Angus turned and looked unflinchingly into their faces. I feared he was about to speak again and I raised my hand to signify forbiddal—but he saw it not, and my inward protest yielded to his fiery purpose.
"Aye, you may well look," he cried to the awestruck worshippers. "God knows I had not meant to do this thing or to speak these words. I came here with the honest purpose to assume the vows that should forever bind me to His service. My heart was honest before God; but when I felt the approach of those guilty hands it was beyond my power to endure their touch. Nor should I feel shame for what I have done. You remember the scourge of knotted cords and the holy temple. Is it wrong that I too should now seek to drive forth this unworthy man? He stands unmasked before you. You know not who he is! He is my father and we share our shame together! Another shares it with her God where the Ettrick water hears her prayer. And this is the man whose hands would convey the grace of God!"
He stopped; and the blanched faces before him gave back a voice, half cry, half sob, anguish rending every heart. They were a proud folk in St. Cuthbert's; besides no man of all the elders was so dear to them as Mr. Blake, his piety and philanthropy so long tried and proved. Although we know it not, there is no asset held more dear than the solvency of a man in whom we vest the precious savings of our confidence.
Every eye and heart seemed turned towards the man so fiercely accused, silently entreating him to relieve the cruel tension.
None doubted that his swift denial would confirm the confidence of our loyal hearts. But the silence drew itself out, moment after moment, each bequeathing its legacy of pain to its successor. Mr. Blake's eyes were raptly fixed on his accuser—his traducer, as we secretly defined him. Their light was not the glow of wrath, nor of resentment, but of a strange wistful curiosity, mixed with eager yearning. Fear and love seemed to look out together.
In the pause that followed, Angus swiftly handed to me a small picture, encased after an ancient fashion.
"Look at that, sir," he said, "that will tell its tale—that is my father's face."
I looked with eager intentness, and it required but a glance to show that the pictured face before me, and the pallid face beside me, were the same. The picture was evidently taken long years before, and the stamp of youth and hope and ardent faith was upon the face. Locks raven black, and an unwrinkled brow, had been exchanged for those that bore the scar of time and care; but no careful eye could fail to see that the youthful face of the picture and the ashen face of the elder were one and the same.
But,—more striking and fatal far—the photograph's evidence was not required. No man who saw, as I saw, the faces of Michael Blake and Angus Strachan side by side need wait for other evidence. Often had I seen them thus before—but never in the nakedness of passion.
Passion has the artist's magic hand and her master sketch is ever of her home. As Titian's immortal hills were but the reproduction of his far-off dwelling-place, genius plighting its troth to childhood, so doth passion illumine first the environs of her long time home, how humble so ever it may be. Passion paints the eternal childlike that is in us all. The face is the window through which the vista of a soul's inner life is flashed by her mystic hand, and in that moment the window glows with the unfeigned light of childhood, its simple radiance still unquenched, though long draped by artificial years.
