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CHAPTER XI
It would be difficult to represent the condition of mind in which
Blatherwick sat on the box-seat of the Defiance coach that evening, behind
four gray thorough-breds, carrying him at the rate of ten miles an hour
towards Deemouth. Hurt pride, indignation, and a certain mild revenge in
contemplating Maggie's disappointment when at length she should become
aware of the distinction he had gained and she had lost, were its main
components. He never noted a feature of the rather tame scenery that went
hurrying past him, and yet the time did not seem to go slowly, for he was
astonished when the coach stopped, and he found his journey at an end.
He got down rather cramped and stiff, and, as it was still early, started
for a stroll about the streets to stretch his legs, and see what was going
on, glad that he had not to preach in the morning, and would have all the
afternoon to go over his sermon once more in that dreary memory of his. The
streets were brilliant with gas, for Saturday was always a sort of market-
night, and at that moment they were crowded with girls going merrily home
from the paper-mill at the close of the week's labour. To Blatherwick, who
had very little sympathy with gladness of any sort, the sight only called
up by contrast the very different scene on which his eyes would look down
the next evening from the vantage coigne of the pulpit, in a church filled
with an eminently respectable congregation--to which he would be setting
forth the results of certain late geographical discoveries and local
identifications, not knowing that already even later discoveries had
rendered all he was about to say more than doubtful.
But while, sunk in a not very profound reverie, he was in the act of
turning the corner of a narrow wynd, he was all but knocked down by a girl
whom another in the crowd had pushed violently against him. Recoiling from
the impact, and unable to recover her equilibrium, she fell helplessly
prostrate on the granite pavement, and lay motionless. Annoyed and half-
angry, he was on the point of walking on, heedless of the accident, when
something in the pale face among the coarse and shapeless shoes that had
already gathered thick around it, arrested him with a strong suggestion of
some one he had once known. But the same moment the crowd hid her from his
view; and, shocked even to be reminded of Isy in such an assemblage, he
turned resolutely away, and cherishing the thought of the many chances
against its being she, walked steadily on. When he looked round again ere
crossing the street, the crowd had vanished, the pavement was nearly empty,
and a policeman who just then came up, had seen nothing of the occurrence,
remarking only that the girls at the paper-mills were a rough lot.
A moment more and his mind was busy with a passage in his sermon which
seemed about to escape his memory: it was still as impossible for him to
talk freely about the things a minister is supposed to love best, as it
had been when he began to preach. It was not, certainly, out of the
fulness of the heart that his mouth ever spoke!
He sought the house of Mr. Robertson, the friend he had come to assist, had
supper with him and his wife, and retired early. In the morning he went to
his friend's church, in the afternoon rehearsed his sermon to himself, and
when the evening came, climbed the pulpit-stair, and soon appeared
engrossed in its rites. But as he seemed to be pouring out his soul in the
long extempore prayer, he suddenly opened his eyes as if unconsciously
compelled, and that moment saw, in the front of the gallery before him, a
face he could not doubt to be that of Isy. Her gaze was fixed upon him; he
saw her shiver, and knew that she saw and recognized him. He felt himself
grow blind. His head swam, and he felt as if some material force was
bending down his body sideways from her. Such, nevertheless, was his self-
possession, that he reclosed his eyes, and went on with his prayer--if that
could in any sense be prayer where he knew neither word he uttered, thing
he thought, nor feeling that moved him. With Claudius in Hamlet he might
have said,
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go!
But while yet speaking, and holding his eyes fast that he might not see her
again, his consciousness all at once returned--it seemed to him through a
mighty effort of the will, and upon that he immediately began to pride
himself. Instantly there-upon he was aware of his thoughts and words, and
knew himself able to control his actions and speech. All the while,
however, that he conducted the rest of the "service," he was constantly
aware, although he did not again look at her, of the figure of Isy before
him, with its gaze fixed motionless upon him, and began at last to wonder
vaguely whether she might not be dead, and come back from the grave to his
mind a mysterious thought-spectre. But at the close of the sermon, when the
people stood up to sing, she rose with them; and the half-dazed preacher
sat down, exhausted with emotion, conflict, and effort at self-command.
