Chapter VIII: Miss West's Christmas Adventure, 337 (7)

And Nelly sat bolt upright, her rosy burden contrasting with her young, faded face, and her large eyes beginning to flame like those of a wild beast about to be robbed of its young.

"Oh no, Nelly, no," groaned Staneholme, covering his face; "I heard of your distress, and I came but to speer of your welfare." And he made a motion to withdraw.

But Nelly's heart smote her for the wrong her rash words had done him--a wayworn, conscience-smitten man--and she recalled him relentingly.

"Ye may have meant well. I bear you no ill-will; I am stricken myself. Take a look at your laddie, Adam Home, before ye gang."

He advanced when she bade him, and received the child from her arms; but with such pause and hesitation that it might have seemed he thought more of his hands again meeting poor Nelly Carnegie's, and of her breath fanning his cheek, than of the precious load she magnanimously intrusted to him. He did look at the infant in his awkward grasp, but it was with a stifled sigh of disappointment.

"He may be a braw bairn, Nelly--I know not--but he has no look of yours."

"Na, he's a Home every inch of him, my bonny boy!" Nelly assented, eagerly. After a moment she turned her head, and added peevishly, "I'm a sick woman, and ye needna mind what I say; I'm no fit for company. Good day; but mind, I've forgotten and forgiven, and wish my bairn's father well."

"Nanny Swinton," called Nelly to her faithful nurse, as she lay awake on her bed, deep in the sober dimness of the summer night, "think you that Staneholme will be booted and spurred with the sun, riding through the Loudons to Lauderdale?"

"It's like, Lady Staneholme," answered Nanny, drowsily. "The keep o' man and beast is heavy in the town, and he'll be tain to look on his ain house, and greet the folk at home after these mony months beyond the seas. Preserve him and ilka kindly Scot from fell Popish notions rife yonder!"

"A miserable comforter are you, Nanny Swinton," muttered her mistress, as she hushed her child, and pressed her fevered lips to each tiny feature.

VIII.--THE RECONCILIATION AND RETURN TO STANEHOLME.

But Staneholme came again in broad light, the next day--the next--and the next, with half excuses and vague talk of business. Lady Carnegie did not interdict his visits, or blame his weakness and inconsistency, for they were seemly in the eyes of the world--which she honoured, after herself, although she washed her hands of the further concerns of these fools.

And Nelly talked to him with a grave friendliness, like one restored from madness or risen from another world. "Staneholme, you've never kissed the wean, and it's an ill omen," she said, suddenly, watching him intently as he dandled the child; and as if jealous of any omission regarding it, she appeared satisfied when he complied with her fancy.

"The curtain is drawn, and the shadow is on you; but is that a scar on your brow, Staneholme, and where did you get it?"

"A clour from a French pistol;" it was but skin deep--he was off his camp-bed in a few days.

He stooped forward, as he spoke slightingly, and pushed back the hair that half obscured the faint blue seam.

"Whisht!" said Nelly, reprovingly, "dinna scorn sickness; that bit stroke might have cost Lady Staneholme her son and my bairn his father;" and she bent towards him in her turn, and passed her fingers curiously and pityingly over the healed wound, ignorant how it burned and throbbed under her touch. "When the bairn is grown, and can rin his lane, Staneholme," Nelly informed him in her new-found freedom of speech, "I will send him for a summer to Staneholme; I'll be lonesome without him, but Michael Armstrong will teach him to ride, and he'll stand by Lady Staneholme's knee." Staneholme expressed no gratitude for the offer, he was fastening the buckle of his beaver. The next time he came he twisted a rose in his hand, and Nelly felt that it must indeed be Beltane: she looked at the flower wistfully, and wondered "would the breezes be shaking the bear and the briar roses on the sea-braes at Staneholme, or were the grapes of southern vines bonnier than they?" He flung down the flower, and strode to her side.

"Come hame, Nelly," he prayed passionately; "byganes may be byganes now. I've deserted the campaign, I've left its honours and its dangers--and I could have liked them well--to free men, and am here to take you hame."

Nelly was thunderstruck. "Hame!" she said, at last, slowly, "where you compelled me to travel, where I gloomed on you day and night, as I vowed; I, who would not be a charge and an oppression to the farthest-off cousin that bears your name. Are you demented?"

"And this is the end," groaned Staneholme, in bitterness; "I dreamt that I would win at last. I did not love you for your health and strength, or your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is fairer to me, lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn, I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"

A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her choking heart; but she pressed her hands upon her breast, and strove against it for the sake of her womanhood.

"And I dreamed," she answered slowly and tremulously, "that it bude to be true, true love, however it had sinned, that neither slight nor hate, nor absence nor fell decay could uproot; and that could tempt me to break my plighted word, and lay my infirmity on the man that bargained for me like gear, and that I swore--Heaven absolve me!--I would gar rue his success till his deein' day. Adam Home, what are you seekin' at my hands?"

"Nae mair than you'll grant, Nelly Carnegie--pardon and peace, and my young gudewife, the desire o' my eyes. I'll be feet to you, Nelly, as long's I'm to the fore."

