All which sacrifices to Bona Dea are pretty uniform, if we may not say that, although young women have as good a right to outrage modesty by splashing about perfectly nude in the sea as the men have, they know better than do any such naughty thing. Nor, perhaps, was it any exception, that as they went into the sea they took each other by the hand, just as Adam and Eve did when they walked hand in hand into a flood of sin, as enticing to them, too, as the shining water was to our virgins—a comparison more true than you may be at present thinking. Then having got up to the middle—that is, in a sense, half seas over, they got into that sportive mood which belongs to bathers, as if an infection from the playful element; and, of course, they could not avoid the usual ducking, which is performed by the two taking hold of both hands, and alternately or simultaneously dipping themselves over head, and as they emerge shaking their locks as the ducks do their wings when they come out of the water. All which was very pleasant, as might have been apparent from the laughing and screighing which terrified the Tom Norries there and then flying over their heads; but it so happened that in one of these see-saws Isabella’s foot slipped, and the consequence was that her hands slipped also out of those of Mary, so that she fell back into the water, more afraid, of course, than hurt; nor was this all, for no sooner had Isabella got on her feet again than holding out her left hand she cried in rather a wild way that she had lost her ruby ring—nay, that very ring which a certain George Ballennie had given her as a pledge of his love, and the loss of which was so like an augury of evil. And then as it was Mary’s hand which pulled it off, or rather Isabella’s that left it in Mary’s, it was natural she should ask at the same time whether Mary had it or had felt it, but Mary asserted that she had it not, neither had she felt it when coming off. So if Mary was honest it behoved to be in the sea, and in all likelihood would never be found again.
And thus the pleasant act of bathing was interrupted in the very middle, for how could there be any more splashing and tumbling and mermaiding with this terrible loss weighing upon Isabella’s heart? She would not know how to face her mother; and as for Ballennie, might he not think that she who would not take better care of a love-token had no great love on her part to be betokened by a ring or anything else. The very sea which a moment before was as beautiful as a blushing bride holding out her arms for the embrace of the bridegroom, became as hateful to her as a Fury, and, hastening to the bank with tears in her eyes, which, of course, could not be seen, she began to dress. Mary, who seemed to participate in her young mistress’s sorrow, commenced the same operation; but when the clothes were on what was to be done? The tide was ebbing, and an hour, or at most two, would discover the channel at the spot where the unlucky slip was made, but to remain all that time would produce uneasiness at home, and there appeared to be nothing for it but for the young lady to go to Edinburgh, and leave Mary to wait for the ebbing of the tide, and make a search among the shingle for the valuable article.
A plan accordingly carried out. Mary certainly awaited the ebb, and did make a search among the gravel, but whether that search was conducted in that assiduous way followed by those who are lighted in their travel by the Lamp of Hope, it is not for us at present to say. Certain at least it is that Mary did not seem very greatly disappointed at her failure in not finding Isabella’s precious love-token, for which want of feeling we do not require to go very deep into Mary’s breast, or any other body’s breast, seeing she was a woman, and had a lover of her own, even George Gallie, as good as Ballennie any day. True, he had never given her a ruby ring; though, as for that, he would if he could, and if he couldn’t how could he? So Mary was on a par with Isabella in that matter; still, we confess, she might have searched more carefully, unless, indeed, we are to be so ungallant as to believe that she had in her mind some foregone secret conclusion that the ring was not there to be found.
Nor, what is almost as strange, did Mary take up her basket and commence her journey homeward in that saddened way which belongs to deep disappointment. Nay, we are not sure but that the words of the old song of her whose ring had been stolen by a mermaid, were conned by Mary to herself as she trudged homewards,—
“And sair she moiled, and sair she toiled,
To find the ring lost in the sea,
And still the thought within her wrought
That she would never married be.”
But there was something else in her head when she reached the house, where she met some very suspicious looks not only from Isabella, but also from Mrs Warrender, for we may as well confess that the daughter had told her mother that when the slip of the hand took place she felt as if the ring had been taken off by the hand of Mary. And then when Mary appeared with a lugubrious face, and reported that she had not found the ring in the shingle, the foresaid suspicion was so much confirmed, that very little more would be required to induce Mr Warrender to make some judicial investigation into the strange circumstance. An inauspicious afternoon and night for Mary, and not less the next day, when she was called into the dining-room, and so sharply interrogated by Mr Warrender, that she cried very bitterly, all the time asserting that she never felt her hand touch the ring, and that it had most certainly fallen into the water and been lost. But Mr Warrender was not a man who believed in tears, at least women’s; for he was ungallant enough to think, that as we cannot distinguish ex parte rei between those of anger and those of sorrow, and as there is a kind called crocodile, as limpid as the others, and just as like a pretty dewdrop, so they never can or ought to be received as evidence either of guilt or innocence. And so it came about, that as the hours passed the conviction grew stronger and stronger in the minds of the family that the meek, and church-going, and psalm-singing Mary Mochrie was a thief.
Of this latter fact, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, there could be no evidence beyond the finding of the missing article, either on Mary’s person or in some place under her power, for Isabella’s word could not go for much; and so it was resolved that Mary’s person and trunk should be searched. A very strong step in the case of a girl who had hitherto held a very good character, and probably altogether unjustifiable, where so powerful an abstractor of earthly things as Neptune was apparently as much in the scrape as Mary. Yet this strong thing was done illotis manibus, and, as might have been expected, with no effect beyond scandalising Mary, who went so far as to say that Heaven took care of its own, and that God would in His own time and way show her persecutors that she was as innocent as that babe unborn, who takes away and places, nobody knows where, so many of the wickednesses of the world. But then an assertion of innocence in the grand style of an appeal to the Deity sometimes piques a prosecutor, because it conveys an imputation that the accused one is better taken care of by Heaven than he is; and so it turned out here, for Mr Warrender felt as if he had been challenged to the ultimate trial by ordeal, and he straightway proceeded to take measures for having Mary apprehended upon the charge of having robbed his daughter of the much-prized ring.