Our Novelettes.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1579, 4 March 1887, Page 4

Our Novelettes.

THE DOMINIES SONS.

Chapter I.—Ccimrs.

Andrew and David Auchinleck, sons of the paiidi sc! tool-master at Auldacres, were about to keep their terms at Oxford. This result was the consequence of Scotch ambition and love of learning. The dominie and his wife had both devoted themselves to the object. There had been something pathetic in the apeot tele of the couple, in the middle of the birchwood and drugget of their little parlour, s'icking fast to their resolution. The dominie had no fancy for shop after shop hours, yet he denied himself his uninterrupted perusal of his penny piper or his " daunder" with his pipe to look at his bees that he might sit in readiness to help the laddies with an obscure case or an involved construction. Mrs Auchinleck closed her mouth tightly on her tit-bits of go'tip. and noided dumbly over her knitting needles, sooner than break the thread of Andrew and David's studies. Whatever had been grudged in the thrifty houshold, nothing had been spired on its sons' eduction. Andrew and David, two gaunt, uncouth students with fine talents, had shown themselves worthy of the lengthened sacrifice, had worked at home and at col ege and won bursaries arid " grants," whii'h h »d enabled them to aspire to the g'al of young Scotland's ambition, Oxford or Cambridge. So proposed the Aucbinlecks, but not so disposed the Ruler of strong men. The week before the young men were to leave for Oxford the schoolmoster was seized with a sudden illness, and within twenty-four hours it was unmistakably evident, even without the doctor's confirmation, that though the final stroke might be delayed, the sick man would never return to the active duties of his calling. Dumb consternation fell on the school-house of Auldacres at the doctor's sentence. Mrs Auchinleck was the first who broke the startled, dismal silence. She spoke querulously in her despair. " You'll no leave us, you two callants. Your father yonder has laid out on your learning every penny he might ha'o put by. Now ane o' you maun take his place; ane o' you, gin it be na buith o' you, maun bide at hame—a' maun bo keeplt now for drugs snd dainties. You're gude lads, you'll not grudge it to your father, who grudged nocht to you, but scrimped himsell tint you micht riso in the warld. In saying that, mind, I'm far from sayiug that you havena done his wull and gladdened his heart. A proud and a pleased man you've made him mony a day, and you've your mither's thanks for't. But bear wi* me, laddies, for I'm torn and wachted in my mind, and still a' that I can see is, that ane o' you maun bide at hnme and take the maister's place, and we may do weel euough yet." It was but a day or two before that the mother had explained with some heat to her chief friend, Mrs Kymer, tho widow of a minister, too poorand of too humble extra tion to bo raised above a schoolmaster s wife, that to be a] tutor or a master at tho great Uriversity of Oxford was entirely another thing from being a tutor in the be6t laird's or lord's family in Scotland, such as Mr Kymer hed been in his day, or from being master — not to say of Auldacres school, but of the biggeet town academy. It was more like being a laird or lord himself, Mis Auchinleck had declared, and then had gone on to illustrate her text. "They wear gowns, woman," Mrs Anchinleck had proceeded, " no like the duds o' some o' our student lad«, but ministers' gowns wi' leddies' coloured hudes hinging dowa their backs. I'm no thinking that my lads will like them sair, for they dinna affect fine claithes, at least no Andrew ; Davie bus mair o' a turn tnat way ; but they maun be neebour liko. The warst thing is that meddling folk may pretend that sic dress has mair to do wi' prelacy even than the minister's lailac gloves up by; but since we've do thocht the new o' our lads taking orders aa they ca't, or having ouy thing to do wi' the English kirk (though wi' their abilities they micbt weel wiii to the bishops gin they cared, or gin it was atheg ther becoming in Scotchmen and a maister's son-), the gowns aud the hudes ore just a set-aff to the outward man. For her own part Mrs Auchinleck would still have stitched her fingers to the bone and lived on oatmeal and water that Andrew aud David might 'iave their fine chunce; but conjugal love and fidlity bade her forget everything save what would enlighten her husband's trial. Her two sons did not blume their mother, but thought silently whi.-h ot the two was to be the giver, and what was to be the extent of the gilt. David, who had been going restlessly out and in all day, now accompanied Andrew as if for a brotherly consultation; but after a few casual, half-idle words on the state of the weather, as well as oa their father's condition, he strolled away aloug the road aud through the bare fields, leaving his brother.

Andrew went no farther than the foot of the little garden, and sat down on the wall in a familiar half-boyish attitude, to think over what had befallen him, and make up his mind what he should do. But the first thing Andrew did was to look about him and to take in half inadvertently, yet with a kind of morbid vividness, every well-known feature of the scene.

