Chapter 10

"But about his answer to my question. Surely no maiden yet had so strange an answer. For, without a word, he went to the desk and took the Bible in his hands. When he had found the place he stood before me and read me this:

"'Then cometh Jesus with them unto the place called Gethsemane.... My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.... My Father if this cup may not pass away from Me except I drink it, Thy will be done.'

"His voice was strange to me, and I was trembling for I didn't know what he meant. But I knew it was my Judgment Day.

"'Angus,' I said faintly, 'what do you mean? What has that to do with us? That is a story of two thousand years ago.'

"'Margaret,' he answered, 'the story of Gethsemane is never old. Its willows cast the same shadows yet as those into which our Saviour crept. And that cup is never empty, though human lips are ever draining it to its dregs. It is close to my lips to-night--and to your sweet lips too, my darling--and we must drink it together.'

"'Together, Angus,' I said, 'thank God for that.' The word was sweet. Oh, father, head-winds are precious unto love if only love's hands together hold the sail.

"After a long silence Angus spoke again and my poor heart had to listen.

"'Margaret,' he began, 'no man ever renounced what I renounce to-night, for no man ever loved as I love you, though I reckon many a man would swear the same, knowing not his perjury--for none can know my love. And joy, and pride, and home--and all with which our pure thought had enriched our home--all these must I surrender now. I must give up everything but love--and that is mine forever. Oh, Margaret, I won you, did I not? I, a poor Scottish laddie, a herd among the heather. I came to Canada lang syne, and by and by I won you, did I not, Margaret?

"'But I must give you up--and I will tell you why.

"'It was not hard for me to find that story of Gethsemane. When I was but a laddie among the Scottish hills my mother's Bible aye opened at that very place; and laddie though I was, I noticed it, for the page was marked and worn and soiled with tears.

"'I asked my mother many a time why the Book aye opened there and what soiled and marked it so. She told me not for long, saying only that it was marked and soiled before her laddie had been born.

"'But the night before I sailed from Annan Foot, she put her arms about me and she told me of the anguish of her soul and all about the tear-stained place--for she told me of her own Gethsemane and of the bitter cup, and said that her laddie's lips could pass it by no more than hers.

"'And ever since that night ma ain buik aye opens at Gethsemane. Oh, Margaret, you understand, do you not?' he cried, 'I am not worthy of you and of your love.

"'The far-off strain of sin starting from another heart than mine (another than my mother's, by the living God) has stained my name. Mine is an unhallowed name. Mine is a shadowed birth. Mine is the perpetual Gethsemane and mine the unemptied cup!

"'Forgive me, Margaret, for the wrong I did you. I should never have spoken love to you at all, or if I did, I should have told you of the blight upon it; but the sky and the trees and the hill were clothed that night in the beauty that wrapt my soul and I thought that God had forgotten and had shrived me in the same sacred light. But He does not forget. That light itself cannot drive the shadow from Gethsemane and the cup has never since been absent from my lips.'

"Angus stopped--and God watched over me; for He pitied me.

"I thought of you and mother first, but God still kept my will in His. I wanted God to lead me and I asked Him to help me--and I waited.

"'Angus,' I said at last, 'your mother loved him, did she not?'

"'Loved!' he answered, 'her pure heart knew no other passion. My own is but an echo. Behold! I was shapen in love.'

"'Then,' said I, 'let her that is without love cast the first stone at her. If any sinning woman love, she has an advocate with the Father. Oh, Angus! Come to me!' I cried, for I was fainting."

* * * * *

Her story was finished now and my daughter added not a word. But she arose and stood before me, her eyes searching my pallid face for a verdict, if haply it might be like her own. I noticed the woman's tactics in her move, for woman's genius makes its home within her soul; she had left my arms that I might, if I would, hold them out to her again and take her back forever. But the arms have their hinges in the heart and mine was tight locked like a vise.

"Margaret," I said at last, and my voice was like the voice of age, "you do not mean that you suffered this man's caresses after he told you what you have just told me?"

Sorrow looked from Margaret's eyes.

"Suffered!" she replied, "suffered! I have learned what suffering is, God knows, but He knows it was not there I learned it. 'This man.' Oh, father, I love him--am I all alone?"

How strong is the weakness of love! There is no panoply like that which love provides, and she who bears it has the whole armour of God.

