Part 3 (1/2)
An hour later, when he ventured to return, he was met on the threshold with the tidings that his wife had been found dead of heart failure.
For many a year after that horrible day Archie McLean was tormented by his reproachful conscience. He regarded himself as a murderer in desire, though actually guiltless of his wife's blood. The terrible shock was his salvation. From that day he never more touched strong drink. The formerly inveterate drunkard, a great portion of whose time was spent in the cells, rose by degrees to the position of the smartest soldier in his company. When his long service had to come to an end, he took a situation as gardener for a time; but a desire which had come upon him when his army service had been completed became still more urgent. He longed to be able to devote himself to a penitential life, as a means of making such atonement as was in his power for his past transgressions. Even while in the army his life had been one of rigorous mortification, dating from the day when he once more began to practise his religion; he shunned no duty, however distasteful, and shrank from no danger.
In response to the keen desire which dominated him, Archie threw up his situation, and searching for some part of the country in which he would not be known, yet where he should find life and surroundings not entirely foreign to his experience, settled at length at Ardmuirland.
For about forty years his life was characterized by a rigorous austerity. His pension was at once carried to the priest, as soon as he received it, to be devoted to the offering of Ma.s.ses for the soul of his unhappy wife, and the relief of the poor--scarcely poorer than himself. He never spent a penny upon his own needs; even the scanty earnings of his labor, unless made in kind, went the same way as his pension. The clothing, even, which charitable persons bestowed upon him in pity soon pa.s.sed into coin for the same end; no scolding of his spiritual Father could prevail upon him to look better after his own well-being.
”I've been a great sinner, Father,” he would say. ”I owe a big debt to the justice of the Almighty!”
As he had lived, so he died, I had noticed that my brother had shown no surprise, as I did, at the sight of the dying figure of the old man stretched on the bare earth with a stone for his pillow; Val had become familiar with the idea.
”My Saviour died on a Cross for me, and shall I, a vile sinner, be content to die in my bed?” Thus he would always answer the remonstrances of the priest.
Whenever I read the Gospel narrative of Lazarus--the wretchedly clothed, ill-fed, diseased mendicant--who inspired loathing in the eyes and nostrils of the delicately nurtured, sensual men who flocked past his unlovely form to the banquets of the rich glutton at whose palace gate he lay, my thoughts fly at once to my old friend, Archie the penitent, and my prayers rise to Heaven on his behalf in the Church's touching pet.i.tion for the departed:
”c.u.m Lazaro, quondam paupere, eternam habeas requiem!”
”With Lazarus, once poor, now blest May'st thou enjoy eternal rest!”
IV
GOLDEN DREAMS
”All the world is turning golden, turning golden In the spring.”
(_Nora Hopper--”April.”_)
On a day when May was growing old, everything up at Ardmuirland was green and gold except the sky, and that was mostly blue and gold.
Gorse and broom were in full blossom, so that on all sides the outlook was glorious!
Looking through my field-gla.s.ses to discover the meaning of a column of dense smoke, which seemed to be rising from a hill in the distance, I found myself gazing at a forest in flames! Fire--a very wall of fire--seemed to extend for miles along a dense tract of woodland! So seemingly fierce the blaze that it lighted up with golden gleams the tower of a distant church beyond the wood! Yet, as I looked steadily, it became evident that the flames neither diminished nor increased; presently I discovered that the column of smoke rose from a spot entirely different--more to the foreground. In the end I had to confess with reluctance that my eyes had been deceived; there was no sensational forest fire at all! What I had seen was but the suns.h.i.+ne on an expanse of yellow bloom on some rising ground beyond the belt of woodland, and on the old church tower, while a rare cloud shaded the nearer prospect.
What a silly goat I called myself! Looking nearer home I saw the same red-gold glow, which needed but the suns.h.i.+ne to wake it into flame.
The disused quarry, not half a mile away, where the sun was bright, might have been an open gold mine--so brilliant the s.h.i.+ning of its wealth of broom bushes! The hedge of gorse which bordered the road on both sides had no speck of green to mar its splendor.
”All the world is turning golden, turning golden.
Gold b.u.t.terflies are light upon the wing; Gold is s.h.i.+ning through the eyelids that were holden Till the spring.”
The graceful verse haunted me all that day, repeating spontaneously, again and again, its tuneful refrain. For up at Ardmuirland we have to wait till May for settled springtide.
Later on I strolled across to her cottage to have a chat with ”Bell o'
the Burn.” I found her busy at her washtub on the threshold of the door, but none the less ready to enter into conversation, as I leaned on the garden fence watching her tireless pink hands, as they worked up the snowy soapsuds.
”You've maybe haird the news, sir?” she began, a note of inquiry in her tone.
I had seen yesterday's _Scotsman_, but not in those pages did any of our folk look for news. They read--those, at least, who possess that accomplishment--the stories in the _People's Friend_ and the like, if they were young; those who were older scanned the columns of the local newspaper, published in the county town, and believed firmly in the absolute truth of everything that was a.s.serted there. But ”news” meant something more intimate--something which affected our own immediate circle by its relation to the daily life and interests of those around us.