FOUNDED ON FACT.
A Fair and gentle girl was Barbara Comyn, the only daughter of one of the strictest and sternest old ministers that ever adhered to Calvin. Yet Mr. Comyn was thoroughly conscientious in all his views; and when he frowned, he did it not through love of frowning, but that he hoped, by gathering a cloud upon his brows, to bring down from those eyes upon which he frowned such showers of repentance as refresh and make green the soul sin-withered and sere from the harsh and hot suns of vice. He was, in truth, a worthy and good man; somewhat narrow of mind and bigoted of creed, it may be, but utterly incapable of committing an ungenerous or dishonorable action. Still, greatly as he loved his winsome daughter, much as he prized her for that dead woman's sake, who, as long as she lay in his bosom, had brought him comfort, and happiness, and honor, he was something over-harsh with her, niggardly in the bestowing of caresses, and liberal in the gift of unnecessary rebuke. Very severe, then, was his displeasure, when she confessed to him, with many blushes, that she loved her young Episcopalian kinsman, John Percival.
The cousins had not been reared together, nor had they even met before the youth had passed his twenty-fifth, the girl her nineteenth year. But we are not of the opinion that young people are the more prone to fall in love with each other for the being educated together in a sort of family domesticity. Such facts are contended for in fiction, but realities have convinced us that such things seldom happen; and if we ever have the fortune to possess children of our own, and wish a son or daughter to wed a particular individual, we shall take good care, not only to conceal our intentions from them, but to keep the pair apart from all brother-and-sister communism, until such time as each heart begins to have its natural craving for a congenial spirit,—when, in sooth, it looks for others than brothers and sisters to cling to. It is a very old, perhaps a very vulgar proverb, that "familiarity breeds contempt;" and we assuredly think, that the constant fireside association of young folks, trained up together in bread-and-butter ease, is more apt to generate calm friendship than warm affection.
But, as we have said, our cousins were brought up asunder; he in England, of which country his father was an eminent physician lately deceased, who had bequeathed to his only son his professional ability, with ample means of commencing his career in a handsome manner. When he first came to Scotland to visit his mother's sister, he found her a corpse; and there, in the house of mourning, the consoler of the motherless Barbara, he learnt to love her with a sincerity of affection to which she fully responded. Great was his vexation and surprise to receive a stern denial of his suit from the minister, who, although he had never testified any degree of partiality for his wife's nephew, had, nevertheless, evinced no dislike of him. But when respectfully called upon to assign a reason for so unexpected a rejection, he briefly said, that "no child of his should with his blessing wed any man who was not a strict Presbyterian; and that, moreover, he had other views for his daughter." Nor were the tears of his child, nor the intercession in their favor of his kindhearted but timid old maiden sister, of any effect. His obstinacy was not to be subdued, nor his will opposed; and the unrelenting preacher, who taught humility, love, and concord from his pulpit, and who could produce not one sensible reason for thwarting the attachment of two amiable creatures, concluded the scene by flying into a furious passion, in which he gave John Percival clearly to understand, that he was no longer an acceptable, or even permitted, guest.
The young man left the manse immediately, and was not slow in quitting Scotland; but love, which teaches many things, taught the kinsfolk means of keeping up, though at rare intervals, an epistolary communion—so frequently the one sustaining prop of two divided hearts!
A year or more passed, finding them true to each other. Barbara refused several excellent proposals of marriage, nor did her father persecute her with expressed wishes for her acceptance of any of them; until, at length, he introduced to her one Mr. Bruce, a wealthy cloth-merchant from Glasgow. He was a man of about fifty years of age, of a well-favored and portly presence, and accounted a sure and somewhat sour follower of Mr. Comyn's favorite creed. Barbara had frequently heard her father speak highly of his Glasgow friend, but as no warning had prepared her, she was very far from dreaming of the character he was about to perform in her presence; and, indeed, the wooing of the honest clothier was neither very active nor oppressive—but, alas, for all that, it was steadfast and resolute.
