'I have a reason,' Herries said, suddenly determined to be frank. 'I am a suitor for the hand of Miss Graham, and she will not marry in her father's lifetime.'
'Oh—ho! sets the wind in that airt?' said the doctor, much more genially. 'Come, sit down, man, and let us talk it over. 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.
'A bold man!' said the doctor. 'Well, rather you than me to meddle with the mistress of The Mains! As to the laird, it goes against the grain with me to give his death-warrant. Many's the bottle I've cracked with him, honest man, sitting in the parlour at The Mains yonder—the mistress brought to bed upstairs—and waiting for they lasses of his to come into the world. But we must all die!' He paused, and then went on gravely, 'I cannot tell you how long you may have to wait. It might be a month, it might be a year, it might be ten. Some, in paralysis, die soon. Some linger in a death in life like his for half a lifetime. The Graham stock is tough, uncommonly so; but my old friend is in a bad case—the Lord send him rest!—and I do not think he'll live the year.' The speaker eyed Herries curiously. 'Does that content you?' he asked, with a twinkling eye.
'God forgive me for a cold-blooded questioner in this!' said Herries, really vexed and sorely ashamed. 'But I am clean distraught, I think! This young lady and I were contracted eight years since, but mischief came between us and we parted. And now we meet only to part again, this feeble life of a man almost dead between us. Am I excused in your eyes, sir?'
'Oh, I think so, I think so!' said the good-natured man of medicine with his husky laugh. 'But I'll not tell on you ('twould hardly do, you know) in after days!' He fetched another tumbler from his cupboard and would have Herries taste with him before he went. And so the aristocratic and reserved lawyer of George Street found himself sitting in the stuffy parlour of an unknown country doctor, with a singular tumult in his blood, a new and tender anticipation at his heart, drinking to happier days.
The laird of The Mains, however, falsified the prediction of his medical attendant and lingered for nearly two years, then dying in his chair. He was gathered to his fathers in the family vault, and friends and neighbours, gathered to his funeral, noted one stranger sharing in his obsequies—a stranger to all but Alison and the old doctor. The same man, in the dusk of the evening, spoke with Alison at the little gate under the lime tree—Alison, tall and pale and sad, in a black gown. It was no moment to speak of love, but, nevertheless, these two did then, in an enforced secrecy, arrange their future. A second time would Alison leave her home, and leave it in secret. For Mrs. Graham was set upon a perverse and obstinate opposition to any marriage for her last remaining daughter, rightly estimating the loss, to her, as one of a superior and most hard-working servant. Alison, who had battled so long, had no more strength and no more courage for the fight. In a month she and Archibald Herries fled to Edinburgh town, and were married by license.
That it was a merry wedding, you are not asked to believe. For, firstly, it took place almost in the shadow of death; and then, happiness that comes after long tarrying, comes—but comes timidly—like a flower that blows too late and trembles for the storm. Yet, in the spring after, the same plant will throw out vigorous and fearless shoots. And so it was, I feel sure, with Alison and Archibald Herries. They were happy in their marriage; children were born to them in the fine George Street house, and there were gay summer migrations to the Galloway home, and all the due symbols of a rational and well-deserved prosperity. I think that to the last they were on calling—if not cordial—terms, with Clarinda, and that Willy Maclehose, grown a fine young man, was a frequent visitor at their house.
But these things are all past and gone now. Alison's children are dust, and their children, I daresay, are preparing in turn for the inevitable abdication. For so the world wags, and we live and die, and Nature renews, for each one of us, the slowly-moving pageant of joy and sorrow, of passion and of pain. But it is the RHYMER, of whatsoever generation he may be, singing of these things for us so that we all understand, who is the only Immortal.
BURNS TO CLARINDA