McLevy (12 page)

“Here’s ane,” cried his wife on the instant, as she began to undo the strings of her head cushion, ay, even that which had been frequently pressed by the head of her lord.
“There,” she added, as she threw the article out of the bed.

“Put these feathers into that bag,” said I; “every feather, and I’ll wait till I see the last put in.”

“Ye’ll find that a kittle job, Mr M’Levy. A fleeing feather’s no easily catched.”

“Weel,” said Sandy, as he threw a wrathful glance at the mistress of his affection, now about to be lost to him, a loss of fifteen stones of solid beef—“I’ll do
your bidding,” and then relaxing into a chuckle—“but will you tell me hoo the devil ony judge or jury can tell, after a’ these feathers are mixed, which belongs to a duke,
and which to a hen, and which to ae duke, and no to anither, and which to ae hen, and no to its neeghbour; and then after a’ that, to whom the hens or the dukes belang? Ye see there’s
no a head feather left.”

I saw in a moment that the cunning rogue had caught me, and that I might be in for an official scrape. But I had gone too far to recede, and I had got out of as great a difficulty before.
“Put in the feathers quick,” said I.

“The lasses will help him,” cried the landlady, still bent on favouring the apprehension of Sandy; and quickly a husky voice sounded through the house, reaching, as it was intended,
the hall of the sleeping beauties—“Kate Semple, Jessie Lumsdaine, Flora Macdonald.”

And straightway came rushing from their beds two or three of her “children”, as she used to call them. I need not describe the condition they were in, nor their swollen, sleepless
eyes, their dishevelled hair, and their wondering looks, as they found their dreams probably changed from a place where there was roasting to a place of plucking.

“Help Sandy to put thae feathers in that pillow-slip, for the deil ane o’ them will remain to tak’ away the credit o’ my house.”

And thereupon the girls began the work, sprawling on their hands and knees, and putting in handful by handful as Sandy held open the mouth of the slip. The job was a difficult one, and the scene
sufficiently picturesque to occupy my attention, diverted as it sometimes was by my anticipated difficulty in identifying the corpses; nor was it without a brush that they could accomplish the
entire clearance I insisted on. Even the flying feathers I urged my nymphs to secure, an operation which they undertook with agility, screaming and laughing in the midst of their work with all that
wild levity and recklessness for which their tribe is remarkable.

“Here,” cried Mrs Dewar, “there’s some on my bed.” And commencing to pick them up, “Nae man shall say that a stown feather was left in my house.”

A degree of refinement in this honest woman’s purity which produced a smile from me, in spite of the difficulties of a case of evidence which promised me some trouble. Nor were my fears
unreasonable. Our honour is at stake in such matters, and then we require to keep in view that while little good may result from punishing so determined and hardened a rogue as Sandy Dewar, the
evil consequences of an acquittal are serious. It emboldens the culprit himself, and affords a triumph to the whole fraternity.

“And now, Sandy,” said I, when there was scarcely a feather to be seen, “you’ll bind all the legs of the corpses together.”

A command which was obeyed slowly and reluctantly.

“Throw them over your back,” continued I, “and the bag will go over all.”

Having got my man laden with his dead spoil, “And now we’ll march to the Office,” said I.

“And fareweel, Sandy,” cried a voice from the bed; “we’ll maybe never see ane anither again. May the Lord prosper ye and mend ye!”

And finding matters in this favourable state, as I conceived, I bent my head over the lump of innocence:—

“Now, Mrs Dewar,” whispered I, “just tell me how Sandy came by the ducks and hens.”

“Aweel,” said she in return, disappointing my hopes of an admission, “I’ll say naething against my lawfu’ husband. If the dukes and hens didna flee in at the
window, it’s now dead certain they’ll no flee oot at the door.”

