Alec Forbes of Howglen
Then he looked down into the street, full of the comings and goings of people, some sauntering and staring, others hastening along. Beauchamp was looking in at the window of a second-hand book-shop opposite.
Not being able to compose himself again to his studies, he resolved, as he had not called on Mr Fraser for some time, and the professor had not been at the class that day, to go and inquire after him now.
Mr Fraser lived in the quadrangle of the college; but in the mood Alec was in, nothing would do him so much good as a walk in the frost. He was sure of a welcome from the old man; for although Alec gave but little attention to Greek now, Mr Fraser was not at all dissatisfied with him, knowing that he was doing his best to make himself a good doctor. His friendliness towards him had increased; for he thought he saw in him noble qualities; and now that he was an old man, he delighted to have a youth near him with whose youthfulness he could come into harmonious contact. It is because the young cannot recognize the youth of the aged, and the old will not acknowledge the experience of the young, that they repel each other.
Alec was shown into the professor's drawing-room. This was unusual. The professor was seated in an easy-chair, with one leg outstretched before him.
"Excuse me, Mr Forbes," he said, holding out his left hand without rising. "I am laid up with the gout—I don't know why. The port wine my grandfather drunk, I suppose. I never drink it. I'm afraid it's old age. And yon's my nurse.—Mr Forbes, your cousin, Kate, my dear."
Alec started. There, at the other side of the fire, sat a girl, half smiling and half blushing as she looked up from her work. The candles between them had hid her from him. He advanced, and she rose and held out her hand. He was confused; she was perfectly collected, although the colour rose a little more in her cheek. She might have been a year older than Alec.
"So you are a cousin of mine, Mr Forbes!" she said, when they were all seated by the blazing fire—she with a piece of plain work in her hands, he with a very awkward nothing in his, and the professor contemplating his swathed leg on the chair before him.
"So your uncle says," he answered, "and I am very happy to believe him.
I hope we shall be good friends."
Alec was recovering himself.
"I hope we shall," she responded, with a quick, shy, asking glance from her fine eyes.
Those eyes were worth looking into, if only as a study of colour. They were of many hues marvellously blended. I think grey and blue and brown and green were all to be found in them. Their glance rather discomposed Alec. He had not learned before that ladies' eyes are sometimes very discomposing. Yet he could not keep his from wandering towards them; and the consequence was that he soon lost the greater part of his senses. After sitting speechless for some moments, and feeling as if he had been dumb for as many minutes, he was seized by a horrible conviction that if he remained silent an instant longer, he would be driven to do or say something absurd. So he did the latter at once by bursting out with the stupid question,
"What are you working at?"
"A duster," she answered instantly—this time without looking up.
Now the said duster was of the finest cambric; so that Alec could not help seeing that she was making game of him. This banished his shyness, and put him on his mettle.
"I see," he said, "when I ask questions, you—"
"Tell lies," she interposed, without giving him time even to hesitate; adding,
"Does your mother answer all your questions, Mr Forbes?"
"I believe she does—one way or other."
"Then it is sometimes the other way? Is she nice?"
"Who?" returned Alec, surprised into doubt.
"Your mother."
"She's the best woman in the world," he answered with vehemence, almost shocked at having to answer such a question.
"Oh! I beg your pardon," returned Kate, laughing; and the laugh curled her lip, revealing very pretty teeth, with a semi-transparent pearly-blue shadow in them.
"I am glad she is nice," she went on. "I should like to know her. Mothers are not always nice. I knew a girl at school whose mother wasn't nice at all."
She did not laugh after this childish speech, but let her face settle into perfect stillness—sadness indeed, for a shadow came over the stillness. Mr Fraser sat watching the two with his amused old face, one side of it twitching in the effort to suppress the smile which sought to break from the useful half of his mouth. His gout could not have been very bad just then.
"I see, Katie, what that long chin of yours is thinking," he said.
"What is my chin thinking, uncle?" she asked.
"That uncles are not always nice either. They snub little girls, sometimes, don't they?"
"I know one who is nice, all except one naughty leg."
She rose, as she said this, and going round to the back of his chair, leaned over it, and kissed his forehead. The old man looked up to her gratefully.
"Ah, Katie!" he said, "you may make game of an old man like me. But don't try your tricks on Mr Forbes there. He won't stand them."
Alec blushed. Kate went back to her seat, and took up her duster again.
