The Court of Cacus Part 5

The latter bore the character of a decent, hard-working man, who had not only the world out of doors to contend with, but within, the temper of a masculine wife. Some success enabled him to become a small contractor on the Union Ca.n.a.l, and for some time he worked his contract, with a detachment of his countrymen, in the neighbourhood of Winchburgh; but we may estimate the extent of his contract, and not less the Irish peculiarity of both the man and his wife, when we know that the contractor's lady worked along with the men in the character of a labourer, with a man's coat on her back, wheeling a barrowful of rubbish as stoutly as any of her men. At that time, they inhabited a temporary hut on the banks of the ca.n.a.l, and, whatever her faults may have been, she exhibited here nothing but economy and industry. The work being finished, Log settled in Edinburgh, where, though honest enough, the contractor became sunk in the huckster, and the keeper of a beggars' hotel, which was soon to rival even Mickey Culzean's. Upon his death, the lodging and furniture, such as it was, with any small earnings he had saved, devolved upon the widow, and thereafter she conducted the establishment; but she soon shewed the smallness of her grat.i.tude and the strength of her pa.s.sion by cohabiting with one of her lodgers, described as young and good-looking, and, thereafter, the depravity of her taste in accepting Hare after the young lover forsook her. Yet her choice was only that which is made by those who seek their kind. The drunkard and semi idiot had charms for one who was herself dest.i.tute not less of virtue than of prudence, and we are soon to see her descending into unparalleled crime, not by the imposed will of Hare, but the ready suggestion of her own heart.

Such are the characters of our wonderful story; and we make no apology to sensible men for disentombing such specimens of our kind from the dust-covered chronicles of their deeds. A salutary horror, not only of their great crimes, but also of those lesser ones which led to these, pervaded the people of Scotland long after the tragedy of so many acts and scenes was performed; and thus it is, in the providence of G.o.d, that virtue becomes brighter by the contrast with vice. It is only, as some one has observed, when the tempest tosses the waves of the ocean into mountains that we see into its depths. It was by the light of burning Troy that aeneas saw the faces of the G.o.ds; and so it is through the light of human pa.s.sions that we discover the nature of the heart of man.

The Opening of the Court--The Old Woman of Gilmerton.[5]

The house which went by the name of Log's lodging-house, and which was occupied by William Hare, as raised by the favour of the widow to the elevation of landlord, was, as already said, situated in Tanner's Close,--one of those narrow pa.s.sages that wind from the north side of the West Port. The entry from the street begins with a descent of a few steps, and is dark from the superinc.u.mbent land. On proceeding downwards, you came--for the house, which was rased for shame, is no longer to be seen--to a smallish self-contained dwelling of one flat, and consisting of three apartments. One pa.s.sing down the close might, with an observant eye, have seen into the front room; but this disadvantage was compensated by the house being disjoined from other dwellings, and a ticket, "Beds to let," as an invitation to vagrants, so many of whom were destined never to come out alive, distinguished it still more. The outer apartment was large, occupied all round by these structures called beds, composed of knocked-up fir stumps, and covered with a few gray sheets and brown blankets, among which the squalid wanderer sought rest, and the profligate snored out his debauch under the weight of nightmare. Another room opening from this was also comparatively large, and furnished much in the same manner. In place of any concealment being practised, so far impossible, indeed, in the case of a public lodging-house, the door stood generally open, and, as we have said, the windows were overlooked by the pa.s.sengers up and down; but as the spider's net is spread open while his small keep is a secret hole, so here there was a small apartment, or rather closet, the window of which looked upon a pig-sty and a dead wall, and into which, as we know, were introduced those unhappy beings destined to death. The very character of the house, the continued scene of roused pa.s.sions, saved it from that observation which is directed towards temporary tumults, so that no surprise could have been excited by cries of suffering issuing from such a place, even if they could have been heard from the interior den; and that was still more impossible, from the extraordinary mode of extinguis.h.i.+ng life adopted by the wary and yet unwary colleagues. In this inner apartment Burke used to work when he did work, which, always seldom, soon came to be rare, and eventually relinquished for other wages.

It will thus be seen that this small dark room was the appropriate place where the words of secrecy would pa.s.s to the ear, or be blurted forth, coa.r.s.e and broken, under the fevered brain of drunkenness. Since ever that night when the 7, 10s. flared its magnetic influence over their eyes, and was communicated, by confidence and sympathy, to the two females, the little world of this quaternity was changed. The women saw that other lodgers would die, and the inspiring hope, not so demoniac as to curdle the remaining drops of human kindness that refused to leave the female breast, pointed in the inevitable direction of gaudy finery, which they might flaunt in the wondering eyes of the poor people of Portsburgh; but so slow a process did not suit the inflamed pa.s.sions of the men. Hare had been revolving in his mind a scheme to set up his own will as the arbiter of the occasion, which would secure more money, even as he wished it; and the secret of this talisman behoved to be communicated to his friend, now poor and miserable, and dissolved in habits of sloth and inebriety. It was in that small room, and while the two women were engaged in the front apartments, that this mystic rite was performed between the solitary inmates, over, as might be expected, the caldron fires of drink. Yes, the mouth found power to utter the words which came as the dictates of a mere desire for money, that they should seize the opportunity so often presented to them of people lying drunk and senseless, and deprive them, by suffocation, of life. The proposition was accepted under the same approving auspices of mammon, who had already made both his own; and under the force of that temptation involved in the words which had been uttered in Surgeon's Square, offering a welcome to a return with a similar burden to that of the pensioner. You may cease to indulge here in those visions of the fancy which would represent human nature in convulsions, panting under the impression of a thought which, at first, produced a revolt, and then became conciliated. The "make" of each of these men was perfect under its own conditions, and if there was any seriousness, it was only a pa.s.sing fear that they might bring their necks into jeopardy. Pity, which never lived in them, could not be said to be dead; the impress of the first money had burned into their souls; the welcome of the doctors rung in their ears; and Grace, studying them in the distance, had flown past them as an impossibility.

