The Stickit Minister's Wooing/The Blue Eyes of Ailie
THE BLUE EYES OF AILIE
When first I went to Cairn Edward as a medical man on my own account, I had little to do with the district of Glenkells. For one thing, there was a resident doctor there, Dr. Campbell—Ignatius Campbell—and in those days professional boundaries were more strictly observed than they have been in more recent years. But in time, whether owing to the natural spread of my practice, or through some small name which I got in the countryside, owing to a successful treatment of tubercular cases, I found myself oftener and oftener in the Glenkells. And, indeed, ever since I began to be able to keep a stated assistant, it has been my custom to take day about with him on the Glenkells round.
But in what follows I speak of the very early years when I had still little actual connection with the district. The Glenkells folk are always in the habit of referring to themselves as a community apart. They may, indeed, in extreme cases include the rest of the United Kingdom—but, as it were, casually. Thus, "If the storm continues it will be a sair winter in Glenkells, and the rest o' the country!"
Or when some statesman conspicuously blundered, or a foreign nation involved themselves in superfluous difficulties, you could not go into a farmhouse or traverse the length of the main street of the Clachan without hearing the words: "The like o' that could never hae happened i' the Glenkells!"
So there arose a proverb which, though of local origin, was not without a certain wider acceptation: "As conceity as Glenkells," or, in a more diffuse form: "Glenkells cocks craw aye croosest an' on a muckler midden!"
But Glenkells wotted little of such slurs, or if it minded at all took them for compliments with a solid and irrefutable foundation. On the other hand, it retorted upon the rest of the world in characteristic fashion, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. As thus: "Tak' care o' him. He's no to be trustit. His grandfaither cam' frae Borgue!" Or, more allusively: "Aye, a Nicholson aye needs watchin'. They a' come frae Kirkcudbright, where the jail is!"
One peculiarity of the speech of this country within a country struck me more than all the others—perhaps because it came in the line of my own profession.
More than once an applicant for my services would say, in answer to my question: "Have you called in the doctor?" "Oh, no, it has no been so serious as that!" Succeedantly I would find that Dr. Ignatius Campbell had been in attendance for some time, and that I ought to have consulted with him before, as it were, jumping his claim.
Dr. Campbell was a queer, dusty, smoky old man who, when seen abroad, sat low in a kind of basket-phaeton—as it were, on the small of his back, and visited his patients in a kind of dreamy exaltation which many put down to drink. They were wrong. The doctor was something much harder to cure—an habitual opium-eater. Somehow Dr. Campbell had never taken the position in the Glenkells to which his abilities entitled him. He came from the North, and that was against him. More than that, he sent in his bills promptly, and saw that they were settled. Worst of all, he took no interest in imaginary diseases.
He openly laughed at calomel—which in the Glenkells was looked upon as a kind of blaspheming of the Trinity. But he was a duly certified graduate of Edinburgh like myself. His name was on the Medical List, and only his unfortunate habit and the dreamy idleness engendered by it kept him from making a very considerable name for himself in his profession. I found, for instance, after his death (he left his books, papers, and instruments to me) that he had actually anticipated in his vague theoretical way some of the most applauded discoveries of more recent times, and that he was well versed in all the foreign literature of such subjects as interested him.
But Dr. Ignatius Campbell with his great pipe, his low-crowned hat, his seedy black clothes with the fluff sticking here and there upon them, was not the man to impress the Glenkells. For in Galloway the minister may go about in fishing-boots, shooting-jacket, and deerstalker if he will—nobody thinks the worse of him for it. The lawyer may look as if he bought his clothes from a slopshop. The country gentleman may wear a suit of tweeds for ten years, till the leather gun-patch on the shoulder threatens to pervade the whole man, back and front. But the doctor, if he would be successful, must perforce dress strictly by rule. Sunday and Saturday he must go buttoned up in his well-fitting surtout. His hat must be glossy, no matter what the weather may be (for myself I always kept a spare one in the box of the gig), and the whole man upon entering a sick-room must bring with him the fragrance of clean linen, good clothes, and personal exactitude. And though naturally a little rebellious at first, I hereby subscribe to the Galloway view of the case.
