Salted with Fire Part 12

_my_ hoose, wi my wife; and my wee bit la.s.sie hings aboot her as gien she was an angel come doon to see the bonny place this warl luks frae up there.--Eh, puir lammie, the stanes oucht to be feower upo thae hill-sides!"

"What for that, Maister Robertson?"

"'Cause there's so mony o' them whaur human herts oucht to be.--Come awa, doggie!" he added, rising.

"Dear me, sir! haena ye hae a grain o' patience to waur (_spend_) upon a puir menseless body?" cried Marion, wringing her hands in dismay. "To think _I_ sud be nice whaur my Lord was sae free!"

"Ay," returned the minister, "and he was jist as clean as ever, wi' mony ane siclike as her inside the heart o' him!--_Gang awa, and dinna dee the like again_, was a' he said to that ane!--and ye may weel be sure she never did! And noo she and Mary are followin, wi' yer ain Isy, i'

the vera futsteps o' the great shepherd, throuw the gowany leys o' the New Jerus'lem--whaur it may be they ca' her Isy yet, as they ca' this ane I hae to gang hame til."

"Ca' they her _that_, sir?--Eh, gar her come, gar her come! I wud fain cry upo _Isy_ ance mair!--Sit ye doon, sir, shame upo' me!--and tak a bite efter yer lang walk!--Will ye no bide the nicht wi' 's, and gang back by the mornin's co'ch?"

"I wull that, mem--and thank ye kindly! I'm a bit fatiguit wi' the hill ro'd, and the walk a wee langer than I'm used til.--Ye maun hae peety upo my kittle temper, mem, and no drive me to ower muckle shame o'

myself!" he concluded, wiping his forehead.

"And to think," cried his hostess, "that my hard hert sud hae drawn sic a word frae ane o' the Lord's servans that serve him day and nicht! I beg yer pardon, and that richt heumbly, sir! I daurna say I'll never do the like again, but I'm no sae likly to transgress a second time as the first.--Lord, keep the doors o' my lips, that ill-faured words comena thouchtless oot, and shame me and them that hear me!--I maun gang and see aboot yer denner, sir! I s' no be lang."

"Yer gracious words, mem, are mair nor meat and drink to me. I could, like Elijah, go i' the stren'th o' them--maybe something less than forty days, but it wad be by the same sort o' stren'th as that angels'-food gied the prophet!"

Marion hurried none the less for such a word; and soon the minister had eaten his supper, and was seated in the cool of a sweet summer-evening, in the garden before the house, among roses and lilies and poppy-heads and long pink-striped gra.s.ses, enjoying a pipe with the farmer, who had antic.i.p.ated the hour for unyoking, and hurried home to have a talk with Mr. Robertson. The minister opened wide his heart, and told them all he knew and thought of Isy. And so prejudiced were they in her favour by what he said of her, and the arguments he brought to show that the judgment of the world was in her case tyrannous and false, that what anxiety might yet remain as to the new relation into which they were about to enter, was soon absorbed in hopeful expectation of her appearance.

"But," he concluded, "you will have to be wise as serpents, lest aiblins (_possibly_) ye kep (_intercept_) a lost sheep on her w'y back to the shepherd, and gar her lie theroot (_out of doors_), exposed to the prowlin wouf. Afore G.o.d, I wud rether share wi' her in _that_ day, nor wi' them that keppit her!"

But when he reached home, the minister was startled, indeed dismayed by the pallor that overwhelmed Isy's countenance when she heard, following his a.s.surance of the welcome that awaited her, the name and abode of her new friends.

"They'll be wantin to ken a'thing!" she sobbed.

"Tell you them," returned the minister, "everything they have a right to know; they are good people, and will not ask more. Beyond that, they will respect your silence."

"There's but ae thing, as ye ken, sir, that I canna, and winna tell. To haud my tongue aboot that is the ae particle o' honesty left possible to me! It's enough I should have been the cause of the poor man's sin; and I'm not going to bring upon him any of the consequences of it as well.

G.o.d keep the doors of my lips!"

"We will not go into the question whether you or he was the more to blame," returned the parson; "but I heartily approve of your resolve, and admire your firmness in holding to it. The time _may_ come when you _ought_ to tell; but until then, I shall not even allow myself to wonder who the faithless man may be."

Isy burst into tears.

"Don't call him that, sir! Don't drive me to doubt him. Don't let the thought cross my mind that he could have helped doing nothing! Besides, I deserve nothing! And for my bonny bairn, he maun by this time be back hame to Him that sent him!"

Thus a.s.sured that her secret would be respected by those to whom she was going, she ceased to show further reluctance to accept the shelter offered her. And, in truth, underneath the dread of encountering James Blatherwick's parents, lay hidden in her mind the fearful joy of a chance of some day catching, herself unseen, a glimpse of the man whom she still loved with the forgiving tenderness of a true, therefore strong heart. With a trembling, fluttering bosom she took her place on the coach beside Mr. Robertson, to go with him to the refuge he had found for her.

