Part 15

But, _lucidus die--nocte inutilis_. As the day dawned, and the morning sun, fresh from the east, threw in between the chinks of the shutters the virgin beams, Ogilvy felt the truth of the old saying, that every day vindicates its two conditions of good and evil. There was again a change in the versatile mind of the romantic youth; and Honour, pinkt out in those gaudy decorations woven by the busy spirits that move so cunningly the springs of man's thoughts in a conventional world, appeared before him. If Isobel was still the Devil Isobel, Honour was a smiling angel, even more beautiful than Sweet Marjory. Yet he was not happy--only firm, as he confessed by that lying power of the mind, to the strength of bonds he had himself imposed, and yet repented of--setting necessity as a will-power amidst the wreck and ruin of his affections. The hour advanced, and he must superinduce the happy bridegroom on the dead statue. Unsteady and fitful even in the common actions of life--lifting the wrong thing, and suddenly throwing it down in the wrong place, again to snatch the right thing at the wrong time--he was not so this morning. Every step and manipulation was like the movement of a machine. Composedness was a luxury to him. Ornament after ornament, at a time when a bridegroom's decorations were the expression of a rude refinement, found its place with a steady, nay, affectedly formal hand; yea, a more cool bridegroom had never been seen in the world's history, since that eventful morning when the hero of Bæotia put on his lion's skin, and took up his wooden club, to marry the fifty daughters of the king, though among these, if the wise man is right, there must have been forty-nine devils. As the solemn work went on, he looked again and again into the mirror, where he saw none of the wrinkles of care, no brow-knitting of fractiousness, no sternness of resolute determination,--all quiet, smooth, even mild. Ay, such a mime is man when he is a mome, that he even smiled as he felt his pulse,--how cool was his blood, how regular the vibrations! And so the mummery went on: the flowered-red vest, the braided coat of sky-blue, the cravat, the ruffles, the wrist-bands scolloped and stiff, the indispensable ruff, concealed behind by the long locks of auburn, so beautiful in Isobel's eyes, that flowed over his broad shoulders.

The work was finished; Ogilvy was dressed--his body in all the colours of the arc of hope--his mind in the dark midnight weeds of a concealed misery, concealed even from himself. He sought the chamber of his mother, and, taking her hand, kissed it fervently; but could not trust himself to even a broken syllable of speech, and his silence was sympathetic. She looked into the face of her son, and then threw her eye solemnly over the array of his dress. The tear stood apparent, yet her face seemed to have borrowed his composedness, as if she felt that the old doom still followed the house of Ogilvy, and was inevitable, when the evil genius of the Bowers was in the ascendant. There was no reproof now, save that which lies in the dumb expression of sorrow--even that reproof which, melting the obstruction of man's egotism, finds its way to the heart, when even scorn would be only a hardening coruscation. Yet even this he could bear for the sake of that conventionality which is a tyrant. Turning away his head, he again kissed the soft hand, and hurried away.

As he issued from the gate and mounted his steed, now refreshed from the rough stress of the previous evening, the sun shone high and flaring, and the face of the country, with its rising hills and heather-bloom, and patches of waving corn, responded--as became it surely on a bridal morning--to the clang of the bell in Bell's Tower,--so like in all but the workings of the heart to the Sabbath morning when the union is to be between the spirit of man and the Lamb without guile. Yet art, self-confident and pragmatic, was not to be cajoled by the solicitations of, to it, a lying nature, however beautiful; and Ogilvy found it convenient, if not manly and heroic, to knit his eyebrows against the sun. So does the Indian hurl his wooden spear against the lightning, because he is a greater being than the Author of the thunder. So he rode on to where the bells rung--for was not he specially called?--the gloom on his countenance, with which his forced determination kept pace, increasing as he proceeded. Nor had he ever ridden thus before. Even his steed might have known, as he opened his nostrils, that there was something more than common in the wind's eye, accustomed as he was to the speed of enthusiasm, or the walk of exhaustion. He was now a solemn stalking-horse, bearing a rigid, buckram-mailed showman, whose only sound or movement resided in the plates of his armour, or his lath sword or gilded spontoon.

As Ogilvy had thus enrolled himself among the chivalry of honour, and was consequently, in his own estimation, as we have hinted, a personage of romance, so was it only consistent with the indispensable gloom of his dignity and sternness that he should ride alone: nor was it seeming that he should accost the guests whom he saw on either side, obeying the call of the bell, and riding along to the bridal and the feast. Yet the scene might have enlivened somewhat a very gloomy knight, as, looking around, he saw the lairds rounding the bases of the hills, and heard, as others came into sight, the sound of bagpipes, however little these might be associated with chivalric notions and aspirations. But then it was not easy to act this solitary part; for what more natural than that those passing to his own celebration should salute him? Nor could he avoid those salutations.

"Joy to thee, Ogilvy," said one, as he rode up; "the nightshade is sweeter than the rose;" and departed.

"A happy day," said another, "when the wolf becomes more innocent than the lamb."

"Good morning, bridegroom," said a third. "The sun shines bright, and the moss-brown tarn is more limpid than the running rill."

"All happiness," said a fourth rider, "when the merle nestles with the jolly owl, and is not afraid when he sounds his horn."

But Ogilvy only compressed his lips the more, and looked the more gloomy, solacing himself with the vision of Honour, the beautiful yet stern virgin, and immaculate as she who shook her mailed petticoats after getting out of Jupiter's head. Nor was the inspiration diminished as he now saw rising before him the rugged pile of Bell's Tower, wherein the bell rang still more lustily as the hour approached. The guests were thronging in a multiform, many-coloured mass, all eager for the honour of a Bower's smile. He was soon among the midst of them, repaying neither compliment, nor salutation, nor mute nod, with a single sign of acknowledgment. And now he entered the great hall, where already the invited numbers were nearly completed. How grand the scene! What silks, and satins, and taffetas, flowerings, braidings, and be-purflings, and hooped inflations! what towering toupees, built up with horse-hair and dyed hemp, stiffened with starch! what nosegays, redolent of heather-bells, and roses, and orange blossoms! There sat Dame Bower herself, fat and jolly, with her ruby dewlap, looking dignity; and Bower, the laird, great in legend. Mess John, too, even fatter than tradition will have him--the sleek bald head and face, where a thousand slynesses could play together without jostling. But what were all these, and the fairest and the proudest there, to Isobel Bower, as, arrayed in her long white veil, she sailed about, heedless of all decorum, showering her triumph upon envious damsels, as if she would blight all their fond hopes to make a rich soil for the flowering of her own! If others sat and looked for being looked at, and others stood for being admired, she walked and moved for worship, as if she claimed the peripatetic honour of the entire round of adoration. Not that she stared for it: she was too intensely magnetized to doubt of the jumping of the steel sparks to be all arranged _rayonnant_, like a horse-shoe, round the centre of her glory. Then, as there is by the domestic law a wearock in every nest, however speckled, and however redolent of balm-leaves or resonant of chirpings, where was Sweet Marjory Bower? Where that law ought to place her, by older legends than the date of Bower pride and power--in a corner, plainly dressed, and trying with downcast eyes to escape observation. But how pallid!--as if all the colours there had vied to steal from her cheeks, not the rosy bloom--for it never was there---but the fresh white of the lily, more beautiful than all the flowers of the garden; and not the colour alone, but the light itself of the lily's eye. Nay, it would seem that the greatest robber of all was her sister, whose look turned upon her as if in scorn of her humility, and in pleasure of her woe.

