Produced by Al Haines.





                              *THE RHYMER*


                            By Allan McAulay



                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
                      NEW YORK :: :: :: :: :: 1900




                          COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

                         _All rights reserved_



                             TROW DIRECTORY
                    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
                                NEW YORK




                                  _TO
                            MARY AND JEANIE_




                              *THE RHYMER*



                              *CHAPTER I.*


In the year of grace 1787, Mr. Graham of The Mains, a worthy gentleman
and laird of the county of Perth, had a family of seven daughters.
This, though hardly at that date amounting to a social crime, was an
indiscretion in a man of few acres and modest income. Moreover, his
partner in life was even now a blooming and a buxom dame, capable of
adding further olive branches to the already over-umbrageous family
tree. She had, indeed, but lately performed the somewhat procrastinated
duty of adding an heir to the tale of the seven lasses of The Mains.
This was as it should be—but it was quite enough.

It was market day in the autumn of the year, and Mr. Graham, who farmed
his own land, had attended the weekly market at the country town of C——.
He was about to jog home in the dusk, when he was accosted by a
neighbour and fellow-laird.

’Hey—Mains!’ called out this personage.  ’Bide a bit, man!  It is in my
mind to do you and the mistress at The Mains a good turn.’  Mr. Graham
drew rein.

’It is not I that will miss a chance of that,’ he observed, in good
humour.

’Well, to be straight to the point,’ said his friend, ’I have a friend
biding with me at this time, one Jimmy Cheape—you may have heard me
speak of him, for he was a crony of our college days.  He is a man of
substance in the county of Fife—and he has a mind to be made acquainted
with you and your lady.’

’Ay, ay!’ ejaculated Mr. Graham.  ’A most laudable and polite wish,
truly, and not to be gainsaid!’

’He is in search of a wife,’ said the friend, slily, with a dig in the
ribs of the laird with the butt-end of his whip, ’and I bethought me
that a presentation to a man with seven daughters was the very thing to
be useful. So I promised it, and he jumped for it—as keen as a cock at a
groset.’

Mr. Graham pricked up his ears.

’That’s the wife’s business rather than mine,’ he observed, cautiously.

’Well! let the wife see him, but see him yourself first. Yonder he is.’
The speaker pointed to a burly form, standing with its back to the
friends.  ’I will bring him forward;’ and he proceeded to be as good as
his word.

When Mr. Cheape, of the county of Fife, presented his countenance to his
possible father-in-law of the future, he was found to be a gentleman of
decidedly mature age, already grey, deeply pitted with the smallpox, and
of no very alluring address.  His salutation was gruff, and his eye
shifty.

’To-morrow,’ he remarked, with rather alarming abruptness, immediately
after the form of introduction had been gone through, ’I will wait upon
Mrs. Graham at The Mains, at about eleven of the clock in the morning.’
With that he stumped off, for he added to his other peculiarities that
of being rather lame of one leg.

’Ah! he means business, you see!’ said the intermediary, admiringly.
The corners of Mr. Graham’s mouth, which had taken an upward inclination
at the first salutation of his friend, now drooped considerably, as he
gazed after his new acquaintance.

’He is somewhat well on in years,’ he remarked, dubiously, ’and there is
not that about him that will take a lass’s fancy.’

’Tut!’ said his friend, ’there is well-nigh one thousand a year about
him and his bonny bit place of Kincarley in the county of Fife; and he
has fine store of plate and plenishing of linen—so he tells me—as well
as the siller.  And _that_ takes a lass’s fancy fast enough, let me tell
you.’

’Well, maybe,’ said the laird, and he gave the reins a jog.  ’Good-night
to you, and you shall hear what betides.’

Mr. Graham jogged home along the muddy roads towards The Mains in a
meditative mood.  The thought of his seven daughters often sat heavy on
his mind.  He could not portion them, and, with or without portions, it
was difficult to imagine how they could marry or settle in a part of the
country so remote, that society could hardly be said to exist—daughters,
as they were, of a man who could not possibly afford to send them to
share the gaieties of the capital, or even of the distant county town.
Yet their marriage was a fixed idea with his wife, as he well knew—the
only idea, indeed, for their future which it was natural and proper, at
that day, for her to entertain.  Alison, their eldest girl, was almost
twenty, and at that age her mother had been already three years married
and had a thriving nursery; two others, well arrived at woman’s estate,
trod closely on her heels.  Very well indeed could the laird imagine
with what enthusiasm his partner would welcome the advent of a suitor,
and a wealthy suitor, too.  Yet he had vague doubts as to whether he
should have placed this temptation within reach of the eager mother of
seven daughters.  Perhaps it would have been better to have declined the
visit from Mr. Cheape once for all.  For although this obscure country
laird of old-time Scotland had a rough exterior, not differing greatly
from that of a farmer or yeoman of the better class, and though he rode
a horse that sometimes drew the plough, a clumsy figure in his
brass-buttoned blue coat and miry buckskins, yet he was a gentleman at
heart, and an honest man to boot.  He had been far from admiring the
exterior and address of Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, and compunction
assailed him when he thought of his Alison, or Kate, or Maggie,
subjected to the wooing of such a bear.  However, it was their mother’s
affair, he thought, with that comfortable shifting of responsibility on
to feminine shoulders which man has so gracefully inherited from Adam.
Besides, he looked forward to telling the news, being a bit of a
humorist in his own way.  So he whipped up the old horse into a heavy
trot.

The Mains lay low and sheltered in the heart of an uninteresting
agricultural corner of the Perthshire lowlands.  It was a low, rambling,
old house, of no pretensions—little better, indeed, than a farm—with
small windows in thick walls, and little low-ceilinged, ill-lighted
rooms.  There were some fine sycamores about it, the abode of an ancient
rookery, and a grand lime tree grew in the field in front of the
house—so very old that no one knew or could guess its age.  To the east
of The Mains lay its farm buildings, and beyond them again the
old-fashioned tangled garden.  Further, and around on all sides, were
thick spruce woods, where the wild pigeons crooned in the summer, and
there were always cones for the gathering.  Through gaps in the woods,
and from certain points of vantage on The Mains’s land, you could see
the Highland hills.  But to Alison and her little sisters these always
seemed far, far away—as though in another country altogether.

Lights in the deep-set windows welcomed the laird, and they were cheery
in the damp murk of the autumn evening.  When he was divested of his
mud-stiffened riding gear, he stretched himself at ease before the
crackling fire in his own sanctum, and his lady joined him.  It was a
long, low, dark room, lined with fusty books, which no one ever took
from the shelves.  The mantelpiece was of solid stone, washed a pale
green, and—chiseled roughly—just below the shelf was a motto, rudely
finished off with a clam-shell, the crest of the Grahams:—

    ’_In human life there’s nothing steadfast stands,_
    _Youth, Glorie, Riches fade.  Death’s sure at hand._’

So it said.  But neither the laird nor the lady of The Mains had any air
of paying attention to this warning of a somewhat despondent progenitor.

The mistress of the house was a handsome woman still, in spite of
household and maternal cares.  Above the middle height, and of comely
figure, she had hair still raven black, a glowing colour in her soft
unwithered cheek, and the light of a strong and unimpaired vitality in
her fine, though rather hard, black eye.  She had the complete empire
over her husband, which such a woman will ever have over men—a woman,
healthy, fresh, strong-willed, though not moulded, perhaps, in the most
refined of nature’s moulds.  He had married her in his youth—the
daughter of a small Glasgow lawyer, hardly, perhaps, his equal from a
social point of view.  But this was a failing soon overlooked in the
blooming, hearty, managing bride, who brought fresh blood to mingle with
the rather attenuated strain of a genteel Scottish family, which boasted
more lineage than looks.

The laird stretched himself to the genial warmth, and prepared to enjoy
the communication of his bit of news.

’A gentleman is to visit us here at The Mains to-morrow in the morning,
wife,’ he began, casually.

’Oh, ay,’ said Mrs. Graham, in the tone of one who expects no pleasant
surprises.  ’It’ll be Cultobanocher or Drumore, likely, to speir about
the grey mare and her foal.’

’Not at all,’ said the laird, ’but a stranger this time—one Cheape of
Kincarley, in the county of Fife, at this time abiding with Drumore.’

’And what will he be wanting with us?’ inquired the mistress of The
Mains.

’A wife, it would seem,’ said the laird, in a carefully-suppressed tone
of voice, but a twinkle in his eye.

’Tut, laird!’ said the lady, crossly, ’you’re joking, but none of your
jokes for me!’  She indeed believed the news too good to be true, and
was wroth with the laird for tantalising her on so tender a subject.

’I am not joking—not I,’ protested the husband and father.  ’’Tis the
living truth, as I sit here.  This fellow will be over here to-morrow at
noon to see if he cannot choose a wife among our seven lasses.’

Then followed, in answer to a rain of questions from the excited lady, a
full and particular account of Mr. Cheape, his means and estate—all,
indeed, that the laird could tell.  Mrs. Graham’s face was flushed, her
eyes sparkling; the corners of her full, firm mouth twitched with
eagerness.  Before the conversation was half over, she had the wedding
settled in her mind, with already a side-thought for the bride’s dress,
and such scanty plenishing as could be spared from The Mains.

’And to think that I was putting poor Ally down for an old maid!’ she
exclaimed, rapturously.  ’The girl with never a man after her yet, and
then to have this rich husband flung at her head!  She was born with a
silver spoon in her mouth, after all—poor Ally!’

’Bide a wee!’ said the laird, cautiously.  ’Wait till you see the man,
my woman!  A grey beard, even like myself, and speckled like a puddock
wi’ the cow-pox. I doubt the girl will get a scunner when she sees him.’

But his partner pounced upon his doubts with righteous anger.

’Laird,’ she said, ’if I see you putting the like o’ that into Ally’s
head, I’ll be at the end of my patience. Setting the lass against her
meat that gait—such foolery!’

’Lasses think of love—’ began the laird.

’Love, indeed!’ almost screamed the lady; ’and what right has _she_ to
think of love, and her almost twenty, and never a jo to her name yet, or
a man’s kiss but her father’s on the cheek o’ her?  When _I_ was her
age, well knew I what love was; but _she_—let her thank her stars she’s
got this chance, and needna pine a spinster all her days!’

’Well, well,’ said the laird, uncomfortably, ’manage it your own way.
I’ll keep my fingers out of the pie. And sort _you_ Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley when he comes to-morrow, for I’ll ha’ none of him!’

His lady, finding he would respond on the subject no longer, bustled off
to her daughter.




                             *CHAPTER II.*


’Ally, Ally!’ she called in her clear, strong voice all over the house,
’where are you, Ally?’ and through the darkening passages she went in
eager search of her eldest daughter.  The seven lasses of The Mains were
variously disposed of in the old warren of a house—in the lesser rooms,
in the attics under the roof, reached by a spiral wooden stair, on which
their young feet clattered up and down from early morn till early
bed-time.

At this moment Alison was putting to bed her two-year-old brother, the
’young laird,’ and apple of all eyes at The Mains.  She sat with him in
her arms at the tiny window of the nursery and crooned him to sleep, and
as she sang she looked out at the murky red sky behind the plane trees,
at the rooks circling and cawing on their way to bed, at the old lime, a
towering mass of black shadow in the gloaming.  This was the scene that
Alison looked upon continually every evening of her life—this young
woman without lovers and innocent of kisses.

Mrs. Graham was breathing rather quickly by the time she stood at the
nursery door, and her first elated sentences were somewhat breathless.

’Braw news your father has brought home for you to-night, Ally!’ she
began.

’Wheesht, mother!’ said Alison, ’you will waken Jacky.’

’Ah!’ said Mrs. Graham, knowingly, ’you’ll soon have done with Jacky
now!’

’Sure,’ said Alison, lifting round grey eyes to her mother’s face, and
pressing Jacky’s head close to her shoulder, ’I’ve no wish to be done
with Jacky;’ and she put a kiss on the boy’s curls.

’Tut!’ said Mrs. Graham, impatiently, ’you might have little Jackys of
your own.  Think you never of that, Ally?’  Alison blushed in the dark:
it was not a fair question.  Jacky was so sound asleep by this time that
the voices did not wake him, and she rose, laid him on the wooden cot
beside her own bed, and happed the clothes about him with deft movements
full of a natural motherliness.

’Come down now, Ally,’ said her mother, ’I want you.’

Alison obeyed her mother, as hitherto she had always done, in the simple
management of her life.

’You are to get a man, Ally, after all,’ said the lady, impressively.
’A husband, and a good one.  Isn’t that the brawest news ever you’ve
heard yet?’

Alison was not quite certain, but there is no doubt, simple soul that
she was, that she was impressed and awed, and that a flutter disturbed
her quiet heart. Alison had never read even the few romances of her day,
and knew nothing about love; and although she sang, in her sweet,
untrained voice, as she went about the house, the love-songs of her
country, often piercing in their pathos and passion—their language was a
sealed book to her.  True, Kirsty the dairy-maid had a lover who put an
arm round her willing waist, and Alison had seen the pair walking so, in
many a gloaming, by the gate of the cow-park.  Would _she_ have a lover
now, and an arm round her waist?  Mrs. Graham did not dwell on such
things in the present interview with her daughter; but she spoke of Mr.
Cheape of Kincarley with solemn impressiveness; of his house and his
lands, and his plate and his linen, and Alison was no unwilling
listener.  It was a calm-blooded, unawakened nature, this of Alison’s
yet, moulded in the dim monotony of obscure country life, in daily
performance of humble duties; a heart stirred yet by no passion more
mastering than a sister’s matter-of-course love for other sisters, and
the little brother, born so late.  She was a sensible, steady girl, yet
only a girl, after all; and I do not say, that night, as she lay down in
her narrow, hard bed beside the softly-breathing baby-brother, that she
did not dream of a bridegroom and a wedding-dress.

Next morning, at the usual hour, Alison attended to one of her
accustomed duties, the care of a flock of young turkeys, in a meadow by
the farm.  They were a late brood, and the object of Alison’s most
anxious solicitude.  This morning her mother had commanded her to put on
a better gown than usual, and to place upon her curls a fine mob-cap of
lace and cambric, whose flapping frills annoyed her.  It was an antique
piece of finery, belonging to her mother’s girlhood rather than to hers;
but fashions at The Mains were not advanced.  Alison’s looks were not
thought greatly of by her parents.  She lacked her mother’s brilliant
colouring and bold, black-eyed beauty.  She was rather pale, indeed,
though with a healthy, even pallor that a touch of cold wind or a little
exertion easily brightened into a pleasing softness of pink.  Her hair,
which would never grow beyond her shoulders for length, curled all about
her ears and neck—tendrils borrowed from the stubborn, reddish locks of
her father, only they were not red, but of a light, sunny brown.  Her
face had the calmness and strength of clear-cut features, and she was
tall beyond the common, well and strongly made.  Not an unpleasing
figure at all was she, as she stood calling to her turkeys, the autumn
sun catching at her hair, and shining in her grey eyes.  Yet the hearts
of her parents misgave them, as they saw her, lest she should fail to
find favour in the eyes of Mr. Cheape of Kincarley.

For Mr. Cheape had arrived, and, with laudable punctuality, had stumped
into the library, where the laird, who had been talked round the night
before into a temporary acquiescence in his suit, waited to receive him.
To the pair, presently entered the lady of the house in her Sunday silk,
and genteelest manners.  A gruff nod to the laird, and a stiff
inclination to his dame, was all the salutation vouchsafed by Mr.
Cheape, who then stood hitting at his boots with the whip in his hand,
and grunting at intervals.

’’Tis a fine morning for the time of the year, and grand for lifting the
neeps,’ began the laird, with a cough.

Mr. Cheape snorted.  ’I’m not here,’ he remarked, with plainness, ’to
discuss the weather and turnips. I’m come, ma’am, to be presented to
your daughters;’ and he ignored the laird, and addressed himself to the
lady.

’To my Daughter Alison, doubtless?’ said Mrs. Graham, with polite
firmness.

’Hum,’ said Mr. Cheape, ’I understood there were seven of them.’

’We are blessed with seven girls, indeed,’ said Mrs. Graham,
majestically.  ’But our daughter Alison is the only one from whom we
could think of parting ourselves at this time.  The rest’—coolly—’are
bairns.’

’I should like to see them all,’ objected the suitor, who felt himself
being ’done.’

’You will see Alison,’ said Mrs. Graham, composedly. ’You must e’en take
them as the Lord gave them—or want!’ she added, with spirit.  (’To
think,’ as she said to her husband afterwards, ’if I hadna been canny—he
might ha’ taken Susie or Maggie, as likely as not—and left Ally on our
hands!’)

’Mr. Cheape is pleased to be plain and to the point,’ here interrupted
the laird, not without sarcasm in his tone, which, however, was quite
lost upon his visitor. ’We have, indeed, seven lasses, and little to
give them, sir, and cannot therefore be over nice in the matter of their
wooing.  Alison is at her turkeys in the east meadow, wife.  Supposing
we conduct this gentleman to the spot, and see if he is inclined to make
a bargain of it?’

So Alison’s fate approached her in this quaint fashion, Mr. Cheape
stumping at her mother’s side, and the laird bringing up the rear, with
a comical eye on the suitor’s burly back.  They paused at a gate where
Alison could not see them, but they could see her in a patch of sun,
with the turkeys picking and cheeping at her feet.  ’Is that the one?’
said Mr. Cheape, pointing at the object of his wooing with his whip.

’Our daughter Alison,’ said Mrs. Graham, complacently, with an
introductory wave of the hand.  ’But twenty, come the New Year time,’
for she much feared that Alison looked older.

Mr. Cheape seemed lost in thought and calculation. ’A knowledge of
fowls,’ he said at last, heavily, ’is useful in a female.’

’’Tis indispensable in the lady of a country mansion,’ said Mrs. Graham,
cheerfully.  ’And none beats Alison at that, let me tell you!’

’Alison, come here!’ called her father.  Alison turned round and obeyed.
When she approached the group which held her suitor, she curtseyed, but
the behaviour of Mr. Cheape at this juncture was so singular and so
disconcerting, that there was no time for a formal introduction between
the two.  Whether it was the wide, all-too-frankly astonished gaze of
Alison’s grey eyes, or the young lady’s imposing height, or simply a fit
of bashfulness that overpowered him, cannot be said. But merely the fact
can be given, that at this delicate juncture the gallant wooer, with a
fiercer grunt than usual, and some muttered exclamation which no one
caught, incontinently turned tail and fled towards the house, the
distracted matron almost running in his wake.  Alison and her father
were left together.

’Is that Mr. Cheape, sir?’ enquired the daughter, gravely.

’Ay, lass,’ said the laird.  ’’Tis even the great Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley, in the county of Fife!’

Alison said nothing, but with her chin in the air, and lilting the
flounces of her good dress above the wet grass she went back to her
turkeys.  Her father laughed his jolly laugh.  ’He will have none of
you, Ally, that’s plain!’ he called after her.  ’So don’t you be losing
your heart to his bonny face, I warn you!’




                             *CHAPTER III.*


But so very far was the laird of The Mains from being accurate in his
assertion of Mr. Cheape’s indifference to his daughter’s charms, that
when he re-entered the library, which he presently did, he found that
gentleman and his wife in the closest confabulation, the subject of
their discourse being no other than that of a contract of marriage
between Miss Graham of The Mains, and Mr. Cheape of Kincarley.  The
latter gentleman appeared now to be much easier of demeanour.

’These matters,’ he observed, almost jocularly, ’are better settled
without the presence of the lady!’

’But, God bless my soul!’ cried the laird, ’you hardly saw the girl, or
she you—’

’Oh, she’ll do, she’ll do,’ said Mr. Cheape, with an agreeable grunt,
but an air of hurry.  ’An’ now I must away: good-day, good-day!’  He
stuck out a snuffy hand, which Mrs. Graham clutched with warmth. ’Sir,’
he continued, addressing the laird, ’if you will be pleased to honour me
with your company at dinner to-morrow night at four, at the King’s Arms
in C——, we can discuss this matter at our ease.  I am in a position to
act handsomely on my part, as I have informed your lady.  But ’tis
better to discuss such matters between gentlemen.  Good-day t’you.’  He
had hurried off, and had scrambled upon his horse at the door, with some
assistance from that animal’s abundant mane, and was jogging down the
approach, before the open-mouthed laird had found time or presence of
mind to accept or reject the invitation to dinner.

’Saw ever man the like of that!’ ejaculated the master of the house,
gazing after man and horse.

’Saw ever woman the like o’ you!’ retorted his spouse, furiously,
’staring like a stuck pig after an honest gentleman that’s done you the
honour to speir your penniless daughter, instead of shaking him warmly
by the hand!’

’I’d as lief shake the tatty-bogle by the hand,’ said the laird,
provokingly.  ’Wife, you’re clever, but you’ll never get Ally to stomach
yon,’ and he indicated the disappearing Mr. Cheape with a derisive
finger.

’Will I not?’ retorted the lady, with a defiant eye, ’ye sumph, John, to
take the bread out of a lassie’s mouth like that, afore she’s bitten on
it.  Ye are even a bigger fool than I thocht ye!’

With such plainness was the much-tried mother of many daughters driven
to address their exasperating father.  The laird laughed: but then and
there a serious marital tussle began, the kind in which the laird was
never victorious.  Mr. Graham announced that he would not dine with Mr.
Cheape to-morrow night, or any other: that it was useless, that there
was no object in his putting himself about to do so, in as much as that
Mr. Cheape’s proposals were preposterous, and not for a moment to be
seriously entertained.  Mrs. Graham, on the other hand, asserted that,
dine with Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, at four of the clock to-morrow
evening at the King’s Arms in C——, he, Mr. Graham of The Mains, in his
best blue coat and ruffled shirt, with powder in his hair—most
unquestionably would, and should. Gradually, the laughing mood went out
of the laird. For his lady intrenched upon money matters, and got him on
the raw there, as only a wife or a creditor can. The laird at this time
was an embarrassed man, and very eager to be quit of his embarrassments.
Previous to the birth of his son, and when it was thought he would not
have an heir, but that the entail, at his death, would send The Mains to
a distant cousin, he had been careless of money, and had considerably
burdened the estate.  Now it was the wish of his heart to lift these
burdens, and leave an unencumbered inheritance to the young laird; and
if it was his wish, it was his wife’s passion.

’What is to become of these lasses?  Are they all to hang upon their
brother?’ was the eternal burden of her cry.  Twenty-four hours of
unremitted harping upon this subject, under all its aspects, reduced the
laird to a frame of mind in which he would have dined with Beelzebub,
had the dinner promised him a solution of his difficulties, and peace
with his wife.  Needless to say, therefore, he dined with Mr. Cheape, of
Kincarley, on the appointed day and hour; and, moreover, did not come
home until past two o’clock on the following morning.

For, let it be remembered, these were the jolly days of the bottle, when
a man was no man who could not carry his port, and carry it home, too.
The laird of The Mains was no drunkard, but he had a head of iron and a
stomach of leather in the good old style of our ancestors. He was a
four-bottle-man with the best of them, and he chanced to find in Mr.
Cheape of Kincarley just such another hardened elderly cask as himself.
The two sat hour after hour, swallowing glass after glass, at first in
gloomy silence; but presently each began to mellow in his own way.  The
laird’s tongue was loosened, and he began to talk about his daughters
and his difficulties. Mr. Cheape lost his shyness, became genial and
generous; at any time, to do him justice, he was a man not niggardly in
money-matters.  The settlements he proposed to make upon his bride were
more than handsome: to the impoverished laird they sounded princely. And
it is a fact—such are the wonder-working powers of the rosy god of
wine—that before the night was out, not only were the preliminaries of a
marriage contract agreed upon, but the laird had become a borrower on
his own account, and Mr. Cheape a lender, of certain sums that the laird
had been at his wits’ end, for many a day, to lay his hands on.  When he
got home, which he managed to do upon his horse with the utmost
propriety, he was not precisely in a condition to explain complicated
money transactions with absolute perspicacity.  But the morning brought
explanations which were eminently satisfactory to the wife of his bosom.
Certain twinges of conscience indeed assailed the laird, and during the
morning’s narration, he was not quite so comfortable in his mind as he
had been over-night. What about Alison’s part of the bargain?  But he
reflected that he was the father of seven penniless girls, and must
harden his heart.

Alison, meanwhile, made fun of Mr. Cheape in the attics, among her
sisters.  True, there was a prick of disappointment at her heart, for
her mother had dangled a wedding before her eyes, and a wedding meant a
lover, of course.  But the happy heart of twenty is sound and light, and
by next morning Alison had forgotten her disappointment, and Mr. Cheape
along with it.  Her mother’s early summons gave her no misgiving.

’Come with me to the big press in the east passage, Alison,’ said the
dame, jingling a bunch of keys, and with the light of battle in her eye.
’’Tis time we looked at something there, and I have a mind to have a
talk with you, besides.’  And at this Alison’s heart did certainly
jump—not pleasantly.

The big press in the east passage smelt agreeably of dried lavender and
rose leaves.  Here was store of fine linen, and a few of the more valued
articles of personal apparel.

’Get out my wedding-silk, Ally,’ commanded Mrs. Graham.  Alison reached
up long arms, and got down the silk, which was laid by, with layers of
fine muslin between its folds.  It was a superb brocade of sweet floral
bunches on a ground of greenish-grey; the flounces of Mechlin on it were
fragile as a fairy’s web, and ivory-tinted with age.  Mrs. Graham
fingered and examined the fabric; then she said, significantly:

’So, ’tis you that’s going to rob me of my fine silk, after all, Ally?
’Tis just as it should be—my eldest girl!’  Alison shook in her shoes,
for she knew well that determined inflection of the maternal voice.

’I don’t understand, mother,’ she managed to stammer.

’Tuts, nonsense!’ said Mrs. Graham, sharply, ’you’re no fool, Ally: you
understand fine.  That honest gentleman you saw yesterday is to marry
you, and lucky you are to get him!’

’Sure, not _that_ man, mother!’ cried poor Alison.

’And why not that man, miss?’ retorted the matron with a rising colour
and an angry eye.

’He’s as old as my father,’ blurted out the reluctant bride, ’and has no
liking for me, for-bye!’

’And why should he ask you when he’s seen you, if he has no liking for
you?’ demanded the matron.

’Because no one else will have him, likely,’ said Alison, in
desperation.  She had never spoken in rebellion to her mother before,
and the effort it cost her was truly desperate.  ’If I have to take that
man,’ she plunged on recklessly, ’I’ll be the laughing-stock of the
countryside and of my very sisters!’

’Alison,’ said Mrs. Graham, in a more reasoning tone, for she felt her
own strength, ’you are a silly lassie, and just don’t know the grand
chance you’re wanting to throw away.  Think what it will be to be a
married woman, wi’ a house and man of your own—a man of substance,
too—and lord it over a whole countryside! Why, here, Ally, you’re little
better than a nurse-girl and a hen-wife!’

’And I’d rather be a nurse-girl and a hen-wife all my days, than married
to that old man,’ cried Alison, with a rising sob.  ’He’ll neither love
me, nor I him!’

’_Love!_’ cried Mrs. Graham, with a blaze of fury, ’and who taught _you_
to speak of love, and you twenty, and never a lover near you!  Set _you_
up to be saucy, indeed! I had had my choice long afore I was your age,
and might ha’ turned up a neb at a decent man, maybe.  But for the likes
of you, it’s very different, let me tell you!’

’You lived in a town,’ said poor Alison, in weak defence, ’and saw the
men.’

’Town or no town makes no difference,’ said Mrs. Graham with lofty
superiority.  ’The men come down the lum to likely lasses, and them
that’s not likely may be thankful to get a chance at all.  What’s to
become of you all,’ she continued, her tone of reasoning degenerating
into the high voice of the scold, ’you seven muckle, useless lasses?
Are you all to sorn on Jacky, poor wee man, for all his days, and take
the very bread out of his mouth?’

’I would not sorn on Jacky,’ said Alison, with a quivering lip.

’Then get you a husband, and no nonsense!’ said Mrs. Graham.  ’’Tis,
indeed, a settled business,’ she went on, coolly, ’settled by your
father.’

’Oh, I’ll not believe it!’ cried Alison, fairly in tears. ’Let me see my
father first.’

’That you shall not,’ said Mrs. Graham with force. Well she knew the
inevitable effects of a daughter’s tears on that weak man.  It became an
indispensable thing, in fact, that Alison should _not_ see her father,
and to that end firm measures must at once be taken.

’Up you get to your room, and stay there, miss, till you are of a better
mind,’ said the stern mother of seven, who did not stick at trifles.
She chased Alison up the garret stair, shut the door on her, and turned
the key.

’A few days o’ _that_,’ she said to herself triumphantly, ’and she’ll be
ready to jump at Mr. Cheape—honest man.’




                             *CHAPTER IV.*


I no not wish, in the very opening of her story, to give the idea that
Alison Graham was a girl of poor spirit. Perhaps she should have turned
upon her mother on the stair, or, at any rate, stood up for her freedom
with a bolder front.  But the habit of Alison’s life, up to this point,
had been obedience, and, in the days of which I write, parental
authority was no matter to be trifled with.  It wanted a hundred years
yet to the birth of the Revolted Daughter, and to Alison, even the tacit
form of resistance which she was about to offer to her parents’ wishes,
seemed a very terrible and almost wicked line of conduct.  She sat down
on the creepie-stool by the little window, where she was wont to sing
Jacky to sleep every night, and was too much puzzled and too heavy at
the heart to cry.  Presently her sisters came and tirled at the door,
wanting to know what was the matter; but the key was safely in the
maternal pocket, and Alison shut off from comfort and communion of these
friendly spirits.  Then her tears began to flow, in very pity for
herself; but she was quite determined that she would have none of Mr.
Cheape.

’The lass will never be got to thole him, I doubt,’ said the laird, with
a sigh.  Now that there was a matter of money between him and Mr.
Cheape, his position was complicated, and he could no longer openly side
with his daughter.

’Leave that to me,’ said Mrs. Graham, grimly.  To her mind it was like
the breaking in of a colt or filly—a fling up, a few kicks over the
traces, and a little restiveness at first, to be treated with a firm
hand, judiciously low diet, and a new bit.

’She’s saucy,’ said the mother of seven.  ’She’ll be cured of that in a
day or two!’

’Do not be hard on poor Ally,’ said the laird, sorely pricked with
compunction.

’’Tis for her own good,’ the lady replied, with no doubt upon that point
whatsoever.

In this awkward predicament it was lucky that the gallant wooer of Miss
Graham of The Mains gave no trouble.  Mr. Cheape of Kincarley having, in
his opinion, safely secured a bride, was, in the meantime, returned to
the county of Fife, doubtless to make preparation for the impending
change in his condition.  He required no silly assurances or fruitless
antenuptial interviews with the lady herself.

Thus Alison remained a prisoner in her little room, deprived of all her
daily tasks and little pleasures, and of all good cheer of warmth and
light and company. The actual prisoner’s fare of bread and water was
indeed not hers, but clots of half-cold porridge and a sup of skim-milk
twice a day are not enticing provender, nor greatly calculated to keep
up a flagging spirit.  Her mother was her only jailer, and with her own
hands dunted down this unsavoury dog’s mess before her, with the
unceasing jibe upon her tongue—angry, persuasive, mocking, cruel, all in
turn.  The weather, meanwhile, without doors, had broken for the season,
and the days were short and dark and dreary.  The rain lashed the little
deep-set window, and Alison sat shivering beside it, and listening to
the howling wind, which whirled the dead leaves off the trees and drove
the protesting rooks from shelter to shelter.  She was a girl of great
good sense and a clear head.  She could see her mother’s point of view
well enough.  There were seven of them—she and her sisters—and what was
to become of them if they did not marry?  She had had no lovers,
therefore it was quite true she had no right to be saucy.  But to marry
Mr. Cheape!  Her gorge rose at the thought of him, of the ugly, pitted
face, the grizzled, scrubby beard, the uncouth form and fashion of the
man.  Surely that was not to be expected of her?  No!  So Alison held
out, and the dreary days dragged on, till all but a week had passed.

Then, at dusk one night, when her heart was faint within her, and her
body faint too, for lack of fresh air and wonted food, her father,
having purloined the key, came creeping up to her attic—very quietly,
good man (indeed, upon his stocking soles)—so that the mistress, engaged
in hustling the maids in a distant laundry, should have no chance of
hearing.

’’Tis a pity, all this, Ally,’ he said, in the dark.

Alison did not trust her voice to answer.

’Were your mother not so doom-set on it,’ went on the laird—’and sure
she ought to know what is best for lasses—I would say never mind, and
let Mr. Cheape go hang.  But she’s set on it, sure and fast, Ally; and
maybe it’s not just such a bad thing as it looks.’  He stopped and
coughed; nothing but his daughter’s quick breathing answered him.  ’He’s
not a bonny man, I will say,’ he continued; ’but ’tisn’t always the
handsome faces and the fine manners that pay best in the end, Ally.  Mr.
Cheape is most handsome in his dealings if he’s not so in his looks;
and, on my soul, I think he would do well by a wife.’  No answer yet.
’You would not help to ruin Jacky, would you, Ally?’ urged the laird,
pathetically.

’Indeed, no,’ said Alison at last, in a low voice.

’But ruin him you will in the future, if you let this chance go by,’
said the laird more firmly, for he was conscious of his advantage.  ’Mr.
Cheape is a monied man, and generous with his money, and we have
profited by that already.  I have taken a loan from him, at a nominal
interest, which has greatly eased my circumstances; but I cannot hold to
that if you give Mr. Cheape the go-by, Ally.’

’I didn’t know of that, sir,’ said Alison.

’’Tis true,’ said the laird, ’and not over much to my credit, for it
seems like the selling of you, lass.  But ’tis for your own good in the
end, too, I swear, or I would hold back yet.  What’s your future, Ally,
but to feed the hens?  And when we’re gone—your mother and I—to feed
them to Jacky’s wife, and she perhaps not so willing to let you.
There’s not much lies before you here, my lassie.’  It seemed not,
indeed.

’Then there’s all your sisters—poor, silly bodies,’ pursued the laird,
who knew his ground, in Alison’s nature, better than did his wife,
because it was akin to his own weaker flesh.  ’What a chance for them in
this braw marriage of yours!  You can give them a lift, poor lasses,
such as we never can....  ’Tis not to ourselves alone we live in this
world, Ally!’

’No, sir,’ said Alison, quietly.  Then, all of a sudden, she reached for
the tinder-box, and, rising, lit the little cruisey lamp upon the wall.
By its weak flame, her father could see her standing before him, very
tall and straight, her face very white, the cheeks a little hollow with
a week of fasting, and the tumbled curls about her broad, soft brows.

’I will have to take Mr. Cheape, sir, I see,’ she said, a little
doggedly, ’since it is best for everybody, and I will—if I _can_.’

’Now that’s a sensible lassie!’ cried the laird, ’and how pleased your
mother will be!’  And, indeed, his own life, from that lady’s
displeasure, had been little, if at all, pleasanter than Alison’s for
the past week. ’Come, Ally, kiss your father!  Things will be better
than you think for, and Cheape a better husband than many a young
spark.’

Alison was about to do as she was bid, when her quick ear caught a sound
outside, and she started away from her father’s arm.

’Listen, sir!’ she cried, ’didn’t you hear the sound of wheels?  It
seems like a chaise driving up.... Father,’ she clutched the laird’s
sleeve, and turned upon him a piteous face, white with fear, ’it will
not be Mr. Cheape come back?’

The laird shook her off, crossly; that frightened face gave a horrid
prick to his conscience.

’Tut, girl,’ he said, ’don’t be a fool!  Mr. Cheape, indeed!  ’Tis you
have been in disgrace, and don’t know the news; indeed, I had forgotten
it myself. Your mother has a friend—’tis a Mistress Maclehose of
Edinburgh—comes to lie here for a night on her way back to the town,
from a visit.  Fine and put about your mother’s been—to get the best
room ready, and a dinner cooked, and all the best china out, and the
silver candlesticks and the tea-set, and all without you.  I was for
having you down, but deil a bit!  She’s thrawn, is your mother, Ally,
when the notion takes her!  But it will be all right now—and there, I
must away to bid welcome to this fine Edinburgh madam.  She’ll set you
all the fashions, Ally, and so cheer up!’  And the laird hustled off,
well pleased with himself in the end.  Ally listened to his heavy
footsteps on the wooden stair, but did not follow him.




                              *CHAPTER V.*


It had been on the second or third day of Alison’s incarceration that
the mistress of The Mains had been thrown into a flutter by receiving a
dispatch from her almost forgotten friend, Nancy Maclehose, craving a
night’s hospitality for old acquaintance’ sake.  The country lady now
wished to make a good show before the urban one.  She could not rival
her in the fashions, or in modish gossip, but she could exhibit good
store of silver and fine linen, and could set a feast before her of all
the country delicacies.

’It’ll be a queer thing if I’m not upsides wi’ Nancy Maclehose,’ she
remarked, ’for all the _belle_ that Nancy was; it didna bring her much.’

’Ay, ay, I remember her fine,’ said the laird, ’nothing but a lassock
when we married, wife—but "pretty Miss Nancy" then, though hardly ten.
I mind her well when we were coortin’, in the old Glasgow days—pretty
Miss Nancy!’

’There’ll be none o’ the "Miss" and little of the "pretty" about her
_now_, I’se warrant,’ said Mrs. Graham, with meaning, ’a wife, and not a
wife, and a widow, and not a widow.  There’s little to be proud o’
there, that _I_ can see.’

’Ay, they discorded, to be sure,’ said the laird.  ’Yet he was a fine
sprig, young Maclehose, too.  Ye’ll mind all the clash about their
coortin’ you got from Glasgow? That was a neat trick of his about the
coach—as neat a trick as ever a young buck played, to my thinking.’

’I never heed such clash,’ said the lady, severely.

’Hoots!’ said the laird.  ’It was when miss was sent to Edinburgh to the
school, being become too forward for her age, as all were well agreed,
and Maclehose could not get acquaint with her, for all he had tried.  So
he ups and takes every place in the coach she was going by to Edinburgh,
and so he got the lass to himself, and a bonny way to do it, too!’

’And what was the end of it all?’ said Mrs. Graham, witheringly.  ’If ye
must tell thae tales before these lasses,’—they were, indeed, seated at
table, and six pairs of ears were taking in with avidity these
indiscreet revelations of love’s audacity,—’it ill beseems you, the
father of a family, to forget the lesson that’s aye in them! But _I’ll_
tell ye what came o’ all that havering trash o’ coortin’ in a coach,
fast enough!  They hadn’t been married five years, when off goes the
fine young buck to live among savages at the West Indies, and leaves his
wife and bairns to charity at home.  And that’s love, misses!  Love!’
she continued, in tones of immeasurable scorn, ’love, indeed!  A guid
stick is a better name for it, for that’s what it comes to in the end as
often as not.  I e’en wish your silly sister Alison was down here this
minute to get this fine love story!  It would do her good!’

And the mother of seven daughters, having pointed a moral with due
emphasis, went off to count napkins out of the linen press.  The six
younger Miss Grahams then relaxed the solemnity of their listening
countenances, and chattered among themselves of this tale of a lover and
a coach, with a great impatience to behold its heroine.

That lady, meanwhile, in no very heroine-like mood, was being jolted
towards The Mains in an old country post-chaise—an interminable
cross-country journey along muddy by-roads, in the lashing rain and wind
of the autumn day.  She almost repented the impulse which had induced
her to come out of her way to renew acquaintance with the friends of her
girlhood.  ’It’s little but sad memories I’m like to get for my pains,’
said she.

Stiff with long travel, cold, weary, and even wet, for the deluging rain
dripped through the covering of the crazy old trap, she was landed at
the door of The Mains in the murk of the evening, just as the laird
descended the front stair from his daughter’s room.  What he saw was a
little, slight woman’s figure, covered from head to foot in a black hood
and mantle, stepping in out of the dark, and receiving a genteel welcome
from his excellent lady.

’Come in, come in,’ the lady of The Mains was saying, standing in the
hall, in her best silk dress, flanked by a shy daughter or two.  ’You
are welcome, Mrs. Maclehose—_Nancy_, it used to be!’

’It must be "Nancy" still, surely!’  So sweet a voice it was that spoke,
that the sudden contrast to the country lady’s hearty tones was like the
change from a trumpet to some delicate stringed instrument that thrills
upon the ear.  It was quite drowned in the laird’s jovial welcome which
ensued.

’Ay, it’s not only "Nancy,"’ said he, ’but "Pretty Miss Nancy"—we’ve not
forgotten that, ma’am, not we!’

’Ah, little of that now, Mr. Graham!’ and the speaker sighed and smiled;
not a very deep sigh, and a very engaging smile.  Mrs. Graham had now
removed the travelling mantle from her guest’s shoulders, and a dainty
little figure of a woman stood forth, less considerably than the average
height, and slender, but with a full slenderness that gave no hint of
angularity or meagreness. Mrs. Maclehose, at eight-and-twenty, was not
of the _beauté éclatante_ which the public expects in one who is known
to posterity as the idol of a love-poet.  Hers was the kind of beauty
that did not suit all tastes; for some, her mouth was too big, for
others, her eyes made too much play, and these would say that she ogled.
It was a fascination that she had rather than beauty, aided by her sweet
voice, and soft, flattering ways; and over all there seemed to be a kind
of innocent voluptuousness, which allured, even though you resented its
allurement. Withal, her little person was daintiness itself; an oval,
small face, velvety, soft, dark eyes, lips of a pomegranate redness that
parted in bewitching smiles, little hands and dainty feet.  Suddenly,
beside her, the buxom lady of The Mains seemed coarse and blowsy, and
all her rosy daughters to have wondrous clumsy waists, and thick red
wrists.  Such was Nancy Maclehose, on the very eve of her apotheosis—the
’_gloriously amiable fine woman_’ of the enamoured Burns, the ’Clarinda’
of so many a bombastic love-letter, and the ’Nanny’ of songs that are
sweet for all time.

But ’Clarinda’ had not met her ’Sylvander’ at this date, and was merely
a little grass-widow, in rather doubtful circumstances, and a guest at
The Mains.  She tuned herself to her company with natural adaptability,
and endured with heroism the massive hospitalities of a provincial
evening.  She was docile with the mistress of the house, and bewitching
with its master; went through an introduction to six shy country girls,
with a pretty word for each.  She praised the china, and envied the
silver; vowed no turkey ever tasted half so good, nor home-brewed ginger
cordial half so luscious. And she meant it all, though all the time her
delicate travel-tired limbs ached for bed, and she felt all the worst
shivering premonitions of a bad cold; the chilly strangeness of a
new-comer was upon her, and the low-roofed, rambling old house seemed
dark and draughty and comfortless.  The evening ended with a toddy-bowl,
of which the contents forced the tears into her eyes; then the
long-suffering guest was ushered into the glories of the best bedroom,
and left in peace.

The firelight danced upon the walls, and upon the chintz hangings, with
their shiny floral pattern.  The best bed yawned for its occupant, but
now she seemed in no mood to succumb to its allurements.  She pulled a
pink wrapper out of her trunk and put it on; and then out of the same
receptacle came a certain book, and with this on her knee, and her chair
pulled close to the fire, she sank into a fit of musing.  The book was a
manuscript book, elaborately bound, and fastening with a lock and key.
It held verses; the fair reader conned a morsel, then with a pencil
added or erased a word, her lips moving the while, and her smooth brow
puckered into the frown of composition.  Most assuredly the best bedroom
at The Mains had never held a poetess before. Her soft mouth smiled to
itself, and her great dark eyes flashed and shone in the firelight.  The
muse apparently was gracious.  Presently, however, a sharp sneeze
brought the lady’s romantic meditations to a prosaic ending.

’As I’m alive,’ said the little woman to herself, with a shiver, ’I have
an influenza coming—and no wonder!’  She got into the high bed and
slipped between the glossy linen sheets, but then she could not sleep.
The old house slept, but with many creakings to a super-sensitive ear:
the whisper of the wind among the eaves and in the ivy, the rattle of a
casement, the tinkling fall of ashes on the hearth.  Now an owl hooted
as it fled through the night, and now a rat scampered in the wall. Then
a strange, puzzling noise teased the ear,—a sort of _sliddering_
sound,—she could not guess its origin.  It was only Alison’s pigeons on
the roof, trying to get a foot-hold on the slanting slates, and then
slip, slipping down with an angry croon and flutter, to scramble up
again, and so _da capo_.

’Perdition take the night and the noises!’ muttered the guest, with a
flounce among the sheets.  Then she curled herself up, and felt a
delicious drowsiness creeping on; but at that very instant came a new
and unmistakable disturbance.  Somebody in the room overhead began to
sob and cry.




                             *CHAPTER VI.*


Nancy sat up in bed with a jerk, never less asleep in her life.

’Now, is there some ghost in this old barrack?’ she asked herself.  But
the sound was too material for that; such a hard sobbing never came from
ghostly throat.

’This is intolerable,’ muttered Mrs. Maclehose; ’I cannot lie and listen
to it; ’tis inhuman.’  She got out of bed and slid her feet into little
slippers that had high red heels and no backs to them.  She threw on her
wrapper, and taking the rush-light in her hand, opened the door softly
and listened.  The passage was dark and cold.  To her left, a wooden
stair led upwards.  From that region the sobbing came.  ’’Tis some
fellow-creature in distress,’ thought the kind little guest.  ’Most
likely but some servant-lass in a scrape, and in terror of her mistress:
God knows I’d be the same.  I’ll go up—a comforting word never came
amiss.’  She set forth, but the red heels made such a tap, tapping on
the bare boards, that she was terrified; she slipped off her shoes and
crept bare-foot up the stair. She knocked at the first door she came to,
which was the right one.  The sobbing ceased at once, but no one
answered.  Then she lifted the latch softly and looked in.

What she saw was the bare little room with the deep-set window where
Alison slept with her little brother. The child’s cot was beside her
bed, empty, for her misbehaviour had deprived her of Jacky.  Alison sat
up in bed, so dazed by the light that she could scarcely see the little
figure with bare feet, and in the pink wrapper, with the neat lacy
night-cap over the dark hair.  Nancy could much more advantageously see
a grey-eyed girl whose face was wet with tears, and whose childish curls
tumbled about her neck and ears.

’Now, this is no servant-lass,’ said Mrs. Maclehose to herself, and
then, aloud, ’My love, don’t be frightened, I beg!  I heard someone
crying in the night, and thought I might be helpful.  If ’tis an
intrusion, forgive me, and I’ll go away.’  Alison stared at the speaker
with parted lips.

’Who are you?’ she murmured.  The little lady laughed softly, closed the
door gently, and came nearer, shading the light with her hand.

’You may well ask,’ said she, ’since I only came to-day!  But tell me
first who _you_ are—come!’

She deposited the rush-light on a chair, and plumping herself down on
the edge of the bed, drew up her little bare feet under her, and peered
into Alison’s face with the most coaxing, the most beguiling, air in the
world.

’I am Alison Graham,’ stammered the daughter of the house.

’What! another of them?’ cried Mrs. Maclehose, aghast; ’why, I saw a
host—four—five—six; you’re never a seventh, surely?’

’Yes,’ said Alison, dolorously.  ’There are seven of us: I am the
oldest.’

’But you were not there, or spoken of,’ persisted Mrs. Maclehose,
scenting a mystery.  ’Were you ill, love?’  Alison turned her head away.

’No, not ill,’ she said, truthful always, ’but—but my mother was not
pleased with me, and so I was not down the stair.’  Mrs. Maclehose put a
soft little hand under Alison’s chin, and turned the reluctant face
towards her.

’Ah, child!’ she said, ’’tis some love trouble, never tell me it isn’t!
Tell me about it, for I am more learned in such than any other person in
the world!  I am an old friend of your mother’s, but not so very old
neither, in years, you know; and I am Nancy—Nancy Maclehose, to my
sorrow.  Now, come, out with it; ’tis a love tale—I know!’

’If it is,’ cried Alison, between laughter and tears, but fairly won,’
’tis a love tale with no love in it, ma’am!’

’The very worst kind of all!’ cried the confidante, serenely.  ’And now,
sure, I know all about it without being told!  ’Tis some marriage they
are forcing upon you for prudence’ sake: some suitor—distasteful, old,
uncouth—’

’Ah! they’ve been telling you,’ murmured Alison, blushing.

’Not a word—I swear!’ cried the vivacious little lady, enchanted at her
own sagacity.  ’But am I not right?  A distasteful marriage, dictated by
prudence; a fond heart that will have none of it, but faithful to
another—’

’Ah! now there you are at fault,’ began Alison, and then paused: why
should she, to a perfect stranger, confess the humiliating fact that she
had no lover, and no secret romance?  But her native honesty prevailed.

’There is no "another,"’ she murmured, shame-facedly.

’Some day there will be, then!’ said Mrs. Maclehose, cheerfully, ’and
you, be faithful to him, child!’

’Faithful?’ cried Alison, wide-eyed.  ’But I’ve never seen him, ma’am;
he doesn’t exist.’

’Ah! he _does_ exist, somewhere—a kindred soul,’ said the romantic
visitor, nodding sagely.  ’He is only waiting for the chance—the divine
chance....’

’I doubt he will never get it at The Mains,’ said the prosaic Alison.

’Faint heart!’ cried Mrs. Maclehose.  ’Believe in Love, the greatest of
all the gods!’

Alison, never thus adjured before, looked doubtful.

’My mother and father tell me not to think about love,’ she said,
hesitatingly; ’they say ’tis a delusion.’

