Produced by Al Haines.
*THE RHYMER*
By Allan McAulay
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK :: :: :: :: :: 1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_All rights reserved_
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
_TO
MARY AND JEANIE_
*THE RHYMER*
*CHAPTER I.*
In the year of grace 1787, Mr. Graham of The Mains, a worthy gentleman
and laird of the county of Perth, had a family of seven daughters.
This, though hardly at that date amounting to a social crime, was an
indiscretion in a man of few acres and modest income. Moreover, his
partner in life was even now a blooming and a buxom dame, capable of
adding further olive branches to the already over-umbrageous family
tree. She had, indeed, but lately performed the somewhat procrastinated
duty of adding an heir to the tale of the seven lasses of The Mains.
This was as it should be--but it was quite enough.
It was market day in the autumn of the year, and Mr. Graham, who farmed
his own land, had attended the weekly market at the country town of
C----. He was about to jog home in the dusk, when he was accosted by a
neighbour and fellow-laird.
'Hey--Mains!' called out this personage. 'Bide a bit, man! It is in my
mind to do you and the mistress at The Mains a good turn.' Mr. Graham
drew rein.
'It is not I that will miss a chance of that,' he observed, in good
humour.
'Well, to be straight to the point,' said his friend, 'I have a friend
biding with me at this time, one Jimmy Cheape--you may have heard me
speak of him, for he was a crony of our college days. He is a man of
substance in the county of Fife--and he has a mind to be made acquainted
with you and your lady.'
'Ay, ay!' ejaculated Mr. Graham. 'A most laudable and polite wish,
truly, and not to be gainsaid!'
'He is in search of a wife,' said the friend, slily, with a dig in the
ribs of the laird with the butt-end of his whip, 'and I bethought me
that a presentation to a man with seven daughters was the very thing to
be useful. So I promised it, and he jumped for it--as keen as a cock at
a groset.'
Mr. Graham pricked up his ears.
'That's the wife's business rather than mine,' he observed, cautiously.
'Well! let the wife see him, but see him yourself first. Yonder he is.'
The speaker pointed to a burly form, standing with its back to the
friends. 'I will bring him forward;' and he proceeded to be as good as
his word.
When Mr. Cheape, of the county of Fife, presented his countenance to his
possible father-in-law of the future, he was found to be a gentleman of
decidedly mature age, already grey, deeply pitted with the smallpox, and
of no very alluring address. His salutation was gruff, and his eye
shifty.
'To-morrow,' he remarked, with rather alarming abruptness, immediately
after the form of introduction had been gone through, 'I will wait upon
Mrs. Graham at The Mains, at about eleven of the clock in the morning.'
With that he stumped off, for he added to his other peculiarities that
of being rather lame of one leg.
'Ah! he means business, you see!' said the intermediary, admiringly.
The corners of Mr. Graham's mouth, which had taken an upward inclination
at the first salutation of his friend, now drooped considerably, as he
gazed after his new acquaintance.
'He is somewhat well on in years,' he remarked, dubiously, 'and there is
not that about him that will take a lass's fancy.'
'Tut!' said his friend, 'there is well-nigh one thousand a year about
him and his bonny bit place of Kincarley in the county of Fife; and he
has fine store of plate and plenishing of linen--so he tells me--as well
as the siller. And _that_ takes a lass's fancy fast enough, let me tell
you.'
'Well, maybe,' said the laird, and he gave the reins a jog. 'Good-night
to you, and you shall hear what betides.'
Mr. Graham jogged home along the muddy roads towards The Mains in a
meditative mood. The thought of his seven daughters often sat heavy on
his mind. He could not portion them, and, with or without portions, it
was difficult to imagine how they could marry or settle in a part of the
country so remote, that society could hardly be said to
exist--daughters, as they were, of a man who could not possibly afford
to send them to share the gaieties of the capital, or even of the
distant county town. Yet their marriage was a fixed idea with his wife,
as he well knew--the only idea, indeed, for their future which it was
natural and proper, at that day, for her to entertain. Alison, their
eldest girl, was almost twenty, and at that age her mother had been
already three years married and had a thriving nursery; two others, well
arrived at woman's estate, trod closely on her heels. Very well indeed
could the laird imagine with what enthusiasm his partner would welcome
the advent of a suitor, and a wealthy suitor, too. Yet he had vague
doubts as to whether he should have placed this temptation within reach
of the eager mother of seven daughters. Perhaps it would have been
better to have declined the visit from Mr. Cheape once for all. For
although this obscure country laird of old-time Scotland had a rough
exterior, not differing greatly from that of a farmer or yeoman of the
better class, and though he rode a horse that sometimes drew the plough,
a clumsy figure in his brass-buttoned blue coat and miry buckskins, yet
he was a gentleman at heart, and an honest man to boot. He had been far
from admiring the exterior and address of Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, and
compunction assailed him when he thought of his Alison, or Kate, or
Maggie, subjected to the wooing of such a bear. However, it was their
mother's affair, he thought, with that comfortable shifting of
responsibility on to feminine shoulders which man has so gracefully
inherited from Adam. Besides, he looked forward to telling the news,
being a bit of a humorist in his own way. So he whipped up the old
horse into a heavy trot.
