Alec Forbes of Howglen Part 54

Having uttered this solemn prediction, of the import of which he, like some other prophets, knew nothing before he uttered it, Murdoch Malison sat down, _a stickit minister_. His brain was a vacuum; and the thought of standing up again to pray was intolerable. No more could he sit there; for if he sat, the people would sit too. Something must be done, and there was n.o.body to do anything. He must get out and then the people would go home. But how could he escape? He durst not go down that pulpit stair in the sight of the congregation.--He cared no more for his vanished reputation. His only thought was how to get out.

Meantime the congregation was variously affected. Some held down their heads and laughed immoderately. These were mostly of Mr Malison's scholars, the fine edge of whose nature, if it ever had any, had vanished under the rasp of his tortures. Even Alec, who, with others of the a.s.sembly, held down his head from sympathetic shame, could not help remembering how the master had made Annie Anderson stand upon the form, and believing for the time in a general retribution in kind.

Andrew Truffey was crying bitterly. His sobs were heard through the church, and some took them for the sobs of Murdoch Malison, who had shrunk into the pulpit like a snail into its sh.e.l.l, so that not an atom of his form was to be seen except from the side-galleries. The maiden daughter of the late schoolmaster gave a shriek, and went into a small fit; after which an awful, quite sepulchral silence reigned for a few moments, broken only by those quivering sobs from Truffey, whom his grandfather was feebly and ineffectually shaking.

At length the precentor, George Macwha, who had for some time been turning over the leaves of his psalm-book, came to the rescue. He rose in the lectern and gave out _The hundred and fifty-first psalm_. The congregation could only find a hundred and fifty, and took the last of the psalms for the one meant. But George, either from old spite against the tormentor of boys and girls, or from mere coincidence--he never revealed which--had chosen in reality a part of the _fifty-first_ psalm.

"The hunner an' fifty-first psalm," repeated George, "from the fifteent verse. An' syne we'll gang hame.

My closed lips, O Lord, by thee, Let them be opened."

As soon as the singing was over, George left the desk, and the congregation following his example, went straggling out of the church, and home, to wait with doubtful patience for the broth which as yet could taste only of onions and the stone that scoured the pot.

As soon as the sounds of retiring footsteps were heard no more in the great echoing church, uprose, like one of Dante's d.a.m.ned out of a torture-tomb, the form of Murdoch Malison, above the edge of the pulpit. With face livid as that of a corpse, he gave a scared look around, and not seeing little Truffey concealed behind one of the pillars, concluded the place empty, and half crawled, half tumbled down the stair to the vestry, where the s.e.xton was waiting him. It did not restore his lost composure to discover, in searching for his handkerchief, that the enc.u.mbrance of the gown had made him put his hand ten times into the same pocket, instead of five times into each, and that in the other his ma.n.u.script lay as safe as it had been useless.

But he took his gown off very quietly, put on his coat and forgot the bands, bade the old s.e.xton a gentle _good day_, and stole away home through the streets. He had wanted to get out, and now he wanted to get in; for he felt very much as Lady G.o.diva would have felt if her hair or her heroism had proved unworthy of confidence.

Poor Murdoch had no mother and no wife; he could not go home and be comforted. Nor was he a youth, to whom a first failure might be of small consequence. He was five and forty, and his head was sprinkled with grey; he was schoolmaster, and everybody knew him; he had boys under him. As he walked along the deserted streets, he felt that he was running the gauntlet of scorn; but every one who saw him coming along with his head sunk on his bosom, drew back from the window till he had gone by. Returning to the window to look after him, they saw, about twenty yards behind him, a solitary little figure, with the tears running down its face, stumping slowly step by step, and keeping the same distance, after the dejected master.

When Mr Malison went into the vestry, Truffey had gone into the porch, and there staid till he pa.s.sed on his way home. Then with stealthily set crutch, putting it down as the wild beast sets down his miching paw, out sprang Truffey and after the master. But however silently Truffey might use his third leg, the master heard the _stump stump_ behind him, and felt that he was followed home every foot of the way by the boy whom he had crippled. He felt, too, in some dim degree which yet had practical results, that the boy was taking divine vengeance upon him, heaping on his head the coals of that consuming fire which is love, which is our G.o.d. And when the first shame was over, the thought of Truffey came back with healing on his lonely heart.

When he reached his own door, he darted in and closed it behind, as if to shut out the whole world through which he had pa.s.sed with that burden of contempt upon his degraded shoulders. He was more ashamed of his failure than he had been sorry for laming Truffey. But the shame would pa.s.s; the sorrow would endure.

Meantime two of his congregation, sisters, poor old _mutched wifies_, were going home together. They were distantly related to the schoolmaster, whom they regarded as the honour of the family, as their bond of relation with the world above them in general and with the priesthood in particular. So when Elspeth addressed Meg with reference to the sermon in a manner which showed her determination to acknowledge no failure, Meg took her cue directly.

"Eh! woman; it's a sair ootluik for puir fowk like us, gin things be gaein that gait!"

"And 'deed it's that, la.s.s! Gin the hairst be gaein to the moles and the bats, it's time we war awa hame; for it'll be a cauld winter."

