In one or two of his letters, which were never very long, Alec had just
mentioned Kate; and now Mrs Forbes had many inquiries to make about
her. Old feelings and thoughts awoke in her mind, and made her wish to
see the daughter of her old companion. The absence of Annie, banished
once more at the suggestion of worldly prudence, but for whose quiet
lunar smile not even Alec's sunny presence could quite make up,
contributed no doubt to this longing after the new maiden. She wrote to
Mr Fraser, asking him to allow his niece to pay her a visit of a few
weeks; but she said nothing about it to Alec. The arrangement happened
to be convenient to Mr Fraser, who wished to accept an invitation
himself. It was now the end of April; and he proposed that the time
should be fixed for the beginning of June.
When this favourable response arrived, Mrs Forbes gave Alec the letter
to read, and saw the flush of delight that rose to his face as he
gathered the welcome news. Nor was this observation unpleasant to her;
for that Alec should at length marry one of her own people was a
grateful idea.
Alec sped away into the fields. To think that all these old familiar
places would one day be glorified by her presence! that the daisies
would bend beneath the foot of the goddess! and the everlasting hills
put on a veil of tenderness from the reflex radiance of her regard! A
flush of summer mantled over the face of nature, the flush of a deeper
summer than that of the year--of the joy that lies at the heart of all
summers. For a whole week of hail, sleet, and "watery sunbeams"
followed, and yet in the eyes of Alec the face of nature still glowed.
When, after long expectation, the day arrived, Alec could not rest. He
wandered about all day, haunting his mother as she prepared his room
for Kate, hurrying away with a sudden sense of the propriety of
indifference, and hurrying back on some cunning pretext, while his
mother smiled to herself at his eagerness and the transparency of his
artifice. At length, as the hour drew near, he could restrain himself
no longer. He rushed to the stable, saddled his pony, which was in
nearly as high spirits as himself, and galloped off to meet the mail.
The sun was nearing the west; a slight shower had just fallen; the
thanks of the thirsty earth were ascending in odour; and the wind was
too gentle to shake the drops from the leaves. To Alec, the wind of his
own speed was the river that bore her towards him; the odours were
wafted from her approach; and the sunset sleepiness around was the
exhaustion of the region that longed for her Cytheraean presence.
At last, as he turned a corner of the road, there was the coach; and he
had just time to wheel his pony about before it was up with him. A
little gloved hand greeted him; the window was let down; and the face
he had been longing for shone out lovelier than ever. There was no
inside passenger but herself; and, leaning with one hand on the
coach-door, he rode alongside till they drew near the place where the
gig was waiting for them, when he dashed on, gave his pony to the man,
was ready to help her as soon as the coach stopped, and so drove her
home in triumph to his mother.
Where the coach stopped, on the opposite side of the way, a grassy
field, which fell like a mantle from the shoulders of a hill crowned
with firs, sloped down to the edge of the road. From the coach, the sun
was hidden behind a thick clump of trees, but his rays, now red with
rich age, flowed in a wide stream over the grass, and shone on an old
Scotch fir which stood a yard or two from the highway, making its red
bark glow like the pools which the prophet saw in the desert. At the
foot of this tree sat Tibbie Dyster; and from her red cloak the level
sun-tide was thrown back in gorgeous glory; so that the eyeless woman,
who only felt the warmth of the great orb, seemed, in her effulgence of
luminous red, to be the light-fountain whence that torrent of
rubescence burst. From her it streamed up to the stem and along the
branches of the glowing fir; from her it streamed over the radiant
grass of the up-sloping field away towards the western sun. But the
only one who saw the splendour was a shoemaker, who rubbed his rosiny
hands together, and felt happy without knowing why.
Alec would have found it difficult to say whether or not he had seen
the red cloak. But from the shadowy side of it there were eyes shining
upon him, with a deeper and truer, if with a calmer, or, say, colder
devotion, than that with which he regarded Kate. The most powerful rays
that fall from the sun are neither those of colour nor those of
heat.--Annie sat by Tibbie's side--the side away from the sun. If the
East and the West might take human shape--come forth in their Oreads
from their hill-tops, and meet half-way between--there they were seated
side by side: Tibbie, old, scarred, blind Tibbie, was of the west and
the sunset, the centre of a blood-red splendour; cold, gentle Annie,
with her dark hair, blue eyes, and the sad wisdom of her pale face, was
of the sun-deserted east, between whose gray clouds, faintly smiling
back the rosiness of the sun's triumphal death, two or three cold stars
were waiting to glimmer.
