Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/734

728 lovely nothings round which the nimbus of sanctity had gathered while he thought not of them; wept over the memory of that moment of delight when his mother kissed him for parting with his willow whistle to the sister who cried for it: he cried now in his turn, after five-and-fifty years, for not yet had the little fact done with him, nor yet had the kiss of his mother lost its power on the man; wept over the sale of the pet lamb, though he had himself sold thousands of lambs since; wept over even that bush of dusty miller by the door, like the one he trampled under his horse's feet in the little yard at Scaurnose that horrible day. And oh that nest of wild bees with it's combs of honey unspeakable! He used to laugh and sing then: he laughed still sometimes — he could hear how he laughed, and it sounded frightful — but he never sang. Were the tears that honored such childish memories all of weakness? Was it cause of regret that he had not been wicked enough to have become impregnable to such foolish trifles? Unable to mount a horse, unable to give an order, not caring even for his toddy, he was left at the mercy of his fundamentals: his childhood came up and claimed him, and he found the childish things he had put away better than the manly things he had adopted. It is one thing for Saint Paul and another for Mr. Worldly Wiseman to put away childish things. The ways they do it, and the things they substitute, are both so different! And now first to me, whose weakness it is to love life more than manners, and men more than their portraits, the man begins to grow interesting. Picture the dawn of innocence on a dull, whiskey-drinking, commonplace soul, stained by self-indulgence and distorted by injustice! Unspeakably more interesting and lovely is to me such a dawn than the honeymoon of the most passionate of lovers, except indeed I know them such lovers that their love will outlast all the moons.

"I'm a poor creature, Lizzy," he said, turning his heavy face one midnight toward the girl as she sat half-dozing, ready to start awake.

"God comfort ye, sir!" said the girl.

"He'll take good care of that," returned the factor. "What did I ever do to deserve it? There's that MacPhail, now — to think of him! Didn't I do what man could for him? Didn't I keep him about the place when all the rest were dismissed? Didn't I give him the key of the library, that he might read and improve his mind? And look what comes of it!"

"Ye mean, sir," said Lizzy, quite innocently, "'at that's the w'y ye ha'e dune wi' God, an' sae he winna heed ye?"

The factor had meant nothing in the least like it. He had merely been talking as the imps of suggestion tossed up. His logic was as sick and helpless as himself. So at that he held his peace, stung in his pride at least — perhaps in his conscience too, only he was not prepared to be rebuked by a girl like her, who had —— Well, he must let it pass: how much better was he himself?

But Lizzy was loyal: she could not hear him speak so of Malcolm and hold her peace as if she agreed in his condemnation.

"Ye'll ken Ma'colm better some day, sir," she said.

"Well, Lizzy," returned the sick man, in a tone that but for feebleness would have been indignant, "I have heard a good deal of the way women will stand up for men that have treated them cruelly, but you to stand up for him passes!"

"He's the best friend I ever had," said Lizzy.

"Girl! how can you sit there, and tell me so to my face?" cried the factor, his voice strengthened by the righteousness of the reproof it bore. "If it were not the dead of the night ——"

"I tell ye naething but the trowth, sir," said Lizzy, as the contingent threat died away. "But ye maun lie still or I maun gang for the mistress. Gien ye be the waur the morn, it 'll be a' my wyte, 'cause I cudna bide to hear sic things said o' Ma'colm."

"Do ye mean to tell me," persisted her charge, heedless of her expostulation, "that the fellow who brought you to disgrace, and left you with a child you could ill provide for — and I well know never sent you a penny all the time he was away, whatever he may have done now — is the best friend you ever had?"

"Noo God forgie ye, Maister Crathie, for threipin' sic a thing!" cried Lizzy, rising as if she would leave him. "Ma'colm MacPhail 's as clear o' ony sin like mine as my wee bairnie itsel'."

"Do ye daur tell me he's no the father o' that same, lass?"

"No; nor never will be the father o' ony bairn whose mither 's no his wife!" said Lizzy, with burning cheeks but resolute voice.

The factor, who had risen on his elbow to look her in the face, fell back in silence, and neither of them spoke for what seemed to the watcher a long time. When she ventured to look at him, he was asleep.