Alexa was both distressed and indignant becoming at once George's partisan. Her distress diminished and her indignation increased as she reflected on the airt whence the unfavorable report reached her; the brothers were such peculiar men! She recalled the strange things she had heard of their childhood; doubtless the judgment was formed on an overstrained and quixotic idea of honesty! Besides, there had always been a strong socialistic tendency in them, which explained how Sandy could malign his benefactor! George was incapable of doing anything dishonorable! She would not trouble herself about it. But she would like to know how Andrew regarded the matter.
She asked him therefore what he thought of Sandy's procedure. Andrew replied that he did not know much about business; but that the only safety must lie in having nothing to do with what was doubtful; therefore Sandy had done right. Alexa said it was too bad of him to condemn where he confessed ignorance. Andrew replied:
“Ma'am, if Mr. Crawford is wrong he is condemned; if he is right my private doubt can not hurt him. Sandy must act by his own doubt, not by Mr. Crawford's confidence.”
Alexa grew more distressed, for she began to recall things George had said which at the time she had not liked, but which she had succeeded in forgetting. If he had indeed gone astray, she hoped he would forget her; she could do without him! But the judgment of such a man as Sandy could settle nothing. Of humble origin and childish simplicity, he could not see the thing as a man of experience must. George might be all right notwithstanding. At the same time there was his father—whose reputation remained under a thick cloud, whose failed character rather than his ill-success had driven George to the other continent. Breed must go for something in a question of probabilities. It was the first time Alexa's thoughts had been turned into such a channel. She clung to the poor comfort that something must have passed at the interview so kindly sought by George to set the quixotical young farmer against him. She would not utter his name to Andrew ever again!
She was right in thinking that George cherished a sincere affection for her. It was one of the spurs which drove him too eagerly after money. I doubt if any man starts with a developed love of money for its own sake—except indeed he be born of generations of mammon worshipers. George had gone into speculation with the object of retrieving the position in which he had supposed himself born, and in the hope of winning the hand of his cousin—thinking too much of himself to offer what would not in the eyes of the world be worth her acceptance. When he stepped on the inclined plane of dishonesty he believed himself only engaging in “legitimate speculation;” but he was at once affected by the atmosphere about him. Wrapped in the breath of admiration and adulation surrounding men who cared for nothing but money-making, men who were not merely dishonest, but the very serpents of dishonesty, against whom pickpockets will “stick off” as angels of light; constantly under the softly persuasive influence of low morals and extravagant appreciation of cunning, he came by rapid degrees to think less and less of right and wrong. At first he called the doings of the place dishonest; then he called them sharp practice; then he called them a little shady; then, close sailing; then he said this or that transaction was deuced clever; then, the man was more rogue than fool; then he laughed at the success of a vile trick; then he touched the pitch, and thinking all the time it was but with one finger, was presently besmeared all over—as was natural, for he who will touch is already smeared.
While Alexa was fighting his battles with herself he had thrown down his arms in the only battle worth fighting. When he wrote to her, which he did regularly, he said no more about business than that his prospects were encouraging; how much his reticence may have had to do with a sense of her disapproval I can not tell.
CHAPTER XV. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
One lovely summer evening Dawtie, with a bundle in her hand, looked from the top of a grassy knoll down on her parents' turf cottage. The sun was setting behind her, and she looked as if she had stepped from it as it touched the ground on which she stood, rosy with the rosiness of the sun, but with a light in her countenance which came from a higher source, from the same nest as the sun himself. She paused but a moment, ran down the hill, and found her mother making the porridge. Mother and daughter neither embraced, nor kissed, nor even shook hands, but their faces glowed with delight, and words of joy and warmest welcome flowed between them.
“But ye haena lost yer place, hae ye, hinny?” said the mother.