of Mysie’s industry wore away, where there was no work by those
cunning fingers--now thin and emaciated; and before the days passed,
and the critical day came whereon another burden would be imposed on
the household, there was need for the sympathy of neighbours in that
form which soon wears out--pecuniary help. That critical day at length
came. Mysie Craig gave birth to a boy, and their necessities from that
hour grew in quicker and greater proportion than the generosity of
friends. There behoved something to be done, and that without delay.
So when Mysie lay asleep, with the innocent evidence of her misfortune
by her side, Mrs Craig put on her red plaid and went forth on a
mother’s duty, and was soon in the presence of George Balgarnie and
his young wife. She was under an impulse which made light of delicate
conventionalities, and did not think it necessary to give the lady
an opportunity of being absent; nay, she rather would have her to be
present--for was she, who had been so far privy to the intercourse
between her husband and Mysie, to be exempt from the consequences which
she, in a sense, might have been said to have brought about?
“Ye have ruined Mysie Craig, sir!” cried at once the roused mother. “Ye
have ta’en awa her honour. Ye have ta’en awa her health. Ye have ta’en
awa her bread. Ay, and ye have reduced three human creatures to want,
it may be starvation; and I have come here in sair sorrow and necessity
to ask when and whaur is to be the remeid?”
“When and where you may find it, woman!” said the lady, as she cast a
side-glance to her husband, probably by way of appeal for the truth
of what she thought it right to say. “Mr Balgarnie never injured your
daughter. Let him who did the deed yield the remeid!”
“And do you stand by this?” said Mrs Craig.
But the husband had been already claimed as free from blame by
his wife, who kept her eye fixed upon him; and the obligation to
conscience, said by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is
sometimes weaker than what is due to a wife, in the estimation of whom
a man may wish to stand in a certain degree of elevation.
“You must seek another father to the child of your daughter,” said he,
lightly. And, not content with the denial, he supplemented it by a
laugh, as he added, “When birds go to the greenwood, they must take the
chance of meeting the goshawk.”
“And that is your answer?” said she.
“It is; and you need never trouble either my wife or me more on this
subject,” was the reply.
“Then may the vengeance o’ the God of justice light on the heads o’
baith o’ ye!” added Mrs Craig, as she went hurriedly away.
Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, for she held on her way
direct to the Lawnmarket, where she found George Davidson, to whom she
related as much as she had been able to get out of Mysie, and also what
had passed at the interview with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing
which, the young writer shook his head.
“You will get a trifle of aliment,” said he; “perhaps half-a-crown
a week, but no more; and Mysie could have made that in a day by her
beautiful work.”
“And she will never work mair,” said the mother, with a sigh.
“For a hundred years,” rejoined he, more to himself than to her, and
probably in congratulation of himself for his perspicacity, “and since
ever there was a college of justice, there never was a case where a man
pulled up on oath for a promise of marriage admitted the fact. It is a
good Scotch law--only we want a people to obey it. But what,” he added
again, “if we were to try it, though it were only as a grim joke and a
revenge in so sad and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig!”
Words which the mother understood no more than she did law Latin; and
so she was sent away as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did
not want to raise hopes which there was no chance of being fulfilled;
but he knew as a Scotchman that a man who trusts himself to “a strae
rape” in the hope of its breaking, may possibly hang himself, and so
it happened that the very next day a summons was served upon George
Balgarnie, to have it found and declared by the Lords of Session that
he had promised to marry Mysie Craig, whereupon a child had been born
by her; or, in fault of that, he was bound to sustain the said child.
Thereupon, without the ordinary law’s delay, certain proceedings went
on, in the course of which Mysie herself was examined as the mother to
afford what the lawyers call a _semiplena probatio_, or half proof, to
be supplemented otherwise, and thereafter George Balgarnie stood before
the august fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with Mysie,
except an occasional walk in the Hunter’s Bog; and this he would have
denied also, but he knew that he had been seen, and that it would be
sworn to by others; and then came the last question, which Mr Greerson,
Mysie’s advocate, put in utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem
to try to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put his head in a noose
on the pretence of seeing how it fitted his neck, that he smiled even
as the words came out of his mouth--
“Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig?”
Was prudence, the chief of the four cardinal virtues, ever yet
consistent with vice? Balgarnie waxed clever--a dangerous trick in a
witness. He stroked his beard with a smile on his face, and answered--
“_Yes, once--when I was drunk!_”
Words which were immediately followed by the crack of a single word in
the dry mouth of one of the advocates--the word “NICKED.”
And nicked he was; for the presiding judge, addressing the witness,
said--
“The drunkenness may be good enough in its own way, sir; but it
does not take away the effect of your promise--nay, it is even an
aggravation, insomuch as having enjoyed the drink, you wanted to enjoy
with impunity what you could make of the promise also.”
