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CHAPTER XX
Never dawned Sunday upon soul more wretched. He had not indeed to climb
into his watchman's tower without the pretence of a proclamation, but on
that very morning his father had put the mare between the shafts of the
gig to drive his wife to Tiltowie and their son's church, instead of the
nearer and more accessible one in the next parish, whither they oftener
went. Arrived there, it was not wonderful they should find themselves so
dissatisfied with the spiritual food set before them, as to wish heartily
they had remained at home, or driven to the nearer church. The moment the
service was over, Mr. Blatherwick felt much inclined to return at once,
without waiting an interview with his son; for he had no remark to make on
the sermon that would be pleasant either for his son or his wife to hear;
but Marion combated the impulse with entreaties that grew almost angry, and
Peter was compelled to yield, although sullenly. They waited in the
churchyard for the minister's appearance.
"Weel, Jeemie," said his father, shaking hands with him limply, "yon was
some steeve parritch ye gied us this mornin!--and the meal itsel was baith
auld and soor!"
The mother gave her son a pitiful smile, as if in deprecation of her
husband's severity, but said not a word; and James, haunted by the taste of
failure the sermon had left in his own mouth, and possibly troubled by
sub-conscious motions of self-recognition, could hardly look his father in
the face, and felt as if he had been rebuked by him before all the
congregation.
"Father," he replied in a tone of some injury, "you do not know how
difficult it is to preach a fresh sermon every Sunday!"
"Ca' ye yon fresh, Jeemie? To me it was like the fuistit husks o' the
half-faimisht swine! Man, I wuss sic provender would drive yersel whaur
there's better and to spare! Yon was lumps o' brose in a pig-wash o'
stourum! The tane was eneuch to choke, and the tither to droon ye!"
James made a wry face, and the sight of his annoyance broke the ice
gathering over the well-spring in his mother's heart; tears rose in her
eyes, and for one brief moment she saw the minister again her bairn. But he
gave her no filial response; ambition, and greed of the praise of men, had
blocked in him the movements of the divine, and corrupted his wholesomest
feelings, so that now he welcomed freely as a conviction the suggestion
that his parents had never cherished any sympathy with him or his
preaching; which reacted in a sudden flow of resentment, and a thickening
of the ice on his heart. Some fundamental shock must dislodge that rooted,
overmastering ice, if ever his wintered heart was to feel the power of a
reviving Spring!
The threesum family stood in helpless silence for a few moments; then the
father said to the mother--
"I doobt we maun be settin oot for hame, Mirran!"
"Will you not come into the manse, and have something before you go?" said
James, not without anxiety lest his housekeeper should be taken at
unawares, and their acceptance should annoy her: he lived in constant dread
of offending his housekeeper!
"Na, I thank ye," returned his father: "it wad taste o' stew!" (blown
dust).
It was a rude remark; but Peter was not in a kind mood; and when love
itself is unkind, it is apt to be burning and bitter and merciless.
Marion burst into tears. James turned away, and walked home with a gait of
wounded dignity. Peter went in haste toward the churchyard gate, to
interrupt with the bit his mare's feed of oats. Marion saw his hands
tremble pitifully as he put the headstall over the creature's ears, and
reproached herself that she had given him such a cold-hearted son. She
climbed in a helpless way into the gig, and sat waiting for her husband.
"I'm that dry 'at I could drink cauld watter!" he said, as he took his
place beside her.
They drove from the place of tombs, but they carried death with them, and
left the sunlight behind them.
Neither spoke a word all the way. Not until she was dismounting at their
own door, did the mother venture her sole remark, "Eh, sirs!" It meant a
world of unexpressed and inexpressible misery. She went straight up to the
little garret where she kept her Sunday bonnet, and where she said her
prayers when in especial misery. Thence she descended after a while to her
bedroom, there washed her face, and sadly prepared for a hungerless
encounter with the dinner Isy had been getting ready for them--hoping to
hear something about the sermon, perhaps even some little word about the
minister himself. But Isy too must share in the disappointment of that
vainly shining Sunday morning! Not a word passed between her master and
mistress. Their son was called the pastor of the flock, but he was rather
the porter of the sheepfold than the shepherd of the sheep. He was very
careful that the church should be properly swept and sometimes even
garnished; but about the temple of the Holy Ghost, the hearts of his
sheep, he knew nothing, and cared as little. The gloom of his parents,
their sense of failure and loss, grew and deepened all the dull hot
afternoon, until it seemed almost to pass their endurance. At last,
however, it abated, as does every pain, for life is at its root: thereto
ordained, it slew itself by exhaustion. "But," thought the mother, "there's
Monday coming, and what am I to do then?" With the new day would return
the old trouble, the gnawing, sickening pain that she was childless: her
daughter was gone, and no son was left her! Yet the new day when it came,
brought with it its new possibility of living one day more!
