CHAPTER XI.
THE GROWING UP OF THE BAIRNS.
THIS was the last incident in the secret history of the Buchanan family for the moment. The sudden, painful, and unexpected crisis which had arisen on Marion’s wedding day ceased almost as suddenly as it arose. The Mowbrays, after staying a short time in St. Rule’s, departed to more genial climes, and places in which more amusement was to be found—for though even so long ago, St. Rule’s had become a sort of watering-place, where people came in the summer, it was not in the least a place of organised pleasure, or where there was any whirl of gaiety; nothing could be more deeply disapproved of than a whirl of gaiety in these days.
There were no hotels and few lodgings of the usual watering-place kind. People who came hired houses and transported themselves and all their families, resuming all their usual habits with the sole difference that the men of the family, instead of going out upon their usual avocations every day, went out to golf instead: which was then a diversion practised only in certain centres of its own, where most of the people could play—a thing entirely changed nowadays, as everybody is aware, when it is to be found everywhere, and practised by everybody, the most of whom do not know how to play.
Mrs. Mowbray did not find the place at all to her mind. Mr. Anderson’s house, to which her son had succeeded, was old-fashioned, with furniture of the last century, and large rooms, filled with the silence and calm of years. Instead of being surrounded by “grounds,” which were the only genteel setting for a gentleman’s house, it had the ruins of the cathedral on one hand, and on the other the High Street. The picturesque was not studied in those days: unless it might be the namby-pamby picturesque, such as flourished in books of beauty, keepsakes, and albums, when what was supposed to be Italian scenery was set forth in steel engravings, and fine ladies at Venetian windows listened to the guitars of their lovers rising from gondolas out of moonlit lakes. To look out on the long, broad, sunny High Street, with, perhaps, the figure of a piper in the distance, against the glow of the sunset, or a wandering group, with an unhappy and melancholy dancing bear—was very vulgar to the middle-class fine lady, a species appropriate to that period, and which now has died away; and, to look out, on the other hand, upon the soaring spring of a broken arch in the ruins, gave Mrs. Mowbray the vapours, or the blues, or whatever else that elegant malady was called. We should say nerves, in these later days, but, at the beginning of the century, nerves had scarcely yet been invented.
For all these reasons, Mrs. Mowbray did not stay long in St. Rule’s—she complained loudly of everything she found there, of the house, and the society which had paid her so little attention: and of the climate, and the golf which Frank had yielded to the fascination of, staying out all day, and keeping her in constant anxiety! but, above all, she complained of the income left by old Mr. Anderson, which was so much less than they expected, and which all her efforts could not increase. She said so much about this, as to make the life of good Mr. Morrison, the man of business, a burden to him: and at the same time to throw upon the most respectable inhabitants of St. Rule’s a sort of cloud or shadow, or suspicion of indebtedness which disturbed the equanimity of the town. “She thinks we all borrowed money from old Anderson,” the gentlemen said with laughter in many a dining-room. But there were a few others, like Mr. Buchanan, who did not like the joke.
“The woman is daft!” they said; but it was remarked by some keen observers that the minister gave but a sickly smile in response. And it may be supposed that this added to the contempt of the ladies for the pretensions of a woman of whom nobody knew who was her father or who her mother, yet who would fain have set herself up as a leader of fashion over them all. In general, when the ladies disapprove of a new-comer, in a limited society like that of St. Rule’s, the men are apt to take her part—but, in this case, nobody took her part; and, as there was nothing gay in the place, and no amusement to be had, even in solemn dinner-parties, she very soon found it was not suitable for her health.
“So cold, even in summer,” she said, shivering—and everybody was glad when she went away, taking that little mannikin, Frank—who, perhaps, might have been made into something like a man on the links—with her, to the inanity of some fashionable place. To like a fashionable place was then believed to be the very top, or bottom, of natural depravity in St. Rule’s.
This had been a very sore ordeal to Mr. Buchanan: his conscience upbraided him day by day—he had even upon him an aching impulse to go and tell somebody to relieve his own mind, and share the responsibility with some one who might have guided him in his sore strait. Though he was a very sound Presbyterian, and evangelical to his finger-tips, the wisdom of the Church of Rome, in the institution of confession, and of a spiritual director to aid the penitent, appeared to him in a far clearer light than he had ever seen it before. To be sure, in all churches, the advantage of telling your difficulties to an adviser conversant with the spiritual life, has always been recognised: but there was no one whom Mr. Buchanan could choose for this office—they were all married men, for one thing, and who could be sure that the difficulty might not ooze out into the mind of a faithful spouse, in no way bound to keep the secrets of her husband’s penitents—and whom, at all events, even though her lips were sealed by strictest honour, the penitent had no intention of confiding his secret to. No; the minister felt that his reverend brethren were the last persons to whom he would like to confide his hard case. If there had been some hermit now, some old secluded person, some old man, or even woman, in the sanctuary of years and experience, to whom a man could go, and, by parable or otherwise, lay bare the troubles of his soul. He smiled at himself even while the thought went through his mind: the prose part of his being suggested an old, neglected figure, all overgrown with beard and hair, in the hollow of St. Rule’s cave, within the dashing of the spray, the very place for a hermit, a dirty old man, hoarse and callous, incapable of comprehending the troubles of a delicate conscience, though he might know what to say to the reprobate or murderer: no, the hermit would not do, he said to himself, with a smile, in our days.