If Balgarnie had been a reader he might have remembered Waller’s verse--
“That eagle’s fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.”
So Mysie gained her plea, and the marriage with Anabella, for whom
she had embroidered the marriage-gown, was dissolved. How matters
progressed afterwards for a time we know not; but the Scotch know that
there is wisdom in making the best of a bad bargain, and in this case
it was a good one; for, as the Lady of Balgruddery, Mysie Craig did
no dishonour to George Balgarnie, who, moreover, found her a faithful
wife, and a good mother to the children that came of this strange
marriage.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of Pinched Tom.
In searching again Lord Kilkerran’s Session Papers in the Advocates’
Library, I observed a strange remark written on the margin of one of
them--“Beware of pinched Tom”--the meaning of which I was at a loss
to find. His lordship was known to be a very grave man, as well as an
excellent lawyer, and all so unlike the Newtons and Harmands, who made
the blind Lady Justice laugh by the antics of that other lady sung by
Beranger--Dame Folly--that I was put to my wit’s end, although I admit
that, by a reference to a part of the printed Session Papers opposite
to which the remark was made, I thought I could catch a glimmering
of his lordship’s intention. The law case occupying the papers
comprehended a question of disputed succession, and that question
involved the application of a curious law in Scotland, which still
remains.
I believe we borrowed it from that great repertory from which our
forefathers took so much wisdom--the Roman code; but be that as it
may, (and it’s no great matter in so far as regards my story,) certain
it is that it is a part of our jurisprudence, that where a marriage
is dissolved by the death of the wife within a year and a day of the
celebration thereof, without leaving a living child, the tocher goes
back to the wife’s friends. Of course nothing is more untrue than that
bit of connubial wit: that while we hold, according to the Bible, that
a man and his wife are _one_, we also very sensibly hold that the
husband is _that one_. Then the child behoves to be a living child; but
what constituted a living child often turned out to be as difficult
a question as what constitutes a new birth of a living Christian,
according to our good old sturdy Calvinism; for as all doctors know
that a child will, on coming into the world, give a breath or two
with a shiver, and then go off like a candle not properly lighted, it
became a question whether, in such a case, the child could be said to
have lived. Sometimes, too, the living symptom is less doubtful, as
in the case, also very common, where the little stranger gives a tiny
scream, the consequence of the filling of the lungs by the rushing in
of the air, and having experienced a touch of the evils of life, makes
up its mind to be off as quickly as possible from a wicked world. Now
this last symptom our Scotch law accepts as the only evidence which
can be received that the child had within it a living-spirit, or, as
we call it, an immortal soul. It would be of no importance that it
opened and shut its eyes, moved its hands, or kicked or sprawled in any
way you please; all this is nothing but infantine pantomime, and the
worst pantomime, too, that it has no possible meaning that any rational
person could understand, and so, therefore, it goes for nothing. In
short, our law holds that, unless “baby squeak,” there is no evidence
that baby ever lived. Nor is any distinction made between the male
and the female, although we know so well that the latter is much more
inclined to make a noise than the other, were it for nothing else than
to exhibit a first attempt to do that at which the sex are so good when
they grow up and get husbands.
To bring back the reader to Lord Kilkerran’s remark--“Beware of Pinched
Tom”--the case to which the note applied comprehended the question
whether the child had been heard to cry, and though the connexion might
be merely imaginary on my part, I recollected in the instant having
heard the story I now relate of Mr Thomas Whitelaw, a merchant burgess
of Edinburgh, who figured somewhere between the middle and the end of
last century, and took for wife a certain Janet Monypenny. In which
union “the sufficient reason” which always exists, though we do not
always know it, was on the part of the said Thomas the certainty that
Janet’s name (defying Shakespeare’s question) was a real designative
of a quality, that being that she possessed, in her own right, not
merely many a penny, but so many thousand pennies, that they amounted
to somewhere about two thousand merks, a large sum in those olden
days. And this money was perhaps the more valuable, that the heiress
had an unfortunate right by inheritance to consumption, whereby she
ran a risk of being taken away, leaving her money unconsumed in the
hands of her husband; an event, this latter, which our merchant burgess
could certainly have turned to more certain account if he had provided
against the law we have mentioned by entering into an antenuptial
contract of marriage, wherein it might have been set forth that, though
the marriage should be dissolved by the death of the wife before “year
and day,” without a living child being born thereof, yet the husband’s
right to the tocher would remain. But then Burgess Thomas did not know
of any such law, while Mr George Monypenny, the brother of Mrs Janet,
knew it perfectly, the more by token that he was a writer, that is, a
legal practitioner, at the Luckenbooths. And though Mr George might
have made a few pennies by writing out the contract, he never hinted
to his intended brother-in-law of the propriety of any such act,
because he knew that he had a chance of coming to more pennies, by the
death of his sister, within the year and the day.
