possession of the mind; and so we need not be surprised that within a
week Mr Monypenny served Mr Whitelaw with a summons to appear before
the fifteen Scotch lords who sat round a table in the form of a
horse-shoe in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, or Court of Session,
and there be ordered to pay to the pursuer or plaintiff the said two
thousand merks, which devolved upon him, as the heir of his sister,
in consequence of the dissolution of the marriage within a year and a
day, without a living child being born thereof. Nor was Mr Whitelaw,
angry as he was and withal confident of success, slow to give in his
defence to the effect that the child had been born alive, and had been
heard to scream--a defence which startled Writer George mightily;
for it was the first intimation he had got of the important fact,
and his experience told him how supple Scotch witnesses are--even to
the extent that it took no fewer than fifteen learned judges to get
the subtle thing called truth out of the subtle minds of “the canny
people;” but he had no alternative than to consent to the commission to
Maister Wylie, advocate, to take a proof of the defender’s averment and
report. And so accordingly the proceedings went on. Mr Advocate Wylie
sat in one of the rooms adjoining the court to take the depositions
of the witnesses, and Mr Williamson was there for Mr Whitelaw, and
Mr Hamilton for Mr Monypenny. The first witness called was Mrs Jean
Gilchrist, who swore very honestly that she heard the child scream; and
Robina Proudfoot swore as honestly to the same thing; nor could all
the efforts of Mr Advocate Hamilton shake those sturdy witnesses, if
it was not that, as so often happens with Scotch witnesses, the more
the advocate wrestled with them, the more firm they waxed. Nor need
we say that the philosophical axiom, that the intensity of belief is
always inversely as the reason for it, never had weight with our Scotch
judges. But then came the difficulty about the _causa scientiæ_; for
neither of the two witnesses could swear that she _saw_ the child alive
and after the scream, inasmuch as the child was certainly dead before
they saw the body; so it was only at best a strong presumption that the
cry actually did come from that child. The witnesses dispersed these
quibbles, and insisted that, as there was no other child in that room,
the cry could come from no other source than Mrs Whitelaw’s baby. But
the crowning witness was to come--Mrs Euphan Lythgow herself, who would
put an end to all doubts; and come she did. Asked whether she delivered
Mrs Whitelaw of a child on the night in question, her answer was in the
affirmative.
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“A _callant_, sir,” was the answer; for Scotch witnesses _will_ use
their own terms, let counsel do what they please. “And,” added Mrs
Lythgow, “he was to be baptized after his father when the time came. He
was to be called Tammas.”
“Just so,” continued Mr Hamilton; “and was he dead or alive when he was
born?”
“Indeed, sir, little Tam wras as life-like as you are when I handled
him wi’ thae hands.”
“How do you know that?” was the next question.
“Ken whether a bairn is dead or living?” responded the midwife, with an
ironical laugh. “Do dead bairns scream, think ye, Maister Hamilton? Ay,
sir, I heard little Tam cry just as plainly as I hear you speak. It’s
God’s way wi’ mony a wean. They seem to ken it’s an ill warld they’re
born into, wi’ so mony lawyers in’t, and they just gie a cry and gae
awa back again.”
And thus the evidence was concluded; nor did it ever occur to these
hair-wigged and ear-wigged gentlemen to ask the astute howdie whether
there was any other creature in the house (except Mr Thomas Whitelaw
himself, who was out of the question) that bore the name of Tam;
and Mrs Lythgow’s conscience, like many others, sat as easy on the
equivocation as a hen does on an addled egg with a shell like the rest,
which contain little chickens all alive. And the case was virtually
saved, as subsequently appeared, when the fifteen, all ear-wigged too,
pronounced sentence in favour of the defender, Mr Whitelaw. But it was
not till some time afterwards the real truth came out. “The labourer is
worthy of his hire,” and when Mrs Euphan called for fee, on Mr Whitelaw
asking how much, the cunning howdie replied--
“Just a hundred merks, Maister Whitelaw.”
“A hundred merks for bringing a child into the world, which lived no
longer than to give a scream?”
“Ay, but you forget _pinched Tam_,” replied she.
Whereupon Mr Whitelaw began to meditate, and thereupon ejaculated--“Oh!
I see. Yes, yes; I did forget pinched Tam; and now I remember, he came
into me that evening after you had ejected him from the bed-room.”
