No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face;
Thou hast already had her last embrace.
Elegy on Mrs. Anne Killigrew.
This second surprise had been accomplished for Jeanie Deans by the rod of
the same benevolent enchanter, whose power had transplanted her father
from the Crags of St. Leonard's to the banks of the Gare Loch. The Duke
of Argyle was not a person to forget the hereditary debt of gratitude,
which had been bequeathed to him by his grandfather, in favour of the
grandson of old Bible Butler. He had internally resolved to provide for
Reuben Butler in this kirk of Knocktarlitie, of which the incumbent had
just departed this life. Accordingly, his agent received the necessary
instructions for that purpose, under the qualifying condition always,
that the learning and character of Mr. Butler should be found proper for
the charge. Upon inquiry, these were found as highly satisfactory as had
been reported in the case of David Deans himself.
By this preferment, the Duke of Argyle more essentially benefited his
friend and _protegee_, Jeanie, than he himself was aware of, since he
contributed to remove objections in her father's mind to the match, which
he had no idea had been in existence.
We have already noticed that Deans had something of a prejudice against
Butler, which was, perhaps, in some degree owing to his possessing a sort
of consciousness that the poor usher looked with eyes of affection upon
his eldest daughter. This, in David's eyes, was a sin of presumption,
even although it should not be followed by any overt act, or actual
proposal. But the lively interest which Butler had displayed in his
distresses, since Jeanie set forth on her London expedition, and which,
therefore, he ascribed to personal respect for himself individually, had
greatly softened the feelings of irritability with which David had
sometimes regarded him. And, while he was in this good disposition
towards Butler, another incident took place which had great influence on
the old man's mind. So soon as the shock of Effie's second elopement was
over, it was Deans's early care to collect and refund to the Laird of
Dumbiedikes the money which he had lent for Effie's trial, and for
Jeanie's travelling expenses. The Laird, the pony, the cocked hat, and
the tabacco-pipe, had not been seen at St. Leonard's Crags for many a
day; so that, in order to pay this debt, David was under the necessity of
repairing in person to the mansion of Dumbiedikes.
He found it in a state of unexpected bustle. There were workmen pulling
down some of the old hangings, and replacing them with others, altering,
repairing, scrubbing, painting, and white-washing. There was no knowing
the old house, which had been so long the mansion of sloth and silence.
The Laird himself seemed in some confusion, and his reception, though
kind, lacked something of the reverential cordiality, with which he used
to greet David Deans. There was a change also, David did not very well
know of what nature, about the exterior of this landed proprietor--an
improvement in the shape of his garments, a spruceness in the air with
which they were put on, that were both novelties. Even the old hat looked
smarter; the cock had been newly pointed, the lace had been refreshed,
and instead of slouching backward or forward on the Laird's head, as it
happened to be thrown on, it was adjusted with a knowing inclination over
one eye.
David Deans opened his business, and told down the cash. Dumbiedikes
steadily inclined his ear to the one, and counted the other with great
accuracy, interrupting David, while he was talking of the redemption of
the captivity of Judah, to ask him whether he did not think one or two of
the guineas looked rather light. When he was satisfied on this point, had
pocketed his money, and had signed a receipt, he addressed David with
some little hesitation,--"Jeanie wad be writing ye something, gudeman?"
"About the siller?" replied David--"Nae doubt, she did."
"And did she say nae mair about me?" asked the Laird.
"Nae mair but kind and Christian wishes--what suld she hae said?" replied
David, fully expecting that the Laird's long courtship (if his dangling
after Jeanie deserves so active a name) was now coming to a point. And so
indeed it was, but not to that point which he wished or expected.
"Aweel, she kens her ain mind best, gudeman. I hae made a clean house o'
Jenny Balchristie, and her niece. They were a bad pack--steal'd meat and
mault, and loot the carters magg the coals--I'm to be married the morn,
and kirkit on Sunday."
