Part 8

"Umph! dinna understand that; but I'm ready when you like."

"That's right," replied the gratified "Spune." "Have Cameron's donkey and cart at the south end of Newington by ten o'clock. It's moonlight, I think."

"Dinna ken, but it's a' ane. I'll be there; but, mind, you stand the whisky this time."

And so (having indulged, perhaps, in our own way of putting this conversation--the contenu being the same) the important enterprise was arranged with that zest on the part of the grave and precise principal which results from secrecy; for it was impossible to suppose that Merrylees could suspect that even they were capable of preying on their fellow-labourer, and robbing the nest of any affections that might hang about it.

At the appointed time the "Moudiewart" was at his post with the little cuddy and the cart, where he was soon joined by his friend. Away they went,--Mowat driving, and the "Spune" lying extended in the vehicle, in utter disregard of the poor animal, not much larger than himself. With such an object before them, comprehending within the success of its acquisition the gratification of two of the strongest passions of degraded man, and no sensibility to admit of the feeling of a reaction in the quietness of the road and the increasing stillness of the hour, with, in addition, an auspicious moon, in whose face they could look only as a light-giving thing that makes gnomes out of head-stones, they might have been supposed to be merry. But no, there were no salient points in their natures from which could spring even that mirth which rides on the back of horrors. Mutely they drove along, with no sounds to break the silence, save the patter of the donkey's feet and the turns of the wheels. Very different this silent progress from those expeditions in which Merrylees formed a part, and where, if there was necessarily absent everything like the rational discourse of human beings, there was yet something to relieve the monotony in the shout after draining off a glass, the muscular contortions, and the bizarres étourderies of their strange friend. It was the caravan without the fool, and even he, as a son of Momus and Angerona, or some such mongrels, was a droll against his will. Sad fate to him who, even in his efforts not to be the cause of mirth in others, could himself become the butt of those whom, not more stupid, he could, in his self-protection, afford to despise. But Merrylees had at length fallen among his enemies, and must abide the issue of a terrible revenge.

By about the hour of half-past twelve they had reached a part of the road where, by the convenience of a slap, they could leave their equipage, with the donkey's neck fixed to a post, and his head within reach of some tempting provender. All this arranged to their satisfaction, they searched about for stray loungers, none of whom could be espied,--so straight they went to their destined work. As familiar with the burying-ground as they were with their own squalid dwellings, they were soon among the green hillocks, few of which, as they saw by the light of the moon, which came upon them in fitful gleams, making all these sombre things more like the productions of feerie than of honest nature, held out any temptations to these lovers of new sod. But at length the "Spune" stopped at an elevation more recent than any around it.

"This is the grave of Merrylees' father anyhow," said the superior.

"Then out with him," said the stolid Mowat.

"Still the idiot," said the other. "Did I not tell you last night he's gone into powder ten years ago, and that it's the sister we're after?"

"Then out wi' her," was the sulky reply.

Nor did the "Spune" need the stimulus of the stolid. He began straight the work,--difficult and arduous to all but such adepts,--puffing, and drawing wind to puff again.

"Hush!" said Mowat. "I heard a noise."

And the "Spune," who after all was a great coward, stood motionless to listen, but all was so still, even as the dead that lay around, that even the breathing of the men sounded like strong whispers. Then away wrought the reassured again, and anon the screwing, the jerking, the pulling, till at last came the final pull, shewing, in the passing beam, the long white shroud, with what it enveloped, extended on the green turf. At that moment the whole area rang with a shout, something between a roar and a yelp, and looking round they saw, behind a low head-stone, a tall figure in white (of course), with its long arms tossed up as with a sudden fling. The apparition was appalling even to men who had no more faith in ghosts than they had in souls; and just as another toss announced the coming shout, they took to flight, staggering as they flew over the numerous inequalities, but making more speed under the spur of terror than ever they had done under that of mammon. They were gone.

And now the apparition, after making some more strange movements, proceeded to take off a white sheet, which he deliberately stuck into the bottom of a coarse bag. Two or three giant steps brought him to the spoiled place of rest.

"And you're there, Sarah Merrylees?" he said, in a voice sufficiently hollow for the part he had so recently assumed. "The 'Spune' is without its porridge this time; and shall not man live on the fruit of the earth?"