’They blaspheme, child!’ cried the visitor, with energy.  ’’Tis love
that has wrought me all the woe in my own span of life, God wot, yet I
believe in him—believe in him still, with all my heart and soul.... But
tell me, love,’ she went on, breaking off in her rhapsody, ’who is it
they would tie you to?’

’’Tis a Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, in Fife,’ said Alison, hanging her
head.  Mrs. Maclehose uttered a little trill of laughter.

’Oh, never, never, Mr. Cheape!’ she tittered. ’Don’t tell me ’tis the
inevitable, the invincible, the inveterate Jimmy Cheape! ...’

’Then you know him?’ cried Alison, eagerly.

’Oh, Lord, child!’ said Mrs. Maclehose, ’who doesn’t, dear?  He has
stumped the streets of Edinburgh, and every sizeable town in the
country, in search of a wife this twenty years and more!  Jimmy Cheape!
No, Alison (for you’ll let me call you Alison?  I like you, child, and
will love you, I know—’tis all arranged by our Fates).  No, no! ’tis not
you that are destined for Mr. Cheape; never think it!’

’I would not think it, if I could help it,’ said the literal Alison.
’But ’tis all arranged—indeed it is—and my mother set upon it in her
mind, and nothing will turn her.’

’_I_ will turn her!’ cried the lively little grass-widow, with her
charming smile and a flash of her dark eyes.

’Will you?’ said Alison, solemnly, leaning forward and gazing at her new
friend with devouring, wondering eyes.  ’How?’

A clock struck two.  It was a timely diversion, and Mrs. Maclehose
jumped down from the bed on to her little bare feet.

’Two of the clock!’ she cried, ’and me with a cold creeping down the
spine of my back like a rill of ice-water!  I must away to my bed,
love.’

’Ah!’ cried Alison, ’how selfish of me to have kept you in a cold room,
talking.’

’’Twas I kept myself, dear,’ said the visitor, lightly. ’Not the first
foolish thing I have done in my life, or likely to be the last, either.
Will you call me, Nancy, child, and kiss me good-night?’

’Sure,’ cried Alison, ’I think you are a dream, a fairy, or an angel!’
The dream put out its arms, took Alison’s head into their embrace, and
kissed her curls.

’We’ll meet to-morrow,’ she said, ’and then you’ll see I’m no dream.’
Then she paddled over the cold bare boards on those little feet, and
casting a last bright look over her shoulder to Alison in the bed, she
was gone.  Alison watched the light in the crack under the door, until
it grew fainter and fainter, and then disappeared. Then, not a little
comforted, she turned round in her nest, and slept like a child.

The next morning, Alison ventured to take her usual place in the
household, and was met with smiles.

’Now you are come to your senses, Alison,’ her mother said, ’and you
will live to thank me that I showed you the way.  See here, now,’ she
went on, ’this fine Edinburgh madam that has come here while you were up
yonder, has gotten an influenza that will keep her in her bed for a
week, I’m thinking.  Not that I grudge it her either, for it aye goes
clean against the grain wi’ me to have sheets soiled for the one night;
I’d far sooner get the week’s work out o’ them.  You must take madam’s
breakfast up, though, and make yourself civil, Ally.  She was aye a
clever, going-about body, Nancy, fine and gleg at the dressing of
herself up. ’Tis a God-send her coming now.  She’ll set us in the
fashions for your wedding, and show us how to sort my bonny silk.’

Alison shuddered; but she prepared the tray for the visitor’s breakfast,
and proceeded to take it upstairs, her heart beating fast with
curiosity.

Under the flowered curtains of the best bed a little figure, still
huddled in the pink wrapper, was gripped in the agueish shivering of an
influenza cold.  It started up, however, with unimpaired liveliness when
Alison appeared.

’Ah, child,’ she cried, ’I knew it would be you! Come, let us look at
each other in the broad daylight. Why, what a Juno it is!’ looking
Alison up and down. ’What a great, big girl, to be topped by those baby
curls.’

Alison came to the bed, pulled the tumbled coverlet straight, and shook
up the pillows, with her sensible literal air.

’You are feverish, ma’am,’ she said, ’and shouldn’t talk.  Here is a
warm shawl my mother sends to hap about you, and she says, please, will
you keep still and warm, and she will bring you a hot posset presently.’
The invalid laughed in the grave, girlish face.

’Oh, Solomon!’ she said, ’and do you expect me to obey your good mother,
and do the wise thing at the wise moment?  You little know poor Nannie
yet.’  Her dark, bright eyes grew full of sadness for a moment, and she
had the air of some pretty, soft, appealing little animal—a kitten,
perhaps—checked in its play by a hurt.  ’I want to talk,’ she said, ’to
talk, and talk, and talk.  We must, you know, Alison, so as to see how
we are to outwit Mr. Cheape.’

’When you are better,’ said Alison, ’we will talk.  I doubt you will
hear plenty of Mr. Cheape,’ she added, soberly.

At this moment a diversion occurred of a sufficiently prosaic nature to
defer further confidences of a sentimental kind.  The driver of the
chaise in which Mrs. Maclehose had arrived the night before sent a
message to say that he could wait no longer, but must return whence he
came, and to that end he must be paid.

’Here, reach me my reticule, dear,’ said the invalid to Alison, and she
hunted in the dainty velvet bag for her purse, and in the purse for the
necessary coin. This, however, did not appear to be instantly
forthcoming.  A slight frown ruffled her forehead, and the faintest
flush rose on her cheek.  ’’Tis most provoking, Ally,’ she said.  ’I
have run short.  Will you run and ask your father, love, to pay the man
for me, and I will this day write for more money to my cousin Herries,
in Edinburgh, who manages my affairs.  You see I trusted to be back in
town immediately, and that’s how I’ve let myself run into so beggarly a
state.’  She laughed lightly; her embarrassment was gone.

Alison duly ran down to her father, who paid two guineas to the driver,
cocking his eye to himself as he did so.

’Women’s debts!’ he remarked within his own mind. ’It’s little likely
I’ll ever see the colour of _that_ again.’  And it may here be
mentioned, as a little matter strictly between him and the reader, that
he never did.




                             *CHAPTER VII.*


As the sagacious mistress of The Mains had foretold, the influenza kept
Mrs. Maclehose in bed for a week. Fever succeeded ague, and cold and
headache followed in their wake, and it was, for some days, a very sick
little woman indeed, that tossed and tumbled between the linen sheets,
under the flowered hangings of the best room.  Alison waited upon her
with a patience and prudence that had presently their own effect upon
the volatile nature of the invalid; these solid, good qualities in the
country girl seemed to have a singular fascination for the little town
lady, in whose character, it is to be feared, they were conspicuously
lacking.  Alison, on her part, felt also curiously drawn to her guest.
This delicate little personage, with all her pretty belongings, her
petulant temper, and pretty ways, was a new type at The Mains.  Simple
Alison felt it a privilege to wait upon one so fine and dainty.  She
could lift her in her bed as though she were a child, and both her tiny
hands could lie in Alison’s one palm, and be spanned by a finger and
thumb.  And yet Alison felt there were more wits in one finger tip of
this little lady than perhaps in the heads of everybody else at The
Mains put together. Were there not poetry books upon her dressing-table,
and did she not, indeed, write poetry herself?  Alison had been for one
year at a young ladies’ seminary in the town of Stirling; but even the
’finish’ imparted by this experience, could not diminish in her a sense
of awe at the literary accomplishments of her new friend.  But I think
it was the storming of her confidence on that first night of their
acquaintance that really impressed Alison with a sense of the
new-comer’s cleverness and power. To the intensely reserved, there is
something almost preternatural in those qualities in another which
overcome and overleap that reserve.  And then Mrs. Maclehose knew all
about Mr. Cheape!  Secretly, but not very hopefully, for Alison’s was
not a sanguine nature, she hoped for deliverance from her threatened
bondage, a deliverance that the cleverness of her new friend should
effect.

The first moment she could sit up in her bed, Mrs. Maclehose demanded
pens and paper, and said she must write letters.

’Could I not write for you, anything that’s necessary?’ Alison asked.
’You are still so weak.’  The invalid shook her head and smiled.

’Ally,’ she said, ’you don’t know, or you don’t realise, I expect, that
I’m a mother, and there are my two poor little men all alone in
Edinburgh town, wondering what has happened to their mammy.’

’Your two little boys,’ cried Alison, eagerly.  ’I’d like to know about
them.  Are they bigger than Jacky?’

’Lud, child, yes, I should think so!’ said the fond mother, with,
perhaps, a slightly-discontented air. ’Monsters of eight and ten years
old!  At least, Willy is a well-grown monster, the eldest.  The younger
is small; he’s in but a crazy state of health, God help him! I know not
what to make of it.’  She moved uncomfortably in the bed, as if the
thought goaded her.  ’For the bairns, or their servant, Jean, I daresay
you could scratch me a line, Ally,’ she went on, ’but I’ve other and
more solemn letters in hand.  You must know I have one most sapient and
noble cousin, Archibald Herries, a writer to His Majesty’s Signet, who
lives in the town, and to him must I render grave and solemn account of
myself, with a prayer for monies, Ally, of the which I stand in parlous
need at the present moment.’

’To be sure I could not write _that_ letter,’ Alison acquiesced.  Her
patient, with a chin supported on a little white hand, was regarding her
attentively.  ’Do you know, Ally,’ said she, ’you are rather like my
cousin Archie yourself, a sort of Solomon, all the virtues and all the
wisdoms and sobrieties combined.’

’Then you don’t seem to like him much,’ said Alison, with a pout.

’May God forgive me for an ungrateful and most base wretch, if I do
not!’ cried her friend, with unexpected energy.  ’For of all the debts
dependent women ever owed to protecting man, mine to my cousin Archie is
the greatest.  I should have been in the street, and my poor babes in
the gutter long since, but for him. And that’s the truth, Ally, and the
plain truth.  He who is my natural protector, bound to me by all the
most sacred laws of God and man, chose to desert me, and leave me to the
care, and even the charity, of others. God be the judge between us!  I
swear I was guiltless in that matter, and indeed guilt has never been
imputed tome.  Do you believe it, Ally?’

’Sure, I believe it with all my heart and soul,’ cried Alison, with
kindling eyes.

’And there spoke an enthusiasm and a trusting warmth of nature that were
never Archie’s, dear,’ said Mrs. Maclehose, laughing once more.  ’No,
you are not like him, love.  ’Tis for a coldness of nature, a perpetual
suspicion that I blame him.  He’s not a kindred soul, and we are ever
tacitly at war.  God knows poor Nancy is no saint.  But he misjudges me
ever, and the injustice pricks.  But there, that’s enough.  Let me get
finished with this proper, virtuous, tiresome letter.’

In the long evenings of convalescence this seemingly ill-assorted pair
were drawn closer and closer together in the links of their sudden
friendship.

’Sing to me as you sing to Jacky, love,’ Nancy would say, nestling down
among the pillows.  And in the gloaming of the quiet room, Alison,
folding her hands in her lap, would sing in her sweet deep-throated
voice those peculiarly poignant ballads of love and longing and loyalty,
with which, since the memorable ’’45,’ the whole of Scotland was
flooded.

’Where got you that trick of song, love?’ Mrs. Maclehose would ask,
sentimentally, ’since you say you have never loved?’

’I had one dozen of singing lessons at the school,’ replied the
ever-practical Alison, ’and I had begun to the harp before I left.’

’Was it that year of school made you different to your sisters, think
you, Ally?’

’Am I different?’ asked Alison, wonderingly.

’Oh, I would not miscall the honest lasses,’ cried Nancy, ’they are all
good and sweet, I am sure.  But about you there is a difference—a
gentler accent, a shade of softness—I know not what.’

’’Twas a very genteel school, indeed,’ said Alison, respectfully.  ’But
it was too dear.  So I only stayed but the one year, instead of three,
and poor Kate and Maggie never got at all.’

’You’d be a treasure, with that "wood-note wild" of yours to our bard,
Ally!’

’Our bard?’ inquired Alison, not at all certain what a bard might be.

’Ay,’ said Nancy, with a kindling eye.  ’Our bard, but not ours only!
The world’s poet—the singer for all time, and for all hearts—Robert
Burns!  Child, haven’t you heard of him, the ploughman poet?’

’A ploughman?’ said Alison, conjuring up the vision of one Donald, the
ploughman at The Mains, with his stubbly beard and bowed legs.

’A ploughman, yes,’ cried Nancy, ’but what a ploughman!  He has had the
town at his feet, Ally! From the highest to the lowest in the land, all
men do him honour.  And as for the women, child, they are ready to kill
each other for a glint of his eye!  The very duchesses hang about him,
and there’s not a titled lady that will not sorn upon and flatter him to
get him to her tea-table.  Never has the town gone so mad about a man
before!’

’And have you often seen him?’ asked Alison.

’To my lasting sorrow and vexation, never!’ cried Nancy, vehemently;
’and, oh, Ally, ’tis the one burning wish—the longing of my heart!  And
there’s that insensible wretch, my cousin Herries, who has the entry
almost everywhere the poet goes, and last winter saw him almost nightly,
and he scorns the privilege that I would sell my soul for!  Him have I
plagued, and others have I plagued, to get me known to my idol; but in
vain, as yet!  It will come, though!  Never was so ardent a wish that
did not bring its own fulfilment, ay, and its own punishment too,
sometimes,’ she added, with a sudden wistfulness.  ’Ally, _you_ never
have these passions, these rebellious cravings, do you, child?’

’Sure, never,’ said Alison, soberly, ’and never would, I think.’

’But I’m made up of them!’ cried the little woman, ’and nothing stays
me—no scruple, no prudence—when they are hot within me!  Know this of
your friend, Ally, and be warned in time.  I wish you to know me as I
really am.  Nature has been kind to me in some respects, but one
essential she has denied me utterly: it is that instantaneous perception
of the fit and unfit, which is so useful in the conduct of life. But you
are rich in this, Ally, and that is why I think that you might be my
friend, and sometimes save me from myself.’

’I will be your friend,’ said Alison, softly, ’though, sure, there never
was a humbler one!’

Thus would these two swear an eternal friendship, over and over again.
Alison heard more, also—heard a great deal, indeed, about the wondrous
ploughman poet, whose image seemed to possess the ardent imagination of
her friend.  There was a certain little brownish, roughly-bound book
amongst those which were wont to litter the coverlet of the best bed.
It had a dog’s-eared and most ungenteel appearance, but it was the
Kilmarnock edition of the poems of Robert Burns, and had its letters
been in gold and its binding of scented satin, it would not, in the then
inflamed state of public adulation of the poet, have been too richly
dressed. To the contents of this little book Alison listened, with a
sort of tingling in her blood.  She had a nature full of unuttered
music, and she had been born and bred among those simple country scenes
of her native land, whence the poet drew his inspiration.  So he became,
as he had become to thousands of his tongue-tied, voiceless, and
strenuous countrymen and countrywomen, the very mouthpiece of her soul;
and thus, long before a tangled thread from this man’s chequered destiny
became in-woven with the simple web of her own life, Alison got her
first knowledge of Robert Burns.

But, in the meantime, the gay little invalid at The Mains, announced
herself cured, and, in a cloud of pink wrapper and enveloping shawl,
tottered from bed to the arm-chair by the fire.

’And, now, Ally,’ she cried, ’now that my spirits are come again, now
for your good mother and Mr. Cheape!’




                            *CHAPTER VIII.*


The task which the romantic Mrs. Maclehose had set herself in regard to
Alison, was one entirely after her own heart.  She considered herself a
past-mistress in all things relating to the tender passion; and though
she herself had met with signal and disastrous shipwreck amid the shoals
of matrimony, there was nothing in life that interested her like affairs
of the heart.  On this occasion, indeed, it was the marring, and not the
making, of a match, that she had in hand.  But what mission could be
more legitimate, what endeavour more congenial, than that of helping to
liberate a young and interesting friend from the horrid bondage of a
loveless contract?  That the mistress of The Mains viewed the matter
from a different standpoint, she was, of course, aware; in her fertile
brain she had arranged a plan of warfare, and went to the battle
wreathed in smiles.

The lady of the house herself opened the campaign; by marching into the
invalid’s room one morning with an armful of silk—the wedding silk,
which she spread forth before her guest.

’Ye were ay a handy body at the clothes, Nancy,’ she observed.  ’Now
tell me how to sort this silk for Alison, in the newest modes.’

’Ah! your lovely Alison—how interesting!’ murmured the guest, sweetly.

’Alison’s well enough,’ said her impartial parent, coolly.  ’We think
her none so lovely here—a good girl, but homely; none the less likely to
make a good wife to an honest gentleman.’

’To be sure, to be sure,’ said Mrs. Maclehose, in a sprightly tone, ’a
little bird has told me of that interesting matter!’

’Then it needna have fashed itself,’ said Mrs. Graham, alluding to the
feathered purveyor of secrets, ’for I was fair bursting to speak of it
myself.  ’Tis a most extraordinary piece of good fortune to us, this
substantial offer for a tocherless lass like Alison.  I cannot get over
it yet, myself.’

’And yet, Alison’—said the guest cautiously, ’Alison herself does not
speak of the matter with the enthusiasm one expects in a young heart on
such an occasion.’

’Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?’ inquired Mrs.
Graham, contemptuously. ’No, nor sense from glaikit lasses!  Alison’s a
fool, and doesna ken what’s good for her.  But—’ grimly—’I’ve been
teaching her, and she’ll learn yet!’

’And the gentleman, ma’am?’ inquired Nancy, casually, ’I protest I have
hardly heard his name?’

’’Tis one most excellent respectit laird,’ said Mrs. Graham, swelling
visibly with the importance of the announcement, ’one Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley in the county of—’  But here Nancy broke in upon her with a
sharp titter, which, however, she had the appearance of politely
suppressing.  Mrs. Graham looked at her sharply.

’What’s wrong wi’ _you_?’ she sarcastically inquired.

’Oh, la, ma’am! nothing, I assure you,’ said Nancy, in an obvious
struggle with a mirthful tendency, ’only Mr. Cheape—ha—ha—’ and she
tailed off into a giggle.

’What dirty gossip o’ the gutters ha’ ye got about the man?’ said Mrs.
Graham, with rising anger and a flashing eye, ’out with your scandal, if
ye must!’

’Oh, scandal, lud, ma’am, no!’ said Nancy.  ’Scandal and poor Jimmy
Cheape were never named together, only—’

’Only _what_,’ cried the irate lady of The Mains, with a stamp of her
big foot.

’Well, ma’am,’ said Nancy, coyly, ’I’d sooner bite my tongue out, sure,
than that it should meddle with Miss Alison’s good fortune.  Only, since
you ask me, it does surprise me that so distinguished a family as Graham
of The Mains shouldn’t look higher for their eldest daughter than poor
Jimmy Cheape.’

’A distinguished family,’ said Mrs. Graham, with a mincing mimicry of
her guest’s tone, ’a distinguished family wi’ seven daughters has to
take what it can get. It can ill afford genteel ideas like yours,
Nancy,’ with somewhat withering significance.  ’But what’s wrong wi’ Mr.
Cheape, to _your_ fine notions, may I ask?’

’Well, ma’am, since you _will_ have it,’ said Nancy, with an air of
reluctant candour, ’simply that he’s the leavings of so many other
folk,—that’s all.’

’Oh, is he, indeed?’ said Mrs. Graham, with fine sarcasm.

’’Tis so old a tale, indeed,’ pursued Nancy, pictorially, ’that it
stretches back clean and away beyond my poor memory.  But even to my
knowledge, Jimmy Cheape has been the rejected of ladies more than I can
count, and such as are not worthy to tie the shoes of Miss Alison.’

’Oh, ay!’ commented Mrs. Graham, with a vicious eye upon her informant.
’Well?’

’There was Jenny M’Lure,’ continued Nancy, with a reminiscent air.  ’All
of one winter he was after her, not that _she_ would look at him though,
and the whole town laughing and looking on.  And then there was Molly
Baleny—_she_ might have had him, for she was near forty and no beauty,
but she put him to the door too.  And there was Jean M’Gregor, the
cutler’s daughter, you know, in Nicol Street; a fine dance she led him,
the hussy—for, after all, a laird was a bit of a string to her bow.
But, of course, she gave him the go-by in the end, and, in my opinion,
she was heartless in the way she held up an old man like that to be the
jest of the town: ’twas no womanly behaviour.  And there were others, I
assure you; he’s been on his knees to some girl or another in the public
park, ’twas the season’s great joke, but I forget her name.  ’Tis not
that he’s wicked or a man of ill-conduct in any way, ma’am—but he is so
comical, and no woman will marry a man that is a laughing-stock.’

’Will she no?’ said Mrs. Graham, with a darting eye. ’But some’ll take a
wastrel, and no be able to keep him when they’ve got him!’  Nancy winced
visibly under this vigorous blow, from no uncertain arm.  ’My woman!’
her hostess proceeded, ’if I find you setting Ally against her beau,
it’s the door you’ll be shown, and that in a hurry!  She’s got to take
Mr. Cheape, or she’s got to beg.  There’s some’s content to beg, but
it’ll no be my daughter!’  And the lady of The Mains, gathering up the
wedding silk, and with her head in the air, marched out of the room.

Nancy sank back in her chair, worsted, she felt, in this encounter.

’Your good mother, Ally,’ she said to her friend, when Alison, appeared,
’is somewhat bludgeon-like in her methods of war.  My poor little
weapons are too fine.’  Alison smiled rather wanly.

’Our mother is very strong in her wishes, and the getting of them,’ she
remarked.  ’’Tis not easy to move her.’

’Ah, but wait till I get at your father,’ cried Nancy, recovering her
spirits.  ’I’m a wonderful hand with the men.’

’My mother is angry with you now,’ said Alison, quietly, ’and with me
too.  She has put me to the clear-starching with the maids in the
laundry, all the afternoon, for fear I should sit with you.’

’Oh, ho!’ said Nancy, ’sets the wind in that quarter? But we’ll see
whose cleverest yet.  Keep a good heart, Ally—you’ll not marry Mr.
Cheape!’  But Alison shook her head despondently, and vanished.  There
were no more twilight talks and songs in the gloamings after that.

Thus matters remained at a standstill for several days, and Nancy chafed
under the well-meant but awkward attentions of Kate and Maggie, who were
sent to take Alison’s place in the best room, about the invalid.  She
longed to be gone.  The dreariness of the country at this season
depressed the little townswoman, and she settled a day in her mind for
her departure.

’But I’ll save that child from her virago of a mother,’ she said to
herself, with determination, ’even if I have to carry her off with me by
force.  Though where,’ she added, with a little grimace to herself,
’though where I’m to put the big creature, if I take her, Lord only
knows!  Is there a corner of my garret she can sleep in?  Well,
Providence must see to that!’

Nancy was never frustrated in a kind action by so paltry a detail.  The
charming vision of herself in the blotched old mirror—she was at her
first _toilette_—smiled back at her approvingly, with the humid sparkle
of her long, soft, dark eyes.  She was about to try her arts on the
laird.




                             *CHAPTER IX.*


The mistress of The Mains, having mounted the gig, was away to the
weekly butter market; Alison was invisible, set, in a distant corner of
the house, upon some interminable domestic task.  Nancy opened her door,
peeped out, and listened; the house was quiet.  The laird, she knew, was
within and at her mercy, for she had heard he had the rheumatics in his
back, and could not go forth in the damp.  She tripped away down the
passage, and by peeping into one room after another, at last found the
library, and the laird in it.

’Here’s the den,’ she cried, gaily, ’and the lion within!’  And she
looked up into her host’s rugged face with those eyes of hers, which no
man in his senses could resist, saving, indeed, a certain legal
gentleman, in Edinburgh, of a hard heart.

The laird was in a doleful mood, inclined to those modified views of the
desirability of life which are fostered in a man by a touch of lumbago.
He stood with his back to the green-washed mantelpiece, with its
pessimistic motto, and his countenance was dourly set.  It, however,
melted in a smile at the sight of his guest, as, indeed, that guest
intended that it should.

’And now I’m come to have a confidential talk with you,’ said she,
ensconcing herself in his big chair, and shaking a finger at him.  ’’Tis
of your daughter, Alison.  Laird, it can never be that a man like you
gives his daughter to a man like Jimmy Cheape!’

’Sells her, you mean,’ said the laird, sourly.  He was indeed Alison’s
father, from whom she had taken her own direct, literal ways of thought
and speech.  ’’Tis true, we have sold the lass.’

’For shame—for shame!’ cried Nancy.  ’Your best and bonniest!  I’ll not
stand by and see it done.  Sure as I’m a woman, I forbid the banns, and
will prevent it!’

’You’d need be quick, then,’ said the laird, with a short sarcastic
laugh.  ’Ally doesn’t know it, for her mother keeps it quiet as yet, but
the man comes to-morrow s’en-night, and expects to find all ready for
the marriage.’

’Lord-a-mercy! then we must act promptly, indeed!’ said Nancy.  ’I’m not
without a practical suggestion in the matter, I assure you.  Instead of
giving the lassie to old Cheape, like a tit-bit to an ogre, give her to
me. Do you hear, laird?’

’Ay, I hear,’ said the laird, laconically.  ’I would if I could,
mistress, for my stomach rises at this marriage. But the wife is set on
a husband for Ally.’

’I’ll get her another,’ cried Nancy, eagerly.  ’The town’s full of
sparks, and to spare!’

’A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, the wife would tell you,’ said
the laird, with a sorry smile. ’Besides, there’s money between old
Cheape and me.  I cannot back out of the bargain now.’

’Tut, he’ll never mind the money!’ cried Nancy. ’He’s been a lender to
half the fathers, brothers, uncles, and guardians in Scotland; for ’tis
the only way he can get word with a woman.  It’s second nature to him to
get the go-by, and if he misses Ally, he’ll take up with one of her
sisters in the twinkling of an eye.’

’’Tis easy to be speaking to _me_,’ said the laird, grimly.  ’Why don’t
you speak to the mistress?  ’Tis her business rather than mine, surely?’

’She’s not to be moved,’ said Nancy, demurely. ’But, laird, that which
cannot be done by force, can often be done by guile.  Are you willing,
in your heart of hearts, to be off with this marriage?  I know you are!’

’I am,’ said the laird, rather heavily, for his conscience spoke at
last.

’Well, give me a hand, and ’twill be done!’ said Nancy.  ’I leave this
place in four days, and a man and chaise from C—— take me to Green
Loaning to get the Edinburgh coach—isn’t that so?  And I must leave this
door in the dark of the morning, before six?  Isn’t that the case?’

’Ay is it,’—said the laird, ’an awkward start.’

’Make it yet an hour awkwarder,’ cried Nancy. ’And let no one know the
time, save Ally and me, and you.  Let the chaise be at the outer gate,
and we’ll slip down and be off before a soul’s stirring.  Is the
mistress a good sleeper?’

’A gey and heavy sleeper in the mornings, now that she puts on years and
weight,’ answered the husband, with a sigh.  ’She talks enough at night,
God wot! But ’tis snoring in the morning, and I that have to rise to
bustle the maids from their beds.  Well?’

’Then you can slip down without danger and see us away,’ said Nancy.  ’I
doubt, without your countenance in the matter, Ally would never come.
But with it she’ll fly this marriage as she would the devil.’

’I believe she will,’ the laird muttered; but he seemed to hesitate.
’’Tis a simple enough plan,’ he conceded. ’I see nothing to hinder its
working.  But how can I consent to foist the lass on to you?  Her
future—’

’Ah—bah—the future!’ said Nancy, ’let the future take care of itself!
There is but one for a fine girl like Ally.  And this storm will blow
by, besides, and you be glad to see her here again, long before I am
ready to part from her.  For I’ll be glad of Ally, let me tell you.
There’s nothing so needful in my unhappy situation as a companion of my
own sex.  Are not the prudent among my acquaintance telling me so every
day of my life?  So consent, for my sake as well as Alison’s, and
believe that you confer a favour by doing so.’

’You make the debtor seem generous,’ said the laird, not unkindly, ’but
I consent.  Though the Lord only knows what I shall say to the wife when
you’re gone!’

’Ah, men must be brave—’tis their duty!’ cried Nancy.  ’And now, be wise
too, and say not a word of this to a soul—not to Ally even, for her
terror and indecision would discover themselves in a moment.  I’ll break
it to her but the night before, and carry the citadel of her conscience
and her scruples by storm—sweep off with her on the wings of surprise.
You arrange with the driver of the chaise: I will manage the rest.’

It was not, therefore, till practically but a few hours before the
meditated flight that Alison knew of the change in store for her.  She
had gone to bed drowned in tears at the prospect of her friend’s
departure, and in quiet despair at the conviction that now all chance of
a rescue from Mr. Cheape was gone.  Then Nancy came creeping up to her
room in the dark on tip-toe, like the little conspirator that she was,
shading the rush-light with her hand.  Jacky slept beside his sister
again, so their talk was in excited whispers.

’Ally,’ Nancy said, leaning over the girl, and patting her wet cheek
with a little hand, ’cry no more, dear love, ’tis all arranged with your
father, and in the happiest way!  No horrid Mr. Cheape for you; you are
free! And you come with me to Edinburgh town in the morning!’

’I—to Edinburgh?’ whispered the startled Alison.

’To me, child, to me!’ Nancy whispered back.  ’Did you think I was to
part from my Ally without a blow struck for her freedom, and leave her
to her fate? Oh, fie! faithless one!  ’Tis your father and I have fixed
it all between us; your mother knows naught. The chaise comes while she
is still abed—more than an hour before she thinks—and we steal away,
with your father, good man, to speed us at the gate. ’Tis quite an
elopement, I declare; only I, alas! am of the wrong sex.  You must rise,
Ally, and put a few duds together; the laird says he will send a trunk
after you to town.  He has mine taken down already, so there will be no
noise in the early hours.  Will you come with me, Ally, and share my
humble garret? ’Tis a poor thing, but mine own, and you’re thrice
welcome, God knows!’

Bewilderment still reigned in Alison’s eyes and brain. ’Must I leave
them all,’ she whispered, ’my sisters and Jacky—?’

’Ay, must you,’ said Nancy, with a little not unnatural impatience, ’or
stay, and be taken from them by ogre Cheape in a fortnight!’

’In a fortnight!  Was he coming so soon?’ said Alison, with a white
face, and then the magnitude of her friend’s action on her behalf
dawning upon her, she cried, with a half sob, ’Oh, Nancy! how can I
thank you for this deliverance?’

’Then you’ll come, Ally?’

’Come?  How can I fail?’ said Alison.  ’And, Nancy, what’ll I say?  But
I’ll not speak, I’ll do.  I’ll try with all my strength to do something
that shall reward you.  I’ll be your servant, anything!’

’Be my own friend, sweetest—’tis enough,’ said Nancy.  ’And now, mind,
not a moment later than the half after four.  ’Twill be as pitch as
night, a strange start.  I protest ’tis a perfect adventure!  I’d not
have missed it for worlds.  Keep a good heart, Ally, just not too soft,
you know, and brave.’  And she tip-toed away again, nodding and smiling.

Alison rose and dressed, and did not sleep again that night, but sat
still by Jacky’s cot, her young brain whirling with confused, grave
thoughts.  When it was time to go she kissed Jacky, pulled up the
coverlet where he had tossed it from his rosy limbs, and smoothed his
curls, that were so like her own.  He had been her charge since birth,
and now she was leaving him to others.  She took a last look round the
bare little room of her maidenhood, and then with her bundle in her
hand, she slipped away down to the distant kitchen to light a stealthy
fire, so that Nancy might have a cup of chocolate to start on.  The old
house of her childhood seemed full of accusing shadows as she flitted
through it, dark and cold and strange to the eye in these unholy hours.
She was thankful when Nancy joined her; they both crouched over the
fire, for it was bitter cold.  Both, too, heard presently, with the
sharp ears of excitement, the distant rumble of wheels.  The chaise had
come.

The laird put his head in at the back door.

’Come, lasses,’ he said.  He had a lantern, and they followed him out
into the starlight of the winter morning.  A wind, forlorn and cold as
the grave, blew in their faces.  The chaise was already piled with
Nancy’s goods—the laird’s doing with his own hands.  Alison could see
the rough familiar figure of him moving about with the lantern, the
father whose weakness and whose strength she knew and understood, the
man so much finer and nobler than the woman who ruled him.  The heart of
the girl yearned over him, and she flung her arms round his neck.

’There was nothing for it but to run, Ally,’ he said, patting her
shoulder.  And then he helped her into the coach, for she stumbled,
blind with tears.  And then the coach rolled away into the dark, leaving
the laird alone at the postern, whence presently he turned slowly away.
For in an hour’s time he had to meet his wife; and it is my opinion
that, in these degenerate days of ours, a man has won the Victoria Cross
for less.




                              *CHAPTER X.*


On one of those dull November afternoons which Mrs. Maclehose spent in
convalescence at The Mains, her two little sons, in the good town of
Edinburgh, set out to walk from their mother’s house in the Potterrow,
of the old town, to their cousin Archibald Herries’s office in the then
very modern George Street, of the new. As far as the North Bridge their
servant Jean accompanied them, basket upon arm; but she had shopping in
the Leith Row, and dismissed them in the direction of George Street,
with directions ’to be guid bairns, not to play themselves on the road,
to be civil to their cousin and give him the message, and to hasten home
again before it was dark.’

They were little fellows of eight and ten respectively, the elder, a
well-grown sturdy boy with red cheeks, the younger, a puny creature,
with a small pale face, in which were set his mother’s eyes without
their laughter. Both were dressed alike in little green suits which they
had long out-grown, and the frilled edges of their wide white collars
were in places frayed and torn.  Their shoes were worn, and as the
younger one walked, indeed, the sole of his little left shoe threatened
momentarily to part company with its sustaining upper, and slip-slopped
upon the pavement at each dragging step. The two walked hand in hand,
casting anxious glances upon the imposing-looking houses to their right.

At the extreme west end of George Street, indeed as far west as it then
extended, was the house they sought,—a high granite-built edifice, with
steps leading up to the door, upon which a brass-plate held the
names—’Herries and Creighton, Writers to the Signet.’  It was with
difficulty, and only by standing on tip-toe, that Willy could reach the
knocker, and the attitude had the effect of stretching him to such an
extent, that it seemed quite impossible he could ever shrink again
within the limits of the little green suit.

’I doubt that was another tear, Danny,’ he said gravely to his little
brother, as an ominous crack made itself heard in the region of the
arm-hole; but he managed to wriggle the sleeves to his wrists again
without further disaster.  A cross-looking old woman opened the door and
admitted them to the office.

In a light, handsome room to the front, above stairs, the walls lined
partly with books and partly with piled-up boxes of deeds, a young man
sat writing at a table. He was of slight and decidedly graceful figure,
and soberly dressed; his powdered hair, tied with a black ribbon, lent
perhaps additional delicacy to his fair, rather over-refined, regular
features.  He turned about in his chair, and his cold blue eyes lit up,
not unkindly, as the two little boys were ushered into his presence.

’Well, my men,’ he said, ’so here you are.  What’s the news?’

’Mother’s coming home, Cousin Archie,’ said Willy, pulling a letter from
his pocket.

’Ay, so I hear,’ said the young lawyer, not without a dryness in his
tone.  ’I have a letter from your mother, too, you see,’ and he tapped
an open missive on his desk.

’There is a beautiful new lady coming home with mother, to stay with
us,’ said Danny, lifting his large dark eyes to his cousin’s face.

’You don’t say so!’ said Cousin Archie.  He took the child up on his
knee.

’Yes,’ continued Danny, settling himself against a comfortable shoulder.
’She has a little brother of her own, and so she is to be like a big
sister to us.’

’Oh, that’s the idea, is it?’ said Archibald Herries. ’And does your
mother say where this mighty fine young lady is to find a room?’

’It was Jean sent us to ask you that,’ said Willy, innocently.  ’I sleep
with mother, you know, and Danny by Jean in the other room, but mother
says the lady will want Jean’s bed, and Jean would know where she’s to
sleep, and may she get M’Alister, our landlord, to hire us the garret?
It’s empty, and ’twill make no difference to him.’

’Except in the matter of the rent—none whatever, Willy,’ said Herries,
more drily than ever.  ’But that’s a secondary matter which we need not
mention.’

He was frowning, and his delicate features looked severe and cold.
Nevertheless a smile lurked about his lips, and it ended in a rather
bitter laugh.

’Tell Jean to get the garret from M’Alister,’ he said. ’You would not
put her out in the street for the new lady—would you, Danny?’

’To be sure not,’ said Danny solemnly.  Herries had absently held one of
the boy’s thin legs, and with a movement the ragged foot-gear caught his
eye.

’That’s a sorry shoe, Danny,’ he said.  ’What’s the matter with it?’

’Well,’ said Danny, gravely, ’it is the sole coming off, I think.  It
has been coming off for a long time.’

’Why don’t you get it mended, man?’ the cousin enquired.

’It should have been mended,’ Danny answered, lifting those soft, dark
eyes of his again.  ’But Jean said there was no more money.’

Herries threw back his head and laughed.

’That’s a sad complaint,’ he said.  ’But come, boys, I’ll walk home with
you, and on the way we’ll get a new pair of shoes for Danny.  Come!’

The three issued forth together, and walked along George Street
eastward.  At the head of the Leith Row they went into a shoemaker’s,
and Danny was fitted with a stout new pair of shoes, for which his
cousin paid. Then they began to climb the old town at a brisk pace, but
presently the younger child lagged behind.

’Are the new shoes hurting you, my man?’ asked Herries.  His usually
rather curt tones were very kind when he spoke to the little boy.

’’Tisn’t the shoes, Cousin Archie,’ said Willy, answering for his
brother.  ’But Danny has a sore leg that makes him hirple when he walks
far.’

’Oh! he has, has he?’ said Herries, looking at the child in perplexity.
’Come, boy, I can carry you up the brae, I think.’

He lifted the little creature, infinitely too small and light for his
years, to his right arm, and, with a pause now and again for breath,
carried him a long way.  They were mounting still, sometimes by steep
and narrow causeways, sometimes by actual flights of steps.  A wintry
sky of dulled flame was spread over the wonderful rock-built city round
them, but the deep-cut valley in its midst was lost in a murky
vapour—half smoke, half fog.  When they got to the Potterrow, Herries
set the child down, and stretched his cramped and aching arm.  He was
not a robust man, and the burden had taxed his muscles.  They walked on
until, in the narrow, echoing street, they came upon an archway,
commonly yclept ’The General’s Entry,’ under which a door admitted to
the common stair leading to the humble lodging occupied, at the present
time, by Mrs. Maclehose.

’Now, be off, boys, and away up to Jean,’ said Herries.

’Good-night, Cousin Archie,’ the children’s voices dutifully answered.

Herries heard their feet clatter on the stone stair, then turned away.

A solitary walk was no novelty to Archibald Herries, for he was, though
young, a somewhat solitary man in circumstances, perhaps by inclination
as well.  He was the last living representative of a good old family in
the south of Scotland, which had, by a series of misfortunes, political
and other, lost lands and houses, and now threatened itself to
disappear.  An orphan since his infancy, Herries had been destined by
his guardians for the army, but a constitutional delicacy showed itself
early in the lad, and such a career became manifestly unadvisable,
though all his dreams and ambitions, as a boy, were centred round it.
He was bidden to fix his thoughts on the law, then considered perhaps
the most highly respectable profession in Scotland, and it was intended
that he should be called to the Bar as an advocate.  But here again his
unlucky star intervened, for Herries soon found himself wanting in those
very qualities of brilliance and assurance which alone can lead to
distinction in such a career.  The more sober avenues of the law
remained open to him, and these he finally entered and pursued.  His
circumstances—he had inherited a modest but certain income—made his
entry into a good legal house, first as a subordinate and finally as a
partner, secure; and from that point onward his success was solid,
progressive, and, indeed, distinguished.  Intellectually well-balanced,
shrewd, long-headed, prudent, and not a little cold, Herries at thirty,
had all the weighty qualities of character essential in the best class
of family lawyer.  The heads of his firm retired, but not a client
deserted him, and he had, at this time, when he was about thirty-three,
perhaps one of the most extended legal concerns in Scotland—a business
worth many thousands of pounds.  He had taken as partner a very
respectable man of the name of Creighton, much older than himself, who
had been senior and confidential clerk of the firm for over thirty
years. Mr. Creighton occupied lodgings of his own, from which he daily
came and went; but Herries lived in the fine modern George Street
mansion, which he had bought, in solitary state, but for his old
housekeeper and a valet. Creighton had his office in one of the rooms by
day, and four clerks did their work in yet another.  It was a most
substantial establishment, already one of the landmarks of New
Edinburgh.  In the eyes of the world, Herries was indeed a successful
person.  Yet he carried, locked in his bosom, that sense of failure and
disappointment which dogs a sensitive man, who pursues an uncongenial
occupation, and succeeds, yet without attaining a single desire of his
heart.

Socially, Herries had the Edinburgh world at his feet. He bore a good
name, he was a rising man, and had a pleasing person and gentlemanly
address.  Caps were set at the successful young lawyer, naturally.  But
Herries, though not averse to occasional dalliance, was hardly a lady’s
man.  One winter, indeed, a great beauty took the town by storm, and
Herries did a little more than dangle in her train, and got a little
more, too, than mere crumbs from her table.  But the beauty, though she
weighed him in the balance, found him wanting, and married a title.  It
was a disappointment to ambition—the wish to win and wear what all men
coveted—rather than to love; yet it had been a shock, too, that drove
further inward the already inward nature of the man.  He had buckled to
his business after it with a more dogged exclusiveness than ever.

Preoccupied, as usual, Herries walked rapidly down towards the New Town,
his thoughts busy for the moment with the children from whom he had just
parted. As he rounded a corner, with bent head, he knocked up against a
man, who seemed to be loitering on the causeway, none too respectably,
with a woman.  The figure of the man was big and burly, and he had a
countryman’s plaid about his shoulders.  The woman was of the poorest
class, of a tall figure, in a draggled cotton gown, a shawl drawn over
her head.  She seemed to cling to the man, and the man, half in jest,
yet half in earnest, to cast her off.  She laughed—an odd, rather wild,
laugh, with little mirth, it seemed.  Herries turned about and stared
after the couple, for he knew the man. All Edinburgh knew that figure,
and a passer-by, a labouring man, accosted Herries with a laugh,—

’Ay, ye may glower,’ he said, with a boastful air, ’ye may glower, and
your eyes be fu’ o’ pride—for that is Robert Burns!’

But if Herries stared after the retreating figure, it was certainly not
with pride.  An expression of disgust curled his fine, severe lips into
lines more fastidious than ever.

’The dog!’ he said, shortly and aloud, and turned on his heel.




                             *CHAPTER XI.*


When Herries re-entered his house, he did not go up to his own rooms at
once, but turned into his partner’s office, which was on the ground
floor, to the front.  It was a smaller apartment than his own, and its
aspect was even more strictly in keeping with the dry and severe nature
of the legal profession.  Wire blinds shielded the rather grimy windows
from the street, and piles of dusty documents, tied with tape, covered
the bare tables with a kind of methodical litter.  A scorching fire,
untidily smothered in its own ashes, heated the room to a stifling
closeness.

Creighton himself was a tall, lean man, long over fifty, gaunt as a
withered reed, with a face of a yellowish waxen pallor, which betokened
delicacy—a good deal of reddish whisker, fading into grey, and sparse
hair of the same colour.  The rusty black of his dress was respectable;
a shrewd eye, a dry manner, constituted the rest of the outward man.  Of
the inward, little, if anything, was known to anyone, even to his
partner.  He was the son of a minister; a deadly quarrel with his family
in early life had separated him from every individual of his own blood.
So much was known.  He made no friends, and cared for nothing in the
world but his business—so much seemed apparent.  Between the man and his
younger, but superior, partner, there existed a certain, but absolutely
unspoken sympathy; there was a decided likeness in the strength of their
reserve and in the solitude of their lives.  As a matter of fact, though
Herries, in his youthful hardness, never dreamed of such a thing, the
elder man cherished towards the younger, hidden as though it were a
crime, a sentiment of deep, and even soft affection.  Herries attracted,
dominated, and possessed his partner; yet no one knew, as Creighton did,
his faults and weaknesses.  And no one dreaded for him, as Creighton
did, with the experience of an embittered life behind him—the effects of
the cold solitude and dry absorption in business in which the young man
lived.  He was for ever making efforts—little, tentative timid
efforts—to influence Herries to relax the young severity of his aspect,
and the rigid regularity of his habits.  It was sometimes rather an odd
game that the two played between them, out of business hours, and, in an
initiated onlooker, would have provoked a smile.

As Herries entered his partner’s room on the present occasion, the
latter, rather like a school-boy caught in some illicit act, slipped a
book under some papers on his table.  It was a little, coarsely-covered
brown book, seen, at that day, on the tables of all men, gentle and
simple, but perhaps not quite the most suitable reading for an elderly
lawyer.  Herries took a seat, his accustomed one in interviews with his
partner.

’This room is over-hot, Creighton, surely,’ he said, ’but comforting
enough after the streets.’

’My chest has been troublesome lately,’ answered the elder man.  ’These
north winds flay me alive.  You have been out—it is good to be young!’

’Oh, ay!’ said Herries, discontentedly.  ’I have been out with my
cousin’s children—plague take them! Did I tell you that the annuities
hitherto paid to Mrs. Maclehose by the Writers’ and Surgeons’ Benevolent
Societies are stopped?  I had trouble enough getting them for her, five
years since, when Maclehose left her. Now that ’tis known he is making
an income in Jamaica, naturally such charitable support is withdrawn.’

’Ay, to be sure,’ said Creighton, quietly.

’I am writing to that damned scoundrel Maclehose,’ Herries went on, ’to
say I will not pay another penny for his wife and family.  Yet there are
the school fees due for the boy Willy, and I must give the lie to my
words to-morrow.’

’Well, well,’ said Creighton, ’the laddie must have his schooling, sure
enough.’

’I’ll be cursed if I can see why I should pay for it, though!’ said
Herries, angrily.  Perhaps there were few things that exasperated him
more than his partner’s attitude in regard to the affairs of Mrs.
Maclehose, as they concerned her cousin.  Here was a man, Herries
reflected, who, of all men, should have resented the intolerable and
altogether unbusiness-like nature of an arrangement which made one man
responsible for the support of the wife and family of another, and that
other, one who was earning a substantial annual income in a foreign
country.  Agnes Maclehose was, indeed, cousin-germain to Archibald
Herries—the daughter of his mother’s sister—and his sole living
relative.  On her quarrel with a worthless husband, he had considered
himself to play but a kinsman’s and a lawyer’s part in arranging for her
the details of a separation; and when, with two young children on her
hands, and friendless, she had come to Edinburgh, he had done his best
to ameliorate for her the hardness of her situation.  He had taken in
hand her money matters: she had a small income derived from money left
her by her father, but it fell far short of the modest necessities of
even a little household in the Potterrow.  Out of his own pocket,
Herries supplemented its deficiencies, and it was not the money he
grudged, but the violation of a principle that he resented.  And here
was Creighton—a lawyer, a man of sense and of extraordinary
shrewdness—who, instead of sympathising with his resentment, would for
ever try to soothe it with ridiculous excuses.

’She is your own blood,’ he would say of his partner’s relative, ’you
cannot put her on the street.’  Or, ’It is but a sup of porridge the
bairns will be wanting just now, not much, a flea’s bite,’ and so forth,
and Herries would fume in vain.  The old lawyer’s private opinion of
Mrs. Maclehose was none the less of an extremely unflattering character;
he believed her to be a daughter of the horse leech, who doubtless
preyed upon his friend after the manner of her kind, and the sound of
her voice in the passage sent shivers down his back, for he was a
woman-hater, or something very like it.  But she was yet, in his mind,
the one tie that Herries had, binding him to the world of kinship, of
human interests and human affection.  And so the man, whose own heart
had perished of atrophy within him, strove to keep life in the heart of
the other by the one means that naturally offered itself.

Herries, failing thus, as usual, to rouse his partner’s sympathy on the
score of the Maclehose difficulty, rose to go, and by a chance movement
of some papers on Creighton’s table, he disclosed to view the guilty
little brown book hidden under them.  His finely-drawn eyebrows arched
themselves in a kind of contemptuous query.  ’At it again?’ he said,
’that jingle that the town rings with?  Your poet’s star is in the
descendent now, though, Creighton,’ he added.

’Never, sir!’ said Creighton, hardily.  ’That star will never set!  It
shines to all time,—like Shakespeare’s, like Homer’s, for the matter of
that.  You’ll not put me out of conceit of my poet, sir!’

’Deuce take him!’ said Herries, half carelessly, half in earnest.  ’My
ears are sick of his name.  We are like to hear less of it this winter,
though, I think; the creature palls at last.  How the women fawned upon
him last year.  Pah!’

’Women will fawn on anything—a dog, a dwarf, a china monster,’ said
Creighton; ’but neither their fawning nor their neglect will touch the
fame, the genius of Robert Burns!’  He spoke with heat, and his dull eye
kindled.

Herries looked at him with a mild wonder.

’It passes me,’ he said, ’this mad enthusiasm for a rhymer—of dirty
rhymes, too, for the most part.  To me they reek of the midden and the
yard, and neither they nor their author are fit furniture for
drawing-rooms—that’s my contention.  But there, sir, good-night!  I
leave you to your poet.  By the way,’ he added, ’this reminds me that I
saw Master Bard on my way home to-night, at his old tricks.  But it is
not duchesses and fine ladies are his game now, but his own kind, it
would seem.’

