Novit answered in the affirmative, and offered to conduct Jeanie to the apartment, where, according to the scrupulous practice of the Scottish Court, the witnesses remain in readiness to be called into Court to give evidence; and separated, at the same time, from all who might influence their testimony, or give them information concerning that which was passing upon the trial.
“Is this necessary?” said Jeanie, still reluctant to quit her father’s hand.
“A matter of absolute needcessity,” said Saddletree, “wha ever heard of witnesses no being enclosed?”
“It is really a matter of necessity,” said the younger counsellor, retained for her sister; and Jeanie reluctantly followed the macer of the Court to the place appointed.
“This, Mr. Deans,” said Saddletree, “is ca’d sequestering a witness; but it’s clean different (whilk maybe ye wadna fund out o’ yoursell) frae sequestering ane’s estate or effects, as in cases of bankruptcy. I hae aften been sequestered as a witness, for the Sheriff is in the use whiles to cry me in to witness the declarations at precognitions, and so is Mr. Sharpitlaw; but I was ne’er like to be sequestered o’ land and gudes but ance, and that was lang syne, afore I was married. But whisht, whisht! here’s the Court coming.”
As he spoke, the five Lords of Justiciary, in their long robes of scarlet, faced with white, and preceded by their mace-bearer, entered with the usual formalities, and took their places upon the bench of judgment.
The audience rose to receive them; and the bustle occasioned by their entrance was hardly composed, when a great noise and confusion of persons struggling, and forcibly endeavouring to enter at the doors of the Court-room, and of the galleries, announced that the prisoner was about to be placed at the bar. This tumult takes place when the doors, at first only opened to those either having right to be present, or to the better and more qualified ranks, are at length laid open to all whose curiosity induces them to be present on the occasion. With inflamed countenances and dishevelled dresses, struggling with, and sometimes tumbling over each other, in rushed the rude multitude, while a few soldiers, forming, as it were, the centre of the tide, could scarce, with all their efforts, clear a passage for the prisoner to the place which she was to occupy. By the authority of the Court, and the exertions of its officers, the tumult among the spectators was at length appeased, and the unhappy girl brought forward, and placed betwixt two sentinels with drawn bayonets, as a prisoner at the bar, where she was to abide her deliverance for good or evil, according to the issue of her trial.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.
We have strict statutes, and most biting laws– The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds– Which, for these fourteen years, we have let sleep, Like to an o’ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey.
Measure for Measure.
“Euphemia Deans,” said the presiding Judge, in an accent in which pity was blended with dignity, “stand up and listen to the criminal indictment now to be preferred against you.”
The unhappy girl, who had been stupified by the confusion through which the guards had forced a passage, cast a bewildered look on the multitude of faces around her, which seemed to tapestry, as it were, the walls, in one broad slope from the ceiling to the floor, with human countenances, and instinctively obeyed a command, which rung in her ears like the trumpet of the judgment-day.
“Put back your hair, Effie,” said one of the macers. For her beautiful and abundant tresses of long fair hair, which, according to the costume of the country, unmarried women were not allowed to cover with any sort of cap, and which, alas! Effie dared no longer confine with the snood or riband, which implied purity of maiden-fame, now hung unbound and dishevelled over her face, and almost concealed her features. On receiving this hint from the attendant, the unfortunate young woman, with a hasty, trembling, and apparently mechanical compliance, shaded back from her face her luxuriant locks, and showed to the whole court, excepting one individual, a countenance, which, though pale and emaciated, was so lovely amid its agony, that it called forth a universal murmur of compassion and sympathy. Apparently the expressive sound of human feeling recalled the poor girl from the stupor of fear, which predominated at first over every other sensation, and awakened her to the no less painful sense of shame and exposure attached to her present situation. Her eye, which had at first glanced wildly around, was turned on the ground; her cheek, at first so deadly pale, began gradually to be overspread with a faint blush, which increased so fast, that, when in agony of shame she strove to conceal her face, her temples, her brow, her neck, and all that her slender fingers and small palms could not cover, became of the deepest crimson.
All marked and were moved by these changes, excepting one. It was old Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of his house.
“Ichabod!” he said to himself–“Ichabod! my glory is departed!”
While these reflections were passing through his mind, the indictment, which set forth in technical form the crime of which the panel stood accused, was read as usual, and the prisoner was asked if she was Guilty, or Not Guilty.
“Not guilty of my poor bairn’s death,” said Effie Deans, in an accent corresponding in plaintive softness of tone to the beauty of her features, and which was not heard by the audience without emotion.
The presiding Judge next directed the counsel to plead to the relevancy; that is, to state on either part the arguments in point of law, and evidence in point of fact, against and in favour of the criminal; after which it is the form of the Court to pronounce a preliminary judgment, sending the cause to the cognisance of the jury, or assize.
The counsel for the crown briefly stated the frequency of the crime of infanticide, which had given rise to the special statute under which the panel stood indicted. He mentioned the various instances, many of them marked with circumstances of atrocity, which had at length induced the King’s Advocate, though with great reluctance, to make the experiment, whether, by strictly enforcing the Act of Parliament which had been made to prevent such enormities, their occurrence might be prevented. “He expected,” he said, “to be able to establish by witnesses, as well as by the declaration of the panel herself, that she was in the state described by the statute. According to his information, the panel had communicated her pregnancy to no one, nor did she allege in her own declaration that she had done so. This secrecy was the first requisite in support of the indictment. The same declaration admitted, that she had borne a male child, in circumstances which gave but too much reason to believe it had died by the hands, or at least with the knowledge or consent, of the unhappy mother. It was not, however, necessary for him to bring positive proof that the panel was accessory to the murder, nay, nor even to prove, that the child was murdered at all. It was sufficient to support the indictment, that it could not be found. According to the stern, but necessary severity of this statute, she who should conceal her pregnancy, who should omit to call that assistance which is most necessary on such occasions, was held already to have meditated the death of her offspring, as an event most likely to be the consequence of her culpable and cruel concealment. And if, under such circumstances, she could not alternatively show by proof that the infant had died a natural death, or produce it still in life, she must, under the construction of the law, be held to have murdered it, and suffer death accordingly.”
The counsel for the prisoner, Mr. Fairbrother, a man of considerable fame in his profession, did not pretend directly to combat the arguments of the King’s Advocate. He began by lamenting that his senior at the bar, Mr. Langtale, had been suddenly called to the county of which he was sheriff, and that he had been applied to, on short warning, to give the panel his assistance in this interesting case. He had had little time, he said, to make up for his inferiority to his learned brother by long and minute research; and he was afraid he might give a specimen of his incapacity, by being compelled to admit the accuracy of the indictment under the statute. “It was enough for their Lordships,” he observed, “to know that such was the law, and he admitted the advocate had a right to call for the usual interlocutor of relevancy.” But he stated, “that when he came to establish his case by proof, he trusted to make out circumstances which would satisfactorily elide the charge in the libel. His client’s story was a short, but most melancholy one. She was bred up in the strictest tenets of religion and virtue, the daughter of a worthy and conscientious person, who, in evil times, had established a character for courage and religion, by becoming a sufferer for conscience’ sake.”
David Deans gave a convulsive start at hearing himself thus mentioned, and then resumed the situation, in which, with his face stooped against his hands, and both resting against the corner of the elevated bench on which the Judges sate, he had hitherto listened to the procedure in the trial. The Whig lawyers seemed to be interested; the Tories put up their lip.
“Whatever may be our difference of opinion,” resumed the lawyer, whose business it was to carry his whole audience with him if possible, “concerning the peculiar tenets of these people” (here Deans groaned deeply), “it is impossible to deny them the praise of sound, and even rigid morals, or the merit of training up their children in the fear of God; and yet it was the daughter of such a person whom a jury would shortly be called upon, in the absence of evidence, and upon mere presumptions, to convict of a crime more properly belonging to a heathen, or a savage, than to a Christian and civilised country. It was true,” he admitted, “that the excellent nurture and early instruction which the poor girl had received, had not been sufficient to preserve her from guilt and error. She had fallen a sacrifice to an inconsiderate affection for a young man of prepossessing manners, as he had been informed, but of a very dangerous and desperate character. She was seduced under promise of marriage–a promise, which the fellow might have, perhaps, done her justice by keeping, had he not at that time been called upon by the law to atone for a crime, violent and desperate in itself, but which became the preface to another eventful history, every step of which was marked by blood and guilt, and the final termination of which had not even yet arrived. He believed that no one would hear him without surprise, when he stated that the father of this infant now amissing, and said by the learned Advocate to have been murdered, was no other than the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the hero of the memorable escape from the Tolbooth Church, and as no one knew better than his learned friend the Advocate, the principal actor in the Porteous conspiracy”
“I am sorry to interrupt a counsel in such a case as the present,” said, the presiding Judge; “but I must remind the learned gentleman that he is travelling out of the case before us.”
The counsel bowed and resumed. “He only judged it necessary,” he said, “to mention the name and situation of Robertson, because the circumstance in which that character was placed, went a great way in accounting for the silence on which his Majesty’s counsel had laid so much weight, as affording proof that his client proposed to allow no fair play for its life to the helpless being whom she was about to bring into the world. She had not announced to her friends that she had been seduced from the path of honour–and why had she not done so?–Because she expected daily to be restored to character, by her seducer doing her that justice which she knew to be in his power, and believed to be in his inclination. Was it natural–was it reasonable–was it fair, to expect that she should in the interim, become _felo de se_ of her own character, and proclaim her frailty to the world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower–he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover them where they do not exist? Was it strange or was it criminal, that she should have repelled their inquisitive impertinence with petulant denials? The sense and feeling of all who heard him would answer directly in the negative. But although his client had thus remained silent towards those to whom she was not called upon to communicate her situation,–to whom,” said the learned gentleman, “I will add, it would have been unadvised and improper in her to have done so; yet, I trust, I shall remove this case most triumphantly from under the statute, and obtain the unfortunate young woman an honourable dismission from your Lordships’ bar, by showing that she did, in due time and place, and to a person most fit for such confidence, mention the calamitous circumstances in which she found herself. This occurred after Robertson’s conviction, and when he was lying in prison in expectation of the fate which his comrade Wilson afterwards suffered, and from which he himself so strangely escaped. It was then, when all hopes of having her honour repaired by wedlock vanished from her eyes,–when an union with one in Robertson’s situation, if still practicable, might, perhaps, have been regarded rather as an addition to her disgrace,–it was _then,_ that I trust to be able to prove that the prisoner communicated and consulted with her sister, a young woman several years older than herself, the daughter of her father, if I mistake not, by a former marriage, upon the perils and distress of her unhappy situation.”
“If, indeed, you are able to instruct _that_ point, Mr. Fairbrother,” said the presiding Judge.
