The Story of the Iron Press.
THE story of the Iron Press hung about my memory for years before I got it localised; nor do I know very well how it came to me, whether from the page of an old broad-sheet, or the tougher tongue of an old dame—the real vellum for the inscription of wonderful legends. However this may be, it is of small importance, inasmuch as I was subsequently so fortunate—and the word will be properly estimated by the real story-hunter—as to find myself in the very room where the recess of the press was still to be seen. How I did look at it, to be sure! nay, if it had been of gold—all my own, too—I question if I could have gazed into the dark recess with more interest; for gold, to people of my bias, is nothing in comparison with the enchantment that hangs about the real concrete souvenir of an old wonder. But before going further, I must apprise the English reader that the word “press”—a Scotch word of somewhat doubtful derivation (maugre Jamieson)—is convertible into the more modern designation “cupboard,” or rather “pantry;” with the qualification that our Scotch term more generally implies the adjunct of a door with lock and key.
With which help you may be induced to represent to yourself, as vividly as the fervour of your imagination may enable you, the house in Hyndford’s Close, which, at the time wherein we are concerned, was occupied by a retired advocate called Mr George Plenderleith. You may see in it yet the signs of its old gentility. There are the panellings on the walls, the hooks whereon were suspended the flowered and figured draperies, the painted roofs, the peculiar enamelled sides of the chimneys having the appearance of china—all so very unlike our modern house fashions. It may not be that the iron press which was in the back bed-room, and the recess of which still remains, had anything to do with the fashion of the time; nor would it be easy to divine its use in a private gentleman’s house, who had no ledgers, journals, or cash-books to preserve from fire, lest certain creditors might say they were burnt to help concealment. Perhaps it was for the conservation of some great property rights, or title-deeds as we call them; perhaps state papers—anything you like, but not the least unlikely, it may have been for the purpose of concealing some unfortunate Covenanter, who could still boast, in his pathetic way, that he had verily nowhere to lay his head; for the cell was too small for a reclining posture—nay, he could scarcely have got upon his knees to offer his Ebenezer for the preservation of the solemn league and covenant, and give thanks that he had got out of “the bishop’s drag-net” and into an iron cage.
Most certainly, at least, this iron cage was not intended to immure the delicate person of the beautiful Ailsie Plenderleith, the only daughter of the advocate—nay, the greatest belle you could have met, displaying her gown of mazerine and her petticoat of cramosie, from “the castle on the knowe to the palace in the howe;” or, as the saying went, from “the castle gate to the palace yett.” We don’t doubt that our Miss Ailsie deserved all this high-flown praise; only we are to keep in mind that no young lady that ever figured in a legend, from the time of the Fair Maid of Troy to her of Perth, was ever anything less than an angel without wings. And in the case of our Ailsie, she might well have passed for possessing these appendages too, when we consider that she would not be behind her sister-belles in the size of those heavy folds of braided silk they drew through their pocket-holes, and seemed to fly with. We need not say that such a creature, if amiable in her mind and affections, would be doated on by such a father as Mr Plenderleith, who had now no wife to console him, and who would expect from his child at least as much love as he was willing to bestow on her. And so, to be sure, it was; he loved his dear Ailsie to what may be called paternal distraction, but as for how much dutiful affection Ailsie bestowed on him, we cannot say.
On another point we can be more sure, and that is, that although her father had many nice beaux in his eye who had a power to dot, and doubtless on so fine a subject no disinclination at all to doat, the never a one of them would the saucy Ailsie look upon except with that haughty disdain which, when it appears in a beautiful woman, is so apt to pique young admirers into greater adoration, mixed, it may be, sometimes with a little choler—a thing that is not so alien to love as you would imagine. Nor was the reason of all this cold hauteur any wonder at all when we are given to know that Miss Plenderleith had one day, by the merest chance, taken into her eye, and even to the back or innermost recesses thereof, the figure of a young student of “old Embro’ College,” called Frederick Lind, a poor bursar of no family, but blessed with what was ten thousand times of more importance in the estimation of the tasteful Ailsie—a handsome person, and a fine ruddy, intelligent face, which was lighted up with an eye as likely to drink up the form of Ailsie as hers had been to receive his. And no doubt it may appear very wonderful that Cupid, who is, as they say, as blind as a bat, and so hits by chance, should have the power of imparting to the eyes of his victims the faculty not only of seeing each other more clearly than before, but also of reading each other’s eyes so plainly, that by a glance they know that they are mutually thinking of each other. But such, we all know very well, is the fact, and so Frederick Lind and Ailsie Plenderleith came to this state of knowledge, and not only so, they came to means of ascertaining, by actual conversation, whether such was really the case or not—the consequence of which was just the natural one, that the sympathy of this knowledge became the sympathy of love; and we suspect that if any one was to blame for this, it was Old Mother Nature herself, who is considerably stronger and more dogmatic in her opinions than either mother or father of earthly mould.
