standard of this paternal master-work--which, indeed, proved to be too
strong meat for any but a few of the sterner office-bearers, who had
never heard their brother-elders' weaknesses so properly handled before.
But they had, nevertheless, to go round the people and tell them that
what the Doctor had said was to be understood spiritually, and chiefly
as a warning to other denominations, else there had been a thin kirk and
but one sparse table instead of the usual four or five, on the day of
high communion in the Cairn Edward Cameronian kirk.
Now, Walter could be a quiet boy in church for a certain time. He did
not very much enjoy the service, except when they sang "Old Hundred" or
"Scarborough," when he would throw back his head and warble delightedly
with the best. But he listened attentively to the prayers, and tracked
the minister over that well-kenned ground. Walter was prepared for his
regular stint, but he did not hold with either additions or innovations.
He liked to know how far he was on in the prayer, and it was with an
exhausted gasp of relief that he caught the curious lowering of the
preacher's voice which tells that the "Amen" is within reasonable
distance.
The whole congregation was good at that, and hearers began to relax
themselves from their standing postures as the minister's shrill pipe
rounded the corner and tacked for the harbour; but Walter was always
down before them. Once, however, after he had seated himself, he was put
to shame by the minister suddenly darting off on a new excursion, having
remembered some other needful supplication which he had omitted. Walter
never quite regained his confidence in Mr. Cameron after that. He had
always thought him a good and Christian man hitherto, but thereafter he
was not so sure.
Once, also, when the minister visited the farm of Drumquhat, Walter,
being caught by his granny in the very act of escaping, was haled to
instant execution with the shine of the soap on his cheeks and hair. But
the minister was kind, and did not ask for anything more abstruse than
"Man's Chief End." He inquired, however, if the boy had ever seen him
before.
"Ou ay," said Walter, confidently; "ye're the man that sat at the back
window!"
This was the position of the manse seat, and at the Fast Day service Mr.
Cameron usually sat there when a stranger preached. Not the least of
Walter's treasures, now in his library, is a dusky little squat book
called _The Peep of Day_, with an inscription on it in Mr. Cameron's
minute and beautiful backhand: "To Walter Carmichael, from the Man at
the Back Window."
The minister was grand. In fact, he usually _was_ grand. On this
particular Sunday he preached his two discourses with only the interval
of a psalm and a prayer; and his second sermon was on the spiritual
rights of a Covenanted kirk, as distinguished from the worldly
emoluments of an Erastian establishment. Nothing is so popular as to
prove to people what they already believe and that day's sermon was long
remembered among the Cameronians. It redd up their position so clearly,
and settled their precedence with such finality, that Walter, hearing
that the Frees had done far wrong in not joining the Church of the
Protests and Declarations in the year 1843, resolved to have his
school-bag full of good road-metal on the following morning, in order to
impress the Copland boys, who were Frees, with a sense of their
position.
But as the sermon proceeded on its conclusive way, the bowed ranks of
the attentive Hill Folk bent further and further forward, during the
long periods of the preacher; and when, at the close of each, they drew
in a long, united breath like the sighing of the wind, and leaned back
in their seats, Walter's head began to nod over the chapters of First
Samuel, which he was spelling out.
David's wars were a great comfort to him during long sermons. Gradually
he dropped asleep, and wakened occasionally with a start when his granny
nudged him when Saunders happened to look his way.
As the little fellow's mind thus came time and again to the surface, he
heard snatches of fiery oratory concerning the Sanquhar Declarations and
the Covenants, National and Solemn League, till it seemed to him as
though the trump of doom would crash before the minister had finished.
And he wished it would! But at last, in sheer desperation, having slept
apparently about a week, he rose with his feet upon the seat, and in his
clear, childish treble he said, being still dazed with sleep--
"Will that man no' soon be dune?"
It was thus that the movement for short services began in the Cameronian
kirk of Cairn Edward. They are an hour and twenty minutes now--a sore
declension, as all will admit.
IV. THE THREE M'HAFFIES
Again the red farm-cart rattled out of the town into the silence of the
hedges. For the first mile or two, the church-folk returning to the
moor-farm might possibly meet and, if they did so, frankly reprove with
word or look the "Sunday walkers," who bit shamefacedly, as well they
might, the ends of hawthorn twigs, and communed together apparently
without saying a word to each other. There were not many pairs of
sweethearts among them--any that were, being set down as "regardless
Englishry," the spawn of the strange, uncannylike building by the
lochside, which the "General" had been intending to finish any time
these half-dozen years.
For the most part the walkers were young men with companions of their
own sex and age, who were anxious to be considered broad in their views.
Times have changed now, for we hear that quite respectable folk, even
town-councillors, take their walks openly on Sabbath afternoons. It was
otherwise in those days.
But none of their own kind did the Drumquhat folk meet or overtake, till
at the bottom rise of the mile-long Whinnyliggate Wood the red cart came
up with the three brave little old maids who, leaving a Free kirk at
their very door, and an Established over the hill, made their way seven
long miles to the true kirk of the persecutions.
It had always been a grief to them that there was no Clavers to make
them testify up to the chin in Solway tide, or with a great fiery match
between their fingers to burn them to the bone. But what they could they
did. They trudged fourteen miles every Sabbath day, with their dresses
"fait and snod" and their linen like the very snow, to listen to the
gospel preached according to their conscience. They were all the
smallest of women, but their hearts were great, and those who knew them
hold them far more worthy of honour than the three lairds of the parish.
Of them all only one remains. (Alas, no more!) But their name and honour
shall not be forgotten on Deeside while fire burns and water runs, if
this biographer can help it. The M'Haffies were all distinguished by
their sturdy independence, but Jen M'Haffie was ever the cleverest with
her head. The parish minister had once mistaken Jen for a person of
limited intelligence; but he altered his opinion after Jen had taken him
through-hands upon the Settlement of "Aughty-nine" (1689), when the
Cameronians refused to enter into the Church of Scotland as
reconstructed by the Revolution Settlement.
The three sisters had a little shop which the two less active tended;
while Mary, the business woman of the family, resorted to Cairn Edward
every Monday and Thursday with and for a miscellaneous cargo. As she
plodded the weary way, she divided herself between conning the sermons
of the previous Sabbath, arranging her packages, and anathematising the
cuddy. "Ye person--ye awfu' person!" was her severest denunciation.
Billy was a donkey of parts. He knew what houses to call at. It is said
that he always brayed when he had to pass the Established kirk manse, in
order to express his feelings. But in spite of this Billy was not a true
Cameronian. It was always suspected that he could not be much more than
Cameronian by marriage--a "tacked-on one," in short. His walk and
conversation were by no means so straightforward, as those of one sound
in the faith ought to have been. It was easy to tell when Billy and his
cart had passed along the road, for his tracks did not go forward, like
all other wheel-marks, but meandered hither and thither across the road,
as though he had been weaving some intricate web of his own devising.
He was called the Whinnyliggate Express, and his record was a mile and a
quarter an hour, good going.
Mary herself was generally tugging at him to come on. She pulled Billy,
and Billy pulled the cart. But, nevertheless, in the long-run, it was
the will of Billy that was the ultimate law. Walter was very glad to
have the M'Haffies on the cart, both because he was allowed to walk all
the time, and because he hoped to get Mary into a good temper against
next Tuesday.
Mary came Drumquhat way twice a week--on Tuesdays and Fridays. As Wattie
went to school he met her, and, being allowed by his granny one penny to
spend at Mary's cart, he generally occupied most of church time, and all
the school hours for a day or two before these red-letter occasions, in
deciding what he would buy.
It did not make choice any easier that alternatives were strictly
limited. While he was slowly and laboriously making up his mind as to
the long-drawn-out merits of four farthing biscuits, the way that
"halfpenny Abernethies" melted in the mouth arose before him with
irresistible force. And just as he had settled to have these, the
thought of the charming explorations after the currants in a couple of
"cookies" was really too much for him. Again, the solid and enduring
charms of a penny "Jew's roll," into which he could put his lump of
butter, often entirely unsettled his mind at the last moment. The
consequence was that Wattie had always to make up his mind in the
immediate presence of the objects, and by that time neither Billy nor
Mary could brook very long delays.
It was important, therefore, on Sabbaths, to propitiate Mary as much as
possible, so that she might not cut him short and proceed on her way
without supplying his wants, as she had done at least once before. On
that occasion she said--
"D'ye think Mary M'Haffie has naething else in the world to do, but
stan' still as lang as it pleases you to gaup there! Gin ye canna tell
us what ye want, ye can e'en do withoot! Gee up, Billy! Come oot o' the
roadside--ye're aye eat-eatin', ye bursen craitur ye!"
III
THE COURTSHIP OF TAMMOCK THACKANRAIP, AYRSHIREMAN
_The peats were brought, the fires were set,
While roared November's gale;
With unbound mirth the neighbours met
To speed the canty tale_.
A bask, dry November night at Drumquhat made us glad to gather in to the
goodwife's fire. I had been round the farm looking after the sheep.
Billy Beattie, a careless loon, was bringing in the kye. He was whacking
them over the rumps with a hazel. I came on him suddenly and changed the
direction of the hazel, which pleased my wife when I told her.
"The rackless young vaigabond," said she--"I'll rump him!"
"Bide ye, wife; I attended to that mysel'."
The minister had been over at Drumquhat in the afternoon, and the wife
had to tell me what he had said to her, and especially what she had said
to him. For my guidwife, when she has a fit of repentance and good
intentions, becomes exceedingly anxious--not about her own shortcomings,
but about mine. Then she confesses all my sins to the minister. Now, I
have telled her a score of times that this is no' bonnie, and me an
elder of twenty years' standing. But the minister kens her weakness. We
must all bear with the women-folk, even ministers, he says, for he is a
married man, an' kens.
"Guidman," she says, as soon as I got my nose by the door-cheek, "it was
an awsome peety that ye werena inby this afternoon. The minister was
graund on smokin'."
"Ay," said I; "had his brither in Liverpool sent him some guid stuff
that had never paid her Majesty's duty, as he did last year?"
"Hoots, haivers; I'll never believe that!" said she, scouring about the
kitchen and rubbing the dust out of odd corners that were clean aneuch
for the Duke of Buccleuch to take his "fower-oors" off. But that is the
way of the wife. They are queer cattle, wives--even the best of them.
Some day I shall write a book about them. It will be a book worth
buying. But the wife says that when I do, she will write a second volume
about men, that will make every married man in the parish sit up. And as
for me, I had better take a millstone about my neck and loup into the
depths of the mill-dam. That is what she says, and she is a woman of her
word. My book on wives is therefore "unavoidably delayed," as Maxwell
whiles says of his St. Mungo's letter, and capital reading it is.
"Hoots, haivers!" said the wife again. She cannot bide not being
answered. Even if she has a _grooin_' in her back, and remarks
"_Ateeshoo-oo!_" ye are bound for the sake of peace to put the question,
"What ails ye, guidwife?"
"I'll never believe that the minister smokes. He never has the gliff o'
it aboot him when he comes here."
"That's the cunnin' o' the body," said I. "He kens wha he's comin' to
see, an' he juist cuittles ye till ye gang aboot the hoose like Pussy
Bawdrons that has been strokit afore the fire, wi' your tail wavin' owre
your back."
"Think shame o' yoursel', Saunders M'Quhirr--you an elder and a man on
in years, to speak that gate."
"Gae wa' wi' ye, Mary M'Quhirr," I said. "Do ye think me sae auld? There
was but forty-aught hours and twenty meenits atween oor first scraichs
in this warld. That's no' aneuch to set ye up to sic an extent, that ye
can afford to gang aboot the hoose castin' up my age to me. There's mony
an aulder man lookin' for his second wife."
And with that, before my wife had time to think on a rouser of a reply
(I saw it in her eye, but it had not time to come away), Thomas
Thackanraip hirpled in. Thomas came from Ayrshire near forty years
since, and has been called Tammock the Ayrshireman ever since. He was
now a hearty-like man with a cottage of his own, and a cheery way with
him that made him a welcome guest at all the neighbouring farmhouses, as
he was at ours. The humours of Tammock were often the latest thing in
the countryside. He was not in the least averse to a joke against
himself, and that, I think, was the reason of a good deal of his
popularity. He went generally with his hand in the small of his back, as
if he were keeping the machinery in position while he walked. But he had
a curious young-like way with him for so old a man, and was for ever
_pook-pook_ing at the lasses wherever he went.
