“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