David Elginbrod

“Those are very strange ideas,” he said.

“But what can there be about the wood? The very primroses—ye brocht me the first this spring yersel’, Mr. Sutherland—come out at the fit o’ the trees, and look at me as if they said, ‘We ken—we ken a’ aboot it;’ but never a word mair they say. There’s something by ordinar’ in’t.”

“Do you like no other place besides?” said Hugh, for the sake of saying something.

“Ou ay, mony ane; but nane like this.”

“What kind of place do you like best?”

“I like places wi’ green grass an’ flowers amo’t.”

“You like flowers then?”

“Like them! whiles they gar me greet an’ whiles they gar me lauch; but there’s mair i’ them than that, an’ i’ the wood too. I canna richtly say my prayers in ony ither place.”

The Scotch dialect, especially to one brought up in the Highlands, was a considerable antidote to the effect of the beauty of what Margaret said.

Suddenly it struck Hugh, that if Margaret were such an admirer of nature, possibly she might enjoy Wordsworth. He himself was as yet incapable of doing him anything like justice; and, with the arrogance of youth, did not hesitate to smile at the Excursion, picking out an awkward line here and there as especial food for laughter even. But many of his smaller pieces he enjoyed very heartily, although not thoroughly—the element of Christian Pantheism, which is their soul, being beyond his comprehension, almost perception, as yet. So he made up his mind, after a moment’s reflection, that this should be the next author he recommended to his pupil. He hoped likewise so to end an interview, in which he might otherwise be compelled to confess that he could render Margaret no assistance in her search after the something in the wood; and he was unwilling to say he could not understand her; for a power of universal sympathy was one of those mental gifts which Hugh was most anxious to believe he possessed.

“I will bring you another book to-night,” said he “which I think you will like, and which may perhaps help you to find out what is in the wood.”

He said this smiling, half in playful jest, and without any idea of the degree of likelihood that there was notwithstanding in what he said. For, certainly, Wordsworth, the high-priest of nature, though perhaps hardly the apostle of nature, was more likely than any other writer to contain something of the secret after which Margaret was searching. Whether she can find it there, may seem questionable.

“Thank you, sir,” said Margaret, gratefully; but her whole countenance looked troubled, as she turned towards her home. Doubtless, however, the trouble vanished before she reached it, for hers was not a nature to cherish disquietude. Hugh too went home, rather thoughtful.

In the evening, he took a volume of Wordsworth, and repaired, according to his wont, to David’s cottage. It was Saturday, and he would stay to supper. After they had given the usual time to their studies, Hugh, setting Margaret some exercises in English to write on her slate, while he helped David with some of the elements of Trigonometry, and again going over those elements with her, while David worked out a calculation—after these were over, and while Janet was putting the supper on the table, Hugh pulled out his volume, and, without any preface, read them the Leech-Gatherer. All listened very intently, Janet included, who delayed several of the operations, that she might lose no word of the verses; David nodding assent every now and then, and ejaculating ay! ay! or eh, man! or producing that strange muffled sound at once common and peculiar to Scotchmen, which cannot be expressed in letters by a nearer approach than hm—hm, uttered, if that can be called uttering, with closed lips and open nasal passage; and Margaret sitting motionless on her creepie, with upturned pale face, and eyes fixed upon the lips of the reader. When he had ceased, all were silent for a moment, when Janet made some little sign of anxiety about her supper, which certainly had suffered by the delay. Then, without a word, David turned towards the table and gave thanks. Turning again to Hugh, who had risen to place his chair, he said,

“That maun be the wark o’ a great poet, Mr. Sutherlan’.”

“It’s Wordsworth’s,” said Hugh.

“Ay! ay! That’s Wordsworth’s! Ay! Weel, I hae jist heard him made mention o’, but I never read word o’ his afore. An’ he never repentit o’ that same resolution, I’se warrant, ‘at he eynds aff wi’. Hoo does it gang, Mr. Sutherlan’?”

Sutherland read:—

“‘God,’ said I, ‘be my help and stay secure!I’ll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor;’”

and added, “It is said Wordsworth never knew what it was to be in want of money all his life.”

“Nae doubt, nae doubt: he trusted in Him.”