And one might have fancied there was a chuckle, as if the creature had been satisfied with its own fun. But now came the part of this tragedy which will for certain be scouted as the work of fiction, but which as certainly made a part of the story. Merrylees,--for it was he, who, having met David Cameron of the West Port on the previous night, had learned the intention of his friends to visit Penicuik, and thereby came to the conclusion that his presence there would be useful,--then took out a rope, and, having gone through a process at which he was very expert, he was soon standing by the side of the wall under his burden of Sarah Merrylees. Nor was it long till he reached the high road, where, keeping by the dark side of the hedge, he intended to proceed to a convenient spot where he might leave his load till he could contrive to bring a conveyance. He had not proceeded far when he heard the roll of the cart, and saw his two friends alongside of it. There was no time to throw away over the head of such an opportunity. So, depositing his burden at the foot of the hedge, close by his side, he ran forward as far as was safe, crying out, "Stop the robbers!"--Nestor Graecos objurgavit; whereupon the terrified "Spune," with the white apparition still in his mind's eye, fled with renewed precipitation, closely followed by Mowat, and leaving David Cameron's cart with the donkey to whatever fate might overtake it. The coast being thus once more clear, and being well satisfied that his friends were too cowardly to return, he ran forward and stopped the donkey; then returning for his burden, he carried it to the cart, wherein he deposited it. A long sauntering journey brought him to town, where, after going through many manoeuvres, he at last contrived to lodge his capture in the hall of the Square.

This terrible story--which, we may add, was a favourite among the students--was told by Merrylees, so far as pertained to him, as altogether applicable to another body, whereby he afforded proof that there is no hardness of heart to which man can attain that is utterly exclusive of a spot where some permeating feeling still supplies the issues of shame. About his part of it the "Spune" had small compunction; but, to confess the truth, it was not till we knew what occurred afterwards that we could bring ourselves to believe that it was possible for it to be true.

To those who know human nature, in the only proper way in which it can be known, it is scarcely necessary to say that we are always under the influence of that error which induces us to estimate the feelings of others by our own. But there is something about these judgments of others even more fallacious, in so far as it almost amounts to an impossibility that we can, through a feeling present, fancy the total absence of it in others. Unable to attain to a negative except in relation to the positive, through which it is thought to be seen, we must either project in some way the matter of our thoughts and feeling into the supposed non-existent, or not think at all. If we could suppose a total death of the affections in a brother as easily as the overwhelming domination of money, we would not deny credit to this most wonderful story; but there lies the difficulty, and you must get out of it the best way you can. Even if you don't succumb in despair, you are far still from the Court of Cacus, so soon to be opened to you by a pen, even as hell was opened to Virgil by the golden ramus.

Resumption of the Great Drama.

The man whom, in our first chapter, we described as a neophyte, left the students with his bashfulness, if we can so call it, supplied by confidence. The power which we have already seen making such havoc among feelings and affections deemed all but ineradicable, had produced the first thrill in a heart long since dead to the pulses of pity. We may say so much, that his life, prior to this day--when there opened to him a vista through which he could see, amidst moving furies, the illuminated figure of mammon, with the means of getting money without hard labour--had been little else all through than a wrestle with poverty, often degenerating into squalid misery; and we may thus estimate the state of his mind, under the new-born hope of what, to such a man, might have the appearance of a small fortune.

But even with the view which the information given him by the students opened up of a new means of making money, we are not entitled to suppose that, as he that night directed his steps to the Cowgate with the intention of reaching the lodgings which he occupied in the West Port, he had any prevision of the extent to which this new pursuit would lead him. His expectations could only, as yet, be limited to the acquisition in some way of those objects required in the halls of the Square, and the value of which had previously come to his ears through the medium of that under-current of whispers to which the exploits of Merrylees, and the others then in the full progress of their career, had given impulse and meaning. Sure it was, at any rate, that he was utterly unconscious that he was permitted to be an agent, selected after due care by the devil, to push and force those passions by which a Christian country, with a name renowned throughout the world for virtue, had been scourged and scathed to a climax. Far less could he foresee the means--to our obscure vision of the ways of Providence--so out of proportion to the evils (already set forth by us) which they remedied, if not put an end to. So it has been said. But by what right do we make out that want of proportion? We know pretty nearly the amount of evil subsequently perpetrated by William Burke,--name of fear, and which even yet only passes in a whisper,--but we do not know (for all we have said is only an inkling,) and never will know, the amount of that other evil which his deeds were to be the means of bringing to an end. The cry had for years gone up to the great white throne of the outraged feelings of a Christian nation. There was only the exception of those who appealed to the pride of science, and man's natural love of life and a sound living body. Meanwhile, those in power, to whom Heaven had accorded the means of reconciliation, looked on with apathy, at least without interest,--an observation which may lead us to the thought that there was less of profanity than is generally supposed in the suggestion which some have ventured, and some have approved, that this man had a mission, yea, that the devil was permitted to tempt him to commit deeds which would rouse the country to seek a remedy sufficient to stop the violation of natural feelings, and at the same time provide for the claims of science.

