The Heart of Mid-Lothian Part 19

"No!" he repeated; "I would not add to the murder of your sister, and of her child, that of any one belonging to her!--Mad, frantic, as I am, and unrestrained by either fear or mercy, given up to the possession of an evil being, and forsaken by all that is good, I would not hurt you, were the world offered me for a bribe! But, for the sake of all that is dear to you, swear you will follow my counsel. Take this weapon, shoot me through the head, and with your own hand revenge your sister's wrong, only follow the course--the only course, by which her life can be saved."

"Alas! is she innocent or guilty?"

"She is guiltless--guiltless of every thing, but of having trusted a villain!--Yet, had it not been for those that were worse than I am--yes, worse than I am, though I am bad indeed--this misery had not befallen."

"And my sister's child--does it live?" said Jeanie.

"No; it was murdered--the new-born infant was barbarously murdered," he uttered in a low, yet stern and sustained voice.--"but," he added hastily, "not by her knowledge or consent."

"Then, why cannot the guilty be brought to justice, and the innocent freed?"

"Torment me not with questions which can serve no purpose," he sternly replied--"The deed was done by those who are far enough from pursuit, and safe enough from discovery!--No one can save Effie but yourself."

"Woe's me! how is it in my power?" asked Jeanie, in despondency.

"Hearken to me!--You have sense--you can apprehend my meaning--I will trust you. Your sister is innocent of the crime charged against her."

"Thank G.o.d for that!" said Jeanie.

"Be still and hearken!--The person who a.s.sisted her in her illness murdered the child; but it was without the mother's knowledge or consent--She is therefore guiltless, as guiltless as the unhappy innocent, that but gasped a few minutes in this unhappy world--the better was its hap, to be so soon at rest. She is innocent as that infant, and yet she must die--it is impossible to clear her of the law!"

"Cannot the wretches be discovered, and given up to punishment?" said Jeanie.

"Do you think you will persuade those who are hardened in guilt to die to save another?--Is that the reed you would lean to?"

"But you said there was a remedy," again gasped out the terrified young woman.

"There is," answered the stranger, "and it is in your own hands. The blow which the law aims cannot be broken by directly encountering it, but it may be turned aside. You saw your sister during the period preceding the birth of her child--what is so natural as that she should have mentioned her condition to you? The doing so would, as their cant goes, take the case from under the statute, for it removes the quality of concealment. I know their jargon, and have had sad cause to know it; and the quality of concealment is essential to this statutory offence.*

* Note K. Child Murder.

Nothing is so natural as that Effie should have mentioned her condition to you--think--reflect--I am positive that she did."

"Woe's me!" said Jeanie, "she never spoke to me on the subject, but grat sorely when I spoke to her about her altered looks, and the change on her spirits."

"You asked her questions on the subject?" he said eagerly. "You _must_ remember her answer was, a confession that she had been ruined by a villain--yes, lay a strong emphasis on that--a cruel false villain call it--any other name is unnecessary; and that she bore under her bosom the consequences of his guilt and her folly; and that he had a.s.sured her he would provide safely for her approaching illness.--Well he kept his word!" These last words he spoke as if it were to himself, and with a violent gesture of self-accusation, and then calmly proceeded, "You will remember all this?--That is all that is necessary to be said."

"But I cannot remember," answered Jeanie, with simplicity, "that which Effie never told me."

"Are you so dull--so very dull of apprehension?" he exclaimed, suddenly grasping her arm, and holding it firm in his hand. "I tell you" (speaking between his teeth, and under his breath, but with great energy), "you _must_ remember that she told you all this, whether she ever said a syllable of it or no. You must repeat this tale, in which there is no falsehood, except in so far as it was not told to you, before these Justices--Justiciary--whatever they call their bloodthirsty court, and save your sister from being murdered, and them from becoming murderers.

Do not hesitate--I pledge life and salvation, that in saying what I have said, you will only speak the simple truth."

"But," replied Jeanie, whose judgment was too accurate not to see the sophistry of this argument, "I shall be man-sworn in the very thing in which my testimony is wanted, for it is the concealment for which poor Effie is blamed, and you would make me tell a falsehood anent it."

"I see," he said, "my first suspicions of you were right, and that you will let your sister, innocent, fair, and guiltless, except in trusting a villain, die the death of a murderess, rather than bestow the breath of your mouth and the sound of your voice to save her."

"I wad ware the best blood in my body to keep her skaithless," said Jeanie, weeping in bitter agony, "but I canna change right into wrang, or make that true which is false."

"Foolish, hardhearted girl," said the stranger, "are you afraid of what they may do to you? I tell you, even the retainers of the law, who course life as greyhounds do hares, will rejoice at the escape of a creature so young--so beautiful, that they will not suspect your tale; that, if they did suspect it, they would consider you as deserving, not only of forgiveness, but of praise for your natural affection."

"It is not man I fear," said Jeanie, looking upward; "the G.o.d, whose name I must call on to witness the truth of what I say, he will know the falsehood."

"And he will know the motive," said the stranger, eagerly; "he will know that you are doing this--not for lucre of gain, but to save the life of the innocent, and prevent the commission of a worse crime than that which the law seeks to avenge."

"He has given us a law," said Jeanie, "for the lamp of our path; if we stray from it we err against knowledge--I may not do evil, even that good may come out of it. But you--you that ken all this to be true, which I must take on your word--you that, if I understood what you said e'en now, promised her shelter and protection in her travail, why do not _you_ step forward, and bear leal and soothfast evidence in her behalf, as ye may with a clear conscience?"

