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REFUGE.
It was a lovely Saturday evening on Glashgar. The few flowers about
the small turf cottage scented the air in the hot western sun. The
heather was not in bloom yet, and there were no trees; but there
were rocks, and stones, and a brawling burn that half surrounded a
little field of oats, one of potatoes, and a small spot with a few
stocks of cabbage and kail, on the borders of which grew some bushes
of double daisies, and primroses, and carnations. These Janet
tended as part of her household, while her husband saw to the oats
and potatoes. Robert had charge of the few sheep on the mountain
which belonged to the farmer at the Mains, and for his trouble had
the cottage and the land, most of which he had himself reclaimed.
He had also a certain allowance of meal, which was paid in
portions, as corn went from the farm to the mill. If they happened
to fall short, the miller would always advance them as much as they
needed, repaying himself -- and not very strictly -- the next time the
corn was sent from the Mains. They were never in any want, and
never had any money, except what their children brought them out of
their small wages. But that was plenty for their every need, nor
had they the faintest feeling that they were persons to be pitied.
It was very cold up there in winter, to be sure, and they both
suffered from rheumatism; but they had no debt, no fear, much love,
and between them, this being mostly Janet's, a large hope for what
lay on the other side of death: as to the rheumatism, that was
necessary, Janet said, to teach them patience, for they had no other
trouble. They were indeed growing old, but neither had begun to
feel age a burden yet, and when it should prove such, they had a
daughter prepared to give up service and go home to help them.
Their thoughts about themselves were nearly lost in their thoughts
about each other, their children, and their friends. Janet's main
care was her old man, and Robert turned to Janet as the one stay of
his life, next to the God in whom he trusted. He did not think so
much about God as she: he was not able; nor did he read so much of
his Bible; but she often read to him; and when any of his children
were there of an evening, he always "took the book." While Janet
prayed at home, his closet was the mountain-side, where he would
kneel in the heather, and pray to Him who saw unseen, the King
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. The sheep took no
heed of him, but sometimes when he rose from his knees and saw Oscar
gazing at him with deepest regard, he would feel a little as if he
had not quite entered enough into his closet, and would wonder what
the dog was thinking. All day, from the mountain and sky and
preaching burns, from the sheep and his dog, from winter storms,
spring sun and winds, or summer warmth and glow, but more than all,
when he went home, from the presence and influence of his wife, came
to him somehow -- who can explain how! -- spiritual nourishment and
vital growth. One great thing in it was, that he kept growing wiser
and better without knowing it. If St. Paul had to give up judging
his own self, perhaps Robert Grant might get through without ever
beginning it. He loved life, but if he had been asked why, he might
not have found a ready answer. He loved his wife -- just because she
was Janet. Blithely he left his cottage in the morning, deep
breathing the mountain air, as if it were his first in the blissful
world; and all day the essential bliss of being was his; but the
immediate hope of his heart was not the heavenly city; it was his
home and his old woman, and her talk of what she had found in her
Bible that day. Strangely mingled -- mingled even to confusion with
his faith in God, was his absolute trust in his wife -- a confidence
not very different in kind from the faith which so many Christians
place in the mother of our Lord. To Robert, Janet was one who
knew -- one who was far ben??? with the Father of lights. She perceived
his intentions, understood his words, did his will, dwelt in the
secret place of the Most High. When Janet entered into the kingdom
of her Father, she would see that he was not left outside. He was
as sure of her love to himself, as he was of God's love to her, and
was certain she could never be content without her old man. He was
himself a dull soul, he thought, and could not expect the great God
to take much notice of him, but he would allow Janet to look after
him. He had a vague conviction that he would not be very hard to
save, for he knew himself ready to do whatever was required of him.
None of all this was plain to his consciousness, however, or I
daresay he would have begun at once to combat the feeling.
His sole anxiety, on the other hand, was neither about life nor
death, about this world nor the next, but that his children should
be honest and honourable, fear God and keep his commandments.
