An Orkney Maid

“True,” said the Bishop, “and we must not belittle the good we have, because we look for something better. Let us be thankful for our feet, though they are not wings.”

Then one of those sudden, inexplicable “arrests” which seem to seal up speech fell over every one, and for a minute or more no one could speak. Rahal broke the spell. “Some angel has passed through the room. Please God he left a blessing! Or perhaps the moonlight has thrown a spell over us. What were you thinking of, Bishop?”

“I will tell you. I was thinking of the first Good Friday in Old Jerusalem. I was thinking of the sun hiding his face at noonday. Thora, have you an almanac?”

Thora took one from a nail on which it was hanging and gave it to him.

“I was thinking that the sun, which hid his face at noonday, must at that time have been in Aries, the Ram. Find me the signs of the Zodiac.” Thora did so. “Now look well at Aries the Ram. What month of our year is signed thus?”

“The month of March, sir.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. Tell me, sir.”

“I believe that in a long forgotten age, some priest or good man received a promise or prophecy revealing the Great Sacrifice that would be offered up for man’s salvation once and for all time. And I think they knew that this plenary sacrament would occur in the vernal season, in the month of March, whose sign or symbol was Aries, the Ram.”

“But why under that sign, sir?”

“The ram, to the ancient world, was the sacrificial animal. We have only to open our Bibles and be amazed at the prominence given to the ram and his congeners. From the time of Abraham until the time of Christ the ram is constantly present in sacrificial and religious ceremonies. Do you remember, Thora, any incident depending upon a ram?”

“When Isaac was to be sacrificed, a ram caught in a thicket was accepted by God in Isaac’s place, as a burnt offering.”

“More than once Abraham offered a ram in sacrifice. In Exodus, Chapter Twenty-ninth, special directions are given for the offering of a ram as a burnt offering to the Lord. In Leviticus, the Eighth Chapter, a bullock is sacrificed for a sin offering but a ram for a burnt offering. In Numbers we are told of the ram of atonement which a man is to offer, when he has done his neighbour an injury. In Ezra, the Tenth, the ram is offered for a trespass because of an unlawful marriage. On the accession of Solomon to the throne one thousand rams with bullocks and lambs were ‘offered up with great gladness.’ In the Old Testament there are few books in which the sacrificial ram is not mentioned. Even the horn of the ram was constantly in evidence, for it called together all religious and solemn services.

“A little circumstance,” continued the Bishop, “that pleases me to remember occurred in Glasgow five weeks ago. I saw a crowd entering a large church, and I asked a workingman, who was eating his lunch outside the building, the name of the church; and he answered,–‘It’s just the auld Ram’s Horn Kirk. They are putting a new minister in the pulpit today and they seem weel pleased wi’ their choice.’

“Now I am going to leave this subject with you. I have only indicated it. Those who wish to do so, can finish the list, for the half has not been told, and indeed I have left the most significant ceremony until the last. It is that wonderful service in the Sixteenth Chapter of Leviticus, where the priest, after making a sin offering of young bullocks and a burnt offering of a ram, casts lots upon two goats for a sin offering, and the goat upon which the lot falls is ‘presented alive before the Lord to make an atonement; and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.’”

Then he took from his pocket a little book and said, “Listen to the end of this service, ‘And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the Children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away, by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness.

“‘And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.’

“My friends, this night let all read the Fifty-third of Isaiah, and they will understand how fitting it was that Christ should be ‘offered up’ in Aries the Ram, the sacrificial month representing the shadows and types of which He was the glorious arch-type.”

Then there was silence, too deeply charged with feeling, for words. The Bishop himself felt that he could speak on no lesser subject, and his small audience were lost in wonder at the vast panorama of centuries, day by day, century after century, through all of which God had remembered that He had promised He would provide the Great and Final Sacrifice for mankind’s justification. Then Aries the Ram would no longer be a promise. It would be a voucher forever that the Promise had been redeemed, and a memorial that His Truth and His mercy endureth forever!

At the door the Bishop said to Ragnor, “In a few hours, Friend Conall, it will be Easter Morning. Then we can tell each other ‘Christ has risen!’” And Conall’s eyes were full of tears, he could not find his voice, he looked upward and bowed his head.

CHAPTER IV

SUNNA AND HER GRANDFATHER

Love is rich in his own right,
He is heir of all the spheres,
In his service day and night,
Swing the tides and roll the years.
What has he to ask of fate?
Crown him; glad or desolate.

Time puts out all other flames,
But the glory of his eyes;
His are all the sacred names,
His are all the mysteries.
Crown him! In his darkest day
He has Heaven to give away!

    – Carl Spencer.
Arms are fair,
When the intent for bearing them is just.

In the meantime Sunna was spending the evening with her grandfather. The old gentleman was reading, but she did not ask him to read aloud, she knew by the look and size of the book that it would not be interesting; and she was well pleased when one of her maids desired to speak with her.

“Well then, Vera, what is thy wish?”

“My sister was here and she was bringing me some strange news. About Mistress Brodie she was talking.”

“Yes, I heard she had come home. Did she bring Thora Ragnor a new Easter gown?”

“Of a gown I heard nothing. It was a young man she brought! O so beautiful is he! And like an angel he sings! The Bishop was very friendly with him, and the Ragnors, also; but they, indeed! they are friendly with all kinds of people.”

“This beautiful young man, is he staying with the Ragnors?”

“With Mistress Brodie he is staying, and with her he went to dinner at the Ragnors’. And the Bishop was there and the young man was singing, and a great deal was made of his singing, also they were speaking of his father who is a famous preacher in some Edinburgh kirk, and–”

“These things may be so, but how came thy sister to know them?”

“This morning my sister took work with Mistress Ragnor and she was waiting on them as they eat; and in and out of the room until nine o’clock. Then, as she went to her own home, she called on me and we talked of the matter, and it seemed to my thought that more might come of it.”

“Yes, no doubt. I shall see that more does come of it. I am well pleased with thee for telling me.”

Then she went back to her grandfather and resumed her knitting. Anon, she began to sing. Her face was flushed and her nixie eyes were dancing to the mischief she contemplated. In a few minutes the old gentleman lifted his head, and looked at her. “Sunna,” he said, “thy song and thy singing are charming, but they fit not the book I am reading.”

“Then I will stop singing and thou must talk to me. There has come news, and I want thy opinion on it. The Ragnors had a dinner party today, and we were not asked.”

“A great lie is that! Conall Ragnor would not give Queen Victoria a party in Lent. Who told thee such foolishness?”

Then Sunna retailed the information given her and asked, “What hast thou done to Conall Ragnor? Always before he bid thee to dinner when the Bishop was at his house? Or perhaps the offence is with Rahal Ragnor? Not long ago thou spent an afternoon with her and black and dangerous as a thunder storm thou came home.”

“This day the dinner was an accidental gathering. Rahal knows well that I have no will to dine with Mistress Brodie. Dost thou want her here, as thy stepmother?”

“If Mistress Brodie is not tired of an easy life, she will turn her feet away from this house. If Sunna cannot please thee, thou art in danger of worse happening. Yes, many are guessing who it is thou wilt marry.”

“And which way runs the guessing?”

“Not all one way. For thee, that is not a respectable thing. Thou should not be named with so many old women.”

“I am of thy opinion. An old woman is little to my mind. If I trust marriage again, I will choose a young girl for my wife–such an one as Treddie Fae, or Thora Ragnor.”