Part 8

'The world may call me poor,' she said, 'but I'm not too poor to have the luxury of giving to those I love--once and away. And, child, if you say one word about it--make one objection--I'll pack you off back to The Mains, and never love you more.'

So Alison submitted, and it was not with a bad grace. The discrepancies of her _toilette_--entirely conceived, cut and furnished forth at The Mains--troubled her greatly. Remember that she was only twenty, and had never had a fine gown in her life.

'A pelisse for the cold streets, dear, and hood to match,' said Nancy, cheerfully, 'and a muslin--yes, I think, a muslin for the evening--the East India muslin is so much in vogue.'

This was as they walked down to the mantle maker's, and that diligent personage, as she eyed the proportions of her new customer, was quite of opinion that a pelisse was the very thing to do them justice.

'The elegant and the fragile for you, Mistress Maclehose,' she astutely remarked, 'the handsome for miss!'

And very handsome indeed that pelisse proved when it came home, being of cloth of a cosy crimson, silk-lined and fur-bordered, with a most coquettish hood, that would just show a curl or two, and was indeed mighty becoming to its wearer. To Alison it seemed a garment fit for a princess; she could not get over its wonders and beauties, and hardly knew herself when she put it on. And, in truth, it worked a wondrous transformation in her air.

'Well, I declare!' Nancy exclaimed, eyeing her over when she tried it on, 'you are quite the fine lady, child, and I feel put away in the shade!'

The white muslin robe was also a triumph--cunningly embroidered, and showing more of Alison's fine white throat and shoulders than had ever been seen before. Nancy's taste finished it with a blue silken scarf, and a blue snood for the curls.

'There,' she cried, 'you'd charm the eyes of Archie himself, if he had any, but he's blind, dear; we must seek you some gallanter beau.'

Having thus enhanced the charms of her _protegee_ with fine clothes, Nancy was not content, but turned a careful eye on her accomplishments.

'You must have lessons on the harp, Ally,' said she, 'and for the voice, love. Such talent as yours must not be neglected. And then you will be the more able to charm our poet when he comes--our poet, who shall be nameless!'

Therefore, one Schetki, a teacher of music, was summoned to instruct Miss Graham for two hours in the week in the management of the voice and harp. So that the little room in the Potterrow echoed to sweet sounds, the twanging of long-silent strings, the deep, sweet notes of Alison's voice; while Nancy, bent with flushed cheeks over her little desk, scribbled her interminable letters--letters, alas! losing more and more of their discreet Platonic tone. The while, two little round-eyed boys would stop their play and listen to the singing; and busy Jean would pause at the door to catch the floating tune.

So passed away two or three busy and happy weeks. I daresay it would be about the Christmas time, when such things are common, that a batch of bills was delivered at the door of a certain rising young lawyer in the New Town. Among them were two--one from a certain mantle-maker of first celebrity, and one from a much respected teacher of the musical arts. They contained, severally, these interesting items:--

_To a Pelisse, in Crimson Paduasoy, lined_ _silk, bordered fur, . . . . . . . 5 guineas._

_To a Robe, Indian Muslin, embroidered,_ _3 guineas and 15 shillings._

And further:--

_To Lessons in the Harp and Voice given at_ _Mistress Maclehose's in the Poterrow, . 2 guineas._

But as to how these interesting and expensive disclosures were received by their victim, it would not be discreet in me, at this point in my story, to tell.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

It would be in the course of these December weeks that Creighton, Herries's associate in business, formed a habit of coming, oftener than usual, to his partner's room, for a chat before leaving the office. Herries had no objection, but he rather wondered what brought the man. There was to be noticed, certainly, at this time, an increasing feebleness in Creighton's health. He coughed frequently, and his breathing seemed to trouble him. Herries thought that perhaps he enjoyed the additional comforts of his superior's room; he would walk about in it rubbing his hands, talking, rather aimlessly, about trifles. Once he rather astonished Herries by an enquiry after the health of Mrs. Maclehose--that lady being no favourite of his.

