a matter of course, so that one may presume that every lion has his
jackal, to howl before him and to polish the bones which his lionship
leaves behind. In human life the same phenomenon appears, and every
lion, who is a lion worth mentioning, may have his satellite in a meaner
kind of creature, to prepare the way before him and do his dirty work.
The poet Burns was well furnished with one of these necessary adjuncts
to a lion's _suite_, in his friend Nicol, a personage who, after sundry
vicissitudes in life, had managed to secure for himself the outwardly
respectable post of a teacher in the High School. The chances of tavern
life had brought the two together, and flattery, no doubt sincere if
fulsome, on the one side, and on the other that necessity to be admired
and followed which is the curse of the poetic temperament, sealed their
friendship. Yet it is difficult to imagine how Burns, with whom men of
a far higher stamp than Nicol, would still gladly have associated, could
content himself with the society of one so palpably inferior to himself
in all ways. Nicol was a coarse, blustering, unwashen brute, with a
violent and jealous temper that the partial poet chose euphuistically to
dub 'a confounded strong in-knee'd sort of a soul.' He had, on more
than one occasion, ruined the Bard's chances of favour in high quarters,
by his ill-bred intrusions and unmannered insolence. He was not a
comfortable kind of jackal at all, and yet Burns stuck to him, actuated,
no doubt, partly by the kind of sturdy loyalty of which he was capable
towards the humble friends of his own sex, and partly by obstinacy. The
man hindered him at every turn, but there was no doubting his devotion.
And then, he was that kind of coarse instrument which a man is not
afraid to use to the most doubtful ends. And the poet, it is likely, had
uses only too many for such a tool.
Nicol, during these weeks of which we write, had been having a hard time
of it. To be jackal to a lion-poet, with an injured knee-pan and
inflamed passions, is no sinecure. Not for weeks had the unfortunate
man had a moment to be called his own. When he was not carrying
messages or delivering letters--waiting for answers, or receiving them
at the door--he was listening to the anathemas of the afflicted poet,
who, maddened by confinement, spent his time in cursing fate, and in the
writing of those letters which he pestered his adherent, in season and
out of season, to carry for him. The inclement weather which had now set
in, added very much to Nicol's hardships. On a certain morning, with
the snowdrifts piled high against the doors, he struggled forth to see
his friend, but armed with a grim resolution that, on such a day, he
would do no more.
He found the poet, with his injured leg upon a stool, scribbling for
dear life. The dingy, ill-kept room was close, with a closeness
strongly flavoured with last night's potations. The Bard, as he wrote
to his Clarinda, was 'pretty hearty, after a bowl busily plyed last
night from dinner-time to bed-time.' He folded and fastened this
precious missive as Nicol entered.
'Eh, Nicol, man,' he began, cheerfully, 'you are just in good time to be
Cupid's messenger once more. Here's the note ready.'
'I carry notes this day,' said Nicol, loudly and assertively, 'to no
sluts whatsoever! 'Tis no day for a dog to be out, not to say a human
being.'
'Hoots, man,' said the poet, fleechingly. 'What's a bit blaw o' snow?
The storm's by wi'. Were it not for this d----d leg, which I did over
exercise in the walking yesterday, I would be out and away mysel'.'
'Well, you can be out and away, leg and all,' said Nicol, unmoved, 'for
ye'll no get me to do none o' your deil's trokes this day.'
'Man, Willie,' said the poet, with a seriously alarmed air, 'but the
letter must go, ye ken that! She, my present charmer (sure you know it
to your own cost as well as mine), has an epistolary aptitude that
surpasses all. 'Tis the devil and all with these high-flown little
dears.... Now, a simple lass will be content with words and kisses, and
so a man whiles gets a moment's peace. But pen and ink must serve her
betters. God wot, it is no easy job to fill a daily sheet! But gin she
doesna get it, she'll have six here, and then you'll have to carry six
answers instead of one.... You'll never fail me at this gait, surely?'
'Is it to that thrice-accursed stair up the town you'd have me go?'
demanded Nicol, savagely. He hated, with some reason, every step of the
steep way to the Potterrow. 'But I needna ask,' he continued. 'You're
none so anxious wi' messages in the other quarter now....' The words
conveyed a sting, and the poet flushed, with the sheepish air of a boy
caught in some peccadillo.
