Romances of the old town of Edinburgh

by Alexander Leighton

“That is just what I want to know, Jean,” said he.

“And it’s just what I want to ken, too,” rejoined Jean, “for to tell you God’s truth, sir,” she continued in a lower tone, “I hae something on my conscience, and yet it’s no muckle either.”

“And what is that?” said he, expecting to get at something on which he could rely, whatever it might be.

“Just this,” answered Jean. “Years agane, Gorthley came to me, and said, ‘Jean Gilchrist, here is something for you,’ and I took it—it was a purse o’ gowd,—and then he said, ‘I would die happy, Jean, if I could think that Martha Bruce, who bears the mark, was the second born of my daughters;’ and, looking at the purse, said I, ‘Weel, sir, if that will mak ye happy, ye may be happy, for it was even so.’ Then said he, ‘Will you stand to that, Jean?’ And I said, ‘Ay, will I, through thick and thin;’ and when he went away, I began to consider if I had dune wrang, but I couldna see it, for doesna the Bible say, that man and wife are ane flesh? and if that be true, how could their children be separate flesh? Weel then, whichever o’ the twa, the first or the second born, carried the mark, they baith being ane flesh, behoved to bear it, and so, if the ane bore it the other bore it, and if the other bore it the ane bore it. Besides, wha doesna ken that twins are just ae bairn cut in twa? They’re aye less than the single bairns, and isna a double-yokit egg just twa eggs joined thegither into ane.”

A kind of logic common at the time, and which, indeed, touched upon the most obscure question of metaphysics, and not very satisfactory to Mr Bayne, who, however, knew the subtle character of the Scotch mind too well to try a fall with so acute a dialectician. So, altogether disappointed with his precognition he left and came away, meeting in the passage Mr Pollock, who had been with Mrs Macintosh, and was now on his way to Jean Gilchrist. They were very intimate, and did not hesitate to compare notes, the result of which was that the case was to realise once more the truth of the toast generally drunk by Edinburgh practitioners at the end of the session, “The glorious uncertainty;” and if Mr Pollock thought so before he examined Jean Gilchrist, his opinion must have been pretty well confirmed by what she said. The case, in short, was not one in which there is conflicting evidence, and where the judges can make out the weight by a hair of prejudice; it was a case in which there was no evidence at all as to which of the girls was the heir; but, then, it was just on account of this equipoise that the two claimants, Martha, helped by her mother on the one side, and Sarah, supported by her lover, Walkinshaw, on the other, waxed the more bitter; and the contention which had so long raged in Gorthley House became hotter and hotter. Nor need we fancy that the writers would try to get the right compromised in some way, where they had so good a chance of making a money certainty out of a moral uncertainty; and so the case went into court under two competing briefs, that is just two claims by the daughters, each insisting to be served heir. The witnesses, whose precognitions we have given, were examined; and a great number of servants who had been in the family, who swore that Gorthley himself always called Sarah Miss Bruce, and Mrs Bruce always called Martha by that dignified title, so that the servants tried to please both master and mistress by calling the one daughter or the other miss, just according to the chance of being overheard by the heads of the house. When before the sheriff, and when the claims were equally suspended, a strange plea was set up by Sarah’s counsel, Mr Fotheringham, to the effect that, taking the question of priority of birth to be doubtful, the doubt could be resolved by a kind of nobile officium on the part of the father as the head of the house, and that as Gorthley had declared for Sarah this should be held as sufficient; but Mr Maitland answered this by saying that the question being one of fact, and that fact coming more within the presumed knowledge of the mother, ought to be settled by the voice of the mother, who declared for Martha; and here again the argument being nearly equal, the judge on the inquest was nonplussed. And thus it came to pass that the old irony of the ancients, directed against a sow coming in place of Minerva as a judge of some very fine matter of truth, turned out to be in this case no irony at all, for the sow was here as good a judge as Minerva. The scales were so nearly balanced that the mere breath which conveyed the doubt might disperse the doubt by moving one of the scales—a very fine irony in itself, in so much as all truth may be resolved, in the far end, into the mere breath of man’s opinion. At length the sheriff gave the cast of the scale to the side of the mother, as the “domestic witness.”

But Sarah was, of course, dissatisfied; or, rather, Fotheringham, who advised her to take the case before the Fifteen, by what is called an Advocation, and so to be sure these lords got a burden thrown upon them which cost them no little trouble. They got the case argued and argued, and were in the end so mystified, that if they could have decided that the question was undecidable, they would have been very glad to have hung it up among the eternal dubieties as an everlasting proof of “the glorious uncertainty;” but they could not agree even to do that, for the entail could not be compromised or set aside, and so they behoved to decide one way or another. Meanwhile, the case having made a noise, a great number of people were collected in court on the day when the judgment was to be finally given. And given it was so far, for seven judges were for Sarah, and seven for Martha, so it came to the president, who said, “I have read of a case somewhere in which the judges drew cuts, and decided by the Goddess Chance in place of justice; and, indeed, if the latter is blind, as they say she is, we may take the one as well as the other as the umpire of the right or the wrong. But there is one consideration which moves me in this case, and that is, that as it is the wife’s duty to bear the children of the family, so it is her privilege to know more about that interesting affair than the husband, who is, as I understand, never present at the mysteries of Lucina, and, therefore, I would be inclined to declare that Martha was the first-born.”

“It’s a lee, my lord,” cried a shrill screaming voice from the court. Whereat the judges directed their eyes with much amazement to the place whence the scream came.

“And who are you,” said the president, “who dare to speak in a court of justice?”

“I deny it’s a court o’ justice,” cried the voice again. “My name is Janet Glennie, and it was me that had the first handlin’ o’ the bairns, and I tell your lordship to your face, that you’re clean wrang, and ken nae mair about the case than Jenkins did about the colour o’ the great grandmother o’ his hen. I tell ye it was Sarah wha came first, and Martha wi’ her strawberry came second, for I saw the mark wi’ my ain een.”

A speech followed by the inevitable laugh of a curious audience, and the better received that the people had always a satirical feeling against the fifteen wise wigs. Nor was this late testimony too late: Mrs Glennie was subsequently sworn, and the judgment went for Sarah. It turned out that Mrs Glennie had been absent for a time from Scotland, and, having, upon visiting Edinburgh, heard of the famous trial, made it a point to be present. Nay, there was a little retribution in the affair, for Lady Gorthley knew she was alive, and had reported her death to serve her own ends.