CHAPTER LXXXVI.
Notwithstanding Alec's diligence and the genial companionship of Mr Cupples�-whether the death of Kate, or his own illness, or the reaction of shame after his sojourn in the tents of wickedness, had opened dark visions of the world of reality lying in awful unknownness around the life he seemed to know, I cannot tell,-�cold isolations would suddenly seize upon him, wherein he would ask himself�-that oracular cave in which one hears a thousand questions before one reply�-"What is the use of it all�-this study and labour?" And he interpreted the silence to mean: "Life is worthless. There is no glow in it�-only a glimmer and shine at best."�-Will my readers set this condition down as one of disease? If they do, I ask, "Why should a man be satisfied with anything such as was now within the grasp of Alec Forbes?" And if they reply that a higher ambition would have set him at peace if not at rest, I only say that they would be nearer health if they had his disease. Pain is not malady; it is the revelation of malady�-the meeting and recoil between the unknown death and the unknown life; that jar of the system whereby the fact becomes known to the man that he is ill. There was disease in Alec, but the disease did not lie in his dissatisfaction. It lay in that poverty of life with which those are satisfied who call such discontent disease. Such disease is the first flicker of the aurora of a rising health.
This state of feeling, however, was only occasional; and a reviving interest in anything belonging to his studies, or a merry talk with Mr Cupples, would dispel it for a time, just as a breath of fine air will give the sense of perfect health to one dying of consumption.
But what made these questionings develope into the thorns of a more definite self-condemnation�-the advanced guard sometimes of the roses of peace-�was simply this:
He had written to his mother for money to lay out upon superior instruments, and new chemical apparatus; and his mother had replied sadly that she was unable to send it. She hinted that his education had cost more than she had expected. She told him that she was in debt to Robert Bruce, and had of late been compelled to delay the payment of its interest. She informed him also that, even under James Dow's conscientious management, there seemed little ground for hoping that the farm would ever make a return correspondent to the large outlay his father had made upon it.
This letter stung Alec to the heart. That his mother should be in the power of such a man as Bruce, was bad enough; but that she should have been exposed for his sake to the indignity of requesting his forbearance, seemed unendurable. To despise the man was no satisfaction, the right and the wrong being where they were.�-And what proportion of the expenses of last session had gone to his college-accounts?
He wrote a humble letter to his mother�-and worked still harder. For although he could not make a shilling at present, the future had hope in it.
Meantime Mr Cupples, in order that he might bear such outward signs of inward grace as would appeal to the perceptions of the Senatus, got a new hat, and changed his shabby tail-coat for a black frock. His shirt ceased to be a hypothesis to account for his collar, and became a real hypostasis, evident and clean. These signs of improvement led to inquiries on the part of the Senatus, and the result was that, before three months of the session were over, he was formally installed as librarian. His first impulse on receiving the good news was to rush down to Luckie Cumstie's and have a double-tumbler. But conscience was too strong for Satan, and sent him home to his pipe�-which, it must be confessed, he smoked twice as much as before his reformation.
From the moment of his appointment, he seemed to regard the library as his own private property, or, rather, as his own family. He was grandfather to the books: at least a grandfather shows that combination of parent and servant which comes nearest to the relation he henceforth manifested towards them. Most of them he gave out graciously; some of them grudgingly; a few of them with much reluctance; but all of them with injunctions to care, and special warnings against forcing the backs, crumpling or folding the leaves, and making thumb-marks.
"Noo," he would say to some country bejan, "tak' the buik i' yer han's no as gin 'twar a neip (turnip), but as gin 'twar the sowl o' a new-born bairn. Min' ye it has to sair (serve) mony a generation efter your banes lie bare i' the moul', an' ye maun hae respec' to them that come efter ye, and no ill-guide their fare. I beg ye winna guddle't (mangle it)."