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, how[page 212]ever, 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.
[page 213]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.
[page 214]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 [page 215]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?
[page 216]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."
[page 217]"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."
[page 218]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 [page 219]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 ser[page 220]vants 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.
[page 221]"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.
[page 222]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."
[page 223]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 [page 224]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 [page 225]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 [page 226]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?"
[page 227]"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 [page 228]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."
