URGENT PRIVATE AFFAIRS.
It was on the morning following the arrival of his daughter’s missive
that Colin Saunders—both his hands resting on the handle of his
spade—addressed the following brief sentence to his employer,
“I’d be much obliged to you, sir, if you would look out for anybody you
think would answer you in my place.”
“In your place, Colin!” repeated Sir Ernest; “why, where are you going?”
“Na very far, sir,” was the cautious rejoinder; “but still just so far
that I canna stay here any longer.”
“What is the matter?” demanded his master; “is the work too hard, or is
your health bad, or do you want assistance, or require more wages? what
is it?”
“The work is neither light nor heavy, sir,” was the satisfactory reply;
“and my health is just what it always was since the time I was a
bairn,—for I never had ache, nor pain of body, in my life; and, for
assistance, so long as I can hold a rake I always said, ‘No pert English
puppy’ should ever set foot in a garden I had any say to; and in regard
of wages, if I wanted an advance I’d ask ye for them: but what ye give
me keeps me comfortable, and more. No, no, it’s not that; but if you
could get any one to suit you and the place, I’d be moving.”
“If you would explain the reason of this sudden determination,” said Sir
Ernest, who somehow felt that, when Colin departed, all that remained to
him of his wife,—the living link which connected, after a fashion, all
her past, and even her present, being with his—would be removed from his
sight for ever; “if you would explain the reason of this sudden
determination, perhaps it might be overcome. Has any one offended you,
or do you dislike the country and wish to revisit Scotland? We have got
on very well together for five years past, and——”
“It’s owre long a time for any one man to serve any one master, I know,”
responded Colin; “but, in consideration of your being a bit beyond most
masters, and as I am no ill to put up with myself, I would have
overlooked that and worked at a while longer; I have nothing particular
to say against you or your country, sir,—you’re far more of a gentleman
than I ever thought to see on this side of the Tweed, and you have
treated me like one; and, though you have no mountains, or lochs, or
hills, or headlands, nor nothing here but fields and swamps, and a lot
of trees, still the soil does well enough for flowers, and it agrees
well enough with me; and, though I do not think much of the people of my
own walk of life here, seeing that they just has one thought and one
hope in existence,—which hope is that they may get their dinners, and
which thought is how; still I can bear well enough with them, even
whilst I can’t help compassionating their ignorance in regard to the
‘food that perisheth not:’ and none of your servants has offended me,
sir; for, when I have let them go on mocking and jeering at my speech
(which is better English, I know, than theirs) for five long years, and
never answered them, it’s not likely they could ‘set’ me at the place
now. No; I may have, like most other folks, something to complain of—at
every end and in the middle besides—but there is still a deal to be
thankful for, too; and I would not be talking of leaving ye yet, only I
have business of my own, and of two or three others, that must be
attended to before I’m many days older. It just so happens that it suits
me to leave Lorton and go for awhile away out of Paradise; and, if my
dear old master were now alive and standing where you now are, and I
still myself, and him to say, ‘Stay, Colin, I want ye to bide a wee bit
longer,’ I wouldn’t do it, sir! I couldn’t do it!” and the old man
dashed his spade emphatically into the ground as he concluded his
speech.
“If you would not remain at his bidding, Colin,” replied Sir Ernest, “I
need scarcely expect you to do so at mine; but is there nothing I can do
for you? do you want another place, or wish to return to Scotland? Tell
me how I can help you, and I will.”
“I neither want, at this present time, sir, silver nor gold, nor
anything but freedom to do that which I am humbly grateful to God my
hand has found to do. I thank you, Sir Ernest Ivraine, for the great
kindness and friendship you have shown to a poor gardener like me; and
if I desired to see the heather again, or had the least notion of
another place, I would tell you so; but I am not going to the Highlands
nor to look for a new master, for there’s not a man in England I had
rather serve than yourself, and only one in Scotland, and him only
because of his grandfather and cousin. There are just two things I would
make free to ask, and, if ye would grant them, I’d be for ever obliged
to you.”
“And what may they be?” demanded his master.
“First, that I may go whenever I like, without waiting for you to find
some one to suit exactly,—maybe sometime I would come back and put
things to rights myself again, if you just had any common body at the
present to keep them from going very far wrong; and second, that you
would give me leave to take that briar bush wi’ me; it’s a valueless
thing, and does not look well amongst the flaunting southern roses.”
