ANDREW AND DAWTIE.
Dawtie slept in peace and happy dreams till the next morning, when she
was up almost with the sun, and out in his low clear light. For the sun
was strong again; the red labor and weariness were gone from his shining
face. Everything about her seemed to know God, or at least to have had a
moment's gaze upon Him. How else could everything look so content,
hopeful and happy. It is the man who will not fall in with the Father's
bliss to whom the world seems soulless and dull. Dawtie was at peace
because she desired nothing but what she knew He was best pleased to
give her. Even had she cherished for Andrew the kind of love her mother
feared, her Lord's will would have been her comfort and strength. If any
one say: “Then she could not know what love is!” I answer: “That person
does not know what the better love is that lifts the being into such a
serene air that it can fast from many things and yet be blessed beyond
what any other granted desire could make it.” The scent of the
sweet-pease growing against the turf wall entered Dawtie's soul like a
breath from the fields of heaven, where the children made merry with the
angels, the merriest of playfellows, and the winds and waters, and all
the living things, and all the things half alive, all the flowers and
all the creatures, were at their sportive call; where the little ones
had babies to play with, and did not hurt them, and where dolls were
neither loved nor missed, being never thought of. Suchlike were the
girl's imaginings as her thoughts went straying, inventing, discovering.
She did not fear the Father would be angry with her for being His child,
and playing at creation. Who, indeed, but one that in loving heart can
_make_, can rightly love the making of the Maker!
When they had had their breakfast, and the old people were ready for
church--where they would listen a little, sleep a little, sing heartily,
and hear nothing to wake hunger, joy or aspiration, Dawtie put a piece
of oat-cake in her pocket, and went to join Andrew where they had made
their tryst and where she found him waiting--at his length in a bush of
heather, with Henry Vaughan's “Silex Scintillans,” drawing from it
“bright shoots of everlastingness” for his Sabbath day's delight. He
read one or two of the poems to Dawtie, who was pleased but not
astonished--she was never astonished at anything; she had nothing in her
to make anything beautiful by contrast; her mind was of beauty itself,
and anything beautiful was to her but in the order and law of
things--what was to be expected. Nothing struck her because of its
rarity; the rare was at home in her country, and she was at home with
it. When, for instance, he read: “Father of lights, what sunny seeds,”
she took it up at once and understood it, felt that the good man had
said the thing that was to be said, and loved him for it. She was not
surprised to hear that the prayer was more than two hundred years old;
were there not millions of years in front? why should it be wonderful
that a few years behind men should have thought and felt as she did, and
been able to say it as she never could! Had she not always loved the
little cocks, and watched them learning to crow?
“But, An'rew,” she said at length, “I want to tell ye something that's
troublin' me; then ye can learn me what ye like.”
“Tell on, Dawtie,” said Andrew; and she began.
“Ae nicht aboot a fornight ago, I couldna sleep. I drave a' the sheep I
could gether i' my brain, ower ae stile efter anither, but the sleep
stack to the woo' o' them, an' ilk ane took o' 't awa' wi' him. I wadna
hae tried, but that I had to be up ear', and I was feared I wad sleep
in.”
For the sake of my more polished readers--I do not say more _refined_,
for polish and refinement may be worlds apart--I will give the rest in
modern English.
“So I got up, and thought to sweep and dust the hall and the stairs;
then if, when I lay down again, I should sleep too long, there would be
a part of the day's work done! You know, Andrew, what the house is like;
at the top of the stair that begins directly you enter the house, there
is a big irregular place, bigger than the floor of your barn, laid with
flags. It is just as if all the different parts of the house had been
built at different times round about it, and then it was itself roofed
in by an after-thought. That's what we call _the hall_. The spare room
opens on the left at the top of the stair, and to the right, across the
hall, beyond the swell of the short thick tower you see the half of
outside, is the door of the study. It is all round with books--some of
them, mistress says, worth their weight in gold, they are so scarce. But
the master trusts me to dust them. He used to do it himself; but now
that he is getting old, he does not like the trouble, and it makes him
asthmatic. He says books more need dusting than anything else, but are
in more danger of being hurt by it, and it makes him nervous to see me
touch them. I have known him stand an hour watching me while I dusted,
looking all the time as if he had just taken a dose of medicine. So I
often do a few books at a time, as I can, when he is not in the way to
be worried with it. But he always knows where I have been with my duster
and long-haired brush. And now it came across me that I had better dust
some books first of all, as it was a good chance, he being sound asleep.
So I lighted my lamp, went straight to the study, and began where I last
left off.
“As I was dusting, one of the books I came to looked so new and
different from the rest that I opened it to see what it was like inside.
It was full of pictures of mugs, and gold and silver jugs and cups--some
of them plain and some colored; and one of the colored ones was so
beautiful that I stood and looked at it. It was a gold cup, I suppose,
for it was yellow; and all round the edge, and on the sides, it was set
with stones, like the stones in mistress's rings, only much bigger. They
were blue and red and green and yellow, and more colors than I can
remember. The book said it was made by somebody, but I forget his name.
It was a long name. The first part of it began with a _B_, and the
second with a _C_, I remember that much. It was like _Benjamin_, but it
wasn't _Benjamin_. I put it back in its place, thinking I would ask the
master whether there really were such beautiful things, and took down
the next. Now whether that had been passed over between two batches I
don't know, but it was so dusty that before I would touch another I gave
the duster a shake, and the wind of it blew the lamp out I took it up to
take it to the kitchen and kindle it again, when, to my astonishment, I
saw a light under the door of a press which was always locked, and where
master said he kept his most precious books. 'How strange!' I thought;
'a light inside a locked cupboard!' Then I remembered how in one place
where I had been there was, in a room over the stable, a press whose
door had no fastening except a bolt on the inside, which set me
thinking, and some terrible things came to me that made me remember it.
