Cosmo felt miserable.
“Ye winna surely gang ohn seein’ Maister Simon!”
“I tried to see him last nicht, but auld Dorty wadna lat me near him. I wad fain say fareweel til him.”
“Weel, put aff gaein’ awa’ till the morn, an’ we’ll gang thegither the nicht an’ see him. Dorty winna haud me oot.”
Aggie hesitated, thought, and consented. Leaving Cosmo more distressed than she knew, she went to the kitchen, took off her bonnet, and telling Grizzie she was not going till the morrow, sat down, and proceeded to pare the potatoes.
“Ance mair,” said Grizzie, resuming an unclosed difference, “what for ye sud gang’s clean ’ayont me. It’s true the auld men are awa’, but here’s the auld wife left, an’ she’ll be a mither to ye, as weel ’s she kens hoo, an’ a lass o’ your sense is easy to mither. I’ the name o’ God I say ’t, the warl’ micht as weel objec’ to twa angels bidin’ i’ h’aven thegither as you an’ the yoong laird in ae hoose! Say ’at they like, ye’re but a servan’ lass, an’ here am I ower ye! Aggie, I’m grouin’ auld, an’ railly no fit to mak a bed my lane—no to mention scoorin’ the flure! It’s no considerate o’ ye, Aggie!—jist ’cause yer father—hoots, he was but yer gran’father! —’s deid o’ a guid auld age, an’ gaithert til his fathers, to gang an’ lea’ me my lane! Whaur am I to get a body I cud bide to hae i’ my sicht, an’ you awa’—you ’at’s been like bane o’ my bane to me! It’s no guid o’ ye, Aggie! There maun be temper intil ’t! I’m sure I ken no cause ever I gae ye.”
Aggie said not a word; she had said all she could say, over and over; so now she pared her potatoes, and was silent. Her heart was sore, but her mind was clear, and her will strong.
Up and down the little garden Cosmo walked, revolving many things. “What is this world and its ways,” he said, “but a dream that dreams itself out and is gone!”
The majority of men, whether they think or not, worship solidity and fact: to such Cosmo’s conclusion must seem both foolish and dangerous—though a dream may be filled with truth, and a fact be a mere shred for the winds of the limbo of vanities. Everything that can pass belongs to the same category with the dream. The question is whether the passing body leaves a live soul; whether the dream has been dreamed, the life lived aright. For there is a reality beyond all facts of suns and systems; solidity itself is but the shadow of a divine necessity; and there may be more truth in a fable than in a whole biography. Where life and truth are one, there is no passing, no dreaming more. To that waking, all dreams truly dreamed are guiding the dreamer. But the last thing—and this was the conclusion of Cosmo’s meditation—any dreamer needs regard, is the judgment of other dreamers upon his dreams. The all-pervading, ill-odoured phantom called Society is but the ghost of a false God. The fear of man, the trust in man, the deference to the opinion of man, is the merest worship of a rag-stuffed idol. The man who seeks the judgment of God can well smile at the unsolicited approval or condemnation of self-styled Society. There is a true society—quite another thing. Doubtless the judgment of the world is of even moral value to those capable of regarding it. To deprive a thief of the restraining influence of the code of thieves’ honour, would be to do him irreparable wrong; so with the tradesman whose law is the custom of the trade; but God demands an honesty, a dignity, a beauty of being, altogether different from that demanded by man of his fellow; and he who is taught of God is set out of sight above such law as that of thieves’ honour, trade-custom, or social recognition—all of the same quality—subjected instead to a law which obeyed is liberty, disobeyed is a hell deeper than Society’s attendant slums.
“Here is a woman,” said Cosmo to himself, “who, with her earnings and her labour both, ministered to the very bodily life of my father and myself! She has been in the house the angel of God—the noblest, truest of women! She has ten times as much genuine education as most men who have been to college! Her brain is second only to her heart!—If it had but pleased God to make her my sister! But there is a way of pulling out the tongue of Slander!”