Читать книгу Gathered In - Catherine Helen Spence - Страница 10

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Kenneth accepted the apology so humbly offered; but the words sank into his mind notwithstanding. Mr. McDiarmid came from the North to see his boy before he left Edinburgh for his departure to unknown lands; he comforted him for his failure about the degree, and took far more cheerful views as to Mr. George Oswald of Tingalpa, than his College friend or than Kenneth himself could take from the letters. He was not only Isabel's brother but her favourite brother. His very sensitiveness about Kenneth's birth, and the ignoring of her in his letters which had hurt the son so much, made Norman McDiarmid see more love in his doings than any one else. As the days hurried on, and the session closed, and there was only to be the short farewell visit to his grandparents and Nelly, he felt daily more reluctance to go to discover what was expected from him in Victoria. Henry Stalker accompanied his friend in this visit. He had before made himself a favourite in the household; his regard for Kenneth was genuine, he was so much plainer in appearance that they were never afraid of his eclipsing their own particular hero, and all Kenneth's praises of his friend's greater abilities and higher standing at the University, backed by his marvellous flow of talk and legend and anecdote and quotation, could not shake Mrs. Oswald's idea that if only Kenneth had taken to the Kirk, he could have outshone the elder student. Whereas he had gone in for being a gentleman by his uncle's orders, and young Stalker was not fit to hold the candle to him in that respect.

Mrs. Oswald interested Stalker much more than her husband did, and he loved to draw her out, and to elicit by question and rejoinder that curious mixture of Calvinistic theology and wordly wisdom, which is so essentially a national characteristic of the bygone generation.

In the village in which the Oswalds lived, they had gone up at least two degrees in the social scale, and were visited by people several degrees higher than that. A rich and liberal son in Australia and a clever grandson at College, on whom no expense was spared, were passports for respectability. The amount of education which the Scottish peasants receive fits them better for a rise in life than would be the case with a similar class in England. The Scotch, too, is a language, and not a dialect, and never seems vulgar in old people; and the old man read the papers and played draughts and backgammon, while his wife in her black gown and snow-white cap knitted stockings, much as people in much higher rank do when life's active work is done.

Their pride and pleasure in Kenneth's appearance, manners, and attainments, were wonderfully little disturbed by the approaching separation. It was to be; it was for this that George had behaved so handsomely; his absence in Edinburgh for his education had accustomed them to it. The laddie would write every month, and send the papers which George had not done, and Nelly would write for them regularly, and would look after them till they were taken in their good time, not far apart from each other, as both fondly hoped. Harry Stalker, whose mind was full of regrets and misgivings about his friend, could not help being amused at the complacency with which these old people looked upon all the arrangements.

Kenneth and his friend had looked into the parish school one day in passing, and the schoolmaster, delighted with the interest taken by two clever Edinburgh students in the children and their studies, and, hoping to rouse the ambition of some of his bigger boys for higher education, made them go through a long examination on various branches of knowledge, and, among other things, took the Shorter Catechism in hand, and the readiness, the precision, and the triumphant certainty of the answers given by the youngest children, awoke an old vein of questioning doubt in the minds of both young men.

"These atoms have no doubts," said Harry, as he and his friend took their way to the Linleath woods, where Nelly had promised to meet them in the afternoon, "any more than your grandfather and grandmother. Curious, is it not, that at the beginning and the ending of life all seems so clear, and in the middle, when you want the faith to live by, it is so perplexing. Shall you and I ever reach a serene atmosphere as theirs, when we shall see whatever is is right, and that this is the best of all possible worlds? Is it the age we live in that is so disturbing, or is this earthquake what every human soul must experience in its passage from youth to age? Probably both; at least the disturbance must arise, but the character of the upheaval is determined by that of the times we are passing through. The more various the currents in which we are caught, the more uncertain will it be to predicate the nature of the 'Sturm und Drang' through which the soul must pass."

"I think a much larger proportion of people escaped this crisis in former times," said Kenneth, "at least there is little trace of such throes in the literature of the past compared to that of the present."

"Literature misleads us in this as in many things, Kenneth. In the first place, modern literature is ten times more abundant; secondly, it is much more daring in expression; and, thirdly, if you look closer into the old literature, you will find hints that the difficulties arose, though they are not dwelt on."

"The difficulties were different in most instances," said Kenneth.

"Aye, you are right there, Kenneth. Modern difficulties are really something grand. It is worth living in this nineteenth century for the sake of the grand problems which we face in their depth and height and vastness," said Harry, his plain face lighting up to something like beauty.

"But with regard to your grandparents you notice their comfortable, unshaken, and unshakable conviction about themselves, about yourself, and about everybody; the settledness they see in every arrangement, the unwillingness to weigh or balance probabilities. Even if a thing is merely proposed or surmised, they take it up as settled and to be carried out at once, and are astonished afterwards to hear it has not been acted on at all."

"If I were to get a letter from Australia tomorrow saying that my uncle had changed all his plans, and wanted me to go to business in Scotland, or to take to the Church, how do you think they would take this uprooting of all the plans they have formed on my behalf?" asked Kenneth.

"Much better than you would do, who can anticipate such a possibility. In a day or less, they would see that it is better that you should remain, and that it was not to be expected that your Uncle George, with a son of his own, should just make a son of you. Your grandmother would take either to business or to the Kirk, with joy, and your grandfather would acquiesce in her ideas, while you would be full of surmises and hesitations, wondering at your uncle's motives, and finding it hard to change the current of your ideas."

"I don't know but what it would be somewhat of a relief," said Kenneth with a sigh. He thought of how little chance there was of his seeing the good old folks again or Nelly, but above all, that he would never possibly see his father's face or hear his voice in that far-off land; and if George Oswald had voluntarily banished himself for so many years, what chance was there of his own return?

"But with regard to your grandparents," said Harry Stalker, "it would be too hard if along with the failing pleasures of age, they continued to feel the keen anxieties of youth. It is a great compensation to them for the loss of much, that they do not feel grief so sharp or apprehension so terrible as we younger men."

"You yourself have the most curious streak of age in your youth that I ever saw in any one," said Kenneth. "Where have you lived in some pre--existent state to acquire all the cynicism, the dogmatism, the insight that sometimes looks like experience, only that in your twenty-two years you cannot have really seen so much. You are not one of the happy men who learn by the experience of others."

"No, unfortunately, I don't learn wisdom, however much I may seem to know. That pre-existence theory is fascinating. When shall the individual have advanced so far as to recollect distinctly what he did, thought, and felt, in the last even of his transmigrations. Is there to be for ever a River of Lethe in which the soul must plunge, and begin anew with only unconscious memories in the shape of tendencies? There is a period in every one's life, pre-natal and post-natal, which is as completely forgotten as if it never had been, and yet it is probably the most important part of his life. So it may be that until we reach a certain advancement we cannot retain individually and definitely the traditional memories of the race. But to return to your old people, who would be shocked beyond measure at such speculations, I am amused to hear how they reckon on Nelly's services so long as they want them, the idea of her marrying and leaving them never enters their head. And I dare say they will imagine when she does give them notice of this kind that they can easily supply her place, but we know they cannot. She's simply perfect in her management."

Kenneth looked up a little sharply at his friend, but he betrayed no emotion. He was only talking of things in the abstract, as was his wont.

"Nelly will, I hope, stay with them as long as they need her. As for marriage it will be hard, with her tastes, to place her in her own station, and she has too much good sense to look above it," said Kenneth.

"Good sense," laughed Harry. "You are as confident as if you were seven or seventy years old. I never trust to good sense in these things."

"There is nothing in the world so good to trust to nevertheless," said Kenneth somewhat impatiently. "And I simply cannot bear to think of her leaving them. She promises--"

"Oh! of course, she promises everything in or out of reason that she thinks would please you or me or any one else. What is a young woman made for but to be agreeable to everybody, especially to the nobler sex? It is the whole duty of women. Let me see! an actuary would value the lives of that couple, the survivor of them I mean, at ten years. They are hale, temperate, and free from all anxiety, and with abundant means. It might stretch out easily to fifteen or sixteen. And Nelly will stick to them till she is thirty-two because she promised, and it would be very handsome to keep her to her promise."

"You are a very uncomfortable counsellor, Harry. And here the subject of our dispute comes with a letter in her hand; the Australian mail is sooner than we expected. This is the last letter I shall receive. Is it to countermand orders or to confirm them?"

"To confirm certainly. The disturbance will come after you get to your uncle's."

There was no alteration in the plans. Kenneth read in his uncle's careless scrawl his renewed injunctions to sail from the port of Liverpool in the good clipper ship 'Kent'; and that he should probably be met in Melbourne, but if not he was to telegraph his arrival and proceed forthwith to Tingalpa by train to Castlehurst, where he would find some one with a buggy and pair to take him home.

The duplicate bills of exchange for his passage-money and outfit were sent in due form; and his appearance was to be much as should do him credit both on board ship and on his landing. There was a little depression among the three young folks in the Linleath woods at this final marching order for Kenneth. Nelly and her friend planned an excursion for the morrow to her own old home, where Kenneth could say good-bye to John Lindores, and to the minister, Mr. Lang, and would visit his mother's grave. In this excursion Mr. Stalker was not a party, he had another visit to pay for the day, but with this exception he did not leave his friend till he saw him on board the 'Kent'. The farewells were said; Marion Oswald saw her daughter's nameless child depart as she thought to fortune and honours and happiness. John Oswald felt less exultant, and poor Nelly thought the house very sad and dull without the two friends who always had so much to say to her.