flounce among the sheets. Then she curled herself up, and felt a
delicious drowsiness creeping on; but at that very instant came a new
and unmistakable disturbance. Somebody in the room overhead began to
sob and cry.
*CHAPTER VI.*
Nancy sat up in bed with a jerk, never less asleep in her life.
'Now, is there some ghost in this old barrack?' she asked herself. But
the sound was too material for that; such a hard sobbing never came from
ghostly throat.
'This is intolerable,' muttered Mrs. Maclehose; 'I cannot lie and listen
to it; 'tis inhuman.' She got out of bed and slid her feet into little
slippers that had high red heels and no backs to them. She threw on her
wrapper, and taking the rush-light in her hand, opened the door softly
and listened. The passage was dark and cold. To her left, a wooden
stair led upwards. From that region the sobbing came. ''Tis some
fellow-creature in distress,' thought the kind little guest. 'Most
likely but some servant-lass in a scrape, and in terror of her mistress:
God knows I'd be the same. I'll go up--a comforting word never came
amiss.' She set forth, but the red heels made such a tap, tapping on
the bare boards, that she was terrified; she slipped off her shoes and
crept bare-foot up the stair. She knocked at the first door she came to,
which was the right one. The sobbing ceased at once, but no one
answered. Then she lifted the latch softly and looked in.
What she saw was the bare little room with the deep-set window where
Alison slept with her little brother. The child's cot was beside her
bed, empty, for her misbehaviour had deprived her of Jacky. Alison sat
up in bed, so dazed by the light that she could scarcely see the little
figure with bare feet, and in the pink wrapper, with the neat lacy
night-cap over the dark hair. Nancy could much more advantageously see
a grey-eyed girl whose face was wet with tears, and whose childish curls
tumbled about her neck and ears.
'Now, this is no servant-lass,' said Mrs. Maclehose to herself, and
then, aloud, 'My love, don't be frightened, I beg! I heard someone
crying in the night, and thought I might be helpful. If 'tis an
intrusion, forgive me, and I'll go away.' Alison stared at the speaker
with parted lips.
'Who are you?' she murmured. The little lady laughed softly, closed the
door gently, and came nearer, shading the light with her hand.
'You may well ask,' said she, 'since I only came to-day! But tell me
first who _you_ are--come!'
She deposited the rush-light on a chair, and plumping herself down on
the edge of the bed, drew up her little bare feet under her, and peered
into Alison's face with the most coaxing, the most beguiling, air in the
world.
'I am Alison Graham,' stammered the daughter of the house.
'What! another of them?' cried Mrs. Maclehose, aghast; 'why, I saw a
host--four--five--six; you're never a seventh, surely?'
'Yes,' said Alison, dolorously. 'There are seven of us: I am the
oldest.'
'But you were not there, or spoken of,' persisted Mrs. Maclehose,
scenting a mystery. 'Were you ill, love?' Alison turned her head away.
'No, not ill,' she said, truthful always, 'but--but my mother was not
pleased with me, and so I was not down the stair.' Mrs. Maclehose put a
soft little hand under Alison's chin, and turned the reluctant face
towards her.
'Ah, child!' she said, ''tis some love trouble, never tell me it isn't!
Tell me about it, for I am more learned in such than any other person in
the world! I am an old friend of your mother's, but not so very old
neither, in years, you know; and I am Nancy--Nancy Maclehose, to my
sorrow. Now, come, out with it; 'tis a love tale--I know!'
'If it is,' cried Alison, between laughter and tears, but fairly won,'
'tis a love tale with no love in it, ma'am!'
'The very worst kind of all!' cried the confidante, serenely. 'And now,
sure, I know all about it without being told! 'Tis some marriage they
are forcing upon you for prudence' sake: some suitor--distasteful, old,
uncouth--'
'Ah! they've been telling you,' murmured Alison, blushing.
'Not a word--I swear!' cried the vivacious little lady, enchanted at her
own sagacity. 'But am I not right? A distasteful marriage, dictated by
prudence; a fond heart that will have none of it, but faithful to
another--'
'Ah! now there you are at fault,' began Alison, and then paused: why
should she, to a perfect stranger, confess the humiliating fact that she
had no lover, and no secret romance? But her native honesty prevailed.
'There is no "another,"' she murmured, shame-facedly.
'Some day there will be, then!' said Mrs. Maclehose, cheerfully, 'and
you, be faithful to him, child!'
'Faithful?' cried Alison, wide-eyed. 'But I've never seen him, ma'am;
he doesn't exist.'
