Christmas came and went. Dr Drummond had long accepted the innovation
of a service on Christmas Day, as he agreed to the anthem while the
collection was being taken up, to flowers about the pulpit, and to
the habit of sitting at prayer. He was a progressive by his business
instinct, in everything but theology, where perhaps his business
instinct also operated the other way, in favour of the sure thing. The
Christmas Day service soon became one of those “special” occasions so
dear to his heart, which made a demand upon him out of the ordinary way.
He rose to these on the wing of the eagle, and his congregation never
lacked the lesson that could be most dramatically drawn from them. His
Christmas Day discourse gathered everything into it that could emphasize
the anniversary, including a vigorous attack upon the saints’ days and
ceremonies of the Church of England calculated to correct the concession
of the service, and pull up sharply any who thought that Presbyterianism
was giving way to the spurious attractions of sentimentality or ritual.
The special Easter service, with every appropriate feature of hymn and
invocation, was apt to be marked by an unsparing denunciation of
the pageants and practices of the Church of Rome. Balance was thus
preserved, and principle relentlessly indicated.
Dr Drummond loved, as I have said, all that asked for notable comment;
the poet and the tragedian in him caught at the opportunity, and
revelled in it. Public events carried him far, especially if they were
disastrous, but what he most profited by was the dealing of Providence
with members of his own congregation. Of all the occasions that inspired
him, the funeral sermon was his happiest opportunity, nor was it, in his
hands, by any means unstinted eulogy. Candid was his summing-up, behind
the decent veil, the accepted apology of death; he was not afraid to
refer to the follies of youth or the weaknesses of age in terms as
unmistakable as they were kindly.
“Grace,” he said once, of an estimable plain spinster who had passed
away, “did more for her than ever nature had done.” He repeated it, too.
“She was far more indebted, I say, to grace, than to nature,” and before
his sharp earnestness none were seen to smile. Nor could you forget
the note in his voice when the loss he deplored was that of a youth of
virtue and promise, or that of a personal friend. His very text would be
a blow upon the heart; the eyes filled from the beginning. People would
often say that they were “sorry for the family,” sitting through Dr
Drummond’s celebration of their bereavement; and the sympathy was
probably well founded. But how fine he was when he paid the last tribute
to that upright man, his elder and office-bearer, David Davidson! How
his words marched, sorrowing to the close! “Much I have said of him,
and more than he would have had me say.” Will it not stay with those who
heard it till the very end, the trenchant, mournful fall of that “more
than he would have had me say”?
It was a thing that Hugh Finlay could not abide in Dr Drummond.
As the winter passed, the little Doctor was hard put to it to keep his
hands off the great political issue of the year, bound up as it was in
the tenets of his own politics, which he held only less uncompromisingly
than those of the Shorter Catechism. It was, unfortunately for him,
a gradual and peaceful progress of opinion, marked by no dramatic
incidents; and analogy was hard to find in either Testament for a change
of fiscal policy based on imperial advantage. Dr Drummond liked a pretty
definite parallel; he had small opinion of the practice of drawing a
pint out of a thimble, as he considered Finlay must have done when he
preached the gospel of imperialism from Deuteronomy XXX, 14. “But the
word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou
mayest do it.” Moreover, to preach politics in Knox Church was a liberty
in Finlay.
The fact that Finlay had been beforehand with him operated perhaps to
reconcile the Doctor to his difficulty; and the candidature of one of
his own members in what was practically the imperial interest no doubt
increased his embarrassment. Nevertheless, he would not lose sight of
the matter for more than two or three weeks together. Many an odd blow
he delivered for its furtherance by way of illustrating higher things,
and he kept it always, so to speak, in the practical politics of the
long prayer.
It was Sunday evening, and Abby and her husband, as usual, had come to
tea. The family was complete with the exception of Lorne, who had driven
out to Clayfield with Horace Williams, to talk over some urgent matters
with persons whom he would meet at supper at the Metropole Hotel
at Clayfield. It was a thing Mrs Murchison thought little short of
scandalous--supper to talk business on the Sabbath day, and in a hotel,
a place of which the smell about the door was enough to knock you down,
even on a weekday. Mrs Murchison considered, and did not scruple to say
so, that politics should be left alone on Sundays. Clayfield votes
might be very important, but there were such things as commandments,
she supposed. “It’ll bring no blessing,” she declared severely, eyeing
Lorne’s empty place.
