my father say that it came on him after he had been confined with
an ill-working stomach to the house, and exercise drove it away.
Ye’ve been sitting ower close. Take scouth for a day. Awa’ ower to
Burntisland, and get payment from John Sprunt o’ the three pounds he
owes for his last suit. Stay ower the night. I say nothing about the
jolly boose ye’ll have thegither, but it may drive thae fumes and
fancies out o’ your head. Come ower with the first boat in the morning,
and I will have your breakfast ready for you.”
The prudence of this advice David was not slow to see, though he had,
maugre his simplicity, considerable misgivings about the affair of the
letter; nor did he altogether feel the absolute conviction that he was
under the influence of the foresaid mysterious power. But independently
of the prudence of her counsel, he felt it as a command, and therefore
behoved to obey. For we may as well admit that David might doubt of
the eternal obligation of a certain decalogue by reason of its being
abrogated; but as for the commands of Mrs Robina, they were subject
to no abrogation, and certainly no denial whatever. So David went and
dressed himself in his “second-best”--a particular mentioned here with
an after-view--and having got from the hands of her, who was thus both
wife and medical adviser, a drop of spirits to help him _on_, and the
merrillygoes _off_, he set forth on his journey.
Proceeding down Leith Wynd, he found himself in Leith Walk; but however
active his limbs, thus relieved on so short a warning from “the
board,” and however keen and far-sighted his eyes, as they scanned
all the people he met, he could not shake off certain doubts whether
the individuals he met were in reality creatures of flesh and blood,
or mere visions. The sacred words of Mrs Robina were a kind of winged
beliefs, which, by merely striking on the ear, performed for him what
many a man has much trouble in doing for himself--that is, thinking;
so that upon the whole the tendency of his thoughts was in a great
degree favourable to sadness and terror. The sigh was heaved again and
again; being sometimes for a longer period delayed, as the hope of a
jolly boose with his friend Sprunt held a partial sway in his troubled
mind. But by and by the activity required by his search for a boat, the
getting on board, the novelty of the sail, the undulating movements,
and all the interests which belong to a “traveller by sea and land,”
drove away the cobwebs that hung about the brain; and by the time he
got to Burntisland he was much as he used to be. But, alas, he little
knew that this journey, propitious as it appeared, was not calculated
to produce the wonderful effects expected from it.
No sooner had he landed on the pier than he made straight for the house
of his friend, which stood by the roadside, a little removed from the
village. He saw it in the distance; and quickening his steps, came to
an angle which enabled him to see into Mr Sprunt’s garden; and we may,
considering how much the three pounds, the boose, the fun, the cure was
associated with the figure of that individual, imagine the satisfaction
felt by Mr Tweedie when he saw the true body of John Sprunt in that
very garden, busily engaged, too, in the delightful occupation of
garden-work, and animated, we may add of our own supposition, with a
mind totally oblivious of the three pounds he owed to the Edinburgh
tailor. But well and truly may we speak of the uncertainty of mundane
things. David had only turned away his eyes for an instant, and yet
in that short period, as he found when he again turned his head, the
well-known figure of his old friend, pot-companion, and debtor in
three pounds, had totally disappeared. The thing looked like what
learned people call a phenomenon. How could Sprunt have disappeared
so soon? Where could he have gone to be invisible, where there was no
summer-house to receive him, and where the time did not permit of a
retreat into his own dwelling? David stood, and began to think of the
words of Robina. There could be no doubt that his eyes had been at
fault again; it was not John Sprunt he had seen--merely a lying image.
And so even on the instant the old sadness came over him again, with
more than one long sigh; nor in his depression and simplicity was he
able to bring up any such recondite thing as a thought suggesting the
connexion between John’s disappearance and the fact that he owed Mr
David Tweedie--whom he could have seen in the road--the sum of three
pounds.
In which depressed and surely uncomfortable condition our traveller
proceeded towards the house, more anxious, indeed, to disprove his
terrors than to get his money. He knocked at the door, which, by the
by, was at the end of the house; and his knock was answered by Mrs
Sprunt herself, a woman who could have acted Bellona in an old Greek
piece.
“I am glad John is at hame,” were David’s first words.
