The next day, Isy, although very weak, was greatly better. She was,
however, too ill to get up; and Marion seemed now in her element, with
two invalids, both dear to her, to look after. She hardly knew for which
to be more grateful—her son, given helpless into her hands, unable to
repel the love she lavished upon him; or the girl whom God had taken
from the very throat of the swallowing grave. But her heart, at first
bubbling over with gladness, soon grew calmer, when she came to perceive
how very ill James was. And before long she began to fear she must
part with her child, whose lack of love hitherto made the threatened
separation the more frightful to her. She turned even from the thought
of Isy’s restoration, as if that were itself an added wrong. From the
occasional involuntary association of the two in her thought, she would
turn away with a sort of meek loathing. To hold her James for one moment
in the same thought with any girl less spotless than he, was to disgrace
herself!
James was indeed not only very ill, but growing slowly worse; for he
lay struggling at last in the Backbite of Conscience, who had him in her
unrelaxing jaws, and was worrying him well. Whence the holy dog came
we know, but how he got a hold of him to begin his saving torment, who
shall understand but the maker of men and of their secret, inexorable
friend! Every beginning is infinitesimal, and wrapt in the mystery of
creation.
Its results only, not its modes of operation or their stages, I may
venture attempting to convey. It was the wind blowing where it listed,
doing everything and explaining nothing. That wind from the timeless and
spaceless and formless region of God’s feeling and God’s thought, blew
open the eyes of this man’s mind so that he saw, and became aware that
he saw. It blew away the long-gathered vapours of his self-satisfaction
and conceit; it blew wide the windows of his soul, that the sweet odour
of his father’s and mother’s thoughts concerning him might enter; and
when it entered, he knew it for what it was; it blew back to him his own
judgments of them and their doings, and he saw those judgments side by
side with his new insights into their real thoughts and feelings; it
blew away the desert sands of his own moral dulness, indifference, and
selfishness, that had so long hidden beneath them the watersprings of
his own heart, existent by and for love and its gladness; it cleared
all his conscious being, made him understand that he had never hitherto
loved his mother or his father, or any neighbour; that he had never
loved God one genuine atom, never loved the Lord Christ, his Master,
or cared in the least that he had died for him; had never at any moment
loved Isy—least of all when to himself he pleaded in his own excuse
that he had loved her. That blowing wind, which he could not see,
neither knew whence it came, and yet less whither it was going, began to
blow together his soul and those of his parents; the love in his father
and in his mother drew him; the memories of his childhood drew him; for
the heart of God himself was drawing him, as it had been from the first,
only now first he began to feel its drawing; and as he yielded to that
drawing and went nearer, God drew ever more and more strongly; until at
last—I know not, I say, how God did it, or whereby he made the soul of
James Blatherwick different from what it had been—but at last it grew
capable of loving, and did love: first, he yielded to love because he
could not help it; then he willed to love because he could love; then,
become conscious of the power, he loved the more, and so went on to
love more and more. And thus did James become what he had to become—or
perish.
But for this liberty, he had to pass through wild regions of torment
and horror; he had to become all but mad, and know it; his body, and his
soul as well, had to be parched with fever, thirst, and fear; he had to
sleep and dream lovely dreams of coolness and peace and courage; then
wake and know that all his life he had been dead, and now first was
alive; that love, new-born, was driving out the gibbering phantoms; that
now indeed it was good to be, and know others alive about him; that now
life was possible, because life was to love, and love was to live. What
love was, or how it was, he could not tell; he knew only that it was the
will and the joy of the Father and the Son.
Long ere he arrived at this, however, the falsehood and utter meanness
of his behaviour to Isy had become plain to him, bringing with it such
an overpowering self-contempt and self-loathing, that he was tempted
even to self-destruction to escape the knowledge that he was himself the
very man who had been such, and had done such things. “To know my deed,
’twere best not know myself!” he might have said with Macbeth. But he
must live on, for how otherwise could he make any atonement? And with
the thought of reparation, and possible forgiveness and reconcilement,
his old love for Isy rushed in like a flood, grown infinitely nobler,
and was uplifted at last into a genuine self-abandoning devotion. But
until this final change arrived, his occasional paroxysms of remorse
touched almost on madness, and for some time it seemed doubtful whether
his mind must not retain a permanent tinge of insanity. He conceived
a huge disgust of his office and all its requirements; and sometimes
bitterly blamed his parents for not interfering with his choice of a
profession that was certain to be his ruin.