Nance converted me.
"Is that a clean collar?—no, sir, you don't! Take it off this instant! I think this tie will suit you better. It is a dull day and something light becomes you. I have ironed your other hat. See that you put it on! Let me look at your cuffs. Mind that you turn down your trousers before you come in sight of the house. John" (this to my driver), "see that Dr. McQuhirr turns down his trousers and puts on his hat right side first. There is a dint at the back that I cannot quite get out!"
It is no wonder that I succeeded in Galloway, having such a—I mean being endowed with such professional talents!
I had not, however, been long in Glenkells before I found out that there was another medical adviser on the scene—a kind of Brownie who did Dr. Campbell's work while he slept or dreamed his life away over his pipe and his coloured diagrams, whose very name was never mentioned, to me at least—perhaps from some idea that as an orthodox professional man I might resent the Brownie's intrusion.
But matters came to a head one day when I found the bottle of medicine I had sent up from the Cairn Edward apothecary standing untouched on the mantelpiece, while another and wholly unlicensed phial stood at the bed-head with a glass beside it, in which lingered a few drops of something which I knew well that I had not prescribed.
"What is this?" I demanded. "Why have you not administered the medicine I sent you?"
The woman put her apron to her lips in some embarrassment.
"Oh, doctor—ye see the way o't was this," she said. "Jeems was ta'en that bad in the nicht that I had to caa' in—a neebour o' oors—an' he brocht this wi' him."
I lifted my hat.
"Good morning, Mrs. Landsborough," I said, with immense dignity; "I am sorry that I must retire from the case. It is impossible for me to go on if you disregard my instructions in that manner. No doubt Dr. Campbell"
The good woman lifted up her hands in amazement and appeal. Even Jeems turned on his bed in quick alarm.
"'Deed, Dr. Ma Whurr!" she cried, "it wasna Dr. Cawmell ava. We wadna think on sic a thing"
"Your faither's son will never gang oot o' a MacLandsborough's hoose in anger, surely?" said Jeems, making the final Galloway appeal to the clan spirit.
This was conjuring with a name I could not disavow, and strongly against my first intentions I continued to attend the case. Jeems got rapidly better, and my bottle diminished steadily day by day. But whether it went down Jeems's throat or mended the health of the back of the grate, it was better, perhaps, that I did not inquire too closely. On my way home I considered my own prescription, and recalled the ingredients which by taste and smell I discovered in the intruding bottle.
"I am not sure but what—well, it might have been better. I wonder who the man is?" This was as much as I could be brought to admit in those days, even to myself. The doctor, who in the first years of his practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is not fit to be trusted—not so much as with the administering of one Beecham's pill.
Yet I own the matter troubled me. I had a rival who—no, he did not understand more of the case than myself. But all the same, I wanted to find him out—in the interests of the Medical Register.
But the riddle was resolved one day about a week afterwards in a rather remarkable manner. I was proceeding up the long main street of the Clachan, looking for a house in which Dr. Campbell (with whom of late I had grown strangely intimate) had told me that he would be found at a certain hour.
As I went I noticed, what I had never seen before, a little house, white and clean without, the creepers clambering all over it. This agreed, so far, with the doctor's description. I turned aside and went up two or three carefully reddened steps. A brass knocker blinked in the evening sunshine. I lifted it and knocked.
"Is the doctor in?" I said to a tall gaunt woman who opened the door an inch or two. As it was I could only see a lenticular section of her person, so that in describing her I draw upon later impressions. She hesitated a second or two, and then, rather grudgingly as I thought, opened the door.
"Come in," she said.
