wonderful, indeed, that if I had not had at second-hand the testimony
of an eye-witness, confirmed by the traditions of the Close, I could
scarcely have ventured the recital I here offer; not that I consider
the facts as unnatural, but that the causes which change love into
hatred, and superinduce the latter often in a direct ratio to the
former, lie so deep, and are altogether so mysterious, that we cannot
understand the meaning of their being there, and far less how they
came to be there. Some strange and unaccountable change came over
these hitherto loving sisters, not only at the same time, but without
its having ever been ascertained that there was any physical or moral
reason for it. It began to show itself in small catches and sharper
rejoinders; minim points not discernible by their former love became
subjects of difference. Then the number of these increased where
the points of contact were, as one might say, infinite. They assert
that nature resents too close an affinity of affection; nor is this
altogether theory, for we see every day friendships which are so close
as to merge identities flare up into terrible hatreds; and we have
scriptural authority for the wrath of brothers. A plain man would
get out of the difficulty in a plain way. Those sisters had become
discontented because they had rejected that natural food of the mind
which is derived from an intercourse with the world; and who does not
know that discontent always finds a peg somewhere whereon to hang a
grievance. Where you have many people about you, you have a greater
choice of these pegs; if you are cooped up in a room with only one
human being within your vision, you are limited; but the pegs must
be got, and _are_ got, till the whole of the one object, a miserable
scapegoat, is covered with them.
Probably the plain man is right. I leave him to the philosopher, and
keep to my safe duty as a narrator.
The spirit of fault-finding once begun, waxed stronger and stronger
upon the food it generated by its own powers of production. Almost
everything either of them did appeared to be wrong in the eyes of
the other; and though for a time they tried to repress the sharp
feelings, which were wonders even to themselves, yet the check would
come, the taunt would follow, and the flash of the eye--an organ once
so expressive of love--succeeded within the passing minute. People who
merely meet may be supposed to seek for objects of disagreement. In the
room in Burnet’s Close the occasions were the very actions of natural
life; the movements of the body, the words of the mouth, the glances
of the eye, the thoughts of the mind, the misconstrued feelings of the
heart. Nor could they, as in most cases people who disagree may, get
away from each other. The repulsion which they felt towards a world
which offered them only reminiscences of past joys, was as a wall
enclosing the arena where these gladiatorial displays of feeling went
on from day to day, scarcely even interrupted by the holy Sabbath any
more than if they had come within the excepted category of necessity
and mercy.
According to my information, which descended to the minutest
particulars, this domestic disease went on for years, without any other
alteration than changes consistent with the laws of bodily ailment.
There were exasperations which, expending themselves in gratuitous
vituperations, receded into silent sullennesses, which lasted for
days. If it happened that no grievance could be discovered by the
microscopic vision, there was recourse to the grievance of yesterday,
which was called up to occupy the greedy vacuum; and then the changes
of aspect, of which, to the jaundiced eye, it was capable, were rung
upon it till they were physically wearied of the strife: while the
weariness only lasted till a renewed energy became ripe for another
onset. But however high the exasperation ever reached, they never came
to any violence. All the energy expended lay in the tongue, and the
eye, and the contorted muscles of irascible expression. It might have
been doubted whether, if any third party interfered, the one would not
have defended the other; but only to retain her as valuable property
for the onset of her peculiar privilege. And what is not less strange,
their religion, which was still maintained with the old Calvinistic
dogmatism, in place of overcoming the domestic demon, became subjected
to it, and changed its aspect according to the wish. Though incapable
of inflicting any bodily pain upon each other, they felt no compunction
in fostering the opinion that, while each was among the elect and
predestinated to everlasting glory, the other was in the scroll of the
reprobate, and ordained to eternal punishment in the brimstone fires,
and the howling horrors of the pit which is so peculiarly constituted
as to have no bottom. Each would read her Bible in her own chair, and
shoot against the other glances of triumph as she figured herself in
heaven looking down upon the torments of her sister in hell. And all
this while neither could have with her own hands inflicted the scratch
of a pin upon the body of the other. It was enough that each could
lacerate the feelings of the other as a vent to the exasperation which
embittered her own heart.
