she not, probably, about to meet the terrible Mr. Herries, that most
exacting and particular gentleman, of whom even Nancy stood in awe? The
severe aspect of the housekeeper, who sourly asked her business at the
door, entirely failed to reassure her; and what with the flutter in her
manner, the low tones of her voice in which she asked to see 'the
gentleman in the office,' it was not surprising, perhaps, that a mistake
arose. So that she was shown into Mr. Creighton's room, instead of
Herries's, the little boys tugging dumbly, but unavailingly, at her
skirts the while.
Mr. Creighton rose in all the confusion and dismay of spirit which the
entry of a female into his sanctum was wont to cause within him. In his
gaunt, elderly figure Alison perceived the very image of Archibald
Herries, which Nancy's casual references to her cousin had managed to
call up in her imagination.
'Will you be good enough to excuse this interruption, sir?' she timidly
began, seeing that Creighton made no effort to open the interview. 'I
am come from my kind friend, Mrs. Maclehose, on a message, to receive a
packet at your hands which she expects.'
Creighton was looking at her with the unsparing penetration--it had a
kind of gimlet-like quality--of his habitual regard. Alison's
unconscious grey eyes met his without flinching; it was indeed he who
first looked away. 'Who was the woman?' he wondered. Somehow, with her
full, large presence, her fresh face and country attire, there seemed to
have come a breath of the fields and hills into his fusty room.
'Mrs. Maclehose is not accustomed to confide her messages with me,
madam,' he said. 'It is likely she meant you to apply to Mr. Herries.'
'Why, sir,' said Alison, confused and blushing, 'are you--are you not--'
The lawyer emitted a dry chuckle.
'I am not Mr. Herries,' he said, smiling. 'In the matter of years I
have some advantage, doubtless, over that gentleman, but he is my
superior, ma'am. I am only Andrew Creighton--at your service, of
course. May I ask, now,' he went on, drily, 'how you are led to think of
Mr. Herries as old enough to be his cousin's father?' ('It was like the
little Jezebel,' he was saying to himself, and he meant poor Nancy, 'to
make her cousin out an old man, and spoil his chances with a likely
lass!')
But Alison protested she knew nothing of Herries's age, stammering, as
all truthful people will, over a white fib.
'You thought all legal gentlemen were old, perhaps?' said Creighton,
quite genially, 'but I protest not; some of us are young and handsome, I
assure you!' He invited his guests to a seat, which they were too timid
to refuse, and had soon evoked from Alison her name and county.
'Graham--Graham of The Mains, to be sure,' he said. 'Why, I remember
your father well. He used to be in and about the town in his youth, but
he never comes now, I take it.'
''Tis a long way off, and my father is busy, and there are too many of
_us_,' Alison explained, and the lawyer seemed fully to understand this
pregnant statement.
'Family cares,' he gravely remarked, 'soon make a solid man out of a
young spark. But you,' he went on, 'you are come on a visit of
pleasure, I understand, and must do our old city the fullest justice.
You must see the sights, madam--Holyrood, the Castle, the Crags. But,
doubtless,' with a clumsy effort to be gallant, 'there are plenty ready
and willing to do the honours of Auld Reekie to Miss Graham of The
Mains.'
'No, indeed, sir,' said Alison, quite simply; 'there is no one but Mrs.
Maclehose, but she is the kindest of the kind, and will show me
everything that I ought to see.'
'Oh, ay, indeed!' said the lawyer in a different voice. After that
Alison rose to go.
'I will bid you good-day now, sir,' she said, with the modest air that
had so taken the crusty old lawyer, 'and I will trust to your kindness
to let Mr. Herries know that his cousin sent a message for the monies.'
('Trust her for that!' interpolated Nancy's instinctive foe.)
He saw his guests to the door with, for him, a singular show of
courtesy. When he came back into his room he stood at the window,
peering over the blind, holding a rough chin between finger and thumb in
an attitude of deep contemplation. 'Graham of The Mains,' he muttered;
'a good name, and a fine lass! She looked true. They cannot _all_ be
deceivers and liars, surely. Will _he_ give any heed to her, though?
There will be opportunity, chances enough. But no, no; I need never
think it.' And rather impatiently he turned to his interrupted work,
and was soon buried in its details.
*CHAPTER XIV.*
When Herries, who had been absent on business, returned to his house, he
was annoyed to find that he had missed the emissary from his cousin.
