Kitabı oku: «The Elect Lady», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XIII. DAWTIE

Is not the Church supposed to be made up of God’s elect? and yet most of my readers find it hard to believe there should be three persons, so related, who agreed to ask of God, and to ask neither riches nor love, but that God should take His own way with them, that the Father should work His will in them, that He would teach them what He wanted of them, and help them to do it! The Church is God’s elect, and yet you can not believe in three holy children! Do you say: “Because they are represented as beginning to obey so young?” “Then,” I answer, “there can be no principle, only an occasional and arbitrary exercise of spiritual power, in the perfecting of praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, or in the preference of them to the wise and prudent as the recipients of divine revelation.”

Dawtie never said much, but tried the more. With heartiness she accepted what conclusions the brothers came to, so far as she understood them—and what was practical she understood as well as they; for she had in her heart the spirit of that Son of Man who chose a child to represent Him and His Father. As to what they heard at church, their minds were so set on doing what they found in the Gospel, that it passed over them without even rousing their intellect, and so vanished without doing any hurt. Tuned to the truth by obedience, no falsehood they heard from the pulpit partisans of God could make a chord vibrate in response. Dawtie indeed heard nothing but the good that was mingled with the falsehood, and shone like a lantern through a thick fog.

She was little more than a child when, to the trouble of her parents, she had to go out to service. Every half year she came home for a day or so, and neither feared nor found any relation altered. At length after several closely following changes, occasioned by no fault of hers, she was without a place. Miss Fordyce heard of it, and proposed to her parents that, until she found another, she should help Meg, who was growing old and rather blind: she would thus, she said, go on learning, and not be idling at home.

Dawtie’s mother was not a little amused at the idea of any one idling in her house, not to say Dawtie, whom idleness would have tried harder than any amount of work; but, if only that Miss Fordyce might see what sort of girl Dawtie was, she judged it right to accept her offer.

She had not been at Potlurg a week before Meg began to complain that she did not leave work enough to keep her warm. No doubt it gave her time for her book, but her eyes were not so good as they used to be, and she was apt to fall asleep over it, and catch cold! But when her mistress proposed to send her away, she would not hear of it So Alexa, who had begun to take an interest in her, set her to do things she had hitherto done herself, and began to teach her other things. Before three months were over, she was a necessity in the house, and to part with Dawtie seemed impossible. A place about that time turning up, Alexa at once offered her wages, and so Dawtie became an integral portion of the laird’s modest household.

The laird himself at length began to trust her as he had never trusted servant, for he taught her to dust his precious books, which hitherto he had done himself, but of late had shrunk from, finding not a few of them worse than Pandora-boxes, liberating asthma at the merest unclosing.

Dawtie was now a grown woman, bright, gentle, playful, with loving eyes, and a constant overflow of tenderness upon any creature that could receive it. She had small but decided and regular features, whose prevailing expression was confidence—not in herself, for she was scarce conscious of herself even in the act of denying herself—but in the person upon whom her trusting eyes were turned. She was in the world to help—with no political economy beyond the idea that for help and nothing else did any one exist. To be as the sun and the rain and the wind, as the flowers that lived for her and not for themselves, as the river that flowed, and the heather that bloomed lovely on the bare moor in the autumn, such was her notion of being. That she had to take care of herself was a falsehood that never entered her brain. To do what she ought, and not do what she ought not, was enough on her part, and God would do the rest! I will not say she reasoned thus; to herself she was scarce a conscious object at all. Both bodily and spiritually she was in the finest health. If illness came, she would perhaps then discover a self with which she had to fight—I can not tell; but my impression is, that she had so long done the true thing, that illness would only develop unconscious victory, perfecting the devotion of her simple righteousness. It is because we are selfish, with that worst selfishness which is incapable of recognizing itself, not to say its own loathsomeness, that we have to be made ill. That they may leave the last remnants of their selfishness, are the saints themselves over-taken by age and death. Suffering does not cause the vile thing in us—that was there all the time; it comes to develop in us the knowledge of its presence, that it may be war to the knife between us and it. It was no wonder that Dawtie grew more and more of a favorite at Potlurg.

She did not read much, but would learn by heart anything that pleased her, and then go saying or singing it to herself. She had the voice of a lark, and her song prevented many a search for her. Against that “rain of melody,” not the pride of the laird, or the orderliness of the ex-school-master ever put up the umbrella of rebuke. Her singing was so true, came so clear from the fountain of joy, and so plainly from no desire to be heard, that it gave no annoyance; while such was her sympathy, that, although she had never get suffered, you would, to hear her sing “My Nannie’s awa’!” have thought her in truth mourning an absent lover, and familiar with every pang of heart-privation. Her cleanliness, clean even of its own show, was a heavenly purity; while so gently was all her spiriting done, that the very idea of fuss died in the presence of her labor. To the self-centered such a person soon becomes a nobody; the more dependent they are upon her unfailing ministration, the less they think of her; but they have another way of regarding such in “the high countries.” Hardly any knew her real name; she was known but by her pet name Dawtie.

