Twelve o’clock struck, and she rose to go to
bed, alarmed lest she should not waken early in the
morning. “But I am afraid I shan’t
sleep,” she said, “if that lightning continues.”
“It is harmless,” Gavin answered, going
to the window. He started back next moment, and
crying, “Don’t look out, mother,”
hastily pulled down the blind.
“Why, Gavin,” Margaret said in fear, “you
look as if it had struck you.”
“Oh, no,” Gavin answered, with a forced
laugh, and he lit her lamp for her.
But it had struck him, though it was not lightning.
It was the flashing of a lantern against the window
to attract his attention, and the holder of the lantern
was Babbie.
“Good-night, mother.”
“Good-night, Gavin. Don’t sit up
any later.”
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.