Around them, all and each, the thoughts of father and mother were
constantly hovering -- as if to watch them, and ward off evil.
Almost from the day, now many years ago, when, because of distance
and difficulty, she ceased to go to church, Janet had taken to her
New Testament in a new fashion.
She possessed an instinctive power of discriminating character,
which had its root and growth in the simplicity of her own; she had
always been a student of those phases of humanity that came within
her ken; she had a large share of that interest in her fellows and
their affairs which is the very bloom upon ripe humanity: with these
qualifications, and the interpretative light afforded by her own
calm practical way of living, she came to understand men and their
actions, especially where the latter differed from what might
ordinarily have been expected, in a marvellous way: her faculty
amounted almost to sympathetic contact with the very humanity.
When, therefore, she found herself in this remote spot, where she
could see so little of her kind, she began, she hardly knew by what
initiation, to turn her study upon the story of our Lord's life.
Nor was it long before it possessed her utterly, so that she
concentrated upon it all the light and power of vision she had
gathered from her experience of humanity. It ought not therefore to
be wonderful how much she now understood of the true humanity -- with
what simple directness she knew what many of the words of the Son of
Man meant, and perceived many of the germs of his individual
actions. Hence it followed naturally that the thought of him, and
the hope of one day seeing him, became her one informing idea. She
was now such another as those women who ministered to him on the
earth.
A certain gentle indifference she allowed to things considered
important, the neighbours attributed to weakness of character, and
called softness; while the honesty, energy, and directness with
which she acted upon insights they did not possess, they attributed
to intellectual derangement. She was "ower easy," they said, when
the talk had been of prudence or worldly prospect; she was "ower
hard," they said, when the question had been of right and wrong.
The same afternoon, a neighbour, on her way over the shoulder of the
hill to the next village, had called upon her and found her brushing
the rafters of her cottage with a broom at the end of a long stick.
"Save 's a', Janet! what are ye efter? I never saw sic a thing!"
she exclaimed.
"I kenna hoo I never thoucht o' sic a thing afore," answered Janet,
leaning her broom against the wall, and dusting a chair for her
visitor; "but this mornin', whan my man an' me was sittin' at oor
brakfast, there cam' sic a clap o' thunner, 'at it jist garred the
bit hoosie trim'le; an' doon fell a snot o' soot intil the very
spune 'at my man was cairryin' till's honest moo. That cudna be as
things war inten'it, ye ken; sae what was to be said but set them
richt?"
"Ow, weel! but ye micht hae waitit till Donal cam' hame; he wad hae
dune 't in half the time, an' no raxed his jints."
"I cudna pit it aff," answered Janet. "Wha kenned whan the Lord
micht come? -- He canna come at cock-crawin' the day, but he may be
here afore nicht."
"Weel, I's awa," said her visitor rising. "I'm gauin' ower to the
toon to buy a feow hanks o' worset to weyve a pair o' stockins to my
man. Guid day to ye, Janet. -- What neist, I won'er?" she added to
herself as she left the house. "The wuman's clean dementit!"
The moment she was gone, Janet caught up her broom again, and went
spying about over the roof -- ceiling there was none -- after long
tangles of agglomerated cobweb and smoke.
"Ay!" she said to herself, "wha kens whan he may be at the door? an'
I wadna like to hear him say -- 'Janet, ye micht hae had yer hoose a
bit cleaner, whan ye kenned I micht be at han'!'"
With all the cleaning she could give it, her cottage would have
looked but a place of misery to many a benevolent woman, who, if she
had lived there, would not have been so benevolent as Janet, or have
kept the place half so clean. For her soul was alive and rich, and
out of her soul, not education or habit, came the smallest of her
virtues. -- Having finished at last, she took her besom to the door,
and beat it against a stone. That done, she stood looking along the
path down the hill. It was that by which her sons and daughters,
every Saturday, came climbing, one after the other, to her bosom,
from their various labours in the valley below, through the sunset,
through the long twilight, through the moonlight, each urged by a
heart eager to look again upon father and mother.