Alec was a little short-sighted, though he had never discovered it till now. When Kate leaned over her uncle's chair, near which he was sitting, he saw that she was still prettier than he had thought her before.—There are few girls who to a short-sighted person look prettier when they come closer; the fact being that the general intent of the face, which the generalizing effect of the shortness of the sight reveals, has ordinarily more of beauty in it than has yet been carried out in detail; so that, as the girl approaches, one face seems to melt away, and another, less beautiful, to dawn up through it.
But, as I have said, this was not Alec's experience with Kate; for, whatever it might indicate, she looked prettier when she came nearer. He found too that her great mass of hair, instead of being, as he had thought, dull, was in reality full of glints and golden hints, as if she had twisted up a handful of sunbeams with it in the morning, which, before night, had faded a little, catching something of the duskiness and shadowiness of their prison. One thing more he saw—that her hand—she rested it on the back of the dark chair, and so it had caught his eye—was small and white; and those were all the qualities Alec was as yet capable of appreciating in a hand. Before she got back to her seat, he was very nearly in love with her. I suspect that those generally who fall in love at first sight have been in love before. At least such was Romeo's case. And certainly it was not Alec's. Yet I must confess, if he had talked stupidly before, he talked worse now; and at length went home with the conviction that he had made a great donkey of himself.
As he walked the lonely road, and the street now fast closing its windows and going to sleep, he was haunted by a very different vision from that which had accompanied him a few hours ago. Then it was the dead face of a man, into which his busy fancy had reset the living eyes that he had seen looking in at the window of the dissecting room; now it was the lovely face of his new-found cousin, possessing him so that he could fear nothing. Life had cast out death. Love had cast out fear.
But love had cast out more. For he found, when he got home, that he could neither read nor think. If Kate could have been conscious of its persistent intrusion upon Alec's thoughts, and its constant interruption of his attempts at study, she would have been ashamed of that pretty face of hers, and ready to disown it for its forwardness. At last, he threw his book to the other end of the room, and went to bed, where he found it not half so difficult to go to sleep as it had been to study.
The next day things went better; for he was not yet so lost that a night's rest could do him no good. But it was fortunate that there was no Greek class, and that he was not called up to read Latin that day. For the anatomy, he was in earnest about that; and love itself, so long as its current is not troubled by opposing rocks, will not disturb the studies of a real student—much.
As he left the dissecting-room, he said to himself that he would just look in and see how Mr Fraser was. He was shown into the professor's study.
Mr Fraser smiled as he entered with a certain grim comicality which
Alec's conscience interpreted into: "This won't do, my young man."
"I hope your gout is better to-day, sir," he said, sending his glance wide astray of his words.
"Yes, I thank you, Mr Forbes," answered Mr Fraser, "it is better. Won't you sit down?"
Warned by that smile, Alec was astute enough to decline, and presently took his leave. As he shut the study door, however, he thought he would just peep into the dining-room, the door of which stood open opposite. There she was, sitting at the table, writing.
"Who can that letter be to?" thought Alec. But it was early days to be jealous.
"How do you do, Mr Forbes?" said Kate, holding out her hand.
Could it be that he had seen her only yesterday? Or was his visual memory so fickle that he had forgotten what she was like? She was so different from what he had been fancying her!
The fact was merely this—that she had been writing to an old friend, and her manner for the time, as well as her expression, was affected by her mental proximity to that friend;—so plastic—so fluent even—was her whole nature. Indeed Alec was not long in finding out that one of her witcheries was, that she was never the same. But on this the first occasion, the alteration in her bewildered him.
"I am glad to find your uncle better," he said.
"Yes.—You have seen him, then?"
"Yes. I was very busy in the dissecting-room, till—"
He stopped; for he saw her shudder.
"I beg your pardon," he hastened to substitute.—"We are so used to those things, that—"
"Don't say a word more about it, please," she said hastily. Then, in a vague kind of way—"Won't you sit down?"
"No, thank you. I must go home," answered Alec, feeling that she did not want him. "Good night," he added, advancing a step.
"Good night, Mr Forbes," she returned in the same vague manner, and without extending her hand.
Alec checked himself, bowed, and went with a feeling of mortification, and the resolution not to repeat his visit too soon.
