after her, and having upon her face a look of contentment, if not
absolute happiness, in place of the sorrow which had occupied it during
all the time of her toilsome journey. The same road is to be retraced;
and if she had an object before which nerved her little limbs, she had
now the delightful consciousness of that object having been effected--a
feeling of inspiration which enabled her, hungry as she was, to
overcome all the toil of the return. Another two hours, with that heavy
umbrella overhead as well as body, brought her at length home, where
she found that people had been sent out in various directions to find
the missing Annie. The mother was in tears, and the father in great
anxiety; and no sooner had she entered and laid down her burden, than
she was clasped to the bosom, first of one parent, and then of the
other.
“But where is the pelican?” said the anxious little maid.
“The pelican! my darling,” cried the mother; “what do you mean?”
“Oh! I have been to him at his own office at Edinburgh, to get him to
come and save Mary’s life, and he said he would be here before me.”
“And what in the world put it in your head to go there?” again asked
the mother.
“Because I heard my father say yesterday that the pelican had insured
dear sister Mary’s life, and I went to tell him to come and do it
immediately; because, if Mary were to die, I couldn’t live, you
know--that’s the reason, dear mother.”
“Yes, yes,” said the father, scarcely able to repress a smile which
rose in spite of his grief. “I see it all; you did a very right thing,
my love. The pelican has been here, and Mary is better.”
“Oh! I am so glad,” rejoined Annie, “for I wasn’t sure whether he had
come or not; because, though I looked for him on the road, I couldn’t
see him.”
At the same moment the doctor came in, with a blithe face.
“Mary is safe now,” said he. “There has been a crisis, after all. The
sweat has broken out upon her dry skin, and she will be well in a very
short time.”
“And there’s no thanks to you,” said Annie, “because it was I who went
for the pelican.”
Whereupon the doctor looked to the father, who, taking him aside,
narrated to him the story, at which the doctor was so pleased that he
laughed right out.
“You’re the noblest little heroine I ever heard of,” said he.
“But have you had anything to eat, dear, in this long journey?” said
the mother.
“No, I didn’t want,” was the answer; “all I wanted was to save Mary’s
life, and I am glad I have done it.”
And glad would we be if, by the laws of historical truth, our stranger
story could have ended here; but, alas! we are obliged to pain the
good reader’s heart by saying that the demon who had left the troubled
little breast of Mary Maconie took possession of Annie’s. The very next
day she lay extended on the bed, panting under the fell embrace of the
relentless foe. As Mary got better, Annie grew worse; and her case was
so far unlike Mary’s, that there was more a tendency to a fevered state
of the brain. The little sufferer watched with curious eyes the anxious
faces of her parents, and seemed conscious that she was in a dangerous
condition. Nor did it fail to occur to her as a great mystery as well
as wonder, why they did not send for the wonderful being who had so
promptly saved the life of her sister. The thought haunted her, yet
she was afraid to mention it to her mother, because it implied a sense
of danger--a fear which one evening she overcame. Fixing her eyes, now
every moment waxing less clear, on the face of her mother--
“Oh! mother, dear,” she whispered, “why do you not send for the
pelican?”
In other circumstances the mother would have smiled; but, alas, no
smile could be seen on that pale face. Whether the pelican was sent
for we know not, but certain it is, that he had no power to save poor
Annie, and she died within the week. But she did not die in vain, for
the large sum insured upon her life eventually came to Mary, whom she
loved so dearly.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Story of Davie Dempster’s Ghaist.
There was once an old saying very common in the mouths of the Edinburgh
people--“As dead as Davie Dempster.” It has long since passed away;
but whether it was preferable to the one to which it has given place,
viz.,--“As dead as a door-nail,” we must leave to those wise people who
can measure degrees of nonvitality in objects which are without life.
