The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

Fate, in all her wilful cruelty, or helped along perhaps by Katharine’s now fearful and watchful parents, decreed that the day of my final trials at Fordyce should be the day of Katharine’s departure for her Borders jail. We had four weeks, a month of warning, but in that month I could only see her once. My preparations for the final trial, my work in the school, and Katharine’s farewell progress round the ladies and castles of Banff, Moray and the Garioch gave us but one day, and one night. Wary as she was by now, Archie’s mother could not refuse me that last hospitality. His lordship was away from home, but she watched us; we were scarcely left alone together two minutes in the day.

And then, in the darkness of the night, I stole to Katharine’s chamber and for the first and only time I took her as my wife, and told her she would always be my wife and mine only. And we slept, naked under the cover, entwined in each other’s arms. I had not meant to fall asleep. I should not have fallen asleep and slumbered with her those long hours till dawn. The light of the early May morning and the singing of the birds gradually began to play upon my eyes and ears. The perfect warmth and comfort of waking with Katharine still in my arms was slowly replaced by a dawning horror that I should not still be here. And as I opened my eyes, Katharine’s head and loosened hair across my bare chest, her pale arm on my shoulder, I was met by the horror of Lady Hay’s face. Her skin was drained of all colour save grey. She moved her mouth but no words would come. Her eyes were filled with the cold disaster of the scene before her. And then she spoke. Slowly, quietly. ‘Get out. You are filth. Get out.’ And then the woman who had loved me as a son staggered from the room and vomited.

And that had been my parting from Katharine, less than three weeks before my final trial for the ministry. I do not know how I kept my senses. A lie. I know how I kept my senses. I had lost the man who would have called himself my brother; I had lost the woman who should have been my wife. I had betrayed my childhood. Everything of my heart, what I had understood as my kin, was closed to me. Yet I still had my calling; I had always had my calling. Even in my one night with Katharine I had told myself there was no sin, because I had meant her for my wife. I did not acknowledge my wrong. Parted from her, I might have been convulsed with grief. Yet I had my calling and my trials were before me. I threw myself still deeper into my books. In those three weeks, less, I turned the Bible on its head and turned it back again. I composed the sermon of my life. There could be no chance of failure, of rejection. I would live for and through my calling. And this I believed until the words were in the mouth of the Moderator of the Presbytery of Fordyce that would have licensed me to preach as a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. And in that moment all tranquillity, all that I still understood in the world was shattered by the cry of my Lord Hay of Delgatie. His wife had finally broken and told him that very morning what I had done, and he had ridden to Fordyce with all the devils in Hell at his heels. He would die before he would see me a minister. He would throw in my face my betrayal of himself and of his family and every single thing they had done for me through all the years of my life. He laid not a finger on me, but before the brethren I was as a man beaten into a stupor. The moderator, aghast, pleading in his eyes, asked me to defend myself. But I could not utter a word. I had no answer for my accuser, for there was none left to give. My dignity lost, I stumbled from the kirk of Fordyce.