“Is that a’ ye can say, mem?” interposed the soutar. “Surely ye wadna daur imaigine her drappit oot o’ his han’s!”
“Na,” returned Marion; “but I wad richt fain ken her fair intil them! Wha is there to assure ’s o’ her faith i’ the atonement?”
“Deed, I kenna, and I carena, mem! I houp she had faith i’ naething, thing nor thoucht, but the Lord himsel! Alive or deid, we’re in his han’s wha dee’d for us, revealin his Father til ’s,” said the soutar; “—and gien she didna ken Him afore, she wull noo! The holy All-in-All be wi’ her i’ the dark, or whatever comes!—O God, haud up her heid, and latna the watters gang ower her!”
So-called Theology rose, dull, rampant, and indignant; but the solemn face of the dead interdicted dispute, and Love was ready to hope, if not quite to believe. Nevertheless to those guileless souls, the words of the soutar sounded like blasphemy: was not her fate settled, and for ever? Had not death in a moment turned her into an immortal angel, or an equally immortal devil? Only how, at such a moment, with the peaceful face before them, were they to argue the possibility that she, the loving, the gentle, whose fault they knew but by her own voluntary confession, was now as utterly indifferent to the heart of the living God, as if He had never created her—nay even had become hateful to him! No one spoke; and the soutar, after gazing on the dead for a while, prayer overflowing his heart, but never reaching his lips, turned slowly, and departed without a word.
As he reached his own door, he met the minister, and told him of the sorrow that had befallen his parents, adding that it was plain they were in sore need of his sympathy. James, although marvelling at their being so much troubled by the death of merely a servant, was roused by the tale to the duty of his profession; and although his heart had never yet drawn him either to the house of mourning or the house of mirth, he judged it becoming to pay another visit to Stonecross, thinking it, however, rather hard that he should have to go again so soon. It pleased the soutar to see him face about at once, however, and start for the farm with a quicker stride than, since his return to Tiltowie as its minister, he had seen him put forth.
James had not the slightest foreboding of whom he was about to see in the arms of Death. But even had he had some feeling of what was awaiting him, I dare not even conjecture the mood in which he would have approached the house—whether one of compunction, or of relief. But utterly unconscious of the discovery toward which he was rushing, he hurried on, with a faint pleasure at the thought of having to expostulate with his mother upon the waste of such an unnecessary expenditure of feeling. Toward his father, he was aware of a more active feeling of disapproval, if not indeed one of repugnance. James Blatherwick was of such whose sluggish natures require, for the melting of their stubbornness, and their remoulding into forms of strength and beauty, such a concentration of the love of God that it becomes a consuming fire.
CHAPTER XXII
The night had fallen when he reached the farm. The place was silent; its doors were all shut; and when he opened the nearest, seldom used but for the reception of strangers, not a soul was to be seen; no one came to meet him, for no one had even thought of him, and certainly no one, except it were the dead, desired his coming. He went into the parlour, and there, from the dim chamber beyond, whose door stood open, appeared his mother. Her heart big with grief, she clasped him in her arms, and laid her cheek against his bosom: higher she could not reach, and nearer than his breast-bone she could not get to him. No endearment was customary between them: James had never encouraged or missed any; neither did he know how to receive such when offered.
“I am distressed, mother,” he began, “to see you so upset; and I cannot help thinking such a display of feeling unnecessary. If I may say so, it seems to me unreasonable. You cannot, in such a brief period as this new maid of yours has spent with you, have developed such an affection for her, as this—” he hesitated for a word, “—as this bouleversement would seem to indicate! The young woman can hardly be a relative, or I should surely have heard of her existence! The suddenness of the occurrence, of which I heard only from my shoemaker, MacLear, must have wrought disastrously upon your nerves! Come, come, dear mother! you must indeed compose yourself! It is quite unworthy of you, to yield to such a paroxysm of unnatural and uncalled-for grief! Surely it is the part of a Christian like you, to meet with calmness, especially in the case of one you have known so little, that inevitable change which neither man nor woman can avoid longer than a few years at most! Of course, the appalling instantaneousness of it in the present case, goes far to explain and excuse your emotion, but now at least, after so many hours have elapsed, it is surely time for reason to resume her sway! Was it not Schiller who said, ‘Death cannot be an evil, for it is universal’?—At all events, it is not an unmitigated evil!” he added—with a sigh, as if for his part he was prepared to welcome it.
During this prolonged and foolish speech, the gentle woman, whose mother-heart had loved the poor girl that bore her daughter’s name, had been restraining her sobs behind her handkerchief; but now, as she heard her son’s cold commonplaces, it was, perhaps, a little wholesome anger that roused her, and made her able to speak.