The Story of Mrs Halliday.
THERE are little bits of romance spread here and there in the routine of ordinary life, but for which we should be like the fairy Aline, somewhat weary of always the same flowers blooming, and the same birds singing, and the same play of human motives and passions. They are something of the nature of episodes which, as in the case of epic poems, are often the most touching and beautiful in the whole work. Yet the beauty is seldom felt by the actors themselves, who are frequently unfortunate; and so it is that they suffer that we may enjoy the pathos of their suffering, after it has gone through the hands of art. We are led to say this as a kind of prelude to one of those episodical dramas which occurred some eighty years ago, and for twenty of them formed a household story, as well from the singularity of the principal circumstances as from the devotion of the personages. But we must go back a little from the main incidents to introduce to the reader a certain Patrick Halliday, a general agent for the sale of English broadcloth, whose place of business was in the Lawnmarket, and dwelling-house in a tenement long called Peddie’s Land, situated near the Old Assembly Close. It belongs not much to our story to say that Mr Halliday was pretty well-to-do in the world, though probably even with youth and fair looks, if he had been a poor man, he would not have secured as he did the hand of a certain young lady, at that time more remarkable than he. Her name was Julia Vallance. We know no more of her except one particular, which many people would rather be known by than by wealth, or even family honours, and that was personal beauty—not of that kind which catches the eye of the common people, and which is of ordinary occurrence, but of that superior order which, addressing itself to a cultivated taste, secures an admiration which can be justified by principles. And so it came to pass that Julia had before her marriage attained to the reputation—probably not a matter of great ambition to herself, certainly not at all times very enviable—of being the belle of the old city. Nor is this saying little, when we claim it in the face of the world as a truth that Edinburgh, in spite of its smoke, has at all times been remarkable for many varieties, dark and fair, of fine women. A result this which, perhaps, we owe to a more equal mixture of the two fine races, the Celt and Saxon, than ever took place in England. But Julia had brought her price, and her market having been made, she could afford to renounce the admiration of a gaping public in consideration of the love of a husband who was as kind to her as he was true. As regards their happiness as man and wife, we will take that in the meantime as admitted, the more by reason that in due time after the marriage they had a child; and, no doubt, they would have had many in succession had it not been for the strange occurrence which forms the fulcrum of our tale.
Apart from the family in Peddie’s Land, and in no manner connected with it, either by blood or favour, was that of Mr Archibald Blair, a young man living in Writers’ Court, of whom we can say little more than that he was connected with the Borgue family in the Stewartry, an advocate, and also married. We are not informed of either the name or lineage of his young wife, and far less can we say aught of the perfections or imperfections she derived from nature. We are only left to presume that if there had been no love, there would probably have been no marriage, and in this case, also, we have the fact of a child having been born to help the presumption of that which, naturally enough, may be taken as granted.
The two families, far asunder in point of grade, and equally far from any chance of acquaintanceship, went on in their several walks; nor are we entitled to say, from anything previously known of them, that they even knew of each other’s existence—unless, to be sure, the reputation of Julia for her personal perfections might have come to Blair’s ears as it did to many who had perhaps never seen her; but, then, the marriage of a beauty is generally the end of her fame, as it is of her maiden career; and those who, before that event, are entitled to look and admire, and, perhaps, wish to whisper their aspirations, not less than to gaze on her beauty, leave the fair one to the happy man to whom the gods have assigned her.
We must now allow four years to have passed, during all which time Patrick Halliday and his wife—still, we presume, retaining her beauty, at least in the matronly form—were happy as the day is long, or, rather we should say, as the day is short, for night is more propitious to love than day. Nothing was known to have occurred to break the harmony which had begun in love, and surely when we have, as there appeared to be here, the three requisites of happiness mentioned by the ancients—health, beauty, and wealth, there was no room for any suspicion that the good deities repented of their gifts. But all this only tended to deepen the shadows of a mystery which we are about to revive at this late period.
