St. Cuthbert's
by Robert E. Knowles · English · Gutenberg #22008 · 416,444 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: St. Cuthbert's
Author: Robert E. Knowles
Release date: July 6, 2007 [eBook #22008]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. CUTHBERT'S ***
Produced by Suzanne Lybarger and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
_ST. CUTHBERT'S_
_A NOVEL_
_ROBERT E. KNOWLES_
[Illustration]
_New York Chicago Toronto_
_FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY_
_London and Edinburgh_
Copyright, 1905, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
First Edition, September, 1905.
Second Edition, October, 1905.
Third Edition, October 15, 1905.
Fourth Edition, November 1905.
Fifth Edition, December 1905.
Sixth Edition, April, 1906.
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
_To The Canadian Pilgrim Fathers_
_CONTENTS_
I THE TURN OF THE TIDE 9
II A MAN WITH A SECRET 20
III OUR MUTUAL TRIAL 26
IV OUR MUTUAL VERDICT 34
V MY KIRK SESSION 42
VI THE FIRST PARISH ROUND 50
VII "THE CHILD OF THE REGIMENT" 58
VIII "A NEW FOOT ON THE FLOOR" 64
IX "ANGELS UNAWARES" 73
X MY PIOUS PROFLIGATE 78
XI PLUCKING A FIERY BRAND 88
XII "BY THAT SAME TOKEN" 98
XIII WITH THE WORKMEN 106
XIV WITH THE EMPLOYERS 119
XV A BOLD PROPOSAL 128
XVI GEORDIE'S OOT-TURN 141
XVII "NOO, THE IN-TURN" 154
XVIII HOW ELSIE WON THE GATE 159
XIX A MAIDEN'S LOVE 175
XX A FATHER'S CRUCIFIXION 187
XXI THE OLD PRECENTOR'S NEW SONG 199
XXII "THE MILLS OF THE GODS" 215
XXIII A MAIDEN PRIESTESS 229
XXIV THE SWEET SUNNY SOUTH 241
XXV ST. CUTHBERT'S SECOND CALL 258
XXVI LOVE'S SINGING SACRIFICE 276
XXVII THE HIDDEN CRUCIFIX 290
XXVIII THE HEATHERY HILLS 300
XXIX "AND ALL BUT HE DEPARTED" 311
XXX LOVE'S VICTORY OVER SIN 323
XXXI LOVE'S TRIUMPH OVER ALL 330
_ST. CUTHBERT'S_
I
_The TURN of The TIDE_
"If you don't get the call you needn't come back here," said my wife to
me as I stood upon the door-sill, bag in hand, and my hard-bought ticket
in my pocket.
"Well, dear one, I would be sure of it if they could only see the
perquisite that goes along with me."
"You must be more serious, Tom, if you expect great calls; but come
inside a minute till I say good-bye. When you brought me first to Canada
we had half a dozen good-byes to every one farewell. Good-bye again, and
if they don't call you they will deserve what they lose."
Thus spoke my wife, and thus was I despatched on the mission that was
big with moment.
It was a wondrous hour that brought to us the invitation which I was now
proceeding to accept. Not that we were unhappy because our salary was
small; we had not lived by bread alone, and our souls were well
content. But my wife had delirious visions, which she affirmed were sane
and reasonable, of her husband's coming yet into his own, and indulged
every now and then in savage and delicious little declarations of the
great misfit, which misfit was in my being the minister of a little
church which afforded a little salary and provoked a little fame.
Her other days had been spent in luxury and amid the refinement and the
pleasures which money only can provide. And when, our wedding day
drawing near apace, I sent her my budget letter, bitterly revealing
impecunious facts at which I had before but darkly hinted, and warning
her of all the sacrifice which lay beyond, she replied with vehement
repudiation of any fears, and in that hour made me rich.
"Cheese and kisses," wrote she, "are considered good fare in my South
land for all who have other resources in their hearts." And I mentally
averred that half of that would be enough for me.
And so we went ahead--oh, progressive step! And we were never poor
again.
But there came a more heroic hour. It was hard, so hard to do, but the
pressure rendered concealment quite impossible, for the note I had
endorsed was handed in for suit. So I told her one twilight hour that
our already limited income must be shared with an unromantic creditor.
There was a little tightening of the lips, then of the arms, then of
those mutual heart cords entangled in their eternal root.
We were boarding then, three rooms in a family hotel, and when I
returned next day at evening I found everything--books, furniture,
piano--all moved to a room upon the topmost story. I was directed
thither by the smiling landlord, more enlightened than I, and I entered
with furtive misgivings in my soul and with visions of that spacious
Southern home before my rueful eyes.
But she was there, radiant and triumphant, still flushed with exercise
of hand and heart, viewing proudly her proof of a new axiom that two or
more bodies may occupy the same space at the selfsame time.
"I am so glad you didn't come before," she said. "I wanted to be all
settled before you saw it. This is just as good as we had before, and
only half the price. Isn't it cozy? And everything just fits. And we are
away from all the noise. And look at that lovely view. And now we can
pay off that horrid note. Aren't you glad?"
"But, Emmeline, my heart breaks to see you caged like this. It is noble
of you, just like you, but I cannot forgive myself that I have brought
you to this," said I, my voice trembling with pain and joy.
"Why, dear one, how can you speak like that? We have everything here,
and each other too, and we shall be caged together."
I kissed that girlish face again and blessed the gift of heaven,
murmuring only, in tones that could not be heard, "He setteth the
solitary in families," and as we went down together I wondered if that
sudden elevation had not brought us nearer heaven than we had been
below.
It was largely owing to this lion-hearted courage that I now found
myself swiftly borne towards the vacant pulpit which yawned in stately
expectation of its weekly candidate.
The invitation "to conduct divine services in St. Cuthbert's, whose
pulpit is now vacant," had come unsought from the kirk session of that
distant temple.
St. Cuthbert's was the stately cathedral of all adjoining
Presbyterianism. It was the pride and crown of a town which stood in
prosperous contentment upon the verge of cityhood. Its history was great
and honourable; its traditions warlike and evangelical; its people
intelligent and intense. Its vast area was famed for its throng of acute
and reflective hearers, almost every man of whom was a sermon taster,
while its officers were the acknowledged possessors of letters patent to
the true ecclesiastical nobility. In my student days, medals and
scholarships were never quoted among the trophies of our divinity men if
it could be justly said of any one that he had preached twice before the
hard heads of St. Cuthbert's. This triumph was recited with the same
reverent air as when men used to say, "He preached before the Queen."
Some hundreds of miles must be traversed before I reached the place, but
only some four-and-twenty hours before I reached the time, of my trial
sermons. Therefore did I convert my car into a study and my unsteady
knee into a desk, giving myself to the rehearsal of those discourses by
which I was to stand or fall. Every weak hand thereof I laboured to
strengthen, and every feeble knee I endeavoured to confirm. And what
motley hours were those I spent on that fast-flying train! All my
reflections tended to devotion, but yet my errand was throbbing with
ambition.
Whereupon I fell into a strange and not unprofitable reverie, painfully
striving to separate my thoughts, the sheep from the goats, and to
reconcile them the one to the other. I knew well enough the human frame
to be persuaded that ambition could not altogether be cast out from the
spirit of a man, which led me to reflect upon its possible place and
purpose if controlled by a master hand beyond the hand of time. I
strove to discover my inmost motive, far behind all other aims, and
consoled myself with the hope that God might make it the dominant and
sovereign one, to which all others might be unconscious ministers, even
as all other lesser ones obey the driving wheel.
I somehow felt that the vision of that radiant face at home, for whom
ambition sprung like a fountain, was in no wise inconsistent with the
holiest work which awaited me on the morrow.
At thought of her, my ambition, earth-born though it was, seemed to be
robed in white and to be unashamedly ministering unto God. And I was
fain to believe at last that this very hope of a larger place was from
Himself, and that He was the shepherd of the sheep and of the goats
alike. Whereupon I fell upon my sermons afresh with a clearer
conscience, which means a stronger mind, and swiftly prayed, even while
I worked, that the Lord of the harvest would winnow my tumultuous
thoughts, garnering the wheat unto Himself and burning the tares with
unquenchable fire.
Onward rushed the hours, and onward rolled the train in its desperate
struggle with them, till the setting sun, victorious over both, reminded
me that I would be in New Jedboro before the dusk deepened into dark.
Then restored I my sermon notes, reburnished and repaired, to the
trusty keeping of my well-worn valise, settling myself for one of those
delicious baths of thought to be truly enjoyed only on the farther side
of toil.
I had but well begun to compose my mind and to forecast the probable
experiences of the morrow, when a rich Scotch voice broke in upon me
with the unmistakable inquiry, "And where micht ye be gaein?"
I responded with the name of New Jedboro, assuming the air of a man who
was bent only upon a welcome visit to long-separated friends. But I had
reckoned without my host. My interrogator was a Scot, with the Scot's
incurable curiosity, always to be estimated by the indifference of his
air. If his face be eloquent of profound unconcern, then may you know
that a fever of inquisitiveness is burning at his heart.
My questioner seemed to scarcely listen for my answer, yet a tutored eye
could tell that he was camping on my trail.
His next interrogation was launched with courteous composure: "Ye'll no'
be the man wha's expeckit in St. Cuthbert's ower the Sabbath?"
I now saw that this was no diluted Scotsman. Bred on Canadian soil, he
was yet original and pure. He had struck the native Scottish note, the
ecclesiastical. Like all his countrymen, he had a native taste for a
minister. His instincts were towards the Kirk, and for all things akin
to Psalm or Presbytery he intuitively took the scent. I have maintained
to this day that he sniffed my sermons from afar, undeceived by the
worldly flavour of my rusty bag.
I collected myself heroically, and replied that I was looking forward to
the discharge of the high duty to which he had referred. Upon this
admission he moved nearer, as a great lawyer stalks his quarry in the
witness box. He eyed me solemnly for a moment, with the look of one
taking aim, and then said slowly--
"I'm no' an elder in that kirk."
"Are you not?" said I, with as generous an intonation of surprise as
conscience would permit.
"I'm no' an elder," he repeated. "But I gang till it," he added.
Then followed a pause, which I dared to break with the remark, "I am
told it is a spacious edifice."
He merely glanced at me, as if to say that all irrelevant conversation
was out of place, and then continued--
"And I'm no' the precentor; I'm no' the man, ye ken, that lifts the
tune."
I nodded sympathetically, trying to convey my sense of the mistake the
congregation had made in its choice of both elders and precentor.
"Ye wud say, to luik at me, that I'm no' an office-seeker, an' ye're
richt. But I haud an office for a' that."
This time I smiled as if light had come to me, and as one who has been
reassured in his belief in an overruling Providence.
"What office do you hold?" said I.
"Ye wudna guess in a twalmonth. I'm no' the treasurer, as ye're
thinkin'--I'm the beadle."
I uttered a brief eulogy upon the honour and responsibility of that
position, pointing out that the beadle had a dignity all his own, as
well as the elders and other officers of the kirk.
He endorsed my views with swift complacent nods.
"That's what I aye think o' when I see the elders on the Sabbath
mornin'," said he; "forbye, there's severals o' _them_, but wha ever
heard tell o' mair than ae beadle? And what's mair, I had raither be a
door-keeper in the Lord's hoose than dwall in tents o' sin. Them's
Dauvit's words, and they aye come to me when I compare mysel' wi' the
elders."
I hurriedly commended his reference to the Scriptures, at the same time
avoiding any share in his rather significant classification, remarking
on the other hand that elders had their place, and that authority was
indispensable in all churches, and the very essence of the Presbyterian
system.
He interrupted me, fearing he had been misunderstood.
"Mind ye," he declared fervently, "I'm no' settin' mysel' up even wi'
the minister. I regard him as mair important than me--far mair
important," he affirmed, with reckless humility, "but the elders, they
are juist common fowk like mysel'. An' at times they are mair than
common. Me an' the minister bear a deal frae the elders. He aye bids me
to bear wi' them, an' I aye bid him no' to mind. I tell him whiles that
we'd meet an' we'd greet whaur the elders cease frae troublin'--them's
the poet's words."
We were now some two miles or so from the town and the church wherein he
exercised his gifts and magnified his office; and my rugged friend,
dismissing the elders for the time, reverted to the inquiry he had seen
fit previously to ignore.
"Ye were askin' me aboot the kirk."
"Yes," said I in a chastened voice, "I asked you if it was not very
large."
"Thae was no' yir exact words, but I ken yir meanin'. It's a gran' kirk,
St. Cuthbert's, an' ye'll need to speak oot--no' to yell, ye ken, for
I'm nigh deefened wi' the roarin' o' the candidates sin' oor kirk was
preached vacant by the Presbytery. Dinna be ower lang; and be sure to
read a' the psalm afore ye sit doon, and hae the sough o' Sinai in yir
discoorse, specially at the mornin' diet; an' aye back up the Scriptures
wi' the catechism, an' hae a word or twa aboot the Covenanters, them as
sealed their testimony wi' their bluid, ye ken. Ye'll tak' ma advice as
kindly; it's mair than likely we'll never meet again gin the morrow's
gone."
I thanked him for his counsel and reached for my bag, at the signal of
escaping steam.
The car door had just closed behind me when I felt a hand upon my arm
and heard a now familiar voice--
"An' dinna pray ower muckle for yir ain devoted folk at hame; an' dinna
ask the King an' Head o' the Kirk to fetch till us a wise under-shepherd
o' the flock."
With a word of additional acknowledgment I stepped on to the station
platform, but my parley with a burly cabman was interrupted by the same
voice whispering in my ear--
"Ye micht mind the elders in yir prayer; gin they were led mair into the
licht it wad dae nae harm to onybody."
