blankets, the gaunt, grey, sightless face; saw it--and knew it.
'Mysie!' she cried, shrinking back in utmost horror.
'Eh?' ejaculated several astonished voices; 'ye kent poor Mysie?'
But Alison felt the clammy sweat of faintness break out upon her flesh.
'Oh, let me go--let me out!' she gasped. 'I will speak to you upon the
stair.'
The women crowded round her, questioning, muttering, explaining she knew
not what. She got forth from the room at last, and found herself
standing with the one woman upon the outer landing. The poor creature
seemed decent enough. By some trick of likeness, she might have been,
probably was, the dead woman's sister. She eyed Alison, not
resentfully, but curiously.
'Are ye--are ye from _him_?' she asked.
'From whom?' said Alison, yet trembling, because she knew.
'Mysie was in trouble, ye ken,' the woman said, with a kind of weary
dispassionateness. 'I thought that mebbe--' She paused, lifting her
lustreless eyes to the fresh, unworn face of the girl before her, as
though wondering how far she would be understood.
But ah! Alison understood. She remembered the walk with Mysie only too
well--the scene before the house in St. James's Square--the poor
creature's then mysterious words. What had, even so short a while ago,
been hidden to Alison's innocence, was plain to her now. Knowledge of
the wrong, and the passion, and the sin of the world was breaking over
her heart like the dawn of a grey day. But it was a true woman's
heart--full of pity and of strength to meet the sorrowful enlightenment.
'He--he has sent money,' she said, crimsoning with shame, and she
slipped the coins into the other's hand. The woman weighed them in her
palm an instant, with a bitter smile.
'He's sent it, has he?' she said. 'Mebbe a wee thing late! Weel, he
didna grudge it likely. They're tellin' me he was never the lad to
grudge, and Mysie had but tae speir and he wad help her. But na, she
wudna! She was a queer body, Mysie. She had a place, and she lost it
(anent her trouble, ye see); and then she got the cauld trailin' the
streets to get a sicht o' her jo, and she dwined and dwined.... Ay,
it's a queer warld: and as you cam' chappin' at the door yonder, wi' his
money in yer hand, the last breath had just but newly left her mooth.'
Alison, as she listened, was pale; her pulses fluttered to her
deeply-moved, indignant sympathy. Inexperienced in sorrow, she knew not
what to say, but her eyes filled, and the woman saw them, and drew her
hand across her own eyes, dim with long watching.
'Ye will excuse us,' she said, with unconscious dignity. 'It wasna
decent that ye sud see what ye saw. But I wasna mysel', and I thocht it
was a neebor that chappit--a skilly woman we were waitin' on. I wudna
have ye think,' she went on, wistfully, 'that we didna do the best we
could for poor Mysie.'
'I know, I know,' whispered Alison, eagerly. 'And, oh! will you take
this from me?' She pressed into the woman's hand her own little hoard.
'I thank ye, mem; I canna refuse it,' the poor creature said simply.
'For we'll be sair put to it for a decent burial.'
Alison turned to go, her eyes burning, her heart hot within her.
*CHAPTER XXXIV.*
One mastering thought gave Alison's feet wings as she neared the
Potterrow on her return from the Wabster's Close. She would tell Nancy
of this heart-moving, this pitiful, sad scene she had witnessed, and
make it plain to her at whose door the greater guilt of it all lay.
Then Nancy must see reason, must lift the veil from her eyes,
acknowledge the wrong-doing of the man who could cause suffering so
infinite, and see her own danger in submitting to his influence.
Alison, in spite of much recently-acquired experience, was still, as the
perspicacious reader will perceive, very simple.
Nancy was sitting writing when her messenger returned.
'Well, child,' she said, 'and did you find the wench and deliver our
friend's bounty?'
'Bounty!' cried Alison, throwing out her hands. 'She--she needs no
bounty, Nancy. She's dead!'
Nancy started, then tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently.
'La, child,' she exclaimed, pettishly, 'how you frighten one!'
But Alison was in no mood to be put off with petulance or callousness.
In quick words, faltering and broken--for her eyes were wet, and her
quiet, reticent nature stirred to the rare point of passionate
utterance--she told what she had seen of Mysie's end.
'And, oh, Nancy,' she whispered at last, on her knees at her friend's
side, 'it was _his_ doing. She was in trouble; it was _his_ fault.