Be all which as it may, the imputed deadness of David Dempster may
appear to have some interest to us when we know the story from which
the old popular saying took its rise; and the more, that the story
cannot be said to want a moral vitality, if it has not even a spice of
humour in it. Certain, to begin with, David Dempster was at least once
alive, for we can vouch for his having been a very respectable denizen
of the old city. We can even impart the nature of his calling, that of
a trafficker in the stuff of man’s wearing apparel, which he sold to
those who were willing to buy, and even to some who were unwilling to
buy; for David’s tongue, if not so long as his ell-wand, was a deuced
deal more supple. Nor does our information end here, for we can, we
are happy to say, tell the name of his wife, which was Dorothy; nay,
we know even the interesting particular, that when David had more
Edinburgh ale in his stomach than humility in his head, he got so far
into the heroics as to call her Dorothea; but as for the maiden name
of this woman, who was the wife of a man so famous as to have been the
source and origin of a proverb, we regret to say that it has gone into
the limbo of things that are lost. To make amends, we can, however,
add that Mrs Dempster was, at the time of our story, as plump and well
coloured as Florabel; but as for David, who was ten years older than
his wife, he was just as plain as any man needs be without pretension
to being disagreeable.
We have said that David Dempster and his wife were respectable, and
we do not intend to offer a jot more evidence on the point, than the
fact that they went to “the kirk” on Sundays, and that, too, with
faces of the normal Calvinistic elongation, and in good clothes;
Dorothy being covered, head and all, with her red silk plaid, and
David immersed in the long square coat of the times, with cuffs as
big as four-pound tea-bags, buttons as broad as crown-pieces, and
pockets able to have held Dr Webster’s--their minister’s--pulpit
Bible in the one, and as many bottles of wine as the worthy gentleman
could carry away at a sitting, in the other; an allusion this last by
no means ill-natured, as we may show by making the admission that,
if David and Dorothy had had heads big enough to carry away all that
their excellent preacher told them, they required no more for unction
and function for a whole week. But, however fair things looked in the
sanctuary, it was otherwise at home in Lady Stair’s Close, where they
resided, for it so happened that our worthy clothes-merchant had got
into debt; nay, there were hornings and captions out against him, and
he stood a chance any day in all the year round of being shut up in
“The Heart of Mid-Lothian,” not nearly so soft a one as Dorothy’s. Not
that all David’s creditors were equally hard upon him, for the laird
of Rubbledykes--a small property on the left-hand side of the road to
Cramond--Mr Thomas Snoddy, who had lent him two hundred pounds Scots,
never asked him for a farthing; the reason of which requires a little
explanation.
In real secret truth the laird had been a lover of Dorothy’s before she
was married to David, and there is no doubt that if he had declared
himself, with Rubbledykes to back him, he would have carried off the
adorable Dorothy in triumph; but then it was the laird’s misfortune
to be what the Scotch call “a blate lover;” which is just to say, a
belated one; and Dorothy was married to the spruce and ardent David
before she knew that a real laird of an estate was dying in secret
for her. Nor could she have had any doubt of the fact, for Mr Snoddy
summoned up courage to tell her so himself--a circumstance which cost
him something, insomuch as no sooner did David know the fact than he
asked him for the loan of the said two hundred pounds Scots money. Of
course, David being, as we have said, a man with a supple tongue, and
brains at the end of it, knew what he was about, and so sure enough he
succeeded; for Rubbledykes, who would not have lent two hundred pound
Scots to the treasurer of the Virgin Mary on a note-of-hand, payable in
Heaven, was even delighted to advance that sum to the husband of his
once loved, and for ever lost, Dorothy. And in this act the laird was
wonderfully liberal; for in his secret heart he conditioned for no more
than the liberty of being allowed to visit the house in Lady Stair’s
Close on market days, and sit beside Dorothy, and look at her, and
wonder at her still red cheeks--albeit, more of the pickling cabbage
than the rose--and sigh at the loss of such a treasure. Neither in
suffering all this adoration did Mrs Dempster commit any very heinous
sin; nay, being, as a good Calvinist, a believer in the excellent
doctrine (if acted up to) of “total depravity,” she was necessarily in
the highway of salvation.
Neither did Mrs Dempster think it necessary to conceal any of these
doings from David. Nay, on one particular Wednesday, after the laird
had had his fill of this will-worship, she brought the subject up in
so particular a way to her husband, that we are thereby led to believe
that they understood each other, and could act in concert. The occasion
was the complaint of David that some of his other creditors were likely
to be down upon him.
