Alec Forbes of Howglen Part 52

"Without an instant's hesitation, Robert slipped it away, and crumpling it up in his hand, gave out the twenty-third psalm, over which it had lain, and read it through. Finding it too short, however, for the respectability of worship, he went on with the twenty-fourth, turning the leaf with thumb and forefinger, while the rest of the fingers clasped the note tight in his palm, and reading as he turned,

"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart--"

As soon as he had finished this psalm, he closed the book with a snap; feeling which to have been improper, he put an additional compensating solemnity into the tone in which he said:

"Thomas Crann, will you engage in prayer?"

"Pray yersel'," answered Thomas gruffly.

Whereupon Robert rose, and, kneeling down, did pray himself.

But Thomas, instead of leaning forward on his chair when he knelt, glanced sharply round at Bruce. He had seen him take something from the Bible, and crumple it up in his hand but would not have felt any inclination to speculate about it, had it not been for the peculiarly keen expression of eager surprise and happy greed which came over his face in the act. Having seen that, and being always more or less suspicious of Bruce, he wanted to know more; and was thus led into an action of which he would not have believed it possible he should ever be guilty.

He saw Bruce take advantage of the posture of devotion which he had a.s.sumed, to put something into his pocket unseen of his guests, as he believed.

When worship was over, Bruce did not ask them to slay to supper.

Prayers did not involve expense; supper did. But Thomas at least could not have stayed longer.

He left his friends and went home pondering. The devotions of the day were not to be concluded for him with any social act of worship. He had many anxious prayers yet to offer before his heart would be quiet in sleep. Especially there was Alec to be prayed for, and his dawtie, Annie; and in truth the whole town of Glamerton, and the surrounding parishes--and Scotland, and the world. Indeed sometimes Thomas went further, and although it is not reported of him that he ever prayed for the devil, as that worthiest of Scotch clergymen prayed, he yet did something very like it once or twice, when he prayed for "the haill universe o' G.o.d, an' a' the bein's in't, up and doon, that we ken unco little about."

CHAPTER LV.

The next morning Kate and Alec rose early, to walk before breakfast to the top of one of the hills, through a young larch-wood which covered it from head to foot. The morning was cool, and the sun exultant as a good child. The dew-diamonds were flashing everywhere, none the less lovely that they were fresh-made that morning. The lark's song was a cantata with the sun and the wind and the larch-odours, in short, the whole morning for the words. How the larks did sing that morning! The only clouds were long pale delicate streaks of lovely gradations in gray; here mottled, there swept into curves. It was just the morning to rouse a wild longing for motion, for the sea and its sh.o.r.e, for endless travel through an endless region of grace and favour, the sun rising no higher, the dew lingering on every blade, and the lark never wearying for his nest. Kate longed for some infinitude of change without vicissitude--ceaseless progress towards a goal endlessly removed! She did not know that the door into that life might have been easier to find in that ugly chapel than even here in the vestibule of heaven.

"My nurse used to call the lark 'Our Lady's hen,'" said Kate.

"How pretty!" answered Alec, and had no more to say.

"Are the people of Glamerton very wicked, Alec?" asked Kate, making another attempt to rouse a conversation.

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Alec. "I suppose they're no worse than other people."

"I thought from Mr Turnbull's sermon that they must be a great deal worse."

"Oh! they all preach like that--except good Mr Cowie, and he's dead."

"Do you think he knew better than the rest of them?"

"I don't know that. But the missionars do know something that other people don't know. And that Mr Turnbull always speaks as if he were in earnest."

"Yes, he does."

"But there's that fellow Bruce!"

"Do you mean the man that put us into his seat?"

"Yes. I _can't_ think what makes my mother so civil to him."

"Why shouldn't she be?"

"Well, you see--I can't bear him. And I can't understand my mother.

It's not like her."

In a moment more they were in a gentle twilight of green, flashed with streaks of gold. A forest of delicate young larches crowded them in, their rich brown cones hanging like the knops that looped up their dark garments fringed with paler green.

And the scent! What a thing to _invent_--the smell of a larch wood! It is the essence of the earth-odour, distilled in the thousand-fold alembics of those feathery trees. And the light winds that awoke blew murmurous music, so sharply and sweetly did that keen foliage divide the air.

Having gazed their fill on the morning around them, they returned to breakfast, and after breakfast they went down to the river. They stood on the bank, over one of the deepest pools, in the bottom of which the pebbles glimmered brown. Kate gazed into it abstracted, fascinated, swinging her neckerchief in her hand. Something fell into the water.

"Oh!" she cried, "what shall I do? It was my mother's."

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when Alec was in the water.

Bubbles rose and broke as he vanished. Kate did not scream, but stood, pale, with parted lips, staring into the pool. With a boiling and heaving of the water, he rose triumphant, holding up the brooch. Kate gave a cry and threw herself on the gra.s.s. When Alec reached her, she lay sobbing, and would not lift her head.

"You are very unkind, Alec," she said at last, looking up. "What will your mother say?"

And she hid her face and began to sob afresh.

"It was your mother's brooch," answered Alec.

"Yes, yes; but we could have got it out somehow."

"No other how.--I would have done that for any girl. You don't know what I would do for _you_, Kate."

"You shouldn't have frightened me. I had been thinking how greedy the pool looked," said Kate, rising now, as if she dared not remain longer beside it.

"I didn't mean to frighten you, Kate. I never thought of it. I am almost a water-rat."

"And now you'll get your death of cold. Come along."

Alec laughed. He was in no hurry to go home. But she seized his hand and half-dragged him all the way. He had never been so happy in his life.

Kate had cried because he had jumped into the water!

That night they had a walk in the moonlight. It was all moon--the air with the mooncore in it; the trees confused into each other by the sleep of her light; the bits of water, so many moons over again; the flowers, all pale phantoms of flowers: the whole earth, transfused with reflex light, was changed into a moon-ghost of its former self. They were walking in the moon-world.

The silence and the dimness sank into Alec's soul, and it became silent and dim too. The only sound was the noise of the river, quenched in that light to the sleepy hush of moon-haunted streams.

Kate felt that she had more room now. And yet the scope of her vision was less, for the dusk had closed in around her.

She had ampler room because the Material had retired as behind a veil, leaving the Immaterial less burdened, and the imagination more free to work its will. The Spiritual is ever putting on material garments; but in the moonlight, the Material puts on spiritual garments.

Kate sat down at the foot of an old tree which stood alone in one of the fields. Alec threw himself on the gra.s.s, and looked up in her face, which was the spirit-moon shining into his world, and drowning it in dreams.--The Arabs always call their beautiful women _moons_.--Kate sat as silent as the moon in heaven, which rained down silence. And Alec lay gazing at Kate, till silence gave birth to speech: