It were needless to go through all the distressing details of what ensued. Dempster henceforth became a downdraught on his wife. This forlorn woman often confessed to her friends that she was perfectly willing to support her husband, provided he would be but content with the plain fare she could offer him, and just walk about and do nothing. But he was not of a temper to endure this listlessness. He required excitement. Instead of quietly spending his forenoons in the arbour, called the Cage, in the Meadows, among decayed military pensioners, and other harmless old men, he prowled about the crowded mean thoroughfares, drinking where he could get liquor for nothing, and roistering in companies of the most debased description. He incurred debts in all directions on the strength of his wife’s character, and she was necessarily compelled to liquidate them. The struggles which she at this time made were very great. Like the mother of Gray the poet, she endured all kinds of ill usage, and persevered under every difficulty to give her son a respectable education, in order that he might have an opportunity of wiping away the stains of his father’s vices, and be a comfort to his mother in the decline of life. To do this, and at the same time continue paying the vile debts of her profligate husband, was altogether impossible. She exhausted the beneficence, and even tired the pity of her friends. It need hardly be mentioned, that the creditors of a husband have an undeniable claim upon the effects of his wife. It unfortunately happened that the wretches with whom Dempster contracted his debts, were as worthless as himself. After draining every resource which his wife could command, he summed up his villainy by giving a promissory note for fifteen pounds to one of his lowest associates. It is supposed that he struck the bargain for a couple of guineas, for with this sum he again absconded from Edinburgh, and, taking his way to Greenock, shipped himself on board of a vessel for America. At first, his wife was thankful for the relief; she again breathed freely; but her joy was soon turned into mourning. The promissory note made its appearance; she had just scraped up and paid her rent; she had not therefore a farthing in the world. In a fortnight, the whole of her effects were sold upon distraint. She was turned to the street a second time, almost bent to the dust with the burden of her miseries. The first night she received shelter in the house of a respectable “much-tried” widow, who was the only person she could freely speak to about her destitute condition. Next day, by the advice of this good woman, she took a room in the neighbourhood, and endeavoured to gather together her pupils, who, it seems, did not desert her, but took a deep interest in her misfortunes. She had also the good fortune to get her boy into one of the educational hospitals, and she therefore expressed herself thankful for the mercies she still received.
An interval of many years now occurs in the story of Mrs Dempster, during which she heard nothing of her husband, except a rumour that he was drowned on a lumbering excursion in the rapids of the St Lawrence. Through the influence of her pitiable tale and real merit, she obtained the situation of superintendant of a large public seminary for young ladies in a country town. Here she lived in peace, comfort, and honour, for some years, till she had almost forgot that ever such a wretch as Dempster existed. What was her horror one day, when, as she was entertaining a large party of respectable people at tea, the demon of her fate stood once more before her, not the mere squalid beggar which he formerly appeared, but a concentration of blackguardism and shabbiness, of utterly ruined and broken-down humanity, such as was never perhaps surpassed, even in the sinks of London and Parisian vice. There was now more than mendicancy in his aspect—there was robbery, murder, and every kind of desperate deed. The wan face, blackened and battered with bruises and wounds—the troubled eye, bespeaking the troubled spirit—the ropy, sooty attire, through which peeped the hardly whiter skin—the feet bare, and ulcerated with walking—every thing told but one tale of unutterable sin and misery. The guests shrunk aghast from this hideous spectre, and the hostess shrieked outright. Little regarding the alarm which he had occasioned, he exclaimed, in a hollow and scarcely earthly voice, “Give me meat—give me drink—give me clothing—I am destitute of all; there you sit in enjoyment of every luxury, while your husband, who is flesh of your flesh, has not known what it is to eat heartily, or to be covered from the piercing wind, for weeks and months. Shrink not from me. Wretched as I seem, I am still your husband. Nothing on earth can break that tie. Meat, I say—drink—I am in my own house, and will be obeyed. For you, gentles, get you gone; your company is not now agreeable.” The company dispersed without farther ceremony, leaving the unhappy woman alone with her husband.
