AN OLD ENEMY.
One Sunday evening--it must have been just while Malcolm and Blue Peter
stood in the Strand listening to a voluntary that filled and overflowed
an otherwise empty church--a short, stout, elderly woman was walking
lightly along the pavement of a street of small houses, not far from a
thoroughfare which, crowded like a market the night before, had now two
lively borders only--of holiday-makers mingled with church-goers. The
bells for evening prayers were ringing. The sun had vanished behind the
smoke and steam of London; indeed he might have set--it was hard to say
without consulting the almanac: but it was not dark yet. The lamps in
the street were lighted, however, and also in the church she passed.
She carried a small Bible in her hand, folded in a pocket-handkerchief,
and looked a decent woman from the country. Her quest was a place where
the minister said his prayers and did not read them out of a book: she
had been brought up a Presbyterian, and had prejudices in favour of
what she took for the simpler form of worship. Nor had she gone much
farther before she came upon a chapel which seemed to promise all she
wanted. She entered, and a sad-looking woman showed her to a seat.
She sat down square, fixing her eyes at once on the pulpit, rather
dimly visible over many pews, as if it were one of the mountains that
surrounded her Jerusalem. The place was but scantily lighted, for
the community at present could ill afford to burn daylight. When the
worship commenced, and the congregation rose to sing, she got up with
a jerk that showed the duty as unwelcome as unexpected, but seemed by
the way she settled herself in her seat for the prayer, already thereby
reconciled to the differences between Scotch church-customs and English
chapel-customs. She went to sleep softly, and woke warily as the prayer
came to a close.
While the congregation again sang, the minister who had officiated
hitherto left the pulpit, and another ascended to preach. When he began
to read the text, the woman gave a little start, and leaning forward,
peered very hard to gain a satisfactory sight of his face between the
candles on each side of it, but without success; she soon gave up her
attempted scrutiny, and thence-forward seemed to listen with marked
attention. The sermon was a simple, earnest, at times impassioned
appeal to the hearts and consciences of the congregation. There was
little attempt in it at the communication of knowledge of any kind, but
the most indifferent hearer must have been aware that the speaker was
earnestly straining after something. To those who understood, it was as
if he would force his way through every stockade of prejudice, ditch
of habit, rampart of indifference, moat of sin, wall of stupidity, and
curtain of ignorance, until he stood face to face with the conscience
of his hearer.
“Rank Arminianism!” murmured the woman. “Whaur’s the gospel o’ that?”
But still she listened with seeming intentness, while something of
wonder mingled with the something else that set in motion every live
wrinkle in her forehead, and made her eyebrows undulate like writhing
snakes.
At length the preacher rose to eloquence, an eloquence inspired by
the hunger of his soul after truth eternal, and the love he bore to
his brethren who fed on husks--an eloquence innocent of the tricks of
elocution or the arts of rhetoric: to have discovered himself using one
of them would have sent him home to his knees in shame and fear--an
eloquence not devoid of discords, the strings of his instrument being
now slack with emotion, now tense with vision, yet even in those
discords shrouding the essence of all harmony. When he ceased, the
silence that followed seemed instinct with thought, with that speech of
the spirit which no longer needs the articulating voice.
“It _canna_ be the stickit minister!” said the woman to herself.
The congregation slowly dispersed, but she sat motionless until all
were gone, and the sad-faced woman was putting out the lights. Then
she rose, drew near through the gloom, and asked her the name of the
gentleman who had given them such a grand sermon. The woman told her,
adding that, although he had two or three times spoken to them at the
prayer meeting--such words of comfort, the poor soul added, as she had
never in her life heard before--this was the first time he had occupied
the pulpit. The woman thanked her, and went out into the street.
“God bless me!” she said to herself, as she walked away; “it _is_ the
stickit minister! Weel, won’ers ’ill never cease. The age o’ mirracles
’ill be come back, I’m thinkin’!” And she laughed an oily contemptuous
laugh in the depths of her profuse person.
What caused her astonishment need cause none to the thoughtful mind.
The man was no longer burdened with any anxiety as to his reception
by his hearers; he was hampered by no necromantic agony to raise the
dead letter of the sermon buried in the tail-pocket of his coat; he had
thirty years more of life, and a whole granary filled with such truths
as grow for him who is ever breaking up the clods of his being to the
spiritual sun and wind and dew; and above all, he had an absolute yet
expanding confidence in his Father in heaven, and a tender love for
everything human. The tongue of the dumb had been in training for song.
And first of all he had learned to be silent while he had nought to
reveal. He had been trained to babble about religion, but through God’s
grace had failed in his babble, and that was in itself a success. He
would have made one of the swarm that year after year cast themselves
like flies on the burning sacrifice that they may live on its flesh,
with evil odours extinguishing the fire that should have gone up in
flame; but a burning coal from off the altar had been laid on his lips,
and had silenced them in torture. For thirty years he had held his
peace, until the word of God had become as a fire in his bones: it was
now breaking forth in flashes.
On the Monday, Mrs Catanach sought the shop of the deacon that was an
ironmonger, secured for herself a sitting in the chapel for the next
half-year, and prepaid the sitting.
“Wha kens,” she said to herself, “what birds may come to gether worms
an’ golachs (_beetles_) aboot the boody-craw (_scarecrow_), Sanny
Grame!”
She was one to whom intrigue, founded on the knowledge of private
history, was as the very breath of her being: she could not exist in
composure without it. Wherever she went, therefore--and her changes
of residence had not been few--it was one of her first cares to enter
into connection with some religious community, first that she might
have scope for her calling--that of a midwife, which in London would
probably be straightened towards that of mere monthly nurse--and next
that thereby she might have good chances for the finding of certain
weeds of occult power that spring mostly in walled gardens, and are
rare on the roadside--poisonous things mostly, called generically
_secrets_.
At this time she had been for some painful months in possession of a
most important one--painful, I say, because all those months she had
discovered no possibility of making use of it. The trial had been
hard. Her one passion was to drive the dark horses of society, and
here she had been sitting week after week on the coach-box over the
finest team she had ever handled, ramping and “foming tarre,” unable
to give them their heads because the demon-grooms had disappeared and
left the looped traces dangling from their collars. She had followed
Florimel from Portlossie--to Edinburgh, and then to London, but not yet
had seen how to approach her with probable advantage. In the meantime
she had renewed old relations with a certain herb-doctor in Kentish
Town, at whose house she was now accommodated. There she had already
begun to entice the confidences of maid-servants, by use of what evil
knowledge she had, and pretence to more, giving herself out as a wise
woman. Her faith never failed her that, if she but kept handling the
fowls of circumstance, one or other of them must at length drop an egg
of opportunity in her lap. When she stumbled upon the schoolmaster,
preaching in a chapel near her own haunts, she felt something more like
a gust of gratitude to the dark power that sat behind and pulled the
strings of events--for thus she saw through her own projected phantom
the heart of the universe--than she had ever yet experienced. If there
were such things as special providences, here, she said, was one; if
not, then it was better luck than she had looked for. The main point in
it was that the dominie seemed likely after all to turn out a popular
preacher; then beyond a doubt other Scotch people would gather to him;
this or that person might turn up, and anyone might turn out useful;
one thread might be knotted to another, until all together had made a
clue to guide her straight through the labyrinth to the centre, to lay
her hand on the collar of the demon of the house of Lossie. It was the
biggest game of her life, and had been its game long before the opening
of my narrative.