IN THE GLOAMING.
August is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it
pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie. The softness of the
gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the
honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the
fields--for harvest is earlier down there than with us--and the cattle
chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed
peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination. Fancies
he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except
his mother and his aunt. There had been times when he and his set
declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to
be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union. It was
never completed--and therefore never signed--because the brotherhood
could not agree about the duration of the vows--the draftsman, who has
been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity,
while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in
the Moderator of Assembly.
This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure
boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk,
but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter. There was in him an
ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost
convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the
celibate state. As an only child, and brought up by a mother given to
noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves,
and considered marriage for ordinary men to flavour of sacrilege. His
mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his
tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her
embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior.
Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a
Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature. Some were
abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints.
Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than
saints. Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the
shameful things they said. One middle-aged female, whose conversation
oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to
sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak
about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described
him as a prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some
women because he thought more highly of them than they thought of
themselves.
Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students,
especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who
neither had endured hardship to get to college, nor did any work at
college. They were described in reports as the "fruits of the
revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the
University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's
lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by
the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they
would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could
gain by their own merits. As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more
charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world
and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in
very coarse and common souls. When he was a young judge--from whom may
the Eternal deliver us all--he was bitter against the "fruits," as he
called them, because they did their best to escape examinations, and
spoke in a falsetto voice, and had no interest in dogs, and because
they told incredible tales of their spiritual achievements. But
chiefly did Carmichael's gorge rise against those unfortunates because
of the mean way they spoke of marriage, and on this account, being a
high-spirited young fellow, he said things which could hardly be
defended, and of which afterwards he honestly repented.
"Yes, religion is profitable for both worlds," one of them would exhort
by the junior common-room fire, "and if you doubt it, look at me;
five-and-twenty shillings a week as a draper's assistant was all I had,
and no chance of rising. Now I 'm a gentleman"--here Carmichael used
to look at the uncleanly little man and snort--"and in two years I
could ask any girl in religious society, and she would take me. A
minister can marry any woman, if he be evangelical. Ah," he would
conclude, with a fine strain of piety, "the Gospel is its own reward."
What enraged Carmichael as he listened in the distance to these paeans
of Pharisaism was the disgusting fact that the "fruits" did carry off
great spoil in the marriage field, so that to a minister without
culture, manners, or manliness, a middle-class family would give their
pet daughter, when they would have refused her to a ten times better
man fighting his way up in commerce. If she died, then this
enterprising buccaneer would achieve a second and third conquest, till
in old age he would rival the patriarchs in the number of his wives and
possessions. As for the girl, Carmichael concluded that she was still
under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a
very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion. This particular
"fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness
especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more
illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made
man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat
disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry--a
mysterious providence, as he often explained--but allowed him to enjoy
life with a guarded satisfaction. What Carmichael said to him about
his ways and his Gospel was very unpleasant and quite unlike
Carmichael's kindly nature, but the only revenge the victim took was to
state his conviction that Scotland would have nothing to do with a man
that was utterly worldly, and in after years to warn vacant churches
against one who did not preach the Cross.
After one of those common-room encounters, Carmichael used to fling
himself out into the east wind and greyness of Edinburgh, fuming
against the simplicity of good people, against the provincialism of his
college, against the Pharisaism of his church, against the Philistinism
of Scottish life. He would go down to Holyrood and pity Queen Mary,
transported from the gay court of France to Knox's Scotland, divided
between theology and bloodshed. In the evening he would sweep his
table clean of German books on the Pentateuch, and cover it with prints
of the old masters, which he had begun to collect, and ancient books of
Catholic devotion, and read two letters to his mother from her uncle,
who had been a Vicar-General, and died in an old Scottish convent in
Spain. There was very little in the letters beyond good wishes, and an
account of the Vicar-General's health, but they seemed to link a Free
Kirk divinity student on to the Holy Catholic Church. Mother Church
cast her spell over his imagination, and he envied the lot of her
priests, who held a commission no man denied and administered a
world-wide worship, whom a splendid tradition sanctioned, whom each of
the arts hastened to aid; while he was to be the minister of a local
sect and work with the "fruits," who knew nothing of Catholic
Christianity, but supposed their little eddy, whereon they danced like
rotten sticks, to be the main stream. Next day a reaction would set
in, and Carmichael would have a fit of Bohemianism, and resolve to be a
man of letters. So the big books on theology would again be set aside,
and he would write an article for _Ferrier's Journal_, that kindliest
of all journals to the young author, which he would receive back in a
week "with thanks." The Sunday night came, and Carmichael sat down to
write his weekly letter to his mother--she got notes between, he found
them all in her drawers, not a scrap missing--and as he wrote, his
prejudices, and petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away.