With no more greeting than that she ushered me into a small room crowded with books and apparatus. The table held a curious microscope, evidently home-made in most of its fittings. Pieces of mechanism, the purpose of which I could not even guess, were strewn about the floor. Castings were gripped angle-wise in vices, and at the end of an ordinary carpenter's bench stood a small blacksmith's furnace, with bellows and anvil all complete. In the recess, half hidden by a screen, I could catch a glimpse of a lathe. There was no carpet on the floor.
The door opened and a small spare man stood before me, the deprecation of an offending dog in his beautiful brown eyes. He did not speak or offer to shake hands, but only stood shyly looking up at me. It was some time before I could find words. Nance often tells me that I need a push behind to enable me to take the lead in any conversation—except with herself, that is, and then I never get a chance.
"I beg your pardon, doctor," said I, "I was seeking my friend Campbell. I did not know you had settled amongst us, or I should have been to call on you before this."
I held out my hand cordially, for the man appealed to me somehow. But he did not seem to notice it.
"No, not 'doctor,'" he said, speaking in a quick agitated way. "Mister—Roger is my name."
"I beg your pardon, I am sure," I stammered; "in that case I do not know how to excuse my intrusion. I asked for the doctor, meaning Dr. Campbell, and your servant"
"My mother, sir!"
There was pride as well as challenge in the brown eyes now, and I found myself liking the young man better than ever.
"I beg your pardon—Mrs. Roger showed me in by mistake, I fear."
"It was no mistake—I am sometimes called so in this place, though not by my own will; I have no right to the title!"
"Well," I said, as I looked round the room. "won't you shake hands with me? You don't know what a pleasure it is to meet a man of science, as it is evident you are, here in these forlorn uplands!"
"Will you pardon me a moment till I inform you exactly of my status?" he said, "and when you clearly understand, if you still wish to shake my hand—well, with all my heart."
He stood silent a moment, and then, suddenly recollecting himself, "Will you not sit down?" he said. "Pray forgive my discourtesy."
I sat down, displacing as I did so a box of tools which had been planted on the green rep of the easy-chair cover.
"You may well be astonished that I wish to speak to you, Dr. McQuhirr," he said, beginning restlessly to pace the room, mechanically avoiding the various obstacles on the floor as he did so; "but I have long wished to put myself right with a member of the profession, and now that chance has thrown us together, I feel that I must speak"
"But there is Dr. Campbell—surely it cannot be that two men of such kindred tastes, in a small place like this, should not know each other!"
He flushed painfully, and turning to a stand near the window, played with the flywheel of a small model, turning it back and forward with his finger.
"Dr. Campbell is the victim of a most unfortunate prejudice," he murmured softly, and for a space said no more. It was so still in the room that through the quiet I could hear the tall eight-day clock ticking half-way up the stairs.
He resumed his narrative and his pacing to and fro at the same moment.
"I am," he went on, "at heart of your profession. I have attended all the classes and earned the encomiums of my professors in the hospitals. I stood fairly well in the earlier written examinations, but at my first oral I broke down completely—a kind of aphasia came over me. My brain reeled, a dreadful shuddering took hold of my soul, and I fell into a dead faint. For months they feared for my reason, and though ultimately I recovered and completed my course of study, I was never able to sit down at an examination-table again. After my father's death my mother settled here, and gradually it has come about that in any emergency I have been asked to visit and prescribe for a patient. I believe the poor people call me 'doctor' among themselves, but I have never either countenanced the title, or on any occasion failed to rebuke the user. Neither have I ever accepted fee or reward, whether for advice or medicine!"
I held out my hand.
"I care not a brass farthing about professional etiquette," said I; "it is my opinion that you are doing a noble work. And I know of one case, at least, where your diagnosis was better than mine!"
More I could not say. He flushed redly and took my hand, shaking it warmly. Then all at once he dropped the somewhat strained elevation of manner in which he had told his story, and began to speak with the innocent confidence and unreserve of a child. He was obviously much pleased at my inferred compliment.
"Ah!" he said, "I know what you mean. But then, you see, you did not know James MacLandsborough's life history. He was my father's gardener. I knew his record and the record of his father before him. It was nothing but an old complaint, for which I had treated him over and over again—working, that is, on the basis of a recent chill. In your place and with your data I should have done what you did. In fact, I admired your treatment greatly."
