As March drew to its close the wheels of life began once again to run creakingly in Woodilee. The frost disappeared under a week of southwesterly gales, and then the wind moved to the east and blew dry and blighting, so that the lean beasts shivered in the infields. The gross unseasonable herbage of the winter had gone, and it promised to be a backward spring. The men went out feebly to the farm-work, and the ploughing began, though the draught-oxen were so poor in condition that the work moved slowly. The siege, too, was raised. Johnnie Dow once again showed his cautious face in the clachan and brought news of the outer world; the pack-horses again struggled through Carnwath Moss; and there came word from Kirk Aller that the meeting of the Presbytery to adjudicate on David’s case was fixed for a day in April. Mr. James rode over from Cauldshaw and the kirk was opened, but David did not renew his preachings at the kirkyard gate.
The truth is that he was weary to the bone. Mark Riddel met him one morning on the road and drew rein sharply at the sight of his face.
“Man David, you’re like a ghost. You’ve worked your body ower sore these last months, and if you dinna take care you’ll be on your back. You and Katrine are two inconsiderate bairns. You’ve both of you done the work of ten men, and you’ll no listen to wiser folk. Take my advice and get furth of this woeful parish till your body is rested and your mind quieter.”
“I am summoned to my trial at Kirk Aller in a week’s time.”
“And that’s the crown of it! That’s what you get for wearing yourself to skin and bone for a thankless folk. There are times when I scunner at my native land. There’s a rumour that Montrose has escaped abroad and is now at the Emperor’s court, and if it werena for you and Katrine I could find it in me to join him. There’s a blight on the country which affects even a brisk heart like mine, and I’m getting mortal sick of the eternal crack of nowt and wedders.”
But though Mark came to the manse every evening and would have nursed him like a mother, David could not relax the tension of body and spirit. He slept badly, and in spite of Isobel’s coaxing ate little; his nights were filled with wild dreams, and, worse, these dreams seemed to pursue him in his waking hours. He felt no special ailment of body to which he could attribute his distress, beyond an extreme fatigue. He would take long walks by day and night, but though he returned from them very stiff and weary, they did not bring him healthful sleep. He tried to master himself, to laugh at himself, but the malaise would not be expelled. . . . He was the prey of childish fears, looking nervously for something malign to come out of the dark or round the corner. And presently the barriers of the real seemed to crumble. He saw faces where there were none, he listened to voices in the deepest silence. Once, coming at night up the manse loan, he heard footsteps on the dry earth approaching him. They grew louder, passed and died away behind him, and he realized that the footsteps were his own.
A word of Chasehope’s stuck evilly in his memory. The Lord had demanded a sacrifice, but the sacrifice was not yet complete, the man had said. The word tortured him and he could get no relief from thinking, for the thing was beyond thought. An oppression of coming disaster weighed on him. He told himself that his enemy had meant no more than the Presbytery trial, but he could not lay the ghost. Something darker, more terrible, hung on the skirts of his imagination. Chasehope was no doubt mad, but truth might lurk in madness; a maniac saw that which was hidden from others. It was for Katrine that he feared, and what he feared he could not give a shape to — there lay the agony of it.
Presently his old dread of the Wood returned — that dread which he thought he had exorcised for ever. He had defied it, but what if it should prove too strong for him? In his distraught thoughts the pestilence seemed to have come out of it — Chasehope had moved unscathed through the weeks of plague — Chasehope and the devils he served were the plague’s masters. Was there some other terror still in its depths waiting to be loosed on him? He had moments of clear-sightedness, when he despised himself for his folly, and realized that to be thus faint of heart was to acknowledge defeat and to abase himself before his enemy. But the conviction returned, stronger than will or reason, and David would walk the hill with clenched hands and muttering lips, or in his closet struggle in blind prayer for a comfort that would not come.
After Katrine’s nightly visits to Woodilee had ceased the minister had meant to go daily to Calidon. But with this new mood of terror upon him he was ashamed to face the girl; and he had sufficient manhood to put restraint upon his longings. The time came, however, when anxiety conquered scruples. He rode to Calidon with a fluttering heart, an excitement rather of fear than of joy.
Mistress Saintserf faced him grimly.
“What have ye done wi’ my bairn?” she demanded. “She is fair broke wi’ ridin’ the roads and tendin’ the riff-raff o’ Woodilee — and the haill parochine no worth a hair o’ her heid. Christian charity, says you — but there’s bounds to Christian charity! Ye’re a bonny lad to tak’ so little care o’ your joe.”