There is reason to believe that this resolution come to by these men, sitting together in this dark room, pa.s.sed as an element into an orgy, different from all those in which they had so often indulged, if not from any that the world ever witnessed; nor was it modified, if it was not inflamed, by those visions of struggling nature expiring among their hands, which, rising as mere spectral forms, disappeared as soon before the images they pictured of a life of sensual indulgence and enervating sloth. If the project had sprung out of the ebullitions of intoxicated pa.s.sions, it might have died away on the morrow, but, the result of calculation, it only received strength from the hopes which it roused, and which again were inflamed by the celebration. Nay, time, as day by day pa.s.sed without a likely lodger coming in, increased the desire to begin, and chafed them into impatience. Hare accordingly resolved to commence prowling about the streets for some promising individual whom he might seduce into the house, and for some days he followed this occupation, but his efforts failed, and the report at night only again inflamed the desire of the morning. One afternoon, it was in December 1827, he again betook himself to the street, and for hours dodged about searching among the poor and miserable for some one who, already intoxicated, might offer those facilities to a beginner which were afterwards held of small account when practice gave proficiency and success confidence. At last he observed in the Gra.s.smarket a decent-looking elderly woman (Abigail Simpson, as afterwards ascertained) whose wandering eye and irregular step shewed that she had got more of the publican's drug than her perhaps weak head could carry. His eye was immediately fixed upon her, and the old smile, which always obeyed the bidding of an evil thought, played over his face, nor did he let her out of his sight as he dogged her irregular movements from place to place. He could see that she was poor, that she was probably friendless, and, above all, that she was tipsy, and he knew enough of degraded nature to tell him what the proverb has settled, _Qui a bu boira_,--he who has drunk will drink more. Making up to her, he introduced himself as one who had met her before, and to his delight, discovered that she was inclined to be communicative, if not garrulous. It was not a difficult matter to advise her to accompany him to his house, where he would treat her with the old bribe of "a dram." So away they trudged together, the dissembler taking special care as he went to keep her on her course, from which she was every moment inclined to stray, by professions of interest and friends.h.i.+p.

Arrived at the lodging-house, the woman was introduced to Burke, with what looks between the two may easily be imagined, as an old friend, and drink was immediately procured. There was now a party which was joined by the two women, who, when they saw the men plying the stranger with whisky--the full value of which their difficulty in getting it to the extent they desired was sufficiently known to them--must have been aware that there was at the bottom of this generosity more than the friends.h.i.+p professed by men dead to the feeling, even as regards those who might have had a claim to it. The time pa.s.sed, and the party became merry, nor was the stranger the least joyous of them, for had she not fallen among friends by sheer accident? and should she not prove her grat.i.tude by being happy, ay, and communicating to them all her secrets? Was she not fortunate in being able to tell them that she was a pensioner of a gentleman in the New Town, who paid her regularly one s.h.i.+lling and sixpence a-week, besides little gratuities, such as the can of kitchen-fee she carried with her, and put aside till she should depart? Yes, and more, that she was blessed with a fine young daughter she had left at home, and who would be anxiously waiting her return. And then that daughter was not only good, she was _beautiful_, and the very pride of her soul. All this Hare heard; and he could carry out the play she had begun, even amidst the intentions he entertained, by expressing an interest in the mother's paragon, so deeply felt, that, being unmarried, he would put in for her hand, provided the mother would consent. And consent she did, so far as her condition would allow, and here, newly forged, was another bond of friends.h.i.+p. Nay, when he and the daughter should have become man and wife, it behoved that they could not live without the good old mother--who, accordingly, would take up her residence with them, with no more cares of poverty, and no dependence upon the pensioning gentleman of the New Town.

Could any human creature be more happy? Nor were the actors less so, though for a reason so very different. But the drink went done, even with the forbearance of the men, that she who would pay so dearly for it should have enough for their purpose. Mrs Hare had money, and there was the can of kitchen-fee, which the stranger could sell, and take home with her--_when the time came_--the price, one and sixpence, to help her little pension, and get a dram at another time, when they would not be there to give it to her. Then, to make the play even more merry and ingenious, this small sum was, very soon after, again, taken from the now almost unconscious woman's pocket, and laid out on more spirits, that the expected opportunity might be made more propitious. The scene progressed with even increased symptoms of noisy merriment. The old woman revived, and, under so many influences bearing on a kindly heart, did her best to sing some of her old songs--household words to her, no doubt, and feelings as well, with which she often at home wiled back the days of her youth, and charmed the ear of that daughter of whom she was so proud and so fond.

Nay, we have the hearsay of the day for saying, that Burke contributed his part, singing, as he was so much in the habit of doing, some of those airs, generally, according to the account of those who knew him, sentimental, if not melancholy.

