XXIV
"COME, ETTRICK; YARROW, COME"
It was two long days before Gordon returned to me. He knew the worst, of course, but had lingered at Carletonville in the hope that he might get some trace of Harold. A telegram to me, and another from me to him, told enough to send him home at once. Poor Dorothy's eyes looked wonderingly upon us as her father held me in his arms so long and so silently after he came in the door. Grandfather turned his troubled face away, pretending to gaze out of the window.
"You look so old, Gordon," I said unguardedly, as I drew back to look once more on the haggard face.
"I am old, my darling," was all his answer, as he drew me to him again.
I forget what we talked about that evening—it was a dreadsome hour. And I actually feared for Gordon. He seemed half crushed, and half defiant, sometimes breaking out into a flood of grief, sometimes sitting long in stony silence. I felt guilty in the thought that I was more composed than he; once or twice I caught myself admitting that my faith was stronger than his—but I dismissed the comparison as pharisaical. Yet that was my chief concern for my husband—I feared for the influence this sorrow would have on his secret life. I knew then, oh! how well I knew, that only one anchor could hold amid a storm like this. And the very ones who had taught me this were God and Gordon.
The gloaming was just deepening into dark when I came back to the study after telling Dorothy good-night; grandfather's chair was close beside Gordon's, the white head visible through the gloom.
"Noo's the time to use yir faith," the old man was saying softly; "naebody needs a licht till the mirk gathers roun' aboot them. An' there's ae thing, there's ae thing, my son, ye maun aye keep sayin' to yirsel': the laddie's juist as dear to God as he is to you an' Helen—if ye love him, it's because God loves us a'," and the quivering voice fell on my harrowed heart like music from some steeple far aloft. "Aye," he went on as if to himself, "Harold canna' wanner ayont the Faither's care—an' we can aye follow him wi' prayer.
"Rax Gordon the Buik, lassie," he suddenly said, after we had sat a while in silence.
I did as I was bidden and Gordon received it without a word. It seemed to me, though perhaps it was only fancy, as he held it a moment, then opened it slowly and began turning the pages over, that there was a reverent eagerness about it such as had long been wanting. I wondered, fearfully, if this new ministry were already working its blessed way. And he passed Hosea by, though he had been reading for some time from that section of the Scriptures; he had some books on those old writers that he was delving into, and he always read at family worship from the parts he was studying for himself—there was so much of this that I had really grown weary of the prophets, shameful though it may be to confess it. Gordon still turned the leaves, nor stopped till he came to the fourteenth of St. John: "Let not your heart be troubled," which he read with a trembling voice that interpreted it beyond all the power of German scholarship. It was like a great anthem to my soul that night, and I think I gloried as much in Gordon's voice as in the wonderful words.
When we knelt to pray I slipped over to Gordon's chair, and we bowed together, his hand tight clasped in mine. I prayed for Gordon all the time we were bended thus, my heart full of a kind of thankful joy that mingled strangely with the passion of loss and loneliness already there. The prayer was beautiful; and just before its close Gordon stopped, tried again, then faltered out with a kind of sob: