Chapter 2

"But you know, Mr. Dallas," replied she, "that Mr. John Napier was a man who, if he threw a stone, cared little whether it struck the kirk window or the mill door."

"That is so far true; but, passionate and unforgiving as he was, he was not so reckless as to be regardless whether the stone did not come back on his own head."

"And it's no genuine!" she resumed, as, disregarding his latter words, she relapsed into her more familiar dialect. "The Lord help ye! canna ye look at first the ae paper and then the ither? and if they're no alike, mustna the ither be the forgery?"

An example of the conditional syllogism which might have amused even a writer to the signet, if he had not been at the very moment busy in the examination of the handwriting of the funeral letter and that of the paper of repudiation and malison--the resemblance, or rather the identity of which was so striking, as to reduce all his theories to confusion.

"By all that's good in heaven, the same," he muttered to himself; and then addressing his visitor, "I confess, Mrs. Hislop," said he, "that this paper has driven me somewhat off my point of confidence; but I suppose you will see that, if the child was actually, as the letter indicates, buried with its mother, Henrietta's rights are at an end. It is just possible, however, I fairly admit, that Mr. Napier, who was a very eccentric man, may have so worded the letter as to induce the world to believe that the so-considered illegitimate child had been dead-born, while he gratified--privately he might verily think--his vengeance by writing this terrible curse. Still I think you are wrong; but as this wonderful paper gives you a plausible plea, I would recommend you to Mr. White, in Mill's Court, who will see to the young woman's rights. He will be the flint, and I the steel; and between our friendly opposition we will produce a spark which will light up the candle of truth."

"Ay," replied she; "only as the spark of fire comes from the steel, we'll just suppose you are the flint--and by my troth you're hard enough; but, come as it may, it will light the lantern that will show Henney Napier to the bonnie haughs of Eastleys."

Mrs. Hislop having got back her paper from Mr. Dallas, left the writer's chambers, and directed her steps to Mill's Court, where she found Mr. White, even as she had Mr. Dallas, busy poring over law papers. She was, as we have seen, one of those people who can make their own introduction acceptable, and, moreover, one of those women, few as they are, who can tell a story with the continuity and fitting emphasis necessary to secure the attention of a busy listener. So Mr. White heard her narrative, not only with interest, but even a touch of the pervading sympathy of the spirit of romance. And so he might; for who doesn't see that the charm of mystery can be enhanced by the hope of turning it to account of money? Then he was so much of a practical man as to know that while every string has two ends, the true way to get hold of both is to make sure in the first place of one. Wherefore he began to interrogate his client as to who could speak to the doings in the house in Meggat's Land on that eventful night when the child was born; and having taken notes of the answers to his questions, he paused a little, as if to consider what was the first step he ought to take into the region of doubt, and perhaps of intrigue, where at least there must be lies floating about like films in the clear atmosphere of truth. Nor had he meditated many minutes till he rose, and taking up his square hat and his gold-headed cane, he said--

"Come, we will try what we can discover in a quarter where an end of the ravelled string ought to be found, whether complicated into a knot by the twisting power of self-interest or no."

And leading the way, he proceeded with his client down the High Street, where, along under the glimmering lamps, were the usual crowds of loungers, composed of canny Saxon and fiery Celt, which have always made this picturesque thoroughfare so remarkable. Not one of all these had any interest for our two searchers; but it was otherwise when they came toward the Canongate Tolbooth, where, out from a dark entry sprang a young woman, and bounding forward, seized our good dame round the neck. This was no other than Henney Hislop herself, who, having been alarmed at the long absence of her "mother," as she called her, and of course believed her to be, was so delighted to find her, that she sobbed out her joy in such an artless way, that even the writer owned it was interesting to behold. Nor was the picture without other traits calculated to engage attention; for the girl whose fortunes had been so strange, and were perhaps destined to be still more strange, was dressed in the humblest garb--the short gown and the skirt peculiar to the time; but then every tint was so bright with pure cleanliness, the earrings set off so fine a skin, the indispensable strip of purple round the head imparted so much of the grace of the old classic wreath; and beyond all this, which might be said to be extraneous, her features--if you abated the foresaid cast or slight squint in the eyes, which imparted a piquancy--were so regular, if not handsome, that you could not have denied that she deserved to be a Napier, if she was not a very Napier in reality. A few words whispered in Mrs. Hislop's ear, and the girl was off, leaving our couple to proceed on their way. Even this incident had its use; for Mr. White, who had known Mr. Napier, and had faith (as who has not?) in the hereditary descent of bodily aspects, could not restrain himself from the remark, however much it might inflame the hopes of his client--"The curse has left no blight there," said he. "That is the very face of Mr. Napier--the high nose especially; and as for the eyes, with that unmistakeable cast, why, I have seen their foretypes in the head of John Napier a hundred times."

An observation so congenial to Mrs. Hislop, that she could not help being a little humorous, even in the depth of an anxiety which had kept her silent for the full space of ten minutes.

"Nose, sir! there wasn't a man frae the castle yett to Holyrood wha could have produced that nose except John Napier."

And without further interruption than her own laugh, they proceeded till they came to the entry called Big Lochend Close, up which they went some forty or fifty steps till they came to an outer door, which led by a short dark passage to two or three inner doors in succession, all leading to separate rooms occupied by separate people. No sooner had they turned into this passage than they encountered a woman in a plaid and with a lantern in her hand, who had just left the third or innermost room, and whose face, as it peered through the thick folds of her head-covering, was illuminated by a gleam from the light she carried. She gave them little opportunity for examination, having hurried away as if she had been afraid of being searched for stolen property.

"Isbel Napier," whispered Mrs. Hislop; "she wha first brought evil into the house of the Napiers, with all its woe."

"And who bodes us small hope here," said he, "if she has been with the nurse."

And entering the room from which the ill-omening woman had issued, they found another, even her of whom they were in search, sitting by the fire, torpid and corpulent, to a degree which indicated that as it had been her trade to nurse others, she had not forgotten herself in her ministrations.

"Mrs. Temple," said Mr. White, who saw the policy of speaking fair the woman who had been so recently in the company of an evil genius; "I am glad to find you so stout and hearty."

"Neither o' the twa, sir," replied she; "for I am rather weak and heartless. Many a ane I hae nursed into health and strength, but a' nursing comes hame in the end."

"And some, no doubt, have died under your care," continued the writer, with a view to introduce his subject; "and therefore you should be grateful for the life that is still spared to you. You could not save the life of Mrs. Napier."

"That's an auld story, and a waefu' ane," she replied, with a side-look at Mrs. Hislop; "and I hae nae heart to mind it. Some said the lady wasna innocent; and doubtless Mr. Napier thought sae, for he took high dealings wi' her, and looked at her wi' a scorn that would have scathed whinstanes. Sae it was better she was ta'en awa--ay, and her baby wi' her; for if it had lived, it would have dree'd the revenge o' that stern man."

"The child!" said Mr. White, "did it die too?"

"Dee! ye may rather ask if it ever lived; for it never drew breath, in this world at least."

A statement so strange, that it brought the eyes of the two visitors to each other; and no doubt both of them recurred in memory to the statement in the funeral letter, which, whatever may have been the case with the assertion now made by the nurse, never could have been dictated by her they had met in the passage; and no doubt, also, they both remembered the statement made by Mr. Dallas, to the effect that both the mother and child were buried together.

"Never drew breath, you say, nurse!" resumed Mr. White, with an air of astonishment; "why, I have been given to understand, not only that the child was born alive, but that it is actually living now."

"Weel," replied the nurse, "maybe St. Cuthbert has wrought a miracle, and brought the child out o' the grave by the West Church; but he has wrought nae miracle on me, to mak' me forget what my een saw, and my hands did, that day when I helped to place the dead body o' the innocent on the breast o' its dead mother; ay, and bent her stiff arms sae as to bring them ower her bairn, just as if she had been faulding it to her bosom. And sae in this fashion were they buried."

"And you would swear to that, Mrs. Temple?" said the writer.

"Ay, upon fifty Bibles, ane after anither," was the reply, in something like a tone of triumph.

Nor could the woman be induced to swerve from these assertions, notwithstanding repeated interrogations; and the writer was left to the conclusion--which he preferred, rather than place any confidence in the funeral letter--that the nurse's statement was in some mysterious way connected with the visit of Isabel Napier; and yet, not so very mysterious, after all, when we are to consider that her brother was preparing to claim Eastleys, as well as the valuable furniture of the house in Meggat's Land, as the nearest lawful heir of his deceased uncle. The salvo was at least comfortable to both Mr. White and his client, and no doubt it helped to lighten their steps, as, bidding adieu to the "hard witness," they left her to the nursing which comes "aye hame in the end."

But their inquiries were not finished; and retracing their steps up the Canongate, they landed in the Fountain Close, where, under the leading of Mrs. Hislop, the writer was procured another witness, with a name already familiar to him through the communication of his client; and this was no other than that same Jean Graham, who was sent to Toddrick's Wynd on that eventful night, fifteen years before, to bring Mrs. Hislop to the house in Meggat's Land;--one of those simple souls--we wish there were more of them in the world--who look upon a lie as rather an operose affair, and who seem to be truthful from sheer laziness. There was, accordingly, no difficulty here; for the woman rolled off her story just as if it had been coiled up in her mind for all that length of time.

