parts of the city, and the consequence was such a crowd at World’s
End Close as might have been looked for if the close had really been
the last refuge from a conflagration of another kind. The applicants
got their turn of entry; every one came out with a face expressive of
wonder, yet so true were they to their oath, that no one would tell a
word he had heard behind the veil of Gallie’s mystery, so that the
curiosity of the outsiders, who wanted to save their shillings, became
inflamed by pique in addition to curiosity. The secret took on the
sacred and cabalistic character of a mystery, and the mystery feeding,
as it always does, upon whispers and ominous looks, increased as the
hours passed. Nor can we wonder at an excitement which had religion at
the bottom of it, and the vanquishment of the soul-destroying David
for the fruitful and ultimate issue. It was only the high price of
admission which limited the number of Gallie’s shillings, for during
the entire day the stern obligation of an oath proved the stern honesty
of a religious people. It was said--and I see no reason to doubt the
truth of the report--that Dr Robertson and many others of the educated
classes caught the infection and paid their shilling; but we may doubt
if the imperturbable David would risk his body or trouble his spirit by
looking into the mysterious close of the World’s End.
As to what took place within Gallie’s room, it would seem that the
ingenious fellow, when he saw the heather on fire, set his gins for the
hares and conies in such a way as to catch them by dozens. He allowed
the room to fill, and having administered the oath to two or three
dozen at a time, he contrived during the course of the day to bag more
shillings than there might have been supposed to be fools or religious
enthusiasts even in superstitious Edinburgh. Afterwards, when rumour
became busy with his gains, it was said that he was thereby enabled
to set up the famous silversmith’s shop that so long, under the name
of “Gallie and Son,” occupied a prominent front in the High Street,
between Halkerston’s Wynd and Milne’s Entry.
But as all things that depend upon mere human testimony must ultimately
be left insoluble, except as belief makes an election and decision,
so even the revelation of the prophet Gallie did not settle the
great question of Mochrie _versus_ Hume, for Gallie could offer no
corroboration of the testimony of which he contrived to make a little
fortune. That revelation came to be known very well the next day,
probably from the softening and tongue-loosening influence of Edinburgh
ale exercised upon even gnarled and cross-grained Presbyterians; and we
need be under no doubt that Donald Gorm, when he shaved the philosopher
next morning, was in full possession of the secret, though we might be
entitled to hold pretty fast by the suspicion that he would not court
another smile from David by recounting to him the destruction of his,
Donald’s, theory of the miracle.
With an apology for having kept the reader too long from a knowledge
of Gallie’s revelation, we now proceed to give it as it was currently
reported. It seemed that on that morning when the two girls went
to bathe, Gallie had left Edinburgh for the same purpose about an
hour later--a statement probable enough, although not attempted to
be supported by any evidence. When about halfway on his journey, he
met Mary Mochrie, who, strangely enough, though perfectly true, was
his sweetheart. After some talk about the kind of bathe she had had,
Mary showed him a ring, which she said she had bought from an old Jew
broker on the previous day, and which she regretted was too wide for
her finger. She then asked him to take it home with him and reduce it.
Gallie having taken the ring into his hand started the moment he fixed
his eye upon it.
“That ring,” said he, for, notwithstanding his scheme to make capital
out of superstition, of which he was an enemy, he was an honest
fellow,--“that ring belongs to your young mistress; and the reason I
know this is that I fixed the ruby in it for her not yet a fortnight
since.”
Taken thus aback, Mary began to prevaricate, saying that Miss Isabella
Warrender had given it to her.
“That cannot be,” said Gallie, “because she told me it was a present
from her lover, George Ballennie, to whom she is to be married.”
Words which Gallie uttered in a solemn if not sorrowful tone, and a
look indicating displeasure and disappointment at thus detecting in the
woman whom he had intended to marry, both theft and falsehood. Nor were
these words left unrequited, for the fiery girl, snatching the ring out
of his hand, called him a liar, besides taunting him with a certain
pendulous attitude which his father, old Gallie, had assumed somewhere
about the precincts of the Tolbooth immediately before dying. The
cruel remark was one of those combinations of sharp words which have a
tendency to stick, especially where the brain to which they adhere has
been previously occupied by love, and so Gallie, muttering to himself a
determination to be revenged, parted from her for ever, and proceeded
on his way to Newhaven.
