Chapter 22

LOVERS.

Only something terrible, Gavin thought, could have brought Babbie
to him at such an hour; yet when he left his mother's room it was
to stand motionless on the stair, waiting for a silence in the
manse that would not come. A house is never still in darkness to
those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant
chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the
latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man woke in the
night.

Now Margaret slept. Two hours earlier, Jean, sitting on the salt-
bucket, had read the chapter with which she always sent herself to
bed. In honour of the little minister she had begun her Bible
afresh when he came to Thrums, and was progressing through it, a
chapter at night, sighing, perhaps, on washing days at a long
chapter, such as Exodus twelfth, but never making two of it. The
kitchen wag-at-the-wall clock was telling every room in the house
that she had neglected to shut her door. As Gavin felt his way
down the dark stair, awakening it into protest at every step, he
had a glimpse of the pendulum's shadow running back and forward on
the hearth; he started back from another shadow on the lobby wall,
and then seeing it start too, knew it for his own. He opened the
door and passed out unobserved; it was as if the sounds and
shadows that filled the manse were too occupied with their game to
mind an interloper.

"Is that you?" he said to a bush, for the garden was in semi-
darkness. Then the lantern's flash met him, and he saw the
Egyptian in the summer-seat.

"At last!" she said, reproachfully. "Evidently a lantern is a poor
door-bell."

"What is it?" Gavin asked, in suppressed excitement, for the least
he expected to hear was that she was again being pursued for her
share in the riot. The tremor in his voice surprised her into
silence, and he thought she faltered because what she had to tell
him was so woeful. So, in the darkness of the summer-seat, he
kissed her, and she might have known that with that kiss the
little minister was hers forever.

Now Babbie had been kissed before, but never thus, and she turned
from Gavin, and would have liked to be alone, for she had begun to
know what love was, and the flash that revealed it to her laid
bare her own shame, so that her impulse was to hide herself from
her lover. But of all this Gavin was unconscious, and he repeated
his question. The lantern was swaying in her hand, and when she
turned fearfully to him its light fell on his face, and she saw
how alarmed he was.

"I am going away back to Nanny's," she said suddenly, and rose
cowed, but he took her hand and held her.