And here we are obliged absolutely to stop for a moment, not that we wish to intrude upon the reader a moralising spirit, where every word suggests a sermon out of more hardened things than stones, but that we are mystified, and are inclined to ask counsel. Could that man have had any sense of the beautiful in the sentiments of these lyrics which, it was said, he sang with feeling, if not pathos? Can it be possible that such a sense can be consistent with a demoralisation such as his? We suspect that it is. We are led to expect its impossibility by a reference to opposite, if not antagonistic, feelings: we cannot love and hate the same object.

This is true, and would seem to disprove our proposition _a priori_. We can reconcile the contradiction only by having recourse to the different faculties of the imagination and the sense. The poet who has ravished his readers by a description of the beauty of female virtue and innocence has been found in a brothel. One of the most touching religious poems in the world has been sung by one who, among brawling revellers, maligned religion and its votaries. The praises of temperance have been enchantingly poured forth by a baccha.n.a.l. The oppressor of the poor has wept at a representation of affecting generosity. Any one may fill up the list without perhaps including a hypocrite. The imagination has its emotions, and the sense its feelings, or, perhaps, no feelings. The why and the wherefore touch the ultimate, and we are lost; but the fact remains, as proved by evidence, that William Burke could, in song, be pathetic.

Recurring to our real tragedy, the effect of the drink soon again sent the creature from her lyrics into a condition which might have suited the purpose of the men; but whether it was that, as beginners, they lost courage, or that lodgers came in and defeated their intentions, they failed that night in effecting their object. The unconscious woman was lifted into a bed, where she lay till the morning. A severe sickness was the consequence of the importunities of her new-made friends; and the colleagues, exasperated by their defeat of the previous night, were alongside of the bed, with offerings of sympathy, and more drink. In the midst of all this, she cried that she wished to get home to her beloved daughter, at the very time that she weakly accepted that which incapacitated her. By and by, the lodgers for the night began to leave the house; and the victim being once more reduced to unconsciousness, they fell to their work in the precise manner they had planned. Hare laid hold of the apertures of breathing, and Burke throwing himself on her body to repress struggles and keep down the ribs, maintained his position till the last sob escaped from the oppressed lungs; and the woman, after a struggle of fully a quarter of an hour, was a corpse. In the evening the body was conveyed to Surgeon's Square, and ten pounds procured for it.

All this tragedy was being acted while the daughter, at Gilmerton, was waiting anxiously for the return of her mother. The evening had pa.s.sed without exciting in her much alarm; but when the morning came, with no mother, and no intelligence, she became oppressed with fears. Without having tasted breakfast, she sallied forth. The village was gone through, and afforded no trace. She next directed her steps to Edinburgh, inquiring at every one she met if they had seen a woman of the appearance she described. At length she resorted to the house of the gentleman who paid the pension, but beyond the information that she had been there on the previous day, she could get no satisfaction. She then wandered through all parts of the city, calling on every one she knew, and putting the same question--if they had seen her mother?--but always receiving the same answer. No weariness oppressed her in this vain search. The night set in only as a prelude to the revival of her hopes in the morning; and search followed search, and day followed day, every hour diminis.h.i.+ng hope. The time was now counted by weeks, and as these sped, by months, yet ever as the time flew, and the hope decayed, the love increased with every accession of her grief. At length even hope was relinquished, and all speculations were lost in mystery. The only conclusion that could rationally be come to was, that the missing one had wandered by the ca.n.a.l and been drowned; for that a human being could disappear and be for ever lost in the city of Edinburgh, with its humane inhabitants ready to render succour, and its vigilant police ever on the watch, was what no one could conceive. The explanation was to come at a time which, to grief, might be thought long in the future; and such an explanation to a daughter! ay, and a daughter of whom the mother was so proud and so fond.

The Mother and Daughter.

If we were to estimate the benefits derived from sacrificing to mammon, according to the material uses to which they are devoted, we would be apt to form a very humble estimate of his G.o.ds.h.i.+p; but these, we suspect, const.i.tute, even with the lowest of his wors.h.i.+ppers, only a small part of the charm of his gifts. Seventeen pounds ten s.h.i.+llings, the price of one dead body, and that of the life and the corpse of another, produced a change in the economy of Log's house and in the minds of its ruling inhabitants. This appeared first in the dresses of the women, who, from being little better than trulls, with clothes bought in p.a.w.nshops, and often not far removed from ragged tanterwallops, began to be equipped like respectable people. Bonnets were got from the milliner direct; and it is even said that fine prints appeared in gaudy colours on the two women of Log's house. It was observed, too, that they held their heads higher, and walked more circ.u.mspectly, as if some species of pride--the kind we leave to the moral a.n.a.lyst--had a.s.serted its universal power, undismayed by the scowl of vice. Lodgers began to be less cared for, as mere lodgers, though the most squalid of them had recommendations of another kind, of which they themselves were not aware; and as for the men, the producers of this wonderful change, they were now gentlemen at large--the huckster's cart, the hurley, the old horse, the stool, and the awl-box, having been discharged and despised as unworthy of those who held in their hands a charm invested with even greater power than the ring of Giges or Mongogul, even that of turning, by a touch, the mortal part of human nature into gold.

