Chapter 37

SECOND JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. Here was a nauseous draught for me. Having finished my tale, I turned to Gavin for sympathy; and, behold, he had been listening for the cannon instead of to my final words. So, like an old woman at her hearth, we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots, and each thinks his own fire a sun, in presence of which all other fires should go out. I was soured to see Gavin prove this, and then I could have laughed without mirth, for had not my bitterness proved it too? "And now," I said, rising, "whether Margaret is to hold up her head henceforth lies no longer with me, but with you." It was not to that he replied. "You have suffered long, Mr. Ogilvy," he said. "Father," he added, wringing my hand. I called him son; but it was only an exchange of musty words that we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to come into at two and twenty. "I should have been told of this," he said. "Your mother did right, sir," I answered slowly, but he shook his head. "I think you have misjudged her," he said. "Doubtless while my fa- -, while Adam Dishart lived, she could only think of you with pain; but after his death--" "After his death," I said quietly, "I was still so horrible to her that she left Harvie without letting a soul know whither she was bound. She dreaded my following her." "Stranger to me," he said, after a pause, "than even your story is her being able to keep it from me. I believed no thought ever crossed her mind that she did not let me share." "And none, I am sure, ever did," I answered, "save that, and such thoughts as a woman has with God only. It was my lot to bring disgrace on her. She thought it nothing less, and she has hidden it all these years for your sake, until now it is not burdensome. I suppose she feels that God has taken the weight off her. Now you are to put a heavier burden in its place." He faced me boldly, and I admire him for it now. "I cannot admit," he said, "that I did wrong in forgetting my mother for that fateful quarter of an hour. Babbie and I loved each other, and I was given the opportunity of making her mine or losing her forever. Have you forgotten that all this tragedy you have told me of only grew out of your own indecision? I took the chance that you let slip by." "I had not forgotten," I replied. "What else made me tell you last night that Babbie was in Nanny's house?" "But now you are afraid--now when the deed is done, when for me there can be no turning back. Whatever be the issue, I should be a cur to return to Thrums without my wife. Every minute I feel my strength returning, and before you reach Thrums I will have set out to the Spittal." There was nothing to say after that. He came with me in the rain as far as the dike, warning me