Part 9

Alison never doubted that, first in Nancy's mind, as she spoke, and first in her own, was the thought of that eternal commerce with St. James's Square. It throve apace, like some ill weed with a fair leaf, but choking roots. And now, as the weeks went on, and the poet wrote of gradual recovery from his hurt, the letters would give place to meetings, and even Alison, in her innocence and her confidence in her friend, knew instinctively that in these meetings there would be danger. If only Herries might be told of them, even though he disapproved! But on the subject of the poet he was unapproachable; he bristled with prejudice, as a porcupine with its quills. Alison's unerring judgment forced her to see that he was unreasonable and unjust.

However, at this juncture, both Alison's anxieties (in this direction) and her little gaieties received an interruption. The boy Danny fell dangerously ill, and all her pity and care went out to him. She was aroused one night to hear him moaning in the cot beside her, and she ran to waken Nancy. Both of them hung over the child, terrified to find that he knew neither of them, but wandered and cried in a high fever. The faithful Jean, roused, ran out into the windy, desolate streets at dawn to call a physician.

Alison knew well that the child had ailed. She had urged it upon Nancy; but, of late, Nancy had cared so little: she seemed, more and more, to push everything from her but the one thing, and that, alas! was not her child. The boy suffered from a running sore or abscess on the hip. It troubled him always, and now, perhaps, some knock or hurt, had aggravated it. Alison shuddered to find it so inflamed--searing, like a live cinder, the delicate flesh. When Jean returned, she had secured no one but a callow student--a timid ignoramus, who either could not, or would not, lance the sore. He sent, however, a jar of leeches. Nancy screamed at the horrid things. But Alison took them in her fingers, without a qualm, and laid them on the child's burning skin. They gave a temporary relief, and he fell into a troubled doze.

'Ally,' said Nancy, an hour or two later, 'the child must have the best physician in the town. I have heard Archie talk of taking him to Mr. Ross, one of our first surgeons. Will you, like your own sweet self, go over to George Street, and tell my cousin he must bring the man here--beg him to do it--rather, without loss of time?'

'I--go to Mr. Herries's office?' stammered Alison, overwhelmed with doubt.

''Tis a savage morning, and I hate to send you, child,' said Nancy, coaxingly. 'But Jean's so busy, and I cannot--I _cannot_ leave the child. You hear how he calls for me every minute. Perhaps we could get a messenger....'

'Nay,' said Alison quietly, 'I'll go, Nancy.'

It was not the weather that daunted her, but a new sensation--a womanly instinct that made her shrink from the idea of putting herself in Herries's way. Supposing he should think her bold? But her strong common sense told her that most probably he would not think of her at all, one way or the other; and this, certainly, was no time to let herself be hindered in helpfulness by silly, unnecessary scruples. So she put on an old, rough cloak of Jean's, wrapped a screen about her head, and cheerfully faced the storm.

Half an hour later she stood in Herries's warm, handsome room, her rosy cheeks bedewed with rain, and the drops sparkling on her curls. She told of Danny's suffering, and gave the message, simply, quietly, in fewest words.

'Why, in conscience, does my cousin send you out on such a day?' exclaimed Herries, in extreme irritation. 'Could she not put her servant on the job? It is preposterous!'

'Jean was very busy, sir. The whole house is upset since four this morning,' Alison answered, quietly. 'Your cousin could not leave her child to come herself.'

'My cousin "leaves her child" on other occasions fast enough,' said Herries, with a sneer. 'This crisis in the boy's health,' he went on, sternly, 'comes of her own neglect. 'Tis weeks since I warned her that she should call in a physician, and I gave her an introduction to Mr. Ross. However, since you are good enough to be her messenger, tell her that I will bring or send the man in the course of the day. It is no sinecure, I think you must perceive, Miss Graham, to be the self-appointed guardian of another man's children.'

He spoke with great bitterness, and Alison could not but feel that he was justified. Her message was delivered, and she could but go. So deep was Herries's annoyed preoccupation, that he barely bowed as he held the door open for her exit.

