Chapter VII: Part 7

And then the thought--the temptation--came to Alison: she might go home! She might cut the strings that bound her--never heeding that they bound another, too--and be free and fly away to that dear, that safe old home, where there were no deceptions, where everybody spoke the truth with disagreeable plainness, if need be, but always the unvarnished truth. Herries would have her do this. He might bid her do it yet. But ah! Alison knew she could not--might not--dared not do it, for heart and conscience both said no. What--and she hardly dared ask herself the question--what would come to Nancy if she were left alone? Alison had learned many things of late, and her girlish eyes had been opened to much--to so much that was not fit for them to see, but that they saw because they were clear-sighted eyes that always read the truth. What would become of Nancy now if the one barrier--the restraining presence of a companion of her own sex--were taken away, and she were left an absolutely unprotected prey to that overpowering influence that shadowed all she did and all she thought? The face of the man rose before Alison--the masterful, sensual face, the riveting eyes--and she heard the stealing steps that now too often and too late--far, far too late into the night--would come creeping up the stair. Jean would be long since safely bedded in her attic--but, at least until now, Alison had always been at hand, with the certain safety of her presence, though fully conscious how angrily that presence was resented by one of the pair, if not indeed by both. Alison was innocent, as the pure are innocent, but she was not stupid, and she was not blind. She knew enough to know that even if Nancy were yet guiltless, her good name was fearfully at stake; it hung by a thread, and one end of that thread was in Alison's hands. And it was Nancy--the dear, dainty, sweet Nancy--that had so twined herself round the simple affections of the country girl! It was the Nancy that had saved Alison from Mr. Cheape, and that had brought her to Archibald Herries. No, Nancy should never be deserted in her peril. Even if Alison's early love for her were gone, there was yet loyalty, and Alison would be unswervingly loyal. She must bide her time and wait. She trusted Herries with a passion of trust. Whatever he did, that must be right, and she would abide by it.

In the meantime, Alison's lover had gone home, far more deeply perturbed than she, because totally in the dark, and because he had not, as had the woman he loved, the solid ground beneath his feet of a nature that could trust. Suspicion and mistrust had dogged the beginning of his love for Alison, but then Creighton had been at his elbow to fight each doubt as it arose; and after that his own love had grown strong, so strong that it grappled with the enemies of his nature, and overthrew them for a time. But now they sprang upon him from their old ambush, and how alive, how terribly alive, they were! The angry blood rushed to his brow as he thought himself deceived. Had she really tricked him? He recalled the ugly little circumstances of the early winter--the meeting in St. James's Square--the fee to Mysie; and then--and then, could it be that Alison had begged for secrecy in their engagement, had deprecated the frequency of his visits to the Potterrow, bidden him come on certain evenings and at certain hours only, because she played a double game, and fooled him in it? But no, this was monstrous, and he did not believe it in his soul--not yet at least. Only, in his bitterness, he said to himself that all women were the same; they all deceived, prevaricated, lied and hid, and this seeming-true, fair creature that he had taken to his heart was only a woman after all. Ah, but he loved her! Not till now had he known the strength of his love, not till his heart pained him as it did this night, with its abominable aching. There was nothing for it but that he must write to her before he slept, and he did so.

He made his accusation in plain terms. 'You have deceived me,' he wrote, 'in regard to an intimacy, which you have hidden, with a man whom you knew well that I abhorred. I did suspect at one time that Burns might possibly frequent my cousin's house, because of her foolish craze for literary lions and the like. But the suspicion left me utterly, because I did not believe that such a matter would be kept from my knowledge by you. But now I suddenly find you intimate with this man, singing to him, and having in common with him, apparently, the memory of countless meetings. What am I to think? To this intimacy--at anyrate in my cousin's household--it is my resolution and my duty to put an instant termination, and I shall know what measures to take to that end. If I have any claim on you--and you yourself only can decide whether I have or not--I forbid you to see or have speech with this man again. He is a profligate. I have reasons, believe me, that make me urge your obedience in this matter. I am harsh with you--I was harsh to-night--but I would not be too harsh, Alison. I know not yet how far you may have acted under influence,--perhaps my cousin's. I have often felt she was no safe guardian for a young girl. Have you found out yet that you left my mother's ring--the ring of our betrothal--in my hands? You started so, when that accursed poet came into the room, and were so visibly taken aback that you forgot my gift! I desire and hope to God you may yet wear it--and wear it worthily. But I will keep it for a little while. You will not see me for some days. I learn that Mr. Creighton's illness is become dangerous, and every hour that I can spare must be spent at his bedside.'

When Alison got this letter, a strange feeling of exaltation moved her. Severe? But then, how just! Plain? But how she loved his plainness! Dear--dearer than his very kisses--to this girl, with her own straight, undeviating nature, was the man's unerring, if narrow, rectitude, his clean, cold uprightness, his hatred of all false ways. He would not give her the ring? She almost laughed; he might slay her--but she would love the slaying from his hands; it would be a noble pain!

Unluckily for himself and all concerned, Herries did not stay his hand that night, after he had written to Alison. He wrote another letter, and this time he wrote neither so wisely nor so well. It ran:--

'Mr. Herries presents his compliments to Mr. Robert Burns, and begs to inform him that he is under the necessity of preventing and forbidding the visits of Mr. Burns to the house of Mrs. Maclehose in the Potterrow. The unhappy circumstances which have deprived Mrs. Maclehose of the protection of a husband, make it indispensable that her relatives and friends should exercise a supervision over her acquaintance, and should guard her from the intimacy of persons not of her own station, or known to her immediate circle.'

