upsettin' scamp in the hale pack, an' it's his ain faither has to say
it in shame an' humiliation! Him an' Sandy are jist gone fair daft.
It's fleein' here to this tea-meetin' an stravagin' yonder to some bit
choir practise, an' here awa, there awa, until Ah dinna ken what's to
be the end o' it! Aye, an' the next thing they've gotten intill their
bit heids is that they must get a bit o' an idolatrous music boax for
the kirk! Yon bit thistle heid o' a schoolmaister cam' till me aboot
the thing the day; what d'ye think o' yon?"
"Dear, dear, that would be a peety," said the champion of youth,
somewhat disconcerted.
"Aye, they've come till it at last! Ah've kenned weel they've been
hatchin' plans this while back an' that oor Andra was in it, aye, an'
Donal' afore he gaed away, but Ah jist gave no heed to their bit noise,
an' Andra kenned his faither better than to come till him wi' his norms
till yon bit slippery, feather-heided crater cam' till me this mornin'."
"An' would he be asking you if they could get one?"
"Askin' me! He didna jist order me to hae the thing bought, but it was
michty near't. Sez he, 'We hae gotten the consent o' a' the ither
elders, _Maister_ Johnstone, an' we know ye jist can't refuse us; we'd
like to hae it afore the new meenister comes,'--the danderin' bit
eejit!"
"I hope you would not be too hard on him, Andra, Mr. Watson would be
meaning no harm----"
"No harm! And are ye the man, Duncan McDonald, to ask an elder of the
Kirk to countenance evil? Ah wes not half so hard on the buddy as he
deserved, but Ah jist telled him pretty plain what Ah thought o' them
a' turnin' the hoose o' God into a circus! 'Ye hae the consent o' a'
the elders, hae ye?' Ah sez. 'An' noo it's ma consent ye want, is it?
Weel, ye hae it!' Ah sez;' for if ye're that set on gettin' yer bit
screechin' boax ma advice'll no hold ye back, so ye may get yer piece
o' idolatory,' Ah sez; 'but mark ma word!' Ah sez, 'mark ma word, the
day yon thing raises its noise an' pollutes the holy place-- Ah'll no
resign. Oh! no, that's what ye're lookin' for,' Ah sez, for Ah'd heerd
rumours--'Ah'll no resign,' Ah sez, 'but Ah'll jist wait till the
Sabbath's ower an' Ah'll get ma ax,' Ah sez, 'an by the help o' the
Almichty Ah'll smash the abomination into a thoosand splinters!'"
His stick came down upon the doorstone with a crash that prophesied
total destruction to the offending instrument.
"Hoots, toots, Andra!" cried Duncan Polite reprovingly, "it's jist
violent you will be; and, indeed, I will be thinkin' it would not be
right to drive the young folks."
"The Maister drove oot wi' a scourage them as misused the hoose o'
God," responded the apostle of force severely.
"Aye, the Master," said Duncan, his fine face lighting up. "The
Master!" he repeated the word tenderly. "Eh, but that would be a fine
word, Andra, a fine word. Yes, He would be doing that once, but that
would not be His spirit, ah, no indeed! For He was led as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened
not His mouth! Eh, eh, and yet He would be the Master o' the whole
Universe!" His voice died away, he sat motionless, his long slender
hands hanging at his side, his eyes seeing wondrous sights on the
purple slope of the opposite hillside.
Andrew Johnstone ceased his vicious whacking of Duncan's asters and
conveyed his stick to its decorous Sabbath position behind him. His
friend's sublime spirituality always cooled Splinterin' Andra's wrath.
There was a long silence, the sound of a bell tinkling away in the dark
forest opposite and the distant murmur of the village alone broke the
stillness. Andrew rose to go in a much better frame of mind. "You an'
me, Duncan," he said with some sadness, "belong to a past generation.
Maister Cameron's gone, an' the auld buddies are slippin' awa fast, an'
whiles Ah hae little patience wi' the new fangled notions. Will the
country be a God-fearin' one, Ah wonder, when we're a' awa?"
It was the question and also the tragedy of their lives, the question
Duncan Polite's whole life was given up towards answering.
"We must jist be trusting that to the Lord, Andra," he said with his
usual hopefulness. "Whatever changes come, He is the same yesterday,
to-day and forever."
