It was on a summer Sunday morning that the story began—or let me rather
say, that I take up the story, for who shall mark the real beginning of
those events that mightily color and disturb, and even turn the course
of our lives?
In the early sunshine, while the dew was still heavy on the grass,
Ian Macpherson had been away three miles up the valley with a dying
shepherd. Following the course of the broad, brawling, shallow Riach
river; now clambering along steep slate-colored banks of shifting
flakes and chips of stone, that looked as if they had swept in
avalanches down the abrupt hillside; now springing with the sure, agile
step of a born Highlander from one boulder to another as he crossed a
streamlet or took a short cut across a bend of the river; now walking
quickly over narrow, level reaches of meadow-ground, or amongst springy
heather under the birches that overhung the broken gravel banks above
the water,—his whole heart was overflowing with that exultation which
breathes in the very early hours of morning when the days are long. The
earth in that hour was very Paradise, not for anything it had given
or ever could give him, but because it was so beautiful, and in its
glorious undesecrated solitude seemed still fresh from the hand of God.
The home of the dying man was a mere hovel of peat-sods covered with
moss-grown thatch, built on one of those fertile reaches of soil
brought down and left here and there in these wild Scotch valleys by
floods of long ago. It stood just above the river—all too perilously
near in time of storm and flood, you would have thought—and round it
towered the rugged hills, echoing unceasingly the murmur of the water
and the wind—a murmur, at least, in summer. In winter many a wild storm
raged up there, darkening the air with heavy snow and sleet, bowing and
breaking and uprooting whole tracts of pines and larch; raving down
the shrouded peaks and narrow, dim ravines, and making to tremble the
little peat hut and the stout hearts within. And then, when the storm
was spent, would be a silence as of death; snowy steeps and glittering
peaks rising up on all sides motionless against a motionless sky, and
down below the dark water creeping slow and quiet under masses of ice.
Macpherson could see it all in memory even as he stepped across the
summer flowers, for the poor shepherds in the lone huts scattered here
and there in the long valley needed him in winter as well as in summer,
in foul weather no less than in fair. But to-day, as he grew accustomed
to the half-light in the hut, and the wan face of the dying man became
clearer in the shadow of the berth in the wall where he was lying, the
minister saw well enough that he would know no more an earthly winter,
nor ever see the snow come down upon the hills again. There was only
one window in the hut, a single unmovable pane a foot square, let into
the sod wall at one end, and rendered even less useful by a strip of
rag pinned across it by way of a blind. Most of the light came in
dusty beams down the wide chimney, slanting across the background of
smoke-blackened wall and rafter, and lying in patches on the uneven mud
floor.
As the day was warm the minister set the door wide open, and the dim,
dying eyes looked out wistfully at the sunny summer weather and the
beautiful wooded slopes where the foot of the opposite hill came down
to the river. But he was tired now; all this was passing from him, and
his eyes came back to Ian Macpherson’s face, where, as he dimly felt,
dwelt something that could not pass away—something that death itself
would have no power to disturb or change. Light kindled faintly on his
rugged, wasted features when Macpherson came and took the toil-worn
hand—so powerless now—in his, for in the young minister’s life this
poor shepherd had seen and understood what no words could have brought
home to him—the reality and power of love. He knew that Macpherson
counted not his life his own, nor any of the things that he possessed.
Year by year he had felt the subtle influence deepening, and had seen
the spirit burning clearer in the eyes, so that to meet him—to the
ignorant, simple shepherd—was like meeting an angel. In Macpherson he
saw and knew a man in the very prime of manhood, clever, as those said
who knew best, and with the world before him; who yet could let the
world go by; who sought no preferment, whose whole life and soul and
energy were devoted to his people without a thought for himself, and
who had ever a kind word and a happy smile for one and all.
These poor people could perhaps not have explained what their young
minister was to them; what he really was beyond what they saw they
could never know; and yet they did feel that he had sacrificed himself
for their sake in staying there, that this sacrifice was no grudging
martyrdom, but a glad free-will offering to the Lord he loved and to
them. It shed more light upon their hearts than a thousand sermons;
it had power to draw aside for them now and again the gross veil of
material aims, and to give them as in a mirror a glimpse of eternal
love.
This dying man could believe in the great love of the Lord who died
for him when he had seen its living power in his minister’s life; and,
though the comparison is but as of a spark to the sun itself, the
selfless brotherhood of one whom he knew very far above him in ways
which he could not understand brought home to him the brotherhood of
Christ. With his hand in Macpherson’s, listening with fast-closing
ears to his earnest words, following his childlike, simple prayers,
it seemed as if earth and its soul-chains of sin and sorrow faded and
fell away; as if the gates of heaven opened wide and wider, and the
light shone out more and more perfect, till at last the call came down,
“Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord;” and then the spirit went up out
of the darkness and ignorance and poverty of the hard shepherd life,
and Macpherson was kneeling alone on the mud floor in the dim hovel
beside the dead.
An hour later the solitary bell of the kirk on the wooded knoll
overlooking Loch Riach was ringing thin and clear across lake and
meadow for morning prayer, and Macpherson hurried up the steep
footpath that wound upwards to the kirk between Scotch firs from the
flat grass land about the water.
A group of strangers stood at the kirkyard gate, a young fellow of two
or three-and-twenty, a lady who looked about the same age, tall and
very fair, and a lad in an Eton jacket with a top hat and broad white
collar. No doubt they belonged to the English family who had been
expected at the villa near the railway station and the store—the only
villa within half a dozen miles.
Macpherson, with the courtesy that is natural to even the shyest
Highlander, lifted his hat to them as a matter of course, and would
have passed on, but the young man stepped forward and asked if they
might go into the church, and whether it mattered where they sat.
