Chapter VII: Part 7

"Oh, she is frightened, poor Sweet Marjory," cried Isobel, with a satirical laugh; "for she has seen the wraith bride on the bastle tower."

"The wraith bride!" responded Ogilvy, relapsing into silence, and instinctively looking round him, where only glared the torchlight among the trees of the lawn, and the dark bodies of the fagot-pilers were moving backwards and forwards. He had heard the couplet mentioned by the forester, and had of course viewed it as a play of superstition; but reason is a weak thing in the grasp of feeling, and now he was all feeling. The remorse of which he had had premonitions, had now taken him as a fit. His eye sought Marjory's down-turned face, and shrunk from Isobel's watchful stare; but the direction of that organ did not form an index to his mind, for his fancy was, even during these swift instants, busy weaving the many-coloured web of the future of his married life, and clouding it with sombre shades; nor did the active agent hesitate to draw materials from the past fortunes of the house of Bell's Tower, and mix them up as things yet to be repeated. Even the wraith bride performed her part now, where she had feeling to help her weakness, and set her up among realities.

At this critical juncture of Ogilvy's thoughts, there came up from the mansion good Dame Bower herself, of portly corporation, often resonant of a comfortable laugh; and now, when flushed with the exercise of her domestic superintendence, looking the very picture of the joyous mother of a happy bride.

"I had forgotten," she said as she approached, "to ask you to convey my thanks to Dame Ogilvy for that beautiful locket with her hair therein--more precious, I ween, than the diamonds and opals, though these, I'm told, are worth five thousand good merks--which she has so thoughtfully sent to Isobel."

"Isobel!" ejaculated Ogilvy, fixing his eye on the face of his bride, where there were no blushes to reveal the consciousness of deceit. "To Isobel!" he repeated; "and did Isobel say this?"

"Yes," replied the mother.

"It is false," cried the damsel, precipitated by anger into the terrible imputation.

The mother stood aghast, and Marjory held her head away.

"Speak, Marjory," said Ogilvy, with lips that in an instant had become white and parched.

"I have sworn," said Marjory.

"And dare not speak?" said Ogilvy. Then a deep gloom spread over his face, his eye flashed with a sudden flame. He spoke not a word more; but, vaulting into the saddle, he drove his spurs into the side of his horse, and rode off. As he passed the fagot-hewers, he saw them clustered together, and heard high words among them, with names of so potent a charm to him, that, even in his confusion and speed, he could not drive them from his mind. These names were, Sweet Marjory and Devil Isobel.

And as if the words had entered the rowels and made them sharper, his horse reared, and he sped on with a whirling tumult in his brain, but yet without uttering a word--nor even to himself did he mutter a remark--still urging his steed, yet unconscious that his journey's end would bring no assuagement of that tumult, nor mean of extricating him from his strange and perilous predicament. Nor was he aware of the speed of his riding, or how far he had gone, till he came to some huts in the outskirts of the Craigwood, which bounds the domain of Bell's Tower on the west, where he saw some cottagers assembled at a door, and again heard words which pierced his ear--no other than those of his own marriage. Again urged by curiosity, he put the question,

"Whom do you speak of, good folks?"

"Sweet Marjory," said one; and another added, "Devil Isobel."

Fain would he have asked more--these were not to him more than sufficient; but pride interposed, and fear aided pride, and away he again sped even at a still quicker pace. Never before had he been so agitated: fear, anger, or remorse had never ruffled the tenor of an existence which passed amidst rural avocations and unsophisticated pleasures,--knew nothing of intrigue, falsehood, or dissimulation--those parasitic plagues that follow the societies of men. The moon that shone over his head was as placid and beautiful, and forest and wold as quiet, as they used to be when his mind was a reflection of the peace that was without; but now, as he rode on and on, wild images arose from the roused autonomy of the spirit, and seemed to be impressed by fire,--the face of Isobel reflecting the light of the moon, and those eyes which, looking up, were in their own expression an adjuration similar to that pronounced by her lips, that she would obey him, and deliver the diamond gift to its rightful owner; then the same eyes when, inflamed by the fire of her wrath, she called her mother a liar, and proved her own falsehood, while she cast off the duty of a daughter. But through all glided the face of Sweet Marjory, with its mildness, beneficence, and timidity; and the eye that, quailing under her sister's tyranny, looked so lovingly in the face of the mother, but dared not chide him who had been false to her. He felt within him that revolution from one feeling to its opposite, which, when it begins in the mind, is so energetic and startling. His love for Isobel--which had been a frenzy, tearing him from another love which had been a sweet dream--began to undergo the wonderful change: her beauty faded before a moral expression which waxed hideous, and grew up in these passing moments into a direct contrast with the gentle loveliness of her sister, which, coming from the heart, beamed through features fitted to enhance it. Nor could he stop this revolution of his sentiments, the full effect of which, aggravated by remorse, shook his frame, as his horse bounded, and added to the turmoil within him. Yet ever the words came from his quivering lips--"Am I fated to be the husband of Devil Isobel? Is Sweet Marjory destined to bless the nuptial bed of another?" And at every repetition he unconsciously drove the spur into the sides of his now foaming steed.

