Playing With Fire Part 14

If he wishes to marry Lady Cramer, I will only express satisfaction in his choice."

"But if he insists on your marrying Allan Reid first?"

"That I will not do. His hopes and desires are sacred to me. I shall expect him to give to mine the same regard. I am sure he will do so. Why do you not point out to him the results you have just made so plain to me?"

"Not I! I shall wash my hands of the whole affair. I wonder what kind of mortals you Macraes are! I was trying to prepare some plain road for you and your lover, and the thought of your father steps in between you and you make him a curtsey, and say, 'Your will be it, Father.'"

"Aunt, for a thousand years the father and the chief in my family have been _one_. He has had the affection and the loyalty due to both relations. My father is still to me _the_ Macrae, and I owe him and give him the first and best homage of my heart."

"Goodness! Gracious! I am very sorry, Miss Macrae, I have presumed to meddle in your affairs. I am only a poor Lowland Scot, ignorant of your famous clansmen. I have seen some of them, of course, in the Glasgow and Edinburgh barracks, but we called them 'kilties,' just plain kilties!

Good soldiers, I believe, but----"

"Dear Aunt, you are making yourself angry for nothing at all. If you think over what I have said, you will allow I am right."

"I have something else to think over now, and I'll meddle no more with other people's love affairs. There now--go away and let me alone--I want no kissing and fleeching. You have cast me clean off--after nineteen years----" and the rest of her complaint was lost in pa.s.sionate sobs and tears.

Then Marion was on her knees, crying with her, and the upcome and outcome was kisses and fond words and forgiveness. But do we forgive? We agree to put aside the fault and forget it; the real thing is, we agree to forget.

After this common family rite Mrs. Caird washed her face and went down to look after dinner, and as she did so she felt a little hardly toward Marion, and her thoughts were grieving and reminiscent. "Oh, the sleepless nights and anxious days I have spent for that dear la.s.sie!"

she sighed; "and, now she is a woman, her lover and her father fill her heart. I am just a n.o.body. Well, thank the Father of all, I gave my love freely. I did not sell it, I gave it, and the gift is my reward. It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Marion, at her sewing, had thoughts not much more satisfactory. "Aunt makes so much of things," she said to herself. "She is so romantic and simple-minded, and she goes over the score on both sides; everything is the very worst or the very best. I wish she would not talk so much about Richard, and be always planning this and that for us. Oh, I ought to be ashamed of such thoughts, and I am ashamed! Aunt Jessy has been my mother, G.o.d bless her!" She had a few moments of repentant reflection and resolutions, and then she continued them in a different way, saying almost audibly: "My father! Oh, Aunt knows my father is different. His blood flows through my heart. I am his child from head to feet. Aunt has often told me so. She ought, then, to know I would stand by my father, whomever he married."

They had forgiven each other--but had they forgotten?

CHAPTER V

THE MINISTER IN LOVE

"The sun and the bees, And the face of her love through the green, The shades of the trees, And the poppy heads glowing between: His heart asked no more, 'Twas full as the hawthorn in May, And Life lay before, As the hours of a long summer day."

For a week there was no change in the usual course and tenor of life at the Little House. Dr. Macrae read or wrote all morning, and after his lunch he dressed with care and rode over to the Hall, took a late dinner with Lady Cramer, and returned home about ten o'clock. He usually took a ma.n.u.script with him, and often spoke of reading it to Lady Cramer.

Sometimes, also, he alluded to other company who were present, most frequently to the elderly Earl Travers, whom he described as an ultramontane Presbyterian. "He sits in a Free Church," he would say, with a slight tone of anger, "but his place is in one of the churches yet subject to Caesar, not in a Free Church, which is a Law unto itself; its t.i.tle deeds being only in the Registry above." Marion was proud of his enthusiasm, but Mrs. Caird told herself, privately, that Earl Travers had no doubt stimulated its character. For it was evident he disliked Travers on grounds more personal than the government of the Church.

