Alec Forbes of Howglen

CHAPTER XXVII

When Annie descended from her hateful eminence, just before the final prayer, it was with a deeper sense of degradation than any violence of the tawse on her poor little hands could have produced. Nor could the attentions of Alec, anxiously offered as soon as they were out of school, reach half so far to console her as they might once have reached; for such was her sense of condemnation, that she dared not take pleasure in anything. Nothing else was worth minding till something was done about that. The thought of having God against her took the heart out of everything.—As soon as Alec left her, she walked with hanging head, pale face, and mournful eyes, straight to Mr Cowie's door.

She was admitted at once, and shown into the library, where the clergyman sat in the red dusky glow of the firelight, sipping a glass of wine, and looking very much like an ox-animal chewing the cud; for the meditation in which the good man indulged over his wine was seldom worthy of being characterized otherwise than as mental rumination.

"Well, Annie, my dear, come away," said he, "I am glad to see you. How does the boat get on?"

Deeply touched by a kindness which fell like dew upon the parching misery of the day, Annie burst into tears. Mr Cowie was greatly distressed. He drew her between his knees, laid his cheek against hers, as was his way with children, and said with soothing tenderness:

"Walawa! what's the matter with my dawtie?"

After some vain attempts at speech, Annie succeeded in giving the following account of the matter, much interrupted with sobs and fresh outbursts of weeping.

"Ye see, sir, I gaed last nicht to the missionar kirk to hear Mr Broon.

And he preached a gran' sermon, sir. But I haena been able to bide

mysel' sin' syne. For I doobt I'm ane o' the wicked 'at God hates, and

I'll never win' to haven at a', for I canna help forgettin' him whiles.

An' the wicked'll be turned into hell, and a' the nations that forget

God. That was his text, sir. And I canna bide it."

In the bosom of the good man rose a gentle indignation against the schismatics who had thus terrified and bewildered that sacred being, a maid-child. But what could he say? He thought for a moment, and betook himself, in his perplexity, to his common sense.

"You haven't forgotten your father, have you, Annie?" said he.

"I think aboot him maist ilka day," answered Annie.

"But there comes a day now and then when you don't think much about him, does there not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think he would be angry with his child because she was so much taken up with her books or her play–"

"I never play at onything, sir."

"Well—with learning songs to say to Alec Forbes and Willie Macwha—do you think he would be angry that you didn't think about him that day, especially when you can't see him?"

"'Deed no, sir. He wadna be sae sair upo' me as that."

"What would he say, do you think?"

"Gin Mr Bruce war to cast it up till me, he wad say: 'Lat alane the lassie. She'll think aboot me the morn—time eneuch.'"

"Well, don't you think your Father in heaven would say the same?"

"Maybe he micht, sir. But ye see my father was my ain father, and wad mak' the best o' me."

"And is not God kinder than your father?"

"He canna weel be that, sir. And there's the Scripter!"

"But he sent his only Son to die for us."

"Ay—for the eleck, sir," returned the little theologian.

Now this was more than Mr Cowie was well prepared to meet, for certainly this terrible doctrine was perfectly developed in the creed of the Scotch Church; the assembly of divines having sat upon the Scripture egg till they had hatched it in their own likeness. Poor Mr Cowie! There were the girl-eyes, blue, and hazy with tearful questions, looking up at him hungrily.—O starving little brothers and sisters! God does love you, and all shall be, and therefore is, well.—But the minister could not say this, gladly as he would have said it if he could; and the only result of his efforts to find a suitable reply was that he lost his temper—not with Annie, but with the doctrine of election.

"Gang ye hame, Annie, my bairn," said he, talking Scotch now, "and dinna trouble yer heid about election, and a' that. It's no' a canny doctrine. No mortal man could ever win at the boddom o' 't. I'm thinkin' we haena muckle to do w' 't. Gang hame, dawtie, and say yer prayers to be preserved frae the wiles o' Sawtan. There 's a sixpence to ye."

