Part 16

The general result of the evidence against Lorimer showed that he had selected Hislop to be an instrument of his atrocious designs chiefly on account of his remarkable resemblance to Wotherspoon. That, still further to heighten this deception, so as to deceive Bryce and his wife, should they, as he expected they would, be confronted with Wotherspoon--or foreseeing, in short, exactly what had happened with regard to him--he had been at the trouble and expense of procuring for Hislop a wig of exactly the same description with that worn by Wotherspoon, and which was of rather a peculiar make and colour. That he had selected a day for coming to Edinburgh, to execute that part of the plot which was performed in Bryce's house, when he knew that Wotherspoon was also in the city; and thus his villanous design was complete in all its parts, and could only have been discovered through the treachery of Hislop. His assertions were all positive, while Wotherspoon's were necessarily all negative; and it is well known how much easier it is to prove than to disprove; and of this Lorimer had the full advantage in the case of the prosecution of the former.

At the desire of the Lord Advocate, the wig which Mr Wotherspoon wore was placed on Hislop's head in court, the former being also present, when Bryce and his wife were called in, and asked to say which of the two was the Mr Wotherspoon they had seen with Lorimer; when both without hesitation and at once, pointed out Hislop; that difference in look and appearance--for, however like two persons may be, some difference between them there always is--being evident, when they were seen together under the circumstances just mentioned, which was scarcely to be detected when they were seen separately by those who were not previously acquainted with them individually and personally: and thus the most fatal evidence of all that had been adduced against Wotherspoon was in one instant rendered not only innocuous to him, but destructive to his persecutor.

The result of Lorimer's trial will be foreseen by the reader. He was condemned to death, and hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh; while Wotherspoon was dismissed from the bar with an unblemished character, and with the sympathy of the whole court and the public at large, for his unmerited sufferings.

Wotherspoon again became a wealthy man, and saw many happy years afterwards; but often said that he would never again speak of forging bills, as Lorimer had declared, after he was condemned to death, that it was his having overheard his idle, but unguarded language on this subject in the inn, that had suggested to him the plot which had so nearly accomplished his destruction.

THE SURGEON'S TALES.

THE THREE LETTERS.

It is a difficult question how far doctors ought voluntarily to interfere in matters of wills. One-half of our profession advocate the moral necessity and propriety of not only putting their patients in such a state of knowledge as to their bodily condition, as to bring out by _inference_ the prudence of arranging their temporal affairs, but of adding suggestions and recommendations to the effect of inducing them to perform this indispensable duty, before the grim tyrant's advances may render it impossible. The other half smile at their bolder and more philanthropic brethren, as fools who interfere with what lies beyond their province, and limit their statements or advice to those necessary replies which are called for by the questions of the patients themselves. Upon all such points, where the truth is sought for _in partibus extremis_, much has been said, and will be said; and perhaps a thousand years hence the profession and the public may be as far from any simple designative proposition of the real moral truth of the subjects, as they are at present. The fault lies in men's minds, which, seeking eternally to generalise, lose sight of the grand fact in nature--that, as in botany she defies man in his attempts at a natural classification, so, in moral states and conditions of society, she equally defies him to manufacture verbal rules for the regulation of individuals or masses under all existing circumstances. For my part, I have always avoided these verbose questions; and, though I have practised for many years, I have never experienced any difficulty in so regulating my statements and advices to dying patients, as might best suit their temporal interests of health and wealth, without losing sight of what was due to higher and more sacred feelings and prospects of a world to come. To tell some patients that they are dying would be to commit a species of homicide; to conceal from them the state of their bodies, and their approaching dissolution, may be to be accessory to worldly wrongs, to be felt for generations, and to that condemnation that is to be felt for ever; but between those extremes there ranges a wide field for the workings of prudence, an ample space for the exercise of a noble and manly virtue, and scope enough and to spare for the exhibition of all those elevated feelings of good hearts that add grace and beauty to the possessors, and are displayed for the benefit of our fellow-creatures. No man has so much in his power for the benefit of mankind as a medical practitioner; and proud am I to say, that no man, speaking generally, more seldom loses the opportunity of turning it to the proper account. These observations are called forth by a case that, some time ago, came under my observation, where the hand of a ruling Providence spurned the schemes of weak mortals, and took the regulation of a dying person's affairs out of her hands, in a manner as strange as it is dark and mysterious.

