THE AULD LICHT KIRK.
One Sabbath day in the beginning of the century the Auld Licht minister
at Thrums walked out of his battered, ramshackle, earthen-floored kirk
with a following and never returned. The last words he uttered in it
were: “Follow me to the commonty, all you persons who want to hear the
Word of God properly preached; and James Duphie and his two sons
will answer for this on the Day of Judgment.” The congregation, which
belonged to the body who seceded from the Established Church a hundred
and fifty years ago, had split, and as the New Lights (now the U.P.'s)
were in the majority, the Old Lights, with the minister at their head,
had to retire to the commonty (or common) and hold service in the open
air until they had saved up money for a church. They kept possession,
however, of the white manse among the trees. Their kirk has but a
cluster of members now, most of them old and done, but each is equal to
a dozen ordinary churchgoers, and there have been men and women among
them on whom memory loves to linger. For forty years they have been
dying out, but their cold, stiff pews still echo the Psalms of David,
and the Auld Licht kirk will remain open so long as it has one member
and a minister.
The church stands round the corner from the square, with only a large
door to distinguish it from the other buildings in the short street.
Children who want to do a brave thing hit this door with their fists,
when there is no one near, and then run away scared. The door, however,
is sacred to the memory of a white-haired old lady who, not so long ago,
used to march out of the kirk and remain on the pavement until the psalm
which had just been given out was sung. Of Thrums' pavement it may here
be said that when you come, even to this day, to a level slab you will
feel reluctant to leave it. The old lady was Mistress (which is Miss)
Tibbie McQuhatty, and she nearly split the Auld Licht kirk over “run
line.” This conspicuous innovation was introduced by Mr. Dishart, the
minister, when he was young and audacious. The old, reverent custom in
the kirk was for the precentor to read out the psalm a line at a time.
Having then sung that line he read out the next one, led the singing
of it, and so worked his way on to line three. Where run line holds,
however, the psalms is read out first, and forthwith sung. This is not
only a flighty way of doing things, which may lead to greater scandals,
but has its practical disadvantages, for the precentor always starts
singing in advance of the congregation (Auld Lichts never being able
to begin to do anything all at once), and, increasing the distance with
every line, leaves them hopelessly behind at the finish. Miss McQuhatty
protested against this change, as meeting the devil half way, but
the minister carried his point, and ever after that she rushed
ostentatiously from the church the moment a psalm was given out, and
remained behind the door until the singing was finished, when she
returned, with a rustle, to her seat. Run line had on her the effect of
the reading of the Riot Act. Once some men, capable of anything, held
the door from the outside, and the congregation heard Tibbie rampaging
in the passage. Bursting into the kirk she called the office-bearers to
her assistance, whereupon the minister in miniature raised his voice and
demanded the why and wherefore of the ungodly disturbance. Great was the
hubbub, but the door was fast, and a compromise had to be arrived at.
The old lady consented for once to stand in the passage, but not without
pressing her hands to her ears. You may smile at Tibbie, but ah! I know
what she was at a sick bedside. I have seen her when the hard look had
gone from her eyes, and it would ill become me to smile too.
As with all the churches in Thrums, care had been taken to make the Auld
Licht one much too large. The stair to the “laft” or gallery, which
was originally little more than ladder, is ready for you as soon as you
enter the doorway, but it is best to sit in the body of the kirk.
The plate for collections is inside the church, so that the whole
congregation can give a guess at what you give. If it is something
very stingy or very liberal, all Thrums knows of it within a few hours;
indeed, this holds good of all the churches, especially perhaps of
the Free one, which has been called the bawbee kirk, because so many
halfpennies find their way into the plate. On Saturday nights the Thrums
shops are besieged for coppers by housewives of all denominations, who
would as soon think of dropping a threepenny bit into the plate as of
giving nothing. Tammy Todd had a curious way of tipping his penny into
the Auld Licht plate while still keeping his hand to his side. He did
it much as a boy fires a marble, and there was quite a talk in the
congregation the first time he missed. A devout plan was to carry your
penny in your hand all the way to church, but to appear to take it out
of your pocket on entering, and some plumped it down noisily like men
paying their way. I believe old Snecky Hobart, who was a canty stock but
obstinate, once dropped a penny into the plate and took out a halfpenny
as change, but the only untoward thing that happened to the plate was
once when the lassie from the farm of Curly Bog capsized it in passing.
