“Ye say weel, neighbour; but an folk canna mend their ill deeds they maun tak the penalty. If it’s but in this world it’s weel for themsels, and if it’s in another pairt than this, it’s a’ the mair just and righteous.”
“Oh, Saunders Delvie,” exclaimed Janet Mense, “ye’re a hard man!”
“Maister Charlie Graeme did sair ill to this house,” said Mrs Mense emphatically, “and meant mair than he could do—but for a’ that, look at the Laird, Saunders, and learn by him. Is he no making this lad like a son o’ Mossgray? is he no doing a’ that the kindest father could do for him? but no to speak o’ the Laird, Saunders, there’s mysel. I likit Miss Lucy Murray weel, and there was never ane but likit Mr Adam; and baith o’ them did that lad’s faither do his warst to bring to misery. I am a lone woman, and have nae bairns o’ my ain; but the time my heart was warmest and fullest, thae young folk—though they were gentles, and no like me, were gaun and coming about the house, and I thought mair o’ them than ever I did o’ mysel. But for a’ the ill he did to them—Saunders, I mind that we need mercy oursels every day, and I can say, Charlie Graeme, I forgive ye.”
“Ay,” said Saunders Delvie sternly, “but he didna dishonour the honest name that your forbears and you had laboured in puirtith and hard toil to keep free of offence in the sight of God and man. He wasna that near to you, that his shame should be yours to bear, the very time that your ain misery for his sin was rugging at your heart; ye dinna ken—and I seek nocht but to bear my ain burden out of the sicht of man.”
His bushy gray eyebrows twitched—his face was moved; this man too had a history.
“Eh, but Saunders, man!” continued the good old housekeeper with some timidity, “it’s no like you—I’m meaning it’s no like what we should do to be so hard on the puir lad; mind how young he was; and for a’ that he did ance ill, mind that he’s your ain.”
“I mind,” said Saunders emphatically, while a sudden yearning seemed to contend on his harsh face with the stern condemnation of justice; “woman, ye dinna ken! If he had been less to me—ay, if he was less to me now, think ye I wad have done what I have done. It’s nae use speaking; do I no see the tears in the wife’s auld e’en morning and nicht? do I no ken wha she’s aye thinking o’ and yearning ower like a weak woman as she is? but I say he shall never cross again the door of the honest house he has brought shame upon—never!”
There was a stern fire in the old man’s eye, and he went hastily out to his work as if he felt ashamed of having been drawn into this revelation of his household grief. He was, naturally, a man with very strong and passionate feelings, and one of those harsh and powerful minds, which at any cost of misery to themselves will cling to their severe and abstract conceptions of justice. His only child, a youth of some promise in their humble sphere, had fallen a few years before into the brutalizing practices of rural vice. He had formed discreditable connections, involved himself in the worst company that Fendie could afford, and to crown all his offences, had finally, in a moment of temptation, stolen some trifling sum from his master. Saunders and his wife were in the sober meridian of life when they married, and this lad Peter was the son of their old age, the secret idol of the old man’s vehement heart. But no one knew the might of love which the somewhat stern father lavished upon the son; and when his criminal folly came to its climax, the mother, the neighbours, the injured master himself, stood aside with awe while Saunders repudiated and disowned the unhappy culprit. They called him harsh and cruel; but the guilty youth himself, even while he trembled under his father’s sentence, discovered for the first time the strong love which in its agony banished him from its home and presence. A kindred strength awoke in the son’s undisciplined spirit. Seeing how bitterly the hopes set on his head had been disappointed, in bitter repentance he turned from the closed door, eager to leave the place of his early sins, and in some strange unknown country to conquer, by the help of God, himself and his fate. For two long years now he had been absent—where his father did not know, nor would inquire; and still in the bitterness of the strong love which burned within him, the old man repudiated the prodigal.
Mossgray and his ward were together in the garden: Saunders hastily avoided them, and went to work alone, where no one could see the stern swelling of his heart. It was the great fault of Saunders’ own class, that they were obtuse to notice and slow to punish those sins of youth, so fatal to all goodness, which the world is content to call follies. Saunders himself was harshly pure and just; he thought it was something of this moral blindness, so common among his humble neighbours, which made Mossgray receive so kindly the son of Charlie Graeme.
Lilias was leaning on her guardian’s arm; they were going to the water-side.