We talked a long while, so long, indeed, that I forgot all about Dr. Campbell, and it was dusk before I found myself at Mr. Roger's door saying "Good-night."
"If I might venture to say so," he stammered, holding my hand a moment in his quick nervous grasp, "I would advise you not to mention your visit here to your friend, Dr. Campbell."
"I am afraid I must," I replied; "I had an appointment with him which I have unfortunately forgotten in the interest of our talk!"
"Then I much fear that it is not 'Good-night' but 'Good-bye' between us!" he murmured sadly, and went within.
And even as he had prophesied so it was.
*******
"Sir," said Dr. Campbell, "I shall be sorry to lose your society, but you must choose between that house and mine. I have special and family reasons why I cannot be intimate with any visitor to Mr.ah, Roger!"
I had found the doctor lying on his couch, as was his custom, his curious Oriental tray beside him, and an acrid tang in the air; but at my first words about my visit he shook off his dreamy abstraction and sat up.
"To tell you the truth, Campbell," I said, as calmly as possible, for, of course, I could not allow any one (except Nance) to dictate to me, "I was singularly interested in the young man, and—he told his tale, as it seemed to me, quite frankly. If I am not to call upon him, I must ask you as to your reasons for a request so singular."
"It is not a request, McQuhirr," said the doctor, passing his hand across his brow as if to clear away moisture. "It is only a little information I give you for your guidance. If you wish to visit this young man—well, I am deeply grieved, but I cannot receive you here, or have any intercourse with you professionally."
"That is saying too much or too little," I replied; "you must tell me your reasons."
Then he hesitated, looking from side to side in a semi-dazed way.
"I would rather not—they are family reasons!" he stammered, as he spoke.
"There is such a thing as the seal of the profession," I reminded him.
"Well," he said at last, "I will tell you. That young man is my nephew, the son of my elder brother. His name is not Roger, but Roger Campbell. His mother was my poor brother's housekeeper. He married her some time after his first wife's death. This boy was their child, and, like a cuckoo in the nest, he tried from the first to oust his elder brother—the child of the dead woman. Indeed, but for my interference his mother and he would have done it between them; for my brother was latterly wholly in their hands.
"Finally this lad went to college, and coming here one summer after the breaking up of the classes he must needs fall in love with Ailie—my daughter, that is. What?—You never knew that I had a daughter! Ah, Alec, I was not always the man you see me—I too have had ambitions. But after—well, what use is there to speak of it? At any rate, young Roger Campbell fell in love with my Ailie, and she, I suppose, liked it well enough, but like a sensible girl gave him no immediate answer. Then after that came his half-brother, who was heir to the little property on Loch Aweside, and he too fell in love with Ailie. There was no girl like her in all the Glen of Kells; and as for him, he was a tall, handsome, fair lad, not crowled and misshapen like this one. Well, Ailie and he fell in love, and then Roger's mother moved heaven and earth to disinherit Archie. It was for this cause that I went up to Inchtaggart and watched my brother during the last weeks of his life. The woman fought like a wild cat for her son, but I and Archie watched in turns. It was I who found the will by which Archie inherited all. In three months Ailie and he were married. Roger Campbell failed in his examinations the same year, and the next mother and son came back here to her native village to live on their savings.
"The mere choice of this place showed their spite against me, but that is not the worst. Ever since that day they have devoted themselves to discrediting me in my profession. And you, who know these people, know to what an extent they have succeeded. My practice has shrunk to nothing—almost. Even the patients I have, when they do call me in, send secretly for my enemy before my feet are cold off the doorstep. Yet I have no redress, for I have never been able to bring a case of taking fees home to him. Ah! if only I could!"
Dr. Ignatius fell back exhausted, for towards the last he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the casements and set the prisms of the little old chandelier a-tingling.
"And that is why I say you must choose between us," he said. "Is it not enough? Have I asked too much?"
