The Clyde was forded by man and horse where ships now ride at anchor;
but the rush of trade, not quite so deep and rapid fifty years since as
now, yet strong and swift, the growth of centuries, was hurrying,
jostling, trampling onward in Jamaica Street and Buchanan Street and
their busy thoroughfares. Within our quarter, however, were stillness
and dimness, the cold, lofty, classic repose of the noble college to
which a professor's house was in immediate vicinity.
The room, large, low-roofed, with small, peaked windows, had not been
built in modern times. The furniture was almost in keeping: roomy
settees, broad, plain, ribbed-back chairs, with faded worked covers,
the task of fingers crumbled into dust, heavy bookcases loaded with
proportionably ponderous or curiously quaint volumes, and mirrors,
with their frames like coffins covered with black velvet and relieved
by gilding.
The only fresh and fragrant thing in the room--ay, or in the house,
where master and mistress and servants were old and withered--was a
young girl seated on a window-seat, her hands lightly crossed, watching
the white clouds in the July sky, white, though nothing else is so in
Glasgow, where the air is heavy with perpetual smoke and vapour.
That girl, too broad-browed and large-eyed for mere youthful beauty, but
with such an arch, delicate, girlish mouth and chin as betokened her a
frank, unsophisticated, merry child after all, was Leslie Bower, the
young daughter and only child of an erudite and venerated professor.
Leslie had no brothers and no sisters, and in a sense she had neither
father nor mother, for Professor Bower was the son, husband, and father
of his books, and he had so mighty a family of these, ancient and
modern, that he had very little time or attention to spare for ties of
the flesh. He was a mild, absent, engrossed old man, flashing into
energy and genius in his own field of learning, but in the world of
ordinary humanity a body without a soul.
Professor Bower married late in life a timid, shrinking English wife,
who, removed from all early ties, and never mingling in Glasgow society,
lapsed into a stillness as profound as his own.
Dr. Bower took little notice of his child; what with duties and studies,
he had no leisure; he read in his slippered morning gown, he read at
meals, he read by his evening lamp; probably, if Mrs. Bower would have
confessed it, he kept a volume under his pillow. No wonder he was a
blear-eyed, poking, muttering old man, for he was much more interested
in Hannibal than in Bonaparte, and regarded Leslie, like the house, the
yearly income, the rector, the students, the janitors, as one of many
abstract facts with which he troubled himself as little as possible.
Mrs. Bower cared for Leslie's health and comfort with scrupulous nervous
exactness, but she was incapable of any other demonstration of regard.
She was as shy and egotistical as poor Louis XVI., and perhaps it would
have demanded as tragic a domestic revolution to have stirred her up to
lively tenderness. Leslie might have been as dubious as Marie Antoinette
of the amount of love entertained for her by her nearest kin, but
curiously, though affectionate and passionate enough to have been the
pure and innocent child of some fiery Jocobin, she had not vexed herself
about this mystery. One sees every day lush purple and rose-flowered
plants growing in unaccountable shade; true, their associates are pale
and drooping, and the growth of the hardier is treacherous, and may
distil poison, but the evil principle is gradual, and after conditions
have been confirmed and matured.
The stronger portion of Leslie's nature, which required abundant and
invigorating food, was slow of development; the lighter side flourished
in the silent, dull house, where nothing else courted the sunbeam. In
her childhood and girlhood, Leslie had gone out to school, and although
always somewhat marked and individual in character, she had companions,
friends, sufficient sympathy and intercourse for an independent, buoyant
nature at the most plastic period of its existence. This stage of life
was but lately left behind; Leslie had not long learnt that now she was
removed from classes and masters, and must in a great measure confine
her acquaintances to those who returned her visits at her father's
house; and as visitors put mamma and papa about, and did not suit their
habits, she must resign her little world, and be almost as quiet and
solitary as her elders. Leslie had just begun to sigh a little for the
old thronged, bustling class-rooms which she had lightly esteemed, and
was active by fits and starts in numerous self-adopted occupations which
could put former ones out of her head, and fill up the great blanks in
her time and thoughts, for she was not inclined to sit down under a
difficulty, and instinctively battled with it in a thousand ways.
