Then he told him all—all his ambitions, all his struggles, and all his doubts and fears.
Mackenzie was silent for a time after he had ceased speaking. Then he took Sandie’s hand in his. “Listen!” he said. “I was a bursar at my University, or I would not be where I am now, for my people were only fisher-folks at Peterhead. I was a bursar, and I have ever since kept up my classics. Now, I can put you in the way of working up for the Grand Competition at the end of October, if you care to come over here about twice or thrice a week.”
Once more came that wildering mist of tears to Sandie’s weak eyes. “The Lord be praised and you be thanked,” he said, pressing Mackenzie’s hand. “He has raised me up a friend, and I am more happy now and hopeful than I have ever been in life.”
For another whole week Sandie was still so weak as to be unable to leave his room; then he was able to totter out into the minister’s garden, and seat himself on the summer-seat, in the warm spring sunshine, in the healthful bracing breath of the sweetest month in all the year.
Maggie May went with him, and sat near him, and read to him little stories, in which he pretended to take great interest, though it really was the story-teller, not the story, he was studying all the time. Soon after his first out-going, young blood began to assert itself, and he somehow felt ashamed of being ill or a patient. He was getting rapidly stronger, at all events, and one morning announced his intention of going home. The minister knew it would be useless to argue with him. Genius is wilful, and there was every probability even now that Sandie would eventually prove that he possessed genius. “What is genius after all,” said somebody, or words to this effect, “but the capability of plodding and steady work?” I am certainly not prepared to agree with this. Genius depends greatly on brain power and brain formation. I never would expect much except a grunt from a sow, however much she applied herself to study.
Sandie went home. The spring and merry May were now almost gone. The joy of June would soon be here. The men, and even Jeannie, the simple servant lassie, were busily engaged thinning the young turnips. As Sandie drove slowly down the loanings in the gig, he could hear their merry voices as they talked and laughed, with now and then Jeannie’s gentle voice raised in song, to which Jamie appended a deep broad bass. The horses were still in the fields as he had seen them last—Glancer nibbling the shoulder of Tippet, Tippet nibbling that of Glancer, the best proof one horse can give his fellow that he loves and respects him.
The banks by the dike and ditch-sides were now all ablaze with the most charming wild-flowers. I might be accused of making copy were I to mention the half of them; but on the water itself floated the spotlessly white water-anemone and the wild forget-me-not. On the banks near by nodded the crimson ragged-robin and blood-red selené. They seemed to be looking at and admiring their own sweet faces reflected from the pools beneath. But the banks were also patched with sky-blue speedwells, starred over with great, solemn-looking, oxeye daisies, and backed by a profusion of the tall and lordly purple orchis.
Sandie took all this in at a glance. His own humble home was the chief part of the picture before him; the banks of wild-flowers, and the clear flowing wee burns or streamlets, were but settings.
His doctor had warned him that he must not use his study for some days to come. Sandie had promised, and he determined to obey. Well, he could not work just yet, so he determined to fall back upon Robbie Burns and Anacreon. With a volume of each in his pocket, he went to the fields every day, and just dawdled along behind the workers, the rooks in turn following up at a respectful distance behind all. Sandie read to the workers, and read so pleasantly, that one moment he would have all hands laughing enough to scare the very rooks, and next the men-folks looking solemn and sad, and the salt, salt tear in Jeannie’s eyes. Dear me! what a power there is in poetry and song when it is well and feelingly read! Somehow I cannot help thinking that, to read poetry well, the reader himself must be possessed of a portion of the divine afflatus.
“Well, mother,” said Sandie one evening, just after June had come in, “I’ve made up my mind to go in for the bursary competition in the end of October. I can but fail.”