Part 68 (2/2)
Mr Graham a.s.sured him of welcome as cordially as if it had been the first time he came with the request, and yet again offered him a chair; but the laird as usual declined it, and walked down the room to find a seat with his companion scholars. He stopped midway, however, and returned to the desk, where, standing on tiptoe, he whispered in the master's ear: ”I canna come upo' the door.” Then turning away again, he crept dejectedly to a seat where some of the girls had made room for him. There he took a slate, and began drawing what might seem an attempt at a door; but ever as he drew he blotted out, and nothing that could be called a door was the result. Meantime, Mr Graham was pondering at intervals what he had said.
School being over, the laird was modestly leaving with the rest, when the master gently called him, and requested the favour of a moment more of his company. As soon as they were alone, he took a Bible from his desk, and read the words:
”I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”
Without comment, he closed the book, and put it away. Mr Stewart stood staring up at him for a moment, then turned, and gently murmuring, ”I canna win at the door,” walked from the schoolhouse.
It was refuge the poor fellow sought--whether from temporal or spiritual foes will matter little to him who believes that the only shelter from the one is the only shelter from the other also.
CHAPTER XLVIII: THE BAILLIES' BARN AGAIN
It began to be whispered about Portlossie, that the marquis had been present at one of the fishermen's meetings--a report which variously affected the minds of those in the habit of composing them. Some regarded it as an act of espial, and much foolish talk arose about the covenanters and persecution and martyrdom. Others, especially the less worthy of those capable of public utterance, who were by this time, in virtue of that sole gift, gaining an influence of which they were altogether unworthy, attributed it to the spreading renown of the preaching and praying members of the community, and each longed for an opportunity of exercising his individual gift upon the conscience of the marquis. The soberer portion took it for an act of mere curiosity, unlikely to be repeated.
Malcolm saw that the only way of setting things right was that the marquis should go again--openly, but it was with much difficulty that he persuaded him to present himself in the a.s.sembly. Again accompanied by his daughter and Malcolm, he did, however, once more cross the links to the Baillies' Barn. Being early they had a choice of seats, and Florimel placed herself beside a pretty young woman of gentle and troubled countenance, who sat leaning against the side of the cavern.
The preacher on this occasion was the sickly young student--more pale and haggard than ever, and halfway nearer the grave since his first sermon. He still set himself to frighten the sheep into the fold by wolfish cries; but it must be allowed that, in this sermon at least, his representations of the miseries of the lost were not by any means so gross as those usually favoured by preachers of his kind. His imagination was sensitive enough to be roused by the words of Scripture themselves, and was not dependent for stimulus upon those of Virgil, Dante, or Milton. Having taken for his text the fourteenth verse of the fifty-ninth psalm, ”And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city,” he dwelt first upon the condition and character of the eastern dog as contrasted with those of our dogs; pointing out to his hearers, that so far from being valued for use or beauty or rarity, they were, except swine, of all animals the most despised by the Jews--the vile outcasts of the border land separating animals domestic and ferine--filthy, dangerous, and hated; then a.s.sociating with his text that pa.s.sage in the Revelation, ”Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for without are dogs,” he propounded, or rather a.s.serted, that it described one variety of the many punishments of the wicked, showing at least a portion of them condemned to rush howling for ever about the walls of the New Jerusalem, haunting the gates they durst not enter.
”See them through the fog steaming up from the sh.o.r.es of their Phlegethon!” he cried, warming into eloquence; ”see the horrid troop, afar from the crystal walls!--if indeed ye stand on those heights of glory, and course not around them with the dogs!--hear them howl and bark as they scour along! Gaze at them more earnestly as they draw nigher; see upon the dog heads of them the signs and symbols of rank and authority which they wore when they walked erect, men--ay, women too, among men and women! see the crown jewels flash over the hanging ears, the tiara tower thrice circled over the hungry eyes! see the plumes and the coronets, the hoods and the veils!”
Here, unhappily for his eloquence, he slid off into the catalogue of women's finery given by the prophet Isaiah, at the close of which he naturally found the oratorical impulse gone, and had to sit down in the mud of an anticlimax. Presently, however, he recovered himself, and, spreading his wings, once more swung himself aloft into the empyrean of an eloquence, which, whatever else it might or might not be, was at least genuine.
