Salted With Fire
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George MacDonald >> Salted With Fire
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15 Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Debra Storr and Distributed Proofreaders
SALTED WITH FIRE
BY
GEORGE MACDONALD
CHAPTER I
"Whaur are ye aff til this bonny mornin', Maggie, my doo?" said the
soutar, looking up from his work, and addressing his daughter as she stood
in the doorway with her shoes in her hand.
"Jist ower to Stanecross, wi' yer leave, father, to speir the mistress for
a goupin or twa o' chaff: yer bed aneth ye's grown unco hungry-like."
"Hoot, the bed's weel eneuch, lassie!"
"Na, it's onything but weel eneuch! It's my pairt to luik efter my ain
father, and see there be nae k-nots aither in his bed or his parritch."
"Ye're jist yer mither owre again, my lass!--Weel, I winna miss ye that
sair, for the minister 'ill be in this mornin'."
"Hoo ken ye that, father?"
"We didna gree vera weel last nicht."
"I canna bide the minister--argle-barglin body!"
"Toots, bairn! I dinna like to hear ye speyk sae scornfulike o' the gude
man that has the care o' oor sowls!"
"It wad be mair to the purpose ye had the care o' his!"
"Sae I hae: hasna ilkabody the care o' ilk ither's?"
"Ay; but he preshumes upo' 't--and ye dinna; there's the differ!"
"Weel, but ye see, lassie, the man has nae insicht--nane to speak o', that
is; and it's pleased God to mak him a wee stoopid, and some thrawn
(_twisted_). He has nae notion even o' the wark I put intil thae wee bit
sheenie (_little shoes_) o' his--that I'm this moment labourin ower!"
"It's sair wastit upo' him 'at caana see the thoucht intil't!"
"Is God's wark wastit upo' you and me excep' we see intil't, and
un'erstan't, Maggie?"
The girl was silent. Her father resumed.
"There's three concernt i' the matter o' the wark I may be at: first, my
ain duty to the wark--that's me; syne him I'm working for--that's the
minister; and syne him 'at sets me to the wark--ye ken wha that is: whilk
o' the three wad ye hae me lea' oot o' the consideration?"
For another moment the girl continued silent; then she said--
"Ye maun be i' the richt, father! I believe 't, though I canna jist _see_
't. A body canna like a'body, and the minister's jist the ae man I canna
bide."
"Ay could ye, gi'en ye lo'ed the _ane_ as he oucht to be lo'ed, and as ye
maun learn to lo'e him."
"Weel I'm no come to that wi' the minister yet!"
"It's a trowth--but a sair pity, my dautie _(daughter--darling)_."
"He provokes me the w'y that he speaks to ye, father--him 'at's no fit to
tie the thong o' your shee!"
"The Maister would lat him tie his, and say _thank ye_!"
"It aye seems to me he has sic a scrimpit way o' believin'! It's no like
believin' at a'! He winna trust him for naething that he hasna his ain
word, or some ither body's for! Ca' ye that lippenin' til him?"
It was now the father's turn to be silent for a moment. Then he said,--
"Lea' the judgin' o' him to his ain maister, lassie. I ha'e seen him whiles
sair concernt for ither fowk."
"'At they wouldna hand wi' _him,_ and war condemnt in consequence--wasna
that it?"
"I canna answer ye that, bairn."
"Weel, I ken he doesna like you--no ae wee bit. He's aye girdin at ye to
ither fowk!"
"May be: the mair's the need I sud lo'e him."
"But noo _can_ ye, father?"
"There's naething, o' late, I ha'e to be sae gratefu' for to _Him_ as that
I can. But I confess I had lang to try sair!"
"The mair I was to try, the mair I jist couldna."
"But ye could try; and He could help ye!"
"I dinna ken; I only ken that sae ye say, and I maun believe ye. Nane the
mair can I see hoo it's ever to be broucht aboot."
"No more can I, though I ken it can be. But just think, my ain Maggie, hoo
would onybody ken that ever ane o' 's was his disciple, gien we war aye
argle-barglin aboot the holiest things--at least what the minister coonts
the holiest, though may be I think I ken better? It's whan twa o' 's strive
that what's ca'd a schism begins, and I jist winna, please God--and it does
please him! He never said, Ye maun a' think the same gait, but he did say,
Ye man a' loe are anither, and no strive!"
"Ye dinna aye gang to his kirk, father!"
