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Of course he did not dream how lonely she was here, and how she longed, if for nothing else, just to be back here alone and do as she pleased, and not to be watched over. If only she might steal Aunt Clarinda and bring her back to live here with her while David was away! But that was not to be thought of, of course.
It remains to be seen whether he will not be as much astonished as I was when I tell him what Lady Clarinda told me." This smart reply produced an effect which I had not anticipated. To my surprise, Mr. Playmore abruptly dropped all further discussion on his side. He appeared to despair of convincing me, and he owned it indirectly in his next words.
It was begun in simple sport; they are already at their fifth or sixth exchange, when Clarinda writes: "It is really curious so much FUN passing between two persons who saw each other only ONCE;" but it is hardly safe for a man and woman in the flower of their years to write almost daily, and sometimes in terms too ambiguous, sometimes in terms too plain, and generally in terms too warm, for mere acquaintance.
It didn't take near as long as you would have imagined. Then we set out in company with the warship to search for the 'Clarinda, as your Captain Simms called her.
And when the sun was so low, and the shadows so long on the grass that the Grey Goose felt ready to run away at the sight of her own neck, little Miss Jane Johnson, and her "particular friend" Clarinda, sat under the big oak-tree on the Green, and Jane pinched Clarinda's little finger till she found that she could keep a secret, and then she told her in confidence that she had heard from Nurse and Jemima that Miss Jessamine's niece had been a very naughty girl, and that that horrid wicked officer had come for her on his black horse, and carried her right away.
"What will the Major say?" I asked. "What do I care? Do you suppose I'm afraid of him? Only last week I broke one of his fine gimcracks up there, and all through Lady Clarinda and her flowers!" She pointed to the top of the book-case to the empty space on it close by the window. My heart gave a sudden bound as my eyes took the direction indicated by her finger. She had broken the vase!
When the poet is leaving Edinburgh, Clarinda is heartbroken. 'Oh, let the scenes of nature remind you of Clarinda!
You would never have written me, except perhaps once more! O, I could curse circumstances, and the coarse tie of human laws, which keeps fast what common sense would loose, and which bars that happiness itself cannot give happiness which otherwise Love and Honour would warrant! But hold I shall make no more "hair-breadth 'scapes." My friendship, Clarinda, is a life-rent business.
We have now arrived, in the history of Burns, as his general correspondence reveals it, at the middle of March 1788. Before the end of the month he had broken off from Clarinda, and shortly afterwards he married Jean Armour. The correspondence with Clarinda began in the last month of 1787, and ran its course in three months.
And there, as to the members of that cheerful little gathering, my memory finds its limits with one exception. The appearance of Lady Clarinda is as present to me as if I had met her yesterday; and of the memorable conversation which we two held together privately, toward the close of the evening, it is no exaggeration to say that I can still call to mind almost every word.
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