I GO DOWN TO MAUCHLINE
Of all this rhyming gaiety, it will be remembered, I had no knowledge
at the time, being still at Alton, chafing under the business in hand,
and awaiting each post, as the days went by, with a beating heart and
the expectancy of some unworded trouble.
The twelfth day passing without news, I cut the end of my business off
altogether, and started for Stair, it being my thought that Nancy's
visiting would be ended and that I should find her there awaiting my
return. The home-coming was a dreary one, the house darkened and
unsociably redd up, and I sat alone to a dinner, served me by Huey, in
a depth of gloom and melancholy which he had never reached before,
debating whether to write to Mauchline or to go down myself the
following morning.
While turning the matter over in my mind, Mr. Francis Hastings's name
was brought in to me, and the humor of the situation struck me with
some force, for here was a girl partially engaged to two men, off
visiting a third, with a fourth clamoring at the door to be her
husband.
"Come in," I cried heartily to the large-faced young man when he
appeared at the doorway. "I'm glad to see ye, Mr. Hastings. Will ye
have a glass with me?" and I pushed the decanter toward him.
"You doubtless know my errand, Lord Stair," he said, refusing the
brandy by a shake of the head. "You had my letter?"
"Some time since, but I put off answering it, thinking--" I hesitated;
the truth being that the matter had passed clean from my mind after
reading the epistle--"thinking a talk would be better."
"Have you any objections to me?" he asked, coming straight to the
point.
I had a great many, but it was scarce possible to name them under the
circumstances, and I shuffled a bit.
"To be frank," said I, "there are obstacles."
"What are they?" he asked, and the conceit in his tone conveyed the
thought that for the honor of an alliance with him obstacles should be
overcome.
"Well," said I, "there's Mr. Danvers Carmichael, who is perhaps the
chief one; and his Grace of Borthwicke, another; and Duncan of
Monteith, and McMurtree of Ainswere--and others whose names I could set
before you."
"And does she love any of these?" he asked.
"She has not taken me into her confidence," I answered; "but my honest
advice to you is to forget all about her."
"I think," he said, testily, "with your permission, I shall ask her
myself."
"Yes, yes! Do!" And as I thought of all that would probably come to him
for his audacity I urged it still further: "Do, by all means!" I cried.
He had scarce gone from the house, and I was still laughing a bit over
the affair, when Huey, with a changed face and an excited voice, came
back to me from the kitchen.
"There's a man, hard ridden, in the doorway with a letter which he will
give to none but your lordship," said he, adding the thing which told
the reason for his pale face and hurried voice: "He's from Mauchline."
A premonition of evil came over me, and as the fellow handed me the
billet a sudden chill and shaking seized my body, so that I was forced
to put the letter upon the table to keep the writing steady enough for
me to see. It was from Janet McGillavorich, short to exasperation, and,
with no set beginning, read as follows:
"Nancy is taken ill and lies delirious at the King's Arms in
Mauchline. We have a doctor here, but I have become alarmed, for it
is now the fourth day that she has been unconscious. I think it
better to let you know just how matters stand, and to ask that ye
come down yourself immediately upon receipt of this and bring Dr.
McMurtrie with you.
"In haste,
"JANET MCGILLAVORICH."
If it be recalled that I had at this time no knowledge of the accident
to Janet's old house, could surmise no reason for Nancy's lying at a
public inn, and was in an agony of fear for her life, the wretched
state of my mind can well be understood; but I was still capable of
quick action, and within an hour Dr. McMurtrie, the end of his dinner
carried in a bag, and myself were upon the Mauchline road.
The crawling of the coach through the darkness, the insane waits for
horses, the many necessary but time-consuming details told upon my
distraught mind to such an extent that when I descended at the door of
the inn I felt an old and broken man. The memory of another ride which
I had taken was heavy upon me, my teeth chattered, the horror showing
in my face so plainly that Dame Dickenson read my thought on the
instant, and coming forward, plucked me by the sleeve.
"She's better," she said, and at the sound of the words I put my head
on the table and wept like a child.
Our presence being made known to Mrs. McGillavorich, she came down
immediately, with a white face and tired, sleepless eyes.
"She's having the first sleep in three days," she said, "and the old
doctor thinks the worst is by. But ye'd best not disturb her. Let her
bide quiet now."
