A Darkening of the Heart

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  There was the ordeal of maintaining appearances for the next few days, of course, and then the funeral, but if she could just keep proper, decent control of herself until after that, she would be all right.

  This became even more difficult than she’d expected when a letter was delivered to Alexander from Robert Burns. The poet had sustained an injury which needed Alexander’s attention. The coach in which he’d been returning to his lodgings had overturned on a corner and he was at present in great pain.

  It was then the strange feelings that had been haunting Susanna recently suddenly resurfaced. It had been necessary to ignore them in order to survive the ordeal of keeping up a semblance of grief. Now she allowed herself to be aware of the thumping of her heart and the flutterings in her stomach when she thought of Robert Burns. He was not slim and pale and elegant in appearance like either Neil or Alexander. Nor did he speak with continuously smooth restraint. Strong emotion could fire his voice and burn in his eyes. His body was big and hard, his complexion brown and weatherbeaten. He wore no wig and his tied-back hair was long and as black as night. She experienced a longing to see him again.

  She asked Alexander if she could accompany him on his visit to Burns. Her brother agreed and they set off to Burns’ lodgings. Now, here was a man, she thought. A real man. Full of life and love and vitality despite his injury which prevented him from walking at the moment. She felt hot and flushed and joyous at the sight of him.

  Alexander said after examining his friend, ‘You’ve dislocated your knee cap, Robert. You’ll have to stay in your room with your injured leg resting on a cushion on this chair. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Robert sighed. ‘It’s just it’s so unfortunate. I had such an important engagement …’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to postpone it. The only way to return your leg to normal use is to rest it for at least a few days. More than likely for much longer. I’ll come back and see you tomorrow and every day until you have totally recovered.’

  Robert turned his dark glowing eyes on Susanna then. ‘You are the luckiest of ladies to have such a brother and I am the luckiest of men.’ He turned his gaze on Alexander again. ‘My dear friend, how can I thank you for all your kindness to me?’

  ‘Just do as I tell you,’ Alexander said gruffly. It always made him feel uncomfortable and somewhat guilty when Robert showed such undisguised love and admiration for him. He knew in his heart of hearts that he did not deserve his friend’s love or his admiration.

  They stayed and chatted for some time. Susanna volunteered to make tea and felt honoured to be able to serve the poet with it. She had carried his book with her to Edinburgh and read it during her lonely evenings locked in the bedroom of the harlot’s house. Read it over and over again. She spoke to him of her admiration of his poetry and the sentiments expressed.

  ‘I especially admired and appreciated,’ she told him enthusiastically, ‘the one about the rights of women.’ And, in an effort to impress him, she recited the first verse.

  While Europe’s eye is fixed on mighty things,

  The fate of empires and the fall of Kings;

  While quacks of state must each produce his plan,

  And even children lisp the Rights of Man;

  Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,

  The Rights of Women merit some attention …

  Burns smiled somewhat ruefully. ‘Alexander will tell you that it was not a very wise thing for me to write.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  He shrugged. ‘It expresses dangerous views in today’s political climate. It has become almost a hanging crime to express admiration and agreement with the principles in Paine’s book, The Rights of Man.’ He smiled. ‘No doubt the powers that be are even more afraid of women getting the rights they are properly due. But all I have done is claim and believe in three of the most harmless of rights, Protection, Decorum and Admiration.’ He gave her a mischievous sideways glance. ‘If necessary, that’s what I’ll argue anyway.’

  ‘He keeps thinking of a career in the Excise for a long-term safe and secure income,’ Alexander said. ‘He’s already undergone a course of training and instruction. I have warned him about the revolutionary things he keeps writing.’

  It was Burns’ turn to recite,

  Searching auld wives’ barrels,

  Ochon the day!

  That clarty barm should stain my laurels;

  But – what’ll ye say!

  These muvin’ things ca’d wives and weans

  Wad muve the very heart o’ stanes!

  ‘I still maintain,’ Alexander said, ‘that you’d be far better to get back to farming.’

