Well, you expect something, and already the heart throbs,—and do not stop it; for pity does not close her eye upon the unfortunate, even where sin has contributed to the misery of the sufferer. But here you cannot help yourself: the inevitable recoil from cruelty will open the issues of compassion whether you will or no; and so strangely formed are we, that here you may be the more willing to acknowledge the soft emotion, that Mary’s eyes reeled with delight when she saw Helen M‘Dougal place upon the table a supply of whisky, which to her share would transcend even the necessities of “the want” after the fever. There was on this occasion no necessity for the siren song to charm into confidence where the bottle was, a band more hallowed, in the estimation of the guest, than the pledges of love. Neither Hare’s sardonic jollity nor Burke’s pathos was needed where the work was apparently so easy; and they were no longer neophytes, but adepts, not only in confidence, but manipulation. Yea, it was the work of apprentices, and they were journeymen; nor was it necessary that they should concern themselves with more than filling the glass and contemplating the imbodied value—ten pounds—as, by her fading energies and impending unconsciousness, it assumed its full proportions. All is ready—the drooping head—the closing eye—the languid, helpless body. The women get the hint. They knew the unseemliness of being spectators—nay, they were delicate. A repetition of the former scene, only with even less resistance. Hare holds again the lips, and Burke presses his twelve stone weight. Scarcely a sigh; but on a trial if dead, a long gurgling indraught. More required—and all is still in that dark room “with the window looking out on the dead wall.”
After a preliminary visit to the College, where arrangement was made for the reception, the colleagues carried their burden, at an hour approaching to twelve, to its destination. As usual, it was examined before payment,—the amount of which, in this instance, we do not know; but, whether from some want of success, consequent on the increased watchfulness over cemeteries, attending the midnight adventures of our friends Merrylees and the “Spune,” or from a greater avidity for science on the part of the surgeons, it is certain that, as the supply from Log’s lodgings increased, the value given for a burden became greater, amounting, in some instances, to £12 or £14.
The band was thus again supplied with resources, and the consequence was an increase of extravagance and riot—the former exhibiting itself in a still more inconsistent style of dress on the part of the females, and the latter in more frequent disturbances of the neighbours. Even questions began to be put to Helen M‘Dougal, which were parried by the intelligence that she communicated,—that she had fallen heir to some house property about her place of birth, and that it was only right that decent people should rise in the world, and take the use of their own. Nor was Mary Hare less adroit in her fences. But the explanations thus given of what appeared to be a mystery were not deemed satisfactory, though no theory could be formed by the remonstrants.
On the part of the fortunate crew, the sums they received seemed only to stimulate their avidity. Not now waiting for the dispersion of the earnings, they aimed at a store, perhaps apprised by some looming suspicion that their fortune was too good to last, and a strange circumstance soon threw another temptation in their way. Young Mary Haldane, the daughter of her whom we have seen so easily and suddenly removed from the world and life, with all those sins on her head which had accumulated from the day of her seduction, had been brought up by the mother to ways as shameless as her own. As yet, however, it was the morning of life to the girl, and it is not always or often that wayward affections spent upon men more profligate than themselves, diminish the love of such creatures to their parents, even if the latter ought, by their neglect, to have earned nothing but hatred. We have seen one daughter cast into inconsolable grief, another was to be a wanderer and inquirer for her parent, with another and even more terrible issue. Having ascertained, on the morning subsequent to that evening when the burden was conveyed to Surgeon’s Square, that her mother had not been seen on the previous night, Mary occupied the day in searching. The woman was a ken-speckle, the familiar object of all in the neighbourhood, as well as the game of the urchins; and much curiosity was added to the sympathy for the orphan, who, unfortunately, was scarcely less notorious. Many aided in the inquiry, but with no more success, of course, than that which attended the efforts of the daughter. It is still remembered how she went about in her decayed finery, with swollen eyes, and the tears on her cheeks, sobbing out her grief, amidst the fruitless question, “Had any one seen Mary Haldane?” At length, one of the neighbours was told by a grocer in Portsburgh, that the woman had been seen going towards Log’s lodgings in the company of William Hare—a trace which, as no suspicions as yet attached to the man, held out some hope of success.
