McLevy (13 page)

“But where have you put your ten shillings?” said the other. “Take care you don’t lose it. Is it in your pocket?”

“Ay, all safe enough, along with the ticket. If I lose them, I lose all; and I may just as weel be coffined at once, and be done wi’t. Ye’re a young creature, and don’t
know the miseries o’ the old.”

“And don’t want for a while,” said the other; “but where do you live?”

“In Lady Lawson’s Wynd,” was the reply.

“And how do you go home?”

“By Hunter Square and the Bridge,” said the simple woman; “for I’ve to go to Nicolson Square, where the factor lives, to pay him the nine shillings; but I doubt if he
will ever get more, for now, with my blankets in the pawn, and nothing to redeem them, what is to cover me in the cold nights of winter?”

“What you can get, woman,” said the other, harshly, as I thought, at least without the feeling due to age and poverty; “just as I do, what we all do—the world to the
winner.”

And what heartless creature can this young woman be? thought I, as, making a long neck, I looked round the side of the stair. My five-times convicted Mary Anne Stewart, one of the nimblest
pick-pockets of the city, and for whom I was then looking as connected with a stolen plaid.

“Easy to say that,” continued the old woman, “when you’ve health and youth on your side; but don’t be too confident. I was once a winner when I won my poor husband;
but what was there for me to win when I lost him who was the winner of my bread, and was left to fight the battle of life with nothing but my ten fingers? You’ve both to win and to lose yet,
my lass; and may the Lord be kinder to you than He has been to me!”

“Best to look to one’s-self and one’s own pocket,” was the consistent reply of the winner, Mary Anne.

And to the pockets of others, said I to myself, the graceless baggage.

“And you never look to Heaven, lass?” again said the woman.

“Never got anything from that quarter yet,” was the reply, in the same strain. “Will Heaven enable you to take that pawn-ticket out of your pouch and get your blankets
back?”

“Ay, and maybe mair,” said the woman; “but though Providence may look sour on me, there’s the Lord of providence, lass, mind that; and He can smile on you even when
you’re suffering, for He knows He can take you out of it. And what church go ye to with these notions in your head?”

“No one,” was the saucy answer; “there’s no kail in the kirks;” then with a laugh, “The ministers eat all the showbread.”

And what more of this kind of talk which I have reported, perhaps in a form different from what took place, but retaining the general sentiments of both, I cannot say, for they moved off. I saw
them still at it in the midst of the square, and till they came to the end of the close opposite Hunter Square, where they parted. Meanwhile I went down the steps by the Bridge, and making a circle
round, I saw the woman making for Hunter Square, where there was a crowd round an Italian with a puggy—general holding a levee—a more sensible animal than its master. Then keeping my
eye on Mary Anne, I saw her join William Walker and James M’Guire, two of my very best friends, as ready to do me a service now as they had done before on more occasions than one. They did
not seem at the moment to be in so playful a mood as the Italian’s puggy; and I did not look for much sport till I got my expectations sharpened by their movement after Mrs Kerr (that was the
name, I think) towards the two mountebanks, who had removed to the south of the Tron.

I then wheeled round the north-east corner of the church, and keeping my eye on my trio, I placed myself in a stair-foot on the east side of the South Bridge, from which I could see both sets of
performers, as well as those performed upon. Mrs Kerr, who, in Lady Lawson’s Wynd, had no opportunity of seeing monkeys from her garret window, seemed to have forgotten the sorrows of her
rent-day and the pawn-shop, and was gaping, as all sight-seers do, at the evolutions of pug, one of whose best feats, general as he was, was to extract his master’s pocket handkerchief from
the one pocket of his cotton velvet coat and put it in the other, and then came the laugh, in which, I presume, the widow of the sorrowful face joined, when the Italian sought for the article in
the wrong pocket. Mrs Kerr did not take the lesson, though the Italian, as a kind of philanthropist, might have had the credit of putting his crowd upon their guard. The simple woman, from whose
mind all her sorrows seemed, for the moment, banished, enjoyed this trick wonderfully, for I could see the careworn face lighted up with the very extreme of satisfaction. Mary Anne was now at her
back, apparently gaping too, and behind her stood Walker and M’Guire, as interested in pug’s pocket-picking as if the trick had been one new to them, and worthy of being learned.

