Meantime, Annie was passing through a strange experience. It gave her a
dreadful shock to know that such things were reported of her hero, her
champion. They could not be true, else Chaos was come again. But when
no exultant denial of them arrived from the pen of his mother, although
she wrote as she had promised, then she understood by degrees that the
youth had erred from the path, and had denied the Lord that bought him.
She brooded and fancied and recoiled till the thought of him became so
painful that she turned from it, rather than from him, with discomfort
amounting almost to disgust. He had been to her the centre of all that
was noble and true. And he revelled in company of which she knew
nothing except from far-off hints of unapproachable pollution! Her idol
all of silver hue was blackened with the breath of sulphur, and the
world was overspread with the darkness which radiated from it.
In this mood she went to the week-evening service at Mr Turnbull's
chapel. There she sat listless, looking for no help, and caring for
none of the hymns or prayers. At length Mr Turnbull began to read the
story of the Prodigal Son. And during the reading her distress vanished
like snow in the sunshine. For she took for her own the character of
the elder brother, prayed for forgiveness, and came away loving Alec
Forbes more than ever she had loved him before. If God could love the
Prodigal, might she not, ought she not to love him too?--The deepest
source of her misery, though she did not know that it was, had been the
fading of her love to him.
And as she walked home through the dark, the story grew into other
comfort. A prodigal might see the face of God, then! He was no grand
monarch, but a homely father. He would receive her one day, and let her
look in his face.
Nor did the trouble return any more. From that one moment, no feeling
of repugnance ever mingled with her thought of Alec. For such a one as
he could not help repenting, she said. He would be sure to rise and go
back to his Father. She would not have found it hard to believe even,
that, come early, or linger late, no swine-keeping son of the Father
will be able to help repenting at last; that no God-born soul will be
able to go on trying to satisfy himself with the husks that the swine
eat, or to refrain from thinking of his Father's house, and wishing
himself within its walls even in the meanest place; or that such a wish
is prelude to the best robe and the ring and the fatted calf, when the
Father would spend himself in joyous obliteration of his son's past and
its misery--having got him back his very own, and better than when he
went, because more humble and more loving.
When Mrs Forbes came home, she entered into no detail, and was
disinclined to talk about the matter at all, probably as much from
dissatisfaction with herself as with her son, But Annie's heart
blossomed into a quiet delight when she learned that the facts were not
so bad as the reports, and that there was no doubt he would yet live
them all down.
The evil time was drawing nigh, ushered by gentler gales and snowdrops,
when she must be turned out for the spring and summer. She would feel
it more than ever, but less than if her aunt had not explained to her
that she had a right to the shelter afforded her by the Bruces.
Meantime arrived a letter from Mr Cupples.
"Dear Madam,--After all the efforts of Mr Alec, aided by my best
endeavours, but counteracted by the grief of knowing that his cousin,
Miss Fraser, entertained a devoted regard for a worthless class-fellow
of his--after all our united efforts, Mr Alec has not been able to pass
more than two of his examinations. I am certain he would have done
better but for the unhappiness to which I have referred, combined with
the illness of Miss Fraser. In the course of a day or two, he will
return to you, when, if you can succeed, as none but mothers can, in
restoring him to some composure of mind, he will be perfectly able
during the vacation to make up for lost time.
"I am, dear madam, your obedient servant,
"Cosmo Cupples."
Angry with Kate, annoyed with her son, vexed with herself, and
indignant at the mediation of "that dirty vulgar little man," Mrs
Forbes forgot her usual restraint, and throwing the letter across the
table with the words "Bad news, Annie," left the room. But the effect
produced upon Annie by the contents of the letter was very different.
Hitherto she had looked up to Alec as a great strong creature. Her
faith in him had been unquestioning and unbounded. Even his
wrong-doings had not impressed her with any sense of his weakness. But
now, rejected and disgraced, his mother dissatisfied, his friend
disappointed, and himself foiled in the battle of life, he had fallen
upon evil days, and all the woman in Annie rose for his defence. In a
moment they had changed places in the world of her moral imagination.
The strong youth was weak and defenceless: the gentle girl opened the
heart almost of motherhood, to receive and shelter the worn outraged
man. A new tenderness, a new pity took possession of her. Indignant
with Kate, angry with the professors, ready to kiss the hands of Mr
Cupples, all the tenderness of her tender nature gathered about her
fallen hero, and she was more like his wife defending him from _her_
mother. Now she could be something if not to him yet for him. He had
been a "bright particular star" "beyond her sphere," but now the star
lay in the grass, shorn of its beams, and she took it to her bosom.
Two days passed. On the third evening in walked Alec, pale and
trembling, evidently ill, too ill to be questioned. His breathing was
short and checked by pain.
"If I hadn't come at once, mother," he said, "I should have been laid
up there. It's pleurisy, Mr Cupples says."
"My poor boy!"
"Oh! I don't care."
"You've been working too hard, dear."
Alec laughed bitterly.
"I did work, mother; but it doesn't matter. She's dead."
"Who's dead?" exclaimed his mother.
"Kate's dead. And I couldn't help it. I tried hard. And it's all my
fault too. Cupples says she's better dead. But I might have saved her."
He started from the sofa, and went pacing about the room, his face
flushed and his breath coming faster and shorter. His mother got him to
lie down again, and asked no more questions. The doctor came and bled
him at the arm, and sent him to bed.