"It is enough for me," I said; "I will do as you wish!"
Now I did not see anything in his story very much against the young man; but, after all, the lad was nothing to me, and I had known Dr. Ignatius a long time.
So I asked him how it came that the young man was called Roger and not Campbell.
"Oh!" he said, "that is the one piece of decent feeling he has shown in the whole affair. He called himself Campbell Roger when he came here. You are the only person who knows that he is my nephew."
*******
I was glad afterwards that I had made him the promise he asked for. I never saw him in life again. Dr. Ignatius Campbell died two days after, being found dead in bed with his tiny pipe clutched in his hand. I went up that same day, and in conjunction with Dr. John Thoburn Brown of Drumfern, found that our colleague had long suffered from an acute form of heart disease, and that it was wonderful how he had survived so long.
The body was lying at the time in the room where he died. The maid-servant had gone to stay with relatives in the village, not being willing to remain all night in the house alone; for which, all things considered, I did not greatly blame her. I asked if there was anything I could do, but was informed that all arrangements for the funeral had been made. It was to be on the Friday, two days after.
I drove up the glen early that morning, and found a tall young man in the house, opening drawers and rummaging among papers. I understood at once that this was Mr. Archibald Campbell of Inchtaggart. I greeted him by that name, and he responded heartily enough.
"You are Dr. McQuhirr," he said; "my father-in-law often spoke about you and how kind you were to him. You know that he has left all his books, papers, and scientific apparatus to you?"
"I did not know," I said; "that is as unexpected as it is undeserved, and I hope you will act precisely as if such a bequest had not existed. You must take all that either you or your wife would care to possess."
"Oh!" he cried lightly, "Ailie could not come. She has been ill lately, and as for me, I would not touch one of the beastly things with a ten-foot pole. Come into the garden and have a smoke."
There Mr. Archibald Campbell told me that he had arranged for a sale of the doctor's house and all his effects as soon as possible.
"Better to have it over," he said, "so you had as well bring up a conveyance and cart off all the scientific rubbish you care about. I want all settled up and done with within the month."
He departed the night after the funeral, leaving the funeral expenses unpaid. He was a hasty, though well-meaning young man, and no doubt he forgot. When I came up on the Monday of the week following, I discovered that the account had been paid.
*******
After I had made my selection of books and instruments, besides taking all the manuscripts (watched from room to room by the Drumfern lawyer's sharp eye), I strolled out, and my steps turned involuntarily towards the little house covered with creepers where I had seen the young man Roger. I felt that death had absolved me from my promise, and with a quick resolve I turned aside.
The same woman opened the door an inch or two. I lifted my hat and asked if her son was in.
She held the door open for me without speaking a word and ushered me into the model-strewn little parlour. I cast my eyes about. On the table lay the discharged account for the funeral expenses of Dr. Ignatius Campbell!
In another moment the door opened and the young man came in, paler than before, and with the slight halt in his gait exaggerated.
"How do you do, Mr. Campbell?" I said quietly, holding out my hand.
He gave back a step, almost as if I had struck him. Then he smiled wanly. "Ah! he told you. I expected he would; and yet you have come?" He spoke slowly, the words coming in jerks.
I held out my hand and said heartily: "Of course I came."
I did not think it necessary to tell him anything about my agreement with Dr. Campbell. He, on his part, had quietly possessed himself of John Ewart's bill for the funeral expenses. We had a long talk, and I stayed so late that Nance had begun to get anxious about me before I arrived home. But not one word, either in justification of himself or of accusation against his uncle, did he utter, though he must have known well enough what his uncle had said of him.
Nor was it till a couple of months afterwards that Roger Campbell adverted again to the subject. I had been to the churchyard to look at the headstone which had been erected, as I knew, at his expense. He had asked me to write the inscription for it, and I had done so.
Coming home, he had to stop several times on the hill to take breath. When we got to the door he said: "I have but one thing to pray for now, Dr. McQuhirr, and that is that I may outlive my mother. Give me your best skill and help me to do that."
