Out in the Forty-Five Part 12

"Sir," said Mr Bagnall, warmly, "I think it presumption--arrogance-- horrible self-conceit."

"To have forgiveness?--or to say so?"

"I cannot answer such a question, Sir!" said Mr Bagnall, getting red in the face, and seizing the pepper-box once more, with which he dusted his pie recklessly. "When a man sets himself up to be better than his neighbours in that way, it is scandalous--perfectly scandalous, Sir!"

"'Better than his neighbours!'" repeated Mr Keith, as if he were considering the question. "If a pardoned criminal be better than his neighbours, I suppose the neighbours are worse criminals?"

"Sir, you misunderstand me. They fancy themselves better than others."

Mr Bagnall was getting angry.

"But seeing all are criminals alike, and they own it every Sunday," was Mr Keith's answer, "does it not look rather odd that an objection should be made to one of them stating that he has been pardoned? Is it because the rest are unpardoned, and are conscious of it?"

"Come, friends!" said Sir Robert, before Mr Bagnall could reply. "Let us not lose our tempers, I beg. Mr Keith is a Scotsman, and such are commonly good reasoners and love a tilt; and 'tis but well in a young man to keep his wits in practice. But we must not get too far, you know."

"Just so! just so!" saith Father, who I think was glad to have a stop put to this sort of converse. "Mr Bagnall, I am sure, bears no malice.

Sir Robert, when do the Holme Cultram hounds meet next?"

Mr Bagnall growled something, I know not what, and gave himself up to his pie for the rest of the time, Mr Keith smiled, and said no more.

But I know in whose hands I thought the victory rested.

Note 1. The word "ticket" was still spelt "etiquette."

Note 2. These exact expressions are quoted in Whitefield's sermons.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN.

"The untrue liveth only in the heart Of vain humanity, which fain would be Its own poor centre and circ.u.mference."

REV HORATIUS BONAR, D.D.

This afternoon I went up the Scar by myself. First I climbed right to the top, and after looking round a little, as I always like to do on the top of a mountain, I went down a few yards to the flat bit where the old Roman wall runs, and sat down on the gra.s.s just above. It was a lovely day. I had not an idea that any one was near the place but myself, and I was just going to sing, when to my surprise I heard a voice on the other side of the Roman wall. It was Angus Drummond's.

"Duncan Keith, why don't you say something?" He broke out suddenly, in a petulant tone--rather the tone of a child who knows it has been naughty, and wants to get the scolding over which it feels sure is coming some time.

"What do you wish me to say?"

Mr Keith's tone was cold and constrained, I thought.

"Why don't you tell me I am an unhanged reprobate, and that you are ashamed to be seen walking with me? You know you are thinking it."

"No, Angus. I was thinking something very different."

"What, then?" asked Angus, sulkily.

"'Doth He not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, _until He find it_?'"

There was no coldness in Mr Keith's tone now.

"What has that got to do with it?" growled Angus in his throat.

"Angus," was the soft answer, "the sheep sometimes makes it a very hard journey for Him."

I know I ought to have risen and crept away long before this: but I did not. It was not right of me, but I sat on. I knew they could not see me through the wall, nor could they get across it at any place so near that I could not be gone far enough before they could catch sight of me.

"I suppose," said Angus, in the same sort of sulky murmur, "that is your way of telling me, Mr Keith, that I am a miserable sinner."

"Are you not?"

"Miserable enough, Heaven knows! But, Duncan, I don't see why you, and Flora, and Mrs Kezia, and all the good folks, or the folks who think themselves extra good, which comes to the same thing--"

"Does it? I was not aware of that," said Mr Keith.

"I can't see," Angus went on, "why you must all turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thunder, and hold up your hands in pious horror at me, because I have done just once what every gentleman in the land does every week, and thinks nothing of it. If you had not been brought up in a hen-coop, and ruled like a copy-book, you would not be so con-- so hideously strict and particular! Just ask Ambrose Catterall whether there is any weight on his conscience; or ask that jolly parson, who tackled you and Flora at breakfast, what he has to say to it. I'll be bound he will read prayers next Sabbath with as much grace and unction as if he had never been drunk in his life. And because I get let in just once, why--"

Angus paused as if to consider how to finish his sentence, and Mr Keith answered one point of his long speech, letting all the rest, go.

"Is it just this once, Angus?"

"I suppose you mean that night at York, when I got let in with those fellows of Greensmith's," growled Angus, more grumpily than ever. "Now, Duncan, that's not generous of you. I did the humble and penitent for that, and you should not cast it up to me. Just that time and this!"

"And no more, Angus?"

Angus muttered something which did not reach me.

"Angus, you know why I came with you?"

"Yes, I know well enough why you came with me," said Angus, bitterly.

"Just because that stupid old meddler, Helen Raeburn, took it into her wooden head that I could not take care of myself, and talked my father into sending me with you now, instead of letting me go the other way round by myself! Could not take care of myself, forsooth!"

"Have you done it?"

"I hadn't it to do. Mr Duncan Keith was to take care of me, just as if I had been a baby--stuff! There is no end to the folly of old women!"

"I think young men might sometimes match them. Well, Angus, I have taken as much care as you let me. But you deceived me, boy. I know more about it than you think. It was not one or two transgressions that let you down to this pitch. I know you had a private key from Rob Greensmith, and let yourself in and out when I believed you asleep."

Angus sputtered out some angry words, which I did not catch.

"No. You are mistaken. Leigh did not tell of you or his brother. Your friend Robert told me himself. He wanted to get out of the sc.r.a.pe, and he did not care about leaving you in it. The friendship of the wicked is not worth much, Angus. But if I had not known it, I should still have felt perfectly sure that there had been more going on than you ever confessed to me. Three months since, Angus, you would not have used words which you have used this day. You would not have spoken so lightly of being 'let in'--let into what? Just stop and think. And twice to-day--once in Flora's presence--you have only just stopped your tongue from a worse word than that. Would you have said such a thing to your father before we left Abbotscliff?"

"Uncle Courtenay was as drunk as any of them last night," Angus blurted out.

I did not like to hear that of Father. Till now I never thought much about such things, except that they were imperfections which men had and women had not, and the women must put up with them. Sins?--well, yes, I suppose getting drunk is a sin, if you come to think about it; but so is getting into a pa.s.sion, and telling falsehoods, and plenty more things which one thinks little or nothing about, because one sees everybody do them every day. It is only the extra good people, like my Aunt Kezia, and Flora, and Mr Keith, that put on grave faces about things of that kind.