'Were you dressed in parchment and tied up with tape 'twould be all one
to him. 'Deed, in that case, you might take his fancy, for you'd then
resemble his dearly beloved law-papers that he lives by. But come now,
for my gentleman hates being kept waiting.'
They were quite a merry party as they picked their way over the cobbles
of the Potterrow, although it was a raw, sunless, disagreeable morning.
Children played and screamed in the gutters, and hawkers yelled to the
echoes, as they made their way down the High Street and the Canongate
towards Holyrood Palace, which was their destination. Herries knew the
city much as a rabbit knows its burrow. There was not an antiquity he
did not point out, not an archway or an effigy that escaped him. So
that their progress was deliberate, and Nancy had heaved a sigh or two,
and stifled more than one yawn in her enormous velvet muff, before the
palace gates closed upon the little party.
'Now, 'twill be all history,' groaned the little duenna to herself. 'I
know Archie: not an anecdote, not an incident will he spare us. Bless
the man, there he goes--Queen Mary, Darnley, Rizzio, Bothwell! Well,
Ally's happy at any rate. Mercy, how the child devours him with her
eyes! You'd think she'd never seen a man before, and neither she has,
poor love. Now, any other young buck would be pleased, and throw a
little gallantry into his manners; but not he. Oh, Lord--'
This was a smothered ejaculation as Herries, having fully expounded one
suite of rooms, proceeded systematically to the next. He was entering
into this business of sight-seeing with all the energy and thoroughness
which characterised him in his profession. He had that passion for the
mastery of detail which is essentially a masculine trait. A picturesque
general impression of things would have satisfied Alison, and come not
amiss even to Nancy. But for Herries, there was nothing too minute to
be examined and explained; everything must be seen, and seen thoroughly.
Nancy dropped behind and neither he nor Alison noticed the fact. As for
Alison, her young limbs never felt fatigue, and she followed where she
was led, interested and well pleased. It would all come back to her
afterwards, that happy, if hard-worked, morning: those stately rooms and
stairways, once silent witnesses to the darkest pages of her country's
history; those frowning portraits on dim, panelled walls; and ever,
before all, the living picture of her guide--the alert figure and keen
face, the slim pointing hand, the dignity, the distinction that were
Herries's own, though he was neither a giant nor a god. He was so kind,
too; for, to be sure, Alison thought, it must all be very stale and dull
to him. Issuing from a careful and instructive examination of the
chapel, they discovered Nancy, seated on a bench, half in laughter and
half in tears of pure exhaustion.
'I can no more!' she exclaimed. 'Not another step, Archie, for my life.
You must put me in a coach and send me home, and you two finish the
sight-seeing by yourselves, for 'tis past me to look at another object,
antique or modern.'
'We have not done the half that I intended,' said Herries, seriously.
He had planned a day, it was now barely noon, and he liked to keep to a
plan. It needed only a very little of Nancy's deft management to
enforce her own suggestion. A coach was called, and she was put into
it; it rumbled off, and she nodded and smiled and waved her hand to the
couple whom she left standing in the palace-yard.
'There, now,' she said to herself, with a sigh of thankfulness and
relief, 'what a most admirable idea! With any other man 'twould not
have done, I could not have left the child; but with Archie, the very
thing! He'll be quite happy schooling her for another hour and bring
her home safe as a church, and she, dear innocent, will never know how
dull she's been.... And now, my soul, to other thoughts!' And before
Potterrow was reached, 'Clarinda's' next letter to 'Sylvander' was all
aflame, written on that busy, burning little brain.
*CHAPTER XIX.*
'Shall we dine?' Herries said, suddenly. On leaving Holyrood they had
taken a short walk in the King's Park, in order that Alison might admire
the crags. Returning to the town they had hunted amid devious ways for a
certain ancient church, and here in the graveyard, among the lank,
decaying grass, the slanting tombs and fallen emblems of mortality,
Herries had pointed out the blackened, mouldering slab which marks the
grave of Rizzio.
Then they had come up the High Street to St. Giles, and had made an
exhaustive survey of that interesting edifice. And now they had climbed
up the Castle-walk, and stood upon that wondrous summit, the rock that
crowns the northern capital. It was here, perhaps, that the faintest
shadow of a lessened alacrity had fallen across Alison's manner, when
invited to scale a bastion and visit a most interesting gun there
situate.
'Are you hungry?' Herries had enquired.
