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CHAPTER XXXIV: AN OLD ENEMY
One Sunday evening--it must have been just while Malcolm and Blue
Peter stood in the Strand listening to a voluntary that filled and
overflowed an otherwise empty church--a short, stout, elderly
woman was walking lightly along the pavement of a street of small
houses, not far from a thoroughfare which, crowded like a market
the night before, had now two lively borders only--of holiday
makers mingled with church goers. The bells for evening prayers were
ringing. The sun had vanished behind the smoke and steam of London;
indeed he might have set--it was hard to say without consulting
the almanac: but it was not dark yet. The lamps in the street were
lighted, however, and also in the church she passed. She carried a
small bible in her hand, folded in a pocket handkerchief and looked
a decent woman from the country. Her quest was a place where the
minister said his prayers and did not read them out of a book: she
had been brought up a Presbyterian, and had prejudices in favour
of what she took for the simpler form of worship. Nor had she gone
much farther before she came upon a chapel which seemed to promise
all she wanted. She entered, and a sad looking woman showed her to
a seat. She sat down square, fixing her eyes at once on the pulpit,
rather dimly visible over many pews, as if it were one of the
mountains that surrounded her Jerusalem. The place was but scantily
lighted, for the community at present could ill afford to burn
daylight. When the worship commenced, and the congregation rose to
sing, she got up with a jerk that showed the duty as unwelcome as
unexpected, but seemed by the way she settled herself in her seat
for the prayer, already thereby reconciled to the differences
between Scotch church customs and English chapel customs. She went
to sleep softly, and woke warily as the prayer came to a close.
While the congregation again sang, the minister who had officiated
hitherto left the pulpit, and another ascended to preach. When he
began to read the text, the woman gave a little start, and leaning
forward, peered very hard to gain a satisfactory sight of his face
between the candles on each side of it, but without success; she
soon gave up her attempted scrutiny, and thence forward seemed to
listen with marked attention. The sermon was a simple, earnest,
at times impassioned appeal to the hearts and consciences of the
congregation. There was little attempt in it at the communication
of knowledge of any kind, but the most indifferent hearer must have
been aware that the speaker was earnestly straining after something.
To those who understood, it was as if he would force his way through
every stockade of prejudice, ditch of habit, rampart of indifference,
moat of sin, wall of stupidity, and curtain of ignorance, until he
stood face to face with the conscience of his hearer.
"Rank Arminianism!" murmured the woman. "Whaur's the gospel o' that?"
But still she listened with seeming intentness, while something
of wonder mingled with the something else that set in motion every
live wrinkle in her forehead, and made her eyebrows undulate like
writhing snakes.
At length the preacher rose to eloquence, an eloquence inspired by
the hunger of his soul after truth eternal, and the love he bore
to his brethren who fed on husks--an eloquence innocent of the
tricks of elocution or the arts of rhetoric: to have discovered
himself using one of them would have sent him home to his knees in
shame and fear--an eloquence not devoid of discords, the strings
of his instrument being now slack with emotion, now tense with
vision, yet even in those discords shrouding the essence of all
harmony. When he ceased, the silence that followed seemed instinct
with thought, with that speech of the spirit which no longer needs
the articulating voice.
"It canna be the stickit minister!" said the woman to herself. The
congregation slowly dispersed, but she sat motionless until all
were gone, and the sad faced woman was putting out the lights. Then
she rose, drew near through the gloom, and asked her the name of
the gentleman who had given them such a grand sermon. The woman
told her, adding that, although he had two or three times spoken
to them at the prayer meeting--such words of comfort, the poor
soul added, as she had never in her life heard before--this was
the first time he had occupied the pulpit. The woman thanked her,
and went out into the street.
"God bless me!" she said to herself, as she walked away; "it is
the stickit minister! Weel, won'ers 'ill never cease. The age o'
mirracles 'ill be come back, I'm thinkin'!" And she laughed an oily
contemptuous laugh in the depths of her profuse person.
What caused her astonishment need cause none to the thoughtful
mind. The man was no longer burdened with any anxiety as to his
reception by his hearers; he was hampered by no necromantic agony
to raise the dead letter of the sermon buried in the tail pocket
of his coat; he had thirty years more of life, and a whole granary
filled with such truths as grow for him who is ever breaking up
the clods of his being to the spiritual sun and wind and dew; and
above all he had an absolute yet expanding confidence in his Father
in heaven, and a tender love for everything human. The tongue of
the dumb had been in training for song. And first of all he had
learned to be silent while he had nought to reveal. He had been
trained to babble about religion, but through God's grace had
failed in his babble, and that was in itself a success. He would
have made one of the swarm that year after year cast themselves
like flies on the burning sacrifice that they may live on its flesh,
with evil odours extinguishing the fire that should have gone up
in flame; but a burning coal from off the altar had been laid on
his lips, and had silenced them in torture. For thirty years he
had held his peace, until the word of God had become as a fire in
his bones: it was now breaking forth in flashes.
On the Monday, Mrs Catanach sought the shop of the deacon that was
an ironmonger, secured for herself a sitting in the chapel for the
next half year, and prepaid the sitting.
"Wha kens," she said to herself "what birds may come to gether
worms an' golachs (beetles) aboot the boody craw (scarecrow), Sanny
Grame!"
She was one to whom intrigue, founded on the knowledge of private
history, was as the very breath of her being: she could not exist
in composure without it. Wherever she went, therefore--and her
changes of residence had not been few--it was one of her first
cares to enter into connection with some religious community, first
that she might have scope for her calling--that of a midwife,
which in London would probably be straightened towards that of mere
monthly nurse--and next that thereby she might have good chances
for the finding of certain weeds of occult power that spring mostly
in walled gardens, and are rare on the roadside--poisonous things
mostly, called generically secrets.
At this time she had been for some painful months in possession of
a most important one--painful, I say, because all those months
she had discovered no possibility of making use of it. The trial
had been hard. Her one passion was to drive the dark horses of
society, and here she had been sitting week after week on the coach
box over the finest team she had ever handled, ramping and "foming
tarre," unable to give them their heads because the demon grooms
had disappeared and left the looped traces dangling from their
collars. She had followed Florimel from Portlossie--to Edinburgh,
and then to London, but not yet had seen how to approach her with
probable advantage. In the meantime she had renewed old relations
with a certain herb doctor in Kentish Town, at whose house she
was now accommodated. There she had already begun to entice the
confidences of maid servants, by use of what evil knowledge she
had, and pretence to more, giving herself out as a wise woman. Her
faith never failed her that, if she but kept handling the fowls of
circumstance, one or other of them must at length drop an egg of
opportunity in her lap. When she stumbled upon the schoolmaster,
preaching in a chapel near her own haunts, she felt something more
like a gust of gratitude to the dark power that sat behind and
pulled the strings of events--for thus she saw through her own
projected phantom the heart of the universe--than she had ever
yet experienced. If there were such things as special providences,
here, she said, was one; if not, then it was better luck than she
had looked for. The main point in it was that the dominie seemed
likely after all to turn out a popular preacher; then beyond a
doubt other Scotch people would gather to him; this or that person
might turn up, and anyone might turn out useful; one thread might
be knotted to another, until all together had made a clue to guide
her straight through the labyrinth to the centre, to lay her hand
on the collar of the demon of the house of Lossie. It was the biggest
game of her life, and had been its game long before the opening of
my narrative.
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