Every
night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at
Debenham - the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes
there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we
four would be each planted in his own particular arm-chair. Fettes was an old
drunken Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property,
since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still
young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman.
His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire.
His place
in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous,
disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague
Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again
set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum -
five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his
nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state
of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was
supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known, upon a
pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a dislocation; but beyond these slight
particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.
One dark winter night - it had struck nine
some time before the landlord joined us - there was a sick man in the George, a
great neighbouring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to
Parliament; and the great man's still greater London doctor had been
telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had
happened in Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and we were all
proportionately moved by the occurrence.
'He's come,' said the landlord, after he
had filled and lighted his pipe.
'He?' said I. 'Who? - not the doctor?'
'Himself,' replied our host.
2
'What is his name?'
'Doctor Macfarlane,' said the landlord.
Fettes was far through his third tumbler,
stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily around him; but at the
last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name 'Macfarlane' twice,
quietly enough the first time, but with sudden emotion at the second.
'Yes,' said the landlord, 'that's his
name, Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane.'
Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes
awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language forcible and
earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from
the dead.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I am afraid
I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this Wolfe
Macfarlane?' And then, when he had heard the landlord out, 'It cannot be, it
cannot be,' he added; 'and yet I would like well to see him face to face.'
'Do you know him, Doctor?' asked the
undertaker, with a gasp.
'God forbid!' was the reply. 'And yet the
name is a strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me, landlord, is he
old?'
'Well,' said the host, 'he's not a young
man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than you.'
'He
is older, though; years older. But,' with a slap upon the table, 'it's the rum
you see in my face - rum and sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy
conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You would think I
was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never
canted. Voltaire might have canted if he'd stood in my shoes; but the brains' -
with a rattling fillip on his bald head - 'the brains were clear and active,
and I saw and made no deductions.'
3
'If you know this doctor,' I ventured to
remark, after a somewhat awful pause, 'I should gather that you do not share
the landlord's good opinion.'
Fettes paid no regard to me.
'Yes,' he said, with sudden decision, 'I
must see him face to face.'
There was another pause, and then a door
was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard upon the
stair.
'That's the doctor,' cried the landlord.
'Look sharp, and you can catch him.'
It was but two steps from the small
parlour to the door of the old George Inn; the wide oak staircase landed almost
in the street; there was room for a Turkey rug and nothing more between the
threshold and the last round of the descent; but this little space was every
evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the stair and the great
signal-lamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the bar-room window.
The George thus brightly advertised itself to passers-by in the cold street.
Fettes walked steadily to the spot, and we, who were hanging behind, beheld the
two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to face.
Dr. Macfarlane was
alert and vigorous. His white hair set off his pale and placid, although
energetic, countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and
the whitest of linen, with a great gold watch-chain, and studs and spectacles
of the same precious material. He wore a broad- folded tie, white and speckled
with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable driving-coat of fur. There
was no doubt but he became his years, breathing, as he did, of wealth and
consideration; and it was a surprising contrast to see our parlour sot - bald,
dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak - confront him at the bottom
of the stairs.
'Macfarlane!' he said somewhat loudly,
more like a herald than a friend.
4
The great doctor pulled up short on the
fourth step, as though the familiarity of the address surprised and somewhat
shocked his dignity.
'Toddy Macfarlane!' repeated Fettes.
The London man almost staggered. He stared
for the swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced behind him with a
sort of scare, and then in a startled whisper, 'Fettes!' he said, 'You!'
'Ay,' said the other, 'me! Did you think I
was dead too? We are not so easy shut of our acquaintance.'
'Hush, hush!' exclaimed the doctor. 'Hush,
hush! this meeting is so unexpected - I can see you are unmanned. I hardly knew
you, I confess, at first; but I am overjoyed - overjoyed to have this
opportunity. For the present it must be how-d'ye-do and good-bye in one, for my
fly is waiting, and I must not fail the train; but you shall - let me see - yes
- you shall give me your address, and you can count on early news of me. We
must do something for you, Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we must
see to that for auld lang syne, as once we sang at suppers.'
'Money!' cried Fettes; 'money from you!
The money that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the rain.'
Dr. Macfarlane had talked himself into
some measure of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon energy of this
refusal cast him back into his first confusion.