This was all--but it was all wrong, and Herries, as a lawyer, if not as a sensible and prudent man, should certainly have known that it was so. That he should forbid Alison the intimacy of such-and-such a man was possibly within his province. That he should advise, cajole or influence his cousin to close her doors against an objectionable visitor might certainly be his duty. But that he should forbid, or, with a high hand, prevent Mr. Burns the poet--a free agent in a free country--from visiting any house where he was welcomed by the inmates (except it were his--Herries's own) was an absurdity so glaring, that the only marvel was it did not strike his vision from the paper as he wrote. It can only be said for him that he was at the moment a sorely harassed man--over-worked, in the first instance, and now set upon by jealousy and suspicion. Hot under these influences, it is perhaps no wonder that he sat down to commit the one thoroughly ill-judged action of his life.

He was aware that the poet left town next day for a fortnight, but he directed the letter to his lodgings in St. James's Square, believing that it would be forwarded by the next mail. As a matter of fact, the letter lay in town until the poet's return.

*CHAPTER XXXIII.*

The fortnight which now began to pass--the period of the poet's absence from town--was a very unhappy one in the Potterrow. Alison had, indeed, her lover's letter, but she would not, or could not, answer it. The truth she could not write, therefore it seemed to her better not to write at all. Hard as it was, it seemed she must be silent under his reproach. Some way out of the mystery might show itself, but it appeared to Alison that she was bound hand and foot, and could not move to clear herself. And in these days, though she had a brave heart, she began to be afraid.

But now the sight of Nancy's wretchedness--no longer to be concealed or disguised--began, even more than her own uneasiness, to affect her. The recklessness, the headstrong wilfulness of the little woman when the object of her passion had been near her, and she could either see him or hear from him day by day, had been hard enough to cope with, but now that he was absent, and the constant excitement of the letters and the meetings was suspended, her state was piteous. She would neither eat nor sleep, neither rest nor yet employ herself; the irritation of her temper--sweet turned to bitter under the alchemy of passion--was almost insupportable. She would still write, by the hour, by day and night, her feverish, passionate letters, which followed the poet by mail and post-gig, and must prettily have punctuated his progress as he went. He, from Glasgow, had scratched her a line as he waited for the Paisley carrier, promising future and full epistles. But these did not follow with absolute regularity, and the unreasoning little creature maddened under his silence. She finally fretted herself into a fever, real enough, and Alison had the doctor in; and a febrifuge and also a sleeping-draught prescribed, gave the household a little peace at night at anyrate.

At last a merciful morning brought a substantial packet from the errant Bard, handsomely franked by some important personage, for he wrote from a fine country house in Ayrshire, where he rested on his way from Mauchline to Dumfriesshire. For hours did Nancy pore over these precious sheets, reading out now and again laughing extracts to Alison. This had always been her wont, and not by any means always edifying had been the nature of these extracts, for Sylvander was a correspondent of amazing frankness, and hid from his Clarinda none of his peccadillos, past or present. Nancy, in these matters, had grown curiously hardened, and probably hardly realised the essence of her revelations to the shocked ears of a girl.

'Why,' she cried, on this occasion, 'here will be a little excursion for you, love! My Sylvander begs a favour of me; 'tis to take five shillings, as from him, to a poor necessitous creature in the Wabster's Close. Will you do it, dear? You know how miserably unfit your poor Nancy is to face the streets!' Now, the poet's message ran:--'There is a poor lass in the Wabster's Close of whom I get a tale of distress that makes my very heart weep blood. For some part of her trouble I am (with contrition, I own it) responsible. I will trust that your goodness will apologise to your delicacy for me, when I beg you, for heaven's sake, to send the poor woman five shillings in my name, and let the wench leave a line for me--you know where--and I shall see her, and try what is to be done for her relief.' Nancy, even, had felt the necessity of editing this passage, but she dwelt upon the poet's kindliness of nature with unction.

'He's said to me often and often, Ally,' she took this occasion to remark, '"I would have all men and women happy! I'd wipe the tears from all eyes if I could!" He has the tenderest, the most sensitive heart!' So, would Alison go upon this charitable quest? Of course she would--thankful to be sent on any quest that did not lead in the direction of St. James's Square.

Now, it will be said that, in these pages, our poor Alison has run too many messages, and, indeed, she has. But the reader, of his own experience, probably knows that there is in this world a certain class of little, dainty, clinging, tender women whose messages are all run for them as a matter of course. To this class did Nancy Maclehose belong. There was a kind of understanding that rough walks in dirty streets, and in all kinds of weather, were not her portion. Nor did she exact this consideration from her friends; it came to her as a sort of right, a kind of tacit acknowledgment of her power--that power to which all bowed down who came in contact with her--the willing Alison, the sturdy Jean, her own devoted little boys--even Herries himself, though he, indeed, was a rebellious slave. So Alison set out, quite willingly, in all good faith that she went upon a charitable mission.