"Na, for I'm jist feared sometimes lest I should stop loein him. It matters
little about gaein to the kirk ilka Sunday, but it matters a heap aboot aye
loein are anither; and whiles he says things aboot the mind o' God, sic
that it's a' I can dee to sit still."
"Weel, father, I dinna believe that I can lo'e him ony the day; sae, wi'
yer leave, I s' be awa to Stanecross afore he comes."
"Gang yer wa's, lassie, and the Lord gang wi' ye, as ance he did wi' them
that gaed to Emmaus."
With her shoes in her hand, the girl was leaving the house when her father
called after her--
"Hoo's folk to ken that I provide for my ain, whan my bairn gangs unshod?
Tak aff yer shune gin ye like when ye're oot o' the toon."
"Are ye sure there's nae hypocrisy aboot sic a fause show, father?" asked
Maggie, laughing, "I maun hide them better!"
As she spoke she put the shoes in the empty bag she carried for the chaff.
"There's a hidin' o' what I hae--no a pretendin' to hae what I haena!--Is'
be hame in guid time for yer tay, father.--I can gang a heap better withoot
them!" she added, as she threw the bag over her shoulder. "I'll put them on
whan I come to the heather," she concluded.
"Ay, ay; gang yer wa's, and lea' me to the wark ye haena the grace to
adverteeze by weirin' o' 't."
Maggie looked in at the window as she passed it on her way, to get a last
sight of her father. The sun was shining into the little bare room, and her
shadow fell upon him as she passed him; but his form lingered clear in the
close chamber of her mind after she had left him far. And it was not her
shadow she had seen, but the shadow, rather, of a great peace that rested
concentred upon him as he bowed over his last, his mind fixed indeed upon
his work, but far more occupied with the affairs of quite another region.
Mind and soul were each so absorbed in its accustomed labour that never did
either interfere with that of the other. His shoemaking lost nothing when
he was deepest sunk in some one or other of the words of his Lord, which he
sought eagerly to understand--nay, I imagine his shoemaking gained thereby.
In his leisure hours, not a great, he was yet an intense reader; but it was
nothing in any book that now occupied him; it was the live good news, the
man Jesus Christ himself. In thought, in love, in imagination, that man
dwelt in him, was alive in him, and made him alive. This moment He was with
him, had come to visit him--yet was never far from him--was present always
with an individuality that never quenched but was continually developing
his own. For the soutar absolutely believed in the Lord of Life, was
always trying to do the things he said, and to keep his words abiding in
him. Therefore was he what the parson called a mystic, and was the most
practical man in the neighbourhood; therefore did he make the best shoes,
because the Word of the Lord abode in him.
The door opened, and the minister came into the kitchen. The soutar always
worked in the kitchen, to be near his daughter, whose presence never
interrupted either his work or his thought, or even his prayers--which
often seemed as involuntary as a vital automatic impulse.
"It's a grand day!" said the minister. "It aye seems to me that just on
such a day will the Lord come, nobody expecting him, and the folk all
following their various callings--as when the flood came and astonished
them."
The man was but reflecting, without knowing it, what the soutar had been
saying the last time they encountered; neither did he think, at the moment,
that the Lord himself had said something like it first.
"And I was thinkin, this vera meenute," returned the soutar, "sic a bonny
day as it was for the Lord to gang aboot amang his ain fowk. I was thinkin
maybe he was come upon Maggie, and was walkin wi' her up the hill to
Stanecross--nearer til her, maybe, nor she could hear or see or think!"
"Ye're a deal taen up wi' vain imaiginins, MacLear!" rejoined the minister,
tartly. "What scriptur hae ye for sic a wanderin' invention, o' no
practical value?"
"'Deed, sir, what scriptur hed I for takin my brakwast this mornin, or ony
mornin? Yet I never luik for a judgment to fa' upon me for that! I'm
thinkin we dee mair things in faith than we ken--but no eneuch! no eneuch!
I was thankfu' for't, though, I min' that, and maybe that'll stan' for
faith. But gien I gang on this gait, we'll be beginnin as we left aff last
nicht, and maybe fa' to strife! And we hae to loe ane anither, not accordin
to what the ane thinks, or what the ither thinks, but accordin as each
kens the Maister loes the ither, for he loes the twa o' us thegither."
"But hoo ken ye that he's pleased wi' ye?"
"I said naething aboot that: I said he loes you and me!"
"For that, he maun be pleast wi' ye!"
"I dinna think nane aboot that; I jist tak my life i' my han', and awa' wi'
't til _Him_;--and he's never turned his face frae me yet.--Eh, sir! think
what it would be gien ever he did!"
