Part 4

Thus would these two swear an eternal friendship, over and over again. Alison heard more, also--heard a great deal, indeed, about the wondrous ploughman poet, whose image seemed to possess the ardent imagination of her friend. There was a certain little brownish, roughly-bound book amongst those which were wont to litter the coverlet of the best bed. It had a dog's-eared and most ungenteel appearance, but it was the Kilmarnock edition of the poems of Robert Burns, and had its letters been in gold and its binding of scented satin, it would not, in the then inflamed state of public adulation of the poet, have been too richly dressed. To the contents of this little book Alison listened, with a sort of tingling in her blood. She had a nature full of unuttered music, and she had been born and bred among those simple country scenes of her native land, whence the poet drew his inspiration. So he became, as he had become to thousands of his tongue-tied, voiceless, and strenuous countrymen and countrywomen, the very mouthpiece of her soul; and thus, long before a tangled thread from this man's chequered destiny became in-woven with the simple web of her own life, Alison got her first knowledge of Robert Burns.

But, in the meantime, the gay little invalid at The Mains, announced herself cured, and, in a cloud of pink wrapper and enveloping shawl, tottered from bed to the arm-chair by the fire.

'And, now, Ally,' she cried, 'now that my spirits are come again, now for your good mother and Mr. Cheape!'

*CHAPTER VIII.*

The task which the romantic Mrs. Maclehose had set herself in regard to Alison, was one entirely after her own heart. She considered herself a past-mistress in all things relating to the tender passion; and though she herself had met with signal and disastrous shipwreck amid the shoals of matrimony, there was nothing in life that interested her like affairs of the heart. On this occasion, indeed, it was the marring, and not the making, of a match, that she had in hand. But what mission could be more legitimate, what endeavour more congenial, than that of helping to liberate a young and interesting friend from the horrid bondage of a loveless contract? That the mistress of The Mains viewed the matter from a different standpoint, she was, of course, aware; in her fertile brain she had arranged a plan of warfare, and went to the battle wreathed in smiles.

The lady of the house herself opened the campaign; by marching into the invalid's room one morning with an armful of silk--the wedding silk, which she spread forth before her guest.

'Ye were ay a handy body at the clothes, Nancy,' she observed. 'Now tell me how to sort this silk for Alison, in the newest modes.'

'Ah! your lovely Alison--how interesting!' murmured the guest, sweetly.

'Alison's well enough,' said her impartial parent, coolly. 'We think her none so lovely here--a good girl, but homely; none the less likely to make a good wife to an honest gentleman.'

'To be sure, to be sure,' said Mrs. Maclehose, in a sprightly tone, 'a little bird has told me of that interesting matter!'

'Then it needna have fashed itself,' said Mrs. Graham, alluding to the feathered purveyor of secrets, 'for I was fair bursting to speak of it myself. 'Tis a most extraordinary piece of good fortune to us, this substantial offer for a tocherless lass like Alison. I cannot get over it yet, myself.'

'And yet, Alison'--said the guest cautiously, 'Alison herself does not speak of the matter with the enthusiasm one expects in a young heart on such an occasion.'

'Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?' inquired Mrs. Graham, contemptuously. 'No, nor sense from glaikit lasses! Alison's a fool, and doesna ken what's good for her. But--' grimly--'I've been teaching her, and she'll learn yet!'

'And the gentleman, ma'am?' inquired Nancy, casually, 'I protest I have hardly heard his name?'

''Tis one most excellent respectit laird,' said Mrs. Graham, swelling visibly with the importance of the announcement, 'one Mr. Cheape of Kincarley in the county of--' But here Nancy broke in upon her with a sharp titter, which, however, she had the appearance of politely suppressing. Mrs. Graham looked at her sharply.

'What's wrong wi' _you_?' she sarcastically inquired.

'Oh, la, ma'am! nothing, I assure you,' said Nancy, in an obvious struggle with a mirthful tendency, 'only Mr. Cheape--ha--ha--' and she tailed off into a giggle.

'What dirty gossip o' the gutters ha' ye got about the man?' said Mrs. Graham, with rising anger and a flashing eye, 'out with your scandal, if ye must!'