“Oh! There’s only too much room,” he said, when he understood what they
wanted, which was not all at once, for the Gaelic was his native tongue
and his ears were utterly unfamiliar with English as spoken by English
people. He led the way through long rank grass and nettles, across
sunken graves and flat tombstones where the inscriptions were worn
away, more, surely, by wild winter storms than by church-going feet,
for there was no trace of any path from the gate to the door.
“Rummiest hole ’t ever I saw, Lily,” poor Macpherson heard the boy say
in an undertone, as he ushered the strangers into as curious a place of
worship as perhaps this nineteenth century can show.
The floor was all uneven and rudely paved with round cobble stones,
glistening and dark with perpetual damp; a gallery, sagging rather
alarmingly towards the middle, ran across either end; on the front
panel of the eastern one was branded in irregular characters,
“I. M. FECIT. AUG. 17, 1771,”
and these were certainly the very newest part of the interior. Along
under the north wall was a row of little wooden pews, some with
broken doors, others with no doors at all; their flooring consisted
merely of earth, with a few rough planks thrown down here and there
to help to keep the feet of the congregation more or less dry. The
once whitewashed walls were stained and blotted with great seas of
green and red mould, and the atmosphere was as that of a subterranean
dungeon—chill, damp, and smelling of ancient decay. Macpherson opened
a pew for them, and they took their places while he walked, just as
he was, up the crazy pulpit stair, hung his hat on a nail above him,
and knelt down. There were two women in one of the rickety galleries,
and not more than half a dozen people in the pews below: a farmer’s
daughter in very gay attire, two or three laboring men in ill-fitting
suits of Sunday black; a keeper in his master’s former shooting-coat
and knickerbockers, and a couple of shepherds in kilt and plaid.
The bell ceased, and the bell-ringer, sexton, precentor,
beadle—whatever he was—having made the rope fast where it hung on the
gable outside, came in and took his place at the desk under the pulpit,
and the Psalm was given out—
“I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid,
My safety cometh from the Lord,
Who heav’n and earth hath made.”
But the only person who attempted to sing was the factotum at the
clerk’s desk, and he rendered the entire Psalm alone from beginning to
end, in slow, loud, wavering, twangy tones that took small account of
a semi-tone higher or lower, and left the tune, when he had finished,
still a matter of conjecture to the uninitiated.
As the service proceeded a few more people came in, dropped into pews
here and there, and stared at the unwonted sight of a lovely English
face and fresh London millinery. But when Macpherson rose, and gave
out his text, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?” reading it twice or thrice in his
curious foreign accent, every eye was fixed upon his face, and each man
placed his arms on the table or shelf in front of him and bent forward
to listen.
It was a thin, plain face, with a low, broad brow, high cheekbones
and irregular features, that showed against the dull light-blue of
the old pulpit; but the dark eyes lit up with intense eagerness as he
leaned forward to preach in his fashion the old, oft-repeated lesson,
and every line of the slight, wiry figure was instinct with energy
and life. His sermon was short, and his language strong and simple—so
simple that to at least one listener it had the force almost of a new
revelation. The hearers could not know what that simplicity cost him,
though some of them might have remembered a time when they could not
understand him; there was nothing to tell how each plain, homely phrase
came out victorious over eloquent words and symbolic imagery and high
intellectual reasonings that were always thronging there within him;
nothing to reveal how hard he was trying to live in them and out of
himself, that he might realise their need, and feel how the message he
so burned to deliver might best wake echoes in those poor dull hearts
that were so slow to respond.
Very earnestly he set forth the nothingness of all the things that
“grossly close us in” and bar the way that leads to life. Passionately
he pleaded for the great single purpose that opens and makes plain that
way and guides unerringly the feet that find it.
The fair English lady, looking up at that young earnest face, and
then beyond it, where through the window she could see red fir boughs
stirring against the summer sky, wondered at the courage that could
face this mere handful of listeners and feel as enthusiastic and
speak with as much energy as though thousands hung upon his words.
To other than Gaelic ears that voice, too, had a special charm with
its undertone of pathos, its plaintive echo of “old, unhappy, far-off
things,” the melancholy of a dying language and a race that is being
fast merged and lost in the self-asserting, irreverent Saxon, akin to
that sorrow on the wind across the moors and among the lonesome hills,
even when it comes whispering down the wild warm corries, or blows cool
off the sunny summits on a summer day, carrying a sound of tears.
At the evening service the young Englishman was there alone, and on his
homeward way Macpherson wondered whether he ought to call at the villa.
For the next day or two, however, he knew he would have no time, for
there was fever at a little farm on the lower boundary of the parish,
and in the poor cottages belonging to it, and as often as other work
would allow Macpherson was there comforting, nursing, helping, and
always bringing with him some welcome trifle that the sufferers could
not afford; a few eggs, a lemon or two, a little tea, two or three
bottles of seltzer-water—anything his kind heart could suggest and his
ready hand procure. Visits like these sometimes occupied his whole
afternoon, so that he did not come home till the shadows of the hills
darkened all the valley.
The sun had disappeared behind the rugged granite steeps to westward,
though the eastern summits could see it still and glowed rose-red
against the evening sky when Macpherson reached the Manse after
Monday’s work. The door stood wide and showed a vista of boarded,
carpetless passage sprinkled with sand, carpetless stairs opposite the
entrance, and a door on either hand; merely looking in, it gave one the
impression that whoever kept the house had good intentions, but fell
lamentably short in carrying them out. Perhaps, however, it had ceased
to strike the master’s eye, for he hung up his hat in the passage with
quite a sigh of relief, turned to the door on the left with a smile of
content on his face, and went into his study.