"But we maunna think o' him ither than he would hae us think."
"That's hoo I'm aye hingin aboot his door, luikin for him."
"Weel, I kenna what to mak o' ye! I maun jist lea' ye to him!"
"Ye couldna dee a kinder thing! I desire naething better frae man or
minister than be left to Him."
"Weel, weel, see til yersel."
"I'll see to _him_, and try to loe my neebour--that's you, Mr. Pethrie.
I'll hae yer shune ready by Setterday, sir. I trust they'll be worthy o'
the feet that God made, and that hae to be shod by me. I trust and believe
they'll nowise distress ye, sir, or interfere wi' yer comfort in preachin.
I'll fess them hame mysel, gien the Lord wull, and that without fail."
"Na, na; dinna dee that; lat Maggie come wi' them. Ye wad only be puttin me
oot o' humour for the Lord's wark wi' yer havers!"
"Weel, I'll sen' Maggie--only ye wad obleege me by no seein her, for ye
micht put _her_ oot o' humour, sir, and she michtna gie yer sermon fair
play the morn!"
The minister closed the door with some sharpness.
CHAPTER II
In the meantime, Maggie was walking shoeless and bonnetless up the hill to
the farm she sought. It was a hot morning in June, tempered by a wind from
the north-west. The land was green with the slow-rising tide of the young
corn, among which the cool wind made little waves, showing the brown earth
between them on the somewhat arid face of the hill. A few fleecy clouds
shared the high blue realm with the keen sun. As she rose to the top of the
road, the gable of the house came suddenly in sight, and near it a sleepy
old gray horse, treading his ceaseless round at the end of a long lever,
too listless to feel the weariness of a labour that to him must have seemed
unprogressive, and, to anything young, heart-breaking. Nor did it appear to
give him any consolation to be aware of the commotion he was causing on the
other side of the wall, where a threshing machine of an antiquated sort
responded with multiform movement to the monotony of his round-and-round.
Near by, a peacock, as conscious of his glorious plumage as indifferent to
the ugliness of his feet, kept time with undulating neck to the motion of
those same feet, as he strode with stagey gait across the cornyard, now and
then stooping to pick up a stray grain spitefully, and occasionally
erecting his superb neck to give utterance to a hideous cry of satisfaction
at his own beauty--a cry as unlike the beauty as ever was discord to
harmony. His glory, his legs and his voice, perplexed Maggie with an
unanalyzed sense of contradiction and unfitness.
Radiant with age and light, the old horse stood still just as the sun
touched the meridian; the hour of repose and food was come, and he knew it;
and at the same moment the girl, passing one of the green-painted doors of
the farm house, stopped at the other, the kitchen one. It stood open, and
in answer to her modest knock, a ruddy maid appeared, with a question in
her eyes, and a smile on her lips at sight of the shoemaker's Maggie, whom
she knew well. Maggie asked if She might see the mistress.
"Here's soutar's Maggie wanting ye, mem!" said the maid and Mistress
Blatherwick who was close at hand, came; to which Maggie humbly but
confidently making her request had it as kindly granted, and followed her
to the barn to fill her pock with the light plumy covering of the husk of
the oats, the mistress of Stonecross helping her the while and talking to
her as she did so--for the soutar and his daughter were favourites with
her and her husband, and they had not seen either of them for some while.
"Ye used to ken oor Maister Jeames I' the auld land-syne, Maggie!" for the
two has played together as children in the same school although growth and
difference in station had gradually put and end to their intimacy so that
it became the mother to refer to him with circumspection, seeing that, in
her eyes at least, Maister Jeames was now far on the way to becoming a
great man, being a divinity student; for in the Scotch church, although it
sets small store on apostolitic descent, every Minister, until he has shown
himself eccentic or incapable of interesting a congregation, is regarded
with quite as much respect as in England is accorded to the claimant of a
phantom-priesthood; and therefore, prospectively, Jeames was to his mother
a man of no little note. Maggie remembered how, when a boy, he had liked to
talk with her father; and how her father would listen to him with a
curious look on his rugged face, while the boy set forth the commonplaces
of a lifeless theology with an occasional freshness of logical
presentation that at least interested himself. But she remembered also
that she had never heard the soutar on his side make any attempt to lay
open to the boy his stores of what one or two in the place, one or two
only, counted wisdom and knowledge.
