Part 5

'It was Jean sent us to ask you that,' said Willy, innocently. 'I sleep with mother, you know, and Danny by Jean in the other room, but mother says the lady will want Jean's bed, and Jean would know where she's to sleep, and may she get M'Alister, our landlord, to hire us the garret? It's empty, and 'twill make no difference to him.'

'Except in the matter of the rent--none whatever, Willy,' said Herries, more drily than ever. 'But that's a secondary matter which we need not mention.'

He was frowning, and his delicate features looked severe and cold. Nevertheless a smile lurked about his lips, and it ended in a rather bitter laugh.

'Tell Jean to get the garret from M'Alister,' he said. 'You would not put her out in the street for the new lady--would you, Danny?'

'To be sure not,' said Danny solemnly. Herries had absently held one of the boy's thin legs, and with a movement the ragged foot-gear caught his eye.

'That's a sorry shoe, Danny,' he said. 'What's the matter with it?'

'Well,' said Danny, gravely, 'it is the sole coming off, I think. It has been coming off for a long time.'

'Why don't you get it mended, man?' the cousin enquired.

'It should have been mended,' Danny answered, lifting those soft, dark eyes of his again. 'But Jean said there was no more money.'

Herries threw back his head and laughed.

'That's a sad complaint,' he said. 'But come, boys, I'll walk home with you, and on the way we'll get a new pair of shoes for Danny. Come!'

The three issued forth together, and walked along George Street eastward. At the head of the Leith Row they went into a shoemaker's, and Danny was fitted with a stout new pair of shoes, for which his cousin paid. Then they began to climb the old town at a brisk pace, but presently the younger child lagged behind.

'Are the new shoes hurting you, my man?' asked Herries. His usually rather curt tones were very kind when he spoke to the little boy.

''Tisn't the shoes, Cousin Archie,' said Willy, answering for his brother. 'But Danny has a sore leg that makes him hirple when he walks far.'

'Oh! he has, has he?' said Herries, looking at the child in perplexity. 'Come, boy, I can carry you up the brae, I think.'

He lifted the little creature, infinitely too small and light for his years, to his right arm, and, with a pause now and again for breath, carried him a long way. They were mounting still, sometimes by steep and narrow causeways, sometimes by actual flights of steps. A wintry sky of dulled flame was spread over the wonderful rock-built city round them, but the deep-cut valley in its midst was lost in a murky vapour--half smoke, half fog. When they got to the Potterrow, Herries set the child down, and stretched his cramped and aching arm. He was not a robust man, and the burden had taxed his muscles. They walked on until, in the narrow, echoing street, they came upon an archway, commonly yclept 'The General's Entry,' under which a door admitted to the common stair leading to the humble lodging occupied, at the present time, by Mrs. Maclehose.

'Now, be off, boys, and away up to Jean,' said Herries.

'Good-night, Cousin Archie,' the children's voices dutifully answered.

Herries heard their feet clatter on the stone stair, then turned away.

A solitary walk was no novelty to Archibald Herries, for he was, though young, a somewhat solitary man in circumstances, perhaps by inclination as well. He was the last living representative of a good old family in the south of Scotland, which had, by a series of misfortunes, political and other, lost lands and houses, and now threatened itself to disappear. An orphan since his infancy, Herries had been destined by his guardians for the army, but a constitutional delicacy showed itself early in the lad, and such a career became manifestly unadvisable, though all his dreams and ambitions, as a boy, were centred round it. He was bidden to fix his thoughts on the law, then considered perhaps the most highly respectable profession in Scotland, and it was intended that he should be called to the Bar as an advocate. But here again his unlucky star intervened, for Herries soon found himself wanting in those very qualities of brilliance and assurance which alone can lead to distinction in such a career. The more sober avenues of the law remained open to him, and these he finally entered and pursued. His circumstances--he had inherited a modest but certain income--made his entry into a good legal house, first as a subordinate and finally as a partner, secure; and from that point onward his success was solid, progressive, and, indeed, distinguished. Intellectually well-balanced, shrewd, long-headed, prudent, and not a little cold, Herries at thirty, had all the weighty qualities of character essential in the best class of family lawyer. The heads of his firm retired, but not a client deserted him, and he had, at this time, when he was about thirty-three, perhaps one of the most extended legal concerns in Scotland--a business worth many thousands of pounds. He had taken as partner a very respectable man of the name of Creighton, much older than himself, who had been senior and confidential clerk of the firm for over thirty years. Mr. Creighton occupied lodgings of his own, from which he daily came and went; but Herries lived in the fine modern George Street mansion, which he had bought, in solitary state, but for his old housekeeper and a valet. Creighton had his office in one of the rooms by day, and four clerks did their work in yet another. It was a most substantial establishment, already one of the landmarks of New Edinburgh. In the eyes of the world, Herries was indeed a successful person. Yet he carried, locked in his bosom, that sense of failure and disappointment which dogs a sensitive man, who pursues an uncongenial occupation, and succeeds, yet without attaining a single desire of his heart.

