Part 9 (2/2)
She was very silent this afternoon, but apparently very happy. Indeed, there was an expression on her face which attracted her father's attention, and he said,
”The sermon has pleased thee well, I see, Christine.”
”The sermon was good, but the text was enough, father. I think it over in my heart, and it leaves a light on all the common things of life.”
And she repeated it softly, ”O Thou preserver of men, unto Thee shall all flesh come.”
David lifted his bonnet reverently, and James, who was learned in what the Scotch pleasantly call ”the humanities,” added slowly,
”'But I, the mortal, Planted so lowly, with death to bless me, I sorrow no longer.'”
When people have such subjects of conversation, they talk moderately--for words are but poor interpreters of emotions whose sources lie in the depths of eternity. But they were none the less happy, and James felt as if he had been sitting at one of those tables which the Lord ”prepareth in the wilderness,” where the ”cup runneth over” with joy and content.
Such moments rarely last long; and it is doubtful if we could bear to keep the soul always to its highest bent. When Christine had sided away the dishes and put in order the little room, David laid down his pipe, and said, ”The Lord's day being now over, I may speak anent my ain matters. I had a letter, Christine, on Sat.u.r.day, from my brother-in-law, McFarlane. He says young Donald will be in Glasgow next week.”
”Will he stay here, father?”
”Na, na; he'll bide wi' the McFarlanes. They are rich folk; but siller is nae sin--an' it be clean-won siller.”
”Then why did Uncle McFarlane write to you, father?”
”He wrote concerning the lad's pecuniary matters, Christine. Young Donald will need gude guiding; and he is my sister Jessie's only bairn--blood is thicker than water, ye'll allow that--and Donald is o'
gentle blood. I'm no saying that's everything; but it is gude to come o' a gude kind.”
”The McFarlanes have aye been for the pope and the Stuarts,” said James, a little scornfully. ”They were 'out' in the '79'; and they would pin the white c.o.c.kade on to-morrow, if there was ever a Stuart to bid them do it.”
”Maybe they would, James. Hielandmen hae a way o' sticking to auld friends. There's Camerons I wadna go bail for, if Prince Charlie could come again; but let that flea stick to the wa'. And the McFarlanes arena exactly papist noo; the twa last generations hae been 'Piscopals--that's ane step ony way towards the truth. Luther mayna be John Knox, but they'll win up to him some time, dootless they will.”
”How old is young McFarlane?” asked James.
”He is turned twenty--a braw lad, his father says. I hae ne'er seen him, but he's Jessie's bairn, and my heart gaes out to meet him.”
”Why did you not tell me on Sat.u.r.day, father? I could have spoken for Maggie Maclean to help me put the house in order.”
”I didna get the letter till the evening post. It was most as good as Sabbath then. Housecleaning is an unco temptation to women-folk, so I keepit the news till the Sabbath sun was weel set.”
During this conversation James Blackie's heart had become heavy with some sad presentiment of trouble, such as arise very naturally in similar circ.u.mstances. As a poet says,
”Ah, no! it is not all delusion, That strange intelligence of sorrow Searching the tranquil heart's seclusion, Making us quail before the morrow.
'Tis the farewell of happiness departing, The sudden tremor of a soul at rest; The wraith of coming grief upstarting Within the watchful breast.”
He listened to David Cameron's reminiscences of his bonnie sister Jessie, and of the love match she had made with the great Highland chieftain, with an ill-disguised impatience. He had a Lowlander's scorn for the thriftless, fighting, freebooting traditions of the Northern clans and a Calvinist's dislike to the Stuarts and the Stuarts' faith; so that David's unusual emotion was exceedingly and, perhaps, unreasonably irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting in song together.
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