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Salted with Fire

by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #9154 · 391,107 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Salted with Fire

Author: George MacDonald


        
Release date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #9154]
                Most recently updated: August 7, 2022

Language: English

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SALTED WITH FIRE


By George MacDonald




CHAPTER I


“Whaur are ye aff til this bonny mornin’, Maggie, my doo?” said the
soutar, looking up from his work, and addressing his daughter as she
stood in the doorway with her shoes in her hand.

“Jist ower to Stanecross, wi’ yer leave, father, to speir the
mistress for a goupin or twa o’ chaff: yer bed aneth ye’s grown unco
hungry-like.”

“Hoot, the bed’s weel eneuch, lassie!”

“Na, it’s onything but weel eneuch! It’s my pairt to luik efter my ain
father, and see there be nae k-nots aither in his bed or his parritch.”

“Ye’re jist yer mither owre again, my lass!—Weel, I winna miss ye that
sair, for the minister ’ill be in this mornin’.”

“Hoo ken ye that, father?”

“We didna gree vera weel last nicht.”

“I canna bide the minister—argle-barglin body!”

“Toots, bairn! I dinna like to hear ye speyk sae scornfulike o’ the gude
man that has the care o’ oor sowls!”

“It wad be mair to the purpose ye had the care o’ his!”

“Sae I hae: hasna ilkabody the care o’ ilk ither’s?”

“Ay; but he preshumes upo’ ’t—and ye dinna; there’s the differ!”

“Weel, but ye see, lassie, the man has nae insicht—nane to speak o’,
that is; and it’s pleased God to mak him a wee stoopid, and some thrawn
(_twisted_). He has nae notion even o’ the wark I put intil thae wee bit
sheenie (_little shoes_) o’ his—that I’m this moment labourin ower!”

“It’s sair wastit upo’ him ’at canna see the thoucht intil’t!”

“Is God’s wark wastit upo’ you and me excep’ we see intil’t, and
un’erstan’t, Maggie?”

The girl was silent. Her father resumed.

“There’s three concernt i’ the matter o’ the wark I may be at: first,
my ain duty to the wark—that’s me; syne him I’m working for—that’s
the minister; and syne him ’at sets me to the wark—ye ken wha that is:
whilk o’ the three wad ye hae me lea’ oot o’ the consideration?”

For another moment the girl continued silent; then she said—

“Ye maun be i’ the richt, father! I believe ’t, though I canna jist
_see_ ’t. A body canna like a’body, and the minister’s jist the ae man I
canna bide.”

“Ay could ye, gi’en ye lo’ed the _ane_ as he oucht to be lo’ed, and as
ye maun learn to lo’e him.”

“Weel I’m no come to that wi’ the minister yet!”

“It’s a trowth—but a sair pity, my dautie (_daughter—darling_).”

“He provokes me the w’y that he speaks to ye, father—him ’at’s no fit
to tie the thong o’ your shee!”

“The Maister would lat him tie his, and say _thank ye_!”

“It aye seems to me he has sic a scrimpit way o’ believin’! It’s no like
believin’ at a’! He winna trust him for naething that he hasna his ain
word, or some ither body’s for! Ca’ ye that lippenin’ til him?”

It was now the father’s turn to be silent for a moment. Then he said,—

“Lea’ the judgin’ o’ him to his ain maister, lassie. I ha’e seen him
whiles sair concernt for ither fowk.”

“’At they wouldna haud wi’ _him_, and war condemnt in consequence—wasna
that it?”

“I canna answer ye that, bairn.”

“Weel, I ken he doesna like you—no ae wee bit. He’s aye girdin at ye to
ither fowk!”

“May be: the mair’s the need I sud lo’e him.”

“But hoo _can_ ye, father?”

“There’s naething, o’ late, I ha’e to be sae gratefu’ for to _Him_ as
that I can. But I confess I had lang to try sair!”

“The mair I was to try, the mair I jist couldna.”

“But ye could try; and He could help ye!”

“I dinna ken; I only ken that sae ye say, and I maun believe ye. Nane
the mair can I see hoo it’s ever to be broucht aboot.”

“No more can I, though I ken it can be. But just think, my ain Maggie,
hoo would onybody ken that ever ane o’ ’s was his disciple, gien we war
aye argle-barglin aboot the holiest things—at least what the minister
coonts the holiest, though may be I think I ken better? It’s whan twa
o’ ’s strive that what’s ca’d a schism begins, and I jist winna, please
God—and it does please him! He never said, Ye maun a’ think the same
gait, but he did say, Ye maun a’ loe ane anither, and no strive!”

“Ye dinna aye gang to his kirk, father!”

“Na, for I’m jist feared sometimes lest I should stop loein him. It
matters little about gaein to the kirk ilka Sunday, but it matters a
heap aboot aye loein ane anither; and whiles he says things aboot the
mind o’ God, sic that it’s a’ I can dee to sit still.”

“Weel, father, I dinna believe that I can lo’e him ony the day; sae, wi’
yer leave, I s’ be awa to Stanecross afore he comes.”

“Gang yer wa’s, lassie, and the Lord gang wi’ ye, as ance he did wi’
them that gaed to Emmaus.”

With her shoes in her hand, the girl was leaving the house when her
father called after her—

“Hoo’s folk to ken that I provide for my ain, whan my bairn gangs
unshod? Tak aff yer shune gin ye like when ye’re oot o’ the toon.”

“Are ye sure there’s nae hypocrisy aboot sic a fause show, father?”
asked Maggie, laughing. “I maun hide them better!”

As she spoke she put the shoes in the empty bag she carried for the
chaff. “There’s a hidin’ o’ what I hae—no a pretendin’ to hae what I
haena!—I s’ be hame in guid time for yer tay, father.—I can gang a heap
better withoot them!” she added, as she threw the bag over her shoulder.
“I’ll put them on whan I come to the heather,” she concluded.

“Ay, ay; gang yer wa’s, and lea’ me to the wark ye haena the grace to
adverteeze by weirin’ o’ ’t.”

Maggie looked in at the window as she passed it on her way, to get a
last sight of her father. The sun was shining into the little bare room,
and her shadow fell upon him as she passed him; but his form lingered
clear in the close chamber of her mind after she had left him far. And
it was not her shadow she had seen, but the shadow, rather, of a great
peace that rested concentred upon him as he bowed over his last, his
mind fixed indeed upon his work, but far more occupied with the affairs
of quite another region. Mind and soul were each so absorbed in its
accustomed labour that never did either interfere with that of the
other. His shoemaking lost nothing when he was deepest sunk in some
one or other of the words of his Lord, which he sought eagerly to
understand—nay, I imagine his shoemaking gained thereby. In his leisure
hours, not a great, he was yet an intense reader; but it was nothing in
any book that now occupied him; it was the live good news, the man Jesus
Christ himself. In thought, in love, in imagination, that man dwelt in
him, was alive in him, and made him alive. This moment He was with him,
had come to visit him—yet was never far from him—was present always
with an individuality that never quenched but was continually developing
his own. For the soutar absolutely believed in the Lord of Life, was
always trying to do the things he said, and to keep his words abiding in
him. Therefore was he what the parson called a mystic, and was the
most practical man in the neighbourhood; therefore did he make the best
shoes, because the Word of the Lord abode in him.

The door opened, and the minister came into the kitchen. The soutar
always worked in the kitchen, to be near his daughter, whose presence
never interrupted either his work or his thought, or even his
prayers—which often seemed as involuntary as a vital automatic impulse.

“It’s a grand day!” said the minister. “It aye seems to me that just on
such a day will the Lord come, nobody expecting him, and the folk all
following their various callings—as when the flood came and astonished
them.”

The man was but reflecting, without knowing it, what the soutar had
been saying the last time they encountered; neither did he think, at the
moment, that the Lord himself had said something like it first.

“And I was thinkin, this vera meenute,” returned the soutar, “sic a
bonny day as it was for the Lord to gang aboot amang his ain fowk. I
was thinkin maybe he was come upon Maggie, and was walkin wi’ her up the
hill to Stanecross—nearer til her, maybe, nor she could hear or see or
think!”

“Ye’re a deal taen up wi’ vain imaiginins, MacLear!” rejoined the
minister, tartly. “What scriptur hae ye for sic a wanderin’ invention,
o’ no practical value?”

“’Deed, sir, what scriptur hed I for takin my brakwast this mornin, or
ony mornin? Yet I never luik for a judgment to fa’ upon me for that!
I’m thinkin we dee mair things in faith than we ken—but no eneuch! no
eneuch! I was thankfu’ for’t, though, I min’ that, and maybe that’ll
stan’ for faith. But gien I gang on this gait, we’ll be beginnin as
we left aff last nicht, and maybe fa’ to strife! And we hae to loe ane
anither, not accordin to what the ane thinks, or what the ither thinks,
but accordin as each kens the Maister loes the ither, for he loes the
twa o’ us thegither.”

“But hoo ken ye that he’s pleased wi’ ye?”

“I said naething aboot that: I said he loes you and me!”

“For that, he maun be pleast wi’ ye!”

“I dinna think nane aboot that; I jist tak my life i’ my han’, and awa’
wi’ ’t til _Him_;—and he’s never turned his face frae me yet.—Eh, sir!
think what it would be gien ever he did!”

“But we maunna think o’ him ither than he would hae us think.”

“That’s hoo I’m aye hingin aboot his door, luikin for him.”

“Weel, I kenna what to mak o’ ye! I maun jist lea’ ye to him!”

“Ye couldna dee a kinder thing! I desire naething better frae man or
minister than be left to Him.”

“Weel, weel, see til yersel.”

“I’ll see to _him_, and try to loe my neebour—that’s you, Mr. Pethrie.
I’ll hae yer shune ready by Setterday, sir. I trust they’ll be worthy
o’ the feet that God made, and that hae to be shod by me. I trust and
believe they’ll nowise distress ye, sir, or interfere wi’ yer comfort
in preachin. I’ll fess them hame mysel, gien the Lord wull, and that
without fail.”

“Na, na; dinna dee that; lat Maggie come wi’ them. Ye wad only be puttin
me oot o’ humour for the Lord’s wark wi’ yer havers!”

“Weel, I’ll sen’ Maggie—only ye wad obleege me by no seein her, for ye
micht put _her_ oot o’ humour, sir, and she michtna gie yer sermon fair
play the morn!”

The minister closed the door with some sharpness.




CHAPTER II


In the meantime, Maggie was walking shoeless and bonnetless up the hill
to the farm she sought. It was a hot morning in June, tempered by a
wind from the north-west. The land was green with the slow-rising tide
of the young corn, among which the cool wind made little waves, showing
the brown earth between them on the somewhat arid face of the hill.
A few fleecy clouds shared the high blue realm with the keen sun. As
she rose to the top of the road, the gable of the house came suddenly
in sight, and near it a sleepy old gray horse, treading his ceaseless
round at the end of a long lever, too listless to feel the weariness of
a labour that to him must have seemed unprogressive, and, to anything
young, heart-breaking. Nor did it appear to give him any consolation
to be aware of the commotion he was causing on the other side of the
wall, where a threshing machine of an antiquated sort responded with
multiform movement to the monotony of his round-and-round. Near by, a
peacock, as conscious of his glorious plumage as indifferent to the
ugliness of his feet, kept time with undulating neck to the motion of
those same feet, as he strode with stagey gait across the cornyard, now
and then stooping to pick up a stray grain spitefully, and occasionally
erecting his superb neck to give utterance to a hideous cry of
satisfaction at his own beauty— a cry as unlike the beauty as ever was
discord to harmony. His glory, his legs and his voice, perplexed Maggie
with an unanalyzed sense of contradiction and unfitness.

Radiant with age and light, the old horse stood still just as the sun
touched the meridian; the hour of repose and food was come, and he knew
it; and at the same moment the girl, passing one of the green-painted
doors of the farm-house, stopped at the other, the kitchen one. It
stood open, and in answer to her modest knock, a ruddy maid appeared,
with a question in her eyes, and a smile on her lips at sight of the
shoemaker’s Maggie, whom she knew well. Maggie asked if she might see
the mistress.

“Here’s soutar’s Maggie wanting ye, mem!” said the maid, and Mistress
Blatherwick, who was close at hand, came; to which Maggie humbly but
confidently making her request, had it as kindly granted, and followed
her to the barn to fill her pock with the light plumy covering of the
husk of the oats, the mistress of Stonecross helping her the while
and talking to her as she did so—for the soutar and his daughter were
favourites with her and her husband, and they had not seen either of
them for some while.

“Ye used to ken oor Maister Jeames i’ the auld lang-syne, Maggie!” for
the two had played together as children in the same school, although
growth and difference in station had gradually put an end to
their intimacy, so that it became the mother to refer to him with
circumspection, seeing that, in her eyes at least, Maister Jeames was
now far on the way to becoming a great man, being a divinity student;
for in the Scotch church, although it sets small store on apostolic
descent, every Minister, until he has shown himself eccentic or
incapable of interesting a congregation, is regarded with quite as
much respect as in England is accorded to the claimant of a
phantom-priesthood; and therefore, prospectively, Jeames was to his
mother a man of no little note. Maggie remembered how, when a boy, he
had liked to talk with her father; and how her father would listen to
him with a curious look on his rugged face, while the boy set forth
the commonplaces of a lifeless theology with an occasional freshness
of logical presentation that at least interested himself. But she
remembered also that she had never heard the soutar on his side make
any attempt to lay open to the boy his stores of what one or two in the
place, one or two only, counted wisdom and knowledge.

“He’s a gey clever laddie,” he had said once to Maggie, “and gien he
gets his een open i’ the coorse o’ the life he’s hardly yet ta’en haud
o’, he’ll doobtless see something; but he disna ken yet that there’s
onything rael to be seen, ootside or inside o’ him!” When he heard that
he was going to study divinity, he shook his head, and was silent.

“I’m jist hame frae peyin him a short veesit,” Mrs. Blatherwick went on.
“I cam hame but twa nichts ago. He’s lodged wi’ a dacent widow in Arthur
Street, in a flat up a lang stane stair that gangs roun and roun till ye
come there, and syne gangs past the door and up again. She taks in han’
to luik efter his claes, and sees to the washin o’ them, and does her
best to haud him tidy; but Jeamie was aye that partic’lar aboot his
appearance! And that’s a guid thing, special in a minister, wha has to
set an example! I was sair pleased wi’ the auld body.”

There was one in the Edinburgh lodging, however, of whom Mrs.
Blatherwick had but a glimpse, and of whom, therefore, she had made no
mention to her husband any more than now to Maggie MacLear; indeed, she
had taken so little notice of her that she could hardly be said to
have seen her at all—a girl of about sixteen, who did far more for the
comfort of her aunt’s two lodgers than she who reaped all the advantage.
If Mrs. Blatherwick had let her eyes rest upon her but for a moment, she
would probably have looked again; and might have discovered that she was
both a good-looking and graceful little creature, with blue eyes, and
hair as nearly black as that kind of hair, both fine and plentiful, ever
is. She might then have discovered as well a certain look of earnestness
and service that would at first have attracted her for its own sake, and
then repelled her for James’s; for she would assuredly have read in it
what she would have counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly
dressed, and looking untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the
mother took her for an ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment
doubted that her son must see her just as she did. He was her only son;
her heart was full of ambition for him; and she brooded on the honour
he was destined to bring her and his father. The latter, however, caring
less for his good looks, had neither the same satisfaction in him nor an
equal expectation from him. Neither of his parents, indeed, had as yet
reaped much pleasure from his existence, however much one of them might
hope for in the time to come. There were two things indeed against such
satisfaction or pleasure—that James had never been open-hearted toward
them, never communicative as to his feelings, or even his doings;
and—which was worse—that he had long made them feel in him a certain
unexpressed claim to superiority. Nor would it have lessened their
uneasiness at this to have noted that the existence of such an implicit
claim was more or less evident in relation to every one with whom
he came in contact, manifested mainly by a stiff, incommunicative
reluctance, taking the form now of a pretended absorption in his books,
now of contempt for any sort of manual labour, even to the saddling of
the pony he was about to ride; and now and always by an affectation of
proper English, which, while successful as to grammar and accentuation,
did not escape the ludicrous in a certain stiltedness of tone and
inflection, from which intrusion of the would-be gentleman, his father,
a simple, old-fashioned man, shrank with more of dislike than he was
willing to be conscious of.

Quite content that, having a better education than himself, his son
should both be and show himself superior, he could not help feeling that
these his ways of asserting himself were signs of mere foolishness, and
especially as conjoined with his wish to be a minister—in regard to
which Peter but feebly sympathized with the general ambition of Scots
parents. Full of simple paternal affection, whose utterance was quenched
by the behaviour of his son, he was continuously aware of something that
took the shape of an impassable gulf between James and his father and
mother. Profoundly religious, and readily appreciative of what was new
in the perception of truth, he was, above all, of a great and simple
righteousness—full, that is, of a loving sense of fairplay—a
very different thing indeed from that which most of those who count
themselves religious mean when they talk of the righteousness of God!
Little, however, was James able to see of this, or of certain other
great qualities in his father. I would not have my reader think that he
was consciously disrespectful to either of his parents, or knew that his
behaviour was unloving. He honoured their character, indeed, but shrank
from the simplicity of their manners; he thought of them with no
lively affection, though not without some kindly feeling and much
confidence—at the same time regarding himself with still greater
confidence. He had never been an idler, or disobedient; and had made
such efforts after theological righteousness as served to bolster
rather than buttress his conviction that he was a righteous youth,
and nourished his ignorance of the fact that he was far from being the
person of moral strength and value that he imagined himself. The person
he saw in the mirror of his self-consciousness was a very fine and
altogether trustworthy personage; the reality so twisted in its
reflection was but a decent lad, as lads go, with high but untrue
notions of personal honour, and an altogether unwarranted conviction
that such as he admiringly imagined himself, such he actually was: he
had never discovered his true and unworthy self! There were many things
in his life and ways upon which had he but fixed eyes of question, he
would at once have perceived that they were both judged and condemned;
but so far, nevertheless, his father and mother might have good hope of
his future.

It is folly to suppose that such as follow most the fashions of this
world are more enslaved by them than multitudes who follow them only
afar off. These reverence the judgments of society in things of far
greater importance than the colour or cut of a gown; often without
knowing it, they judge life, and truth itself, by the falsest of all
measures, namely, the judgment of others falser than themselves; they do
not ask what is true or right, but what folk think and say about this
or that. James, for instance, altogether missed being a gentleman by his
habit of asking himself how, in such or such circumstances, a gentleman
would behave. As the man of honour he would fain know himself, he would
never tell a lie or break a promise; but he had not come to perceive
that there are other things as binding as the promise which alone
he regarded as obligatory. He did not, for instance, mind raising
expectations which he had not the least intention of fulfilling.

Being a Scotch lad, it is not to be wondered at that he should turn
to Theology as a means of livelihood; neither is it surprising that
he should do so without any conscious love to God, seeing it is not in
Scotland alone that untrue men take refuge in the Church, and turn the
highest of professions into the meanest, laziest, poorest, and most
unworthy, by following it without any genuine call to the same. In
any profession, the man must be a poor common creature who follows
it without some real interest in it; but he who without a spark of
enthusiasm for it turns to the Church, is either a “blind mouth,” as
Milton calls him—scornfullest of epithets, or an “old wife” ambitious
of telling her fables well; and James’s ambition was of the same
contemptible sort—that, namely, of distinguishing himself in the
pulpit. This, if he had the natural gift of eloquence, he might well do
by its misuse to his own glory; or if he had it not, he might acquire a
spurious facility resembling it, and so be every way a mere windbag.

Mr. Petrie, whom it cost the soutar so much care and effort to love, and
who, although intellectually small, was yet a good man, and by no means
a coward where he judged people’s souls in danger, thought to save
the world by preaching a God, eminently respectable to those who could
believe in such a God, but to those who could not, a God far from lovely
because far from righteous. His life, nevertheless, showed him in many
ways a believer in Him who revealed a very different God indeed from the
God he set forth. His faith, therefore, did not prevent him from looking
upon the soutar, who believed only in the God he saw in Jesus Christ,
as one in a state of rebellion against him whom Jesus claimed as his
father.

Young Blatherwick had already begun to turn his back upon several of the
special tenets of Calvinism, without, however, being either a better or
a worse man because of the change in his opinions. He had cast aside,
for instance, the doctrine of an everlasting hell for the unbeliever;
but in doing so he became aware that he was thus leaving fallow a great
field for the cultivation of eloquence; and not having yet discovered
any other equally productive of the precious crop, without which so
little was to be gained for the end he desired—namely, the praise of
men, he therefore kept on, “for the meantime,” sowing and preparing to
reap that same field. Mr. Petrie, on the other hand, held the doctrine
as absolutely fundamental to Christianity, and preached it with power;
while the soutar, who had discarded it from his childhood, positively
refused, jealous of strife, to enter into any argument upon it with the
disputatious little man.

As yet, then, James was reading Scotch metaphysics, and reconciling
himself to the concealment of his freer opinions, upon which concealment
depended the success of his probation, and his license. But the close of
his studies in divinity was now near at hand.