Mr. Dishart, who was always a ready man, introduced something into
his sermon that day about women's dress, which every one hoped Christy
Lundy, the lassie in question, would remember. Nevertheless, the
minister sometimes came to a sudden stop himself when passing from the
vestry to the pulpit. The passage being narrow, his rigging would catch
in a pew as he sailed down the aisle. Even then, however, Mr. Dishart
remembered that he was not as other men.
White is not a religious color, and the walls of the kirk were of a dull
gray. A cushion was allowed to the manse pew, but merely as a symbol of
office, and this was the only pew in the church that had a door. It was
and is the pew nearest to the pulpit on the minister's right, and one
day it contained a bonnet, which Mr. Dishart's predecessor preached at
for one hour and ten minutes. From the pulpit, which was swaddled in
black, the minister had a fine sweep of all the congregation except
those in the back pews downstairs, who were lost in the shadow of the
laft. Here sat Whinny Webster, so called because, having an inexplicable
passion against them, he devoted his life to the extermination of whins.
Whinny for years ate peppermint lozenges with impunity in his back seat,
safe in the certainty that the minister, however much he might try,
could not possibly see him. But his day came. One afternoon the kirk
smelt of peppermints, and Mr. Dishart could rebuke no one, for the
defaulter was not in sight. Whinny's cheek was working up and down
in quiet enjoyment of its lozenge, when he started, noticing that the
preaching had stopped. Then he heard a sepulchral voice say “Charles
Webster!” Whinny's eyes turned to the pulpit, only part of which was
visible to him, and to his horror they encountered the minister's head
coming down the stairs. This took place after I had ceased to attend the
Auld Licht kirk regularly; but I am told that as Whinny gave one wild
scream the peppermint dropped from his mouth. The minister had got him
by leaning over the pulpit door until, had he given himself only another
inch, his feet would have gone into the air. As for Whinny he became a
God-fearing man.
The most uncanny thing about the kirk was the precentor's box beneath
the pulpit. Three Auld Licht ministers I have known, but I can only
conceive one precentor. Lang Tammas' box was much too small for him.
Since his disappearance from Thrums I believe they have paid him the
compliment of enlarging it for a smaller man, no doubt with the feeling
that Tammas alone could look like a Christian in it. Like the whole
congregation, of course, he had to stand during the prayers--the first
of which averaged half an hour in length. If he stood erect his head
and shoulders vanished beneath funereal trappings, when he seemed
decapitated, and if he stretched his neck the pulpit tottered. He looked
like the pillar on which it rested, or he balanced it on his head like a
baker's tray. Sometimes he leaned forward as reverently as he could,
and then, with his long, lean arms dangling over the side of his box,
he might have been a suit of “blacks” hung up to dry. Once I was talking
with Cree Queery in a sober, respectable manner, when all at once a
light broke out on his face. I asked him what he was laughing at, and
he said it was at Lang Tammas. He got grave again when I asked him what
there was in Lang Tammas to smile at, and admitted that he could not
tell me. However, I have always been of opinion that the thought of the
precentor in his box gave Cree a fleeting sense of humor.
