THE POWER OF DARKNESS.
He found his mother at breakfast, wondering what had become of him.
"Are you equal to a bit of bad news, mother?" he asked with a smile.
The mother's thoughts flew instantly to Ian.
"Oh, it's nothing about Ian!" said the chief, answering her look.
Its expression changed; she hoped now it was some fresh obstacle
between him and Mercy.
"No, mother, it is not that either!" said Alister, again answering
her look--with a sad one of his own, for the lack of his mother's
sympathy was the sorest trouble he had. "It is only that uncle's
money is gone--all gone."
She sat silent for a moment, gave a little sigh, and said,
"Well, it will all be over soon! In the meantime things are no worse
than they were! His will be done!"
"I should have liked to make a few friends with the mammon of
unrighteousness before we were turned out naked!"
"We shall have plenty," answered the mother, "--God himself, and a
few beside! If you could make friends with the mammon, you can make
friends without it!"
"Yes, that is happily true! Ian says it was only a lesson for the
wise and prudent with money in their pockets--a lesson suited to
their limited reception!"
As they spoke, Nancy entered.
"Please, laird," she said, "Donal shoemaker is wanting to see you."
"Tell him to come in," answered the chief.
Donal entered and stood up by the door, with his bonnet under his
arm--a little man with puckered face, the puckers radiating from or
centering in the mouth, which he seemed to untie like a money-hag,
and pull open by means of a smile, before he began to speak. The
chief shook hands with him, and asked how he could serve him.
"It will not be to your pleasure to know, Macruadh," said Donal,
humbly declining to sit, "that I have received this day notice to
quit my house and garden!"
The house was a turf-cottage, and the garden might grow two bushels
and a half of potatoes.
"Are you far behind with your rent?"
"Not a quarter, Macruadh."
"Then what does it mean?"
"It means, sir, that Strathruadh is to be given to the red deer, and
the son of man have nowhere to lay his head. I am the first at your
door with my sorrow, but before the day is over you will have--"
Here he named four or five who had received like notice to quit.
"It is a sad business!" said the chief sorrowfully.
"Is it law, sir?"
"It is not easy to say what is law, Donal; certainly it is not
gospel! As a matter of course you will not be without shelter, so
long as I may call stone or turf mine, but things are looking bad!
Things as well as souls are in God's hands however!"
"I learn from the new men on the hills," resumed Donal, "that the
new lairds have conspired to exterminate us. They have discovered,
apparently, that the earth was not made for man, but for rich men
and beasts!" Here the little man paused, and his insignificant face
grew in expression grand. "But the day of the Lord will come," he
went on, "as a thief in the night. Vengeance is his, and he will
know where to give many stripes, and where few.--What would you have
us do, laird?"
"I will go with you to the village."
"No, if you please, sir! Better men will be at your door presently
to put the same question, for they will do nothing without the
Macruadh. We are no more on your land, great is our sorrow, chief,
but we are of your blood, you are our lord, and your will is ours.
You have been a nursing father to us, Macruadh!"
"I would fain be!" answered the chief.
"They will want to know whether these strangers have the right to
turn us out; and if they have not the right to disseize, whether we
have not the right to resist. If you would have us fight, and will
head us, we will fall to a man--for fall we must; we cannot think to
stand before the redcoats."
"No, no, Donal! It is not a question of the truth; that we should be
bound to die for, of course. It is only our rights that are
concerned, and they are not worth dying for. That would be mere
pride, and denial of God who is fighting for us. At least so it
seems at the moment to me!"
"Some of us would fain fight and have done with it, sir!"
The chief could not help smiling with pleasure at the little man's
warlike readiness: he knew it was no empty boast; what there was of
him was good stuff.
"You have a wife and children, Donal!" he said; "what would become
of them if you fell?"
"My sister was turned out in the cold spring," answered Donal, "and
died in Glencalvu! It would be better to die together!"
"But, Donal, none of yours will die of cold, and I can't let you
fight, because the wives and children would all come on my hands,
and I should have too many for my meal! No, we must not fight. We
may have a right to fight, I do not know; but I am sure we have at
least the right to abstain from fighting. Don't let us confound
right and duty, Donal--neither in thing nor in word!"
"Will the law not help us, Macruadh?"
"The law is such a slow coach! our enemies are so rich! and the
lawyers have little love of righteousness! Most of them would see
the dust on our heads to have the picking of our bones! Stick nor
stone would be left us before anything came of it!"
"But, sir," said Donal, "is it the part of brave men to give up
their rights?"
"No man can take from us our rights," answered the chief, "but any
man rich enough may keep us from getting the good of them. I say
again we are not bound to insist on our rights. We may decline to do
so, and that way leave them to God to look after for us."
"God does not always give men their rights, sir! I don't believe he
cares about our small matters!"
"Nothing that God does not care about can be worth our caring about.
But, Donal, how dare you say what you do? Have you lived to all
eternity? How do you know what you say? GOD DOES care for our
rights. A day is coming, as you have just said, when he will judge
the oppressors of their brethren."
