Chapter III: Part 3

In the course of five weeks William Halket put his foot on the old pier of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been urchins when he went away. The look of the old harbour revived the image which had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the running of the one image into the other produced the ordinary illusion of all that long interval appearing as a day; but there was no illusion in the change, that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and there was no Mary Brown there now. Having called a coach he told the driver to proceed up Leith Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay’s Inn, in St Mary’s Wynd; but the man told him there was no inn there, nor had been in his memory. The man added that he would take him to the White Horse in the Canongate, and thither accordingly he drove him. On arriving at the inn he required the assistance of the waiter to enable him to get out of the coach, nor probably did the latter think this any marvel, after looking into a face so furrowed with years, so pale with the weakness of a languid circulation, so saddened with care. The rich man had only an inn for a home, nor in all his native country was there one friend whom he hoped to find alive. Neither would a search help him, as he found on the succeeding day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old city. The houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures, and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years--a similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him as he was indeed strange to them. True, too, as the coachman said, Peter Ramsay’s Inn, where he had heard Mary singing at her work, and the stable where he had whistled blithely among his favourite horses, were no longer to be seen--_etiam cineres perierunt_--their very sites were occupied by modern dwellings. What of that small half-sunk lodging in Big Lochend Close, where Mary’s mother lived, and where Mary had been brought up, where perhaps Mary had died. Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to hobble down the Canongate to that little lodging, and might there not be for him a sad pleasure even to enter and sit down by the same fireplace where he had seen the dearly-beloved face, and listened to her voice, to him more musical than the melody of angels?

And so after he had walked about till he was wearied, and his steps became more unsteady and slow, and as yet without having seen a face which he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big Close. There was, as regards stone and lime, little change here; he soon recognised the half-sunk window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had sometimes tapped as a humorous sign that he was about to enter, which had often been responded to by Mary’s finger on the glass, as a token that he would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. A small corb would now hold all that remained of both mother and daughter. He turned away his head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. Yet the wish to enter that house rose again like a yearning, and what more in the world than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there for him to yearn for? All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of seeing the room where she was born--yea, where probably she had died. In as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair, which, in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he was at the foot of it; there was there the old familiar dark passage, with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any interest to him. Arrived at it he stood in doubt. He would knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him, and yet, what had he to fear, for half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown? At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see more of him, for the lobby was still darker.

“Who may live here?” said he, in the expectation of hearing some name unknown to him.

The answer, in a broken cracked voice, was not slow--

“Mary Brown; and what may you want of her?”

“Mary Brown!” but not a word more could he say, and he stood as still as a post, not a movement of any kind did he show for so long a time that the woman might have been justified in her fear of a very spirit.

“And can ye say nae mair, sir?” rejoined she. “Is my name a bogle to terrify human beings?”

But still he was silent, for the reason that he could not think--far less speak, nor even for some minutes could he achieve more than the repetition of the words, “Mary Brown.”

“But hadna ye better come in, good sir?” said she. “Ye may ken our auld saying: ‘They that speak in the dark may miss their mark;’ for words carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, to say the truth, I am old and blind.”

And, moving more as an automaton than as one under a will, Halket was seated on a chair with this said old and blind woman by his side, who sat silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger to explain what he wanted. Nor was the opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in the obscure light of the room, to scrutinise her form and features, and in doing this he went upon the presumption that this second Mary Brown only carried the name of the first; but as he looked he began to detect features which riveted his eyes; where the re-agent was so sharp and penetrating, the analysis was rapid--it was also hopeful--it was also fearful. Yes, it was true that that woman was _his_ Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the blue eyes were gray, without light and without speculation; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death; the lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet withal he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That wreck was dear to him; it was a relic of the idol he had worshipped through life; it was the only remnant in the world which had any interest for him; and he could on the instant have clasped her to his breast, and covered her pale face with his tears. But how was he to act? A sudden announcement might startle and distress her.

“There was a Mary Brown,” said he, “who was once a housemaid in Mr Peter Ramsay’s Inn in St Mary’s Wynd.”

“And who can it be that can recollect that?” was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. “Ye maun be full o’ years. Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever had in this world.”

“And there was one William Halket there at that time also,” he continued.

Words which, as they fell upon the ear, seemed to be a stimulant so powerful as to produce a jerk in the organ; the dulness of the eyes seemed penetrated with something like light, and a tremor passed over her entire frame.

“That name is no to be mentioned, sir,” she said, nervously, “except aince, and nae mair; he was my ruin; for he pledged his troth to me, and promised to come back and marry me, but he never came.”

“Nor wrote you?” said Halket.

“No, never,” replied she; “I would hae gien the world for a scrape o’ the pen o’ Will Halket; but it’s a’ past now, and I fancy he is dead and gone to whaur there is neither plighted troth, nor marriage, nor giving in marriage; and my time, too, will be short.”

A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, carrying the suspicion that Mr Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never forwarded the letters, whereto many circumstances tended.

“And what did you do when you found Will had proved false?” inquired Halket. “Why should that have been your ruin?”

“Because my puir heart was bound up in him,” said she, “and I never could look upon another man. Then what could a puir woman do? My mother died, and I came here to work as she wrought: ay, fifty years ago, and my reward has been the puir boon o’ the parish bread; ay, and, waur than a’ the rest, blindness.”

“Mary,” said Halket, as he took her emaciated hand into his, scarcely less emaciated, and divested of the genial warmth of life.

The words carried the old sound, and she started and shook.

“Mary!” he continued, “Will Halket still lives. He was betrayed, as you have been betrayed. He wrote three letters to you, all of which were kept back by his master, for fear of losing one who he saw would be useful to him; and, to complete the conspiracy, he reported you dead upon the authority of Peter Ramsay. Whereupon Will betook himself to the making of money, but he never forgot his Mary, whose name has been heard as often as the song of the birds in the groves of Virginia.”

“Ah, you are Will himself!” cried she. “I ken now the sound o’ your voice in the word ‘Mary,’ even as you used to whisper it in my ear in the fields at St Leonard’s. Let me put my hand upon your head, and move my fingers ower your face. Yes, yes; oh, mercy, merciful God, how can my poor worn heart bear a’ this!”

“Mary, my dear Mary!” ejaculated the moved man, “come to my bosom and let me press you to my heart; for this is the only blissful moment I have enjoyed for sixty years.”

Nor was Mary deaf to his entreaties, for she resigned herself as in a swoon to an embrace, which an excess of emotion, working on the shrivelled heart and the wasted form, probably prevented her from feeling.

“But, O Willie!” she cried, “a life’s love lost; a lost life on both our sides.”

“Not altogether,” rejoined he, in the midst of their mutual sobs. “It may be--nay, it is--that our sands are nearly run. Yea, a rude shake would empty the glass, so weak and wasted are both of us; but still there are a few grains to pass, and they shall be made golden. You are the only living creature in all this world I have any care for. More thousands of pounds than you ever dreamt of are mine, and will be yours. We will be married even yet, not as the young marry, but as those marry who may look to their knowing each other as husband and wife in heaven, where there are no cruel interested men to keep them asunder; and for the short time we are here you shall ride in your carriage as a lady, and be attended by servants; nor shall a rude breath of wind blow upon you which it is in the power of man to save you from.”

“Ower late, Willie; ower late,” sighed the exhausted woman, as she still lay in his arms. “But if all this should please my Will--I canna use another name, though you are now a gentleman--I will do even as you list, and that which has been by a cruel fate denied us here we may share in heaven.”

“And who shall witness this strange marriage?” said he. “There is no one in Edinburgh now that I know or knows me. Has any one ever been kind to you?”

“Few, few indeed,” answered she. “I can count only three.”

“I must know these wonderful exceptions,” said he, as he made an attempt at a grim smile; “for those who have done a service to Mary Brown have done a double service to me. I will make every shilling they have given you a hundred pounds. Tell me their names.”

“There is John Gilmour, my landlord,” continued she, “who, though he needed a’ his rents for a big family, passed me many a term, and forbye brought me often, when I was ill and couldna work, many a bottle o’ wine; there is Mrs Paterson o’ the Watergate, too, who aince when I gaed to her in sair need gave me a shilling out o’ three that she needed for her bairns; and Mrs Galloway o’ Little Lochend, slipt in to me a peck o’ meal ae morning when I had naething for breakfast.”

“And these shall be at our marriage, Mary,” said he. “They shall be dressed to make their eyes doubtful if they are themselves. John Gilmour will wonder how these pounds of his rent he passed you from have grown to hundreds. Mrs Paterson’s shilling will have grown as the widow’s mite never grew, even in heaven; and Mrs Galloway’s peck of meal will be made like the widow’s cruse of oil--it will never be finished while she is on earth.”

Whereupon Mary raised her head. The blank eyes were turned upon him, and something like a smile played over the thin and wasted face. At the same moment a fair-haired girl of twelve years came jumping into the room, and only stopped when she saw a stranger.

“That is Helen Kemp,” said Mary, who knew her movements. “I forgot Helen; she lights my fire, and when I was able to gae out used to lead me to the park.”

“And she shall be one of the favoured ones of the earth,” said he, as he took by the hand the girl, whom the few words from Mary had made sacred to him, adding, “Helen, dear, you are to be kinder to Mary than you have ever been;” and, slipping into the girl’s hand a guinea, he whispered, “You shall have as many of these as will be a bigger tocher to you than you ever dreamed of, for what you have done for Mary Brown.”

