All this tragedy was being acted while the daughter, at Gilmerton, was waiting anxiously for the return of her mother. The evening had passed without exciting in her much alarm; but when the morning came, with no mother, and no intelligence, she became oppressed with fears. Without having tasted breakfast, she sallied forth. The village was gone through, and afforded no trace. She next directed her steps to Edinburgh, inquiring at every one she met if they had seen a woman of the appearance she described. At length she resorted to the house of the gentleman who paid the pension, but beyond the information that she had been there on the previous day, she could get no satisfaction. She then wandered through all parts of the city, calling on every one she knew, and putting the same question—if they had seen her mother?—but always receiving the same answer. No weariness oppressed her in this vain search. The night set in only as a prelude to the revival of her hopes in the morning; and search followed search, and day followed day, every hour diminishing hope. The time was now counted by weeks, and as these sped, by months, yet ever as the time flew, and the hope decayed, the love increased with every accession of her grief. At length even hope was relinquished, and all speculations were lost in mystery. The only conclusion that could rationally be come to was, that the missing one had wandered by the canal and been drowned; for that a human being could disappear and be for ever lost in the city of Edinburgh, with its humane inhabitants ready to render succour, and its vigilant police ever on the watch, was what no one could conceive. The explanation was to come at a time which, to grief, might be thought long in the future; and such an explanation to a daughter! ay, and a daughter of whom the mother was so proud and so fond.
The Mother and Daughter.
If we were to estimate the benefits derived from sacrificing to mammon, according to the material uses to which they are devoted, we would be apt to form a very humble estimate of his godship; but these, we suspect, constitute, even with the lowest of his worshippers, only a small part of the charm of his gifts. Seventeen pounds ten shillings, the price of one dead body, and that of the life and the corpse of another, produced a change in the economy of Log’s house and in the minds of its ruling inhabitants. This appeared first in the dresses of the women, who, from being little better than trulls, with clothes bought in pawnshops, and often not far removed from ragged tanterwallops, began to be equipped like respectable people. Bonnets were got from the milliner direct; and it is even said that fine prints appeared in gaudy colours on the two women of Log’s house. It was observed, too, that they held their heads higher, and walked more circumspectly, as if some species of pride—the kind we leave to the moral analyst—had asserted its universal power, undismayed by the scowl of vice. Lodgers began to be less cared for, as mere lodgers, though the most squalid of them had recommendations of another kind, of which they themselves were not aware; and as for the men, the producers of this wonderful change, they were now gentlemen at large—the huckster’s cart, the hurley, the old horse, the stool, and the awl-box, having been discharged and despised as unworthy of those who held in their hands a charm invested with even greater power than the ring of Giges or Mongogul, even that of turning, by a touch, the mortal part of human nature into gold.
Hitherto even the philosophers had been wrong in their estimate of man and the world on which he lives. The ill-natured cynics represented that, in his earthly aspect, man is a parasite on the great animal the world; preying on his fellow-creatures, he is, in return, preyed upon by parasites. There are those that prey upon his body, others that, in the form of pains, ride upon the back of his vicious pleasures. There are those that fawn upon him, and feed upon his fortunes, and when he dies he is eaten by parasites. But there was in reserve, and unknown to these detractors, a chapter on human nature only laid open to our time and country, for though the Easterns had their fable of the gouls, it was received only as a fairy tale by the Westerns, till they were surprised into a belief even transcending the images of Arabian fancy. Yet the more hopeful philosophers, who draw their inspirations from Calvary, where was seen the consideration for the shekels of silver, are not dismayed. Yea, in this lowly thing we call our body, which preys on garbage, and is preyed upon in return, is a microcosm, which represents, in extension, that which has no limit—in perfection, that which is without end—in beauty, that which the poet cannot, with all his inspiration, describe.