"Big tramping feet, Staneholme," said Nelly, trying to jest, and pushing him back; "dinna promise ower fair. Na, Adam Home, you'll wauken the bairn!"

So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of the past storm.

There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.

"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"

Staneholme laughed, and retorted something perhaps neither quite modest nor wise; but the ready tongue that had learnt so speedily to pour itself out to his greedy ears did not now scold and contradict him, but sighed--

"Ah, Adam Home, you do not have the best of it; it is sweet to be beat; I didna ken--I never guessed that."

Gladly astounded were the retainers of Staneholme at their young laird's unannounced return, safe and sound, from the wars; but greater and more agreeable was their friendly surprise to find that his sick wife, who came back with him unstrengthened in body, was healed and hearty in spirit. Well might good old Lady Staneholme rejoice, and hush her bold grandson, for the change was not evanescent or its effects uncertain. As Staneholme drove out his ailing wife, or constructed a seat for her on the fresh moor, or looked at her stitching his frilled shirts as intently as the child's falling collars, and talked to her of his duties and his sports, his wildness was controlled and dignified. And when he sat, the head and protector of his deaf old mother, and his little frolicsome, fearless child, and his Nelly Carnegie, whose spirit had come again, but whose body remained but a sear relic of her blooming youth, his fitful melancholy melted into the sober tenderness of a penitent, believing man, who dares not complain, but who must praise God and be thankful, so long as life's greatest boons are spared to him.

HECTOR GARRET OF OTTER.

I.--THE FIRE.

A calm, pure summer moonlight fell upon the Ayrshire mosses and deans, but did not silver, as far as we are concerned, the Carrick Castle of Bruce, nor Cameron's lair amidst the heather, nor landward Tintock, nor even seagirt Ailsa Craig, but only the rolling waves of the Atlantic and a grey turreted mansion-house built on a promontory running abruptly into the water. The dim ivory light illuminated a gay company met in the dwelling with little thought of stillness or solemnity, but with their own sense of effect, grouped carelessly, yet not ungracefully, in an old-fashioned, though not unsuitable drawing-room.

They needed relief, these brilliant supple figures; they demanded the background of grey hangings, scant carpet, spindle-legged chairs, and hard sombre prints. To these very cultivated, very artificial and picturesque personages, a family sitting-room was but a stage, where lively, capricious, yet calculating actors were engaged in playing their parts.

The party were mostly French, from the mass of gallant, dauntless emigrants, many of whom were thus entertained with grateful, commiserating hospitality in households whose members had but lately basked in the sparkling geniality of the southern atmosphere, now lurid and surcharged with thunder.

There was a Marquise, worldly, light, and vain, whom adversity had not broken, and could not sour; an Abbé, bland and double, but gentle and kindly in his way; a soldier, volatile, hot-headed, brave as a lion, simple as a child; an older man, sad, sneering, indifferent to this world and the next, but with the wrecks of a noble head, and, God help him, a noble heart.

Of the three individuals present of a different nation and creed, two closely resembled the others with only that vague, impalpable, but perceptible distinction of those whose rearing affords a superficial growth which overspreads but does not annihilate the original plant. The one was a young man, buoyant, flippant, and reckless as the French soldier, but with a bold defiance in his tone which was all his own; the other a young girl, coquettish and vivacious as the Marquise, but with a deep consciousness under her feigning, an undercurrent of watchful pride and passion, of which her model was destitute. The last of the circle was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered lad, who stood apart from the others, big, shy, silent:--but he was earnest amid their shallowness, noble amid their hollowness, and devoted amid their fickleness. How he gazed on the arch, haughty girl, with her lilies and roses, her pencilled brows, her magnificent hair magnificently arranged, with her rich silk and airy lace, and muslin folded and gathered and falling into lines which were the very poetry of attire, unless where a piquant provoking frill, band, or peak, reminded the gazer that the princess was a woman, a mocking mischievous woman, as well as a radiant lady! How he listened to her contradictory words, witty and liquid even in their most worthless accents! how he drank in her songs, the notes of her harp, the rustle of her dress, the fall of her foot! how he started if she moved! how he saw her, though his eyes were on the ground, and though his head was in his hands, while she marked him ceaselessly, half with cruel triumph, half with a flutter and faintness which she angrily and scornfully resisted and denied.

A few more gay _bons mots_ and repartees, a last epigram from the Abbé, a court anecdote from the Marquise which might have figured in one of those letters of Madame de Sévigné where the freshness of the haymaker of Les Rochers survives the glare and the terrible staleness of the Versailles of Louis XV., a blunt camp jest from the soldier, a sarcasm from the philosopher, a joyous barcarole, strangely succeeded by a snatch from that lament of woe wrung forth by the fatal field of Flodden, and the company dispersed. The horse's hoofs of the single stranger of the evening rung on the causeway, as he made for the smooth sands of the bay, the lights one by one leaping out, and the pale moon remaining mistress of Earlscraig as when the warder on yon tower peered out over the waters for the boats of the savage Irish kern, or lit the bale-fire that summoned Montgomery and Muir to ride and run for the love or the fear of Boswell of Earlscraig.