Alexa, who wondered at times that she could not interest her in things she made her read, little knew how superior the girl’s choice was to her own! Not knowing much of literature, what she liked was always of the best in its kind, and nothing without some best element could interest her at all. But she was not left either to her “own sweet will” or to the prejudices of her well-meaning mistress; however long the intervals that parted them, Andrew continued to influence her reading as from the first. A word now and a word then, with the books he lent or gave her, was sufficient. That Andrew liked this or that, was enough to make Dawtie set herself to find in it what Andrew liked, and it was thus she became acquainted with most of what she learned by heart.

Above two years before the time to which I have now brought my narrative, Sandy had given up farming, to pursue the development of certain inventions of his which had met the approval of a man of means who, unable himself to devise, could yet understand a device: he saw that there was use, and consequently money in them, and wisely put it in Sandy’s power to perfect them. He was in consequence but little at home, and when Dawtie went to see her parents, as she could much oftener now, Andrew and she generally met without a third. However many weeks might have passed, they always met as if they had parted only the night before. There was neither shyness nor forwardness in Dawtie. Perhaps a livelier rose might tinge her sweet round cheek when she saw Andrew; perhaps a brighter spark shone in the pupil of Andrew’s eye; but they met as calmly as two prophets in the secret of the universe, neither anxious nor eager. The old relation between them was the more potent that it made so little outward show.

“Have you anything for me, Andrew?” Dawtie would say, in the strong dialect which her sweet voice made so pleasant to those that loved her; whereupon Andrew, perhaps without immediate answer more than a smile, would turn into his room, and reappear with what he had got ready for her to “chew upon” till they should meet again. Milton’s sonnet, for instance, to the “virgin wise and pure,” had long served her aspiration; equally wise and pure, Dawtie could understand it as well as she for whom it was written. To see the delight she took in it, would have been a joy to any loving student of humanity. It had cost her more effort to learn than almost any song, and perhaps therefore it was the more precious. Andrew seldom gave her a book to learn from; in general he copied, in his clearest handwriting, whatever poem or paragraph he thought fit for Dawtie; and when they met, she would not unfrequently, if there was time, repeat unasked what she had learned, and be rewarded with his unfailing look of satisfaction.

There was a secret between them—a secret proclaimed on the house-tops, a secret hidden, the most precious of pearls, in their hearts—that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; that its work is the work of the Lord, whether the sowing of the field, the milking of the cow, the giving to the poor, the spending of wages, the reading of the Bible; that God is all in all, and every throb of gladness His gift; that their life came fresh every moment from His heart; that what was lacking to them would arrive the very moment He had got them ready for it. They were God’s little ones in God’s world—none the less their own that they did not desire to swallow it, or thrust it in their pockets.

Among poverty-stricken Christians, consumed with care to keep a hold of the world and save their souls, they were as two children of the house. By living in the presence of the living One, they had become themselves His presence—dim lanterns through which His light shone steady. Who obeys, shines.

CHAPTER XIV. SANDY AND GEORGE

Sandy had found it expedient to go to America, and had now been there a twelvemonth; he had devised a machine of the value of which not even his patron could be convinced—that is, he could not see the prospect of its making money fast enough to constitute it a good thing. Sandy regarded it as a discovery, a revelation for the uplifting of a certain down-trodden portion of the community; and therefore, having saved a little money, had resolved to make it known in the States, where insight into probabilities is fresher. And now Andrew had a letter from him in which he mentioned that he had come across Mr. Crawford, already of high repute in Wall Street; that he had been kind to him, and having learned his object in visiting the country, and the approximate risk in bringing out his invention, had taken the thing into consideration. But the next mail brought another letter to the effect that, having learned the nature of the business done by Mr. Crawford, he found himself unable to distinguish between it and gambling, or worse; it seemed to him a vortex whose very emptiness drew money into it. He had therefore drawn back, and declined to put the thing in Crawford’s hands. This letter Andrew gave Dawtie to read, that she might see that Sandy remained a true man. He had never been anxious on the point, but was very glad that ignorance had not drawn him into an evil connection.

Dawtie took the letter with her to read at her leisure. Unable, however, to understand something Sandy said concerning Mr. Crawford’s business, she asked a question or two of her mistress, which led to questions on Alexa’s part. Finding what was the subject of Sandy’s letter, she wished to see it. Dawtie asked leave of Andrew, and gave it her.

