Salted with Fire

When she began to come to herself she had no knowledge of where she had been, or for how long her mind had been astray; all was irretrievable confusion, crossed with cloud-like trails of blotted dreams, and vague survivals of gratitude for bread and pieces of money. Everything she became aware of surprised her, except the child in her arms. Her story had been plain to every one she met, and she had received thousands of kindnesses which her memory could not hold. At length, intentionally or not, she found herself in a neighbourhood to which she had heard James Blatherwick refer.

Here again a dead blank stopped her backward gaze—till suddenly once more she grew aware, and knew that she was aware, of being alone on a wide moor in a dim night, with her hungry child, to whom she had given the last drop of nourishment he could draw from her, wailing in her arms. Then fell upon her a hideous despair, and unable to carry him a step farther, she dropped him from her helpless hands into a bush, and there left him, to find, as she thought, some milk for him. She could sometimes even remember that she went staggering about, looking under the great stones, and into the clumps of heather, in the hope of finding something for him to drink. At last, I presume, she sank on the ground, and lay for a time insensible; anyhow, when she came to herself, she searched in vain for the child, or even the place where she had left him.

The same evening it was that Maggie came along with Andrew, and found the baby as I have already told. All that night, and a great part of the next day, Isy went searching about in vain, doubtless with intervals of repose compelled by utter exhaustion. Imagining at length that she had discovered the very spot where she left him, and not finding him, she came to the conclusion that some wild beast had come upon the helpless thing and carried him off. Then a gleam of water coming to her eye, she rushed to the peat-hag whence it was reflected, and would there have drowned herself. But she was intercepted and turned aside by a man who threw down his flauchter-spade, and ran between her and the frightful hole. He thought she was out of her mind, and tried to console her with the assurance that no child left on that moor could be in other than luck’s way. He gave her a few half-pence, and directed her to the next town, with a threat of hanging if she made a second attempt of the sort. A long time of wandering followed, with ceaseless inquiry, and alternating disappointment and fresh expectation; but every day something occurred that served just to keep the life in her, and at last she reached the county-town, where she was taken to a place of shelter.

CHAPTER VIII

James Blatherwick was proving himself not unacceptable to his native parish, where he was thought a very rising man, inasmuch as his fluency was far ahead of his perspicuity. He soon came to note the soutar as a man far in advance of the rest of his parishioners; but he saw, at the same time, that he was regarded by most as a wild fanatic if not as a dangerous heretic; and himself imagined that he saw in him certain indications of a mild lunacy.

In Tiltowie he pursued the same course as elsewhere: anxious to let nothing come between him and the success of his eloquence, he avoided any appearance of differing in doctrine from his congregation; and until he should be more firmly established, would show himself as much as possible of the same mind with them, using the doctrinal phrases he had been accustomed to in his youth, or others so like that they would be taken to indicate unchanged opinions, while for his part he practised a mental reservation in regard to them.

He had noted with some degree of pleasure in the soutar, that he used almost none of the set phrases of the good people of the village, who devoutly followed the traditions of the elders; but he knew little as to what the soutar did not believe, and still less of what he did believe with all his heart and soul; for John MacLear could not even utter the name of God without therein making a confession of faith immeasurably beyond anything inhabiting the consciousness of the parson; and on his part soon began to note in James a total absence of enthusiasm in regard to such things of which his very calling implied at least an absolute acceptance: he would allude to any or all of them as merest matters of course! Never did his face light up when he spoke of the Son of God, of his death, or of his resurrection; never did he make mention of the kingdom of heaven as if it were anything more venerable than the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

But the soul of the soutar would venture far into the twilight, searching after the things of God, opening wider its eyes, as the darkness widened around them. On one occasion the parson took upon him to remonstrate with what seemed to him the audacity of his parishioner:

“Don’t you think you are just going a little too far there, Mr. MacLear?” he said.

“Ye mean ower far intil the dark, Mr. Blatherwick?”

“Yes, that is what I mean. You speculate too boldly.”

“But dinna ye think, sir, that that direction it’s plain the dark grows a wee thinner, though I grant ye there’s nothing yet to ca’ licht? Licht we may aye ken by its ain fair shinin, and by noucht else!”

“But the human soul is just as apt to deceive itself as the human eye! It is always ready to take a flash inside itself for something objective!” said Blatherwick.