It was for the sake of the minute notices of nature, and not for the religious lesson, which he now seemed to see for the first time, that Hugh had read the poem. He could not help being greatly impressed by the confidence with which David received the statement he had just made on the authority of De Quincey in his unpleasant article about Wordsworth. David resumed:

“He maun hae had a gleg ‘ee o’ his ain, that Maister Wordsworth, to notice a’thing that get. Weel he maun hae likit leevin’ things, puir maukin an’ a’—jist like our Robbie Burns for that. An’ see hoo they a’ ken ane anither, thae poets. What says he aboot Burns?—ye needna tell me, Mr. Sutherlan’; I min’t weel aneuch. He says:—

‘Him wha walked in glory an’ in joy,Followin’ his ploo upo’ the muntain-side.’

Puir Robbie! puir Robbie! But, man, he was a gran’ chield efter a’; an’ I trust in God he’s won hame by this!”

Both Janet and Hugh, who had had a very orthodox education, started, mentally, at this strange utterance; but they saw the eye of David solemnly fixed, as if in deep contemplation, and lighted in its blue depths with an ethereal brightness; and neither of them ventured to speak. Margaret seemed absorbed for the moment in gazing on her father’s face; but not in the least as if it perplexed her like the fir-wood. To the seeing eye, the same kind of expression would have been evident in both countenances, as if Margaret’s reflected the meaning of her father’s; whether through the medium of intellectual sympathy, or that of the heart only, it would have been hard to say. Meantime supper had been rather neglected; but its operations were now resumed more earnestly, and the conversation became lighter; till at last it ended in hearty laughter, and Hugh rose and took his leave.

CHAPTER VIII. A SUNDAY MORNING

It is the property of good and sound knowledge, to putrifie and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may tearme them) vermiculate questions; which have indeed a kinde of quicknesse, and life of spirite, but no soundnesse of matter, or goodnesse of quality.—LORD BACON.—Advancement of Learning.

The following morning, the laird’s family went to church as usual, and Hugh went with them. Their walk was first across fields, by pleasant footpaths; and then up the valley of a little noisy stream, that obstinately refused to keep Scotch Sabbath, praising the Lord after its own fashion. They emerged into rather a bleak country before reaching the church, which was quite new, and perched on a barren eminence, that it might be as conspicuous by its position, as it was remarkable for its ugliness. One grand aim of the reformers of the Scottish ecclesiastical modes, appears to have been to keep the worship pure and the worshippers sincere, by embodying the whole in the ugliest forms that could be associated with the name of Christianity. It might be wished, however, that some of their followers, and amongst them the clergyman of the church in question, had been content to stop there; and had left the object of worship, as represented by them, in the possession of some lovable attribute; so as not to require a man to love that which is unlovable, or worship that which is not honourable—in a word, to bow down before that which is not divine. The cause of this degeneracy they share in common with the followers of all other great men as well as of Calvin. They take up what their leader, urged by the necessity of the time, spoke loudest, never heeding what he loved most; and then work the former out to a logical perdition of everything belonging to the latter.

Hugh, however, thought it was all right: for he had the same good reasons, and no other, for receiving it all, that a Mohammedan or a Buddhist has for holding his opinions; namely, that he had heard those doctrines, and those alone, from his earliest childhood. He was therefore a good deal startled when, having, on his way home, strayed from the laird’s party towards David’s, he heard the latter say to Margaret as he came up:

“Dinna ye believe, my bonny doo, ‘at there’s ony mak’ ups or mak’ shifts wi’ Him. He’s aye bringin’ things to the licht, no covenin’ them up and lattin them rot, an’ the moth tak’ them. He sees us jist as we are, and ca’s us jist what we are. It wad be an ill day for a’ o’s, Maggy, my doo, gin he war to close his een to oor sins, an’ ca’ us just in his sicht, whan we cudna possibly be just in oor ain or in ony ither body’s, no to say his.”

“The Lord preserve’s, Dawvid Elginbrod! Dinna ye believe i’ the doctrine o’ Justification by Faith, an’ you a’maist made an elder o’?”

Janet was the respondent, of course, Margaret listening in silence.

“Ou ay, I believe in’t, nae doot; but, troth! the minister, honest man, near-han’ gart me disbelieve in’t a’thegither wi’ his gran’ sermon this mornin’, about imputit richteousness, an’ a clean robe hidin’ a foul skin or a crookit back. Na, na. May Him ‘at woosh the feet o’ his friens, wash us a’thegither, and straucht oor crookit banes, till we’re clean and weel-faured like his ain bonny sel’.”