It was mid-February now, and there was an extraordinary mildness in the air. The frost and snow, the bitter north winds were gone. A tender sky, sweet with the very tints of spring, swam above the stern old town, and a westerly wind, soft as a kiss, touched Alison's cheek as she walked. She was acquainted with her destination, the Wabster's Close--a most malodorous and unpleasing quarter; but Alison was not afraid of such places now, and merely picked her way with added caution over the foul causeway and slippery cobbles. She had nothing but a name, Clow, as uncommon as it was hideous to go by, and by inquiry she discovered the tenement or 'land,' where a family thus named was said to live. It was up a stair of an agglomerated and indescribable filth--the worst that Alison had yet seen. No wonder, she thought, that a person living in such a place needed a charitable dole.

She paused at a door, behind which there seemed to rise a perfect Babel of sound--a Babel, yet curiously subdued, as though many people spoke, and spoke at once, yet in hushed voices. She knocked, and a woman opened, who, with a curious, indescribable air of excitement, plucked her by the sleeve, whispering hoarsely,--'Come in by--come ben!'

Alison felt impelled to enter, but shrank involuntarily, as the close air of the darksome and overcrowded chamber, with some nameless horror in it, assailed her senses. The woman, however, who had admitted her, now closed the door behind her. Alison noticed that her hands were shaking, piteously, uncontrollably, and that she was very pale. The room seemed full--full to overflowing--of women who whispered with bent heads, gesticulating, raising hands to heaven, and who now turned curious eyes on Alison.

She stood still in the middle of the wretched place, awed and terrified, she knew not why, yet instinctively conscious of the nearness of some tragedy.

'I was sent here,' she whispered to the woman near her, 'with five shillings for a girl, Clow, said to be in want or sickness.'

A murmur ran round the room. At her words, as if by common consent, the crowd of women drew aside, and through the clearance thus made Alison perceived a bed; and on the bed, its dismal occupant, the newly-dead, as yet untended, the staring eyes unclosed, the pallid hand clenched on the disordered covering. A woman, standing at the bed's head, still held to the parted lips the undimmed mirror.

Alison's vision swam; she sickened, but she saw--saw, upturned among the blankets, the gaunt, grey, sightless face; saw it--and knew it.

'Mysie!' she cried, shrinking back in utmost horror.

'Eh?' ejaculated several astonished voices; 'ye kent poor Mysie?'

But Alison felt the clammy sweat of faintness break out upon her flesh.

'Oh, let me go--let me out!' she gasped. 'I will speak to you upon the stair.'

The women crowded round her, questioning, muttering, explaining she knew not what. She got forth from the room at last, and found herself standing with the one woman upon the outer landing. The poor creature seemed decent enough. By some trick of likeness, she might have been, probably was, the dead woman's sister. She eyed Alison, not resentfully, but curiously.

'Are ye--are ye from _him_?' she asked.

'From whom?' said Alison, yet trembling, because she knew.

'Mysie was in trouble, ye ken,' the woman said, with a kind of weary dispassionateness. 'I thought that mebbe--' She paused, lifting her lustreless eyes to the fresh, unworn face of the girl before her, as though wondering how far she would be understood.

But ah! Alison understood. She remembered the walk with Mysie only too well--the scene before the house in St. James's Square--the poor creature's then mysterious words. What had, even so short a while ago, been hidden to Alison's innocence, was plain to her now. Knowledge of the wrong, and the passion, and the sin of the world was breaking over her heart like the dawn of a grey day. But it was a true woman's heart--full of pity and of strength to meet the sorrowful enlightenment.

'He--he has sent money,' she said, crimsoning with shame, and she slipped the coins into the other's hand. The woman weighed them in her palm an instant, with a bitter smile.

'He's sent it, has he?' she said. 'Mebbe a wee thing late! Weel, he didna grudge it likely. They're tellin' me he was never the lad to grudge, and Mysie had but tae speir and he wad help her. But na, she wudna! She was a queer body, Mysie. She had a place, and she lost it (anent her trouble, ye see); and then she got the cauld trailin' the streets to get a sicht o' her jo, and she dwined and dwined.... Ay, it's a queer warld: and as you cam' chappin' at the door yonder, wi' his money in yer hand, the last breath had just but newly left her mooth.'

Alison, as she listened, was pale; her pulses fluttered to her deeply-moved, indignant sympathy. Inexperienced in sorrow, she knew not what to say, but her eyes filled, and the woman saw them, and drew her hand across her own eyes, dim with long watching.

'Ye will excuse us,' she said, with unconscious dignity. 'It wasna decent that ye sud see what ye saw. But I wasna mysel', and I thocht it was a neebor that chappit--a skilly woman we were waitin' on. I wudna have ye think,' she went on, wistfully, 'that we didna do the best we could for poor Mysie.'

'I know, I know,' whispered Alison, eagerly. 'And, oh! will you take this from me?' She pressed into the woman's hand her own little hoard.

'I thank ye, mem; I canna refuse it,' the poor creature said simply. 'For we'll be sair put to it for a decent burial.'

Alison turned to go, her eyes burning, her heart hot within her.

*CHAPTER XXXIV.*

One mastering thought gave Alison's feet wings as she neared the Potterrow on her return from the Wabster's Close. She would tell Nancy of this heart-moving, this pitiful, sad scene she had witnessed, and make it plain to her at whose door the greater guilt of it all lay. Then Nancy must see reason, must lift the veil from her eyes, acknowledge the wrong-doing of the man who could cause suffering so infinite, and see her own danger in submitting to his influence. Alison, in spite of much recently-acquired experience, was still, as the perspicacious reader will perceive, very simple.