Socially, Herries had the Edinburgh world at his feet. He bore a good name, he was a rising man, and had a pleasing person and gentlemanly address. Caps were set at the successful young lawyer, naturally. But Herries, though not averse to occasional dalliance, was hardly a lady's man. One winter, indeed, a great beauty took the town by storm, and Herries did a little more than dangle in her train, and got a little more, too, than mere crumbs from her table. But the beauty, though she weighed him in the balance, found him wanting, and married a title. It was a disappointment to ambition--the wish to win and wear what all men coveted--rather than to love; yet it had been a shock, too, that drove further inward the already inward nature of the man. He had buckled to his business after it with a more dogged exclusiveness than ever.

Preoccupied, as usual, Herries walked rapidly down towards the New Town, his thoughts busy for the moment with the children from whom he had just parted. As he rounded a corner, with bent head, he knocked up against a man, who seemed to be loitering on the causeway, none too respectably, with a woman. The figure of the man was big and burly, and he had a countryman's plaid about his shoulders. The woman was of the poorest class, of a tall figure, in a draggled cotton gown, a shawl drawn over her head. She seemed to cling to the man, and the man, half in jest, yet half in earnest, to cast her off. She laughed--an odd, rather wild, laugh, with little mirth, it seemed. Herries turned about and stared after the couple, for he knew the man. All Edinburgh knew that figure, and a passer-by, a labouring man, accosted Herries with a laugh,--

'Ay, ye may glower,' he said, with a boastful air, 'ye may glower, and your eyes be fu' o' pride--for that is Robert Burns!'

But if Herries stared after the retreating figure, it was certainly not with pride. An expression of disgust curled his fine, severe lips into lines more fastidious than ever.

'The dog!' he said, shortly and aloud, and turned on his heel.

*CHAPTER XI.*

When Herries re-entered his house, he did not go up to his own rooms at once, but turned into his partner's office, which was on the ground floor, to the front. It was a smaller apartment than his own, and its aspect was even more strictly in keeping with the dry and severe nature of the legal profession. Wire blinds shielded the rather grimy windows from the street, and piles of dusty documents, tied with tape, covered the bare tables with a kind of methodical litter. A scorching fire, untidily smothered in its own ashes, heated the room to a stifling closeness.

Creighton himself was a tall, lean man, long over fifty, gaunt as a withered reed, with a face of a yellowish waxen pallor, which betokened delicacy--a good deal of reddish whisker, fading into grey, and sparse hair of the same colour. The rusty black of his dress was respectable; a shrewd eye, a dry manner, constituted the rest of the outward man. Of the inward, little, if anything, was known to anyone, even to his partner. He was the son of a minister; a deadly quarrel with his family in early life had separated him from every individual of his own blood. So much was known. He made no friends, and cared for nothing in the world but his business--so much seemed apparent. Between the man and his younger, but superior, partner, there existed a certain, but absolutely unspoken sympathy; there was a decided likeness in the strength of their reserve and in the solitude of their lives. As a matter of fact, though Herries, in his youthful hardness, never dreamed of such a thing, the elder man cherished towards the younger, hidden as though it were a crime, a sentiment of deep, and even soft affection. Herries attracted, dominated, and possessed his partner; yet no one knew, as Creighton did, his faults and weaknesses. And no one dreaded for him, as Creighton did, with the experience of an embittered life behind him--the effects of the cold solitude and dry absorption in business in which the young man lived. He was for ever making efforts--little, tentative timid efforts--to influence Herries to relax the young severity of his aspect, and the rigid regularity of his habits. It was sometimes rather an odd game that the two played between them, out of business hours, and, in an initiated onlooker, would have provoked a smile.