Next day, the stranger appeared abroad in a decent suit of clothes, and Mrs Dempster seemed to have recovered a little of her equanimity. Every sacrifice, however, which she could make for this wretch, was in vain, or only encouraged him to demand greater indulgences. An unlimited supply of liquor in his own house would not satisfy him. He required large sums wherewith to treat all the canaille of the town. Entreaties, indulgences, every thing that could be devised to gratify him, were unavailing to impress him with a sense of his wife’s situation. He intruded his unhallowed front into her school, and insulted her before her pupils. Those who laughed at his antics he would seize by the shoulders, and turn out of doors. He had also a most perverse desire of pushing himself into her presence, whenever he thought she was conversing with any of her employers, before whom an observance of propriety and decorum was most particularly necessary. Indeed, he just delighted to do exactly what his wife wished him not to do, the grand object of his low mind being to show how much he had her comfort and welfare in his power. At length, with every feeling of respect for Mrs Dempster, her employers, the magistrates, found it necessary to inform her, that they could not permit her to retain the school any longer under such circumstances, as it was threatened with utter annihilation by the gradual diminution of the number of pupils. She proposed to her husband to allow him regularly the full half of her earnings, if he would only stay in some other place, and never again intrude upon her. But he scorned to be bought off, as he said. He insisted rather upon her giving up the school, and accompanying him to Edinburgh, where, with the little sum she had saved, and what besides they could raise by the sale of her superfluous furniture, he would enter into business on his own account, and she should never again be obliged to work for either herself or for him. The poor woman had no alternative. She was compelled to abandon the scene, where for so many years she had enjoyed the comforts of life and the respect of society, in order to be dragged at the chariot wheels, or rather at the cart’s tail, of her husband’s vices and fortunes, through scenes to which she shuddered to look forward.
In the capital, Dempster’s design of entering into business, if he ever seriously entertained it, was no more talked of. Fleshed once again with a taste of his former indulgences, he rushed headlong into that infamous career, which already had twice ended in voluntary banishment. His wife’s finances were soon exhausted; but, with the barbarity of a demon taskmaster, he would every day leave her with a threat, which she but too well knew he would execute, of beating her, if she should not be able to produce next morning a sum necessary for the gratification of his wretched appetites. It was now in vain to attempt that mode of subsistence by which she had hitherto supported herself. So long as she was haunted by this evil genius, that was impracticable. By the interest, however, of some of her former friends, she obtained a scanty and precarious employment for her needle, by which she endeavoured to supply the cravings of her husband, and her own simpler wants. From morning early, through the whole day, and till long after midnight, this modest and virtuous woman would sit in her humble lodging, painfully exerting herself at a tedious and monotonous task, that she might be able to give to her husband in the morning that sum, without which she feared he would only rush into greater mischief, if not into absolute crime. No vigils were grudged, if she only had the gratification at last of seeing him return. Though he often staid away the whole night, she never could permit herself to suppose that he would do so again, but she would sit bending over her work, or, if she could work no more from positive fatigue, gazing into the dying embers of her fire, watching and watching for the late and solitary foot, which, by a strange exertion of the sense, she could hear and distinguish long ere any sound would have been perceptible to another person. Alas, for the sleepless nights which woman so often endures for the sake of her cruel helpmate! Alas, for the generous and enduring affection which woman cherishes so often for the selfish heart by which it is enslaved!