“If I am indeed able to instruct that point, my Lord,” resumed Mr. Fairbrother, “I trust not only to serve my client, but to relieve your Lordships from that which I know you feel the most painful duty of your high office; and to give all who now hear me the exquisite pleasure of beholding a creature, so young, so ingenuous, and so beautiful, as she that is now at the bar of your Lordships’ Court, dismissed from thence in safety and in honour.”
This address seemed to affect many of the audience, and was followed by a slight murmur of applause. Deans, as he heard his daughter’s beauty and innocent appearance appealed to, was involuntarily about to turn his eyes towards her; but, recollecting himself, he bent them again on the ground with stubborn resolution.
“Will not my learned brother, on the other side of the bar,” continued the advocate, after a short pause, “share in this general joy, since, I know, while he discharges his duty in bringing an accused person here, no one rejoices more in their being freely and honourably sent hence? My learned brother shakes his head doubtfully, and lays his hand on the panel’s declaration. I understand him perfectly–he would insinuate that the facts now stated to your Lordships are inconsistent with the confession of Euphemia Deans herself. I need not remind your Lordships, that her present defence is no whit to be narrowed within the bounds of her former confession; and that it is not by any account which she may formerly have given of herself, but by what is now to be proved for or against her, that she must ultimately stand or fall. I am not under the necessity of accounting for her choosing to drop out of her declaration the circumstances of her confession to her sister. She might not be aware of its importance; she might be afraid of implicating her sister; she might even have forgotten the circumstance entirely, in the terror and distress of mind incidental to the arrest of so young a creature on a charge so heinous. Any of these reasons are sufficient to account for her having suppressed the truth in this instance, at whatever risk to herself; and I incline most to her erroneous fear of criminating her sister, because I observe she has had a similar tenderness towards her lover (however undeserved on his part), and has never once mentioned Robertson’s name from beginning to end of her declaration.
“But, my Lords,” continued Fairbrother, “I am aware the King’s Advocate will expect me to show, that the proof I offer is consistent with other circumstances of the, case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will demand of me how Effie Deans’s confession to her sister, previous to her delivery, is reconcilable with the mystery of the birth,–with the disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I will not deny a possibility which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords, the explanation of this is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say, in the facility and pliability, of the female sex. The _dulcis Amaryllidis irae,_ as your Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive a woman so atrociously offended by the man whom she has loved, but that she will retain a fund of forgiveness, upon which his penitence, whether real or affected, may draw largely, with a certainty that his bills will be answered. We can prove, by a letter produced in evidence, that this villain Robertson, from the bottom of the dungeon whence he already probably meditated the escape, which he afterwards accomplished by the assistance of his comrade, contrived to exercise authority over the mind, and to direct the motions, of this unhappy girl. It was in compliance with his injunctions, expressed in that letter, that the panel was prevailed upon to alter the line of conduct which her own better thoughts had suggested; and, instead of resorting, when her time of travail approached, to the protection of her own family, was induced to confide herself to the charge of some vile agent of this nefarious seducer, and by her conducted to one of those solitary and secret purlieus of villany, which, to the shame of our police, still are suffered to exist in the suburbs of this city, where, with the assistance, and under the charge, of a person of her own sex, she bore a male child, under circumstances which added treble bitterness to the woe denounced against our original mother. What purpose Robertson had in all this, it is hard to tell, or even to guess. He may have meant to marry the girl, for her father is a man of substance. But, for the termination of the story, and the conduct of the woman whom he had placed about the person of Euphemia Deans, it is still more difficult to account. The unfortunate young woman was visited by the fever incidental to her situation. In this fever she appears to have been deceived by the person that waited on her, and, on recovering her senses, she found that she was childless in that abode of misery. Her infant had been carried off, perhaps for the worst purposes, by the wretch that waited on her. It may have been murdered, for what I can tell.”
He was here interrupted by a piercing shriek, uttered by the unfortunate prisoner. She was with difficulty brought to compose herself. Her counsel availed himself of the tragical interruption, to close his pleading with effect.
“My Lords,” said he, “in that piteous cry you heard the eloquence of maternal affection, far surpassing the force of my poor words–Rachel weeping for her children! Nature herself bears testimony in favour of the tenderness and acuteness of the prisoner’s parental feelings. I will not dishonour her plea by adding a word more.”
“Heard ye ever the like o’ that, Laird?” said Saddletree to Dumbiedikes, when the counsel had ended his speech. “There’s a chield can spin a muckle pirn out of a wee tait of tow! Deil haet he kens mair about it than what’s in the declaration, and a surmise that Jeanie Deans suld hae been able to say something about her sister’s situation, whilk surmise, Mr. Crossmyloof says, rests on sma’ authority. And he’s cleckit this great muckle bird out o’ this wee egg! He could wile the very flounders out o’ the Firth.–What garr’d my father no send me to Utrecht?–But whisht, the Court is gaun to pronounce the interlocutor of relevancy.”
And accordingly the Judges, after a few words, recorded their judgment, which bore, that the indictment, if proved, was relevant to infer the pains of law: And that the defence, that the panel had communicated her situation to her sister, was a relevant defence: And, finally, appointed the said indictment and defence to be submitted to the judgment of an assize.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND.
Most righteous judge! a sentence.–Come, prepare. Merchant of Venice.
It is by no means my intention to describe minutely the forms of a Scottish criminal trial, nor am I sure that I could draw up an account so intelligible and accurate as to abide the criticism of the gentlemen of the long robe. It is enough to say that the jury was impanelled, and the case proceeded. The prisoner was again required to plead to the charge, and she again replied, “Not Guilty,” in the same heart-thrilling tone as before.
The crown counsel then called two or three female witnesses, by whose testimony it was established, that Effie’s situation had been remarked by them, that they had taxed her with the fact, and that her answers had amounted to an angry and petulant denial of what they charged her with. But, as very frequently happens, the declaration of the panel or accused party herself was the evidence which bore hardest upon her case.
In the event of these tales ever finding their way across the Border, it may be proper to apprise the southern reader that it is the practice in Scotland, on apprehending a suspected person, to subject him to a judicial examination before a magistrate. He is not compelled to answer any of the questions asked of him, but may remain silent if he sees it his interest to do so. But whatever answers he chooses to give are formally written down, and being subscribed by himself and the magistrate, are produced against the accused in case of his being brought to trial. It is true, that these declarations are not produced as being in themselves evidence properly so called, but only as adminicles of testimony, tending to corroborate what is considered as legal and proper evidence. Notwithstanding this nice distinction, however, introduced by lawyers to reconcile this procedure to their own general rule, that a man cannot be required to bear witness against himself, it nevertheless usually happens that these declarations become the means of condemning the accused, as it were, out of their own mouths. The prisoner, upon these previous examinations, has indeed the privilege of remaining silent if he pleases; but every man necessarily feels that a refusal to answer natural and pertinent interrogatories, put by judicial authority, is in itself a strong proof of guilt, and will certainly lead to his being committed to prison; and few can renounce the hope of obtaining liberty by giving some specious account of themselves, and showing apparent frankness in explaining their motives and accounting for their conduct. It, therefore, seldom happens that the prisoner refuses to give a judicial declaration, in which, nevertheless, either by letting out too much of the truth, or by endeavouring to substitute a fictitious story, he almost always exposes himself to suspicion and to contradictions, which weigh heavily in the minds of the jury.
The declaration of Effie Deans was uttered on other principles, and the following is a sketch of its contents, given in the judicial form, in which they may still be found in the Books of Adjournal.
The declarant admitted a criminal intrigue with an individual whose name she desired to conceal. “Being interrogated, what her reason was for secrecy on this point? She declared, that she had no right to blame that person’s conduct more than she did her own, and that she was willing to confess her own faults, but not to say anything which might criminate the absent. Interrogated, if she confessed her situation to any one, or made any preparation for her confinement? Declares, she did not. And being interrogated, why she forbore to take steps which her situation so peremptorily required? Declares, she was ashamed to tell her friends, and she trusted the person she has mentioned would provide for her and the infant. Interrogated if he did so? Declares, that he did not do so personally; but that it was not his fault, for that the declarant is convinced he would have laid down his life sooner than the bairn or she had come to harm. Interrogated, what prevented him from keeping his promise? Declares, that it was impossible for him to do so, he being under trouble at the time, and declines farther answer to this question. Interrogated, where she was from the period she left her master, Mr. Saddletree’s family, until her appearance at her father’s, at St. Leonard’s, the day before she was apprehended? Declares, she does not remember. And, on the interrogatory being repeated, declares, she does not mind muckle about it, for she was very ill. On the question being again repeated, she declares, she will tell the truth, if it should be the undoing of her, so long as she is not asked to tell on other folk; and admits, that she passed that interval of time in the lodging of a woman, an acquaintance of that person who had wished her to that place to be delivered, and that she was there delivered accordingly of a male child. Interrogated, what was the name of that person? Declares and refuses to answer this question. Interrogated, where she lives? Declares, she has no certainty, for that she was taken to the lodging aforesaid under cloud of night. Interrogated, if the lodging was in the city or suburbs? Declares and refuses to answer that question. Interrogated, whether, when she left the house of Mr. Saddletree, she went up or down the street? Declares and refuses to answer the question. Interrogated, whether she had ever seen the woman before she was wished to her, as she termed it, by the person whose name she refuses to answer? Declares and replies, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, whether this woman was introduced to her by the said person verbally, or by word of mouth? Declares, she has no freedom to answer this question. Interrogated, if the child was alive when it was born? Declares, that–God help her and it!–it certainly was alive. Interrogated, if it died a natural death after birth? Declares, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, where it now is? Declares, she would give her right hand to ken, but that she never hopes to see mair than the banes of it. And being interrogated, why she supposes it is now dead? the declarant wept bitterly and made no answer. Interrogated, if the woman, in whose lodging she was, seemed to be a fit person to be with her in that situation? Declares, she might be fit enough for skill, but that she was an hard-hearted bad woman. Interrogated, if there was any other person in the lodging excepting themselves two? Declares, that she thinks there was another woman; but her head was so carried with pain of body and trouble of mind, that she minded her very little. Interrogated, when the child was taken away from her? Declared that she fell in a fever, and was light-headed, and when she came to her own mind, the woman told her the bairn was dead; and that the declarant answered, if it was dead it had had foul play. That, thereupon, the woman was very sair on her, and gave her much ill language; and that the deponent was frightened, and crawled out of the house when her back was turned, and went home to Saint Leonard’s Crags, as well as a woman in her condition dought.*
* i.e. Was able to do.