“Weel, Dawvid—but that’s sanctificaition, ye ken.”

“Ca’t ony name ‘at you or the minister likes, Janet, my woman. I daursay there’s neither o’ ye far wrang after a’; only this is jist my opingan aboot it in sma’—that that man, and that man only, is justifeed, wha pits himsel’ into the Lord’s han’s to sanctifee him. Noo! An’ that’ll no be dune by pittin’ a robe o’ richteousness upo’ him, afore he’s gotten a clean skin aneath’t. As gin a father cudna bide to see the puir scabbit skin o’ his ain wee bit bairnie, ay, or o’ his prodigal son either, but bude to hap it a’ up afore he cud lat it come near him! Ahva!”

Here Hugh ventured to interpose a remark.

“But you don’t think, Mr. Elginbrod, that the minister intended to say that justification left a man at liberty to sin, or that the robe of Christ’s righteousness would hide him from the work of the Spirit?”

“Na; but there is a notion in’t o’ hidin’ frae God himsel’. I’ll tell ye what it is Mr. Sutherlan’: the minister’s a’ richt in himsel’, an’ sae’s my Janet here, an’ mony mair; an’ aiblins there’s a kin’ o’ trowth in a’ ‘at they say; but this is my quarrel wi’ a’ thae words an’ words an’ airguments, an’ seemilies as they ca’ them, an’ doctrines, an’ a’ that—they jist haud a puir body at airm’s lenth oot ower frae God himsel’. An’ they raise a mist an’ a stour a’ aboot him, ‘at the puir bairn canna see the Father himsel’, stan’in’ wi’ his airms streekit oot as wide’s the heavens, to tak’ the worn crater,—and the mair sinner, the mair welcome,—hame to his verra hert. Gin a body wad lea’ a’ that, and jist get fowk persuâdit to speyk a word or twa to God him lane, the loss, in my opingan, wad be unco sma’, and the gain verra great.”

Even Janet dared not reply to the solemnity of this speech; for the seer-like look was upon David’s face, and the tears had gathered in his eyes and dimmed their blue. A kind of tremulous pathetic smile flickered about his beautifully curved mouth, like the glimmer of water in a valley, betwixt the lofty aquiline nose and the powerful but finely modelled chin. It seemed as if he dared not let the smile break out, lest it should be followed instantly by a burst of tears.

Margaret went close up to her father and took his hand as if she had been still a child, while Janet walked reverentially by him on the other side. It must not be supposed that Janet felt any uneasiness about her husband’s opinions, although she never hesitated to utter what she considered her common-sense notions, in attempted modification of some of the more extreme of them. The fact was that, if he was wrong, Janet did not care to be right; and if he was right, Janet was sure to be; “for,” said she—and in spirit, if not in the letter, it was quite true—“I never mint at contradickin’ him. My man sall hae his ain get, that sall he.” But she had one especial grudge at his opinions; which was, that it must have been in consequence of them that he had declined, with a queer smile, the honourable position of Elder of the Kirk; for which Janet considered him, notwithstanding his opinions, immeasurably more fitted than any other man “in the haill country-side—ye may add Scotlan’ forby.” The fact of his having been requested to fill the vacant place of Elder, is proof enough that David was not in the habit of giving open expression to his opinions. He was looked upon as a douce man, long-headed enough, and somewhat precise in the exaction of the laird’s rights, but open-hearted and open-handed with what was his own. Every one respected him, and felt kindly towards him; some were a little afraid of him; but few suspected him of being religious beyond the degree which is commonly supposed to be the general inheritance of Scotchmen, possibly in virtue of their being brought up upon oatmeal porridge and the Shorter Catechism.

Hugh walked behind the party for a short way, contemplating them in their Sunday clothes: David wore a suit of fine black cloth. He then turned to rejoin the laird’s company. Mrs. Glasford was questioning her boys, in an intermittent and desultory fashion, about the sermon.

“An’ what was the fourth heid, can ye tell me, Willie?”

Willie, the eldest, who had carefully impressed the fourth head upon his memory, and had been anxiously waiting for an opportunity of bringing it out, replied at once:

“Fourthly: The various appellations by which those who have indued the robe of righteousness are designated in Holy Writ.”

“Weel done, Willie!” cried the laird.