As Ogilvy entered, walking up direct and stedfastly to the midst of the great hall, there arose the welcome buzz, like that humming which makes musical the sphere where comes the reigning queen of the hive. But how soon, as the bell in the tower ceased to ring, was all that noise hushed into a death-like silence, as he stood without sign or movement, with his arms crossed, and his gloomy eyes fixed on the only empty space in that crowded assembly! Would he not look at the bride, or salute the bride's mother, or shake hands with the bride's father, or do any one of all those many things which lay to his duty--far more to his inclination--as a happy bridegroom? Not one of them. And there he stood, as a motionless Grecian god hewn out of veritable panthelion, with its ivory eyes, and the mute worshippers all about. Nay, the likeness was even more perfect; for as these worshippers, from the very fear of reverence and the impression of awe, kept at a distance from that centre of deity, so those guests who were nearest to the strange man moved instinctively away, leaving him in the middle of the charmed ring. But even this did not move him. Then there was business to be done. "Oh! he was only meditative." The greatness of the occasion was the mother of a hundred excuses. Still to all it was oppressive, killing enthusiasm, and so unlike what these gay hopefuls had prefigured of that celestial state in which they wished themselves to be. Only Isobel seemed unchanged. She whispered to Mess John--most unseemly; but was she not the Devil Isobel? Ogilvy, even as a statue, was hers, and could not get away. Then the bridesmaids sought each other, by the clustering sympathy of their gay wreaths and their office, and the bridesman stood in readiness. Mess John was at the altar; and the bell was to ring the celebrating peal after the ceremony was ended, and the guests should fall to their knives and forks; and the retainers on the lawn, where the fire blazed wild to roast the ox and honour the bride, should sit down to their marriage feast.

As Solemnity is the mother of Angerona, with her finger on her lip, so here reigned now the utmost stillness that could be enforced by heaving hearts against the buzz of a crowd. Scarcely a sound was heard as the altar was encircled. You might have detected a sigh, if it had not been that every sigh was suppressed. Even Isobel was mute, but not from any cessation of her triumph--rather from the impression of its culmination in possession. She stood grandly, looking around her, in defiance of the inexorable law of down-gazing on the ground, where brides see so much which no one else sees. Nor had she yet expressed by a look any wonder at the statue bridegroom, whose attitude was still unchanged. All is eye, and ear, and throbbing heart, when of a sudden the door of the great hall opened, calling the eye in the direction of the screech. Who dared? Some one more daring than common humanity. A figure entered, in the dress of another bride,--a tall figure, with surely nothing to be covered by the white satin and the long lace mantilla, suspended from the top of a wreathed head white as the driven snows of Salmon, but bones, sheer bones. The face could scarcely be seen for the folds of the veil: only two eyes, with no more light in them than what plays on the surface of untransparent things, and fixed and immoveable as if they saw nothing. The guests were breathless from stupefying amazement. They beheld it pass into the middle of the hall, where, in the space that had been deserted, it began a movement something like dancing. Strange mutterings of a broken-voiced song, with words about long years having passed away, rhyming with bridal day, and so forth, in the cauldron-kettle-and-incantation style, came in snatches.

"It is that infernal old witch, Patricia Bower," screamed Devil Isobel.

And rushing forward, the impassioned creature threw the weight of her body on the composition of bones and satin. It fell, with a loud shrill scream from a windpipe dried by the breath of ninety-seven years.

Dame Bower and Sweet Marjory rushed forward and drew back the veil. It was the antediluvian Patricia. She was dead. The last spark had been offered to Hymen, and the incense canister was broken. Drops of blood issued from her mouth and nose, and sat upon the marble face, with still remains of the old beauty in it which had charmed Walter Ogilvy, like dots on the tiger lily.

At this moment the bell began to clang. Devil Isobel was gone. She had hurried out the moment she knew that the spark of life had fled. Nor could she be found. The song says--

"They sought her here, they sought her there, By lochs and streams that scent the main, By forests dark, and gardens fair; But she was never seen again."