Interrogated, why she did not tell her story to her sister and father, and get force to search the house for her child, dead or alive? Declares, it was her purpose to do so, but she had not time. Interrogated, why she now conceals the name of the woman, and the place of her abode? The declarant remained silent for a time, and then said, that to do so could not repair the skaith that was done, but might be the occasion of more. Interrogated, whether she had herself, at any time, had any purpose of putting away the child by violence? Declares, never; so might God be merciful to her–and then again declares, never, when she was in her perfect senses; but what bad thoughts the Enemy might put into her brain when she was out of herself, she cannot answer. And again solemnly interrogated, declares, that she would have been drawn with wild horses, rather than have touched the bairn with an unmotherly hand. Interrogated, declares, that among the ill-language the woman gave her, she did say sure enough that the declarant had hurt the bairn when she was in the brain fever; but that the declarant does not believe that she said this from any other cause than to frighten her, and make her be silent. Interrogated, what else the woman said to her? Declares, that when the declarant cried loud for her bairn, and was like to raise the neighbours, the woman threatened her, that they that could stop the wean’s skirling would stop hers, if she did not keep a’ the founder.*
* i.e. The quieter.
And that this threat, with the manner of the woman, made the declarant conclude, that the bairn’s life was gone, and her own in danger, for that the woman was a desperate bad woman, as the declarant judged from the language she used. Interrogated, declares, that the fever and delirium were brought on her by hearing bad news, suddenly told to her, but refuses to say what the said news related to. Interrogated, why she does not now communicate these particulars, which might, perhaps, enable the magistrate to ascertain whether the child is living or dead; and requested to observe, that her refusing to do so, exposes her own life, and leaves the child in bad hands; as also that her present refusal to answer on such points is inconsistent with her alleged intention to make a clean breast to her sister? Declares, that she kens the bairn is now dead, or, if living, there is one that will look after it; that for her own living or dying, she is in God’s hands, who knows her innocence of harming her bairn with her will or knowledge; and that she has altered her resolution of speaking out, which she entertained when she left the woman’s lodging, on account of a matter which she has since learned. And declares, in general, that she is wearied, and will answer no more questions at this time.”
Upon a subsequent examination, Euphemia Deans adhered to the declaration she had formerly made, with this addition, that a paper found in her trunk being shown to her, she admitted that it contained the credentials, in consequence of which she resigned herself to the conduct of the woman at whose lodgings she was delivered of the child. Its tenor ran thus:–
“Dearest Effie,–I have gotten the means to send to you by a woman who is well qualified to assist you in your approaching streight; she is not what I could wish her, but I cannot do better for you in my present condition. I am obliged to trust to her in this present calamity, for myself and you too. I hope for the best, though I am now in a sore pinch; yet thought is free–I think Handie Dandie and I may queer the stifler* for all that is come and gone.
* Avoid the gallows.
You will be angry for me writing this to my little Cameronian Lily; but if I can but live to be a comfort to you, and a father to your babie, you will have plenty of time to scold.–Once more, let none knew your counsel–my life depends on this hag, d–n her–she is both deep and dangerous, but she has more wiles and wit than ever were in a beldam’s head, and has cause to be true to me. Farewell, my Lily–Do not droop on my account–in a week I will be yours or no more my own.”
Then followed a postscript. “If they must truss me, I will repent of nothing so much, even at the last hard pinch, as of the injury I have done my Lily.”
Effie refused to say from whom she had received this letter, but enough of the story was now known, to ascertain that it came from Robertson; and from the date, it appeared to have been written about the time when Andrew Wilson (called for a nickname Handie Dandie) and he were meditating their first abortive attempt to escape, which miscarried in the manner mentioned in the beginning of this history.
The evidence of the Crown being concluded, the counsel for the prisoner began to lead a proof in her defence. The first witnesses were examined upon the girl’s character. All gave her an excellent one, but none with more feeling than worthy Mrs. Saddletree, who, with the tears on her cheeks, declared, that she could not have had a higher opinion of Effie Deans, nor a more sincere regard for her, if she had been her own daughter. All present gave the honest woman credit for her goodness of heart, excepting her husband, who whispered to Dumbiedikes, “That Nichil Novit of yours is but a raw hand at leading evidence, I’m thinking. What signified his bringing a woman here to snotter and snivel, and bather their Lordships? He should hae ceeted me, sir, and I should hae gien them sic a screed o’ testimony, they shauldna hae touched a hair o’ her head.”
“Hadna ye better get up and tryt yet?” said the Laird. “I’ll mak a sign to Novit.”
“Na, na,” said Saddletree, “thank ye for naething, neighbour–that would be ultroneous evidence, and I ken what belangs to that; but Nichil Novit suld hae had me ceeted _debito tempore._” And wiping his mouth with his silk handkerchief with great importance, he resumed the port and manner of an edified and intelligent auditor.
Mr. Fairbrother now premised, in a few words, “that he meant to bring forward his most important witness, upon whose evidence the cause must in a great measure depend. What his client was, they had learned from the preceding witnesses; and so far as general character, given in the most forcible terms, and even with tears, could interest every one in her fate, she had already gained that advantage. It was necessary, he admitted, that he should produce more positive testimony of her innocence than what arose out of general character, and this he undertook to do by the mouth of the person to whom she had communicated her situation–by the mouth of her natural counsellor and guardian–her sister.–Macer, call into court, Jean, or Jeanie Deans, daughter of David Deans, cowfeeder, at Saint Leonard’s Crags!”
When he uttered these words, the poor prisoner instantly started up, and stretched herself half-way over the bar, towards the side at which her sister was to enter. And when, slowly following the officer, the witness advanced to the foot of the table, Effie, with the whole expression of her countenance altered, from that of confused shame and dismay, to an eager, imploring, and almost ecstatic earnestness of entreaty, with outstretched hands, hair streaming back, eyes raised eagerly to her sister’s face, and glistening through tears, exclaimed in a tone which went through the heart of all who heard her,–“O Jeanie, Jeanie, save me, save me!”
With a different feeling, yet equally appropriated to his proud and self-dependent character, old Deans drew himself back still farther under the cover of the bench; so that when Jeanie, as she entered the court, cast a timid glance towards the place at which she had left him seated, his venerable figure was no longer visible. He sate down on the other side of Dumbiedikes, wrung his hand hard, and whispered, “Ah, Laird, this is warst of a’–if I can but win ower this part–I feel my head unco dizzy; but my Master is strong in his servant’s weakness.” After a moment’s mental prayer, he again started up, as if impatient of continuing in any one posture, and gradually edged himself forward towards the place he had just quitted.
Jeanie in the meantime had advanced to the bottom of the table, when, unable to resist the impulse of affections she suddenly extended her hand to her sister. Effie was just within the distance that she could seize it with both hers, press it to her mouth, cover it with kisses, and bathe it in tears, with the fond devotion that a Catholic would pay to a guardian saint descended for his safety; while Jeanie, hiding her own face with her other hand, wept bitterly. The sight would have moved a heart of stone, much more of flesh and blood. Many of the spectators shed tears, and it was some time before the presiding Judge himself could so far subdue his emotion as to request the witness to compose herself, and the prisoner to forbear those marks of eager affection, which, however natural, could not be permitted at that time, and in that presence.
The solemn oath,–“the truth to tell, and no truth to conceal, as far as she knew or should be asked,” was then administered by the Judge “in the name of God, and as the witness should answer to God at the great day of judgment;” an awful adjuration, which seldom fails to make impression even on the most hardened characters, and to strike with fear even the most upright. Jeanie, educated in deep and devout reverence for the name and attributes of the Deity, was, by the solemnity of a direct appeal to his person and justice, awed, but at the same time elevated above all considerations, save those which she could, with a clear conscience, call Him to witness. She repeated the form in a low and reverent, but distinct tone of voice, after the Judge, to whom, and not to any inferior officer of the Court, the task is assigned in Scotland of directing the witness in that solemn appeal which is the sanction of his testimony.
When the Judge had finished the established form, he added in a feeling, but yet a monitory tone, an advice, which the circumstances appeared to him to call for.
“Young woman,” these were his words, “you come before this Court in circumstances, which it would be worse than cruel not to pity and to sympathise with. Yet it is my duty to tell you, that the truth, whatever its consequences may be, the truth is what you owe to your country, and to that God whose word is truth, and whose name you have now invoked. Use your own time in answering the questions that gentleman” (pointing to the counsel) “shall put to you.–But remember, that what you may be tempted to say beyond what is the actual truth, you must answer both here and hereafter.”
The usual questions were then put to her:–Whether any one had instructed her what evidence she had to deliver? Whether any one had given or promised her any good deed, hire, or reward, for her testimony? Whether she had any malice or ill-will at his Majesty’s Advocate, being the party against whom she was cited as a witness? To which questions she successively answered by a quiet negative. But their tenor gave great scandal and offence to her father, who was not aware that they are put to every witness as a matter of form.
“Na, na,” he exclaimed, loud enough to be heard, “my bairn is no like the Widow of Tekoah–nae man has putten words into her mouth.”
One of the judges, better acquainted, perhaps, with the Books of Adjournal than with the Book of Samuel, was disposed to make some instant inquiry after this Widow of Tekoah, who, as he construed the matter, had been tampering with the evidence. But the presiding Judge, better versed in Scripture history, whispered to his learned brother the necessary explanation; and the pause occasioned by this mistake had the good effect of giving Jeanie Deans time to collect her spirits for the painful task she had to perform.
Fairbrother, whose practice and intelligence were considerable, saw the necessity of letting the witness compose herself. In his heart he suspected that she came to bear false witness in her sister’s cause.
“But that is her own affair,” thought Fairbrother; “and it is my business to see that she has plenty of time to regain composure, and to deliver her evidence, be it true, or be it false–_valeat quantum._”
Accordingly, he commenced his interrogatories with uninteresting questions, which admitted of instant reply.
“You are, I think, the sister of the prisoner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not the full sister, however?”
“No, sir–we are by different mothers.”
“True; and you are, I think, several years older than your sister?”
“Yes, sir,” etc.
After the advocate had conceived that, by these preliminary and unimportant questions, he had familiarised the witness with the situation in which she stood, he asked, “whether she had not remarked her sister’s state of health to be altered, during the latter part of the term when she had lived with Mrs. Saddletree?”
Jeanie answered in the affirmative.
“And she told you the cause of it, my dear, I suppose?” said Fairbrother, in an easy, and, as one may say, an inductive sort of tone.
“I am sorry to interrupt my brother,” said the Crown Counsel, rising; “but I am in your Lordships’ judgment, whether this be not a leading question?”
“If this point is to be debated,” said the presiding Judge, “the witness must be removed.”
For the Scottish lawyers regard with a sacred and scrupulous horror every question so shaped by the counsel examining, as to convey to a witness the least intimation of the nature of the answer which is desired from him. These scruples, though founded on an excellent principle, are sometimes carried to an absurd pitch of nicety, especially as it is generally easy for a lawyer who has his wits about him to elude the objection. Fairbrother did so in the present case.
“It is not necessary to waste the time of the Court, my Lord since the King’s Counsel thinks it worth while to object to the form of my question, I will shape it otherwise.–Pray, young woman, did you ask your sister any question when you observed her looking unwell?–take courage–speak out.”
“I asked her,” replied Jeanie, “what ailed her.”