Thus Leslie had her flower-painting--few natural flowers she saw, poor
girl--card boxes, worsted vases, eggshell baskets, embroidery pieces,
canary bird, and books--the last greedily devoured. She did not assist
her mother, because although their household was limited, Mrs. Bower's
quiet, methodical plans were perfect, and she gently declined all
interference with her daily round. Neither did Leslie work for her
father, because the professor would as soon have employed her canary
bird. She was not thoughtful and painstaking for the poor, because,
though accustomed to a species of almsgiving, she heard nothing, saw
nothing of nearer or higher association with her neighbours. Yet there
was capacity enough in that heart and brain for good or for evil.
So Leslie sat there, pausing in her sewing, and gazing idly at the sky,
with a girl's quick pensiveness and thick-coming fancies, as she mused.
How blue it was yonder! What glorious clouds! yet the world below was
rather stupid and tiresome, and it was hard to say what people toiled so
arduously for. There were other lands and other people: should she ever
see them? Surely, for she was quite young. She wished they could go in
summer 'down the water,' out of this din and dust, to some coast village
or lonely loch between lofty purple mountains, such as she had seen when
with Mrs. Elliot; papa might spare a few weeks, people no richer did;
they had no holidays, and it was so hot and close, and always the same.
But she supposed she must be contented, and would go away to cool and
compose herself in the crypt of their own cathedral. How grand it was;
how solemn the aisles and arches on every side, like forest trees; and
then the monuments--what stories she invented for them! St. Mungo's
Well! St. Mungo, austere, yet beneficent; with bare feet, cowled head,
scarred back, and hardest of all, swept and garnished heart, with his
fruitful blessing, 'Let Glasgow flourish.' What would St. Mungo think
now of the city of the tree, the fish, and the bell?
This hoar, venerable, beautiful feat of art was to the imprisoned
Glasgow girl as St. Paul's to such another isolated imaginative nature.
There was a knock at the street-door; a very decided application of the
queer, twisted knocker. Leslie roused herself: not a beggar's tap that;
none of the janitors; and this was not Dr. Murdoch's or Dr. Ware's hour:
the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a
man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door was
closed. Leslie started up with pleased surprise,--"Hector Garret of
Otter! he will come upstairs to see us; he will tell us how the country
is looking; he will bring news from Ferndean," and for the next hour she
sat in happy, patient expectation.
Mrs. Bower, a fair, faded, grave woman, came into the room, and sat down
with her needlework in the other window.
"Mamma," exclaimed Leslie, "do you know that Hector Garret of Otter is
downstairs with papa?"
"Yes, Leslie."
"He never fails to ask for us; don't you think we'll see him here
by-and-by?"
"I do not know; it depends upon his engagements."
"I wonder what brings him to Glasgow just now; he must find it so much
more agreeable at home," with a little sigh.
"Leslie, I don't think you have anything to do with that."
"No, certainly; Hector Garret and I are two very different persons."
"Leslie!"
"Well, mamma."
"I wish you would not say Hector Garret; it does not sound proper in a
girl like you."
"I suppose it does not. He must have been a grown-up man when I was a
child. I have caught the habit from papa, but I have not the least
inclination to use the name to his face."
"I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped.
Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man
of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual,
statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types
of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast
of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark,
bright, and variable.
The visitor brought a gift in his hand--a basket of flowers and summer
fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look
politely obliged, and not irrationally elated.
"So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower--wild roses
and hawthorn too--I like so much to have them, though they wither very
soon. I dare say they grew where
'Fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance.'
(Burns was becoming famous, and Leslie had picked up the lines
somewhere.) And the strawberries, oh, they must be from Ferndean."
The bearer nodded and smiled.
"I knew it by instinct," and Leslie began eating them like a tempted
child, and stained her pretty lips. "Those old rows on each side of the
summer-house where papa first learnt his lessons--I wonder if there are
jackdaws there still: won't you have some?"
"No, thank you. What a memory you have, Miss Bower!"
"Ferndean is my Highland hill. When papa is very stiff and helpless from
rheumatism, he talks of it sometimes. It is so long ago; he was so
different then."
