Allan Stuart. A novel

Chapter I

< AM a very unpopular man,' said Allan Stuart anxiously ; ' do you think you could bear it, Kate?' ' I am a very popular woman,' answered Miss Sinclair lightly, at the same time drop ping her lover a dainty courtesy. ' We are clearly meant one to counteract the other.' ' But think seriously,' he urged. ' You may reproach me afterwards, when it is too late to change ; and I love you too well not to wish you to be as happy as you can pos sibly be.' A 'Then listen to me,' she said, speaking with sweet, blushing earnestness. ' I have had a very happy life, but never knew what happiness could be till — ' and her blushes filled up the pause. ' I am quite sure if you are unpopular, you have done nothing to make you so ; and if all the world turns against you — Why, you gloomy, old thing,' she continued, in a lighter strain, ' I won't pamper your vanity any further.

You must say something nice to me now.' But he took no notice of her playfulness. ' Are you sure, Kate, that your love can stand a strain, if necessary ? ' A hurt expression passed over her face, and there was a suspicion of tears in her large grey eyes. ' You are unkind to say so,' she answered, a little petulantly. ' I am sure ! ' and she was right. Girl though she was, and in ignorance of the trials that awaited her, — ignorant of much in her own character, she knew she was capable of infinite loyalty. Whether the loyalty of an inexperienced, ' unlessoned girl ' was likely to help Mr Stuart's unpopu larity, was another question. That remained to be seen. That gentleman was lost meanwhile in an incoherent rapture of love and admiration for Miss Sinclair. But even if his rhapsody were connected enough to be intelligible, a sense of delicacy would keep me from inflict ing it on the reader.

A speech, in which recur conspicuously one or two leading ideas, is apt to be monotonous to an indifferent spectator. ' I think you must be an angel, Kate ! ' he said, looking at her rapturously, and con cluding his pæan in this highly original and ingenious remark. 0 ' A very speckled angel,' answered Kate, half laughing, half serious. ' I wonder if your love will bear the strain of finding out what I am. We must help each other to be good, Allan.' Mr Stuart felt — in his present ecstatic frame of mind — that he too was an angel, though unworthy to mate with such a bright particular star as Miss Sinclair. They forgot, for the moment, the chances they would have of finding out each other's manifold infirmities. For, alas ! they were human, like other people. Did it do them harm to have a high ideal of each other ?

Granted that they will be often disappointed in them selves and each other ; they are seeing each other now in the light of what it is possible God sees they may become. Mr Stuart has been engaged to Kate Sinclair for a week, with the consent of her mother, who is the only person entitled to object to or approve of the union. But, indeed, I don't think Mrs Sinclair could have objected to anything anxiously desired by her daughter. Not but that she was a person of a sufficiently strong will of her own ; but she loved Kate with an almost idolatrous love, a love that saw no flaw in her treasure, and that would have run all risks to gratify her. Mr Stuart pleased Kate. For herself, I think she would have preferred a different kind of son-in-law, one more deferential to her opinions, and with a higher idea of her abilities.

I imagine he would have been very much surprised if anyone had accused him of not paying sufficient deference to Mrs Sinclair. For he prided himself on being on the best of terms with his future mother-in-law, and on his politeness to her. And so he was very polite to her in all these little attentions her position demanded from him. But when you do not care to see very far into a person's mind with whom you are brought in contact, you, with altogether different ideas, must jar on her a good deal. Mr Stuart was a Liberal. The first article in his creed was, that Gladstone was the greatest statesman in this or any other clime or age. When he was giving free vent to his opinions, he did not know, or ignored the fact that he was trampling on the feel ings of his quiet mother-in-law, who was endowed with an equally firm belief in Disraeli.

Mrs Sinclair had adopted her husband's political opinions, as women do ; but she held them with as much tenacity as if she had arrived at them by the force of her original convictions. 0 In literature and religion it was the same. Scott and Byron were her poets ; while Allan and her daughter waxed enthusiastic over Tennyson, Browning, Morris, and yet newer lights. She held old-fashioned views about Sun day, or the Sabbath, as she invariably called it ; shook her head dubiously over a Sunday walk for pleasure. Allan, on the contrary, thought nothing of travelling by train on that day, if it were necessary ; not otherwise, I must do him the justice to say. Mrs Sinclair kept her mouth shut for Kate's sake, dimly understanding that things had altered since her youth, and perhaps feeling that Allan's moral code was loftier than her own.