'Your relative and her children are well, I trust?' he said, in his formal way. 'Ahem'--with a laboriously unconscious air; 'I daresay you will be seeing, now and then, the young gentlewoman who at present seems to form one of Mrs. Maclehose's circle?'

'Miss Graham? I'll be sworn I do!' said Herries, laughing. 'He would have bad eyesight who failed to see anything quite so big and strapping, up in my cousin's garret there, for all the world like a gowk in a hedge-sparrow's nest.'

'She seemed a pleasing and unassuming young woman,' said the elder man, mildly. 'She inadvertently paid me a visit in my office some time since. I have been looking up the old books, and find that the young lady's grandfather was a client of the old house, when the century was in its teens. It would be a genteel recognition of the old connection to show her some little civility on this her first visit to the capital.'

'What could you do for a girl like that?' inquired Herries, carelessly.

'Well,' said Creighton, with a nervous air, 'I did think--I was thinking that a tea-drinking--'

'A _what_?' said Herries, looking at his partner as if he thought him gone mad.

'Well, an asking of the ladies to tea one day,' said Creighton, with a look of guilt. 'But I daresay 'tis impossible--impossible,' he went on, as the look of incredulity refused to fade upon the younger man's face. 'Something else might be thought of--showing the town to the young lady, there's much in this old city instructive to a young mind. And 'tis a pity the poor thing should go back, to be buried in the country, without seeing all she can; but I'm helpless there; these streets kill me just now.' But Herries seemed to smile upon this latter suggestion as a suitable one.

'Show the lions of the city to Miss Graham?' he said. 'Well, we might see about that. 'Twould be an act of good-nature to the country-mouse. I'll oblige you if I can find the time.'

One of the genuinely kind impulses to which Herries, in spite of his apparent coldness, was often subject, whimsically seized him on this matter. He had now seen Miss Graham several times. She was his cousin's guest; after all, perhaps he owed her a civility. So, one morning, when no business of importance was demanding personal attention, he set off for the Potterrow, with a view to suggesting a day of sight-seeing to his cousin and her friend.

Both ladies were fortunately at home, and professed themselves delighted with the idea.

'The driest thing imaginable, love, and just like him to propose it,' said Nancy, in a vivacious whisper, as the two went off to prepare themselves for a walk. 'But 'tis proper you should see all the tiresome things, and, of course, I must come as duenna, though, Lord knows, you'd be as safe with Archie in a desert as with your grannie. Not but what it is kind of him to propose this,' added the little woman, with compunction,--'kind in substantiate, but no romance: that's his character.'

Alison was taking her new pelisse out of its cherished folds, and brushing her curls into extra good order. Nancy playfully pushed her away from the one mirror of the establishment.

'No good to dress yourself up for Archie, dear,' she said, laughingly. 'Were you dressed in parchment and tied up with tape 'twould be all one to him. 'Deed, in that case, you might take his fancy, for you'd then resemble his dearly beloved law-papers that he lives by. But come now, for my gentleman hates being kept waiting.'

They were quite a merry party as they picked their way over the cobbles of the Potterrow, although it was a raw, sunless, disagreeable morning. Children played and screamed in the gutters, and hawkers yelled to the echoes, as they made their way down the High Street and the Canongate towards Holyrood Palace, which was their destination. Herries knew the city much as a rabbit knows its burrow. There was not an antiquity he did not point out, not an archway or an effigy that escaped him. So that their progress was deliberate, and Nancy had heaved a sigh or two, and stifled more than one yawn in her enormous velvet muff, before the palace gates closed upon the little party.

'Now, 'twill be all history,' groaned the little duenna to herself. 'I know Archie: not an anecdote, not an incident will he spare us. Bless the man, there he goes--Queen Mary, Darnley, Rizzio, Bothwell! Well, Ally's happy at any rate. Mercy, how the child devours him with her eyes! You'd think she'd never seen a man before, and neither she has, poor love. Now, any other young buck would be pleased, and throw a little gallantry into his manners; but not he. Oh, Lord--'

