I stood alone in the centre of this well-loved room, silent now save for the crackling of the fire in the hearth, with the two small boys who now regarded me cautiously, in no possible doubt that I, Uncle Alexander, was the cause of their mother’s displeasure and therefore of all disruption of the usual life of the house. They said nothing, and the accusation of it burned into my confusion. The silence at last was broken by the arrival of William, the ageing Davy hobbling behind him.
‘Alexander,’ my friend said, smiling awkwardly. ‘It is good to see you. I had feared you might not come.’
‘Might not come?’ I enquired, confused. ‘I have been here to my dinner every Tuesday and Saturday evening for the last two years, and many another in between. Why in all the world did you think I would not be here tonight?’
‘Well,’ said William, hesitant and looking sideways in the direction of Davy, then down at the two boys. He looked away from me. ‘Davy, will you take the boys to get washed, and tell the mistress Mr Seaton and I will take our dinner in my study.’ The boys made to protest that they were already clean, but their protests were to no avail. I felt like protesting myself, but instead followed William silently through the house to the sanctuary of his study.
Once we were in, he shut the door firmly behind me and then turned to look at me, a weariness in his eyes. ‘What in the Devil’s name has been going on, Alexander? What were you thinking of? This house has been as the eye of the storm all day, and I dare hardly mention your name without my dear wife bringing down all the imprecations of Hell upon both our heads.’
‘William,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
He strode across the room and sat down heavily behind his desk, evidently angered. I had seldom seen William angry in the fourteen years I had known him. ‘What I am talking about,’ he said, enunciating each word clearly, ‘is you taking leave of your senses. It is all around the town, and not only amongst the women, that you were in not one but two drunken brawls last night, and that there was not a drinking house in the town where the serving girls were safe from you. I had it on authority that you kept low company the whole night, and that only the quick thinking of the ill-favoured Highlander you were with kept you from the sight of the baillies. I was half astonished not to find you in the tolbooth.’
I sat down, though unbidden, and tried to disentangle his words from what I knew to be true. ‘William,’ I said, screwing shut my eyes for hope of greater clarity, ‘I still have no idea what you are talking about. I spent last night in my room in the college, burning the candle low and deep into the night, alone, with a Hebrew version of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I have not been drunk since you and I sat up half the night with Jaffray and his uisge bheatha when he was here in March, and the only Highlander I know is Ishbel, the wife of our friend the Music Master in Banff, and I believe were you to call her ill-favoured, he would run you through, he and Jaffray both.’
William’s face began to lighten a little. ‘So you were not at Jennie Grant’s place near the Brig O’Dee last night, gambling and getting into fights with the packmen?’
‘I have never gambled, as you know. And why on earth would I go to the Hardgate for food, drink or company?’ I asked.
‘And you were not at the Browns’ place, nor Maisie Johnston’s either?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, perplexed.
‘And there were no brawls, no bridling of serving girls, no Highlander?’ he persisted.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I have your word?’
‘You have my word, although I am not a little astonished you should need it.’
He sank back in his chair, convinced at last and visibly relieved. I myself now felt convinced of little, and a good deal unsettled. ‘William, what is all this talk?’
My friend took a bottle of good Madeira wine and two glasses from a press behind his desk that he thought Elizabeth was unaware of and poured us each a generous measure. He handed me my drink and smiled ruefully.
‘Alexander, I should not have doubted you, but this house has been in such an uproar of female fury all day that I had no peace even in my own head to think. Sarah returned from the morning market on the verge of tears and stayed there a good hour, apparently, before Elizabeth was able to draw from her what was upsetting her. The girl had been told by not one but half a dozen of the burgh’s finest scolds that you had been drinking and pestering women through the town half the night. She would not have countenanced their scandalmongering had she not had it from some respectable matrons too.’
He looked up at me, a little uneasy, and half looked away.
‘You know, Alexander, there are many in the town, and that number growing, who suspect you have a partiality for the girl. Och, Heavens, Alexander, I know it well enough myself; I see it in your face every time she walks into the room. But there are petty minds aplenty who would take little pleasure in seeing a servant girl, a fallen woman at that as they see her, being raised above her degree by a marriage to you. They would have been tripping over each other this morning to reach her first with the news of your carry on.’
I could feel the anger raging in my chest so I could hardly breathe. ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘tripping over each other and landing in a midden of their own making.’ I stood up. ‘So they think she’s beneath me, do they? Well, William, do you know why I have never yet spoken to her of it, of my feelings? Do you, William?’
My friend shook his head wordlessly, somewhat taken aback by the force of my rage. I took a breath and spoke slowly, deliberately. ‘It is because I know her to be so far above me in every way, other than that of the station that fate has thrown her to, that I am too scared to speak lest I hear her say she will not have me.’ At that moment there was a firm knock at the door, and Davy entered with a tray bearing our dinner. William had long assured me that Davy was not as deaf as he pretended to be, and I suspected from the look on his face that he had heard every word of my outburst. As he turned to leave us he gave me a look I had rarely seen from him before: it was something approaching respect.
‘Sit down, Alexander,’ said William after the old man had gone.
I did so slowly, looking all the while at some spot beyond my feet.
‘Would you not look at me?’ he said in frustration. So I did, and saw that his eyes were kind and there was a rueful smile about his mouth. ‘I would be the first to agree that Sarah is a much better person than those who would calumniate her. And remember, I myself married a maidservant. Since you brought her to our home, she has been a better help and friend to Elizabeth than I could ever have hoped for. She nursed my son when my wife was too ill to do it herself, and we both thank God every day that He sent her to us, through you, that our boy might live. Young Zander is as a brother to James, the brother he will never have.’ This I knew already, for Elizabeth had come so close to death in bringing James into the world that William had sworn he would never risk her in childbirth again. ‘No one knows better than I her qualities. And of course, she is beautiful too, which will not help her cause with many of the beetroot-faced dumplings of the burgh.’ I laughed, against my will, as did he. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘there are few know you better than I do either. And I tell you you are the best of men, whatever may have happened in the past; I know you to be the best of men, and so does she. Tell her of your feelings, before you are both too old and too set in your loneliness to live otherwise.’ He filled again the glass I had emptied, and lifted up his own towards me. ‘And do I have your word on that, Alexander?’