One day, when Patrick Halliday returned from a journey to Carlisle, he was thunderstruck by the intelligence communicated to him by his servant, that his wife had disappeared two days before, and no one could tell whither she had gone. The servant, by her own report, had been sent to Leith on a message, and had taken the daughter, little Julia, with her; and when she came back, she found the door unlocked, and her mistress gone. She had made inquiries among the neighbours, she had gone to the acquaintances of the family, she had had recourse to every one and every place where it was likely she would get intelligence of her—all to no effect. Not a single individual could even say so much as that he or she had seen her that day, and at length, wearied out by her inquiries, she had had recourse to the supposition that she had followed her husband to Carlisle.
The effect of this strange intelligence was simply stupifying. Halliday dropt into a chair, and, compressing his temples with his trembling hands, seemed to try to retain his consciousness against the echoes of words which threatened to take it away. For a time he had no power of thought, and even when the ideas began again to resume their train, their efforts were broken and wild, tending to nothing but confusion.
He put question after question to the servant, every answer throwing him back upon new suppositions, all equally fruitless. The only notion that seemed to give him any relief was, that she had gone to a distance, to some of her friends—wild enough, yet better than blank despair; and as for infidelity, the thought never once occurred to him, where there was no ground on which to rear even a doubt.
At length, on regaining something like composure, he rose from his seat, and began to walk drearily through the house. He opened his desk and found that a considerable sum of money he had left there was untouched. He next opened the press in the wall, where she kept her clothes. He could not see anything wanting—the gown was there which latterly she had been in the habit of putting on when she went out to walk with little Julia; her two bonnets, the good and the better—the one for everyday and the one for Sunday—hung upon their pegs. Her jewels, too, which were in a drawer of her cabinet, were all there, with the exception of the marriage-ring she was in the habit of wearing every day. There was nothing wanting, save her ordinary body clothes, including the fringed yellow wrapper in which, during the forenoon, she used to perform her domestic duties, and which he had often thought became her better than even her silks. Wherever she had gone, she must have departed in her undress and bareheaded—nay, her slippers must have been on her feet, for not only were they away, but the high-heeled shoes by which she replaced them when she went to walk were in the place where they usually lay.
In the midst of all this mystery, the relations and others, who had been quickened into a high-wrought curiosity by the inquiries made by the servant, dropt in one after another in the expectation that the missing wife would have returned with her husband, but they went away more astonished than before, and leaving the almost frantic husband to an increase of his apprehension and fears.
The dark night came on, and he retired to bed, there to have the horrors of a roused fancy added to the deductions of a hapless and demented reason.
In the morning he rose after a sleepless and miserable night, tried to eat a little breakfast with the playful little Julia, the image of her mother, by his side, asking him every now and then, in the midst of her prattle, what had become of mammy, rose and went forth, scarcely knowing whither to go. Directing his steps almost mechanically towards his place of business, he ascertained that his clerk knew no more of the missing wife than the others. On emerging again from his office, he was doomed to run the ordinary gauntlet of inquiries, and not less of strange looks where the inquirers seemed afraid to put the question. Others tried to read him by a furtive glance, and went away with their construction. No one could give him a word of comfort, if, indeed, he had not sometimes reason to suspect that there were of his anxious friends some who were not ill pleased that he had lost, no doubt by elopement, a wife who outshone theirs.
At length he found his way to the bailie’s office, where he got some of the town constables to institute a secret search among the closes, and thus the day passed resultless and weary, leaving him to another night of misery.
Next day brought scarcely any change, except in the wider spread throughout the city of the news, which, in the circumstances, degenerated into the ordinary scandal. Nor did the husband make any endeavour to check this, by stating to any one the part of the mystery connected with the clothes—a secret which he kept to himself, and brooded over with a morbid feeling he perhaps could not have explained to himself. And that day passed also, leaving at its close an increased curiosity on the part of the public, but with no change in the conviction that the lady had merely played her husband false.
The next day was not so barren—nay, it was pregnant with a fact calculated to increase the excitement without ameliorating the scandal. On going up the High Street, Halliday met one of the officers who had been engaged in the search, and who told him that another citizen had disappeared in a not less mysterious way. The question, “Who is it?” was put, but not answered, except by another question.
“Was Mrs Halliday acquainted with Mr Archibald Blair, advocate, in Writers’ Court?”
“No,” was the answer of the husband; “and why do you put the question?”
“Because Mrs Blair requested me,” replied the officer. “She is in great distress about her husband, and I think you had better see her.”
