Part 5

A month passed, and Wallace had not yet returned; but Fastern's Even was still a month distant, and every day brought the hope of a letter, at least, to explain the cause of his conduct, and point out his future proceedings, whether "for feid or favour." But no letter came; and all their inquiries ended in the intelligence that his relative's affairs were not yet wound up, and that some weeks yet would elapse before he could return. The situation, meanwhile, of the victim of prejudice was painful, and gradually becoming hopeless. Her prior sufferings from the stings of calumny were alleviated by the expectation that the generous mind of Wallace would scorn the schemes of her enemy, and her marriage would refute the aspersions, and place her beyond the reach of their poison; but now her relief was not only apparently cut off, but changed, by some adverse fate, into a proof--a confirmation of what had been alleged against her character. Every day found her a mourner; and it was only after nightfall that she could summon up resolution to go abroad on the small messages that domestic wants rendered necessary. Involved in mystery as were both mother and daughter, and pained as the latter was beyond endurance, there yet hung over them a still darker cloud of misfortune, equally mysteriously and fortuitously collected and formed, and equally cruel in its unmerited discharge on the heads of innocent victims. Misery of the deepest and most complicated kind seems often to be evolved from the most trifling causes, as if to show the proud sons of men, by a lesson that pains while it mocks them, the utter darkness of that blindness which they mistake for the light of a concealed reason. One evening, Menie had occasion to proceed to the small village of Canonmills, on a message to a friend; and, as usual, she waited till nightfall, to avoid the gaze of the neighbours, whom her fevered fancy exhibited to her (to a great extent untruly) as participators in the circulation of the calumnies under which she suffered. Wrapped up in a cloak, she hurried out, and proceeded down the narrow loan that then led to the village she intended to visit. Her step was stealthy, and her eye filled with secret shame, even among the shades of night. She reached the house, where she staid for a short time, and then set out on return, which she was inclined to accomplish as quickly and stealthily as she had done her progress forth; but she had not proceeded many paces from the village, when she observed a small wicker corban or basket lying by the side of a hedgerow that then ran along the lower part of the loan. There appeared to be no one near it; and, impelled by a natural curiosity, she proceeded forward and inspected it. There was on it, she observed, a bundle, so carefully pinned up, that, though she applied her fingers hastily to it, she could not penetrate its folds. On lifting up the strange deposit, she found that it felt heavy. She stood irresolute, and again looked around her, but saw no one. She was flurried; and her desire to get home urged her to take it up, and proceed hurriedly along the road, with the view of taking it to the house with her, to examine it leisurely, and restore it to the owner, in the event of his casting up. She obeyed the natural impulse; and, as she ran home with the unknown charge, she repeatedly cast her eyes about, to see if any one appeared to claim it; but she still saw no one; and, in the space of a few minutes, she reached the door of the house, and hurried in. She placed the burden upon the floor--telling her mother, at the same time, that she had found it on the road, and brought it home to see what it contained, as the bundle was so carefully tied up that she could not unfold it on the highway. Her mother put on her spectacles; and, bending down, proceeded, with the aid of Menie, to undo the cloth, when, to their surprise, they evolved from the many foldings of an envelope the dead body (still warm) of a new-born babe. Menie fainted at the grim spectacle, and the mother ran for hartshorn, to recover her daughter. In a little time she revived, but it was only to shudder again at the strange sight; while the sagacious mind of Euphan was busy with the divinations of a sad experience, that pointed to some new calamity to result from this new turn of their adverse fate. She saw, at once, that if she called in her envious neighbours, that had been already busy with the character of her daughter, the unlikely story of the finding and bringing home of a dead child would be scorned and laughed at, while the circumstance of the child being found in the house would be laid hold of as a handle for corroborating and confirming the already circulated calumnies, if, indeed, it might not form a subject for judicial examination and exposure, that might end in the ruin of one already too much persecuted. These cogitations led to a sudden resolution. Rolling up the body hastily in the envelope--

"Hie ye quickly, Menie," she said, "to the place whar ye fand this dangerous burden, and lay it in the precise position in which ye first saw it. The shafts o' envy are already thick round innocence, and we need not for sorrow to prick our own eyes that tears may fall. There is a knowledge that is for guid, and ane that is for evil; but 'the work of all flesh is before Him, and nothing can be hid from his eyes,' so shall this shame be made manifest in his own way. Haste, child, and obey the behest o' your mother."

