Part 12

'Oh, you think of my cousin,' said Herries, coolly. 'But she dare not try these tricks; she understands too well the delicacy and instability of her present situation, she knows to a hair's-breadth what she can, and what she cannot, risk. I can trust Nancy with herself, but with--with a charge I cannot trust her. She's no fit guide for a young girl.'

'Oh, be at rest, sir, be at rest!' said Creighton, smiling. 'She that we talk of needs no guidance from your cousin. If there is guiding to be done, her own will be the hand that guides; and whomsoever she guides she will guide to a blessing. Take my word for that; I have looked her through and through.... And now that we talk of angels, we begin to hear their wings, I perceive.'

Herries looked up, and saw in the distance Alison and the child Willy coming towards them.

'They--they sometimes walk here of a morning,' he said.

'Ah, you knew that!' cried Creighton, well pleased.

'It may be that I did,' said Herries.

His partner's words had poured balm upon his irritation. There was a calmness and a strength about Creighton's common sense, that made it very convincing. He could certainly influence Herries to a degree that was possible with no one else. And now Alison herself was coming, and the young man felt a sudden and uncontrollable tumult in his blood. She passed them at the full distance of the broad walk, and only bowed, but it was near enough for them to see the sudden colour in her half-averted face, to note the quickened step and fluttered air. Creighton slipped his arm from that of his friend.

'Run, man, run!' he said; 'you are due elsewhere. Don't you see the signals held out for your welcome?'

'I--I see them,' stammered Herries, himself red as a boy. 'But you, sir? Can you get home?'

'What matters an old man like me?' cried Creighton, impatiently. 'My race is run. Be off--be off! She'll give you the slip yet; she's nearly out of sight.'

Herries hesitated a moment; his cold eyes were alight as they looked after the vanishing figure in the red pelisse.

'I'll take your advice, sir,' he said. And then he followed.

Creighton toiled up the steep ascent to his lodgings alone.

'All's well--for this time!' he was saying to himself. 'But how will it be when I am not at his elbow to allay suspicion, to soothe pride? They're ingrained in the nature of the lad. Will they lose him his happiness as they did me mine? It's likely--it's likely yet, if I know men.' He had barely breath to get up the long stone stair to his rooms, and cast himself into a chair beside the neglected hearth. He looked round the room with dull apathy of sickness, and wiped the sheer sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand.

'She--she shall have all I have to leave in this world,' he muttered. 'For the lad's sake, and for the sake of one of her sex--dead this thirty years. And for her own sake, too--a fine, a fair creature, a bonny lass!' He made as though he would reach a desk that stood near upon a table, but fell back weakly in his chair.

'Time enough yet for that, I daresay,' he said, closing his eyes.

There is often 'time enough' for the making of those wills, and yet the future finds them--unmade.

*CHAPTER XXVIII.*

Down in the fields, near where, nowadays, Ainslie and Moray Places rear their respectable family mansions--fields white that morning with the thick, wintry rime--Archibald Herries and Alison Graham walked side by side. He was bareheaded in the cold, for assuredly a man does not talk easily of love with his hat on his head. He held it in a hand behind him; the other arm had Alison's hand between it and his heart. This girl was his. Had he needed to ask? There are some things craved and received without question and answer. Suspicion and mistrust seemed to have vanished away; no man could harbour either while he looked in Alison's eyes.

'Whom shall we tell first, Ally?' he was asking.

'Need we tell anyone, sir--just yet?' said Alison, wistfully. 'Isn't it too new and too--too good to be told?'

The words were too strictly an echo from his own nature for him to find fault with them.

'But my cousin might have to be told,' he suggested.

'Nancy? Oh, no, no!' said Alison, impulsively.

'Why?' said Herries, laughing. 'I thought you were such dear friends, and had no secrets from each other?'

'So we are--dear friends, sir,' said Alison, though not quite with the enthusiasm she might have felt a month ago. 'But--I could not tell her of this. 'Tis different to everything else in the world.'

'That's true,' Herries answered. 'Ally,' he said, suddenly, 'are you prepared to find me but a poor lover? For 'tis that I'm likely to prove, I fear. I am but a dry stick. Pretty speeches come so shyly to my lips, and as to love-letters, I never put pen to paper but in the way of business. Weeks might pass and I might never say, "I love you."'

'Sure,' said Alison slowly, as though she were thinking out some abstruse and difficult problem, 'sure, 'tis the people that love each other most that never do say "I love you." All my life long I've loved my father and my sisters and little Jacky when he came, but I never thought to say "I love you" to one of them. If you know a thing in your heart, the less need to have it on your lips. Don't you think so, sir?'

