ALEC’S FRIENDS VISIT HIM.
It was not until the evening of the following day that a letter from
Hubert Blake arrived at the Castle Farm. Alec himself had not written;
for Blake had assured him that he would write at once, and would say
all that was necessary.
As soon as Alec’s father opened the letter and read its opening words,
Margaret, who was watching him, saw a change come into his face. She
dropped her work and clasped her hands, nerving herself for the bad
news which she was sure had come.
The letter was a very long one, and took several minutes to read. Still
Margaret waited, without speaking. Suddenly the old man’s arm dropped
by the side of his chair, and he uttered a sound which was half a moan,
half an inarticulate wail.
‘What is it, father?’ cried Margaret, springing to his side. ‘Something
dreadful has happened. Oh! what is it?’
Her father gazed at her with stony features, without uttering a word.
‘Only tell me, father! Something is wrong with Alec. Is he ill?’
‘Worse than that, my girl,’ said the old man, almost in a whisper.
‘Dead--is he dead? He cannot be dead.’
‘It is worse than that,’ said Mr. Lindsay, in a louder tone.
‘He has----’
The words failed to come.
He conquered his emotion, and spoke them with a cold, cruel
distinctness.
‘He has stolen--or tried to steal--his uncle’s money. He is in prison.’
For a moment Margaret’s heart stood still. Then she seized Blake’s
letter, which was lying on the floor, and began to read it.
The old man sat gazing into the fire without speaking.
‘But he may be innocent!’ cried Margaret suddenly. ‘Mr. Blake does not
believe him guilty. See; he says--“Of course I do not for one moment
believe----”’
‘Of course he says that,’ interrupted her father impatiently. ‘That is
only his polite way of speaking.’
‘But he _cannot_ be guilty.’
‘None of us know what we may do till the temptation comes, Margaret.
Besides, it is too clear. Your uncle imagined he was leaving all this
money to the Free Church. Alec made him think he was doing so by
reading the will wrongly. Dr. Mackenzie has sworn that he heard him do
so with his own ears.’
‘But James Semple says----’
‘I noticed that,’ said Mr. Lindsay coldly. ‘Don’t you see, they
would divide this immense sum of money between them? I would not
take Semple’s word, in such a case, against that of a man like Dr.
Mackenzie.’
‘Are you going to London, father?’ asked the girl, after a pause.
‘Ay; I suppose so. In the morning.’
‘You will let me go with you?’
‘Nonsense, girl. Of what use could _you_ be?’
‘Not much, perhaps; but we would be company for each other. Oh, father!
I can’t stay here by myself!’
And the old man yielded a somewhat grudging consent.
Late on the following afternoon they arrived in London. Blake had
obtained from his uncle permission to invite them both to Highgate in
the first instance, an invitation which Mr. Lindsay was very unwilling
to accept. He wished to go to an hotel, but Margaret overruled him.
‘They will perhaps be offended if we don’t go; and we need only stay
one night,’ she said.
Old Mr. Blake found it convenient to have one of his ‘attacks,’ as
he rather vaguely called them, and thus avoided his guests entirely,
Hubert was anxious to make some return for the kindness he had received
at Castle Farm; but in spite of his efforts there was a constraint on
the little party which nothing could dissipate. Mr. Lindsay looked and
spoke very much as usual, except that he was very pale, and there was
a stern formality in his manner which forbade any nearer approach. His
rough northern accents sounded harsh and forbidding to the southern
ears of his new acquaintances.
As for Sophy, her colour heightened a little when she was told that
Margaret would accompany her father, and would, for one night at least,
be a guest under Mr. Blake’s roof. She was anxious to see what the girl
was like who had captivated Hubert’s affections--for she felt sure
that something of the kind had occurred. Margaret’s cold pale face,
her severe beauty, her low measured tones, took the English girl by
surprise.
‘She is dressed like a housekeeper,’ was Sophy’s first thought. ‘But
how self-possessed she is, how--how unlike anyone I have ever seen,’
was her second.
Margaret, in spite of her country-made dress and her utter want of
‘style,’ was in no way ridiculous. Her calm proud eyes surveyed her
hostess, till Sophy felt, somehow, that she was the smaller and weaker
creature of the two, and instinctively turned to Hubert for sympathy
and protection.
Before Mr. Lindsay went upstairs for the night Blake tried to say a
word about Alec, whose name had never crossed his father’s lips.
‘I think it will be better, Mr. Blake, if we leave that subject
entirely alone for the present,’ said the old man sternly.
Blake flushed and bit his lip, but made no reply.
‘Is it possible that he believes Alec to be guilty?’ he said to himself
afterwards, with a curious look at his guest’s face.
It was true. The laird was not a man to take an imaginative view of
things. He looked simply at the facts, and in them he read his son’s
condemnation. As for the faith that can go beyond ‘facts,’ the faith
that considers a man’s character to be the most important of all facts,
that can accept a gesture of denial as more potent evidence than the
words of many witnesses, he would have looked upon such a thing as
childish folly. His son had been tempted, probably by Semple. He had
been without true religious principle; and he had fallen. The disgrace
was indelible; it was overwhelming. For him no more would the sun
shine, or the trees put forth their leaves. His gray hairs would indeed
go down with sorrow to the grave.
