_A FATHER'S CRUCIFIXION_
It is from joy alone that real sorrow can be brewed. Were joy to perish
from the earth human lips would soon forget the bitter taste of anguish.
The only intolerable clouds are those which follow swift upon some rosy
morn, frowning its every sunbeam into darkness, pursuing its fugitive
smiles as the hound pursues the deer. The soul's great sickness is in
joy's relapse.
Into the tide of our daughter's virgin gladness her mother and I were
soon gladly swept. Love and joy are incendiary things and we soon
succumbed to the sweet contagion. Apart altogether from our daughter's
choice, he might well have been our own; for Angus Strachan was strong
of body and vigorous of mind, and pure of soul. He had made swift
strides in his chosen calling, and was now a partner in one of the
manufacturing firms which were New Jedboro's pride. At the door of
industry he had knocked with patient hand, and wealth had answered to
that knock herself. He was a man of influence, ever increasing, in New
Jedboro. In St. Cuthbert's, he was held in high esteem by all, and the
next election, we knew, would call him to the elder's honoured place.
Prepossessing in appearance, manly in bearing, musical in speech,
fragrant in character, Angus might well wake the echoes of even our
Margaret's noble heart.
Wherefore there was joy in St. Cuthbert's manse, and in its three
devoted hearts, beating high with a common hope. Our morning sun shone
radiantly.
But the eclipse came suddenly. It was again the Sabbath evening, and
Margaret again was nestling close, her face bearing more and more the
beauty which love's tuition gives.
"Father," she suddenly began, "I want to ask you something."
"What is it, child?" I said.
"You know that verse in the Bible that says:--'Who did sin, this man or
his parents?' You know the verse. Well father, who did sin? Was it the
man, or was it his parents?"
"What a strange question, child! What on earth has that to do with you?"
"Never mind, father--let us stick to the text," she answered. "You are a
minister and I want you to stick to the text. Tell me who did sin?"
"Well, if the man's blindness was because of sin, since he was born
blind and since he couldn't sin before he was born, I suppose it must
have been his parents," I answered slowly. "What difference does it
make to you?" For I was curious to know.
"And don't you think," she went on unheedingly, "that it was cruel for
anybody to hold that poor man responsible for his parents' sin?"
"I suppose so, but why are you catechizing me like this, burrowing among
old questions of two thousand years ago?"
"Oh, father, there are no old questions," and there was a strange cry in
her voice, "because there are no old lives. They are all new every
day--they all live again, father. Sin is new and sorrow is new--and the
Cross is new, father--so new and so cruel," she cried, the tears now
flowing fast, "and that question isn't old--it is asked every day. And
it is asked of me--and I have to answer it, and answer it as you have
done, and as the compassionate Saviour would have done," she concluded,
her voice trembling with its passion.
"What on earth do you mean, Margaret? Sin, sorrow, the Cross, what have
these to do with you?" I asked eagerly.
"It was only last night that Angus told me. Poor fellow, his face was
white when he came and his look was full of agony. Of course I asked him
to tell me what was the matter. We were in the library, for I always
took him there because it has a fireplace, and we both love to watch
the fire. I had laid the wood myself last night before Angus came, and
there was never task so dear--it was the gloaming when I laid it, but I
knew it would soon be bright.
"But about his answer to my question. Surely no maiden yet had so
strange an answer. For, without a word, he went to the desk and took the
Bible in his hands. When he had found the place he stood before me and
read me this:
"'Then cometh Jesus with them unto the place called Gethsemane.... My
soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.... My Father if this cup may not
pass away from Me except I drink it, Thy will be done.'
"His voice was strange to me, and I was trembling for I didn't know what
he meant. But I knew it was my Judgment Day.
"'Angus,' I said faintly, 'what do you mean? What has that to do with
us? That is a story of two thousand years ago.'
"'Margaret,' he answered, 'the story of Gethsemane is never old. Its
willows cast the same shadows yet as those into which our Saviour crept.
And that cup is never empty, though human lips are ever draining it to
its dregs. It is close to my lips to-night--and to your sweet lips too,
my darling--and we must drink it together.'