“Nae doobt! nae doobt! but whan the true licht comes, ye aye ken the differ! A man may tak the dark for licht, but he canna take the licht for darkness!”

“And there must always be something for the light to shine upon, else the man sees nothing!” said the parson.

“There’s thoucht, and possible insicht intil the man!” said the soutar to himself.—“Maybe, like the Ephesians, ye haena yet fund oot gien there be ony Holy Ghost, sir?” he said to him aloud.

“No man dares deny that!” answered the minister.

“Still a man mayna ken’t, though he daursna deny’t! Nane but them ‘at follows whaur he leads, can ken that he verily is.”

“We must beware of private interpretation!” suggested James.

“Gien a man hearsna a word spoken til his ain sel’, he has na the word to lippen til! The Scriptur is to him but a sealed buik; he walks i’ the dark. The licht is neither pairtit nor gethered. Gien a man has licht, he has nane the less that there’s twa or three o’ them thegither present.—Gien there be twa or three prayin thegither, ilk ane o’ the three has jist what he’s able to receive, and he kens ‘t in himsel as licht; and the fourth may hae nane. Gien it comena to ilk ane o’ them, it comesna to a’. Ilk ane maun hae the revelation intil his ain sel’, as gien there wasna ane mair. And gien it be sae, hoo are we to win at ony trouth no yet revealed, ‘cep we gang oot intil the dark to meet it? Ye maun caw canny, I admit, i’ the mirk; but ye maun caw gien ye wad win at onything!”

“But suppose you know enough to keep going, and do not care to venture into the dark?”

“Gien a man hauds on practeesin what he kens, the hunger ‘ill wauk in him efter something mair. I’m thinkin the angels had lang to desire afore they could luik intil certain things they sair wantit; but ye may be sure they warna left withoot as muckle licht as would lead honest fowk safe on!”

“But suppose they couldn’t tell whether what they seemed to see was true light or not?”

“Syne they would hae to fa’ back upo the wull o’ the great Licht: we ken weel he wants us a’ to see as he himsel sees! Gien we seek that Licht, we’ll get it; gien we carena for’t, we’re jist naething and naegait, and are in sore need o’ some sharp discipleen.”

“I’m afraid I can’t follow you quite. The fact is, I have been so long occupied with the Bible history, and the new discoveries that bear testimony to it, that I have had but little time for metaphysics.”

“And what’s the guid o’ history, or sic metapheesics as is the vera sowl o’ history, but to help ye to see Christ? and what’s the guid o’ seein Christ but sae to see God wi’ hert and un’erstan’in baith as to ken that yer seein him? Ye min’ hoo the Lord said nane could ken the Father but the man to whom the Son revealt him? Sir, it’s fell time ye had a glimp o’ that! Ye ken naething till ye ken God—the only ane a man can truly and railly ken!”

“Well, you’re a long way ahead of me, and for the present I’m afraid there’s nothing left but to say good-night to you!”

And therewith the minister departed.

“Lord,” said the soutar, as he sat guiding his awl through sole and welt and upper of the shoe on his last, “there’s surely something at work i’ the yoong man! Surely he canna be that far frae waukin up to see and ken that he sees and kens naething! Lord, pu’ doon the dyke o’ learnin and self-richteousness that he canna see ower the tap o’, and lat him see thee upo’ the ither side o’ ‘t. Lord, sen’ him the grace o’ oppen e’en to see whaur and what he is, that he may cry oot wi’ the lave o’ ‘s, puir blin’ bodies, to them that winna see. ‘Wauk, thoo that sleepest, and come oot o’ thy grave, and see the licht o’ the Father i’ the face o’ the Son.’”

But the minister went away intent on classifying the soutar by finding out with what sect of the middle-age mystics to place him. At the same time something strange seemed to hover about the man, refusing to be handled in that way. Something which he called his own religious sense appeared to know something of what the soutar must mean, though he could neither isolate nor define it.