”Could they but surmount those walls, whose inherent radiance is the artillery of their defence, those walls high uplifted, whose lowest foundations are such stones as make the glory of earthly crowns; could they overleap those gates of pearl, and enter the golden streets, what think ye they would do there? Think ye they would rage hither and thither at will, making horrid havoc amongst the white robed inhabitants of the sinless capital? Nay, verily; for, in the gold transparent as gla.s.s, they would see their own vile forms in truth telling reflex, and, turning in agony, would rush yelling back, out again into the darkness--the outer darkness --to go round and round the city again and for evermore, tenfold tortured henceforth with the memory of their visioned selves.”
Here the girl beside Lady Florimel gave a loud cry, and fell backwards from her seat. On all sides arose noises, loud or suppressed, mingled with murmurs of expostulation. Even Lady Florimel, invaded by shrieks, had to bite her lips hard to keep herself from responding with like outcry; for scream will call forth scream, as vibrant string from its neighbour will draw the answering tone.
”Deep calleth unto deep! The wind is blowing on the slain! The Spirit is breathing on the dry bones!” shouted the preacher in an ecstacy. But one who rose from behind Lizzy Findlay, had arrived at another theory regarding the origin of the commotion--and doubtless had a right to her theory, in as much as she was a woman of experience, being no other than Mrs Catanach.
At the sound of her voice seeking to soothe the girl, Malcolm shuddered; but the next moment, from one of those freaks of suggestion which defy a.n.a.lysis, he burst into laughter: he had a glimpse of a she dog, in Mrs Catanach's Sunday bonnet, bringing up the rear of the preacher's canine company, and his horror of the woman found relief in an involuntary outbreak that did not spring altogether from merriment.
It attracted no attention. The cries increased; for the preacher continued to play on the harp nerves of his hearers, in the firm belief that the Spirit was being poured out upon them. The marquis, looking very pale, for he could never endure the cry of a woman even in a play, rose, and taking Florimel by the arm, turned to leave the place. Malcolm hurried to the front to make way for them.
But the preacher caught sight of the movement, and, filled with a fury which seemed to him sacred, rushed to the rescue of souls.
”Stop!” he shouted. ”Go not hence, I charge you. On your lives I charge you! Turn ye, turn ye: why will ye die? There is no fleeing from Satan. You must resist the devil. He that flies is lost. If you turn your backs upon Apollyon, he will never slacken pace until he has driven you into the troop of his dogs, to go howling about the walls of the city. Stop them, friends of the cross, ere they step beyond the sound of mercy; for, alas! the voice of him who is sent cannot reach beyond the particle of time wherein he speaks: now, this one solitary moment, gleaming out of the eternity before us only to be lost in the eternity behind us--this now is the accepted time; this Now and no other is the moment of salvation!”
Most of the men recognized the marquis; some near the entrance saw only Malcolm clearing the way: marquis or fisher, it was all the same when souls were at stake: they crowded with one consent to oppose their exit: yet another chance they must have, whether they would or not These men were in the mood to give--not their own --but those other men's bodies to be burnt on the poorest chance of saving their souls from the everlasting burnings.
Malcolm would have been ready enough for a fight, had he and the marquis been alone, but the presence of Lady Florimel put it out of the question. Looking round, he sought the eye of his master.
Had Lord Lossie been wise, he would at once have yielded, and sat down to endure to the end. But he jumped on the form next him, and appealed to the common sense of the a.s.sembly.
”Don't you see the man is mad?” he said, pointing to the preacher.
”He is foaming at the mouth. For G.o.d's sake look after your women: he will have them all in hysterics in another five minutes. I wonder any man of sense would countenance such things!”
As to hysterics, the fisher folk had never heard of them; and though the words of the preacher were not those of soberness, they yet believed them the words of truth, and himself a far saner man than the marquis.
”Gien a body comes to oor meetin',” cried one of them, a fine specimen of the argle bargling Scotchman--a creature known and detested over the habitable globe--”he maun just du as we du, an' sit it oot. It's for yer sowl's guid.”
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