He sat down moodily to his desk again when she was gone. But presently, though some little interval of time had elapsed, his sharp ears caught the sound of her voice, downstairs it seemed. What delayed her? he wondered, irritably; and supposed he must descend and see. What he did see, as he came downstairs into the hall, was the spectacle of his partner, Creighton, bare-headed in the rain, helping Miss Graham into a coach, while a clerk, who had apparently just fetched it, held open the door. Herries felt himself redden to the very forehead with a boyish shame. The coach rolled off, and Creighton came in, shaking the rain from his coat.

'My good sir,' said Herries, meeting him, 'our noble profession of the law is making a Diogenes of me, and I seem to have forgotten the manners of a gentleman. But you make up for my deficiencies.'

'Nay, nay,' said Creighton, in confusion, 'I but saw the child trying to open the door against the blatter, and I could not let her walk forth into the rain. That was all. I hear she brings ill news.'

'Ill enough,' said Herries. 'But what special sort of churl was I to confound her with her news? A good girl, doing far more than her duty by me and mine.'

'Ay, a fine lass, a very fine lass,' said Creighton, looking earnestly at the younger man.

'And yet, like the rest of them,' said Herries, musingly. 'She comes to a man's house as to a shop, for something useful--all 'tis good for.'

'Nay, now,' said Creighton, smiling, 'we know who it is teaches her _that_ trick here. 'Tis not of her own doing, or on her own trokes. Be just, sir.'

And so it was that Alison's elderly conquest in George Street took up the cudgels on her behalf and never dropped them again as long as he had strength to hold them.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

The eminent surgeon came to the Potterrow immediately, and said his oracular say after the manner of his kind. Sea air he prescribed, and, even more stringently, sea water--douchings and rubbings for that piteous little limb, fast shrinking in a fell disease. Country milk he further insisted on, and a nourishing diet. Better put the child, he said, to some farm or seaside cottage, where he could get the full benefit of a country life. There were plenty decent folk along the coast, he opined, accustomed to the boarding of delicate children from the town. But that would only be when the child was fit to move--not yet. In the meantime, he lanced the sore, which operation afforded everyone in the little establishment in Potterrow a harrowing morning. The mother--'distracted,' as she said--paced up and down the parlour, fingers in her ears; while, in the little closet-bedroom, Alison held Danny's hands, and honest Jean steadied the quivering little thigh beneath the lancet. The operation gave great relief, and in a few days Danny was convalescent--an interesting invalid, indeed, with larger and more cavernous dark eyes than ever, and laid, in high dignity, upon a couch, drawn near the parlour fire.

Herries came nearly every day to see him. He got into a comfortable habit of coming towards evening, just when Nancy's pretty tea-table was spread in the parlour, and candle-light and fire-light danced upon the panel, and the cosy, red curtains were drawn against the dreary night. It was really very pleasant, and Herries came, in these days, to dislike the empty solitude of his own house at this hour, when Creighton would be gone, and the clerks dispersed to their homes. He did not pause to ask himself why his cousin's room now seemed so vastly agreeable of an evening. He was not an analytical personage, and he still believed that it was to see Danny and watch his progress that he came. Was he not busy making arrangements for the little boy's removal to the seaside, which the doctor wished to hasten, in spite of the coldness of the season? He spoke constantly of an old nurse of his own, who was married and settled at the village of Prestonpans--a decent woman, accustomed to the charge of children. He was in treaty with her for little Danny's board, and presently the matter seemed settled.

''Tis one of your own delightful, good, sensible, charming plans, Archie,' Nancy said, comfortably. 'No one else could have devised anything half so suitable. Sure, dear cousin, you are as wise as Solomon!'

Herries did not reply, but he looked at his relative, between half-closed eyelids, with the satirical glance he always kept for her--not that it could half express the nameless exasperation which this little, cooing, wooing, winsome woman roused in his suspicious nature. Perhaps, just now, he was a little tired of being called so sensible. Aristides, though history does not say so, may have been as wearied as his neighbours of hearing himself called the just.