We would not be true to human nature if we limited the effects of this change in the fortunes of Log’s house to what we have already described. The vicious heart pants for pleasures to worry it. La lampe inextinguible du plaisir must burn, though fed with rancid oil extracted from decayed organisms; and so there was a growing increase, not only in the number, but in the intensity of the “enjoyments” of the bacchanalian nights. If the neighbours had noticed the external changes, they were not the less observant—though destined to be long ignorant of the cause—of what was nightly acted within. The brawls and fights were louder and more frequent, and the dithyrambics which mixed with them in grotesque inconsistency had more of the ménad of the priests of Cybele. Yet all this, by God’s law, was sternly a necessity: we need no moral here. Secrecy and publicity are separate instruments of divine retribution, working strangely and mysteriously to the same end. Even the ordinary secret sin corrodes the heart by its immurement, and the sin of Log’s house was not an ordinary one. The more it is suppressed, the greater the elasticity of the torment. When freed from the prison of the heart it produces that recoil of the good which isolates the criminal from the smiles of fellowship and the help of society. Yes, this is the point with the diverging paths of ruin or redemption, and Heaven still vindicates the old economy. If the sinner will be saved by penitence, he must give signs of his suffering, and the world will profit by it as well as himself. If he hurries to ruin, he will still give evidence of his agony. In either case, that Providence which watches over us will still serve its purpose.
Only one of these paths was here open, and the quaternity even rushed into it. The progress of the ruin must keep apace. The excitement, in the shape, to them, of pleasure, must be sustained; and above all, the men had tasted the power of money—not to be estimated by what it produced—in what simply pleased such strange natures. They had got their heads into the dagon temple, and though all the rest of the body was exposed, they felt, however much they were in danger of justice, that they had some security against a continuance of the misery and contempt of their prior lives. They must, accordingly, go on, for they were dipsomaniacs in blood. The £17, 10s. must, if it had not already, come to an end, under the expense of these nightly orgies, and, behold the prowler again out to look for a new victim.
There had been known to both of the men, and not less to the women, an unfortunate creature of the name of Mary Haldane, whose vagrant beat was the old scene of the Grassmarket. Her life had not been all through a succession of those scenes in which her class figure; for, previous to the birth of a natural child, the fruit of seduction, she had been not only respected for a fair reputation, but looked on favourably for those personal qualities so often the means of ruin. Then the demon drink had met her at that turn of the fortunes of so many of her kind, when decayed beauty is not compensated by the consolations of penitence. The road down was easy, even to that stage where flapping rags could scarcely cover the body. Need we say that this creature was likely, when the prowler knew from his own experience that she would drink to the point. One day he accordingly issued forth to seek for Mary, but Mary had been in the drink fever for days, and he could only regret that so favourable a condition had not ensued in Log’s house, where the termination would not have been the recovery which this time once more awaited her. Exasperated by his disappointment, he was only the more determined to overlook other tempting objects in that fruitful field of human weeds, fit enough for death’s scythe. Nor had he to wait long. Two days afterwards Mary was standing at the mouth of the narrow close up which she lived.[6] The moment he saw her, the old smile and eloquent twinkle again illuminated or darkened his face, for he was as sure of his prey as the fox is of its spoil when it sits in the roost with its head under its wing. Nor was the smile less expressive that Mary presented to him. The red and swollen eyes, the quivering cheeks, and all the other signs of that unhappiness through which the rebel spirit will still shoot its buoyance in spite of depressed nature. Misery is easily approached. The dram is again the bribe, and the kindliness of the offer a recommendation, which was as much a surprise as a pleasure to one from whom all kindliness had been long barred by the magnetic repulsion of poverty and degradation. Poor Mary was once more happy; and, accompanying her “friend,” she trudged along to the place where the envied stimulant awaited her.
As they were slowly wending their way along the West Port, the people, as some of them afterwards stated, looked earnestly at the couple, without being able to explain the sympathy which brought them together; for already Hare was upon the rise in society, with a new coat and hat, and even a tie; but the presence of the gentleman did not prevent the children from pursuing their old game of teazing Mary, nor could the threatenings of her protector keep them off. At this juncture, who should approach from the opposite direction but the colleague. The mutual smile—yea, more. Would Burke, who had the character of being serviceable to the unfortunate, permit Mary Haldane to be abused while he was present? He would protect the friendless; and so the boys got a drubbing, and injured misfortune was vindicated. Having accomplished this act of justice, Burke, who had now so little to do, and was so far above cobbling, proceeded on what had been intended as a pleasant stroll, while his friend and Mary held their way to Log’s lodgings. In a short time he was seen to return with a quicker step; and by and by they are all assembled in the little dark room “with the window looking out on the dead wall”—where the women, who knew that the money was getting exhausted, received them with their peculiar welcome.