But Duncan Polite realised the affair was not ended. He knew it was
not likely that the young people would defy Splinterin' Andra and drive
him to violence, but the fire of gossip would be set going and he
feared his friend's life would be embittered. He was thinking deeply
and sadly over the problem the next morning as he dug up the potatoes
from his garden. There was Coonie, now, if he set his sharp tongue
going against the elder there would be no end to the trouble. He
glanced up and saw the subject of his thoughts coming slowly down the
road in his old buckboard.
Why the Glenoro mail-carrier was called Coonie instead of Henry Greene,
which was his real name, was, like all that gentleman's personal
affairs, shrouded in mystery. Some doubted that Coonie himself knew,
though if he did it was not at all likely he would divulge the secret,
for he guarded very carefully his own private business. Whatever
concerned himself held a monopoly of his reticence, however, for in
matters of current gossip he was second to none in the whole township
of Oro. He beat even Miss Cotton and Mrs. Fraser, for, whereas they
might arrive at a stage when they had nothing more to tell, not so
Coonie. If he found himself without some startling news he
manufactured it to suit the occasion.
His vehicle was an old buckboard with a wide seat, and a rickety old
chariot it was. His custom was to sit slouching at one end of the
seat, one foot upon the dashboard, the other dangling down in the dust,
thus making the other end of the seat stick away up in the air, as
though to suggest to any chance pedestrian that he was almost crowded
out already and could accommodate no one.
His horse was a poor, decrepit, old creature, whom he had named Bella,
after the eldest of the pretty Hamilton girls, much to that young
lady's disgust. In spite of old Bella's skeleton appearance and
hobbling gait, Coonie took great pride in her and offered many times to
trot her against Sandy Neil's racer. Her extreme lameness seemed quite
appropriate, however, for in this respect she was the fitting
complement to her master. For poor Coonie was a cripple, scarcely able
to bear his long body on his weak ankles, and when the villagers saw
him stumble painfully out of his vehicle at the post-office and drag
himself to the veranda, even the person outraged by his latest flight
of fancy forgave and pitied him. Everyone felt that the nimbleness of
his tongue was perhaps only some slight compensation for the
uselessness of his feet.
His daily drive through Glenoro was something of an event to all the
inhabitants, for he was willing to stop everywhere and anywhere and
tell the latest news. Old Andrew considered him a most pernicious
individual and a breeder of evil in the Glen, and for that reason as
well as on general principles, Coonie took a particular delight in
libelling the ruling elder. He pulled up as he reached Duncan's gate.
He never passed without a few words with the old man. Not because he
ever heard or told any gossip at Duncan Polite's, but Coonie could
never forget a certain dark night when the mail bag was lost and the
drunken mail-carrier in danger of finding himself behind prison bars, a
night when Duncan Polite had toiled over the hills through mud and
rain, and had rescued him. Not a person in the whole countryside,
except the two, knew of the affair, but Coonie remembered, and in his
queer way tried to repay the man who had saved him.
"Mornin'!" he called, somewhat crustily, as was his wont in opening a
conversation. "How's things this mornin'?"
Duncan had hurried into the house and now emerged with a dipperful of
creamy buttermilk. Coonie drank it off in one long pull.
"Ginger, that's prime!" he cried, drawing a long breath. "Goes right
to the dry spot. How's your potatoes?"
"Oh, they will be very good, very good indeed," said Duncan. He
hesitated a moment and then continued. "You would be hearing about the
master and the organ?" he questioned in some embarrassment.
Coonie shot out a look of surprise from his small bright eyes; that
Duncan Polite should open any such subject was an amazing thing.
"Yep," he answered sharply. "Why?"
"I will be having no right to interfere, Coonie." Duncan Polite never
by the slightest gesture hinted that he had any claim on the
mail-carrier's gratitude. "I will be having no right to interfere, but
this will be a thing that will do harm to the church and the Lord's
work, and if it is talked about,----" Duncan's reticence was
overcoming him again after this unusual outburst.
Coonie nodded in perfect comprehension. He planted his foot upon the
dashboard once more. "You don't want folks to be gabbin' about yours
truly up on the hill yonder?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in
the direction where Andrew Johnstone's house appeared far up the slope.
"Well, I guess I'll have to choke off a few. Gedap thar, whatter ye
doin'!" He gave old Bella a lash with the whip which she noticed
merely by a switch of her tail. His shoulders sank to their accustomed
limpness and he took no notice of Duncan's thanks as he drove off. He
was really disappointed, for he had prepared such a version of the
story, purporting to have come from the Oa, as would set Splinterin'
Andra in a rage forever. He sighed over his loss.