In the meantime, Alison was very happy--who so happy in all Edinburgh? She had Danny to take care of, and she was one of those born caretakers of the sick and weak. She carried him in and out of the parlour in her strong arms; twice daily, with unhesitating nerve and tender fingers, she would dress his sore; all day long she would play with him, sing to him, talk to him, playful yet reasonable, at once tender and firm. She did not know how a certain pair of lynx eyes watched her with the child. The owner of the lynx eyes did not himself know how narrow was their scrutiny. He was quite unconscious of the fact that all he saw, worth mentioning, in that little room was the figure of a tall girl with grey eyes, who played with a little boy. It was Nancy who remarked at this time that she had never before known her Cousin Archie to be musical. He certainly did evince a singular interest at present in the musical progress of Miss Graham, asking questions about the thoroughness of Professor Schetki's style, the duration of his lessons, and such-like technicalities. It may be that the appearance of a certain bill in his budget at home had something to do with this sudden interest in the arts. Certainly, at this time, and nearly every night, the young lawyer had a habit of pulling a certain account--nay, two--out of a bundle in his desk. He would turn them over and over, look at them, fold them up, and then unfold them again. Sometimes his eyebrows would merely arch themselves, very high indeed; sometimes he would emit a soft, short whistle; once he smiled. That was when he put the bills away for the last time, and it is his biographer's duty to state they were discharged.

All this time, while the mere prosaic matters of everyday life went on as above, a certain high-souled correspondence, which took no note of common things, continued to unite the Potterrow with St. James's Square. Alison still took letters, weary of the job, but loyal to her friend. Sometimes she was rewarded by hearing priceless extracts from the effusions which came in return. '_I am delighted, my lovely friend, with your enthusiasm for religion,_' wrote the poet. '*'Tis also my favourite topic.*' Alison thought this sounded very nice--pious, even. Perhaps there was no harm after all, and Herries was, yes, he was too strict in his censures of a genius whom he did not, and would not, understand. Yet she sighed, and sometimes wished there was no poet in St. James's Square.

Once, near dusk, she and Nancy were walking in the New Town, and the latter took a perverse fancy to stroll into the square herself.

'But I left your note this morning, Nancy!' protested poor Alison.

'I know, I know, child,' said Nancy, whose face had an eager look. 'But I've been virtue, prudence itself, Ally, and never set foot in the sacred precincts myself. Now 'tis dusk nearly, and no one about. You know my romantic nature. I would see with my own eyes the shrine of genius. Come, love, be generous to your friend!' And they dawdled some minutes in the wretched, grimy square,--Nancy, holding her muff to her face, but peering up at the windows of the houses. Alison did not know that a foolish pen had written that morning: '_I am promised to be in your square this afternoon, and if your window be to the street, shall have the pleasure of giving you a nod._' Nor did she hear the poet's lively rejoinder of the next day: '_You don't know the proper storey for a poet's lodging, Clarinda! Why didn't you look higher?_'

And then, coming out of the square, in the very neck of it, whom should they run against but Herries himself.

'This is an odd hour and place for you ladies to be walking alone,' said he. And Alison saw how his eyes narrowed with suspicion, and his lips set themselves in their most obstinate folds. But Nancy was inimitable in self-possession and unconcern; said something about a visit to a clockmaker in the square, and then talked of the weather. Alison, poor Alison, had felt the shock so, that her very heart jumped. Then followed the sickly sensation, so horribly novel to her young strength, of a feeling of faintness. She knew that her very lips grew white, as she stood there listening to Nancy's prattle. How foolish it was ... but, oh, would Nancy _never_ go! At last she nodded a lively good-night to her relative, and they separated.

'La, child!' Nancy exclaimed, as they scurried home, 'that was a queer mischance! And did you see how mighty odd my gentleman looked at us? He knows, all the world knows, Burns lodges in the square. But I think I put him off the scent; he knows my big wag-at-the-wall clock comes from Jamieson's, and that's in the square too.... But, Ally, what made you turn so white? Are you not well, love? Sure I'm sorry you had a qualm; 'tis horrid, vapourish weather just now, but could anything on earth have been more opportune? For now, if Archie takes it into his head that either of us has a sentimental interest in the square, it must be you!' She laughed her little soft, thrilling laugh, and tripped gaily along beside her silent companion. 'But I don't think,' she added presently,' that he saw anything. It was too dark.'