So now I said to myself: 'There's some one in there, after master's
books!' It was not a likely thing, but the night is the time for
fancies, and in the night you don't know what is likely and what is not.
One thing, however, was clear--I ought to find out what the light meant.
Fearful things darted one after the other through my head as I went to
the door, but there was one thing I dared not do, and that was to leave
it unopened. So I opened it as softly as I could, in terror lest the
thief should hear my heart beating. When I could peep in what do you
think I saw? I could not believe my eyes! There was a great big room! I
rubbed my eyes, and stared; and rubbed them again and stared--thinking
to rub it away; but there it was, a big odd-shaped room, part of it with
round sides, and in the middle of the room a table, and on the table a
lamp, burning as I had never seen lamp burn, and master at the table
with his back to me. I was so astonished I forgot that I had no business
there, and ought to go away. I stood like an idiot, mazed and lost. And
you will not wonder when I tell you that the laird was holding up to the
light, between his two hands, the very cup I had been looking at in the
book, the stones of it flashing all the colors of the rainbow. I should
think it a dream, if I did not _know_ it was not. I do not believe I
made any noise, for I could not move, but he started up with a cry to
God to preserve him, set the cup on the table, threw something over it,
caught up a wicked-looking knife, and turned round. His face was like
that of a corpse, and I could see him tremble. I stood steady; it was no
time then to turn away. I supposed he expected to see a robber, and
would be glad when he discovered it was only me; but when he did his
fear changed to anger, and he came at me. His eyes were flaming, and he
looked as if he would kill me. I was not frightened--poor old man, I was
able for him any day!--but I was afraid of hurting him. So I closed the
door quickly, and went softly to my own room, where I stood a long time
in the dark, listening, but heard nothing more. What am I to do,
Andrew?”
“I don't know that you have to do anything. You have one thing not to
do, that is--tell anybody what you have seen.”
“I was forced to tell _you_ because I did not know what to do. It makes
me _so_ sorry!”
“It was no fault of yours. You acted to the best of your knowledge, and
could not help what came of it. Perhaps nothing more will come. Leave
the thing alone, and if he say anything tell him how it happened.”
“But, Andrew, I don't think you see what it is that troubles me. I am
afraid my master is a miser. The mistress and he take their meals, like
poor people, in the kitchen. That must be the dining-room of the
house!--and though my eyes were tethered to the flashing cup, I could
not help seeing it was full of strange and beautiful things. Among them,
I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought
on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered
other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!”
“Suppose him a miser,” said Andrew, “what could you do? How are you to
help it?”
“That's what I want to know. I love my master, and there must be a way
to help it. It was terrible to see him, in the middle of the night,
gazing at that cup as if he had found the most precious thing that can
ever have existed on the earth.”
“What was that?” asked Andrew.
He delighted in Dawtie's talk. It was like an angel's, he said, both in
its ignorance and its wisdom.
“You can't have forgotten, Andrew. It's impossible!” she answered. “I
heard you say yourself!”
Andrew smiled.
“I know,” he said.
“Poor man!” resumed Dawtie; “he looked at the cup as you might at that
manuscript! His soul was at it, feasting upon it! Now wasn't that
miserly?”
“It was like it.”
“And I love my master,” repeated Dawtie, thus putting afresh the
question what she was to do.
“Why do you love him, Dawtie?” asked Andrew.
“Because I'm set to love him. Besides, we're told to love our
enemies--then surely we're to love our friends. He has always been a
friend to me. He never said a hard word to me, even when I was handling
his books. He trusts me with them! I can't help loving him--a good deal,
Andrew! And it's what I've got to do!”
“There's not a doubt about it, Dawtie. You've got to love him, and you
do love him!”
“But there's more than that, Andrew. To hear the laird talk you would
think he cared more for the Bible than for the whole world--not to say
gold cups. He talks of the merits of the Saviour, that you would think
he loved Him with all his heart. But I can not get it out of my mind,
ever since I saw that look on his face, that he loves that cup--that
it's his graven image--his idol! How else should he get up in the middle
of the night to--to--to--well, it was just like worshiping it.”
“You're afraid then that he's a hypocrite, Dawtie!”
“No; I daren't think that--if it were only for fear I should stop loving
him--and that would be as bad!”
“As bad as what, Dawtie?”
“I don't always know what I'm going to say,” answered Dawtie, a little
embarrassed, “and then when I've said it I have to look what it means.
But isn't it as bad not to love a human being as it would be to love a
thing?”
“Perhaps worse,” said Andrew.
“Something must be done!” she went on. “He can't be left like that! But
if he has any love to his Master, how is it that the love of that Master
does not cast out the love of Mammon? I can't understand it.”
“You have asked a hard question, Dawtie. But a cure may be going on, and
take a thousand years or ages to work it out.”
“What if it shouldn't be begun yet.”
“That would be terrible.”
“What then am I to do, Andrew? You always say we must _do_ something!
You say there is no faith but what _does_ something!”
“The apostle James said so, a few years before I was born, Dawtie!”
“Don't make fun of me--please, Andrew! I like it, but I can't bear it
to-day, my head is so full of the poor old laird!”
“Make fun of you, Dawtie! Never! But I don't know yet how to answer
you.”
“Well, then, what _am_ I to do?” persisted Dawtie.
“Wait, of course, till you know what to do. When you don't know what to
do, don't do anything--only keep asking the Thinker for wisdom. And
until you know, don't let the laird see that you know anything.”
With this answer Dawtie was content.
Business was over, and they turned to go home.