“That’s richt, Willie,” said his mother. Then turning to the younger, whose attention was attracted by a strange bird in the hedge in front. “An’ what called he them, Johnnie, that put on the robe?” she asked.

“Whited sepulchres,” answered Johnnie, indebted for his wit to his wool-gathering.

This put an end to the catechising. Mrs. Glasford glanced round at Hugh, whose defection she had seen with indignation, and who, waiting for them by the roadside, had heard the last question and reply, with an expression that seemed to attribute any defect in the answer, entirely to the carelessness of the tutor, and the withdrawal of his energies from her boys to that “saucy quean, Meg Elginbrod.”

CHAPTER IX. NATURE

When the Soul is kindled or enlightened by the Holy Ghost, then it beholds what God its Father does, as a Son beholds what his Father does at Home in his own House.—JACOB BEHMEN’S Aurora—Law’s Translation.

Margaret began to read Wordsworth, slowly at first, but soon with greater facility. Ere long she perceived that she had found a friend; for not only did he sympathize with her in her love for nature, putting many vague feelings into thoughts, and many thoughts into words for her, but he introduced her to nature in many altogether new aspects, and taught her to regard it in ways which had hitherto been unknown to her. Not only was the pine wood now dearer to her than before, but its mystery seemed more sacred, and, at the same time, more likely to be one day solved. She felt far more assuredly the presence of a spirit in nature,

“Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean, and the living air;”

for he taught her to take wider views of nature, and to perceive and feel the expressions of more extended aspects of the world around her. The purple hill-side was almost as dear to her as the fir-wood now; and the star that crowned its summit at eve, sparkled an especial message to her, before it went on its way up the blue. She extended her rambles in all directions, and began to get with the neighbours the character of an idle girl. Little they knew how early she rose, and how diligently she did her share of the work, urged by desire to read the word of God in his own handwriting; or rather, to pore upon that expression of the face of God, which, however little a man may think of it, yet sinks so deeply into his nature, and moulds it towards its own likeness.

Nature was doing for Margaret what she had done before for Wordsworth’s Lucy: she was making of her “a lady of her own.” She grew taller and more graceful. The lasting quiet of her face began to look as if it were ever upon the point of blossoming into an expression of lovely feeling. The principal change was in her mouth, which became delicate and tender in its curves, the lips seeming to kiss each other for very sweetness. But I am anticipating these changes, for it took a far longer time to perfect them than has yet been occupied by my story.

But even her mother was not altogether proof against the appearance of listlessness and idleness which Margaret’s behaviour sometimes wore to her eyes; nor could she quite understand or excuse her long lonely walks; so that now and then she could not help addressing her after this fashion:

“Meg! Meg! ye do try my patience, lass, idlin’ awa’ yer time that get. It’s an awfu’ wastery o’ time, what wi’ beuks, an’ what wi’ stravaguin’, an’ what wi’ naething ava. Jist pit yer han’ to this kirn noo, like a gude bairn.”

Margaret would obey her mother instantly, but with a look of silent expostulation which her mother could not resist; sometimes, perhaps, if the words were sharper than usual, with symptoms of gathering tears; upon which Janet would say, with her honest smile of sweet relenting,

“Hootoots, bairn! never heed me. My bark’s aye waur nor my bite; ye ken that.”

Then Margaret’s face would brighten at once, and she would work hard at whatever her mother set her to do, till it was finished; upon which her mother would be more glad than she, and in no haste to impose any further labour out of the usual routine.

In the course of reading Wordsworth, Margaret had frequent occasion to apply to Hugh for help. These occasions, however, generally involved no more than small external difficulties, which prevented her from taking in the scope of a passage. Hugh was always able to meet these, and Margaret supposed that the whole of the light which flashed upon her mind when they were removed, was poured upon the page by the wisdom of her tutor; never dreaming—such was her humility with regard to herself, and her reverence towards him—that it came from the depths of her own lucent nature, ready to perceive what the poet came prepared to show. Now and then, it is true, she applied to him with difficulties in which he was incapable of aiding her; but she put down her failure in discovering the meaning, after all which it must be confessed he sometimes tried to say, to her own stupidity or peculiarity—never to his incapacity. She had been helped to so much by his superior acquirements, and his real gift for communicating what he thoroughly understood; he had been so entirely her guide to knowledge, that she would at once have felt self-condemned of impiety—in the old meaning of the word—if she had doubted for a moment his ability to understand or explain any difficulty which she could place clearly before him.

