Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ATwVAAAAQAAJ
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
INCHBRACKEN
[Illustration]
INCHBRACKEN
THE STORY OF A
FAMA CLAMOSA
BY
ROBERT CLELAND
* * *
_NEW EDITION--ILLUSTRATED_
* * *
GLASGOW:
ROBERT FORRESTER, 1 ROYAL EXCHANGE SQUARE
* * *
1887
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--The Parish Of Kilrundle.
II.--A Storm.
III.--The Find.
IV.--Down By the Burnside.
V.--Julia.
VI.--Sophia.
VII.--Joseph.
VIII.--A Field Preaching.
IX.--The Baby.
X.--Tibbie.
XI.--An Excursion.
XII.--Inchbracken.
XIII.--A Harbour of Refuge.
XIV.--Scandal.
XV.--Mary.
XVI.--Man and Wife.
XVII.--Roderick.
XVIII.--The Delivery of a Letter.
XIX.--Subornation of Perjury.
XX.--In a Sick Room.
XXI.--Circe.
XXII.--In Session.
XXIII.--Mother and Daughter.
XXIV.--Luckie Howden.
XXV.--Sophia's Answer.
XXVI.--Fama Clamosa.
XXVII.--Dealings in Love and Faithfulness.
XXVIII.--More Faithfulness but Less Love.
XXIX.--Consultation.
XXX.--Tibbie's Troubles.
XXXI.--A Catechist.
XXXII.--Changes.
XXXIII.--Discomfited.
XXXIV.--'Wooed an' Married an a'.'
XXXV.--Found.
XXXVI.--Augustus Wallowby.
XXXVII.--The End.
INCHBRACKEN.
CHAPTER I.
_THE PARISH OF KILRUNDLE_.
The night was stormy and black as pitch. Sheets of chilling rain sped
lashing across the glen, driven by the whirling tempest. The burns in
the hills, swollen into torrents, came tumbling down their rocky beds
all foam and uproar, diffusing through the air an undertone of
continuous thunder, that could be distinctly heard in each recurring
interval of the gale. Along the road which traversed the clachan of
Glen Effick and then wandered up the glen and across the hills, the
elements had free scope to work their evil will, and nothing with life
dared venture forth to oppose them. The air was full of hissings and
roarings and crackings and rumblings, as trees and roofs swayed and
shivered to the blast, and the loosened stones rumbled in the beds of
neighbouring torrents. The drowsy lights from the inn door and the
post-office disclosed nothing but a sheet of falling rain and an
overflowing gutter, and the gleams from the round boles in the cottage
shutters were but shining bars across the thick darkness of the night.
The two bright lamps of the stage coach from Inverlyon, descending the
hill road from the east, glowed like the fierce eyes of some monster
of the night, and disclosed something of the scene as they passed
along, trees tossing and writhing in the wind, wayside burns broke
loose from their bounds and foaming across the road, and for the
rest,--slop, slush, and blackness. Within, the tumult out of doors
gave edge to the glow and comfort of the snug peat fire on the hearth.
The wind, rumbling in the rocking chimney, and occasional raindrops
hissing on the embers, seemed but to call forth a ruddier light from
that goodly pile of burning peat and peeled coppice oak. True the
hearth was but clay, and of clay too was the floor of the apartment,
but the flicker and play of the flames hid the one as effectually as
the comfortable Brussels carpet concealed the other. The whitewashed
cottage walls, as well as some outlying yards of carpet, were covered
by bookcases whose tops touched the low ceiling, and big books piled
and heaped one on the other as they best might be to save space.
This sombre background was somewhat relieved by the glints of the
firelight on a few gilt picture frames containing portraits, and by a
few steel engravings built curiously in among the books. Those dear
old engravings, which forty years ago embellished every middle class
home in Scotland,--John Knox preaching, Queen Mary at Leith after Sir
William Allan, and Duncan's stirring memorials of Prince Charlie--they
were good wholesome art for every day life, and likely to stir the
children's hearts, as did the ballads sung round the hearths of an
earlier generation, to an honest love of the brave and the beautiful,
and a sturdy pride in their Scottish birth. We have higher art
now-a-days, or we think so. We spend more money on it; and if not more
discriminative, are at least greatly more critical; but is the moral
influence of our walls on our households better now than it was then?
