Alec Forbes of Howglen Part 90

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVI.

Notwithstanding Alec's diligence and the genial companions.h.i.+p of Mr Cupples?-whether the death of Kate, or his own illness, or the reaction of shame after his sojourn in the tents of wickedness, had opened dark visions of the world of reality lying in awful _unknownness_ around the life he seemed to know, I cannot tell,-?cold isolations would suddenly seize upon him, wherein he would ask himself?-that oracular cave in which one hears a thousand questions before one reply?-"What is the use of it all?-this study and labour?" And he interpreted the silence to mean: "Life is worthless. There is no glow in it?-only a glimmer and s.h.i.+ne at best."?-Will my readers set this condition down as one of disease? If they do, I ask, "Why should a man be satisfied with anything such as was now within the grasp of Alec Forbes?" And if they reply that a higher ambition would have set him at peace if not at rest, I only say that they would be nearer health if they had his disease. Pain is not malady; it is the revelation of malady?-the meeting and recoil between the unknown death and the unknown life; that jar of the system whereby the fact becomes known to the man that he is ill. There was disease in Alec, but the disease did not lie in his dissatisfaction. It lay in that poverty of life with which those are satisfied who call such discontent disease. Such disease is the first flicker of the aurora of a rising health.

This state of feeling, however, was only occasional; and a reviving interest in anything belonging to his studies, or a merry talk with Mr Cupples, would dispel it for a time, just as a breath of fine air will give the sense of perfect health to one dying of consumption.

But what made these questionings develope into the thorns of a more definite self-condemnation?-the advanced guard sometimes of the roses of peace-?was simply this:

He had written to his mother for money to lay out upon superior instruments, and new chemical apparatus; and his mother had replied sadly that she was unable to send it. She hinted that his education had cost more than she had expected. She told him that she was in debt to Robert Bruce, and had of late been compelled to delay the payment of its interest. She informed him also that, even under James Dow's conscientious management, there seemed little ground for hoping that the farm would ever make a return correspondent to the large outlay his father had made upon it.

This letter stung Alec to the heart. That his mother should be in the power of such a man as Bruce, was bad enough; but that she should have been exposed for his sake to the indignity of requesting his forbearance, seemed unendurable. To despise the man was no satisfaction, the right and the wrong being where they were.?-And what proportion of the expenses of last session had gone to his college-accounts?

He wrote a humble letter to his mother?-and worked still harder. For although he could not make a s.h.i.+lling at present, the future had hope in it.

Meantime Mr Cupples, in order that he might bear such outward signs of inward grace as would appeal to the perceptions of the Senatus, got a new hat, and changed his shabby tail-coat for a black frock. His s.h.i.+rt ceased to be a hypothesis to account for his collar, and became a real hypostasis, evident and clean. These signs of improvement led to inquiries on the part of the Senatus, and the result was that, before three months of the session were over, he was formally installed as librarian. His first impulse on receiving the good news was to rush down to Luckie c.u.mstie's and have a double-tumbler. But conscience was too strong for Satan, and sent him home to his pipe?-which, it must be confessed, he smoked twice as much as before his reformation.

From the moment of his appointment, he seemed to regard the library as his own private property, or, rather, as his own family. He was grandfather to the books: at least a grandfather shows that combination of parent and servant which comes nearest to the relation he henceforth manifested towards them. Most of them he gave out graciously; some of them grudgingly; a few of them with much reluctance; but all of them with injunctions to care, and special warnings against forcing the backs, crumpling or folding the leaves, and making thumb-marks.

"Noo," he would say to some country bejan, "tak' the buik i' yer han's no as gin 'twar a neip (turnip), but as gin 'twar the sowl o' a new-born bairn. Min' ye it has to sair (serve) mony a generation efter your banes lie bare i' the moul', an' ye maun hae respec' to them that come efter ye, and no ill-guide their fare. I beg ye winna guddle't (mangle it)."

The bejans used to laugh at him in consequence. But long before they were magistrands, the best of them had a profound respect for the librarian. Not a few of them repaired to him with all their difficulties; and such a general favourite was he, that any story of his humour or oddity was sure to be received with a roar of loving laughter. Indeed I doubt whether, within the course of a curriculum, Mr Cupples had not become the real centre of intellectual and moral life in that college.

