saw a young lady come in to prayers, that spoke not a word to any one, only made becks and bows to the old gentleman and lady of the house – ken ye wha she is?”
“No, indeed,” answered Nigel; “some relation of the family, I suppose.”
“Deil a bit – deil a bit,” answered Moniplies, hastily, “not a blood-drop’s kin to them, if she had a drop of blood in her body – I tell you but what all human beings allege to be truth, that swell within hue and cry of Lombard Street – that lady, or quean, or whatever you choose to call her, has been dead in the body these many a year, though she haunts them, as we have seen, even at their very devotions.”
“You will allow her to be a good spirit at least,” said Nigel Olifaunt, “since she chooses such a time to visit her friends?”
“For that I kenna, my lord,” answered the superstitious follower; “I ken no spirit that would have faced the right down hammer-blow of Mess John Knox, whom my father stood by in his very warst days, bating a chance time when the Court, which my father supplied with butcher-meat, was against him. But yon divine has another airt from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black, of North Leith, and sic like. – Alack-a-day! wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southron read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm fraw the heart, may be powerful to drive them away, even as the Evil Spirit was driven by he smell of the fish’s liver from the bridal-chamber of Sara, the daughter of Raguel? As to whilk story, nevertheless, I make scruple to say whether it be truth or not, better men than I am having doubted on that matter.”
“Well, well, well,” said his master, impatiently, “we are now near home, and I have permitted you to speak of this matter for once, that we may have an end to your prying folly, and your idiotical superstitions, for ever. For whom do you, or your absurd authors or informers, take this lady?”
“I can sae naething preceesely as to that,” answered Moniplies; “certain it is her body died and was laid in the grave many a day since, notwithstanding she still wanders on earth, and chiefly amongst Maister Heriot’s family, though she hath been seen in other places by them that well knew her. But who she is, I will not warrant to say, or how she becomes attached, like a Highland Brownie, to some peculiar family. They say she has a row of apartments of her own, ante-room, parlour, and bedroom; but deil a bed she sleeps in but her own coffin, and the walls, doors, and windows are so chinked up, as to prevent the least blink of daylight from entering; and then she dwells by torchlight – ”
“To what purpose, if she be a spirit?” said Nigel Olifaunt.
“How can I tell your lordship?” answered his attendant. “I thank God I know nothing of her likings, or mislikings – only her coffin is there; and I leave your lordship to guess what a live person has to do with a coffin. As little as a ghost with a lantern, I trow.”
“What reason,” repeated Nigel, “can a creature, so young and so beautiful, have already habitually to contemplate her bed of last-long rest?”
“In troth, I kenna, my lord,” answered Moniplies; “but there is the coffin, as they told me who have seen it: it is made of heben-wood, with silver nails, and lined all through with three-piled damask, might serve a princess to rest in.”
“Singular,” said Nigel, whose brain, like that of most active young spirits, was easily caught by the singular and the romantic; “does she not eat with the family?”
“Who! – she!” – exclaimed Moniplies, as if surprised at the question; “they would need a lang spoon would sup with her, I trow. Always there is something put for her into the Tower, as they call it, whilk is a whigmaleery of a whirling-box, that turns round half on the tae side o’ the wa’, half on the tother.”
“I have seen the contrivance in foreign nunneries,” said the Lord of Glenvarloch. “And is it thus she receives her food?”
“They tell me something is put in ilka day, for fashion’s sake,” replied the attendant; “but it’s no to be supposed she would consume it, ony mair than the images of Bel and the Dragon consumed the dainty vivers that were placed before them. There are stout yeomen and chamber-queans in the house, enow to play the part of Lick-it-up-a’, as well as the threescore and ten priests of Bel, besides their wives and children.”
“And she is never seen in the family but when the hour of prayer arrives?” said the master.
“Never, that I hear of,” replied the servant.
“It is singular,” said Nigel Olifaunt, musing. “Were it not for the ornaments which she wears, and still more for her attendance upon the service of the Protestant Church, I should know what to think, and should believe her either a Catholic votaress, who, for some cogent reason, was allowed to make her cell here in London, or some unhappy Popish devotee, who was in the course of undergoing a dreadful penance. As it is, I know not what to deem of it.”
His reverie was interrupted by the linkboy knocking at the door of honest John Christie, whose wife came forth with “quips, and becks, and wreathed smiles,” to welcome her honoured guest on his return to his apartment.
CHAPTER VIII
Ay! mark the matron well – and laugh not, Harry,
At her old steeple-hat and velvet guard —
I’ve call’d her like the ear of Dionysius;
I mean that ear-form’d vault, built o’er his dungeon,
To catch the groans and discontented murmurs
Of his poor bondsmen – Even so doth Martha
Drink up, for her own purpose, all that passes,
Or is supposed to pass, in this wide city —
She can retail it too, if that her profit
Shall call on her to do so; and retail it
For your advantage, so that you can make
Your profit jump with hers.
We must now introduce to the reader’s acquaintance another character, busy and important far beyond her ostensible situation in society – in a word, Dame Ursula Suddlechop, wife of Benjamin Suddlechop, the most renowned barber in all Fleet Street. This dame had her own particular merits, the principal part of which was (if her own report could be trusted) an infinite desire to be of service to her fellow-creatures. Leaving to her thin half-starved partner the boast of having the most dexterous snap with his fingers of any shaver in London, and the care of a shop where starved apprentices flayed the faces of those who were boobies enough to trust them, the dame drove a separate and more lucrative trade, which yet had so many odd turns and windings, that it seemed in many respects to contradict itself.
Its highest and most important duties were of a very secret and confidential nature, and Dame Ursula Suddlechop was never known to betray any transaction intrusted to her, unless she had either been indifferently paid for her service, or that some one found it convenient to give her a double douceur to make her disgorge the secret; and these contingencies happened in so few cases, that her character for trustiness remained as unimpeached as that for honesty and benevolence.
In fact, she was a most admirable matron, and could be useful to the impassioned and the frail in the rise, progress, and consequences of their passion. She could contrive an interview for lovers who could show proper reasons for meeting privately; she could relieve the frail fair one of the burden of a guilty passion, and perhaps establish the hopeful offspring of unlicensed love as the heir of some family
