Expect me to-morrow at this hour with a better-arranged purpose.”
And folding her in his arms, and kissing her fervently, even as
his remorse were thereby assuaged as well as his love gratified,
he departed, leaving Effie to thoughts we should be sorry to think
ourselves capable of putting into words. Nor need we say more than that
Stormonth kept his word. Effie Carr was in a few days Mrs Stormonth,
and in not many more the presiding female power in the fine residence
of Kelton.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of Mary Mochrie and the Miracle of the Cod.
It was said that David Hume’s barber, who had the honour of shaving
the philosopher every morning, was so scandalised by David’s Essay
on Miracles, that he told him to his face--which he was smoothing at
the time--that Mary Mochrie’s miracle shut his mouth. And no doubt
this was so far true, for the shaver took care while he was telling
the story to hold David’s lips close with his left hand, while he
was plying his razor with the other. David, we are informed, used to
tell this anecdote himself along with the story of the modern miracle
appended to it; and as the latter is a good example of the easy way by
which the blind sentiment of wonder groping for light comes to refer
strange things to Divine interposition, and consequently the facility
of belief in those darker times, we may include among our stories for
the amusement of our readers that of the miracle, which, goes in this
wise:--
On a fine day in the month of June a certain Miss Isabella Warrender,
the daughter of a respectable burgess, bethought herself of the luxury
of a plunge in the Forth, on the sands to the west of Newhaven, and
with a view to safety, as well as companionship, she behoved to
take with her her father’s trusty servant, Mary Mochrie. The blue
bathing-gowns were accordingly put into the basket, and away they went
on their journey of two miles with heads “as light as lavrocks,” and
thinking of no other miracle in the world than that of enjoyment--a
veritable miracle to many, insomuch as it is to them in this world of
doubtful happiness and real misery miraculously scarce. Nor was it
long, with their light feet, ere they reached their destination; all
things, too, being otherwise propitious, for the sun was shining in a
clear sky, the surface of the sea was as smooth as glass, and like a
mirror reflected the rays of the sun; so that, to speak figuratively,
Apollo and Neptune were on the best of terms, as if they had resolved
to favour specially on that day so fair a specimen of an earthly maid,
who, for a time, was to become a water nymph. So, after looking out
from beneath her curls for Peeping Toms,--of whom, by the way, to
the honour of Scotland, our Godivas in these parts have little to
complain,--Isabella got herself made as like Musidora as possible, in
which condition she remained only for that single moment occupied by
Mary in investing her with the said blue gown. Whereupon, Mary having
also divested herself of her clothes, was as quickly reclaimed from the
searching eyes of the upper of the two propitious gods by her young
mistress helping her on with her sea dress.
All which sacrifices to _Bona Dea_ are pretty uniform, if we may not
say that, although young women have as good a right to outrage modesty
by splashing about perfectly nude in the sea as the men have, they
know better than do any such naughty thing. Nor, perhaps, was it any
exception, that as they went into the sea they took each other by the
hand, just as Adam and Eve did when they walked hand in hand into a
flood of sin, as enticing to them, too, as the shining water was to our
virgins--a comparison more true than you may be at present thinking.
Then having got up to the middle--that is, in a sense, half seas over,
they got into that sportive mood which belongs to bathers, as if an
infection from the playful element; and, of course, they could not
avoid the usual ducking, which is performed by the two taking hold of
both hands, and alternately or simultaneously dipping themselves over
head, and as they emerge shaking their locks as the ducks do their
wings when they come out of the water. All which was very pleasant,
as might have been apparent from the laughing and screighing which
terrified the Tom Norries there and then flying over their heads; but
it so happened that in one of these see-saws Isabella’s foot slipped,
and the consequence was that her hands slipped also out of those of
Mary, so that she fell back into the water, more afraid, of course,
than hurt; nor was this all, for no sooner had Isabella got on her feet
again than holding out her left hand she cried in rather a wild way
that she had lost her ruby ring--nay, that very ring which a certain
George Ballennie had given her as a pledge of his love, and the loss
of which was so like an augury of evil. And then as it was Mary’s hand
which pulled it off, or rather Isabella’s that left it in Mary’s, it
was natural she should ask at the same time whether Mary had it or had
felt it, but Mary asserted that she had it not, neither had she felt it
when coming off. So if Mary was honest it behoved to be in the sea, and
in all likelihood would never be found again.
