amenable to the obligations of a necessity, forged by his own imprudent
hands. He had, by a fast mode of living, got into debt--a condition
from which his father, a stern man, had relieved him twice before,
but with a threat on the last occasion that if he persevered in his
prodigality he would withdraw from him his yearly allowance, and throw
him upon his own resources. The threat proved ineffectual, and this
young heir of entail, with all his pride, was once in the grasp of
low-born creditors: nay, things in this evil direction had gone so
far that writs were out against him, and one in the form of a caption
was already in the hands of a messenger-at-arms. That the debts were
comparatively small in amount was no amelioration where the purse was
all but empty; and he had exhausted the limited exchequers of his
chums, which with college youths was, and is, not difficult to do. So
the gay Bob was driven to his last shift, and that, as is generally the
case, was a mean one; for necessity, as the mother of inventions, does
not think it proper to limit her births to genteel or noble devices
to please her proud consort. He even had recourse to poor Effie to
help him; and, however ridiculous this may seem, there were reasons
that made the application appear not so desperate as some of his other
schemes. It was only the caption that as yet quickened his fears; and
as the sum for which the writ was issued was only twenty pounds, it was
not, after all, so much beyond the power of a clerk.
It was during one of their ordinary walks in the Meadows that the
pressing necessity was opened by Stormonth to the vexed and terrified
girl. He told her that, but for the small help he required in the
meantime, all would be ruined. The wrath of his father would be excited
once more, and probably to the exclusion of all reconciliation; and
he himself compelled to flee, but whither he knew not. He had his plan
prepared, and proposed to Effie, who had no means of her own, _to take
a loan_ of the sum out of her father’s cash-box--words very properly
chosen according to the euphemistic policy of the devil, but Effie’s
genuine spirit was roused and alarmed.
“Dreadful!” she whispered, as if afraid that the night-wind would carry
her words to honest ears. “Besides,” she continued, “my father, who is
a hard man, keeps his desk lockit.”
Words which took Stormonth aback, for even he saw there was here a
necessity as strong as his own; yet the power of invention went to work
again.
“Listen, Effie,” said he. “If you cannot help me, it is not likely we
shall meet again. I am desperate, and will go into the army.”
The ear of Effie was chained to a force which was direct upon the
heart. She trembled and looked wistfully into his face, even as if by
that look she could extract from him some other device less fearful by
which she might have the power of retaining him for so short a period
as a day.
“You draw out your father’s drafts on the bank, Effie,” he continued.
“Write one out for me, and I will put your father’s name to it. You
can draw the money. I will be saved from ruin; and your father will
never know.”
A proposal which again brought a shudder over the girl.
“Is it Robert Stormonth who asks me to do this thing?” she whispered
again.
“No,” said he; “for I am not myself. Yesterday, and before the
messenger was after me, I would have shrunk from the suggestion. I am
not myself, I say, Effie. Ay or no; keep me or lose me,--that is the
alternative.”
“Oh, I cannot,” was the language of her innocence, and for which he was
prepared; for the stimulant was again applied in the most powerful of
all forms--the word farewell was sounded in her ear.
“Stop, Robert; let me think.” But there was no thought, only the heart
beating wildly. “I will do it; and may the penalty be mine, and mine
only.”
So it was: “even virtue’s self turns vice when misapplied.” What her
mind shrank from was embraced by the heart as a kind of sacred duty of
a love making a sacrifice for the object of its first worship. It was
arranged; and as the firmness of a purpose is often in proportion to
the prior disinclination, so Effie’s determination to save her lover
from ruin was forthwith put in execution; nay, there was even a touch
of the heroine in her, so wonderfully does the heart, acting under its
primary instincts, sanctify the device which favours its affection.
That same evening Effie Carr wrote out the draft for twenty pounds on
the Bank of Scotland, gave it to Stormonth, who from a signature of
the father’s, also furnished by her, perpetrated the forgery--a crime
at that time punishable by death. The draft so signed was returned to
Effie. Next forenoon she went to the bank, as she had often done for
her father before; and the document being in her handwriting, as prior
ones of the same kind had also been, no scrutinising eye was turned
to the signature. The money was handed over, but _not counted_ by the
recipient, as before had been her careful habit--a circumstance with
its effect to follow in due time. Meanwhile Stormonth was at a place of
appointment out of the reach of the executor of the law, and was soon
found out by Effie, who gave him the money with trembling hands. For
this surely a kiss was due. We do not know; but she returned with the
satisfaction, overcoming all the impulses of fear and remorse, that she
had saved the object of her first and only love from ruin and flight.