By-and-by he began to lend her harder, that is, more purely intellectual books. He was himself preparing for the class of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics; and he chose for her some of the simpler of his books on these subjects—of course all of the Scotch school—beginning with Abercrombie’s Intellectual Powers. She took this eagerly, and evidently read it with great attention.

One evening in the end of summer, Hugh climbed a waste heathery hill that lay behind the house of Turriepuffit, and overlooked a great part of the neighbouring country, the peaks of some of the greatest of the Scotch mountains being visible from its top. Here he intended to wait for the sunset. He threw himself on the heather, that most delightful and luxurious of all couches, supporting the body with a kindly upholding of every part; and there he lay in the great slumberous sunlight of the late afternoon, with the blue heavens, into which he was gazing full up, closing down upon him, as the light descended the side of the sky. He fell fast asleep. If ever there be an excuse for falling asleep out of bed, surely it is when stretched at full length upon heather in bloom. When he awoke, the last of the sunset was dying away; and between him and the sunset sat Margaret, book in hand, waiting apparently for his waking. He lay still for a few minutes, to come to himself before she should see he was awake. But she rose at the moment, and drawing near very quietly, looked down upon him with her sweet sunset face, to see whether or not he was beginning to rouse, for she feared to let him lie much longer after sundown. Finding him awake, she drew back again without a word, and sat down as before with her book. At length he rose, and, approaching her, said—

“Well, Margaret, what book are you at now?”

“Dr. Abercrombie, sir,” replied Margaret.

“How do you like it?”

“Verra weel for some things. It makes a body think; but not a’thegither as I like to think either.”

It will be observed that Margaret’s speech had begun to improve, that is, to be more like English.

“What is the matter with it?”

“Weel, ye see, sir, it taks a body a’ to bits like, and never pits them together again. An’ it seems to me that a body’s min’ or soul, or whatever it may be called—but it’s jist a body’s ain sel’—can no more be ta’en to pieces like, than you could tak’ that red licht there oot o’ the blue, or the haill sunset oot o’ the heavens an’ earth. It may be a’ verra weel, Mr. Sutherland, but oh! it’s no like this!”

And Margaret looked around her from the hill-top, and then up into the heavens, where the stars were beginning to crack the blue with their thin, steely sparkle.

“It seems to me to tak’ a’ the poetry oot o’ us, Mr. Sutherland.”

“Well, well,” said Hugh, with a smile, “you must just go to Wordsworth to put it in again; or to set you again up after Dr. Abercrombie has demolished you.”

“Na, na, sir, he sanna demolish me: nor I winna trouble Mr. Wordsworth to put the poetry into me again. A’ the power on earth shanna tak’ that oot o’ me, gin it be God’s will; for it’s his ain gift, Mr. Sutherland, ye ken.”

“Of course, of course,” replied Hugh, who very likely thought this too serious a way of speaking of poetry, and therefore, perhaps, rather an irreverent way of speaking of God; for he saw neither the divine in poetry, nor the human in God. Could he be said to believe that God made man, when he did not believe that God created poetry—and yet loved it as he did? It was to him only a grand invention of humanity in its loftiest development. In this development, then, he must have considered humanity as farthest from its origin; and God as the creator of savages, caring nothing for poets or their work.

They turned, as by common consent, to go down the hill together.

“Shall I take charge of the offending volume? You will not care to finish it, I fear,” said Hugh.

“No, sir, if you please. I never like to leave onything unfinished. I’ll read ilka word in’t. I fancy the thing ‘at sets me against it, is mostly this; that, readin’ it alang wi’ Euclid, I canna help aye thinkin’ o’ my ain min’ as gin it were in some geometrical shape or ither, whiles ane an’ whiles anither; and syne I try to draw lines an’ separate this power frae that power, the memory frae the jeedgement, an’ the imagination frae the rizzon; an’ syne I try to pit them a’ thegither again in their relations to ane anither. And this aye takes the shape o’ some proposition or ither, generally i’ the second beuk. It near-han’ dazes me whiles. I fancy gin’ I understood the pairts o’ the sphere, it would be mair to the purpose; but I wat I wish I were clear o’t a’thegither.”

Hugh had had some experiences of a similar kind himself, though not at all to the same extent. He could therefore understand her.

“You must just try to keep the things altogether apart,” said he, “and not think of the two sciences at once.”