And thus progressed to a termination a scene perhaps more extraordinary than ever entered into the head of a writer of natural things and events not beyond the sphere of the probable. Nor did what afterwards took place fall short of the intentions of a man whose intense yearnings to make up for what had been lost led him into the extravagance of a vain fancy. He next day took a great house and forthwith furnished it in proportion to his wealth. He hired servants in accordance, and made all the necessary arrangements for the marriage. Time which had been so cruel to him and his sacred Mary was put under the obligation of retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs Paterson, Mrs Galloway, and Helen Kemp were those, and those alone, privileged to witness the ceremony. We would not like to describe how they were decked out, nor shall we try to describe the ceremony itself. But vain are the aspirations of man when he tries to cope with the Fates! The changed fortune was too much for the frail and wasted bride to bear. She swooned at the conclusion of the ceremony, and was put into a silk-curtained bed. Even the first glimpse of grandeur was too much for the spirit whose sigh was vanity, all is vanity, and, with the words on her lips, “A life’s love lost,” she died.

The Story of the Merrillygoes.

The world has been compared to many things,--a playhouse, a madhouse, a penitentiary, a caravanserai, and so forth; but I think a show-box wherein all, including man, is turned by machinery, is better than any of them. And every one looks through his own little round hole at all the rest, he being both object and subject. How the scenes shift too! the belief of one age being the laughing-stock of the next. Witches and brownies and fairies and ghosts and bogles have lost their quiddity, and given birth to quips and laughs; but I have here, as a simple storyteller, to do with one example of these vanished beliefs, what was in folk-lore called the “Merrillygoes,” sometimes in the old Scotch dictionaries spelled “Mirrligoes.” It was a supposed affection of the eyes, in which the victim or patient, as you suppose the visitation brought on by natural or supernatural powers, fancied he saw men and women and inanimate things which were not at the time before him. I think the affection was different from the “glamour” which was generally attributed to the wrath of fairies; and both indeed might, after all, be resolved into the pseudoblepsy of the old, and the monomania of the new nosologies. But dismissing all learning--which, however potent to puff up man’s pride, and then prick the bladder of his conceit, has no concern with a story--I at once introduce to you Mr David Tweedie. He was one of those Davids who, for some Scotch reason, are called Dauvit; and, like other simple men, he had a wife, whose name, I think, was Semple, Robina Semple, certainly not Simple. These worthies figured in Berenger’s Close of Edinburgh some time about the provostship of the unfortunate Alexander Wilson; and were not only man and wife by holy Kirk, but a copartnership, insomuch as, Dauvit being a tailor, she after marriage, and having no children to “fash her,” became a tailor also, sitting on the same board with him, using the same goose, yea, pricking the same flea with emulous needle.

Yet our couple were in some respects the most unlike each other in the world; Robina being a sharp, clear-witted, nay, ingenious woman--Dauvit a mere big boy. I do not know if I could give the reader a better explanation of the expression I have used than by referring him to the notion he might form of Holbein’s picture of his son, whom he quaintly and humorously painted as a man, but retaining all the features, except size, of a boy: the chubby cheeks, small snub nose, pinking eyes, and delicate colours. Nor was Dauvit a big chubby man merely as respected the body, for he was also little better than chubby in mind; at least in so far as regards credulity, passiveness, and softness. He had a marvellous appetite for worldly wonders, the belief being in the direct ratio of the wonderfulness, and he gave credit to the last thing he heard, for no other reason than that it was the last thing; one impression thus effacing another, so that the soft round lump remained always much the same. All which peculiarities were, it may easily be supposed, not only known to, but very well appreciated by, his loving, but perhaps not over-faithful, Binny.

If you keep these things in your mind, you will be able the better to estimate the value of the facts as I proceed to tell you that one morning Dauvit was a little later in getting out of bed than was usual with him, by reason that he had on the previous night been occupied with a suit of those sacredly-imperative things called in Scotland “blacks,” that is, mourning. But then the time was not lost; for Robina was up and active, very busily engaged in preparing breakfast. Not that Dauvit condescended to take much notice of these domestic duties of Binny, because he had ample faith not only in her housewifery, but the wonderful extent of her understanding; only it just happened, as indeed anything _may_ happen in a world where we do not know why anything _does_ happen, that as he lay very comfortably under the welcome pressure of the soft blankets, with his eyes looking as it were out of a hole, he heard a tap at the door, which tap was just as like that of the letter-carrier as any two blunts of exactly the same length could possibly be. Nor did his observation stop here; for he saw with these same eyes, as if confirming his ears, Binny go to the door and open it; then came the words of doubtless the said letter-carrier, “That’s for Dauvit;” and at the same instant a letter was put into his wife’s hands, and thereafter disappeared at the hole of her pocket, where there were many things that David knew nothing about.