II
_A MAN With a SECRET_
There was no one about the station to welcome me and none to direct, but
there were many to stare and wonder.
The moderator of the vacant kirk had provided me with the address of the
house to which he said I should repair. I was in no wise mortified by
this apparent lack of hospitality, for the aforesaid moderator had
reminded me in his postscript that the folk of St. Cuthbert's were
notoriously Scotch, untrained to any degree of devotion at the
beginning, but famous for the fervour of their loyalty at the close of
their ministers' careers.
Whether or not I should have any career at all amongst them was the
subject of my thoughts as I wended my way to "Inglewood," for such was
the melodious title of the house which was to be my home during my
sojourn in New Jedboro.
Beautiful for situation it proved to be, nestling among its sentinels of
oak, upon the highest hill of seven which garrisoned the town. The signs
of wealth and good taste were everywhere about, and my probationer's
heart was beating fast when I pulled the polished silver knob whose
patrician splendour had survived the invasion of all electrical
upstarts.
I heard the answering bell far within, breaking again and again into its
startled cry, and my soul answered it with peals of such humiliation as
is known only to the man whose heart affords a home to that ill-matched
pair, the discomfiture of the candidate and the pride of the
Presbyterian.
The door was opened by the master of the house, Michael Blake, a man of
forty-five or so, the wealthy senior of New Jedboro's greatest
manufacturing firm.
I suppose he looked first at me, but my first sensation was of his keen
eye swiftly falling on the shabby travelling-bag in my left hand, my
right kept disengaged for any friendly overture which might await me.
Oh, the shame and the anguish of those swift glances towards one's
travelling-bag! Can no kind genius devise a scheme for their temporary
concealment such as the modern book agent has brought to its perfection,
full armed beneath the treacherous shelter of his cloak?
I broke the silence: "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Blake?"
"Yes, that is my name," responded a rich, soulful voice, resonant with
the finest Scottish flavour, "and what can I do for you, sir?"
Presuming that it would be hardly delicate for me to state the
particular duty I was expecting him to discharge, I betook myself to the
association of ideas, and replied--
"I am to preach in St. Cuthbert's to-morrow," hoping that this might
suggest to him the information he had sought.
Swift and beautiful was the transformation. The soul of hospitality
leaped from his face, stern and secretive though it was. His eye, which
had seemed to hold my blushing bag at bay, turned now upon me with all
the music of a great welcome in its glance. He looked at me with that
frank abruptness which true cordiality creates, and when he took my hand
in his my heart leaped to the warm shelter of its grasp.
"I have been looking for you; you are welcome here," he said, in the
quietest of tones. He drew me gently within the massive door, and in
that moment I knew that I was in the custody of love.
A grandfather's clock, proud and stately in its sense of venerable
faithfulness, was gravely ticking off the moments with hospitality in
its tone. A pleasant-faced lassie showed me to my room, reminding me
that the evening meal awaited my descent.
My host justified my every impression. While we disposed of the plain
but appetizing fare, whose crown was the speckled trout which his skill
had lured from home, he submitted me to the kindliest of
cross-examinations concerning my past, my scholarship, my evangelical
positions, my household, and much else that nestled among them all.
Throughout, I felt the charm and the power of his gentleness, and under
its secret influence I yielded up what many another would have sought in
vain. Some natures there are which search you as the sun lays bare the
flowers, making for itself a pathway to their inmost heart, every petal
opening before its siege of love.
But reciprocity there was none. His lips seemed to stand like inexorable
sentinels before his heart, in league with its great secret, the
guardians of a past which no man had heard revealed. One or two
tentative attempts to discover his antecedents were foiled by his
charming taciturnity.
"I came from the old country many years ago," was the only information
he vouchsafed me.
The evening was spent in conversation which never flamed but never
flagged. My increasing opportunity for observation served but to confirm
my conviction that I was confronted with a man who had one great and
separate secret hidden within the impenetrable recesses of a contrite
heart. He said little about St. Cuthbert's or the morrow, his most
significant observation being to the effect that the serious-minded of
the kirk were looking forward to my appearance with hopeful interest.
After he had bidden me good-night, he again sought me in my chamber,
interrupting the devotions which I was striving to conduct in oblivion
of to-morrow and in the sombre light of the Judgment Day.
"Will you do me a kindness in the kirk to-morrow?" he said, with almost
pathetic eagerness.
I responded fervently that nothing could be a greater kindness to myself
than the sense of one bestowed on him.
"Very well, then, will you give us the Fifty-first Psalm to sing at the
morning service--it always seems to me that it is the soul's staple
food; and let us begin with the fifth verse--
"'Behold, Thou in the inward parts
With truth delighted art.'
It falls like water on the thirsty heart. And perhaps, if your previous
selection will permit, you would give us in the evening the paraphrase--
"'Come let us to the Lord our God
With contrite hearts return.'
My mother first taught me that," he added, with the first quiver of the
lip I yet had seen, "and I have learned it anew from God."
He then swiftly departed, little knowing that he had given me that night
a pillow for both head and heart. I fell asleep, his great quotations
and his earnest words flowing about my soul even as the ocean laves the
shore.
III
_OUR MUTUAL TRIAL_
The Sabbath morning broke serene and fair. Thus also awoke my spirit,
still invigorated by its contact with one I felt to be an honest and
God-fearing man, whose ardour I knew was chastened by a long-waged
conflict of the soul.
Our morning worship was led by Mr. Blake himself, who besought the
Divine blessing upon the labours of him who was "for this day 'our
servant for Jesus' sake.'"
We walked to the church together, mingling with the silent and reverent
multitude pressing towards a common shrine.
As he left me at the vestry door, he said earnestly--
"Forget that you are a candidate of St. Cuthbert's, and remember that
you are a minister of God."
The beadle recognized me with a confidential nod, inspected the pulpit
robe which I had donned, and taking up the "Books," he led the way to
the pulpit steps with an air which might have provoked the envy of the
most solemn mace-bearer who ever served his king.
He opened the door, and then there appeared to my wondering view a sea
of expectant faces, vast beyond my utmost dream. They were steeped in
silence, a silence so intense that it left the impress on my mind of an
ocean, majestic in its heaving grandeur; for the stiller you find the
sea of human faces the more reasonably may you dread the trough of human
waves.
The wonder of the reverent and the sneer of the scornful have alike been
prompted by the preaching of a candidate. Something strange and
incongruous seems to pertain to the performance of a man whose
acknowledged purpose is the dual one of winning alike the souls and the
smiles of men. He seeks, as all preachers are supposed to do, the uplift
of his hearers' souls, while his very appearance is a pledge of his
desire to so commend himself as to be their favourite and their choice.
Much hath been written, and more hath been said, of the humiliation to
which he must submit who occupies a vacant pulpit as the applicant for a
vacant kirk.
But, whatever ground there be for these reflections, I felt the force of
none of them that radiant Sabbath morning in St. Cuthbert's. My
Calvinism, which is regarded by those who know it not as dragonlike and
altogether drastic, proved now my comfort and my stay, and within its
vast pavilion I seemed to hide as in the covert of the Eternal. For
there surged through heart and brain the stately thought that such
experimental dealings between a minister and a people might be
sublimated before reverent eyes, hallowed as a holy venture, and
destined to play its part in the economy of God.
His claim seemed loftier far than any obligation between my heart and
man, and so uplifted was I by the sense of a commission which even
candidature could neither invalidate nor deform, that all sense of
servility, all cringing thought of livelihood, all fear of faltering and
all faltering of fear, seemed to flee away even as the blasphemy of
darkness retreats before the sanctities of the morn. In very truth I
forgot that I was a candidate of St. Cuthbert's and seemed but to
remember that I was a minister of God.
Whether my sermon was good or ill I could not then have told; but I
could well have told that a victorious secret is to him who strives
after earnestness of heart, unvexed by the clamour of his own rebellious
and ambitious soul.
The congregation was vast and reverent as befitted the purpose of the
hour; the most careless eye could mark the strong and reflective cast of
those Scottish faces, whose native adamant was but little softened by
their sojourn beneath Canadian skies. Reverence seemed to clothe these
worshippers like a garment. They were as men who believed in God,
whereby are men most fearsome and yet most glorious to look upon. It was
the fearsomeness of such a face, garrisoned in God, which had beat back
the haughty gaze of Mary when she met the eye of Knox, burning with a
fire which no torch of time had kindled.
And when they sang their opening hymn, they seemed to stride upwards as
mountaineers, for they lifted up their eyes as men who would cast them
down again only before God Himself. From word to word they climbed, and
from line to line, as though each word or line were some abutting crag
of the very hill of God. Besides, the psalm they sung was this--
"I to the hills will lift mine eyes
From whence doth come mine aid."
Their intensity steadied my very soul. They seemed to look at me as if
to say, "We are in earnest if you are; our kirk is vacant but our hearts
are full," and the pulpit in which I stood, and in which many a hapless
man had stood before, was hallowed by its solemn garrison of waiting
souls, and redeemed of all taint of treason towards its sacred trust.
When I called them unto prayer, they answered as the forest answers
when the wind brings it word from heaven, save some venerable few who
rose erect (as was their fathers' way), standing like sentinel oaks amid
lesser trees, they also bending with an obeisance prompted from within.
It seemed not hard to lead these earnest hearts in prayer--they seemed
the rather to lead my soul as by a more familiar path; or, to state the
truth more utterly, their devoutness seemed to bear me on, as the deep
ocean bears itself and its every burden towards the shore.
This intensity of worship pervaded its every act. They joined in the
reading of the Word as those who must both hear and see it for
themselves, their books opening and closing in unison with the larger
one which decked their pulpit like a crown.
Even when the collection was taken up they maintained their loftiness of
poise. It had been often told me that Scotch folk contribute to an
offering with the same heroism wherewith their ancestors opened their
unshrinking veins, doling forth their money, like their blood, with a
martyr's air. But although I remarked that some Scottish eyes followed
their departing coins with glances of parental tenderness, there was yet
a solemn stateliness about the operation which greatly won me, even
those who dedicated the homeliest copper doing it unabashedly, as if to
the Lord, and not unto men.
We closed with the penitential psalm which Mr. Blake had asked, and its
great words seemed charged with the strong reality of men who believed
in sin with the same old-fashioned earnestness as marked their faith in
God, the two answering the one to the other as deep calleth unto deep,
eternally harmonious as they are.
The congregation swayed slowly down the aisle, Scottishly cold and
still, like the processional of the ice in the spring-time. They
reminded me of noble bergs drifting through the Straits of Belle Isle.
It was a Presbyterian flood, and every man a floe. But I suspected
mightily that they were nevertheless the product of the spring, and
somehow felt that they dwelt near the confines of the summer. The fire
which warmed their hearts had touched my own, and in that very moment
wherein they turned their backs upon me, I pursued them with
surrendering tenderness, and coveted for my own the rugged faithfulness
which hath now enriched these many golden years.
One or two turned to glance at me, but when their gaze met mine they
despatched their eyes on some impartial quest, as if caressing their
noble church or looking for some lingering friend.
The precentor, whose place was in a kind of songster's pulpit just below
me, was wreathed in the complacent air of a man who has discharged a
lofty duty and has done it well. He had borne himself throughout as the
real master of the entire service, and as one who had ruled from an
untitled throne. He cast me one or two swift glances, such as would
become an engineer who had brought his train or a pilot who had brought
his ship to the desired haven. I returned his overture with a look of
humble gratitude, and he thereupon relaxed as one well content with what
was his hard-earned due, but nothing more. I have well learned since
then that by so much as one values one's peace, by that much must one
reverence the precentor.
When I regained the vestry I found it peopled with six or seven elders
(a great and sweltering population), but no word of favour or approval
escaped a single Scottish lip. Their hour had not yet come; but I knew
it not, and was proportionately cast down by what seemed to me a silent
rhetoric of scorn. But it was the will of heaven to somewhat set aside
what I unknowingly estimated to be the verdict of indifference. The
beadle, as one with whom I had had a past, beckoned me without,
whispering that a "wumman body," a stranger, desired to speak with me in
an adjoining room.
Her story was short and sad; her request, the sobbing entreaty of a
broken heart that I would pray for her darling and her prodigal, her
first-born, wandering in that farthest of all countries which lies
beyond the confines of a mother's ken. I answered her with a glance
which owned the kinship of her tears, and pledged it with a hand which,
thank God, has ever found its warmest welcome in the hand of woe. Then I
went back to the vestry unafraid. "For what," thought I, "can these
elders do either for me or against me, if I am really a priest unto God
for one mother's son? This woman has evidently forgotten that I am a
candidate of St. Cuthbert's, and has remembered only that I am a
minister of God."
IV
_OUR MUTUAL VERDICT_
The evening service was like unto that of the morning, the only
difference being that I saw this sturdy folk, mountain-like, in the
light of the setting, instead of the rising sun. But still no word or
hint revealed to me the favour or disfavour with which my efforts had
been received by the people of St. Cuthbert's, save only that one man
ventured to remark that I had brought him in mind of Thomas Chalmers.
I hurriedly exclaimed, "Is that so?" in a tone which all too plainly
implored him to go on.
"Yes," said he. "When ye blawed yir nose, if ma een had been shut, I cud
hae swore it was Chammers," whereupon the last state of me was worse
than the first.
But I was a little comforted in overhearing one Scot say to another as
they passed me on their homeward way, "He's no' to be expeckit to preach
like yon man frae Hawick," to which the other replied, and I caught his
closing words, "But there was a bit at the end that wasna bad."
This was but a thin gruel to satisfy one's wondering soul, but it was
shortly thickened by the beadle. He was waiting for us at Mr. Blake's,
wishing instruction about some task that fell within his duties, but he
managed to have a word with me--
"I canna tell what waits ye, but, gin ye'd like to see through the
manse, I'll tak' ye through the morn."