"To whom do you talk of a clear conscience, woman?" said he, with a sudden fierceness which renewed her terrors,--"to _me?_--I have not known one for many a year. Bear witness in her behalf?--a proper witness, that even to speak these few words to a woman of so little consequence as yourself, must choose such an hour and such a place as this. When you see owls and bats fly abroad, like larks, in the suns.h.i.+ne, you may expect to see such as I am in the a.s.semblies of men.--Hush--listen to that."

A voice was heard to sing one of those wild and monotonous strains so common in Scotland, and to which the natives of that country chant their old ballads. The sound ceased--then came nearer, and was renewed; the stranger listened attentively, still holding Jeanie by the arm (as she stood by him in motionless terror), as if to prevent her interrupting the strain by speaking or stirring. When the sounds were renewed, the words were distinctly audible:

"When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in' the green-wood, The hind keeps the hill."

The person who sung kept a strained and powerful voice at its highest pitch, so that it could be heard at a very considerable distance. As the song ceased, they might hear a stifled sound, as of steps and whispers of persons approaching them. The song was again raised, but the tune was changed:

"O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride; There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide."

"I dare stay no longer," said the stranger; "return home, or remain till they come up--you have nothing to fear--but do not tell you saw me--your sister's fate is in your hands." So saying, he turned from her, and with a swift, yet cautiously noiseless step, plunged into the darkness on the side most remote from the sounds which they heard approaching, and was soon lost to her sight. Jeanie remained by the cairn terrified beyond expression, and uncertain whether she ought to fly homeward with all the speed she could exert, or wait the approach of those who were advancing towards her. This uncertainty detained her so long, that she now distinctly saw two or three figures already so near to her, that a precipitate flight would have been equally fruitless and impolitic.

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.

She speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts.

Hamlet.

Like the digressive poet Ariosto, I find myself under the necessity of connecting the branches of my story, by taking up the adventures of another of the characters, and bringing them down to the point at which we have left those of Jeanie Deans. It is not, perhaps, the most artificial way of telling a story, but it has the advantage of sparing the necessity of resuming what a knitter (if stocking-looms have left such a person in the land) might call our "dropped st.i.tches;" a labour in which the author generally toils much, without getting credit for his pains.

"I could risk a sma' wad," said the clerk to the magistrate, "that this rascal Ratcliffe, if he were insured of his neck's safety, could do more than ony ten of our police-people and constables to help us to get out of this sc.r.a.pe of Porteous's. He is weel acquent wi' a' the smugglers, thieves, and banditti about Edinburgh; and, indeed, he may be called the father of a' the misdoers in Scotland, for he has pa.s.sed amang them for these twenty years by the name of Daddie Rat."

"A bonny sort of a scoundrel," replied the magistrate, "to expect a place under the city!"

"Begging your honour's pardon," said the city's procurator-fiscal, upon whom the duties of superintendent of police devolved, "Mr. Fairscrieve is perfectly in the right. It is just sic as Ratcliffe that the town needs in my department; an' if sae be that he's disposed to turn his knowledge to the city service, yell no find a better man.--Ye'll get nae saints to be searchers for uncustomed goods, or for thieves and sic like;--and your decent sort of men, religious professors, and broken tradesmen, that are put into the like o' sic trust, can do nae gude ava. They are feared for this, and they are scrupulous about that, and they arena free to tell a lie, though it may be for the benefit of the city; and they dinna like to be out at irregular hours, and in a dark cauld night, and they like a clout ower the crown far waur; and sae between the fear o' G.o.d, and the fear o' man, and the fear o' getting a sair throat, or sair banes, there's a dozen o' our city-folk, baith waiters, and officers, and constables, that can find out naething but a wee bit skulduddery for the benefit of the Kirk treasurer. Jock Porteous, that's stiff and stark, puir fallow, was worth a dozen o' them; for he never had ony fears, or scruples, or doubts, or conscience, about onything your honours bade him."

"He was a gude servant o' the town," said the Bailie, "though he was an ower free-living man. But if you really think this rascal Ratcliffe could do us ony service in discovering these malefactors, I would insure him life, reward, and promotion. It's an awsome thing this mischance for the city, Mr. Fairscrieve. It will be very ill taen wi' abune stairs. Queen Caroline, G.o.d bless her! is a woman--at least I judge sae, and it's nae treason to speak my mind sae far--and ye maybe ken as weel as I do, for ye hae a housekeeper, though ye arena a married man, that women are wilfu', and downa bide a slight. And it will sound ill in her ears, that sic a confused mistake suld come to pa.s.s, and naebody sae muckle as to be put into the Tolbooth about it."

"If ye thought that, sir," said the procurator-fiscal, "we could easily clap into the prison a few blackguards upon suspicion. It will have a gude active look, and I hae aye plenty on my list, that wadna be a hair the waur of a week or twa's imprisonment; and if ye thought it no strictly just, ye could be just the easier wi' them the neist time they did onything to deserve it; they arena the sort to be lang o' gieing ye an opportunity to clear scores wi' them on that account."

"I doubt that will hardly do in this case, Mr. Sharpitlaw," returned the town-clerk; "they'll run their letters,* and be adrift again, before ye ken where ye are."

* A Scottish form of procedure, answering, in some respects, to the English Habeas Corpus.

"I will speak to the Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about Ratcliffe's business. Mr. Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive instructions--something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and his unknown gentleman--I know no business any man has to swagger about in the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the pulpit on the Sabbath. I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading the mob, though the time has been, they hae been as forward in a bruilzie as their neighbours."