His kind heart was sorely grieved that all it could give was money. She had asked for bread, and he had but a stone, as he thought, to give her. So he gave it her with shame. He might however have reversed the words of St Peter, saying, "Spiritual aid I have none, but such as I have give I thee;" and so offered her the sixpence. But, for my part, I think the sixpence had more of bread in it than any theology he might have been expected to have at hand; for, so given, it was the symbol and the sign of love, which is the heart of the divine theology.

Annie, however, had a certain Scotchness in her which made her draw back from the offer.

"Na, thank ye, sir," she said; "I dinna want it."

"Will ye no tak' it to please an auld man, bairn?"

"Deed will I, sir, I wad do a hantle mair nor that to please you."

And again the tears filled her blue eyes as she held out her hand—receiving in it a shilling which Mr Cowie, for more relief to his own burdened heart, had substituted for the sixpence.

"It's a shillin', sir!" she said, looking up at him with the coin lying on her open palm.

"Weel, what for no? Is a shillin' no a saxpence?"

"Ay, sir. It's twa."

"Weel, Annie," said the old man, suddenly elevated into prophecy for the child's need—for he had premeditated nothing of the sort—"maybe whan God offers us a saxpence, it may turn oot to be twa. Good nicht, my bairn."

But Mr Cowie was sorely dissatisfied with himself. For not only did he perceive that the heart of the child could not be thus satisfied, but he began to feel something new stirring in his own bosom. The fact was that Annie was further on than Mr Cowie. She was a child looking about to find the face of her Father in heaven: he was but one of God's babies, who had been lying on his knees, receiving contentedly and happily the good things he gave him, but never looking up to find the eyes of him from whom the good gifts came. And now the heart of the old man, touched by the motion of the child's heart—yearning after her Father in heaven, and yet scarcely believing that he could be so good as her father on earth—began to stir uneasily within him. And he went down on his knees and hid his face in his hands.

But Annie, though not satisfied, went away comforted. After such a day of agony and humiliation, Mr Cowie's kiss came gracious with restoration and blessing. It had something in it which was not in Mr Brown's sermon. And yet if she had gone to Mr Brown, she would have found him kind too—very kind; but solemnly kind—severely kind; his long saintly face beaming with religious tenderness—not human cordiality; and his heart full of interest in her spiritual condition, not sympathy with the unhappiness which his own teaching had produced; nay, rather inclined to gloat over this unhappiness as the sign of grace bestowed and an awakening conscience.

But notwithstanding the comfort Mr Cowie had given her—the best he had, poor man!—Annie's distress soon awoke again. To know that she could not be near God in peace and love without fulfilling certain mental conditions—that he would not have her just as she was now, filled her with an undefined but terribly real misery, only the more distressing that it was vague with the vagueness of the dismal negation from which it sprung.

It was not however the strength of her love to God that made her unhappy in being thus barred out from him. It was rather the check thus given to the whole upward tendency of her being, with its multitude of undefined hopes and longings now drawing nigh to the birth. It was in her ideal self rather than her conscious self that her misery arose. And now, dearly as she loved Mr Cowie, she began to doubt whether he knew much about the matter. He had put her off without answering her questions, either because he thought she had no business with such things, or because he had no answer to give. This latter possibly added not a little to her unhappiness, for it gave birth to a fearful doubt as to the final safety of kind Mr Cowie himself.

But there was one man who knew more about such secret things, she fully believed, than any man alive; and that man was Thomas Crann. Thomas was a rather dreadful man, with his cold eyes, high shoulders, and wheezing breath; and Annie was afraid of him. But she would have encountered the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as surely as the Pilgrim, to get rid of the demon nightmare that lay upon her bosom, crushing the life out of her heart. So she plucked up courage, like Christian of old, and resolved to set out for the house of the Interpreter. Judging, however, that he could not yet be home from his work, she thought it better to go home herself first.

After eating a bit of oat cake, with a mug of blue milk for kitchie (Latin "obsonium"), she retired to her garret and waited drearily, but did not try to pray.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was very dark by the time she left the house, for the night was drizzly; but she knew the windings of Glamerton almost as well as the way up her garret-stair. Thomas's door was half open, and a light was shining from the kitchen. She knocked timidly. At the same moment she heard the voice of Thomas from the other end of this house, which consisted only of a but and a ben. In the ben-end (the inner originally, hence better room) there was no light: Thomas often sat in the dark.