The talk about the lamplit table was, nevertheless, all of the election,
blessed or unblessed. It was not in human nature that it shouldn’t be,
as Mrs Murchison would have very quickly told you if you had found her
inconsistent. There was reason in all things, as she frequently said.
“I hear,” Alec had told them, “that Octavius Milburn is going around
bragging he’s got the Elgin Chamber of Commerce consolidated this time.”
“Against us?” exclaimed Stella; and her brother said, “Of course!”
“Those Milburns,” remarked Mrs Murchison, “are enough to make one’s
blood boil. I met Mrs Milburn in the market yesterday; she’d been
pricing Mrs Crow’s ducks, and they were just five cents too dear for
her, and she stopped--wonderful thing for her--and had SUCH an amount
to say about Lorne, and the honour it was, and the dear only knows what!
Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth--and Octavius Milburn doing all
he knew against him the whole time! That’s the Milburns! I cut her
remarkably short,” Mrs Murchison added, with satisfaction, “and when
she’d made up her mind she’d have to give that extra five cents for
the ducks because there weren’t any others to be had, she went back and
found I’d bought them.”
“Well done, Mother!” said Alec, and Oliver remarked that if those were
today’s ducks they were too good for the Milburn crowd, a lot.
“I expect she wanted them, too,” remarked Stella. “They’ve got the only
Mr Hesketh staying with them now. Miss Filkin’s in a great state of
excitement.”
“I guess we can spare them Hesketh,” said John Murchison.
“He’s a lobster,” said Stella with fervour.
“He seems to bring a frost where he goes,” continued Abby’s husband,
“in politics, anyhow. I hear Lorne wants to make a present of him to the
other side, for use wherever they’ll let him speak longest. Is it true
he began his speech out at Jordanville--‘Gentlemen--and those of you who
are not gentlemen’?”
“Could he have meant Mrs Farquharson and Miss Milburn?” asked Mr
Murchison quietly, when the derision subsided; and they laughed again.
“He told me,” said Advena, “that he proposed to convert Mr Milburn to
the imperial policy.”
“He’ll have his job cut out for him,” said her father.
“For my part,” Abby told them, “I think the Milburns are beneath
contempt. You don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s something ABOUT
them--not that we ever come in contact with them,” she continued with
dignity. “I believe they used to be patients of Dr Henry’s till he got
up in years, but they don’t call in Harry.”
“Maybe that’s what there is about them,” said Mr Murchison, innocently.
“Father’s made up his mind,” announced Dr Harry, and they waited,
breathless. There could be only one point upon which Dr Henry could be
dubitating at that moment.
“He’s going to vote for Lorne.”
“He’s a lovely old darling!” cried Stella. “Good for Dr Henry Johnson! I
knew he would.”
The rest were silent with independence and gratification. Dr Henry’s
Conservatism had been supposed to be invincible. Dr Harry they thought
a fair prey to Murchison influence, and he had capitulated early, but he
had never promised to answer for his father.
“Yes, he’s taken his time about it, and he’s consulted about all the
known authorities,” said his son, humorously. “Went right back to the
Manchester school to begin with--sat out on the verandah reading Cobden
and Bright the whole summer; if anybody came for advice sent ‘em in to
me. I did a trade, I tell you! He thought they talked an awful lot of
sense, those fellows--from the English point of view. ‘D’ye mean to tell
me,’ he’d say, ‘that a generation born and bred in political doctrine
of that sort is going to hold on to the colonies at a sacrifice? They’d
rather let ‘em go at a sacrifice!’ Well, then he got to reading the
other side of the question, and old Ormiston lent him Parkin, and he
lent old Ormiston Goldwin Smith, and then he subscribed to the Times for
six months--the bill must have nearly bust him; and then the squire went
over without waiting for him and without any assistance from the Times
either; and finally--well, he says that if it’s good enough business for
the people of England it’s good enough business for him. Only he keeps
on worrying about the people of England, and whether they’ll make enough
by it to keep them contented, till he can’t next month all right, he
wants it to be distinctly understood that family connection has nothing
to do with it.”
“Of course it hasn’t,” Advena said.
“But we’re just as much obliged,” remarked Stella.