But it was hard for a woman who had been accounted clever in her youth, to feel stranded on the sands where yesterday the waters of life had been in full flow ; to find the tide of to-day flowing in quite a different direction. So it is with those whose minds do not grow ; who early in life sweep and garnish and furnish them, leaving no space for the influx of fresh ideas. They forget that, while the forms of truth is ever changing, the truth itself is always the same ; and the new truth of to-day is simply the old truth of yesterday, cast in a new mould to prevent it from hardening into cant. But it is notorious that daughters do not look upon their husbands primarily as sons in-law to their mothers. To Kate, Allan was well-nigh perfect; and if she did see some times that he had some small defects, she would have died before she would have admitted as much to anyone else. 'What is Kate like?' I hear a female reader asking ; ' is she pretty ? ' Female critics said she was twt pretty, and then exhausted themselves in the endeavour to explain her fascination by saying she was a flirt.

From that odious term, as I under stand it, I defend Kate entirely ; she was no flirt. And though she was not strictly pretty, she could be more than pretty on occasion, and that is as much as any woman need desire. And she was always attractive to look at, of the middle height, with a slender figure, which had a slight tendency to stoop. This tendency her mother anxi ously tried to correct. Her features were rather prominent, nose and mouth both being larger than beauty permits. But then to counterbalance, her complexion was of that creamy paleness, into which stole a wild rose tint when she was moved or excited. She had abundant hair, of a pale yellow, and her eyes were of that colour which you can call blue, or grey, or violet, as you will. They were beautiful eyes, that grew dark with feeling or flashed with merriment, according to her mood.

Her hands and feet were very small and well shaped, and altogether, to the thinking of many people, there was not a more attractive little person in the three kingdoms. Of course, in a girl of one-and twenty, one could not expect character to be thoroughly developed. There was the germ of much good in her, though at present it was mixed with extravagance and incompleteness. Mrs Sinclair and her daughter lived in Edinburgh ; Allan Stuart in the small county town of Holdingham, a railway journey of two or three hours from the metropolis. He is a lawyer, and it is a long-descended business, his father and grandfather having been in the profession before him. If it had not been for them Mr Stuart might to-day be a more popular man. They had been noted for their grasping avarice ; for their perversion of justice, while always keeping within the letter of the law.

They took up any case and any man, provided they saw in it a chance of making money. They were most thoroughly distrusted, even by those whose cause they had brought to a triumphant con clusion. Still, in many ways, they had had a very successful business. They were both clever, and both particularly gentlemanly looking men. Allan, when he realised the trickeries and deceits of his father's profession, threatened at once to leave it ; but his father having promised reformation, he consented to re main. And Allan did effect much good, but popular opinion set down the good done to the late repentance of his father, and fixed on him as the sharpest of the three genera tions. As well, ay, and far better, hang a dog than give it a bad name ; and Allan often writhed in spirit under the innuendoes of the townspeople. 'Jist the very moral o' your grandfaither,' would be often said, with a sneer. ' I could think him leivin', an' in the flesh again.' Now, if this was a compliment in one way, and old Mr Stuart had been a remarkably handsome old man, it certainly was not in another, for a greater rogue never lived un hung.

And Allan knew that the comparison was true in outward appearance, that there was a great resemblance between him and his grandfather. The nose was the same — a delicate aquiline, the eyes the same in shape and colour, but oh ! how different in expression ; but there was a refinement and force about the mouth which his grandfather never possessed. Allan was tall, but not remarkably so, and he had rather a defiant manner. It seemed to say, ' I know what you are thinking of me, and I do not care, for it is not true.' But, alas ! who does not care in some measure for the good opinion of his fellow men ? You may not have much respect for the people among whom you live, but still it is unpleasant to have them thinking and speaking evil of you. To complain of being misunderstood, is generally considered as a sentimental grievance ; and yet, in truth, to have men ascribing your good actions to self-interested or hypocritical motives, and knowing better than to believe any good of you, is very hard to bear.

As of old, it still holds true that ' man does not live by bread alone.' Life does not consist merely in satisfying the needs of hunger and cold ; nor even in encompassing ourselves with luxuries. Other wants will make themselves felt ; and Allan's life, till he met Kate, had been unusually devoid of love and sympathy. He might have made friends, you think, but the boy and man was quick to feel the shadow of disreputability hovering over him, and held himself proudly aloof. His mother died when he was born, and if his father had not now been dead a year, I don't think he would ever have proposed to Kate. Wherein he would have done her a grievous wrong, for she had learnt to love him, with the love to which forgetting is not possible. Allan, with the instincts of a man who has never experienced much brightness in life, felt as if he could not believe in this great gift of God to him — as if it were a bright dream that must soon pass away.