To be sure, he had one faithful confidant, the wife of his bosom; but, least of all, would Mr. Buchanan have poured out his troubles to his wife. He knew very well what she would say—“You accepted an indulgence that was not meant for you; you took your bill and wrote fourscore when it was hundreds you were owing; Claude, my man, that cannot be—you must just go this moment and tell Mr. Morrison the whole truth; and, if I should sell my flannel petticoat, we’ll pay it off, every penny, if only they will give us time.” He knew so well what she would say, that he could almost hear the inflections of her voice in saying it. There was no subtlety in her—she would understand none of his hesitations. She would see no second side to the question. “Own debt and crave days,” she would say; she was fond of proverbs—and he had heard her quote that before.
There are thus difficulties in the way of consulting the wife of your bosom, especially if she is a practical woman, who could, in a manner, force you to carry out your repentance into restitution, and give you no peace.
During this time of reawakened feeling, Mr. Buchanan had a certain distant sentiment, which he did not know how to explain to himself, against his daughter Elsie. She had a way of looking at him which he did not understand—not the look of disapproval, but of curiosity, half wistful, half pathetic—as if she wanted to know something more of him, to clear up some doubt in her own mind. What cause could the girl have to want more knowledge of her own father? She knew everything about him, all his habits, his way of looking at things—as much as a girl could know about a man so much older and wiser than herself. It half amused him to think that one of his own family should find this mystery in him. He was to himself, always excepting that one thing, as open as the day—and yet the amusement was partial, and mingled with alarm. She knew more of that one thing than any one else; could it be that it was curiosity and anxiety about this that was in the girl’s eyes?
Sometimes he thought so, and then condemned himself for entertaining such a thought, reminding himself that vague recollections like that of Elsie do not take such shape in a young mind, and also that it was impossible that one so young, and his affectionate and submissive child, should entertain any such doubts of him.
The curious thing was that, knowing all he did of himself, and that he had done—or intended to do, which was the same—this one thing which was evil, he still felt it impossible that any doubt of him should lodge in his daughter’s mind.
In this way the years which are, perhaps, most important in the development of the young, passed over the heads of the Buchanans. From sixteen, Elsie grew to twenty, and became, as Marion had been, her mother’s right hand, so that Mrs. Buchanan, more free from domestic cares than formerly, was able to take an amount of repose which, perhaps, was not quite so good for her as her former more active life; for she grew stout, and less willing to move as her necessities lessened. John was now in Edinburgh, having very nearly obtained the full-fledged honours of a W.S. And Rodie, nearly nineteen, was now the only boy at home. Perhaps, as the youngest, and the last to be settled, he was more indulged than the others had been; for he had not yet decided upon his profession, and still had hankerings after the army, notwithstanding that all the defects of that service had been put before him again and again—the all but impossibility of buying him a commission, the certainty that he would have to live on his pay, and many other disadvantageous things.
Rodie was still not old enough to be without hopes that something might turn up to make his desires possible, however little appearance of it there might be. Getting into the army in those days was not like getting into the army now. With us it means, in the first place, examinations, which any boy of moderate faculties and industry can pass: but then it meant so much money out of his father’s pocket to buy a commission: to put the matter in words, the present system seems the better way—but it is doubtful whether the father’s pocket is much the better, seeing that there is often a great deal of “cramming” to be done before the youth gets through the ordeal of examinations, and sometimes, it must be allowed, boys who are of the most perfect material for soldiers do not get through that narrow gate at all.
But there was no cramming in Roderick Buchanan’s day; the word had not been invented, nor the thing. A boy’s education was put into him solidly, moderately, in much the same way as his body was built up, by the work of successive years—he was not put into a warm place, and filled with masses of fattening matter, like the poor geese of Strasburg.
Rodie’s eyes, therefore, not requiring to be for ever bent on mathematics or other abstruse studies, were left free to search the horizon for signs of anything that might turn up; perhaps a cadetship for India, which was the finest thing that could happen—except in his mother’s eyes, who thought one son was enough to have given up to the great Moloch of India: but, had the promise of the cadetship arrived any fine morning, I fear Mrs. Buchanan’s scruples would have been made short work with. In the meantime, Rodie was attending classes at the College, and sweeping the skies with the telescope of hope.
Rodie and his sister had come a little nearer with the progress of the years. From the proud moment, when the youth felt the down of a coming moustache upon his upper lip, and began to perceive that he was by no means a bad-looking fellow, and to feel inclinations towards balls and the society of girls, scorned and contemned so long as he was merely a boy, he had drawn a little closer to his sister, who had, as it were, the keys of that other world. It was a little selfish, perhaps; but, in a family, one must not look too closely into motives; and Elsie, faithful to her first affection, was glad enough to get him back again, and to find that he was, by no means, so scornful of mere “lassies,” as in the days when his desertion had made her little heart so sore. Perhaps it had something to do with his conversion, that “his laddies,” the Alicks and Ralphs of his boyish days, had all taken (at least, as many as remained of them, those who had not yet gone off to the army, or the bar, or the W.S.’s office) to balls also, and now danced as vigorously as they played.