I thanked him, declining, but secretly blessed him and inwardly
rejoiced.
At worship that night my gentle host read the story of the prodigal, and
when we knelt to pray he repeated twice, "I will arise and go unto my
Father," and in the pause I felt that the wave of some besetting memory
was beating on the shore; more and more was it borne in upon me that
this man had a past, shared only by himself and God and some one else
unknown.
The morning witnessed my departure from New Jedboro, and from the window
of the train I watched its fast-retreating hills, so often trodden by me
since with the swinging stride of joy, or clambered with the heavy step
of care.
There is neither time nor space to set down in detail all that followed.
Let it suffice to say that while they were musing the fire burned, and
the good folk of St. Cuthbert's slowly and solemnly resolved to call me
to their ancient church.
They were scandalized by a report, which spread with pestilential ease,
that I had known my wife but three short weeks when I asked her to walk
the long walk with me. This and other rumours provoked them to despatch
a sage and ponderous officer to the distant scene of my labours, that he
might investigate them on the spot. He came, he saw, he was conquered.
My wife lassoed him at a throw. He went home in fetters, his eloquence
alone unloosed. Long before the night on which they should meet to call,
he had brandished his opinion as to the wisdom of my delirious haste.
"But did he mak' his choice so redeek'lus sudden?" he was asked.
"I dinna ken," he answered tropically, "and I dinna care. If he bided
three weeks, he bided ower lang. I kent that fine when ance I saw her.
Noo, I pit it till ye, gin ye were crossin' a desert place, an' ye saw
the Rose o' Sharon afore ye, wad ye no' pluck it gin ye micht, and pluck
it quick? I pit it till ye." And they answered him not a word, for there
is no debater like the heart.
I was told in after days that my historic friend the beadle canvassed
for me night and day, laying mighty stress upon the fact that he knew me
well, since he had travelled with me, assuring every ear that I was
"uncommon ceevil," and proudly laying bare the independent scorn with
which I had met his proposition to inspect the manse.
"But we micht get him yet," he concluded, "gin we gang richt aboot it."
These testimonials, together with his plaintive appeal to be relieved of
the responsibility which the absence of a fixed minister threw upon
himself, went far to confirm the wavering.
Nor shall I linger to trace the workings of that ponderous machinery
whereby I was at last installed as the minister of St. Cuthbert's
Church. Even the great assemblage which gathered to welcome us, with its
infinite introductions, its features social, devotional, and
deputational, its addresses civic and ecclesiastical, must be dismissed
with a word.
It reminded me of nothing so much as of the launching of a ship, and
beneath all its tumult of artillery there thrummed the deep undertone of
joy. For St. Cuthbert's, contrary to its historic way, had parted with
its last minister, a man of great ability, amid the smoke of battle, and
he had gone forth as Napoleon went, with a martial record which the
corroding years even yet have scarcely tarnished. Fierce had been the
fight, the factions grimly equal, and beclouded with a sublime confusion
as to which side had been led by heaven and which by Belial. On this
point, even now, they do not exactly see eye to eye.
And this deep joy, whose untiring hum (joy's native voice) had entwined
itself with every exercise of our exultant gathering was born of the
assurance of returning harmony and the welcome calm which follows the
departing storm. The gentle vines of peace were beginning to clothe
their scarred and disfigured Zion.
St. Cuthbert's hailed that night as the hour of its convalescence. In
consequence, every speech, even those from dry and desiccated lips, was
coloured with the melody of hope. Even hoary jokes and ancestral
stories, kept for tea-meetings as hard tack is kept for the army and
navy, were disinfected by the kindly flavour which brooded like an April
cloud.
And now it is my purpose to set down as best I may some of the features
of my life, and a few of my most vivid observations among these
remarkable folk.
The greater number of them had been born in bonnie Scotland, and all of
them, even those who had never seen their ancestral home, spoke and
lived and thought as though they had just come from the heathery hills.
They were sprung from the loins of heroes, the stalwart pioneers from
Roxburghshire and Ayrshire and Dumfries, and many another noble spot
whose noblest sons had gone forth to earth's remotest bound, flaming
with love of liberty and God. Seventy years before they had settled
about New Jedboro, thinking of the well-loved Scottish town whose name
it bore.
Soon the echoing forest bowed before their gleaming axes, and they made
the wilderness to blossom like the rose. Comfort, and even wealth, came
to them at the imperious beck of industry. Stern and earnest, reckoning
frivolity a sin, finding their pleasure in a growing capacity for
self-denial and a growing scorn of needless luxury, they cherished in
their blood the iron which had been bequeathed by noble sires.
Hand in hand with God like sons of Knox, they built the school and the
church with the first-fruits of their toil, disporting themselves again
in their unforgotten psalms, worshipping after the dear-bought manner of
their fathers, not a few of whom had paid the price of blood, nor deemed
it sacrifice.
Like draws to like, they say. With St. Cuthbert's this had certainly
been the case; for every minister who had served them heretofore had
been both born and educated in their motherland.
Three had they had. The first was the Reverend John Grant, Doctor of
Divinity, from Greenock; the second, the Reverend James Kay, from
Aberdeen; the third, my immediate predecessor, the Reverend Henry
Alexander from Glasgow.
Like a mountain peak towered the memory of their first minister, a man
of gigantic power, scholarly and profound, grimly genial, carrying with
him everywhere the air of the Eternal. He was as eloquent almost as
human lips can be, magnetic to the point of tyranny, and grandly
independent of everything and every one but God. His fame covered Canada
like a flood. American colleges sought the honour of their laurel on his
brow, and from one of the best he accepted his Doctor's hood. City
congregations coveted him with pious envy, but he hearkened to few and
coquetted with none. He had assumed the cure of St. Cuthbert's when it
was almost entirely (as it was still considerably) a country
congregation, revelling in solitude and souls, both of which were nearer
here to Nature's heart than amid the sweltering throng. Here he
cherished his mighty heart and gave eternal bent to hearts only less
mighty than his own.
"Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his place."
Throughout my ministry in St. Cuthbert's the mention of his name was the
signal for a cloud of witnesses. Forty years had elapsed since the
countryside followed him to his grave, shrouded in gown and bands, a
regalia more than royal to their loving eyes. But they had guarded his
memory with the vigilance which belongs only to the broken heart, and
the traditions of his greatness were fresh among them still.
"I likit the ither twa fine," said a shrewd sermon taster to me soon
after my arrival, "but their sermons didna plough the soul like the
Doctor's; we hae na had the fallow grun' turned up sin' he dee'd."
And so said, or thought, they all.
V
_My KIRK SESSION_
He would need a brave and facile pen who would venture to portray the
kirk session of St. Cuthbert's Church. For any kirk session is far from
commonplace, let alone the session of such a church as mine. Kirk
sessions are the bloom of Scottish character in particular and the crown
and glory of mankind in general. Piety, sobriety, severity, these are
the three outstanding graces which they illustrate supremely; but
interlocked with these are many other gifts and virtues in varying
degrees of culture.
In St. Cuthbert's, the pride of eldership was chiefly vested in their
wives and daughters.
"Ye mauna be ower uplifted aboot yir faither's office," was the
oft-repeated admonition of the elder's wife to the elder's children, and
the children were not slow to remark that her words were one part rebuke
and ten parts pride. For to mothers and bairns alike he appeared as one
of God's kings and priests when he walked down the aisle with the
vessels of the Lord.
Many of these men were poor, grandly and pathetically poor, but none
was poor enough to appear at the sacramental board without his "blacks,"
radiant with the lustre of open love and sacred sacrifice. This I
afterwards learned was their wives' doing, and marvellous in my eyes. Ah
me! How many a decently apparelled husband, how many a white-robed
child, has come forth out of great tribulation not their own. Indeed,
uncounted multitudes there are who shall walk in white before the throne
of God, whose robes the secret sacrifice of loving hearts hath whitened
as no fuller of earth can whiten them.
My first meeting with the kirk session of St. Cuthbert's was an
epoch-marking incident. Twenty-eight there were who sat about the
session-room, every man but one an importation from Caledonia's rugged
hills. Roxburgh's covenanting heroes, Wigtonshire's triumphant martyrs,
Dumfriesshire and her Cameronians, with their great namesake's lion
heart; Ayrshire, with her bloody memories of moor and moss-hags, of
quarry and conventicle, of Laud and liberty--all these had filtered
through and reappeared in these silent and stalwart men.
Of these eight-and-twenty faces at least one score had the cast of
marble and the stamp of eternity upon them. I felt like a hillock
nestling at the feet of lofty peaks, for I do make my oath that when you
are begirt by men in whose veins there flows the blood of martyrs, who
have been slowly nurtured upon such stately doctrines as are their daily
food, who actually believe in God as a living participator in the
affairs of time, whose mental pabulum has been Thomas Boston and Samuel
Rutherford and Philip Doddridge, and who have used these worthies but as
helps to climb that unpinnacled hill of the Eternal Word--when you get
such men as these, multiplied a hundredfold by the stern consciousness
of a religious trust, if you are not then among the Rockies of flesh and
blood, I am as one who sees men like walking trees, ignorant of the true
altitudes of human life.
But I was yet to learn, and to learn by heart (the great medium of all
real character), that many a fragrant flower may bloom in secret clefts
of rock-bound hills, frowning and forbidding though they be. For God
loves to surprise us, especially in happy ways; and His is a sanguine
sun.
It should now be stated that I began my ministry in St. Cuthbert's with
the handicap of an Irish ancestry. How then was I to wear the hodden
gray? Or how was I to commingle myself with that historic tide which I
well knew the Scottish heart regarded as fed more than any other from
the river that makes glad the city of God?
My every vein was already full to overflowing with Irish blood. My
father was from Ballymena and my mother was from Cork, a solution which
no chemistry could cure. I was inclined by nature and confirmed by
practice towards a reasonable pride in my ancestral land. But odds were
against me. Even the mistress of my manse, whose judgment was wont to
take counsel of her kindly heart, even she remonstrated when she first
discovered my nativity, and has never since been altogether thankful,
though she strives hard to be resigned.
"Why do you always flaunt your Irish origin?" she reasoned once. "If it
is good stock, be modest about it; and if it is not, the less said the
better."
Then she remarked that she was no doubt prejudiced, for she had once
witnessed the noble procession in New York on St. Patrick's Day; and she
added that they all seemed to have mouths like the Mammoth Cave of
Kentucky and complexions like an asphalt pavement under repairs. My
wife's power of detecting analogies was uncommonly acute.
* * * * *
When the session had been duly constituted, the minutes of the last
meeting were read by the session clerk. It is probably quite within the
mark to say that all ecclesiastical officialdom can produce no other
dignitary with the same stern grandeur as pertains to the clerk of a
Scottish session. I have witnessed archbishops in their robes and with
their mitres, and have marvelled at the gravity with which they clothed
the most ponderous frivolities, at their stately genuflections, at the
swift shedding and donning of their bewildering millineries. I have seen
General Booth resplendent in his flaming clericals. I have even looked
on the bespangled Dowie, dazzling and bedazzled--but none of these has
the majesty of poise, the aroma of responsibility, or the inexorable air
of authority which mark the true-bred session clerk.
The minutes having been read and hermetically sealed, I addressed the
elders briefly, referring to my great duties and my poor abilities,
after which I invited them to a general deliberation, and begged them to
acquaint me with the mind and temper of the congregation, asking such
advice as might be useful in entering upon my labours.
"We bid ye welcome, moderator," began the senior elder, by name Sandy
Grant, "an' we'll do what in us lies to haud up yir hands; ye're no' oor
servant, but oor minister, and we're a' ready to do yir biddin', gin
it's the will o' God. Ye're sittin' in a michty seat, moderator. It was
frae that chair that oor first minister spak' till us in far ither
days."
At this reference to the golden age, I saw a wave of tenderness break
over the faces of the older men.
"Ay, I mind weel the nicht Doctor Grant sat amang us for the first time,
as ye're sittin' noo."
This time it was Ronald M'Gregor who had spoken, the love-light on whose
face even sixty winters could not disguise.
"We'll never look upon his like again. Ye've mebbe watched the storm,
sir, when it beat upon the shore. His style o' delivery was like the
ragin' o' the waves. Ye see that buik, moderator, yir haun's restin' on
the tap o't. Weel, he dune for sax o' them the while he was oor
minister. We bocht the strongest bound o' them, but he banged them to
tatters amazin' fast. A page at a skite. Times it was like the driftin'
o' the leaves in the fall. He was graun' on the terrors o' the law. We
haena been what's to say clean uplifted wi' the michty truth o' the
punishment o' the lost sin' his mooth was closed in death," and Ronald
sighed the sigh of the hungry heart.
"Div ye no' mind the Doctor on the decrees, the simmer o' the
cholera--div ye no' mind yon, Ronald?" said Thomas Laidlaw, swept into
the seething tide of reminiscence; but here the session clerk rose to a
point of order.
"The members o' this court will address the moderator," he said sternly.
"Moreover, we are here for business, not for history. We might well
think shame of ourselves, glorifying the old when we should be
welcoming the new. We're no' to be aye dwellin' amang the tombs" (this
with a rise in feeling and a drop in language). "Besides, Doctor Grant
was no' a common man, and it's no becomin' to be comparin' common men
along wi' the likes o' him."
So this, thought I, is the Scottish mode of paying compliments. I had
always heard that their little tributes were more medicinal than
confectionery.
Then followed a painful calm, for Scottish calms are stormy things.
It was Michael Blake who first resumed.
"Let us forget the things which are behind," he said, "if we only can,"
and there was a wealth of agony in his words, "and let us press forth
unto those things which are before. We greet you, moderator, as the
messenger of peace, for we are all but sinful men and unworthy of the
trust we hold. I hope you will preach to us the grace of God, for we
have learned ourselves the terrors of the law."