"Jean, come ben to worship," he cried roughly.

"Comin', Thamas," answered Jean.

Again Annie knocked, but again without result. Her knock was too gentle. After a moment's pause, dreading that the intended prayers might interfere with her project, she knocked yet again; but a second time her knock was overwhelmed in the gruff call of Thomas, sounding yet more peremptory than before.

"Jean, come ben to worship."

"Hoot, Thamas, hae patience, man. I canna come."

"Jean, come ben to worship direckly."

"I'm i' the mids' o' cleanin' the shune. I hae dooble wark o' Mononday, ye ken."

"The shune can bide."

"Worship can bide."

"Haud yer tongue. The shune can bide."

"Na, na; they canna bide."

"Gin ye dinna come ben this minute, I'll hae worship my lane."

Vanquished by the awful threat, Jean dropped the shoe she held, and turned her apron; but having to pass the door on her way to the ben-end, she saw Annie standing on the threshold, and stopped with a start, ejaculating:

"The Lord preserve's, lassie!"

"Jean, what are ye sweerin' at?" cried Thomas, angrily.

"At Annie Anderson," answered Jean simply.

"What for are ye sweerin' at her? I'm sure she's a douce lassie. What does the bairn want?"

"What do ye want, Annie?"

"I want to see Thomas, gin ye please," answered Annie.

"She wants to see you, Thomas," screamed Jean; remarking in a lower voice, "He's as deef's a door-nail, Annie Anderson."

"Lat her come in, than," bawled Thomas.

"He's tellin' ye to come in, Annie," said Jean, as if she had been interpreting his words. But she detained her nevertheless to ask several unimportant questions. At length the voice of Thomas rousing her once more, she hastened to introduce her.

"Gang in there, Annie," she said, throwing open the door of the dark room. The child entered and stood just within it, not knowing even where Thomas sat. But a voice came to her out of the gloom:

"Ye're no feared at the dark, are ye, Annie? Come in."

"I dinna ken whaur I'm gaein."

"Never min' that. Come straucht foret. I'm watchin' ye."

For Thomas had been sitting in the dark till he could see in it (which, however, is not an invariable result), while out of the little light Annie had come into none at all But she obeyed the voice, and went straight forward into the dark, evidently much to the satisfaction of Thomas, who seizing her arm with one hand, laid the other, horny and heavy, on her head, saying:

"Noo, my lass, ye'll ken what faith means. Whan God tells ye to gang into the mirk, gang!"

"But I dinna like the mirk," said Annie.

"No human sowl can," responded Thomas. "Jean, fess a can'le direckly."

Now Thomas was an enemy to everything that could be, justly or unjustly, called superstition; and this therefore was not the answer that might have been expected of him. But he had begun with the symbolic and mystical in his reception of Annie, and perhaps there was something in the lovely childishness of her unconscious faith (while she all the time thought herself a dreadful unbeliever) that kept Thomas to the simplicities of the mystical part of his nature. Besides, Thomas's mind was a rendezvous for all extremes. In him they met, and showed that they met by fighting all day long. If you knocked at his inner door, you never could tell what would open it to you—all depending on what happened to be uppermost in the wrestle.

The candle was brought and set on the table, showing two or three geranium plants in the window. Why her eyes should have fixed upon these, Annie tried to discover afterwards, when she was more used to thinking. But she could not tell, except it were that they were so scraggy and wretched, half drowned in the darkness, and half blanched by the miserable light, and therefore must have been very like her own feelings, as she stood before the ungentle but not unkind stone-mason.

"Weel, lassie," said he, when Jean had retired, "what do ye want wi' me?"

Annie burst into tears again.

"Jean, gae butt the hoose direckly," cried Thomas, on the mere chance of his attendant having lingered at the door. And the sound of her retreating footsteps, though managed with all possible care, immediately justified his suspicion. This interruption turned Annie's tears aside, and when Thomas spoke next, she was able to reply.

"Noo, my bairn," he said, "what's the maitter?"

"I was at the missionar kirk last nicht," faltered Annie.

"Ay! And the sermon took a grip o' ye?—Nae doot, nae doot. Ay. Ay."