She's dead--dead! and but for him she might have been alive and
happy--honest at the least.'
But Nancy looked down at her face unmoved, with a little, hard smile.
'Accidents will happen,' she said coolly. 'We must all die, surely.
Men will be men. To talk as you do is sheer hysterics. You are a
child.'
'I am a woman!' cried Alison, 'and I see with a woman's eyes.'
'You ought to concede,' Nancy continued, unmoved, 'that our friend has
acted by the lass as handsomely as anyone could expect. He sent money.
I've reason to know he would have acknowledged her child had the silly
wench but given him the chance. He's all generosity, kindness, warmth.
Didn't I give you his very words this morning--"I'd wipe the tears from
all eyes if I could"?'
''Twould be far better, I think,' cried Alison, 'that he should try
first to cause no tears to flow. I see no beauty, Nancy, in beautiful
words when cruel, heedless acts go with them.'
Nancy shrugged her shoulders.
'You've no understanding of a poet, Ally,' she said, with a superior and
pitying air. But Alison rose to her feet, feeling a sudden courage to
say that which had long burned upon her tongue.
'Oh! Nancy, Nancy,' she cried, 'is it for _this_ man that you--'
'That I _what_?' said Nancy, turning fiercely upon her friend.
'That you forget,' whispered Alison, stammeringly, 'forget that you are
Willy and Danny's mother, and--and--a wife, Nancy!' From cheek to brow,
from her neck to her very ears, Nancy turned scarlet at the words, and
her eyes blazed with anger.
'How _dare_ you, Alison Graham,' she said, 'how dare you say such words
to me? _I_ forget myself--I, who remember hourly that I am bound--bound
by an iron chain to an odious fate? Ah, were I free!'--she clenched her
little hands, and her whole tiny frame was shaken with the vehemence of
her passion, 'were I free, should I be here?--and he--he, as he is--left
to the machinations of the vulgar, and driven to demean himself with
filthy peasants?' She had risen, and stood over Alison, blazing with
jealousy as well as rage--not jealousy of the luckless dead victim of
the poet's passions, but, as it happened, of Jean Armour, of whose
ascendency over the Bard she was mortally suspicious. But now she turned
all the vials of her wrath on Alison.
'You, to misunderstand me!' she cried. 'You, whom I have trusted, to
turn again and rend me! But you are like the rest of the
world--evil-minded! You read wickedness when there is only the
innocence and true nobility of great minds. You are incapable of
understanding friendship. I despise and rise above your mean
suspicions--they are unworthy of my thoughts. But if the viper I had
cherished and nursed to warmth in my bosom had turned and stung me, I
could not have been more pained!' Saying which, with a toss of her head
and a fine rustle of petticoats, Nancy flounced out of the room,
slamming the door behind her.
Poor Alison remained alone to chew the cud of this new development in
her friend's mood as best she might. That Nancy should thus mount the
virtuous high-horse took her inexperience totally by surprise. She
conceived the figment of the 'friendship' to have long since been cast
aside; but she was evidently wrong, it died a lingering death. The girl
was hopelessly at sea; she began to doubt herself. Was she really
evil-minded? Did she actually suspect evil where no evil was?
Presently Nancy came back, her fit of anger gone, replaced by one of
virtuous resignation. She kissed Alison sweetly on the cheek.
'I forgive you, Ally!' she said, with the most perfect air of injured
innocence. 'You are young, you do not understand! You are influenced
by the cruel world! I declare I think you've been too much with Herries
lately in all these tiresome visits of his, and are become infected with
his horrid narrow manner of thought. Ah! be my own sweet Ally again,
and we shall not quarrel.' Alison submitted to the kiss and to the
reconciliation in meek bewilderment, hardly now capable of aught else.
These were very sad days for Alison, for evidently Herries held himself
aloof. What else, under her incriminating silence, could he do? She
asked herself this, and found no answer. Yet she would listen for his
footsteps on the stair, and scan the empty streets for his familiar
figure--empty to her because she never met or saw him all these dreary
days. One afternoon she sat alone in the little parlour--for Nancy,
after a bad night, was lying down in her room. She was so deep in
thought, sitting away by the little window, her hands idle over the work
in her lap, that she heard nothing, and it was only when she suddenly
turned round that she found her thoughts had taken visible form.
Herries himself stood in the doorway.