Travers had been a close friend of the late Lord Cramer, and he took his place quietly but authoritatively at the side of his widow; indeed it appeared to Dr. Macrae that, on the very first night he met him at the Hall, Lady Cramer referred questions to the Earl that might have been left to his judgment. Even then, Dr. Macrae had an incipient jealousy of the Earl, who had just returned from a twelve months' cruise, rich in charming anecdotes of entertaining persons and events.

Really, Travers was much interested by the Minister and, hearing that he was going to preach in Cramer Church on the following Sabbath, he made an engagement at once with Lady Cramer to go with her to the service.

She was delighted with the proposal and, with an intimate look at Dr.

Macrae and a private handclasp as she pa.s.sed him, vowed it would be the greatest pleasure the Earl could offer her. "I have always longed," she continued, "to hear one of those famous sermons that are said to thrill the largest congregations in Glasgow."

Certainly Dr. Macrae was flattered and much pleased. He had no fear of falling below any standard set up for him, yet he kept closely to himself all the previous Sat.u.r.day, for he was gathering together his personality, so largely diffused by his late happiness, and flooding the sermon he was to deliver with streams of his own feeling and intellect.

And, oh, how good he felt this exercise to be! For some hours he rose like a tower far above the restless sea of his pa.s.sions. He put every doubt under his feet, he made himself forget he ever had a doubt.

The next morning was in itself sacramental, a Sabbath morning

"so cool, so calm, so bright; The bridal of the earth and sky,"

filled the soul with peace, and everywhere there was a sense of rest.

Even the cart horses knew it was Sunday, and were standing at the field gates, idle and happy. In the pale sunlight the moor stretched away to the mountains, and silent and serious little groups of people were crossing it from every side, but all making for one point--Cramer Church.

Dr. Macrae had been driven there very early and, during the hour before service, he was in the small vestry at the entrance of the church, and was, as he desired, left quite alone. In that hour he rose to the grandest alt.i.tude of his nature and, when the cessation of footsteps told him the congregation was gathered, he opened the vestry door. Then a very aged elder set wide the pulpit door, and Dr. Macrae--tall, stately, long-gowned and white-banded--walked with a serious deliberation unto that High Place from which he was to break the Bread of Life to the waiting wors.h.i.+pers before him. There was an irresistible power, both in him and going forth from him, that drew everyone present to himself. His burning, vehement spirit found its way in full force to his face, and it infected, nay, it went like a dart, to souls sleepy and careless in Zion.

To the Episcopalian the prayers are everything; to the Presbyterian it is the sermon; and there was a sigh of satisfaction when Dr. Macrae read with clear, powerful enunciation the last four verses of the sixth chapter of Hebrews, and boldly announced that he would speak "first of _G.o.d the Chooser_, then of _G.o.d the Slain_, then of _G.o.d the Comforter_."

From these great seminal truths he reasoned of righteousness and judgment to come with a penetrative, judicial power; but he quickly pa.s.sed this stage and entered into their enforcement with an overwhelming insistence. Something was to be _done_rather than explained. The sermon was almost fiercely theological, but through it all there was that wonderfully inspired look, that diviner mind, that "little more" which declares the Superman to be in control.

Two remarks showed something of the personal struggle that he was going through. Speaking of the doubting spirit prevalent in the whole religious world, he said: "You will find in the words of my text the remedy: that, by two immutable things in which it was impossible for G.o.d to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." And, again, very pointedly, he asked: "When we have done wrong, how shall we remedy the wrong? I will tell you. We must work day and night, as men work on a railway when the bridge is broken down. For all traffic between our souls and heaven will be interrupted until we get this ruin--this reason for G.o.d's withdrawal--out of the way."

The last sentences of his sermon were given to defending the creed of his country, and the Minister who does this clasps the heart of his people to him. He preached an hour and the time was as ten minutes. No one moved until he closed the Book and, with a glowing face and a joyful voice, gave the benediction.

