Salted with Fire

“Vera weel! Gien I hear him, I s’ atten’ til ‘im,” answered the soutar.

“Thank ye, father,” returned Maggie, and left the house.

But the minister, having to start that same afternoon for Deemouth, and feeling it impossible, things remaining as they were, to preach at his ease, had been watching the soutar’s door: he saw it open and Maggie appear. For a moment he flattered himself she was coming to look for him, in order to tell him how sorry she was for her late behaviour to him. But her start when first she became aware of his presence, did not fail, notwithstanding his conceit, to satisfy him that such was not her intent. He made haste to explain his presence.

“I’ve been waiting all this time on the chance of seeing you, Margaret!” he said. “I am starting within an hour or so for Deemouth, but could not bear to go without telling you that your father has no objection to my saying to you what I please. He means to have a talk with you to-morrow morning, and as I cannot possibly get back from Deemouth before Monday, I must now express the hope that he will not succeed in persuading you to doubt the reality of my love. I admire your father more than I can tell you, but he seems to hold the affections God has given us of small account compared with his judgment of the strength and reality of them.”

“Did he no tell ye I was free to do or say what I liked?” rejoined Maggie rather sharply.

“Yes; he did say something to that effect.”

“Then, for mysel, and i’ the name o’ my father, I tell ye, Maister Bletherwick, I dinna care to see ye again.”

“Do you mean what you say, Margaret?” rejoined the minister, in a voice that betrayed not a little genuine emotion.

“I do mean it,” she answered.

“Not if I tell you that I am both ready and willing to take the child and bring him up as my own?”

“He wouldna be yer ain!”

“Quite as much as yours!”

“Hardly,” she returned, with a curious little laugh. “But, as I daur say my father tellt ye, I canna believe ye lo’e God wi’ a’ yer hert.”

“Dare you say that for yourself, Margaret?”

“No; but I do want to love God wi’ my whole hert. Mr. Bletherwick, are ye a rael Christian? Or are ye sure ye’re no a hypocreet? I wad like to ken. But I dinna believe ye ken yersel!”

“Well, perhaps I do not. But I see there is no occasion to say more!”

“Na, nane,” answered Maggie.

He lifted his hat, and turned away to the coach-office.

CHAPTER XI

It would be difficult to represent the condition of mind in which Blatherwick sat on the box-seat of the Defiance coach that evening, behind four gray thorough-breds, carrying him at the rate of ten miles an hour towards Deemouth. Hurt pride, indignation, and a certain mild revenge in contemplating Maggie’s disappointment when at length she should become aware of the distinction he had gained and she had lost, were its main components. He never noted a feature of the rather tame scenery that went hurrying past him, and yet the time did not seem to go slowly, for he was astonished when the coach stopped, and he found his journey at an end.

He got down rather cramped and stiff, and, as it was still early, started for a stroll about the streets to stretch his legs, and see what was going on, glad that he had not to preach in the morning, and would have all the afternoon to go over his sermon once more in that dreary memory of his. The streets were brilliant with gas, for Saturday was always a sort of market-night, and at that moment they were crowded with girls going merrily home from the paper-mill at the close of the week’s labour. To Blatherwick, who had very little sympathy with gladness of any sort, the sight only called up by contrast the very different scene on which his eyes would look down the next evening from the vantage coigne of the pulpit, in a church filled with an eminently respectable congregation—to which he would be setting forth the results of certain late geographical discoveries and local identifications, not knowing that already even later discoveries had rendered all he was about to say more than doubtful.

But while, sunk in a not very profound reverie, he was in the act of turning the corner of a narrow wynd, he was all but knocked down by a girl whom another in the crowd had pushed violently against him. Recoiling from the impact, and unable to recover her equilibrium, she fell helplessly prostrate on the granite pavement, and lay motionless. Annoyed and half-angry, he was on the point of walking on, heedless of the accident, when something in the pale face among the coarse and shapeless shoes that had already gathered thick around it, arrested him with a strong suggestion of some one he had once known. But the same moment the crowd hid her from his view; and, shocked even to be reminded of Isy in such an assemblage, he turned resolutely away, and cherishing the thought of the many chances against its being she, walked steadily on. When he looked round again ere crossing the street, the crowd had vanished, the pavement was nearly empty, and a policeman who just then came up, had seen nothing of the occurrence, remarking only that the girls at the paper-mills were a rough lot.

