Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XI.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Herries looked at him with a mild wonder.

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XII.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Mr.--Mr. Maclehose?' whispered Alison, delicately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIII.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIV.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XV.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Old Cheape--you know him--Cheape of Kincarley,' said Nancy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Who?' said Alison, a little startled. 'The--the poet?'

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XVI.*

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