One of the strangest things, however, in all that juvenile band, was the change which had come over Johnny Wemyss, who, the reader will remember, was only a fisherman’s son, and lived east the town in a fisher’s cottage, and was not supposed the best of company for the minister’s son. Johnny, the romantic, silent boy, who had put down his flowers on the pavement that the bride’s path might be over them, had taken to learning, as it was easy for the poorest boy, in such a centre of education, to do. As was usual, when a lad of his class showed this turn, which was by no means extraordinary, it was towards the Church that the parents directed their thoughts, and Johnny had taken all his “arts” classes, his “humanities,” the curriculum of secular instruction, and was pondering doctrine and exegesis in the theological branch, on his way to be a minister, at the moment in their joint history at which we have now arrived. I am not sure that even then he was quite sure that he himself intended to be a minister; for, being a serious youth by nature, he had much loftier views of that sacred profession than, perhaps, it was possible for a minister’s son, trained up in over-much familiarity with it, to have. But his meaning was, as yet, not very clear to himself; he was fonder of “beasts,” creatures of the sea-coast, fishes, and those half-inanimate things, which few people, as yet, had begun to think of at all, than of anything else in the world, except.... I will not fill in this blank; perhaps the young reader will guess what was the thing Johnny Wemyss held in still higher devotion than “his beasts;” at all events, if he follows the thread of this story, he will in time find out.
Johnny was no longer kept outside the minister’s door. In his red gown, as a student of St. Rule’s, he was as good as anyone, and the childish alliance, which had long existed between him and Rodie, was still kept up, although Rodie’s fictitious enthusiasm for beasts, which was merely a reflection from his friend’s, had altogether failed, and he was as ready as any one to laugh at the pottering in all the sea-pools, and patient observation of all the strange creatures’ ways, which kept Wemyss busy all the time he could spare from his lectures and his essays, and the composition of the sermons which a theological student at St. Mary’s College was bound, periodically, to produce. Those tastes of his were already recognised as very absurd and rather amusing, but very good things to keep a laddie out of mischief, Mrs. Buchanan said; for it was evident that he could not be “carrying on” in any foolish way, so long as he spent his afternoons out on the caller sands, with his wee spy-glass, examining the creatures, how they were made, and all about them, though it was a strange taste for a young man. Several times he had, indeed, brought a basin full of sea-water—carrying it through the streets, not at all put out by the amusement which surrounded him, the school-boys that followed at his heels, the sharp looks which his acquaintances gave each other, convinced now that Johnny Wemyss had certainly a bee in his bonnet—to the minister’s house, that Miss Elsie might see the wonderful white and pink creatures, like sea-flowers, the strange sea-anemones, rooted on bits of rock, and waving their tentacles, or shutting them up in a moment at a rude touch.
Elsie, much disposed to laugh at first, when the strange youth brought her this still stranger trophy, gradually came to admire, and wonder, and take great notice of the sea-anemones, which were wonderfully pretty, though so queer—and which, after all, she began to think, it was quite as clever of Johnny Wemyss to have discovered, as it was of the Alicks and Ralphs to shoot the wild-fowl at the mouth of the Eden. It was even vaguely known that he wrote to some queer scientific fishy societies about them, and received big letters by the post, “costing siller,” or sometimes franked in the corner with long, sprawling signatures of peers, or members of parliament. People, however, would not believe that these letters could be about Johnny Wemyss’s beasts; they thought that this must simply be a pretence to make himself and his rubbish of importance, and that it must be something else which procured him these correspondents, though what, they could not tell.
Wemyss was the eldest of the little society. He was three-and-twenty, and ought to be already settled in life, everybody thought. He had, for some time, been making his living, which was the first condition of popular respect, and had already been tutor to a number of lads before he had begun his theological course. This age was rather a late age in Scotland for a student of divinity—most of those who had any interest were already sure of a kirk, and even those who had none were exercising their gifts as probationers, and hoping to attract somebody’s notice who could bestow one. But Johnny somehow postponed that natural consummation: he went on with his tutor’s work, and made no haste over his studies, continuing to attend lectures, when he might have applied to the Presbytery for license. It was believed, and not without truth, that not even for the glory of being a placed minister, could he make up his mind to give up his beloved sea-pools, where he was always to be found of an afternoon, pottering in the sea-water, spoiling his clothes, and smelling of the brine, as if he were still one of the fisher folk among whom he had been born. He no longer dwelt among them, however, for his father and mother were both dead, and he himself lived in a little lodging among those cheap tenements frequented by students near the West, out at the other end of the town. He did not go to the balls, nor care for dancing like the others,—which was a good thing, seeing he was to be a minister,—but, notwithstanding, there were innumerable occasions of meeting each other, common to all the young folk of the friendly, little, old-fashioned town.