The sun was now far down his western arc, and nearly on a level with
her eyes; and as she gazed into the darkness of the too much light,
suddenly emerged from it, rose upward, staggered towards her -- was it
an angel? was it a spectre? Did her old eyes deceive her? or was
the second sight born in her now first in her old age? -- It seemed a
child -- reeling, and spreading out hands that groped. She covered
her eyes for a moment, for it might be a vision in the sun, not on
the earth -- and looked again. It was indeed a naked child! and -- was
she still so dazzled by the red sun as to see red where red was
none? -- or were those indeed blood-red streaks on his white skin?
Straight now, though slow, he came towards her. It was the same
child who had come and gone so strangely before! He held out his
hands to her, and fell on his face at her feet like one dead. Then,
with a horror of pitiful amazement, she saw a great cross marked in
two cruel stripes on his back; and the thoughts that thereupon went
coursing through her loving imagination, it would be hard to set
forth. Could it be that the Lord was still, child and man,
suffering for his race, to deliver his brothers and sisters from
their sins? -- wandering, enduring, beaten, blessing still? accepting
the evil, slaying it, and returning none? his patience the one rock
where the evil word finds no echo; his heart the one gulf into which
the dead-sea wave rushes with no recoil -- from which ever flows back
only purest water, sweet and cool; the one abyss of destroying love,
into which all wrong tumbles, and finding no reaction, is lost,
ceases for evermore? there, in its own cradle, the primal order is
still nursed, still restored; thence is still sent forth afresh, to
leaven with new life the world ever ageing! Shadowy and vague they
were -- but vaguely shadowed were thoughts like these in Janet's mind,
as she stood half-stunned, regarding for one moment motionless the
prostrate child and his wrongs. The next she lifted him in her
arms, and holding him tenderly to her mother-heart, carried him into
the house, murmuring over him dove-like sounds of pity and
endearment mingled with indignation. There she laid him on his side
in her bed, covered him gently over, and hastened to the little byre
at the end of the cottage, to get him some warm milk. When she
returned, he had already lifted his heavy eyelids, and was looking
wearily about the place. But when he saw her, did ever so bright a
sun shine as that smile of his! Eyes and mouth and whole face
flashed upon Janet! She set down the milk, and went to the bedside.
Gibbie put up his arms, threw them round her neck, and clung to her
as if she had been his mother. And from that moment she was his
mother: her heart was big enough to mother all the children of
humanity. She was like Charity herself, with her babes innumerable.
"What have they done to ye, my bairn?" she said, in tones pitiful
with the pity of the Shepherd of the sheep himself.
No reply came back -- only another heavenly smile, a smile of absolute
content. For what were stripes and nakedness and hunger to Gibbie,
now that he had a woman to love! Gibbie's necessity was to love;
but here was more; here was Love offering herself to him! Except in
black Sambo he had scarcely caught a good sight of her before. He
had never before been kissed by that might of God's grace, a true
woman. She was an old woman who kissed him; but none who have drunk
of the old wine of love, straightway desire the new, for they know
that the old is better. Match such as hers with thy love, maiden of
twenty, and where wilt thou find the man I say not worthy, but fit
to mate with thee? For hers was love indeed -- not the love of
love -- but the love of Life. Already Gibbie's faintness was gone -- and
all his ills with it. She raised him with one arm, and held the
bowl to his mouth, and he drank; but all the time he drank, his eyes
were fixed upon hers. When she laid him down again, he turned on
his side, off his scored back, and in a moment was fast asleep. She
stood gazing at him. So still was he, that she began to fear he was
dead, and laid her hand on his heart. It was beating steadily, and
she left him, to make some gruel for him against his waking. Her
soul was glad, for she was ministering to her Master, not the less
in his own self, that it was in the person of one of his little
ones. Gruel, as such a one makes it, is no common fare, but
delicate enough for a queen. She set it down by the fire, and
proceeded to lay the supper for her expected children. The clean
yellow-white table of soft smooth fir, needed no cloth -- only horn
spoons and wooden caups.