There, a good deal to his astonishment, stood the young Englishman of
yesterday, holding out a cordial hand and introducing himself with an
apology as Robert Echalaz.
“I have been making your acquaintance through the names of your books,”
said he, with a smile. “The—the maid”—he hesitated a moment before
venturing to apply this title to the grimy child who had admitted
him—“the maid told me, as far as I could make out what she said, that
you would be home soon, so I took the liberty of waiting here.”
Macpherson assured him that he was very welcome, and fetched in another
chair out of the adjacent kitchen to add force to his words.
Then young Echalaz came straight to his point. His brother, he said,
was bent on getting some fishing, and they thought that probably Mr.
Macpherson, if he could not help them himself, might at any rate be
able to direct them to some one who could.
“And I was glad of so plausible an excuse for getting to know you,”
added the young fellow, with a frank smile. “I—I am preparing for holy
orders, and”—he hesitated—“well, I don’t know—but I should very much
like to have some talks with you.”
Macpherson’s face lit up with pleasure at this.
“I am afraid I shall disappoint you if you expect to learn anything
from me,” he said, and his quaint accent struck the young Englishman
afresh. Nevertheless, the two talked there for an hour before it even
occurred to them that time was passing, and Echalaz jumped up and
declared he ought to have been at home before now.
“And the fishing?” suggested Macpherson.
The fishing had been quite forgotten, but it was very soon settled,
and Macpherson after some debate promised to meet the two brothers on
the following Thursday. He accompanied his new acquaintance down the
path to the gate, thinking it would be pleasant to be able to offer him
hospitality of some sort, but afraid that dry oatcake would hardly be
attractive, even with the addition—supposing that boiling water could
be produced within reasonable time—of tea that this well-to-do young
Englishman might possibly not think good. Poor Macpherson dismissed his
hospitable inclinations with regret that made his grasp of the other’s
hand all the warmer when they parted.
When Macpherson arrived at the villa at the appointed hour he found Tom
waiting at the gate.
“Mother wants you to come in and see her,” said the boy, shaking hands,
and Macpherson followed him into the house to the drawing-room, where
Mrs. Echalaz—a pretty, faded, delicate-looking woman—lay on the sofa
beside the open window. She turned her head languidly towards him, and
held out a slim white hand.
“Ah, Mr. Macpherson, it is so good of you to devote yourself to my
boy,” she said, conventionally. “I am sure he is very grateful; are you
not, Tom?”
Tom murmured something about “awfully jolly,” and suggested that they
should start at once.
Mrs. Echalaz, however, first asked many questions, as to the distance,
the river, and the possibility of danger to her son, who was evidently
the spoiled pet of the family.
Macpherson assured her that she need not be alarmed, and promised at
all events to do his best to take care of Tom; and then, instead of
Robert, when he was expected, Lily came in equipped for a walk, and
Mrs. Echalaz said, “Ah, yes, my daughter, Mr. Macpherson. I’m sorry to
say Robert is not well. He reads too hard, I am sure; he is not fit to
go, and so I am sending Lily instead. I can’t let Tom”—she changed the
expression of the thought in her heart—“Tom would be quite too much for
you alone,” she said. “I always send one of them with him—not,” she
added, betraying herself still more to Macpherson’s quick perceptions,
“not that I doubt your care; I am sure you will not let any harm befall
him.”
But her last words, far from being expressive of any such assurance,
sounded like a reiterated appeal to him to guard her darling.
Macpherson said he would be very careful, and at length the three were
allowed to depart.
Tom lost no time in handing over all his encumbrances to his sister,
and before they had walked through the wood at the back of the villa
he was away after butterflies, leaving Lily and Macpherson to carry
the rods and tackle, the fishing-basket, and the lunch. It was a great
relief to the young minister to find that the English girl was neither
shy nor self-conscious, but ready to talk with the same pleasant
frankness and cordiality that had so struck him in the elder brother.
She watched Tom’s retreating figure with an indulgent smile for a
minute, and then turned to her companion. “May I ask you a great many
questions, Mr. Macpherson?” she said, with natural directness.
“Surely,” answered he, readily; “and I hope I may be able to answer
some of them.”
“I want to tell Robert,” she explained, with a smile. “After we had
been to your little kirk on Sunday we both wanted very much to know
you. He is to take holy orders, and he and I think a great deal about
the work to which he will be called. Your life, now, must be something
utterly different from anything we have ever seen or imagined before.”
“Is it?” he said. “Only because such primitive conditions exist perhaps
no longer in England. I suppose a time is drawing nearer that will
sweep away what lingers here.”
“Well, but—” Lily hesitated an instant. “May I be quite frank?” she put
in, deprecatingly. “How is it that _you_ are in such a place?”
He did not know the drift of this question, and looked puzzled.
“Why should I not be?” he asked, diffidently.
The girl glanced expressively to north and south, down and up the
lonely valley.
“One might say, speaking roughly,” she said, “that there are no people
here,”
Macpherson too looked up the valley, and saw, far off, the hut where
that poor shepherd had died, and thoughts of that Sunday morning
brought the light into his face.
“That _would_ be ’speaking roughly,’” he said, with a gentleness that
made her feel ashamed at first, and then anxious to justify herself.
“But is your congregation always so small?” she asked.
“That was about the average on Sunday,” he answered, and added, with
a sigh, as if the fact were one he tried to forget, “It _is_ small.
My predecessor, I’m afraid, was unpopular, and latterly very old and
feeble, and could not keep them together. A few have come back to me,
but only a few.”
“Then why do you stay here?” said Lily, impetuously. “Robert told me
about your books, and—and the house—the Manse—so poor and bare. He says
you must be far above your work. Indeed, we knew it from your sermon on
Sunday.”
