'Was I to take a sweetheart from your chamber?' said Herries, with a sneer.
'But, surely,' cried Burns, 'surely you knew the lass was there against her will? She had come on some cantrip of my Clarinda—well, I must e'en be plain, your cousin, Mrs. Maclehose; we had some trifle of dalliance in those days, and your girl was Cupid's messenger—just once too often, it would seem.'
'But she as good as told me with her own lips,' said Herries, 'that the disgrace of her situation was her own, and that she had deceived me....'
'Then she lied!' said Burns, energetically, 'and lied to save her friend, who was indeed most particularly in terror that your honour's self should scent her little game.... Listen, sir. I was never one to tell when I had kissed, but I must e'en out with it now. Here's a grave matter that needs more clearing even than I thought—and your own relative's honour is surely as safe with you as with me. The little lady thrives, I hear, on the fairest pinnacle of good fame, and you would be the last to interrupt her prosperity. But in those merry days she had a kindly eye for a poor Bard—and troth, so had the Bard for her—and we had—well, sundry tender passages and letters, though all within the strictest limits of Platonic friendship. And then there was your bonny lass—may God forgive us for the use we put her innocence to!—forever the go-between. Yet, sir, before real harm was done, I had compounded with my conscience to break with my Clarinda once and forever. Then came your ... Do you remember your letter?'
'I remember a letter,' said Herries, moodily, 'in which I forbade you my cousin's house....'
'Ay!' cried Burns, 'and what right had you, or any fellow-creature, to hector, catechise and insult me as did you in that letter? To a man of my temper, 'twas intolerable, and every drop of black blood in my veins rose at the injury. I had the creature Nicol at my elbow, and he made me write some trash—I mind not what—to you. But the real mischief was that your ill-judged and insolent order sent me, by provocation, hot-foot to your cousin's—ay, by night, too—and we were alone.... I outstayed—indeed, I did most damnably outstay, decorum's hour—and I will not say what devil whispered in my ear ... for opportunity and the fair one both were kind. Then there comes upon us, out of her first sleep, the lassie Graham. Ecod! I see her yet—the round eyes of her, like a bairn's, staring at me; the flounces of her night-rail, her bare bit feet. Up she comes, and takes the woman from my very arms into her own, as had she been an infant, showing me the door the while wi' the gait o' a queen. 'Od, 'tis not often Robbie Burns has played so poor a part in an affair of that kind! I e'en slunk out o' the house like a whipped tyke wi' his tail atween his legs. And so the lass better'd me—and maybe saved the honour of your house. And for all reward you cast her off!' Herries had turned from white to red, and from red to white again, during this recital. But now his eyes glittered with a cold anger.
'You are utterly unjust as to my part in the affair,' he said deliberately. 'Your own letter, which you slur over so easily, was a tissue of falsehood—if what you now tell me be true—and it was written with intent to mislead me. Every word and every act of my cousin's was studied to the same end. I was hedged in with lies. Of those who wronged Miss Graham, I certainly was not the guilty one; I utterly deny it. I was the catspaw of others infinitely unscrupulous. If I did Miss Graham an injustice, I deeply deplore it; but I was not responsible.' Burns eyed the speaker long and curiously—ironically, indeed.
'The legal mind, I see, sir, lights on the cold justice of the case at once, and banishes emotion and romance,' he said. 'Let me tell you, here and now, how I repent my part in the unlucky business. The letter I sent you was Nicol's, in truth, and not mine. In a sober mood I'd not have lent myself to such a trick; but I was drunk, and there was my disgrace. I ask your pardon, as one erring human being asks pardon of another, who, in his turn, must be a supplicant for grace before the Throne of God.... Or is Mr. Herries, indeed, above his fellows, and in no need of pity and forgiveness from above?' Herries frowned—the annoyed frown of a man to whom heroics are distasteful.
'It is a Christian duty to forgive,' he said coldly. 'Your injury to me I do forgive, but your injury to another was far deeper, and confession and repentance, sir, have come a little late.'
'But not too late for reparation!' cried the poet, eagerly. 'Does your heart not warm again to that wronged lassie? 'Od, my own blood, that runs like ice in these congealing veins, leaps at the thought of her! I cannot get to her—I'll never see her face again—for earth will be upon these eyes, and the great darkness.... But I will bless her with the blessing of the dying—'tis all I have.... But you, sir—you—you have a horse, you've health and strength and time—a heart, I'd hope ... surely you will go to her—fly to her—losing not a day!'