'Wheesht! wheesht!' he said, uneasily. Nicol shrugged his shoulders;
the countless and complicated amours of his friend wearied him
excessively, for he heard of little else. Those of the lower kind he
would condone; they served for a coarse jest now and again, and he would
rally the poet--as others had often done--on the extraordinary
unattractiveness of some of his humbler Dulcineas. But for the more
ambitious intrigues, he had scant patience, and the vulgarian's restless
jealousy of the class above him made him, on this score, especially
intractable and suspicious.
'I would ye had the giving and taking yersel' o' your precious letters
to your fine, flummery madams,' he said, ill-temperedly. 'Och, there's
ane o' them I would I had a hand o'! The jad', she thinks an honest man
the dirt beneath her feet, and rubs her fingers on her hanky--curse her
airs!--if they chance to touch her hand.' The poet looked puzzled.
'Sure, you can't mean my Clarinda?' he said. 'She has a soft eye for
all men, and there's no d----d airs whatsoever about her.'
''Tis a strappin', great, wallopin' hizzy, the one I'm meaning,' said
Nicol, carelessly. He cherished a spite against the tall, grey-eyed
girl, with her unmistakable, fastidious air of ladyhood, who so often
gave letters into his hands, and he was glad to vent it in words.
'Ah--I take you now!' said Burns, nodding his head, 'and I am rather
with you there, I think. A cold, haughty miss! A feather in Society's
cap, no doubt; while the likes of us are but hob-nails in its shoes. But
she has a voice--a voice that--'
'Here--gie's the letter!' said Nicol, rudely interrupting what promised
to become a rhapsody. 'When is it that you leave the town for the south
country?' he suddenly asked, turning at the door.
'Never speir at me, lad,' answered the poet, whimsically. 'Ask the star
of love that governs my destiny!'
'Tuts--havers!' retorted Nicol, irritably; he was in no mood for
trifling, and the poet's most persuasive airs (he could coax like a
child) were lost upon him. 'I tell you this, once for all,' he went on,
'you must sort your private matters for yourself before ye go. There
must be none of your baggages, gentle or simple, skirling round this
door when you're away. For I'll not have it!'
'Sure, Willie, man, there's something up with you the day,' murmured the
poet, wheedlingly. 'Was it last night's bowl? 'Od, we kept it up late,
and 'twas a winking brew. My own headpiece dirls yet!' But his friend
did not deign a reply. He had gone off to find a shovel and broom,
proceeding therewith to sourly sweep the snow from the doorstep of
genius; which humble task performed, he set off to the Potterrow with
the very worst grace in the world.
The Bard, left to himself, twirled absently in his fingers Clarinda's
last effusion, while he lost himself in meditation. To the ingenious
reader it will be clear that 'Sylvander' wearied of the correspondence.
It may be doubted whether a man can keep the Platonic ball a-rolling
beyond a certain number of weeks with any satisfaction. A woman wearies
of this specious form of humbug less easily, perhaps,--she has more to
lose by its abandonment. 'Clarinda's' letters grew longer day by day,
while 'Sylvander's' dwindled, and became irregular. Frequent
interviews, indeed, now took the place of letters, and of these the poet
was by no means tired. They had a special flavour--exquisite even to
the blunted palate of Don Juan. Here was an intrigue, and yet not an
intrigue, with a little woman who combined a thousand fascinations in
her dainty person: the intellectual bias, the ardent temperament, quick
passions, and yet a tantalising prudence which armed her with tormenting
scruples exquisitely provocative to this tempter, who, with the full
force of his genius and his overpowering personality, lured her from
safety. Poor Nancy! she had thought to dally with a giant, and hold him
in the delicate chains of her influence; but the giant had her in his
tremendous hands, and they were like to brush the bloom from her
butterfly-like being. Nevertheless did the giant curse himself, because
he could not leave her, and could not, though business, honour, and duty
pressed him on all sides, forego the delicacies of this stolen
love-feast. Day after day he postponed his departure, already so long
delayed by his accident. He was long overdue in Dumfriesshire, where he
was in treaty for certain farm lands, which were to be the making of his
future (or so he hoped). The affair of his appointment in the Excise
hung in the balance, and required the pushing of his interest at every
turn. His genteel and powerful acquaintance, Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop,
pressed for his attendance at her house of Dunlop in Ayrshire, in
letters quite as long and almost as oppressively affectionate as
Clarinda's. And then, at Mauchline, his partial and all-too-prolific
Jean had just presented him, and for the second time, with twins. True,
in timely and most considerate fashion, these had died; but still, the
matter seemed to press for a little personal superintendence. Was ever
poet so beset? And yet, he lingered, and the Devil led him to the
Potterrow.