That night Alison had a nightmare. She dreamt that she walked somewhere, but there was a chain about her feet; and ever, as she tried to hurry on, the chain tightened, bruising her ankles, cutting even into the flesh. On some height beyond her stood a figure. Its face was hidden, but she knew that it was Herries. Then Alison awoke, and found that she was crying.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

Herries was not greatly disturbed at the meeting in St. James's Square, after the first flash of annoyance. It was one of those incidents, little thought of at the time, which may, at a later date, loom large; a link in that chain of circumstantial evidence which sends many a culprit to his doom. He merely hoped, irritably enough, that his cousin was not playing tricks, making a fool of herself about the poet (he knew the poet's lodging perfectly), and he made a definite resolve to interfere, if this should be the case. Not only, he reflected, must Nancy walk warily on her own account, but she had, under her charge, a young and inexperienced girl, who must on no account be exposed to dangerous poetic wiles. Miss Graham, it struck him, bad looked pale; doubtless, she had confined herself too closely nursing Danny. He must design some little dissipation for her. As a matter of fact, he had two in view.

'Are you still of a mind to give the ladies their tea-drinking, sir?' he inquired, genially, of his partner, walking into that gentleman's room one evening.

'To be sure, to be sure,' said Mr. Creighton, concealing his amazement with creditable dexterity. 'Only, my poor rooms....'

'Oh, my dear sir,' said Herries, affably, 'consider this house at your disposal, and Lizzie at your service. She will do everything. And, now I come to think of it, my room above stairs is the more cheerful, more suited to ladies than this. What do you think?'

'I entirely agree,' answered Mr. Creighton, with the solemnity of a judge. 'My portion of the entertainment will doubtless consist in amusing the ladies when they arrive,' he added, with a kind of stiff jocularity. But Herries declined to see the joke.

'Shall I convey your invitation to my cousin and Miss Graham, and perhaps I may beg you to extend it to the boy, Willy?' he inquired, in a business-like tone.

'Assuredly,' answered his partner. 'And if you can manage gracefully to convey to Miss Graham the idea that this little civility on my part is a compliment to our ancient connection with her family, I shall feel that the genteel thing has been done.' It must be admitted that Mr. Creighton, in spite of his age and profession, could enter, with wonderful spirit, into a little game. When his partner had gone, he rubbed his hands together with a delighted air.

'It is working!' he said to himself. 'Who would have thought it, so soon? But he needs tender handling, the lad. I must take care.'

Herries had no difficulty in arranging a day with the ladies of the Potterrow, when they should enjoy the hospitalities of Mr. Creighton. It was to be on a Thursday, and the matter was fixed. However, when the morning came, Nancy, with great finality, announced her intention of keeping the house all day.

'But, but,' cried Alison, in dismay, 'we _promised_, Nancy!'

'So we did, dear,' said Nancy, with provoking coolness, 'and we'll keep our promise, that is, you shall, you and Willy. But as for me, to take tea with those two, with that old mummy of a writer, that hates me like poison, and good, dull Archie, that we've had such a dose of, of late,--my dear, 'twould choke me, and that's a fact! Now, don't look so shocked. Besides,' she added, lowering her voice, 'to be strictly honest, and you know I am so with _you_, my love, and tell you everything--I've other fish to fry. Ally, my poet is free to-day, for the first time! For the very first time, he goes out. All sorts of tiresome engagements bind him this day, he says, that he dare not neglect. But there's a chance, Ally, a little, little chance, like the faintest star in the firmament, that he may visit his friend. Think of it, and you'll see that not for a kingdom would I risk his not finding me here. Far more likely 'twill be to-morrow or Saturday ... but ... oh, Ally, it might be to-day!'

'But for me,'--said Alison, troubled at heart, 'can I possibly go to the house of these gentlemen alone?'

