"Good-bye," he heard her say softly. "Thank you for what you have done for me, now and before."
"Good-bye," he said mechanically, following her into the hall, realising that she was going. He opened the door for her, saw her move down the steps and with the sudden sense of his deprivation he responded to an appeal within him and called out hurriedly, awkwardly, like a schoolboy, "You'll come and see me again soon, won't you?" Then ashamed of his own clumsiness, he came down the steps to her and proffered an explanation of his remark, exclaiming,
"When I've seen Gibson I'll want you to know what the outcome is to be."
Again she looked at him gratefully and, exclaiming, "I'll come next week," gained the road and walked rapidly away.
As he turned and slowly reentered his own house, he became gradually amazed at his own recent action, at his sudden outspoken request that she should revisit him shortly; but although at first he somewhat ashamedly attributed this to the poignant appeal of her beauty in the light that had encircled her in his room, later he more honestly admitted to himself that this was not the sole reason of his conduct. Mary Brodie had always been for him a strangely beautiful figure, a noble, courageous spirit who had woven her life through his existence in the town with a short and tragic thread. From the moment when he had first seen her unconscious, in the sad predicament of her condition and against the gross contamination of her surroundings, like a lily uprooted and thrown on the dung hill, he had been drawn to her in her helplessness and immaturity; later he had been fired by her patience and uncomplaining fortitude during her long period of illness and in the suffering visited upon her by the death of her child; he had seen too, and clearly, that though she had been possessed by another, she was pure, chaste as that light which had recently encompassed her. His admiration and interest had been aroused and he had promised himself that he would assist her to rebuild her life, but she had run from the town the moment her strength had permitted, fluttering away from the net of opprobrium which she must have felt around her. During the years of her absence he had, from time to time, thought of her; often the memory of her figure, thin, white, fragile, had risen before him with a strange insistent appeal, as if to tell him that the thread of her life would return to weave itself once more into the texture of his existence. He sat down at his desk, considering her deeply, praying that there would be no further tragedy in this return of Mary Brodie to the house of tribulation from which she had been so grievously outcast. After a few moments his thoughts moved into another channel, and from a pigeon- hole in his desk he drew out an old letter, the writing of which, now slightly faded after four years' preservation, sloped in rounded character across the single page. He read it once more, this, her only letter to him, in which she had sent him some money, the pathetic accumulation, no doubt, of her meagre wages, in an attempt to recompense him in some degree for his service to her. With the letter clasped in the fine tapering fingers of his hand he remained staring in front of him, seeing her working as she had now told him she worked, upon her knees, scrubbing, washing, scouring, performing the menial duties of her occupation working like a servant.
At length he sighed, shook himself, restored the letter to the desk, and observing that he had a full hour before his afternoon consultations were due to begin, determined to visit the Rector of the Academy at once, to enquire discreetly into the condition of Nessie Brodie. Accordingly, having instructed his housekeeper that he would return before four o'clock, he left the house and walked slowly towards the school, wrapped in a strange and sober meditation.
It was but a short way to the Academy, that old foundation of the Borough which lay within the town, backing a little from Church Street to exhibit the better the severe, yet proportioned architecture of its weathered front, and now, in the paved space that lay before it, displaying proudly the two high-wheeled Russian guns captured at Balaclava by Maurice Latta's company of the Winton Yeomanry.
But Renwick, when he shortly reached the building, passed inside without seeing its frontage or its guns; mounting the shallow, well-worn stone stairs, he advanced along the passage, tapped with a preoccupied manner at the headmaster's door and, as he was bidden, entered.
Gibson, a youngish looking man for his position, whose face was not yet completely set into the scholastic mould, was seated at his littered desk in the middle of the small book-lined study and he did not at once look up, but, an engrossed yet unpedantic figure in his smooth suit of dark brown a colour he habitually affected, continued to observe a document that lay in front of him. Renwick, a faint smile finally twisting his grave face at the other's preoccupation, remarked whimsically, after a moment:
"Still the same earnest student, Gibson," and as the other looked up with a start, continued, "It takes me back again to the old days to see you grinding at it like that."
Gibson, whose eye had brightened at the sight of Renwick, lay back in his chair and, motioning the other to sit down, remarked easily:
"I had no idea it was you, Renwick. I imagined rather one of my inky brigade trembling in the presence, awaiting a just chastisement. It does the little beggars good to keep them in awe of the imperial dignity."
A smile passed between them that was almost as spontaneous as a grin of their schooldays and Renwick murmured:
"You're the very pattern of old Bulldog Morrison. I must tell him when I get back to Edinburgh. He'd appreciate the compliment."
"The humour of it, you mean," cried Gibson, surveying the past with a distant eye. "Gad! How I wish I were going back to the old place like you! You're a lucky dog." Then fixing his glance on the other suddenly, he remarked, "You haven't come to say good-bye, already?"
"No! No, man," returned Renwick lightly. "I'm not off for six months. I'm not leaving you in the wilderness yet awhile." Then his face changed and he contemplated the floor for a moment before raising his gaze to Gibson and resuming seriously, "My errand is a peculiar one; I want you to treat it in confidence! You're an old friend, yet it is hard for me to explain what I'm about." He again paused and continued with some difficulty, "You have a child at
school here that I am interested in even anxious about. It is Nessie Brodie. I'm indirectly concerned about her health and her future. Mind you, Gibson, I haven't the least right to come here like this. I'm well aware of that, but you're not like a board of governors; I want your opinion and, if necessary, your help."
Gibson looked at the other intently, then away again, but he made no enquiry as to Renwick's motive and instead replied slowly:
"Nessie Brodie! She's a clever child. Yes! Very intelligent, but with a curious turn of her mind. Her memory is marvelous, Renwick; you could read her a whole page of Milton and she would repeat it almost word for word; her perception, too, is acute, but her reasoning, the deeper powers of thought, are not proportionate." He shook his head. "She's what I call a smart pupil, quick as a needle, but with, I'm afraid, some pervading shallowness in her intellect."
"She's going up for the Latta," persisted Renwick. "Is she fit for it will she win it ?"
"She may win it," replied Gibson with a shrug of his shoulders, "but to what purpose! And indeed I can't say if she will do so. The matter is not in our hands. The standards of the University are not school standards. Her vocation is teaching after a Normal education."
"Can't you keep her back, then?" remarked Renwick with some slight eagerness. "I have information that her health is suffering from the strain of this preparation."
"It's impossible," returned the other. "As I've just said, the matter is out of our hands. It is a scholarship open to the Borough, set by the University authorities, and every one may enter who is eligible. To be frank, I did drop a hint to her her esteemed parent," he Towned here momentarily, "but it was useless. He's set on it grimly. And indeed she has such an excellent chance of winning that it sounds like pure folly to wish her to stand down. And yet… "