Alec Forbes of Howglen

CHAPTER XC

It was a dreary wintry summer to all at Howglen. Why should the ripe corn wave deep-dyed in the gold of the sunbeams, when Alec lay frozen in the fields of ice, or sweeping about under them like a broken sea-weed in the waters so cold, so mournful? Yet the work of the world must go on. The corn must be reaped. Things must be bought and sold. Even the mourners must eat and drink. The stains which the day had gathered must be washed from the brow of the morning; and the dust to which Alec had gone down must be swept from the chair in which he had been wont to sit. So things did go on -of themselves as it were, for no one cared much about them, although it was the finest harvest that year that Howglen had ever borne. It had begun at length to appear that the old labour had not been cast into a dead grave, but into a living soil, like that of which Sir Philip Sidney says in his sixty-fifth psalm:

"Each clodd relenteth at thy dressing,"

as if it were a human soul that had bethought itself and began to bring forth fruit. -This might be the beginning of good things. But what did it matter?

Annie grew paler, but relaxed not a single effort to fill her place. She told her poor friends that she had no money now, and could not help them; but most were nearly as glad to see her as before; while one of them who had never liked receiving alms from a girl in such a lowly position, as well as some who had always taken them thankfully, loved her better when she had nothing to give.

She renewed her acquaintance with Peter Whaup, the blacksmith, through his wife, who was ill, and received her visits gladly.

"For," she said, "she's a fine douce lass, and speyks to ye as gin ye war ither fowk, and no as gin she kent a'thing, and cam to tell ye the muckle half o' 't."

I wonder how much her friends understood of what she read to them? She did not confine herself to the Bible, which indeed she was a little shy of reading except they wanted it, but read anything that pleased herself, never doubting that "ither fowk" could enjoy what she enjoyed. She even tried the Paradise Lost upon Mrs Whaup, as she had tried it long ago upon Tibbie Dyster; and Mrs Whaup never seemed tired of listening to it. I daresay she understood about as much of it as poets do of the celestial harmonies ever toning around them.

And Peter Whaup was once known, when more than half drunk, to stop his swearing in mid-volley, simply because he had caught a glimpse of Annie at the other end of the street.

So the maiden grew in favour. Her beauty, both inward and outward, was that of the twilight, of a morning cloudy with high clouds, or of a silvery sea: it was a spiritual beauty for the most part. And her sorrow gave a quiet grace to her demeanour, peacefully ripening it into what is loveliest in ladyhood. She always looked like one waiting -sometimes like one listening, as she waited, to "melodies unheard."

CHAPTER XCI

One night, in the end of October, James Dow was walking by the side of his cart along a lonely road, through a peat-moss, on his way to the nearest sea-port for a load of coals. The moon was high and full. He was approaching a solitary milestone in the midst of the moss. It was the loneliest place. Low swells of peat-ground, the burial places of old forests, rolled away on every side, with, here and there, patches of the white-bearded canna-down, or cotton-grass, glimmering doubtfully as the Wind woke and turned himself on the wide space, where he found nothing to puff at but those same little old fairies sunning their hoary beards in the strange moon. As Dow drew near to the milestone he saw an odd-looking figure seated upon it. He was about to ask him if he would like a lift, when the figure rose, and cried joyfully,

"Jamie Doo!"

James Dow staggered back, and was nearly thrown down by the slow-rolling wheel; for the voice was Alec Forbes's. He gasped for breath, and felt as if he were recovering from a sudden stroke of paralysis, during which everything about him had passed away and a new order come in. All that he was capable of was to cry wo! to his horse.

There stood Alec, in rags, with a face thin but brown -healthy, bold, and firm. He looked ten years older standing there in the moonlight.

"The Lord preserve's!" cried Dow, and could say no more.

"He has preserved me, ye see, Jeamie. Hoo's my mother?"

"She's brawly, brawly, Mr Alec. The Lord preserve's! She's been terrible aboot ye. Ye maunna gang in upo' her. It wad kill her."

"I hae a grainy sense left, Jeamie. But I'm awfu' tired. Ye maun jist turn yer cairt and tak' me hame. I'll be worth a lade o' coal to my mither ony gait. An' syne ye can brak it till her."