"I move that we adjourn," interjected Ronald M'Gregor, alarmed for the
retirement of Sinai, and fearful of a too early spring.
"I second that," said a rugged patriarch, hitherto silent.
"But I hope the moderator 'll permit me to express the hope that he'll
no' shorten up the services, and that he'll gie the young fowk mair o'
the catechism than we hae been gettin', and mak' the sacraments mair
searchin' to the soul," said Saunders M'Tavish.
"Ye're oot o' order," interrupted the clerk; "there's a motion to
adjourn afore the Chair."
"But I maun tak' ma staun," exclaimed Saunders.
"Ye mauna," retorted the clerk, "ye maun tak' yir seat," and Saunders
dropped where he stood, while his fellow-elders looked into each other's
faces as if to say that this thing might have befallen any one of them.
VI
_The FIRST PARISH ROUND_
I soon began, of course, the visitation of my flock. Although my title
to youth was at that time undisputed, and although the unreflective
would have labelled me "new school," the importance of faithful visiting
was ever before my mind.
The curate's place (unhappiest of men) had more than once been offered
me at the hands of portly ministers, prepared to deny themselves all the
visiting, they to take all the preaching and nearly all the salary,
while their untitled slave was to deny himself the high joy of the
pulpit, to starve on the salary's dregs, and to indulge himself royally
in a very carnival of unceasing visitation. These overtures I had had
little hesitation in declining, for observation had taught me that the
slave's place soon makes the slave's spirit, unless that slavery be an
indenture unto God, which is but the sterner name for liberty.
Moreover, curates (especially Presbyterian, which implieth the greater
perversion) seemed to lack the breath of the uplands which the pulpit
breathes, and too often degenerate into society favourites, whose
flapping tails of black may be seen as these curates ring at fashionable
doors, where "five-o'clocks" within await the kid-gloved ministers of
men who are supposed to be the stewards of eternal life. I had once
overheard an enamelled queen of fashion declare, with much emotion, that
their curate was indispensable to a high-class "at home," and even
panegyrize his graceful transportation of cups of tea, however full.
Whereupon I forever swore that I would frizzle upon no such heathen
altar; I vowed to be either a minister or a butler--one thing or the
other--but never a Right Reverend Butler, which is a monster and a
tongue-cheeked comedy to both God and man.
As the minister of a vast congregation like St. Cuthbert's, I might on
the other hand have requested an assistant who should relieve me of the
visiting, leaving me only the duties of the pulpit, oceanic enough for
any man. Indeed, one of the stalwarts had suggested this to me, averring
that I needed more time for my sermons, whereat I looked at him sharply;
but his face was placid as a sea of milk, which is the way of Scotsmen
when they mean to score. But this dual ministry was ever the object of
my disfavour, for he preaches best who visits best, and the weekly
garner makes the richest grist for the Sunday mill. True and tender
visiting is the sermon's fuse, and what God hath put together no man
can safely put asunder.
One of my first visits was to the farmhouse of Donald M'Phatter, a
belated member of the fold, for he and his wife Elsie had not beshadowed
St. Cuthbert's door for many a year. This parochial policy had been
suggested to me by the beadle:
"Ye maun luik to the driftwood first--pit oot the laggin' log frae the
shore, ye ken," he said to me, following this up with an exhaustive
narrative of the raftsman's life which had once been his.
I found Donald dour but deferential, full-armed against every appeal for
his reform.
"I willna gang," he exclaimed, "till ony kirk that pits oot the token[1]
at the sacrament, and taks up wi' they bit cairds they're usin' the noo.
Cairds at the sacrament! it's fair insultin' to the Almichty."
[Footnote 1: A small piece of metal with the words "This do in
remembrance of Me," given in Scottish churches, before the Sacrament of
The Supper, to those entitled to participate.]
I parried the blow as best I could, and was on the verge of winning in
the argument when he suddenly took another tack.
"Forbye, I hae dune ma duty. Didna I gang steady when the Doctor was oor
meenister? Ilka Sabbath day I gaed an' hearkened till the graun' sermons
twa oors at a time, an' God grippit me thae days, an' He hasna loosened
His haud o' me yet. Ance saved, aye saved. That's ma doctrine. Wha can
slip awa frae grace, forbye it be thae Methody buddies an' ither
Armenian fowk, an' there was na ane o' them in the parish in the
doctor's day. The fields was fine an' fu' o' wheat thae days, but
there's muckle mustard noo, I tell ye that."
"But you will surely admit, Mr. M'Phatter, that the nourishment of years
ago will not suffice for to-day. Yesterday's dinner will not forestall
the necessity of the day that follows," I urged, inwardly ashamed of the
threadbare argument.
He saw its threadbareness too, for he retorted--
"That's a verra auld argyment; in fac', it's clean stale, if it's no'
rotten. Doctor Grant wud hae sniffit at it. And what's mair, it's no' an
argyment ava', for I hae mony a dinner o' the sermons that I gathered in
thae far back days. I aye eat and sup off that when ye an' yir fowk's
fummlin' wi' yir cairds at the kirk. Bide a meenit."
He hurried into an adjoining room, and soon returned with a sheaf of
rusty notes, clearing his throat awhile with the sound of a trumpeter
calling to the fray.
"I wasna ane o' the sleepin' kind; I aye paid attention in the hoose o'
God. I only sleepit ance an' I cudna help it, for oor Jeanie was born
that mornin'--an' that was a work o' needcessity. An' what's mair, I
aye took notes o' the discoorse, an' I hae them yet.
"They's ma dinners noo, tae use yir word, minister--they's ma dinners,
an' they hunger nae mair wha tak's them--saxteen or seventeen coorses,
ilka ane o' them; nane o' yir bit lunches wi' napkins an' flowers and
finger bowls like ye hae the noo, no' worth the bit grace ye say ower
them--they's nane o' yir teas, tastin' an' sniffin', wi' sweeties an'
sic like--they's meat, sir, strong meat for strong men, an' the bane's
in the baith o' them like."
He stopped, as a cannon stops after it has fired, the aroma of battle
still pouring from its lips.
"What are these papers in your hand?" I asked, not for information, but
for breath. (You have seen a caged canary leap from its perch to its
swing, and back again, when sorely pressed.) He speedily closed that
door.
"They, sir? Div ye no' ken what's they? They's Doctor Grant's heids and
pertikklers. Doctor Grant's heids and pertikklers, I'm tellin' ye. A' o'
them but ane is the heids an' pertikklers o' sermons that made St.
Cuthbert's ring like the wood on an August nicht when the thunder roams
it. That ither ane he preach't in a graun city kirk wha soucht to get
him, and they cudna--an' it was croodit like the barn mou' when
harvest's dune, an' I was there masel', an' he kent me--an' I'm the man
that held his cane in ma haun the time he preach't, I'm tellin' ye." And
Donald's withered face was now aglow with such a tenderness as only
bygone years can loan to age; his eyes were ashine with tears, each one
the home of sheeted days that had come back from the dead, and his
parted lips were drinking deep of the mystic tides of memory.
* * * * *
A rich mosaic was the visitation of this sterling race. The lovely
valleys and the picturesque hills of their ancestral sires I have often
roamed since then, but never have I seen the Scottish character in its
homely beauty as it appeared to me in their happy Canadian life among
the cozy farmhouses of this fruitful countryside. The traditions of
their native land were tenderly cherished by them all, and many were the
stories they related of the old days in Scotland and of the day whereon
they looked their last upon the unforgotten heather.
One of my first visits was to Mrs. Gavin Toshack, whom I found in a
reminiscent mood.
"Ay," she said, "we're a' Scotch aboot thae pairts; an' God keep us sae.
There's been scarce a fly in the ointment, forbye Sandy Trother's wife,
who gied him, an' gied us a', a heap o' tribble; but she was Irish, ye
ken. An' oor ministers hae a' been frae Scotland; but we had ane for
mebbe twa month or mair--nae oor ain minister, but only a kin' o'
evangelist buddy. He was an Irish buddy tae, but there were severals
converted. That was nae Irish wark whatever, but the grace o' God. We
were na lang oot frae the auld country when he cam'; I mind fine. It was
in the year '37. We sailed frae Annan Water Foot in July, an' eight
weeks or mair it took us afore we landit in Quebec. Then by canal and
wagon till we reach't New Jedboro; 'twas a sair, weary ride. But the
breath o' freedom an' o' promise was in the air--an' we hae oor ain hame
noo an' twa hunner acres o' the finest land in a' the country. An' we're
independent noo, wi' eneuch for a bite an' a sup till we hunger nae mair
nor thirst ony mair. An' oor bairnies is a' daein' fine: Jamie's a
doctor i' Chicago; an' oor Jeanie's mairrit on Allan Sutherland, him as
will be the new Reeve o' the coonty; an' Chairlie has a ranch i' Alberta
like the Duke o' Roxburgh's estate; an' Willie'll hae oor ain land here,
when we sleep aneath it.
"I aften sit an' think we micht hae been aye herdin' sheep on the
Dumfries hills, wi' scarce eneuch to eat, wi' this man 'my Laird' an'
yon man 'yir Grace' an' oor ain bairns little mair nor slaves. The duke
we knelt doon afore in Scotland aften paid mair for a racin' filly nor
we paid for a' this bonnie land we ca' oor ain the day. Canada's nae
sae guid for earls an' lairds, but it's graun' for puir honest fowk. An'
what's mair," continued Mrs. Gavin, "we didna hae the preachin' i' the
auld country we hae in Canada--leastwise, no' as graun' as we used to
hae i' the time o' Doctor Grant. Div ye ken, sir, the grandest thing I
ever heard come oot o' his mooth? No? Weel, it was this. He aye preach't
fearfu' lang, as ye've nae doot heard, an' at times the men fowk wad
weary an' gang oot, some to tak' a reek wi' their pipes an' mair to gang
ower the way an' hae a drap juist to liven the concludin' heids o' the
discoorse (for they aye steppit back); but the Doctor didna seem to
understaun'. Weel, ae day some o' them was stampin' doon the aisle, an'
the Doctor, he juist stoppit an' sat doon, an' then he says, 'Ma freens,
we'll bide a wee till the chaff blaws awa'.' Losh, hoo they drappit
whaur they stood! There was nae mair gaun oot that day, I tell ye, nor
mony a day. But mind ye, 'twas fearsome the time atween when he sat doon
in the pulpit an' when he speakit oot like I telt ye; it was clean
fearsome."
VII
"_The CHILD of The REGIMENT_"
My labours in St. Cuthbert's had covered but a few fleeting years (oh,
relentless ticking of the clock! at once the harbinger and the echo of
eternity), when there came into our lives life's greatest earthly joy.
Serene and peaceful our lives had been, every hour garlanded with love
and every year festooned by the Hand Unseen.
Trials and difficulties there had been indeed, but they were as billows
which carried in their secret bosom the greeting of the harbour and the
shore. Even the roots of sorrow had been moistened by the far-off wells
of joy. To many a guest of God, disguised in the habiliments of gloom,
we had turned a frowning face and had bidden such begone. But such
guests heeded not, pressing relentlessly in upon our trembling hearth,
when lo! the passing days revealed their mission; we saw the face hidden
beneath the sombre hood, and prayed the new-discovered guest to abide
with us unto the end. For God loveth the masquerade, and doth use it
everywhere.
The way to hell appeareth glorious oftentimes, but the pathway unto life
is robed in shadows and its sign-post is the cross--which things are a
masquerade and to be witnessed every day; for in one single day all
God's great drama is rehearsed in miniature.
Our manse was a pleasant place, and its site had been selected by some
one with the nursery-heart. Spacious and genial was the old homely
house, with its impartial square. Rooms there were, and halls, waiting
to echo back some voice uncoarsened by the clang of time and uncorroded
by the salt of tears. Rich terraces flowed in velvet waves down to the
waiting river, murmuring its trysting joy; a full-robed choir of oak and
elm and maple kept their eternal places in a grander loft than man could
build them, while pine and spruce and cedar, disrobing never, but
snatching their bridal garments from the winter storm, swelled the
sylvan harmony.
Here came the crocuses and the snowdrops, trembling like the waifs of
winter, and hither came the violet and the dandelion to reassure these
daring pioneers; later on, the pansy and the rose utterly convinced them
that they had not lost their way, but had been guided by the pilgrims'
Friend.
But no child's voice had waked these sombre echoes, no child's gentle
feet had pressed this velvet sward; no radiant shadow such as childhood
alone can cast had flitted here and there beneath these lonely trees,
nor had these flowers felt their life's great and only thrill in the
touch of a baby's dimpled hand. But that golden door at last swung
gently open. That hour of ecstasy and anguish brought us life's crown
and joy, and the hills of time, erstwhile green and beautiful, were now
radiant with a light kindled from afar.
St. Cuthbert's rejoiced exceedingly when our little Margaret was given
unto us, but we knew it not at first, for Scotch joy is a deep and
silent thing, a fermentation at the centre rather than an effervescence
at the surface. For our Margaret was as one born out of due time, the
first child whose infant cry had awakened the echoes of their ancient
manse, though seventy long years had flown since their first minister
had come among them. Thus she became the child of the regiment and they
silently exulted. Jubilant, one hour after this new star had swung into
the firmament, I hoisted the Union Jack to the topmost notch of our
towering flag-pole, and never has it flaunted its triumph more
jubilantly since.
The beadle reported to me afterwards that the other churches were
mightily jealous of our late autumn bloom, and one of their devotees, an
Episcopalian, had asked him sneeringly--
"What's that flag doing there?"
"It's blawin' i' the wind," retorted my diplomatic beadle.
