"You dare to look me in the face!"
They were Rintoul's words. Yet Babbie had only ventured to look up
because he was so long in speaking. His voice was low but harsh, like
a wheel on which the brake is pressed sharply.
"It seems to be more than the man is capable of," he added sourly.
"Do you think," Babbie exclaimed, taking fire, "that he is afraid of
you?"
"So it seems; but I will drag him into the light, wherever he is
skulking."
Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was off his tongue
already.
"Go," said Babbie coldly, "and shout and stamp through the house; you
may succeed in frightening the women, who are the only persons in
it."
"Where is he?"
"He has gone to the Spittal to see you."
"He knew I was on the hill."
"He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had run away with me in
your trap."
"Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give you back to him."
"To compel you," corrected Babbie.
"Pooh!" said the earl nervously, "that was but mummery on the hill."
"It was a marriage."
"With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would count for less than
nothing. Babbie, I am still in time to save you."
"I don't want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses no court could
discredit."
"What witnesses?"
"Mr. McKenzie and yourself."
She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked at him, there were
tears in his eyes as well as in her own. It was perhaps the first time
these two had ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for
Rintoul.
"I am so sorry," Babbie began in a broken voice; then stopped, because
they seemed such feeble words.
"If you are sorry," the earl answered eagerly, "it is not yet too
late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come away with me, Babbie, if only
in pity for yourself."
"Ah, but I don't pity myself."
"Because this man has blinded you."
"No, he has made me see."
"This mummery on the hill----"
"Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of that marriage, as He
could never have countenanced yours and mine."
"God! I never heard the word on your lips before."
"I know that."
"It is his teaching, doubtless?"
"Yes."
"And he told you that to do to me as you have done was to be pleasing
in God's sight?"
"No; he knows that it was so evil in God's sight that I shall suffer
for it always."
"But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment for him?"
"It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment will be
worse, probably, than mine."
[Illustration: "YOU DARE TO LOOK ME IN THE FACE!"]
"That," said the earl, scoffing, "is not just."
"It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying
me."
"And what form is his punishment to take?"
"For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in
all men's eyes, unless--unless God is more merciful to us than we can
expect."
Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it
with sarcasm.
"It is you I pity now," he said, looking wonderingly at her. "Do you
not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity
in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to
take you from me?"
"If you knew him," Babbie answered, "you would not need to be told
that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an
hour ago."
"And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of
what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off
to marry him."
"I am not so bad as that," Babbie answered, and told him what had
brought her to Thrums. "I had no thought but of returning to you, nor
he of keeping me from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse
door--and then we heard your voice."
"And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove you to this?"
"I--I love him so much."
What more could Babbie answer? These words told him that, if
love commands, home, the friendships of a lifetime, kindnesses
incalculable, are at once as naught. Nothing is so cruel as love if
a rival challenges it to combat.
"Why could you not love me, Babbie?" said the earl sadly. "I have done
so much for you."
It was little he had done for her that was not selfish. Men are
deceived curiously in such matters. When they add a new wing to their
house, they do not call the action virtue; but if they give to a
fellow-creature for their own gratification, they demand of God a good
mark for it. Babbie, however, was in no mood to make light of the
earl's gifts, and at his question she shook her head sorrowfully.
"Is it because I am too--old?"
This was the only time he ever spoke of his age to her.
"Oh no, it is not that," she replied hastily, "I love Mr.
Dishart--because he loves me, I think."
"Have I not loved you always?"
"Never," Babbie answered simply. "If you had, perhaps then I should
have loved you."
"Babbie," he exclaimed, "if ever man loved woman, and showed it by the
sacrifices he made for her, I----"
"No," Babbie said, "you don't understand what it is. Ah! I did not
mean to hurt you."
"If I don't know what it is, what is it?" he asked, almost humbly. "I
scarcely know you now."
"That is it," said Babbie.
She gave him back his ring, and then he broke down pitifully.
Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with
nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life
into the dust of his senile passion. These were the last words that
passed between him and Babbie:
"There was nothing," he said wistfully, "in this wide world that you
could not have had by asking me for it. Was not that love?"
"No," she answered. "What right have I to everything I cry for?"
"You should never have had a care had you married me. That is love."
"It is not. I want to share my husband's cares, as I expect him to
share mine."
"I would have humored you in everything."
"You always did: as if a woman's mind were for laughing at, like a
baby's passions."
"You had your passions, too, Babbie. Yet did I ever chide you for
them? That was love."
