lump remained
always much the same. All which peculiarities were, it may easily be
supposed, not only known to, but very well appreciated by, his loving,
but perhaps not over-faithful, Binny.
If you keep these things in your mind, you will be able the better
to estimate the value of the facts as I proceed to tell you that one
morning Dauvit was a little later in getting out of bed than was usual
with him, by reason that he had on the previous night been occupied
with a suit of those sacredly-imperative things called in Scotland
“blacks,” that is, mourning. But then the time was not lost; for Robina
was up and active, very busily engaged in preparing breakfast. Not
that Dauvit condescended to take much notice of these domestic duties
of Binny, because he had ample faith not only in her housewifery, but
the wonderful extent of her understanding; only it just happened,
as indeed anything _may_ happen in a world where we do not know why
anything _does_ happen, that as he lay very comfortably under the
welcome pressure of the soft blankets, with his eyes looking as it
were out of a hole, he heard a tap at the door, which tap was just as
like that of the letter-carrier as any two blunts of exactly the same
length could possibly be. Nor did his observation stop here; for he saw
with these same eyes, as if confirming his ears, Binny go to the door
and open it; then came the words of doubtless the said letter-carrier,
“That’s for Dauvit;” and at the same instant a letter was put into his
wife’s hands, and thereafter disappeared at the hole of her pocket,
where there were many things that David knew nothing about.
Strange as this seemed to Mr Tweedie, even the last act of pocketing
would not have appeared to him so very curious if at the moment of
secreting the letter she had not very boldly, and even with a kind of
smile upon her face, looked fully into the open eyes of her husband.
But more still, this sagacious and honest woman immediately thereafter
retired into the inner room, where, no doubt, she made herself
acquainted with the contents of the communication, whatever it might
be, and from which she came again to resume, as she did resume, her
preparations for breakfast just as if nothing had happened beyond what
was common. Of course I need not say that Dauvit was astonished; but
his astonishment was an increasing quantity in proportion to the time
that now passed without her going forward to the bedside and reading
the letter to him, as she had often done before; and if we might be
entitled to wonder why he didn’t at once put the question, “What letter
was that, Binny?” perhaps the answer which would have been given by
David himself might have been that his very wonder prevented him from
asking for an explanation of the wonder--just as miracles shut people’s
mouths at the same moment that they make them open their eyes.
However this might be--and who knows but that David might have a pawky
curiosity to try Binny?--the never a word did he say; but, rising
slowly and quietly, he dressed himself, in that loose way in which
of all tradesmen the tailors most excel, for a reason of which I am
entirely ignorant. He then sat down by the fire; and Binny having
seated herself on the other side, the operation of breakfast began
without a word being said on either part, but with mutual looks, which
on the one side, viz., Robina’s, were very well understood, but on the
other not at all. A piece of pantomime all this which could not last
very long, for the good reason that impatience is the handmaiden of
curiosity; and David at length, in spite of a bit of bread which almost
closed up his mouth, got out the words--
“What letter was that, Binny, which the letter-carrier handed in this
mornin’?”
“Letter! there was nae letter, man,” was the answer of Binny,
accompanied with a look of surprise, which might in vain compete with
the wonder immediately called up in the eyes of her simple husband.
“Did I no see it with my ain een?” was the very natural ejaculation.
“No, you didn’t; you only thought ye saw it,” said the wife; “and thae
twa things have a gey difference between them.”
“What _do_ ye mean, Robina, woman?”
“The merrillygoes!”
“The merrillygoes,” rejoined the wondering David; “my een niver were in
that condition.”
“_You_ may think sae, Dauvit,” rejoined Binny; “but I happen to ken
better. On Wednesday night, when we were in bed, and the moon shining
in at the window, did I no hear you say, ‘Binny, woman, what are ye
doing up at this eery hour?’ It was just about twelve; and upon
lifting my head and looking ower at ye, I saw your een staring out as
gleg as a hawk’s after a sparrow. It had begun then.”
“Ou, I had been dreaming,” said David.
“Dreaming with your een open!”
“That is indeed strange enough,” rejoined David. “Did ye really see my
een open?”
“Did ye ever hear me tell ye a lee, man? Am I no as true as the Bible?
and think ye I dinna ken the strange light o’ the merrillygoes, when I
have seen it in the een o’ my ain father?”
“Is that really true, Binny? I’m beginnin’ to get fear’d. But what o’
your father, lass?”
“Ye may weel ask,” said the wife. “He had been awa’ at Falkirk Tryst
with his ewes, and it was about seven o’clock when he cam’ hame. We
were then in the farm o’ Kimmergame. Weel, he was coming up the lang
loan, and it was gloaming; and just when he was about twenty yards from
his ain door, he saw twa men hurrying along with a coffin a’ studded
with white nails. They were only a yard or twa before him, and the
moment he saw them he stopped till he saw where they were going; and
yet where could they be going but to his ain house; and nae doubt his
wife would be dead, for the lang coffin couldna have fitted any other
person in the house; but he was soon made sure enough, for he saw the
men with the coffin enter into his ain door, and there he stood in a
swither o’ fear; but he was a brave man, and in he went, never stopping
till he got into his ain parlour, where my mother was sitting at her
tea, and nae sooner did she see him than she broke out in a laugh o’
perfect joy at his hamecome. But the never a word he ever said about
the coffin, because he didn’t wish to terrify his wife with evil omens;
and besides, he understood the vision perfectly. And, Dauvit, if ye’re
a wise man ye will submit to the hand o’ God, wha sees fit to bring
thae visitations upon us for some wise end.”
“Very true,” said David, to whom the affair of the letter was rather
much even for _his_ credulity; “but still, Binny, lass, I canna just
come to it that I was deceived.”
“Weel, weel, stick to it, my man, and mak me, your ain wife, a leear.”
“That canna be either,” rejoined David; “and by my faith, I’m at a loss
what to think or what to do; for if it really be that the infliction’s
upon me, how, in the Lord’s name, am I to ken the real thing from the
fause? My head rins right round at the very thought o’t. And then I
fancy there’s nae remedy in the power o’ man.”