Herries

“ Herries followed at his leisure, his hands behind him, and his head bent. The few words-that, he had spoken of himself to Alison had disturbed his serenity; such words, however commonplace, when spoken of the inner self by a man so wrapt in reserve as Herries, are apt to affect the speaker thus, for their utterance is the breaking of the rule and habit of a life. He stood, and looked absently seawards. A schooner, under full sail, was beating up the firth. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Alison had left the room, and the boy Willy was shouting for Herries from an inner chamber, where he slept, and Herries went to him. Nancy's whole aspect, voice, and manner, changed in his absence.
'For God's sake, Sylvander,' she said, clasping the poet's arm, 'behave yourself this night! Yonder is my most revered, particular, Puritanical cousin and guardian, the lawyer Archibald Herries. A pragmatical creature—no soul, no sympathy—but if he's offended, poor Clarinda is undone! He is all her shield against the cruel world—all the worldly hope of her poor, deserted babes. ”

“ A woman's name he uttered so often, and with such poignant meaning, that Herries, bending over him, asked again and yet again if she were not one who could be sent for. He could not know that the earth had covered her for thirty years in that parish graveyard, away among the Pentlands, where Creighton, one evening not long since, had craved his partner to see him buried. ”

“ Herries, with folded arms, and with a singular mixture of emotions, looked long upon the splendid mask. As in life, the dark hair swept the pallid brow, and though the glory of those eyes was quenched under the sealed lids that would lift no more, there was, in the fixed and immutable gravity of the lifeless face, a language beyond all looks, beyond all uttered speech: that air of incommunicable knowledge which, in the Dead, baffles the living with its eternal silence. ”

“ Herries made no move. The poet, glowering somewhat, now that the mood of inspiration had left him, chafed visibly under the other's sneering silence and marked aloofness. In spite of his natural manliness and independence, he was agonisingly sensitive to a social slight, and helpless under it. Yet neither would he give in. It grew late. The poet, it transpired, contemplated an early start the following morning, when he was to ride to Ayrshire, returning in a fortnight or so to town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the latter vengeance that had overtaken the laird of The Mains—pinning him helpless, and almost speechless, to his great lug-chair by the fire for which he shivered even in the hottest day. There he sat, huddled in gown and slippers, the wreck of a man at fifty-six, and behind him, rudely carved upon the green stone mantel, Herries read the doleful legend, which seemed the text of a wordless but expressive sermon:
'In human life there's nothing steadfast stands,
Youth, Glorie, Riches fades. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It took Herries three full days to accomplish the business of which he had spoken to the poet. When he returned to Dumfries, the town was ringing with the death of Burns. A suppressed excitement seemed to pervade the streets; men spoke in muffled voices, awe-stricken, of the great spirit fled—and women cried to think of the destitute young widow, with her flock of orphans, who must so soon, in double peril, and under the very shadow of death, give to the world the poet's posthumous child. ”

“ But there, I'll not wound your sensibilities and those of Miss Graham any further to-night.' Herries laughed as he spoke. 'I'll take myself off, and leave you ladies to enjoy your raptures. A mere man has no chance when there's a poet on the tapis.'
'Nay, Archie,' said Nancy, more gently, throwing herself, with a little sigh, into a chair and leaning back in it. 'Stay a while. 'Tis no wish of mine to drive you away, God wot!'
Herries stood on the hearth, looking down at his cousin with his cool, critical, half-satirical regard. ”

“ JAMES HERRIES. From Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, (i. 214.) (See the preface to the last ballad but one.)
"O are ye my father, or are ye my mother?
Or are ye my brother John?
Or are ye James Herries, my first true love,
Come back to Scotland again?"
5 "I am not your father, I am not your mother,
Nor am I your brother John;
But I'm James Herries, your first true love,
Come back to Scotland again."
"Awa', awa', ye former lovers,
10 Had far awa' frae me;
For now I am another man's wife,
Ye'll ne'er see joy o' me." ”

“ This time the door was opened to him by Jessie Lewars, her pretty face swollen and discoloured by tears.
'I was directed by—by the late Mr. Burns to call here for a packet of letters,' said Herries, with respectful hesitancy.
'We were bidden to expect you, sir,' answered the girl, and then she added that invitation which, under the circumstances, among the peasantry of Scotland, is never withheld and never refused: 'Will you be pleased to come up the stair and view the corpse, sir?' Herries followed her upstairs, but she did not enter the room with him. He was left to do that alone. ”

“ Herries still chuckled.
Frances turned her puzzled gaze on Ethel. "I shouldn't wonder," nodded the girl, with indifferent placidity.
"Do you mean——?" asked the Missionary.
"Oh, Walt's easy, you know," explained Ethel. "He's known everywhere for a kind of mark. Anybody can get money out of him."
"Any woman, you mean," corrected Herries. "Men haven't found it so easy."
Frances dropped her sewing in her lap and sat staring meditatively before her, the puzzled expression deepening in her eyes. ”