“Surely, sir,” rejoined the woman; “think ye I was fule enough to keep
him in the room to be seen by the women, after I had got out o’ him a’
that I wanted?”
And Mrs Lythgow got her hundred merks. How the incident came to the
ears of Lord Kilkerran, history saith not; but if you are curious, you
may see upon the margin of the said Session Paper the words--“Beware of
pinched Tom!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Iron Press.
The story of the Iron Press hung about my memory for years before I
got it localised; nor do I know very well how it came to me, whether
from the page of an old broad-sheet, or the tougher tongue of an old
dame--the real vellum for the inscription of wonderful legends. However
this may be, it is of small importance, inasmuch as I was subsequently
so fortunate--and the word will be properly estimated by the real
story-hunter--as to find myself in the very room where the recess of
the press was still to be seen. How I did look at it, to be sure! nay,
if it had been of gold--all my own, too--I question if I could have
gazed into the dark recess with more interest; for gold, to people
of my bias, is nothing in comparison with the enchantment that hangs
about the real concrete _souvenir_ of an old wonder. But before going
further, I must apprise the English reader that the word “press”--a
Scotch word of somewhat doubtful derivation (_maugre_ Jamieson)--is
convertible into the more modern designation “cupboard,” or rather
“pantry;” with the qualification that our Scotch term more generally
implies the adjunct of a door with lock and key.
With which help you may be induced to represent to yourself, as
vividly as the fervour of your imagination may enable you, the house
in Hyndford’s Close, which, at the time wherein we are concerned, was
occupied by a retired advocate called Mr George Plenderleith. You may
see in it yet the signs of its old gentility. There are the panellings
on the walls, the hooks whereon were suspended the flowered and figured
draperies, the painted roofs, the peculiar enamelled sides of the
chimneys having the appearance of china--all so very unlike our modern
house fashions. It may not be that the iron press which was in the
back bed-room, and the recess of which still remains, had anything to
do with the fashion of the time; nor would it be easy to divine its
use in a private gentleman’s house, who had no ledgers, journals, or
cash-books to preserve from fire, lest certain creditors might say they
were burnt to help concealment. Perhaps it was for the conservation of
some great property rights, or title-deeds as we call them; perhaps
state papers--anything you like, but not the least unlikely, it may
have been for the purpose of concealing some unfortunate Covenanter,
who could still boast, in his pathetic way, that he had verily
nowhere to lay his head; for the cell was too small for a reclining
posture--nay, he could scarcely have got upon his knees to offer his
Ebenezer for the preservation of the solemn league and covenant, and
give thanks that he had got out of “the bishop’s drag-net” and into an
iron cage.
Most certainly, at least, this iron cage was not intended to immure the
delicate person of the beautiful Ailsie Plenderleith, the only daughter
of the advocate--nay, the greatest belle you could have met, displaying
her gown of mazerine and her petticoat of cramosie, from “the castle
on the knowe to the palace in the howe;” or, as the saying went, from
“the castle gate to the palace yett.” We don’t doubt that our Miss
Ailsie deserved all this high-flown praise; only we are to keep in mind
that no young lady that ever figured in a legend, from the time of
the Fair Maid of Troy to her of Perth, was ever anything less than an
angel without wings. And in the case of our Ailsie, she might well have
passed for possessing these appendages too, when we consider that she
would not be behind her sister-belles in the size of those heavy folds
of braided silk they drew through their pocket-holes, and seemed to fly
with. We need not say that such a creature, if amiable in her mind and
affections, would be doated on by such a father as Mr Plenderleith, who
had now no wife to console him, and who would expect from his child at
least as much love as he was willing to bestow on her. And so, to be
sure, it was; he loved his dear Ailsie to what may be called paternal
distraction, but as for how much dutiful affection Ailsie bestowed on
him, we cannot say.
