Part 14

In the meantime, Alison's lover had gone home, far more deeply perturbed than she, because totally in the dark, and because he had not, as had the woman he loved, the solid ground beneath his feet of a nature that could trust. Suspicion and mistrust had dogged the beginning of his love for Alison, but then Creighton had been at his elbow to fight each doubt as it arose; and after that his own love had grown strong, so strong that it grappled with the enemies of his nature, and overthrew them for a time. But now they sprang upon him from their old ambush, and how alive, how terribly alive, they were! The angry blood rushed to his brow as he thought himself deceived. Had she really tricked him? He recalled the ugly little circumstances of the early winter--the meeting in St. James's Square--the fee to Mysie; and then--and then, could it be that Alison had begged for secrecy in their engagement, had deprecated the frequency of his visits to the Potterrow, bidden him come on certain evenings and at certain hours only, because she played a double game, and fooled him in it? But no, this was monstrous, and he did not believe it in his soul--not yet at least. Only, in his bitterness, he said to himself that all women were the same; they all deceived, prevaricated, lied and hid, and this seeming-true, fair creature that he had taken to his heart was only a woman after all. Ah, but he loved her! Not till now had he known the strength of his love, not till his heart pained him as it did this night, with its abominable aching. There was nothing for it but that he must write to her before he slept, and he did so.

He made his accusation in plain terms. 'You have deceived me,' he wrote, 'in regard to an intimacy, which you have hidden, with a man whom you knew well that I abhorred. I did suspect at one time that Burns might possibly frequent my cousin's house, because of her foolish craze for literary lions and the like. But the suspicion left me utterly, because I did not believe that such a matter would be kept from my knowledge by you. But now I suddenly find you intimate with this man, singing to him, and having in common with him, apparently, the memory of countless meetings. What am I to think? To this intimacy--at anyrate in my cousin's household--it is my resolution and my duty to put an instant termination, and I shall know what measures to take to that end. If I have any claim on you--and you yourself only can decide whether I have or not--I forbid you to see or have speech with this man again. He is a profligate. I have reasons, believe me, that make me urge your obedience in this matter. I am harsh with you--I was harsh to-night--but I would not be too harsh, Alison. I know not yet how far you may have acted under influence,--perhaps my cousin's. I have often felt she was no safe guardian for a young girl. Have you found out yet that you left my mother's ring--the ring of our betrothal--in my hands? You started so, when that accursed poet came into the room, and were so visibly taken aback that you forgot my gift! I desire and hope to God you may yet wear it--and wear it worthily. But I will keep it for a little while. You will not see me for some days. I learn that Mr. Creighton's illness is become dangerous, and every hour that I can spare must be spent at his bedside.'

When Alison got this letter, a strange feeling of exaltation moved her. Severe? But then, how just! Plain? But how she loved his plainness! Dear--dearer than his very kisses--to this girl, with her own straight, undeviating nature, was the man's unerring, if narrow, rectitude, his clean, cold uprightness, his hatred of all false ways. He would not give her the ring? She almost laughed; he might slay her--but she would love the slaying from his hands; it would be a noble pain!

Unluckily for himself and all concerned, Herries did not stay his hand that night, after he had written to Alison. He wrote another letter, and this time he wrote neither so wisely nor so well. It ran:--

'Mr. Herries presents his compliments to Mr. Robert Burns, and begs to inform him that he is under the necessity of preventing and forbidding the visits of Mr. Burns to the house of Mrs. Maclehose in the Potterrow. The unhappy circumstances which have deprived Mrs. Maclehose of the protection of a husband, make it indispensable that her relatives and friends should exercise a supervision over her acquaintance, and should guard her from the intimacy of persons not of her own station, or known to her immediate circle.'

This was all--but it was all wrong, and Herries, as a lawyer, if not as a sensible and prudent man, should certainly have known that it was so. That he should forbid Alison the intimacy of such-and-such a man was possibly within his province. That he should advise, cajole or influence his cousin to close her doors against an objectionable visitor might certainly be his duty. But that he should forbid, or, with a high hand, prevent Mr. Burns the poet--a free agent in a free country--from visiting any house where he was welcomed by the inmates (except it were his--Herries's own) was an absurdity so glaring, that the only marvel was it did not strike his vision from the paper as he wrote. It can only be said for him that he was at the moment a sorely harassed man--over-worked, in the first instance, and now set upon by jealousy and suspicion. Hot under these influences, it is perhaps no wonder that he sat down to commit the one thoroughly ill-judged action of his life.

He was aware that the poet left town next day for a fortnight, but he directed the letter to his lodgings in St. James's Square, believing that it would be forwarded by the next mail. As a matter of fact, the letter lay in town until the poet's return.

*CHAPTER XXXIII.*

The fortnight which now began to pass--the period of the poet's absence from town--was a very unhappy one in the Potterrow. Alison had, indeed, her lover's letter, but she would not, or could not, answer it. The truth she could not write, therefore it seemed to her better not to write at all. Hard as it was, it seemed she must be silent under his reproach. Some way out of the mystery might show itself, but it appeared to Alison that she was bound hand and foot, and could not move to clear herself. And in these days, though she had a brave heart, she began to be afraid.