"Margaret," I pleaded, "you surely will not ruin your life and break your mother's heart and mine by any madness such as this."

"'Ruin my life,' father! what ruin can there be to the life that loves and is loved? I have no life at all apart from him. It seems so simple. I can't take back my heart!"

"Perhaps so, my daughter," I replied, "perhaps so. I know your love is no fickle thing. But Margaret, you do not propose to link your life with his, shadowed as you yourself declare it to have been from his birth?"

"Father, it is already linked. It was not I who linked our lives, nor was it he; nor was it both together--it was God. Surely He wouldn't have let me love and trust, if it was wrong. I want you to help me; I am all alone."

"But you do not mean," I cried with growing warmth, "that I, the minister of St. Cuthbert's Kirk, New Jedboro, am to be called upon to take into my family and to acknowledge as my son, a man who cannot speak his father's name, who cannot," for I was maddening fast, "speak it even to himself, forsooth, because he knows not what it is?"

"Oh, father, do not press me so; I love you--and I love him too, and----"

"But about our family?" I asked hotly.

"I forgot about families," she sobbed. "Oh, father, teach this poor heart of mine to love no more and I will obey your every wish--but it is hard for love to serve two masters."

My heart was wrung by her plaintive voice; but love dwells hard by cruelty, and my self-control was going fast. Let those defend me who have known my agony.

"You know, I suppose, the result that will issue from your madness? You know what it will mean to your future relations here?" I asked hoarsely, explaining my threat by a glance about the room.

"Don't call it madness, father," she replied, pleadingly. "There is no madness in love. I cannot help it, father. Why should I? Surely Angus is the same as he was when first I loved him. I haven't learned anything new about the soul of him, father."

"But his origin?" I interrupted.

"But he is good, father,--and kind--and true--and he loves me."

It was but a moment till I was past the bounds of reason. Disappointment, pride, shame, anger--all these had their cruel way with me. I am covered with confusion as with a garment while I try to record what followed, though I could not tell it all, even if I would. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of love. For the anguished soul pours out the vials of its remorse and self-reproach upon the well loved head, and fury waxes with its shame.

"I want none of your preaching," and my voice was coarse with anger; "you are a willful and disobedient child and you may as well learn first as last who is the master of this house. Do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear,--and my heart is broken. You want me to go away and not to see me any more. And I don't know where to go."

She was kneeling now and the tears were dropping hot upon my hand, which she had taken in both of hers. "Oh, father, when birdlings leave the nest, surely God wants them to go, because He gives them wings. Father, dear, oh, do not push me out in this cruel way. I want to keep you and Angus both--and mother. Am I really wrong?

"Father, you are a preacher of the Everlasting Gospel, and doesn't that say we were all born wrong and need to be born again? You said only last Sunday that if we're once on the Rock, God forgets all about the pit and the miry clay. And you said God makes the past new--all new, and that all the redeemed ones are just the same in His sight--all good, and with the past away behind them. I thought it was beautiful, because I thought about Angus--and it seemed just like the Saviour's way."

My heart was wrung with a great desire to take the bended form unto myself. I half moved forward to kiss the lips of this kneeling priestess unto love. But as I did so the memory of other lips that had been pressed to them rolled in upon me and swept away the better impulse. I faltered into compromise.

"Margaret, you are still my daughter and I am touched by what you say. Let us find common ground. Promise me that you will suspend judgment in this matter for a year, your promise meantime to be revoked and at the end of that time, we will take it up afresh. This will give time for sober judgment."

But her blanched face turned to mine, and the white lips spoke again. "Oh, spare me, father, for I cannot--you know I cannot--oh, father, pity me!"

My soul flamed with ungovernable anger. I did pity her and this it was that stirred my cruelty. For my soul relapsed to barbarous coarseness and I said: "Then choose between us--you can have your ----," and I called him an awful word, the foulest of all words, whose very sound speaks the shame it means to tell, the curse of humanity hissed in its nauseous syllables.

And more--but how can I write it down! I did not strike her--but I thrust her from me; I laid my coward hand upon her shoulder--not in violence nor heavily, but eternal menace was in it. For I pushed her from me, crying brutally: "Quote me another Scripture. Have you not chosen the better part? There is the door which his shadow first accursed--you see the door?" and I hurled the poisoned word at her again.

