Winter Evening Tales Part 5

"Well, G.o.d speaks to His children 'in dreams, and by the oracles that come in darkness.'"

"He used to do so."

"Wilt thou then say that He has ceased so to speak to men? Now, I will tell thee a thing that happened; I will tell thee just the bare facts; I will put nothing to, nor take anything away from them.

"'Tis, five years ago the first day of last June. I was in Stornoway in the Lews, and I was going to the Gairloch Preachings. It was rough, cheerless weather, and all the fishing fleet were at anchor for the night, with no prospect of a fishing. The fishers were sitting together talking over the bad weather, but, indeed, without that bitterness that I have heard from landsmen when it would be the same trouble with them.

So I gathered them into Donald Brae's cottage, and we had a very good hour. I noticed a stranger in the corner of the room, and some one told me he was one of those men who paint pictures, and I saw that he was busy with a pencil and paper even while we were at the service. But the next day I left for the Preachings, and I thought no more of him, good or bad.

"On the first of September I was in Oban. I had walked far and was very tired, but I went to John MacNab's cottage, and, after I had eat my kippered herring and drank my tea, I felt better. Then I talked with John about the resurrection of the body, for he was in a tribulation of thoughts and doubts as to whether our Lord had a permanent humanity or not.

"And I said to him, John, Christ redeemed our whole nature, and it is this way: the body being ransomed, as well as the spirit, by no less a price than the body of Christ, shall be equally cleansed and glorified.

Now, then, after I had gone to my room, I was sitting thinking of these things, and of no other things whatever. There was not a sound but that of the waves breaking among the rocks, and drawing the tinkling pebbles down the beach after them. Then the ears of my spiritual body were opened, and I heard these words, _'I will go with thee to Glasgow!'_ Instead of saying to the heavenly message, 'I am ready!' I began to argue with myself thus: 'Whatever for should I go to Glasgow? I know not anyone there. No one knows me. I have duties at Portsee not to be left.

I have no money for such a journey--'

"I fell asleep to such thoughts. Then I dreamed of--or I saw--a woman fair as the daughters of G.o.d, and she said, _'I will go with thee to Glasgow!'_ With a strange feeling of being hurried and pressed I awoke--wide awake, and without any conscious will of my own, I answered, 'I am ready. I am ready now.'

"As I left the cottage it was striking twelve, and I wondered what means of reaching Glasgow I should find at midnight. But I walked straight to the pier, and there was a small steamer with her steam up. She was blowing her whistle impatiently, and when the skipper saw me coming, he called to me, in a pa.s.sion, 'Well, then, is it all night I shall wait for thee?'

"I soon perceived that there was a mistake, and that it was not John Balmuto he had been instructed to wait for. But I heeded not that; I was under orders I durst not disobey. She was a trading steamer, with a perishable cargo of game and lobsters, and so she touched at no place whatever till we reached Glasgow. One of her pa.s.sengers was David MacPherson of Harris, a very good man, who had known me in my visitations. He was going to Glasgow as a witness in a case to be tried between the Harris fishers and their commission house in Glasgow.

"As we walked together from the steamer, he said to me, 'Let us go round by the court house, John, and I'll find out when I'll be required.' That was to my mind; I did not feel as if I could go astray, whatever road was taken, and I turned with him the way he desired to go. He found the lawyer who needed him in the court house, and while they talked together I went forward and listened to the case that was in hand.

"It was a trial for murder, and I could not keep my eyes off the young man who was charged with the crime. He seemed to be quite broken down with shame and sorrow. Before MacPherson called me the court closed and the constables took him away. As he pa.s.sed me our eyes met, and my heart dirled and burned, and I could not make out whatever would be the matter with me. All night his face haunted me. I was sure I had seen it some place; and besides it would blend itself with the dream which had brought me to Glasgow.

"In the morning I was early at the court house and I saw the prisoner brought in. There was the most marvelous change in his looks. He walked like a man who has lost fear, and his face was quite calm. But now it troubled me more than ever. Whatever had I to do with the young man? Yet I could not bear to leave him.

"I listened and found out that he was accused of murdering his uncle.

They had been traveling together and were known to have been at Ullapool on the thirtieth of May. On the first of June the elder man was found in a lonely place near Oban, dead, and, without doubt, from violence. The chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence against his nephew was very strong. To judge by it I would have said myself to him, 'Thou art certainly guilty.'

"On the other side the young man declared that he had quarreled with his uncle at Ullapool and left him clandestinely. He had then taken pa.s.sage in a Manx fishing smack which was going to the Lews, but he had forgotten the name of the smack. He was not even certain if the boat was Manx. The landlord of the inn, at which he said he stayed when in the Lews, did not remember him. 'A thing not to be expected,' he told the jury, 'for in the summer months, what with visitors, and what with the fishers, a face in Stornoway was like a face on a crowded street. The young man might have been there'--

"The word _Stornoway_ made the whole thing clear to me. The prisoner was the man I had noticed with a pencil and paper among the fishers in Donald Brae's cottage. Yes, indeed he was! I knew then why I had been sent to Glasgow. I walked quickly to the bar, and lifting my bonnet from my head, I said to the judge, 'My lord, the prisoner _was_ in Stornoway on the first of June. I saw him there!'

