Notwithstanding which difficulties the visitor contrived to make a hearty meal; nor was he contented with the brandy taken during the time of eating, for with all their spiritual tenderness, there was a crave for toddy—a request which was complied with by the introduction of warm water and sugar. How often the tumbler was tumbled up to pour the last drops, which defied the silver toddy-ladle in the glass, we are not authorised to say; but we have authority for the assertion that any man of flesh and blood could not have perpetrated that number of tumblings without changing almost his nature—that is, being so far spiritualised as to be entitled to say, in the words of the old song by Pinkerton—
“Death, begone—here’s none but souls.”
And therefore the spiritual nature of David Dempster, in his new part, was not so wonderful after all. But the doubt recurs again, as we proceed to say that Mrs Dorothy Snoddy helped her visitor to bed, nay, she actually went very blithely into that same bed herself, where they both slumbered very comfortably till next morning.
We may add that these same doubts were liable to be dispelled by another fact we have to relate. The visitor, it will be remembered, put the question to Dorothy, “How was he to meet the people of Edinburgh?” a question which implied a mortal presence, besides no prescience. We say this last deliberately, because in place of the fear of meeting being on his side, it was altogether on theirs. It happened that, two days after the occurrences we have described, an object bearing the figure of David Dempster was seen on the Cramond road by a carrier called Samuel Finlayson, who had had transactions with the dealer in corduroys—an occasion which had the inevitable effect of raising Samuel’s bonnet along with the standing hair, besides that of inducing him to whip his horse to force the animal on, just in the way of another animal of cognate species under similar circumstances. He, of course, took the story of a ghaist, all cut and dry, into the city. On the same day, Andrew Gilfillan saw the same figure on Corstorphine Hill, and flew past the seat marked “Rest and be thankful,” without even looking at it. He, too, carried the same tidings. George Plenderleith encountered the identical object in the village of Corstorphine busy eating Corstorphine cream—that is, cream mixed with oatmeal, (a finer kind of crowdy,) and he hastened to Edinburgh with a speed only to be accounted for by terror. He, too, told his tale; the effect of all which, added to and inflamed by other reports, was, that Edinburgh was stirred from the Castle gate to the Palace yett, by the conviction that David Dempster had returned from the kingdom of death to this world of life for some purpose which would most certainly come out; but, in due time, whether with or without a purpose, here it was proved that ghosts were no dream, and David Hume no philosopher. Many people sought the Cramond road, and hung about Rubbledykes to get their scepticism or dogmatism confirmed. The end of these things is pretty uniform—res locuta est; the people began to see where the truth lay, and the laughter came in due course, to revive the hearts that had been chilled by fear.
We would be sorry if we were necessitated to end our story at the very nick of the triumph of vice. Happily, we have something more to say—nothing less, indeed, than that James Snoddy, the brother of the laird, raised a process—that is, instituted a suit before the Court of Session, to have his brother’s contract of marriage with Mrs Dorothy Dempster annulled and set aside, upon the grounds of deception, circumvention, and prava causa; nor had he any trouble in getting a decree, for David and his wife made no appearance, neither could they make any appearance in Edinburgh. Their only resource was to take advantage of that kind of bail called “leg;” an easy affair, insomuch as there is no bond required for appearance anywhere. It was at the time supposed that they had gone to America, that asylum of unfortunates, where one-half of the people cut the throats of the other in the name of liberty.
The Story of the Gorthley Twins.
IT was the custom at one time in Edinburgh for the proprietors of large self-contained houses to give them the names of the properties they had in the country—hence our Panmure House, Tweeddale Court, and so forth—and among them there was Gorthley House, of which no vestige now remains; nay, we are by no means sure where it was situated, beyond the fact that it was somewhere in the Canongate, but gone as it is according to the law of change, its name will always be associated with the law-plea Bruce versus Bruce, which contained the germ of the little romance we are now to relate in our way. And to begin in order, we take the state of matters at the time when the plea began. John Bruce of Gorthley had died, and left a widow and three daughters, two of whom were twins, and the third was the youngest. The names of the twins were Sarah and Martha, who at this time were two fine girls verging upon majority, and as like each other as two white peas; and surely if we might expect, in this world of strife and contention, that there should be found real love and friendship anywhere, it might be in the case of two sisters who had lain so close together for nine months, and who had drunk their milk at the same kindly fountain of a doating mother’s breast. But so full is the moral atmosphere of our fallen world of the spores of hatred, that you may as well try to keep a cheese from the seeds of green mould as the human heart from the germs of ill-will. And so it was that these two young ladies hated each other very heartily, for a reason which we will by and by reveal, to the astonishment of the reader; and this hatred was the counterpart of a contention that had embittered the lives of the father and mother, even up to the time of the former’s death.
All which will be better explained by following the course of events after the death of Mr Bruce, beginning with a visit on the part of Lady Gorthley—as she was called according to the custom of the time, when titles were held in such regard that the common people even forged them for the great—along with her favourite daughter, Martha, to the office of Mr James Pollock, the agent for the family. That her ladyship was bent upon some enterprise of considerable moment might have been guessed from the look of her face, which had that mysterious air about it belonging to secrecy, nor less from that of the daughter; and no one could have doubted that, whatever they were bent upon, the other twin, Sarah, was not to be let up to the secret. Perhaps the time of the visit to the writer was opportune, insomuch as Sarah had gone, as she had said, with her cousin, George Walkinshaw, advocate, to take a stroll by the back of St Leonard’s as far as “the Cat Nick,” and come home by the Hunter’s Bog; which couple, we may also say, had their secret too, in addition to their love affair, if that secret was not connected with the very same subject we have referred to as that which divided the family. Be all that as it might, we are going right along with the facts of the plea when we set forth that in a very short time Lady Gorthley and Martha were seated each on a chair in the writing office of the said agent, Mr Pollock, and the very first words that came out of her ladyship’s mouth were these—