“A lot of our church people are going to stay at home election day,”
declared Abby; “they won’t vote for Lorne, and they won’t vote against
imperialism, so they’ll just sulk. Silly, I call it.”
“Good enough business for us,” said Alec.
“Well, what I want to know is,” said Mrs Murchison, “whether you are
coming to the church you were born and brought up in, Abby, or not,
tonight? There’s the first bell.”
“I’m not going to any church.” said Abby. “I went this morning. I’m
going home to my baby.”
“Your father and mother,” said Mrs Murchison, “can go twice a day, and
be none the worse for it. By the way, Father, did you know old Mrs Parr
was dead? Died this morning at four o’clock. They telephoned for Dr
Drummond, and I think they had little to do, for he had been up with her
half the night already, Mrs Forsyth told me.”
“Did he go?” asked Mr Murchison.
“He did not, for the very good reason that he knew nothing about it. Mrs
Forsyth answered the telephone, and told them he hadn’t been two hours
in his bed, and she wouldn’t get him out again for an unconscious
deathbed, and him with bronchitis on him and two sermons to preach
today.”
“I’ll warrant Mrs Forsyth caught it in the morning,” said John
Murchison.
“That she did. The doctor was as cross as two sticks that she hadn’t had
him out to answer the phone. ‘I just spoke up,’ she said, ‘and told him
I didn’t see how he was going to do any good to the pour soul over a
telephone wire.’ ‘It isn’t that,’ he said, ‘but I might have put them
on to Peter Fratch for the funeral. We’ve never had an undertaker in the
church before,’ he said; ‘he’s just come, and he ought to be supported.
Now I expect it’s too late, they’ll have gone to Liscombe.’ He rang them
up right away, but they had.”
“Dr Drummond can’t stand Liscombe,” said Alec, as they all laughed a
little at the Doctor’s foible, all except Advena, who laughed a
great deal. She laughed wildly, then weakly. “I wouldn’t--think it a
pleasure--to be buried by Liscombe myself!” she cried hysterically, and
then laughed again until the tears ran down her face, and she lay back
in her chair and moaned, still laughing.
Mr and Mrs Murchison, Alec, Stella, and Advena made up the family party;
Oliver, for reasons of his own, would attend the River Avenue Methodist
Church that evening. They slipped out presently into a crisp white
winter night. The snow was banked on both sides of the street. Spreading
garden fir trees huddled together weighted down with it; ragged icicles
hung from the eaves or lay in long broken fingers on the trodden paths.
The snow snapped and tore under their feet; there was a glorious moon
that observed every tattered weed sticking up through the whiteness, and
etched it with its shadow. The town lay under the moon almost dramatic,
almost mysterious, so withdrawn it was out of the cold, so turned in
upon its own soul of the fireplace. It might have stood, in the snow and
the silence, for a shell and a symbol of the humanity within, for angels
or other strangers to mark with curiosity. Mr and Mrs Murchison were
neither angels nor strangers; they looked at it and saw that the
Peterson place was still standing empty, and that old Mr Fisher hadn’t
finished his new porch before zero weather came to stop him.
The young people were well ahead; Mrs Murchison, on her husband’s arm,
stepped along with the spring of an impetus undisclosed.
“Is it to be the Doctor tonight?” asked John Murchison. “He was so
hoarse this morning I wouldn’t be surprised to see Finlay in the pulpit.
They’re getting only morning services in East Elgin just now, while
they’re changing the lighting arrangements.”
“Are they, indeed? Well, I hope they’ll change them and be done with
it, for I can’t say I’m anxious for too much of their Mr Finlay in Knox
Church.”
“Oh, you like the man well enough for a change, Mother!” John assured
her.
“I’ve nothing to say against his preaching. It’s the fellow himself. And
I hope we won’t get him tonight for, the way I feel now, if I see him
gawking up the pulpit steps it’ll be as much as I can do to keep in my
seat, and so I just tell you, John.”
“You’re a little out of patience with him, I see,” said Mr Murchison.
“And it would be a good thing if more than me were out of patience with
him. There’s such a thing as too much patience, I’ve noticed.”
“I dare say,” replied her husband, cheerfully.
“If Advena were any daughter of mine she’d have less patience with him.”
“She’s not much like you,” assented the father.
“I must say I like a girl to have a little spirit if a man has none. And
before I’d have him coming to the house week after week the way he has,
I’d see him far enough.”
