A TURNING-POINT.
The hay-harvest was over, and the corn-harvest had not begun, so there
was a comparatively ‘slack time’ at the farm. In a month, or less,
every man and woman about the place, with probably two or three stray
Irish labourers, would be busy with the sickle, or ‘binding,’ from
early morning till late into the twilight; but for the present there
was a period of repose.
Alec was sitting in the parlour with his father and sister. He had been
at home, rather against his will, since the beginning of May. He was
now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, strikingly handsome in feature,
but rather awkward in limb--educated, so far as a sufficiency of
Latin, Greek, and mathematics was concerned, but entirely ignorant of
modern languages and history, and almost as ignorant of the world and
human life as he had been when he first went to College. His winters
had generally been spent in the society of his friend Cameron (who
had at last won the desire of his heart, by being appointed assistant
to the Professor of Surgery), and Cameron’s influence upon him was
stronger than he had any idea of. In heart and in experience Alec
was still a boy, and he was, boy like, letting his attention wander
from his volume of Spinoza to dream an impossible dream, when he was
recalled to the earth by the sound of his father’s voice.
‘I met Mr. Dickson to-day, Alec.’
‘Yes?’
‘He tells me the Presbytery meets next week. Hadn’t you better be
getting ready for the examination? I suppose there is one before you go
to the Hall?’
Alec was silent for a moment. He understood perfectly that the subject
had been introduced in a half-indirect way, so as to throw upon him the
burden of beginning the attack, as it were; and he understood, too,
that the time had come for this question being settled.
‘I thought I had told you, father, that I am not going to the Free
Church Hall.’
‘Margaret, will you leave us alone for a few minutes?’ said Mr.
Lindsay, and his daughter gathered up her work and left the room.
‘So you have been deceiving us all this time?’ said the laird in a low
tone, fixing his cold, stern eyes upon his son.
‘I have never deceived you!’ burst out the young man hotly.
‘When I agreed to furnish the means for your going to College,’ said
the laird slowly, ‘I certainly understood that you were thinking of the
ministry. What other reason was there for your staying here in idleness
since you left College? And why, in that case, did you go to College
at all? You have no wish to be a doctor, have you? Answer me, sir!’
‘No; I have not.’
‘Then you _have_ been deceiving me, I see.’
With a great effort Alec restrained himself.
‘When I first went to Glasgow,’ he began, ‘I said I wanted to be
educated. I said nothing of becoming a minister; and I have never given
you any reason to suppose that I intended doing anything of the kind.’
‘You knew very well, sir, that it was not only my expectation, but my
earnest desire, and that I never would have consented to throw away so
much money on your education, merely to try to turn you into a fine
gentleman.’
Alec flushed up, opened his lips, and closed them again without
speaking. He could not tell his father that the insinuation conveyed by
his words was untrue.
‘Ah, Alec!’ pursued the old man, in a softer tone, ‘think what an
opportunity you are throwing away! An opportunity that will never
come again. What life could be higher or nobler than that spent in
saving souls?’ To this Alec made no reply. ‘What are all the honours
and wealth of the world compared to being the instrument of saving one
soul?’ asked Mr. Lindsay.
‘But I have no call to the ministry,’ said Alec at length.
‘Have you sought for a call, my boy?’ asked his father. ‘Calls are not
vouchsafed to those who do not listen for the summoning voice. Have you
sought the guidance of God in this matter? Pray, my son, pray that you
may be led aright. And now, tell Margaret and the servants to come to
worship.’
Alec knew that his father meant to be kind--if only he would submit.
He knew that the last words which the laird had spoken to him were
sincere, but they grated upon him more unpleasantly than even the
unjust and harsh things which his father had said at the beginning of
the conversation. He resented this interference in the affairs of his
own heart. He could see no rule or method of distinguishing between a
Divine call and a suggestion of his own inclination. He was, in fact,
out of harmony with the religious system in which he had been brought
up. Sometimes he was willing to believe that the fault was entirely in
himself; at other times he felt that the whole system was cold, hard,
unlovely, and never free from a strong tendency to cant; but he was
quite at a loss to know what he would have put in its place.