"He gave a great cry of joy and turned to me; and in a moment he called out: 'You are the man who read the Bible to the fishers. I remember you.

I have your likeness among my drawings.' And I said, 'I am the man.'

"Then my lord, the judge, made them swear me, and he said they would hear my evidence. For one moment I was a coward. I thought I would hide G.o.d's share in the deliverance, lest men should doubt my whole testimony. The next, I was telling the true story: how I had been called at midnight--twice called; how I had found Evan Conochie's boat waiting for me; how on the boat I had met David MacPherson, and been brought to the court house by him, having no intention or plan of my own in the matter.

"And there was a great awe in the room as I spoke. Every one believed what I said, and my lord asked for the names of the fishers who were present in Donald Brae's cottage on the night of the first of June. Very well, then, I could give many of them, and they were sent for, and the lad was saved, thank G.o.d Almighty!"

"How do you explain it, John?"

"No, I will not try to explain it; for it is not to be hoped that anyone can explain by human reason the things surpa.s.sing human reason."

"Do you know what became of the young man?"

"I will tell thee about him. He is a very rich young man, and the only child of a widow, known like Dorcas of old for her great goodness to the Lord's poor. But when his mother died it did not go well and peaceably between him and his uncle; and it is true that he left him at Ullapool without a word. Well, then, he fell into this sore strait, and it seemed as if all hope of proving his innocence was over.

"But that very night on which I saw him first, he dreamed that his mother came to him in his cell and she comforted him and told him, 'To-morrow, surely, thy deliverer shall speak for thee.' He never doubted the heavenly vision. 'How could I?' he asked me. 'My mother never deceived me in life; would she come to me, even in a dream, to tell me a lie? Ah, no!'"

"Is he still alive?"

"G.o.d preserve him for many a year yet! I'll only require to speak his name"--and when he had done so, I knew the secret spring of thankfulness that fed the never-ceasing charity of one great, good man.

"And yet, John," I urged, "how can spirit speak with spirit?"

"'_How?_' I will tell thee, that word 'how' has no business in the mouth of a child of G.o.d. When I was a boy, who had dreamed 'how' men in London might speak with men in Edinburgh through the air, invisible and unheard? That is a matter of trade now. Can thou imagine what subtle secret lines there may be between the spiritual world and this world?"

"But dreams, John?"

"Well, then, dreams. Take the dream life out of thy Bible and, oh, how much thou wilt lose! All through it this side of the spiritual world presses close on the human side. I thank G.o.d for it. Yes, indeed! Many things I hear and see which say to me that Christians now have a kind of shame in what is mystical or supernatural. But thou be sure of this--the supernaturalism of the Bible, and of every Christian life is not one of the difficulties of our faith, _it is the foundation of our faith_. The Bible is a supernatural book, the law of a supernatural religion; and to part with this element is to lose out of it the flavor of heaven, and the hope of immortality. Yes, indeed!"

This conversation occurred thirty years ago. Two years since, I met the man who had experienced such a deliverance, and he told me again the wonderful story, and showed me the pencil sketch which he had made of John Balmuto in Donald Brae's cottage. He had painted from it a grand picture of his deliverer, wearing the long black camlet cloak and head-kerchief of the order of evangelists to which he belonged. I stood reverently before the commanding figure, with its inspired eyes and rapt expression; for, during those thirty years, I also had learned that it was only those

Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon their bed have sate, Who know you not, Ye Heavenly Powers.

SIX, AND HALF-A-DOZEN.

Slain in the battle of life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of h.e.l.l, and the strong bands of a pitiless death dragging her to the grave--still she craved, as the awful hour drew near, to see once more the home of her innocent childhood. Not that she thought to die in its shelter--any one who knew David Todd knew also that was a hopeless dream; but if, IF her father should say one pardoning word, then she thought it would help her to understand the love of G.o.d, and give her some strength to trust in it.

Early in the evening, just as the sun was setting and the cows were coming lowing up the little lane, scented with the bursting lilac bushes, she stood humbly at the gate her father must pa.s.s in order to go to the hillside fold to shelter the ewes and lambs. Very soon she saw him coming, his Scotch bonnet pulled over his brows, his steps steadied by his shepherd's staff. His lips were firmly closed, and his eyes looked far over the hills; for David was a mystic in his own way, and they were to him temples not made with hands in which he had seen and heard wonderful things. Here the storehouses of hail and lightning had been opened in his sight, and he had watched in the sunshine the tempest bursting beneath his feet. He had trod upon rainbows and been waited upon by spectral mists. The voices of winds and waters were in his heart, and he pa.s.sionately believed in G.o.d. But it was the G.o.d of his own creed--jealous, just and awful in that inconceivable holiness which charges his angels with folly and detects impurity in the sinless heavens. So, when he approached the gate he saw, but would not see, the dying girl who leaned against it. Whatever he felt he made no sign. He closed it without hurry, and then pa.s.sed on the other side.