Faithlessly as he had behaved to Isy, Blatherwick was not consciously, that is with purpose or intent, a deceitful man. He had, on the contrary, always cherished a strong faith in his own honour. But faith in a thing, in an idea, in a notion, is no proof, or even sign that the thing actually exists: in the present case it had no root except in the man’s thought of himself, in his presentation to himself of his own reflected self. The man who thought so much of his honour was in truth a moral unreality, a cowardly fellow, a sneak who, in the hope of escaping consequences, carried himself as beyond reproof. How should such a one ever have the power of spiritual vision developed in him? How should such a one ever see God—ever exist in the same region in which the soutar had long taken up his abode? Still there was this much reality in him, and he had made this much progress that, holding fast by his resolve henceforward no more to slide, he was aware also of a dim suspicion of something he had not seen, but which he might become able to see; and was half resolved to think and read, for the future, with the intent to find out what this strange man seemed to know, or thought he knew.

Soon finding himself unable, however, try as hard as he might, to be sure of anything, he became weary of the effort, and sank back into the old, self-satisfied, blind sleep.

CHAPTER IX

Out of this quiescence, however, a pang from the past one morning suddenly waked him, and almost without consciousness of a volition, he found himself at the soutar’s door. Maggie opened it with the baby in her arms, with whom she had just been having a game. Her face was in a glow, her hair tossed about, and her dark eyes flashing with excitement. To Blatherwick, without any great natural interest in life, and in the net of a haunting trouble which caused him no immediate apprehension, the young girl, of so little account in the world, and so far below him as he thought, affected him as beautiful; and, indeed, she was far more beautiful than he was able to appreciate. It must be remembered too, that it was not long since he had been refused by another; and at such a time a man is readier to fall in love afresh. Trouble then, lack of interest, and late repulse, had laid James’s heart, such as it was, open to assault from a new quarter whence he foresaw no danger.

“That’s a very fine baby you have!” he said. “Whose is he?”

“Mine, sir,” answered Maggie, with some triumph, for she thought every one must know the story of her treasure.

“Oh, indeed; I did not know!” answered the parson, bewildered.

“At least,” Maggie resumed a little hurriedly, “I have the best right to him!” and there stopped.

“She cannot possibly be his mother!” thought the minister, and resolved to question his housekeeper about the child.

“Is your father in the house?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, went in. “Such a big boy is too heavy for you to carry!” he added, as he laid his hand on the latch of the kitchen door.

“No ae bit!” rejoined Maggie, with a little contempt at his disparagement of her strength. “And wha’s to cairry him but me?”

Huddling the boy to her bosom, she went on talking to him in childish guise, as she lifted the latch for the minister:—

“Wad he hae my pet gang traivellin the warl’ upo thae twa bonny wee legs o’ his ain, wantin the wings he left ahint him? Na, na! they maun grow a heap stronger first. His ain mammie wad cairry him gien he war twice the size! Noo, we s’ gang but the hoose and see daddy.”

She bore him after the minister, and sat down with him on her own stool, beside her father, who looked up, with his hands and knees in skilful consort of labour.

“Weel, minister, hoo are ye the day? Is the yerd ony lichter upo’ the tap o’ ye?” he said, with a smile that was almost pauky.

“I do not understand you, Mr. MacLear!” answered James with dignity.

“Na, ye canna! Gien ye could, ye wouldna be sae comfortable as ye seem!”

“I cannot think, Mr. MacLear, why you should be rude to me!”

“Gien ye saw the hoose on fire aboot a man deid asleep, maybe ye micht be in ower great a hurry to be polite til ‘im!” remarked the soutar.

“Dare you suggest, sir, that I have been drinking?” cried the parson.

“Not for a single moment, sir; and I beg yer pardon for causin ye so to mistak me: I do not believe, sir, ye war ever ance owertaen wi’ drink in a’ yer life! I fear I’m jist ower ready to speyk in parables, for it’s no a’body that can or wull un’erstan’ them! But the last time ye left me upo’ this same stule, it was wi’ that cry o’ the Apostle o’ the Gentiles i’ my lug—‘Wauk up, thoo that sleepest!’ For even the deid wauk whan the trumpet blatters i’ their lug!”

“It seems to me that there the Apostle makes allusion to the condition of the Gentile nations, asleep in their sins! But it may apply, doubtless, to the conversion of any unbelieving man from the error of his ways.”

“Weel,” said the soutar, turning half round, and looking the minister full in the face, “are ye convertit, sir? Or are ye but turnin frae side to side i’ yer coffin—seekin a sleepin assurance that ye’re waukin?”

“You are plain-spoken anyway!” said the minister, rising.

“Maybe I am at last, sir! And maybe I hae been ower lang in comin to that same plainness! Maybe I was ower feart for yer coontin me ill-fashiont—what ye ca’ rude!”