'That means, I suppose, that I must e'en trail out over there myself
after office hours,' he said to himself. 'Plague take the woman! And
yet she must be visited at some time or another.' Visits, rather of
business than of pleasure to his troublesome charge in the Potterrow,
were a part of the routine of his life. They would generally be spent
in a wrangle over accounts, and yet hardly a wrangle either, for it
takes two to make such a thing, and Nancy was incapable of quarrelling.
But Herries would spend a laborious hour trying to instil into his
volatile charge some notion of the nature of money, and the value of
keeping and giving an account thereof. He might as well have tried to
instil into the passing winds an appreciation of these practical
details. Nancy had but one notion of money--to spend it. Not that even
Herries, in his severest moments, could call her selfishly or
systematically extravagant, which was the more provoking. It was an
infinitesimal house-keeping--that of the tiny household in the
Potterrow; but by systematic ideas of cutting her coat according to her
cloth in all things, Nancy would not, or could not, be governed, and
Herries would drive himself nearly crazy over the futility of his
efforts to coerce this delicate, frail, light, feminine thing that so
smilingly defied him.
This night, as he prepared himself to walk over to the Potterrow,
another annoyance from a feminine source assailed him. Lizzie, his
housekeeper, demanded an untimely interview by knocking at his door and
then entering his room, followed, at a discreet distance, by,
apparently, a satellite.
'Well, woman, what is it?' he demanded crossly.
'Weel ye s'ud ken what it is,' said Ailie, who used all the freedom of
speech towards her master of an old servant of his family, which,
indeed, she was. 'Was I no' tellin' ye yestreen it was the day I was to
gar ma sister's husband's niece--it's the lass Mysie--come oot ower frae
the Wabster's Close, to see if she wadna do ye for a help tae me aboot
the hoose, noo a'm that auld and failed'--
'Oh, the devil take her!' said Herries, impatiently. 'Of course she'll
do if she suits you. It's your business, isn't it?'
'Na! it's just no my business!' retorted the old woman, sourly. 'For
when I said I wad like weel to hae a lass, ye hummed and haw'd,
and--"the dangers o' the toon!" quo' you--to a young lassie wi' the
beaux and sic like. 'Od, I'se gar ye see I'se gotten ane that wull hae
nae sic havers. Come ben, Mysie!' She called to her relative, who had
remained, meanwhile, on the landing without, and who now obediently
appeared. 'Tak the screen aff ye!' commanded Lizzie, alluding to the
tartan shawl commonly worn about the head and face by the poorer women
of that day.
Mysie divested herself of this garment, and disclosed to view a
countenance certainly destitute of any conspicuous allurement to the
aforesaid beaux. She was a very tall and somewhat grenadier-like young
woman, with a pale, rather haggard, face, a quick, roving glance, and a
general air as of something newly caught and altogether untamed.
'She has the three nieces wi' her gude man, ma sister,' continued
Lizzie,' and I'se warrant ye weel I waled the little bonniest o' the
bilin'! Mysie 'll no be bathered wi' the lads, I'm thinkin'.'
She contemplated her connection with grim approval, almost pride; but
Mysie, who had hitherto listened to the curious encomium of her lack of
dangerous charms with a perfectly apathetic indifference, uttered, at
the last words, a sudden, odd laugh. Herries looked up sharply, but the
naturally rather heavy face had become stolidly grave again, and Mysie,
ordered to do so by her relative, proceeded meekly to leave the room.
'I've seen her before, somewhere, surely?' said Herries, thoughtfully,
teased by some vague reminiscence. 'Rather a rough diamond, isn't she,
Lizzie?'
''Oo--a wee thing, mebbe--ay!' said Lizzie, cheerfully. 'She's fresh aff
the fields, doon Colinton way, howkin' tatties ... but she's takken wi'
a notion for genteel sairvice i' the toon. 'Od, she'll get it wi' me,
onyway!' Thus promising abundant, wholesome occupation for her hopeful
_protegee_, Lizzie departed to nether regions, well pleased. Herries
felt that he had not cottoned greatly to his new retainer. But the
choice of a scullion seemed, for the time being, a matter of such
infinitely small importance, that he had presently forgotten Mysie as
completely as though she had never existed.
Presently, having dined, he walked briskly up the town in the gloaming.
Lights were beginning to twinkle from the houses in the old town--lights
so high up in the gathering haze, that they seemed to strain to the
stars. The ill-lighted and malodorous wynds and closes clattered to the
deafening din of their granite-given echoes; harsh voices called to each
other across the narrow spaces; there floated from the castle height the
toll of a bell, giving the hour. Herries picked his way to the
Potterrow, and was admitted to his cousin's house by the discreet Jean.