These were the last words of the sonsy landlady, and I marched Sandy, with his burden, through an admiring crowd to the Office, where, having locked him up, I began to examine the dead bodies.
The heads, as I have said, had been all taken care of, not a feather left upon one of them. Every corpse was so provokingly like another, that I could see no way of proving that they belonged to
any one; and if, as was likely, Sandy had not been observed by any person about the place, I had no evidence to rest on but the equivocal words of Mrs Dewar, which pointed out no proprietor. I was
in difficulty, but my difficulty was a stimulant as well; and there in the Office I sat, I know not how long, making my
post mortem
examination with all the assiduity of a doctor. My
honour was concerned. The bantam would crow if my hens were not identified; but oh the inestimable virtue of perseverance! Were I to recount what this power has yielded me, I would read a lesson to
the sluggard better than any imparted by Solomon. I had made my discoveries, and was the more satisfied with the result, as, during all the time I had been engaged in the examination of my eighteen
dead bodies, I had become the theme of much good-humoured laughter among my compeers, joined in by the Superintendent and Lieutenant themselves.

A short time afterwards, there came in a charge from Mr Beaton, Hope Park, Meadows, to the effect that nine ducks had been stolen from his premises on the previous night; and after the lapse of
another hour, a second charge, involving the nine hens, came from Mr Renton of Hope Park End. To these places I repaired, and saw the servants, who could, of course, have had no difficulty about
the identity of their favourites, fed and tended by them every morning, and relieved by them of the succulent treasure they dropt so industriously for the morning’s meal, provided the
feathers remained, but they all laughed at the idea of knowing their lamented favourites with bare bodies. As to the thief, no one could say that he was seen, or even heard. Sandy had done his work
well. I then got the lasses to dress themselves, and accompany me to the Office, where we soon arrived; the bodies were all lying in the state in which I left them. The sight to the girls was
nothing less than striking. They held up their hands, and really looked pitiful, for no doubt they had had an affection for the creatures; and the strongest of us, I suspect, have some feelings
thus lowly, but not the less sympathetically directed, which even the savoury morsel of a fed favourite cannot altogether dissipate. My pig is a better pig than yours; but I’d rather eat
yours, if you will eat mine.

So the girls turned over and over the bodies, examining them with all the minuteness in their power. Jenny declared it impossible, and Helen was in despair; Peggy thought she observed something,
and Barbara declared it to be nothing. I watched them with some amusement, nor less the men in the Office. They stood around us laughing heartily at the remarks of the investigators, running up a
joke to a climax, and then pursuing another, not always at the sole expense of the lasses, who could retort cleverly, impeaching their mockers as utterly unable to distinguish a male from a female
fowl. At the long run, a happy thought struck Jenny.

“But where’s the ‘pensioner?’ ” cried she.

“Ay, the ‘pensioner,’ ” responded her neighbour Nelly.

“Had he a spliced leg?” inquired I.

“Yes,” replied the first, “a dog broke it, and Nelly and I bound it up with two thin pieces of wood and a string.”

“Ay, and he got aye the best handful of barley,” rejoined Nelly; “but the leg of the ‘pensioner’ was cured a month ago, and the bandage removed.”

“Is that the ‘pensioner’?” said I, as I showed the leg of one which I had observed in the forenoon as having on it the appearance of a healed-up sore.

“Ay, just the creature,” they both exclaimed. “It was the right leg, and you’ll see yet the marks of the string.”

The discovery was followed by the merriment of the men, who asserted that some one or other of the girls must have had a pensioner for a lover, with the designation of whom the drake had been
honoured; but the girls indignantly denied the charge, declaring that they could not fancy a man pensioner, however much they might love a drake one.

“Besides,” added Jenny, cleverly, “he was our pensioner, not the Queen’s.”

“So much for the ducks,” said I; “and now for the hens and cocks; was there no pensioner among them?”

“No,” cried Barbara, “but there was the ‘corporal’.”

“Any mark beyond the coat?” inquired I.

“Ay,” cried Peggy, “he was stone-blind in the right eye; he lost his sight in a battle with Mr Grant’s cock, and never recovered his eyesight again. When toying with his
wives, he turned aye round to the left side.”

“Yes,” struck in Betty; “before his misfortune, he was the king of a’ the cocks in the Meadows.”

“Is that the blind ‘corporal’?” said I.

“The very creature,” cried Barbara, as she examined the white orb of the animal which I had detected in the morning; “but oh,” she added, “I am vexed to see him in
that condition!”

