PASSION AND PATIENCE.
It was a glorious morning, and as they climbed, the lightening air
made their spirits rise with their steps. Great masses of cloud hung
beyond the edge of the world, and here and there towered
foundationless in the sky--huge tumulous heaps of white vapour with
gray shadows. The sun was strong, and poured down floods of light,
but his heat was deliciously tempered by the mountain atmosphere.
There was no wind--only an occasional movement as if the air itself
were breathing--just enough to let them feel they moved in no
vacuum, but in the heart of a gentle ocean.
They came to the hut I have already described as the one chiefly
inhabited by Hector of the Stags and Rob of the Angels. It commanded
a rare vision. In every direction rose some cone-shaped hill. The
world lay in coloured waves before them, wild, rugged, and grand,
with sheltering spots of beauty between, and the shine of lowly
waters. They tapped at the door of the hut, but there was no
response; they lifted the latch--it had no lock--and found neither
within. Alister and Mercy wandered a little higher, to the shadow of
a great stone; Christina went inside the hut and looked from its
door upon the world; Ian leaned against the side of it, and looked
up to the sky. Suddenly a few great drops fell--it was hard to say
whence. The scattered clouds had been drawing a little nearer the
sun, growing whiter as they approached him, and more had ascended
from the horizon into the middle air, blue sky abounding between
them. A swift rain, like a rain of the early summer, began to fall,
and grew to a heavy shower. They were glorious drops that made that
shower; for the sun shone, and every drop was a falling gem,
shining, sparkling like a diamond, as it fell. It was a bounteous
rain, coming from near the zenith, and falling in straight lines
direct from heaven to earth. It wanted but sound to complete its
charm, and that the bells of the heather gave, set ringing by the
drops. The heaven was filled with blue windows, and the rain seemed
to come from them rather than from the clouds. Into the rain rose
the heads of the mountains, each clothed in its surplice of thin
mist; they seemed rising on tiptoe heavenward, eager to drink of the
high-born comfort; for the rain comes down, not upon the mown grass
only, but upon the solitary and desert places also, where grass will
never be--"the playgrounds of the young angels," Rob called them.
"Do come in," said Christina; "you will get quite wet!"
He turned towards her. She stepped back, and he entered. Like one a
little weary, he sat down on Hector's old chair.
"Is anything the matter?" asked Christina, with genuine concern.
She saw that he was not quite like himself, that there was an
unusual expression on his face. He gave a faint apologetic smile.
"As I stood there," he answered, "a strange feeling came over me--a
foreboding, I suppose you would call it!"
He paused; Christina grew pale, and said, "Won't you tell me what it
was?"
"It was an odd kind of conviction that the next time I stood there,
it would not be in the body.--I think I shall not come back."
"Come back!" echoed Christina, fear beginning to sip at the cup of
her heart. "Where are you going?"
"I start for Canada next week."
She turned deadly white, and put out her hands, feeling blindly
after support. Ian started to his feet.
"We have tired you out!" he said in alarm, and took her by both
hands to place her in the chair.
She did not hear him. The world had grown dark about her, a hissing
noise was in her ears, and she would have fallen had he not put his
arm round her. The moment she felt supported, she began to come to
herself. There was no pretence, however, no coquetry in her
faintness. Neither was it aught but misery and affection that made
her lay her head on Ian's shoulder, and burst into a violent fit of
weeping. Unused to real emotion, familiar only with the
poverty-stricken, false emotion of conquest and gratified vanity,
when the real emotion came she did not know how to deal with it, and
it overpowered her.
"Oh! oh!" she cried at length between her sobs, "I am ashamed of
myself! I can't help it! I can't help it! What will you think of me!
I have disgraced myself!"
Ian had been far from any suspicion of the state of things, but he
had had too much sorrowful experience to be able to keep his
unwilling eyes closed to this new consternation. The cold shower
seemed to flood his soul; the bright drops descending with such
swiftness of beauty, instinct with sun-life, turned into points of
icy steel that pierced his heart. But he must not heed himself! he
must speak to her! He must say something through the terrible shroud
that infolded them!
"You are as safe with me," he faltered, "--as safe as with your
mother!"
"I believe it! I know it," she answered, still sobbing, but looking
up with an expression of genuine integrity such as he had never seen
on her face before. "But I AM sorry!" she went on. "It is very weak,
and very, very un--un--womanly of me! But it came upon me all at
once! If I had only had some warning! Oh, why did you not tell me
before? Why did you not prepare me for it? You might have known what
it would be to hear it so suddenly!"
More and more aghast grew Ian! What was to be done? What was to be
said? What was left for a man to do, when a woman laid her soul
before him? Was there nothing but a lie to save her from bitterest
humiliation? To refuse any woman was to Ian a hard task; once he had
found it impossible to refuse even where he could not give, and had
let a woman take his soul! Thank God, she took it indeed! he yielded
himself perfectly, and God gave him her in return! But that was
once, and for ever! It could not be done again!
