"_The CHILD of The REGIMENT_"
My labours in St. Cuthbert's had covered but a few fleeting years (oh,
relentless ticking of the clock! at once the harbinger and the echo of
eternity), when there came into our lives life's greatest earthly joy.
Serene and peaceful our lives had been, every hour garlanded with love
and every year festooned by the Hand Unseen.
Trials and difficulties there had been indeed, but they were as billows
which carried in their secret bosom the greeting of the harbour and the
shore. Even the roots of sorrow had been moistened by the far-off wells
of joy. To many a guest of God, disguised in the habiliments of gloom,
we had turned a frowning face and had bidden such begone. But such
guests heeded not, pressing relentlessly in upon our trembling hearth,
when lo! the passing days revealed their mission; we saw the face hidden
beneath the sombre hood, and prayed the new-discovered guest to abide
with us unto the end. For God loveth the masquerade, and doth use it
everywhere.
The way to hell appeareth glorious oftentimes, but the pathway unto life
is robed in shadows and its sign-post is the cross--which things are a
masquerade and to be witnessed every day; for in one single day all
God's great drama is rehearsed in miniature.
Our manse was a pleasant place, and its site had been selected by some
one with the nursery-heart. Spacious and genial was the old homely
house, with its impartial square. Rooms there were, and halls, waiting
to echo back some voice uncoarsened by the clang of time and uncorroded
by the salt of tears. Rich terraces flowed in velvet waves down to the
waiting river, murmuring its trysting joy; a full-robed choir of oak and
elm and maple kept their eternal places in a grander loft than man could
build them, while pine and spruce and cedar, disrobing never, but
snatching their bridal garments from the winter storm, swelled the
sylvan harmony.
Here came the crocuses and the snowdrops, trembling like the waifs of
winter, and hither came the violet and the dandelion to reassure these
daring pioneers; later on, the pansy and the rose utterly convinced them
that they had not lost their way, but had been guided by the pilgrims'
Friend.
But no child's voice had waked these sombre echoes, no child's gentle
feet had pressed this velvet sward; no radiant shadow such as childhood
alone can cast had flitted here and there beneath these lonely trees,
nor had these flowers felt their life's great and only thrill in the
touch of a baby's dimpled hand. But that golden door at last swung
gently open. That hour of ecstasy and anguish brought us life's crown
and joy, and the hills of time, erstwhile green and beautiful, were now
radiant with a light kindled from afar.
St. Cuthbert's rejoiced exceedingly when our little Margaret was given
unto us, but we knew it not at first, for Scotch joy is a deep and
silent thing, a fermentation at the centre rather than an effervescence
at the surface. For our Margaret was as one born out of due time, the
first child whose infant cry had awakened the echoes of their ancient
manse, though seventy long years had flown since their first minister
had come among them. Thus she became the child of the regiment and they
silently exulted. Jubilant, one hour after this new star had swung into
the firmament, I hoisted the Union Jack to the topmost notch of our
towering flag-pole, and never has it flaunted its triumph more
jubilantly since.
The beadle reported to me afterwards that the other churches were
mightily jealous of our late autumn bloom, and one of their devotees, an
Episcopalian, had asked him sneeringly--
"What's that flag doing there?"
"It's blawin' i' the wind," retorted my diplomatic beadle.
"It's nothing to be so joyful over," urged the Episcopalian brother.
"It's mair nor ever happened in yon kirk o' yours; an' it's mair nor
could happen to the Pope o' Rome, wha's a true freen o' yours, I'm
jalousin'," snorted my beadle back triumphantly; for William was
uncharitable, and despaired of all ritualists, the iron of covenanting
protest running hot within his blood.
Nor were these the only swords that flashed above our Margaret's cradle;
for a Methodist mother in Israel, hopeful of a sympathetic response from
Elsie M'Phatter (the non-churchgoing one), ventured the comment that
similar events in her own brilliant maternal record had provoked no
unseemly joy; to which Elsie responded tartly--
"I ken that fine, and it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist;
but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us,
wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the field thereafter was
Elsie's own.
* * * * *
The Sabbath morning after Margaret's dawn St. Cuthbert's was full to
overflowing, as seemed to be every heart, especially every aged heart,
finding its morning anew in the life of a little child. For the morning
and the evening are wondrously alike. In summer especially, the
sun-bathed mountains, the pendant dewdrop, the melodious silences--all
these belong so much to both alike that I find it hard to distinguish
the matins and the vespers of God's cathedral days.