Part 30

"After a long silence Angus spoke again and my poor heart had to listen.

"'Margaret,' he began, 'no man ever renounced what I renounce to-night, for no man ever loved as I love you, though I reckon many a man would swear the same, knowing not his perjury--for none can know my love. And joy, and pride, and home--and all with which our pure thought had enriched our home--all these must I surrender now. I must give up everything but love--and that is mine forever. Oh, Margaret, I won you, did I not? I, a poor Scottish laddie, a herd among the heather. I came to Canada lang syne, and by and by I won you, did I not, Margaret?

"'But I must give you up--and I will tell you why.

"'It was not hard for me to find that story of Gethsemane. When I was but a laddie among the Scottish hills my mother's Bible aye opened at that very place; and laddie though I was, I noticed it, for the page was marked and worn and soiled with tears.

"'I asked my mother many a time why the Book aye opened there and what soiled and marked it so. She told me not for long, saying only that it was marked and soiled before her laddie had been born.

"'But the night before I sailed from Annan Foot, she put her arms about me and she told me of the anguish of her soul and all about the tear-stained place--for she told me of her own Gethsemane and of the bitter cup, and said that her laddie's lips could pass it by no more than hers.

"'And ever since that night ma ain buik aye opens at Gethsemane. Oh, Margaret, you understand, do you not?' he cried, 'I am not worthy of you and of your love.

"'The far-off strain of sin starting from another heart than mine (another than my mother's, by the living God) has stained my name. Mine is an unhallowed name. Mine is a shadowed birth. Mine is the perpetual Gethsemane and mine the unemptied cup!

"'Forgive me, Margaret, for the wrong I did you. I should never have spoken love to you at all, or if I did, I should have told you of the blight upon it; but the sky and the trees and the hill were clothed that night in the beauty that wrapt my soul and I thought that God had forgotten and had shrived me in the same sacred light. But He does not forget. That light itself cannot drive the shadow from Gethsemane and the cup has never since been absent from my lips.'

"Angus stopped--and God watched over me; for He pitied me.

"I thought of you and mother first, but God still kept my will in His. I wanted God to lead me and I asked Him to help me--and I waited.

"'Angus,' I said at last, 'your mother loved him, did she not?'

"'Loved!' he answered, 'her pure heart knew no other passion. My own is but an echo. Behold! I was shapen in love.'

"'Then,' said I, 'let her that is without love cast the first stone at her. If any sinning woman love, she has an advocate with the Father. Oh, Angus! Come to me!' I cried, for I was fainting."

* * * * *

Her story was finished now and my daughter added not a word. But she arose and stood before me, her eyes searching my pallid face for a verdict, if haply it might be like her own. I noticed the woman's tactics in her move, for woman's genius makes its home within her soul; she had left my arms that I might, if I would, hold them out to her again and take her back forever. But the arms have their hinges in the heart and mine was tight locked like a vise.

"Margaret," I said at last, and my voice was like the voice of age, "you do not mean that you suffered this man's caresses after he told you what you have just told me?"

Sorrow looked from Margaret's eyes.

"Suffered!" she replied, "suffered! I have learned what suffering is, God knows, but He knows it was not there I learned it. 'This man.' Oh, father, I love him--am I all alone?"

How strong is the weakness of love! There is no panoply like that which love provides, and she who bears it has the whole armour of God.

"Margaret," I pleaded, "you surely will not ruin your life and break your mother's heart and mine by any madness such as this."

"'Ruin my life,' father! what ruin can there be to the life that loves and is loved? I have no life at all apart from him. It seems so simple. I can't take back my heart!"

"Perhaps so, my daughter," I replied, "perhaps so. I know your love is no fickle thing. But Margaret, you do not propose to link your life with his, shadowed as you yourself declare it to have been from his birth?"

"Father, it is already linked. It was not I who linked our lives, nor was it he; nor was it both together--it was God. Surely He wouldn't have let me love and trust, if it was wrong. I want you to help me; I am all alone."

"But you do not mean," I cried with growing warmth, "that I, the minister of St. Cuthbert's Kirk, New Jedboro, am to be called upon to take into my family and to acknowledge as my son, a man who cannot speak his father's name, who cannot," for I was maddening fast, "speak it even to himself, forsooth, because he knows not what it is?"

"Oh, father, do not press me so; I love you--and I love him too, and----"

"But about our family?" I asked hotly.

"I forgot about families," she sobbed. "Oh, father, teach this poor heart of mine to love no more and I will obey your every wish--but it is hard for love to serve two masters."