The Elect Lady, George MacDonald [smallest ebook reader TXT] 📗

had looked through the chink of the door.

"What do you mean?" he stammered. "I do not understand!"

His lips trembled: was it possible he had had to do with the stealing of it?

The truth was this: he had learned the existence of the cup from this very book; and had never rested until, after a search of more than ten years, he at length found it in the hands of a poor man who dared not offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up, or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself its real cause-namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think, sir," said Dawtie, "that whoever has that cup ought to send it back to the place it was stolen from?"

Had the old man been a developed hypocrite, he would have replied at once: "He certainly ought." But by word of mouth to condemn himself would have been to acknowledge to himself that he ought to send the cup home, and this he dared not do. Men who will not do as they know, make strange confusion in themselves. The worst rancor in the vessel of peace is the consciousness of wrong in a not all-unrighteous soul. The laird was false to his own self, but to confess himself false would be to initiate a change which would render life worthless to him! What would all his fine things be without their heart of preciousness, the one jewel that now was nowhere in the world but in his house, in the secret chamber of his treasures, which would be a rifled case without it! As is natural to one who will not do right, he began to argue the moral question, treating it as a point of casuistry that troubled the mind of the girl.

"I don't know that, Dawtie!" he said. "It is not likely that the person that has the cup, whoever he may be-that is, if the cup be still in existence-is the same who stole it; and it would hardly be justice to punish the innocent for the guilty?-as would be the case, if, supposing I had bought the cup, I had to lose the money I paid for it. Should the man who had not taken care of his cup have his fault condoned at my expense? Did he not deserve, the many might say, to be so punished, placing huge temptation in the path of the needy, to the loss of their precious souls, and letting a priceless thing go loose in the world, to work ruin to whoever might innocently buy it?"

His logic did not serve to show him the falsehood of his reasoning, for his heart was in the lie. "Ought I or he," he went on, "to be punished because he kept the thing ill? And how far would the quixotic obligation descend? A score of righteous men may by this time have bought and sold the cup!-is it some demon-talisman, that the last must meet the penalty, when the original owner, or some descendant of the man who lost it, chooses to claim it? For anything we know, he may himself have pocketed the price of the rumored theft! Can you not see it would be a flagrant injustice?-fit indeed to put an end to all buying and selling! It would annihilate transfer of property! Possession would mean only strength to keep, and the world would fall into confusion."

"It would be hard, I grant," confessed Dawtie; "but the man who has it ought at least to give the head of the family in which it had been the chance of buying it back at the price it cost him. If he could not buy it back-then the thing would have to be thought over."

"I confess I don't see the thing," returned the laird. "But the question needs not keep you out of bed, Dawtie! It is not often a girl in your position takes an interest in the abstract! Besides," he resumed, another argument occurring to him, "a thing of such historical value and interest ought to be where it was cared for, not where it was in danger every moment."

"There might be something in that," allowed Dawtie, "if it were where everybody could see it. But where is the good if it be but for the eyes of one man?"

The eyes she meant fixed themselves upon her till their gaze grew to a stony stare. She must know that he had it! Or did she only suspect? He must not commit himself! He must set a watch on the door of his lips! What an uncomfortable girl to have in the house! Oh, those self-righteous Ingrams! What mischief they did! His impulse was to dart into his treasure-cave, lock himself in, and hug the radiant chalice. He dared not. He must endure instead the fastidious conscience and probing tongue of an intrusive maid-servant!

"But," he rejoined, with an attempt at a smile, "if the pleasure the one man took in it should, as is easy to imagine, exceed immeasurably the aggergate pleasure of the thousands that would look upon it and pass it by-what then?"

"The man would enjoy it the more that many saw it-except he loved it for greed, when he would be rejoicing in iniquity, for the cup would not be his. And anyhow, he could not take it with him when he died!"

