SOMETHING STRANGE.
Alister did not feel inclined to go home. The night was more like
Mercy, and he lingered with the night, inhabiting the dream that it
was Mercy's house, and she in the next room. He turned into the
castle, climbed the broken steps, and sat on the corner of the wall,
the blank hill before him, asleep standing, with the New House on
its shoulder, and the moonlight reflected from Mercy's window under
which he had so lately stood. He sat for an hour, and when he came
down, was as much disinclined to go home as before: he could not
rest in his chamber, with no Ian on the other side of its wall! He
went straying down the road, into the valley, along the burnside, up
the steep beyond it, and away to the hill-farm and the tomb.
The moon was with him all the way, but she seemed thinking to
herself rather than talking to him. Why should the strange,
burnt-out old cinder of a satellite be the star of lovers? The
answer lies hid, I suspect, in the mysteries of light reflected.
He wandered along, careless of time, of moonset, star-shine, or
sunrise, brooding on many things in the rayless radiance of his
love, and by the time he reached the tomb, was weary with excitement
and lack of sleep. Taking the key from where it was cunningly
hidden, he unlocked the door and entered.
He started back at sight of a gray-haired old man, seated on one of
the stone chairs, and leaning sadly over the fireless hearth: it
must be his uncle! The same moment he saw it was a ray from the
sinking moon, entering by the small, deep window, and shining feebly
on the chair. He struck a light, kindled the peats on the hearth,
and went for water. Returning from the well he found the house dark
as before; and there was the old man again, cowering over the
extinguished fire! The idea lasted but a moment; once more the level
light of the moon lay cold and gray upon the stone chair! He tried
to laugh at his fancifulness, but did not quite succeed. Several
times on the way up, he had thought of his old uncle: this must have
given the shape to the moonlight and the stone! He made many
attempts to recall the illusion, but in vain. He relighted the fire,
and put on the kettle. Going then for a book to read till the water
boiled, he remembered a letter which, in the excitement of the
afternoon, he had put in his pocket unread, and forgotten. It was
from the family lawyer in Glasgow, informing him that the bank in
which his uncle had deposited the proceeds of his sale of the land,
was in a state of absolute and irrecoverable collapse; there was not
the slightest hope of retrieving any portion of the wreck.
Alister did not jump up and pace the room in the rage of
disappointment; neither did he sit as one stunned and forlorn of
sense. He felt some bitterness in the loss of the hope of making up
to his people for his uncle's wrong; but it was clear that if God
had cared for his having the money, he would have cared that he
should have it. Here was an opportunity for absolute faith and
contentment in the will that looks after all our affairs, the small
as well as the great.
Those who think their affairs too insignificant for God's regard,
will justify themselves in lying crushed under their seeming ruin.
Either we live in the heart of an eternal thought, or we are the
product and sport of that which is lower than we.
"It was evil money!" said the chief to himself; "it was the sale of
a birthright for a mess of pottage! I would have turned it back into
the right channel, the good of my people! but after all, what can
money do? It was discontent with poverty that began the ruin of the
highlands! If the heads of the people had but lived pure, active,
sober, unostentatious lives, satisfied to be poor, poverty would
never have overwhelmed them! The highlands would have made Scotland
great with the greatness of men dignified by high-hearted
contentment, and strong with the strength of men who could do
without!" Therewith it dawned upon Alister how, when he longed to
help his people, his thoughts had always turned, not to God first,
but to the money his uncle had left him. He had trusted in a
fancy--no less a fancy when in his uncle's possession than when cast
into the quicksand of the bank; for trust in money that is, is no
less vain, and is farther from redress, than trust in money that is
not. In God alone can trust repose. His heart had been so faithless
that he did not know it was! He thought he loved God as the first
and last, the beginning, middle, and end of all things, and he had
been trusting, not in God, but in uncertain riches, that is in vile
Mammon! It was a painful and humiliating discovery. "It was well,"
he said, "that my false deity should be taken from me! For my
idolatry perhaps, a good gift has failed to reach my people! I must
be more to them than ever, to make up to them for their loss with
better than money!"
He fell on his knees, and thanked God for the wind that had blown
cold through his spirit, and slain at least one evil thing; and when
he rose, all that was left of his trouble was a lump in his throat,
which melted away as he walked home through the morning air on the
hills. For he could not delay; he must let his mother know their
trouble, and, as one who had already received help from on high,
help her to bear it! If the messenger of Satan had buffeted him, he
had but broken a way for strength!
But at first he could not enjoy as he was wont the glory of the
morning. It troubled him. Would a single note in the song of the
sons of the morning fail because God did or would not do a thing?
Could God deserve less than thanks perfect from any one of his
creatures? That man could not know God who thanked him but for what
men call good things, nor took the evil as from the same love! He
scorned himself, and lifted up his heart. As he reached the brow of
his last descent, the sun rose, and with it his soul arose and
shone, for its light was come, and the glory of the Lord was risen
upon it. "Let God," he said, "take from us what he will: himself he
can only give!" Joyful he went down the hill. God was, and all was
well!