Hitherto even the philosophers had been wrong in their estimate of man and the world on which he lives. The ill-natured cynics represented that, in his earthly aspect, man is a parasite on the great animal the world; preying on his fellow-creatures, he is, in return, preyed upon by parasites. There are those that prey upon his body, others that, in the form of pains, ride upon the back of his vicious pleasures. There are those that fawn upon him, and feed upon his fortunes, and when he dies he is eaten by parasites. But there was in reserve, and unknown to these detractors, a chapter on human nature only laid open to our time and country, for though the Easterns had their fable of the gouls, it was received only as a fairy tale by the Westerns, till they were surprised into a belief even transcending the images of Arabian fancy. Yet the more hopeful philosophers, who draw their inspirations from Calvary, where was seen the consideration for the shekels of silver, are not dismayed. Yea, in this lowly thing we call our body, which preys on garbage, and is preyed upon in return, is a microcosm, which represents, in extension, that which has no limit--in perfection, that which is without end--in beauty, that which the poet cannot, with all his inspiration, describe.

We would not be true to human nature if we limited the effects of this change in the fortunes of Log's house to what we have already described.

The vicious heart pants for pleasures to worry it. _La lampe inextinguible du plaisir_ must burn, though fed with rancid oil extracted from decayed organisms; and so there was a growing increase, not only in the number, but in the intensity of the "enjoyments" of the baccha.n.a.lian nights. If the neighbours had noticed the external changes, they were not the less observant--though destined to be long ignorant of the cause--of what was nightly acted within. The brawls and fights were louder and more frequent, and the dithyrambics which mixed with them in grotesque inconsistency had more of the _menad_ of the priests of Cybele. Yet all this, by G.o.d's law, was sternly a necessity: we need no moral here. Secrecy and publicity are separate instruments of divine retribution, working strangely and mysteriously to the same end. Even the ordinary secret sin corrodes the heart by its immurement, and the sin of Log's house was not an ordinary one. The more it is suppressed, the greater the elasticity of the torment.

When freed from the prison of the heart it produces that recoil of the good which isolates the criminal from the smiles of fellows.h.i.+p and the help of society. Yes, this is the point with the diverging paths of ruin or redemption, and Heaven still vindicates the old economy. If the sinner will be saved by penitence, he must give signs of his suffering, and the world will profit by it as well as himself. If he hurries to ruin, he will still give evidence of his agony. In either case, that Providence which watches over us will still serve its purpose.

Only one of these paths was here open, and the quaternity even rushed into it. The progress of the ruin must keep apace. The excitement, in the shape, to them, of pleasure, must be sustained; and above all, the men had tasted the _power_ of money--not to be estimated by what it produced--in what simply pleased such strange natures. They had got their heads into the dagon temple, and though all the rest of the body was exposed, they felt, however much they were in danger of justice, that they had some security against a continuance of the misery and contempt of their prior lives. They must, accordingly, go on, for they were dipsomaniacs in blood.

The 17, 10s. must, if it had not already, come to an end, under the expense of these nightly orgies, and, behold the prowler again out to look for a new victim.

There had been known to both of the men, and not less to the women, an unfortunate creature of the name of Mary Haldane, whose vagrant beat was the old scene of the Gra.s.smarket. Her life had not been all through a succession of those scenes in which her cla.s.s figure; for, previous to the birth of a natural child, the fruit of seduction, she had been not only respected for a fair reputation, but looked on favourably for those personal qualities so often the means of ruin. Then the demon drink had met her at that turn of the fortunes of so many of her kind, when decayed beauty is not compensated by the consolations of penitence. The road down was easy, even to that stage where flapping rags could scarcely cover the body. Need we say that this creature was likely, when the prowler knew from his own experience that she would drink _to the point_. One day he accordingly issued forth to seek for Mary, but Mary had been in the drink fever for days, and he could only regret that so favourable a condition had not ensued in Log's house, where the termination would not have been the recovery which this time once more awaited her. Exasperated by his disappointment, he was only the more determined to overlook other tempting objects in that fruitful field of human weeds, fit enough for death's scythe. Nor had he to wait long. Two days afterwards Mary was standing at the mouth of the narrow close up which she lived.[6] The moment he saw her, the old smile and eloquent twinkle again illuminated or darkened his face, for he was as sure of his prey as the fox is of its spoil when it sits in the roost with its head under its wing. Nor was the smile less expressive that Mary presented to him. The red and swollen eyes, the quivering cheeks, and all the other signs of that unhappiness through which the rebel spirit will still shoot its buoyance in spite of depressed nature. Misery is easily approached. The dram is again the bribe, and the kindliness of the offer a recommendation, which was as much a surprise as a pleasure to one from whom all kindliness had been long barred by the magnetic repulsion of poverty and degradation. Poor Mary was once more happy; and, accompanying her "friend," she trudged along to the place where the _envied_ stimulant awaited her.

As they were slowly wending their way along the West Port, the people, as some of them afterwards stated, looked earnestly at the couple, without being able to explain the sympathy which brought them together; for already Hare was upon the rise in society, with a new coat and hat, and even a tie; but the presence of the _gentleman_ did not prevent the children from pursuing their old game of teazing Mary, nor could the threatenings of her protector keep them off. At this juncture, who should approach from the opposite direction but the colleague. The mutual smile--yea, more. Would Burke, who had the character of being serviceable to the unfortunate, permit Mary Haldane to be abused while he was present?

He would protect the friendless; and so the boys got a drubbing, and injured misfortune was vindicated. Having accomplished this act of justice, Burke, who had now so little to do, and was so far above cobbling, proceeded on what had been intended as a pleasant stroll, while his friend and Mary held their way to Log's lodgings. In a short time he was seen to return with a quicker step; and by and by they are all a.s.sembled in the little dark room "with the window looking out on the dead wall"--where the women, who knew that the money was getting exhausted, received them with their peculiar welcome.

