The doctor had guessed aright. Tony did not present himself at meeting
on Sunday. Mrs. Butler, indeed, was there, though the distance was more
than a mile, and the day a raw and gusty one, with threatenings of snow
in the air.
“Are you coming with me, Tony, to hear the minister? It will be an
interesting lecture to-day on the character of Ahab,” said she, opening
his door a few inches.
“I'm afraid not, mother; I'm in for a hard day's work this morning.
Better lose Ahab than lose my examination.”
Mrs. Butler did not approve of the remark, but she closed the door
and went her way, while Tony covered his table with a mass of books,
arranged paper and pens, and then, filling the bowl of a large Turkish
pipe, sat himself down, as he fancied, to work, but in reality to weave
thoughts about as profitable and as connected as the thin blue wreaths
of smoke that issued from his lips, and in watching whose wayward curls
and waftings he continued to pass hours.
I have often suspected--indeed, my experience of life leads me much to
the conviction--that for the perfect enjoyment of what is called one's
own company, the man of many resources must yield the palm to him
of none; and that the mere man of action, whose existence is stir,
movement, and adventure, can and does find his occasional hours of
solitude more pleasurable than he who brings to his reveries the
tormenting doubts and distrusts, the casuistical indecisions, and the
dreary discontents, that so often come of much reading. Certainly in
the former there is no strain,--no wear and tear. He is not called on
to breast the waves and stem the tide, but to float indolently down the
stream without even remarking the scenery that clothes the banks.
Tony, I fancy, was a master of this art; he knew how to follow up any
subject in thought till it began to become painful, and then to turn his
attention to the sea and some far-off white sail, or to the flickering
leaflet of falling snow, tossed and drifted here and there like some
castaway,--a never-failing resource. He could follow with his eyes the
azure circles of smoke, and wonder which would outstrip the other.
To fit him for the life of a “messenger,” he had taken down “Cook's
Voyages;” but after reading a few pages, he laid down the book to think
how far the voyager's experiences could apply to the daily exigencies of
a Foreign Office official, and to ask himself if he were not in
reality laying down too wide and too extensive a foundation for future
acquirement. “No,” thought he, “I 'll not try to be any better or
smarter than the rest. I 'll just stick to the practical part, and here
goes for Ollendorf.” Three or four sentences read,--he leaned back, and
wondered whether he would not rather undertake an excursion on foot to
Jerusalem than set out on an expedition into the French language. As
if a whole life could master that bulky dictionary, and transfer its
contents to his poor brain! To be sure, Alice knew it; but Alice could
learn what she pleased. She learned to skate in three lessons,--and
how she did it too! Who ever glided over the ice with such a grace,--so
easy, so quiet, but with such a perfection of movement! Talk of
dancing,--it was nothing to it. And could n't she ride? See her three
fields off, and you'd know the ground just by the stride of her horse.
Such a hand she had! But who was like Alice?
Ah! there was the boundless prairie, to his thoughts, on which he
might ramble forever; and on that wide swelling savannah, roaming and
straying, we shall now leave him, and turn our glance elsewhere.
The morning service of the meeting-house over, Dr. Stewart proposed to
walk home with Mrs. Butler. The exposition about Ahab had neither been
as full or as able as he had intended, but it was not his fault,--at
least, only in part his fault; the sum of which consisted in the fact
that he had broken through a good rule, which up to that hour had never
met with infraction,--he had opened a post-letter on the Sabbath-morn.
“This comes,” said he, plaintively, “of letting the sinfu' things of
this warld mingle wi' the holier and higher ones of the warld to come.
Corruption is aye stronger than life; and now I maun tell you the whole
of it.” If we do not strictly follow the good minister, and tell what
he had to say in his own words, it is to spare our reader some time on
a matter which may not possess the amount of interest to him it had for
the person who narrated it. The matter was this: there came that morning
a letter from Mrs. M'Gruder to Dr. Stewart,--a letter that almost
overwhelmed him. The compensation to humility of station is
generally this, that the interests of the humble man are so lowly, so
unpretending, and so little obtrusive that they seldom or never provoke
the attention of his more fortunate neighbors. As with the rivulet that
can neither float a barque nor turn a mill-wheel none meddles, so with
the course of these lowly lives few concern themselves, and they ripple
along unheeded. Many and many a time had the old minister hugged this
thought to his heart,--many and many a time had he felt that there
were cares and troubles in this life so proud and so haughty that they
disdained the thatched cabin and the humble roof-tree, but loved to push
their way through crowds of courtiers up marble stairs and along gilded
corridors. It was then with a perfect shock that he came to learn that
even they, in all their lowliness, could claim no exemption from common
calamity. The letter began by stating that the writer, before putting
pen to paper, had waited till Miss Stewart should have reached her home,
so that no anxieties as to her health should be added to the pain the
communication might cause. After this louring commencement the epistle
went on to state that the satisfaction which Dolly had at first given
by her general good temper and strict attention to her duties,
“compensating in a great measure for the defects in her own education
and want of aptitude as a teacher,” soon ceased to be experienced, as
it was found that she was subject to constant intervals of great
depression, and even whole days, when she seemed scarcely equal to her
duties. The cause was not very long a secret.
It was an attachment she had formed to a brother of Mr. M'Gruder's,
who, some years younger than himself, had been established in Italy as a
partner, and had now come over to England on business.
It was not necessary to say that the writer had never encouraged this
sentiment; on the contrary, she had more than remonstrated with her
brother-in-law on the score of his attentions, and flatly declared that,
if he persisted, she would do her utmost to have the partnership with
his brother dissolved, and all future intercourse at an end between
them. This led to scenes of a very violent nature, in which she was
obliged to own her husband had the cruelty to take his brother's side
against her, and avow that Samuel was earning his own bread, and if he
liked to share it with an “untochcred lassie,” it should be far from
him, Robert M'Grader, that any reproach should come,--a sarcasm that
Mrs. M'Grader seemed keenly to appreciate.
