David Laing

“ At this moment Arthur Laing entered the room. His brow was clouded. He had searched his purse, his cigar-case, the lining of his hat—in fact every depository where a careful man would be likely to bestow documents whose existence he wished to remember; as no careful man would put such things in the pocket of his ‘blazer’, he had not searched there; thus the telegrams had not appeared, and the culprit was looking forward, with some alarm, to the reception which would await him when he ‘turned up’ to lunch with his friends, as he had promised to do. ”

“ He considered him a person of sterling worth, with a quiet, inoffensive, unobtrusive character, though at the same time not deficient in decision, but never once suspected him to be a person of so much importance and influence as he all at once discovered him to be. ”

“ In the large common drawing-room, adorned with pictures, book-cases, and all those various things which constitute the peculiar little world of a beautiful room intended for social enjoyment, sat two of the old ladies at their work. Mrs. Laing was received by all as one receives a messenger of joy. The old ladies evidently regarded her as one of their best friends. They were anxious to prove to her that they were well and full of the energy of life. For she had made them understand that no greater trouble could happen to her than that they should die ”

“ One of the simplest and most popular of the living national song-writers, Alexander Laing, was born at Brechin on the 14th May 1787. His father, James Laing, was an agricultural labourer. With the exception of two winters' schooling, he was wholly self-taught. Sent to tend cattle so early as his eighth year, he regularly carried books and writing-materials with him to the fields. ”

“ He was tolerably well educated and possessed good natural abilities, but his erratic temperament precluded his advancement. For some years previous to his death he was employed as a book canvasser and flying stationer, in allusion to which he was commonly known in the country as ‘Stashie Laing.’ The first of Laing's antiquarian writings, ‘The Caledonian Itinerary, or a Tour on the Banks of the Dee, with Historical Notes from the best Authorities,’ appeared at Aberdeen in 1819. ”

“ Sir Roger read his gruesome narrative with much emphasis, and as he laid down the paper he observed:
“Well, I hope I’m not more of a coward than most men, but in face of dynamite—ugh!” and he shuddered realistically.
“I should make for the door,” said Laing.
“Yes, but in this case the bomb was at the door!”
“Then,” said Laing, “I should exit by the window.”
“But this poor man,” remarked Mary Travers, “stayed to rescue the woman he loved,” and her eyes rested for an instant in confident affection on Charlie Ellerton.
“We should all do as much, I trust,” said John, glancing at Dora Bellairs. ”

“ By the advice of Maddie, a native of Bornou, he swallowed a decoction of green bark from the butter tree, and speedily afterwards became worse, so that he could get no repose. On the next day he said to Lander, “I feel myself dying. Take care of my journal and papers after my decease; and when you arrive in London, go immediately to my agents and send for my uncle who will accompany you to the colonial office, and see you deposit them with the secretary. Borrow money, and go home by Fezzan in the train of the Arab merchants. From Mourzuk send to Mr. ”

“ General John R. Brooke, who had fought at Gettysburg and later had commanded our forces in Porto Rico, came pretty close to selection. One evening David H. Lane, representing the organization of the Republican party, came up to my house. Lane is a remarkable man. Slight in frame, sandy in complexion, with a face of the Shakespearean type, he is very much of a philosopher and has often been called the brains of the party in Philadelphia, and is conceded by all to be one of its most astute leaders. As a plenipotentiary he tendered to me the nomination. ”

“ Then, in the full sight of both armies, he advanced against the giant warrior in his gleaming harness, who stood brandishing his great spear and shouting his scorn.
Seeing David approach, he came forward, preceded by his shield-bearer. But perceiving only this fresh-faced stripling in his skin garment, he was filled with contempt at such an antagonist.
"Am I a dog," he cried, "that thou comest to me with staves?"
Cursing the youth by his heathen gods, he shouted: "Come to me, and I will give thy flesh to the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field." ”

“ I wish you, sir, to break the business to her; meanwhile, I will lodge at the Old Inn, Mrs. Laing's, at Anstruther, and await your return."
I agreed (continued the parson of Kilrenny) to wait upon the widow; and to see, in fact, how the wind set, in regard to "first love." I found her, as I expected, neatly clad in her habiliments of widowhood, and employed in making some dresses for a sister's marriage. I asked and obtained a private interview, when I detailed, as cautiously as I could, the particulars of Thomas Laing's history. ”

“ He knew too little about Lanny Welsh to condemn the young man in his own mind without further facts. Had he had the giving he would not have presented Alice to anyone like Lanny, for he would have chosen some youth he knew better—and that meant Mary Derling's boy Ben—but, having his innate desire to do justice to all men, and as Alice had already chosen Lanny, David felt he should learn more about Lanny before he made an absolute decision to oppose his daughter's choice. He knew enough of men and life to believe the tags the world put on young fellows were not always the proper tags. ”

“ Laban now deceives him touching Rachel and the marriage. But in much of his behaviour during the twenty years he spent with Laban, we see what was excellent in him. For the force and influence of knowing that we are under the hand of God for correction, is necessarily felt by a mind that has anything right towards God in it. It is not that nature will be changed or broken under such a pressure, but it must, in measure, more or less, be controlled. David when under rebuke, sore and humbling as ever saint had exposed himself to, carries himself beautifully. ”

“ In the same way Louie beat and ill-treated a half-starved collie—one of the short-haired black sort familiar to the shepherd of the north, and to David himself in his farm days—which would haunt the shop and kitchen. Whereupon David felt all his heart melt towards the squalid, unhandsome creature. ”

“ A cold grey morning was breaking over the moor; the chimneys of the distant cotton-towns rose out of mists, under a sky streaked with windy cloud. The Mermaid's Pool, as they passed it, looked chill and mocking; and the world altogether felt so raw and lonely that David welcomed the first sheep they came across with a leap of the heart, and positively hungered for a first sight of the farm. How he got Louie—in whose cheeks the fever-spots were rising—over the river he never quite remembered. ”