“Ah, Dorothy, if they were a’ like Snoddy.”
Not a very respectful way of alluding to no less a personage than the
laird of Rubbledykes, let alone his kindness; but then David, being
a debtor, did not respect himself, and nothing was ever more true
than the saying, “That our own self-respect is the foundation of that
respect which we pay to others.”
“But they’re _no’_ a’ like the laird,” replied Dorothy; “and what’s
mair, David, my man, the laird winna be ane o’ your creditors lang
either.”
“What mean you, lass?” inquired David.
“I just mean neither mair nor less than that Thomas Snoddy o’
Rubbledykes, wha should hae been my gudeman, is deein’ as fast as he
can bicker; and that by and by I might have been my Leddy Rubbledykes
wi’ three hundred a year, and nae husband to trouble me.”
“That’s ill news,” continued David; “for if he dees, the debt will gae
to his brother, a man who would raze the skin frae the mother’s face
that bore him, if he could mak a leather purse out o’t. But what maks
ye think he is deein’, lass?”
“Deein’!” rejoined Dorothy, with an ill-timed, if not cruel laugh.
“That cough o’ his would kill baith you and me in a year, even if we
should only cough time about.”
“Ower true, I fear,” groaned David; “and then there’s a’ thae ither
debts upon me. Hark, Dorothy, ye’re a clever dame; could ye no’ get the
laird to discharge the debt?”
“Maybe I might, were I to kiss him, David,” was the answer, with
another smile.
“And what for no’?” asked this honest man, who raised his voice in the
Tron every Sunday.
“Because I am neither a Judith nor a Judas,” replied she.
“But ye’re a Christian,” was the ready rejoinder; “and what’s mair, a
Calvinist.”
“As if a body could be a Christian without being a Calvinist,” said
she. “But what do ye mean, David--are ye crazy? Why should I kiss
another man because I’m a Calvinist?”
“Nae sin, nae salvation,” said he.
Whereupon the worthy couple laughed at a tenet which, being liable to
a double construction, has always been dangerous to the common people
of Scotland. And what was worse, this laugh was only the prelude to a
further conversation so deep and mysterious, and withal conducted in
so low a train of whispers and re-whispers, that even our familiar,
endowed as he is with the power of going through stone walls, could
carry off no more than smiles and nods and winks, and more and more
of the same kind of laughs. But as the son of Sirach says, “There
is an exquisite subtlety, and the same is unjust;” and “Wrath will
surely search it.” Nor was there in this case much time required for
the retribution, for the very next day a man rushed into the house of
Mrs Dempster with the intelligence on his tongue that David Dempster
was drowned at Granton. The dreadful story was indeed corroborated
into a certainty by a bundle of clothes which the messenger of evil
tidings laid on the table, no other than the suit which David had
put on that morning, including the linen shirt which Dorothy’s own
fingers had adorned with the breast-ruffle, and identified with the
beloved initials, D. D., more precious to her than the symbols of
ecclesiastical honours. All were there as he had left them on the beach
before the plunge which was to be unto death--yea, something after
death, and more terrible, for had not David been a scoffer? If Mrs
Dempster had at first been able to collect her scattered senses, she
would have been satisfied even with the look of the clothes, for she
had heard her husband say, with a blithe look, that he was to go to
Granton to bathe, and she would, moreover, have had some minutes sooner
the melancholy satisfaction that one so dear to her had not committed
suicide.
But the sudden impression left no room for consolations of any kind.
Struggling nature could do no more than work itself out of one swoon
to fall into another, and how long it was before she could listen to
the inrushing neighbours with their news that he had been boated for,
and dived for, and hooked for, and searched for, no record remains to
tell. But that all these efforts had been made there was no doubt, and
as the hours passed bringing as yet no assuagement of a grief which
is only amenable to time, it came to be known that the coast had been
examined all about the fatal spot with no return but the inevitable
_non inventus_; nor did it require many days to satisfy the unfortunate
widow that the catastrophe was of that complete kind where the
remaining victim is not only deprived of a husband, but denied the poor
consolation of seeing his dead body.