She looked at me but once--as one, suddenly awakening, looks at her assassin. Then she went out, a lover as white as snow.

XXI

_The OLD PRECENTOR'S NEW SONG_

As a stream emerges from its forest tunnel, eluding the embrace of tangled shadows, swiftly gliding from sombre swamps and hurrying towards the sunlit plain, its phantom weeds of widowhood exchanged for its bridal robe of light; so doth this tale of mine glide forth from the sable shadows which garrison the chapter it has left behind.

No man loves to linger by his scaffold, though it be cheated of its last adornment, and though no eye behold its grinning outline but its own. For there are shadowy scaffolds, and invisible executioners, sitting at our own boards and eating of our own bread, discernible only in a glass. Our own Sheriffs and Executioners are we all.

Swift in the wake of sorrow came the unromantic form of toil. Thank God! Work is sorrow's cure, its hands like the hands of an enemy, but its voice the voice of an Eternal friend. For duty is God's midwife, sent to deliver the soul that travails in its anguish.

It was but the day after Margaret had passed from out my door, girding it as she went with crape, invisible to other eyes, that I was called to Archie McCormack's house. The day was bright and clear, but I knew it not--for in this doth sorrow make us like to God, that then the darkness and the light are both alike.

For some months past, my old precentor had been failing fast. The doctor said it was his heart, but none of us believed it; for his heart had grown larger, stronger, happier with every passing year. Its outer life might perish if it would, but its inner life was renewed day by day. Indeed, his soul's second harvest seemed to take the form of cheerfulness, the scantiest crop of all in the stern seasons of his earlier life. Even merriment sought to bloom before the frost should come.

The very day before Margaret and I began our life's Lenten season, I had been to see him, little thinking that my next visit was to be the last. My own heart was full of that joy whose overflow Margaret had entrusted to its care--which is a great gift to a minister, this gift of gladness, seeking as he does to irrigate the thirsty plains of life about him.

"How is my precentor to-day?" I asked as I sat down at the blazing hearth. He was lying on the couch, the fourth gradation--the field, the veranda, the room, the couch, the bed, the grave--thus the promotion runs!

"I'm by or'nar glad to see ye," he replied, evasively. "The auld freens are the best."

"That's good, Archie, the old friends are glad to hear it. They hear it seldom from Scottish lips, however hopefully they suspect it."

"We're nae muckle given to compliments--I'll grant ye that. But whiles we think; an' whiles we speak--an' whiles we wunna. But I'm no backward in tellin' a man gin I care for him. Noo, I was sayin' to the wife this verra day that yon man ye brocht frae Montreal last simmer was like eneuch a graun preacher--I'm no disputin' that, mind ye. But I was sayin' to the wife as hoo I likit yirsel' fully mair nor him."

I smiled with pleasure, for the process was an interesting one. Bouquets look strange in these rough Scottish hands--but their fragrance is the sweeter for all that.

"I understand, Archie. You do not often pay a compliment, but I know its sincerity when it comes and I appreciate it all the same."

He had not finished, for he felt he had gone too far.

"Aye, that's what I was sayin' to the wife. I likit yirsel' fully better nor him--it's different ye see; I'm gettin' kind o' used to ye, ye ken!"

This made his tribute morally complete. Oh, thou Scotchman! Thou canst not withhold a tincture of lemon from the sweetest cup!

"But how is my precentor to-day?" I renewed, fearful of additional repairs to his eulogy.

"Weel, I'm no' complainin'--an' I'm no' boastin'; but there's mony a yin waur. I'm no' sufferin' pain to speak o'. I can sleep at nicht, an' I tak my parritch, an' I hae ma faculties--an' I'm in God's hauns," he said, the climax coming with unconscious power.

"There's no better bulletin than that," I responded. "I see you still take your smoke, Archie," I added cheerfully, nodding towards an ancient trusty pipe which enjoyed its brief respite on a chair, long his familiar friend, and noticeably breathing out its loyalty where it lay.

"Ou, aye, I dinna lack for ony o' the needcessities o' life, thank God," he replied gratefully, and with utter seriousness.

"What a blessing that you are free from pain," I hurriedly remarked; for the mouth, like a capricious steed, is more easily controlled when it is in motion.