Nancy was sitting writing when her messenger returned.

'Well, child,' she said, 'and did you find the wench and deliver our friend's bounty?'

'Bounty!' cried Alison, throwing out her hands. 'She--she needs no bounty, Nancy. She's dead!'

Nancy started, then tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently.

'La, child,' she exclaimed, pettishly, 'how you frighten one!'

But Alison was in no mood to be put off with petulance or callousness. In quick words, faltering and broken--for her eyes were wet, and her quiet, reticent nature stirred to the rare point of passionate utterance--she told what she had seen of Mysie's end.

'And, oh, Nancy,' she whispered at last, on her knees at her friend's side, 'it was _his_ doing. She was in trouble; it was _his_ fault. She's dead--dead! and but for him she might have been alive and happy--honest at the least.'

But Nancy looked down at her face unmoved, with a little, hard smile.

'Accidents will happen,' she said coolly. 'We must all die, surely. Men will be men. To talk as you do is sheer hysterics. You are a child.'

'I am a woman!' cried Alison, 'and I see with a woman's eyes.'

'You ought to concede,' Nancy continued, unmoved, 'that our friend has acted by the lass as handsomely as anyone could expect. He sent money. I've reason to know he would have acknowledged her child had the silly wench but given him the chance. He's all generosity, kindness, warmth. Didn't I give you his very words this morning--"I'd wipe the tears from all eyes if I could"?'

''Twould be far better, I think,' cried Alison, 'that he should try first to cause no tears to flow. I see no beauty, Nancy, in beautiful words when cruel, heedless acts go with them.'

Nancy shrugged her shoulders.

'You've no understanding of a poet, Ally,' she said, with a superior and pitying air. But Alison rose to her feet, feeling a sudden courage to say that which had long burned upon her tongue.

'Oh! Nancy, Nancy,' she cried, 'is it for _this_ man that you--'

'That I _what_?' said Nancy, turning fiercely upon her friend.

'That you forget,' whispered Alison, stammeringly, 'forget that you are Willy and Danny's mother, and--and--a wife, Nancy!' From cheek to brow, from her neck to her very ears, Nancy turned scarlet at the words, and her eyes blazed with anger.

'How _dare_ you, Alison Graham,' she said, 'how dare you say such words to me? _I_ forget myself--I, who remember hourly that I am bound--bound by an iron chain to an odious fate? Ah, were I free!'--she clenched her little hands, and her whole tiny frame was shaken with the vehemence of her passion, 'were I free, should I be here?--and he--he, as he is--left to the machinations of the vulgar, and driven to demean himself with filthy peasants?' She had risen, and stood over Alison, blazing with jealousy as well as rage--not jealousy of the luckless dead victim of the poet's passions, but, as it happened, of Jean Armour, of whose ascendency over the Bard she was mortally suspicious. But now she turned all the vials of her wrath on Alison.

'You, to misunderstand me!' she cried. 'You, whom I have trusted, to turn again and rend me! But you are like the rest of the world--evil-minded! You read wickedness when there is only the innocence and true nobility of great minds. You are incapable of understanding friendship. I despise and rise above your mean suspicions--they are unworthy of my thoughts. But if the viper I had cherished and nursed to warmth in my bosom had turned and stung me, I could not have been more pained!' Saying which, with a toss of her head and a fine rustle of petticoats, Nancy flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Poor Alison remained alone to chew the cud of this new development in her friend's mood as best she might. That Nancy should thus mount the virtuous high-horse took her inexperience totally by surprise. She conceived the figment of the 'friendship' to have long since been cast aside; but she was evidently wrong, it died a lingering death. The girl was hopelessly at sea; she began to doubt herself. Was she really evil-minded? Did she actually suspect evil where no evil was? Presently Nancy came back, her fit of anger gone, replaced by one of virtuous resignation. She kissed Alison sweetly on the cheek.

'I forgive you, Ally!' she said, with the most perfect air of injured innocence. 'You are young, you do not understand! You are influenced by the cruel world! I declare I think you've been too much with Herries lately in all these tiresome visits of his, and are become infected with his horrid narrow manner of thought. Ah! be my own sweet Ally again, and we shall not quarrel.' Alison submitted to the kiss and to the reconciliation in meek bewilderment, hardly now capable of aught else.

These were very sad days for Alison, for evidently Herries held himself aloof. What else, under her incriminating silence, could he do? She asked herself this, and found no answer. Yet she would listen for his footsteps on the stair, and scan the empty streets for his familiar figure--empty to her because she never met or saw him all these dreary days. One afternoon she sat alone in the little parlour--for Nancy, after a bad night, was lying down in her room. She was so deep in thought, sitting away by the little window, her hands idle over the work in her lap, that she heard nothing, and it was only when she suddenly turned round that she found her thoughts had taken visible form. Herries himself stood in the doorway.

For him, too, it was a supreme moment, because he put out his whole strength against his love, and for once love conquered. He had told himself he had not come to seek Alison, and had given himself the shallow pretext of bringing his cousin's monthly money allowance. But now ... he closed the door, and in a minute his arms held Alison, and with a touch, half rough, half tender, he was pushing the darling curls from her white temples and kissing them. Yet even now they heard Nancy moving in her room, and knew they had not a moment.