'Oh, lud, child, with Willy, yes, of course!' exclaimed Nancy, impatiently. 'Why, now,' she went on, with a titter, 'were it a question of taking tea with old Creighton alone, your duenna might hesitate, but with Archie there, why, every element of propriety is present. Don't you know him yet, child? As safe as a church, haven't I told you a thousand times, and about as lively. There, run away now, and get your things out. I'm sure I wish you had a gayer spark than Archie to dress up for.'

'I think Mr. Herries is very kind to--to us,' said Alison, with her head in the air.

'Kind?' said Nancy, 'kind as a grandfather, dear. Who ever doubted it?'

When the hour arrived, Alison in her fine pelisse and hood, and Willy, wriggling in the agonies of his 'Sunday suit,' were prepared to start. There was a look of beaming pleasure on Alison's face, but it clouded over when she saw that Nancy drew from her desk the inevitable letter, shut and sealed for delivery.

'Ah, love,' Nancy cried, in her softest voice, 'you'll leave this for me on the way home, won't you? 'Tis on your road coming by the bridge, and won't take a minute.'

'Must I--_must_ I take it?' said poor Alison, looking very blank. 'I--I thought you expected Mr. Burns to-day....'

'The merest chance, child,' cried Nancy, impatiently. 'And this note is _most particular_, Ally, for it tells him all my movements for the next few days, so that there may be no chance of our missing. 'Tis not like my Ally to refuse me a little favour like this,' she added, reproachfully.

'I'll take it, Nancy,' said Alison, sadly. Refuse Nancy a favour? How could she? But the letter in her pocket seemed to burn her. To leave it meant a moment of degradation always. But to leave it--going straight from Herries's house--hiding it from him all the time--hurt her honour, hurt her very heart.

In the meantime, in Herries's fine room, the feast was spread, and Mr. Creighton hovered round it, fascinated. He had made a reckless expenditure in sweet cakes; there were enough to feed a multitude. Herries had had enough to do coercing the savage Lizzie into unearthing the best china, and the beautiful silver tea-service--a family heirloom. Now, he regarded the preparations with a contented eye. The room was one of those exceedingly handsome ones for which the larger Edinburgh mansions are justly famous. Three long windows looked out into George Street: round the cornice ran a delicate frieze, one of the masterpieces of Adams; and the high mantel was decorated with medallions--white upon green--from the same hand. In the slim classicality, the severe grace of these moulded figures, an observant eye might have traced a resemblance to the young host, especially trim this afternoon in fresh powder and a new coat. He was reflecting that this was, properly speaking, the drawing-room of his house. If he ever married, he must shift his business quarters elsewhere, and this house must become his private residence. The entrance of Mr. Creighton's guests broke in upon his reverie.

It was a very pleasant tea-party, indeed, in spite of the absence of Mrs. Maclehose, which was regretted with due politeness. Mr. Creighton devoted himself grimly to the entertainment of Willy, who, perched precariously upon the edge of a high chair, regarded his overtures much as he might those of a well-intentioned ogre. Mr. Creighton 'pressed' the cakes--boys, he reflected, could eat a limitless quantity. Willy was too frightened to refuse; he ate, until the powers of mastication were all but paralysed, and then rolled helpless eyes of repletion towards Alison, silently imploring succour.

But Alison, it is to be feared, was not paying that attention to her young charge, which was customary with her. She had been requested to make the tea--an absorbing process always; and then, Herries was helping her, kind, 'as a grandfather,' of course. How pretty was the china and the silver! The goodly spread made her think of gala days at The Mains, with a touch, an ache, of home. The conversation was all that a grandfather, at his best, could have attained.

'You must tell my cousin,' Herries was saying, 'that I have arranged to take Danny down to Prestonpans on Saturday. 'Tis sudden, but Ross presses the change, while this clearer spell of weather lasts. I'll have a comfortable coach at the Grassmarket--the boy will travel in warmth and comfort. Nancy will come with him, doubtless. And you--I trust you will honour us, Miss Graham? 'Tis a fine drive, and there's much of interest to be seen at Prestonpans.' Alison said it would be delightful. Then she rose to go, for it grew late.