Chapter VI: A New Experience

For the next six weeks Alec Lindsay’s life was one unvarying round of lectures, and preparation for lectures. For recreation he had football on the College Green, long walks on Saturday afternoons, and long debates with his friend Cameron. The debates, however, were not very frequent, for the Highlander was working twelve hours a day.

‘I mean to get a first-class in surgery,’ he said to Alec one Saturday night, as the two sat over their pipes in Alec’s sitting-room; ‘and then perhaps the Professor will ask me to be an assistant. If he does, my fortune is made, for I know my work.’

‘Ay, that’s the great thing,’ said Alec absently. ‘Don’t you ever go to church, Cameron?’ he added abruptly.

‘As seldom as I can,’ said the other, with a side look at his companion; ‘but don’t take me for a guide.’

‘I can’t help it,’ replied the lad, still gazing into the fire; ‘we all take our neighbours for guides, whether we acknowledge it or not.’

‘More or less, no doubt.’

‘Don’t you think one _ought_ to go to church?’

‘How can I tell? Every man for himself, my lad.’

‘That won’t do,’ answered Alec, rousing himself and facing his friend; ‘right’s right, and wrong’s wrong; what is right for one man must be right for every man--under the same circumstances, I mean.’

‘Will you just tell me,’ said Cameron, half defiantly, ‘what good going to church can do me? I know the psalms almost by heart, and I know the chapters the minister reads almost as well. As for the prayers, half of them aren’t prayers at all, and the other half I could say as weel at hame, if I had a mind. And the sermons!--man, Alec, ye canna say ye think they can do good to any living creature.’

‘Some of them, perhaps.’

‘When I find a minister that doesna tell us the same thing over, and over, and over again, and use fifty words to say what might be said in five, to spin out the time, I’ll reconsider the p’int,’ said Cameron.

‘But you believe there’s a God,’ said Alec.

‘That’s a lang stap furret,’ said the other.

‘But do you?’

‘Well, I do, and I dinna. I don’t believe in the Free Kirk God. It’s hard to think this warl could mak’ itsel’: but I hae my doots.’

‘Then you’re an Agnostic?’

‘What if I am? Are ye scunnered?’[1]

‘No--and yet----’

‘Or what if I should tell you I have chosen some other religion? Why should I be a Presbyterian? Because I was born in Scotland. That’s the only reason I’ve been able to think of, and it doesn’t seem to me to be up to much.’

Alec was secretly shocked, though he thought it more manly not to show it.

‘I believe in the Bible,’ he said at last.

‘That doesna help you much,’ said Cameron, with some contempt. ‘Baptists, Independents, Episcopalians, the very Papists themsel’s, and thae half-heathen Russians, wad tell ye that they believe in the Bible. Ye micht as weel tell a judge, when he ca’ed on you for an argument, that ye believe in an Act o’ Parliament.’

‘Hae ye an aitlas?’ he continued after a pause. ‘Here’s one.’

He turned to a ‘Mercator’s projection’ at the beginning of the volume, and scratched the spot which represented Scotland with his pencil. He then slightly shaded England, the United States, and Holland, and put in a few dots in Germany and Switzerland.

‘There!’ he said, as he pushed the map across the table; ‘that’s your Presbyterian notion o’ Christendom. There’s a glimmerin’ in England and the States, but only in bonny Scotland does the true licht shine full and fair. As for Germany, Holland, an’ Switzerland, they’re unco dry, no tae say deid branches. The rest o’ mankind--total darkness!’

‘But you might have said the same thing of Christianity itself at one time, and of every religion in the world, for that matter,’ protested Alec.

‘Nae doot,’ retorted Cameron, ‘but that was at the beginning. This is Christianity, according to the gospel o’ John Knox and Company after nineteen centuries! A poor show for nineteen hunder’ years--a mighty poor show!’

He got up as he spoke, and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, prepared to move to his own quarters.

‘Let’s change the subject,’ said Alec. ‘Here’s a letter I got this morning, and I don’t know how to answer it.’

‘What’s this?’ said the older man, taking the thick sheet of paper between the tips of his fingers. ‘“Mr. James Lindsay presents his compliments to Mr. Alexander Lindsay, and requests the pleasure of his company at dinner on Tuesday the 27th inst., at half-past six. Blythswood Square, December, 187-.” Is this old James Lindsay o’ Drumleck?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a connection of his?’

‘Grand-nephew.’

‘And why can’t you answer the note?’

‘I don’t want to go. I haven’t been brought up to this sort of thing, and I don’t care to go out of my way to make myself ridiculous in a rich man’s house. Besides, I don’t want to go to the expense of a suit of dress clothes. And then, my uncle and I were not particularly smitten with each other when I saw him last.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Alec,’ said Cameron quietly. ‘You can’t afford to throw away the friendship of a man worth twenty thousand a year.’

‘That phrase always reminds me,’ remarked Alec, ‘of what one of the Erskines--I don’t remember which of them it was--once said, when some one said in his company that so-and-so had died worth three hundred thousand pounds--“Did he indeed, sir? And a very pretty sum, too, to begin the next world with.”’