Now I fairly admit that, while I expected something, I was utterly unprepared for an attack on Mary Anne’s part on her poor old friend of the entry; for however harsh her words were to the
old woman, I still thought she had some qualms of pity excited in her by that sorrowful wail which had struck my own ears as something touching and heart-stirring. I had been simply false to my
experience, while Mary Anne remained true to her heartless craft. Yes, I saw the young hopeless extract from Mrs Kerr’s pocket something, doubtless the ten shillings, and hand it to
M’Guire, whereupon they all three hurried away down the High Street.

My energy was roused in a moment, sharpened by the cruelty of this most heartless robbery. My course was, to myself, clear, though not, perhaps, what you might imagine. I have always had a
horror of being seen rushing along the street, like Justice under hysterics flying after a victim. It’s not decorous, and, besides, it does no good. The red-hand is a good catch, but I have
often enough known a startled thief drop a valuable which never could be recovered, and I have found my account better balanced by knowing my man, and catching him with the booty, when he thinks
all safe. In this case, I allowed the three to pass me, nor did I lay hands on them. I first hurried up to Mrs Kerr, and touching her on the shoulder,

“Is your ten shillings safe in your pocket?” said I.

“My ten shillings!” said she, nervously; “surely it is, but how do you know I had ten shillings in my pocket?”

“Never mind that, search quick.”

“The Lord help me!” she exclaimed, as she fumbled in her empty pocket; “it’s gone, with the pawn-ticket. I’m ruined, sir; it’s all I have in the world, and
how am I to meet the factor? I’m ruined, ruined!”

And she burst into tears, sobbing in the midst of the crowd.

“Get as fast as you can to the Police-Office,” said I, “and I’ll bring to you the pickpockets, and maybe your money. You know one of them.”

“Who could be so cruel?” she inquired.

The young woman you blabbed to in the pawnbroker’s stair,” said I.

“Oh, the Lord forgive her,” said she, “for I told her the whole story of my grief.”

“Which you should have kept to yourself,” said I. “Away to the Office, and wait for me.”

And having seen her off I proceeded down the High Street, in the direction taken by the thieves. That confidence I have so often felt, and perhaps somewhat vaingloriously expressed, I can
account for in no other way than viewing it as a result of my knowledge of thieves and their haunts, joined to the impression of so many successes. On this occasion I was so sure, that I believed I
walked as if I had been going to dinner, without being quickened by a very sharp appetite; but I did not feel the less desire to get hold of those who bad so unknowingly to themselves roused
sympathies in my breast, made sluggish, no doubt, by the hardening influences of official routine. Mary Anne was so well known about the High Street, that she couldn’t pass without the
observation of the loungers in that crowded resort of the poor. A few passing hints, like dots in a line, led me along till I came to Toddrick’s Wynd, at the head of which I paused, and
casting a glance down with my advantage of a good eye for a long wynd, I saw one of those little clots of human beings, generally so interesting to me, in proportion as they show an interest among
themselves. I was quicker now, and rushing forward, I came upon the three I wanted, all busy in the glorious ceremony of division, that is, giving every one
his own
, with the exception of
the proprietor. The very sums were in their hands, with the unction inseparable from the acquisition of money.

“Five shillings to Mary Anne, and half-a-crown to each of you,” said I, “is fair. I will settle it for you, since you seem to disagree. The pawn-ticket for the blankets is for
my trouble.”

There is seldom any hurry-skurry among these gentry, for they know the worst, and are made up to it.

“Come, give me the money.”

And so they did, the whole ten shillings, and the ticket to boot.

“No kail in the police cell to night, Mary Anne,” said I, “any more than in the church, where the ministers eat all the showbread.”

Mary Anne looked into my face, and burst out into a laugh,—such is the seared and hardened temperament of thieves; and it is as well that the punishment-mongers should know this, that they
may endeavour to devise some other and more effectual mode of reclamation.

“So you had no pity for the poor old woman?”

“The whining hag had more money than I had,” was the reply.

“You mean more than the five shillings you got for the stolen plaid?” said I.

“Who said it was stolen?”

“The lady in Gilmour Place you stole it from,” said I. “I have been looking for you to settle that small matter for three days.”

A streak of new light thus thrown upon an old subject, which qualified Mary Anne’s fun, and silenced her.