'Very,' said poor Alison, and then could have bitten her tongue out for
making an admission at that day considered so very ungenteel. But,
indeed, it was now long since breakfast time, and a sup of the boys'
porridge at half-past eight, and a hunk of their bread, although a
nutritive, was not a very lasting, meal. Healthy Alison was indeed
hungry, and Herries's 'Shall we dine?' had a most tempting sound.
'Your cousin will be expecting me, sir,' she demurred, as in duty bound.
'Oh, Nancy dines at mid-day with the boys, I know,' said Herries, 'and
that's two hours and more a-gone. 'Tis not a fashionable hour to ask a
lady to take dinner. But we've deserved it--so let us dine.'
He considered a moment. He could not take his present companion to dine
alone with him at any of the frequented taverns of the city. But he
suddenly recalled a little place where they could go with safety and
decorum. It was a resort called 'Lucky Simpson's Howff'--a couple of
clean rooms kept by an old wife, and much frequented by simple folk
landed from the country, in the neighbouring Grassmarket, who feared the
prices and temptations of more fashionable establishments.
'Come,' said Herries, encouragingly. 'It is not more than fine minutes'
walk, and Lucky has always the pot upon the fire.' And Alison seemed to
have no choice but to follow.
Presently, at the corner of a close, they came upon the oddest little
house in the world, whose tiny granite gable, with its crows'-steps,
stood sideways to the street. They entered by means of a little outside
stairway, and were soon seated in the low-ceilinged, heavily-raftered
room, where Lucky Simpson dispensed her simple hospitality. The
woman--a stirring old body, in striped cotton gown and snowy
'mutch'--waited upon her guests herself, and seeing that on this
occasion she had 'the quality' to deal with, she spread a coarse
homespun cloth upon the table, and furnished it with two-pronged forks.
Lucky's accustomed guests dined off the bare boards, and 'supped their
meat' with horn spoons, as a rule. She now lamented that the day's
dinner was nothing more genteel than 'sheep's head, done wi' the collops
and the braincakes.' But to Herries and his hungry companion this
sounded appetising enough.
They were seated one on each side of the homely little table. Alison
had loosened the strings of her hood--it fell back a little from her
freshened face, and the little clustering curls about her temples. She
was looking about her, all unconscious of possible scrutiny, the
pleasure of the situation bright upon her face. Herries looked at
her--perhaps for the very first time--with real attention, and a
something of her personality, its simplicity and trustfulness, its
gentle candour, was borne in upon his mind.
'My God!' he said to himself--and a kind of pang assailed him--'how
innocent she looks! It is a woman's body, but sure, only a child looks
out of those eyes.' And he felt a sudden warm impulse of kindness and
goodwill go out of him towards this grave, shy, country girl.
But the arrival of the sheep's head, steaming in a savoury manner, put
an end to reflection.
'Now this is indeed a most sadly ungenteel dish, as Lucky says, to put
before a lady,' Herries said. 'Miss Graham has perhaps never tasted
anything so common?'
'Who--I, sir?' said Alison, simply. 'Why, don't I get my dinner off it
every Monday at The Mains?'
'Every Monday?' said Herries, amused. 'Now, why on Mondays, pray?'
'Why, sure,' said Alison, shocked at the unpractical nature of the
query, 'because the sheep is killed on Saturdays, and so we get the head
on Mondays, by nature, sir.'
'At that rate,' said Herries, laughing, 'you must work down the animal,
I suppose, and have the tail on Saturdays?' But Alison shook her head,
smiling and dimpling. No; it appeared the tail came up on Thursdays
'roasted with the gigot,' and was usually the portion of 'Ferran,' the
collie dog.
And so they had a good deal of conversation over that little meal, and
were very friendly, and even merry. Those who knew Herries only under
the frigid reserve and severe pre-occupation of his usual manner, would
have been astonished to see how he unbent, how simple were the jokes he
cracked with Lucky, how kind and gentle his converse with his timid
guest.
Lucky brought in a steaming toddy, and Herries would have it that Alison
must 'taste.' Out of his own glass--before he touched it himself--he
must ladle a drop into hers, with Lucky's funny old toddy-ladle, with
the worn and dented silver bowl, and spindly, long black handle. Yes,
that was a pleasant hour, but, like all such, over too soon. They must
go. Alison, from an inner pocket, had produced a remarkably attenuated
little purse.