"I am very sorry!" he murmured; and the words and their tone sent a
shiver through the heart of Christina.
But now that she had betrayed her secret, the pent up tide of her
phantasy rushed to the door. She was reckless. Used to everything
her own way, knowing nothing of disappointment, a new and ill
understood passion dominating her, she let everything go and the
torrent sweep her with it. Passion, like a lovely wild beast, had
mastered her, and she never thought of trying to tame it. It was
herself! there was not enough of her outside the passion to stand up
against it! She began to see the filmy eyed Despair, and had neither
experience to deal with herself, nor reticence enough to keep
silence.
"If you speak to me like that," she cried, "my heart will
break!--Must you go away?"
"Dear Miss Palmer,--" faltered Ian.
"Oh!" she ejaculated, with a world of bitterness in the protest.
"--do let us be calm!" continued Ian. "We shall not come to anything
if we lose ourselves this way!"
The WE and the US gave her a little hope.
"How can I be calm!" she cried. "I am not cold-hearted like
you!--You are going away, and I shall never see you again to all
eternity!"
She burst out weeping afresh.
"Do love me a little before you go," she sobbed. "You gave me my
life once, but that does not make it right to take it from me again!
It only gives you a right to its best!"
"God knows," said Ian, "if my life could serve you, I should count
it a small thing to yield!--But this is idle talk! A man must not
pretend anything! We must not be untrue!"
She fancied he did not believe in her.
"I know! I know! you may well distrust me!" she returned. "I have
often behaved abominably to you! But indeed I am true now! I dare
not tell you a lie. To you I MUST speak the truth, for I love you
with my whole soul."
Ian stood dumb. His look of consternation and sadness brought her to
herself a little.
"What have I done!" she cried, and drawing back a pace, stood
looking at him, and trembling. "I am disgraced for ever! I have told
a man I love him, and he leaves me to the shame of it! He will not
save me from it! he will not say one word to take it away! Where is
your generosity, Ian?"
"I must be true!" said Ian, speaking as if to himself, and in a
voice altogether unlike his own.
"You will not love me! You hate me! You despise me! But I will not
live rejected! He brushes me like a feather from his coat!"
"Hear me," said Ian, trying to recover himself. "Do not think me
insensible--"
"Oh, yes! I know!" cried Christina yet more bitterly; "--INSENSIBLE
TO THE HONOUR _I_ DO YOU, and all that world of nothing!--Pray use
your victory! Lord it over me! I am the weed under your foot! I beg
you will not spare me! Speak out what you think of me!"
Ian took her hand. It trembled as if she would pull it away, and her
eyes flashed an angry fire. She looked more nearly beautiful than
ever he had seen her! His heart was like to break. He drew her to
the chair, and taking a stool, sat down beside her. Then, with a
voice that gathered strength as he proceeded, he said:--
"Let me speak to you, Christina Palmer, as in the presence of him
who made us! To pretend I loved you would be easier than to bear the
pain of giving you such pain. Were I selfish enough, I could take
much delight in your love; but I scorn the unmanliness of accepting
gold and returning silver: my love is not mine to give."
It was some relief to her proud heart to imagine he would have loved
her had he been free. But she did not speak.
"If I thought," pursued Ian, "that I had, by any behaviour of mine,
been to blame for this,--" There he stopped, lest he should seem to
lay blame on her.--"I think," he resumed, "I could help you if you
would listen to me. Were I in like trouble with you, I would go into
my room, and shut the door, and tell my Father in heaven everything
about it. Ah, Christina! if you knew him, you would not break your
heart that a man did not love you just as you loved him."
Had not her misery been so great, had she not also done the thing
that humbled her before herself, Christina would have been indignant
with the man who refused her love and dared speak to her of
religion; but she was now too broken for resentment.
The diamond rain was falling, the sun was shining in his vaporous
strength, and the great dome of heaven stood fathomless above the
pair; but to Christina the world was black and blank as the gloomy
hut in which they sat. When first her love blossomed, she saw the
world open; she looked into its heart; she saw it alive--saw it
burning with that which made the bush alive in the desert of
Horeb--the presence of the living God; now, the vision was over, the
desert was dull and dry, the bush burned no more, the glowing lava
had cooled to unsightly stone! There was no God, nor any man more!
Time had closed and swept the world into the limbo of vanity! For a
time she sat without thought, as it were in a mental sleep. She
opened her eyes, and the blank of creation stared into the very
heart of her. The emptiness and loneliness overpowered her. Hardly
aware of what she was doing, she slid to her knees at Ian's feet,
crying,
"Save me, save me, Ian! I shall go mad! Pardon me! Help me!"