"There was a terrible stir in the house that night," she began. "The nurse, wha is yet living in Lochend Close, and Mrs. Kemp the howdie, wha is dead, were wi' my lady; and John Cowie, the butler, was busy attending our master, who had been the haill day in ane o' his dark fits, for we heard him calling for Cowie in a fierce voice ever and again; and his step sounded ower our heads upon the floor as he walked back and fore in his wrath. Then I was sent for you, and brought you, and you'll mind how Cowie bade me go along; but I had mair sense, for I listened at the door, and heard what the butler said to ye when he gied ye the bairn; and think ye I didna see ye carry it along the passage as ye left? Sae far I could understand; but when I heard nurse say the bairn was dead, Mrs. Kemp say the bairn was still-born, and Cowie declare it was better it was dead and awa, I couldna comprehend this ava; nor do I weel yet; but we just thought that as there was something wrang between master and my lady, he wanted us to believe that the bairn was dead, for very shame o' being thought the father, when maybe he wasna. And then he was so guid to me and my neighbour Anne Dickson,--ye mind o' her--puir soul, she's dead too,--that we couldna, for the very heart o' us, say a word o' what we knew. But now when Mr. Napier is dead, and the brother o' that wicked Jezebel, Isbel Napier, may try to take the property frae Henney, wha I aye kenned as a Napier, with the very nose and een o' the father, I have spoken out; and may the Lord gie the right to whom the right is due!"

"It's all right," said the writer, after he had jotted with a pencil the evidence of Jean, as well as that of the nurse; "and if we could find this John Cowie, we might so fortify the orphan's rights, as to defy Miss Napier and her brother, and Mr. Dallas, and all the witnesses they can bring."

"Ay," continued the woman, "but I doubt if you'll catch him. He left Mr. Napier's service about ten years ago, and I never heard mair o' him."

"Nor I either," said Mrs. Hislop.

"Well, we must search for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so far as I can see, is he who will unravel this strange business."

And thus the day's work finished. The writer parted for Mill's Court, and Mrs. Hislop, filled with doubts, hopes, and anxieties, sought her humble dwelling in Toddrick's Wynd, where Henney waited for her with all the solicitude of a daughter; but a word did not escape her lips that might carry to the girl's mind a suspicion that the golden cord of their supposed relationship ran a risk of being severed, even with the eventual condition that one, if not both of the divisions, would be transmuted into a string of diamonds.

Meanwhile the agent was in his own house, revolving all the points of a puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair; and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants, that the opposite party was undergoing the same process of oscillation. It was clear enough that Cowie was the required Oedipus; and if it should turn out that he was dead, or could not be found, the advantage was, with a slight declination, on the part of Charles Napier; insomuch as, while he was indisputably the nephew of the deceased, the orphan, Henrietta, was under the necessity of proving her birth and pedigree. And so, as it appeared, Mr. Dallas was of that opinion, for the very next day he applied to Chancery for a brieve to get Charles Napier served nearest and lawful heir to his uncle; and as in legal warfare, where the judges are cognisant only of patent claims, there is small room for retiring tactics, Mr. White felt himself obliged, however anxious he was to gain time, to follow his opponent's example by taking out a competing brieve in favour of Henrietta.

The parties were now face to face in court, and the battle behoved to be fought out; but as in all legal cases, where the circumstances are strange or peculiar, the story soon gets wind, so here the Meggat's Land romance was by-and-by all over the city. Nor did it take less fantastic forms than usual, where sympathies and antipathies are strong in proportion to the paucity of the facts on which they are fed. It was a favourite opinion of some, that the case could only be cleared by supposing that a dead stranger child had been surreptitiously passed off, and even coffined, as the true one; while others, equally skilled in the art of divining, maintained that the child given to Mrs. Hislop by Cowie was a bastard of his own, by the terrible woman Isabel Napier, who was thus, according to the ordinary working of public prejudice, raised to a height of crime sufficient to justify the hatred of the people: on which presumption, it behoved to be assumed that the paper containing the curse was a forgery by Cowie and his associate in crime, and that the money paid to Mrs. Hislop was furnished by the lady; all which suppositions, and others not less incredible, were greedily accepted, for the very reason that it required something prodigious to explain an enigma which exhausted the ordinary sources of man's ingenuity; just as we find in many religions, where miracles--the more absurd, the more acceptable--are resorted to to explain the mystery of man's relation to God, a secret which no natural light can illuminate.