The boys and girls of to-day will grow up less narrow. Will they be as
loyal and true-hearted?
But to return to the study of the Reverend Roderick Brown, licentiate
of the Free Church of Scotland. On the window-shelf were pots of hardy
roses in luxuriant bloom, and in the distant corner stood a tall
crimson cloth screen of many leaves, behind which were concealed the
bed and toilette appurtenances of his reverence the licentiate. Beyond
this a door communicated with an inner room; but here there are signs
unmistakable of a lady's chamber, so we may not intrude.
Drawn up before the fire there stands a large writing-table, on which
are books and much manuscript, and at one end sits the occupant, deep
in the composition of one of the five or six discourses he will be
expected to deliver in the course of the following week. A tall young
man under thirty, well-proportioned and even athletic, but pale and
thin, and rather worn as regards the face. The straight black hair
which he has tossed back from his face in the throes of composition,
displays a forehead pale, blue-veined, and high, but rather narrow,
eyes dark and deep-set, beneath shaggy brows, in hollow and
blue-rimmed sockets, as of one who has gone through much excitement
and fatigue, but burning with a steady fire of enthusiasm, which seems
as if it would never go out, so long as a drop of the oil of life
remains in the lamp to supply it with fuel. The mouth is long and
flexible, not without signs of firmness and vigor, but gentle and
serene, a smile appearing to lurk in one of the corners, as awaiting
its opportunity to break forth. The whole expression is pure and
unworldly. An observer must have said, that, whether or not he might
be wise and prudent, he did not look like a fool, and he was most
assuredly good.
His sister Mary sits opposite him plying her needle, and crooning to
herself some scraps of old world song, but softly, so as not to
disturb the flow of the minister's thoughts. She is younger by some
years than her brother, tall like him, and with all the grace in
repose that comes of well-exercised and symmetrical limbs. The head is
small, with a wealth of golden brown hair wound tightly round it, face
oval and fair, with the complexion of a shell The eyelids are very
full, drooping and long-lashed, and beneath them the eyes look forth
like violets from the shade. The hands are large and firm, but white,
supple, and perfectly shaped, and it is a treat and a joy to watch her
as she sits at work. She seems to exhale the breath of violets,
suggested perhaps by the colour of her eyes, as one follows her
tranquil movements, like Shelley's hyacinth bells--
'Which rang with a music so soft and intense
That it passed for an odor within the sense.'
The varying light of the fire, shining warmly upon her, touches even
the folds of her black gown into a subdued repetition of the quivering
glories that flicker among her hair.
Those were the _disruption times_, which all have heard of, and the
middle-aged among us can recall more or less vividly. Times so
different from the present! When we look back on them, knowing how
much there was that was narrow, rugged, and unlovely, we must still
feel a regretful admiration for an atmosphere of earnestness and more
heroic warmth of feeling than is now attainable to the cold-blooded
clear-sightedness and electric dispassionateness of the critical
spirit now prevalent, which admits good and detects shortcoming in all
varieties of faith and opinion alike, and so, leaves the seeker after
the better to follow the worse in pure weariness, satisfied in the end
to pursue material advantage, seeing that Truth and Goodness have
become abstractions, too high to be attained, or else too widely
diffused to be missed, in whatever direction the wayfarer may stray.
In those days the seeker after the goodly pearl of truth, felt
constrained to forsake all and followed it; and doubtless the
forsaking and the quest brought a moral benefit, though it by no means
follows that the form in which they sought it, the Ultramontane fetish
of ecclesiastical supremacy--exemption from State interference,
combined with an unlimited right to meddle in the State--was in any
sense a truth at all. An earnest following out of the supposed truth
cannot but be wholesome to the seeker, and to fight for an idea of any
kind, must be good in materialistic times.