A wonderful deal of what they deemed "religious discussion" was carried on betwixt Mr. Bruce and the minister during the visit of the former at the manse, which, we have omitted to state, (though for certain reasons we do not intend to give it a name,) was situated out of the town of Aberdeen, in a retired strath or valley, full of hazels and sloe-bushes, with the Dee running through them like a huge silver snake. Although little more than half a mile from Aberdeen, and much nearer the church of which Mr. Comyn was minister, the manse seemed as lonely and quiet as if thirty miles lay between it and a busy, populous town. Now, though Mr. Bruce had hired a sleeping apartment in the cottage of Mr. Comyn's bell-man, or sexton, which stood hard by the kirk, he spent all his spare time with his friend at the manse, where his meals were invariably taken; and in addition to the wonderful amount of polemical palaver we have hinted at, a wonderful deal of whisky-toddy did the worthy minister and his guest contrive to swallow in the heat of their arguments. Many a time and oft did good, innocent Miss Henny Comyn declare, that when the shake-hands hour arrived, Mr. Bruce, "puir man, seemed to toddle aff to his cosie beddie at Davy Bain's marvellously fu' o' the spirit!" True it was; but the ancient virgin guessed not in her guilelessness, that the spirit was an evil one, and elicited by man and fire from the unsuspecting barleycorn.
At last, as we have said, Mr. Comyn spoke out his wish—nay, his commands—that Barbara should prepare to receive Mr. Bruce as a bridegroom in six months thereafter. And now Mr. Bruce himself, a shy and dour man at other times, found courage one day, after dinner, to express his—"love;" so he really called it, and so we suppose must we, in our extreme ignorance of the precise category of nomenclature to which the feelings that actuated him belonged. Honest man! bigoted and selfish as he was, he was neither cruel by nature nor cross-grained; and he was even moved by the pathetic and frank avowal which Barbara made to him on the state of her heart. But, though touched by her tears, he understood them not, treated them but as the natural mawkishness of girlish sentimentality; nor had her assurance that she could never love any one but her cousin John, power to dissuade him from the prosecution of his suit. He was void of all delicacy of feeling, was neither hurt nor displeased with her confessed partiality for another, but satisfied himself by quoting, misquoting, and utterly perverting Scripture, and concluded by assuring her that it was her bounden duty to obey her father before marriage—her husband after. He had no doubt she would be very happy as his wife, for "he was rich, and a steady Presbyterian!" And with this declaration, threatening a return in six months to claim her hand—which he had the audacity to kiss—he left her for his Glasgow warehouses.
In this dire dilemma the poor lassie knew not what course to pursue. Her aunt, although kind, indulgent, and pitying her, (for in youth she had had experience of a blighted affection, and no woman-heart, that is not naturally sour, passes through such trial without becoming sweeter)—was bound in complete serfdom to her brother, and was quite unable to suggest any means or likelihood of release; so Barbara wrote a full account of her predicament to her lover. Not long afterward, so cleverly disguised by dress as to deceive even herself, Percival was again at Aberdeen—determined, should all other methods fail, to carry off his kinswoman on the very eve of the bridal; and many a twilight evening, when the minister sat over books or took his after-dinner nap, did those two young creatures meet, unnoticed and unsuspected, on the banks of the Dee. But those meetings must soon end, for six months have passed, and Mr. Bruce—once more lodged in the house of Davy Bain—is come to wed and take home his reluctant bride.
One evening—it was cloudy and threatened foul weather, though the summer air was warm and surcharged with flower-scents—John Percival betook himself as usual to the customary trysting-place. It was a thick copse of hazel past which ran—heard but not seen—the river; which, where the shrubbery ended, formed a dark, deep pool, so garnished by overhanging nut-trees that it had acquired the name of the Nut-hole. Beyond this pool lay the road to the manse; but as the trees here ceased to offer concealment, the Nut-tree-hole became the limits to Percival's attendance on his cousin in her way homeward. The rustic seat in the centre of the coppice was still unoccupied, and he began to fear that something had transpired to prevent her from coming. It was no use to listen for the sounds of her light, advancing footsteps; for the Dee made so loud and incessant a sough as it tumbled from the steep bank that helped to form the Nut-hole, that it drowned all lesser sounds.
He was, however, soon made conscious that there were sounds which no sough of tumbling waters could drown; for, on a sudden, neither remote nor suppresed, a fierce, a pitiful cry, like that of one in some dread life-peril, struck upon his ears, succeeded by the breaking asunder of the boughs of trees, and then a plunge in the water—a heavy plunge, that made itself heard above the monotonous murmur of the falling flood. Astonished, almost alarmed, he rose, and was hastening through the thicket toward the Nut-hole, whence the noise had proceeded, when, as he was about to cross the track that led from the manse to the main road to Aberdeen, he beheld flying toward him a dark-mantled figure: he knew it at once. Her hands stretched toward him, her face ghastly with the death-white of intense horror, Barbara staggered toward him, and with a sharp, short gasp, as if she dreaded to give utterance to deep fear by a louder sound, she fainted at his very feet.
