BEFORE THE REFORMER'S CHAIR.
"The Lord save us, Maister Ralph, what's this?" said John
Bairdieson, opening the door of the stair in James's Court. It was
a narrow hall that it gave access to, more like a passage than a
hall. "Hoo hae ye come? An' what for didna Maister Welsh or you
write to say ye war comin'? An' whaur's a' the buiks an' the
gear?" continued John Bairdieson.
"I have walked all the way, John," said Ralph. "I quarrelled with
the minister, and he turned me to the door."
"Dear sirce!" said John anxiously, "was't ill-doing or unsound
doctrine?"
"Mr. Welsh said that he could not company with unbelievers."
"Then it's doctrine--wae's me, wae's me! I wuss it had been the
lasses. What wull his faither say? Gin it had been ill-doin', he
micht hae pitten it doon to the sins o' yer youth; but ill-
doctrine he canna forgie. O Maister Ralph, gin ye canna tell a lee
yersel', wull ye no haud yer tongue--I can lee, for I'm but an
elder--an' I'll tell him that at a kirn [harvest festival] ye war
persuaded to drink the health o' the laird, an' you no bein'
acquant wi' the strength o' Glenlivat--"
"John, John, indeed I cannot allow it. Besides, you're a sailor-
man, an' even in Galloway they do not have kirns till the corn's
ripe," replied Ralph with a smile.
"Aweel, can ye no say, or let me say for ye, gin ye be particular,
that ye war a wee late oot at nicht seein' a bit lassie--or ocht
but the doctrine? It wasna anything concernin' the fundamentals o'
the Marrow, Maister Ralph, though, surely," continued John
Bairdieson, whose elect position did not prevent him from doing
his best for the interests of his masters, young and old. Indeed,
to start with the acknowledged fact of personal election sometimes
gives a man like John Bairdieson an unmistakable advantage. Ralph
went to his own room, leaving John Bairdieson listening, as he
prayed to be allowed to do, at the door of his father's room.
In a minute or two John Bairdieson came up, with a scared face.
"Ye're to gang doon, Maister Ralph, an' see yer faither. But, O
sir, see that ye speak lown [calm] to him. He hasna gotten sleep
for twa nichts, an' he's fair pitten by himsel' wi' thae ill-set
Conformists--weary fa' them! that he's been in the gall o'
bitterness wi'."
Ralph went down to his father's study. Knocking softly, he
entered. His father sat in his desk chair, closed in on every
side. It had once been the pulpit of a great Reformer, and each
time that Gilbert Peden shut himself into it, he felt that he was
without father or mother save and except the only true and proper
Covenant-keeping doctrine in broad Scotland, and the honour and
well-being of the sorely dwindled Kirk of the Marrow.
Gilbert Peden was a noble make of a man, larger in body though
hardly taller than his son. He wore a dark-blue cloth coat with
wide flaps, and the immense white neckerchief on which John
Bairdieson weekly expended all his sailor laundry craft. His face
was like his son's, as clear-cut and statuesque, though larger and
broader in frame and mould. There was, however, a coldness about
the eye and a downward compression of the lips, which speaks the
man of narrow though fervid enthusiasms.
Ralph went forward to his father. As he came, his father stayed
him with the palm of his hand, the finger-tips turned upward.
"Abide, my son, till I know for what cause you have left or been
expelled from the house of the man to whom I committed you during
your trials for license. Answer me, why have you come away from
the house of Allan Welsh like a thief in the night?"
"Father," said Ralph, "I cannot tell you everything at present,
because the story is not mine to tell. Can you not trust me?"
"I could trust you with my life and all that I possess," said his
father; "they are yours, and welcome; but this is a matter that
affects your standing as a probationer on trials in the kirk of
the Marrow, which is of divine institution. The cause is not mine,
my son. Tell me that the cause of your quarrel had nothing to do
with the Marrow kirk and your future standing in it, and I will
ask you no more till you choose to tell me of your own will
concerning the matter."
The Marrow minister looked at his son with a gleam of tenderness
forcing its way through the sternness of his words.
But Ralph was silent.
"It was indeed in my duty to the Marrow kirk that Mr. Welsh
considered that I lacked. It was for this cause that he refused to
company further with me."
Then there came a hardness as of grey hill stone upon the
minister's face. It was not a pleasant thing to see in a father's
face.
"Then," he said slowly, "Ralph Peden, this also is a manse of the
Marrow kirk, and, though ye are my own son, I cannot receive ye
here till your innocence is proven in the presbytery. Ye must
stand yer trials."
Ralph bowed his head. He had not been unprepared for something
like this, but the pain he might have felt at another time was
made easier by a subtle anodyne. He hardly seemed to feel the
smart as a week before he might have done. In some strange way
Winsome was helping him to bear it--or her prayers for him were
being answered.
John Bairdieson broke into the study, his grey hair standing on
end, and the shape of the keyhole cover imprinted on his brow
above his left eye. John could see best with his left eye, and
hear best with his right ear, which he had some reason to look
upon as a special equalization of the gifts of Providence, though
not well adapted for being of the greatest service at keyholes.