On another point we can be more sure, and that is, that although her
father had many nice beaux in his eye who had a power to _dot_, and
doubtless on so fine a subject no disinclination at all to _doat_, the
never a one of them would the saucy Ailsie look upon except with that
haughty disdain which, when it appears in a beautiful woman, is so
apt to pique young admirers into greater adoration, mixed, it may be,
sometimes with a little choler--a thing that is not so alien to love as
you would imagine. Nor was the reason of all this cold _hauteur_ any
wonder at all when we are given to know that Miss Plenderleith had one
day, by the merest chance, taken into her eye, and even to the back
or innermost recesses thereof, the figure of a young student of “old
Embro’ College,” called Frederick Lind, a poor bursar of no family,
but blessed with what was ten thousand times of more importance in
the estimation of the tasteful Ailsie--a handsome person, and a fine
ruddy, intelligent face, which was lighted up with an eye as likely to
drink up the form of Ailsie as hers had been to receive his. And no
doubt it may appear very wonderful that Cupid, who is, as they say,
as blind as a bat, and so hits by chance, should have the power of
imparting to the eyes of his victims the faculty not only of seeing
each other more clearly than before, but also of reading each other’s
eyes so plainly, that by a glance they know that they are mutually
thinking of each other. But such, we all know very well, is the fact,
and so Frederick Lind and Ailsie Plenderleith came to this state of
knowledge, and not only so, they came to means of ascertaining, by
actual conversation, whether such was really the case or not--the
consequence of which was just the natural one, that the sympathy of
this knowledge became the sympathy of love; and we suspect that if any
one was to blame for this, it was Old Mother Nature herself, who is
considerably stronger and more dogmatic in her opinions than either
mother or father of earthly mould.
The connexion thus formed--we are compelled, though sorry, to say,
clandestinely--might not have entailed upon the young devotees any
very formidable consequences, had they been prudent, and confined
their meetings to St Leonard’s Double-dykes, St Anthony’s Well, the
Giant’s Ribs, the Hunter’s Bog, or the Friar’s Walk. Nay, they might
have adventured even less recondite walks; but they had some notions
of comfort which would be gratified with nothing short of a roof over
their very irrational heads, and probably a fire burning by their
sides, as if love could not have kept itself in fuel without the
assistance of so coarse and earthy a thing as Midlothian coal.
While all this was going forward, and generating confidence in the
ordinary ratio of successful immunity, our good and loving old Mr
Advocate Plenderleith was just as busy with _his_ eyes in endeavouring
to find out among the said beaux of Edinburgh, with their braided
broad-tailed coats and ruffled wristbands, of which Mr Frederick Lind
had nothing to boast, such a one as would be likely to form a suitable
husband to his pretty but scornful, (to all save one,) daughter, and a
promising son-in-law to himself; that is, one who would bring a sum to
the mutual exchequer, and take care not only of Ailsie, but that fine
property of his in Lanarkshire, called Threemarks, from its valuation
in the land-roll being of that very considerable extent. And so he
did his best to invite one or two of them to his house in Hyndford’s
Close to drink a bottle of claret, and see Miss Ailsie through the
charmed medium of the same, being satisfied that a young woman is
seen to more advantage through that medium than through the roses of
the Paphian groves where Venus dallies with her son. But all this
paternal black-footing would not do, because the step went only in
one direction, without a return. Our Ailsie scorned them all--a very
unwise policy in the little rebel, for she might have seen that her
father, who was a shrewd man, would be likely to suspect that the ship
which rides at an anchor, however little seen, is just that very one
which seems to defy most the blustering winds and the rolling waves.
And accordingly Mr Plenderleith began to think that his daughter’s
heart must be anchored somewhere--not so likely on golden sands as
on some tough clay--and _that_ “where” he would have given his old
Parliament-House wig, with all the meal in it to boot, to find out.
Nay, he began to be angry before he could assure himself of the fact;
and being as determined under a restrainer as he ever had been under a
retainer, he was a dangerous man for even a loving daughter to tamper
with.
But old fathers, probably with spectacles, are not good watchers of
their love-stricken daughters; and Mr Plenderleith, knowing this,
placed confidence in his old servant or servitor, (as these domestic
Balderstones were then called,) Andrew Crabbin, and got him to keep an
eye upon the outgoings and incomings, and companionship and letters of
the unsuspecting Ailsie. On the other hand, she was inclined to place
faith in Andrew--not that she let him know the name or degree of her
beloved Frederick, but that she bespoke his secrecy in the event of his
seeing her with a highly respectable young man, of genteel connexions,
whom her father would be delighted to receive as a son-in-law, but who
was not just yet in a position to present himself in the drawing-room.
Which two confidences Andrew received together, and found means in
his canny Scotch head to entertain both kindly, but with a foregone
conclusion that he would make more money out of the rents and fees of
his master than the pin-money of poor Ailsie.