He thought no more of the Nut-hole, or of what might have happened there, absorbed in his solicitude for his beloved cousin, but his endeavors to restore her to animation were fruitless. The manse lay not two hundred yards distant; so at such a juncture, regardless of what the consequences might be to himself, he bore her in his arms; and not without some difficulty, for the track was narrow and broken up, and the night had darkened with falling rain. He reached the house. Fortunately, there was no one in the parlor but Miss Henny; and the startled maiden, seeing a stranger bearing the body of her niece, would have screamed, had he not at once whispered his own name, briefly explained what had happened, and entreated her to befriend them.
"Gae awa', gae awa', laddie," said she, as she quickly brought some vinegar from the sideboard and bathed her niece's brow with the refreshing liquid. "My brither maunna see you; nor, if I can help it, sall he know acht o' this. Gae awa', Johnny dear; he'll be back, belive. She's beginning to revive. I'll get her to bed, and tell him she's too ill to attend prayers. God bless you, my ain dawtie, what's a' this?" added she, kissing the brow of the girl, whose eyes opened to perceive the retiring form of her cousin.
If Barbara Comyn revealed to her good aunt the cause of her fright and consequent illness, it is very certain that Miss Henny kept the secret. Next morning, indeed, though with a wan face, Barbara appeared at prayers; and Mr. Comyn had concluded reading a portion of the Gospel, when a paper, falling out of the Bible, arrested his attention for a moment. Only for a moment, however; for, mentally supplicating forgiveness for that involuntary wandering of his thoughts from the act of worship in which he was engaged, the good man knelt and prayed with fervor. This sacred duty terminated, they sat down to the breakfast-table, and then the minister slowly opened the paper, glanced over it, turned deadly pale, and exclaimed,
"The great and good God be around us! Let not the delusions of Satan prevail, but keep from us the evil spirits that make us see things that are not!"
"What is the matter, brither?" cried the wondering Miss Henny, whilst, as though chained to the table, Barbara neither moved nor spoke.
"Take this, woman," said he, in a tremulous voice, "and read it to me, that I may be sure the same awful words that meet my sight also meet yours."
And the astonished Henrietta, taking the paper, read what follows:
Last night, after leaving you, I was stopped by your sexton, my landlord, David Bain, who led me out of the highroad to the Nut-hole, under pretence of showing me a large salmon which he had hooked but could not land. He there felled me to the earth, robbed me, and flung my body into the river Dee. Pray for the soul of
Simon Bruce.
When the awe-struck Henrietta ceased, she found that Barbara had fainted; and the minister, in a whirl of distracting thoughts to which he was unaccustomed, ascribing his child's swoon to terror, placed the ominous paper in the Bible, and determined to make known the whole mysterious case at once to Mr. Craigie, the chief magistrate of Aberdeen. Not for a single instant did Mr. Comyn suspect a hoax, or imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the expense of the minister, even if any motive for doing so had existed. The minister, therefore, hastened up stairs to change his coat, leaving the Bible containing the document from the dead on the table; while his sister, finding her niece better, left her to see that her brother's best hat and gloves were ready.
We wonder what Barbara is about meanwhile.
Presently Mr. Comyn returned to the parlor, and putting the Bible in his pocket, (for he dared not again look at the horrible piece of writing,) set off at a quick pace for the town. Nor, as he hurried on, did he give a passing glance at the track which diverged from the highroad toward the Nut-tree-hole. The magistrate was at home, and great indeed was his amazement when he heard the minister's story; but lo! when Mr. Comyn, reverently taking the Bible from his pocket, opened it to show Mr. Craigie the note, written as he declared in the peculiar handwriting of his friend, he found nothing where he had deposited it but a piece of blank paper, folded up in the same form, but utterly void. And then in truth the worthy magistrate waxed somewhat wroth; at first accusing Mr. Comyn of being credulously duped by some pawkie servant who owed him a grudge, and ending by setting him down as "clean daft, doited, and dazed by too mickle study," (and in his ire he had very nearly added, "too much toddy.") But, as in no amicable frame of temper the gentlemen were about to quarrel downright, the magistrate asking the minister what proof he could adduce of Mr. Bruce's not being alive and merry, a seasonable and loud knocking at the street-door interrupted them; and presently a servant entered to announce that a drowned man had been found in the Dee, and that his body had been brought to the door!
With shaking limbs the minister followed Mr. Craigie down stairs to the lobby, now full of people. It appeared that some men employed in the salmon fisheries had, within the last hour, dragged their nets, in which they had discovered the corpse of a man whose skull had been literally smashed in twain by a violent blow.