Still more remarkable, there were none of these reconciliations
that among relations often make amends for strife, and maintain
the equipoise so insisted upon by nature. We all know how these
ameliorations work in the married life and among lovers. In these cases
the anger seems to become the fuel of love. Not so with our sisters.
The worm was a never-dying one. But even in this desperate case there
was not wanting evidence of nature’s efforts towards an amelioration.
It was true they could not separate; they were objects necessary
to each other; nay, even if Mr Ross, who witnessed the working of
the domestic evil, had contrived to get them into separate rooms--a
proposal which was indeed made, and morbidly resisted--they would have
pursued each other in imagination with perhaps even more misery than
that which they inflicted on each other.
At length they came to a scheme of their own, so peculiar that it has
formed the incident of that story which has made it live in Edinburgh
through many years, and even to this day. The plan was, that they
should draw in the middle of the floor a distinct line of chalk, which
should be a boundary between them, over which neither the one nor the
other would ever set her foot. To make this plan workable, it was
necessary that the two ends of the room should be each self-contained
as regarded the necessary articles of household plenishing; and this,
by the aid of Mr Ross and Peggy Fergusson, was duly accomplished. One
of these articles was a big ha’ Bible for Martha, to stand against that
retained by Mary--in explanation of which I may inform the English
reader that the old Calvinists had nearly as much faith in the size
of their Bibles as in their contents. Nor was the strength of their
faith altogether irrespective of the kind of cover, and the manner
in which it was clasped. There was a great virtue in good strong
calfskin--sometimes with the rough hair upon it; and if the clasps were
of silver or gold, the volume had a peculiar merit. It was necessary,
therefore, that Martha’s Bible should be as big as Mary’s; and the
latter having been adorned by old Peter Jopp with silver clasps, so the
former was equally orthodox in this respect.
And so the chalk line was drawn. The only difficulty regarded the
fire; but this was got over by some ingenuity on the part of Peggy and
a workman, whereby the grate was altered so as to hold two cranes;
and so minute were the engineers, that the end of the chalk line came
up to the hearth, dividing it exactly into two halves; so that each
crane could be got at without overstepping the mark. This arrangement
lasted through eleven years; and if to that period we add the five
years of prior strife, this domestic war endured for sixteen years;
nor, according to the report of Mr Ross and Peggy, with that of the
good many curious visitors who contrived through various excuses to
get a view of the domestic arrangement, was that magic line which thus
separated two hearts once so loving ever transgressed; nay, it seemed
to become a point of honour in the two maidens. They might read their
Bibles on either side of it, and send their mute anathemas across it,
so as to reach the unhappy non-elect; but not a foot of either ever
trod upon the mark. The foot of time might dull it, but the ready
hand of either revived the line of demarcation, even as the feelings
were kept alive in undying vividness; all which may easily enough be
conceived; it contravenes no law of nature; but I fairly admit that I
must draw a strong bill on the credulity of poor modern haters of the
Armenian kind, when I state what was on all hands acknowledged, that
after the chalk truce--that is, for eleven years--the residents of
this room, divided so against itself, never interchanged a word with
each other. I freely admit that all traditions become incrusted by
the marvellous. We do not reject port wine because it has undergone a
certain process. Yes; but we do not swallow the crust, which is only
deposited sugar. So be it; and you are welcome to your advantage,
provided you admit that the raciness you admire is the consequence
of the deposit; and so, in my case, you may reject the eleven years’
silence of Martha and Mary Jopp, yet you cannot get quit of the tang of
the reported marvel. For my own part, I am a little sceptical myself;
but then I cannot prove the negative of a popular statement; and I
rather doubt if there are many religions in the world which are founded
on anything better than this defiance.