Yet how true it is that the kingdom of Death is in the land of
forgetfulness, not only to the ghostly denizens who there dwell, but
also to those who are left in this region of quick memories. Wherein
surely there is a kindness in the cruelty; for assuredly there is no
one who could suffer for a protracted period the intensity of the first
onset of a grief of a privation which is to be for ever in this world
and be able to live. And this kindliness of the fates was experienced
by Mrs Dorothy Dempster, who, after a decent period, and amidst the
consolations of friends, felt herself in a condition to be able to wait
upon the creditors of her husband and get them to be contented with
the small stock left by him, and give her acquittances of their debts;
nay, so heartrending were her appeals, and so miserable she appeared in
her weeds, that these good men even voted her a small sum out of the
wreck as a beautiful tribute to pity and humanity. All which went for
its value, so creditable as it is to human nature, and we need hardly
add that the frequent reading of the encomium in the _Mercury_ on the
merits of the deceased--which, of course, proceeded on the inevitable
rule that a man is only good provided he is dead--heaped up the
consolation even to a species of melancholy pleasure.
And, surely, if on this occasion there was any one _ipsis charitibus
humanior_, it was Mr Thomas Snoddy, the good laird of Rubbledykes.
Nor were his attentions merely empty-handed visits to the house of
the widow, for he brought her money, often, after all, the chief of
consolations. Of the manner in which that might be accepted he probably
suspected there was nothing to be feared; but there was another gift
he had in store, in regard to the acceptability of which he was
not quite so sure--and that was his old love kindled up into a new
flame--probably enough he had never heard or read the lines to the
effect that--
“Cupid can his wings apply,
To other uses than to fly;
Serving as a handkerchief
To dry the tears of widows’ grief.”
But, whether so or not, he resolved upon trying what he himself could
do in that remedial way; and, accordingly, he began with a small dose,
the success of which urged him to a repetition; and on he went from
small quantities to greater, till he was overjoyed to find that the
patient could bear any amount he was able to administer. Nor could it
be said that the aforesaid cough made any abatement from the success
of these efforts, if we might not rather surmise that it entered as an
element in their recommendation--at least it indicated no hollowness in
Rubbledykes.
We all know that “the question” once meant _torture_. At the period of
our story, and we hope not less in our day, it meant _rapture_; and it
is not unlikely that Mrs Dempster on that market-day, when the laird
sat by the side of the parlour fire in Lady Stair’s Close, enjoyed
something of that kind when the words fell on her ear.
“Now, my dear Dorothy--to come to the point in the lang-run--will ye
hae me for your second husband, wha should hae been your first?”
“I hae no objection,” replied Dorothy, as she held away her head and
covered her eyes with her handkerchief; “_but_----”
And Mrs Dempster stopped short, with an effect almost as great on the
astonished suitor as that of the memorable answer given by a certain
Mrs Jean of Clavershalee to another laird, whose property lay not far
distant from Rubbledykes.
“But!” ejaculated the laird, with an effort that brought an attack of
his cough upon him. “You maun ‘but’ me nae ‘buts,’ Dorothy, unless ye
want to kill me. I aye thought I had a better claim to you than David.
Heaven rest his body in the deep waters o’ the Forth, and his soul in
heaven!”
“Ay,” continued she, as she applied the handkerchief again, as if this
time to receive some tears which ought to have come and didn’t; “but
that just puts me in mind o’ what I was going to say. You have seen
how David was ta’en awa. What if onything should happen to you? What
would become o’ me? Rubbledykes would gae to your brother.”
“The de’il a stane o’t, Dorothy,” cried the laird. “It will be a’
yours. I will mak it ower to you; tofts and crofts, outhouses and
inhouses, muirs and mosses, pairts and pertinents. Will that please
you?”
“Ay, will’t,” answered Dorothy from behind the handkerchief.