And thus the pleasant act of bathing was interrupted in the very
middle, for how could there be any more splashing and tumbling and
mermaiding with this terrible loss weighing upon Isabella’s heart? She
would not know how to face her mother; and as for Ballennie, might
he not think that she who would not take better care of a love-token
had no great love on her part to be betokened by a ring or anything
else. The very sea which a moment before was as beautiful as a blushing
bride holding out her arms for the embrace of the bridegroom, became as
hateful to her as a Fury, and, hastening to the bank with tears in her
eyes, which, of course, could not be seen, she began to dress. Mary,
who seemed to participate in her young mistress’s sorrow, commenced
the same operation; but when the clothes were on what was to be done?
The tide was ebbing, and an hour, or at most two, would discover the
channel at the spot where the unlucky slip was made, but to remain all
that time would produce uneasiness at home, and there appeared to be
nothing for it but for the young lady to go to Edinburgh, and leave
Mary to wait for the ebbing of the tide, and make a search among the
shingle for the valuable article.
A plan accordingly carried out. Mary certainly awaited the ebb, and did
make a search among the gravel, but whether that search was conducted
in that assiduous way followed by those who are lighted in their travel
by the Lamp of Hope, it is not for us at present to say. Certain at
least it is that Mary did not seem very greatly disappointed at her
failure in not finding Isabella’s precious love-token, for which want
of feeling we do not require to go very deep into Mary’s breast, or any
other body’s breast, seeing she was a woman, and had a lover of her
own, even George Gallie, as good as Ballennie any day. True, he had
never given her a ruby ring; though, as for that, he would if he could,
and if he couldn’t how could he? So Mary was on a par with Isabella in
that matter; still, we confess, she might have searched more carefully,
unless, indeed, we are to be so ungallant as to believe that she had in
her mind some foregone secret conclusion that the ring was not there to
be found.
Nor, what is almost as strange, did Mary take up her basket and
commence her journey homeward in that saddened way which belongs to
deep disappointment. Nay, we are not sure but that the words of the old
song of her whose ring had been stolen by a mermaid, were conned by
Mary to herself as she trudged homewards,--
“And sair she moiled, and sair she toiled,
To find the ring lost in the sea,
And still the thought within her wrought
That she would never married be.”
But there was something else in her head when she reached the house,
where she met some very suspicious looks not only from Isabella, but
also from Mrs Warrender, for we may as well confess that the daughter
had told her mother that when the slip of the hand took place she
felt as if the ring had been taken off by the hand of Mary. And then
when Mary appeared with a lugubrious face, and reported that she had
not found the ring in the shingle, the foresaid suspicion was so
much confirmed, that very little more would be required to induce
Mr Warrender to make some judicial investigation into the strange
circumstance. An inauspicious afternoon and night for Mary, and not
less the next day, when she was called into the dining-room, and so
sharply interrogated by Mr Warrender, that she cried very bitterly, all
the time asserting that she never felt her hand touch the ring, and
that it had most certainly fallen into the water and been lost. But Mr
Warrender was not a man who believed in tears, at least women’s; for he
was ungallant enough to think, that as we cannot distinguish _ex parte
rei_ between those of anger and those of sorrow, and as there is a kind
called crocodile, as limpid as the others, and just as like a pretty
dewdrop, so they never can or ought to be received as evidence either
of guilt or innocence. And so it came about, that as the hours passed
the conviction grew stronger and stronger in the minds of the family
that the meek, and church-going, and psalm-singing Mary Mochrie was a
thief.