Alexa was both distressed and indignant becoming at once George’s partisan. Her distress diminished and her indignation increased as she reflected on the airt whence the unfavorable report reached her; the brothers were such peculiar men! She recalled the strange things she had heard of their childhood; doubtless the judgment was formed on an overstrained and quixotic idea of honesty! Besides, there had always been a strong socialistic tendency in them, which explained how Sandy could malign his benefactor! George was incapable of doing anything dishonorable! She would not trouble herself about it. But she would like to know how Andrew regarded the matter.

She asked him therefore what he thought of Sandy’s procedure. Andrew replied that he did not know much about business; but that the only safety must lie in having nothing to do with what was doubtful; therefore Sandy had done right. Alexa said it was too bad of him to condemn where he confessed ignorance. Andrew replied:

“Ma’am, if Mr. Crawford is wrong he is condemned; if he is right my private doubt can not hurt him. Sandy must act by his own doubt, not by Mr. Crawford’s confidence.”

Alexa grew more distressed, for she began to recall things George had said which at the time she had not liked, but which she had succeeded in forgetting. If he had indeed gone astray, she hoped he would forget her; she could do without him! But the judgment of such a man as Sandy could settle nothing. Of humble origin and childish simplicity, he could not see the thing as a man of experience must. George might be all right notwithstanding. At the same time there was his father—whose reputation remained under a thick cloud, whose failed character rather than his ill-success had driven George to the other continent. Breed must go for something in a question of probabilities. It was the first time Alexa’s thoughts had been turned into such a channel. She clung to the poor comfort that something must have passed at the interview so kindly sought by George to set the quixotical young farmer against him. She would not utter his name to Andrew ever again!

She was right in thinking that George cherished a sincere affection for her. It was one of the spurs which drove him too eagerly after money. I doubt if any man starts with a developed love of money for its own sake—except indeed he be born of generations of mammon worshipers. George had gone into speculation with the object of retrieving the position in which he had supposed himself born, and in the hope of winning the hand of his cousin—thinking too much of himself to offer what would not in the eyes of the world be worth her acceptance. When he stepped on the inclined plane of dishonesty he believed himself only engaging in “legitimate speculation;” but he was at once affected by the atmosphere about him. Wrapped in the breath of admiration and adulation surrounding men who cared for nothing but money-making, men who were not merely dishonest, but the very serpents of dishonesty, against whom pickpockets will “stick off” as angels of light; constantly under the softly persuasive influence of low morals and extravagant appreciation of cunning, he came by rapid degrees to think less and less of right and wrong. At first he called the doings of the place dishonest; then he called them sharp practice; then he called them a little shady; then, close sailing; then he said this or that transaction was deuced clever; then, the man was more rogue than fool; then he laughed at the success of a vile trick; then he touched the pitch, and thinking all the time it was but with one finger, was presently besmeared all over—as was natural, for he who will touch is already smeared.

While Alexa was fighting his battles with herself he had thrown down his arms in the only battle worth fighting. When he wrote to her, which he did regularly, he said no more about business than that his prospects were encouraging; how much his reticence may have had to do with a sense of her disapproval I can not tell.

CHAPTER XV. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

One lovely summer evening Dawtie, with a bundle in her hand, looked from the top of a grassy knoll down on her parents’ turf cottage. The sun was setting behind her, and she looked as if she had stepped from it as it touched the ground on which she stood, rosy with the rosiness of the sun, but with a light in her countenance which came from a higher source, from the same nest as the sun himself. She paused but a moment, ran down the hill, and found her mother making the porridge. Mother and daughter neither embraced, nor kissed, nor even shook hands, but their faces glowed with delight, and words of joy and warmest welcome flowed between them.

“But ye haena lost yer place, hae ye, hinny?” said the mother.

“No, mother; there’s no fear o’ that, as lang’s the laird or Miss Lexy’s to the fore. They tret me—I winna say like ane o’ themsel’s, but as if they would hae likit me for ane o’ themsel’s, gien it had pleased the Lord to sen’ me their way instead o’ yours. They’re that guid to me ye canna think!”

“Then what’s broucht ye the day?”

“I beggit for a play-day. I wantit to see An’rew.”

“Eh, lass! I’m feart for ye! Ye maunna set yer hert sae hie! An’rew’s the best o’ men, but a lass canna hae a man til hersel’ jist ‘cause he’s the best man i’ the warl’!”

“What mean ye by that, mother?” said Dawtie, looking a little scared. “Am I no’ to lo’e An’rew, ‘cause he’s ‘maist as guid’s the Lord wad hae him? Wad ye hae me hate him for’t? Has na he taught me to lo’e God—to lo’e Him better nor father, mither, An’rew, or onybody? I wull lo’e An’rew! What can ye mean, mother?”

“What I mean, Dawtie, is, that ye mamma think because ye lo’e him ye maun hae him; ye maunna think ye canna du wantin’ An’rew!”