He looked distressed.
“Do you think they will not have understood me?” he asked, with eager
anxiety. “Was it difficult—obscure—beyond the mark?”
“Oh, no, no!” said Lily, astonished at his way of looking at it; “a
child must have understood every word. I can’t quite explain how it
struck me and Robert too; it was so short and so complete, and the
words so simple that one wondered at their intense force; and yet—yet—”
He looked anxiously at her. “Don’t be afraid to find fault, Miss
Echalaz,” he said, earnestly; “I shall be so thankful to you—”
“Fault!” she interrupted; “oh, you don’t understand me! I never heard
anything that went so straight from heart to heart as those words of
yours. When we came out I turned to Robert, and he turned to me, and we
both said, ‘Well?’ and then Robert asked me what was the secret of such
power, but I couldn’t tell. And he thought a long time as we went home,
about what you had said, and what he would have said in your place,
which none of them would have listened to or understood.”
Lily smiled rather sadly and broke off, for she remembered how Robert
had said to her at last that Macpherson “_walked with God_,” and
that that was the secret of his power. She could not well repeat her
brother’s words, but she knew that they were true, and wanted to
acknowledge to Macpherson the debt that both felt they owed to him.
“Ah! Mr. Macpherson,” she said, earnestly, “you made us both ashamed.
We were eager to begin teaching, and we suddenly found we had
everything still to learn. Robert says he sees now that _nothing_,
absolutely nothing, can be done by a man who has not begun with
himself.”
Macpherson looked up with keen sympathy, divining at once a
fellow-struggler, for this was beaten ground to him, sorely familiar.
“That is true enough,” he said; “and yet we all begin at the outside,
and are always returning to it again.”
Lily sighed.
“Yes,” she said, “and looking downward from ourselves instead of up to
our ideal—to God. One seems to be always beginning, only beginning,
over and over again.”
“Perhaps,” said Macpherson thoughtfully—“perhaps we need a whole life
of beginning to show us what we are, and to teach us that the good that
is done is all of God.”
“But don’t you feel yourself thrown away on such a miserable little
congregation?” Lily went on, recurring to her first idea. “Would you
not like a large parish?—a city audience?”
His eyes kindled.
“Once,” he said, “I wished for a larger field, and, as you say, an
_audience_; and I thought myself thrown away. I looked on this as a
mere stepping-stone to preferment; it was quite too paltry for my
enthusiasm; I could not make myself intelligible to my few people, my
sermons flew quite over their heads; I was disappointed and miserable.
I wanted to bring a sacrifice, you understand, Miss Echalaz, but it was
to be of my own choosing—such as Cain’s. And when I felt that God did
not require it of me, I was angry and hurt, just, you know, as Cain
was. And then one day a poor shepherd said to me, humbly and simply,
‘You are too clever for the like of us.’ That was lightning across
thick darkness, Miss Echalaz. I understood, by God’s mercy, what I
had known without understanding all along; it was obedience that He
required; no sacrifice but the laying down of my will before His. And
now,” he said, sadly—“now I wish I _could_ throw myself away, if it
were but for one man.”
“But you won’t stay here always?” Lily suggested.
“Ah! I don’t know,” he answered, with a smile. “We are soldiers; we
go where we are sent; but I know now that it is good for us—for me at
least—to work in a field where no glory can be reaped. If there were
a prize within reach one might be in danger of looking away from the
Master who calls us to follow only Him.”
Lily walked on in thoughtful silence.
Meanwhile Tom had strayed far from the track, plunging knee-deep
through heather and green cranberry scrub after butterflies, and
alarming the oyster-catchers, which flew whistling and circling
overhead, “tiring the echoes with unvaried cries,” and grouse, which
went whirring and clamoring away up among the big grey boulders on the
mountainside. The two sat down to wait for him.
“Every sight and sound here has a personality for me,” Macpherson said,
looking across the valley, where along the brow of a scarped hollow
lay white wreaths of snow, and a little cloud above it hung about the
mountain-top, clinging as if it would fain wander no more across the
pathless heaven.
“That little cloud, see how it clings—heaven-born though it is—to the
barren earth. If it lingers there it must dissolve in rain and fall
into that cold hollow which never sees the sun.”
Even as he spoke the cloudlet stirred, detached itself, and stole
slowly away into the blue air.
“Ay!” he said to himself, with expressive intonation as he watched it;
and then, bending his head while he held a piece of heather ungathered
in his hand, he listened a minute. “Hark!” he said, raising his eyes
with a dreamy smile. “Do you hear it?”
Far through the stillness of the sultry summer air came the murmur of
water falling down its stony channel.
“It is the burn yonder—that green streak between the hills—tumbling
down among the ferns. I used to fancy it mourned to leave its native
fountains, and flowery sheltering banks, and the solitude of these
mighty hills; but now it seems to me it feels a great destiny drawing
it irresistibly onward, down to the forests below, through moor and
meadow, to exchange the mountain echoes and the wild birds’ cry for
the shriek and rattle of railways and the din of busy towns; to hurry
onward, though it lose its early sweetness and receive many a foul
stain as it goes to join the ocean, the mighty heart which draws it to
itself, reaching which at last all its impurity shall be purged away.”
He was looking into the far horizon, where rank on rank of faint and
fainter hills mingled with the clouds and blue sky, and seemed lost in
thoughts beyond the words he had been speaking.
Lily’s glance rested on his spiritual face, and presently she sighed.