’God send him back to the fields and the hills!’ ejaculated Creighton,
with warmth.  ’The town is no place for poor Rob, and I doubt they have
ruined the lad between them all!  But I must be gone, too, sir.  Dick
has been waiting on me this hour and more in the cold.’

Dick—well known to half the town as ’Creighton’s Dick’—was a dog, a
gaunt and hairy Skye terrier, with appealing eyes, who owned Creighton
as master. Every morning he followed the lawyer to his office, returning
home by himself, and every evening he came for him, waiting on the
doorstep for Creighton to appear.  He never failed, and the townspeople,
on his line of route, would time their doings by the punctual coming and
going of the lawyer’s dog.

’Come, man!’ Creighton would say, as he closed the sounding door behind
him, and the dog, though stiff and old, would spring at his knees.  This
night was one of a penetrating coldness, and Creighton seemed to shrink
together as he met the blast.  But he faced it, and man and dog took
their accustomed way down the windy granite street.




                             *CHAPTER XII.*


Alison’s journey to Edinburgh with her new friend was certainly the most
exciting and novel experience which her quiet life had yet afforded.  It
was hardly more than daylight when they got to Green Loaning, and
exchanged their country conveyance for the Edinburgh stage coach.  There
were but few people travelling at this season, and they had the interior
of that vehicle all to themselves.  Nancy soon had it littered with all
the paraphernalia which ever seemed a part of herself—the down cushions,
the scent bottles, the poetry books, the pencil and tablets for
recording any sudden outburst of the Muse—all the thousand little odds
and ends, so new and so marvellous to Alison, the country girl of simple
habits and few possessions.  Nancy was in high glee, the mood, as it
were, of some general of a feeble army, who, by an adroit and timely
stratagem, has defeated and outwitted a foe infinitely stronger than
himself.

’Well, Ally,’ she said cheerfully, for Alison was a little tearful, just
at first, ’is it not a comfort, child, that you’ve left home with the
blessing of one parent at least? As to the other, well, your mother is a
resourceful lady, I am sure, and will find a good use for Mr. Cheape
yet. She will get him for Kate or Maggie—’

’Oh, no, no!’ cried Alison in horror.  ’But, indeed, my mother will be
sorely vexed,’ she added; ’and what my poor father will say to her, I
cannot think.  And, Nancy, how shall I ever face her again myself?’

’’Tis far too soon to think of that, love,’ said Nancy, comfortably.
’Perhaps you need never face her at all, in the way you mean.  What you
have to think of now, child, is all the pleasant new things you have
before you—the town, new friends, new faces.  ’Tis but a hole and corner
of a home, I’m taking you to, Ally, but it has a cheery hearth, and
you’ll not be dull, I think.’

’How could I, how could anyone, be dull with you?’ cried Alison.  And,
indeed, that seemed a very unlikely contingency, the least likely of
all.

The coach rumbled on, sometimes smoothly, when Nancy chattered without
ceasing, sometimes with din and noise, when she would fall into a
pensive mood. Once they had a long pause for a rest or change of horses,
and it was then that Nancy rummaged in her bag and drew out a little
case of miniatures.

’Ah, my little men!’ she said softly.  ’You haven’t seen them, Ally.’
The case held pretty little pictures of Willy and Danny—Willy with his
rosy cheeks, and Danny with his mother’s eyes, turned sad and sorrowful.
Alison looked at them with delighted interest; these were to be the
substitutes, for a while, for Jacky and her sisters.

’You have not seen the mother-half of me, Ally,’ Nancy was saying
softly; ’and yet, do you know, I am nothing if I am not a good mother;
’tis my best point.’

’Yes,’ said Alison, sympathetically, and yet with a faint feeling of
surprise.  She had heard so much about so many things from her
fascinating new friend, but so very little about the children.  However,
Alison reflected, people always speak least about that which lies
nearest their hearts.

’Yes,’ Nancy went on, gazing at the miniatures the while, ’there are
friends of mine, Ally, who say to me they wonder I can love the children
of such a father. My answer is, I love them the more, owe them the more
devotion and duty, for having given them such a father!’

The sentiment seemed unexceptionable, and found instant echo in Alison’s
loyal breast.  She noticed there was a third miniature in the case, but
it was covered with a piece of silk.  Nancy now removed this and
disclosed the portrait of a young man, extremely handsome, in a dark
style, but the reverse of pleasing.

’’Tis he!’ she said, holding the miniature out to Alison, and turning
her head away, with a sigh.

’Mr.—Mr. Maclehose?’ whispered Alison, delicately.

’Ay,’ said Nancy, ’my deserter, my betrayer, I may, indeed, call him!
For did he not betray my youth, ruin my happiness, destroy my life?  And
yet, I’m made so, Ally, that I can’t part from his image, but keep it
there, with the faces of his innocent children.  He was the lover of my
youth—I can’t forget it!’  She propped the miniatures up on the seat in
front of her, and continued to gaze upon them, with many head-shakings,
and soft, moist eyes.  But presently the coach went on, and her mood
changed utterly; she fell to discussing the contents of a little basket,
which the hospitality of The Mains had prepared for her over-night.

’’Twas only meant for one, Ally,’ she laughed.  ’Little your good mother
thought that two would be at its demolishment!  But there’s enough and
to spare; the lady has a generous hand.’

They had quite a gay little meal.  The neglected miniatures overturned
with the jolting of the coach. Mr. Maclehose’s, indeed, fell down among
the straw at the bottom of the vehicle, and it was Alison who finally
picked him up, dusted him, and replaced him in the case.  The short day
began to close in now; the tired travellers spent the rest of the
journey half asleep, and mostly in silence.

It was a clattering over cobble-stones—a din indescribable of wheels and
horses’ hoofs—that woke Alison at last to a realisation of her arrival
in the town.  The coach drew up at its office in the Grassmarket, and
they got out there.  A man was waiting, with a ’hurley’ or barrow to
take their boxes, while the two ladies themselves walked, a link-boy
flashing his torch before them. How high and dark seemed the houses, how
narrow the echoing streets!  Alison, dazed and a little frightened, kept
close to her companion, who chattered gaily, with undiminished and
irrepressible vitality.  They came to the Potterrow eventually, and to
the dark archway and stone stair which led to Nancy’s ’garret,’ as she
called it.  A very decent serving-woman was holding a light at the
stair-head, and presently two little boys had rushed out, and
half-smothered their mother with hugging arms and raining kisses.

’Oh! gently, boys, gently!’ cried Nancy, laughing and kissing all at
once.  Then she put an arm about Alison.  ’Come, Ally,’ she said, ’and
be welcome to my little nest!’

It was a little nest indeed.  Allison thought it the tiniest, yet the
cosiest and homeliest room she had ever seen.  Such a bright fire leapt
in the polished grate, such cosy red hangings were drawn across the
windows; the polished panelling of the walls gleamed so cheerfully, and
there was a table drawn to the hearth. Presently, they were sitting
there, over a dish of tea; but Nancy could get no peace to eat or drink
for the boys.  They seemed both on her knee at once—Willy, with rough
boyish arms about her neck—Danny, with adoring eyes, never taken from
her face.

’You see, they love their little mother, Ally,’ she said, and her eyes
were full of tears.  Alison cast a motherly eye upon the children.  It
was very late, she thought, in her matter-of-fact way, for little boys
to be out of their beds, especially the younger, who looked so small and
’shilpit.’  Then she reflected she would ask Nancy, as soon as possible,
to be allowed to let out their clothes—more especially Willy’s—for the
discrepancies of the little green suits were at once apparent to her
practical eye.  Nancy, in the meantime, was frolicking about the little
room, putting things into place, giving a pat here, a push there—a
little tug to a curtain, or change of position to a screen or chair.
Presently, she fell upon a packet of letters that had awaited her
arrival, and was instantly absorbed in them, her quick, little, ringed
fingers busy with their fastenings.  All at once she gave a little cry
of rapture and surprise.

’Ally,’ she called, ’oh, Ally! what do you think? The gods are kind at
last—Fortune smiles!  Did I not tell you I’d get my heart’s desire?
Here is a letter from my cousin Nimmo—Miss Nimmo—and she asks me to a
tea-drinking at her house to-morrow; ’tis actually to meet—to meet and
be made known to, the Poet—my poet—the world’s poet—the immortal
bard—ah! magic name—to Robert Burns!’  Alison smiled down at her friend
with her kind, gentle grey eyes.

’I’m so glad, Nancy,’ she said; ’’twill be a great event—and how lucky
you are home in time!’

’La, yes, child, indeed!’ said Nancy.  ’Supposing I had missed it, I’d
have gone mad, I think, with sheer vexation!  Ally, you’ve brought me
happiness, you’ve brought luck to my house!’  She flung an arm about
Alison’s waist; she was almost dancing with glee.  Her great dark eyes
shone and glowed, her vivid lips were parted, to let her hurried
breathing come and go. Beside the quiet, calm, unstirred country girl—a
something tropical, she seemed, turning to passion, as the flower turns
to the light it cannot live without.

’But now, to bed!’ she cried.  ’To bed, boys, Alison, all.  To-morrow
must come quick, quick—on wings, Ally, on wings!’

So the little rooms were darkened, and Alison, feeling rather big and
strange amid her new surroundings, took possession of Jean’s closet,
feeling more at home when she found that Danny slept beside her, in a
little cot like Jacky’s.




                            *CHAPTER XIII.*


A north wind, whistling at the windows, awoke Alison next morning from
rather troubled dreams of The Mains, and her mother, and Mr. Cheape.
But it is difficult not to be cheerful at twenty, and Alison, who was a
sensible and wholesome young woman, had soon put away night-thoughts,
and was prepared to enter heartily into all the brisk novelty of her
surroundings. Nancy’s home, if a garret, was a very lively garret, with
the boys at their play, Jean’s cheerful industries, and its own gay,
fascinating little mistress, tripping here and there, with laughter ever
on her lips and in her eyes.

’Why, Ally,’ she cried, ’the sun shines on you, child! ’Tis the first
fine morning for a month.  You must get a walk and see the town.’  She
was busy with a dress, as she spoke, a gay thing of rose pink, just
sobered down with black, that she had taken out of a press.

’For, you see, love,’ she said, ’I must be modish to-night, if ever so
in my life.  Had there been time, I’d have had a new gown to deck poor
Nancy’s fading charms, and fit them for a poet’s eye.’

’You’d look pretty in anything,’ said Alison, meaning every word.  Nancy
laughed, with the liquid sparkle of her wonderful almond eyes.

’But, child, you shall not sit in here all day, watching me trim my
silly self for Nimmo’s tea-drinking,’ she said.  ’I will tell you what
we’ll do.  Willy and Danny shall take you between them: I have not,
indeed, the time myself this morning, or I’d come with my Ally as the
first of pleasures; but you shall walk over to the New Town, and to my
cousin Herries’s, and get me the packet of monies that is due.  ’Tis
mighty awkward in him not to have it waiting me here.  I’ve to borrow
from Jean already; but it makes a nice outing on a sunny morning.  Will
you go, child?’

’Surely,’ said Alison.  And she went away to prepare herself, for her
first walk in the streets, in the little closet she could hardly turn
in.  She tied on, as she was wont to do at home on Sundays, her wide hat
of rather sun-burnt straw, over the ’mob’ that was supposed to keep her
hair in order.  So that her sweet, grave face had a double framing of
clean frills and soft unruly curls.  A cross-over tippet covered her
handsome shoulders.  It was almost a summer suit, but Alison had nothing
else.

’Lud, what a country figure the poor child cuts,’ was Nancy’s inward
comment as Alison stood before her. ’I must see to her clothes
presently, presently.’  She came to the stair-head to see the little
party set off, bidding the boys take great care of their friend.

A gay north wind blew high that day through the grim streets of
Edinburgh town.  It was a morning of bright, shallow, winter sunshine.
When they had gone down into the Cowgate, and up again on the other
side, Alison and her little guides found themselves on the ridge of the
city, and below them they could see the nascent New Town spreading
itself, and beyond that, a lovely distance, rounded by the blue hills of
Fife, and watered by the widening Forth.  It was a day and scene to lift
the spirits to their zenith.  The keen wind searched the thin folds of
Alison’s summer gown, and blew the curls about her face, which grew rosy
with the cold.  Her blood ran warm, and she laughed, with the little
boys, just for pure health and happiness and freedom.

However, when they reached George Street, Alison became subdued.  Was
she not, probably, about to meet the terrible Mr. Herries, that most
exacting and particular gentleman, of whom even Nancy stood in awe?  The
severe aspect of the housekeeper, who sourly asked her business at the
door, entirely failed to reassure her; and what with the flutter in her
manner, the low tones of her voice in which she asked to see ’the
gentleman in the office,’ it was not surprising, perhaps, that a mistake
arose.  So that she was shown into Mr. Creighton’s room, instead of
Herries’s, the little boys tugging dumbly, but unavailingly, at her
skirts the while.

Mr. Creighton rose in all the confusion and dismay of spirit which the
entry of a female into his sanctum was wont to cause within him.  In his
gaunt, elderly figure Alison perceived the very image of Archibald
Herries, which Nancy’s casual references to her cousin had managed to
call up in her imagination.

’Will you be good enough to excuse this interruption, sir?’ she timidly
began, seeing that Creighton made no effort to open the interview.  ’I
am come from my kind friend, Mrs. Maclehose, on a message, to receive a
packet at your hands which she expects.’

Creighton was looking at her with the unsparing penetration—it had a
kind of gimlet-like quality—of his habitual regard.  Alison’s
unconscious grey eyes met his without flinching; it was indeed he who
first looked away.  ’Who was the woman?’ he wondered.  Somehow, with her
full, large presence, her fresh face and country attire, there seemed to
have come a breath of the fields and hills into his fusty room.

’Mrs. Maclehose is not accustomed to confide her messages with me,
madam,’ he said.  ’It is likely she meant you to apply to Mr. Herries.’

’Why, sir,’ said Alison, confused and blushing, ’are you—are you not—’
The lawyer emitted a dry chuckle.

’I am not Mr. Herries,’ he said, smiling.  ’In the matter of years I
have some advantage, doubtless, over that gentleman, but he is my
superior, ma’am.  I am only Andrew Creighton—at your service, of course.
May I ask, now,’ he went on, drily, ’how you are led to think of Mr.
Herries as old enough to be his cousin’s father?’  (’It was like the
little Jezebel,’ he was saying to himself, and he meant poor Nancy, ’to
make her cousin out an old man, and spoil his chances with a likely
lass!’)

But Alison protested she knew nothing of Herries’s age, stammering, as
all truthful people will, over a white fib.

’You thought all legal gentlemen were old, perhaps?’ said Creighton,
quite genially, ’but I protest not; some of us are young and handsome, I
assure you!’  He invited his guests to a seat, which they were too timid
to refuse, and had soon evoked from Alison her name and county.

’Graham—Graham of The Mains, to be sure,’ he said.  ’Why, I remember
your father well.  He used to be in and about the town in his youth, but
he never comes now, I take it.’

’’Tis a long way off, and my father is busy, and there are too many of
_us_,’ Alison explained, and the lawyer seemed fully to understand this
pregnant statement.

’Family cares,’ he gravely remarked, ’soon make a solid man out of a
young spark.  But you,’ he went on, ’you are come on a visit of
pleasure, I understand, and must do our old city the fullest justice.
You must see the sights, madam—Holyrood, the Castle, the Crags. But,
doubtless,’ with a clumsy effort to be gallant, ’there are plenty ready
and willing to do the honours of Auld Reekie to Miss Graham of The
Mains.’

’No, indeed, sir,’ said Alison, quite simply; ’there is no one but Mrs.
Maclehose, but she is the kindest of the kind, and will show me
everything that I ought to see.’

’Oh, ay, indeed!’ said the lawyer in a different voice. After that
Alison rose to go.

’I will bid you good-day now, sir,’ she said, with the modest air that
had so taken the crusty old lawyer, ’and I will trust to your kindness
to let Mr. Herries know that his cousin sent a message for the monies.’
(’Trust her for that!’ interpolated Nancy’s instinctive foe.)

He saw his guests to the door with, for him, a singular show of
courtesy.  When he came back into his room he stood at the window,
peering over the blind, holding a rough chin between finger and thumb in
an attitude of deep contemplation.  ’Graham of The Mains,’ he muttered;
’a good name, and a fine lass! She looked true.  They cannot _all_ be
deceivers and liars, surely.  Will _he_ give any heed to her, though?
There will be opportunity, chances enough.  But no, no; I need never
think it.’  And rather impatiently he turned to his interrupted work,
and was soon buried in its details.




                             *CHAPTER XIV.*


When Herries, who had been absent on business, returned to his house, he
was annoyed to find that he had missed the emissary from his cousin.
’That means, I suppose, that I must e’en trail out over there myself
after office hours,’ he said to himself.  ’Plague take the woman!  And
yet she must be visited at some time or another.’  Visits, rather of
business than of pleasure to his troublesome charge in the Potterrow,
were a part of the routine of his life.  They would generally be spent
in a wrangle over accounts, and yet hardly a wrangle either, for it
takes two to make such a thing, and Nancy was incapable of quarrelling.
But Herries would spend a laborious hour trying to instil into his
volatile charge some notion of the nature of money, and the value of
keeping and giving an account thereof. He might as well have tried to
instil into the passing winds an appreciation of these practical
details.  Nancy had but one notion of money—to spend it.  Not that even
Herries, in his severest moments, could call her selfishly or
systematically extravagant, which was the more provoking.  It was an
infinitesimal house-keeping—that of the tiny household in the Potterrow;
but by systematic ideas of cutting her coat according to her cloth in
all things, Nancy would not, or could not, be governed, and Herries
would drive himself nearly crazy over the futility of his efforts to
coerce this delicate, frail, light, feminine thing that so smilingly
defied him.

This night, as he prepared himself to walk over to the Potterrow,
another annoyance from a feminine source assailed him.  Lizzie, his
housekeeper, demanded an untimely interview by knocking at his door and
then entering his room, followed, at a discreet distance, by,
apparently, a satellite.

’Well, woman, what is it?’ he demanded crossly.

’Weel ye s’ud ken what it is,’ said Ailie, who used all the freedom of
speech towards her master of an old servant of his family, which,
indeed, she was.  ’Was I no’ tellin’ ye yestreen it was the day I was to
gar ma sister’s husband’s niece—it’s the lass Mysie—come oot ower frae
the Wabster’s Close, to see if she wadna do ye for a help tae me aboot
the hoose, noo a’m that auld and failed’—

’Oh, the devil take her!’ said Herries, impatiently. ’Of course she’ll
do if she suits you.  It’s your business, isn’t it?’

’Na! it’s just no my business!’ retorted the old woman, sourly.  ’For
when I said I wad like weel to hae a lass, ye hummed and haw’d, and—"the
dangers o’ the toon!" quo’ you—to a young lassie wi’ the beaux and sic
like.  ’Od, I’se gar ye see I’se gotten ane that wull hae nae sic
havers.  Come ben, Mysie!’ She called to her relative, who had remained,
meanwhile, on the landing without, and who now obediently appeared. ’Tak
the screen aff ye!’ commanded Lizzie, alluding to the tartan shawl
commonly worn about the head and face by the poorer women of that day.

Mysie divested herself of this garment, and disclosed to view a
countenance certainly destitute of any conspicuous allurement to the
aforesaid beaux.  She was a very tall and somewhat grenadier-like young
woman, with a pale, rather haggard, face, a quick, roving glance, and a
general air as of something newly caught and altogether untamed.

’She has the three nieces wi’ her gude man, ma sister,’ continued
Lizzie,’ and I’se warrant ye weel I waled the little bonniest o’ the
bilin’!  Mysie ’ll no be bathered wi’ the lads, I’m thinkin’.’

She contemplated her connection with grim approval, almost pride; but
Mysie, who had hitherto listened to the curious encomium of her lack of
dangerous charms with a perfectly apathetic indifference, uttered, at
the last words, a sudden, odd laugh.  Herries looked up sharply, but the
naturally rather heavy face had become stolidly grave again, and Mysie,
ordered to do so by her relative, proceeded meekly to leave the room.

’I’ve seen her before, somewhere, surely?’ said Herries, thoughtfully,
teased by some vague reminiscence. ’Rather a rough diamond, isn’t she,
Lizzie?’

’’Oo—a wee thing, mebbe—ay!’ said Lizzie, cheerfully. ’She’s fresh aff
the fields, doon Colinton way, howkin’ tatties ... but she’s takken wi’
a notion for genteel sairvice i’ the toon.  ’Od, she’ll get it wi’ me,
onyway!’  Thus promising abundant, wholesome occupation for her hopeful
_protégée_, Lizzie departed to nether regions, well pleased.  Herries
felt that he had not cottoned greatly to his new retainer.  But the
choice of a scullion seemed, for the time being, a matter of such
infinitely small importance, that he had presently forgotten Mysie as
completely as though she had never existed.

Presently, having dined, he walked briskly up the town in the gloaming.
Lights were beginning to twinkle from the houses in the old town—lights
so high up in the gathering haze, that they seemed to strain to the
stars.  The ill-lighted and malodorous wynds and closes clattered to the
deafening din of their granite-given echoes; harsh voices called to each
other across the narrow spaces; there floated from the castle height the
toll of a bell, giving the hour.  Herries picked his way to the
Potterrow, and was admitted to his cousin’s house by the discreet Jean.

With the privilege of intimacy, he walked unannounced into the little
parlour.  But for the dancing firelight it was in darkness, the cosy,
red curtains drawn, and those within seemed in no hurry for the lights.

’Well, cousin!’ said Herries, carelessly, as he entered. But so very
tall a woman’s figure rose from the hearth, where it seemed to have been
seated—displacing two little boys as it did so—that Herries realised at
once it was not his Cousin Nancy.  Jean saved the situation at this
critical moment by bringing in a pair of lighted candles.  And thus
Archibald Herries and Alison Graham saw each other for the first time.

Alison shook in her shoes, for she felt that this could be none other
than the redoubtable Herries.  And Herries, who was in a bad temper,
inwardly cursed his luck which had betrayed him into an awkward
interview with a country miss.

’Mrs. Maclehose is gone out to a tea-drinking, sir,’ Alison managed to
say, standing shyly where she had risen.  ’But she should presently come
home.  It is past the hour when she promised to return.’

’I apologise for my intrusion,’ said Herries.  ’Let me present myself,
in Mrs. Maclehose’s absence—her cousin, and your servant, Archibald
Herries.’  He bowed, with the accustomed little flourish and affectation
of the day, and Alison stole a look at him half frightened and half
fascinated.  She had never seen so fine a personage as this young man in
all her days, with his smartly cut, if sober, coat—his laced frills, the
powder in his hair, the ring upon his finger.  How fine and delicate and
clear-cut were his features, how cold and keen his blue eyes, under
those ironically-arched and finely pencilled eyebrows.  No wonder,
Alison thought, that Nancy was afraid of him.  He was terrible: much
more so, being so smart and fine, than if he had been a snuffy old
gentleman, such as Alison, in her fancy, had painted him.  And yet,
behold, the moment he sat down, Danny inserted himself between his
knees, and Willy lolled against his shoulder, with the clumsy affection
of boyhood.  The children, evidently, were not afraid of this terrible
person.  Alison, in an agony of shyness, was wondering if she must
introduce herself, when Herries saved her the trouble.

’And so you are come to explore the capital, Miss Graham,’ he said,
showing that he knew her name, ’but doubtless you knew it before?’

’No, indeed, sir,’ said Alison.  ’I never was in a town in my life,
excepting Stirling, where I was at school.’

’Ah, indeed!’ said Herries, suppressing a yawn, but not at all
suppressing a bad-tempered tendency to be covertly rude to this country
girl, who was going to bore him.  ’And when you were not at school, in
Stirling, you lived—?’

’I lived at my father’s house, sir,’ said Alison, quite simply.

’Hum-m,’ said Herries, perhaps a trifle disconcerted. ’I believe that I
have often heard of The Mains,’ he went on, condescendingly, ’a rural
solitude.  And what did Miss Graham do at The Mains?’

’I minded the turkeys, sir,’ said Alison, ’and did as I was bid.’  She
was not, in spite of her shyness and timidity, very well pleased with
the condescending tone of this fine young townsman, and spoke roundly.
The answer was amusing to Herries, and changed his mood. He looked
attentively at the speaker, but would not admit there was anything to
admire.  A ’big bouncing miss,’ he called her in his thoughts.  But,
nevertheless, he looked again; and once, he caught, full in the eyes,
the innocent candour of her wide grey glance—and before it, he was aware
that his own gaze fell.

’And have you made friends with these little men?’ he asked, in a
totally changed tone; and Willy and Danny grinned.  After that they
conversed very amicably about the little boys, their lessons and their
play, Danny’s delicacy and Willy’s school.  Herries made himself vastly
agreeable, as he well could do when he chose; and Alison was quite
startled when she saw how low the candles had burnt, which were quite
respectably long when Jean had brought them in.  But still Nancy
tarried.

’My cousin is late, surely,’ said Herries.  ’I, too, was bidden to the
great Nimmo’s, but I suspect I have passed a much more profitable
evening where I am.’

’But, indeed, no, sir!’ said Alison, in all good faith. ’For the great
Mr. Burns, the poet, was to be at Miss Nimmo’s, and ’twas to meet him
that Nancy was so wild to go.’

’I’m the more glad I was absent, then,’ said Herries. ’Mr. Burns is not
a person to my taste.’

’Why, sir,’ said Alison, wonderingly, ’don’t you admire his great
poems?’

’I never read them,’ said Herries, ’and never wish to. And, moreover,’
he continued, severely, ’I gather they are no fit reading for a lady,
whatever they may be for men.’

’But why?’ cried Alison, forgetting her shyness, in her surprise, ’sure,
sir, there’s the most beautiful things in them, all the best feelings
you can think of, and so often religion and the highest thoughts....’

’Then all I can say is,’ said Herries, shortly, ’that their author adds
hypocrisy to vice, and becomes the more odious in consequence.’

Alison gave a little gasp.  She, who pored over ’The Cottar’s Saturday
Night,’ and poems to ’The Mountain Daisy’ and ’A Field Mouse’; and
Herries, who heard the town talk of ’Holy Willie’s Prayer,’ and the even
less-edifying satires, were, indeed, little likely to agree on the
subject of the genius of Burns.  But even had Herries stopped to
consider the difference of their points of view, his opinion of the poet
would have remained unaltered.  And so it was that Alison found herself,
for the first time, fluttering against that stone wall of prejudice
which raised itself so soon in Herries’s nature. She had too much tact
to pursue the subject, and presently there were sounds without which
proved a timely interruption.  It was the chairmen, putting down the
returning guest at the foot of the stair.

’Ah, there’s Nancy at last, sir,’ cried Alison, ’so you’ll see her
before you go.’




                             *CHAPTER XV.*


All her life long, even when she was an old, old woman, did Alison
remember the vision that Nancy made as she came, fresh from Miss Nimmo’s
memorable party, into the little parlour that night.  She was in her
pretty dress of pink and black, her little shoes had high pink heels,
and a pink rose fastened the lace lappets in her hair.  But it was her
face that was illumined: her parted lips were scarlet, her eyes glowed,
her cheeks were delicately flushed.  She clasped her hands together as
she ran into the room, crying to Alison: ’Oh, Ally, I have seen him!
And, oh, much more than that: I’ve talked with him!  ’Tis the crowning
night of my life....’  And then, all at once, perceiving Merries, her
face fell, and she stopped short in her rhapsody.  ’You here, cousin!’
she said, in a changed voice.  ’Well, ’tis an age since we met.  And now
I must postpone my raptures, I know, for you’ll not approve their
object.’

’No need to name him,’ said Herries, blandly, ’Miss Graham has
enlightened me.  And so,’ he added, very disagreeably, it must be
confessed, ’that dog has come back from the dung-hill to the
drawing-room.’

’Herries!’ exclaimed Nancy, passionately, ’how ... how dare you speak
so?’

’Tut, cousin!  I’ve the freedom of my tongue, haven’t I, even though I
speak of your consecrated bard?  But there, I’ll not wound your
sensibilities and those of Miss Graham any further to-night.’  Herries
laughed as he spoke.  ’I’ll take myself off, and leave you ladies to
enjoy your raptures.  A mere man has no chance when there’s a poet on
the _tapis_.’

’Nay, Archie,’ said Nancy, more gently, throwing herself, with a little
sigh, into a chair and leaning back in it.  ’Stay a while.  ’Tis no wish
of mine to drive you away, God wot!’

Herries stood on the hearth, looking down at his cousin with his cool,
critical, half-satirical regard.  Her little innocent arts, so
infallible, as a rule, in the conquest of his sex, her languishing
glance, her merry smile, had no more effect upon him than summer breezes
on the bastions of a fort.  He called her in his thoughts, ’a little
baggage,’ teasing as a midge, perhaps, but hardly more important in the
general scheme of things.  That the ’little baggage’ might have
passions, strong to move her, and strong to move the little world around
her—strong enough, perhaps, to turn aside the deep and placid current of
his own existence—was a thought that never crossed his brain.  Nancy, in
the meantime, appreciated perfectly his attitude towards her, and it
inspired her with a kind of petulance—the petulance of a charming woman
at fault with a man, for once.  Yet she always tried ’to be pretty with
Herries,’ as she phrased it.  It was her nature, and her weakness, to be
’pretty’ with everyone.

Alison, at this juncture, had left the cousins alone, taking Danny to
his bed, for the child drooped with fatigue, in spite of his eagerness
to sit up late.  Herries watched her departure.

’I don’t quite gather who she is, and where she comes from, your
very—your very ample young friend?’ he enquired, lazily.

’My friend is Miss Graham of The Mains,’ said Nancy, with some tartness.

’Oh, I know that much,’ said Herries.  ’But how she comes to be your
friend, and to be here, gives food for enquiry.  I’ve hitherto not seen
that misses from the country were much to your taste.’

’She has a little history, Archie,’ said Nancy, covering her stony
relative (quite unavailingly) with one of her softest glances—’a little
history that might melt even your hard heart.’

’Let us hear it, and perhaps I’ll melt,’ said Herries, drily.

’I found the child in a dreary, God-forsaken hole of a country place,’
Nancy began, in narrative style, ’one of a prodigious family—seven
girls—think of it!  And they were going to marry her, against her every
wish and instinct, to a man old enough to be her father.  And so I acted
Providence and bore her off, in spite of them, and here she is.’

’Good God, cousin!’ said Herries, with a lift of his eyebrows that Nancy
particularly disliked; ’you mean to say you took the girl from her
parents—interfered with their projects for her future—and now burden
yourself with the responsibility of her maintenance? Heavens!’

’Her own father helped me—at the end,’ said Nancy, pouting.  ’He was a
decent man, and thankful to be off the devilish bargain of selling his
daughter to an old horror.  Yes, I call it devilish—hellish—if you
prefer the word!’

’Oh, Lord!’ said Herries, as though words failed him.  ’And who, pray,
was the bridegroom you have helped to cheat?’

’Old Cheape—you know him—Cheape of Kincarley,’ said Nancy.

’A most respectable person, and excellent parti!’ exclaimed Herries, now
in his most provoking mood. ’Why, a warm man is old Cheape, with as cosy
a bit of property in the east neuk of Fife as there is in broad
Scotland.  And you have cheated Miss Graham out of this fine
setting-down!  What better could she have hoped for, in her situation?
Upon my soul, but you have done the poor girl a bad turn.  And how do
you mean to make up for it?’

It was no soft glance with which Nancy now eyed her exasperating
relative; her eyes flashed, and her little fingers literally tingled to
box his ears.

’Archie,’ she said, with a little toss, ’I think ’tis time you were back
among your law books and your papers, for you can’t breathe, I think, in
a kindlier atmosphere.’  Herries laughed, not ill-humouredly, however,
for there was real mirth in the twinkle of his eyes.

’I’ll be gone, dear cousin,’ he said.  ’I’d present my condolences to
Miss Graham, but she’s vanished.  Poor young lady, I protest I grieve
for her.  Well, good-night, Nancy.  We will converse on business another
time—your packet is on yonder table, by the fire.’  He took his
departure, still smiling—that provoking smile of his, with the eyebrows
raised.

’I’m d——d if it’s altogether a laughing matter, though’—he said to
himself as he went down the stair. ’For is Nancy—or am I, rather, for it
comes to that—to feed, clothe and fend for that prodigious miss up
yonder?  ’Tis a mighty practical question, and no joke.’  It was a
question—a rather delicate one, perhaps,—which only time could answer,
which it did, in all due course, and with the greatest plainness.

In the room which the young lawyer had left, and to which Alison had
returned, the candles flared down in their sockets, and the fire burned
low, but still its two occupants remained there, deep in talk.  Or
rather, one talked, and the other listened; for it was Nancy who poured
forth all the pent-up raptures of her first interview with the poet,
while Alison sympathised—struggling, it must be confessed, with a
certain feeling of sleepiness the while.  For it was no doubt because
Nancy tried to describe precisely that which is indescribable—the
nameless fascination of genius—the overpowering magnetism of an unique
personality—that she failed, on this occasion, completely to convince
her usually pliant listener.

’I am afraid,’ said Alison, presently, with a pensive air, ’that your
cousin, Mr. Herries, does not think that Mr. Burns is quite a—quite a
good man.’

’Herries!’ exclaimed Nancy, indignantly, ’you heard him!  And pray, did
you ever hear anything so intolerant—so insufferably unjust, in your
life? Because, forsooth, a man is not cut precisely after his own
pattern—cold, bloodless, passionless, like himself—Herries condemns him!
He will make no allowance for a nature different to his own—subject to
temptations which never assail him, and the sport of circumstances whose
difficulty he has no idea of.  Herries, indeed! Ally, if life were as
Herries would make it, ’twould be a desert, and I’d die of thirst.  But,
Heaven be thanked, though I depend upon him in a measure, and must
therefore obey him in many outward things, he cannot bind my soul!  That
is free—to take its own flights—to seek its own companion in a kindred
spirit, which understands it, and whom it understands.’

Sleepy Alison did not pause to enquire whether this was merely a
poetical generalisation, or whether the ’kindred spirit’ were Mr. Burns.
She looked gently and patiently—a little wonderingly, perhaps, at the
fretted, passion-tossed little creature at her side.

’Come to bed, Nancy,’ she whispered persuasively, as to an excited
child.  ’’Tis so late, dear—long, long past one of the clock.’

’To bed!’ exclaimed Nancy.  ’And who could sleep, after such an evening
as I have spent?  But, of course, I’ll come, love.  ’Tis a world of
prose, and one must eat and sleep, as though poesy were not.  But,
Ally’—she crept close to the girl, and whispered at her ear with flushed
face, and brightening eyes—’Ally, he is coming here!’

’Who?’ said Alison, a little startled.  ’The—the poet?’

’Ay, child,’ said Nancy, ’the bard.  He’s to honour my poor hovel with
his presence.  Think of it!  And you will see him, Ally—ay—and hear him.
For don’t suppose that I forgot my Ally in my raptures.  I said to him,
"I have a song-bird, sir, up in my eyrie, whose wood-note wild will
delight you."  You remember how I told you, Ally, he delights in a voice
to sing over to him the old country airs and catches, and this he told
me himself to-night.  So you must be in song, sweetest—when he comes, in
a day or two—and we will tune the old harp, and have a heavenly evening
with the Muses.’

This, surely, was a prospect to delight any girl, and fill her brain
with dreams.  But Alison, as she went to bed that night (prosaic girl—I
grieve to state it of a heroine), never thought of the honour in store
for her. In the first place, she was sleepy, and in the second—well, in
the second, her thoughts seemed inclined to stay elsewhere.  There
flickered before her eyes—it would come—the most teasing, tantalising
little picture—the cameo-like outline of a profile, virile though
delicate—and oh, so dreadfully severe; the steely penetration of cold,
cold blue eyes; the lines of a figure that held Danny on its knee, and
had Willy leaning heavily against its shoulder.  And the following, or
something like it, was Miss Graham’s last waking thought that night.

’I’ve heard Nancy call him "little," but he’s as big as me, and I’ (with
a deep sigh) ’am so much, much too big for a woman....  If I were as wee
as Nancy, I’d call him ... tall.’




                             *CHAPTER XVI.*


The figure of Robert Burns at all the Edinburgh parties of the winters
of 1786-1787 is as classical among the classical portraits of literary
history as that of Byron at Ravenna, or Shelley at Geneva, or Scott
among the woods of Abbotsford.  It is the imposing and yet pathetic
spectacle of a Titan in a chain of flowers.  For here was a man, a
peasant pure and simple, taken from the plough, to be the pet for a
while of fine ladies in genteel drawing-rooms, and the plaything of men,
who, though they were pigmies beside him, yet covered him with an easy
condescension, and held him as the object of a gracious, if fitful,
patronage. Burns had borne the ordeal of his sudden popularity with
wonderful steadfastness of mind.  The natural shrewdness of the Scottish
peasant was combined in him with the splenetic melancholy of the
poetical temperament; and the combination aided him to a singularly just
view of his position and its dangers.  He was never over-sanguine; he
suspected that his course, like that of other meteors, would be brief,
if brilliant; and, so far as it lay within the bounds of Edinburgh
society, so it proved.  That society—that brilliant little world of
fashion, intellect and power—has been held to account for its treatment
of the peasant-poet, whom it _fêted_ for a season, and then dropped.  It
had hailed him with acclamation because he was a peasant—the more
wonderful a genius for being so—and then, because he was a peasant, it
held him at arm’s length.  It was no more than he himself had foretold,
though in foretelling it he had hardly realised the embittering effects
upon his proud and sensitive temper.  It was a great and cruel
injustice—the thoughtless inconsistency of a selfish world—but, under
the circumstances, it was inevitable and almost natural.  It seems
certainly to have been the fact that, by the time his first season in
the capital was over, the attitude of two-thirds of its society towards
the poet was, like that of Herries, one of a growing repulsion.

It was at this juncture, at the beginning of his second season, that
Burns met Mrs. Maclehose in the drawing-room of Miss Nimmo.  All the
little world gathered at that party had smiled at the result; but it was
a smile entirely devoid of malice.  No one knew, or even thought, any
harm of the charming little grass-widow—victim of a heartless
desertion—who lived so simply and so blamelessly with her two young
children in her garret in the Potterrow, under the strict guardianship
of that most respected and rising young man, her cousin, Archibald
Herries.  Her weakness for the Muses was well known, and her passion to
be made acquainted with the poet of the hour had long been a jest.
While, as to Burns, there was no question at all what his opinion would
be of a pretty and charming young woman of lively parts, who was ready
to fall down and worship him.  So, when the two came together, and sat
the whole evening side by side upon a sofa, engaged in a conversation so
absorbing, that they had neither eyes nor ears for the rest of the
world—everyone nodded and laughed and let them alone.

Burns at this time had come to Edinburgh on business connected with the
publication of his works.  He was lodged in a couple of rooms in St.
James’s Square in the New Town, and kept, on the whole, but doubtful
company.  Fine friends, as already hinted, were growing cold, and fine
ladies, in high places, fastidious.  In the lesser intellectual
circles—as at Miss Nimmo’s—he was still welcome.  But it was not a happy
or prosperous period in his life.  Money matters worried, and conscience
pricked.  A summer’s dalliance in his native place had reduced his
much-enduring Jean Armour to a condition which resulted in that meek
woman’s ignominious expulsion, for a second time, from her father’s
house.  Other matters, also of a tender and delicate nature, were giving
trouble.  From a poet’s love affairs it is seldom discreet to lift the
veil.  It can only be said that their frequency never seems to negative
their fervour, while they last.  Burns had a capacious heart, which
could furnish shrines for several idols at one time; a complex nature
where, as ever, the Soul and the Satyr strove for unequal mastery.  It
may be imagined how delightful to such a temperament was the balm of
Mrs. Maclehose’s generous adulation.  The poet was precisely in that
condition when a man desires to be soothed, to be flattered, to be made
to forget his own shortcomings and the world’s cruelty.  And who so
clever to keep him in such a mood as the fascinating little grass-widow
of the Potterrow?  So their spirits rushed together, and they swore an
eternal friendship on the spot.  In a couple of days, it was arranged,
the poet should come and take a dish of tea with Mrs. Maclehose at her
house, and that lady was in the seventh heaven.  But, to quote the bard
himself,—

    ’The best laid plans o’ mice and men
    Gang aft a-gley’—

and the tea-drinking, at that early date, never took place.  Either on
the way home from Miss Nimmo’s, or on some errand the following day, the
poet was knocked down in the street by a coach, and thus, instead of
hastening to the Potterrow on the wings of an exalted friendship, he
found himself crippled and confined to his lodging in St. James’s Square
with a broken knee-pan and a highly-irritated temper.  In the Potterrow
the news of this untimely accident came as a crushing disappointment.
Nancy cried like a child, and Alison, who had not shed such tears
herself since she was seven years of age, strove to comfort her with
every device of words and every promise of future compensation that she
could think of.

’He’ll come yet—of course he will, Nancy,’ she said cheerfully; ’and
then, you know, he’ll write.’

Alas! easy words!  Had poor Alison but foreseen with what a fatal
facility he would, and did, write: with what awful and voluminous
avidity they both would fall upon pens, ink and paper, she would not
have spoken so lightly.  Could she but have had a vision of that weary
sequence of thick letters, that only too often her own faithful though
unwilling hands would have to carry, she would not have been so
delighted when the first one was written and the first received. Nancy,
in a fever of thwarted eagerness, had at first threatened to rush off to
visit the bard in his confinement.

’I must see him!’ she cried, stamping her little foot. ’I shall, and
will!  What’s to prevent me?  Am I not a wife and mother?  Are we not
all relatives—sons and daughters of Adam?  Why should a censorious world
put difficulties in the way of my visiting my poor friend?  I’ll not be
bound by these ridiculous conventionalities!’  But Alison’s sound
natural sense averted the threatened indiscretion.

’’Twould embarrass the poor man to receive you, Nancy,’ she sensibly
said.  ’You know you have told me yourself how low is his station in the
world, and ’tis little likely he has a room fit to see ladies in, and it
would hurt his pride that you should find that out. And then—and then,
your cousin, Mr. Herries, who does not favour—’

’Drat my cousin!’ said Nancy, petulantly, ’and you to quote him, as
solemn as the owl himself!  But ’tis true—God’s truth, indeed—I daren’t
offend him.  And most consumedly it would offend his highness—such a
visit on my part—if it got to his ears.  No, you are right, Ally—wise,
Ally!  I see it.  I’ll abandon this visit, though ’twould but be one of
kindness and mercy. I’ll take me to my pen.  Thank Heaven for the pen,
Ally, that permits no real separation—no severing of souls—between
friend and friend!’

The Pen!  Little, busy, inky devil, that, when the tongue would stammer
and the lips be stiff, blabs out the inmost secrets of the heart!
Betrayer and tell-tale, with a treachery that is worse than tongues,
because indelible!  Specious ally, who turns king’s evidence, and
becomes the most relentless witness to our follies! Pin’s point, now
steeped in honey and now dipped in gall, oh, power of hurt, far deadlier
than the honest sword, this pricking Pen!  Sensible Alison, when, long,
long years after this, she came to hold in her hand certain letters,
yellowed and faded with age, and to read, marvelling greatly, their
turbulent, passionate pages, thought this, and more, of the dangerous
doings of the quill; although, to be sure, she never expressed herself
in the language of hyperbole.  That was not her way.

When, however, the first two or three of these letters were written, and
their answers received, in those gay early days in the Potterrow, Alison
was delighted, because they made her friend so happy.

’We are to make it a regular thing,’ Nancy explained, ’and who knows,
Ally, but that it may become one of the classic correspondences in our
language? We are to have borrowed names chosen by him.  How I love this
fancy of Arcadian names in such a commerce; it gives the last delightful
touch of romance. He is to be "Sylvander," and I "Clarinda."  Now is not
"Clarinda" a pretty name, Ally?  Heard you ever a sweeter or a more
musical?’

’’Tis very pretty, indeed,’ said Alison, good-naturedly. Secretly she
thought it an outlandish appellation. ’I think "Nancy’s" quite as
pretty,’ she added, truthfully; ’though, to be sure, a stranger could
not call you so at once.’

’Why, that’s just it!’ cried Nancy.  ’Don’t you see how we avoid vulgar
familiarity on one hand, and chilling formality on the other?  ’Tis the
most perfect idea.  I am in love with it, Ally!’

Alison smiled benignly on her little friend, quite unaware that the
cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, had appeared on their horizon, the
cloud that would some day cover the sky.




                            *CHAPTER XVII.*


One day, about this time, our heroine received a great surprise, not to
say a violent shock, in a letter from her father.  She came running in
with it to Nancy, who had not risen, with a very white face.

’Lud, child!’ cried her friend, looking up from the composition of a
morning poem, ’what is it?’

’My sister Kate is to have Mr. Cheape!’ gasped Alison.  Nancy burst out
laughing.

’Well, love,’ she said, ’what did I tell you?  And why pull such a long
lugubrious face over it?  Could any arrangement more altogether natural
be imagined? There is another of you disposed of, your mother pleased,
and Mr. Cheape fitted with a wife at last.’

’Oh, how could she do it?’ wailed Alison, alluding to her
less-fastidious sister.  ’Kate, too, the bonniest of us all!’

’Well, dear, she gets the wedding silk and a man with it,’ said Nancy.
’I’ll be bound she is quite content.’

But Alison, not so easily consoled, wept over the horrid fate of her
sister.  Her father, otherwise, wrote cheerfully.  The impending wedding
had restored good humour to his consort, and he expressed a belief that
Alison, if she had a mind to, might now return home, and all would be
forgotten and forgiven.  The laird, however, proceeded to counsel his
daughter to remain where she was for the present, and ’get all the good
she could for her coach-hire to the town,’ as he expressed it, after the
matter-of-fact manner of The Mains.

’Sure, Ally, you’d never think of leaving me?’ said Nancy in sincere
alarm, and with imploring eyes.

’Indeed, I’ve no wish to,’ said Alison.

’For, you know,’ went on the little woman, clinging to Alison’s hand,
which she fondled as she spoke, ’I get to lean on you, Ally, day by day,
and more and more.  You’re so big, and strong, and steady, not a poor
little straw like me, blown about by every wind.’

Alison looked a little doubtful.  ’I’m big and strong, I know,’ she said
pensively, ’but I doubt ’tis more in the body than in the mind, Nancy.
I’m like a child in leading-strings, I sometimes think.  ’Twas our
mother kept us all so, I suppose, being herself strong-willed.’

’Well, to be sure,’ said Nancy, with a laugh, ’you’d have married Mr.
Cheape if it hadn’t been for me.

’Yes, I believe I should,’ said Alison, slowly.  ’It seemed best for
everybody.  I’d never have had the power alone, to break with it.  So,
you see, I doubt my own strength, Nancy, when I’m put to it.’

Possibly Alison’s straight mind was already puzzling itself over the
problem of that Platonic correspondence which had now become such a part
of life in the Potterrow—bringing a feverish element into it.  Letters
came and letters went every day.  Sometimes they were entrusted to the
’caddies,’ or town’s messengers, but these proved a disagreeable class
to deal with.  Scenting an intrigue, they were extortionate, and Nancy’s
slender purse could endure no such constant drain.  So it came about
that Alison, only too naturally and too often, became friendship’s
messenger, and very heartily did she grow to dislike the walk between
the Potterrow and the poet’s lodging.  St. James’s Square, now little
better than a ’slum,’ was even in those days an unattractive locality.
Unlike the rest of the New Town, it was meanly built, and had a squalid
air, its denizens being not among the most respectable or desirable of
the city.  Disagreeable and meaning glances would be cast at the tall
young lady, still very countrified in her air and dress, who hurried
along, either alone, or only with a little boy for company.  Then, at
the dingy house where the poet lodged, the door would be opened either
by a rough-looking man, with a very insolent and disagreeable manner (it
was, indeed, none other than the poet’s precious friend and crony,
Nicol), or by a slatternly woman, with a sly glance, greedy for a bribe.
The bribe, alas! at Nancy’s instigation, was given by Alison’s innocent
and shrinking hand.  How could she help it?  This element of secrecy—of
the underhand—in the affair vexed her to the soul.  She did not doubt
that the correspondence in itself was perfectly innocent.  Nancy gave
her to understand it was the most high-souled, the most improving, the
most inspiring correspondence that ever was carried on.  It treated
almost exclusively of religion and the Muses, and it was to be the means
of bringing the poet to better ways of thinking—especially on the former
important subject.  Yet, Nancy said, this was a censorious world; it
would at once wickedly misunderstand a correspondence between a married
woman, in her delicate position, and a man of the poet’s character and
condition.  Therefore, it must be kept quiet—most especially from
Herries, with his distorted views and unjust judgments, must it be kept
a secret.  Alison sighed, but she loved and trusted her little friend,
and acquiesced.

Nor, at this time, must it be supposed that Alison’s life was all a
running of messages, or even a willing drudgery for Nancy’s little boys,
which she herself would gladly have made it.  Far too kind-hearted was
the little mistress of the Potterrow to permit of this. She desired
above all things that her young friend should be seen and admired, and
one fine morning she had suddenly said,—

’And now, Ally, we must see to your clothes, love! Look, the sun shines!
We’ll e’en away to Madam Cantrip’s this very minute, and see the
fashions.’

’But,’ cried Alison, aghast, ’I’ve no money to buy new clothes, Nancy!’

Nancy simply pinched her cheek and laughed, ever so sunnily and gaily.

’The world may call me poor,’ she said, ’but I’m not too poor to have
the luxury of giving to those I love—once and away.  And, child, if you
say one word about it—make one objection—I’ll pack you off back to The
Mains, and never love you more.’