For him, too, it was a supreme moment, because he put out his whole
strength against his love, and for once love conquered. He had told
himself he had not come to seek Alison, and had given himself the
shallow pretext of bringing his cousin's monthly money allowance. But
now ... he closed the door, and in a minute his arms held Alison, and
with a touch, half rough, half tender, he was pushing the darling curls
from her white temples and kissing them. Yet even now they heard Nancy
moving in her room, and knew they had not a moment.
'Alison,' whispered Herries, hoarsely, 'I wish to God you would go home.
Go home, and I will say not another word, but come and ask you from your
parents.' ... But Alison pushed him from her with her arms--him, and the
terrible temptation of his words.
'I can't go home!' she said, and ran from the room, meeting Nancy, who
entered.
'Well, cousin,' the latter exclaimed, with her own undaunted
sprightliness, 'here's an unexpected honour! 'Tis some time since you
visited this humble roof.' But Herries turned a moody look upon his
relative.
'We have not come to an understanding yet on the subjects of my last
visit,' he said grimly. 'But I daresay you know me too well to believe
that I have been inactive in the matter. I have taken measures to
prevent the visits of a certain unsuitable person to your house.'
'Indeed!' said Nancy, meekly, gathering up her forces for the fray, and
rapidly coming to the conclusion that meekness would suit her best; if
feeble as a weapon, it would at least be baffling to her adversary.
Herries continued--
'If you have no sense of what is fitting or unfitting for a young woman
in your peculiarly delicate circumstances, others must exercise it for
you. That such a man as Burns should visit your house as an intimate is
worse than unfitting--it is a slur upon your reputation. He is openly a
profligate, and his _bonnes fortunes_ with women everywhere are become a
bye-word. If you cannot protect yourself against the danger of his
society, you must be protected.' Nancy had cast down her eyes and
looked the image of innocence.
'You are too much the master here, Archie,' she meekly said, 'and I and
my poor infants are too directly dependent on your bounty for your word
to be questioned. No doubt you are wise. If you have forbidden Mr.
Burns my house, of course he will be forbidden.' Herries looked
suspiciously at the smooth, downcast face of his cousin. He did not
believe a word she said--he never did. But she baffled him.
'Have you no conscience,' he said angrily, 'that you have subjected to
the influence of Mr. Burns a girl like that one yonder--your guest--an
inexperienced young creature committed to your charge, and for whom you
are responsible? Has no thought of her ever troubled you?' Nancy
assumed a little troubled air of guilt, fidgeting with the fringes of
her apron.
'La, Archie,' she said, 'poor Alison! Well, 'tis her sweet voice that
has attracted the poet here, I may tell you that. And if she is--may
be, for I've no certain knowledge of it, mind you--a little smit, what
harm? Girls love these soft sensations--'tis their life. But lud,
Archie! fancy talking of such things to you,' and she gave a little
amused laugh. Herries looked at her with a helpless dislike. His eyes
were full of a dumb and angry pain that could not get itself spoken. He
had always despised this little woman--an error of judgment, for such
little women are full of power, and have swayed kingdoms in their day.
Now, with callous little hands, she turned the dagger in his heart.
Heavens! how she made him suffer--unconsciously, it was true, but he had
a bitter feeling that the will was there.
'Is Miss Graham gone out?' he asked uneasily.
'La! cousin, I can't tell you,' said Nancy, carelessly. 'I
daresay--she's often out. I can't keep a constant dragon's eye on a
great girl like that. I'm no tyrant, and she has her liberties.'
Herries turned away impatiently; there was nothing to be gained in
remaining with his cousin but added uneasiness. He left her house a
bitterly dissatisfied and anxious man.
*CHAPTER XXXV.*
Herries's homeward way led him past the house where his partner,
Creighton, lay, now in the last stages of consumptive illness. He had
been there very often of late, and, more than one night, had watched
beside the sick-bed until morning. During the early stages of his
illness, Mr. Creighton had always asked each day for Alison, and been
well satisfied with the answers which Herries gave him. But latterly
these kind and eager questionings had ceased, and in increasing fever
and weakness the man was gradually losing touch with the things of this
life. Yet there had been a rally only that morning and the day before.
A forlorn hope sprang up in Herries's heart that his partner's sagacity
might help him once again. He would tell him his trouble--he would
unburden himself. Creighton was a long-headed, a shrewd man, and as
secret as the grave towards which he was hastening.
