The Little Minister

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

HOW BABBIE SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST FOURTH

How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the Spittal? I did not ask the question. To interest myself in Babbie at that dire hour of Margaret’s life would have been as impossible to me as to sit down to a book. To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom the parlor door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous dominie that is in pain outside it. Your eyes are on the young wife.

When Babbie was plucked off the hill, she thought as little as Gavin that her captor was Rob Dow. Close as he was to her, he was but a shadow until she screamed the second time, when he pressed her to the ground and tied his neckerchief over her mouth. Then, in the moment that power of utterance was taken from her, she saw the face that had startled her at Nanny’s window. Half-carried, she was borne forward rapidly, until some one seemed to rise out of the broom and strike them both. They had only run against the doctor’s trap; and huddling her into it, Dow jumped up beside her. He tied her hands together with a cord. For a time the horse feared the darkness in front more than the lash behind; but when the rains became terrific, it rushed ahead wildly – probably with its eyes shut.

In three minutes Babbie went through all the degrees of fear. In the first she thought Lord Rintoul had kidnapped her; but no sooner had her captor resolved himself into Dow, drunk with the events of the 325 day and night, than in the earl’s hands would have lain safety. Next, Dow was forgotten in the dread of a sudden death which he must share. And lastly, the rain seemed to be driving all other horrors back, that it might have her for its own. Her perils increased to the unbearable as quickly as an iron in the fire passes through the various stages between warmth and white heat. Then she had to do something; and as she could not cry out, she flung herself from the dogcart. She fell heavily in Caddam Wood, but the rain would not let her lie there stunned. It beat her back to consciousness, and she sat up on her knees and listened breathlessly, staring in the direction the trap had taken, as if her eyes could help her ears.

All night, I have said, the rain poured, but those charges only rode down the deluge at intervals, as now and again one wave greater than the others stalks over the sea. In the first lull it appeared to Babbie that the storm had swept by, leaving her to Dow. Now she heard the rubbing of the branches, and felt the torn leaves falling on her gown. She rose to feel her way out of the wood with her bound hands, then sank in terror, for some one had called her name. Next moment she was up again, for the voice was Gavin’s, who was hurrying after her, as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart. Dow was now at the brute’s head, and probably it tried to bite him, for he struck it, crying:

“Would you? Stand still till I find her… I heard her move this minute.”

Babbie crouched upon a big stone and sat motionless while he groped for her. Her breathing might have been tied now, as well as her mouth. She heard him feeling for her, first with his feet and then with his 326 hands, and swearing when his head struck against a tree.

“I ken you’re within hearing,” he muttered, “and I’ll hae you yet. I have a gully-knife in my hand. Listen!”

He severed a whin-stalk with the knife, and Babbie seemed to see the gleam of the blade.

“What do I mean by wanting to kill you?” he said, as if she had asked the question. “Do you no ken wha said to me, ‘Kill this woman?’ It was the Lord. ‘I winna kill her,’ I said, ‘but I’ll cart her out o’ the country.’ ‘Kill her,’ says He; ‘why encumbereth she the ground?’”

He resumed his search, but with new tactics. “I see you now,” he would cry, and rush forward perhaps within a yard of her. Then she must have screamed had she had the power. When he tied that neckerchief round her mouth he prolonged her life.

Then came the second hurricane of rain, so appalling that had Babbie’s hands been free she would have pressed them to her ears. For a full minute she forgot Dow’s presence. A living thing touched her face. The horse had found her. She recoiled from it, but its frightened head pressed heavily on her shoulder. She rose and tried to steal away, but the brute followed, and as the rain suddenly exhausted itself she heard the dragging of the dogcart. She had to halt.

Again she heard Dow’s voice. Perhaps he had been speaking throughout the roar of the rain. If so, it must have made him deaf to his own words. He groped for the horse’s head, and presently his hand touched Babbie’s dress, then jumped from it, so suddenly had he found her. No sound escaped him, and she was beginning to think it possible that he had mistaken her for a bush when his hand went over her face. He was making sure of his discovery.

