'For myself,' said the Laird, 'I will accompany your deputation to wait on Mr. Brown, if it were only to show him that there are some who believe in him still; but as for visiting the young woman who has had the ill luck to fall under the suspicion of this meeting, I must crave to be excused. How any man can think of going on such an errand to a lonely old woman and her daughter is beyond my comprehension. For myself, I could not do it.'
'Duty, brother! duty!' cried Mr. Geddie. 'That should be the watchword of every true soldier of the cross! Likings and dislikes will go for nothing in the eyes of true wisdom when duty calls, and her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace!'
CHAPTER XXVII.
[DEALING WITH A SINNER IN LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS].
The next day Roderick, having slept well, was greatly refreshed, and felt strong enough to move to his easy chair by the fire. Mary had heaped up the peat and coppice oak on the hearth, and thrown open the window till the air grew sweet and wholesome, and the clammy damps of their hovel were dissipated like the nightmares that had been oppressing his brain all through the past dreary week.
'And what can the rumours be that Sophie spoke of, Mary?' he asked. 'I really am curious to know. I suspect they have influenced more people than that absurd Duchess. That would account for the way the people have stayed away from me, which has been surprising and even distressing me a good deal. However, I am getting better now; a day or two more and I shall be out among them, and I shall find it all out. But I really feel hurt by their coldness and indifference to me.'
'Nonsense, Roddie! They are a foolish and ungrateful lot; never mind them. You must follow the doctor's advice, and go south for the winter, as soon as you are able to travel. Just look at the walls! green with damp, and the moisture trickling down the plaster; and yet this is only October! What will it be in January? It is fine weather now, and we are burning as much fuel as can be done without setting the house on fire, and it takes it all to drive the horrid mouldiness even temporarily out of the air. When winter comes and the rain is incessant out of doors, except when it snows, perhaps, for a change, the window must be kept closed, and the mouldiness and the damp will turn the place into a very cave, and, as the doctor said, after this attack a very little matter will drive you into a consumption. You must not think of it--it terrifies me, and, indeed, I am afraid even for myself. As for the people--I think they will very likely think better of you after we are gone. When your charities among them are suspended, very likely they may think more of you and them. It will serve them right, and be a warning against wagging their tattling tongues so freely for the future. Have done with them! They are a worthless set.'
'Fie, Mary! What are any of us but poor worthless creatures? We who have education and an income, should not be hard on the poor souls. The world must appear very different to them, from what it does to us. Think what it must be to look into the half empty meal-girnel, and at the little heap of potatoes, and know that that is all between them and starvation, till more is earned,--that the smallest miscarriage, a delay in receiving the weekly wage, a stumble ending in a sprain, sickness of a child, even an accident to a horse or a car, may entail a supperless night, or a day of hunger! And when all the energy and care are needed to stave off from day to day their physical destitution, is it not too much to look for those more graceful and spiritual charities which make our life pleasant? It takes so much of light and heat and moisture to support the mere plant life; and when these are so stintedly supplied, it is surely over-exacting to look for the same profusion of flower and fruit on the bare hill-side as one expects in a sheltered garden. In visiting among the poor, I have often felt humbled at the view of their sturdy fortitude under privation, and the extent of their unostentatious charities to one another. They will stint themselves of the necessaries of life to help those worse provided than themselves, but they cannot talk about it. Indeed, the beautiful act and the gracious word are never to be met with both on the same bush among these wind-swept hills, and I am thankful to say it is the deed I have oftenest observed. I feel bound to make allowance for much rugged speech which might sound hard and uncharitable to a stranger. You may sow mignonette and gilly-flower in your garden, but it is the heather, tough and sturdy, which grows upon the braes, and defies the blasts; and that, too, has its beauty and its sweetness, and we value it less only because it is more abundant and common.'
'Poor Roderick! The hebdomadal orator had broken out in him after his long rest in bed,--the habit of prelecting before a silent auditory, which many find so difficult to acquire, and which, when learnt, makes so many long-winded and pragmatical nuisances in private life. It did not trouble Mary. Born in a manse, she had been used to prelections all her life, and as the periods would grow longer and more resonant, she would know that no answer was expected, and would go on with her work. Perhaps she regarded it as practise for Sunday, most likely she did not think of it at all, as she settled more steadily to her tatting and crochet work--the Penelope's web, always beginning and never apparently coming to an end,--which kept her fingers pleasantly busy, and left her mind in perfect peace.
There is no saying to what heights and depths of wisdom, or, mayhap, nonsense, Roderick might have attained. The muse theologic, after a week's inaction, inclined to long and discursive flight, but was interrupted in full career by the entrance of Mr. Sangster.