“He might as well come there as anywhere,” Mr Murchison replied,
ambiguously. “I suppose he has now and then time on his hands?”
“Well, he won’t have it on his hands much longer.”
“He won’t, eh?”
“No, he won’t,” Mrs Murchison almost shook the arm she was attached to.
“John, I think you might show a little interest! The man’s going to be
married.”
“You don’t say that?” John Murchison’s tone expressed not only
astonishment but concern. Mrs Murchison was almost mollified.
“But I do say it. His future wife is coming here to Elgin next month,
she and her aunt, or her grandmother, or somebody, and they’re to stay
at Dr Drummond’s and be married as soon as possible.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr Murchison, which was his way of expressing simple
astonishment.
“There’s no nonsense about it. Advena told me herself this afternoon.”
“Did she seem put out about it?”
“She’s not a girl to show it,” Mrs Murchison hedged, “if she was. I just
looked at her. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s a piece of news. When did you
hear it?’ I said. ‘Oh, I’ve known it all the winter!’ says my lady. What
I wanted to say was that for an engaged man he had been pretty liberal
with his visits, but she had such a queer look in her eyes I couldn’t
express myself, somehow.”
“It was just as well left unsaid,” her husband told her, thoughtfully.
“I’m not so sure,” Mrs Murchison retorted. “You’re a great man, John,
for letting everything alone. When he’s been coming here regularly for
more than a year, putting ideas into the girl’s head--”
“He seems to have told her how things were.”
“That’s all very well--if he had kept himself to himself at the same
time.”
“Well, Mother, you know you never thought much of the prospect.”
“No, I didn’t,” Mrs Murchison said. “It wouldn’t be me that would be
married to him, and I’ve always said so. But I’d got more or less used
to it,” she confessed. “The man’s well enough in some ways. Dear knows
there would be a pair of them--one’s as much of a muddler as the other!
And anybody can see with half an eye that Advena likes him. It hasn’t
turned out as I expected, that’s a fact, John, and I’m just very much
annoyed.”
“I’m not best pleased about it myself,” said John Murchison, expressing,
as usual, a very small proportion of the regret that he felt, “but I
suppose they know their own business.”
Thus, in their different ways, did these elder ones also acknowledge
their helplessness before the advancing event. They could talk of it in
private and express their dissatisfaction with it, and that was all they
could do. It would not be a matter much further turned over between
them at best. They would be shy of any affair of sentiment in terms of
speech, and from one that affected a member of the family, self-respect
would help to pull them the other way. Mrs Murchison might remember it
in the list of things which roused her vain indignation; John Murchison
would put it away in the limbo of irremediables that were better
forgotten. For the present they had reached the church door.
Mrs Murchison saw with relief that Dr Drummond occupied his own pulpit,
but if her glance had gone the length of three pews behind her she
would have discovered that Hugh Finlay made one of the congregation.
Fortunately, perhaps, for her enjoyment of the service, she did not
look round. Dr Drummond was more observing, but his was a position
of advantage. In the accustomed sea of faces two, heavy shadowed and
obstinately facing fate, swam together before Dr Drummond, and after he
had lifted his hands and closed his eyes for the long prayer he saw them
still. So that these words occurred, near the end, in the long prayer--
“O Thou Searcher of hearts, who hast known man from the beginning, to
whom his highest desires and his loftiest intentions are but as
the desires and intentions of a little child, look with Thine own
compassion, we beseech Thee, upon souls before Thee in any peculiar
difficulty. Our mortal life is full of sin, it is also full of the
misconception of virtue. Do Thou clear the understanding, O Lord, of
such as would interpret Thy will to their own undoing; do Thou teach
them that as happiness may reside in chastening, so chastening may
reside in happiness. And though such stand fast to their hurt, do Thou
grant to them in Thine own way, which may not be our way, a safe issue
out of the dangers that beset them.”
Dr Drummond had his own method of reconciling foreordination and free
will. To Advena his supplication came with that mysterious double
emphasis of chance words that fit. Her thought played upon them all
through the sermon, rejecting and rejecting again their application
and their argument and the spring of hope in them. She, too, knew that
Finlay was in church and, half timidly, she looked back for him, as the
congregation filed out again into the winter streets. But he, furious,
and more resolved than ever, had gone home by another way.