“I poured it out before the Lord,” he said, putting the phial on the table; “but the sin is no less, for I did it in meaning, if not in deed. How can I ever lift my head or my hand before His presence again?”
“Oh, my laddie! my man!” cried his wife, who was the mother of every soul in trouble, “oh, my Claude! Are you so little a father, you with your many bairns, that you do not know in your heart how He is looking at you? ‘Such pity as a father hath unto His children dear.’ You are just fevered and sick with trouble. You shut out your wife from you, and now you would shut out your Lord from you.”
“No,” he said, grasping her hand, “never again, Mary, never again. I am weak as water, I cannot stand alone. I have judged others for less, far less, than I myself have done.”
“Well, let it be so,” said his wife, “you will know better another time. Claude, you are just my bairn to-night. You will say your prayers and go to your bed, and the Lord in heaven and me at your bedside, like a dream it will all pass away.”
He dropped down heavily upon his knees, and bent his head upon the table.
“Mary, I feel as if I could say nought but this: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh Lord.”
“You know well,” she said, “the hasty man that Peter was, if ever he had been taken at his word. And do you mind what was the answer? It was just ‘Follow me.’”
“Father, forgive me. Master, forgive me,” he breathed through the hands that covered his face, and then his voice broke out in the words of an older faith, words which she understood but dimly, and which frightened her with the mystery of an appeal into the unknown. Kyrie Eleison, Christ Eleison, the man said, humbled to the very depths.
The woman stood trembling over him not knowing how to follow. His voice rolled forth low and intense, like the sound of an organ into the silent room; hers faltered after in sobs inarticulate, terrified, exalted, understanding nothing, comprehending all.
This scene was scarcely ended when Elsie burst out singing over her work, forgetting that there was any trouble in the world: to each its time, and love through all.