Ernest’s eye fell on the plant the gardener indicated, and a sort of
tremor shook his voice as he answered,
“You can go when you like and come back when you like; but as for the
briar, take anything you choose out of the garden excepting that:
my—my—sister-in-law is fond of it, and I think it is the only one about
the place.”
“If the lady has a regard for it, why in course a twig of it must not be
touched,” answered Saunders, a smile flickering over his hard face; “I
would not have mentioned it, only I thought it was a sort of stranger
here, far away from its own country, and that nobody would look after it
when I was gone; but it is all right now, sir, thank you.”
And, as the new baronet turned slowly away, the old man muttered,
“And so that angel-faced woman is fond of it? Aye, maybe so; but there’s
another about the house fonder of it than any of us; not for her sake,
but for _her’s_. Oh! Miss Mina, if I could only but see ye once again,
ye poor, heedless, unfortunate, heart-broken young creature!”
Colin’s rapid conclusion was quite correct; there was no flower in the
garden Mina had loved like that Scotch briar: from the time the bush
came into bloom till its last leaves strewed the ground, she had been
wont to gather its blossoms and wreathe them in her hair and wear them
in her girdle. She always kept a bouquet of those perishable roses on
her dressing-table: that briar was her quiet home friend; its perfume
came over her soul like the memory of the tones and the looks of those
who dwelt on earth no longer; and now, when Mina was there no more to
pluck its flowers, the bush acquired a sort of interest in her husband’s
eyes,—an interest, not even the most beautiful of Flora’s darling
children had ever previously inspired in him.
“That came from the land o’ the leal, Ernest,” remarked his
sister-in-law one day as they passed by the spot where it grew.
“I believe so,” he briefly replied.
The lady paused to gather one of the roses; and, after thoughtfully
gazing at it for a moment, she said, placing the wild bud tenderly in
the black riband belt which encircled her waist,
“She was fond of it, Ernest, was she not,—very fond?”
“She loved everything that came from Scotland, and every person who
could say he was born there.”
“Natural enough,” answered his sister; “she loved her own land well,
Ernest, but she loved you better, though more silently. Never shake your
head with such an incredulous air: I know as well that she did, that she
does, love you, as I knew, when I first caught sight of that briar bush,
that many a time she stopped beside it, as I did but now, to pull its
blossoms or inhale its fragrance, whilst a thought of silent moors and
stern mountains and dark lakes swept through her mind. Her young heart
was almost broken here, Ernest; it was no place to bring a wife to: I
plead her cause, as one woman may plead that of another, and ask you,
candidly and fairly, was it?”
“No,” he confessed: “I did very wrong; I ought never to have married
her.”
“Not to break her spirit here, at all events,” returned the lady. “When
Henry told me what a dreary home yours was, I mourned for the girl whom
you had wedded to misery, as I might for a friend, for a sister. He
said, when he heard of your marriage, that, for centuries past, no woman
had been otherwise than wretched whose evil destiny brought her to
reside in Paradise; some, he said, dragged out life under circumstances,
when the prolongation of the gift was a cruel misfortune; but most
crept, broken-hearted, to the old family vault and sank thankfully to
sleep in that dreary abiding-place. Therefore I sorrowed for her; and,
since I have seen your home and some of your relatives, and heard more
of Mina, I have sorrowed with a deeper grief: I thank heaven, however,
that, in her rash flight from your father’s gloomy abode, she passed by
the churchyard without pausing: we could make Paradise brighter to her
now. And, in reference to that flight, which you so sternly resent, let
me say something also, Ernest. What she married you for, I am not
competent to tell,—it may have been for affection, it may have been
chiefly from prudential motives; her decision may have been swayed by
the advice of friends, by reason, by gratitude, by feelings of her
desolate position, by the prospect of a happy home: hundreds of
circumstances and changes and thoughts and ideas may have influenced her
original choice; and of these of course I can say nothing: but I do know
what she left you for, and it was because of the love she bore you.”
“Women are all alike,” said Ernest impatiently, as his sister concluded,
“in their loves and their friendships and their aversions they are
influenced solely by imagination; they talk about things of which they
are wholly ignorant, and, commencing upon false premises, bring out at
length what they consider satisfactory results, but which are, after
all, completely erroneous.”
“You are very ungallant,” said Mrs. Ivraine, with a faint smile; “but
prove your words, it is all I ask at present.”
