The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [122]
“Now, tomorrow is Sunday, and I will once again be before them, my time away from them over. Why, Mary Rose and I visited with everyone before we went to Brighton and then on to visit my brothers. I have been home to stay for a week now, and everything is back to normal. I have seen everyone in these past days, spoken to everyone, commiserated with everyone, prayed with everyone. Surely both Mary Rose and I have taken tea with nearly everyone yet again, and I will say that everyone has been quite civil. So please tell me, Samuel, how could they possibly come to this conclusion, a conclusion that is nonsense, of course?”
“Be that as it may, sir,” Samuel said, not answering the question because he deemed it irrelevant, “I must tell you that I always strive to communicate God’s word to his flock, and to communicate the flock’s words and feelings and thoughts back to you.”
“Very well. Tell me what I haven’t seen.” At Tysen’s nod, Samuel gently cleared his throat. Tysen could see that he was striving to find a tactful way of delivering the blow. He said finally, reluctantly, “I feel it my duty, sir, to remind you that you are no longer in Scotland, surely a place of sufficiently strict Protestant ethics, a place that surely holds no more sinners than we have here. But nonetheless, the Scottish people are still not our sort. Perhaps they changed you, sir, presented you with problems that made you think differently from the way you’ve always thought, made you yell and howl when normally you would speak quite calmly, perhaps even whisper, made you perhaps question—perhaps even deny—all the spiritual and pious philosophies you have hitherto always firmly believed and espoused.”
“Although your words flowed quite nicely, Samuel, I am not entirely certain I understand what you just said.”
“You would have understood before you left for Scotland, sir. You would have answered me in the same vein—before Scotland. Ah, it is difficult, Reverend Sherbrooke. I will endeavor to clarify my sentiments. The Scottish people, sir—they are, quite simply, not like us. They do not share the exact breadth, complexity, and depth of our beliefs. They do not comprehend or appreciate the ways we look at ourselves and at the world. They are different from us, sir.”
“Ah. What sort are we, Samuel?”
“We are Englishmen, Reverend Sherbrooke.”
“I begin to see. And my wife isn’t.”
“That is correct, sir. From what I’ve learned, our people are striving out of respect for you to tolerate her if you will but return your former self to them. That means, sir, that they want you the way you were before you left for Scotland. They want the real you to come back to them.” As Tysen’s eyebrow was still elevated, Samuel added, near desperation in his voice, “They very much want you to try very hard to be yourself again. No one else, just your old self, the very introspective and devout self that was in full bloom here before that old and revered self left for Scotland.”
“The way I was before I went to Scotland,” Tysen repeated slowly. “What do you think they mean by that, Samuel?”
“I have even spoken at length with many of the men and the ladies in our flock, Reverend Sherbrooke. They have sought me out, actually, many of them. They wanted to speak to me. Mr. Gaither, who now owns the Dead Spaniard Inn—he just purchased it this past week from his older brother, Tom the Wastrel—something you didn’t know and it would have been nice if you had but known and commented upon it.
“Ah, yes, my point is that Mr. Gaither was the men’s spokesman. He told me that they have all discussed the situation amongst themselves. I have to say it, sir—though it smites me to have to—they have even gone so far as to smirk and leer. They are jesting at how