But whither all this hot haste--whither was he flying? To his home, where he knew that his mother condemned his choice, though her delicacy had limited her dissatisfaction to that strange but pregnant expression, whereby she had sent her most valuable jewel to her whom she valued and loved, and whom, in the madness of fascination, he had left to sorrow, if not to heartbreaking--perhaps death. He felt that he behoved to be home to make certain preparations for his appearance on the morrow, as a bridegroom by the side of Isobel Bower; and yet he felt that he could not face his mother under the feelings which now ruled him, and the very weakness of his resolution prompted the device of tarrying by the way until she should have gone to bed. He knew where to watch her chamber light, and he began to draw the rein. Yet how unconscious he was of a peculiarity of that power that had been for some time working within him!--yea, even remorse, who, true to her unfailing purpose, was moulding his heart into that yearning to visit the victim on which she insists for ever as a condition of peace to the betrayer. He had come to the cross-road leading eastwards; and even while muttering his purpose of merely prolonging the period of his home-going, he was twitching the rein to the right, so that the obedient steed turned and carried him forward at the old speed. Whither now, versatile and remorseful youth? From this eastern road there goes off, a couple of miles forward, a rough track, leading to the mansion he had so recently left. And it was not long ere he reached the point of turn. Nor was he even decided when there, that he would again draw the rein to the right. But if he was master of his horse, he was not master of himself: the rough track was taken, and Ogilvy was in full swing to Bell's Tower. He did not know that it is only when the act is accomplished that one thinks of the decrees of Fate, though it is true that the purposes of man are equally fated in their beginnings, when reason is battling against feeling, as in their termination. In how short time was he in the pine wood, behind the house, where were his bane, and perhaps his antidote, though he could not divine the latter! And he trembled as through the trees he saw the flitting lights, as they came and went past the windows, indicating the joy of preparation: not for these he looked, only for one, sombre and steady, like Melancholy's dull eye, wherein no tear glistens. Leaving his horse tied to a pine stem, Ogilvy was in an instant kneeling at the low casement at the foot of the bastle house, where glimmered that light for which he had been so intensely looking.

Was it that grief, forced into an excitement foreign to its lonely, self-indulgent nature, wooed the evening air, to cool by the open window the fever of her slow-throbbing veins? Certain it is at least that Marjory Bower expected no salutation from without at that hour.

"Sweet Marjory, will you listen to one who once dared to love you, and who has now sorrow at his heart, yet Heaven's wrath will not send forth lightnings to kill?"

"What terrible words are these?" replied the maiden, as she took her hand from her brow and looked in the direction of the open casement.

"Not those," replied he, "which are winged with the hope of a bridegroom. But I am miserable! Marjory Bower, I loved you, and you returned my love; I deserted you, and you never even gloomed on me; and I am now the bridegroom of your sister,--ay, your sister, Devil Isobel! Will you give me hope if I break off this marriage?"

"Nay," rejoined she; "that cannot be. You have gone too far to go back with honour."

"Or forward with any hope of happiness," said he. "But I will brave all your father's anger, Isobel's revenge, and my loss of honour, if you will consent to be mine within a year."

"Nay," repeated the maid with a sigh. "Out of my unhappiness may come the happiness of others. Though I may not live to see it, I may die in the hope that Isobel Bower may, in your keeping, come to deserve a name better than that terrible one she has earned, and which just now sounded so terrible from your lips."

"Is she not a liar, who falsified my words?" said he impassionedly. "Is she not a thief, who appropriated the diamond gift of my mother, intended for you? Is she not an undutiful daughter, who first deceived her mother by a falsehood, and then denounced her as herself false? Is that woman, with the form of an angel and the heart of a devil, to be my wife? And does Marjory Bower counsel it? Then Marjory Bower hates Hector Ogilvy!"