At this moment my assistant came up, and we took the three to the Office, where I brought the young thief to face with Mrs Kerr. The look of relief which played over the grief-worn features of
the woman when she saw her four half-crowns and pawn-ticket, can only be understood by those who are, or have been poor, and who know the narrow margin on the verge of which flit the few and
desultory illumined figures of their happiness. It did not last long, for it was to give place to the old melancholy, but I believe the feelings with which she looked on the face of the hardened
creature to whom she had poured out the simple history of her sorrows, would never pass away.

“I didn’t think, for all I have heard of the wickedness of human creatures,” she said, as she kept her eyes on Mary Anne, who did not seem to feel her situation more than as
quite a natural one, “that it was in the heart of a woman to rob one, who might be her mother, of all she had in the world.”

“‘Twill learn you to look at monkeys again,” replied Mary Anne, with a laugh, which gave so ludicrous a turn to the pathetic, that the Lieutenant himself could scarcely resist
it.

She might have profited by the monkey, thought I, for it offered her a lesson which she did not take to heart.

And thus this act of the strange drama ended. The next was the retributive one—the issue or conclusion being proportioned, not to the amount taken, but to the enormity of the hardened
depravity which it revealed. The three were tried before the High Court. Mary Anne, as the principal performer, getting ten years’ transportation, and Walker and M’Guire seven years
each. So that, has Mary Anne’s mind not been closed against every good impression, she would have admitted that, if she had never previously obtained anything from that Power she so
irreverently maligned, she had at length received a share of the stern and severe reward it invariably bestows upon the vicious and the guilty.

❖

D
on’t fancy I am going to speak of the “happy land” of which Richard Weaver sings so well, through the medium of the hymn, so
joyous with its “away and away” to where many of us, it is to be hoped, have mothers, and sisters, and brothers. Nor will the people of Edinburgh be ignorant of the meaning of the title
of my present reminiscence. Yet many may not know the “happy land” I allude to—not other than that large tenement in Leith Wynd, not far from the top, composed of a number of
houses, led to by a long stone-stair,—the steps of which are worn into inequalities by the myriads of feet, tiny and large, light and heavy, steady and unsteady, which have passed up and down
so long,—and divided into numerous dens, inhabited by thieves, robbers, thimblers, pick-pockets, abandoned women, drunken destitutes, and here and there chance-begotten brats, squalling with
hunger, or lying dead for days after they should have been buried. Well do I know every hole and corner of it, and so well that I shrink from a description of it, which at the best would be only a
mass of blotches—not a picture, only coarse cloth and dingy paint. Some people may have a notion of a “stew”; but the Happy Land is a great conglomeration of stews; so that the
scenes, the doings, the swearings, the fights, the drunken brawls, the prostitutions, the blasphemies, the cruelties, and the robberies, which you figure of various houses removed by distance, are
often all going on at the same moment, and with no more screens or barriers to hide the shame than thin lath walls and crazy doors—often, indeed, without any division at all. Yet all the
people who inhabit this accumulation of dens understand each other. It is a world by itself, with no law ruling except force, no compunction except fear, no religion except that of the devil. They
laugh at every thing that is fair and good, and transfer the natural feelings due to these over to evil; and, then, there’s not a whit of effort in all this—to them it is perfectly
natural. And I’m not sure if they do not consider the outside world over in the New Town a very tame affair, not worth living for.

In the third storey of the huge tenement, as you go into the right, there was a section of this little world, occupied by a young, stout, and fair hizzy, called Mary Wood, about twenty years of
age. She was well known, not only in the Happy Land itself, but in Princes Street, where she was often seen walking as demurely under her fashionable bonnet as any of the young ladies from the
houses in the New Town. Her section was very limited, consisting only of a small room, containing a bed, a table, a chair or two, a looking-glass of course, and a trunk for her fineries, not
forgetting “the red saucer”. Immediately off this room was a closet, with no means of light, excepting one or two auger-bored holes, intended for gratifying any one taking up his
station there by a look of what was going on in the room. These two apartments formed the castle of this enchantress, and the scene of a plot—not uncommon then—entered into by Mary and
two strong ruffians of the names of George Renny and James Stevenson. The conspiracy was not so complicated as it was bold, dastardly, and cruel. Mary was to go out in her most seductive dress, and
endeavour to entice in any gentleman likely to have a gold watch and money on him, and when she had succeeded in this, the two bullies, as they have been called, who, on a signal of her approach,
had previously betaken themselves to the closet, were, when they considered all matters ripe, to rush out, seize the victim, and rob him.