But George Oswald moving there uneasily in his elbow chair was too much perplexed and conscience-stricken to give a ready answer. The vehement father-love of Saunders Delvie, which in its agony of disappointed hope produced this vow, sublimed the old man’s sternness and lifted it out of the class of ordinary emotions. It was not anger, or wounded pride, or shame alone, but it was all these, intensified and burning with the strong, bitter love which still worshipped in its secret heart the son whom it had expelled from his home. The worldly man who had put the barrier of his disapproval in the way of his son’s happiness, for such paltry motives as Saunders Delvie never knew, felt himself abashed in presence of the old, stern peasant, whose appealing eye was upon him.
“Saunders,” said Mr Oswald, with a faltering voice, “we are bound at all times to forgive.”
“It’s no that I dinna forgive him,” cried the old man in his passion. “It’s no that I dinna think upon him night and day—it’s no that—oh man! do ye no ken?”
And Saunders, forgetting all artificial respectfulness, put down his gray head into his hard toil-worn hands and sobbed aloud—such strong convulsive sobs as the awed banker had never heard before.
Hope Oswald had opened the door very quietly to look in, and the instincts of childhood were scarcely yet subdued in the young heart of the banker’s daughter. She came softly across the room to stand by Saunders’ side, and touch his hand with awe and pity.
“Saunders,” whispered Hope, “maybe it is not true—the minister says it is not true.”
The old man lifted his face; no face less stern could have been moved so greatly.
“What is’t that’s no true?”
“Poor Peter!” said Hope, with tears upon her cheek, “do you mind how good he aye was, Saunders? and his heart broke, people say, because you were angry at him; but you are not angry now; and when he comes back you will go out to meet him like the man in the Bible, and be friends? for, Saunders, you are friends with Peter now?”
He could not wait for any judgment; he could not think of any vow. A burst of weeping, such as might have hailed the prodigal’s return, followed the simple speech of Hope. The living love within him burst through its perverse and unseemly garments; and those peaceful walls, unused to great emotion, had never heard such a cry as broke through them now, from lips that trembled as the great king’s did of old, when he too wept for his Absalom. “My son! my son!”