A time at length arrived when the supplies purveyed by Mrs Dempster from her own earnings were quite incompetent to satisfy this living vampire. She saw him daily rush from her presence, threatening that he would bring her to the extremity of disgrace by the methods he would take to obtain money. She lived for weeks in the agonising fear that the next moment would bring her news of some awful crime committed by his hand, and for which he was likely to suffer the last penalty of the law. She hardly knew who or what were his associates; but occasionally she learned, from mutterings in his sleep, that his practices were of the most flagitious and debased kind. He seemed to be the leader or director of a set of wretches who made a livelihood by midnight burglary. At length, one day he came home at an unusual hour, accompanied by three strangers, with whom he entered into conversation in the next room. Between that apartment and the room in which he was sitting, there was a door, which, being never used, was locked up. Through the thin panels, she overheard a scheme laid for entering the house of ——, a villa in the neighbourhood, in order to rob the tenant, whom they described as a gentleman just returned from the East Indies, with a great quantity of plate and other valuables. One of the persons in conference had visited the house, through the kindness of a servant, to whom he had made up as a sweetheart; and he therefore was able to lead the attack through such a channel as rendered success almost certain. “The nabob,” said this person, “sleeps in a part of the house distant from the room in which his boxes are for the present deposited. But should he attempt to give us any disturbance, we have a remedy for that, you know.” And here the listener’s blood ran cold at hearing a pistol cocked. From all that she could gather, her husband was only to keep watch at the outside of the house, while the rest should enter in search of the booty. It is impossible to describe the horror with which she heard the details of the plot. Her mind was at first in such a whirl of distracted feeling, that she hardly knew where she stood; but as the scheme was to be executed that very evening, she saw it necessary to exert herself quickly and decisively, and, therefore, she immediately went to the house of a friend, and wrote an anonymous note to the person most concerned, warning him of a design (she could use no more specific language) which she knew was entertained against a certain part of his property, and recommending him to have it removed to some more secure part of his house. To make quite sure of this note being delivered in time, she took it herself to the gate, and left it with the porter, whom she strictly enjoined to give it immediately into the hands of his master. She then went home, and spent an evening of misery more bitter than the cup of death itself. She had formerly passed many a lonely night at her cheerless fireside, while waiting for the return of her wretched husband; but she never spent one like this. When she reflected upon the happiness of her early days, and the splendid prospects which were then said to lie before her, and contrasted them with the misery into which she had been so suddenly plunged, not by any fault of her own, but, as it appeared, by the mere course of destiny, she could have almost questioned the justice of that supreme power, by which she piously believed the concerns of this lower world to be adjusted. What dire calamities had sprung to her from one unfortunate step! What persecutions she had innocently endured! How hopeless was her every virtuous exertion against the perverse counteraction of a being from whom society could not permit her to be disjoined! And, finally, what an awful outburst of wretchedness was at this moment, to appearance, impending over her! Then she recalled one gentle recollection, which occasionally would steal into her mind, even in her darkest hours, and fill it with an agreeable but still painful light—the thought of Russell—Russell, the kind and good, whom, in a moment of girlish vanity, she had treated harshly, so that he vanished from her presence for ever, and even from the place where he had suffered her scorn. Had fate decreed that she should have been united to that endeared mate of her childhood, how different might have been her lot!—how different, also, perhaps, might have been his course of life!—for she feared that her ungenerous cruelty had also made shipwreck of his noble nature. These meditations were suddenly disturbed by the entrance of Dempster, who rushed into her room, holding a handkerchief upon his side, and, pale, gory, and breathless, fell upon the ground before her. Almost ere she had time to ascertain the reality of this horrid vision, quick footsteps were heard upon the stair. The open door gave free admission, and in a moment the room was half filled with watchmen, at the head of whom appeared a middle-aged gentleman, of a prepossessing though somewhat disordered exterior. “This,” he exclaimed, “is the villain; secure him, if he be yet alive, but I fear he has already met the punishment which is his due.” The watchmen raised Dempster from the ground, and, holding his face to the light, found that the glaze of death was just taking effect upon his eyes. The unhappy woman shrieked as she beheld the dreadful spectacle, and would have fallen upon the ground if she had not been prevented by the stranger, who caught her in his arms. Her eyes, when they first re-opened, were met by those of Russell.