“And I would be glad if that were true, Mr Dauvit,” replied she; “but
it just happens no to be true. John went off to Kirkaldy at six o’clock
this morning to try and get some siller that’s due him there.”
“Let me in to sit down,” muttered David, with a kind of choking in his
voice.
And following the good dame into the parlour, Mr Tweedie threw himself
into the arm-chair in a condition of great fear and perturbation.
Having sat mute for a minute or two, probably to the wonderment of the
dame, he began to rub his brow with his handkerchief, as if taking off
a little perspiration could help him in his distress.
“Mrs Sprunt,” said he, “I could have sworn that I saw John working in
the yard.”
Whereat Mrs Sprunt broke out into a loud laugh, which somehow or
another seemed to David as ghostly as his visions; and when she had
finished she added, “Something wrong, Dauvit, with your een.”
“Gudeness gracious and ungracious!” said David. “Is this possible? Can
it really be? Whaur, in the name o’ Heeven, am I to look for a real
flesh-and-blood certainty?”
“And yet ye seem to be sober, Dauvit.”
“As a judge,” replied he. But, after a pause, “Can I be sure even o’
_you_?” he cried, as he started up; the while his eyes rolled in a
manner altogether very unlike the douce quiet character he bore. “Let
me satisfy mysel that you are really Mrs Janet Sprunt in the real body.”
And making a sudden movement, with his arms extended towards the
woman, he tried to grip her; but it was a mere futile effort. Mrs
Sprunt was gone through the open door in an instant, and David was left
alone with another confirmation of his dreaded suspicion, muttering
to himself, “There too, there too,--a’ alike; may the Lord have mercy
upon His afflicted servant! Robina Tweedie, ye were right after a’, and
that letter was a delusion like the rest--a mere eemage--a’ eemages
thegither.”
After which soliloquy he again sat down in the easy-chair, held his
hands to his face, and groaned in the pain of a wounded spirit. But
even in the midst of this solemn conviction that the Lord had laid His
hand upon him, he could see that sitting there could do him no good;
and, rising up, he made for the kitchen. There was no one there; he
tried another room, which he also found empty; and issuing forth from
the unlucky house, he encountered an old witch-looking woman who was
turning the corner, as if going in the direction of another dwelling.
“Did you see Mrs Sprunt even now?” said he.
“No likely,” answered the woman; “when she tauld me this mornin’ she
was going to Petticur. She has a daughter there, ye ken.”
Melancholy intelligence which seemed to have a logical consistency
with the other parts of that day’s remarkable experiences; nor did
David seem to think that anything more was necessary for the entire
satisfaction of even a man considerably sceptical, and then who in
those days doubted the merrillygoes?
“What poor creatures we are!” said he. “I came here for a perfect cure,
and I gae hame with a heavy care.”
And with these words, which were in reality an articulated groan, Mr
David Tweedie made his way back towards the pier, under an apprehension
that as he went along he would meet with some verification of a
suspicion which, having already become a conviction, not only required
no more proof, but was strong enough to battle all opposing facts and
arguments; so he went along with his chin upon his breast, and his
eyes fixed upon the ground, as if he were afraid to trust them with a
survey of living beings, lest they might cheat him as they had already
done. It was about half-past twelve when he got to the boat; and he was
further disconcerted by finding that the wind, which had brought him
so cleverly over, would repay itself, like over-generous givers, who
take back by one hand what they give by the other. And so it turned
out; for he was fully two hours on the passage, all of which time
was occupied by a reverie as to the extraordinary calamity that had
befallen him. And how much more dreary his cogitations as he thought
of the increased unhappiness of Robina, when she ascertained not only
the failure of getting payment of his debt, but the total wreck of her
means of cure!
At length he got to Leith pier; but his landing gave him no pleasure:
he was still haunted with the notion that he would encounter more
mischances; and he hurried up Leith Walk, passing old friends whom he
was afraid to speak to. Arrived at the foot of Leith Wynd, he made a
detour which brought him to the foot of Halkerston’s Wynd, up which he
ascended, debouching into the High Street. And here our story becomes
so incredible, that we are almost afraid to trust our faithful pen to
write what David Tweedie saw on his emerging from the entry. There,
coming up the High Street, was Mrs Robina Tweedie herself, marching
along steadily, dressed in David’s best suit. He stood and stared with
goggle eyes, as if he felt some strange pleasure in the fascination.