One evening, as he and Alec were sitting together speculating on the speediest mode of turning Alec's acquirements to money-account, their landlady entered.

"Here's my cousin," she said, "Captain McTavish o' the _Sea-horse_, Mr Forbes, wha says that afore lang he'll be wantin' a young doctor to gang and haud the scurvy aff o' his men at the whaul-fis.h.i.+n'. Sae of coorse I thoucht o' my ain first, and ran up the stair to you. It'll be fifty poun' i' yer pooch, and a plenty o' rouch ploys that the like o'

you young fallows likes, though I canna say I wad like sic things mysel'. Only I'm an auld wife, ye see, and that maks the differ."

"Nae that auld, Mistress Leslie," said Cupples, "gin ye wadna lee."

"Tell Captain McTavish that I'll gang," said Alec, who had hesitated no longer than the time Mr Cupples took to say the word of kind flattery to their landlady.

"He'll want testimonials, ye ken."

"Wadna _ye_ gie me ane, Mrs Leslie?"

"'Deed wad I, gin 'twar o' ony acc.o.o.nt. Ye see, Mr Alec, the day's no yesterday; and this session's no the last."

"Haud yer tongue, and dinna rub a sair place," cried Mr Cupples.

"I beg yer pardon," returned Mrs Leslie, submissively.

Alec followed her down the stair.

He soon returned, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with delight. Adventure! And fifty pounds to take to his mother!

"All right, Mr Cupples. The Captain has promised to take me if my testimonials are satisfactory. I think they will give me good ones now.

If it weren't for you, I should have been lying in the gutter instead of walking the quarter-deck."

"Weel, weel, bantam. There's twa sides to maist obligations.?-I'm leebrarian."

The reader may remember that in his boyhood Alec was fond of the sea, had rigged a flagstaff, and had built the _Bonnie Annie_. He was nearly beside himself with delight, which continued unjarred until he heard from his mother. She had too much good sense to make any opposition, but she could not prevent her antic.i.p.ations of loss and loneliness from appearing. His mother's trouble quelled the exuberance of Alec's spirits without altering his resolve. He would return to her in the fall of the year, bringing with him what would ease her mind of half its load.

There was no check at the examinations this session.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVII.

Mrs Forbes was greatly perplexed about Annie. She could not bear the thought of turning her out; and besides she did not see where she was to go, for she could not be in the house with young Bruce. On the other hand, she had still the same dangerous sense of worldly duty as to the prevention of a so-called unsuitable match, the chance of which was more threatening than ever. For Annie had grown very lovely, and having taken captive the affections of the mother, must put the heart of the son in dire jeopardy. But Alec arrived two days before he was expected, and delivered his mother from her perplexity by declaring that if Annie were sent away he too would leave the house. He had seen through the maternal precautions the last time he was at home, and talking with Cupples about it, who secretly wished for no better luck than that Alec should fall in love with Annie, had his feelings strengthened as to the unkindness, if not injustice, of throwing her periodically into such a dungeon as the society of the Bruces. So Annie remained where she was, much, I must confess, to her inward content.

The youth and the maiden met every day?-the youth unembarra.s.sed, and the maiden reserved and shy, even to the satisfaction of the mother.

But if Alec could have seen the loving thoughts which, like threads of heavenly gold (for all the gold of heaven is invisible), wrought themselves into the garments she made for him, I do not think _he_ could have helped falling in love with her, although most men, I fear, would only have fallen the more in love with themselves, and cared the less for her. But he did not see them, or hear the divine measures to which her needle flew, as she laboured to arm him against the cold of those regions

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things.

Alec's college-life had interposed a gulf between him and his previous history. But his approaching departure into places unknown and a life untried, operated upon his spiritual condition like the approach of death; and he must strengthen again all the old bonds which had been stretched thin by time and absence; he must make righteous atonement for the wrong of neglect; in short, he must set his inward house in order, ere he went forth to the abodes of ice. Death is not a breaker but a renewer of ties. And if in view of death we gird up the loins of our minds, and unite our hearts into a whole of love, and tenderness, and atonement, and forgiveness, then Death himself cannot be that thing of forlornness and loss.

