Chapter XIV

A TURNING-POINT.

The hay-harvest was over, and the corn-harvest had not begun, so there was a comparatively ‘slack time’ at the farm. In a month, or less, every man and woman about the place, with probably two or three stray Irish labourers, would be busy with the sickle, or ‘binding,’ from early morning till late into the twilight; but for the present there was a period of repose.

Alec was sitting in the parlour with his father and sister. He had been at home, rather against his will, since the beginning of May. He was now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, strikingly handsome in feature, but rather awkward in limb—educated, so far as a sufficiency of Latin, Greek, and mathematics was concerned, but entirely ignorant of modern languages and history, and almost as ignorant of the world and human life as he had been when he first went to College. His winters had generally been spent in the society of his friend Cameron (who had at last won the desire of his heart, by being appointed assistant to the Professor of Surgery), and Cameron’s influence upon him was stronger than he had any idea of. In heart and in experience Alec was still a boy, and he was, boy like, letting his attention wander from his volume of Spinoza to dream an impossible dream, when he was recalled to the earth by the sound of his father’s voice.

‘I met Mr. Dickson to-day, Alec.’

‘Yes?’

‘He tells me the Presbytery meets next week. Hadn’t you better be getting ready for the examination? I suppose there is one before you go to the Hall?’

Alec was silent for a moment. He understood perfectly that the subject had been introduced in a half-indirect way, so as to throw upon him the burden of beginning the attack, as it were; and he understood, too, that the time had come for this question being settled.

‘I thought I had told you, father, that I am not going to the Free Church Hall.’

‘Margaret, will you leave us alone for a few minutes?’ said Mr. Lindsay, and his daughter gathered up her work and left the room.

‘So you have been deceiving us all this time?’ said the laird in a low tone, fixing his cold, stern eyes upon his son.

‘I have never deceived you!’ burst out the young man hotly.

‘When I agreed to furnish the means for your going to College,’ said the laird slowly, ‘I certainly understood that you were thinking of the ministry. What other reason was there for your staying here in idleness since you left College? And why, in that case, did you go to College at all? You have no wish to be a doctor, have you? Answer me, sir!’

‘No; I have not.’

‘Then you have been deceiving me, I see.’

With a great effort Alec restrained himself.

‘When I first went to Glasgow,’ he began, ‘I said I wanted to be educated. I said nothing of becoming a minister; and I have never given you any reason to suppose that I intended doing anything of the kind.’

‘You knew very well, sir, that it was not only my expectation, but my earnest desire, and that I never would have consented to throw away so much money on your education, merely to try to turn you into a fine gentleman.’

Alec flushed up, opened his lips, and closed them again without speaking. He could not tell his father that the insinuation conveyed by his words was untrue.

‘Ah, Alec!’ pursued the old man, in a softer tone, ‘think what an opportunity you are throwing away! An opportunity that will never come again. What life could be higher or nobler than that spent in saving souls?’ To this Alec made no reply. ‘What are all the honours and wealth of the world compared to being the instrument of saving one soul?’ asked Mr. Lindsay.

‘But I have no call to the ministry,’ said Alec at length.

‘Have you sought for a call, my boy?’ asked his father. ‘Calls are not vouchsafed to those who do not listen for the summoning voice. Have you sought the guidance of God in this matter? Pray, my son, pray that you may be led aright. And now, tell Margaret and the servants to come to worship.’

Alec knew that his father meant to be kind—if only he would submit. He knew that the last words which the laird had spoken to him were sincere, but they grated upon him more unpleasantly than even the unjust and harsh things which his father had said at the beginning of the conversation. He resented this interference in the affairs of his own heart. He could see no rule or method of distinguishing between a Divine call and a suggestion of his own inclination. He was, in fact, out of harmony with the religious system in which he had been brought up. Sometimes he was willing to believe that the fault was entirely in himself; at other times he felt that the whole system was cold, hard, unlovely, and never free from a strong tendency to cant; but he was quite at a loss to know what he would have put in its place.

That evening Margaret contrived to see her brother alone before she went to bed. She came up to him in silence, took his hand in one of hers, and rested her other arm upon his shoulder.

‘Alec,’ she said, ‘have you quite set your heart against being a minister?’

‘That’s not a fair way to put it, Maggie,’ said he. ‘Unless one’s heart is naturally bent upon that calling, I don’t think one should follow it.’

‘But think of the good you might do!’

‘Oh, that is such stuff, Maggie! Look at the ministers about here: what particular good do they do—Mr. Johnstone, or Mr. Fergus, or Mr. Simpson, or any of them? On Saturdays they write (or don’t write) their sermons. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays they read, or potter about their gardens, or gossip with the neighbours.’

‘They visit the sick,’ put in Margaret.

‘One afternoon a week is enough for that.’

‘And they visit all their people regularly.’

‘Yes; and some of them simply pay calls, and the zealous ones give away tracts and ask how your soul is. A piece of impertinence!’

‘Ah, Alec, you are sadly changed,’ said Margaret, withdrawing her arm from her brother’s shoulder.

