"There's a young man doon the stair, sir, and he says he wants to speak
wi' the minister."
I descended, hearing as I went a rattling fusilade of ivory, which I
knew was the echo of a soul's thunder-storm.
* * * * *
How often do we meet new faces, little recking their relation to coming
years! Yet many an unfading light and many an incurable eclipse has come
with a transient meeting such as this! How many a woman of Samaria goes
to draw water from the well, and sees--the Lord! For I met only a boy,
or better, a laddie--boyhood-breathing word!--about sixteen years of
age, openly poor but pathetically decent. His clothes were coarse and
cheap and even darned, bearing here and there the signatures of poverty
and motherhood.
I advanced and took his hand; for that is an easy masonry, and its
exercise need never be regretted even if it never be repeated. My wife
once spent a plaintive day because she had wasted a hand-shake upon a
caller whom she took to be an applicant for matrimony, whose emoluments
were hers, but who turned out to be an agent for Smith's Dictionary of
the Bible, whose emoluments were his own. Nevertheless I have always
held that no true hand-shake is unrecorded in the book of life.
"And what can I do for you, my lad?" I said.
"I dinna ken, sir," he answered, in a voice that suggested a sea voyage,
for it was redolent of what lies only beyond the sea.
"What is your name?"
"Angus Strachan, sir, and I come frae Ettrick, and I hae my lines frae
the minister o' the Free Kirk."
"And when did you land, Mr. Strachan?"
"Ca' me Angus, sir, if ye please. Naebody has ca'd me by that name sin'
my mither pairted wi' me at the stage coach road, and she was fair
chokit wi' cryin', and when I cudna see her mair for the bush aboon the
burn, I could aye hear her bleatin' like a lamb--an' it was the
gloamin'. An' I can fair hear her yet. Will ye no' ca' me Angus?"
Accursed be the heart which has no opening door for the immigrant's
weary feet, and thrice accursed be the heart which remembers
strangerhood against some mother's homeless boy. Such malediction, thank
God, my soul has never won, for if there be one sight which more than
another fills me with hopeful pity, it is the spectacle of some peasant
lad making the great venture of an untried shore, pressing in to those
who were also foreigners one far-back cheerless day, and asking if this
Western land may harbour still another exile from the poverty he seeks
to flee. Especially is this true of Scottish laddies; for upon their
faces seems to be written: "I ask for but a chance such as thou hadst
thyself," which was the plea of Tom Carlyle when he first knocked at
London's mighty door.
So I drew nearer to him, and my heart flowed through my voice as I said
again--
"When did you land, Angus lad? and tell me all about yourself. I have
heard that mother's cry before." For I was thinking of my own mother's
parting blessing, save that hers was wondrously exultant as becometh one
who calls back from the unseen Chariot of God.
"I landed yesterday at Montreal, and I cam' ower on the _Lake Ontario_.
And I hae but little to tell, and it wunna tak' me lang. Ma mither
weaves in Ettrick, and I herded sheep upon the hills sin' I was able.
But I was aye hame at nicht, and she aye keepit a licht in the window
when the nicht was dark and her shadow fell upon it, for she aye cam'
oot to meet me when she heard me lilt the sang. And she lilted tae, and
we baith sang it thegither till we met, and then we gaed ben thegither
and gaed na mair oot till the mirk was by."
I detected the serious and lofty figure in his words, and the vision of
Scotland's lowly altars and thatched cathedrals rose before me. No man
could mistake the ritual of which that strain was bred.
"And why came you here, Angus?"
"I cam' here," he answered, "to better masel'. I heard tell o' Canada
sin' I was a bairn, and they a' spak' it fair for a land whaur an honest
man micht mak' an honest leevin'--and mair tae," he added, true to the
Scotch afterthought of an extra.
"And what line do you propose to follow? What work do you intend to do?"
"Ilka line that's straight, an' ony wark that willna soil the soul even
gin it may soil the hands," he answered quickly.
My soul went out to the lad, for I saw that his heart's roots were deep
in the best heart-soil the world hath known, and that the Atlantic's
billows had not quenched the light of his mother's cottage fire.
"Your father is dead, is he, Angus?" was the next step in my examination
for discovery, as the lawyers say.
"No, he's no' deid, he's alive," replied the lad, with the exactitude
which marks his race; "but I dinna care to speak aboot him."
"Very well, very well, boy," I rejoined hastily; "spends his time and
his money and your mother's money, when he can get it, at the Red Cow,
or the Cock and Hens, a drunken wastrel and cruel too; for I have been
enough in Scotland to know that such hens lay deadly eggs and such red
cows' milk is red with blood." All this latter part, of course, I said
to myself, but no word of it to the lad before me, for no honest youth
can bear any lips to miscall his father save his own.
"You will come to the manse with us and stay the night; it is too late
to seek other lodging now."
"Thank ye kindly, sir, but I hae a wee pickle siller in my pocket," he
replied, with modest independence. I verily believe that in heaven all
Scotsmen (and even Scotch Freemasons) will be found wi' a wee pickle
siller in their pockets when they receive that great degree.
But I insisted, and I won; for he who wages the campaign of hospitality
hath God for his ally, and no heart can finally resist that siege.