'Oh, scandal, lud, ma'am, no!' said Nancy. 'Scandal and poor Jimmy Cheape were never named together, only--'

'Only _what_,' cried the irate lady of The Mains, with a stamp of her big foot.

'Well, ma'am,' said Nancy, coyly, 'I'd sooner bite my tongue out, sure, than that it should meddle with Miss Alison's good fortune. Only, since you ask me, it does surprise me that so distinguished a family as Graham of The Mains shouldn't look higher for their eldest daughter than poor Jimmy Cheape.'

'A distinguished family,' said Mrs. Graham, with a mincing mimicry of her guest's tone, 'a distinguished family wi' seven daughters has to take what it can get. It can ill afford genteel ideas like yours, Nancy,' with somewhat withering significance. 'But what's wrong wi' Mr. Cheape, to _your_ fine notions, may I ask?'

'Well, ma'am, since you _will_ have it,' said Nancy, with an air of reluctant candour, 'simply that he's the leavings of so many other folk,--that's all.'

'Oh, is he, indeed?' said Mrs. Graham, with fine sarcasm.

''Tis so old a tale, indeed,' pursued Nancy, pictorially, 'that it stretches back clean and away beyond my poor memory. But even to my knowledge, Jimmy Cheape has been the rejected of ladies more than I can count, and such as are not worthy to tie the shoes of Miss Alison.'

'Oh, ay!' commented Mrs. Graham, with a vicious eye upon her informant. 'Well?'

'There was Jenny M'Lure,' continued Nancy, with a reminiscent air. 'All of one winter he was after her, not that _she_ would look at him though, and the whole town laughing and looking on. And then there was Molly Baleny--_she_ might have had him, for she was near forty and no beauty, but she put him to the door too. And there was Jean M'Gregor, the cutler's daughter, you know, in Nicol Street; a fine dance she led him, the hussy--for, after all, a laird was a bit of a string to her bow. But, of course, she gave him the go-by in the end, and, in my opinion, she was heartless in the way she held up an old man like that to be the jest of the town: 'twas no womanly behaviour. And there were others, I assure you; he's been on his knees to some girl or another in the public park, 'twas the season's great joke, but I forget her name. 'Tis not that he's wicked or a man of ill-conduct in any way, ma'am--but he is so comical, and no woman will marry a man that is a laughing-stock.'

'Will she no?' said Mrs. Graham, with a darting eye. 'But some'll take a wastrel, and no be able to keep him when they've got him!' Nancy winced visibly under this vigorous blow, from no uncertain arm. 'My woman!' her hostess proceeded, 'if I find you setting Ally against her beau, it's the door you'll be shown, and that in a hurry! She's got to take Mr. Cheape, or she's got to beg. There's some's content to beg, but it'll no be my daughter!' And the lady of The Mains, gathering up the wedding silk, and with her head in the air, marched out of the room.

Nancy sank back in her chair, worsted, she felt, in this encounter.

'Your good mother, Ally,' she said to her friend, when Alison, appeared, 'is somewhat bludgeon-like in her methods of war. My poor little weapons are too fine.' Alison smiled rather wanly.

'Our mother is very strong in her wishes, and the getting of them,' she remarked. ''Tis not easy to move her.'

'Ah, but wait till I get at your father,' cried Nancy, recovering her spirits. 'I'm a wonderful hand with the men.'

'My mother is angry with you now,' said Alison, quietly, 'and with me too. She has put me to the clear-starching with the maids in the laundry, all the afternoon, for fear I should sit with you.'

'Oh, ho!' said Nancy, 'sets the wind in that quarter? But we'll see whose cleverest yet. Keep a good heart, Ally--you'll not marry Mr. Cheape!' But Alison shook her head despondently, and vanished. There were no more twilight talks and songs in the gloamings after that.

Thus matters remained at a standstill for several days, and Nancy chafed under the well-meant but awkward attentions of Kate and Maggie, who were sent to take Alison's place in the best room, about the invalid. She longed to be gone. The dreariness of the country at this season depressed the little townswoman, and she settled a day in her mind for her departure.

'But I'll save that child from her virago of a mother,' she said to herself, with determination, 'even if I have to carry her off with me by force. Though where,' she added, with a little grimace to herself, 'though where I'm to put the big creature, if I take her, Lord only knows! Is there a corner of my garret she can sleep in? Well, Providence must see to that!'