Whatever David felt, he was too proud and too steady-minded to show any
unpleasant surprise in his countenance and manner.
"I wuss ye happy, sir, through Him that gies happiness--marriage is an
honourable state."
"And I am wedding into an honourable house, David--the Laird of
Lickpelf's youngest daughter--she sits next us in the kirk, and that's
the way I came to think on't."
There was no more to be said but again to wish the Laird joy, to taste a
cup of his liquor, and to walk back again to St. Leonard's, musing on the
mutability of human affairs and human resolutions. The expectation that
one day or other Jeanie would be Lady Dumbiedikes, had, in spite of
himself, kept a more absolute possession of David's mind than he himself
was aware of. At least, it had hitherto seemed a union at all times
within his daughter's reach, whenever she might choose to give her silent
lover any degree of encouragement, and now it was vanished for ever.
David returned, therefore, in no very gracious humour for so good a man.
He was angry with Jeanie for not having encouraged the Laird--he was
angry with the Laird for requiring encouragement--and he was angry with
himself for being angry at all on the occasion.
On his return he found the gentleman who managed the Duke of Argyle's
affairs was desirous of seeing him, with a view to completing the
arrangement between them. Thus, after a brief repose, he was obliged to
set off anew for Edinburgh, so that old May Hettly declared, "That a'
this was to end with the master just walking himself aff his feet."
When the business respecting the farm had been talked over and arranged,
the professional gentleman acquainted David Deans, in answer to his
inquiries concerning the state of public worship, that it was the
pleasure of the Duke to put an excellent young clergyman, called Reuben
Butler, into the parish, which was to be his future residence.
"Reuben Butler!" exclaimed David--"Reuben Butler, the usher at Liberton?"
"The very same," said the Duke's commissioner; "his Grace has heard an
excellent character of him, and has some hereditary obligations to him
besides--few ministers will be so comfortable as I am directed to make
Mr. Butler."
"Obligations?--The Duke?--Obligations to Reuben Butler--Reuben Butler a
placed minister of the Kirk of Scotland?" exclaimed David, in
interminable astonishment, for somehow he had been led by the bad success
which Butler had hitherto met with in all his undertakings, to consider
him as one of those step-sons of Fortune, whom she treats with unceasing
rigour, and ends with disinheriting altogether.
There is, perhaps, no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of
a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the
esteem of others. When assured of the reality of Butler's change of
prospects, David expressed his great satisfaction at his success in life,
which, he observed, was entirely owing to himself (David). "I advised his
puir grand-mother, who was but a silly woman, to breed him up to the
ministry; and I prophesied that, with a blessing on his endeavours, he
would become a polished shaft in the temple. He may be something ower
proud o' his carnal learning, but a gude lad, and has the root of the
matter--as ministers gang now, where yell find ane better, ye'll find ten
waur, than Reuben Butler."
He took leave of the man of business, and walked homeward, forgetting his
weariness in the various speculations to which this wonderful piece of
intelligence gave rise. Honest David had now, like other great men, to go
to work to reconcile his speculative principles with existing
circumstances; and, like other great men, when they set seriously about
that task, he was tolerably successful.
Ought Reuben Butler in conscience to accept of this preferment in the
Kirk of Scotland, subject as David at present thought that establishment
was to the Erastian encroachments of the civil power? This was the
leading question, and he considered it carefully. "The Kirk of Scotland
was shorn of its beams, and deprived of its full artillery and banners of
authority; but still it contained zealous and fructifying pastors,
attentive congregations, and, with all her spots and blemishes, the like
of this Kirk was nowhere else to be seen upon earth."
David's doubts had been too many and too critical to permit him ever
unequivocally to unite himself with any of the dissenters, who upon
various accounts absolutely seceded from the national church. He had
often joined in communion with such of the established clergy as
approached nearest to the old Presbyterian model and principles of 1640.
