"I care what they think of you," Gavin said, as if that were decisive, "and I tell you I will not allow you to repeat this freak."
"You 'will not allow me,'" echoed Babbie, almost enjoying herself, despite her sudden loss of sel f-respect,
"I will not," Gavin said, resolutely. "Henceforth you must do as I think fit."
"Since when have you taken command of me?" demanded Babbie.
"Since a minute ago," Gavin replied, "when you let me kiss you."
"Let you!" exclaimed Babbie, now justly incensed. "You did it yourself. I was very angry."
"No, you were not."
"I am not allowed to say that even?" asked the Egyptian. "Tell me something I may say, then, and I will repeat it after you."
"I have something to say to you," Gavin told her, after a moment's reflection; "yes, and there is something I should like to hear you repeat after me, but not to-night."
"I don't want to hear what it is," Babbie said, quickly, but she knew what it was, and even then, despite the new pain at her heart, her bosom swelled with pride because this man still loved her. Now she wanted to run away with his love for her before he could take it from her, and then realising that this parting must be forever, a great desire filled her to hear him put that kiss into words, and she said, faltering:
"You can tell me what it is if you like."
"Not to-night," said Gavin.
"To-night, if at all," the gypsy almost entreated.
"To-morrow, at Nanny's," answered Gavin, decisively: and this time he remembered without dismay that the morrow was the Sabbath.
In the fairy tale the beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince, and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over this man, her plaything.
"Your lantern is shining on my mother's window," were the words that woke her from this discovery, and then she found herself yielding the lantern to him. She became conscious vaguely that a corresponding change was taking place in herself.
"You spoke of taking me to your mother," she said, bitterly.
"Yes," he answered at once, "to-morrow"; but she shook her head, knowing that to-morrow he would be wiser.
"Give me the lantern," she said, in a low voice, "I am going back to Nanny's now."
"Yes," he said, "we must set out now, but I can carry the lantern."
"You are not coming with me!" she exclaimed, shaking herself free of his hand.
"I am coming," he replied, calmly, though he was not calm. "Take my arm, Babbie."
She made a last effort to free herself from bondage, crying passionately, "I will not let you come."
"When I say I am coming," Gavin answered between his teeth, "I mean that I am coming, and so let that be an end of this folly. Take my arm."
"I think I hate you," she said, retreating from him.
"Take my arm," he repeated, and, though her breast was rising rebelliously, she did as he ordered, and so he escorted her from the garden. At the foot of the field she stopped, and thought to frighten him by saying, "What would the people say if they saw you with me now?"
"It does not much matter what they would say," he answered, still keeping his teeth together as if doubtful of their courage. "As for what they would do, that is certain; they would put me out of my church."
"And it is dear to you?"
"Dearer than life."
"You told me long ago that your mother's heart would break if----"
"Yes, I am sure it would."
They had begun to climb the fields, but she stopped him with a jerk.
"Go back, Mr. Dishart," she implored, clutching his arm with both hands. "You make me very unhappy for no purpose. Oh, why should you risk so much for me?"
"I cannot have you wandering here alone at midnight," Gavin answered, gently.
"That is nothing to me," she said, eagerly, but no longer resenting his air of proprietorship.
"You will never do it again if I can prevent it."
"But you cannot," she said, sadly. "Oh, yes, you can, Mr. Dishart. If you will turn back now I shall promise never to do anything again without first asking myself whether it would seem right to you. I know I acted very wrongly to-night."
"Only thoughtlessly," he said.
"Then have pity on me," she besought him, "and go back. If I have only been thoughtless, how can you punish me thus? Mr. Dishart," she entreated, her voice breaking, "if you were to suffer for this folly of mine, do you think I could live?"
"We are in God's hands, dear," he answered, firmly, and he again drew her arm to him. So they climbed the first field, and were almost at the hill before either spoke again.
"Stop," Babbie whispered, crouching as she spoke; "I see some one crossing the hill."
"I have seen him for some time," Gavin answered, quietly; "but I am doing no wrong, and I will not hide."
The Egyptian had to walk on with him, and I suppose she did not think the less of him for that. Yet she said, warningly--
"If he sees you, all Thrums will be in an uproar before morning."
"I cannot help that," Gavin replied. "It is the will of God."
"To ruin you for my sins?"
"If He thinks fit."
The figure drew nearer, and with every step Babbie's distress doubled.
"We are walking straight to him," she whispered. "I implore you to wait here until he passes, if not for your own sake, for your mother's."
At that he wavered, and she heard his teeth sliding against each other, as if he could no longer clench them.
"But, no," he said moving on again, "I will not be a skulker from any man. If it be God's wish that I should suffer for this, I must suffer."
"Oh, why," cried Babbie, beating her hands together in grief, "should you suffer for me?"
"You are mine," Gavin answered. Babbie gasped.
"And if you act foolishly," he continued, "it is right that I should bear the brunt of it. No, I will not let you go on alone; you are not fit to be alone. You need some one to watch over you and care for you and love you, and, if need be, to suffer with you."
"Turn back, dear, before he sees us."
"He has seen us."