Without another word, Dow turned his horse, helped Alec into the cart, covered him with his coat and some straw, and strode away beside, not knowing whether he was walking in a dream, or in a real starry night. Alec fell fast asleep, and never waked till the cart stood still, about midnight, at his mother's door. He started up.

"Lie still, Mr Alec," said Dow, in a whisper. "The mistress 'll be in her bed. And gin ye gang in upo' her that gait, ye'll drive her daft."

Alec lay down again, and Dow went to Mary's window, on the other side, to try to wake her. But just as he returned, Alec heard his mother's window open.

"Who's there?" she called.

"Naebody but me, Jeamie Doo," answered James. "I was half-gaits to Portlokie, whan I had a mishap upo' the road. Bettie pat her fit upon a sharp stane, and fell doon, and bruik baith her legs."

"How did she come home then?"

"She bude to come hame, mem."

"Broke her legs!"

"Hoot, mem -her k-nees. I dinna mean the banes, ye ken, mem; only the skin. But she wasna fit to gang on. And sae I brocht her back."

"What's that i' the cairt? Is't onything deid?"

"Na, mem, de'il a bit o' 't! It's livin' eneuch. It's a stranger lad that I gae a lift till upo' the road. He's fell tired."

But Dow's voice trembled, or -or something or other revealed all to the mother's heart. She gave a great cry. Alec sprung from the cart, rushed into the house, and was in his mother's arms.

Annie was asleep in the next room, but she half awoke with a sense of his presence. She had heard his voice through the folds of sleep. And she thought she was lying on the rug before the dining-room fire, with Alec and his mother at the tea-table, as on that night when he brought her in from the snow-hut. Finding out confusedly that the supposition did not correspond with some other vague consciousness, she supposed next that she "had died in sleep and was a blessed ghost," just going to find Alec in heaven. That was abandoned in its turn, and all at once she knew that she was in her own bed, and that Alec and his mother were talking in the next room.

She rose, but could hardly dress herself for trembling. When she was dressed she sat down on the edge of the bed to bethink herself.

The joy was almost torture, but it had a certain qualifying bitter in it. Ever since she had believed him dead, Alec had been so near to her! She had loved him as much as ever she would. But Life had come in suddenly, and divided those whom Death had joined. Now he was a great way off; and she dared not speak to him whom she had cherished in her heart. Modesty took the telescope from the hands of Love, and turning it, put the larger end to Annie's eye. Ever since her confession to Curly, she had been making fresh discoveries in her own heart; and now the tide of her love swelled so strong that she felt it must break out in an agony of joy, and betray her if once she looked in the face of Alec alive from the dead. Nor was this all. What she had done about his mother's debt, must come out soon; and although Alec could not think that she meant to lay him under obligation, he might yet feel under obligation, and that she could not bear. These things and many more so worked in the sensitive maiden that as soon as she heard Alec and his mother go to the dining-room she put on her bonnet and cloak, stole like a thief through the house to the back door, and let herself out into the night.

She avoided the path, and went through the hedge into a field of stubble at the back of the house across which she made her way to the turnpike road and the new bridge over the Glamour. Often she turned to look back to the window of the room where he that had been dead was alive and talking with his widowed mother; and only when the intervening trees hid it from her sight did she begin to think what she should do. She could think of nothing but to go to her aunt once more, and ask her to take her in for a few days. So she walked on through the sleeping town.

Not a soul was awake, and the stillness was awful. It was a place of tombs. And those tombs were haunted by dreams. Away towards the west, the moon lay on the steep-sloping edge of a rugged cloud, appearing to have rolled half-way down from its lofty peak, and about to be launched off its baseless bulk into

"the empty, vast, and wandering air."

In the middle of the large square of the little gray town she stood and looked around her. All one side lay in shade; the greater part of the other three lay in moonlight. The old growth of centuries, gables and fronts -stepping out into the light, retreating into the shadow -outside stairs and dark gateways, stood up in the night warding a townful of sleepers. Not one would be awake now. Ah yes! there was light in the wool-carder's window. His wife was dying. That light over the dying, wiped the death-look from the face of the sleeping town, Annie roused herself and passed on, fearing to be seen. It was the only thing to be afraid of. But the stillness was awful. One silence only could be more awful: the same silence at noon-day.