Mrs Germain, a widow lady of fortune, sent her niece, a young woman about twenty-three years of age, to request that I would visit her in my professional capacity. The case, I was told, was not an urgent one, and I might call at any time during the course of the day, as suited my arrangements and leisure. I went, accordingly, in a short time afterwards, and was introduced into a very splendid drawing-room, where I observed an elderly lady, whom I took to be Mrs Germain herself, reclining on a damask-covered couch, with the young person who had waited on me sitting on a footstool by her side. The two individuals were interesting in many respects, even at first sight. There was a singular elegance of taste displayed in the dress, though a dishabille, of the elderly one, which, co-operating with a set of features at one time undoubtedly handsome, and now noble and intellectual, bespoke the lady by birth, and one that had cultivated the art of making the body and the mind reflect on each other mutual beauty and adornment. The young one, whom I had seen before, but under the shade of a jealous veil, was one of those _blondines_ so highly prized in French novel-writing, and seldom seen in our country in the perfection of contrast, of dark piercing eyes and light auburn tresses, so frequently seen in France. She was also very elegantly attired; and the graceful manner in which she reclined, with her left arm on the side of the couch, and her right holding a richly-gilt book, from which she had been reading to her aunt, produced an effect which an artist or a lover would not have been slow to acknowledge. On a nearer approach, I soon detected, in the composed and bland features of the elder, the delicate, yet certain, touch of the finger of some latent, lurking disease; which, by draining the blood from the lips, blanching the lower confines of the temples, and depressing the globes of the eyes, had given a melancholy premonition of serious changes about to be effected in vital parts.

Having been introduced by the niece, who rose and handed me a chair, I sat down by the side of the couch, and received an account of the symptoms which had exhibited themselves to the invalid; from which I learned that she had been ailing for several months, but that no indications of serious disease having been detected by her, she had put off her application for medical advice from day to day, in the hope of getting better. How little did she know that, during all that time, she had been unconsciously, yet progressively, travelling the dark path of death!--how little did she now know, as she lay there, arrayed in the tasteful and costly decorations of the body--her face clothed with the composure of easy indolence and the expression of noble pride, and her soft languid eye lighted up with the hope of a long course of happiness supplied from the resources of wealth--that death was busy with the secret parts of her heart! I understood her complaint at the first description of her symptoms--an aneurism or tumour in the region of the fountain of life, which would burst in an instant, and precipitate her in another moment into eternity.

Her complaint defies all the efforts of our profession, and it is, moreover, one which never can with propriety be explained to a patient, because there are few that have firmness enough to enable them to bear up under the certainty of an instantaneous dissolution, and the uncertainty of the dread moment. I therefore exercised that allowable and humane dissimulation which the searching eyes of patients, or that of friends, render necessary for their freedom and relief from fears that would often kill as certainly as the disease which generates them. This might not have been called for by any vigilance on the part of Mrs Germain to read my face; she felt no apprehension, and put no questions as to what I conceived to be the nature of her complaint. But I saw the dark eyes of the niece fixed upon my countenance with a searching intensity of look and solicitude of expression, which showed that, if she could, she would have read the most secret thoughts of my heart. There was affection deep and pure in that look, and the fear of the bursting asunder of ties more dear to her than her own existence. She continued her gaze silently, but thoughtfully; and the conversation of her aunt, which, notwithstanding her weakness, was spirited and buoyant, touching many indifferent topics lightly, and with the ease and grace of high breeding and fine cultivated fancy, struck her ear without carrying a meaning to her mind. I indulged the confidence of the patient, and witnessed, with feelings which we only can know, the delusive spirit of life flapping his golden-coloured wings round the heart whose citadel was already occupied by the demon of death. Such scenes are familiar to us; but there was something in this different from any I had yet witnessed: and I took my departure with an assumed placidity of look, while the inmost recesses of my spirit were convulsed by the laugh of the patient, and the silent-brooding and fearful-searching eye of that angelic being, whose existence seemed to be wound up in her friend.

Even in desperate cases we must prescribe; and in the evening I sent some medicines of the paregoric and hypnotic kind, with a view, simply--for I could do no more--of relieving a slight pain which occasionally, but at considerable intervals, interfered with her good spirits. I continued my visits, and often witnessed scenes similar to those I described. The patient was gradually approaching the dread issue; and still, at every meeting, that beautiful young woman watched my every look, and searched my heart with those brilliant eyes, that spoke some mysterious language, which even the deepest feelings of friendship for her benefactress would scarcely explain. The patient herself felt no solicitude--she saw no danger. It was clearly otherwise with her niece: but what surprised me was, that this devoted girl only looked her intense feelings; she never asked me if her aunt was in danger. Every glance, every movement, showed that she felt it; but the fear of having her apprehensions confirmed--such, at least, was my construction of her strange conduct--sealed up her lips, and constrained her to a solemn silence.

One day I called, and was shown into an anteroom, until some friend had departed. I heard words in an adjoining closet, and knew the voice of Louisa--for such was the name of the fair creature who had claimed so much interest from me.

"Why will not you, my dearest Louisa?" said the soft voice of a young man. "This is terrible! Think, love, meditate, what will be the dreadful issue! Oh, sweet, angelic being! why were you fated to make me adore you for acting against those wishes I now breathe in your ear? Ask the doctor; tell him the awful secret, that our happiness depends on ten written letters of a name; and he has only to say write, and it is written."