Tammas and Hendry Munn were the two paid officials of the church, Hendry
being kirk-officer; but poverty was among the few points they had in
common. The precentor was a cobbler, though he never knew it, shoemaker
being the name in those parts, and his dwelling-room was also his
workshop. There he sat in his “brot,” or apron, from early morning to
far on to midnight, and contrived to make his six or eight shillings a
week. I have often sat with him in the darkness that his “cruizey”
lamp could not pierce, while his mutterings to himself of “ay, ay, yes,
umpha, oh ay, ay man,” came as regularly and monotonously as the tick
of his “wag-at-the-wa'” clock. Hendry and he were paid no fixed sum
for their services in the Auld Licht kirk, but once a year there was a
collection for each of them, and so they jogged along. Though not the
only kirk-officer of my time Hendry made the most lasting impression. He
was, I think, the only man in Thrums who did not quake when the minister
looked at him. A wild story, never authenticated, says that Hendry once
offered Mr. Dishart a snuff from his mull. In the streets Lang Tammas
was more stern and dreaded by evil-doers, but Hendry had first place
in the kirk. One of his duties was to precede the minister from the
session-house to the pulpit and open the door for him. Having shut
Mr. Dishart in he strolled away to his seat. When a strange minister
preached, Hendry was, if possible, still more at his ease. This will not
be believed, but I have seen him give the pulpit-door on these occasions
a fling to with his feet. However ill an ordinary member of the
congregation might become in the kirk he sat on till the service ended,
but Hendry would wander to the door and shut it if he noticed that the
wind was playing irreverent tricks with the pages of Bibles, and proof
could still be brought forward that he would stop deliberately in the
aisle to lift up a piece of paper, say, that had floated there. After
the first psalm had been sung it was Hendry's part to lift up the plate
and carry its tinkling contents to the session-house. On the greatest
occasions he remained so calm, so indifferent, so expressionless, that
he might have been present the night before at a rehearsal.
When there was preaching at night the church was lit by tallow candles,
which also gave out all the artificial heat provided. Two candles stood
on each side of the pulpit, and others were scattered over the church,
some of them fixed into holes on rough brackets, and some merely
sticking in their own grease on the pews. Hendry superintended the
lighting of the candles, and frequently hobbled through the church to
snuff them. Mr. Dishart was a man who could do anything except snuff a
candle, but when he stopped in his sermon to do that he as often as not
knocked the candle over. In vain he sought to refix it in its proper
place, and then all eyes turned to Hendry. As coolly as though he were
in a public hall or place of entertainment, the kirk-officer arose and,
mounting the stair, took the candle from the minister's reluctant hands
and put it right. Then he returned to his seat, not apparently puffed
up, yet perhaps satisfied with himself; while Mr. Dishart, glaring after
him to see if he was carrying his head high, resumed his wordy way.
Never was there a man more uncomfortably loved than Mr. Dishart. Easie
Haggart, his maid-servant, reproved him at the breakfast table. Lang
Tammas and Sam'l Mealmaker crouched for five successive Sabbath nights
on his manse-wall to catch him smoking (and got him). Old wives grumbled
by their hearths when he did not look in to despair of their salvation.
He told the maidens of his congregation not to make an idol of him. His
session saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversation with a strange
woman, and asked grimly if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty
were his years when he came to Thrums, and on the very first Sabbath he
knocked a board out of the pulpit. Before beginning his trial sermon he
handed down the big Bible to the precentor, to give his arms free swing.
The congregation, trembling with exhilaration, probed his meaning. Not
a square inch of paper, they saw, could be concealed there. Mr. Dishart
had scarcely any hope for the Auld Lichts; he had none for any other
denomination. Davit Lunan got behind his handkerchief to think for
a moment, and the minister was on him like a tiger. The call was
unanimous. Davit proposed him.
Every few years, as one might say, the Auld Licht kirk gave way and
buried its minister. The congregation turned their empty pockets inside
out, and the minister departed in a farmer's cart. The scene was not an
amusing one to those who looked on at it. To the Auld Lichts was then
the humiliation of seeing their pulpit “supplied” on alternate Sabbaths
by itinerant probationers or stickit ministers. When they were not
starving themselves to support a pastor the Auld Lichts were saving up
for a stipend. They retired with compressed lips to their looms, and
weaved and weaved till they weaved another minister. Without the grief
of parting with one minister there could not have been the transport
of choosing another. To have had a pastor always might have made them
vain-glorious.
They were seldom longer than twelve months in making a selection, and
in their haste they would have passed over Mr. Dishart and mated with a
monster. Many years have elapsed since Providence flung Mr. Watts out
of the Auld Licht kirk. Mr. Watts was a probationer who was tried before
Mr. Dishart, and, though not so young as might have been wished, he
found favor in many eyes. “Sluggard in the laft, awake!” he cried to
Bell Whamond, who had forgotten herself, and it was felt that there
must be good stuff in him. A breeze from Heaven exposed him on Communion
Sabbath.