But even then the reaction was on the spring; the rebound was to be
fearful and fatal. The teller at the bank had been struck with Effie’s
manner; and the non-counting of the notes had roused a suspicion,
which fought its way even against the improbability of a mere girl
perpetrating a crime from which females are generally free. He examined
the draft, and soon saw that the signature was a bad imitation.
Thereupon a messenger was despatched to Bristo Street for inquiry. John
Carr, taken by surprise, declared that the draft, though written by
the daughter, was forged--the forgery being in his own mind attributed
to George Lindsay, his young salesman. Enough this for the bank, who
had in the first place only to do with the utterer, against whom their
evidence as yet only lay. Within a few hours afterwards Effie Carr was
in the Tolbooth, charged with the crime of forging a cheque on her
father’s account-current.
The news soon spread over Edinburgh--at that time only an overgrown
village, in so far as regarded local facilities for the spread of
wonders. It had begun there, where the mother was in recurring faints,
the father in distraction and not less mystery, George Lindsay in
terror and pity. And here comes in the next strange turn of our story.
Lindsay all of a sudden declared he was the person who imitated the
name--a device of the yearning heart to save the girl of his affection
from the gallows, and clutched at by the mother and father as a means
of their daughter’s redemption. One of those thinly-sown beings who
are cold-blooded by nature, who take on love slowly but surely, and
seem fitted to be martyrs, Lindsay defied all consequences, so that it
might be that Effie Carr should escape an ignominious death. Nor did he
take time for further deliberation; in less than half an hour he was in
the procurator-fiscal’s office; the willing self-criminator; the man
who did the deed; the man who was ready to die for his young mistress
and his love. His story, too, was as ready as it was truth-seeming.
He declared that he had got Effie to write out the draft as if
commissioned by John Carr; that he took it away, and with his own hands
added the name; that he had returned the cheque to Effie to go with it
to the bank, and had received the money from her on her return. The
consequence was his wish, and it was inevitable. That same day George
Lindsay was lodged also in the Tolbooth, satisfied that he had made
a sacrifice of his life for one whom he had loved for years, and who
yet had never shown him even a symptom of hope that his love would be
returned.
All which proceedings soon came on the wings of rumour to the ears of
Robert Stormonth, who was not formed to be a martyr even for a love
which was to him as true as his nature would permit. He saw his danger,
because he did not see the character of a faithful girl who would die
rather than compromise her lover. He fled--aided probably by that very
money he had wrung out of the hands of the devoted girl; nor was his
disappearance connected with the tragic transaction; for, as we have
said, the connexion between him and Effie had been kept a secret, and
his flight could be sufficiently accounted for by his debt.
Meanwhile the precognitions or examination of the parties went on,
and with a result as strange as it was puzzling to the officials.
Effie was firm to her declaration that she not only wrote the body
of the cheque, but attached to it the name of her father, and had
appropriated the money in a way which she declined to state. On the
other hand, Lindsay was equally stanch to his statement made to the
procurator-fiscal, that he had got Effie to write the draft, had forged
the name to it, and got the money from her. The authorities very soon
saw that they had got more than the law bargained for or wanted; nor
was the difficulty likely soon to be solved. The two parties could not
both be guilty, according to the evidence, nor could one of them be
guilty to the exclusion of the other; neither, when the balance was
cast, was there much difference in the weight of the scales, because
while it was in one view more likely that Lindsay signed the false
name, it was beyond doubt that Effie wrote the body of the document,
and she had moreover presented it. But was it for the honour of the
law that people should be hanged on a likelihood? It was a new case
without new heads to decide it, and it made no difference that the
body of the people, who soon became inflamed on the subject, took the
part of the girl and declared against the man. It was easy to be seen
that the tracing of the money would go far to solve the mystery; and
accordingly there was a strict search made in Lindsay’s lodgings, as
well as in Effie’s private repositories at home. We need not say with
what effect, where the money was over the Border and away. It was thus
in all views more a case for Astræa than common heads; but then she had
gone to heaven. The Lord Advocate soon saw that the law was likely to
be caught in its own meshes. The first glimpse was got of the danger
of hanging so versatile, so inconsistent, so unsearchable a creature
as a human being on a mere confession of guilt. That that had been the
law of Scotland in all time, nay, that it had been the law of the world
from the beginning, there was no doubt. Who could know the murderer
or the forger better than the murderer or the forger themselves? and
would any one throw away his life on a false plea? The reasoning does
not exhaust the deep subject; there remains the presumption that the
criminal will, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, deny, and deny
boldly. But our case threw a new light on the old law, and the Lord
Advocate was slow to indict where he saw not only reasons for failure,
but also rising difficulties which might strike at the respect upon
which the law was founded.