The information was immediately conveyed to the young woman, who thereupon hastened to the West Port, where she got the story confirmed, with all the minutiæ of Burke’s gallant rescue of Hare’s protégée from the assaults of the urchins. Nor did she stop till she got to Log’s lodgings. Mrs Hare denied that the woman had ever been in her house—a statement corroborated by Helen M‘Dougal, who, in her new-born pride, resented the imputation that it could be possible for the beggar to have the impudence to approach the residence of respectable people; but Hare, who in the back room had heard the rencontre, came forth, and taking the part of the girl—with what expression of countenance to his companions, it would be difficult for a mere pen to give the symbols of an idea—sympathised with her, and even more, asked her to come into the room with the window opening to the dead wall, and get a dram to dry up her tears. The girl, also given to drink, was tempted, and complied with the kind invitation. It was not long till the colleague made his appearance, having, it is supposed, seen Mary enter when he was lounging idly about the top of the close. They were no sooner seated, and the whisky put upon the table by Helen M‘Dougal, than Hare began his explanation. He told her that her mother had spoken to him on that day when she disappeared; that she told him she was going to Midcalder, (where he knew she had some friends;) and that he had no doubt she would be found there, to the great joy of the despairing girl.
And no doubt the poor girl’s heart jumped to the valediction. She began to get cheerful under the new-lighted lamp of hope; and if there was any deficiency in the oil, it was supplied by the cognate combustible which, like all other agents of the same kind, consumes by its latent fires those who consume it. Glass succeeded glass, and with hope getting brighter and brighter before her eyes, now dry enough, and sympathy sounding louder and louder in her ears, what marvel that Mary Haldane should be as happy as those who had preceded her in those jubilations. She talked of her lovers and her youthful escapades—not forgetting those whisky-born fortunes, embracing equipages and servants, which are the continual destiny of the wretched, as if nature, in some mood of pity, made an imaginary compensation for real privations and as real misery. How little conscious was she that the two men, who responded so exuberantly to her wild aspirations, were watching when they would exhaust and bring her “to the point.” Nor was the issue long delayed. Mary was one of those who, once fairly begun, never stopped, if the means were in her power, till she had run the full course. The symptoms of the artificial narcosis began to shew themselves,—the thick speech, the heavy eye, the bent head, and only a little longer and she was extended on the floor. Let us not speak of this girl’s youth, the interest of her peculiar fortunes, with no chance ever given her of putting even the first step in the path of virtue. Why, there was, even in the estimation of those who stood over, ready for the work of their calling, a curious if not stimulating aptitude in sending her after her mother. Did she not call there to see her, and find her? and why should they defeat so laudable a purpose? The quarter of an hour’s suspension between life and death, with those mysterious agonies of which the organism is capable, even in the absence of manifestations, or at least in their suppression by external force, and Mary Haldane experienced the fate of her mother. And with her mother, too, she lay that night in the hall of Surgeon’s Square.
The Grandmother and the Dumb Boy.
It has been said, that in the course of one man’s life there occurs usually only one springtide on which he may direct his barque to fortune, and, so far as we have seen, this chance was not denied to the governors of Log’s lodgings; but nature has not equally decreed that the voyagers shall see beyond that fortune, or to what it may lead. Nay, is there not something in the circumference of the objects of a day, if not an hour, if not a minute, which, like that which surrounds the scorpion, keeps all inside inviolate from the anathemas beyond? But then the circumference is ever changing, and ever enclosing new objects, till the last, with an opening in the side, looks out upon the dark or light theatre of retribution or salvation. We sometimes see this solitary springtide surmounted by the shattered barque of age, from which the waters of life are fast receding, and yet the voyager moves on. His fortune is a hysteria, through the ecstatic delirium of which he cannot see the gulf before his nose. These two men and two women whose history we record were on their springtide, and we are not to wonder that, beyond the circumference of rock and cloud, they were prevented from looking; not that there were not openings through which they could see ruin, but that the insanity of a fruitful wickedness made them revel blindly in the buoyancy of their progress, heedless of all rocks and gulfs of retribution.