A horrible, ugly look came and went across
his almost venerable countenance. 'My dear fellow,' he said, 'be it as you
please; my last thought is to offend you. I would intrude on none. I will leave
you my address, however - '
'I do not wish it - I do not wish to know
the roof that shelters you,' interrupted the other. 'I heard your name; I
feared it might be you; I wished to know if, after all, there were a God; I
know now that there is none. Begone!'
< 5
He still stood in the middle of the rug,
between the stair and doorway; and the great London physician, in order to
escape, would be forced to step to one side. It was plain that he hesitated
before the thought of this humiliation. White as he was, there was a dangerous
glitter in his spectacles; but while he still paused uncertain, he became aware
that the driver of his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual scene
and caught a glimpse at the same time of our little body from the parlour,
huddled by the corner of the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decided him
at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing on the wainscot, and made a
dart like a serpent, striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet
entirely at an end, for even as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm
and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct, 'Have you seen
it again?'
The great rich London doctor cried out
aloud with a sharp, throttling cry; he dashed his questioner across the open
space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out of the door like a detected thief.
Before it had occurred to one of us to make a movement the fly was already
rattling toward the station. The scene was over like a dream, but the dream had
left proofs and traces of its passage. Next day the servant found the fine gold
spectacles broken on the threshold, and that very night we were all standing
breathless by the bar- room window, and Fettes at our side, sober, pale, and
resolute in look.
'God protect us, Mr. Fettes!' said the
landlord, coming first into possession of his customary senses. 'What in the
universe is all this? These are strange things you have been saying.'
Fettes turned toward us; he looked us each
in succession in the face. 'See if you can hold your tongues,' said he. 'That
man Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that have done so already have
repented it too late.'
6
And then, without so much as finishing his
third glass, far less waiting for the other two, he bade us good-bye and went
forth, under the lamp of the hotel, into the black night.
We three turned to our places in the
parlour, with the big red fire and four clear candles; and as we recapitulated
what had passed, the first chill of our surprise soon changed into a glow of
curiosity. We sat late; it was the latest session I have known in the old
George. Each man, before we parted, had his theory that he was bound to prove;
and none of us had any nearer business in this world than to track out the past
of our condemned companion, and surprise the secret that he shared with the great
London doctor. It is no great boast, but I believe I was a better hand at
worming out a story than either of my fellows at the George; and perhaps there
is now no other man alive who could narrate to you the following foul and
unnatural events.
In
his young days Fettes studied medicine in the schools of Edinburgh. He had
talent of a kind, the talent that picks up swiftly what it hears and readily
retails it for its own. He worked little at home; but he was civil, attentive,
and intelligent in the presence of his masters. They soon picked him out as a
lad who listened closely and remembered well; nay, strange as it seemed to me
when I first heard it, he was in those days well favoured, and pleased by his
exterior. There was, at that period, a certain extramural teacher of anatomy,
whom I shall here designate by the letter K. His name was subsequently too well
known.
The man who bore it skulked through the streets of Edinburgh in
disguise, while the mob that applauded at the execution of Burke called loudly
for the blood of his employer. But Mr. K- was then at the top of his vogue; he
enjoyed a popularity due partly to his own talent and address, partly to the
incapacity of his rival, the university professor. The students, at least,
swore by his name, and Fettes believed himself, and was believed by others, to
have laid the foundations of success when he had acquired the favour of this
meteorically famous man. Mr. K- was a BON VIVANT as well as an accomplished
teacher; he liked a sly illusion no less than a careful preparation. In both
capacities Fettes enjoyed and deserved his notice, and by the second year of
his attendance he held the half-regular position of second demonstrator or
sub-assistant in his class.
7
In this capacity the charge of the theatre
and lecture-room devolved in particular upon his shoulders. He had to answer
for the cleanliness of the premises and the conduct of the other students, and
it was a part of his duty to supply, receive, and divide the various subjects.
It was with a view to this last - at that time very delicate - affair that he
was lodged by Mr. K- in the same wynd, and at last in the same building, with
the dissecting-rooms. Here, after a night of turbulent pleasures, his hand
still tottering, his sight still misty and confused, he would be called out of
bed in the black hours before the winter dawn by the unclean and desperate
interlopers who supplied the table. He would open the door to these men, since
infamous throughout the land. He would help them with their tragic burden, pay
them their sordid price, and remain alone, when they were gone, with the
unfriendly relics of humanity. From such a scene he would return to snatch
another hour or two of slumber, to repair the abuses of the night, and refresh
himself for the labours of the day.