'Alison,' whispered Herries, hoarsely, 'I wish to God you would go home. Go home, and I will say not another word, but come and ask you from your parents.' ... But Alison pushed him from her with her arms--him, and the terrible temptation of his words.

'I can't go home!' she said, and ran from the room, meeting Nancy, who entered.

'Well, cousin,' the latter exclaimed, with her own undaunted sprightliness, 'here's an unexpected honour! 'Tis some time since you visited this humble roof.' But Herries turned a moody look upon his relative.

'We have not come to an understanding yet on the subjects of my last visit,' he said grimly. 'But I daresay you know me too well to believe that I have been inactive in the matter. I have taken measures to prevent the visits of a certain unsuitable person to your house.'

'Indeed!' said Nancy, meekly, gathering up her forces for the fray, and rapidly coming to the conclusion that meekness would suit her best; if feeble as a weapon, it would at least be baffling to her adversary. Herries continued--

'If you have no sense of what is fitting or unfitting for a young woman in your peculiarly delicate circumstances, others must exercise it for you. That such a man as Burns should visit your house as an intimate is worse than unfitting--it is a slur upon your reputation. He is openly a profligate, and his _bonnes fortunes_ with women everywhere are become a bye-word. If you cannot protect yourself against the danger of his society, you must be protected.' Nancy had cast down her eyes and looked the image of innocence.

'You are too much the master here, Archie,' she meekly said, 'and I and my poor infants are too directly dependent on your bounty for your word to be questioned. No doubt you are wise. If you have forbidden Mr. Burns my house, of course he will be forbidden.' Herries looked suspiciously at the smooth, downcast face of his cousin. He did not believe a word she said--he never did. But she baffled him.

'Have you no conscience,' he said angrily, 'that you have subjected to the influence of Mr. Burns a girl like that one yonder--your guest--an inexperienced young creature committed to your charge, and for whom you are responsible? Has no thought of her ever troubled you?' Nancy assumed a little troubled air of guilt, fidgeting with the fringes of her apron.

'La, Archie,' she said, 'poor Alison! Well, 'tis her sweet voice that has attracted the poet here, I may tell you that. And if she is--may be, for I've no certain knowledge of it, mind you--a little smit, what harm? Girls love these soft sensations--'tis their life. But lud, Archie! fancy talking of such things to you,' and she gave a little amused laugh. Herries looked at her with a helpless dislike. His eyes were full of a dumb and angry pain that could not get itself spoken. He had always despised this little woman--an error of judgment, for such little women are full of power, and have swayed kingdoms in their day. Now, with callous little hands, she turned the dagger in his heart. Heavens! how she made him suffer--unconsciously, it was true, but he had a bitter feeling that the will was there.

'Is Miss Graham gone out?' he asked uneasily.

'La! cousin, I can't tell you,' said Nancy, carelessly. 'I daresay--she's often out. I can't keep a constant dragon's eye on a great girl like that. I'm no tyrant, and she has her liberties.' Herries turned away impatiently; there was nothing to be gained in remaining with his cousin but added uneasiness. He left her house a bitterly dissatisfied and anxious man.

*CHAPTER XXXV.*

Herries's homeward way led him past the house where his partner, Creighton, lay, now in the last stages of consumptive illness. He had been there very often of late, and, more than one night, had watched beside the sick-bed until morning. During the early stages of his illness, Mr. Creighton had always asked each day for Alison, and been well satisfied with the answers which Herries gave him. But latterly these kind and eager questionings had ceased, and in increasing fever and weakness the man was gradually losing touch with the things of this life. Yet there had been a rally only that morning and the day before. A forlorn hope sprang up in Herries's heart that his partner's sagacity might help him once again. He would tell him his trouble--he would unburden himself. Creighton was a long-headed, a shrewd man, and as secret as the grave towards which he was hastening.

Herries quickened his steps, and when he came to the stair he mounted it with a renewed energy in his gait. Before he reached the sick man's door he heard his voice--speaking out much more strongly than of late--and his hopes arose. Mr. Creighton was sitting up in bed, unimaginably gaunt and pale; a thin red colour made a patch on either sunk and waxen cheek, and his eyes were very bright. But, alas! when they were turned on Herries there was no recognition in them, and his loud, eager talk was the mere babble of delirium. The names upon his lips were names that Herries had never heard; they were doubtless those of the man's home and youth so resolutely put behind him, so hopelessly divided from him by the yawning gulf of some bitter, early quarrel. A woman's name he uttered so often, and with such poignant meaning, that Herries, bending over him, asked again and yet again if she were not one who could be sent for. He could not know that the earth had covered her for thirty years in that parish graveyard, away among the Pentlands, where Creighton, one evening not long since, had craved his partner to see him buried. Now his unmeaning voice went on and on, monotonous, painful, terribly sad. Herries turned away at last in bitterest silence. Creighton's dog, that crouched upon the bed, half starved, growled at his footsteps as he crossed the floor.