Had these old-world times returned by magic? had a crazed serving-man revived the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity. No horn blew, no bugle sounded, no tramp of horse or hurrying feet broke the silence; the house lay in profound rest, and the sleepers slept on, though truly that was no phantom glare, no marsh gleam, but the near presence of an awful foe.

And the smoke burst forth in thicker, more suffocating volume; the red streamers shot up again and again, and the burning embers fell like thickest swarms of fire-flies, before a single hasty step roused an echo already lost in the roar and crackle of fire. A scared, half-dressed servant ran out into the court, flung up his hands as he looked around him, then hurried back, and suddenly the great bell pealed out its faithful alarum. "Good folk, good folk, danger is at the door! For Jesu's sake and your dear lives, up and flee! The angels hold out their hands, Sodom is around you--away, away!"

The summons was not in vain. Within a few seconds clamorous outcries, shrieks of dismay, the dashing open of doors and windows, answered the proclamation. A horror-struck crowd assembled rapidly in the court; but notwithstanding that the Abbé's wan face and shaven crown appeared speedily, and the soldier shouted, "Who is in danger? _mes camarades, suivez-moi!_" the philosopher instinctively elected himself commander; he rose, tall and erect, over the heads of his fellows; his face flushed and brightened; and he spoke words of wisdom and resolution whose spirit men recognised through the veil of his frozen tongue; while cravens shrank back, brave men rallied round him!

"Where is Boswell? _Mon Dieu!_ the house is burning and the master is not found! Adolphe, _sauve la Marquise, cet escalier n'est pas perdu_. But where is Boswell? Show his room to me--the nearest way--quick, or he perishes. _Ah, le voilà!_"

Down a flight of side steps stumbled the butler and a favourite groom, bearing between them the young laird, motionless, senseless, his dress dishevelled, but unscathed by flame, and unstained by blood; still breathing, but his marked imperious features were unconscious, heavy, and lethargic.

The Abbé and his elder friend exchanged glances. The brow of the latter contracted in disgust and gloom.

"Adolphe and he played billiards against my desire, as if he were not _bête_ enough already," he said in an undertone. "Lay him here, my friends," to the servants, "and listen to me. If you love the Seigneur, let him never know that thus it happened this night. Cover him with a mantle; he will awake to see his chateau a ruin. _Mais, n'importe_, we will do our best. Carry out what is most precious; bring up buckets of water. _Ma foi!_ there is enough at hand."

Yes; at their feet, but by a few fathoms unavailable, lay the broad sea, sufficient to extinguish the conflagration of a thousand cities, while the house above was rent with fierce heat, which reddened the sea like blood.

The Marquise was rescued sobbing and shivering, but she shared her blanket with one of the poor servant-girls. Even the old bed-ridden nurse, so blind and stupid with age that none could satisfy her of the cause of the tumult and din, was carried out, and placed on the grass terrace beside the master; where no sooner did she apprehend intuitively the neighbourhood of her proudly cherished nursling, than she left off her weak wailing, and began to croon over him as fondly and contentedly as when he lay an innocent babe in his cradle:

"Are you weary, Earlscraig? Have you come back sorely tired from the hunt or the race? Weary fa' the men folk that let you lie down with the dew-draps on your bonny curls--bonnier than Miss Alice's, for a' their fleechin'--as if it were high noon. No but noontide has its ills, too; but you would never heed a bonnet, neither for sun nor wind. A wild laddie, a wild laddie, Earlscraig!"

Eager but ignorant hands were piling up heaps of miscellaneous goods--pictures, feather-beds, old armour, plate, mirrors, harness, carpets, and wearing apparel. All were tossed together in wild confusion. The moon was hidden; air, earth, and water were lurid; a hot blast blew in men's faces, which alone remained white and haggard, when a murmur and question, a doubt and frenzy, first stirred and fast convulsed the mass. "Where is Miss Alice?" Ay, where was Miss Alice? Who had seen her? Speak, in God's name!--shout her name until her voice replies, and men's shuddering souls are freed from this ghastly nightmare.

Miss Alice! Alice Boswell! are you safe, lamenting unseen the home of your fathers? Or are you within that turret whose foundation rock descends sheer into the sea--that turret close by which the demon began his work, where his forked tongue is now licking each loophole and outlet, where beams are bursting and the yawning jaws of hell are about to swallow up the rapid wreck--forgotten, forsaken--the queen of hearts, the wooed and worshipped beauty; fair and sweet, ripe and rare, the sole daughter of the race; the charm and delight of its grey heads?

Oh, Father, thou art terrible in thy decrees! Oh, men, ye are miserable fools! She is there by the blazing framework of the window of her chamber, which she has never quitted; her hair loose, some portion of her dress cast about her, her eyes wide open and glazing with terror, but strangely beautiful--with a glory behind and about her; an unearthly brightness upon brow and cheek, and white arms stretched out imploringly, despairingly for help in her utmost need.

They pressed forward; they looked up in anguish; old men who had followed her when a fairy child, friends of long standing, acquaintances of yesterday. Again and again the gallant soldier penetrated the low doorway; again and again he swerved and recoiled from the furnace fumes that met him--a more fearful encounter than the fury of the sans-culottes and the reeking pools beneath the guillotine.

