A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.
So entirely were the chief and his family out of the world, that
they had not yet a notion of the worldly relations of Mr. Peregrine
Palmer. But the mother thought it high time to make inquiry as to
his position and connections. She had an old friend in London, the
wife of a certain vice-chancellor, with whom she held an occasional
correspondence, and to her she wrote, asking if she knew anything of
the family.
Mrs. Macruadh was nowise free from the worldliness that has regard
to the world's regard. She would not have been satisfied that a
daughter in law of hers should come of people distinguished for
goodness and greatness of soul, if they were, for instance,
tradespeople. She would doubtless have preferred the daughter of an
honest man, whatever his position, to the daughter of a scoundrel,
even if he chanced to be a duke; but she would not have been content
with the most distinguished goodness by itself. Walking after Jesus,
she would have drawn to the side of Joanna rather than Martha or
Mary; and I fear she would have condescended--just a little--to Mary
Magdalen: repentance, however perfect, is far from enough to satisfy
the worldly squeamishness of not a few high-principled people who do
not know what repentance means.
Mrs. Macruadh was anxious to know that the girl was respectable, and
so far worthy of her son. The idea of such an inquiry would have
filled Mercy's parents with scornful merriment, as a thing ludicrous
indeed. People in THEIR position, who could do this and that, whose
name stood so high for this and that, who knew themselves well bred,
who had one relation an admiral, another a general, and a
marriage-connection with some of the oldest families in the
country--that one little better than a yeoman, a man who held the
plough with his own big hands, should enquire into THEIR social
standing! Was not Mr. Peregrine Palmer prepared to buy him up the
moment he required to sell! Was he not rich enough to purchase an
earl's daughter for his son, and an earl himself for his beautiful
Christina! The thing would have seemed too preposterous.
The answer of the vice-chancellor's lady burst, nevertheless, like a
bombshell in the cottage. It was to this effect:--The Palmers were
known, if not just in the best, yet in very good society; the sons
bore sign of a defective pedigree, but the one daughter out was,
thanks to her mother, fit to go anywhere. For her own part, wrote
the London correspondent, she could not help smelling the grains: in
Scotland a distiller, Mr. Peregrine Palmer had taken to brewing in
England--was one of the firm Pulp and Palmer, owning half the
public-houses in London, therefore high in the regard of the English
nobility, if not actually within their circle.--Thus far the
satirical lady of the vice-chancellor.
Horror fell upon the soul of the mother. The distiller was to her as
the publican to the ancient Jew. No dealing in rags and marine
stores, no scraping of a fortune by pettifogging, chicane, and
cheating, was to her half so abominable as the trade of a brewer.
Worse yet was a brewer owning public-houses, gathering riches in
half-pence wet with beer and smelling of gin. The brewer was to her
a moral pariah; only a distiller was worse. As she read, the letter
dropped from her hands, and she threw them up in unconscious appeal
to heaven. She saw a vision of bloated men and white-faced women,
drawing with trembling hands from torn pockets the money that had
bought the wide acres of the Clanruadh. To think of the Macruadh
marrying the daughter of such a man! In society few questions indeed
were asked; everywhere money was counted a blessed thing, almost
however made; none the less the damnable fact remained, that certain
moneys were made, not in furthering the well-being of men and women,
but in furthering their sin and degradation. The mother of the chief
saw that, let the world wink itself to blindness, let it hide the
roots of the money-plant in layer upon layer of social ascent, the
flower for which an earl will give his daughter, has for the soil it
grows in, not the dead, but the diseased and dying, of loathsome
bodies and souls of God's men and women and children, which the
grower of it has helped to make such as they are.
She was hot, she was cold; she started up and paced hurriedly about
the room. Her son the son in law of a distiller! the husband of his
daughter! The idea was itself abhorrence and contempt! Was he not
one of the devil's fishers, fishing the sea of the world for the
souls of men and women to fill his infernal ponds withal! His money
was the fungous growth of the devil's cellars. How would the brewer
or the distiller, she said, appear at the last judgment! How would
her son hold up his head, if he cast in his lot with theirs! But
that he would never do! Why should she be so perturbed! in this
matter at least there could be no difference between them! Her noble
Alister would be as much shocked as herself at the news! Could the
woman be a lady, grown on such a hot-bed! Yet, alas! love could tempt
far--could subdue the impossible!