And so thought Patrick Halliday, as he hurried away to Writers’ Court, much in the condition of one who would rush into the flames to avoid the waves; for, dreadful as the death of his beloved wife would be to him, more dreadful still was the thought that she had eloped with another man, and that man might be Archibald Blair. On reaching the house, where he was admitted upon the instant, he found a counterpart of his own domestic tragedy—everything telling the tale of weariness, anxiety, and fear; comers and goers with lugubrious countenances; and Mrs Blair herself in a chair the picture of that very misery he had himself endured, and was at that very moment enduring.
“Who are you?” she cried, as he approached her. “Are you come with good news or bad?”
“My name is Halliday, madam,” replied he. “I understand you wish to see me.”
“As much as you may perhaps wish to see me,” answered the lady. “The town has been ringing for days with the news of the sudden disappearance of your wife, who is said to be——,” and she faltered at the word, “very beautiful. Is it true, and on what day did she disappear?”
“Too true, madam,” groaned the unhappy man. “Tuesday was the day on which she was found amissing.”
“Tuesday! Oh, unfortunate day!” rejoined she. “The very one, sir, when my Archibald left me, perhaps never to return. Can you tell me,” she continued, as she sobbed hysterically, “whether your wife and my husband were ever at any time acquainted? Oh, I fear your answer, but I must hear it.”
“I don’t think,” replied he, “that my wife ever knew of the existence of your husband. Even I never heard of his name, though I now understand he was a promising advocate. I can, therefore, give you small satisfaction; and, I presume, I can get as little from you when I ask you, what I presume is unnecessary, whether you ever heard that my wife was in any way acquainted with Mr Blair?”
“No,” replied she; “neither he nor I ever mentioned her name, nor did it once come to my ears that Archibald was ever seen in the company of any woman answering to the description of your wife.”
“Most wonderful circumstance, madam,” replied Halliday, into whose mind a thought at the moment came, suggested by the mystery of the left clothes. “Pray, madam,” he continued, “can you draw no conclusion from Mr Blair’s desk or wardrobe whether or not he had provided himself for the necessities of a journey?”
“That is the very wonder of all the wonders about this strange case, sir,” she answered. “I have made a careful search, knowing the money that was in the house, and having sent and inquired whether he had drawn any from the bank, I am satisfied that he had not a penny of money upon him. As for his wardrobe, every article is there, with the exception of what he used when he went to take a walk in the morning—a light dress, with a round felt hat in place of the square one. Even his cane stands there in the lobby. Where could he have gone in such an undress, and without money?”
A pertinent question, which was just the counterpart of that which Patrick Halliday had put to himself. The resemblance between the two cases struck him as wonderful, and no doubt if he had stated to Mrs Blair the analogous facts connected with his wife’s wardrobe, the untouched money, and the missing slippers, that lady would have shared in his wonder; but he felt disinclined to add to her apprehensions by acquainting her with facts which could lead to no practical use. There was sufficient community of feeling between them without going into further minutiæ, and the conversation ended with looks of fearful foreboding.
Patrick Halliday left the house of the advocate only to saunter like one broke loose from Bedlam, going hither and thither without aim; learning, as he went, that the absence of Mr Blair had got abroad abreast of his own evil, and that the public had adopted the theory that his wife and the advocate had gone off together. The conclusion was only too natural, nor would it in all likelihood have been much modified even though all the facts inferring some other solution had come to be known. Even he himself was coming gradually to see that the disappearance of the two occurring at the same time, almost at the same hour, could not be countervailed by the other facts. But behind all this there was the apparent difficulty to be overcome that two individuals so well known in a news-loving city should have been in the habit of meeting, wherever the place might be, without any one having ever seen them—nay, the almost impossible thing that a woman without a bonnet, arrayed in a yellow wrapper, and with coloured slippers on her feet, could have passed through any of the streets without being recognised, and that the same immunity from all observation should have been enjoyed by a public man so well known—dressed, too, in a manner calculated to attract notice. There was certainly another theory, and some people entertained the possibility, if not the reasonableness of it, that the two clandestine lovers might have concealed themselves for an obvious purpose in some of those houses whose keepers have an interest in the concealment of their guilty lodgers. But this theory must have appeared a very dubious one, for it involved a degree of imprudence, if not recklessness, amounting to voluntary ruin, where a little foresight might have secured their object without further sacrifice than the care required in the preservation of their guilty secret. But, unlikely as this theory was, it was not left untested, for special visits and inquiries were made in all places known as likely to offer refuge to persons in their circumstances and condition.