Few lads could have been more insensible
to the impressions of a life thus passed among the ensigns of mortality. His
mind was closed against all general considerations. He was incapable of
interest in the fate and fortunes of another, the slave of his own desires and
low ambitions. Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum
of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient
drunkenness or punishable theft. He coveted, besides, a measure of
consideration from his masters and his fellow-pupils, and he had no desire to
fail conspicuously in the external parts of life. Thus he made it his pleasure
to gain some distinction in his studies, and day after day rendered
unimpeachable eye-service to his employer, Mr. K-. For his day of work he
indemnified himself by nights of roaring, blackguardly enjoyment; and when that
balance had been struck, the organ that he called his conscience declared
itself content.
The supply of subjects was a continual
trouble to him as well as to his master. In that large and busy class, the raw
material of the anatomists kept perpetually running out; and the business thus
rendered necessary was not only unpleasant in itself, but threatened dangerous
consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy of Mr. K- to ask no
questions in his dealings with the trade. 'They bring the body, and we pay the
price,' he used to say, dwelling on the alliteration - 'QUID PRO QUO.' And,
again, and somewhat profanely, 'Ask no questions,' he would tell his
assistants, 'for conscience' sake.'
There was no understanding that the
subjects were provided by the crime of murder. Had that idea been broached to
him in words, he would have recoiled in horror; but the lightness of his speech
upon so grave a matter was, in itself, an offence against good manners, and a
temptation to the men with whom he dealt. Fettes, for instance, had often
remarked to himself upon the singular freshness of the bodies. He had been
struck again and again by the hang-dog, abominable looks of the ruffians who
came to him before the dawn; and putting things together clearly in his private
thoughts, he perhaps attributed a meaning too immoral and too categorical to the
unguarded counsels of his master. He understood his duty, in short, to have
three branches: to take what was brought, to pay the price, and to avert the
eye from any evidence of crime.
8
One November morning this policy of
silence was put sharply to the test. He had been awake all night with a racking
toothache - pacing his room like a caged beast or throwing himself in fury on
his bed - and had fallen at last into that profound, uneasy slumber that so
often follows on a night of pain, when he was awakened by the third or fourth
angry repetition of the concerted signal. There was a thin, bright moonshine;
it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an
indefinable stir already preluded the noise and business of the day.
The ghouls
had come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be gone.
Fettes, sick with sleep, lighted them upstairs. He heard their grumbling Irish
voices through a dream; and as they stripped the sack from their sad merchandise
he leaned dozing, with his shoulder propped against the wall; he had to shake
himself to find the men their money. As he did so his eyes lighted on the dead
face. He started; he took two steps nearer, with the candle raised.
'God Almighty!' he cried. 'That is Jane
Galbraith!'
The men answered nothing, but they
shuffled nearer the door.
'I know her, I tell you,' he continued.
'She was alive and hearty yesterday. It's impossible she can be dead; it's
impossible you should have got this body fairly.'
'Sure, sir, you're mistaken entirely,'
said one of the men.
But the other looked Fettes darkly in the
eyes, and demanded the money on the spot.
It was impossible to misconceive the
threat or to exaggerate the danger. The lad's heart failed him. He stammered
some excuses, counted out the sum, and saw his hateful visitors depart. No
sooner were they gone than he hastened to confirm his doubts. By a dozen
unquestionable marks he identified the girl he had jested with the day before.
He saw, with horror, marks upon her body that might well betoken violence. A
panic seized him, and he took refuge in his room. There he reflected at length
over the discovery that he had made; considered soberly the bearing of Mr. K-'s
instructions and the danger to himself of interference in so serious a
business, and at last, in sore perplexity, determined to wait for the advice of
his immediate superior, the class assistant.
9
This was a young doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane,
a high favourite among all the reckless students, clever, dissipated, and
unscrupulous to the last degree. He had travelled and studied abroad. His
manners were agreeable and a little forward. He was an authority on the stage,
skilful on the ice or the links with skate or golf-club; he dressed with nice
audacity, and, to put the finishing touch upon his glory, he kept a gig and a
strong trotting-horse. With Fettes he was on terms of intimacy; indeed, their
relative positions called for some community of life; and when subjects were
scarce the pair would drive far into the country in Macfarlane's gig, visit and
desecrate some lonely graveyard, and return before dawn with their booty to the
door of the dissecting-room.
On that particular morning Macfarlane
arrived somewhat earlier than his wont. Fettes heard him, and met him on the
stairs, told him his story, and showed him the cause of his alarm. Macfarlane
examined the marks on her body.