The Mains lay low and sheltered in the heart of an uninteresting
agricultural corner of the Perthshire lowlands. It was a low, rambling,
old house, of no pretensions--little better, indeed, than a farm--with
small windows in thick walls, and little low-ceilinged, ill-lighted
rooms. There were some fine sycamores about it, the abode of an ancient
rookery, and a grand lime tree grew in the field in front of the
house--so very old that no one knew or could guess its age. To the east
of The Mains lay its farm buildings, and beyond them again the
old-fashioned tangled garden. Further, and around on all sides, were
thick spruce woods, where the wild pigeons crooned in the summer, and
there were always cones for the gathering. Through gaps in the woods,
and from certain points of vantage on The Mains's land, you could see
the Highland hills. But to Alison and her little sisters these always
seemed far, far away--as though in another country altogether.
Lights in the deep-set windows welcomed the laird, and they were cheery
in the damp murk of the autumn evening. When he was divested of his
mud-stiffened riding gear, he stretched himself at ease before the
crackling fire in his own sanctum, and his lady joined him. It was a
long, low, dark room, lined with fusty books, which no one ever took
from the shelves. The mantelpiece was of solid stone, washed a pale
green, and--chiseled roughly--just below the shelf was a motto, rudely
finished off with a clam-shell, the crest of the Grahams:--
'_In human life there's nothing steadfast stands,_
_Youth, Glorie, Riches fade. Death's sure at hand._'
So it said. But neither the laird nor the lady of The Mains had any air
of paying attention to this warning of a somewhat despondent progenitor.
The mistress of the house was a handsome woman still, in spite of
household and maternal cares. Above the middle height, and of comely
figure, she had hair still raven black, a glowing colour in her soft
unwithered cheek, and the light of a strong and unimpaired vitality in
her fine, though rather hard, black eye. She had the complete empire
over her husband, which such a woman will ever have over men--a woman,
healthy, fresh, strong-willed, though not moulded, perhaps, in the most
refined of nature's moulds. He had married her in his youth--the
daughter of a small Glasgow lawyer, hardly, perhaps, his equal from a
social point of view. But this was a failing soon overlooked in the
blooming, hearty, managing bride, who brought fresh blood to mingle with
the rather attenuated strain of a genteel Scottish family, which boasted
more lineage than looks.
The laird stretched himself to the genial warmth, and prepared to enjoy
the communication of his bit of news.
'A gentleman is to visit us here at The Mains to-morrow in the morning,
wife,' he began, casually.
'Oh, ay,' said Mrs. Graham, in the tone of one who expects no pleasant
surprises. 'It'll be Cultobanocher or Drumore, likely, to speir about
the grey mare and her foal.'
'Not at all,' said the laird, 'but a stranger this time--one Cheape of
Kincarley, in the county of Fife, at this time abiding with Drumore.'
'And what will he be wanting with us?' inquired the mistress of The
Mains.
'A wife, it would seem,' said the laird, in a carefully-suppressed tone
of voice, but a twinkle in his eye.
'Tut, laird!' said the lady, crossly, 'you're joking, but none of your
jokes for me!' She indeed believed the news too good to be true, and
was wroth with the laird for tantalising her on so tender a subject.
'I am not joking--not I,' protested the husband and father. ''Tis the
living truth, as I sit here. This fellow will be over here to-morrow at
noon to see if he cannot choose a wife among our seven lasses.'
Then followed, in answer to a rain of questions from the excited lady, a
full and particular account of Mr. Cheape, his means and estate--all,
indeed, that the laird could tell. Mrs. Graham's face was flushed, her
eyes sparkling; the corners of her full, firm mouth twitched with
eagerness. Before the conversation was half over, she had the wedding
settled in her mind, with already a side-thought for the bride's dress,
and such scanty plenishing as could be spared from The Mains.
'And to think that I was putting poor Ally down for an old maid!' she
exclaimed, rapturously. 'The girl with never a man after her yet, and
then to have this rich husband flung at her head! She was born with a
silver spoon in her mouth, after all--poor Ally!'
'Bide a wee!' said the laird, cautiously. 'Wait till you see the man,
my woman! A grey beard, even like myself, and speckled like a puddock
wi' the cow-pox. I doubt the girl will get a scunner when she sees him.'
But his partner pounced upon his doubts with righteous anger.
'Laird,' she said, 'if I see you putting the like o' that into Ally's
head, I'll be at the end of my patience. Setting the lass against her
meat that gait--such foolery!'
'Lasses think of love--' began the laird.
'Love, indeed!' almost screamed the lady; 'and what right has _she_ to
think of love, and her almost twenty, and never a jo to her name yet, or
a man's kiss but her father's on the cheek o' her? When _I_ was her
age, well knew I what love was; but _she_--let her thank her stars she's
got this chance, and needna pine a spinster all her days!'
'Well, well,' said the laird, uncomfortably, 'manage it your own way.
I'll keep my fingers out of the pie. And sort _you_ Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley when he comes to-morrow, for I'll ha' none of him!'
His lady, finding he would respond on the subject no longer, bustled off
to her daughter.
*CHAPTER II.*
'Ally, Ally!' she called in her clear, strong voice all over the house,
'where are you, Ally?' and through the darkening passages she went in
eager search of her eldest daughter. The seven lasses of The Mains were
variously disposed of in the old warren of a house--in the lesser rooms,
in the attics under the roof, reached by a spiral wooden stair, on which
their young feet clattered up and down from early morn till early
bed-time.
At this moment Alison was putting to bed her two-year-old brother, the
'young laird,' and apple of all eyes at The Mains. She sat with him in
her arms at the tiny window of the nursery and crooned him to sleep, and
as she sang she looked out at the murky red sky behind the plane trees,
at the rooks circling and cawing on their way to bed, at the old lime, a
towering mass of black shadow in the gloaming. This was the scene that
Alison looked upon continually every evening of her life--this young
woman without lovers and innocent of kisses.
