By the following Monday it was known at many looms that something sat
heavily on the Auld Licht minister's mind. On the previous day he had
preached his second sermon of warning to susceptible young men, and
his first mention of the word "woman" had blown even the sleepy heads
upright. Now he had salt fish for breakfast, and on clearing the table
Jean noticed that his knife and fork were uncrossed. He was observed
walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy Linn, who possessed the pioneer
spring-bed of Thrums, and always knew when her man jumped into it by
suddenly finding herself shot to the ceiling. Lunan, the tinsmith, and
two women, who had the luck to be in the street at the time, saw him
stopping at Dr. McQueen's door, as if about to knock, and then turning
smartly away. His hat blew off in the school wynd, where a wind
wanders ever, looking for hats, and he chased it so passionately that
Lang Tammas went into Allardyce's smiddy to say--
"I dinna like it. Of course he couldna afford to lose his hat, but he
should hae run after it mair reverently."
Gavin, indeed, was troubled. He had avoided speaking of the Egyptian
to his mother. He had gone to McQueen's house to ask the doctor to
accompany him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he
changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting alone. It was
a day of thaw, nothing to be heard from a distance but the swish of
curling-stones through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the
eldership was going on. Around him, Gavin saw only dejected firs with
drops of water falling listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass
that rustled as if animals were crawling through it. All the roads
were slack.
I suppose no young man to whom society has not become a cheap thing
can be in Gavin's position, awaiting the coming of an attractive girl,
without giving thought to what he should say to her. When in the
pulpit or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the little
minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine what to say to the
Egyptian.
This was because he had not yet decided which of two women she was.
Hardly had he started on one line of thought when she crossed his
vision in a new light, and drew him after her.
Her "Need that make any difference?" sang in his ear like another
divit, cast this time at religion itself, and now he spoke aloud,
pointing his finger at a fir: "I said at the mud house that I believed
you because I knew you. To my shame be it said that I spoke falsely.
How dared you bewitch me? In your presence I flung away the precious
hours in frivolity; I even forgot the Sabbath. For this I have myself
to blame. I am an unworthy preacher of the Word. I sinned far more
than you who have been brought up godlessly from your cradle.
Nevertheless, whoever you are, I call upon you, before we part never
to meet again, to repent of your----"
And then it was no mocker of the Sabbath he was addressing, but a
woman with a child's face, and there were tears in her eyes. "Do you
care?" she was saying, and again he answered, "Yes, I care." This
girl's name was not Woman, but Babbie.
Now Gavin made an heroic attempt to look upon both these women at
once. "Yes, I believe in you," he said to them, "but henceforth you
must send your money to Nanny by another messenger. You are a gypsy
and I am a minister; and that must part us. I refuse to see you again.
I am not angry with you, but as a minister----"
It was not the disappearance of one of the women that clipped this
argument short; it was Babbie singing--
"It fell on a day, on a bonny summer day,
When the corn grew green and yellow,
That there fell out a great dispute
Between Argyle and Airly.
"The Duke of Montrose has written to Argyle
To come in the morning early,
An' lead in his men by the back o' Dunkeld
To plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
"Where are you?" cried Gavin in bewilderment.
"I am watching you from my window so high," answered the Egyptian; and
then the minister, looking up, saw her peering at him from a fir.
"How did you get up there?" he asked in amazement.
"On my broomstick," Babbie replied, and sang on--
"The lady looked o'er her window sae high,
And oh! but she looked weary,
And there she espied the great Argyle
Come to plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
"What are you doing there?" Gavin said, wrathfully.
"This is my home," she answered. "I told you I lived in a tree."
"Come down at once," ordered Gavin. To which the singer responded--
"'Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,' he says;
'Come down and kiss me fairly
Or before the morning clear day light
I'll no leave a standing stane in Airly.'"
"If you do not come down this instant," Gavin said in a rage, "and
give me what I was so foolish as to come for, I----"