Such is the narrative of Miss Ballingal. I have no reason to think she was ever righted. I saw her die. I believe in the expression of an eye fixed on a world of spirits. I have also often seen a smile of triumph as the soul fluttered to depart.
THE WARNING.
Among the inhabitants of Blackenburn, which was once the scene of some incidents in the following story, Nanny Ferly was perhaps the most extraordinary. If man, woman, or child had caught a cold of a week's standing, she never failed to discover a strong similarity between their case and the case of some one else who had died of consumption. Whether the complaint were toothache, or headache, or heartache, she seemed always certain that the symptoms were fatal; though sometimes she rather left people to infer the truth from certain significant hints which she gave them, than told it plain out. Upon these occasions, she would shake her head, turn up her eyes, groan audibly, and say, "Ay, ay, a fever often begins that way; and I've kenned mony a ane carried to their end by a sma' beginning." She believed as firmly in the existence of ghosts, wraiths, warnings before death, and, in short, all sorts of supernatural agency, as she believed in the truth of her Bible; and in these, along with her talk of "illnesses," "deaths," and "burials" (births and baptisms were not among her favourite subjects), she found the means of satisfying the craving of a morbid appetite for excitement, which she possessed in an eminent degree.
In the house which stood next to Nanny's lived Nelly Jackson, who was rather a shrewd, thinking woman, and in some respects the very antithesis of the former. She had brought her husband four children, most of whom were grown up. They had, however, upon several occasions, been seriously indisposed; but their mother, who already knew Nanny's propensity for peopling the other world, and who, with a creditable degree of penetration, guessed the effect which the ominous shake of her head, and her usual "ay, ay," were likely to have upon the mind of a distressed person, carefully prevented her from getting to their presence while they were ill; and though Nanny did not fail to foretell their fate, in her usual significant way, among her other neighbours, by some mistake they all recovered. Nanny accounted herself not only neglected but insulted, by not being allowed to exercise her benevolence in visiting the sick at all seasons; Nelly, on the other hand, having seen her predictions falsified in the case of her own children, began to doubt that neither her foresight nor her piety were superior to those of others; she even ventured to speak rather slightingly of both, affirming that "nothing gave Nanny greater pleasure than to see her neighbours dying;" which speeches were borne to the ears of Nanny; and thus, though they neither came to fistycuffs nor high words, there was little love between them.
Next to Nelly, on the other side, lived Margaret M'Kenzie, her husband, and a daughter, whose name was Mary. Margaret was an honest, industrious, and, in most respects, a sensible woman; but, from the circumstance of having been accustomed to listen to it for a length of time, her neighbour Nanny's belief in the preternatural had acquired a considerable ascendency in her mind, and often influenced her thoughts; so that she might be regarded as a sort of medium between the two characters already described. She had born to her husband a son and a daughter; the former of whom had learned a trade and left them: but Mary, who when young was rather a delicate girl, had always been kept at home. To accommodate and keep her as comfortable as possible, a small apartment, with a chimney and a back window, had been fitted up in the ben end of the house; and in this little sanctum, besides assisting her mother with the household concerns, she had earned her own subsistence with her needle for several years. Her constitution, of late, however, had greatly improved; and at nineteen—the time at which our story commences—she was a healthy, handsome, and, upon the whole, rather a good-looking young woman.