Mrs. Graham was breathing rather quickly by the time she stood at the
nursery door, and her first elated sentences were somewhat breathless.
'Braw news your father has brought home for you to-night, Ally!' she
began.
'Wheesht, mother!' said Alison, 'you will waken Jacky.'
'Ah!' said Mrs. Graham, knowingly, 'you'll soon have done with Jacky
now!'
'Sure,' said Alison, lifting round grey eyes to her mother's face, and
pressing Jacky's head close to her shoulder, 'I've no wish to be done
with Jacky;' and she put a kiss on the boy's curls.
'Tut!' said Mrs. Graham, impatiently, 'you might have little Jackys of
your own. Think you never of that, Ally?' Alison blushed in the dark:
it was not a fair question. Jacky was so sound asleep by this time that
the voices did not wake him, and she rose, laid him on the wooden cot
beside her own bed, and happed the clothes about him with deft movements
full of a natural motherliness.
'Come down now, Ally,' said her mother, 'I want you.'
Alison obeyed her mother, as hitherto she had always done, in the simple
management of her life.
'You are to get a man, Ally, after all,' said the lady, impressively.
'A husband, and a good one. Isn't that the brawest news ever you've
heard yet?'
Alison was not quite certain, but there is no doubt, simple soul that
she was, that she was impressed and awed, and that a flutter disturbed
her quiet heart. Alison had never read even the few romances of her day,
and knew nothing about love; and although she sang, in her sweet,
untrained voice, as she went about the house, the love-songs of her
country, often piercing in their pathos and passion--their language was
a sealed book to her. True, Kirsty the dairy-maid had a lover who put
an arm round her willing waist, and Alison had seen the pair walking so,
in many a gloaming, by the gate of the cow-park. Would _she_ have a
lover now, and an arm round her waist? Mrs. Graham did not dwell on
such things in the present interview with her daughter; but she spoke of
Mr. Cheape of Kincarley with solemn impressiveness; of his house and his
lands, and his plate and his linen, and Alison was no unwilling
listener. It was a calm-blooded, unawakened nature, this of Alison's
yet, moulded in the dim monotony of obscure country life, in daily
performance of humble duties; a heart stirred yet by no passion more
mastering than a sister's matter-of-course love for other sisters, and
the little brother, born so late. She was a sensible, steady girl, yet
only a girl, after all; and I do not say, that night, as she lay down in
her narrow, hard bed beside the softly-breathing baby-brother, that she
did not dream of a bridegroom and a wedding-dress.
Next morning, at the usual hour, Alison attended to one of her
accustomed duties, the care of a flock of young turkeys, in a meadow by
the farm. They were a late brood, and the object of Alison's most
anxious solicitude. This morning her mother had commanded her to put on
a better gown than usual, and to place upon her curls a fine mob-cap of
lace and cambric, whose flapping frills annoyed her. It was an antique
piece of finery, belonging to her mother's girlhood rather than to hers;
but fashions at The Mains were not advanced. Alison's looks were not
thought greatly of by her parents. She lacked her mother's brilliant
colouring and bold, black-eyed beauty. She was rather pale, indeed,
though with a healthy, even pallor that a touch of cold wind or a little
exertion easily brightened into a pleasing softness of pink. Her hair,
which would never grow beyond her shoulders for length, curled all about
her ears and neck--tendrils borrowed from the stubborn, reddish locks of
her father, only they were not red, but of a light, sunny brown. Her
face had the calmness and strength of clear-cut features, and she was
tall beyond the common, well and strongly made. Not an unpleasing
figure at all was she, as she stood calling to her turkeys, the autumn
sun catching at her hair, and shining in her grey eyes. Yet the hearts
of her parents misgave them, as they saw her, lest she should fail to
find favour in the eyes of Mr. Cheape of Kincarley.
For Mr. Cheape had arrived, and, with laudable punctuality, had stumped
into the library, where the laird, who had been talked round the night
before into a temporary acquiescence in his suit, waited to receive him.
To the pair, presently entered the lady of the house in her Sunday silk,
and genteelest manners. A gruff nod to the laird, and a stiff
inclination to his dame, was all the salutation vouchsafed by Mr.
Cheape, who then stood hitting at his boots with the whip in his hand,
and grunting at intervals.
''Tis a fine morning for the time of the year, and grand for lifting the
neeps,' began the laird, with a cough.
Mr. Cheape snorted. 'I'm not here,' he remarked, with plainness, 'to
discuss the weather and turnips. I'm come, ma'am, to be presented to
your daughters;' and he ignored the laird, and addressed himself to the
lady.
'To my Daughter Alison, doubtless?' said Mrs. Graham, with polite
firmness.
'Hum,' said Mr. Cheape, 'I understood there were seven of them.'
'We are blessed with seven girls, indeed,' said Mrs. Graham,
majestically. 'But our daughter Alison is the only one from whom we
could think of parting ourselves at this time. The rest'--coolly--'are
bairns.'
'I should like to see them all,' objected the suitor, who felt himself
being 'done.'
'You will see Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, composedly. 'You must e'en take
them as the Lord gave them--or want!' she added, with spirit. ('To
think,' as she said to her husband afterwards, 'if I hadna been
canny--he might ha' taken Susie or Maggie, as likely as not--and left
Ally on our hands!')
'Mr. Cheape is pleased to be plain and to the point,' here interrupted
the laird, not without sarcasm in his tone, which, however, was quite
lost upon his visitor. 'We have, indeed, seven lasses, and little to
give them, sir, and cannot therefore be over nice in the matter of their
wooing. Alison is at her turkeys in the east meadow, wife. Supposing
we conduct this gentleman to the spot, and see if he is inclined to make
a bargain of it?'