*CHAPTER XXX.*
For some two or three weeks Herries adhered with wonderful strictness to
the sober and sensible terms of courtship laid down between him and
Alison. They never wrote to each other, and they very rarely met. The
latter contingency, however, arose rather from the sheer pressure of
circumstances than from inclination. Mr. Creighton continued to be
confined to his rooms by severe illness, and Herries found himself in
consequence overwhelmed with business. Not only was the office work
doubly heavy in the absence of his partner, but it was constantly
interrupted by the necessity of reference to the absent man, as long as
he was able in any measure to give his mind to the affairs of his
profession. Latterly, this had almost ceased to be the case, for the
invalid grew worse rather than better, and Herries's visits quickly
changed from those of business to those merely of inquiry. Mr.
Creighton lay day after day in that dreary room of his, uncomplaining,
somewhat ill-attended, and always lonely, facing, with grim stoicism,
the approaching end. His dog, Dick, lay on the bed at his feet, with
melting eyes fixed ever on his master's face--uncomprehending, but full
of a wise beast's yearning sympathy.
But all this time, at his heart--that newly-discovered organ--Herries
longed for Alison. Sometimes he could snatch a brief hour to go to the
Potterrow, but, naturally, he hardly ever found Alison alone. These
visits of his drove Nancy nearly wild with impatience and with fear--the
fear being, of course, that they would clash with those of the poet.
'What in the universe brings the man now?' she would petulantly exclaim.
'Can he not let us be?'
Her _naive_ conviction that a man who had always been adamant to her own
charms must necessarily remain so to those of everyone else continued
perfectly unshaken. Whether, under any circumstances, she could have
believed Herries capable of being in love is very doubtful. But at
present the distorting veil of her own half-guilty passion was drawn
across her eyes, and she saw nothing.
'Are you never alone?' Herries said fretfully to Alison once, after a
singularly irksome visit shared with Nancy and Willy.
'Not very often, sir,' said Alison; and then she added, with a little
hesitation, shyly, 'There are Tuesday and Thursday evenings, now, when
Nancy goes to hear Mr. Kemp lecture on a missionary project, and I--I do
not go, because 'tis Willy's history nights, and I help him with his
lessons.'
'Then I'll come those nights, of course!' cried Herries. 'But then, drat
him, there will always be the boy!'
'I can sometimes put him to Jean in the kitchen with his book,' said
Alison, demurely, and a dimple suddenly showed in one cheek, which
Herries had never noticed before.
Jean, in these days, was a great ally of Alison's, and if she saw more
than she was meant to see in Herries's visits, she kept her honest
counsel.
So Herries came always on these evenings when the exemplary Nancy, who
was in her own peculiar fashion extremely pious, attended the
lucubrations of her favourite divine. Those were sweet hours to the
harassed man, and I do not say they were the less sweet for being
stolen. He could lay aside for a brief space the stern responsibilities
of the life he took so hardly--let his brain rest, and his heart speak.
The little parlour would be, in the twilight of the lengthening
evenings, lit only by the firelight and the dying day. If Herries
called himself a cold or backward lover, not so, in those dear hours,
did Alison find him.
'Ally,' he said one night, 'this secrecy cannot go on for ever, though
just now it is conformable enough to my affairs. When shall it end?'
'When I go home, sir, perhaps,' said Alison, timidly.
'Then, when you go home, I come too,' said Herries, softly, 'and make
formal propositions to the laird of The Mains for the hand of his eldest
daughter?'
'Yes, sir,' said Alison, with shining eyes. They shone because they saw
so fair a vision--her happy self returning to her old home, and with
her, this true, this gallant lover. She saw the low, old house--the
dear, humble rooms of her childhood--her father's face--her sisters
crowding round her. Oh! proud the moment when she should show this
'braw wooer' of her own to the mother who would have had her tie herself
to Mr. Cheape! Our good Alison was all a woman here, and sweet was the
foretaste of a woman's triumph.
'Let it be very soon,' Herries whispered, his lips among the curls at
her ear; 'whenever this accursed press of business is over, the sooner
the better for me.'
'Whenever Nancy can spare me, sir,' said Alison.