Never in Kate's presence, under the influence of her truth and reality, but in dark moments, when the bitter memories of the past surged over him ; when it seemed as if the darkness of that past must necessarily obscure his future. And yet this proud man, who clothed himself in an impenetrable cloak of reserve, lest any compassionable soul, lest any vulgar curiosity of the coarse-minded, with which unfortunately this world abounds, should find out how grievously he was wounded, had his day dreams. Of some day he thought, oh ! how far distant, when he should be recognised as a benefactor by the tcwnfolks of Holdingham, when he should be held in reverence by the people who now held him so cheap. Never was the expression of his face so hopelessly sad as when he awoke from one of these reveries, when he said to himself bitterly, 'That which hath been, shall be.' The remark made by him at the beginning of this chapter, was caused by a conversation, in which Kate had innocently questioned him about his father.

Where he could say little good, he was not the kind of man to describe with effusion the evil that had been, nor the pain that he had suffered. One may cry out about toothache, or head ache, or any trivial ailment of that kind ; but for the incurable disease that prostrates you, or the giant sorrow that alternately benumbs and agonises you, live as though it were not. * I would rather not talk about him,' he said at length, after evading her questions for a while, ' he — he was not good.' Kate said no more. With the instinct of love, she guessed what it cost him to say the words. Shortly afterwards he made the remark about being an unpopular man, the discus sion of which lands him for the present in an island of bliss. I am glad he is so happy. He needs some reviving draughts of happi ness after the miseries of these years.

He needs sympathy, after the relationships in which he has lived, which have been so jarring and full of pain. He needs love and trust, after the doubts and distrust, after the sneers and insinuations of the people among whom his life is cast. Will one frail girl's sympathy, will one weak woman's love, be enough for him ? 0 The heavens spread their blue arch over him as over all, and He who stretcheth it out is 'a Father who pitieth His children.'

Chapter II

T is a day about the beginning of August, a day in which storms have exhausted themselves, and there are fitful murmurs of peace, and uncertain prospects of better weather. The wind is dying away of exhaustion, and the sun is struggling to come through the clouds. The usual crowd is on the deck of the steamer plying between Dover and Calais, the usual multitude of holiday seekers who are turning their backs on England, and business, and care for a while, and mean to drink deep draughts of Lethe and happiness in foreign lands. There is the middle-class man of moderate means, with his wife and two pretty daughters, who rely on paterfamilias with an absolute trust, and to whom it would seem an un heard of thing if they had to look after themselves in any way. There is the Alpine climber, bronzed and wiry-looking, looking forward with the greatest zest to his mountain experiences.

There is the clerk, whose first trip abroad it is, with a confused sense of his own importance, and a variety of unde fined and uncomfortable sensations in his interior. For, reader, the sea does not look very rough, but there is that most unpleasant thing, aground-swell, going on. Never mind, that will only add a more vivid interest to the tale our swaggering little friend gives to his favoured associates, of his ten days' ' trip to the Continent.' There are numbers of unprotected females, some foolishly clinging to any stray gentle men who assists them out of pity; others quietly independent. Since they are obliged to manage for themselves, they will do it as quietly and efficiently as possible. Lastly — what steamer ever crossed the Channel with out its full complement of these ? — there is the usual number of newly-married couples.

Among them are Allan and Kate, married the day before. For, reader, I have spared you the wedding, the account of the bride's dazzling ap pearance, and the hang-dog demeanour of the bridegroom; the titters of the brides maids, and the compliments of the grooms man ; the speeches which reveal the power ful and original genius of the near relations ; 0 0 and, lastly, the comment of Mrs Grundy, a personage for whom I have such contempt, that I almost regret mentioning her. Mrs Sinclair was left behind, with a sinking of her motherly heart, and an indescribable void in her life, and Allan and Kate are fairly launched on this new stage of their existence. Allan is as light-hearted as a boy. No shadow, as yet, of the old life falls on this new world of life and happiness into which he has entered.

Kate is quite as happy, dis turbed only by the fear of that two hours' experience of the Channel which lies before her. A dread not unfounded as after events prove. She wants at first to stay on deck with her husband, but that Allan will not allow. ' You must go into the ladies' cabin and lie down,' he says, authoritatively. ' It is too stormy for you to be up here ; and, besides, if you are at all inclined to be sick, it will send you off immediately.' Kate yields reluctantly, and seeks out for herself a velvet couch whereon to be miserable. Allan accompanies her to the door, but there a majestic figure bars his way, and the voice of the stewardess says for biddingly, — ' This is the ladies' cabin, sir. ' I know,' he says, hurriedly ; ' look after my wife — the lady over there,' pointing to Kate, and slipping into her hand enough to have recompensed her for looking after three ladies. ' Married yesterday, or at most the day before,' said that lady to herself, sagely, shaking her head. ' Well, to be sure, marriage do make gentlemen free with their money at first, whatever they may turn out like afterwards.' With which philosophical remark she went about her duties.

