But neither the one nor the other knew that that cry was verily worth two thousand merks to Maister Burgess Whitelaw, the father, who in a back-room sat in the deep pit of anxiety and heard nothing, and perhaps it was better that he didn’t, for that cry might have raised hopes—never to be realised—of the birth of a living son or daughter, who would by and by lisp in his ear the charmed word “Father”—of a dead wife’s recovery, after so terrible a trial to one so much wasted—of the saving of his fortune from the ruthless hands of his brother-in-law. But there is always some consolation for the miserable, and didn’t Mrs Janet’s favourite, even Tom himself, with his bright scarlet collar, come to him and sit upon his knee and look up in his face and purr so audibly, that one might have thought he was expressing sympathy and hope? So it is: nature is always laughing at her own work. Even as this pantomime was acting, Mrs Lythgow opened the door of the blue-painted chamber, and presenting a bundle to Mrs Gilchrist—
“The bairn is dead,” she whispered; “lay it on the table there out o’ the sight o’ its mother, who will not live lang enough even to see its dead face.”
“And yet we heard it cry,” said Robina. “Poor dear innocent,” she added, as she peered among the folds of the flannel, “ye have had a short life.”
“And no’ a merry ane,” added the gossip.
“Did ye expect the bairn to laugh, ye fule woman that ye are?” was the reply of the howdie. “Come and help me wi’ the deeing mither.”
And straightway the three women were by the bedside of the patient, in whose throat Death was already sounding his rattle, after the last effort of exhausted nature to give to the world a life in exchange for her own; and Mr Whitelaw was there too to witness the dying throes of his wife, with perhaps the thought in his mind that the gods are pitiless as well as foolish, for what was the use of giving him a dead child in recompense for a dead mother, and taking away from him, at the very same moment, the said two thousand merks of good Scotch money. Wherein, so far, Mr Whitelaw was himself unjust to these much abused gods; but he did not know as yet that the child had cried, and who knows what consoling effect that circumstance might have had upon one who was what Pindar calls “a man of money.” At least, we will give to any man more than one of these merks who will show us out of the great “Treasury of Evils,” mentioned by the Greek poets, any one which cannot be ameliorated by money. And so Mr Whitelaw heard, in the last expiring breath of Mrs Janet Monypenny the departing sign of the loss of the three greatest good things of this world—a wife, a child, and a tocher.
But the moral oscillation comes round as sure as that of the pendulum, and in accordance with that law Mr Whitelaw was, within a short time after the death of his wife, told by Mrs Gilchrist that the child had made the much-wished-for sign of life. A communication, this, very easily accounted for, but we do not undertake to explain why, when Mr Whitelaw heard it, he was scarcely equal to the task of preventing an expression upon his sorrowful countenance which an ill-natured person would call a smile. Nor, indeed, is there any way of explaining so inexplicable a phenomenon, except by having recourse to the fact mentioned by Burns, that “man is a riddle.” A solution which will also serve us when we further narrate that this small wail of the child lightened wonderfully Mr Whitelaw’s duty in getting all things arranged for the funeral, including the melancholy peculiarity of getting the coffin made that was to contain a mother and her first-born. Nay, it enabled him even at the funeral to meet the triumphant look of his brother-in-law, Writer George, as it clearly said, even in the midst of his tears, “You owe me two thousand merks;” for we are to remember that Mr Whitelaw, in exchange for the writer’s perfidy in not mentioning to him the necessity of a contract of marriage, had with a spice of malice concealed from him the fact of the child having been heard to cry, and then it was natural for the writer to suppose that the child had been born dead.
As money ameliorates grief, business prevents grief from taking possession of the mind; and so we need not be surprised that within a week Mr Monypenny served Mr Whitelaw with a summons to appear before the fifteen Scotch lords who sat round a table in the form of a horse-shoe in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, or Court of Session, and there be ordered to pay to the pursuer or plaintiff the said two thousand merks, which devolved upon him, as the heir of his sister, in consequence of the dissolution of the marriage within a year and a day, without a living child being born thereof. Nor was Mr Whitelaw, angry as he was and withal confident of success, slow to give in his defence to the effect that the child had been born alive, and had been heard to scream—a defence which startled Writer George mightily; for it was the first intimation he had got of the important fact, and his experience told him how supple Scotch witnesses are—even to the extent that it took no fewer than fifteen learned judges to get the subtle thing called truth out of the subtle minds of “the canny people;” but he had no alternative than to consent to the commission to Maister Wylie, advocate, to take a proof of the defender’s averment and report. And so accordingly the proceedings went on. Mr Advocate Wylie sat in one of the rooms adjoining the court to take the depositions of the witnesses, and Mr Williamson was there for Mr Whitelaw, and Mr Hamilton for Mr Monypenny. The first witness called was Mrs Jean Gilchrist, who swore very honestly that she heard the child scream; and Robina Proudfoot swore as honestly to the same thing; nor could all the efforts of Mr Advocate Hamilton shake those sturdy witnesses, if it was not that, as so often happens with Scotch witnesses, the more the advocate wrestled with them, the more firm they waxed. Nor need we say that the philosophical axiom, that the intensity of belief is always inversely as the reason for it, never had weight with our Scotch judges. But then came the difficulty about the causa scientiæ; for neither of the two witnesses could swear that she saw the child alive and after the scream, inasmuch as the child was certainly dead before they saw the body; so it was only at best a strong presumption that the cry actually did come from that child. The witnesses dispersed these quibbles, and insisted that, as there was no other child in that room, the cry could come from no other source than Mrs Whitelaw’s baby. But the crowning witness was to come—Mrs Euphan Lythgow herself, who would put an end to all doubts; and come she did. Asked whether she delivered Mrs Whitelaw of a child on the night in question, her answer was in the affirmative.
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“A callant, sir,” was the answer; for Scotch witnesses will use their own terms, let counsel do what they please. “And,” added Mrs Lythgow, “he was to be baptized after his father when the time came. He was to be called Tammas.”