"Hillo, bantam!" exclaimed Mr Cupples, to Alec entering his garret
within an hour of his arrival in his old quarters, and finding the soul
of the librarian still hovering in the steam of his tumbler, like one
of Swedenborg's damned over the odour of his peculiar hell. As he spoke
he emptied the glass, the custom of drinking from which, instead of
from the tumbler itself--rendering it impossible to get drunk all at
once--is one of the atonements offered by the Scotch to their tutelar
god--Propriety.--"Come awa'. What are ye stan'in' there for, as gin ye
warna at hame," he added, seeing that Alec lingered on the threshold.
"Sit doon. I'm nae a'thegither sorry to see ye."
"Have you been to the country, Mr Cupples?" asked Alec, as he took a
chair.
"The country! Na, I haena been i' the country. I'm a toon-snail. The
country's for calves and geese. It's ower green for me. I like the gray
stanes--weel biggit, to haud oot the cauld. I jist reverse the opingon
o' the auld duke in Mr Shackspere;--for this my life
'Find trees in tongues, its running brooks in books,
Stones in sermons,---'
and I canna gang on ony farther wi' 't. The last's true ony gait. I
winna gie ye ony toddy though."
"I dinna want nane."
"That's richt. Keep to that negation as an anchor o' the soul, sure and
steadfast. There's no boddom to the sea ye'll gang doon in gin ye cut
the cable that hauds ye to that anchor. Here's to ye!"
And again Mr Cupples emptied his glass.
"Hoo are ye prepared for yer mathematics?" he resumed.
"Middlin' only," answered Alec.
"I was doobtin' that. Sma' preparation does weel eneuch for Professor
Fraser's Greek; but ye'll fin' it's anither story wi' the mathematics.
Ye maun jist come to me wi' them as ye did wi' the Greek."
"Thank you, Mr Cupples," said Alec heartily. "I don't know how to repay
you."
"Repay me! I want nae repayment. Only spier nae questons at me, and
gang awa whan I'm drunk."
After all his summer preparation, Alec was still behind in mathematics;
for while, with a distinct object in view, he was capable of
much--without one, reading was a weariness to him. His medical studies,
combining, as they did, in their anatomical branch, much to be learned
by the eye and the hand with what was to be learned from books,
interested him more and more.
One afternoon, intent upon a certain course of investigation, he
remained in the dissecting room after the other students had gone, and
worked away till it grew dark. He then lighted a candle, and worked on.
The truth was unfolding itself gently and willingly. At last, feeling
tired, he laid down his scalpel, dropped upon a wooden chair, and, cold
as it was, fell fast asleep. When he awoke, the candle was _bobbing_ in
its socket, alternately lighting and shadowing the dead man on the
table. Strange glooms were gathering about the bottles on the shelves,
and especially about one corner of the room, where--but I must not
particularize too much. It must be remembered that he had awaked
suddenly, in a strange place, and with a fitful light. He confessed to
Mr Cupples that he had felt a little uncomfortable--not frightened, but
_eerie_. He was just going to rise and go home, when, as he stretched
out his hand for his scalpel, the candle sunk in darkness, and he lost
the guiding glitter of the knife. At the same moment, he caught a
doubtful gleam of two eyes looking in at him from one of the windows.
That moment the place became insupportable with horror. The vague sense
of an undefined presence turned the school of science into a
charnel-house. He started up, hurried from the room, feeling as if his
feet took no hold of the floor and his back was fearfully exposed,
locked the door, threw the key upon the porter's table, and fled. He
did not recover his equanimity till he found himself in the long narrow
street that led to his lodgings, lighted from many little shop-windows
in stone gable and front.
By the time he had had his tea, and learned a new proposition of
Euclid, the fright seemed to lie far behind him. It was not so far as
he thought, however, for he started to his feet when a sudden gust of
wind shook his windows. But then it was a still frosty night, and such
a gust was not to be expected. He looked out. Far above shone the
stars.
"How they sparkle in the frost!" he said, as if the frost reached them.
But they did look like the essential life that makes snow-flakes and
icy spangles everywhere--they were so like them, only they were of
fire. Even snow itself must have fire at the heart of it.--All was
still enough up there.
Then he looked down into the street, full of the comings and goings of
people, some sauntering and staring, others hastening along. Beauchamp
was looking in at the window of a second-hand book-shop opposite.
Not being able to compose himself again to his studies, he resolved, as
he had not called on Mr Fraser for some time, and the professor had not
been at the class that day, to go and inquire after him now.