“Very well–take your own time–and what was the answer she made?” continued Mr. Fairbrother.
Jeanie was silent, and looked deadly pale. It was not that she at any one instant entertained an idea of the possibility of prevarication–it was the natural hesitation to extinguish the last spark of hope that remained for her sister.
“Take courage, young woman,” said Fairbrother.–“I asked what your sister said ailed her when you inquired?”
“Nothing,” answered Jeanie, with a faint voice, which was yet heard distinctly in the most distant corner of the Court-room,–such an awful and profound silence had been preserved during the anxious interval, which had interposed betwixt the lawyer’s question and the answer of the witness.
Fairbrother’s countenance fell; but with that ready presence of mind, which is as useful in civil as in military emergencies, he immediately rallied.–“Nothing? True; you mean nothing at _first_–but when you asked her again, did she not tell you what ailed her?”
The question was put in a tone meant to make her comprehend the importance of her answer, had she not been already aware of it. The ice was broken, however, and with less pause than at first, she now replied,–“Alack! alack! she never breathed word to me about it.”
A deep groan passed through the Court. It was echoed by one deeper and more agonised from the unfortunate father. The hope to which unconsciously, and in spite of himself, he had still secretly clung, had now dissolved, and the venerable old man fell forward senseless on the floor of the Court-house, with his head at the foot of his terrified daughter. The unfortunate prisoner, with impotent passion, strove with the guards betwixt whom she was placed. “Let me gang to my father!–I _will_ gang to him–I _will_ gang to him–he is dead–he is killed–I hae killed him!”–she repeated, in frenzied tones of grief, which those who heard them did not speedily forget.
Even in this moment of agony and general confusion, Jeanie did not lose that superiority, which a deep and firm mind assures to its possessor under the most trying circumstances.
“He is my father–he is our father,” she mildly repeated to those who endeavoured to separate them, as she stooped,–shaded aside his grey hairs, and began assiduously to chafe his temples.
The Judge, after repeatedly wiping his eyes, gave directions that they should be conducted into a neighbouring apartment, and carefully attended. The prisoner, as her father was borne from the Court, and her sister slowly followed, pursued them with her eyes so earnestly fixed, as if they would have started from their sockets. But when they were no longer visible, she seemed to find, in her despairing and deserted state, a courage which she had not yet exhibited.
“The bitterness of it is now past,” she said, and then boldly, addressed the Court. “My Lords, if it is your pleasure to gang on wi’ this matter, the weariest day will hae its end at last.”
The Judge, who, much to his honour, had shared deeply in the general sympathy, was surprised at being recalled to his duty by the prisoner. He collected himself, and requested to know if the panel’s counsel had more evidence to produce. Fairbrother replied, with an air of dejection, that his proof was concluded.
The King’s Counsel addressed the jury for the crown. He said in a few words, that no one could be more concerned than he was for the distressing scene which they had just witnessed. But it was the necessary consequence of great crimes to bring distress and ruin upon all connected with the perpetrators. He briefly reviewed the proof, in which he showed that all the circumstances of the case concurred with those required by the act under which the unfortunate prisoner was tried: That the counsel for the panel had totally failed in proving, that Euphemia Deans had communicated her situation to her sister: That, respecting her previous good character, he was sorry to observe, that it was females who possessed the world’s good report, and to whom it was justly valuable, who were most strongly tempted, by shame and fear of the world’s censure, to the crime of infanticide: That the child was murdered, he professed to entertain no doubt. The vacillating and inconsistent declaration of the prisoner herself, marked as it was by numerous refusals to speak the truth on subjects, when, according to her own story, it would have been natural, as well as advantageous, to have been candid; even this imperfect declaration left no doubt in his mind as to the fate of the unhappy infant. Neither could he doubt that the panel was a partner in this guilt. Who else had an interest in a deed so inhuman? Surely neither Robertson, nor Robertson’s agent, in whose house she was delivered, had the least temptation to commit such a crime, unless upon her account, with her connivance, and for the sake of saying her reputation. But it was not required of him, by the law, that he should bring precise proof of the murder, or of the prisoner’s accession to it. It was the very purpose of the statute to substitute a certain chain of presumptive evidence in place of a probation, which, in such cases, it was peculiarly difficult to obtain. The jury might peruse the statute itself, and they had also the libel and interlocutor of relevancy to direct them in point of law. He put it to the conscience of the jury, that under both he was entitled to a verdict of Guilty.
The charge of Fairbrother was much cramped by his having failed in the proof which he expected to lead. But he fought his losing cause with courage and constancy. He ventured to arraign the severity of the statute under which the young woman was tried. “In all other cases,” he said, “the first thing required of the criminal prosecutor was to prove unequivocally that the crime libelled had actually been committed, which lawyers called proving the _corpus delicti._ But this statute, made doubtless with the best intentions, and under the impulse of a just horror for the unnatural crime of infanticide, ran the risk of itself occasioning the worst of murders, the death of an innocent person, to atone for a supposed crime which may never have been committed by anyone. He was so far from acknowledging the alleged probability of the child’s violent death, that he could not even allow that there was evidence of its having ever lived.”
The King’s Counsel pointed to the woman’s declaration; to which the counsel replied–“A production concocted in a moment of terror and agony, and which approached to insanity,” he said, “his learned brother well knew was no sound evidence against the party who emitted it. It was true, that a judicial confession, in presence of the Justices themselves, was the strongest of all proof, insomuch that it is said in law, that ‘_in confitentem nullae sunt partes judicis._’ But this was true of judicial confession only, by which law meant that which is made in presence of the justices, and the sworn inquest. Of extrajudicial confession, all authorities held with the illustrious Farinaceus and Matthaeus, ‘_confessio extrajudicialis in se nulla est; et quod nullum est, non potest adminiculari._’ It was totally inept, and void of all strength and effect from the beginning; incapable, therefore, of being bolstered up or supported, or, according to the law phrase, adminiculated, by other presumptive circumstances. In the present case, therefore, letting the extrajudicial confession go, as it ought to go, for nothing,” he contended, “the prosecutor had not made out the second quality of the statute, that a live child had been born; and _that,_ at least, ought to be established before presumptions were received that it had been murdered. If any of the assize,” he said, “should be of opinion that this was dealing rather narrowly with the statute, they ought to consider that it was in its nature highly penal, and therefore entitled to no favourable construction.”
He concluded a learned speech, with an eloquent peroration on the scene they had just witnessed, during which Saddletree fell fast asleep.
It was now the presiding Judge’s turn to address the jury. He did so briefly and distinctly.
“It was for the jury,” he said, “to consider whether the prosecutor had made out his plea. For himself, he sincerely grieved to say, that a shadow of doubt remained not upon his mind concerning the verdict which the inquest had to bring in. He would not follow the prisoner’s counsel through the impeachment which he had brought against the statute of King William and Queen Mary. He and the jury were sworn to judge according to the laws as they stood, not to criticise, or evade, or even to justify them. In no civil case would a counsel have been permitted to plead his client’s case in the teeth of the law; but in the hard situation in which counsel were often placed in the Criminal Court, as well as out of favour to all presumptions of innocence, he had not inclined to interrupt the learned gentleman, or narrow his plea. The present law, as it now stood, had been instituted by the wisdom of their fathers, to check the alarming progress of a dreadful crime; when it was found too severe for its purpose it would doubtless be altered by the wisdom of the Legislature; at present it was the law of the land, the rule of the Court, and, according to the oath which they had taken, it must be that of the jury. This unhappy girl’s situation could not be doubted; that she had borne a child, and that the child had disappeared, were certain facts. The learned counsel had failed to show that she had communicated her situation. All the requisites of the case required by the statute were therefore before the jury. The learned gentleman had, indeed, desired them to throw out of consideration the panel’s own confession, which was the plea usually urged, in penury of all others, by counsel in his situation, who usually felt that the declarations of their clients bore hard on them. But that the Scottish law designed that a certain weight should be laid on these declarations, which, he admitted, were _quodammodo_ extrajudicial, was evident from the universal practice by which they were always produced and read, as part of the prosecutor’s probation. In the present case, no person who had heard the witnesses describe the appearance of the young woman before she left Saddletree’s house, and contrasted it with that of her state and condition at her return to her father’s, could have any doubt that the fact of delivery had taken place, as set forth in her own declaration, which was, therefore, not a solitary piece of testimony, but adminiculated and supported by the strongest circumstantial proof.
“He did not,” he said, “state the impression upon his own mind with the purpose of biassing theirs. He had felt no less than they had done from the scene of domestic misery which had been exhibited before them; and if they, having God and a good conscience, the sanctity of their oath, and the regard due to the law of the country, before their eyes, could come to a conclusion favourable to this unhappy prisoner, he should rejoice as much as anyone in Court; for never had he found his duty more distressing than in discharging it that day, and glad he would be to be relieved from the still more painful task which would otherwise remain for him.”
The jury, having heard the Judge’s address, bowed and retired, preceded by a macer of Court, to the apartment destined for their deliberation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD.
Law, take thy victim–May she find the mercy In yon mild heaven, which this hard world denies her!
It was an hour ere the jurors returned, and as they traversed the crowd with slow steps, as men about to discharge themselves of a heavy and painful responsibility, the audience was hushed into profound, earnest, and awful silence.
“Have you agreed on your chancellor, gentlemen?” was the first question of the Judge.
The foreman, called in Scotland the chancellor of the jury, usually the man of best rank and estimation among the assizers, stepped forward, and with a low reverence, delivered to the Court a sealed paper, containing the verdict, which, until of late years, that verbal returns are in some instances permitted, was always couched in writing. The jury remained standing while the Judge broke the seals, and having perused the paper, handed it with an air of mournful gravity down to the clerk of Court, who proceeded to engross in the record the yet unknown verdict, of which, however, all omened the tragical contents. A form still remained, trifling and unimportant in itself, but to which imagination adds a sort of solemnity, from the awful occasion upon which it is used. A lighted candle was placed on the table, the original paper containing the verdict was enclosed in a sheet of paper, and, sealed with the Judge’s own signet, was transmitted to the Crown Office, to be preserved among other records of the same kind. As all this is transacted in profound silence, the producing and extinguishing the candle seems a type of the human spark which is shortly afterwards doomed to be quenched, and excites in the spectators something of the same effect which in England is obtained by the Judge assuming the fatal cap of judgment. When these preliminary forms had been gone through, the Judge required Euphemia Deans to attend to the verdict to be read.
After the usual words of style, the verdict set forth, that the Jury having made choice of John Kirk, Esq., to be their chancellor, and Thomas Moore, merchant, to be their clerk, did, by a plurality of voices, find the said Euphemia Deans Guilty of the crime libelled; but, in consideration of her extreme youth, and the cruel circumstances of her case, did earnestly entreat that the Judge would recommend her to the mercy of the Crown.