"It's nothing to be so joyful over," urged the Episcopalian brother.
"It's mair nor ever happened in yon kirk o' yours; an' it's mair nor
could happen to the Pope o' Rome, wha's a true freen o' yours, I'm
jalousin'," snorted my beadle back triumphantly; for William was
uncharitable, and despaired of all ritualists, the iron of covenanting
protest running hot within his blood.
Nor were these the only swords that flashed above our Margaret's cradle;
for a Methodist mother in Israel, hopeful of a sympathetic response from
Elsie M'Phatter (the non-churchgoing one), ventured the comment that
similar events in her own brilliant maternal record had provoked no
unseemly joy; to which Elsie responded tartly--
"I ken that fine, and it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist;
but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us,
wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the field thereafter was
Elsie's own.
* * * * *
The Sabbath morning after Margaret's dawn St. Cuthbert's was full to
overflowing, as seemed to be every heart, especially every aged heart,
finding its morning anew in the life of a little child. For the morning
and the evening are wondrously alike. In summer especially, the
sun-bathed mountains, the pendant dewdrop, the melodious silences--all
these belong so much to both alike that I find it hard to distinguish
the matins and the vespers of God's cathedral days.
My voice trembled just a little as I gave out the psalm--
"Such pity as a father hath
Unto his children dear,"
but we sang it to the tune of "Dunfermline," and soon I was borne out to
sea upon its far-flung billows; for of a truth these old Scottish tunes
have the swing of eternity in them, and seem to grandly overlap the
bourne of time and space. And when we prayed the only liturgy which
Presbyterians will own, I could not forbear to say "Our Father" twice,
and lo! a strange thing happened unto me. For a great light seemed to
shine upon the words, and that little helpless life at home within the
manse, and its thrice-blessed cry, and its yearning look of wonder, and
its hand whose only prowess was to lie in some stronger hand of
love--all these became a commentary, illustrating God, and in their
cordial light I beheld Him as mother, or professor, or minister had
never shown Him to me before, bending over the souls of men, otherwise
orphaned evermore. That vision has tarried with me ever since, and my
people have been the better of it; for he alone can caress his people's
souls who has felt the caress of His father's love. God's tenderness is
the great contagion for the healing of life's long disease.
VIII
"_A NEW FOOT on The FLOOR_"
When our daughter (are there any two other words so well-wed as these?
What music their union makes!) was only about ten years old, her mother,
which is my wife writ large and heavenly, and I were taking tea at
Inglewood, which my long-suffering readers will remember as the home
which first welcomed me to New Jedboro and the residence of Mr. Michael
Blake. When our meal was over, Mr. Blake and I were enjoying a quiet
game of billiards, which was a game I loved. But I may have more to say
about this later on, for so had some of my pious people, though I am
inclined to think that they objected not so much because they thought
the game was wrong as because they feared I was enjoying it. For, to
some truly good Scotch folk the measure of enjoyableness is the measure
of sin, and a thing needeth no greater fault than to be guilty of
deliciousness. But the converse of this they also hold as true, namely,
that what maketh miserable is of God, and to be wretched is to be pious
at the heart. For which reason, I have observed oftentimes, they deem
that to be a truly well-spent Sabbath day which had banished all
possible happiness from their children's lives, bringing them to its
close limp and cramped and sore, but catechism-full and with a good mark
in the book of life for every weary hour.
Was it Johnson who ventured the opinion that the Puritans put
bear-baiting under the ban, not because it was painful to the bears but
because it was pleasant to the people? Whether it was or no, I shall not
discuss it. Neither shall I discuss the ethics of billiards, unless it
be to say this much, that if there be games in heaven, I do not doubt it
will have an honoured place, for it is an ivory game and truthful,
abhorring vagrant luck and scoring only by eternal laws which Euclid
made his own. And I make no doubt that many a hand hath plied the
billiard cue which long ere this hath touched with its finger-tips the
ivory gates and golden.
But to return. We were in the very midst of our game, of which I
remember very little, often and often though I have tried to recall
every feature of that eventful night. But I do recall that we spoke
about our Margaret, and there was a deep strain of wistful envy in Mr.
Blake's voice. I remember well his saying that God's richest earthly
gift was that of wife and child and hearth.
"Though I speak," he added almost bitterly, "as I might speak of distant
stars, for I have no one of the three," and his lips closed tightly
while he drove his ball with a savage hand.
"You have not wife or child," I said, "but no man who has been sheltered
by your friendship can agree with you about your hearth. It has warmed
my heart too many times when that heart was cold."
"There is no hearth where there is neither wife nor child," he answered
almost passionately. "Hearths are not built with hands. Do you not know,
sir, that if a man would have a fireside he must begin to kindle it when
youth is still throbbing in his heart? From boyhood up he is preparing
it, or else he is quenching it in darkness. Do you know, sir, if I were
a preacher I would burn that into young men's hearts till they would
feel that heaven or hell were all bound up with how they reverence or
despise their future fireside. I would tell them that no man can lay his
hearth in ashes in the hot days of youth, and then build it up again in
the rainy days of age.
"I would tell every wastrel, and every man who is rehearsing hell with
his youthful follies, that he cannot eat his cake and have it. For
hearth and wife and child are not for him. I would tell him that he
cannot breed a cancer in his heart while he is young and cure it with
some pious perfume brewed by the hand of age. I would tell them that
till my lips blistered, and then they should hear of the grace of God
till those same lips were rosy with its healing."
Amazed, I stood and gazed at him, for there was a fearful fascination in
his face. The face of a saint it was, with that warlike peace which only
a battling and victorious life can give, but it had for the time the
half-hunted look of one who trembles at the sound of footsteps he had
hoped were forever still, of one whose soul was overstormed by surging
waves of memory. There is sometimes a dread ghastliness in the thought
that out of the abundance of a man's heart his mouth is speaking, though
he declares it not. It is like the procession of a naked soul; or, to
change the figure, it is like beholding a man unearth some very corpse
he had long sought to hide.
It was his turn to play--ah me! the grim variety of life--and his ball
failed but narrowly of a delicate ambition.
"If I could but have it back and play it over," I heard him rather sigh
than say, whereat I bethought myself of the high allegory of a game.
Musing still, I stood apart, gazing as one gazes at a fire, which in
very truth I was.
"It is your shot, sir," he said, in a voice as passionless as when I
first heard it years before.
My ball had but left my cue when the door opened and a servant said--
"There's a young man doon the stair, sir, and he says he wants to speak
wi' the minister."
I descended, hearing as I went a rattling fusilade of ivory, which I
knew was the echo of a soul's thunder-storm.
* * * * *
How often do we meet new faces, little recking their relation to coming
years! Yet many an unfading light and many an incurable eclipse has come
with a transient meeting such as this! How many a woman of Samaria goes
to draw water from the well, and sees--the Lord! For I met only a boy,
or better, a laddie--boyhood-breathing word!--about sixteen years of
age, openly poor but pathetically decent. His clothes were coarse and
cheap and even darned, bearing here and there the signatures of poverty
and motherhood.
I advanced and took his hand; for that is an easy masonry, and its
exercise need never be regretted even if it never be repeated. My wife
once spent a plaintive day because she had wasted a hand-shake upon a
caller whom she took to be an applicant for matrimony, whose emoluments
were hers, but who turned out to be an agent for Smith's Dictionary of
the Bible, whose emoluments were his own. Nevertheless I have always
held that no true hand-shake is unrecorded in the book of life.
"And what can I do for you, my lad?" I said.
"I dinna ken, sir," he answered, in a voice that suggested a sea voyage,
for it was redolent of what lies only beyond the sea.
"What is your name?"
"Angus Strachan, sir, and I come frae Ettrick, and I hae my lines frae
the minister o' the Free Kirk."
"And when did you land, Mr. Strachan?"
"Ca' me Angus, sir, if ye please. Naebody has ca'd me by that name sin'
my mither pairted wi' me at the stage coach road, and she was fair
chokit wi' cryin', and when I cudna see her mair for the bush aboon the
burn, I could aye hear her bleatin' like a lamb--an' it was the
gloamin'. An' I can fair hear her yet. Will ye no' ca' me Angus?"
Accursed be the heart which has no opening door for the immigrant's
weary feet, and thrice accursed be the heart which remembers
strangerhood against some mother's homeless boy. Such malediction, thank
God, my soul has never won, for if there be one sight which more than
another fills me with hopeful pity, it is the spectacle of some peasant
lad making the great venture of an untried shore, pressing in to those
who were also foreigners one far-back cheerless day, and asking if this
Western land may harbour still another exile from the poverty he seeks
to flee. Especially is this true of Scottish laddies; for upon their
faces seems to be written: "I ask for but a chance such as thou hadst
thyself," which was the plea of Tom Carlyle when he first knocked at
London's mighty door.
So I drew nearer to him, and my heart flowed through my voice as I said
again--
"When did you land, Angus lad? and tell me all about yourself. I have
heard that mother's cry before." For I was thinking of my own mother's
parting blessing, save that hers was wondrously exultant as becometh one
who calls back from the unseen Chariot of God.
"I landed yesterday at Montreal, and I cam' ower on the _Lake Ontario_.
And I hae but little to tell, and it wunna tak' me lang. Ma mither
weaves in Ettrick, and I herded sheep upon the hills sin' I was able.
But I was aye hame at nicht, and she aye keepit a licht in the window
when the nicht was dark and her shadow fell upon it, for she aye cam'
oot to meet me when she heard me lilt the sang. And she lilted tae, and
we baith sang it thegither till we met, and then we gaed ben thegither
and gaed na mair oot till the mirk was by."
I detected the serious and lofty figure in his words, and the vision of
Scotland's lowly altars and thatched cathedrals rose before me. No man
could mistake the ritual of which that strain was bred.
"And why came you here, Angus?"
"I cam' here," he answered, "to better masel'. I heard tell o' Canada
sin' I was a bairn, and they a' spak' it fair for a land whaur an honest
man micht mak' an honest leevin'--and mair tae," he added, true to the
Scotch afterthought of an extra.
"And what line do you propose to follow? What work do you intend to do?"
"Ilka line that's straight, an' ony wark that willna soil the soul even
gin it may soil the hands," he answered quickly.
My soul went out to the lad, for I saw that his heart's roots were deep
in the best heart-soil the world hath known, and that the Atlantic's
billows had not quenched the light of his mother's cottage fire.
"Your father is dead, is he, Angus?" was the next step in my examination
for discovery, as the lawyers say.
"No, he's no' deid, he's alive," replied the lad, with the exactitude
which marks his race; "but I dinna care to speak aboot him."
"Very well, very well, boy," I rejoined hastily; "spends his time and
his money and your mother's money, when he can get it, at the Red Cow,
or the Cock and Hens, a drunken wastrel and cruel too; for I have been
enough in Scotland to know that such hens lay deadly eggs and such red
cows' milk is red with blood." All this latter part, of course, I said
to myself, but no word of it to the lad before me, for no honest youth
can bear any lips to miscall his father save his own.
"You will come to the manse with us and stay the night; it is too late
to seek other lodging now."
"Thank ye kindly, sir, but I hae a wee pickle siller in my pocket," he
replied, with modest independence. I verily believe that in heaven all
Scotsmen (and even Scotch Freemasons) will be found wi' a wee pickle
siller in their pockets when they receive that great degree.
But I insisted, and I won; for he who wages the campaign of hospitality
hath God for his ally, and no heart can finally resist that siege.
IX
"_ANGELS UNAWARES_"
I presented him to my wife and to my host, whose cordiality was worthy
of his wealth and his success. Perhaps he was thinking of an hour like
unto this when, so many long years before, he too had reached New
Jedboro by night, friendless and poor, also craving work, beginning that
steady climb which had brought him to the dizzy heights of wealth and
influence.
For memories of poverty, like poor relations, should not be thrust out
at wealth's back gate, but should have a choice room in the mansion at
whose door the sated heart will often knock, seeking rest.
My wife has frequently told me that she liked Angus from the start
because he seemed so robed in health and draped in a kind of pathetic
modesty, with eyes whose colour she was certain would not fade. How
women do love the metaphors of millinery! How better than the sage of
Chelsea they understand the philosophy of clothes! But she also added
that she was charmed by the way he spoke his mother's name, for in his
tone she caught the flavour of a quick caress; and woman is more facile
far than man in her translation of these Hebraic breathings. Besides
all this, he held the gate open as she passed through into our manse
estate; she still remarks that this was a little thing, but contends
that he did it in a great way.
We showed the tired stranger to his room. Distinguished guests we have
had beneath the roof of St. Cuthbert's manse. We once had Major Pond,
the great cicerone of great lecturers; he had brought Ian Maclaren to
our town, who in turn brought the spring to all of us, beguiling
moisture even from long-sullen clouds.
He had stayed with Mr. Blake, which was but fair, for these are wealth's
real prerogatives; but the genial Major stayed with us. We were greatly
charmed, for he charmed us till two o'clock in the morning; and my wife,
fearful that she might stampede him to his bed, rose at intervals and
hid her face in the geranium window when she had to yawn. But it was the
clock and not the Major that provoked these mild convulsions. He
rehearsed to us his glorious achievements with his "stars." Some few
plaints he had, wherein he "wept o'er his wounds," but almost all his
tales were "tales of valour done." He told the number of his "stars,"
vividly described how he held them in his right hand, pointed out to us
how one "star" differeth from another "star" in glory, and went to bed
at last with the air of a man who had gilded the Pleiades, brushed up
Castor and Pollux, and house-cleaned the heavens generally.