Dr. McMurtrie and I took turns by the bedside that day and night, but
she knew neither of us, lying, in her waking moments, with scarlet
cheeks and wide, delirious eyes, singing snatches of songs, weaving
meaningless words together, and crying over and over again, "It's of no
use--no use--no use," in a kind of eldritch sing-song which wrung my
heart.
"She's had some kind of a shock," Dr. McMurtrie said, "one that she'll
be some time getting over, I fear."
As to the cause of the trouble the whole house was as mystified as
myself.
"I know as little of the reason of her illness as you do yourselves."
Janet said, after she had narrated the doings at the inn. "On Tuesday,
a little after noon, she came to me saying that she'd been in such an
excited state, she was off alone to collect herself by a walk, and
while she was out she passed a girl who was putting some linen on the
bleach-green; Nancy spoke to her concerning some lace with which the
garments were trimmed, and as they talked Rab Burns passed them, with
four or five of his cronies, and the girl broke into a passion at sight
of him, shaking her fist after him and calling him foul names as he
went down the lane.
"At this, another girl, who was soon to be a mother, came weeping from
the house, and Nancy emptied her purse to them before they parted.
"When she came in," Janet went on, "her face was white and set, her
eyes seeing nothing, and when Rab Burns sent up his name to her that
night she said to the maid, 'Tell Mr. Burns that Miss Stair will not
see him!' and sat by the window, staring into the starlight, where I
found her at five the next morning with the fever upon her and her wits
gone gyte."
I have had much sorrow in my time, but the agony of suspense and
suspicion with which the next few days were filled pales every grief of
my life that went before this time. Was it possible, I asked God, that
my wee bit, wonderful lassie, my Little Flower, had bloomed to be
trodden under foot by a plowman of Ayr?
McMurtrie drove me from the house at times for rest of mind as well as
exercise, and one night, at the week's end, having walked farther than
usual, I entered an ale-house in the Cowgate for something to quench my
thirst. There was a man standing by the window, and at sight of him,
for it was Robert Burns, and the time was not yet come for me to say to
him what might have to be said, I drew back, thinking myself unseen,
and closed the door. I had gone but a few steps in the darkness when I
felt a hand clapped on my shoulder, and turning, found Burns himself
beside me.
"Come back," he cried, "come back; I want a word with ye, Lord Stair.
You've come down," he cried, "to take your daughter from the company of
those unfit for her to know. And you're right in it. But the thought
that ye showed toward me when you went out to avoid my company is
wrong; wrong, as I must face my Maker in the great last day! I've had
my way with women; but in this one case I've taken such care of her as
ye might hae done yourself!
"She's found the truth of me, and our friendship is by with forever! I
know that well.
"But tell her from me, will ye not, that such righting of a wrong as
can be done I am determined to do, and that the lassie she kens of is
to be my wife as soon as she chooses. Tell her," and here the tears
stood big in his eyes, "that I am sorrier than I can ever say that her
mind has been assoiled by my wicked affairs--" and here he broke forth
into a sudden heat--"God Almighty!" he cried, "if a woman like that had
loved me, Shakespeare would have had to look to his laurels. Aye! and
Fergusson, too. The Lord himself made me a poet, but she might have
made me a man!"[6]
[6] Lord Stair mentions here that he afterward had from this same
girl (Mrs. Nellie Brown), the following description of the poet's
first meeting with the sister, Jean Armour:
"D'ye see Sam McClellan's spout over the gate there? Weel, it was
just whaur Rab and Jean first foregathered. Her and me had gaen
there for a gang o' water, an' I had fill't my cans first an'
come ower here juist whaur you an' me's stan'in. When Jean was
fillin' her stoups, Rab Burns cam' up an' began some nonsense or
ither wi' her, an' they talked an' leuch sae lang that it juist
made me mad; to think, tae, that she should ha'e a word to say
wi' sic a lowse character as Rab Burns. When she at last cam'
ower, I gied her a guid hecklin. 'Trowth,' said I, 'Jean, ye ocht
to think black-burnin' shame o' yersel. Before bein' seen daffin'
wi' Rab Burns, woman, I would far raither been seen speakin'--to
a sodger.' That was the beginnin' o' the unfortunate
acquaintance."
The marriage between the two was acknowledged to the world in
1787.--EDITOR.