Allison Bain; Or, By a Way She Knew Not

by Margaret M. Robertson

But in his heart he knew that for the only work which was left to him to do, he was neither ready nor willing, nor for the kind of life which he saw stretching a long, weary way before him.

He could do as his father had done before him, he told his mother cheerfully, and who had done better than he? But to himself he owned that this was to be doubted. He could never do as his father had done; he was not the man his father had been, or he could never have played the fool, wasting his time and losing his opportunities, as he had done. He had been spoiled with softness, with idle days, and the pleasant things of life, which he could not forget, and which, like a weakling, he was in his secret heart longing for still. And even his father had not won what men called success, and a firm footing among his fellows, till the best part of his life was over.

But his father had been content through all his days as they came, and with his day’s work and his day’s wages. And his father had known his own strength and could bide his time. As for his son, John told himself that he was neither strong nor wise. He knew, or he feared at this time, that only the thought of his mother and her need of him kept him from despair.

He called it despair, poor lad, not knowing what he said. The depths of despair came to him with the thought of enlisting as a common soldier, to go away and live his life with as little exercise of his own will as the musket he carried, and to death and a nameless grave. Or it meant to sail away before the mast, a slave to some tyrant who held the power of life and death, because he held the power of the lash. And it might have come to one or other of these possibilities with him, if it had not been for his mother and her need of him.

For the dead level of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or wiser than other men.

These were dark days for the young man. At last he took his mother’s gently spoken words of counsel to heart, and opened the box in which she had secretly packed his college-books, and where they had lain hidden all this time. But the sight of them, and the associations they called up, made him heartsick and ashamed, and it was only by the exercise of strong self-restraint that he made himself pretend to take some interest in them for his mother’s sake. After this he fell into the way of taking long walks in all directions, and did a turn of work here and there as he could get it, and generally came home hungry, and tired, and ready for his bed, so that no reading could be expected of him.

But the days were growing short, and the dark hours many and long, and the mother’s heart “grew wae” for her son many a time. By and by something happened.

It was a good thing for the minister’s Davie that John Beaton was within sound of the voices of the lad’s terrified companions the day that he fell into “Burney’s Pot,” and it was a good thing also for John. The little lad was nearly gone when he was pulled out of the water, and having no knowledge of his home or name, since his young companions had taken to their heels as soon as they saw Davie safe, John took him home to his mother, and together they did what could be done for his help.

This was the beginning. Davie was allowed to fall asleep in Mrs Beaton’s bed, and in the gloaming John carried him home wrapped in a blanket, and then he saw the minister and his wife and Marjorie. It was the beginning for John of more than can well be told.

His manner of life from that time was changed. Not that he went often to the manse at first, though the door was always open to him, and a welcome awaiting him. But the life he saw there, the words he heard, and the spirit that showed in all that was done, or said, or planned, in great things and in small, came like a new revelation to him; and the more he saw and thought of it all, the less he thought about his own loss and his changed life and his unhopeful prospects.