Strange as this seemed to Mr Tweedie, even the last act of pocketing would not have appeared to him so very curious if at the moment of secreting the letter she had not very boldly, and even with a kind of smile upon her face, looked fully into the open eyes of her husband. But more still, this sagacious and honest woman immediately thereafter retired into the inner room, where, no doubt, she made herself acquainted with the contents of the communication, whatever it might be, and from which she came again to resume, as she did resume, her preparations for breakfast just as if nothing had happened beyond what was common. Of course I need not say that Dauvit was astonished; but his astonishment was an increasing quantity in proportion to the time that now passed without her going forward to the bedside and reading the letter to him, as she had often done before; and if we might be entitled to wonder why he didn’t at once put the question, “What letter was that, Binny?” perhaps the answer which would have been given by David himself might have been that his very wonder prevented him from asking for an explanation of the wonder--just as miracles shut people’s mouths at the same moment that they make them open their eyes.

However this might be--and who knows but that David might have a pawky curiosity to try Binny?--the never a word did he say; but, rising slowly and quietly, he dressed himself, in that loose way in which of all tradesmen the tailors most excel, for a reason of which I am entirely ignorant. He then sat down by the fire; and Binny having seated herself on the other side, the operation of breakfast began without a word being said on either part, but with mutual looks, which on the one side, viz., Robina’s, were very well understood, but on the other not at all. A piece of pantomime all this which could not last very long, for the good reason that impatience is the handmaiden of curiosity; and David at length, in spite of a bit of bread which almost closed up his mouth, got out the words--

“What letter was that, Binny, which the letter-carrier handed in this mornin’?”

“Letter! there was nae letter, man,” was the answer of Binny, accompanied with a look of surprise, which might in vain compete with the wonder immediately called up in the eyes of her simple husband.

“Did I no see it with my ain een?” was the very natural ejaculation.

“No, you didn’t; you only thought ye saw it,” said the wife; “and thae twa things have a gey difference between them.”

“What _do_ ye mean, Robina, woman?”

“The merrillygoes!”

“The merrillygoes,” rejoined the wondering David; “my een niver were in that condition.”

“_You_ may think sae, Dauvit,” rejoined Binny; “but I happen to ken better. On Wednesday night, when we were in bed, and the moon shining in at the window, did I no hear you say, ‘Binny, woman, what are ye doing up at this eery hour?’ It was just about twelve; and upon lifting my head and looking ower at ye, I saw your een staring out as gleg as a hawk’s after a sparrow. It had begun then.”

“Ou, I had been dreaming,” said David.

“Dreaming with your een open!”

“That is indeed strange enough,” rejoined David. “Did ye really see my een open?”

“Did ye ever hear me tell ye a lee, man? Am I no as true as the Bible? and think ye I dinna ken the strange light o’ the merrillygoes, when I have seen it in the een o’ my ain father?”

“Is that really true, Binny? I’m beginnin’ to get fear’d. But what o’ your father, lass?”

“Ye may weel ask,” said the wife. “He had been awa’ at Falkirk Tryst with his ewes, and it was about seven o’clock when he cam’ hame. We were then in the farm o’ Kimmergame. Weel, he was coming up the lang loan, and it was gloaming; and just when he was about twenty yards from his ain door, he saw twa men hurrying along with a coffin a’ studded with white nails. They were only a yard or twa before him, and the moment he saw them he stopped till he saw where they were going; and yet where could they be going but to his ain house; and nae doubt his wife would be dead, for the lang coffin couldna have fitted any other person in the house; but he was soon made sure enough, for he saw the men with the coffin enter into his ain door, and there he stood in a swither o’ fear; but he was a brave man, and in he went, never stopping till he got into his ain parlour, where my mother was sitting at her tea, and nae sooner did she see him than she broke out in a laugh o’ perfect joy at his hamecome. But the never a word he ever said about the coffin, because he didn’t wish to terrify his wife with evil omens; and besides, he understood the vision perfectly. And, Dauvit, if ye’re a wise man ye will submit to the hand o’ God, wha sees fit to bring thae visitations upon us for some wise end.”

“Very true,” said David, to whom the affair of the letter was rather much even for _his_ credulity; “but still, Binny, lass, I canna just come to it that I was deceived.”

“Weel, weel, stick to it, my man, and mak me, your ain wife, a leear.”

“That canna be either,” rejoined David; “and by my faith, I’m at a loss what to think or what to do; for if it really be that the infliction’s upon me, how, in the Lord’s name, am I to ken the real thing from the fause? My head rins right round at the very thought o’t. And then I fancy there’s nae remedy in the power o’ man.”