So Alison submitted, and it was not with a bad grace. The discrepancies
of her _toilette_—entirely conceived, cut and furnished forth at The
Mains—troubled her greatly.  Remember that she was only twenty, and had
never had a fine gown in her life.

’A pelisse for the cold streets, dear, and hood to match,’ said Nancy,
cheerfully, ’and a muslin—yes, I think, a muslin for the evening—the
East India muslin is so much in vogue.’

This was as they walked down to the mantle maker’s, and that diligent
personage, as she eyed the proportions of her new customer, was quite of
opinion that a pelisse was the very thing to do them justice.

’The elegant and the fragile for you, Mistress Maclehose,’ she astutely
remarked, ’the handsome for miss!’

And very handsome indeed that pelisse proved when it came home, being of
cloth of a cosy crimson, silk-lined and fur-bordered, with a most
coquettish hood, that would just show a curl or two, and was indeed
mighty becoming to its wearer.  To Alison it seemed a garment fit for a
princess; she could not get over its wonders and beauties, and hardly
knew herself when she put it on.  And, in truth, it worked a wondrous
transformation in her air.

’Well, I declare!’ Nancy exclaimed, eyeing her over when she tried it
on, ’you are quite the fine lady, child, and I feel put away in the
shade!’

The white muslin robe was also a triumph—cunningly embroidered, and
showing more of Alison’s fine white throat and shoulders than had ever
been seen before.  Nancy’s taste finished it with a blue silken scarf,
and a blue snood for the curls.

’There,’ she cried, ’you’d charm the eyes of Archie himself, if he had
any, but he’s blind, dear; we must seek you some gallanter beau.’

Having thus enhanced the charms of her _protégée_ with fine clothes,
Nancy was not content, but turned a careful eye on her accomplishments.

’You must have lessons on the harp, Ally,’ said she, ’and for the voice,
love.  Such talent as yours must not be neglected.  And then you will be
the more able to charm our poet when he comes—our poet, who shall be
nameless!’

Therefore, one Schetki, a teacher of music, was summoned to instruct
Miss Graham for two hours in the week in the management of the voice and
harp.  So that the little room in the Potterrow echoed to sweet sounds,
the twanging of long-silent strings, the deep, sweet notes of Alison’s
voice; while Nancy, bent with flushed cheeks over her little desk,
scribbled her interminable letters—letters, alas! losing more and more
of their discreet Platonic tone.  The while, two little round-eyed boys
would stop their play and listen to the singing; and busy Jean would
pause at the door to catch the floating tune.

So passed away two or three busy and happy weeks. I daresay it would be
about the Christmas time, when such things are common, that a batch of
bills was delivered at the door of a certain rising young lawyer in the
New Town.  Among them were two—one from a certain mantle-maker of first
celebrity, and one from a much respected teacher of the musical arts.
They contained, severally, these interesting items:—


_To a Pelisse, in Crimson Paduasoy, lined_
       _silk, bordered fur, . . . . . . . 5 guineas._

_To a Robe, Indian Muslin, embroidered,_
       _3 guineas and 15 shillings._

And further:—

_To Lessons in the Harp and Voice given at_
       _Mistress Maclehose’s in the Poterrow, . 2 guineas._


But as to how these interesting and expensive disclosures were received
by their victim, it would not be discreet in me, at this point in my
story, to tell.




                            *CHAPTER XVIII.*


It would be in the course of these December weeks that Creighton,
Herries’s associate in business, formed a habit of coming, oftener than
usual, to his partner’s room, for a chat before leaving the office.
Herries had no objection, but he rather wondered what brought the man.
There was to be noticed, certainly, at this time, an increasing
feebleness in Creighton’s health.  He coughed frequently, and his
breathing seemed to trouble him.  Herries thought that perhaps he
enjoyed the additional comforts of his superior’s room; he would walk
about in it rubbing his hands, talking, rather aimlessly, about trifles.
Once he rather astonished Herries by an enquiry after the health of Mrs.
Maclehose—that lady being no favourite of his.

’Your relative and her children are well, I trust?’ he said, in his
formal way.  ’Ahem’—with a laboriously unconscious air; ’I daresay you
will be seeing, now and then, the young gentlewoman who at present seems
to form one of Mrs. Maclehose’s circle?’

’Miss Graham?  I’ll be sworn I do!’ said Herries, laughing.  ’He would
have bad eyesight who failed to see anything quite so big and strapping,
up in my cousin’s garret there, for all the world like a gowk in a
hedge-sparrow’s nest.’

’She seemed a pleasing and unassuming young woman,’ said the elder man,
mildly.  ’She inadvertently paid me a visit in my office some time
since.  I have been looking up the old books, and find that the young
lady’s grandfather was a client of the old house, when the century was
in its teens.  It would be a genteel recognition of the old connection
to show her some little civility on this her first visit to the
capital.’

’What could you do for a girl like that?’ inquired Herries, carelessly.

’Well,’ said Creighton, with a nervous air, ’I did think—I was thinking
that a tea-drinking—’

’A _what_?’ said Herries, looking at his partner as if he thought him
gone mad.

’Well, an asking of the ladies to tea one day,’ said Creighton, with a
look of guilt.  ’But I daresay ’tis impossible—impossible,’ he went on,
as the look of incredulity refused to fade upon the younger man’s face.
’Something else might be thought of—showing the town to the young lady,
there’s much in this old city instructive to a young mind.  And ’tis a
pity the poor thing should go back, to be buried in the country, without
seeing all she can; but I’m helpless there; these streets kill me just
now.’  But Herries seemed to smile upon this latter suggestion as a
suitable one.

’Show the lions of the city to Miss Graham?’ he said. ’Well, we might
see about that.  ’Twould be an act of good-nature to the country-mouse.
I’ll oblige you if I can find the time.’

One of the genuinely kind impulses to which Herries, in spite of his
apparent coldness, was often subject, whimsically seized him on this
matter.  He had now seen Miss Graham several times.  She was his
cousin’s guest; after all, perhaps he owed her a civility.  So, one
morning, when no business of importance was demanding personal
attention, he set off for the Potterrow, with a view to suggesting a day
of sight-seeing to his cousin and her friend.

Both ladies were fortunately at home, and professed themselves delighted
with the idea.

’The driest thing imaginable, love, and just like him to propose it,’
said Nancy, in a vivacious whisper, as the two went off to prepare
themselves for a walk.  ’But ’tis proper you should see all the tiresome
things, and, of course, I must come as duenna, though, Lord knows, you’d
be as safe with Archie in a desert as with your grannie.  Not but what
it is kind of him to propose this,’ added the little woman, with
compunction,—’kind in substantiate, but no romance: that’s his
character.’

Alison was taking her new pelisse out of its cherished folds, and
brushing her curls into extra good order. Nancy playfully pushed her
away from the one mirror of the establishment.

’No good to dress yourself up for Archie, dear,’ she said, laughingly.
’Were you dressed in parchment and tied up with tape ’twould be all one
to him.  ’Deed, in that case, you might take his fancy, for you’d then
resemble his dearly beloved law-papers that he lives by. But come now,
for my gentleman hates being kept waiting.’

They were quite a merry party as they picked their way over the cobbles
of the Potterrow, although it was a raw, sunless, disagreeable morning.
Children played and screamed in the gutters, and hawkers yelled to the
echoes, as they made their way down the High Street and the Canongate
towards Holyrood Palace, which was their destination.  Herries knew the
city much as a rabbit knows its burrow.  There was not an antiquity he
did not point out, not an archway or an effigy that escaped him.  So
that their progress was deliberate, and Nancy had heaved a sigh or two,
and stifled more than one yawn in her enormous velvet muff, before the
palace gates closed upon the little party.

’Now, ’twill be all history,’ groaned the little duenna to herself.  ’I
know Archie: not an anecdote, not an incident will he spare us.  Bless
the man, there he goes—Queen Mary, Darnley, Rizzio, Bothwell!  Well,
Ally’s happy at any rate.  Mercy, how the child devours him with her
eyes!  You’d think she’d never seen a man before, and neither she has,
poor love.  Now, any other young buck would be pleased, and throw a
little gallantry into his manners; but not he.  Oh, Lord—’

This was a smothered ejaculation as Herries, having fully expounded one
suite of rooms, proceeded systematically to the next.  He was entering
into this business of sight-seeing with all the energy and thoroughness
which characterised him in his profession.  He had that passion for the
mastery of detail which is essentially a masculine trait.  A picturesque
general impression of things would have satisfied Alison, and come not
amiss even to Nancy.  But for Herries, there was nothing too minute to
be examined and explained; everything must be seen, and seen thoroughly.
Nancy dropped behind and neither he nor Alison noticed the fact.  As for
Alison, her young limbs never felt fatigue, and she followed where she
was led, interested and well pleased.  It would all come back to her
afterwards, that happy, if hard-worked, morning: those stately rooms and
stairways, once silent witnesses to the darkest pages of her country’s
history; those frowning portraits on dim, panelled walls; and ever,
before all, the living picture of her guide—the alert figure and keen
face, the slim pointing hand, the dignity, the distinction that were
Herries’s own, though he was neither a giant nor a god.  He was so kind,
too; for, to be sure, Alison thought, it must all be very stale and dull
to him. Issuing from a careful and instructive examination of the
chapel, they discovered Nancy, seated on a bench, half in laughter and
half in tears of pure exhaustion.

’I can no more!’ she exclaimed.  ’Not another step, Archie, for my life.
You must put me in a coach and send me home, and you two finish the
sight-seeing by yourselves, for ’tis past me to look at another object,
antique or modern.’

’We have not done the half that I intended,’ said Herries, seriously.
He had planned a day, it was now barely noon, and he liked to keep to a
plan.  It needed only a very little of Nancy’s deft management to
enforce her own suggestion.  A coach was called, and she was put into
it; it rumbled off, and she nodded and smiled and waved her hand to the
couple whom she left standing in the palace-yard.

’There, now,’ she said to herself, with a sigh of thankfulness and
relief, ’what a most admirable idea!  With any other man ’twould not
have done, I could not have left the child; but with Archie, the very
thing!  He’ll be quite happy schooling her for another hour and bring
her home safe as a church, and she, dear innocent, will never know how
dull she’s been.... And now, my soul, to other thoughts!’  And before
Potterrow was reached, ’Clarinda’s’ next letter to ’Sylvander’ was all
aflame, written on that busy, burning little brain.




                             *CHAPTER XIX.*


’Shall we dine?’ Herries said, suddenly.  On leaving Holyrood they had
taken a short walk in the King’s Park, in order that Alison might admire
the crags. Returning to the town they had hunted amid devious ways for a
certain ancient church, and here in the graveyard, among the lank,
decaying grass, the slanting tombs and fallen emblems of mortality,
Herries had pointed out the blackened, mouldering slab which marks the
grave of Rizzio.

Then they had come up the High Street to St. Giles, and had made an
exhaustive survey of that interesting edifice.  And now they had climbed
up the Castle-walk, and stood upon that wondrous summit, the rock that
crowns the northern capital.  It was here, perhaps, that the faintest
shadow of a lessened alacrity had fallen across Alison’s manner, when
invited to scale a bastion and visit a most interesting gun there
situate.

’Are you hungry?’ Herries had enquired.

’Very,’ said poor Alison, and then could have bitten her tongue out for
making an admission at that day considered so very ungenteel.  But,
indeed, it was now long since breakfast time, and a sup of the boys’
porridge at half-past eight, and a hunk of their bread, although a
nutritive, was not a very lasting, meal. Healthy Alison was indeed
hungry, and Herries’s ’Shall we dine?’ had a most tempting sound.

’Your cousin will be expecting me, sir,’ she demurred, as in duty bound.

’Oh, Nancy dines at mid-day with the boys, I know,’ said Herries, ’and
that’s two hours and more a-gone. ’Tis not a fashionable hour to ask a
lady to take dinner. But we’ve deserved it—so let us dine.’

He considered a moment.  He could not take his present companion to dine
alone with him at any of the frequented taverns of the city.  But he
suddenly recalled a little place where they could go with safety and
decorum.  It was a resort called ’Lucky Simpson’s Howff’—a couple of
clean rooms kept by an old wife, and much frequented by simple folk
landed from the country, in the neighbouring Grassmarket, who feared the
prices and temptations of more fashionable establishments.

’Come,’ said Herries, encouragingly.  ’It is not more than fine minutes’
walk, and Lucky has always the pot upon the fire.’  And Alison seemed to
have no choice but to follow.

Presently, at the corner of a close, they came upon the oddest little
house in the world, whose tiny granite gable, with its crows’-steps,
stood sideways to the street. They entered by means of a little outside
stairway, and were soon seated in the low-ceilinged, heavily-raftered
room, where Lucky Simpson dispensed her simple hospitality.  The woman—a
stirring old body, in striped cotton gown and snowy ’mutch’—waited upon
her guests herself, and seeing that on this occasion she had ’the
quality’ to deal with, she spread a coarse homespun cloth upon the
table, and furnished it with two-pronged forks.  Lucky’s accustomed
guests dined off the bare boards, and ’supped their meat’ with horn
spoons, as a rule.  She now lamented that the day’s dinner was nothing
more genteel than ’sheep’s head, done wi’ the collops and the
braincakes.’  But to Herries and his hungry companion this sounded
appetising enough.

They were seated one on each side of the homely little table.  Alison
had loosened the strings of her hood—it fell back a little from her
freshened face, and the little clustering curls about her temples.  She
was looking about her, all unconscious of possible scrutiny, the
pleasure of the situation bright upon her face.  Herries looked at
her—perhaps for the very first time—with real attention, and a something
of her personality, its simplicity and trustfulness, its gentle candour,
was borne in upon his mind.

’My God!’ he said to himself—and a kind of pang assailed him—’how
innocent she looks!  It is a woman’s body, but sure, only a child looks
out of those eyes.’  And he felt a sudden warm impulse of kindness and
goodwill go out of him towards this grave, shy, country girl.

But the arrival of the sheep’s head, steaming in a savoury manner, put
an end to reflection.

’Now this is indeed a most sadly ungenteel dish, as Lucky says, to put
before a lady,’ Herries said.  ’Miss Graham has perhaps never tasted
anything so common?’

’Who—I, sir?’ said Alison, simply.  ’Why, don’t I get my dinner off it
every Monday at The Mains?’

’Every Monday?’ said Herries, amused.  ’Now, why on Mondays, pray?’

’Why, sure,’ said Alison, shocked at the unpractical nature of the
query, ’because the sheep is killed on Saturdays, and so we get the head
on Mondays, by nature, sir.’

’At that rate,’ said Herries, laughing, ’you must work down the animal,
I suppose, and have the tail on Saturdays?’  But Alison shook her head,
smiling and dimpling.  No; it appeared the tail came up on Thursdays
’roasted with the gigot,’ and was usually the portion of ’Ferran,’ the
collie dog.

And so they had a good deal of conversation over that little meal, and
were very friendly, and even merry. Those who knew Herries only under
the frigid reserve and severe pre-occupation of his usual manner, would
have been astonished to see how he unbent, how simple were the jokes he
cracked with Lucky, how kind and gentle his converse with his timid
guest.

Lucky brought in a steaming toddy, and Herries would have it that Alison
must ’taste.’  Out of his own glass—before he touched it himself—he must
ladle a drop into hers, with Lucky’s funny old toddy-ladle, with the
worn and dented silver bowl, and spindly, long black handle.  Yes, that
was a pleasant hour, but, like all such, over too soon.  They must go.
Alison, from an inner pocket, had produced a remarkably attenuated
little purse.

’I suppose, sir,’ she said, ’it is now time that we should pay for our
dinner?’

Herries leaned his elbows on the table, and, smiling, looked long and
deep into her eyes.  Well, he had looked into a woman’s eyes like that
before—perhaps too often.  But never before had the depths of Alison’s
innocent being been plumbed by such a gaze.  It troubled her—but with
how sweet, how perilously sweet a trouble!  Her eyes fell, and the
colour crept to her cheeks.  Herries looked away, but his voice was kind
when it spoke.

’When a lady does a man the honour to dine with him,’ he said, smiling,
’she is not generally asked to pay the reckoning.’ Alison blushed
scarlet, as one detected in some awful solecism, and huddled the little
purse out of sight.

’I—I didn’t know,’ she stammered.  ’You must excuse me, sir.  I never
dined out with—with a gentleman before.’

’I’ll be sworn you never did!’ Herries said to himself, in great
amusement.

After that they rose and went out into the streets again, where the
short, gloomy winter afternoon was already darkening into evening.
Herries naturally escorted his charge up the town towards the Potterrow.
They mounted the worn flights of steps, the steep closes and murky
wynds, with the brisk step of youth refreshed—Alison the first and least
fatigued. Herries felt himself admiring her for the first time.

’Now, that’s a handsome jacket,’ said the innocent man to himself,
eyeing the red pelisse, ’and I protest, it sets a handsome figure!  A
fine free step the girl has, too—country-bred.’  Altogether, he was very
well pleased with his companion that night.

When they reached the Potterrow it was nearly dark, and the ill-trimmed
flaring lantern that hung in the General’s Entry was already lit.

’Will you not come up to your cousin’s tea-table, sir?’ asked Alison,
shyly.

’I thank you, no,’ Herries answered.  ’Make my excuses to Nancy.  I have
business this evening.’

’I—I should thank you for a very pleasant day, sir,’ said Alison,
timidly.  ’I have greatly enjoyed myself.’

’Nay,’ said Herries, with a little flourish, ’the pleasure was mine!  I
trust we have other enjoyable days, in company, to come.’  And with that
they parted, and Herries walked down the town alone.

’If all pleasures were as innocent and as cheap, mistress,’ he said to
himself, thinking of Alison’s little speech, ’men would be better and
richer than they are!’  And he laughed when he thought of the modest
total of Lucky’s bill.  On his doorstep he found Creighton’s terrier,
Dick, shivering in the cold.  ’Come in, beastie!’ he said, ’and lie by
the fire till your master goes.’

He was in a singularly softened mood, and in high good humour with all
the world.




                             *CHAPTER XX.*


Mrs. Maclehose, having provided her young friend with a pretty gown, was
of no mind that that garment should waste its sweetness in a cupboard.
It was now the height of the Edinburgh winter season, and she was full
of engagements; so that the two ladies were presently immersed in quite
a whirl of mild dissipation. They went to kettle-drums, sometimes night
after night; to literary _soirées_, such as Nancy loved, where lions, of
more or less celebrity, mildly roared; sometimes to concerts at the St.
Cecilia Hall, for which Herries would send them tickets; and once or
twice even to a rout in the Assembly Rooms, where Alison looked on at,
but could not join, the extremely stiff and joyless dancing of the day.
At nearly every entertainment they frequented, Herries would be present,
for it was by virtue of his introduction that his cousin had the
_entrée_ everywhere, and he was widely known.  He was heartily sick of
the social round, but it was necessary for his professional interests
that he should be seen, and he was fully aware of the fact.  One pair of
eyes watched the door for his coming in those days, though he did not
know it.  Alison, in a room full of strangers, would look longingly for
the one face that she knew, and, almost unconsciously, her eyes would
follow the now familiar figure.  She thought that all the world watched
him thus.  For, surely, he had a better carriage, a finer head, a
smarter coat than any other man.  Herries certainly had distinction, but
he was below, rather than above, middle height, and not, naturally, one
to rise above a crowd.

With what a curious, new, expectant joy had Alison looked forward to
meeting him for the first time after that happy day of sight-seeing!
But here her ignorance of men, at any rate of this man in particular,
built up a disappointment for her.  Herries at Lucky Simpson’s—Herries
entertaining a simple country girl, whom he regarded as a child—was very
different from the Herries of evening parties and the social treadmill.
When next Alison saw him, and he gave her a formal five minutes of his
arm in a crowded drawing-room, he was like a stranger again—cold, stiff,
dressed in reserve as in a garment.  It was the nature of the man, and,
in time, Alison learned the difficult lesson that it set her, as one
learns who loves his task.  But she certainly got little aid from Nancy.

’’Tis a strange being—Archie,’ his cousin would say, discussing him
after some chance meeting.  ’A riddle to me, Ally, who can generally
read a man like a book. Many a time I wonder what is in the heart of the
creature—what are the motives of his actions, the ruling passions of his
life.  I’ve known him since he was a boy, and at all the crises of my
life he’s been at my elbow—the adviser, the protector, the benefactor.
But, I tell you, child, I know no more what he really thinks on any
subject under the sun, than the child unborn!  And what is more, I know
no one who ever did!  And yet I’d not have you think I underrate his
good qualities,’ she went on earnestly.  ’I see his solid worth, and I
respect it.  But ’tis my most unlucky star has ruled it, that I must be
dependent on a man I fear.  I live by love, Ally—by sympathy,
confidence, communion!  I can forgive—I hope to be forgiven.  But
Herries asks no forgiveness, and he grants none.  He—he drives me to
subterfuge, Ally.  I swear against my proper nature!’

Alison never doubted that, first in Nancy’s mind, as she spoke, and
first in her own, was the thought of that eternal commerce with St.
James’s Square.  It throve apace, like some ill weed with a fair leaf,
but choking roots.  And now, as the weeks went on, and the poet wrote of
gradual recovery from his hurt, the letters would give place to
meetings, and even Alison, in her innocence and her confidence in her
friend, knew instinctively that in these meetings there would be danger.
If only Herries might be told of them, even though he disapproved!  But
on the subject of the poet he was unapproachable; he bristled with
prejudice, as a porcupine with its quills.  Alison’s unerring judgment
forced her to see that he was unreasonable and unjust.

However, at this juncture, both Alison’s anxieties (in this direction)
and her little gaieties received an interruption.  The boy Danny fell
dangerously ill, and all her pity and care went out to him.  She was
aroused one night to hear him moaning in the cot beside her, and she ran
to waken Nancy.  Both of them hung over the child, terrified to find
that he knew neither of them, but wandered and cried in a high fever.
The faithful Jean, roused, ran out into the windy, desolate streets at
dawn to call a physician.

Alison knew well that the child had ailed.  She had urged it upon Nancy;
but, of late, Nancy had cared so little: she seemed, more and more, to
push everything from her but the one thing, and that, alas! was not her
child.  The boy suffered from a running sore or abscess on the hip.  It
troubled him always, and now, perhaps, some knock or hurt, had
aggravated it.  Alison shuddered to find it so inflamed—searing, like a
live cinder, the delicate flesh.  When Jean returned, she had secured no
one but a callow student—a timid ignoramus, who either could not, or
would not, lance the sore.  He sent, however, a jar of leeches.  Nancy
screamed at the horrid things.  But Alison took them in her fingers,
without a qualm, and laid them on the child’s burning skin.  They gave a
temporary relief, and he fell into a troubled doze.

’Ally,’ said Nancy, an hour or two later, ’the child must have the best
physician in the town.  I have heard Archie talk of taking him to Mr.
Ross, one of our first surgeons.  Will you, like your own sweet self, go
over to George Street, and tell my cousin he must bring the man here—beg
him to do it—rather, without loss of time?’

’I—go to Mr. Herries’s office?’ stammered Alison, overwhelmed with
doubt.

’’Tis a savage morning, and I hate to send you, child,’ said Nancy,
coaxingly.  ’But Jean’s so busy, and I cannot—I _cannot_ leave the
child.  You hear how he calls for me every minute.  Perhaps we could get
a messenger....’

’Nay,’ said Alison quietly, ’I’ll go, Nancy.’

It was not the weather that daunted her, but a new sensation—a womanly
instinct that made her shrink from the idea of putting herself in
Herries’s way. Supposing he should think her bold?  But her strong
common sense told her that most probably he would not think of her at
all, one way or the other; and this, certainly, was no time to let
herself be hindered in helpfulness by silly, unnecessary scruples.  So
she put on an old, rough cloak of Jean’s, wrapped a screen about her
head, and cheerfully faced the storm.

Half an hour later she stood in Herries’s warm, handsome room, her rosy
cheeks bedewed with rain, and the drops sparkling on her curls.  She
told of Danny’s suffering, and gave the message, simply, quietly, in
fewest words.

’Why, in conscience, does my cousin send you out on such a day?’
exclaimed Herries, in extreme irritation. ’Could she not put her servant
on the job?  It is preposterous!’

’Jean was very busy, sir.  The whole house is upset since four this
morning,’ Alison answered, quietly. ’Your cousin could not leave her
child to come herself.’

’My cousin "leaves her child" on other occasions fast enough,’ said
Herries, with a sneer.  ’This crisis in the boy’s health,’ he went on,
sternly, ’comes of her own neglect.  ’Tis weeks since I warned her that
she should call in a physician, and I gave her an introduction to Mr.
Ross.  However, since you are good enough to be her messenger, tell her
that I will bring or send the man in the course of the day.  It is no
sinecure, I think you must perceive, Miss Graham, to be the
self-appointed guardian of another man’s children.’

He spoke with great bitterness, and Alison could not but feel that he
was justified.  Her message was delivered, and she could but go.  So
deep was Herries’s annoyed preoccupation, that he barely bowed as he
held the door open for her exit.

He sat down moodily to his desk again when she was gone.  But presently,
though some little interval of time had elapsed, his sharp ears caught
the sound of her voice, downstairs it seemed.  What delayed her? he
wondered, irritably; and supposed he must descend and see.  What he did
see, as he came downstairs into the hall, was the spectacle of his
partner, Creighton, bare-headed in the rain, helping Miss Graham into a
coach, while a clerk, who had apparently just fetched it, held open the
door.  Herries felt himself redden to the very forehead with a boyish
shame.  The coach rolled off, and Creighton came in, shaking the rain
from his coat.

’My good sir,’ said Herries, meeting him, ’our noble profession of the
law is making a Diogenes of me, and I seem to have forgotten the manners
of a gentleman. But you make up for my deficiencies.’

’Nay, nay,’ said Creighton, in confusion, ’I but saw the child trying to
open the door against the blatter, and I could not let her walk forth
into the rain.  That was all.  I hear she brings ill news.’

’Ill enough,’ said Herries.  ’But what special sort of churl was I to
confound her with her news?  A good girl, doing far more than her duty
by me and mine.’

’Ay, a fine lass, a very fine lass,’ said Creighton, looking earnestly
at the younger man.

’And yet, like the rest of them,’ said Herries, musingly.  ’She comes to
a man’s house as to a shop, for something useful—all ’tis good for.’

’Nay, now,’ said Creighton, smiling, ’we know who it is teaches her
_that_ trick here.  ’Tis not of her own doing, or on her own trokes.  Be
just, sir.’

And so it was that Alison’s elderly conquest in George Street took up
the cudgels on her behalf and never dropped them again as long as he had
strength to hold them.




                             *CHAPTER XXI.*


The eminent surgeon came to the Potterrow immediately, and said his
oracular say after the manner of his kind.  Sea air he prescribed, and,
even more stringently, sea water—douchings and rubbings for that piteous
little limb, fast shrinking in a fell disease.  Country milk he further
insisted on, and a nourishing diet. Better put the child, he said, to
some farm or seaside cottage, where he could get the full benefit of a
country life. There were plenty decent folk along the coast, he opined,
accustomed to the boarding of delicate children from the town.  But that
would only be when the child was fit to move—not yet.  In the meantime,
he lanced the sore, which operation afforded everyone in the little
establishment in Potterrow a harrowing morning.  The
mother—’distracted,’ as she said—paced up and down the parlour, fingers
in her ears; while, in the little closet-bedroom, Alison held Danny’s
hands, and honest Jean steadied the quivering little thigh beneath the
lancet. The operation gave great relief, and in a few days Danny was
convalescent—an interesting invalid, indeed, with larger and more
cavernous dark eyes than ever, and laid, in high dignity, upon a couch,
drawn near the parlour fire.

Herries came nearly every day to see him.  He got into a comfortable
habit of coming towards evening, just when Nancy’s pretty tea-table was
spread in the parlour, and candle-light and fire-light danced upon the
panel, and the cosy, red curtains were drawn against the dreary night.
It was really very pleasant, and Herries came, in these days, to dislike
the empty solitude of his own house at this hour, when Creighton would
be gone, and the clerks dispersed to their homes.  He did not pause to
ask himself why his cousin’s room now seemed so vastly agreeable of an
evening.  He was not an analytical personage, and he still believed that
it was to see Danny and watch his progress that he came.  Was he not
busy making arrangements for the little boy’s removal to the seaside,
which the doctor wished to hasten, in spite of the coldness of the
season?  He spoke constantly of an old nurse of his own, who was married
and settled at the village of Prestonpans—a decent woman, accustomed to
the charge of children.  He was in treaty with her for little Danny’s
board, and presently the matter seemed settled.

’’Tis one of your own delightful, good, sensible, charming plans,
Archie,’ Nancy said, comfortably. ’No one else could have devised
anything half so suitable. Sure, dear cousin, you are as wise as
Solomon!’

Herries did not reply, but he looked at his relative, between
half-closed eyelids, with the satirical glance he always kept for
her—not that it could half express the nameless exasperation which this
little, cooing, wooing, winsome woman roused in his suspicious nature.
Perhaps, just now, he was a little tired of being called so sensible.
Aristides, though history does not say so, may have been as wearied as
his neighbours of hearing himself called the just.

In the meantime, Alison was very happy—who so happy in all Edinburgh?
She had Danny to take care of, and she was one of those born caretakers
of the sick and weak.  She carried him in and out of the parlour in her
strong arms; twice daily, with unhesitating nerve and tender fingers,
she would dress his sore; all day long she would play with him, sing to
him, talk to him, playful yet reasonable, at once tender and firm. She
did not know how a certain pair of lynx eyes watched her with the child.
The owner of the lynx eyes did not himself know how narrow was their
scrutiny. He was quite unconscious of the fact that all he saw, worth
mentioning, in that little room was the figure of a tall girl with grey
eyes, who played with a little boy.  It was Nancy who remarked at this
time that she had never before known her Cousin Archie to be musical. He
certainly did evince a singular interest at present in the musical
progress of Miss Graham, asking questions about the thoroughness of
Professor Schetki’s style, the duration of his lessons, and such-like
technicalities.  It may be that the appearance of a certain bill in his
budget at home had something to do with this sudden interest in the
arts.  Certainly, at this time, and nearly every night, the young lawyer
had a habit of pulling a certain account—nay, two—out of a bundle in his
desk.  He would turn them over and over, look at them, fold them up, and
then unfold them again.  Sometimes his eyebrows would merely arch
themselves, very high indeed; sometimes he would emit a soft, short
whistle; once he smiled.  That was when he put the bills away for the
last time, and it is his biographer’s duty to state they were
discharged.

All this time, while the mere prosaic matters of everyday life went on
as above, a certain high-souled correspondence, which took no note of
common things, continued to unite the Potterrow with St. James’s Square.
Alison still took letters, weary of the job, but loyal to her friend.
Sometimes she was rewarded by hearing priceless extracts from the
effusions which came in return. ’_I am delighted, my lovely friend, with
your enthusiasm for religion,_’ wrote the poet.  ’*’Tis also my
favourite topic.*’  Alison thought this sounded very nice—pious, even.
Perhaps there was no harm after all, and Herries was, yes, he was too
strict in his censures of a genius whom he did not, and would not,
understand.  Yet she sighed, and sometimes wished there was no poet in
St. James’s Square.

Once, near dusk, she and Nancy were walking in the New Town, and the
latter took a perverse fancy to stroll into the square herself.

’But I left your note this morning, Nancy!’ protested poor Alison.

’I know, I know, child,’ said Nancy, whose face had an eager look.  ’But
I’ve been virtue, prudence itself, Ally, and never set foot in the
sacred precincts myself. Now ’tis dusk nearly, and no one about.  You
know my romantic nature.  I would see with my own eyes the shrine of
genius.  Come, love, be generous to your friend!’  And they dawdled some
minutes in the wretched, grimy square,—Nancy, holding her muff to her
face, but peering up at the windows of the houses. Alison did not know
that a foolish pen had written that morning: ’_I am promised to be in
your square this afternoon, and if your window be to the street, shall
have the pleasure of giving you a nod._’  Nor did she hear the poet’s
lively rejoinder of the next day: ’_You don’t know the proper storey for
a poet’s lodging, Clarinda!  Why didn’t you look higher?_’

And then, coming out of the square, in the very neck of it, whom should
they run against but Herries himself.

’This is an odd hour and place for you ladies to be walking alone,’ said
he.  And Alison saw how his eyes narrowed with suspicion, and his lips
set themselves in their most obstinate folds.  But Nancy was inimitable
in self-possession and unconcern; said something about a visit to a
clockmaker in the square, and then talked of the weather.  Alison, poor
Alison, had felt the shock so, that her very heart jumped.  Then
followed the sickly sensation, so horribly novel to her young strength,
of a feeling of faintness.  She knew that her very lips grew white, as
she stood there listening to Nancy’s prattle.  How foolish it was ...
but, oh, would Nancy _never_ go!  At last she nodded a lively good-night
to her relative, and they separated.

’La, child!’ Nancy exclaimed, as they scurried home, ’that was a queer
mischance!  And did you see how mighty odd my gentleman looked at us?
He knows, all the world knows, Burns lodges in the square.  But I think
I put him off the scent; he knows my big wag-at-the-wall clock comes
from Jamieson’s, and that’s in the square too....  But, Ally, what made
you turn so white?  Are you not well, love?  Sure I’m sorry you had a
qualm; ’tis horrid, vapourish weather just now, but could anything on
earth have been more opportune?  For now, if Archie takes it into his
head that either of us has a sentimental interest in the square, it must
be you!’  She laughed her little soft, thrilling laugh, and tripped
gaily along beside her silent companion.  ’But I don’t think,’ she added
presently,’ that he saw anything.  It was too dark.’

That night Alison had a nightmare.  She dreamt that she walked
somewhere, but there was a chain about her feet; and ever, as she tried
to hurry on, the chain tightened, bruising her ankles, cutting even into
the flesh. On some height beyond her stood a figure.  Its face was
hidden, but she knew that it was Herries.  Then Alison awoke, and found
that she was crying.




                            *CHAPTER XXII.*


Herries was not greatly disturbed at the meeting in St. James’s Square,
after the first flash of annoyance. It was one of those incidents,
little thought of at the time, which may, at a later date, loom large; a
link in that chain of circumstantial evidence which sends many a culprit
to his doom.  He merely hoped, irritably enough, that his cousin was not
playing tricks, making a fool of herself about the poet (he knew the
poet’s lodging perfectly), and he made a definite resolve to interfere,
if this should be the case.  Not only, he reflected, must Nancy walk
warily on her own account, but she had, under her charge, a young and
inexperienced girl, who must on no account be exposed to dangerous
poetic wiles.  Miss Graham, it struck him, bad looked pale; doubtless,
she had confined herself too closely nursing Danny.  He must design some
little dissipation for her.  As a matter of fact, he had two in view.

’Are you still of a mind to give the ladies their tea-drinking, sir?’ he
inquired, genially, of his partner, walking into that gentleman’s room
one evening.

’To be sure, to be sure,’ said Mr. Creighton, concealing his amazement
with creditable dexterity. ’Only, my poor rooms....’

’Oh, my dear sir,’ said Herries, affably, ’consider this house at your
disposal, and Lizzie at your service. She will do everything.  And, now
I come to think of it, my room above stairs is the more cheerful, more
suited to ladies than this.  What do you think?’

’I entirely agree,’ answered Mr. Creighton, with the solemnity of a
judge.  ’My portion of the entertainment will doubtless consist in
amusing the ladies when they arrive,’ he added, with a kind of stiff
jocularity. But Herries declined to see the joke.

’Shall I convey your invitation to my cousin and Miss Graham, and
perhaps I may beg you to extend it to the boy, Willy?’ he inquired, in a
business-like tone.

’Assuredly,’ answered his partner.  ’And if you can manage gracefully to
convey to Miss Graham the idea that this little civility on my part is a
compliment to our ancient connection with her family, I shall feel that
the genteel thing has been done.’  It must be admitted that Mr.
Creighton, in spite of his age and profession, could enter, with
wonderful spirit, into a little game.  When his partner had gone, he
rubbed his hands together with a delighted air.

’It is working!’ he said to himself.  ’Who would have thought it, so
soon?  But he needs tender handling, the lad.  I must take care.’

Herries had no difficulty in arranging a day with the ladies of the
Potterrow, when they should enjoy the hospitalities of Mr. Creighton.
It was to be on a Thursday, and the matter was fixed.  However, when the
morning came, Nancy, with great finality, announced her intention of
keeping the house all day.

’But, but,’ cried Alison, in dismay, ’we _promised_, Nancy!’

’So we did, dear,’ said Nancy, with provoking coolness, ’and we’ll keep
our promise, that is, you shall, you and Willy.  But as for me, to take
tea with those two, with that old mummy of a writer, that hates me like
poison, and good, dull Archie, that we’ve had such a dose of, of
late,—my dear, ’twould choke me, and that’s a fact!  Now, don’t look so
shocked.  Besides,’ she added, lowering her voice, ’to be strictly
honest, and you know I am so with _you_, my love, and tell you
everything—I’ve other fish to fry.  Ally, my poet is free to-day, for
the first time!  For the very first time, he goes out.  All sorts of
tiresome engagements bind him this day, he says, that he dare not
neglect.  But there’s a chance, Ally, a little, little chance, like the
faintest star in the firmament, that he may visit his friend.  Think of
it, and you’ll see that not for a kingdom would I risk his not finding
me here.  Far more likely ’twill be to-morrow or Saturday ... but ...
oh, Ally, it might be to-day!’

’But for me,’—said Alison, troubled at heart, ’can I possibly go to the
house of these gentlemen alone?’

’Oh, lud, child, with Willy, yes, of course!’ exclaimed Nancy,
impatiently.  ’Why, now,’ she went on, with a titter, ’were it a
question of taking tea with old Creighton alone, your duenna might
hesitate, but with Archie there, why, every element of propriety is
present. Don’t you know him yet, child?  As safe as a church, haven’t I
told you a thousand times, and about as lively. There, run away now, and
get your things out.  I’m sure I wish you had a gayer spark than Archie
to dress up for.’

’I think Mr. Herries is very kind to—to us,’ said Alison, with her head
in the air.

’Kind?’ said Nancy, ’kind as a grandfather, dear. Who ever doubted it?’

When the hour arrived, Alison in her fine pelisse and hood, and Willy,
wriggling in the agonies of his ’Sunday suit,’ were prepared to start.
There was a look of beaming pleasure on Alison’s face, but it clouded
over when she saw that Nancy drew from her desk the inevitable letter,
shut and sealed for delivery.

’Ah, love,’ Nancy cried, in her softest voice, ’you’ll leave this for me
on the way home, won’t you?  ’Tis on your road coming by the bridge, and
won’t take a minute.’

’Must I—_must_ I take it?’ said poor Alison, looking very blank.  ’I—I
thought you expected Mr. Burns to-day....’

’The merest chance, child,’ cried Nancy, impatiently. ’And this note is
_most particular_, Ally, for it tells him all my movements for the next
few days, so that there may be no chance of our missing.  ’Tis not like
my Ally to refuse me a little favour like this,’ she added,
reproachfully.

’I’ll take it, Nancy,’ said Alison, sadly.  Refuse Nancy a favour?  How
could she?  But the letter in her pocket seemed to burn her.  To leave
it meant a moment of degradation always.  But to leave it—going straight
from Herries’s house—hiding it from him all the time—hurt her honour,
hurt her very heart.

In the meantime, in Herries’s fine room, the feast was spread, and Mr.
Creighton hovered round it, fascinated. He had made a reckless
expenditure in sweet cakes; there were enough to feed a multitude.
Herries had had enough to do coercing the savage Lizzie into unearthing
the best china, and the beautiful silver tea-service—a family heirloom.
Now, he regarded the preparations with a contented eye.  The room was
one of those exceedingly handsome ones for which the larger Edinburgh
mansions are justly famous.  Three long windows looked out into George
Street: round the cornice ran a delicate frieze, one of the masterpieces
of Adams; and the high mantel was decorated with medallions—white upon
green—from the same hand.  In the slim classicality, the severe grace of
these moulded figures, an observant eye might have traced a resemblance
to the young host, especially trim this afternoon in fresh powder and a
new coat.  He was reflecting that this was, properly speaking, the
drawing-room of his house.  If he ever married, he must shift his
business quarters elsewhere, and this house must become his private
residence.  The entrance of Mr. Creighton’s guests broke in upon his
reverie.

It was a very pleasant tea-party, indeed, in spite of the absence of
Mrs. Maclehose, which was regretted with due politeness.  Mr. Creighton
devoted himself grimly to the entertainment of Willy, who, perched
precariously upon the edge of a high chair, regarded his overtures much
as he might those of a well-intentioned ogre. Mr. Creighton ’pressed’
the cakes—boys, he reflected, could eat a limitless quantity.  Willy was
too frightened to refuse; he ate, until the powers of mastication were
all but paralysed, and then rolled helpless eyes of repletion towards
Alison, silently imploring succour.

But Alison, it is to be feared, was not paying that attention to her
young charge, which was customary with her.  She had been requested to
make the tea—an absorbing process always; and then, Herries was helping
her, kind, ’as a grandfather,’ of course.  How pretty was the china and
the silver!  The goodly spread made her think of gala days at The Mains,
with a touch, an ache, of home.  The conversation was all that a
grandfather, at his best, could have attained.

’You must tell my cousin,’ Herries was saying, ’that I have arranged to
take Danny down to Prestonpans on Saturday.  ’Tis sudden, but Ross
presses the change, while this clearer spell of weather lasts.  I’ll
have a comfortable coach at the Grassmarket—the boy will travel in
warmth and comfort.  Nancy will come with him, doubtless.  And you—I
trust you will honour us, Miss Graham?  ’Tis a fine drive, and there’s
much of interest to be seen at Prestonpans.’  Alison said it would be
delightful.  Then she rose to go, for it grew late.

’’Tis a fine clear evening to take the air,’ said Herries, ’and if Miss
Graham walks, may I have the honour to escort her to the Potterrow?’
His glance was searching hers.  His escort ... through the grim streets,
under these rosy skies of the winter twilight?  Her eyes shone
acquiescence.  And then—and then she remembered Nancy’s letter, and the
willing answer died on her lips.




                            *CHAPTER XXIII.*


Herries was waiting for her to speak; his quick eye caught, first, the
eager, answering look, then the cloud, the hesitation, the confusion.

’I could not trouble you to come with me, sir,’ said Alison, in a low
voice, her eyes on the ground.  ’Willy and I know the way well.’  There
was the unmistakable note of refusal in her speech.

Herries raised his eyebrows; his irritable pride was at once in arms.
’Very well,’ he said coldly; ’then I will have a coach called.  At this
New Year season you cannot be permitted to walk in the streets at this
hour, with no protection but Willy.’

’I wish to walk, sir,’ said Alison, miserably.  She was, indeed, a poor
actress; inventions and excuses came never a one to her aid.  Mr.
Creighton advanced unexpectedly to her rescue.

’These coaches,’ he said, ’are a terrible expense, the drivers
extortionate, indeed, especially going up the town.  There is the lass,
Mysie, sir,’—to Herries,—’could she not be spared to accompany Miss
Graham?’

’She is big enough to do the dragon, certainly,’ said Herries, with a
short laugh.  ’Mysie be it, then; I’ll have her told.’  He left the
room, with an air of offence, to give the order.

’’Tis a pity you could not let Mr. Herries go with you,’ Mr. Creighton
said softly to Alison.  ’The walk would have done him good; he sits too
confined to his work.’

Alison raised her grey eyes to the old man’s face; they were dimmed with
her vexation, her shame.  But she had no time to speak, for Herries
returned to say, curtly, that Mysie waited below for her charges, and
presently both gentlemen saw their guests to the door.

When Herries returned to his room, followed by his partner, he kicked at
the fine fire in his grate, a way he had when annoyed.

’Madam was up to some little trick, there,’ he said sharply.

’Tut! tut!’ said Creighton.  ’Why jump to ill conclusions, sir?  We men
of the law are too apt to be suspicious. It does not do with women; they
have ways with them that seem little and secret to us, but are quite
innocent.’

’I like no such ways,’ said Herries, dourly.  ’What has she to hide?
Why could she not let me go with her?’

’For the very reason, lad,’ cried his partner, in desperation, ’that
there comes a time when a lass will not do, for proper pride, the very
thing that her heart longs for most.  ’Tis near on thirty years since I
had to do with a woman in kindness, but I remember that.  Man, did you
not see the colour on her cheek and the glint in her eye, when you first
spoke?’

’A man that is not fool and puppy does not see such things,’ said
Herries, virtuously.

But he was mollified.

Alison, meanwhile, was by no means enjoying her walk home.  Her heart
was hot and sore within her. It was hard to have missed that pleasant
escort, to have been obliged to offend so kind a friend.  Would he
forgive her?  These melancholy thoughts were interrupted by Willy, who,
generally an active child, was lagging in a tiresome way.

’Ally,’ he said at last, with the dire directness of childhood, ’I am
feeling _that_ sick....’

’You have had too much cake,’ said Alison, sternly.

’’Twasn’t my fault, then,’ cried Willy, resentfully, ’’twas that old man
that made me.’  And ruefully he put a hand just where the ’Sunday suit’
fastened with most unpleasant tightness over Mr. Creighton’s too liberal
hospitality.  But no terrible results ensued, and Alison had soon
forgotten Willy’s woes in wonder at the strangeness of the escort which
Herries had substituted for his own.

Mysie was certainly an odd figure.  What a queer young woman for a
servant, Alison thought, and with what very strange manners!  Mysie, in
a draggled cotton gown, and screen by no means modestly covering her
charms, was no sooner out of sight of her master’s windows, than she
began to stalk along as though the town belonged to her, swinging her
arms, occasionally casting a sly, sideward glance at her companions, but
more often leering at a passer-by.  It was the New Year time, and the
streets were full of half-drunken loafers of both sexes.  Mysie soon
attracted all the attention that she wanted; shouts of laughter began to
follow her, and soon a sorry jest or two.  Her bold manner grew bolder,
her step more free; yet, in the abandonment of her air, there would have
been apparent, to an experienced eye, rather recklessness and despair
than any genuine flaunting.  There was, too, a peculiarity in her gait
which Alison was too young to note, or to understand, had she noted it.
Only the odd behaviour of the woman struck her.  It was very
disagreeable.  She tightened her clasp of Willy’s hand, and quickened
her pace.

But at the end of Princess Street she had to stop. There was that odious
letter to be delivered, and delivered secretly, as Alison well
understood.  ’Mysie,’ she said, with what courage she could summon, ’I
wish to turn up here on a message.  Wait here, if you please, with the
young gentleman, until I return.’

’Na, I’ll no wait,’ retorted Mysie, with a cunning look.  ’I’m for
comin’ wi’ ye.’

Alison knew not what to do; resistance, she felt, would only make a
scene.

’I am only going to leave a letter in the square,’ she said quietly;
’you can come if you choose.’

’Whatna square?’ enquired Mysie.

Alison did not answer, but hurried on.  When St. James’s Square opened
up before them, she felt a hand upon her arm.

’What’s the like o’ you doin’ here?’ Mysie asked, in a fierce whisper.
But when they came to the accustomed door, and Alison stopped, the woman
released her hold, and burst into a peal of laughter.  ’Here,’ she
cried, ’_Here_!  Eh, lass, but this dings a’!  You anither o’ them, and
you in silks and satins!  Eh, but he’s a braw lad!’  She held her sides
with laughter, arms akimbo, and stared at Alison with her strange, wild
eyes.  Alison was now certain she was demented.

’Come away, come away,’ she said soothingly; she had hurriedly slipped
the letter in between the door and its lintel.  But Mysie would not be
cajoled.

’Anither o’ his jo’s!’ she ejaculated, and then she bent to Alison’s
ear, ’Whar is’t ye meet him, lass?  And what is’t ye pit intil the
letter?  I canna write him ma’sel’, or I would—I would—my certes, yes!’
Alison tried to shake her off.

’I don’t know what you are talking of,’ she said, ’and neither do you.
The letter is neither your business nor mine.’

’Ah, ye needna be tellin’ me that!’ said Mysie.  ’But I’se no trament
ye, lass,’ she added, with a sudden change of tone.  ’We maun be movin’,
too.’  The unhappy creature sighed; her mood of excitement seemed over,
and she walked along quietly and dejectedly, her step dragging on the
stones.  Suddenly she paused, seizing Alison’s arm.  ’Lass,’ she
whispered, ’ye—ye ken him?  Think ye he’ll be guid to Mysie in her
trouble?’

’Who?  What trouble?’ asked Alison, startled, and suddenly moved to a
kind of shrinking pity for the woman.  But Mysie did not explain, only
gave her a strange look and heaved a convulsive sigh.  To Alison, the
disagreeable idea presented itself that her companion might babble among
Herries’s servants of the leaving of the letter.  Well, where you
desired silence you gave a fee.  Nancy had taught her that.  She felt in
her pocket for her purse; there was only a crown in it, which seemed a
great deal, but it must be given.

’This is for your trouble, Mysie,’ she said, when they had reached the
General’s Entry, but the words suggesting discretion which she had meant
to utter, literally stuck in her throat.  They were unnecessary.

’I’se no tell on ye, lass,’ said Mysie, with a cunning look, as her
dirty fingers closed upon the coin.  Alison shuddered, but dismissed her
quietly.

The incident had disturbed her a good deal, and when she entered the
parlour, she had a rather pale face and frightened eyes.

