"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at Tito! All his vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't help it. The thing is good in itself."
Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man making a valuable contribution to the argument:--
"Beauty is but skin deep."
"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn says, 'only man is vile.'"
"But that really does apply to his moral."
"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of us are hideous."
"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug, comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.
"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for existence----"
"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"
Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking, as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael nose if I had had any choice in the matter."
The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the moment have thought of anything save the crude assertion that he considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow between the road and a bog full of waving cotton grass. So the Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the rheumatism, simply appalling.
"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret, which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and held out her hand.
"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure, care to hear me abused; so it is wiser for me to go alone. Good-bye."
She was off as she spoke down the brae, leaving him disappointed, yet still vaguely content, the very thought of in the future having a wife who would go and visit old Peggy filling him with peace, for that old woman was a sore trial to his dignity, since she invariably made a point of remembering his youth as a barefoot cotter's boy. But then at heart she was a Presbyterian who did not believe in the sanctity of orders. So he went on his way down the loch fairly satisfied with himself, while Marjory took his place beside the sick bed of the rheumatic old woman.
The girl gave one regretful glance at the sunshine before she dived into the darkness of the cottage. It was mean and squalid in the extreme, yet to those accustomed to the dirt and warmth, the discomfort and the cosiness of a Highland hut, its air of tidiness was unusual. The mud floor was even and clean swept, the single pane of glass doing duty as a window was neither broken nor patched with rags, while the crazy, smoke-blackened dresser was ranged with common earthenware. A gathering peat, just edged with fire, lay on the huge stone hearth, above which a tiny black pot hung in the thin column of pale blue smoke which, as it rose to the dim rafters, was illumined by the only ray of sunlight in the house--that which streamed through the round hole in the roof which did duty as a chimney. Beside the hearth a fair-haired boy of about six lay fast asleep, while from a settle in the darkness a pair of gleaming green eyes revealed the presence of a cat.
Nothing more to be seen by Marjory's sun-blinded sight. Not a sound to be heard, until suddenly a grey hen roosting in the rafters began to cluck uproariously with much sidelong prancings of a pair of yellow legs, and downward dips of a quaint, irascible, tufted head. Instantly from a recess bed arose a patient moan and a pious aspiration that the Lord's will might be done at all costs.
"Good afternoon, Peggy! I hope your sleep has done you good," said Marjory blithely, as she sate down on the edge of the bed, and looked steadily at the occupant's face. Old Peggy Duncan, with the assertion that she had not slept for days trembling on her tongue, wavered before the girl's decision, and murmured something about closing an eye.
"That is better than nothing, isn't it?" continued the uncompromising visitor. "And as for wee Paulie! he's been having a fine snooze. Haven't you, Paulie?"
The child by the fire, rubbing his eyes drowsily, smiled back at her rather sheepishly.
"'Deed it's so," broke in the querulous voice, satisfied at finding a legitimate object for complaint. "He's just the laziest, weariest wean, and no caring a tinker's damn for his nanny. Just lyin' sleepin', and me in an agony. Could ye not watch?--Ay!--Ay! But what can one expect o' a child o' the devil----"
"Peggy! You're a wicked old woman to speak like that. Paul does more than most boys twice his age. I'll be bound he has been stuffing indoors with you all day long without a grumble. Run away now, dear laddie, and get the fresh air."
The order, spoken in Gaelic, produced a sudden flash of life all over the little fellow, and he was out of the door in a second. Marjory looked after him with a pleasant smile.
"He is a pretty boy, isn't he, Peggy?--quite the prettiest in the glen."
"Aye! he has the curse o' beauty. Sae had his mither. Ay! an' her father before her. Thank the Lord, Miss Marjory, you're no bonnie."
"I shall do nothing of the sort, Peggy. And how is the pain? Better for that liniment I rubbed in yesterday?"
"Better!" There was a world of satisfied scorn in the old voice. "Better frae ae teaspoonful o' stuff. Lord be gude to us, Miss Marjory! Naethin' short o' a meeracle'll better me, an' ye talk o' a carnal rubbin' doing it."
"It would be a miracle if it did, wouldn't it, Peggy?" retorted the girl, calmly; "but if it did no good at all there is no use in repeating it, so I'll be off and leave you to your sleep again."
"Hoot awa! an' you tired wi' your walk. Just sit ye down and rest a bit and dinna mind me. I'm used to being no minded, ye ken. Wha minds a bit pauper body but the pairish? Two an' saxpence a week, an' a boll o' meal term-day that's no meal at a', but just grits; grits and dirt. I'm no wondering that they puts soddy (soda) until't at the poor's-house to gar't swall. Ay! Aye! and me lyin' a week without spiritual food, an' I cravin' for it from anyone."
"Now, Peggy, you know quite well you told Mr. Gillespie you wanted none of his priestcraft, the last time he was here. You are just a bad, ungrateful old woman, and I've a great mind to go away without making you a cup of tea or telling you the news."
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