As Herries entered his partner's room on the present occasion, the latter, rather like a school-boy caught in some illicit act, slipped a book under some papers on his table. It was a little, coarsely-covered brown book, seen, at that day, on the tables of all men, gentle and simple, but perhaps not quite the most suitable reading for an elderly lawyer. Herries took a seat, his accustomed one in interviews with his partner.

'This room is over-hot, Creighton, surely,' he said, 'but comforting enough after the streets.'

'My chest has been troublesome lately,' answered the elder man. 'These north winds flay me alive. You have been out--it is good to be young!'

'Oh, ay!' said Herries, discontentedly. 'I have been out with my cousin's children--plague take them! Did I tell you that the annuities hitherto paid to Mrs. Maclehose by the Writers' and Surgeons' Benevolent Societies are stopped? I had trouble enough getting them for her, five years since, when Maclehose left her. Now that 'tis known he is making an income in Jamaica, naturally such charitable support is withdrawn.'

'Ay, to be sure,' said Creighton, quietly.

'I am writing to that damned scoundrel Maclehose,' Herries went on, 'to say I will not pay another penny for his wife and family. Yet there are the school fees due for the boy Willy, and I must give the lie to my words to-morrow.'

'Well, well,' said Creighton, 'the laddie must have his schooling, sure enough.'

'I'll be cursed if I can see why I should pay for it, though!' said Herries, angrily. Perhaps there were few things that exasperated him more than his partner's attitude in regard to the affairs of Mrs. Maclehose, as they concerned her cousin. Here was a man, Herries reflected, who, of all men, should have resented the intolerable and altogether unbusiness-like nature of an arrangement which made one man responsible for the support of the wife and family of another, and that other, one who was earning a substantial annual income in a foreign country. Agnes Maclehose was, indeed, cousin-germain to Archibald Herries--the daughter of his mother's sister--and his sole living relative. On her quarrel with a worthless husband, he had considered himself to play but a kinsman's and a lawyer's part in arranging for her the details of a separation; and when, with two young children on her hands, and friendless, she had come to Edinburgh, he had done his best to ameliorate for her the hardness of her situation. He had taken in hand her money matters: she had a small income derived from money left her by her father, but it fell far short of the modest necessities of even a little household in the Potterrow. Out of his own pocket, Herries supplemented its deficiencies, and it was not the money he grudged, but the violation of a principle that he resented. And here was Creighton--a lawyer, a man of sense and of extraordinary shrewdness--who, instead of sympathising with his resentment, would for ever try to soothe it with ridiculous excuses.

'She is your own blood,' he would say of his partner's relative, 'you cannot put her on the street.' Or, 'It is but a sup of porridge the bairns will be wanting just now, not much, a flea's bite,' and so forth, and Herries would fume in vain. The old lawyer's private opinion of Mrs. Maclehose was none the less of an extremely unflattering character; he believed her to be a daughter of the horse leech, who doubtless preyed upon his friend after the manner of her kind, and the sound of her voice in the passage sent shivers down his back, for he was a woman-hater, or something very like it. But she was yet, in his mind, the one tie that Herries had, binding him to the world of kinship, of human interests and human affection. And so the man, whose own heart had perished of atrophy within him, strove to keep life in the heart of the other by the one means that naturally offered itself.