'Ah! he _does_ exist, somewhere--a kindred soul,' said the romantic
visitor, nodding sagely. 'He is only waiting for the chance--the divine
chance....'
'I doubt he will never get it at The Mains,' said the prosaic Alison.
'Faint heart!' cried Mrs. Maclehose. 'Believe in Love, the greatest of
all the gods!'
Alison, never thus adjured before, looked doubtful.
'My mother and father tell me not to think about love,' she said,
hesitatingly; 'they say 'tis a delusion.'
'They blaspheme, child!' cried the visitor, with energy. ''Tis love
that has wrought me all the woe in my own span of life, God wot, yet I
believe in him--believe in him still, with all my heart and soul.... But
tell me, love,' she went on, breaking off in her rhapsody, 'who is it
they would tie you to?'
''Tis a Mr. Cheape of Kincarley, in Fife,' said Alison, hanging her
head. Mrs. Maclehose uttered a little trill of laughter.
'Oh, never, never, Mr. Cheape!' she tittered. 'Don't tell me 'tis the
inevitable, the invincible, the inveterate Jimmy Cheape! ...'
'Then you know him?' cried Alison, eagerly.
'Oh, Lord, child!' said Mrs. Maclehose, 'who doesn't, dear? He has
stumped the streets of Edinburgh, and every sizeable town in the
country, in search of a wife this twenty years and more! Jimmy Cheape!
No, Alison (for you'll let me call you Alison? I like you, child, and
will love you, I know--'tis all arranged by our Fates). No, no! 'tis
not you that are destined for Mr. Cheape; never think it!'
'I would not think it, if I could help it,' said the literal Alison.
'But 'tis all arranged--indeed it is--and my mother set upon it in her
mind, and nothing will turn her.'
'_I_ will turn her!' cried the lively little grass-widow, with her
charming smile and a flash of her dark eyes.
'Will you?' said Alison, solemnly, leaning forward and gazing at her new
friend with devouring, wondering eyes. 'How?'
A clock struck two. It was a timely diversion, and Mrs. Maclehose
jumped down from the bed on to her little bare feet.
'Two of the clock!' she cried, 'and me with a cold creeping down the
spine of my back like a rill of ice-water! I must away to my bed,
love.'
'Ah!' cried Alison, 'how selfish of me to have kept you in a cold room,
talking.'
''Twas I kept myself, dear,' said the visitor, lightly. 'Not the first
foolish thing I have done in my life, or likely to be the last, either.
Will you call me, Nancy, child, and kiss me good-night?'
'Sure,' cried Alison, 'I think you are a dream, a fairy, or an angel!'
The dream put out its arms, took Alison's head into their embrace, and
kissed her curls.
'We'll meet to-morrow,' she said, 'and then you'll see I'm no dream.'
Then she paddled over the cold bare boards on those little feet, and
casting a last bright look over her shoulder to Alison in the bed, she
was gone. Alison watched the light in the crack under the door, until
it grew fainter and fainter, and then disappeared. Then, not a little
comforted, she turned round in her nest, and slept like a child.
The next morning, Alison ventured to take her usual place in the
household, and was met with smiles.
'Now you are come to your senses, Alison,' her mother said, 'and you
will live to thank me that I showed you the way. See here, now,' she
went on, 'this fine Edinburgh madam that has come here while you were up
yonder, has gotten an influenza that will keep her in her bed for a
week, I'm thinking. Not that I grudge it her either, for it aye goes
clean against the grain wi' me to have sheets soiled for the one night;
I'd far sooner get the week's work out o' them. You must take madam's
breakfast up, though, and make yourself civil, Ally. She was aye a
clever, going-about body, Nancy, fine and gleg at the dressing of
herself up. 'Tis a God-send her coming now. She'll set us in the
fashions for your wedding, and show us how to sort my bonny silk.'
Alison shuddered; but she prepared the tray for the visitor's breakfast,
and proceeded to take it upstairs, her heart beating fast with
curiosity.
Under the flowered curtains of the best bed a little figure, still
huddled in the pink wrapper, was gripped in the agueish shivering of an
influenza cold. It started up, however, with unimpaired liveliness when
Alison appeared.
'Ah, child,' she cried, 'I knew it would be you! Come, let us look at
each other in the broad daylight. Why, what a Juno it is!' looking
Alison up and down. 'What a great, big girl, to be topped by those baby
curls.'
Alison came to the bed, pulled the tumbled coverlet straight, and shook
up the pillows, with her sensible literal air.
'You are feverish, ma'am,' she said, 'and shouldn't talk. Here is a
warm shawl my mother sends to hap about you, and she says, please, will
you keep still and warm, and she will bring you a hot posset presently.'