When Annie saw him worn and ill, her heart swelled till she could
hardly bear the aching of it. She would have been his slave, and she
could do nothing. She must leave him instead. She went to her room, put
on her bonnet and cloak, and was leaving the house when Mrs Forbes
caught sight of her.
"Annie! what _do_ you mean, child? You're not going to leave me?"
"I thought you wouldn't want me any more, ma'am."
"You silly child!"
Annie ran back to her room, thus compromising with a strong inclination
to dance back to it.
When Mr Cupples and Alec had begun to place confidence in each other's
self-denial, they cared less to dog each other.--Alec finding at the
Natural Philosophy examination that he had no chance, gathered his
papers, and leaving the room, wandered away to his former refuge when
miserable, that long desolate stretch of barren sand between the mouths
of the two rivers. Here he wandered till long after the dusk had
deepened into night.--A sound as of one singing came across the links,
and drew nearer and nearer. He turned in the direction of it, for
something in the tones reminded him of Kate; and he almost believed the
song was her nurse's ghostly ballad. But it ceased; and after walking
some distance inland, he turned again towards the sea. The song rose
once more, but now between him and the sea. He ran towards it, falling
repeatedly on the broken ground. By the time he reached the shore, the
singing had again ceased, but presently a wild cry came from seawards,
where the waves far out were still ebbing from the shore. He dashed
along the glimmering sands, thinking he caught glimpses of something
white, but there was no moon to give any certainty. As he advanced he
became surer, but the sea was between. He rushed in. Deeper and deeper
grew the water. He swam. But before he could reach the spot, for he had
taken to the water too soon, with another cry the figure vanished,
probably in one of those deep pits which abound along that shore. Still
he held on, diving many times, but in vain. His vigour was not now what
it had once been, and at length he was so exhausted, that when he came
to himself, lying on his back in the dry sands, he had quite forgotten
how he came there. He would have rushed again into the water, but he
could scarcely move his limbs. He actually crawled part of the way
across the links to the college. There he inquired if Miss Fraser was
in the house. The maid assured him that she was in her own room,
whereupon he went home. But he had scarcely gone before they discovered
that her room was deserted, and she nowhere to be found. The shock of
this news rendered it impossible for him to throw off the effects of
his exposure. But he lingered on till Mr Cupples compelled him to go
home. Not even then, however, had her body been recovered. Alec was
convinced that she had got into one of the quicksands; but it was cast
ashore a few days after his departure, and it was well that he did not
see it. He did not learn the fact till many years after.
It soon transpired that she had been out of her mind for some time.
Indeed rumours of the sort had been afloat before. The proximate cause
of her insanity was not certainly known. Some suspicion of the
worthlessness of her lover, some enlightenment as to his perfidy, or
his unaccountable disappearance alone, may have occasioned its
manifestation. But there is great reason to believe that she had a
natural predisposition to it. And having never been taught to provide
for her own mental sustenance, and so nourish a necessary independence,
she had been too ready to squander the wealth of a rich and lovely
nature upon an unworthy person, and the reaction had been madness and
death. But anything was better than marrying Beauchamp.
One strange fact in the case was her inexplicable aversion to
water--either a crude prevision of her coming fate, or, in the
mysterious operations of delirious reasoning, the actual cause of it.
The sea, visible from her window over the dreary flat of the links, may
have fascinated her, and drawn her to her death. Such cases are not
unknown.
During the worst period of Alec's illness, he was ever wandering along
that shore, or swimming in those deadly waters. Sometimes he had laid
hold of the drowning girl and was struggling with her to the surface.
Sometimes he was drawing her in an agony from the swallowing gullet of
a quicksand, which held her fast, and swallowed at her all the time
that he fought to rescue her from its jawless throat.
Annie took her turn in the sick chamber, watching beside the
half-unconscious lad, and listening anxiously to the murmurs that broke
through the veil of his dreams. The feeling with which she had received
the prodigal home into her heart, spread its roots deeper and wider,
and bore at length a flower of a pale-rosy flush--Annie's love revealed
to herself--strong although pale, delicate although strong. It seemed
to the girl she had loved him so always, only she had not thought about
it. He had fought for her and endured for her at school; he had saved
her life from the greedy waters of the Glamour at the risk of his own:
she would be the most ungrateful of girls if she did not love him.--And
she did love him with a quiet intensity peculiar to her nature.
Never had she happier hours than those in which it seemed that only the
stars and the angels were awake besides herself. And if while watching
him thus at night she grew sleepy, she would kneel down and pray God to
keep her awake, lest any harm should befall Alec. Then she would wonder
if even the angels could do without sleep always, and fancy them lying
about the warm fields of heaven between their own shadowy wings. She
would wonder next if it would be safe for God to close his eyes for one
minute--safe for the world, she meant; and hope that, if ever he did
close his eyes, that might not be the one moment when she should see
his face. Then she would nod, and wake up with a start, flutter
silently to her feet, and go and peep at the slumberer. Never was woman
happier than Annie was during those blessed midnights and cold grey
dawns. Sometimes, in those terrible hours after midnight that belong
neither to the night nor the day, but almost to the primeval darkness,
the terrors of the darkness would seize upon her, and she would sit
"inhabiting trembling." But the lightest movement of the sleeper would
rouse her, and a glance at the place where he lay would dispel her
fears.