“I fear no,” replied Binny. “Ye maun just pray; but I have heard my father say that it came on him after he had been confined with an ill-working stomach to the house, and exercise drove it away. Ye’ve been sitting ower close. Take scouth for a day. Awa’ ower to Burntisland, and get payment from John Sprunt o’ the three pounds he owes for his last suit. Stay ower the night. I say nothing about the jolly boose ye’ll have thegither, but it may drive thae fumes and fancies out o’ your head. Come ower with the first boat in the morning, and I will have your breakfast ready for you.”

The prudence of this advice David was not slow to see, though he had, maugre his simplicity, considerable misgivings about the affair of the letter; nor did he altogether feel the absolute conviction that he was under the influence of the foresaid mysterious power. But independently of the prudence of her counsel, he felt it as a command, and therefore behoved to obey. For we may as well admit that David might doubt of the eternal obligation of a certain decalogue by reason of its being abrogated; but as for the commands of Mrs Robina, they were subject to no abrogation, and certainly no denial whatever. So David went and dressed himself in his “second-best”--a particular mentioned here with an after-view--and having got from the hands of her, who was thus both wife and medical adviser, a drop of spirits to help him _on_, and the merrillygoes _off_, he set forth on his journey.

Proceeding down Leith Wynd, he found himself in Leith Walk; but however active his limbs, thus relieved on so short a warning from “the board,” and however keen and far-sighted his eyes, as they scanned all the people he met, he could not shake off certain doubts whether the individuals he met were in reality creatures of flesh and blood, or mere visions. The sacred words of Mrs Robina were a kind of winged beliefs, which, by merely striking on the ear, performed for him what many a man has much trouble in doing for himself--that is, thinking; so that upon the whole the tendency of his thoughts was in a great degree favourable to sadness and terror. The sigh was heaved again and again; being sometimes for a longer period delayed, as the hope of a jolly boose with his friend Sprunt held a partial sway in his troubled mind. But by and by the activity required by his search for a boat, the getting on board, the novelty of the sail, the undulating movements, and all the interests which belong to a “traveller by sea and land,” drove away the cobwebs that hung about the brain; and by the time he got to Burntisland he was much as he used to be. But, alas, he little knew that this journey, propitious as it appeared, was not calculated to produce the wonderful effects expected from it.

No sooner had he landed on the pier than he made straight for the house of his friend, which stood by the roadside, a little removed from the village. He saw it in the distance; and quickening his steps, came to an angle which enabled him to see into Mr Sprunt’s garden; and we may, considering how much the three pounds, the boose, the fun, the cure was associated with the figure of that individual, imagine the satisfaction felt by Mr Tweedie when he saw the true body of John Sprunt in that very garden, busily engaged, too, in the delightful occupation of garden-work, and animated, we may add of our own supposition, with a mind totally oblivious of the three pounds he owed to the Edinburgh tailor. But well and truly may we speak of the uncertainty of mundane things. David had only turned away his eyes for an instant, and yet in that short period, as he found when he again turned his head, the well-known figure of his old friend, pot-companion, and debtor in three pounds, had totally disappeared. The thing looked like what learned people call a phenomenon. How could Sprunt have disappeared so soon? Where could he have gone to be invisible, where there was no summer-house to receive him, and where the time did not permit of a retreat into his own dwelling? David stood, and began to think of the words of Robina. There could be no doubt that his eyes had been at fault again; it was not John Sprunt he had seen--merely a lying image. And so even on the instant the old sadness came over him again, with more than one long sigh; nor in his depression and simplicity was he able to bring up any such recondite thing as a thought suggesting the connexion between John’s disappearance and the fact that he owed Mr David Tweedie--whom he could have seen in the road--the sum of three pounds.

In which depressed and surely uncomfortable condition our traveller proceeded towards the house, more anxious, indeed, to disprove his terrors than to get his money. He knocked at the door, which, by the by, was at the end of the house; and his knock was answered by Mrs Sprunt herself, a woman who could have acted Bellona in an old Greek piece.

“I am glad John is at hame,” were David’s first words.

“And I would be glad if that were true, Mr Dauvit,” replied she; “but it just happens no to be true. John went off to Kirkaldy at six o’clock this morning to try and get some siller that’s due him there.”

“Let me in to sit down,” muttered David, with a kind of choking in his voice.

And following the good dame into the parlour, Mr Tweedie threw himself into the arm-chair in a condition of great fear and perturbation. Having sat mute for a minute or two, probably to the wonderment of the dame, he began to rub his brow with his handkerchief, as if taking off a little perspiration could help him in his distress.

“Mrs Sprunt,” said he, “I could have sworn that I saw John working in the yard.”

Whereat Mrs Sprunt broke out into a loud laugh, which somehow or another seemed to David as ghostly as his visions; and when she had finished she added, “Something wrong, Dauvit, with your een.”

“Gudeness gracious and ungracious!” said David. “Is this possible? Can it really be? Whaur, in the name o’ Heeven, am I to look for a real flesh-and-blood certainty?”