At length a hand came to the latch, and mother and daughter greeted
as mother and daughter only can; then came a son, and mother and son
greeted as mother and son only can. They kept on arriving singly to
the number of six -- two daughters and four sons, the youngest some
little time after the rest. Each, as he or she came, Janet took to
the bed, and showed her seventh child where he slept. Each time she
showed him, to secure like pity with her own, she turned down the
bedclothes, and revealed the little back, smitten with the eternal
memorial of the divine perfection. The women wept. The young men
were furious, each after his fashion.
"God damn the rascal 'at did it!" cried one of them, clenching his
teeth, and forgetting himself quite in the rage of the moment.
"Laddie, tak back the word," said his mother calmly. "Gien ye dinna
forgie yer enemies, ye'll no be forgi'en yersel'."
"That's some hard, mither," answered the offender, with an attempted
smile.
"Hard!" she echoed; "it may weel be hard, for it canna be helpit.
What wad be the use o' forgiein' ye, or hoo cud it win at ye, or
what wad ye care for't, or mak o't, cairryin' a hell o' hate i' yer
verra hert? For gien God be love, hell maun be hate. My bairn,
them 'at winna forgie their enemies, cairries sic a nest o' deevilry
i' their ain boasoms, 'at the verra speerit o' God himsel' canna win
in till't for bein' scomfished wi' smell an' reik. Muckle guid wad
ony pardon dee to sic! But ance lat them un'erstan' 'at he canna
forgie them, an' maybe they'll be fleyt, an' turn again' the Sawtan
'at's i' them."
"Weel, but he's no my enemy," said the youth.
"No your enemy!" returned his mother; " -- no your enemy, an' sair
(serve) a bairn like that! My certy! but he's the enemy o' the
haill race o' mankin'. He trespasses unco sair against me, I'm weel
sure o' that! An' I'm glaid o' 't. I'm glaid 'at he has me for ane
o' 's enemies, for I forgie him for ane; an' wuss him sae affrontit
wi' himsel' er' a' be dune, 'at he wad fain hide his heid in a
midden."
"Noo, noo, mither!" said the eldest son, who had not yet spoken, but
whose countenance had been showing a mighty indignation, "that's
surely as sair a bannin' as yon 'at Jock said."
"What, laddie! Wad ye hae a fellow-cratur live to a' eternity ohn
been ashamed o' sic a thing 's that? Wad that be to wuss him weel?
Kenna ye 'at the mair shame the mair grace? My word was the best
beginnin' o' better 'at I cud wuss him. Na, na, laddie! frae my
verra hert, I wuss he may be that affrontit wi' himsel' 'at he canna
sae muckle as lift up's een to h'aven, but maun smite upo' 's breist
an' say, 'God be mercifu' to me a sinner!' That's my curse upo'
him, for I wadna hae 'im a deevil. Whan he comes to think that
shame o' himsel', I'll tak him to my hert, as I tak the bairn he
misguidit. Only I doobt I'll be lang awa afore that, for it taks
time to fess a man like that till's holy senses."
The sixth of the family now entered, and his mother led him up to
the bed.
"The Lord preserve's!" cried Donal Grant, "it's the cratur! -- An' is
that the gait they hae guidit him! The quaietest cratur an' the
willin'est!"
Donal began to choke.
"Ye ken him than, laddie?" said his mother.
"Weel that," answered Donal. "He's been wi' me an' the nowt ilka day
for weeks till the day."
With that he hurried into the story of his acquaintance with Gibbie;
and the fable of the brownie would soon have disappeared from
Daurside, had it not been that Janet desired them to say nothing
about the boy, but let him be forgotten by his enemies, till he grew
able to take care of himself. Besides, she said, their father might
get into trouble with the master and the laird, if it were known
they had him.
Donal vowed to himself, that, if Fergus had had a hand in the abuse,
he would never speak civil word to him again.
He turned towards the bed, and there were Gibbie's azure eyes wide
open and fixed upon him.