The vision was so concrete, that he could identify his own green coat
made by his own artistic fingers. There were the white metal buttons,
the broadest he could get in the whole city--nay, one of them on the
back had been scarcely a match, and he recognised the defect; his
knee-breeches too, so easily detected by their having been made out of
a large remnant of a colour (purple) whereof there was not another bit
either to be bought or “cabbaged,”--nay, the very brass knee-buckles of
which he was so proud; the “rig-and-fur” stockings of dark brown; the
shoe-buckles furbished up the last Sunday; the square hat he had bought
from Pringle; and, to crown all, his walking-stick with the ivory top.
So perfect indeed was the “get-up” of his lying eyes, that, if he
had not been under the saddening impression of his great visitation,
he would have been well amused by the wonderful delusion. Even as it
was, he could not help following the phantom, as it went so proudly
and jantily along the street. And what was still more extraordinary,
he saw Mucklewham, the city guardsman, meet her and speak to her in
a private kind of way, and then go away with her. But David had a
trace of sense in his soft nature. He saw that it was vain as well
as hurtful to gratify what was so clearly a delusion; it would only
deepen the false images in eyes already sufficiently “glamoured;” and
so he stopped suddenly short and let them go--that is, he would cease
_to look_,--and they, the visions, would cease _to be_. In all which
how little did he know that he was prefiguring a philosophy which was
some time afterwards to become so famous! Nay, are we not all under the
merrillygoes in this world of phantoms?
“You say you see the things that be:
I say you only think you see.
Not even that. It seems to me
You only think you think you see.
Then thinking weaves so many a lie,
Methinks this world is ‘all my eye.’”
But even in his grief and sacred fear he could not help saying to
himself, “Gude Lord! if that eemage werena frightfu’, would it no be
funny? And what will Robina say? Nae doubt she is at this very moment
sitting at her tea in Berenger’s Close, thinking upon my calamity.
What _will_ she say when I tell her that I saw her in the High Street
dressed in my Sunday suit, walking just as if she were Provost Wilson
himsel? I wouldna wonder if she should get into ane o’ her laughing
fits, even in very spite o’ her grief for the awful condition of her
loving husband. At any rate, it’s time I were hame, when I canna tell
what I am to see next, nor can even say which end o’ me is uppermost.”
Nor scarcely had he finished his characteristic soliloquy, when a
hand was laid on his shoulder. It was that of the corporal; but how
was David to know that? Why, he felt Bill’s hand; and to make things
more certain, he even laid his own hand upon the solid shoulder of the
sturdy city guardsman; adding, for still greater proof--
“Did you meet and speak to any one up the street there?”
“The niver a living soul,” said the corporal, “as I’m a sinner; but
come along, man, to the Prophet Amos’s,” (a well-known tavern in
the Canongate,) “and let us have a jolly jug, for I’m to be on duty
to-night, and need something to cheer me up; and the colour of ale will
sit better on your cheeks when you go home to Robina than that saffron.
Are you well enough, David? I think I might as well ask the question of
a half-hanged dog.”
“Half or hale hanged,” replied David, as he eyed his friend
suspiciously, “I canna be the waur o’ a jug o’ ale.”
An answer which was perhaps the result of sheer despair, for the
conviction of the “real unreality” of what he had seen was now so
much beyond doubt that he began to submit to it as a doom; and what
is irremediable becomes, like death, to be bearable, nay, even
accommodating to the routine of life; and so the two jogged along till
they came to the Prophet’s, where they sat down to their liquor and,
we may add, loquacity, of which latter Mucklewham was so profuse, that
any other less simple person than David might have thought that the
guardsman wanted to speak against time. But David suspected nothing,
and he was the more inclined to be patient that his friend had promised
to pay the score.
“And when saw ye Robina?” said David.
“Not for a good round year, my bairn,” said the big corporal.
“Gude Lord, did ye no see her and speak to her even this day?”
Whereupon the big guardsman laughed a horse (guardsman’s) laugh;
and pointing his finger to his eye he twirled the same, that is the
finger, merrily round. A movement which David too well understood; and
after heaving a deep sigh, he took a deep pull at the ale, as if in a
paroxysm of despair.