The affair hung loose for a time; and Lindsay’s friends, anxious to
save him, got him induced to run his letters,--the effect of which is
to give the prosecutor a period wherein to try the culprit, on failure
of which the person charged is free. The same was done by Effie’s
father; but quickened as the Lord Advocate was, the difficulty still
met him like a ghost that would not be laid,--that if he put Effie
at the bar, Lindsay would appear in the witness-box; and if he put
Lindsay on his trial, Effie would swear he was innocent; and as for
two people forging _the same name_, the thing had never been heard of.
And so it came to pass that the authorities at last, feeling they were
in a cleft stick, where if they relieved one hand the other would be
caught, were inclined to liberate both panels. But the bank was at that
time preyed upon by forgeries, and were determined to make an example
now when they had a culprit, or perhaps two. The consequence was,
that the authorities were forced to give way, vindicating their right
of choice as to the party they should arraign. That party was Effie
Carr; and the choice justified itself by two considerations: that she,
by writing and uttering the cheque, was so far committed by evidence
exterior to her self-inculpation; and secondly, that Lindsay might
break down in the witness-box under a searching examination. Effie was
therefore indicted and placed at the bar. She pleaded guilty, but the
prosecutor notwithstanding led evidence; and at length Lindsay appeared
as a witness for the defence. The people who crowded the court had been
aware from report of the condition in which Lindsay stood; but the deep
silence which reigned throughout the hall when he was called to answer
evinced the doubt whether he would stand true to his self-impeachment.
The doubt was soon solved. With a face on which no trace of fear could
be perceived, with a voice in which there was no quaver, he swore
that it was he who signed the draft and sent Effie for the money. The
oscillation of sympathy, which had for a time been suspended, came
round again to the thin pale girl, who sat there looking wistfully and
wonderingly into the face of the witness; and the murmuring approbation
that broke out, in spite of the shrill “Silence” of the crier,
expressed at once admiration of the man--criminal as he swore himself
to be--and pity for the accused. What could the issue be? Effie was
acquitted, and Lindsay sent back to gaol. Was he not to be tried? The
officials felt that the game was dangerous. If Lindsay had stood firm
in the box, had not Effie sat firm at the bar, with the very gallows
in her eye; and would not she, in her turn, be as firm in the box? All
which was too evident; and the consequence in the end came to be, that
Lindsay was in the course of a few days set at liberty.
And now there occurred proceedings not less strange in the house of
John Carr. Lindsay was turned off, because, though he had made a
sacrifice of himself to save the life of Effie, the sacrifice was only
that due to the justice he had offended. The dismissal was against the
protestations of Effie, who alone knew he was innocent; and she had to
bear the further grief of learning that Stormonth had left the city on
the very day whereon she was apprehended--a discovery this too much
for a frame always weak, and latterly so wasted by her confinement in
prison, and the anguish of mind consequent upon her strange position.
And so it came to pass, in a few more days, that she took to her bed,
a wan, wasted, heart-broken creature; but stung as she had been by the
conduct of the man she had offered to die to save, she felt even more
the sting of ingratitude in herself for not divulging to her mother as
much of her secret as would have saved Lindsay from dismissal; for she
was now more and more satisfied that it was the strength of his love
for her that had driven him to his great and perilous sacrifice. Nor
could her mother, as she bent over her daughter, understand why her
liberation should have been followed by so much of sorrow; nay, loving
her as she did, she even reproached her as being ungrateful to God.