"Aye, that's a great blessin'. I've been uncommon free frae pain. A fortnight syne, I had a verra worritsome feelin' in ma innerts--a kind o' colic, I'm jalousin'. Sandy Grant said as how whusky wi' a little sulphur was gey guid. I tell 't him I never had nowt to dae wi' sulphur i' ma life, an' I wudna begin to bother wi't noo;" and Archie lifted his eyebrows, adjusted his night-cap, and turned upon me a very solemn smile.

He doubtless saw by my face that I approved his caution, for I secretly believed that he was right. Thus confirmed, he lay meditating for a time, but it was soon made evident that his thoughts had not wandered far from the matter in hand.

"Aye, sulphur's nae improvement to whusky," he slowly averred at length, "forbye, I was richt. I was richt frae a medeecinal standpoint, ye ken. The verra next day ma doctor ordered me to tak a little whusky for the pain I tell't ye o'. An' I did; I took it afore he tell't me."

"And it did you good, Archie?" I asked indulgently.

"Guid?" replied Archie, in a tone of much reproach. Then he said no more, scorning to demonstrate an axiom. But he was not through with the subject. The moral had still to be pointed.

"Is't no won'erfu', minister, the law o' compensation that oor Creator gies us, to reach a' through oor lives?

"Pain has its ither side, ye ken. An' when we say as hoo it's an ill wind that blaws naebody guid, we're acknowledgin' the love o' the Almichty. Ilka cloud has aye its siller linin'. Noo, for instance, it was a fearfu' pain I took--but the ither that I took to cure it--it was Scotch," and Archie drew a gentle sigh, half of piety and half of reminiscence.

* * * * *

When next I turned my steps towards Archie's door, though only two short days had fled, all life had changed to me and darkness hung about me like a pall. Upon which change I was bitterly reflecting when I was interrupted by a message that Archie was taken somewhat worse and not expected to live longer than through the night. And I could not but be glad of this summons from my own life's tragedy, that I might share another's. It is God's blessed way. The balm for secret sorrow is in the bosom of another burden, unselfishly assumed; and the Cyrenian of every age hath this for his hire, that, while he bends beneath another's cross, he is disburdened of his own.

I found my old precentor weak, and failing fast, but "verra composed," as we say in New Jedboro.

He welcomed me with a gentle smile.

"Ye'll pray wi' me," he said gravely, "but it'll no' be the closin' prayer. I'm wearin' awa fast, but I'll no' leave ye till the morn, I'm dootin'. Pit up a bit prayer noo--but there's ae thing--dinna mind the Maister o' His promise to come again an' receive me till Himsel'--no' that it isna a gowden word; but I want it keepit till the last an' it's the last word I want to hear. Speak it to me when I hear the surge. That'll gie Him time eneuch, for He'll no' be far awa. An' I want to hear it aboon the billows. Noo pit up yir prayer."

Short and simple were our petitions; for the prayer of little children is best for those who are about to enter into the kingdom of God.

After we had finished, my eyes, unknown to him, were long fixed on Archie's face. For a strange interest centres about those whose loins are girded for long journeys; and I have never outgrown the boyish awe with which I witnessed the loosening of the ropes that held aerial travellers to the earth. I have seen some scores of persons die,

"By many a death-bed I have been And many a sinner's parting seen,"

but the awful tragedy is ever new and familiarity breeds increasing reverence. Death is a hero to his valet.

"You are not afraid, Archie?" I said at length--the old question that springs, not to the dying, but to the living lips.

"Afeart!" said Archie, "what wad I be afeart for?"

"You are not afraid to meet your Lord?" I answered, inwardly reproaching myself for the words.

"Afeart!" repeated the dying man, "afeart to meet ma Lord. Why should I be feart to meet a Man that died for me?"

I inwardly blessed him for the great reply and engaged its unanswerable argument for my next Sabbath's sermon. No man dieth unto himself.

"Wull ye dae something for me?" said Archie, suddenly. "Wull ye write to a man I kent lang syne?"

"Certainly," said I. "Who is the man, Archie?"

"I'll tell ye, gin ma hairt hauds guid a meenit. It's Andra Mathieson--an' he lives in San Francisco. Him an' me gaed to the schule thegither in the Auld Country, an' I hadna seen him for nigh fifty year till last Can'lemas a twalmonth, when I gaed to San Francisco for ma health. He's awfu' rich. He lives in a graun hoose an' he has a coachman wi' yin o' thae coats wi' buttons. But I gaed to see him an' I needna hae been sae feart, for he minded on me, an' he wadna hear o' me bidin' at the taivern, an' he took me to his graun hoose, an' he was ower guid to a plain cratur like me.