’Bless the child,’ cried Nancy, who, with a litter of paper round her,
was scribbling verses by the cosy hearth.  ’What ails you?  Has old
Creighton’s tea given you the indigestion?  Be sure, love, if there was
poison in the cup, ’twas meant for me!  But, Ally, you look scared: what
is it, love?’

’’Twas—’twas nothing much,’ said Alison, struggling to rid herself of
the disagreeable impressions of her walk.  ’Only, Mr. Herries has such a
strange servant-lass that he sent across the town with us; she behaved
so—so odd.’  Nancy laughed.

’Was that all?’ she said flippantly.  ’Gentlemen have often "strange
servant lasses," dear, and I dare say Archie, for all his prim ways, is
no better than his neighbours.’

Alison’s cheeks suddenly flamed scarlet, and her eyes blazed, as she
caught the innuendo.

’That—that was a _wicked_ thought, Nancy,’ she said.

’La—Innocence, don’t look so scandalised,’ laughed Nancy.  ’What a
spit-fire it is!  But take my word for it, Ally, men are men, love, and
not old maids!’ which was an undeniable truth; and not a surprising one,
perhaps, on the lips of the confidential friend of Mr. Burns, the poet.




                            *CHAPTER XXIV.*


The Bard had not visited the Potterrow on that evening, as Alison was
not slow to discover.  But Nancy was in a mood so gay, so full of
sparkle, that her friend presumed that the famous visit was a pleasure
only for a very little time deferred.

’Nancy,’ Alison said, venturing on a subject which she felt was too
mundane to find favour at the moment, ’Mr. Herries says that he takes
Danny down to the seaside on Saturday.’

’Does he, love?’ said Nancy, coolly.  ’Well, ’tis vastly good of him,
I’m sure.  But if he expects dutiful maternal attendance from me on that
day, he can’t get it; for I’m most particularly engaged at home.’

’He—he begged of us both to come,’ said Alison, in rather a low voice.

’Well, dear, ’twill be a nice jaunt for you,’ said Nancy, cheerfully.
’And with you there to take care of Danny, the less need for me.  ’Twas
exactly so I planned it, in my own mind.  Child, Ally, of what use you
are to me!  What did I do before I had you?’  She came over to Alison’s
side of the hearth, patted the girl’s cheek and playfully pulled a curl.
But Alison’s heart was troubled.

’Nancy,’ she said, timidly, ’don’t you think ’twill seem a little—a
little odd to Mr. Herries that you do not go with poor Danny?’

’It may seem as odd as it pleases, love,’ answered Nancy; ’I am not
going.’

Alison looked at her friend in sore perplexity.  There was—there had
been for some time—a change working in the little woman, a hardening
process, it seemed.  It was a hiding process, too, for it seemed to
raise a barrier between her and Alison, between her and the children,
between her and the common, wholesome, pleasant things of every-day
life.  She let the girl, the children, the household,—the rest of the
world, for that matter,—go their own ways; while she, absorbed, intent,
wrapt in some dream, seemed to breathe a separate air. A kind of hard
eagerness was taking the place of her old bright gaiety; a certain
determined selfishness seemed to conquer the keen, if perhaps rather
shallow, sympathy, that made her personality so winning in its normal
phases.  Wistfully, across the boundless levels of her girlish
inexperience, Alison looked at her little friend. What ailed her?  How
could she help?  One tremendous, one unswerving resolution formed itself
gradually in the girl’s mind at this time; she was there to help Nancy,
to stand beside her through thick and thin. Nancy had helped her, had
saved her from an abyss of life-long misery.  She would be Nancy’s
friend to the last limits of undeviating loyalty.

But in the meantime, Alison being young, looked forward to Saturday;
with rather a fearful joy, perhaps, for how was one to meet an
offended—so justly offended—a friend as Mr. Herries, after the offence?
She half-feared some message would arrive, coldly declining the pleasure
of her society on Saturday’s expedition. Was it not quite
possible—probable, even?  But Saturday arrived, bringing no such cruel
message, however richly deserved; and Alison, from her little northern
window, saw the Rose of Day blush and quiver through the cloudless
winter sky, and knew that another glorious frost-bound day was granted
for Danny’s safe removal to the sea.

They made quite a triumphal procession going down to the Grassmarket.
First went Jean, bearing in her stout arms the little invalid, almost
lost in shawls; then came Alison, with his bundle and his box of toys;
Willy capered in the rear; and Nancy, Nancy herself, armed with her own
inimitable, charming, dazzling impudence, tripped down with them to see
them off.  She met her cousin with an unabashed front.

’I am not coming, Archie,’ she said, in a plaintive tone, and with a
melting glance.  ’My mother’s tact tells me ’tis better to have the
parting with my poor Danny now, and here, whilst the child is excited
with the start and the pleasure of his drive.  Were I to come, and then
leave him in a strange place, there’d be a sad scene, most detrimental
to his health, and shattering to my poor nerves.’  Herries simply raised
his eyebrows; but he presently drew his cousin aside, while the others
were busy setting Danny and his belongings in the coach.

’I am rather doubtful,’ he said, with an unusual air of indecision,
’doubtful of the propriety of my—ahem—taking Miss Graham upon this
excursion alone.’

’Doubtful of a fiddlestick, Archie,’ retorted his cousin with vivacity.
’La, cousin, who could the poor child go with if not with you?  Ain’t
you safe as a convent? and then with the two little fellows and all—
You’re joking, surely?  You’d never disappoint the girl of her jaunt for
such a silly reason?’

Herries said no more, but he looked rather spitefully at his cousin.
Perhaps he was not flattered at being told he was ’as safe as a
convent.’

In the meantime, the coach was ready for its start. Herries had selected
a fine roomy vehicle, with a glass front, and had ordered three horses.
Danny was in a seventh heaven of delight, and so forgot the pain of
parting.  There was a cracking of whips, a tremendous clatter of hoofs
on the cobbles, a cheer from the little crowd that had collected to see
the start.  Nancy, from the causeway, fluttered a dainty
pocket-handkerchief, and Jean waved her work-worn hand.  Hers were the
only tears that watered this farewell; one or two fell on her coarse
apron as she trudged home behind her mistress.

’Yon poor bairn will never come back,’ she said to herself, and drew the
back of her hand across her eyes.

The village of Prestonpans lies, as all men know, about ten miles east
of Edinburgh, on the shores of the Firth of Forth, as it widens to the
sea.  It is a fine drive down there, by the Portobello and the
Musselburgh roads, for you perceive that there widens out before you one
of the great waterways of the world—the ocean-path to this cold northern
country of our love.  Perhaps only the trading vessels and the fishing
boats go there now, but it was the galleons of old that cleaved that
mighty swirl, half river and half sea, and the sailing ships that
brought Queen Mary to her fateful kingdom, curtseyed to that tawny tide.
The instructive Herries was not slow to point out these matters to his
young companions.  There was no cloud upon his august brow, and so
Alison became very happy.  They were busy with the little boys all the
way down, curbing the frantic excitement of Willy, who had been promised
an hour on the sands, and encouraging Danny, whose spirit flagged, and
who asked plaintive and difficult questions about his mother’s absence.
It was high noon when they rattled into Prestonpans, and Alison stepped
out into the village street, where the queer, little, secretive-looking
white houses shouldered each other on to the road, and the growl of the
sea could be heard at their backs.

The woman who was to have the charge of Danny lived in a little house to
which you climbed by a wooden outside stair.  She was a most cheerful
person, whom Herries addressed as ’Isabella,’ and who, in her turn,
patted him on the shoulders, and called him ’Master Archie.’  She
bustled them all into the warm, clean, homely cottage, and showed off
with pride her preparations for Danny’s sojourn—his little bed covered
with a patch-work quilt, his chair with a cushion on it, the very kitten
to play with ’when he wearied.’  She lugged out of some recess a curious
old battered tin vessel, bearing some faint resemblance to the modern
hip bath.

’Ye see,’ she said, ’I’m well acquaint wi’ they delicut bairns.  It’s a
while sin’ syne, but I had ane wi’ me—the brawest bairn ever ye saw—but
he had the one leg shorter than the t’ither, and ay the somethin’ wrong
wi’ the one foot; an’ it was the sea watter for him too. Here’s his bit
bath—I hae ay keepit it.  One Walter Scott they ca’d him,’ she added, ’a
writer’s son; a gran’ strappin’ callant now, though he hirples yet; but
he’s mindfu’ o’ an auld body, and comes to see me whiles.’  And her
listeners of that benighted generation heard that wonder-working name,
and knew it not for a magician’s!

Then it was arranged that Alison and her escort should take Willy to the
sands while the day was at its best, and when they came back Isabella
would give them a ’sup o’ broth and a tattie,’ she said, ’to warm them
up before the long drive home.’




                             *CHAPTER XXV.*


It was one of those days when the land lies under the spell of a long
and sunny frost; the ground rang iron to the foot, but the sea smiled
and sparkled to the sun, and the Lomonds of Fife, beyond the Firth, were
clear against the winter sky.  Herries and his companions walked briskly
down the village and along the links. Away to their right stretched the
fields, where, not a generation since, the blood of a great battle had
been spilt, but where now the peaceful stubble grew over the scattered
implements of war and over the bones of men,—and quiet cottages smoked
to tranquil skies.

’Shouldn’t you like to be a soldier, Willy?’ Alison asked the little
boy, who pranced beside her, tugging at her arm.

’Yes,’ said Willy, ’I’d like to be a soldier.  But I shouldn’t like to
be shot,’ he added, cautiously.

’’Tis a fancy of all boys,’ said Herries.  ’They don’t all qualify it,
like Willy here.  It was more than a fancy with me, God knows!’

’With you, sir?’ asked Alison, in surprise.

’I dreamed of soldiering,’ said Herries, bitterly, ’till I waked to find
myself tied to a desk.’

’Was—was it a great disappointment, sir?’ asked Alison, timidly.

’One of those disappointments that mark a man for life, I think,’ said
Herries, tersely.  ’Nearly all my family in the past bore arms, and the
love of it is in my blood.  ’Tis the gentleman’s profession, to my mind.
But I was a sickly boy, and held unfit to apply for His Majesty’s
commission, so behold me, a poor scrivener, at your service!’

Alison stole a look at the speaker.  Could it be the fine, the
successful, the apparently self-sufficient Mr. Herries who spoke thus
feelingly of disappointment? To Alison, it seemed that such a man must
always have,—must always have had,—all that he wanted.  But, evidently,
this was not so.

’I’ll not be so afraid of him now,’ thought Alison.

They had come to another little village, just of fishermen’s huts, that
seem to cling to the very rocks of the sea.  Here there was a harbour,
and the delicate tracery of masts and rigging rose against the sky.  As
they stood watching, a little fleet of fishing boats—catching a faint
breath of the freezing wind—unfurled their tanned brown sails, and put
to sea.

’Ah, Willy, see the bonny boats!’ cried Alison; and catching the boy by
the hand, she ran with him away down the little street, and out upon the
sandy links beyond.

Herries followed at his leisure, his hands behind him, and his head
bent.  The few words-that, he had spoken of himself to Alison had
disturbed his serenity; such words, however commonplace, when spoken of
the inner self by a man so wrapt in reserve as Herries, are apt to
affect the speaker thus, for their utterance is the breaking of the rule
and habit of a life.  He stood, and looked absently seawards.  A
schooner, under full sail, was beating up the firth.  How slow, how
infinitely tedious, was her tacking course!  It seemed to Herries, just
then, to typify his own life, for ever beating up against the wind of
his tastes and inclinations, in the uncongenial profession of his
adoption.  Had anyone asked Herries the ruling motive of his existence
at this time, he would have answered, drearily enough, and with no
thought of taking credit to himself, ’A sense of duty.’  Sober, in an
age of drunkenness, and constitutionally fastidious where the manners of
the times permitted, and even sanctioned, an extreme of licence—Herries
had something of the melancholy in him, which dogs a man who is born
before his time.  Neither boon companions had he, nor social pleasures,
nor tender friendships; all these he seemed to have outgrown. Life, at
the very springs of it, seemed to have gone dry. And yet he was a man
with all the appurtenances of success, who commanded the respect of
other men, and held his head above the crowd. Duty—success—respect....
How laudable it sounded!  And yet there was something wanting, greater
than all these.

He strolled on along the links, while Alison and Willy ran races on the
sands.  Evidently the races were warm work, for Alison had dropped her
pelisse, and left it on the grassy ledge where the links break into the
shore.  Herries sat down beside it, in the sun.  He slipped a
half-frozen hand beneath its folds; it was still warm from her wearing,
and a curious emotion thrilled him at the contact, as though his blood
ran warmer. Presently Alison came herself to where he sat, glowing from
her run—panting, rosy, happy.  Heavens! what a breath of life—young
life—the creature brought along with her.  Her curls were blown about by
the wind; her eyes were bright—they had the wide-open, innocent look of
a child’s.  Herries looked at her, and a terrible ache of longing took
hold of him—whether it was for her, or just for what she stood for, of
all that was lacking in his own life—he could not tell.  It is very
difficult to say when, to a nature of Herries’s reserve, his critical
hesitancy and profound fastidiousness—the divine moment comes, and the
proud man’s approval first melts into the tenderness of passion.  But
with Herries, I rather think it was then—on that sunny morning on the
sandy links—when Alison stood before him, with the sea behind her, and
the ribbon falling from her loosened curls.  True, all that he said was,
pointing with an instructive arm,—

’That is the Berwick road, Miss Graham.  And over there, that odd-shaped
hill you see—that is North Berwick Law.’  But there, again, was the
nature of the man; once a feeling had him, it then became too inward for
common recognition, and far too sacred for speech.

After that, they retraced their steps, and Herries, who felt somehow
that he had been erring on the side of sentimentality, instituted a
thorough and improving examination of the antiquities of Prestonpans.
Willy, it is true, showed symptoms of rebellion, but Alison, though
rather cold and hungry, followed, ready and smiling, with that infinite
patience for the foibles of a man, as for the gambols of a child, which
comes as naturally to some women—well, as naturally as love itself.

They had a very pleasant hour in Isabella’s cottage, as a subsequent
reward.  They supped broth at the fireside, and got warmed through and
through.  There was a grand platter of potatoes, boiled in their
jackets, so hot that nobody could touch them.

’You’d be astonished how long they keep their heat, too,’ Herries said
to Alison.  ’We’ll put one in your muff, and you’ll see how ’twill keep
your hands warm all the way home.’  And he popped the biggest into
Alison’s muff, and was very ’jokey’ with Isabella, and Isabella with
him, and so the time went very pleasantly. But, alas! as the end drew
near, and Danny heard the horses’ feet upon the street, and knew he was
to be left behind, he began to cry, not with the robust roar of healthy
childhood, but with silent tears, that overflowed his piteous dark eyes,
and wet his small pale face.  Alison gathered him in her arms, and
cuddled him against her shoulder.  She spoke to him of the coming
summer—of the time when he would be well again and able to run about,
and Willy should come down and play with him on the sands.  And
Danny—who would never see another summer, or run about again, or play
with his little brother more—looked up in her kind face, and was
comforted.

The afternoon had settled to a piercing cold, as they drove home.  For a
mile, the horses, maddened with the frost, and fresh from their long
rest, ran away, and the coach swayed from side to side, Willy shrieking
with delight.  Alison felt a strange excitement in the air; the evening
was so lovely—earth and sky and sea wore those strange, gem-like tints
which are part of the magic accompaniment of a great frost.  There rose,
to their left, out of the ruddy haze—the craggy mass of Arthur’s Seat;
and tower and crown, and citadel and spire rose, one by one, and the
great rock-built city wore all its classic air—a smoky fane, spread to
the cold gods of the north.  Herries was very silent; in the dark of the
coach, silhouetted against the window, Alison could see the fine, cold
profile, the severe, set mouth.  She was very silent too, and presently
Willy fell asleep, and lay against her knee in a tired heap.

When they got out at the Grassmarket it was in the gloaming, and Herries
said he would see his charges to their door.  A slip of the new moon
swam in the limpid sky; every now and then she looked down at them
between the high houses.  Alison was turning over in her mind the pretty
speech that she must make to Mr. Herries for this pleasant day.  Ah, how
to say enough, and not too much!  The very thought of it made her heart
beat—with sheer nervousness, was it? Or was it that Herries’s extreme
silence was burdened with a meaning which made itself felt, in the
strange way of such things?

When they got to the General’s Entry, Willy clattered up the stair.  The
lamp flared, and in its doubtful light Herries stood waiting.  And then,
because, perhaps, being of a masterful mind, he meant to wait no longer
for what he wanted; or just because what he wanted was so near, so
sweet, so terribly desirable,—his arm crept to Alison’s waist, and he
kissed her, and the ice of his life seemed broken, all the sweet springs
of summer to gush in his heart.

’Ally, Ally,’ he whispered—and why his first words were jealous ones he
could not have told you—’Ally, tell me, did a man ever kiss you before?’

’Never in all my life!’ said Alison, staring straight out before her
into the dark, with wonder-struck eyes. And lo! that which had been a
reproach at The Mains became the crowning glory of her life, and at that
Pygmalion-like touch of a lover’s lips, the soul of Alison awoke to
passion, as the marble awoke to life.

But—such is the relentlessness of the prose of life—Jean must choose
this interesting moment in which to open the door above them and let a
light down the shaft of the stair.  The pair started asunder, Herries
stammered good-night, and Alison walked up the dirty steps of that
Edinburgh common stair as though they were the rungs of a golden ladder
leading straight to heaven.




                            *CHAPTER XXVI.*


It might generally be supposed that one great emotion of the mastering
kind possesses the soul to the temporary exclusion of all others.  But
this is not the case; for it is, rather, when the soul is
awake—quivering to the touch of some novel experience—that its
sensitiveness to new impressions is the greatest, and its capacity for
seeing all things and understanding all things is at the fullest
stretch.  Thus, when Alison walked into Nancy’s room that night, full of
her own bliss, her heart gave only one bounding throb the more when she
found a stranger there, and realised that at last she beheld the
longed-for visitor, stood in the presence of genius, and touched the
hand of Robert Burns.

The familiar room wore its cosiest and most seductive aspect—the
curtains drawn, and fire- and candle-light shining on the wall.  The
figure, which, at Nancy’s motion, rose to meet Alison, seemed to her
almost colossal; but only so, because her mind’s-eye was filled with the
slenderer proportions of a very different figure.  The man was indeed of
peasant build, of a goodly height, but heavy and thick-set, dressed
decently and yeoman-wise, ’like a farmer to dine with the laird.’  As he
bent towards her the full-blooded, warm-hued, powerful face, she became
conscious of his eyes, black as night, with their fringe of
shadow-casting lashes—commanding and compelling eyes, almost surcharged
with brilliance.  Nancy was speaking, lightly, gracefully.

’I told you of my song-bird,’ said she to the poet; ’here she is.
She’ll warble your lays with the very "wood-note wild" you are always
asking for.  Ally, love, welcome home!  We were waiting for you. Run,
child, and take off your things, and come and sing.  Must she not,
Sylvander?’

The poet bowed.  It could not be said that his gestures were clumsy, for
the man had ever a natural dignity; but they had the air of
indifferently controlled strength, which spoke the peasant struggling
with the conventions of the parlour.  His great, black glance covered
Alison; half-wondering and half-shrinking, she felt it search her.

’If Miss Graham,’ he said, with a low bow, ’will honour me with a song,
she will make a poor poet the richer.  I find no inspiration in the
world like the lilt of a bonny voice in a bonny tune.’

Alison smiled to herself as she went to put off her hood and pelisse and
smooth her curls.  The deep, flattering voice rang oddly in her ears,
for they were full of the curt speech and clear, incisive utterance of
her lover—who was certainly no poet.

In her absence, the Bard leaned against the mantel-piece and glowered
down with his dark look upon his hostess.  She—flushed, radiant,
passionate, fluttered like a bird in the big hand of the fowler, but a
willing bird.

’Are all our interviews, madam,’ began the Bard rather moodily, ’to be
held in the presence of a third person?  Are Clarinda and Sylvander
never to be alone?’

’Nay, but our third person—such a sweet, interesting girl,’ said Nancy,
persuasively.  ’The companion of my dreary solitude—think of it!  ’Twill
not be always possible to dispense with her society,’ she added,
pensively, ’nor—nor desirable, perhaps.’

A warm look shot from the poet’s eye.

’Has _she_ no kindred soul compelling her society when we wish mutually
to enjoy each other’s?’ demanded he, harping on the unexpected intruder.

’Nay, never a one!’ said Nancy, laughing archly. ’And ’tis a girl I
promised to find a swain for, too. Can Sylvander’s romantic ingenuity
not help me here?’

’Sylvander has the kettle on the other hob, I’m thinking!’ said the poet
with a short, meaning laugh. His manner varied from the rather stilted
politeness into which he had schooled it, sometimes to a racy reversion
to his native ways of speech and gesture, sometimes, when an opening
offered, to an uncontrollable and not always inoffensive familiarity.
Sundry mistakes in such matters had cost him more than one friendship in
the feminine great world—a cruel but perfectly inevitable injustice.
Here, however, and with his present hostess, he was but too little
likely to offend.  Nancy was constitutionally lenient to the stronger
sex in its warm moments.  She had that curious insensitiveness to
encroachment—that lack of resentment to the taking of small
liberties—which may be sometimes seen in perfectly-refined and
gently-nurtured women.  It did not offend her now, for instance, that
the poet—seen only for the second time in her life—should bend so
closely over her, covering her with ardent, covetous eyes ... and then
abruptly straighten himself as Alison came in.

’Come along, child,’ she cried, ’and sing!  No, not with the
harp—alone.’  She blew out two candles that were guttering low, so that
the room was in firelight only.  Alison sat down, and with her hands
folded in her lap and her grave eyes fixed upon the fire, sang—sang, I
think, as she had never sung before, because, at last, there had come to
her a full understanding of the song.  She chose one or two of the
simpler and older ballads, love-songs of a peasant people long ago.

Then might one who watched have seen a singular transfiguration come
over the poet’s face.  The heavy sensuality of its lines seemed to melt
away, and leave in its place a sort of splendid, weighty thoughtfulness.
Leaning his elbow on his knee, his chin upon his clenched hand, the
whole soul of the man seemed once more concentrated in his eyes, but
they were no longer the eyes of the satyr, but of the poet; and they
were looking at Alison, not as at the woman, but as at the singer, whose
sweet singing roused inspiration at its source.  Even now his lips
moved, for the lyrical impulse stirred within him, and the thronging
words and the tingling lines leapt into unison in his throbbing brain.
You could see the massive features quiver, the passionate veins upon the
temples swell, the eye blaze beneath the furrowed brow.  Nancy watched
and worshipped him as a fanatic before a shrine, and even literal
Alison, as she felt herself wrapt in that consuming presence, knew
herself, with a singular uplifting of the spirit, to be, for the moment,
the privileged hand-maid of genius.  When the last sounds died away, the
man would move, would slap his giant thigh, with something like a shout
of pure delight, and call for more, broad as the peasant that he was,
and with the passion and insistence of a boy.  In these fine, natural
moments, Alison liked him well, and when he fell to discussing the
ballad or the air—thoughtful, intelligent, shrewd—she would like him
even better, and feel that even Herries might approve her liking.  Ah!
had this been all, and these little _symposia_ that were to take place
so often in the cosy little room, been all as innocent as they seemed,
what a fitting, what a grand impression of Scotland’s poet would Alison
have carried away with her!  But, alas! ’Sylvander’ all too soon would
don the cap and bells, and then Alison would wonder, with a shudder, how
Nancy could bear to have him sit so close, and bend so near to hers that
changed face, with the bold eyes and sensual lips. Intellectual
attraction—fascination even—the man had for the girl, must have had,
indeed, for all who came under the sway of his tremendous personality
and his genius, but it warred in her, sometimes, with a physical
repulsion, so strong that she could scarcely conceal it.

This first evening, Willy called to her from his bed, for the story she
was in the habit of telling him before he went to sleep.  So ’Sylvander’
and ’Clarinda’ snatched a few precious moments of communion alone.

’Well,’ Nancy said, ’was not that a fit song for a poet’s ear?  Has not
the child the sweetest voice?’

’Ay,’ said the poet, stretching great arms above his head, his dark eyes
glowing, and his bronzed cheek flushed.  ’Ay, a sweet voice!  My heart
leaps, and my blood sallies at its sweetness.  I am a slave to such
sounds.  But miss will not sing often for the poor bard. I can see,’ he
added in a different tone, ’’tis a fine lady—not a congenial, not a
sympathetic soul....’

’What?  Poor Ally?’ said Nancy, in unfeigned surprise. ’Why, ’tis the
simplest, the most unquestioning child!  Sure, there’s no thought of
criticism in her heart towards anyone.’  The poet shrugged his shoulders
incredulously.  He had the quick, morbid sensitiveness of the poet
tribe, and already he had noted the almost intangible shrinking of
Alison from his person—the hardly perceptible drawing of herself up when
he pressed too near, or spoke gallantly.  He put it down to the feeling
of class, which he was always so suspiciously ready to detect and to
resent—the shrinking of a proud miss from the peasant.

’You see, Sylvander,’ Nancy went on, ’the child may be of such great
service in our friendship.  Her very presence is a pretext for the
visits of a certain bard. Young, fair, a songstress, might not
she—rather than poor Clarinda’s fading charms—be thought to constitute
his attraction?’

’Provided the deception hurts no one,’ said the Bard rather uneasily.
He had that sense of fairness which is too exclusively, it is to be
feared, a masculine quality. An untethered rover in the fields of love,
he never yet willingly poached, or spoiled another’s sport.  ’I would
not hurt miss with the world,’ he added.

’Take care you do not the rather hurt Clarinda with the world!’ cried
Nancy, shaking an admonitory finger.  Passion and prudence alternately
swayed the little woman at this time; her warm temperament and growing
passion drove her within the sphere of danger; her love of the world and
its countenance, a terror of losing caste, as a young and pretty woman
in a delicate situation, held her back.

Now, as the poet rose to depart, she loaded him with cautions as to his
future coming and going.  She begged of him not to employ the town’s
messengers: they were so shifty, and getting to know her house too well;
not to come, if he could avoid it, in a chair—chairs were so unusual in
that poor part of the town that they caused remark; not to trouble Jean
too often at the door: ’twere better he should have the key.

’See how I honour, how I trust, my Sylvander!’ she said, softly.  The
poet pocketed the key, with, it must be admitted, a rollicking eye for
so romantic a personage.  He did his best, however, to look only
impassioned, and not also entertained.  And such apt deceivers are men,
that he perfectly succeeded.

When he was gone, Alison and Nancy sat a while together by the fire, but
they had singularly little to say to each other.  Nancy asked a few
evidently forced questions about her boy, and the expedition to
Prestonpans; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she was silent and
restless.

’Thank Heaven!’ she exclaimed suddenly, ’now Danny’s away, Herries will
not be poking his solemn face in so often as of late.  ’Twould be most
consumedly awkward if he did.’

And then Alison realised, with a very strange feeling of aloofness from
her friend, and a peculiar sense of the unnaturalness of the situation,
that she could never—no, not imaginably ever, she thought—speak to Nancy
of her love, and of her lover, Herries!

So that wondrous day ended for Alison, and she was alone at last, with
no tangible memento of it, saving, indeed, a large cold potato in her
muff.  A certain intangible memento, it is true, burned upon her cheek,
so that she was glad to bury it in the cool sheets.  One never knows how
long it may be since a reader was in love, and so it were better,
perhaps, not to tell how a silly girl, that night, went to bed with a
cold potato under her pillow.  It might be so very long ago—that silly
season with the reader—that he may well have forgotten that, though the
sense of humour is a mighty great thing, there is a time with us all
when it is nought.




                            *CHAPTER XXVII.*


Ordinary mortals, from the schoolboy upward, are familiar with the
disagreeableness of what may be called the Monday mornings of life—those
after-holiday mornings which come as a cold _douche_ after a pleasant
outing.  Herries tasted the full amenities of this experience on first
buckling to his work after the excursion to Prestonpans.  On Sunday—a
_dies non_ in the Edinburgh of those days, when most decent persons went
to church and stayed there—nothing could be done.  On Monday morning he
descended to his office in his grimmest business mood, very unlike a
young man who had kissed a girl under the lantern in the General’s
Entry, late on Saturday evening.  Indeed, anyone less like kissing, or
being kissed, never was seen.

He found a disagreeable accumulation of business; and a certain fact
that had lately, from time to time, been hinting its existence—the fact,
namely, that his partner’s working capacities were on the wane—was this
morning, for the first time, fully borne in upon his mind.  In regard to
the rather important affairs of a client, there was confusion, and, in
respect to the preparation of certain deeds and papers, delay; neither,
a few weeks ago, would have been possible, under Creighton’s inexorable
_régime_.  Herries felt that probably he must shortly face—of all things
the most worrying to a business-man, whose affairs have long run in a
smooth, appointed groove—a change of partnership. It was the more
difficult as Creighton gave no hint of his retirement, and the idea that
such a hint might have to originate with his partner, was exceedingly
repugnant to the younger man.  Herries was aware that his associate’s
health was very delicate, but like all those in daily contact with a
failing man, he had no idea how great and how rapid was the decline.  It
certainly never struck him that Creighton omitted to speak of his
retirement from business, simply because he believed the last retirement
of all to be imminent, and death about to set his partner free.

When Herries had made some headway with his morning’s work, lost his
temper with his clerk, and otherwise expressed his consciousness of the
untowardness of things in general, he made the pleasing discovery, that
a moral earthquake was heaving in the domestic department of his house.
His room was ill-swept, his fire ill-tended; he summoned Lizzie, who
appeared in even more than her usual condition of dishevelment, and
telling her to send Mysie with some wood, was met with the baffling
information: ’There’s nae Mysie here!’ delivered with a war-like snort.

’No Mysie!’ exclaimed Herries.  ’Why, what’s come to the girl?’

’There’s that come to her,’ said Lizzie, succinctly, ’that it ill
becomes a decent body to hae the tellin’ o’....’

’What!’ said Herries, repressing a strong inclination to laugh.  ’Has
the poor wench gone wrong?’

The ferocity of Lizzie’s expression was answer enough.

’So homely looks are no safeguard after all, Lizzie?’ said Herries, when
he had been enlightened. ’And all your trouble in choosing a discreet
helpmate was thrown away!’  He could not help tormenting his dependent,
whose temper afforded him amusement at times, as well as inconvenience.
’How and when did you get rid of the girl?’ he enquired.

’Rid o’ her—the dirty besom!’ said Lizzie, reverting to the idiom of the
fray.  ’I put her to the door, and to the street—and her skirling like a
scraggit hen!  I’se warrant ye, I got rid o’ her!’

’Well, I hope you gave her her wages up to date,’ said Herries, turning
away, ’and did not put the poor wretch penniless on the pavement, in her
condition, and in this weather.’

’Oo, she had siller, I’m thinking,’ said the old woman, with a sly look;
’there was a croon i’ the pocket o’ her—and ane no’ honestly come by,
neither.’

’Bless me!’ said Herries, ’you paint your relative very black, Lizzie!
Did she steal the crown?’

’Na,’ said Lizzie, with unpleasant meaning in her tone; she had a tongue
that would always hurt someone, if it could,—’she got given the croon
right enough!  ’Twas frae that braw leddy i’ the red coat ye had to her
tea here; she wad hae Mysie haud her tongue aboot some cantrip o’ her
ane, up the toon there, leaving a letter, or sic-like trash; but Mysie,
ye ken, was simple, and aye blabbed everything she saw. O, they’re a’
the same, gentle and simple,’ added Lizzie, who hated her own sex with
inexplicable malice.

’You may go,’ said Herries, curtly.  He felt as though he had got a slap
across the face—and from a dirty hand.

Pressure of work at first allowed him no time for unprofitable musing.
He had to go down to his partner’s room on business.  The office, as
usual, was heated to suffocation, and he found Creighton—a most singular
state of things—half asleep, or rather in a condition of a sort of
semi-torpor, crouching over the fire. He, however, roused himself, and
attended to the business in hand with almost his usual perspicacity.
But Herries perceived that his energy was but a spurt; it flagged almost
instantly.

’You don’t look well, sir,’ he said to the elder man.

’I am not well, Herries,’ Creighton answered heavily, but he said no
more, for his breath seemed to catch.

’I must beg of you to excuse my further attendance to-day,’ he gasped
out.  ’I must—I must go out into the air.  I burn—my chest seems
weighted.  The fresh air would relieve me.’

’It is very cold, sir,’ said Herries, alarmed by his partner’s symptoms.
’Let me come with you.’

’Will you?’ said Creighton, wistfully.  Herries helped the old man—he
seemed suddenly to have become a very old man—into his great-coat.  He
hardly believed him fit to walk, but the going out seemed to relieve
him, as he expected.  He drew one or two deep breaths of the icy air,
and then walked on, though with a feeble step.

’Take my arm,’ said Herries, kindly.  ’We’ll have a turn in the sun,
below the castle.’

They proceeded for some way in silence.  One subject tormented Herries’s
thoughts; he was impelled—unlike himself, somehow—to give it utterance.

’I was right, and you wrong, about a trifle, the other night,
Creighton,’ he said.  ’A young lady of our acquaintance, who refused my
escort up the town, did so because she had something to hide.’

’Who told you?’ asked Creighton, sharply.

’Lizzie,’ said Herries.  ’The lass Mysie told tales when she got home.
She was heavily fee’d to hold her tongue about some letter secretly
left.’

’And you tell me,’ exclaimed Creighton, with unexpected energy, ’that
you listen to the gossip of servants on such a subject!  Fie, for shame,
sir!  Besides, are you the Grand Turk, or a Catholic Inquisitor, that a
girl may not leave a letter on a friend?  Just as likely it was not her
own letter, but your cousin’s; and as to the feeing, why, ’twas the New
Year time, and she would have to fee the lass for her trouble.’

’A crown is a heavy fee from a girl’s slender purse to a scullion,’ said
Herries, moodily.  ’I have an inkling,’ he went on, frowning, ’where the
letter was left—St. James’s Square, I dare be sworn!  We know who lodges
there, and the women can no more keep off him than flies from honey.’

’Bless me!’ said Creighton.  ’Are you blaming our poor Rob?  Nay, sir,
but what a strange, far-fetched idea.  I had hardly realised the Bard
was known to your cousin, though I think you told me they met some weeks
ago.’

’By this time, I daresay, he frequents my cousin’s house,’ said Herries,
quietly, ’for that’s his way in such matters.  A scoundrel in manners,’
went on the young lawyer, angrily; ’the seducer of women—I know him! I’d
sooner trust the lamb with the wolf, than a young, inexperienced girl
with such a man.  The glamour of his genius hides the corruption of his
mind.  The thought of that danger is sickening.’

’Wheesht, wheest!’ said Creighton.  ’I don’t gainsay that he is warm—too
warm, poor Rob!  But believe me, sir, ’tis not the young and noble and
innocent—like our fair friend who shall be nameless—that such a man
seeks.  ’Tis the more experienced women—ripe for dalliance—versed in
such ardours—’

’Oh, you think of my cousin,’ said Herries, coolly. ’But she dare not
try these tricks; she understands too well the delicacy and instability
of her present situation, she knows to a hair’s-breadth what she can,
and what she cannot, risk.  I can trust Nancy with herself, but
with—with a charge I cannot trust her.  She’s no fit guide for a young
girl.’

’Oh, be at rest, sir, be at rest!’ said Creighton, smiling.  ’She that
we talk of needs no guidance from your cousin.  If there is guiding to
be done, her own will be the hand that guides; and whomsoever she guides
she will guide to a blessing.  Take my word for that; I have looked her
through and through.... And now that we talk of angels, we begin to hear
their wings, I perceive.’

Herries looked up, and saw in the distance Alison and the child Willy
coming towards them.

’They—they sometimes walk here of a morning,’ he said.

’Ah, you knew that!’ cried Creighton, well pleased.

’It may be that I did,’ said Herries.

His partner’s words had poured balm upon his irritation.  There was a
calmness and a strength about Creighton’s common sense, that made it
very convincing. He could certainly influence Herries to a degree that
was possible with no one else.  And now Alison herself was coming, and
the young man felt a sudden and uncontrollable tumult in his blood.  She
passed them at the full distance of the broad walk, and only bowed, but
it was near enough for them to see the sudden colour in her half-averted
face, to note the quickened step and fluttered air.  Creighton slipped
his arm from that of his friend.

’Run, man, run!’ he said; ’you are due elsewhere. Don’t you see the
signals held out for your welcome?’

’I—I see them,’ stammered Herries, himself red as a boy.  ’But you, sir?
Can you get home?’

’What matters an old man like me?’ cried Creighton, impatiently.  ’My
race is run.  Be off—be off! She’ll give you the slip yet; she’s nearly
out of sight.’

Herries hesitated a moment; his cold eyes were alight as they looked
after the vanishing figure in the red pelisse.

’I’ll take your advice, sir,’ he said.  And then he followed.

Creighton toiled up the steep ascent to his lodgings alone.

’All’s well—for this time!’ he was saying to himself. ’But how will it
be when I am not at his elbow to allay suspicion, to soothe pride?
They’re ingrained in the nature of the lad.  Will they lose him his
happiness as they did me mine?  It’s likely—it’s likely yet, if I know
men.’  He had barely breath to get up the long stone stair to his rooms,
and cast himself into a chair beside the neglected hearth.  He looked
round the room with dull apathy of sickness, and wiped the sheer sweat
from his forehead with a shaking hand.

’She—she shall have all I have to leave in this world,’ he muttered.
’For the lad’s sake, and for the sake of one of her sex—dead this thirty
years.  And for her own sake, too—a fine, a fair creature, a bonny
lass!’  He made as though he would reach a desk that stood near upon a
table, but fell back weakly in his chair.

’Time enough yet for that, I daresay,’ he said, closing his eyes.

There is often ’time enough’ for the making of those wills, and yet the
future finds them—unmade.




                           *CHAPTER XXVIII.*


Down in the fields, near where, nowadays, Ainslie and Moray Places rear
their respectable family mansions—fields white that morning with the
thick, wintry rime—Archibald Herries and Alison Graham walked side by
side.  He was bareheaded in the cold, for assuredly a man does not talk
easily of love with his hat on his head.  He held it in a hand behind
him; the other arm had Alison’s hand between it and his heart.  This
girl was his.  Had he needed to ask?  There are some things craved and
received without question and answer.  Suspicion and mistrust seemed to
have vanished away; no man could harbour either while he looked in
Alison’s eyes.

’Whom shall we tell first, Ally?’ he was asking.

’Need we tell anyone, sir—just yet?’ said Alison, wistfully.  ’Isn’t it
too new and too—too good to be told?’

The words were too strictly an echo from his own nature for him to find
fault with them.

’But my cousin might have to be told,’ he suggested.

’Nancy?  Oh, no, no!’ said Alison, impulsively.

’Why?’ said Herries, laughing.  ’I thought you were such dear friends,
and had no secrets from each other?’

’So we are—dear friends, sir,’ said Alison, though not quite with the
enthusiasm she might have felt a month ago.  ’But—I could not tell her
of this.  ’Tis different to everything else in the world.’

’That’s true,’ Herries answered.  ’Ally,’ he said, suddenly, ’are you
prepared to find me but a poor lover?  For ’tis that I’m likely to
prove, I fear.  I am but a dry stick.  Pretty speeches come so shyly to
my lips, and as to love-letters, I never put pen to paper but in the way
of business.  Weeks might pass and I might never say, "I love you."’

’Sure,’ said Alison slowly, as though she were thinking out some
abstruse and difficult problem, ’sure, ’tis the people that love each
other most that never do say "I love you."  All my life long I’ve loved
my father and my sisters and little Jacky when he came, but I never
thought to say "I love you" to one of them.  If you know a thing in your
heart, the less need to have it on your lips.  Don’t you think so, sir?’

’True, very true, Ally,’ said Herries, thinking to himself what a pearl
of sweet sense he had found, and how she suited him; ’only—only—’

’Only what?’ asked Alison, innocently.

’Only I would it were the General’s Entry, dear,’ whispered Herries, at
her ear, ’with walls and nothing but a dim old lamp....’

’Ah, but it’s not, sir!’ cried Alison, pulling away from him, scarlet
with blushes; ’’tis the open field, and there comes Willy!’

’Plague take the child—so he does!’ said Herries.

He had given the boy a shilling to spend at a booth in the suburb, and
it seemed to him hardly a shilling’s-worth of absence that had been
granted.  Willy came racing towards them, vociferous, flying a
newly-purchased kite above his head.

’So we must go, I suppose, sir?’ said Alison, wistfully.

’’Tis getting mighty cold, though we haven’t noticed it,’ Herries
observed, as they walked townwards across the fields.  ’I think I smell
the snow.’

A thin, yellowish film had gathered over the bright sun, which, day
after day, had made the long, strong frost endurable.  The cold, indeed,
became perceptibly greater, and a slight, shivering wind set in from the
north.

’Haste you home, child,’ said Herries, ’and be in before the storm.  You
may guess whether I come soon to the Potterrow or not.’

’N—not too often, sir,’ whispered Alison.  The whisper might have stood
for the mere coyness of a girl, and so Herries translated it.  But in
Alison’s mind was the troubled knowledge of how little welcome her lover
was just now, in the little room which his own liberality helped to make
so cosy and so home-like.  It was very hard, she thought, but time would
doubtless show a way out of the difficulty, if one were only patient.

Alison, indeed, was very grave as she walked home that day, after
parting from her lover.  She was very happy.  Her feeling for Herries
had become—as such feelings will with such natures—a part and parcel of
herself—the very heart of her.  It was a wondrous thing, a miracle, that
the one man she had ever known should also be the one man in the world
most worthy of love and honour.  But then, to reverent and simple minds,
the miracle brings awe as well as joy, and Alison was a little afraid of
her own happiness, as though it could hardly be meant for such as she.
Not for nothing was she the daughter of those bucolic, hard-lived
ancestors of hers, who, generation after generation, in the dull
obscurity of The Mains, had dragged through joyless and prosaic lives,
ignorant of the world beyond the boundaries of their home.  Something of
a want of buoyancy was Alison’s, and it came from that old home source.
But she loved,—and the tingle of the new sensation ran through her veins
like wine, though it left her sober.

Herries, in the meantime, reached his house in a mood of elation so very
singular for him that, had he been like many of his countrymen of that
day, superstitious, he would have called it ’fey’—uncanny. Everything
seemed to be working together for his good; the stars in their courses
fought his battles. Through the least likely source in the world—his
cousin—he had found what promised to be the happiness of his life.
Approval and passion—how seldom they combine!—met in his tenderness for
Alison Graham.  There might be other girls more beautiful and more
accomplished, but surely there was no other in the world so formed to
please him.  How sensible she was!  Would any other girl have condoned,
nay, actually have proposed, a courtship so shorn of the nonsense which
by long custom must needs beset all conventional affairs of the kind?
Herries reflected, with easy complacency, how exceedingly well it suited
him, at this juncture, that his betrothal should be kept a secret.
Creighton, he was certain, was either ill, or about to be ill, and
during his illness the affair of a new partnership would naturally be in
a decent abeyance. The strain of double work and double anxiety must
fall upon him, Herries, very severely in the immediate future, and how
inexpressibly inconvenient, at such a time, would have been the fuss and
the worry of a declared engagement.  But there was to be no such foolish
demand upon his time and energy, no nonsense of a daily correspondence,
or lover-like dancing of attendance on his charmer.  He was even bidden
not to go too often to the Potterrow!  How infinitely to his taste, how
admirably suitable, it all was!

Yet, for a young man so perfectly pleased with a wise and sober
arrangement of things, that evening in his rooms seemed to pass with
extraordinary slowness,—in very truth, with the most appalling tedium.
He was restless; he could neither write nor read.  He spent the lonely
hours lolling now in one chair, now in another, his handsome head thrown
back, his eyes beset with dreams.  What he dreamed of was a room, so
much meaner than his own, a little room, ruddy with fire and candlelight
and cosy curtains, where there was a grey-eyed girl, the tinkle of a
harp, the notes of a song.  He went furtively to a window and looked
out, with a certain thought in the back of his mind.  But the night was
one of whirling snow, dark and wild, for the storm had come.

’’Twould be madness to go; they’d think me crazy,’ was the thought in
his mind.  A clock struck, and he laughed.  ’Why, they’ll be away to
their beds!’ he said.  Certain strings, which appeared to be attached in
the neighbourhood of his heart, were pulling him, pulling him to the
Potterrow.  But this time he withstood their wrenching, and taking a law
book from the shelf, set himself to read like a really sensible man.




                            *CHAPTER XXIX.*


The lion and the jackal are figures coupled by the natural historian as
a matter of course, so that one may presume that every lion has his
jackal, to howl before him and to polish the bones which his lionship
leaves behind.  In human life the same phenomenon appears, and every
lion, who is a lion worth mentioning, may have his satellite in a meaner
kind of creature, to prepare the way before him and do his dirty work.

The poet Burns was well furnished with one of these necessary adjuncts
to a lion’s _suite_, in his friend Nicol, a personage who, after sundry
vicissitudes in life, had managed to secure for himself the outwardly
respectable post of a teacher in the High School.  The chances of tavern
life had brought the two together, and flattery, no doubt sincere if
fulsome, on the one side, and on the other that necessity to be admired
and followed which is the curse of the poetic temperament, sealed their
friendship.  Yet it is difficult to imagine how Burns, with whom men of
a far higher stamp than Nicol, would still gladly have associated, could
content himself with the society of one so palpably inferior to himself
in all ways.  Nicol was a coarse, blustering, unwashen brute, with a
violent and jealous temper that the partial poet chose euphuistically to
dub ’a confounded strong in-knee’d sort of a soul.’  He had, on more
than one occasion, ruined the Bard’s chances of favour in high quarters,
by his ill-bred intrusions and unmannered insolence.  He was not a
comfortable kind of jackal at all, and yet Burns stuck to him, actuated,
no doubt, partly by the kind of sturdy loyalty of which he was capable
towards the humble friends of his own sex, and partly by obstinacy.  The
man hindered him at every turn, but there was no doubting his devotion.
And then, he was that kind of coarse instrument which a man is not
afraid to use to the most doubtful ends. And the poet, it is likely, had
uses only too many for such a tool.

Nicol, during these weeks of which we write, had been having a hard time
of it.  To be jackal to a lion-poet, with an injured knee-pan and
inflamed passions, is no sinecure.  Not for weeks had the unfortunate
man had a moment to be called his own.  When he was not carrying
messages or delivering letters—waiting for answers, or receiving them at
the door—he was listening to the anathemas of the afflicted poet, who,
maddened by confinement, spent his time in cursing fate, and in the
writing of those letters which he pestered his adherent, in season and
out of season, to carry for him. The inclement weather which had now set
in, added very much to Nicol’s hardships.  On a certain morning, with
the snowdrifts piled high against the doors, he struggled forth to see
his friend, but armed with a grim resolution that, on such a day, he
would do no more.

He found the poet, with his injured leg upon a stool, scribbling for
dear life.  The dingy, ill-kept room was close, with a closeness
strongly flavoured with last night’s potations.  The Bard, as he wrote
to his Clarinda, was ’pretty hearty, after a bowl busily plyed last
night from dinner-time to bed-time.’  He folded and fastened this
precious missive as Nicol entered.

’Eh, Nicol, man,’ he began, cheerfully, ’you are just in good time to be
Cupid’s messenger once more. Here’s the note ready.’

’I carry notes this day,’ said Nicol, loudly and assertively, ’to no
sluts whatsoever!  ’Tis no day for a dog to be out, not to say a human
being.’

’Hoots, man,’ said the poet, fleechingly.  ’What’s a bit blaw o’ snow?
The storm’s by wi’.  Were it not for this d——d leg, which I did over
exercise in the walking yesterday, I would be out and away mysel’.’

’Well, you can be out and away, leg and all,’ said Nicol, unmoved, ’for
ye’ll no get me to do none o’ your deil’s trokes this day.’

’Man, Willie,’ said the poet, with a seriously alarmed air, ’but the
letter must go, ye ken that!  She, my present charmer (sure you know it
to your own cost as well as mine), has an epistolary aptitude that
surpasses all.  ’Tis the devil and all with these high-flown little
dears....  Now, a simple lass will be content with words and kisses, and
so a man whiles gets a moment’s peace.  But pen and ink must serve her
betters.  God wot, it is no easy job to fill a daily sheet!  But gin she
doesna get it, she’ll have six here, and then you’ll have to carry six
answers instead of one....  You’ll never fail me at this gait, surely?’

’Is it to that thrice-accursed stair up the town you’d have me go?’
demanded Nicol, savagely.  He hated, with some reason, every step of the
steep way to the Potterrow.  ’But I needna ask,’ he continued.  ’You’re
none so anxious wi’ messages in the other quarter now....’  The words
conveyed a sting, and the poet flushed, with the sheepish air of a boy
caught in some peccadillo.

’Wheesht! wheesht!’ he said, uneasily.  Nicol shrugged his shoulders;
the countless and complicated amours of his friend wearied him
excessively, for he heard of little else.  Those of the lower kind he
would condone; they served for a coarse jest now and again, and he would
rally the poet—as others had often done—on the extraordinary
unattractiveness of some of his humbler Dulcineas.  But for the more
ambitious intrigues, he had scant patience, and the vulgarian’s restless
jealousy of the class above him made him, on this score, especially
intractable and suspicious.