"Guid e'en to ye, mistress; hoo's a' at Drumquhat the nicht?" says
Tammock.
"Come your ways by, an' tak' a seat by the fire, Tammock; it's no' a
kindly nicht for auld banes," says the wife.
"Ay, guidwife, 'deed and I sympathise wi' ye," says Tammock. "It's what
we maun a' come to some day."
"Doitered auld body!" exclaimed my wife, "did ye think I was meanin'
mysel'?"
"Wha else?" said Tammock, reaching forward to get a light for his pipe
from the hearth where a little glowing knot had fallen, puffing out
sappy wheezes as it burned. He looked slyly up at the mistress as he did
so.
"Tammock," said she, standing with her arms wide set, and her hands on
that part of the onstead that appears to have been built for them, "wad
hae ye mind that I was but a lassock when ye cam' knoitin' an' hirplin'
alang the Ayrshire road frae Dalmellington."
"I mind brawly," said Tammock, drawing bravely away. "Ay, Mary, ye were
a strappin' wean. Ye said ye wadna hae me; I mind that weel. That was
the way ye fell in wi' Drumquhat, when I gied up thochts o' ye mysel'."
"_You_ gie up thochts o' me, Tammock! Was there ever siccan presumption?
Ye'll no' speak that way in my hoose. Hoo daur ye? Saunders, hear till
him. Wull ye sit there like a puddock on a post, an' listen to
this--this Ayrshireman misca' your marriet wife, Alexander M'Quhirr?
Shame till ye, man!"
My married wife was well capable of taking care of herself in anything
that appertained to the strife of tongues. In the circumstances,
therefore, I did not feel called upon to interfere.
"Ye can tak' a note o' the circumstance an' tell the minister the next
time he comes owre," said I, dry as a mill-hopper.
She whisked away into the milk-house, taking the door after her as far
as it would go with a _flaff_ that brought a bowl, which had been set on
its edge to dry, whirling off the dresser on to the stone floor.
When the wife came back, she paused before the fragments. We were
sitting smoking very peacefully and wondering what was coming.
"Wha whammelt my cheeny bowl?" said Mistress M'Quhirr, in a tone which,
had I not been innocent, would have made me take the stable.
"Wha gaed through that door last?" said I.
"The minister," says she.
"Then it maun hae been the minister that broke the bowl. Pit it by for
him till he comes. I'm no' gaun to be wracked oot o' hoose an' hame for
reckless ministers."
"But wha was't?" she said, still in doubt.
"Juist e'en the waff o' your ain coat-tails, mistress," said Tammock. "I
hae seen the day that mair nor bowls whammelt themsel's an' brak' into
flinders to be after ye."
And Tammock sighed a sigh and shook his head at the red _greesoch_ in
the grate.
"Hoots, haivers!" said the mistress. But I could see she was pleased,
and wanted Tammock to go on. He was a great man all his days with the
women-folk by just such arts. On the contrary, I am for ever getting
cracks on the crown for speaking to them as ye would do to a man body.
Some folk have the gift and it is worth a hundred a year to them at the
least.
"Ay," said Tammock thoughtfully, "ye nearly brak' my heart when I was
the grieve at the Folds, an' cam' owre in the forenichts to coort ye.
D'ye mind hoo ye used to sit on my knee, and I used to sing,
'My love she's but a lassie yet'?"
"I mind no siccan things," said Mistress M'Quhirr. "Weel do ye ken that
when ye cam' aboot the mill I was but a wee toddlin' bairn rinnin' after
the dyukes in the yaird. It's like aneuch that I sat on your knee. I hae
some mind o' you haudin' your muckle turnip watch to my lug for me to
hear it tick."
"Aweel, aweel, Mary," he said placably, "it's like aneuch that was it.
Thae auld times are apt to get a kennin' mixter-maxter in yin's held."
We got little more out of him till once the bairns were shooed off to
their beds, and the wife had been in three times at them with the broad
of her loof to make them behave themselves. But ultimately Tammock
Thackanraip agreed to spend the night with us. I saw that he wanted to
open out something by ourselves, after the kitchen was clear and the men
off to the stable.
So on the back of nine we took the book, and then drew round the red
glow of the fire in the kitchen. It is the only time in the day that the
mistress allows me to put my feet on the jambs, which is the only way
that a man can get right warmed up, from foundation to rigging, as one
might say. In this position we waited for Tammock to begin--or rather I
waited, for the wife sat quietly in the corner knitting her stocking.
"I was thinkin' o' takin' a wife gin I could get a guid, faceable-like
yin," said Tammock, thumbing the dottle down.
"Ay?" said I, and waited.
"Ye see, I'm no' as young as I yince was, and I need somebody sair."
"But I thocht aye that ye were lookin' at Tibby o' the Hilltap," said
the mistress.
"I was," said Thomas sententiously. He stroked his leg with one hand
softly, as though it had been a cat's back.
Now, Tibby o' the Hilltap was the farmer's daughter, a belle among the
bachelors, but one who had let so many lads pass her by, that she was
thought to be in danger of missing a down-sefting after all. But Tammock
had long been faithful.
"I'll gang nae mair to yon toun," said Tammock.
"Hoots, haivers!" (this was Mistress M'Quhirr's favourite expression);
"an' what for no'? What said she, Tammock, to turn you frae the
Hilltap?"
"She said what settled me," said Tammock a little sadly. "I'm thinkin'
there's nocht left for't but to tak' Bell Mulwhulter, that has been my
housekeeper, as ye ken, for twenty year. But gin I do mak' up my mind to
that, it'll be a heartbreak that I didna do it twenty year since. It wad
hae saved expense."
"'Deed, I'm nane so sure o' that," said the goodwife, listening with one
ear cocked to the muffled laughter in the boys' sleeping-room.
"Thae loons are no' asleep yet," said she, lifting an old flat-heeled
slipper and disappearing.
There was a sharp _slap-slapping_ for a minute, mixed with cries of "Oh,
mither, it was Alec!" "No, mither, it was Rob!"
Mary appeared at the door presently, breathing as she did when she had
half done with the kirning. She set the slipper in the corner to be
ready to her hand in case of further need.
"Na, na, Ayrshireman," she said; "it's maybe time aneuch as it is for
you to marry Bell Mulwhulter. It's sma' savin' o' expense to bring up a
rachle o' bairns."
"Dod, woman, I never thocht a' that," said Tammock. "It's maybe as weel
as it is."
"Ay, better a deal. Let weel alane," said the mistress.
"I doot I'll hae to do that ony way noo," said Tammock.
"But what said Tibby o' the Hilltap to ye, Tammock, that ye gied up
thochts o' her sae sudden-like?"
"Na, I can tell that to naebody," he said at last.
"Hoots, haivers!" said the wife, who wanted very much to know. "Ye ken
that it'll gang nae farder."
"Aweel," said Tammock, "I'll tell ye."
And this he had intended to do from the first, as we knew, and he knew
that we knew it. But the rules of the game had to be observed. There was
something of a woman's round-the-corner ways about Tammock all his days,
and that was the way he got on so well with them as a general
rule--though Tibby o' the Hilltap had given him the go-by, as we were
presently to hear.
"The way o't was this," began Tammock, putting a red doit of peat into
the bowl of his pipe and squinting down at it with one eye shut to see
that it glowed. "I had been payin' my respects to Tibby up at the
Hilltap off and on for a year or twa--"
"Maistly on," said my wife. Tammock paid no attention.
"Tibby didna appear to mislike it to ony extent. She was fond o' caa'in'
the crack, an' I was wullin' that she should miscaa' me as muckle as she
likit--for I'm no' yin o' your crouse, conceity young chaps to be fleyed
awa' wi' a gibe frae a lassie."
"Ye never war that a' the days o' ye, Tammock!" said the mistress.
"Ay, ye are beginnin' to mind noo, mistress," said Tammas dryly. "Weel,
the nicht afore last I gaed to the Hilltap to see Tibby, an' as usual
there was a lad or twa in the kitchen, an' the crack was gaun screevin'
roond. But I can tak' my share in that," continued Tammas modestly, "so
we fell on to the banter.
"Tibby was knitting at a reid pirnie[4] for her faither; but, of course,
I let on that it was for her guidman, and wanted her to tak' the size o'
my held so that she micht mak' it richt.
[Footnote 4: Night-cap.]
"'It'll never be on the pow o' an Ayrshire drover,' says she, snell as
the north wind.
"'An' what for that?' says I.
"'The yairn 's owre dear,' says Tibby. 'It cost twa baskets o' mushrooms
in Dumfries market!'
"'An' what price paid ye for the mushrooms that the airn should be owre
dear?' said I.
"'Ou, nocht ava,' says Tibby. 'I juist gat them whaur the Ayrshire
drover gat the coo. I fand them in a field!'
"Then everybody _haa-haa_ed with laughing. She had me there, I wull
alloo--me that had been a drover," said Tammas Thackanraip.
"But that was naething to discourage ye, Tammock," said I. "That was
juist her bit joke."
"I ken--I ken," said Tammock; "but hand a wee--I'm no' dune yet. So
after they had dune laughin', I telled them o' the last man that was
hangit at the Grassmarket o' Edinburgh. There was three coonts in the
dittay against him: first, that he was fand on the king's highway
withoot due cause; second, he wan'ered in his speech; and, thirdly, he
owned that he cam' frae Gallowa'.
"This kind o' squared the reckoning, but it hadna the success o' the
Ayrshireman and the coo, for they a' belonged to Gallowa' that was in
the kitchen,"
"'Deed, an' I dinna see muckle joke in that last mysel'," said my wife,
who also belonged to Galloway.
"And I'll be bound neither did the poor lad in the Grassmarket!" I put
in, edgeways, taking my legs down off the jambs, for the peats had
burned up, and enough is as good as a feast.
Then Tammas was silent for a good while, smoking slowly, taking out his
pipe whiles and looking at the shank of it in a very curious manner.
I knew that we were coming to the kernel of the story now.
"So the nicht slippit on," continued the narrator, "an' the lads that
had to be early up in the morning gaed awa yin by yin, an' I was left
my lane wi' Tibby. She was gaun aboot here an' there gey an' brisk,
clatterin' dishes an' reddin' corners.
"'Hae a paper an' read us some o' the news, gin ye hae nocht better to
say,' said she.
"She threw me a paper across the table that I kenned for Maxwell's by
the crunkle o' the sheets.
"I ripit a' my pooches, yin after the ither.
"'I misdoot I maun hae comed awa' withoot my specs, Tibby,' says I at
last, when I could come on them nowhere.
"So we talked a bit langer, and she screeved aboot, pittin' things into
their places.
"'It's a fine nicht for gettin' hame,' she says, at the hinder end.
"This was, as ye may say, something like a hint, but I was determined to
hae it oot wi' her that nicht. An' so I had, though no' in the way I had
intended exactly.
"'It _is_ a fine nicht,' says I; 'but I ken by the pains in the sma' o'
my back that it's gaun to be a storm.'
"Wi' that, as if a bee had stang'd her, Tibby cam' to the ither side o'
the table frae whaur I was sittin'--as it micht be there--an' she set
her hands on the edge o't wi' the loofs doon (I think I see her noo; she
looked awsome bonny), an' says she--
"'Tammas Thackanraip, ye are a decent man, but ye are wasting your time
comin' here coortin' me,' she says. 'Gin ye think that Tibby o' the
Hilltap is gaun to marry a man wi' his een in his pooch an' a
weather-glass in the sma' o' his back, ye're maist notoriously
mista'en,' says she."
There was silence in the kitchen after that, so that we could hear the
clock ticking time about with my wife's needles.
"So I cam' awa'," at last said Tammock, sadly.
"An' what hae ye dune aboot it?" asked my wife, sympathetically.
"Dune aboot it?" said Tammas; "I juist speered Bell Mulwhulter when I
cam' hame."
"An' what said she?" asked the mistress.
"Oh," cried Tammas, "she said it was raither near the eleeventh 'oor,
but that she had nae objections that she kenned o'."
IV
THE OLD TORY
_One man alone,
Amid the general consent of tongues.
