On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have said, something
strange happened in the Auld Licht pulpit. The congregation, despite
their troubles, turned it over and peered at it for days, but had they
seen into the inside of it they would have weaved few webs until the
session had sat on the minister. The affair baffled me at the time,
and for the Egyptian's sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it
not one of Gavin's milestones. It includes the first of his memorable
sermons against Woman.
I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I heard of the sermon
before night, and this, I think, is as good an opportunity as another
for showing how the gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen
school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to the manse I had kept
the vow made to myself and avoided Thrums. Only once had I ventured to
the kirk, and then, instead of taking my old seat, the fourth from the
pulpit, I sat down near the plate, where I could look at Margaret
without her seeing me. To spare her that agony I even stole away as
the last word of the benediction was pronounced, and my haste
scandalised many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire
quickly from the church after the manner of the godless U. P.'s (and
the Free Kirk is little better), who have their hats in their hand
when they rise for the benediction, so that they may at once pour out
like a burst dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us, clear
our throats and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put our
hats into them. In time we do get out, but I am never sure how.
One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town, without
losing his character, and I used to await the return of my neighbour,
the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity
post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a man
whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from his wife his great
pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright
what he thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding it as
it deserved, and I have seen him when completely baffled by the brute,
sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue: "You think you're
clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer,
that's what you are. You think you have blood in you. You hae blood!
Gae away, and dinna blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man
yestreen that kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie
fushionless besom. What do you say to that?"
As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter topic
was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously
when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had none, "aye
implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."
On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place
awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had
something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife and three children,
holding each other's hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a
little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by shouting. All
were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having started half a
minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on them.
"It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just as I
was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before me.
"You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at the
Glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is Established, and so
neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to know what their long
faces meant, and so asked at once--
"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?"
"Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round his
wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk
this day, sic as----"
"Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply; "have you on your Sabbath
shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?"
"Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny things on,"
retorted the farmer.
"Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day."
"Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear
genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them till he takes them aff.
Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma?"
"It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's
kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna expect to
be baith grand and comfortable."