Allison Bain Part 16

She had never been a woman of many words, and even to her son she rarely spoke of these things. But as time went on she grew sweeter and gentler day by day, he thought. He left her with less anxiety when he went away, and he found her always when he came home peaceful and content.

For the peace of G.o.d was with her.

CHAPTER TEN.

"O! love will venture in where it daurna weel be seen; O! love will venture in where wisdom ance has been."

Saunners Crombie had not been mistaken when he told his friend that "a measure of prosperity" had, of late, come to John Beaton. A debt long due to his father had been paid to him, and the story which the debtor had to tell was worth many times the money to John and his mother.

It was not the first good deed done in secret by the father which had since his death come to the knowledge of the son. Other stories had been told by friends and neighbours, and even by comparative strangers, of kind words spoken by him, and generous help given, which had healed sick hearts, and opened the way out of depths of despair to some who were sinners, and to some who were only sufferers. And now this man came to tell how he also had been helped--saved, he called it, and he told it with tears in his eyes, though more than a generation had pa.s.sed since then.

David Cunningham was the son of the minister of the parish where the first of the three Johns had lived, and where the second John and his brothers and sisters had been born. He had fallen into foolish ways first, and then into evil ways, and through some act of inexcusable folly, or worse, had, it seemed, shut upon himself the last door of hope for a life of well-doing. An offer of a clerkship in an East Indian house had been given him by a friend of his family, and a sum sufficient for his outfit had been advanced. This sum he had lost, or rather it had been claimed for the payment of a debt which he could not have confessed to his father without breaking the old man's heart. It would have been utter ruin to the lad if John Beaton had not come to the rescue.

This was before John was a rich man, or even had a prospect of riches, but he gave the money willingly, even gladly, to save the son of his father's friend.

"When you come home a rich man you can pay me, if I be living; and if I be dead, you can pay it to them who may come after me," said he. And now David Cunningham had come home to pay his debt.

"Every month from the very first," he told John, "I put something away toward it, and a good many months pa.s.sed before the full sum was saved.

Then, when I wrote to your father that it was ready for him, he told me to invest it for him, and let it grow till I should come home again.

That was five-and-thirty years ago, and it has grown well since then.

It is yours now, and much pleasure and profit may you get out of it."

"There is no fear of that," said John.

"And I have a better wish than that for you," said Mr Cunningham gravely. "May you have the chance and the heart to help to save some poor fellow as your father saved me."

"Thank you for the good wish. I will try to follow in my father's steps," said John. "But the money is my mother's, and the pleasure of doing good with it will be hers."

"And if all I have heard of her be true, her pleasure will be to give pleasure to her son," said his friend.

"Yes; that is true, too," said John.

But as the money was well invested, it was to be allowed to remain where it was for the present. The income from it would secure to his mother a home more like that to which she was born than the one in which she had lived since her husband's death, "though, G.o.d bless her, she has never murmured," said her son.

And John was triumphing in his heart. He saw, or he thought he saw, his way clear to the carrying out of several plans, which he had been dreaming about, but which he had hardly suffered himself to regard as possible till now. He had been in Aberdeen all the winter, working both with his head and his hands. He had fallen in with an old schoolfellow, who was in the second year of his university course, a cripple lad, who was altogether unfit for the kind of life enjoyed most by lads of his age when set free from their lectures and their hours of study. He was living a lonely life till John found him, and his visits to the lad's rooms were good for them both.

John had been reading steadily during the winter leisure of the years he had been in Nethermuir, and now he enjoyed greatly going over the ground with his friend, and gradually the knowledge came to him that he had grown in mind as well as in stature since the days when he had trifled with, or utterly neglected, the opportunities which had been given him.

He could do now with ease and pleasure that which in those idle days had been a task and a burden. Gradually that which had been a vague longing, a half-acknowledged desire, became a settled purpose.

It was to consult with his mother as to the carrying out of this purpose that he had come to Nethermuir at this time, and he had not meant to sleep until all his plans were laid before her. But when three days had pa.s.sed--on the fourth he was to return to Aberdeen--not a word with regard to them had been uttered. John had not got out of the maze into which he had fallen when he first caught sight of Allison Bain, standing with loosened hair and smiling eyes, watching the mad play of the bairns, with little Marjorie in her arms.

He had not forgotten his plans or his purposes. There were moments when he would have been willing to forget them, when he even tried to forget them and to smile at his thought of them, as he had sometimes smiled at a foolish dream in the light of the morning. He was not quite sure that he needed to speak to his mother at all. He might at least wait a while. Why should he trouble her by speaking about changes which might never come?

And yet, had he not told his mother all his plans and even his thoughts all his life? Her word would make clear what course he should take.

Her "single eye" would see the fine scheme he had been dreaming about in its true light. He could trust his mother's wise simplicity more than his own ambitious desires, which could hardly be worthy, he thought, since they were the outcome of discontent.

And why should he not be content as he was? He had fallen from no high estate. His father and his father's father had wrought with their hands, and had been honoured of all who knew them. Why should he not be content to live as they lived, or to work his way upward to an easier life, as his father had done?

"At any rate, I will have it out with my mother to-night," said he.

He was standing, when he came to this resolve, on the very spot where he first caught sight of Allison Bain. It was the second time he had stood there since that day, for no reason that he could have told to any one.

He had come to the spot in the early morning after that first sleepless night. He needed a walk to stretch his legs, which were rather stiff after the long tramp of yesterday, he told his mother, when he came home to the breakfast he had kept waiting, and he told himself that he only chanced to take that road rather than another.

He said nothing about it to Robert Hume. They had the night before agreed to take an early walk together. Robin was late; but happily, as he thought, he caught sight of John as he was disappearing over the first hilltop, and followed with no thought of finding himself in the way.

But when he came to the head of the last hillock, and saw John standing where he had stood the day before, "looking at nothing," as Robin told his mother afterward, he was seized with sudden shamefaced-ness, and turning, shot like an arrow down the brae.

John had been less at the manse than he usually was while visiting his mother. He was to go there in the evening, and he must speak to his mother before he said anything about his half-formed plans to the minister or Mrs Hume, as he came home fully intending to do. So he turned homeward on the last afternoon; and as he walked he was saying to himself, with indignant contempt of his indecision, that after all he must be a poor creature, a fool, though he had never been in the way of thinking so till now.

"Well, John lad," said his mother, looking up as he came in.

Her little maid had gone home for the day, and Mrs Beaton was sitting in her arm-chair "just waiting," as she said.

It was a nice little room. A bright fire burned in the grate, and a shining tea-kettle was steaming on the hob. The carpet on the floor was faded and worn, and the furniture was of the plainest; but there were a few pretty things in the room to brighten it, and over the mantel-piece was a portrait of John's father, "taken at his best." For some strange reason, which he himself did not understand, John paused at the door, and looked up at the strong, good face.

The picture was not much as a work of art perhaps, but it was a striking likeness. There was the firm mouth, and the kind grey eyes, and the broad shoulders, rounded and stooping a little, after long years of labour, and the abundant dark hair, which had showed no silver threads until the last blow came to end all. A sudden pang smote John's heart as he looked.

"I was but a lad," he said to himself. "I didna ken what he was till I lost him."

"You are growing like him, John," said his mother softly.

"Am I, mother? I doubt it is only your loving een that can see it."

"Are ye troubled, John?" were the words that rose to the mother's lips, but they were not spoken. "Ye're needing your tea, John," said she instead.

John laughed. "I'm needing something, and I'll be glad of my tea in the meantime. No, you are not to rise. You are to sit still in your chair and tell me what to do."

Not that he needed telling. The skill, and the will, and the gentleness natural to a loving daughter had come to this mother's son through long and loving service. So the little table was brought forward, on which all things were already arranged. The tea was "masket," and the teapot covered with the "cosie," and during the three minutes necessary and sufficient for its proper infusion, John went to his room, and the mother's face grew grave while she waited.

"He's no' at peace with himself. But he'll tell me if he's needing my help. G.o.d bless him and keep him this day--and forever and ay."

Then John came in and they had their tea, and spoke about other things, about the visit she had had in the afternoon from little Marjorie, whom Allison Bain had carried in her arms to see her, as she often did, and of how the child was growing stronger every day. And then they agreed together that little Annie Thorn, who had been coming in to help Mrs Beaton all these years, should come now to stay always, because it would be better in many ways for both mistress and maid. They spoke of other things besides; but it must be acknowledged that John said little, and was not so ready with a.s.sent or with response as he was wont to be when his mother had anything to say to him.

After a time they fell into silence for a little, and then John said:

"I have something to tell you, mother."

"Is it good news, John?" said his mother with a little flutter at her heart.

"Part of it is good, surely. As for the rest--that may be good or bad, as you shall take it."

"I'm waiting, John."

For John's head had drooped on his hand, and he sat thinking.

"And you're a wee anxious? But there is no occasion, mother dear. I have good news. I meant to tell you the night I came home. I could hardly wait till I got home to tell you. I dinna ken how I put it off,"

added John hurriedly. "Mother, did you ever hear my father speak of a good turn he once did to one David Cunningham, a long time ago it must have been?"