St. Cuthbert's Part 5

"It's mair nor ever happened in yon kirk o' yours; an' it's mair nor could happen to the Pope o' Rome, wha's a true freen o' yours, I'm jalousin'," snorted my beadle back triumphantly; for William was uncharitable, and despaired of all ritualists, the iron of covenanting protest running hot within his blood.

Nor were these the only swords that flashed above our Margaret's cradle; for a Methodist mother in Israel, hopeful of a sympathetic response from Elsie M'Phatter (the non-churchgoing one), ventured the comment that similar events in her own brilliant maternal record had provoked no unseemly joy; to which Elsie responded tartly--

"I ken that fine, and it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist; but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us, wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the field thereafter was Elsie's own.

The Sabbath morning after Margaret's dawn St. Cuthbert's was full to overflowing, as seemed to be every heart, especially every aged heart, finding its morning anew in the life of a little child. For the morning and the evening are wondrously alike. In summer especially, the sun-bathed mountains, the pendant dewdrop, the melodious silences--all these belong so much to both alike that I find it hard to distinguish the matins and the vespers of G.o.d's cathedral days.

My voice trembled just a little as I gave out the psalm--

"Such pity as a father hath Unto his children dear,"

but we sang it to the tune of "Dunfermline," and soon I was borne out to sea upon its far-flung billows; for of a truth these old Scottish tunes have the swing of eternity in them, and seem to grandly overlap the bourne of time and s.p.a.ce. And when we prayed the only liturgy which Presbyterians will own, I could not forbear to say "Our Father" twice, and lo! a strange thing happened unto me. For a great light seemed to s.h.i.+ne upon the words, and that little helpless life at home within the manse, and its thrice-blessed cry, and its yearning look of wonder, and its hand whose only prowess was to lie in some stronger hand of love--all these became a commentary, ill.u.s.trating G.o.d, and in their cordial light I beheld Him as mother, or professor, or minister had never shown Him to me before, bending over the souls of men, otherwise orphaned evermore. That vision has tarried with me ever since, and my people have been the better of it; for he alone can caress his people's souls who has felt the caress of His father's love. G.o.d's tenderness is the great contagion for the healing of life's long disease.

VIII

"_A NEW FOOT on The FLOOR_"

When our daughter (are there any two other words so well-wed as these?

What music their union makes!) was only about ten years old, her mother, which is my wife writ large and heavenly, and I were taking tea at Inglewood, which my long-suffering readers will remember as the home which first welcomed me to New Jedboro and the residence of Mr. Michael Blake. When our meal was over, Mr. Blake and I were enjoying a quiet game of billiards, which was a game I loved. But I may have more to say about this later on, for so had some of my pious people, though I am inclined to think that they objected not so much because they thought the game was wrong as because they feared I was enjoying it. For, to some truly good Scotch folk the measure of enjoyableness is the measure of sin, and a thing needeth no greater fault than to be guilty of deliciousness. But the converse of this they also hold as true, namely, that what maketh miserable is of G.o.d, and to be wretched is to be pious at the heart. For which reason, I have observed oftentimes, they deem that to be a truly well-spent Sabbath day which had banished all possible happiness from their children's lives, bringing them to its close limp and cramped and sore, but catechism-full and with a good mark in the book of life for every weary hour.

Was it Johnson who ventured the opinion that the Puritans put bear-baiting under the ban, not because it was painful to the bears but because it was pleasant to the people? Whether it was or no, I shall not discuss it. Neither shall I discuss the ethics of billiards, unless it be to say this much, that if there be games in heaven, I do not doubt it will have an honoured place, for it is an ivory game and truthful, abhorring vagrant luck and scoring only by eternal laws which Euclid made his own. And I make no doubt that many a hand hath plied the billiard cue which long ere this hath touched with its finger-tips the ivory gates and golden.

But to return. We were in the very midst of our game, of which I remember very little, often and often though I have tried to recall every feature of that eventful night. But I do recall that we spoke about our Margaret, and there was a deep strain of wistful envy in Mr.

Blake's voice. I remember well his saying that G.o.d's richest earthly gift was that of wife and child and hearth.

"Though I speak," he added almost bitterly, "as I might speak of distant stars, for I have no one of the three," and his lips closed tightly while he drove his ball with a savage hand.

"You have not wife or child," I said, "but no man who has been sheltered by your friends.h.i.+p can agree with you about your hearth. It has warmed my heart too many times when that heart was cold."

"There is no hearth where there is neither wife nor child," he answered almost pa.s.sionately. "Hearths are not built with hands. Do you not know, sir, that if a man would have a fireside he must begin to kindle it when youth is still throbbing in his heart? From boyhood up he is preparing it, or else he is quenching it in darkness. Do you know, sir, if I were a preacher I would burn that into young men's hearts till they would feel that heaven or h.e.l.l were all bound up with how they reverence or despise their future fireside. I would tell them that no man can lay his hearth in ashes in the hot days of youth, and then build it up again in the rainy days of age.

"I would tell every wastrel, and every man who is rehearsing h.e.l.l with his youthful follies, that he cannot eat his cake and have it. For hearth and wife and child are not for him. I would tell him that he cannot breed a cancer in his heart while he is young and cure it with some pious perfume brewed by the hand of age. I would tell them that till my lips blistered, and then they should hear of the grace of G.o.d till those same lips were rosy with its healing."