Of this latter fact, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, there
could be no evidence beyond the finding of the missing article, either
on Mary’s person or in some place under her power, for Isabella’s word
could not go for much; and so it was resolved that Mary’s person and
trunk should be searched. A very strong step in the case of a girl
who had hitherto held a very good character, and probably altogether
unjustifiable, where so powerful an abstractor of earthly things as
Neptune was apparently as much in the scrape as Mary. Yet this strong
thing was done _illotis manibus_, and, as might have been expected,
with no effect beyond scandalising Mary, who went so far as to say that
Heaven took care of its own, and that God would in His own time and way
show her persecutors that she was as innocent as that babe unborn, who
takes away and places, nobody knows where, so many of the wickednesses
of the world. But then an assertion of innocence in the grand style
of an appeal to the Deity sometimes piques a prosecutor, because it
conveys an imputation that the accused one is better taken care of by
Heaven than he is; and so it turned out here, for Mr Warrender felt
as if he had been challenged to the ultimate trial by ordeal, and he
straightway proceeded to take measures for having Mary apprehended upon
the charge of having robbed his daughter of the much-prized ring.
These measures were taken as they had been resolved upon, and here
it behoves us, for a reason which may appear by and by, to be so
particular as to say, that the officer was to come in the morning after
breakfast to convey the alleged culprit to the office of the public
prosecutor, for the purpose, in the first place, of examination. Nor
was Mary unprepared, nay, she was not even to all appearance very
much put about, for she had gone about her work as usual, and having
finished what she had to do as maid-of-all-work--cook, scullery-maid,
and scrub--she began to make preparations for cutting-up and gutting,
and scraping, and washing the large cod, which lay upon the dresser
ready for these operations, and which, by the way, Mrs Warrender had
that morning, an hour before, bought for the sum of one and sixpence,
from a Jenny Mucklebacket, of the village of Newhaven--another
particular fact which we are bound to apologise for on the foresaid
plea of necessity, lest we might incur the charge of wishing to
produce an effect by Dutch painting. But Mary’s services as to the
cod were dispensed with by Mrs Warrender, if they were not actually
resented as either a bribe to forego the prosecution, or a cold-blooded
indifference assumed for the purpose of showing her innocence. And so
when the officer came Mary was hurried away to undergo this terrible
ordeal, which, whatever other effect it might have, could not fail to
leave her marked with the very burning irons that might not inflict the
punishment due to robbery.
Leaving Mrs Warrender with the cod, which is as indispensable to our
legend as a frying-pan to a Dutch interior, or the bone of a pig to
a saint’s legend, we follow the prisoner to the office of the man
who is a terror to evil-doers. Mr Warrender was there as the private
prosecutor, and Isabella as a witness, or rather _the_ witness. On
being seated, the fiscal asked Mary, whether, on the day of the
bathing, she had not seen the said ring on the finger of her young
mistress; whereto Mary answered in the affirmative. Then came the
application of the Lydian stone, in the form of the question, whether
she did not, at the foresaid time and place, abstract the said ring
from the finger of Isabella when she held her hand in the process of
dipping; but Mary was here negative and firm, asserting that she did
not, and giving emphasis to her denial by adding, that God knew she
was as innocent as the foresaid babe. In spite of all which, Isabella
insisted that she had been robbed in the manner set forth. The fiscal
saw at once that the whole case lay between the two young women, and
recommended Mr Warrender to let go the prosecution as one which must
fail for defect of evidence; but that gentleman, for the reason that
he had so far committed himself, and also for that he was annoyed at
what he called the impudence of a servant disputing the word of his
daughter, and calling her, in effect, a liar, insisted upon his right,
as the protector and curator of his daughter, of having the culprit
committed to jail, in the expectation that, through some medium of the
three magic balls, or otherwise, he would get more evidence of the
crime. The fiscal had no alternative; and so Mary Mochrie was taken to
the Tolbooth, with the ordinary result, in the first place, of the news
going up and down the long street which then formed the city, that Mrs
Warrender’s servant was imprisoned for the strange crime of abstracting
from Miss Warrender’s finger, while bathing, the love-token given to
her by her intended. There was, doubtless, about the tale just so much
of romance that would serve it as wings to carry it wherever gossip was
acceptable--and we would like to know where in that city it was not
acceptable then, and where it is not acceptable now.