A trick, this last line, of some of the old legend-mongers of the Bell's Tower minstrels, no doubt to conceal the shame of the family; for Devil Isobel had flown to the tower, where, having concealed herself till the bell-ringers went away to join in the feast of the ox, which they never tasted even after so much pulling and hauling, she mounted to the belfry. Somehow she had contrived to cast the bell-rope round one of the beams by which the bell was suspended, so as to produce no noise, and then, having made a noose of a different kind from that she had that day been busily twining, she suspended herself by the neck. It was some days before she was discovered. The long white figure, still arrayed in the marriage dress with the flowing veil, had been observed by some of the searchers; and then, strange enough, it was remembered that one solitary clang of the bell had been heard after the cessation of the ringing. That was the death-peal of Isobel Bower. But, a year after, that same bell had another peal to sound--no other than the celebration of the marriage of Hector Ogilvy and Sweet Marjory. Some say that Bell's Tower got its name from the contraction of Isobel. Names stick after the things have passed away. They did well at least to change the rope--_finis funis_.

DOCTOR DOBBIE.

The particular day in the life of the worthy disciple of Esculapius to which we desire to direct the attention of the reader, was raw, coldish, and drizzly in the morning, but cleared up towards noon; and although it never became what could be called warm (it was the latter end of September), it turned out a very passable sort of day on the whole--such a day as no man could reasonably object to, unless he had some particular purpose of his own to serve. In such case he might perhaps have wished more rain, or probably more sunshine, as the one or the other suited his interest; but where no such selfish motives interfered, the day must have been generally allowed to have been a good one. The thermometer stood at--we forget what; and the barometer indicated "Fair."

PERSONAL APPEARANCE, CHARACTER, AND PECULIARITIES OF THE DOCTOR.

The doctor was a little stout man, not what could be called corpulent, but presenting that sort of plump appearance which gives the idea of a person's being hard-packed, squeezed, crammed into his skin.

Such was the doctor, then--not positively fat, but thick, firm, and stumpy; the latter characteristic being considerably heightened by his always wearing a pair of glossy Hessian boots, which, firmly encasing his little thick legs up nearly to the knees, gave a peculiar air of stamina and solidity to his nether person. The doctor stood like a rock in his Hessians, and stumped along in them--for he was excessively vain of them--as proudly as a field-marshal, planting his little iron heels on the flag-stones with a sharpness and decision that told of a firm and vigorous step.

The doctor was no great hand at his trade; but this, it is but fair to observe, was not his own opinion. It was the opinion only of those who employed him, and of the little public to whom he was known. He himself entertained wholly different sentiments on the subject. The doctor, in truth, was a vain, conceited little gentleman; but, withal, a pleasant sort of person, and very generally liked. He sung a capital song, and had an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits.

One consequence of the latter circumstance was his being much invited out amongst his friends and acquaintances. He was, in fact, a regular guest at all their festivities and merry-makings, and on these occasions used to get himself fully more strongly malted than became a gentleman of his grave profession.

When returning home of a night in this state, the little doctor's little iron heels might be heard rap-rapping on the flag-stones at a great distance in the quiet street, for he then planted them with still more decision and vigour than when sober; and so well known in his neighbourhood was the sound of his footsteps, so audible were they in the stillness of the night, and so habitually late was he in returning home--his profession forming an excellent excuse for this--that people, even while sitting at their own firesides, or, it might be, in bed, although at the height of three storeys, became aware, the moment they heard his heels, that the doctor was passing beneath; and the exclamations, "That's the doctor," or "There goes the doctor," announced the important fact to many a family circle. All unconscious, however, of these recognitions, the doctor stumped on his way, reflecting the while, it might be, on the good cheer he had just been enjoying.