His prayer was answered. He lived just two days after his mother. And I was with him most of the time, while Nance stayed with my people at Drumquhat. It was a beautiful Sabbath evening, and the kirk folk were just coming home. Most who suffer from his particular form of phthisis imagine themselves to be getting better to the very last, but he knew too much to have any illusions. I had put the pillows behind him, and he was sitting up making kindly comment on the people as they passed by, Bible in hand. He stopped suddenly and looked at me.
"Doctor," he said, "what my uncle told you about me never made any difference to you?"
"No," I said, rather shamefacedly, "no difference at all!"
"No," he went on, meditatively, "no difference. Well, I want you to burn two documents for me, lest they fall into the wrong hands—as they might before these good folk go back kirkward again."
He directed me with his finger, at the same time handing me a key he wore upon his watchchain.
"Even my poor mother up there," he said, pointing to the room above, "has never set eyes on what I am going to show you. It is weak of me; I ought not to do it, doctor, but I will not deny that it is some comfort to set myself right with one human soul before I go."
I took out of a little drawer in a bureau a miniature, a bundle of letters, and a broadly folded legal-looking document.
I offered them to Roger, but he waved them away.
"I do not want to look upon them—they are here!" He touched his forehead. "And one of them is here!" He laid his hand on his heart with that freedom of gesture which often comes to the dying, especially to those who have repressed themselves all their lives.
I looked down at the miniature and saw the picture of a girl, very pretty, beautiful indeed, but with that width between the eyes which, in fair women, gives a double look.
"Ailie, my brother's wife!" he said, in answer to my glance. "These are her letters. Open them one by one and burn them."
I did as he bade me, throwing my eyes out of focus so that I might not read a word. But out of one fluttered a pressed flower. It was fixed on a card with a little lock of yellow hair arranged about it for a frame, fresh and crisp. And as I picked it up I could not help catching the prettily printed words:
"TO DARLING ROGER, FROM HIS OWN AILIE."
There was also a date.
"Let me look at that!" he said quickly. I gave it to him. He looked at the flower—a quick painful glance, but as he handed me back the card he laughed a little.
"It is a 'Forget-me-not,'" he said. Then in a musing tone he added: "Well, Ailie, I never have!"
So one by one the letters were burnt up, till only a black pile of ashes remained, in ludicrous contrast to the closely packed bundle I had taken from the drawer.
"Now burn the ribbon that kept them together, and look at the other paper."
I unfolded it. It was a will in holograph, the characters clear and strong, signed by Archibald Ruthven Campbell, of Inchtaggart, Argyleshire, devising all his estate and property to his son Roger, with only a bequest in money to his elder son!
I was dazed as I looked through it, and my lips framed a question. The young man smiled.
"My father's last will," he said, "dated a month before his death. She never knew it." (Again he indicated the upper room where his mother's body lay.) "They never knew it." (He looked at the girl's picture as it smiled up from the table where I had laid it.) "My brother Archie succeeded on a will older by twenty years. But when I lost Ailie, I lost all. Why should she marry a failure? Besides, I truly believe that she loves my brother, at least as well as ever she loved me. It is her nature. That she is infinitely happier with him, I know."
"Then you were the heir all the time and never told it—not to any one!" I cried, getting up on my feet. He motioned me towards the grate again.
"Burn it," he said, "I have had a moment of weakness. It is over. I ought to have been consistent and not told even you. No, let the picture lie. I think it does me good. God bless you, Alec! Now, good-night; go home to your Nance."
*******
He died the next forenoon while I was still on my rounds. And when I went in to look at him, the picture had disappeared. I questioned the old crone who had watched his last moments and afterwards prepared him for burial.
"He had something in his hand," she answered, "but I couldna steer it. His fingers grippit it like a smith's vice."
I looked, and there from between the clenched fingers of the dead right hand the eyes of Ailie Campbell smiled out at me—blue and false as her own Forget-me-not.