"Eh, ye cratur!" he cried; and darting to the bed, he took Gibbie's
face between his hands, and said, in a voice to which pity and
sympathy gave a tone like his mother's,
"Whaten a deevil was't 'at lickit ye like that? Eh! I wuss I had
the trimmin' o' him!"
Gibbie smiled.
"Has the ill-guideship ta'en the tongue frae 'im, think ye?" asked
the mother.
"Na, na," answered Donal; "he's been like that sin' ever I kenned
him. I never h'ard word frae the moo' o' 'im."
"He'll be ane o' the deif an' dumb," said Janet.
"He's no deif, mither; that I ken weel; but dumb he maun be, I'm
thinkin'. -- Cratur," he continued, stooping over the boy, "gien ye
hear what I'm sayin', tak haud o' my nose."
Thereupon, with a laugh like that of an amused infant, Gibbie raised
his hand, and with thumb and forefinger gently pinched Donal's large
nose, at which they all burst out laughing with joy. It was as if
they had found an angel's baby in the bushes, and been afraid he was
an idiot, but were now relieved. Away went Janet, and brought him
his gruel. It was with no small difficulty and not without a moan
or two, that Gibbie sat up in the bed to take it. There was
something very pathetic in the full content with which he sat there
in his nakedness, and looked smiling at them all. It was more than
content -- it was bliss that shone in his countenance. He took the
wooden bowl, and began to eat; and the look he cast on Janet seemed
to say he had never tasted such delicious food. Indeed he never
had; and the poor cottage, where once more he was a stranger and
taken in, appeared to Gibbie a place of wondrous wealth. And so it
was -- not only in the best treasures, those of loving kindness, but
in all homely plenty as well for the needs of the body -- a very
temple of the God of simplicity and comfort -- rich in warmth and rest
and food.
Janet went to her kist, whence she brought out a garment of her own,
and aired it at the fire. It had no lace at the neck or cuffs, no
embroidery down the front; but when she put it on him, amid the
tearful laughter of the women, and had tied it round his waist with
a piece of list that had served as a garter, it made a dress most
becoming in their eyes, and gave Gibbie indescribable pleasure from
its whiteness, and its coolness to his inflamed skin.
They had just finished clothing him thus, when the goodman came
home, and the mother's narration had to be given afresh, with
Donal's notes explanatory and completive. As the latter reported
the doings of the imagined brownie, and the commotion they had
caused at the Mains and along Daurside, Gibbie's countenance flashed
with pleasure and fun; and at last he broke into such a peal of
laughter as had never, for pure merriment, been heard before so high
on Glashgar. All joined involuntarily in the laugh -- even the old
man, who had been listening with his grey eyebrows knit, and hanging
like bosky precipices over the tarns of his deepset eyes, taking in
every word, but uttering not one. When at last his wife showed him
the child's back, he lifted his two hands, and moved them slowly up
and down, as in pitiful appeal for man against man to the sire of
the race. But still he said not a word. As to utterance of what
lay in the deep soul of him, the old man, except sometimes to his
wife, was nearly as dumb as Gibbie himself.
They sat down to their homely meal. Simplest things will carry the
result of honest attention as plainly as more elaborate dishes; and,
which it might be well to consider, they will carry no more than
they are worth: of Janet's supper it is enough to say that it was
such as became her heart. In the judgment of all her guests, the
porridge was such as none could make but mother, the milk such as
none but mother's cow could yield, the cakes such as she only could
bake.
Gibbie sat in the bed like a king on his throne, gazing on his
kingdom. For he that loves has, as no one else has. It is the
divine possession. Picture the delight of the child, in his passion
for his kind, looking out upon this company of true hearts, honest
faces, human forms -- all strong and healthy, loving each other and
generous to the taking in of the world's outcast! Gibbie could not,
at that period of his history, have invented a heaven more to his
mind, and as often as one of them turned eyes towards the bed, his
face shone up with love and merry gratitude, like a better sun.