Kate had a very bad two hours, and had given up all hope of seeing La Belle France before they were half-way across. She was sure she was going to die, and indeed she did not much mind then if she did. She was a very impressionable little person : when she was in good spirits, saw everything through rose-coloured spectacles ; and when she was in bad, was sure that everything dreadful was going to happen. B ' Oh, dear,' she moaned once to the stewardess, ' do you think I shall get over it?' ' Why, bless your heart, ma'am,' was that lady's cheering response, ' you'll be as spry as a cricket when once you get to the other side.' Kate closed her eyes, with a dreary con sciousness that the lady did not understand her case at all, and had no idea how very, very ill she felt. ' And how very unkind of Allan not to come near me.

He'll perhaps be sorry a little when he gets to Calais, and finds I'm dead.' And she nearly wept over the trials of her situation, and took a gloomy pleasure in picturing to herself his tardy remorse for neglecting her. Though she knew perfectly that he could not be allowed to remain with her. ' Now, my dear,' said the stewardess at last, after what seemed a lifetime of suffering, ' we'll be at Calais in five minutes. You must try and get on your feet. Here's your good gentleman come for you.' To do her justice, she had been particu larly kind and attentive to Kate, and done her utmost to deserve the largesse Allan had bestowed on her. ' Well, Kate,' he said, bestowing a pitying glance on the tottering, woe-begone little object advancing to him, ' have you been very bad, dear ? ' ' Bad ! oh, Allan,' she replied, with pro found solemnity, ' I — I think I am dying.' ' Oh, no, not so bad as that,' he answered cheerfully ; ' take my arm, and when once you have had something to eat, you'll be as well as ever.' Kate felt that her husband, as well as the stewardess, underrated her sufferings.

She was convinced hers was the worst case of sea-sickness on record. Is there not always something in our own sufferings that singles 0 0 0 them out from others ? None of us likes to be considered as a unit in a mass ; we pre fer that the unit should have a background, whereon its doings and sufferings are diso 0 played with greater effect. ' Why — why do people ever go abroad ? ' she murmured, plaintively, as they were mov ing slowly to show their tickets, and escape from that, to them, floating abode of misery. ' Why ? to enjoy themselves, of course,' said her husband again, cheerfully, and, to her ear, unfeelingly ; ' as you will be doing ten minutes from hence.' Kate shook her head. How little he understood her, or rather her sufferings. For herself, she looked forward to going to bed in an hotel at Calais, and at least a pro longed illness. ' But, poor fellow,' she said to herself, 'he'll know the truth soon enough.

I'll try and keep up a little longer for his sake.' With which unselfish resolution she leant heavily on her husband's arm, and tried to avoid the collisions that necessarily happen in such a crowd. And it was strange, but true, by the time she left the pier she was conscious of reviving thrills of hope and health ; and by the time they reached the refreshment room, she was, though she would not confess it to herself, hungry. And Allan did not even say, ' I told you so,' as he plied his wife with every delicacy he could find for her, and watched her gradually assume a less w*oebegone appear ance. Kate too began to be ashamed of her faint-heartedness. ' But I really was very ill, Allan,' she replied, looking at him with solemnity. ' I believe you,' he said, laughing. ' You could not have had a worse crossing.

It was a confounded ground-swell. I'm not gener ally squeamish, but I was ill to-day.' 'Ah, Allan,' was Kate's rejoinder, shocked at her own selfishness, ' and I never thought of you.' 'Well, if you had, you could not have prevented it, Kate,' he continued, teazingly. ' I could never have believed it, unless I had seen you, that you could present such a green-and-yellow appearance as you did a little ago. I thought you were a changeling.' Kate drew herself up, and then burst out laughing. ' Well,' she rejoined, ' I did not know in time to take notes of you, but I have no doubt you were more than a match for me. Do I look better now ?' she continued, with feminine anxiety. ' Am I tidy ? ' ' You are — my own ; ' he was relapsing into one of the rhapsodies so cruelly interrupted by the sea-sickness ; but Kate immediately assumed a frigid demeanour, and said, in as business a tone as she could assume, — ' Now, Allan, don't you think it is time for us to take our seats, and is the luggage all right ? ' ' See here,' she said, in a lower tone, as they were going to the train, ' you know — you must not — before people ? ' ' Must not what ?' asked Allan quizzically. ' Pretend that I am no relation to you at all ?