'True, very true, Ally,' said Herries, thinking to himself what a pearl of sweet sense he had found, and how she suited him; 'only--only--'

'Only what?' asked Alison, innocently.

'Only I would it were the General's Entry, dear,' whispered Herries, at her ear, 'with walls and nothing but a dim old lamp....'

'Ah, but it's not, sir!' cried Alison, pulling away from him, scarlet with blushes; ''tis the open field, and there comes Willy!'

'Plague take the child--so he does!' said Herries.

He had given the boy a shilling to spend at a booth in the suburb, and it seemed to him hardly a shilling's-worth of absence that had been granted. Willy came racing towards them, vociferous, flying a newly-purchased kite above his head.

'So we must go, I suppose, sir?' said Alison, wistfully.

''Tis getting mighty cold, though we haven't noticed it,' Herries observed, as they walked townwards across the fields. 'I think I smell the snow.'

A thin, yellowish film had gathered over the bright sun, which, day after day, had made the long, strong frost endurable. The cold, indeed, became perceptibly greater, and a slight, shivering wind set in from the north.

'Haste you home, child,' said Herries, 'and be in before the storm. You may guess whether I come soon to the Potterrow or not.'

'N--not too often, sir,' whispered Alison. The whisper might have stood for the mere coyness of a girl, and so Herries translated it. But in Alison's mind was the troubled knowledge of how little welcome her lover was just now, in the little room which his own liberality helped to make so cosy and so home-like. It was very hard, she thought, but time would doubtless show a way out of the difficulty, if one were only patient.

Alison, indeed, was very grave as she walked home that day, after parting from her lover. She was very happy. Her feeling for Herries had become--as such feelings will with such natures--a part and parcel of herself--the very heart of her. It was a wondrous thing, a miracle, that the one man she had ever known should also be the one man in the world most worthy of love and honour. But then, to reverent and simple minds, the miracle brings awe as well as joy, and Alison was a little afraid of her own happiness, as though it could hardly be meant for such as she. Not for nothing was she the daughter of those bucolic, hard-lived ancestors of hers, who, generation after generation, in the dull obscurity of The Mains, had dragged through joyless and prosaic lives, ignorant of the world beyond the boundaries of their home. Something of a want of buoyancy was Alison's, and it came from that old home source. But she loved,--and the tingle of the new sensation ran through her veins like wine, though it left her sober.

Herries, in the meantime, reached his house in a mood of elation so very singular for him that, had he been like many of his countrymen of that day, superstitious, he would have called it 'fey'--uncanny. Everything seemed to be working together for his good; the stars in their courses fought his battles. Through the least likely source in the world--his cousin--he had found what promised to be the happiness of his life. Approval and passion--how seldom they combine!--met in his tenderness for Alison Graham. There might be other girls more beautiful and more accomplished, but surely there was no other in the world so formed to please him. How sensible she was! Would any other girl have condoned, nay, actually have proposed, a courtship so shorn of the nonsense which by long custom must needs beset all conventional affairs of the kind? Herries reflected, with easy complacency, how exceedingly well it suited him, at this juncture, that his betrothal should be kept a secret. Creighton, he was certain, was either ill, or about to be ill, and during his illness the affair of a new partnership would naturally be in a decent abeyance. The strain of double work and double anxiety must fall upon him, Herries, very severely in the immediate future, and how inexpressibly inconvenient, at such a time, would have been the fuss and the worry of a declared engagement. But there was to be no such foolish demand upon his time and energy, no nonsense of a daily correspondence, or lover-like dancing of attendance on his charmer. He was even bidden not to go too often to the Potterrow! How infinitely to his taste, how admirably suitable, it all was!

Yet, for a young man so perfectly pleased with a wise and sober arrangement of things, that evening in his rooms seemed to pass with extraordinary slowness,--in very truth, with the most appalling tedium. He was restless; he could neither write nor read. He spent the lonely hours lolling now in one chair, now in another, his handsome head thrown back, his eyes beset with dreams. What he dreamed of was a room, so much meaner than his own, a little room, ruddy with fire and candlelight and cosy curtains, where there was a grey-eyed girl, the tinkle of a harp, the notes of a song. He went furtively to a window and looked out, with a certain thought in the back of his mind. But the night was one of whirling snow, dark and wild, for the storm had come.

''Twould be madness to go; they'd think me crazy,' was the thought in his mind. A clock struck, and he laughed. 'Why, they'll be away to their beds!' he said. Certain strings, which appeared to be attached in the neighbourhood of his heart, were pulling him, pulling him to the Potterrow. But this time he withstood their wrenching, and taking a law book from the shelf, set himself to read like a really sensible man.

*CHAPTER XXIX.*

The lion and the jackal are figures coupled by the natural historian as 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.