"I canna help forgettin' him, Thomas."

"But ye maun try and no forget him, lassie."

"Sae I do. But it's dour wark, and 'maist impossible."

"Sae it maun aye be; to the auld Aidam impossible; to the young

Christian a weary watch."

Hope began to dawn upon Annie.

"A body micht hae a chance," she asked with meditative suggestion, "allooin' 'at she did forget him whiles?"

"Nae doot, lassie. The nations that forget God are them that dinna care, that never fash their heids, or their herts aither, aboot him—them that were never called, never chosen."

Annie's trouble returned like a sea-wave that had only retired to gather strength.

"But hoo's a body to ken whether she be ane o' the elec'?" she said, quaking.

"That's a hard maitter. It's no needfu' to ken't aforehan'. Jist lat that alane i' the mean time."

"But I canna lat it alane. It's no for mysel' aither a'thegither. Could ye lat it alane, Thomas?"

This home-thrust prevented any questioning about the second clause of her answer. And Thomas dearly loved plain dealing.

"Ye hae me there, lassie. Na, I cudna lat it alane. An' I never did lat it alane. I plaguit the Lord nicht an' day till he loot me ken."

"I tried hard last nicht," said Annie, "but the rottans war ower mony for me."

"Sawtan has mony wiles," said the mason reflectively.

"Do ye think they warna rottans?' asked Annie.

"Ow! nae doot. I daursay."

"'Cause, gin I thocht they war only deils, I wadna care a buckie (periwinkle) for them."

"It's muckle the same what ye ca' them, gin they ca you frae the throne o' grace, lassie."

"What am I to do than, Thomas?"

"Ye maun haud at it, lassie, jist as the poor widow did wi' the unjust judge. An' gin the Lord hears ye, ye'll ken ye're ane o' the elec', for it's only his own elec' that the Lord dis hear. Eh! lassie, little ye ken aboot prayin' an' no faintin'."

Alas for the parable if Thomas's theories were to be carried out in its exposition! For they would lead to the conclusion that the Lord and the unjust judge were one and the same person. But it is our divine aspirations and not our intellectual theories that need to be carried out. The latter may, nay must in some measure, perish; the former will be found in perfect harmony with the divine Will; yea, true though faint echoes of that Will—echoes from the unknown caves of our deepest humanity, where lies, yet swathed in darkness, the divine image.

To Thomas's words Annie's only reply was a fixed gaze, which he answered thus, resuming his last words:

"Ay, lassie, little ye ken aboot watchin' and prayin'. Whan it pleased the Lord to call me, I was stan'in' my lane i' the mids' o' a peat-moss, luikin' wast, whaur the sun had left a reid licht ahin him, as gin he had jist brunt oot o' the lift, an' hadna gane doon ava. An' it min'd me o' the day o' jeedgment. An' there I steid and luikit, till the licht itsel' deid oot, an' naething was left but a gray sky an' a feow starns intil't. An' the cloods gethered, an' the lift grew black an' mirk; an' the haill countryside vainished, till I kent no more aboot it than what my twa feet could answer for. An' I daurna muv for the fear o' the pits o' water an' the walleen (well-eyes—quagmire-springs) on ilka han'. The lee-lang nicht I stood, or lay, or kneeled upo' my k-nees, cryin' to the Lord for grace. I forgot a' aboot election, an' cried jist as gin I could gar him hear me by haudin' at him. An' i' the mornin', whan the licht cam', I faund that my face was to the risin' sun. And I crap oot o' the bog, an' hame to my ain hoose. An' ilka body 'at I met o' the road took the tither side o' 't, and glowert at me as gin I had been a ghaist or a warlock. An' the bairns playin' aboot the doors ran in like rabbits whan they got sicht o' me. An' I begud to think 'at something fearsome had signed me for a reprobate; an' I jist closed my door, and gaed to my bed, and loot my wark stan', for wha cud wark wi' damnation hingin' ower his heid? An' three days gaed ower me, that nothing passed my lips but a drap o' milk an' water. An' o' the fourth day, i' the efternoon, I gaed to my wark wi' my heid swimmin' and my hert like to brak for verra glaidness. I was ane o' the chosen.["]