She could not rest; she must find one of them! Not a moment longer
could she remain alone with the terrible disclosure. If Alister was
in love with the girl, he must get out of it at once! Never again
would she enter the Palmers' gate, never again set foot on their
land! The thought of it was unthinkable! She would meet them as if
she did not see them! But they should know her reason--and know her
inexorable!
She went to the edge of the ridge, and saw Ian sitting with his book
on the other side of the burn. She called him to her, and handed him
the letter. He took it, read it through, and gave it her back.
"Ian!" she exclaimed, "have you nothing to say to that?"
"I beg your pardon, mother," he answered: "I must think about it.
Why should it trouble you so! It is painfully annoying, but we have
come under no obligation to them!"
"No; but Alister!"
"You cannot doubt Alister will do what is right!"
"He will do what he thinks right!"
"Is not that enough, mother?"
"No," she answered angrily; "he must do the thing that is right."
"Whether he knows it or not? Could he do the thing he thought
wrong?"
She was silent.
"Mother dear," resumed Ian, "the only Way to get at what IS right is
to do what seems right. Even if we mistake there is no other way!"
"You would do evil that good may come! Oh, Ian!"
"No, mother; evil that is not seen to be evil by one willing and
trying to do right, is not counted evil to him. It is evil only to
the person who either knows it to be evil, or does not care whether
it be or not."
"That is dangerous doctrine!"
"I will go farther, mother, and say, that for Alister to do what you
thought right, if he did not think it right himself--even if you
were right and he wrong--would be for him to do wrong, and blind
himself to the truth."
"A man may be to blame that he is not able to see the truth," said
the mother.
"That is very true, but hardly such a man as Alister, who would
sooner die than do the thing he believed wrong. But why should you
take it for granted that Alister will think differently from you?"
"We don't always think alike."
"In matters of right and wrong, I never knew him or me think
differently from you, mother!"
"He is very fond of the girl!"
"And justly. I never saw one more in earnest, or more anxious to
learn."
"She might well be teachable to such teachers!"
"I don't see that she has ever sought to commend herself to either
of us, mother. I believe her heart just opened to the realities she
had never had shown her before. Come what may, she will never forget
the things we have talked about."
"Nothing would make me trust her!"
"Why?"
"She comes of an' abominable breed."
"Is it your part, mother, to make her suffer for the sins of her
fathers?"
"I make her suffer!"
"Certainly, mother--by changing your mind toward her, and suspecting
her, the moment you learn cause to condemn her father."
"The sins of the fathers are visited on the children!--You will not
dispute that?'
"I will grant more--that the sins of the fathers are often
reproduced in the children. But it is nowhere said, 'Thou shalt
visit the sins of the fathers on the children.' God puts no
vengeance into our hands. I fear you are in danger of being unjust
to the girl, mother!--but then you do not know her so well as we
do!"
"Of course not! Every boy understands a woman better than his
mother!"
"The thing is exceedingly annoying, mother! Let us go and find
Alister at once!"
"He will take it like a man of sense, I trust!"
"He will. It will trouble him terribly, but he will do as he ought.
Give him time and I don't believe there is a man in the world to
whom the right comes out clearer than to Alister."
The mother answered only with a sigh.
"Many a man," remarked Ian, "has been saved through what men call an
unfortunate love affair!"
"Many a man has been lost by having his own way in one!" rejoined
the mother.
"As to LOST, I would not make up my mind about that for a few
centuries or so!" returned Ian. "A man may be allowed his own way
for the discipline to result from it."
"I trust, Ian, you will not encourage him in any folly!"
"I shall have nothing to do but encourage him in his first resolve,
mother!"