Things in this world being so arranged that one person’s misfortune
or wretchedness becomes another person’s opportunity, we may see how
Gallie came to his purpose. Perhaps he might not have thought it worth
his pains to expose his own sweetheart from a mere feeling of revenge,
but when he came to find that the woman who had cast up to him his
father’s misfortune, had taken or been put into the position of an
instrument of God’s grace, that the public had been by her precipitated
into a superstitious enthusiasm--a species of feeling which he hated,
(for who knows but that he might have been descended from that older
Gallio who deserved to have been hanged?) and that he saw by the clear
vision of ingenuity that he could revenge himself as to Mary, and make
himself rich at the expense of the fools whom he despised, he fell upon
the adroit scheme which we have so faithfully recorded.
We have already also said that the oath of secrecy which Gallie had
imposed on his dupes was dispensed with by some of the “loose-fish”
who could not be so easily caught as the devout cod. But this did not
end the controversy, for it immediately took the form of a contest
between the Gallieites and the Mochrieites, and the fury of the contest
having drawn the attention of the officials of the law, Mary was
again apprehended, with the view to be indicted for the theft of the
ring, provided any corroborative testimony could be got in support
of the statement of Gallie, who was forced to make his revelation to
the fiscal, this one time without a shilling. The Scotch people are
blessed or cursed with a metaphysical tendency, and this may be the
reason of their peculiar faith, as well as of their old suspicion of
human testimony in the courts of law. One witness has never been
received in Scotland as good for anything, if standing alone; and when
we look to the samples of humanity that meet us every day, so nicely
poised between truth and falsehood, that the weight of a Queen Anne’s
farthing would decide the inclination to the one side or the other, we
are apt to think our judges rather sagacious. Perhaps they thought of
themselves in these palmy days when they took bribes, and considered
them very good and gracious things, too, in their own way. But be all
that as it may, the evidence of Gallie was not corroborated in any way;
the ring might have been put into the cod’s mouth by Isabella Warrender
herself to ruin Mary. Woman can do such things; and Gallie’s accusation
might have been the consequence of Mary’s allusion to the fate of his
father. The result, accordingly, was, that Mary Mochrie was dismissed.
Yet even here the affair did not end, for some people received her with
open arms, as being a vessel of mercy.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of the Pelican.
Though not so much a tradition as a memory still fresh probably in the
minds of some of the good old Edinburgh folks, we here offer, chiefly
for the benefit of our young female readers who are fond of a story
wherein little heroines figure, as in Béranger’s “Sylphide,” an account
of a very famous adventure of a certain little Jeannie Deans in our
city--the more like the elder Jeannie, inasmuch as they both were
concerned in a loving effort to save the life of a sister. Whereunto,
as a very necessary introduction, it behoves us to set forth that
there was, some sixty years ago, more or less, a certain Mr William
Maconie, who was a merchant on the South Bridge of Edinburgh, but who,
for the sake of exercise and fresh air,--a commodity this last he need
not have gone so far from the Calton Hill to seek--resided at Juniper
Green, a little village three or four miles from St Giles’s. Nor did
this distance incommode him much, seeing that he had the attraction to
quicken his steps homewards of a pretty young wife and two little twin
daughters, Mary and Annie, as like each other as two rosebuds partially
opened, and as like their mother, too, as the objects of our simile are
to themselves when full blown.
Peculiar in this respect of having twins at the outset, and sisters
too--a good beginning of a contract to perpetuate the species--Mr
Maconie was destined to be even more so, inasmuch as there came no
more of these pleasant _deliciæ domi_, at least up to the time of
our curious story--a circumstance the more to be regretted by the
father in consequence of a strange fancy (never told to his wife)
that possessed him of wishing to insure the lives of his children as
they came into the world, or at least after they had got through the
rather uninsurable period of mere infant life. And in execution of this
fancy--a very fair and reasonable one, and not uncommon at that time,
whatever it may be now, when people are not so provident--he had got an
insurance to the extent of five hundred pounds effected in the Pelican
Office--perhaps the most famous at that time--on the lives of the said
twins, Mary and Annie, who were, no doubt, altogether unconscious of
the importance they were thus made to hold in the world.