But his attention was soon diverted by a welcome sight. Sim
Baskerville, the village store-keeper and postmaster, commonly called
Basketful in accordance with the custom of the country, could already
be seen, even from this height, coming out upon the veranda at short
intervals to see if the mail were coming. Nothing annoyed the
postmaster so much as to have the mail arrive late, and nothing pleased
the mail-carrier so much as to annoy the postmaster. Mr. Basketful was
a choleric Englishman, and one of Coonie's chief diversions was to put
him into a rage by a dilatory approach to the village. So, seeing his
enemy on the lookout, he let old Bella crawl down the hill with
maddening slowness, looking round, meanwhile, for somebody with whom he
might stop and talk.
The first opportunity presented itself with the whirring of a sewing
machine, coming from a little house on the edge of the village. It was
a tiny white cottage, apparently kept from encroaching upon the road by
a thick rope of lilacs, a trim little place, painfully neat. When that
sound emanated from within, Coonie knew that the village dressmaker was
at home; and as she bore a fierce hatred to him and all his doings, he
never failed to give her a call when possible. He drew up his
buckboard before the lilac bushes, therefore, happily conscious of
certain vigorous gesticulations from the post-office veranda, of a
character calculated to encourage rapid approach.
"Hello! in there!" he shouted.
There was no response, except for a more determined whizzing of the
machine.
"Got a message for you, 'Liza!"
To the angry occupant of the house it was agony to go on sewing. Who
knew but that, for once, the old fool might be telling the truth, she
reflected. Perhaps someone in the Oa had sent word with him that she
was wanted there for a day's sewing, and she knew nothing would please
Coonie better than to have her refuse to listen.
But by this time her tormentor, despairing of ever enticing her out by
fair words, resolved to launch a bomb which he knew was sure to bring
the besieged raging to the walls. "Got a message from Tom Poole!" he
roared, loud enough to be heard at Mrs. Fraser's across the valley.
"He says to tell you he's comin' down sparkin' to-morrow night!"
Miss Cotton flashed into the doorway, white with rage. She, who had
never seen the man who dared to pay her loverlike attentions, to have
her name bawled out over the countryside coupled with that of a man who
was a widower of six months with a family of as many children! She
shook her scissors in his face.
"If you don't shut up your tomfoolery, you blatherin' old idiot!" she
cried, in a sort of shrieking whisper, "I'll throw boilin' water over
you!"
Coonie stared in injured righteousness. "Well I never! That's all the
thanks I get for obligin' you. I can't help it if he's gone spooney on
you; next time I bring you a message----"
"Yes, next time you bring me a message it'll be the last you'll take to
a livin' soul. Drive your old hearse away from my door, will you, an'
tell your lies to somebody that's big enough fool to believe you!"
The door slammed and the sewing machine buzzed wrathfully, and Coonie
sent Bella scrambling down the hill, his drooping shoulders heaving
with convulsive laughter. To put 'Liza Cotton into a rage, while Sim
Basketful, in a similar condition, was popping in and out of his store
door like a jack-in-the-box, was worth the whole day's drive. He
meandered along chuckling loudly, but suddenly checked his mirth as he
espied Maggie Hamilton standing at the gate beneath the oaks and
holding a bundle under her arm. This was evidently intended for him,
so he drove to the opposite side of the road and crawled along with
drooping shoulders and abstracted mien.
But this particular Miss Hamilton understood Coonie's dark ways and
knew how to deal with him. She darted across the road and caught old
Bella by the head.
"Hold on now, smarty!" she said. "You needn't pretend you've turned
deaf and blind all at once, you're stupid enough without. Here's a
parcel for Aunt Mary McLean, Coonie, and mother wants you to take it to
her, please, like an old duck. You know Aunt Mary thinks you're the
handsomest fellow in Oro."
But Coonie was not be flattered into obliging anyone. "Look here,
you," he growled, "what d'ye think I run this mail for, anyhow? Think
it's a charitable institution? You tell your Aunt Mary Maria
stick-in-the-mud that if she thinks the Almighty created me to cart
truck over the country for lazy lumps like you that thinks they're too
good to walk, she'd better go an' get informed all over again."
But Maggie had expected this and was prepared. "Jess! Sarah! Bell!"
she cried, "come out here quick and settle this old donkey! He's gone
balky again!"
There was a chorus of shrieks, a swish of skirts down the garden path,
and reinforcements in the shape of three more young ladies emerged from
the gate and fell upon the rebellious mail-carrier. They climbed into
the shaking old buckboard and Maggie seized the reins and turned old
Bella up the hill again.