One day, having had no delirium for some hours, he suddenly called out
as they stood by his bed—
“Oh, mother! oh, father! _why_ did you tempt me to such hypocrisy? _Why_
did you not bring me up to walk at the plough-tail? _Then_ I should
never have had to encounter the damnable snares of the pulpit! It was
that which ruined me—the notion that I must take the minister for my
pattern, and live up to my idea of _him_, before even I had begun to
cherish anything real in me! It was the road royal to hypocrisy! Without
that rootless, worthless, devilish fancy, I might have been no worse
than other people! Now I am lost! Now I shall never get back to bare
honesty, not to say innocence! They are both gone for ever!”
The poor mother could only imagine it his humility that made him accuse
himself of hypocrisy, and that because he had not fulfilled to the
uttermost the smallest duty of his great office.
“Jamie, dear,” she cried, laying her cheek to his, “ye maun cast yer
care upo’ Him that careth for ye! He kens ye hae dene yer best—or if
no yer vera best—for wha daur say that?—ye hae at least dene what ye
could!”
“Na, na!” he answered, resuming the speech of his boyhood—a far better
sign of him than his mother understood, “I ken ower muckle, and that
muckle ower weel, to lay sic a flattering unction to my sowl! It’s jist
as black as the fell mirk! ‘Ah, limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
art more engaged!’”
“Hoots, ye’re dreamin, laddie! Ye never was engaged to onybody—at least
that ever I h’ard tell o’! But, ony gait, fash na ye aboot that! Gien it
be onything o’ sic a natur that’s troublin ye, yer father and me we s’
get ye clear o’ ’t!”
“Ay, there ye’re at it again! It was _you_ ’at laid the bird-lime! Ye
aye tuik pairt, mither, wi’ the muckle deil that wad na rist till he had
my sowl in his deepest pit!”
“The Lord kens his ain: he’ll see that they come throuw unscaumit!”
“The Lord disna mak ony hypocreet o’ purpose doobtless; but gien a
man sin efter he has ance come to the knowledge o’ the trowth, there
remaineth for him—ye ken the lave o’ ’t as weel as I dee mysel, mother!
My only houp lies in a doobt—a doobt, that is, whether I _had_ ever
come til a knowledge o’ the trowth—or hae yet!—Maybe no!”
“Laddie, ye’re no i’ yer richt min’. It’s fearsome to hearken til ye!”
“It’ll be waur to hear me roarin wi’ the rich man i’ the lowes o’ hell!”
“Peter! Peter!” cried Marion, driven almost to distraction, “here’s yer
ain son, puir fallow, blasphemin like ane o’ the condemned! He jist gars
me creep!”
Receiving no answer, for her husband was nowhere near at the moment, she
called aloud in her desperation—
“Isy! Isy! come and see gien ye can dee onything to quaiet this ill
bairn.”
Isy heard, and sprang from her bed.
“Comin, mistress!” she answered; “comin this moment.”
They had not met since her resurrection, as Peter always called it.
“Isy! Isy!” cried James, the moment he heard her approaching, “come and
haud the deil aff o’ me!”
He had risen to his elbow, and was looking eagerly toward the door.
She entered. James threw wide his arms, and with glowing eyes clasped
her to his bosom. She made no resistance: his mother would lay it all to
the fever! He broke into wild words of love, repentance, and devotion.
“Never heed him a hair, mem; he’s clean aff o’ his heid!” she said in
a low voice, making no attempt to free herself from his embrace, but
treating him like a delirious child. “There maun be something aboot me,
mem, that quaiets him a bit! It’s the brain, ye ken, mem! it’s the het
brain! We maunna contre him! he maun hae his ain w’y for a wee!”
But such was James’s behaviour to Isy that it was impossible for the
mother not to perceive that, incredible as it might seem, this must
be far from the first time they had met; and presently she fell to
examining her memory whether she herself might not have seen Isy
before ever she came to Stonecross; but she could find no answer to her
inquiry, press the question as she might. By and by, her husband came
in to have his dinner, and finding herself compelled, much against her
will, to leave the two together, she sent up Eppie to take Isy’s place,
with the message that she was to go down at once. Isy obeyed, and went
to the kitchen; but, perturbed and trembling, dropped on the first chair
she came to. The farmer, already seated at the table, looked up, and
anxiously regarding her, said—
“Bairn, ye’re no fit to be aboot! Ye maun caw canny, or ye’ll be ower
the burn yet or ever ye’re safe upo’ this side o’ ’t! Preserve’s a’! ir
we to lowse ye twise in ae month?”