A moment more and his mind was busy with a passage in his sermon which seemed about to escape his memory: it was still as impossible for him to talk freely about the things a minister is supposed to love best, as it had been when he began to preach. It was not, certainly, out of the fulness of the heart that his mouth ever spoke!

He sought the house of Mr. Robertson, the friend he had come to assist, had supper with him and his wife, and retired early. In the morning he went to his friend’s church, in the afternoon rehearsed his sermon to himself, and when the evening came, climbed the pulpit-stair, and soon appeared engrossed in its rites. But as he seemed to be pouring out his soul in the long extempore prayer, he suddenly opened his eyes as if unconsciously compelled, and that moment saw, in the front of the gallery before him, a face he could not doubt to be that of Isy. Her gaze was fixed upon him; he saw her shiver, and knew that she saw and recognized him. He felt himself grow blind. His head swam, and he felt as if some material force was bending down his body sideways from her. Such, nevertheless, was his self-possession, that he reclosed his eyes, and went on with his prayer—if that could in any sense be prayer where he knew neither word he uttered, thing he thought, nor feeling that moved him. With Claudius in Hamlet he might have said,

   My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:   Words without thoughts never to heaven go!

But while yet speaking, and holding his eyes fast that he might not see her again, his consciousness all at once returned—it seemed to him through a mighty effort of the will, and upon that he immediately began to pride himself. Instantly there-upon he was aware of his thoughts and words, and knew himself able to control his actions and speech. All the while, however, that he conducted the rest of the “service,” he was constantly aware, although he did not again look at her, of the figure of Isy before him, with its gaze fixed motionless upon him, and began at last to wonder vaguely whether she might not be dead, and come back from the grave to his mind a mysterious thought-spectre. But at the close of the sermon, when the people stood up to sing, she rose with them; and the half-dazed preacher sat down, exhausted with emotion, conflict, and effort at self-command. When he rose once more for the benediction, she was gone; and yet again he took refuge in the doubt whether she had indeed been present at all.

When Mrs. Robertson had retired, and James was sitting with his host over their tumbler of toddy, a knock came to the door. Mr. Robertson went to open it, and James’s heart sank within him. But in a moment his host returned, saying it was a policeman to let him know that a woman was lying drunk at the bottom of his doorsteps, and to inquire what he wished done with her.

“I told him,” said Mr. Robertson, “to take the poor creature to the station, and in the morning I would see her. When she’s ill the next day, you see,” he added, “I may have a sort of chance with her; but it is seldom of any use.”

A horrible suspicion that it was Isy herself had seized on Blatherwick; and for a moment he was half inclined to follow the men to the station; but his friend would be sure to go with him, and what might not come of it! Seeing that she had kept silent so long, however, it seemed to him more than probable that she had lost all care about him, and if let alone would say nothing. Thus he reasoned, lost in his selfishness, and shrinking from the thought of looking the disreputable creature in the eyes. Yet the awful consciousness haunted him that, if she had fallen into drunken habits and possibly worse, it was his fault, and the ruin of the once lovely creature lay at his door, and his alone.

He made haste to his room, and to bed, where for a long while he lay unable even to think. Then all at once, with gathered force, the frightful reality, the keen, bare truth broke upon him like a huge, cold wave; he had a clear vision of his guilt, and the vision was conscious of itself as his guilt; he saw it rounded in a gray fog of life-chilling dismay. What was he but a troth-breaker, a liar—and that in strong fact, not in feeble tongue? “What am I,” said Conscience, “but a cruel, self-seeking, loveless horror—a contemptible sneak, who, in dread of missing the praises of men, crept away unseen, and left the woman to bear alone our common sin?” What was he but a whited sepulchre, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness?—a fellow posing in the pulpit as an example to the faithful, but knowing all the time that somewhere in the land lived a woman—once a loving, trusting woman—who could with a word hold him up to the world a hypocrite and a dastard—

   A fixed figure for the Time of scorn   To point his slow unmoving finger at!

He sprang to the floor; the cold hand of an injured ghost seemed clutching feebly at his throat. But, in or out of bed, what could he do? Utterly helpless, he thought, but in truth not daring to look the question as to what he could do in the face, he crept back ignominiously into his bed; and, growing a little less uncomfortable, began to reason with himself that things were not so bad as they had for that moment seemed; that many another had failed in like fashion with him, but his fault had been forgotten, and had never reappeared against him! No culprit was ever required to bear witness against himself! He must learn to discipline and repress his over-sensitiveness, otherwise it would one day seize him at a disadvantage, and betray him into self-exposure!