And although there were many things to be amended in that system, yet he
remembered that he, David Deans, had himself ever been an humble pleader
for the good old cause in a legal way, but without rushing into
right-hand excesses, divisions and separations. But, as an enemy to
separation, he might join the right-hand of fellowship with a minister of
the Kirk of Scotland in its present model. _Ergo,_ Reuben Butler might
take possession of the parish of Knocktarlitie, without forfeiting his
friendship or favour--Q. E. D. But, secondly, came the trying point of
lay-patronage, which David Deans had ever maintained to be a coming in by
the window, and over the wall, a cheating and starving the souls of a
whole parish, for the purpose of clothing the back and filling the belly
of the incumbent.
This presentation, therefore, from the Duke of Argyle, whatever was the
worth and high character of that nobleman, was a limb of the brazen
image, a portion of the evil thing, and with no kind of consistency could
David bend his mind to favour such a transaction. But if the parishioners
themselves joined in a general call to Reuben Butler to be their pastor,
it did not seem quite so evident that the existence of this unhappy
presentation was a reason for his refusing them the comforts of his
doctrine. If the Presbytery admitted him to the kirk, in virtue rather of
that act of patronage than of the general call of the congregation, that
might be their error, and David allowed it was a heavy one. But if Reuben
Butler accepted of the cure as tendered to him by those whom he was
called to teach, and who had expressed themselves desirous to learn,
David, after considering and reconsidering the matter, came, through the
great virtue of if, to be of opinion that he might safely so act in that
matter.
There remained a third stumbling-block--the oaths to Government exacted
from the established clergymen, in which they acknowledge an Erastian
king and parliament, and homologate the incorporating Union between
England and Scotland, through which the latter kingdom had become part
and portion of the former, wherein Prelacy, the sister of Popery, had
made fast her throne, and elevated the horns of her mitre. These were
symptoms of defection which had often made David cry out, "My bowels--my
bowels!--I am pained at the very heart!" And he remembered that a godly
Bow-head matron had been carried out of the Tolbooth church in a swoon,
beyond the reach of brandy and burnt feathers, merely on hearing these
fearful words, "It is enacted by the Lords _spiritual_ and temporal,"
pronounced from a Scottish pulpit, in the proem to the Porteous
Proclamation. These oaths were, therefore, a deep compliance and dire
abomination--a sin and a snare, and a danger and a defection. But this
shibboleth was not always exacted. Ministers had respect to their own
tender consciences, and those of their brethren; and it was not till a
later period that the reins of discipline were taken up tight by the
General Assemblies and Presbyteries. The peacemaking particle came again
to David's assistance. _If_ an incumbent was not called upon to make such
compliances, and _if_ he got a right entry into the church without
intrusion, and by orderly appointment, why, upon the whole, David Deans
came to be of opinion, that the said incumbent might lawfully enjoy the
spirituality and temporality of the cure of souls at Knocktarlitie, with
stipend, manse, glebe, and all thereunto appertaining.
The best and most upright-minded men are so strongly influenced by
existing circumstances, that it would be somewhat cruel to inquire too
nearly what weight parental affection gave to these ingenious trains of
reasoning. Let David Deans's situation be considered. He was just
deprived of one daughter, and his eldest, to whom he owed so much, was
cut off, by the sudden resolution of Dumbiedikes, from the high hope
which David had entertained, that she might one day be mistress of that
fair lordship. Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his
spirits, Butler comes before his imagination--no longer the half-starved
threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of
Knocktarlitie, beloved by his congregation--exemplary in his
life--powerful in his doctrine--doing the duty of the kirk as never
Highland minister did before--turning sinners as a colley dog turns
sheep--a favourite of the Duke of Argyle, and drawing a stipend of eight
hundred punds Scots, and four chalders of victual. Here was a match,
making up in David's mind, in a tenfold degree, the disappointment in
the case of Dumbiedikes, in so far as the goodman of St. Leonard's held
a powerful minister in much greater admiration than a mere landed
proprietor. It did not occur to him, as an additional reason in favour
of the match, that Jeanie might herself have some choice in the matter;
for the idea of consulting her feelings never once entered into the
honest man's head, any more than the possibility that her inclination
might perhaps differ from his own.