Towards the end of the eleventh year a new incident arose to change
perhaps the tenor of this strange drama. Martha Darling, a daughter
of the sister Margaret who went to India, was sent home to Mr Ross to
be educated in Scotland, where she was to remain till the homecoming
of her parents, who had become rich on the spoils of Cheyte Sing, or
the Begums of Oude, or some other unfortunate Indian victim. The
girl was generous, and full of young life; and Mr Ross became hopeful
that by introducing her to her aunts some instinctive feelings might
be called up in the breasts of the sisters which would break up the
old congelation. He told her the story of the chalk line, and got a
scream of a laugh for an answer, with the threat that she would force
her aunts to embrace, and weep, and be friends. Next day the visit
was made, and, designedly, without any intimation that the niece had
arrived in Scotland. On opening the door, Mr Ross found the two ladies
in that position in which he had so often before found them, each
sitting stiffly on her own side of the chalk line, and looking out of
her window into the close--for, as I should have stated before, the
room was supplied by two windows.
“Your niece from India--only arrived yesterday.”
No more time for prologue, for the girl flew forward, and taking
her elder aunt round the neck, hugged her very lovingly after the
Anglo-Indian fashion, and thereafter, making a spring over the line of
chalk, she ran to Aunt Mary, and performed the same operation upon her,
but with no emolliating result; the old petrefactions, which had become
harder by the passage of every wave of time, were not to be dissolved
or softened by the sparkling rill from the green sunny mountains. They
looked strangely only because they looked unnaturally; but that was
no reason why Martha the younger should change her nature, and so she
rattled away, every now and then casting her eye, with a laugh, at the
line of chalk.
“If I had you only in India,” she went on, “where the natives, when
they drink bang, dance such strange dances, you would laugh so. Shall I
show you?”
And without waiting for an answer, she began to make very pretty but
somewhat irregular revolving movements on the floor, whereby in a short
time, by the rapid motion of her small feet, she contrived to efface
the line of chalk.
“Now you can hardly see it,” she proceeded with shortened breath; “and
now, the nasty thing being gone, you are to cross and shake hands, and
kiss each other.”
But the good-natured girl’s efforts were useless. The sisters sat as
stiff in their chairs as if they had been the figures in a pagoda
irresponsive to the dance of the worshippers. Even the confident
will-power of youth, which under-estimates all difficulties, was
staggered by the resistance offered to its efforts, and the young
Martha was obliged to leave without attaining an object over which she
had been dreaming the preceding night. Next morning the chalk line was
renewed, the still air of the room in Burnet’s Close had recovered
its quietude from the oscillation produced by the young girl’s laugh,
and the demon of obstinacy sat enshrined in its niche which it had
occupied for so many years; nor had the after visits of the younger
Martha had any better effect towards the object that lay nearest to
her generous heart. And now a month had passed; a particular morning
rose--not marked by an asterisk in the calendar, and yet remarkable for
opening with the thickest gray dawn that had been observed for a time.
And here you may already see I am getting among the mists, where old
Dame Mystery, with her undefined lines, is ready to assume the forms
forecast by brooding fancy. The gloom in the old room still hung thick,
as the two maiden ladies moved slowly about, so like automatons, each
preparing her cup of tea. So sternly had custom occupied the place of
primary nature, that it would now have appeared more strange and out
of joint for them to speak than to be silent. And so, as the minutes
passed, the gray mist of the morning gave way to the struggling rays of
the sun, and now there was something to be seen--nay, something that
could not be unseen. Nor this the less by token that the eyes of both
our Martha and Mary were fixed as if by a spell upon that part of the
wall over the mantelpiece. There was hanging bodily, in the old frame,
and radiant with the old light, the real picture of their mother, for
the possession of which they had sighed for sixteen years. We may
easily conceive that it could not fail of an effect, even as free from
the connexion of any mystery as to how it came to be there. But the
question, if put by either to herself or her neighbour, could not be
answered in any way consistently with natural causes, for neither of
them had been out of the room--nay, neither had been in a condition
which could have been taken advantage of by any one who wished by a
trick to take them by surprise. Then how catching the superstitious
when it plays into the hand of our fears! As they looked with
spell-bound eyes on that apparition, and read once more the expression
in that blessed countenance that spoke peace and love,--reproof enough
to those who for so many long years had disobeyed her injunctions to
treat each other as sisters, and love each other even as she loved them
and they her,--they never doubted but that some unseen hand placed that
picture there for the end of chastening their rebellious hearts, and
bringing them back to that love which was enjoined even by Him whom
they worshipped as the very God of Love. It seemed as if they shook as
they gazed, and each one at intervals sought with a furtive glance the
face of the other. A charm was working among the old half-dead nerves
that for years had quivered with the passions of the devil. The revived
feelings of that olden time, when that mild loving mother was the
centre of their affections and bond of love between themselves, were in
a tumult below the hard crust of mutual hatred, that was breaking under
the touch of the finger of God; they were both of the elect, since God
took the trouble to chide them and recall them to their duty and their
obedience. The relentings in the hard faces, the rising tears in the
eyes of both, the tremors in the hands, all spoke eloquently to each
other; nor did they speak in vain; they rose as if by sympathy. “O
Martha!” “O Mary!” No more; the words were enough, and the two sisters
were locked in the arms of each other, drawing long sighs, and sobbing
convulsively.