Yes, I had seen them, for the figure on the hill was no other than the dominie of Glen Quharity. The park gate clicked as it swung to, and I looked up and saw Gavin and the Egyptian. My eyes should have found them sooner, but it was to gaze upon Margaret's home, while no one saw me, that I had trudged into Thrums so late, and by that time, I suppose, my eyes were of little service for seeing through. Yet, when I knew that of these two people suddenly beside me on the hill one was the little minister and the other a strange woman, I fell back from their side with dread before I could step forward and cry "Gavin!"
"I am Mr. Dishart," he answered, with a composure that would not have served him for another sentence. He was more excited than I, for the "Gavin" fell harmlessly on him, while I had no sooner uttered it than there rushed through me the shame of being false to Margaret. It was the only time in my life that I for-got her in him, though he has ever stood next to her in my regard.
I looked from Gavin to the gypsy woman, and again from her to him, and she began to tell a lie in his interest. But she got no farther than "I met Mr. Dis-bart accid--" when she stopped, ashamed. It was reverence for Gavin that checked the lie. Not every man has had such a compliment paid him.
"It is natural," Gavin said, slowly, "that you, sir, should wonder why I am here with this woman at such an hour, and you may know me so little as to think ill of me for it."
I did not answer, and he misunderstood my silence.
"No," he continued, in a harder voice, as if I had asked him a question, "I will explain nothing to you. You are not my judge. If you would do me harm, sir, you have it in your power."
It was with these cruel words that Gavin addressed me. He did not know how cruel they were. The Egyptian, I think, must have seen that his suspicions hurt me, for she said, softly, with a look of appeal in her eyes--
&nb
sp; "You are the schoolmaster in Glen Quharity? Then you will perhaps save Mr. Dishart the trouble of coming farther by showing me the way to old Nanny Webster's house at Windyghoul?"
"I have to pass the house at any rate," I answered eagerly, and she came quickly to my side.
I knew, though in the darkness I could see but vaguely, that Gavin was holding his head high and waiting for me to say my worst. I had not told him that I dared think no evil of him, and he still suspected me. Now I would not trust myself to speak lest I should betray Margaret, and yet I wanted him to know that base doubts about him could never find a shelter in me. I am a timid man who long ago lost the glory of my life by it, and I was again timid when I sought to let Gavin see that my faith in him was unshaken. I lifted my bonnet to the gypsy, and asked her to take my arm. It was done clumsily, I cannot doubt, but he read my meaning and held out his hand to me. I had not touched it since he was three years old, and I trembled too much to give it the grasp I owed it. He and I parted without a word, but to the Egyptian he said, "To- morrow, dear, I will see you at Nanny's," and he was to kiss her, but I pulled her a step farther from him, and she put her hands over her face, crying, "No, no!"
If I asked her some questions between the hill and Windyghoul you must not blame me, for this was my affair as well as theirs. She did not answer me; I know now that she did not hear me. But at the mud house she looked abruptly into my face, and said--
"You love him, too!"
I trudged to the school-house with these words for company, and it was less her discovery than her confession that tortured me. How much I slept that night you may guess.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONTAINS A BIRTH, WHICH IS SUFFICIENT FOR ONE CHAPTER.
"The kirk bell will soon be ringing," Nanny said on the following morning, as she placed herself carefully on a stool, one hand holding her Bible and the other wandering complacently over her aged merino gown. "Ay, lassie, though you're only an Egyptian I would hae ta'en you wi' me to hear Mr. Duthie, but it's spei ring ower muckle o' a woman to expect her to gang to the kirk in her ilka day claethes."
The Babbie of yesterday would have laughed at this, but the new Babbie sighed.
"I wonder you don't go to Mr. Dishart's church now. Nanny," she said, gently. "I am sure you prefer him."
"Babbie, Babbie," exclaimed Nanny, with spirit, "may I never be so far left to mysel' as to change my kirk just because I like another minister better! It's easy seen, lassie, that you ken little o' religious questions."
"Very little," Babbie admitted, sadly.
"But dinna ba so waeful about it," the old woman continued, kindly, "for that's no nane like you. Ay, and if you see muckle mair o' Mr. Dishart he'll soon cure your ignorance."
"I shall not see much more of him," Babbie answered, with averted head.
"The like o' you couldna expect it," Nanny said, simply, whereupon Babbie went to the window. "I had better be stepping," Nanny said, rising, "for I am aye late unless I'm on the hill by the time the bell begins. Ay, Babbie, I'm doubting my merino's no sair in the fashion?"
She looked down at her dress half despondently, and yet with some pride.
"It was fowerpence the yard, and no less," she went on, fondling the worn merino, "when we bocht it at Sam'l Curr's. Ay, but it has been turned sax times since syne."
She sighed, and Babbie came to her and put her arms round her, saying, "Nanny, you are a dear."
"I'm a gey auld-farrant-looking dear, I doubt," said Nanny, ruefully.
"Now, Nanny," rejoined Babbie, "you are just wanting me to flatter you. You know the merino looks very nice."
"It's a guid merino yet," admitted the old woman, "but, oh, Babbie, what does the material matter if the cut isna fashionable? It's fine, isn't it, to be in the fashion?"