Thus he reasoned—and sank back once more among the all but dead; the loud alarum of his rousing conscience ceased, and he fell asleep in the resolve to get away from Deemouth the first thing in the morning, before Mr. Robertson should be awake. How much better it had been for him to hold fast his repentant mood, and awake to tell everything! but he was very far from having even approached any such resolution. Indeed no practical idea of his, however much brooded over at night, had ever lived to bear fruit in the morning; not once had he ever embodied in action an impulse toward atonement! He could welcome the thought of a final release from sin and suffering at the dissolution of nature, but he always did his best to forget that at that very moment he was suffering because of wrong he had done for which he was taking no least trouble to make amends. He had lived for himself, to the destruction of one whom he had once loved, and to the denial of his Lord and Master!

More than twice on his way home in the early morning, he all but turned to go back to the police-station, but it was, as usual, only all but, and he kept walking on.

CHAPTER XII

Already, ere James’s flight was discovered, morning saw Mr. Robertson on his way to do what he might for the redemption of one of whom he knew little or nothing: the policemen returning from their night’s duty, found him already at the door of the office. He was at once admitted, for he was well known to most of them. He found the poor woman miserably recovered from the effects of her dissipation, and looking so woebegone, that the heart of the good man was immediately filled with profoundest pity, recognizing before him a creature whose hope was wasted to the verge of despair. She neither looked up nor spoke; but what he could see of her face appeared only ashamed, neither sullen nor vengeful. When he spoke to her, she lifted her head a little, but not her eyes to his face, confessing apparently that she had nothing to say for herself; and he saw her plainly at the point of taking refuge in the Dee. Tenderly, as if to the little one he had left behind him in bed, he spoke in her scarce listening ear child-soothing words of almost inarticulate sympathy, which yet his tone carried where they were meant to go. She lifted her lost eyes at length, saw his face, and burst into tears.

“Na, na,” she cried, through tearing sobs, “ye canna help me, sir! There’s naething ‘at you or onybody can dee for me! But I’m near the mou o’ the pit, and God be thankit, I’ll be ower the rim o’ ‘t or I hae grutten my last greit oot!—For God’s sake gie me a drink—a drink o’ onything!”

“I daurna gie ye onything to ca’ drink,” answered the minister, who could scarcely speak for the swelling in his throat. “The thing to dee ye guid is a cup o’ het tay! Ye canna hae had a moofu’ this mornin! I hae a cab waitin me at the door, and ye’ll jist get in, my puir bairn, and come awa hame wi’ me! My wife’ll be doon afore we win back, and she’ll hae a cup o’ tay ready for ye in a moment! You and me ‘ill hae oor brakfast thegither.”

“Ken ye what ye’re sayin, sir? I daurna luik an honest wuman i’ the face. I’m sic as ye ken naething aboot.”

“I ken a heap aboot fowk o’ a’ kin’s—mair a heap, I’m thinkin, nor ye ken yersel!—I ken mair aboot yersel, tee, nor ye think; I hae seen ye i’ my ain kirk mair nor ance or twice. The Sunday nicht afore last I was preachin straucht intil yer bonny face, and saw ye greitin, and maist grat mysel. Come awa hame wi’ me, my dear; my wife’s anither jist like mysel, an’ll turn naething to ye but the smilin side o’ her face, I s’ un’ertak! She’s a fine, herty, couthy, savin kin’ o’ wuman, my wife! Come ye til her, and see!”

Isy rose to her feet.

“Eh, but I would like to luik ance mair intil the face o’ a bonny, clean wuman!” she said. “I’ll gang, sir,” she went on, with sudden resolve “—only, I pray ye, sir, mak speed, and tak me oot o’ the sicht o’fowk!”

“Ay, ay, come awa; we s’ hae ye oot o’ this in a moment,” answered Mr. Robertson.—“Put the fine doon to me,” he whispered to the inspector as they passed him on their way out.

The man returned his nod, and took no further notice.

“I thoucht that was what would come o’ ‘t!” he murmured to himself, looking after them with a smile. But indeed he knew little of what was going to come of it!