"All a man may be to his sister, I am ready to be to you. I will
write to you from Canada; you can answer me or not as you please. My
heart cries out to me to take you in my arms and comfort you, but I
must not; it would not comfort you."
"You do not despise me, then?--Oh, thank you!"
"Despise you!--no more than my dead sister! I would cherish you as I
would her were she in like sorrow. I would die to save you this
grief--except indeed that I hope much from it."
"Forget all about me," said Christina, summoning pride to her aid.
"I will not forget you. It is impossible, nor would I if I could."
"You forgive me then, and will not think ill of me?"
"How forgive trust? Is that an offence?"
"I have lost your good opinion! How could I degrade myself so!"
"On the contrary, you are fast gaining my good opinion. You have
begun to be a true woman!"
"What if it should be only for--"
"Whatever it may have been for, now you have tasted truth you will
not turn back!"
"Now I know you do not care for me, I fear I shall soon sink back
into my old self!"
"I do care for you, Christina, and you will not sink back into your
old self. God means you to be a strong, good woman--able, with the
help he will give you, to bear grief in a great-hearted fashion.
Believe me, you and I may come nearer each other in the ages before
us by being both true, than is possible in any other way whatever."
"I am miserable at the thought of what you must think of me!
Everybody would say I had done a shameless thing in confessing my
love!"
"I am not in the way of thinking as everybody thinks. There is
little justice, and less sympathy, to be had from everybody. I would
think and judge and feel as the one, my Master. Be sure you are safe
with me."
"You will not tell anybody?"
"You must trust me."
"I beg your pardon! I have offended you!"
"Not in the least. But I will bind myself by no promises. I am bound
already to be as careful over you as if you were the daughter of my
father and mother. Your confession, instead of putting you in my
power, makes me your servant."
By this time Christina was calm. There was a great load on her
heart, but somehow she was aware of the possibility of carrying it.
She looked up gratefully in Ian's face, already beginning to feel
for him a reverence which made it easier to forego the right to put
her arms round him. And therewith awoke in her the first movement of
divine relationship--rose the first heave of the child-heart toward
the source of its being. It appeared in the form of resistance.
Complaint against God is far nearer to God than indifference about
him.
"Ian Macruadh," said Christina solemnly, and she looked him in the
eyes as she said it, "how can you believe there is a God? If there
were, would he allow such a dreadful thing to befall one of his
creatures? How am I to blame? I could not help it!"
"I see in it his truth and goodness toward his child. And he will
let you see it. The thing is between him and you."
"It will be hard to convince me it is either good or loving to make
anyone suffer like this!" protested Christina, her hand
unconsciously pressed on her heart; "--and all the disgrace of it
too!" she added bitterly.
"I will not allow there is any disgrace," returned Ian. "But I will
not try to con vince you of anything about God. I cannot. You must
know him. I only say I believe in him with all my heart. You must
ask him to explain himself to you, and not take it for granted,
because he has done what you do not like, that he has done you a
wrong. Whether you seek him or not, he will do you justice; but he
cannot explain himself except you seek him."
"I think I understand. Believe me, I am willing to understand."
A few long seconds of silence followed. Christina came a little
nearer. She was still on her knees.
"Will you kiss me once," she said, "as you would a little child!"
"In the name of God!" answered Ian, and stooping kissed her gently
and tenderly.
"Thank you!" she said; "--and now the rain is over, let us join
Mercy and the chief. I hope they have not got very wet!"
"Alister will have taken care of that. There is plenty of shelter
about here."
They left the cottage, drew the door close, and through the heather,
sparkling with a thousand rain-drops, the sun shining hotter than
ever through the rain-mist, went up the hill.
They found the other pair sheltered by the great stone, which was
not only a shadow from the heat, but sloped sufficiently to be a
covert from the rain. They did not know it had ceased; perhaps they
did not know it had rained.
On a fine morning of the following week, the emigrants began the
first stage of their long journey; the women in two carts, with
their small impedimenta, the men walking--Ian with them, a stout
stick in his hand. They were to sail from Greenock.
Ian and Christina met several times before he left, but never alone.
No conference of any kind, not even of eyes, had been sought by
Christina, and Ian had resolved to say nothing more until he reached
Canada. Thence he would write things which pen and ink would say
better and carry nearer home than could speech; and by that time too
the first keenness of her pain would have dulled, and left her mind
more capable of receiving them. He was greatly pleased with the
gentle calm of her behaviour. No one else could have seen any
difference toward himself. He read in her carriage that of a child
who had made a mistake, and was humbled, not vexed. Her mother noted
that her cheek was pale, and that she seemed thoughtful; but farther
she did not penetrate. To Ian it was plain that she had set herself
to be reasonable.