"I have already tried to speak to him, but I cannot. Alfred, I see our danger. My aunt, I fear, is dying. The L20,000 left her by her husband goes to a sordid wretch, his brother, if she dies without a will. There is none on earth she loves but me and Alfred. O beloved Alfred! you alone divide, with that angelic woman, the affection of your Louisa. You are poor; I know it; I have wept for it. I have nothing on this earth. If she die without a will, we are beggars, and her last breath will wail our destiny, and her last tear tell her too late her unavailing sympathy. I know all this. It is my night thought, my day dream, my love's whisper, my Alfred's theme; but, God help me, I cannot break this subject to the doctor; my very heart bounds within my bosom at the thought of raising one slight fear in the breast of that woman to whom I owe all the happiness I have ever experienced upon earth. What, oh, what shall be done, Alfred?"

I heard her sobs burst from her, as she sought for sympathy in the bosom of her lover.

"Louisa, love, lift up your head," he answered. "You are sacrificing both of us to a feeling which that excellent woman herself would pronounce a weakness and a cruelty to both you and her. Think, love, what shall be the thoughts, the agonies, of your aunt, if she finds herself firmly locked in the arms of death, and her hands bound up, by his rigid grasp, from obeying the dictates of a bursting, breaking heart. The thought that Augustus Germain, the man she hates, inherits all her fortune, and that her dear Louisa is left by her a beggar, will drag her parting spirit to the confines of the flesh, and torture it in the body's expiring struggle. You tremble at rousing in her a fear of death, by the mention of the will; and you inflict a thousand agonies, by leaving her unprepared for that death when it comes. Louisa, Louisa, lift up your head, and say if these are not the words of truth."

A silence succeeded these words. The girl was in tears, and her feelings choked her reply.

"I feel that you have spoken truth, Alfred," said she; "yet I cannot do it, I cannot--I will rather be a beggar."

"And you _will_ be a beggar, sweet but deluded girl," rejoined the lover; "and Alfred, who would have died for his Louisa, will be also a beggar, through her weakness. Love is hated by the Fates."

Another pause intervened, of some moments.

"But, Alfred," resumed the sobbing girl, "if--if--oh, I tremble at the word--if my aunt should die without a will, and your Louisa, in place of having twenty thousand pounds, is, as she will be, a beggar--will your love for me, Alfred--ah, I choke--the thought swells my heart----"

"I know it--I know it, Louisa," replied he; "mention it not--it is well that your swelling heart binds up the treacherous word--would not Louisa, with all her aunt's wealth, take Alfred, who has nothing--shall not Alfred, who has nothing, take his Louisa, a beggar? Lovely girl! good, elevated, and noble as you are, I question if you sufficiently appreciate the devotedness of your Alfred. But, Louisa, think again of what I have said. I see you again to-morrow. Oh, how time flies, when I think of your aunt!--how it lags when I think of you! Think--think, ere it be too late."

"I cannot--I cannot," replied she.

There was an embrace; he departed, and the disconsolate Louisa sat and wept bitterly alone.

The servant came and told me that Mrs Germain was now alone. I hastened to her. She was, as usual, on the couch. The disease was gradually progressing, but without making much of external ravage; and her spirits were as good as usual.

"Ha, doctor," she said, briskly, as I went forward, "that was Augustus Germain who now went from me. Know you him? He is the brother of my deceased husband; and now, when I am ailing, though, Heaven be praised, not dying, he has begun to sneak about me, for his own private ends. I have not seen his face these six months. Do you know he is in my power? I can leave the whole fortune I got from his brother past him--to whom I please. Ha! ha!"

"And do you intend, madam, to leave it past him?" replied I, looking in her face gravely.

"Intend!" cried she, with another laugh, which I feared would burst the tumour, and end her life in the instant. "Why, to be sure I do. Louisa Milford shall be my heir, though I had a million for every thousand. That girl, sir, is a jewel beyond the value of all that Golconda could give up from its inmost recesses. She loves Alfred Stanford, a young man as noble in his sentiments, as she is kind, and gentle, and true in her affections; but he is poor, and, praise be to Heaven! I have the means of making them rich and happy."

"And why do you delay this act of kindness and duty," said I, with a look fixed on her eyes, "when you and all others are aware how very brittle a thread life hangs by?"

She looked at me firmly and intently as I pronounced these words, and paused a little, as if she felt some slight shock, which she required to overcome.

"Do _you_ think, sir," replied she, "that I ought not to delay that act?"

"Though you were in perfect health, madam, I should, answer, yes, undoubtedly," said I, with eagerness.