With the privilege of intimacy, he walked unannounced into the little
parlour. But for the dancing firelight it was in darkness, the cosy,
red curtains drawn, and those within seemed in no hurry for the lights.
'Well, cousin!' said Herries, carelessly, as he entered. But so very
tall a woman's figure rose from the hearth, where it seemed to have been
seated--displacing two little boys as it did so--that Herries realised
at once it was not his Cousin Nancy. Jean saved the situation at this
critical moment by bringing in a pair of lighted candles. And thus
Archibald Herries and Alison Graham saw each other for the first time.
Alison shook in her shoes, for she felt that this could be none other
than the redoubtable Herries. And Herries, who was in a bad temper,
inwardly cursed his luck which had betrayed him into an awkward
interview with a country miss.
'Mrs. Maclehose is gone out to a tea-drinking, sir,' Alison managed to
say, standing shyly where she had risen. 'But she should presently come
home. It is past the hour when she promised to return.'
'I apologise for my intrusion,' said Herries. 'Let me present myself,
in Mrs. Maclehose's absence--her cousin, and your servant, Archibald
Herries.' He bowed, with the accustomed little flourish and affectation
of the day, and Alison stole a look at him half frightened and half
fascinated. She had never seen so fine a personage as this young man in
all her days, with his smartly cut, if sober, coat--his laced frills,
the powder in his hair, the ring upon his finger. How fine and delicate
and clear-cut were his features, how cold and keen his blue eyes, under
those ironically-arched and finely pencilled eyebrows. No wonder,
Alison thought, that Nancy was afraid of him. He was terrible: much
more so, being so smart and fine, than if he had been a snuffy old
gentleman, such as Alison, in her fancy, had painted him. And yet,
behold, the moment he sat down, Danny inserted himself between his
knees, and Willy lolled against his shoulder, with the clumsy affection
of boyhood. The children, evidently, were not afraid of this terrible
person. Alison, in an agony of shyness, was wondering if she must
introduce herself, when Herries saved her the trouble.
'And so you are come to explore the capital, Miss Graham,' he said,
showing that he knew her name, 'but doubtless you knew it before?'
'No, indeed, sir,' said Alison. 'I never was in a town in my life,
excepting Stirling, where I was at school.'
'Ah, indeed!' said Herries, suppressing a yawn, but not at all
suppressing a bad-tempered tendency to be covertly rude to this country
girl, who was going to bore him. 'And when you were not at school, in
Stirling, you lived--?'
'I lived at my father's house, sir,' said Alison, quite simply.
'Hum-m,' said Herries, perhaps a trifle disconcerted. 'I believe that I
have often heard of The Mains,' he went on, condescendingly, 'a rural
solitude. And what did Miss Graham do at The Mains?'
'I minded the turkeys, sir,' said Alison, 'and did as I was bid.' She
was not, in spite of her shyness and timidity, very well pleased with
the condescending tone of this fine young townsman, and spoke roundly.
The answer was amusing to Herries, and changed his mood. He looked
attentively at the speaker, but would not admit there was anything to
admire. A 'big bouncing miss,' he called her in his thoughts. But,
nevertheless, he looked again; and once, he caught, full in the eyes,
the innocent candour of her wide grey glance--and before it, he was
aware that his own gaze fell.
'And have you made friends with these little men?' he asked, in a
totally changed tone; and Willy and Danny grinned. After that they
conversed very amicably about the little boys, their lessons and their
play, Danny's delicacy and Willy's school. Herries made himself vastly
agreeable, as he well could do when he chose; and Alison was quite
startled when she saw how low the candles had burnt, which were quite
respectably long when Jean had brought them in. But still Nancy
tarried.
'My cousin is late, surely,' said Herries. 'I, too, was bidden to the
great Nimmo's, but I suspect I have passed a much more profitable
evening where I am.'
'But, indeed, no, sir!' said Alison, in all good faith. 'For the great
Mr. Burns, the poet, was to be at Miss Nimmo's, and 'twas to meet him
that Nancy was so wild to go.'
'I'm the more glad I was absent, then,' said Herries. 'Mr. Burns is not
a person to my taste.'
'Why, sir,' said Alison, wonderingly, 'don't you admire his great
poems?'
'I never read them,' said Herries, 'and never wish to. And, moreover,'
he continued, severely, 'I gather they are no fit reading for a lady,
whatever they may be for men.'
'But why?' cried Alison, forgetting her shyness, in her surprise, 'sure,
sir, there's the most beautiful things in them, all the best feelings
you can think of, and so often religion and the highest thoughts....'