One is led to use the word 'Ultramontane' in connection with the Free
Church 'movement,' by the curious resemblance between the claims of
these ardent Presbyterians, and those of the Ultramontane section of
the Catholic Church, as well as by the very similar language in which
both expressed and supported them. It would seem indeed as if since
1840 a wave of turbulence had passed over the minds of all Churchmen,
beginning in this Northern Kingdom and rolling Southwards. England and
Ireland have since then been disturbed by unruly priests, and the long
pontificate of Pius IX. has witnessed in every country a continued
effort of the Spiritual Estate to assert itself against secular
authority.
That the struggle in Scotland was for no absolute truth, would appear
from the change of front which the body that then arose now presents.
It commenced by claiming to have inherited the rights of the
historical church, confirmed by act of parliament, to guide the nation
and the state in questions of faith and morals. Now it places itself
with the voluntary religious associations, and clamours for depriving
its own successors of the endowments which its members themselves
resigned because of conditions which now do not exist. When Chalmers,
ten years before the Disruption, fought the battle of Establishments
against Voluntaryism, not only in Scotland, but in England also, he
little thought that the Church he was to found, would, in a quarter of
a century, become the hottest association of voluntaries in the
country! New circumstances have begotten new 'principles,' let us say,
for it would not be well to impute anything like trade jealousy to
holy men.
Roderick Brown was pursuing his theological studies in Edinburgh,
during the years of theological excitement which preceded the
catastrophe. Youth is sympathetic, and the leaders of the movement had
holy names and historic memories to conjure with. It is not wonderful,
therefore, that he caught the enthusiasm of the men about him, and
thirsted to bear his part in contending for the truth. At each
succeeding vacation he returned to his father's manse with a
heightened ardour for ecclesiastical combat; and many and long were
their discussions on the Church question and its new lights. To the
young man's surprise, he found his arguments fall rather flat and
pointless in presence of his father's calm and dispassionate
statements of the case; but the elder found the wisdom and
understanding gathered in sixty years' intercourse with the Church and
the world equally powerless to cool down the heat and ardour of the
enthusiastic youth. Therefore, as must ever be the case where
affection and respect are combined with common sense, they finally
agreed to differ, each forbearing to insist on his own preferences,
and confident that the other sought only the right according to his
lights.
The disappointment to Doctor Brown was not slight. He felt himself
rapidly failing, and he had hoped to find in his son an assistant and
successor in whose hands he might contentedly leave the care of his
beloved flock, and pass on to an uninterrupted fulfilment the many
good works he had commenced in his parish. Besides his parish, the
future of his daughter may also have weighed much on the old man's
mind. She had been born and bred in the manse, and was as well known
to every one of the parishioners, as the minister himself. To the poor
she had been the recognised messenger of mercy. Ever since her
mother's death (when she was thirteen), had devolved on her with the
assistance of the old housekeeper, the many and onerous duties that
fall to the country minister's wife; and in fulfilling these she had
won the love of rich and poor alike.
Roderick too had been bred in the manse, and was known to every living
soul in the parish. He had fished the burns with the sons of the
farmers and crofters, when a lad, and as he grew older shot on the
moors with the lairds. Gentle and simple alike had only kind words to
say of the minister's son, and to these was added sincere respect when
he entered on his theological studies, and afforded such assistance to
his father in his sacred duties as the laws of the Church permit to
the unordained. There would have been but one voice in the parish from
Patron, Heritors, and People, as to who should succeed Doctor Brown in
his charge, and it was very bitter to the old man to find that for an
enthusiastic scruple all his hopes were to be laid low.
In the year of the Disruption, Dr. Brown died, and in the same year
his son Roderick was licensed to preach by the Free Church. On many
therefore fell a double bereavement; his father was taken away, and
forthwith it became necessary to gather up his household gods, the
relics of his past, steeped in all the memories of childhood and of
those who had made it glad, and to move forth into a new and an
untried life.