Tibbie had come out to bask a little, and, in the dark warmth of the
material sun, to worship that Sun whose light she saw in the hidden
world of her heart, and who is the Sun of all the worlds; to breathe
the air, which, through her prison-bars, spoke of freedom; to give
herself room to long for the hour when the loving Father would take her
out of the husk which infolded her, and say to her: "_See, my child_."
With the rest of the travailing creation, she was groaning in hopeful
pain--not in the pain of the mother, but in the pain of the child, soon
to be forgotten in the following rest.
If my younger readers want to follow Kate and Alec home, they will take
it for a symptom of the chill approach of "unlovely age," that I say to
them: 'We will go home with Tibbie and Annie, and hear what they say. I
like better to tell you about ugly blind old Tibbie than about
beautiful young Kate.--But you shall have your turn. Do not think that
we old people do not care for what you care for. We want more than you
want--a something without which what you like best cannot last.'
"What did the coch stop for, Annie, lass?" asked Tibbie, as soon as the
mail had driven on.
"It's a lady gaein to Mistress Forbes's at Howglen."
"Hoo ken ye that?"
"'Cause Alec Forbes rade oot to meet her, and syne took her hame i' the
gig."
"Ay! ay! I thought I heard mair nor the ordinar nummer o' horse-feet as
the coch cam' up. He's a braw lad, that Alec Forbes-isna he?"
"Ay is he," answered Annie, sadly; not from jealousy, for her
admiration of Alec was from afar; but as looking up from purgatorial
exclusion to the paradise of Howglen, where the beautiful lady would
have all Mrs Forbes, and Alec too, to herself.
The old woman caught the tone, but misinterpreted it.
"I doobt," she said, "he winna get ony guid at that college."
"What for no?" returned Annie. "I was at the school wi' him, and never
saw onything to fin' fau't wi'."
"Ow na, lassie. Ye had naething to do fin'in' fau't wi' him. His father
was a douce man, an' maybe a God-fearin' man, though he made but sma'
profession. I think we're whiles ower sair upo' some o' them that
promises little, and maybe does the mair. Ye min' what ye read to me
afore we cam' oot thegither, aboot the lad that said till's father,
_I go not_; but afterwards he repented and gaed?"
"Ay."
"Weel, I think we'll gang hame noo."
They rose, and went, hand in hand, over the bridge, and round the end
of its parapet, and down the steep descent to the cottage at its foot,
Tibbie's cloak shining all the way, but, now that the sun was down,
with a chastened radiance. When she had laid it aside, and was seated
on her low wooden chair within reach of her spinning-wheel,
"Noo," said Tibbie, "ye'll jist read a chapter till me, lassie, afore
ye gang hame, and syne I s' gang to my bed. Blin'ness is a sair savin'
o' can'les."
She forgot that it was summer, when, in those northern regions, the
night has no time to gather before the sun is flashing again in the
east.
The chapter Annie chose was the ninth of St John's Gospel, about Jesus
curing the man blind from his birth. When she had finished, Annie said,
"Michtna he cure you, Tibbie, gin ye spiered at him?"
"Ay micht he, and ay will he," answered Tibbie. "I'm only jist bidin'
his time. But I'm thinkin' he'll cure me better yet nor he cured that
blin' man. He'll jist tak' the body aff o' me a'thegither, and syne
I'll see, no wi' een like yours, but wi' my haill speeritual body. Ye
min' that verse i' the prophecees o' Ezakiel: I ken't weel by hert. It
says: 'And their whole boady, and their backs, and their han's, and
their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes roon aboot, even the
wheels that they four had.' Isna that a gran' text? I wiss Mr Turnbull
wad tak' it into his heid to preach frae that text sometime afore it
comes, which winna be that lang, I'm thinkin'. The wheels'll be
stoppin' at my door or lang."