"_Courage, soldats! Vive la mort, pour la femme et pour la gloire!_" and with a shout half-exulting, half-maddened, the Gallic blood again fired to the desperate feat. Then there was a diversion--a rush to the opposite side of the building--a ladder might be of use there. A notion of forcing open a closed-up and disused gallery of communication, seized hold of these agitated minds, and this afforded a vent to the pent-up sympathy and distress. New energy supplanted stupor; and through the deep hush of the fire could be distinguished the blows of axe and hammer, wielded lustily by stalwart and devoted arms, eager to clear a way of life and liberty for the captive.

But this was a work of time, and louder crackled and hissed the flames. A fiercer blaze filled the sky, and glittered back from the waves; the serpent tongues drew together, and shot up through the room in a yellow pyramid. In vain! in vain! The zealous labourers panted in the sickness of horror and the chill of great awe.

"A boat! a boat!" called a voice from the outer circle. The thinker, the scorner, stood on the verge of the rocks above the illuminated sea, his head bare, his coat stripped off. "Let Mademoiselle cast herself from the casement instantly; it is her only hope. I can swim; I will hold her up until a boat is launched. _Courage, Mademoiselle!_ trust in God and in me."

"Yes, Marquise," he whispered for a second to his countrywoman near him; "I have lost God for many a day; I have found him again in this hour. A _Te Deum_ for my requiem!" and looking aghast upon his face in the great light, the Marquise crossed herself, and averred ever afterwards that it was transformed like unto that of his patron saint, St. Francis. The next moment he plunged into the midnight sea. Those who witnessed the action declared that the reflection of the burning was so strong that he seemed to sink into a lake of fire, where he rose again presently, and breasted the waters stoutly.

The girl saw the design; she comprehended it, and the hoarse murmur of encouragement that hailed its presence of mind. The concentration of the flames, which threatened every moment to bring down a portion of the ponderous roof in one destroying crash, left a freer passage. She advanced quickly--she put her foot on the smouldering sill; she paused, hesitated. It was a fearful alternative.

"Leap down, leap down, Miss Alice; a drowning man has two lives, a burning man but one. Down, down, or you are lost!"

But another cry mingled with the vehement appeal--a piercing, confident cry, that would have vibrated on the dull ear of the dying, though it said only, "I am coming. Alice Boswell: I am coming!"

He was there, on his panting, foam-flecked horse: he flung himself from his saddle; he heard her answer, "Hector Garret, save me, save me!"

He broke the circle as Samson burst the green withes: he paralysed all remonstrance; he vanished into the abyss which the great staircase presented. He must have borne a charmed life to reach thus far--when a mightier roar, a perfect column of fire, a thundering avalanche of glowing timber and huge stones descended with a shock of an earthquake, and rebounded into the sea, engulfing for ever the fair slight form within.

By daring and magnanimous effort and main force, other arms bore back Hector Garret from the tottering walls and shaken foundation: and the boat rowed out and delivered the heroic Frenchman. The sinking in of the turret roof satiated the destroyer, so that the further wing of the house was preserved. Its master lived unharmed, to rouse himself from his portentous slumber and face his calamity, while the lover lay writhing and raging in the clutch of wild fever.

But the summer sun shining down on the sea, once more blue and clear as heaven, fell on black yawning gaps and mounds of ashes; on shivered glass and strewn relics of former luxury; on the very grass of the promontory, brown and withered, and trodden into the earth for many a yard; on the horrible grave of the maiden who had watched her own image in the crystal pools, lilted her siren songs to the break of the waves, woven at once chains for her adorers and the web of that destiny which buried her there, unshrouded and uncoffined.

II.--THE OFFER.

The Clyde was forded by man and horse where ships now ride at anchor; but the rush of trade, not quite so deep and rapid fifty years since as now, yet strong and swift, the growth of centuries, was hurrying, jostling, trampling onward in Jamaica Street and Buchanan Street and their busy thoroughfares. Within our quarter, however, were stillness and dimness, the cold, lofty, classic repose of the noble college to which a professor's house was in immediate vicinity.

The room, large, low-roofed, with small, peaked windows, had not been built in modern times. The furniture was almost in keeping: roomy settees, broad, plain, ribbed-back chairs, with faded worked covers, the task of fingers crumbled into dust, heavy bookcases loaded with proportionably ponderous or curiously quaint volumes, and mirrors, with their frames like coffins covered with black velvet and relieved by gilding.

The only fresh and fragrant thing in the room--ay, or in the house, where master and mistress and servants were old and withered--was a young girl seated on a window-seat, her hands lightly crossed, watching the white clouds in the July sky, white, though nothing else is so in Glasgow, where the air is heavy with perpetual smoke and vapour.

That girl, too broad-browed and large-eyed for mere youthful beauty, but with such an arch, delicate, girlish mouth and chin as betokened her a frank, unsophisticated, merry child after all, was Leslie Bower, the young daughter and only child of an erudite and venerated professor.