'Why, what can bind you to my cousin, child?' asked Herries; '--I mean
as to a particular period of time?'
'I--I am bound, sir,' said Alison, a little unhappily. 'As long as Nancy
wants me, I must stay.' The shadow of a hidden thing seemed to fall
across her joy. She moved away from her lover.
'Well, I can see no "must" about it,' said Herries. 'You are a strange
pair of friends, I often think, you and Nancy! Two creatures more
unlike never lived, I believe.'
'I would--I would you could think differently of Nancy,' said Alison,
impulsively.
'I do what I can for her in the best way that I am able,' Herries
answered, a little curtly, perhaps.
'You do everything in the world for her, sir,' cried Alison, eagerly,
'except--except understand her, I think.'
'What should there be to understand about the little jade?' said
Herries, lightly. 'But, nay, I daresay there is too much, and I don't
like women who need such a vast deal of understanding. She that I love
must be clear as the day to my eyes--no obscurities, no subterfuges, no
explanations--and she _is_!'
'But, sir,' said Alison, very much in earnest on this point, 'I would
have you understand all that Nancy is to me now--all that she must ever
be, whatever happens. I--we both--owe her our happiness, do we not,
Archie? But for Nancy, I'd never have come to Edinburgh, nor have seen
you.'
'But for Nancy,' cried Herries, gaily, 'you'd be Mrs. Cheape of
Kincarley, in the cosy county of Fife! Here's to Nancy, who stole a
wife from the laird, and brought one to Archibald Herries, the poor
writer of George Street!' And he lifted high a little cup from the
mantel, and pretended to drink to the absent mistress of the house. So
light-hearted on these happy evenings was Alison's lover.
Then there came the evening--but memorable, alas! for more than
this--when Herries brought her his mother's ring. He had found time,
and it had taken him many hours after his busy days, to hunt for it in
the recesses of his house among the piles of boxes, desks and cases
crammed with the relics of the parents he had never known. At last he
had got it--a beautiful, clear-set emerald, slipped thirty years ago
from a dead woman's hand by the despairing man who had loved her.
The lovers bent over it at the little window, and it gleamed at them in
the fading evening light.
'How beautiful,' whispered awestruck Alison, who had never owned a ring
in her life. ''Tis much too grand for me, sir, and I--I can give you
nothing back.'
'Give me a curl,' said Herries, half in jest. 'The true lover's gift.'
'Would you really like one?' cried Alison, and with characteristic
absence of vanity she seized upon one of her finest, and caught up a
pair of scissors for the sacrifice.
'Nay, now, not that one,' Herries laughed, forcibly intervening. 'You'd
spoil the bonny bunch! She here, a baby one that hides behind your
ear--you'd never miss it.' Alison snipped off the 'baby one,' tied it
up with a thread of silk from Nancy's basket, and twisted it in a piece
of paper, all with her own matter-of-fact and literal air, that made
Herries laugh again, and love her more.
'There, sir,' she said. 'I would 'twere a handsomer gift. You know,'
she added, 'they say 'tis unlucky to give hair--it means "farewell."'
'Ah, but we're so prosaic a pair, love,' said Herries, half-mocking.
'There's no romantic ill-luck in store for us, be sure. We leave that
to the high-flyers.'
Then they went to the window again and bent their heads over the ring.
It is hardly fair to spy upon a rising and respectable young lawyer in
his softer moments. But if, in the old days at The Mains, Kirsty, the
dairy-maid, had had a lover who put an arm around her waist, Alison, as
her own good mother might have put it, was 'upsides with her' now.
She and Herries, indeed, were so absorbed in the ring and in each
other's company that they heard no sounds outside the little room.
Their backs were towards the door, which had an awkward trick of
sometimes swinging open unnoticed, when not securely latched. It had
swung open now to some movement of the crazy old tenement, and all
unknown to the lovers, a figure stood motionless on the threshold. It
was a towering figure, but it had a canny step, to which additional
stealthiness had been imparted by the simple expedient of removing the
stout shoes from the heavy feet. Too often had Robbie Burns crept to
clandestine meetings not to know that 'tis pity on such occasions to
disturb the neighbours with unseemly clatter on the stairs.
He could see well into the room, for the fire had blazed up brightly,
and he perceived perfectly the two figures and their
attitude--recognising one.