“ Persons must have had their foreheads, as well as their consciences, “seared with a hot iron,” before they could publish such things to the world as facts. Yet Laing’s book was approved, and declared worthy of publication, by two doctors of the university of Paris. Its grossest slanders against the Scottish reformers were literally copied, and circulated through the continent as undoubted truths, by Reginaldus, Spondanus, Julius Breigerus, and many other foreign popish authors. ”

“ Louie's ways with her brother were no more engaging than with the rest of the world; and she was not a creature who invited consolation from anybody. David, too, with his power of escape at any time into a world of books and dreams or simply into the wild shepherd life of the moors, was often inclined to a vague irritation with Louie's state of perpetual revolt. The food was nasty, their clothes were ugly and scanty, Aunt Hannah was as hard as nails—at the same time Louie was enough to put anybody's back up. ”

“ In 1867 Laing was reappointed chairman of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway (a post which he held down to 1894) , and his position as a railway magnate introduced him to the city. Laing's connections with the financial world were not unimportant. During his tenure of the chair at the board of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, that company gradually became highly prosperous, and he contributed to the result not only by his business capacity, but by his skill in choosing and supporting good subordinates. ”

“ Laing died, aged 86, at Rockhills, Sydenham Hill, on 6 Aug. 1897, and was buried on 10 Aug. in the extramural cemetery, Brighton. He married in 1841 Mary, daughter of Captain Cowan, R.N., and left two sons and three daughters. His personalty was sworn at 94,643l. (Railway Times, 18 Sept. 1897) .
Laing's writings are remarkable as the relaxations of a man who had spent over half a century almost exclusively immersed in affairs. ”

“ Had David, with such a temperament, never been more deeply moved than she knew herself to have moved him? More than once a secret inarticulate suspicion of this kind had crossed her. The poorest and shallowest soul may have these flashes of sad insight, under the kindling of its affections.
But now she knew, and the difference was vast. After she had asked all her questions, and delivered a vehement protest against the tenacity of his self-reproach with regard to Louie—for what decent girl need go wrong unless she has a mind to?—she laid her head down again on David's knee. ”

“ French art and skill were here already in the wild country. Each tree stood out as though it had been personally thought for; every plantation was in regular lines; each woody walk drove straight from point to point, following out a plan orderly and intricate as a spider's web.
By this time Louie's fervour of curiosity and attention had very much abated; she grew tired and cross, and presently fell asleep. But, with every mile less between them and Paris, David's pulse beat faster, and his mind became more absorbed in the flying scene. ”

“ She led John by this time a dog's life. From the temptress she had become the tease and tyrant, and the clumsy fellow, consumed with feverish passion, slaved for her whenever she was near him with hardly the reward of a kind look or a civil word in a fortnight. David set his teeth and tried to recover possession of his friend. And as long as they two were at the press or in the shop together alone, John was often his old self, and would laugh out in the old way. But no sooner did Louie appear than he followed her about like an animal, and David could make no more of him. ”

“ The tin box and its contents rattled under David's arm as he leapt and straddled across the bogs, choosing always the widest jump and the stiffest bit of climb, out of sheer wantonness of life and energy. Louie's thin figure, in its skimp cotton dress and red crossover, her long legs in their blue worsted stockings, seemed to fly over the moor, winged, as it were, by an ecstasy of freedom. If one could but be in two places at once—on the Scout—and peeping from some safe corner at Aunt Hannah's wrath! ”

“ And here was the Foundry—David could hardly prevent himself from marching into the yard littered with mysterious odds and ends of old iron which had been the treasure house of his childhood. But no Tom—and no familiar face anywhere.
Yes!—there was the shoemaker's cottage, where the prayer-meeting had been, and there, on the threshold, looking at the approaching figure, stood the shoemaker's wife, the strange woman with the mystical eyes. David greeted her as he came near. She stared at him from under a bony hand put up against the sun, but did not apparently recognise him ”

“ Lanny Welsh might be better than he feared, and if Lucille Hardcome subscribed even half what she had suggested David might be able to keep even with the world or even save a little. He had hardly entered his study before Lanny Welsh and Alice came tapping on his door.
XVI. AN INTERVIEW IN a small town men find themselves tagged far sooner and far more permanently than in the large cities. Let a young fellow attend church for a few weeks, behave decently for a year, and get a job as soon as one offers, and he is tagged as a “good” young man ”

“ Thus he appears to David; at first sight
All earth-bred fears and sorrows take their flight:
In rushes joy divine, and hope, and rest;
A sacred calm shines through his peaceful breast.
'Hail, man belov'd! from highest heaven,' said he.
'My mighty Master sends thee health by me.
The things thou saw'st are full of truth and light,
Shaped in the glass of the divine foresight.
Even now old Time is harnessing the Years
To go in order thus: hence, empty fears! ”

“ He was afraid to add the usual threat of death that morning.
"'Tis a simple dream," said the rabbi, slowly. "The things of which men—and even kings are but men—dream in their sleep are connected with the deeds performed by day. Thy garden represents the House of David which thou hast sought to destroy. The old man was King David himself, and thou hast promised to cherish and nurture his one remaining descendant."
The Shah listened in silence. Then, with a flash in his eye he said, "But all the descendants of this King David were slain." ”

“ Although Laidlaw’s period of incarceration had been unusually brief, it had afforded ample time for meditation. David’s powers of meditation were strong—his powers of action even stronger. While in his cell he had opened his little Bible—the only book allowed him—and turned to the passage which states that, “it is not good that man should be alone.” ”