Mr Fraser lived in the quadrangle of the college; but in the mood Alec
was in, nothing would do him so much good as a walk in the frost. He
was sure of a welcome from the old man; for although Alec gave but
little attention to Greek now, Mr Fraser was not at all dissatisfied
with him, knowing that he was doing his best to make himself a good
doctor. His friendliness towards him had increased; for he thought he
saw in him noble qualities; and now that he was an old man, he
delighted to have a youth near him with whose youthfulness he could
come into harmonious contact. It is because the young cannot recognize
the youth of the aged, and the old will not acknowledge the experience
of the young, that they repel each other.
Alec was shown into the professor's drawing-room. This was unusual. The
professor was seated in an easy-chair, with one leg outstretched before
him.
"Excuse me, Mr Forbes," he said, holding out his left hand without
rising. "I am laid up with the gout--I don't know why. The port wine my
grandfather drunk, I suppose. _I_ never drink it. I'm afraid it's old
age. And yon's my nurse.--Mr Forbes, your cousin, Kate, my dear."
Alec started. There, at the other side of the fire, sat a girl, half
smiling and half blushing as she looked up from her work. The candles
between them had hid her from him. He advanced, and she rose and held
out her hand. He was confused; she was perfectly collected, although
the colour rose a little more in her cheek. She might have been a year
older than Alec.
"So you are a cousin of mine, Mr Forbes!" she said, when they were all
seated by the blazing fire--she with a piece of plain work in her
hands, he with a very awkward nothing in his, and the professor
contemplating his swathed leg on the chair before him.
"So your uncle says," he answered, "and I am very happy to believe him.
I hope we shall be good friends."
Alec was recovering himself.
"I hope we shall," she responded, with a quick, shy, asking glance from
her fine eyes.
Those eyes were worth looking into, if only as a study of colour. They
were of many hues marvellously blended. I think grey and blue and brown
and green were all to be found in them. Their glance rather discomposed
Alec. He had not learned before that ladies' eyes are sometimes very
discomposing. Yet he could not keep his from wandering towards them;
and the consequence was that he soon lost the greater part of his
senses. After sitting speechless for some moments, and feeling as if he
had been dumb for as many minutes, he was seized by a horrible
conviction that if he remained silent an instant longer, he would be
driven to do or say something absurd. So he did the latter at once by
bursting out with the stupid question,
"What are you working at?"
"A duster," she answered instantly--this time without looking up.
Now the said duster was of the finest cambric; so that Alec could not
help seeing that she was making game of him. This banished his shyness,
and put him on his mettle.
"I see," he said, "when I ask questions, you--"
"Tell lies," she interposed, without giving him time even to hesitate;
adding,
"Does your mother answer all your questions, Mr Forbes?"
"I believe she does--one way or other."
"Then it is sometimes the other way? Is she nice?"
"Who?" returned Alec, surprised into doubt.
"Your mother."
"She's the best woman in the world," he answered with vehemence, almost
shocked at having to answer such a question.
"Oh! I beg your pardon," returned Kate, laughing; and the laugh curled
her lip, revealing very pretty teeth, with a semi-transparent
pearly-blue shadow in them.
"I am glad she is nice," she went on. "I should like to know her.
Mothers are not _always_ nice. I knew a girl at school whose mother
wasn't nice at all."
She did not laugh after this childish speech, but let her face settle
into perfect stillness--sadness indeed, for a shadow came over the
stillness. Mr Fraser sat watching the two with his amused old face, one
side of it twitching in the effort to suppress the smile which sought
to break from the useful half of his mouth. His gout could not have
been very bad just then.
"I see, Katie, what that long chin of yours is thinking," he said.
"What is my chin thinking, uncle?" she asked.
"That uncles are not always nice either. They snub little girls,
sometimes, don't they?"
"I know one who _is_ nice, all except one naughty leg."
She rose, as she said this, and going round to the back of his chair,
leaned over it, and kissed his forehead. The old man looked up to her
gratefully.
"Ah, Katie!" he said, "you may make game of an old man like me. But
don't try your tricks on Mr Forbes there. He won't stand them."
Alec blushed. Kate went back to her seat, and took up her duster again.
Alec was a little short-sighted, though he had never discovered it till
now. When Kate leaned over her uncle's chair, near which he was
sitting, he saw that she was still prettier than he had thought her
before.--There are few girls who to a short-sighted person look
prettier when they come closer; the fact being that the general intent
of the face, which the generalizing effect of the shortness of the
sight reveals, has ordinarily more of beauty in it than has yet been
carried out in detail; so that, as the girl approaches, one face seems
to melt away, and another, less beautiful, to dawn up through it.