Well, you expect something, and already the heart throbs,--and do not stop it; for pity does not close her eye upon the unfortunate, even where sin has contributed to the misery of the sufferer. But here you cannot help yourself: the inevitable recoil from cruelty will open the issues of compa.s.sion whether you will or no; and so strangely formed are we, that here you may be the more willing to acknowledge the soft emotion, that Mary's eyes reeled with delight when she saw Helen M'Dougal place upon the table a supply of whisky, which to her share would transcend even the necessities of "the want" after the fever. There was on this occasion no necessity for the siren song to charm into confidence where the bottle was, a band more hallowed, in the estimation of the guest, than the pledges of love. Neither Hare's sardonic jollity nor Burke's pathos was needed where the work was apparently so easy; and they were no longer neophytes, but adepts, not only in confidence, but manipulation. Yea, it was the work of apprentices, and they were journeymen; nor was it necessary that they should concern themselves with more than filling the gla.s.s and contemplating the imbodied value--ten pounds--as, by her fading energies and impending unconsciousness, it a.s.sumed its full proportions.

All is ready--the drooping head--the closing eye--the languid, helpless body. The women get the hint. They knew the unseemliness of being spectators--nay, they were delicate. A repet.i.tion of the former scene, only with even less resistance. Hare holds again the lips, and Burke presses his twelve stone weight. Scarcely a sigh; but on a trial if dead, a long gurgling indraught. More required--and all is still in that dark room "with the window looking out on the dead wall."

After a preliminary visit to the College, where arrangement was made for the reception, the colleagues carried their burden, at an hour approaching to twelve, to its destination. As usual, it was examined before payment,--the amount of which, in this instance, we do not know; but, whether from some want of success, consequent on the increased watchfulness over cemeteries, attending the midnight adventures of our friends Merrylees and the "Spune," or from a greater avidity for science on the part of the surgeons, it is certain that, as the supply from Log's lodgings increased, the value given for a burden became greater, amounting, in some instances, to 12 or 14.

The band was thus again supplied with resources, and the consequence was an increase of extravagance and riot--the former exhibiting itself in a still more inconsistent style of dress on the part of the females, and the latter in more frequent disturbances of the neighbours. Even questions began to be put to Helen M'Dougal, which were parried by the intelligence that she communicated,--that she had fallen heir to some house property about her place of birth, and that it was only right that decent people should rise in the world, and take the use of their own. Nor was Mary Hare less adroit in her fences. But the explanations thus given of what appeared to be a mystery were not deemed satisfactory, though no theory could be formed by the remonstrants.

On the part of the _fortunate_ crew, the sums they received seemed only to stimulate their avidity. Not now waiting for the dispersion of the earnings, they aimed at a store, perhaps apprised by some looming suspicion that their fortune was too good to last, and a strange circ.u.mstance soon threw another temptation in their way. Young Mary Haldane, the daughter of her whom we have seen so easily and suddenly removed from the world and life, with all those sins on her head which had acc.u.mulated from the day of her seduction, had been brought up by the mother to ways as shameless as her own. As yet, however, it was the morning of life to the girl, and it is not always or often that wayward affections spent upon men more profligate than themselves, diminish the love of such creatures to their parents, even if the latter ought, by their neglect, to have earned nothing but hatred. We have seen one daughter cast into inconsolable grief, another was to be a wanderer and inquirer for her parent, with another and even more terrible issue. Having ascertained, on the morning subsequent to that evening when the burden was conveyed to Surgeon's Square, that her mother had not been seen on the previous night, Mary occupied the day in searching. The woman was a ken-speckle, the familiar object of all in the neighbourhood, as well as the game of the urchins; and much curiosity was added to the sympathy for the orphan, who, unfortunately, was scarcely less notorious. Many aided in the inquiry, but with no more success, of course, than that which attended the efforts of the daughter. It is still remembered how she went about in her decayed finery, with swollen eyes, and the tears on her cheeks, sobbing out her grief, amidst the fruitless question, "Had any one seen Mary Haldane?" At length, one of the neighbours was told by a grocer in Portsburgh, that the woman had been seen going towards Log's lodgings in the company of William Hare--a trace which, as no suspicions as yet attached to the man, held out some hope of success.

The information was immediately conveyed to the young woman, who thereupon hastened to the West Port, where she got the story confirmed, with all the minutiae of Burke's gallant rescue of Hare's _protegee_ from the a.s.saults of the urchins. Nor did she stop till she got to Log's lodgings. Mrs Hare denied that the woman had ever been in her house--a statement corroborated by Helen M'Dougal, who, in her new-born pride, resented the imputation that it could be possible for the beggar to have the impudence to approach the residence of respectable people; but Hare, who in the back room had heard the rencontre, came forth, and taking the part of the girl--with what expression of countenance to his companions, it would be difficult for a mere pen to give the symbols of an idea--sympathised with her, and even more, asked her to come into the room with the window opening to the dead wall, and get a dram to dry up her tears. The girl, also given to drink, was tempted, and complied with the kind invitation. It was not long till the colleague made his appearance, having, it is supposed, seen Mary enter when he was lounging idly about the top of the close. They were no sooner seated, and the whisky put upon the table by Helen M'Dougal, than Hare began his explanation. He told her that her mother had spoken to him on that day when she disappeared; that she told him she was going to Midcalder, (where he knew she had some friends;) and that he had no doubt she would be found there, to the great joy of the despairing girl.