"Now, we'll drive you clean back to Lakeview, if you don't speak up
smart and say you'll take it!" she cried.
But Coonie did not mind. Mr. Basketful was by this time in the middle
of the road, so he prolonged the encounter as long as possible.
"Go ahead," he said, settling himself comfortably in his seat; "you'll
soon be at the Oa, if you keep on. I bet that's where Jessie wants to
go to see what's the latest news from Don Neil."
"Yes, and you want to go up the hill and talk to 'Liza Cotton,"
retorted Jessie.
"That's it," laughed Maggie, pulling the old horse almost into the
ditch, "you'd trot off with a bundle quick enough if she asked you."
Coonie roared. "Well, that's true. Haw! Haw! I'd start off that
quick I'd never git stopped. Gosh! but ain't she the old scorpion!" he
exclaimed with feeling, "Say, if her an' me was the only folks left in
the world, I'd kill her an' live alone. See here, you scalawags, clear
out an' leave that poor brute alone, an' I'll take your trash."
It was a surrender. The victorious quartette leaped from the buckboard
and retired, with many admonitions for his guidance in his future
dealings with them, warnings which Coonie pretended not to hear.
His shoulders sagged again as he slowly approached the post-office. He
paused a few moments on the bridge, to gaze meditatively into the
water, then he spent some time gesticulating to an imaginary person
down at the mill-dam, and at last, slowly and with every appearance of
insupportable weariness, dragged up to the post-office door.
"Kind of hot," he remarked genially, noticing the perspiring
countenance of the indignant postmaster.
Mr. Basketful took the mail-bag with a withering air. "Kind o'," he
remarked sarcastically. "Guess your 'orse 'ad a sunstroke on the road.
'Ere 'Syl, tend to that hanimal, will you?"
A stylishly dressed young man came down with elegant leisure from his
position on a cracker barrel and proceeded to water Coonie's horse.
The mail-carrier's helpless condition called for assistance which was
always freely rendered. The person to whom the task generally fell was
Mr. Sylvanus Todd, who, by reason of his leisurely habits, found plenty
of time, when not assisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge
around the post-office and look up the street to see what the Hamilton
girls were doing. Sylvanus always assisted Coonie most willingly; he
was a young man who was noted all over the township of Oro for his
obliging ways and his mannerly deportment. Indeed, Mr. Todd posed as
an authority on all matters of etiquette. He even went so far once as
to admonish Wee Andra on the errors of his pedestrianism. "When you're
walkin' with a lady, Andra," Sylvanus had said kindly, "you'd ought to
let her walk up agin' the buildin's." But so far from improving the
giant's manners this good advice only caused him to place his adviser
in a tank of cheese factory whey and to continue thereafter to walk as
seemed right in his own eyes.
Coonie did not care for Syl Todd; he had much of the simple
guilelessness of his parents and did not take teasing with any
pleasurable degree of asperity. So the mail-carrier generally treated
him with silent contempt. He swung himself from the buckboard and
hobbled painfully to the store veranda.
"Business seems pressin' with you, Mr. Todd," he remarked as he lit his
pipe. "You're always in an awful rush."
Mr. Todd gave a doubtful grin. "Well say, Coonie, this here's the
backwoodsest place I ever seen; us Americans can't stand it."
Sylvanus had spent six months in the United States, managing a gigantic
business firm, he had hinted, from which enterprise he had returned to
the parental roof, a sadder if not a wiser man, to take up the more
lucrative employment of making cheese. He never quite outlived the
glory of his travels, however.
Coonie grunted. "You should a' stayed over there an' been President.
They must be awful lonesome since you left. Any noos?"
"Well, I should snicker if there wasn't! The master's got into an
awful row!"
His listener sighed deeply. What an opportunity this would have been
to set his version of the story going!
"What's eatin' him?" he asked with wonderful self-control. "Neil kids
been lickin' him again?"
"Worse nor that; he's got into a row with Splinterin' Andra!"
"Gosh!" Coonie's amazement would have deceived a much more astute
individual than Sylvanus Todd. "What's that old wind-mill got himself
flappin' about now?"
"About gettin' the organ for the Presbyterian church. Watson spoke to
Splinterin' Andra about it an' the old fellow gave him Hail Columbia,
as they say in the States."
Mr. Basketful was coming out with the mall-bag.