She interfered with his studies notwithstanding, and sent him wandering in the streets, when he ought to have been reading at home. One bright moonlight night he found himself on the quay, and spying a boat at the foot of one of the stairs, asked the man in it if he was ready for a row. The man agreed. Alec got in, and they rowed out of the river, and along the coast to a fishing village where the man lived, and whence Alec walked home. This was the beginning of many such boating excursions made by Alec in the close of this session. They greatly improved his boatmanship, and strengthened his growing muscles. The end of the winter was mild, and there were not many days unfit for the exercise.
CHAPTER XLII
The next Saturday but one Alec received a note from Mr Fraser, hoping that his new cousin had not driven him away, and inviting him to dine that same afternoon.
He went. After dinner the old man fell asleep in his chair.
"Where were you born?" Alec asked Kate.
She was more like his first impression of her.
"Don't you know?" she replied. "In the north of Sutherlandshire—near the foot of a great mountain, from the top of which, on the longest day, you can see the sun, or a bit of him at least, all night long."
"How glorious!" said Alec.
"I don't know. I never saw him. And the winters are so long and terrible! Nothing but snowy hills about you, and great clouds always coming down with fresh loads of snow to scatter over them."
"Then you don't want to go back?"
"No. There is nothing to make me wish to go back. There is no one there to love me now."
She looked very sad for a few moments.
"Yes," said Alec, thoughtfully; "a winter without love must be dreadful. But I like the winter; and we have plenty of it in our quarter too."
"Where is your home?"
"Not many miles north of this."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Of course I think so."
"Ah! you have a mother. I wish I knew her."
"I wish you did.—True: the whole place is like her to me. But I don't think everybody would admire it. There are plenty of bare snowy hills there too in winter. But I think the summers and the harvests are as delightful as anything can be, except—"
"Except what?"
"Don't make me say what will make you angry with me."
"Now you must, else I shall fancy something that will make me more angry."
"Except your face, then," said Alec, frightened at his own boldness, but glancing at her shyly.
She flushed a little, but did not look angry.
"I don't like that," she said. "It makes one feel awkward."
"At least," rejoined Alec, emboldened, "you must allow it is your own fault."
"I can't help my face," she said, laughing.
"Oh! you know what I mean. You made me say it."
"Yes, after you had half-said it already. Don't do it again."
And there followed more of such foolish talk, uninteresting to my readers.
"Where were you at school?" asked Alec, after a pause. "Your uncle told me you were at school."
"Near London," she answered.
"Ah! that accounts for your beautiful speech."
"There again. I declare I will wake my uncle if you go on in that way."
"I beg your pardon," protested Alec; "I forgot."
"But," she went on, "in Sutherlandshire we don't talk so horribly as they do here."
"I daresay not," returned Alec, humbly.
"I don't mean you. I wonder how it is that you speak so much better than all the people here."
"I suppose because my mother speaks well. She never lets me speak broad
Scotch to her."
"Your mother again! She's everything to you."
Alec did not reply.
"I should like to see her," pursued Kate.
"You must come and see her, then."
"See whom?" asked Mr Fraser, rousing himself from his nap.
"My mother, sir," answered Alec.
"Oh! I thought you had been speaking of Katie's friend," said the professor, and fell asleep again.
"Uncle means Bessie Warner, who is coming by the steamer from London on
Monday. Isn't it kind of uncle to ask her to come and see me here?"
"He is kind always. Was Miss Warner a schoolfellow of yours?"
"Yes—no—not exactly. She was one of the governesses. I must go and meet her at the steamer. Will you go with me?"
"I shall be delighted. Do you know when she arrives?"
"They say about six. I daresay it is not very punctual."
"Oh! yes, she is—when the weather is decent. I will make inquiries, and come and fetch you."
"Thank you.—I suppose I may, uncle?"
"What, my dear?" said the professor, rousing himself again.
"Have my cousin to take care of me when I go to meet Bessie?"
"Yes, certainly. I shall be much obliged to you, Mr Forbes. I am not quite so agile as I was at your age, though my gouty leg is better."
This conversation would not have been worth recording were it not that it led to the walk and the waiting on Monday.—They found, when they reached the region of steamers, that she had not yet been signalled, but her people were expecting the signal every minute. So Alec and Kate walked out along the pier, to pass the time. This pier runs down the side of the river, and a long way into the sea. It had begun to grow dark, and Alec had to take great care of Kate amongst the tramways, coils of rope, and cables that crossed their way. At length they got clear of these, and found themselves upon the pier, built of great rough stones—lonely and desert, tapering away into the dark, its end invisible, but indicated by the red light far in front.