"We shall be all dead and buried long before then!"
"As he pleases, Donal! He is my chief. I will have what he wills,
not what I should like! A thousand years I will wait for my rights
if he chooses. I will trust him to do splendidly for me. No; I will
have no other way than my chief's! He will set everything straight!"
"You must be right, sir! only I can't help wishing for the old
times, when a man could strike a blow for himself!"
With all who came Alister held similar talk; for though they were
not all so warlike as the cobbler, they keenly felt the wrong that
was done them, and would mostly, but for a doubt of its rectitude,
have opposed force with force. It would at least bring their case
before the country!
"The case is before a higher tribunal," answered the laird; "and
one's country is no incarnation of justice! How could she be, made
up mostly of such as do not love fair play except in the abstract,
or for themselves! The wise thing is to submit to wrong."
It is in ordering our own thoughts and our own actions, that we have
first to stand up for the right; our business is not to protect
ourselves from our neighbour's wrong, but our neighbour from our
wrong. This is to slay evil; the other is to make it multiply. A man
who would pull out even a mote from his brother's eye, must first
pull out the beam from his own eye, must be righteous against his
own selfishness. That is the only way to wound the root of evil. He
who teaches his neighbour to insist on his rights, is not a teacher
of righteousness. He who, by fulfilling his own duties, teaches his
neighbour to give every man the fair play he owes him, is a
fellow-worker with God.
But although not a few of the villagers spoke in wrath and
counselled resistance, not one of them rejoiced in the anticipation
of disorder. Heartily did Rob of the Angels insist on peace, but his
words had the less force that he was puny in person, and, although
capable of great endurance, unnoted for deeds of strength. Evil
birds carried the words of natural and righteous anger to the ears
of the new laird; no good birds bore the words of appeasement: he
concluded after his kind that their chief countenanced a determined
resistance.
On all sides the horizon was dark about the remnant of Clanruadh.
Poorly as they lived in Strathruadh, they knew no place else where
they could live at all. Separated, and so disabled from making
common cause against want, they must perish! But their horizon was
not heaven, and God was beyond it.
It was a great comfort to the chief that in the matter of his clan
his mother agreed with him altogether: to the last penny of their
having they must help their people! Those who feel as if the land
were their own, do fearful wrong to their own souls! What grandest
opportunities of growing divine they lose! Instead of being
man-nobles, leading a sumptuous life until it no longer looks
sumptuous, they might be God-nobles--saviours of men, yielding
themselves to and for their brethren! What friends might they not
make with the mammon of unrighteousness, instead of passing hence
into a region where no doors, no arms will be open to them! Things
are ours that we may use them for all--sometimes that we may
sacrifice them. God had but one precious thing, and he gave that!
The chief, although he saw that the proceedings of Mr. Palmer and
Mr. Brander must have been determined upon while his relation to
Mercy was yet undeclared, could not help imagining how differently
it might have gone with his people, had he been married to Mercy,
and in a good understanding with her father. Had he crippled his
reach toward men by the narrowness of his conscience toward God? So
long as he did what seemed right, he must regret no consequences,
even for the sake of others! God would mind others as well as him!
Every sequence of right, even to the sword and fire, are God's care;
he will justify himself in the eyes of the true, nor heed the
judgment of the false.
One thing was clear--that it would do but harm to beg of Mr. Palmer
any pity for his people: it would but give zest to his rejoicing in
iniquity! Something nevertheless must be determined, and speedily,
for winter was at hand.
The Macruadh had to consider not only the immediate accommodation of
the ejected but how they were to be maintained. Such was his
difficulty that he began to long for such news from Ian as would
justify an exodus from their own country, not the less a land of
bondage, to a home in the wilderness. But ah, what would then the
land of his fathers without its people be to him! It would be no
more worthy the name of land, no longer fit to be called a
possession! He knew then that the true love of the land is one with
the love of its people. To live on it after they were gone, would be
like making a home of the family mausoleum. The rich "pant after the
dust of the earth on the head of the poor," but what would any land
become without the poor in it? The poor are blessed because by their
poverty they are open to divine influences; they are the buckets set
out to catch the rain of heaven; they are the salt of the earth! The
poor are to be always with a nation for its best blessing, or for
its condemnation and ruin. The chief saw the valleys desolate of the
men readiest and ablest to fight the battles of his country. For the
sake of greedy, low-minded fellows, the summons of her war-pipes
would be heard in them no more, or would sound in vain among the
manless rocks; from sheilin, cottage, or clachan, would spring no
kilted warriors with battle response! The red deer and the big sheep
had taken the place of men over countless miles of mountain and moor
and strath! His heart bled for the sufferings and wrongs of those
whose ancestors died to keep the country free that was now expelling
their progeny. But the vengeance had begun to gather, though neither
his generation nor ours has seen it break. It must be that offences
come, but woe unto them by whom they come!