Yet Miss Plenderleith was so dexterous in managing her intrigue, that
Andrew had for a time nothing to reveal; but opportunity comes at
the end to patience, and this was the case one night when Andrew was
busy cleaning his master’s long boots in an outhouse at the back of
the dwelling-house; for as he was straining to get the article in his
hand as bright as the “Day and Martin” of the time would make it, his
attention was directed to a sound from the red-tiled roof. Whereupon,
pricking up his ears, Andrew put his head out at the door, and what in
all this wide earth does he see but two boots disappearing at Ailsie’s
bed-room window! He had never seen any of the two or three pairs his
master possessed going into the house in that way, and probably he did
not need that fact to explain to him the wonderful apparition. Nor was
it any question with him what to do. The hour was late, but his master
was not gone to bed, if he was not yet engaged over his mulled claret,
with a bit of toast done pretty brown in it.
Having accordingly got, unobserved from above, into the back-door--the
more by reason that he waited till the window-sash came down with all
prudential softness of sound--Andrew made his way up-stairs to the room
where Mr Plenderleith was regaling himself, and probably thinking of
the scornful Ailsie, who would not accord to his matrimonial wishes.
“There’s a young man gone in this minute at Miss Ailsie’s bed-room
window,” said he, in a mysterious way, to his master; whereupon Mr
Plenderleith started up in a great rage, and rushing to a closet
brought forth a long rapier of formidable sharpness. “I will slay him
on the spot,” said he, “for it is hamesucken and a deuced deal more,
and I have law on my side. Come with me, Andrew Crabbin.” But Andrew’s
intermediate views did not accord with the slaughter of Ailsie’s lover.
“Wait,” says he, “till I listen;” and hastening to Miss Plenderleith’s
room, he tirled at the door, so that it might be heard inside, but not
by his enraged master, whose spirit was more in his fiery eye than
his ear; and coming back more slowly than comported with his master’s
fury--“Now’s your time,” said he, “for I heard him inside.” Nor was
there now any time lost, for the infuriated father rushed along the
lobby to his daughter’s chamber door, which, to his surprise, he found
unfastened; and, having entered, he found Ailsie all very much at her
ease, nor was there anything to rouse his suspicions at all except the
condition of the blind, which was drawn up. No more was needed--that
was enough; the angry father accused his daughter with having had a
man in her bed-room. Ailsie denied the charge, but it was of no avail.
Orders were upon the instant issued to get the carriage ready, and in
the course of an hour afterwards Mr Plenderleith and his daughter, with
Andrew and the two female servants in a hired carriage, were on their
way to his house at Threemarks. The house in Hyndford’s Close was shut
up. Mr Plenderleith had in so short a period made up his mind, and
executed a purpose which he considered necessary to his own honour and
his daughter’s preservation.
Time passed on, and in the meantime Andrew kept his secret, delighted
in his own mind that he had saved the life of the young man. About a
month afterwards Mr Plenderleith came to town alone, and having entered
the house found everything precisely as he left it. But he had an
object--no other than to discover whether Ailsie had left any letters
whereby he might discover the name of the clandestine lover. So far he
succeeded, and having returned to Threemarks, he some time afterwards
despatched Andrew to Edinburgh to make inquiries as to a student of the
name of Frederick Lind. This commission Andrew executed with fidelity,
but all his efforts were vain; no tidings could be heard of the youth.
The landlady with whom he had lodged said that he had gone out one
night and had never returned; and the opinion of his relations, to whom
she had communicated the fact of his absence, was, that he had gone to
England, where he also had relations. With this account Mr Plenderleith
was so far pleased, but he continued from time to time to repeat his
inquiries with no better, or rather to him worse, success. Yet such was
his apprehension lest his daughter should again have it in her power to
deceive him, that he remained at Threemarks for the full space of three
years and more.
Meanwhile Ailsie, having come to the conclusion that she would not see
her lover again, renounced all thoughts of him except what perhaps at
night would rise up to her fancy, when the internal lights play false
with the reason. The young heart requires only time to renounce the
strongest passion, though a cherished memory will still hang suspended
over the sacred tomb of its affections. And so it was. More time
passed, till at length Ailsie Plenderleith agreed to give her hand to
a young advocate of the name of George Graham, who had good prospects
at the bar. The couple were to be married in Hyndford’s Close, and
the house was put in order to receive them. Ailsie came in a bride.