When he rose once more for the benediction, she was gone; and yet again he
took refuge in the doubt whether she had indeed been present at all.
When Mrs. Robertson had retired, and James was sitting with his host over
their tumbler of toddy, a knock came to the door. Mr. Robertson went to
open it, and James's heart sank within him. But in a moment his host
returned, saying it was a policeman to let him know that a woman was lying
drunk at the bottom of his doorsteps, and to inquire what he wished done
with her.
"I told him," said Mr. Robertson, "to take the poor creature to the
station, and in the morning I would see her. When she's ill the next day,
you see," he added, "I may have a sort of chance with her; but it is
seldom of any use."
A horrible suspicion that it was Isy herself had seized on Blatherwick; and
for a moment he was half inclined to follow the men to the station; but his
friend would be sure to go with him, and what might not come of it! Seeing
that she had kept silent so long, however, it seemed to him more than
probable that she had lost all care about him, and if let alone would say
nothing. Thus he reasoned, lost in his selfishness, and shrinking from the
thought of looking the disreputable creature in the eyes. Yet the awful
consciousness haunted him that, if she had fallen into drunken habits and
possibly worse, it was his fault, and the ruin of the once lovely creature
lay at his door, and his alone.
He made haste to his room, and to bed, where for a long while he lay unable
even to think. Then all at once, with gathered force, the frightful
reality, the keen, bare truth broke upon him like a huge, cold wave; he had
a clear vision of his guilt, and the vision was conscious of itself as
his guilt; he saw it rounded in a gray fog of life-chilling dismay. What
was he but a troth-breaker, a liar--and that in strong fact, not in feeble
tongue? "What am I," said Conscience, "but a cruel, self-seeking, loveless
horror--a contemptible sneak, who, in dread of missing the praises of men,
crept away unseen, and left the woman to bear alone our common sin?" What
was he but a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all
uncleanness?--a fellow posing in the pulpit as an example to the faithful,
but knowing all the time that somewhere in the land lived a woman--once a
loving, trusting woman--who could with a word hold him up to the world a
hypocrite and a dastard--
A fixed figure for the Time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!
He sprang to the floor; the cold hand of an injured ghost seemed clutching
feebly at his throat. But, in or out of bed, what could he do? Utterly
helpless, he thought, but in truth not daring to look the question as to
what he could do in the face, he crept back ignominiously into his bed;
and, growing a little less uncomfortable, began to reason with himself that
things were not so bad as they had for that moment seemed; that many
another had failed in like fashion with him, but his fault had been
forgotten, and had never reappeared against him! No culprit was ever
required to bear witness against himself! He must learn to discipline and
repress his over-sensitiveness, otherwise it would one day seize him at a
disadvantage, and betray him into self-exposure!
Thus he reasoned--and sank back once more among the all but dead; the loud
alarum of his rousing conscience ceased, and he fell asleep in the resolve
to get away from Deemouth the first thing in the morning, before Mr.
Robertson should be awake. How much better it had been for him to hold fast
his repentant mood, and awake to tell everything! but he was very far from
having even approached any such resolution. Indeed no practical idea of
his, however much brooded over at night, had ever lived to bear fruit in
the morning; not once had he ever embodied in action an impulse toward
atonement! He could welcome the thought of a final release from sin and
suffering at the dissolution of nature, but he always did his best to
forget that at that very moment he was suffering because of wrong he had
done for which he was taking no least trouble to make amends. He had lived
for himself, to the destruction of one whom he had once loved, and to the
denial of his Lord and Master!
More than twice on his way home in the early morning, he all but turned to
go back to the police-station, but it was, as usual, only all but, and he
kept walking on.
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