'Then all I can say is,' said Herries, shortly, 'that their author adds
hypocrisy to vice, and becomes the more odious in consequence.'
Alison gave a little gasp. She, who pored over 'The Cottar's Saturday
Night,' and poems to 'The Mountain Daisy' and 'A Field Mouse'; and
Herries, who heard the town talk of 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' and the even
less-edifying satires, were, indeed, little likely to agree on the
subject of the genius of Burns. But even had Herries stopped to
consider the difference of their points of view, his opinion of the poet
would have remained unaltered. And so it was that Alison found herself,
for the first time, fluttering against that stone wall of prejudice
which raised itself so soon in Herries's nature. She had too much tact
to pursue the subject, and presently there were sounds without which
proved a timely interruption. It was the chairmen, putting down the
returning guest at the foot of the stair.
'Ah, there's Nancy at last, sir,' cried Alison, 'so you'll see her
before you go.'
*CHAPTER XV.*
All her life long, even when she was an old, old woman, did Alison
remember the vision that Nancy made as she came, fresh from Miss Nimmo's
memorable party, into the little parlour that night. She was in her
pretty dress of pink and black, her little shoes had high pink heels,
and a pink rose fastened the lace lappets in her hair. But it was her
face that was illumined: her parted lips were scarlet, her eyes glowed,
her cheeks were delicately flushed. She clasped her hands together as
she ran into the room, crying to Alison: 'Oh, Ally, I have seen him!
And, oh, much more than that: I've talked with him! 'Tis the crowning
night of my life....' And then, all at once, perceiving Merries, her
face fell, and she stopped short in her rhapsody. 'You here, cousin!'
she said, in a changed voice. 'Well, 'tis an age since we met. And now
I must postpone my raptures, I know, for you'll not approve their
object.'
'No need to name him,' said Herries, blandly, 'Miss Graham has
enlightened me. And so,' he added, very disagreeably, it must be
confessed, 'that dog has come back from the dung-hill to the
drawing-room.'
'Herries!' exclaimed Nancy, passionately, 'how ... how dare you speak
so?'
'Tut, cousin! I've the freedom of my tongue, haven't I, even though I
speak of your consecrated bard? But there, I'll not wound your
sensibilities and those of Miss Graham any further to-night.' Herries
laughed as he spoke. 'I'll take myself off, and leave you ladies to
enjoy your raptures. A mere man has no chance when there's a poet on
the _tapis_.'
'Nay, Archie,' said Nancy, more gently, throwing herself, with a little
sigh, into a chair and leaning back in it. 'Stay a while. 'Tis no wish
of mine to drive you away, God wot!'
Herries stood on the hearth, looking down at his cousin with his cool,
critical, half-satirical regard. Her little innocent arts, so
infallible, as a rule, in the conquest of his sex, her languishing
glance, her merry smile, had no more effect upon him than summer breezes
on the bastions of a fort. He called her in his thoughts, 'a little
baggage,' teasing as a midge, perhaps, but hardly more important in the
general scheme of things. That the 'little baggage' might have
passions, strong to move her, and strong to move the little world around
her--strong enough, perhaps, to turn aside the deep and placid current
of his own existence--was a thought that never crossed his brain.
Nancy, in the meantime, appreciated perfectly his attitude towards her,
and it inspired her with a kind of petulance--the petulance of a
charming woman at fault with a man, for once. Yet she always tried 'to
be pretty with Herries,' as she phrased it. It was her nature, and her
weakness, to be 'pretty' with everyone.
Alison, at this juncture, had left the cousins alone, taking Danny to
his bed, for the child drooped with fatigue, in spite of his eagerness
to sit up late. Herries watched her departure.
'I don't quite gather who she is, and where she comes from, your
very--your very ample young friend?' he enquired, lazily.
'My friend is Miss Graham of The Mains,' said Nancy, with some tartness.
'Oh, I know that much,' said Herries. 'But how she comes to be your
friend, and to be here, gives food for enquiry. I've hitherto not seen
that misses from the country were much to your taste.'
'She has a little history, Archie,' said Nancy, covering her stony
relative (quite unavailingly) with one of her softest glances--'a little
history that might melt even your hard heart.'
'Let us hear it, and perhaps I'll melt,' said Herries, drily.
'I found the child in a dreary, God-forsaken hole of a country place,'
Nancy began, in narrative style, 'one of a prodigious family--seven
girls--think of it! And they were going to marry her, against her every
wish and instinct, to a man old enough to be her father. And so I acted
Providence and bore her off, in spite of them, and here she is.'