So, with the sordid thoughts suited to his mission, he trudged along, looking about for some one he expected to see; and by and by there came from behind, and joined him, an individual, in the shape of a spare wretch, gruesome and goulish, of moderate height, with a cadaverous face, in which were set, in the most whimsical manner, two gray eyes, so far apart that it did not seem possible for him to look at you with both at the same time. There was in these oblique orbs, too, a leer which seemed to be the normal and unchangeable expression of a mind which not only disregarded the humanities and rights of his species, but mocked and laughed at them. Most creatures, even the wickedest, are at times surprised into moments of bonhommie. Nature seems to demand this as a kind of rest to the spirit, as if evil were a disturbance, which, to be sure, it generally is; but the malignity of this wonderful being was so thorough-going, smooth, and natural, that even what he might intend for a bastard kind of love or friendship was only a modification of his diabolism, so that his smile was merely a relaxation of his congenital enmity towards all that was good and beautiful in nature. This man was William Hare,--a name which, not less than that of William Burke, will ever be as an apparition to the retina of the ear of mankind.

The forgathering of these men was followed instantly, but secretly, as if they feared the chances of a whisper having a collateral fall, by the reciprocation of confidences, in which, as a matter of course, was included the success of the visitor to the Square, and over the face of the listener there came merely a stronger phase of the ordinary expression of the malign pleasure which less or more always played in those divergent eyes. But these conferences cannot be understood without a knowledge of what had taken place in the latter's house in Tanners' Close, to which they were loungingly directing their steps, and where the former lodged. And many others lodged there too, for it was one of those low caravanseries or lodging-houses which are as well the refuge of trampers, who would pass there a night, as of more permanent residenters, who, deprived of a home by vagabondism, earned a desultory livelihood as chance carriers or troggan-mongers, fish-hawkers, or peripatetic dealers in small wares. Sometimes a lodger a little above these classes would find his account in the cheap refuge, and three days before that night a tall man, a pensioner, who ordinarily went by the name of Donald, had died, a short time only before his pension became due. To that pension the master of the establishment had looked forward as the means of being reimbursed for several months' rent and advances, amounting to somewhere about £4. This loss rankled in the mind of Hare, for though Donald was not without some poor friends who would see him decently buried, they were without the means, as well perhaps the will, to pay a debt for the justice of which the bad character of the creditor could be no guarantee.

And here we have the best evidence, that even on that day when Donald died, and up to the morning of the funeral, and eight or ten hours previous to this forgathering in the Cowgate, no thought had crossed the mind of either of these men of taking the debt out of the body of the pensioner. Allowing for all discrepancies as to the time when the tongue of one of them gave expression to the dark purpose, it is clear that the communication would not, on the supposition of the thought having been slumbering in the mind, have been delayed till the morning of the funeral, nor even to the hour of bringing in the coffin. No doubt they had been both aware that such things had been done, and were being done, in Edinburgh at that time, and the temptation had crossed them, not without being accepted by their sordidness. The intention and the thought sprang up together, and, by all accounts, it was the mind of Hare that produced the birth; but the exclusiveness of the credit was just so much the less in proportion to the readiness by which it was on the instant adopted and cherished by his friend. You may here mark an analogy, which it might be of pregnant interest for all men, and women too, to ponder, as a little sermon, and not the less that this entire history is a big one:--The tiny seed will lie in the ground for years, and though the soil may be known to be congenial in the wealth of rottenness, it will not spring to the expectation of the gardener. It may be tossed over and over, and hither and thither for years, and appear above ground, shooting resolutely its stem, when not only not looked for, but against all expectation. So it is with the mind and its germs. The small shoot of an invention takes its start from an agreement of circumstances unknown to us, and grows and grows into branching horrors; nay, every branch, and leaflet, and poisonous calyx has its secondary origin in a germ as mysteriously stimulated as the one that lay so long perhaps in the earth. And what then? Why, just this--that our practical philosophy is ever vexing itself by tugging at the cords of Calvinism. Why and how did this thought arise in the mind of Hare? Because he was a wicked man. And why was he a wicked man? The old story of the scroll, whereon were marked in fire the names of the reprobates. But reject it, and say that he made himself a wicked man. Try that process upon yourself, if you happen to be a good one, or the opposite, if you happen to be bad, and see how you will succeed by such decree of your own.

