Salted with Fire

Two or three miles away, in the heart of the hills, on the outskirts of the farm of Stonecross, lived an old cottar and his wife, who paid a few shillings of rent to Mr. Blatherwick for the acre or two their ancestors had redeemed from the heather and bog, and gave, with their one son who remained at home, occasional service on the farm. They were much respected by the farmer and his wife, as well as the small circle to which they were known in the neighbouring village—better known, and more respected still in that kingdom called of heaven; for they were such as he to whom the promise was given, that he should yet see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. They had long and heartily loved and honoured the soutar, whom they had known before the death of his wife, and for his sake and hers, both had always befriended the motherless Maggie. They could not greatly pity her, seeing she had such a father, yet old Eppie had her occasional moments of anxiety as to how the bairn would grow up without a mother’s care. No sooner, however, did the little one begin to show character, than Eppie’s doubt began to abate; and long before the time to which my narrative has now come, the child and the child like old woman were fast friends. Maggie was often invited to spend a day at Bogsheuch—oftener indeed than she felt at liberty to leave her father and their common work, though not oftener than she would have liked to go.

One morning, early in summer, when first the hillsides had begun to look attractive, a small agricultural cart, such as is now but seldom seen, with little paint except on its two red wheels, and drawn by a thin, long-haired little horse, stopped at the door of the soutar’s house, clay-floored and straw-thatched, in a back-lane of the village. It was a cart the cottar used in the cultivation of his little holding, and his son who drove it, now nearly middle-aged, was likely to succeed to the hut and acres of Bogsheuch. Man and equipage, both well known to the soutar, had come with an invitation, more pressing than usual, that Maggie would pay them a visit of a few days.

Father and daughter, consulting together in the presence of Andrew Cormack, arrived at the conclusion that, work being rather slacker than usual, and nobody in need of any promised job which the soutar could not finish by himself in good time, Maggie was quite at liberty to go. She sprang up joyfully—not without a little pang at the thought of leaving her father alone, although she knew him quite equal to anything that could be required in the house before her return—and set about preparing their dinner, while Andrew went to execute a few commissions that the mistress at Stonecross and his mother at Bogsheuch had given him. By the time he returned, Maggie was in her Sunday gown, with her week-day wrapper and winsey petticoat in a bundle—for she reckoned on being of some use to Eppie during her visit When they had eaten their humble dinner, Andrew brought the cart to the door, and Maggie scrambled into it.

“Tak a piece wi’ ye,” said her father, following her to the cart: “ye hadna muckle to yer denner, and ye may be hungry again or ye hae the lang road ahint ye!”

He put several pieces of oatcake in her hand, which she received with a loving smile; and they set out at a walking pace, which Andrew made no attempt to quicken.

It was far from a comfortable carriage, neither was her wisp of straw in the bottom of it altogether comfortable to sit upon; but the change from her stool and the close attention her work required, to the open air and the free rush of the thoughts that came crowding to her out of the wilderness, put her at once in a blissful mood. Even the few dull remarks that the slow-thinking Andrew made at intervals from his perch on the front of the cart, seemed to come to her from the realm of Faerie, the mysterious world that lay in the folds of the huddled hills. Everything Maggie saw or heard that afternoon seemed to wear the glamour of God’s imagination, which is at once the birth and the very truth of everything. Selfishness alone can rub away that divine gilding, without which gold itself is poor indeed.

Suddenly the little horse stood still. Andrew, waking up from a snooze, jumped to the ground, and began, still half asleep, to search into the cause of the arrest; for Jess, although she could not make haste, never of her own accord stood still while able to keep on walking. Maggie, on her part, had for some time noted that they were making very slow progress.

“She’s deid cripple!” said Andrew at length, straightening his long back from an examination of Jess’s fore feet, and coming to Maggie’s side of the cart with a serious face. “I dinna believe the crater’s fit to gang ae step furder! Yet I canna see what’s happent her.”

Maggie was on the road before he had done speaking. Andrew tried once to lead Jess, but immediately desisted. “It would be fell cruelty!” he said. “We maun jist lowse her, and tak her gien we can to the How o’ the Mains. They’ll gie her a nicht’s quarters there, puir thing! And we’ll see gien they can tak you in as weel, Maggie. The maister, I mak nae doobt, ‘ill len’ me a horse to come for ye i’ the morning.”

“I winna hear o’ ‘t!” answered Maggie. “I can tramp the lave o’ the ro’d as weel’s you, Andrew!”

“But I hae a’ thae things to cairry, and that’ll no lea’ me a ban’ to help ye ower the burn!” objected Andrew.