CHAPTER III


Upon a certain stormy day in the great northern city, preparing for
what he regarded as his career, James sat in the same large, shabbily
furnished room where his mother had once visited him—half-way up the
hideously long spiral stair of an ancient house, whose entrance was in a
narrow close. The great clock of a church in the neighbouring street had
just begun to strike five of a wintry afternoon, dark with snow, falling
and yet to fall: how often in after years was he not to hear the ghostly
call of that clock, and see that falling snow!—when a gentle tap came
to his door, and the girl I have already mentioned came in with a tray
and the materials for his most welcomed meal, coffee with bread and
butter. She set it down in a silence which was plainly that of deepest
respect, gave him one glance of devotion, and was turning to leave the
room, when he looked up from the paper he was writing, and said—

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Isy. Haven’t you time to pour out my coffee
for me?”

Isy was a small, dark, neat little thing, with finely formed features,
and a look of child-like simplicity, not altogether removed from
childishness. She answered him first with her very blue eyes full of
love and trust, then said—

“Plenty o’ time, sir. What other have I to do than see that you be at
your ease?”

He shoved aside his work, and looking up with some concentration in his
regard, pushed his chair back a little from the table, and rejoined—

“What’s the matter with you this last day or two, Isy? You’re not
altogether like yourself!”

She hesitated a moment, then answered—

“It can be naething, I suppose, sir, but just that I’m growin older and
beginnin to think aboot things.”

She stood near him. He put his arm round her little waist, and would
have drawn her down upon his knees, but she resisted.

“I don’t see what difference that can make in you all at once, Isy!
We’ve known each other so long that there can be no misunderstanding of
any sort between us. You have always behaved like the good and modest
girl you are; and I’m sure you have been most attentive to me all the
time I have been in your aunt’s house.”

He spoke in a tone of superior approval.

“It was my bare duty, and ye hae aye been kinder to me than I could hae
had ony richt to expec’. But it’s nearhan’ ower noo!” she concluded with
a sigh that indicated approaching tears, as she yielded a little to the
increased pressure of his arm.

“What makes you say that?” he returned, giving her a warm kiss, plainly
neither unwelcome nor the first.

“Dinna ye think it would be better to drop that kin’ o’ thing the noo,
sir?” she said, and would have stood erect, but he held her fast.

“Why now, more than any time—I don’t know for how long? Where does a
difference come in? What puts the notion in your pretty little head?”

“It maun come some day, and the langer the harder it’ll be!”

“But tell me what has set you thinking about it all at once?”

She burst into tears. He tried to soothe and comfort her, but in
struggling not to cry she only sobbed the worse. At last, however, she
succeeded in faltering out an explanation.

“Auntie’s been tellin me that I maun luik to my hert, so as no to tyne’t
to ye a’thegither! But it’s awa a’ready,” she went on, with a fresh
outburst, “and it’s no manner o’ use cryin til’t to come back to me. I
micht as weel cry upo’ the win’ as it blaws by me! I canna understan’
’t! I ken weel ye’ll soon be a great man, and a’ the toon crushin to
hear ye; and I ken jist as weel that I’ll hae to sit still in my seat
and luik up to ye whaur ye stan’, no daurin to say a word—no daurin
even to think a thoucht lest somebody sittin aside me should hear’t ohn
me spoken. For what would it be but clean impidence o’ me to think ’at
there was a time when I was sittin whaur I’m sittin the noo—and thinkin
’t i’ the vera kirk! I would be nearhan’ deein for shame!”

“Didn’t you ever think, Isy, that maybe I might marry you some day?”
said James jokingly, confident in the gulf between them.

“Na, no ance. I kenned better nor that! I never even wusst it, for that
would be nae freen’s wuss: ye would never get ony farther gien ye did!
I’m nane fit for a minister’s wife—nor worthy o’ bein ane! I micht
do no that ill, and pass middlin weel, in a sma’ clachan wi’ a wee bit
kirkie—but amang gran’ fowk, in a muckle toon—for that’s whaur ye’re
sure to be! Eh me, me! A’ the last week or twa I hae seen ye driftin
awa frae me, oot and oot to the great sea, whaur never a thoucht o’ Isy
would come nigh ye again;—and what for should there? Ye camna into the
warl’ to think aboot me or the likes o’ me, but to be a great preacher,
and lea’ me ahin ye, like a sheaf o’ corn ye had jist cuttit and left
unbun’!”

Here came another burst of bitter weeping, followed by words whose very
articulation was a succession of sobs.

“Eh, me, me! I doobt I hae clean disgraced mysel!” she cried at last,
and ended, wiping her eyes—in vain, for the tears would keep flowing.

As to young Blatherwick, I venture to assert that nothing vulgar or
low, still less of evil intent, was passing through his mind during this
confession; and yet what but evil was his unpitying, selfish exultation
in the fact that this simple-hearted and very pretty girl should love
him unsought, and had told him so unasked? A true-hearted man would
at once have perceived and shrunk from what he was bringing upon her:
James’s vanity only made him think it very natural, and more than
excusable in her; and while his ambition made him imagine himself so
much her superior as to exclude the least thought of marrying her, it
did not prevent him from yielding to the delight her confession caused
him, or from persuading her that there was no harm in loving one to whom
she must always be dear, whatever his future might bring with it. Isy
left the room not a little consoled, and with a new hope in possession
of her innocent imagination; leaving James exultant over his conquest,
and indulging a more definite pleasure than hitherto in the person and
devotion of the girl. As to any consciousness in him of danger to either
of them, it was no more than, on the shore, the uneasy stir of a storm
far out at sea. Had the least thought of wronging her invaded his mind,
he would have turned from it with abhorrence; yet was he endangering all
her peace without giving it one reasonable thought. He was acting with a
selfishness too much ingrained to manifest its own unlovely shape; while
in his mind lay all the time a half-conscious care to avoid making the
girl any promise.

As to her fitness for a minister’s wife, he had never asked himself a
question concerning it; but in truth she might very soon have grown far
fitter for the position than he was for that of a minister. In character
she was much beyond him; and in breeding and consciousness far more of
a lady than he of a gentleman—fine gentleman as he would fain know
himself. Her manners were immeasurably better than his, because they
were simple and aimed at nothing. Instinctively she avoided whatever,
had she done it, she would at once have recognized as uncomely. She did
not know that simplicity was the purest breeding, yet from mere truth of
nature practised it unknowing. If her words were older-fashioned, that
is, more provincial than his, at least her tone was less so, and her
utterance was prettier than if, like him, she had aped an Anglicized
mode of speech. James would, I am sure, have admired her more if she
had been dressed on Sundays in something more showy than a simple cotton
gown; and I fear that her poverty had its influence in the freedoms he
allowed himself with her.

Her aunt was a weak as well as unsuspicious woman, who had known better
days, and pitied herself because they were past and gone. She gave
herself no anxiety as to her niece’s prudence, but continued well
assured of it even while her very goodness was conspiring against her
safety. It would have required a man, not merely of greater goodness
than James, but of greater insight into the realities of life as well,
to perceive the worth and superiority of the girl who waited upon him
with a devotion far more angelic than servile; for whatever might
have seemed to savour of the latter, had love, hopeless of personal
advantage, at the root of it.

Thus things went on for a while, with a continuous strengthening of the
pleasant yet not altogether easy bonds in which Isobel walked, and
a constant increase of the attraction that drew the student to the
self-yielding girl; until the appearance of another lodger in the house
was the means of opening Blatherwick’s eyes to the state of his own
feelings, by occasioning the birth and recognition of a not unnatural
jealousy, which “gave him pause.” On Isy’s side there was not the least
occasion for this jealousy, and he knew it; but not the less he saw
that, if he did not mean to go further, here he must stop—the immediate
result of which was that he began to change a little in his behaviour
toward her, when at any time she had to enter his room in ministration
to his wants.

Of this change the poor girl was at once aware, but she attributed it
to a temporary absorption in his studies. Soon, however, she could not
doubt that not merely was his voice or his countenance changed toward
her, but that his heart had grown cold, and that he was no longer
“friends with her.” For there was another and viler element than mere
jealousy concerned in his alteration: he had become aware of a more
real danger into which he was rapidly drifting—that of irrecoverably
blasting the very dawn of his prospects by an imprudent marriage. “To
saddle himself with a wife,” as he vulgarly expressed it, before he had
gained his license—before even he had had the poorest opportunity of
distinguishing himself in that wherein lay his every hope and
ambition of proving his excellence, was a thing not for a moment to
be contemplated! And now, when Isobel asked him in sorrowful mood some
indifferent question, the uneasy knowledge that he was about to increase
her sadness made him answer her roughly—a form not unnatural to
incipient compunction: white as a ghost she stood a moment silently
staring at him, then sank on the floor senseless.

Seized with an overmastering repentance that brought back with a rush
all his tenderness, James sprang to her, lifted her in his arms, laid
her on the sofa, and lavished caresses upon her, until at length she
recovered sufficiently to know where she lay—in the false paradise of
his arms, with him kneeling over her in a passion of regret, the first
passion he had ever felt or manifested toward her, pouring into her ear
words of incoherent dismay—which, taking shape as she revived, soon
became promises and vows. Thereupon the knowledge that he had committed
himself, and the conviction that he was henceforth bound to one course
in regard to her, wherein he seemed to himself incapable of falsehood,
unhappily freed him from the self-restraint then most imperative upon
him, and his trust in his own honour became the last loop of the snare
about to entangle his and her very life. At the moment when a genuine
love would have hastened to surround the woman with bulwarks of safety,
he ceased to regard himself as his sister’s keeper. Even thus did Cain
cease to be his brother’s keeper, and so slew him.

But the vengeance on his unpremeditated treachery, for treachery,
although unpremeditated, it was none the less, came close upon its
heels. The moment that Isy left the room, weeping and pallid, conscious
that a miserable shame but waited the entrance of a reflection even now
importunate, he threw himself on the floor, writhing as in the claws of
a hundred demons. The next day but one he was to preach his first sermon
before his class, in the presence of his professor of divinity! His
immediate impulse was to rush from the house, and home hot-foot to his
mother; and it would have been well for him to have done so indeed,
confessed all, and turned his back on the church and his paltry ambition
together! But he had never been open with his mother, and he feared his
father, not knowing the tender righteousness of that father’s heart,
or the springs of love which would at once have burst open to meet the
sorrowful tale of his wretched son; and instead of fleeing at once
to his one city of refuge, he fell but to pacing the room in hopeless
bewilderment; and before long he was searching every corner of his
reviving consciousness, not indeed as yet for any justification, but
for what palliation of his “fault” might there be found; for it was the
first necessity of this self-lover to think well, or at least endurably,
of himself. Nor was it long before a multitude of sneaking arguments,
imps of Satan, began to assemble at the agonized cry of his
self-dissatisfaction—for it was nothing more.

For, in that agony of his, there was no detestation of himself because
of his humiliation of the trusting Isobel; he did not loathe his abuse
of her confidence, or his having wrapt her in the foul fire-damp of his
miserable weakness: the hour of a true and good repentance was for him
not yet come; shame only as yet possessed him, because of the failure
of his own fancied strength. If it should ever come to be known, what
contempt would not clothe him, instead of the garments of praise of
which he had dreamed all these years! The pulpit, that goal of his
ambition, that field of his imagined triumphs—the very thought of
it now for a time made him feel sick. Still, there at least lay yet a
possibility of recovery—not indeed by repentance, of which he did not
seek to lay hold, but in the chance that no one might hear a word of
what had happened! Sure he felt, that Isy would never reveal it, and
least of all to her aunt! His promise to marry Isy he would of course
keep! Neither would that be any great hardship, if only it had no
consequences. As an immediate thing, however, it was not to be thought
of! there could be at the moment no necessity for such an extreme
measure! He would wait and see! he would be guided by events! As to
the sin of the thing—how many had not fallen like him, and no one the
wiser! Never would he so offend again! and in the meantime he would let
it go, and try to forget it—in the hope that providence now, and at
length time, would bury it from all men’s sight! He would go on the same
as if the untoward thing had not so cruelly happened, had cast no such
cloud over the fair future before him! Nor were his selfish regrets
unmingled with annoyance that Isy should have yielded so easily: why had
she not aided him to resist the weakness that had wrought his undoing?
She was as much to blame as he; and for her unworthiness was he to be
left to suffer? Within an hour he had returned to the sermon under his
hand, and was revising it for the twentieth time, to perfect it before
finally committing it to memory; for so should the lie of his life
be crowned with success, and seem the thing it was not—an outcome of
extemporaneous feeling! During what remained of the two days following
he spared no labour, and at last delivered it with considerable unction,
and the feeling that he had achieved his end.

Neither of those days did Isy make her appearance in his room, her aunt
excusing her apparent neglect with the information that she was in bed
with a bad headache, while herself she supplied her place.

The next day Isy went about her work as usual, but never once looked up.
James imagined reproach in her silence, and did not venture to address
her, having, indeed, no wish to speak to her, for what was there to be
said? A cloud was between them; a great gulf seemed to divide them! He
wondered at himself, no longer conscious of her attraction, or of his
former delight in her proximity. His resolve to marry her was not yet
wavering; he fully intended to keep his promise; but he must wait the
proper time, the right opportunity for revealing to his parents the fact
of his engagement! After a few days, however, during which there had
been no return to their former familiarity, it was with a fearful kind
of relief that he learned she was gone to pay a visit to a relation in
the country. He did not care that she had gone without taking leave of
him, only wondered if she could have said anything to incriminate him.

The session came to an end while she was still absent; he took a formal
leave of her aunt, and went home to Stonecross.

His father at once felt a wider division between them than before, and
his mother was now compelled, much against her will, to acknowledge to
herself its existence. At the same time he carried himself with less
arrogance, and seemed humbled rather than uplifted by his success.

During the year that followed, he made several visits to Edinburgh, and
before long received the presentation to a living in the gift of his
father’s landlord, a certain duke who had always been friendly to the
well-to-do and unassuming tenant of one of his largest farms in the
north. But during none of these visits did he inquire or hear anything
about Isy; neither now, when, without blame he might have taken steps
toward the fulfilment of the promise which he had never ceased to regard
as binding, could he persuade himself that the right time had come for
revealing it to his parents: he knew it would be a great blow to his
mother to learn that he had so handicapped his future, and he feared the
silent face of his father at the announcement of it.

It is hardly necessary to say that he had made no attempt to establish
any correspondence with the poor girl. Indeed by this time he found
himself not unwilling to forget her, and cherished a hope that she had,
if not forgotten, at least dismissed from her mind all that had taken
place between them. Now and then in the night he would wake to a few
tender thoughts of her, but before the morning they would vanish,
and during the day he would drown any chance reminiscence of her in a
careful polishing and repolishing of his sentences, aping the style
of Chalmers or of Robert Hall, and occasionally inserting some
fine-sounding quotation; for apparent richness of composition was his
principal aim, not truth of meaning, or lucidity of utterance.

I can hardly be presumptuous in adding that, although growing in a
certain popularity with men, he was not thus growing in favour with
God. And as he continued to hear nothing about Isy, the hope at length,
bringing with it a keen shoot of pleasure, awoke in him that he was
never to hear of her more. For the praise of men, and the love of that
praise, having now restored him to his own good graces, he regarded
himself with more interest and approbation than ever; and his continued
omission of inquiry after Isy, heedless of the predicament in which
he might have placed her, was a far worse sin against her, because
deliberate, than his primary wrong to her, and it now recoiled upon him
in increased hardness of heart and self-satisfaction.

Thus in love with himself, and thereby shut out from the salvation of
love to another, he was specially in danger of falling in love with the
admiration of any woman; and thence now occurred a little episode in his
history not insignificant in its results.

He had not been more than a month or two in his parish when he was
attracted by a certain young woman in his congregation of some inborn
refinement and distinction of position, to whom he speedily became
anxious to recommend himself: he must have her approval, and, if
possible, her admiration! Therefore in his preaching, if the word
used for the lofty, simple utterance of divine messengers, may without
offence be misapplied to his paltry memorizations, his main thought was
always whether the said lady was justly appreciating the eloquence and
wisdom with which he meant to impress her—while in fact he remained
incapable of understanding how deep her natural insight penetrated both
him and his pretensions. Her probing attention, however, he so entirely
misunderstood that it gave him no small encouragement; and thus becoming
only the more eager after her good opinion, he came at length to imagine
himself heartily in love with her—a thing impossible to him with
any woman—and at last, emboldened by the fancied importance of his
position, and his own fancied distinction in it, he ventured an offer
of his feeble hand and feebler heart;—but only to have them, to his
surprise, definitely and absolutely refused. He turned from the lady’s
door a good deal disappointed, but severely mortified; and, judging it
impossible for any woman to keep silence concerning such a refusal, and
unable to endure the thought of the gossip to ensue, he began at once
to look about him for a refuge, and frankly told his patron the whole
story. It happened to suit his grace’s plans, and he came speedily to
his assistance with the offer of his native parish—whence the soutar’s
argumentative antagonist had just been removed to a place, probably not
a very distinguished one, in the kingdom of heaven; and it seemed to all
but a natural piety when James Blatherwick exchanged his parish for that
where he was born, and where his father and mother continued to occupy
the old farm.




CHAPTER IV


The soutar was still meditating on things spiritual, still reading the
gospel of St. John, still making and mending shoes, and still watching
the development of his daughter, who had begun to unfold what not a few
of the neighbours, with most of whom she was in favour, counted beauty.
The farm labourers in the vicinity were nearly all more or less her
admirers, and many a pair of shoes was carried to her father for the
sake of a possible smile from Maggie; but because of a certain awe that
seemed to pervade her presence, no one had as yet dared a word to her
beyond that of greeting or farewell: each that looked upon her became at
once aware of a certain inferiority. Her beauty seemed to suggest behind
it a beauty it was unable to reveal.

She was rather short in stature, but altogether well proportioned, with
a face wonderfully calm and clear, and quiet but keen dark eyes. Her
complexion owed its white-rose tinge to a strong, gentle life, and its
few freckles to the pale sun of Scotland, for she courted every breeze
bonnetless on the hills, when she accompanied her father in his walks,
or carried home the work he had finished. He rejoiced especially that
she should delight in feeling the wind about her, for he held it to
indicate sympathy with that spirit whose symbol it was, and which he
loved to think of as folding her about, closer and more lovingly than
his own cherishing soul.

Of her own impulse, and almost from the moment of her mother’s death,
she had given herself to his service, first in doing all the little
duties of the house, and then, as her strength and faculty grew, in
helping him more and more in his trade. As soon as she had cleared away
the few things necessary for a breakfast of porridge and milk, Maggie
would hasten to join her father where he stooped over his last, for he
was a little shortsighted.

When he lifted his head you might see that, notwithstanding the
ruggedness of his face, he was a good-looking man, with strong,
well-proportioned features, in which, even on Sundays, when he scrubbed
his face unmercifully, there would still remain lines suggestive of
ingrained rosin and heelball. On week days he was not so careful to
remove every sign of the labour by which he earned his bread; but when
his work was over till the morning, and he was free to sit down to a
book, he would never even touch one without first carefully washing his
hands and face. In the workshop, Maggie’s place was a leather-seated
stool like her father’s, a yard or so away from his, to leave room for
his elbows in drawing out the lingels (_rosined threads_): there she
would at once resume the work she had left unfinished the night before;
for it was a curious trait in the father, early inherited by the
daughter, that he would never rise from a finished job, however near
might be the hour for dropping work, without having begun another to go
on with in the morning. It was wonderful how much cleaner Maggie managed
to keep her hands; but then to her fell naturally the lighter work for
women and children. She declared herself ambitious, however, of one day
making with her own hands a perfect pair of top-boots.

The advantages she gained from this constant intercourse with her father
were incalculable. Without the least loss to her freedom of thought,
nay, on the contrary, to the far more rapid development of her truest
liberty, the soutar seemed to avoid no subject as unsuitable for the
girl’s consideration, but to insist only on its being regarded from the
highest attainable point of view. Matters of indifferent import they
seldom, if ever, discussed at all; and nothing she knew her father cared
about did Maggie ever allude to with indifference. Full of an honest
hilarity ever ready to break out when occasion occurred, she was at the
same time incapable of a light word upon a sacred subject. Such jokes
as, more than elsewhere, one is in danger of hearing among the clergy of
every church, very seldom came out in her father’s company; and she
very early became aware of the kind of joke he would take or refuse.
The light use, especially, of any word of the Lord would sink him in a
profound silence. If it were an ordinary man who thus offended, he might
rebuke him by asking if he remembered who said those words; once, when
it was a man specially regarded who gave the offence, I heard him say
something to this effect, “The maister doesna forget whaur and whan he
spak thae words: I houp ye do forget!” Indeed the most powerful force
in the education of Maggie was the evident attitude of her father toward
that Son of Man who was even now bringing the children of God to the
knowledge of that Father of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is
named. Mingling with her delights in the inanimate powers of Nature, in
the sun and the wind, in the rain and the growth, in the running waters
and the darkness sown with stars, was such a sense of His presence that
she felt like him, He might at any moment appear to her father, or,
should it so please Him, even to herself.

Two or three miles away, in the heart of the hills, on the outskirts of
the farm of Stonecross, lived an old cottar and his wife, who paid a few
shillings of rent to Mr. Blatherwick for the acre or two their ancestors
had redeemed from the heather and bog, and gave, with their one son
who remained at home, occasional service on the farm. They were much
respected by the farmer and his wife, as well as the small circle to
which they were known in the neighbouring village—better known, and
more respected still in that kingdom called of heaven; for they were
such as he to whom the promise was given, that he should yet see the
angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. They had long
and heartily loved and honoured the soutar, whom they had known before
the death of his wife, and for his sake and hers, both had always
befriended the motherless Maggie. They could not greatly pity her,
seeing she had such a father, yet old Eppie had her occasional moments
of anxiety as to how the bairn would grow up without a mother’s care.
No sooner, however, did the little one begin to show character, than
Eppie’s doubt began to abate; and long before the time to which my
narrative has now come, the child and the child-like old woman were fast
friends. Maggie was often invited to spend a day at Bogsheuch—oftener
indeed than she felt at liberty to leave her father and their common
work, though not oftener than she would have liked to go.

