WE will leave the main road which runs through the Glen between oak
trees which were planted fifty years ago, but are only now beginning to
join their branches, and take our way up the hillside till we come to
the purple sea of heather whose billows rise and fall, broken only here
and there by an oasis of green or a running burm. Our goal is this little
cottage which is so low that its roof merges into the hill behind,
and upon whose thatch the wild flowers have encroached. Stoop, if you
please, for it is not wise to have high doorways where the winter storm
beats so fiercely, and being respectable people, we shall be taken into
the inner room, where strangers of high degree are received and the
treasures of the family are kept. It will not take long to give an
inventory of the furniture, and the value will not run to two figures. A
box bed, a small table, four ancient chairs, what they called a chest
of drawers, and on the mantelpiece some peacocks' feathers by way of
decoration, and certain china ornaments representing animals which never
have been seen in this creation, and are never likely to emerge in any
process of evolution. Were this all, I should not have troubled you to
climb so far, or to leave even for five minutes the glory of the open
moor. There is something else in the lowly room which you might well
take a journey to see, for it is a rare sight in shepherds' cottages.
Here is a bookshelf, and on it, I declare, some dozen volumes bound in
full calf, and bearing on one side the arms of a University. You must
revise your judgment of this house, and find another measure than the
height of the walls and the cubic space in the rooms. It matters not
although a house have thirty chambers, with lofty ceilings and soft
carpets and carved furniture; if there be no books which belong to
literature within its walls it is a poor and narrow home, and the souls
therein are apt to be mean and earthly.
While you are looking at the books the shepherd's wife is looking at
you. From the moment you crossed the threshold she has been thinking of
that bookshelf, and hoping you would take notice thereof, but not for
the world would she have mentioned it by word or sign. We had our own
code of manners in the Glen, and one of our cardinal sins was “blowing,”
by which we meant boasting; and while a man though perhaps not a woman,
could be forgiven for “tasting,” there was no mercy shown to the person
who allowed himself to brag. When, for instance, old David Ross's son
became a professor, his father and mother simply allowed the glorious
fact to ooze out through Domsie, who certainly had no scruple in making
the most of it, and neither the father nor mother ever said Professor in
public, although we believe they called their son nothing else between
themselves; but the Glen made up for their reticence by decorating
every second sentence about him with the word. All the same, Mistress
McPherson is watching us keenly, and she would be utterly disappointed
if we had overlooked the shelf; and now, in answer to our inquiry, she
will take us into the kitchen and place us by the fireside, that we may
hear the story of her scholar son, which, indeed, is the one romance in
the history of this humble family.
One morning John left the cottage to go to school, a shepherd's boy, and
likely, as it appeared, to herd sheep and live in the Glen all the
days of his life as his father had done before him. In the evening the
schoolmaster, who is the judge of letters in the Glen, with the minister
as a court of confirmation, came up and told the father and mother that
in the purposes of the Eternal their son was evidently destined to be
a scholar, and that upon them lay the duty of seeing that John made his
calling and election sure. Had tidings come to those two people, whose
wage in money would not amount to ten shillings a week, that they were
heirs to a fortune, it would not have brought such pleasure to their
souls as the good hope that their lowly stock would once at least in
a generation produce the white flower of a scholar's life. The whole
family, father and mother, with their grown-up sons and daughters in
service, will now unite in one labour--to save and to sacrifice, that by
hook or crook their brother may reach a university, and be sustained
in his study there till he has reached its reward. Four years from that
evening, had you been standing under the great arch by which students
enter the quadrangle of Edinburgh University, you had seen the
shepherd's son pass in, plainly dressed and shy in manner, but strong
of body and brave in soul, and charged with all the knowledge that
his schoolmaster and his minister could impart by patient, ungrudging
labour. The lad before him is a noble's son, and the one following is a
merchant's, and so sons of the rich and of the poor, of the high and
of the low, they go together, into the one Republic on the face of the
earth, the Republic of Letters, where money does not count, nor rank,
nor influence, nor intrigue, but where every man stands equal and the
best man wins.
Another four years and John has obtained his degree, a double first, and
he writes to the cottage on the side of the hill that the two old people
must come up to see him crowned. For six weeks before the day his mother
has just one consuming anxiety, and that is what she should wear on
the occasion, and it is only after fifteen long deliberations with her
gossips in the Glen that the great affair is settled, while the father's
mind is wholly taken up on Sundays with the effort to look as if he were
not the father of a graduate.
When the shepherd and his wife enter the gates of the University,
they are not to be thought of as two illiterate peasants who cannot
distinguish between a University and a dry-goods store. Although they
had never themselves expected to see so high a place, and had only
cherished it as a secret hope that perhaps one of their boys might
attain so far, they have learned by the tradition of their nation, and
by the speech of Domsie in the kirk-yard on Sabbath, to enter into
the greatness of a university. It is to them the home of the highest
knowledge, and a sacred place to which reverend people might well go
up as a pious Moslem to Mecca or a Jew to Jerusalem. As they cross the
quadrangle, the shepherd touches his wife, and points to an elderly
gentleman in the distance. They follow him with respectful attention as
he shambles along, half a dozen books under his arm, his shabby cloak
held by a single button, a hat as old as Jamie Soutar's resting on the
back of his head.