Once more in the open world, with which she had had so much intercourse that was other than joyous, that same world began at once to work the will of its Maker upon her poor lacerated soul; and afar in its hidden deeps the process of healing was already begun. Agony would many a time return unbidden, would yet often rise like a crested wave, with menace of overwhelming despair, but the Real, the True, long hidden from her by the lying judgments of men and women, was now at length beginning to reveal itself to her tear-blinded vision; Hope was lifting a feeble head above the tangled weeds of the subsiding deluge; and ere long the girl would see and understand how little cares the Father, whose judgment is the truth of things, what at any time his child may have been or, done, the moment that child gives herself up to be made what He would have her! Looking down into the hearts of men, He sees differences there of which the self-important world takes no heed; many that count themselves of the first, He sees the last--and what He sees, alone _is_: a gutter-child, a thief, a girl who never in this world had even a notion of purity, may lie smiling in the arms of the Eternal, while the head of a lordly house that still flourishes like a green bay-tree, may be wandering about with the dogs beyond the walls of the city.

Out in the open world, I say, the power of the present G.o.d began at once to work upon Isobel, for there, although dimly, she yet looked into His open face, sketched vaguely in the mighty something we call Nature--chiefly on the great vault we call Heaven, the _Upheaved_.

Shapely but undefined; perfect in form, yet limitless in depth; blue and persistent, yet ever evading capture by human heart in human eye; this sphere of fas.h.i.+oned boundlessness, of definite shapelessness, called up in her heart the formless children of upheavedness--grandeur, namely, and awe; hope, namely, and desire: all rushed together toward the dawn of the unspeakable One, who, dwelling in that heaven, is above all heavens; mighty and unchangeable, yet childlike; inexorable, yet tender as never was mother; devoted as never yet was child save one. Isy, indeed, understood little of all this; yet she wept, she knew not why; and it was not for sorrow.

But when, the coach-journey over, she turned her back upon the house where her child lay, and entered the desolate hill-country, a strange feeling began to invade her consciousness. It seemed at first but an old mood, worn shadowy; then it seemed the return of an old dream; then a painful, confused, half-forgotten memory; but at length it cleared and settled into a conviction that she had been in the same region before, and had had, although a pa.s.sing, yet a painful acquaintance with it; and at the last she concluded that she must be near the very spot where she had left and lost her baby. All that had, up to that moment, befallen her, seemed fused in a troubled conglomerate of hunger and cold and weariness, of help and hurt, of deliverance and returning pain: they all mingled inextricably with the scene around her, and there condensed into the memory of that one event--of which this must a.s.suredly be the actual place! She looked upon widespread wastes of heather and peat, great stones here and there, half-buried in it, half-sticking out of it: surely she was waiting there for something to come to pa.s.s! surely behind this veil of the Seen, a child must be standing with outstretched arms, hungering after his mother! In herself that very moment must Memory be trembling into vision! At Length her heart's desire must be drawing near to her expectant soul!

But suddenly, alas! her certainty of recollection, her a.s.surance of prophetic antic.i.p.ation, faded from her, and of the recollection itself remained nothing but a ruin! And all the time it took to dawn into brilliance and fade out into darkness, had measured but a few weary steps by the side of her companion, lost in the meditation of a glad sermon for the next Sunday about the lost sheep carried home with jubilance, and forgetting how unfit was the poor sheep beside him for such a fatiguing tramp up hill and down, along what was nothing better than the stony bed of a winter-torrent.

All at once Isy darted aside from the rough track, scrambled up the steep bank, and ran like one demented into a great clump of heather, which she began at once to search through and through. The minister stopped bewildered, and stood to watch her, almost fearing for a moment that she had again lost her wits. She got on the top of a stone in the middle of the clump, turned several times round, gazed in every direction over the moor, then descended with a hopeless look, and came slowly back to him, saying--

"I beg your pardon, sir; I thought I had a glimpse of my infant through the heather! This must be the very spot where I left him!"

The next moment she faltered feebly--

"Hae we far to gang yet, sir?" and before he could make her any answer, staggered to the bank on the roadside, fell upon it, and lay still.

The minister immediately felt that he had been cruel in expecting her to walk so far; he made haste to lay her comfortably on the short gra.s.s, and waited anxiously, doing what he could to bring her to herself. He could see no water near, but at least she had plenty of air!

In a little while she began to recover, sat up, and would have risen to resume her journey. But the minister, filled with compunction, took her up in his arms. They were near the crown of the ascent, and he could carry her as far as that! She expostulated, but was unable to resist.

Light as she was, however, he found it no easy task to bear her up the last of the steep rise, and was glad to set her down at the top--where a fresh breeze was waiting to revive them both. She thanked him like a child whose father had come to her help; and they seated themselves together on the highest point of the moor, with a large, desolate land on every side of them.

"Oh, sir, but ye _are_ good to me!" she murmured. "That brae just minded me o' the Hill of Difficulty in the Pilgrim's Progress!"

"Oh, you know that story?" said the minister.

