Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/480

474 Portlossie to Edinburgh, and then to London, but not yet had seen how to approach her with probable advantage. In the meantime she had renewed old relations with a certain herb-doctor in Kentish Town, at whose house she was now accommodated. There she had already begun to entice the confidences of maidservants by use of what evil knowledge she had and pretence to more, giving herself out as a wise-woman. Her faith never failed her that, if she but kept handling the fowls of circumstances, one or other of them must at length drop an egg of opportunity in her lap. When she stumbled upon the schoolmaster preaching in a chapel near her own haunts, she felt something more like a gust of gratitude to the dark power that sat behind and pulled the strings of events — for thus she saw through her own projected phantom the heart of the universe — than she had ever yet experienced. If there were such things as special providences, here, she said, was one: if not, then it was better luck than she had looked for. The main point in it was that the dominie seemed likely, after all, to turn out a popular preacher: then beyond a doubt other Scotch people would gather to him: this or that person might turn up, and any one' might turn out useful. One thread might be knotted to another, until all together made a clew to guide her straight through the labyrinth to the centre, to lay her hand on the collar of the demon of the house of Lossie. It was the biggest game of her life, and had been its game long before the opening of my narrative.

 

Malcolm first visited Mr. Graham the schoolmaster had already preached two or three times in the pulpit of Hope Chapel. His ministrations at the prayer-meetings had led to this; for every night on which he was expected to speak there were more people present than on the last; and when the deacons saw this they asked him to preach on the Sundays. After two Sundays they came to him in a body and besought him to become a candidate for the vacant pulpit, assuring him of success if he did so. He gave a decided refusal, however, nor mentioned his reasons. His friend Marshal urged him, pledging himself for his income to an amount which would have been riches to the dominie, but in vain. Thereupon the silk-mercer concluded that he must have money, and, kind man as he was, grew kinder in consequence, and congratulated him on his independence.

"I depend more on the fewness of my wants than on any earthly store for supplying them," said the dominie.

Marshal's thermometer fell a little, but not his anxiety to secure services which, he insisted, would be for the glory of God and the everlasting good of perishing souls. The schoolmaster only smiled queerly and held his peace. He consented, however, to preach the next Sunday, and on the Monday consented to preach the next again. For several weeks the same thing recurred. But he would never promise on a Sunday, or allow the briefest advertisement to be given concerning him. All said he was feeling his way.

Neither had he, up to this time, said a word to Malcolm about the manner in which his Sundays were employed, while yet he talked much about a school he had opened in a room occupied in the evenings by a debating club, where he was teaching such children of small shopkeepers and artisans as found their way to him — in part through his connection with the chapel-folk. When Malcolm had called on a Sunday his landlady had been able to tell him nothing more than that Mr. Graham had gone out at such and such an hour — she presumed to church; and when he had once or twice expressed a wish to accompany him wherever he went to worship, Mr. Graham had managed somehow to let him go without having made any arrangement for his doing so.

On the evening after his encounter with Liftore, Malcolm visited the schoolmaster and told him everything about the affair. He concluded by saying that Lizzy's wrongs had loaded the whip far more than his sister's insult, but that he was very doubtful whether he had had any right to constitute himself the avenger of either after such a fashion. Mr. Graham replied that a man ought never to be carried away by wrath, as he had so often sought to impress upon him, and not without success; but that in the present case, as the rascal deserved it so well, he did not think he need trouble himself much. At the same time, he ought to remind himself that the rightness or wrongness, of any particular act was of far less consequence than the rightness or wrongness of the will whence sprang the act; and that while no man could be too anxious as to whether a contemplated action ought or ought not to be done, at the same time no man could do 