He stumbled upstairs to the parlour. Nicol was there, and made him some excited communication, pointing to the inner door. But the festive condition of the Bard made him hopelessly dense to oral instruction. He had not a notion what his excited friend was talking about.
'Man, pull yourself together,' cried Nicol, eagerly, hearing a knock from below, and running to the window. 'As I'm alive, here's our cock o' the walk seeking his bonny hen.'
'Herries, man, Herries!' shouted Nicol, slapping his thigh. 'The little lawyer body ye were to lick. Wheesht! here he comes.'
'My enemy!' said the Bard, grandiloquently, with a dim feeling that a great occasion was upon him. He half-sat, half-propped himself upon the corner of the table, with arms folded across his chest. He was ruddy with wine; his jet black hair was spread upon his brow; in the fine blue and buff of his best suit, with his magnificent shoulders, his grand head and lowering eye--it was impossible to deny, drunken though he was, the splendour of his presence. To him, thus, and to Nicol, was ushered Herries, white with anger, and a terrible vital excitement.
Herries walked straight to the figure on the table.
'Where--where is she?' he said, but he was hardly audible, for his throat was parched. The poet lurched a little, but steadied himself with an inimitable air of tipsy gravity.
'Speak up, ma billy!' he said. 'I'm dull the day.'
'I ask you--and you know it--where is Miss Graham?' said Herries, with clenching hands.
'Nae man speirs at me for glaikit lasses,' he observed virtuously; 'you are come to the wrong shop.'
'Nay, sir,' he said, 'you are come right enough, though Rob, here, is too modest to admit it. We hae your bonny bird safe and sound.... Here, mistress, come out now! there's ain to fetch you--' He flung open the bedroom door, close to which he had stood, with his hand upon the lock, since Herries's entry. And out of the dark room into the light one walked Alison Graham.
Her face, her neck, her very hands, were white: they were drenched with whiteness, so that she seemed more dead than alive; and the lines of her face were drawn so deep, that it had suddenly lost the roundness and the air of youth. Her wild eyes went from face to face with a hunted look; the light hurt them, and she raised her hand, but it fell powerless, while her look riveted itself at last on her lover.