CHAPTER LXXVI
When Alec woke in the morning, it rushed upon his mind that he had had a terrible dream; and he reproached himself that even in a dream he should be capable of striking to the earth the friend who had just saved him from disgrace, and wanted to save him from more. But as his headache began to yield to cold water, discomposing doubts rose upon his clearing mental horizon. They were absurd, but still they were unpleasant. It could be only a dream that he had felled the man twice his age, and half his size, who had once shed his blood for him. But why did it look so like fact, if it was only a dream? Horrible thought! Could it?– It could -It must be -It was a fact!
Haggard with horror as well as revelry, he rushed towards the stair, but was met by Mrs Leslie, who stopped him and said:
"Mr Forbes, gin you and Mr Cupples gang on at this rate, I'll be forced to gie ye baith warnin' to flit. I oucht to hae written to yer mither afore noo. Ye'll brack her hert or a' be dune. Eh! it's a sair thing whan young lads tak to drink, and turn reprobates in a jiffie (moment)."
"I dinna gang to your kirk, and ye needna preach to me. What's the maitter wi' Mr Cupples? He hasna ta'en to drink in a jiffie, has he?"
"Ye scorner! He cam hame last nicht bleedin' at the heid, and i' the han's o' the watchman. Puir man! he cud hardly win up the stair. I canna think hoo he cam' to fa' sae sair; for they say there's a special Providence watches ower drunk men and bairns. He was an awfu' sicht, honest man! A terrible mixter o' reid and white."
"What said he about it?" asked Alec, trembling.
"Ow, naething. He had naething till say. Ye maunna gang near him; for I left him fest asleep. Gang awa benn to yer ain room, and I'll be in wi' yer brakfast in ten minutes. Eh! but ye wad be a fine lad gin ye wad only gie up the drink and the ill company."
Alec obeyed, ashamed and full of remorse. The only thing he could do was to attend to Mr Cupples's business in the library, where he worked at the catalogue till the afternoon lecture was over.
Nobody had seen Beauchamp, and the blinds of Kate's windows were drawn down.
All day his heart was full of Mr Cupples; and as he went home he recalled everything with perfect distinctness, and felt that his conduct had been as vile as it was possible for conduct to be. Because a girl could not love him, he had ceased to love his mother, had given himself up to Satan, and had returned the devotion of his friend with a murderous blow. Because he could not have a bed of roses, he had thrown himself down in the pig-stye. He rushed into a public-house, and swallowed two glasses of whisky. That done, he went straight home, and ran up to Mr Cupples's room.
Mr Cupples was sitting before the fire, with his hands on his knees and his head bound in white, bloodstained. He turned a ghastly face, and tried to smile. Alec's heart gave way utterly. He knelt at Mr Cupples's feet, laid his head on his knee, and burst into very unsaxon but most gracious tears. Mr Cupples laid a small trembling hand on the boy's head, saying,
"Eh! bantam, bantam!" and could say no more.
"Mr Cupples," sobbed Alec, "forgive me. I'll cut my throat, gin ye like."
"Ye wad do better to cut the deevil's throat."
"Hoo could I do that? Tell me, and I'll do 't."
"Wi' the broken whisky-bottle, man. That's at the root o' a' the mischeef. It's no you. It's the drink. And eh! Alec, we micht be richt happy thegither efter that. I wad mak a scholar o' ye."
"Weel, Mr Cupples, ye hae a richt to demand o' me what ye like; for henceforth ye hae the pooer o' life or deith ower me. But gin I try to brak throu the drinkin', I maun haud oot ower frae the smell o' 't; an' I doobt," added Alec slyly, "ye wadna hae the chance o' makin' muckle o' a scholar o' me in that case."
And now the dark roots of thought and feeling blossomed into the fair flower of resolution.
"Bantam," said Mr Cupples solemnly, "I sweir to God, gin ye'll gie ower the drink and the lave o' yer ill gaits, I'll gie ower the drink as weel. I hae naething ither to gie ower. But that winna be easy," he added with a sigh, stretching his hand towards his glass.
From a sudden influx of energy, Alec stretched his hand likewise towards the same glass, and laying hold on it as Mr Cupples was raising it to his lips, cried:
"I sweir to God likewise—And noo," he added, leaving his hold of the glass, "ye daurna drink it."
Mr Cupples threw glass and all into the fire.
"That's my fareweel libation to the infernal Bacchus," he said. "Lat it gang to swall the low o' Phlegethon. But eh! it's a terrible undertakin'. It's mair nor Hercules himsel' could hae made onything o'. Bantam! I hae saicrifeesed mysel' to you. Haud to your pairt, or I canna haud to mine."
It was indeed a terrible undertaking. I doubt whether either of them would have had courage for it, had he not been under those same exciting influences -which, undermining all power of manly action, yet give for the moment a certain amount of energy to expend. But the limits are narrow within which, by wasting his capital, a man secures a supply of pocket-money. And for them the tug of war was to come.
They sat on opposite sides of the table and stared at each other. As the spirituous tide ebbed from the brain, more and more painful visions of the near future steamed up. Yet even already conscience began to sustain them. Her wine was strong, and they were so little used to it that it even excited them.