It was, in fact, the body of Mr. Bruce. Here, indeed, was confirmation strange of the statement which the mysterious and missing document had contained; and both Mr. Craigie and the minister, exchanging looks that expressed their mutual dismay, were sorely perplexed in their own minds how to account for these singular events. The body was reverently laid out in the hall, whilst the magistrate, summoning some of his officials, and accompanied by the clergyman and one or two of the fishermen, proceeded to the cottage of David Bain.
The bell-man was not at home, having gone, they said, "to Mr. Comyn's, to inquire about his lodger, Mr. Bruce, who had not come home to his bed the night before, as was customary."
Strange glances passed between the auditors; but a sign from the magistrate imposed silence, and they departed, determining to survey the Nut-hole, near which, in the river, the body had been found in the nets, after which they had no doubt they would find the sexton at the manse. As they threaded the thicket of hazel, at some distance from the pool, one of the salmon-fishers declared, that from a plot of white-thorn and bramble-bushes he had seen the eyes of a foumart or polecat glare out upon him; and in a low voice, directing the attention of a comrade to the spot, they both imagined they could detect the figure of a man crouching among the trailing shrubs. Whispering their suspicion to Mr. Craigie, he ordered the whole party to join quietly in a search, and follow him and the minister to the Nut-hole. Thither, then, the magistrate, attended only by Mr. Comyn, proceeded; and who, think ye, found they there?
A young man, handsome and well-dressed, in the undisguised apparel of a gentleman, stood there, evidently unconscious of the advancing twain. He held a stout, club-like stick in his hand, which he was examining intently—for it was covered with blood, now dried, and amidst which stuck clots of hair! As the gentlemen came suddenly upon him he started, and dropped the stick; whilst Mr. Comyn, staring at him in wonder, for, as we have said, all disguise had been discarded, exclaimed—
"John Percival, is this you?"
A question which the young man could have answered in the affirmative with strict veracity, but for the assertion from the magistrate which followed it up.
"And you, sir, are the murderer of Mr. Bruce!"
"Good God! what do you mean!" cried the horrified youth.
"That stick, which you have just dropped, is covered with blood," said Mr. Craigie; "a foul murder has been committed, and we find you with the supposed instrument of that murder, near the very spot where there is ground to believe the act was perpetrated."
A fearful pang shot through Percival's frame, but conscious innocence made it brief, and with a calmness of demeanor which guilt never could have assumed, and gravely smiling, he turned to his uncle saying—
"You cannot believe that I am guilty?"
"No, no, John!" answered the individual appealed to. "God forbid that I should judge you wrongfully, but—"
"But," interrupted the magistrate, "not only does it appear that you have slain a man, but that, desirous of fixing your guilt upon another, you have written a letter, falsely accusing an innocent person of that crime."
"Letter!" repeated Percival, "Sir, I do not even know what you mean."
"Mr. Comyn," asked the magistrate, "this young man—the nephew of my lamented friend, your late wife—paid court, as I understand, to your daughter, and was by her rejected?"
"By me, sir—by me, Mr. Craigie," answered the clergyman; "the lassie never rejected him, but I did."
"And the murdered man," slowly pronounced the magistrate, "was the betrothed husband of Miss Comyn?"
Percival started violently, uttering an ejaculation of horror and wonder, for at last he saw the inferences which Mr. Craigie seemed willing to draw from circumstances that certainly looked suspicious.
"As God is my judge, that is the truth," replied the minister, "and I had forgotten all about it. Oh! John Percival, as you are the nephew of my beloved Mary, answer me with truth, and say that you are innocent of this heinous deed!"
"I am indeed innocent, my dear uncle," said the young man; "nor did I know until this moment who the unfortunate man was, of whose untimely death I am accused."
"Here he is, gentlemen; we've got him safe and sound!" cried several voices; and dragging a wild and haggard-faced man, the fishers and officials of justice approached the trio who stood by the Nut-tree-hole.
"The Lord be our guide!" exclaimed Mr. Comyn, "it is really David Bain!" and as the wretched sexton struggled to free himself from the arms that pinioned him, the minister, prompted by a sudden impulse, advancing toward him, and looking steadily in his face, said—
"David Bain, look not to deny your crime, but confess it, and implore your Maker's pardon, even at this the eleventh hour. In my Bible, this morning, I found a paper, written by the spirit of him you murdered here last night, and charging you with the commission of the deed."
At these strange words, which in our modern times might have produced mirth, the guilty creature, losing all self-possession, uttered a loud cry, and pointing to the bloody cudgel which still lay at the magistrate's feet, exclaimed—
"I did it with that! I did it with that!" and fell back in a fit.
