Salted With Fire
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George MacDonald >> Salted With Fire
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"Dare you say that for yourself, Margaret?"
"No; but I do want to love God wi' my whole hert. Mr. Bletherwick, are ye a
rael Christian? Or are ye sure ye're no a hypocreet? I wad like to ken. But
I dinna believe ye ken yersel!"
"Well, perhaps I do not. But I see there is no occasion to say more!"
"Na, nane," answered Maggie.
He lifted his hat, and turned away to the coach-office.
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.
CHAPTER XII
Already, ere James's flight was discovered, morning saw Mr. Robertson on
his way to do what he might for the redemption of one of whom he knew
little or nothing: the policemen returning from their night's duty, found
him already at the door of the office. He was at once admitted, for he was
well known to most of them. He found the poor woman miserably recovered
from the effects of her dissipation, and looking so woebegone, that the
heart of the good man was immediately filled with profoundest pity,
recognizing before him a creature whose hope was wasted to the verge of
despair. She neither looked up nor spoke; but what he could see of her face
appeared only ashamed, neither sullen nor vengeful. When he spoke to her,
she lifted her head a little, but not her eyes to his face, confessing
apparently that she had nothing to say for herself; and he saw her plainly
at the point of taking refuge in the Dee. Tenderly, as if to the little
one he had left behind him in bed, he spoke in her scarce listening ear
child-soothing words of almost inarticulate sympathy, which yet his tone
carried where they were meant to go. She lifted her lost eyes at length,
saw his face, and burst into tears.
"Na, na," she cried, through tearing sobs, "ye canna help me, sir! There's
naething 'at you or onybody can dee for me! But I'm near the mou o' the
pit, and God be thankit, I'll be ower the rim o' 't or I hae grutten my
last greit oot!--For God's sake gie me a drink--a drink o' onything!"
"I daurna gie ye onything to ca' drink," answered the minister, who could
scarcely speak for the swelling in his throat. "The thing to dee ye guid is
a cup o' het tay! Ye canna hae had a moofu' this mornin! I hae a cab waitin
me at the door, and ye'll jist get in, my puir bairn, and come awa hame wi'
me! My wife'll be doon afore we win back, and she'll hae a cup o' tay
ready for ye in a moment! You and me 'ill hae oor brakfast thegither."
"Ken ye what ye're sayin, sir? I daurna luik an honest wuman i' the face.
I'm sic as ye ken naething aboot."
"I ken a heap aboot fowk o' a' kin's--mair a heap, I'm thinkin, nor ye ken
yersel!--I ken mair aboot yersel, tee, nor ye think; I hae seen ye i' my
ain kirk mair nor ance or twice. The Sunday nicht afore last I was preachin
straucht intil yer bonny face, and saw ye greitin, and maist grat mysel.
Come awa hame wi' me, my dear; my wife's anither jist like mysel, an'll
turn naething to ye but the smilin side o' her face, I s' un'ertak! She's a
fine, herty, couthy, savin kin' o' wuman, my wife! Come ye til her, and
see!"
Isy rose to her feet.
"Eh, but I would like to luik ance mair intil the face o' a bonny, clean
wuman!" she said. "I'll gang, sir," she went on, with sudden resolve "--
only, I pray ye, sir, mak speed, and tak me oot o' the sicht o'fowk!"
"Ay, ay, come awa; we s' hae ye oot o' this in a moment," answered Mr.
Robertson.--"Put the fine doon to me," he whispered to the inspector as
they passed him on their way out.
The man returned his nod, and took no further notice.
"I thoucht that was what would come o' 't!" he murmured to himself, looking
after them with a smile. But indeed he knew little of what was going to
come of it!
The good minister, whose heart was the teacher of his head, and who was not
ashamed either of himself or his companion, showed Isy into their little
breakfast-parlour, and running up the stair to his wife, told her he had
brought the woman home, and wanted her to come down at once. Mrs.
Robertson, who was dressing her one child, hurried her toilet, gave over
the little one to the care of her one servant, and made haste to welcome
the poor shivering night-bird, waiting with ruffled feathers below. When
she opened the door, the two women stood for a moment silently gazing on
each other--then the wife opened her arms wide, and the girl fled to their
shelter; but her strength failing her on the way, she fell to the floor.