The invalid laughed in the grave, girlish face.
'Oh, Solomon!' she said, 'and do you expect me to obey your good mother,
and do the wise thing at the wise moment? You little know poor Nannie
yet.' Her dark, bright eyes grew full of sadness for a moment, and she
had the air of some pretty, soft, appealing little animal--a kitten,
perhaps--checked in its play by a hurt. 'I want to talk,' she said, 'to
talk, and talk, and talk. We must, you know, Alison, so as to see how
we are to outwit Mr. Cheape.'
'When you are better,' said Alison, 'we will talk. I doubt you will
hear plenty of Mr. Cheape,' she added, soberly.
At this moment a diversion occurred of a sufficiently prosaic nature to
defer further confidences of a sentimental kind. The driver of the
chaise in which Mrs. Maclehose had arrived the night before sent a
message to say that he could wait no longer, but must return whence he
came, and to that end he must be paid.
'Here, reach me my reticule, dear,' said the invalid to Alison, and she
hunted in the dainty velvet bag for her purse, and in the purse for the
necessary coin. This, however, did not appear to be instantly
forthcoming. A slight frown ruffled her forehead, and the faintest
flush rose on her cheek. ''Tis most provoking, Ally,' she said. 'I
have run short. Will you run and ask your father, love, to pay the man
for me, and I will this day write for more money to my cousin Herries,
in Edinburgh, who manages my affairs. You see I trusted to be back in
town immediately, and that's how I've let myself run into so beggarly a
state.' She laughed lightly; her embarrassment was gone.
Alison duly ran down to her father, who paid two guineas to the driver,
cocking his eye to himself as he did so.
'Women's debts!' he remarked within his own mind. 'It's little likely
I'll ever see the colour of _that_ again.' And it may here be
mentioned, as a little matter strictly between him and the reader, that
he never did.
*CHAPTER VII.*
As the sagacious mistress of The Mains had foretold, the influenza kept
Mrs. Maclehose in bed for a week. Fever succeeded ague, and cold and
headache followed in their wake, and it was, for some days, a very sick
little woman indeed, that tossed and tumbled between the linen sheets,
under the flowered hangings of the best room. Alison waited upon her
with a patience and prudence that had presently their own effect upon
the volatile nature of the invalid; these solid, good qualities in the
country girl seemed to have a singular fascination for the little town
lady, in whose character, it is to be feared, they were conspicuously
lacking. Alison, on her part, felt also curiously drawn to her guest.
This delicate little personage, with all her pretty belongings, her
petulant temper, and pretty ways, was a new type at The Mains. Simple
Alison felt it a privilege to wait upon one so fine and dainty. She
could lift her in her bed as though she were a child, and both her tiny
hands could lie in Alison's one palm, and be spanned by a finger and
thumb. And yet Alison felt there were more wits in one finger tip of
this little lady than perhaps in the heads of everybody else at The
Mains put together. Were there not poetry books upon her dressing-table,
and did she not, indeed, write poetry herself? Alison had been for one
year at a young ladies' seminary in the town of Stirling; but even the
'finish' imparted by this experience, could not diminish in her a sense
of awe at the literary accomplishments of her new friend. But I think
it was the storming of her confidence on that first night of their
acquaintance that really impressed Alison with a sense of the
new-comer's cleverness and power. To the intensely reserved, there is
something almost preternatural in those qualities in another which
overcome and overleap that reserve. And then Mrs. Maclehose knew all
about Mr. Cheape! Secretly, but not very hopefully, for Alison's was
not a sanguine nature, she hoped for deliverance from her threatened
bondage, a deliverance that the cleverness of her new friend should
effect.
The first moment she could sit up in her bed, Mrs. Maclehose demanded
pens and paper, and said she must write letters.
'Could I not write for you, anything that's necessary?' Alison asked.
'You are still so weak.' The invalid shook her head and smiled.
'Ally,' she said, 'you don't know, or you don't realise, I expect, that
I'm a mother, and there are my two poor little men all alone in
Edinburgh town, wondering what has happened to their mammy.'
'Your two little boys,' cried Alison, eagerly. 'I'd like to know about
them. Are they bigger than Jacky?'
'Lud, child, yes, I should think so!' said the fond mother, with,
perhaps, a slightly-discontented air. 'Monsters of eight and ten years
old! At least, Willy is a well-grown monster, the eldest. The younger
is small; he's in but a crazy state of health, God help him! I know not
what to make of it.' She moved uncomfortably in the bed, as if the
thought goaded her. 'For the bairns, or their servant, Jean, I daresay
you could scratch me a line, Ally,' she went on, 'but I've other and
more solemn letters in hand. You must know I have one most sapient and
noble cousin, Archibald Herries, a writer to His Majesty's Signet, who
lives in the town, and to him must I render grave and solemn account of
myself, with a prayer for monies, Ally, of the which I stand in parlous
need at the present moment.'
