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'ssuite, 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?'Hernaïveconviction 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 sheis!''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 cleanwud,[*] 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 atyourfeet 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 fromhim?' 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.
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'ssuite, 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?'
Hernaïveconviction 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 sheis!'
'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 cleanwud,[*] 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?'
'Lassie wi' the lint white locks,Bonnie lassie, artless lassie!Wilt thou wi' me tend the flocks?Wilt thou be my dearie, O?'
'Lassie wi' the lint white locks,
Bonnie lassie, artless lassie!
Bonnie lassie, artless lassie!
Wilt thou wi' me tend the flocks?
Wilt thou be my dearie, O?'
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 atyourfeet 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 fromhim?' 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.