"Weel, ae mornin', we was sittin', haein' oor crack aboot the auld days, an' the schule, an' the sheep we herded thegither on the Ettrick hills. But oor crack aye harkit back to the kirk an' the minister an' the catechism, an' a' thae deeper things o' auld lang syne. He said as hoo he had gane far bye thae things, livin' amang the stour o' a' his siller--but he remarkit that he aften thocht o' the auld ways, an' the auld tunes, an' the minister wi' his goon an' bands; an' he said he was fair starvin' for a psalm--or a paraphrase. They dinna sing them in Ameriky. An' I lilted yin till him--we was lookin' far oot at the Gowden Gate, an' it lookit like the crystal water ma een'll sune see."

Archie stopped, though apparently but little exhausted. His eyes seemed flooded with tender memories of that momentous hour on the far distant Pacific Coast.

"What psalm did you sing him?" I ventured, presently.

"It was a paraphrase," he answered, the smile still upon his face. "It was the twenty-sixth:

"'Ho ye that thirst approach the spring Where living waters flow,'

an' Andra grat like a bairn:

"'I haena heard it sin I ran barefit aboot the hills,' he said, an' he wad hae me sing the lines ower again:

"'How long to streams of false delight Will ye in crowds repair?'

an' I'm no' worthy, I ken, but I pit up a bit prayer wi' him--ye mauna think I'm boastin', sir, but I brocht him to Christ, an' when I think on't noo, it's lichtsome, an' I'm minded o' that simmer sun on the Gowden Gate. Ye'll write to him an' tell him we'll sing a psalm thegither yet."

My promise given and Andrew Mathieson's address taken, Archie lay silent for a little time. Swift glances at myself, swiftly withdrawn, denoted his desire to say something more. It came at length and with unmistakable directness.

"I'm dootin' I've been wrang; mebbe I was 'righteous over-much.'"

"What is it, Archie?" I said soothingly. "Some sin? Or some mistake in the days that are gone?"

"I'm no' sayin' it was the yin or the ither," replied the old precentor, a familiar frosty flavour in his voice, "an' if it was, I'll no' confess it to ony yin but God--but I'm misdootin' I was ower hard on the hymes."

"What hymns, Archie?" I asked, seeking only to make easier his acknowledgment of error, ever difficult to Scottish lips. For, if the truth were told, Scotchmen secretly divide sins into three classes, those of omission, of commission, and of admission.

"Ye ken fine," he made reply, "div ye no' mind hoo Margaret an' Angus Strachan compeared afore the Kirk Session wi' their prayer for man-made hymes i' the kirk?"

"Yes, Archie, I remember--the Session denied their request."

Ah me, I thought, how much has befallen Margaret and Margaret's father since that night!

"Ay, I ken that; an' I'm no' regrettin'--but I'm dootin' I was ower hard on the hymes. My speerit was aye ower fiery for an elder. But King Dauvit himsel' was mair fearsome than me wi' blasphemers--no' to ca' Margaret yin; but I'm mindin' that the Maister aye took anither way, a better yin, I'm dootin'. An' I'm feart I was mair like Dauvit, for a' I'd raither be like the Maister."

"You have the right of it, Archie; He showed us the more excellent way."

"Forbye," Archie went on, pursuing his line of thought, "I've my misgivin's aboot wha wrote thae hymes. It wasna the deevil, an' it wasna Watts, an' it wasna yon great Methody body; they set them doon, nae doot--but wha started them? I'm sair dootin' they had their rise amang the hills, the same whaur Dauvit saw the glory o' God."

"Above the hills of time," I added softly.

"An' what's mair, it kind o' came to me that a hyme micht be a prayer, ye ken. Noo, your prayer in the kirk is no' inspired. That is, no' like Dauvit's psalms--but it's upliftin' for a' that. An' I'm thinkin' that mebbe it's nae waur to lilt a prayer than to speak yin, an' mebbe the great Methody was prayin' when he said:

"'Let me to Thy bosom fly,'

an' I'm dootin' we micht dae waur than jine wi' him."