"'Together, Angus,' I said, 'thank God for that.' The word was sweet.
Oh, father, head-winds are precious unto love if only love's hands
together hold the sail.
"After a long silence Angus spoke again and my poor heart had to listen.
"'Margaret,' he began, 'no man ever renounced what I renounce to-night,
for no man ever loved as I love you, though I reckon many a man would
swear the same, knowing not his perjury--for none can know my love. And
joy, and pride, and home--and all with which our pure thought had
enriched our home--all these must I surrender now. I must give up
everything but love--and that is mine forever. Oh, Margaret, I won you,
did I not? I, a poor Scottish laddie, a herd among the heather. I came
to Canada lang syne, and by and by I won you, did I not, Margaret?
"'But I must give you up--and I will tell you why.
"'It was not hard for me to find that story of Gethsemane. When I was
but a laddie among the Scottish hills my mother's Bible aye opened at
that very place; and laddie though I was, I noticed it, for the page was
marked and worn and soiled with tears.
"'I asked my mother many a time why the Book aye opened there and what
soiled and marked it so. She told me not for long, saying only that it
was marked and soiled before her laddie had been born.
"'But the night before I sailed from Annan Foot, she put her arms about
me and she told me of the anguish of her soul and all about the
tear-stained place--for she told me of her own Gethsemane and of the
bitter cup, and said that her laddie's lips could pass it by no more
than hers.
"'And ever since that night ma ain buik aye opens at Gethsemane. Oh,
Margaret, you understand, do you not?' he cried, 'I am not worthy of you
and of your love.
"'The far-off strain of sin starting from another heart than mine
(another than my mother's, by the living God) has stained my name. Mine
is an unhallowed name. Mine is a shadowed birth. Mine is the perpetual
Gethsemane and mine the unemptied cup!
"'Forgive me, Margaret, for the wrong I did you. I should never have
spoken love to you at all, or if I did, I should have told you of the
blight upon it; but the sky and the trees and the hill were clothed that
night in the beauty that wrapt my soul and I thought that God had
forgotten and had shrived me in the same sacred light. But He does not
forget. That light itself cannot drive the shadow from Gethsemane and
the cup has never since been absent from my lips.'
"Angus stopped--and God watched over me; for He pitied me.
"I thought of you and mother first, but God still kept my will in His. I
wanted God to lead me and I asked Him to help me--and I waited.
"'Angus,' I said at last, 'your mother loved him, did she not?'
"'Loved!' he answered, 'her pure heart knew no other passion. My own is
but an echo. Behold! I was shapen in love.'
"'Then,' said I, 'let her that is without love cast the first stone at
her. If any sinning woman love, she has an advocate with the Father. Oh,
Angus! Come to me!' I cried, for I was fainting."
* * * * *
Her story was finished now and my daughter added not a word. But she
arose and stood before me, her eyes searching my pallid face for a
verdict, if haply it might be like her own. I noticed the woman's
tactics in her move, for woman's genius makes its home within her soul;
she had left my arms that I might, if I would, hold them out to her
again and take her back forever. But the arms have their hinges in the
heart and mine was tight locked like a vise.
"Margaret," I said at last, and my voice was like the voice of age, "you
do not mean that you suffered this man's caresses after he told you what
you have just told me?"
Sorrow looked from Margaret's eyes.
"Suffered!" she replied, "suffered! I have learned what suffering is,
God knows, but He knows it was not there I learned it. 'This man.' Oh,
father, I love him--am I all alone?"
How strong is the weakness of love! There is no panoply like that which
love provides, and she who bears it has the whole armour of God.
"Margaret," I pleaded, "you surely will not ruin your life and break
your mother's heart and mine by any madness such as this."
"'Ruin my life,' father! what ruin can there be to the life that loves
and is loved? I have no life at all apart from him. It seems so simple.
I can't take back my heart!"
"Perhaps so, my daughter," I replied, "perhaps so. I know your love is
no fickle thing. But Margaret, you do not propose to link your life with
his, shadowed as you yourself declare it to have been from his birth?"