Yet, unfortunately for the far-seeing and provident father, this scheme
threatened to fructify sooner than he wished, if indeed it could ever
have fructified to his satisfaction; for the grisly spectre of Typhus
laid his relentless hand upon Mary when she--and of a consequence
Annie--was somewhere about eight years old. And surely, being as we are
very hopeful optimists in the cause of human nature, we need not say
that the father, as he and his wife watched the suffering invalid on
through the weary days and nights of the progress towards the crisis
of that dangerous ailment, never once thought of the Pelican, except
as a bird that feeds its young with the warm blood of its breast.
But, sorrowful as they were, their grief was nothing in comparison
with the distress of little Annie, who slipped about listening and
making all manner of anxious inquiries about her sick sister, whom she
was prohibited from seeing for fear of her being touched by the said
spectre; nor was her heart the less troubled with fears for her life,
that all things seemed so quiet and mysterious about the house--the
doctor coming and going, and the father and mother whispering to each
other, but never to her, and their faces so sad-like and mournful, in
place of being, as was their wont, so cheerful and happy.
And surely all this solicitude on the part of Annie Maconie need not
excite our wonder, when we consider that, from the time of their
birth, the twin sisters had never been separated; but that, from the
moment they had made their entrance on this world’s stage, they had
been always each where the other was, and had run each where the other
ran, wished each what the other wished, and wept and laughed each when
the other wept or laughed. Nature, indeed, before it came into her
fickle head to make two of them, had, in all probability, intended
these little sisters--“little cherries on one stalk”--to be but one;
and they could only be said not to be _one_, because of their bodies
being two--a circumstance of no great importance, for, in spite of the
duality of body, the spirit that animated them was a unity, and as we
know from an old philosopher called Plato, the spirit is really the
human creature, the flesh and bones constituting the body being nothing
more than a mere husk intended at the end to feed worms. And then the
mother helped this sameness by dressing them so like each other, as if
she wanted to make a “Comedy of Errors” out of the two little female
Dromios.
But in the middle of this mystery and solicitude, it happened that
Annie was to get some light; for at breakfast one morning--not yet
that of the expected crisis--when her father and mother were talking
earnestly in an undertone to each other, all unaware that the child,
as she was moving about, was watching their words and looks, much as
an older victim of credulity may be supposed to hang on the cabalistic
movements and incantations of a sibyl, the attentive little listener
eagerly drank in every word of the following conversation:--
“The doctor is so doubtful,” said the anxious mother, with a tear in
her eye, “that I have scarcely any hope; and if she is taken away, the
very look of Annie, left alone ‘bleating for her sister lamb,’ will
break my heart altogether.”
“Yes,” rejoined Mr Maconie, “it would be hard to bear; but,”--and
it was the first time since Mary’s illness he had ever remembered
the insurance,--“it was wise that I insured poor Mary’s life in the
Pelican.”
“Insured her life in the Pelican!” echoed the wife, in a higher tone.
“That was at least lucky; but, oh! I hope we will not need to have our
grief solaced by that comfort in affliction for many a day.”
And this colloquy had scarcely been finished when the doctor entered,
having gone previously into the invalid’s room, with a very mournful
expression upon his face; nor did his words make that expression any
more bearable, as he said--
“I am sorry to say I do not like Mary’s appearance so well to-day. I
fear it is to be one of those cases where we cannot discover anything
like a crisis at all; indeed, I have doubts about this old theory being
applicable to this kind of fever, where the virus goes on gradually
working to the end.”
“The end!” echoed Mrs Maconie; “then, doctor, I fear you see what that
will be.”
“I would not like to say,” added he; “but I fear you must make up your
mind for the worst.”