Before he had told her all that happened to him during the
week--touching gently on the poor Revivalist--although his mother had a
saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic--and saying
nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales--for this would have
alarmed her at once--he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a
Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly
cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty commotion of youth and its
censoriousness, he had a shrewd idea that a man is likely to do his
life-work best in the tradition of his faith and blood. Next morning
his heart warmed as he went in through the college gates, and he would
have defended Knox unto the death, as the maker of Scotland. His
fellow-students seemed now a very honest set of men, as indeed they
were, although a trifle limited in horizon, and he hoped that one of
the "fruits" was "satisfied with his Sunday's work," which shows that
as often as a man of twenty-one gets out of touch with reality, he
ought straightway to sit down and write to his mother. Carmichael
indeed told me one evening at the Cottage that he never had any
mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall
instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's
desire, and he loved her. As a layman it perhaps did not become me to
judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided
by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory
the better he would do his work. After which both of us smoked
furiously, and Carmichael, two minutes later, was moved to remark that
some Turkish I had then was enough to lure a man up Glen Urtach in the
month of December.
The young minister was stirred on the way to Kilbogie, and began to
dream dreams in the twilight. Love had come suddenly to him, and after
an unexpected fashion. Miss Carnegie was of another rank and another
faith, nor was she even his ideal woman, neither conspicuously
spiritual nor gentle, but frank, outspoken, fearless, self-willed. He
could also see that she had been spoiled by her father and his friends,
who had given her _carte blanche_ to say and do what she pleased. Very
likely--he could admit that even in the first blush of his emotion--she
might be passionate and prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater.
This he had imagined in the Tochty woods, and was not afraid, for her
imperfections seemed to him a provocation and an attraction. They were
the defects of her qualities--of her courage, candour, generosity,
affection. Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of
her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the
fascination of her manner. She was free from the affectations,
gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known.
St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his
heart, but life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man were married
to a saint. The saints have no humour, and do not relax. Life with a
woman like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and stimulating, full of
surprises and piquancy. No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an
instinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at the core. She was
a gallant lass, and . . . he loved her.
[Illustration: Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination.]
What an absurdity was this revery, and Carmichael laughed aloud at
himself. Twice he had met Miss Carnegie--on one occasion she had found
him watering strange dogs out of his hat, and on the other he had given
her to understand that women were little removed from fools. He had
made the worst of himself, and this young woman who had lived with
smart people must have laughed at him. Very likely she had made him
into a story, for as a raconteur himself he knew the temptation to work
up raw material, or perhaps Miss Carnegie had forgotten long ago that
he had called. Suppose that he should call to-morrow on his way home
and say, "General Carnegie, I think it right to tell you that I admire
your daughter very much, and should like your permission to pay my
addresses. I am Free Church minister in Drumtochty, and my stipend is
200 pounds a year" . . . his laugh this time was rather bitter. The
Carnegies would be at once admitted into the county set, and he would
only meet them at a time . . . Lord Hay was a handsome and pleasant
young fellow. He would be at Glen Urtach House for the shooting in a
few days . . . that was a likely thing to happen . . . the families
were old friends . . . there would be great festivities in the
Glen . . . perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's
health . . . It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come
along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if
any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister of
Kilbogie.
Carmichael was standing in the shadow as Saunderson came along the
road, and the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the dear old
bookman. Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but
with much poring over books and meditation he had descended some three
inches. His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to
genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, and with his flowing,
untrimmed beard, was now quite grey. Within his clothes he was the
merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in
sharp outline, and his hands were almost transparent. The redeeming
feature in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal. Whether
he was expounding doctrines of an incredible disbelief in humanity or
exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a divine love in which he did
not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon
his knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic.
Young ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new
views were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and
came in a year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson,
curiously compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness
were quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part. For
years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael" and even "MacWheep," though he
was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
ministry--so much reverence at least was in the lads--and "Mister"
attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
Eastern sage. Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day of
his death Kilbogie was so called. He made protest against the title as
being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on
the ground of his slender attainments. The lads saw the force of this
objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to
MacWheep, but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson--whereat
Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so
called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness.