Cameron smiled grimly.

‘You’ll have to go, Alec,’ he repeated; ‘and you needn’t be afraid of appearing ridiculous. Do as you see others do, and keep a lown sail; better seem blate than impident.’

‘My father would be in a fine way if he heard that my uncle had invited me, and that I had refused the invitation,’ said Lindsay.

‘And quite right too,’ rejoined Cameron. ‘Besides, Alec, the old man is your father’s uncle, and you ought to show him some respect.’

‘That wasn’t the reason you put in the forefront,’ said Alec slyly.

For reply Cameron, who had reached the door, picked up a Greek grammar, flung it at his friend’s head as he muttered something in Gaelic, and banging the door behind him, ascended to his own domicile.

Exactly at the appointed hour Alec presented himself at his grand-uncle’s house in Blythswood Square. The square had once been fashionable, and was still something more than respectable, because the houses were too large to be inhabited by people of moderate means; but the situation was dull and gloomy to the last degree. Within, however, there was a very different scene. Entrance-hall, staircase, drawing-room, were all as brilliant as gas-jets could make them. The walls, even of the passages, were lined with pictures, good, bad, and indifferent. Every landing, every corner, held a statue, or at least a statuette, or a bust upon a pedestal.

When Alec was ushered into the drawing-room, he could hardly see for the blaze of light; he could hardly move for little tables laden with china, ormolu, and bronzes. Fortunately, Sir Peter and Lady Colquhoun were entering the reception-room just as Alec reached it, so that he made his entrance in their wake, and, as it were, under their lee.

The room was already pretty well filled, and more guests were continually arriving. On the hearth-rug stood a little old man, with a mean, inexpressive face, scanty hair which was still gray, thin gray whiskers, small eyes, and a fussy consequential air. When he spoke, it was in a high-pitched, rasping voice; and he invariably gave one the impression that he was insisting upon being noticed and attended to.

This was Mr. Lindsay of Drumleck. He stared at Alec for an instant, then gave him his hand in silence, and, without addressing a word to him, continued his conversation with the Lord Provost’s wife. Alec’s face flushed. His first impulse was to walk out of the room, and out of the house; but on second thoughts he saw that that course would not even be dignified. He retreated to a corner, and set himself to watch the company.

For the most part they sat nearly silent--fat baillies and their well-nourished wives--hard-featured damsels of thirty or forty summers, in high-necked dresses and Brussels lace collars--one or two stout ministers--such was the assembly. Alec was astonished. He had expected, somehow, that he should meet people of a different type.

‘Take one or two dozen people from behind the shop-counters in Argyle Street,’ he said to himself (with boyish contempt for the disappointing), ‘or even a few Muirburn ploughmen and weavers, give them plenty of money, and in three weeks they would be quite as fine ladies and gentlemen as any I see here.’

As the thought passed through the boy’s mind, the door was thrown open, and the names of ‘Professor Taylor and Miss Mowbray’ were announced. A tall, lean man, with long hair and crumpled old-fashioned garments, entered, and beside him walked a young lady with her eyes on the ground.

She was dressed in a cream-coloured costume, with just a fleck of colour here and there. She was indeed remarkably pretty, and possessed a soft, childlike grace which was more captivating than beauty alone would have been. She had a small, well-rounded figure--a little more and it would have been plump--abundant dark-brown hair, and a soft, peach-like complexion. Her eyelashes were unusually long; and when, reaching her host, she half-timidly raised her eyes to his, Alec (who was sitting in the background) felt a little thrill of pleasure at the mere sight of their dark loveliness.

She was the first lady, the first young lady, at least, whom he had seen, and he looked at her as if she were a being to be worshipped. But Laura Mowbray was indeed pretty enough to have turned the head of a more experienced person than the laird’s son.

Professor Taylor and his niece moved to one side; her dress almost brushed against Alec. She glanced at him for an instant; without intending it he dropped his eyes, and the girl looked in another direction with a little inward smile.

In three or four minutes dinner was announced, and Laura fell to the care of James Semple (the cousin who had taken Alec’s place at the oil-works), who had just come in. There were more men than women in the party, and Alec and one or two of the less wealthy guests were left to find their way into the dining-room by themselves at the end of the procession. Fortune, however, favoured Alec. When he took his seat, he found that he was sitting between a pale, inoffensive-looking youth and--Laura Mowbray.

He literally did not dare to look at her, much less to address her; he was not sure, indeed, whether the rules of society allowed him to do so in the absence of an introduction. In a little time, however, his shyness wore off; he watched his opportunity; but before he found one, his neighbour remarked in her soft English accent, and in the sweetest of tones:

‘What dreadful fogs you have in Glasgow!’

Alec made some reply, and the ice once broken, he made rapid progress.

‘Everybody I meet seems to be related to somebody else, or connected with some one I have met before,’ said Miss Mowbray. ‘You have all so many relations in this part of the country, and you seem never to forget any of them. In London it is different. People seldom know their next-door neighbours; and it is just a chance whether they keep up cousinships, and so on, or not.’

‘Really? I think that is very unnatural.’