Nancy was never frustrated in a kind action by so paltry a detail. The charming vision of herself in the blotched old mirror--she was at her first _toilette_--smiled back at her approvingly, with the humid sparkle of her long, soft, dark eyes. She was about to try her arts on the laird.

*CHAPTER IX.*

The mistress of The Mains, having mounted the gig, was away to the weekly butter market; Alison was invisible, set, in a distant corner of the house, upon some interminable domestic task. Nancy opened her door, peeped out, and listened; the house was quiet. The laird, she knew, was within and at her mercy, for she had heard he had the rheumatics in his back, and could not go forth in the damp. She tripped away down the passage, and by peeping into one room after another, at last found the library, and the laird in it.

'Here's the den,' she cried, gaily, 'and the lion within!' And she looked up into her host's rugged face with those eyes of hers, which no man in his senses could resist, saving, indeed, a certain legal gentleman, in Edinburgh, of a hard heart.

The laird was in a doleful mood, inclined to those modified views of the desirability of life which are fostered in a man by a touch of lumbago. He stood with his back to the green-washed mantelpiece, with its pessimistic motto, and his countenance was dourly set. It, however, melted in a smile at the sight of his guest, as, indeed, that guest intended that it should.

'And now I'm come to have a confidential talk with you,' said she, ensconcing herself in his big chair, and shaking a finger at him. ''Tis of your daughter, Alison. Laird, it can never be that a man like you gives his daughter to a man like Jimmy Cheape!'

'Sells her, you mean,' said the laird, sourly. He was indeed Alison's father, from whom she had taken her own direct, literal ways of thought and speech. ''Tis true, we have sold the lass.'

'For shame--for shame!' cried Nancy. 'Your best and bonniest! I'll not stand by and see it done. Sure as I'm a woman, I forbid the banns, and will prevent it!'

'You'd need be quick, then,' said the laird, with a short sarcastic laugh. 'Ally doesn't know it, for her mother keeps it quiet as yet, but the man comes to-morrow s'en-night, and expects to find all ready for the marriage.'

'Lord-a-mercy! then we must act promptly, indeed!' said Nancy. 'I'm not without a practical suggestion in the matter, I assure you. Instead of giving the lassie to old Cheape, like a tit-bit to an ogre, give her to me. Do you hear, laird?'

'Ay, I hear,' said the laird, laconically. 'I would if I could, mistress, for my stomach rises at this marriage. But the wife is set on a husband for Ally.'

'I'll get her another,' cried Nancy, eagerly. 'The town's full of sparks, and to spare!'

'A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, the wife would tell you,' said the laird, with a sorry smile. 'Besides, there's money between old Cheape and me. I cannot back out of the bargain now.'

'Tut, he'll never mind the money!' cried Nancy. 'He's been a lender to half the fathers, brothers, uncles, and guardians in Scotland; for 'tis the only way he can get word with a woman. It's second nature to him to get the go-by, and if he misses Ally, he'll take up with one of her sisters in the twinkling of an eye.'

''Tis easy to be speaking to _me_,' said the laird, grimly. 'Why don't you speak to the mistress? 'Tis her business rather than mine, surely?'

'She's not to be moved,' said Nancy, demurely. 'But, laird, that which cannot be done by force, can often be done by guile. Are you willing, in your heart of hearts, to be off with this marriage? I know you are!'

'I am,' said the laird, rather heavily, for his conscience spoke at last.

'Well, give me a hand, and 'twill be done!' said Nancy. 'I leave this place in four days, and a man and chaise from C---- take me to Green Loaning to get the Edinburgh coach--isn't that so? And I must leave this door in the dark of the morning, before six? Isn't that the case?'

'Ay is it,'--said the laird, 'an awkward start.'

'Make it yet an hour awkwarder,' cried Nancy. 'And let no one know the time, save Ally and me, and you. Let the chaise be at the outer gate, and we'll slip down and be off before a soul's stirring. Is the mistress a good sleeper?'

'A gey and heavy sleeper in the mornings, now that she puts on years and weight,' answered the husband, with a sigh. 'She talks enough at night, God wot! But 'tis snoring in the morning, and I that have to rise to bustle the maids from their beds. Well?'