The parson was half-way to the door, for he was angry, which was not surprising. But with the latch in his hand he turned, and, lo, there in the middle of the floor, with the child in her arms, stood the beautiful Maggie, as if in act to follow him: both were staring after him.

“Dinna anger him, father,” said Maggie; “he disna ken better!”

“Weel ken I, my dautie, that he disna ken better; but I canna help thinkin he’s maybe no that far frae the waukin. God grant I be richt aboot that! Eh, gien he wud but wauk up, what a man he would mak! He kens a heap—only what’s that whaur a man has no licht?”

“I certainly do not see things as you would have me believe you see them; and you are hardly capable of persuading me that you do, I fear!” said Blatherwick, with the angry flush again on his face, which had for a moment been dispelled by pallor.

But here the baby seeming to recognize the unsympathetic tone of the conversation, pulled down his lovely little mouth, and sent from it a dread and potent cry. Clasping him to her bosom, Maggie ran from the room with him, jostling James in the doorway as he let her pass.

“I am afraid I frightened the little man!” he said.

“‘Deed, sir, it may ha’ been you, or it may ha’ been me ‘at frichtit him,” rejoined the soutar. “It’s a thing I’m sair to blame in—that, whan I’m in richt earnest, I’m aye ready to speyk as gien I was angert. Sir, I humbly beg yer pardon.”

“As humbly I beg yours,” returned the parson; “I was in the wrong.”

The heart of the old man was drawn afresh to the youth. He laid aside his shoe, and turning on his stool, took James’s hand in both of his, and said solemnly and lovingly—

“This moment I wad wullin’ly die, sir, that the licht o’ that uprisin o’ which we spak micht brak throuw upon ye!”

“I believe you, sir,” answered James; “but,” he went on, with an attempt at humour, “it wouldn’t be so much for you to do after all, seeing you would straightway find yourself in a much better place!”

“Maybe whaur the penitent thief sat, some auchteen hunner year ago, waitin to be called up higher!” rejoined the soutar with a watery smile.

The parson opened the door, and went home—where his knees at once found their way to the carpet.

From that night Blatherwick began to go often to the soutar’s, and soon went almost every other day, for at least a few minutes; and on such occasions had generally a short interview with Maggie and the baby, in both of whom, having heard from the soutar the story of the child, he took a growing interest.

“You seem to love him as if he were your own, Maggie!” he said one morning to the girl.

“And isna he my ain? Didna God himsel gie me the bairn intil my vera airms—or a’ but?” she rejoined.

“Suppose he were to die!” suggested the minister. “Such children often do!”

“I needna think aboot that,” she answered. “I would just hae to say, as mony ane has had to say afore me: ‘The Lord gave,’—ye ken the rest, sir!”

But day by day Maggie grew more beautiful in the minister’s eyes, until at last he was not only ready to say that he loved her, but for her sake to disregard worldly and ambitious considerations.

CHAPTER X

On the morning of a certain Saturday, therefore, which day of the week he always made a holiday, he resolved to let her know without further delay that he loved her; and the rather that on the next day he was engaged to preach for a brother clergyman at Deemouth, and felt that, his fate with Maggie unknown, his mind would not be cool enough for him to do well in the pulpit. But neither disappointment nor a fresh love had yet served to set him free from his old vanity or arrogance: he regarded his approaching declaration as about to confer great honour as well as favour upon the damsel of low estate, about to be invited to share in his growing distinction. In his late disappointment he had asked a lady to descend a little from her social pedestal, in the belief that he offered her a greater than proportionate counter-elevation; and now in his suit to Maggie he was almost unable to conceive a possibility of failure. When she would have shown him into the kitchen, he took her by the arm, and leading her to the ben-end, at once began his concocted speech. Scarcely had she gathered his meaning, however, when he was checked by her startled look.

“And what wad ye hae me dee wi’ my bairn?” she asked instantly, without sign of perplexity, smiling on the little one as at some absurdity in her arms rather than suggested to her mind.

But the minister was sufficiently in love to disregard the unexpected indication. His pride was indeed a little hurt, but he resisted any show of offence, reflecting that her anxiety was not altogether an unnatural one.

“Oh, we shall easily find some experienced mother,” he answered, “who will understand better than you even how to take care of him!”