One morning, early in summer, when first the hillsides had begun to look
attractive, a small agricultural cart, such as is now but seldom seen,
with little paint except on its two red wheels, and drawn by a thin,
long-haired little horse, stopped at the door of the soutar’s house,
clay-floored and straw-thatched, in a back-lane of the village. It was
a cart the cottar used in the cultivation of his little holding, and his
son who drove it, now nearly middle-aged, was likely to succeed to the
hut and acres of Bogsheuch. Man and equipage, both well known to the
soutar, had come with an invitation, more pressing than usual, that
Maggie would pay them a visit of a few days.

Father and daughter, consulting together in the presence of Andrew
Cormack, arrived at the conclusion that, work being rather slacker than
usual, and nobody in need of any promised job which the soutar could not
finish by himself in good time, Maggie was quite at liberty to go. She
sprang up joyfully—not without a little pang at the thought of leaving
her father alone, although she knew him quite equal to anything
that could be required in the house before her return—and set about
preparing their dinner, while Andrew went to execute a few commissions
that the mistress at Stonecross and his mother at Bogsheuch had given
him. By the time he returned, Maggie was in her Sunday gown, with her
week-day wrapper and winsey petticoat in a bundle—for she reckoned on
being of some use to Eppie during her visit.

When they had eaten their humble dinner, Andrew brought the cart to the
door, and Maggie scrambled into it.

“Tak a piece wi’ ye,” said her father, following her to the cart: “ye
hadna muckle to yer denner, and ye may be hungry again or ye hae the
lang road ahint ye!”

He put several pieces of oatcake in her hand, which she received with a
loving smile; and they set out at a walking pace, which Andrew made no
attempt to quicken.

It was far from a comfortable carriage, neither was her wisp of straw in
the bottom of it altogether comfortable to sit upon; but the change from
her stool and the close attention her work required, to the open air
and the free rush of the thoughts that came crowding to her out of
the wilderness, put her at once in a blissful mood. Even the few dull
remarks that the slow-thinking Andrew made at intervals from his perch
on the front of the cart, seemed to come to her from the realm of
Faerie, the mysterious world that lay in the folds of the huddled hills.
Everything Maggie saw or heard that afternoon seemed to wear the glamour
of God’s imagination, which is at once the birth and the very truth of
everything. Selfishness alone can rub away that divine gilding, without
which gold itself is poor indeed.

Suddenly the little horse stood still. Andrew, waking up from a snooze,
jumped to the ground, and began, still half asleep, to search into the
cause of the arrest; for Jess, although she could not make haste, never
of her own accord stood still while able to keep on walking. Maggie,
on her part, had for some time noted that they were making very slow
progress.

“She’s deid cripple!” said Andrew at length, straightening his long back
from an examination of Jess’s fore feet, and coming to Maggie’s side of
the cart with a serious face. “I dinna believe the crater’s fit to gang
ae step furder! Yet I canna see what’s happent her.”

Maggie was on the road before he had done speaking. Andrew tried once
to lead Jess, but immediately desisted. “It would be fell cruelty!” he
said. “We maun jist lowse her, and tak her gien we can to the How o’ the
Mains. They’ll gie her a nicht’s quarters there, puir thing! And we’ll
see gien they can tak you in as weel, Maggie. The maister, I mak nae
doobt, ’ill len’ me a horse to come for ye i’ the morning.”

“I winna hear o’ ’t!” answered Maggie. “I can tramp the lave o’ the ro’d
as weel’s you, Andrew!”

“But I hae a’ thae things to cairry, and that’ll no lea’ me a han’ to
help ye ower the burn!” objected Andrew.

“What o’ that?” she returned. “I was sae fell tired o’ sittin that my
legs are jist like to rin awa wi’ me. Lat me jist dook mysel i’ the
bonny win’!” she added, turning herself round and round. “—Isna it jist
like awfu’ thin watter, An’rew?—Here, gie me a haud o’ that loaf. I s’
cairry that, and my ain bit bundle as weel; syne, I fancy, ye can manage
the lave yersel!”

Andrew never had much to say, and this time he had nothing. But her
readiness relieved him of some anxiety; for his mother would be very
uncomfortable if he went home without her!

Maggie’s spirits rose to lark-pitch as the darkness came on and
deepened; and the wind became to her a live gloom, in which, with no
eye-bound to the space enclosing her, she could go on imagining after
the freedom of her own wild will. As the world and everything in it
gradually disappeared, it grew easy to imagine Jesus making the darkness
light about him, and stepping from it plain before her sight. That
could be no trouble to him, she argued, as, being everywhere, he must be
there. He could appear in any form, who had created every shape on the
face of the whole world! If she were but fit to see him, then surely he
would come to her! For thus often had her father spoken to her, talking
of the varied appearances of the Lord after his resurrection, and his
promise that he would be with his disciples always to the end of the
world. Even after he had gone back to his father, had he not appeared to
the apostle Paul? and might it not be that he had shown himself to many
another through the long ages? In any case he was everywhere, and always
about them, although now, perhaps from lack of faith in the earth, he
had not been seen for a long time. And she remembered her father once
saying that nobody could even _think_ a thing if there was no possible
truth in it. The Lord went away that they might believe in him when out
of the sight of him, and so be in him, and he in them!

“I dinna think,” said Maggie aloud to herself, as she trudged along
beside the delightfully silent Andrew, “that my father would be the
least astonished—only filled wi’ an awfu’ glaidness—if at ony moment,
walkin at his side, the Lord was to call him by his name, and appear
til him. He would but think he had just steppit oot upon him frae some
secret door, and would say,—‘I thoucht, Lord, I would see you some day!
I was aye greedy efter a sicht o’ ye, Lord, and here ye are!’”




CHAPTER V


The same moment to her ears came the cry of an infant. Her first thought
was, “Can that be Himsel, come ance again as he cam ance afore?”

She stopped in the dusky starlight, and listened with her very soul.

“Andrew!” she cried, for she heard the sound of his steps as he plodded
on in front of her, and could vaguely see him, “Andrew, what was yon?”

“I h’ard naething,” answered Andrew, stopping at her cry and listening.

There came a second cry, a feeble, sad wail, and both of them heard it.

Maggie darted off in the direction whence it seemed to come; nor had she
far to run, for it was not one to reach any distance.

They were at the moment climbing a dreary, desolate ridge, where the
road was a mere stony hollow, in winter a path for the rain rather
than the feet of men. On each side of it lay a wild moor, covered
with heather and low berry-bearing shrubs. Under a big bush Maggie saw
something glimmer, and, flying to it, found a child. It might be a year
old, but was so small and poorly nourished that its age was hard to
guess. With the instinct of a mother, she caught it up, and clasping it
close to her panting bosom, was delighted to find it cease wailing the
moment it felt her arm. Andrew, who had dropped the things he carried,
and started at once after her, met her half-way, so absorbed in her
treasure trove, and so blind to aught else, that he had to catch them
both in his arms to break the imminent shock; but she slipped from them,
and, to his amazement, went on down the hill, back the way they had
come: clearly she thought of nothing but carrying the infant home to her
father; and here even the slow perception of her companion understood
her.

“Maggie, Maggie,” he cried, “ye’ll baith be deid afore ye win hame wi’
’t! Come on to my mither. There never was wuman like her for bairns!
She’ll ken a hantle better nor ony father what to dee wi’ ’t!”

Maggie at once recovered her senses, and knew he was right—but not
before she had received an instantaneous insight that never after left
her: now she understood the heart of the Son of Man, come to find and
carry back the stray children to their Father and His. When afterward
she told her father what she had then felt, he answered her with just
the four words and no more—

“Lassie, ye hae ’t!”

Happily the moon was now up, so that Andrew was soon able to find the
things they had both dropped in their haste, and Maggie had soon wrapped
the baby in the winsey petticoat she had been carrying. Andrew took up
his loaf and his other packages, and they set out again for Bogsheuch,
Maggie’s heart all but overwhelmed with its exultation. Had the precious
thing been twice the weight, so exuberant was her feeling of wealth in
it that she could have carried it twice the distance with ease, although
the road was so rough that she went in constant terror of stumbling.
Andrew gave now and then a queer chuckle at the ludicrousness of their
home-coming, and every second minute had to stop and pick up one or
other of his many parcels; but Maggie strode on in front, full of
possession, and with the feeling of having now at last entered upon her
heavenly inheritance; so that she was quite startled when suddenly they
came in sight of the turf cottage, and the little window in which a
small cresset-lamp was burning. Before they reached it the door opened,
and Eppie appeared with an overflow of question and anxious welcome.

“What on earth—” she began.

“Naething but a bonny wee bairnie, whause mither has tint it!” at once
interrupted and answered Maggie, flying up to her, and laying the child
in her arms.

Mrs. Cormack stood and stared, now at Maggie, and now at the bundle that
lay in her own arms. Tenderly searching in the petticoat, she found at
last the little one’s face, and uncovered the sleeping child.

“Eh the puir mither!” she said, and hurriedly covered again the tiny
countenance.

“It’s mine!” cried Maggie. “I faund it honest!”

“Its mither may ha’ lost it honest, Maggie!” said Eppie.

“Weel, its mither can come for’t gien she want it! It’s mine till she
dis, ony gait!” rejoined the girl.

“Nae doobt o’ that!” replied the old woman, scarcely questioning that
the infant had been left to perish by some worthless tramp. “Ye’ll maybe
hae’t langer nor ye’ll care to keep it!”

“That’s no vera likly,” answered Maggie with a smile, as she stood in
the doorway, in the wakeful night of the northern summer: “it’s ane o’
the Lord’s ain lammies ’at he cam to the hills to seek. He’s fund this
ane!”

“Weel, weel, my bonnie doo, it sanna be for me to contradick ye!—But
wae’s upo’ me for a menseless auld wife! come in; come in: the mair
welcome ’at ye’re lang expeckit!—But bless me, An’rew, what hae ye dune
wi’ the cairt and the beastie?”

In a few words, for brevity was easy to him, Andrew told the story of
their disaster.

“It maun hae been the Lord’s mercy! The puir beastie bude to suffer for
the sake o’ the bairnie!”

She got them their supper, which was keeping hot by the fire; and then
sent Maggie to her bed in the ben-end, where she laid the baby beside
her, after washing him and wrapping him in a soft well-worn shift of
her own. But Maggie scarcely slept for listening lest the baby’s breath
should stop; and Eppie sat in the kitchen with Andrew until the light,
slowly travelling round the north, deepened in the east, and at last
climbed the sky, leading up the sun himself; when Andrew rose, and set
his face toward Stonecross, in full but not very anxious expectation
of a stormy reception from his mistress before he should have time
to explain. When he reached home, however, he found the house not yet
astir; and had time to feed and groom his horses before any one was
about, so that, to his relief, no rendering of reasons was necessary.

All the next day Maggie was ill at ease, in much dread of the appearance
of a mother. The baby seemed nothing the worse for his exposure, and
although thin and pale, appeared a healthy child, taking heartily the
food offered him. He was decently though poorly clad, and very clean.
The Cormacks making inquiry at every farmhouse and cottage within range
of the moor, the tale of his finding was speedily known throughout the
neighbourhood; but to the satisfaction of Maggie at least, who fretted
to carry home her treasure, without any result; so that by the time the
period of her visit arrived, she was feeling tolerably secure in her
possession, and returned with it in triumph to her father.

The long-haired horse not yet proving equal to the journey, she had to
walk home; but Eppie herself accompanied her, bent on taking her share
in the burden of the child, which Maggie was with difficulty persuaded
to yield. Eppie indeed carried him up to the soutar’s door, but Maggie
insisted on herself laying him in her father’s arms. The soutar rose
from his stool, received him like Simeon taking the infant Jesus from
the arms of his mother, and held him high like a heave-offering to him
that had sent him forth from the hidden Holiest of Holies. One moment in
silence he held him, then restoring him to his daughter, sat down again,
and took up his last and shoe. Then suddenly becoming aware of a breach
in his manners, he rose again at once, saying—

“I crave yer pardon, Mistress Cormack: I was clean forgettin ony breedin
I ever had!—Maggie, tak oor freen’ ben the hoose, and gar her rest her
a bit, while ye get something for her efter her lang walk. I’ll be ben
mysel’ in a meenute or twa to hae a crack wi’ her. I hae but a feow
stitches mair to put intil this same sole! The three o’ ’s maun tak some
sarious coonsel thegither anent the upbringin o’ this God-sent bairn!
I doobtna but he’s come wi’ a blessin to this hoose! Eh, but it was a
mercifu fittin o’ things that the puir bairn and Maggie sud that nicht
come thegither! Verily, He shall give his angels chairge over thee! They
maun hae been aboot the muir a’ that day, that nane but Maggie sud get
a haud o’ ’im—aiven as they maun hae been aboot the field and the flock
and the shepherds and the inn-stable a’ that gran’ nicht!”

The same moment entered a neighbour who, having previously heard and
misinterpreted the story, had now caught sight of their arrival.

“Eh, soutar, but ye _ir_ a man by Providence sair oppressed!” she cried.
“Wha think ye’s been i’ the faut here?”

The wrath of the soutar sprang up flaming.

“Gang oot o’ my hoose, ye ill-thouchtit wuman!” he shouted. “Gang oot
o’ ’t this verra meenit—and comena intil ’t again ’cep it be to beg my
pardon and that o’ this gude wuman and my bonny lass here! The Lord God
bless her frae ill tongues!—Gang oot, I tell ye!”

The outraged father stood towering, whom all the town knew for a man of
gentlest temper and great courtesy. The woman stood one moment dazed and
uncertain, then turned and fled. Maggie retired with Mistress Cormack;
and when the soutar joined them, he said never a word about the
discomfited gossip. Eppie having taken her tea, rose and bade them
good-night, nor crossed another threshold in the village.




CHAPTER VI


As soon as the baby was asleep, Maggie went back to the kitchen where
her father still sat at work.

“Ye’re late the night, father!” she said.

“I am that, lassie; but ye see I canna luik for muckle help frae you for
some time: ye’ll hae eneuch to dee wi’ that bairn o’ yours; and we hae
him to fen for noo as weel’s oorsels! No ’at I hae the least concern
aboot the bonny white raven, only we maun consider _him_ like the lave!”

“It’s little he’ll want for a whilie, father!” answered Maggie. “—But
noo,” she went on, in a tone of seriousness that was almost awe, “lat me
hear what ye’re thinkin:—what kin’ o’ a mither could she be that left
her bairn theroot i’ the wide, eerie nicht? and what for could she hae
dene ’t?”

“She maun hae been some puir lassie that hadna learnt to think first
o’ His wull! She had believt the man whan he promised to merry her, no
kennin he was a leear, and no heedin the v’ice inside her that said _ye
maunna_; and sae she loot him dee what he likit wi’ her, and mak himsel
the father o’ a bairnie that wasna meant for him. Sic leeberties as he
took wi’ her, and she ouchtna to hae permittit, made a mither o’ her
afore ever she was merried. Sic fules hae an awfu’ time o’ ’t; for fowk
hardly ever forgies them, and aye luiks doon upo’ them. Doobtless the
rascal ran awa and left her to fen for hersel; naebody would help her;
and she had to beg the breid for hersel, and the drap milk for the
bairnie; sae that at last she lost hert and left it, jist as Hagar left
hers aneath the buss i’ the wilderness afore God shawed her the bonny
wall o’ watter.”

“I kenna whilk o’ them was the warst—father or mither!” cried Maggie.

“Nae mair do I!” said the soutar; “but I doobt the ane that lee’d to the
ither, maun hae to be coontit the warst!”

“There canna be mony sic men!” said Maggie.

“’Deed there’s a heap o’ them no a hair better!” rejoined her father;
“but wae’s me for the puir lassie that believes them!”

“She kenned what was richt a’ the time, father!”

“That’s true, my dauty; but to ken is no aye to un’erstan’; and even to
un’erstan’ is no aye to see richt intil’t! No wuman’s safe that hasna
the love o’ God, the great Love, in her hert a’ the time! What’s best in
her, whan the vera best’s awa, may turn to be her greatest danger. And
the higher ye rise ye come into the waur danger, till ance ye’re fairly
intil the ae safe place, the hert o’ the Father. There, and there only,
ye’re safe!—safe frae earth, frae hell, and frae yer ain hert! A’ the
temptations, even sic as ance made the haivenly hosts themsels fa’ frae
haiven to hell, canna touch ye there! But whan man or wuman repents and
heumbles himsel, there is He to lift them up, and that higher than ever
they stede afore!”

“Syne they’re no to be despised that fa’!”

“Nane despises them, lassie, but them that haena yet learnt the danger
they’re in o’ that same fa’ themsels. Mony ane, I’m thinking, is keepit
frae fa’in, jist because she’s no far eneuch on to get the guid o’ the
shame, but would jist sink farther and farther!”

“But Eppie tells me that maist o’ them ’at trips gangs on fa’in, and
never wins up again.”

“Ou, ay; that’s true as far as we, short-lived and short-sichtit
craturs, see o’ them! but this warl’s but the beginnin; and the glory
o’ Christ, wha’s the vera Love o’ the Father, spreads a heap further nor
that. It’s no for naething we’re tellt hoo the sinner-women cam til him
frae a’ sides! They needit him sair, and cam. Never ane o’ them was
ower black to be latten gang close up til him; and some o’ sic women
un’erstede things he said ’at mony a respectable wuman cudna get a glimp
o’! There’s aye rain eneuch, as Maister Shaksper says, i’ the sweet
haivens to wash the vera han’ o’ murder as white as snow. The creatin
hert is fu’ o’ sic rain. Loe _him_, lassie, and ye’ll never glaur the
bonny goon ye broucht white frae his hert!”

The soutar’s face was solemn and white, and tears were running down the
furrows of his cheeks. Maggie too was weeping. At length she said—

“Supposin the mither o’ my bairnie a wuman like that, can ye think it
fair that _her_ disgrace should stick til _him?_”

“It sticks til him only in sic minds as never saw the lovely greatness
o’ God.”

“But sic bairns come na intil the warl as God wad hae them come!”

“But your bairnie _is_ come, and that he couldna withoot the creatin
wull o’ the Father! Doobtless sic bairnies hae to suffer frae the prood
jeedgment o’ their fellow-men and women, but they may get muckle guid
and little ill frae that—a guid naebody can reive them o’. It’s no
a mere veesitin o’ the sins o’ the fathers upo’ the bairns, but a
provision to haud the bairns aff o’ the like, and to shame the fathers
o’ them. Eh, but sic maun be sair affrontit wi’ themsels, that disgrace
at ance the wife that should hae been and the bairn that shouldna! Eh,
the puir bairnie that has sic a father! But he has anither as weel—a
richt gran’ father to rin til!—The ae thing,” the soutar went on, “that
you and me, Maggie, has to do, is never to lat the bairn ken the miss o’
father or mother, and sae lead him to the ae Father, the only real and
true ane.—There he’s wailin, the bonny wee man!”

Maggie ran to quiet her little one, but soon returned, and sitting down
again beside her father, asked him for a piece of work.

All this time, through his own cowardly indifference, the would-be-grand
preacher, James Blatherwick, knew nothing of the fact that, somewhere in
the world, without father or mother, lived a silent witness against him.




CHAPTER VII


Isy had contrived to postpone her return to her aunt until James was
gone; for she dreaded being in the house with him lest anything should
lead to the discovery of the relation between them. Soon after his
departure, however, she had to encounter the appalling fact that the
dread moment was on its way when she would no longer be able to conceal
the change in her condition. Her first and last thought was then, how
to protect the good name of her lover, and avoid involving him in the
approaching ruin of her reputation. With this in view she vowed to God
and to her own soul absolute silence with regard to the past: James’s
name even should never pass her lips! Nor did she find the vow hard to
keep, even when her aunt took measures to draw her secret from her; but
the dread lest in her pains she should cry out for the comfort which
James alone could give her, almost drove her to poison, from which only
the thought of his coming child restrained her. Enabled at length only
by the pure inexorability of her hour, she passed through her sorrow and
found herself still alive, with her lips locked tight on her secret.
The poor girl who was weak enough to imperil her good name for love of
a worthless man, was by that love made strong to shield him from the
consequences of her weakness. Whether in this she did well for the
world, for the truth, or for her own soul, she never wasted a thought.
In vain did her aunt ply her with questions; she felt that to answer one
of them would be to wrong him, and lose her last righteous hold upon the
man who had at least once loved her a little. Without a gleam, without
even a shadow of hope for herself, she clung, through shame and blame,
to his scathlessness as the only joy left her. He had most likely, she
thought, all but forgotten her very existence, for he had never written
to her, or made any effort to discover what had become of her. She clung
to the conviction that he could never have heard of what had befallen
her.