'Eh, ma lassie,' he ejaculated to himself, 'kissin' and kitlin' like the
rest o' us, for all your prudish airs!' And he executed, behind the
unconscious pair, a short and silent war-dance on his stocking-soles,
brandishing his shoes above his head in the mischievous glee of a
schoolboy. But he made no sign. Diving behind the door, he deftly
reassumed his foot-gear, and then, with a due and decent rattling of the
latch, he made known his presence, and entered the little room.
Alison turned, with a great and visible start, when she heard and saw
him. She felt herself grow pale, for she knew that an awkward, and even
terrible, moment had come, and that the meeting, which Nancy had schemed
for weeks to avoid, must now, by some unforeseen coincidence, take
place. But she took her courage in both her hands, and with it there
came to her a certain definite sense of relief. At last, she felt,
there would be an end to deception.
'This is Mr. Burns, the poet, sir,' she said, in her quiet voice, and
turned to Herries.
*CHAPTER XXXI.*
Herries, whose eyes had narrowed and whose lips were set, held his hands
behind him and made an inclination so haughty and so slight that it was
barely perceptible. Jean brought in the lights.
'We have met ere this, sir, I think,' said Burns, not unpleasantly. He
knew Herries perfectly by sight, and had no reason to suppose he would
resent the imputation of being seen at some of the first houses in
Edinburgh.
'I was hitherto unaware of the honour,' said Herries, with appalling
frigidity, and it would have needed no very acute observer to have seen
the hot and sensitive blood rush to the poet's face. He, however,
contained himself with dignity enough. Alison's fingers, cold with
fright, were twisted together with nervousness. She certainly did not
improve matters by saying to the poet,--
'Mrs. Maclehose was not expecting you just now, I think, sir?'
'Why, no, madam,' said the Bard; 'but I could not come at a later hour,
and I swear the strings of your harp so drew me that I could not forego
coming now rather than not at all. We must finish "Lassie wi' the Lint
White Locks," and to that grand tune "The Rothiemurchus Rant," or I will
go clean _wud_,[*] I think. It rings i' the head o' me half right, and
yet not right. Tantalus himself could not endure it.' The poet had set
back his shoulders and spoke out freely and boldly, as though by the
divine right of his genius the little room and all it held, including
Alison, were his. He ignored Herries. As to Herries, Alison could see
him without looking at him, could tell the very tilt his fine and
scornful brows were set at, could feel, through her very back, the
coldness of his stare. And yet her courage rose. Oh, he would be
angry--sore displeased! But better by far he should be angry for a
little while than any longer deceived.
[*] Mad.
It was fortunate for all concerned that Nancy returned at this critical
juncture. She took in the state of matters in an instant, and with
ready wit and supple tact did all that one little woman could do to save
the situation. She bustled about, she chattered, she rallied the poet
on the rareness of his visits (he had been there the previous night),
she pulled a chair up to the hearth for Herries, and almost pushed him
into it.
'Now, cousin,' she said coolly, 'you'll witness one of our own little
symposiums, and hear how marvellously Ally is improving on the harp.'
She ardently hoped--though she did not expect--that Herries would go.
But this he had no intention of doing. Alison had left the room, and
the boy Willy was shouting for Herries from an inner chamber, where he
slept, and Herries went to him. Nancy's whole aspect, voice, and
manner, changed in his absence.
'For God's sake, Sylvander,' she said, clasping the poet's arm, 'behave
yourself this night! Yonder is my most revered, particular, Puritanical
cousin and guardian, the lawyer Archibald Herries. A pragmatical
creature--no soul, no sympathy--but if he's offended, poor Clarinda is
undone! He is all her shield against the cruel world--all the worldly
hope of her poor, deserted babes. I implore you have a care not to
offend him by your manners to your poor friend.'
'My bare existence offends him,' said the poet, shrewdly enough. 'What
right,' he continued bitterly, 'has the poor ploughman to breathe the
same air with so fine a gentleman as Mr. Herries?'
'Oh, heavens!' cried Nancy, half beside herself. 'Never heed him. Are
you not worth a hundred of such poor dried sticks as he? Only think of
your poor Clarinda and be careful! 'Twould indeed be almost better
could you go.'
'I thank you, madam,' said the Bard, grimly; 'but I think I'll stand my
ground, unless you put me to the door.'
'Then, for God's sake, give all your heed to Ally,' cried Nancy; 'not a
look, not a word, but of merest civility to Clarinda!'