So Alison's fate approached her in this quaint fashion, Mr. Cheape
stumping at her mother's side, and the laird bringing up the rear, with
a comical eye on the suitor's burly back. They paused at a gate where
Alison could not see them, but they could see her in a patch of sun,
with the turkeys picking and cheeping at her feet. 'Is that the one?'
said Mr. Cheape, pointing at the object of his wooing with his whip.
'Our daughter Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, complacently, with an
introductory wave of the hand. 'But twenty, come the New Year time,'
for she much feared that Alison looked older.
Mr. Cheape seemed lost in thought and calculation. 'A knowledge of
fowls,' he said at last, heavily, 'is useful in a female.'
''Tis indispensable in the lady of a country mansion,' said Mrs. Graham,
cheerfully. 'And none beats Alison at that, let me tell you!'
'Alison, come here!' called her father. Alison turned round and obeyed.
When she approached the group which held her suitor, she curtseyed, but
the behaviour of Mr. Cheape at this juncture was so singular and so
disconcerting, that there was no time for a formal introduction between
the two. Whether it was the wide, all-too-frankly astonished gaze of
Alison's grey eyes, or the young lady's imposing height, or simply a fit
of bashfulness that overpowered him, cannot be said. But merely the fact
can be given, that at this delicate juncture the gallant wooer, with a
fiercer grunt than usual, and some muttered exclamation which no one
caught, incontinently turned tail and fled towards the house, the
distracted matron almost running in his wake. Alison and her father
were left together.
'Is that Mr. Cheape, sir?' enquired the daughter, gravely.
'Ay, lass,' said the laird. ''Tis even the great Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley, in the county of Fife!'
Alison said nothing, but with her chin in the air, and lilting the
flounces of her good dress above the wet grass she went back to her
turkeys. Her father laughed his jolly laugh. 'He will have none of
you, Ally, that's plain!' he called after her. 'So don't you be losing
your heart to his bonny face, I warn you!'
*CHAPTER III.*
But so very far was the laird of The Mains from being accurate in his
assertion of Mr. Cheape's indifference to his daughter's charms, that
when he re-entered the library, which he presently did, he found that
gentleman and his wife in the closest confabulation, the subject of
their discourse being no other than that of a contract of marriage
between Miss Graham of The Mains, and Mr. Cheape of Kincarley. The
latter gentleman appeared now to be much easier of demeanour.
'These matters,' he observed, almost jocularly, 'are better settled
without the presence of the lady!'
'But, God bless my soul!' cried the laird, 'you hardly saw the girl, or
she you--'
'Oh, she'll do, she'll do,' said Mr. Cheape, with an agreeable grunt,
but an air of hurry. 'An' now I must away: good-day, good-day!' He
stuck out a snuffy hand, which Mrs. Graham clutched with warmth. 'Sir,'
he continued, addressing the laird, 'if you will be pleased to honour me
with your company at dinner to-morrow night at four, at the King's Arms
in C----, we can discuss this matter at our ease. I am in a position to
act handsomely on my part, as I have informed your lady. But 'tis
better to discuss such matters between gentlemen. Good-day t'you.' He
had hurried off, and had scrambled upon his horse at the door, with some
assistance from that animal's abundant mane, and was jogging down the
approach, before the open-mouthed laird had found time or presence of
mind to accept or reject the invitation to dinner.
'Saw ever man the like of that!' ejaculated the master of the house,
gazing after man and horse.
'Saw ever woman the like o' you!' retorted his spouse, furiously,
'staring like a stuck pig after an honest gentleman that's done you the
honour to speir your penniless daughter, instead of shaking him warmly
by the hand!'
'I'd as lief shake the tatty-bogle by the hand,' said the laird,
provokingly. 'Wife, you're clever, but you'll never get Ally to stomach
yon,' and he indicated the disappearing Mr. Cheape with a derisive
finger.
'Will I not?' retorted the lady, with a defiant eye, 'ye sumph, John, to
take the bread out of a lassie's mouth like that, afore she's bitten on
it. Ye are even a bigger fool than I thocht ye!'
With such plainness was the much-tried mother of many daughters driven
to address their exasperating father. The laird laughed: but then and
there a serious marital tussle began, the kind in which the laird was
never victorious. Mr. Graham announced that he would not dine with Mr.
Cheape to-morrow night, or any other: that it was useless, that there
was no object in his putting himself about to do so, in as much as that
Mr. Cheape's proposals were preposterous, and not for a moment to be
seriously entertained. Mrs. Graham, on the other hand, asserted that,
dine with Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, at four of the clock to-morrow
evening at the King's Arms in C----, he, Mr. Graham of The Mains, in his
best blue coat and ruffled shirt, with powder in his hair--most
unquestionably would, and should. Gradually, the laughing mood went out
of the laird. For his lady intrenched upon money matters, and got him on
the raw there, as only a wife or a creditor can. The laird at this time
was an embarrassed man, and very eager to be quit of his embarrassments.
Previous to the birth of his son, and when it was thought he would not
have an heir, but that the entail, at his death, would send The Mains to
a distant cousin, he had been careless of money, and had considerably
burdened the estate. Now it was the wish of his heart to lift these
burdens, and leave an unencumbered inheritance to the young laird; and
if it was his wish, it was his wife's passion.