General Drysdale, the patron and chief heritor of the parish, a
staunch Conservative in Church and State, was greatly disappointed at
the step taken by the son of his old friend, in quitting the church of
his father. He would gladly have presented him to the living, and felt
personally aggrieved that he had deliberately incapacitated himself
from accepting it. The late minister had been his frequent guest at
Inchbracken, and the intercourse between the families of the great
house and the manse had been constant and cordial, and had formed a
most useful bond of connection between the laird and his poorer
tenants; but now, owing to the wrongheadedness of an inexperienced
youth, all this must cease, and who could tell how the new incumbent
would answer? The breeding of himself and his family might make their
presence unacceptable at the castle, and in that case intercourse
would necessarily cease, and the laird and his people, in consequence,
would drift apart from want of the old link; or even should the new
comer answer, it would be long before a stranger could establish ties
between himself and the different orders of his flock, and longer
still before he could become a bond between one order and another.
But even this did not make up the whole sum of Roderick's offences.
His personal merits themselves added another count to the General's
indictment against him. Beloved by rich and poor, his religious
ministrations were greatly valued in his native parish, and many who
might in other circumstances have stood staunch by the Kirk and the
laird, were seduced into dissent by his insidious exhortations. Not
only had he refused to accept the legitimate cure of souls, but he had
raised the standard of rebellion within the bounds, thereby tending to
subvert the wisely-appointed order of things, and contributing to the
inletting of that free tide of revolutionary democracy which the
General espied afar as doomed eventually to sweep away lairds and all
other salutary potentates, and lead on to levelling ideas, the
abomination of desolation, and the end of the world. Clearly, then, it
was the duty of every well-regulated mind to discountenance such
doings; and in the interest of public order, and for the sake of his
misguided tenantry, General Drysdale's duty to refuse ground for the
erection of a schismatic meetinghouse--a temple of discord, upon any
portion of his and; or to rent a dwelling to the missionary of
rebellion and error.
Roderick therefore being unable to find shelter for himself and his
sister within five miles of the church and manse of Kilrundle, betook
himself to the neighbouring hamlet of Glen Effick, which was beyond
the territory of this well-meaning persecutor, but still hovered on
the edge of Kilrundle Parish, over which he could raid at will, and
hold meetings on the hillside for the faithful of the flock, who
gathered in ever increasing crowds to hear him, emulous of the 'Hill
Folk' of old, who, as they were often reminded, 'held not their lives
dear, but went forth to serve the Lord in the wilderness.'
Almost all the cottars in Glen Effick would have been proud to receive
the minister and his sister, but their means were less than their
desires. The cottages were but small, and a few vacant rooms,
scattered here and there throughout the village, were all that could
be offered to shelter them and their effects. Hence in one cottage he
had his books and made his study, and in this also they both slept. In
another, across the road, they took their meals, and had bestowed such
of their goods as were in use for that purpose. In a third was Mary's
piano and many of her belongings, and there they would probably have
spent their evenings, but that an old body, with more zeal than space
at her disposal, had insisted on bestowing their tea equipage in her
corner cupboard, where it was visible through the glass door, and
proved her a mother in Israel. Thither they felt bound to follow it
occasionally, that so Luckie Howden might have the glory of making tea
for the minister.
All this was very tiresome to Mary, and sometimes she thought her
patience would break down entirely. During her peaceful and happy life
with her father she had imbibed all his ideas. She still clung to the
Established Church as her head, and disapproving of the Disruption,
she had neither zeal for the cause, nor a pleasing sense of martyrdom
to mitigate the worries, discomforts, and privations of her daily
life. The one only solace of her lot was her great love for her
brother, from whom she had resolved never to part, and with whom she
was prepared to endure even greater hardships. An uncle had pressed
her strongly to make her home with him, but she could not tear herself
from Roderick, and so stayed on.