And no doubt the poor girl's heart jumped to the valediction. She began to get cheerful under the new-lighted lamp of hope; and if there was any deficiency in the oil, it was supplied by the cognate combustible which, like all other agents of the same kind, consumes by its latent fires those who consume it. Gla.s.s succeeded gla.s.s, and with hope getting brighter and brighter before her eyes, now dry enough, and sympathy sounding louder and louder in her ears, what marvel that Mary Haldane should be as happy as those who had preceded her in those jubilations. She talked of her lovers and her youthful escapades--not forgetting those whisky-born fortunes, embracing equipages and servants, which are the continual destiny of the wretched, as if nature, in some mood of pity, made an imaginary compensation for real privations and as real misery. How little conscious was she that the two men, who responded so exuberantly to her wild aspirations, were watching when they would exhaust and bring her "to the point." Nor was the issue long delayed. Mary was one of those who, once fairly begun, never stopped, if the means were in her power, till she had run the full course. The symptoms of the artificial narcosis began to shew themselves,--the thick speech, the heavy eye, the bent head, and only a little longer and she was extended on the floor. Let us not speak of this girl's youth, the interest of her peculiar fortunes, with no chance ever given her of putting even the first step in the path of virtue. Why, there was, even in the estimation of those who stood over, ready for the work of their calling, a curious if not stimulating apt.i.tude in sending her after her mother. Did she not call there to see her, and find her? and why should they defeat so laudable a purpose? The quarter of an hour's suspension between life and death, with those mysterious agonies of which the organism is capable, even in the absence of manifestations, or at least in their suppression by external force, and Mary Haldane experienced the fate of her mother. And with her mother, too, she lay that night in the hall of Surgeon's Square.

The Grandmother and the Dumb Boy.

It has been said, that in the course of one man's life there occurs usually only one springtide on which he may direct his barque to fortune, and, so far as we have seen, this chance was not denied to the governors of Log's lodgings; but nature has not equally decreed that the voyagers shall see beyond that fortune, or to what it may lead. Nay, is there not something in the circ.u.mference of the objects of a day, if not an hour, if not a minute, which, like that which surrounds the scorpion, keeps all inside inviolate from the anathemas beyond? But then the circ.u.mference is ever changing, and ever enclosing new objects, till the last, with an opening in the side, looks out upon the dark or light theatre of retribution or salvation. We sometimes see this solitary springtide surmounted by the shattered barque of age, from which the waters of life are fast receding, and yet the voyager moves on. His fortune is a _hysteria_, through the ecstatic delirium of which he cannot see the gulf before his nose. These two men and two women whose history we record were on their springtide, and we are not to wonder that, beyond the circ.u.mference of rock and cloud, they were prevented from looking; not that there were not openings through which they could see ruin, but that the insanity of a fruitful wickedness made them revel blindly in the buoyancy of their progress, heedless of all rocks and gulfs of retribution.

Poor moralising this, we suspect, as regards men whose pleasures, bought at such a price of a revolt against nature, could be termed only "painted pain." But even they could not be exempted from the laws of human nature.

The circle behoved to contain its objects, and to change from day to day till the last came, with the lateral opening looking into perdition; perhaps any other mode ever devised by man of bringing sacrifices to mammon might not have been utterly exclusive of an attempt to get into a caste above. Bankrupts, thieves, adulterers, and even ordinary murderers, sometimes in our day try their hands at this, and make wonderful successes, for even these crimes which make men what they are, are not absolutely incompatible with a modern conventional status; but the crime of the men of our history involved in its very nature the impossibility of ever holding up the head in any other way than a swagger of desperation, or directing the eyes to an honest face, except as a look of dogged defiance. So, in addition to those evidences of change at Log's lodgings, we have only to mention the restlessness of the moneyed vagabonds driving them out to the streets to pull companions of their grade into drinking-houses, and treating them with the money which, however they might love it, burnt their hands that dispensed it. The delirium of intoxication amidst living objects that carried the mind out, was the refuge from, not the spectre of conscience, for conscience they had none, but that of justice, which no averting of the eyes could enable them to avoid, only the reeling of them could make it a changing phantasmagoria.