“The Lord has delivered you into my hands,” he 327 said in a low voice, with some awe in it. Then he pulled her to the ground, and, sitting down beside her, rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round his knees. She would have bartered the world for power to speak to him.

“He wouldna hear o’ my just carting you to some other countryside,” he said confidentially. “‘The devil would just blaw her back again,’ says He, ‘therefore kill her.’ ‘And if I kill her,’ I says, ‘they’ll hang me.’ ‘You can hang yoursel’,’ says He. ‘What wi’?’ I speirs. ‘Wi’ the reins o’ the dogcart,’ says He. ‘They would break,’ says I. ‘Weel, weel,’ says He, ‘though they do hang you, nobody’ll miss you.’ ‘That’s true,’ says I, ‘and You are a just God.’”

He stood up and confronted her.

“Prisoner at the bar,” he said, “hae ye onything to say why sentence of death shouldna be pronounced against you? She doesna answer. She kens death is her deserts.”

By this time he had forgotten probably why his victim was dumb.

“Prisoner at the bar, hand back to me the soul o’ Gavin Dishart. You winna? Did the devil, your master, summon you to him and say, ‘Either that noble man or me maun leave Thrums?’ He did. And did you, or did you no, drag that minister, when under your spell, to the hill, and there marry him ower the tongs? You did. Witnesses, Rob Dow and Tammas Whamond.”

She was moving from him on her knees, meaning when out of arm’s reach to make a dash for life.

“Sit down,” he grumbled, “or how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft.”

For the first time his voice faltered.

“That’s the difficulty, for witches canna die, except by burning or drowning. There’s no blood in you for 328 my knife, and your neck wouldna twist. Your master has brocht the rain to put out a’ the fires, and we’ll hae to wait till it runs into a pool deep enough to drown you.

“I wonder at You, God. Do You believe her master’ll mak’ the pool for her? He’ll rather stop his rain. Mr. Dishart said You was mair powerful than the devil, but it doesna look like it. If You had the power, how did You no stop this woman working her will on the minister? You kent what she was doing, for You ken a’ things. Mr. Dishart says You ken a’ things. If You do, the mair shame to You. Would a shepherd, that could help it, let dogs worry his sheep? Kill her! It’s fine to cry ‘Kill her,’ but whaur’s the bonfire, whaur’s the pool? You that made the heaven and the earth and all that in them is, can You no set fire to some wet whins, or change this stane into a mill-dam?”

He struck the stone with his fist, and then gave a cry of exultation. He raised the great slab in his arms and flung it from him. In that moment Babbie might have run away, but she fainted. Almost simultaneously with Dow she knew this was the stone which covered the Caddam well. When she came to, Dow was speaking, and his voice had become solemn.

“You said your master was mair powerful than mine, and I said it too, and all the time you was sitting here wi’ the very pool aneath you that I have been praying for. Listen!”

He dropped a stone into the well, and she heard it strike the water.

“What are you shaking at?” he said in reproof. “Was it no yoursel’ that chose the spot? Lassie, say your prayers. Are you saying them?”

He put his hand over her face, to feel if her lips were moving, and tore off the neckerchief.

And then again the rain came between them. In 329 that rain one could not think. Babbie did not know that she had bitten through the string that tied her hands. She planned no escape. But she flung herself at the place where Dow had been standing. He was no longer there, and she fell heavily, and was on her feet again in an instant and running recklessly. Trees intercepted her, and she thought they were Dow, and wrestled with them. By and by she fell into Windyghoul, and there she crouched until all her senses were restored to her, when she remembered that she had been married lately.