By and by she grew able to reflect that to remain where she was would be
the ruin of her aunt; for who would lodge in the same house with _her_?
She must go at once! and her longing to go, with the impossibility
of even thinking where she could go, brought her to the very verge of
despair, and it was only the thought of her child that still gave her
strength enough to live on. And to add immeasurably to her misery, she
was now suddenly possessed by the idea, which for a long time remained
immovably fixed, that, agonizing as had been her effort after silence,
she had failed in her resolve, and broken the promise she imagined
she had given to James; that she had been false to him, brought him to
shame, and for ever ruined his prospects; that she had betrayed him into
the power of her aunt, and through her to the authorities of the church!
That was why she had never heard a word from him, she thought, and she
was never to see him any more! The conviction, the seeming consciousness
of all this, so grew upon her that, one morning, when her infant was
not yet a month old, she crept from the house, and wandered out into the
world, with just one shilling in a purse forgotten in the pocket of
her dress. After that, for a time, her memory lost hold of her
consciousness, and what befel her remained a blank, refusing to be
recalled.

When she began to come to herself she had no knowledge of where she had
been, or for how long her mind had been astray; all was irretrievable
confusion, crossed with cloud-like trails of blotted dreams, and vague
survivals of gratitude for bread and pieces of money. Everything she
became aware of surprised her, except the child in her arms. Her story
had been plain to every one she met, and she had received thousands of
kindnesses which her memory could not hold. At length, intentionally or
not, she found herself in a neighbourhood to which she had heard James
Blatherwick refer.

Here again a dead blank stopped her backward gaze—till suddenly once
more she grew aware, and knew that she was aware, of being alone on a
wide moor in a dim night, with her hungry child, to whom she had given
the last drop of nourishment he could draw from her, wailing in her
arms. Then fell upon her a hideous despair, and unable to carry him a
step farther, she dropped him from her helpless hands into a bush, and
there left him, to find, as she thought, some milk for him. She could
sometimes even remember that she went staggering about, looking under
the great stones, and into the clumps of heather, in the hope of finding
something for him to drink. At last, I presume, she sank on the ground,
and lay for a time insensible; anyhow, when she came to herself, she
searched in vain for the child, or even the place where she had left
him.

The same evening it was that Maggie came along with Andrew, and found
the baby as I have already told. All that night, and a great part of the
next day, Isy went searching about in vain, doubtless with intervals of
repose compelled by utter exhaustion. Imagining at length that she had
discovered the very spot where she left him, and not finding him, she
came to the conclusion that some wild beast had come upon the helpless
thing and carried him off. Then a gleam of water coming to her eye, she
rushed to the peat-hag whence it was reflected, and would there have
drowned herself. But she was intercepted and turned aside by a man who
threw down his flauchter-spade, and ran between her and the frightful
hole. He thought she was out of her mind, and tried to console her with
the assurance that no child left on that moor could be in other than
luck’s way. He gave her a few half-pence, and directed her to the next
town, with a threat of hanging if she made a second attempt of the
sort. A long time of wandering followed, with ceaseless inquiry,
and alternating disappointment and fresh expectation; but every day
something occurred that served just to keep the life in her, and at last
she reached the county-town, where she was taken to a place of shelter.




CHAPTER VIII


James Blatherwick was proving himself not unacceptable to his native
parish, where he was thought a very rising man, inasmuch as his fluency
was far ahead of his perspicuity. He soon came to note the soutar as a
man far in advance of the rest of his parishioners; but he saw, at the
same time, that he was regarded by most as a wild fanatic if not as
a dangerous heretic; and himself imagined that he saw in him certain
indications of a mild lunacy.

In Tiltowie he pursued the same course as elsewhere: anxious to let
nothing come between him and the success of his eloquence, he avoided
any appearance of differing in doctrine from his congregation; and until
he should be more firmly established, would show himself as much as
possible of the same mind with them, using the doctrinal phrases he had
been accustomed to in his youth, or others so like that they would be
taken to indicate unchanged opinions, while for his part he practised a
mental reservation in regard to them.

He had noted with some degree of pleasure in the soutar, that he used
almost none of the set phrases of the good people of the village, who
devoutly followed the traditions of the elders; but he knew little as to
what the soutar did not believe, and still less of what he did believe
with all his heart and soul; for John MacLear could not even utter the
name of God without therein making a confession of faith immeasurably
beyond anything inhabiting the consciousness of the parson; and on his
part soon began to note in James a total absence of enthusiasm in regard
to such things of which his very calling implied at least an absolute
acceptance: he would allude to any or all of them as merest matters of
course! Never did his face light up when he spoke of the Son of God,
of his death, or of his resurrection; never did he make mention of the
kingdom of heaven as if it were anything more venerable than the kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland.

But the soul of the soutar would venture far into the twilight,
searching after the things of God, opening wider its eyes, as the
darkness widened around them. On one occasion the parson took upon him
to remonstrate with what seemed to him the audacity of his parishioner:

“Don’t you think you are just going a little too far there, Mr.
MacLear?” he said.

“Ye mean ower far intil the dark, Mr. Blatherwick?”

“Yes, that is what I mean. You speculate too boldly.”

“But dinna ye think, sir, that that direction it’s plain the dark grows
a wee thinner, though I grant ye there’s nothing yet to ca’ licht? Licht
we may aye ken by its ain fair shinin, and by noucht else!”

“But the human soul is just as apt to deceive itself as the human
eye! It is always ready to take a flash inside itself for something
objective!” said Blatherwick.

“Nae doobt! nae doobt! but whan the true licht comes, ye aye ken the
differ! A man _may_ tak the dark for licht, but he canna take the licht
for darkness!”

“And there must always be something for the light to shine upon, else
the man sees nothing!” said the parson.

“There’s thoucht, and possible insicht intil the man!” said the soutar
to himself.—“Maybe, like the Ephesians, ye haena yet fund oot gien
there be ony Holy Ghost, sir?” he said to him aloud.

“No man dares deny that!” answered the minister.

“Still a man mayna _ken’t_, though he daursna deny’t! Nane but them ’at
follows whaur he leads, can ken that he verily is.”

“We must beware of private interpretation!” suggested James.

“Gien a man hearsna a word spoken til his ain sel’, he has na the word
to lippen til! The Scriptur is to him but a sealed buik; he walks i’ the
dark. The licht is neither pairtit nor gethered. Gien a man has licht,
he has nane the less that there’s twa or three o’ them thegither
present.—Gien there be twa or three prayin thegither, ilk ane o’ the
three has jist what he’s able to receive, and he kens ’t in himsel as
licht; and the fourth may hae nane. Gien it comena to ilk ane o’ them,
it comesna to a’. Ilk ane maun hae the revelation intil his ain sel’, as
gien there wasna ane mair. And gien it be sae, hoo are we to win at ony
trouth no yet revealed, ’cep we gang oot intil the dark to meet it? Ye
maun caw canny, I admit, i’ the mirk; but ye maun caw gien ye wad win at
onything!”

“But suppose you know enough to keep going, and do not care to venture
into the dark?”

“Gien a man hauds on practeesin what he kens, the hunger ’ill wauk in
him efter something mair. I’m thinkin the angels had lang to desire
afore they could luik intil certain things they sair wantit; but ye may
be sure they warna left withoot as muckle licht as would lead honest
fowk safe on!”

“But suppose they couldn’t tell whether what they seemed to see was true
light or not?”

“Syne they would hae to fa’ back upo the wull o’ the great Licht: we ken
weel he wants us a’ to see as he himsel sees! Gien we seek that Licht,
we’ll get it; gien we carena for’t, we’re jist naething and naegait, and
are in sore need o’ some sharp discipleen.”

“I’m afraid I can’t follow you quite. The fact is, I have been so long
occupied with the Bible history, and the new discoveries that bear
testimony to it, that I have had but little time for metaphysics.”

“And what’s the guid o’ history, or sic metapheesics as is the vera sowl
o’ history, but to help ye to see Christ? and what’s the guid o’ seein
Christ but sae to see God wi’ hert and un’erstan’in baith as to ken that
yer seein him? Ye min’ hoo the Lord said nane could ken the Father but
the man to whom the Son revealt him? Sir, it’s fell time ye had a glimp
o’ that! Ye ken naething till ye ken God—the only ane a man can truly
and railly ken!”

“Well, you’re a long way ahead of me, and for the present I’m afraid
there’s nothing left but to say good-night to you!”

And therewith the minister departed.

“Lord,” said the soutar, as he sat guiding his awl through sole and welt
and upper of the shoe on his last, “there’s surely something at work i’
the yoong man! Surely he canna be that far frae waukin up to see and ken
that he sees and kens naething! Lord, pu’ doon the dyke o’ learnin and
self-richteousness that he canna see ower the tap o’, and lat him see
thee upo’ the ither side o’ ’t. Lord, sen’ him the grace o’ oppen e’en
to see whaur and what he is, that he may cry oot wi’ the lave o’ ’s,
puir blin’ bodies, to them that winna see. ’Wauk, thoo that sleepest,
and come oot o’ thy grave, and see the licht o’ the Father i’ the face
o’ the Son.’”

But the minister went away intent on classifying the soutar by finding
out with what sect of the middle-age mystics to place him. At the same
time something strange seemed to hover about the man, refusing to be
handled in that way. Something which he called his own religious sense
appeared to know something of what the soutar must mean, though he could
neither isolate nor define it.

Faithlessly as he had behaved to Isy, Blatherwick was not consciously,
that is with purpose or intent, a deceitful man. He had, on the
contrary, always cherished a strong faith in his own honour. But faith
in a thing, in an idea, in a notion, is no proof, or even sign that the
thing actually exists: in the present case it had no root except in
the man’s thought of himself, in his presentation to himself of his own
reflected self. The man who thought so much of his honour was in truth a
moral unreality, a cowardly fellow, a sneak who, in the hope of escaping
consequences, carried himself as beyond reproof. How should such a one
ever have the power of spiritual vision developed in him? How should
such a one ever see God—ever exist in the same region in which the
soutar had long taken up his abode? Still there was this much reality
in him, and he had made this much progress that, holding fast by his
resolve henceforward no more to slide, he was aware also of a dim
suspicion of something he had not seen, but which he might become able
to see; and was half resolved to think and read, for the future, with
the intent to find out what this strange man seemed to know, or thought
he knew.

Soon finding himself unable, however, try as hard as he might, to be
sure of anything, he became weary of the effort, and sank back into the
old, self-satisfied, blind sleep.




CHAPTER IX


Out of this quiescence, however, a pang from the past one morning
suddenly waked him, and almost without consciousness of a volition, he
found himself at the soutar’s door. Maggie opened it with the baby in
her arms, with whom she had just been having a game. Her face was in a
glow, her hair tossed about, and her dark eyes flashing with excitement.
To Blatherwick, without any great natural interest in life, and in the
net of a haunting trouble which caused him no immediate apprehension,
the young girl, of so little account in the world, and so far below him
as he thought, affected him as beautiful; and, indeed, she was far more
beautiful than he was able to appreciate. It must be remembered too,
that it was not long since he had been refused by another; and at such
a time a man is readier to fall in love afresh. Trouble then, lack of
interest, and late repulse, had laid James’s heart, such as it was, open
to assault from a new quarter whence he foresaw no danger.

“That’s a very fine baby you have!” he said. “Whose is he?”

“Mine, sir,” answered Maggie, with some triumph, for she thought every
one must know the story of her treasure.

“Oh, indeed; I did not know!” answered the parson, bewildered.

“At least,” Maggie resumed a little hurriedly, “I have the best right to
him!” and there stopped.

“She cannot possibly be his mother!” thought the minister, and resolved
to question his housekeeper about the child.

“Is your father in the house?” he asked, and without waiting for an
answer, went in. “Such a big boy is too heavy for you to carry!” he
added, as he laid his hand on the latch of the kitchen door.

“No ae bit!” rejoined Maggie, with a little contempt at his
disparagement of her strength. “And wha’s to cairry him but me?”

Huddling the boy to her bosom, she went on talking to him in childish
guise, as she lifted the latch for the minister:—

“Wad he hae my pet gang traivellin the warl’ upo thae twa bonny wee legs
o’ his ain, wantin the wings he left ahint him? Na, na! they maun grow a
heap stronger first. His ain mammie wad cairry him gien he war twice the
size! Noo, we s’ gang but the hoose and see daddy.”

She bore him after the minister, and sat down with him on her own stool,
beside her father, who looked up, with his hands and knees in skilful
consort of labour.

“Weel, minister, hoo are ye the day? Is the yerd ony lichter upo’ the
tap o’ ye?” he said, with a smile that was almost pauky.

“I do not understand you, Mr. MacLear!” answered James with dignity.

“Na, ye canna! Gien ye could, ye wouldna be sae comfortable as ye seem!”

“I cannot think, Mr. MacLear, why you should be rude to me!”

“Gien ye saw the hoose on fire aboot a man deid asleep, maybe ye micht
be in ower great a hurry to be polite til ’im!” remarked the soutar.

“Dare you suggest, sir, that I have been drinking?” cried the parson.

“Not for a single moment, sir; and I beg yer pardon for causin ye so to
mistak me: I do not believe, sir, ye war ever ance owertaen wi’ drink in
a’ yer life! I fear I’m jist ower ready to speyk in parables, for it’s
no a’body that can or wull un’erstan’ them! But the last time ye left me
upo’ this same stule, it was wi’ that cry o’ the Apostle o’ the Gentiles
i’ my lug—‘Wauk up, thoo that sleepest!’ For even the deid wauk whan
the trumpet blatters i’ their lug!”

“It seems to me that there the Apostle makes allusion to the condition
of the Gentile nations, asleep in their sins! But it may apply,
doubtless, to the conversion of any unbelieving man from the error of
his ways.”

“Weel,” said the soutar, turning half round, and looking the minister
full in the face, “are _ye_ convertit, sir? Or are ye but turnin frae
side to side i’ yer coffin—seekin a sleepin assurance that ye’re
waukin?”

“You are plain-spoken anyway!” said the minister, rising.

“Maybe I am at last, sir! And maybe I hae been ower lang in comin
to that same plainness! Maybe I was ower feart for yer coontin me
ill-fashiont—what ye ca’ _rude_!”

The parson was half-way to the door, for he was angry, which was not
surprising. But with the latch in his hand he turned, and, lo, there in
the middle of the floor, with the child in her arms, stood the beautiful
Maggie, as if in act to follow him: both were staring after him.

“Dinna anger him, father,” said Maggie; “he disna ken better!”

“Weel ken I, my dautie, that he disna ken better; but I canna help
thinkin he’s maybe no that far frae the waukin. God grant I be richt
aboot that! Eh, gien he wud but wauk up, what a man he would mak! He
kens a heap—only what’s that whaur a man has no licht?”

“I certainly do not see things as you would have me believe you see
them; and you are hardly capable of persuading me that you do, I fear!”
said Blatherwick, with the angry flush again on his face, which had for
a moment been dispelled by pallor.

But here the baby seeming to recognize the unsympathetic tone of the
conversation, pulled down his lovely little mouth, and sent from it a
dread and potent cry. Clasping him to her bosom, Maggie ran from the
room with him, jostling James in the doorway as he let her pass.

“I am afraid I frightened the little man!” he said.

“’Deed, sir, it may ha’ been you, or it may ha’ been me ’at frichtit
him,” rejoined the soutar. “It’s a thing I’m sair to blame in—that,
whan I’m in richt earnest, I’m aye ready to speyk as gien I was angert.
Sir, I humbly beg yer pardon.”

“As humbly I beg yours,” returned the parson; “I was in the wrong.”

The heart of the old man was drawn afresh to the youth. He laid aside
his shoe, and turning on his stool, took James’s hand in both of his,
and said solemnly and lovingly—

“This moment I wad wullin’ly die, sir, that the licht o’ that uprisin o’
which we spak micht brak throuw upon ye!”

“I believe you, sir,” answered James; “but,” he went on, with an attempt
at humour, “it wouldn’t be so much for you to do after all, seeing you
would straightway find yourself in a much better place!”

“Maybe whaur the penitent thief sat, some auchteen hunner year ago,
waitin to be called up higher!” rejoined the soutar with a watery smile.

The parson opened the door, and went home—where his knees at once found
their way to the carpet.

From that night Blatherwick began to go often to the soutar’s, and soon
went almost every other day, for at least a few minutes; and on such
occasions had generally a short interview with Maggie and the baby, in
both of whom, having heard from the soutar the story of the child, he
took a growing interest.

“You seem to love him as if he were your own, Maggie!” he said one
morning to the girl.

“And isna he my ain? Didna God himsel gie me the bairn intil my vera
airms—or a’ but?” she rejoined.

“Suppose he were to die!” suggested the minister. “Such children often
do!”

“I needna think aboot that,” she answered. “I would just hae to say,
as mony ane has had to say afore me: ‘The Lord gave,’—ye ken the rest,
sir!”

But day by day Maggie grew more beautiful in the minister’s eyes, until
at last he was not only ready to say that he loved her, but for her sake
to disregard worldly and ambitious considerations.




CHAPTER X


On the morning of a certain Saturday, therefore, which day of the week
he always made a holiday, he resolved to let her know without further
delay that he loved her; and the rather that on the next day he was
engaged to preach for a brother clergyman at Deemouth, and felt that,
his fate with Maggie unknown, his mind would not be cool enough for him
to do well in the pulpit. But neither disappointment nor a fresh love
had yet served to set him free from his old vanity or arrogance: he
regarded his approaching declaration as about to confer great honour
as well as favour upon the damsel of low estate, about to be invited
to share in his growing distinction. In his late disappointment he had
asked a lady to descend a little from her social pedestal, in the belief
that he offered her a greater than proportionate counter-elevation; and
now in his suit to Maggie he was almost unable to conceive a possibility
of failure. When she would have shown him into the kitchen, he took
her by the arm, and leading her to the _ben-end_, at once began his
concocted speech. Scarcely had she gathered his meaning, however, when
he was checked by her startled look.

“And what wad ye hae me dee wi’ my bairn?” she asked instantly, without
sign of perplexity, smiling on the little one as at some absurdity in
her arms rather than suggested to her mind.

But the minister was sufficiently in love to disregard the unexpected
indication. His pride was indeed a little hurt, but he resisted any show
of offence, reflecting that her anxiety was not altogether an unnatural
one.

“Oh, we shall easily find some experienced mother,” he answered, “who
will understand better than you even how to take care of him!”

“Na, na!” she rejoined. “I hae baith a father and a wean to luik efter;
and that’s aboot as muckle as I’ll ever be up til!”

So saying, she rose and carried the little one up to the room her father
now occupied, nor cast a single glance in the direction of her would-be
lover.

Now at last he was astonished. Could it mean that she had not understood
him? It could not be that she did not appreciate his offer! Her devotion
to the child was indeed absurdly engrossing, but that would soon come
right! He could have no fear of such a rivalry, however unpleasant at
the moment! That little vagrant to come between him and the girl he
would make his wife!

He glanced round him: the room looked very empty! He heard her
oft-interrupted step through the thin floor: she was lavishing caresses
on the senseless little animal! He caught up his hat, and with a flushed
face went straight to the soutar where he sat at work.

“I have come to ask you, Mr. MacLear, if you will give me your daughter
to be my wife!” he said.

“Ow, sae that’s it!” returned the soutar, without raising his eyes.

“You have no objection, I hope?” continued the minister, finding him
silent.

“What says she hersel? Ye comena to me first, I reckon!”

“She said, or implied at least, that she could not leave the child. But
she cannot mean that!”

“And what for no?—There’s nae need for me to objeck!”

“But I shall soon persuade her to withdraw that objection!”

“Then I should _hae_ objections—mair nor ane—to put to the fore!”

“You surprise me! Is not a woman to leave father and mother and cleave
to her husband?”

“Ow ay—sae be the woman is his wife! Than lat nane sun’er them!—But
there’s anither sayin, sir, that I doobt may hae something to dee wi’
Maggie’s answer!”

“And what, pray, may that be?”

“That man or woman must leave father and mother, wife and child, for the
sake o’ the Son o’ Man.”

“You surely are not papist enough to think that means a minister is not
to marry?”

“Not at all, sir; but I doobt that’s what it’ll come til atween you and
Maggie!”

“You mean that she will not marry?”

“I mean that she winna merry _you_, sir.”

“But just think how much more she could do for Christ as the minister’s
wife!”

“I’m ’maist convinced she wad coont merryin you as tantamount to refusin
to lea’ a’ for the Son o’ Man.”

“Why should she think that?”

“Because, sae far as I see, she canna think that _ye_ hae left a’ for
_him_.”

“Ah, that is what you have been teaching her! She does not say that of
herself! You have not left her free to choose!”

“The queston never came up atween’s. She’s perfecly free to tak her ain
gait—and she kens she is!—Ye dinna seem to think it possible she
sud tak _his_ wull raither nor yours!—that the love o’ Christ should
constrain her ayont the love offert her by Jeames Bletherwick!—We _hae_
conversed aboot ye, sir, but niver differt!”

“But allowing us—you and me—to be of different opinions on some
points, must that be a reason why she and I should not love one
another?”

“No reason whatever, sir—if ye can and do: _that_ point would be
already settlet. But ye winna get Maggie to merry ye sae long as she
disna believe ye loe her Lord as well as she loes him hersel. It’s no
a common love that Maggie beirs to her Lord; and gien ye loed her wi’ a
luve worthy o’ her, ye would see that!”

“Then you will promise me not to interfere?”

“I’ll promise ye naething, sir, excep to do my duty by her—sae far as
I understan’ what that duty is. Gien I thoucht—which the God o’ my life
forbid!—that Maggie didna lo’e him as weel at least as I lo’e him, I
would gang upo’ my auld knees til her, to entreat her to loe him wi’ a’
her heart and sowl and stren’th and min’;—and whan I had done that, she
micht merry wha she wad—hangman or minister: no a word would I say!
For trouble she maun hae, and trouble she wull get—I thank my God, who
giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not!”