The chief feature waa the shabby, narrow, two-storeyed house, the two stereotyped windows below and the three above on euoh side of the door, answering to the kitchen and parlour, the room which Andrew shared with David, and his father and mothers' room with its window unwontedly shaded loDg before sundown. A few yards apart from the unnadorned dwelling waa the even barer and more aoiled and battered school-room.

Across the road appeared the comparatively sheltered and ornate manse and kit k, which had drifted apart in the social scale during a century and more from their old allies the school and schoolmaster's house. There flourished the dazzling drawing-room, in which Andrew and David Auchinleck had been entertained as exemplary lads who did the parish credit, by the minister, a slim man, with a face bearing no small resemblance to tbat of a skull. The minister's wife, Mrs Tcmp'eton, retained the weil-preserved remains of a fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty, and was scrupulously in the fashion. The minister's youngest son, Cosmo Templeton, was like his lather, with some flesh on his face as yet. He had been sent away and educated at an English private school, and had been successful in gettiug a government appointment. Thfe miuister's many daughters were like their mother, but with less pretensions to beauty than she had possessed, l'hey were the single specimens of elegant girlhood that had come into close contact with the Auohinleck lads, for their fellow, Cecy Kymer, in her faded patched frocks and highly-unfashion-able straw hats, would not bear tbat definition.

The whole dramatit perso*ce of the manse passed before Andrew as he sat there. He neard once more Mr 'iempleton'a mangled quotations from Homer and Virgil, got up for the benefit of Andrew and David, at which the two scholarly young priga had laughed sardonically in their sleeves. He received anew Cosmo's off-hand, exultant account of hia satisfactory examination, which had impressed >ndrew and David with the pool oonvjotion that they oould bavt Bit and

surmounted it with ease any day. All the same it hfd been a fact that they ronld not meet and answer, without supreme moriifiea tion at I heir clowni-h slown< ss, Mrs Templelon's light. cotidcßo f nding, but not unkindly speeches (for she too was the pre ud mother of a successful soo). and the still airier flights for the purpose of interesting and aausing the clever louts, on the part of the young hdies. There had been no fault to fi r d with the minister's wifo and daughters in their passing intercourse with the domine's sons, save that Mrs Templeton might have been a trifle too suave, and the Missis Tcmpleton too affable. The girls in their pretty fearle sness, grariousnass, and gracafulness were dazzling to the youthful hermits, and the manse draw-ing-room a kind of half-pleasing purgUory to the shy, proud brothers. Over the whole of these near objects, with their swift, deadly-lively suggestions, as well as over the dimmer, vaguer, more remote features of the landscape, the scarcelv broken stubble and turnip fields, merging into the shoreless waves of the moor, " costing up," as yet no purple flush on its sombre surface, there brooded an unrelieved pole, misty autumn sky. It was one of thase skies in which there is neither clear light or darkness, and below which gossamers with their clinging haeo wrap and veil every branch ai d leaf. Andrew gnzed about him mechanically, till there rose before him in a flash, with a pang of comparison, the stately pile upon pile of noble college and hall, such as they bad appoared when he and David paid them a passing, charmed visit to enter their names on the list of students. Fleeting as had been Andrew Auchinleck's experience of Oxford — the Christ church meadows, the Isis, the cloisters of St. John's, the tower of Merton, the dome of the Radclyffe, the galleries of the Bodleiaa Library, returned to him as if he had seen them but yesterday. With these there came the keen expectations of learned leisure, improving companionship, rivalries and rewards, which would open to the aspirants courses not unworthy of such training, clothing them with the simple dignity and fine freema onary of gentlemen. If either Andrew or David Auchinleck resigned Oxford for the present and took Auldacres parish school instead, neither of them had the slightest hope of reoalling their decision aud reaching the university at a more distar.t date. It could not be. It would be impossible for the brothers to recover the lapsed bursaries and grants which would have enabled them at present to keep their terms. As Andrew sat ttiere pondering on the garden wa l, David returned from his stroll.

David betrayed more traces of disorder and vexation than Andrew.

It was with hejt and passion stirring every feature of his long-lipped, wide-nostriled, drooping-eyeb rowed lace that David directly addressed Andrew on the subj ct. •' I don't mean to blome my mother, Andrew. Of course she is to be pitied next to my father, but this proposal that one of us bhouid thrjw up our long-formed plans and take the school is unreasonable. Think of the waste it would be of all we have done. Of oourse a person must be found to fill my father's place." " No, Davie; even if wo could find such a person," denied Andrew positively, "my father has not retained the means to pay him, and neither you nor I could ensure it. For that matter you are well aware," continued poor Andrew, in a dry and surly protest, " that in any oase we should have had to scrape and pinch, and it would have been a close shave fur us to keep our terms at Oxford. Theu, if we proposed a third party there would mo;t likely be bother with the Presbytery, jealous of its privileges; but I don't think there would be any objection to oue of us filling my father's otfice."