’I would ye had the giving and taking yersel’ o’ your precious letters
to your fine, flummery madams,’ he said, ill-temperedly.  ’Och, there’s
ane o’ them I would I had a hand o’!  The jad’, she thinks an honest man
the dirt beneath her feet, and rubs her fingers on her hanky—curse her
airs!—if they chance to touch her hand.’  The poet looked puzzled.

’Sure, you can’t mean my Clarinda?’ he said.  ’She has a soft eye for
all men, and there’s no d——d airs whatsoever about her.’

’’Tis a strappin’, great, wallopin’ hizzy, the one I’m meaning,’ said
Nicol, carelessly.  He cherished a spite against the tall, grey-eyed
girl, with her unmistakable, fastidious air of ladyhood, who so often
gave letters into his hands, and he was glad to vent it in words.

’Ah—I take you now!’ said Burns, nodding his head, ’and I am rather with
you there, I think.  A cold, haughty miss!  A feather in Society’s cap,
no doubt; while the likes of us are but hob-nails in its shoes. But she
has a voice—a voice that—’

’Here—gie’s the letter!’ said Nicol, rudely interrupting what promised
to become a rhapsody.  ’When is it that you leave the town for the south
country?’ he suddenly asked, turning at the door.

’Never speir at me, lad,’ answered the poet, whimsically. ’Ask the star
of love that governs my destiny!’

’Tuts—havers!’ retorted Nicol, irritably; he was in no mood for
trifling, and the poet’s most persuasive airs (he could coax like a
child) were lost upon him. ’I tell you this, once for all,’ he went on,
’you must sort your private matters for yourself before ye go.  There
must be none of your baggages, gentle or simple, skirling round this
door when you’re away.  For I’ll not have it!’

’Sure, Willie, man, there’s something up with you the day,’ murmured the
poet, wheedlingly.  ’Was it last night’s bowl?  ’Od, we kept it up late,
and ’twas a winking brew.  My own headpiece dirls yet!’  But his friend
did not deign a reply.  He had gone off to find a shovel and broom,
proceeding therewith to sourly sweep the snow from the doorstep of
genius; which humble task performed, he set off to the Potterrow with
the very worst grace in the world.

The Bard, left to himself, twirled absently in his fingers Clarinda’s
last effusion, while he lost himself in meditation.  To the ingenious
reader it will be clear that ’Sylvander’ wearied of the correspondence.
It may be doubted whether a man can keep the Platonic ball a-rolling
beyond a certain number of weeks with any satisfaction.  A woman wearies
of this specious form of humbug less easily, perhaps,—she has more to
lose by its abandonment.  ’Clarinda’s’ letters grew longer day by day,
while ’Sylvander’s’ dwindled, and became irregular.  Frequent
interviews, indeed, now took the place of letters, and of these the poet
was by no means tired.  They had a special flavour—exquisite even to the
blunted palate of Don Juan.  Here was an intrigue, and yet not an
intrigue, with a little woman who combined a thousand fascinations in
her dainty person: the intellectual bias, the ardent temperament, quick
passions, and yet a tantalising prudence which armed her with tormenting
scruples exquisitely provocative to this tempter, who, with the full
force of his genius and his overpowering personality, lured her from
safety.  Poor Nancy! she had thought to dally with a giant, and hold him
in the delicate chains of her influence; but the giant had her in his
tremendous hands, and they were like to brush the bloom from her
butterfly-like being.  Nevertheless did the giant curse himself, because
he could not leave her, and could not, though business, honour, and duty
pressed him on all sides, forego the delicacies of this stolen
love-feast. Day after day he postponed his departure, already so long
delayed by his accident.  He was long overdue in Dumfriesshire, where he
was in treaty for certain farm lands, which were to be the making of his
future (or so he hoped).  The affair of his appointment in the Excise
hung in the balance, and required the pushing of his interest at every
turn.  His genteel and powerful acquaintance, Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop,
pressed for his attendance at her house of Dunlop in Ayrshire, in
letters quite as long and almost as oppressively affectionate as
Clarinda’s.  And then, at Mauchline, his partial and all-too-prolific
Jean had just presented him, and for the second time, with twins.  True,
in timely and most considerate fashion, these had died; but still, the
matter seemed to press for a little personal superintendence. Was ever
poet so beset?  And yet, he lingered, and the Devil led him to the
Potterrow.




                             *CHAPTER XXX.*


For some two or three weeks Herries adhered with wonderful strictness to
the sober and sensible terms of courtship laid down between him and
Alison.  They never wrote to each other, and they very rarely met. The
latter contingency, however, arose rather from the sheer pressure of
circumstances than from inclination. Mr. Creighton continued to be
confined to his rooms by severe illness, and Herries found himself in
consequence overwhelmed with business.  Not only was the office work
doubly heavy in the absence of his partner, but it was constantly
interrupted by the necessity of reference to the absent man, as long as
he was able in any measure to give his mind to the affairs of his
profession.  Latterly, this had almost ceased to be the case, for the
invalid grew worse rather than better, and Herries’s visits quickly
changed from those of business to those merely of inquiry.  Mr.
Creighton lay day after day in that dreary room of his, uncomplaining,
somewhat ill-attended, and always lonely, facing, with grim stoicism,
the approaching end.  His dog, Dick, lay on the bed at his feet, with
melting eyes fixed ever on his master’s face—uncomprehending, but full
of a wise beast’s yearning sympathy.

But all this time, at his heart—that newly-discovered organ—Herries
longed for Alison.  Sometimes he could snatch a brief hour to go to the
Potterrow, but, naturally, he hardly ever found Alison alone.  These
visits of his drove Nancy nearly wild with impatience and with fear—the
fear being, of course, that they would clash with those of the poet.

’What in the universe brings the man now?’ she would petulantly exclaim.
’Can he not let us be?’

Her _naïve_ conviction that a man who had always been adamant to her own
charms must necessarily remain so to those of everyone else continued
perfectly unshaken.  Whether, under any circumstances, she could have
believed Herries capable of being in love is very doubtful.  But at
present the distorting veil of her own half-guilty passion was drawn
across her eyes, and she saw nothing.

’Are you never alone?’ Herries said fretfully to Alison once, after a
singularly irksome visit shared with Nancy and Willy.

’Not very often, sir,’ said Alison; and then she added, with a little
hesitation, shyly, ’There are Tuesday and Thursday evenings, now, when
Nancy goes to hear Mr. Kemp lecture on a missionary project, and I—I do
not go, because ’tis Willy’s history nights, and I help him with his
lessons.’

’Then I’ll come those nights, of course!’ cried Herries. ’But then, drat
him, there will always be the boy!’

’I can sometimes put him to Jean in the kitchen with his book,’ said
Alison, demurely, and a dimple suddenly showed in one cheek, which
Herries had never noticed before.

Jean, in these days, was a great ally of Alison’s, and if she saw more
than she was meant to see in Herries’s visits, she kept her honest
counsel.

So Herries came always on these evenings when the exemplary Nancy, who
was in her own peculiar fashion extremely pious, attended the
lucubrations of her favourite divine.  Those were sweet hours to the
harassed man, and I do not say they were the less sweet for being
stolen.  He could lay aside for a brief space the stern responsibilities
of the life he took so hardly—let his brain rest, and his heart speak.
The little parlour would be, in the twilight of the lengthening
evenings, lit only by the firelight and the dying day.  If Herries
called himself a cold or backward lover, not so, in those dear hours,
did Alison find him.

’Ally,’ he said one night, ’this secrecy cannot go on for ever, though
just now it is conformable enough to my affairs.  When shall it end?’

’When I go home, sir, perhaps,’ said Alison, timidly.

’Then, when you go home, I come too,’ said Herries, softly, ’and make
formal propositions to the laird of The Mains for the hand of his eldest
daughter?’

’Yes, sir,’ said Alison, with shining eyes.  They shone because they saw
so fair a vision—her happy self returning to her old home, and with her,
this true, this gallant lover.  She saw the low, old house—the dear,
humble rooms of her childhood—her father’s face—her sisters crowding
round her.  Oh! proud the moment when she should show this ’braw wooer’
of her own to the mother who would have had her tie herself to Mr.
Cheape!  Our good Alison was all a woman here, and sweet was the
foretaste of a woman’s triumph.

’Let it be very soon,’ Herries whispered, his lips among the curls at
her ear; ’whenever this accursed press of business is over, the sooner
the better for me.’

’Whenever Nancy can spare me, sir,’ said Alison.

’Why, what can bind you to my cousin, child?’ asked Herries; ’—I mean as
to a particular period of time?’

’I—I am bound, sir,’ said Alison, a little unhappily. ’As long as Nancy
wants me, I must stay.’  The shadow of a hidden thing seemed to fall
across her joy. She moved away from her lover.

’Well, I can see no "must" about it,’ said Herries. ’You are a strange
pair of friends, I often think, you and Nancy!  Two creatures more
unlike never lived, I believe.’

’I would—I would you could think differently of Nancy,’ said Alison,
impulsively.

’I do what I can for her in the best way that I am able,’ Herries
answered, a little curtly, perhaps.

’You do everything in the world for her, sir,’ cried Alison, eagerly,
’except—except understand her, I think.’

’What should there be to understand about the little jade?’ said
Herries, lightly.  ’But, nay, I daresay there is too much, and I don’t
like women who need such a vast deal of understanding.  She that I love
must be clear as the day to my eyes—no obscurities, no subterfuges, no
explanations—and she _is_!’

’But, sir,’ said Alison, very much in earnest on this point, ’I would
have you understand all that Nancy is to me now—all that she must ever
be, whatever happens. I—we both—owe her our happiness, do we not,
Archie?  But for Nancy, I’d never have come to Edinburgh, nor have seen
you.’

’But for Nancy,’ cried Herries, gaily, ’you’d be Mrs. Cheape of
Kincarley, in the cosy county of Fife!  Here’s to Nancy, who stole a
wife from the laird, and brought one to Archibald Herries, the poor
writer of George Street!’  And he lifted high a little cup from the
mantel, and pretended to drink to the absent mistress of the house.  So
light-hearted on these happy evenings was Alison’s lover.

Then there came the evening—but memorable, alas! for more than this—when
Herries brought her his mother’s ring.  He had found time, and it had
taken him many hours after his busy days, to hunt for it in the recesses
of his house among the piles of boxes, desks and cases crammed with the
relics of the parents he had never known.  At last he had got it—a
beautiful, clear-set emerald, slipped thirty years ago from a dead
woman’s hand by the despairing man who had loved her.

The lovers bent over it at the little window, and it gleamed at them in
the fading evening light.

’How beautiful,’ whispered awestruck Alison, who had never owned a ring
in her life.  ’’Tis much too grand for me, sir, and I—I can give you
nothing back.’

’Give me a curl,’ said Herries, half in jest.  ’The true lover’s gift.’

’Would you really like one?’ cried Alison, and with characteristic
absence of vanity she seized upon one of her finest, and caught up a
pair of scissors for the sacrifice.

’Nay, now, not that one,’ Herries laughed, forcibly intervening.  ’You’d
spoil the bonny bunch!  She here, a baby one that hides behind your
ear—you’d never miss it.’  Alison snipped off the ’baby one,’ tied it up
with a thread of silk from Nancy’s basket, and twisted it in a piece of
paper, all with her own matter-of-fact and literal air, that made
Herries laugh again, and love her more.

’There, sir,’ she said.  ’I would ’twere a handsomer gift.  You know,’
she added, ’they say ’tis unlucky to give hair—it means "farewell."’

’Ah, but we’re so prosaic a pair, love,’ said Herries, half-mocking.
’There’s no romantic ill-luck in store for us, be sure.  We leave that
to the high-flyers.’

Then they went to the window again and bent their heads over the ring.
It is hardly fair to spy upon a rising and respectable young lawyer in
his softer moments.  But if, in the old days at The Mains, Kirsty, the
dairy-maid, had had a lover who put an arm around her waist, Alison, as
her own good mother might have put it, was ’upsides with her’ now.

She and Herries, indeed, were so absorbed in the ring and in each
other’s company that they heard no sounds outside the little room.
Their backs were towards the door, which had an awkward trick of
sometimes swinging open unnoticed, when not securely latched.  It had
swung open now to some movement of the crazy old tenement, and all
unknown to the lovers, a figure stood motionless on the threshold.  It
was a towering figure, but it had a canny step, to which additional
stealthiness had been imparted by the simple expedient of removing the
stout shoes from the heavy feet.  Too often had Robbie Burns crept to
clandestine meetings not to know that ’tis pity on such occasions to
disturb the neighbours with unseemly clatter on the stairs.

He could see well into the room, for the fire had blazed up brightly,
and he perceived perfectly the two figures and their
attitude—recognising one.

’Eh, ma lassie,’ he ejaculated to himself, ’kissin’ and kitlin’ like the
rest o’ us, for all your prudish airs!’  And he executed, behind the
unconscious pair, a short and silent war-dance on his stocking-soles,
brandishing his shoes above his head in the mischievous glee of a
schoolboy.  But he made no sign.  Diving behind the door, he deftly
reassumed his foot-gear, and then, with a due and decent rattling of the
latch, he made known his presence, and entered the little room.

Alison turned, with a great and visible start, when she heard and saw
him.  She felt herself grow pale, for she knew that an awkward, and even
terrible, moment had come, and that the meeting, which Nancy had schemed
for weeks to avoid, must now, by some unforeseen coincidence, take
place.  But she took her courage in both her hands, and with it there
came to her a certain definite sense of relief.  At last, she felt,
there would be an end to deception.

’This is Mr. Burns, the poet, sir,’ she said, in her quiet voice, and
turned to Herries.




                            *CHAPTER XXXI.*


Herries, whose eyes had narrowed and whose lips were set, held his hands
behind him and made an inclination so haughty and so slight that it was
barely perceptible.  Jean brought in the lights.

’We have met ere this, sir, I think,’ said Burns, not unpleasantly.  He
knew Herries perfectly by sight, and had no reason to suppose he would
resent the imputation of being seen at some of the first houses in
Edinburgh.

’I was hitherto unaware of the honour,’ said Herries, with appalling
frigidity, and it would have needed no very acute observer to have seen
the hot and sensitive blood rush to the poet’s face.  He, however,
contained himself with dignity enough.  Alison’s fingers, cold with
fright, were twisted together with nervousness. She certainly did not
improve matters by saying to the poet,—

’Mrs. Maclehose was not expecting you just now, I think, sir?’

’Why, no, madam,’ said the Bard; ’but I could not come at a later hour,
and I swear the strings of your harp so drew me that I could not forego
coming now rather than not at all.  We must finish "Lassie wi’ the Lint
White Locks," and to that grand tune "The Rothiemurchus Rant," or I will
go clean _wud_,[*] I think. It rings i’ the head o’ me half right, and
yet not right. Tantalus himself could not endure it.’  The poet had set
back his shoulders and spoke out freely and boldly, as though by the
divine right of his genius the little room and all it held, including
Alison, were his.  He ignored Herries.  As to Herries, Alison could see
him without looking at him, could tell the very tilt his fine and
scornful brows were set at, could feel, through her very back, the
coldness of his stare.  And yet her courage rose.  Oh, he would be
angry—sore displeased! But better by far he should be angry for a little
while than any longer deceived.

[*] Mad.

It was fortunate for all concerned that Nancy returned at this critical
juncture.  She took in the state of matters in an instant, and with
ready wit and supple tact did all that one little woman could do to save
the situation.  She bustled about, she chattered, she rallied the poet
on the rareness of his visits (he had been there the previous night),
she pulled a chair up to the hearth for Herries, and almost pushed him
into it.

’Now, cousin,’ she said coolly, ’you’ll witness one of our own little
symposiums, and hear how marvellously Ally is improving on the harp.’
She ardently hoped—though she did not expect—that Herries would go.  But
this he had no intention of doing.  Alison had left the room, and the
boy Willy was shouting for Herries from an inner chamber, where he
slept, and Herries went to him.  Nancy’s whole aspect, voice, and
manner, changed in his absence.

’For God’s sake, Sylvander,’ she said, clasping the poet’s arm, ’behave
yourself this night!  Yonder is my most revered, particular, Puritanical
cousin and guardian, the lawyer Archibald Herries.  A pragmatical
creature—no soul, no sympathy—but if he’s offended, poor Clarinda is
undone!  He is all her shield against the cruel world—all the worldly
hope of her poor, deserted babes.  I implore you have a care not to
offend him by your manners to your poor friend.’

’My bare existence offends him,’ said the poet, shrewdly enough.  ’What
right,’ he continued bitterly, ’has the poor ploughman to breathe the
same air with so fine a gentleman as Mr. Herries?’

’Oh, heavens!’ cried Nancy, half beside herself. ’Never heed him.  Are
you not worth a hundred of such poor dried sticks as he?  Only think of
your poor Clarinda and be careful!  ’Twould indeed be almost better
could you go.’

’I thank you, madam,’ said the Bard, grimly; ’but I think I’ll stand my
ground, unless you put me to the door.’

’Then, for God’s sake, give all your heed to Ally,’ cried Nancy; ’not a
look, not a word, but of merest civility to Clarinda!’

The poet cocked his eye.  He was about to tell what he had seen that
evening on first entering the room, but he checked himself: telling
tales was not his weakness. And then the idea of a little dalliance with
Alison, under the supercilious nose of her lover, by no means came
amiss.  Here was a little diverting vengeance ready to his hand; he
would never carry it too far, he reflected, for, with all his faults, he
was generous and good-natured.  So he chuckled, and nodded knowingly to
Nancy.

In the dark little outer lobby, Alison and Herries had met for a brief
moment.

’Archie!’ whispered Alison, with an outstretched hand.  But he turned
upon her a look of offence so cold, that she was silenced, and her arm
fell to her side.

’I did not know,’ he said icily, ’of Miss Graham’s intimate acquaintance
with the poet Burns!’  And he brushed past her into the parlour.
Alison, feeling as though she had been struck, followed him.  It had
been easy to bear his anger in advance; but oh! she had not known how
hard it would be—how hard to meet that changed look in his face, that
coldness in his voice. The wave of courage that had risen so high within
her, receded; but she forced it back.  Better he should be angry than
deceived.  She did not realise as yet the intricate, net-like nature of
deception, so loth to set one free.

The evening passed.  To all outward appearances it was a musical evening
of undeniable edification to all concerned, when a great poet might have
been seen unbending himself, and honouring, with much gallant attention,
the accomplished young lady who helped him with her harp and song.
Nancy sat in her accustomed place, wreathed in smiles, and dispensing
sugared words and glances.  Herries, indeed, was totally silent, but it
might have been the silence of appreciation.  Alison and her harp, the
poet seated near her, made a central and striking group in the little
room.  How fair—how singularly fair—she looked that night!  So, at
least, it seemed to her lover, watching her from under lowered lids,
with anger—the anger of love and longing—at his heart.  The poet, too,
looked well: strong, manly, massive.  Herries, as he watched him bend
over Alison that fine frame and splendid head, hated him at that moment,
not, I fear, for his vices, but for his thews and sinews, his
sun-browned comeliness and daring eye. Like many men, slenderly moulded,
and of delicate constitution, Herries had a passionate and jealous
admiration of manly beauty hardened and developed by all out-door and
vigorous pursuits.  Necessity had doomed him to a sedentary life, but it
was against every taste and inclination, every instinct of his being.
He felt now, angrily, that this creature—this ploughman—belittled him.
Certainly the contrast between them was sufficiently striking; it was
the contrast between porcelain and bronze.  Yet never had the peculiar
grace of Herries, the marked refinement, the purity of his chiselled
face, shone more by contrast.  So, at least, it seemed to one who saw
him, whenever she dared steal a glance upon her angry Jove.

They could not make much headway with the song that night, probably
because Alison’s wits were wandering.  Burns was working up, after his
usual methods, the ’Lassie wi’ the Lint White Locks,’ some fag-end of an
old, forgotten country catch, which he set in the jewels of his own
deathless words, and sought to match to some old tune.  Alison had found
the air; over and over again she played it, and sang the words as the
poet said, them at her ear.  The little room seemed full of the air, of
the words, of the spirit of song:—

    _’Lassie wi’ the lint white locks,_
      _Bonnie lassie, artless lassie!_
    _Wilt thou wi’ me tend the flocks?_
      _Wilt thou be my dearie, O?’_


Over and over and over again—the little fleering, jeering, heartless
tune, with yet its sub-note of pathos and of pain, the tinkle of the
harp, the girlish voice singing, the poet’s deeper tones in speech.
Herries had no ear for music or for verse, yet that air and those words
stayed with him all his life.  He could never hear a boy whistle the
one, or a lass lilt the other at her work, without an unbearable stab of
pain.

When the singing was over, it became apparent to the astute hostess of
the Potterrow that each of her guests meant to outstay the other.
Herries made no move. The poet, glowering somewhat, now that the mood of
inspiration had left him, chafed visibly under the other’s sneering
silence and marked aloofness.  In spite of his natural manliness and
independence, he was agonisingly sensitive to a social slight, and
helpless under it. Yet neither would he give in.  It grew late.  The
poet, it transpired, contemplated an early start the following morning,
when he was to ride to Ayrshire, returning in a fortnight or so to town.
This forced him, at last, to make a move, for he had affairs to attend
to.  With a formal adieu to the ladies, and a black look at Herries,
which he could not, for the life of him, decide to make into a bow or
not, he took his departure.

He was hardly out of the room, when Herries walked to the window and set
it open.

’Pah!’ he said, ’there’s too much of your poet in here!’  Then he fell
silent, for words wanted him.  In olden days he would have rated his
cousin in no measured terms.  But now the woman he wanted to rate was
not his cousin, but another, and his lips were sealed to her in the
presence of a third person.  Besides, he was not only angry, when it is
easy to speak; but he was sore, when it is almost impossible for a proud
and sensitive man to find words.  And, as yet, he did not know what
words to use.

’I’ll reserve my criticism on your "symposium" for another occasion,
Nancy,’ he said.  ’’Twill be so very full and appreciative a one that
’twill require more time than is left us this evening,’ he added
significantly. He said good-night to his cousin.  To Alison he bowed
coldly as he left the room.

’My lord is fine and angry,’ said Nancy, as she shut the door on him,
’but that’s of course.  On the whole, the matter has passed off better
than I could have expected, though Lord only knows what is to come.
’Twas at _your_ feet the poet sat, Ally, no doubt about that!’  And she
tittered, well pleased.

’Oh, Nancy, Nancy!’ cried Alison; she knew not what she was about to
say, but the impulse seemed to be on her to be out with it all.

’Hush, child!’ said Nancy, sharply.  ’Listen!’  There was a bounding
step upon the stair, and she ran to the door, laughing, and flung it
wide.  The poet had tricked the lawyer prettily.  He had simply hidden
himself in a dark niche of the stair until he saw his enemy depart, and
here he was again, bursting with successful mischief.

’Did Clarinda fancy her Sylvander would leave her with a formal, cold
farewell?’ he asked, with a fine rolling eye.

Alison ran to her room, and shut herself up in it in a passion of just
anger—just, but helpless.

So Clarinda and her Sylvander had a long and tender parting, and felt
that they took a well-deserved, as well as most enjoyable, revenge upon
her disagreeable relative.




                            *CHAPTER XXXII.*


Alison’s struggles that night were like those of a bird that is caught
in a net.  The bird cannot free itself, not altogether for want of
strength, but because it does not understand the nature of nets.  And
thus it was with Alison.  The meshes, not of her own will or seeking,
were all round and about her; so slight, so thread-like they seemed, yet
they had entangled her, and the more she strove to cast them off the
more they clung. Her lover was offended—justly offended.  Alison’s
straight inward eye saw that at once.  She had deceived him, though
bitterly against her will.  She had connived, and still connived, at his
deception by another.  That other was her friend and benefactress whose
bread she ate, who had loaded her with kindness.  She could not unravel
the deception.  She could not seek forgiveness from her lover by
confession without betraying Nancy.

’I see that it is wrong ever to hide anything,’ was one of her thoughts
that night.  ’’Twould have been far better to have told Nancy at once
that we loved each other.’  And yet that deception, if, indeed, it could
be called one, had seemed so innocent.  It had arisen, not from ideas of
expediency, but from sheer strength of feeling—the feeling of reserved
and silent natures that longed for privacy in a sacred moment.  Had they
not a perfect right to keep their happiness to themselves—a happiness
that injured or robbed no one—that concerned no one but their two
selves?  That night it had been in her to tell Nancy, but what would she
have gained by such a telling?  Was it conceivable that Nancy, even
though knowing all, would put matters straight by a full confession to
Herries, exposing herself, her passion, her duplicity, and then,
renouncing all her misdeeds, sit calmly down to a benignant
contemplation of Herries’s happiness?  Alison almost laughed as she
thought of it.  No, that was not conceivable.  It seemed to her—and
Alison was very clear-headed—that a full knowledge of the facts—of the
facts that bound her and Herries together—would merely drive Nancy into
further and fiercer deceit. She would simply regard them both as enemies
leagued together against her, and deceive both, whereas, as yet, she
deceived only the one.  Not only was there no help, but there might be
danger in telling Nancy now.

And then the thought—the temptation—came to Alison: she might go home!
She might cut the strings that bound her—never heeding that they bound
another, too—and be free and fly away to that dear, that safe old home,
where there were no deceptions, where everybody spoke the truth with
disagreeable plainness, if need be, but always the unvarnished truth.
Herries would have her do this.  He might bid her do it yet. But ah!
Alison knew she could not—might not—dared not do it, for heart and
conscience both said no. What—and she hardly dared ask herself the
question—what would come to Nancy if she were left alone?  Alison had
learned many things of late, and her girlish eyes had been opened to
much—to so much that was not fit for them to see, but that they saw
because they were clear-sighted eyes that always read the truth.  What
would become of Nancy now if the one barrier—the restraining presence of
a companion of her own sex—were taken away, and she were left an
absolutely unprotected prey to that overpowering influence that shadowed
all she did and all she thought?  The face of the man rose before
Alison—the masterful, sensual face, the riveting eyes—and she heard the
stealing steps that now too often and too late—far, far too late into
the night—would come creeping up the stair.  Jean would be long since
safely bedded in her attic—but, at least until now, Alison had always
been at hand, with the certain safety of her presence, though fully
conscious how angrily that presence was resented by one of the pair, if
not indeed by both.  Alison was innocent, as the pure are innocent, but
she was not stupid, and she was not blind.  She knew enough to know that
even if Nancy were yet guiltless, her good name was fearfully at stake;
it hung by a thread, and one end of that thread was in Alison’s hands.
And it was Nancy—the dear, dainty, sweet Nancy—that had so twined
herself round the simple affections of the country girl! It was the
Nancy that had saved Alison from Mr. Cheape, and that had brought her to
Archibald Herries. No, Nancy should never be deserted in her peril. Even
if Alison’s early love for her were gone, there was yet loyalty, and
Alison would be unswervingly loyal. She must bide her time and wait.
She trusted Herries with a passion of trust.  Whatever he did, that must
be right, and she would abide by it.

In the meantime, Alison’s lover had gone home, far more deeply perturbed
than she, because totally in the dark, and because he had not, as had
the woman he loved, the solid ground beneath his feet of a nature that
could trust.  Suspicion and mistrust had dogged the beginning of his
love for Alison, but then Creighton had been at his elbow to fight each
doubt as it arose; and after that his own love had grown strong, so
strong that it grappled with the enemies of his nature, and overthrew
them for a time.  But now they sprang upon him from their old ambush,
and how alive, how terribly alive, they were!  The angry blood rushed to
his brow as he thought himself deceived.  Had she really tricked him?
He recalled the ugly little circumstances of the early winter—the
meeting in St. James’s Square—the fee to Mysie; and then—and then, could
it be that Alison had begged for secrecy in their engagement, had
deprecated the frequency of his visits to the Potterrow, bidden him come
on certain evenings and at certain hours only, because she played a
double game, and fooled him in it?  But no, this was monstrous, and he
did not believe it in his soul—not yet at least.  Only, in his
bitterness, he said to himself that all women were the same; they all
deceived, prevaricated, lied and hid, and this seeming-true, fair
creature that he had taken to his heart was only a woman after all.  Ah,
but he loved her!  Not till now had he known the strength of his love,
not till his heart pained him as it did this night, with its abominable
aching.  There was nothing for it but that he must write to her before
he slept, and he did so.

He made his accusation in plain terms.  ’You have deceived me,’ he
wrote, ’in regard to an intimacy, which you have hidden, with a man whom
you knew well that I abhorred.  I did suspect at one time that Burns
might possibly frequent my cousin’s house, because of her foolish craze
for literary lions and the like. But the suspicion left me utterly,
because I did not believe that such a matter would be kept from my
knowledge by you.  But now I suddenly find you intimate with this man,
singing to him, and having in common with him, apparently, the memory of
countless meetings. What am I to think?  To this intimacy—at anyrate in
my cousin’s household—it is my resolution and my duty to put an instant
termination, and I shall know what measures to take to that end.  If I
have any claim on you—and you yourself only can decide whether I have or
not—I forbid you to see or have speech with this man again.  He is a
profligate.  I have reasons, believe me, that make me urge your
obedience in this matter.  I am harsh with you—I was harsh to-night—but
I would not be too harsh, Alison.  I know not yet how far you may have
acted under influence,—perhaps my cousin’s.  I have often felt she was
no safe guardian for a young girl.  Have you found out yet that you left
my mother’s ring—the ring of our betrothal—in my hands?  You started so,
when that accursed poet came into the room, and were so visibly taken
aback that you forgot my gift!  I desire and hope to God you may yet
wear it—and wear it worthily.  But I will keep it for a little while.
You will not see me for some days.  I learn that Mr. Creighton’s illness
is become dangerous, and every hour that I can spare must be spent at
his bedside.’

When Alison got this letter, a strange feeling of exaltation moved her.
Severe?  But then, how just! Plain?  But how she loved his plainness!
Dear—dearer than his very kisses—to this girl, with her own straight,
undeviating nature, was the man’s unerring, if narrow, rectitude, his
clean, cold uprightness, his hatred of all false ways.  He would not
give her the ring?  She almost laughed; he might slay her—but she would
love the slaying from his hands; it would be a noble pain!

Unluckily for himself and all concerned, Herries did not stay his hand
that night, after he had written to Alison.  He wrote another letter,
and this time he wrote neither so wisely nor so well.  It ran:—

’Mr. Herries presents his compliments to Mr. Robert Burns, and begs to
inform him that he is under the necessity of preventing and forbidding
the visits of Mr. Burns to the house of Mrs. Maclehose in the Potterrow.
The unhappy circumstances which have deprived Mrs. Maclehose of the
protection of a husband, make it indispensable that her relatives and
friends should exercise a supervision over her acquaintance, and should
guard her from the intimacy of persons not of her own station, or known
to her immediate circle.’

This was all—but it was all wrong, and Herries, as a lawyer, if not as a
sensible and prudent man, should certainly have known that it was so.
That he should forbid Alison the intimacy of such-and-such a man was
possibly within his province.  That he should advise, cajole or
influence his cousin to close her doors against an objectionable visitor
might certainly be his duty. But that he should forbid, or, with a high
hand, prevent Mr. Burns the poet—a free agent in a free country—from
visiting any house where he was welcomed by the inmates (except it were
his—Herries’s own) was an absurdity so glaring, that the only marvel was
it did not strike his vision from the paper as he wrote.  It can only be
said for him that he was at the moment a sorely harassed
man—over-worked, in the first instance, and now set upon by jealousy and
suspicion.  Hot under these influences, it is perhaps no wonder that he
sat down to commit the one thoroughly ill-judged action of his life.

He was aware that the poet left town next day for a fortnight, but he
directed the letter to his lodgings in St. James’s Square, believing
that it would be forwarded by the next mail.  As a matter of fact, the
letter lay in town until the poet’s return.




                           *CHAPTER XXXIII.*


The fortnight which now began to pass—the period of the poet’s absence
from town—was a very unhappy one in the Potterrow.  Alison had, indeed,
her lover’s letter, but she would not, or could not, answer it.  The
truth she could not write, therefore it seemed to her better not to
write at all.  Hard as it was, it seemed she must be silent under his
reproach.  Some way out of the mystery might show itself, but it
appeared to Alison that she was bound hand and foot, and could not move
to clear herself.  And in these days, though she had a brave heart, she
began to be afraid.

But now the sight of Nancy’s wretchedness—no longer to be concealed or
disguised—began, even more than her own uneasiness, to affect her.  The
recklessness, the headstrong wilfulness of the little woman when the
object of her passion had been near her, and she could either see him or
hear from him day by day, had been hard enough to cope with, but now
that he was absent, and the constant excitement of the letters and the
meetings was suspended, her state was piteous. She would neither eat nor
sleep, neither rest nor yet employ herself; the irritation of her
temper—sweet turned to bitter under the alchemy of passion—was almost
insupportable.  She would still write, by the hour, by day and night,
her feverish, passionate letters, which followed the poet by mail and
post-gig, and must prettily have punctuated his progress as he went.
He, from Glasgow, had scratched her a line as he waited for the Paisley
carrier, promising future and full epistles.  But these did not follow
with absolute regularity, and the unreasoning little creature maddened
under his silence.  She finally fretted herself into a fever, real
enough, and Alison had the doctor in; and a febrifuge and also a
sleeping-draught prescribed, gave the household a little peace at night
at anyrate.

At last a merciful morning brought a substantial packet from the errant
Bard, handsomely franked by some important personage, for he wrote from
a fine country house in Ayrshire, where he rested on his way from
Mauchline to Dumfriesshire.  For hours did Nancy pore over these
precious sheets, reading out now and again laughing extracts to Alison.
This had always been her wont, and not by any means always edifying had
been the nature of these extracts, for Sylvander was a correspondent of
amazing frankness, and hid from his Clarinda none of his peccadillos,
past or present.  Nancy, in these matters, had grown curiously hardened,
and probably hardly realised the essence of her revelations to the
shocked ears of a girl.

’Why,’ she cried, on this occasion, ’here will be a little excursion for
you, love!  My Sylvander begs a favour of me; ’tis to take five
shillings, as from him, to a poor necessitous creature in the Wabster’s
Close. Will you do it, dear?  You know how miserably unfit your poor
Nancy is to face the streets!’  Now, the poet’s message ran:—’There is a
poor lass in the Wabster’s Close of whom I get a tale of distress that
makes my very heart weep blood.  For some part of her trouble I am (with
contrition, I own it) responsible.  I will trust that your goodness will
apologise to your delicacy for me, when I beg you, for heaven’s sake, to
send the poor woman five shillings in my name, and let the wench leave a
line for me—you know where—and I shall see her, and try what is to be
done for her relief.’  Nancy, even, had felt the necessity of editing
this passage, but she dwelt upon the poet’s kindliness of nature with
unction.

’He’s said to me often and often, Ally,’ she took this occasion to
remark, ’"I would have all men and women happy!  I’d wipe the tears from
all eyes if I could!"  He has the tenderest, the most sensitive heart!’
So, would Alison go upon this charitable quest?  Of course she
would—thankful to be sent on any quest that did not lead in the
direction of St. James’s Square.

Now, it will be said that, in these pages, our poor Alison has run too
many messages, and, indeed, she has.  But the reader, of his own
experience, probably knows that there is in this world a certain class
of little, dainty, clinging, tender women whose messages are all run for
them as a matter of course.  To this class did Nancy Maclehose belong.
There was a kind of understanding that rough walks in dirty streets, and
in all kinds of weather, were not her portion.  Nor did she exact this
consideration from her friends; it came to her as a sort of right, a
kind of tacit acknowledgment of her power—that power to which all bowed
down who came in contact with her—the willing Alison, the sturdy Jean,
her own devoted little boys—even Herries himself, though he, indeed, was
a rebellious slave.  So Alison set out, quite willingly, in all good
faith that she went upon a charitable mission.

It was mid-February now, and there was an extraordinary mildness in the
air.  The frost and snow, the bitter north winds were gone.  A tender
sky, sweet with the very tints of spring, swam above the stern old town,
and a westerly wind, soft as a kiss, touched Alison’s cheek as she
walked.  She was acquainted with her destination, the Wabster’s Close—a
most malodorous and unpleasing quarter; but Alison was not afraid of
such places now, and merely picked her way with added caution over the
foul causeway and slippery cobbles.  She had nothing but a name, Clow,
as uncommon as it was hideous to go by, and by inquiry she discovered
the tenement or ’land,’ where a family thus named was said to live.  It
was up a stair of an agglomerated and indescribable filth—the worst that
Alison had yet seen.  No wonder, she thought, that a person living in
such a place needed a charitable dole.

She paused at a door, behind which there seemed to rise a perfect Babel
of sound—a Babel, yet curiously subdued, as though many people spoke,
and spoke at once, yet in hushed voices.  She knocked, and a woman
opened, who, with a curious, indescribable air of excitement, plucked
her by the sleeve, whispering hoarsely,—’Come in by—come ben!’

Alison felt impelled to enter, but shrank involuntarily, as the close
air of the darksome and overcrowded chamber, with some nameless horror
in it, assailed her senses.  The woman, however, who had admitted her,
now closed the door behind her.  Alison noticed that her hands were
shaking, piteously, uncontrollably, and that she was very pale.  The
room seemed full—full to overflowing—of women who whispered with bent
heads, gesticulating, raising hands to heaven, and who now turned
curious eyes on Alison.

She stood still in the middle of the wretched place, awed and terrified,
she knew not why, yet instinctively conscious of the nearness of some
tragedy.

’I was sent here,’ she whispered to the woman near her, ’with five
shillings for a girl, Clow, said to be in want or sickness.’

A murmur ran round the room.  At her words, as if by common consent, the
crowd of women drew aside, and through the clearance thus made Alison
perceived a bed; and on the bed, its dismal occupant, the newly-dead, as
yet untended, the staring eyes unclosed, the pallid hand clenched on the
disordered covering.  A woman, standing at the bed’s head, still held to
the parted lips the undimmed mirror.

Alison’s vision swam; she sickened, but she saw—saw, upturned among the
blankets, the gaunt, grey, sightless face; saw it—and knew it.

’Mysie!’ she cried, shrinking back in utmost horror.

’Eh?’ ejaculated several astonished voices; ’ye kent poor Mysie?’

But Alison felt the clammy sweat of faintness break out upon her flesh.

’Oh, let me go—let me out!’ she gasped.  ’I will speak to you upon the
stair.’

The women crowded round her, questioning, muttering, explaining she knew
not what.  She got forth from the room at last, and found herself
standing with the one woman upon the outer landing.  The poor creature
seemed decent enough.  By some trick of likeness, she might have been,
probably was, the dead woman’s sister.  She eyed Alison, not
resentfully, but curiously.

’Are ye—are ye from _him_?’ she asked.

’From whom?’ said Alison, yet trembling, because she knew.

’Mysie was in trouble, ye ken,’ the woman said, with a kind of weary
dispassionateness.  ’I thought that mebbe—’  She paused, lifting her
lustreless eyes to the fresh, unworn face of the girl before her, as
though wondering how far she would be understood.

But ah!  Alison understood.  She remembered the walk with Mysie only too
well—the scene before the house in St. James’s Square—the poor
creature’s then mysterious words.  What had, even so short a while ago,
been hidden to Alison’s innocence, was plain to her now.  Knowledge of
the wrong, and the passion, and the sin of the world was breaking over
her heart like the dawn of a grey day.  But it was a true woman’s
heart—full of pity and of strength to meet the sorrowful enlightenment.

’He—he has sent money,’ she said, crimsoning with shame, and she slipped
the coins into the other’s hand. The woman weighed them in her palm an
instant, with a bitter smile.

’He’s sent it, has he?’ she said.  ’Mebbe a wee thing late!  Weel, he
didna grudge it likely.  They’re tellin’ me he was never the lad to
grudge, and Mysie had but tae speir and he wad help her.  But na, she
wudna!  She was a queer body, Mysie.  She had a place, and she lost it
(anent her trouble, ye see); and then she got the cauld trailin’ the
streets to get a sicht o’ her jo, and she dwined and dwined....  Ay,
it’s a queer warld: and as you cam’ chappin’ at the door yonder, wi’ his
money in yer hand, the last breath had just but newly left her mooth.’

Alison, as she listened, was pale; her pulses fluttered to her
deeply-moved, indignant sympathy.  Inexperienced in sorrow, she knew not
what to say, but her eyes filled, and the woman saw them, and drew her
hand across her own eyes, dim with long watching.

’Ye will excuse us,’ she said, with unconscious dignity.  ’It wasna
decent that ye sud see what ye saw. But I wasna mysel’, and I thocht it
was a neebor that chappit—a skilly woman we were waitin’ on.  I wudna
have ye think,’ she went on, wistfully, ’that we didna do the best we
could for poor Mysie.’

’I know, I know,’ whispered Alison, eagerly.  ’And, oh! will you take
this from me?’  She pressed into the woman’s hand her own little hoard.

’I thank ye, mem; I canna refuse it,’ the poor creature said simply.
’For we’ll be sair put to it for a decent burial.’

Alison turned to go, her eyes burning, her heart hot within her.




                            *CHAPTER XXXIV.*


One mastering thought gave Alison’s feet wings as she neared the
Potterrow on her return from the Wabster’s Close.  She would tell Nancy
of this heart-moving, this pitiful, sad scene she had witnessed, and
make it plain to her at whose door the greater guilt of it all lay.
Then Nancy must see reason, must lift the veil from her eyes,
acknowledge the wrong-doing of the man who could cause suffering so
infinite, and see her own danger in submitting to his influence.
Alison, in spite of much recently-acquired experience, was still, as the
perspicacious reader will perceive, very simple.

Nancy was sitting writing when her messenger returned.

’Well, child,’ she said, ’and did you find the wench and deliver our
friend’s bounty?’

’Bounty!’ cried Alison, throwing out her hands. ’She—she needs no
bounty, Nancy.  She’s dead!’

Nancy started, then tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently.

’La, child,’ she exclaimed, pettishly, ’how you frighten one!’

But Alison was in no mood to be put off with petulance or callousness.
In quick words, faltering and broken—for her eyes were wet, and her
quiet, reticent nature stirred to the rare point of passionate
utterance—she told what she had seen of Mysie’s end.

’And, oh, Nancy,’ she whispered at last, on her knees at her friend’s
side, ’it was _his_ doing.  She was in trouble; it was _his_ fault.
She’s dead—dead! and but for him she might have been alive and
happy—honest at the least.’

But Nancy looked down at her face unmoved, with a little, hard smile.

’Accidents will happen,’ she said coolly.  ’We must all die, surely.
Men will be men.  To talk as you do is sheer hysterics.  You are a
child.’

’I am a woman!’ cried Alison, ’and I see with a woman’s eyes.’

’You ought to concede,’ Nancy continued, unmoved, ’that our friend has
acted by the lass as handsomely as anyone could expect.  He sent money.
I’ve reason to know he would have acknowledged her child had the silly
wench but given him the chance.  He’s all generosity, kindness, warmth.
Didn’t I give you his very words this morning—"I’d wipe the tears from
all eyes if I could"?’

’’Twould be far better, I think,’ cried Alison, ’that he should try
first to cause no tears to flow.  I see no beauty, Nancy, in beautiful
words when cruel, heedless acts go with them.’

Nancy shrugged her shoulders.

’You’ve no understanding of a poet, Ally,’ she said, with a superior and
pitying air.  But Alison rose to her feet, feeling a sudden courage to
say that which had long burned upon her tongue.

’Oh!  Nancy, Nancy,’ she cried, ’is it for _this_ man that you—’

’That I _what_?’ said Nancy, turning fiercely upon her friend.

’That you forget,’ whispered Alison, stammeringly, ’forget that you are
Willy and Danny’s mother, and—and—a wife, Nancy!’  From cheek to brow,
from her neck to her very ears, Nancy turned scarlet at the words, and
her eyes blazed with anger.

’How _dare_ you, Alison Graham,’ she said, ’how dare you say such words
to me?  _I_ forget myself—I, who remember hourly that I am bound—bound
by an iron chain to an odious fate?  Ah, were I free!’—she clenched her
little hands, and her whole tiny frame was shaken with the vehemence of
her passion, ’were I free, should I be here?—and he—he, as he is—left to
the machinations of the vulgar, and driven to demean himself with filthy
peasants?’  She had risen, and stood over Alison, blazing with jealousy
as well as rage—not jealousy of the luckless dead victim of the poet’s
passions, but, as it happened, of Jean Armour, of whose ascendency over
the Bard she was mortally suspicious. But now she turned all the vials
of her wrath on Alison.

’You, to misunderstand me!’ she cried.  ’You, whom I have trusted, to
turn again and rend me!  But you are like the rest of the
world—evil-minded!  You read wickedness when there is only the innocence
and true nobility of great minds.  You are incapable of understanding
friendship.  I despise and rise above your mean suspicions—they are
unworthy of my thoughts.  But if the viper I had cherished and nursed to
warmth in my bosom had turned and stung me, I could not have been more
pained!’  Saying which, with a toss of her head and a fine rustle of
petticoats, Nancy flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind
her.

Poor Alison remained alone to chew the cud of this new development in
her friend’s mood as best she might.  That Nancy should thus mount the
virtuous high-horse took her inexperience totally by surprise. She
conceived the figment of the ’friendship’ to have long since been cast
aside; but she was evidently wrong, it died a lingering death.  The girl
was hopelessly at sea; she began to doubt herself.  Was she really
evil-minded?  Did she actually suspect evil where no evil was?
Presently Nancy came back, her fit of anger gone, replaced by one of
virtuous resignation.  She kissed Alison sweetly on the cheek.

’I forgive you, Ally!’ she said, with the most perfect air of injured
innocence.  ’You are young, you do not understand!  You are influenced
by the cruel world!  I declare I think you’ve been too much with Herries
lately in all these tiresome visits of his, and are become infected with
his horrid narrow manner of thought.  Ah! be my own sweet Ally again,
and we shall not quarrel.’  Alison submitted to the kiss and to the
reconciliation in meek bewilderment, hardly now capable of aught else.

These were very sad days for Alison, for evidently Herries held himself
aloof.  What else, under her incriminating silence, could he do?  She
asked herself this, and found no answer.  Yet she would listen for his
footsteps on the stair, and scan the empty streets for his familiar
figure—empty to her because she never met or saw him all these dreary
days.  One afternoon she sat alone in the little parlour—for Nancy,
after a bad night, was lying down in her room.  She was so deep in
thought, sitting away by the little window, her hands idle over the work
in her lap, that she heard nothing, and it was only when she suddenly
turned round that she found her thoughts had taken visible form.
Herries himself stood in the doorway.

For him, too, it was a supreme moment, because he put out his whole
strength against his love, and for once love conquered.  He had told
himself he had not come to seek Alison, and had given himself the
shallow pretext of bringing his cousin’s monthly money allowance. But
now ... he closed the door, and in a minute his arms held Alison, and
with a touch, half rough, half tender, he was pushing the darling curls
from her white temples and kissing them.  Yet even now they heard Nancy
moving in her room, and knew they had not a moment.

’Alison,’ whispered Herries, hoarsely, ’I wish to God you would go home.
Go home, and I will say not another word, but come and ask you from your
parents.’ ... But Alison pushed him from her with her arms—him, and the
terrible temptation of his words.

’I can’t go home!’ she said, and ran from the room, meeting Nancy, who
entered.

’Well, cousin,’ the latter exclaimed, with her own undaunted
sprightliness, ’here’s an unexpected honour!  ’Tis some time since you
visited this humble roof.’  But Herries turned a moody look upon his
relative.

’We have not come to an understanding yet on the subjects of my last
visit,’ he said grimly.  ’But I daresay you know me too well to believe
that I have been inactive in the matter.  I have taken measures to
prevent the visits of a certain unsuitable person to your house.’

’Indeed!’ said Nancy, meekly, gathering up her forces for the fray, and
rapidly coming to the conclusion that meekness would suit her best; if
feeble as a weapon, it would at least be baffling to her adversary.
Herries continued—

’If you have no sense of what is fitting or unfitting for a young woman
in your peculiarly delicate circumstances, others must exercise it for
you.  That such a man as Burns should visit your house as an intimate is
worse than unfitting—it is a slur upon your reputation.  He is openly a
profligate, and his _bonnes fortunes_ with women everywhere are become a
bye-word.  If you cannot protect yourself against the danger of his
society, you must be protected.’  Nancy had cast down her eyes and
looked the image of innocence.

’You are too much the master here, Archie,’ she meekly said, ’and I and
my poor infants are too directly dependent on your bounty for your word
to be questioned.  No doubt you are wise.  If you have forbidden Mr.
Burns my house, of course he will be forbidden.’  Herries looked
suspiciously at the smooth, downcast face of his cousin.  He did not
believe a word she said—he never did.  But she baffled him.

’Have you no conscience,’ he said angrily, ’that you have subjected to
the influence of Mr. Burns a girl like that one yonder—your guest—an
inexperienced young creature committed to your charge, and for whom you
are responsible?  Has no thought of her ever troubled you?’  Nancy
assumed a little troubled air of guilt, fidgeting with the fringes of
her apron.

’La, Archie,’ she said, ’poor Alison!  Well, ’tis her sweet voice that
has attracted the poet here, I may tell you that.  And if she is—may be,
for I’ve no certain knowledge of it, mind you—a little smit, what harm?
Girls love these soft sensations—’tis their life. But lud, Archie! fancy
talking of such things to you,’ and she gave a little amused laugh.
Herries looked at her with a helpless dislike.  His eyes were full of a
dumb and angry pain that could not get itself spoken. He had always
despised this little woman—an error of judgment, for such little women
are full of power, and have swayed kingdoms in their day.  Now, with
callous little hands, she turned the dagger in his heart. Heavens! how
she made him suffer—unconsciously, it was true, but he had a bitter
feeling that the will was there.