Herries quickened his steps, and when he came to the stair he mounted it
with a renewed energy in his gait. Before he reached the sick man's
door he heard his voice--speaking out much more strongly than of
late--and his hopes arose. Mr. Creighton was sitting up in bed,
unimaginably gaunt and pale; a thin red colour made a patch on either
sunk and waxen cheek, and his eyes were very bright. But, alas! when
they were turned on Herries there was no recognition in them, and his
loud, eager talk was the mere babble of delirium. The names upon his
lips were names that Herries had never heard; they were doubtless those
of the man's home and youth so resolutely put behind him, so hopelessly
divided from him by the yawning gulf of some bitter, early quarrel. A
woman's name he uttered so often, and with such poignant meaning, that
Herries, bending over him, asked again and yet again if she were not one
who could be sent for. He could not know that the earth had covered her
for thirty years in that parish graveyard, away among the Pentlands,
where Creighton, one evening not long since, had craved his partner to
see him buried. Now his unmeaning voice went on and on, monotonous,
painful, terribly sad. Herries turned away at last in bitterest
silence. Creighton's dog, that crouched upon the bed, half starved,
growled at his footsteps as he crossed the floor.
Herries went out into the exquisite spring evening, but it brought him
neither peace nor comfort. What to him were the crocus tints behind the
looming castle masses? what to him the evening star that swam and shone
there? In his heart were love, bitterness, and battle. Battle--for
presently his enemy must return, might even now be returning, and then
the tussle must begin. Herries was perfectly conscious that his letter
to Robert Burns was a sheer challenge. How was he to enforce the order
he had given? With what weapons could he fight a peasant? The duel
would have been his remedy--easy and obvious--with an equal, but in
those days men did not fight with churls. What combat of the kind was
possible with a man who had never touched a sword or lifted a firearm in
his life? Herries was full of fight--sharp-set, determined, coldly
eager for the fray. You could see it in the steel-blue glitter of his
eye, the scornful lift of eyebrow and dilation of the fine carved
nostril. A game terrier, wiry with pluck, and bristling with defiance,
matched against a mastiff. Such might have seemed to a sporting
onlooker the chances of the fight. Alison, meanwhile, woman-like, had
no excitement of a coming battle to make her forget her pain. She, too,
thought of the enemy's return, but with a cold terror, feeble and
helpless. In her little closet, all alone, she would lie and think,
forcing the tears back into her heart.
And even then he was coming--he had come--that common enemy, riding up
the crowded streets upon his borrowed nag in the broad light of the
lengthening day. He had ridden all the way from Dumfries by easy
stages, jolly stages, most rollickingly punctuated by the flowing bowl
and much good company. Thus he came in by the town gate, riding boldly
for all men to see, loose rein and roving eye, king of all hearts,
commander of the blood of men. The people turned to look at him, and
laughed for pleasure; some called aloud, 'Guid e'en t'ye, Robbie!' while
others walked at his pony's shaggy shoulder and stretched eager hands
upward for his grip. So, with half the town to welcome him, came Robert
Burns back to the Auld Reekie of his songs and sins.
Certainly Alison's lucky star was on the wane, for Mr. Creighton died
that night, and died intestate. And so she had missed a fortune and
lost a friend.
*CHAPTER XXXVI.*
Burns, on this occasion, had returned to Edinburgh in what was, for him,
really rather a chastened mood. His absence had been on important
business, and that business had progressed to such a degree that he felt
himself on the verge of a great crisis in his life, and was well minded
that it should be a crisis for good and not for evil. He had surveyed
the farmlands in the exquisite valley of the Nith, and had made 'a
poet's, not a farmer's choice' of Elliesland, where he intended to
settle forthwith and turn farmer in serious earnest. Furthermore, an
appointment in the Excise had been insured to him by the interest of
powerful friends, and that was another practical, sensible, wage-earning
feather in his cap. Of certain interesting domestic complications at
Mauchline it hardly does to speak with any degree of knowledge or
understanding, but there can be little question that, at this time,
there loomed large in the poet's mind some idea of an arrangement with
the patient, twin-bearing Jean, which should do some tardy justice to
that long-suffering female.