Leslie had no brothers and no sisters, and in a sense she had neither father nor mother, for Professor Bower was the son, husband, and father of his books, and he had so mighty a family of these, ancient and modern, that he had very little time or attention to spare for ties of the flesh. He was a mild, absent, engrossed old man, flashing into energy and genius in his own field of learning, but in the world of ordinary humanity a body without a soul.

Professor Bower married late in life a timid, shrinking English wife, who, removed from all early ties, and never mingling in Glasgow society, lapsed into a stillness as profound as his own.

Dr. Bower took little notice of his child; what with duties and studies, he had no leisure; he read in his slippered morning gown, he read at meals, he read by his evening lamp; probably, if Mrs. Bower would have confessed it, he kept a volume under his pillow. No wonder he was a blear-eyed, poking, muttering old man, for he was much more interested in Hannibal than in Bonaparte, and regarded Leslie, like the house, the yearly income, the rector, the students, the janitors, as one of many abstract facts with which he troubled himself as little as possible.

Mrs. Bower cared for Leslie's health and comfort with scrupulous nervous exactness, but she was incapable of any other demonstration of regard. She was as shy and egotistical as poor Louis XVI., and perhaps it would have demanded as tragic a domestic revolution to have stirred her up to lively tenderness. Leslie might have been as dubious as Marie Antoinette of the amount of love entertained for her by her nearest kin, but curiously, though affectionate and passionate enough to have been the pure and innocent child of some fiery Jocobin, she had not vexed herself about this mystery. One sees every day lush purple and rose-flowered plants growing in unaccountable shade; true, their associates are pale and drooping, and the growth of the hardier is treacherous, and may distil poison, but the evil principle is gradual, and after conditions have been confirmed and matured.

The stronger portion of Leslie's nature, which required abundant and invigorating food, was slow of development; the lighter side flourished in the silent, dull house, where nothing else courted the sunbeam. In her childhood and girlhood, Leslie had gone out to school, and although always somewhat marked and individual in character, she had companions, friends, sufficient sympathy and intercourse for an independent, buoyant nature at the most plastic period of its existence. This stage of life was but lately left behind; Leslie had not long learnt that now she was removed from classes and masters, and must in a great measure confine her acquaintances to those who returned her visits at her father's house; and as visitors put mamma and papa about, and did not suit their habits, she must resign her little world, and be almost as quiet and solitary as her elders. Leslie had just begun to sigh a little for the old thronged, bustling class-rooms which she had lightly esteemed, and was active by fits and starts in numerous self-adopted occupations which could put former ones out of her head, and fill up the great blanks in her time and thoughts, for she was not inclined to sit down under a difficulty, and instinctively battled with it in a thousand ways.

Thus Leslie had her flower-painting--few natural flowers she saw, poor girl--card boxes, worsted vases, eggshell baskets, embroidery pieces, canary bird, and books--the last greedily devoured. She did not assist her mother, because although their household was limited, Mrs. Bower's quiet, methodical plans were perfect, and she gently declined all interference with her daily round. Neither did Leslie work for her father, because the professor would as soon have employed her canary bird. She was not thoughtful and painstaking for the poor, because, though accustomed to a species of almsgiving, she heard nothing, saw nothing of nearer or higher association with her neighbours. Yet there was capacity enough in that heart and brain for good or for evil.

So Leslie sat there, pausing in her sewing, and gazing idly at the sky, with a girl's quick pensiveness and thick-coming fancies, as she mused.

How blue it was yonder! What glorious clouds! yet the world below was rather stupid and tiresome, and it was hard to say what people toiled so arduously for. There were other lands and other people: should she ever see them? Surely, for she was quite young. She wished they could go in summer 'down the water,' out of this din and dust, to some coast village or lonely loch between lofty purple mountains, such as she had seen when with Mrs. Elliot; papa might spare a few weeks, people no richer did; they had no holidays, and it was so hot and close, and always the same. But she supposed she must be contented, and would go away to cool and compose herself in the crypt of their own cathedral. How grand it was; how solemn the aisles and arches on every side, like forest trees; and then the monuments--what stories she invented for them! St. Mungo's Well! St. Mungo, austere, yet beneficent; with bare feet, cowled head, scarred back, and hardest of all, swept and garnished heart, with his fruitful blessing, 'Let Glasgow flourish.' What would St. Mungo think now of the city of the tree, the fish, and the bell?

This hoar, venerable, beautiful feat of art was to the imprisoned Glasgow girl as St. Paul's to such another isolated imaginative nature.

There was a knock at the street-door; a very decided application of the queer, twisted knocker. Leslie roused herself: not a beggar's tap that; none of the janitors; and this was not Dr. Murdoch's or Dr. Ware's hour: the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door was closed. Leslie started up with pleased surprise,--"Hector Garret of Otter! he will come upstairs to see us; he will tell us how the country is looking; he will bring news from Ferndean," and for the next hour she sat in happy, patient expectation.

Mrs. Bower, a fair, faded, grave woman, came into the room, and sat down with her needlework in the other window.

"Mamma," exclaimed Leslie, "do you know that Hector Garret of Otter is downstairs with papa?"

"Yes, Leslie."