The face of the miser grew grayer; his lip trembled; but he said nothing. He was beginning to hate Dawtie. She was an enemy! She sought his discomfiture, his misery! He had read strange things in certain old books, and half believed some of them: what if Dawtie was one of those evil powers that haunt a man in pleasant shape, learn the secrets of his heart, and gain influence over him that they may tempt him to yield his soul to the enemy! She was set on ruining him! Certainly she knew that cup was in his possession! He must temporize! He must seem to listen! But as soon as fit reason could be found, such as would neither compromise him nor offend her, she must be sent away! And of all things, she must not gain the means of proving what she now perhaps only suspected, and was seeking assurance of! He stood thinking. It was but for a moment; for the very next words from the lips of the girl that was to him little more than a house-broom, set him face to face with reality-the one terror of the unreal.

"Eh, maister, sir," said Dawtie, with the tears in her eyes, and now at last breaking down in her English, "dinna ye ken 'at ye hae to gie the man 'at aucht that gowden bicker, the chance o' buyin' 't back?"

The laird shivered. He dared not say: "How do you know?" for he dared not hear the thing proved to him. If she did know, he would not front her proof! He would not have her even suppose it an acknowledged fact!

"If I had the cup," he began-but she interrupted him: it was time they should have done with lying!

"Ye ken ye hae the cup, sir!" she said. "And I ken tu, for I saw 't i' yer han's!"

"You shameless, prying hussy!" he began, in a rage at last-but the eager, tearful earnestness of her face made him bethink himself: it would not do to make an enemy of her! "Tell me, Dawtie," he said, with sudden change of tone, "how it was you came to see it."

She told him all-how and when; and he knew that he had seen her see him.

He managed to give a poor little laugh.

"All is not gold that glitters, Dawtie!" he said. "The cup you saw was not the one in the book, but an imitation of it-mere gilded tin and colored glass-copied from the picture, as near as they could make it-just to see better what it must have been like. Why, my good girl, that cup would be worth thousands of pounds! So go to bed, and don't trouble yourself about gold cups. It is not likely any of them will come our way!"

Simple as Dawtie was, she did not believe him. But she saw no good to be done by disputing what he ought to know.

"It wasna aboot the gold cup I was troublin' mysel'!" she said, hesitatingly.

"You are right there!" he replied, with another deathly laugh, "it was not! But you have been troubling me about nothing half the night, and I am shivering with cold! We really must, both of us, go to bed! What would your mistress say!"

"No," persisted Dawtie, "it wasna aboot the cup, gowd or no gowd; it was and is aboot my maister I'm troubled! I'm terrible feart for ye, sir! Ye're a worshiper o' Mammon, sir!"

The laird laughed, for the danger was over!-to Dawtie's deep dismay he laughed!

"My poor girl," he said, "you take an innocent love of curious things for the worship of Mammon! Don't imagine me jesting. How could you believe an old man like me, an elder of the kirk, a dispenser of her sacred things, guilty of the awful crime of Mammon worship?"

He imagined her ignorantly associating the idea of some idolatrous ritual with what to him was but a phrase-the worship of Mammon. "Do you not remember," he continued, "the words of Christ, that a man can not serve God and Mammon? If I be a Christian, as you will hardly doubt, it follows that I am not a worshiper of Mammon, for the two can not go together."

"But that's just the question, sir! A man who worships God, worships Him with his whole heart and soul and strength and mind. If he wakes at night, it is to worship God; if he is glad in his heart, it is because God is, and one day he shall behold His face in brightness. If a man worships God, he loves Him so that no love can come between him and God; if the earth were removed, and the mountains cast into the midst of the sea, it would be all one to him, for God would be all the same. Is it not so, sir?"

"You are a good girl, Dawtie, and I approve of every word you say. It would more than savor of presumption to profess that I loved God up to the point you speak of; but I deserve to love Him. Doubtless a man ought to love God so, and we are all sinners just because we do not love God so. But we have the atonement!"

"But, sir," answered Dawtie, the silent tears running down her face, "I love God that way! I don't care a dust for anything without Him! When I go to bed, I don't care if I never wake again in this world; I shall be where He would have me!"

"You presume, Dawtie! I fear me much you presume! What if that should be in hell?"

"If it be, it will be the best. It will be to set me right. Oh, sir, He is so good! Tell me one thing, sir: when you die-"

"Tut, tut, lass! we're not come to that yet! There's no occasion