'Yes,' he said with a nod, 'it looks
fishy.'
'Well, what should I do?' asked Fettes.
'Do?' repeated the other. 'Do you want to
do anything? Least said soonest mended, I should say.'
'Some one else might recognise her,'
objected Fettes. 'She was as well known as the Castle Rock.'
'We'll hope not,' said Macfarlane, 'and if
anybody does - well, you didn't, don't you see, and there's an end. The fact
is, this has been going on too long. Stir up the mud, and you'll get K- into
the most unholy trouble; you'll be in a shocking box yourself. So will I, if
you come to that. I should like to know how any one of us would look, or what
the devil we should have to say for ourselves, in any Christian witness-box.
For me, you know there's one thing certain - that, practically speaking, all our
subjects have been murdered.'
10
'Macfarlane!' cried Fettes.
'Come now!' sneered the other. 'As if you
hadn't suspected it yourself!'
'Suspecting is one thing - '
'And proof another. Yes, I know; and I'm
as sorry as you are this should have come here,' tapping the body with his
cane. 'The next best thing for me is not to recognise it; and,' he added
coolly, 'I don't. You may, if you please. I don't dictate, but I think a man of
the world would do as I do; and I may add, I fancy that is what K- would look
for at our hands. The question is, Why did he choose us two for his assistants?
And I answer, because he didn't want old wives.'
This was the tone of all others to affect
the mind of a lad like Fettes. He agreed to imitate Macfarlane. The body of the
unfortunate girl was duly dissected, and no one remarked or appeared to
recognise her.
One afternoon, when his day's work was
over, Fettes dropped into a popular tavern and found Macfarlane sitting with a
stranger. This was a small man, very pale and dark, with coal-black eyes. The
cut of his features gave a promise of intellect and refinement which was but
feebly realised in his manners, for he proved, upon a nearer acquaintance,
coarse, vulgar, and stupid. He exercised, however, a very remarkable control
over Macfarlane; issued orders like the Great Bashaw; became inflamed at the
least discussion or delay, and commented rudely on the servility with which he
was obeyed.
This most offensive person took a fancy to Fettes on the spot,
plied him with drinks, and honoured him with unusual confidences on his past
career. If a tenth part of what he confessed were true, he was a very loathsome
rogue; and the lad's vanity was tickled by the attention of so experienced a man.
'I'm a pretty bad fellow myself,' the
stranger remarked, 'but Macfarlane is the boy - Toddy Macfarlane I call him.
Toddy, order your friend another glass.' Or it might be, 'Toddy, you jump up
and shut the door.' 'Toddy hates me,' he said again. 'Oh yes, Toddy, you do!'
11
'Don't you call me that confounded name,'
growled Macfarlane.
'Hear him! Did you ever see the lads play
knife? He would like to do that all over my body,' remarked the stranger.
'We medicals have a better way than that,'
said Fettes. 'When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we dissect him.'
Macfarlane looked up sharply, as though
this jest were scarcely to his mind.
The afternoon passed. Gray, for that was
the stranger's name, invited Fettes to join them at dinner, ordered a feast so
sumptuous that the tavern was thrown into commotion, and when all was done
commanded Macfarlane to settle the bill. It was late before they separated; the
man Gray was incapably drunk. Macfarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the cud
of the money he had been forced to squander and the slights he had been obliged
to swallow.
Fettes, with various liquors singing in his head, returned home
with devious footsteps and a mind entirely in abeyance. Next day Macfarlane was
absent from the class, and Fettes smiled to himself as he imagined him still
squiring the intolerable Gray from tavern to tavern. As soon as the hour of
liberty had struck he posted from place to place in quest of his last night's
companions. He could find them, however, nowhere; so returned early to his
rooms, went early to bed, and slept the sleep of the just.
At four in the morning he was awakened by
the well-known signal. Descending to the door, he was filled with astonishment
to find Macfarlane with his gig, and in the gig one of those long and ghastly
packages with which he was so well acquainted.
'What?' he cried. 'Have you been out
alone? How did you manage?'
But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding
him turn to business. When they had got the body upstairs and laid it on the
table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away. Then he paused and
seemed to hesitate; and then, 'You had better look at the face,' said he, in
tones of some constraint. 'You had better,' he repeated, as Fettes only stared
at him in wonder.
12
'But where, and how, and when did you come
by it?' cried the other.
'Look at the face,' was the only answer.
Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed
him. He looked from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At last,
with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that
met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of
death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left
well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even
in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience.
It was a CRAS
TIBI which re-echoed in his soul, that two whom he had known should have come
to lie upon these icy tables. Yet these were only secondary thoughts. His first
concern regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge so momentous, he knew not
how to look his comrade in the face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had
neither words nor voice at his command.
It was Macfarlane himself who made the
first advance. He came up quietly behind and laid his hand gently but firmly on
the other's shoulder.
'Richardson,' said he, 'may have the
head.'
Now Richardson was a student who had long
been anxious for that portion of the human subject to dissect. There was no
answer, and the murderer resumed: 'Talking of business, you must pay me; your
accounts, you see, must tally.'
Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his
own: 'Pay you!' he cried. 'Pay you for that?'
'Why, yes, of course you must. By all
means and on every possible account, you must,' returned the other. 'I dare not
give it for nothing, you dare not take it for nothing; it would compromise us
both. This is another case like Jane Galbraith's. The more things are wrong the
more we must act as if all were right. Where does old K- keep his money?'
13
'There,' answered Fettes hoarsely,
pointing to a cupboard in the corner.
'Give me the key, then,' said the other,
calmly, holding out his hand.
There was an instant's hesitation, and the
die was cast. Macfarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch, the infinitesimal
mark of an immense relief, as he felt the key between his fingers. He opened
the cupboard, brought out pen and ink and a paper-book that stood in one
compartment, and separated from the funds in a drawer a sum suitable to the occasion.
'Now, look here,' he said, 'there is the
payment made - first proof of your good faith: first step to your security. You
have now to clinch it by a second. Enter the payment in your book, and then you
for your part may defy the devil.'
The
next few seconds were for Fettes an agony of thought; but in balancing his
terrors it was the most immediate that triumphed. Any future difficulty seemed
almost welcome if he could avoid a present quarrel with Macfarlane. He set down
the candle which he had been carrying all this time, and with a steady hand
entered the date, the nature, and the amount of the transaction.
'And now,' said Macfarlane, 'it's only
fair that you should pocket the lucre. I've had my share already. By the bye,
when a man of the world falls into a bit of luck, has a few shillings extra in
his pocket - I'm ashamed to speak of it, but there's a rule of conduct in the
case. No treating, no purchase of expensive class-books, no squaring of old
debts; borrow, don't lend.'
'Macfarlane,' began Fettes, still somewhat
hoarsely, 'I have put my neck in a halter to oblige you.'
'To oblige me?' cried Wolfe. 'Oh, come!
You did, as near as I can see the matter, what you downright had to do in self-
defence. Suppose I got into trouble, where would you be? This second little
matter flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of Miss
Galbraith. You can't begin and then stop. If you begin, you must keep on
beginning; that's the truth. No rest for the wicked.'
14
A horrible sense of blackness and the
treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.
'My God!' he cried, 'but what have I done?
and when did I begin? To be made a class assistant - in the name of reason,
where's the harm in that? Service wanted the position; Service might have got
it. Would HE have been where I am now?'
'My dear fellow,' said Macfarlane, 'what a
boy you are! What harm HAS come to you? What harm CAN come to you if you hold
your tongue? Why, man, do you know what this life is? There are two squads of
us - the lions and the lambs. If you're a lamb, you'll come to lie upon these
tables like Gray or Jane Galbraith; if you're a lion, you'll live and drive a
horse like me, like K-, like all the world with any wit or courage. You're
staggered at the first. But look at K-! My dear fellow, you're clever, you have
pluck. I like you, and K- likes you. You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell
you, on my honour and my experience of life, three days from now you'll laugh
at all these scarecrows like a High School boy at a farce.'
And with that Macfarlane took his
departure and drove off up the wynd in his gig to get under cover before
daylight. Fettes was thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the miserable
peril in which he stood involved. He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that there
was no limit to his weakness, and that, from concession to concession, he had
fallen from the arbiter of Macfarlane's destiny to his paid and helpless
accomplice. He would have given the world to have been a little braver at the
time, but it did not occur to him that he might still be brave. The secret of
Jane Galbraith and the cursed entry in the day-book closed his mouth.
Hours passed; the class began to arrive;
the members of the unhappy Gray were dealt out to one and to another, and
received without remark. Richardson was made happy with the head; and before
the hour of freedom rang Fettes trembled with exultation to perceive how far
they had already gone toward safety.