The proposition was thus made that the body of the stalwart Donald should be sold to the doctors, and at once agreed to by the listener, only with the scruple that there was no time between the period of their conversation and the funeral to get all matters arranged--a sorry objection from such a man, and so accordingly made small account of by either. And so they straightway set about getting the bag of tanner's bark--a circumstance which shews us that the practices of Merry-Andrew and his brethren had reached their ears. Nor are we to have the smallest hesitation in assuming that Helen M'Dougal, with whom Burke lived in concubinage, and Hare's wife--the two females in the house--joined to form that quatern destined to the orgies of the Court of Cacus. The bag of bark was speedily procured, the body of Donald hauled out of the coffin and deposited on a bed, the bark was put in, the lid screwed down, and all made decent and fair for the bearers. When the vice has fructified into an act, how easy is the tribute paid to virtue! And so these men, according to the normal course, joined with long faces the train of the mourners, among whom--though some of them who loved the jolly old pensioner had tears in their eyes--they could hold up, or rather down, their faces as mournfully as the best.

The interlude of this play of the forenoon, and the melodrama of the night, consisted in the appearance of Burke in the hall in Surgeons' Square, and having forgathered in the Cowgate in the manner we have set forth, the two friends, bound together by prior confidences, of which no man ever knew the extent or nature, pursued their way to Tanners' Close, where they were welcomed by the women with the remainder of the whisky got for the funeral. The offering was to nerve them for the work in which they were merely apprentices; nor was the offering given and participated in less cheerfully by the women themselves, that they had both applied the soft hand of feminine attentions to the gallant pensioner,--even hung over his squalid couch tenderly, and wet his dry lips, and all the more, surely, that he had been a soldier, had seen and mixed in battles in his day, and therefore deserved something better than a bag for a winding sheet, and the knife of the anatomist coming after, at so long a distance, the bayonet of the enemy. Such gilt, which shews itself everywhere as society gets more civilised, is easily rubbed off; and with the knowledge of these tender nurses, the two men proceeded to their work, which, coarse as it was, was easily executed. The bag was filled and hoisted on the shoulders of Burke, who carried it in the dark as far as Bristo Port, where Hare, as a relay, took up the burden. So well known along the Grassmarket and Cowgate, where their figures might have excited attention, they took then the round-about way of College Street, and, getting to the Square, they felt some of that hesitation--shall we call it bashfulness?--which Burke had betrayed at his prior visit. They accordingly placed their load at the door of a cellar in the lower part of the buildings, and mounting to the room where one of them had been before, encountered the same three young assistants still engaged in their ardent work.

"Bring it up," was the reply of more than one, when they had heard the words of the merchants, as they hung fire in their mouths and tongues. Up soon it was, and drawn out and laid upon the table in the winding-sheet. Yes, a piece of delicacy that which was soon to be dispensed with as extravagant and unnecessary. And the covering partially drawn off, there is that rapid and curious, yet never perfectly composed, scanning of the eyes of even old students, but with no recoil on the part of the sellers, who had sat and drank with the old soldier, and heard his stories of Peninsular battles, and laughed at his jokes. Not the less racy these, that he thought his companions kind and jolly souls--how far away from the intention of selling his body for gold he never imagined, for the idea could not have entered the mind of Suspicion herself, if there be any such goddess in the mythology of poets. But all such reminiscences, if they threatened to force an entry into the minds of these men, were quickly sent back to the limbo of obliviousness by the obdurate mammon.

By and by, and after the exit of one of the students, there came in the monoculus himself, Knox, and the covering was altogether withdrawn. It seemed to him a fair mercantable commodity. That is, it was not too old for any of the valuable tissues,--in the midst of which lay the secrets these students were so anxious to reveal, not for the purpose of filling their pockets in after-times, but for the benefit of mankind,--to have been dissolved or injured. Seven pounds ten shillings is pronounced as the price of the body of the veteran. A shadow passed over the faces of the sellers; the sum did not come up to the hopes inspired by the reports which had oozed out of the earnings of the Merry-Andrews and the "Spunes." Yet the sum, to these wretched earners of pennies for vagrants' beds and cobbled shoes, was a coup of mammon sufficient to have made their hardened hearts clatter upon their ribs, and scare away the last trace of humanity inspired by the lips of a mother, kept otherwise, and up to this time, unscathed by the temptations of the devil. But they could not refuse the sum,--that is, they had not yet hardihood to chaffer; and, the money being paid, they were on the eve of departing, when they were told that they would be made welcome again, if they came with an equally good recommendation. And as they went, they did not forget the shirt.