That evening Margaret contrived to see her brother alone before she
went to bed. She came up to him in silence, took his hand in one of
hers, and rested her other arm upon his shoulder.
‘Alec,’ she said, ‘have you quite set your heart against being a
minister?’
‘That’s not a fair way to put it, Maggie,’ said he. ‘Unless one’s heart
is naturally bent upon that calling, I don’t think one should follow
it.’
‘But think of the good you might do!’
‘Oh, that is such stuff, Maggie! Look at the ministers about here:
what particular good do they do--Mr. Johnstone, or Mr. Fergus, or Mr.
Simpson, or any of them? On Saturdays they write (or don’t write) their
sermons. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays they
read, or potter about their gardens, or gossip with the neighbours.’
‘They visit the sick,’ put in Margaret.
‘One afternoon a week is enough for that.’
‘And they visit all their people regularly.’
‘Yes; and some of them simply pay calls, and the zealous ones give away
tracts and ask how your soul is. A piece of impertinence!’
‘Ah, Alec, you are sadly changed,’ said Margaret, withdrawing her arm
from her brother’s shoulder.
‘At any rate, I admit I am not fit to be a minister.’
‘It will grieve father very much. He has set his heart upon it.’
‘I can’t help that. I can’t do a thing like that--live a lie my whole
life through--to please him.’
Margaret kissed her brother’s cheek and left him. She had a feeling
that he and she were far apart in religious matters, and she was
right in her belief. Alec Lindsay had read modern philosophy; he had
been taught at College that ‘free-thought’ was a man’s inalienable
inheritance, and that it was a species of intellectual suicide to
stifle a doubt. In the Calvinism he had learned in childhood there
was plenty of dogma certainly; but then he did not like the dogma,
and he saw no particular reason for believing it. He was, in fact, a
Theist; but he gave his father no hint that his religious opinions
had undergone a change. He knew very well that if he had so much as
expressed a doubt as to the soundness of the Calvinist doctrine of
Predestination, or the lawfulness of taking a walk or reading a novel
on a Sunday, his father would have been shocked beyond expression, and
would first have stormed at him, and then mourned him as one who had
already sold himself to the Evil One.
Nothing more passed between father and son for some days, and then Mr.
Lindsay asked Alec point-blank whether he was going to devote himself
to ‘the ministry of the Gospel.’
‘No, father; I have no inclination of that kind, and I think that
without a very strong disposition to such a life it would be wrong to
begin it.’
The elder man fixed a cold look on his son, but made no reply.
‘Don’t you think I am right in saying so?’ asked Alec.
The laird continued to gaze at his son without speaking, and Alec
abruptly left the room.
About a week afterwards Alec was startled by his father saying to him
one morning:
‘I have just had a note from your uncle James. He is willing to take
you into his office, and give you a small salary. The sooner you can
get ready to go the better.’
‘But I have no taste for a business life. I am not fitted for it, and
I----’
‘Perhaps you will tell me what you _are_ fit for,’ cried the old laird.
‘Just understand this. If you choose to reject this offer, I shall have
no more to say to you. You may take your own way, and I wash my hands
of you. It seems to me you are bent on throwing away your chances.’
‘Surely, sir, it is better to follow one’s own inclination in choosing
a profession?’
‘And what may be your inclination?’
‘I should like to be a lawyer.’
‘And who is to support you while you are studying law?’
‘Others have begun as poor as I, and have risen to the top of the
tree.’
‘It is madness--sheer madness!’ exclaimed the laird, rising and pacing
up and down the room.
‘I can begin as clerk in an office,’ said Alec.
‘You shall do nothing of the kind!’ shouted his father. ‘You would
know, if you knew anything at all about it, that you would not be paid
while your articles were running. Perhaps you would like to be an
advocate?’[1]
Alec was silent; for he knew that if he confessed that his real wish
was to go to the bar, he would only the more effectually rouse his
father’s anger.
