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 his fealty. It was not until she
knew the soutar, however, that at length she understood the tireless
redeeming of the Father, who had sent men blind and stupid and
ill-conditioned, into a world where they had to learn almost everything.
There were some few books of a more theological sort, which happily she
neither could understand nor was able to imagine she understood, and
which therefore she instinctively refused, as affording nourishment
neither for thought nor feeling. There was, besides, Dr. Johnson’s
_Rasselas_, which mildly interested her; and a book called _Dialogues of
Devils_, which she read with avidity. And thus, if indeed her ignorance
did not become rapidly less, at least her knowledge of its existence
became slowly greater.
And all the time the conviction grew upon her, that she had been in
that region before, and that in truth she could not be far from the spot
where she laid her child down, and lost him.