The ceremony was performed with great _éclat_ and rejoicings. And now
comes that part of the legend which always fits so well to some great
occasion, such as a marriage; but we must take these things as we find
them. The new-married couple were to sleep in the room which had been
the scene of so strange a play three or four years ago. On returning to
take off her bride’s dress, her eye became fixed upon the door of the
iron press. A wild thought seized her brain: she applied her finger to
the well-known spring. The door opened, and the skeleton of Frederick
Lind fell out against her, rattling in the clothes that hung about it,
and striking her as it fell with a loud crash on the floor.
The explanation of our legend is not difficult. Lind had been pushed
into the press on previous occasions, without the door being closed
entirely upon him. Ailsie, on the fatal evening, had no doubt thought
that she had left the door as she used to do; but in the hurry
consequent on the coming of her father, she had committed the terrible
mistake of imparting to it too much impulse, whereby the lock had
caught; and as the spring was not available inside, the prisoner was
immured beyond the chance of escape. So narrow, too, was the recess,
that the skeleton form had stood upright in the clothes, and it thus
fell out when relieved of the support of the door.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Girl Forger.
It is a common thing for writers of a certain class, when they want
to produce the feeling of wonder in their readers, to introduce some
frantic action, and then to account for it by letting out the secret
that the actor was mad. The trick is not so necessary as it seems,
for the strength of human passions is a potentiality only limited
by experience; and so it is that a sane person may under certain
stimulants do the maddest thing in the world. The passion itself is
always true, it is only the motive that may be false; and therefore it
is that in narrating for your amusement, perhaps I may add instruction,
the following singular story--traces of the main parts of which I got
in the old books of a former procurator-fiscal--I assume that there
was no more insanity in the principal actor, Euphemia, or, as she was
called, Effie, Carr, when she brought herself within the arms of the
law, than there is in you, when now you are reading the story of her
strange life. She was the only daughter of John Carr, a grain merchant,
who lived in Bristo Street. It would be easy to ascribe to her all
the ordinary and extraordinary charms that are thought so necessary
to embellish heroines; but as we are not told what these were in her
case, we must be contented with the assurance that nature had been
kind enough to her to give her power over the hearts of men. We shall
be nearer our purpose when we state, what is necessary to explain a
peculiar part of our story, that her father, in consequence of his own
insufficient education, had got her trained to help him in keeping
his accounts with the farmers, and in writing up his books; nay, she
enjoyed the privilege of writing his drafts upon the Bank of Scotland,
which the father contrived to sign, though in his own illiterate way,
and with a peculiarity which it would not have been easy to imitate.
But our gentle clerk did not consider these duties imposed upon her by
her father as excluding her either from gratifying her love of domestic
habits by assisting her mother in what at that time was denominated
hussyskep or housekeeping, or from a certain other gratification,
which might without a hint from us be anticipated--no other than the
luxury of falling head and ears, and heart too we fancy, in love with
a certain dashing young student of the name of Robert Stormonth, then
attending the University more for the sake of polish than of mere
study; for he was the son of the proprietor of Kelton, and required to
follow no profession. How Effie got entangled with this youth we have
no means of knowing, so we must be contented with the Scotch proverb--
“Tell me where the flea may bite,
And I will tell where love may light.”
The probability is that, from the difference of their stations and
the retiring nature of our gentle clerk, we shall be safe in assuming
that he had, as the saying goes, been smitten by her charms in some of
those street encounters, where there is more of Love’s work done than
in “black-footed” tea coteries expressly held for the accommodation of
Cupid. And that the smitting was a genuine feeling we are not left to
doubt, for, in addition to the reasons we shall afterwards have too
good occasion to know, he treated Effie, not as those wild students
who are great men’s sons do “the light o’ loves” they meet in their
escapades; for he intrusted his secrets to her, he took such small
counsel from her poor head as a “learned clerk” might be supposed able
to give; nay, he told her of his mother, and how one day he hoped to be
able to introduce her at Kelton as his wife. All which Effie repaid
with the devotedness of that most wonderful affection called the first
or virgin love--the purest, the deepest, the most thoroughgoing of
all the emotions of the human heart. But as yet he had not conceded
to her wish that he should consent to their love being made known to
Effie’s father and mother: love is only a leveller to itself and its
object; the high-born youth, inured to refined manners, shrunk from
a family intercourse, which put him too much in mind of the revolt
he had made against the presumed wishes and intentions of his proud
parents. Wherein, after all, he was only true to the instincts of that
institution, apparently so inhumane as well as unchristian in its
exclusiveness, called aristocracy; and yet with the excuse that its
roots are pretty deeply set in human nature.