But the minister was far more to be pitied than those whose misery he was.
All night long he slept with a sense of ill-usage sublying his
consciousness, and dominating his dreams; but with the sun came a doubt
whether he had not acted in unseemly fashion, when he turned and left his
father and mother in the churchyard. Of course they had not treated him
well; but what would his congregation, some of whom might have been
lingering in the churchyard, have thought, to see him leave them as he
did? His only thought, however, was to take precautions against their
natural judgment of his behaviour.
After his breakfast, he set out, his custom of a Monday morning, for what
he called a quiet stroll; but his thoughts kept returning, ever with fresh
resentment, to the soutar's insinuation--for such he counted it--on the
Saturday. Suddenly, uninvited, and displacing the phantasm of her father,
arose before him the face of Maggie; and with it the sudden question, What
then was the real history of the baby on whom she spent such an irrational
amount of devotion. The soutar's tale of her finding him was too
apocryphal! Might not Maggie have made a slip? Or why should the
pretensions of the soutar be absolutely trusted? Surely he had, some time
or other, heard a rumour! A certain satisfaction arose with the suggestion
that this man, so ready to believe evil of his neighbour, had not kept his
own reputation, or that of his house, perhaps, undefiled. He tried to
rebuke himself the next moment, it is true, for having harboured a moment's
satisfaction in the wrong-doing of another: it was unbefitting the pastor
of a Christian flock! But the thought came and came again, and he took no
continuous trouble to cast it out. When he went home, he put a question or
two to his housekeeper about the little one, but she only smiled paukily,
and gave him no answer.
After his two-o'clock dinner, he thought it would be Christian-like to
forgive his parents: he would therefore call at Stonecross--which would
tend to wipe out any undesirable offence on the minds of his parents, and
also to prevent any gossip that might injure him in his sacred profession!
He had not been to see them for a long time; his visits to them gave him
no satisfaction; but he never dreamed of attributing that to his own want
of cordiality. He judged it well, however, to avoid any appearance of evil,
and therefore thought it might be his duty to pay them in future a hurried
call about once a month. For the past, he excused himself because of the
distance, and his not being a good walker! Even now that he had made up his
mind he was in no haste to set out, but had a long snooze in his armchair
first: it was evening when he climbed the hill and came in sight of the low
gable behind which he was born.
Isy was in the garden gathering up the linen she had spread to dry on the
bushes, when his head came in sight at the top of the brae. She knew him at
once, and stooping behind the gooseberries, fled to the back of the house,
and so away to the moor. James saw the white flutter of a sheet, but
nothing of the hands that took it. He had heard that his mother had a nice
young woman to help her in the house, but cherished so little interest in
home-affairs that the news waked in him no curiosity.
Ever since she came to Stonecross, Isy had been on the outlook lest James
should unexpectedly surprise her, and so be himself surprised into an
involuntary disclosure of his relation to her; and not even by the long
deferring of her hope to see him yet again, had she come to pretermit her
vigilance. She did not intend to avoid him altogether, only to take heed
not to startle him into any recognition of her in the presence of his
mother. But when she saw him approaching the house, her courage failed
her, and she fled to avoid the danger of betraying both, herself and him.
She was in truth ashamed of meeting him, in her imagination feeling
guiltily exposed to his just reproaches. All the time he remained that
evening with his mother, she kept watching the house, not once showing
herself until he was gone, when she reappeared as if just returned from
the moor, where Mrs. Blatherwick imagined her still indulging the hope of
finding her baby, concerning whom her mistress more than doubted the very
existence, taking the supposed fancy for nothing but a half-crazy survival
from the time of her insanity before the Robertsons found her.
The minister made a comforting peace with his mother, telling her a part of
the truth, namely, that he had been much out of sorts during the week, and
quite unable to write a new sermon; and that so he had been driven at the
very last to take an old one, and that so hurriedly that he had failed to
recall correctly the subject and nature of it; that he had actually begun
to read it before finding that it was altogether unsuitable--at which very
moment, fatally for his equanimity, he discovered his parents in the
congregation, and was so dismayed that he could not recover his self-
possession, whence had ensued his apparent lack of cordiality! It was a
lame, yet somewhat plausible excuse, and served to silence for the moment,
although it was necessarily so far from satisfying his mother's heart. His
father was out of doors, and him James did not see.
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