“Na, na!” she rejoined. “I hae baith a father and a wean to luik efter; and that’s aboot as muckle as I’ll ever be up til!”

So saying, she rose and carried the little one up to the room her father now occupied, nor cast a single glance in the direction of her would-be lover.

Now at last he was astonished. Could it mean that she had not understood him? It could not be that she did not appreciate his offer! Her devotion to the child was indeed absurdly engrossing, but that would soon come right! He could have no fear of such a rivalry, however unpleasant at the moment! That little vagrant to come between him and the girl he would make his wife!

He glanced round him: the room looked very empty! He heard her oft-interrupted step through the thin floor: she was lavishing caresses on the senseless little animal! He caught up his hat, and with a flushed face went straight to the soutar where he sat at work.

“I have come to ask you, Mr. MacLear, if you will give me your daughter to be my wife!” he said.

“Ow, sae that’s it!” returned the soutar, without raising his eyes.

“You have no objection, I hope?” continued the minister, finding him silent.

“What says she hersel? Ye comena to me first, I reckon!”

“She said, or implied at least, that she could not leave the child. But she cannot mean that!”

“And what for no?—There’s nae need for me to objeck!”

“But I shall soon persuade her to withdraw that objection!”

“Then I should hae objections—mair nor ane—to put to the fore!”

“You surprise me! Is not a woman to leave father and mother and cleave to her husband?”

“Ow ay—sae be the woman is his wife! Than lat nane sun’er them!—But there’s anither sayin, sir, that I doobt may hae something to dee wi’ Maggie’s answer!”

“And what, pray, may that be?”

“That man or woman must leave father and mother, wife and child, for the sake o’ the Son o’ Man.”

“You surely are not papist enough to think that means a minister is not to marry?”

“Not at all, sir; but I doobt that’s what it’ll come til atween you and Maggie!”

“You mean that she will not marry?”

“I mean that she winna merry you, sir.”

“But just think how much more she could do for Christ as the minister’s wife!”

“I’m ‘maist convinced she wad coont merryin you as tantamount to refusin to lea’ a’ for the Son o’ Man.”

“Why should she think that?”

“Because, sae far as I see, she canna think that ye hae left a’ for him.”

“Ah, that is what you have been teaching her! She does not say that of herself! You have not left her free to choose!”

“The queston never came up atween’s. She’s perfecly free to tak her ain gait—and she kens she is!—Ye dinna seem to think it possible she sud tak his wull raither nor yours!—that the love o’ Christ should constrain her ayont the love offert her by Jeames Bletherwick!—We hae conversed aboot ye, sir, but niver differt!”

“But allowing us—you and me—to be of different opinions on some points, must that be a reason why she and I should not love one another?”

“No reason whatever, sir—if ye can and do: that point would be already settlet. But ye winna get Maggie to merry ye sae long as she disna believe ye loe her Lord as well as she loes him hersel. It’s no a common love that Maggie beirs to her Lord; and gien ye loed her wi’ a luve worthy o’ her, ye would see that!”

“Then you will promise me not to interfere?”

“I’ll promise ye naething, sir, excep to do my duty by her—sae far as I understan’ what that duty is. Gien I thoucht—which the God o’ my life forbid!—that Maggie didna lo’e him as weel at least as I lo’e him, I would gang upo’ my auld knees til her, to entreat her to loe him wi’ a’ her heart and sowl and stren’th and min’;—and whan I had done that, she micht merry wha she wad—hangman or minister: no a word would I say! For trouble she maun hae, and trouble she wull get—I thank my God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not!”

“Then I am free to do my best to win her?”

“Ye are, sir; and mair—afore the morn’s mornin, I winna pass a word wi’ her upo the subjeck.”

“Thank you, sir,” returned the minister, and took his leave.

“A fine lad! a fine lad!” said the soutar aloud to himself, as he resumed the work for a moment interrupted,”—but no clear—no crystal-clear—no clear like the Son o’ Man!”

He looked up, and saw his daughter in the doorway.

“No a word, lassie!” he cried. “I’m no for ye this meenute.—No a word to me aboot onything or onybody the day, but what’s absolute necessar!”

“As ye wull! father,” rejoined Maggie.—“I’m gaein oot to seek auld Eppy; she was intil the baker’s shop a meenute ago!—The bairnie’s asleep.”