‘Oh! _so_ unnatural! Life in London is so dreadfully conventional and superficial. Don’t you think so?’

‘I dare say; but I have never been in London.’

‘Have you, Mr. Semple?’ she asked of the gentleman on her left.

‘No, I haven’t,’ he answered shortly.

He did not approve of Miss Mowbray paying any attention to Alec, regarding her as for the time being his property. On this Laura left off talking to Alec, and devoted herself to the amusement of Mr. Semple.

Soon, however, she took advantage of his attention being claimed by the lady on his left, to turn again with a smile to Alec.

‘Mr. Semple tells me you are at College. My uncle is a professor there, but he has hardly any students, because history is not a compulsory subject in the examinations. How do you like being at College?’

Alec was grateful for her interest in him, and gave her his impressions of College life. Then she turned once more to her legitimate entertainer, who was by that time at liberty.

Alec had already had far more intercourse with his lovely neighbour than he had dared to hope for; but the dinner was a long one; and as Mr. Semple’s left-hand neighbour happened to be a maiden aunt with money, she was able to compel his attention once more before the close of the meal.

‘You live in a beautiful part of the country, I believe,’ Miss Mowbray remarked to Alec.

‘I don’t know; I like it, of course; but I don’t know that it is finer than any country with wood and a river.’

‘Oh, you _have_ a river? I am so passionately fond of river scenery.’

‘Yes, and we have a castle,’ replied Alec; and before the ladies rose he had described not only the castle, but the moorland and the romantic dell which was his sister’s favourite retreat, to his much-interested neighbour.

When at length the ladies followed Miss Lindsay--a distant relation who superintended Mr. Lindsay’s establishment--out of the room, Alec felt as if the evening had suddenly come to an end.

Semple, who had vouchsafed him rather a cool nod in the evening, tried in vain to make him talk.

‘How do you like College?’

‘Pretty well.’

‘Dreadful underbred set. Why don’t you go to Oxford?’

Alec made no reply.

‘Or Edinburgh--they are a much better class of men at Edinburgh, I’m told.’

And Mr. Semple turned away to join a conversation about ‘warrants,’ and ‘premiums,’ and ‘vendor’s shares,’ ‘corners,’ ‘contangos,’ and ‘quotations,’ which to Alec was simply unintelligible.

At the other end of the table a conversation of another character was in progress--one hardly less interesting to those who took part in it, and hardly more interesting to an outsider. It seemed that a wealthy congregation of United Presbyterians had built themselves an organ at considerable expense, without obtaining the sanction of their co-religionists; and an edict had gone forth that the organ must be silent on Sundays, but might be used for the delectation of those who attended the prayer-meeting on Wednesday evenings.

‘I look upon it as the thin end of the wedge,’ said the Reverend Hector MacTavish, D.D., striking his fist on his knee. ‘You begin with hymns, many of them wish-washy trash, some of them positively unscriptural. Then you must have a choir for the tunes, as if the old-fashioned long metre and common metre were not good enough; then comes an organ; then the Lord’s Prayer is used as a part of the ritual--mark you, as a part of the ritual--I have no objection to the Lord’s Prayer when it is not used on formal, stated occasions. After that, you have a liturgy.’

‘No, no, Doctor; you are going too fast,’ murmured one of the audience.

‘And I maintain that with a liturgy there is an end to the distinctively Presbyterian form of worship.’

‘But where would you draw the line?’ inquired a mild, sallow-faced young man who had imbibed his theological opinions at Heidelberg, and was in consequence suspected of latitudinarianism, if not of actual heresy.

‘Where our fathers drew it, at the Psalms of Tavid!’ thundered Mr. MacTavish, striking his unoffending knee once more.

‘Then I fear you render Union impossible,’ said the young minister.

‘And what if I do, sir?’ said Dr. MacTavish loftily; ‘in my opinion we Free Churchmen are ferry well as we are, and need no new lights to illuminate us.’

The young man received the covert sneer at his German training and his liberal ideas with a smile; and Alec listened no longer, but relapsed into dreamland. The dispute, however, continued long after most of the men had returned to the drawing-room, and Alec rose from his chair while an animated discussion was in progress on the point whether the use of an organ was favourable to spiritual worship or tended to sensuousness, and whether the fact that the New Testament was silent on the subject, condemned the organ and its followers by anticipation.

When Alec entered the drawing-room, Miss Mowbray was singing. He retreated to a corner and stood as one spell-bound. He watched for an opportunity of speaking to her again, but there was none; however, on passing him on her way to the door on her uncle’s arm, she gave him a little bow and smile, which he regarded as another proof of her sweetness of disposition.

The theologians had not finished their disputations, and were continuing them in a corner of the drawing-room, when Alec took his departure.

He walked back to his poor and empty room with his head among the stars. She had talked with him, smiled upon him, treated him as an equal. He would find out where she lived, and contrive to meet her again. How lovely she was, how sweet, how pure, how good! The wide earth, Alec Lindsay was firmly convinced, contained no mortal fit for one moment to be compared with the girl whose soft brown eyes and gentle, almost appealing, looks still made his heart beat as he remembered them.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Disgusted.