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CHAPTER XIII
It must be remembered that Blatherwick knew nothing of the existence of
his child: such knowledge might have modified the half-conscious
satisfaction with which, on his way home, he now and then saw a providence
in the fact that he had been preserved from marrying a woman who had now
proved herself capable of disgracing him in the very streets. But during
his slow journey of forty miles, most of which he made on foot, hounded on
from within to bodily motion, he had again, as in the night, to pass
through many an alternation of thought and feeling and purpose. To and fro
in him, up and down, this way and that, went the changing currents of
self-judgment, of self-consolement, and of fresh-gathering dread. Never for
one persistent minute was his mind clear, his purpose determined, his line
set straight for honesty. He must live up--not to the law of
righteousness, but to the show of what a minister ought to be! he must
appear unto men! In a word, he must keep up the deception he had begun in
childhood, and had, until of late years, practised unknowingly! Now he
knew it, and went on, not knowing how to get rid of it; or rather,
shrinking in utter cowardice from the confession which alone could have set
him free. Now he sought only how to conceal his deception and falseness. He
had no pleasure in them, but was consciously miserable in knowing himself
not what he seemed--in being compelled, as he fancied himself in excuse, to
look like one that had not sinned. In his heart he grumbled that God should
have forsaken him so far as to allow him to disgrace himself before his
conscience. He did not yet see that his foulness was ingrained; that the
Ethiopian could change his skin, or the leopard his spots, as soon as he;
that he had never yet looked purity in the face; that the fall which
disgraced him in his own eyes was but the necessary outcome of his
character--that it was no accident but an unavoidable result; that his
true nature had but disclosed itself, and appeared--as everything hid must
be known, everything covered must be revealed. Even to begin the
purification without which his moral and spiritual being must perish
eternally, he must dare to look on himself as he was: he would not
recognize himself, and thought he lay and would lie hid from all. Dante
describes certain of the redeemed as lying each concealed in his or her own
cocoon of emitted light: James lay hidden like a certain insect in its own
gowk-spittle. It is strange, but so it is, that many a man will never
yield to see himself until he become aware of the eyes of other men fixed
upon him; they seeing him, and he knowing that they see him, then first,
even to himself, will he be driven to confess what he has long all but
known. Blatherwick's hour was on its way, slow-coming, but no longer to be
shunned. His soul was ripening to self-declaration. The ugly self must
blossom, must show itself the flower, the perfection of that evil thing he
counted himself! What a hold has not God upon us in this inevitable
ripening of the unseen into the visible and present! The flower is there,
and must appear!
In the meantime he suffered, and went on in silence, walking like a servant
of the Ancient of Days, and knowing himself a whited sepulchre. Within him
he felt the dead body that could not rest until it was laid bare to the
sun; but all the time he comforted himself that he had not fallen a second
time, and that the once would not be remembered against him: did not the
fact that it was forgotten, most likely was never known, indicate the
forgiveness of God? And so, unrepentant, he remained unforgiven, and
continued a hypocrite and the slave of sin.
But the hideous thing was not altogether concealed; something showed under
the covering whiteness! His mother saw that something shapeless haunted
him, and often asked herself what it could be, but always shrank even from
conjecturing. His father felt that he had gone from him utterly, and that
his son's feeding of the flock had done nothing to bring him and his
parents nearer to each other! What could be hidden, he thought, beneath the
mask of that unsmiling face?
But there was a humble observer who saw deeper than the parents--John
MacLear, the soutar.
One day, after about a fortnight, the minister walked into the workshop of
the soutar, and found him there as usual. His hands were working away
diligently, but his thoughts had for some time been brooding over the
blessed fact, that God is not the God of the perfect only, but of the
growing as well; not the God of the righteous only, but of such as hunger
and thirst after righteousness.
"God blaw on the smoking flax, and tie up the bruised reed!" he was saying
to himself aloud, when in walked the minister.
Now, as in some other mystical natures, a certain something had been
developed in the soutar not unlike a spirit of prophecy--an insight which,
seemingly without exercise of the will, sometimes laid bare to him in a
measure the thoughts and intents of hearts in which he was more than
usually interested; or perhaps it was rather a faculty, working
unconsciously, of putting signs together, and drawing from them
instantaneous conclusion of the fact at which they pointed. After their
greeting, he suddenly looked up at his visitor with a certain fixed
attention: the mere glance had shown him that he looked ill, and he now saw
that something in the man's heart was eating at it like a canker. Therewith
at once arose in his brain the question: could he be the father of the
little one crowing in the next room? But he shut it into the darkest
closet of his mind, shrinking from the secret of another soul, as from the
veil of the Holy of Holies! The next moment, however, came the thought:
what if the man stood in need of the offices of a friend? It was one thing
to pry into a man's secret; another, to help him escape from it! As out of
this thought the soutar sat looking at him for a moment, the minister felt
the hot blood rush to his cheeks.
"Ye dinna luik that weel, minister," said the soutar: "is there onything
the maitter wi' ye, sir?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," answered the parson. "I have sometimes a touch
of headache in the early morning, especially when I have sat later than
usual over my books the night before; but it always goes off during the
day."