“My lot, I’m afraid,” she said, “is cast in that same city turmoil—we
live in London, you know. It will be hard to go back to that
artificial, crowded, stifling atmosphere after this.” Glancing up and
round them at the wide moorland and the hills, “Here the soul lies open
to all the winds of heaven; there—ah! one can soon forget there is a
heaven at all.”
“Hullo!” cried Tom’s voice, some little way behind them; and presently
he came up flushed and very much out of breath, and flung himself down
in the heather at their feet. “I should like to climb up and touch that
snow,” he remarked, after only one minute’s prostrate inaction, resting
on his elbows with his chin in his hands and his feet waving slowly
about. “I shouldn’t fancy your living in winter, sir,” he went on,
looking up at Macpherson, “but perhaps you just shut yourself up with
your books, like a dormouse, till the snow clears off?”
“I can’t do that,” said Macpherson, simply. “I have been up this valley
sometimes in snow so deep that the three miles took over three hours to
walk, and once before I could come back there was such a blinding storm
that I had to spend the night in that little black hut—you can just see
it, to the right, far up the valley. It is not always safe to go alone,
but I generally do because I know almost every stone and tree.”
Tom cross-questioned a little about these winter expeditions, and then
voted for refreshments; but Lily laughed at him, and proposed that
they should do a little more of the day’s work first, and then the
three rose and set forward, Tom engrossing the minister’s attention
with a host of such far-fetched and extraordinary questions as only a
schoolboy can possibly propound and care to have answered.
When at last they reached the river, after looking about and choosing
a place for lunch, Tom condescended to relieve his sister of his own
paraphernalia, told her she might “turn out the grub” because he
required the basket, and coolly recommended her to mount guard over
everything till they came back.
“Are you not going to fish, Miss Echalaz?” asked Macpherson, becoming
aware that it was proposed to leave her alone, and not altogether happy
at the idea.
“Oh! she’s only chaperon,” cried Tom, impatient to be off, and Lily
held up a cloud of white knitting which she said would keep her
quiet as long as they liked to be away. Tom uttered an urgent “Oh,
sir—_please_—she really is all right,” Macpherson turned away, and
then the two went obliquely down the bank with their rods, and were
soon lost to sight.
All was silence but the babbling of the water among the rocks, and
the faint summer air playing in the tassels of the birches, and all
above the glowing brown and purple moor the heat twinkled and trembled
aromatic of thyme and bog myrtle and juniper.
Lily clambered down the bank and found a shady nook fringed about with
stunted birch and ferns, and there she resigned herself to knitting and
to thronging thoughts suggested by what the young minister had said.
Macpherson, meanwhile, and Tom had established themselves to their
entire satisfaction on two large boulders in mid stream, and abandoned
themselves to the “sport” of waiting for the fishes.
Tom, conscious at first of Macpherson’s experienced eye, contrived to
be very patient for half an hour; but then he could no longer help
thinking that the fishes were obstinate, or the spot unfavorable, or
the sun too hot and bright, or the air too still, or the fly—probably
the fly was not the right kind; at any rate, a change of position must
no longer be deferred. By judicious tacking from boulder to boulder,
and then across a low shingle island where stunted alder scrub made a
shelter for the oyster-catchers, and tufts of saxifrage and stonecrop
grew, he arrived at a more likely place, and tried again. Still it
was evident that the fishes did not see the matter from his point of
view. He very soon wearied of his new position and cast about for
a better. He saw a big round boulder out in the very middle of the
broadest part of the stream, and was seized with all a boy’s longing
to be on it, sport or no sport. To long for a thing, with Tom Echalaz,
was as a rule to attain it rather sooner than later, and he at once
began making his way out with plenty of pluck and very little caution,
and finally landed with his rod, much wetter than he cared to notice,
and tried again. He turned presently, when even this new delight was
beginning to pall, to see what Macpherson was doing. Then he fancied
he heard thunder, and stood motionless to listen. His eyes were fixed
on the brown laughing water, flowing so softly over the stones below,
that caught the sun and shadow through it and looked like broken gold
amongst the soft brown of the bottom; the pebbly clatter of the shallow
waterfall beyond was in his ears. This was the moment, the sight, the
sound that remained indelibly fixed in his memory afterwards—the sultry
stillness, and the slumbrous babble and murmur that only made it seem
more still. Surely there was a curious sound far off up the valley.
“It _is_ thunder,” he said softly to himself, and looked up at the
cloudless sky. “How—really—it does sound awfully queer.”
He glanced up stream to see what had become of his companion, and
called out, “I say, isn’t that thunder?”
Macpherson, who also was in the middle of the stream, to Tom’s
astonishment was in the act of throwing off his coat, and shouted
almost before Tom had spoken,
“To the bank—the bank, for your life! At once!” and even careless,
unobservant Tom saw his face look white as death against the dark
background of rock and river.
Young Echalaz, although alarmed, was by no means the man to move
without sufficient cause shown, and rather naturally looked about him
for his danger before doing what he was told, even when Macpherson
shouted again.
Yet the first far-off sound, the shouts and the delay, were all
embraced in a few seconds. Then suddenly the boy realised that it was
_not_ thunder—this fearful, awesome wail and roar that was drawing
nearer. He turned in terror, towards the bank, and heard Macpherson
call out, “Can you swim?”
“No,” Tom shouted, but his voice was lost in the wild tumult of
rushing water, the river rose to his waist, the spate was upon them.