This was a smothered ejaculation as Herries, having fully expounded one suite of rooms, proceeded systematically to the next. He was entering into this business of sight-seeing with all the energy and thoroughness which characterised him in his profession. He had that passion for the mastery of detail which is essentially a masculine trait. A picturesque general impression of things would have satisfied Alison, and come not amiss even to Nancy. But for Herries, there was nothing too minute to be examined and explained; everything must be seen, and seen thoroughly. Nancy dropped behind and neither he nor Alison noticed the fact. As for Alison, her young limbs never felt fatigue, and she followed where she was led, interested and well pleased. It would all come back to her afterwards, that happy, if hard-worked, morning: those stately rooms and stairways, once silent witnesses to the darkest pages of her country's history; those frowning portraits on dim, panelled walls; and ever, before all, the living picture of her guide--the alert figure and keen face, the slim pointing hand, the dignity, the distinction that were Herries's own, though he was neither a giant nor a god. He was so kind, too; for, to be sure, Alison thought, it must all be very stale and dull to him. Issuing from a careful and instructive examination of the chapel, they discovered Nancy, seated on a bench, half in laughter and half in tears of pure exhaustion.

'I can no more!' she exclaimed. 'Not another step, Archie, for my life. You must put me in a coach and send me home, and you two finish the sight-seeing by yourselves, for 'tis past me to look at another object, antique or modern.'

'We have not done the half that I intended,' said Herries, seriously. He had planned a day, it was now barely noon, and he liked to keep to a plan. It needed only a very little of Nancy's deft management to enforce her own suggestion. A coach was called, and she was put into it; it rumbled off, and she nodded and smiled and waved her hand to the couple whom she left standing in the palace-yard.

'There, now,' she said to herself, with a sigh of thankfulness and relief, 'what a most admirable idea! With any other man 'twould not have done, I could not have left the child; but with Archie, the very thing! He'll be quite happy schooling her for another hour and bring her home safe as a church, and she, dear innocent, will never know how dull she's been.... And now, my soul, to other thoughts!' And before Potterrow was reached, 'Clarinda's' next letter to 'Sylvander' was all aflame, written on that busy, burning little brain.

*CHAPTER XIX.*

'Shall we dine?' Herries said, suddenly. On leaving Holyrood they had taken a short walk in the King's Park, in order that Alison might admire the crags. Returning to the town they had hunted amid devious ways for a certain ancient church, and here in the graveyard, among the lank, decaying grass, the slanting tombs and fallen emblems of mortality, Herries had pointed out the blackened, mouldering slab which marks the grave of Rizzio.

Then they had come up the High Street to St. Giles, and had made an exhaustive survey of that interesting edifice. And now they had climbed up the Castle-walk, and stood upon that wondrous summit, the rock that crowns the northern capital. It was here, perhaps, that the faintest shadow of a lessened alacrity had fallen across Alison's manner, when invited to scale a bastion and visit a most interesting gun there situate.

'Are you hungry?' Herries had enquired.

'Very,' said poor Alison, and then could have bitten her tongue out for making an admission at that day considered so very ungenteel. But, indeed, it was now long since breakfast time, and a sup of the boys' porridge at half-past eight, and a hunk of their bread, although a nutritive, was not a very lasting, meal. Healthy Alison was indeed hungry, and Herries's 'Shall we dine?' had a most tempting sound.

'Your cousin will be expecting me, sir,' she demurred, as in duty bound.

'Oh, Nancy dines at mid-day with the boys, I know,' said Herries, 'and that's two hours and more a-gone. 'Tis not a fashionable hour to ask a lady to take dinner. But we've deserved it--so let us dine.'

He considered a moment. He could not take his present companion to dine alone with him at any of the frequented taverns of the city. But he suddenly recalled a little place where they could go with safety and decorum. It was a resort called 'Lucky Simpson's Howff'--a couple of clean rooms kept by an old wife, and much frequented by simple folk landed from the country, in the neighbouring Grassmarket, who feared the prices and temptations of more fashionable establishments.

'Come,' said Herries, encouragingly. 'It is not more than fine minutes' walk, and Lucky has always the pot upon the fire.' And Alison seemed to have no choice but to follow.