She spoke so wistfully that, instead of smiling, Babbie kissed her.
"I am afraid to lay hand on the merino, Nanny, but give me off your bonnet and I'll make it ten years younger in as many minutes."
"Could you?" asked Nanny, eagerly, unloosening her bonnet-strings. "Mercy on me!" she had to add; "to think about altering bonnets on the Sabbath-day! Lassie, how could you propose sic a thing?"
"Forgive me, Nanny," Babbie replied, so meekly that the old woman looked at her curiously.
"I dinna understand what has come ower you," she said. "There's an unca difference in you since last nicht. I used to think you were mair like a bird than a lassie, but you've lost a' your daft capers o' singing and lauching, and I take ill wi't. Twa or three times I've catched you greeting. Babbie, what has come ower you?"
"Nothing, Nanny. I think I hear the bell."
Down in Thrums two kirk-officers had let their bells loose, waking echoes in Windyghoul as one dog in country parts sets all the others barking, but Nanny did not hurry off to church. Such a surprising notion had filled her head suddenly that she even forgot to hold her dress off the floor.
"Babbie," she cried, in consternation, "dinna tell me you've gotten ower fond o' Mr. Dishart."
"The like of me, Nanny!" the gypsy answered, with affected raillery, but there was a tear in her eye.
"It would be a wild, presumptious thing," Nanny said, "and him a grand minister, but--"
Babbie tried to look her in the face, but failed, and then all at once there came back to Nanny the days when she and her lover wandered the hill together.
"Ah, my dawtie," she cried, so tenderly, "what does it matter wha he is when you canna help it!"
Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and Babbie rested her head on the old woman's breast. But do you think it could have happened had not Nanny loved a weaver two-score years before?
And now Nanny has set off for church and Babbie is alone in the mud house. Some will pity her not at all, this girl who was a dozen women in the hour, and all made of impulses that would scarce stand still to be photographed. To attempt to picture her at any time until now would have been like chasing a spirit that changes to something else as your arms clasp it; yet she has always seemed a pathetic little figure to me. If I understand Babbie at all, it is, I think, because I loved Margaret, the only woman I have ever known well, and one whose nature was not, like the Egyptian's, complex, but most simple, as if God had told her only to be good. Throughout my life since she came into it she has been to me a glass in which many things are revealed that I could not have learned save through her, and something of all womankind, even of bewildering Babbie, I seem to know because I knew Margaret.
No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to love, for then God has her by the hand. There is no love but this. She may dream of what love is, but it is only of a sudden that she knows. Babbie, who was without a guide from her baby days, had dreamed but little of it, hearing its name given to another thing. She had been born wild and known no home; no one had touched her heart except to strike it, she had been educated, but never tamed; her life had been thrown strangely among those who were great in the world's possessions, but she was not of them. Her soul was in such darkness that she had never seen it; she would have danced away cynically from the belief that there is such a thing, and now all at once she had passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not love God's doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself, and the moment she saw it the flash lit her own soul.
It was but little of his Master that was in Gavin, but far smaller things have changed the current of human lives; the spider's thread that strikes our brow on a country road may do that. Yet this I will say, though I have no wish to cast the little minister on my pages larger than he was, that he had some heroic hours in Thrums, of which one was when Babbie learned to love him. Until the moment when he kissed her she had only conceived him a quaint fellow whose life was a string of Sundays, but behold what she saw in him now. Evidently to his noble mind her mystery was only some misfortune, not of her making, and his was to be the part of leading her away from it into the happiness of the open life. He did not doubt her, for he loved, and to doubt
is to dip love in the mire. She had been given to him by God, and he was so rich in her possession that the responsibility attached to the gift was not grievous. She was his, and no mortal man could part them. Those who looked askance at her were looking askance at him; in so far as she was wayward and wild, he was those things; so long as she remained strange to religion, the blame lay on him.
All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past night, and to her it was the book of love. What things she had known, said and done in that holy name! How shamefully have we all besmirched it! She had only known it as the most selfish of the passions, a brittle image that men consulted because it could only answer in the words they gave it to say. But here was a man to whom love was something better than his own desires leering on a pedestal. Such love as Babbie had seen hitherto made strong men weak, but this was a love that made a weak man strong. All her life, strength had been her idol, and the weakness that bent to her cajolery her scorn. But only now was it revealed to her that strength, instead of being the lusty child of passions, grows by grappling with and throwing them.
So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that she had ever seen in man. I shall be told that she thought far more of him than he deserved, forgetting the mean in the worthy: but who that has had a glimpse of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth on earth? Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.
Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin preached a sermon in praise of Woman, and up in the mudhouse in Windyghoul Babbie sat alone. But it was the Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in her life. Her discovery had frozen her mind for a time, so that she could only stare at it with eyes that would not shut; but that had been in the night. Already her love seemed a thing of years, for it was as old as herself, as old as the new Babbie. It was such a dear delight that she clasped it to her, and exulted over it because it was hers, and then she cried over it because she must give it up.
Barrie, J M - Thrums 03 - The Little Minister Page 18