It would be easy to lengthen out our historiette into one of circumstantial evidence, trial, condemnation, and ultimate discovery; but we have preferred telling it as it really happened. On the person of David Bain were found a pocket-book and purse, recognized as the property of the late Mr. Bruce, and containing bank-notes and bills to a considerable amount; the sight of which, in the possession of his lodger, had evoked the cupidity of the bell-man. He made a full confession, and in due time suffered the penalty due to his offence. Meanwhile the minister, in the thankfulness of his soul to find his nephew guiltless, embraced him tenderly, and freely permitted that courtship to proceed between his daughter and him, which he had before so strenuously opposed.
One circumstance still remained a mystery, undeveloped to all save Barbara's aunt, Percival, and the worthy magistrate,—by whose advice, indeed, it was concealed from the minister; who, to his dying day, confidently believed that the paper he had found in his Bible had been placed there by supernatural interposition. But the hand of the dead had nothing to do with it, as we mean to explain.
On the evening of the murder, Barbara Comyn sallied forth to meet her cousin, leaving Mr. Bruce and her father discussing punch and polemics. She was later than usual, and as she sped along, she became aware of the approach from Aberdeen of an individual, whom she could not avoid meeting if she proceeded direct to the tryst. She therefore stole into a different track, thinking to make a circuit which would occupy the time the stranger might take in passing the copse of hazels; but, unfortunately (or fortunately, was it?), she met a poor woman, the wife of a neighboring peasant, who was on her way to the manse to implore some black currant jelly for a child suffering from sore throat. The call of distress was never disregarded by Barbara, and she flew back to the manse, procured the jelly, and giving it to the woman, hastened amidst falling rain to the trysting-place. As she was about to round the point which hid the Nut-hole from view, she heard the sounds of struggling feet and wrestling arms; and, regardless of danger to herself in her fears for Percival, she forced her way through some bushes, and beheld two men, in no friendly embrace, staggering on the very verge of the pool. Before she could look again the one had fallen on the earth; and the other, with a desperate blow of his stick on the head of the prostrate man, uttered an oath in a voice whose peculiar tones were well-known to Barbara, and in the twinkling of an eye shoved the wounded man over the bank into the Nut-tree hole!
Her blood curdling with horror, Barbara found no voice, no strength, to speak or stir; but she became, so to speak, all eye; and as the murderer, swiftly cramming into his hat and pockets something which she could not define, rose up, and forgetful of the cudgel, which lay blood-dabbled on the grass, rushed from the place where he had taken the burden of a deadly sin upon his soul, she saw his face, and recognized her father's sexton—David Bain.
In terror, that found no tongue, she reached her lover, and became insensible; nor was it till her recovery, when she found herself alone with her aunt, that she felt how important to her future life might be the events of that night. She resolved, ere yet she spoke one word in reply to the questions of her aunt, to ascribe her swoon to anything but the real cause; and it was, perhaps, well she so determined, for she remembered that, in her flight from the fatal spot where she had witnessed the perpetration of so foul a deed, she had picked up a letter, which she had hid in her bosom, scarcely conscious of what she did, yet, perhaps, imperceptibly aware—with the foresight of inexplicable convictions—that it might yet prove of essential service. When she retired to her chamber, and had got rid of Aunt Henny, she took the paper from its concealment, and saw that it was the empty cover of a letter addressed to "Mr. Bruce, at the house of David Bain, Sexton;" and then the certainty struck her of the murdered man being her affianced husband.
The character of David Bain was marked by extreme avarice, and Barbara's conclusions as to the instigating cause of the crime he had committed were easily formed. But what means could she pursue in order to convict guilt, without at the same time rendering her own appearance before a public court of justice necessary? from which she shrank nervously, since the cause of her presence in such a spot, and at such an hour, must of course be revealed. A sudden thought struck her—and, wild as it was, she put it into instant execution. She knew her father's belief in supernatural agency, and trusted strongly to the effect such a document as that which she now prepared would have upon him. She wrote the note which Mr. Comyn discovered in the Bible, imitating Mr. Bruce's hand, which was peculiar, as closely as she could; and then, when the minister left it there—a circumstance which, though she did not foresee, rejoiced her—she subtracted it thence, uninterrupted and unsuspected. But when it pleased the Almighty to make manifest the murderer by the means thus strangely suggested to her, she confessed the whole to the indulgent Henny and her lover, and by their advice took the magistrate also into her confidence.
We have nothing more to relate, but that Barbara Comyn and John Percival were soon after united by the worthy minister; whilst Miss Henny was as busy as a bee in preparations for the wedding, and as happy in witnessing the happiness of others as if she had never known a care of her own.
Thiers has abandoned politics and history for the summer to visit England.