“Then I am free to do my best to win her?”

“Ye are, sir; and mair—afore the morn’s mornin, I winna pass a word wi’
her upo the subjeck.”

“Thank you, sir,” returned the minister, and took his leave.

“A fine lad! a fine lad!” said the soutar aloud to himself, as
he resumed the work for a moment interrupted,—“but no clear—no
crystal-clear—no clear like the Son o’ Man!”

He looked up, and saw his daughter in the doorway.

“No a word, lassie!” he cried. “I’m no for ye this meenute.—No a word
to me aboot onything or onybody the day, but what’s absolute necessar!”

“As ye wull! father,” rejoined Maggie.—“I’m gaein oot to seek auld
Eppy; she was intil the baker’s shop a meenute ago!—The bairnie’s
asleep.”

“Vera weel! Gien I hear him, I s’ atten’ til ’im,” answered the soutar.

“Thank ye, father,” returned Maggie, and left the house.

But the minister, having to start that same afternoon for Deemouth, and
feeling it impossible, things remaining as they were, to preach at his
ease, had been watching the soutar’s door: he saw it open and Maggie
appear. For a moment he flattered himself she was coming to look for
him, in order to tell him how sorry she was for her late behaviour to
him. But her start when first she became aware of his presence, did not
fail, notwithstanding his conceit, to satisfy him that such was not her
intent. He made haste to explain his presence.

“I’ve been waiting all this time on the chance of seeing you, Margaret!”
he said. “I am starting within an hour or so for Deemouth, but could not
bear to go without telling you that your father has no objection to my
saying to you what I please. He means to have a talk with you to-morrow
morning, and as I cannot possibly get back from Deemouth before Monday,
I must now express the hope that he will not succeed in persuading you
to doubt the reality of my love. I admire your father more than I can
tell you, but he seems to hold the affections God has given us of small
account compared with his judgment of the strength and reality of them.”

“Did he no tell ye I was free to do or say what I liked?” rejoined
Maggie rather sharply.

“Yes; he did say something to that effect.”

“Then, for mysel, and i’ the name o’ my father, I tell ye, Maister
Bletherwick, I dinna care to see ye again.”

“Do you mean what you say, Margaret?” rejoined the minister, in a voice
that betrayed not a little genuine emotion.

“I do mean it,” she answered.

“Not if I tell you that I am both ready and willing to take the child
and bring him up as my own?”

“He wouldna _be_ yer ain!”

“Quite as much as yours!”

“Hardly,” she returned, with a curious little laugh. “But, as I daur say
my father tellt ye, I canna believe ye lo’e God wi’ a’ yer hert.”

“Dare you say that for yourself, Margaret?”

“No; but I do want to love God wi’ my whole hert. Mr. Bletherwick, are
ye a rael Christian? Or are ye sure ye’re no a hypocreet? I wad like to
ken. But I dinna believe ye ken yersel!”

“Well, perhaps I do not. But I see there is no occasion to say more!”

“Na, nane,” answered Maggie.

He lifted his hat, and turned away to the coach-office.




CHAPTER XI


It would be difficult to represent the condition of mind in which
Blatherwick sat on the box-seat of the Defiance coach that evening,
behind four gray thorough-breds, carrying him at the rate of ten miles
an hour towards Deemouth. Hurt pride, indignation, and a certain mild
revenge in contemplating Maggie’s disappointment when at length she
should become aware of the distinction he had gained and she had lost,
were its main components. He never noted a feature of the rather tame
scenery that went hurrying past him, and yet the time did not seem to go
slowly, for he was astonished when the coach stopped, and he found his
journey at an end.

He got down rather cramped and stiff, and, as it was still early,
started for a stroll about the streets to stretch his legs, and see what
was going on, glad that he had not to preach in the morning, and would
have all the afternoon to go over his sermon once more in that dreary
memory of his. The streets were brilliant with gas, for Saturday was
always a sort of market-night, and at that moment they were crowded with
girls going merrily home from the paper-mill at the close of the week’s
labour. To Blatherwick, who had very little sympathy with gladness of
any sort, the sight only called up by contrast the very different scene
on which his eyes would look down the next evening from the vantage
coigne of the pulpit, in a church filled with an eminently respectable
congregation—to which he would be setting forth the results of certain
late geographical discoveries and local identifications, not knowing
that already even later discoveries had rendered all he was about to say
more than doubtful.

But while, sunk in a not very profound reverie, he was in the act of
turning the corner of a narrow wynd, he was all but knocked down by
a girl whom another in the crowd had pushed violently against him.
Recoiling from the impact, and unable to recover her equilibrium, she
fell helplessly prostrate on the granite pavement, and lay motionless.
Annoyed and half-angry, he was on the point of walking on, heedless
of the accident, when something in the pale face among the coarse and
shapeless shoes that had already gathered thick around it, arrested him
with a strong suggestion of some one he had once known. But the same
moment the crowd hid her from his view; and, shocked even to be reminded
of Isy in such an assemblage, he turned resolutely away, and cherishing
the thought of the many chances against its being she, walked steadily
on. When he looked round again ere crossing the street, the crowd had
vanished, the pavement was nearly empty, and a policeman who just then
came up, had seen nothing of the occurrence, remarking only that the
girls at the paper-mills were a rough lot.

A moment more and his mind was busy with a passage in his sermon which
seemed about to escape his memory: it was still as impossible for him to
talk freely about the things a minister is supposed to love best, as
it had been when he began to preach. It was not, certainly, out of the
fulness of the heart that _his_ mouth ever spoke!

He sought the house of Mr. Robertson, the friend he had come to assist,
had supper with him and his wife, and retired early. In the morning he
went to his friend’s church, in the afternoon rehearsed his sermon to
himself, and when the evening came, climbed the pulpit-stair, and soon
appeared engrossed in its rites. But as he seemed to be pouring out his
soul in the long extempore prayer, he suddenly opened his eyes as
if unconsciously compelled, and that moment saw, in the front of the
gallery before him, a face he could not doubt to be that of Isy. Her
gaze was fixed upon him; he saw her shiver, and knew that she saw and
recognized him. He felt himself grow blind. His head swam, and he felt
as if some material force was bending down his body sideways from her.
Such, nevertheless, was his self-possession, that he reclosed his eyes,
and went on with his prayer—if that could in any sense be prayer where
he knew neither word he uttered, thing he thought, nor feeling that
moved him. With Claudius in _Hamlet_ he might have said,

   My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
   Words without thoughts never to heaven go!

But while yet speaking, and holding his eyes fast that he might not
see her again, his consciousness all at once returned—it seemed to him
through a mighty effort of the will, and upon that he immediately began
to pride himself. Instantly thereupon he was aware of his thoughts and
words, and knew himself able to control his actions and speech. All
the while, however, that he conducted the rest of the “service,” he was
constantly aware, although he did not again look at her, of the figure
of Isy before him, with its gaze fixed motionless upon him, and began at
last to wonder vaguely whether she might not be dead, and come back from
the grave to his mind a mysterious thought-spectre. But at the close of
the sermon, when the people stood up to sing, she rose with them; and
the half-dazed preacher sat down, exhausted with emotion, conflict, and
effort at self-command. When he rose once more for the benediction,
she was gone; and yet again he took refuge in the doubt whether she had
indeed been present at all.

When Mrs. Robertson had retired, and James was sitting with his host
over their tumbler of toddy, a knock came to the door. Mr. Robertson
went to open it, and James’s heart sank within him. But in a moment his
host returned, saying it was a policeman to let him know that a woman
was lying drunk at the bottom of his doorsteps, and to inquire what he
wished done with her.

“I told him,” said Mr. Robertson, “to take the poor creature to the
station, and in the morning I would see her. When she’s ill the next
day, you see,” he added, “I may have a sort of chance with her; but it
is seldom of any use.”

A horrible suspicion that it was Isy herself had seized on Blatherwick;
and for a moment he was half inclined to follow the men to the station;
but his friend would be sure to go with him, and what might not come of
it! Seeing that she had kept silent so long, however, it seemed to him
more than probable that she had lost all care about him, and if let
alone would say nothing. Thus he reasoned, lost in his selfishness, and
shrinking from the thought of looking the disreputable creature in the
eyes. Yet the awful consciousness haunted him that, if she had fallen
into drunken habits and possibly worse, it was his fault, and the ruin
of the once lovely creature lay at his door, and his alone.

He made haste to his room, and to bed, where for a long while he
lay unable even to think. Then all at once, with gathered force, the
frightful reality, the keen, bare truth broke upon him like a huge, cold
wave; he had a clear vision of his guilt, and the vision was
conscious of itself as _his_ guilt; he saw it rounded in a gray fog of
life-chilling dismay. What was he but a troth-breaker, a liar—and that
in strong fact, not in feeble tongue? “What am I,” said Conscience, “but
a cruel, self-seeking, loveless horror—a contemptible sneak, who, in
dread of missing the praises of men, crept away unseen, and left the
woman to bear alone our common sin?” What was he but a whited sepulchre,
full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness?—a fellow posing in the
pulpit as an example to the faithful, but knowing all the time that
somewhere in the land lived a woman—once a loving, trusting woman—who
could with a word hold him up to the world a hypocrite and a dastard—

   A fixed figure for the Time of scorn
   To point his slow unmoving finger at!

He sprang to the floor; the cold hand of an injured ghost seemed
clutching feebly at his throat. But, in or out of bed, what could he
do? Utterly helpless, he thought, but in truth not daring to look the
question as to what he could do in the face, he crept back ignominiously
into his bed; and, growing a little less uncomfortable, began to reason
with himself that things were not so bad as they had for that moment
seemed; that many another had failed in like fashion with him, but
his fault had been forgotten, and had never reappeared against him! No
culprit was ever required to bear witness against himself! He must learn
to discipline and repress his over-sensitiveness, otherwise it would one
day seize him at a disadvantage, and betray him into self-exposure!

Thus he reasoned—and sank back once more among the all but dead; the
loud alarum of his rousing conscience ceased, and he fell asleep in the
resolve to get away from Deemouth the first thing in the morning, before
Mr. Robertson should be awake. How much better it had been for him to
hold fast his repentant mood, and awake to tell everything! but he was
very far from having even approached any such resolution. Indeed no
practical idea of his, however much brooded over at night, had ever
lived to bear fruit in the morning; not once had he ever embodied in
action an impulse toward atonement! He could welcome the thought of a
final release from sin and suffering at the dissolution of nature,
but he always did his best to forget that at that very moment he was
suffering because of wrong he had done for which he was taking no least
trouble to make amends. He had lived for himself, to the destruction of
one whom he had once loved, and to the denial of his Lord and Master!

More than twice on his way home in the early morning, he all but turned
to go back to the police-station, but it was, as usual, only _all but_,
and he kept walking on.




CHAPTER XII


Already, ere James’s flight was discovered, morning saw Mr. Robertson
on his way to do what he might for the redemption of one of whom he
knew little or nothing: the policemen returning from their night’s duty,
found him already at the door of the office. He was at once admitted,
for he was well known to most of them. He found the poor woman miserably
recovered from the effects of her dissipation, and looking so woebegone,
that the heart of the good man was immediately filled with profoundest
pity, recognizing before him a creature whose hope was wasted to the
verge of despair. She neither looked up nor spoke; but what he could see
of her face appeared only ashamed, neither sullen nor vengeful. When
he spoke to her, she lifted her head a little, but not her eyes to his
face, confessing apparently that she had nothing to say for herself; and
he saw her plainly at the point of taking refuge in the Dee. Tenderly,
as if to the little one he had left behind him in bed, he spoke in
her scarce listening ear child-soothing words of almost inarticulate
sympathy, which yet his tone carried where they were meant to go. She
lifted her lost eyes at length, saw his face, and burst into tears.

“Na, na,” she cried, through tearing sobs, “ye canna help me, sir!
There’s naething ’at you or onybody can dee for me! But I’m near the
mou o’ the pit, and God be thankit, I’ll be ower the rim o’ ’t or I hae
grutten my last greit oot!—For God’s sake gie me a drink—a drink o’
onything!”

“I daurna gie ye onything to ca’ drink,” answered the minister, who
could scarcely speak for the swelling in his throat. “The thing to dee
ye guid is a cup o’ het tay! Ye canna hae had a moofu’ this mornin! I
hae a cab waitin me at the door, and ye’ll jist get in, my puir bairn,
and come awa hame wi’ me! My wife’ll be doon afore we win back, and
she’ll hae a cup o’ tay ready for ye in a moment! You and me ’ill hae
oor brakfast thegither.”

“Ken ye what ye’re sayin, sir? I daurna luik an honest wuman i’ the
face. I’m sic as ye ken naething aboot.”

“I ken a heap aboot fowk o’ a’ kin’s—mair a heap, I’m thinkin, nor ye
ken yersel!—I ken mair aboot yersel, tee, nor ye think; I hae seen ye
i’ my ain kirk mair nor ance or twice. The Sunday nicht afore last I was
preachin straucht intil yer bonny face, and saw ye greitin, and maist
grat mysel. Come awa hame wi’ me, my dear; my wife’s anither jist like
mysel, an’ll turn naething to ye but the smilin side o’ her face, I s’
un’ertak! She’s a fine, herty, couthy, savin kin’ o’ wuman, my wife!
Come ye til her, and see!”

Isy rose to her feet.

“Eh, but I would like to luik ance mair intil the face o’ a bonny, clean
wuman!” she said. “I’ll gang, sir,” she went on, with sudden resolve
“—only, I pray ye, sir, mak speed, and tak me oot o’ the sicht o’fowk!”

“Ay, ay, come awa; we s’ hae ye oot o’ this in a moment,” answered Mr.
Robertson.—“Put the fine doon to me,” he whispered to the inspector as
they passed him on their way out.

The man returned his nod, and took no further notice.

“I thoucht that was what would come o’ ’t!” he murmured to himself,
looking after them with a smile. But indeed he knew little of what was
going to come of it!

The good minister, whose heart was the teacher of his head, and who was
not ashamed either of himself or his companion, showed Isy into their
little breakfast-parlour, and running up the stair to his wife, told her
he had brought the woman home, and wanted her to come down at once. Mrs.
Robertson, who was dressing her one child, hurried her toilet, gave over
the little one to the care of her one servant, and made haste to welcome
the poor shivering night-bird, waiting with ruffled feathers below. When
she opened the door, the two women stood for a moment silently gazing
on each other—then the wife opened her arms wide, and the girl fled to
their shelter; but her strength failing her on the way, she fell to the
floor. Instantly the other was down by her side. The husband came to her
help; and between them they got her at once on the little couch.

“Shall I get the brandy?” said Mrs. Robertson.

“Try a cup of tea,” he answered.

His wife made haste, and soon had the tea poured out and cooling. But
Isy still lay motionless. Her hostess raised the helpless head upon her
arm, put a spoonful of the tea to her lips, and found to her joy that
she tried to swallow it. The next minute she opened her eyes, and would
have risen; but the rescuing hand held her down.

“I want to tell ye,” moaned Isy with feeble expostulation, “’at ye dinna
ken wha ye hae taen intil yer hoose! Lat me up to get my breath, or I’ll
no be able to tell ye.”

“Drink your tea,” answered the other, “and then say what you like.
There’s no hurry. You’ll have time enough.”

The poor girl opened her eyes wide, and gazed for a moment at Mrs.
Robertson. Then she took the cup and drank the tea. Her new friend went
on—

“You must just be content to bide where you are a day or two. Ye’re no
to fash yersel aboot onything: I have clothes enough to give you all the
change you can want. Hold your tongue, please, and finish your tea.”

“Eh, mem,” cried Isy, “fowk ’ill say ill o’ ye, gien they see the like
o’ me in yer hoose!”

“Lat them say, and say ’t again! What’s fowk but muckle geese!”

“But there’s the minister and his character!” she persisted.

“Hoots! what cares the minister?” said his wife. “Speir at him there,
what he thinks o’ clash.”

“’Deed,” answered her husband, “I never heedit it eneuch to tell!
There’s but ae word I heed, and that’s my Maister’s!”

“Eh, but ye canna lift me oot o’ the pit!” groaned the poor girl.

“God helpin, I can,” returned the minister. “—But ye’re no i’ the pit
yet by a lang road; and oot o’ that road I s’ hae ye, please God, afore
anither nicht has darkent!”

“I dinna ken what’s to come o’ me!” again she groaned.

“That we’ll sune see! Brakfast’s to come o’ ye first, and syne my wife
and me we’ll sit in jeedgment upo ye, and redd things up. Min’ ye’re to
say what ye like, and naither ill fowk nor unco guid sall come nigh ye.”

A pitiful smile flitted across Isy’s face, and with it returned the
almost babyish look that used to form part of her charm. Like an
obedient child, she set herself to eat and drink what she could; and
when she had evidently done her best—

“Now put up your feet again on the sofa, and tell us everything,” said
the minister.

“No,” returned Isy; “I’m not at liberty to tell you _everything_.”

“Then tell us what you please—so long as it’s true, and that I am sure
it will be,” he rejoined.

“I will, sir,” she answered.

For several moments she was silent, as if thinking how to begin; then,
after a gasp or two,—

“I’m not a good woman,” she began. “Perhaps I am worse than you think
me.—Oh, my baby! my baby!” she cried, and burst into tears.

“There’s nae that mony o’ ’s just what ither fowk think us,” said the
minister’s wife. “We’re in general baith better and waur nor that.—But
tell me ae thing: what took ye, last nicht, straucht frae the kirk to
the public? The twa haudna weel thegither!”

“It was this, ma’am,” she replied, resuming the more refined speech to
which, since living at Deemouth, she had been less accustomed—“I had
a shock that night from suddenly seeing one in the church whom I had
thought never to see again; and when I got into the street, I turned so
sick that some kind body gave me whisky, and that was how, not having
been used to it for some time, that I disgraced myself. But indeed, I
have a much worse trouble and shame upon me than that—one you would
hardly believe, ma’am!”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Robertson, modifying her speech also the
moment she perceived the change in that of her guest: “you saw him
in church—the man that got you into trouble! I thought that must be
it!—won’t you tell me all about it?”

“I will not tell his name. _I_ was the most in fault, for I knew
better; and I would rather die than do him any more harm!—Good morning,
ma’am!—I thank you kindly, sir! Believe me I am not ungrateful,
whatever else I may be that is bad.”

She rose as she spoke, but Mrs. Robertson got to the door first, and
standing between her and it, confronted her with a smile.

“Don’t think I blame you for holding your tongue, my dear. I don’t want
you to tell. I only thought it might be a relief to you. I believe, if
I were in the same case—or, at least, I hope so—that hot pincers
wouldn’t draw his name out of me. What right has any vulgar inquisitive
woman to know the thing gnawing at your heart like a live serpent?
I will never again ask you anything about him.—There! you have my
promise!—Now sit down again, and don’t be afraid. Tell me what you
please, and not a word more. The minister is sure to find something to
comfort you.”

“What can anybody say or do to comfort such as me, ma’am? I am
lost—lost out of sight! Nothing can save me! The Saviour himself
wouldn’t open the door to a woman that left her suckling child out in
the dark night!—That’s what I did!” she cried, and ended with a wail as
from a heart whose wound eternal years could never close.

In a while growing a little calmer—

“I would not have you think, ma’am,” she resumed, “that I wanted to get
rid of the darling. But my wits went all of a sudden, and a terror, I
don’t know of what, came upon me. Could it have been the hunger, do you
think? I laid him down in the heather, and ran from him. How far I went,
I do not know. All at once I came to myself, and knew what I had done,
and ran to take him up. But whether I lost my way back, or what I did,
or how it was, I cannot tell, only I could not find him! Then for a
while I think I must have been clean out of my mind, and was always
seeing him torn by the foxes, and the corbies picking out his eyes. Even
now, at night, every now and then, it comes back, and I cannot get the
sight out of my head! For a while it drove me to drink, but I got rid of
that until just last night, when again I was overcome.—Oh, if I could
only keep from seeing the beasts and birds at his little body when I’m
falling asleep!”

She gave a smothered scream, and hid her face in her hands. Mrs.
Robertson, weeping herself, sought to comfort her, but it seemed in
vain.

“The worst of it is,” Isy resumed, “—for I must confess everything,
ma’am!—is that I cannot tell what I may have done in the drink. I may
even have told his name, though I remember nothing about it! It must
be months, I think, since I tasted a drop till last night; and now I’ve
done it again, and I’m not fit he should ever cast a look at me! My
heart’s just like to break when I think I may have been false to him,
as well as false to his child! If all the devils would but come and tear
me, I would say, thank ye, sirs!”

“My dear,” came the voice of the parson from where he sat listening to
every word she uttered, “my dear, naething but the han’ o’ the Son o’
Man’ll come nigh ye oot o’ the dark, saft-strokin yer hert, and closin
up the terrible gash intil’t. I’ the name o’ God, the saviour o’ men, I
tell ye, dautie, the day ’ill come whan ye’ll smile i’ the vera face o’
the Lord himsel, at the thoucht o’ what he has broucht ye throuw! Lord
Christ, haud a guid grup o’ thy puir bairn and hers, and gie her back
her ain. Thy wull be deen!—and that thy wull’s a’ for redemption!—Gang
on wi’ yer tale, my lassie.”

“’Deed, sir, I can say nae mair—and seem to hae nae mair to say.—I’m
some—some sick like!”