‘At any rate, I admit I am not fit to be a minister.’

‘It will grieve father very much. He has set his heart upon it.’

‘I can’t help that. I can’t do a thing like that—live a lie my whole life through—to please him.’

Margaret kissed her brother’s cheek and left him. She had a feeling that he and she were far apart in religious matters, and she was right in her belief. Alec Lindsay had read modern philosophy; he had been taught at College that ‘free-thought’ was a man’s inalienable inheritance, and that it was a species of intellectual suicide to stifle a doubt. In the Calvinism he had learned in childhood there was plenty of dogma certainly; but then he did not like the dogma, and he saw no particular reason for believing it. He was, in fact, a Theist; but he gave his father no hint that his religious opinions had undergone a change. He knew very well that if he had so much as expressed a doubt as to the soundness of the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination, or the lawfulness of taking a walk or reading a novel on a Sunday, his father would have been shocked beyond expression, and would first have stormed at him, and then mourned him as one who had already sold himself to the Evil One.

Nothing more passed between father and son for some days, and then Mr. Lindsay asked Alec point-blank whether he was going to devote himself to ‘the ministry of the Gospel.’

‘No, father; I have no inclination of that kind, and I think that without a very strong disposition to such a life it would be wrong to begin it.’

The elder man fixed a cold look on his son, but made no reply.

‘Don’t you think I am right in saying so?’ asked Alec.

The laird continued to gaze at his son without speaking, and Alec abruptly left the room.

About a week afterwards Alec was startled by his father saying to him one morning:

‘I have just had a note from your uncle James. He is willing to take you into his office, and give you a small salary. The sooner you can get ready to go the better.’

‘But I have no taste for a business life. I am not fitted for it, and I——’

‘Perhaps you will tell me what you are fit for,’ cried the old laird. ‘Just understand this. If you choose to reject this offer, I shall have no more to say to you. You may take your own way, and I wash my hands of you. It seems to me you are bent on throwing away your chances.’

‘Surely, sir, it is better to follow one’s own inclination in choosing a profession?’

‘And what may be your inclination?’

‘I should like to be a lawyer.’

‘And who is to support you while you are studying law?’

‘Others have begun as poor as I, and have risen to the top of the tree.’

‘It is madness—sheer madness!’ exclaimed the laird, rising and pacing up and down the room.

‘I can begin as clerk in an office,’ said Alec.

‘You shall do nothing of the kind!’ shouted his father. ‘You would know, if you knew anything at all about it, that you would not be paid while your articles were running. Perhaps you would like to be an advocate?’[1]

Alec was silent; for he knew that if he confessed that his real wish was to go to the bar, he would only the more effectually rouse his father’s anger.

‘Give me a week to think it over,’ he said at length. ‘It is not fair to ask me to decide a question that will influence the whole course of my life at a moment’s notice.’

To this his father made no reply; and Alec left the house, and wandered off to his old quarters at the ruined castle to hold counsel with himself.

At the end of an hour’s thinking he had resolved to reject his uncle’s offer. He saw quite plainly that if he accepted it he would be bound down for life to the narrow life of a Glasgow merchant—if, indeed, he had the chance of ever becoming more than an underling. He must give up the life of a student, for he knew that was practically incompatible with ‘getting on in business.’ And he must say good-bye to his ambitions. Rather than become a money-getting machine like one of the men he had met at his uncle’s table, he would go back to teaching. Then, at least, he could keep up his reading, and continue to attend classes at College.

It was, no doubt, a foolish decision to make. But Alec could not help thinking that he could do better with himself than spend the next few years of his life as a clerk in his uncle’s oil-works. He was determined to try to climb the ladder of Fortune, even if he should be thrown down and crushed under the feet of the crowd.

‘After all,’ he said to himself, as he rose from his seat and slowly made his way back to the farm—‘after all, my life is my own. I can but try. I would rather make a struggle to rise, and fail, than not make the attempt. But I don’t mean to fail. The question is, how can I get my foot on the first rung of the ladder? I haven’t five pounds in the world.’

That was the difficulty; but next day a light was thrown on his path, and that from a quarter from which he had never expected it to come.

In the afternoon his cousin Semple turned up at the farm. This young man did not at all like the idea of his clever cousin coming to the oil-works. At present he was the only relative of Mr. James Lindsay in the place; and he thought it tolerably certain that at the old man’s death the concern would pass into his hands. If another nephew were introduced, his own prospects might be seriously injured; and so he had thought it worth while to run down to the farm, and see whether he could not secretly dissuade Alec from taking this step.

Of course he said nothing about the matter in the presence of Mr. Lindsay or Margaret; and he could not help fancying that the keen eyes of the old laird were watching him as if to divine his intention. But when tea was over, the two young men strolled out together, and Semple began at once:

‘So you are coming to us next week, I hear, Alec.’

‘How do you know that?’ said the other, with inbred Scotch caution.

‘Oh, Uncle James told me to expect you. Of course you know you’ll have to begin at the beginning, and I fear you won’t find it very much to your taste after your College life.’