’Is Miss Graham gone out?’ he asked uneasily.

’La! cousin, I can’t tell you,’ said Nancy, carelessly. ’I daresay—she’s
often out.  I can’t keep a constant dragon’s eye on a great girl like
that.  I’m no tyrant, and she has her liberties.’  Herries turned away
impatiently; there was nothing to be gained in remaining with his cousin
but added uneasiness.  He left her house a bitterly dissatisfied and
anxious man.




                            *CHAPTER XXXV.*


Herries’s homeward way led him past the house where his partner,
Creighton, lay, now in the last stages of consumptive illness.  He had
been there very often of late, and, more than one night, had watched
beside the sick-bed until morning.  During the early stages of his
illness, Mr. Creighton had always asked each day for Alison, and been
well satisfied with the answers which Herries gave him.  But latterly
these kind and eager questionings had ceased, and in increasing fever
and weakness the man was gradually losing touch with the things of this
life.  Yet there had been a rally only that morning and the day before.
A forlorn hope sprang up in Herries’s heart that his partner’s sagacity
might help him once again.  He would tell him his trouble—he would
unburden himself.  Creighton was a long-headed, a shrewd man, and as
secret as the grave towards which he was hastening.

Herries quickened his steps, and when he came to the stair he mounted it
with a renewed energy in his gait.  Before he reached the sick man’s
door he heard his voice—speaking out much more strongly than of late—and
his hopes arose.  Mr. Creighton was sitting up in bed, unimaginably
gaunt and pale; a thin red colour made a patch on either sunk and waxen
cheek, and his eyes were very bright.  But, alas! when they were turned
on Herries there was no recognition in them, and his loud, eager talk
was the mere babble of delirium.  The names upon his lips were names
that Herries had never heard; they were doubtless those of the man’s
home and youth so resolutely put behind him, so hopelessly divided from
him by the yawning gulf of some bitter, early quarrel.  A woman’s name
he uttered so often, and with such poignant meaning, that Herries,
bending over him, asked again and yet again if she were not one who
could be sent for.  He could not know that the earth had covered her for
thirty years in that parish graveyard, away among the Pentlands, where
Creighton, one evening not long since, had craved his partner to see him
buried.  Now his unmeaning voice went on and on, monotonous, painful,
terribly sad.  Herries turned away at last in bitterest silence.
Creighton’s dog, that crouched upon the bed, half starved, growled at
his footsteps as he crossed the floor.

Herries went out into the exquisite spring evening, but it brought him
neither peace nor comfort.  What to him were the crocus tints behind the
looming castle masses? what to him the evening star that swam and shone
there?  In his heart were love, bitterness, and battle.  Battle—for
presently his enemy must return, might even now be returning, and then
the tussle must begin.  Herries was perfectly conscious that his letter
to Robert Burns was a sheer challenge.  How was he to enforce the order
he had given?  With what weapons could he fight a peasant?  The duel
would have been his remedy—easy and obvious—with an equal, but in those
days men did not fight with churls. What combat of the kind was possible
with a man who had never touched a sword or lifted a firearm in his
life?  Herries was full of fight—sharp-set, determined, coldly eager for
the fray.  You could see it in the steel-blue glitter of his eye, the
scornful lift of eyebrow and dilation of the fine carved nostril.  A
game terrier, wiry with pluck, and bristling with defiance, matched
against a mastiff.  Such might have seemed to a sporting onlooker the
chances of the fight.  Alison, meanwhile, woman-like, had no excitement
of a coming battle to make her forget her pain.  She, too, thought of
the enemy’s return, but with a cold terror, feeble and helpless.  In her
little closet, all alone, she would lie and think, forcing the tears
back into her heart.

And even then he was coming—he had come—that common enemy, riding up the
crowded streets upon his borrowed nag in the broad light of the
lengthening day.  He had ridden all the way from Dumfries by easy
stages, jolly stages, most rollickingly punctuated by the flowing bowl
and much good company.  Thus he came in by the town gate, riding boldly
for all men to see, loose rein and roving eye, king of all hearts,
commander of the blood of men.  The people turned to look at him, and
laughed for pleasure; some called aloud, ’Guid e’en t’ye, Robbie!’ while
others walked at his pony’s shaggy shoulder and stretched eager hands
upward for his grip.  So, with half the town to welcome him, came Robert
Burns back to the Auld Reekie of his songs and sins.

Certainly Alison’s lucky star was on the wane, for Mr. Creighton died
that night, and died intestate.  And so she had missed a fortune and
lost a friend.




                            *CHAPTER XXXVI.*


Burns, on this occasion, had returned to Edinburgh in what was, for him,
really rather a chastened mood.  His absence had been on important
business, and that business had progressed to such a degree that he felt
himself on the verge of a great crisis in his life, and was well minded
that it should be a crisis for good and not for evil.  He had surveyed
the farmlands in the exquisite valley of the Nith, and had made ’a
poet’s, not a farmer’s choice’ of Elliesland, where he intended to
settle forthwith and turn farmer in serious earnest. Furthermore, an
appointment in the Excise had been insured to him by the interest of
powerful friends, and that was another practical, sensible, wage-earning
feather in his cap.  Of certain interesting domestic complications at
Mauchline it hardly does to speak with any degree of knowledge or
understanding, but there can be little question that, at this time,
there loomed large in the poet’s mind some idea of an arrangement with
the patient, twin-bearing Jean, which should do some tardy justice to
that long-suffering female.

It is fairly plain, in any case, that during his absence in the south,
Sylvander had cooled considerably to his Clarinda.  Not that he did not
adore her still, in a proper poet’s way, but he had begun to adore
someone else, with practical ends in view.  So matters with his
fascinating little friend in the Potterrow must be brought to a pleasant
conclusion.  It would cause him more than a pang, but still, there must
be an end to all things—the best of friends must part.  He meant to
remain in Edinburgh for a few days only, merely to wind up business
matters with his publisher and pay a few visits of farewell.  Then he
would turn his back upon the capital of his triumphs and his
disappointments, and turn over a new leaf in life and love.

This might have happened without further hindrance, and things have
settled themselves comfortably to everybody’s satisfaction (except,
perhaps, Clarinda’s), had it not been for Herries’s most unlucky and
misguided letter.  This awaited the poet at his lodging, under a pile of
correspondence accumulated for him by his henchman Nicol.  This admiring
attendant of genius also awaited the arrival of Burns in his rooms, and
the two spent a convivial evening of reunion.  The Bard was already
elevated enough in his spirits, owing to the festive nature of his
journey, but it was with that kind of elevation which turns to
querulousness at very slight provocation.

’Here’s letters enough to last a body a lifetime,’ he grumbled, turning
over a pile of papers, where several missives of Clarinda’s lay, still
unopened, it is sad to state.  ’Here’s a packet from some unknown,’ he
added; ’thick paper, and a fine crest upon the seal.’  He broke it open.
As he read the few lines in Herries’s upright, clear-cut writing, the
blood rushed in purple to his face, and he started to his feet.

’Now, by all that’s damnable, this is too much!’ he shouted, his very
eyes becoming bloodshot.

’Canny, lad, canny,’ said Nicol, soothingly, accustomed to the poet in
his cups.  ’What’s up now?’

But it was no mere vinous rage that held the Bard. He was touched in his
tenderest and sorest points—his independence and his sense of social
inferiority.

’Up?’ he cried, ’up?  Why, here’s a miserable hound of a pettifogging
lawyer—a wretched, thin-blooded, whey-faced whipper-snapper that I could
crush to the wall wi’ the one hand o’ me—has the damned impudence to
infringe upon my liberties and tell me that he forbids me Mrs.
Maclehose’s house!’  He tossed the letter to his friend, who read it
with a kindling eye.  Unluckily, it was couched in terms precisely those
to enrage Nicol also, not merely as a partisan, but because he acridly
resented the tone and attitude of a superior.

’"Persons not of her station, or known to her immediate circle,"’ he
quoted with a sneer.  ’And who is Master Herries that he writes so
fine?’

’Am I not telling you?’ cried Burns, irritably.  ’A damned, pettifogging
George Street writer, some cousin or guardian of my Clarinda, who,
because he contributes a few paltry pence to the maintenance of her
bairns, satisfies the miserable, half-inch soul of an unfeeling,
cold-blooded, pitiful bigot by standing censor to everything she does
that is above his dungeon bosom and foggy head!  I’ve seen him but the
once, but _I_ know him!  Ay, and I’ll know him to some purpose now, be
damned to him!  Here, out of my light, man!  Let me go—’  He had seized
a cudgel from a corner of the room and apparently meditated an instant
adjournment to the lawyer’s premises, so armed.  But Nicol interceded.

’Wheesht, lad!’ he urged.  ’Steady a wee thing, now!  Wait a bittie and
see if we cannot forge some prettier mischief to Master Herries than a
mere thrashing. That’s like to be more of a scandal to you than to him.
Trust him to have half-a-dozen lacqueys at his beck and call that would
put you to the door or ever you could win by to the man.  They know
better, these lily-livered, dirty, skunking lawyer-bodies, than not to
guard themselves well against honest men’s anger.’

Burns paused.  Nicol’s counsels had generally some weight with him, more
especially when, as at the present moment, after a merry afternoon, he
was not perfectly certain of his actions.

’How’ll I win at him?  How will I touch him?’ he said, flinging down the
stick and frowning heavily.

’You’ve a full right to a pretty revenge,’ said his friend; ’and surely
you can’t want of opportunity. The gate’s open to you that gives you
entry to the man’s very hearth.’

’Ay, that’s true,’ said Burns, with a grin, as he thought of the cosy
fireside in the Potterrow.

’Can’t you make the fellow jealous?’ said Nicol.

’If he had the passions of a buck-rabbit, weel could I!’ said Burns,
vindictively.  ’For there’s his lass—I caught him with her in the
dark—and then, under his very nose, I had to pay her some particularity
of attention in order to put him off the scent with my Clarinda. ’Tis
that muckle lass you have some grudge against yourself.’

’Why, then,’ cried Nicol, warming to congenial mischief, ’if we cannot
brew a fine broth out of this bonny concatenation, the devil take us for
silly, shiftless bodies!  I’m none so loth, I can tell you, to have a
fling at miss for all her haughty airs.  You shall pretend to love her.
Write to Master Lawyer; tell him you never dreamed to lift presumptuous
eyes to his worship’s exquisite relative, but are contented with her
governante—or whatsoever the lass is.  I’m thinking that will do our
trick.’

’Eh?’ said the poet, doubtfully.  He was dazed with wine, and hardly
understood the nature of that which was proposed to him.  Nicol got the
ink-pot, a sheet of paper, and a pen, which he thrust into his friend’s
somewhat unsteady hand.

’Write, now,’ he began eagerly—’something in this style: "Honoured
sir"—(letters in the third person are so damnably difficult to put, I
can’t away with them!)—"Honoured sir: I am in due receipt of your late
favour, which hath awaited me at my lodging this long time in my absence
on a journey.  I crave your pardon for this delay in answering the same.
I also crave your patience for offence given in the matter of my visits
to the house of your honourable cousin, Mistress Maclehose.  But sure,
sir, you were not so mistaken, on the one occasion that we met there, as
to confuse the object of my attention with any other.  It was most
assuredly not—as, sir, you might have seen—your honour’s relative, who,
in truth, is far above my sphere, but the young female abiding with her
at this time.  And I would humbly beg of your kindness not to interrupt
this little affair of an honourable affection, which is like to be in a
fair way to become reciprocal...."’

’"Reciprocal"!’ said Burns, pausing, with a confused laugh.  ’Man, but
that’s a muckle lee!  The lass hates me, sure’s death—I know not why.’

’Then serve her right the more,’ said Nicol, now bent upon mischief.  He
had a peculiar leaning to the coarse, practical joke, and was entirely
callous to the sufferings of his victims in such cases, even had they
done nothing to provoke his spite.  The Bard looked yet a little
doubtful, and bungled over the letter.  Had he been perfectly sober, it
is unlikely that he would have lent himself to a device so mean and
cowardly.  Actions of this kind were not natural to him by any means,
for, at anyrate, where men were concerned, he was honest and
straightforward in his dealings.  But Nicol poured a stream of specious
arguments into his buzzing ears; all was fair in love and war—and this
was both—and all that his letter, at the worst, would lead to was a
lover’s quarrel, which would doubtless be patched up far sooner than the
delinquents at all deserved.  Thus cajoled, the poet finished and folded
up the letter, and consented to its dispatch.

Then he fell to brooding over Herries’s note again, and over that
clearness came to him on one point at anyrate.  For to this hot-blooded
son of Adam the high-handed prohibition it contained was fuel added to
his flame.  He had all but virtuously resolved to cut matters short with
his Clarinda; but now that resolution went to the four winds, and a very
different one sprang into determination in its place.  He scrawled a
letter to the Potterrow, to which both wine and passion lent a warmth he
had hardly yet dared to express. And Nicol sallied forth with both
epistles—this time, in spite of the lateness of the hour, with no
complaints.




                           *CHAPTER XXXVII.*


Mrs. Maclehose, on the following evening, stood in the window of her
little room, lost in agitating thought. The poet’s impassioned letter
was in the bosom of her dress, and seemed to burn her, but with a
delicious pain. At almost any other juncture of her commerce with the
man it would have frightened her; for the little woman, in spite of her
impetuosity, had some obscure element of the national caution in her
nature.  But now she was in a state when caution must give way to the
fiercer and more primitive passions.  For nearly three weeks now she had
suffered a frenzy of jealous love, and during the absence of her friend,
as she called him, was not only tortured with a longing for the sight of
him, but also with horrible fears of his infidelity.  She had pictured
him as returned within the sphere of the influence of Jean Armour—a
person she insisted upon regarding as a low-minded, artful hussy with
designs upon the Bard.  License to almost any degree she would allow the
man, whose nature she made allowances for with an amazing liberality; it
was the idea of matrimony she dreaded with an anguish of jealous dread.
But the poet’s letter had brought ample reassurance: he was returned to
his Clarinda, more in love with her—more impassioned, than when he went
away. He implored for an interview that night, but it must be private.
He had matters to discuss of the utmost importance, but they were for
her ear alone.  He conjured her, by all that was most sacred in love and
friendship, to let no third person intrude upon the happiness of their
first reunion.  Well ... she would not tell Alison that he came, and
Alison would go to bed: that was all.  But then, the girl slept so
light, and had an ear so sensitive ... she must, in that confined space,
hear voices...?  Nancy knit her soft brows, and behind them, her busy,
tortuous little brain made plans.

Alison had been out of doors with Willy that afternoon, and returned
somewhat late.  It was a blustering spring evening, with a shrewd edge
to the wind, and when the girl came into the parlour at the late
tea-time there was an unquestionable redness about her eyelids. Alas! it
was not the wind that smirched her fair good looks, but tears.  For poor
Alison, in these days, would cry a little, uncomforted, in her closet,
choking back the tears.

’Why, Ally, you have got the cold!’ said Nancy. ’I can see it in your
eyes.’  Alison turned quickly from the light.

’I never get the cold,’ she said.  But Nancy insisted, and harped upon
the ailment—she was convinced that Alison had an influenza coming.

’When you go to bed, which I’d have you do early, love,’ she said
purringly, ’I’ll give you something that will check the horrid thing.  A
few drops of _aqua vitæ_ in water are infallible at an early stage.’
Healthy Alison, who took no medicine stuff, would stoutly have rebelled
at any other time, but now she was anxious to divert attention from her
red eyes, and promised to take the remedy.  When bedtime came, Nancy
bade her undress and get into her bed and she would bring her the dose
with her own hands.

She was away some little time in her own room, and Alison heard the
clink of glass against glass as she prepared the decoction.  Water had
gone into it, and a few drops of the _aqua vitæ_, which turned the water
into an opaque whiteness.  And then Nancy had paused and looked round
her with a guilty look.  She took another bottle from the shelf beside
her bed, and measured a portion of its contents into the half-full wine
glass.  It was her own sleeping draught—a half dose.

It must not for an instant be supposed that there was anything of the
villain in Nancy’s composition, or that she intended to do her friend
the smallest injury.  She well knew that the sleeping draught was of the
mildest order—a perfectly harmless drug, as the physician had positively
assured her.  And she put in only the half dose.  Nevertheless, as she
carried it into the girl’s room, and gave it to her, it was with an
averted look. She could not bear to meet Alison’s eyes, and her little
hand so shook that a part of the liquid was spilt upon the sheet.  Then
she hurriedly kissed her friend, put out the light, and left her.

Alison lay awake some time, for, upon perfectly healthy nerves, a
sleeping draught will occasionally have the reverse of its intended
effect.  She seemed to get a headache and to become restless.  She heard
Nancy’s movements in her room with peculiar distinctness, and supposed
that her friend was preparing for bed.  In reality, the deluded little
woman was changing her dress from a common to a dainty one—adding, in
every ribbon and coaxed trick of curl, to the danger that awaited
her—moving furtively, with many a pause, to listen if Alison stirred, or
Jean in the attic above. Then a kind of buzzing drowsiness came over
Alison—disagreeable, because she seemed to want to fight against it.
But it overcame her; and then for some hours she did certainly sleep,
and much more heavily than was her wont.

When she awoke, it was with a confused, unpleasant feeling, and the
sound of voices in her ears.  The room was dark, but a line of light
showed under the door. Alison sat up and listened.  A curious,
nightmare-like sense of danger was upon her, indefinably oppressive. Her
ears were acute.  She heard Nancy’s voice, and a man’s voice,
unmistakably.  Clearness came to her, though her temples throbbed and
the drug she had been given buzzed in her head.  She slipped to the
floor, searched for, but could not find her shoes, groped for her
wrapper, and threw it over her shoulders.  She crept to the door and
lifted the latch noiselessly.

The passage lamp was out, but the parlour was in a glow of brightness.
The door had swung open with its old trick, and a stream of light came
from it.  In brilliant relief the little room and all it held stood out.
And, in the circle of light, unconscious of all save each other, they
stood—the tempter and the tempted.  And behind Alison the big
wag-at-the-wall clock, with a guilty twang, struck one.

One of Robert Burns’s great labouring hands was clenched, and he leaned
heavily on the table with it. Alison could see the veins in it throb and
swell with the hot, ungovernable blood.  His other arm held Nancy—Nancy,
whose little trembling hands covered her face—and who turned, as Alison
watched her, to hide it against the man’s powerful shoulder.  The poet’s
face was in shadow, for it was bent over the woman.  He spoke, but his
voice was low and thick; Alison could not catch the words.

She only looked at them a moment, just till the clock struck.  Then they
moved with a start, and she also moved forward, until she too stood in
the circle of light. Petrified, the lovers saw her both at
once,—staring, chapfallen, as though they beheld a spirit: only a girl,
indeed, with bare feet, and in her nightgown, sleep still in her wide
eyes and curls scattered on her shoulders, but hedged about with the
immutable dignity of innocence, and strong with the strength of right.
She walked straight up to Nancy, and with a little jerk of effort took
her into her own arms from the man’s embrace, facing him boldly.

’It is too late for visitors here, sir,’ she said simply. ’Mrs.
Maclehose would have you go.’

The poet’s arms dropped to his side and his jaw fell. His sun-browned
face had become quite pale, and the words which stammered on his lips
would not get themselves spoken.  When he moved it was to fumble for his
hat.  Then he made for the door, without a look or word for those he
left; and it might be said that he slunk, then and there, from the room
and from the house.

Nancy had slipped from Alison’s arms and lay on the floor in a little
huddled heap, moaning.  Alison tried to raise her, but she would not
rise.

’Come, Nancy, come to bed,’ whispered the girl. ’You are cold—you are
shaking.’  She lifted her, and then Nancy stood up, staring round her
with miserable, unseeing eyes—deadly pale, and utterly dishevelled.

’I—I slipped,’ she said, in a curious dazed way. ’I—slipped—and nearly
fell, Ally.’

’Here’s my hand,’ said Alison.  And then, half leading and half carrying
her, the girl took the wretched little woman to her bed.




                           *CHAPTER XXXVIII.*


Alison watched all night long beside her friend. Nancy never let go her
hand, but lay holding it, at first in a kind of wretched stupor, staring
straight before her, with dry, miserable eyes; then in a sort of palsy
of convulsive shivering, and at last in a fit of hysterical weeping, so
violent that it seemed to tear her little frame to pieces.  Alison
soothed and comforted her as best she could, but at first neither peace
nor comfort came.  The girl’s own thoughts were full of bewilderment.
Here, in truth, was love—a creature shaken by it through all the
innermost places of her being.  Alison, too, loved—but then, how
differently!  Was it the same passion—this, that destroyed her friend,
and that which raised her own soul to heights never dreamed of before
she had known Herries?  Presently Nancy fell into the light doze of
sheer exhaustion, and Alison was able to go and dress herself.

But her troubles were by no means over, for Nancy awoke to a plight most
piteous—a mental condition almost impossible to cope with.  Like one,
who, saved from some horrible fate by accident or misadventure, is
haunted by phantasmal death in every form, so Nancy, with the tremendous
recoil of every natural womanly feeling, beheld herself, again and yet
again, on the verge of the great and terrible abyss from which she had
been so narrowly and so barely saved.  Her mind clung now, with the
painful obstinacy and insistence of hysteria, to every symbol and
outward sign of safety.  Could these stumbling steps of hers be hid?
Could she resume, before the men and women of her world, the steady gait
of blameless womanhood?  With words that harrowed Alison’s very soul,
she protested her actual innocence, while she bemoaned the folly that
had made her risk her reputation.  Oh, she had been
mad—blind—headstrong!  She saw it all now.

’All my life, Ally,’ she said, her sweet voice roughened with long
crying—’all my life I’ve been guided by the impulse of the moment.  My
passion has done what it will with me, and now it has undone me
utterly.’  Then she fell to harping on the theme of secrecy. Was there
anyone who would betray her?  How much did Jean know, and did she
gossip?  And Alison—Alison, who knew all—oh, was she sure of herself?
Would she never—never by word, or look, or sign—betray her friend?

’Will you swear to me, Ally, that you’ll never tell?’ cried Nancy,
raising herself in bed.  ’I’d be easier if you’d swear upon the Bible
never to betray me!’

’Nay,’ said Alison, proudly, ’I’ll not swear.  Have I ever lied to you
that you should ask an oath?  But I’ll promise you, Nancy, by all you’ve
been to me, and done for me, that no word of mine shall ever tell your
secret to any human being.’  Nancy sank back among her pillows with a
sigh of relief.

’Then I’m safe,’ she said, ’for _he_ will never betray me; to kiss and
tell is not his nature.  He is all the noblest generosity!  Don’t think
my love is dead, Ally,’ she added in something of her old tones.  ’It
lives, and it will live, purified.  I’ll tear the earthly part of it
from my heart, and live in hopes that we may meet in heaven!’  Soothed
by this interesting and sanguine reflection, Nancy grew calmer.  She
took a little of her sleeping medicine, and Alison was just beginning to
look forward to an hour of peace, when she awoke with a scream.  ’Oh,
God!’ she cried aloud, ’my key!’

’Hush, Nancy; Jean will hear you,’ said Alison, patiently.  ’What key?’

’My key,’ reiterated Nancy, working herself up into a passion of terror;
’my house key.  Oh! fool that I was!  I gave it to him in all innocence:
it was before your own eyes, Alison, and only to save Jean when she was
throng.  It has an ivory label to it, with my name and the street’s
name, and if it is found with him I am undone—undone!’  She twined her
fingers in her hair and would have torn it but that Alison held her
hands. Alison herself looked blank enough; the matter of the key struck
her as a bad business, incriminating evidence enough in the hands of
such a man as Burns—careless, if he was not malicious, and, like all
men, leaving things about.  ’Ally, as you love me, you must go and get
it from him!’ said Nancy; ’I’ll not trust the matter upon paper.  I must
have a messenger, and that messenger must be you.’

’Nay, but that’s too much!’ cried Alison, turning white.

’Too much?’ said Nancy, piteously.  ’Too much to save your friend whom
you have promised to save? Oh, Ally, pity me—pity me—and go!’  She put
up her trembling arms and caught Alison about the neck, clinging to her.

’If I go,’ said poor Alison, desperately, ’will you promise me one
thing, Nancy—never, never to send me on another message to this man?’

’Never!  I swear!’ cried Nancy.  ’Oh, Ally, I’ve been wrong to do it so
often, most hideously selfish and wrong so to have used your
good-nature.  But you’ll forgive me, for I knew not what I did!’

Alison met the inevitable with a kind of cold, white calm.  Her very
flesh shrank from the thought of meeting Burns, of being near him and
breathing the same air.  Now she must not only go to his house, but in
all probability enter it, doing that which, to anyone not acquainted
with the intricacies of the affair and her own obscure part in it, was,
on the face of it, open to the gravest misconstruction.  Should Herries
know of it—what then?  But a kind of despair had come to Alison on this
point.  She must do what she had to do; it was all a ghastly mistake, a
growing and intolerable injustice, but she must blunder on with it now.
She was the same Alison, and in the same mood, who had desperately
promised in Jacky’s twilight nursery, weeks ago, to marry Mr. Cheape
because duty drove her to it, and she saw no other way.

It was agreed that she should wait till nearly dusk before setting out,
and it was, perhaps, five or six o’clock before she left the house.  She
hurried through the familiar streets, choosing the obscurer ones, and
keeping in the shadow—haunted by a sense of the guilt which was not
hers.  She stood at last before the odiously familiar door in St.
James’s Square, and knocked.  It was opened to her by Nicol, and
Alison’s flesh crept, for she loathed the man, and feared him now—she
knew not why.

’Is Mr. Burns within?’ she asked in a low voice. Nicol looked her up and
down with an indescribable insolence.

’No, mistress,’ he said, ’he’s not.’

’Will he be in soon?’ Alison forced herself to ask.

’Are you that anxious to see him?’ said Nicol, with a leer.  Alison drew
herself up, with a passionate scorn, though she trembled in every limb.

’I have important business with Mr. Burns,’ she faltered, ’and desire an
interview.’

’Ay, oh, ay, I understand!’ said Nicol.  ’Well, mistress, come in and
wait.  Rob’s door is never closed to bonny lasses.’  He held the door
wide.  Behind his uncouth figure opened a vista of dingy passage, ending
in a stair.  Alison hesitated, half drew back; to cross that threshold
was horrible to her; it seemed to put her in the power of men—of bad
men.  She held her hand to her heart—it fluttered so—and cast a longing
look down the empty street.  Oh, for some help!  But no help came.

’If there is some room where I could wait—alone’ ... she began, with an
unlucky inflection on the last word, which Nicol’s ear caught, and
bitterly resented.

’Oh, ay, there’s a room where you can be private,’ answered Nicol, with
suspicious blandness.  ’Come up the stair.’  He led the way, and Alison
followed in the close, malodorous darkness.

Burns occupied two rooms on the first floor of the house, a parlour and
sleeping-closet communicating. It was into the former of these that
Nicol ushered Alison—a disorderly and ill-kept room, with a bottle and
glasses on the table, and articles of a man’s wearing apparel strewn
about upon the chairs and floor.

’’Tis no room for a fine miss like you,’ said Nicol, with dangerous
politeness.  ’I’ll take it upon myself to usher you into our sanctum
sanctorum—’tis more genteel.’

’But if this is the parlour,’ said Alison, looking round her nervously,
and perhaps beginning a little to lose her head, ’if this is the
parlour, had I not better remain here?’

’No, no,’ said Nicol, speciously, ’we have the other—much more private.
Here anyone may come at any moment, you see, and if your business is
private—’  It was a touch of devilish cunning, for terror seized Alison
at the thought of an intrusion.

’If, then, you think it wiser—’ she said, looking about her with
startled eyes.

’Ay, come away—much wiser’—said Nicol.  ’See here!’  He held open the
door of the inner room—its only entrance—and Alison walked in.  The
moment her feet were over the threshold, Nicol slammed-to the door upon
her, and locked it with a loud report.

’There, my bonny bird!’ he called, his grinning mouth to the panel;
’we’ve got you safe and sound! Are ye "alone" enough in there for your
taste?  ’Od, it’s there you’ll bide till Rob comes hame and lets ye
out!’  He exploded in a fit of laughter; here was a piece of horse-play
after his own heart.

Stunned and stupid, Alison had tottered a few steps into the inner room.
A bed in the corner, unmade since the morning, showed that it was the
poet’s sleeping chamber.  And she was trapped beyond all possibility of
escape.




                            *CHAPTER XXXIX.*


The letter which Nicol had conveyed from Burns to Herries lay unopened
at the office of the latter for a matter of about, perhaps, thirty-six
hours.  Delivered very late in the evening, it was not conveyed to
Herries that night, because he had already retired.  In the early
morning hours he was summoned to the death-bed of his partner, and he
only returned from that melancholy scene in order, after a hurried meal,
to set off to a remote village in the Pentlands, where, under an
engagement with the dead man, he must make arrangements for the funeral.
Returning at night, dog-tired, after many hours spent in the saddle (for
it had been necessary to go on horseback), he had not then attempted to
examine his correspondence.  But the first letter that he opened in the
morning was that from St. James’s Square.

He sat still after its perusal—stunned.  The morning sun streamed in
through the three long windows of his fine room, and found him, perhaps
on hour later, still sitting motionless, the letter in his hand.  The
anguish of surprise was not his, for, after all, the letter contained
mere confirmation of long-latent suspicion. But it came as a fearful
blow nevertheless.  Here was a man who had expected little of men and
women, but he had got less than he expected after all.  He had believed
that he had cherished no illusions, and dreamed no dreams; but the
modest hopes that he had allowed himself to entertain of faith in one
human being, whom he loved, were dashed.  The cynic’s disgust, as well
as the man’s heart-wrung sorrow, was his portion.

Yet Herries was a lawyer, keen of vision, and trained in the detection
of deceit, and to him that letter actually did smack false at the first
reading, and afterwards also. He had heard much, as was inevitable, of
the sturdy independence of the peasant poet; certainly this letter was
not the letter of such a man.  It was a suspiciously subservient, an
actually cringing letter, and in every line rang false.  Yet Herries
knew, and recognised at once, the poet’s handwriting; for Burns’s
letters at that day were often handed round the town as curiosities, and
the young lawyer had seen at least a score.  A certain wearied languor
had come over Herries, numbing his faculties, so that in this matter
they had almost ceased to serve him.  He told himself that his love was
dead—nipped by this long frost of cold suspicion, and ruined forever by
this base association with men and ways unclean and devious.  Yet he was
a just man, and he would not condemn Alison unheard.  He had already
given her the chance of explanation and defence; he would give it her
again.  He would seek her out, and he would confront her with the
letter—ask her if it were true or false.  He would make her speak; and
those grave lips that he had kissed so often: those candid eyes—that
indescribably childlike wide innocence of brow that had been Alison’s
charm, rather than and (to him) beyond all beauty—well, he should learn
once for all if they lied, and were only the fair outer covering of
deceit and blackness.  It was impossible that he could be absent again
during office hours, for the previous day had been a blank one, and the
pressure of the accumulated work of the past weeks was becoming daily
more unendurable.  But in the evening he would go to the Potterrow, and
put an end to the mysteries that destroyed his peace.

He set out, accordingly, after he had dined.  It was a damp, windy
night, with heavy rain-clouds hurrying from the west.  Hardly an hour
before him Alison had trod those pavements, her face set to the New
Town, trying to hide herself as she went.  Herries walked with his head
held high, conning over the stringent things that he should say in the
coming interview, yet striving also that he should be just and calm.
Jean opened to him with a glum face.  Well did the honest servant know
that things were going wrong.  Her sympathies were all with Alison.

’I have business with Miss Graham,’ said Herries. ’Can I see her?’

’I doot no, sir,’ said Jean.  ’The young leddy is from home, and the
mistress ill in her bed.’

’I will come in and wait,’ said Herries; ’but do not you disturb your
mistress—it is not necessary.’  He felt a repugnance to seeing his
cousin; more lies, he told himself, and impotent anger on his own part,
would be the only result.

He walked into the parlour.  The little room had an ominously neglected
and inhospitable air; the fire was nearly out, and the hard, lingering
light of the spring evening showed up all the shabbinesses of the little
nest, so kindly hid in the cosy winter hours. Herries threw himself into
a chair, prepared to wait. Half-an-hour dragged by and no one came.  The
demon of restlessness got him, and he began to pace the room. He thought
he would see Nancy after all, and called Jean.

’Ask my cousin if she can see me,’ he said, and at the same moment
Nancy’s voice called to him faintly from her room.  He entered it.

The invalid lay against a pile of pillows, in her pink wrapper, looking,
indeed, merely the ghost of herself. Her cheeks were pallid, her dark
eyes ringed, the lines upon her face were visibly deepened.

’Why, Nancy, I find you an invalid!’ said Herries, in astonishment.  ’I
fear I intrude; but my business is with Miss Graham to-night, and if you
can tell me where she is gone, or when she is likely to return, I will
not disturb you a moment longer.’

Nancy trembled, for all the terrors of discovery beset her.  The courage
to answer her cousin coherently was not in her; her quivering lips would
hardly form her words.

’Ally is—is gone out,’ she murmured.  ’She did not tell me where.  A
walk with Willy is her custom at this hour, and—’

’It is past seven o’clock,’ said Herries, impatiently, ’and Willy is in
the kitchen with his books.’  He frowned, and his eyes, full of
freshly-roused suspicion, searched Nancy’s face.  But a man cannot bully
a sick woman in her bed.

’I shall wait for Miss Graham,’ he said shortly, as he turned on his
heel, ’if need be, till midnight.’  He returned to the parlour, where
Jean had lit a candle, and continued his watch.  Nancy, on her bed,
tossed to and fro, a prey to perfect agony of mind.  It was more than
two hours since Alison had left the house.  What had become of her?
Here was Herries on the trail of some discovery.  The wretched little
woman saw herself upon the brink of ruin.  She rolled over on her face,
biting the sheet between her chattering teeth, stiff and cold, and in a
kind of rigour.

In a rage of obstinacy, Herries waited on.  The wag-at-the-wall clock
struck eight—the half-hour—then nine.  He started up, and went to the
servant in her kitchen.

’Jean,’ he said, and his voice had a curiously unnatural sound, ’I
cannot get from your mistress where Miss Graham is gone.  Can you tell
me?’  The woman hesitated, and then spoke out, bursting, indeed, with a
sense of Alison’s wrongs, though about, alas! only to add to them.

’Gone?’ she said.  ’Weel ken I whar she’s gone! Just where she’s been
too often, sir, though I say it that am but a sairvant—’

’Take care what you do say,’ said Herries, sternly. ’I have ears for no
idle gossip.  Where did she go?’

’To Burns’s lodging, sir,’ said Jean, setting fire to a long trail,
’and, sir—’

’That’s enough,’ said Herries.  His voice was quiet, but his action was
like lightning, and, before the slow-moving Scotchwoman could put out a
hand to stop him, or utter another word, he was out upon the stair and
in the street, making for St. James’s Square as though the devil were
after him.

His haste undid him.  Had he waited but a moment more, the flood-gates
of Jean’s confidence would have been opened wide, and from the honest
creature’s lips he would have learnt, if not the whole truth, yet enough
to light him to the rest.  But that was not to be.




                             *CHAPTER XL.*


There is no ground for supposing that during his Edinburgh sojourn,
Robert Burns succumbed to those habits of intemperance which afterwards
destroyed him.  It was an age of drink, and he no doubt drank, as did
nearly all his contemporaries, immoderately at times.  But there is much
to show that in these days he was sober in his habits, for the most
part, and no record whatever that he disgraced himself by conspicuous
over-indulgence.  The end of his visit, however, was inevitably a time
of trial in this respect.  There were farewell visits to be paid to many
a roystering character and tavern companion; and the nature of such
farewells can easily be imagined, along with their result.  On the day
succeeding his last visit to the Potterrow, Burns drank heavily,
impelled thereto by impulses less agreeable than those of mere
good-fellowship. When he turned into his lodging, which he did only a
few minutes before Herries reached the door, he was very drunk indeed.

He stumbled upstairs to the parlour.  Nicol was there, and made him some
excited communication, pointing to the inner door.  But the festive
condition of the Bard made him hopelessly dense to oral instruction. He
had not a notion what his excited friend was talking about.

’Man, pull yourself together,’ cried Nicol, eagerly, hearing a knock
from below, and running to the window.  ’As I’m alive, here’s our cock
o’ the walk seeking his bonny hen.’

’Who?’ said the poet, confusedly.

’Herries, man, Herries!’ shouted Nicol, slapping his thigh.  ’The little
lawyer body ye were to lick. Wheesht! here he comes.’

’My enemy!’ said the Bard, grandiloquently, with a dim feeling that a
great occasion was upon him.  He half-sat, half-propped himself upon the
corner of the table, with arms folded across his chest.  He was ruddy
with wine; his jet black hair was spread upon his brow; in the fine blue
and buff of his best suit, with his magnificent shoulders, his grand
head and lowering eye—it was impossible to deny, drunken though he was,
the splendour of his presence.  To him, thus, and to Nicol, was ushered
Herries, white with anger, and a terrible vital excitement.

Herries walked straight to the figure on the table.

’Where—where is she?’ he said, but he was hardly audible, for his throat
was parched.  The poet lurched a little, but steadied himself with an
inimitable air of tipsy gravity.

’Speak up, ma billy!’ he said.  ’I’m dull the day.’

’I ask you—and you know it—where is Miss Graham?’ said Herries, with
clenching hands.

The poet cocked an eyebrow.

’Nae man speirs at me for glaikit lasses,’ he observed virtuously; ’you
are come to the wrong shop.’

Nicol burst into a coarse guffaw.

’Nay, sir,’ he said, ’you are come right enough, though Rob, here, is
too modest to admit it.  We hae your bonny bird safe and sound....
Here, mistress, come out now! there’s ain to fetch you—’  He flung open
the bedroom door, close to which he had stood, with his hand upon the
lock, since Herries’s entry.  And out of the dark room into the light
one walked Alison Graham.

Her face, her neck, her very hands, were white: they were drenched with
whiteness, so that she seemed more dead than alive; and the lines of her
face were drawn so deep, that it had suddenly lost the roundness and the
air of youth.  Her wild eyes went from face to face with a hunted look;
the light hurt them, and she raised her hand, but it fell powerless,
while her look riveted itself at last on her lover.

’Alison!’ said Herries.  ’How ... how ...’  But he could not speak.  Yet
justice should be hers—that thought printed itself in fiery letters on
his reeling brain.  Here—no matter that it was before these men, before
them or before the world—he would ask her why she stood there, and let
her clear herself if she could.

’Alison,’ he said, going close up to her, ’whose shame is this—yours or
another’s?’

Alison’s eyes looked round the room in a vain search for help.  They
fell on Nicol, who, crassly ignorant of the real circumstances of her
case, could hardly have helped her, and certainly would not if he could.
They fell on Burns, but Burns was drunk, and had he been sober, must
sooner have protected the woman he had nearly ruined than helpless
Alison.  Alison’s eyes fell to the ground, and all the long struggle of
the past weeks concentrated itself in the anguish of one moment’s swift
decision.  Her happiness, or Nancy’s honour—which?

Her chin sank upon her breast: she seemed to shrink—the image of shame.

’I ... I have deceived you, sir,’ she stammered, with lips that scarcely
moved.

It was the truth, but so little of it, and so hopelessly perverted!
Alison raised her eyes to her lover’s face, and he should have read the
real truth in them, but he was blind.

’That’s enough,’ was all he said.  ’I have asked and you have answered.
On your own head be it!’

For a few seconds no one moved in the dead silence. The poet, half
asleep, with his chin upon his chest, lurched and swayed, now one way,
and now another. Herries’s eyes flamed, as they looked at him, with the
cold flame of disgust and hate.

’Your host is drunk,’ he said to Alison, almost cavalierly.  He had
become icily cool, and the crisp tones of his business manner came to
him, as though he stood in his own orderly office with a client in front
of him. ’I cannot leave you here, you understand,’ he continued,
addressing her; ’you are in my relative’s care, and I am her
representative.  You must leave this house—for the present, at least—and
leave it with me.’  He went to the door, and opened it, with a gesture
that seemed to command rather than to solicit her exit.  No one
interfered, not even Nicol moved or spoke.  With bowed head, Alison
walked slowly from the room. And as she did so, the swaying figure of
Burns, supine, fell prostrate on the table in a drunken sleep.

Out of doors it was raining, pouring with rain out of the black night
sky.  Neither Alison nor her companion could shelter themselves, and the
gusty wind blew in their bent faces as they struggled along.  A
link-boy’s torch flashed at the corner of the square, and at the end of
Princes Street there was a pack of chairmen sheltering under a wall, for
it was an Assembly night.

’I will see you under shelter and in safety,’ said Herries, speaking for
the first time.  ’But after that I can never willingly see your face
again.  Do you understand?’  He had to raise his voice against the wind
and the hiss and patter of the rain.

’I understand,’ said Alison; ’I expected nothing else,’ she added
proudly.  Yet the pride was for him, not herself.  _He_ take that which
was smirched and spoiled?  Not a fair one, but the fairest of all, must
be his, and how could she ever be fairest again—even though Herries
should know all—stained to the soul as she felt, after those destroying,
those damning hours in the squalid chamber of a libertine?  It would be
a relief, she thought, to part.  Oh, let him go! let him go!

He called a chair and handed her into it, punctiliously instructing and
paying the chairman.  How it stabbed Alison that he should do this now.
How often, in the happy dealings of a man with a girlish guest, he had
paid such little sums on her behalf.  But all that was over and done
with.  And in the pelting rain, and in the dark, wordless they parted.

Alison felt in her pocket for Nancy’s key.  At least she had that and
her friend should be safe.  She had seen it among a lot of untidy litter
on a table in her prison, and had had the sense and courage to take it.
That must be her reward.

                     *      *      *      *      *

At midnight, a white figure stood at Nancy’s bedside. It was Alison,
with a light in her hand.  After a brief and curiously dry account of
her adventure on her return home, she had gone to her room, but it was
not to sleep.

’Nancy,’ she now said, ’I’m going home!’  Nancy sat up in her bed.

’Home, child?’ she cried.  ’What do you mean? Oh—no—no!  You’d never
leave me in my misery! You are frightened and upset.  ’Twas an odious
adventure—some trick of that beast Nicol.  But to-morrow you’ll be
yourself again, Ally—my strength and comfort—my only one!’

’I got you the key,’ said Alison, doggedly.  ’I—I have done what I
could.  But now I’m going home, and you must not prevent me.’

Nancy burst into tears.

’Oh—Ally!’ she sobbed, ’there’s something between us!’

’Yes,’ said Alison, dully, ’there’s something between me and all the
world from to-day.  But I’ll go home and hide myself—and forget.  You’ll
not rise, Nancy,’ she went on, ’for I’ve been to Jean and she will help
me away.  The coach goes at five—to-morrow is the day for it, you know,
and I could not wait another week.  I’ll come in and say good-bye before
I go.’  Nancy turned her face to the wall, and sobbed and wept.  But
Alison’s eyes were dry.

A few hours later she stood in Nancy’s room again, in the grey dawn,
hooded and cloaked for her journey. But her little friend had drugged
herself into a deep sleep, and Alison did not wake her.  In one of her
tiny hands—the hand that had loaded Alison with easy kindness and
covered her with a blame and shame not hers—was clasped the unlucky key.
She breathed deeply and peacefully with parted lips—those lips made for
laughter and for love—the swollen eyelids fringed and closed, the dark
hair scattered on the pillow. Alison stood and looked at her long,
without resentment, without love, without feeling of any kind, for
feeling was numb with her now.  Then she turned away, and went and
kissed Willy in his sleep.  And there were no other farewells.

’I doubt you are leaving us in trouble, Miss Ally!’ said kindly Jean.
She stood at the coach door—the March wind scattering the scanty locks
upon her rough, broad forehead—loth to part from the young lady she had
liked and served through all these winter weeks.

’Yes, Jean,’ said Alison, sadly,’ good-bye.’

’But, oo—it’ll a’ win richt i’ the end?’ said the cheerful woman,
tentatively.

’No—never!’ answered Alison, with the tremendous finality of youth.

The horn sounded, the whip cracked, and the lumbering vehicle lurched on
its way.  And so Alison went back to The Mains.




                             *CHAPTER XLI.*


It might have been about eight o’clock the next morning when Lizzie, the
old housekeeper in George Street, thrust her head in at her master’s
door.

’Maircy me!’ she exclaimed, and there was some cause for her wonder in
the sight, at that hour, of candles burning in the broad day, and
Herries at his desk, where, indeed, he had been all night.

Sleep had left him and thought had become intolerable. With an effort
almost superhuman he had determined to lose himself in the
technicalities of his work, and he had done it.  But he now looked, with
bloodshot eyes, his tumbled linen and disordered hair, the living image
of dissipation rather than business. Lizzie eyed him most suspiciously.
He never drank, but the censorious old woman believed he had been
drinking.

’The Lord be gude to us!’ she ejaculated, ’what’s wrang?  Wastin’ waxen
candles this gait!’  And she blew them out, and snuffed them with her
fingers. ’You’re wanted,’ she went on.  ’There’s a lad frae Creighton’s
wi’ a message express.  Ye maun gang there at aince anent the dog.’

’What about the dog?’ said Herries.

’Weel,’ said Lizzie, ’as far as I can get it frae the lad, the tyke is
turned upon them all, and aye he sits girning by the corp, and they
canna get it coffined. They’re for you to gang and fleech him awa’, or
somethin’ that gait.’

’I will come,’ said Herries.

Creighton’s unfortunate canine companion had given some trouble already,
which Herries had not grudged.  Within the hour of his master’s death,
when it was necessary that the last offices should be done, Herries had
coaxed the poor starving brute from his post upon the bed, tempting him
with a piece of meat. But no sooner was the morsel swallowed than the
creature ran back to the room of death, and scratching at the door,
pushed in and leapt upon the bed.  Nothing had since dislodged him, and
Herries had ordered him to be left in peace—a solitary mourner.  It had
been a mistaken kindness, for thirst had probably now turned the beast
rabid.  Herries took a pistol out of its case, and primed and loaded it.
For Dick there could only be the kindly ultimatum of a bullet.

He went straight to Mr. Creighton’s lodgings.  It was the same March
morning, windy, but now fair, which was seeing Alison on her sad way
home.  The wind cut him like a knife, though it was not really cold.  He
had eaten nothing for many hours, and a wretchedness of spirit was upon
him, beyond anything that he had deemed it possible he could know.

In Creighton’s room the coffin stood upon its trestles, and stiff and
still, beneath the sheet upon the bed, lay its belated occupant.  At the
starkly upturned feet crouched the terrier, his red eyes glowing like
cinders, at every slightest sound or movement drawing his lips back from
his teeth in a rabid snarl.  Herries approached him, with a half hope
the dog would know him and be pacified, but the brute would have sprung
at him in a moment.  He drew back sufficiently far to take a deliberate
and steady aim.

The shot rang out with terrific reverberation within the narrow, echoing
limits of the empty room, which filled instantly with a blue and pungent
smoke.  When that cleared off, Herries perceived the dog had hardly
moved, arrested in his crouching attitude by swift death.  Presently a
single scarlet trickle from behind his ear stained the whiteness of his
master’s shroud, his fierce eye dimmed and glazed, and his bristling
body stiffened as it lay.

Herries, the smoking pistol in his hand, stood still a moment—in his
disordered dress, and with his pale, set face and bloodshot eyes, a
singularly haunting image of the suicide.  But just as some men, too
strong to swoon, must bear a physical agony to its last limit, so to
Herries, with the accurately-balanced character of his intellect and his
temper, the impulse of self-destruction could never come.  He must bear,
he would overcome: the iron will survived; the brain, active and
restless, keen and clear, worked on—a finely-regulated mechanism.  But
his heart was empty, and from that moment he closed its portals on the
world.

                     *      *      *      *      *




                            *CHAPTER XLII.*


Time, who is the great healer, does his work with admirable celerity for
some.  By the spring of that year, though there came to her in the early
weeks of April the astounding news of Burns’s marriage to Jean Armour,
Mrs. Maclehose had resumed the peaceful tenor of her blameless existence
as a cruelly deserted wife and anxious mother.  This little vessel, so
lightly rigged, so fairy-like, with sails and pennants spread for none
but summer breezes, had encountered rough weather, but had survived with
wonderfully little hurt. Helmsman and pilot, perchance, had suffered,
and an honest seaman or so gone by the board; but the spirit of the
little ship, undaunted, rode lightly on the calm. The little Edinburgh
world of Mrs. Maclehose’s acquaintances observed with edification her
devotion to her delicate youngest boy.  She, indeed, moved herself and
her small household to Prestonpans for a season, where he lay.  In the
August of that year little Danny died, and it may be said most
truthfully that no child ever winged his way from earth to heaven from
tenderer maternal arms.

For all the rest of Nancy’s doings are they not written in more books
than one, so that he who runs may read?  It is to be conjectured that
her relations with her cousin became tacitly somewhat strained after the
events recorded in this history, although there was no open quarrel.  It
seems probable that Herries, after Danny’s death, and in the hardness of
heart which grew upon him at this time, withdrew the superfluities, at
anyrate, of the monetary assistance he had been in the habit of
conveying to his relative.