How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped, and whether he searched for her, no one knows. After a time he jumped into the dogcart again, and drove aimlessly through the rain. That wild journey probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end only when a tree fell upon the trap. The horse galloped off, but one of Dow’s legs was beneath the tree, and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg was little injured, he could not extricate himself. A night and day passed, and he believed that he must die; but even in this plight he did not forget the man he loved. He found a piece of slate, and in the darkness cut these words on it with his knife:

“Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna see the minister marrying an Egyptian on the hill this nicht. May I burn in Hell if this is no true.

This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved proof of what he was perjuring himself to deny.

Chapter Forty.

BABBIE AND MARGARET – DEFENCE OF THE MANSE CONTINUED

The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which she had once danced and sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt McKenzie’s clutch on my arm for hours after he left me, but she was far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him. Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would have gone away forever without another tear.

What do I say? I am doing a wrong to the love these two bore each other. Babbie would not have taken so base a message from my lips. He would have had to say the words to her himself before she believed them his. What would he want her to do now? was the only question she asked herself. To follow him was useless, for in that rain and darkness two people might have searched for each other all night in a single field. That he would go to the Spittal, thinking her in Rintoul’s dogcart, she did not doubt; and his distress was painful to her to think of. But not knowing that the burns were in flood, she underestimated his danger.

Remembering that the mudhouse was near, she 331 groped her way to it, meaning to pass the night there; but at the gate she turned away hastily, hearing from the door the voice of a man she did not know to be Nanny’s brother. She wandered recklessly a short distance, until the rain began to threaten again, and then, falling on her knees in the broom, she prayed to God for guidance. When she rose she set off for the manse.

The rain that followed the flash of lightning had brought Margaret to the kitchen.

“Jean, did you ever hear such a rain? It is trying to break into the manse.”

“I canna hear you, ma’am; is it the rain you’re feared at?”

“What else could it be?”

Jean did not answer.

“I hope the minister won’t leave the church, Jean, till this is over?”

“Nobody would daur, ma’am. The rain’ll turn the key on them all.”

Jean forced out these words with difficulty, for she knew that the church had been empty and the door locked for over an hour.

“This rain has come as if in answer to the minister’s prayer, Jean.”

“It wasna rain like this they wanted.”

“Jean, you would not attempt to guide the Lord’s hand. The minister will have to reprove the people for thinking too much of him again, for they will say that he induced God to send the rain. To-night’s meeting will be remembered long in Thrums.”

Jean shuddered, and said, “It’s mair like an ordinary rain now, ma’am.”

“But it has put out your fire, and I wanted another heater. Perhaps the one I have is hot enough, though.”

Margaret returned to the parlor, and from the kitchen Jean could hear the heater tilted backward and forward in the box-iron – a pleasant, homely sound 332 when there is happiness in the house. Soon she heard a step outside, however, and it was followed by a rough shaking of the barred door.

“Is it you, Mr. Dishart?” Jean asked nervously.

“It’s me, Tammas Whamond,” the precentor answered. “Unbar the door.”

“What do you want? Speak low.”

“I winna speak low. Let me in. I hae news for the minister’s mother.”

“What news?” demanded Jean.

“Jean Proctor, as chief elder of the kirk I order you to let me do my duty.”

“Whaur’s the minister?”

“He’s a minister no longer. He’s married a gypsy woman and run awa wi’ her.”

“You lie, Tammas Whamond. I believe – ”

“Your belief’s of no consequence. Open the door, and let me in to tell your mistress what I hae seen.”

“She’ll hear it first frae his ain lips if she hears it ava. I winna open the door.”

“Then I’ll burst it open.”

Whamond flung himself at the door, and Jean, her fingers rigid with fear, stood waiting for its fall. But the rain came to her rescue by lashing the precentor until even he was forced to run from it.

“I’ll be back again,” he cried. “Woe to you, Jean Proctor, that hae denied your God this nicht.”

“Who was that speaking to you, Jean?” asked Margaret, re-entering the kitchen. Until the rain abated Jean did not attempt to answer.

“I thought it was the precentor’s voice,” Margaret said.

Jean was a poor hand at lying, and she stuttered in her answer.