  ‘Do you remember my friend, Patrick Miller?’ Burns asked.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘He’s offered me a seventy-six-year lease on a farm and three hundred pounds to cover the cost of building a farmhouse and making other general improvements.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Alexander enthused. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Ellisland, Dumfriesshire.’

  25

  Alexander tried not to think of Robert going to live in Dumfriesshire. He could not bear the idea of him living anywhere near Isobel McKenzie. He wrote telling the McKenzies of his sister’s sudden bereavement and how he felt he had to give her the company and support she needed for some time after the funeral.

  The McKenzies wrote back, as he hoped they would, and invited him to bring his sister to stay for a few weeks, or as long as they both wished, in their home in Dumfriesshire. This he promised he’d do immediately after the funeral. He determined that he would propose to Isobel without delay and be safely married to her before Robert fixed up with his Ellisland farm.

  Damn the man, he kept thinking. Why had he to keep tormenting him like this? Of all the places in Scotland, he had to pick a farm in Dumfriesshire.

  Before they left Edinburgh for Tarbolton, he and Susanna visited Burns every day. Alexander remembered a time when Susanna had thoroughly disliked Robert. Or so she’d said. Now, she could not hide how enamoured she was with him. Not that Robert paid her much attention, certainly not amorous attention. While Susanna had been making them a dish of tea and concocting some tasty dishes for Robert in the kitchen, he had confided to Alexander that he was madly in love (yet again!) with the most beautiful and intelligent lady in Christendom, a Mrs Nancy MacElhose.

  ‘Mrs?’ Alexander had raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, alas. Nothing can come of it. Although she has left her husband. He is still in Jamaica. She has children to care for. She is also well connected in the town, and is very protective of her good name and reputation.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ A sarcastic note crept into Alexander’s voice. ‘She is faced with great difficulties then, poor woman.’

  Susanna returned to the room then and the conversation was cut short. In subsequent conversations, however, Alexander learned that letters (a great many letters) were daily being exchanged between Burns and Mrs MacElhose, and he could just imagine how this frustrating situation would give Robert’s muse free flow. Words, especially written words, and especially in letters, could completely carry him away. He used to, Alexander remembered, write passionate love letters for any young man to send to his sweetheart in Tarbolton and for miles around. He could just imagine what a torrent of emotion would be let loose and what ornate language there would be in such a plethora of letters. And what drama the pair would wallow in. Sometimes he thought Robert should have been an actor. The woman sounded as foolish and as sentimental as he was. They seemed well matched to play the love game and in so doing, to whip themselves into a paper passion. Apparently, they were writing six letters a day to each other, and they’d only met for a few minutes at an elderly spinster’s tea party.

  Mrs MacElhose was so prissy and fearful of her good reputation that she suggested that they use pseudonyms – classical names no less – Clarinda and Sylvander. This was obviously so that she could hide behind the pseudonym – let herself
go as Clarinda but still imagine she was keeping her good name intact as the respectable Mrs MacElhose. (Daughter of a surgeon, niece of a Presbyterian minister, cousin to two Edinburgh judges.)

  How ridiculous and hypocritical, Alexander thought. A love game it was and would continue as such, albeit a passionate one, a hot torrent of words. He could imagine the love poetry and songs (tragic, no doubt) that would come of all this, especially when it ended. As end it would. Burns always rushed for intimacy and this never worked with gentlewomen–even with those who had a high and even loving regard for him. It wasn’t that he was brutish but simply that that was the way of men of his lowly station in life. Houghmagandy was the usually accepted thing. It hadn’t got through to Robert, and Alexander felt sure it never would, especially when he was so highly sexed, that gentlewomen would never give way to such intimacies so quickly, and especially before marriage.

  Meantime, of course, tied to his chair in his lodgings, Robert could not make any of his usual attempts at physical intimacy. He was certainly making up for it in the number of letters he was writing.

  Alexander and Susanna had to take their leave of Robert to go to Tarbolton for Neil Guthrie’s funeral. Robert thanked them both – especially Susanna – for all the kindness he’d received, and hoped he would meet with them both again soon.

