“Not for a good round year, my bairn,” said the big corporal.
“Gude Lord, did ye no see her and speak to her even this day?”
Whereupon the big guardsman laughed a horse (guardsman’s) laugh; and pointing his finger to his eye he twirled the same, that is the finger, merrily round. A movement which David too well understood; and after heaving a deep sigh, he took a deep pull at the ale, as if in a paroxysm of despair.
And so they drank on, till David having risen and left the room for a breath of fresh air, found on his return that his generous friend had vanished. Very wonderful, no doubt. But, then, had he not taken his jug with him?—no doubt to get it replenished—and he would return with a filled tankard. Vain expectation! Mucklewham was only another Sprunt, another lie of the visual sense. Did David Tweedie really need this new proof? David knew he didn’t; neither did he require the additional certainty of his calamity by having to pay only for his own “shot.” The Prophet did not ask for more, nor did he think it necessary to say why; perhaps he would make the corporal pay his own share afterwards. The whole thing was as clear as noon: David had been drinking with one who had no stomach wherein to put his liquor, and for the good reason that he had no body to hold that stomach.
“Waur than the case o’ the letter, or Sprunt, (hiccup,) or Robina dressed in my claes,” said he lugubriously, “for I only saw them, but I handled the corporal, sat with him, drank with him, heard him speak; yet baith he and the pewter jug were off in a moment, and I hae paid (hic) only for ae man’s drink. But is it no a’ a dream thegither? I wouldna wonder I am at this very moment in my bed wi’ Robina lying at my back.”
And rising up, he discovered that he was not very well able to keep his legs, the more by reason that he had poured the ale into an empty stomach; there was, besides, a new confusion in his brain, as if that organ had not already enough to do with any small powers of maintaining itself in equilibrium which it possessed. But he behoved to get home; and to Berenger’s Close he accordingly went, making sure as he progressed of at least one truth in nature, amidst all the dubieties and delusions of that most eventful day: that the shortest way between two points is the deflecting one. And what was Binny about when he entered his own house? Working the button-holes of a vest which had been left by David unfinished. No sooner did she see David staggering in than she threw the work aside.
“Hame already? and in that state too!” she cried. “You must have been seeing strange ferlies in the High Street, while I was sitting here busy at my wark.”
“Strange enough, lass; but if you can tell me whether or no I am Dauvit Tweedie, your lawfu’ husband or the Prophet Moses, or the Apostle Aaron, or (hic) the disciple Deuteronomy, or the deevil, it’s mair than I can.”
Whereupon David dropt his uncertain body in a chair, doubting perhaps if even the chair was really a chair.
“And it wasna just enough,” rejoined she, “that you had an attack of the merrillygoes, but you must add pints o’ ale to make your poor wits mair confounded.”