'What is to become of these lasses? Are they all to hang upon their
brother?' was the eternal burden of her cry. Twenty-four hours of
unremitted harping upon this subject, under all its aspects, reduced the
laird to a frame of mind in which he would have dined with Beelzebub,
had the dinner promised him a solution of his difficulties, and peace
with his wife. Needless to say, therefore, he dined with Mr. Cheape, of
Kincarley, on the appointed day and hour; and, moreover, did not come
home until past two o'clock on the following morning.
For, let it be remembered, these were the jolly days of the bottle, when
a man was no man who could not carry his port, and carry it home, too.
The laird of The Mains was no drunkard, but he had a head of iron and a
stomach of leather in the good old style of our ancestors. He was a
four-bottle-man with the best of them, and he chanced to find in Mr.
Cheape of Kincarley just such another hardened elderly cask as himself.
The two sat hour after hour, swallowing glass after glass, at first in
gloomy silence; but presently each began to mellow in his own way. The
laird's tongue was loosened, and he began to talk about his daughters
and his difficulties. Mr. Cheape lost his shyness, became genial and
generous; at any time, to do him justice, he was a man not niggardly in
money-matters. The settlements he proposed to make upon his bride were
more than handsome: to the impoverished laird they sounded princely. And
it is a fact--such are the wonder-working powers of the rosy god of
wine--that before the night was out, not only were the preliminaries of
a marriage contract agreed upon, but the laird had become a borrower on
his own account, and Mr. Cheape a lender, of certain sums that the laird
had been at his wits' end, for many a day, to lay his hands on. When he
got home, which he managed to do upon his horse with the utmost
propriety, he was not precisely in a condition to explain complicated
money transactions with absolute perspicacity. But the morning brought
explanations which were eminently satisfactory to the wife of his bosom.
Certain twinges of conscience indeed assailed the laird, and during the
morning's narration, he was not quite so comfortable in his mind as he
had been over-night. What about Alison's part of the bargain? But he
reflected that he was the father of seven penniless girls, and must
harden his heart.
Alison, meanwhile, made fun of Mr. Cheape in the attics, among her
sisters. True, there was a prick of disappointment at her heart, for
her mother had dangled a wedding before her eyes, and a wedding meant a
lover, of course. But the happy heart of twenty is sound and light, and
by next morning Alison had forgotten her disappointment, and Mr. Cheape
along with it. Her mother's early summons gave her no misgiving.
'Come with me to the big press in the east passage, Alison,' said the
dame, jingling a bunch of keys, and with the light of battle in her eye.
''Tis time we looked at something there, and I have a mind to have a
talk with you, besides.' And at this Alison's heart did certainly
jump--not pleasantly.
The big press in the east passage smelt agreeably of dried lavender and
rose leaves. Here was store of fine linen, and a few of the more valued
articles of personal apparel.
'Get out my wedding-silk, Ally,' commanded Mrs. Graham. Alison reached
up long arms, and got down the silk, which was laid by, with layers of
fine muslin between its folds. It was a superb brocade of sweet floral
bunches on a ground of greenish-grey; the flounces of Mechlin on it were
fragile as a fairy's web, and ivory-tinted with age. Mrs. Graham
fingered and examined the fabric; then she said, significantly:
'So, 'tis you that's going to rob me of my fine silk, after all, Ally?
'Tis just as it should be--my eldest girl!' Alison shook in her shoes,
for she knew well that determined inflection of the maternal voice.
'I don't understand, mother,' she managed to stammer.
'Tuts, nonsense!' said Mrs. Graham, sharply, 'you're no fool, Ally: you
understand fine. That honest gentleman you saw yesterday is to marry
you, and lucky you are to get him!'
'Sure, not _that_ man, mother!' cried poor Alison.
'And why not that man, miss?' retorted the matron with a rising colour
and an angry eye.
'He's as old as my father,' blurted out the reluctant bride, 'and has no
liking for me, for-bye!'
'And why should he ask you when he's seen you, if he has no liking for
you?' demanded the matron.
'Because no one else will have him, likely,' said Alison, in
desperation. She had never spoken in rebellion to her mother before,
and the effort it cost her was truly desperate. 'If I have to take that
man,' she plunged on recklessly, 'I'll be the laughing-stock of the
countryside and of my very sisters!'
'Alison,' said Mrs. Graham, in a more reasoning tone, for she felt her
own strength, 'you are a silly lassie, and just don't know the grand
chance you're wanting to throw away. Think what it will be to be a
married woman, wi' a house and man of your own--a man of substance,
too--and lord it over a whole countryside! Why, here, Ally, you're
little better than a nurse-girl and a hen-wife!'
'And I'd rather be a nurse-girl and a hen-wife all my days, than married
to that old man,' cried Alison, with a rising sob. 'He'll neither love
me, nor I him!'
'_Love!_' cried Mrs. Graham, with a blaze of fury, 'and who taught _you_
to speak of love, and you twenty, and never a lover near you! Set _you_
up to be saucy, indeed! I had had my choice long afore I was your age,
and might ha' turned up a neb at a decent man, maybe. But for the likes
of you, it's very different, let me tell you!'
'You lived in a town,' said poor Alison, in weak defence, 'and saw the
men.'
'Town or no town makes no difference,' said Mrs. Graham with lofty
superiority. 'The men come down the lum to likely lasses, and them
that's not likely may be thankful to get a chance at all. What's to
become of you all,' she continued, her tone of reasoning degenerating
into the high voice of the scold, 'you seven muckle, useless lasses?
Are you all to sorn on Jacky, poor wee man, for all his days, and take
the very bread out of his mouth?'