For his point's sake bore his point--
Then, unrepenting, died_.
The first time I ever saw the Old Tory, he was scurrying down the street
of the Radical village where he lived, with a score of men after him.
Clods and stones were flying, and the Old Tory had his hand up to
protect his head. Yet ever as he fled, he turned him about to cry an
epithet injurious to the good name of some great Radical leader. It was
a time when the political atmosphere was prickly with electricity, and
men's passions easily flared up--specially the passions of those who had
nothing whatever to do with the matter.
The Old Tory was the man to enjoy a time like that. On the day before
the election he set a banner on his chimney which he called "the right
yellow," which flaunted bravely all day so long as David Armitt, the Old
Tory, sat at his door busking salmon hooks, with a loaded blunderbuss at
his elbow and grim determination in the cock of one shaggy grey eyebrow.
But at night, when all was quiet under the Dullarg stars, Jamie
Wardhaugh and three brave spirits climbed to the rigging of the Old
Tory's house, tore down his yellow flag, thrust the staff down the
chimney, and set a slate across the aperture.
Then they climbed down and proceeded to complete their ploy. Jamie
Wardhaugh proposed that they should tie the yellow flag to the pig's
tail in derision of the Old Tory and his Toryism. It was indeed a happy
thought, and would make them the talk of the village upon election day.
They would set the decorated pig on the dyke to see the Tory candidate's
carriage roll past in the early morning.
They were indeed the talk of the village; but, alas! the thing itself
did not quite fall out as they had anticipated. For, while they were
bent in a cluster within the narrow, slippery quadrangle of the pig-sty,
and just as Jamie Wardhaugh sprawled on his knees to catch the
slumbering inmate by the hind-leg, they were suddenly hailed in a deep,
quiet voice--the voice of the Old Tory.
"Bide ye whaur ye are, lads--ye will do bravely there. I hae Mons Meg on
ye, fu' to the bell wi' slugs, and she is the boy to scatter. It was
kind o' ye to come and see to the repairing o' my bit hoose an' the
comfort o' my bit swine. Ay, kind it was--an' I tak' it weel. Ye see,
lads, my wife Meg wull no let me sleep i' the hoose at election times,
for Meg is a reid-headed Radical besom--sae I e'en tak' up my quarters
i' the t'ither end o' the swine-ree, whaur the auld sow died oot o'."
The men appeared ready to make a break for liberty, but the bell-mouth
of Mons Meg deterred them.
"It's a fine nicht for the time o' year, Davit!" at last said Jamie
Wardhaugh. "An' a nice bit pig. Ye hae muckle credit o't!"
"Ay," said David Armitt, "'deed, an' ye are richt. It's a sonsy bit
swine."
"We'll hae to be sayin' guid-nicht, Davit!" at last said Jamie
Wardhaugh, rather limply.
"Na, na, lads. It's but lanesome oot here--an' the morn's election day.
We'll e'en see it in thegither. I see that ye hae a swatch o' the guid
colour there. That's braw! Noo, there's aneuch o't for us a', Jamie;
divide it intil five! Noo, pit ilka yin o' ye a bit in his bonnet!"
One of the others again attempted to run, but he had not got beyond the
dyke of the swine-ree when the cold rim of Mons Meg was laid to his ear.
"She's fu' to the muzzle, Wullie," said the Old Tory; "I wadna rin, gin
I war you."
Willie did not run. On the contrary, he stood and shook visibly.
"She wad mak' an awfu' scatterment gin she war to gang aff. Ye had
better be oot o' her reach. Ye are braw climbers. I saw ye on my riggin'
the nicht already. Climb your ways back up again, and stick every man o'
ye a bit o' the bonny yellow in your bonnets."
So the four jesters very reluctantly climbed away up to the rigging of
David Armitt's house under the lowering threat of Mons Meg's iron jaws.
Then the Old Tory took out his pipe, primed it, lighted it, and sat down
to wait for the dawning with grim determination. With one eye he
appeared to observe the waxing and waning of his pipe; and with the
other, cocked at an angle, he watched the four men on his rigging.
"It's a braw seat, up there, gentlemen. Fine for the breeks. Dinna hotch
owre muckle, or ye'll maybe gang doon through, and I'm tellin' ye, ye'll
rue it gin ye fa' on oor Meg and disturb her in her mornin' sleep.
Hearken till her rowtin' like a coo! Certes, hoo wad ye like to sleep a'
yer life ayont that? Ye wad be for takin' to the empty swine-ree that
the sow gaed oot o', as weel as me."
So the Old Tory sat with his blunderbuss across his knees, and comforted
the men on the roof with reminiscences of the snoring powers of his
spouse Meg. But, in spite of the entertaining nature of the
conversation, Jamie Wardhaugh and the others were more than usually
silent. They sat in a row with their chins upon their knees and the
ridiculous yellow favours streaming from their broad blue bonnets.
The morning came slowly. Gib Martin, the tailor, came to his door at ten
minutes to six to look out. He had hastily drawn on his trousers, and he
came out to spit and see what kind of morning it was; then he was going
back to bed again. But he wished to tell the minister that he had been
up before five that morning; and, as he was an elder, he did not want to
tell a whole lie.
Gib glanced casually at the sky, looked west to the little turret on the
kirk to see the clock, and was about to turn in again, when something
black against the reddening eastern sky caught his eye.
"Preserve us a', what's yon on Davit Armitt's riggin'?" he cried.
And so surprised was Gib Martin, that he came all the way down the
street in three spangs, and that on his stocking-feet, though he was a
married man.
But he did not see the Old Tory sitting by the side of the pig-sty--a
thing he had cause to be sorry for.
"Save us, Jamie, what are ye doin' sittin' on Davit Armitt's
hoose-riggin'? Gin the doited auld Tory brute catches ye--"
"A fine mornin' to ye, tailor," said the Old Tory from the side of the
dyke.
The tailor faced about with a sudden pallor.
The muzzle of Mons Meg was set fair upon him, and he felt for the first
time in his life that he could not have threaded a needle had his life
depended on it.
"Climb up there aside the other four," commanded David Armitt.
"I'm on my stockin'-feet, Davit!" said the tailor.
"It's brave an' dry for the stockin'-feet up on the riggin'," said the
Old Tory. "Up wi' ye, lad; ye couldna do better."
And the tailor was beside the others before he knew it, a strand of the
bright yellow streaming from the button-hole of his shirt. So one after
another the inhabitants of Dullarg came out to wonder, and mounted to
wear the badge of slavery; until, when the chariot of the Tory candidate
dashed in at twenty minutes to seven on its way to the county town, the
rigging of David Armitt's house was crowded with men all decorated with
his yellow colours. Never had such a sight been seen in the Radical and
Chartist village of Dullarg.
Then the Old Tory leaped to his feet as the horses went prancing by.
"Gie a cheer, boys!" he cried; and as the muzzle of Mons Meg swept down
the file, a strange wavering cry arose, that was half a gowl of anger
and half a broken-backed cheer.
Then "Bang!" went Mons Meg, and David Armitt took down the street at
full speed with sixteen angry men jumping at his tail. But, by good
luck, he got upon the back of the Laird's coach, and was borne rapidly
out of their sight down the dusty road that led to the county town.
It was the Old Tory's Waterloo. He did not venture back till the time of
the bee-killing. Then he came without fear, for he knew he was the only
man who could take off the honey from the village hives to the
satisfaction of the parish.
The Old Tory kept the secret of his Toryism to the last.
Only the minister caught it as he lay a-dying. He was not penitent, but
he wanted to explain matters.
"It's no as they a' think, minister," he said, speaking with difficulty.
"I cared nocht aboot it, ae way or the ither. I'm sure I aye wantit to
be a douce man like the lave. But Meg was sair, sair to leeve wi'. She
fair drave me till't. D'ye think the like o' that wull be ta'en into
account, as it were--up yonder?"
The minister assured him that it would, and the Old Tory died in peace.
V
THE GREAT RIGHT-OF-WAY CASE
_The Vandal and the Visigoth come here,
The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes,
Unblest, behold not where the glory lies;
The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer_
_Degrades the wholesome earth--these all come near
To gaze upon the wonder of the hills,
And drink the limpid clearness of the rills.
Yet each returns to what he holds most dear_,
_To change the script and grind the mammon mills
Unpurified; for what men hither bring,
That take they hence, and Nature doth appear_
_As one that spends herself for sodden wills,
Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling,
And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear._
Glen Conquhar was a summer resort. Its hillsides had never been barred
by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies
strolling book in hand, a cock-shy to the children passing on their way
to school. The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over
its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields,
where the grasshopper for ever "burred," and the haymakers stopped with
elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by. The Marquis had never
enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes. His
shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north,
was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of
September and October. The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar
Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning
the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses. Then the
underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones
whisper the information, "That's the Marquis!" For it is the next thing
in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.
The hotel of Glen Conquhar was far from the haunts of men. Its quiet was
never disturbed by the noise of roysterers. It was the summer home of a
number of quiet people from the south--fishing men chiefly, who loved to
hear the water rushing about their legs on the edges of the deep
salmon-pools of the Conquhar Water. There was Cole, Radical M.P.,
impulsive and warm-hearted, a London lawyer who had declined, doubtless
to his own monetary loss, to put his sense of justice permanently into a
blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the
angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days,
but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago--fellows
tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with
their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding
the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in
March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November,
when nothing but the weathered birch-leaves spun down the flooded glen
of the Conquhar. Old Royle regarded the best fishing in the water as his
birthright, and every rival as an intruder. He showed this too, for
there was no bashfulness about Old Royle. Young men who had just begun
to fish consulted him as to where they should begin on the morrow. Old
Royle was of opinion that there was not a single fish within at least
five miles of the hotel. Indeed, he thought of "taking a trap" in the
morning to a certain pool six miles up the water, where he had seen a
round half-dozen of beauties only the night before. The young men
departed, strapped and gaitered, at cock-crow on the morrow. They fished
all day, and caught nothing save and except numerous dead branches in
the narrow swirls of the linn. But they lost, in addition to their
tempers, the tops of a rod or two caught in the close birch tangles,
many casts of flies, and a fly-book which one of them had dropped out of
his breast-pocket while in act to disentangle his hook from the underlip
of a caving bank. His fly-book and he had descended into the rushing
Conquhar together. He clambered out fifty yards below; and as for the
fly-book, it was given by a mother-salmon to her young barbarians to
play with in the deepest pool between Glendona and Loch Alsh.
When these young men returned, jolly Mr. Forbes, of landlords the most
excellent, received them with a merry twinkle in his eye. In the lobby,
Old Royle was weighing his "take." He had caught two beautiful fish--one
in the pool called "Black Duncan," and the other half a mile farther up.
He had had the water to himself all day. These young men passed in to
dinner with thoughts too deep for words.
Suddenly the quiet politics of the glen were stirred by the posting of a
threatening notice, which appeared on the right across the bridge at the
end of the path, along which from time immemorial the ladies of the
hotel had been in the habit of straying in pairs, communing of feminine
mysteries; or mooning singly with books and water-colour blocks, during
the absence of the nominal heads of their houses, who were engaged in
casting the fly far up the glen.
Once or twice a surly keeper peremptorily turned back the innocent and
law-abiding sex, but always when unaccompanied by the more persistent
male. So there was wrath at the _table-d'hôte_. There was indignation in
the houses of summer residence scattered up and down the strath. It was
the new tenant of the Lodge of Glen Conquhar, or rather his wife, who
had done this thing. For the first season for many years the shooting
and fishing on the north side of the Conquhar had been let by the
Marquis of Rannoch. From the minister's glebe for ten miles up the water
these rights extended. They had been leased to the scion of a Black
Country family, noble in the second generation by virtue of the paternal
tubs and vats. The master was a shy man, dwelling in gaiters and great
boots, only to be met with far on the hills, and then passing placidly
on with quiet down-looking eyes. Contrariwise, the lady was much in
evidence. Her noble proportions and determined eye made the boldest
quail. The M.P. thanked Heaven three times a day that he was not her
husband. She managed the house and the shooting as well. Among other
things, she had resolved that no more should mere hotel-visitors walk to
within sight of her windows, and that the path which led up the north
side of the glen must be shut up for ever and ever. She procured a
painted board from a cunning artificer in the neighbouring town of
Portmore, which announced (quite illegally) the pains and penalties
which would overtake those who ventured to set foot on the forbidden
roadway.