"No, it was contempt. Oh," she cried passionately, "what have not you
men to answer for who talk of love to a woman when her face is all you
know of her; and her passions, her aspirations, are for kissing to
sleep, her very soul a plaything? I tell you, Lord Rintoul, and it is
all the message I send back to the gentlemen at the Spittal who made
love to me behind your back, that this is a poor folly, and well
calculated to rouse the wrath of God."
Now, Jean's ear had been to the parlor keyhole for a time, but some
message she had to take to Margaret, and what she risked saying was
this:
"It's Lord Rintoul and a party that has been catched in the rain, and
he would be obliged to you if you could gie his bride shelter for the
nicht."
Thus the distracted servant thought to keep Margaret's mind at rest
until Gavin came back.
"Lord Rintoul!" exclaimed Margaret. "What a pity Gavin has missed him.
Of course she can stay here. Did you say I had gone to bed? I should
not know what to say to a lord. But ask her to come up to me after he
has gone--and, Jean, is the parlor looking tidy?"
Lord Rintoul having departed, Jean told Babbie how she had accounted
to Margaret for his visit. "And she telled me to gie you dry claethes
and her compliments, and would you gang up to the bedroom and see
her?"
Very slowly Babbie climbed the stairs. I suppose she is the only
person who was ever afraid of Margaret. Her first knock on the bedroom
door was so soft that Margaret, who was sitting up in bed, did not
hear it. When Babbie entered the room, Margaret's first thought was
that there could be no other so beautiful as this, and her second was
that the stranger seemed even more timid than herself. After a few
minutes' talk she laid aside her primness, a weapon she had drawn in
self-defence lest this fine lady should not understand the grandeur of
a manse, and at a "Call me Babbie, won't you?" she smiled.
"That is what some other person calls you," said Margaret archly. "Do
you know that he took twenty minutes to say good-night? My dear," she
added hastily, misinterpreting Babbie's silence, "I should have been
sorry had he taken one second less. Every tick of the clock was a
gossip, telling me how he loves you."
In the dim light a face that begged for pity was turned to Margaret.
"He does love you, Babbie?" she asked, suddenly doubtful.
Babbie turned away her face, then shook her head.
"But you love him?"
Again Babbie shook her head.
"Oh, my dear," cried Margaret, in distress, "if this is so, are you
not afraid to marry him?"
She knew now that Babbie was crying, but she did not know why Babbie
could not look her in the face.
"There may be times," Babbie said, most woeful that she had not
married Rintoul, "when it is best to marry a man though we do not love
him."
"You are wrong, Babbie," Margaret answered gravely; "if I know
anything at all, it is that."
"It may be best for others."
"Do you mean for one other?" Margaret asked, and the girl bowed her
head. "Ah, Babbie, you speak like a child."
"You do not understand."
"I do not need to be told the circumstances to know this--that if two
people love each other, neither has any right to give the other up."
Babbie turned impulsively to cast herself on the mercy of Gavin's
mother, but no word could she say; a hot tear fell from her eyes upon
the coverlet, and then she looked at the door, as if to run away.
"But I have been too inquisitive," Margaret began; whereupon Babbie
cried, "Oh no, no, no: you are very good. I have no one who cares
whether I do right or wrong."
"Your parents----"
"I have had none since I was a child."
"It is the more reason why I should be your friend," Margaret said,
taking the girl's hand.
"You do not know what you are saying. You cannot be my friend."
"Yes, dear, I love you already. You have a good face, Babbie, as well
as a beautiful one."
Babbie could remain in the room no longer. She bade Margaret
good-night and bent forward to kiss her; then drew back, like a Judas
ashamed.
"Why did you not kiss me?" Margaret asked in surprise, but poor Babbie
walked out of the room without answering.
* * * * *
Of what occurred at the manse on the following day until I reached it,
I need tell little more. When Babbie was tending Sam'l Farquharson's
child in the Tenements she learned of the flood in Glen Quharity, and
that the greater part of the congregation had set off to the
assistance of the farmers; but fearful as this made her for Gavin's
safety, she kept the new anxiety from his mother. Deceived by another
story of Jean's, Margaret was the one happy person in the house.
"I believe you had only a lover's quarrel with Lord Rintoul last
night," she said to Babbie in the afternoon. "Ah, you see I can guess
what is taking you to the window so often. You must not think him long
in coming for you. I can assure you that the rain which keeps my son
from me must be sufficiently severe to separate even true lovers. Take
an old woman's example, Babbie. If I thought the minister's absence
alarming, I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind is so much at
ease that, see, I can thread my needle."
It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus tranquilly to
Babbie that the precentor got into the manse.
Chapter Forty-Two.