'To be sure I could not write _that_ letter,' Alison acquiesced. Her
patient, with a chin supported on a little white hand, was regarding her
attentively. 'Do you know, Ally,' said she, 'you are rather like my
cousin Archie yourself, a sort of Solomon, all the virtues and all the
wisdoms and sobrieties combined.'
'Then you don't seem to like him much,' said Alison, with a pout.
'May God forgive me for an ungrateful and most base wretch, if I do
not!' cried her friend, with unexpected energy. 'For of all the debts
dependent women ever owed to protecting man, mine to my cousin Archie is
the greatest. I should have been in the street, and my poor babes in
the gutter long since, but for him. And that's the truth, Ally, and the
plain truth. He who is my natural protector, bound to me by all the
most sacred laws of God and man, chose to desert me, and leave me to the
care, and even the charity, of others. God be the judge between us! I
swear I was guiltless in that matter, and indeed guilt has never been
imputed tome. Do you believe it, Ally?'
'Sure, I believe it with all my heart and soul,' cried Alison, with
kindling eyes.
'And there spoke an enthusiasm and a trusting warmth of nature that were
never Archie's, dear,' said Mrs. Maclehose, laughing once more. 'No,
you are not like him, love. 'Tis for a coldness of nature, a perpetual
suspicion that I blame him. He's not a kindred soul, and we are ever
tacitly at war. God knows poor Nancy is no saint. But he misjudges me
ever, and the injustice pricks. But there, that's enough. Let me get
finished with this proper, virtuous, tiresome letter.'
In the long evenings of convalescence this seemingly ill-assorted pair
were drawn closer and closer together in the links of their sudden
friendship.
'Sing to me as you sing to Jacky, love,' Nancy would say, nestling down
among the pillows. And in the gloaming of the quiet room, Alison,
folding her hands in her lap, would sing in her sweet deep-throated
voice those peculiarly poignant ballads of love and longing and loyalty,
with which, since the memorable ''45,' the whole of Scotland was
flooded.
'Where got you that trick of song, love?' Mrs. Maclehose would ask,
sentimentally, 'since you say you have never loved?'
'I had one dozen of singing lessons at the school,' replied the
ever-practical Alison, 'and I had begun to the harp before I left.'
'Was it that year of school made you different to your sisters, think
you, Ally?'
'Am I different?' asked Alison, wonderingly.
'Oh, I would not miscall the honest lasses,' cried Nancy, 'they are all
good and sweet, I am sure. But about you there is a difference--a
gentler accent, a shade of softness--I know not what.'
''Twas a very genteel school, indeed,' said Alison, respectfully. 'But
it was too dear. So I only stayed but the one year, instead of three,
and poor Kate and Maggie never got at all.'
'You'd be a treasure, with that "wood-note wild" of yours to our bard,
Ally!'
'Our bard?' inquired Alison, not at all certain what a bard might be.
'Ay,' said Nancy, with a kindling eye. 'Our bard, but not ours only!
The world's poet--the singer for all time, and for all hearts--Robert
Burns! Child, haven't you heard of him, the ploughman poet?'
'A ploughman?' said Alison, conjuring up the vision of one Donald, the
ploughman at The Mains, with his stubbly beard and bowed legs.
'A ploughman, yes,' cried Nancy, 'but what a ploughman! He has had the
town at his feet, Ally! From the highest to the lowest in the land, all
men do him honour. And as for the women, child, they are ready to kill
each other for a glint of his eye! The very duchesses hang about him,
and there's not a titled lady that will not sorn upon and flatter him to
get him to her tea-table. Never has the town gone so mad about a man
before!'
'And have you often seen him?' asked Alison.
'To my lasting sorrow and vexation, never!' cried Nancy, vehemently;
'and, oh, Ally, 'tis the one burning wish--the longing of my heart! And
there's that insensible wretch, my cousin Herries, who has the entry
almost everywhere the poet goes, and last winter saw him almost nightly,
and he scorns the privilege that I would sell my soul for! Him have I
plagued, and others have I plagued, to get me known to my idol; but in
vain, as yet! It will come, though! Never was so ardent a wish that
did not bring its own fulfilment, ay, and its own punishment too,
sometimes,' she added, with a sudden wistfulness. 'Ally, _you_ never
have these passions, these rebellious cravings, do you, child?'