Whereupon the laird took her in his arms with a view to kiss her; but
there is many a slip not only between the cup and the lip, but between
one lip and another; for no sooner had Thomas so prepared himself for,
perhaps, the greatest occasion of his life--even that of kissing a
woman, and that woman the very idol of his heart--than that dreadful
cough came again upon him, and Dorothy could not help thinking that it
was now more hollow, or, as the Scotch call it, _toom_, than ever she
had heard it.
“I will awa to Mr Ainslie and get the contract written out at length,”
he said, to cover his disgrace.
Nor was it sooner said than done. Away he went, leaving Dorothy
virtually a bride, and the lady _in esse_ of an estate, albeit a small
one, yet great to her. At all which she laughed a most enigmatical
laugh, as if some secret thoughts had risen in her mind with the effect
of a ridiculous incongruity; but what these thoughts were no one ever
knew. Nor shall we try to imagine them, considering ourselves to be
better employed in setting forth that shortly afterwards Mrs Dorothy
Dempster was joined in the silken bands of holy wedlock with Thomas
Snoddy, Esquire, of Rubbledykes, and that by the hands of Dr Webster
of the Tron, who accompanied the happy couple in the evening to the
gray-slated mansion-house, where he made another celebration of the
event by draining a couple of bottles of good old claret. Strange
enough all these things; but the real wonders of our story would seem
only to begin with the settlement of Mr David Dempster’s widow in
the mansion-house of the veritable laird; even though, consistently
with the manners of the time, there was a duck-pond at the door, a
peat-stack on the gable, and a midden gracing the byre not five yards
from the parlour window; spite of all which Mrs Dorothy was a lady,
while David lay with glazed eyes in the Forth among the fishes scarcely
a mile distant from his enchanted widow.
We think it a strange thing that mortals should laugh and weep by
turns, yet we think sunshine and showers a very natural alternation;
and surely it is far more wonderful that we often weep when we
should laugh, and laugh when we should weep--of which hypocrisy,
notwithstanding, there is a hundred times more in the world than man or
woman wots of. And we are sorry to be obliged to doubt the extent of
the new-made lady’s grief when she saw the laird’s cough increasing as
his love waxed stronger and his lungs grew less. Nay, we are not sure
that when she saw that he was dying, and hailed the signs with grief
in her eyes and joy in her heart, she was under the impression that
she was acting up to the amiable tenet of her religious creed--total
depravity. Be all which as it may, it is certain that though Dorothy’s
tears had been of that real kind of which Tully says they are--“the
easiest dried of all things,” they would not have retarded the progress
of the laird’s disease. It was not yet three months, and he was
confined to bed, with Dorothy hanging over him, watching him with all
the care of a seeker for favourable symptoms. But one evening there was
a symptom which she was unprepared for--nay, she was this time serious
in her alarm.
“I have done that which is evil in the sight o’ God.”
The words came as from a far-away place, they were so hollow.
“What is it, Tammas?” asked she.
“I have seen David Dempster’s ghaist,” said he. “It looked in at that
window, and disappeared in an instant; but no’ before I kent what the
een said. Yea, Dorothy, they said as plainly as een can speak--‘Tammas
Snoddy, ye made love to Dorothy Dempster when I was alive in the body,
and her lawful husband.’”
And the laird shook all over so violently that Dorothy could see the
clothes move.
“Just your conscience, Tammas,” said she. “Ye maun fley thae visions
awa in the auld way. It is the deevil tempting ye. We maun flap the
leaves o’ the Bible at him, and ye’ll see nae mair o’ him in this warld
at any rate.”
And Dorothy, taking up the holy book and opening it at the middle,
flapt it with such energy that more dust came out of it than should
have been found in a Calvinist’s Bible.
“Ye’ll see nor hilt, nor hair, nor hoop, nor horn mair o’ him,” she
added, with, we almost fear to surmise, a laugh.
And Mrs Snoddy’s prophecy was of that kind--the safest of all--which
comes after knowledge.
“Then I will dee in peace,” said the relieved laird; “for I hae nae
ither sin on my conscience.”
“Nae sin, nae salvation,” added Dorothy.
“A maist comfortable doctrine,” sighed the laird.