Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin preached
a sermon in praise of Woman, and up in the mudhouse
in Windyghoul Babbie sat alone. But it was the
Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in her
life. Her discovery had frozen her mind for a
time, so that she could only stare at it with eyes
that would not shut; but that had been in the night.
Already her love seemed a thing of years, for it was
as old as herself, as old as the new Babbie. It
was such a dear delight that she clasped it to her,
and exulted over it because it was hers, and then
she cried over it because she must give it up.
For Babbie must only look at this love and then turn
from it. My heart aches for the little Egyptian,
but the Promised Land would have remained invisible
to her had she not realized that it was only for others.
That was the condition of her seeing.
New world, and the woman
who may not dwell therein.
Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have
straggled home, there comes to me at times, and so
sudden that it may be while I am infusing my tea,
a hot desire to write great books. Perhaps an
hour afterwards I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging
all I have written into the fire (yet rescuing some
of it on second thought), and curse myself as an ingle-nook
man, for I see that one can only paint what he himself
has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the
vices, even to being an impious man, that I may describe
them better. For this may I be pardoned.
It comes to nothing in the end, save that my tea is
brackish.
Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating
me of many experiences, more helpful to a writer than
to a Christian, it has not been so tame but that I
can understand why Babbie cried when she went into
Nanny’s garden and saw the new world. Let
no one who loves be called altogether unhappy.
Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and Babbie knew
that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among
the stiff berry bushes, as one who stretches forth
her hands to Love and sees him looking for her, and
knows she must shrink from the arms she would lie
in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear.
This is not a love that is always bitter. It
grows sweet with age. But could that dry the tears
of the little Egyptian, who had only been a woman
for a day?
Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that
must keep her and Gavin ever apart she knew, and he
did not; but had it been removed she would have given
herself to him humbly, not in her own longing, but
because he wanted her. “Behold what I am,”
she could have said to him then, and left the rest
to him, believing that her unworthiness would not
drag him down, it would lose itself so readily in
his strength. That Thrums could rise against such
a man if he defied it, she did not believe; but she
was to learn the truth presently from a child.