“There is nothing wrong, is there?” cried Margaret, in sudden fright. “My son – ”

“Nothing, nothing.”

The words jumped from Jean to save Margaret from falling. Now she could not take them back. “I winna believe it o’ him,” said Jean to herself. “Let them say what they will, I’ll be true to him; and when he comes back he’ll find her as he left her.”

“It was Lang Tammas,” she answered her mistress; “but he just came to say that – ”

“Quick, Jean! what?”

“ – Mr. Dishart has been called to a sick-bed in the country, ma’am – to the farm o’ Look-About-You; and as it’s sic a rain, he’s to bide there a’ nicht.”

“And Whamond came through that rain to tell me this? How good of him. Was there any other message?”

“Just that the minister hoped you would go straight to your bed, ma’am,” said Jean, thinking to herself, “There can be no great sin in giving her one mair happy nicht; it may be her last.”

The two women talked for a short time, and then read verse about in the parlor from the third chapter of Mark.

“This is the first night we have been left alone in the manse,” Margaret said, as she was retiring to her bedroom, “and we must not grudge the minister to those who have sore need of him. I notice that you have barred the doors.”

“Ay, they’re barred. Nobody can win in the nicht.”

“Nobody will want in, Jean,” Margaret said, smiling.

“I dinna ken about that,” answered Jean below her breath. “Ay, ma’am, may you sleep for baith o’ us this nicht, for I daurna gang to my bed.”

Jean was both right and wrong, for two persons wanted in within the next half-hour, and she opened the door to both of them. The first to come was Babbie.

So long as women sit up of nights listening for a footstep, will they flatten their faces at the window, though all without be black. Jean had not been back 334 in the kitchen for two minutes before she raised the blind. Her eyes were close to the glass, when she saw another face almost meet hers, as you may touch your reflection in a mirror. But this face was not her own. It was white and sad. Jean suppressed a cry, and let the blind fall, as if shutting the lid on some uncanny thing.

“Won’t you let me in?” said a voice that might have been only the sob of a rain-beaten wind; “I am nearly drowned.”

Jean stood like death; but her suppliant would not pass on.

“You are not afraid?” the voice continued. “Raise the blind again, and you will see that no one need fear me.”

At this request Jean’s hands sought each other’s company behind her back.

“Wha are you?” she asked, without stirring. “Are you – the woman?”

“Yes.”

“Whaur’s the minister?”

The rain again became wild, but this time it only tore by the manse as if to a conflict beyond.

“Are you aye there? I daurna let you in till I’m sure the mistress is bedded. Gang round to the front, and see if there’s ony licht burning in the high west window.”

“There was a light,” the voice said presently, “but it was turned out as I looked.”

“Then I’ll let you in, and God kens I mean no wrang by it.”

Babbie entered shivering, and Jean rebarred the door. Then she looked long at the woman whom her master loved. Babbie was on her knees at the hearth, holding out her hands to the dead fire.

“What a pity it’s a fause face.”

“Do I look so false?”

“Is it true? You’re no married to him?”

“Yes, it is true.”

“And yet you look as if you was fond o’ him. If you cared for him, how could you do it?”

“That was why I did it.”

“And him could hae had wha he liked.”

“I gave up Lord Rintoul for him.”

“What? Na, na; you’re the Egyptian.”

“You judge me by my dress.”

“And soaking it is. How you’re shivering – what neat fingers – what bonny little feet. I could near believe what you tell me. Aff wi’ these rags, an I’ll gie you on my black frock, if – if you promise me no to gang awa wi’t.”

So Babbie put on some clothes of Jean’s, including the black frock, and stockings and shoes.

“Mr. Dishart cannot be back, Jean,” she said, “before morning, and I don’t want his mother to see me till he comes.”

“I wouldna let you near her the nicht though you gaed on your knees to me. But whaur is he?”

Babbie explained why Gavin had set off for the Spittal; but Jean shook her head incredulously, saying, “I canna believe you’re that grand leddy, and yet ilka time I look at you I could near believe it.”