On these occasions, the doctor, while he kept the open street, got on swimmingly; but the dark and somewhat tortuous staircase which he had to ascend to reach his domicile--the said domicile being on the third flat--used to annoy him sadly. When very much overcome, as, we grieve to say it, the doctor very frequently was, the labour it cost him to make out the three stairs was very serious. It was long protracted, too; it took him an immense time; for, conscious of his unsteady condition, he climbed slowly and deliberately, but we cannot add quietly; for his shuffling, kicking, and blowing, to which he frequently added a muttered objurgation or two on missing a step, as he struggled up the dark stair, were distinctly audible to the whole land. By merely listening, they could trace his whole progress with the utmost accuracy, from the moment he entered the close, until the slam of a door announced that the doctor was housed. They could hear him pass along the close--they could hear him commence his laborious ascent--they could hear him struggling upwards, and, anon, the point of his boot striking against a step, which he had taken more surely than necessary--they could hear him gain the landing-place at his own door, signified by a peculiar shuffle, which almost seemed to express the intelligence that a great work had been accomplished--they could hear the doctor fumbling amongst his keys and loose coin for his check-key, and again fumbling with this check-key about its aperture in the door, the hitting of the latter being a tedious and apparently most difficult achievement--and, lastly, they could hear the door flung to with great violence, announcing the finale of the doctor's progress.

Over and above the more ordinary and obvious difficulties attending the doctor's ascent on such occasions, and under such circumstances as those of which we speak, there was one of a peculiar and particularly annoying nature. This was the difficulty he found in discriminating his own landing-place from the others,--a difficulty which was greatly increased by the entire similarity of all the landing-places on the stair, the doors in all of which were perfect counterparts of each other, and stood exactly in the same relative positions. This difficulty often nonplussed him sadly; but he at length fell upon a method of overcoming it, and of ensuring his making attempts on no door but his own. He counted the landing-places as he gained them, pausing a second or two on each to draw breath, and impress its number on his memory,--one, two, three, then out with the check-key.

Now this was all very well had the doctor continued to reckon accurately; but, considering the state of obfuscation in which he generally returned home at night, it was very possible that he might miscount on an occasion, and take that for three which, according to Cocker, was only two, or that for two which, by the same authority, was but one. This was perfectly possible, as the sequel of our tale will sufficiently prove. In the meantime, we proceed to other matters; and, to make our history as complete as possible, we start anew with--

THE DOCTOR'S SHOP.

It had not a very imposing appearance; for, to tell a truth, the doctor's circumstances were by no means in a palmy state. The shop, therefore, was decidedly a shabby one. It was very small and very dirty, with a little projecting bow window, the lower panes of which were mystified with some sort of light green substance--paint or paper, we don't know which--in order to baffle the curiosity of the prying urchins who used to congregate about it. Not that they were attracted by anything in the window itself, but that it happened to be a favourite station of the boys in the neighbourhood,--a sort of mustering place, or place of call, where they could at any time find each other. The typical display in the doctor's window consisted of a blue bottle, a pound of salts, and a serpent; the second being made up into labelled packages of about an ounce weight each, and built up with nice skill against one of the panes, so as to make as much show as possible. The serpent was a native of the Lammermoor Hills, which a boy, who drove a buttermilk cart, brought in one morning, and sold to the doctor for a shilling.

The inside of the doctor's shop, which besides being very dirty was very dark, had a strange, mysterious, equivocal sort of character about it. Everything was dingy, and greasy, and battered, and mutilated. Dirty broken glasses stood in dark and dirty corners; rows of dirty bottles, some without stoppers, and some with the necks chipped off, and containing drops of black, villanous-looking liquids, stood on dirty shelves; rows of battered, unctuous-looking drawers, rising tier above tier, lined one side of the shop, most of which were handled with bits of greasy cord, the brass handles with which they had been originally furnished having long since disappeared, and never having been replaced.

What these drawers contained, no human being but the doctor himself could tell. In truth, few of them contained anything at all. Those that did, could be described only as holding mysterious, dirty-looking powders, lumps of incomprehensible substances, or masses of desiccated vegetable matter of powerful and most abominable flavour.

For all these, the doctor had, doubtless, very learned names; but such as we have described them was their appearance to the eye of the uninitiated.