Stanley, Farrar, Beecher, and a score of others filtered through him as
he sat by our humble fire, turning his telescope this way and that as a
sportsman turns his gun, while the very clock ticked slow to listen. My
wife became quite confused, probably sun-struck, for she has since
affirmed that the Major claimed to have been present at the birth of
every one of these famous men on whom he early resolved to confer
immortality. My recollection of his night's autobiography is rather that
of a lane of dazzling light, in which there stood now one and now
another giant, but all alike clinging to the Major's hand.
But this does not exhaust our list of the famous men whose ponderous
heads have pressed the pillow whereon the exiled Angus now laid his own
to rest. For we once had the Moderator. The Moderator of what? some
unsophisticated gentile will wish to know. Of the General Assembly, of
course, for that is the Westminster Assembly of Divines in recurring
resurrection, and it hath its unadjourning court in heaven, as the
ambushed correspondent of the Hebrews doth inform us. Which proves, my
precentor tells me, that the New Jerusalem is a Presbyterian city and
singeth nothing but the psalms.
The Moderator, as I have already said, abode with us over night, and we
almost begrudged the sleeping hours, for, if you will waste sleep upon a
Moderator, let it be when he is preaching and not when he is filling
your house with dignity and smoke. For the Moderator loved his pipe, and
so did I, and together we revelled in those clouds before which all
other clouds retreat. What a great leveller is that democrat, tobacco.
For while we smoked we were both moderators, and even an Assembly clerk
could not have told which was which. Twice, too, the Moderator filled
from my pouch, with no air of patronage, and I shall never forget it of
him. When he went to his bed, still redolent of Virginia, he asked me
for a little soda water, very little, he said emphatically. I brought it
to him, and passing by his door a moment later, I heard a low gurgling
sound like that of an infant brook, then silence, then an honest
smack--soon after there emerged a festive flavour, a healing aroma,
sweetly distilling. As I went back to our room, I said to my wife, "What
a fine spirit a Moderator can shed through a house," in which opinion
she agreed, though she knew not what I said. I was all but asleep when
she aroused me with--
"Tom, why is a Moderator called a Moderator?"
"Because he takes it moderately, dear," I answered, being only in the
twilight of intelligence.
"Takes what, Tom?" she asked.
"His honours, sweetheart--go to sleep."
But although we have had great guests like these, I do not know that I
was ever more glad with the thought of a sleeping stranger than with the
knowledge that this homeless lad was beneath our roof that night. For he
who homes the honest poor has borrowed the guests of God, and a mother's
wandering son is His peculiar care.
I knew that the great Executor of all praying mothers leaves them not
long indebted to any man; He Himself shall speak with their creditors in
the gate.
X
_My PIOUS PROFLIGATE_
My wandering but faithful pen, whose every child, though homely, is its
legitimate own, must now forsake Angus and his fortunes for a season. It
shall again return to him, _if it be spared_. For the good folk of St.
Cuthbert's have taught me to insert this phrase at every seasonable
opening--indeed, they deem it fitting for every season, and the very
first marriage in New Jedboro at which I officiated afforded a vivid
proof of this.
The young couple were just emerging from the heavenly operation, still
somewhat under the celestial chloroform, when Ronald M'Gregor admonished
them. His admonition was after a fashion almost ministerial, for Ronald
had once culled himself from out the common herd as meant for a
minister, and had abandoned his pursuit only when he found that he had
every qualification except the gifts.
"Ye maun bear in mind," he said, "that ye're nae mair twa, but ae flesh;
an' ye'll bide wi' ane anither till deith shall ye pairt--that is, gin
ye're spared."
Meantime, this friendly pen must record this news of Angus, that the
very morning he left St. Cuthbert's manse he entered upon his
apprentice term in the great iron manufactory of which Mr. Blake was the
head and the propelling power; for behind every engine is the ingenuity,
not of many men, but of one.
And leaving him there to ply his fortune and to confront that unseen
antagonist against whom every ambitious man plays move and move about, I
betake myself again to the records of St. Cuthbert's.
Yet I find it hard to dismiss the lad, for his is a besetting face, and
besides, it stubbornly appears above the main current of all the story I
have yet to tell.
My fortunes with these strange Scotch folk must be recorded, and chief
among my handiwork I think of Geordie Lorimer. For he was a typical
Scot, and supremely so in this, that he could be both very religious and
very bad. Of which the remarkable thing lies here, that he was both of
these at one and the self-same time.
Now, although I am an Irishman, and boast the most romantic blood of
time, yet must I frankly admit that few countrymen of mine have such
facility. Many of them there are who could be religious, and more who
could be bad, with spontaneous ease, but few there be who know how to be
both at once. But Geordie did. He was a profligate, but a pious
profligate; a terror he was, but he was a holy terror. Mind you well, I
do not mean to impugn Geordie's sincerity in the last appeal; not for
one moment, for I believe implicitly that Geordie, in the very heart of
him, meant to do well. Indeed, I will go further, and say that in his
very soul he wished to be closer to God; for he could not well help that
wish--it was his inseparable heritage from a saintly father, long a
beloved elder in St. Cuthbert's, whose sacred suit of "blacks" Geordie
had inherited, himself wearing them to the sacrament till the session
denied him his token, and shut him out, blacks and all. The memory of
his mother's life was still fragrant to hundreds, fresh and dewy in
love's unwithering morn; upon the tide of prayer had Geordie's infant
life been launched, and its gentle waves, faint but palpable, still
sought to lave his soul.
How many a Northern island-life, bleak and wild, is redeemed from utter
destruction by that great gulfstream, the prayers of a mother who was in
league with God! Thus it came about that Geordie Lorimer's life was a
muddy stream, still tinged with the crystal waters of its hill-born
spring. He had made the ghastly find, that when he would do good, evil
was present with him; to will was present with him, but how to perform
that which was good he found not. For Geordie had, alas! a stronger
thirst than that for righteousness. He was given to "tasting," a
homeopathic word which Scotsmen use to indicate a trough. I soon heard
of him as incorrigibly religious but incorrigibly dry.
Geordie was the best-known character in New Jedboro, as well known as
the town pump, the one famed for its outgiving, the other for its
intaking powers, but both alike for liquid prowess. His principal
occupation was in his wife's name, being a boarding-house whose inmates
were secretly and shamefully proud of Geordie's unique superiority in
his own particular line, for he could outdrink the countryside.
The very Saturday which preceded my Sunday as a candidate of St.
Cuthbert's (they afterwards told me) Geordie was in the kindly grip of
the town constable, who was bearing him towards the jail, his victim
loudly proclaiming to the world that the guardian of the law had
arrested him only when he, Geordie, had refused to treat for the
eleventh time.
"He tret the ainst, an' I tret ten times or mair," Geordie was
vehemently affirming to a sympathetic street. Turning a corner, they met
no less a personage than Sandy Weir, the session clerk.
"Sandy, dinna let him tak' me to the lock-up. There's to be a new
minister i' the kirk," he cried, "an' I maun gang to hear him preach the
morn. Sandy, wull ye no' bid him no' to tak' me to the lock-up?"
But Sandy was a man under authority, having elders under him, and he
refrained, knowing the boundaries of his power.
Passing along a quiet street some years after this, I beheld the
unreforming Geordie in a savage fight with a kindred spirit, who drew
his inspiration from the same source as his antagonist; for many a cork
they had released together. The two men fought like tigers, abandoning
themselves the more cheerfully to the combat they both knew would end in
a renewal of brotherhood and beer. This thought lent a sanguine
enthusiasm to their every effort, for each felt it a point of honour to
make the engagement worthy of the "treaty" (a fitting word) that awaited
them at the Travellers' Rest.
Above the din of battle I heard a voice emerging from Geordie's head,
which head emerged from his opponent's oxter--
"Dinna mark me, Jock, dinna mark me; for we're gaun to hae the bairn
baptized i' the kirk the morn," and I knew not which to admire more,
Geordie's moral versatility, or the beautiful comity of war.
Geordie did appear in the kirk with the bairn the next morning,
unmarked, except by unusual solemnity. He did not take the vows, of
course--these were assumed by his long-suffering and devoted wife; but
Geordie felt he should be there as collateral security.
I coveted Geordie's soul, and longed to add his regeneration to the new
Acts of the Apostles. No opportunity to speak with him was ever allowed
to slip, and one came to me whose details I must recount. There had been
an election for the town council, which had, half in joke and half in
jealousy, returned Geordie as the councillor of his ward; for our
glorious manhood suffrage, as some one has pointed out, makes Judas
Iscariot as influential at the polls as the Apostle Paul.
Returning, the night of the election, from a sickbed visit, I overtook
the jubilant Geordie, full of emotion and other things. His locomotion
was irregular and spasmodic, his course original, picturesque, and
variable. Geordie was having it out with the law of gravitation.
He was as a ship returning from Jamaica, a precious cargo of spirits in
its hold, and labouring heavily in the trough of the sea. I essayed to
take his arm, intending to be his wheelsman home, but it was like trying
to board a vessel in a storm; for Geordie had at least a hundred routes
which he must traverse with impartial feet. After I had somewhat managed
to adopt his swing, I sought to deal faithfully with him, though it was
like preaching from the plunging deck of a ship at sea, while the breath
of my swaying auditor suggested that the aforesaid cargo had sprung a
leak.
He was raising a double pæan to voice a twofold joy: the first, the joy
of triumph in the recent contest; the second, the historic and
imperishable joy that he was a Scotsman born.
"Yon whelp I skelpit the day was naething but an Irishman," he cried
loftily. "I canna get Robbie Burns' graun' words oot o' my heid: 'The
Scotsmen staun' an' Irish fa'--let him on wi' me,'" and on this wave of
martial spirit Geordie took another plunge at right angles from our
previous course, bearing me after him like a skiff tied to a schooner
amid stormy seas.
After we had put about and regained our bearings, I nimbly took
advantage of this patriotic opening, having ever a quick mind for the
transition of ideas.
"Yes, Geordie, many good things are Scotch, and many Scotch things are
good. Some misguided persons think even that Scotch liquor is good. Now,
George----" But I got no further. This time Geordie swung around before
me, like a boat that trusts its moorings--
"Ye're richt, minister; wha wad hae thocht ye kent the difference? But
ye're richt--a' whusky is guid, but some's mair guid nor ithers, an'
Scotch is mair guid nor ony ithers. Those feckless Irish fowk aye tak'
the speerits o' oor native land gin they hae the siller, which isna
likely. An' I dinna blame them muckle."
I now saw that there was no opening along this line, favourable at first
sight as it had appeared. The attack must be plain and straight.
"Geordie," I began, "this is a pitiable situation for a minister to be
in, and you know, George----"
"That's a' richt, minister--dinna fash yersel'. I'll no' mention it to a
soul. Mony's the time I hae been fou masel', 'peetiably seetivated,' as
ye ca' it, bein' mair learned nor me; to be honest wi' ye, I'm juist a
wee bit 'peetiably seetivated' this vera nicht. But I'll tak' ye hame
for a' that, an nane'll hear tell o't frae Geordie Lorimer."
Then he plunged again, propelled by the sense of a new responsibility,
and for a minute we two performed, unaided and alone, the several
different parts of an eight-hand reel.
Nevertheless, I relinquished not my hold, for I was truly attached to
the fellow, and in due time we made a mile, though I know the cyclometer
would have recorded ten. More hopeful, I was steaming on, a clerical
tugboat, when of a sudden Geordie stopped, pointing with his right leg
high in air, trusting me and his left to perform the relief duty thus
demanded.
"Yon's ma coo, ma Ayrshire coo," he exclaimed, pointing with his initial
leg to the white-faced cow which lay among its kindred, its jaw gently
swinging.
"The beast disna ken," I heard him mutter; then he suddenly bolted,
breaking his tether, and before I could recover him he had shambled on
to the road with the gait of a delirious camel, and kicking his innocent
property from behind, cried out--
"Get oot o' that. Sic like a thing, to be lyin' wi' the common herd.
Mind ye, ye're no' an or'nary man's coo--ye're a cooncillor's coo." Then
he retraced his labyrinthian steps in a corresponding swath.
As we drew near his humble gate (how often Geordie had made that last
port with pain), he muttered to himself reflectively--
"I gied him hell," referring doubtless to the vanquished candidate.
Whereat I took him to task right sternly, giving him sharply to
understand that such language was an insult to his minister and friend.
In reply, he fell upon me, literally and figuratively, with tones of
reproachful tenderness.
"Minister," he said, "I own ye as a faithfu' guide." ("You'd better,"
said I to myself, for I was weary.) "I own ye as a faithfu' guide, an' I
wudna gie ye pain. For we've had oor ain times thegither. I micht maist
say as 'at 'We twa hae paiddled i' the burn,' only it wudna be becomin'.
But aboot that word--I've heard ye say yirsel' frae the pulpit as how
hell is a maist awfu' feelin' i' the breist. Verra well, dinna ye think
as hoo yon Irish whelp I skelpit the day 'll hae a waesome feelin' i'
his breist? That's a' the meanin' I desired till convey. It's nae wrang
when it's expoun'it. Guid-nicht till ye, minister."
XI
_PLUCKING A FIERY BRAND_
But there are others of whom I have better things to record, and indeed
better things shall yet be set down by me concerning Geordie Lorimer
before these short and simple annals shall have ended. For there is
nothing so joysome to record as the brightening story of a soul coming
to its real birth from the travail of its sin and struggle. For
perchance time itself is God's great midwife, and man's writhing agony
is to the end that he may soon be born.
The serious will doubtless wish to learn what befell me in my effort to
beguile the rugged Donald M'Phatter and his wife, who had quit the kirk
when the kirk quit the tokens, back to the worship of the sanctuary. It
is many years since they returned to St. Cuthbert's hallowed shrine, and
they now sing the uncreated song.
For they have joined that choir invisible whose voices, trained by God,
blend in perfect unison, but not in time; for they reckon not by days
and years where they have gone to dwell.