But, you know, that would look a little odd. Though, to be sure, I might pretend to be your courier,' he ended, meditatively. ' Don't talk nonsense,' said Kate, with dignity. ' You know quite well what I mean.' ' But I don't, oh most sweetest ! ' retorted the unabashed Allan. ' We may settle our selves in different corners of the carriage, if you like, but everybody will know who we are.' These speeches, so unlike Allan's usual manner, for he was a man of proud reserve, who hated the notice of his fellow-men, betrayed how happy he was. Kate discreetly let the subject alone, and began on another tack. 'How funny it all is!' she exclaimed. 'What shrill voices the people have, and what are they all chattering about ? Oh, it is amusing ! ' ' I believe,' said Allan demurely, ' that it is barely possible for people to enjoy themselves in a foreign land ; though I did hear some doleful sentiments to the contrary enunciated about half an hour ago by a person who shall be nameless.' ' Allan,' rejoined Kate, in mock despair, ' however am I to live with you, if you don't at least try to make yourself more agreeable?' And so on, and so on, youth and happiness being the speakers, and the speeches but the light foam-bells on the surface, be neath which lie depths of infinite love ; as they felt, a minute afterwards, when a gentle man, getting into the carriage, stumbled a little awkwardly against Kate, and begged her pardon, calling her ' Mademoiselle.' ' That was — yesterday,' whispered Kate to her husband. ' How far off it seems now ! ' ' Thank God that we are together.'

Chapter III

R and Mrs Stuart went to Brussels, thence to Cologne, and up the Rhine to Basle. A hacknied route, but oh ! how full of enjoyment. And Kate was thoroughly fresh ; she had never been out of her own country before. Allan had, once or twice, but on business, which made all the difference. They had lovely weather for their journey up the river, round whose banks so many legends cluster. 0 From Bonn they sailed — which, in my opinion, is a charming little town, where the sieben geberg rise in the distance — past Dra chenfels ; onward, till the current of the river runs more swiftly, and the bends become more frequent, and at each bend castled crags con front each other ; past the rock where the fabled Lorelei lures her victims to destruction; past picturesque St Goar and Goarhausen, till they come to lovely Bingen ; on through the flatter and less romantic scenery, till they arrive at Schaffhausen, where they see the famous falls.

Basle is their next resting place, whence they proceed to Lucerne. They stay some days in the little Swiss town, guarded by the grand snow moun tains, with its narrow streets, its wasser thurm, its quaint old covered bridges, and its cathedral, where the bare, whitewashed walls contrast incongruously with the gilt images and the decorations of the altar. They hear the wonderful organ, and in the mimic thunderstorm Kate creeps closer to her husband, and even Allan cannot refrain from looking out of the window, to see the heavy rain that has come on so suddenly. For, by the art of the organist, heavy hail seems to fall — splash, splash — on the window pane. The sobs mount into Kate's throat after wards, as he plays ' Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people ; ' and the strains of the vox humana seem to come from a distance, like the perfection of human singing.

Even Allan feels the spell, and he is not musical. And day by day they admire more and more the lovely lake of emerald green, guarded by its snow mountains. They see lovely sunsets on Mount Pilalus, where earth seems for a brief space to borrow the hues of heaven, and the snow is gloriously flushed with the last rays of the sun. They do not go up the Rigi, where cockney tourists swarm, doing their best to make Switzerland 3 0 vulgar and commonplace. Indeed, I am afraid I must confess of both my hero and heroine, that they don't often see the sun rise anywhere. Then they go out of the beaten track alto gether, and sailing down the river as far as Stamsthadt, they drive to Engelberg. The drive is beautiful beyond description ; first through level meadows, where the peasants are busy making hay, mostly shrivelled, dried-up looking old women, with nothing on their heads to protect them from the heat of the sun.

Fragrant smells the hay, beautiful are the flowers, numerous are the orchards, with the apple-trees, whose boughs are weighed down by abundant fruit ; and on either side, in the distance, are hills wooded to the top. Then the path gets steeper, and the river on one side leaps down furiously, with that milkywhite colour peculiar to glacial streams ; and the rocky height rises high above the road, wooded with sombre firs, with fragrant pines, with graceful, ladylike beeches ; and far in the distance rise the grand snow moun tains. Then on, as they grow nearer, and the path ever steeper, till they come to the Alpine valley of Engelberg. It is six miles long, and three or four broad, girdled on all sides with the everlasting hills, with their snowy summits towering high above the clouds, exquisite, and a vision of perfect beauty.