'Good God, cousin!' said Herries, with a lift of his eyebrows that Nancy
particularly disliked; 'you mean to say you took the girl from her
parents--interfered with their projects for her future--and now burden
yourself with the responsibility of her maintenance? Heavens!'
'Her own father helped me--at the end,' said Nancy, pouting. 'He was a
decent man, and thankful to be off the devilish bargain of selling his
daughter to an old horror. Yes, I call it devilish--hellish--if you
prefer the word!'
'Oh, Lord!' said Herries, as though words failed him. 'And who, pray,
was the bridegroom you have helped to cheat?'
'Old Cheape--you know him--Cheape of Kincarley,' said Nancy.
'A most respectable person, and excellent parti!' exclaimed Herries, now
in his most provoking mood. 'Why, a warm man is old Cheape, with as cosy
a bit of property in the east neuk of Fife as there is in broad
Scotland. And you have cheated Miss Graham out of this fine
setting-down! What better could she have hoped for, in her situation?
Upon my soul, but you have done the poor girl a bad turn. And how do
you mean to make up for it?'
It was no soft glance with which Nancy now eyed her exasperating
relative; her eyes flashed, and her little fingers literally tingled to
box his ears.
'Archie,' she said, with a little toss, 'I think 'tis time you were back
among your law books and your papers, for you can't breathe, I think, in
a kindlier atmosphere.' Herries laughed, not ill-humouredly, however,
for there was real mirth in the twinkle of his eyes.
'I'll be gone, dear cousin,' he said. 'I'd present my condolences to
Miss Graham, but she's vanished. Poor young lady, I protest I grieve
for her. Well, good-night, Nancy. We will converse on business another
time--your packet is on yonder table, by the fire.' He took his
departure, still smiling--that provoking smile of his, with the eyebrows
raised.
'I'm d----d if it's altogether a laughing matter, though'--he said to
himself as he went down the stair. 'For is Nancy--or am I, rather, for
it comes to that--to feed, clothe and fend for that prodigious miss up
yonder? 'Tis a mighty practical question, and no joke.' It was a
question--a rather delicate one, perhaps,--which only time could answer,
which it did, in all due course, and with the greatest plainness.
In the room which the young lawyer had left, and to which Alison had
returned, the candles flared down in their sockets, and the fire burned
low, but still its two occupants remained there, deep in talk. Or
rather, one talked, and the other listened; for it was Nancy who poured
forth all the pent-up raptures of her first interview with the poet,
while Alison sympathised--struggling, it must be confessed, with a
certain feeling of sleepiness the while. For it was no doubt because
Nancy tried to describe precisely that which is indescribable--the
nameless fascination of genius--the overpowering magnetism of an unique
personality--that she failed, on this occasion, completely to convince
her usually pliant listener.
'I am afraid,' said Alison, presently, with a pensive air, 'that your
cousin, Mr. Herries, does not think that Mr. Burns is quite a--quite a
good man.'
'Herries!' exclaimed Nancy, indignantly, 'you heard him! And pray, did
you ever hear anything so intolerant--so insufferably unjust, in your
life? Because, forsooth, a man is not cut precisely after his own
pattern--cold, bloodless, passionless, like himself--Herries condemns
him! He will make no allowance for a nature different to his
own--subject to temptations which never assail him, and the sport of
circumstances whose difficulty he has no idea of. Herries, indeed!
Ally, if life were as Herries would make it, 'twould be a desert, and
I'd die of thirst. But, Heaven be thanked, though I depend upon him in
a measure, and must therefore obey him in many outward things, he cannot
bind my soul! That is free--to take its own flights--to seek its own
companion in a kindred spirit, which understands it, and whom it
understands.'
Sleepy Alison did not pause to enquire whether this was merely a
poetical generalisation, or whether the 'kindred spirit' were Mr. Burns.
She looked gently and patiently--a little wonderingly, perhaps, at the
fretted, passion-tossed little creature at her side.
'Come to bed, Nancy,' she whispered persuasively, as to an excited
child. ''Tis so late, dear--long, long past one of the clock.'
'To bed!' exclaimed Nancy. 'And who could sleep, after such an evening
as I have spent? But, of course, I'll come, love. 'Tis a world of
prose, and one must eat and sleep, as though poesy were not. But,
Ally'--she crept close to the girl, and whispered at her ear with
flushed face, and brightening eyes--'Ally, he is coming here!'
'Who?' said Alison, a little startled. 'The--the poet?'