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The Heart of Midlothian: Porteous

Before Reuben Butler could see her the Tolbooth was closed; and before he could escape from the city a crowd of rioters compelled him to return with them to the jail and administer the last rites to Porteous, whom they dragged forth to death.

The leader of the mob, a young man disguised in woman's clothes, seized a moment in the midst of the turmoil in the jail to beg Effie to escape. "For God's sake--for your own sake--for my sake--flee, or they'll take your life," was all that he had time to say.

The girl gazed after him for a moment, and then, faintly muttering, "Better tyne life, since tint is gude fame," she sank her head upon her hand, and remained, seemingly, as unconscious as a statue, of the noise and tumult which passed around her.

In the morning, on his way to see Jeanie and her father at St. Leonard's Butler encountered in the King's park a young man of noble bearing, but strangely agitated, who bade him "tell Jeanie Deans that, when the moon rises, I shall expect to meet her at Nicol Muschat's Cairn, beneath Saint Anthony's chapel."

After attempting in vain to induce Jeanie to explain the message, he returned to visit Effie again, in the Tolbooth, only to be compelled, on his arrival there, to tell the whole story, lest he be convicted of guilt in the Porteous affair. And then he was sent home, under bail not to leave Libberton, nor to communicate with any member of the family of Effie Deans. But if his experiences were to him incomprehensible, they were by no means so to the authorities. By piecing together his testimony with that of others, they rightly determined that the stranger in the King's park, the leader of the Porteous mob, and the father of Effie's child were one and the same person, namely, Geordie Robertson, comrade of Wilson the smuggler, and but lately escaped from the very prison in which Effie Deans was now confined. Accordingly, they planned to capture him that night at Muschat's Cairn. But before they could reach that place, Robertson had time to beg Jeanie to save her sister at the trial by testifying that Effie had disclosed to her her condition. Then he escaped.

Merely that slight falsehood would have removed the case of Effie Deans from under the letter of the cruel Scotch statute. But Jeanie, steadfastly, devoutly truthful, was utterly unable to placate her conscience in bearing false witness. Nor could the disappointment of Effie herself, whom, she was at last permitted to visit in the strong-room of the prison, alter her resolution. "He wanted that I suld be mansworn," she said. "I told him that I daurna swear to an untruth."

At the trial, when Jeanie was brought in to testify, Effie, in human weakness, cried, "O Jeanie, Jeanie, save me!" But when the solemn oath--"the truth to tell, and no truth to conceal, as far as she knew or was asked," was administered "in the name of God, and as the witness should answer to God at the great day of judgment," Jeanie, educated in deep reverence for the name of the Deity, was elevated above all considerations save those which she could, with a clear conscience, call Him to witness. And when the advocate came at length to the point of asking her, "what your sister said ailed her when you inquired," Jeanie could only answer, "Nothing." When the sentence was pronounced by the Doomsman, Effie's own eyes were the only dry ones in the court. "God forgive ye, my Lords," she said, "and dinna be angry wi' me for wishin' it--we a' need forgiveness."

The next morning found Jeanie Deans traveling alone and afoot on the long road to London "to see the Queen's face that gives grace," and beg for her sister's pardon. Her tartan screen served all the purposes of a riding-habit, and of an umbrella; a small bundle contained such changes of linen as were absolutely necessary. She had a few guineas, and a letter from Reuben Butler to the Duke of Argyle, whose grandfather had been under obligations of the deepest to the famous Bible Butler, grandfather of the poor assistant-school-master, now sick at Libberton.

She passed luckily, on the whole, through so weary and dangerous a journey, and at length, through the intercession of the duke, secured the pardon which she sought.