  It was just as well, Alexander thought later, that there never had been any shortage of money in the Guthrie family, because it was an expensive thing to die and even more so to be buried. Especially in this case, where there had been the added expense of the conveyance of the corpse from Edinburgh.

  Then there was the usual winding sheet and the woollen stockings for the corpse’s feet. There was the lyke-wake which meant everyone watching by the corpse all day and all night. The body was half-embalmed and laid out for view. The furniture was all covered in white linens and invitations had been sent out on folio gilt-edged sheets. People came from all over (mostly, Alexander guessed, in respect and in memory of old Guthrie rather than of Neil) and refreshments were served continuously. Indeed, it was a lavish feast with the minister saying blessings over the meat which he said ‘improved the occasion’. The claret and ale and whisky went round and round the company with great rapidity until the mourners could not stand, but made hilarious staggering procession behind the coffin to the grave. It had been known that on such occasions, everyone had become so drunk that they had arrived at the graveside only to discover the corpse had been left behind.

  Alexander remained sober enough to make sure this did not happen. Susanna had taken to her bed before the funeral, insisting that she was never going to set foot in Guthrie House ever again, not even for her husband’s funeral. Her parents protested and pleaded and wheedled, all to no avail.

  ‘I don’t care what anybody thinks or how bad it looks,’ Susanna cried. ‘Tell them I’m prostrate, too ill with grief to attend. Tell them anything, I don’t care. I’m not going.’

  And that was that. Alexander had to see to everything and to suffer all the feasting and drunkenness of the funeral. English officers witnessing such an occasion had pronounced ‘a Scots funeral to be merrier than an English wedding’.

  Drinking, Alexander concluded, was the favourite vice of the century and brought no shame whatsoever. Quite the reverse. Certainly in Scotland, it was not thought of as a vice at all. The only good thing about it, if one could call it good, was that it resulted in plenty of work for physicians, surgeons and apothecaries.

  Alexander was glad when the funeral was over, and doubly glad that it hadn’t been a Highland funeral which could last for several days and where liquor was emptied in hogsheads.

  Afterwards he asked Susanna if she wanted to accompany him to Dumfriesshire to visit his friends, the McKenzies, and she eagerly jumped at the chance.

  ‘Will we break our journey in Edinburgh first?’ she asked with shining eyes. ‘It would be wonderful to see Robert again.’

  ‘No, I was not planning to do that.’

  ‘Oh, please, Alexander. Apart from anything else, he might need you.’

  ‘There’s nothing more I can do, Susanna. He needs a few more weeks to completely rest his leg and to cure the swelling and bruising. That is all.’

  ‘Oh, Alexander!’ She pouted. ‘Just to please me.’

  He hesitated. He ought to see Professor Purdie and explain the further delay there would be before his return to duty in the Infirmary. He could also visit a printer and make enquiries about a new book of his poems.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘Only for a couple of days.’

  Susanna clapped her hands and skipped about the room in delight. ‘Thank you, Alexander. You are the best of brothers, and I love you.’

  ‘Tuts,’ he muttered, turning away. ‘Control yourself, Susanna. You are a young lady, not a child. And a widow lady, remember.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll act the solemn widow in front of others, never fear, but I’m surely entitled to some release in private.’

  His thoughts turned to Isobel and his courting of her. He had written to her almost every day since they had last seen each other and had tried, as much as was in his nature, to make his sentiments of love and his honourable intentions clear to her. Her letters of reply were most encouraging. He would press his suit as forcibly as possible at their next meeting. By now, she must know of his urgent desire to make her his wife. He decided to confide in his family, and it gave him good feelings of happiness and content when his mother and father and Susanna were delighted and wished him well.

  ‘We’ll no’ be able to travel tae yer weddin’ tho’, son,’ his father said. ‘Yer mother an’ me arnae as fit as we used tae be. Especially yer mother. An’ we’d love tae have met the lassie.’