'I suppose, sir,' she said, 'it is now time that we should pay for our
dinner?'
Herries leaned his elbows on the table, and, smiling, looked long and
deep into her eyes. Well, he had looked into a woman's eyes like that
before--perhaps too often. But never before had the depths of Alison's
innocent being been plumbed by such a gaze. It troubled her--but with
how sweet, how perilously sweet a trouble! Her eyes fell, and the
colour crept to her cheeks. Herries looked away, but his voice was kind
when it spoke.
'When a lady does a man the honour to dine with him,' he said, smiling,
'she is not generally asked to pay the reckoning.' Alison blushed
scarlet, as one detected in some awful solecism, and huddled the little
purse out of sight.
'I--I didn't know,' she stammered. 'You must excuse me, sir. I never
dined out with--with a gentleman before.'
'I'll be sworn you never did!' Herries said to himself, in great
amusement.
After that they rose and went out into the streets again, where the
short, gloomy winter afternoon was already darkening into evening.
Herries naturally escorted his charge up the town towards the Potterrow.
They mounted the worn flights of steps, the steep closes and murky
wynds, with the brisk step of youth refreshed--Alison the first and
least fatigued. Herries felt himself admiring her for the first time.
'Now, that's a handsome jacket,' said the innocent man to himself,
eyeing the red pelisse, 'and I protest, it sets a handsome figure! A
fine free step the girl has, too--country-bred.' Altogether, he was
very well pleased with his companion that night.
When they reached the Potterrow it was nearly dark, and the ill-trimmed
flaring lantern that hung in the General's Entry was already lit.
'Will you not come up to your cousin's tea-table, sir?' asked Alison,
shyly.
'I thank you, no,' Herries answered. 'Make my excuses to Nancy. I have
business this evening.'
'I--I should thank you for a very pleasant day, sir,' said Alison,
timidly. 'I have greatly enjoyed myself.'
'Nay,' said Herries, with a little flourish, 'the pleasure was mine! I
trust we have other enjoyable days, in company, to come.' And with that
they parted, and Herries walked down the town alone.
'If all pleasures were as innocent and as cheap, mistress,' he said to
himself, thinking of Alison's little speech, 'men would be better and
richer than they are!' And he laughed when he thought of the modest
total of Lucky's bill. On his doorstep he found Creighton's terrier,
Dick, shivering in the cold. 'Come in, beastie!' he said, 'and lie by
the fire till your master goes.'
He was in a singularly softened mood, and in high good humour with all
the world.
*CHAPTER XX.*
Mrs. Maclehose, having provided her young friend with a pretty gown, was
of no mind that that garment should waste its sweetness in a cupboard.
It was now the height of the Edinburgh winter season, and she was full
of engagements; so that the two ladies were presently immersed in quite
a whirl of mild dissipation. They went to kettle-drums, sometimes night
after night; to literary _soirees_, such as Nancy loved, where lions, of
more or less celebrity, mildly roared; sometimes to concerts at the St.
Cecilia Hall, for which Herries would send them tickets; and once or
twice even to a rout in the Assembly Rooms, where Alison looked on at,
but could not join, the extremely stiff and joyless dancing of the day.
At nearly every entertainment they frequented, Herries would be present,
for it was by virtue of his introduction that his cousin had the
_entree_ everywhere, and he was widely known. He was heartily sick of
the social round, but it was necessary for his professional interests
that he should be seen, and he was fully aware of the fact. One pair of
eyes watched the door for his coming in those days, though he did not
know it. Alison, in a room full of strangers, would look longingly for
the one face that she knew, and, almost unconsciously, her eyes would
follow the now familiar figure. She thought that all the world watched
him thus. For, surely, he had a better carriage, a finer head, a
smarter coat than any other man. Herries certainly had distinction, but
he was below, rather than above, middle height, and not, naturally, one
to rise above a crowd.
With what a curious, new, expectant joy had Alison looked forward to
meeting him for the first time after that happy day of sight-seeing!
But here her ignorance of men, at any rate of this man in particular,
built up a disappointment for her. Herries at Lucky Simpson's--Herries
entertaining a simple country girl, whom he regarded as a child--was
very different from the Herries of evening parties and the social
treadmill. When next Alison saw him, and he gave her a formal five
minutes of his arm in a crowded drawing-room, he was like a stranger
again--cold, stiff, dressed in reserve as in a garment. It was the
nature of the man, and, in time, Alison learned the difficult lesson
that it set her, as one learns who loves his task. But she certainly
got little aid from Nancy.