“Why, here are you, whom my brother and I both deemed a model of sense,
speaking absolutely with tears in your eyes of a person you never saw,
and coming to conclusions regarding her conduct, when, in reality, you
know nothing of the facts of the case.”
“Then why do you not put me in possession of them, Ernest?” she
inquired.
“Because the subject is a painful one,” he said in a low harsh voice; “I
wish to forget it—and her.”
“But cannot,” continued his sister-in-law. “Ah! believe me, we women
arrive occasionally at juster conclusions than you; and, if she had not
been worth remembering, if she had not been worth thinking about, I
know—wife though she is—you would neither have remembered nor thought of
her so long.”
And what the gentle lady took on trust, Colin Saunders had long known
from actual observation; and, firmly convinced of the fact that,
wherever Mina was, she ought to come back to a home where a tender
welcome awaited her, the old Scotchman—having set his household duly in
order—went forth, for the second time, to view, with holy horror,
“Sawtan’s den,” as he termed England’s metropolis, though he was not
without a faint idea that there might be some good people dwelling even
in the city so especially favoured, as a modern divine has asserted, by
being made by the evil one his “abiding place,” or seat of government,
when not more agreeably and profitably located in Paris.
It was one summer Saturday night that Colin found himself “turning
matters” over with his daughter; and, after he had turned them—as the
Scotch minister did Ephraim—into every possible shape, he proposed to
his son-in-law to “read and expound a chapter and make an extempore
prayer,” to which proposition Frith agreed with an expression of face
decidedly more mournful than solemn; for Frith was a hopeless sinner,
who had attended “kirk” and passed sacramental examinations, and
listened devoutly to Colin’s exhortations in the days when he was
looking admiringly on Jennie Saunders, but who had since wofully
disappointed his worthy father-in-law, by walking back along the path
leading to Church and State, whistling organs, unelected preachers, book
services, new style psalms, and a hundred other innovations and
abominations, too hideous to enumerate.
“I hope ye’ll be saved, John,” said Colin, doubtingly, to his relative
on one occasion; “but I’m greatly afraid of it.”
“I hope we both shall, and many another,” was the reply; “why are you so
especially uneasy about me?”
“Because, instead of humbly eating the true bread as ye used to do, ye
go now and sit under a man who reads his prayers and writes his
sermons.”
“That puts me out of his power,” was John’s sinful retort; “I know
exactly what I’m in for, and I am not at the mercy of a mortal to keep
me for hours and hours, hearing things repeated half a dozen times, as
you are.”
“The Lord is good; but there’s little hope for you, I’m afraid,”
exclaimed Colin; “it’s a part of my creed, that any man who cannot make
a prayer of himself, ought never to be let read one for others; he’s not
fit to stand up and expound. And what’s a written sermon but a device o’
the enemy? a speaking from the head, not from the heart; not of
spiritual understanding, but of carnal knowledge.”
“But half the sermons in Scotland are written; and I am sure it is
better for a clergyman to read it at once than to spend nights and days,
as I heard of one doing, stamping in desperation across the floor,
trying to learn his task off, so that when Sunday drew near, nobody in
the house could get any sleep for his shouting and thumping.”
“It’s a bad way, John, to try to make your own character whiter, by
flinging soot on your neighbours, and it’s unbecoming a man o’
discretion to repeat a wheen of disreputable truthless stories. I don’t
want to say anything hurtful to you, either about your country or
yourself, but I have great fears concerning your soul; and, as for
England, considering what sort of teaching it has, I just wonder it’s as
good as it is;” and, by way of giving John Frith’s spiritual interests
“a lift,” and also to the end that right might, for once, be done in
“the modern and sinful Babylon,” Colin Saunders—being that Saturday
night in a peculiarly argumentative and theological mood—treated the
family to such an endless disquisition on matters of faith and doctrine,
and points of difference and points of union on soul-destroying heresies
and more venial transgressions, that his namesake, Colin the younger,
had to be carried sleeping to bed, and his sister got so tired and
cross, that, for very peace sake, her mother bore her off in like manner
to a similar destination.
And poor Colin added, on the strength of this juvenile backsliding, such
a number of extra clauses to his earnest petition, that John Frith told
his wife, in confidence, he was glad her father did not visit them
often, for that he could not profess to “stand” such endless preaching.
