The Elect Lady

CHAPTER XXXI. THE PROSECUTION

As soon as Crawford had his things away from Potlurg, satisfied the cup was nowhere among them, he made a statement of the case to a magistrate he knew; and so represented it, as the outcome of the hypocrisy of pietism, that the magistrate, hating everything called fanatical, at once granted him a warrant to apprehend Dawtie on the charge of theft.

It was a terrible shock. Alexa cried out with indignation. Dawtie turned white and then red, but uttered never a word.

“Dawtie,” said her mistress, “tell me what you know about the cup. You do know something that you have not told me!”

“I do, ma’am, but I will not tell it except I am forced.”

“That you are going to be, my poor girl! I am very sorry, for I am perfectly sure you have done nothing you know to be wrong!”

“I have done nothing you or anybody would think wrong, ma’am.”

She put on her Sunday frock, and went down to go with the policeman. To her joy she found her mistress at the door, ready to accompany her. They had two miles or more to walk, but that was nothing to either.

Questioned by the magistrate, not unkindly, for her mistress was there, Dawtie told everything—how first she came upon the likeness and history of the cup, and then saw the cup itself in her master’s hands.

Crawford told how the laird had warned him against Dawtie, giving him to understand that she had been seized with a passion for the goblet such that she would peril her soul to possess it, and that he dared not let her know where it was.

“Sir,” said Dawtie, “he could na hae distrusted me like that, for he gae me his keys, and sent me to fetch the cup when he was ower ill to gang till’t.”

“If that be true, your worship,” said Crawford, “it does not affect the fact that the cup was in the hands of the old man when I left him and she went to him, and from that moment it has not been seen.”

“Did he have it when you went to him?” asked the magistrate.

“I didna see’t, sir. He was in a kind o’ faint when I got up.”

Crawford said that, hearing a cry, he ran up again, and found the old man at the point of death, with just strength to cry out before he died, that Dawtie had taken the cup from him. Dawtie was leaning over him, but he had not imagined the accusation more than the delirious fancy of a dying man, till it appeared that the cup was not to be found.

The magistrate made out Dawtie’s commitment for trial. He remarked that she might have been misled by a false notion of duty: he had been informed that she belonged to a sect claiming the right to think for themselves on the profoundest mysteries—and here was the result! There was not a man in Scotland less capable of knowing what any woman was thinking, or more incapable of doubting his own insight.

Doubtless, he went on, she had superstitiously regarded the cup as exercising a Satanic influence on the mind of her master; but even if she confessed it now, he must make an example of one whose fanaticism would set wrong right after the notions of an illiterate sect, and not according to the laws of the land. He just send the case to be tried by a jury! If she convinced the twelve men composing that jury, of the innocence she protested, she would then be a free woman.

Dawtie stood very white all the time he was speaking, and her lips every now and then quivered as if she were going to cry, but she did not. Alexa offered bail, but his worship would not accept it: his righteous soul was too indignant. She went to Dawtie and kissed her, and together they followed the policeman to the door, where Dawtie was to get into a spring-cart with him, and be driven to the county town, there to lie waiting the assizes.

The bad news had spread so fast that as they came out, up came Andrew. At sight of him Dawtie gently laughed, like a pleased child. The policeman, who, like many present, had been prejudiced by her looks in her favor, dropped behind, and she walked between her mistress and Andrew to the cart.

“Dawtie!” said Andrew.

“Oh, Andrew! has God forgotten me?” she returned, stopping short.

“For God to forget,” answered Andrew, “would be not to be God any longer!”

“But here I am on my road til a prison, Andrew! I didna think He would hae latten them do’t!”

“A bairn micht jist as weel say, whan its nurse lays’t intil its cradle, and says: ‘Noo, lie still!’ ‘Mammy, I didna think ye would hae latten her do’t!’ He’s a’ aboot ye and in ye, Dawtie, and this is come to ye jist to lat ye ken ‘at He is. He raised ye up jist to spen’ His glory upo’! I say, Dawtie, did Jesus Christ deserve what He got?”