Herries, failing thus, as usual, to rouse his partner's sympathy on the score of the Maclehose difficulty, rose to go, and by a chance movement of some papers on Creighton's table, he disclosed to view the guilty little brown book hidden under them. His finely-drawn eyebrows arched themselves in a kind of contemptuous query. 'At it again?' he said, 'that jingle that the town rings with? Your poet's star is in the descendent now, though, Creighton,' he added.

'Never, sir!' said Creighton, hardily. 'That star will never set! It shines to all time,--like Shakespeare's, like Homer's, for the matter of that. You'll not put me out of conceit of my poet, sir!'

'Deuce take him!' said Herries, half carelessly, half in earnest. 'My ears are sick of his name. We are like to hear less of it this winter, though, I think; the creature palls at last. How the women fawned upon him last year. Pah!'

'Women will fawn on anything--a dog, a dwarf, a china monster,' said Creighton; 'but neither their fawning nor their neglect will touch the fame, the genius of Robert Burns!' He spoke with heat, and his dull eye kindled.

Herries looked at him with a mild wonder.

'It passes me,' he said, 'this mad enthusiasm for a rhymer--of dirty rhymes, too, for the most part. To me they reek of the midden and the yard, and neither they nor their author are fit furniture for drawing-rooms--that's my contention. But there, sir, good-night! I leave you to your poet. By the way,' he added, 'this reminds me that I saw Master Bard on my way home to-night, at his old tricks. But it is not duchesses and fine ladies are his game now, but his own kind, it would seem.'

'God send him back to the fields and the hills!' ejaculated Creighton, with warmth. 'The town is no place for poor Rob, and I doubt they have ruined the lad between them all! But I must be gone, too, sir. Dick has been waiting on me this hour and more in the cold.'

Dick--well known to half the town as 'Creighton's Dick'--was a dog, a gaunt and hairy Skye terrier, with appealing eyes, who owned Creighton as master. Every morning he followed the lawyer to his office, returning home by himself, and every evening he came for him, waiting on the doorstep for Creighton to appear. He never failed, and the townspeople, on his line of route, would time their doings by the punctual coming and going of the lawyer's dog.

'Come, man!' Creighton would say, as he closed the sounding door behind him, and the dog, though stiff and old, would spring at his knees. This night was one of a penetrating coldness, and Creighton seemed to shrink together as he met the blast. But he faced it, and man and dog took their accustomed way down the windy granite street.

*CHAPTER XII.*

Alison's journey to Edinburgh with her new friend was certainly the most exciting and novel experience which her quiet life had yet afforded. It was hardly more than daylight when they got to Green Loaning, and exchanged their country conveyance for the Edinburgh stage coach. There were but few people travelling at this season, and they had the interior of that vehicle all to themselves. Nancy soon had it littered with all the paraphernalia which ever seemed a part of herself--the down cushions, the scent bottles, the poetry books, the pencil and tablets for recording any sudden outburst of the Muse--all the thousand little odds and ends, so new and so marvellous to Alison, the country girl of simple habits and few possessions. Nancy was in high glee, the mood, as it were, of some general of a feeble army, who, by an adroit and timely stratagem, has defeated and outwitted a foe infinitely stronger than himself.

'Well, Ally,' she said cheerfully, for Alison was a little tearful, just at first, 'is it not a comfort, child, that you've left home with the blessing of one parent at least? As to the other, well, your mother is a resourceful lady, I am sure, and will find a good use for Mr. Cheape yet. She will get him for Kate or Maggie--'

'Oh, no, no!' cried Alison in horror. 'But, indeed, my mother will be sorely vexed,' she added; 'and what my poor father will say to her, I cannot think. And, Nancy, how shall I ever face her again myself?'

''Tis far too soon to think of that, love,' said Nancy, comfortably. 'Perhaps you need never face her at all, in the way you mean. What you have to think of now, child, is all the pleasant new things you have before you--the town, new friends, new faces. 'Tis but a hole and corner of a home, I'm taking you to, Ally, but it has a cheery hearth, and you'll not be dull, I think.'

'How could I, how could anyone, be dull with you?' cried Alison. And, indeed, that seemed a very unlikely contingency, the least likely of all.