The agitation caused by these cares, acting on a system already excited,
had brought on a fever to Dolly; and it was only on her convalescence,
and while still very weak, that a young man arrived in London and called
to see her, who suddenly seemed to influence all her thoughts and plans
for the future. Sam, it appeared, had gone back to Italy, relying on
Dolly's promise to consult her father and give him a final reply to his
offer of marriage. From the day, however, that this stranger had called,
Dolly seemed to become more and more indifferent to this project,
declaring that her failing health and broken spirits would render her
rather a burden than a benefit, and constantly speaking of home, and
wishing to be back there. “Though I wished,” continued the writer, “that
this resolve had come earlier, and that Miss Stewart had returned to
her father before she had thrown discord into a united family, I was not
going to oppose it, even late as it occurred. It was therefore arranged
that she was to go home, ostensibly to recruit and restore herself in
her native air; but I, I need hardly tell you, as firmly determined she
should never pass this threshold again. Matters were in this state, and
Miss Stewart only waiting for a favorable day to begin her journey--an
event I looked for with the more impatience as Mr. M'G. and myself could
never, I knew, resume our terms of affection so long as she remained in
our house,--when one night, between one and two o'clock, we were awoke
by the sound of feet in the garden under our window. I heard them first,
and, creeping to the casement, I saw a figure clamber over the railing
and make straight for the end of the house where Miss Stewart slept,
and immediately begin a sort of low moaning kind of song, evidently
a signal. Miss Stewart's window soon opened, and on this I called Mr.
M'Grader. He had barely time to reach the window, when a man's voice
from below cried out, 'Come down; are you coming?' On this, Mr. M'Gruder
rushed downstairs and into the garden. Two or three loud and angry words
succeeded, and then a violent struggle, in which my husband was twice
knocked down and severely injured. The man, however, made his escape,
but not unrecognized; for your daughter's voice cried out, 'Oh, Tony, I
never thought you 'd do this,' or, 'Why did you do this?' or some words
to that effect.
“The terms on which, through Miss Stewart's behavior, I have latterly
lived with Mr. M'Gruder, gave me no opportunity to learn anything from
_him_. Indeed, he never so much as spoke of an incident which confined
him two days to his room and five days to the house; but, as if bent on
exasperation, redoubled his kind inquiries about your daughter, who was
now, as she said, too ill to leave her room.
“No other course was then open to me than to write the present letter
to you and another to my brother-in-law. He, at least, I am determined,
shall know something of the young lady with whom he wishes to share his
fortune, though I trust that a minister of the Gospel will have no need
of any promptings of mine to prevent such a casualty. My last words, on
parting with your daughter, were to ask if the man I saw that night was
the same who had called to see her, and her reply was, 'Yes, the same.'
I will not disguise that she had the grace to cry as she said it.
“That she is never to return here, I need not say. Ay, more than that;
no reference to me will be responded to in terms that can serve her.
But this is not all. I require that you will send, and send open for my
inspection, such a letter to Mr. S. M'Gruder as may finally put an end
to any engagement, and declare that, from the circumstances now known
to you, you could neither expect, or even desire, that he would make
her his wife. Lastly, I demand--and I am in a position to enforce a
demand--that you do not communicate with my husband at all in this
affair; sufficient unpleasantness and distrust having been already
caused by our unhappy relations with your family.”
A few moral reflections closed the epistle. They were neither very
novel nor very acute, but they embodied the sense of disappointment
experienced by one who little thought, in taking a teacher from the
manse of a minister, she was incurring a peril as great as if she had
sent over to France for the latest refinement in Parisian depravity.
“Keep her at home with yourself, Dr. Stewart,” wrote she, “unless
the time comes when the creature she called Tony may turn up as a
respectable man, and be willing to take her.” And with a gracefully
expressed hope that Dolly's ill health might prove seasonable for
self-examination and correction, she signed herself, “Your compassionate
friend, Martha M'Gruder.”
“What do you say to that, Mrs. Butler? Did ever you read as much cruelty
in pen and ink, I ask you? Did you ever believe that the mother of
children could write to a father of his own daughter in such terms as
these?”
“I don't know what it means, doctor; it 's all confusion to me. Who is
Tony? It's not our Tony, surely?”
“I'm not so sure of that, Mrs. Butler. Tony was up in London and he
called to see Dolly. You remember that he told in his letter to you how
the puir lassie's hair was cut short--”
“I remember it all, Dr. Stewart; but what has all that to do with all
this dreadful scene at night in the garden?” The doctor shook his head
mournfully, and made no reply. “If you mean, Dr. Stewart, that it was
my Tony that brought about all these disasters, I tell you I will not--I
cannot believe it. It would be better to speak your mind out, sir, than
to go on shaking your head. We're not altogether so depraved that our
disgrace is beyond words.”
“There 's nothing for anger here, my dear old friend,” said he, calmly,
“though maybe there's something for sorrow. When you have spoken to
your son, and I to my daughter, we 'll see our way better through this
thorny path. Good-bye.”
“You are not angry with me, doctor?” said she, holding out her hand,
while her eyes were dimmed with tears,--“you are not angry with me?”
“That I am not,” said he, grasping her hand warmly in both his own. “We
have no other treasures in this world, either of us, than this lad
and this lassie, and it's a small fault if we cling to them the more
closely. I think I see Tony coming to meet you, so I'll just turn home
again.” And with another and more affectionate good-bye, they parted.