15
For two days he continued to watch, with
increasing joy, the dreadful process of disguise.
On the third day Macfarlane made his
appearance. He had been ill, he said; but he made up for lost time by the
energy with which he directed the students. To Richardson in particular he
extended the most valuable assistance and advice, and that student, encouraged
by the praise of the demonstrator, burned high with ambitious hopes, and saw
the medal already in his grasp.
Before the week was out Macfarlane's
prophecy had been fulfilled. Fettes had outlived his terrors and had forgotten
his baseness. He began to plume himself upon his courage, and had so arranged
the story in his mind that he could look back on these events with an unhealthy
pride. Of his accomplice he saw but little. They met, of course, in the
business of the class; they received their orders together from Mr. K-. At
times they had a word or two in private, and Macfarlane was from first to last
particularly kind and jovial. But it was plain that he avoided any reference to
their common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to him that he had cast in
his lot with the lions and foresworn the lambs, he only signed to him smilingly
to hold his peace.
At length an occasion arose which threw
the pair once more into a closer union. Mr. K- was again short of subjects;
pupils were eager, and it was a part of this teacher's pretensions to be always
well supplied. At the same time there came the news of a burial in the rustic
graveyard of Glencorse. Time has little changed the place in question. It stood
then, as now, upon a cross road, out of call of human habitations, and buried
fathom deep in the foliage of six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the
neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand, one loudly singing among
pebbles, the other dripping furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind
in mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven days the voice of the
bell and the old tunes of the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed
the silence around the rural church.
The Resurrection Man - to use a byname of
the period - was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary
piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and
trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners,
and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection. To rustic
neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some
bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the
body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the
ease and safety of the task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful
expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit,
terror-haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced,
the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being
rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost
indignities before a class of gaping boys.
16
Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a
dying lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that
green and quiet resting-place. The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for
sixty years, and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly
conversation, was to be rooted from her grave at midnight and carried, dead and
naked, to that far-away city that she had always honoured with her Sunday's
best; the place beside her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her
innocent and almost venerable members to be exposed to that last curiosity of
the anatomist.
Late one afternoon the pair set forth,
well wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle. It rained
without remission - a cold, dense, lashing rain. Now and again there blew a
puff of wind, but these sheets of falling water kept it down. Bottle and all,
it was a sad and silent drive as far as Penicuik, where they were to spend the
evening. They stopped once, to hide their implements in a thick bush not far
from the churchyard, and once again at the Fisher's Tryst, to have a toast
before the kitchen fire and vary their nips of whisky with a glass of ale.
When
they reached their journey's end the gig was housed, the horse was fed and
comforted, and the two young doctors in a private room sat down to the best
dinner and the best wine the house afforded. The lights, the fire, the beating
rain upon the window, the cold, incongruous work that lay before them, added
zest to their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their cordiality
increased. Soon Macfarlane handed a little pile of gold to his companion.
'A compliment,' he said. 'Between friends
these little d-d accommodations ought to fly like pipe-lights.'
Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded
the sentiment to the echo. 'You are a philosopher,' he cried. 'I was an ass
till I knew you. You and K- between you, by the Lord Harry! but you'll make a
man of me.'
17
'Of course we shall,' applauded
Macfarlane. 'A man? I tell you, it required a man to back me up the other
morning. There are some big, brawling, forty-year-old cowards who would have
turned sick at the look of the d-d thing; but not you - you kept your head. I
watched you.'
'Well, and why not?' Fettes thus vaunted
himself. 'It was no affair of mine. There was nothing to gain on the one side
but disturbance, and on the other I could count on your gratitude, don't you
see?' And he slapped his pocket till the gold pieces rang.
Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch of
alarm at these unpleasant words. He may have regretted that he had taught his
young companion so successfully, but he had no time to interfere, for the other
noisily continued in this boastful strain:-
'The great thing is not to be afraid. Now,
between you and me, I don't want to hang - that's practical; but for all cant,
Macfarlane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin,
crime, and all the old gallery of curiosities - they may frighten boys, but men
of the world, like you and me, despise them. Here's to the memory of Gray!'
It
was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig, according to order, was
brought round to the door with both lamps brightly shining, and the young men
had to pay their bill and take the road. They announced that they were bound
for Peebles, and drove in that direction till they were clear of the last
houses of the town; then, extinguishing the lamps, returned upon their course,
and followed a by-road toward Glencorse.