“Gentlemen,” said the Judge, “you have done your duty–and a painful one it must have been to men of humanity like you. I will undoubtedly transmit your recommendation to the throne. But it is my duty to tell all who now hear me, but especially to inform that unhappy young woman, in order that her mind may be settled accordingly, that I have not the least hope of a pardon being granted in the present case. You know the crime has been increasing in this land, and I know farther, that this has been ascribed to the lenity in which the laws have been exercised, and that there is therefore no hope whatever of obtaining a remission for this offence.” The jury bowed again, and, released from their painful office, dispersed themselves among the mass of bystanders.
The Court then asked Mr. Fairbrother whether he had anything to say, why judgment should not follow on the verdict? The counsel had spent some time in persuing and reperusing the verdict, counting the letters in each juror’s name, and weighing every phrase, nay, every syllable, in the nicest scales of legal criticism. But the clerk of the jury had understood his business too well. No flaw was to be found, and Fairbrother mournfully intimated, that he had nothing to say in arrest of judgment.
The presiding Judge then addressed the unhappy prisoner:–“Euphemia Deans, attend to the sentence of the Court now to be pronounced against you.”
She rose from her seat, and with a composure far greater than could have been augured from her demeanour during some parts of the trial, abode the conclusion of the awful scene. So nearly does the mental portion of our feelings resemble those which are corporeal, that the first severe blows which we receive bring with them a stunning apathy, which renders us indifferent to those that follow them. Thus said Mandrin, when he was undergoing the punishment of the wheel; and so have all felt, upon whom successive inflictions have descended with continuous and reiterated violence.*
* [The notorious Mandrin was known as the Captain-General of French & smugglers. See a Tract on his exploits, printed 1753.]
“Young woman,” said the Judge, “it is my painful duty to tell you, that your life is forfeited under a law, which, if it may seem in some degree severe, is yet wisely so, to render those of your unhappy situation aware what risk they run, by concealing, out of pride or false shame, their lapse from virtue, and making no preparation to save the lives of the unfortunate infants whom they are to bring into the world. When you concealed your situation from your mistress, your sister, and other worthy and compassionate persons of your own sex, in whose favour your former conduct had given you a fair place, you seem to me to have had in your contemplation, at least, the death of the helpless creature, for whose life you neglected to provide. How the child was disposed of–whether it was dealt upon by another, or by yourself–whether the extraordinary story you have told is partly false, or altogether so, is between God and your own conscience. I will not aggravate your distress by pressing on that topic, but I do most solemnly adjure you to employ the remaining space of your time in making your peace with God, for which purpose such reverend clergymen, as you yourself may name, shall have access to you. Notwithstanding the humane recommendation of the jury, I cannot afford to you, in the present circumstances of the country, the slightest hope that your life will be prolonged beyond the period assigned for the execution of your sentence. Forsaking, therefore, the thoughts of this world, let your mind be prepared by repentance for those of more awful moments–for death, judgment, and eternity.–Doomster, read the sentence.”*
* Note N. Doomster, or Dempster, of Court.
When the Doomster showed himself, a tall haggard figure, arrayed in a fantastic garment of black and grey, passmented with silver lace, all fell back with a sort of instinctive horror, and made wide way for him to approach the foot of the table. As this office was held by the common executioner, men shouldered each other backward to avoid even the touch of his garment, and some were seen to brush their own clothes, which had accidentally become subject to such contamination. A sound went through the Court, produced by each person drawing in their breath hard, as men do when they expect or witness what is frightful, and at the same time affecting. The caitiff villain yet seemed, amid his hardened brutality, to have some sense of his being the object of public detestation, which made him impatient of being in public, as birds of evil omen are anxious to escape from daylight, and from pure air.
Repeating after the Clerk of Court, he gabbled over the words of the sentence, which condemned Euphemia Deans to be conducted back to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and detained there until Wednesday the day of —; and upon that day, betwixt the hours of two and four o’clock afternoon, to be conveyed to the common place of execution, and there hanged by the neck upon a gibbet. “And this,” said the Doomster, aggravating his harsh voice, “I pronounce for _doom._”
He vanished when he had spoken the last emphatic word, like a foul fiend after the purpose of his visitation had been accomplished; but the impression of horror excited by his presence and his errand, remained upon the crowd of spectators.
The unfortunate criminal,–for so she must now be termed,–with more susceptibility, and more irritable feelings than her father and sister, was found, in this emergence, to possess a considerable share of their courage. She had remained standing motionless at the bar while the sentence was pronounced, and was observed to shut her eyes when the Doomster appeared. But she was the first to break silence when that evil form had left his place.
“God forgive ye, my Lords,” she said, “and dinna be angry wi’ me for wishing it–we a’ need forgiveness.–As for myself, I canna blame ye, for ye act up to your lights; and if I havena killed my poor infant, ye may witness a’ that hae seen it this day, that I hae been the means of killing my greyheaded father–I deserve the warst frae man, and frae God too–But God is mair mercifu’ to us than we are to each other.”
With these words the trial concluded. The crowd rushed, bearing forward and shouldering each other, out of the Court, in the same tumultuary mode in which they had entered; and, in excitation of animal motion and animal spirits, soon forgot whatever they had felt as impressive in the scene which they had witnessed. The professional spectators, whom habit and theory had rendered as callous to the distress of the scene as medical men are to those of a surgical operation, walked homeward in groups, discussing the general principle of the statute under which the young woman was condemned, the nature of the evidence, and the arguments of the counsel, without considering even that of the Judge as exempt from their criticism.
The female spectators, more compassionate, were loud in exclamation against that part of the Judge’s speech which seemed to cut off the hope of pardon.
“Set him up, indeed,” said Mrs. Howden, “to tell us that the poor lassie behoved to die, when Mr. John Kirk, as civil a gentleman as is within the ports of the town, took the pains to prigg for her himsell.”
“Ay, but, neighbour,” said Miss Damahoy, drawing up her thin maidenly form to its full height of prim dignity–“I really think this unnatural business of having bastard-bairns should be putten a stop to.–There isna a hussy now on this side of thirty that you can bring within your doors, but there will be chields–writer-lads, prentice-lads, and what not–coming traiking after them for their destruction, and discrediting ane’s honest house into the bargain–I hae nae patience wi’ them.”
“Hout, neighbour,” said Mrs. Howden, “we suld live and let live–we hae been young oursells, and we are no aye to judge the warst when lads and lasses forgather.”
“Young oursells! and judge the warst!” said Miss Damahoy. “I am no sae auld as that comes to, Mrs. Howden; and as for what ye ca’ the warst, I ken neither good nor bad about the matter, I thank my stars!”
“Ye are thankfu’ for sma’ mercies, then,” said Mrs. Howden with a toss of her head; “and as for you and young–I trow ye were doing for yoursell at the last riding of the Scots Parliament, and that was in the gracious year seven, sae ye can be nae sic chicken at ony rate.”
Plumdamas, who acted as squire of the body to the two contending dames, instantly saw the hazard of entering into such delicate points of chronology, and being a lover of peace and good neighbourhood, lost no time in bringing back the conversation to its original subject.
“The Judge didna tell us a’ he could hae tell’d us, if he had liked, about the application for pardon, neighbours,” said he “there is aye a wimple in a lawyer’s clew; but it’s a wee bit of a secret.”
“And what is’t–what is’t, neighbour Plumdamas?” said Mrs. Howden and Miss Damahoy at once, the acid fermentation of their dispute being at once neutralised by the powerful alkali implied in the word secret.
“Here’s Mr. Saddletree can tell ye that better than me, for it was him that tauld me,” said Plumdamas as Saddletree came up, with his wife hanging on his arm, and looking very disconsolate.
When the question was put to Saddletree, he looked very scornful. “They speak about stopping the frequency of child-murder,” said he, in a contemptuous tone; “do ye think our auld enemies of England, as Glendook aye ca’s them in his printed Statute-book, care a boddle whether we didna kill ane anither, skin and birn, horse and foot, man, woman, and bairns, all and sindry, _omnes et singulos,_ as Mr. Crossmyloof says? Na, na, it’s no _that_ hinders them frae pardoning the bit lassie. But here is the pinch of the plea. The king and queen are sae ill pleased wi’ that mistak about Porteous, that deil a kindly Scot will they pardon again, either by reprieve or remission, if the haill town o’ Edinburgh should be a’ hanged on ae tow.”
“Deil that they were back at their German kale-yard then, as my neighbour MacCroskie ca’s it,” said Mrs. Howden, “an that’s the way they’re gaun to guide us!”
“They say for certain,” said Miss Damahoy, “that King George flang his periwig in the fire when he heard o’ the Porteous mob.”
“He has done that, they say,” replied Saddletree, “for less thing.”
“Aweel,” said Miss Damahoy, “he might keep mair wit in his anger–but it’s a’ the better for his wigmaker, I’se warrant.”
“The queen tore her biggonets for perfect anger,–ye’ll hae heard o’ that too?” said Plumdamas. “And the king, they say, kickit Sir Robert Walpole for no keeping down the mob of Edinburgh; but I dinna believe he wad behave sae ungenteel.”
“It’s dooms truth, though,” said Saddletree; “and he was for kickin’ the Duke of Argyle* too.”
* Note O. John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.
“Kickin’ the Duke of Argyle!” exclaimed the hearers at once, in all the various combined keys of utter astonishment.
“Ay, but MacCallummore’s blood wadna sit down wi’ that; there was risk of Andro Ferrara coming in thirdsman.”
“The duke is a real Scotsman–a true friend to the country,” answered Saddletree’s hearers.
“Ay, troth is he, to king and country baith, as ye sall hear,” continued the orator, “if ye will come in bye to our house, for it’s safest speaking of sic things _inter parietes._”
When they entered his shop, he thrust his prentice boy out of it, and, unlocking his desk, took out, with an air of grave and complacent importance, a dirty and crumpled piece of printed paper; he observed, “This is new corn–it’s no every body could show you the like o’ this. It’s the duke’s speech about the Porteous mob, just promulgated by the hawkers. Ye shall hear what Ian Roy Cean* says for himsell.
* Red John the warrior, a name personal and proper in the Highlands to John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, as MacCummin was that of his race or dignity.
My correspondent bought it in the Palace-yard, that’s like just under the king’s nose–I think he claws up their mittans!–It came in a letter about a foolish bill of exchange that the man wanted me to renew for him. I wish ye wad see about it, Mrs. Saddletree.”
Honest Mrs. Saddletree had hitherto been so sincerely distressed about the situation of her unfortunate prote’ge’e, that she had suffered her husband to proceed in his own way, without attending to what he was saying. The words bills and renew had, however, an awakening sound in them; and she snatched the letter which her husband held towards her, and wiping her eyes, and putting on her spectacles, endeavoured, as fast as the dew which collected on her glasses would permit, to get at the meaning of the needful part of the epistle; while her husband, with pompous elevation, read an extract from the speech.
“I am no minister, I never was a minister, and I never will be one”
“I didna ken his Grace was ever designed for the ministry,” interrupted Mrs. Howden.