There were enthusiastic mass meetings, tempered with tea and cake, on
the lawn. Ladies said impressive things of their ill-treatment; and
their several protectors, and even others without any direct and obvious
claim, felt indignation upon their several accounts. The correct theory
of trespass was announced by a high authority, and the famous
prescription of the great judge, Lord Mouthmore, was stated. It ran as
follows:--
"When called to account for trespass, make use of the following formula
if you wish the law to have no hold over you: 'I claim no right-of-way,
and I offer sixpence in lieu of damages,' at the same time offering the
money composition to the enemy."
This was thought to be an admirable solution, and all the ladies present
resolved to carry sixpences in their pockets when next they went
a-walking. One lady so mistrusted her memory that she set down the
prescription privately as follows: "I claim no sixpence, and I offer
damages in lieu of right-of-way!"
"It is always well to be exact," she said; "memory is so treacherous."
But this short and easy method with those who take their stand on
coercion and illegality was scouted by the Radical M.P. He pointed out
with the same lucidity and precision with which he would have stated a
case to a leading counsel, the facts (first) that the right-of-way was
not only claimed, but existed; (second) that the threatening notice was
inoperative; (third) that an action lay against any person who attempted
to deforce the passage of any individual; (fourth) that the road in
question was the only way to kirk and market for a very considerable
part of the strath, that therefore the right-of-way was inalienable; and
(fifth) that the right could be proved back to the beginning of the
century, and, indeed, that it had never been disputed till the advent of
Mrs. Nokes. The case was complete. It had only to go before any court in
the land to be won with costs against the extruder. The only question
was, "Who would bell the cat?" Several ladies of yielding dispositions,
who went fully intending to beard the lion, turned meekly back at the
word of the velveteen Jack-in-office. For such is the conservative basis
of woman, that she cannot believe that the wrong can by any possibility
be on the side of the man in possession. If you want to observe the only
exception to this attitude, undertake to pilot even the most upright of
women through the custom-house.
The situation became acute owing to the indignant feelings of the
visitors, now reinforced by the dwellers in the various houses of
private entertainment. Indignation meetings increased and abounded. A
grand demonstration along the path and under the windows of the lodge
was arranged for Sunday after morning church--several clergymen agreeing
to take part, on the well-known principle of the better day the better
deed. What might have happened no one can say. An action for assault and
battery would have been the English way; a selection of slugs and
tenpenny nails over the hedge might possibly have been the Irish way;
but what actually happened in this law-abiding strath was quite
different.
In this parish of Glen Conquhar there was a minister, as there is a
minister in every parish in broad Scotland. He was very happy. He had a
cow or two of his own on the glebe, and part of it he let to the master
of the hotel.
The Reverend Donald Grant of Glen Conquhar was an old man now, but,
though a little bowed, he was still strong and hearty, and well able for
his meal of meat. He lived high up on the hill, whose heathery sides
looked down upon the kirk and riverside glebe. His simplicity of heart
and excellence of character endeared him to his parish, as indeed was
afterwards inscribed upon enduring marble on the tablet which was placed
under the list of benefactions in the little kirk of the strath.
The minister did not often come down from his Mount of the Wide
Prospects; and when he did, it was for some definite purpose, which
being performed, he straightway returned to his hill-nest.
He had heard nothing of the great Glen Conquhar right-of-way case, when
one fine morning he made his way down to the hamlet to see one of his
scanty flock, whose church attendance had not been all that could be
desired. As he went down the hill he passed within a few feet of the
newly painted trespass notice-board; but it was not till his return,
with slow steps, a little weary with the uphill road and the heat of the
day, that his eyes rested on the glaring white notice. Still more slowly
and deliberately he got his glasses out of their shagreen case, mounted
their massive silver rims on his nose, and slowly read the legend which
intimated that "_Trespassers on this Private Road will be Prosecuted
with the utmost Rigour of the Law_."
Having got to the large BY ORDER at the end, he calmly dismounted the
benignant silver spectacles, returned them to the shagreen case, and so
to the tail-pocket of his black coat. Then, still more benignantly, he
sought about among the roots of the trees till he found the stout branch
of a fir broken off in some spring gale, but still tough and
able-bodied. With an energy which could hardly have been expected from
one of his hoar hairs, the minister climbed part way up the pole, and
dealt the obnoxious board such hearty thwacks, first on one side and
then on the other, that in a trice it came tumbling down.
As he was picking it up and tucking it beneath his arm, the gamekeeper
on the watch in some hidden sentry-box among the leaves came hurrying
down.
"Oh, Mr. Grant, Mr. Grant!" he exclaimed in horror, "what are you doing
with that board?"--his professional indignation grievously at war with
his racial respect for the clerical office.
"'Deed, Dugald, I'm just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my
arm. It will make not that ill firewood, and it has no business whatever
to be cockin' up there on the corner of my glebe."
The end of the Great Glen Conquhar Right-of-Way Case.
VI
DOMINIE GRIER
_A grey, grey world and a grey belief,
True as iron and grey as grief;
Worse worlds there are, worse faiths, in truth,
Than the grey, grey world and the grey belief_.
"_The Grey Land_."
What want ye so late with Dominie Grier? To tell you the tale of my
going on foot to the town of Edinburgh that I might preserve pure the
doctrine and precept of the parish of Rowantree? Ay, to tell of it I am
ready, and with right goodwill. Never a day do I sit under godly Mr.
Campbell but I think on my errand, and the sore stroke that the deil and
Bauldy Todd gat that day when I first won speech with the Lady
Lochwinnoch.
It was langsyne in the black Moderate days, and the Socinians were great
in the land. 'Deed ay, it was weary work in these times; let me learn
the bairns what I liked in the school, it was never in me to please the
Presbytery. But whiles I outmarched them when they came to examine; as,
indeed, to the knowledge and admiration of all the parish, I did in the
matter of Effectual Calling. It was Maister Calmsough of Clauchaneasy
that was putting the question, and rendering the meaning into his own
sense as he went along. But he chanced upon James Todd of Todston, a
well-learned boy; and, if I may say so, a favourite of mine, with whom I
had been at great pains that he should grow up in the faith and
wholesome discipline. Thereto I had fed him upon precious Thomas Boston
of Ettrick and the works of godly Mr. Erskine, desiring with great
desire that one day he might, by my learning and the blessing of
Almighty God, even come to wag his head in a pulpit--a thing which,
because of the sins of a hot youth, it had never been in my power,
though much in my heart, to do.
But concerning the examination. Mr. Calmsough was insisting upon the
general mercy of God--which, to my thinking, is at the best a dangerous
doctrine, and one that a judicious preacher had best keep his thumb
upon. At last he asked Jamie Todd what he thought of the matter; for he
was an easy examiner, and would put a question a yard long to be
answered with "Yes" and "No"--a fool way of examining, which to me was
clear proof of his incapacity.
But James Todd was well learned and withstood him, so that Mr. Calmsough
grew angry and roared like a bull. I could only sit quiet in my desk,
for upon that day it was not within my right to open my mouth in my own
school, since it was in the hands of the Presbytery. So I sat still,
resting my confidence upon the Lord and the ready answers of James Todd.
And I was not deceived. For though he was but a laddie, the root of the
matter was in him, and not a Socinian among them could move him from my
teaching concerning Justification and Election.
"Ye may explain it away as ye like, sir," said James Todd, "but me and
the Dominie and the Bible has anither way o't!"
"Is it thus that you train your elder scholars to speak to their
spiritual advisers, Dominie Grier?" asked Mr. Calmsough, turning on me.
"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," said I meekly, for pride in
James Todd was just boiling within me, and yet I would not let them see
it.
I desired them to depart from the school of Rowantree, thinking that any
of my first class in the Bible could have answered them even as did
James Todd. I was in the fear of my life that they should light upon
mine own son Tam, for he knew no more than how to bait a line and guddle
trout; but nevertheless he has done wonderfully well at the pack among
the ignorant English, and is, (I deny it not to him) the staff of my
declining years. But Tam, though as great a dulbert as there is betwixt
Saterness and the Corse o' Slakes, sat up looking so gleg that they
passed him by and continued to wrestle with James Todd, who only hung
his head and looked stupid, yet had in him, for all that, a very dungeon
of lear.
Now, it came to pass, less than three weeks after the examination of my
bit school at the Rowantree, that our own minister, Mr. Wakerife, took a
chill after heating himself at the hay, and died. He was a canny body,
and sound on the doctrine, but without unction or the fervour of the
Spirit blowing upon him in the pulpit. Still, he was sound, and in a
minister that is aye the main thing.
Now, so great was the regardlessness of the parish, that the honest man
was not cold in his coffin before two-three of the farmers with whom the
members of the Presbytery were wont to stay when they came to examine,
laid their heads together that they might make the parish of Rowantree
even as Corseglass, and Deadthraws, and other Valleys of Dry Bones about
us.
"There shall be no more fanatics in Rowantree!" said they.
And they had half a gallon over the head of it, which, being John
Grieve's best, they might have partaken of in a better cause.
Now, the worst of them was Bauldy Todd of Todston, the father of my
James. It was a great thing, as I have often been told, to hear James
and his father at it. James was a quiet and loutish loon so long as he
was let alone, and he went about his duties pondering and revolving
mighty things in his mind. But when you chanced to start him on the
fundamentals, then the Lord give you skill of your weapon, for it was no
slight or unskilled dialectician who did you the honour to cross swords
with you.
But Bauldy Todd, being a hot, contentious man, could not let his son
alone. In the stable and out in the hayfield he was ever on his back,
though Jamie was never the lad to cross him or to begin an argument. But
his father would rage and try to shout him down--a vain thing with
Jamie. For the lad, being well learned in the Scriptures, had the more
time to bethink himself while the "goldering" of his father was heard as
far as the high Crownrigs. And even as Bauldy paused for breath, James
would slip a text under his father's guard, which let the wind out of
him like a bladder that is transfixed on a thorn-bush. Then there
remained nothing for Bauldy but to run at Jamie to lay on him with a
staff--an argument which, taking to his heels, Jamie as easily avoided.
It was my own Jamie who brought me word of the ill-contrived ploy that
was in the wind. He told me that his father and Mickle Andrew of
Ingliston and the rest of that clan were for starting to see the Lady
Lochwinnoch, the patron of the parish, to make interest on behalf of Mr.
Calmsough's nephew, as cold and lifeless a moral preacher as was ever
put out of the Edinburgh College, which is saying no little, as all will
admit.
They were to start, well mounted on their market horses, the next
morning at break of day, to ride all the way to Edinburgh. In a moment
I saw what I was called upon to do. I left Jamie Todd with a big stick
to keep the school in my place, while, with some farles of cake bread in
my pocket, I took alone my way to Edinburgh. Ten hours' start I had; and
though it be a far cry to the town of Edinburgh and a rough road, still
I thought that I should be hardly bestead if I could not walk it in two
days. For my heart was sore to think of the want of sound doctrine that
was about to fall upon the parish of Rowantree. Indeed, I saw not the
end of it, for there was no saying what lengths such a minister and his
like-minded elders might not run to. They might even remove me from some
of my offices and emoluments. And then who would train the Jamie Todds
to give a reason of the faith that was in them before minister and
elder?
So all that night I walked on sore-hearted. It was hardly dark, for the
season of the year was midsummer, and by the morning I had gone thirty
miles. But when I came on the hard "made" road again, I hasted yet more,
for I knew that by the hour of eight Bauldy and his farmers would be in
the saddle. And I heard as it were the hoofs of the horses ringing
behind me--the horses of the enemies of sound doctrine; for the Accuser
of the Brethren sees to it that his messengers are well mounted. Yet
though I was footsore, and had but a farle of oatcake in my pocket, I
went not a warfare on my own charges.
For by the way I encountered a carrier in the first spring-cart that
ever I had seen. It was before the day of the taxes. And, seeing the
staff in my hand and the splashing of the moor and the peatlands on my
knee-breeches, he very obligingly gave me a lift, which took me far on
my journey. When he loosed his horse to take up his quarters at an inn
for the night I thanked him very cordially for his courtesy, and so
fared on my way without pause or rest for sleep. I had in my mind all
the time the man I was to propose to the Lady Lochwinnoch.