"It's true, every word of it, Coonie," he said, his wrath having
vanished. "That's the way with them Presbyterians; they're that stiff
they can't 'elp 'avin' trouble."
Coonie scrambled into his buckboard, feeling doubly crippled in the
galling restriction that had been put upon his unruly member. He drove
off without a word, not even stopping at Mrs. Fraser's gate at the top
of the hill. Syl Todd sat upon the veranda of the store, watching
until his old buckboard sank behind the south hill, wondering if he
were ill.
Duncan had never before tried to exercise a restraining influence upon
Coonie's tongue, though as he watched his old buckboard straying down
into the valley, crossing and recrossing the road, to allow its owner
to joke and gossip with this one and that, the Watchman often thought
what a power for good Coonie might be in Glenoro if only his heart were
touched by the grace of God. His first attempt at stemming the tide of
the mail-carrier's gossip met with wonderful success, however. People
discovered that for some inexplicable reason, Coonie seemed to have no
interest whatever in Splinterin' Andra's behaviour over the proposal of
an organ, and with the chief stoker idle, the fire of gossip soon died
for want of fuel. The young people postponed their project
indefinitely, and gradually the affair dropped out of the public
interest, making way for a much more important matter.
IV
THE SECOND JOHN McALPINE
Donald's first year at college passed uneventfully. He returned the
next spring to his work on the farm, covered with honours, full of
tales of his studies or his freshman adventures, but never a word of
his final destiny, though Duncan Polite anxiously awaited it. He was
in some trouble about Donald. He had set up a high standard for his
boy and was pained and surprised when he failed to attain it. If only
Mr. Cameron were living, he often reflected with a sigh, he would soon
set Donald's feet in the right path. The lack of a pastor was a great
grief to Duncan Polite. What would happen to his covenant if the flock
were left so long shepherdless?
And then into the midst of his doubts and fears, his anxiety for the
future and his regrets for the past, there came such a rich and
abounding blessing, such an abundant answer to all his prayers, that
for a season the Watchman was overwhelmed with contrite joy. For,
after nearly a year of dissension, the congregations of Glenoro and the
Tenth concession of Oro at last made choice of a minister, a choice
which won the unanimous approval of both churches and suited everyone
from old Andrew Johnstone to the Hamilton girls. He seemed to possess
every requisite to suit the varied tastes of the varied people of
Glenoro church. The old folk overlooked his youth, and the Oa forgot
his lack of Gaelic in the light of his great achievement, for he
possessed one quality that made it possible for him to bind together in
peace and harmony the different factions of the church. It was not
that he was very handsome, that he had a free, winning manner, it was
not that he had had a brilliant career at college or that his
professors prophesied a great future for him, it was not that he was an
eloquent preacher and was filled with zeal for his Master. All these
were important; but they sank into insignificance before his cardinal
virtue, that which placed him immeasurably above all other probationers
and made Duncan Polite look upon him as the embodiment of all his
hopes, for was he not a grandson of Glenoro's hero, and himself John
McAlpine Egerton?
What more could Glenoro hope for on this earth? What more could be
desired? Mr. McAlpine come back to them! It seemed too good to be
true. He did not even need to preach for a call. In fact, he had had
no intention of doing so, but Peter Farquhar and Donald Fraser had
heard him preach one Sabbath in Toronto when they went to the
Exhibition, and they brought home such a glowing report of this second
John McAlpine that at the close of his college term they all with one
consent invited him to come and be their pastor. Even the Oa went for
him solidly; a Gaelic preacher seemed an impossible luxury in these
degenerate times, anyway, and, as Peter Farquhar said, "Mr. McAlpine's
grandson without the Gaelic was better than any other man with it."
There had not been such a congregation in the Glenoro church since the
days of the first John McAlpine as there was the Sabbath after the
young man's induction. All the old people who had not come out to
church since Mr. Cameron's death were there. Many of them remembered
their young pastor's grandfather, whose fiery zeal and burning
eloquence melted the hearts of those who had gone astray and shook to
the very foundations of their being the most hardened sinners,--and
here was his counterpart raised up to take his place!
As the young man stood up during the singing of the first psalm, many
aged eyes noted with loving eagerness certain resemblances in voice and
gesture to their hero. His face was handsome and clear-cut and lit by
a pair of kindly, frank, blue eyes, a face which betokened a generous
and amiable disposition. And the way he held up his fine head and
straightened his broad shoulders was so like the first John McAlpine
that many an old couple nudged each other with delight.