The good minister, whose heart was the teacher of his head, and who was not ashamed either of himself or his companion, showed Isy into their little breakfast-parlour, and running up the stair to his wife, told her he had brought the woman home, and wanted her to come down at once. Mrs. Robertson, who was dressing her one child, hurried her toilet, gave over the little one to the care of her one servant, and made haste to welcome the poor shivering night-bird, waiting with ruffled feathers below. When she opened the door, the two women stood for a moment silently gazing on each other—then the wife opened her arms wide, and the girl fled to their shelter; but her strength failing her on the way, she fell to the floor. Instantly the other was down by her side. The husband came to her help; and between them they got her at once on the little couch.

“Shall I get the brandy?” said Mrs. Robertson.

“Try a cup of tea,” he answered.

His wife made haste, and soon had the tea poured out and cooling. But Isy still lay motionless. Her hostess raised the helpless head upon her arm, put a spoonful of the tea to her lips, and found to her joy that she tried to swallow it. The next minute she opened her eyes, and would have risen; but the rescuing hand held her down.

“I want to tell ye,” moaned Isy with feeble expostulation, “‘at ye dinna ken wha ye hae taen intil yer hoose! Lat me up to get my breath, or I’ll no be able to tell ye.”

“Drink your tea,” answered the other, “and then say what you like. There’s no hurry. You’ll have time enough.”

The poor girl opened her eyes wide, and gazed for a moment at Mrs. Robertson. Then she took the cup and drank the tea. Her new friend went on—

“You must just be content to bide where you are a day or two. Ye’re no to fash yersel aboot onything: I have clothes enough to give you all the change you can want. Hold your tongue, please, and finish your tea.”

“Eh, mem,” cried Isy, “fowk ‘ill say ill o’ ye, gien they see the like o’ me in yer hoose!”

“Lat them say, and say ‘t again! What’s fowk but muckle geese!”

“But there’s the minister and his character!” she persisted.

“Hoots! what cares the minister?” said his wife. “Speir at him there, what he thinks o’ clash.”

“‘Deed,” answered her husband, “I never heedit it eneuch to tell! There’s but ae word I heed, and that’s my Maister’s!”

“Eh, but ye canna lift me oot o’ the pit!” groaned the poor girl.

“God helpin, I can,” returned the minister. “—But ye’re no i’ the pit yet by a lang road; and oot o’ that road I s’ hae ye, please God, afore anither nicht has darkent!”

“I dinna ken what’s to come o’ me!” again she groaned.

“That we’ll sune see! Brakfast’s to come o’ ye first, and syne my wife and me we’ll sit in jeedgment upo ye, and redd things up. Min’ ye’re to say what ye like, and naither ill fowk nor unco guid sail come nigh ye.”

A pitiful smile flitted across Isy’s face, and with it returned the almost babyish look that used to form part of her charm. Like an obedient child, she set herself to eat and drink what she could; and when she had evidently done her best—

“Now put up your feet again on the sofa, and tell us everything,” said the minister.

“No,” returned Isy; “I’m not at liberty to tell you everything.”

“Then tell us what you please—so long as it’s true, and that I am sure it will be,” he rejoined.

“I will, sir,” she answered.

For several moments she was silent, as if thinking how to begin; then, after a gasp or two,—

“I’m not a good woman,” she began. “Perhaps I am worse than you think me.—Oh, my baby! my baby!” she cried, and burst into tears.

“There’s nae that mony o’ ‘s just what ither fowk think us,” said the minister’s wife. “We’re in general baith better and waur nor that.—But tell me ae thing: what took ye, last nicht, straucht frae the kirk to the public? The twa haudna weel thegither!”

“It was this, ma’am,” she replied, resuming the more refined speech to which, since living at Deemouth, she had been less accustomed—“I had a shock that night from suddenly seeing one in the church whom I had thought never to see again; and when I got into the street, I turned so sick that some kind body gave me whisky, and that was how, not having been used to it for some time, that I disgraced myself. But indeed, I have a much worse trouble and shame upon me than that—one you would hardly believe, ma’am!”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Robertson, modifying her speech also the moment she perceived the change in that of her guest: “you saw him in church—the man that got you into trouble! I thought that must be it!—won’t you tell me all about it?”

“I will not tell his name. I was the most in fault, for I knew better; and I would rather die than do him any more harm!—Good morning, ma’am!—I thank you kindly, sir! Believe me I am not ungrateful, whatever else I may be that is bad.”

She rose as she spoke, but Mrs. Robertson got to the door first, and standing between her and it, confronted her with a smile.