All was still in vain; another day passed, and another, till the entire week proved the inutility of both search and inquiry. The ordinary age of a wonder was attained, with the usual consequence of the beginning of that decay which is inherent in all things. Yet it is with these moral organisms as with the physical—they cast their seeds to come up again as memories. A month elapsed, and then another, and another, till these periods carried the mere diluted interest of the early days. So it is that the big animal, the world, on which man is one of the small parasites, supplies the sap as the desires require, and changes it as the appetite changes, with that variety which is the law of nature. Even as regarded Patrick Halliday and Mrs Blair, the moral granulation began gradually and silently to fill up the excavated sores in their hearts, and by and by it ought by rule to have come about that the cicatrices would follow, and then the smoothing of the covering, even to the pellucid skin. And as for the public, new wonders, from the ever-discharging womb of events, were rising up every day, so that the story of the once famed Julia Halliday and the advocate Blair was at length assuming the sombre colours of one of the acted romances of life. But it takes long to make a complete romance. There is a vitality in moral events as in some physical ones which revives in overt symptoms, and so it was in the case we are concerned with. A whole year had at length passed, and brooding silence had waxed thick over the now comparatively-old event; but the silence was to be broken by the speaking of an inanimate thing as strange in itself as the old mystery.
One day, when Patrick Halliday had returned from his office in the upper part of the city to Peddie’s Land for the purpose of getting a letter which he had by mistake left on the table in the morning, he found that the servant had gone out as usual for the purpose of taking little Julia for an airing; but, getting entrance by his own key, he proceeded along the lobby to the parlour, on opening the door of which, and entering, his eye was attracted to something on the floor. The room was at the time shaded by the hangings drawn together to keep out the rays of the sun, and, not distinguishing the object very well, he thought it was some plaything of Julia’s. On taking it up he found, to his amazement, that it was one of the slippers of his wife. It had a damp musty smell, which he found so unpleasant that he threw it down on the floor again, and then began to think where in the world it had come from, or how it came to be there. The servant might explain it when she came in; but why she should have gone out with that remaining to be explained he could not understand. Meanwhile his only conclusion was, that sufficient search had not been made for the slippers, and that the dog, which was out with the maid, had dragged the article from some nook or corner which had escaped observation. Under this impression he felt inclined to seek for the neighbour of that which had been so strangely found, altogether oblivious of the fact that, if the slipper had been left by the runaway, she must have departed either bare-footed or in her stocking-soles; for her shoes, so far as he could know, had been accounted for.
But he was not to be called upon to make this search; something else awaited him; for, as he sat enveloped in the darkness of this new mystery, his eye, wandering about in the shaded room, was attracted by another object. Rising, as if by a start, he proceeded to the spot, and took up, to his further amazement, a man’s shoe. He at first supposed that it was one of his own; but on looking at the silver buckle, on which were engraved—not an uncommon thing at the time—two initial letters, (these were “A. B.,”) he was at no loss for the name. It was that of the missing advocate. This shoe, like the slipper, was covered with white mould, and smelt of an odour different from and more disagreeable than mere must. He was now in more perplexity than ever, nor could he bring his mind to a supposition of how these things came to be there. It was the time of popular superstitions, when intelligences in the shape of ghosts and hobgoblins, and all forms of good and devilish beings, seemed to have nothing else to do than to entertain themselves with the fancies, feelings, and passions of men, and we might not be surprised to find that Patrick Halliday was brought under the feeling of an indescribable awe—nay, it is doubtful if even the veritable spirits of his wife and her paramour, if they had then and there appeared in that shaded room before him, would have produced a stronger impression upon him than did those speechless yet eloquent things. A moral vertigo was on him; he threw himself again into a chair, and felt his knees knocking against each other, as if the nerves, paralysed by the deep impression upon the brain, were no longer under the influence of the will.
After sitting for a time in this state of perplexity and awe, from which he could not extricate himself, the servant, with his daughter, returned. He called her to his presence, and asked her, pointing to the shoe and the slipper, “how those things came to be there?”