  ‘But I’ve no doubt Isobel and I will visit you after we are man and wife.’

  Alexander decided that he would ask the McKenzies, in the circumstances, if there could be a quiet wedding. After all, Susanna and his family were supposed to be in mourning. He realised he was rather jumping the gun because he had not yet made a formal proposal and been formally accepted. But he was confident that all would be well. Love did not blind him as it did Robert. He had never been in love before. Robert was scarcely ever out of love. Alexander was a steady-natured, dependable and practical man. Robert was none of these things. Alexander knew that it was sensible for a man in his position (indeed any man) to find a wife with a good dowry, and he had found such a woman. Robert, for all his so-called genius and charisma, would be lucky if he ended up with a penniless country wench. Alexander expected that Robert was still thinking of Jean Armour as a wife and she could be the best choice for a farmer. The quicker this charade with Sylvander and Clarinda finished and he got back to farming with his ignorant but obviously fecund Jean, the better for all concerned. She could apparently read, and write a simple letter, but as far as he could discern, apart from Robert’s book she had not read any book except the Bible. He would not be surprised in fact if she had not even read Robert’s book. For all the fine, educated ladies he’d met, that was the best he could do.

  Alexander tried to comfort himself with this fact and assure himself that Robert would prove no danger as far as Isobel was concerned. Yet he was not assured. He did not trust fate, and he did not trust Robert.

  He cursed himself now for agreeing to take Susanna to visit Robert and to waste precious time in Edinburgh. He must get to Dumfriesshire before Robert was fixed up with any farm there. He guessed that a lot would depend on how long the love game with Mrs MacElhose would last. As long as Clarinda continued to keep Sylvander in an agony of frustration, Robert would hopefully stay in Edinburgh.

  Alexander packed his bag in readiness to travel the next day, then settled down to spend a quiet evening working on some verses. He was pleased and proud of his new poems. He had worked harder than ever on this book. If there was any fairness in life at all, it would succeed. More than anything else, he wanted it to be admired by Isobel.

  26
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br />   His Clarinda was adorable. She was such a beautiful little blonde with a shapely figure and dancing eyes. Her relatives were much less attractive to Robert. They infuriated him. Her second cousin, Senator of the College of Justice, Lord Dreghorn, had been cruelly neglectful of Nancy MacElhose. He had never helped her. On the contrary he had treated her with nothing but harshness and disapproval, despite the fact that she was living alone, and had no help from her irresponsible husband.

  Of course, Lord Dreghorn and his equally vindictive cronies had already shown an obsessive hatred to other women – Edinburgh prostitutes. They had hounded these women and persecuted them unmercifully. Burns had become so infuriated with Dreghorn, he’d poured out his feelings in a pessimistic letter to his friend, Peter Hill.

  ‘May woman curse them!’ he’d written. ‘May woman blast them. May woman damn them! May her lovely hand inexorably shut the Portal of Rapture to their most earnest prayers and fondest essays for entrance! And when many years, and much port and great business have delivered them over to Vulture Gouts, and Aspen Palsies, then may the dear, bewitching Charmer in derision throw open the blissful gate to tantalize their impotent desires which like ghosts haunt their bosoms when all their powers to give or receive enjoyment are forever asleep in the sepulchre of their fathers!!!’

  The other relation of Nancy’s that Burns hated was the Reverend John Kemp. Nancy, he knew, was in the habit of confiding in this cleric during little tête-à-têtes in his Tolbooth vestry where he solemnly advised and sermonised poor Nancy. Eventually, Nancy had written to Robert in some distress saying that he must cease to have any contact with her, and enclosing a letter from this man. Robert had immediately written back, ‘I have no patience to read the Puritanic scrawl and damned sophistry. Ye heavens, thou God of nature, thou Redeemer of mankind! Ye look down with approving eyes on a passion inspired by the purest flame, and guarded by truth, delicacy and honour, but the half-inch soul of an unfeeling, cold-blooded, pitiful Presbyterian bigot cannot forgive anything above his dungeon bosom and foggy head.’