And why, when we have so much deeper tragedies to recount, ought we to stop our narrative to record--unless, indeed, for the mere sake of the arithmetic of murders--a mere interlude resorted to as a relief from dithyrambism? Childermas day came round again! Poor Joe the miller could bring his price of eleven pounds as well as the rest of them. No doubt, when he offered himself, in the heyday of his life, to Jenny the farmer's daughter, he thought himself of greater account than merely eleven pounds; but men undergo deterioration. Even when rejected, he would have spurned the valuation when he sung that jolly song of independence so often sung by his craft, and which declares the determination that neither lawyer nor doctor would "e'er get a fee from him,"--true enough, yet, alas! not false in the reverse, that doctors would give a fee _for_ him. Joe's miscalculations were due to his ignorance of the effects of intemperance, for it will not do to say that these are known when every day brings up new developments of consequences resulting from this most dangerous of all the voluntary evils of man. Say that the drunkard dares the advent of poverty, crime, the horrors of _delirium tremens_--death,--could he say that this last is a greater violence to nature than that produced by the grip and the pressure which, in all these cases, were only consequent upon the inebriation, which, again, was the act of his own will? It was while in a state of inebriety that the prowler met Joe. He was already made and prepared, and the subsequent decoyment, the additional drink, the final onset of the grim actors, their success, were only the development of a drama wrought out by actors who took an advantage accorded by himself. Our authority for treating this case as a mere interlude is derived from the admission of Burke himself, who, as a great judge could estimate the importance of what by others cannot be estimated at all, for the simple reason that the smallest of these tragedies so far transcends all power of comprehension that comparison becomes a farce; yet though this once jolly son of a jolly craft might have earned the contempt attributed to a facility of dying, he was, we are a.s.sured, mourned in the hamlet of his birth, where his frailties, if condemned, were placed, as is too often the case, to the account of a good heart. Nay, for aught we know,--and we say it the more readily that no one can trace or enumerate the threads which the poorest of G.o.d's creatures leaves ramifying from heart to heart, all to respond, as by electric sympathy, to the shock of his death,--the farmer's daughter might even be concussed to tears--how much too late--when the terrible tragedy was divulged. We may be at least certain that Joe never dreamed that a man's character in the world depends upon his manner of leaving it, or he would have saved his reputation by a greater resistance when the enemies were upon him, but he was also then too late: the devil, whom he might have fought with and defeated if sober, had taken on a strange form, and was unknown to the victim, for the reason that the victim did not know himself.

However unimportant he might be in these annals, the price which the miller brought was sufficient to stimulate the now, and long before, irredeemable actors to a deed which, in the estimation of Burke himself, as it must ever be in that of a blus.h.i.+ng nation, stood unparalleled among his own atrocities, as by all experiences else it was unparalleled in the world. Before entering upon the detail, we feel inclined to philosophise a little. We have been obliged to speak of these men as men, because they possessed all the physical characters of the species. In a natural view it has been said that, by the presence of the lower animals in the world, man is more injured in his ideas of a high nature and destiny than he is benefited in the temporal advantages of being fed and clothed by them.

The Roman felt the inconveniences of the presence of apes in the same world with him, when he cried out, in rage or satire or pity, _Simia, quam similis, turp.i.s.sima bestia, n.o.bis_! Then what is the use of these beings always putting us in mind of our resemblance to them? If we are to believe Pythagoras, Mr Tweddel, or Mr Smith, or any one of the vegetarians, we could, in their absence, live on herbs and fruits, and be clothed with cotton and linen. Their presence in the same world, and with so much in common with us, is a continual satire on man's psychological privilege or peculium, and to get quit of this many early nations accorded a soul and a hereafter to them. The satire was inverted when men made G.o.ds of them. We of a modern age shew our respect by an act of parliament against being cruel to them; and secondly, by eating them. In the midst of such curious speculations we are always apt to forget that within the moralities of our species we have gorillas far fiercer than any brother or sister of that "splendid specimen" described by Du Chaillu, and yet the strength and savagery of this animal have been called in doubt.

One day, about a month after the disposal of Joe the miller, Hare was again on the track of the unfortunate, and this time, as it was said, sent out by his colleague, as if the latter had wished to seek in repet.i.tion the a.s.suagement of familiarity. Alas! the old search. You cry me mercy, and I would forbear did I not know that truth must bear her crown amidst the lying conventionalities of refinement; and virtue, who is her companion, looks to her for strength, while she s.h.i.+nes the brighter for the proximity of vice. Yes, the old threading through the mazes of human beings,--now pa.s.sing between the ripe and the raw, the full-blooded youth and the tottering beggar, the rich and the poor--apportioning the meed of his approbation according to the selective affinities of the possible.

Polypheme had no tastes; this man was refined. Yea, even like the good philanthropist who pa.s.ses by those who do not require his help, and turns kindly to the maimed and the blind and the miserable, his were claimed by those on whom the hard and heavy hand of calamity had pressed. The G.o.ddess pitied Iphigenia, and made her a priestess, not because she was beautiful and the daughter of a great king, but because she was unfortunate.

But on this occasion the searcher was _sought_. While standing on the High Street holding the b.u.t.ton of the ragged coat of an old man who pleased him, and whose escape, seeing he was a dipsomaniac, would be nothing short of miracle, there came up to him an Irishwoman, also advanced in years, apparently a weary tramp, her shoes covered with dust, and her poor clothes looking as if she had slept in them all night among straw. She was a stranger in a strange city, and by her side was a little boy whom she held by the hand, for he was one of G.o.d's stricken--deaf and dumb--with that wistful peering of the eyes which is as often the effect of the infirmity as of the habit of solicitation. She told him that she was from Ireland, that she was on the search for some one of her countrymen or countrywomen whom she knew, and from whom she intended to claim that privilege of friends.h.i.+p and a.s.sistance which the people of that country, with all their faults, are so liberal in according. Was there need for a bond of confidence? He himself was of the ould country, and would he not a.s.sist a country-woman with a charge so helpless, so pitiful, so burdensome, except for the love which bore it? Nay, did he not know the very person she sought? and did she not reside in Log's lodgings, whereto he would be so delighted to lead her? Happy escape for the b.u.t.ton-held, and yet strange freak of the mind as it works awry often for an opposite; for he seemed, as he departed, to envy the new comer, who had thus secured the friends.h.i.+p of one now possessed of money, and not backward in shewing it.