"He's a gey clever laddie," he had said once to Maggie, "and gien he gets
his een open i' the coorse o' the life he's hardly yet ta'en hand o', he'll
doobtless see something; but he disna ken yet that there's onything rael to
be seen, ootside or inside o' him!" When he heard that he was going to
study divinity, he shook his head, and was silent.
"I'm jist hame frae peyin him a short veesit," Mrs. Blatherwick went on. "I
cam hame but twa nichts ago. He's lodged wi' a dacent widow in Arthur
Street, in a flat up a lang stane stair that gangs roun and roun till ye
come there, and syne gangs past the door and up again. She taks in han' to
luik efter his claes, and sees to the washin o' them, and does her best to
hand him tidy; but Jeamie was aye that partic'lar aboot his appearance! And
that's a guid thing, special in a minister, wha has to set an example! I
was sair pleased wi' the auld body."
There was one in the Edinburgh lodging, however, of whom Mrs. Blatherwick
had but a glimpse, and of whom, therefore, she had made no mention to her
husband any more than now to Maggie MacLear; indeed, she had taken so
little notice of her that she could hardly be said to have seen her at all
--a girl of about sixteen, who did far more for the comfort of her aunt's
two lodgers than she who reaped all the advantage. If Mrs. Blatherwick had
let her eyes rest upon her but for a moment, she would probably have
looked again; and might have discovered that she was both a good-looking
and graceful little creature, with blue eyes, and hair as nearly black as
that kind of hair, both fine and plentiful, ever is. She might then have
discovered as well a certain look of earnestness and service that would at
first have attracted her for its own sake, and then repelled her for
James's; for she would assuredly have read in it what she would have
counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, and looking
untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the mother took her for an
ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment doubted that her son must
see her just as she did. He was her only son; her heart was full of
ambition for him; and she brooded on the honour he was destined to bring
her and his father. The latter, however, caring less for his good looks,
had neither the same satisfaction in him nor an equal expectation from him.
Neither of his parents, indeed, had as yet reaped much pleasure from his
existence, however much one of them might hope for in the time to come.
There were two things indeed against such satisfaction or pleasure--that
James had never been open-hearted toward them, never communicative as to
his feelings, or even his doings; and--which was worse--that he had long
made them feel in him a certain unexpressed claim to superiority. Nor would
it have lessened their uneasiness at this to have noted that the existence
of such an implicit claim was more or less evident in relation to every one
with whom he came in contact, manifested mainly by a stiff,
incommunicative reluctance, taking the form now of a pretended absorption
in his books, now of contempt for any sort of manual labour, even to the
saddling of the pony he was about to ride; and now and always by an
affectation of proper English, which, while successful as to grammar and
accentuation, did not escape the ludicrous in a certain stiltedness of tone
and inflection, from which intrusion of the would-be gentleman, his father,
a simple, old-fashioned man, shrank with more of dislike than he was
willing to be conscious of.
Quite content that, having a better education than himself, his son should
both be and show himself superior, he could not help feeling that these his
ways of asserting himself were signs of mere foolishness, and especially as
conjoined with his wish to be a minister--in regard to which Peter but
feebly sympathized with the general ambition of Scots parents. Full of
simple paternal affection, whose utterance was quenched by the behaviour of
his son, he was continuously aware of something that took the shape of an
impassable gulf between James and his father and mother. Profoundly
religious, and readily appreciative of what was new in the perception of
truth, he was, above all, of a great and simple righteousness--full, that
is, of a loving sense of fairplay--a very different thing indeed from that
which most of those who count themselves religious mean when they talk of
the righteousness of God! Little, however, was James able to see of this,
or of certain other great qualities in his father. I would not have my
reader think that he was consciously disrespectful to either of his
parents, or knew that his behaviour was unloving. He honoured their
character, indeed, but shrank from the simplicity of their manners; he
thought of them with no lively affection, though not without some kindly
feeling and much confidence--at the same time regarding himself with still
greater confidence. He had never been an idler, or disobedient; and had
made such efforts after theological righteousness as served to bolster
rather than buttress his conviction that he was a righteous youth, and
nourished his ignorance of the fact that he was far from being the person
of moral strength and value that he imagined himself. The person he saw in
the mirror of his self-consciousness was a very fine and altogether
trustworthy personage; the reality so twisted in its reflection was but a
decent lad, as lads go, with high but untrue notions of personal honour,
and an altogether unwarranted conviction that such as he admiringly
imagined himself, such he actually was: he had never discovered his true
and unworthy self! There were many things in his life and ways upon which
had he but fixed eyes of question, he would at once have perceived that
they were both judged and condemned; but so far, nevertheless, his father
and mother might have good hope of his future.