He took a day to go and see Curly, and spent a pleasant afternoon with him, recalling the old times, and the old stories, and the old companions; for the youth with the downy chin has a past as ancient as that of the man with the gray beard. And Curly told him the story of his encounter with young Bruce on the bank of the Wan Water. And over and over again Annie's name came up, but Curly never hinted at her secret.

The next evening he went to see Thomas Crann. Thomas received him with a cordiality amounting even to gruff tenderness.

"I'm richt glaid to see ye," he said; "and I tak' it verra kin' o' ye, wi' a' yer gran' learnin', to come and see an ignorant man like me. But Alec, my man, there's some things 'at I ken better nor ye ken them yet.

Him that made the whauls is better worth seekin' nor the whauls themsel's. G.o.d's works may swallow the man that follows them, but G.o.d himsel' 's the hidin'-place frae the wind, and the covert frae the tempest. Set na up nae fause G.o.d?-that's the thing 'at ye lo'e best, ye ken?-for like Dawgon, it'll fa', and maybe brain ye i' the fa'. Come doon upo' yer knees wi' me, and I'll pray for ye. But ye maun pray for yersel', or my prayers winna be o' muckle avail: ye ken that."

Yielding to the spiritual power of Thomas, whose gray-blue eyes were flas.h.i.+ng with fervour, Alec kneeled down as he was desired, and Thomas said:

"O thou who madest the whales to play i' the great watters, and gavest unto men sic a need o' licht that they maun hunt the leviathan to haud their lamps burnin' at nicht whan thou hast sent thy sun awa' to ither lands, be thou roon' aboot this youth, wha surely is nae muckle waur than him 'at the Saviour lo'ed; and when thou seest his s.h.i.+p gang sailin' into the far north whaur thou keepest thy stores o' frost and snaw ready to remin' men o' thy goodness by takin' the heat frae them for a sizzon?-when thou seest his s.h.i.+p gaein far north, pit doon thy finger, O Lord, and straik a track afore't, throu' amo' the hills o'

ice, that it may gang throu' in saf-ety, even as thy chosen people gaed throu' the Reid Sea, and the river o' Jordan. For, Lord, we want him hame again in thy good time. For he is the only son of his mother, and she is a widow. But aboon a', O Lord, elec' him to thy grace and lat him ken the glory o' G.o.d, even the licht o' thy c.o.o.ntenance. For me, I'm a' thine, to live or dee, and I care not which. For I hae gotten the gueed o' this warl'; and gin I binna ready for the neist, it's because o' my sins, and no o' my savours. For I wad glaidle depairt and be with the Lord. But this young man has never seen thy face; and, O Lord, I'm jist feared that my c.o.o.ntenance micht fa' even in thy kingdom, gin I kent that Alec Forbes was doon i' the ill place. Spare him, O Lord, and gie him time for repentance gin he has a chance; but gin he has nane, tak' him at ance, that his doom may be the lichter."

Alec rose with a very serious face, and went home to his mother in a mood more concordant with her feelings than the light-heartedness with which he generally tried to laugh away her apprehensions.

He even called on Robert Bruce, at his mother's request. It went terribly against the grain with him though. He expected to find him rude as of old, but he was, on the contrary, as pleasant as a man could be whose only notion of politeness lay in _licking_.

His civility came from two sources?-the one hope, the other fear. Alec was going away and might never return. That was the hope. For although Bruce had spread the report of Annie's engagement to Curly, he believed that Alec was the real obstacle to his plans. At the same time he was afraid of him, believing in his cowardly mind that Alec would not stop short of personal reprisals if he should offend him; and now he was a great six-foot fellow, of whose prowess at college confused and exaggerated stories were floating about the town.?-Bruce was a man who could hatch and cherish plans, keeping one in reserve behind the other, and beholding their result from afar.

"Ay! ay! Mr Forbes?-sae ye're gaun awa' amo' the train-ile, are ye? Hae ye ony share i' the tak' no?"

"I don't think the doctor has any share," answered Alec.