In another minute Jean had something else to think of, for there came a loud rap upon the front door.

“It’s Tammas Whamond back again,” she moaned; “and if the mistress hears, she’ll tell me to let him in.”

“You shall open to me,” cried a hoarse voice.

“That’s no Tammas’ word,” Jean said in bewilderment.

“It is Lord Rintoul,” Babbie whispered.

“What? Then it’s truth you telled me.”

The knocking continued; a door upstairs opened, and Margaret spoke over the banisters.

“Have you gone to bed, Jean? Some one is knocking 336 at the door, and a minute ago I thought I heard a carriage stop close by. Perhaps the farmer has driven Mr. Dishart home.”

“I’m putting on my things, ma’am,” Jean answered; then whispered to Babbie, “What’s to be done?”

“He won’t go away,” Babbie answered. “You will have to let him into the parlor, Jean. Can she see the door from up there?”

“No; but though he was in the parlor?”

“I shall go to him there.”

“Make haste, Jean,” Margaret called. “If it is any persons wanting shelter, we must give it them on such a night.”

“A minute, ma’am,” Jean answered. To Babbie she whispered, “What shall I say to her?”

“I – I don’t know,” answered Babbie ruefully. “Think of something, Jean. But open the door now. Stop, let me into the parlor first.”

The two women stole into the parlor.

“Tell me what will be the result o’ his coming here,” entreated Jean.

“The result,” Babbie said firmly, “will be that he shall go away and leave me here.”

Margaret heard Jean open the front door and speak to some person or persons whom she showed into the parlor.

Chapter Forty-One.

RINTOUL AND BABBIE – BREAKDOWN OF THE DEFENCE OF THE MANSE

“You dare to look me in the face!”

They were Rintoul’s words. Yet Babbie had only ventured to look up because he was so long in speaking. His voice was low but harsh, like a wheel on which the brake is pressed sharply.

“It seems to be more than the man is capable of,” he added sourly.

“Do you think,” Babbie exclaimed, taking fire, “that he is afraid of you?”

“So it seems; but I will drag him into the light, wherever he is skulking.”

Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was off his tongue already.

“Go,” said Babbie coldly, “and shout and stamp through the house; you may succeed in frightening the women, who are the only persons in it.”

“Where is he?”

“He has gone to the Spittal to see you.”

“He knew I was on the hill.”

“He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had run away with me in your trap.”

“Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give you back to him.”

“To compel you,” corrected Babbie.

“Pooh!” said the earl nervously, “that was but mummery on the hill.”

“It was a marriage.”

“With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would count for less than nothing. Babbie, I am still in time to save you.”

“I don’t want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses no court could discredit.”

“What witnesses?”

“Mr. McKenzie and yourself.”

She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked at him, there were tears in his eyes as well as in her own. It was perhaps the first time these two had ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for Rintoul.

“I am so sorry,” Babbie began in a broken voice; then stopped, because they seemed such feeble words.

“If you are sorry,” the earl answered eagerly, “it is not yet too late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come away with me, Babbie, if only in pity for yourself.”

“Ah, but I don’t pity myself.”

“Because this man has blinded you.”

“No, he has made me see.”

“This mummery on the hill – ”

“Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of that marriage, as He could never have countenanced yours and mine.”

“God! I never heard the word on your lips before.”

“I know that.”

“It is his teaching, doubtless?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you that to do to me as you have done was to be pleasing in God’s sight?”

“No; he knows that it was so evil in God’s sight that I shall suffer for it always.”

“But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment for him?”

“It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment will be worse, probably, than mine.”

“That,” said the earl, scoffing, “is not just.”

“It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying me.”

“And what form is his punishment to take?”

“For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in all men’s eyes, unless – unless God is more merciful to us than we can expect.”

Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it with sarcasm.

“It is you I pity now,” he said, looking wonderingly at her. “Do you not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to take you from me?”