An Orkney Maid Part 27

For a moment they, stood silently hand clasped, then parted, and the Bishop walked straight to the vestry and taking a key from his pocket, opened the door. There was a fire laid ready for the match and he stooped and lit it, and Ian placed his chair near by.

"That is good!" he said. "Bring your own chair near to me, Ian, I have something to say to you."

"I am glad of that, Bishop. No one seemed to care for my sorrow. I was made to feel this day the difference between a son and a son-in-law."

"There is a difference, a natural one, but you have been treated as a son always. Ragnor has told me all about those charges. You may speak freely to me. It is better that you should do so."

"I explained the charges to the whole family. Do they not believe me?"

"The explanation was only partial and one-sided. I think the charge of gambling may be put aside, with your promise to abstain from the appearance of evil for the future. I understand your position about the Sabbath. You should have gone on singing in some church. Supposing you got no spiritual help from it, you were at least lifting the souls of others on the wings of holy song, and you need not have mocked at the devout feelings of others by music unfit for the day."

"It was a bit of boyish folly."

"It was something far more than that. I had a letter from Jean Hay more than two months ago and I investigated every charge she made against you."

"Well, Bishop?"

"I find that, examined separately, they do not indicate any settled sinfulness; but taken together they indicate a variable temper, a perfectly untrained nature, and a weak, unresisting will. Now, Ian, a weak, good man is a dangerous type of a bad man. They readily become the tools of wicked men of powerful intellect and determined character. I have met with many such cases. Your change of name----"

"Oh, sir, I could not endure Calvin tacked on to me! If you knew what I have suffered!"

"I know it all. Why did you not tell the Ragnors on your first acquaintance with them?"

"Mrs. Ragnor liked Ian because it is the Highland form for John, and Thora loved the name and I did not like, while they knew so little of me, to tell them I had only a.s.sumed it. I watched for a good opportunity to speak concerning it and none came. Then I thought I would consult you at this time, before the wedding day."

"I could not have married you under the name of Ian. Discard it at once. Take it as a pet name between Thora and yourself, if you choose.

No doubt you thought Ian was prettier and more romantic and suitable for your really handsome person."

"Oh, Bishop, do not humiliate me! I----"

"I have no doubt I am correct. I have known young men wreck their lives for some equally foolish idea."

"I will cast it off today. I will tell Thora the truth tonight. Before we are married, I will advertise it in next week's _News_."

"Before you are married, I trust you will have made the name of John Macrae so famous that you will need no such advertising."

"What do you mean, Bishop?"

"I want you to go to the trenches at Redan or to fight your way into Sebastopol. You have been left too much to your own direction and your own way. Obedience is the first round of the ladder of Success. You must learn it. You can only be a subordinate till you manage this lesson. Your ideas of life are crude and provincial. You need to see men making their way upward, in some other places than in shops and offices. Above all, you must learn to conquer yourself and your indiscreet will. You are not a man, until you are master in your own house and fear no mutiny against your Will to act n.o.bly. You have had no opportunities for such education. Now take one year to begin it."

"You mean that I must put off my marriage for a year."

"Exactly. Under present circ.u.mstances----"

"Oh, sir, that is not thinkable! It would be too mortifying! I could not go back to Edinburgh. I could not put off my marriage!"

"You will be obliged to do so. Do you imagine the Ragnors will hold wedding festivities, while their eldest son is dying, or his broken body on its way home for burial?"

"I thought the ceremony would be entirely religious and the festivities could be abandoned."

"Is that what you wish?"

"Yes, Bishop."

"Then you will not get it. A year's strict mourning is due the dead, and the Ragnors will give every hour of it. Boris is their eldest son."

"They should remember also their living daughter Thora will suffer as well as myself."

"You are not putting yourself in a good light, John Macrae. Thora loves her brother with a great affection. Do you think she can comfort her grief for his loss, by giving you any loving honour that belongs to him? You do not know Thora Ragnor. She has her mother's just, strong character below all her gentle ways, and what her father and mother say she will endorse, without question or reluctance. Now I know that Ragnor had resolved on a year's separation and discipline, before he heard of his son's dangerous condition."

"Boris was not dead when that Vedder letter was written. He may not be dead now. He may not be going to die."

"It is only his wonderful physical strength that has kept him alive so long. Vedder said to me, they looked for his death at any hour. He cannot recover. His wound is a fatal one. It is beyond hope. Vedder wrote while he was yet alive, so that he might perhaps break the blow to his family."

"What then do you advise me to do?"

"Ragnor intends to go back with you and myself to Edinburgh. He will see your father and offer to buy you a commission as ensign in a good infantry regiment. We will ask your father if he will join in the plan."

"My father will not join in anything to help me. How much will an ensign's commission cost?"

"I think four or five hundred pounds. Ragnor would pay half, if your father would pay half."

Then Ian rose to his feet, and his eyes blazed with a fire no one had ever seen there before. "Bishop," he said, "I thank you for all you propose, but if I go to the trenches at Redan or the camp at Sebastopol, I will go on John Macrae's authority and personality. I have one hundred pounds, that is sufficient. I can learn all the great things you expect me to learn there better among the rankers than the officers. I have known the officers at Edinburgh Castle. They were not fit candidates for a bishopric."

The good man looked sadly at the angry youth and answered, "Go and talk the matter over with Thora."

"I will. Surely she will be less cruel."

"What do you wish, considering present circ.u.mstances?"

"I want the marriage carried out, devoid of all but its religious ceremony. I want to spend one month in the home prepared for us, and then I will submit to the punishment and schooling proposed."

"No, you will not. Do not throw away this opportunity to retrieve your so far neglected, misguided life. There is a great man in you, if you will give him s.p.a.ce and opportunity to develop, John. This is the wide open door of Opportunity; go through, and go up to where it will lead you. At any rate do whatever Thora advises. I can trust you as far as Thora can." Then he held out his hand, and Ian, too deeply moved to speak, took it and left the cathedral without a word.

He found Thora alone in the parlour. She had evidently been weeping but that fact did not much soothe his sense of wrong and injustice. He felt that he had been put aside in some measure. He was not sure that even now Thora had been weeping for his loss. He told himself, she was just as likely to have been mourning for Boris. He felt that he was unjustly angry but, oh, he was so hopeless! Every one was ready to give him advice, no one had said to him those little words of loving sympathy for which his heart was hungry. He had felt it to be his duty to try and console Thora, and Thora had wept in his arms and he had kissed her tears away. She was now weary with weeping and suffering with headache. She knew also that talking against any decision of her father's was useless. When he had said the word, the man or woman that could move him did not live. Acceptance of the will of others was a duty she had learned to observe all her life, it was just the duty that Ian had thought it right to resist. So amid all his love and disappointment, there was a cruel sense of being of secondary interest and importance, just at the very time he had expected to be first in everyone's love and consideration.

Finally he said, "Dear Thora, I can feel no longer. My heart has become hopeless. I suffer too much. I will go to my room and try and submit to this last cruel wrong."

Then Thora was offended. "There is no one to blame for this last cruel wrong but thyself," she answered. "The death of Boris was a nearer thing to my father and mother than my marriage. Thy marriage can take place at some other time, but for my dear brother there is no future in this life."

"Are you even sure of his death?"

"My mother has seen him."

"That is nonsense."

"To you, I dare say it is. Mother sees more than any one else can see.

She has spiritual vision. We are not yet able for it, nor worthy of it."