‘Well, Nan, I’ll see the lad—there can be no harm in that; and I’ll not thwart your happiness if I find him deserving of you.’
Ay, there was the rub. Was he, or almost any one else in the world, deserving of his Nan?
Seated in the cosy parlour, and the embarrassment of the unexpected introduction over, Nan prudently withdrew, leaving the two gentlemen to feel their way into each other’s acquaintanceship over a bottle of claret and a box of cigars. Alfred was a good talker, easy, self-possessed, and even genial in his style.
He felt no diffidence in proposing for Anne; true, meantime he was almost impecunious, and had no established or certain means of living; but he was a gentleman, well educated and bred, and, as he inwardly thought, a very eligible son-in-law for any innkeeper in the land. Anne was now called in, and blushingly joined in the conversation. The suitor pressed for an immediate union. This was, however, decisively negatived by both father and daughter. Porteous had been favourably impressed by his proposed son-in-law; but when he learned that his future income was to be derivable solely from literary emoluments, it became him to act in the matter with great caution, for the sake of his daughter’s future. If this literary venture was to be gone into, its success must be thoroughly demonstrated in actual pounds, shillings, and pence, before the marriage could take place. Anne thought this a reasonable stipulation: her lover didn’t. His pride felt hurt at finding obstacles where he imagined he had an easy walk over. He had, however, to pocket his pride and submit to the inevitable. On these conditions the lovers became engaged, with the old gentleman’s approval. A great weight of concealment was now off Anne’s mind. Her spirits rose, and for a few brief days the happy pair abandoned themselves to the innocent delusions and delights of ‘Love’s young dream.’
Anne was the first to awake to the realities of life. She was nothing if not practical, and she soon realised that all this sweet billing and cooing was but a waste of time. Her knight must go forth into the tournament of life, gain his trophies, and then come back to claim her as his guerdon.
‘Now, Alfred,’ she said one day, ‘I think it is high time you should put your literary projects into execution. That, you can’t well do here. I think you should take a cheap lodging in Edinburgh, or some place where you would have the advantage of good reference libraries, and set to work at once.’
‘True, Nan; I must think of making a start one of these days.—But you don’t wish me away, dearest, do you?’ he said in a tender way.
‘Oh, you know well enough I don’t!’ she returned with the slightest trace of impatience in her tone. ‘But if we are to get married, it will not be by your idling your time away here. You’ll find a hundred pounds won’t keep you long in a large city; and think in what an awkward position you would be, if it got done before you found a regular and profitable market for your literary work.’
He was forced to admit the soundness of the advice, which was emphatically indorsed by Mr Porteous. So, the following day he packed up his traps; and the evening found him established in a modest lodging in Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, which had formerly known him as a student.
The lovers might have served as a model for all others so situated, in the regularity and length of their communications to each other. For fully a month, Alfred wrote in the brightest of spirits. He was engaged on a lengthy paper, ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Literature of Greece and Rome.’ This was intended for a famous London quarterly; he would act prudently, however, and would not commit himself until he had ascertained the very highest sum obtainable for it.