The girl was seized with as great wonder as he himself had been, and there was even a greater cause for astonishment on her part, insomuch as, according to her declaration, she had cleaned out and dusted the parlour within half an hour of going forth, and these articles were certainly not in the room then. As for the outer door, she had left it fastened in the usual way, and the windows were carefully drawn down before her departure. Where could they have come from, she questioned both her master and herself, with an equal chance of a satisfactory answer from either. Then she would not have been a woman if she could have resisted the claims of superstition in a case so inexplicable, so extraordinary, so unparalleled even in winter fireside stories. And so she looked at her master, and he looked at her, in blank wonder, without either of them having the power of venturing even a surmise as to how or by what earthly or unearthly means those ominous things, so terrible in the associations by which they were linked to their owners, came to be where they were.
After some longer time uselessly occupied, Patrick Halliday bethought himself of going to Writers’ Court, so taking up the silver-buckled shoe, and putting it into his large coat pocket, he proceeded to Mrs Blair’s. He found her in that state of reconciled despondency to which she had been reduced for more than two months; but the moment she saw Patrick Halliday enter, she sprang up as if she had been quickened by the impulse of a new-born hope rising amidst the clouds of a long-settled despair. The movement was soon stayed when her keenness scanned the face of the man; but a new feeling took possession of her when she saw him draw out of his pocket the silver-buckled shoe with which she had been as familiar as with her own.
“Where, in the Lord’s name!—” she cried, without being able to say more, while she seized spasmodically the strange object, still covered as it was with the mould, and with the silver obscured by the passage of time. And, gazing at it, she heard Halliday’s account of how he came to be in possession of it, along with the slipper.
“Have you the neighbour in the house?” he inquired.
“No, no,” said she; “but I am certain that that is one of the shoes Archibald had on the day he disappeared. Oh, sir, I can scarcely look at these initials; and there is such a death-like odour about it that it sickens me.”
“It is the same with the slipper,” said he. “It would seem that both of them had been taken off the feet of corpses.”
“Strange mystery altogether,” added she, with a deep sigh. “Oh, I could have wished I had not seen these—it only serves to renew my care, without satisfying my natural desire to know the fate of one I loved so dearly.”
“It is so with me as well, madam,” rejoined Mr Patrick; “but the finding of this shoe and slipper may satisfy us of the connexion between your husband and my wife.”
“Yes, yes,” ejaculated she; “but oh, merciful God! what a wretched satisfaction to the bereaved wife and the deserted child. You are a man, and can bear up. A poor woman must sit in solitude and mourn, while the flesh wastes day by day under the weary spirit.”
“And you can suggest nothing to help me to an explanation of this new mystery?” said he.
“Nothing; all is darker than ever,” replied she. “But, sir, you have got the only trace that for a long year has been found of this most unfortunate—I fear, unhappy pair, and it will be for you to improve it in some way. Something more will follow. I will go over with you myself to your house. A woman’s eyes are sharper than a man’s. I would like to examine the house, and judge for myself.”
And the lady, rising, went and dressed herself. In a few minutes more they were on the way to Peddie’s Land; probably, as they went along, objects of speculation to those who knew the strange link by which their fortunes were joined. Nor was it unlikely that evil tongues might suggest that as their partners had played them false, they intended to make amends by a kind of poetical retribution. Alas! how different from their thoughts, how unlike their feelings, how far distant from their object!
On arriving at the house, a new wonder was to meet them, almost upon the threshold. The servant ran forward to Halliday, holding in her hand the partner of the silver-buckled shoe which her master had in his pocket. She was utterly unable to say a word, her eyes were strained not less in width than in intensity, her mouth was open like that of an idiot, and motioning and muttering, “Come, come,” she led her master and Mrs Blair on through two or three rooms till she came to a small closet, at the back of which there was a door, now for the first time in Patrick Halliday’s experience found open. In explanation of which peculiarity we require to suspend our narrative for a minute or two, to enable us to inform the reader, that the house then occupied by Halliday had, five years before, and immediately preceding his marriage, been in possession of George Morgan, a wool-dealer.