“Mother,” said the girl, “I have a secret that lies like a stane upon
my heart. George Lindsay had nae mair to do with that forgery than you.”
“And who had to do with it then, Effie, dear?”
“Myself,” continued the daughter; “I filled up the cheque at the
bidding o’ Robert Stormonth, whom I had lang loved. It was he wha put
my faither’s name to it. It was to him I gave the money, to relieve him
from debt, and he has fled.”
“Effie, Effie!” cried the mother; “and we have done this thing to
George Lindsay--ta’en from him his basket and his store, yea, the bread
o’ his mouth, in recompense for trying to save your life by offering
his ain.”
“Yes, mother,” added Effie; “but we must make that wrang richt.”
“And mair, lass,” rejoined the mother, as she rose abruptly and
nervously, and hurried to her husband, to whom she told the strange
intelligence. Then John Carr was a just man as well as a loving parent;
and while he forgave his unfortunate daughter, he went and brought
back George Lindsay to his old place that very night; nor did he or
Mrs Carr know the joy they had poured into the heart of the young
man, for the reason that they did not know the love he bore to their
daughter. But if this was a satisfaction to Effie, in so far as it
relieved her heart of a burden, it brought to her a burden of another
kind. The mother soon saw how matters stood with the heart of Lindsay,
and she moreover saw that her or her daughter’s gratitude could not be
complete so long as he was denied the boon of being allowed to marry
the girl he had saved from the gallows; and she waited her opportunity
of breaking the delicate subject to Effie. It was not time yet, when
Effie was an invalid; and even so far wasted and worn as to cause
apprehensions of her ultimate fate, even death; nor perhaps would that
time ever come when she could bear to hear the appeal without pain; for
though Stormonth had ruined her character and her peace of mind--nay,
had left her in circumstances almost unprecedented for treachery,
baseness, and cruelty--he retained still the niche where the offerings
of a first love had been made: his image had been indeed burned into
the virgin heart, and no other form of man’s face, though representing
the possessor of beauty, wealth, and worldly honours, would ever take
away that treasured symbol. It haunted her even as a shadow of herself,
which, disappearing at sundown, comes again at the rise of the moon;
nay, she would have been contented to make other sacrifices equally
great as that which she had made; nor wild moors, nor streams, nor
rugged hills, would have stopped her in an effort to look upon him once
more, and replace that inevitable image by the real vision, which had
first taken captive her young heart.
But time passed, bringing the usual ameliorations to the miserable.
Effie got so far better in health that she became able to resume, in
a languid way, her former duties, with the exception of those of “the
gentle clerk”--for of these she had had enough; even the very look of
a bank-draft brought a shudder over her; nor would she have entered
the Bank of Scotland again, even with a good cheque for a thousand
pounds to have been all her own. Meanwhile the patient George had plied
a suit which he could only express by his eyes, or the attentions of
one who worships; but he never alluded, even in their conversations,
to the old sacrifice. The mother too, and not less the father, saw the
advantages that might result as well to the health of her mind as that
of her body. They had waited--a vain waiting--for the wearing out of
the traces of the obdurate image: and when they thought they might take
placidity as the sign of what they waited for, they first hinted, and
then expressed in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. For a time
all their efforts were fruitless; but John Carr, getting old and weak,
wished to be succeeded in his business by George; and the wife, when
she became a widow, would require to be maintained,--reasons which had
more weight with Effie than any others, excepting always the act of
George’s self-immolation at the shrine in which his fancy had placed
her. The importunities at length wore out her resistings, without
effacing the lines of the old and still endeared image; and she gave
a cold, we may say reluctant, consent. The bride’s “ay” was a sigh,
the rapture a tear of sadness. But George was pleased even with this:
Effie, the long-cherished Effie, was at length his.