''Tis a strange being--Archie,' his cousin would say, discussing him
after some chance meeting. 'A riddle to me, Ally, who can generally
read a man like a book. Many a time I wonder what is in the heart of the
creature--what are the motives of his actions, the ruling passions of
his life. I've known him since he was a boy, and at all the crises of
my life he's been at my elbow--the adviser, the protector, the
benefactor. But, I tell you, child, I know no more what he really
thinks on any subject under the sun, than the child unborn! And what is
more, I know no one who ever did! And yet I'd not have you think I
underrate his good qualities,' she went on earnestly. 'I see his solid
worth, and I respect it. But 'tis my most unlucky star has ruled it,
that I must be dependent on a man I fear. I live by love, Ally--by
sympathy, confidence, communion! I can forgive--I hope to be forgiven.
But Herries asks no forgiveness, and he grants none. He--he drives me
to subterfuge, Ally. I swear against my proper nature!'
Alison never doubted that, first in Nancy's mind, as she spoke, and
first in her own, was the thought of that eternal commerce with St.
James's Square. It throve apace, like some ill weed with a fair leaf,
but choking roots. And now, as the weeks went on, and the poet wrote of
gradual recovery from his hurt, the letters would give place to
meetings, and even Alison, in her innocence and her confidence in her
friend, knew instinctively that in these meetings there would be danger.
If only Herries might be told of them, even though he disapproved! But
on the subject of the poet he was unapproachable; he bristled with
prejudice, as a porcupine with its quills. Alison's unerring judgment
forced her to see that he was unreasonable and unjust.
However, at this juncture, both Alison's anxieties (in this direction)
and her little gaieties received an interruption. The boy Danny fell
dangerously ill, and all her pity and care went out to him. She was
aroused one night to hear him moaning in the cot beside her, and she ran
to waken Nancy. Both of them hung over the child, terrified to find
that he knew neither of them, but wandered and cried in a high fever.
The faithful Jean, roused, ran out into the windy, desolate streets at
dawn to call a physician.
Alison knew well that the child had ailed. She had urged it upon Nancy;
but, of late, Nancy had cared so little: she seemed, more and more, to
push everything from her but the one thing, and that, alas! was not her
child. The boy suffered from a running sore or abscess on the hip. It
troubled him always, and now, perhaps, some knock or hurt, had
aggravated it. Alison shuddered to find it so inflamed--searing, like a
live cinder, the delicate flesh. When Jean returned, she had secured no
one but a callow student--a timid ignoramus, who either could not, or
would not, lance the sore. He sent, however, a jar of leeches. Nancy
screamed at the horrid things. But Alison took them in her fingers,
without a qualm, and laid them on the child's burning skin. They gave a
temporary relief, and he fell into a troubled doze.
'Ally,' said Nancy, an hour or two later, 'the child must have the best
physician in the town. I have heard Archie talk of taking him to Mr.
Ross, one of our first surgeons. Will you, like your own sweet self, go
over to George Street, and tell my cousin he must bring the man
here--beg him to do it--rather, without loss of time?'
'I--go to Mr. Herries's office?' stammered Alison, overwhelmed with
doubt.
''Tis a savage morning, and I hate to send you, child,' said Nancy,
coaxingly. 'But Jean's so busy, and I cannot--I _cannot_ leave the
child. You hear how he calls for me every minute. Perhaps we could get
a messenger....'
'Nay,' said Alison quietly, 'I'll go, Nancy.'
It was not the weather that daunted her, but a new sensation--a womanly
instinct that made her shrink from the idea of putting herself in
Herries's way. Supposing he should think her bold? But her strong
common sense told her that most probably he would not think of her at
all, one way or the other; and this, certainly, was no time to let
herself be hindered in helpfulness by silly, unnecessary scruples. So
she put on an old, rough cloak of Jean's, wrapped a screen about her
head, and cheerfully faced the storm.
Half an hour later she stood in Herries's warm, handsome room, her rosy
cheeks bedewed with rain, and the drops sparkling on her curls. She
told of Danny's suffering, and gave the message, simply, quietly, in
fewest words.
'Why, in conscience, does my cousin send you out on such a day?'
exclaimed Herries, in extreme irritation. 'Could she not put her servant
on the job? It is preposterous!'
