“If we had any objection, madam, to your knowing what we were saying,” interposed Annie, “we are by no means bound to tell. But you are quite welcome to it. I have been assuring Helsa that there is some mistake about my leaving this house. Here have I lived, and here I hope to die.”
“We must talk that matter over,” declared Lady Carse. “We are so crowded next door that we can bear it no longer; and I must live in sight of the harbour, you know.”
And she went over all the old arguments, while she sent Helsa to bring in Mr Ruthven, that he might add his pastoral authority to her claims. After having once declared herself immovable, Annie bore all in silence; the pleas that her lamp was so seldom wanted; that it would be well tended for her, while she could sleep all night, and every night; that it had become a passion with Lady Carse to obtain this house, and that anyone was an enemy who denied her the only thing she could enjoy. These pleas Annie listened to in silence, and then to reproaches on her selfishness, her obstinacy, her malice and cruelty. When both her visitors had exhausted their arguments, she turned to Lady Carse, and intimated that now they had all spoken their minds on this subject, she wished to be alone in her own house. Then she turned to Mr Ruthven, and told him that whatever he had to say as her pastor, she would gladly listen to.
“In some other place than this,” he declared with severity. “I have tried rebuke and remonstrance here, beside your own hearth, with a perseverance which I fear has lowered the dignity of my office. I have done. I enter this house no more as your pastor.”
Annie bowed her head, and remained standing till they were gone; then she sank down, melting into tears.
“This, then,” and her heart swelled at the thought; “this, then, is the end of my hope—the brightest hope I ever had since my great earthly hope was extinguished! I thought I could bear anything if there was only a pastor at hand. And now—but there is my duty still; nothing can take that away. And I am forgetting that at this very moment, when I have so little else left! crying in this way when I want better eyes than mine are now for watching the sea. I have shed too many tears in my day; more than a trusting Christian woman should; and now I must keep my eyes dry and my heart firm for my duty. And I cannot see that I have done any wrong in staying by the duty that God gave me, and the house that I must do it in. With this house and God’s house—” And her thoughts recurred, as usual, to the blessing of the sabbath. She should still have a pastor in God’s house, if not in her own. And thus she cheered her heart while she bathed her eyes that they might serve for her evening gaze over the sea.
She was destined, however, to be overtaken by dismay on the sabbath, and in that holy house where she had supposed her peace could never be disturbed. The pastor read and preached from the passage in the 18th chapter of Matthew, which enjoins remonstrance with sinners, first in private, then in the presence of one or two witnesses, and at last before the church. The passage was read so emphatically that Annie’s heart beat thick and fast. But this did not prepare her for what followed. In his sermon the pastor explained that though the scriptural expression was, “If thy brother trespass,” the exhortation was equally applicable to any Christian sister who should offend. He declared that if any Christian sister was present who was conscious of having trespassed on the comfort and natural feelings of an afflicted and persecuted personage whom they had the honour to entertain among them, he besought the offending sister to enquire of herself whether she had not been rebuked first alone, then in the presence of a witness—alas! in vain; and whether, therefore, the time had not come for a rebuke before the Church. He would, however, name no one, but leave yet some place for repentance; and so forth.
Annie’s natural dismay, terrible as it was, soon yielded before the appeal to her conscience, which the pastor supposed would appal her. She knew that she was right; and in this knowledge she raised her bowed head, and listened more calmly than many others. If there had been any doubt among the small congregation as to who was meant, Lady Carse would have dispersed it. She sat in the front row, with the minister’s family. Unable to restrain her vindictive satisfaction, she started up and pointed with her finger, and nodded at Annie. The pitying calm gaze with which Annie returned the insult went to many hearts, and even to Mrs Ruthven’s so far so that she pulled the lady by the skirt, and implored her to sit down.
There are many precious things which remain always secrets to those who do not deserve to know them. For instance, tyrants know nothing of the animating and delicious reaction which they cause in the souls of their victims. The cheerfulness, sweetness and joy of their victims has ever been, and will ever be, a perplexity to oppressors. It was so now to Mr Ruthven, after an act of tyranny perpetrated, as most acts of tyranny are, under a mistaken, an ignorant and arrogant sense of duty. Not only did the widow stand up with others for the closing psalm—her voice was the firmest, sweetest, clearest in the assembly—so sweet and clear that it came back even upon her own ear with a sort of surprise. As for others, all were more or less moved. But their emotion had the common effect of making them draw back from the object of it. After the service, nobody spoke to Annie. She heeded this but little, absorbed as she was in thankfulness in finding that the privileges of God’s house were not disturbed—that her relation to Him and her rights of worship were not touched by any fallibility in His minister. As she reached the entrance of the churchyard, Macdonald overtook her, and made her use his arm for the descent of the irregular steps. A few words from Helsa had put him in possession of the case. He desired the widow not to think for a moment of leaving her house. Everybody wished to do what could be done to reconcile the stranger lady to her abode in the island; but there was a point beyond which he was sure Sir Alexander would not permit encroachment. His advice was to serve and please her in small affairs, and leave it to Sir Alexander to deal with her in such an important one as her having a house to herself. Annie smiled, and said this was exactly her plan.
That evening was, to the inhabitants of the island, the most memorable one of the year—of the generation—of the century. This was not fully known at the time. The most memorable days often appear just like other days till they are past; and though there was some excitement and bustle this evening, no one on the island saw the full meaning of what was before his eyes.