“And yet ye seem to be sober, Dauvit.”

“As a judge,” replied he. But, after a pause, “Can I be sure even o’ _you_?” he cried, as he started up; the while his eyes rolled in a manner altogether very unlike the douce quiet character he bore. “Let me satisfy mysel that you are really Mrs Janet Sprunt in the real body.”

And making a sudden movement, with his arms extended towards the woman, he tried to grip her; but it was a mere futile effort. Mrs Sprunt was gone through the open door in an instant, and David was left alone with another confirmation of his dreaded suspicion, muttering to himself, “There too, there too,--a’ alike; may the Lord have mercy upon His afflicted servant! Robina Tweedie, ye were right after a’, and that letter was a delusion like the rest--a mere eemage--a’ eemages thegither.”

After which soliloquy he again sat down in the easy-chair, held his hands to his face, and groaned in the pain of a wounded spirit. But even in the midst of this solemn conviction that the Lord had laid His hand upon him, he could see that sitting there could do him no good; and, rising up, he made for the kitchen. There was no one there; he tried another room, which he also found empty; and issuing forth from the unlucky house, he encountered an old witch-looking woman who was turning the corner, as if going in the direction of another dwelling.

“Did you see Mrs Sprunt even now?” said he.

“No likely,” answered the woman; “when she tauld me this mornin’ she was going to Petticur. She has a daughter there, ye ken.”

Melancholy intelligence which seemed to have a logical consistency with the other parts of that day’s remarkable experiences; nor did David seem to think that anything more was necessary for the entire satisfaction of even a man considerably sceptical, and then who in those days doubted the merrillygoes?

“What poor creatures we are!” said he. “I came here for a perfect cure, and I gae hame with a heavy care.”

And with these words, which were in reality an articulated groan, Mr David Tweedie made his way back towards the pier, under an apprehension that as he went along he would meet with some verification of a suspicion which, having already become a conviction, not only required no more proof, but was strong enough to battle all opposing facts and arguments; so he went along with his chin upon his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the ground, as if he were afraid to trust them with a survey of living beings, lest they might cheat him as they had already done. It was about half-past twelve when he got to the boat; and he was further disconcerted by finding that the wind, which had brought him so cleverly over, would repay itself, like over-generous givers, who take back by one hand what they give by the other. And so it turned out; for he was fully two hours on the passage, all of which time was occupied by a reverie as to the extraordinary calamity that had befallen him. And how much more dreary his cogitations as he thought of the increased unhappiness of Robina, when she ascertained not only the failure of getting payment of his debt, but the total wreck of her means of cure!

At length he got to Leith pier; but his landing gave him no pleasure: he was still haunted with the notion that he would encounter more mischances; and he hurried up Leith Walk, passing old friends whom he was afraid to speak to. Arrived at the foot of Leith Wynd, he made a detour which brought him to the foot of Halkerston’s Wynd, up which he ascended, debouching into the High Street. And here our story becomes so incredible, that we are almost afraid to trust our faithful pen to write what David Tweedie saw on his emerging from the entry. There, coming up the High Street, was Mrs Robina Tweedie herself, marching along steadily, dressed in David’s best suit. He stood and stared with goggle eyes, as if he felt some strange pleasure in the fascination. The vision was so concrete, that he could identify his own green coat made by his own artistic fingers. There were the white metal buttons, the broadest he could get in the whole city--nay, one of them on the back had been scarcely a match, and he recognised the defect; his knee-breeches too, so easily detected by their having been made out of a large remnant of a colour (purple) whereof there was not another bit either to be bought or “cabbaged,”--nay, the very brass knee-buckles of which he was so proud; the “rig-and-fur” stockings of dark brown; the shoe-buckles furbished up the last Sunday; the square hat he had bought from Pringle; and, to crown all, his walking-stick with the ivory top. So perfect indeed was the “get-up” of his lying eyes, that, if he had not been under the saddening impression of his great visitation, he would have been well amused by the wonderful delusion. Even as it was, he could not help following the phantom, as it went so proudly and jantily along the street. And what was still more extraordinary, he saw Mucklewham, the city guardsman, meet her and speak to her in a private kind of way, and then go away with her. But David had a trace of sense in his soft nature. He saw that it was vain as well as hurtful to gratify what was so clearly a delusion; it would only deepen the false images in eyes already sufficiently “glamoured;” and so he stopped suddenly short and let them go--that is, he would cease _to look_,--and they, the visions, would cease _to be_. In all which how little did he know that he was prefiguring a philosophy which was some time afterwards to become so famous! Nay, are we not all under the merrillygoes in this world of phantoms?

“You say you see the things that be:
I say you only think you see.
Not even that. It seems to me
You only think you think you see.
Then thinking weaves so many a lie,
Methinks this world is ‘all my eye.’”