This may have been one of the contributing causes to the curious impulse
which, about the autumn of the year ’91, moved Nancy to think of
rejoining her long-lost husband, and induced her to undertake a voyage
to the West Indies with that laudable end in view.  The journey was not
a success.  She, indeed, found Mr. Maclehose with little difficulty, but
she found along with him the partner of his exile, a swarthy lady of
those climes, with a numerous coffee-colored progeny. And this discovery
so shocked the moral sensibilities of the little lady, who had regarded
with a lenient eye the amorous delinquencies of her Sylvander, that she
incontinently fled the marital premises, and returned to Leith in the
same vessel that had brought her out.  The most remarkable feature of
this episode is the fact that Robert Burns, although at this time nearly
three years married, did indubitably come to Edinburgh to seek a
farewell interview with his Clarinda.  How they two met, with what
feelings, with what memories, who shall be bold enough to say?  The
world, at least, became infinitely the richer for this parting and for
poor Clarinda’s absence.  For the poet’s soul was stirred, and soon fine
Edinburgh ladies at the harp and spinet, and country lasses at their
milking, were singing, to its melting air,—

    _’Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,_
    _And listens the lambkins that bleat o’er the braes,_
    _While birds warble welcome in ilka green show,_
    _But to me it’s delightless—my Nannie’s awa’._

    _The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn,_
    _And violets bathe in the weet o’ the morn;_
    _They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blow,_
    _They mind me o’ Nannie—and Nannie’s awa’._

    _Thou lav’rock that springs frae the dews o’ the lawn,_
    _The shepherd to warn o’ the grey-breaking dawn;_
    _And thou mellow mavis that hails the night-fa’_
    _Give over for pity—my Nannie’s awa’.’_

And also of this curious farewell were born those lines in which is
reached, perhaps, the very topmost summit of the lyrical genius of
Burns—those lines which are the epitome of all love-tragedy—of all
hopeless passion—of all parting woe.  And these shall the painstaking
reader, who toils to the end of this history, read on the last page for
his reward.

Sylvander and Clarinda continued to correspond with considerable
desultoriness during the few years of life that remained to the Rhymer,
and sad to state, in these communications there is to be traced a very
decided recriminative tartness, which is a blow to the ingenuous and
sentimental reader.  So sputtered out, in rather fiery sparks—as,
indeed, is the too common wont of such—one of the most curious of the
world’s classic flirtations.

Mrs. Maclehose lived to a great age, becoming a most _espiègle_ and
charming old lady—the centre of a large and admiring acquaintance.
Years after the poet’s death, when all danger was over, and passion,
too, dead, it was her chief boast, her ’meed of fame,’ to figure as
Burns’s ’Clarinda.’  She kept, and would exhibit, many little souvenirs
of the Bard, and on all matters pertaining to the history of his
Edinburgh visits, she was for many years the greatest living authority.
She publicly and impartially would maintain till the last that the
poet’s marriage with a peasant was the greatest mistake of his life,
dragging him down to a low level, intellectually as well as socially;
whereas with higher companionship he might have risen to heights
incalculably nobler, both of prosperity and of fame. To her dying day
she expressed a pious wish that she might meet in heaven the Bard whose
soul she felt that she alone had understood as it deserved in the
imperfect communionship of earth.  All things considered, the hope of
meeting in quite another quarter might have seemed more justifiable.
But so—exit our charming Nancy from these veracious pages.

To Herries, meanwhile, in his house in George Street, these years
brought solitary success and lonely gain.  He set himself to his work
with an iron determination to forget the past, and it seemed that he
succeeded.  To him Alison Graham was dead, as truly dead as though she
lay in yonder graveyard under the shadow of the Castle rock, with a
great stone to weight her down until the Judgment Day.  He never thought
of her at all.  He never pictured his room now as a drawing-room, with
gracious feminine appurtenances; it was the office, pure and simple.  In
Creighton’s room below worked his new partner, a young and stirring man.
The business extended itself in all directions and flourished like a
miracle.  Some of the most resounding names in Scotland figured on the
green tin boxes, in their yearly increasing phalanx, in Herries’s room.
He had the name of a hard man, and was, no doubt, rather feared than
loved.  But so he willed it—for he had had enough of love.  Round him,
in these busy years, grew wider and yet wider the gallant New Town of
Edinburgh—curving into crescents, and widening into squares and handsome
residential streets.  More and more, the genteel world gravitated to
this quarter, and left the Old Town to the squalor of decay.  Herries,
for one, never visited the old streets and closes—giving in, no doubt,
to the new fashion.  The High Street was his limit; the devious and
narrow ways which led to the Potterrow knew him no more.

And meanwhile, down in the rich south country, in the little white
farmhouse among the broom, on the bonny banks of Nith, Robert Burns
pursued the downward tenor of his way.  Poet and exciseman, farmer and
bard: the kindly husband and father, the incorrigible rake: the eager
host, the far too frequent—and far, far too uproariously welcomed—guest:
the copious correspondent, the ill-balanced politician: the reckless,
eager, revolutionary spirit, the remorse-stricken, disappointed,
penitent man; at once affectionate and quarrelsome—losing friend after
friend, and tiring out the patience of men and women who would fain have
befriended him to the last; quixotically generous in money matters,
refusing money for his songs, and then forced to accept, in grinding
bitterness of spirit, the eleemosynary five-pound note under pressure of
inexorable necessity—so he stands out, a tragic figure for all time, the
presiding genius, the Rhymer of the North. Too soon the fair page—or
that which had promised so fair—of the life at Elliesland had to be
turned down, the stock and plenishing of the little farm scattered and
sold, and the patient Jean and her little flock of helpless bairns made
to flit sadly to Dumfries.  Here the temptations of the country town and
its taverns soon finished what the too trying and demoralising routine
of the Excise had begun; and in the squalor of excess—in sadness,
illness, disillusionment and pain—the shining light of genius grew dim,
and flickered to extinction.




                            *CHAPTER XLIII.*


As time went on, and his fortune accumulated, there came to Archibald
Herries that impulse which generally visits the laborious and
land-loving Scot at some period of his career—the impulse to possess
himself of territorial acres—the ancestral ones if possible.  The family
from which Herries sprang had owned land in the Galloway region, or near
about Kirkcudbright.  It occurred to him suddenly, in the summer of ’96,
when town was empty, and the grass growing up between the cobbles of the
Edinburgh streets, after its rural wont, that he would take a tour in
the South and re-visit the country of his sires.  He set out with a
couple of good nags—one ridden by his servant, with a pack-saddle.

It was a successful expedition (all worldly matters prospered with
Herries in these days), and in more ways than in mere pleasure.  Not
only did he see the country to advantage in the fine summer weather, but
he discovered that a small property, with its excellent mansion house,
which had once been the ancient possession of a younger branch of his
family, was for sale. There seemed no reason—certainly not want of
funds—why he should not become the purchaser.  It might have occurred to
him to ask himself why he, unmarried and childless, should burden
himself with acres never to become an inheritance.  But no such
consideration gave him pause.  He was inwardly determined that, at the
first moment he thought fit to do so, he should marry—ay, and beget sons
to carry on his name and fame.  True, that moment had never come; but it
was not for love’s sake that it tarried—or so he was convinced.

It was on his return journey that he stayed for a few nights at
Dumfries.  With his pleasure-trip he had combined a certain modicum of
business, and the affairs of an important client detained him in the
country-town longer than he meant.  In the long, summer evenings he
would stroll about the streets, losing himself in its little vennels and
closes, and stopping every now and then to stare about him, as a man
will in a place that is strange to him.  That Dumfries was becoming
famous as the last home of the man who had practically ruined his life,
Herries may have known, but only vaguely.  The fashionable world had
dropped the poet Burns.  The town roared over ’Tam o’ Shanter’ when it
appeared, but forgot to pension the unlucky bard struggling with his
poverty on the banks of Nith.

It was one morning, as he sat at breakfast in his tavern, that a
messenger brought Herries a note.  It was written in a sprawling,
uncertain hand, and was unsigned, undated and unaddressed.  It ran—’A
dying fellow-creature uses the privilege of his sad condition to summon
Mr. Herries to his house.  It may be that Mr. Herries will there hear
that which might be of importance to his affairs.’  Herries turned the
note over with an incredulous smile.  Who in Dumfries could know of
anything that was of importance to him? A little boy waited to guide him
to the house of his correspondent.  Herries thought that he would go.
The mystery would help to pass an idle morning.

The child led him a little way down the hill, and guided him to a small
and humble street called, as Herries observed, the Wee Vennel.  They
stopped before a decent two-storeyed house, like an artisan’s dwelling
of the better class.

’Here, my boy,’ said Herries, giving the child a shilling, ’can’t you
tell me who it is that desires to see me?’

’No.  I was not to say, sir,’ answered the boy.  He was a fine little
fellow of about nine or ten, and as he spoke he raised his large black
eyes—surely Herries had seen eyes just like these before—to the
stranger’s face.

The door was opened by a quiet-looking, young woman with a sweet face,
but Herries did not then observe her with any particularity.  She asked
him gently to walk upstairs.  At the door of a room opening to the left,
she paused.

’You will be very quiet, will you not, sir?’ she asked.  ’You’ll not
excite him?  He has not long to live.’  She had a quiet, controlled, and
yet a very sad voice.  Herries then noticed her wedding-ring, and also
the fact that she seemed very near her time.  She opened the door to the
sick-room, and left him.

The room was cross-lighted by two windows set in opposite walls, and by
one of these, which was opened to the street and to the summer air and
sunshine, was drawn a great chair, where someone sat, propped by a pile
of pillows.  A very pretty young girl in the rustic style sat near with
an open book upon her knee, from which she had been reading aloud.  She
rose as Herries entered, and quietly left the room.  It was Jessie
Lewars, a neighbour’s pretty daughter, who helped to minister to the
dying poet—an innocent type of much that had been the reverse of
innocent in his life—a characteristic attendant enough.  Not as yet had
the faintest warning reached Herries in whose presence it was that,
after eight years of silent hatred, he stood.  Something of awe, indeed,
held him, for he recognised by instinct the atmosphere of death. But he
walked up to the chair in total unsuspicion, mechanically holding out a
hand.  And then a voice arrested him.

’Nay, not yet, sir!’ said Burns.  ’Wait!  When once before you met me,
you held your hand behind you.  It may be you’ll put it back again
before we’ve done.’

Herries started violently, and his hand dropped to his side, for now he
saw and knew his enemy.

But this—this deathlike image—could it indeed be Robert Burns?  The last
time that Herries had seen him—that only too memorable time—he had been
in the hey-day of his splendid manhood, flushed with wine and bold with
license, handsome as Bacchus, careless of mankind—balancing on the
corner of a table in unblushing drunkenness.  Now, a spectre faced the
amazed intruder—hollow-eyed and fever-haunted, the bony frame of a
skeleton, the traces of death’s clayey finger on cheek and temple, lip
and brow.  Only the eyes glowed with their wonted and sombre fire; they
seemed to look Herries through and through—to read the secrets of his
heart.  In spite of the old hatred, and battling with the old contempt,
there struggled into Herries’s sensations an unwilling reverence.  All
through what seemed to him the fantastic interview which ensued he
strove with bitterness to assert himself.  But it was with the curious
and baffling consciousness that a greater than himself, albeit stained
with a thousand sins and follies, strove with him and held him down.




                            *CHAPTER XLIV.*


’Will you not be seated, sir?’ said Burns, pointing to the chair which
Jessie Lewars had vacated. Herries, with a gesture and an inclination,
intimated his wish to stand; and throughout the interview he continued
to do so at some little distance from the sick man, his head bent, his
eyes upon the ground, save when they were raised to meet the poet’s dark
and penetrating gaze.

’Now, sir,’ the Bard began, raising himself with difficulty in his
chair, ’have patience while you listen to me.  You owe me the hearing
which the dying may exact from those they leave behind.’

’I will listen to you,’ said Herries, shortly.

’Last night,’ continued Burns; ’these two or three nights, indeed, I
have seen you pass my door, unwitting; for here I sit with a sick man’s
look-out upon the world he must soon leave.  I remembered you, and a bit
of the Devil’s work I did when the wine was red and ginger hot in the
mouth came back to me, for it concerned your house.  I have gossips in
the town—too many, perhaps—and I soon heard that the great Edinburgh
lawyer, Mr. Herries, was abiding at the "Globe," alone, but for his
servant. Now, why alone?’  The questioner’s dark eye rested upon
Herries’s with a look half quizzical, half sombre.

’Where is man’s God-given companion—where is the wife, sir?’

’I have no wife,’ said Herries, sternly, most bitterly resenting the
allusion to his private matters—yet, somehow, held by the overpowering
personality of his interlocutor.

’What?’ cried Burns.  ’Then where is the lass that you loved—for you did
love her—the big, bonny body wi’ the bunch o’ curls?  Well I mind her,
though she liked me little!’

’If you speak of Miss Graham,’ said Herries, his lips hardly able to
form the name, ’I have never seen her or heard of her since the night I
took her from your house.’

’Man alive!’ ejaculated the poet, staring at his guest in blank
astonishment.  ’Is it possible?  That there was a mischief brewing
through some trickery of that sour devil, Nicol, I knew—fu’ though I
was, and roarin’ fu’ that night.  But, as I live, I never thought but
that you and the lass would kiss and make it up or ever you got the
length of Princes Street!’

’Was I to take a sweetheart from your chamber?’ said Herries, with a
sneer.

’But, surely,’ cried Burns, ’surely you knew the lass was there against
her will?  She had come on some cantrip of my Clarinda—well, I must e’en
be plain, your cousin, Mrs. Maclehose; we had some trifle of dalliance
in those days, and your girl was Cupid’s messenger—just once too often,
it would seem.’

’But she as good as told me with her own lips,’ said Herries, ’that the
disgrace of her situation was her own, and that she had deceived me....’

’Then she lied!’ said Burns, energetically, ’and lied to save her
friend, who was indeed most particularly in terror that your honour’s
self should scent her little game....  Listen, sir.  I was never one to
tell when I had kissed, but I must e’en out with it now.  Here’s a grave
matter that needs more clearing even than I thought—and your own
relative’s honour is surely as safe with you as with me.  The little
lady thrives, I hear, on the fairest pinnacle of good fame, and you
would be the last to interrupt her prosperity.  But in those merry days
she had a kindly eye for a poor Bard—and troth, so had the Bard for
her—and we had—well, sundry tender passages and letters, though all
within the strictest limits of Platonic friendship.  And then there was
your bonny lass—may God forgive us for the use we put her innocence
to!—forever the go-between.  Yet, sir, before real harm was done, I had
compounded with my conscience to break with my Clarinda once and
forever. Then came your ... Do you remember your letter?’

’I remember a letter,’ said Herries, moodily, ’in which I forbade you my
cousin’s house....’

’Ay!’ cried Burns, ’and what right had you, or any fellow-creature, to
hector, catechise and insult me as did you in that letter?  To a man of
my temper, ’twas intolerable, and every drop of black blood in my veins
rose at the injury.  I had the creature Nicol at my elbow, and he made
me write some trash—I mind not what—to you.  But the real mischief was
that your ill-judged and insolent order sent me, by provocation,
hot-foot to your cousin’s—ay, by night, too—and we were alone....  I
outstayed—indeed, I did most damnably outstay, decorum’s hour—and I will
not say what devil whispered in my ear ... for opportunity and the fair
one both were kind. Then there comes upon us, out of her first sleep,
the lassie Graham.  Ecod!  I see her yet—the round eyes of her, like a
bairn’s, staring at me; the flounces of her night-rail, her bare bit
feet.  Up she comes, and takes the woman from my very arms into her own,
as had she been an infant, showing me the door the while wi’ the gait o’
a queen.  ’Od, ’tis not often Robbie Burns has played so poor a part in
an affair of that kind!  I e’en slunk out o’ the house like a whipped
tyke wi’ his tail atween his legs.  And so the lass better’d me—and
maybe saved the honour of your house.  And for all reward you cast her
off!’  Herries had turned from white to red, and from red to white
again, during this recital.  But now his eyes glittered with a cold
anger.

’You are utterly unjust as to my part in the affair,’ he said
deliberately.  ’Your own letter, which you slur over so easily, was a
tissue of falsehood—if what you now tell me be true—and it was written
with intent to mislead me.  Every word and every act of my cousin’s was
studied to the same end.  I was hedged in with lies.  Of those who
wronged Miss Graham, I certainly was not the guilty one; I utterly deny
it. I was the catspaw of others infinitely unscrupulous. If I did Miss
Graham an injustice, I deeply deplore it; but I was not responsible.’
Burns eyed the speaker long and curiously—ironically, indeed.

’The legal mind, I see, sir, lights on the cold justice of the case at
once, and banishes emotion and romance,’ he said.  ’Let me tell you,
here and now, how I repent my part in the unlucky business.  The letter
I sent you was Nicol’s, in truth, and not mine. In a sober mood I’d not
have lent myself to such a trick; but I was drunk, and there was my
disgrace. I ask your pardon, as one erring human being asks pardon of
another, who, in his turn, must be a supplicant for grace before the
Throne of God....  Or is Mr. Herries, indeed, above his fellows, and in
no need of pity and forgiveness from above?’  Herries frowned—the
annoyed frown of a man to whom heroics are distasteful.

’It is a Christian duty to forgive,’ he said coldly. ’Your injury to me
I do forgive, but your injury to another was far deeper, and confession
and repentance, sir, have come a little late.’

’But not too late for reparation!’ cried the poet, eagerly.  ’Does your
heart not warm again to that wronged lassie?  ’Od, my own blood, that
runs like ice in these congealing veins, leaps at the thought of her! I
cannot get to her—I’ll never see her face again—for earth will be upon
these eyes, and the great darkness.... But I will bless her with the
blessing of the dying—’tis all I have....  But you, sir—you—you have a
horse, you’ve health and strength and time—a heart, I’d hope ... surely
you will go to her—fly to her—losing not a day!’

’After a few hours’ reflection,’ said Herries, with a consciously
exaggerated coldness, ’I shall be the better judge of how to act.  In
the meantime, although I do not doubt your statement, I should like
proof positive that your memory does not play you false.’

’Most noble judge!’ said Burns, with bitter irony, ’it shall be yours!
The sacred pages of my Clarinda’s letters will be proof-positive enough
in all conscience, and you shall see them.  They are safe with you.
I’ll have the packet searched for, and to-morrow, if you will trouble to
call, it shall be delivered to your hands.’

’To-morrow,’ said Herries, ’I shall be absent at B—— on the Duke’s
business, and perhaps for two days; but on my return I will do myself
the honour to call.’

’I may not be here,’ said Burns, significantly.  ’But, no matter, the
letters will be ready.’  He paused.  The two men looked at each other in
silence—antipathetic to the last—across a gulf of mutual
misunderstanding, that not years of speech or explanation could have
bridged over.  The ardent and impulsive temperament of Burns might
indeed have leapt the chasm, and he longed even now for a reconciliation
with the man he had wronged—a reconciliation with warm, heartfelt words,
and a clasp of the hand.  But to Herries, hedged about with the
prejudices of a lifetime—to Herries, just, but cold—even the semblance
of reconciliation was impossible.  It was Burns who spoke next, in a
gentler voice, and with a kindly shrewdness in his eyes.

’How well it would be, sir,’ he said, ’could nature sometimes mix her
handiwork!  Had I, now, some of your excellent qualities of judgment and
coolness, how much more wisely should I have waged the war of life!  And
you, methinks, might be a little better for a few drops of the hot blood
that has been the plague of me all my days.  But we are as God made us,
and the Devil spoiled us, and to make or mar is seemingly little in our
own power.’  The poet’s voice had become fainter, and the excitement
which had upheld him throughout the interview began to wane.  His
excessive weakness became apparent, as he leaned back against the
pillows, with closing eyes.  Herries came nearer to him for the first
time.

’You have stretched a great point for me, Mr. Burns,’ he said, ’in that
you have undertaken this interview when you were so little able to bear
the strain. I admire your fortitude, and I beg to thank you for the
unselfish effort.  I see how it has worn you out, and I will leave you
now, and call your nurse.’  The poet opened his eyes, and fixed them on
the younger man with an indescribably yearning look.

’I would do better now,’ he said, ’to pray than to preach!  There is one
prayer for us all, Mr. Herries—for you—for me: "_Forgive us our debts as
we forgive our debtors!_"’

’Amen!’ said Herries, with the first ring of emotion in his voice.
Then, with a deep inclination, he silently left the room.




                             *CHAPTER XLV.*


It took Herries three full days to accomplish the business of which he
had spoken to the poet.  When he returned to Dumfries, the town was
ringing with the death of Burns.  A suppressed excitement seemed to
pervade the streets; men spoke in muffled voices, awe-stricken, of the
great spirit fled—and women cried to think of the destitute young widow,
with her flock of orphans, who must so soon, in double peril, and under
the very shadow of death, give to the world the poet’s posthumous child.

Herries felt a great delicacy in presenting himself at the house of
mourning, and yet time pressed, and the possession of the letters was of
vital importance to him. He waited one day, and then, on the morning of
his departure, directed his steps to the Wee Vennel.  This time the door
was opened to him by Jessie Lewars, her pretty face swollen and
discoloured by tears.

’I was directed by—by the late Mr. Burns to call here for a packet of
letters,’ said Herries, with respectful hesitancy.

’We were bidden to expect you, sir,’ answered the girl, and then she
added that invitation which, under the circumstances, among the
peasantry of Scotland, is never withheld and never refused: ’Will you be
pleased to come up the stair and view the corpse, sir?’  Herries
followed her upstairs, but she did not enter the room with him.  He was
left to do that alone.

It was the same room in which he had spoken with the poet, but now swept
and garnished, and with a Puritan simplicity and dignity in its poor
belongings that went strangely to the heart.  The widow rose from her
seat at the bed’s head.  Herries had seen her before, but only now
realised that this must be Jean Armour.  With a singularly unaffected
gesture of restrained and decent sorrow, she removed, in silence, the
fair white linen kerchief that covered the face of her dead.  Herries,
with folded arms, and with a singular mixture of emotions, looked long
upon the splendid mask.  As in life, the dark hair swept the pallid
brow, and though the glory of those eyes was quenched under the sealed
lids that would lift no more, there was, in the fixed and immutable
gravity of the lifeless face, a language beyond all looks, beyond all
uttered speech: that air of incommunicable knowledge which, in the Dead,
baffles the living with its eternal silence.

After a few minutes the widow, gently and reverently, covered the face
once more.

’It was to be,’ she said simply, with the quiet fatalism of her class.
She turned and took from the table a packet of letters, and handed them
to Herries without a word.  He noted the quivering of her bloodless lip,
but noted, too, the mild placidity of her wise, broad brow.  Without
some such element of enduring calm, never, surely, could Jean Armour
have met the complicated trials of her life.

Herries took the letters from her with an almost humble reverence, and,
strangely subdued in spirit, left the house and journeyed from the town.

                     *      *      *      *      *

As Herries, thus leaving Dumfries, turned his horse’s head to the north,
he was still undecided as to the precise direction he must take.
Northwards he must go, but whether straight to Edinburgh, or, with a
divergence to the west which would lead him to the home of the woman he
had once loved, he could not, deeply though he hated indecision, make up
his mind.  A singular mood of coldness and hesitancy was upon him, and
he could not shake it off.  Yet it would be wrong to judge Herries, even
now, as a man without feelings; he had feelings, but naturally so deeply
hid, and, of late years, so sternly repressed, so purposely held down,
that he began to doubt their existence in himself. Where was the
enthusiasm, the chivalrous ardour that should have urged him on an
errand like this: that errand—a privilege, surely, to any generous
man—of reparation to a noble and innocent woman for a cruel wrong?  This
was his errand now, but it left him cold. No gush of revived passion
stirred his heart; he seemed to himself to have become old and
pulseless, and, unconsciously, he pictured Alison the same—old too, past
feeling.  Was she alive or dead?  He did not know.  Married, perhaps?
It might well be, and with another man’s children at her knee.  She had
acted nobly, bravely, in that miserable episode of the past.
Well—perhaps—and yet Herries was not even in sympathy with the note of
sacrifice in her act.  It angered him rather—the injustice, the cruelty
of it, and the total unworthiness, in his view, of her for whom the
sacrifice had been made.  Alison had held Nancy’s honour as dearer than
his—Herries’s—happiness, and had sacrificed him, as well as herself, to
her ideas of loyalty to a friend.  He doubted whether she had done well:
to his present cold mood there seemed a something less noble than
quixotism in this—a touch of womanish hysterics.  His own part in the
affair he felt must be a source of bitterness to him that could never
die; yet he would not allow that there could be any element in it
whatsoever of remorse.  His had been the dupe’s part, and, to a man of
Herries’s proud temper, that was a galling thought, however it might
lessen his responsibility.  The woman in whom he had believed had been
made to appear to him as unworthy of belief—by evidences so strong that
to doubt them must have been to doubt the testimony of his senses and
his sanity. He had cast her off, but it had not been without question.
He had been stern, perhaps—but, in his opinion, it behoved men to be
stern where honour was concerned. He had been tricked, and though it was
not Alison who tricked him, yet she had connived at the trickery, and
stood by and seen him made a fool of. As he went on his way, riding
slowly, and resting often, he would take out and read those letters
which had been given up to him—those fevered letters of ’Clarinda’—which
certainly cleared Alison of every kind of blame, save that of a too
yielding good-nature to her unscrupulous friend.  How they enraged him,
as he read—just as their writer used to do in days gone by—with what an
impotent rage against this trivial feminine thing that he despised, and
yet that had had power enough almost to ruin his life!  Yet the letters
brought decision, for they shaped his course, which now definitely took
the westward route, towards the Perthshire highlands.

All this time, as he pondered, he had been riding through the classic
country—sacred even then, as it is still, to the genius and the name of
Burns.  He had taken his way along the broad and river-haunted valley of
the Nith; he had threaded the wild and hilly country of the Cumnocks; he
had rested at Mauchline, and might have seen, without knowing it,
Mossgiel.  All around him, rich and fair, yellow now to its abundant
harvests, spread the country that had nursed the peasant poet to his
Titanic manhood—noble valley—rolling river—fertile plain.  The lowly
farms were eloquent of him; each humble implement of toil—the plough,
the harrow and the reaper’s hook—spoke of the hardy labours of his
strenuous youth.  The woods whispered of him; the summer evening
breathed the legend of his first idyllic love—seemed instinct with the
young undoing of Jean Armour, with the kiss, the jest, the gaiety of
rustic courtship.  At inn and toll, at kirk and market—yet rang the
echoes of his splendid joviality, and by haunted kirkyard wall, and
clattering arch and hoary brig, it seemed as though you yet might hear
the thundering hoofs of flying Tam o’ Shanter’s auld mare Maggie.  One
name only seemed ever on the lips of men and women—and Herries heard it,
as it seemed to him, wherever he rode, wherever he rested, wherever he
spoke, or ate or slept upon that memorable journey. Strange irony of
fate that should lead him—the instinctive enemy of the dead
poet—antipathetic to him in every thought and impulse and idea—to haunt
these scenes.  Stranger still that he should come to them fresh from the
last great scene of all—the closing scene in that tremendous tragedy of
a poet’s life.  Even Herries—unimaginative, unsympathetic, cold—felt the
coincidence, and felt with it some singular, reluctant, vague
understanding of the spirit that had passed away, even though his own
wrongs, and the deeper wrongs of another, from the dead man’s very hand,
cried out for their too-long-delayed redress.

In this unwonted and unwelcome mingling of moods, he took his way,
riding up the western coasts from Ayr, crossing the Clyde near Glasgow,
striking inland to the mountain land up by Loch Lomond, through the
exquisite wild Highland country of Glen Falloch; and so, by pass and
glen, and wood and water, fertile strath and harvest fields, down to the
lowlands again, and the tamer country of the Ochills.  One summer night
found him, at length, at the last gate of the Highlands, the little town
of C——, and he knew that he rested but two miles from Alison’s home, if
indeed Alison were still Alison Graham and had a home at The Mains.




                            *CHAPTER XLVI.*


Away down at The Mains it was high summer, and the low-lying,
wood-encircled old white house lay brooding in the August heat.  The
bees hummed in the lime tree, and in the spruce woods the pigeons
crooned all day, but the rooks in the plane trees kept their cawing till
the evening.

But in these days there were great changes at The Mains; not only those
deliberate changes, due to the slow workings of nature, which are common
to the obscure places of the world, but the more violent ones which come
of the striving and the energy of man, or rather woman.  In the first
place, Mrs. Graham, that tremendous creature, had married all her
daughters, every one, save, indeed, the predestined old maid of the
family, who, though she had had (as her mother frequently reminded her)
the best chances of them all, in an Edinburgh season, was mateless
still.  By remorseless energy, by ceaseless harping on the subject, had
this stringent mother goaded six daughters into matrimony against
tremendous odds.  One, as we know, had ’taken’ Mr. Cheape; two had
married ministers—albeit one had been a ’wanter,’ i.e., a widower, with
a numerous infant family.  Another had captured a soldier lad, a
subaltern in a marching regiment, quartered, during some manoeuvres of
the County Militia, at the town of C——.  Yet another had espoused a
surgeon, while one, alas! the pretty Sally, barely at sixteen, had run
away with a handsome shepherd off her father’s farm.  Hot was the hue
and cry after the misguided lassie; her father spurred to overtake the
couple and prevent the union, but returned crestfallen—thankful,
eventually, to have been shown the marriage lines. This episode was no
great feather in the maternal cap, and poor Sally’s name was
conspicuously absent from the fly-leaf of the family Bible.  The
mistress of The Mains now rested from her match-making labours, and
devoted, henceforth, all her energies to the insane indulgence of her
only son—now a pampered and disagreeable boy of ten.

In these times would Mrs. Graham publicly announce among her neighbours
that she did not intend to marry off her daughter Alison.  Disgraceful
though it was to have a girl left on your hands, yet one unmarried
daughter was not unuseful.  Jacky would need a housekeeper until he
married.  After that great event, Alison’s future might be nebulous, but
in no case was it a matter of very great importance.

In the meantime, useful occupation was not lacking to Miss Graham of The
Mains.  In these changed days, she had, besides her household work and
poultry-keeping, certain grave and tender duties which kept her much
confined to the house, even in this lovely summer time.  It was to get a
few moments’ respite from these, and a mouthful of fresh air, that she
would steal out, bare-headed, on the drowsy afternoons, and wander in
the garden.  One day (it was, indeed, the day after Herries’s arrival in
the country), she did this, having in charge, however, her brother.  The
mistress of The Mains was absent on a drive to visit a distant
neighbour, and in her absence the precious heir was never trusted a
moment by himself.

Jacky wished to go and climb upon a wall which was being built round the
old, and hitherto only hedged, garden.  So far but a few yards had been
completed—the broad parapet offering a tempting promenade for youthful
agility.  It was a forbidden joy, but such things, to the spoilt child,
are ever only nominally forbidden, and Alison, by sage experience, was
aware that protest would be only waste of time. Jacky, therefore,
pranced upon the wall, deftly cracking a huge carter’s whip—his latest
acquisition, which he had already made a terror to every man and woman
at The Mains.  He was now a fat, overgrown and hearty boy, with long,
fair, effeminate ringlets, which a fond maternal hand could not bring
itself to shear, and which assorted ill enough with the sturdy and
thick-set appearance of the youthful heir.

For a little while he strutted all content, and Alison stepped about the
sweet old garden in the sun, and picked herself a little bunch of white
clove pinks, and stuck them in her dress.  But her moments of respite
were soon numbered.

’Come now, Jacky,’ she called, going to the wall’s foot; ’come down like
a good boy!  You know I must go in to father.’

’I’m no comin’,’ said Jacky, with the serene finality of the spoilt
child.

’Ah—but you must,’ pleaded his sister, ’for mother would never have you
left upon the dyke your lone, and father wants me.’  But Jacky paid no
heed.

’I’ll have to come and pull you down,’ said Alison, rashly going nearer.

’Ye’ll no!’ said Jacky, with a deft swirl of his whip. It cracked like a
pistol shot on the silent summer air, and the tip of the lash caught
Alison on the ear, so that she clapped her hand to the place with a
little cry of pain.

’Ah, Jacky,’ she cried, ’you’ve hurt me now.’  But Jacky—a fiendish,
little, spoilt wretch—only laughed.

Nemesis, however, hovered behind him, for there had been an unsuspected
witness to the scene.  A gentleman on horseback had come down the road
which passed close to the new wall, and, attracted by the repeated
cracking of a whip, had paused.  Finally he had dismounted, tied his
horse to a gate-post, and, standing a little way off from the end of the
unfinished dyke, could see and hear what happened both above and below.
While Alison, the tears of her smart in her eyes, still expostulated
vainly with her brother, she was suddenly electrified to perceive his
ankles clasped by two hands from the other side of the wall.  With a
sharp howl of terror, the heir of all the Grahams disappeared abruptly
from his perch.  Alison ran round the dyke, and lo! with the roaring
Jacky struggling in his arms, there was Archibald Herries, or his ghost.

Alison stopped dead, and the two, with eight years between them of pain,
and parting, and estrangement, stood staring at each other—so strange is
human life—upon the verge of laughter.  Herries released the boy, who
ran yelling to the house, and then, flushed and awkward, he stood before
Alison.

’I—I am come to The Mains, you see,’ he stammered, not brilliantly, it
must be confessed.

’I see, sir,’ said Alison, a little giddily.  (How sweet, how strong—too
strong—the pinks smelt in her dress!)  ’But you are like to have an odd
welcome,’ she went on, in a queer, steady voice, and yet with a little
uncertain laugh, ’if you begin like this, by beating Jacky.  ’Tis a
providence has sent my mother from home this day, or you would be like
to get into her black books.’

The summer world, the trees, the sky were reeling round her, but she
kept her head, better, indeed, than did the man.  He, dumb, stood
looking at her, while the world, his world, changed round him, like the
world of dreams.  What had he expected to see?—a faded woman past her
prime?  Alison was twenty-eight now, but at twenty-eight, young women
living quiet country lives are neither old nor faded as a common rule.
She was a girl yet, the flush of summer on her cheeks, not the tendril
of a curl changed; bewitching womanliness was in the sweet curves of her
young body beneath the cotton gown.  Her eyes seemed larger than of
yore, perhaps because the face had fined away a little from mere girlish
chubbiness to slightly hollower lines of cheek and chin.  Her soft,
broad forehead knit itself a little.  Herries felt his heart go from
him, and his cool head swam.  He tried to keep command of himself, but
himself—the self of all these barren years—was slipping from him even
now.

’Can I—can I have a few words with you alone?’ he asked humbly.

’Surely, sir,’ said Alison.  ’But I cannot spare you many minutes, for I
am wanted.’  A look of pain, of harassed anxiety, came into her eyes,
which should have been an omen.  But Herries did not see it.  They began
to walk in the garden, on a grass path between yew hedges.

’Have you seen Nancy lately, and is she well?’ asked Alison, breaking
the silence.

’I never see her,’ said Herries, shortly.  ’Have you dropped all
knowledge of her too?’

’At first we wrote a little,’ said Alison, quietly, ’but I am no great
hand at letters, sir, and so—and so we grew apart.’

’That’s well,’ said Herries, abruptly.  He chafed at this dull talk,
walking at Alison’s side, but what to say, where to begin?  He stole a
look at her.  ’Alison,’ he cried suddenly, ’your ear hurts.  That little
monster cut it with the lash; it bleeds.’

’Does it?’ said Alison, faintly, putting up her hand.

’Wait—here!’ said Herries, eagerly.  ’I have a soft silk kerchief.’  He
noted, with a kind of anguish, the smudge of blood upon a little curl,
and yet thought himself cool enough to wipe it away unmoved.  But the
touch, the contact, the terrible sweetness of approach were all too
much.  The pent-up tenderness of years would be denied no longer—his
empty arms rebelled against their emptiness.

’Ally!’ he cried.  ’Oh!  Ally—oh, my soul!’

For, indeed, it did seem as though, after all these years of deathly
trance, his soul had come back to him.




                            *CHAPTER XLVII.*


And now Herries, who had found an advocate, became his own accuser.

’That you can forgive me this long and cruel silence is impossible,’
said the man who had hitherto held himself so proudly blameless.

’Nay, there’s nothing to forgive in you,’ said the fond woman, who held
him blameless still.  ’Do you think I did not know you?’ she went on
softly.  ’I knew that you, being you, must have acted as you did. And I
said to myself I would abide by your action, whatever it was, for I knew
it would be just!’

’If it was not my action that was sorely wrong,’ said Herries, in his
new contrition, ’then it was something deeper.  ’Twas my heart and
nature that erred; to doubt yon was a cold-hearted, an abominable
crime!’  But Alison only smiled.

’If you had erred,’ she said, ’it might have been easier for me, for
then I might have found some comfort in thinking you unworthy.  But no,
I would not, for all the world, have had it so!  I’d rather have borne
the hardness of our parting than that!’

’Was it—was it so very hard—to you?’ whispered Herries.

’Is it hard when the nest and the young ones are torn from the bird, do
you think?’ said Alison.  ’If that is hard, my suffering was like it;
for all that I had went from me when I went from you!’  Herries sighed,
and memory tormented him.  He heard the plashing rain upon the
pavement—the rain of that night of parting; he saw the white face that
Alison turned upon him from the window of the sedan as the chairmen
carried her away into the darkness.

’May God pardon me the hardness of my heart,’ he said, raising the hat
from his head, ’for I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.’

They spoke of Robert Burns, and they spoke of Nancy, unravelling that
terrible entanglement of the past.  Herries spoke with a new gentleness,
and Alison, as she heard him, pressed close to his side.

’You forgive them—you do forgive them—don’t you, Archie?’ she whispered.
’For, you know, Nancy never dreamed how deeply she injured us, and
he—the man—knew not what he did.  We cannot be happy if we leave them
unforgiven!’  Herries did not answer, for his heart was big within him,
and in his ears was the sound of a voice, now stilled for ever, pleading
for that forgiveness which the sweet woman at his side now urged upon
him.

’"_Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors!_"’ said he, at last,
in the same words, and they fell from him with a sigh.


’I must go now,’ said Alison, at last, ’for I dare not linger.  I have
stayed too long.’

’Nay, but I’ll not let you, Alison,’ said Herries, ’till it is promised
me that our parting is at an end, and that I can come and ask you of
your parents this very day. Why not?’  Alison stood still and looked at
him, and in her eyes was a something akin to that compassion with which
you will see a mother look at her careless and unconscious child.

’Nay, Archie,’ she said faintly.  ’I had been thinking that you knew....
But that’s all gone and done with now.  I have no freedom to go with any
man.  I cannot leave my home.’

’But, by the God that is above us, you shall—and with me!’ said Herries,
violently.  ’I will permit no second sacrifice of our love and life.’

’Come with me—home, Archie,’ said Alison, gently, ’and I’ll show you
what I cannot tell you.’  In a brooding silence they went to unloose
Herries’s horse, which had pawed the ground beneath him to a pulp.  A
lad took it from them as they went towards the house.  ’I am taking you
to my father’s room,’ said Alison, in a low voice.  She led him down the
dark narrow passage to the library.

’Here are two steps in the dark—take care,’ she whispered, and as he
stumbled he felt her guiding hand come out to him.  She opened the
library door, and in the warm light of the summer evening that came in
through the little deep-set windows, Herries saw the laird of The Mains.

Alas! for the four-bottle man—our jovial ancestor of a drinking age!
His life may have been a merry one, but it was generally short, and
often before middle age the gout would get him at his vitals, or deathly
paralysis lay him by the heels.  It was the latter vengeance that had
overtaken the laird of The Mains—pinning him helpless, and almost
speechless, to his great lug-chair by the fire for which he shivered
even in the hottest day.  There he sat, huddled in gown and slippers,
the wreck of a man at fifty-six, and behind him, rudely carved upon the
green stone mantel, Herries read the doleful legend, which seemed the
text of a wordless but expressive sermon:

    _’In human life there’s nothing steadfast stands,_
    _Youth, Glorie, Riches fades.  Death’s sure at hand.’_


Hardly anything of the sick man could move but his eyes, and these
turned upon his daughter as she entered with a dog-like look of
expectation, while he set up a painful, inarticulate cry for water—for
he was tormented by an insatiable and raging thirst.

’’Tis ever so, if I leave him for but half-an-hour,’ said Alison, in a
low voice.  ’No one comes to him; they let his cup be empty and his fire
go out.  Oh, I’ve been cruel to leave him so long,’ she cried, with a
pang of remorse.  She held the cup to his lips, and in her strong young
arms raised the supine and helpless form against the pillows.  Herries,
inexpressibly shocked, with a sense of foreboding against which he
vainly strove, watched her.

’But, Alison!’ he whispered, passionately, ’this—this is your mother’s
duty.  She’s bound to it by every law of marriage—by every impulse of
humanity.’

’You do not know my mother, sir,’ said Alison, quietly; ’God forgive me
for these unnatural words against her that bore me.  But my mother has
her health, and is, besides, of an impatient nature, and cannot
understand that others should be sick and feeble....  I’ll say no more.’

They went together to the far end of the low, long room, which was now
getting dark.

’But this is monstrous!’ said Herries, vehemently, ’a second sacrifice—I
repeat it!  You sacrificed me once to Nancy—and now you would sacrifice
me to another.  You cannot love me!’

’I love you,’ said Alison, intently, ’I love you better than all the
world—better than my poor father.  But, or ever I saw your face, Archie,
I knew his, and he has been a good father to me.  God would surely
desert me if, knowing what I do of things at home, I were to leave him
in his helplessness.  Archie, you’ll not bring me to tempt God’s anger?’
It was almost a cry, but Herries would not hear the justice in it.

’Then I go,’ he said, sore and angry, ’I go, uncomforted and alone.’
But Alison clung to him with a sob.

’Oh, no—no—no!’ she whispered, ’don’t leave me, Archie—oh, not yet!
I’ve been so long alone—so long—and never a sight of your face, and
sometimes I would be nearly mad to think I might forget it.  But no—I
have remembered every line.’

Herries held his breath, and in the poignant sacredness of the moment
his heart stood still.  For never had Alison’s arms held him as they did
just now, or her eyes read his face; and he felt that woman’s passion,
unashamed, had taken the place of a girl’s timid love. Her fingers
touched his hair, and yet, somehow, with all its passion, it was a touch
that might have been his mother’s.

’You’re gotten so grey, Archie,’ she said, with a little tender laugh.
’You’ll scarcely need the powder now!’

But Herries put her from him, almost roughly, with an oath.

’I can’t bear it, Ally,’ he said.  ’If I must go, let me go now.  I must
have all or nothing.’

He took his riding-whip from the table where he had laid it, and turned
and went without a word.




                           *CHAPTER XLVIII.*


That night did a stranger cause much commotion in the streets of C——by
rampaging (as the inhabitants expressed it) up and down, demanding at
every turn the surgeon who waited upon Mr. Graham of The Mains.  It was
Herries who pursued this curious quest, and the placid citizens judged
him demented, as, indeed, but a few hours since, he would have judged
himself. He traced the personage whom he sought to his own dwelling,
where he found him, resting after the labours of the day, over a
comfortable and steaming glass of toddy.  Herries entered the room,
booted and spurred as he was, and rang a guinea on the doctor’s table
with much the air of holding a pistol to his ear.

’I am given to understand,’ said he, ’that you attend the laird of The
Mains.  Oblige me by telling me in confidence how long, in your opinion,
it is probable that Mr. Graham has to live?’  The astonished Æsculapius
looked up, open-mouthed, shoving his spectacles from his nose to his
bald forehead.

’God bless me!’ he exclaimed.  ’And who are you that put this most
extraordinary question?  It is outrageous!’

’I have paid good money for your opinion, like any other man—and should
get it, I presume,’ said Herries, sulkily.

’Not at all, not at all, sir!’ said the doctor, swelling with
professional offence.  ’I never heard of such bold impudence!’  He was,
in the meantime, looking Herries up and down, and perceiving a
gentlemanly man, well dressed and with a pale, grave face, made up his
mind that he was neither a man in liquor nor a madman, but some person
of consideration.

’If,’ he said at last, ’you will give me satisfactory reasons for your
extraordinary question, I may see whether I can answer it with decorum
and with due attention to professional etiquette.  I am too old a bird
not to know that there are often good reasons for the strangest
actions.’  Herries was silent.  He had intended no confidences; an
impulse, very unlike him, had driven him to this crude method of trying
to find out how long a time, Laban-like, he must yet serve for Alison.
There was something kindly in the old doctor’s weather-worn, sagacious
countenance.

’I have a reason,’ Herries said, suddenly determined to be frank.  ’I am
a suitor for the hand of Miss Graham, and she will not marry in her
father’s lifetime.’

’Oh—ho! sets the wind in that airt?’ said the doctor, much more
genially.  ’Come, sit down, man, and let us talk it over.  And so you
are a friend of Miss Alison’s?  So am I—in troth, her earliest!  And she
will not leave her father for you?  Well, I daresay not, I daresay not—a
good lass!  But the mother, let me tell you, stands in your gait fully
more than the laird. She’ll not do wanting Alison, and so she tells the
world. A tremendous woman, sir, and set on her own ways. You’ll not get
Alison from her.’

’I’ll take her!’ said Herries, with a short laugh.

’A bold man!’ said the doctor.  ’Well, rather you than me to meddle with
the mistress of The Mains!  As to the laird, it goes against the grain
with me to give his death-warrant.  Many’s the bottle I’ve cracked with
him, honest man, sitting in the parlour at The Mains yonder—the mistress
brought to bed upstairs—and waiting for they lasses of his to come into
the world.  But we must all die!’  He paused, and then went on gravely,
’I cannot tell you how long you may have to wait.  It might be a month,
it might be a year, it might be ten.  Some, in paralysis, die soon.
Some linger in a death in life like his for half a lifetime.  The Graham
stock is tough, uncommonly so; but my old friend is in a bad case—the
Lord send him rest!—and I do not think he’ll live the year.’  The
speaker eyed Herries curiously.  ’Does that content you?’ he asked, with
a twinkling eye.

’God forgive me for a cold-blooded questioner in this!’ said Herries,
really vexed and sorely ashamed. ’But I am clean distraught, I think!
This young lady and I were contracted eight years since, but mischief
came between us and we parted.  And now we meet only to part again, this
feeble life of a man almost dead between us.  Am I excused in your eyes,
sir?’

’Oh, I think so, I think so!’ said the good-natured man of medicine with
his husky laugh.  ’But I’ll not tell on you (’twould hardly do, you
know) in after days!’  He fetched another tumbler from his cupboard and
would have Herries taste with him before he went. And so the
aristocratic and reserved lawyer of George Street found himself sitting
in the stuffy parlour of an unknown country doctor, with a singular
tumult in his blood, a new and tender anticipation at his heart,
drinking to happier days.


The laird of The Mains, however, falsified the prediction of his medical
attendant and lingered for nearly two years, then dying in his chair.
He was gathered to his fathers in the family vault, and friends and
neighbours, gathered to his funeral, noted one stranger sharing in his
obsequies—a stranger to all but Alison and the old doctor.  The same
man, in the dusk of the evening, spoke with Alison at the little gate
under the lime tree—Alison, tall and pale and sad, in a black gown. It
was no moment to speak of love, but, nevertheless, these two did then,
in an enforced secrecy, arrange their future.  A second time would
Alison leave her home, and leave it in secret.  For Mrs. Graham was set
upon a perverse and obstinate opposition to any marriage for her last
remaining daughter, rightly estimating the loss, to her, as one of a
superior and most hard-working servant.  Alison, who had battled so
long, had no more strength and no more courage for the fight.  In a
month she and Archibald Herries fled to Edinburgh town, and were married
by license.


That it was a merry wedding, you are not asked to believe.  For,
firstly, it took place almost in the shadow of death; and then,
happiness that comes after long tarrying, comes—but comes timidly—like a
flower that blows too late and trembles for the storm.  Yet, in the
spring after, the same plant will throw out vigorous and fearless
shoots.  And so it was, I feel sure, with Alison and Archibald Herries.
They were happy in their marriage; children were born to them in the
fine George Street house, and there were gay summer migrations to the
Galloway home, and all the due symbols of a rational and well-deserved
prosperity.  I think that to the last they were on calling—if not
cordial—terms, with Clarinda, and that Willy Maclehose, grown a fine
young man, was a frequent visitor at their house.

But these things are all past and gone now.  Alison’s children are dust,
and their children, I daresay, are preparing in turn for the inevitable
abdication.  For so the world wags, and we live and die, and Nature
renews, for each one of us, the slowly-moving pageant of joy and sorrow,
of passion and of pain.  But it is the RHYMER, of whatsoever generation
he may be, singing of these things for us so that we all understand, who
is the only Immortal.




                         _*BURNS TO CLARINDA*_


    _’Ae fond kiss and then we sever,_
    _Ae fareweel and then forever!_
    _Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,_
    _Warring sighs and groans, I’ll wage thee._
    _Who shall say that fortune grieves him_
    _While the star of hope she leaves him?_
    _Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,_
    _Dark despair around benights me._

    _’I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy,_
    _Naething could resist my Nancy;_
    _But to see her was to love her;_
    _Love but her and love forever._
    _Had we never loved sae kindly,_
    _Had we never loved sae blindly,_
    _Never met or never parted,_
    _We had ne’er been broken-hearted._

    _’Fare thee well, thou first and fairest!_
    _Fare thee well, thou best and dearest!_
    _Thine be ilka joy and treasure,_
    _Peace, contentment, love and pleasure._
    _Ae fond kiss and then we sever;_
    _’Ae fareweel, alas! forever._
    _Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,_
    _Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.’_