On the evening of this solemn day the door of the Auld Licht kirk was
sometimes locked, and the congregation repaired, Bible in hand, to the
commonty. They had a right to this common on the Communion Sabbath,
but only took advantage of it when it was believed that more persons
intended witnessing the evening service than the kirk would hold. On
this day the attendance was always very great.
It was the Covenanters come back to life. To the summit of the slope a
wooden box was slowly hurled by Hendry Munn and others, and round this
the congregation quietly grouped to the tinkle of the cracked Auld Licht
bell. With slow, majestic tread the session advanced upon the steep
common with the little minister in their midst. He had the people in his
hands now, and the more he squeezed them the better they were pleased.
The travelling pulpit consisted of two compartments, the one for the
minister and the other for Lang Tammas, but no Auld Licht thought that
it looked like a Punch and Judy puppet show. This service on the common
was known as the “tent preaching,” owing to a tent's being frequently
used instead of the box.
Mr. Watts was conducting the service on the commonty. It was a fine,
still summer evening, and loud above the whisper of the burn from which
the common climbs, and the labored “pechs” of the listeners, rose the
preacher's voice. The Auld Lichts in their rusty blacks (they must
have been a more artistic sight in the olden days of blue bonnets and
knee-breeches) nodded their heads in sharp approval, for though they
could swoop down on a heretic like an eagle on carrion, they scented no
prey. Even Lang Tammas, on whose nose a drop of water gathered when he
was in his greatest fettle, thought that all was fair and above-board.
Suddenly a rush of wind tore up the common, and ran straight at
the pulpit. It formed in a sieve, and passed over the heads of the
congregation, who felt it as a fan, and looked up in awe. Lang Tammas,
feeling himself all at once grow clammy, distinctly heard the leaves
of the pulpit Bible shiver. Mr. Watts' hands, outstretched to prevent a
catastrophe, were blown against his side, and then some twenty sheets of
closely written paper floated into the air. There was a horrible, dead
silence. The burn was roaring now. The minister, if such he can be
called, shrank back in his box, and as if they had seen it printed
in letters of fire on the heavens, the congregation realized that Mr.
Watts, whom they had been on the point of calling, read his sermon. He
wrote it out on pages the exact size of those in the Bible, and did not
scruple to fasten these into the Holy Book itself. At theatres a sullen
thunder of angry voices behind the scene represents a crowd in a rage,
and such a low, long-drawn howl swept the common when Mr. Watts was
found out. To follow a pastor who “read” seemed to the Auld Lichts like
claiming heaven on false pretences. In ten minutes the session alone,
with Lang Tammas and Hendry, were on the common. They were watched by
many from afar off, and (when one comes to think of it now) looked a
little curious jumping, like trout at flies, at the damning papers still
fluttering in the air. The minister was never seen in our parts again,
but he is still remembered as “Paper Watts.”
Mr. Dishart in the pulpit was the reward of his upbringing. At ten he
had entered the university. Before he was in his teens he was practising
the art of gesticulation in his father's gallery pew. From distant
congregations people came to marvel at him. He was never more than
comparatively young. So long as the pulpit trappings of the kirk at
Thrums lasted he could be seen, once he was fairly under way with his
sermon, but dimly in a cloud of dust. He introduced headaches. In a
grand transport of enthusiasm he once flung his arms over the pulpit and
caught Lang Tammas on the forehead. Leaning forward, with his chest on
the cushions, he would pommel the Evil One with both hands, and
then, whirling round to the left, shake his fist at Bell Whamond's
neckerchief. With a sudden jump he would fix Pete Todd's youngest boy
catching flies at the laft window. Stiffening unexpectedly, he would
leap three times in the air, and then gather himself in a corner for a
fearsome spring. When he wept he seemed to be laughing, and he laughed
in a paroxysm of tears. He tried to tear the devil out of the pulpit
rails. When he was not a teetotum he was a windmill. His pump position
was the most appalling. Then he glared motionless at his admiring
listeners, as if he had fallen into a trance with his arm upraised. The
hurricane broke next moment. Nanny Sutie bore up under the shadow of the
windmill--which would have been heavier had Auld Licht ministers worn
gowns--but the pump affected her to tears. She was stone-deaf.