The connexion thus formed—we are compelled, though sorry, to say, clandestinely—might not have entailed upon the young devotees any very formidable consequences, had they been prudent, and confined their meetings to St Leonard’s Double-dykes, St Anthony’s Well, the Giant’s Ribs, the Hunter’s Bog, or the Friar’s Walk. Nay, they might have adventured even less recondite walks; but they had some notions of comfort which would be gratified with nothing short of a roof over their very irrational heads, and probably a fire burning by their sides, as if love could not have kept itself in fuel without the assistance of so coarse and earthy a thing as Midlothian coal.
While all this was going forward, and generating confidence in the ordinary ratio of successful immunity, our good and loving old Mr Advocate Plenderleith was just as busy with his eyes in endeavouring to find out among the said beaux of Edinburgh, with their braided broad-tailed coats and ruffled wristbands, of which Mr Frederick Lind had nothing to boast, such a one as would be likely to form a suitable husband to his pretty but scornful, (to all save one,) daughter, and a promising son-in-law to himself; that is, one who would bring a sum to the mutual exchequer, and take care not only of Ailsie, but that fine property of his in Lanarkshire, called Threemarks, from its valuation in the land-roll being of that very considerable extent. And so he did his best to invite one or two of them to his house in Hyndford’s Close to drink a bottle of claret, and see Miss Ailsie through the charmed medium of the same, being satisfied that a young woman is seen to more advantage through that medium than through the roses of the Paphian groves where Venus dallies with her son. But all this paternal black-footing would not do, because the step went only in one direction, without a return. Our Ailsie scorned them all—a very unwise policy in the little rebel, for she might have seen that her father, who was a shrewd man, would be likely to suspect that the ship which rides at an anchor, however little seen, is just that very one which seems to defy most the blustering winds and the rolling waves. And accordingly Mr Plenderleith began to think that his daughter’s heart must be anchored somewhere—not so likely on golden sands as on some tough clay—and that “where” he would have given his old Parliament-House wig, with all the meal in it to boot, to find out. Nay, he began to be angry before he could assure himself of the fact; and being as determined under a restrainer as he ever had been under a retainer, he was a dangerous man for even a loving daughter to tamper with.
But old fathers, probably with spectacles, are not good watchers of their love-stricken daughters; and Mr Plenderleith, knowing this, placed confidence in his old servant or servitor, (as these domestic Balderstones were then called,) Andrew Crabbin, and got him to keep an eye upon the outgoings and incomings, and companionship and letters of the unsuspecting Ailsie. On the other hand, she was inclined to place faith in Andrew—not that she let him know the name or degree of her beloved Frederick, but that she bespoke his secrecy in the event of his seeing her with a highly respectable young man, of genteel connexions, whom her father would be delighted to receive as a son-in-law, but who was not just yet in a position to present himself in the drawing-room. Which two confidences Andrew received together, and found means in his canny Scotch head to entertain both kindly, but with a foregone conclusion that he would make more money out of the rents and fees of his master than the pin-money of poor Ailsie.
Yet Miss Plenderleith was so dexterous in managing her intrigue, that Andrew had for a time nothing to reveal; but opportunity comes at the end to patience, and this was the case one night when Andrew was busy cleaning his master’s long boots in an outhouse at the back of the dwelling-house; for as he was straining to get the article in his hand as bright as the “Day and Martin” of the time would make it, his attention was directed to a sound from the red-tiled roof. Whereupon, pricking up his ears, Andrew put his head out at the door, and what in all this wide earth does he see but two boots disappearing at Ailsie’s bed-room window! He had never seen any of the two or three pairs his master possessed going into the house in that way, and probably he did not need that fact to explain to him the wonderful apparition. Nor was it any question with him what to do. The hour was late, but his master was not gone to bed, if he was not yet engaged over his mulled claret, with a bit of toast done pretty brown in it.
