Allan McAulay

“ Herries, as he watched him bend over Alison that fine frame and splendid head, hated him at that moment, not, I fear, for his vices, but for his thews and sinews, his sun-browned comeliness and daring eye. Like many men, slenderly moulded, and of delicate constitution, Herries had a passionate and jealous admiration of manly beauty hardened and developed by all out-door and vigorous pursuits. Necessity had doomed him to a sedentary life, but it was against every taste and inclination, every instinct of his being. He felt now, angrily, that this creature—this ploughman—belittled him. ”

“ Alison, indeed, was very grave as she walked home that day, after parting from her lover. She was very happy. Her feeling for Herries had become—as such feelings will with such natures—a part and parcel of herself—the very heart of her. It was a wondrous thing, a miracle, that the one man she had ever known should also be the one man in the world most worthy of love and honour. But then, to reverent and simple minds, the miracle brings awe as well as joy, and Alison was a little afraid of her own happiness, as though it could hardly be meant for such as she. ”

“ His great, black glance covered Alison; half-wondering and half-shrinking, she felt it search her.
'If Miss Graham,' he said, with a low bow, 'will honour me with a song, she will make a poor poet the richer. I find no inspiration in the world like the lilt of a bonny voice in a bonny tune.'
Alison smiled to herself as she went to put off her hood and pelisse and smooth her curls. The deep, flattering voice rang oddly in her ears, for they were full of the curt speech and clear, incisive utterance of her lover—who was certainly no poet. ”

“ James's Square—the fee to Mysie; and then—and then, could it be that Alison had begged for secrecy in their engagement, had deprecated the frequency of his visits to the Potterrow, bidden him come on certain evenings and at certain hours only, because she played a double game, and fooled him in it? But no, this was monstrous, and he did not believe it in his soul—not yet at least. Only, in his bitterness, he said to himself that all women were the same; they all deceived, prevaricated, lied and hid, and this seeming-true, fair creature that he had taken to his heart was only a woman after all. ”

“ The world's poet—the singer for all time, and for all hearts—Robert Burns! Child, haven't you heard of him, the ploughman poet?'
'A ploughman?' said Alison, conjuring up the vision of one Donald, the ploughman at The Mains, with his stubbly beard and bowed legs.
'A ploughman, yes,' cried Nancy, 'but what a ploughman! He has had the town at his feet, Ally! From the highest to the lowest in the land, all men do him honour. And as for the women, child, they are ready to kill each other for a glint of his eye! ”

“ Do you believe it, Ally?'
'Sure, I believe it with all my heart and soul,' cried Alison, with kindling eyes.
'And there spoke an enthusiasm and a trusting warmth of nature that were never Archie's, dear,' said Mrs. Maclehose, laughing once more. 'No, you are not like him, love. 'Tis for a coldness of nature, a perpetual suspicion that I blame him. He's not a kindred soul, and we are ever tacitly at war. God knows poor Nancy is no saint. ”

“ In the meantime, Alison's lover had gone home, far more deeply perturbed than she, because totally in the dark, and because he had not, as had the woman he loved, the solid ground beneath his feet of a nature that could trust. Suspicion and mistrust had dogged the beginning of his love for Alison, but then Creighton had been at his elbow to fight each doubt as it arose; and after that his own love had grown strong, so strong that it grappled with the enemies of his nature, and overthrew them for a time. ”

“ Could she resume, before the men and women of her world, the steady gait of blameless womanhood? With words that harrowed Alison's very soul, she protested her actual innocence, while she bemoaned the folly that had made her risk her reputation. Oh, she had been mad—blind—headstrong! She saw it all now.
'All my life, Ally,' she said, her sweet voice roughened with long crying—'all my life I've been guided by the impulse of the moment. My passion has done what it will with me, and now it has undone me utterly.' Then she fell to harping on the theme of secrecy. ”

“ What combat of the kind was possible with a man who had never touched a sword or lifted a firearm in his life? Herries was full of fight—sharp-set, determined, coldly eager for the fray. You could see it in the steel-blue glitter of his eye, the scornful lift of eyebrow and dilation of the fine carved nostril. A game terrier, wiry with pluck, and bristling with defiance, matched against a mastiff. Such might have seemed to a sporting onlooker the chances of the fight. Alison, meanwhile, woman-like, had no excitement of a coming battle to make her forget her pain. ”

“ In Creighton's room below worked his new partner, a young and stirring man. The business extended itself in all directions and flourished like a miracle. Some of the most resounding names in Scotland figured on the green tin boxes, in their yearly increasing phalanx, in Herries's room. He had the name of a hard man, and was, no doubt, rather feared than loved. But so he willed it—for he had had enough of love. Round him, in these busy years, grew wider and yet wider the gallant New Town of Edinburgh—curving into crescents, and widening into squares and handsome residential streets. ”

“ I have stayed too long.'
'Nay, but I'll not let you, Alison,' said Herries, 'till it is promised me that our parting is at an end, and that I can come and ask you of your parents this very day. Why not?' Alison stood still and looked at him, and in her eyes was a something akin to that compassion with which you will see a mother look at her careless and unconscious child.
'Nay, Archie,' she said faintly. 'I had been thinking that you knew.... But that's all gone and done with now. I have no freedom to go with any man. ”

“ But this is not the case; for it is, rather, when the soul is awake—quivering to the touch of some novel experience—that its sensitiveness to new impressions is the greatest, and its capacity for seeing all things and understanding all things is at the fullest stretch. Thus, when Alison walked into Nancy's room that night, full of her own bliss, her heart gave only one bounding throb the more when she found a stranger there, and realised that at last she beheld the longed-for visitor, stood in the presence of genius, and touched the hand of Robert Burns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One mastering thought gave Alison's feet wings as she neared the Potterrow on her return from the Wabster's Close. She would tell Nancy of this heart-moving, this pitiful, sad scene she had witnessed, and make it plain to her at whose door the greater guilt of it all lay. Then Nancy must see reason, must lift the veil from her eyes, acknowledge the wrong-doing of the man who could cause suffering so infinite, and see her own danger in submitting to his influence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cheape, sir, I see,' she said, a little doggedly, 'since it is best for everybody, and I will—if I can.'
'Now that's a sensible lassie!' cried the laird, 'and how pleased your mother will be!' And, indeed, his own life, from that lady's displeasure, had been little, if at all, pleasanter than Alison's for the past week. 'Come, Ally, kiss your father! Things will be better than you think for, and Cheape a better husband than many a young spark.'
Alison was about to do as she was bid, when her quick ear caught a sound outside, and she started away from her father's arm. ”

“ An untethered rover in the fields of love, he never yet willingly poached, or spoiled another's sport. 'I would not hurt miss with the world,' he added.
'Take care you do not the rather hurt Clarinda with the world!' cried Nancy, shaking an admonitory finger. Passion and prudence alternately swayed the little woman at this time; her warm temperament and growing passion drove her within the sphere of danger; her love of the world and its countenance, a terror of losing caste, as a young and pretty woman in a delicate situation, held her back. ”

“ Nancy sat in her accustomed place, wreathed in smiles, and dispensing sugared words and glances. Herries, indeed, was totally silent, but it might have been the silence of appreciation. Alison and her harp, the poet seated near her, made a central and striking group in the little room. How fair—how singularly fair—she looked that night! So, at least, it seemed to her lover, watching her from under lowered lids, with anger—the anger of love and longing—at his heart. The poet, too, looked well: strong, manly, massive. ”