I had not reached the city when I heard behind me the trampling of
horses and the loud voices of men. Louder than all I heard Bauldy Todd's
roar. It was as much as I could do to make a spring for the stone-dyke
at the side of the road, to drag myself over it, and lie snug till their
cavalcade had passed. I could hear them railing upon me as they went by.
"I'll learn him to put notions into my laddie's head!" cried Todd of
Todston.
"We'll empty the auld carle's meal-ark, I'se warrant!" said Mickle
Andrew.
"Faith, lads, we'll get a decent drinking, caird-playin' minister in
young Calmsough--yin that's no' feared o' a guid braid oath!" cried
Chryston of Commonel.
And I was trembling in all my limbs lest they should see me. So before I
dared rise I heard the clatter of their horses' feet down the road. My
heart failed me, for I thought that in an hour they would be in
Edinburgh town and have audience of my lady, and so prefer their request
before me.
Yet I was not to be daunted, and went limping onward as best I might.
Nor had I gone far when, in a beautiful hollow, by the lintels of an inn
that had for a sign a burn-trout over the door, I came upon their
horses.
"Warm be your wames and dry your thrapples!" quoth I to myself; "an',
gin the brew be nappy and the company guid at the Fisher's Tryst, we'll
bring back the gospel yet to the holms of the Rowantree, or I am sair
mista'en!"
So when I got to my lady's house, speering at every watchman, it was
still mirk night. But in the shadow of an archway I sat me down to
wait, leaning my breast against the sharp end of my staff lest sleep
should overcome me. The hope of recommending the godly man, Mr.
Campbell, to my lady kept me from feeling hungered. Yet I was fain in
time to set about turning my pockets inside out. In them I searched for
crumblings of my cakes, and found a good many, so that I was not that
ill off.
As soon as it was day, and I saw that the servants of the house began to
stir, I went over and knocked soundly upon the great brass knocker. A
man with a cropped black poll and powder sifted among it, came and
ordered me away. I asked when my lady would be up.
"Not before ten of the clock," said he.
Now, I knew that this would never do for me, because the farmer bodies
would certainly arrive before that, drunk or sober. So I told Crophead
that he had better go and tell his mistress that there was one come
post-haste all the way from the parish of Rowantree, where her property
lay, and that the messenger must instantly speak with her.
But Crophead swore at me, and churlishly bade me begone at that hour of
the morning. But since he would have slammed the door on me, I set my
staff in the crevice and hoised it open again. Ay, and would have made
my oak rung acquaint with the side of his ill-favoured head, too, had
not a woman's voice cried down the stair to know the reason of the
disturbance.
"It is a great nowt from the country, and he will not go away," said
Crophead.
Then I stepped forward into the hall, sending him that withstood me over
on his back against the wall. Speaking high and clear as I do to my
first class, I said--
"I am Dominie Grier, parish schoolmaster of the parish of Rowantree,
madam, and I have come post-haste from that place to speak to her
ladyship."
Then I heard a further commotion, as of one shifting furniture, and
another voice that spoke rapidly from an inner chamber.
In a little while there came one down the stair and called me to follow.
So forthwith I was shown into a room where a lady in a flowered
dressing-gown was sitting up in bed eating some fine kind of porridge
and cream out of a silver platter.
"Dominie Grier!" said the lady pleasantly, affecting the vulgar dialect,
"what has brocht ye so far from home? Have the bairns barred ye oot o'
the schule?"
"Na, my lady," I replied, with my best bow; "I come to you in mickle
fear lest the grace of God be barred out of the poor parish of
Rowantree."
So I opened out to her the whole state of the case; and though at first
she seemed to be amused rather than edified, she gave me her promise
that young William Campbell, who was presently assistant to the great
Dr. Shirmers, of St. John's in the city, should get the kirk of
Rowantree. He was not a drop's blood to me, though him and my wife were
far-out friends, so that it was not as if I had been asking anything for
myself. Yet I thanked her ladyship warmly for her promise in the name of
all the godly in the parish of Rowantree, and warned her at the same
time of the regardless clan that were seeking to abuse her good-nature.
But I need not have troubled, for I was but at the door and Crophead
sulkily showing me out, when whom should I meet fair in the teeth but
Bauldy Todd and all his fighting tail!
Never were men more taken aback. They stopped dead where they were, when
they saw me; and Bauldy, who had one hand in the air, having been laying
down the law, as was usual with him, kept it there stiff as if he had
been frozen where he stood.
Now I never let on that I saw any of them, but went by them with my
briskest town step and my head in the air, whistling like a lintie--
"The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!"
"Deil burn me," cried Bauldy Todd, "but the Dominie has done us!"
"'Deed, he was like to do that ony gate," said Mickie Andrew. "We may as
weel gang hame, lads. I ken the Dominie. His tongue wad wile the bird
aff the tree. We hae come the day after the fair, boys."
But as for me, I never turned a hair; only keeped my nose in the
straight of my face, and went by them down the street as though I had
been the strength of a regiment marching with pipers, whistling all the
time at my refrain--
"The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!"
VII
THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
_Hard is it, O my friends, to gather up
A whole life's goodness into narrow space--
A life made Heaven-meet by patient grace,
And handling oft the sacramental cup_
_Of sorrow, drinking all the bitter drains.
Her life she kept most sacred from the world;
Though, Martha-wise, much cumber'd and imperill'd
With service, Mary-like she brought her pains_,
_And laid them and herself low at the feet,
The travel-weary, deep-scarr'd feet, of Him
The incarnate Good, who oft in Galilee_
_Had borne Himself the burden and the heat--
Ah! couldst thou bear, thy tender eyes were dim
With humble tears to think this meant for thee!_
A certain man had two daughters. The man was a minister in Galloway--a
Cameronian minister in a hill parish in the latest years of last
century; consequently he had no living to divide to them. Of the two
daughters, one was wise and the other was foolish. So he loved the
foolish with all his heart. Also he loved the wise daughter; but her
heart was hard because that her sister was preferred before her. The
man's name was Eli M'Diarmid, and his daughters' names were Sophia and
Elsie. He had been long in the little kirk of Cauldshields. To the manse
he had brought his young wife, and from its cheerless four walls he had
walked behind her hearse one day nigh twenty years ago. The daughters
had been reared here; but, even as enmity had arisen on the tilled slips
of garden outside Eden, so there had always been strife between the
daughters of the lonely manse--on the one side rebellion and the
resentment of restraint, on the other tale-bearing and ferret-eyed
spying.
This continued till Elsie M'Diarmid was a well-grown and a comely lass,
while her sister Sophia was already sharpening and souring towards the
thirties. One day there was a terrible talk in the parish. Elsie, the
minister's younger daughter, had run off to Glasgow, and there got
married to Alec Saunderson, the dominie's ne'er-do-well son. So to
Glasgow the minister went, and came back in three weeks with an extra
stoop to his shoulders. But with such a still and patient silence on his
face, that no man and (what is more wonderful) no woman durst ask him
any further questions. After that, Elsie was no more named in the manse;
but the report of her beauty and her waywardness was much in the parish
mouth. A year afterwards her sister went from the manse in all the odour
of propriety, to be the mistress of one of the large farms of a
neighbouring glen. Then the minister gathered himself more than ever
close in to his lonely hearth, with only Euphemia Kerr, his wise old
housekeeper, once his children's nurse. He went less frequently abroad,
and looked more patiently than ever out of his absent grey eyes on the
"herds" and small sheep-farmers who made up the bulk of his scanty
flock.
The Cameronian kirk of Cauldshields was a survival of the time when the
uplands of Galloway were the very home and hive of the "Westlan'"
Whigs--of the men who marched to Rullion Green to be slaughtered, sent
Claverhouse scurrying to Glasgow from Drumclog, and abjured all earthly
monarchs at the cross of Sanquhar.
But now the small farms were already being turned into large, the sheep
were dispossessing the plough, and the principle of "led" farms was
depopulating the countryside. That is, instead of sonsy farmers' wives
and their husbands (the order is not accidental) marshalling their hosts
into the family pews on Sabbath, many of the farms were held by wealthy
farmers who lived in an entirely different part of the country. These
gave up the farmhouse, with its feudality of cothouses, to a taciturn
bachelor shepherd or two, who squatted promiscuously in the once voluble
kitchen.
The morning of the first Sabbath of February dawned bitterly over the
scattered clachan of Cauldshields. It had been snowing since four
o'clock on Saturday night, and during those hours no dog had put its
nose outside the door. At seven in the morning, had any one been able to
see across the street for the driving snow, he would have seen David
Grier look out for a moment in his trousers and shirt, take one
comprehensive glance, and vanish within. That glance had settled David's
church attendance for the day. He was an "Auld Kirk," and a very regular
hearer, having been thirty years in the service of the laird; but in the
moment that he looked out into the dim white chaos of whirling snow,
David had settled it that there would be no carriage down from the "Big
House" that day. "The drifts will be sax fit in the howes o' the
muir-road," he said, as he settled himself to sleep till midday, with a
solid consciousness that he had that day done all that the most exacting
could require of him. As his thoughts composed themselves to a
continuation of his doze, while remaining deliciously conscious of the
wild turmoil outside, David Grier remembered the wayfarer who had got a
lift in his cart to Cauldshields the night before. "It was weel for the
bit bairn that I fell in wi' her at the Cross Roads," said he, as he
stirred his wife in the ribs with his elbow, to tell her it was time to
get up and make the fire.
* * * * *
In the manse of Cauldshields the Reverend Eli M'Diarmid's housekeeper
was getting him ready for church.
"There'll no' be mony fowk at the kirk the day, gin there be ony ava';
but that's nae raison that ye shouldna gang oot snod," she said, as she
brushed him faitly down. "Ye mind hoo Miss Elsie used to say that ye wad
gang oot a verra ragman gin she didna look efter ye!" The minister
turned his back, and the housekeeper continued, like the wise woman of
Tekoa, "Eh, but she was a heartsome bairn, Miss Elsie; an' a bonny--nane
like till her in a' the pairish!"
"Oh, woman, can ye not hold your tongue?" said the minister, knocking
his hands angrily together.
"Haud my tongue or no haud my tongue, ye're no' gaun withoot yer sermon
an' yer plaid, minister," said his helper. So with that she brought the
first from the study table and placed it in the leather case which held
his bands, and reached the plaid from its nail in the hall. It was not
for nothing that she had watched the genesis and growth of that sermon
which she placed in the case. Some folk declare that she suggested the
text. Nor is this so wholly impossible as it looks, for Cauldshields'
housekeeper was a very wise woman indeed.
It was but a step to the kirk door from the manse, but it took the
minister nearly twenty minutes to overcome the drifts and get the key
turned in the lock--for in these hard times it was no uncommon thing for
the minister to be also the doorkeeper of the tabernacle. Then he took
hold of the bell-rope, and high above him the notes swung out into the
air; for though the storm had now settled, vast drifts remained to tell
of the blast of the night. But the gale had engineered well, and as the
minister looked over the half mile that separated the kirk from the
nearest house of the clachan he knew that not a soul would be able to
come to the kirk that day. Yet it never occurred to him to put off the
service of the sanctuary. He was quite willing to preach to Euphemia
Kerr alone, even so precious a discourse as he carried in his band-case
that day.
The minister was his own precentor, as, according to the law and
regulation of the kirks of Scotland, he always is in the last resort,
however he may choose to delegate his authority. He gave out from his
swallow's nest the Twenty-third Psalm, and led it off himself in a
powerful and expressive voice, which sounded strangely in the empty
church. The tune was taken up from the manse pew, in the dusk under the
little gallery, by a quavering, uncertain pipe--as dry and unsympathetic
as, contrariwise, the singer was warm-hearted and full of the very sap
of human kindness. The minister was so absorbed in his own full-hearted
praise that he was scarce conscious that he was almost alone in the
chill emptiness of the church. Indeed, a strange feeling stole upon him,
that he heard his wife's voice singing the solemn gladness of the last
verse along with him, as they had sung it together near forty years ago
when she had first come to the hill kirk of Cauldshields.
"Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me:
And in God's house for evermore
My dwelling-place shall be."