She fell back on the sofa, white as death.

The parson was a big man; he took her up in his arms, and carried her to
a room they had always ready on the chance of a visit from “one of the
least of these.”

At the top of the stair stood their little daughter, a child of five
or six, wanting to go down to her mother, and wondering why she was not
permitted.

“Who is it, moder?” she whispered, as Mrs. Robertson passed her,
following her husband and Isy. “Is she very dead?”

“No, darling,” answered her mother; “it is an angel that has lost her
way, and is tired—so tired!—You must be very quiet, and not disturb
her. Her head is going to ache very much.”

The child turned and went down the stair, step by step, softly, saying—

“I will tell my rabbit not to make any noise—and to be as white as he
can.”

Once more they succeeded in bringing back to the light of consciousness
her beclouded spirit. She woke in a soft white bed, with two faces of
compassion bending over her, closed her eyes again with a smile of sweet
content, and was soon wrapt in a wholesome slumber.

In the meantime, the caitiff minister had reached his manse, and found
a ghastly loneliness awaiting him—oh, how much deeper than that of the
woman he had forsaken! She had lost her repute and her baby; he had lost
his God! He had never seen his shape, and had not his word abiding in
him; and now the vision of him was closed in an unfathomable abyss of
darkness, far, far away from any point his consciousness could reach!
The signs of God were around him in the Book, around him in the world,
around him in his own existence—but the signs only! God did not
speak to him, did not manifest himself to him. God was not where James
Blatherwick had ever sought him; he was not in any place where was the
least likelihood of his ever looking for or finding him!




CHAPTER XIII


It must be remembered that Blatherwick knew nothing of the existence
of his child: such knowledge might have modified the half-conscious
satisfaction with which, on his way home, he now and then saw a
providence in the fact that he had been preserved from marrying a
woman who had now proved herself capable of disgracing him in the very
streets. But during his slow journey of forty miles, most of which he
made on foot, hounded on from within to bodily motion, he had again, as
in the night, to pass through many an alternation of thought and feeling
and purpose. To and fro in him, up and down, this way and that, went
the changing currents of self-judgment, of self-consolement, and of
fresh-gathering dread. Never for one persistent minute was his mind
clear, his purpose determined, his line set straight for honesty. He
must live up—not to the law of righteousness, but to the show of what
a minister ought to be! he must appear unto men! In a word, he must
keep up the deception he had begun in childhood, and had, until of late
years, practised unknowingly! Now he knew it, and went on, not knowing
how to get rid of it; or rather, shrinking in utter cowardice from the
confession which alone could have set him free. Now he sought only how
to conceal his deception and falseness. He had no pleasure in them,
but was consciously miserable in knowing himself not what he seemed—in
being compelled, as he fancied himself in excuse, to look like one that
had not sinned. In his heart he grumbled that God should have forsaken
him so far as to allow him to disgrace himself before his conscience.
He did not yet see that his foulness was ingrained; that the Ethiopian
could change his skin, or the leopard his spots, as soon as he; that he
had never yet looked purity in the face; that the fall which disgraced
him in his own eyes was but the necessary outcome of his character—that
it was no accident but an unavoidable result; that his true nature had
but disclosed itself, and appeared—as everything hid must be known,
everything covered must be revealed. Even _to begin_ the purification
without which his moral and spiritual being must perish eternally,
he must dare to look on himself as he was: he _would_ not recognize
himself, and thought he lay and would lie hid from all. Dante describes
certain of the redeemed as lying each concealed in his or her own cocoon
of emitted light: James lay hidden like a certain insect in its own
_gowk-spittle_. It is strange, but so it is, that many a man will never
yield to see himself until he become aware of the eyes of other men
fixed upon him; they seeing him, and he knowing that they see him, then
first, even to himself, will he be driven to confess what he has long
all but known. Blatherwick’s hour was on its way, slow-coming, but no
longer to be shunned. His soul was ripening to self-declaration. The
ugly self must blossom, must show itself the flower, the perfection of
that evil thing he counted himself! What a hold has not God upon us in
this inevitable ripening of the unseen into the visible and present! The
flower is there, and must appear!

In the meantime he suffered, and went on in silence, walking like a
servant of the Ancient of Days, and knowing himself a whited sepulchre.
Within him he felt the dead body that could not rest until it was laid
bare to the sun; but all the time he comforted himself that he had
not fallen a second time, and that the _once_ would not be remembered
against him: did not the fact that it was forgotten, most likely was
never known, indicate the forgiveness of God? And so, unrepentant, he
remained unforgiven, and continued a hypocrite and the slave of sin.

But the hideous thing was not altogether concealed; something showed
under the covering whiteness! His mother saw that something shapeless
haunted him, and often asked herself what it could be, but always
shrank even from conjecturing. His father felt that he had gone from
him utterly, and that his son’s feeding of the flock had done nothing to
bring him and his parents nearer to each other! What could be hidden, he
thought, beneath the mask of that unsmiling face?

But there was a humble observer who saw deeper than the parents—John
MacLear, the soutar.

One day, after about a fortnight, the minister walked into the workshop
of the soutar, and found him there as usual. His hands were working away
diligently, but his thoughts had for some time been brooding over the
blessed fact, that God is not the God of the perfect only, but of the
growing as well; not the God of the righteous only, but of such as
hunger and thirst after righteousness.

“God blaw on the smoking flax, and tie up the bruised reed!” he was
saying to himself aloud, when in walked the minister.

Now, as in some other mystical natures, a certain something had been
developed in the soutar not unlike a spirit of prophecy—an insight
which, seemingly without exercise of the will, sometimes laid bare to
him in a measure the thoughts and intents of hearts in which he was more
than usually interested; or perhaps it was rather a faculty, working
unconsciously, of putting signs together, and drawing from them
instantaneous conclusion of the fact at which they pointed. After their
greeting, he suddenly looked up at his visitor with a certain fixed
attention: the mere glance had shown him that he looked ill, and he now
saw that something in the man’s heart was eating at it like a canker.
Therewith at once arose in his brain the question: could he be the
father of the little one crowing in the next room? But he shut it into
the darkest closet of his mind, shrinking from the secret of another
soul, as from the veil of the Holy of Holies! The next moment, however,
came the thought: what if the man stood in need of the offices of a
friend? It was one thing to pry into a man’s secret; another, to help
him escape from it! As out of this thought the soutar sat looking at him
for a moment, the minister felt the hot blood rush to his cheeks.

“Ye dinna luik that weel, minister,” said the soutar: “is there onything
the maitter wi’ ye, sir?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” answered the parson. “I have sometimes a
touch of headache in the early morning, especially when I have sat later
than usual over my books the night before; but it always goes off during
the day.”

“Ow weel, sir, that’s no, as ye say, a vera sairious thing! I couldna
help fancyin ye had something on yer min’ by ord’nar!”

“Naething, naething,” answered James with a feeble laugh. “—But,” he
went on—and something seemed to send the words to his lips without
giving him time to think—“it is curious you should say that, for I was
just thinking what was the real intent of the apostle in his injunction
to confess our faults one to another.”

The moment he uttered the words he felt as if he had proclaimed his
secret on the housetop; and he would have begun the sentence afresh,
with some notion of correcting it; but again he knew the hot blood shoot
to his face.—“I _must_ go on with something!” he felt rather than said
to himself, “or those sharp eyes will see through and through me!”

“It came into my mind,” he went on, “that I should like to know what
_you_ thought about the passage: it cannot surely give the least ground
for auricular confession! I understand perfectly how a man may want
to consult a friend in any difficulty—and that friend naturally the
minister; but—”

This was by no means a thing he had meant to say, but he seemed carried
on to say he knew not what. It was as if, without his will, the will
of God was driving the man to the brink of a pure confession—to the
cleansing of his stuffed bosom “of that perilous stuff which weighs upon
the heart.”

“Do you think, for instance,” he continued, thus driven, “that a man is
bound to tell _everything_—even to the friend he loves best?”

“I think,” answered the soutar after a moment’s thought, “that we must
answer the _what_, before we enter upon the _how much_. And I think,
first of all we must ask—to _whom_ are we bound to confess?—and there
surely the answer is, to him to whom we have done the wrong. If we have
been grumbling in our hearts, it is to God we must confess: who else
has to do with the matter? To _Him_ we maun flee the moment oor eyes
are opent to what we’ve been aboot! But, gien we hae wranged ane o’ oor
fallow-craturs, wha are we to gang til wi’ oor confession but that same
fallow-cratur? It seems to me we maun gang to that man first—even afore
we gang to God himsel. Not one moment must we indulge procrastination on
the plea o’ prayin! From our vera knees we maun rise in haste, and say
to brother or sister, ‘I’ve done ye this or that wrang: forgie me.’ God
can wait for your prayer better nor you, or him ye’ve wranged, can
wait for your confession! Efter that, ye maun at ance fa’ to your best
endeevour to mak up for the wrang. ‘Confess your sins,’ I think
it means, ‘each o’ ye to the ither again whom ye hae dene the
offence.’—Divna ye think that’s the cowmonsense o’ the maitter?”

“Indeed, I think you must be right!” replied the minister, who sat
revolving only how best, alas, to cover his retreat! “I will go home at
once and think it all over. Indeed, I am even now all but convinced that
what you say must be what the Apostle intended!”

With a great sigh, of which he was not aware, Blatherwick rose and
walked from the kitchen, hoping he looked—not guilty, but sunk in
thought. In truth he was unable to think. Oppressed and heavy-laden with
the sense of a duty too unpleasant for performance, he went home to his
cheerless manse, where his housekeeper was the only person he had
to speak to, a woman incapable of comforting anybody. There he went
straight to his study, but, kneeling, found he could not pray the
simplest prayer; not a word would come, and he could not pray without
words! He was dead, and in hell—so far perished that he felt nothing.
He rose, and sought the open air; it brought him no restoration. He had
not heeded his friend’s advice, had not entertained the thought of the
one thing possible to him—had not moved, even in spirit, toward Isy!
The only comfort he could now find for his guilty soul was the thought
that he could do nothing, for he did not know where Isy was to be found.
When he remembered the next moment that his friend Robertson must be
able to find her, he soothed his conscience with the reflection that
there was no coach till the next morning, and in the meantime he could
write: a letter would reach him almost as soon as he could himself!

But what then would Robertson think? He might give his wife the letter
to read! She might even read it of herself, for they concealed nothing
from each other! So he only walked the faster, tired himself, and earned
an appetite as the result of his day’s work! He ate a good dinner,
although with little enjoyment, and fell fast asleep in his chair. No
letter was written to Robertson that day. No letter of such sort was
ever written. The spirit was not willing, and the flesh was weakness
itself.

In the evening he took up a learned commentary on the Book of Job; but
he never even approached the discovery of what Job wanted, received, and
was satisfied withal. He never saw that what he himself needed, but did
not desire, was the same thing—even a sight of God! He never discovered
that, when God came to Job, Job forgot all he had intended to say to
him—did not ask him a single question—knew that all was well. The
student of Scripture remained blind to the fact that the very presence
of the Living One, of the Father of men, proved sufficient in itself to
answer every question, to still every doubt! But then James’s heart was
not pure like Job’s, and therefore he could never have seen God; he did
not even desire to see him, and so could see nothing as it was. He read
with the blindness of the devil in his heart.

In Marlowe’s _Faust_, the student asks Mephistopheles—

   How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

And the demon answers him—

   Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it;

and again—

                    Where we are is hell;
    And where hell is there must we ever be:
    ... when all the world dissolves,
    And every creature shall be purified,
    All places shall be hell that are not heaven;

and yet again—

   I tell thee I am damned, and now in hell;

and it was thus James fared; and thus he went to bed.

And while he lay there sleepless, or walked in his death to and fro in
the room, his father and mother, some three miles away, were talking
about him.




CHAPTER XIV


For some time they had lain silent, thinking about him by no means
happily. They were thinking how little had been their satisfaction in
their minister-son; and had gone back in their minds to a certain time,
long before, when conferring together about him, a boy at school.

Even then the heart of the mother had resented his coldness, his seeming
unconsciousness of his parents as having any share or interest in his
life or prospects. Scotch parents are seldom demonstrative to each other
or to their children; but not the less in them, possibly the hotter
because of their outward coldness, burns the causal fire, the central,
the deepest—that eternal fire, without which the world would turn to a
frozen clod, the love of the parent for the child. That must burn while
_the_ Father lives! that must burn until the universe _is_ the Father
and his children, and none beside. That fire, however long held down and
crushed together by the weight of unkindled fuel, must go on to gather
heat, and, gathering, it must glow, and at last break forth in the
scorching, yea devouring flames of a righteous indignation: the Father
must and _will_ be supreme, that his children perish not! But as yet
_The Father_ endured and was silent; and the child-parents also must
endure and be still! In the meantime their son remained hidden from them
as by an impervious moral hedge; he never came out from behind it, never
stood clear before them, and they were unable to break through to him:
within his citadel of indifference there was no angelic traitor to draw
back the bolts of its iron gates, and let them in. They had gone on
hoping, and hoping in vain, for some holy, lovely change in him; but
at last had to confess it a relief when he left the house, and went to
Edinburgh.

But the occasion to which I refer was long before that.

The two children were in bed and asleep, and the parents were lying
then, as they lay now, sleepless.

“Hoo’s Jeemie been gettin on the day?” said his father.

“Well enough, I suppose,” answered his mother, who did not then speak
Scotch quite so broad as her husband’s, although a good deal broader
than her mother, the wife of a country doctor, would have permitted when
she was a child; “he’s always busy at his books. He’s a good boy, and a
diligent; there’s no gainsayin that! But as to hoo he’s gettin on, I
can beir no testimony. He never lets a word go from him as to what he’s
doin, one way or anither. ‘What _can_ he be thinkin aboot?’ I say whiles
to mysel—sometimes ower and ower again. When I gang intil the parlour,
where he always sits till he has done his lessons, he never lifts his
heid to show that he hears me, or cares wha’s there or wha isna. And as
soon as he’s learnt them, he taks a buik and gangs up til his room, or
oot aboot the hoose, or intil the cornyard or the barn, and never comes
nigh me!—I sometimes won’er gien he would ever miss me deid!” she
ended, with a great sigh.

“Hoot awa, wuman! dinna tak on like that,” returned her husband. “The
laddie’s like the lave o’ laddies! They’re a’ jist like pup-doggies till
their een comes oppen, and they ken them ’at broucht them here. He’s
bun’ to mak a guid man in time, and he canna dee that ohn learnt to be
a guid son to her ’at bore him!—Ye canna say ’at ever he contert ye! Ye
hae tellt me that a hunner times!”

“I have that! But I would hae had no occasion to dwall upo’ the fac’,
gien he had ever gi’en me, noo or than, jist a wee bit sign o’ ony
affection!”

“Ay, doobtless! but signs are nae preefs! The affection, as ye ca’ ’t,
may be there, and the signs o’ ’t wantin!—But I ken weel hoo the hert
o’ ye ’s workin, my ain auld dautie!” he added, anxious to comfort her
who was dearer to him than son or daughter.

“I dinna think it wad be weel,” he resumed after a pause, “for me to say
onything til ’im aboot his behaviour til ’s mither: I dinna believe he
wud ken what I was aimin at! I dinna believe he has a notion o’ onything
amiss in himsel, and I fear he wad only think I was hard upon him, and
no’ fair. Ye see, gien a thing disna come o’ ’tsel, no cryin upo’ ’t ’ll
gar ’t lift its heid—sae lang, at least, as the man kens naething aboot
it!”

“I dinna doobt ye’re right, Peter,” answered his wife; “I ken weel that
flytin ’ill never gar love spread oot his wings—excep’ it be to flee
awa’! Naething but shuin can come o’ flytin!”

“It micht be even waur nor shuin!” rejoined Peter. “—But we better gang
til oor sleeps, lass!—We hae ane anither, come what may!”

“That’s true, Peter; but aye the mair I hae you, the mair I want my
Jeemie!” cried the poor mother.

The father said no more. But, after a while, he rose, and stole softly
to his son’s room. His wife stole after him, and found him on his knees
by the bedside, his face buried in the blankets, where his boy lay
asleep with calm, dreamless countenance.

She took his hand, and led him back to bed.

“To think,” she moaned as they went, “’at yon’s the same bairnie I
glowert at till my sowl ran oot at my een! I min’ weel hoo I leuch and
grat, baith at ance, to think I was the mother o’ a man-child! and I
thought I kenned weel what was i’ the hert o’ Mary, whan she claspit the
blessed ane til her boasom!”

“May that same bairnie, born for oor remeid, bring oor bairn til his
richt min’ afore he’s ower auld to repent!” responded the father in a
broken voice.

“What for,” moaned Marion, “was the hert o’ a mither put intil me? What
for was I made a wuman, whause life is for the beirin o’ bairns to the
great Father o’ a’ gien this same was to be my reward?—Na, na, Lord,”
she went on, checking herself, “I claim naething but thy wull; and weel
I ken ye wouldna hae me think siclike thy wull!”




CHAPTER XV


It would be too much to say that the hearts of his parents took no
pleasure in the advancement of their son, such as it was. I suspect the
mother was glad to be proud where she could find no happiness—proud
with the love that lay incorruptible in her being. But the love that is
all on one side, though it may be stronger than death, can hardly be so
strong as life! A poor, maimed, one-winged thing, such love cannot soar
into any region of conscious bliss. Even when it soars into the region
where God himself dwells, it is but to partake there of the divine
sorrow which his heartless children cause him. My reader may well
believe that father nor mother dwelt much upon what their neighbours
called James’s success—or cared in the least to talk about it: that
they would have felt to be mere hypocrisy, while hearty and genuine
relations were so far from perfect between them. Never to human being,
save the one to the other, and that now but very seldom, did they allude
to the bitterness which their own hearts knew; for to speak of it would
have seemed almost equivalent to disowning their son. And alas the
daughter was gone to whom the mother had at one time been able to bemoan
herself, knowing she understood and shared in their misery! For Isobel
would gladly have laid down her life to kindle in James’s heart such a
love to their parents as her own.

We may now understand a little, into what sort of man the lad James
Blatherwick had grown. When he left Stonecross for the University, it
was with scarce a backward look; nothing was in his heart but eagerness
for the coming conflict. Having gained there one of its highest
bursaries, he never spent a thought, as he donned his red gown, on the
son of the poor widow who had competed with him, and who, failing, had
to leave ambition behind him and take a place in a shop—where, however,
he soon became able to keep, and did keep, his mother in what was to her
nothing less than happy luxury; while the successful James—well, so far
my reader already knows about him.

As often as James returned home for the vacations, things, as between
him and his parents, showed themselves unaltered; and by his third
return, the heart of his sister had ceased to beat any faster at the
thought of his arrival: she knew that he would but shake hands limply,
let hers drop, and the same moment be set down to read. Before the time
for taking his degree arrived, Isobel was gone to the great Father.
James never missed her, and neither wished nor was asked to go home to
her funeral. To his mother he was never anything more or less than quite
civil; she never asked him to do anything for her. He came and went as
he pleased, cared for nothing done on the farm or about the house, and
seemed, in his own thoughts and studies, to have more than enough to
occupy him. He had grown a powerful as well as handsome youth, and
had dropped almost every sign of his country breeding. He hardly ever
deigned a word in his mother-dialect, but spoke good English with
a Scotch accent. Neither had he developed any of the abominable
affectations by which not a few such as he have imagined to repudiate
their origin.

His father had not then first to discover that his son was far too fine
a gentleman to show any interest in agriculture, or put out his hand
to the least share in that oldest and most dignified of callings. His
mother continued to look forward, although with fading interest, to
the time when he should be—the messenger of a gospel which he nowise
understood; but his father did not at all share her anticipation; and
she came to know ere long that to hear him preach would but renew and
intensify a misery to which she had become a little accustomed in their
ordinary intercourse. The father felt that his boy had either left him a
long way off, or had never at any time come near him. He seemed to stand
afar upon some mountain-top of conscious or imagined superiority.

James, as one having no choice, lived at _home_, so called by custom
and use, but lived as one come of another breed than his parents, having
with theirs but few appreciable points of contact. Most conventional
of youths, he yet wrote verses in secret, and in his treasure-closet
worshipped Byron. What he wrote he seldom showed, and then only to
one or two of his fellow-students. Possibly he wrote only to prove to
himself that he could do that also, for he never doubted his faculty
in any direction. When he went to Edinburgh—to learn theology,
forsooth!—he was already an accomplished mathematician, and a yet
better classic, with some predilections for science, and a very small
knowledge of the same: his books showed for the theology, and for the
science, an occasional attempt to set his father right on some point of
chemistry. His first aspiration was to show himself a gentleman in the
eyes of the bubblehead calling itself Society—of which in fact he knew
nothing; and the next, to have his eloquence, at present existent only
in an ambitious imagination, recognized by the public. Such were the two
devils, or rather the two forms of the one devil Vanity, that possessed
him. He looked down on his parents, and the whole circumstance of
their ordered existence, as unworthy of him, because old-fashioned and
bucolic, occupied only with God’s earth and God’s animals, and having
nothing to do with the shows of life. And yet to the simply honourable,
to such of gentle breeding as despised mere show, the ways of life in
their house would have seemed altogether admirable: the homely, yet not
unfastidious modes and conditions of the unassuming homestead, would
have appeared to them not a little attractive. But James took no
interest in any of them, and, if possible, yet less in the ways of the
tradesmen and craftsmen of the neighbouring village. He never felt the
common humanity that made him one with them, did not in his thoughts
associate himself at all with them. Had he turned his feeling into
thoughts and words, he would have said, “I cannot help being the son of
a farmer, but at least my mother’s father was a doctor; and had I been
consulted, my father should have been at least an officer in one of his
majesty’s services, not a treader of dung or artificial manure!” The
root of his folly lay in the groundless self-esteem of the fellow;
fostered, I think, by a certain literature which fed the notion, if
indeed it did not plainly inculcate the _duty_ of rising in the world.
To such as he, the praise of men may well seem the patent of their
nobility; but the man whom we call _The Saviour_, and who knew the
secret of Life, warned his followers that they must not seek that sort
of distinction if they would be the children of the Father who claimed
them.