“No ae bit, Andrew! What for should ye speir sic a thing?”

“Then do ye think God hae forgotten Him?”

“May be He thoucht it jist for a minute!”

“Well, ye hae thoucht jist for a minute, and ye maun think it nae mair.”

“But God couldna forget Him, An’rew: He got it a’ for doin’ His will!”

“Evil may come upon as from other causes than doing the will of God; but from whatever cause it comes, the thing we have to see to is, that through it all we do the will of God!”

“What’s His will noo, An’rew?”

“That ye tak it quaietly. Shall not the Father do wi’ His ain child what He will! Can He no shift it frae the tae airm to the tither, but the bairn maun girn? He has ye, Dawtie! It’s a’ richt!”

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!” said Dawtie.

She raised her head. The color had come back to her face; her lips had ceased to tremble; she stepped on steadily to where, a few yards from the door, the spring-cart was waiting her. She bade her mistress good-bye, then turned to Andrew and said:

“Good-bye, An’rew! I am not afraid.”

“I am going with you, Dawtie,” said Andrew.

“No, sir, you can’t do that!” said the policeman; “at least you can’t go in the trap!”

“No, no, Andrew!” cried Dawtie. “I would rather go alone. I am quite happy now. God will do with me as He pleases!”

“I am going with you,” said Alexa, “if the policeman will let me.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am! A lady’s different!—I’ve got to account for the prisoner you see, sir!”

“I don’t think you should, ma’am,” said Dawtie. “It’s a long way!”

“I am going,” returned her mistress, decisively.

“God bless you, ma’am!” said Andrew.

Alexa had heard what he said to Dawtie. A new light had broken upon her. “God is like that, is He?” she said to herself. “You can go close up to Him whenever you like?”

CHAPTER XXXII. A TALK AT POTLURG

It would be three weeks before the assizes came. The house of Potlurg was searched by the police from garret to cellar, but in vain; the cup was not found.

As soon as they gave up searching, Alexa had the old door of the laird’s closet, discernible enough on the inside, reopened, and the room cleaned. Almost unfurnished as it was, she made of it her sitting-parlor. But often her work or her book would lie on her lap, and she would find herself praying for the dear father for whom she could do nothing else now, but for whom she might have done so much, had she been like Dawtie. Her servant had cared for her father more than she!

As she sat there one morning alone, brooding a little, thinking a little, reading a little, and praying through it all, Meg appeared, and said Maister Andrew wanted to see her.

He had called more than once to inquire after Dawtie, but had not before asked to see her mistress.

Alexa felt herself unaccountably agitated. When he walked into the room, however, she was able to receive him quietly. He came, he said, to ask when she had seen Dawtie. He would have gone himself to see her, but his father was ailing, and he had double work to do. Besides, she did not seem willing to see him! Alexa told him she had been with her the day before, and had found her a little pale, and, she feared, rather troubled in her mind. She said she would trust God to the last, but confessed herself assailed by doubts.

“I said to her,” continued Alexa, “‘Be sure, Dawtie, God will make your innocence known one day!’ She answered: ‘Of course, ma’am, there is nothing hidden that shall not be known; but I am not impatient about that. The Jews to this day think Jesus an impostor!’ ‘But surely,’ said I, ‘you care that people should understand you are no thief, Dawtie!’ ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered; ‘all I say is, that is does not trouble me. I want only to be downright sure that God is looking after me all the time. I am willing to sit in prison till I die, if He pleases.’ ‘God can’t please that!’ I said. ‘If He does not care to take me out, I do not care to go out,’ said Dawtie. ‘It’s not that I’m good; it’s only that I don’t care for anything He doesn’t care for. What would it be that all men acquitted me, if God did not trouble Himself about His children!’”

“You see, ma’am, it comes to this,” said Andrew: “it is God Dawtie cares about, not herself! If God is all right, Dawtie is all right. The if sometimes takes one shape, sometimes another, but the fear is the same—and the very fear is faith. Sometimes the fear is that there may be no God, and that you might call a fear for herself; but when Dawtie fears lest God should not be caring for her, that is a fear for God; for if God did not care for His creature, He would be no true God!”