Instantly the other was down by her side. The husband came to her help; and
between them they got her at once on the little couch.
"Shall I get the brandy?" said Mrs. Robertson.
"Try a cup of tea," he answered.
His wife made haste, and soon had the tea poured out and cooling. But Isy
still lay motionless. Her hostess raised the helpless head upon her arm,
put a spoonful of the tea to her lips, and found to her joy that she tried
to swallow it. The next minute she opened her eyes, and would have risen;
but the rescuing hand held her down.
"I want to tell ye," moaned Isy with feeble expostulation, "'at ye dinna
ken wha ye hae taen intil yer hoose! Lat me up to get my breath, or I'll no
be able to tell ye."
"Drink your tea," answered the other, "and then say what you like. There's
no hurry. You'll have time enough."
The poor girl opened her eyes wide, and gazed for a moment at Mrs.
Robertson. Then she took the cup and drank the tea. Her new friend went
on--
"You must just be content to bide where you are a day or two. Ye're no to
fash yersel aboot onything: I have clothes enough to give you all the
change you can want. Hold your tongue, please, and finish your tea."
"Eh, mem," cried Isy, "fowk 'ill say ill o' ye, gien they see the like o'
me in yer hoose!"
"Lat them say, and say 't again! What's fowk but muckle geese!"
"But there's the minister and his character!" she persisted.
"Hoots! what cares the minister?" said his wife. "Speir at him there, what
he thinks o' clash."
"'Deed," answered her husband, "I never heedit it eneuch to tell! There's
but ae word I heed, and that's my Maister's!"
"Eh, but ye canna lift me oot o' the pit!" groaned the poor girl.
"God helpin, I can," returned the minister. "--But ye're no i' the pit yet
by a lang road; and oot o' that road I s' hae ye, please God, afore anither
nicht has darkent!"
"I dinna ken what's to come o' me!" again she groaned.
"That we'll sune see! Brakfast's to come o' ye first, and syne my wife and
me we'll sit in jeedgment upo ye, and redd things up. Min' ye're to say
what ye like, and naither ill fowk nor unco guid sail come nigh ye."
A pitiful smile flitted across Isy's face, and with it returned the almost
babyish look that used to form part of her charm. Like an obedient child,
she set herself to eat and drink what she could; and when she had evidently
done her best--
"Now put up your feet again on the sofa, and tell us everything," said the
minister.
"No," returned Isy; "I'm not at liberty to tell you _everything_."
"Then tell us what you please--so long as it's true, and that I am sure it
will be," he rejoined.
"I will, sir," she answered.
For several moments she was silent, as if thinking how to begin; then,
after a gasp or two,--
"I'm not a good woman," she began. "Perhaps I am worse than you think me.--
Oh, my baby! my baby!" she cried, and burst into tears.
"There's nae that mony o' 's just what ither fowk think us," said the
minister's wife. "We're in general baith better and waur nor that.--But
tell me ae thing: what took ye, last nicht, straucht frae the kirk to the
public? The twa haudna weel thegither!"
"It was this, ma'am," she replied, resuming the more refined speech to
which, since living at Deemouth, she had been less accustomed--"I had a
shock that night from suddenly seeing one in the church whom I had thought
never to see again; and when I got into the street, I turned so sick that
some kind body gave me whisky, and that was how, not having been used to it
for some time, that I disgraced myself. But indeed, I have a much worse
trouble and shame upon me than that--one you would hardly believe, ma'am!"
"I understand," said Mrs. Robertson, modifying her speech also the moment
she perceived the change in that of her guest: "you saw him in church--the
man that got you into trouble! I thought that must be it!--won't you tell
me all about it?"
"I will not tell his name. _I_ was the most in fault, for I knew better;
and I would rather die than do him any more harm!--Good morning, ma'am!--I
thank you kindly, sir! Believe me I am not ungrateful, whatever else I may
be that is bad."
She rose as she spoke, but Mrs. Robertson got to the door first, and
standing between her and it, confronted her with a smile.
"Don't think I blame you for holding your tongue, my dear. I don't want you
to tell. I only thought it might be a relief to you. I believe, if I were
in the same case--or, at least, I hope so--that hot pincers wouldn't draw
his name out of me. What right has any vulgar inquisitive woman to know the
thing gnawing at your heart like a live serpent? I will never again ask you
anything about him.--There! you have my promise!--Now sit down again, and
don't be afraid. Tell me what you please, and not a word more. The minister
is sure to find something to comfort you."