'I would not sorn on Jacky,' said Alison, with a quivering lip.
'Then get you a husband, and no nonsense!' said Mrs. Graham. ''Tis,
indeed, a settled business,' she went on, coolly, 'settled by your
father.'
'Oh, I'll not believe it!' cried Alison, fairly in tears. 'Let me see my
father first.'
'That you shall not,' said Mrs. Graham with force. Well she knew the
inevitable effects of a daughter's tears on that weak man. It became an
indispensable thing, in fact, that Alison should _not_ see her father,
and to that end firm measures must at once be taken.
'Up you get to your room, and stay there, miss, till you are of a better
mind,' said the stern mother of seven, who did not stick at trifles.
She chased Alison up the garret stair, shut the door on her, and turned
the key.
'A few days o' _that_,' she said to herself triumphantly, 'and she'll be
ready to jump at Mr. Cheape--honest man.'
*CHAPTER IV.*
I no not wish, in the very opening of her story, to give the idea that
Alison Graham was a girl of poor spirit. Perhaps she should have turned
upon her mother on the stair, or, at any rate, stood up for her freedom
with a bolder front. But the habit of Alison's life, up to this point,
had been obedience, and, in the days of which I write, parental
authority was no matter to be trifled with. It wanted a hundred years
yet to the birth of the Revolted Daughter, and to Alison, even the tacit
form of resistance which she was about to offer to her parents' wishes,
seemed a very terrible and almost wicked line of conduct. She sat down
on the creepie-stool by the little window, where she was wont to sing
Jacky to sleep every night, and was too much puzzled and too heavy at
the heart to cry. Presently her sisters came and tirled at the door,
wanting to know what was the matter; but the key was safely in the
maternal pocket, and Alison shut off from comfort and communion of these
friendly spirits. Then her tears began to flow, in very pity for
herself; but she was quite determined that she would have none of Mr.
Cheape.
'The lass will never be got to thole him, I doubt,' said the laird, with
a sigh. Now that there was a matter of money between him and Mr.
Cheape, his position was complicated, and he could no longer openly side
with his daughter.
'Leave that to me,' said Mrs. Graham, grimly. To her mind it was like
the breaking in of a colt or filly--a fling up, a few kicks over the
traces, and a little restiveness at first, to be treated with a firm
hand, judiciously low diet, and a new bit.
'She's saucy,' said the mother of seven. 'She'll be cured of that in a
day or two!'
'Do not be hard on poor Ally,' said the laird, sorely pricked with
compunction.
''Tis for her own good,' the lady replied, with no doubt upon that point
whatsoever.
In this awkward predicament it was lucky that the gallant wooer of Miss
Graham of The Mains gave no trouble. Mr. Cheape of Kincarley having, in
his opinion, safely secured a bride, was, in the meantime, returned to
the county of Fife, doubtless to make preparation for the impending
change in his condition. He required no silly assurances or fruitless
antenuptial interviews with the lady herself.
Thus Alison remained a prisoner in her little room, deprived of all her
daily tasks and little pleasures, and of all good cheer of warmth and
light and company. The actual prisoner's fare of bread and water was
indeed not hers, but clots of half-cold porridge and a sup of skim-milk
twice a day are not enticing provender, nor greatly calculated to keep
up a flagging spirit. Her mother was her only jailer, and with her own
hands dunted down this unsavoury dog's mess before her, with the
unceasing jibe upon her tongue--angry, persuasive, mocking, cruel, all
in turn. The weather, meanwhile, without doors, had broken for the
season, and the days were short and dark and dreary. The rain lashed
the little deep-set window, and Alison sat shivering beside it, and
listening to the howling wind, which whirled the dead leaves off the
trees and drove the protesting rooks from shelter to shelter. She was a
girl of great good sense and a clear head. She could see her mother's
point of view well enough. There were seven of them--she and her
sisters--and what was to become of them if they did not marry? She had
had no lovers, therefore it was quite true she had no right to be saucy.
But to marry Mr. Cheape! Her gorge rose at the thought of him, of the
ugly, pitted face, the grizzled, scrubby beard, the uncouth form and
fashion of the man. Surely that was not to be expected of her? No! So
Alison held out, and the dreary days dragged on, till all but a week had
passed.
Then, at dusk one night, when her heart was faint within her, and her
body faint too, for lack of fresh air and wonted food, her father,
having purloined the key, came creeping up to her attic--very quietly,
good man (indeed, upon his stocking soles)--so that the mistress,
engaged in hustling the maids in a distant laundry, should have no
chance of hearing.
''Tis a pity, all this, Ally,' he said, in the dark.
Alison did not trust her voice to answer.
'Were your mother not so doom-set on it,' went on the laird--'and sure
she ought to know what is best for lasses--I would say never mind, and
let Mr. Cheape go hang. But she's set on it, sure and fast, Ally; and
maybe it's not just such a bad thing as it looks.' He stopped and
coughed; nothing but his daughter's quick breathing answered him. 'He's
not a bonny man, I will say,' he continued; 'but 'tisn't always the
handsome faces and the fine manners that pay best in the end, Ally. Mr.
Cheape is most handsome in his dealings if he's not so in his looks;
and, on my soul, I think he would do well by a wife.' No answer yet.
'You would not help to ruin Jacky, would you, Ally?' urged the laird,
pathetically.
'Indeed, no,' said Alison at last, in a low voice.
'But ruin him you will in the future, if you let this chance go by,'
said the laird more firmly, for he was conscious of his advantage. 'Mr.