“Don’t think I blame you for holding your tongue, my dear. I don’t want you to tell. I only thought it might be a relief to you. I believe, if I were in the same case—or, at least, I hope so—that hot pincers wouldn’t draw his name out of me. What right has any vulgar inquisitive woman to know the thing gnawing at your heart like a live serpent? I will never again ask you anything about him.—There! you have my promise!—Now sit down again, and don’t be afraid. Tell me what you please, and not a word more. The minister is sure to find something to comfort you.”

“What can anybody say or do to comfort such as me, ma’am? I am lost—lost out of sight! Nothing can save me! The Saviour himself wouldn’t open the door to a woman that left her suckling child out in the dark night!—That’s what I did!” she cried, and ended with a wail as from a heart whose wound eternal years could never close.

In a while growing a little calmer—

“I would not have you think, ma’am,” she resumed, “that I wanted to get rid of the darling. But my wits went all of a sudden, and a terror, I don’t know of what, came upon me. Could it have been the hunger, do you think? I laid him down in the heather, and ran from him. How far I went, I do not know. All at once I came to myself, and knew what I had done, and ran to take him up. But whether I lost my way back, or what I did, or how it was, I cannot tell, only I could not find him! Then for a while I think I must have been clean out of my mind, and was always seeing him torn by the foxes, and the corbies picking out his eyes. Even now, at night, every now and then, it comes back, and I cannot get the sight out of my head! For a while it drove me to drink, but I got rid of that until just last night, when again I was overcome.—Oh, if I could only keep from seeing the beasts and birds at his little body when I’m falling asleep!”

She gave a smothered scream, and hid her face in her hands. Mrs. Robertson, weeping herself, sought to comfort her, but it seemed in vain.

“The worst of it is,” Isy resumed, “—for I must confess everything, ma’am!—is that I cannot tell what I may have done in the drink. I may even have told his name, though I remember nothing about it! It must be months, I think, since I tasted a drop till last night; and now I’ve done it again, and I’m not fit he should ever cast a look at me! My heart’s just like to break when I think I may have been false to him, as well as false to his child! If all the devils would but come and tear me, I would say, thank ye, sirs!”

“My dear,” came the voice of the parson from where he sat listening to every word she uttered, “my dear, naething but the han’ o’ the Son o’ Man’ll come nigh ye oot o’ the dark, saft-strokin yer hert, and closin up the terrible gash intil’t. I’ the name o’ God, the saviour o’ men, I tell ye, dautie, the day ‘ill come whan ye’ll smile i’ the vera face o’ the Lord himsel, at the thoucht o’ what he has broucht ye throuw! Lord Christ, haud a guid grup o’ thy puir bairn and hers, and gie her back her ain. Thy wull be deen!—and that thy wull’s a’ for redemption!—Gang on wi’ yer tale, my lassie.”

“‘Deed, sir, I can say nae mair—and seem to hae nae mair to say.—I’m some—some sick like!”

She fell back on the sofa, white as death.

The parson was a big man; he took her up in his arms, and carried her to a room they had always ready on the chance of a visit from “one of the least of these.”

At the top of the stair stood their little daughter, a child of five or six, wanting to go down to her mother, and wondering why she was not permitted.

“Who is it, moder?” she whispered, as Mrs. Robertson passed her, following her husband and Isy. “Is she very dead?”

“No, darling,” answered her mother; “it is an angel that has lost her way, and is tired—so tired!—You must be very quiet, and not disturb her. Her head is going to ache very much.”

The child turned and went down the stair, step by step, softly, saying—

“I will tell my rabbit not to make any noise—and to be as white as he can.”

Once more they succeeded in bringing back to the light of consciousness her beclouded spirit. She woke in a soft white bed, with two faces of compassion bending over her, closed her eyes again with a smile of sweet content, and was soon wrapt in a wholesome slumber.

In the meantime, the caitiff minister had reached his manse, and found a ghastly loneliness awaiting him—oh, how much deeper than that of the woman he had forsaken! She had lost her repute and her baby; he had lost his God! He had never seen his shape, and had not his word abiding in him; and now the vision of him was closed in an unfathomable abyss of darkness, far, far away from any point his consciousness could reach! The signs of God were around him in the Book, around him in the world, around him in his own existence—but the signs only! God did not speak to him, did not manifest himself to him. God was not where James Blatherwick had ever sought him; he was not in any place where was the least likelihood of his ever looking for or finding him!