Mr. Garret and Mrs. Bower exchanged a few civil words on his journey,
the spring weather, the state of the war, like two taciturn people who
force their speeches; then he became Leslie's property, sat down beside
her, watched her arranging her flowers, helped her a little, and spoke
now and then in answer to her questions, and that was sufficient.
Hector Garret was particularly struck this evening with the incongruity
of Leslie's presence in the Professor's dry, silent, scholastic home,
and with her monotonous, shaded existence, and her want of natural
associations and fitting companionship. He pondered upon her future; he
was well acquainted with her prospects; he knew much better than she did
that the money with which his father had bought up the mortgages on
Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long
ago, and that the miserable annuity upon which the Professor rested
peacefully as a provision for his widow and child, died with the former.
It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own
family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek
porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the
fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the
creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make
her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate
of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the
epistles were for the benefit of the world at large, and destined to
descend to future generations of barbarians.
What a frank, single-hearted young girl she seemed to Hector
Garret--intelligent, capable of comprehending him in a degree, amusing
him with her similes and suggestions; pretty, too, as one of those wild
roses or pinks that she prized so highly, though she wore a sober,
green, flowered silk dress. He should like to see her in a white gown.
He supposed that was not a convenient town wear. Pope had unmasked
women, but he could not help thinking that a fresh, simple, kind young
girl would be rather a pleasant object of daily encounter. She would
grow older, of course. That was a pity; but still she would be
progressing into an unsophisticated, cordial, contented woman, whom
servants would obey heartily--to whom children would cling. Even men had
a gush of tenderness for these smiling, unobtrusive, humble mothers; and
best so in the strain and burden of this life.
Leslie knew nothing of these meditations. She only understood Hector
Garret as a considerate friend, distinguished personally, and gifted
mentally--for her father set great store upon him--but, unlike the gruff
or eager servants to whom she was accustomed, condescending to her
youth and ignorance, and with a courtesy the nearest to high-breeding
she had ever met. She was glad to see Hector Garret, even if he did not
bring a breath of the country with him. She parted from him with a sense
of loss--a passing sadness that hung upon her for an hour or two, like
the vapour on the river, which misses the green boughs and waving woods,
and sighs sluggishly past wharfs and warehouses.
It was a still greater surprise to Leslie when Hector Garret came again
the next evening. He had never been with them on two successive days
before. She supposed he had gone back to Ayrshire, although he had not
distinctly referred to his speedy return. But he was here, and Leslie
entertained him as usual.
"Should you not like to see Ferndean?" inquired Hector Garret.
"Don't speak of it," Leslie cautioned him, soberly; "it would be far too
great happiness for this world."
"Why, what sort of dismal place do you think the world?"
"Too good a place for you and me," Leslie answered evasively, and with a
touch of fun.
"But this is the very season for Ferndean and Otter, when the pasture is
gay as a garden, and you can have boating every day in the creeks, more
sheltered than the moorland lochs."
The tears came into Leslie's eyes.
"I think it is unkind of you, Mr. Garret, to tempt me with such
pictures," she answered, half pettishly.
"I mean to be kind," he responded quickly. "I may err, but I can take
refuge in my intentions. You may see Ferndean and Otter, if you can
consent to go there, and dwell there as a grave man's friend and wife."
Leslie started violently, and the blood rushed over her face.
"I beg your pardon, Sir, but you don't mean it?"
"I do mean it, Leslie, as being the best for both of us; and I ask you
plainly and directly to marry me: if you agree, I hope and trust that
you will never regret it."
Leslie trembled very much. She said afterwards that she pinched her arm
to satisfy herself that she was awake, but she was not quite overcome.
"I was never addressed so before. I do not know what to say. You are
very good, but I am not fit."
He interrupted her--not with vows and protestations, but resolutely and
convincingly.
"I am the best judge of your fitness,--but you must judge for yourself
also. I am certain of your father's and mother's acquiescence, so I do
not mention them. But do not hurry; take time, consult your own heart;
consider the whole matter. I will not press for your decision. I will
wait days, weeks. I will go down to Otter in the meantime, if you prefer
it. But if you do say yes, remember, dear Leslie, you confer upon me the
greatest boon that a woman can bestow on a man, and I think I am capable
of appreciating it."