Herries went out into the exquisite spring evening, but it brought him neither peace nor comfort. What to him were the crocus tints behind the looming castle masses? what to him the evening star that swam and shone there? In his heart were love, bitterness, and battle. Battle--for presently his enemy must return, might even now be returning, and then the tussle must begin. Herries was perfectly conscious that his letter to Robert Burns was a sheer challenge. How was he to enforce the order he had given? With what weapons could he fight a peasant? The duel would have been his remedy--easy and obvious--with an equal, but in those days men did not fight with churls. What combat of the kind was possible with a man who had never touched a sword or lifted a firearm in his life? Herries was full of fight--sharp-set, determined, coldly eager for the fray. You could see it in the steel-blue glitter of his eye, the scornful lift of eyebrow and dilation of the fine carved nostril. A game terrier, wiry with pluck, and bristling with defiance, matched against a mastiff. Such might have seemed to a sporting onlooker the chances of the fight. Alison, meanwhile, woman-like, had no excitement of a coming battle to make her forget her pain. She, too, thought of the enemy's return, but with a cold terror, feeble and helpless. In her little closet, all alone, she would lie and think, forcing the tears back into her heart.

And even then he was coming--he had come--that common enemy, riding up the crowded streets upon his borrowed nag in the broad light of the lengthening day. He had ridden all the way from Dumfries by easy stages, jolly stages, most rollickingly punctuated by the flowing bowl and much good company. Thus he came in by the town gate, riding boldly for all men to see, loose rein and roving eye, king of all hearts, commander of the blood of men. The people turned to look at him, and laughed for pleasure; some called aloud, 'Guid e'en t'ye, Robbie!' while others walked at his pony's shaggy shoulder and stretched eager hands upward for his grip. So, with half the town to welcome him, came Robert Burns back to the Auld Reekie of his songs and sins.

Certainly Alison's lucky star was on the wane, for Mr. Creighton died that night, and died intestate. And so she had missed a fortune and lost a friend.

*CHAPTER XXXVI.*

Burns, on this occasion, had returned to Edinburgh in what was, for him, really rather a chastened mood. His absence had been on important business, and that business had progressed to such a degree that he felt himself on the verge of a great crisis in his life, and was well minded that it should be a crisis for good and not for evil. He had surveyed the farmlands in the exquisite valley of the Nith, and had made 'a poet's, not a farmer's choice' of Elliesland, where he intended to settle forthwith and turn farmer in serious earnest. Furthermore, an appointment in the Excise had been insured to him by the interest of powerful friends, and that was another practical, sensible, wage-earning feather in his cap. Of certain interesting domestic complications at Mauchline it hardly does to speak with any degree of knowledge or understanding, but there can be little question that, at this time, there loomed large in the poet's mind some idea of an arrangement with the patient, twin-bearing Jean, which should do some tardy justice to that long-suffering female.

It is fairly plain, in any case, that during his absence in the south, Sylvander had cooled considerably to his Clarinda. Not that he did not adore her still, in a proper poet's way, but he had begun to adore someone else, with practical ends in view. So matters with his fascinating little friend in the Potterrow must be brought to a pleasant conclusion. It would cause him more than a pang, but still, there must be an end to all things--the best of friends must part. He meant to remain in Edinburgh for a few days only, merely to wind up business matters with his publisher and pay a few visits of farewell. Then he would turn his back upon the capital of his triumphs and his disappointments, and turn over a new leaf in life and love.

This might have happened without further hindrance, and things have settled themselves comfortably to everybody's satisfaction (except, perhaps, Clarinda's), had it not been for Herries's most unlucky and misguided letter. This awaited the poet at his lodging, under a pile of correspondence accumulated for him by his henchman Nicol. This admiring attendant of genius also awaited the arrival of Burns in his rooms, and the two spent a convivial evening of reunion. The Bard was already elevated enough in his spirits, owing to the festive nature of his journey, but it was with that kind of elevation which turns to querulousness at very slight provocation.

'Here's letters enough to last a body a lifetime,' he grumbled, turning over a pile of papers, where several missives of Clarinda's lay, still unopened, it is sad to state. 'Here's a packet from some unknown,' he added; 'thick paper, and a fine crest upon the seal.' He broke it open. As he read the few lines in Herries's upright, clear-cut writing, the blood rushed in purple to his face, and he started to his feet.

'Now, by all that's damnable, this is too much!' he shouted, his very eyes becoming bloodshot.

'Canny, lad, canny,' said Nicol, soothingly, accustomed to the poet in his cups. 'What's up now?'

But it was no mere vinous rage that held the Bard. He was touched in his tenderest and sorest points--his independence and his sense of social inferiority.

'Up?' he cried, 'up? Why, here's a miserable hound of a pettifogging lawyer--a wretched, thin-blooded, whey-faced whipper-snapper that I could crush to the wall wi' the one hand o' me--has the damned impudence to infringe upon my liberties and tell me that he forbids me Mrs. Maclehose's house!' He tossed the letter to his friend, who read it with a kindling eye. Unluckily, it was couched in terms precisely those to enrage Nicol also, not merely as a partisan, but because he acridly resented the tone and attitude of a superior.

'"Persons not of her station, or known to her immediate circle,"' he quoted with a sneer. 'And who is Master Herries that he writes so fine?'

'Am I not telling you?' cried Burns, irritably. 'A damned, pettifogging George Street writer, some cousin or guardian of my Clarinda, who, because he contributes a few paltry pence to the maintenance of her bairns, satisfies the miserable, half-inch soul of an unfeeling, cold-blooded, pitiful bigot by standing censor to everything she does that is above his dungeon bosom and foggy head! I've seen him but the once, but _I_ know him! Ay, and I'll know him to some purpose now, be damned to him! Here, out of my light, man! Let me go--' He had seized a cudgel from a corner of the room and apparently meditated an instant adjournment to the lawyer's premises, so armed. But Nicol interceded.