“What o’ that?” she returned. “I was sae fell tired o’ sittin that my legs are jist like to rin awa wi’ me. Lat me jist dook mysel i’ the bonny win’!” she added, turning herself round and round. “—Isna it jist like awfu’ thin watter, An’rew?—Here, gie me a haud o’ that loaf. I s’ cairry that, and my ain bit bundle as weel; syne, I fancy, ye can manage the lave yersel!”

Andrew never had much to say, and this time he had nothing. But her readiness relieved him of some anxiety; for his mother would be very uncomfortable if he went home without her!

Maggie’s spirits rose to lark-pitch as the darkness came on and deepened; and the wind became to her a live gloom, in which, with no eye-bound to the space enclosing her, she could go on imagining after the freedom of her own wild will. As the world and everything in it gradually disappeared, it grew easy to imagine Jesus making the darkness light about him, and stepping from it plain before her sight. That could be no trouble to him, she argued, as, being everywhere, he must be there. He could appear in any form, who had created every shape on the face of the whole world! If she were but fit to see him, then surely he would come to her! For thus often had her father spoken to her, talking of the varied appearances of the Lord after his resurrection, and his promise that he would be with his disciples always to the end of the world. Even after he had gone back to his father, had he not appeared to the apostle Paul? and might it not be that he had shown himself to many another through the long ages? In any case he was everywhere, and always about them, although now, perhaps from lack of faith in the earth, he had not been seen for a long time. And she remembered her father once saying that nobody could even think a thing if there was no possible truth in it. The Lord went away that they might believe in him when out of the sight of him, and so be in him, and he in them!

“I dinna think,” said Maggie aloud to herself, as she trudged along beside the delightfully silent Andrew, “that my father would be the least astonished—only filled wi’ an awfu’ glaidness—if at ony moment, walkin at his side, the Lord was to call him by his name, and appear til him. He would but think he had just steppit oot upon him frae some secret door, and would say,—‘I thoucht, Lord, I would see you some day! I was aye greedy efter a sicht o’ ye, Lord, and here ye are!’”

CHAPTER V

The same moment to her ears came the cry of an infant. Her first thought was, “Can that be Himsel, come ance again as he cam ance afore?”

She stopped in the dusky starlight, and listened with her very soul.

“Andrew!” she cried, for she heard the sound of his steps as he plodded on in front of her, and could vaguely see him, “Andrew, what was yon?”

“I h’ard naething,” answered Andrew, stopping at her cry and listening.

There came a second cry, a feeble, sad wail, and both of them heard it.

Maggie darted off in the direction whence it seemed to come; nor had she far to run, for it was not one to reach any distance.

They were at the moment climbing a dreary, desolate ridge, where the road was a mere stony hollow, in winter a path for the rain rather than the feet of men. On each side of it lay a wild moor, covered with heather and low berry-bearing shrubs. Under a big bush Maggie saw something glimmer, and, flying to it, found a child. It might be a year old, but was so small and poorly nourished that its age was hard to guess. “With the instinct of a mother, she caught it up, and clasping it close to her panting bosom, was delighted to find it cease wailing the moment it felt her arm. Andrew, who had dropped the things he carried, and started at once after her, met her half-way, so absorbed in her treasure trove, and so blind to aught else, that he had to catch them both in his arms to break the imminent shock; but she slipped from them, and, to his amazement, went on down the hill, back the way they had come: clearly she thought of nothing but carrying the infant home to her father; and here even the slow perception of her companion understood her.

“Maggie, Maggie,” he cried, “ye’ll baith be deid afore ye win hame wi’ ‘t! Come on to my mither. There never was wuman like her for bairns! She’ll ken a hantle better nor ony father what to dee wi’ ‘t!”

Maggie at once recovered her senses, and knew he was right—but not before she had received an instantaneous insight that never after left her: now she understood the heart of the Son of Man, come to find and carry back the stray children to their Father and His. When afterward she told her father what she had then felt, he answered her with just the four words and no more—

“Lassie, ye hae ‘t!”

Happily the moon was now up, so that Andrew was soon able to find the things they had both dropped in their haste, and Maggie had soon wrapped the baby in the winsey petticoat she had been carrying. Andrew took up his loaf and his other packages, and they set out again for Bogsheuch, Maggie’s heart all but overwhelmed with its exultation. Had the precious thing been twice the weight, so exuberant was her feeling of wealth in it that she could have carried it twice the distance with ease, although the road was so rough that she went in constant terror of stumbling. Andrew gave now and then a queer chuckle at the ludicrousness of their home-coming, and every second minute had to stop and pick up one or other of his many parcels; but Maggie strode on in front, full of possession, and with the feeling of having now at last entered upon her heavenly inheritance; so that she was quite startled when suddenly they came in sight of the turf cottage, and the little window in which a small cresset-lamp was burning. Before they reached it the door opened, and Eppie appeared with an overflow of question and anxious welcome.

