Her delight in the child, instead of growing less, went on increasing because of the awe, rather than dread of having at last to give him up.
CHAPTER XIX.
Meanwhile the minister remained moody, apparently sunk in contemplation, but in fact mostly brooding, and meditating neither form nor truth. Sometimes he felt indeed as if he were losing altogether his power of thinking—especially when, in the middle of the week, he sat down to find something to say on the Sunday. He had greatly lost interest in the questions that had occupied him while he was yet a student, and imagined himself in preparation for what he called the ministry—never thinking how one was to minister who had not yet learned to obey, and had never sought anything but his own glorification! It was little wonder he should lose interest in a profession, where all was but profession! What pleasure could that man find in holy labour who, not indeed offered his stipend to purchase the Holy Ghost, but offered all he knew of the Holy Ghost to purchase popularity? No wonder he should find himself at length in lack of talk to pay for his one thing needful! He had always been more or less dependent on commentaries for the joint he provided—and even for the cooking of it: was it any wonder that his guests should show less and less appetite for his dinners?
The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed!
To have food to give them, he must think! To think, he must have peace! to have peace, he must forget himself! to forget himself, he must repent, and walk in the truth! to walk in the truth, he must love God and his neighbour!—Even to have interest in the dry bone of criticism, which was all he could find in his larder, he must broil it—and so burn away in the slow fire of his intellect, now dull and damp enough from lack of noble purpose, every scrap of meat left upon it! His last relation to his work, his fondly cherished intellect, was departing from him, to leave him lord of a dustheap! In the unsavoury mound he grubbed and nosed and scraped dog-like, but could not uncover a single fragment that smelt of provender. The morning of Saturday came, and he recognized with a burst of agonizing sweat, that he dared not even imagine his appearance before his congregation: he had not one written word to read to them; and extempore utterance was, from conscious vacancy, impossible to him; he could not even call up one meaningless phrase to articulate! He flung his concordance sprawling upon the floor, snatched up his hat and clerical cane, and, scarce knowing what he did, presently found himself standing at the soutar’s door, where he had already knocked, without a notion of what he was come to seek. The old parson, generally in a mood to quarrel with the soutar, had always walked straight into his workshop, and greeted him crouched over his work; but the new parson always waited on the doorstep for Maggie to admit him.
She had opened the door wide ere he knew why he had come, or could think of anything to say. And now he was in greater uneasiness than usual at the thought of the cobbler’s deep-set black eyes about to be fixed upon him, as if to probe his very thoughts.
“Do you think your father would have time,” he asked humbly, “to measure me for a pair of light boots?”
Mr. Blatherwick was very particular about his foot-gear, and had hitherto always fitted himself at Deemouth; but he had at length learned that nothing he could there buy approached in quality, either of material or workmanship, what the soutar supplied to his poorest customer: he would mend anything worth mending, but would never make anything inferior.
“Ye’ll get what ye want at such and such place,” he would answer, “and I doobtna it’ll be as guid as can be made at the siller; but for my ain pairt, ye maun excuse me!”
“’Deed, sir, he’ll be baith glad and prood to mak ye as guid a pair o’ beets as he can compass,” answered Maggie. “Jist step in here, sir, and lat him ken what ye want. My bairn’s greitin, and I maun gang til ’im; it’s seldom he cries oot!”