'Wheesht, lad!' he urged. 'Steady a wee thing, now! Wait a bittie and see if we cannot forge some prettier mischief to Master Herries than a mere thrashing. That's like to be more of a scandal to you than to him. Trust him to have half-a-dozen lacqueys at his beck and call that would put you to the door or ever you could win by to the man. They know better, these lily-livered, dirty, skunking lawyer-bodies, than not to guard themselves well against honest men's anger.'

Burns paused. Nicol's counsels had generally some weight with him, more especially when, as at the present moment, after a merry afternoon, he was not perfectly certain of his actions.

'How'll I win at him? How will I touch him?' he said, flinging down the stick and frowning heavily.

'You've a full right to a pretty revenge,' said his friend; 'and surely you can't want of opportunity. The gate's open to you that gives you entry to the man's very hearth.'

'Ay, that's true,' said Burns, with a grin, as he thought of the cosy fireside in the Potterrow.

'Can't you make the fellow jealous?' said Nicol.

'If he had the passions of a buck-rabbit, weel could I!' said Burns, vindictively. 'For there's his lass--I caught him with her in the dark--and then, under his very nose, I had to pay her some particularity of attention in order to put him off the scent with my Clarinda. 'Tis that muckle lass you have some grudge against yourself.'

'Why, then,' cried Nicol, warming to congenial mischief, 'if we cannot brew a fine broth out of this bonny concatenation, the devil take us for silly, shiftless bodies! I'm none so loth, I can tell you, to have a fling at miss for all her haughty airs. You shall pretend to love her. Write to Master Lawyer; tell him you never dreamed to lift presumptuous eyes to his worship's exquisite relative, but are contented with her governante--or whatsoever the lass is. I'm thinking that will do our trick.'

'Eh?' said the poet, doubtfully. He was dazed with wine, and hardly understood the nature of that which was proposed to him. Nicol got the ink-pot, a sheet of paper, and a pen, which he thrust into his friend's somewhat unsteady hand.

'Write, now,' he began eagerly--'something in this style: "Honoured sir"--(letters in the third person are so damnably difficult to put, I can't away with them!)--"Honoured sir: I am in due receipt of your late favour, which hath awaited me at my lodging this long time in my absence on a journey. I crave your pardon for this delay in answering the same. I also crave your patience for offence given in the matter of my visits to the house of your honourable cousin, Mistress Maclehose. But sure, sir, you were not so mistaken, on the one occasion that we met there, as to confuse the object of my attention with any other. It was most assuredly not--as, sir, you might have seen--your honour's relative, who, in truth, is far above my sphere, but the young female abiding with her at this time. And I would humbly beg of your kindness not to interrupt this little affair of an honourable affection, which is like to be in a fair way to become reciprocal...."'

'"Reciprocal"!' said Burns, pausing, with a confused laugh. 'Man, but that's a muckle lee! The lass hates me, sure's death--I know not why.'

'Then serve her right the more,' said Nicol, now bent upon mischief. He had a peculiar leaning to the coarse, practical joke, and was entirely callous to the sufferings of his victims in such cases, even had they done nothing to provoke his spite. The Bard looked yet a little doubtful, and bungled over the letter. Had he been perfectly sober, it is unlikely that he would have lent himself to a device so mean and cowardly. Actions of this kind were not natural to him by any means, for, at anyrate, where men were concerned, he was honest and straightforward in his dealings. But Nicol poured a stream of specious arguments into his buzzing ears; all was fair in love and war--and this was both--and all that his letter, at the worst, would lead to was a lover's quarrel, which would doubtless be patched up far sooner than the delinquents at all deserved. Thus cajoled, the poet finished and folded up the letter, and consented to its dispatch.

Then he fell to brooding over Herries's note again, and over that clearness came to him on one point at anyrate. For to this hot-blooded son of Adam the high-handed prohibition it contained was fuel added to his flame. He had all but virtuously resolved to cut matters short with his Clarinda; but now that resolution went to the four winds, and a very different one sprang into determination in its place. He scrawled a letter to the Potterrow, to which both wine and passion lent a warmth he had hardly yet dared to express. And Nicol sallied forth with both epistles--this time, in spite of the lateness of the hour, with no complaints.

*CHAPTER XXXVII.*

Mrs. Maclehose, on the following evening, stood in the window of her little room, lost in agitating thought. The poet's impassioned letter was in the bosom of her dress, and seemed to burn her, but with a delicious pain. At almost any other juncture of her commerce with the man it would have frightened her; for the little woman, in spite of her impetuosity, had some obscure element of the national caution in her nature. But now she was in a state when caution must give way to the fiercer and more primitive passions. For nearly three weeks now she had suffered a frenzy of jealous love, and during the absence of her friend, as she called him, was not only tortured with a longing for the sight of him, but also with horrible fears of his infidelity. She had pictured him as returned within the sphere of the influence of Jean Armour--a person she insisted upon regarding as a low-minded, artful hussy with designs upon the Bard. License to almost any degree she would allow the man, whose nature she made allowances for with an amazing liberality; it was the idea of matrimony she dreaded with an anguish of jealous dread. But the poet's letter had brought ample reassurance: he was returned to his Clarinda, more in love with her--more impassioned, than when he went away. He implored for an interview that night, but it must be private. He had matters to discuss of the utmost importance, but they were for her ear alone. He conjured her, by all that was most sacred in love and friendship, to let no third person intrude upon the happiness of their first reunion. Well ... she would not tell Alison that he came, and Alison would go to bed: that was all. But then, the girl slept so light, and had an ear so sensitive ... she must, in that confined space, hear voices...? Nancy knit her soft brows, and behind them, her busy, tortuous little brain made plans.