"Then I may as well do it now, when I am only slightly ailing," answered she; recovering, in a moment, from the slight uneasiness I had caused her; "yet, somehow or other, I am so filled with the spirit of life--so young--I mean comparatively--with so many years before me--with such a gay world around me, that I cannot help laughing at making a will. I must put on spectacles, I presume, when I sign it, and look grave and antiquated. Ha! ha! Well, I shall send for old parchment Jenkins in the evening; and, as I would wish you to be present at the execution, I will thank you to make your visit to me in the evening to-morrow. Old Goosequill and you may partake of a glass of my burgundy, vintage '94, on the head of the young widow's settlement."

"I shall attend, madam," said I; "and, if you please, I shall send Mr Jenkins to you just now as I pass."

She eyed me somewhat closely again; but the feeling flew off.

"Do so--do," she replied; and I left her.

As I proceeded out to the main door, I passed the small room where Louisa Milford still sat, with the effect of the extraordinary scene that had taken place between her and the young man called Stanford pressing on her bosom. I stood a moment, and heard distinctly her deep sobs and stifled moans. Her sentiments were beautiful, her conduct noble: she would sacrifice twenty thousand pounds to avoid giving the aunt she loved a moment's uneasiness; and she had resisted the impassioned importunities of a lover, who was suspended between beggary and affluence, and who had adroitly addressed himself to the young heart of love, as well as to the immature judgment of youth. I had no liberty to say one word to her of her aunt's intentions; yet I had for some time resolved to communicate to her the true state of her relative's health, with an injunction to keep the fearful nature of the disease a secret from the patient. I knocked at the door, and was requested to walk in. She was hurriedly occupied in drying up her tears, and removing the signs of grief.

"You have been weeping, Miss Milford," I said; "is it for your aunt?"

"Forbid that I should require to weep for her!" she cried, starting, as if stung with pain. "I cannot bear the idea of that woman being in danger. I have watched your eye daily, and have read in it fearful things; but I will comfort her; she shall never know that there is danger near. I will ward off the sad thought; and oh! sir, for mercy's sake, co-operate with me in my love, while you try to save her from the danger, the thought of which she shall never know!"

The remembrance of what had passed a few minutes before between her and her lover, brought out the full effect of the purity of thought that dictated her impassioned words. I surveyed her for a moment with admiration.

"I did not think my _professional_ eye was so easily read, Miss Milford," I replied. "You have read it correctly. Your aunt cannot live. I have thought it my duty to inform you of this. Her complaint is in the region of the heart, and she will likely die in an instant."

She stood for a moment pale and motionless, as if her heart had suddenly ceased its functions. A slow heaving of the bosom showed the approach of a paroxysm of grief; and I trembled lest the sounds should reach the patient's room. I pointed in the direction silently. She understood me; and the strongest workings of nature were overcome by the strength of her fear to cause pain to her she loved. She struggled against the rising passion, and, turning to me, fell suddenly at my feet, and held up her clasped hands in the direction of my countenance.

"And you will not tell her?" she cried, while struggling sobs impeded her speech; "no, no, pity demands it, and I pray for it--let her live in the hope of life! Say, good sir, for Heaven's sake, that you will conceal it from her, and from all others. None shall know it from me--I will die rather than divulge it. She will thus be happy to the end. She requires no preparation--she is spotless--pure as the child unborn; and as she has lived, so shall she die!"

"It is not my intention to communicate it to her," replied I.

"Ah! thanks, thanks, good sir," she replied, in the same impassioned voice. "Bless you--bless you!"

"But this ignorance, Miss Milford," said I, "prevents a settlement of a patient's worldly affairs."

"If that settlement, in the case of my aunt," replied she, fervently, and turning up her eyes to heaven, "is to be purchased by one moment of pain to her, let Augustus Germain take all."

"Extraordinary sentiment!" muttered I--"extraordinary being!" I left her to her grief, and proceeded to the attorney's house. He was at home, and promised to wait on Mrs Germain that day. He called afterwards, and told me that the will would be ready next evening at seven, when I was requested to attend to witness it, along with him. I attended accordingly. The lady was in her usual state of spirits. She sat up on the couch, arrayed in a superb undress. Miss Milford was not present. I observed her in her own room, as I passed, with Stanford sitting by her, holding one of her hands. The attorney, and one of his clerks, and myself, were the only persons present besides the invalid.

"I am dying to hear a will, Mr Jenkins," said the patient, laughing. "I don't think I ever heard one in my life; for my husband's settlement was a contract of marriage, and I fear there is _some_ difference between the two papers."

Mr Jenkins read the settlement.

"Will you not allow me a glass of wine, doctor?" resumed the invalid, in the same strain. "It may steady my hand. I declare I am as nervous as a young bride."

I poured out a glass of her old burgundy, and gave it to her.

"Here is to my own health first!" said she--"for, you know, I'm an invalid; and, secondly, here is to you all, and may you never be worse than I am until you come to die!"