And so they drank on, till David having risen and left the room for a
breath of fresh air, found on his return that his generous friend had
vanished. Very wonderful, no doubt. But, then, had he not taken his jug
with him?--no doubt to get it replenished--and he would return with a
filled tankard. Vain expectation! Mucklewham was only another Sprunt,
another lie of the visual sense. Did David Tweedie really need this
new proof? David knew he didn’t; neither did he require the additional
certainty of his calamity by having to pay only for his own “shot.” The
Prophet did not ask for more, nor did he think it necessary to say why;
perhaps he would make the corporal pay his own share afterwards. The
whole thing was as clear as noon: David had been drinking with one who
had no stomach wherein to put his liquor, and for the good reason that
he had no body to hold that stomach.
“Waur than the case o’ the letter, or Sprunt, (hiccup,) or Robina
dressed in my claes,” said he lugubriously, “for I only _saw_ them, but
I handled the corporal, sat with him, drank with him, heard him speak;
yet baith he and the pewter jug were off in a moment, and I hae paid
(hic) only for ae man’s drink. But is it no a’ a dream thegither? I
wouldna wonder I am at this very moment in my bed wi’ Robina lying at
my back.”
And rising up, he discovered that he was not very well able to keep
his legs, the more by reason that he had poured the ale into an empty
stomach; there was, besides, a new confusion in his brain, as if that
organ had not already enough to do with any small powers of maintaining
itself in equilibrium which it possessed. But he behoved to get
home; and to Berenger’s Close he accordingly went, making sure as he
progressed of at least one truth in nature, amidst all the dubieties
and delusions of that most eventful day: that the shortest way between
two points is the deflecting one. And what was Binny about when he
entered his own house? Working the button-holes of a vest which had
been left by David unfinished. No sooner did she see David staggering
in than she threw the work aside.
“Hame already? and in that state too!” she cried. “You must have been
seeing strange ferlies in the High Street, while I was sitting here
busy at my wark.”
“Strange enough, lass; but if you can tell me whether or no I am Dauvit
Tweedie, your lawfu’ husband or the Prophet Moses, or the Apostle
Aaron, or (hic) the disciple Deuteronomy, or the deevil, it’s mair than
I can.”
Whereupon David dropt his uncertain body in a chair, doubting perhaps
if even the chair was really a chair.
“And it wasna just enough,” rejoined she, “that you had an attack of
the merrillygoes, but you must add pints o’ ale to make your poor wits
mair confounded.”
A remark which Robina thought herself entitled to make, irrespective of
the question which for a hundred years has been disputed, viz., whether
she had sent the corporal to take David to Prophet Amos’s and fill him
drunk with ale, and then shirk the score?
“But haste ye to bed, my man,” she added, “that’s the place for you,
where you may snore awa’ the fumes o’ Prophet Amos’s ale, and the
whimwhams o’ your addled brain.”
An advice which David took kindly, though he did not need it; for,
educated as he may be said to have been by the clever Robina, he was
fortunately one of those favoured beings pointed at in the wise saying
that the power of education is seldom effectual except in those happy
cases where it is superfluous. So it was the ale that sent him to bed
and to sleep as well--a condition into which he sunk very soon. And it
was kindly granted to him, insomuch as it was a kind of recompense for
what he had suffered during that day of wonders: it saved him from the
possibility of hearing a conversation in the other room between Robina
and the corporal, in the course of which it was asked and answered
whether David had recognised Robina in her male decorations; and
whether he had any suspicions as to the true character of the deep plot
they were engaged in working out.