"He never fails to ask for us; don't you think we'll see him here by-and-by?"

"I do not know; it depends upon his engagements."

"I wonder what brings him to Glasgow just now; he must find it so much more agreeable at home," with a little sigh.

"Leslie, I don't think you have anything to do with that."

"No, certainly; Hector Garret and I are two very different persons."

"Leslie!"

"Well, mamma."

"I wish you would not say Hector Garret; it does not sound proper in a girl like you."

"I suppose it does not. He must have been a grown-up man when I was a child. I have caught the habit from papa, but I have not the least inclination to use the name to his face."

"I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped.

Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual, statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark, bright, and variable.

The visitor brought a gift in his hand--a basket of flowers and summer fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look politely obliged, and not irrationally elated.

"So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower--wild roses and hawthorn too--I like so much to have them, though they wither very soon. I dare say they grew where

'Fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance.'

(Burns was becoming famous, and Leslie had picked up the lines somewhere.) And the strawberries, oh, they must be from Ferndean."

The bearer nodded and smiled.

"I knew it by instinct," and Leslie began eating them like a tempted child, and stained her pretty lips. "Those old rows on each side of the summer-house where papa first learnt his lessons--I wonder if there are jackdaws there still: won't you have some?"

"No, thank you. What a memory you have, Miss Bower!"

"Ferndean is my Highland hill. When papa is very stiff and helpless from rheumatism, he talks of it sometimes. It is so long ago; he was so different then."

Mr. Garret and Mrs. Bower exchanged a few civil words on his journey, the spring weather, the state of the war, like two taciturn people who force their speeches; then he became Leslie's property, sat down beside her, watched her arranging her flowers, helped her a little, and spoke now and then in answer to her questions, and that was sufficient.

Hector Garret was particularly struck this evening with the incongruity of Leslie's presence in the Professor's dry, silent, scholastic home, and with her monotonous, shaded existence, and her want of natural associations and fitting companionship. He pondered upon her future; he was well acquainted with her prospects; he knew much better than she did that the money with which his father had bought up the mortgages on Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long ago, and that the miserable annuity upon which the Professor rested peacefully as a provision for his widow and child, died with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles were for the benefit of the world at large, and destined to descend to future generations of barbarians.

What a frank, single-hearted young girl she seemed to Hector Garret--intelligent, capable of comprehending him in a degree, amusing him with her similes and suggestions; pretty, too, as one of those wild roses or pinks that she prized so highly, though she wore a sober, green, flowered silk dress. He should like to see her in a white gown. He supposed that was not a convenient town wear. Pope had unmasked women, but he could not help thinking that a fresh, simple, kind young girl would be rather a pleasant object of daily encounter. She would grow older, of course. That was a pity; but still she would be progressing into an unsophisticated, cordial, contented woman, whom servants would obey heartily--to whom children would cling. Even men had a gush of tenderness for these smiling, unobtrusive, humble mothers; and best so in the strain and burden of this life.

Leslie knew nothing of these meditations. She only understood Hector Garret as a considerate friend, distinguished personally, and gifted mentally--for her father set great store upon him--but, unlike the gruff or eager servants to whom she was accustomed, condescending to her youth and ignorance, and with a courtesy the nearest to high-breeding she had ever met. She was glad to see Hector Garret, even if he did not bring a breath of the country with him. She parted from him with a sense of loss--a passing sadness that hung upon her for an hour or two, like the vapour on the river, which misses the green boughs and waving woods, and sighs sluggishly past wharfs and warehouses.

It was a still greater surprise to Leslie when Hector Garret came again the next evening. He had never been with them on two successive days before. She supposed he had gone back to Ayrshire, although he had not distinctly referred to his speedy return. But he was here, and Leslie entertained him as usual.

"Should you not like to see Ferndean?" inquired Hector Garret.

"Don't speak of it," Leslie cautioned him, soberly; "it would be far too great happiness for this world."

"Why, what sort of dismal place do you think the world?"

"Too good a place for you and me," Leslie answered evasively, and with a touch of fun.

"But this is the very season for Ferndean and Otter, when the pasture is gay as a garden, and you can have boating every day in the creeks, more sheltered than the moorland lochs."

The tears came into Leslie's eyes.

"I think it is unkind of you, Mr. Garret, to tempt me with such pictures," she answered, half pettishly.

"I mean to be kind," he responded quickly. "I may err, but I can take refuge in my intentions. You may see Ferndean and Otter, if you can consent to go there, and dwell there as a grave man's friend and wife."

Leslie started violently, and the blood rushed over her face.

"I beg your pardon, Sir, but you don't mean it?"

"I do mean it, Leslie, as being the best for both of us; and I ask you plainly and directly to marry me: if you agree, I hope and trust that you will never regret it."

Leslie trembled very much. She said afterwards that she pinched her arm to satisfy herself that she was awake, but she was not quite overcome.

"I was never addressed so before. I do not know what to say. You are very good, but I am not fit."

He interrupted her--not with vows and protestations, but resolutely and convincingly.