"It is a rough season of the year for a lady to come by sea," said
Alec.
"Bessie is very fond of the sea," answered Kate. "I hope you will like her, Mr Forbes."
"Do you want me to like her better than you?" rejoined Alec. "Because if you do—"
"Look how beautiful that red light is on the other side of the river," interrupted Kate. "And there is another further out."
"When the man at the helm gets those two lights in a line," said Alec, "he may steer straight in, in the darkest night—that is, if the tide serves for the bar."
"Look how much more glorious the red shine is on the water below!" said
Kate.
"It looks so wet!" returned Alec,—"just like blood."
He almost cursed himself as he said so, for he felt Kate's hand stir as if she would withdraw it from his arm. But after fluttering like a bird for a moment, it settled again upon its perch, and there rested.
The day had been quite calm, but now a sudden gust of wind from the north-east swept across the pier and made Kate shiver. Alec drew her shawl closer about her, and her arm further within his. They were now close to the sea. On the other side of the wall which rose on their left, they could hear the first of the sea-waves. It was a dreary place—no sound even indicating the neighbourhood of life. On one side, the river below them went flowing out to the sea in the dark, giving a cold sluggish gleam now and then, as if it were a huge snake heaving up a bend of its wet back, as it hurried away to join its fellows; on the other side rose a great wall of stone, beyond which was the sound of long waves following in troops out of the dark, and falling upon a low moaning coast. Clouds hung above the sea; and above the clouds two or three disconsolate stars.
"Here is a stair," said Alec. "Let us go up on the top of the sea-wall, and then we shall catch the first glimpse of the light at her funnel."
They climbed the steep rugged steps, and stood on the broad wall, hearing the sea-pulses lazily fall at its foot. The wave crept away after it fell, and returned to fall again like a weary hound. There was hardly any life in the sea. How mournful it was to lie out there, the wintry night, beneath an all but starless heaven, with the wind vexing it when it wanted to sleep!
Alec feeling Kate draw a deep breath like the sigh of the sea, looked round in her face. There was still light enough to show it frowning and dark and sorrowful and hopeless. It was in fact a spiritual mirror, which reflected in human forms the look of that weary waste of waters. She gave a little start, gathered herself together, and murmured something about the cold.
"Let us go down again," said Alec.—"The wind has risen considerably, and the wall will shelter us down below."
"No, no," she answered; "I like it. We can walk here just as well. I don't mind the wind."
"I thought you were afraid of falling off."
"No, not in the dark. I should be, I daresay, if I could see how far we are from the bottom."
So they walked on. The waves no longer fell at the foot of the wall, but leaned their breasts against it, gleaming as they rose on its front, and darkening as they sank low towards its deep base.
The wind kept coming in gusts, tearing a white gleam now and then on the dark surface of the sea. Behind them shone the dim lights of the city; before them all was dark as eternity, except for the one light at the end of the pier. At length Alec spied another out at sea.
"I believe that is the steamer," he said. "But she is a good way off. We shall have plenty of time to walk to the end—that is, if you would like to go."
"Certainly; let us go on. I want to stand on the very point," answered
Kate.
They soon came to the lighthouse on the wall, and there descended to the lower part of the pier, the end of which now plunged with a steep descent into the sea. It was constructed of great stones clamped with iron, and built into a natural foundation of rock. Up the slope the waves rushed, and down the slope they sank again, with that seemingly aimless and resultless rise and fall, which makes the sea so dreary and sad to those men and women who are not satisfied without some goal in view, some outcome of their labours; for it goes on and on, answering ever to the call of sun and moon, and the fierce trumpet of the winds, yet working nothing but the hopeless wear of the bosom in which it lies bound for ever.
They stood looking out into the great dark before them, dark air, dark sea, dark sky, watching the one light which grew brighter as they gazed. Neither of them saw that a dusky figure was watching them from behind a great cylindrical stone that stood on the end of the pier, close to the wall.
A wave rushed up almost to their feet.
"Let us go," said Kate, with a shiver. "I can't bear it longer. The water is calling me and threatening me. There! How that wave rushed up as if it wanted me at once!"
Alec again drew her closer to him, and turning, they walked slowly back. He was silent with the delight of having that lovely creature all to himself, leaning on his arm, in the infolding and protecting darkness, and Kate was likewise silent.
