"You are better now?" I heard Gavin ask, presently.
He thought that having been taken ill suddenly I had waved to him for
help because he chanced to be near. With all my wits about me I might
have left him in that belief, for rather would I have deceived him
than had him wonder why his welfare seemed so vital to me. But I, who
thought the capacity for being taken aback had gone from me, clung to
his arm and thanked God audibly that he still lived. He did not tell
me then how my agitation puzzled him, but led me kindly to the hill,
where we could talk without listeners. By the time we reached it I was
again wary, and I had told him what had brought me to Thrums, without
mentioning how the story of his death reached my ears, or through
whom.
"Mr. McKenzie," he said, interrupting me, "galloped all the way from
the Spittal on the same errand. However, no one has been hurt much,
except the piper himself."
Then he told me how the rumor arose.
"You know of the incident at the Spittal, and that Campbell marched
off in high dudgeon? I understand that he spoke to no one between the
Spittal and Thrums, but by the time he arrived here he was more
communicative; yes, and thirstier. He was treated to drink in several
public-houses by persons who wanted to hear his story, and by-and-by
he began to drop hints of knowing something against the earl's bride.
Do you know Rob Dow?"
"Yes," I answered, "and what you have done for him."
"Ah, sir!" he said, sighing, "for a long time I thought I was to be
God's instrument in making a better man of Rob, but my power over him
went long ago. Ten short months of the ministry takes some of the
vanity out of a man."
Looking sideways at him I was startled by the unnatural brightness of
his eyes. Unconsciously he had acquired the habit of pressing his
teeth together in the pauses of his talk, shutting them on some woe
that would proclaim itself, as men do who keep their misery to
themselves.
"A few hours ago," he went on, "I heard Rob's voice in altercation as
I passed the Bull tavern, and I had a feeling that if I failed with
him so should I fail always throughout my ministry. I walked into the
public-house, and stopped at the door of a room in which Dow and the
piper were sitting drinking. I heard Rob saying, fiercely, 'If what
you say about her is true, Highlandman, she's the woman I've been
looking for this half year and mair; what is she like?' I guessed,
from what I had been told of the piper, that they were speaking of the
earl's bride; but Rob saw me and came to an abrupt stop, saying to his
companion, 'Dinna say another word about her afore the minister.' Rob
would have come away at once in answer to my appeal, but the piper was
drunk and would not be silenced. 'I'll tell the minister about her,
too,' he began. 'You dinna ken what you're doing,' Rob roared, and
then, as if to save my ears from scandal at any cost, he struck
Campbell a heavy blow on the mouth. I tried to intercept the blow,
with the result that I fell, and then some one ran out of the tavern
crying, 'He's killed!' The piper had been stunned, but the story went
abroad that he had stabbed me for interfering with him. That is really
all. Nothing, as you know, can overtake an untruth if it has a
minute's start."
"Where is Campbell now?"
"Sleeping off the effect of the blow: but Dow has fled. He was
terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran off up the West Town end.
The doctor's dogcart was standing at a door there and Rob jumped into
it and drove off. They did not chase him far, because he is sure to
hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will come back."
Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our denseness, neither
Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck the Highlander down rather than let
him tell his story in the minister's presence. One moment's suspicion
would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the spring to all
Rob's behavior in the past eight months we were ignorant, and so to
Gavin the Bull had only been the scene of a drunken brawl, while I
forgot to think in the joy of finding him alive.
"I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently," Gavin said, breaking a
picture that had just appeared unpleasantly before me of Babbie still
in agony at Nanny's, "but before I leave you tell me why this rumor
caused you such distress."
The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it. Crossing the hill
we had by this time drawn near a hollow called the Toad's-hole, then
gay and noisy with a caravan of gypsies. They were those same wild
Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one eventful night, and
as I saw them crowding round their king, a man well known to me, I
guessed what they were at.
"Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly, "would you like to see a gypsy
marriage? One is taking place there just now. That big fellow is the
king, and he is about to marry two of his people over the tongs. The
ceremony will not detain us five minutes, though the rejoicings will
go on all night."
I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding in my time, and at
the wild, weird orgies that followed them, but what is interesting to
such as I may not be for a minister's eyes, and, frowning at my
proposal, Gavin turned his back upon the Toad's-hole. Then, as we
recrossed the hill, to get away from the din of the camp, I pointed
out to him that the report of his death had brought McKenzie to
Thrums, as well as me.
"As soon as McKenzie heard I was not dead," he answered, "he galloped
off to the Spittal, without even seeing me. I suppose he posted back
to be in time for the night's rejoicings there. So you see, it was not
solicitude for me that brought him. He came because a servant at the
Spittal was supposed to have done the deed."
"Well, Mr. Dishart," I had to say, "why should I deny that I have a
warm regard for you? You have done brave work in our town."
"It has been little," he replied. "With God's help it will be more in
future."
He meant that he had given time to his sad love affair that he owed to
his people. Of seeing Babbie again I saw that he had given up hope.
Instead of repining, he was devoting his whole soul to God's work. I
was proud of him, and yet I grieved, for I could not think that God
wanted him to bury his youth so soon.
"I had thought," he confessed to me, "that you were one of those who
did not like my preaching."
"You were mistaken," I said, gravely. I dared not tell him that,
except his mother, none would have sat under him so eagerly as I.
"Nevertheless," he said, "you were a member of the Auld Licht church
in Mr. Carfrae's time, and you left it when I came."
"I heard your first sermon," I said.
"Ah," he replied. "I had not been long in Thrums before I discovered
that if I took tea with any of my congregation and declined a second
cup, they thought it a reflection on their brewing."
"You must not look upon my absence in that light," was all I could
say. "There are reasons why I cannot come."
He did not press me further, thinking I meant that the distance was
too great, though frailer folk than I walked twenty miles to hear him.
We might have parted thus had we not wandered by chance to the very
spot where I had met him and Babbie. There is a seat there now for
those who lose their breath on the climb up, and so I have two reasons
nowadays for not passing the place by.
We read each other's thoughts, and Gavin said calmly, "I have not seen
her since that night. She disappeared as into a grave."
How could I answer when I knew that Babbie was dying for want of him,
not half a mile away?
"You seemed to understand everything that night," he went on; "or if
you did not, your thoughts were very generous to me."
In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were moving on again,
this time in the direction of Windyghoul.
"She was only a gypsy girl," he said, abruptly, and I nodded. "But I
hoped," he continued, "that she would be my wife."
"I understood that," I said.
"There was nothing monstrous to you," he asked, looking me in the
face, "in a minister's marrying a gypsy?"
I own that if I had loved a girl, however far below or above me in
degree, I would have married her had she been willing to take me. But
to Gavin I only answered, "These are matters a man must decide for
himself."
"I had decided for myself," he said, emphatically.
"Yet," I said, wanting him to talk to me of Margaret, "in such a case
one might have others to consider besides himself."
"A man's marriage," he answered, "is his own affair, I would have
brooked no interference from my congregation."
I thought, "There is some obstinacy left in him still;" but aloud I
said, "It was of your mother I was thinking."
"She would have taken Babbie to her heart," he said, with the fond
conviction of a lover.