‘Give me a week to think it over,’ he said at length. ‘It is not fair
to ask me to decide a question that will influence the whole course of
my life at a moment’s notice.’
To this his father made no reply; and Alec left the house, and wandered
off to his old quarters at the ruined castle to hold counsel with
himself.
At the end of an hour’s thinking he had resolved to reject his uncle’s
offer. He saw quite plainly that if he accepted it he would be bound
down for life to the narrow life of a Glasgow merchant--if, indeed,
he had the chance of ever becoming more than an underling. He must
give up the life of a student, for he knew that was practically
incompatible with ‘getting on in business.’ And he must say good-bye to
his ambitions. Rather than become a money-getting machine like one of
the men he had met at his uncle’s table, he would go back to teaching.
Then, at least, he could keep up his reading, and continue to attend
classes at College.
It was, no doubt, a foolish decision to make. But Alec could not help
thinking that he could do better with himself than spend the next
few years of his life as a clerk in his uncle’s oil-works. He was
determined to try to climb the ladder of Fortune, even if he should be
thrown down and crushed under the feet of the crowd.
‘After all,’ he said to himself, as he rose from his seat and slowly
made his way back to the farm--‘after all, my life is my own. I can but
try. I would rather make a struggle to rise, and fail, than not make
the attempt. But I don’t mean to fail. The question is, how can I get
my foot on the first rung of the ladder? I haven’t five pounds in the
world.’
That was the difficulty; but next day a light was thrown on his path,
and that from a quarter from which he had never expected it to come.
In the afternoon his cousin Semple turned up at the farm. This young
man did not at all like the idea of his clever cousin coming to the
oil-works. At present he was the only relative of Mr. James Lindsay in
the place; and he thought it tolerably certain that at the old man’s
death the concern would pass into his hands. If another nephew were
introduced, his own prospects might be seriously injured; and so he
had thought it worth while to run down to the farm, and see whether he
could not secretly dissuade Alec from taking this step.
Of course he said nothing about the matter in the presence of Mr.
Lindsay or Margaret; and he could not help fancying that the keen eyes
of the old laird were watching him as if to divine his intention. But
when tea was over, the two young men strolled out together, and Semple
began at once:
‘So you are coming to us next week, I hear, Alec.’
‘How do you know that?’ said the other, with inbred Scotch caution.
‘Oh, Uncle James told me to expect you. Of course you know you’ll have
to begin at the beginning, and I fear you won’t find it very much to
your taste after your College life.’
‘I may as well tell you, Semple, I’ve made up my mind not to go. But
I’m “between the deil and the deep sea.” I don’t know what else I am
to do.’
‘What would you like to do?’ asked Semple.
Secretly he was overjoyed at hearing of this resolution, and he
determined to further it by every means in his power.
‘What I would like to do would be to go to London, and enter the office
of a good firm of solicitors. Between ourselves, Semple, I mean to go
to the bar; but I can’t begin to study in the regular way, because
I’ve no money. I have heard that it’s not a bad plan to go into a
solicitor’s office for awhile, to begin with, to learn the practice.
But I know no one in London--no one in the profession, at least.’
‘Perhaps I could help you there, Alec,’ said the other, after a pause.
‘I wish you could,’ said Alec earnestly.
‘Do you remember a fellow called Beattie? I think he was at College
while you were there.’
‘We didn’t go to the same classes. He was two or three years in advance
of me; but I remember his name very well. A clever fellow, wasn’t he?’
‘Plenty of brains, certainly,’ answered Semple. ‘Well, he had very
much the same ideas as yourself. He went to London, and got into the
office of a firm of solicitors--Hatchett, Small, and Hatchett; and now
he is one of their managing clerks, though I believe he has never got
his articles. Well, we are clients of Hatchetts’. They are carrying on
a big lawsuit for us just now, and I dare say it will be a thousand
pounds in their pocket. I should think they would oblige me in a thing
of that sort; and Beattie, I know, will do what he can for you.’