"Nay," replied she calmly, "I only love your honour. Night and day I will pray for a blessing on your marriage, and that God, who made the heart of my sister, may change it into love and goodness."

A repressed spasmodic laugh shook the frame of the youth. "What a hope," he said, "on which to found the happiness of a life, and for which to barter such a creature as you! But, Marjory, you have roused the pride of my honour, while you have appeased my remorse; and I will marry Isobel because you have said that I should. It is thus I shall punish myself by becoming a victim in turn to the honour I was false to."

As he pronounced these words, he fixed his eye on the face of Marjory, which at the moment reflected brightly the light of the lamp. Her eyes were swimming in tears. She seemed to struggle with herself, as if she feared that, in thus counselling him, she incurred some heavy responsibility. So Ogilvy thought. But he little knew that there was mixed up with these emotions the keen anguish of a sacrifice; for she had not as yet admitted to him how dear he had been to her, and how bitterly she had felt the transference of his affections from her to her sister. He waited for a few moments. He got no reply, except from these swimming eyes. "Adieu! dear Marjory," he said; and hastened again to the pine wood, where, having flung himself on his steed, he started for home.

As he hurried along, he felt that he had appeased one feeling at the expense of a life's happiness, and yet he was satisfied, according to that law whereby the present evil always appears the greatest. About half way up the rough track he met one of the servants of Bell's Tower proceeding homewards, and suspecting that he had been with a message to him or his mother, he stopped and questioned him.

"I have been to Dame Ogilvy with a letter from Dame Bower," said the man; "and well I may," he added, as he sided up and whispered, "The fagot-hewers have seen the bride to-night on the top bartisan of the castle tower."

"And I now see a fool," replied Ogilvy, and rode on. Not that he thought the man the fool he called him, but that he felt it necessary, as many men do, to make a protest against the weakness of superstition at the very moment when the mysterious power was busy with his heart; and, repeating the word "fool," he went on auguring and condemning in the double way of mortals. How strangely he had been led for the last hour! The terms he had heard applied to his bride, justifying what he had himself seen, had all but resolved him to remain absent from the intended ceremony of the morrow. He had had some lurking hope that Marjory would agree to his resolution, and again inspire him with hope; and he knew that his mother would be pleased with a change which would yield her a chance of having her favourite for her daughter-in-law. He had been proposing as a weak mortal. Another power was purposing as a God; and yet he considered himself as so much master of himself and the occasion as to laugh with bitter scorn at the rustic diviner, and his folly of the apparition bride. And now there was shining before him the light of the lamp from the chamber of his mother, whom he had still stronger reasons than ever for avoiding that night. But even these reasons were unavailing. The spirit of his honour, which had been so fragile a thing when opposed by the advent of a new love, had been breathed upon and increased to a flame by her he had deserted; and he for the moment felt he could face the mild reproof of a mother whom he loved. What a versatile, incomprehensible creature is man, even in those inspired moments, when, with the nerve trembling under the tension of purpose, he appears to himself and others in his highest position! In a few minutes more he was in the presence of his mother.

There sat in her painted chamber the fine gentlewoman, with her fixed eye divining in the light of the gilded lamp, as the spirit cast upon the dark curtain of the future the forms which were but as re-adaptations of the signs of what had come and gone in her memory and experience. The two families had been linked by the power of fate, and the connection, which had never been dissolved; was to evolve in some new form. She had grieved for her gentle favourite, Marjory Bower; and had she been as stern as she was mild, she would have interposed a parent's authority against her son's change of purpose. Yea, there might have been true affection in that sternness; but such would have been the resolution of a mental strength which she did not possess, for she was as those whose parental love gratifies wilfulness from a fear of producing pain. Nor even now, when she held in her hand a letter of, to her, strange import, could she call up from her soft heart an energy to save her son from the ruin which seemed to impend over him. He stood for a moment before her, silent, pale, and resolved against all chances,--verily a puppet under the reaction of affections and principles he had dared to tamper with against the injunctions of honour,--and yet he could not see that the soft and trembling hand of her in Bell's Tower, which held the strings that bound him so, held them and straitened them by a spasm. Nor was it of use to him now that the strings trembled, and relaxed only for the time when the soft, reproving, yet loving light of his mother's eye, as it turned from her reverie, fell upon his soul; for his purpose came again, as his lip quivered and he waxed more pale.

"What means this letter?" said she, as she held it forth in her hand. "Mrs. Bower thanks me for the gift I sent to your bride."