So the marriage was entered into without more use of written paper than
what we call the marriage lines, and Writer George was satisfied until
he began to see that Mrs Whitelaw was likely to be a mother before the
expiry of the year and the day; but then he had the consolation--for,
alas! human nature was the same in those olden times that it is now--of
seeing that, while poor Janet was increasing in one way, she was
decreasing in another, so that it was not unlikely that there would be
not only a dead child, but a dead mother; and then he would come in
as nearest of kin for the tocher of two thousand merks, of all which
speculations on the part of the unnatural brother, Burgess Thomas knew
nothing. But it so happened that Mrs Euphan Lythgow, the most skilly
howdie or midwife in Edinburgh at that time, was the woman who was to
bring the child into the world, and she had seen indications enough to
satisfy her that there was a probability that things would go on in the
very way so cruelly hoped for by the man of the law; nay, she had her
eyes--open enough at all times--more opened still by some questions put
to her by the wily expectant, and so she held it to be her duty to go
straight to Burgess Thomas.
“I fear,” said she, “baith for the mother and the bairn, for she is
worn awa to skin and bane, and if she bear the heir she will only get
lighter, as we ca’ it, to tak on a heavier burden, even that o’ death.
The bairn may live, but it’s only a chance.”
Whereat Burgess Thomas looked sad, for he really loved his wife, but it
might just happen that a thought came into his head that death had no
power over the two thousand merks.
“If baith the mother and the bairn dee,” continued Euphan, “the money
you got by her will tak wing and flee awa to Mr George, her brother.”
“What mean you, woman?” asked Mr Whitelaw, as he looked wistfully and
fearfully into the face of the howdie.
“Had ye no’ a contract o’ marriage?” continued she.
“No,” was the answer.
“Aweel, ye’re in danger, for ken ye na it is our auld Scotch law that
when there’s nae contract, and the year and the day hasna passed, and
when the mither dees and the bairn dees without a cry, the tocher flees
back again? Heard ye never the auld rhyme--
‘Mither dead and bairn gane,
Pay the tocher to her kin;
But an ye hear the bairn squeal,
Gudeman, grip the tocher weel.’”
“God bless me, Mrs Lythgow! is that the law?” cried the husband, in a
fright.
“Indeed, and it is,” was the rejoinder. “You are muckle obliged to
Writer George. If the bairn lives to be baptized, George is no the name
it will bear.”
“No,” replied he; “if a boy, it will be baptized Thomas.”
“Tam!” ejaculated the howdie in a screechy voice, the reason of which
might be that her son carrying that name had died during the year, and
she was affected.
But no sooner had the word Tam passed from her lips, than a large red
cat came from the rug, and looking up in her face, mewed in so very
expressive a way that the sadness which the recollection of her boy had
inspired passed suddenly away, and was succeeded by a comical look;
and rubbing Bawdrons “along of the hair,” as Mr Dickens would express
it, the true way of treating either cats or cat-witted people, she
continued addressing the favourite--
“And you, Tam, and I will be better acquainted before the twa thousand
merks are paid to Writer George.”
“What does the woman mean?” said the burgess. “What connexion is there
between that animal and my wife’s fortune?”
“Ye’ll ken that when the time comes,” was the answer; “but coming
nearer to the subject in hand, ye’ll take care to hae twa witnesses in
the blue-painted parlour, next to your bed-room, when I’m untwining the
mistress o’ her burden, whether it be a dead bairn or a living ane.”
“And what good will that do me if both the mother and child should
die?” inquired he.
“Ye’ll ken that when Writer George comes and asks ye for the tocher,”
was the answer.
Nor did Mrs Euphan Lythgow wait to throw any further light upon a
subject which appeared to the burgess to require more than the candle
of his own mind could supply if he should snuff it again and again,
and arn’t we, every one of us, always snuffing the candle so often
that we can see nothing? But Mrs Lythgow was what the Scotch people
call “a skilly woman.” She could see--to use an old and very common
expression--as far into a millstone as any one, and it was especially
clear to her that she would deliver Mrs Whitelaw of a dead child, that
death would deliver the mother of her life, and Writer George would
deliver Maister Whitelaw of two thousand good merks of Scotch money,
unless, as a poor salvage out of all this loss, she could deliver the
burgess out of the hands of the writer. And so the time passed till the
eventful evening came, when the wasted invalid was seized with those
premonitory pains which have come right down from old mother Eve to the
fair daughters of men, as a consequence of her eating the too sweet
paradise pippin. The indispensable Mrs Euphan Lythgow was sent for
express and came on the instant, for she knew she had unusual duties
to perform, nor did she forget as one of the chief of those to get
Mrs Jean Gilchrist, a neighbouring gossip, and Robina Proudfoot, the
servant, ensconsed in the said blue-painted parlour, for the sole end
that they should hear what they could hear, but as for seeing anything
that passed within the veil of the secret temple of Lucina, they were
not to be permitted to get a glimpse until such time as might please
the priestess of the mysteries herself.