Then the prayer echoed along the walls, bare like a barn before the
harvest. Nevertheless, I doubt not that it went straight to the throne
of God as the minister pleaded for the weary and the heavy-laden, the
fatherless and the oppressed, for the little children and those on whom
the Lord has special pity--"for to Thee, O Lord, more are the children
of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord."
And the minister seemed to hear somewhere a sound of silent weeping,
like that which he had hearkened to in the night long ago, when his wife
sorrowed by his side and wept in the darkness for the loss of their only
man-bairn.
The minister gave out his text. There was silence within, and without
the empty church only the whistling sough of the snowdrift. "And when he
was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and
ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him."
There was a moment's pause, and a strange, unwonted sound came from the
manse seat under the dark of the gallery. It was the creak of the
housekeeper opening the door of the pew. The minister paused yet a
moment in his discourse, his dim eyes vaguely expectant. But what he
saw, stilled for ever the unspoken opening of his sermon. A girlish
figure came up the aisle, and was almost at the foot of the pulpit-steps
before the minister could move. And she carried something tenderly in
her arms, as a bairn is carried when it is brought forward for the
baptizing.
"My father!" she said.
Nobody knows how the minister got out of the pulpit except Euphemia
Kerr, and it is small use asking her; but it is currently reported that
it was in such fashion as never minister got out of pulpit before. And,
at the door of the manse seat stood Euphemia, the wise woman of Tekoa,
her tears falling _pat-pat_ like raindrops on the narrow book-board; but
with a smile on her face, as who would say, "Now, Lord, let Thy servant
depart in peace," when she saw the minister fall on the neck of his
well-beloved daughter and kiss her, having compassion on her.
But this is what Sophia M'Diarmid that was, said when she heard of the
home-coming of her sister Elsie.
"It was like her brazen face to come back when she had shut every other
door. My father never made ony sic wark wi' me that bade wi' him
respectable a' my days; but hear ye to me, Mistress Colville, I will
never darken their doorstep till the day of my death." So she would not
go in.
BOOK THIRD
HISTORIES
I
FENWICK MAJOR'S LITTLE 'UN
_A short to-day,
And no to-morrow:
A winsome wife,
And a mickle sorrow--
Then done was the May
Of my love and my life_.
"Secrets."
[_Edinburgh student lodgings of usual type_. ROGER CHIRNSIDE, M.A.;
_with many books about him, seated at table_. JO BENTLEY _and_ "TAD"
ANDERSON _squabbling by the fireplace_.]
_Loquitur_ ROGER CHIRNSIDE.
Look here, you fellows, if you can't be quiet, I'll kick you out of
this! How on earth is a fellow to get up "headaches" for his final, if
you keep making such a mischief of a row? By giving me a fine one for a
sample, do you say? I'll take less of your sauce, Master Tad, or you'll
get shown out of here mighty quick. Now, not another word out of the
heads of you!
[_Chirnside attacks his books again, murmuring intermittently as the
others subside for the time_.
CHIRNSIDE. Migraine--artery--decussate--wonder what this other fool says
(_rustling leaves_). They all contradict one another, and old
Rutherland will never believe you when you tell him so.
[_A new quarrel arises at the upper end of the room between Jo Bentley
and Tad_.
CHIRNSIDE (_starting to his feet_). Lay down that book, Bentley! Do you
hear? I know Tad is a fool, and needs his calf's head broken. But do it
with another book--Calderhead's _Mind and Matter_, or _T. and
T._--anything but that. Take the poker or anything! But lay down that
book. Do you hear me, Bentley?
[_The book is laid down_.
CHIRNSIDE (_continuing_). What am I in such a funk about? No, it's not
because it is a Bible, though a Bible never makes a good missile. I
always keep an _Oliver and Boyd_ on purpose--one of the old
leather-backed kind that never wears out, even when half the leaves are
ripped out for pipe-lights.
[_Tad Anderson asks a question_.
Why am I so stung up about that book? Tell you fellows? Well, I don't
mind knocking off a bit and giving you the yarn. That Bible belonged to
Fenwick Major. Never heard of Fenwick Major! What blessed ignorant
chickens you must be! Where were you brought up?
[_Chirnside slowly lights his pipe before speaking again_.
Well--I entered with Fenwick Major when I came up as a first year's man
in Arts. I was green as grass, or as you fellows last year. Not that you
know much yet, by the way.
Now, drop that _Medical Ju_, Bentley! Hand me the _Lancet_. It makes
good pipe-lights--about all it's good for. Oh--Fenwick Major? Well
(_puff-puff-puff_), he came up to college with me. Third-class
carriage--our several _maters_ at the door weeping--you know the kind of
thing. Fenwick's governor prowling about in the background with a
tenner in an envelope to stick in through the window. His mother with a
new Bible and his name on the first leaf. I had no governor and no
blooming tenner. Only my old _mater_ told me to spend my bursary as
carefully as I could, and not to disgrace my father's memory. Then
something took me, and I wanted to go over to the other side of the
compartment and look out at the window. Good old lady, mine, as ever
they make them. Ever felt that way, fellows?
[_Chirnside's pipe goes out. Jo Bentley and Tad shift their legs
uneasily and cross them the other way_.
So we came up. Fenwick Major's name stands next to mine on the
University books. You know the style. Get your money all ready. Make out
your papers--What is your place of birth? Have you had the small-pox? If
so, how often and where? And shove the whole biling across the counter
to the fellow with the red head and the uncertain temper. You've been
there?
[_Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. They had been there_.
Well, you fellows, Fenwick Major and I got through our first session
together. We were lonely, of course, and we chummed some. First go off,
we lodged together. But Fenwick had hordes of chips and I had only my
bursary, and none too much of that. Fenwick wanted a first floor. I
preferred the attic, and thought a sitting-room unnecessary. So we
parted. Fenwick Major used to drop in after that, and show me his new
suits and the latest thing in sticks--nobby things, with a silver band
round them and his name. Then he got a terrier, and learned to be
knowing as to bars. I envied, but luckily had no money. Besides, that's
all skittles any way, and you've to pay for it sweetly through the nose
in the long-run. Now mind me, you fellows!
[_Bentley and Tad mind Chirnside_.
Oh, certainly, I'll get on with my apple-cart and tell you about the
book.
Well, the short and the long of it is that Fenwick Major began to go to
the dogs, the way you and I have seen a many go. Oh, it's a gay
road--room inside, and a penny all the way. But there's always the devil
to pay at the far end. I'm not preaching, fellows; only, you take my
word for it and keep clear.
Yet, in spite of the dogs, there was no mistake but Fenwick Major could
work. His father was a parson--white hair on his shoulders, venerable
old boy, all that sort of thing. Had coached Fenwick till he was full as
a sheep-tick. So he got two medals that session, and the fellows--his
own set--gave him a supper--whisky-toddy, and we'll not go home till
morning--that style! But most of them wouldn't even go home when it was
morning. They went down to the Royal and tried to break in with
sticks--young fools! The bobbies scooped them by couples and ran them
in. They were all in court the next day. Most of the fellows gave their
right enough names, but they agreed to lie about Fenwick's for his
father's sake and his medals. Most of them were colonial medicals
anyway. It didn't matter a toss-up to them. So Fenwick went home all
right with his two medals. His father met him at the station, proud as
Punch. His mother took possession of the medals; and when she thought
that Fenwick Major was out of the way, she took them all round the
parish in her black reticule basket, velvet cases and all, and showed
them to the goodwives.
Fenwick Minor was home from school, and went about like a dog
worshipping his big brother. This is all about Fenwick Minor.
But Greenbrae parish and its humble, poor simpletons of folk did not
content Fenwick Major long. He went back to Edinburgh, as he told his
father, to read during the summer session; and when we came up again in
November, Fenwick Major was going it harder than ever.
[_Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson look at each other. They know all about
that_.
CHIRNSIDE (_continues_). Then he gave up attending class much, only
turning up for examinations. He had fits of grinding like fire at home.
Again he would chuck the whole thing, and lounge all day and most of the
night about shops in the shady lanes back of the Register. So we knew
that Fenwick Major was burning his fingers. Then he cut classes and
grinds altogether, and when I met him next, blest if he didn't cut me.
That wasn't much, of course, and maybe showed his good taste. But it was
only a year since we chummed--and I knew his people, you know.
Fact was, we felt somebody ought to speak to Fenwick--so all the fellows
said. But of course, when it came to the point, they pitched on me, and
stuck at me till they made me promise.
So I met him and said to him: "Now, look here, Fenwick, this is playing
it pretty low down on the old man at home and your mother. Better let up
on this drinking and cutting round loose. It's skittles anyway, and will
come to no good!" Just as I would say to you fellows.
I think Fenwick Major was first of all a bit staggered at my speaking to
him. Later he came to himself, and told me where to go for a meddling
young hypocrite.
"Who are you to come preaching to me, any way?" he said.
And I admitted that I was nobody. But I told him all the same that he
had better listen to what I said.
"You are playing the fool, and you'll come an awful cropper," I went on.
"Not that it matters so much for you, but you've got a father and a
mother to think about."
What Fenwick Major said then about his father and mother I am not going
to tell you. He had maybe half a dozen "wets" on board, so we won't
count him responsible.
But after that Fenwick Major never looked the way I was on. He drank
more than ever, till you could see the shakes on him from the other side
of the street. And there was the damp, bleached look about his face that
you see in some wards up at the Infirmary.
[_Jo Bentley and Tad Anderson nod. Their heads are bent eagerly towards
Chirnside_.
But I heard from other fellows that he still tried to work. He would
come out of a bad turn. Then he would doctor himself, Turkish-bath
himself, diet himself, and go at his books. But, as I am alive, fellows,
he had got himself into such a state that what he learned the night
before, he had forgotten the next morning. Ay, even the book he had been
reading and the subject he was cramming. Talk about no hell, fellows!
Don't you believe 'em. I know four knocking about Edinburgh this very
moment.
But right at the close of the session we heard that the end had come.
So, at least, we thought. Fenwick Major had married a barmaid or
something like that. "What a fool!" said some. I was only thankful that
I had not to tell his mother.
But his mother was told, and his father came to Edinburgh to find
Fenwick Major. He did not find the prodigal son, who was said to have
gone to London. At any rate, his father went home, and in a fortnight
there was a funeral--two in a month. Mother went first, then the old
man. I went down to both, and cursed Fenwick Major and his barmaid with
all the curses I knew. And I was a second-year medical at the time.
I never thought to hear more of him. Did not want to. He was lost. He
had married a barmaid, and I knew where his father and mother lay under
the sod. And my own old _mater_ kept flowers on the two graves summer
and winter.
One night I was working here late--green tea, towel round my head--oral
next morning. There was a knock at the door. The landlady was in bed, so
I went. There was a laddie there, bare-legged and with a voice like a
rip-saw.
"If ye please, there's a man wants awfu' to see ye at Grant's Land at
the back o' the Pleasance."
I took my stick and went out into the night. It was just coming light,
and the gas-jets began to look foolish. I stumbled up to the door, and
the boy showed me in. It was a poor place--of the poorest. The stair was
simply filthy.
But the room into which I was shown was clean, and there on a bed, with
the gas and the dawn from the east making a queer light on his face, sat
Fenwick Major.
He held out his hand.
"How are you, Chirnside? Kind of you to come. This is the little wife!"
was what he said, but I can tell you he looked a lot more.
At the word a girl in black stole silently out of the shadow, in which I
had not noticed her.
She had a white, drawn face, and she watched Fenwick Major as a mother
watches a sick child that is going to be taken from her up at the
hospital.
"I wanted to see you, old chap, before I went--you know. It's a long way
to go, and there's no use in hanging back even if I could. But the
little wife says she knows the road, and that I won't find it dark. She
can't read much, the little wife--education neglected and all that.
Precious lot I made of mine, medals and all! But she's a trump. She
made a man of me. Worked for me, nursed me. Yes, you did, Sis, and I
_shall_ say it. It won't hurt me to say it. Nothing will hurt me now,
Sis."
"James, do not excite yourself!" said the little wife just then.
I had forgotten his name was James. He was only Fenwick Major to me.
"Now, little wife," he said, "let me tell Chirnside how I've been a bad
fellow, but the Little 'Un pulled me through. It was the best day's work
I ever did when I married Sis!"
