St. Cuthbert's Part 16

Suddenly her eyes opened wide, fastening themselves upon her son.

"I'll sune win hame," she murmured gladly, "an' I want ye to say yir bit prayer to me, Robin, afore I gang, the way ye did when ye were a bairnie. Kneel doon, Robin, an' say it to me, an' we'll baith say it to G.o.d, for I'm weary tae. 'Noo I lay me,' ye ken."

The strong man bowed beside his mother's bed, and the great anthem began, the sobbing ba.s.s of the broken heart mingling with the feeble dying voice--

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Thee Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee Lord my soul to take."

Suddenly she pointed with uplifted hand: "Oh, faither, I see oor Elsie's face--an' the token's in her haun', an' it's a' bricht wi' gowden licht.

She's biddin' us a' hame--me, an' faither, an' Robin----" and she pa.s.sed into the homeland bearing the prodigal's name with her up to G.o.d.

I gently closed her eyes. Donald stood long beside the bed; then, taking his son into his arms, he said--

"Yir mither's bye the gate."

XIX

_A MAIDEN'S LOVE_

What self-contradicting things we are! The very joys we crave bring sorrow when they come; for they crowd out some only lesser joy, which, rejected, turns to bitterness and takes its long revenge. It is one of the blessed laws of life that no heart, however hospitable, can entertain more than one sorrow at one time, how many so ever be waiting at the door. Each must wait its turn.

But alas! Joy has its corresponding law; every heart's pleasure is an alternative, and if much we would enjoy, much also we must renounce. Joy usually comes as twins, and the great perplexity is to discern which the first-born is, that our homage may not return unto us void.

Of many of our deepest longings may it not be said that their fulfillment would be our keenest disappointment? For instance, the wife of our family physician is forever lamenting that no spouse in all New Jedboro sees as little of her husband as does she, forever longing that he might be released to the enjoyment of his own fireside. Yet should a fickle or convalescent public suddenly so release him, our doctor's wife would be of all women most miserable.

Even as I write, I am disturbed by a lad of twenty who starts to-day on his long journey to Athabasca and the waiting prairies of our great Canadian West.

Full of pathetic joy is his youthful face; but his mother is bowed beside the bed whereon she gave him birth--her cup, she thinks, would be full to overflowing if her first-born son were suddenly to dis.p.a.ck his box and take up the old nestling life again. The sun would have turned back to its undimmed meridian, she weens; and yet she knows full well that this very longing, were it gratified, would poison her overflowing cup and tarnish her mother's pride. If she were asked to choose between these two, womanlike, she would elect to have them both--but G.o.d forbids.

The youth's father says: "Let the lad go forth"--and G.o.d is a Father, though He takes counsel of a mother-heart.

All this reflective vein flows from this poor heart of mine, the truth whereof that heart hath sorrowfully proved.

For my daughter Margaret holds within it a place of solitary tenderness, more exclusively her own as the years go by. And I too was forced to the great alternative, the same which hath wrung uncounted parents' hearts before I saw the light, the same as will rend thousands more when that poor light has filtered through darkness into Day.

What father is there who can contemplate without dismay the prospect of his only daughter surrendered to another's care, though that other press the cruel claim of a mate's more pa.s.sionate love? Where is the father that does not long to shelter his child's sweet innocence forever within the pavilion of his heart's loving tenderness? And yet, where is the father who would be free from torture, were he a.s.sured that his soul's yearning would be satisfied, and that no high claim of unrelated love would ever rival or dispute his own?

It was my own fault that Margaret's attachment to Angus Strachan came to me as a bolt from the blue. I had never dreamed of it--I was so sure of everybody loving Margaret that I never thought of anybody loving her. Of course it was easily seen that their friendship was mutually cherished; but friendship, although a mother's hope, is a father's rea.s.surance.

Margaret's mother had more than once spoken of their friendship in that portentous tone which all women hope to a.s.sume before they die; and her words exuded the far-off fragrance of orange blossoms. She began with the a.s.surance that the friendship between Angus and our Margaret had no particular meaning--to which I agreed. A little later on she ventured the remark that she did not think Angus cared for Margaret except as a friend--to which also I cheerfully agreed. Later still, she resorted to the interrogative, and asked me if I thought Margaret would ever marry, to which I answered: "I hope so, but she shall not with my consent."

"I was married when I was Margaret's age," added my wife. (What woman is there who does not love to say the same?) "Margaret will soon be twenty."

"Yes, my dear, but few women have the chance that came to you and no man ever had provocation like to mine." This was followed by a pa.s.sage at arms, during which, of course, the fair debater's lips were sealed.

By degrees my wife's attack upon the subject grew bolder and more frontal.

"Do you think Margaret cares anything for Angus?" she asked, the hour being that post-retiring one sacred in every age to conjugal conference.

"I don't think so--certainly not; why should she? We have a triangular family altogether--two to each of us, and why should she want any more?

She has you and me, just as I have you and her, and you have her and me."

"But that is foolish; you don't understand."