As Andrew said this with a tremendous effort at stolid common sense and stony inditfieronce, there rose up before his mental eyes Auldaercd parish school on a summer or a winter day. lie heard the dull drone of peasjnt children painfully climbing the first step to knowledge in tueir tattered, scrawled over," first " a-id " second books," witu the mur ler of syntax and pronunciation in the scant and rune fifth forui. He fancied himself seated in the mister's uneasy woodeu chair at the common deal desk, overlooking the iong hacked aud blotted desk of the writiug scholars. While in sharp and glowing contrast rose in his mental vision tbe historical and aristocratic common rooms, lecture rooms and chapels, rich in carved oak and stained glass, infinitely richer in their me nories, wherj great Englisu sta lawyers, and ecc.esiaitics, were nurtured, wiih their crowd ol polished—for t:ie most part pleasant, even in their ex :lusiveuess and idle dissipation—gentlemen commouers, and their dons, courteous iu their severest curiuess. There met mingled wonderful companies of gifted men; there waged vigorous and subtle intellectual contests ; there shone the pure glory of scholarly " honours."

" I dare Bay not," burst out David Auchinleck, indignantly, in answer to Audrey's djgged etaiemeut that the presbytery to which Auidacres, with its kirk and school, belonged, would not object to him or his brother in the room ot their father superannuated. "It is easy for you to speak, Andrew j no doubt you are the eldest and you claim the right of choice, but think what yju are dooming me to, how you are blasting my prospects. By Heaven 1 cannot do it!" auu the lad broke uff iu a quivering frenay of despair. " Hold on," growled Andrew, with a man's growl, in raply to what sounded like a woman's cry. " I mean to stay and take the school."

David stepped back, calmed down in an instant. It was some seconds more till he recovered voice to exclaim and argue, and til the colour whi c h had retreated from hi" cheeks, leaving them blank and white at the immense relief and yet the great rebuke of bis brother's announcement, returned to his face.

" Are you se r i o us, Andrew P Do yoa reallv mean it ? lia Te jou thought what it will cost you I' and he pressed up to his brother with greater freedom and closer attachment than the two youug me n, siiff and almost frigid in their intercourse, and each full of his own difficulties and aims, had lately expressed. " Wuat is the use of thinking p" protested Andrew, gruffly, leaping down from the wall and waikiug towards ttie house. " There is no other way if one of us is still to go to Oxford."

But it might have been eo arranged that neither of the Aucliinle<'ks should have gone to Oxiord then or afterwards, and neither of them'kept the school. Tbey might both have continued at one of the Scotch universities, where students of slender means could have lived more cheaply, where clever steady young men already known could ha7e got teaching at once, and spared money either to have paid a competent assistant for their father, or in case of his retiring to have supplemented his retiring pittance, and maintained him and their mother. There Andrew and David oould still have qualified themselves for a less ambitious future indeed, but for gentlemen's professions. There was that third resource, and it had occurred to Andrew ; though it is hire justice to state that in the excitement and confusion of David's mind it did not i suggest itself to him till Andrew had already dismissed this last alternative with the short " I'll atar. If one of us may make »ipooa or ipott ft bora it Oxford, it would

be a pity he should not have the opportunity/' " You are the finest fellow in the world, Andrew," exclaimed David, incoherent in hi* agitation. "None can tell so well as I what you are doing." " Never mind," said Andrew, more as if he were aggrieved and annc yfd than gratified by his brother's praise. " I am the elder son, as you said," be added, with a touch of bitter irony, which brought David a little more to h's senses. " I ought not to allow the sacrifice," David began, with bis colour coming and going- "It I thought I could stand the reverse——" " No, you could not, Davip," Andrew put his brother down summarily, squaring bis own shoulders, " it. will take me to do it. And now, if you please, I'd rather say no more about it." Chapter ll.—Ckcy. Six years later Mrs Auchinleck sat in the same Auldacre? school-house parlour, presiding over the early tea of her son the master. The lean, active mother was little altered, though she wore a widow's cap of some years' standing, and when she put it on had mourned keenly. The son was in a measure changed. The ill-balanced, awkward student who had tnken his father's school had grown into a blunt, somewhat heavy-looking young man, with a threatening of still greater harshness and heaviness in his indifferent-looking bulky comeliness. "Andrew," said Mrs Auchinleck, " you'll give yoursel' a brush up for your brither." She did not speak dictatoriully, but neither did she speak deferentially. She used the tone employed between equals—in addition, equals who are agreed to differ, and accustomed to bav<s many a friendly dispute and trial of strength together. " Not I, mother," answered Andrew, glancing carelessly at the sleeve of his shabby school-coat, and speaking in flat contradiction, like a man who bad a babit of contradiction in trifles. "If l avie would thank me for making any difference on his account, he is uo brother of mine. Besides, you know, I would not put myself about for the Queen's coming to Auldncres."