He spoke with singular impartiality, but without reassuring his hearer.
Leslie looked helplessly up to him, excited and distressed.
He smiled a little, and sighed a brief sigh.
"You are not satisfied. You are too candid and generous. You wish me to
take my refusal at once. You feel that I am too old, too dull to
presume--"
"Oh, no, no," Leslie exclaimed, seeing herself convicted of terrible
selfishness and conceit, while her heart was throbbing even painfully
with humility and gratitude. "You have done me a great honour, and if
you would not be disappointed--if you would bear with me--if you are not
deceiving yourself in your nobleness--I should be so happy to go to
Ferndean."
He thanked her eloquently, and talked to her a little longer, kindly and
affectionately, and then he offered to seek her father; and left her to
her agitated reflections. What a fine, dignified man he looked! Could it
be possible that this was her lot in life? And the very sun which had
risen upon her planning a walk with Mary Elliot next week, was yet
streaming upon her poor pots of geraniums on the dusty window-sill. She
quitted her seat, and began to walk quickly up and down.
"Leslie, you are shaking the room." Mamma had been in the further window
with her sewing all the time.
Leslie stole behind the brown window-curtain, fluttering her hand among
the folds.
"Leslie, you are pulling that curtain awry."
"I cannot help it, mamma."
"Why not, child? Are you ill?"
"Yes--no, mamma. I don't know what to think--I can't think. But Hector
Garret has asked me to be his wife."
Mrs. Bower's needle dropped from her fingers. She stared at her
daughter. She rose slowly.
"Impossible, Leslie," she observed.
Leslie laughed hysterically.
"Yes, indeed. It was very strange, but I heard every word."
"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"
Mrs. Bower had never so cross-examined her daughter in her life; but
Leslie was not disturbed or vexed by her incredulity.
"Quite certain. I know it was only yesterday that you scolded me for
taking liberties with his name; but he was perfectly serious, and he
has gone to tell papa."
Mrs. Bower gazed wistfully on Leslie, and a faint red colour rose in
her cheek, while she interlaced her fingers nervously.
"Leslie," she asked again, in a shaking voice, "do you know what you
are doing?"
Leslie looked frightened.
"Is it so very terrible, mamma? I should possibly have married some
day--most girls mean to do it; and only think of Ferndean and Otter.
Besides, there is nobody I could like so well as Hector Garret, I am
quite sure, although I little guessed he cared so much for me;" and
Leslie's eye's fell, and a sunny, rosy glow mantled over her whole face,
rendering it very soft and fair.
"I see it is to be, Leslie. May it be for your welfare, my dear;" and
her mother stooped abruptly, and kissed the young, averted cheek.
Leslie was awed. She dreaded that her father would be equally moved,
and then she did not know how she could stand it. But she might have
spared herself the apprehension; for when the Professor shuffled in he
sat down as usual, fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the
most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his
lecture by twenty minutes--"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself
notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event
of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the
rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a
moment, he observed parenthetically, as he turned a page--"Child! you
have my approval of a union with Hector Garret--an odd fancy, but that
is no business of ours,"--dropped his eyes again on his volume, and made
no further allusion to the subject for the rest of the evening--no, nor
ever again, of his own free will. Hector Garret assailed him on
preliminaries, his wife patiently waylaid and besieged him for the
necessary funds, acquaintances congratulated him--he was by compulsion
drawn more than once from roots and æsthetics; but left to himself, he
would have assuredly forgotten his daughter's wedding-day, as he had
done that of her baptism.
Leslie recovered from the stunning suddenness of her fate, and awoke
fully to its brightness. To go down to Ayrshire and dwell there among
hills and streams, and pure heather-scented air, like any shepherdess;
to be the nearest and dearest to Hector Garret:--already the
imaginative, warm-hearted girl began to raise him into a divinity.