In her new situation Effie Carr--now Mrs Lindsay--performed all the
duties of a good and faithful wife; by an effort of the will no doubt,
though in another sense only a sad obedience to necessity, of which
we are all, as the creatures of motives, the very slaves. But the old
image resisted the appeals of her reason, as well as the blandishments
of a husband’s love. She was only true, faithful, and kind, till
the birth of a child lent its reconciling power to the efforts of
duty. Some time afterwards John Carr died--an event which carried in
its train the subsequent death of his wife. There was left to the
son-in-law a dwindling business, and a very small sum of money; for the
father had met with misfortunes in his declining years, which impaired
health prevented him from resisting. Time wore on, and showed that
the power of the martyr-spirit is not always that of the champion of
worldly success; for it was now but a struggle between George Lindsay,
with a stained name, and the stern demon of misfortune. He was at
length overtaken by poverty, which, as affecting Effie, preyed so
relentlessly upon his spirits, that within two years he followed John
Carr to the grave. Effie was now left with two children to the work
of her fingers, a poor weapon wherewith to beat off the wolf of want;
and even this was curtailed by the effects of the old crime, which the
public still kept in green remembrance.
Throughout, our story has been the sensationalism of angry Fate,
and even less likely to be believed than the work of fiction. Nor
was the vulture face of the Nemesis yet smoothed down. The grief of
her bereavement had only partially diverted Effie’s mind from the
recollections of him who had ruined her, and yet could not be hated by
her, nay, could not be but loved by her. The sensitised nerve, which
had received the old image, gave it out fresh again to the reviving
power of memory, and this was only a continuation of what had been a
corroding custom of years and years. But as the saying goes, it is a
long road that does not offer by its side the spreading bough of shade
to the way-worn traveller. One day, when Effie was engaged with her
work, of which she was as weary as of the dreaming which accompanied
it, there appeared before her, without premonition or foreshadowing
sign, Robert Stormonth, of Kelton, dressed as a country gentleman,
booted, and with a whip in his hand.
“Are you Effie Carr?”
The question was useless to one who was already lying back in her chair
in a state of unconsciousness, from which she recovered only to open
her eyes and avert them, and shut them and open them again, like the
victim of epilepsy.
“And do you fear me?” said the excited man, as he took her in his
strong arms and stared wildly into her face; “I have more reason to
fear you, whom I ruined,” he continued. “Ay, brought within the verge
of the gallows. I know it all, Effie. Open your eyes, dear soul, and
smile once more upon me. Nay, I have known it for years, during which
remorse has scourged me through the world. Look up, dear Effie, while
I tell you I could bear the agony no longer; and now opportunity
favours the wretched penitent, for my father is dead, and I am not only
my own master, but master of Kelton, of which you once heard me speak.
Will you not look up yet, dear Effie? I come to make amends to you,
not by wealth merely, but to offer you again that love I once bore to
you, and still bear. Another such look, dear; it is oil to my parched
spirit. You are to consent to be my wife--the very smallest boon I dare
offer.”
During which strange rambling speech Effie was partly insensible; yet
she heard enough to afford her clouded mind a glimpse of her condition,
and of the meaning of what was said to her. For a time she kept staring
into his face as if she had doubts of his real personality; nor could
she find words to express even those more collected thoughts that began
to gather into form.
“Robert Stormonth,” at length she said, calmly, “and have you suffered
too? Oh, this is more wonderful to me than a’ the rest o’ these
wonderful things.”
“As no man ever suffered, dear Effie,” he answered. “I was on the eve
of coming to you, when a friend I retained here wrote me to London of
your marriage with the man who saved you from the fate into which I
precipitated you. How I envied that man who offered to die for you! He
seemed to take from me my only means of reparation; nay, my only chance
of happiness. But he is dead. Heaven give peace to so noble a spirit!
And now you are mine. It is mercy I come to seek in the first instance;
the love--if that, after all that is past, is indeed possible--I will
take my chance of that.”
“Robert,” cried the now weeping woman, “if that love had been aince
less, what misery I would have been spared! Ay, and my father, and
mother, and poor George Lindsay; a’ helped awa to the grave by my
crime, for it stuck to us to the end.” And she buried her head in his
bosom, sobbing piteously.
“_My_ crime, dear Effie, not yours,” said he. “It was you who saved
my life; and if Heaven has a kindlier part than another for those who
err by the fault of others, it will be reserved for one who made a
sacrifice to love. But we have, I hope, something to enjoy before you
go there, and as yet I have not got your forgiveness.”
“It is yours--it is yours, Robert,” was the sobbing answer. “Ay, and
with it a’ the love I ever had for you.”