But all these suppositions were destined to undergo refractions through the medium of a new fact. The case, by technical processes, came before the Court of Session, where the diversity of opinion was, proportionably to the number of judges, as great as among the quidnuncs outside. The only clear idea in the heads of the robed and wigged wiseacres was, that the case, Napier _versus_ Napier, was a puzzle which no man could read or solve. It seemed fated to be as famous as the old Sphinx, the insoluble Moenander, or the tortuous labyrinth, or the intricate key of Hercules--_ne Apollo quidem intelligat_; and if it had not happened that Lord Kames suggested the possibility of getting an additional piece of evidence through the examination of the coffin wherein Mrs. Napier was buried, the court might have been sitting over the famous case even in this year of the nineteenth century. The notion was worthy of his lordship's ingenuity; and accordingly a commission was issued to one of the Faculty to proceed to the West Church burying-ground, and there cause to be laid open and examined the coffin of the said Mrs. Henrietta Preston or Napier, with the view to ascertain whether or not the body of a child had been placed therein along with the corpse of the mother.

This commission was accordingly executed, and the report bore, that "he, the commissioner, had proceeded to the burying-ground of the parish of St. Cuthberts, and there caused David Scott, the sexton, to lay open the grave of the said Henrietta Preston or Napier, and to open the coffin therein contained; which having accordingly been done by the said David Scott and his assistants, the commissioner, upon a faithful examination, aided by the experience of the said David Scott, did find the skeletons of two bodies in the said coffin identified as that of the said lady, one whereof was that of a woman apparently of middle age, and the other that of a babe, which lay upon the chest of the larger skeleton in such a way or manner as to be retained or held in that position by the arms of the same being laid across it; that having satisfied himself of these facts, the commissioner caused the coffin to be again closed and the grave covered with all decency and care. And he accordingly made this report to their lordships."

The fact thus ascertained, in opposition to the expectation of those who favoured the orphan, was viewed by the court as depriving, to a great extent, the case of that aspect of a riddle by which it had been so unfortunately distinguished; and as the case had been hung up even beyond the time generally occupied by cases at that period, when, as it was sometimes remarked, law-suits were as often settled by the old rule, _Romanus sedendo vincit_--by the death of one or other of the parties--as by a judgment, the case was again put to the Roll for a hearing on the effect of the new evidence. It was contended for the nephew by Mr. Wight, that the question was now virtually settled, insomuch that the court was not bound to solve riddles, but to find to whom pertained a certain right of inheritance. The birth of the child had been sworn to by the nurse, as well as its death, and the final placing of it in the coffin; and now the court had, as it were, ocular demonstration of these facts by the body having been seen by their own commissioner, placed on the breast of the mother in that very peculiar way described by Mrs. Temple. All claim on the part of the girl was thus virtually excluded, for the proceedings which took place that evening in another room, under circumstances of suspicion, were sworn to only by Mrs. Hislop herself, an interested witness, and were only partially confirmed by an eavesdropper, who, as eavesdroppers generally do (except when their own characters are concerned), perhaps heard according as foregone prejudices induced her to wish. These suspicious proceedings might be explained by as many hypotheses as had been devised by the wise judges of the taverns, among which was the theory of the living child being Cowie's own by Isabel Napier, and palmed off as Mrs. Napier's to hide the shame of the true mother,--all unlikely enough, no doubt, but not so impossible as that the coffined child should now be alive and awaiting the issue of this case, in the expectation of being Lady of Eastleys.

On the other side, Mr. Andrews, counsel for Henrietta, maintained that while his learned brother assumed the one half of the case as proved, and repudiated the other as a lie or a myth, he had a right to embrace the other half, and pronounce the first a stratagem or trick. The proceedings in the back-room into which Jean Graham introduced Mrs. Hislop were more completely substantiated than those in the bedroom where Mrs. Napier lay; for while the one were sworn to by Mrs. Hislop herself, a soothfast witness, and confirmed in all points by the woman Graham, the other were attempted to be proven by the solitary testimony of the nurse Temple. The paper containing the curse was as indisputably in the handwriting of Mr. Napier as was the funeral letter. The money paid was proved by the fact that the orphan had been kept and educated for fifteen years. The name Henrietta was not likely to have been a mere coincidence, and it was still more unlikely that a respectable woman such as Mrs. Hislop would invent a story of affiliation so strangely in harmony with the secrets of the house in Meggat's Land, and fortify it by a forged document. Then Mrs. Hislop was unable to write, and no attempt had been made on the other side to prove that Henrietta had a father other than he who was pointed out by the paper of the curse. So he (the counsel) might follow the example of his brother, and hold the other half of the case to be unexplainable by hypotheses, however ridiculous. The child having been disposed of to Mrs. Hislop,--a fact thus proved,--what was to prevent him (the counsel) from going also to the haunts of the _tabernian_ Solons, or anywhere else in the regions of fancy, for the theory that Mr. Napier, or some plotter for him in the shape of Mrs. Kemp or John Cowie, substituted the dead child of a stranger for the living one of his wife, and bribed the nurse Temple to tell the tale she had told? to which she would be the more ready by the golden promptings of the woman Isabel Napier, the niece, whose brother would, in the event of the stratagem being concealed, succeed to the estate of Eastleys.