"My old grannie used to make me read it to her when she lay dying. I thought it long and tiresome then, but since you took me to your house, sir, I have remembered many things in it; I knew then that I was come to the house of the Interpreter. You've made me understand, sir!"

"I am glad of that, Isy! You see I know some things that make me very glad, and so I want them to make you glad too. And the thing that makes me gladdest of all, is just that G.o.d is what he is. To know that such a One is G.o.d over us and in us, makes of very being a most precious delight. His children, those of them that know him, are all glad just because he _is_, and they are his children. Do you think a strong man like me would read sermons and say prayers and talk to people, doing nothing but such shamefully easy work, if he did not believe what he said?"

"I'm sure, sir, you have had hard enough work with me! I am a bad one to teach! I thought I knew all that you have had such trouble to make me see! I was in a bog of ignorance and misery, but now I am getting my head up out of it, and seeing about me!--Please let me ask you one thing, sir: how is it that, when the thought of G.o.d comes to me, I draw back, afraid of him? If he be the kind of person you say he is, why can't I go close up to him?"

"I confess the same foolishness, my child, _at times_," answered the minister. "It can only be because we do not yet see G.o.d as he is--and that must be because we do not yet really understand Jesus--do not see the glory of G.o.d in his face. G.o.d is just like Jesus--exactly like him!"

And the parson fell a wondering how it could be that so many, gentle and guileless as this woman-child, recoiled from the thought of the perfect One. Why were they not always and irresistibly drawn toward the very idea of G.o.d? Why, at least, should they not run to see and make sure whether G.o.d was indeed such a one or not? whether he was really Love itself--or only loved them after a fas.h.i.+on? It set him thinking afresh about many things; and he soon began to discover that he had in fact been teaching a good many things without _knowing_ them; for how could he _know_ things that were not true, and therefore _could not_ be known?

He had indeed been _saying_ that G.o.d was Love, but he had yet been teaching many things about him that were not lovable!

They sat thinking and talking, with silences between; and while they thought and talked, the day-star was all the time rising unnoted in their hearts. At length, finding herself much stronger, Isy rose, and they resumed their journey.

The door stood open to receive them; but ere they reached it, a bright-looking little woman, with delicate lines of ingrained red in a sorrowful face, appeared in it, looking out with questioning eyes--like a mother-bird just loosening her feet from the threshold of her nest to fly and meet them. Through the film that blinded those expectant eyes, Marion saw what manner of woman she was that drew nigh, and her motherhood went out to her. For, in the love-witchery of Isy's yearning look, humbly seeking acceptance, and in her hesitating approach half-checked by gentle apology, Marion imagined she saw her own Isy coming back from the gates of Death, and sprang to meet her. The mediating love of the minister, obliterating itself, had made him linger a step or two behind, waiting what would follow: when he saw the two folded each in the other's arms, and the fountain of love thus break forth at once from their encountering hearts, his soul leaped for joy of the new-created love--new, but not the less surely eternal; for G.o.d is Love, and Love is that which is, and was, and shall be for evermore--boundless, unconditioned, self-existent, creative! "Truly,"

he said in himself, "G.o.d is Love, and G.o.d is all and in all! He is no abstraction; he is the one eternal Individual G.o.d! In him Love evermore breaks forth anew into fresh personality--in every new consciousness, in every new child of the one creating Father. In every burning heart, in everything that hopes and fears and is, Love is the creative presence, the centre, the source of life, yea Life itself; yea, G.o.d himself!"

The elder woman drew herself a little back, held the poor white-faced thing at arms'-length, and looked her through the face into the heart.

"My bonny lamb!" she cried, and pressed her again to her bosom. "Come hame, and be a guid bairn, and ill man sall never touch ye, or gar ye greit ony mair! There's _my_ man waitin for ye, to tak ye, and haud ye safe!"

Isy looked up, and over the shoulder of her hostess saw the strong paternal face of the farmer, full of silent welcome. For the strange emotion that filled him he did not seek to account: he had nothing to do with that; his will was lord over it!

"Come ben the hoose, la.s.sie," he said, and led the way to the parlour, where the red sunset was s.h.i.+ning through the low gable window, filling the place with the glamour of departing glory. "Sit ye doon upo the sofa there; ye maun be unco tired! Surely ye haena come a' the lang ro'd frae Tiltowie upo yer ain twa wee feet?"

"'Deed has she," answered the minister, who had followed them into the room; "the mair shame to me 'at loot her dee 't!"

Marion lingered outside, wiping away the tears that would keep flowing.

For the one question, "What can be amiss wi' Jamie?" had returned upon her, haunting and harrying her heart; and with it had come the idea, though vague and formless, that their goodwill to the wandering outcast might perhaps do something to make up for whatever ill thing Jamie might have done. At last, instead of entering the parlour after them, she turned away to the kitchen, and made haste to get ready their supper.

Isy sank back in the wide sofa, lost in relief; and the minister, when he saw her look of conscious refuge and repose, said to himself--

"She is feeling as we shall all feel when first we know nothing near us but the Love itself that was before all worlds!--when there is no doubt more, and no questioning more!"