For the first year or more of his ministry an Auld Licht minister was
a mouse among cats. Both in the pulpit and out of it they watched for
unsound doctrine, and when he strayed they took him by the neck. Mr.
Dishart, however, had been brought up in the true way, and seldom gave
his people a chance. In time, it may be said, they grew despondent, and
settled in their uncomfortable pews with all suspicion of lurking heresy
allayed. It was only on such Sabbaths as Mr. Dishart changed pulpits
with another minister that they cocked their ears and leaned forward
eagerly to snap the preacher up.
Mr. Dishart had his trials. There was the split in the kirk, too,
that comes once at least to every Auld Licht minister. He was long in
marrying. The congregation were thinking of approaching him, through the
medium of his servant, Easie Haggart, on the subject of matrimony; for
a bachelor coming on for twenty-two, with an income of eighty pounds per
annum, seemed an anomaly--when one day he took the canal for Edinburgh
and returned with his bride. His people nodded their heads, but said
nothing to the minister. If he did not choose to take them into his
confidence, it was no affair of theirs. That there was something queer
about the marriage, however, seemed certain. Sandy Whamond, who was a
soured man after losing his eldership, said that he believed she had
been an “Englishy”--in other words, had belonged to the English Church;
but it is not probable that Mr. Dishart would have gone the length of
that. The secret is buried in his grave.
Easie Haggart jagged the minister sorely. She grew loquacious with
years, and when he had company would stand at the door joining in the
conversation. If the company was another minister, she would take a
chair and discuss Mr. Dishart's infirmities with him. The Auld Lichts
loved their minister, but they saw even more clearly than himself the
necessity for his humiliation. His wife made all her children's clothes,
but Sanders Gow complained that she looked too like their sister. In one
week three of the children died, and on the Sabbath following it
rained. Mr. Dishart preached, twice breaking down altogether and gaping
strangely round the kirk (there was no dust flying that day), and spoke
of the rain as angels' tears for three little girls. The Auld Lichts let
it pass, but, as Lang Tammas said in private (for, of course, the thing
was much discussed at the looms), if you materialize angels in that way,
where are you going to stop?
It was on the fast-days that the Auld Licht kirk showed what it was
capable of, and, so to speak, left all the other churches in Thrums far
behind. The fast came round once every summer, beginning on a Thursday,
when all the looms were hushed, and two services were held in the kirk
of about three hours' length each. A minister from another town assisted
at these times, and when the service ended the members filed in at
one door and out at another, passing on their way Mr. Dishart and his
elders, who dispensed “tokens” at the foot of the pulpit. Without a
token, which was a metal lozenge, no one could take the sacrament on
the coming Sabbath, and many a member has Mr. Dishart made miserable by
refusing him his token for gathering wild-flowers, say, on a Lord's Day
(as testified to by another member). Women were lost who cooked dinners
on the Sabbath, or took to colored ribbons, or absented themselves from
church without sufficient cause. On the fast-day fists were shaken at
Mr. Dishart as he walked sternly homeward, but he was undismayed. Next
day there were no services in the kirk, for Auld Lichts could not afford
many holidays, but they weaved solemnly, with Saturday and the Sabbath
and Monday to think of. On Saturday service began at two and lasted
until nearly seven. Two sermons were preached, but there was no
interval. The sacrament was dispensed on the Sabbath. Nowadays the
“tables” in the Auld Licht kirk are soon “served,” for the attendance
has decayed, and most of the pews in the body of the church are made
use of. In the days of which I speak, however, the front pews alone were
hung with white, and it was in them only the sacrament was administered.
As many members as could get into them delivered up their tokens and
took the first table. Then they made room for others, who sat in their
pews awaiting their turn. What with tables, the preaching, and unusually
long prayers, the service lasted from eleven to six. At half-past six
a two hours' service began, either in the kirk or on the common, from
which no one who thought much about his immortal soul would have dared
(or cared) to absent himself. A four hours' service on the Monday,
which, like that of the Saturday, consisted of two services in one, but
began at eleven instead of two, completed the programme.
On those days, if you were a poor creature and wanted to acknowledge it,
you could leave the church for a few minutes and return to it, but the
creditable thing was to sit on. Even among the children there was a keen
competition, fostered by their parents, to sit each other out, and be in
at the death.