It may be set down as certain that I would never have won them back to
church had it not been that I abandoned argument and adopted friendship.
For argument, to my mind, satisfies a people's souls as well as a bill
of fare will suffice a hungry man; but the heart's food is a different
matter. Argument may be botany, but friendship is a flower; and one
little violet is better than one big volume, or a thousand of them, as
far as that goes. This is perhaps the same thing as to say that a living
dog is better than a dead lion, for most big books are sepulchres--but I
think that my figure hath a sweeter flavour than the other.
And when I deliver the Yale lectures to young ministers, I shall tell
them that there is a blessed guile, a holy cozenage of the heart whereby
they may win their people's souls by stealth. And if a parson hath some
obdurate parishioner or some gnarled and snarling elder, let him attack
him as a thief in the night, and turn its darkness into day.
I had to build my friendship with Donald brick by brick, and oftentimes
it swayed before his blasts. A hundred times I could have been justly
angry and forever done with him. But I knew a man, a very near relation,
with whom God might oftener have done the same, and had not; besides, I
remembered that adroit petition in the Lord's Prayer, which is the
plummet of the soul's sincerity--and I had read of One who reviled not
again.
"In days far by," he charged, "oor faithers said wi' pride as hoo the
ministers o' God were dyin' for the truth; but in thae modern days, a'
men say as hoo they're dyin' for their steepin'" (stipend).
Now this was hard to bear, for I had declined larger stipends than I
accepted from St. Cuthbert's, and some would say that this was a right
and proper time to stand upon my dignity. But what is so dignified as
the Cross, planted in the very centre of shame's garden? I had long
before determined that no man can stand on dignity, for it must be
dignity that stands upon the man, and by no act or word of his, be it
remarked, but by the high act of God. For those men who stand on dignity
are top-heavy things, pigmies upon stilts, triangles upside down.
Therefore I was patient with Donald, and guarded our infant friendship
as a lost hunter shields his last remaining match. I said little to him
about church, and much about the Highlands. For Donald was a belated
Highlander, his parents having lapsed to the lowlands, where birth took
him at a disadvantage; but he was ever struggling to recover Inverness.
"I was a hielandman afore I was born and a lowlandman after. I kind o'
flawed doon like, ye ken," he said.
I nodded acquiescence, for it is a favourite theory of mine that a man
is born of his grandparents just as much as of his father and his
mother; they are equally responsible, I hold, but have the advantage of
an earlier retreat.
It was Donald's great delight to recount the fighting stories of his
highland ancestors. In all that bloody reel he joined again with joy.
The slightest reference to it, and Donald was off--over the hills and
far away, his guid blue bonnet on his head, his burly knees as bare as
the bayonet his fathers bore, and the wild skirl of the bagpipes in his
heart. Those pagan-Christian days, those shameful splendours of feud and
raid and massacre, those mutual pleasantries of human pig-sticking,
those civilized savageries and chivalric demonries--all these were
Donald's sanguinary food.
"Mind ye," he would say, "half the time they didna ken what they were
fechtin' aboot. But they focht a' the better for that--the graun' human
principle was there; they kent that fine, an' that was a' they needit
for to ken. Forbye, they foucht when the chief bade them fecht. When he
gied the word, hieland foot was never slow and hieland bluid was never
laggin'. Man, what a graun' chief Bonyparte wad hae made, gin the
M'Phatters had ta'en him up!"
"Dinna be aye speakin' aboot yir M'Phatters," interrupted his gentle
wife, now somewhat aroused, for her maiden name was Elsie Campbell, and
she had her own share of highland memories. "They were guid eneuch
fechters in their way, nae doot, but it wasna the Campbell way. Yir
M'Phatter feet that ye're haverin' aboot was never slow when the
Campbells was comin', I'll grant ye that--the Campbells did them, ye ken
that fine, Donald."
"Hoots, wumman, ye dinna ken what yir sayin'. Div ye no' mind the battle
o' the bluidy shirt, an'----"
"Haud yir wheesht--I canna bide to hear aboot thae bluidy shirts an'
things. It's a fair scunner', and the minister hearin' ye to the
bargain," Elsie shut him off triumphantly in propriety's great name.
The first real olive branch of friendship which Donald extended to me
was under cover of the bagpipes. I knew he was relenting when he first
asked me if I would like to hear him play. I forged a pious lie,
declaring it would give me the greatest pleasure. Surely that sin has
been atoned for; I have suffered for it as no tongue can tell. The world
needeth a new Dante, to write a new _Inferno_, with the bagpipes thrown
in. Then will that sombre picture of future suffering be complete. I
make no reckless charge against those aforesaid instruments of music,
facetiously so called. The bagpipes are a good thing in their place, but
their place is with Dante and his _Inferno_.
They have survived only as bulldogs survive, from perverted sentiment,
and mal-educated taste. For the Scotsman is the most sentimental among
men, stubbornly and maliciously and relentlessly sentimental. The
bagpipes are a legacy from the grim testament of war, and the savage
breath of other days belches through them yet. Ah me! with what secret
pride I hear again far other music wafted from my native Emerald Isle!
Nor can I well conceal my joy that the emblem of Ireland, despised and
rejected though she be, is the sweetest-tongued of all music-making
things in this vale of tears. For her, no lion, tempest-crowned, for her
no prowling bear, for her no screaming eagle--but the harp, mellifluous
and tender. And although its liquid strain hath for centuries been
touched by sorrow, yet there hath been music in its voice for all the
happier listening world, and the day draweth near, please God, when its
unfleeting joy shall descend and rest on her own fields and meadows,
making glad the hearts within her humble cottages, whose only wealth is
love.
But Donald's fervent passion for this warlike weapon of his fathers was
unrestrained by thoughts of other lands. Had any man suggested that
Irish music was superior, he would doubtless have bidden him begone and
dwell with other lyres. Such suggestion I did not dare to make. On the
contrary, I smiled as he fondled his windy octopus, which he did with
mysterious tenderness. Then he adjusted the creature to his lips, while
I calmly braced myself for the gathering storm.
I had not long to wait. He paced dramatically back and forward for a
minute in a preliminary sort of way, like one who pushes his shallop
from the shore, gently pressing the huge belly of the thing with his
elbow as if to prompt it for the ensuing fray. The thing emitted one or
two sample sounds, not odious particularly, but infantile and grimly
prophetic, like the initial squeaks of some windful babe awaking from
its sleep. Then the thing seemed to feel its strength, to recognize its
dark enfranchisement, and broke into such a blasphemy of sound as hath
not been heard since the angels alighted where they fell.
I have heard the deep roar of the ocean, and have listened to the
screech of the typhoon through befiddled sails; I have shuddered at the
savage yell of the hyena, and have grown cold, even in the tropics,
before the tooting of the wounded elephant; I have heard the eagle rend
the firmament and the midnight fog-horn ring the changes on
eternity--join them all together, and they will be still but as a
village choir compared to the infinite and full-orbed bray of the
highland bagpipes.
After the first shock of sky-quake had subsided, Donald turned and
looked at me with a rapt and heavenly smile, the thing emitting sundry
noises all the while, like fragments from a crash of sound,
comparatively mild, as a stream which has just run Niagara.
I stood, dripping with noise, fearful lest the tide might rush in again,
and looking about for my hat, if haply it might have been cast up upon
the beach.
"Wasna that a graun' ane?" said the machinator. "It's nae often ye'll
hear the like o' that in Canada. There's jist ae man beside masel' can
gie ye that this side o' Inverness--and he's broke i' the win'."
"Thank God!" I ejaculated fervently, not knowing what I said.
But Donald misunderstood me and I had nothing to fear.
"Ye're richt there," he cried exultantly; "it's what I ca' a sacred
preevilege to hear the like o' that, maist as sacred as a psalm. Ma
faither used to play that verra tune at funerals i' the hielands, and
the words they aye sang till't was these:--
"'Take comfort, Christians, when your friends
In Jesus fall asleep,'
an' it used to fair owercome the mourners. If ye were gaun by a hoose
i' the hieland glens, and heard thae words and that tune, ye cud mak'
sure there was a deid corpse i' the hoose."
"I don't wonder," was my response; but he perceived nothing in the words
except reverent assent.
"Ay," went on Donald, "it's a graun' means o' rest to the weary heart.
It's fair past everything for puttin' the bairns to sleep. Mony's the
time I hae lulled them wi' that same tune when their mither cud dae
naethin' wi' them. I dinna mind as I ever heard a bairn cry when I was
gien them that tune."
"I quite believe that," I replied, burning to ask him if they ever cried
again. But I refrained, and began my retreat towards the door.
"Bide a wee; I maun gie ye 'The MacGregor's Lament.'"
But I was obstinate, having enough occasion for my own.
"Hoots, man, dinna gang--it's early yet."
"But I really feel that I must go. I would sooner hear it some other
time." At my own funeral, I meant. "Besides, Mr. M'Phatter, the bagpipes
always influence me strangely. They give me such a feeling of the other
world as kind of unfits me for my work."
Whereupon Donald let me go. As I fled along the lane I watched him
holding the thing still in his hand, and I feared even yet lest it
might slip its leash.
But I have been thankful ever since that Donald did not ask me which
other world I meant.
XII
"_By That SAME TOKEN_"
This was the first step towards the return of the M'Phatter family to
St. Cuthbert's Church. I waited patiently, stepped carefully, and
endured cheerfully every hardship, from the bagpipes down; but all the
time I had before my mind that triumphant day when Donald and his
household would once more walk down the kirk's spacious aisle, like the
ransomed of the Lord who return and come to Zion with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads.
One glorious summer evening I broached the matter to them both. It was
the pensive hour of twilight, and Donald had been telling me with
thrilling eloquence of a service he had once attended in St. Peter's
Church, Dundee, when the saintly M'Cheyne had cast the spell of eternity
about him. When he had got as nearly through as he ever got with his
favourite themes, I asked him to listen to me for a little, and not to
interrupt. He promised, and I talked on to them for an hour or more, the
twilight deepening into darkness, and the sweet incense of nature's
evening mass arising about us where we sat.
It was the hour and the season that lent themselves to memory, and I
armed myself with all the unforgotten years as I bore down upon their
hearts. The duty, the privilege, the joy of mingling with the great
congregation in united voice and heart to bless the Creator's name, all
this I urged with passionate entreaty.
"Oh, Donald," I cried at last, forgetting his seventy years and the
title those years deserved, "come back, come back, man, to the fountain
at which you drank with joy long years ago! Oh, Donald, it is springing
yet, and its living waters are for you. Years have not quenched their
holy stream, nor changed the loving heart of Him who feeds them. Donald
man, your pride is playing havoc with your soul. Are not the days
shortening in upon you? You saw the darkness fall since we sat down
together, and the night has come, and it is always night in the grave.
Man, hurry home before the gloaming betrays you to the dark.
"Do you not hear yonder clock ticking in the hall that same old song of
death, the same it sang, the night your father's father was born in the
glen, the same it wailed the night he died? It is none other than the
voice of God telling you that the night cometh fast. Oh, Donald, was it
not your mother who first taught you the way to that holy spring, even
as she taught your boyish feet the path to yonder babbling burn which
even now is lilting to the night? Donald man, be a little child again,
and come back before you die."
Then there was a silence deep as death, and we heard the crickets sing
and the drowsy tinkling on the distant hill. I spoke not another word,
for when a great Scotch soul is in revolution, I would as soon have
offered to assist at the creation as seek then to interfere. But I heard
his wife Elsie sobbing gently and I felt a tear on Donald's cheek. My
heart caught its distilling fragrance, like a bluebell on some
mountainside, and I knew that the seasons were exchanging in Donald's
soul, winter retreating before the avenging spring.
Suddenly he arose and swiftly spoke--
"I'll gang back on Sabbath mornin'; I'll tak' ma mither's psalm-buik,
and I'll gang."
He strode quickly towards the house; as he passed me the rising moon
shone upon his face, and it looked like that of a soul which has the
judgment day behind and eternal mother-love before.
Elsie walked with me to the gate, and her face put the now radiant night
to shame. Her long eclipse had ended. It was then she told me the secret
of the token and her husband's love for it.
"Ye mauna think ower hard on Donald; I promised to tell naebody, but ye
willna let him ken. It wasna the token in itsel', but it was oor Elsie
mair. Elsie was oor little lassie that's gone to bide wi' God.
"Weel, when she was a bit bairn, she aye gaed wi' us to the sacrament,
and she was awfu' ta'en up wi' the token. She wad spell oot the bit
writin' on't, and she thocht there was naethin' sae bonnie as the
picture o' the goblet on the ither side o't. And she wad thrust her wee
bit haun' intil Donald's wes'coat pocket, where he aye keepit the token,
an' she wad tak' it oot an' luik at it, an' no' ask for sweeties or gang
to sleep or greet, like ither bairns. And when she was deein', she askit
for it, and she dee'd wi' it in her haun'. An' that verra nicht, when
Donald an' me was sittin' fon'lin' her gowden curls an' biddin' ane
anither no' to greet--for ae broken hairt can comfort anither broken
hairt--he slippit the token frae oot her puir cauld wee haun', an' he
read the writin' that's on't oot lood: 'This do in remembrance of Me,'
an' he says, 'I'll dae it in remembrance o' them baith, mither--o'
Christ an' oor Elsie--an' when I show forth the Lord's death till He
come, I'll aye think o' them baith, an' think o' them baith thegither in
the yonderland--Christ an' oor Elsie--an' me an' you tae, mither, a'
thegither in the Faither's hoose.' An' a' the time o' the funeral he
hauded the token ticht, an' he keepit aye sayin' till himsel', 'Christ
an' oor Elsie--an' us a'.'
