Never dawned Sunday upon soul more wretched. He had not indeed to climb
into his watchman’s tower without the pretence of a proclamation, but on
that very morning his father had put the mare between the shafts of the
gig to drive his wife to Tiltowie and their son’s church, instead of the
nearer and more accessible one in the next parish, whither they oftener
went. Arrived there, it was not wonderful they should find themselves
so dissatisfied with the spiritual food set before them, as to wish
heartily they had remained at home, or driven to the nearer church.
The moment the service was over, Mr. Blatherwick felt much inclined to
return at once, without waiting an interview with his son; for he had no
remark to make on the sermon that would be pleasant either for his son
or his wife to hear; but Marion combated the impulse with entreaties
that grew almost angry, and Peter was compelled to yield, although
sullenly. They waited in the churchyard for the minister’s appearance.
“Weel, Jeemie,” said his father, shaking hands with him limply, “yon
was some steeve parritch ye gied us this mornin!—and the meal itsel was
baith auld and soor!”
The mother gave her son a pitiful smile, as if in deprecation of her
husband’s severity, but said not a word; and James, haunted by the taste
of failure the sermon had left in his own mouth, and possibly troubled
by sub-conscious motions of self-recognition, could hardly look his
father in the face, and felt as if he had been rebuked by him before all
the congregation.
“Father,” he replied in a tone of some injury, “you do not know how
difficult it is to preach a fresh sermon every Sunday!”
“Ca’ ye yon fresh, Jeemie? To me it was like the fuistit husks o’ the
half-faimisht swine! Man, I wuss sic provender would drive yersel whaur
there’s better and to spare! Yon was lumps o’ brose in a pig-wash o’
stourum! The tane was eneuch to choke, and the tither to droon ye!”
James made a wry face, and the sight of his annoyance broke the ice
gathering over the well-spring in his mother’s heart; tears rose in her
eyes, and for one brief moment she saw the minister again her bairn.
But he gave her no filial response; ambition, and greed of the praise of
men, had blocked in him the movements of the divine, and corrupted his
wholesomest feelings, so that now he welcomed freely as a conviction the
suggestion that his parents had never cherished any sympathy with him
or his preaching; which reacted in a sudden flow of resentment, and a
thickening of the ice on his heart. Some fundamental shock must dislodge
that rooted, overmastering ice, if ever his wintered heart was to feel
the power of a reviving Spring!
The threesum family stood in helpless silence for a few moments; then
the father said to the mother—
“I doobt we maun be settin oot for hame, Mirran!”
“Will you not come into the manse, and have something before you go?”
said James, not without anxiety lest his housekeeper should be taken at
unawares, and their acceptance should annoy her: he lived in constant
dread of offending his housekeeper!
“Na, I thank ye,” returned his father: “it wad taste o’ stew!” (_blown
dust_).
It was a rude remark; but Peter was not in a kind mood; and when love
itself is unkind, it is apt to be burning and bitter and merciless.
Marion burst into tears. James turned away, and walked home with a gait
of wounded dignity. Peter went in haste toward the churchyard gate, to
interrupt with the bit his mare’s feed of oats. Marion saw his hands
tremble pitifully as he put the headstall over the creature’s ears, and
reproached herself that she had given him such a cold-hearted son. She
climbed in a helpless way into the gig, and sat waiting for her husband.
“I’m that dry ’at I could drink cauld watter!” he said, as he took his
place beside her.
They drove from the place of tombs, but they carried death with them,
and left the sunlight behind them.
Neither spoke a word all the way. Not until she was dismounting at their
own door, did the mother venture her sole remark, “Eh, sirs!” It meant
a world of unexpressed and inexpressible misery. She went straight up to
the little garret where she kept her Sunday bonnet, and where she said
her prayers when in especial misery. Thence she descended after a
while to her bedroom, there washed her face, and sadly prepared for
a hungerless encounter with the dinner Isy had been getting ready for
them—hoping to hear something about the sermon, perhaps even some
little word about the minister himself. But Isy too must share in the
disappointment of that vainly shining Sunday morning! Not a word passed
between her master and mistress. Their son was called the pastor of the
flock, but he was rather the porter of the sheepfold than the shepherd
of the sheep. He was very careful that the church should be properly
swept and sometimes even garnished; but about the temple of the Holy
Ghost, the hearts of his sheep, he knew nothing, and cared as little.
The gloom of his parents, their sense of failure and loss, grew and
deepened all the dull hot afternoon, until it seemed almost to pass
their endurance. At last, however, it abated, as does every pain, for
life is at its root: thereto ordained, it slew itself by exhaustion.