Meanwhile Mrs Warrender had been very busy with the mute person of our
drama--the cod--in which, like the devil in the story who had bargained
for a sinner and having got a saint instead, had half resolved to
follow the advice of Burns and “take a thought and mend,” she had got
so much more than she bargained for with the fishwife that she was,
when Mr Warrender and Isabella entered, ready to faint. They found
her sitting in a chair scarcely able to move, under no less an agency
than the fear of God. Her breath came and went with difficulty through
lips with that degree of paleness which lips have a special tendency
to take on, an expression of awe was over her face, and in her hand
she held that identical ruby ring for the supposed theft of which the
unfortunate Mary had been hurried to jail, and as for being able to
speak she was as mute as the flounder in the proverb that never spoke
but once; all she could do was to hold up the ring and point to the
cod upon the dresser. But all in vain, for Mr Warrender could not see
through the terrible mystery, nay, surely the most wonderful thing
that had ever happened in this lower world since the time when the
whale cast up Jonah just where and when he was wanted, till at length
Mrs Warrender was enabled to utter a few broken words to the effect
that the ring had been found in the stomach of the fish. Then, to be
sure, all was plain enough--the cod was a chosen instrument in the
hands of the great Author of Justice sent by a special message to save
Mary Mochrie from the ruin which awaited her under a false charge. The
conviction was easy in proportion to the charm which supernaturalism
always holds over man--
“True miracles are more believed
The more they cannot be conceived;”
and we are to remember that the last witch had not been burnt at the
time of our story. But what made this Divine interposition the more
serious to the house of the Warrenders, the message from above was sent
as direct as a letter by post, only not prepaid, for Mrs Warrender had
paid for the fish; and so it was equally plain that a duty was thus put
upon Mr Warrender of no ordinary kind.
Nor was he long in obeying the command. Taking the wonderful ring
along with him he hurried away to the office he had so lately left,
and told the miraculous tale to the man of prosecutions. And what
although that astute personage smiled at the story, just as if he
would have said, if he had thought it worth his while, “Was there any
opportunity for Mary Mochrie handling the cod?”--it was only the small
whipcord of scepticism applied to the posteriors of the rhinoceros of
superstition, even that instinct in poor man to be eternally looking
up into the blank sky for special providences. So Mr Warrender, now
himself a holy instrument, got what he wanted--an order to the jailer
for Mary’s liberation. So away he went; and as he went to the Tolbooth
he told every acquaintance he met the exciting story--among others
his own clergyman of the Greyfriars, who held up his hands and said,
“Wonderful are the ways of God! Yea, this very thing hath a purpose in
it, even that of utterly demolishing that arch sceptic David Hume’s
soul-destroying Essay on Miracles. I will verily take up the subject
the next Sabbath.” And thus, dropping the germs as he went, which
formed a revolving radius line from the centre of the mystery--his
own house--the consequence was that the miracle of the cod went like
wildfire wherever there was the fuel of a predisposing superstition;
and where, we repeat, was that not then? where is not now, despite of
David with all his genius--the first and best of the anti-Positivists,
because he was a true Pyrrhonean. Having got to the jail, Mr Warrender
informed Mary of this wonderful turn of providence in her favour,
whereat Mary, as a matter of course, held up her hands in great wonder
and admiration.
But Mr Warrender was not, by this act of justice, yet done with Mary.
