The Little Minister Part 67

"G.o.d! 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 G.o.d's sight?"

"No; he knows that it was so evil in G.o.d'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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU DARE TO LOOK ME IN THE FACE!"]

"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 G.o.d 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?"

"If you knew him," Babbie answered, "you would not need to be told that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an hour ago."

"And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off to marry him."

"I am not so bad as that," Babbie answered, and told him what had brought her to Thrums. "I had no thought but of returning to you, nor he of keeping me from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse door--and then we heard your voice."

"And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove you to this?"

"I--I love him so much."

What more could Babbie answer? These words told him that, if love commands, home, the friends.h.i.+ps of a lifetime, kindnesses incalculable, are at once as naught. Nothing is so cruel as love if a rival challenges it to combat.

"Why could you not love me, Babbie?" said the earl sadly. "I have done so much for you."

It was little he had done for her that was not selfish. Men are deceived curiously in such matters. When they add a new wing to their house, they do not call the action virtue; but if they give to a fellow-creature for their own gratification, they demand of G.o.d a good mark for it. Babbie, however, was in no mood to make light of the earl's gifts, and at his question she shook her head sorrowfully.

"Is it because I am too--old?"

This was the only time he ever spoke of his age to her.

"Oh no, it is not that," she replied hastily, "I love Mr.

Dishart--because he loves me, I think."

"Have I not loved you always?"

"Never," Babbie answered simply. "If you had, perhaps then I should have loved you."

"Babbie," he exclaimed, "if ever man loved woman, and showed it by the sacrifices he made for her, I----"

"No," Babbie said, "you don't understand what it is. Ah! I did not mean to hurt you."

"If I don't know what it is, what is it?" he asked, almost humbly. "I scarcely know you now."

"That is it," said Babbie.

She gave him back his ring, and then he broke down pitifully.

Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life into the dust of his senile pa.s.sion. These were the last words that pa.s.sed between him and Babbie:

"There was nothing," he said wistfully, "in this wide world that you could not have had by asking me for it. Was not that love?"

"No," she answered. "What right have I to everything I cry for?"

"You should never have had a care had you married me. That is love."

"It is not. I want to share my husband's cares, as I expect him to share mine."

"I would have humored you in everything."

"You always did: as if a woman's mind were for laughing at, like a baby's pa.s.sions."

"You had your pa.s.sions, too, Babbie. Yet did I ever chide you for them? That was love."

"No, it was contempt. Oh," she cried pa.s.sionately, "what have not you men to answer for who talk of love to a woman when her face is all you know of her; and her pa.s.sions, her aspirations, are for kissing to sleep, her very soul a plaything? I tell you, Lord Rintoul, and it is all the message I send back to the gentlemen at the Spittal who made love to me behind your back, that this is a poor folly, and well calculated to rouse the wrath of G.o.d."

Now, Jean's ear had been to the parlor keyhole for a time, but some message she had to take to Margaret, and what she risked saying was this:

"It's Lord Rintoul and a party that has been catched in the rain, and he would be obliged to you if you could gie his bride shelter for the nicht."

Thus the distracted servant thought to keep Margaret's mind at rest until Gavin came back.

"Lord Rintoul!" exclaimed Margaret. "What a pity Gavin has missed him.

Of course she can stay here. Did you say I had gone to bed? I should not know what to say to a lord. But ask her to come up to me after he has gone--and, Jean, is the parlor looking tidy?"

Lord Rintoul having departed, Jean told Babbie how she had accounted to Margaret for his visit. "And she telled me to gie you dry claethes and her compliments, and would you gang up to the bedroom and see her?"

Very slowly Babbie climbed the stairs. I suppose she is the only person who was ever afraid of Margaret. Her first knock on the bedroom door was so soft that Margaret, who was sitting up in bed, did not hear it. When Babbie entered the room, Margaret's first thought was that there could be no other so beautiful as this, and her second was that the stranger seemed even more timid than herself. After a few minutes' talk she laid aside her primness, a weapon she had drawn in self-defence lest this fine lady should not understand the grandeur of a manse, and at a "Call me Babbie, won't you?" she smiled.

"That is what some other person calls you," said Margaret archly. "Do you know that he took twenty minutes to say good-night? My dear," she added hastily, misinterpreting Babbie's silence, "I should have been sorry had he taken one second less. Every tick of the clock was a gossip, telling me how he loves you."

In the dim light a face that begged for pity was turned to Margaret.