Cheape is a monied man, and generous with his money, and we have
profited by that already. I have taken a loan from him, at a nominal
interest, which has greatly eased my circumstances; but I cannot hold to
that if you give Mr. Cheape the go-by, Ally.'
'I didn't know of that, sir,' said Alison.
''Tis true,' said the laird, 'and not over much to my credit, for it
seems like the selling of you, lass. But 'tis for your own good in the
end, too, I swear, or I would hold back yet. What's your future, Ally,
but to feed the hens? And when we're gone--your mother and I--to feed
them to Jacky's wife, and she perhaps not so willing to let you.
There's not much lies before you here, my lassie.' It seemed not,
indeed.
'Then there's all your sisters--poor, silly bodies,' pursued the laird,
who knew his ground, in Alison's nature, better than did his wife,
because it was akin to his own weaker flesh. 'What a chance for them in
this braw marriage of yours! You can give them a lift, poor lasses,
such as we never can.... 'Tis not to ourselves alone we live in this
world, Ally!'
'No, sir,' said Alison, quietly. Then, all of a sudden, she reached for
the tinder-box, and, rising, lit the little cruisey lamp upon the wall.
By its weak flame, her father could see her standing before him, very
tall and straight, her face very white, the cheeks a little hollow with
a week of fasting, and the tumbled curls about her broad, soft brows.
'I will have to take Mr. Cheape, sir, I see,' she said, a little
doggedly, 'since it is best for everybody, and I will--if I _can_.'
'Now that's a sensible lassie!' cried the laird, 'and how pleased your
mother will be!' And, indeed, his own life, from that lady's
displeasure, had been little, if at all, pleasanter than Alison's for
the past week. 'Come, Ally, kiss your father! Things will be better
than you think for, and Cheape a better husband than many a young
spark.'
Alison was about to do as she was bid, when her quick ear caught a sound
outside, and she started away from her father's arm.
'Listen, sir!' she cried, 'didn't you hear the sound of wheels? It
seems like a chaise driving up.... Father,' she clutched the laird's
sleeve, and turned upon him a piteous face, white with fear, 'it will
not be Mr. Cheape come back?'
The laird shook her off, crossly; that frightened face gave a horrid
prick to his conscience.
'Tut, girl,' he said, 'don't be a fool! Mr. Cheape, indeed! 'Tis you
have been in disgrace, and don't know the news; indeed, I had forgotten
it myself. Your mother has a friend--'tis a Mistress Maclehose of
Edinburgh--comes to lie here for a night on her way back to the town,
from a visit. Fine and put about your mother's been--to get the best
room ready, and a dinner cooked, and all the best china out, and the
silver candlesticks and the tea-set, and all without you. I was for
having you down, but deil a bit! She's thrawn, is your mother, Ally,
when the notion takes her! But it will be all right now--and there, I
must away to bid welcome to this fine Edinburgh madam. She'll set you
all the fashions, Ally, and so cheer up!' And the laird hustled off,
well pleased with himself in the end. Ally listened to his heavy
footsteps on the wooden stair, but did not follow him.
*CHAPTER V.*
It had been on the second or third day of Alison's incarceration that
the mistress of The Mains had been thrown into a flutter by receiving a
dispatch from her almost forgotten friend, Nancy Maclehose, craving a
night's hospitality for old acquaintance' sake. The country lady now
wished to make a good show before the urban one. She could not rival
her in the fashions, or in modish gossip, but she could exhibit good
store of silver and fine linen, and could set a feast before her of all
the country delicacies.
'It'll be a queer thing if I'm not upsides wi' Nancy Maclehose,' she
remarked, 'for all the _belle_ that Nancy was; it didna bring her much.'
'Ay, ay, I remember her fine,' said the laird, 'nothing but a lassock
when we married, wife--but "pretty Miss Nancy" then, though hardly ten.
I mind her well when we were coortin', in the old Glasgow days--pretty
Miss Nancy!'
'There'll be none o' the "Miss" and little of the "pretty" about her
_now_, I'se warrant,' said Mrs. Graham, with meaning, 'a wife, and not a
wife, and a widow, and not a widow. There's little to be proud o'
there, that _I_ can see.'
'Ay, they discorded, to be sure,' said the laird. 'Yet he was a fine
sprig, young Maclehose, too. Ye'll mind all the clash about their
coortin' you got from Glasgow? That was a neat trick of his about the
coach--as neat a trick as ever a young buck played, to my thinking.'
'I never heed such clash,' said the lady, severely.
'Hoots!' said the laird. 'It was when miss was sent to Edinburgh to the
school, being become too forward for her age, as all were well agreed,
and Maclehose could not get acquaint with her, for all he had tried. So
he ups and takes every place in the coach she was going by to Edinburgh,
and so he got the lass to himself, and a bonny way to do it, too!'
'And what was the end of it all?' said Mrs. Graham, witheringly. 'If ye
must tell thae tales before these lasses,'--they were, indeed, seated at
table, and six pairs of ears were taking in with avidity these
indiscreet revelations of love's audacity,--'it ill beseems you, the
father of a family, to forget the lesson that's aye in them! But _I'll_
tell ye what came o' all that havering trash o' coortin' in a coach,
fast enough! They hadn't been married five years, when off goes the
fine young buck to live among savages at the West Indies, and leaves his
wife and bairns to charity at home. And that's love, misses! Love!'
she continued, in tones of immeasurable scorn, 'love, indeed! A guid
stick is a better name for it, for that's what it comes to in the end as
often as not. I e'en wish your silly sister Alison was down here this
minute to get this fine love story! It would do her good!'