So she passed into the western road and through the trees to the bridge over the Wan Water. They stood so still in the moonlight! And the smell from the withering fields laid bare of the harvest and breathing out their damp odours, came to her mixed with the chill air from the dark hills around, already spiced with keen atoms of frost, soon to appear in spangly spikes. Beneath the bridge the river flowed maunderingly, blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood looking down into it from the bridge when she ought to have been in bed and asleep. She was not far from Clippenstrae, but she could not go there so early, for her aunt would be frightened first and angry next. So she wandered up the stream to the old church-forsaken churchyard, and sat on one of the tombstones. It became very cold as the morning drew on. The moon went down; the stars grew dim; the river ran with a livelier murmur; and through all the fine gradations of dawn- cloudy wind and grey sky -the gates of orange and red burst open, and the sun came forth rejoicing. The long night was over. It had not been a very weary one; for Annie had thoughts of her own, and like the earth in the warm summer nights, could shine and flash up through the dark, seeking the face of God in the altar-flame of prayer. Yet she was glad when the sun came. With the first bubble of the spring of light bursting out on the hill-top, she rose and walked through the long shadows of the graves down to the river and through the long shadows of the stubble down the side of the river, which shone in the morning light like a flowing crystal of delicate brown- and so to Clippenstrae, where she found her aunt still in her night-cap. She was standing at the door, however, shading her eyes with her hand, looking abroad as if for some one that might be crossing hitherward from the east. She did not see Annie approaching from the north.

"What are ye luikin' for, auntie?"

"Naething. Nae for you, ony gait, lassie."

"Weel, ye see, I'm come ohn luikit for. But ye was luikin' for somebody, auntie."

"Na. I was only jist luikin'."

Even Annie did not then know that it was the soul's hunger, the vague sense of a need which nothing but the God of human faces, the God of the morning and of the starful night, the God of love and self-forgetfulness, can satisfy, that sent her money-loving, poverty-stricken, pining, grumbling old aunt out staring towards the east. It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their own hopes. How little they know what they look for in reality is their God! This is that for which their heart and their flesh cry out.

Lead, lead me on, my Hopes. I know that ye are true and not vain. Vanish from my eyes day after day, but arise in new forms. I will follow your holy deception; -follow till ye have brought me to the feet of my Father in Heaven, where I shall find you all with folded wings spangling the sapphire dusk whereon stands His throne, which is our home.

"What do ye want sae ear's this, Annie Anderson?"

Margaret's first thought was always -"What can the body be wantin'?"

"I want ye to tak' me in for a while," answered Annie.

"For an hoor or twa? Ow ay."

"Na. For a week or twa maybe."

"'Deed no. I'll do naething o' the kin', Lat them 'at made ye prood, keep ye prood."

"I'm nae prood, auntie. What gars ye say that?"

"Sae prood 'at ye wadna tak' a gude offer whan it was i' yer pooer. And syne they turn ye oot whan it shuits themsels. Gentle fowks is sair misca'd (misnamed). I'm no gaein' to tak' ye in. There's Dawvid Gordon wants a lass. Ye can jist gang till a place like ither fowk."

"I'll gang and luik efter 't direckly. Hoo far is't, Auntie?"

"Gaein' and giein' awa' yer siller to beggars as gin 't war stew

(dust), jist to be a gran' lady! Ye're nane sae gran', I can tell ye.

An' syne comin' to puir fowk like me to tak' ye in for a week or twa!

Weel I wat!"

Auntie had been listening to evil tongues -so much easier to listen to than just tongues. With difficulty Annie kept back her tears. She made no defence; tried to eat the porridge which her aunt set before her; and departed. Before three hours were over, she had the charge of the dairy and cooking at Willowcraig for the next six months of coming winter and spring. Protected from suspicion, her spirits rose all the cheerier for their temporary depression, and she went singing about the house like a lintie.