“He disna mean a minister of the gospel, Mrs. Howden, but a minister of state,” said Saddletree, with condescending goodness, and then proceeded: “The time was when I might have been a piece of a minister, but I was too sensible of my own incapacity to engage in any state affair. And I thank God that I had always too great a value for those few abilities which Nature has given me, to employ them in doing any drudgery, or any job of what kind soever. I have, ever since I set out in the world (and I believe few have set out more early), served my prince with my tongue; I have served him with any little interest I had, and I have served him with my sword, and in my profession of arms. I have held employments which I have lost, and were I to be to-morrow deprived of those which still remain to me, and which I have endeavoured honestly to deserve, I would still serve him to the last acre of my inheritance, and to the last drop of my blood”
Mrs. Saddletree here broke in upon the orator:–“Mr. Saddletree, what _is_ the meaning of a’ this? Here are ye clavering about the Duke of Argyle, and this man Martingale gaun to break on our hands, and lose us gude sixty pounds–I wonder what duke will pay that, quotha–I wish the Duke of Argyle would pay his ain accounts–He is in a thousand punds Scots on thae very books when he was last at Roystoun–I’m no saying but he’s a just nobleman, and that it’s gude siller–but it wad drive ane daft to be confused wi’ deukes and drakes, and thae distressed folk up-stairs, that’s Jeanie Deans and her father. And then, putting the very callant that was sewing the curpel out o’ the shop, to play wi’ blackguards in the close–Sit still, neighbours, it’s no that I mean to disturb _you;_ but what between courts o’ law and courts o’ state, and upper and under parliaments, and parliament houses, here and in London, the gudeman’s gane clean gyte, I think.”
The gossips understood civility, and the rule of doing as they would be done by, too well, to tarry upon the slight invitation implied in the conclusion of this speech, and therefore made their farewells and departure as fast as possible, Saddletree whispering to Plundamas that he would “meet him at MacCroskie’s” (the low-browed shop in the Luckenbooths, already mentioned), “in the hour of cause, and put MacCallummore’s speech in his pocket, for a’ the gudewife’s din.”
When Mrs. Saddletree saw the house freed of her importunate visitors, and the little boy reclaimed from the pastimes of the wynd to the exercise of the awl, she went to visit her unhappy relative, David Deans, and his elder daughter, who had found in her house the nearest place of friendly refuge.
End of Vol. 1.
THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, Volume 2
By Walter Scott
TALES OF MY LANDLORD
COLLECTED AND ARRANGED
BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM,
SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK
OF GANDERCLEUGH.
SECOND SERIES.
[Illustration: Titlepage]
THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN.
CHAPTER FIRST.
Isab.–Alas! what poor ability’s in me To do him good?
Lucio.–Assay the power you have. Measure for Measure.
When Mrs. Saddletree entered the apartment in which her guests had shrouded their misery, she found the window darkened. The feebleness which followed his long swoon had rendered it necessary to lay the old man in bed. The curtains were drawn around him, and Jeanie sate motionless by the side of the bed. Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of kindness, nay, of feeling, but not of delicacy. She opened the half-shut window, drew aside the curtain, and, taking her kinsman by the hand, exhorted him to sit up, and bear his sorrow like a good man, and a Christian man, as he was. But when she quitted his hand, it fell powerless by his side, nor did he attempt the least reply.
“Is all over?” asked Jeanie, with lips and cheeks as pale as ashes,–“and is there nae hope for her?”
“Nane, or next to nane,” said Mrs. Saddletree; “I heard the Judge-carle say it with my ain ears–It was a burning shame to see sae mony o’ them set up yonder in their red gowns and black gowns, and to take the life o’ a bit senseless lassie. I had never muckle broo o’ my gudeman’s gossips, and now I like them waur than ever. The only wiselike thing I heard onybody say, was decent Mr. John Kirk of Kirk-knowe, and he wussed them just to get the king’s mercy, and nae mair about it. But he spake to unreasonable folk–he might just hae keepit his breath to hae blawn on his porridge.”
“But _can_ the king gie her mercy?” said Jeanie, earnestly. “Some folk tell me he canna gie mercy in cases of mur in cases like hers.”
“_Can_ he gie mercy, hinny?–I weel I wot he can, when he likes. There was young Singlesword, that stickit the Laird of Ballencleuch, and Captain Hackum, the Englishman, that killed Lady Colgrain’s gudeman, and the Master of Saint Clair, that shot the twa Shaws,* and mony mair in my time–to be sure they were gentle blood, and had their, kin to speak for them–And there was Jock Porteous the other day–I’se warrant there’s mercy, an folk could win at it.”
* [In 1828, the Author presented to the Roxburgh Club a curious volume containing the “Proceedings in the Court-Martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, for the murder of Ensign Schaw, and Captain Schaw, 17th October 1708.”]
“Porteous?” said Jeanie; “very true–I forget a’ that I suld maist mind.– Fare ye weel, Mrs. Saddletree; and may ye never want a friend in the hour of distress!”
“Will ye no stay wi’ your father, Jeanie, bairn?–Ye had better,” said Mrs. Saddletree.
“I will be wanted ower yonder,” indicating the Tolbooth with her hand, “and I maun leave him now, or I will never be able to leave him. I fearna for his life–I ken how strong-hearted he is–I ken it,” she said, laying her hand on her bosom, “by my ain heart at this minute.”
“Weel, hinny, if ye think it’s for the best, better he stay here and rest him, than gang back to St. Leonard’s.”
“Muckle better–muckle better–God bless you!–God bless you!–At no rate let him gang till ye hear frae me,” said Jeanie.
“But ye’ll be back belive?” said Mrs. Saddletree, detaining her; “they winna let ye stay yonder, hinny.”
“But I maun gang to St. Leonard’s–there’s muckle to be dune, and little time to do it in–And I have friends to speak to–God bless you–take care of my father.”
She had reached the door of the apartment, when, suddenly turning, she came back, and knelt down by the bedside.–“O father, gie me your blessing–I dare not go till ye bless me. Say but ‘God bless ye, and prosper ye, Jeanie’–try but to say that!”
Instinctively, rather than by an exertion of intellect, the old man murmured a prayer, that “purchased and promised blessings might be multiplied upon her.”
“He has blessed mine errand,” said his daughter, rising from her knees, “and it is borne in upon my mind that I shall prosper.”
So saying, she left the room.
Mrs. Saddletree looked after her, and shook her head. “I wish she binna roving, poor thing–There’s something queer about a’ thae Deanses. I dinna like folk to be sae muckle better than other folk–seldom comes gude o’t. But if she’s gaun to look after the kye at St. Leonard’s, that’s another story; to be sure they maun be sorted.–Grizzie, come up here, and tak tent to the honest auld man, and see he wants naething.–Ye silly tawpie” (addressing the maid-servant as she entered), “what garr’d ye busk up your cockemony that gate?–I think there’s been enough the day to gie an awfa’ warning about your cockups and your fallal duds–see what they a’ come to,” etc. etc. etc.
Leaving the good lady to her lecture upon worldly vanities, we must transport our reader to the cell in which the unfortunate Effie Deans was now immured, being restricted of several liberties which she had enjoyed before the sentence was pronounced.
When she had remained about an hour in the state of stupified horror so natural in her situation, she was disturbed by the opening of the jarring bolts of her place of confinement, and Ratcliffe showed himself. “It’s your sister,” he said, “wants to speak t’ye, Effie.”
“I canna see naebody,” said Effie, with the hasty irritability which misery had rendered more acute–“I canna see naebody, and least of a’ her–Bid her take care o’ the auld man–I am naething to ony o’ them now, nor them to me.”
“She says she maun see ye, though,” said Ratcliffe; and Jeanie, rushing into the apartment, threw her arms round her sister’s neck, who writhed to extricate herself from her embrace.
“What signifies coming to greet ower me,” said poor Effie, “when you have killed me?–killed me, when a word of your mouth would have saved me–killed me, when I am an innocent creature–innocent of that guilt at least–and me that wad hae wared body and soul to save your finger from being hurt?”
“You shall not die,” said Jeanie, with enthusiastic firmness; “say what you like o’ me–think what you like o’ me–only promise–for I doubt your proud heart–that ye wunna harm yourself, and you shall not die this shameful death.”
“A _shameful_ death I will not die, Jeanie, lass. I have that in my heart–though it has been ower kind a ane–that wunna bide shame. Gae hame to our father, and think nae mair on me–I have eat my last earthly meal.”
“Oh, this was what I feared!” said Jeanie.
“Hout, tout, hinny,” said Ratcliffe; “it’s but little ye ken o’ thae things. Ane aye thinks at the first dinnle o’ the sentence, they hae heart eneugh to die rather than bide out the sax weeks; but they aye bide the sax weeks out for a’ that. I ken the gate o’t weel; I hae fronted the doomster three times, and here I stand, Jim Ratcliffe, for a’ that. Had I tied my napkin strait the first time, as I had a great mind till’t–and it was a’ about a bit grey cowt, wasna worth ten punds sterling–where would I have been now?”
“And how _did_ you escape?” said Jeanie, the fates of this man, at first so odious to her, having acquired a sudden interest in her eyes from their correspondence with those of her sister.
“_How_ did I escape?” said Ratcliffe, with a knowing wink,–“I tell ye I ‘scapit in a way that naebody will escape from this Tolbooth while I keep the keys.”
“My sister shall come out in the face of the sun,” said Jeanie; “I will go to London, and beg her pardon from the king and queen. If they pardoned Porteous, they may pardon her; if a sister asks a sister’s life on her bended knees, they will pardon her–they _shall_ pardon her–and they will win a thousand hearts by it.”
Effie listened in bewildered astonishment, and so earnest was her sister’s enthusiastic assurance, that she almost involuntarily caught a gleam of hope; but it instantly faded away.
“Ah, Jeanie! the king and queen live in London, a thousand miles from this–far ayont the saut sea; I’ll be gane before ye win there.”
“You are mistaen,” said Jeanie; “it is no sae far, and they go to it by land; I learned something about thae things from Reuben Butler.”
“Ah, Jeanie! ye never learned onything but what was gude frae the folk ye keepit company wi’; but!–but!”–she wrung her hands and wept bitterly.
“Dinna think on that now,” said Jeanie; “there will be time for that if the present space be redeemed. Fare ye weel. Unless I die by the road, I will see the king’s face that gies grace–O, sir” (to Ratcliffe), “be kind to her–She ne’er ken’d what it was to need a stranger’s kindness till now.–Fareweel–fareweel, Effie!–Dinna speak to me–I maunna greet now–my head’s ower dizzy already!”
She tore herself from her sister’s arms, and left the cell. Ratcliffe followed her, and beckoned her into a small room. She obeyed his signal, but not without trembling.