The trembling girl started back at the mention of again bearing the unholy load; but she was impelled by the strange looks of her parent; and, like an automaton, she hurriedly snatched up the corb, and hastened with it to the place where she found it. She was wrapped up in her cloak, which she threw over the charge, and, after the manner of a thief, or a worker of secret iniquity, she slouched along the loan, trembling and stumbling at every step, till she came to the precise spot, and there she looked several times around her, before she ventured to deposit her burden. She thought she perceived some one behind her, who passed into an opening in the hedge, and she felt irresolute whether to lay down the corban at that moment, or ascertain first whether there was really any one behind the fence; but her mind again recurring to the contents of her burden, a feeling of horripilation crept over her, and, gently crouching down, as if terrified to behold her own act, she withdrew the cloak, left the charge, and fled precipitately along the dark side of the loan. Curiosity impelled her, as she fled, to turn her head, and she saw, with terror, some one issue from the opening in the hedge, and proceed, as she thought, to the identical spot which she had just left. It struck her forcibly, and she shuddered at the thought, that the figure she saw resembled that of Wallace; and the suspicion arose, that he had been watching about the cottage, had followed her, and observed her motions, and would now examine the burden she had so stealthily and mysteriously deposited by the side of the hedge. A strong paroxysm of hysterical emotion seized her, as the full consequences of a realisation of the conjecture were arrayed before her by the conjuring power of her terrors. The prior unexplained suspicion under which she yet lay rose to swell the tumult of her thoughts. She thought her God had deserted her, and that the destiny of her miserable life was placed under the charge of evil spirits, who gloried in her utter ruin. She grew faint, and was scarcely able to walk; and before she again reached the house, the choking effects of the hysterical spasm had almost deprived her of breath. The door was open for her reception; and the moment she entered, she fell upon the floor, panting for air, the blood streaming from her nostrils, and shrill, broken screams, like the sounds that issue from the victims of Cynanche, bursting from her labouring throat.

The alarmed mother again applied restoratives to her suffering daughter, who, in a few minutes, opened her eyes, and became sensible.

"Were you seen, Menie?" whispered the mother, anxiously, in her ear. "Speak, love. 'Blessed is he that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.' Fear not, child; tell me, were ye seen by the eyes o' mortal?"

"God be merciful to me!" answered the girl. "If my eyes deceived me not, George Wallace cam behind me, and saw me lay down that evidence o' anither's shame. I am lost for ever!"

The mother was silent, and lifted up her eyes in an attitude of prayer to Heaven. The nervous symptoms still clung to the daughter, and shiverings and spasms succeeded each other, till she grew so weak that she was unable to undress herself to retire to bed. The office was performed by the kindly hands of the parent, who, still overcome by the workings of fearful anticipations, sat down by the fire, and, fixing her eyes on the red embers, seemed for a time lost in the meditations of a heart that, filled with the spirit of God, felt that, as Esdras sayeth, "life is astonishment and fear," and that we cannot comprehend the things that are promised to the righteous in this world, nor those that are given to the wicked to destroy the happiness of the good.

The night was passed in anxiety and fearful forebodings; and the beam of the morning was dreaded by the daughter, as if it were the blaze of evidence that was to bring to light some crime she had committed. She was unable to rise; the small domestic duties of the morning were performed by the mother, pensively, and under the burden of the prospect of coming ill. About ten o'clock, a slight knock was heard at the door; Euphan cried, in a weak voice, "Come in." She heard a whispering and rustling of clothes, as if the visitors were deciding, by expostulations and pushings, which of them should enter first. At last two neighbours, who had been known to be active in circulation of reports against the daughter, made their appearance. On the usual salutation, expressed, as Euphan thought, in a strange voice, and accompanied by stranger looks--

"Is Menie ill the day?" said one of them, as she cast her eye obliquely upon the bed. "Has she nae doctor, puir thing?"

"I haena seen her for mony weeks," said the other. "Why do ye conceal her illness, Euphan, woman? The lassie may dee, when a helpin hand micht save her."

"Yet I hae heard that she was seen on the road to Canonmills last nicht in the darkenin," rejoined the first, with an oblique glance at the other.

The words reached Menie in the bed, and the clothes shook above her.

"God be praised, my bairn is weel!" said Euphan, who understood the import of their speech; "but, though 'affliction cometh not forth from the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground,' yet are we all born unto grief. We hae our ain sorrows, and never pry into those o' our neighbours."

The conversation continued for some time, and the women departed, leaving the inmates to the certainty that the village had got hold of the dreaded topic of calumny against the miserable victim of prejudice. The shock had not expended its strength upon their already racked nerves, when the door was opened by a rude hand, and two men entered, dressed in the garb of officers of the Sheriff Court. An involuntary scream was uttered by Menie, as her eyes met the uniform of red facings of the harsh-looking men. Euphan was silent; but her eyes were filled with the eloquence of fear.