Bewildered, but not losing all his natural courage, the boy made an
effort to plant the thick end of his rod down into the bottom to steady
himself, but the next instant the water was about his shoulders, he
lost his footing and was swept away upon the flood. Exactly what
happened then, or how long it was that he felt himself rolling over,
whirling helplessly along with the mighty current, choking and
struggling, deafened by the thunder of the water, fighting desperately
for his life, Tom never could make out, but he remembered feeling at
last that he was beaten, that his earthly career was “about played
out,” as he himself expressed it; then there was a moment’s vivid
anguish of death, and keen memories of things done and left undone in
the long ago that he must now “let alone for ever,” and then a pause,
a stoppage, energy coming back—he was caught and entangled by the
fishing-basket that hung about his shoulders, and then a strong arm
held him fast and he heard Macpherson’s voice saying bravely, “Hold
on—you’re all safe, thank God!” and in another minute he was dragged on
to the bank.
“I’m all right!” he gasped, plucking up his spirits as he got his eyes
open and pushed his dripping hair off his face, and then he sat up and
laughed at the figure his preserver presented kneeling there in his
shirt-sleeves, soaked and streaming with water. “What _will_ the mater
say?” he exclaimed, delighted with his adventure. “Let’s go and show
ourselves to Lily.”
Macpherson sprang to his feet and looked along the bank down stream.
“Where is your sister?” he faltered, dashing the water from his eyes;
and then, without waiting for an answer, he was away like an arrow from
the bow, running beside the river as hard as man can run. Tom set off
running too, and presently saw Macpherson, now far ahead, plunge into
the flood.
A dead tree, bleached by last winter’s storms, went sweeping past him,
checked now and again by projecting rocks or overhanging boughs, and
then driven on once more by the overwhelming force of the water. For an
instant the boy threw himself upon the ground sobbing loud in agonising
dread, and then again he struggled to his feet, choked down his sobs,
and ran on at his utmost speed.
Not very far down the river turned at a sharp angle towards the nearer
bank, and a few old alders leaned out between the rocks. As Tom drew
near enough to distinguish one object from another amongst the foam
and swirling water, he gave a glad shout, “Hold on! hold on!” and in
another two minutes, holding by the alders, he was clambering down
towards the edge of the water, where Macpherson had caught a bough with
one hand and with the other supported Lily, who was clinging to his
shoulder.
“Give her your hand,” said Macpherson, rather faintly. “I can do
nothing.”
“Can you give me your hand, Lily?” panted the boy, leaning down. “Can
you climb a bit?”
“Oh! save us, Tom! I can’t let go,” Lily gasped, helpless with terror.
“There’s no footing,” said Macpherson, desperately.
Tom laid himself carefully along the trunk, and reaching down,
succeeded in taking firmly hold of Lily’s hand. Macpherson at the same
moment exerted his flagging strength to lift her a little towards the
friendly boughs.
“Be brave,” he said, detaching her clinging hands.
Tom pulled valiantly, and in another minute she was safe; only half out
of the water it is true, and trembling with cold and fright, but still
able to hold on, and with Tom’s help climb up on to dry land.
“Thank God!” Macpherson uttered, and added, “Is she hurt?” but
before either could answer they heard a crashing noise and a cry,
and steadying themselves to look downwards, saw the dead tree, which
had been caught somewhere higher up and detained a little while,
go swinging round the curve with its roots tossing in the air, and
Macpherson—? Macpherson was gone, and the lower boughs, where he and
Lily had been clinging, were all broken and torn away.
* * * * *
Two hours later Mrs. Echalaz was brought to the verge of hysterics at
the sight of her daughter, wet from head to foot, her face scratched
and bruised, her long wet hair hanging tangled about her shoulders,
without hat or gloves, and alone, hurrying towards the house.
Before Lily could explain what had happened Tom too appeared, wet and
pale, and choking with sobs, followed at a little distance by two
red-bearded, red-haired keepers, wet through also, moving slowly, and
carrying between them Macpherson, without coat or hat, his head fallen
back, his face white and still, his arms hanging limply down, water
trickling from his clothes and hair.
“I knew it! I said so!” screamed Mrs. Echalaz, clasping Tom in her
arms. “Never, never will I trust you out of my sight again!”
Tom broke away, crying bitterly.
“Oh, mother, don’t! He’s dead!”
“Dead!” shrieked poor Mrs. Echalaz; “and they’re bringing him into this
house?”
She was rushing out into the passage, but Robert, who had already
helped to bring Macpherson in, met her, and led her quietly back.
“You put these two to bed,” said he, “and I will take care of him,
mother. The men say he may come round,” and he hurried away to do all
that the keeper’s experience suggested and send at once for a doctor.
The keeper, whose name, in common with most of the population of that
district, was also Macpherson, told Robert how this very thing had
happened only two years before to the young laird and his own son, who
were both very nearly drowned, and explained that an unusual amount
of rain must have fallen up in the hills, some sudden and violent
downpour, to occasion the spate.
It was long before they dared cease to doubt of Macpherson’s recovery,
and when at last he really began to mend, the process was slow and
tedious.
As soon as her terrors for Tom were appeased by finding that he was not
a whit the worse for his wetting, Mrs. Echalaz took so kindly to the
young fellow, who certainly owed his whole misfortune to them, that
she waited on him and nursed him as patiently and tenderly as his own
mother could have done.
“I could not have believed it was so pleasant to be ill,” he said to
her, with a grateful smile, one day when, helped by Robert and Tom, he
had come into the sitting-room for the first time; “I shall be spoiled
for going back to work.”
They all protested that he need not think of work yet, as he could not
so much as walk alone; and many a pleasant day went by in that little
sitting-room, where half-drawn blinds made a cool dimness, and an
unfamiliar perfume dwelt in the air—attar of roses, perhaps; something
quite different, at any rate, from the odor of plain—very plain—
cookery and peat smoke to which he was accustomed at the Manse.
The room was like fairyland, with its hundred costly trifles, china
ornaments, scraps of Oriental work, curious fans and other nicknacks,
photographs and books littered about in prettily-regulated disorder.
