The Minister's Wife - Mrs. Oliphant

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of the Lord!’

      They all gathered close, with an uncontrollable thrill of excitement, to listen to this appeal and to see the result of it. Isabel fell on her knees beside her sister, and gazed at her to see the change, if any came. Ailie, with her hands raised over Margaret’s head, and her face lifted to Heaven, waited for her answer. John Diarmid by her side, with a look of wilder passion still, hung over the group in speechless excitement. Even Jean Campbell behind stood wringing her hands, feeling her heart beat and her temples throb. Was it the Spirit of God that was about to come, shaking the homely room as by a whirlwind? There was a pause of awful stillness during which nobody spoke. When Margaret answered, the bystanders started and looked at each other. The calm tone of her voice fell upon their excited nerves like something from a different world.

      ‘I hear your voice, Ailie,’ said Margaret, with the softness of a whisper, though her words fell quite distinct and clear upon their ears, ‘but I hear no voice within. Can you not believe that God may deal one way with you and another with me?’

      ‘God has no stepbairns,’ cried Ailie. ‘Does He love me better than you? O neebors! on your knees—on your knees! Will He no remember His ain word that’s passed to us and canna be recalled. What two or three agree to ask is granted afore we speak. It’s no His consent, but her’s we have to seek!’

      Then she threw herself on her knees, with upturned face and hands stretched out. They all sank down around her, filling the darkening room with kneeling figures. Even the minister, whose office was thus taken out of his hands, knelt down behind the girl who took such wild authority upon her, and bent his face into his clasped hands, moved, as only the prevailing excitement of the time could have moved him, by that faint tinge of possibility which was in the air. Isabel, kneeling too, took her sister’s hand, and watched her with an intense gaze which seemed to penetrate to her very heart.

      No one in the room except Margaret escaped the contagion of that strange emotion. She had fallen back into her chair in weakness, and gazed at them with calm and pitiful looks, like those of an angel. Hers was the only heart that beat no faster. She lay and looked at them all as a creature past all the storms of life might be supposed to look at those still tossing on its stormy tide. She was not roused by the appeal made to her faith, nor overwhelmed by the fervour of the prayers, the tears, the exclamations, the bewildered, breathless expectations by which she was surrounded. She put one arm softly round Isabel, who knelt by her side, and with her other hand took hold of Ailie’s, which was stretched up over her in entreaty. There seemed to be something mesmeric in the touch of those cool, soft fingers. Ailie’s outstretched arms fell; her eyes turned to Margaret’s face; a strange wonder came over her countenance; her voice died away as if surprise had extinguished it; and then there was again another pause, full of fate.

      ‘Ailie, God hears,’ said the sick girl; ‘and He will give me life; but not here, and not now. You’re not to think your prayers refused. I’m near to the gate and I can hear the message sent. It says, “Aye, she shall be saved; aye, she shall rise up; not in earth, but in Heaven."’

      ‘No,’ said Ailie, passionately; ‘it’s no a true spirit of prophecy; it’s an evil spirit come to tempt you. No. O ye of little faith, wherefore do ye doubt? Is the Lord to be vexed for ever with this generation that will not believe? Listen to His voice. Arise, arise! shake off the bonds of Satan. Rise up, and stand upon your feet. Margaret, let not God’s servants plead in vain. Oh, hearken to mo while I plead with you, harder, far harder, than I have to plead with God. Why will ye die, O house of Israel? Rise up and live: I command you in the name of the Lord!’

      ‘Oh, if you would but try! O my Maggie, will you try?’ sobbed Isabel, clasping her sister closer, and gazing with supplication beyond words in her face.

      And the minister lifted his face from his hands, and looked at her; and little Mary, who had stolen in, came forward like a little wandering spirit, and threw herself, with a cry, on Margaret’s shoulder, in a wild attempt to raise her up. This last effort of childish passion was more than the sick girl could bear. She turned round upon them all with a wondering burst of patience and impatience.

      ‘Is there no one to understand?’ she said, with a plaintive cry, and drew her hands away and covered her face with them in a kind of despair. Even her own had turned, as it were, against her. Her bodily strength gave way; her heart failed her; no response woke in her mind to those wild addresses. That they should leave her alone, alone, was all she longed for—only to be left in quiet, to be at peace.

      Then the minister stood up, and took Ailie by the arm. She was shivering and trembling with the revulsion, worn out with her excitement. Her moment of ‘power’ was over.

      ‘You can do no more here,’ he said, with a thrill in his voice which betrayed how much he himself had been moved. She is worn out, and you are worn out, and here there is no more to say. Ailie, for God’s sake come with me, and disturb her no more.’

      ‘O friends, it’s the wiles of Satan,’ said Ailie. ‘Oh, to think he should be there! Margret—Margret, how can I leave you to perish! Let me stay by her day and night, and wrestle with Satan for his prey!’

      ‘You will come with me,’ said Mr. Lothian, firmly, and then the passionate creature burst into choking sobs and tears. Poor Margaret, whose thread of life was worn so thin, whose weakness could so ill bear the struggle, sat in the gathering twilight, and looked on while the prophetess, who had come to heal her, was led, like an exhausted child, from her presence. She thought she was alone, but a sound close to her startled her back again into a little flush of agitation. ‘I am worn and weaker,’ she said, driven to the limit of her powers. ‘Oh, will ye let me be? Whoever you are, leave me and my life to God!’

      ‘Margaret, it is I,’ said a deep voice close to her ear. ‘Why will you die? Do you know my heart will die with you, and my last hope? Am I to live to curse God? or will you live—will you live, and save a sinful soul? Margaret, because I have been ill to you have pity on me!’

      Weak as she was, Margaret started from her seat. ‘John Diarmid,’ she cried, ‘how dare ye speak to me? Am I the one to bear the blame of your blessing or your misery? If you had the heart of a man, you would go miles and miles rather than enter here.’

      ‘I would lie at your door like a dog,’ said the man in his passion, ‘rather than be banished like this; but I’ll go away to the ends of the earth, Margaret, Margaret, if you’ll live, and not die!’

      ‘I’ll do as the Lord pleases,’ said the poor girl, stretching out her feeble hands in the darkness for some support. She was worn out. Before her persecutor could reach her she had sunk upon the floor with a faintness which soon reached the length of unconsciousness. The women, rushing in at his cry, carried her to her bed. She had not fainted to be out of suffering; her heart throbbed against her breast, as though struggling to be free. Poor Margaret! The human passion was more hard to meet than all that went before.

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      Mr. John, whose appearance at the Glebe had thus moved all the spectators, had been for a long time the embodiment of pleasure-seeking and dissipation to the country-side. His had been the jeunesse orageuse, which, as a pleasant discipline and beginning of life, had ceased to be realised on this side of the Channel. A quaint old house on the eastern side of the Loch, and a few hill-sides which had been in the family for centuries, were all his patrimony; but his mother had transmitted a moderate fortune to her only child, which he had got rid of in his younger days in gayer scenes than could be found on the Loch. When he had returned perforce, all his money being spent, to his long-neglected home, Mr. John for some years had taken rank as the Don Giovanni of the district. He had been so far prudent or fortunate as never to be the object of any unusually grave scandal. Miss Catherine, rigid as she was in morality, had not been compelled to shut her doors against her own connection, but had been able to doubt, to extenuate, to find excuses for him. ‘Left to his own will when he was but a callant,’

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