“What on earth—” she began.

“Naething but a bonny wee bairnie, whause mither has tint it!” at once interrupted and answered Maggie, flying up to her, and laying the child in her arms.

Mrs. Cormack stood and stared, now at Maggie, and now at the bundle that lay in her own arms. Tenderly searching in the petticoat, she found at last the little one’s face, and uncovered the sleeping child.

“Eh the puir mither!” she said, and hurriedly covered again the tiny countenance.

“It’s mine!” cried Maggie. “I faund it honest!”

“Its mither may ha’ lost it honest, Maggie!” said Eppie.

“Weel, its mither can come for’t gien she want it! It’s mine till she dis, ony gait!” rejoined the girl.

“Nae doobt o’ that!” replied the old woman, scarcely questioning that the infant had been left to perish by some worthless tramp. “Ye’ll maybe hae’t langer nor ye’ll care to keep it!”

“That’s no vera likly,” answered Maggie with a smile, as she stood in the doorway, in the wakeful night of the northern summer: “it’s ane o’ the Lord’s ain lammies ‘at he cam to the hills to seek. He’s fund this ane!”

“Weel, weel, my bonnie doo, it sanna be for me to contradick ye!—But wae’s upo’ me for a menseless auld wife! come in; come in: the mair welcome ‘at ye’re lang expeckit!—But bless me, An’rew, what hae ye dune wi’ the cairt and the beastie?”

In a few words, for brevity was easy to him, Andrew told the story of their disaster.

“It maun hae been the Lord’s mercy! The puir beastie bude to suffer for the sake o’ the bairnie!”

She got them their supper, which was keeping hot by the fire; and then sent Maggie to her bed in the ben-end, where she laid the baby beside her, after washing him and wrapping him in a soft well-worn shift of her own. But Maggie scarcely slept for listening lest the baby’s breath should stop; and Eppie sat in the kitchen with Andrew until the light, slowly travelling round the north, deepened in the east, and at last climbed the sky, leading up the sun himself; when Andrew rose, and set his face toward Stonecross, in full but not very anxious expectation of a stormy reception from his mistress before he should have time to explain. When he reached home, however, he found the house not yet astir; and had time to feed and groom his horses before any one was about, so that, to his relief, no rendering of reasons was necessary.

All the next day Maggie was ill at ease, in much dread of the appearance of a mother. The baby seemed nothing the worse for his exposure, and although thin and pale, appeared a healthy child, taking heartily the food offered him. He was decently though poorly clad, and very clean. The Cormacks making inquiry at every farmhouse and cottage within range of the moor, the tale of his finding was speedily known throughout the neighbourhood; but to the satisfaction of Maggie at least, who fretted to carry home her treasure, without any result; so that by the time the period of her visit arrived, she was feeling tolerably secure in her possession, and returned with it in triumph to her father.

The long-haired horse not yet proving equal to the journey, she had to walk home; but Eppie herself accompanied her, bent on taking her share in the burden of the child, which Maggie was with difficulty persuaded to yield. Eppie indeed carried him up to the soutar’s door, but Maggie insisted on herself laying him in her father’s arms. The soutar rose from his stool, received him like Simeon taking the infant Jesus from the arms of his mother, and held him high like a heave-offering to him that had sent him forth from the hidden Holiest of Holies. One moment in silence he held him, then restoring him to his daughter, sat down again, and took up his last and shoe. Then suddenly becoming aware of a breach in his manners, he rose again at once, saying—

“I crave yer pardon, Mistress Cormack: I was clean forgettin ony breedin I ever had!—Maggie, tak oor freen ben the hoose, and gar her rest her a bit, while ye get something for her efter her lang walk. I’ll be ben mysel’ in a meenute or twa to hae a crack wi’ her. I hae but a feow stitches mair to put intil this same sole! The three o’ ‘s maun tak some sarious coonsel thegither anent the upbringin o’ this God-sent bairn! I doobtna but he’s come wi’ a blessin to this hoose! Eh, but it was a mercifu fittin o’ things that the puir bairn and Maggie sud that nicht come thegither! Verily, He shall give his angels chairge over thee! They maun hae been aboot the muir a’ that day, that nane but Maggie sud get a haud o’ ‘im—aiven as they maun hae been aboot the field and the flock and the shepherds and the inn-stable a’ that gran’ nicht!”