So along they went, up between the high houses of Edinburgh's princ.i.p.al thoroughfare and down by the then Old Bow, with its strange old fronts and leering storm windows, as if they were curious about the modern people, so unlike their ancient inhabitants, all which sights raised a wonderment in the western Celt, which could only be satisfied by questions, and which, again, were answered with as much particularity as if she was not only to see them all again, but to seek them out for a purpose. Then how the boy watched the face of the man, as if some instinct had told him he would befriend his grandmother, and be in the room of a father to him. And what had this boy ever learned yet through his eyes alone, to be able to read backwards the looks of love. Do we not get dreary? The road has no windings, and there are no trees to conceal the cave of skulls on the Aventinian mount. Once again with his victim,--for surely we cannot count the deaf and dumb boy with the wistful eyes as being destined to have his name--if it could be known in the strange country--recorded in the list, within the little back room. The colleague was there, lying drowsy from the prior night's potations, but not unexpectant of the return of his friend. His eye brightened as the quickened orb threw off the drowsy vapours; and could he be otherwise than polite--the word is not misapplied--to the strangers? But where was the Irish friend? Oh, she would come in good time; and though it were long, did not Helen M'Dougal place upon the table, in a goodly bottle, that which qualified the ardour of impatience? The boy must be cared for too till the friend came, and Mary Hare would do that duty in the front room--yea, might there not have been sweetmeats in Log's lodgings when the Logs had now waxed wealthy? In two hours that woman was lying a corpse in the bed of the small room "with the window looking out on the dead wall." The boy was dumb, but he had wistful eyes, and begged imploringly with these to see his grandmother.

The women could not even lie to him, and tell him he would see her in the morning.

In the evening the two men sat over the fire in that same room, with the body of the woman stretched out on the bed which was at the back of the wall behind them. The boy was still under the charge of Mary Hare in the front room. Every moment that had separated him from his grandmother--to him all the world of his knowledge and affections--rendered the duty of the governess more difficult, and even strange sounds, between a groan and a scream, made their way out of his speechless mouth, as if nature in an agony struggled against her own decrees. The sounds found their way to the back room, and it came to be a question with the men, as they still sat looking into the fire, what was to be done with him. It was proposed by one, we know not which, that he should be taken out in the dark to the Canongate and there left. The policy had two reasons to support it. In the first place, he could not peach, and was therefore safe; in the second, they could hardly venture the offer of two burdens, however welcome at Surgeon's Square, for fear of awakening suspicions, a reason, this latter, which was rejected by the other, supposed to be Burke, for the other reason, that the boy, when dead, could be kept in the house for a few days without great depreciation in value; and even if they should get for him a pound or two less, they could make it up upon a fresher one next time.

There was thus some little disagreement between the faithful friends, which must await a settlement; and, in the meantime, Hare went out to get a tea-chest for the conveyance of the inhabitant of the bed against the wall. On his departure, his friend sat ruminating. At one time, when alone, and amidst the sombre yet sometimes _soft_ influences of melancholy, with her throng of shades of the past and gone, he used to sing to himself plaintive airs. Perhaps his melancholy at these times was poetical. These shades point to the ghosts of our friends, that seem to stand on yonder sh.o.r.e of the land of shadows, and beckon us to them. We resist the appeal from day to day for the sake of those that remain. These die too, and the crowd of beckoners increases, till all that formed our world seem to have flitted away, and then we make the sign of resignation to the hermit shadow (in his case the hangman) that is to lead us to them.

If he ever did indulge in these plaintive airs, now was the propitious time, but his mind was engaged on something more practical--the resolution, turned and turned again, and examined and laid aside to come back--yes, the resolution to send the boy after his grandmother.

The night pa.s.sed, the boy having by some means been made to understand that his protectress was in bed unwell, but the mutterings of the mute might have indicated that he had fears which, perhaps, he could not comprehend. The morning found the resolution of the prior night unshaken; and, in that same back room where the grandmother lay, Burke took the boy on his knee, and, as he himself expressed it, broke his back. No wonder that he described this scene as the one that lay most heavily upon his heart, and said that he was haunted by the recollection of the piteous expression of the wistful eyes as the victim looked in his face. The lad was laid on the bed along with his grandmother; and in the evening an old herring barrel held the couple who in life were each to each the one thing loved--and love is the same in the high and the low--had the same fate, enclosed in the same receptacle, and dealt with in the same way in Surgeon's Square.

It was recorded that a curious incident happened in connexion with this affair which had wellnigh put a stop to the career of these wonderful men, and we cannot help thinking, in looking back upon it, that it should not have led to a complete discovery. The herring barrel, containing the two bodies, was placed in a cart. An old horse, which Hare had used in his traffic in fish and crockery-ware, was yoked to it, and the two set out in the darkening to Surgeon's Square with their cargo. They proceeded along the West Port without anything remarkable happening, but when they reached the marketplace, at the entrance to the Gra.s.smarket, the horse stopped, and, notwithstanding all their efforts, would not move a leg. They were in confusion. Exposure was imminent. As Burke afterwards said, they thought "the poor old horse had risen up in judgment against them." A crowd collected, but, strangely enough, the people were so much occupied with the horse that they never thought of inquiring what was in the cart; and when it was found that neither entreaties nor blows would induce the animal to move forward, two porters were allowed to bear off the burden without any particular notice. Nay, these men so much less squeamish than the horse, took the barrel to the dissecting rooms without ever asking what they were carrying. The horse, which it is probable age and hard usage had arrested in its progress, was, in revenge for the fright it had caused its masters, led to a neighbouring tannery and slaughtered. It was of no value in Surgeon's Square.[7]

The Stray Waifs