It was now almost time for the sons and daughters to go down the
hill again, and leave the cottage and the blessed old parents and
the harboured child to the night, the mountain-silence, and the
living God. The sun had long been down; but far away in the north,
the faint thin fringe of his light-garment was still visible, moving
with the unseen body of his glory softly eastward, dreaming along
the horizon, growing fainter and fainter as it went, but at the
faintest then beginning to revive and grow. Of the northern lands
in summer, it may be said, as of the heaven of heavens, that there
is no night there. And by and by the moon also would attend the
steps of the returning children of labour.
"Noo, lads an' lasses, afore we hae worship, rin, ilk ane o' ye,"
said the mother, "an' pu' heather to mak a bed to the wee man -- i'
the neuk there, at the heid o' oors. He'll sleep there bonny, an'
no ill 'ill come near 'im."
She was obeyed instantly. The heather was pulled, and set together
upright as it grew, only much closer, so that the tops made a dense
surface, and the many stalks, each weak, a strong upbearing whole.
They boxed them in below with a board or two for the purpose, and
bound them together above with a blanket over the top, and a white
sheet over that -- a linen sheet it was, and large enough to be
doubled, and receive Gibbie between its folds. Then another blanket
was added, and the bed, a perfect one, was ready. The eldest of the
daughters took Gibbie in her arms, and, tenderly careful over his
hurts, lifted him from the old folks' bed, and placed him in his
own -- one more luxurious, for heather makes a still better stratum
for repose than oat-chaff -- and Gibbie sank into it with a sigh that
was but a smile grown vocal.
Then Donal, as the youngest, got down the big Bible, and having laid
it before his father, lighted the rush-pith-wick projecting from the
beak of the little iron lamp that hung against the wall, its shape
descended from Roman times. The old man put on his spectacles, took
the book, and found the passage that fell, in continuous process, to
that evening.
Now he was not a very good reader, and, what with blindness and
spectacles, and poor light, would sometimes lose his place. But it
never troubled him, for he always knew the sense of what was coming,
and being no idolater of the letter, used the word that first
suggested itself, and so recovered his place without pausing. It
reminded his sons and daughters of the time when he used to tell
them Bible stories as they crowded about his knees; and sounding
therefore merely like the substitution of a more familiar word to
assist their comprehension, woke no surprise. And even now, the
word supplied, being in the vernacular, was rather to the benefit
than the disadvantage of his hearers. The word of Christ is spirit
and life, and where the heart is aglow, the tongue will follow that
spirit and life fearlessly, and will not err.
On this occasion he was reading of our Lord's cure of the leper; and
having read, "put forth his hand," lost his place, and went straight
on without it, from his memory of the facts.
"He put forth his han' -- an' grippit him, and said, Aw wull -- be
clean."
After the reading followed a prayer, very solemn and devout. It was
then only, when before God, with his wife by his side, and his
family around him, that the old man became articulate. He would
scarcely have been so then, and would have floundered greatly in the
marshes of his mental chaos, but for the stepping-stones of certain
theological forms and phrases, which were of endless service to him
in that they helped him to utter what in him was far better, and so
realise more to himself his own feelings. Those forms and phrases
would have shocked any devout Christian who had not been brought up
in the same school; but they did him little harm, for he saw only
the good that was in them, and indeed did not understand them save
in so far as they worded that lifting up of the heart after which he
was ever striving.
By the time the prayer was over, Gibbie was fast asleep again. What
it all meant he had not an idea; and the sound lulled him -- a service
often so rendered in lieu of that intended. When he woke next, from
the aching of his stripes, the cottage was dark. The old people
were fast asleep. A hairy thing lay by his side, which, without the
least fear, he examined by palpation, and found to be a dog,
whereupon he fell fast asleep again, if possible happier than ever.
And while the cottage was thus quiet, the brothers and sisters were
still tramping along the moonlight paths of Daurside. They had all
set out together, but at one point after another there had been a
parting, and now they were on six different roads, each drawing
nearer to the labour of the new week.
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