From the days of their childhood, a close intimacy had subsisted between her and Jenny Jackson, who had been her playmate and confidant from the earliest period of her recollection. But somewhat more than a year previous to the time here referred to, Jenny had arrived at that age when it is common for parents in a certain station to send their daughters to "service out amang the farmers round," as Burns has phrased it, that they "may learn something of the world." This, at least, is almost always assigned as a general reason for such a step, and almost as often taken for granted. There are, however, several adjuncts, which nobody ever thinks of mentioning, and sundry little motives of a private or personal nature, which are not without their influence in determining both the parents and the girls themselves upon the propriety of going abroad. In the first place, when a young woman comes to be married—and most of them have a sort of presentiment that, at one time or other, they will have the misfortune to be so—she is always expected to provide, or bring along with her, a certain share of the furnishing of a house. Her share having been fixed by a sort of conventional laws, there is no escaping from it: at least there can be but little prospect of an honourable settlement in life without it—the other sex having, in general, enough to do with their own part of the concern, and being by no means more disinterested than the "true love" ballad-makers have represented them. To enable her to make this provision, the parents of a portionless lass can seldom do more than lend her some little assistance in the way of advice and management, leaving her to procure the wherewithal, or, in other words, the money with which the furnishing of houses, and everything else, must be purchased by her own industry. Thus left, service in the country, and some regular occupation, such as the art of weaving in the towns, are the only alternatives; and to one or other of these she must early devote her attention, if she intends to be in the field of matrimony within a reasonable time.
To those who are acquainted with the tactics of the tender passion, it is, moreover, known that a bashful lover seldom cares for seeking the society of his fair one in the presence of her parents, while the fair one herself as seldom cares for being seen in the society of a lover by these relations. In such matters, a great deal of deceit, or, to speak more properly, of concealment, must be practised. There is a luxury in keeping all those delightful feelings, hopes, fears, fancies, and follies to one's-self; more than half the excitement of the thing, and consequently more than half its pleasure, would be destroyed if the secret were too soon divulged; and for some such reason, perhaps, your enamoured swain fears the eye of a mother, as being an interested party, and likely to be quick-sighted, more than that of any other human being. Whatever be the cause, the effect which it produces seems to be tolerably well understood by a very great majority of marriageable young women; and out of pity, as it would appear, for the failings of the other sex in general, and those of bashful young men in particular, they are sometimes willing to afford wooers an opportunity of seeing them in a less embarrassing situation.
Influenced by one or other, or both or neither of these reasons, motives, or whatever the reader chooses to call them, Jenny Jackson, with her mother's consent, engaged herself as a servant at a place called Heatherinch; and after having been nearly three quarters of a year in her place, she represented the advantages of "going to service" in so favourable a light, that her young friend, Mary M'Kenzie, felt inclined to listen to any proposal which might give her a chance of similar advantages. Such a proposal was not long awanting; for it appeared that Jenny really had a situation in her eye, and that her previous discourse had been intended to prepare her friend for accepting it. Shortly thereafter, Mary was accordingly engaged to go at the ensuing Martinmas in the capacity of a servant girl to Cairnybraes, which was a farm lying at the distance of only a mile or so from Heatherinch; and she promised herself a whole world of satisfaction in being again so near her friend.
Here the reader will, no doubt, be inclined to think that Jenny was perfectly disinterested in these matters, and that she could have no motive for doing as she had done, except a wish to promote Mary's happiness. But, alas! how much of disinterestedness, charity, benevolence, and even piety itself, would disappear, if we could only apply the science of chemistry to the heart! Neither acids nor alkalis, however, can be brought to act upon it; and as for the crucible, the copple, and the fusing-pot, they are out of the question, so that a chemical analysis is not to be expected; and in the absence of such tests, we can only judge of causes from effects; or, in other words, we must judge of the heart from actions and appearances. Be it known then, that, within the first half-year of Jenny's service, two young men, who were also servants on the farm, had taken it into their heads to manifest rather more than an ordinary attachment to her. This she told not; but people do not expect to be told of such matters, and in the present instance they ascertained, or rather guessed, the truth, without any evidence from her. Their names were Andrew Angus and James Duff. Like herself, they were both engaged to remain for another year; and though Jenny might have managed their attentions and their addresses without much trouble, had they been only lodged at a tolerable distance, she found it rather distressing to have them constantly so near her. In this emergency, it occurred to her that it were better to have one of them "taken off her hand;" for the performance of this feat, her friend, Mary M'Kenzie, was the most likely individual she could think of; and for Mary's future lover Andrew was set apart.