"James!" she said again, warningly.
"Look here, Chirnside," Fenwick went on, "the Little 'Un can't read;
but, do you know, she sleeps with my old mother's Bible under her
pillow. I can't read either, though you would hardly know it. I lost my
sight the year I married (my own fault, of course), and I've been no
better than a block ever since. I want you to read me a bit out of the
old Book."
"Why didn't you send for a minister, Fenwick?" I said. "He could talk to
you better than I can."
"Don't want anybody to speak to me. Little 'Un has done all that. But I
want you to read. And, see here, Chirnside, I was a brute beast to you
once--quarrelled with you years ago--"
"Don't think of that, Fenwick Major!" I said. "That's all right!"
"Well, I won't," he said; "for what's the use? But Little 'Un said,
'Don't let the sun go down upon your wrath.' 'And no more I will, Little
'Un,' says I. So I sent a boy after you, old man."
Now, you fellows, don't laugh; but there and then I read three or four
chapters of the Bible--out of Fenwick's mother's Bible--the one she
handed in at the carriage window that morning he and I set off for
college. I actually did and this is the Bible.
[_Bentley and Tad Anderson do not laugh_.
When I had finished, I said--"Fenwick, I'm awfully sorry, but fact is--I
can't pray."
"Never mind about that, old man!" said he; "Little 'Un can pray!"
And Little 'Un did pray; and I tell you what, fellows, I never heard any
such prayer. That little girl was a brick.
Then Fenwick Major put out fingers like pipe-staples, and said--
"Old man, you'll give Little 'Un a hand--after--you know."
I don't know that I said anything. Then he spoke again, and very
slowly--
"It's all right, old boy. Sun hasn't gone down on our wrath, has it?"
And even as he smiled and held a hand of both of us, the sun went down.
Little brick, wasn't she? Good little soul as ever was! Three cheers for
the little wife, I say. What are you fellows snuffling at there? Why
can't you cheer?
II
MAC'S ENTERIC FEVER
_Merry are the months when the years go slow,
Shining on ahead of us, like lamps in a row:
Lamps in a row in a briskly moving town.
Merry are the moments ere the night shuts down_.
"_Halleval and Haskeval_."
In those days we took great care of our health. It was about the only
thing we had to take care of. So we went to lodge on the topmost floor
of a tall Edinburgh land, with only some indifferent slates and the
midnight tomcats between us and the stars. The garret story in such a
house is, medically speaking, much the healthiest. We have always had
strong views about this matter, and we did not let any considerations of
expense prevent us taking care of our health.
Also, it is a common mistake to over-eat. Therefore, we students had
porridge twice a day, with a herring in between, except when we were
saving up for a book. Then we did without the herring. It was a fine
diet, wholesome if sparse, and kept us brave and hungry. Hungry dogs
hunt best, except retrievers.
In this manner we lived for many years with an excellent lady, who never
interfered with our ploys unless we broke a poker or a leaf of the table
at least. Then she came in and told us what she thought of us for ten
eloquent minutes. After that we went out for a walk, and the landlady
gathered up the fragments that remained.
It was a lively place when Mac and I lodged together. Mac was a painter,
but he had not yet decided which Academy he would be president of--so
that in the meantime Sir Frederick Langton and Sir Simeon Stormcloud
could sleep in their beds with some ease of mind.
Our room up near the sky was festooned with dim photographs of immense
family tombstones--a perfect graveyard of them, which proved that the
relations of Mrs. Christison, our worthy landlady, would have some
trouble in getting to bed in anything like time if by chance they should
be caught wandering abroad at cock-crow. Mixed with these there were
ghastly libels on the human form divine, which Mac had brought home from
the students' atelier--ladies and gentlemen who appeared to find it
somewhat cold, and had therefore thoughtfully provided themselves with a
tight-fitting coat of white-wash. Mac said this was the way that
flesh-colour was painted under direct illumination. Well, it might have
been. We did not set up for judges. But to an inexperienced eye they
looked a great deal more like deceased white-washed persons who had been
dug up after some weeks' decent burial. We observed that they appeared
to be mildewed in patches, but Mac explained that these were the
muscles. This also was possible; but, all the same, we had never seen
any ladies or gentlemen who carried their muscles outside, so to speak.
Mac said he did this sort of thing because he was applying for admission
to the Academy Life Class. We all hoped he would get in, for we had had
quite enough of dead people, especially when they were white-washed and
resurrected, besides given to wearing their muscles outside.
Mac used, in addition to this provocation, to play jokes on us, because
Almond and I were harmless and quiet. Almond was studying engineering
because he was going to be a wholesale manufacturer of wheelbarrows. I
was an arts student who wrote literary and political articles in the
office of a moribund newspaper all night, and wakened in time to go
along the street to dine in a theological college.
So Mac used to play off his wicked jokes upon Almond and myself for the
reasons stated. He bored a hole through the wall at the head of our bed,
and awoke us untimeously in the frosty mornings by squirting mysterious
streams of water upon us. He said he had promised Almond's mother to see
that he took a bath every morning, and he was going to do it. He
anticipated us at our tins of sardines, and when we re-opened them we
found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made
disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing
that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon
the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks
concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention
was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We
bore these things meekly on the whole, for that was our nature--at least
mine.
Occasionally the worm turned, and then a good many articles of furniture
were overset; and the Misses Hope, who resided beneath us, knocked up
through the ceiling with the tongs, whereupon the landlady and her
daughter came in armed with the poker and a long-handled broom to
promote peace.
But after the affair of the squirt Almond and I took counsel, and Almond
said (for Professor Jeeming Flenkin had discovered on the back of a
careful drawing of an engine wheel a caricature of himself pointing with
index-finger and saying, "Very smutty!") that he would stand this sort
of thing no longer.
So we resolved to work a sell on Mac which he would not forget to his
dying day. To effect this we took our landlady and our landlady's
daughter into the plot, and the matter was practically complete when Mac
came home. We heard him whistling up the stairs. The engineer was
drawing a cherub in Indian ink. The arts student was reading a text-book
of geology. The landlady and her daughter were busy about their work in
their own quarters. All was peace.
The key clicked in the lock, and then the whistle stopped as Mac
entered.
The landlady met him at the door. She gazed anxiously and maternally at
his face. She seemed surprised also, and a trifle agitated.
"Dear me, Maister Mac, what's the maitter? Ye're no' lookin' weel."
Mac was a little surprised, but not alarmed.
"There is nothing the matter, Mrs. Christison," said he lightly.
"Eh, Teena, come here," she cried to her daughter.
Teena came hurriedly at her mother's call. But as she looked upon Mac
the fashion of her countenance changed.
"Are you not well?" she said, peering anxiously into the pupils of Mac's
eyes.
Such attentions are flattering, and Mac, being a squire of dames, was
desirous of making the most of it.
"Well, I was not feeling quite up to the mark, but I daresay it'll pass
off," he said diplomatically.
"You must not be working so hard. You will kill yourself one of these
days."
For which we hope and trust she may be forgiven, though it is a good
deal to hope.
"Where do you feel it most, Mr. Mac?" then inquired Teena tenderly.
Mac is of opinion that, if anywhere, he feels it worst in his head, but
his chest is also paining him a little.
"Gang richt awa' in, my laddie," says the landlady, "an' lie doon and
rest ye on the sofa, an' I'll be ben the noo wi' something till ye!"
Mac comes in with a slightly scared and conscious expression on his
face. Almond and I look up from our work as he enters, though, as it
were, only in a casual manner. But what we see arrests our attention,
and Almond's jaw drops as he looks from Mac to me, and back again to
Mac.
"Good gracious, what's wrang wi' ye, man?" he gasps, in his native
tongue.
I get up hastily and go over to the patient. I take him by the arm, pull
him sharply to the window and turn him round--an action which he
resents.
"I wish to goodness you fellows would not make asses of yourselves," he
says, as he flings himself down on the sofa.
Almond and I look at one another as if this fretfulness were one of the
worst signs, and we had quite expected it. We say nothing for a little
as we sit down to work; but uneasily, as if we have something on our
minds. Presently I rise, and, going into the bedroom, motion to Almond
as I go. This action is not lost on Mac. I did not mean that it should
be. We shut the door and whisper together. Mac comes and shakes the
door, which is locked on the inside.
"Come out of that, you fellows," he cries, "and don't be gibbering
idiots!"
But for all that he is palpably nervous and uneasy.
"Go away and lie down, like a good fellow," I say soothingly; "it'll be
all right--all right."
But Mac is not soothed in the least. Then we whisper some more, and
rustle the leaves of a large Quain which lies on the mantelpiece, a
legacy from some former medical lodger. After a respectable time we come
out without looking at Mac, who peers at us steadily from the sofa. I
go directly to the _Scotsman_ of the day, and run my finger down the
serried columns till I come to the paragraph which gives the mortality
for the week. Almond looks over my shoulder the while, and I make a
score with my finger-nail under the words "enteric fever." We are sure
that Mac does not know what enteric fever is. No more do we, but that
does not matter.
We withdraw solemnly one by one, as if we were a procession, with a
muttered excuse to Mac that we are going out to see a man. Almond
sympathetically and silently brings a dressing-gown to cover his feet.
He angrily kicks it across the floor.
"I say, you fellows--" he begins, as we go out.
But we take no heed. The case is too serious. Then we go into the
kitchen and discuss it with the landlady.
We do this with solemn pauses, indicative of deep thought. We go back
into the sitting-room. Mac has been to look at the paper where my nail
scored it. We knew he would, and he is now lying on the sofa rather
pale. He even groans a little. The symptoms work handsomely. It is small
wonder we are alarmed.
We ring for the landlady, and she comes in hastily and with anxiety
depicted on her countenance. She asks him where he feels it worst. Teena
runs for Quain, and, being the least suspect of the party, she reads, in
a low, hushed tone, an account of the symptoms of enteric fever
(previously inserted in manuscript) which would considerably astonish
Dr. Quain and the able specialist who contributed the real account of
that disease to the volume.
It seems that for the disease specified, castor-oil and a mustard
blister, the latter applied very warm between the shoulders, are the
appropriate and certain cures. There is nothing that Mac dislikes so
much as castor-oil. He would rather die than take it--so he says. But a
valuable life, which might be spent in the service of the highest art,
must not be permitted to be thus thrown away. So we get the castor-oil
in a spoon, and with Teena coaxing and Almond acting on the well-known
principle of twenty years' resolute government--down she goes.
Instantly Mac feels a little better, for he can groan easier than
before. That is a good sign. The great thing now is to keep up the
temperature and induce perspiration. The mustard approaches. The
landlady cries from the kitchen to know if he is ready. Teena retires to
get more blankets. The patient is put to bed, and in a little the
mustard plaster is being applied in the place indicated by Quain. We
tell one another what a mercy it is that we have all the requisites in
the house. (There is no mustard in the plaster, really--only a few
pepper-corns and a little sand scraped from the geological hammer.) But
we say aloud that we hope Mac can bear it for twenty minutes, and we
speculate on whether it will bring _all_ the skin with it when it comes
off.
This is too much, and the groaning recommences. The blankets are
applied, and in a trice there is no lack of perspiration. But within
three minutes Mac shouts that the abominable plaster is burning right
down through him. It is all pure mustard, he says. We must have put a
live coal in by mistake. We tell him it will be all right--in twenty
minutes. It is no use; he is far past advice, and in his insanity he
would tear it off and so endanger the success of the treatment. But this
cannot be permitted. So Almond sits on the plaster to keep it in its
place, while I time the twenty minutes with a stop-watch.
At the end of this period of crisis the patient is pronounced past the
worst. But, being in a state of collapse, it becomes necessary to rouse
him with a strong stimulant. So, having sent the ladies to a place of
safety, we take off the plaster tenderly, and kindly show Mac the
oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that there was never anything the
matter with him at all. We express a hope that he will find that the
castor-oil has done him good. A little castor-oil is an excellent thing
at any time. And we also advise him, the next time he feels inclined to
work off a sell on us or play any more of his pranks, to have a
qualified medical man on the premises. Quain is evidently not good
enough. He makes mistakes. We show him the passage.
Then we advise him to put on his clothes, and not make a fool of himself
by staying in bed in the middle of the day.