Now, all this was overheard by Annie, who, we may here seize the
opportunity of saying, was, in addition to being a sensitive creature,
one of those precocious little philosophers thinly spread in the
female world, and made what they are often by delicate health, which
reduces them to a habit of thinking much before their time. Not that
she wanted the vivacity of her age, but that it was tempered by periods
of serious musing, when all kinds of what the Scotch call “auld
farrent” (far yont) thoughts come to be where they should not be, the
consequence being a weird-like kind of wisdom, very like that of the
aged; so the effect on a creature so constituted was just equal to
the cause. Annie ran out of the room with her face concealed in her
hands, and got into a small bed-room darkened by the window-blind, and
there, in an obscurity and solitude suited to her mind and feelings,
she resigned herself to the grief of the young heart. It was now
clear to her that her dear Mary was to be taken from her; had not the
doctor said as much? And then she had never seen death, of which she
had read and heard and thought so much, that she looked upon it as a
thing altogether mysterious and terrible. But had she not overheard
her father say that he had insured poor dear Mary’s life with the
Pelican? and had she not heard of the pelican--yea, the pelican of the
wilderness--as a creature of a most mythical kind, though she knew
not aught of its nature, whether bird or beast, or man or woman, or
angel. But whatever it might be, certain it was that her father would
never have got this wonderful creature to insure Mary’s life if it
was not possessed of the power to bring about so great a result; so
she cogitated, and mused, and philosophised in her small way, till
she came to the conclusion that the pelican not only had the destiny
of Mary in its hands, but was under an obligation to save her from
that death which was so terrible to her. Nor had she done yet with
the all-important subject; for all at once it came into her head as
a faint memory, that one day, when her father was taking her along
with her mother through the city, he pointed to a gilded sign, with a
large bird represented thereon tearing its breast with its long beak
and letting out the blood to its young, who were holding their mouths
open to drink it in. “There,” said he, “is the Pelican;” words she
remembered even to that hour, for they were imprinted upon her mind by
the formidable appearance of the wonderful-looking creature feeding its
young with the very blood of its bosom. But withal she had sense enough
to know--being, as we have said, a small philosopher--that a mere
bird, however endowed with the power of sustaining the lives of its
offspring, could not save that of her sister, and therefore it behoved
to be only the symbol of some power within the office over the door of
which the said sign was suspended. Nor in all this was Annie Maconie
more extravagant than are nineteen-twentieths of the thousand millions
in the world who still cling to occult causes.
And with those there came other equally strange thoughts; but beyond
all she could not for the very life of her comprehend that most
inexcusable apathy of her father, who, though he had heard with his own
ears, from good authority, that her beloved Mary was lying in the next
bed-room dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to town--even
to that very pelican who had so generously undertaken to insure Mary’s
life. It was an apathy unbecoming a father; and the blood of her little
heart warmed with indignation at the very time that the said heart was
down in sorrow as far as its loose strings would enable it to go. But
was there no remedy? To be sure there was, and Annie knew, moreover,
what it was; but then it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that
sacrifice she also knew, though it must of necessity be kept in the
meantime as secret as the wonderful doings in the death-chamber of the
palace of a certain Bluebeard.
Great thoughts these for so little a woman as Annie Maconie; and no
doubt the greatness and the weight of them were the cause why, for all
that day--every hour of which her father was allowing to pass--she was
more melancholy and thoughtful than she had ever been since Mary began
to be ill. But, somehow, there was a peculiar change which even her
mother could observe in her; for while she had been in the habit of
weeping for her sister, yea, and sobbing very piteously, she was all
this day apparently in a reverie. Nor even up to the time of her going
to bed was she less thoughtful and abstracted, even as if she had been
engaged in solving some problem great to her, however small it might
seem to grown-up infants. As for sleeping under the weight of so much
responsibility, it might seem to be out of the question, and so verily
it was; for her little body, acted on by the big thoughts, was moved
from one side to another all night, so that she never slept a wink
still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, of poor Mary,
her father’s criminal passiveness, and that most occult remedy which so
completely engrossed her mind.