"Ay, that it will! The minister was sair owercome at the prospec', honest man. It was a' he cud do, to win at the en' o' his discoorse ohn grutten ootricht."

"He sees into the will o' the Almichty. He's far ben wi' Him--that's verra clear."

"Ay, la.s.s, ay."

And hence, by slow degrees, in the middle of the vague prophecies of vengeance gathered a more definite kernel of prediction, believed by some, disbelieved, yet feared, by others--that the harvest would be so eaten of worms and blasted with s.m.u.t, that bread would be up to famine prices, and the poor would die of starvation.

But still the flowers came out and looked men in the face and went in again; and still the sun shone on the evil and on the good, and still the rain fell on the just and on the unjust.

And still the denunciations from the pulpits went on; but the human souls thus exposed to the fires seemed only to harden under their influences.

CHAPTER LVII.

Before the period of Kate's visit arrived, a letter from Professor Fraser, to the purport that if Mrs Forbes did not mind keeping Kate a little longer he would be greatly indebted to her, came to Alec like a reprieve from execution. And the _little longer_ lengthened into the late harvest of that country.

The summer shone on, and the corn grew, green and bonnie. And Alec's love grew with the corn; and Kate liked him better and better, but was not a whit more inclined to fall in love with him.

One night, after the house was quiet, Alec, finding he could not sleep, rose and went out to play the ghost a while. It was a sultry night.

Great piles of cloud were heaped up in the heavens. The moon gleamed and vanished by fits, looking old and troubled when she sighed herself out of a cloud.

"There's a storm coming," said Alec to himself; and watched and waited.

There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash, and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a great dram, on which t.i.tanic hands were beating and rolling. Then the rain poured down, and the scent of the earth rose into the air. Alec ran to look up at Kate's window. His heart bounded when he saw a white figure looking out into the stormy dark.

"Kate! Kate!" he cried, in a loud whisper, "come out--do come out. It's so splendid!"

She started and drew back. Presently she reappeared, and opening the window, said,

"Alec! do come in."

"No, no. You come out, Kate. You don't know what it's like. You have only to get into bed again."

Kate hesitated. But in a moment more she withdrew. Alec saw she meant to come, and flew round to the door. In a few minutes she glided silently out, and fronted the black sky. The same moment another flash, in which her spirit seemed to her to be universal, flung the darkness aside. She could have counted the houses of Glamerton. The hills rose up within her very soul. The Glamour shone in silver. The harvest gleamed in green. The larch-forest hung like a cloud on the horizon.

Then the blank dark folded again its scared wings over the world; and the trees rustled their leaves with one wavy sweep, and were still. And again the rain came down in a tumult--warm, genial summer rain, full of the life of lightning. Alec stood staring through the dull dark, as if he would see Kate by the force of his will alone. The tempest in the heavens had awaked a like tempest in his bosom: would the bosom beside his receive his lightning and calm his pent-up storm by giving it s.p.a.ce to rave? His hand took hers beseechingly. Another flash came, and he saw her face. The whole glory of the night gloomed and flashed and flowed in that face. But alas! its response was to the stormy heaven alone, not to the stormy human soul. As the earth answers the heaven with lightning of her own, so Kate, herself a woman-storm, responded to the elemental cry.

Her shawl had fallen back, and he saw a white arm uplifted, bare to the shoulder, gleaming through the night, and an eye flashing through the flood that filled it. He could not mistake her pa.s.sion. He knew that it was not for him; that she was a harp played upon by the elements; yet, pa.s.sioned still more with her pa.s.sion, he cried aloud,

"Oh, Kate! if you do not love me I shall die."

Kate started, and sought to take her hand from his, but she could not.

"Let me go, Alec," she said, pleadingly.

His fingers relaxed, and she sped into the house like a bird, leaving him standing in the night.

There was no more lightning. The rain fell heavy and persistent. The wind rose. And when the dawn came, the clouds were drifting over the sky; and the day was a wet gray fringy ma.s.s of wind and rain and cloud, tossing trees, and corn hard bested.

He rose and dragged himself away. He had thrown himself upon the gra.s.s, and had burned there till his exhausted feelings lay like smouldering fire under the pale ashes of the dawn.

When Kate made her appearance at breakfast she looked bright and cold.

She had told his mother about last night, though how much he could only guess. When he asked her whether he might not read to her, she only said,

"If you like."

Whereupon he did not like.

It was a dreary day. He crept about the house like a child in disgrace, and the darkness seemed an age in coming. When the candles were brought, he went to bed; and when his mother went up, she found him asleep, but feverish. When he woke he was delirious.

For a week there was nothing but wet and windy weather. Alec was in bed. Kate was unhappy. Mrs Forbes was anxious.

The corn was badly lodged. Patches lay p.r.o.ne, tangled, spiky, and rough; and it was evident that if sunshine, strong, healthy sunshine, did not soon break out, the wretched mooncalf-prediction of Murdoch Malison would come true, for the corn, instead of ripening, would start a fresh growth, and the harvest would be a very bad one indeed, whether the people of Glamerton repented or not.

But after a grievous week, that blessed sunshine did come. The corn rose up from its low estate, looked at the sun, gathered heart, and began to ripen diligently.