‘I may as well tell you, Semple, I’ve made up my mind not to go. But I’m “between the deil and the deep sea.” I don’t know what else I am to do.’

‘What would you like to do?’ asked Semple.

Secretly he was overjoyed at hearing of this resolution, and he determined to further it by every means in his power.

‘What I would like to do would be to go to London, and enter the office of a good firm of solicitors. Between ourselves, Semple, I mean to go to the bar; but I can’t begin to study in the regular way, because I’ve no money. I have heard that it’s not a bad plan to go into a solicitor’s office for awhile, to begin with, to learn the practice. But I know no one in London—no one in the profession, at least.’

‘Perhaps I could help you there, Alec,’ said the other, after a pause.

‘I wish you could,’ said Alec earnestly.

‘Do you remember a fellow called Beattie? I think he was at College while you were there.’

‘We didn’t go to the same classes. He was two or three years in advance of me; but I remember his name very well. A clever fellow, wasn’t he?’

‘Plenty of brains, certainly,’ answered Semple. ‘Well, he had very much the same ideas as yourself. He went to London, and got into the office of a firm of solicitors—Hatchett, Small, and Hatchett; and now he is one of their managing clerks, though I believe he has never got his articles. Well, we are clients of Hatchetts’. They are carrying on a big lawsuit for us just now, and I dare say it will be a thousand pounds in their pocket. I should think they would oblige me in a thing of that sort; and Beattie, I know, will do what he can for you.’

‘But the difficulty is, they wouldn’t pay me any salary.’

‘I should think they would give you something. You would very soon be of use to them. They paid Beattie, I know, almost from the first. But why don’t you go straight to Uncle James, and ask him to give you something to start you in life?’

Alec shook his head.

‘I’ll see if I can’t manage that for you. He’s a regular old screw. Five hundred pounds would be nothing to him.’

‘It would make a considerable difference to me,’ said Alec, with a laugh. ‘You know, Semple, it’s awfully good of you to trouble yourself about my affairs.’

‘Oh no; not at all.’

‘Yes, it is. It’s exceedingly kind of you. I shall never forget it as long as I live.’

Semple was rather amused than embarrassed by his cousin’s expressions of gratitude.

‘If he had tried his best, he couldn’t have suited my book better,’ said he to himself. ‘But I must see what I can do with the old man.’

On reflection, however, he considered that it would be dangerous for him to approach Mr. James Lindsay himself. The shrewd old gentleman would be sure, he thought, to see through his motives. On his return to Glasgow, therefore, he betook himself to Miss Lindsay, and after telling her that Alec could not, and would not, go into ‘the works,’ he informed her of the plan that was on foot, and wound up by saying that Alec was such a clever fellow that it was a shame he should miss his chances for the sake of a little money. Surely his uncle would not grudge to do that much for him.

‘It strikes me,’ said the old lady, ‘that the lad’s best chance of making his fortune is to go into his uncle’s office.’

She threw a keen glance at her visitor as she spoke, but Semple bore it unmoved.

‘I dare say; indeed, I told him so, if I remember right. But he has made up his mind not to go.’

‘Weel, if he gets the offer of the situation you speak o’, I’ll e’en do my best wi’ Mr. Lindsay; but it winna be muckle, I doot.’

On this Semple took his leave, and that night he went up to London, ostensibly on the affairs of the lawsuit. Beattie and he were old friends, and with his help he managed to convey to Mr. Hatchett the impression that Mr. James Lindsay would be grievously offended if they did not oblige him by taking his nephew into their office. It was all settled in half an hour; and next morning Semple was back in Glasgow.

All Miss Lindsay’s eloquence, however, failed to make a deep impression on Uncle James. He would give the lad a hundred pounds, and that was all.

‘The laddie’s a fool,’ said he, ‘a clever fool; and that’s aye the worst kind. If I were to give him mair, it wad a’ come to the same thing in the end.’

Alec’s father happened to be from home when the welcome letter arrived to tell him that the opening he had longed for had been found, and that the money difficulty had been removed. ‘Don’t say too much in thanking your uncle,’ wrote Semple. ‘There is nothing he hates like a fuss being made over his presents; and, after all, there is no doubt you have a kind of claim upon him.’

This, however, was not the way in which Alec looked at the matter. Of course he went at once to see his uncle, and thank him, and his gratitude was so heartfelt that the old man was touched a little.

‘Say nae mair, Alec; say nae mair,’ said he. ‘I hope you’ll do well, and do us credit; and if there should be a positive necessity for it, I dare say another hunder might be forthcoming.’

‘I trust it will not be necessary, uncle.’

‘Weel, mony a man has won to the top o’ the tree wi’ less than a hunder pound in his pouch at the start. Guid-day!’

The difficulty which had seemed so insurmountable had disappeared; and to Alec it seemed as if the world lay at his feet. True, the parting with his father would be a painful one; but that could not be helped. He would do his best to soften the old man’s resentment at this second frustration of his wishes—and perhaps, he thought, some day his father would be glad that he had taken his own way, and determined to carve out his fortune with his own hand.

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