"I don't want to understand," I answered drowsily. "Margaret's only a child--and I want to go to sleep; if I don't sleep over my sermon to-night, the people will to-morrow." For it was Sat.u.r.day night.

But "the child" was not asleep. The love affairs of other hearts are by others easily borne, even though those others be the next nearest and dearest of all. But how different with the maiden's heart that loves, and tremblingly hopes that it loves not in vain! Then doth the pillow burn with holy pa.s.sion, and considerate sleep, like an indulgent nurse, turns her steps aside, fearing to break in upon the soul's solemn revelry. Even when she ventures nigh, gently withdrawing the still unwearied heart from its virgin joy, do the half open lips still sip from the new found cisterns of sweet and tender bliss.

O holy love! Who shall separate the joy thou bringest from the heart that opens wide to welcome it, even as the flower bares its bosom to the sun?

Darkness and tears and sorrow may follow fast; fears and misgivings and dread discoveries may come close upon thy train; broken-heartedness and bleak perpetual maidenhood may be thine only relics; or, flowering with the years, the thorns of grief and poverty and widowhood may grow where youthful fancy looked for radiant flowers; the heart which echoed with thy bridal song may yet peal forth the Rachel cry--but thou belongest to the heart forever, and none of these can dispossess the soul of its unforgotten transport. Nor fire, nor flood, nor fraud can prevail against thee! Thy treasures moth and rust doth not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal!

As a burning building lends its heat to all beside it, so was my own soul kindled, half with rapture and half with anger, by the story of Margaret's pa.s.sion. Father's and daughter's hearts were never pressed closer to each other than were mine and my only child's.

It was the succeeding Sunday night that Margaret, in her father's arms, breathed out the tender tale; I was enjoying my evening smoke (a post-sermonic anodyne), but long before Margaret had finished, my cigar was in ashes and my heart in flame.

"Father," she began, her face hidden on my shoulder, "I am either very happy or very wretched, and I cannot decide which till I know which you will be."

"The old problem, daughter, is it not?" I answered. "Still longing to enter a hospital? And you want to wheedle your old father into giving you up?" for Margaret, like every other modern girl, had been craving entrance to that n.o.ble calling. The high-born and the love-lorn, those weary of life, or of love, or both, find a refuge there.

"No, father, I was not thinking of that at all. I don't want to be a nurse any more."

"What is it then? You have never had any secrets from your father and you will not have any now, will you, dear one?"

"Oh, father, I will tell you all I can--but I cannot tell you all."

I started in my chair, for the child note was absent from her words, and the pa.s.sion of womanhood was in its stead. Awesome to a father's heart is that moment wherein a daughter's voice unconsciously a.s.serts the suffrage of her soul.

"Go on, my daughter--tell me what you may," I said, for I knew now that the realm was one wherein parental authority was of no avail.

Only silence followed; her lips spoke no word, but the heaving bosom had a rhetoric all its own and told me that a new life, begotten not of mine, was throbbing there. An alien life it seemed to me, a soul's expansion beyond the province of my own, an infinitude which denied the sway of even a father's love. At length she spoke:

"Oh, father, I will tell you all--that is, all I can. But I am so lonely. You cannot follow me, father. I have gone away in--with another--in where you cannot go."

"What mean you, Margaret? In where? Where can I not come?" I asked, perplexed.

"Father, let me tell you. I am speaking in a figure, I know--but it is the only way--and you will understand. Love is a far country, and prodigals take their journey there--but they seek it two by two. Oh, father, another one and I went off together to that far, far land and those who go leave father and mother far behind. But there is no hunger and no famine there."

Rich the endowment love bestows! While we had all thought Margaret anything but dull, yet this new speech of metaphor and music fell upon my ears as a great surprise. That live coal from off G.o.d's altar had touched her lips when first another's burning lips of love anointed them with flame. When this new sun arises, the humblest of G.o.d's meadow creatures know that the soul has wings and spread them in that holy light.

Closer to my breast I pressed the heart whose tumult, as it struggled with its m.u.f.fled witnesses, started the same pa.s.sionate riot in my own.

"There are many voices in your heart, daughter mine; let them speak every one and tell me all their story. Where is it that your father cannot come?"

"Father," she answered, with sweet calmness but with averted face, "I never loved you more than now. But love's joy is in its loneliness, its sweet bridal loneliness. It was a long weary way that another one and I--you know his name, and I cannot speak it yet--walked together, but not alone together; for others walked besides us--and friendship is a cruel thing. But oh, father dear, one day--no, it was in the gloaming, we saw an avenue far beyond; and we both knew it was for us and for us alone. I saw it first, but I did not let Angus know. But he saw it in a moment and he started quickly on. Then my feet fell back, though my heart pressed on with his. But Angus would not let me stop. He hurried me on; and it was sweet to be overborne, for love makes a man so strong and a woman so weak.

"When we came close up to where you enter in, I saw that the way within was sweet, and shadowy, so shadowy, but I saw that it was long, so long.