“Then He could not exist!”

“True; and so you are back on the other fear!”

“What would you have said to her, Mr. Ingram?”

“I would have reminded her that Jesus was perfectly content with His Father; that He knew what was coming on Himself, and never doubted Him—just gloried that His Father was what He knew Him to be.”

“I see! But what did you mean when you said that Dawtie’s very fear was faith?”

“Think, ma’am: people that only care to be saved, that is, not to be punished for their sins, are anxious only about themselves, not about God and His glory at all. They talk about the glory of God, but they make it consist in pure selfishness! According to them, He seeks everything for Himself; which is dead against the truth of God, a diabolic slander of God. It does not trouble them to believe such things about God; they do not even desire that God should not be like that; they only want to escape Him. They dare not say God will not do this or that, however clear it be that it would not be fair; they are in terror of contradicting the Bible. They make more of the Bible than of God, and so fail to find the truth of the Bible, and accept things concerning God which are not in the Bible, and are the greatest of insults to Him! Dawtie never thinks about saving her soul; she has no fear about her soul; she is only anxious about God and His glory. How the doubts come, God knows; but if she did not love God, they would not be there. Jesus says God will speedily avenge His elect—those that cry day and night to Him—which I take to mean that He will soon save them from all such miseries. Free Dawtie from unsureness about God, and she has no fear left. All is well, in the prison or on the throne of God, if He only be what she thinks He is. If any one say that doubt can not coexist with faith, I answer, it can with love, and love is the greater of the two, yea, is the very heart of faith itself. God’s children are not yet God’s men and women. The God that many people believe in, claiming to be the religious because they believe in Him, is a God not worth believing in, a God that ought not to be believed in. The life given by such a God would be a life not worth living, even if He made His votaries as happy as they would choose to be. A God like that could not make a woman like Dawtie anxious about Him! If God be not each as Jesus, what good would the proving of her innocence be to Dawtie! A mighty thing indeed that the world should confess she was not a thief! But to know that there is a perfect God, one for us to love with all the power of love of which we feel we are capable, is worth going out of existence for; while to know that God himself, must make every throb of consciousness a divine ecstasy!”

Andrew’s heart was full, and out of its fullness he spoke. Never before had he been able in the presence of Alexa to speak as he felt. Never before had he had any impulse to speak as now. As soon would he have gone to sow seed on a bare rock, as words of spirit and life in her ears!

“I am beginning to understand you,” she said. “Will you forgive me? I have been very self-confident and conceited! What a mercy things are not as I thought they were—thought they ought to be!”

“And the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea!” said Andrew. “And men’s hearts shall be full of bliss, because they have found their Father, and He is what He is, and they are going home to Him.”

He rose.

“You will come and see me again soon—will you not?” she said.

“As often as you please, ma’am; I am your servant.”

“Then come to-morrow.”

He went on the morrow, and the next day, and the day after—almost every day while Dawtie was waiting her trial.

Almost every morning Alexa went by train to see Dawtie; and the news she brought, Andrew would carry to the girl’s parents. Dawtie continued unwilling to see Andrew: he had had trouble enough with her already, she said; but Andrew could not quite understand her refusal.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A GREAT OFFERING

Two days before the assizes, Andrew was with Alexa in her parlor. It was a cool autumn evening, and she proposed they should go on the heath, which came close up to the back of the house.

When they reached the top of the hill, a cold wind was blowing, and Andrew, full of care for old and young, man and woman, made Alexa draw her shawl closer about her throat, where, with his rough, plow-man hands, he pinned it for her. She saw, felt, and noted his hands; a pitying admiration, of which only the pity was foolish, woke in her; and ere she knew, she was looking up in his face with such a light in her eyes that Andrew found himself embarrassed, and let his fall. Moved by that sense of class-superiority which has no place in the kingdom of heaven, she attributed his modesty to self-depreciation, and the conviction rose in her, which has often risen in such as she, that there is a magnanimity demanding the sacrifice, not merely of conventional dignity, but of conventional propriety. She felt that a great lady, to be more than great, must stoop; that it was her part to make the approach which, between equals, was the part of the man; the patroness must do what the woman might not. This man was worthy of any woman; and he should not, because of the humility that dared not presume, fail of what he deserved!