“What’s the fule thing shaking for?” said he; “I mean nothing but civility to you. D–n me, I respect you, and I can’t help it. You have so much spunk, that d–n me, but I think there’s some chance of your carrying the day. But you must not go to the king till you have made some friend; try the duke–try MacCallummore; he’s Scotland’s friend–I ken that the great folks dinna muckle like him–but they fear him, and that will serve your purpose as weel. D’ye ken naebody wad gie ye a letter to him?”
“Duke of Argyle!” said Jeanie, recollecting herself suddenly, “what was he to that Argyle that suffered in my father’s time–in the persecution?”
“His son or grandson, I’m thinking,” said Ratcliffe, “but what o’ that?”
“Thank God!” said Jeanie, devoutly clasping her hands.
“You whigs are aye thanking God for something,” said the ruffian. “But hark ye, hinny, I’ll tell ye a secret. Ye may meet wi’ rough customers on the Border, or in the Midland, afore ye get to Lunnon. Now, deil ane o’ them will touch an acquaintance o’ Daddie Ratton’s; for though I am retired frae public practice, yet they ken I can do a gude or an ill turn yet–and deil a gude fellow that has been but a twelvemonth on the lay, be he ruffler or padder, but he knows my gybe* as well as the jark** of e’er a queer cuffin*** in England–and there’s rogue’s Latin for you.”
* Pass.
** Seal.
*** Justice of Peace.
It was indeed totally unintelligible to Jeanie Deans, who was only impatient to escape from him. He hastily scrawled a line or two on a dirty piece of paper, and said to her, as she drew back when he offered it, “Hey!–what the deil–it wunna bite you, my lass–if it does nae gude, it can do nae ill. But I wish you to show it, if you have ony fasherie wi’ ony o’ St. Nicholas’s clerks.”
“Alas!” said she, “I do not understand what you mean.”
“I mean, if ye fall among thieves, my precious,–that is a Scripture phrase, if ye will hae ane–the bauldest of them will ken a scart o’ my guse feather. And now awa wi’ ye–and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do the job, it maun be him.”
After casting an anxious look at the grated windows and blackened walls of the old Tolbooth, and another scarce less anxious at the hospitable lodging of Mrs. Saddletree, Jeanie turned her back on that quarter, and soon after on the city itself. She reached St. Leonard’s Crags without meeting any one whom she knew, which, in the state of her mind, she considered as a great blessing. “I must do naething,” she thought, as she went along, “that can soften or weaken my heart–it’s ower weak already for what I hae to do. I will think and act as firmly as I can, and speak as little.”
There was an ancient servant, or rather cottar, of her father’s, who had lived under him for many years, and whose fidelity was worthy of full confidence. She sent for this woman, and explaining to her that the circumstances of her family required that she should undertake a journey, which would detain her for some weeks from home, she gave her full instructions concerning the management of the domestic concerns in her absence. With a precision, which, upon reflection, she herself could not help wondering at, she described and detailed the most minute steps which were to be taken, and especially such as were necessary for her father’s comfort. “It was probable,” she said, “that he would return to St. Leonard’s to-morrow! certain that he would return very soon–all must be in order for him. He had eneugh to distress him, without being fashed about warldly matters.”
In the meanwhile she toiled busily, along with May Hettly, to leave nothing unarranged.
It was deep in the night when all these matters were settled; and when they had partaken of some food, the first which Jeanie had tasted on that eventful day, May Hettly, whose usual residence was a cottage at a little distance from Deans’s house, asked her young mistress, whether she would not permit her to remain in the house all night? “Ye hae had an awfu’ day,” she said, “and sorrow and fear are but bad companions in the watches of the night, as I hae heard the gudeman say himself.”
“They are ill companions indeed,” said Jeanie; “but I maun learn to abide their presence, and better begin in the house than in the field.”
She dismissed her aged assistant accordingly,–for so slight was the gradation in their rank of life, that we can hardly term May a servant,–and proceeded to make a few preparations for her journey.
The simplicity of her education and country made these preparations very brief and easy. Her tartan screen served all the purposes of a riding-habit and of an umbrella; a small bundle contained such changes of linen as were absolutely necessary. Barefooted, as Sancho says, she had come into the world, and barefooted she proposed to perform her pilgrimage; and her clean shoes and change of snow-white thread stockings were to be reserved for special occasions of ceremony. She was not aware, that the English habits of comfort attach an idea of abject misery to the idea of a barefooted traveller; and if the objection of cleanliness had been made to the practice, she would have been apt to vindicate herself upon the very frequent ablutions to which, with Mahometan scrupulosity, a Scottish damsel of some condition usually subjects herself. Thus far, therefore, all was well.
From an oaken press, or cabinet, in which her father kept a few old books, and two or three bundles of papers, besides his ordinary accounts and receipts, she sought out and extracted from a parcel of notes of sermons, calculations of interest, records of dying speeches of the martyrs, and the like, one or two documents which she thought might be of some use to her upon her mission. But the most important difficulty remained behind, and it had not occurred to her until that very evening. It was the want of money; without which it was impossible she could undertake so distant a journey as she now meditated.
David Deans, as we have said, was easy, and even opulent in his circumstances. But his wealth, like that of the patriarchs of old, consisted in his kine and herds, and in two or three sums lent out at interest to neighbours or relatives, who, far from being in circumstances to pay anything to account of the principal sums, thought they did all that was incumbent on them when, with considerable difficulty, they discharged the “annual rent.” To these debtors it would be in vain, therefore, to apply, even with her father’s concurrence; nor could she hope to obtain such concurrence, or assistance in any mode, without such a series of explanations and debates as she felt might deprive her totally of the power of taking the step, which, however daring and hazardous, she felt was absolutely necessary for trying the last chance in favour of her sister. Without departing from filial reverence, Jeanie had an inward conviction that the feelings of her father, however just, and upright, and honourable, were too little in unison with the spirit of the time to admit of his being a good judge of the measures to be adopted in this crisis. Herself more flexible in manner, though no less upright in principle, she felt that to ask his consent to her pilgrimage would be to encounter the risk of drawing down his positive prohibition, and under that she believed her journey could not be blessed in its progress and event. Accordingly, she had determined upon the means by which she might communicate to him her undertaking and its purpose, shortly after her actual departure. But it was impossible to apply to him for money without altering this arrangement, and discussing fully the propriety of her journey; pecuniary assistance from that quarter, therefore, was laid out of the question.
It now occurred to Jeanie that she should have consulted with Mrs. Saddletree on this subject. But, besides the time that must now necessarily be lost in recurring to her assistance Jeanie internally revolted from it. Her heart acknowledged the goodness of Mrs. Saddletree’s general character, and the kind interest she took in their family misfortunes; but still she felt that Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of an ordinary and worldly way of thinking, incapable, from habit and temperament, of taking a keen or enthusiastic view of such a resolution as she had formed; and to debate the point with her, and to rely upon her conviction of its propriety, for the means of carrying it into execution, would have been gall and wormwood.
Butler, whose assistance she might have been assured of, was greatly poorer than herself. In these circumstances, she formed a singular resolution for the purpose of surmounting this difficulty, the execution of which will form the subject of the next chapter.
CHAPTER SECOND
‘Tis the voice of the sluggard, I’ve heard him complain, “You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;” As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his heavy head. Dr. Watts.
The mansion-house of Dumbiedikes, to which we are now to introduce our readers, lay three or four miles–no matter for the exact topography–to the southward of St. Leonard’s. It had once borne the appearance of some little celebrity; for the “auld laird,” whose humours and pranks were often mentioned in the ale-houses for about a mile round it, wore a sword, kept a good horse, and a brace of greyhounds; brawled, swore, and betted at cock-fights and horse-matches; followed Somerville of Drum’s hawks, and the Lord Ross’s hounds, and called himself _point devise_ a gentleman. But the line had been veiled of its splendour in the present proprietor, who cared for no rustic amusements, and was as saying, timid, and retired, as his father had been at once grasping and selfishly extravagant–daring, wild, and intrusive.
Dumbiedikes was what is called in Scotland a single house; that is, having only one room occupying its whole depth from back to front, each of which single apartments was illuminated by six or eight cross lights, whose diminutive panes and heavy frames permitted scarce so much light to enter as shines through one well-constructed modern window. This inartificial edifice, exactly such as a child would build with cards, had a steep roof flagged with coarse grey stones instead of slates; a half-circular turret, battlemented, or, to use the appropriate phrase, bartizan’d on the top, served as a case for a narrow turnpike stair, by which an ascent was gained from storey to storey; and at the bottom of the said turret was a door studded with large-headed nails. There was no lobby at the bottom of the tower, and scarce a landing-place opposite to the doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and dilapidated outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous, surrounded the mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being partly displaced and partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles sprung up between them, and the small garden, which opened by a postern through the wall, seemed not to be in a much more orderly condition. Over the low-arched gateway which led into the yard there was a carved stone, exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and above the inner entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering hatchment, which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard. The approach to this palace of pleasure was by a road formed by the rude fragments of stone gathered from the fields, and it was surrounded by ploughed, but unenclosed land. Upon a baulk, that is, an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn, the Laird’s trusty palfrey was tethered by the head, and picking a meal of grass. The whole argued neglect and discomfort; the consequence, however, of idleness and indifference, not of poverty.
In this inner court, not without a sense of bashfulness and timidity, stood Jeanie Deans, at an early hour in a fine spring morning. She was no heroine of romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest on the mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur to her, a little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by instinct how to apply, might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no person of taste beyond her time, rank, and country, and certainly thought the house of Dumbiedikes, though inferior to Holyrood House, or the palace at Dalkeith, was still a stately structure in its way, and the land a “very bonny bit, if it were better seen to and done to.” But Jeanie Deans was a plain, true-hearted, honest girl, who, while she acknowledged all the splendour of her old admirer’s habitation, and the value of his property, never for a moment harboured a thought of doing the Laird, Butler, or herself, the injustice, which many ladies of higher rank would not have hesitated to do to all three on much less temptation.
Her present errand being with the Laird, she looked round the offices to see if she could find any domestic to announce that she wished to see him. As all was silence, she ventured to open one door–it was the old Laird’s dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another–it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points of domestic management in which Dumbiedikes was positively active; in all other matters of domestic economy he was completely passive, and at the mercy of his housekeeper–the same buxom dame whom his father had long since bequeathed to his charge, and who, if fame did her no injustice, had feathered her nest pretty well at his expense.
Jeanie went on opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which half hung on the walls, half trailed on the litter. Beyond the “treviss,” which formed one side of the stall, stood a cow, who turned her head and lowed when Jeanie came into the stable, an appeal which her habitual occupations enabled her perfectly to understand, and with which she could not refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard.
While she was accommodating “the milky mother” with the food which she should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to perform, ejaculated,
“Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!” and fled, yelling as if she had seen the devil.
To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer–
Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail.
Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the Brownie had been flaying her. Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her temporary occupation, and followed the yelling damsel into the courtyard, in order to undeceive and appease her, was there met by Mrs. Janet Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as scandal went–the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman, betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the last Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or thereabouts, fond of her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious that her administration did not rest on so sure a basis as in the time of the old proprietor, this considerate lady had introduced into the family the screamer aforesaid, who added good features and bright eyes to the powers of her lungs. She made no conquest of the Laird, however, who seemed to live as if there was not another woman in the world but Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing affection even to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own uneasy thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard’s Crags, and often, when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according to his custom before utterance, she expected him to say, “Jenny, I am gaun to change my condition;” but she was relieved by, “Jenny, I am gaun to change my shoon.”
Still, however, Mrs. Balchristie regarded Jeanie Deans with no small portion of malevolence, the customary feeling of such persons towards anyone who they think has the means of doing them an injury. But she had also a general aversion to any female tolerably young, and decently well-looking, who showed a wish to approach the house of Dumbiedikes and the proprietor thereof. And as she had raised her mass of mortality out of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to the rescue of her clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against all and sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she harboured _inimicitiam contra omnes mortales._
“Wha the deil are ye?” said the fat dame to poor Jeanie, whom she did not immediately recognise, “scouping about a decent house at sic an hour in the morning?”
“It was ane wanting to speak to the Laird,” said Jeanie, who felt something of the intuitive terror which she had formerly entertained for this termagant, when she was occasionally at Dumbiedikes on business of her father’s.
“Ane!–And what sort of ane are ye!–hae ye nae name?–D’ye think his honour has naething else to do than to speak wi’ ilka idle tramper that comes about the town, and him in his bed yet, honest man?”
“Dear Mrs. Balchristie,” replied Jeanie, in a submissive tone, “d’ye no mind me?–d’ye no mind Jeanie Deans?”
“Jeanie Deans!” said the termagant, in accents affecting the utmost astonishment; then, taking two strides nearer to her, she peered into her face with a stare of curiosity, equally scornful and malignant–“I say Jeanie Deans indeed–Jeanie Deevil, they had better hae ca’ed ye!–A bonny spot o’ wark your tittie and you hae made out, murdering ae puir wean, and your light limmer of a sister’s to be hanged for’t, as weel she deserves!–And the like o’ you to come to ony honest man’s house, and want to be into a decent bachelor gentleman’s room at this time in the morning, and him in his bed!–Gae wa’, gae wa’!”
Jeanie was struck mute with shame at the unfeeling brutality of this accusation, and could not even find words to justify herself from the vile construction put upon her visit. When Mrs. Balchristie, seeing her advantage, continued in the same tone, “Come, come, bundle up your pipes and tramp awa wi’ ye!–ye may be seeking a father to another wean for ony thing I ken. If it warna that your father, auld David Deans, had been a tenant on our land, I would cry up the men-folk, and hae ye dookit in the burn for your impudence.”
Jeanie had already turned her back, and was walking towards the door of the court-yard, so that Mrs. Balchristie, to make her last threat impressively audible to her, had raised her stentorian voice to its utmost pitch. But, like many a general, she lost the engagement by pressing her advantage too far.
The Laird had been disturbed in his morning slumbers by the tones of Mrs. Balchristie’s objurgation, sounds in themselves by no means uncommon, but very remarkable, in respect to the early hour at which they were now heard. He turned himself on the other side, however, in hopes the squall would blow by, when, in the course of Mrs. Balchristie’s second explosion of wrath, the name of Deans distinctly struck the tympanum of his ear. As he was, in some degree, aware of the small portion of benevolence with which his housekeeper regarded the family at St. Leonard’s, he instantly conceived that some message from thence was the cause of this untimely ire, and getting out of his bed, he slipt as speedily as possible into an old brocaded night-gown, and some other necessary garments, clapped on his head his father’s gold-laced hat (for though he was seldom seen without it, yet it is proper to contradict the popular report that he slept in it, as Don Quixote did in his helmet), and opening the window of his bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. “Hark ye,” he exclaimed from the window, “ye auld limb of Satan–wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest man’s daughter that gate?”
Mrs. Balchristie was completely caught in the manner. She was aware, from the unusual warmth with which the Laird expressed himself, that he was quite serious in this matter, and she knew, that with all his indolence of nature, there were points on which he might be provoked, and that, being provoked, he had in him something dangerous, which her wisdom taught her to fear accordingly. She began, therefore, to retract her false step as fast as she could. “She was but speaking for the house’s credit, and she couldna think of disturbing his honour in the morning sae early, when the young woman might as weel wait or call again; and to be sure, she might make a mistake between the twa sisters, for ane o’ them wasna sae creditable an acquaintance.”
“Haud your peace, ye auld jade,” said Dumbiedikes; “the warst quean e’er stude in their shoon may ca’ you cousin, an a’ be true that I have heard.–Jeanie, my woman, gang into the parlour–but stay, that winna be redd up yet–wait there a minute till I come down to let ye in–Dinna mind what Jenny says to ye.”
“Na, na,” said Jenny, with a laugh of affected heartiness, “never mind me, lass–a’ the warld kens my bark’s waur than my bite–if ye had had an appointment wi’ the Laird, ye might hae tauld me–I am nae uncivil person–gang your ways in by, hinny,” and she opened the door of the house with a master-key.
“But I had no appointment wi’ the Laird,” said Jeanie, drawing back; “I want just to speak twa words to him, and I wad rather do it standing here, Mrs. Balchristie.”
“In the open court-yard!–Na, na, that wad never do, lass; we mauna guide ye that gate neither–And how’s that douce honest man, your father?”
Jeanie was saved the pain of answering this hypocritical question by the appearance of the Laird himself.
“Gang in and get breakfast ready,” said he to his housekeeper–“and, d’ye hear, breakfast wi’ us yoursell–ye ken how to manage thae porringers of tea-water–and, hear ye, see abune a’ that there’s a gude fire.–Weel, Jeanie, my woman, gang in by–gang in by, and rest ye.”
“Na, Laird,” Jeanie replied, endeavouring as much as she could to express herself with composure, notwithstanding she still trembled, “I canna gang in–I have a lang day’s darg afore me–I maun be twenty mile o’ gate the night yet, if feet will carry me.”
“Guide and deliver us!–twenty mile–twenty mile on your feet!” ejaculated Dumbiedikes, whose walks were of a very circumscribed diameter,–“Ye maun never think o’ that–come in by.”
“I canna do that, Laird,” replied Jeanie; “the twa words I have to say to ye I can say here; forby that Mrs. Balchristie”
“The deil flee awa wi’ Mrs. Balchristie,” said Dumbiedikes, “and he’ll hae a heavy lading o’ her! I tell ye, Jeanie Deans, I am a man of few words, but I am laird at hame, as well as in the field; deil a brute or body about my house but I can manage when I like, except Rory Bean, my powny; but I can seldom be at the plague, an it binna when my bluid’s up.”
“I was wanting to say to ye, Laird,” said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of entering upon her business, “that I was gaun a lang journey, outby of my father’s knowledge.”
“Outby his knowledge, Jeanie!–Is that right? Ye maun think ot again–it’s no right,” said Dumbiedikes, with a countenance of great concern.
“If I were ance at Lunnon,” said Jeanie, in exculpation, “I am amaist sure I could get means to speak to the queen about my sister’s life.”
“Lunnon–and the queen–and her sister’s life!” said Dumbiedikes, whistling for very amazement–“the lassie’s demented.”
“I am no out o’ my mind,” said she, “and sink or swim, I am determined to gang to Lunnon, if I suld beg my way frae door to door–and so I maun, unless ye wad lend me a small sum to pay my expenses–little thing will do it; and ye ken my father’s a man of substance, and wad see nae man, far less you, Laird, come to loss by me.”
Dumbiedikes, on comprehending the nature of this application, could scarce trust his ears–he made no answer whatever, but stood with his eyes rivetted on the ground.
“I see ye are no for assisting me, Laird,” said Jeanie, “sae fare ye weel–and gang and see my poor father as aften as ye can–he will be lonely eneugh now.”
“Where is the silly bairn gaun?” said Dumbiedikes; and, laying hold of her hand, he led her into the house. “It’s no that I didna think o’t before,” he said, “but it stack in my throat.”
Thus speaking to himself, he led her into an old-fashioned parlour, shut the door behind them, and fastened it with a bolt. While Jeanie, surprised at this manoeuvre, remained as near the door as possible, the Laird quitted her hand, and pressed upon a spring lock fixed in an oak panel in the wainscot, which instantly slipped aside. An iron strong-box was discovered in a recess of the wall; he opened this also, and pulling out two or three drawers, showed that they were filled with leathern bags full of gold and silver coin.
“This is my bank, Jeanie lass,” he said, looking first at her and then at the treasure, with an air of great complacency,–“nane o’ your goldsmith’s bills for me,–they bring folk to ruin.”
Then, suddenly changing his tone, he resolutely said,–“Jeanie, I will make ye Lady Dumbiedikes afore the sun sets and ye may ride to Lunnon in your ain coach, if ye like.”
“Na, Laird,” said Jeanie, “that can never be–my father’s grief–my sister’s situation–the discredit to you”
“That’s _my_ business,” said Dumbiedikes; “ye wad say naething about that if ye werena a fule–and yet I like ye the better for’t–ae wise body’s eneugh in the married state. But if your heart’s ower fu’, take what siller will serve ye, and let it be when ye come back again–as gude syne as sune.”
“But, Laird,” said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of being explicit with so extraordinary a lover, “I like another man better than you, and I canna marry ye.”
“Another man better than me, Jeanie!” said Dumbiedikes; “how is that possible? It’s no possible, woman–ye hae ken’d me sae lang.”
“Ay but, Laird,” said Jeanie, with persevering simplicity, “I hae ken’d him langer.”
“Langer! It’s no possible!” exclaimed the poor Laird. “It canna be; ye were born on the land. O Jeanie woman, ye haena lookit–ye haena seen the half o’ the gear.” He drew out another drawer–“A’ gowd, Jeanie, and there’s bands for siller lent–And the rental book, Jeanie–clear three hunder sterling–deil a wadset, heritable band, or burden–Ye haena lookit at them, woman–And then my mother’s wardrobe, and my grandmother’s forby–silk gowns wad stand on their ends, their pearline-lace as fine as spiders’ webs, and rings and ear-rings to the boot of a’ that–they are a’ in the chamber of deas–Oh, Jeanie, gang up the stair and look at them!”
[Illustration: Jeanie and the Laird of Dumbiedykes–Frontispiece]
But Jeanie held fast her integrity, though beset with temptations, which perhaps the Laird of Dumbiedikes did not greatly err in supposing were those most affecting to her sex.
“It canna be, Laird–I have said it–and I canna break my word till him, if ye wad gie me the haill barony of Dalkeith, and Lugton into the bargain.”
“Your word to _him,_” said the Laird, somewhat pettishly; “but wha is he,