"As she did not appear at breakfast, and was absent from the dinner-table as well, Mrs Forbes set out with Alec to inquire after her, and not knowing where else to go first, betook herself to Robert Bruce. He showed more surprise than pleasure at seeing Alec, smiling with his own acridness as he said,

"I doobt ye haena brocht hame that barrel o' ile ye promised me, Mr

Alec? It wad hae cleared aff a guid sheave o' yer mither's debts."

Alec answered cheerily, although his face flushed,

"All in good time, I hope, Mr Bruce. I'm obliged to you for your forbearance, though."

He was too solemn-glad to be angry.

"It canna laist for ever, ye ken," rejoined Bruce, happy to be able to bite, although his poison-bag was gone.

Alec made no reply.

"Have you seen Annie Anderson to-day, Mr Bruce?" asked his mother.

"'Deed no, mem. She doesna aften trouble huz wi' her company. We're no gran' eneuch for her."

"Hasn't she been here to-day?" repeated Mrs Forbes, with discomposure in her look and tone.

"Hae ye tint her, mem?" rejoined Bruce. "That is a peety. She'll be awa' wi' that vaigabone, Willie Macwha. He was i' the toon last nicht. I saw him gang by wi' Baubie Peterson."

They made him no reply, understanding well enough that though the one premise might be true, the conclusion must be as false as it was illogical and spiteful. They did not go to George Macwha's, but set out for Clippenstrae. When they reached the cottage, they found Meg's nose in full vigour.

"Na. She's no here. What for sud she be here? She has no claim upo' me, although it pleases you to turn her oot- efter bringin' her up to notions that hae jist ruined her wi' pride."

"Indeed I didn't turn her out, Miss Anderson."

"Weel, ye sud never hae taen her in."

There was something in her manner which made them certain she knew where Annie was; but as she avoided every attempt to draw her into the admission, they departed foiled, although relieved. She knew well enough that Annie's refuge could not long remain concealed, but she found it pleasant to annoy Mrs Forbes.

And not many days passed before Mrs Forbes did learn where Annie was. But she was so taken up with her son, that weeks even passed before that part of her nature which needed a daughter's love began to assert itself again, and turn longingly towards her all but adopted child.

Alec went away once more to the great town. He had certain remnants of study to gather up at the university, and a certain experience to go through in the preparation of drugs, without which he could not obtain his surgeon's diploma. The good harvest would by and by put a little money in his mother's hands, and the sooner he was ready to practise the better.

The very day after he went, Mrs Forbes drove to Willowcraig to see Annie. She found her short-coated and short-wrappered, like any other girl at a farmhouse. Annie was rather embarrassed at the sight of her friend. Mrs Forbes could easily see, however, that there was no breach in her affection towards her. Yet it must be confessed that having regard to the final return of her son, she was quite as well pleased to know that she was bound to remain where she was for some time to come.

She found the winter very dreary without her, though.

CHARTER XCII

Finding herself in good quarters, Annie re-engaged herself at the end of the half-year. She had spent the winter in house work, combined with the feeding of pigs and poultry, and partial ministrations to the wants of the cows, of which she had milked the few continuing to give milk upon turnips and straw, and made the best of their scanty supply for the use of the household. There was no hardship in her present life. She had plenty of wholesome food to eat, and she lay warm at night. The old farmer, who was rather overbearing with his men, was kind to her because he liked her; and the guidwife was a sonsy (well conditioned) dame, who, when she scolded, never meant anything by it.

She cherished her love for Alec, but was quite peaceful as to the future. How she might have felt had she heard that he was going to be married, I cannot take upon me to say.

When her work was done, she would go out for a lonely walk, without asking leave or giving offence, indulging in the same lawlessness as before, and seeming incapable of being restrained by other bonds than those of duty.

And now the month of April was nearly over, and the primroses were glintin' on the braes.

One evening she went out bare-headed to look how a certain den, wont to be haunted by wild-flowers and singing-birds, was getting on towards its complement of summer pleasures. As she was climbing over a fence, a horseman came round the corner of the road. She saw at a glance that it was Alec, and got down again.