Amazed, I stood and gazed at him, for there was a fearful fascination in his face. The face of a saint it was, with that warlike peace which only a battling and victorious life can give, but it had for the time the half-hunted look of one who trembles at the sound of footsteps he had hoped were forever still, of one whose soul was overstormed by surging waves of memory. There is sometimes a dread ghastliness in the thought that out of the abundance of a man's heart his mouth is speaking, though he declares it not. It is like the procession of a naked soul; or, to change the figure, it is like beholding a man unearth some very corpse he had long sought to hide.

It was his turn to play--ah me! the grim variety of life--and his ball failed but narrowly of a delicate ambition.

"If I could but have it back and play it over," I heard him rather sigh than say, whereat I bethought myself of the high allegory of a game.

Musing still, I stood apart, gazing as one gazes at a fire, which in very truth I was.

"It is your shot, sir," he said, in a voice as pa.s.sionless as when I first heard it years before.

My ball had but left my cue when the door opened and a servant said--

"There's a young man doon the stair, sir, and he says he wants to speak wi' the minister."

I descended, hearing as I went a rattling fusilade of ivory, which I knew was the echo of a soul's thunder-storm.

How often do we meet new faces, little recking their relation to coming years! Yet many an unfading light and many an incurable eclipse has come with a transient meeting such as this! How many a woman of Samaria goes to draw water from the well, and sees--the Lord! For I met only a boy, or better, a laddie--boyhood-breathing word!--about sixteen years of age, openly poor but pathetically decent. His clothes were coa.r.s.e and cheap and even darned, bearing here and there the signatures of poverty and motherhood.

I advanced and took his hand; for that is an easy masonry, and its exercise need never be regretted even if it never be repeated. My wife once spent a plaintive day because she had wasted a hand-shake upon a caller whom she took to be an applicant for matrimony, whose emoluments were hers, but who turned out to be an agent for Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, whose emoluments were his own. Nevertheless I have always held that no true hand-shake is unrecorded in the book of life.

"And what can I do for you, my lad?" I said.

"I dinna ken, sir," he answered, in a voice that suggested a sea voyage, for it was redolent of what lies only beyond the sea.

"What is your name?"

"Angus Strachan, sir, and I come frae Ettrick, and I hae my lines frae the minister o' the Free Kirk."

"And when did you land, Mr. Strachan?"

"Ca' me Angus, sir, if ye please. Naebody has ca'd me by that name sin'

my mither pairted wi' me at the stage coach road, and she was fair chokit wi' cryin', and when I cudna see her mair for the bush aboon the burn, I could aye hear her bleatin' like a lamb--an' it was the gloamin'. An' I can fair hear her yet. Will ye no' ca' me Angus?"

Accursed be the heart which has no opening door for the immigrant's weary feet, and thrice accursed be the heart which remembers strangerhood against some mother's homeless boy. Such malediction, thank G.o.d, my soul has never won, for if there be one sight which more than another fills me with hopeful pity, it is the spectacle of some peasant lad making the great venture of an untried sh.o.r.e, pressing in to those who were also foreigners one far-back cheerless day, and asking if this Western land may harbour still another exile from the poverty he seeks to flee. Especially is this true of Scottish laddies; for upon their faces seems to be written: "I ask for but a chance such as thou hadst thyself," which was the plea of Tom Carlyle when he first knocked at London's mighty door.

So I drew nearer to him, and my heart flowed through my voice as I said again--

"When did you land, Angus lad? and tell me all about yourself. I have heard that mother's cry before." For I was thinking of my own mother's parting blessing, save that hers was wondrously exultant as becometh one who calls back from the unseen Chariot of G.o.d.

"I landed yesterday at Montreal, and I cam' ower on the _Lake Ontario_.

And I hae but little to tell, and it wunna tak' me lang. Ma mither weaves in Ettrick, and I herded sheep upon the hills sin' I was able.

But I was aye hame at nicht, and she aye keepit a licht in the window when the nicht was dark and her shadow fell upon it, for she aye cam'

oot to meet me when she heard me lilt the sang. And she lilted tae, and we baith sang it thegither till we met, and then we gaed ben thegither and gaed na mair oot till the mirk was by."

I detected the serious and lofty figure in his words, and the vision of Scotland's lowly altars and thatched cathedrals rose before me. No man could mistake the ritual of which that strain was bred.

"And why came you here, Angus?"

"I cam' here," he answered, "to better masel'. I heard tell o' Canada sin' I was a bairn, and they a' spak' it fair for a land whaur an honest man micht mak' an honest leevin'--and mair tae," he added, true to the Scotch afterthought of an extra.

"And what line do you propose to follow? What work do you intend to do?"

"Ilka line that's straight, an' ony wark that willna soil the soul even gin it may soil the hands," he answered quickly.

My soul went out to the lad, for I saw that his heart's roots were deep in the best heart-soil the world hath known, and that the Atlantic's billows had not quenched the light of his mother's cottage fire.

"Your father is dead, is he, Angus?" was the next step in my examination for discovery, as the lawyers say.