"Save us, minister!" he burst out; "the laddie's but a laddie, an'
na doot his pranks hae upset guid Maister Welsh a wee. Lads will
be lads, ye ken. But Maister Ralph's soond on the fundamentals--I
learned him the Shorter Questions mysel', sae I should ken--forbye
the hunner an' nineteenth Psalm that he learned on my knee, and
how to mak' a Fifer's knot, an' the double reef, an' a heap o'
usefu' knowledge forbye; an' noo to tak' it into your heid that
yer ain son's no soond in the faith, a' because he has fa'en oot
wi' a donnert auld carle--"
"John," said the minister sternly, "leave the room! You have no
right to speak thus of an honoured servant of the kirk of the
Marrow."
Ralph could see through the window the light fading off the Fife
Lomonds, and the long line of the shore darkening under the night
into a more ethereal blue.
There came to him in this glimpse of woods and dewy pastures
overseas a remembrance of a dearer shore. The steading over the
Grannoch Loch stood up clear before him, the blue smoke going
straight up, Winsome's lattice standing open with the roses
peeping in, and the night airs breathing lovingly through them,
airing it out as a bed-chamber for the beloved.
The thought made his heart tender. To his father he said:
"Father, will you not take my word that there is nothing wicked or
disgraceful in what I have done? If it were my own secret, I would
gladly tell you at once; but as it is, I must wait until in his
own time Mr. Welsh communicates with you."
The minister, sitting in the Reformer's seat, pulling at his stern
upper lip, winced; and perhaps had it not been for the pulpit the
human in him might have triumphed. But he only said:
"I am quite prepared to support you until such time as at a
meeting of the presbytery the matter be tried, but I cannot have
in a Marrow Manse one living under the fama of expulsion from the
house of a brother minister in good standing."
"Thank you, father," said his son, "for your kind offer, but I do
not think I shall need to trouble you."
And so with these words the young man turned and went out proudly
from the father's sight, as he had gone from the manse of the
other minister of the Marrow kirk.
As he came to the outside of the door, leaving his father sitting
stately and stern in the Reformer's pulpit, he said, in the deeps
of his heart:
"God do so to me, and more also, if I ever seek again to enter the
Marrow kirk, if so be that, like my father, I must forget my
humanity in order worthily to serve it!"
After he had gone out, the Reverend Gilbert Peden took his Bible
and read the parable of the prodigal son. He closed the great
book, which ever lay open before him, and said, as one who both
accuses and excuses himself:
"But the prodigal son was not under trials for license in the kirk
of the Marrow!"
At the door, John Bairdieson, his hair more than ever on end, met
Ralph. He held up his hands.
"It's an awfu'--like thing to be obleegit to tell the hale truth!
O man, couldna ye hae tell't a wee bit lee? It wad hae saved an
awfu' deal o' fash! But it's ower late now; ye can juist bide i'
the spare room up the stair, an' come an' gang by door on the
Castle Bank, an' no yin forbye mysel' 'ill be a hair the wiser. I,
John Bairdieson, 'll juist fetch up yer meals the same as
ordinar'. Ye'll be like a laddie at the mastheid up there; it'll
be braw an' quate for the studyin'!"
"John, I am much obliged to you for your kind thought," said
Ralph, "but I cannot remain in his house against my father's
expressed wish, and without his knowledge."
"Hear till him! Whaur else should he bide but in the hoose that he
was born in, an' his faither afore him? That would be a bonny like
story. Na, na, ye'll juist bide, Maister Ralph, an'--"
"I must go this very night," said Ralph. "You mean well, John, but
it cannot be. I am going down to see my uncle, Professor
Thriepneuk."
"Leave yer faither's hoose to gang to that o' a weezened auld--"
"John!" said Ralph, warningly.
"He's nae uncle o' yours, onygate, though he married your mother's
sister. An' a sair life o't she had wi' him, though I doot na but
thae dochters o' his sort him to richts noo."
So, in spite of John Bairdieson's utmost endeavours, and waiting
only to put his clothes together, Ralph took his way over to the
Sciennes, where his uncle, the professor, lived in a new house
with his three daughters, Jemima, Kezia, and Keren-happuch. The
professor had always been very kind to Ralph. He was not a Marrow
man, and therefore, according to the faith of his father, an
outcast from the commonwealth. But he was a man of the world of
affairs, keen for the welfare of his class at the University
College--a man crabbed and gnarled on the surface, but within him
a strong vein of tenderness of the sort that always seems ashamed
of catching its possessor in a kind action.
To him Ralph knew that he could tell the whole story. The Sciennes
was on the very edge of the green fields. The corn-fields
stretched away from the dyke of the Professor's garden to the
south towards the red-roofed village of Echo Bank and the long
ridge of Liberton, crowned by the square tower on which a stone
dining-room table had been turned up, its four futile legs waving
in the air like a beetle overset on its back.