Presently she condescended to details. “She has nae strength, the puir thing — clean worn out like an auld bauchle [shoe]. Yestreen I garred her tak’ to her bed, and she’s lyin’ as biddable as a wean, and her for ordinar’ sae sweir to bide still. . . . Na, ye canna see her. But dinna fash yoursel’, my man. She’s no sick — just weary wi’ ower heavy a task. A long lie in her bed will put her richt, and a change in this dowie weather. Pray for a bit blink o’ sun. . . . Ye’re lookin’ gey gash yoursel’. Ye’d be nane the waur o’ a week on your back.”
As David rode homeward he remembered the last words and laughed at the irony. A week in bed, when he could scarcely endure three hours in a night! Mistress Saintserf’s news had put him into an agony of apprehension. He stabled his horse and set out to work off his anxiety by bodily fatigue, but it grew with every mile he walked. Weariness, he told himself, was only natural after such a winter’s toil; was not he himself worn out, and did not even Mark Riddel confess to a great fatigue? But he could not console himself with such thoughts. At any moment she might fall into a fever, and then — he remembered with dreadful distinctness the stages of the malady. Was this the last lingering effort of the pest? — he had heard of such cases coming weeks after the thing seemed to have been stayed. And always there rose in his mind Chasehope’s prophecy of a sacrifice still to come.
He would fain have gone back to Calidon and waited for news. Instead he sent Isobel with a message to Mistress Grizel. His housekeeper was noted as a skilful nurse and an amateur leech, and he begged that she should be allowed to help in waiting upon Katrine. The sending of her did something to ease his mind, for it was a direct piece of service to his beloved; moreover, if Isobel was in Calidon, he could go there as often as he wished and have speech with her, for he was a little ashamed to reveal to Mistress Grizel his lack of fortitude. Meantime he could fend for himself, and cook what food he needed.
The time passed on leaden feet, and the hours of darkness were one long sleepless nightmare. Next day he was early at Calidon and found Isobel with a composed face. “Ye needna tak’ it sae sair, Mr. David,” she assured him. “The leddy’s no that bad. Nae doot she’s sair weary, but the feck o’ the time she sleeps like a bairn, and there’s nae fever. There’s strong bluid in her that will no be lang ere it conquers the weakness. But losh, sir, ye’ve the face o’ a bogle. Awa’ hame wi’ ye and lie doun, or I’ll no bide anither hour in Calidon. Are ye takin’ your meat? Dinna look at me like a glum wean, but dae as I tell ye.”
David returned to the manse, and under the influence of Isobel’s cheerfulness fell asleep in his chair and slept till the late afternoon. He awoke freshened in body, but with a new alarm at his heart. Isobel had said there was no fever, but that meant that she dreaded fever. . . . By this time it might have come. Even now Katrine might be delirious. . . . He realized how swiftly during the pest fever had succeeded listlessness.
Nevertheless the hours of sleep had given him a greater power of self-control, and he curbed his instinct to ride forthwith to Calidon. He wandered through the house and out into the glebe, striving to fix his mind on small and homely things. It was the third day of April, but there was no sign of spring. The dislocation of the seasons had given the earth an autumnal air, for the shoals of fallen leaves lay as if it were November, and the frosts had not bleached the herbage. He remembered how a year ago at this time he had wandered on the hills and felt with joy the stirrings of new life. To-day the world was still clamped in bonds, and death was in the bare trees and the leaden sky. What had become of his high hopes? All gone save one — and that the dearest. A year ago he had had no thought of Katrine and had been happy in other things. Now these had been turned into ashes, but he had got Katrine in their stead. If she were to go —? The thought so chilled his heart that he fled indoors, as if in the house he could barricade himself against it.
In his study he turned over his books. He tried to pray, but set prayer was idle, for every breath he drew had become an impassioned supplication. He had out his notes on Isaiah and the prolegomena which he had completed, but his eyes could scarcely read them. How small and remote these labours seemed! Every now and then a quotation from the prophet stood out in his manuscript, and these were as ominous as a raven’s croaking. “Burning instead of beauty. . . . Their faces shall be as flames. . . . Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire. . . . This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest.”
He turned from his notes in awe and took up his secular books. One he opened at random and saw that it was the ?neid, and the words which caught his eyes were “manibus date lilia plenis.” Small wonder that the book had opened there, for it was a well-thumbed passage; but he shuddered as if he had cast the sortes Virgilian? and had got a doleful answer.............