It behoved him to take her home and restore her to her place, with
a character not only cleared of all imputation, but illustrated by
the shining light of the favour of Heaven; and so he accompanied her
down the thronged High Street,--an act which partook somewhat of the
procession of a saint, whereat people stared; nay, many who had heard
of the miracle went up and shook hands with one who was the favourite
of the Great Disposer of events. Nor did her honours end with this
display; for when they reached the house they found it filled with
acquaintances, and even strangers, all anxious to see the wonderful
fish, and the ring, and the maid. In the midst of all which honours
Mary looked as simple as a Madonna; and if she winked it was only
with one eye, and the winking was to herself. Even here her honours
that day did not terminate, for she behoved for once to dine with the
family--not on the cod, which was reserved as something sacred, like
the small fishes offered by the Phaselites to their gods--but on a
jolly leg of lamb, as a recompense for the breakfast of which she had
that morning been deprived. Nay, as for the cod, in place of being
eaten, it stood a risk of being pickled, and carried off to help the
exchequer of some poor Catholic community in the land of miracles.
But probably the most wonderful part of our history consists in this
fact, that no one ever hinted at the propriety of having recourse to
the easiest and most natural way of solving a knot so easily tied; but
we have only to remember another mystery--that of the gullibility of
man when under the hunger of superstition. Nor need we say that the
maw of a cod, big and omnivorous as it is, never equalled that of the
miracle-devourer’s, possessing, as it does, too, the peculiarity of
keeping so long that which is accepted. Wherein it resembles the purse
of the miser, the click of the spring of which is the sign of perpetual
imprisonment. We only hear the subsequent jingle of the coin, and the
jingle in our present instance might have lasted for twenty years,
during all which time Mary Mochrie’s miracle might have served as the
best answer to the Essay of the renowned sceptic.
And thus we are brought back to the anecdote with which we set out. The
story we have told is, in all its essentials, that which Donald Gorm,
David Hume’s barber, treated him to on that morning when he wanted to
close up for ever the mouth of the arch sceptic. It is not easy to
smile while under the hands of a story-telling barber, for the reason
that the contracted muscle runs a risk of being still more contracted
by a slice being taken off it by a resolute razor moving in straight
lines, so that probably it was not till Donald had finished both the
story and the shaving, that David dared to indulge in that good-natured
smile with which he used to meet his opponents, even in the teeth of
the Gael’s oath, “’Tis a miracle, py Cot,”--a word this latter which,
in Donald’s humour, might stand for the word cod, as well as for
another too sacred to be here mentioned.
Yet the philosopher had further occasion for his good-humoured
reticence, with which, as is well known, he declared he would alone
meet the censors of his Essay, for it was really on the occasion of
this great religious sensation in the city that the washer-women at
the “Nor’ Loch” threatened to “dook him,” for the reason that, as they
had heard, he had not only written that detestable Essay to prove
that no miracles (for they were ungenerous enough to pay no attention
to his _very_ grave exception of the real Bible ones) could ever
be, but he had actually gone the extreme length of disbelieving the
intervention of God to save the innocent Mary Mochrie from the Moloch
of the criminal law. We need not be unassured that this additional
bit of gossip, as it spread though the city, would only tend to the
inflammation that already prevailed. Nor need we wonder at all this,
when we remember the play of metaphysical wit, which was received as
very serious by the vulgar,--that David believed in nothing, except
that there was no God.
But the mind of the Edinburgh public was not destined to cool down
before it underwent further combustion. It happened that a certain
person of the name of Gallie, a common working jeweller in World’s End
Close, was possessed of knowledge which he had picked up on the road
to Newhaven, whither he had been going to bathe, on that very morning
when the miraculous ring was lost, and which knowledge, he thought,
being a knowing fellow, he could turn to account in the midst of the
heat of collision between the miracle-mongers and the sceptics, even
as he might have transmuted by the fire of the furnace a piece of base
metal into gold; and he took a strange way to effect his purpose.
Having first called on Mr Warrender and got a sight of the magic ring,
he next wrote an advertisement, which he got printed in the form of
the small posters of that day of Lilliputian bills. It ran in these
terms:--“Mary Mochrie’s Miracle.--If any one is anxious to learne the
trew secret of this reputyd miracle, let him or her, mann or woman, hye
to the closs of ye Warld’s End, where Michael Gallie resideth, and on
ye payement of one shilling they will hear somethyng that will astonie
them; but not one to tell ye other upon his aith.”