Whereupon, somewhat hurriedly, we retreat to our bedrooms; and, locking
the doors, sit down to observe with interest the bolts bending and the
hinges manfully resisting, while Mac with a poker in either hand flings
himself wildly against them. He says he wants to see us, but we reply
that we are engaged.
III
THE COLLEGING OF SIMEON GLEG
_Forth from the place of furrows
To the Town of the Many Towers;
Full many a lad from the ploughtail
Has gone to strive with the hours_,
_Leaving the ancient wisdom
Of tilth and pasturage,
For the empty honour of striving,
And the emptier name of sage_.
"_Shadows_."
Without blared all the trumpets of the storm. The wind howled and the
rain blattered on the manse windows. It was in the upland parish of
Blawrinnie, and the minister was preparing his Sabbath's sermon. The
study lamp was lit and the window curtains were drawn. Robert Ford
Buchanan was the minister of Blawrinnie. He was a young man who had only
been placed a year or two, and he had a great idea of the importance of
his weekly sermons to the Blawrinnie folk. He also spoke of "My People"
in an assured manner when he came up to the Assembly in May:
"I am thinking of giving my people a series of lectures on the Old
Testament, embodying the results of--"
"Hout na, laddie," said good Roger Drumly, who got a D.D. for marrying a
professor's sister (and deserved a V.C.), "ye had better stick to the
Shorter's Quastions an' preach nae whigmaleeries i' the pairish o'
Blawrinnie. Tak' my word for it, they dinna gie a last year's nest-egg
for a' the results of creeticism. I was yince helper there mysel', ye
maun mind, an' I ken Blawrinnie."
There is no manner of doubt that Dr. Drumly was right. Since he married
the professor's sister, he did not speak much himself, except in his
sermons, which were inordinately long; but he was a man very much
respected, for, as one of his elders said, "Gin he does little guid in
the pairish, he is a quate, ceevil man, an' does just as little ill."
And this, after all, is chiefly what is expected of a settled and
official minister with a manse and glebe in that part of the country.
Too much zeal is not thought to become him. It is well enough in a mere
U.P.
But the Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan had not so settled on his lees as
to accept such a negative view of his duties. He must try to help his
people singly and individually, and this he certainly did to the best of
his ability. For he neither spent all his time running after Dissenters,
as the manner of some is; nor yet did he occupy all his pastoral visits
with conversations on the iniquity of Disestablishment, as is others'
use and wont. He went in a better way about the matter, in order to
prove himself a worthy minister of the parish, taking such a vital
interest in all that appertained to it, that no man could take his
bishopric from him.
Among other things, he had a Bible-class for the young, in which the
hope of the parish of Blawrinnie was instructed as to the number of
hands that had had the making of the different prophecies, and upon the
allusions to primitive customs in the book of Genesis (which the
minister called a "historical synopsis"). There were three lassies
attending the class, and three young men who came to walk home with the
lassies. Unfortunately, two of the young men wanted to walk home with
the same young lass, so that the minister's Bible-class could not always
be said to make for peace. As, indeed, the Reverend Doctor Drumly
foretold when the thing was started. He had met the professor's sister
first at a Bible-class, and was sore upon the subject.
But it was the minister's Bible-class that procured Mr. Ford Buchanan
the honour of a visit that night of storm and stress. First of all there
was an unwonted stir in the kitchen, audible even in the minister's
study, where he stood on one leg, with a foot on a chair, consulting
authorities. (He was an unmarried man.)
Elizabeth Milligan, better known as "the minister's Betsy," came and
rapped on the door in an undecided way. It was a very interesting
authority the minister was consulting, so he only said "Thank you,
Elizabeth!" in an absent-minded way and went on reading, rubbing his
moustache the while with the unoccupied hand in a way which, had he
known it, kept it perpetually thin.
But Betty continued to knock, and finally put her head within the study
door.
"It's no' yer parritch yet," she said. "It's but an hour since ye took
yer tea. But, if ye please, minister, wad ye be so kind as open the
door? There's somebody ringing the front-door bell, an' it's jammed wi'
the rain forbye, an' nae wise body gangs and comes that gait ony way,
binna yersel'."
"Certainly, certainly, Elizabeth; I will open the door immediately!"
said the minister, laying down his book and marking the place with last
week's list of psalms and intimations.
Mr. Buchanan went to the seldom-used front door, turned the key, and
threw open the portal to see who the visitor might be who rang the manse
bell at eight o'clock on such a night. Betsy hung about the outskirts
of the hall in a fever of anticipation and alarm. It might be a
highwayman--or even a wild U.P. There was no saying.
But when the minister pulled the door wide open, he looked out and saw
nothing. Only blackness and tossing leaves were in front of him.
"Who's there?" he cried, peremptorily, in his pulpit voice--which he
used when "my people" stood convicted of some exhibition of extreme
callousness to impression.
But only the darkness fronted him and the swirl of wind slapped the wet
ivy-leaves against the porch.
Then apparently from among his feet a little piping voice replied--
"If ye please, minister, I want to learn Greek and Laitin, an' to gang
to the college."
The minister staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this
peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the
darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other
world--that is, of course, the world of spirits and churchyard ghosts.
But gradually there grew upon him a general impression of a little
figure, broad and squat, standing bareheaded and with cap in hand on his
threshold. The minister came to himself, and his habits of hospitality
asserted themselves.
"You want to learn Greek and Latin," he said, accustomed to
extraordinary requests. "Come in and tell me all about it."
The little, broad figure stepped within the doorway.
"I'm a' wat wi' the rain," again quoth the elfish voice, more genially,
"an' I'm no' fit to gang into a gentleman's hoose."
"Come into the dining-room," said the minister kindly.
"'Deed, an' ye'll no," interposed Betsy, who had been coming nearer.
"Ye'se juist gang into the study, an' I'll lay doon a bass for ye to
stand an' dreep on. Where come ye frae, laddie?"
"I am Tammas Gleg's laddie. My faither disna ken that I hae come to see
the minister," said the boy.
"The loon's no' wise!" muttered Betsy. "Could the back door no' hae
served ye?--Bringing fowk away through the hoose traikin' to open the
front door to you on sic a nicht! Man, ye are a peetifu' object!"
The object addressed looked about him. He was making a circle of wetness
on the floor. He was taken imperatively by the coat-sleeve.
"Ye canna gang into the study like that. There wad be nae dryin' the
floor. Come into the kitchen, laddie," said Betsy. "Gang yer ways ben,
minister, to your ain gate-end, an' the loon'll be wi' ye the noo."
So Betsy, who was accustomed to her own way in the manse of Blawrinnie,
drove Tammas Gleg's laddie before her into the kitchen, and the minister
went into the study with a kind of junior apostolic meekness. Then he
meditatively settled his hard circular collar, which he wore in the
interests of Life and Work, but privately hated with a deadly hatred, as
his particular form of penance.
It was no very long season that he had to wait, and before he had done
more than again lift up his interesting "authority," the door of the
study was pushed open and Betsy cried in, "Here he's!" lest there might
be any trouble in the identification. And not without some reason. For,
strange as was the figure which had stepped into the minister's lobby
out of the storm, the vision which now met his eyes was infinitely
stranger.
A thick-set body little over four and a half feet high, exceedingly
thick and stout, was surmounted with one of the most curious heads the
minister had ever seen. He saw a round apple face, eyes of extraordinary
brightness, a thin-lipped mouth which seemed to meander half-way round
the head as if uncertain where to stop. Betsy had arrayed this "object"
in a pink bed-gown of her own, a pair of the minister's trousers turned
up nearly to the knee in a roll the thickness of a man's wrist, and one
of the minister's new-fangled M.B. waistcoats, through the armholes of
which two very long arms escaped, clad as far as the elbows in the
sleeves of the pink bed-gown.
Happily the minister was wholly destitute of a sense of humour (and
therefore clearly marked for promotion in the Church); and the privation
stood him in good stead now. It only struck him as a little irregular to
be sitting in the study with a person so attired. But he thought to
himself--"After all, he may be one of My People."
"And what can I do for you?" he said kindly, when the Object was seated
opposite to him on the very edge of a large arm-chair, the pink arms
laid like weapons of warfare upon his knees, and the broad hands warming
themselves in a curious unattached manner at the fire.
"Ye see, sir," began the Object, "I am Seemion Gleg, an' I am ettlin' to
be a minister."
The Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan started. He came of a Levitical
family, and over his head there were a series of portraits of very
dignified gentlemen in extensive white neckerchiefs, his forebears and
predecessors in honourable office--a knee-breeched, lace-ruffled
moderator among them.
It was as if a Prince of the Blood had listened to some rudely
democratic speech from a waif of the causeway.
"A minister!" he exclaimed. Then, as a thought flashed across him--"Oh,
a Dissenting preacher!" he continued.
This would explain matters.
"Na, na," said Simeon Gleg; "nae Dissenter ava'. I'm for the Kirk
itsel'--the Auld Kirk or naething. That was the way my mither brocht me
up. An' I want to learn Greek an' Laitin. I hae plenty o' spare time,
an' my maister gies me a' the forenichts. I can learn at the peat fire
after the ither men are gane to their beds."
"Your master!" said the minister. "Do you mean your teacher?"
"Na, na," said Simeon Gleg; "I mean Maister Golder o' the Glaisters. I
serve there as plooman!"
"You!" exclaimed the minister, aghast. "How old may you be?"
"I'm gaun in my nineteenth year," said Simeon. "I'm no' big for my age,
I ken; but I can throw ony man that I get grups on, and haud ony beast
whatsomever. I can ploo wi' the best an' maw--Weel, I'm no' gaun to
brag, but ye can ask Maister Golder--that is an elder o' your ain, an'
comes at least twa Sabbaths afore every Communion to hear ye."
"But why do ye want to learn Greek and Latin?" queried the minister.
"Weel, ye see, sir," said Simeon Gleg, leaning forward to poke the manse
fire with the toe of his stocking--the minister watching with interest
to see if he could do it without burning the wool--"I hae saved twunty
pounds, and I thocht o' layin' it oot on the improvement o' my mind.
It's a heap o' money, I ken; but, then, my mind needs a feck o'
impruvement--if ye but kenned hoo ignorant I am, ye wadna wonder. Ay,
ay"--taking, as it were, a survey of the whole ground--"my mind will
stand a deal o' impruvement. It's gey rough, whinny grund, and has never
been turned owre. But I was thinkin' Enbra wad gie it a rare bit lift.
What do ye think o' the professors there? I was hearin' some o' them
wasna thocht muckle o'!"
The minister moved a little uneasily in his chair, and settled his
circular collar.
"Well," he said, "they are able men--most of them."
He was a cautious minister.
"Dod, an' I'm gled to hear ye sayin' that. It's a relief to my mind,"
said Simeon Gleg. "I dinna want to fling my twunty pound into the
mill-dam."
"But I understood you to say," went on the minister, "that you intended
to enter the ministry of the Kirk."
"Ou ay, that's nae dout my ettlin'. But that's a lang gate to gang, an'
in the meantime my object in gaun to the college is juist the
cultivation o' my mind."
The wondrous apple-faced ploughboy in the red-sleeved bed-gown looked
thoughtfully at the palms of his horny hands as he reeled off this
sentence. But he had more to say.
"I think Greek and Laitin wull be the best way. Twunty pounds'
worth--seven for fees an' the rest for providin'. But my mither says
she'll gie me a braxy ham or twa, an' a crock o' butter."
"But what do you know?" asked the minister. "Have you begun the
languages?"
Simeon Gleg wrestled a moment with the M.B. waistcoat, and from the
inside of it he extricated two books.
"This," he said, "is Melvin's Laitin Exercises, an' I hae the Rudiments
at hame. I hae been through them twice. An' this is the Academy Greek
Rudiments. O man--I mean, O minister"--he broke out earnestly, "gin ye
wad juist gie the letters a bit rin owre. I dinna ken hoo to mak' them
soond!"
The minister ran over the Greek letters.
The eyes of Simeon Gleg were upturned in heartfelt thankfulness. His
long arms danced convulsively upon his knees. He shot out his
red-knotted fingers till they cracked with delight.
"Man, man, an' that's the soond o' them! It's awsome queer! But, O,
it's bonny, bonny! There's nocht like the Greek and the Laitin!"