'Then you can slip down without danger and see us away,' said Nancy. 'I doubt, without your countenance in the matter, Ally would never come. But with it she'll fly this marriage as she would the devil.'

'I believe she will,' the laird muttered; but he seemed to hesitate. ''Tis a simple enough plan,' he conceded. 'I see nothing to hinder its working. But how can I consent to foist the lass on to you? Her future--'

'Ah--bah--the future!' said Nancy, 'let the future take care of itself! There is but one for a fine girl like Ally. And this storm will blow by, besides, and you be glad to see her here again, long before I am ready to part from her. For I'll be glad of Ally, let me tell you. There's nothing so needful in my unhappy situation as a companion of my own sex. Are not the prudent among my acquaintance telling me so every day of my life? So consent, for my sake as well as Alison's, and believe that you confer a favour by doing so.'

'You make the debtor seem generous,' said the laird, not unkindly, 'but I consent. Though the Lord only knows what I shall say to the wife when you're gone!'

'Ah, men must be brave--'tis their duty!' cried Nancy. 'And now, be wise too, and say not a word of this to a soul--not to Ally even, for her terror and indecision would discover themselves in a moment. I'll break it to her but the night before, and carry the citadel of her conscience and her scruples by storm--sweep off with her on the wings of surprise. You arrange with the driver of the chaise: I will manage the rest.'

It was not, therefore, till practically but a few hours before the meditated flight that Alison knew of the change in store for her. She had gone to bed drowned in tears at the prospect of her friend's departure, and in quiet despair at the conviction that now all chance of a rescue from Mr. Cheape was gone. Then Nancy came creeping up to her room in the dark on tip-toe, like the little conspirator that she was, shading the rush-light with her hand. Jacky slept beside his sister again, so their talk was in excited whispers.

'Ally,' Nancy said, leaning over the girl, and patting her wet cheek with a little hand, 'cry no more, dear love, 'tis all arranged with your father, and in the happiest way! No horrid Mr. Cheape for you; you are free! And you come with me to Edinburgh town in the morning!'

'I--to Edinburgh?' whispered the startled Alison.

'To me, child, to me!' Nancy whispered back. 'Did you think I was to part from my Ally without a blow struck for her freedom, and leave her to her fate? Oh, fie! faithless one! 'Tis your father and I have fixed it all between us; your mother knows naught. The chaise comes while she is still abed--more than an hour before she thinks--and we steal away, with your father, good man, to speed us at the gate. 'Tis quite an elopement, I declare; only I, alas! am of the wrong sex. You must rise, Ally, and put a few duds together; the laird says he will send a trunk after you to town. He has mine taken down already, so there will be no noise in the early hours. Will you come with me, Ally, and share my humble garret? 'Tis a poor thing, but mine own, and you're thrice welcome, God knows!'

Bewilderment still reigned in Alison's eyes and brain. 'Must I leave them all,' she whispered, 'my sisters and Jacky--?'

'Ay, must you,' said Nancy, with a little not unnatural impatience, 'or stay, and be taken from them by ogre Cheape in a fortnight!'

'In a fortnight! Was he coming so soon?' said Alison, with a white face, and then the magnitude of her friend's action on her behalf dawning upon her, she cried, with a half sob, 'Oh, Nancy! how can I thank you for this deliverance?'

'Then you'll come, Ally?'

'Come? How can I fail?' said Alison. 'And, Nancy, what'll I say? But I'll not speak, I'll do. I'll try with all my strength to do something that shall reward you. I'll be your servant, anything!'

'Be my own friend, sweetest--'tis enough,' said Nancy. 'And now, mind, not a moment later than the half after four. 'Twill be as pitch as night, a strange start. I protest 'tis a perfect adventure! I'd not have missed it for worlds. Keep a good heart, Ally, just not too soft, you know, and brave.' And she tip-toed away again, nodding and smiling.