Jennie remembered the time when she had to do so for years; and, as she
thought of the faithful kindness of her father’s heart, and of his
sterling goodness,—of the quiet tranquillity of those former days, and
the frequent thoughts of the “better land,” which constant talking on
religious subjects awakened; she wondered—with a wonder born partly of
fervent love for her fatherland, and partly of a reverence for the old
grey-haired man—whether his way were not, after all, the best,—whether
he had not brought up her brothers and sisters more in the way they
should go than she was training her children,—whether it were not better
to speak always of heaven than always of earth,—whether it might not be
more holy and good to consider this world as a mere trying preparation
for another, than to educate for success and happiness in it, and almost
it alone.
And that expounding of the Scriptures, and long weary, though fervent,
extempore prayer, brought such memories of old back to her mind,—such
thoughts of mother and home, and brothers and sisters, all dead and
gone, that the woman—happy wife and parent though she was—dropped some
sorrowful tears that night on her pillow, and resolved that she and the
old true-hearted man—her father, her visitor—would go to some
Calvinistic place of worship on the morrow, where he might hear what she
knew he had long been debarred from,—a sermon of high-seasoned doctrine,
delivered from the lips of a Presbyterian minister; for Colin had for
years been doomed to subsist on such rare morsels of heavenly food as
dropped from the lips of Baptists, Independents, Methodists, and even
Church and State people. He said “It was a bad place where a sinner
could hear naething to profit him;” and accordingly, when other sources
of drinking from the fountain of living waters failed, he repaired to
church, though the forms and manner, and frequently matter, made him
sometimes consider the draught none of the purest or clearest; but now
he looked forward to a treat,—to hearing a discourse from a real genuine
disciple and follower of “John Knox,” to quoting of texts and finding of
proofs, to a wrestling with the enemy, to a dividing into heads, and an
expounding and lengthening and branching and explaining, which might
last for hours if only “handled” properly.
So Colin fell asleep, and never wakened till the two “Government” calls
of “milk” and “mack’rel” startled him from blissful slumber; the old man
rubbed his eyes, considered him what day it might be, came to the
conclusion it was indeed “the Sabbath;” and, muttering “Lord forgie the
sinful wretches,” started from his couch, dressed, and went down stairs
vexed in spirit, astounded in mind.
The crowds of people he and Jennie encountered as they wended their way
to “kirk,” who were all going likewise to worship God after the manner
of their fathers, though very possibly not of Colin’s fathers, appeased
him not in the slightest degree; and when—after the first four verses of
the twenty-fifth Psalm had been read, without the rather nasal twang
which was of sweet savour in the nostrils of the descendant of the
Covenanters, the organ pealed forth—Saunders groaned almost aloud, and
looked so utterly disgusted that his neighbour, a plump, short,
good-natured English shopkeeper, asked if he were ill.
“No in body,” was the whispered rejoinder, which caused his
fellow-worshipper to look curiously at him, marvelling if he had
committed any heinous sin, the recollection of which was weighing on his
conscience.
And the prayer: “I could hae made a better mysel,” thought Colin; “not a
bit o’ power, or force o’ glory in it.” Then the sermon: “Just
twenty-nine minutes lang, Jennie,” he said to his daughter on his way
home; “no controversy in any divide o’t, just read like a church one,
any man could have done the same, every bit as cleverly;” and so the old
man groaned and lamented, asserting his heart was “sair” for his child
and troubled for her offspring; and, on the strength of his
disappointment and his anxiety, after dinner he laid forcible hands on
two of his grandsons, and made them read the sixth chapter of First
Chronicles, turn and turn about from beginning to end, insisting that
they should spell the words if unable to pronounce them, which
lengthened the “teaching” to such a period, and impressed every letter
so forcibly on the children’s recollection that, till the hour of their
deaths, they never forgot the Sunday when they read a chapter filled
with hard names, and eighty-one verses long, through, for their Scotch
grandfather. But at length the “day of rest” came to a conclusion,—that
day on which Colin could not have worked if he would, and would not even
if he could; and the night closed over a city which never seems to
sleep; and then the sun rose clear and bright on the second morning of
the week, and called the descendant of those who worshipped on the bare
hill sides back to earthly cares and thoughts and wishes; and, as he
never undertook any enterprise for the success of which he would have
felt it a sin and a mockery to pray, he went forth full of faith, strong
of purpose, honest of heart, into the turmoil and noise and bustle,
which are the distinguishing characteristics of England’s metropolis.