“Jist answer me ae queston, Isy, and I’ll speir nae mair,” said Marion.
“Na, na, never a queston!” interposed Peter;—“no ane afore even the
shaidow o’ deith has left the hoose!—Draw ye up to the table, my bonny
bairn: this isna a time for ceremony, and there’s sma’ room for that ony
day!”
Finding, however, that she sat motionless, and looked far more
death-like than while in her trance, he got up, and insisted on her
swallowing a little whisky; when she revived, and glad to put herself
under his nearer protection, took the chair he had placed for her beside
him, and made a futile attempt at eating. “It’s sma’ won’er the puir
thing hasna muckle eppiteet,” remarked Mrs. Blatherwick, “considerin the
w’y yon ravin laddie up the stair has been cairryin on til her!”
“What! Hoo’s that?” questioned her husband with a start.
“But ye’re no to mak onything o’ that, Isy!” added her mistress.
“Never a particle, mem!” returned Isy. “I ken weel it stan’s for
naething but the heat o’ the burnin brain! I’m richt glaid though, that
the sicht o’ me did seem to comfort him a wee!”
“Weel, I’m no sae sure!” answered Marion. “But we’ll say nae mair anent
that the noo! The guidman says no; and his word’s law i’ this hoose.”
Isy resumed her pretence of breakfast. Presently Eppie came down, and
going to her master, said—
“Here’s An’ra, sir, come to speir efter the yoong minister and Isy: am I
to gar him come in?”
“Ay, and gie him his brakfast,” shouted the farmer.
The old woman set a chair for her son by the door, and proceeded to
attend to him. James was left alone.
Silence again fell, and the appearance of eating was resumed, Peter
being the only one that made a reality of it. Marion was occupied with
many thinkings, specially a growing doubt and soreness about Isy. The
hussy had a secret! She had known something all the time, and had been
taking advantage of her unsuspiciousness! It would be a fine thing for
her, indeed, to get hold of the minister! but she would see him dead
first! It was too bad of the Robertsons, whom she had known so long and
trusted so much! They knew what they were doing when they passed their
trash upon her! She began to distrust ministers! What right had they to
pluck brands from the burning at the expense o’ dacent fowk! It was to
do evil that good might come! She would say that to their faces! Thus
she sat thinking and glooming.
A cry of misery came from the room above. Isy started to her feet. But
Marion was up before her.
“Sit doon this minute,” she commanded.
Isy hesitated.
“Sit doon this moment, I tell ye!” repeated Marion imperiously. “Ye hae
no business there! I’m gaein til ’im mysel!” And with the word she left
the room.
Peter laid down his spoon, then half rose, staring bewildered, and
followed his wife from the room.
“Oh my baby! my baby!” cried Isy, finding herself alone. “If only I had
you to take my part! It was God gave you to me, or how could I love you
so? And the mistress winna believe that even I had a bairnie! Noo she’ll
be sayin I killt my bonny wee man! And yet, even for _his_ sake, I never
ance wisht ye hadna been born! And noo, whan the father o’ ’im’s ill,
and cryin oot for me, they winna lat me near ’im!”
The last words left her lips in a wailing shriek.
Then first she saw that her master had re-entered. Wiping her eyes
hurriedly, she turned to him with a pitiful, apologetic smile.
“Dinna be sair vext wi’ me, sir: I canna help bein glaid that I had him,
and to tyne him has gien me an unco sair hert!”
She stopped, terrified: how much had he heard? she could not tell what
she might not have said! But the farmer had resumed his breakfast, and
went on eating as if she had not spoken. He had heard nearly all she
said, and now sat brooding on her words.
Isy was silent, saying in her heart—“If only he loved me, I should be
content, and desire no more! I would never even want him to say it! I
would be so good to him, and so silent, that he could not help loving me
a little!”
I wonder whether she would have been as hopeful had she known how his
mother had loved him, and how vainly she had looked for any love in
return! And when Isy vowed in her heart never to let James know that she
had borne him a son, she did not perceive that thus she would withhold
the most potent of influences for his repentance and restoration to God
and his parents. She did not see James again that night; and before she
fell asleep at last in the small hours of the morning, she had made up
her mind that, ere the same morning grew clear upon the moor, she would,
as the only thing left her to do for him, be far away from Stonecross.
She would go back to Deemouth, and again seek work at the paper-mills!