Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXI Part 2

"For her lover, nae doubt; for my master wasna expected hame for a week.

And was I no guilty mysel', wha played into her hands, and was fause to him wha fed me?"

"Haud your peace, then, and say naething. The Lord will forgi'e you."

"Oh G.o.d, hae mercy on me, a sinner; and tak awa' frae me this transgression, that I may lift up my voice in the tabernacle without fear or trembling!"

The wheel turned with greater celerity and more noise, and wife Christian was on her knees, beating her bosom and crying for mercy.

"Say nae mair, woman," cried the spinner, "and do nae mair. Let the corpse lie in the green bed, and a' thing be in the wud-dream o' that dreary house; do nae mair."

"But the Lord drives me."

"Just sae; and he wham you would hang on the wuddy will stand up against ye, and swear ye were the cause o' the death o' his braw leddie, for that ye concealed her trothlessness, and winked at her wickedness."

"Haud your tongue, c.u.mmer," cried the Old Light Sinner; "haud your tongue, or you'll drive me mad. Is my heart no like aneugh to brak its strings, but ye maun tug at them? Is my brain no het aneugh, but ye maun set lowe to it, and burn it? And my conscience, ken ye na what it is to hae that terrible thing within ye, when it's waukened up like a fiend o'

h.e.l.l, chasing ye wi' a red-het brand, and nae escape, for the angel o'

the Lord hauds ye agen? Ann Hall, my auldest friend, will ye do this thing for me?"

"What is it?"

"Gang to Mr B----, the fiscal, and tell him that the corpse is there, and that the man is here, and say naething o' me; do this, or I'll never haud up my hands again for grace and mercy."

Ann was silent, only driving the wheel, the sound of which in the silent house--dark enough, too, in the small light of the oil cruise over the fireplace--was all that was heard, save the occasional sobs of the unhappy victim of conscience.

"I canna, Christian; I canna, la.s.s. I'll hang nae man for the death o' a light-o'-love limmer, and to save the conscience o' ane wha, if she didna see something wrang when it _was_ wrang, ought to hae seen it."

"I repent and am sair in the spirit," replied Christian; "but if I had tauld him what I suspected was wrang between Spynie--and ye ken he was a lord, and t.i.tles cast glamour ower the een o' maidens--and my mistress, it would hae been a' the same. But wae's me!" she added, as she sighed from the depths of the heart, and wrung her hands, "I had a lichtness about me myself. A woman's no in her ain keeping at wild happy nineteen.

The heart is aye jumping against the head. But oh, how changed when the Auld Licht shone ower me! And hae I no been a guid wife to Geordie Gourlay? Will you no help me, woman?"

"I hae said it," replied Mrs Hall, as the energy of her resolution pa.s.sed into the moving power of the wheel, and the revolutions became quicker and quicker.

The Cameronian stood for a moment looking at her--the lips compressed, the brow knit, the hand firmly bound up, and striking it upon the wall.

"Ye're o' my faith," said she bitterly; "and may the Evil One help ye when ye're in need o' the Lord!"

And with these words she left her old friend, drawing the door after her with a clang, which shook the crazy tenement. In a moment she was in the street, now beginning to be deserted. The wooden-pillared lamps, so thinly distributed, and their small dreary s.p.u.n.k of life, showed only the darkness they were perhaps intended to illumine; and here and there was seen a gay-dressed sprig of aristocracy, with his gold-headed cane, c.o.c.ked hat, and braided vest, strolling unsteadily home, after having drunk his couple of claret. Solitary city guardsmen were lounging about, as if waiting for the peace being broken, when an encounter occurred between some such ornamented braggadocio and a low Wynd blackguard--ready to use his quarter-staff against the silver-handled sword of the aristocrat; and here and there the high-pattened, short-gowned light-o'-love, regardless of the loud-screamed "gardy-loo,"

frolicked with "gold lace and wine," or swore the Edinburgh oaths at untrue and discarded lovers of their own degree. But guidwife Christian saw none of all these things; only one engrossing vision was in her mind, that of the sleeping scene of enchantment in the old flat, a.s.sociated with the figure of the stranger;--one feeling only was paramount in her heart, the inspired awe of the conviction that these petrified relics of another time, so long back, were there waiting for her to touch them, that they should be disenchanted, and speak and tell their tale, and then rot and depart, according to the usual law of change, and corruption, and decay.

In this mood she got to the top of the Wynd, and was hurrying along the first or covered portion, overspread by the front lands, and therefore dark, when she encountered a man rolled up in a cloak. Even in the dim light coming from the street lamp on the main pavement, she recognised him in a moment. He was slouching down by the side of the wall, and did not seem to notice her. So Christian held back, until he had got farther on. She felt herself concentrated upon his movements, and observed that he hung about her own stair, standing in the middle of the close, with his eye fixed on the dark windows of the deserted flat. There was no meaning in his action. It seemed simply that his eye was bound to that house. So far Christian understood the ways of the world; but there are deeper mysteries there than she wotted of or dreamed just then. A man will examine a gangrene if it is hopeful; and will hope, and shrink, and be alarmed, when the hope fails only but a little; nay, he will dread the undoing of the bandages, lest the hope of the prior undoing should be changed by the new aspect into a conviction of aggravation; but there is a state of that ailment, as of moral ills, where all hope having vanished, despair comes to be reconciled to its own terrors, and the eye will peer into the hopeless thing, ay, and be charmed with it, and dally with it, as an irremediable condition, which is his own peculium, a part of his nature, so far changed. He then becomes a lover of pity, as before he was a seeker for hope; and, like a desperate bankrupt, will hawk the balance-sheet of his ills, to make up for the subtraction from his credit by the sympathy of the world. So did that man look upon that house, a hopeless sore, after twenty years pain and agony, with these green spots, and the caustic-defying "proud flesh." Was not the fleshless corpse of his dead wife still there? She was a skeleton; but he could only fancy her as he had seen her twenty years before, a young and beautiful woman. Nor was he alarmed as Christian, weary of waiting but not unsteeled now for a recognition, stept forward and confronted him.