There was no sound but that of their
own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It was pitch
dark; here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for
a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace,
and almost groping, that they picked their way through that resonant blackness
to their solemn and isolated destination. In the sunken woods that traverse the
neighbourhood of the burying- ground the last glimmer failed them, and it
became necessary to kindle a match and re-illumine one of the lanterns of the
gig. Thus, under the dripping trees, and environed by huge and moving shadows,
they reached the scene of their unhallowed labours.
18
They were both experienced in such
affairs, and powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been twenty minutes
at their task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid. At
the same moment Macfarlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, flung it
carelessly above his head. The grave, in which they now stood almost to the
shoulders, was close to the edge of the plateau of the graveyard; and the gig
lamp had been propped, the better to illuminate their labours, against a tree,
and on the immediate verge of the steep bank descending to the stream. Chance
had taken a sure aim with the stone. Then came a clang of broken glass; night
fell upon them; sounds alternately dull and ringing announced the bounding of
the lantern down the bank, and its occasional collision with the trees. A stone
or two, which it had dislodged in its descent, rattled behind it into the
profundities of the glen; and then silence, like night, resumed its sway; and
they might bend their hearing to its utmost pitch, but naught was to be heard
except the rain, now marching to the wind, now steadily falling over miles of
open country.
They were so nearly at an end of their
abhorred task that they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark. The coffin
was exhumed and broken open; the body inserted in the dripping sack and carried
between them to the gig; one mounted to keep it in its place, and the other,
taking the horse by the mouth, groped along by wall and bush until they reached
the wider road by the Fisher's Tryst. Here was a faint, diffused radiancy,
which they hailed like daylight; by that they pushed the horse to a good pace
and began to rattle along merrily in the direction of the town.
They had both been wetted to the skin
during their operations, and now, as the gig jumped among the deep ruts, the
thing that stood propped between them fell now upon one and now upon the other.
At every repetition of the horrid contact each instinctively repelled it with
the greater haste; and the process, natural although it was, began to tell upon
the nerves of the companions. Macfarlane made some ill-favoured jest about the
farmer's wife, but it came hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in
silence.
Still their unnatural burden bumped from side to side; and now the
head would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their shoulders, and now the
drenching sack-cloth would flap icily about their faces. A creeping chill began
to possess the soul of Fettes. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed somehow
larger than at first. All over the country-side, and from every degree of
distance, the farm dogs accompanied their passage with tragic ululations; and
it grew and grew upon his mind that some unnatural miracle had been
accomplished, that some nameless change had befallen the dead body, and that it
was in fear of their unholy burden that the dogs were howling.
19
'For God's sake,' said he, making a great
effort to arrive at speech, 'for God's sake, let's have a light!'
Seemingly Macfarlane was affected in the
same direction; for, though he made no reply, he stopped the horse, passed the
reins to his companion, got down, and proceeded to kindle the remaining lamp.
They had by that time got no farther than the cross-road down to Auchenclinny.
The rain still poured as though the deluge were returning, and it was no easy
matter to make a light in such a world of wet and darkness.
When at last the
flickering blue flame had been transferred to the wick and began to expand and
clarify, and shed a wide circle of misty brightness round the gig, it became
possible for the two young men to see each other and the thing they had along
with them. The rain had moulded the rough sacking to the outlines of the body
underneath; the head was distinct from the trunk, the shoulders plainly
modelled; something at once spectral and human riveted their eyes upon the
ghastly comrade of their drive.
For some time Macfarlane stood motionless,
holding up the lamp. A nameless dread was swathed, like a wet sheet, about the
body, and tightened the white skin upon the face of Fettes; a fear that was
meaningless, a horror of what could not be, kept mounting to his brain. Another
beat of the watch, and he had spoken. But his comrade forestalled him.
'That is not a woman,' said Macfarlane, in
a hushed voice.
'It was a woman when we put her in,'
whispered Fettes.
'Hold that lamp,' said the other. 'I must
see her face.'
And as Fettes took the lamp his companion
untied the fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from the head. The
light fell very clear upon the dark, well-moulded features and smooth-shaven
cheeks of a too familiar countenance, often beheld in dreams of both of these
young men. A wild yell rang up into the night; each leaped from his own side
into the roadway: the lamp fell, broke, and was extinguished; and the horse,
terrified by this unusual commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a
gallop, bearing along with it, sole occupant of the gig, the body of the dead
and long-dissected Gray.
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