"What have I done!" she cried, and drawing back a pace, stood looking at him, and trembling. "I am disgraced for ever! I have told a man I love him, and he leaves me to the shame of it! He will not save me from it! he will not say one word to take it away! Where is your generosity, Ian?"
"I must be true!" said Ian, speaking as if to himself, and in a voice altogether unlike his own.
"You will not love me! You hate me! You despise me! But I will not live rejected! He brushes me like a feather from his coat!"
"Hear me," said Ian, trying to recover himself. "Do not think me insensible--"
"Oh, yes! I know!" cried Christina yet more bitterly; "--INSENSIBLE TO THE HONOUR _I_ DO YOU, and all that world of nothing!--Pray use your victory! Lord it over me! I am the weed under your foot! I beg you will not spare me! Speak out what you think of me!"
Ian took her hand. It trembled as if she would pull it away, and her eyes flashed an angry fire. She looked more nearly beautiful than ever he had seen her! His heart was like to break. He drew her to the chair, and taking a stool, sat down beside her. Then, with a voice that gathered strength as he proceeded, he said:--
"Let me speak to you, Christina Palmer, as in the presence of him who made us! To pretend I loved you would be easier than to bear the pain of giving you such pain. Were I selfish enough, I could take much delight in your love; but I scorn the unmanliness of accepting gold and returning silver: my love is not mine to give."
It was some relief to her proud heart to imagine he would have loved her had he been free. But she did not speak.
"If I thought," pursued Ian, "that I had, by any behaviour of mine, been to blame for this,--" There he stopped, lest he should seem to lay blame on her.--"I think," he resumed, "I could help you if you would listen to me. Were I in like trouble with you, I would go into my room, and shut the door, and tell my Father in heaven everything about it. Ah, Christina! if you knew him, you would not break your heart that a man did not love you just as you loved him."
Had not her misery been so great, had she not also done the thing that humbled her before herself, Christina would have been indignant with the man who refused her love and dared speak to her of religion; but she was now too broken for resentment.
The diamond rain was falling, the sun was shining in his vaporous strength, and the great dome of heaven stood fathomless above the pair; but to Christina the world was black and blank as the gloomy hut in which they sat. When first her love blossomed, she saw the world open; she looked into its heart; she saw it alive--saw it burning with that which made the bush alive in the desert of h.o.r.eb--the presence of the living G.o.d; now, the vision was over, the desert was dull and dry, the bush burned no more, the glowing lava had cooled to unsightly stone! There was no G.o.d, nor any man more!
Time had closed and swept the world into the limbo of vanity! For a time she sat without thought, as it were in a mental sleep. She opened her eyes, and the blank of creation stared into the very heart of her. The emptiness and loneliness overpowered her. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she slid to her knees at Ian"s feet, crying,
"Save me, save me, Ian! I shall go mad! Pardon me! Help me!"
"All a man may be to his sister, I am ready to be to you. I will write to you from Canada; you can answer me or not as you please. My heart cries out to me to take you in my arms and comfort you, but I must not; it would not comfort you."
"You do not despise me, then?--Oh, thank you!"
"Despise you!--no more than my dead sister! I would cherish you as I would her were she in like sorrow. I would die to save you this grief--except indeed that I hope much from it."
"Forget all about me," said Christina, summoning pride to her aid.
"I will not forget you. It is impossible, nor would I if I could."
"You forgive me then, and will not think ill of me?"
"How forgive trust? Is that an offence?"
"I have lost your good opinion! How could I degrade myself so!"
"On the contrary, you are fast gaining my good opinion. You have begun to be a true woman!"
"What if it should be only for--"
"Whatever it may have been for, now you have tasted truth you will not turn back!"
"Now I know you do not care for me, I fear I shall soon sink back into my old self!"
"I do care for you, Christina, and you will not sink back into your old self. G.o.d means you to be a strong, good woman--able, with the help he will give you, to bear grief in a great-hearted fashion.
Believe me, you and I may come nearer each other in the ages before us by being both true, than is possible in any other way whatever."
"I am miserable at the thought of what you must think of me!
Everybody would say I had done a shameless thing in confessing my love!"
"I am not in the way of thinking as everybody thinks. There is little justice, and less sympathy, to be had from everybody. I would think and judge and feel as the one, my Master. Be sure you are safe with me."
"You will not tell anybody?"
"You must trust me."
"I beg your pardon! I have offended you!"
"Not in the least. But I will bind myself by no promises. I am bound already to be as careful over you as if you were the daughter of my father and mother. Your confession, instead of putting you in my power, makes me your servant."
By this time Christina was calm. There was a great load on her heart, but somehow she was aware of the possibility of carrying it.
She looked up gratefully in Ian"s face, already beginning to feel for him a reverence which made it easier to forego the right to put her arms round him. And therewith awoke in her the first movement of divine relationship--rose the first heave of the child-heart toward the source of its being. It appeared in the form of resistance.
Complaint against G.o.d is far nearer to G.o.d than indifference about him.
"Ian Macruadh," said Christina solemnly, and she looked him in the eyes as she said it, "how can you believe there is a G.o.d? If there were, would he allow such a dreadful thing to befall one of his creatures? How am I to blame? I could not help it!"
"I see in it his truth and goodness toward his child. And he will let you see it. The thing is between him and you."
"It will be hard to convince me it is either good or loving to make anyone suffer like this!" protested Christina, her hand unconsciously pressed on her heart; "--and all the disgrace of it too!" she added bitterly.
"I will not allow there is any disgrace," returned Ian. "But I will not try to con vince you of anything about G.o.d. I cannot. You must know him. I only say I believe in him with all my heart. You must ask him to explain himself to you, and not take it for granted, because he has done what you do not like, that he has done you a wrong. Whether you seek him or not, he will do you justice; but he cannot explain himself except you seek him."
"I think I understand. Believe me, I am willing to understand."
A few long seconds of silence followed. Christina came a little nearer. She was still on her knees.
"Will you kiss me once," she said, "as you would a little child!"
"In the name of G.o.d!" answered Ian, and stooping kissed her gently and tenderly.
"Thank you!" she said; "--and now the rain is over, let us join Mercy and the chief. I hope they have not got very wet!"
"Alister will have taken care of that. There is plenty of shelter about here."
They left the cottage, drew the door close, and through the heather, sparkling with a thousand rain-drops, the sun shining hotter than ever through the rain-mist, went up the hill.
They found the other pair sheltered by the great stone, which was not only a shadow from the heat, but sloped sufficiently to be a covert from the rain. They did not know it had ceased; perhaps they did not know it had rained.
On a fine morning of the following week, the emigrants began the first stage of their long journey; the women in two carts, with their small impedimenta, the men walking--Ian with them, a stout stick in his hand. They were to sail from Greenock.
Ian and Christina met several times before he left, but never alone.
No conference of any kind, not even of eyes, had been sought by Christina, and Ian had resolved to say nothing more until he reached Canada. Thence he would write things which pen and ink would say better and carry nearer home than could speech; and by that time too the first keenness of her pain would have dulled, and left her mind more capable of receiving them. He was greatly pleased with the gentle calm of her behaviour. No one else could have seen any difference toward himself. He read in her carriage that of a child who had made a mistake, and was humbled, not vexed. Her mother noted that her cheek was pale, and that she seemed thoughtful; but farther she did not penetrate. To Ian it was plain that she had set herself to be reasonable.