Leslie was supremely content, she was gay and giddy even with present
excitement; with the pretty bustle of being so important and so
occupied--she whose whole time lately had been vacant and idle--so
willing to admire her new possessions, so openly elated with their
superiority, and not insensible to the fact that all these prominent
obtrusive cares were but little superfluous notes of the great symphony
upon which she had entered, and whose infinitely deeper, fuller, higher
tones she would learn well, by-and-by.
Leslie Bower was the personification of joy, and no one meddled with her
visions. Hector Garret was making his preparations at Otter; and when
Leslie sang as she stitched, and ran lightly up and down, only the
servants in the kitchen laid their heads together, and confided to each
other that "never did they see so daffin' a bride; Miss Leslie should
ken that a greetin' bride's a happy bride!" But no one told Leslie--no
one taught her the tender meaning of the wise old proverb--no one warned
her of the realities of life, so much sadder, so much holier, purer,
more peaceful than any illusion. Her mother had relapsed into her
ordinary calmness, rather wounding Leslie's perceptions when she allowed
herself to think of it, for she did not read the lingering assiduity
that was so intent it might have been employed upon her shroud. And
there was no one else--no; Leslie was quite unaware that her gladness
was ominous.
Only the shadow of a warning crossed Leslie's path of roses, and she
disregarded it. Her confidence in Hector Garret and in life remained
unbounded.
Leslie had gone to the best known of her early companions, her cup
brimming over in the gracious privilege of begging Mary Elliot to be
her bridesmaid. The Elliots had been kind to her, and had once taken her
to their cheerful country-house; and now Mary was to witness the
ceremony, and Hector Garret had said that she might, if she pleased, pay
Leslie a long visit at Otter.
Mary Elliot was a little older, a little more experienced in womanly
knowledge than Leslie.
"How strange it sounds that you should be married so soon, Leslie, from
your old house, where we thought you buried. We believed that you must
lead a single life, unless your father made a pet of one of his
students: and then you must have waited until he left college."
"It is the reverse. I have no time to lose," nodded Leslie; "only
Hector Garret is not old-looking. I don't believe that he has a
grey hair in his head. He is a far handsomer man than Susan Cheyne's
sister's husband."
"I know it; he was pointed out to me in the street. Is he very fond of
you, Leslie?"
"I suppose--a little, or he would not have me."
"Does he flatter you, pretend that you are a queen, say all manner of
fine things to you? I should like to be enlightened."
"No, no, Mary; real men are not like men in books--and he is not
foolish."
"But it is not foolish in a lover. They are all out of their
senses--blinded by admiration and passion."
"Perhaps; but Hector Garret is a clever man, only he speaks when he is
spoken to, and does not forget you when out of sight. And do you know,
I have been used to clever people, and decidedly prefer to look up to
a man?"
"What does he call you, Leslie?"
"Why, Leslie, to be sure, or Miss Bower. You would not have him say Mrs.
Garret yet?" And Leslie covered her face and laughed again, and reddened
to the tips of her fingers.
"Not 'Bonnie Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the
echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears
and would wilfully repeat, "Winsome Mary," "Little Woman," "Witch!"
"No," Leslie replied, with honest frankness, "that would be speaking
nonsense; and if Hector Garret thinks nonsense that is bad enough."
"Do you remember how we talked sometimes of our husbands?"
"Yes, I do. They were all to be heroes."
"And you were to be courted on bended knees. Yes, Leslie, solicited
again and again; and when you yielded at last, it should be such an act
of grace that the poor fellow would be half mad with delight."
"I was mad myself. I was full of some song or bit of poetry. I tell you
again, Mary, if you have not found it out for yourself, real life is not
like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait
patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong
horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and
rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him
to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and
mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not
enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silent couple. They have
been very kind to me all my life, and I ought to be glad that they will
not miss me much. But although it was wrong, I have often felt a little
forlorn, and been tempted to have bad, discontented thoughts all by
myself. However, that is over, and I hope I'm going to be a good and
sensible woman now. And, Mary, I am so anxious to have your opinion upon
my crimson pelisse, because mamma does not profess to be a judge; and I
cannot be certain that it is proper merely on a mantua-maker's word and
my own taste. I would like to do Hector Garret credit; not that I can
really do so in any eyes but his own."