The other Thrums kirks held the sacrament at the same time, but not
with the same vehemence. As far north from the school-house as Thrums
is south of it, nestles the little village of Quharity, and there the
fast-day was not a day of fasting. In most cases the people had to go
many miles to church. They drove or rode (two on a horse), or walked in
from other glens. Without “the tents,” therefore, the congregation, with
a long day before them, would have been badly off. Sometimes one tent
sufficed; at other times rival publicans were on the ground. The tents
were those in use at the feeing and other markets, and you could get
anything inside them, from broth made in a “boiler” to the firiest
whiskey. They were planted just outside the kirk-gate--long, low tents
of dirty white canvas--so that when passing into the church or out of
it you inhaled their odors. The congregation emerged austerely from the
church, shaking their heads solemnly over the minister's remarks, and
their feet carried them into the tent. There was no mirth, no unseemly
revelry, but there was a great deal of hard drinking. Eventually the
tents were done away with, but not until the services on the fast-days
were shortened. The Auld Licht ministers were the only ones who
preached against the tents with any heart, and since the old dominie, my
predecessor at the school-house, died, there has not been an Auld Licht
permanently resident in the glen of Quharity.
Perhaps nothing took it out of the Auld Licht males so much as a
christening. Then alone they showed symptoms of nervousness, more
especially after the remarkable baptism of Eppie Whamond. I could
tell of several scandals in connection with the kirk. There was, for
instance, the time when Easie Haggart saved the minister. In a fit of
temporary mental derangement the misguided man had one Sabbath
day, despite the entreaties of his affrighted spouse, called at the
post-office, and was on the point of reading the letter there received
when Easie, who had slipped on her bonnet and followed him, snatched
the secular thing from his hands. There was the story that ran like fire
through Thrums and crushed an innocent man, to the effect that Pete
Todd had been in an Edinburgh theatre countenancing the play-actors.
Something could be made, too, of the retribution that came to Charlie
Ramsay, who woke in his pew to discover that its other occupant, his
little son Jamie, was standing on the seat divesting himself of his
clothes in presence of a horrified congregation. Jamie had begun
stealthily, and had very little on when Charlie seized him. But having
my choice of scandals I prefer the christening one--the unique case of
Eppie Whamond, who was born late on Saturday night and baptized in the
kirk on the following forenoon.
To the casual observer the Auld Licht always looked as if he were
returning from burying a near relative. Yet when I met him hobbling down
the street, preternaturally grave and occupied, experience taught me
that he was preparing for a christening. How the minister would have
borne himself in the event of a member of his congregation's wanting the
baptism to take place at home it is not easy to say; but I shudder to
think of the public prayers for the parents that would certainly have
followed. The child was carried to the kirk through rain, or snow, or
sleet, or wind; the father took his seat alone in the front pew, under
the minister's eye, and the service was prolonged far on into the
afternoon. But though the references in the sermon to that unhappy
object of interest in the front pew were many and pointed, his time had
not really come until the minister signed to him to advance as far as
the second step of the pulpit stairs. The nervous father clenched the
railing in a daze, and cowered before the ministerial heckling.
From warning the minister passed to exhortation, from exhortation to
admonition, from admonition to searching questioning, from questioning
to prayer and wailing. When the father glanced up, there was the radiant
boy in the pulpit looking as if he would like to jump down his throat.
If he hung his head the minister would ask, with a groan, whether he was
unprepared; and the whole congregation would sigh out the response
that Mr. Dishart had hit it. When he replied audibly to the minister's
uncomfortable questions, a pained look at his flippancy travelled
from the pulpit all round the pews; and when he only bowed his head in
answer, the minister paused sternly, and the congregation wondered what
the man meant. Little wonder that Davie Haggart took to drinking when
his turn came for occupying that front pew.
If wee Eppie Whamond's birth had been deferred until the beginning of
the week, or humility had shown more prominently among her mother's
virtues, the kirk would have been saved a painful scandal, and Sandy
Whamond might have retained his eldership. Yet it was a foolish but
wifely pride in her husband's official position that turned Bell Dundas'
head--a wild ambition to beat all baptismal record.
