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.
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."
"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 recognize 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 coalblack 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!" 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 was
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 in 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 wellknown 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.
"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?"
"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."
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 Iam 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
daybook 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.
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 forsworn 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 fathoms 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 e~posed to
uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys.
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."
"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 reillumine 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.
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 illfavoured 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 sackcloth 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 countryside, 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.
"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.
THE END