Having accordingly got, unobserved from above, into the back-door—the more by reason that he waited till the window-sash came down with all prudential softness of sound—Andrew made his way up-stairs to the room where Mr Plenderleith was regaling himself, and probably thinking of the scornful Ailsie, who would not accord to his matrimonial wishes. “There’s a young man gone in this minute at Miss Ailsie’s bed-room window,” said he, in a mysterious way, to his master; whereupon Mr Plenderleith started up in a great rage, and rushing to a closet brought forth a long rapier of formidable sharpness. “I will slay him on the spot,” said he, “for it is hamesucken and a deuced deal more, and I have law on my side. Come with me, Andrew Crabbin.” But Andrew’s intermediate views did not accord with the slaughter of Ailsie’s lover. “Wait,” says he, “till I listen;” and hastening to Miss Plenderleith’s room, he tirled at the door, so that it might be heard inside, but not by his enraged master, whose spirit was more in his fiery eye than his ear; and coming back more slowly than comported with his master’s fury—“Now’s your time,” said he, “for I heard him inside.” Nor was there now any time lost, for the infuriated father rushed along the lobby to his daughter’s chamber door, which, to his surprise, he found unfastened; and, having entered, he found Ailsie all very much at her ease, nor was there anything to rouse his suspicions at all except the condition of the blind, which was drawn up. No more was needed—that was enough; the angry father accused his daughter with having had a man in her bed-room. Ailsie denied the charge, but it was of no avail. Orders were upon the instant issued to get the carriage ready, and in the course of an hour afterwards Mr Plenderleith and his daughter, with Andrew and the two female servants in a hired carriage, were on their way to his house at Threemarks. The house in Hyndford’s Close was shut up. Mr Plenderleith had in so short a period made up his mind, and executed a purpose which he considered necessary to his own honour and his daughter’s preservation.
Time passed on, and in the meantime Andrew kept his secret, delighted in his own mind that he had saved the life of the young man. About a month afterwards Mr Plenderleith came to town alone, and having entered the house found everything precisely as he left it. But he had an object—no other than to discover whether Ailsie had left any letters whereby he might discover the name of the clandestine lover. So far he succeeded, and having returned to Threemarks, he some time afterwards despatched Andrew to Edinburgh to make inquiries as to a student of the name of Frederick Lind. This commission Andrew executed with fidelity, but all his efforts were vain; no tidings could be heard of the youth. The landlady with whom he had lodged said that he had gone out one night and had never returned; and the opinion of his relations, to whom she had communicated the fact of his absence, was, that he had gone to England, where he also had relations. With this account Mr Plenderleith was so far pleased, but he continued from time to time to repeat his inquiries with no better, or rather to him worse, success. Yet such was his apprehension lest his daughter should again have it in her power to deceive him, that he remained at Threemarks for the full space of three years and more.
Meanwhile Ailsie, having come to the conclusion that she would not see her lover again, renounced all thoughts of him except what perhaps at night would rise up to her fancy, when the internal lights play false with the reason. The young heart requires only time to renounce the strongest passion, though a cherished memory will still hang suspended over the sacred tomb of its affections. And so it was. More time passed, till at length Ailsie Plenderleith agreed to give her hand to a young advocate of the name of George Graham, who had good prospects at the bar. The couple were to be married in Hyndford’s Close, and the house was put in order to receive them. Ailsie came in a bride. The ceremony was performed with great éclat and rejoicings. And now comes that part of the legend which always fits so well to some great occasion, such as a marriage; but we must take these things as we find them. The new-married couple were to sleep in the room which had been the scene of so strange a play three or four years ago. On returning to take off her bride’s dress, her eye became fixed upon the door of the iron press. A wild thought seized her brain: she applied her finger to the well-known spring. The door opened, and the skeleton of Frederick Lind fell out against her, rattling in the clothes that hung about it, and striking her as it fell with a loud crash on the floor.
The explanation of our legend is not difficult. Lind had been pushed into the press on previous occasions, without the door being closed entirely upon him. Ailsie, on the fatal evening, had no doubt thought that she had left the door as she used to do; but in the hurry consequent on the coming of her father, she had committed the terrible mistake of imparting to it too much impulse, whereby the lock had caught; and as the spring was not available inside, the prisoner was immured beyond the chance of escape. So narrow, too, was the recess, that the skeleton form had stood upright in the clothes, and it thus fell out when relieved of the support of the door.