What further took place in the house of Mr Tweedie that night we have
not been able, notwithstanding adequate inquiry, to ascertain; but of
this important fact we are well assured, that next morning David awoke
in a much improved condition. To account for this we must remember his
peculiar nature, for to him “the yesterday,” whatever yesterday it
might be, was always a _dies non_; it had done its duty and was gone,
and it had no business here any more than an impudent fellow who tries
to live too long after the world is sick of him. Indeed, we know that
he ate such a breakfast, and with such satisfaction, that no ideas of
a yesterday had any chance of resisting the feelings of the moment; and
once gone, they had too much difficulty to get into the dark chamber
again to think of trying it. He was “on the board” by ten o’clock. For
he had work to do, and as Robina’s purpose was in the meantime served,
she said no more of the merrillygoes. She had perhaps something else
to do; for shortly after eleven she went out, perhaps to report to
the corporal the sequel to that which he already knew. But whatever
her object, her absence was not destined to be so fruitful of good to
her as her presence wherever she might go; for it so happened that as
David was sitting working, and sometimes with his face overcast with
a passing terror of a return of his calamity, he found he required a
piece of cloth of a size and colour whereof there were some specimens
in an old trunk. To that repository of cabbage, as it is vulgarly
called, he went; and in rummaging through the piebald contents he
came upon a parcel in a corner. On opening it, he found to his great
wonderment no fewer than a hundred guineas of pure gold. The rays from
the shiny pieces seemed to enter his eyes like spikes, and fix the
balls in the sockets; if he felt a kind of fascination yesterday as he
looked at his wife in male attire, though a mere vision, he experienced
the influence now even more, however doubtful he was of the reality of
the glittering objects. He seized, he clutched them, he shut his eyes,
and opened them again as he opened his hands; they did _not_ disappear;
but then Robina herself might appear, and under this apprehension,
which put to flight his doubts, he carried them off, and secreted
them in a private drawer of which he had the key; whereupon he betook
himself again to the board. By and by Robina returned; but the never
a word David said of the guineas, because he had still doubts of the
veracity of his eyes.
And so the day passed without anything occurring to suggest either
inquiry or answer. During the night David slept so soundly that he was
even oblivious of his prize; and it was not till eleven next forenoon,
when his wife went out, that he ventured to look into the drawer; but
now the terrible truth was revealed to him: the guineas were gone, and
he had been again under delusion. The merrillygoes once more! and how
was he to admit the fact to Robina, after his attempted appropriation!
But, happily, there was no necessity for admitting his own shame, for
about four o’clock John Jardine the letter-carrier called and told
him that his wife had eloped with the corporal. The intelligence was
no doubt very dreadful to David, who loved his wife so dearly that
he could have subscribed to the saying “that the husband will always
be deceived when the wife condescends to dissemble;” but Mrs Robina
Tweedie did not so condescend; and David now began to see certain
things and to recollect certain circumstances which, when put together,
appeared even to his mind more strange than the merrillygoes. And his
eyes were opened still further by a letter from Kirkcudbright from a Mr
Gordon, wishing to be informed why he had not acknowledged the receipt
of the hundred guineas left him by his uncle, and which had been sent
in a prior letter in the form of a draft on the Bank of Scotland. Mr
David Tweedie now went to the bank, and was told that the money had
been paid to a man in a green coat and white metal buttons, square hat,
and walking-stick, who represented himself as David Tweedie.
Our story, it will be seen, has pretty nearly explained itself; yet
something remains to be told. A whole year elapsed, when one morning
Mrs Robina Tweedie appeared before honest David, with a lugubrious face
and a lugubrious tale, to the effect that although she had been tempted
to run away with the corporal, she had almost immediately left him--a
pure, bright, unsullied wife; but during all this intermediate time
she had felt so ashamed and conscience-stricken, that she could not
return and ask forgiveness. All which David heard, and to all which he
answered--
“Robina--nae mair Tweedie, lass--ye ken I was afflicted with a strange
calamity when ye left me. I thought I saw what wasna to be seen. It
comes aye back upon me now and then; and I ken it’s on me this mornin’.
I may think I see you there standin’ before me, even as I saw you in
my broad-tailed coat that day in the High Street; but I ken it’s a’
a delusion. In fact, my dear Robina, _I dinna see you, I dinna even
feel your body_,” (pushing her out by the cuff of the neck;) “the
merrillygoes, lass! the merrillygoes!”
And David shut the door on the ejected Robina--thereafter living a very
quiet and comparatively happy life, free from all glamour or any other
affection of the eyes, and seeing just as other people see. Yea, with
his old friend Sprunt and his wife he had many a joke on the subject,
forgiving John for running away that morning to shirk his creditor,
as well as Mrs Janet for being terrified out of the house by the wild
rolling eyes of the unhappy David.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Six Toes.