"I am the best judge of your fitness,--but you must judge for yourself also. I am certain of your father's and mother's acquiescence, so I do not mention them. But do not hurry; take time, consult your own heart; consider the whole matter. I will not press for your decision. I will wait days, weeks. I will go down to Otter in the meantime, if you prefer it. But if you do say yes, remember, dear Leslie, you confer upon me the greatest boon that a woman can bestow on a man, and I think I am capable of appreciating it."

He spoke with singular impartiality, but without reassuring his hearer. Leslie looked helplessly up to him, excited and distressed.

He smiled a little, and sighed a brief sigh.

"You are not satisfied. You are too candid and generous. You wish me to take my refusal at once. You feel that I am too old, too dull to presume--"

"Oh, no, no," Leslie exclaimed, seeing herself convicted of terrible selfishness and conceit, while her heart was throbbing even painfully with humility and gratitude. "You have done me a great honour, and if you would not be disappointed--if you would bear with me--if you are not deceiving yourself in your nobleness--I should be so happy to go to Ferndean."

He thanked her eloquently, and talked to her a little longer, kindly and affectionately, and then he offered to seek her father; and left her to her agitated reflections. What a fine, dignified man he looked! Could it be possible that this was her lot in life? And the very sun which had risen upon her planning a walk with Mary Elliot next week, was yet streaming upon her poor pots of geraniums on the dusty window-sill. She quitted her seat, and began to walk quickly up and down.

"Leslie, you are shaking the room." Mamma had been in the further window with her sewing all the time.

Leslie stole behind the brown window-curtain, fluttering her hand among the folds.

"Leslie, you are pulling that curtain awry."

"I cannot help it, mamma."

"Why not, child? Are you ill?"

"Yes--no, mamma. I don't know what to think--I can't think. But Hector Garret has asked me to be his wife."

Mrs. Bower's needle dropped from her fingers. She stared at her daughter. She rose slowly.

"Impossible, Leslie," she observed.

Leslie laughed hysterically.

"Yes, indeed. It was very strange, but I heard every word."

"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"

Mrs. Bower had never so cross-examined her daughter in her life; but Leslie was not disturbed or vexed by her incredulity.

"Quite certain. I know it was only yesterday that you scolded me for taking liberties with his name; but he was perfectly serious, and he has gone to tell papa."

Mrs. Bower gazed wistfully on Leslie, and a faint red colour rose in her cheek, while she interlaced her fingers nervously.

"Leslie," she asked again, in a shaking voice, "do you know what you are doing?"

Leslie looked frightened.

"Is it so very terrible, mamma? I should possibly have married some day--most girls mean to do it; and only think of Ferndean and Otter. Besides, there is nobody I could like so well as Hector Garret, I am quite sure, although I little guessed he cared so much for me;" and Leslie's eye's fell, and a sunny, rosy glow mantled over her whole face, rendering it very soft and fair.

"I see it is to be, Leslie. May it be for your welfare, my dear;" and her mother stooped abruptly, and kissed the young, averted cheek.

Leslie was awed. She dreaded that her father would be equally moved, and then she did not know how she could stand it. But she might have spared herself the apprehension; for when the Professor shuffled in he sat down as usual, fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his lecture by twenty minutes--"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a moment, he observed parenthetically, as he turned a page--"Child! you have my approval of a union with Hector Garret--an odd fancy, but that is no business of ours,"--dropped his eyes again on his volume, and made no further allusion to the subject for the rest of the evening--no, nor ever again, of his own free will. Hector Garret assailed him on preliminaries, his wife patiently waylaid and besieged him for the necessary funds, acquaintances congratulated him--he was by compulsion drawn more than once from roots and æsthetics; but left to himself, he would have assuredly forgotten his daughter's wedding-day, as he had done that of her baptism.

Leslie recovered from the stunning suddenness of her fate, and awoke fully to its brightness. To go down to Ayrshire and dwell there among hills and streams, and pure heather-scented air, like any shepherdess; to be the nearest and dearest to Hector Garret:--already the imaginative, warm-hearted girl began to raise him into a divinity.

Leslie was supremely content, she was gay and giddy even with present excitement; with the pretty bustle of being so important and so occupied--she whose whole time lately had been vacant and idle--so willing to admire her new possessions, so openly elated with their superiority, and not insensible to the fact that all these prominent obtrusive cares were but little superfluous notes of the great symphony upon which she had entered, and whose infinitely deeper, fuller, higher tones she would learn well, by-and-by.

Leslie Bower was the personification of joy, and no one meddled with her visions. Hector Garret was making his preparations at Otter; and when Leslie sang as she stitched, and ran lightly up and down, only the servants in the kitchen laid their heads together, and confided to each other that "never did they see so daffin' a bride; Miss Leslie should ken that a greetin' bride's a happy bride!" But no one told Leslie--no one taught her the tender meaning of the wise old proverb--no one warned her of the realities of life, so much sadder, so much holier, purer, more peaceful than any illusion. Her mother had relapsed into her ordinary calmness, rather wounding Leslie's perceptions when she allowed herself to think of it, for she did not read the lingering assiduity that was so intent it might have been employed upon her shroud. And there was no one else--no; Leslie was quite unaware that her gladness was ominous.