It would be difficult to describe the feelings with which these long-severed hearts again recognised each other, the wretchedness into which she was plunged, by learning that her well-intended efforts had unexpectedly led to the death of her husband, or the returning tide of grateful and affectionate emotion which possessed his bosom, on being informed that those efforts had saved his life, not to speak of the deep sensation of pity with which he listened to the tale of her life. A tenderer feeling than friendship was now impossible, and, if it could have existed, would have hardly been in good taste; but Russell, now endowed with that wealth which, when he had it not, would have been of so much avail, contented himself to use it in the pious task of rendering the declining years of Eliza Farney as happy as her past life had been miserable.
TALE OF THE SILVER HEART.
In the course of a ramble through the western part of Fife, I descended one evening upon the ancient burgh of Culross, which is situated on a low stripe of land beside the sea-shore, with a line of high grounds rising behind it, upon which are situated the old abbey church and the ruins of a very fine mansion-house, once the residence of the lords of the manor. On stepping forth next morning from the little inn, I found that the night had been stormy, and that the waves of the Forth were still rolling with considerable violence, so as to delay the usual passage of the ferry-boat to Borrowstouness. Having resolved to cross to that part of the opposite shore, I found that I should have ample time, before the boat could proceed, to inspect those remains of antiquity, which now give the burgh almost its only importance in the eyes of a traveller. The state of the atmosphere was in the highest degree calculated to increase the interest of these objects. It was a day of gloom, scarcely different from night. The sky displayed that fixed dulness which so often succeeds a nocturnal tempest; the sea was one sheet of turbid darkness, save where chequered by the breaking wave. The streets and paths of the little village-burgh showed, each by its deep and pebbly seam, how much rain had fallen during the night; and all the foliage of the gardens and woods around, as well as the walls of the houses, were still drenched with wet. Having secured the services of the official called the bedral, I was conducted to the abbey church, which is a very old Gothic structure, but recently repaired and fitted up as a parochial place of worship. It was fitting, in such a gloomy day, to inspect the outlines of abbots and crusaders which still deck the pavement of this ancient temple; and there was matter, perhaps, for still more solemn reflection in the view of the adjacent mansion-house. Culross Abbey, as this structure is called, was finished so lately as the reign of Charles the Second, and by the same architect with Holyrood House, which it far exceeded in magnificence. Yet, as the premature ruin of youthful health is a more affecting object than the ripe decline of age, so did this roofless modern palace, with the wallflower waving from its elegant Grecian windows, present a more dismal aspect than could have been expected from any ruin of more hoary antiquity. The tale which it told of the extinction of modern grandeur, and the decline of recently flourishing families, appealed more immediately and more powerfully to the sympathies than that of remote and more barbarous greatness, which is to be read in the sterner battlements of a border tower, or an ancient national fortress. The site had been chosen upon a lofty terrace overlooking the sea, in order that the inmates might be enlivened by the ever-changing aspect of that element, and the constant transit of its ships; but now all useless was this peculiarity of situation, except to serve to the mariner as a kind of landmark, or to supply the more contemplative voyager with the subject of a sigh. With a mind attuned by this object to the most melancholy reflections, I was conducted to what is called an aisle or burial vault, projecting from the north side of the church, and which contains the remains of the former lords of Culross. There images are shown, cut in beautiful Italian marble, of Sir —— Bruce, his lady, and several children, all of which must have been procured from the Continent at a great expense; for this honourable knight and his family flourished in the early part of the seventeenth century, when no such art was practised in Scotland. The images, however, and the whole sepulchre, had a neglected and desolate appearance, as may be expected by the greatest of personages, when their race has become unknown at the scene of their repose. In this gloomy chamber of the heirless dead, I was shown a projection from one of the side-walls, much like an altar, over which was painted on the wall the mournfully appropriate and expressive word “Fuimus.” Below was an inscription on a brass plate, importing that this was the resting place of the heart of Edward Lord Bruce of Kinloss, formerly proprietor of the princely estate of Culross; and that the story connected with it was to be found related in the Guardian, and alluded to in Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion. It was stated that the