"It means, dear mother," replied he firmly, "what it says. I was weak enough to think that, if I committed your jewelled locket to Isobel's hand as the mean whereby it would reach Marjory, I would do something to cement their love. I saw Isobel's eye light up as she fixed it on the diamonds--their glare had entered her soul and made it avaricious; and envy threw her red glance to fire the passion. Yes, she appropriated the gift. I have other evidence than this, even from my bride." And as he pronounced the word "bride," a scornful laugh escaped from him, and alarmed his mother.

"And yet she _is_ your bride, and will be your wife to-morrow?" said she, looking inquiringly.

"She will," replied he, in a tone which, though soft, if not pitiful, was firm, if a trait of sarcasm against himself might not have been detected in it.

"Strange!" ejaculated the mother, as she still fixed her eyes on him. Then, musing a little, "Do you know that the bride has been seen to-night on the bastle tower?"

"Superstition."

"An ill-used word, Hector," said she; "as if God was not the Ruler of his own world. When we see unnatural motives swaying men, and all working to an event, are we not to suppose that that event shall also be out of Nature's scheme? and that which is out of Nature's scheme must be in God's immediate hand. What motives impel you to wed a woman with whom you must be miserable, and have that misery enhanced by seeing every day her who would have rendered you happy?"

"My honour pledged to the world, which must condemn and laugh at a breach of faith, not to be justified except at the expense of Isobel."

"A false reason," continued the mother. "Is there more honour in adhering to a breach of honour than in returning to the honour that was broken?"

"There is another reason, mother," said Ogilvy, as he carried his hand over his sorrowful face.

"What is that?"

"Sweet Marjory commands me."

"Ah, Hector, Hector, how little you know of the heart of woman! Know you not that in a forsaken woman the heart has an irony even when it is breaking? Ask her if you should wed her rival, and the breaking heart-string will respond Yes, even as the cord of the harp will twang when it is severed. Well do I know Sweet Marjory, and what she must have felt when she uttered this command. The canker has begun, and she will die. The worm does not seek always the withered leaf. You've heard the song that Patricia used to sing--

"'The dainty worm, it loves the tomb,
And gnaws, and gnaws its nightly food;
But a daintier worm selects the bloom,
And a daintier still affects the bud.'"

"Oh, God forgive me!" ejaculated the miserable youth, as, holding his hand on his brow, he rushed out of the room and sought his bed-chamber. Was there ever such a night before the day, of all days auspicious to mortals, of the culminating joy of human life! Could he not find refuge in sleep, where the miserable so often seek to escape from the vibrations of the leaping, palpitating nerve, inflamed by the fever of life? A half-hour's dreamy consciousness, an hour's vision of returning images, rest and unrest, haunting scenes woven by some secret power, so varied, so ephialtic, so monstrous, yet all, somehow or another, however unlike the reality, still vindicating a connection. Why should Sweet Marjory be in the deep recesses of the pine wood, resting by his foaming steed, with his mother sitting and breathing hope's accents in her ear, and ever and again calling on him in sobbing vocables to return from his pursuit of another? He would return. The charm of her sweet voice is felt to be irresistible; yet it is resisted. And though he looks back only to see her by the flaught of the lightning that plays among the trees, his steps are forward, where Devil Isobel charms him with a song, in comparison of which the magic of the sirens is but the rustle of the reed as it swerves in the blast. He struggles, and seizes the stems of the pines to hold him from his progress and keep him steady; and he writhes as he finds he cannot obey the maternal appeal to a son's love. All is still again, and there is rest, only to be alternated by the recurring visions always assuming new forms, changing and disappearing, flaring up again, and then the deep breast-riding oppression, and those hollow moans, which never can be imitated by the waking sense, as if Nature preserved this domain of the spirit as an evidence, in the night of the soul, that there is another world where the limbo of agony is not less certain than the heaven which is simulated by sweet dreams.

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 Baeotia 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.

To complete the charms of the doctor's medical establishment, it was constantly pervaded by a heavy, unearthly smell, that, we verily believe, no man but himself could have inhaled for an hour and lived.

Notwithstanding the unpretending and homely character of the doctor's establishment, it boasted a sounding name. The doctor himself called it, and so did the signboard over the door, "The ---- Medical Hall,"--a title which the envious thought absurd enough for a place whose proudest show was a blue bottle, a pound of salts, and a serpent. But these people did not recollect, or did not choose to recollect, the high pretensions of the doctor himself. They did not advert to the numerous degrees, honorary titles, fellowships, etc., which he had acquired, otherwise they would have looked to the man, not to the shop. Probably, however, few of them were aware of the number of these which he boasted; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that the doctor could, and did on particular occasions, sign himself thus:--"David Dobbie, M.D.; E.F.; M.N.O.; U.V.; Z.Y.X.; W.V.U.;" nor did he hesitate sometimes to alter the letters according to the inspiration of the happy moment.

