THE FALL OF EARLSTOUN.
It was toward the mellow end of August that there came a sough of things
terrible wafted down the fair glen of the Kens, a sough which neither
lost in volume nor in bitterness when it turned into the wider strath of
the Dee.
It arrived in time at the Manse of Balmaghie, as all things are sure to
turn manseward ere a day pass in the land of Galloway.
One evening in the quiet space between the end of hay and the first
sickle-sweep of harvest, Hob came in with more than his ordinary solemn
staidness.
But he said nothing till we were over with the taking of the Book and
ready to go to bed. Then as he was winding the watch I had brought him
from Edinburgh he glanced up once at me.
“When ye were last at Earlstoun,” he said, “heard ye any news?”
I thought he meant at first that Mary was to be married, and it may be
that my face showed too clearly the anxiety of the heart.
“About Sandy himself?” he hastened to add.
“About Alexander Gordon?” cried I in astonishment. “What ill news would
I hear about Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun?”
He nodded, finished the winding of his horologe, held it gravely to his
ear to assure himself that it was going, and then nodded again. For that
was Hob’s way.
“Well,” he said, “the Presbytery have had him complained of to them for
drunkenness and worse. And they will excommunicate him with the greatest
excommunication if he decline their authority.”
“But Earlstoun is not of their communion,” I cried, much astonished, the
matter being none of the Presbytery’s business; “he is of the Hill-folk,
an elder and mainstay among them for thirty years.”
“The Presbytery have made it their business because he is a well-wisher
of yours,” said Hob. “Besides, the report of it has already gone abroad
throughout the land, and they say that the matter will be brought
before the next general meeting of the societies.”
“And in the meantime?” I began.
“In the meantime,” said Hob, “those of the Hill-folk who form the
Committee of the Seven Thousand have suspended him from his eldership!”
Hob paused, as he ever did when he had more to tell, and was considering
how to begin.
“Go on, Hob,” cried I--testily enough, I fear.
“They say that his old seizure has come again upon him. He sits in an
upper room like a beast, and will be approached by none. And some
declare that, like King David, he feigns madness, others that he has
been driven mad by the sin and the shame.”
Now this was sore and grievous tidings to me, not only because of Mary
Gordon, but for the sake of the cause.
For Alexander Gordon had been during a generation the most noted
Covenanter of the stalwart sort in Scotland. He had suffered almost unto
death without wavering in the old ill times of Charles and James. He had
languished long in prison, both in the Castle of Edinburgh and that of
Blackness. He had come to the first frosting of the hair with a name
clear and untainted. And now when he stood at the head of the
Covenanting remnant it was like the downfall of a god that he should so
decline from his place and pride.
Then the other part of the news that the Presbytery, as the
representatives and custodians of morals, were to lay upon him the
Greater Excommunication was also a thing hard and bitter. For if they
did so it inferred the penalties of being shut off from communion with
man in the market-place and with God in the closet. The man who spoke to
the excommunicated partook of the crime. And though the power of the
Presbytery to loose and to bind had somewhat declined of late, yet,
nevertheless, the terror of the major anathema still pressed heavily
upon the people.
Hob went soberly up to his bedroom. The boards creaked as he threw
himself down, and I could hear him fall quiet in a minute. But sleep
would not come to my eyelids. At last I arose from my naked bed and took
my way down to the water-side by which I had walked oftentimes in dark
days and darker nights.
Then as I was able I put before Him who is never absent the case of
Alexander Gordon. And I wrestled long as to what I should do. Sometimes
I thought of him as my friend, and again I knew that it was chiefly for
the sake of Mary Gordon that I was thus greatly troubled.
But with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing
clearness of purpose--such as always comes to the soul of man when, out
of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up
from the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
I would go to Earlstoun and have speech with Alexander Gordon. The
Presbytery had condemned him unheard. His own folk of the Societies--at
least, some of the elders of them--had been ready to believe an evil
report and had suspended him from his office. He needed a minister’s
dealing, or at least a friend’s advice. I was both, and there was all
the more reason because I was neither of the Kirk that had condemned nor
of the communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest
and highest.
It was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, I set my hat
on my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges
to walk to Earlstoun. I heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the
gall-bushes of the meadow. A blackbird turned up some notes of his
morning song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and
the rathe summer time. Suddenly the east brightened and rent. The day
strode over the land.
I journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. It was very evidently to
be a day of fervent heat. Soon I had to take off my coat, and as I
carried it country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me
good-day from the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over
the hated park-dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
Mostly when I walked abroad I observed nothing, but to-day I saw
everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or
when stricken with fever.
I noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire
to little pebbly islands. The lilies, yellow and white, basked and
winked belated on the still and glowing water. The cattle, both nolt and
kye, stood knee-deep in the shallows--to me the sweetest and most
summersome of all rural sights.
As I drew near to New Galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks
and squabbled like shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water,
or darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing
“hide-and-seek” about the tree-trunks.
And through all pulsed the thought, “What shall I say to my friend?
Shall I be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke?
Shall I take part with Mary Gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and
fall with him? Or are my message and my Master more to me than any
earthly love?” I feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of
hearts. Nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than
myself.