Part 14 (1/2)
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,”