Chapter VII: Part 7

Yet the philosopher had further occasion for his good-humoured reticence, with which, as is well known, he declared he would alone meet the censors of his Essay, for it was really on the occasion of this great religious sensation in the city that the washer-women at the “Nor’ Loch” threatened to “dook him,” for the reason that, as they had heard, he had not only written that detestable Essay to prove that no miracles (for they were ungenerous enough to pay no attention to his _very_ grave exception of the real Bible ones) could ever be, but he had actually gone the extreme length of disbelieving the intervention of God to save the innocent Mary Mochrie from the Moloch of the criminal law. We need not be unassured that this additional bit of gossip, as it spread though the city, would only tend to the inflammation that already prevailed. Nor need we wonder at all this, when we remember the play of metaphysical wit, which was received as very serious by the vulgar,--that David believed in nothing, except that there was no God.

But the mind of the Edinburgh public was not destined to cool down before it underwent further combustion. It happened that a certain person of the name of Gallie, a common working jeweller in World’s End Close, was possessed of knowledge which he had picked up on the road to Newhaven, whither he had been going to bathe, on that very morning when the miraculous ring was lost, and which knowledge, he thought, being a knowing fellow, he could turn to account in the midst of the heat of collision between the miracle-mongers and the sceptics, even as he might have transmuted by the fire of the furnace a piece of base metal into gold; and he took a strange way to effect his purpose. Having first called on Mr Warrender and got a sight of the magic ring, he next wrote an advertisement, which he got printed in the form of the small posters of that day of Lilliputian bills. It ran in these terms:--“Mary Mochrie’s Miracle.--If any one is anxious to learne the trew secret of this reputyd miracle, let him or her, mann or woman, hye to the closs of ye Warld’s End, where Michael Gallie resideth, and on ye payement of one shilling they will hear somethyng that will astonie them; but not one to tell ye other upon his aith.”

Copies of this bill Gallie posted on several walls in the most crowded 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.

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.”

And Annie being thus satisfied, went away, dragging the main-sheet 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.

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.