With Alec the struggle would soon be over. His nervous system would speedily recover its healthy operations. But Cupples -from whose veins alcohol had expelled the blood, whose skull was a Circean cup of hurtful spells -would not delirium follow for him?
Suddenly Alec laid his hand on the bottle. Mr Cupples trembled. Was he going to break his vow already?
"Wadna't be better to fling this into the neist yard, Mr Cupples?" said Alec. "We daurna fling 't i' the fire. It wad set the chimley in a low (flame)."
"Na, na. Lat ye 't sit," returned Mr Cupples.
"I wad be clean affrontit gin I cudna see and forbear. Ye may jist pit it into the press though. A body needna lay burdens grievous to be borne upo' himsel' mair nor upo' ither fowk. Noo, lat's hae a game o' cribbage, to haud's ohn thocht aboot it."
They played two or three games. It was pathetic to see how Mr Cupples's right hand, while he looked at the cards in his left, would go blindly flitting about the spot where his glass had always used to stand; and how, when he looked up unable to find it, his face shadowed over with disappointment. After those two or three games, he threw down the cards, saying,
"It winna do, bantam. I dinna like the cairts the nicht. Wi'oot ony thing to weet them, they're dooms dry. What say ye to a chorus o' schylus?"
Alec's habits of study had been quite broken up of late. Even the medical lectures and the hospital classes had been neglected. So schylus could not be much of a consolatory amusement in the blank which follows all exorcism. But Cupples felt that if no good spirit came into the empty house, sweeping and garnishing would only entice the seven to take the place of the one. So he tried to interest his pupil once again in his old studies; and by frequent changes did ere long succeed in holding tedium at bay.
But all his efforts would have resulted in nothing but that vain sweeping and garnishing, had not both their hearts been already tenanted by one good and strong spirit -essential life and humanity. That spirit was Love, which at the long last will expel whatsoever opposeth itself. While Alec felt that he must do everything to please Mr Cupples, he, on his part, felt that all the future of the youth lay in his hands. He forgot the pangs of alcoholic desire in his fear lest Alec should not be able to endure the tedium of abstinence; and Alec's gratitude and remorse made him humble as a slave to the little big-hearted man whom he had injured so cruelly.
"I'm tired and maun gang to my bed, for I hae a sair heid," said Mr
Cupples, that first night.
"That's my doin'!" said Alec, sorrowfully.
"Gin this new repentance o' yours and mine turns oot to hae onything in't, we'll baith hae rizzon to be thankfu' that ye cloured (dinted) my skull, Alec. But eh me! I'm feared I winna sleep muckle the nicht."
"Wad ye like me to sit up wi' ye?" asked Alec. "I cud sleep i' your cheir weel eneuch."
"Na, na. We hae baith need to say oor prayers, and we cudna do that weel thegither. Gang ye awa' to yer bed, and min' yer vow to God and to me. And dinna forget yer prayers, Alec."
Neither of them forgot his prayers. Alec slept soundly—Mr Cupples not at all.
"I think," he said, when Alec appeared in the morning, "I winna tak sic a hardship upo' me anither nicht. Jist open the cat's door and fling the bottle into somebody's yard. I houp it winna cut onybody's feet."
Alec flew to the cupboard, and dragged out the demon.
"Noo," said Mr Cupples, "open the twa doors wide, and fling 't wi' a birr, that I may hear its last speech and dyin' declaration."
Alec did as he was desired, and the bottle fell on the stones of a little court. The clash rose to the ears of Mr Cupples.
"Thank God!" he said with a sigh.—"Alec, no man that hasna gane throu the same, can tell what I hae gane throu this past nicht, wi' that deevil i' the press there cryin' 'Come pree (taste) me! come pree me!' But I heard and hearkened not. And yet whiles i' the nicht, although I'm sure I didna sleep a wink, I thocht I was fumblin' awa' at the lock o' the press an' cudna get it opened. And the press was a coffin set up upo' its en', an' I kent that there was a corp inside it, and yet I tried sair to open't. An' syne again, I thocht it was the gate o' Paradees afore which stud the angel wi' the flamin' sword that turned ilka gait, and wadna lat me in. But I'm some better sin the licht cam, and I wad fain hae a drappy o' that fine caller tipple they ca' watter."
Alec ran down and brought it cold from the pump, saying, as Mr Cupples returned the tumbler with a look of thanks,
"But there's the tappit hen. I doot gin we lea' her i' the press, she'll be wantin' to lay."
"Na, na, nae fear o' that. She's as toom's a cock. Gang and luik. The last drap in her wame flaw oot at the window i' that bottle. Eh! Alec, but I'll hae a sair day, and ye maun be true to me. Gie me my Homer, or I'll never win throu't. An ye may lay John Milton within my rax (reach); for I winna pit my leg oot o' the blankets till ye come hame. Sae ye maunna be langer nor ye can help."
Alec promised, and set off with a light heart.
Beauchamp was at none of the classes. And the blinds of Kate's windows were still drawn down.