“It’s true, mother, I kenna what I should do wantin’ An’rew! Is na he aye shovin’ the door o’ the kingdom a wee wider to lat me see in the better? It’s little ferly (marvel) I lo’e him! But as to wantin’him for my ain man, as ye hae my father!—mother, I wad be ashamet o’ mysel’ to think o’ ony sic a thing!—clean affrontit wi’ mysel’ I wad be!”

“Weel, weel, bairn! Ye was aye a wise like lass, an’ I maun lippen til ye! Only luik to yer hert.”

“As for no’ lo’ein’ him, mither—me that canna luik at a blin’ kittlin’ ohn lo’ed it!—lo, mither! God made me sae, an didna mean me no’ to lo’e An’rew!”

“Andrew!” she repeated, as if the word meant the perfection of earth’s worthiest rendering the idea of appropriation too absurd.

Silence followed, but the mother was brooding.

“Ye maun bethink ye, lass, hoo far he’s abune ye!” she said at length.

As the son of the farmer on whose land her husband was a cotter, Andrew seemed to her what the laird seemed to old John Ingram, and what the earl seemed to the laird, though the laird’s family was ancient when the earl’s had not been heard of. But Dawtie understood Andrew better than did her mother.

“You and me sees him far abune, mother, but Andrew himsel’ never thinks o’ nae sic things. He’s sae used to luikin’ up, he’s forgotten to luik doon. He bauds his lan’ frae a higher than the laird, or the yerl himsel’!”

The mother was silent. She was faithful and true, but, fed on the dried fish of logic and system and Roman legalism, she could not follow the simplicities of her daughter’s religion, who trusted neither in notions about him, nor even in what he had done, but in the live Christ himself whom she loved and obeyed.

“If Andrew wanted to marry me,” Dawtie went on, jealous for the divine liberty of her teacher, “which never cam intil’s heid—na, no ance—the same bein’ ta’en up wi’ far ither things, it wouldna be because I was but a cotter lass that he wouldna tak his ain gait! But the morn’s the Sabbath day, and we’ll hae a walk thegither.”

“I dinna a’thegither like thae walks upo’ the Sabbath day,” said the mother.

“Jesus walkit on the Sabbath the same as ony ither day, mother!”

“Weel, but He kenned what He was aboot!”

“And sae do I, mother! I ken His wull!”

“He had aye something on han’ fit to be dune o’ the Sabbath!”

“And so hae I the day, mother. If I was to du onything no fit i’ this His warl’, luikin’ oot o’ the e’en He gae me, wi’ the han’s an’ feet He gae me, I wad jist deserve to be nippit oot at ance, or sent intil the ooter mirk (darkness)!”

“There’s a mony maun fare ill then, lass!”

“I’m sayin’ only for mysel’. I ken nane sae to blame as I would be mysel’.”

“Is na that makin’ yersel’ oot better nor ither fowk, lass?”

“Gien I said I thoucht onything worth doin’ but the wull o’ God, I wad be a leear; gien I say man or woman has naething ither to do i’ this warl’ or the neist, I say it believin’ ilkane o’ them maun come til’t at the lang last. Feow sees’t yet, but the time’s comin’ when ilkabody will be as sure o’ ‘t as I am. What won’er is’t that I say’t, wi’ Jesus tellin’ me the same frae mornin’ to nicht!”

“Lass, lass, I fear me, ye’ll gang oot o’ yer min’!”

“It ‘ll be intil the mind o’ Christ, then, mother! I dinna care for my ain min’. I hae nane o’ my ain, an’ will stick to His. Gien I dinna mak His mine, and stick til’t, I’m lost! Noo, mother, I’ll set the things, and run ower to the hoose, and lat An’rew ken I’m here!”

“As ye wull, lass! ye’r ayont me! I s’ say naething anent a willfu’ woman, for ye’ve been aye a guid dochter. I trust I hae risen to houp the Lord winna be disappointit in ye.”

Dawtie found Andrew in the stable, suppering his horses, told him she had something to talk to him about, and asked if he would let her go with him in his walk the next day. Andrew was delighted to see her, but he did not say so; and she was back before her mother had taken the milk from the press. In a few minutes her father appeared, and welcomed her with a sober joy. As they eat their supper, he could not keep his eyes off her, she sat looking so well and nice and trim. He was a good-looking, work-worn man, his hands absolutely horny with labor. But inside many such horny husks are ripening beautiful kingdom hands, for the time when “dear welcome Death” will loose and let us go from the grave-clothes of the body that bind some of us even hand and foot. Rugged father and withered mother were beautiful in the eyes of Dawtie, and she and God saw them better than any other. Good, endless good was on the way to them all! It was so pleasant to be waiting for the best of all good things.