When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to
confer the degree of D. D. on him for his distinguished learning and
great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was
delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an
ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone
out in a body and compelled him to accept. They also purchased a
Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of
Kilbogie two days before the capping. One of them saw that he was duly
brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those
days took place. Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to
British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled
half a column of the _Caledonian_, and drew forth a complimentary
article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost
all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption,
and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much
frankness. The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a
great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in
which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his
neighbour, a successful West-end clergyman, the author of a Life of
Dorcas and other pleasing booklets. For some time after his boys said
"Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common
title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of
his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.
The Rabbi was tasting some morsel of literature as he came along, and
halted opposite Carmichael, whom he did not see in the shadow, that he
might enjoy it aloud.
"That is French verse, Rabbi, I think, but it sounds archaic; is it
from a Huguenot poet?"
"Assuredly," replied the Rabbi, not one whit astonished that a man
should come out from a hedge on Kilbogie road and recognise his
quotation; "from Clement Marot, whom, as you remember, there is good
evidence Queen Mary used to read. It is you, John Carmichael." The
Rabbi awoke from the past, and held Carmichael's hand in both of his.
"This was very mindful. You were going home from Pitscowrie and turned
aside to visit me.
"It is unfortunate that I am hastening to a farm called the Mains, on
the border of Pitscourie parish, to expound the Word; but you will go
on to the Manse and straitly charge Barbara to give you food, and I
will hasten to return." And the Rabbi looked forward to the night with
great satisfaction.
"No, I am not coming from Pitscowrie, and you are not going there, as
far as one can see. Why, you are on your way to Tochty woods; you are
going west instead of east; Rabbi, tell the truth, have you been
snuffing?"
This was a searching question, and full of history. When the Rabbi
turned his back against the wind to snuff with greater comfort, he was
not careful to resume his original position, but continued cheerfully
in the new direction. This weakness was so well known that the school
bairns would watch till he had started, and stand in a row on the road
to block his progress. Then there would be a parley, which would end
in the Rabbi capitulating and rewarding the children with peppermints,
whereupon they would see him fairly off again and go on their
way--often looking back to see that he was safe, and somehow loving him
all the more for his strange ways. So much indeed was the Rabbi
beloved that a Pitscowrie laddie, who described Saunderson freely as a
"daftie" to Mains' grandson, did not see clearly for a week, and never
recovered his lost front tooth.
"That," remarked young Mains, "'ll learn Pitscowrie tae set up
impidence aboot the minister."
"There is no doubt, that I snuffed--it was at Claypots steading--but
there was no wind that I should turn. This is very remarkable, John,
and . . . disconcerting.
"These humiliations are doubtless a lesson," resumed the Rabbi as they
hurried to Mains, "and a rebuke. Snuffing is in no sense a necessity,
and I have long recognised that the habit requires to be
restricted--very carefully restricted. For some time I have had fixed
times--once in the forenoon, once in the afternoon, and again in the
evening. Had I restrained myself till my work was over and I had
returned home this misadventure would not have occurred, whereby I have
been hindered and the people will have been kept waiting for their
spiritual food.
"It is exactly twenty years to-night since I began this meeting in
Mains," the Rabbi explained to Carmichael, "and I have had great
pleasure in it and some profit. My subject has been the Epistle to the
Romans, and by the goodness of God we are approaching the last
chapters. The salutations will take about a year or so; Rufus, chosen
in the Lord, will need careful treatment; and then I thought, if I were
spared, of giving another year to a brief review of the leading points
of doctrine; eh?"
Carmichael indicated that the family at Mains would almost expect
something of the sort, and inquired whether there might not be a few
passages requiring separate treatment at fuller length than was
possible in this hurried commentary.
"Quite so, John, quite so; no one is more bitterly conscious of the
defects of this exposition than myself--meagre and superficial to a
degree, both in the patristic references and the experimental
application; but we are frail creatures, John, and it is doubtful
whether the exposition of any book should extend unto a generation. It
has always caused me regret that Mains--I mean the father of the
present tenant--departed before we had come to the comfort of the
eighth chapter."
The Rabbi's mind was much affected by this thought, and twice in the
kitchen his eye wandered to the chair where his friend had sat, with
his wife beside him. From Priscilla and Aquila he was led into the
question of hospitality, on which he spoke afterwards till they came to
the Manse, where he stationed Carmichael on the doorstep till he
secured a light.
"There is a parcel of books on the floor, partially opened, and the way
of passing is narrow and somewhat dangerous in the darkness."