The coach rumbled on, sometimes smoothly, when Nancy chattered without ceasing, sometimes with din and noise, when she would fall into a pensive mood. Once they had a long pause for a rest or change of horses, and it was then that Nancy rummaged in her bag and drew out a little case of miniatures.

'Ah, my little men!' she said softly. 'You haven't seen them, Ally.' The case held pretty little pictures of Willy and Danny--Willy with his rosy cheeks, and Danny with his mother's eyes, turned sad and sorrowful. Alison looked at them with delighted interest; these were to be the substitutes, for a while, for Jacky and her sisters.

'You have not seen the mother-half of me, Ally,' Nancy was saying softly; 'and yet, do you know, I am nothing if I am not a good mother; 'tis my best point.'

'Yes,' said Alison, sympathetically, and yet with a faint feeling of surprise. She had heard so much about so many things from her fascinating new friend, but so very little about the children. However, Alison reflected, people always speak least about that which lies nearest their hearts.

'Yes,' Nancy went on, gazing at the miniatures the while, 'there are friends of mine, Ally, who say to me they wonder I can love the children of such a father. My answer is, I love them the more, owe them the more devotion and duty, for having given them such a father!'

The sentiment seemed unexceptionable, and found instant echo in Alison's loyal breast. She noticed there was a third miniature in the case, but it was covered with a piece of silk. Nancy now removed this and disclosed the portrait of a young man, extremely handsome, in a dark style, but the reverse of pleasing.

''Tis he!' she said, holding the miniature out to Alison, and turning her head away, with a sigh.

'Mr.--Mr. Maclehose?' whispered Alison, delicately.

'Ay,' said Nancy, 'my deserter, my betrayer, I may, indeed, call him! For did he not betray my youth, ruin my happiness, destroy my life? And yet, I'm made so, Ally, that I can't part from his image, but keep it there, with the faces of his innocent children. He was the lover of my youth--I can't forget it!' She propped the miniatures up on the seat in front of her, and continued to gaze upon them, with many head-shakings, and soft, moist eyes. But presently the coach went on, and her mood changed utterly; she fell to discussing the contents of a little basket, which the hospitality of The Mains had prepared for her over-night.

''Twas only meant for one, Ally,' she laughed. 'Little your good mother thought that two would be at its demolishment! But there's enough and to spare; the lady has a generous hand.'

They had quite a gay little meal. The neglected miniatures overturned with the jolting of the coach. Mr. Maclehose's, indeed, fell down among the straw at the bottom of the vehicle, and it was Alison who finally picked him up, dusted him, and replaced him in the case. The short day began to close in now; the tired travellers spent the rest of the journey half asleep, and mostly in silence.

It was a clattering over cobble-stones--a din indescribable of wheels and horses' hoofs--that woke Alison at last to a realisation of her arrival in the town. The coach drew up at its office in the Grassmarket, and they got out there. A man was waiting, with a 'hurley' or barrow to take their boxes, while the two ladies themselves walked, a link-boy flashing his torch before them. How high and dark seemed the houses, how narrow the echoing streets! Alison, dazed and a little frightened, kept close to her companion, who chattered gaily, with undiminished and irrepressible vitality. They came to the Potterrow eventually, and to the dark archway and stone stair which led to Nancy's 'garret,' as she called it. A very decent serving-woman was holding a light at the stair-head, and presently two little boys had rushed out, and half-smothered their mother with hugging arms and raining kisses.

'Oh! gently, boys, gently!' cried Nancy, laughing and kissing all at once. Then she put an arm about Alison. 'Come, Ally,' she said, 'and be welcome to my little nest!'

It was a little nest indeed. Allison thought it the tiniest, yet the cosiest and homeliest room she had ever seen. Such a bright fire leapt in the polished grate, such cosy red hangings were drawn across the windows; the polished panelling of the walls gleamed so cheerfully, and there was a table drawn to the hearth. Presently, they were sitting there, over a dish of tea; but Nancy could get no peace to eat or drink for the boys. They seemed both on her knee at once--Willy, with rough boyish arms about her neck--Danny, with adoring eyes, never taken from her face.