And really I thought I could see some little humidity about the blue eye of the good-natured girl.

“That’s the lass for a man,” thought I. “Give me a qualm of pity in a woman even for a bird, and I tell you you may make sure of a good wife.”

I once knew—permit me to go off the scene a little—a young woman who lived in Great King Street. She was a great belle, and admired for a kind of beauty not uncommon among our
servants. A gentleman in town, whose name I could mention, saw her one day, as she was carrying home some books from the library in Dundas Street. He was smitten—followed her—spoke to
her—and entertained the idea of making her his wife, whereby she would have become a lady. Time passed; and, in the meantime, he was informed that the pretty Margaret one night, when in the
bed-room flat of the house, pitched the cat, which had offended her in her cleanly notions, out of the window. It was a bitter cold night, and the frost was intense. In the morning the cat was
found spiked on the railing, and frozen stiff. This was enough for our lover, and he forsook her. She afterwards fell, became a street-walker, and died neglected and uncared for in the Infirmary. I
suspect the little pearl in Barbara’s eye for the blind corporal was worth all the beauty in the face and person of the once admired but forsaken Margaret.

My story of the ducks and hens concludes with this investigation; for though the scene was renewed before the Sheriff, it was not so rich as that which took place among ourselves. Sandy got
sixty days imprisonment for the ducks, and six months for the hens, as a kind of second offence; and Luckie Dewar could afford a few tears (common to certain amphibious animals on the banks of the
Nile) over the misfortunes of Sandy Dewar, who had thus fallen from being master of the Cock and Trumpet to being the occupant of a prison. Such is the ascending and descending scale of profligate
life.

❖

D
o you know any one within the circle of your experience who is utterly renounced to himself—what is called a money-grub or hunks, eternally
yearning for money, so as to deserve the address of Burns: “Fie upon you, coward man, that you should be the slave o’t”. If there’s any tear about that man’s eye,
depend upon’t it’s only a thinnish rheum; and. as for anything like a response in the ear to the cry of pity, the drum will as soon crack at the singing of a psalm. Such a character is
the result of an accumulation of
hardnesses
, increasing in intensity with his advancing years. We don’t wonder so much at the hunks as hate him. But in regard to the brick-moulded
thief, who seldom comes within the range of ordinary observation, you are apt to think that he is not so hard-hearted after all. You give him some credit for generosity,—nay, when he is
picking your pocket, you lay to his charge more necessity than will. Yet there never was a harder-hearted wretch than a regular thief. He is as destitute of pity as of honesty, and will steal as
readily the shilling from under the poorhouse pensioner’s pillow as the ring from the finger of my lady. Even after “feeding time” he is still rapacious, and if he ever gives
away, it is from recklessness, never from benevolence.

I have had many cases that go to prove these remarks, and one occurs to me worthy of recital, from the personal proximity into which I was brought to the condition of the hearts of the
actors.

In the eddies at the bottoms of stairs leading to pawnshops, a detective has often a chance for promising rises to his phantom minnow. In 1845, somewhere in August, I chanced to be coming up the
stair leading from the Market to Milne Square. Just as I was arriving at the passage out, two women were coming down from the Equitable Loan Company’s Office; and as they were engaged in
conversation, I stood a few steps down where I couldn’t be seen, and heard what they were saying to each other. The voices were those of a young brisk wench and an aged woman, with that kind
of wail in her speech which sometimes comes to be a bad habit, but which at least shows that the heart is not so easy as it might be.

“I got five shillings on a plaid worth five pounds,” said the younger. “What did he give you on the blankets?”

“No less than I sought,” replied the elder, “ten shillings. It will just pay my landlord, and leave a shilling over; but it’s a sore heart to me to pawn, for I never was
used to it; yet better pawn than be poinded.”

“And who will poind you ?”

“My landlord for the rent, woman; ay, a rich man with thousands, who feeds his servants on roast-beef and pudding till they are ready to burst, and yet takes the two or three shillings of
rent of me which I need for porridge; and it’s not that these great people like their servants, only they like to get the name of their house being a good meat-house; and the fat limmers are
as saucy to them, after all, as ever.”