But now the sight of Nancy's wretchedness--no longer to be concealed or disguised--began, even more than her own uneasiness, to affect her. The recklessness, the headstrong wilfulness of the little woman when the object of her passion had been near her, and she could either see him or hear from him day by day, had been hard enough to cope with, but now that he was absent, and the constant excitement of the letters and the meetings was suspended, her state was piteous. She would neither eat nor sleep, neither rest nor yet employ herself; the irritation of her temper--sweet turned to bitter under the alchemy of passion--was almost insupportable. She would still write, by the hour, by day and night, her feverish, passionate letters, which followed the poet by mail and post-gig, and must prettily have punctuated his progress as he went. He, from Glasgow, had scratched her a line as he waited for the Paisley carrier, promising future and full epistles. But these did not follow with absolute regularity, and the unreasoning little creature maddened under his silence. She finally fretted herself into a fever, real enough, and Alison had the doctor in; and a febrifuge and also a sleeping-draught prescribed, gave the household a little peace at night at anyrate.

At last a merciful morning brought a substantial packet from the errant Bard, handsomely franked by some important personage, for he wrote from a fine country house in Ayrshire, where he rested on his way from Mauchline to Dumfriesshire. For hours did Nancy pore over these precious sheets, reading out now and again laughing extracts to Alison. This had always been her wont, and not by any means always edifying had been the nature of these extracts, for Sylvander was a correspondent of amazing frankness, and hid from his Clarinda none of his peccadillos, past or present. Nancy, in these matters, had grown curiously hardened, and probably hardly realised the essence of her revelations to the shocked ears of a girl.

'Why,' she cried, on this occasion, 'here will be a little excursion for you, love! My Sylvander begs a favour of me; 'tis to take five shillings, as from him, to a poor necessitous creature in the Wabster's Close. Will you do it, dear? You know how miserably unfit your poor Nancy is to face the streets!' Now, the poet's message ran:--'There is a poor lass in the Wabster's Close of whom I get a tale of distress that makes my very heart weep blood. For some part of her trouble I am (with contrition, I own it) responsible. I will trust that your goodness will apologise to your delicacy for me, when I beg you, for heaven's sake, to send the poor woman five shillings in my name, and let the wench leave a line for me--you know where--and I shall see her, and try what is to be done for her relief.' Nancy, even, had felt the necessity of editing this passage, but she dwelt upon the poet's kindliness of nature with unction.

'He's said to me often and often, Ally,' she took this occasion to remark, '"I would have all men and women happy! I'd wipe the tears from all eyes if I could!" He has the tenderest, the most sensitive heart!' So, would Alison go upon this charitable quest? Of course she would--thankful to be sent on any quest that did not lead in the direction of St. James's Square.

Now, it will be said that, in these pages, our poor Alison has run too many messages, and, indeed, she has. But the reader, of his own experience, probably knows that there is in this world a certain class of little, dainty, clinging, tender women whose messages are all run for them as a matter of course. To this class did Nancy Maclehose belong. There was a kind of understanding that rough walks in dirty streets, and in all kinds of weather, were not her portion. Nor did she exact this consideration from her friends; it came to her as a sort of right, a kind of tacit acknowledgment of her power--that power to which all bowed down who came in contact with her--the willing Alison, the sturdy Jean, her own devoted little boys--even Herries himself, though he, indeed, was a rebellious slave. So Alison set out, quite willingly, in all good faith that she went upon a charitable mission.

It was mid-February now, and there was an extraordinary mildness in the air. The frost and snow, the bitter north winds were gone. A tender sky, sweet with the very tints of spring, swam above the stern old town, and a westerly wind, soft as a kiss, touched Alison's cheek as she walked. She was acquainted with her destination, the Wabster's Close--a most malodorous and unpleasing quarter; but Alison was not afraid of such places now, and merely picked her way with added caution over the foul causeway and slippery cobbles. She had nothing but a name, Clow, as uncommon as it was hideous to go by, and by inquiry she discovered the tenement or 'land,' where a family thus named was said to live. It was up a stair of an agglomerated and indescribable filth--the worst that Alison had yet seen. No wonder, she thought, that a person living in such a place needed a charitable dole.

She paused at a door, behind which there seemed to rise a perfect Babel of sound--a Babel, yet curiously subdued, as though many people spoke, and spoke at once, yet in hushed voices. She knocked, and a woman opened, who, with a curious, indescribable air of excitement, plucked her by the sleeve, whispering hoarsely,--'Come in by--come ben!'

Alison felt impelled to enter, but shrank involuntarily, as the close air of the darksome and overcrowded chamber, with some nameless horror in it, assailed her senses. The woman, however, who had admitted her, now closed the door behind her. Alison noticed that her hands were shaking, piteously, uncontrollably, and that she was very pale. The room seemed full--full to overflowing--of women who whispered with bent heads, gesticulating, raising hands to heaven, and who now turned curious eyes on Alison.

She stood still in the middle of the wretched place, awed and terrified, she knew not why, yet instinctively conscious of the nearness of some tragedy.

'I was sent here,' she whispered to the woman near her, 'with five shillings for a girl, Clow, said to be in want or sickness.'

A murmur ran round the room. At her words, as if by common consent, the crowd of women drew aside, and through the clearance thus made Alison perceived a bed; and on the bed, its dismal occupant, the newly-dead, as yet untended, the staring eyes unclosed, the pallid hand clenched on the disordered covering. A woman, standing at the bed's head, still held to the parted lips the undimmed mirror.

Alison's vision swam; she sickened, but she saw--saw, upturned among the 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.'