“ The family from which Herries sprang had owned land in the Galloway region, or near about Kirkcudbright. It occurred to him suddenly, in the summer of '96, when town was empty, and the grass growing up between the cobbles of the Edinburgh streets, after its rural wont, that he would take a tour in the South and re-visit the country of his sires. He set out with a couple of good nags—one ridden by his servant, with a pack-saddle.
It was a successful expedition (all worldly matters prospered with Herries in these days) , and in more ways than in mere pleasure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Creighton continued to be confined to his rooms by severe illness, and Herries found himself in consequence overwhelmed with business. Not only was the office work doubly heavy in the absence of his partner, but it was constantly interrupted by the necessity of reference to the absent man, as long as he was able in any measure to give his mind to the affairs of his profession. Latterly, this had almost ceased to be the case, for the invalid grew worse rather than better, and Herries's visits quickly changed from those of business to those merely of inquiry. ”

“ One thing at least would always make the old gentleman open his eyes. The one thing he really cared for in this world was his hobby of armored weapons, especially Eastern weapons, and he would talk for hours about Damascus blades and Arab swordmanship. Lord James Herries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a short, dark, sturdy man with a very sallow face and a very sullen manner, which contrasted with the gorgeous flower in his buttonhole and his festive trick of being always slightly overdressed. It was something of a euphemism to call him a well-known man about town. ”

“ Herries, whose mental energies, as well as his personal strength and activity, seemed to qualify him well to act so dangerous a part; and I knew that all along the Western Border, both in England and Scotland, there are so many nonjurors, that such a person may reside there with absolute safety, unless it becomes, in a very especial degree, the object of the government to secure his person ”

“ Her naïve conviction that a man who had always been adamant to her own charms must necessarily remain so to those of everyone else continued perfectly unshaken. Whether, under any circumstances, she could have believed Herries capable of being in love is very doubtful. But at present the distorting veil of her own half-guilty passion was drawn across her eyes, and she saw nothing.
'Are you never alone?' Herries said fretfully to Alison once, after a singularly irksome visit shared with Nancy and Willy.
'Not very often, sir,' said Alison ”

“ There is the lass, Mysie, sir,'—to Herries,—'could she not be spared to accompany Miss Graham?'
'She is big enough to do the dragon, certainly,' said Herries, with a short laugh. 'Mysie be it, then; I'll have her told.' He left the room, with an air of offence, to give the order.
''Tis a pity you could not let Mr. Herries go with you,' Mr. Creighton said softly to Alison. 'The walk would have done him good; he sits too confined to his work.'
Alison raised her grey eyes to the old man's face ”

“ Herries said. "Let me introduce myself by name. This is my friend, Mr. Gilroy. Here also is my friend, Mr. Duckworth, who is an invalid. It was to please him that we engaged this room. But after your recent remarks to the landlord, I am afraid that we must retire gracefully."
The stranger smiled and shook his head.
"My name is Harrington," he said—"a cosmopolitan at that. Let me make a suggestion to you. Why not dine here with me? I have ordered a special dinner for four, but my friends have been detained in Paris. You look like getting no dinner at all. ”

“ And so you are a friend of Miss Alison's? So am I—in troth, her earliest! And she will not leave her father for you? Well, I daresay not, I daresay not—a good lass! But the mother, let me tell you, stands in your gait fully more than the laird. She'll not do wanting Alison, and so she tells the world. A tremendous woman, sir, and set on her own ways. You'll not get Alison from her.'
'I'll take her!' said Herries, with a short laugh. ”

“ But she had no time to speak, for Herries returned to say, curtly, that Mysie waited below for her charges, and presently both gentlemen saw their guests to the door.
When Herries returned to his room, followed by his partner, he kicked at the fine fire in his grate, a way he had when annoyed.
'Madam was up to some little trick, there,' he said sharply.
'Tut! tut!' said Creighton. 'Why jump to ill conclusions, sir? We men of the law are too apt to be suspicious. It does not do with women ”

“ The speaker looked like a man who has the fear of the rope about his neck. Herries was inclined to make light of the matter. All they had to do was to keep their eyes open for a man with a peculiar scar on the back of his right hand. Once they found him, it would be a very easy matter to hand him over to the authorities. Perhaps he was already in custody, perchance he was one of the gang of captured desperadoes.
"I don't think so," said Duckworth thoughtfully. "The scarred right hand seemed to be on the side of authority; anyway, he had a pretty good grip on the red-haired chap. ”

“ She was disposed also to place some reliance on the assurances of friendship she had lately received from the English Queen. She was well aware of the hollowness of most of Elizabeth’s promises; but in her present extremity, she thought that to cross the sea would be to resign her crown forever. After much hesitation, she finally determined on going into England, and desired Herries to write to Elizabeth’s Warden at Carlisle, to know whether she might proceed thither. ”

“ Herriott, if you could have seen her all these years—her patient, hopeless face! If you could realize the life she leads in the overseer's house and contrast it with that brilliant past when you saw her admired and sought in New York—even in London—you might perhaps understand how changed she is. I longed for you to know that your wife's heart is wholly yours, because I have believed you would always love her. If she ever suspects I have told you her secret she will never forgive—she will disown me. ”