But even in his grief and sacred fear he could not help saying to himself, “Gude Lord! if that eemage werena frightfu’, would it no be funny? And what will Robina say? Nae doubt she is at this very moment sitting at her tea in Berenger’s Close, thinking upon my calamity. What _will_ she say when I tell her that I saw her in the High Street dressed in my Sunday suit, walking just as if she were Provost Wilson himsel? I wouldna wonder if she should get into ane o’ her laughing fits, even in very spite o’ her grief for the awful condition of her loving husband. At any rate, it’s time I were hame, when I canna tell what I am to see next, nor can even say which end o’ me is uppermost.”

Nor scarcely had he finished his characteristic soliloquy, when a hand was laid on his shoulder. It was that of the corporal; but how was David to know that? Why, he felt Bill’s hand; and to make things more certain, he even laid his own hand upon the solid shoulder of the sturdy city guardsman; adding, for still greater proof--

“Did you meet and speak to any one up the street there?”

“The niver a living soul,” said the corporal, “as I’m a sinner; but come along, man, to the Prophet Amos’s,” (a well-known tavern in the Canongate,) “and let us have a jolly jug, for I’m to be on duty to-night, and need something to cheer me up; and the colour of ale will sit better on your cheeks when you go home to Robina than that saffron. Are you well enough, David? I think I might as well ask the question of a half-hanged dog.”

“Half or hale hanged,” replied David, as he eyed his friend suspiciously, “I canna be the waur o’ a jug o’ ale.”

An answer which was perhaps the result of sheer despair, for the conviction of the “real unreality” of what he had seen was now so much beyond doubt that he began to submit to it as a doom; and what is irremediable becomes, like death, to be bearable, nay, even accommodating to the routine of life; and so the two jogged along till they came to the Prophet’s, where they sat down to their liquor and, we may add, loquacity, of which latter Mucklewham was so profuse, that any other less simple person than David might have thought that the guardsman wanted to speak against time. But David suspected nothing, and he was the more inclined to be patient that his friend had promised to pay the score.

“And when saw ye Robina?” said David.

“Not for a good round year, my bairn,” said the big corporal.

“Gude Lord, did ye no see her and speak to her even this day?”

Whereupon the big guardsman laughed a horse (guardsman’s) laugh; and pointing his finger to his eye he twirled the same, that is the finger, merrily round. A movement which David too well understood; and after heaving a deep sigh, he took a deep pull at the ale, as if in a paroxysm of despair.

And so they drank on, till David having risen and left the room for a breath of fresh air, found on his return that his generous friend had vanished. Very wonderful, no doubt. But, then, had he not taken his jug with him?--no doubt to get it replenished--and he would return with a filled tankard. Vain expectation! Mucklewham was only another Sprunt, another lie of the visual sense. Did David Tweedie really need this new proof? David knew he didn’t; neither did he require the additional certainty of his calamity by having to pay only for his own “shot.” The Prophet did not ask for more, nor did he think it necessary to say why; perhaps he would make the corporal pay his own share afterwards. The whole thing was as clear as noon: David had been drinking with one who had no stomach wherein to put his liquor, and for the good reason that he had no body to hold that stomach.

“Waur than the case o’ the letter, or Sprunt, (hiccup,) or Robina dressed in my claes,” said he lugubriously, “for I only _saw_ them, but I handled the corporal, sat with him, drank with him, heard him speak; yet baith he and the pewter jug were off in a moment, and I hae paid (hic) only for ae man’s drink. But is it no a’ a dream thegither? I wouldna wonder I am at this very moment in my bed wi’ Robina lying at my back.”

And rising up, he discovered that he was not very well able to keep his legs, the more by reason that he had poured the ale into an empty stomach; there was, besides, a new confusion in his brain, as if that organ had not already enough to do with any small powers of maintaining itself in equilibrium which it possessed. But he behoved to get home; and to Berenger’s Close he accordingly went, making sure as he progressed of at least one truth in nature, amidst all the dubieties and delusions of that most eventful day: that the shortest way between two points is the deflecting one. And what was Binny about when he entered his own house? Working the button-holes of a vest which had been left by David unfinished. No sooner did she see David staggering in than she threw the work aside.

“Hame already? and in that state too!” she cried. “You must have been seeing strange ferlies in the High Street, while I was sitting here busy at my wark.”

“Strange enough, lass; but if you can tell me whether or no I am Dauvit Tweedie, your lawfu’ husband or the Prophet Moses, or the Apostle Aaron, or (hic) the disciple Deuteronomy, or the deevil, it’s mair than I can.”

Whereupon David dropt his uncertain body in a chair, doubting perhaps if even the chair was really a chair.

“And it wasna just enough,” rejoined she, “that you had an attack of the merrillygoes, but you must add pints o’ ale to make your poor wits mair confounded.”