But, as I have said, this was not Alec's experience with Kate; for,
whatever it might indicate, she looked prettier when she came nearer.
He found too that her great mass of hair, instead of being, as he had
thought, dull, was in reality full of glints and golden hints, as if
she had twisted up a handful of sunbeams with it in the morning, which,
before night, had faded a little, catching something of the duskiness
and shadowiness of their prison. One thing more he saw--that her
hand--she rested it on the back of the dark chair, and so it had caught
his eye--was small and white; and those were all the qualities Alec was
as yet capable of appreciating in a hand. Before she got back to her
seat, he was very nearly in love with her. I suspect that those
generally who fall in love at first sight have been in love before. At
least such was Romeo's case. And certainly it was not Alec's. Yet I
must confess, if he had talked stupidly before, he talked worse now;
and at length went home with the conviction that he had made a great
donkey of himself.
As he walked the lonely road, and the street now fast closing its
windows and going to sleep, he was haunted by a very different vision
from that which had accompanied him a few hours ago. Then it was the
dead face of a man, into which his busy fancy had reset the living eyes
that he had seen looking in at the window of the dissecting room; now
it was the lovely face of his new-found cousin, possessing him so that
he could fear nothing. Life had cast out death. Love had cast out fear.
But love had cast out more. For he found, when he got home, that he
could neither read nor think. If Kate could have been _conscious_ of
its persistent intrusion upon Alec's thoughts, and its constant
interruption of his attempts at study, she would have been ashamed of
that pretty face of hers, and ready to disown it for its forwardness.
At last, he threw his book to the other end of the room, and went to
bed, where he found it not half so difficult to go to sleep as it had
been to study.
The next day things went better; for he was not yet so lost that a
night's rest could do him no good. But it was fortunate that there was
no Greek class, and that he was not called up to read Latin that day.
For the anatomy, he was in earnest about that; and love itself, so long
as its current is not troubled by opposing rocks, will not disturb the
studies of a real student--much.
As he left the dissecting-room, he said to himself that he would just
look in and see how Mr Fraser was. He was shown into the professor's
study.
Mr Fraser smiled as he entered with a certain grim comicality which
Alec's conscience interpreted into: "This won't do, my young man."
"I hope your gout is better to-day, sir," he said, sending his glance
wide astray of his words.
"Yes, I thank you, Mr Forbes," answered Mr Fraser, "it is better. Won't
you sit down?"
Warned by that smile, Alec was astute enough to decline, and presently
took his leave. As he shut the study door, however, he thought he would
just peep into the dining-room, the door of which stood open opposite.
There she was, sitting at the table, writing.
"Who can that letter be to?" thought Alec. But it was early days to be
jealous.
"How do you do, Mr Forbes?" said Kate, holding out her hand.
Could it be that he had seen her only yesterday? Or was his visual
memory so fickle that he had forgotten what she was like? She was so
different from what he had been fancying her!
The fact was merely this--that she had been writing to an old friend,
and her manner for the time, as well as her expression, was affected by
her mental proximity to that friend;--so plastic--so fluent even--was
her whole nature. Indeed Alec was not long in finding out that one of
her witcheries was, that she was never the same. But on this the first
occasion, the alteration in her bewildered him.
"I am glad to find your uncle better," he said.
"Yes.--You have seen him, then?"
"Yes. I was very busy in the dissecting-room, till--"
He stopped; for he saw her shudder.
"I beg your pardon," he hastened to substitute.--"We are so used to
those things, that--"
"Don't say a word more about it, please," she said hastily. Then, in a
vague kind of way--"Won't you sit down?"
"No, thank you. I must go home," answered Alec, feeling that she did
not want him. "Good night," he added, advancing a step.
"Good night, Mr Forbes," she returned in the same vague manner, and
without extending her hand.
Alec checked himself, bowed, and went with a feeling of mortification,
and the resolution not to repeat his visit too soon.
She interfered with his studies notwithstanding, and sent him wandering
in the streets, when he ought to have been reading at home. One bright
moonlight night he found himself on the quay, and spying a boat at the
foot of one of the stairs, asked the man in it if he was ready for a
row. The man agreed. Alec got in, and they rowed out of the river, and
along the coast to a fishing village where the man lived, and whence
Alec walked home. This was the beginning of many such boating
excursions made by Alec in the close of this session. They greatly
improved his boatmanship, and strengthened his growing muscles. The end
of the winter was mild, and there were not many days unfit for the
exercise.