Chapter IV: Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XVII.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And further:--

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

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

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIX.*

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

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

'Are you hungry?' Herries had enquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XX.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I--go to Mr. Herries's office?' stammered Alison, overwhelmed with doubt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XXI.*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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