By the time they reached the quay at the other end of the pier, the steamer had crossed the bar, and they could hear the thud of her paddles treading the water beneath them, as if eagerly because she was near her rest. After a few struggles, she lay quiet in her place, and they went on board.
Alec saw Kate embrace a girl perhaps a little older than herself, helped her to find her luggage, put them into a chaise, took his leave, and went home.
He did not know that all the way back along the pier they had been followed by Patrick Beauchamp.
CHAPTER XLIII
Excited, and unable to settle to his work, Alec ran upstairs to Mr Cupples, whom he had not seen for some days. He found him not more than half-way towards his diurnal goal.
"What's come o' you, bantam, this mony a day?" said Mr Cupples.
"I saw ye last Saturday," said Alec.
"Last Setterday week, ye mean," rejoined the librarian. "Hoo's the mathematics comin' on?"
"To tell the truth, I'm raither ahin' wi' them," answered Alec.
"I was thinkin' as muckle. Rainbows! Thae rainbows! And the anawtomy?"
"Nae jist stan'in' still a'thegither."
"That's weel. Ye haena been fa'in' asleep again ower the guddlet carcass o' an auld pauper—hae ye?"
Alec stared. He had never told any one of his adventure in the dissecting-room.
"I saw ye, my man. But I wasna the only ane that saw ye. Ye micht hae gotten a waur fleg gin I hadna come up, for Mr Beauchamp was takin' the bearin's o' ye throu the window, and whan I gaed up, he slippit awa' like a wraith. There ye lay, wi' yer heid back, and yer mou' open, as gin you and the deid man had been tryin' whilk wad sleep the soun'est. But ye hae ta'en to ither studies sin' syne. Ye hae a freah subject—a bonnie young ane. The Lord hae mercy upo' ye! The goddess o' the rainbow hersel's gotten a haud o' ye, and ye'll be seein' naething but rainbows for years to come.—Iris bigs bonnie brigs, but they hae nowther pier, nor buttress, nor key-stane, nor parapet. And no fit can gang ower them but her ain, and whan she steps aff, it's upo' men's herts, and yours can ill bide her fit, licht as it may be."
"What are ye propheseein' at, Mr Cupples?" said Alec, who did not more than half understand him.
"Verra weel. I'm no drunk yet," rejoined Mr Cupples, oracularly. "But that chield Beauchamp's no rainbow—that lat me tell ye. He'll do you a mischeef yet, gin ye dinna luik a' the shairper. I ken the breed o' him. He was luikin' at ye throu the window like a hungry deevil. And jist min' what ye're aboot wi' the lassie—she's rael bonnie—or ye may chance to get her into trouble, withoot ony wyte (fault) o' yer ain. Min' I'm tellin' ye. Gin ye'll tak my advice, ye'll tak a dose o' mathematics direckly. It's a fine alterative as weel as antidote, though maybe whusky's…..the verra broo o' the deevil's ain pot," he concluded, altering his tone entirely, and swallowing the rest of his glass at a gulp.
"What do ye want me to do?" asked Alec.
"To tak tent (care) o' Beauchamp. And meantime to rin doon for yer
Euclid and yer Hutton, and lat's see whaur ye are."
There was more ground for Mr Cupples's warning than Alec had the smallest idea of. He had concluded long ago that all possible relations, even those of enmity—practical enmity at least—were over between them, and that Mr Beauchamp considered the bejan sufficiently punished for thrashing him, by being deprived of his condescending notice for the rest of the ages. But so far was this from being the true state of the case, that, although Alec never suspected it, Beauchamp had in fact been dogging and haunting him from the very commencement of the session, and Mr Cupples had caught him in only one of many acts of the kind. In the anatomical class, where they continued to meet, he still attempted to keep up the old look of diadain, as if the lesson he had received had in no way altered their relative position. Had Alec known with what difficulty, and under what a load of galling recollection, he kept it up, he would have been heartily sorry for him. Beauchamp's whole consciousness was poisoned by the memory of that day. Incapable of regarding any one except in comparative relation to himself, the effort of his life had been to maintain that feeling of superiority with which he started every new acquaintance; for occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as Hector, who yet turned and fled before Achilles. Without the upholding sense of duty, no man can be sure of his own behaviour, simply because he cannot be sure of his own nerves. Duty kept the red-cross knight "forlorne and left to losse," "haplesse and eke hopelesse,"