All which secrecy has been followed by the unfortunate consequence
that history nowhere records what took place in that secret room for
an hour or two after the two women took up their station in the said
blue-painted chamber. But this much we know, that the house was so
silent that our favourite Tom could not have chosen a more auspicious
evening for mousing for prey in place of mewing for play, even if he
had had all the sagacity of the famous cats of Tartesia. As for Mrs
Gilchrist and Robina, they could not have listened more zealously, we
might even say effectually, if they had been gifted with ears as long
as those of certain animals in Trophonia; and surely we cannot be wrong
in saying they were successful listeners, when we are able to report
that Mrs Gilchrist nipped the bare fleshy arm of Robina, as a sign that
she heard what she wanted to hear.
“That’s the scream o’ the wean!” said she.
“Ay, and may the Lord be praised!” was the answer of Robina, in spite
of the nip.
But neither the one nor the other knew that that cry was verily
worth two thousand merks to Maister Burgess Whitelaw, the father,
who in a back-room sat in the deep pit of anxiety and heard nothing,
and perhaps it was better that he didn’t, for that cry might have
raised hopes--never to be realised--of the birth of a living son
or daughter, who would by and by lisp in his ear the charmed word
“Father”--of a dead wife’s recovery, after so terrible a trial to one
so much wasted--of the saving of his fortune from the ruthless hands
of his brother-in-law. But there is always some consolation for the
miserable, and didn’t Mrs Janet’s favourite, even Tom himself, with
his bright scarlet collar, come to him and sit upon his knee and look
up in his face and purr so audibly, that one might have thought he
was expressing sympathy and hope? So it is: nature is always laughing
at her own work. Even as this pantomime was acting, Mrs Lythgow opened
the door of the blue-painted chamber, and presenting a bundle to Mrs
Gilchrist--
“The bairn is dead,” she whispered; “lay it on the table there out o’
the sight o’ its mother, who will not live lang enough even to see its
dead face.”
“And yet we heard it cry,” said Robina. “Poor dear innocent,” she
added, as she peered among the folds of the flannel, “ye have had a
short life.”
“And no’ a merry ane,” added the gossip.
“Did ye expect the bairn to laugh, ye fule woman that ye are?” was the
reply of the howdie. “Come and help me wi’ the deeing mither.”
And straightway the three women were by the bedside of the patient,
in whose throat Death was already sounding his rattle, after the last
effort of exhausted nature to give to the world a life in exchange for
her own; and Mr Whitelaw was there too to witness the dying throes
of his wife, with perhaps the thought in his mind that the gods are
pitiless as well as foolish, for what was the use of giving him a dead
child in recompense for a dead mother, and taking away from him, at the
very same moment, the said two thousand merks of good Scotch money.
Wherein, so far, Mr Whitelaw was himself unjust to these much abused
gods; but he did not know as yet that the child had cried, and who
knows what consoling effect that circumstance might have had upon one
who was what Pindar calls “a man of money.” At least, we will give to
any man more than one of these merks who will show us out of the great
“Treasury of Evils,” mentioned by the Greek poets, any one which cannot
be ameliorated by money. And so Mr Whitelaw heard, in the last expiring
breath of Mrs Janet Monypenny the departing sign of the loss of the
three greatest good things of this world--a wife, a child, and a tocher.
But the moral oscillation comes round as sure as that of the pendulum,
and in accordance with that law Mr Whitelaw was, within a short time
after the death of his wife, told by Mrs Gilchrist that the child had
made the much-wished-for sign of life. A communication, this, very
easily accounted for, but we do not undertake to explain why, when Mr
Whitelaw heard it, he was scarcely equal to the task of preventing
an expression upon his sorrowful countenance which an ill-natured
person would call a smile. Nor, indeed, is there any way of explaining
so inexplicable a phenomenon, except by having recourse to the fact
mentioned by Burns, that “man is a riddle.” A solution which will also
serve us when we further narrate that this small wail of the child
lightened wonderfully Mr Whitelaw’s duty in getting all things arranged
for the funeral, including the melancholy peculiarity of getting the
coffin made that was to contain a mother and her first-born. Nay, it
enabled him even at the funeral to meet the triumphant look of his
brother-in-law, Writer George, as it clearly said, even in the midst of
his tears, “You owe me two thousand merks;” for we are to remember that
Mr Whitelaw, in exchange for the writer’s perfidy in not mentioning to
him the necessity of a contract of marriage, had with a spice of malice
concealed from him the fact of the child having been heard to cry, and
then it was natural for the writer to suppose that the child had been
born dead.