“Keep's a', Jeems,” whispers Janet respectfully “Div ye really think
that he's a professor?”
“We canna be sure, woman; he micht juist be a scholar, but I am judgin'
that he's a professor--he hes a' the appearance.”
And the two old people stand still in the bit till he disappears, and
then they go on their way much lifted. Outside religion there is no word
in Scots speech so sacred as “professor.” It means a semi-heavenly
body charged with Latin and Greek philosophy and mathematics. It was
something to see such a man, and to be in his company was living in an
atmosphere where you might catch the infection of his learning. When a
glensman, to whom Domsie had spoken of professors with bated breath for
more than a generation, learned that in southern parts the title was
assumed by hairdressers and ventriloquists, and that they were not sent
to gaol for profanity, then Drumtochty discovered another argument for
its favourite doctrine of original sin.
As the two go down the half-lit passage to the hall of graduation, they
are met by a majestic figure--a young man in evening dress, and over
it the gown of an M.A., with its white silk hood, and on his head the
Master's cap.
“Are you coming, may I ask,” said he, with quite a nice English accent,
to the graduation ceremony, “and can I be of any service?”
“We are, sir; and as we are strangers frae the country, we would be
muckle obleeged if ye could shew us the door. We dinna want to go where
the gentry are sittin', but if ye would juist tak' us where we could
see, we'd be content and terrible pleased. There's a... friend to get
his degree to-day, and my man and me would like to see him.”
“Mither,” said the figure, “and ye dinna ken yir ain son,” for he had
taken them in well, and played his little trick with much success. They
had never seen him in evening dress, nor in his Master's robe, and the
light was as darkness; besides, he had dropped the accent of the Glen.
The father and the son laughed together joyfully at Janet, but she
declared that she had known him all the time, and put it to them if a
mother could be mistaken about her son. But she didn't know him all the
same, and as long as she lived it was a pleasant jest between them when
he came north to visit them, and she met him at the garden gate. “Well,
mither,” he would say, “div ye ken yir son the day?”
Janet was well pleased that one should tease her in after times about
this ploy of John's, for it always gave her an opportunity of describing
how handsome he looked in his black and white silk, and of stating that
she. Mistress McPherson, wife of James McPherson, shepherd at Camashach,
considered the dress of a Master of Arts the handsomest that a man could
wear.
John took his father and mother into the hall, and placed them in the
seats reserved for the friends of graduates, and while a man has various
moments of pure joy in his life, there is none sweeter than when he
brings his mother to see him crowned at the close of his university
career. For in this matter he owes everything to two people--the
schoolmaster who taught him and the mother who inspired him.
“Now, mither, you watch that door yonder, for through it the procession
will come; and when ye see the men wi' the white silk hoods, ye'll ken
that I'm there, and ye'll surely no mistake me again.”
He was so provoking, and he looked so handsome with the flush of the day
upon his cheek, that, as he stooped over her, she was about to give him
a little shove and tell him not to give “any more impi-dence to his auld
mither,” when she remembered where she was sitting, and the grand folk
round her, and so she only answered with a demure nod of intelligence.
She brought out her glasses, and the shepherd polished them carefully
for her because her hands were trembling, and for that matter he had
almost to put them on her nose, so shaken was she on this great day; and
then she watched the door, as if there was nothing else in all the hall
except that door. It seemed to her twelve hours before it opened and the
procession streamed through with many a famous man and many a coloured
garment. Janet had no eyes for the Chancellor in his purple and gold,
nor for the robes of red and the hoods of lemon silk bordered with white
fur, for there was nothing beautiful in her eyes that day except black
gowns with white silk upon them. When at last the Masters of Arts
appeared, she told me afterwards many and many a time in the Glen that
they were a body of very respectable-looking young men, but that among
them all there was only one outstanding and handsome man, and that, by a
curious accident which mothers only can explain, happened to be her
son. She followed him as he came down the passage, and was a little
disappointed that he was now carrying his trencher in his hand instead
of wearing it-on his head, and she saw him take his seat, and could
hardly forgive some great lady in front of her, whose bonnet, coming in
the line of vision, prevented her catching anything except a little bit
of John's shoulder with the white silk upon it. A little later, and she
watched him rise and go forward and kneel before the Chancellor, and
then there was said over him Latin words so magical that after they were
spoken a student was changed from a common man into a Master of Arts.
We used to say in our jesting that the Latin could not be translated, it
was so mysterious and awful, but the shepherd's wife and John's mother
was an accomplished Latin scholar that day, and she heard the Chancellor
say, as distinctly as ever man spoke--
“John McPherson, you are the tallest, strongest, handsomest, ablest,
kindest-hearted son whom this University ever made Master of Arts.”
That was a free translation, but it was true in spirit, and the letter
killeth.
Standing behind the Chancellor, and looking down upon the hall, I saw
the faces of the shepherd and his wife, and I knew that they would never
taste such perfect joy again till they entered through the gates into
the city, and then I longed to be lifted above all circumstances, and to
have the power of the fairy world, where you do what you please. For I
should have gone down into the hall, and held a special and unheard-of
graduation ceremony, conferring a degree of a new kind altogether upon
that shepherd and his wife, because without their unworldly ideals, and
their hard sacrifices, and their holy prayers, John McPherson had never
knelt there that day in his white silk glory, Master of Arts with the
highest honours.