" I do not want to argue with you," announced Mrs Auchinleck, with some dignity; " I ken what arguing with a man comes to, though your father was a hantle less thrawn and dour than you are, Andrew. But, any way, you'll not go oyer to Upper Muirend to look after your ciaps ia this weary allotment system, when jour brother is expected to arrive on the first visit that has not been a fleeing ane, because on his reading parites and foreign tours, since your father's death." "I'm ready to start," declared Andrew, doggedly ; " I have working-men to pay and working-women to hire, else I'll lose the harvest, and I leave you to judge whether I can afford that. If you're not content with giving up your room to Davie, making ic so fine that he will not know it again, while you sleep in the kitchen, and if you cannot entertain him youtaelf for an hour should he come before tight o'clock, you must just send him across the moor to meet me. He knows the road, and the walk will be fine exercise for him after travelling by railway." Mrs Auchinleck fidgeted on her chair and pulled the strings of her white cap; but though she groaned and sniffed a little she said no more. She was aware by experieuce that mere words would be of no avail here. She was not a fooliah woman.

All at once, as Andrew was rising leieu ely from the table, his mother suddenly looking out of the window, exclaimed impatiently, " If there is not Mrs Bymer bringing Cecy to see us! When she hears that Davie is coming, she'll never be so senseless as to bide still and be in his way."

" Women never mind being in folk's way } it is my opnion they try to be in it," proclaimed the young master m uugadaut testiness, as he had to submit to give up bis evening business for the time. " Good evening, Mrs Auchinleck and Mr Andrew. Tins is my daughter Cecil, tf you please," said a voice deprecatingly, yet with mild boaitlulness, as Mrs Kymer quietly trotted into the Auchinleck's parlour, ushered in by the school-house little maid. Mrs Kymer was a soft, round little woman in black drapery, with an old-fashioned habit of curtsying like the dipping down of a pigeon.

Jlen never bore malice long against so canny a woman as Mrs Kymer—a creature who appealed to their protection. But Andrew kept his hands in his pockets, remaiued standing with his back against the tea table, and contented himself with nodding to his lamiliar guest, till somebody else came into the room—somebody so completely different, so widely opposed to all the surroundings, that Andrew was fairly startled out of his shell.

Andrew had been souring and hardening into increasing churlishness ever since the time when, resigning his worldly aim in life, he had thought it beet to turn his back on all the pursuits which he had followed for its suke, as well as loved for their own. What would you bave? Tue sight of his books beyond the hackneyed text-books of his father's school stung and wrung nis hidden sensibility j the touch of his mathematical instruments sickened him. Therefore poor Andrew was not able to pay the debt of his sonehip and brutheruood witnout becoming iu several lights, (.piritually as weli as socially, an impoverished man. He had not completed his offering as the heroes of romance complete theirs—with cheerful grace, comiug off, after all, with little loss. Jie had taken refuge as far as he could in what belongs to the bodily man, and developed only too much of the brawny rather than mutcular Christian. He had resorted to gardeuing—of the delving aud vegetable rearing kind, to farming, carrying out liis operations on a batch of tne strips of moorland that an cnterp.is.ng laird had allo.ted to agricultural labours ; and he pursued such epurts as golf on the golf ground, and curling wnen the. e was any ice on the moorland lochs. Andrew Auchinleck was less chary iu bestowing his company on hie neighbours of every description tiia.i his lather and mother had been, tUough he was not actually a very soc.al man. Uis quick-witted, stirewd mother dreaded in her secret soul, with reason, to what coarseness aud excess the rectionary license of sociality lead and betray her son.

It was before such a foiled, rective man, still on this side of the Rubicon, ere he bad iit his manliness stumbled into the slough of sensuality, and defiled himself with vice, that there appeared in the poor, plain little schoolhouse parlour, not au houest, kindly, ha fliojdeimh Cecy Rymer, but a living, breathing St. Cecilia a brown-haired, liquid-eyed, Madonna-faced woman, tall and handsome, serenely beautiful aud gracious. The eifect was in the air, the gait, and the perfect bloom of womanhood. It was not io the uniqueness ar expensireness of the dress; for—except that Cecy's linen gown was fresh and umepaired, and was made with some ■mount of quaint, outljndish plaining and braiding, and that her hat, though it bad seen a sea voyage, looked, by omparison with Ceoy's shockingly bad old bats, a bran new silver-grey hat, with a silver-grey band—the drew had hardly ,oost more than that of the old Ceoy Rymer. (To be continued.)