"Ow weel, sir, that's no, as ye say, a vera sairious thing! I couldna help
fancyin ye had something on yer min' by ord'nar!"
"Naething, naething," answered James with a feeble laugh. "--But," he went
on--and something seemed to send the words to his lips without giving him
time to think--"it is curious you should say that, for I was just thinking
what was the real intent of the apostle in his injunction to confess our
faults one to another."
The moment he uttered the words he felt as if he had proclaimed his secret
on the housetop; and he would have begun the sentence afresh, with some
notion of correcting it; but again he knew the hot blood shoot to his
face.--"I must go on with something!" he felt rather than said to
himself, "or those sharp eyes will see through and through me!"
"It came into my mind," he went on, "that I should like to know what you
thought about the passage: it cannot surely give the least ground for
auricular confession! I understand perfectly how a man may want to consult
a friend in any difficulty--and that friend naturally the minister; but--"
This was by no means a thing he had meant to say, but he seemed carried on
to say he knew not what. It was as if, without his will, the will of God
was driving the man to the brink of a pure confession--to the cleansing of
his stuffed bosom "of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart."
"Do you think, for instance," he continued, thus driven, "that a man is
bound to tell everything--even to the friend he loves best?"
"I think," answered the soutar after a moment's thought, "that we must
answer the what, before we enter upon the how much. And I think, first
of all we must ask--to whom are we bound to confess?--and there surely
the answer is, to him to whom we have done the wrong. If we have been
grumbling in our hearts, it is to God we must confess: who else has to do
with the matter? To Him we maun flee the moment oor eyes are opent to
what we've been aboot! But, gien we hae wranged ane o' oor fallow-craturs,
wha are we to gang til wi' oor confession but that same fallow-cratur? It
seems to me we maun gang to that man first--even afore we gang to God
himsel. Not one moment must we indulge procrastination on the plea o'
prayin! From our vera knees we maun rise in haste, and say to brother or
sister, 'I've done ye this or that wrang: forgie me.' God can wait for your
prayer better nor you, or him ye've wranged, can wait for your confession!
Efter that, ye maun at ance fa' to your best endeevour to mak up for the
wrang. 'Confess your sins,' I think it means, 'each o' ye to the ither
again whom ye hae dene the offence.'--Divna ye think that's the cowmonsense
o' the maitter?"
"Indeed, I think you must be right!" replied the minister, who sat
revolving only how best, alas, to cover his retreat! "I will go home at
once and think it all over. Indeed, I am even now all but convinced that
what you say must be what the Apostle intended!"
With a great sigh, of which he was not aware, Blatherwick rose and walked
from the kitchen, hoping he looked--not guilty, but sunk in thought. In
truth he was unable to think. Oppressed and heavy-laden with the sense of a
duty too unpleasant for performance, he went home to his cheerless manse,
where his housekeeper was the only person he had to speak to, a woman
incapable of comforting anybody. There he went straight to his study, but,
kneeling, found he could not pray the simplest prayer; not a word would
come, and he could not pray without words! He was dead, and in hell--so far
perished that he felt nothing. He rose, and sought the open air; it brought
him no restoration. He had not heeded his friend's advice, had not
entertained the thought of the one thing possible to him--had not moved,
even in spirit, toward Isy! The only comfort he could now find for his
guilty soul was the thought that he could do nothing, for he did not know
where Isy was to be found. When he remembered the next moment that his
friend Robertson must be able to find her, he soothed his conscience with
the reflection that there was no coach till the next morning, and in the
meantime he could write: a letter would reach him almost as soon as he
could himself!
But what then would Robertson think? He might give his wife the letter to
read! She might even read it of herself, for they concealed nothing from
each other! So he only walked the faster, tired himself, and earned an
appetite as the result of his day's work! He ate a good dinner, although
with little enjoyment, and fell fast asleep in his chair. No letter was
written to Robertson that day. No letter of such sort was ever written. The
spirit was not willing, and the flesh was weakness itself.
In the evening he took up a learned commentary on the Book of Job; but he
never even approached the discovery of what Job wanted, received, and was
satisfied withal. He never saw that what he himself needed, but did not
desire, was the same thing--even a sight of God! He never discovered that,
when God came to Job, Job forgot all he had intended to say to him--did not
ask him a single question--knew that all was well. The student of Scripture
remained blind to the fact that the very presence of the Living One, of the
Father of men, proved sufficient in itself to answer every question, to
still every doubt! But then James's heart was not pure like Job's, and
therefore he could never have seen God; he did not even desire to see him,
and so could see nothing as it was. He read with the blindness of the devil
in his heart.
In Marlowe's Faust, the student asks Mephistopheles--
How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
And the demon answers him--
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it;
and again--
Where we are is hell;
And where hell is there must we ever be:
... when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven;
and yet again--
I tell thee I am damned, and now in hell;
and it was thus James fared; and thus he went to bed.
And while he lay there sleepless, or walked in his death to and fro in the
room, his father and mother, some three miles away, were talking about him.
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