"Father! O, father! speak one word to me."

Then he turned and looked at her, sternly and awfully.

"Thou art nane o' my bairn. I ken naught o' thee."

Without another glance at the white, despairing face, he walked rapidly on; for the spring nights were chilly, and he must gather his lambs into the fold, though this poor sheep of his own household was left to perish.

But, if her father knew her no more, the large sheep-dog at his side was not so cruel. No theological dogmas measured Rover's love; the stain on the spotless name of his master's house, which hurt the old man like a wound, had not shadowed his memory. He licked her hands and face, and tried with a hospitality and pity which made him so much nearer the angels than his master to pull her toward her home. But she shook her head and moaned pitifully; then throwing her arms round the poor brute she kissed him with those pa.s.sionate kisses of repentance and love which should have fallen on her father's neck. The dog (dumb to all but G.o.d) pleaded with sorrowful eyes and half-frantic gestures; but she turned wearily away toward a great circle of immense rocks--relics of a religion scarcely more cruel than that which had neither pity nor forgiveness at the mouth of the grave. Within their shadow she could die unseen; and there next morning a wagoner, attracted by the plaintive howling of a dog, found her on the ground, dead.

There are set awful hours between every soul and heaven. Who knows what pa.s.sed between Lettice Todd and her G.o.d in that dim forsaken temple of a buried faith? Death closes tenderly even the eyes full of tears, and her face was beautiful with a strange peace, though its loveliness was marred and its youth "seared with the autumn of strange suffering."

At the inquest which followed, her stern old father neither blamed nor excused himself. He accepted without apology the verdict of society against him; only remarking that its reproof was "a guid example o'

Satan correcting sin."

Scant pity and less ceremony was given to her burial. Death, which draws under the mantle of Charity the pride, cruelty and ambition of men, covering them with those two narrow words _Hic jacet_! gives also to the woman who has been a sinner all she asks--oblivion. In no other way can she obtain from man toleration. The example of the whitest, purest soul that ever breathed on earth, in this respect, is ignored in the church He founded. The tenderest of human hearts, "when lovely woman stooped to folly," found no way of escape for her but to "die;" and those closet moralists, with filthy fancies and soiled souls, who abound in every community, regard her with that sort of scorn which a Turk expresses when he says "Dog of a Christian." Poor Lettice! She had procured this doom--first by sacrificing herself to a blind and cruel love, and then to the importunate demands of hunger, "oldest and strongest of pa.s.sions." Ah! if there was no pity in Heaven, no justice beyond the grave, what a cruel irony this life would be! For, while the s.e.xton shoveled hastily over the rude coffin the obliterating earth, there pa.s.sed the graveyard another woman equally fallen from all the apostle calls "lovely and of good report." One whose youth and hopes and marvelous beauty had been sold for houses and lands and a few thousand pounds a year. But, though her life was a living lie, the world praised her, because she "had done well unto herself." Yet, at the last end, the same seed brought forth the same fruit, and the Lady of Hawksworth Hall learned, with bitter rapidity, that riches are too poor to buy love.

Scarcely had she taken possession of her splendid home before she longed for the placid happiness of her mother's cottage, and those evening walks under the beech-trees, whose very memory was now a sin. Over her beautiful face there crept a pathetic shadow, which irritated the rude and noisy squire like a reproach. He had always had what he wanted. Not even the beauty of all the border counties had been beyond his means to buy but somehow he felt as if in this bargain he had been overreached.

Her better part eluded his possession, and he felt dissatisfied and angry. Expostulations grew into cruel words; cruel words came to cruder blows. _Yes, blows_. English gentlemen thirty years ago knew their privileges; and that was one of them. She was as much and as lawfully his as the horses in his stables or the hounds in his kennels. He beat them, too, when they did not obey him. Her beauty had betrayed her into the hands of misery. She had wedded it, and there was no escape for her.

One day, when her despair and suffering was very great, some tempting devil brought her a gla.s.s of brandy, and she drank it. It gave her back for a few hours her departed sceptre; but at what a price! Her slave soon became her master. Stimulus and stupefaction, physical exhaustion and mental horrors, the abandonment of friends and the brutality of a coa.r.s.e and cruel husband, brought her at last to the day of reckoning.

She died, seven years after her marriage, in the delirium of opium.

There were physicians and servants around her, and an unloving husband waiting for the news of his release. I think I would rather have died where Lettice did--under the sky, with the solemn mountains lifting their heads in a perpetual prayer around me, and that faithful dog licking my hands, and mourning my wasted life.