"Mrs. Gourlay!" he said, as he peered into her hard face.

"Ay, guidwife Christian, as my husband says. Christian Gourlay that is--Christian Dempster that was."

"Dempster!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed he, as he staggered and sustained himself against the side of the close.

"Yes, sir--Patrick Guthrie that was when I was Dempster, and is--ay, and will be till you are born again, and baptized with fire."

"Patrick Guthrie!" he repeated. "Yes, the man, the very man. And here, too, is the evidence kept and preserved, perhaps more than once s.n.a.t.c.hed from death, to be here at this hour to see me, and lay your hand on me, and be certain that I am the man, the very man. And," after a pause, "you have kept your sworn promise?"

"Till this day. Look up there, and see thae closed shutters; go in, and behold, and say whether or not."

"Too faithful!" groaned he.

"To an aith wrung out o' me by a money-bribe and terror."

"And to be repaid by a money-reward and penitence."

"The ane, sir, but never the other. Another day--another day," she repeated, "will try a'."

"What mean you, Christian?"

"Mean I? Why are you here?"

"Because I am weary wandering over the face of the earth, an exile and a criminal, for twenty long--oh long years!"

"And now want rest and peace! And how can ye get them but through the fire of the law, and the waters of the gospel? Where are you living?"

"Why should I conceal from you, Christian?" said he, thoughtfully.

"No--at the White Horse in the Canongate, under the name of Douglas."

"_Her_ name! Then look ye to it; for there will be human voices where none have been for twenty years, and cries o' wonder, and tears o' pity.

Yes, yes, the long sleep is ended, for the charm is broken. Good night."

And hurrying away, she mounted the stair, leaving the man even more amazed than he was heart-broken and miserable. Nor will we be far wrong in supposing that Patrick Guthrie sought the White Horse probably not to sleep, but if to sleep, as probably to dream. As for guidwife Christian, she was soon on that side so propitious to her snoring; and as for her dreams, they were not more of seraphim, nor of Urim and Thummim, than they were on that night when she was the disembodied spirit of her who had lain so long in the bed with green curtains. Yet, no doubt, Geordie was just as certain that she slept as he was on that same night when he saw the said disembodied spirit; and as for himself, there could be little doubt that, sleeping or waking, his mind was occupied in tracing the marked resemblance of the stranger to the picture on the wall, which would lead him again to the beautiful lady, and which, again, would remind him of the bones below the red coverlet; and then there is as little doubt as there is about all these wonderful things, that he would fancy himself beridden with a terrible nightmare. Oppressed and tortured by thoughts which he could not bring to bear on any probable event, he turned and turned; but all his restlessness would produce no effect on guidwife Christian, who seemed as dead asleep as ever was he of the Cretan cave in the middle of the seventy years. Nor could he understand this: heretofore a slight cough, even slighter than that which brought the Doctor in the "Devil on Two Sticks," used to awaken the faithful wife; and now nothing would awaken her. He dodged, he cried; but she wouldn't help to take off the nightmare, which, with its old characteristic of tailor-folded legs and grinning aspect, sat upon his chest, as it heaved, but could not throw off the imp. But what was more extraordinary, this strange conduct of Christian was the continuation of--nay, a climax to--her inexplicable conduct since ever that night when he caught up in his mind, as in a prism, that midnight vision which he had seen, and the fiery coruscations of which still careered through his brain. Honest Geordie had no guile; and if he had had any, the new birth he had undergone, with the consequent baptism, would have taken it clean away, so that there was no chance of a suspicion of the part which guidwife Christian had played on the said occasion. Yet, wonder as he might, if he had known all, he would have wondered more how any woman, even with the advantage of a "New Light,"

could have snored under the purpose she had revolved in her mind, and which she had so darkly revealed to her old master. Ah yes, that female member, of which so much has been said--even that it contains on the subtle point thereof a little nerve which anatomists cannot find in the corresponding organ in man--can swim lightly _tanquam suber_, and yet never give an indication of the depths below. But Geordie became wild;--was she dead outright? Dead people do not snore, but the dying do in apoplexy. He took her by the shoulders, and shook her.

"Christian, woman, will ye no speak, when I can get nae rest? Wha was that man wha called here yestreen?"

No, she wouldn't.

"And did I no see you look at him as ye never looked at man before?"

No avail.

"And what took ye out so soon after he was awa'?"

No reply.

"And what's mair"--the murder was now out,--"did ye no meet him secretly at the stair-foot, and stand and speak to him in strange words and strange signs?"

Not yet.

"And what, in the name o' Heaven, and a' the ither powers up and down and round and round, was the aith that ye swore to him?"

Another pause.

"And what money-bribe was it ye spak o' sae secretly and darkly?"