Then the minister stood up, and took Ailie by the arm. She was shivering and trembling with the revulsion, worn out with her excitement. Her moment of ‘power’ was over.
‘You can do no more here,’ he said, with a thrill in his voice which betrayed how much he himself had been moved. She is worn out, and you are worn out, and here there is no more to say. Ailie, for God’s sake come with me, and disturb her no more.’
‘O friends, it’s the wiles of Satan,’ said Ailie. ‘Oh, to think he should be there! Margret—Margret, how can I leave you to perish! Let me stay by her day and night, and wrestle with Satan for his prey!’
‘You will come with me,’ said Mr. Lothian, firmly, and then the passionate creature burst into choking sobs and tears. Poor Margaret, whose thread of life was worn so thin, whose weakness could so ill bear the struggle, sat in the gathering twilight, and looked on while the prophetess, who had come to heal her, was led, like an exhausted child, from her presence. She thought she was alone, but a sound close to her startled her back again into a little flush of agitation. ‘I am worn and weaker,’ she said, driven to the limit of her powers. ‘Oh, will ye let me be? Whoever you are, leave me and my life to God!’
‘Margaret, it is I,’ said a deep voice close to her ear. ‘Why will you die? Do you know my heart will die with you, and my last hope? Am I to live to curse God? or will you live—will you live, and save a sinful soul? Margaret, because I have been ill to you have pity on me!’
Weak as she was, Margaret started from her seat. ‘John Diarmid,’ she cried, ‘how dare ye speak to me? Am I the one to bear the blame of your blessing or your misery? If you had the heart of a man, you would go miles and miles rather than enter here.’
‘I would lie at your door like a dog,’ said the man in his passion, ‘rather than be banished like this; but I’ll go away to the ends of the earth, Margaret, Margaret, if you’ll live, and not die!’
‘I’ll do as the Lord pleases,’ said the poor girl, stretching out her feeble hands in the darkness for some support. She was worn out. Before her persecutor could reach her she had sunk upon the floor with a faintness which soon reached the length of unconsciousness. The women, rushing in at his cry, carried her to her bed. She had not fainted to be out of suffering; her heart throbbed against her breast, as though struggling to be free. Poor Margaret! The human passion was more hard to meet than all that went before.
CHAPTER V
Mr. John, whose appearance at the Glebe had thus moved all the spectators, had been for a long time the embodiment of pleasure-seeking and dissipation to the country-side. His had been the jeunesse orageuse, which, as a pleasant discipline and beginning of life, had ceased to be realised on this side of the Channel. A quaint old house on the eastern side of the Loch, and a few hill-sides which had been in the family for centuries, were all his patrimony; but his mother had transmitted a moderate fortune to her only child, which he had got rid of in his younger days in gayer scenes than could be found on the Loch. When he had returned perforce, all his money being spent, to his long-neglected home, Mr. John for some years had taken rank as the Don Giovanni of the district. He had been so far prudent or fortunate as never to be the object of any unusually grave scandal. Miss Catherine, rigid as she was in morality, had not been compelled to shut her doors against her own connection, but had been able to doubt, to extenuate, to find excuses for him. ‘Left to his own will when he was but a callant,’ she would say, ‘flattered and served hand and foot by them that led him away. If I am to shut my doors on the poor lad, where would he get a word of advice, or be shown the error of his ways?’