Now, had the doctor's right to all these titles been taken into account, and, so taken, been appreciated as it ought, there would have been fewer sneers at his Medical Hall than there was as matters stood.

THE INVITATION.

In another part of this history we have stated that the doctor, being generally liked, was much invited out to feastings and merry-makings, and convivialities of all sorts, from the aristocratic roast turkey and bottle of port, to the plebeian Findhorn haddock and jug of toddy. But all, in this way, was fish that came in the doctor's net. Provided there was quantity--particularly in the liquor department--he was not much given to shying at quality. He certainly preferred wine, but by no means turned up his nose at a tumbler. Few men, in fact, could empty more at a sitting.

It was observed of the doctor, by those who knew him intimately, that he was always in bad humour on what he called blank days. These were days on which he had no invitation on hand for any description of guzzle whatever--either dinner, tea, supper, or a "just come up and take a glass of toddy in the evening." This seldom occurred, but it did sometimes happen; and on these occasions the doctor's short and snappish answers gave sufficient intimation of the provoking fact.

In such temper, then, and for such reason, was the doctor in the forenoon of the particular day in his life which we have made the subject of this paper. He was as cross as an old drill-sergeant; and what made him worse, the affair he had been at on the preceding night had been a very poor one. He had been hinted away after the third tumbler--treatment which had driven the doctor to swear, mentally, that he would never enter the house again. How far he would keep this determination, it remained for another invitation to prove.

In this mood, then, and at the time already alluded to, was the doctor employed, behind his counter, in measuring off some liquid in a graduated glass, which he held between him and the light, and on which he was looking very intently, as the liquid was precious, the quantity wanted small, and the glass but faintly marked, when a little boy entered the shop, and inquired if Dr. Dobbie was within.

"Yes. What do you want?" replied the doctor gruffly, and without taking his eye off the graduated glass.

"Here's a line for ye, sir," said the boy, laying a card on the counter.

"Who's it from?" roared the doctor.

"Frae Mr. Walkinshaw, sir," replied the boy, meekly; "and he would like to ken whether ye can come or no."

"Come; oh, surely. Let me see," said the doctor. "Come; ay, certainly," he added, his tone suddenly dropping down to the mild and affable, and speaking from an intuitive knowledge of the tenor of the card. "Surely; let me see." And the doctor opened the note and read, his eyes gloating, and his countenance dissolving into smiles, as he did so:--

"DEAR DOCTOR,--A few friends at half-past eight. Just a haddock
and a jug of toddy. Be as pointed as you can. Won't be kept
_very_ late. Dear Doctor, yours truly,

"R. WALKINSHAW."

"My compliments to Mr. Walkinshaw," said the doctor, with a bland smile, and folding up the card with a sort of affectionate air as he spoke, "and tell him I will be pointed. Stop, boy," he added, on the latter's being about to depart with his message; "stop," he said, running towards his till, and thence abstracting threepence, which he put into the boy's hand, with a--"There, my boy, take that to buy marbles." The doctor always rewarded such messengers; but he did so systematically, and by a rule of his own. For an invitation to breakfast he gave a penny, thus estimating that meal at all but the lowest possible rate; for an invitation to dinner he gave sixpence; for one to supper, threepence, as exemplified in the instance above.

In possession of Mr. Walkinshaw's invitation, the doctor continued in excellent spirits throughout the remainder of the day.

THE GUZZLE.

At the height of three stories, in a respectable-looking tenement in a certain quarter of a certain city which shall be nameless, there resided a decent widow woman of the name of Paton, who kept lodgers.

At the particular time, and on the particular occasion at and on which we introduce the reader to Mrs. Paton's lodging-house, there was a certain parlour in the said house in a state of unusual tidiness. Not to say that this parlour was not always in good order: it was; but in the present instance, it displayed an extra degree both of _redding_-up and of comfort.

An unusually large fire blazed in the polished grate, and a couple of candles, in shining candlesticks, stood on the bright mahogany table. On a small old-fashioned sideboard was exhibited a goodly display of bottles and glasses, flanked by a sugar basin, heaped up with snowy bits of refined sugar; a small plate of cut cheese, another of biscuit, and a third bearing a couple of lemons.