‘But the difficulty is, they wouldn’t pay me any salary.’
‘I should think they would give you something. You would very soon be
of use to them. They paid Beattie, I know, almost from the first. But
why don’t you go straight to Uncle James, and ask him to give you
something to start you in life?’
Alec shook his head.
‘I’ll see if I can’t manage that for you. He’s a regular old screw.
Five hundred pounds would be nothing to him.’
‘It would make a considerable difference to me,’ said Alec, with a
laugh. ‘You know, Semple, it’s awfully good of you to trouble yourself
about my affairs.’
‘Oh no; not at all.’
‘Yes, it is. It’s exceedingly kind of you. I shall never forget it as
long as I live.’
Semple was rather amused than embarrassed by his cousin’s expressions
of gratitude.
‘If he had tried his best, he couldn’t have suited my book better,’
said he to himself. ‘But I must see what I can do with the old man.’
On reflection, however, he considered that it would be dangerous for
him to approach Mr. James Lindsay himself. The shrewd old gentleman
would be sure, he thought, to see through his motives. On his return
to Glasgow, therefore, he betook himself to Miss Lindsay, and after
telling her that Alec could not, and would not, go into ‘the works,’
he informed her of the plan that was on foot, and wound up by saying
that Alec was such a clever fellow that it was a shame he should miss
his chances for the sake of a little money. Surely his uncle would not
grudge to do that much for him.
‘It strikes me,’ said the old lady, ‘that the lad’s best chance of
making his fortune is to go into his uncle’s office.’
She threw a keen glance at her visitor as she spoke, but Semple bore it
unmoved.
‘I dare say; indeed, I told him so, if I remember right. But he has
made up his mind not to go.’
‘Weel, if he gets the offer of the situation you speak o’, I’ll e’en do
my best wi’ Mr. Lindsay; but it winna be muckle, I doot.’
On this Semple took his leave, and that night he went up to London,
ostensibly on the affairs of the lawsuit. Beattie and he were old
friends, and with his help he managed to convey to Mr. Hatchett the
impression that Mr. James Lindsay would be grievously offended if they
did not oblige him by taking his nephew into their office. It was all
settled in half an hour; and next morning Semple was back in Glasgow.
All Miss Lindsay’s eloquence, however, failed to make a deep impression
on Uncle James. He would give the lad a hundred pounds, and that was
all.
‘The laddie’s a fool,’ said he, ‘a clever fool; and that’s aye the
worst kind. If I were to give him mair, it wad a’ come to the same
thing in the end.’
Alec’s father happened to be from home when the welcome letter arrived
to tell him that the opening he had longed for had been found, and that
the money difficulty had been removed. ‘Don’t say too much in thanking
your uncle,’ wrote Semple. ‘There is nothing he hates like a fuss
being made over his presents; and, after all, there is no doubt you
have a kind of claim upon him.’
This, however, was not the way in which Alec looked at the matter.
Of course he went at once to see his uncle, and thank him, and his
gratitude was so heartfelt that the old man was touched a little.
‘Say nae mair, Alec; say nae mair,’ said he. ‘I hope you’ll do well,
and do us credit; and if there should be a positive necessity for it, I
dare say another hunder might be forthcoming.’
‘I trust it will not be necessary, uncle.’
‘Weel, mony a man has won to the top o’ the tree wi’ less than a hunder
pound in his pouch at the start. Guid-day!’
The difficulty which had seemed so insurmountable had disappeared; and
to Alec it seemed as if the world lay at his feet. True, the parting
with his father would be a painful one; but that could not be helped.
He would do his best to soften the old man’s resentment at this second
frustration of his wishes--and perhaps, he thought, some day his father
would be glad that he had taken his own way, and determined to carve
out his fortune with his own hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A barrister.