"What gars ye think that, Tibbie? There's no sign o' deith aboot you,
I'm sure," said Annie.
"Weel, ye see, I canna weel say. Blin' fowk somehoo kens mair nor ither
fowk aboot things that the sicht o' the een has unco little to do wi'.
But never min'. I'm willin' to bide i' the dark as lang as He likes.
It's eneuch for ony bairn to ken that its father's stan'in' i' the
licht, and seein' a' aboot him, and sae weel able to guide hit, though
it kensna whaur to set doon its fit neist. And I wat He's i' the licht.
Ye min' that bit aboot the Lord pittin' Moses intil a clift o' the
rock, and syne coverin' him wi' his han' till he was by him?"
"Ay, fine that," answered Annie.
"Weel, I canna help thinkin' whiles, that the dark aboot me's jist the
how o' the Lord's han'; and I'm like Moses, only wi' this differ, that
whan the Lord tak's his han' aff o' me, it'll be to lat me luik i' the
face o' him, and no to lat me see only his back pairts, which was a'
that he had the sicht o'; for ye see Moses was i' the body, and cudna
bide the sicht o' the face o' God. I daursay it wad hae blin' 't him. I
hae heard that ower muckle licht'll ca fowk blin' whiles. What think
ye, lassie?"
"Ay; the lichtnin' blin's fowk whiles. And gin I luik straucht at the
sun, I can see nothing efter't for a whilie."
"I tell ye sae!" exclaimed Tibbie triumphantly. "And do ye min' the
veesion that the apostle John saw in Pawtmos? I reckon he micht hae
thocht lang there, a' him lane, gin it hadna been for the bonnie
things, and the gran' things, and the terrible things 'at the Lord loot
him see. They _war_ gran' sichts! It was the veesion o' the Saviour
himsel'--Christ himsel'; and he says that his coontenance was as the
sun shineth in his strength. What think ye o' that, lass!"
This was not a question, but an exulting exclamation. The vision in
Patmos proved that although Moses must not see the face of God because
of its brightness, a more favoured prophet might have the vision. And
Tibbie, who had a share in the privileges of the new covenant, who was
not under the law like Moses, but under grace like John, would one day
see the veil of her blindness shrivel away from before her deeper eyes,
burnt up by the glory of that face of God, which is a consuming
fire.--I suppose that Tibbie was right in the main. But was it not
another kind of brightness, a brightness without effulgence, a
brightness grander and more glorious, shining in love and patience, and
tenderness and forgiveness and excuse, that Moses was unfit to see,
because he was not well able to understand it, until, ages after, he
descended from heaven upon the Mount of Transfiguration, and the humble
son of God went up from the lower earth to meet him there, and talk
with him face to face as a man with his friend?
Annie went home to her garret. It was a singular experience the child
had in the changes that came to her with the seasons. The winter with
its frost and bitter winds brought her a home at Howglen; the summer,
whose airs were molten kisses, took it away, and gave her the face of
nature instead of the face of a human mother. For the snug little
chamber in which she heard with a quiet exultation the fierce rush of
the hail-scattering tempest against the window, or the fluffy fall of
the snow-flakes, like hands of fairy babies patting the glass, and
fancied herself out in the careering storm, hovering on the wings of
the wind over the house in which she lay soft and warm--she had now the
garret room, in which the curtainless bed, with its bare poles, looked
like a vessel in distress at sea, and through the roof of which the
winds found easy way. But the winds were warm now, and through the
skylight the sunbeams illuminated the floor, showing all the rat-holes
and wretchedness of decay.
There was comfort out of doors in the daytime--in the sky and the
fields and all the "goings-on of life." And this night, after this talk
with Tibbie, Annie did not much mind going back to the garret. Nor did
she lie awake to think about the beautiful lady Alec had taken home
with him.
And she dreamed again that she saw the Son of Man. There was a veil
over his face like the veil that Moses wore, but the face was so bright
that it almost melted the veil away, and she saw what made her love
that face more than the presence of Alec, more than the kindness of Mrs
Forbes or Dowie, more than the memory of her father.