“Andrew,” she said, “I am going to do an unusual thing, but you are not like other men, and will not misunderstand! I know you now—know you as far above other men as the clouds are above this heath!”

“Oh, no, no, ma’am!” protested Andrew.

“Hear me out, Andrew,” she interrupted—then paused a little.

“Tell me,” she resumed, “ought we not to love best the best we know?”

“Surely, ma’am!” he answered, uncomfortable, but not anticipating what was on the way.

“Andrew, you are the best I know! I have said it! I do not care what the world thinks; you are more to me than all the worlds! If you will take me, I am yours.”

She looked him in the face with the feeling that she had done a brave and a right thing.

Andrew stood stock-still.

“Me, ma’am!” he gasped, and grew pale—then red as a foggy sun. But he made scarcely a moment’s pause.

“It’s a God-like thing you have done, ma’am!” he said. “But I can not make the return it deserves. From the heart of my heart I thank you. I can say no more.”

His voice trembled. She heard a stifled sob. He had turned away to conceal his emotion.

And now came greatness indeed to the front. Instead of drawing herself up with the bitter pride of a woman whose best is scorned, Alexa behaved divinely. She went close to Andrew, laid her hand on his arm, and said:

“Forgive me, Andrew. I made a mistake. I had no right to make it. Do not be grieved, I beg; you are nowise to blame. Let us continue friends!”

“Thank you, ma’am!” said Andrew, in a tone of deepest gratitude; and neither said a word more. They walked side by side back to the house.

Said Alexa to herself:

“I have at least been refused by a man worthy of the honor I did him! I made no mistake in him!”

When they reached the door, she stopped. Andrew took off his hat, and said, holding it in his hand as he spoke:

“Good-night, ma’am! You will send for me if you want me?”

“I will. Good-night!” said Alexa, and went in with a strange weight on her heart.

Shut in her room, she wept sorely, but not bitterly; and the next day old Meg, at least, saw no change in her.

Said Andrew to himself:

“I will be her servant always.”

He was humbled, not uplifted.

CHAPTER XXXIV. ANOTHER OFFERING

The next evening, that before the trial, Andrew presented himself at the prison, and was admitted. Dawtie came to meet him, held out her hand, and said:

“Thank you, Andrew!”

“How are you, Dawtie?”

“Well enough, Andrew!”

“God is with us, Dawtie.”

“Are you sure, Andrew?”

“Dawtie, I can not see God’s eyes looking at me, but I am ready to do what He wants me to do, and so I feel He is with me.”

“Oh, Andrew, I wish I could be sure!”

“Let us take the risk together, Dawtie!”

“What risk, Andrew?”

“The risk that makes you not sure, Dawtie—the risk that is at once the worst and the least—the risk that our hope should be in vain, and there is no God. But, Dawtie, there is that in my heart that cries Christ did die, and did rise again, and God is doing His best. His perfect love is our perfect safety. It is hard upon Him that His own children will not trust Him!”

“If He would but show Himself!”

“The sight of Him now would make us believe in Him without knowing Him; and what kind of faith would that be for Him or for us! We should be bad children, taking Him for a weak parent! We must know Him! When we do, there will be no fear, no doubt. We shall run straight home! Dawtie, shall we go together?”

“Yes, surely, Andrew! God knows I try. I’m ready to do whatever you tell me, Andrew!”

“No, Dawtie! You must never do what I tell you, except you think it right.”

“Yes, I know that. But I am sure I should think it right!”

“We’ve been of one mind for a long time now, Dawtie!”

“Sin’ lang afore I had ony min’ o’ my ain!” responded Dawtie, turning to her vernacular.