"Is your daughter at home, good woman?" said one of the men, while he cast his eye on the bed from which the weak scream issued.

"Ay," answered the mother. "What is your pleasure wi' her or wi' me?"

"Where is she?" added the same person.

"There," answered the mother. "She is weakly this morning, and hasna yet risen."

"No doubt--no doubt," said the man. "She cannot be weel. I understand she has been confined to the house for six weeks, with the exception of some night wanderings; but she must this day face the light of the sun. We have a warrant of apprehension against her, proceeding on a charge of child-murder. She must up and dress, sick or well, and go with us. The body of the child lies in the sheriff's office; and it is right that the mother should be there also."

The words, which had an ironical virulence in them, unbecoming the station of the man, wrung a wail from the accused maiden, which, muffled by the bedclothes she had wrapped round her head, sounded like the waning voice of the departing spirit; and the mother, overcome by the accumulation of ills crowned by this consummation, flung herself at the feet of the speaker, and grasped his legs with her fleshless arm.

"God hath spoken once; but I have heard it many times that power belongeth unto him, and not to those wha whet their tongues like swords, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows at the innocent. My dochter is as guiltless o' this crime as the babe she is accused o' murderin. Let her remain, if ye hae in ye the heart that travaileth with pity, and I will awa to them that sent ye, and satisfy them, as never suspicion was satisfied, that Menie Dempster is nae mair capable o' committin this crime against God and his laws, than is she wha is sanctified by the holiest spirit that ever warmed the breast or filled with tears the een o' the mercifu. Grant me this ae request, and it will be a' that Euphan Dempster may ever ask o' man."

"We cannot," replied the officer; "all we can do is to retire for a moment, till your daughter dress herself; but we cannot wait long--so, quick--quick."

And the two men retired to the door, where their appearance had already collected a crowd of curious inquirers. The behests of necessity overcome the strongest feelings of mortals, and even impart to weakness a morbid strength. The unhappy maiden rose, and put on her clothes in the midst of the outpourings of her mother's religious inspirations; but her sobs and suppressed wailings bore evidence to a sorrow that would not be comforted, even by the assurances of the mercy that endureth for ever. The men again entered; and Menie, accompanied by her mother, was led away to the hall of the Sheriff's Court, to undergo an examination, which, of itself, might operate as their utter ruin in this world.

They arrived at the court-room about eleven o'clock. An examination of witnesses had already been begun. As they entered the door of the room where they were to be placed, Menie saw passing through the lobby several neighbours; and between two men, in the act of taking him to be examined, she observed George Wallace, whose eyes seemed red and inflamed, and who exhibited a strong reluctance to proceed forward, requiring the efforts of the men to drag him before the examinator. The whole scene seemed nothing but a dream; and the trifling circumstance from which it originated invested it with a character strange and unnatural. It was nearly four o'clock before Menie was called in to be examined. When led before the judge, she looked wildly around her. A chair was set for her, and she sat down. The usual questions as to her name, and other matters, were put, and the more important part of the examination proceeded. She was asked whether she had at one time been on terms of intimacy with Michael M'Intyre, the city guardsman; whether she had not been in his society among the trees of Inverleith, on a night mentioned; whether she had not been courted by George Wallace of Inverleith Mains; whether she had not been renounced by him; whether the reason of such renouncement was not her prior intimacy with M'Intyre; whether she had not been confined to the house for a considerable period, and what was the reason of such confinement; whether she had not deposited a basket containing the dead child near the hedgerow in the loan leading to Canonmills; and whether she was not the mother of the child. Every question was answered according to her simple ideas of innocence and truth; but when she came to state that she found the basket on the road, carried it home without looking at it, and then replaced it in the situation in which she found it, and all this without being able properly to account for so unlikely and extraordinary a proceeding, the sheriff, prejudiced as he was against her, from her previous admission that she had been seen in the society of M'Intyre, a man of dissolute habits--that Wallace had not visited her for many weeks, in consequence, as she supposed, of that circumstance--and that she had not been in the habit of going out for a considerable period--viewed her statement as false, and entertained the strongest suspicions of her being guilty of the crime laid to her charge. She was accordingly committed to prison until further evidence might be procured, to throw more light on the mysterious transaction.