And the mother of seven daughters, having pointed a moral with due
emphasis, went off to count napkins out of the linen press. The six
younger Miss Grahams then relaxed the solemnity of their listening
countenances, and chattered among themselves of this tale of a lover and
a coach, with a great impatience to behold its heroine.
That lady, meanwhile, in no very heroine-like mood, was being jolted
towards The Mains in an old country post-chaise--an interminable
cross-country journey along muddy by-roads, in the lashing rain and wind
of the autumn day. She almost repented the impulse which had induced
her to come out of her way to renew acquaintance with the friends of her
girlhood. 'It's little but sad memories I'm like to get for my pains,'
said she.
Stiff with long travel, cold, weary, and even wet, for the deluging rain
dripped through the covering of the crazy old trap, she was landed at
the door of The Mains in the murk of the evening, just as the laird
descended the front stair from his daughter's room. What he saw was a
little, slight woman's figure, covered from head to foot in a black hood
and mantle, stepping in out of the dark, and receiving a genteel welcome
from his excellent lady.
'Come in, come in,' the lady of The Mains was saying, standing in the
hall, in her best silk dress, flanked by a shy daughter or two. 'You
are welcome, Mrs. Maclehose--_Nancy_, it used to be!'
'It must be "Nancy" still, surely!' So sweet a voice it was that spoke,
that the sudden contrast to the country lady's hearty tones was like the
change from a trumpet to some delicate stringed instrument that thrills
upon the ear. It was quite drowned in the laird's jovial welcome which
ensued.
'Ay, it's not only "Nancy,"' said he, 'but "Pretty Miss Nancy"--we've
not forgotten that, ma'am, not we!'
'Ah, little of that now, Mr. Graham!' and the speaker sighed and smiled;
not a very deep sigh, and a very engaging smile. Mrs. Graham had now
removed the travelling mantle from her guest's shoulders, and a dainty
little figure of a woman stood forth, less considerably than the average
height, and slender, but with a full slenderness that gave no hint of
angularity or meagreness. Mrs. Maclehose, at eight-and-twenty, was not
of the _beaute eclatante_ which the public expects in one who is known
to posterity as the idol of a love-poet. Hers was the kind of beauty
that did not suit all tastes; for some, her mouth was too big, for
others, her eyes made too much play, and these would say that she ogled.
It was a fascination that she had rather than beauty, aided by her sweet
voice, and soft, flattering ways; and over all there seemed to be a kind
of innocent voluptuousness, which allured, even though you resented its
allurement. Withal, her little person was daintiness itself; an oval,
small face, velvety, soft, dark eyes, lips of a pomegranate redness that
parted in bewitching smiles, little hands and dainty feet. Suddenly,
beside her, the buxom lady of The Mains seemed coarse and blowsy, and
all her rosy daughters to have wondrous clumsy waists, and thick red
wrists. Such was Nancy Maclehose, on the very eve of her
apotheosis--the '_gloriously amiable fine woman_' of the enamoured
Burns, the 'Clarinda' of so many a bombastic love-letter, and the
'Nanny' of songs that are sweet for all time.
But 'Clarinda' had not met her 'Sylvander' at this date, and was merely
a little grass-widow, in rather doubtful circumstances, and a guest at
The Mains. She tuned herself to her company with natural adaptability,
and endured with heroism the massive hospitalities of a provincial
evening. She was docile with the mistress of the house, and bewitching
with its master; went through an introduction to six shy country girls,
with a pretty word for each. She praised the china, and envied the
silver; vowed no turkey ever tasted half so good, nor home-brewed ginger
cordial half so luscious. And she meant it all, though all the time her
delicate travel-tired limbs ached for bed, and she felt all the worst
shivering premonitions of a bad cold; the chilly strangeness of a
new-comer was upon her, and the low-roofed, rambling old house seemed
dark and draughty and comfortless. The evening ended with a toddy-bowl,
of which the contents forced the tears into her eyes; then the
long-suffering guest was ushered into the glories of the best bedroom,
and left in peace.
The firelight danced upon the walls, and upon the chintz hangings, with
their shiny floral pattern. The best bed yawned for its occupant, but
now she seemed in no mood to succumb to its allurements. She pulled a
pink wrapper out of her trunk and put it on; and then out of the same
receptacle came a certain book, and with this on her knee, and her chair
pulled close to the fire, she sank into a fit of musing. The book was a
manuscript book, elaborately bound, and fastening with a lock and key.
It held verses; the fair reader conned a morsel, then with a pencil
added or erased a word, her lips moving the while, and her smooth brow
puckered into the frown of composition. Most assuredly the best bedroom
at The Mains had never held a poetess before. Her soft mouth smiled to
itself, and her great dark eyes flashed and shone in the firelight. The
muse apparently was gracious. Presently, however, a sharp sneeze
brought the lady's romantic meditations to a prosaic ending.
'As I'm alive,' said the little woman to herself, with a shiver, 'I have
an influenza coming--and no wonder!' She got into the high bed and
slipped between the glossy linen sheets, but then she could not sleep.
The old house slept, but with many creakings to a super-sensitive ear:
the whisper of the wind among the eaves and in the ivy, the rattle of a
casement, the tinkling fall of ashes on the hearth. Now an owl hooted
as it fled through the night, and now a rat scampered in the wall. Then
a strange, puzzling noise teased the ear,--a sort of _sliddering_
sound,--she could not guess its origin. It was only Alison's pigeons on
the roof, trying to get a foot-hold on the slanting slates, and then
slip, slipping down with an angry croon and flutter, to scramble up
again, and so _da capo_.