heart was enclosed in a silver case of its own shape, which had reposed here ever since it ceased to beat with the tide of mortal life in the year 1613, except that it was raised from its cell for a brief space in 1808, in the course of some repairs upon the sepulchre. As I had a perfect recollection of the story told by Steele, which indeed had made a deep impression upon me in boyhood, it was with no small interest that I beheld the final abode of an object so immediately connected with it. It seemed as if time had been betrayed, and two centuries annihilated, when I thus found myself in presence of the actual membrane, in bodily substance entire, which had, by its proud passions, brought about the catastrophe of that piteous tale. What! thought I, and does the heart of Edward Bruce, which beat so long ago with emotions now hardly known among men, still exist at this spot, as if the friends of its owner had resolved that so noble a thing should never find decay? The idea had in it something so truly captivating, that it was long ere I could quit the place, or return to the feelings of immediate existence. The whole scene around, and the little neglected burgh itself, had now become invested with a fascinating power over me; and I did not depart till I had gathered, from the traditions of the inhabitants, the principal materials of the following story, aiding them, after I had reached home, by reference to more authentic documents:—
Edward Lord Bruce of Kinloss, the second who bore the title, was the son of the first lord, who is so memorable in history as a serviceable minister to King James the Sixth during the latter years of his Scottish reign, having been chiefly instrumental, along with the Earl of Mar, in smoothing the way for his majesty’s succession to Queen Elizabeth. After the death of his father, the young Lord Bruce continued, along with his mother, to enjoy high consideration in the English court. He was a contemporary and playmate of Henry Prince of Wales, whom he almost equalled in the performance of all noble sports and exercises, while, from his less cold character, he was perhaps a greater favourite among those who were not prepossessed in favour of youthful royalty. There was not, perhaps, in the whole of the English court, any young person of greater promise, or more endearing qualities, than Lord Bruce, though, in respect of mere external accomplishments, he was certainly rivalled by his friend Sir George Sackville, a younger son of the Earl of Dorset. This young gentleman, who was the grandson of one poet,[1] and destined to be the grandsire of another,[2] was one of those free and dashing spirits, who, according to the accounts of contemporary writers, kept the streets of London in an almost perpetual brawl, by night and by day, with their extravagant frolics, or, more generally, the feuds arising out of them. His heart and genius were naturally good, but the influence of less innocent companions gradually betrayed him into evil habits; and thus many generous faculties, which might have adorned the highest profession, were in him perverted to the basest uses. It was often a subject of wonder that the pure and elevated nature of young Lord Bruce should tolerate the reckless profligacy of Sackville; but those who were surprised did not take a very extended view of human nature. The truth is, that real goodness is often imposed upon by vice, and sees in it more to attract and delight than it does in goodness similar to itself. The gentle character of Bruce clung to the fierce and turbulent nature of Sackville, as if it found in that nature a protection and comfort which it needed. Perhaps there was something, also, in the early date of their intimacy, which might tend to fix the friendship of these dissimilar minds. From their earliest boyhood they had been thrown together as pages in the household of the prince, where their education proceeded, step by step, in union, and every action and every duty was the same. It was further remarked, that, while the character of Bruce appeared always to be bolder in the presence of Sackville than on other occasions, that of Sackville was invariably softened by juxtaposition with Bruce; so that they had something more like a common ground to meet upon than could previously have been suspected.
When the two young men were about fourteen, and as yet displayed little more than the common features of innocent boyhood, Sackville was permitted by his parents to accompany Bruce on a summer visit to the paternal estates of the young nobleman in Scotland. There they enjoyed together, for some weeks, all the sports of the season and place, which seemed to be as untiring as their own mutual friendship. One day, as they were preparing to go out a-hunting, an aged woman, who exercised the trade of spaewife, or fortune-teller, came up to the gate. The horses upon which they had just mounted were startled by the uncouth appearance of the stranger, and that ridden by Sackville was so very restive as nearly to throw him off. This caused the young Englishman to address her in language of not the most respectful kind; nor could all the efforts of Lord Bruce, who was actuated by different feelings, prevent him from aiming at her once or twice with his whip.