It is fairly plain, in any case, that during his absence in the south,
Sylvander had cooled considerably to his Clarinda. Not that he did not
adore her still, in a proper poet's way, but he had begun to adore
someone else, with practical ends in view. So matters with his
fascinating little friend in the Potterrow must be brought to a pleasant
conclusion. It would cause him more than a pang, but still, there must
be an end to all things--the best of friends must part. He meant to
remain in Edinburgh for a few days only, merely to wind up business
matters with his publisher and pay a few visits of farewell. Then he
would turn his back upon the capital of his triumphs and his
disappointments, and turn over a new leaf in life and love.
This might have happened without further hindrance, and things have
settled themselves comfortably to everybody's satisfaction (except,
perhaps, Clarinda's), had it not been for Herries's most unlucky and
misguided letter. This awaited the poet at his lodging, under a pile of
correspondence accumulated for him by his henchman Nicol. This admiring
attendant of genius also awaited the arrival of Burns in his rooms, and
the two spent a convivial evening of reunion. The Bard was already
elevated enough in his spirits, owing to the festive nature of his
journey, but it was with that kind of elevation which turns to
querulousness at very slight provocation.
'Here's letters enough to last a body a lifetime,' he grumbled, turning
over a pile of papers, where several missives of Clarinda's lay, still
unopened, it is sad to state. 'Here's a packet from some unknown,' he
added; 'thick paper, and a fine crest upon the seal.' He broke it open.
As he read the few lines in Herries's upright, clear-cut writing, the
blood rushed in purple to his face, and he started to his feet.
'Now, by all that's damnable, this is too much!' he shouted, his very
eyes becoming bloodshot.
'Canny, lad, canny,' said Nicol, soothingly, accustomed to the poet in
his cups. 'What's up now?'
But it was no mere vinous rage that held the Bard. He was touched in his
tenderest and sorest points--his independence and his sense of social
inferiority.
'Up?' he cried, 'up? Why, here's a miserable hound of a pettifogging
lawyer--a wretched, thin-blooded, whey-faced whipper-snapper that I
could crush to the wall wi' the one hand o' me--has the damned impudence
to infringe upon my liberties and tell me that he forbids me Mrs.
Maclehose's house!' He tossed the letter to his friend, who read it
with a kindling eye. Unluckily, it was couched in terms precisely those
to enrage Nicol also, not merely as a partisan, but because he acridly
resented the tone and attitude of a superior.
'"Persons not of her station, or known to her immediate circle,"' he
quoted with a sneer. 'And who is Master Herries that he writes so
fine?'
'Am I not telling you?' cried Burns, irritably. 'A damned, pettifogging
George Street writer, some cousin or guardian of my Clarinda, who,
because he contributes a few paltry pence to the maintenance of her
bairns, satisfies the miserable, half-inch soul of an unfeeling,
cold-blooded, pitiful bigot by standing censor to everything she does
that is above his dungeon bosom and foggy head! I've seen him but the
once, but _I_ know him! Ay, and I'll know him to some purpose now, be
damned to him! Here, out of my light, man! Let me go--' He had seized
a cudgel from a corner of the room and apparently meditated an instant
adjournment to the lawyer's premises, so armed. But Nicol interceded.
'Wheesht, lad!' he urged. 'Steady a wee thing, now! Wait a bittie and
see if we cannot forge some prettier mischief to Master Herries than a
mere thrashing. That's like to be more of a scandal to you than to him.
Trust him to have half-a-dozen lacqueys at his beck and call that would
put you to the door or ever you could win by to the man. They know
better, these lily-livered, dirty, skunking lawyer-bodies, than not to
guard themselves well against honest men's anger.'
Burns paused. Nicol's counsels had generally some weight with him, more
especially when, as at the present moment, after a merry afternoon, he
was not perfectly certain of his actions.
'How'll I win at him? How will I touch him?' he said, flinging down the
stick and frowning heavily.
'You've a full right to a pretty revenge,' said his friend; 'and surely
you can't want of opportunity. The gate's open to you that gives you
entry to the man's very hearth.'
'Ay, that's true,' said Burns, with a grin, as he thought of the cosy
fireside in the Potterrow.
'Can't you make the fellow jealous?' said Nicol.
'If he had the passions of a buck-rabbit, weel could I!' said Burns,
vindictively. 'For there's his lass--I caught him with her in the
dark--and then, under his very nose, I had to pay her some particularity
of attention in order to put him off the scent with my Clarinda. 'Tis
that muckle lass you have some grudge against yourself.'