"What can anybody say or do to comfort such as me, ma'am? I am lost--lost
out of sight! Nothing can save me! The Saviour himself wouldn't open the
door to a woman that left her suckling child out in the dark night!--
That's what I did!" she cried, and ended with a wail as from a heart whose
wound eternal years could never close.
In a while growing a little calmer--
"I would not have you think, ma'am," she resumed, "that I wanted to get rid
of the darling. But my wits went all of a sudden, and a terror, I don't
know of what, came upon me. Could it have been the hunger, do you think? I
laid him down in the heather, and ran from him. How far I went, I do not
know. All at once I came to myself, and knew what I had done, and ran to
take him up. But whether I lost my way back, or what I did, or how it was,
I cannot tell, only I could not find him! Then for a while I think I must
have been clean out of my mind, and was always seeing him torn by the
foxes, and the corbies picking out his eyes. Even now, at night, every now
and then, it comes back, and I cannot get the sight out of my head! For a
while it drove me to drink, but I got rid of that until just last night,
when again I was overcome.--Oh, if I could only keep from seeing the
beasts and birds at his little body when I'm falling asleep!"
She gave a smothered scream, and hid her face in her hands. Mrs. Robertson,
weeping herself, sought to comfort her, but it seemed in vain.
"The worst of it is," Isy resumed, "--for I must confess everything,
ma'am!--is that I cannot tell what I may have done in the drink. I may
even have told his name, though I remember nothing about it! It must be
months, I think, since I tasted a drop till last night; and now I've done
it again, and I'm not fit he should ever cast a look at me! My heart's just
like to break when I think I may have been false to him, as well as false
to his child! If all the devils would but come and tear me, I would say,
thank ye, sirs!"
"My dear," came the voice of the parson from where he sat listening to
every word she uttered, "my dear, naething but the han' o' the Son o'
Man'll come nigh ye oot o' the dark, saft-strokin yer hert, and closin up
the terrible gash intil't. I' the name o' God, the saviour o' men, I tell
ye, dautie, the day 'ill come whan ye'll smile i' the vera face o' the
Lord himsel, at the thoucht o' what he has broucht ye throuw! Lord Christ,
haud a guid grup o' thy puir bairn and hers, and gie her back her ain. Thy
wull be deen!--and that thy wull's a' for redemption!--Gang on wi' yer
tale, my lassie."
"'Deed, sir, I can say nae mair--and seem to hae nae mair to say.--I'm
some--some sick like!"
She fell back on the sofa, white as death.
The parson was a big man; he took her up in his arms, and carried her to a
room they had always ready on the chance of a visit from "one of the least
of these."
At the top of the stair stood their little daughter, a child of five or
six, wanting to go down to her mother, and wondering why she was not
permitted.
"Who is it, moder?" she whispered, as Mrs. Robertson passed her, following
her husband and Isy. "Is she very dead?"
"No, darling," answered her mother; "it is an angel that has lost her way,
and is tired--so tired!--You must be very quiet, and not disturb her. Her
head is going to ache very much."
The child turned and went down the stair, step by step, softly, saying--
"I will tell my rabbit not to make any noise--and to be as white as he
can."
Once more they succeeded in bringing back to the light of consciousness her
beclouded spirit. She woke in a soft white bed, with two faces of
compassion bending over her, closed her eyes again with a smile of sweet
content, and was soon wrapt in a wholesome slumber.
In the meantime, the caitiff minister had reached his manse, and found a
ghastly loneliness awaiting him--oh, how much deeper than that of the woman
he had forsaken! She had lost her repute and her baby; he had lost his God!
He had never seen his shape, and had not his word abiding in him; and now
the vision of him was closed in an unfathomable abyss of darkness, far, far
away from any point his consciousness could reach! The signs of God were
around him in the Book, around him in the world, around him in his own
existence--but the signs only! God did not speak to him, did not manifest
himself to him. God was not where James Blatherwick had ever sought him; he
was not in any place where was the least likelihood of his ever looking for
or finding him!
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!
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