For a whole week he came home as early as possible and spent the rest of the day with Mr Cupples. But many dreary hours passed over them both. The suffering of Mr Cupples and the struggle which he had to sustain with the constant craving of his whole being, are perhaps indescribable; but true to his vow and to his friend, he endured manfully. Still it was with a rueful-comical look and a sigh, sometimes, that he would sit down to his tea, remarking,
"Eh, man! this is meeserable stuff -awfu' weyk tipple -a pagan invention a'thegither."
But the tea comforted the poor half-scorched, half-sodden nerves notwithstanding, and by slow degrees they began to gather tone and strength; his appetite improved; and at the end of the week he resumed his duties in the library. And thenceforth, as soon as his classes were over, Alec would go to the library to Mr Cupples, or on other days Mr Cupples would linger near the medical school or hospital, till Alec came out, and then they would go home together. Once home, both found enough to do in getting one of them up to the mark of the approaching examinations.—Two pale-faced creatures they sat there, in Mr Cupples's garret, looking wretched and subdued enough, although occasionally they broke out laughing, as the sparks of life revived and flickered into merriment.
Inquiring after Miss Fraser, Alec learned that she was ill. The maid inquired in return if he knew anything about Mr Beauchamp.
CHAPTER LXXVII
Mr Cupples and Alec were hard at work -the table covered with books and papers; when a knock came to the door -the rarest occurrence in that skyey region -and the landlady ushered in Mrs Forbes.
The two men sprang to their feet, and Mrs Forbes stared with gratified amazement. The place was crowded with signs of intellectual labour, and not even a pack of cards was visible.
"Why didn't you answer my last letter, Alec?" she said.
It had dropped behind some books, and he had never seen it.
"What is the meaning, then, of such reports about you?" she resumed, venturing to put the question in the presence of Mr Cupples in the hope of a corroborated refutation.
Alec looked confused, grew red, and was silent. Mr Cupples took up the reply.
"Ye see, mem, it's a pairt o' the edication o' the human individual, frae the time o' Adam and Eve doonwith, to learn to refuse the evil and chowse the guid. This doesna aye come o' eatin' butter and honey, but whiles o' eatin' aise (ashes) and dirt. Noo, my pupil, here, mem, your son, has eaten that dirt and made that chice. And I'll be caution (security) for him that he'll never mair return to wallow i' that mire. It's three weeks, mem, sin ae drop o' whusky has passed his mou."
"Whisky!" exclaimed the mother. "Alec! Is it possible?"
"Mem, mem! It wad become ye better to fa' doon upo' yer knees and thank the God that's brocht him oot o' a fearfu' pit and oot o' the miry clay and set his feet upon a rock. But the rock's some sma' i' the fit-haud, and ae word micht jist caw him aff o' 't again. Gin ye fa' to upbraidin' o' 'm, ye may gar him clean forget's washin'."
But Mrs Forbes was proud, and did not like interference between her and her son. Had she found things as bad as she had expected, she would have been humble. Now that her fears had abated, her natural pride had returned.
"Take me to your own room, Alec," she said.
"Ay, ay, mem. Tak' him wi' ye. But caw cannie, ye ken, or ye'll gie me a deevil o' a job wi' 'm."
With a smile to Cupples, Alec led the way.
He would have told his mother almost everything if she had been genial.
As she was, he contented himself with a general confession that he had
been behaving very badly, and would have grown ten times worse but for
Mr Cupples, who was the best friend that he had on earth.
"Better than your mother, Alec?" she asked, jealously.
"I was no kith or kin of his, and yet he loved me," said Alec.
"He ought to have behaved more like a gentleman to me."
"Mother, you don't understand Mr Cupples. He's a strange creature. He takes a pride in speaking the broadest Scotch, when he could talk to you in more languages than you ever heard of, if he liked."
"I don't think he's fit company for you anyhow. We'll change the subject, if you please."
So Alec was yet more annoyed, and the intercourse between mother and son was forced and uncomfortable. As soon as she retired to rest, Alec bounded up stairs again.
"Never mind my mother," he cried. "She's a good woman, but she's vexed with me, and lets it out on you."
"Mind her!" answered Mr Cupples; "she's a verra fine woman; and she may say what she likes to me. She'll be a' richt the morn's mornin'. A woman wi' ae son's like a coo wi' ae horn, some kittle (ticklish), ye ken. I cud see in her een haill coal-pits o' affection. She wad dee for ye, afore ye cud say- 'Dinna, mither.'"
Next day they went to call on Professor Fraser. He received them kindly, and thanked Mrs Forbes for her attentions to his niece. But he seemed oppressed and troubled. His niece was far from well, he said -had not left her room for some weeks, and could see no one.
Mrs Forbes associated Alec's conduct with Kate's illness, but said nothing about her suspicions. After one day more, she returned home, reassured by but not satisfied with her visit. She felt that Alec had outgrown his former relation to her, and had a dim perception that her pride had prevented them from entering upon a yet closer relation. It is their own fault when mothers lose by the growth of their children.
CHAPTER LXXVIII
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.