I have said enough, perhaps too much, of this most uninteresting of men!
How he came to be born such, is not for my speculation: had he remained
such, his story would not have been for my telling. How he became
something better, it remains my task to try to set forth.

I now complete the talk that followed the return of the simple couple to
bed. “I was jist thinkin, Peter,” said Marion, after they had again
lain silent for a while, “o’ the last time we spak thegither aboot the
laddie—it maun be nigh sax year sin syne, I’m thinkin!”

“’Deed I canna say! ye may be richt, Mirran,” replied her spouse. “It’s
no sic a cheery subjec’ ’at we sud hae muckle to say to ane anither
anent it! He’s a man noo, and weel luikit upo’; but it maks unco little
differ to his parents! He’s jist as dour as ever, and as far as man
could weel be frae them he cam o’!—never a word to the ane or the ither
o’ ’s! Gien we war twa dowgs, he couldna hae less to say til’s, and
micht weel hae mair! I s’ warran’ Frostie says mair in ae half-hoor to
his tyke, nor Jeemie has said to you or me sin’ first he gaed to the
college!”

“Bairns is whiles a queer kin’ o’ a blessin!” remarked the mother. “But,
eh, Peter! it’s what may lie ahint the silence that frichts me!”

“Lass, ye’re frichtin _me_ noo! What _div_ ye mean?”

“Ow naething!” returned Marion, bursting into tears. “But a’ at ance
it was borne in upo me, that there maun be something to accoont for the
thing. At the same time I daurna speir at God himsel what that thing
can be. For there’s something waur noo, and has been for some time,
than ever was there afore! He has sic a luik, as gien he saw nor heard
onything but ae thing, the whilk ae thing keeps on inside him, and winna
wheesht. It’s an awfu’ thing to say o’ a mither’s ain laddie; and to hae
said it only to my ain man, and the father o’ the laddie, maks my hert
like to brak!—it’s as gien I had been fause to my ain flesh and blude
but to think it o’ ’im!—Eh, Peter, what _can_ it be?”

“Ow jist maybe naething ava’! Maybe he’s in love, and the lass winna
hear til ’im!”

“Na, Peter; love gars a man luik up, no doon at his ain feet! It gars
him fling his heid back, and set his een richt afore him—no turn them
in upo his ain inside! It maks a man straucht i’ the back, strong i’ the
airm, and bauld i’ the hert.—Didna it you, Peter?”

“Maybe it did; I dinna min’ vera weel.—But I see love can hardly be the
thing that’s amiss wi’ the lad. Still, even his parents maun tak tent o’
jeedgin—specially ane o’ the Lord’s ministers—maybe ane o’ the Lord’s
ain elec’!”

“It’s awfu’ to think—I daurna say ’t—I daurna maist think the words
o’ ’t, Peter, but it _wull_ cry oot i’ my vera hert!—Steik the door,
Peter—and ticht, that no a stray stirk may hear me!—Was a minister o’
the gospel ever a heepocreete, Peter?—like ane o’ the auld scribes
and Pharisees, Peter?—Wadna it be ower terrible, Peter, to be
permittit?—Gien our ain only son was—”

But here she broke down; she could not finish the frightful sentence.
The farmer again left his bed, and dropt upon a chair by the side of it.
The next moment he sank on his knees, and hiding his face in his hands,
groaned, as from a thicket of torture—

“God in haiven, hae mercy upon the haill lot o’ ’s.”

Then, apparently unconscious of what he did, he went wandering from the
room, down to the kitchen, and out to the barn on his bare feet, closing
the door of the house behind him. In the barn he threw himself, face
downward, on a heap of loose straw, and there lay motionless. His wife
wept alone in her bed, and hardly missed him: it required of her no
reflection to understand whither he had gone, or what he was doing. He
was crying, like King Lear from the bitterness of an outraged father’s
heart, to the Father of fathers:

“God, ye’re a father yersel,” he groaned; “and sae ye ken hoo it’s rivin
at my hert!—Na, Lord, ye dinna ken; for ye never had a doobt aboot
_your_ son!—Na, I’m no blamin Jeemie, Lord; I’m no cryin oot upo _him_;
for ye ken weel hoo little I ken aboot him: he never opened the buik o’
his hert to _me_! Oh God, grant that he hae naething to hide; but gien
he has, Lord, pluck it oot o’ ’im, and _him_ oot o’ the glaur! latna him
stick there. I kenna hoo to shape my petition, for I’m a’ i’ the dark;
but deliver him some gait, Lord, I pray thee, for his mither’s sake!—ye
ken what she is!—_I_ dinna coont for onything, but ye ken _her_!—Lord,
deliver the hert o’ her frae the awfu’est o’ a’ her fears.—Lord, a
hypocreet! a Judas-man!”

More of what he said, I cannot tell; somehow this much has reached my
ears. He remained there upon the straw while hour after hour passed,
pleading with the great Father for his son; his soul now lost in dull
fatigue, now uttering itself in groans for lack of words, until at
length the dawn looked in on the night-weary earth, and into the two
sorrow-laden hearts, bringing with it a comfort they did not seek to
understand.




CHAPTER XVI


But it brought no solace to the mind of the weak, hard-hearted, and
guilty son. He had succeeded once more in temporarily soothing his
conscience with some narcotic of false comfort, and now slept the sleep
of the houseless, whose covering was narrower than he could wrap himself
in. Ah, those nights! Alas for the sleepless human soul out in the
eternal cold! But so heartless was James, that, if his mother had come
to him in the morning with her tear-dimmed eyes, he would never have
asked himself what could ail her; would never even have seen that she
was unhappy; least of all would have suspected himself the cause of her
red eyes and aching head, or that the best thing in him was that mental
uneasiness of which he was constantly aware. Thank God, there was no way
round the purifying fire! he could not escape it; he _must_ pass through
it!




CHAPTER XVII


Little knows the world what a power among men is the man who simply and
really believes in him who is Lord of the world to save men from
their sins! He may be neither wise nor prudent; he may be narrow and
dim-sighted even in the things he loves best; they may promise him much,
and yield him but a poor fragment of the joy that might be and ought to
be his; he may present them to others clothed in no attractive hues, or
in any word of power; and yet, if he has but that love to his neighbour
which is rooted in, and springs from love to his God, he is always a
redeeming, reconciling influence among his fellows. The Robertsons were
genial of heart, loving and tender toward man or woman in need of them;
their door was always on the latch for such to enter. If the parson
insisted on the wrath of God against sin, he did not fail to give
assurance of His tenderness toward such as had fallen. Together the
godly pair at length persuaded Isobel of the eager forgiveness of the
Son of Man. They assured her that he could not drive from him the very
worst of sinners, but loved—nothing less than tenderly _loved_ any
one who, having sinned, now turned her face to the Father. She
would doubtless, they said, have to see her trespass in the eyes of
unforgiving women, but the Lord would lift her high, and welcome her to
the home of the glad-hearted.

But poor Isy, who regarded her fault as both against God and the man who
had misled her, and was sick at the thought of being such as she judged
herself, insisted that nothing God himself could do, could ever restore
her, for nothing could ever make it that she had not fallen: such a
contradiction, such an impossibility alone could make her clean! God
might be ready to forgive her, but He could not love her! Jesus
might have made satisfaction for her sin, but how could that make any
difference in or to her? She was troubled that Jesus should have so
suffered, but that could not give her back her purity, or the peace of
mind she once possessed! That was gone for ever! The life before her
took the appearance of an unchanging gloom, a desert region whence the
gladness had withered, and whence came no purifying wind to blow from
her the odours of the grave by which she seemed haunted! Never to all
eternity could she be innocent again! Life had no interest for her! She
was, and must remain just what she was; for, alas, she could not cease
to be!

Such thoughts had at one period ravaged her life, but they had for some
time been growing duller and deader: now once more revived by goodness
and sympathy, they had resumed their gnawing and scorching, and she
had grown yet more hateful to herself. Even the two who befriended and
comforted her, could never, she thought, cease to regard her as what
they knew she was! But, strange to say, with this revival of her
suffering, came also a requickening of her long dormant imagination,
favoured and cherished, doubtless, by the peace and love that surrounded
her. First her dreams, then her broodings began to be haunted with sweet
embodiments. As if the agonized question of the guilty Claudius were
answered to her, to assure her that there _was_ “rain enough in the
sweet heavens to wash her white as snow,” she sometimes would wake from
a dream where she stood in blessed nakedness with a deluge of
cool, comforting rain pouring upon her from the sweetness of those
heavens—and fall asleep again to dream of a soft strong west wind
chasing from her the offensive emanations of the tomb, that seemed to
have long persecuted her nostrils as did the blood of Duncan those of
the wretched Lady Macbeth. And every night to her sinful bosom came back
the soft innocent hands of the child she had lost—when ever and again
her dream would change, and she would be Hagar, casting her child away,
and fleeing from the sight of his death. More than once she dreamed that
an angel came to her, and went out to look for her boy—only to return
and lay him in her arms grievously mangled by some horrid beast.

When the first few days of her sojourn with the good Samaritans were
over, and she had gathered strength enough to feel that she ought no
longer to be burdensome to them, but look for work, they positively
refused to let her leave them before her spirit also had regained some
vital tone, and she was able to “live a little”; and to that end they
endeavoured to revive in her the hope of finding her lost child: setting
inquiry on foot in every direction, they promised to let her know the
moment when her presence should begin to cause them inconvenience.

“Let you go, child?” her hostess had exclaimed: “God forbid! Go you
shall not until you go for your own sake: you cannot go for ours!”

“But I’m such a burden to you—and so useless!”

“Was the Lord a burden to Mary and Lazarus, think ye, my poor bairn?”
rejoined Mrs. Robertson.

“Don’t, ma’am, please!” sobbed Isy.

“Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it to me!”
insisted her hostess.

“That doesna apply, ma’am,” objected Isy. “I’m nane o’ his!”

“Who is then? Who was it he came to save? Are you not one of his lost
sheep? Are you not weary and heavy-laden? Will you never let him feel at
home with you? Are _you_ to say who he is to love and who he isn’t? Are
_you_ to tell him who are fit to be counted his, and who are not good
enough?”

Isy was silent for a long time. The foundations of her coming peace were
being dug deeper, and laid wider.

She still found it impossible, from the disordered state of her mind at
the time, to give any notion of whereabout she had been when she laid
her child down, and leaving him, could not again find him. And Maggie,
who loved him passionately and believed him wilfully abandoned,
cherished no desire to discover one who could claim him, but was
unworthy to have him. For a long time, therefore, neither she nor
her father ever talked, or encouraged talk about him; whence certain
questing busybodies began to snuff and give tongue. It was all very
well, they said, for the cobbler and his Maggie to pose as rescuers and
benefactors: but whose was the child? His growth nevertheless went on
all the same, and however such hints might seem to concern him, happily
they never reached him. Maggie flattered herself, indeed, that never in
this world would they reach him, but would die away in the void, or like
a fallen wave against the heedless shore! And yet, all the time, in the
not so distant city, a loving woman was weeping and pining for lack
of him, whose conduct, in the eyes of the Robertsons, was not merely
blameless, but sweetly and manifestly true, constantly yielding fuel to
the love that encompassed her. But, although mentally and spiritually
she was growing rapidly, she seemed to have lost all hope. For, deeper
in her soul, and nearer the root of her misery than even the loss of her
child, lay the character and conduct of the man to whom her love seemed
inextinguishable. His apostasy from her, his neglect of her, and her
constantly gnawing sense of pollution, burned at the bands of her life;
and her friends soon began to fear that she was on the verge of a slow
downward slide, upon which there is seldom any turning.

The parson and his wife had long been on friendliest terms with the
farmer of Stonecross and his wife; and, brooding on the condition of
their guest, it was natural that the thought of Mrs. Blatherwick should
occur to them as one who might be able to render them the help they
needed for her. Difficulties were in the way, it was true, chiefly that
of conveying a true conception of the nature and character of the woman
in whom they desired her interest; but if Mrs. Blatherwick were once to
see her, there would be no fear of the result: received at the farm, she
was certain in no way to compromise them! They were confident she would
never belie the character they were prepared to give her. Neither was
there any one at the farm for whom it was possible to dread intercourse
with her, seeing that, since the death of their only daughter, they had
not had a servant in the house. It was concluded therefore between them
that Mr. Robertson should visit their friends at Stonecross, and tell
them all they knew about Isy.

It was a lovely morning in the decline of summer, the corn nearly full
grown, but still green, without sign of the coming gold of perfection,
when the minister mounted the top of the coach, to wait, silent and
a little anxious, for the appearance of the coachman from the office,
thrusting the waybill into the pocket of his huge greatcoat, to gather
his reins, and climb heavily to his perch. A journey of four hours,
through a not very interesting country, but along a splendid road,
would carry him to the village where the soutar lived, and where James
Blatherwick was parson! There a walk of about three miles awaited him—a
long and somewhat weary way to the town-minister—accustomed indeed to
tramping the hard pavements, but not to long walks unbroken by calls.
Climbing at last the hill on which the farmhouse stood, he caught sight
of Peter Blatherwick in a neighbouring field of barley stubble, with the
reins of a pair of powerful Clydesdales in his hands, wrestling with
the earth as it strove to wrench from his hold the stilts of the plough
whose share and coulter he was guiding through it. Peter’s delight was
in the open air, and hard work in it. He was as far from the vulgar idea
that a man rose in the scale of honour when he ceased to labour with his
hands, as he was from the fancy that a man rose in the kingdom of heaven
when he was made a bishop.

As to his higher nature, the farmer believed in God—that is, he tried
to do what God required of him, and thus was on the straight road to
know him. He talked little about religion, and was no partisan. When he
heard people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party
in the church, he would turn away with a smile such as men yield to
the talk of children. He had no time, he would say, to spend on such
disputes: he had enough to do in trying to practise what was beyond
dispute.

He was a reading man, who not merely drank at every open source he came
across, but thought over what he read, and was, therefore, a man of true
intelligence, who was regarded by his neighbours with more than ordinary
respect. He had been the first in the district to lay hold of the
discoveries in chemistry applicable to agriculture, and had made use of
them, with notable results, upon his own farm; setting thus an example
which his neighbours were so ready to follow, that the region, nowise
remarkable for its soil, soon became remarkable for its crops. The
note-worthiest thing in him, however, was his _humanity_, shown first
and chiefly in the width and strength of his family affections. He had
a strong drawing, not only to his immediate relations, but to all of his
blood; who were not few, for he came of an ancient family, long settled
in the neighbourhood. In his worldly affairs he was well-to-do, having
added not a little to the little his father had left him; but he was no
lover of money, being open-handed even to his wife, upon whom first your
money-grub is sure to exercise his parsimony. There was, however, at
Stonecross, little call to spend and less temptation from without,
the farm itself being equal to the supply of almost every ordinary
necessity.

In disposition Peter Blatherwick was a good-humoured, even merry man,
with a playful answer almost always ready for a greeting neighbour.

The minister did not however go on to join the farmer, but went to the
house, which stood close at hand, with its low gable toward him. Late
summer still lorded it in the land; only a few fleecy clouds shared the
blue of the sky with the ripening sun, and on the hot ridges the air
pulsed and trembled, like vaporized layers of mother-of-pearl.

At the end of the idle lever, no sleepy old horse was now making his
monotonous rounds; his late radiance, born of age and sunshine, was
quenched in the dark of the noonday stall. But the peacock still
strutted among the ricks, as conscious of his glorious plumage, as
regardless of the ugliness of his feet as ever; now and then checking
the rhythmic movement of his neck, undulating green and blue, to scratch
the ground with those feet, and dart his beak, with apparently spiteful
greed, at some tiny crystal of quartz or pickle of grain they exposed;
or, from the towering steeple of his up lifted throat, to utter his
self-satisfaction in a hideous cry.

In the gable before him, Mr. Robertson passed a low window, through
which he had a glimpse of the pretty, old-fashioned parlour within, as
he went round to the front, to knock at the nearer of two green-painted
doors.

Mrs. Blatherwick herself came to open it, and finding who it was
that knocked—of all men the most welcome to her in her present
mood—received him with the hearty simplicity of an evident welcome.

For was he not a minister? and was not he who caused all her trouble, a
minister also? She was not, indeed, going to lay open her heart and let
him see into its sorrow; for to confess her son a cause of the least
anxiety to her, would be faithless and treacherous; but the unexpected
appearance of Mr. Robertson brought her, nevertheless, as it were the
dawn of a winter morning after a long night of pain.

She led him into the low-ceiled parlour, the green gloom of the big
hydrangea that filled the front window, and the ancient scent of the
withered rose-leaves in the gorgeous china basin on the gold-bordered
table-cover. There the minister, after a few kind commonplaces, sat for
a moment, silently pondering how to enter upon his communication. But he
did not ponder long, however; for his usual way was to rush headlong
at whatever seemed to harbour a lion, and come at once to the
death-grapple.

Marion Blatherwick was a good-looking woman, with a quiet strong
expression, and sweet gray eyes. The daughter of a country surgeon, she
had been left an orphan without means; but was so generally respected,
that all said Mr. Blatherwick had never done better than when he married
her. Their living son seemed almost to have died in his infancy; their
dead daughter, gone beyond range of eye and ear, seemed never to have
left them: there was no separation, only distance between them.

“I have taken the liberty, Mrs. Blatherwick, of coming to ask your help
in a great perplexity,” began Mr. Robertson, with an embarrassment she
had never seen in him before, and which bewildered her not a little.

“Weel, sir, it’s an honour done me—a great honour, for which I hae to
thank ye, I’m sure!” she answered.

“Bide ye, mem, till ye hear what it is,” rejoined the minister. “We,
that is, my wife and mysel, hae a puir lass at hame i’ the hoose. We hae
ta’en a great interest in her for some weeks past; but noo we’re ’maist
at oor wits’ en’ what to do wi’ her neist. She’s sair oot o’ hert, and
oot o’ health, and out o’ houp; and in fac’ she stan’s in sair, ay,
desperate need o’ a cheenge.”

“Weel, that ouchtna to mak muckle o’ a diffeeclety atween auld friens
like oorsels, Maister Robertson!—Ye wad hae us tak her in for a whilie,
till she luiks up a bit, puir thing?—Hoo auld may she be?”

“She can hardly be mair nor twenty, or aboot that—sic like as your
ain bonnie lassie would hae been by this time, gien she had ripent
here i’stead o’ gaein awa to the gran’ finishin schuil o’ the just made
perfec. Weel min’ I her bonny face! And, ’deed, this ane’s no’ that
unlike yer ain Isy! She something favours her.”

“Eh, sir, fess her to me! My hert’s waitin for her! Her mither maunna
lowse her! She couldna stan’ that!”

“She has nae mither, puir thing!—But ye maun dee naething in a hurry; I
maun tell ye aboot her first!”

“I’m content ’at she’s a frien o’ yours, sir. I ken weel ye wad never
hae me tak intil my hoose ane that was na fit—and a’ the lads aboot the
place frae ae mornin til anither!”

“Indeed she _is_ a frien o’ mine, mem; and I hae never a dreid o’
onything happenin ye wadna like. She’s in ower sair trouble to cause ony
anxiety. The fac’ is, she’s had a terrible misfortun!”

The good woman started, drew herself up a little, and said hurriedly,

“There’s no a wean, is there?”

“’Deed is there, mem!—but pairt o’ the meesery is, the bairn’s
disappeart; and she’s brackin her heart aboot ’im. She’s maist oot o’
her min’, mem! No that she’s onything but perfecly reasonable, and gies
never a grain o’ trouble! I canna doobt she’d be a great help til ye,
and that ilka minute ye saw fit to lat her bide. But she’s jist huntit
wi’ the idea that she pat the bairnie doon, and left him, and kens na
whaur.—Verily, mem, she’s ane o’ the lambs o’ the Lord’s ain flock!”

“That’s no the w’y the lambs o’ _his_ flock are i’ the w’y o’ behavin
themsels!—I fear me, sir, ye’re lattin yer heart rin awa wi’ yer
jeedgment!”

“I hae aye coontit Mary Magdalen ane o’ the Lord’s ain yowies, that he
left the lave i’ the wilderness to luik for: this is sic anither! Gien
ye help Him to come upon her, ye’ll cairry her hame ’atween ye rej’icin!
And ye min’ hoo he stude ’atween ane far waur nor her, and the ill
men that would fain hae shamet her, and sent them oot like sae mony
tykes—thae gran’ Pharisees—wi their tails tuckit in ’atween their
legs!—Sair affrontit they war, doobtless!—But I maun be gaein, mem,
for we’re no vera like to agree! My Maister’s no o’ ae min’ wi’ you,
mem, aboot sic affairs—and sae I maun gang, and lea’ ye to yer ain
opingon! But I would jist remin’ ye, mem, that she’s at this present i’
_my_ hoose, wi my wife; and my wee bit lassie hings aboot her as gien
she was an angel come doon to see the bonny place this warl luks frae
up there.—Eh, puir lammie, the stanes oucht to be feower upo thae
hill-sides!”