He looked ten years younger than he did when entering the pulpit. He appeared to be much taller and of a larger bulk, and his face shone and his eyes glowed with more than mortal light. For, at that hour of superman control, the virtue of the spiritual erected and informed the physical. The congregation longed to speak to him and to touch his hand, but he walked through the gazing throng with uplifted face and towering form, silent and enwrapt with his own power and eloquence, and, going into the little vestry to unrobe, remained there until the Earl and Lady Cramer had departed, and only a few humble and fervent wors.h.i.+pers lingered thoughtfully among the graves in the churchyard. To these he spoke, and they looked into his gracious, handsome face, touched almost reverently the hand he offered and to their dying day talked of him as of a man inspired and miraculous, a true Preacher of His Word.

At his own door Marion met him with a kiss, a thing so unusual that it had a kind of solemnity in it. "My good, wonderful father!" she whispered, "there is no man can preach like you!" His heart beat pleasantly to her love and admiration, and, though Mrs. Caird only looked at him as he took his place at the table, he was as well satisfied as he had been with Marion's greeting. He could see that she had been weeping. The light of prayer was on her face, and from the whole household he heard the silent psalm of thanksgiving.

That day he remained at home, and on Monday he did the same. He thought he was honestly "working day and night as men work on a railway when the bridge is broken." Something had gone wrong between G.o.d and his soul.

The Power with the mult.i.tude which had been given him he still retained, but that wonderful faculty within us which feels after and finds the Divinity did not respond to his call. Yet he knew well that we have our being in G.o.d, that G.o.d's ear lies close to our lips, that it is always listening, that we sigh into it, even as we sleep and dream. Why did not G.o.d give him again the personal joy of His salvation? He walked hour after hour all Monday up and down his study, examining and defending himself; for this att.i.tude is almost certainly our first one when we come penitently to G.o.d. Yet Dr. Macrae knew well that only with blinding tears and breaking heart can the sinner go to His Maker and plead: "Cast me not away from Thy Presence, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy Salvation."

Tuesday he was physically weary and when he opened the book he was considering, Hugh Miller's "Red Stone," he could not read it. The words pa.s.sed before his eyes, but his mind refused to notice them, and he threw down the volume and resigned himself to religious reverie. His eyes were on his closed Bible, and he was recalling in a regretful mood the power and splendor of its promises and a.s.surances. He was "feeling after G.o.d, if haply he might find Him," trying to call up arguments for his existence, his personality, His loving and constant interflow into the affairs of men. But he had lost the habit of Faith, and was continually finding himself face to face with the incomprehensible problems which Science may propound but can never answer: Whence come we? Whither do we go? Why was man created? Why does he continue to exist? What has become of the vast mult.i.tudes of the dead? What will become of the vaster mult.i.tudes that may yet tread the earth?

But ever when he reached the outermost rim of this useless thought, these awful and sacred questions still called to his soul for an answer.

Indeed, he felt acutely that he had not gained from Science any intelligible religious system; nor yet any belief which he could profess, or which he could defend from an a.s.sailant. He could find in it nothing that a man could have recourse to in the hour of trouble, or the day of death; and, when Mrs. Caird came into his study about the noon hour, he felt compelled to speak to her. With a quick, nervous motion he laid his hand upon some books at his side and complained wearily:

"All they say about G.o.d is so terribly inadequate, Jessy."

"Of course it is inadequate," she answered. "When men know nothing, how can they teach, especially about Him,

... 'Who, though vast and strange When with _intellect_ we gaze, Yet close to the heart steals in In a thousand tender ways.'"

"O my dear sister, I am so miserable!"

"My dear Ian, when we withdraw ourselves from that circle within which the Bible is a definite authority, we must be miserable."

"Why?"

"We have then only a negative religion, and pray what is there between us and the next lower down negation? And I a.s.sure you it would become easy to repeat this descending movement again and again. Indeed, there could be no reason for making a stand at any point, until----"

"Until?"

"The end!"

"Then?"

"There might come the dread of sliding away toward the brink--and over the brink--of the precipice."

"Then what help is there for a man who has taken this road ignorantly and innocently?"