The result of his meditations was, that he was called upon to take the
management of the whole affair into his own hand, and give, if it should
be found possible without sinful compliance, or backsliding, or defection
of any kind, a worthy pastor to the kirk of Knocktarlitie. Accordingly,
by the intervention of the honest dealer in butter-milk who dwelt in
Liberton, David summoned to his presence Reuben Butler. Even from this
worthy messenger he was unable to conceal certain swelling emotions of
dignity, insomuch, that, when the carter had communicated his message to
the usher, he added, that "Certainly the Gudeman of St. Leonard's had
some grand news to tell him, for he was as uplifted as a midden-cock upon
pattens."
Butler, it may readily be conceived, immediately obeyed the summons. He
was a plain character, in which worth and good sense and simplicity were
the principal ingredients; but love, on this occasion, gave him a certain
degree of address. He had received an intimation of the favour designed
him by the Duke of Argyle, with what feelings those only can conceive who
have experienced a sudden prospect of being raised to independence and
respect from penury and toil. He resolved, however, that the old man
should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first
to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also
determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to
expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without
irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the
most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were
many doubts which David Deans could himself clear up to his own
satisfaction, yet he might have been by no means disposed to accept the
solution of any other person; and to engage him in an argument would have
been certain to confirm him at once and for ever in the opinion which
Butler chanced to impugn.
He received his friend with an appearance of important gravity, which
real misfortune had long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged
to those days of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow
Butler, and dictated the mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He
made known to Reuben, with great prolixity, the prospect of his changing
his present residence for the charge of the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm
in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various advantages of the situation
with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the patient hearer, that
nothing had so much moved him to acceptance, as the sense that, by his
skill in bestial, he could render the most important services to his
Grace the Duke of Argyle, to whom, "in the late unhappy circumstance"
(here a tear dimmed the sparkle of pride in the old man's eye), "he had
been sae muckle obliged."
"To put a rude Hielandman into sic a charge," he continued, "what could
be expected but that he suld be sic a chiefest herdsman, as wicked Doeg
the Edomite? whereas, while this grey head is to the fore, not a clute o'
them but sall be as weel cared for as if they were the fatted kine of
Pharaoh.--And now, Reuben, lad, seeing we maun remove our tent to a
strange country, ye will be casting a dolefu' look after us, and thinking
with whom ye are to hold counsel anent your government in thae slippery
and backsliding times; and nae doubt remembering, that the auld man,
David Deans, was made the instrument to bring you out of the mire of
schism and heresy, wherein your father's house delighted to wallow; aften
also, nae doubt, when ye are pressed wi' ensnaring trials and tentations
and heart-plagues, you, that are like a recruit that is marching for the
first time to the touk of drum, will miss the auld, bauld, and
experienced veteran soldier that has felt the brunt of mony a foul day,
and heard the bullets whistle as aften as he has hairs left on his auld
pow."
It is very possible that Butler might internally be of opinion, that the
reflection on his ancestor's peculiar tenets might have been spared, or
that he might be presumptuous enough even to think, that, at his years,
and with his own lights, he might be able to hold his course without the
pilotage of honest David. But he only replied, by expressing his regret,
that anything should separate him from an ancient, tried, and
affectionate friend.
"But how can it be helped, man?" said David, twisting his features into a
sort of smile--"How can we help it?--I trow, ye canna tell me that--Ye
maun leave that to ither folk--to the Duke of Argyle and me, Reuben. It's
a gude thing to hae friends in this warld--how muckle better to hae an
interest beyond it!"
And David, whose piety, though not always quite rational, was as sincere
as it was habitual and fervent, looked reverentially upward and paused.