Only the shadow of a warning crossed Leslie's path of roses, and she disregarded it. Her confidence in Hector Garret and in life remained unbounded.

Leslie had gone to the best known of her early companions, her cup brimming over in the gracious privilege of begging Mary Elliot to be her bridesmaid. The Elliots had been kind to her, and had once taken her to their cheerful country-house; and now Mary was to witness the ceremony, and Hector Garret had said that she might, if she pleased, pay Leslie a long visit at Otter.

Mary Elliot was a little older, a little more experienced in womanly knowledge than Leslie.

"How strange it sounds that you should be married so soon, Leslie, from your old house, where we thought you buried. We believed that you must lead a single life, unless your father made a pet of one of his students: and then you must have waited until he left college."

"It is the reverse. I have no time to lose," nodded Leslie; "only Hector Garret is not old-looking. I don't believe that he has a grey hair in his head. He is a far handsomer man than Susan Cheyne's sister's husband."

"I know it; he was pointed out to me in the street. Is he very fond of you, Leslie?"

"I suppose--a little, or he would not have me."

"Does he flatter you, pretend that you are a queen, say all manner of fine things to you? I should like to be enlightened."

"No, no, Mary; real men are not like men in books--and he is not foolish."

"But it is not foolish in a lover. They are all out of their senses--blinded by admiration and passion."

"Perhaps; but Hector Garret is a clever man, only he speaks when he is spoken to, and does not forget you when out of sight. And do you know, I have been used to clever people, and decidedly prefer to look up to a man?"

"What does he call you, Leslie?"

"Why, Leslie, to be sure, or Miss Bower. You would not have him say Mrs. Garret yet?" And Leslie covered her face and laughed again, and reddened to the tips of her fingers.

"Not 'Bonnie Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears and would wilfully repeat, "Winsome Mary," "Little Woman," "Witch!"

"No," Leslie replied, with honest frankness, "that would be speaking nonsense; and if Hector Garret thinks nonsense that is bad enough."

"Do you remember how we talked sometimes of our husbands?"

"Yes, I do. They were all to be heroes."

"And you were to be courted on bended knees. Yes, Leslie, solicited again and again; and when you yielded at last, it should be such an act of grace that the poor fellow would be half mad with delight."

"I was mad myself. I was full of some song or bit of poetry. I tell you again, Mary, if you have not found it out for yourself, real life is not like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silent couple. They have been very kind to me all my life, and I ought to be glad that they will not miss me much. But although it was wrong, I have often felt a little forlorn, and been tempted to have bad, discontented thoughts all by myself. However, that is over, and I hope I'm going to be a good and sensible woman now. And, Mary, I am so anxious to have your opinion upon my crimson pelisse, because mamma does not profess to be a judge; and I cannot be certain that it is proper merely on a mantua-maker's word and my own taste. I would like to do Hector Garret credit; not that I can really do so in any eyes but his own."

III.--THE NEW HOME.

Hector Garret had his girl wife at Otter, and very sunny her existence was for the lustrum of that honeymoon. It was almost sufficient for her to be at liberty, fairly installed in her castle in the air, a country home. And its lord and master was generous and indulgent, and wasted, he did not care to say how many days, in displaying to her the green ruinousness of Ferndean--in climbing the hills and hunting out the widest views for her--in taking her out in his boat, and rowing her in sunshine and shade, enjoying her wonder and exultation most benevolently. In a short time he left her to herself, for he had much property, to whose numerous details he attended with rigid conscientiousness, and he had been a student from his youth, and sat almost as much as Dr. Bower in his library, although it was an airier and more heterogeneously fitted-up sanctuary. Leslie was perfectly satisfied; in fact, while the novelty around her was fresh, she preferred to wander about at her leisure, and find out places for herself, because Hector Garret was always hurrying her, and she was trying so hard to be clever, active, and amiable. Ah, that slight strain already perceptible, that growth of ignorance, misconception, and extravagant reverence--what fruit would it bear?

Otter was a rambling white house in a green meadow opening to the sea. Its salient points were its size and age. The slowest-growing shrubs in its pleasance were tough, seamed, branched and bowed with time. There were few trees in the neighbourhood except at forsaken Ferndean; but there were slow swelling hills crowned with heather closing in the valley over which Otter presided with the dignified paternal character of the great house of strath, or glen. Leslie smiled when she first heard the natives of the district term the grey or glittering track that bounded the western horizon, "The Otter Sea," but very soon she fell into the use of the same name, and was conscious of feeling far more interest in the boats and ships that crossed that limited space, than in those which she saw from the hilltops spread far and wide over a great expanse broken only by the misty Irish coast-line. Indeed, Hector Garret explained to her that he had seignorial claims over that strip of waves--that the seaweed, and, after certain restrictions, the fragments of wreck cast upon its sands, were his property, quite as much as if he had waved his banner over it, like the gallant Spaniard, in the name of his Most Catholic Majesty.

Leslie had variety in her locality; the beach, with its huge boulders and inspiring music; the fields and "uplands airy," with their hedge wealth of vetch, briar, and bramble; the garden, the ancient walled garden, at whose antiquities Hector Garret laughed.