Among the wives she was esteemed a poor body whose infant did not see
the inside of the kirk within a fortnight of its birth. Forty years ago
it was an accepted superstition in Thrums that the ghosts of children
who had died before they were baptized went wailing and wringing their
hands round the kirk-yard at nights, and that they would continue to do
this until the crack of doom. When the Auld Licht children grew up,
too, they crowed over those of their fellows whose christening had
been deferred until a comparatively late date, and the mothers who had
needlessly missed a Sabbath for long afterward hung their heads. That
was a good and creditable birth which took place early in the week, thus
allowing time for suitable christening preparations; while to be born on
a Friday or a Saturday was to humiliate your parents, besides being an
extremely ominous beginning for yourself. Without seeking to vindicate
Bell Dundas' behavior, I may note, as an act of ordinary fairness, that,
being the leading elder's wife, she was sorely tempted. Eppie made her
appearance at 9:45 on a Saturday night.
In the hurry and skurry that ensued, Sandy escaped sadly to the square.
His infant would be baptized eight days old--one of the longest deferred
christenings of the year. Sandy was shivering under the clock when I met
him accidentally, and took him home. But by that time the harm had been
done. Several of the congregation had been roused from their beds to
hear his lamentations, of whom the men sympathized with him, while the
wives triumphed austerely over Bell Dundas. As I wrung poor Sandy's
hand, I hardly noticed that a bright light showed distinctly between the
shutters of his kitchen-window; but the elder himself turned pale and
breathed quickly. It was then fourteen minutes past twelve.
My heart sank within me on the following forenoon, when Sandy Whamond
walked, with a queer twitching face, into the front pew under a glare of
eyes from the body of the kirk and the laft. An amazed buzz went round
the church, followed by a pursing up of lips and hurried whisperings.
Evidently Sandy had been driven to it against his own judgment. The
scene is still vivid before me: the minister suspecting no guile, and
omitting the admonitory stage out of compliment to the elder's standing;
Sandy's ghastly face; the proud godmother (aged twelve) with the
squalling baby in her arms; the horror of the congregation to a man and
woman. A slate fell from Sandy's house even as he held up the babe
to the minister to receive a “droukin'” of water, and Eppie cried so
vigorously that her shamed godmother had to rush with her to the vestry.
Now things are not as they should be when an Auld Licht infant does not
quietly sit out her first service.
Bell tried for a time to carry her head high; but Sandy ceased to
whistle at his loom, and the scandal was a rolling stone that soon
passed over him. Briefly it amounted to this: that a bairn born
within two hours of midnight on Saturday could not have been ready for
christening at the kirk next day without the breaking of the Sabbath.
Had the secret of the nocturnal light been mine alone all might have
been well; but Betsy Mund's evidence was irrefutable. Great had been
Bell's cunning, but Betsy had outwitted her. Passing the house on the
eventful night, Betsy had observed Marget Dundas, Bell's sister, open
the door and creep cautiously to the window, the chinks in the outside
shutters of which she cunningly closed up with “tow.” As in a flash the
disgusted Betsy saw what Bell was up to, and, removing the tow, planted
herself behind the dilapidated dyke opposite and awaited events.
Questioned at a special meeting of the office-bearers in the vestry,
she admitted that the lamp was extinguished soon after twelve o'clock,
though the fire burned brightly all night. There had been unnecessary
feasting during the night, and six eggs were consumed before
breakfast-time. Asked how she knew this, she admitted having counted the
eggshells that Marget had thrown out of doors in the morning. This, with
the testimony of the persons from whom Sandy had sought condolence on
the Saturday night, was the case for the prosecution. For the defence,
Bell maintained that all preparations stopped when the clock struck
twelve, and even hinted that the bairn had been born on Saturday
afternoon. But Sandy knew that he and his had got a fall. In the
forenoon of the following Sabbath the minister preached from the text,
“Be sure your sin will find you out;” and in the afternoon from “Pride
goeth before a fall.” He was grand. In the evening Sandy tendered his
resignation of office, which was at once accepted. Webs were behind-hand
for a week, owing to the length of the prayers offered up for Bell; and
Lang Tammas ruled in Sandy's stead.