Alison rose and dressed, and did not sleep again that night, but sat still by Jacky's cot, her young brain whirling with confused, grave thoughts. When it was time to go she kissed Jacky, pulled up the coverlet where he had tossed it from his rosy limbs, and smoothed his curls, that were so like her own. He had been her charge since birth, and now she was leaving him to others. She took a last look round the bare little room of her maidenhood, and then with her bundle in her hand, she slipped away down to the distant kitchen to light a stealthy fire, so that Nancy might have a cup of chocolate to start on. The old house of her childhood seemed full of accusing shadows as she flitted through it, dark and cold and strange to the eye in these unholy hours. She was thankful when Nancy joined her; they both crouched over the fire, for it was bitter cold. Both, too, heard presently, with the sharp ears of excitement, the distant rumble of wheels. The chaise had come.

The laird put his head in at the back door.

'Come, lasses,' he said. He had a lantern, and they followed him out into the starlight of the winter morning. A wind, forlorn and cold as the grave, blew in their faces. The chaise was already piled with Nancy's goods--the laird's doing with his own hands. Alison could see the rough familiar figure of him moving about with the lantern, the father whose weakness and whose strength she knew and understood, the man so much finer and nobler than the woman who ruled him. The heart of the girl yearned over him, and she flung her arms round his neck.

'There was nothing for it but to run, Ally,' he said, patting her shoulder. And then he helped her into the coach, for she stumbled, blind with tears. And then the coach rolled away into the dark, leaving the laird alone at the postern, whence presently he turned slowly away. For in an hour's time he had to meet his wife; and it is my opinion that, in these degenerate days of ours, a man has won the Victoria Cross for less.

*CHAPTER X.*

On one of those dull November afternoons which Mrs. Maclehose spent in convalescence at The Mains, her two little sons, in the good town of Edinburgh, set out to walk from their mother's house in the Potterrow, of the old town, to their cousin Archibald Herries's office in the then very modern George Street, of the new. As far as the North Bridge their servant Jean accompanied them, basket upon arm; but she had shopping in the Leith Row, and dismissed them in the direction of George Street, with directions 'to be guid bairns, not to play themselves on the road, to be civil to their cousin and give him the message, and to hasten home again before it was dark.'

They were little fellows of eight and ten respectively, the elder, a well-grown sturdy boy with red cheeks, the younger, a puny creature, with a small pale face, in which were set his mother's eyes without their laughter. Both were dressed alike in little green suits which they had long out-grown, and the frilled edges of their wide white collars were in places frayed and torn. Their shoes were worn, and as the younger one walked, indeed, the sole of his little left shoe threatened momentarily to part company with its sustaining upper, and slip-slopped upon the pavement at each dragging step. The two walked hand in hand, casting anxious glances upon the imposing-looking houses to their right.

At the extreme west end of George Street, indeed as far west as it then extended, was the house they sought,--a high granite-built edifice, with steps leading up to the door, upon which a brass-plate held the names--'Herries and Creighton, Writers to the Signet.' It was with difficulty, and only by standing on tip-toe, that Willy could reach the knocker, and the attitude had the effect of stretching him to such an extent, that it seemed quite impossible he could ever shrink again within the limits of the little green suit.

'I doubt that was another tear, Danny,' he said gravely to his little brother, as an ominous crack made itself heard in the region of the arm-hole; but he managed to wriggle the sleeves to his wrists again without further disaster. A cross-looking old woman opened the door and admitted them to the office.

In a light, handsome room to the front, above stairs, the walls lined partly with books and partly with piled-up boxes of deeds, a young man sat writing at a table. He was of slight and decidedly graceful figure, and soberly dressed; his powdered hair, tied with a black ribbon, lent perhaps additional delicacy to his fair, rather over-refined, regular features. He turned about in his chair, and his cold blue eyes lit up, not unkindly, as the two little boys were ushered into his presence.

'Well, my men,' he said, 'so here you are. What's the news?'

'Mother's coming home, Cousin Archie,' said Willy, pulling a letter from his pocket.

'Ay, so I hear,' said the young lawyer, not without a dryness in his tone. 'I have a letter from your mother, too, you see,' and he tapped an open missive on his desk.

'There is a beautiful new lady coming home with mother, to stay with us,' said Danny, lifting his large dark eyes to his cousin's face.

'You don't say so!' said Cousin Archie. He took the child up on his knee.

'Yes,' continued Danny, settling himself against a comfortable shoulder. 'She has a little brother of her own, and so she is to be like a big sister to us.'

'Oh, that's the idea, is it?' said Archibald Herries. 'And does your mother say where this mighty fine young lady is to find a room?'