The same moment entered a neighbour who, having previously heard and misinterpreted the story, had now caught sight of their arrival.

“Eh, soutar, but ye ir a man by Providence sair oppressed!” she cried. “Wha think ye’s been i’ the faut here?”

The wrath of the soutar sprang up flaming.

“Gang oot o’ my hoose, ye ill-thouchtit wuman!” he shouted. “Gang oot o’ ‘t this verra meenit—and comena intil ‘t again ‘cep it be to beg my pardon and that o’ this gude wuman and my bonny lass here! The Lord God bless her frae ill tongues!—Gang oot, I tell ye!”

The outraged father stood towering, whom all the town knew for a man of gentlest temper and great courtesy. The woman stood one moment dazed and uncertain, then turned and fled. Maggie retired with Mistress Cormack; and when the soutar joined them, he said never a word about the discomfited gossip. Eppie having taken her tea, rose and bade them good-night, nor crossed another threshold in the village.

CHAPTER VI

As soon as the baby was asleep, Maggie went back to the kitchen where her father still sat at work.

“Ye’re late the night, father!” she said.

“I am that, lassie; but ye see I canna luik for muckle help frae you for some time: ye’ll hae eneuch to dee wi’ that bairn o’ yours; and we hae him to fen for noo as weel’s oorsels! No ‘at I hae the least concern aboot the bonny white raven, only we maun consider him like the lave!” “It’s little he’ll want for a whilie, father!” answered Maggie. “—But noo,” she went on, in a tone of seriousness that was almost awe, “lat me hear what ye’re thinkin:—what kin’ o’ a mither could she be that left her bairn theroot i’ the wide, eerie nicht? and what for could she hae dene ‘t?”

“She maun hae been some puir lassie that hadna learnt to think first o’ His wull! She had believt the man whan he promised to merry her, no kennin he was a leear, and no heedin the v’ice inside her that said ye maunna; and sae she loot him dee what he likit wi’ her, and mak himsel the father o’ a bairnie that wasna meant for him. Sic leeberties as he took wi’ her, and she ouchtna to hae permittit, made a mither o’ her afore ever she was merried. Sic fules hae an awfu’ time o’ ‘t; for fowk hardly ever forgies them, and aye luiks doon upo’ them. Doobtless the rascal ran awa and left her to fen for hersel; naebody would help her; and she had to beg the breid for hersel, and the drap milk for the bairnie; sae that at last she lost hert and left it, jist as Hagar left hers aneath the buss i’ the wilderness afore God shawed her the bonny wall o’ watter.”

“I kenna whilk o’ them was the warst—father or mither!” cried Maggie.

“Nae mair do I!” said the soutar; “but I doobt the ane that lee’d to the ither, maun hae to be coontit the warst!”

“There canna be mony sic men!” said Maggie.

“‘Deed there’s a heap o’ them no a hair better!” rejoined her father; “but wae’s me for the puir lassie that believes them!”

“She kenned what was richt a’ the time, father!”

“That’s true, my dauty; but to ken is no aye to un’erstan’; and even to un’erstan’ is no aye to see richt intil’t! No wuman’s safe that hasna the love o’ God, the great Love, in her hert a’ the time! What’s best in her, whan the vera best’s awa, may turn to be her greatest danger. And the higher ye rise ye come into the waur danger, till ance ye’re fairly intil the ae safe place, the hert o’ the Father. There, and there only, ye’re safe!—safe frae earth, frae hell, and frae yer ain hert! A’ the temptations, even sic as ance made the haivenly hosts themsels fa’ frae haiven to hell, canna touch ye there! But whan man or wuman repents and heumbles himsel, there is He to lift them up, and that higher than ever they stede afore!”

“Syne they’re no to be despised that fa’!”

“Nane despises them, lassie, but them that haena yet learnt the danger they’re in o’ that same fa’ themsels. Mony ane, I’m thinking, is keepit frae fa’in, jist because she’s no far eneuch on to get the guid o’ the shame, but would jist sink farther and farther!”

“But Eppie tells me that maist o’ them ‘at trips gangs on fa’in, and never wins up again.”