Alison had been out of doors with Willy that afternoon, and returned somewhat late. It was a blustering spring evening, with a shrewd edge to the wind, and when the girl came into the parlour at the late tea-time there was an unquestionable redness about her eyelids. Alas! it was not the wind that smirched her fair good looks, but tears. For poor Alison, in these days, would cry a little, uncomforted, in her closet, choking back the tears.

'Why, Ally, you have got the cold!' said Nancy. 'I can see it in your eyes.' Alison turned quickly from the light.

'I never get the cold,' she said. But Nancy insisted, and harped upon the ailment--she was convinced that Alison had an influenza coming.

'When you go to bed, which I'd have you do early, love,' she said purringly, 'I'll give you something that will check the horrid thing. A few drops of _aqua vitae_ in water are infallible at an early stage.' Healthy Alison, who took no medicine stuff, would stoutly have rebelled at any other time, but now she was anxious to divert attention from her red eyes, and promised to take the remedy. When bedtime came, Nancy bade her undress and get into her bed and she would bring her the dose with her own hands.

She was away some little time in her own room, and Alison heard the clink of glass against glass as she prepared the decoction. Water had gone into it, and a few drops of the _aqua vitae_, which turned the water into an opaque whiteness. And then Nancy had paused and looked round her with a guilty look. She took another bottle from the shelf beside her bed, and measured a portion of its contents into the half-full wine glass. It was her own sleeping draught--a half dose.

It must not for an instant be supposed that there was anything of the villain in Nancy's composition, or that she intended to do her friend the smallest injury. She well knew that the sleeping draught was of the mildest order--a perfectly harmless drug, as the physician had positively assured her. And she put in only the half dose. Nevertheless, as she carried it into the girl's room, and gave it to her, it was with an averted look. She could not bear to meet Alison's eyes, and her little hand so shook that a part of the liquid was spilt upon the sheet. Then she hurriedly kissed her friend, put out the light, and left her.

Alison lay awake some time, for, upon perfectly healthy nerves, a sleeping draught will occasionally have the reverse of its intended effect. She seemed to get a headache and to become restless. She heard Nancy's movements in her room with peculiar distinctness, and supposed that her friend was preparing for bed. In reality, the deluded little woman was changing her dress from a common to a dainty one--adding, in every ribbon and coaxed trick of curl, to the danger that awaited her--moving furtively, with many a pause, to listen if Alison stirred, or Jean in the attic above. Then a kind of buzzing drowsiness came over Alison--disagreeable, because she seemed to want to fight against it. But it overcame her; and then for some hours she did certainly sleep, and much more heavily than was her wont.

When she awoke, it was with a confused, unpleasant feeling, and the sound of voices in her ears. The room was dark, but a line of light showed under the door. Alison sat up and listened. A curious, nightmare-like sense of danger was upon her, indefinably oppressive. Her ears were acute. She heard Nancy's voice, and a man's voice, unmistakably. Clearness came to her, though her temples throbbed and the drug she had been given buzzed in her head. She slipped to the floor, searched for, but could not find her shoes, groped for her wrapper, and threw it over her shoulders. She crept to the door and lifted the latch noiselessly.

The passage lamp was out, but the parlour was in a glow of brightness. The door had swung open with its old trick, and a stream of light came from it. In brilliant relief the little room and all it held stood out. And, in the circle of light, unconscious of all save each other, they stood--the tempter and the tempted. And behind Alison the big wag-at-the-wall clock, with a guilty twang, struck one.

One of Robert Burns's great labouring hands was clenched, and he leaned heavily on the table with it. Alison could see the veins in it throb and swell with the hot, ungovernable blood. His other arm held Nancy--Nancy, whose little trembling hands covered her face--and who turned, as Alison watched her, to hide it against the man's powerful shoulder. The poet's face was in shadow, for it was bent over the woman. He spoke, but his voice was low and thick; Alison could not catch the words.

She only looked at them a moment, just till the clock struck. Then they moved with a start, and she also moved forward, until she too stood in the circle of light. Petrified, the lovers saw her both at once,--staring, chapfallen, as though they beheld a spirit: only a girl, indeed, with bare feet, and in her nightgown, sleep still in her wide eyes and curls scattered on her shoulders, but hedged about with the immutable dignity of innocence, and strong with the strength of right. She walked straight up to Nancy, and with a little jerk of effort took her into her own arms from the man's embrace, facing him boldly.

'It is too late for visitors here, sir,' she said simply. 'Mrs. Maclehose would have you go.'

The poet's arms dropped to his side and his jaw fell. His sun-browned face had become quite pale, and the words which stammered on his lips would not get themselves spoken. When he moved it was to fumble for his hat. Then he made for the door, without a look or word for those he left; and it might be said that he slunk, then and there, from the room and from the house.

Nancy had slipped from Alison's arms and lay on the floor in a little huddled heap, moaning. Alison tried to raise her, but she would not rise.