In the meantime, the circumstances of the case being of that inexplicable kind that stirs the curiosity of a prying public, the results of the precognition got abroad, and it was ascertained that a considerable part of the information afforded to the sheriff had been procured from Elspeth Grierson, the mother of Margaret Grierson, and from one of the men who had seen Menie in the arms of the city guardsman. The manner in which Wallace became implicated as an unwilling witness against his betrothed, was also a curious feature in the case. He had not been absent in the south so long as it had been represented, but had concealed his arrival at home with a view to watch the motions of her whom he yet loved, in spite of the suspicions he entertained against her; and having, on that eventful evening, seen Menie hurrying along with a basket in her hand, he had followed her, and seen her deposit the charge in the manner already mentioned. At the very moment when he was in the act of examining it, Elspeth Grierson came up, as if she had been returning from Canonmills, and helped him to undo the cloth in which the dead body of the child was wrapped; and thus was he painfully committed as a witness of what he had seen. The authorities soon after got intelligence of the circumstance; the child was taken to the office, and a great number of witnesses, chiefly pointed out by Elspeth Grierson (among the rest, George Wallace), were examined, previous to the interrogation of the supposed culprit herself.

The unhappy situation of the girl, and the apparently conflicting testimony of the witnesses, roused a sympathetic interest in many of her acquaintances, who, having set on foot a system of inquiry, induced or persuaded the fiscal to seek for the truth, rather than for an unilateral array of inculpative testimony. It was impossible, even on the part of the authorities, to deny the force of the facts, that Menie had been often seen by the neighbours during their visits, though she had kept the house in the day-time, in consequence of the shame produced by the reports circulated against her; that she had been on a visit to Canonmills on that evening when the child was exposed; that the rumours against her (with the exception of the facts attending the depositing of the corb) proceeded mainly from one source, which was a poisoned one; and that, in place of denying, as she might have done, all knowledge of the transaction, she had explained everything with a simplicity that was seldom exhibited by the votaries of vice. These things made a suitable impression, and the crown authorities were obliged to stop short in their proceedings, from the circumstance that they could find no proof of gravidity, and only one witness, Wallace himself--whose reluctance to give his testimony was looked upon, when contrasted with his ascertained inimical feelings towards her, as an affected exhibition of leniency to cover concealed hatred--could speak to the fact of the depositation of the child. All seemed enveloped in doubt; and, if there was a glimpse of certainty in regard to any part of the inexplicable case, it was that, that doubt itself would effectuate the ruin of the unfortunate prisoner, who could never claim again the respect that is due to innocence.

For six months she was confined within the narrow cells of a jail, and during every day of that period she was visited by her mother, whose endeavours to support the young and breaking heart of the victim, by the application of the balm that God has sent to the miserable, only tended to calm the spirit as it sunk in the ruins of a decaying constitution. She was at last liberated; but the freedom of the body only made more manifest the effects of the blasting power of prejudice and suspicion; and the intelligence, that was communicated to her some time afterwards, that Wallace had married Margaret Grierson, crowned the misery that enslaved her, and seemed to cut off all hope that she could ever again hold up her head among the daughters of men. Time passed, and realised that inherent condition of his power, which, as his progress continues, brings to the miserable the sad consolation of the woes of their enemies. The marriage of Wallace with Margaret Grierson was an unhappy one. The collision of adverse sentiments produced in the wife an infirmity of temper, which, in its exasperated moods, sought for relief in intoxication; and the domestic feuds at Inverleith Mains became a common topic of conversation among the inhabitants of Broughton. Such are the turns of fate that acknowledge the influence of a power whose ways we cannot comprehend; yet a still more extraordinary discovery was to be manifested to the child of misfortune. One night Menie and her mother were engaged in their evening exercise, heedless of the concerns of a world from which they were excluded, when the door opened with a loud noise, and George Wallace stood before them. His eyes were wild and bloodshot, a fever was in his blood, and his nerves, excited by some maniac passion, shook till his frame seemed convulsed, and the powers of judgment and will lay prostrate before the fiend that ruled his heart. Menie started up affrighted, and the mother laid her hand upon the book.

"I am compelled to be here," he cried, with a choking, unnatural voice, as he held forth his hands to the maiden; "and it is well I have come, for the quiet air o' this house o' innocence already quells the fever o' my heart. I have this moment left my wife; and I had a struggle to pass the water-dam, that shone in the mune to invite me to bury mysel and my grief in its still breast. But there is a God in heaven; and He it is wha has brought me here, to look ance mair on her I loved and ruined, and now can only save by my ain endless misery and shame. She lies yonder steeped in drink; but the power o' conscience has repelled the subtle poison, and she could speak in burnin words her crime and my eternal shame. Margaret Grierson it was--my wife--the mother o' my child--O God, help my words!--she has confessed, in her drunken madness, and my heart tells me it is the confession o' God's eternal truth, that the babe was hers--that her mother laid it by the hedgerow, a breathin victim, to hide her daughter's dishonour--and that it died there by suffocation. Let me speak it out, that this throbbin heart may be stilled. But it cannot--it never can be in this world--no--no--nor in the next."