Mr. Butler intimated the pleasure with which he would receive his
friend's advice on a subject so important, and David resumed.
"What think ye now, Reuben, of a kirk--a regular kirk under the present
establishment?--Were sic offered to ye, wad ye be free to accept it, and
under whilk provisions?--I am speaking but by way of query."
Butler replied, "That if such a prospect were held out to him, he would
probably first consult whether he was likely to be useful to the parish
he should be called to; and if there appeared a fair prospect of his
proving so, his friend must be aware, that in every other point of view,
it would be highly advantageous for him."
"Right, Reuben, very right, lad," answered the monitor, "your ain
conscience is the first thing to be satisfied--for how sall he teach
others that has himself sae ill learned the Scriptures, as to grip for
the lucre of foul earthly preferment, sic as gear and manse, money and
victual, that which is not his in a spiritual sense--or wha makes his
kirk a stalking-horse, from behind which he may tak aim at his stipend?
But I look for better things of you--and specially ye maun be minded not
to act altogether on your ain judgment, for therethrough comes sair
mistakes, backslidings and defections, on the left and on the right. If
there were sic a day of trial put to you, Reuben. you, who are a young
lad, although it may be ye are gifted wi' the carnal tongues, and those
whilk were spoken at Rome, whilk is now the seat of the scarlet
abomination, and by the Greeks, to whom the Gospel was as foolishness,
yet nae-the-less ye may be entreated by your weel-wisher to take the
counsel of those prudent and resolved and weather-withstanding
professors, wha hae kend what it was to lurk on banks and in mosses, in
bogs and in caverns, and to risk the peril of the head rather than
renounce the honesty of the heart."
Butler replied, "That certainly, possessing such a friend as he hoped and
trusted he had in the goodman himself, who had seen so many changes in
the preceding century, he should be much to blame if he did not avail
himself of his experience and friendly counsel."
"Eneugh said--eneugh said, Reuben," said David Deans, with internal
exultation; "and say that ye were in the predicament whereof I hae
spoken, of a surety I would deem it my duty to gang to the root o' the
matter, and lay bare to you the ulcers and imposthumes, and the sores and
the leprosies, of this our time, crying aloud and sparing not."
David Deans was now in his element. He commenced his examination of the
doctrines and belief of the Christian Church with the very Culdees, from
whom he passed to John Knox,--from John Knox to the recusants in James
the Sixth's time--Bruce, Black, Blair, Livingstone,--from them to the
brief, and at length triumphant period of the Presbyterian Church's
splendour, until it was overrun by the English Independents. Then
followed the dismal times of prelacy, the indulgences, seven in number,
with all their shades and bearings, until he arrived at the reign of King
James the Second, in which he himself had been, in his own mind, neither
an obscure actor nor an obscure sufferer. Then was Butler doomed to hear
the most detailed and annotated edition of what he had so often heard
before,--David Deans's confinement, namely, in the iron cage in the
Canongate Tolbooth, and the cause thereof.
We should be very unjust to our friend David Deans, if we should
"pretermit"--to use his own expression--a narrative which he held
essential to his fame. A drunken trooper of the Royal Guards, Francis
Gordon by name, had chased five or six of the skulking Whigs, among whom
was our friend David; and after he had compelled them to stand, and was
in the act of brawling with them, one of their number fired a
pocket-pistol, and shot him dead. David used to sneer and shake his head
when any one asked him whether _he_ had been the instrument of removing
this wicked persecutor from the face of the earth. In fact the merit of
the deed lay between him and his friend, Patrick Walker, the pedlar,
whose words he was so fond of quoting. Neither of them cared directly to
claim the merit of silencing Mr. Francis Gordon of the Life-Guards, there
being some wild cousins of his about Edinburgh, who might have been even
yet addicted to revenge, but yet neither of them chose to disown or yield
to the other the merit of this active defence of their religious rights.