Presently, at the corner of a close, they came upon the oddest little house in the world, whose tiny granite gable, with its crows'-steps, stood sideways to the street. They entered by means of a little outside stairway, and were soon seated in the low-ceilinged, heavily-raftered room, where Lucky Simpson dispensed her simple hospitality. The woman--a stirring old body, in striped cotton gown and snowy 'mutch'--waited upon her guests herself, and seeing that on this occasion she had 'the quality' to deal with, she spread a coarse homespun cloth upon the table, and furnished it with two-pronged forks. Lucky's accustomed guests dined off the bare boards, and 'supped their meat' with horn spoons, as a rule. She now lamented that the day's dinner was nothing more genteel than 'sheep's head, done wi' the collops and the braincakes.' But to Herries and his hungry companion this sounded appetising enough.

They were seated one on each side of the homely little table. Alison had loosened the strings of her hood--it fell back a little from her freshened face, and the little clustering curls about her temples. She was looking about her, all unconscious of possible scrutiny, the pleasure of the situation bright upon her face. Herries looked at her--perhaps for the very first time--with real attention, and a something of her personality, its simplicity and trustfulness, its gentle candour, was borne in upon his mind.

'My God!' he said to himself--and a kind of pang assailed him--'how innocent she looks! It is a woman's body, but sure, only a child looks out of those eyes.' And he felt a sudden warm impulse of kindness and goodwill go out of him towards this grave, shy, country girl.

But the arrival of the sheep's head, steaming in a savoury manner, put an end to reflection.

'Now this is indeed a most sadly ungenteel dish, as Lucky says, to put before a lady,' Herries said. 'Miss Graham has perhaps never tasted anything so common?'

'Who--I, sir?' said Alison, simply. 'Why, don't I get my dinner off it every Monday at The Mains?'

'Every Monday?' said Herries, amused. 'Now, why on Mondays, pray?'

'Why, sure,' said Alison, shocked at the unpractical nature of the query, 'because the sheep is killed on Saturdays, and so we get the head on Mondays, by nature, sir.'

'At that rate,' said Herries, laughing, 'you must work down the animal, I suppose, and have the tail on Saturdays?' But Alison shook her head, smiling and dimpling. No; it appeared the tail came up on Thursdays 'roasted with the gigot,' and was usually the portion of 'Ferran,' the collie dog.

And so they had a good deal of conversation over that little meal, and were very friendly, and even merry. Those who knew Herries only under the frigid reserve and severe pre-occupation of his usual manner, would have been astonished to see how he unbent, how simple were the jokes he cracked with Lucky, how kind and gentle his converse with his timid guest.

Lucky brought in a steaming toddy, and Herries would have it that Alison must 'taste.' Out of his own glass--before he touched it himself--he must ladle a drop into hers, with Lucky's funny old toddy-ladle, with the worn and dented silver bowl, and spindly, long black handle. Yes, that was a pleasant hour, but, like all such, over too soon. They must go. Alison, from an inner pocket, had produced a remarkably attenuated little purse.

'I suppose, sir,' she said, 'it is now time that we should pay for our dinner?'

Herries leaned his elbows on the table, and, smiling, looked long and deep into her eyes. Well, he had looked into a woman's eyes like that before--perhaps too often. But never before had the depths of Alison's innocent being been plumbed by such a gaze. It troubled her--but with how sweet, how perilously sweet a trouble! Her eyes fell, and the colour crept to her cheeks. Herries looked away, but his voice was kind when it spoke.

'When a lady does a man the honour to dine with him,' he said, smiling, 'she is not generally asked to pay the reckoning.' Alison blushed scarlet, as one detected in some awful solecism, and huddled the little purse out of sight.

'I--I didn't know,' she stammered. 'You must excuse me, sir. I never dined out with--with a gentleman before.'

'I'll be sworn you never did!' Herries said to himself, in great amusement.

After that they rose and went out into the streets again, where the short, gloomy winter afternoon was already darkening into evening. Herries naturally escorted his charge up the town towards the Potterrow. They mounted the worn flights of steps, the steep closes and murky wynds, with the brisk step of youth refreshed--Alison the first and least fatigued. Herries felt himself admiring her for the first time.