Lying there, weak and weary, his eyes dwelt upon it all with vague,
unspeculating wonder and faint content. Mrs. Echalaz and Lily too were
always so lovely to look at, “a gude sicht for sair een,” their faces
so refined, voices so low and gentle, hands so delicately fair; their
dress, too, was wonderful and beautiful, like a part of themselves. He
felt himself under a deepening spell in their midst; he had never seen
things like the things he saw here, nor women like these women.
As for Lily, he was ashamed at all she did for him, but too helpless to
protest.
Once, when she saw that he hardly knew how to suffer so much kindness
at her hands, she said, rather sadly,
“Except for me, you need not be lying here at all,” and after that he
could only hold his tongue, and try to take everything graciously,
owning to himself that the least he could do was this; and not owning
what he perhaps scarcely knew, that all this kindness would lose its
charm if she were no longer the minister. But the more the charm grew
upon him the more shy and silent he became with her; and, perversely,
the more he longed to see her, or at least to know that she was near,
the less dared he raise his eyes or speak a word. And then he felt
beyond all hiding that, to part and see her no more would be the
bitterest pain he could ever know—such pain as a man must carry to
his grave. He knew that he was sorry to be getting strong, and so
drawing near the hour he dreaded; and then, because he felt such utter
reluctance to return to his old life—the life he would feel to be so
desperately lonely henceforth—he resolved to go at once.
That very day he spoke to Mrs. Echalaz alone, when the evening twilight
made it easier to say what he knew she would oppose with the pretty
tyranny which they all exercised upon him, and which his natural
shyness made it very hard for him to resist.
“As if I should listen to such nonsense,” said Mrs. Echalaz, just as he
had felt that she would. “You are not going for at least a week.”
His thin, brown hand twitched nervously on the arm of his chair.
“You are very kind,” he said, huskily—“much too kind; but I _must_ go.
Please do not urge me to stay—you don’t know how hard you make it to
me.”
Mrs. Echalaz laid her pretty jewelled fingers on his restless hand.
“Now tell me why you _must_ go,” she said, kindly; “and if it is a good
reason I will allow it.”
He hesitated long enough for her to divine that his answer, when it
came, was an evasion.
“I know it is my duty,” he said, looking down. “I shall do wrong to
stay here—doing nothing.” The last two words he added rather hastily,
after an instant’s embarrassment.
“So you will not tell me?” said Mrs. Echalaz, reproachfully.
He raised his eyes, doubting, to her face, with a strong impulse to
tell her all; then he smiled faintly.
“Do you not think duty the highest possible reason?” he asked,
resolving to keep silence.
Mrs. Echalaz looked at him.
“I think I could tell you a nearer one,” she said, with a gentle
pressure of her hand on his, that told him she read his very heart; and
then she added, with grave kindness, “Then I suppose we must let duty
carry the day. We shall miss you dreadfully.”
Macpherson raised her hand with reverent affection to his lips, but he
could not say a word.
When the rest came home from their walk he was gone.
Privately Mrs. Echalaz told Robert what had passed, and what she
construed it to mean.
“Well, why not?” was his comment.
“Why not!” echoed his mother, raising hands and eyes. “Of course I
like him. I never met a man to whom I would sooner have trusted Lily’s
happiness, but _of course_ it’s impossible.”
“Why?” asked Robert, simply.
“My dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Echalaz, “you know he has nothing. And
think of the connection! Preposterous!”
“A fig for the connection!” rejoined Robert, coolly; “and as for money,
Lily has quite enough, I suppose. Ask _her_.”
“Oh, you’re perfectly ridiculous!” cried his mother, with a vehemence
that convinced him she was already wavering in her own mind, and he
said no more.
Meanwhile Macpherson went home, and the first thing that recalled
him unmistakably to common earth was the sight of his one servant, a
ragged, barefooted, scantily clad, unkempt lassie of eleven or so, who
opened the door to him with exceedingly dirty hands, a grin of cheerful
welcome on her broad unwashed face. It was like waking from a sunny
dream to find oneself lying in the dark; rain beating on the window,
the gusty night wind shaking the door; and to feel the thrill of some
sharp pain—pain that makes a loneliness for flesh and spirit such as no
human heart may share, but is known to God alone.
He nodded to the child, and going past her into his study, shut the
door behind him. The sand slipped and grated under his feet, the smell
of peat-smoke and cookery was unabated. He sat down at his table, where
in that long past other life of his he had spent so many busy happy
hours, and hid his face on his folded arms, trying to let the influence
and memory of the last weeks go by; trying hard to put it away and
brace himself to the old work again.
The girl tapped at the door and said his tea was ready, and he went
into the smoky kitchen and sat down before a rather smeary cup and
plate, a pile of singed oatcakes, and a small teapot, but the food
stuck in his throat. He could not touch it, and by way of getting to
work at once he went away to visit a poor family half a mile off. On
his way home he found his strength exhausted. He could hardly drag
himself along, and even when at last in sight of his own door he leaned
against the low kirkyard wall and wondered whether he could reach it,
while his tired eyes dwelt listlessly on the lovely evening landscape.
The grey birches leaned motionless down over the mossy knolls, and
the dark ranks of larch and fir by the loch looked down into their
dark glassy shadows in the deep water. The great hills are growing dim
through the mist of evening, the clouds have crept away, and all the
sky shines with a faint rosy glow through the veil of rising vapor;
the long grass in the hollows there beside the lake and all the folded
flowers in yonder meadows are drinking in the gracious dew. Far through
the stillness comes the voice of many waters—of the river leaping down
the rocks. Through Macpherson’s fancy comes a vision of it sparkling in
the glory of a summer day, of himself too walking there, fenced about
with daylight and companionship, plovers calling and crying overhead,
flowers glowing under foot, merry gnats dancing in the yellow gleams
under the alder boughs, light and shadow flying over the fields and
flickering among the pools and waterfalls. But now the ghostly mist
creeps on and folds it all out of sight, and he is alone.
