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.