'Sure, never,' said Alison, soberly, 'and never would, I think.'
'But I'm made up of them!' cried the little woman, 'and nothing stays
me--no scruple, no prudence--when they are hot within me! Know this of
your friend, Ally, and be warned in time. I wish you to know me as I
really am. Nature has been kind to me in some respects, but one
essential she has denied me utterly: it is that instantaneous perception
of the fit and unfit, which is so useful in the conduct of life. But you
are rich in this, Ally, and that is why I think that you might be my
friend, and sometimes save me from myself.'
'I will be your friend,' said Alison, softly, 'though, sure, there never
was a humbler one!'
Thus would these two swear an eternal friendship, over and over again.
Alison heard more, also--heard a great deal, indeed, about the wondrous
ploughman poet, whose image seemed to possess the ardent imagination of
her friend. There was a certain little brownish, roughly-bound book
amongst those which were wont to litter the coverlet of the best bed.
It had a dog's-eared and most ungenteel appearance, but it was the
Kilmarnock edition of the poems of Robert Burns, and had its letters
been in gold and its binding of scented satin, it would not, in the then
inflamed state of public adulation of the poet, have been too richly
dressed. To the contents of this little book Alison listened, with a
sort of tingling in her blood. She had a nature full of unuttered
music, and she had been born and bred among those simple country scenes
of her native land, whence the poet drew his inspiration. So he became,
as he had become to thousands of his tongue-tied, voiceless, and
strenuous countrymen and countrywomen, the very mouthpiece of her soul;
and thus, long before a tangled thread from this man's chequered destiny
became in-woven with the simple web of her own life, Alison got her
first knowledge of Robert Burns.
But, in the meantime, the gay little invalid at The Mains, announced
herself cured, and, in a cloud of pink wrapper and enveloping shawl,
tottered from bed to the arm-chair by the fire.
'And, now, Ally,' she cried, 'now that my spirits are come again, now
for your good mother and Mr. Cheape!'
*CHAPTER VIII.*
The task which the romantic Mrs. Maclehose had set herself in regard to
Alison, was one entirely after her own heart. She considered herself a
past-mistress in all things relating to the tender passion; and though
she herself had met with signal and disastrous shipwreck amid the shoals
of matrimony, there was nothing in life that interested her like affairs
of the heart. On this occasion, indeed, it was the marring, and not the
making, of a match, that she had in hand. But what mission could be
more legitimate, what endeavour more congenial, than that of helping to
liberate a young and interesting friend from the horrid bondage of a
loveless contract? That the mistress of The Mains viewed the matter
from a different standpoint, she was, of course, aware; in her fertile
brain she had arranged a plan of warfare, and went to the battle
wreathed in smiles.
The lady of the house herself opened the campaign; by marching into the
invalid's room one morning with an armful of silk--the wedding silk,
which she spread forth before her guest.
'Ye were ay a handy body at the clothes, Nancy,' she observed. 'Now
tell me how to sort this silk for Alison, in the newest modes.'
'Ah! your lovely Alison--how interesting!' murmured the guest, sweetly.
'Alison's well enough,' said her impartial parent, coolly. 'We think
her none so lovely here--a good girl, but homely; none the less likely
to make a good wife to an honest gentleman.'
'To be sure, to be sure,' said Mrs. Maclehose, in a sprightly tone, 'a
little bird has told me of that interesting matter!'
'Then it needna have fashed itself,' said Mrs. Graham, alluding to the
feathered purveyor of secrets, 'for I was fair bursting to speak of it
myself. 'Tis a most extraordinary piece of good fortune to us, this
substantial offer for a tocherless lass like Alison. I cannot get over
it yet, myself.'
'And yet, Alison'--said the guest cautiously, 'Alison herself does not
speak of the matter with the enthusiasm one expects in a young heart on
such an occasion.'
'Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?' inquired Mrs.
Graham, contemptuously. 'No, nor sense from glaikit lasses! Alison's a
fool, and doesna ken what's good for her. But--' grimly--'I've been
teaching her, and she'll learn yet!'
'And the gentleman, ma'am?' inquired Nancy, casually, 'I protest I have
hardly heard his name?'
''Tis one most excellent respectit laird,' said Mrs. Graham, swelling
visibly with the importance of the announcement, 'one Mr. Cheape of
Kincarley in the county of--' But here Nancy broke in upon her with a
sharp titter, which, however, she had the appearance of politely
suppressing. Mrs. Graham looked at her sharply.
'What's wrong wi' _you_?' she sarcastically inquired.