A scene all this which, being apt to precipitate one of my disposition
into the gushing vein, I must leave. I shall be on somewhat safer
ground as I proceed to say what truth and probability equally require,
that the paroxysm being over, and the two having begun, even as they
had done of old, to make and sugar each other’s tea, to butter each
other’s bread, and even to break each other’s egg, or bone each other’s
small haddock--most delightful tricks of love, which selfishness knows
nothing of, and cannot compensate by any means within its power,--they
gradually began to doubt whether some kindly hand of flesh was not
concerned in producing the phenomenon of the picture. They had both
been sound asleep till nine o’clock, and Peggy Fergusson had in the
gray dawn been in the room doing her duty to the fire. But what
although the Indian elf, who had likely brought the picture home with
her from India, had been put up by Mr Ross to a little deception, and
had slipt in in the wake of Peggy, and hung it on the nail which had
been so generously left by the old tenant? nay, these spinsters, apart
from the delusion produced by the demon of obstinacy, were sensible
women; and in the pleasant talk that now flowed like limpid water down
a very pretty valley with flowers on either side they came to the
conclusion, with--Oh, wonder!--a laugh fighting for utterance among the
dry muscles, that the fact was just so as we have stated it. What then.
Was not the effect admirable--yea, delectable?
A conclusion this which derived no little confirmation from the fact
that the young Anglo-Indian came bouncing into the room about eleven
o’clock, crying, in her spirited way, “Ah, I see it is all right,” and
yet never saying a word of the said picture; but, indeed, the fairy had
some work to do other than of revealing the secrets of Titania to her
victims, for she straightway set to work with a wet cloth to eradicate
every trace of that devil-invented line of chalk which had so long kept
asunder good amiable spirits. Nor was she contented with even this, for
to satisfy her impish whims, she got her now changed aunts, nothing
loth, to cross and recross the place of the now defaced line, till all
notion of the division was taken out of their minds.
It is a pleasant thing for me to have authority to say that this
miraculous change was not destined to be merely temporary. The flow
from the once secluded fountains of feeling continued its stream--nay,
it seemed as if the two old maidens could not love each other enough,
and they had been often heard to confess that one hour of pure nature
was worth all the sixteen years of factitious opposition to her
dictates. So true it is that, let us deplore as we may the many ills
of life, we shall never diminish them by damming up the fountains of
feeling and driving the emotions back upon the heart. Then fortune
favours those who are true to nature, who is the mother of fortune, and
all other occult agencies. The nabob and his wife came home the next
year, and set up a great establishment in our old city. The spinsters
were gradually drawn out again into that world which they had so
foolishly left--we use the word deliberately, for hermits carry with
them into their cells a worse world than they leave behind, however
unsteady, however cruel, and however vain, that may at times seem to
be;--nay, we can say with a good conscience that our two sisters became
the very darlings of a flock of young nephews and nieces; sometimes
danced in a reel of ancient maidens; gadded gaily about; sipt their
scandal, and helped like good citizens to spread the sweet poison; and
passed many years as happily as can be the fortune of those who are
contented to live according to the laws of nature.
[Illustration]
_Ballantyne & Company, Printers, Edinburgh._
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
entered into the public domain.