Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Catherine took her into another room, and interrogated her concerning her pecuniary arrangements for the journey. Anne evaded the question, laughed at the scanty family of shillings in her own purse, and spoke of Lewis.
“Child, you are a gowk after all,” said Mrs. Catherine. “The lad needs all his siller for himself. If there is anything to spare, let him use it on bonnie dies to dress his little bride withal—though the bairn Alison has a natural grace, and needs them less than most. But if you say a word about siller to Lewis, you shall never enter my door again. Mind! It is my wont to keep my word.”
Within a week after this conversation, the last half of Mrs. Catherine’s prodigal outfit was hurriedly sent to Glasgow, where Archibald Sutherland had made his first beginning with success and honor. The cold lodging, to whose narrow and solitary fireside he returned, night after night alone—the fat, Glasgow landlady, whose broad, good-humored face began to smile upon him with a familiar kindliness, which the broken laird blamed himself for almost shrinking from—the life of strange labor—he was getting accustomed to them all.
The house which he had entered was a great one. The senior partner, Mr. Sutor, a man of good mercantile descent, and capital business head, lived at a considerable distance from Glasgow, in one of those magnificent solitudes of hill and water, whither the merchants of St. Mungo are wont to carry their genial wealth, and their fine houses. It was within convenient distance of the “Saut Water,” that irresistible temptation and delight of every genuine Glaswegian. Mr. Sutor came up frequently to business; he was still the active sagacious head of his extensive establishment. The manager, Mr. George Lumsden, was as great a man in his way. He lived in the dignified vicinity of Blytheswood Square. He had a fine house, a well-dressed pretty wife, and beautiful children; gave good dinners; visited baillies and town-councillors, and had baillies and town-councillors visiting him, and was certain in a very short time, to have his respectable name introduced into the firm. He was moreover an active, intelligent man, almost intellectual in spite of those absorbing cares of business, and worthy to call the minister of Portoran brother. Had Archibald chosen, he might have made a tolerably good entre into the society of Glasgow, in the hospitable house of Mr. Lumsden; but Archibald did not choose. His former folly, illness, and repentance had both sobered and saddened him, and he desired to avoid society—a desire which Mr. Lumsden kindly perceived; and after one or two unhappy evenings, during which the sensitive young man had endured in exquisite pain “the pity of the crowd,” and suffered the sympathy of indifferent strangers, Mr. Lumsden forbore pressing further invitations upon him.
Messrs. Sutor and Sinclair’s office was filled with young men—very young men, most of them—adventurous scions of commercial Glasgow families, foredoomed to push their fortunes, and to push them successfully in every quarter of the globe. Youths who made immense havoc among “grossets,” strawberries, and all other delicacies of the luxurious summer-time, sacred to Clydesdale orchards, and radiant with the crowning glory of the Saut Water; nor in the gloomier season did less execution among edibles and drinkables, by no means so delicate or innocent—uproarious, laughter loving, practical-joking youths, among whose noisy conclave Archibald Sutherland sat silent, grave, and sad, in strange solitude.
Thoroughly respectable they would all be by-and-by, on English ‘Change and foreign market-place, and home counting-house—men who could lose some few thousands without much discomposure, and whose custom was to win them in tens and twenties. Yet one could pass so lightly over these ruddy faces, to rest upon that pale one among them, with its secret history—its grief—its hope—altogether forgetful that this was a hired clerk, and that the cubs were young gentlemen, taken in at nominal salaries, to learn their craft, and saving Mr. Sutor no inconsiderable annual sum in the salaries of other hired clerks, whose services his great business must have demanded but for them.
But Archibald discharged his duty well: so well, that Mr. Lumsden formally pronounced his satisfaction—shortened his probation—and when he had been but a month in the Glasgow counting-house, bade him prepare immediately for his voyage. Archibald did so: wrote a long letter, and received a short note of leave-taking from his sister Isabel—the much-admired and gay Mrs. Duncombe—packed up his great outfit, placed in his pocketbook Mrs. Catherine’s long letter of pithy counsel and tender kindliness; with these few words of grave farewell from Merkland; and on a heavy day in February, took his last look of the fair West Country, and its beautiful Clyde, and set sail for the New World.
CHAPTER XIX.
MR. Lumsden, of Portoran, was seated in his study. The March wind was blustering boisterous and rude without, driving its precious dust, so valuable, as the proverb says, to farmer and seedsman, upon the window. The study of the Portoran Manse was by no means a luxurious place—there were no reclining library chairs in it: the formidable volumes that clothed its walls were such as no dilettanti student would venture to engage withal. Its furniture was of the plainest. One large respectable looking glazed bookcase, and a multitude of auxiliary shelves, were piled to overflowing with books—books worth one’s while to look at, though Russian leather and gilding were marvellously scant among them. That glorious row of tall vellum-covered folios—Miss Lumsden tells a story of them—how they were presented to her studious brother John, the day he was licensed, by a wealthy elder (to whom be all honor and laud, and many followers;) and how John, in the mightiness of his glee, forgetful of the new dignity of his Reverend, fairly danced round the ponderous volumes in overbrimming pride and exultation. Miss Lumsden’s studious brother John, sits listening the while, with his own peculiar smile upon his face—a smile which gives to that dark, penetrating, intellectual countenance a singular fascination—there is something in the simplicity of its glee, which at once suits so well and contrasts so strangely with his strong and noble character.
For Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran, was altogether a peculiar man; we are sorry that we cannot venture to call him a type of the clergymen of Scotland; he was not a type of any body or profession. You will find rare individuals of his class here and there, but nowhere many. That there were such things as fatigue and weariness, Mr. Lumsden knew—he had heard of them, with the hearing of the ear, and believed in their existence as on good testimony we believe that there are mountains in the moon; but Mr. Lumsden regarded people who complained much of these with a smile, half-pitying, half-incredulous, and met the idea of himself suffering from them with a no less amused burst of open wonder than if it had been suggested to him that he should hold a diet of examination, on some chill hillside of the pale planet over us. The laborious duties of a brave and faithful minister were very life and breath to Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran—obstacles that discouraged every other man did only pleasantly excite and stimulate his patient might of labor. Weary work, from which all beside him turned disconsolate and afraid, Mr. Lumsden swept down upon, his face radiant with all its frank simplicity of glee. Nothing daunted the mighty, vigorous, healthful soul within him—nothing cast down that great, broad, expansive power of Hope, which was with him no fair beguiling fairy, but an athletic spirit, greedy of labor as the elfin serving-man of Michael Scot. In labors manifold the minister of Portoran spent his manly days; foremost in every good work, valiantly at the head of every Christian enterprise, and full of that high religious chivalry which dares all things in the service of the Church and of the Church’s Head.