“Ou, ay; that’s true as far as we, short-lived and short-sichtit craturs, see o’ them! but this warl’s but the beginnin; and the glory o’ Christ, wha’s the vera Love o’ the Father, spreads a heap further nor that. It’s no for naething we’re tellt hoo the sinner-women cam til him frae a’ sides! They needit him sair, and cam. Never ane o’ them was ower black to be latten gang close up til him; and some o’ sic women un’erstede things he said ‘at mony a respectable wuman cudna get a glimp o’! There’s aye rain eneuch, as Maister Shaksper says, i’ the sweet haivens to wash the vera han’ o’ murder as white as snow. The creatin hert is fu’ o’ sic rain. Loe him, lassie, and ye’ll never glaur the bonny goon ye broucht white frae his hert!”

The soutar’s face was solemn and white, and tears were running down the furrows of his cheeks. Maggie too was weeping. At length she said—

“Supposin the mither o’ my bairnie a wuman like that, can ye think it fair that her disgrace should stick til him?”

“It sticks til him only in sic minds as never saw the lovely greatness o’ God.”

“But sic bairns come na intil the warl as God wad hae them come!”

“But your bairnie is come, and that he couldna withoot the creatin wull o’ the Father! Doobtless sic bairnies hae to suffer frae the prood jeedgment o’ their fellow-men and women, but they may get muckle guid and little ill frae that—a guid naebody can reive them o’. It’s no a mere veesitin o’ the sins o’ the fathers upo’ the bairns, but a provision to haud the bairns aff o’ the like, and to shame the fathers o’ them. Eh, but sic maun be sair affrontit wi’ themsels, that disgrace at ance the wife that should hae been and the bairn that shouldna! Eh, the puir bairnie that has sic a father! But he has anither as weel—a richt gran’ father to rin til!—The ae thing,” the soutar went on, “that you and me, Maggie, has to do, is never to lat the bairn ken the miss o’ father or mother, and sae lead him to the ae Father, the only real and true ane.—There he’s wailin, the bonny wee man!”

Maggie ran to quiet her little one, but soon returned, and sitting down again beside her father, asked him for a piece of work.

All this time, through his own cowardly indifference, the would-be-grand preacher, James Blatherwick, knew nothing of the fact that, somewhere in the world, without father or mother, lived a silent witness against him.

CHAPTER VII

Isy had contrived to postpone her return to her aunt until James was gone; for she dreaded being in the house with him lest anything should lead to the discovery of the relation between them. Soon after his departure, however, she had to encounter the appalling fact that the dread moment was on its way when she would no longer be able to conceal the change in her condition. Her first and last thought was then, how to protect the good name of her lover, and avoid involving him in the approaching ruin of her reputation. With this in view she vowed to God and to her own soul absolute silence with regard to the past: James’s name even should never pass her lips! Nor did she find the vow hard to keep, even when her aunt took measures to draw her secret from her; but the dread lest in her pains she should cry out for the comfort which James alone could give her, almost drove her to poison, from which only the thought of his coming child restrained her. Enabled at length only by the pure inexorability of her hour, she passed through her sorrow and found herself still alive, with her lips locked tight on her secret. The poor girl who was weak enough to imperil her good name for love of a worthless man, was by that love made strong to shield him from the consequences of her weakness. Whether in this she did well for the world, for the truth, or for her own soul, she never wasted a thought. In vain did her aunt ply her with questions; she felt that to answer one of them would be to wrong him, and lose her last righteous hold upon the man who had at least once loved her a little. Without a gleam, without even a shadow of hope for herself, she clung, through shame and blame, to his scathlessness as the only joy left her. He had most likely, she thought, all but forgotten her very existence, for he had never written to her, or made any effort to discover what had become of her. She clung to the conviction that he could never have heard of what had befallen her.

By and by she grew able to reflect that to remain where she was would be the ruin of her aunt; for who would lodge in the same house with her? She must go at once! and her longing to go, with the impossibility of even thinking where she could go, brought her to the very verge of despair, and it was only the thought of her child that still gave her strength enough to live on. And to add immeasurably to her misery, she was now suddenly possessed by the idea, which for a long time remained immovably fixed, that, agonizing as had been her effort after silence, she had failed in her resolve, and broken the promise she imagined she had given to James; that she had been false to him, brought him to shame, and for ever ruined his prospects; that she had betrayed him into the power of her aunt, and through her to the authorities of the church! That was why she had never heard a word from him, she thought, and she was never to see him any more! The conviction, the seeming consciousness of all this, so grew upon her that, one morning, when her infant was not yet a month old, she crept from the house, and wandered out into the world, with just one shilling in a purse forgotten in the pocket of her dress. After that, for a time, her memory lost hold of her consciousness, and what befel her remained a blank, refusing to be recalled.