Morgan’s warehouse, where he stored his wool, entered from a close to the west, through a pend, between Peddie’s Land and the large tenement adjoining. The run of the warehouse was thus at right angles to that of the dwelling-house, and Morgan was thereby enabled to knock out a small door at the back of a press, through which he could conveniently pass to his place of business without being at the trouble of going down the close to the main entry. After Morgan’s death, the house and warehouse went to his heirs, from whom Halliday rented the former, the other having been let to some other person for three years, after which it had been without a tenant. We may state also that Halliday was at first quite aware of the existence of the door at the back of the press, and had even taken the precaution of getting it locked; but as no requisition had been made by the tenant of the warehouse to have the communication more securely barred, the door had been left in the condition we have described.
Resuming our story: the servant, when she came to the point where we left her, stopped and trembled; but by this time Halliday had begun to see whither these pointings tended, and pushing the girl aside with a view to examine the door, he was astonished to find that it opened to his touch—a fact better known by Nettle, his dog, who had, as the shoes testified, been there before.
On entering the warehouse, all the windows of which were shut except one, through which a ray of light struggled to illuminate merely a part of the room, the party beheld a sight which in all likelihood would retain a vividness in their memories after all other images of earthly things had passed away. Right in the middle of the partial light admitted by the solitary window lay the bodies of two persons—a man and a woman. The latter had on her a yellow morning gown trimmed with green. One slipper was on, the other off; her head, which was uncovered, was surmounted by the high toupee of the times, which consisted of the collected hair brushed up and supported by a concealed cushion. The man had on a morning dress, with a round felt hat, which still retained its place on his head. There was no corruption in the bodies of that kind called moist. They were nearly shrivelled, but that to an extent which reduced them to little other than skeletons covered with a brown skin—a state of the bodies which probably resulted from the dry air of the wareroom, heated as it was by a smithy being immediately below it, the smoke of which was conveyed by a flue up the side of the tenement. The two bodies lay clasped in each other’s arms, the faces were so close that the noses almost met; the eyes were open, and though the balls were shrunk so much that they could not be seen, the lids, which had shrunk also, were considerably apart. These were the bodies of Julia Halliday and Archibald Blair.
There was not a word spoken by the searchers. Their eyes told them all that was necessary to convince them of the identity of those who lay before them. Nor, when Halliday took up a paper which lay at the head of Blair, did he think it necessary to make any observation of surprise at what was in keeping with what they saw.
“Oh, read,” said Mrs Blair, as she gasped in the midst of her agony.
Halliday, holding up the paper so as to receive the light, read as follows:—
“Whoever you may be, man or woman, who first discovers the bodies of me and her who lies by my side will please, as he or she hopes for mercy, deliver this paper either to Mr Patrick Halliday of Peddie’s Land, or Mrs Archibald Blair in Writers’ Court, that they may take the means of getting us decently interred. Julia Halliday and I, Archibald Blair, met and looked and loved. These few words contain the secret of our misfortune, and must be the excuse of our crime in taking away our lives. Our love was too strong to be quelled by resolution, too sacred to be corrupted by coarse enjoyment of the senses, too hopeless to be borne amidst the impediments of our mutual obligations to our spouses. We felt and believed that it was only our mortal bodies that belonged to our partners, our spirits were ours and ours alone by that decree which made the soul, with its sympathies and its elections, before ever the world was, or marriage, which is only a convention of man’s making. We loved, we sinned not, yet we were unhappy, because we could not fulfil the obligations of affection to those we had sworn at the altar to love and honour. Often have we torn ourselves from each other with vows on our lips of mutual avoidance, but these efforts were vain. We could not live estranged, and we flew again to each other’s arms, again to vow, again to meet, again to be blessed, again to be tortured. This life was unendurable; and, left to the alternative of parting or dying, we selected the latter. The poison was bought by me in two separate vials. As I write, Julia holds hers in her hands, and smiles as she is about to swallow the drug. We have resolved to lie down face to face, so as to be able to look into each other’s eyes and watch jealously Death as he drags us slowly from each other. I have now swallowed my draft, smiling the while in Julia’s face. She does the same. The pen trembles in my hand. Farewell, my wife: Julia mutters, ‘Farewell, my husband.’ Against neither have we ever sinned.
“Archibald Blair.”