'Now, that's a handsome jacket,' said the innocent man to himself, eyeing the red pelisse, 'and I protest, it sets a handsome figure! A fine free step the girl has, too--country-bred.' Altogether, he was very well pleased with his companion that night.

When they reached the Potterrow it was nearly dark, and the ill-trimmed flaring lantern that hung in the General's Entry was already lit.

'Will you not come up to your cousin's tea-table, sir?' asked Alison, shyly.

'I thank you, no,' Herries answered. 'Make my excuses to Nancy. I have business this evening.'

'I--I should thank you for a very pleasant day, sir,' said Alison, timidly. 'I have greatly enjoyed myself.'

'Nay,' said Herries, with a little flourish, 'the pleasure was mine! I trust we have other enjoyable days, in company, to come.' And with that they parted, and Herries walked down the town alone.

'If all pleasures were as innocent and as cheap, mistress,' he said to himself, thinking of Alison's little speech, 'men would be better and richer than they are!' And he laughed when he thought of the modest total of Lucky's bill. On his doorstep he found Creighton's terrier, Dick, shivering in the cold. 'Come in, beastie!' he said, 'and lie by the fire till your master goes.'

He was in a singularly softened mood, and in high good humour with all the world.

*CHAPTER XX.*

Mrs. Maclehose, having provided her young friend with a pretty gown, was of no mind that that garment should waste its sweetness in a cupboard. It was now the height of the Edinburgh winter season, and she was full of engagements; so that the two ladies were presently immersed in quite a whirl of mild dissipation. They went to kettle-drums, sometimes night after night; to literary _soirees_, such as Nancy loved, where lions, of more or less celebrity, mildly roared; sometimes to concerts at the St. Cecilia Hall, for which Herries would send them tickets; and once or twice even to a rout in the Assembly Rooms, where Alison looked on at, but could not join, the extremely stiff and joyless dancing of the day. At nearly every entertainment they frequented, Herries would be present, for it was by virtue of his introduction that his cousin had the _entree_ everywhere, and he was widely known. He was heartily sick of the social round, but it was necessary for his professional interests that he should be seen, and he was fully aware of the fact. One pair of eyes watched the door for his coming in those days, though he did not know it. Alison, in a room full of strangers, would look longingly for the one face that she knew, and, almost unconsciously, her eyes would follow the now familiar figure. She thought that all the world watched him thus. For, surely, he had a better carriage, a finer head, a smarter coat than any other man. Herries certainly had distinction, but he was below, rather than above, middle height, and not, naturally, one to rise above a crowd.

With what a curious, new, expectant joy had Alison looked forward to meeting him for the first time after that happy day of sight-seeing! But here her ignorance of men, at any rate of this man in particular, built up a disappointment for her. Herries at Lucky Simpson's--Herries entertaining a simple country girl, whom he regarded as a child--was very different from the Herries of evening parties and the social treadmill. When next Alison saw him, and he gave her a formal five minutes of his arm in a crowded drawing-room, he was like a stranger again--cold, stiff, dressed in reserve as in a garment. It was the nature of the man, and, in time, Alison learned the difficult lesson that it set her, as one learns who loves his task. But she certainly got little aid from Nancy.

''Tis a strange being--Archie,' his cousin would say, discussing him after some chance meeting. 'A riddle to me, Ally, who can generally read a man like a book. Many a time I wonder what is in the heart of the creature--what are the motives of his actions, the ruling passions of his life. I've known him since he was a boy, and at all the crises of my life he's been at my elbow--the adviser, the protector, the benefactor. But, I tell you, child, I know no more what he really thinks on any subject under the sun, than the child unborn! And what is more, I know no one who ever did! And yet I'd not have you think I underrate his good qualities,' she went on earnestly. 'I see his solid worth, and I respect it. But 'tis my most unlucky star has ruled it, that I must be dependent on a man I fear. I live by love, Ally--by sympathy, confidence, communion! I can forgive--I hope to be forgiven. But Herries asks no forgiveness, and he grants none. He--he drives me to subterfuge, Ally. I swear against my proper nature!'