Mournfully, and yet with what deep longing, it brings to his heart
thoughts of that dim night that shall be when the day is past to come
no more; of the many morrows that shall dawn and set with their sun and
shadow, the many evenings with their tender mist and dew, when he will
have nor part nor lot in the beautiful earth save a narrow grave he
knows not where. Oh, life, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle! vanishing
as a dream! Shall he not bear its utmost burden to the end?
Strength and patience came to him beside those quiet graves. Feeling
forward into the future he could divine a coming hour when he would be
fain to ask a harder trial, longer probation, ere he see the face of
the Master he has followed with such faltering feet; that he may suffer
a little more for the dear sake of Him whom he has loved so unworthily,
ere the day for suffering go by for evermore.
The next day, having made up his mind to avoid the villa entirely,
he sent Mrs. Echalaz a basket of water-lilies from the loch, with a
message to the effect that he hoped his long arrears of work might be
his excuse for not coming in person.
He only longed now to hear that they were gone, and went in daily fear
of meeting some of them. He thought and hoped that his fever of unrest
might pass into dull pain when she was gone, a pain he might be able
to bear more quietly, and in time, perhaps, ignore. Hard work was the
only anodyne; but he was not very fit yet for all he tried to do, and
the sore trouble of his heart weighed down his spirit and sapped his
energy in spite of his best efforts, so that even to himself he grew
changed and strange.
He was coming home one evening through the birch wood above the loch,
about a week after he had left the villa, with weary, lagging steps,
and his eyes upon the ground, when the consciousness of another
presence, though he heard no sound, made him look up to find himself
face to face with Lily standing alone on the narrow path just in front
of him. She had been sitting there under the trees and had just risen
to her feet; her hands were full of white scented orchis, her hat lay
on the ground, and the evening sunlight fell on her fair hair and
showed him that her face was paler than when he saw it last—paler and
almost, he thought, a little sad. He forgot how his behavior might
appear to her; his one idea was to escape, that she might never guess
the fatal shipwreck he had made.
His eyes fell directly, and with a few inarticulate words he lifted his
hat and stood aside to let her pass. But Lily did not move. Perhaps if
he had not looked so very ill, and something more than ill, she might
have lacked courage to disregard his gesture; as it was, pity held her
there.
“Mr. Macpherson,” she said, in a low, grieved voice, “am I to pass by
without a word?”
He could not speak. It was like the last glimpse of light to the
prisoner condemned to life-long darkness to have her standing there.
How was he to bid her go?
“What have we done?” Lily asked. “What has happened?”
Macpherson looked up, pale and agitated. “I am not ungrateful,” he
said, barely able to control his voice. “Oh, don’t think that, Miss
Echalaz.”
“I can’t think that,” said Lily, simply; “but something is wrong if,
after all that has happened, you try to treat me as an utter stranger.”
He felt she was hurt, and looked up melted, penitent, ready to give
himself any pain, undergo any humiliation, to heal the wound he had
made.
“Miss Echalaz,” he said, “I wanted to spare you—and myself too—I—I
am blind and bewildered—I have been very selfish—perhaps it is wrong
now to tell you—I don’t know—I can’t tell—” he stopped, and there was
a moment’s absolute silence covering wild confusion and conflict in
his heart, and then he looked up and the words came, he knew not how,
steady and clear, “I love you, Miss Echalaz.” They were scarcely spoken
before he was condemning himself again. “Oh! Laugh at me—” He laughed
too as he spoke, not knowing what he did till he saw her face change
and the tears start from her eyes.
“Does it seem to _you_ a thing for laughter?” she asked, passionately.
“Have you judged me a woman to laugh at the love of the noblest man I
know? To hold it so very cheap that you need not even tell me—”
“How could I tell you?” he broke out. “What could I offer in exchange
for all I would ask you to lay down? _Could_ I ask you to come and
live in this wilderness in the barest poverty, where half the year is
winter, where there is no—no society, nothing but work and hardship and
loneliness?”
“If those were all you had to offer, you were right,” Lily answered,
tremulously. “You yourself do not live that life for nothing. There is
something that so far outweighs all those things that you count them as
naught.”
“Oh, I love my people!” said Macpherson at once, and even as he
uttered the word it told him what she meant. “My love was such a poor
thing to offer,” he faltered humbly, “and I have nothing else.”
The tears brimmed over in Lily’s eyes. “And would you take anything
else in exchange?” she said—“would money do instead, or rank, or any
other thing?”
“Oh, no, no, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously; “only love, and only
yours! Can love—such love as mine—outweigh all the rest?” His voice
failed, and as he raised his earnest, searching eyes to her face, the
last words came in a hoarse whisper, “Oh, is it enough for me to dare
offer you that alone?”
Lily crossed the narrow pathway that divided them, letting all her
flowers fall at their feet, and laid her hands in his.
“Would you really have let me go away without telling me?” she asked,
bravely, while the rosy color deepened in her cheeks. “Less than love,
for you and me, is nothing; and more than love there cannot be;” and
then she was fain to hide her face and fast-falling tears upon his
breast. “Oh, if only I were less unworthy!”
Macpherson trembled as he drew her to him. “God bless you, darling!” he
murmured, brokenly; and again and again, thinking over the past, she
heard him whisper, “Thank God! thank God!”—_Leisure Hour._