But certainly it was the light of morning for which sister Annie
sighed; and when it came glinting in at the small window, she was up
and beginning to dress, all the while listening lest the servant or
any other one in the house should know she was up at that hour. Having
completed her toilet, she slipped downstairs, and having got to the
lobby, she was provident enough to lay hold of an umbrella, for she
suspected the elements as being in league against her. Thus equipped,
she crept out by the back-door, and having got thus free, she hurried
along, never looking behind her till she came to the main road to
Edinburgh, when she mounted the umbrella--one used by her father, and
so large that it was more like a main-sheet than a covering suitable
to so small a personage; so it behoved, that if she met any other
“travellers on purpose bent,” the moving body must have appeared to
be some small tent on its way to a fair, carried by the proprietor
thereof, of whom no more could be seen but the two short toddling legs,
and the hem of the black riding-hood. But what cared Annie? She toiled
along; the miles were long in comparison of the short legs, but then
there was a large purpose in that little body, in the view of which
miles were of small account, however long a time it might take those
steps to go over them. Nor was it any drawback to all this energy,
concentrated in so small a bulk, that she had had no breakfast. Was
the dying sister Mary able to take any breakfast? and why should Annie
eat when Mary, who did all she did--and she always did everything that
sister Mary did--could not? The argument was enough for our little
logician.
By the time she reached, by those short steps of hers, the great city,
it was half-past eleven, and she had before her still a great deal to
accomplish. She made out, after considerable wanderings, the street
signalised above all streets by that wonderful bird; but after she got
into it, the greater difficulty remained of finding the figure itself,
whereto there was this untoward obstacle, that it was still drizzling
in the thick Scotch way of concrete drops of mist, and the umbrella
which she held over her head was so large that no turning it aside
would enable her to see under the rim at such an angle as would permit
her scanning so elevated a position, and so there was nothing for it
but to draw it down. But even this was a task--heavy as the main-sheet
was with rain, and rattling in a considerable wind--almost beyond her
strength; and if it hadn’t been that a kindly personage who saw the
little maid’s difficulty gave her assistance, she might not have been
able to accomplish it. And now, with the heavy article in her hand, she
peered about for another half-hour, till at length her gladdened eye
fell upon the mystic symbol.
And no sooner had she made sure of the object, than she found her way
into the office, asking the porter as well as a clerk where the pelican
was to be found--questions that produced a smile; but smile here or
smile there, Annie was not to be beat, nor did she stop in her progress
until at last she was shown into a room where she saw perched on a high
stool with three (of course) long legs, a strange-looking personage
with a curled wig and a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be
the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room, with the umbrella,
not much shorter or less in circumference than herself, the gentleman
looked curiously at her, wondering no doubt what the errand of so
strange a little customer could be.
“Well, my little lady,” said he, “what may be your pleasure?”
“I want the pelican,” said Annie.
The gentleman was still more astonished, even to the extent that he
laid down his pen and looked at her again.
“The pelican, dear?”
“Ay; just the pelican,” answered she, deliberately, and even a little
indignantly. “Are you the pelican?”
“Why, yes, dear; all that is for it below the figure,” said he,
smiling, and wondering what the next question would be.
“I am so glad I have found you,” said she; “because sister Mary is
dying.”
“And who is sister Mary?”
“My sister, Mary Maconie, at Juniper Green.”
Whereupon the gentleman began to remember that the name of William
Maconie was in his books as holder of a policy.
“And what more?”
“My father says the pelican insured Mary’s life, and I want you to come
direct and do it, because I couldn’t live if Mary were to die. And
there’s no time to be lost.”
“Oh! I see, dear; and who sent you?”
“Nobody,” answered Annie. “My father wouldn’t come to you, and I have
come from Juniper Green myself, without telling my father or mother.”
“Oh yes, dear; I understand you.”
“But you must do it quick,” continued she, “because the doctor
says she’s in great danger; so you must come with me, and save her
immediately.”
“I am sorry, my dear little lady,” rejoined he, “that I cannot go with
you; but I will set about it immediately, and I have no doubt, being
able to go faster than you, that I will get there before you, so that
all will be right before you arrive.”
“See that you do it, then,” said she, “because I can’t live if Mary
dies. Are you quite sure you will do it?”
“Perfectly sure, my little dear,” added he; “go away home, and all will
be right. The pelican will do his duty.”