"Father, it is already linked. It was not I who linked our lives, nor
was it he; nor was it both together--it was God. Surely He wouldn't have
let me love and trust, if it was wrong. I want you to help me; I am all
alone."
"But you do not mean," I cried with growing warmth, "that I, the
minister of St. Cuthbert's Kirk, New Jedboro, am to be called upon to
take into my family and to acknowledge as my son, a man who cannot speak
his father's name, who cannot," for I was maddening fast, "speak it even
to himself, forsooth, because he knows not what it is?"
"Oh, father, do not press me so; I love you--and I love him too,
and----"
"But about our family?" I asked hotly.
"I forgot about families," she sobbed. "Oh, father, teach this poor
heart of mine to love no more and I will obey your every wish--but it is
hard for love to serve two masters."
My heart was wrung by her plaintive voice; but love dwells hard by
cruelty, and my self-control was going fast. Let those defend me who
have known my agony.
"You know, I suppose, the result that will issue from your madness? You
know what it will mean to your future relations here?" I asked hoarsely,
explaining my threat by a glance about the room.
"Don't call it madness, father," she replied, pleadingly. "There is no
madness in love. I cannot help it, father. Why should I? Surely Angus is
the same as he was when first I loved him. I haven't learned anything
new about the soul of him, father."
"But his origin?" I interrupted.
"But he is good, father,--and kind--and true--and he loves me."
It was but a moment till I was past the bounds of reason.
Disappointment, pride, shame, anger--all these had their cruel way with
me. I am covered with confusion as with a garment while I try to record
what followed, though I could not tell it all, even if I would. There is
no cruelty like the cruelty of love. For the anguished soul pours out
the vials of its remorse and self-reproach upon the well loved head, and
fury waxes with its shame.
"I want none of your preaching," and my voice was coarse with anger;
"you are a willful and disobedient child and you may as well learn first
as last who is the master of this house. Do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear,--and my heart is broken. You want me to go away and not to
see me any more. And I don't know where to go."
She was kneeling now and the tears were dropping hot upon my hand, which
she had taken in both of hers. "Oh, father, when birdlings leave the
nest, surely God wants them to go, because He gives them wings. Father,
dear, oh, do not push me out in this cruel way. I want to keep you and
Angus both--and mother. Am I really wrong?
"Father, you are a preacher of the Everlasting Gospel, and doesn't that
say we were all born wrong and need to be born again? You said only last
Sunday that if we're once on the Rock, God forgets all about the pit and
the miry clay. And you said God makes the past new--all new, and that
all the redeemed ones are just the same in His sight--all good, and with
the past away behind them. I thought it was beautiful, because I thought
about Angus--and it seemed just like the Saviour's way."
My heart was wrung with a great desire to take the bended form unto
myself. I half moved forward to kiss the lips of this kneeling priestess
unto love. But as I did so the memory of other lips that had been
pressed to them rolled in upon me and swept away the better impulse. I
faltered into compromise.
"Margaret, you are still my daughter and I am touched by what you say.
Let us find common ground. Promise me that you will suspend judgment in
this matter for a year, your promise meantime to be revoked and at the
end of that time, we will take it up afresh. This will give time for
sober judgment."
But her blanched face turned to mine, and the white lips spoke again.
"Oh, spare me, father, for I cannot--you know I cannot--oh, father, pity
me!"
My soul flamed with ungovernable anger. I did pity her and this it was
that stirred my cruelty. For my soul relapsed to barbarous coarseness
and I said: "Then choose between us--you can have your ----," and I
called him an awful word, the foulest of all words, whose very sound
speaks the shame it means to tell, the curse of humanity hissed in its
nauseous syllables.
And more--but how can I write it down! I did not strike her--but I
thrust her from me; I laid my coward hand upon her shoulder--not in
violence nor heavily, but eternal menace was in it. For I pushed her
from me, crying brutally: "Quote me another Scripture. Have you not
chosen the better part? There is the door which his shadow first
accursed--you see the door?" and I hurled the poisoned word at her
again.
She looked at me but once--as one, suddenly awakening, looks at her
assassin. Then she went out, a lover as white as snow.