“But,” thought the mother, “there’s Monday coming, and what am I to
do then?” With the new day would return the old trouble, the gnawing,
sickening pain that she was childless: her daughter was gone, and no
son was left her! Yet the new day when it came, brought with it its new
possibility of living one day more!
But the minister was far more to be pitied than those whose misery he
was. All night long he slept with a sense of ill-usage sublying his
consciousness, and dominating his dreams; but with the sun came a doubt
whether he had not acted in unseemly fashion, when he turned and left
his father and mother in the churchyard. Of course they had not treated
him well; but what would his congregation, some of whom might have been
lingering in the churchyard, have thought, to see him leave them as he
did? His only thought, however, was to take precautions against their
natural judgment of his behaviour.
After his breakfast, he set out, his custom of a Monday morning, for
what he called a quiet stroll; but his thoughts kept returning, ever
with fresh resentment, to the soutar’s insinuation—for such he counted
it—on the Saturday. Suddenly, uninvited, and displacing the phantasm of
her father, arose before him the face of Maggie; and with it the sudden
question, What then was the real history of the baby on whom she spent
such an irrational amount of devotion. The soutar’s tale of her finding
him was too apocryphal! Might not Maggie have made a slip? Or why should
the pretensions of the soutar be absolutely trusted? Surely he had, some
time or other, heard a rumour! A certain satisfaction arose with the
suggestion that this man, so ready to believe evil of his neighbour, had
not kept his own reputation, or that of his house, perhaps, undefiled.
He tried to rebuke himself the next moment, it is true, for having
harboured a moment’s satisfaction in the wrong-doing of another: it was
unbefitting the pastor of a Christian flock! But the thought came and
came again, and he took no continuous trouble to cast it out. When he
went home, he put a question or two to his housekeeper about the little
one, but she only smiled paukily, and gave him no answer.
After his two-o’clock dinner, he thought it would be Christian-like to
forgive his parents: he would therefore call at Stonecross—which would
tend to wipe out any undesirable offence on the minds of his parents,
and also to prevent any gossip that might injure him in his sacred
profession! He had not been to see them for a long time; his visits to
them gave him no satisfaction; but he never dreamed of attributing that
to his own want of cordiality. He judged it well, however, to avoid any
appearance of evil, and therefore thought it might be his duty to pay
them in future a hurried call about once a month. For the past, he
excused himself because of the distance, and his not being a good
walker! Even now that he had made up his mind he was in no haste to set
out, but had a long snooze in his armchair first: it was evening when he
climbed the hill and came in sight of the low gable behind which he was
born.
Isy was in the garden gathering up the linen she had spread to dry on
the bushes, when his head came in sight at the top of the brae. She knew
him at once, and stooping behind the gooseberries, fled to the back of
the house, and so away to the moor. James saw the white flutter of a
sheet, but nothing of the hands that took it. He had heard that his
mother had a nice young woman to help her in the house, but cherished so
little interest in home-affairs that the news waked in him no curiosity.
Ever since she came to Stonecross, Isy had been on the outlook lest
James should unexpectedly surprise her, and so be himself surprised into
an involuntary disclosure of his relation to her; and not even by
the long deferring of her hope to see him yet again, had she come to
pretermit her vigilance. She did not intend to avoid him altogether,
only to take heed not to startle him into any recognition of her in the
presence of his mother. But when she saw him approaching the house, her
courage failed her, and she fled to avoid the danger of betraying
both herself and him. She was in truth ashamed of meeting him, in her
imagination feeling guiltily exposed to his just reproaches. All the
time he remained that evening with his mother, she kept watching the
house, not once showing herself until he was gone, when she reappeared
as if just returned from the moor, where Mrs. Blatherwick imagined
her still indulging the hope of finding her baby, concerning whom her
mistress more than doubted the very existence, taking the supposed fancy
for nothing but a half-crazy survival from the time of her insanity
before the Robertsons found her.
The minister made a comforting peace with his mother, telling her a
part of the truth, namely, that he had been much out of sorts during the
week, and quite unable to write a new sermon; and that so he had been
driven at the very last to take an old one, and that so hurriedly that
he had failed to recall correctly the subject and nature of it; that
he had actually begun to read it before finding that it was altogether
unsuitable—at which very moment, fatally for his equanimity, he
discovered his parents in the congregation, and was so dismayed that he
could not recover his self-possession, whence had ensued his apparent
lack of cordiality! It was a lame, yet somewhat plausible excuse, and
served to silence for the moment, although it was necessarily so far
from satisfying his mother’s heart. His father was out of doors, and him
James did not see.