It is folly to suppose that such as follow most the fashions of this world
are more enslaved by them than multitudes who follow them only afar off.
These reverence the judgments of society in things of far greater
importance than the colour or cut of a gown; often without knowing it, they
judge life, and truth itself, by the falsest of all measures, namely, the
judgment of others falser than themselves; they do not ask what is true or
right, but what folk think and say about this or that. James, for instance,
altogether missed being a gentleman by his habit of asking himself how, in
such or such circumstances, a gentleman would behave. As the man of honour
he would fain know himself, he would never tell a lie or break a promise;
but he had not come to perceive that there are other things as binding as
the promise which alone he regarded as obligatory. He did not, for
instance, mind raising expectations which he had not the least intention of
fulfilling.
Being a Scotch lad, it is not to be wondered at that he should turn to
Theology as a means of livelihood; neither is it surprising that he should
do so without any conscious love to God, seeing it is not in Scotland alone
that untrue men take refuge in the Church, and turn the highest of
professions into the meanest, laziest, poorest, and most unworthy, by
following it without any genuine call to the same. In any profession, the
man must be a poor common creature who follows it without some real
interest in it; but he who without a spark of enthusiasm for it turns to
the Church, is either a "blind mouth," as Milton calls him--scornfullest of
epithets, or an "old wife" ambitious of telling her fables well; and
James's ambition was of the same contemptible sort--that, namely, of
distinguishing himself in the pulpit. This, if he had the natural gift of
eloquence, he might well do by its misuse to his own glory; or if he had it
not, he might acquire a spurious facility resembling it, and so be every
way a mere windbag.
Mr. Petrie, whom it cost the soutar so much care and effort to love, and
who, although intellectually small, was yet a good man, and by no means a
coward where he judged people's souls in danger, thought to save the world
by preaching a God, eminently respectable to those who could believe in
such a God, but to those who could not, a God far from lovely because far
from righteous. His life, nevertheless, showed him in many ways a believer
in Him who revealed a very different God indeed from the God he set forth.
His faith, therefore, did not prevent him from looking upon the soutar, who
believed only in the God he saw in Jesus Christ, as one in a state of
rebellion against him whom Jesus claimed as his father.
Young Blatherwick had already begun to turn his back upon several of the
special tenets of Calvinism, without, however, being either a better or a
worse man because of the change in his opinions. He had cast aside, for
instance, the doctrine of an everlasting hell for the unbeliever; but in
doing so he became aware that he was thus leaving fallow a great field for
the cultivation of eloquence; and not having yet discovered any other
equally productive of the precious crop, without which so little was to be
gained for the end he desired--namely, the praise of men, he therefore
kept on, "for the meantime," sowing and preparing to reap that same field.
Mr. Petrie, on the other hand, held the doctrine as absolutely fundamental
to Christianity, and preached it with power; while the soutar, who had
discarded it from his childhood, positively refused, jealous of strife, to
enter into any argument upon it with the disputatious little man.
As yet, then, James was reading Scotch metaphysics, and reconciling himself
to the concealment of his freer opinions, upon which concealment depended
the success of his probation, and his license. But the close of his studies
in divinity was now near at hand.
CHAPTER III
Upon a certain stormy day in the great northern city, preparing for what
he regarded as his career, James sat in the same large, shabbily furnished
room where his mother had once visited him--half-way up the hideously long
spiral stair of an ancient house, whose entrance was in a narrow close. The
great clock of a church in the neighbouring street had just begun to strike
five of a wintry afternoon, dark with snow, falling and yet to fall: how
often in after years was he not to hear the ghostly call of that clock, and
see that falling snow!--when a gentle tap came to his door, and the girl I
have already mentioned came in with a tray and the materials for his most
welcomed meal, coffee with bread and butter. She set it down in a silence
which was plainly that of deepest respect, gave him one glance of devotion,
and was turning to leave the room, when he looked up from the paper he was
writing, and said--
"Don't be in such a hurry, Isy. Haven't you time to pour out my coffee for
me?"
Isy was a small, dark, neat little thing, with finely formed features, and
a look of child-like simplicity, not altogether removed from childishness.
She answered him first with her very blue eyes full of love and trust, then
said--
"Plenty o' time, sir. What other have I to do than see that you be at your
ease?"
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