There was this to be said for him, that he had never known his son. The
two natures were in many points absolutely unlike. Their sympathies
were diverse. Alec had often abstained from expressing his true
opinions, but the old man had nevertheless been quite aware that they
were in many instances the antipodes of his own. Confidence between
them would in any case have been difficult; and events had made it
almost impossible. Alec perhaps did his father less than justice, and
the old man felt bitterly that any one of Alec’s chance acquaintances
knew his son better than he did himself.
It was a relief to everyone when the travellers retired. Sophy, as she
sought her couch, could think of no one but Margaret.
‘An iceberg! A positive iceberg!’ she exclaimed to herself, as she
sat crouching over the tiny fire in her bedroom. ‘Even her brother’s
trouble does not seem to move her in the least. Ah! if I had had
such a brother! And Hubert--can he really love her? If it had been
anyone worthy of him, anyone who could understand and return his warm
affection, I should have been----’
Here Sophy’s candle suddenly went out, and her reflections ended in a
sigh.
Meanwhile, Alec’s naturally buoyant spirits had not failed him. As he
told himself over and over again, he had acted like a fool, with a most
culpable want of care, and it was only natural and fitting that he
should suffer for it. As for the confinement, the cold of his cell,
the mean surroundings, the distasteful food, that mattered little. The
disgrace was the worst of it.
‘My poor father will feel it terribly,’ he said to himself. ‘And even
if by some accident I am acquitted, will men believe me innocent? How
can I hope to rise to a high place in the world’s estimation after
this? Twenty years hence someone will say--There was some queer story
about a will, wasn’t there? He was accused of tampering with one, and
he was tried at the Old Bailey. I know that.’
This was the thought which chilled him, and nearly broke down his
courage. His liberty might be regained; wealth might come in future
years; but his good name, more precious than all--was not that
irretrievably gone?
This gloomy thought was in his mind one morning, when his cell-door
suddenly opened, and his father appeared, with Margaret behind him.
Alec sprang from his seat, and rushed forward with outstretched hands.
‘Father!’ he cried.
But the old man had advanced a step or two, and now stood looking at
his son immovably, his hands resting on the top of his stick.
‘Unhappy boy!’
Alec drew back, his eyes blazing with indignation, unable to speak.
Margaret was seized with a fit of sobbing. It was the only sound in the
cell.
‘And you believe that I did that?’ asked Alec at length, frowning as he
spoke.
The lad’s look and words almost shook the old man’s opinion. Alec
seemed to be taking the part of the accuser.
‘I believe the oath of God’s minister,’ answered Mr. Lindsay. ‘Do
you--dare you, deny it?’
‘Deny it!’ echoed the boy, as, turning his back, he looked up at the
grated window of his cell.
It was well that his father could not see the look of contempt which
was then on his face.
‘Speak, sir! Do you deny your guilt to your own father?’ cried the old
man.
The lad’s manner was irritating him past endurance. Alec did not answer
at once, and Margaret stepped forward.
‘Only say you did not intend to do anything wrong, Alec,’ she said,
laying her hand on her brother’s arm.
‘Why should I say it, when I would not be believed, Maggie?’ he said
in a softer tone. ‘We had better not say any more about it. I am sorry
you should have had such a long journey in winter for nothing,’ he
continued, addressing his father. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
The old man looked at his son without speaking. Was it possible that he
could be speaking the truth? No; he told himself. It was not possible.
And if so, what a consummate hypocrite, what an impudent scoundrel, had
the young man become! And yet he was his son.
The interview lasted a few minutes longer; but nothing further was said
on the subject of Alec’s guilt or innocence, till the visitors were on
the point of leaving the cell.
‘Alec,’ said the laird in a softer tone than he had yet spoken in,
‘if you cannot confess to me, you may at least confess to God. If we
confess our sins, you know, He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins. But if any restitution is possible it must be made, else there
can be no forgiveness.--Come, Margaret, I think we had better be going
now.’
And the old man turned to leave the cell, a hundred-fold more sad at
heart than he had been when he entered it.
Alec stood still, in cold but respectful silence. Margaret, as soon as
his back was turned, threw one arm round her brothers neck; but he did
not respond to her embrace.
‘And you, Maggie? Do you believe this of me?’
‘Not--not if you say you did not intend to do wrong, Alec. But if
you had done it, I would have loved you all the same,’ she said in a
hurried whisper.
‘Thank you, Maggie. But--never mind. Good-bye for to-day. Don’t let
father come again, if you can help it.’
In another moment they were gone.
So even Maggie did not quite believe in him. She was not sure. She was
balancing probabilities.
‘And who will believe in my innocence, if my own father does not?’ he
cried aloud, when he found himself alone.
Who indeed? Alec saw, as he had not seen before, the cruel strength
of the very accusation to blast his life. Henceforth an honourable
distinction was impossible for him. In a moment the ambition which,
vague as its shape had been, bad been the life-blood of his soul,
perished within him. He saw the years stretch out before him, without
hope of any second spring. His love was wrecked; his good name was
gone; and, worst of all, there was nothing to live for.
All at once he burst into a wild fit of laughter.
The gaoler came and opened his cell-door to see what was the matter.
‘It’s a queer world this, isn’t it, turnkey?’
‘None the less queer for having _you_ in it,’ said the man, as he shut
the door with a bang, and made the heavy bolts fall into their sockets.