'Jean was very busy, sir. The whole house is upset since four this
morning,' Alison answered, quietly. 'Your cousin could not leave her
child to come herself.'
'My cousin "leaves her child" on other occasions fast enough,' said
Herries, with a sneer. 'This crisis in the boy's health,' he went on,
sternly, 'comes of her own neglect. 'Tis weeks since I warned her that
she should call in a physician, and I gave her an introduction to Mr.
Ross. However, since you are good enough to be her messenger, tell her
that I will bring or send the man in the course of the day. It is no
sinecure, I think you must perceive, Miss Graham, to be the
self-appointed guardian of another man's children.'
He spoke with great bitterness, and Alison could not but feel that he
was justified. Her message was delivered, and she could but go. So
deep was Herries's annoyed preoccupation, that he barely bowed as he
held the door open for her exit.
He sat down moodily to his desk again when she was gone. But presently,
though some little interval of time had elapsed, his sharp ears caught
the sound of her voice, downstairs it seemed. What delayed her? he
wondered, irritably; and supposed he must descend and see. What he did
see, as he came downstairs into the hall, was the spectacle of his
partner, Creighton, bare-headed in the rain, helping Miss Graham into a
coach, while a clerk, who had apparently just fetched it, held open the
door. Herries felt himself redden to the very forehead with a boyish
shame. The coach rolled off, and Creighton came in, shaking the rain
from his coat.
'My good sir,' said Herries, meeting him, 'our noble profession of the
law is making a Diogenes of me, and I seem to have forgotten the manners
of a gentleman. But you make up for my deficiencies.'
'Nay, nay,' said Creighton, in confusion, 'I but saw the child trying to
open the door against the blatter, and I could not let her walk forth
into the rain. That was all. I hear she brings ill news.'
'Ill enough,' said Herries. 'But what special sort of churl was I to
confound her with her news? A good girl, doing far more than her duty
by me and mine.'
'Ay, a fine lass, a very fine lass,' said Creighton, looking earnestly
at the younger man.
'And yet, like the rest of them,' said Herries, musingly. 'She comes to
a man's house as to a shop, for something useful--all 'tis good for.'
'Nay, now,' said Creighton, smiling, 'we know who it is teaches her
_that_ trick here. 'Tis not of her own doing, or on her own trokes. Be
just, sir.'
And so it was that Alison's elderly conquest in George Street took up
the cudgels on her behalf and never dropped them again as long as he had
strength to hold them.
*CHAPTER XXI.*
The eminent surgeon came to the Potterrow immediately, and said his
oracular say after the manner of his kind. Sea air he prescribed, and,
even more stringently, sea water--douchings and rubbings for that
piteous little limb, fast shrinking in a fell disease. Country milk he
further insisted on, and a nourishing diet. Better put the child, he
said, to some farm or seaside cottage, where he could get the full
benefit of a country life. There were plenty decent folk along the
coast, he opined, accustomed to the boarding of delicate children from
the town. But that would only be when the child was fit to move--not
yet. In the meantime, he lanced the sore, which operation afforded
everyone in the little establishment in Potterrow a harrowing morning.
The mother--'distracted,' as she said--paced up and down the parlour,
fingers in her ears; while, in the little closet-bedroom, Alison held
Danny's hands, and honest Jean steadied the quivering little thigh
beneath the lancet. The operation gave great relief, and in a few days
Danny was convalescent--an interesting invalid, indeed, with larger and
more cavernous dark eyes than ever, and laid, in high dignity, upon a
couch, drawn near the parlour fire.
Herries came nearly every day to see him. He got into a comfortable
habit of coming towards evening, just when Nancy's pretty tea-table was
spread in the parlour, and candle-light and fire-light danced upon the
panel, and the cosy, red curtains were drawn against the dreary night.
It was really very pleasant, and Herries came, in these days, to dislike
the empty solitude of his own house at this hour, when Creighton would
be gone, and the clerks dispersed to their homes. He did not pause to
ask himself why his cousin's room now seemed so vastly agreeable of an
evening. He was not an analytical personage, and he still believed that
it was to see Danny and watch his progress that he came. Was he not
busy making arrangements for the little boy's removal to the seaside,
which the doctor wished to hasten, in spite of the coldness of the
season? He spoke constantly of an old nurse of his own, who was married
and settled at the village of Prestonpans--a decent woman, accustomed to
the charge of children. He was in treaty with her for little Danny's
board, and presently the matter seemed settled.