A remark which Robina thought herself entitled to make, irrespective of the question which for a hundred years has been disputed, viz., whether she had sent the corporal to take David to Prophet Amos’s and fill him drunk with ale, and then shirk the score?

“But haste ye to bed, my man,” she added, “that’s the place for you, where you may snore awa’ the fumes o’ Prophet Amos’s ale, and the whimwhams o’ your addled brain.”

An advice which David took kindly, though he did not need it; for, educated as he may be said to have been by the clever Robina, he was fortunately one of those favoured beings pointed at in the wise saying that the power of education is seldom effectual except in those happy cases where it is superfluous. So it was the ale that sent him to bed and to sleep as well--a condition into which he sunk very soon. And it was kindly granted to him, insomuch as it was a kind of recompense for what he had suffered during that day of wonders: it saved him from the possibility of hearing a conversation in the other room between Robina and the corporal, in the course of which it was asked and answered whether David had recognised Robina in her male decorations; and whether he had any suspicions as to the true character of the deep plot they were engaged in working out.

What further took place in the house of Mr Tweedie that night we have not been able, notwithstanding adequate inquiry, to ascertain; but of this important fact we are well assured, that next morning David awoke in a much improved condition. To account for this we must remember his peculiar nature, for to him “the yesterday,” whatever yesterday it might be, was always a _dies non_; it had done its duty and was gone, and it had no business here any more than an impudent fellow who tries to live too long after the world is sick of him. Indeed, we know that he ate such a breakfast, and with such satisfaction, that no ideas of a yesterday had any chance of resisting the feelings of the moment; and once gone, they had too much difficulty to get into the dark chamber again to think of trying it. He was “on the board” by ten o’clock. For he had work to do, and as Robina’s purpose was in the meantime served, she said no more of the merrillygoes. She had perhaps something else to do; for shortly after eleven she went out, perhaps to report to the corporal the sequel to that which he already knew. But whatever her object, her absence was not destined to be so fruitful of good to her as her presence wherever she might go; for it so happened that as David was sitting working, and sometimes with his face overcast with a passing terror of a return of his calamity, he found he required a piece of cloth of a size and colour whereof there were some specimens in an old trunk. To that repository of cabbage, as it is vulgarly called, he went; and in rummaging through the piebald contents he came upon a parcel in a corner. On opening it, he found to his great wonderment no fewer than a hundred guineas of pure gold. The rays from the shiny pieces seemed to enter his eyes like spikes, and fix the balls in the sockets; if he felt a kind of fascination yesterday as he looked at his wife in male attire, though a mere vision, he experienced the influence now even more, however doubtful he was of the reality of the glittering objects. He seized, he clutched them, he shut his eyes, and opened them again as he opened his hands; they did _not_ disappear; but then Robina herself might appear, and under this apprehension, which put to flight his doubts, he carried them off, and secreted them in a private drawer of which he had the key; whereupon he betook himself again to the board. By and by Robina returned; but the never a word David said of the guineas, because he had still doubts of the veracity of his eyes.

And so the day passed without anything occurring to suggest either inquiry or answer. During the night David slept so soundly that he was even oblivious of his prize; and it was not till eleven next forenoon, when his wife went out, that he ventured to look into the drawer; but now the terrible truth was revealed to him: the guineas were gone, and he had been again under delusion. The merrillygoes once more! and how was he to admit the fact to Robina, after his attempted appropriation!

But, happily, there was no necessity for admitting his own shame, for about four o’clock John Jardine the letter-carrier called and told him that his wife had eloped with the corporal. The intelligence was no doubt very dreadful to David, who loved his wife so dearly that he could have subscribed to the saying “that the husband will always be deceived when the wife condescends to dissemble;” but Mrs Robina Tweedie did not so condescend; and David now began to see certain things and to recollect certain circumstances which, when put together, appeared even to his mind more strange than the merrillygoes. And his eyes were opened still further by a letter from Kirkcudbright from a Mr Gordon, wishing to be informed why he had not acknowledged the receipt of the hundred guineas left him by his uncle, and which had been sent in a prior letter in the form of a draft on the Bank of Scotland. Mr David Tweedie now went to the bank, and was told that the money had been paid to a man in a green coat and white metal buttons, square hat, and walking-stick, who represented himself as David Tweedie.

Our story, it will be seen, has pretty nearly explained itself; yet something remains to be told. A whole year elapsed, when one morning Mrs Robina Tweedie appeared before honest David, with a lugubrious face and a lugubrious tale, to the effect that although she had been tempted to run away with the corporal, she had almost immediately left him--a pure, bright, unsullied wife; but during all this intermediate time she had felt so ashamed and conscience-stricken, that she could not return and ask forgiveness. All which David heard, and to all which he answered--