“What for that, Maister Robertson?”

“’Cause there’s so mony o’ them whaur human herts oucht to be.—Come
awa, doggie!” he added, rising.

“Dear me, sir! haena ye hae a grain o’ patience to waur (_spend_) upon
a puir menseless body?” cried Marion, wringing her hands in dismay. “To
think _I_ sud be nice whaur my Lord was sae free!”

“Ay,” returned the minister, “and he was jist as clean as ever, wi’ mony
ane siclike as her inside the heart o’ him!—_Gang awa, and dinna dee
the like again_, was a’ he said to that ane!—and ye may weel be sure
she never did! And noo she and Mary are followin, wi’ yer ain Isy, i’
the vera futsteps o’ the great shepherd, throuw the gowany leys o’ the
New Jerus’lem—whaur it may be they ca’ her Isy yet, as they ca’ this
ane I hae to gang hame til.”

“Ca’ they her _that_, sir?—Eh, gar her come, gar her come! I wud fain
cry upo _Isy_ ance mair!—Sit ye doon, sir, shame upo’ me!—and tak a
bite efter yer lang walk!—Will ye no bide the nicht wi’ ’s, and gang
back by the mornin’s co’ch?”

“I wull that, mem—and thank ye kindly! I’m a bit fatiguit wi’ the hill
ro’d, and the walk a wee langer than I’m used til.—Ye maun hae peety
upo my kittle temper, mem, and no drive me to ower muckle shame o’
myself!” he concluded, wiping his forehead.

“And to think,” cried his hostess, “that my hard hert sud hae drawn sic
a word frae ane o’ the Lord’s servans that serve him day and nicht! I
beg yer pardon, and that richt heumbly, sir! I daurna say I’ll never do
the like again, but I’m no sae likly to transgress a second time as the
first.—Lord, keep the doors o’ my lips, that ill-faured words comena
thouchtless oot, and shame me and them that hear me!—I maun gang and
see aboot yer denner, sir! I s’ no be lang.”

“Yer gracious words, mem, are mair nor meat and drink to me. I could,
like Elijah, go i’ the stren’th o’ them—maybe something less than forty
days, but it wad be by the same sort o’ stren’th as that angels’-food
gied the prophet!”

Marion hurried none the less for such a word; and soon the minister had
eaten his supper, and was seated in the cool of a sweet summer-evening,
in the garden before the house, among roses and lilies and poppy-heads
and long pink-striped grasses, enjoying a pipe with the farmer, who had
anticipated the hour for unyoking, and hurried home to have a talk with
Mr. Robertson. The minister opened wide his heart, and told them all he
knew and thought of Isy. And so prejudiced were they in her favour
by what he said of her, and the arguments he brought to show that the
judgment of the world was in her case tyrannous and false, that what
anxiety might yet remain as to the new relation into which they
were about to enter, was soon absorbed in hopeful expectation of her
appearance.

“But,” he concluded, “you will have to be wise as serpents, lest aiblins
(_possibly_) ye kep (_intercept_) a lost sheep on her w’y back to the
shepherd, and gar her lie theroot (_out of doors_), exposed to the
prowlin wouf. Afore God, I wud rether share wi’ her in _that_ day, nor
wi’ them that keppit her!”

But when he reached home, the minister was startled, indeed dismayed by
the pallor that overwhelmed Isy’s countenance when she heard, following
his assurance of the welcome that awaited her, the name and abode of her
new friends.

“They’ll be wantin to ken a’thing!” she sobbed.

“Tell you them,” returned the minister, “everything they have a right
to know; they are good people, and will not ask more. Beyond that, they
will respect your silence.”

“There’s but ae thing, as ye ken, sir, that I canna, and winna tell. To
haud my tongue aboot that is the ae particle o’ honesty left possible to
me! It’s enough I should have been the cause of the poor man’s sin; and
I’m not going to bring upon him any of the consequences of it as well.
God keep the doors of my lips!”

“We will not go into the question whether you or he was the more to
blame,” returned the parson; “but I heartily approve of your resolve,
and admire your firmness in holding to it. The time _may_ come when you
_ought_ to tell; but until then, I shall not even allow myself to wonder
who the faithless man may be.”

Isy burst into tears.

“Don’t call him that, sir! Don’t drive me to doubt him. Don’t let the
thought cross my mind that he could have helped doing nothing! Besides,
I deserve nothing! And for my bonny bairn, he maun by this time be back
hame to Him that sent him!”

Thus assured that her secret would be respected by those to whom she
was going, she ceased to show further reluctance to accept the shelter
offered her. And, in truth, underneath the dread of encountering James
Blatherwick’s parents, lay hidden in her mind the fearful joy of a
chance of some day catching, herself unseen, a glimpse of the man whom
she still loved with the forgiving tenderness of a true, therefore
strong heart. With a trembling, fluttering bosom she took her place
on the coach beside Mr. Robertson, to go with him to the refuge he had
found for her.

Once more in the open world, with which she had had so much intercourse
that was other than joyous, that same world began at once to work the
will of its Maker upon her poor lacerated soul; and afar in its hidden
deeps the process of healing was already begun. Agony would many a time
return unbidden, would yet often rise like a crested wave, with menace
of overwhelming despair, but the Real, the True, long hidden from her
by the lying judgments of men and women, was now at length beginning to
reveal itself to her tear-blinded vision; Hope was lifting a feeble head
above the tangled weeds of the subsiding deluge; and ere long the girl
would see and understand how little cares the Father, whose judgment is
the truth of things, what at any time his child may have been or done,
the moment that child gives herself up to be made what He would have
her! Looking down into the hearts of men, He sees differences there of
which the self-important world takes no heed; many that count themselves
of the first, He sees the last—and what He sees, alone _is_: a
gutter-child, a thief, a girl who never in this world had even a notion
of purity, may lie smiling in the arms of the Eternal, while the head
of a lordly house that still flourishes like a green bay-tree, may be
wandering about with the dogs beyond the walls of the city.

Out in the open world, I say, the power of the present God began at once
to work upon Isobel, for there, although dimly, she yet looked into
His open face, sketched vaguely in the mighty something we call
Nature—chiefly on the great vault we call Heaven, the _Upheaved_.
Shapely but undefined; perfect in form, yet limitless in depth; blue and
persistent, yet ever evading capture by human heart in human eye; this
sphere of fashioned boundlessness, of definite shapelessness, called up
in her heart the formless children of upheavedness—grandeur, namely,
and awe; hope, namely, and desire: all rushed together toward the dawn
of the unspeakable One, who, dwelling in that heaven, is above all
heavens; mighty and unchangeable, yet childlike; inexorable, yet tender
as never was mother; devoted as never yet was child save one. Isy,
indeed, understood little of all this; yet she wept, she knew not why;
and it was not for sorrow.

But when, the coach-journey over, she turned her back upon the house
where her child lay, and entered the desolate hill-country, a strange
feeling began to invade her consciousness. It seemed at first but an old
mood, worn shadowy; then it seemed the return of an old dream; then a
painful, confused, half-forgotten memory; but at length it cleared and
settled into a conviction that she had been in the same region before,
and had had, although a passing, yet a painful acquaintance with it; and
at the last she concluded that she must be near the very spot where she
had left and lost her baby. All that had, up to that moment, befallen
her, seemed fused in a troubled conglomerate of hunger and cold and
weariness, of help and hurt, of deliverance and returning pain: they all
mingled inextricably with the scene around her, and there condensed into
the memory of that one event—of which this must assuredly be the actual
place! She looked upon widespread wastes of heather and peat, great
stones here and there, half-buried in it, half-sticking out of it:
surely she was waiting there for something to come to pass! surely
behind this veil of the Seen, a child must be standing with outstretched
arms, hungering after his mother! In herself that very moment must
Memory be trembling into vision! At Length her heart’s desire must be
drawing near to her expectant soul!

But suddenly, alas! her certainty of recollection, her assurance of
prophetic anticipation, faded from her, and of the recollection itself
remained nothing but a ruin! And all the time it took to dawn into
brilliance and fade out into darkness, had measured but a few weary
steps by the side of her companion, lost in the meditation of a glad
sermon for the next Sunday about the lost sheep carried home with
jubilance, and forgetting how unfit was the poor sheep beside him for
such a fatiguing tramp up hill and down, along what was nothing better
than the stony bed of a winter-torrent.

All at once Isy darted aside from the rough track, scrambled up the
steep bank, and ran like one demented into a great clump of heather,
which she began at once to search through and through. The minister
stopped bewildered, and stood to watch her, almost fearing for a moment
that she had again lost her wits. She got on the top of a stone in
the middle of the clump, turned several times round, gazed in every
direction over the moor, then descended with a hopeless look, and came
slowly back to him, saying—

“I beg your pardon, sir; I thought I had a glimpse of my infant through
the heather! This must be the very spot where I left him!”

The next moment she faltered feebly—

“Hae we far to gang yet, sir?” and before he could make her any answer,
staggered to the bank on the roadside, fell upon it, and lay still.

The minister immediately felt that he had been cruel in expecting her
to walk so far; he made haste to lay her comfortably on the short grass,
and waited anxiously, doing what he could to bring her to herself. He
could see no water near, but at least she had plenty of air!

In a little while she began to recover, sat up, and would have risen to
resume her journey. But the minister, filled with compunction, took her
up in his arms. They were near the crown of the ascent, and he could
carry her as far as that! She expostulated, but was unable to resist.
Light as she was, however, he found it no easy task to bear her up the
last of the steep rise, and was glad to set her down at the top—where
a fresh breeze was waiting to revive them both. She thanked him like
a child whose father had come to her help; and they seated themselves
together on the highest point of the moor, with a large, desolate land
on every side of them.

“Oh, sir, but ye _are_ good to me!” she murmured. “That brae just minded
me o’ the Hill of Difficulty in the Pilgrim’s Progress!”

“Oh, you know that story?” said the minister.

“My old grannie used to make me read it to her when she lay dying. I
thought it long and tiresome then, but since you took me to your house,
sir, I have remembered many things in it; I knew then that I was come to
the house of the Interpreter. You’ve made me understand, sir!”

“I am glad of that, Isy! You see I know some things that make me very
glad, and so I want them to make you glad too. And the thing that makes
me gladdest of all, is just that God is what he is. To know that such
a One is God over us and in us, makes of very being a most precious
delight. His children, those of them that know him, are all glad just
because he _is_, and they are his children. Do you think a strong man
like me would read sermons and say prayers and talk to people, doing
nothing but such shamefully easy work, if he did not believe what he
said?”

“I’m sure, sir, you have had hard enough work with me! I am a bad one
to teach! I thought I knew all that you have had such trouble to make
me see! I was in a bog of ignorance and misery, but now I am getting
my head up out of it, and seeing about me!—Please let me ask you one
thing, sir: how is it that, when the thought of God comes to me, I draw
back, afraid of him? If he be the kind of person you say he is, why
can’t I go close up to him?”

“I confess the same foolishness, my child, _at times_,” answered the
minister. “It can only be because we do not yet see God as he is—and
that must be because we do not yet really understand Jesus—do not see
the glory of God in his face. God is just like Jesus—exactly like him!”

And the parson fell a wondering how it could be that so many, gentle and
guileless as this woman-child, recoiled from the thought of the perfect
One. Why were they not always and irresistibly drawn toward the very
idea of God? Why, at least, should they not run to see and make sure
whether God was indeed such a one or not? whether he was really Love
itself—or only loved them after a fashion? It set him thinking afresh
about many things; and he soon began to discover that he had in fact
been teaching a good many things without _knowing_ them; for how could
he _know_ things that were not true, and therefore _could not_ be known?
He had indeed been _saying_ that God was Love, but he had yet been
teaching many things about him that were not lovable!

They sat thinking and talking, with silences between; and while they
thought and talked, the day-star was all the time rising unnoted in
their hearts. At length, finding herself much stronger, Isy rose, and
they resumed their journey.

The door stood open to receive them; but ere they reached it, a
bright-looking little woman, with delicate lines of ingrained red in a
sorrowful face, appeared in it, looking out with questioning eyes—like
a mother-bird just loosening her feet from the threshold of her nest to
fly and meet them. Through the film that blinded those expectant
eyes, Marion saw what manner of woman she was that drew nigh, and her
motherhood went out to her. For, in the love-witchery of Isy’s yearning
look, humbly seeking acceptance, and in her hesitating approach
half-checked by gentle apology, Marion imagined she saw her own Isy
coming back from the gates of Death, and sprang to meet her. The
mediating love of the minister, obliterating itself, had made him linger
a step or two behind, waiting what would follow: when he saw the two
folded each in the other’s arms, and the fountain of love thus break
forth at once from their encountering hearts, his soul leaped for joy of
the new-created love—new, but not the less surely eternal; for God
is Love, and Love is that which is, and was, and shall be for
evermore—boundless, unconditioned, self-existent, creative! “Truly,”
he said in himself, “God is Love, and God is all and in all! He is no
abstraction; he is the one eternal Individual God! In him Love evermore
breaks forth anew into fresh personality—in every new consciousness, in
every new child of the one creating Father. In every burning heart, in
everything that hopes and fears and is, Love is the creative presence,
the centre, the source of life, yea Life itself; yea, God himself!”

The elder woman drew herself a little back, held the poor white-faced
thing at arms’-length, and looked her through the face into the heart.

“My bonny lamb!” she cried, and pressed her again to her bosom. “Come
hame, and be a guid bairn, and ill man sall never touch ye, or gar ye
greit ony mair! There’s _my_ man waitin for ye, to tak ye, and haud ye
safe!”

Isy looked up, and over the shoulder of her hostess saw the strong
paternal face of the farmer, full of silent welcome. For the strange
emotion that filled him he did not seek to account: he had nothing to do
with that; his will was lord over it!

“Come ben the hoose, lassie,” he said, and led the way to the parlour,
where the red sunset was shining through the low gable window, filling
the place with the glamour of departing glory. “Sit ye doon upo the sofa
there; ye maun be unco tired! Surely ye haena come a’ the lang ro’d frae
Tiltowie upo yer ain twa wee feet?”

“’Deed has she,” answered the minister, who had followed them into the
room; “the mair shame to me ’at loot her dee ’t!”

Marion lingered outside, wiping away the tears that would keep flowing.
For the one question, “What can be amiss wi’ Jamie?” had returned upon
her, haunting and harrying her heart; and with it had come the idea,
though vague and formless, that their good-will to the wandering outcast
might perhaps do something to make up for whatever ill thing Jamie might
have done. At last, instead of entering the parlour after them, she
turned away to the kitchen, and made haste to get ready their supper.

Isy sank back in the wide sofa, lost in relief; and the minister, when
he saw her look of conscious refuge and repose, said to himself—

“She is feeling as we shall all feel when first we know nothing near us
but the Love itself that was before all worlds!—when there is no doubt
more, and no questioning more!”

But the heart of the farmer was full of the old uncontent, the old
longing after the heart of his boy, that had never learned to cry
“_Father!_”

But soon they sat down to their meal. While they ate, hardly any one
spoke, and no one missed the speech or was aware of the silence, until
the bereaved Isobel thought of her child, and burst into tears. Then the
mother who sorrowed with such a different, and so much bitterer sorrow,
divining her thought and whence it came, rose, and from behind her
said—

“Noo ye maun jist come awa wi’ me, and I s’ pit ye til yer bed, and lea’
ye there!—Na, na; say gude nicht to naebody!—Ye’ll see the minister
again i’ the mornin!”

With that she took Isy away, half-carrying her close-pressed, and
half-leading her; for Marion, although no bigger than Isy, was much
stronger, and could easily have carried her.

That night both mothers slept well, and both dreamed of their mothers
and of their children. But in the morning nothing remained of their two
dreams except two hopes in the one Father.

When Isy entered the little parlour, she found she had slept so long
that breakfast was over, the minister smoking his pipe in the garden,
and the farmer busy in his yard. But Marion heard her, and brought her
breakfast, beaming with ministration; then thinking she would eat it
better if left to herself, went back to her work. In about five minutes,
however, Isy joined her, and began at once to lend a helping hand.

“Hoot, hoot, my dear!” cried her hostess, “ye haena taen time eneuch
to make a proaper brakfast o’ ’t! Gang awa back, and put mair intil ye.
Gien ye dinna learn to ate, we s’ never get ony guid o’ ye!”

“I just can’t eat for gladness,” returned Isy. “Ye’re that good to me,
that I dare hardly think aboot it; it’ll gar me greit!—Lat me help ye,
mem, and I’ll grow hungry by dennertime!”

Mrs. Blatherwick understood, and said no more. She showed her what
she might set about; and Isy, happy as a child, came and went at
her commands, rejoicing. Probably, had she started in life with less
devotion, she might have fared better; but the end was not yet, and the
end must be known before we dare judge: result explains history. It is
enough for the present to say that, with the comparative repose of mind
she now enjoyed, with the good food she had, and the wholesome exercise,
for Mrs. Blatherwick took care she should not work too hard, with the
steady kindness shown her, and the consequent growth of her faith and
hope, Isy’s light-heartedness first, and then her good looks began to
return; so that soon the dainty little creature was both prettier and
lovelier than before. At the same time her face and figure, her ways
and motions, went on mingling themselves so inextricably with Marion’s
impressions of her vanished Isy, that at length she felt as if she
never could be able to part with her. Nor was it long before she assured
herself that she was equal to anything that had to be done in the house;
and that the experience of a day or two would make her capable of
the work of the dairy as well. Thus Isy and her mistress, for so Isy
insisted on regarding and calling her, speedily settled into their new
relation.

It did sometimes cross the girl’s mind, and that with a sting of doubt,
whether it was fair to hide from her new friends the full facts of her
sorrowful history; but to quiet her conscience she had only to reflect
that for the sake of the son they loved, she must keep jealous guard
over her silence. Further than James’s protection, she had no design,
cherished no scheme. The idea of compelling, or even influencing him to
do her justice, never once crossed her horizon. On the contrary, she was
possessed by the notion that she had done him a great wrong, and shrank
in horror from the danger of rendering it irretrievable. She had never
thought the thing out as between her and him, never even said to herself
that he too had been to blame. Her exaggerated notion of the share she
had in the fault, had lodged and got fixed in her mind, partly from
her acquaintance with the popular judgment concerning such as she, and
partly from her humble readiness to take any blame to herself. Even had
she been capable of comparing the relative consequences, the injury she
had done his prospects as a minister, would have seemed to her revering
soul a far greater wrong than any suffering or loss he had brought upon
her. For what was she beside him? What was the ruin of her life to the
frustration of such prospects as his? The sole alleviation of her
misery was that she seemed hitherto to have escaped involving him in the
results of her lack of self-restraint, which results, she was certain,
remained concealed from him, as from every one in any way concerned
with him in them. In truth, never was man less worthy of it, or more
devotedly shielded! And never was hidden wrong to the woman turned more
eagerly and persistently into loving service to the man’s parents! Many
and many a time did the heart of James’s mother, as she watched Isy’s
deft and dainty motions, regret, even with bitterness, that such a
capable and love-inspiring girl should have rendered herself unworthy
of her son—for, notwithstanding what she regarded as the disparity of
their positions, she would gladly have welcomed Isy as a daughter, had
she but been spotless, and fit to be loved by him.

In the evenings, when the work of the day was done, Isy used to ramble
about the moor, in the lingering rays of the last of the sunset, and the
now quickly shortening twilight. In those hours unhasting, gentle, and
so spiritual in their tone that they seem to come straight from the
eternal spaces where is no recalling and no forgetting, where time and
space are motionless, and the spirit is at rest, Isy first began to read
with conscious understanding. For now first she fell into the company of
books—old-fashioned ones no doubt, but perhaps even therefore the more
fit for her, who was an old-fashioned, gentle, ignorant, thoughtful
child. Among the rest in the farmhouse, she came upon the two volumes
of a book called The Preceptor, which contained various treatises laying
down “the first principles of Polite Learning:” these drew her eager
attention; and with one or other of the not very handy volumes in her
hand, she would steal out of sight of the farm, and lapt in the solitude
of the moor, would sit and read until at last the light could reveal
not a word more. Even the Geometry she found in them attracted her not a
little; the Rhetoric and Poetry drew her yet more; but most of all, the
Natural History, with its engravings of beasts and birds, poor as they
were, delighted her; and from these antiquated repertories she gathered
much, and chiefly that most valuable knowledge, some acquaintance with
her own ignorance. There also, in a garret over the kitchen, she found
an English translation of Klopstock’s Messiah, a poem which, in the
middle of the last and in the present century, caused a great excitement
in Germany, and did not a little, I believe, for the development of
religious feeling in that country, where the slow-subsiding ripple of
its commotion is possibly not altogether unfelt even at the present
day. She read the volume through as she strolled in those twilights, not
without risking many a fall over bush and stone ere practice taught her
to see at once both the way for her feet over the moor, and that for her
eyes over the printed page. The book both pleased and suited her, the
parts that interested her most being those about the repentant angel,
Abaddon; who, if I remember aright, haunted the steps of the Saviour,
and hovered about the cross while he was crucified. The great question
with her for a long time was, whether the Saviour must not have forgiven
him; but by slow degrees it became at last clear to her, that he who
came but to seek and to save the lost, could not have closed the door
against one that sought return to 

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