David said, that if he had fired a pistol then, it was what he never did
after or before. And as for Mr. Patrick Walker, he has left it upon
record, that his great surprise was, that so small a pistol could kill so
big a man. These are the words of that venerable biographer, whose trade
had not taught him by experience, that an inch was as good as an ell.
"He," (Francis Gordon) "got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol,
rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk
man, which notwithstanding killed him dead!"*
* Note S. Death of Francis Gordon.
Upon the extensive foundation which the history of the kirk afforded,
during its short-lived triumph and long tribulation, David, with length
of breath and of narrative, which would have astounded any one but a
lover of his daughter, proceeded to lay down his own rules for guiding
the conscience of his friend, as an aspirant to serve in the ministry.
Upon this subject, the good man went through such a variety of nice and
casuistical problems, supposed so many extreme cases, made the
distinctions so critical and nice betwixt the right hand and the left
hand--betwixt compliance and defection--holding back and stepping
aside--slipping and stumbling--snares and errors--that at length, after
having limited the path of truth to a mathematical line, he was brought
to the broad admission, that each man's conscience, after he had gained
a certain view of the difficult navigation which he was to encounter,
would be the best guide for his pilotage. He stated the examples and
arguments for and against the acceptance of a kirk on the present
revolution model, with much more impartiality to Butler than he had been
able to place them before his own view. And he concluded, that his young
friend ought to think upon these things, and be guided by the voice of
his own conscience, whether he could take such an awful trust as the
charge of souls without doing injury to his own internal conviction of
what is right or wrong.
When David had finished his very long harangue, which was only
interrupted by monosyllables, or little more, on the part of Butler, the
orator himself was greatly astonished to find that the conclusion, at
which he very naturally wished to arrive, seemed much less decisively
attained than when he had argued the case in his own mind.
In this particular, David's current of thinking and speaking only
illustrated the very important and general proposition, concerning the
excellence of the publicity of debate. For, under the influence of any
partial feeling, it is certain, that most men can more easily reconcile
themselves to any favourite measure, when agitating it in their own mind,
than when obliged to expose its merits to a third party, when the
necessity of seeming impartial procures for the opposite arguments a much
more fair statement than that which he affords it in tacit meditation.
Having finished what he had to say, David thought himself obliged to be
more explicit in point of fact, and to explain that this was no
hypothetical case, but one on which (by his own influence and that of the
Duke of Argyle) Reuben Butler would soon be called to decide.
It was even with something like apprehension that David Deans heard
Butler announce, in return to this communication, that he would take that
night to consider on what he had said with such kind intentions, and
return him an answer the next morning. The feelings of the father
mastered David on this occasion. He pressed Butler to spend the evening
with him--He produced, most unusual at his meals, one, nay, two bottles
of aged strong ale.--He spoke of his daughter--of her merits--her
housewifery--her thrift--her affection. He led Butler so decidedly up to
a declaration of his feelings towards Jeanie, that, before nightfall, it
was distinctly understood she was to be the bride of Reuben Butler; and
if they thought it indelicate to abridge the period of deliberation which
Reuben had stipulated, it seemed to be sufficiently understood betwixt
them, that there was a strong probability of his becoming minister of
Knocktarlitie, providing the congregation were as willing to accept of
him, as the Duke to grant him the presentation. The matter of the oaths,
they agreed, it was time enough to dispute about, whenever the shibboleth
should be tendered.
Many arrangements were adopted that evening, which were afterwards
ripened by correspondence with the Duke of Argyle's man of business, who
intrusted Deans and Butler with the benevolent wish of his principal,
that they should all meet with Jeanie, on her return from England, at the
Duke's hunting-lodge in Roseneath.
This retrospect, so far as the placid loves of Jeanie Deans and Reuben
Butler are concerned, forms a full explanation of the preceding narrative
up to their meeting on the island, as already mentioned.