"Next Sabbath was the sacrament, an' Donald gaed alane, for I cudna gang
wi' him, and that was the day they tell't the fowk hoo communion cairds
was better, an' hoo they wudna use the tokens ony mair. Then Donald
grippit the seat, an' he rose an' gaed oot o' the kirk, an' cam hame,
an' gaed till his room, an' I didna see his face till the gloamin'. Oh,
minister, dinna think owre hard aboot him. That's why he never gaed mair
to the kirk, for he loved oor Elsie sair."
I pressed her hand in parting, but I spoke no word, for I was thinking
passionately of those golden curls, and that little hand in which the
token lay tightly clasped; but it was our Margaret's face that was white
upon the pillow. Love is a great interpreter.
The next Sabbath morning saw Donald and Elsie in the courts of Zion, and
great peace was upon their brows. When I ascended the pulpit stairs,
they were already in their ancestral pew, now the property of Hector
Campbell, who had abandoned it with joy, only asking that he be given
one in the gallery from which he might see Donald's face.
We opened our service with the Scottish psalm--
"How lovely is Thy dwelling-place,
Oh, Lord of hosts, to me,"
and a strange thing befell us then. Donald was singing huskily,
struggling with a storm which had its centre in his heart, all the more
violent because it was a summer storm and fed from the inmost tropics of
his soul. But it was the part Elsie took in that great psalm which is
still the wonder of all who were there that day, though her voice hath
long been silent in the grave. She had, years before, been reckoned the
sweetest singer of all who helped to swell St. Cuthbert's praise. Her
voice had been trained by none but God, yet its power and richness were
unequalled. But her last song had been by the bedside of her dying
child, and those who heard her say there was not a faltering note.
And now her voice was released again, and her unchained soul, aflame
with its long-silent love for the courts of Zion, found in that voice
its highway up to God. No psalm-book, no note of music made by hand, no
human thought repressed her or trammelled her exultant wing. Uncaged,
she sang as the lark sings when native meadows bid its exile cease.
From the first note, clear and radiant, as on a golden staircase her
voice went upward with its loving sacrifice. All eyes were turned upon
her, all other voices hushed in wonder, while even the wondering
precentor abdicated to join the vassal throng. But she knew it
not--knew nothing, indeed, but that she was again in the unforgotten
house of God, and pouring out her soul to the soul's great Comforter.
And she sat down with the others when the psalm was done, but wist not
that her face shone.
* * * * *
The kirk session was convened in my room after the great service ceased,
and the glow of joy was on every face. This joy they carefully
concealed, as was their way, but I felt its heat even when I could not
see its gleam. One or two spoke briefly, and their parted lips disclosed
their deep rejoicing, but only for a moment, as you have caught the bed
of flame behind the furnace's swiftly closing door. I told them, in a
word, of Donald and his Elsie and his token.
They were stern men, and ruled the kirk with sternness; they had dealt
faithfully with more than one who sought to restore the reign of the
token against the expressed ruling of the session. They nipped contumacy
in the bud.
But it was moved by Ronald M'Gregor, and seconded by Saunders M'Dermott,
and unanimously carried, "That the clerk be instructed to inform Donald
M'Phatter, and his wife Elsie M'Phatter, that it is the will of the
kirk session of St. Cuthbert's that they be in no wise admitted to the
sacrament except on presentation of tokens regularly stamped and bearing
the date of 1845."
XIII
_WITH The WORKMEN_
I think we first realized the worth of Angus Strachan the year of the
great strike among the mechanics of New Jedboro. That was a terrible
year, and the memory of it is dark and clammy yet. For our whole town,
and almost every man's bread and butter, rose and fell with the industry
or the idleness of our great iron manufactories. To my mind, the cause
of the trouble was twofold: first, that the proprietors were very rich;
and second, that the agitators were very scoundrels. For we had as happy
a class of working men in New Jedboro, take them on the whole, as the
God of work looked down upon. They were in receipt of fair and
considerable wages, their shops were clean and well ventilated, and
their hours reasonably short, especially if compared to those poor
creatures whom greed and selfishness keep behind the counters till
twelve o'clock on a Saturday night. And I have noticed that those who
howl the loudest about long hours are those who postpone their shopping
till ten or eleven of these same Saturday nights.
For the most part, they owned their own homes and the plots of ground
they gardened, and I do contend that the watering-can and the spade and
the pruning knife are a means of grace. Very many of them made twelve
shillings a day, which is three dollars in our good Canadian money, and
some of the highest paid made twice as much. And there was work for them
every working day and every working hour of the day.
The peace was broken when two sleek and well-dressed agitators came to
town, agents for the Central Organization, whose mild and pleasant duty
it was to tell free-born working-men when they were to work and when to
starve.
These gentlemen soon precipitated a general strike, in which they took a
highly sympathetic part, reviving the flagging courage of half-starving
wives and children, exhorting them to endure unto the end; and be it
said to their lasting credit, these aforesaid gentlemen toiled
faithfully to spread their new evangel, desisting only three times a
day, when they repaired to their six-course meals at the Imperial Hotel.
They pointed out, between meals, to the hungry men how well-pleasing was
their hunger in the sight of heaven, for it would help some
fellow-workmen three thousand miles away, and possibly be of benefit to
some few who had not yet been born. Hunger, they pointed out with lofty
ardour, might not be comfortable in every case, but it was glorious,
and in the line of immortal fame. All of this was somewhat marred by
their occasional gulping and hiccoughing, for six-course dinners are not
friendly to ethereal oratory. When one of them got through, the other,
having finished the picking of his teeth, would take the stand and
divulge anew to these underfed immortals the secrets of the Book of
Life.
Then their poor dupes would cheer with a desperate attempt at courage,
but it was to me like the bleating of sheep that are led to the
slaughter. Wearily they sought their once happy homes, to find empty
larders and broken-hearted wives, their wondering children crying for
the necessities they had never lacked before, their clothes in tatters,
and the roses departed from their cheeks.
Many a sick wife and ailing child did I visit then, pining for the
little delicacies their breadwinner could not afford to buy--all of this
at the behest of two bespangled gentlemen, who even then were writing to
their distant wives, enclosing substantial checks, and descanting
eloquently upon the sumptuous fare at the aforesaid Imperial Hotel.
Two sights there are in this panoramic world which greatly madden me,
and they are twins.
The first is the spectacle of a pot-bellied landlord, his wife and
family sated with every luxury, as he smilingly takes across the
bar--have you ever seen a snake swallow its prey, an equally slimy
sight?--the five-cent piece of some poor fellow whose child hath neither
toy nor bread, and whose broken wife, struggling in God's name to shield
her children from indecency and want, will tremblingly explore his
pocketbook at midnight, only to find every farthing of his wages gone.
For the aforesaid smiling landlord hath poured it into the satin lap of
the equally smiling wife at the Travellers' Rest.
And the other sight is the spectacle of a complacent gentleman, organ
for the Trades and Labour Union, who alighteth from his Pullman car to
ply his incendiary trade, living in the lap of luxury, while weeping
wives stroke the famished faces of their hungry bairns and dumbly plead
with God that this cruel strike may soon be over.
It was at such a time as this that Angus first impressed us with his
real power. We had seen much of him in the years that had passed since
he spent his first New Jedboro night beneath our roof. Often and often
he would spend the evening with us, chatting on pleasant topics or
teaching our Margaret the high things of chess, at which he was
well-nigh a master. But I little dreamed then what fateful moves there
may be even in a game of chess, what mating and checkmating and sundry
other operations may be sublimely mingled in that so interesting
struggle.
We heard with pleasure that Angus was making rare progress in his chosen
trade, and even now, although early in his twenties, he was head
draughtsman in all that great establishment. Night schools, with wide
and constant reading, had made his English almost as good as new, and
the shabby lad of six or seven years ago was now a citizen amongst us of
repute and promise.
But that is no rare occurrence in this new world of ours, where men have
better chances than the rigid ways of the old land will afford. For old
Scotland means that her mountains shall remain mountains, and her
valleys she purposes shall be valleys evermore; and I make little doubt
that Mr. Carnegie would have been ranked with the valleys till they
received his dust had he never sought the wider spaces of our Western
World. From which Western World both their hills and valleys have
received his dust in rich abundance.
Passing a crowded hall one night when this industrial storm was at its
height, I heard a voice which seemed familiar addressing the excited
men, and surely there hath never before or since been heard a speech of
greater sense and soundness.
"Are we working men fools enough," he was asking as I entered, "to be
led by the nose at the will of these strangers who want us to strike in
the interests of Chicago or St. Louis or San Francisco? Charity begins
at home, and our first duty is to look after our own. If we are going to
have dictators in this matter, let us choose them from honest workers
among ourselves, and not from high-salaried importations such as these.
Look at their hands the next time you get a chance, and tell me why they
are so smooth and white. None of your diamond-ringed fraternity for me,"
cried Angus with growing passion.
At this point Jack Slater interrupted. Jack was famed for his hearty
resistance to every industrious instinct, resolutely denying himself the
much-lauded sweets of toil. He was the leading Socialist of the town,
hating every man who was an actual toiler with his hands, always
excepting the well-fed agitators, whom he worshipped with ignorant
devotion.
"I just want fer to ask Mr. Strachan one question. What right has them
fellows what owns the foundries to be makin' ropes of money while the
likes of us only gets our two dollars a day? Let us have equality,
that's what I say. Give me equality or give me death. God made one man
as good as another, and it's the devil as tries to make them different.
Let's divide up, that's what I say, and don't have them fellows sportin'
round in their carriages and goin' to Europe, while the rest of us is
sweatin' through the dog days in the shops."
Loud murmurs of approval broke from a hundred sullen lips, and Bob
Taylor, encouraged by Jack's success, jumped to his feet and shouted--
"I hopes as how all the fellers 'll stand firm and bring the bosses up
with the short turn. We kin do it, for we're the lads as makes their
money for them. What them kerridge fellows needs is a bash or two in the
jaw from the horny hand of toil. I goes in fer rotten-eggin' all the
scabs as agrees to work lower nor the wage we set, and if that won't do,
I goes in fer duckin' 'em; and if duckin' won't do, I goes in fer fixin'
'em so's they won't work nowheres. If this is a free country, let's have
our share of the kerridges--I believe in equality the same as Jack."
These views were received with renewed expressions of approval, for to
most of the excited men they seem quite unanswerable.
"That's the ticket; make 'em walk the plank. We're just as good as
them," I heard some burly mechanic mutter.
The eager audience turned towards Angus, awaiting his reply, if haply
reply could be provided. It has been my lot to hear many strong
addresses, but I esteem this answering speech of Angus's among the
strongest utterances I have heard.
"Mr. Slater wishes," he began, "to know by what right our employers make
more money than we do. In answer, let me ask him by what right Bill
Montgomery, the foreman in the moulding shop, gets more money every
pay-day than Tom Coxford, who is one of his men. I suppose he will admit
it is because Bill has more ability and more experience than Tom; he
will also admit that the difference in their wages is a just difference,
and indeed I have never heard any one find fault with it. Well, carry
out that principle, and some one who has more skill than Montgomery will
get more money than he gets. Then there will be some one above him
again, and so on till you get to the head of the firm. If differing
wages are just at all--and every one admits they are--then how can you
deny their legitimate profits to the men whose industry and business
ability have established the concern and guided it along to what it is
to-day?
"Mr. Slater says that men are all equal. I don't agree with him. It is
clear that God means some men to be rich and others to be less rich. If
a man quarrels with the inequality among men, his quarrel is with God.
God makes some men richer than others to begin with. When we see the
highest riches, like those of brains and strength, unequally divided, we
need not wonder to see the lesser riches somewhat unevenly distributed.
God gives one man, or a woman like Jenny Lind, a voice that means a
thousand dollars a night as often as they want to sing, and He gives
another man a voice like an alarm-clock or a buzz-saw. He gives one man
a mind that seems always to be full, and another man a mind, let him do
his best, that is always as empty as a last year's nest. Surely I have
more ground for envying the man who is born with more brains than I than
the man who is born with more wealth than I. And yet God alone is
responsible for the first-named inequality. We hear too much rubbish
about this theory of all men being equal born.
"As for Bob Taylor's hint that we should employ violence to prevent men
working for what wage they please, I have only this to say, that nobody
but a lazy dog like him would suggest such a policy.
"We all know that when the whistle blows in the morning, Bob always
tries how much of it he can hear before he goes in; and when it blows at
night, he tries how much of it he can hear after he gets out. Bob is
always slow at the end where he ought to be quick, and quick at the end
where all honest men try at least to be decently slow; and then he talks
to us about ducking some poor fellow who wants to make an honest living
for his wife and children. I will say this much, too, that if the time
ever comes when a free-born man cannot sell his labour in the market
for what price he likes, then I will turn my back upon the old flag and
leave its soil forever.
"Now, I am going to ask Mr. Slater a question or two about this dividing
up business.
"Do you think, Mr. Slater, if a man has a million dollars, that he ought
to divide up with the man who has very little, if that man happens to be
working for him?"
"Most sartintly," replied Jack.
"Very well, if a man has ten thousand dollars, should he divide up with
a poorer man who works for him?"
"Sure," answered Jack promptly.
"Well, suppose a man has a house and a little garden, and he has a man
hired to help dig it or repair it, should he divide up with this poorer
workman who has neither house nor garden?"
Jack hesitated, his brows knit in thought; then he answered slowly--
"Naw, I don't just think so."
"Why not?" said Angus.
"Well, 'twouldn't be fair; besides, I happen to have a little house and
garden of my own."
Then all that crowd of men exploded in a burst of derisive laughter
which set the seal of triumph on Angus's argument.
After the uproar had subsided, an intrepid Scotsman, only a few months
in New Jedboro, volunteered to address the meeting.
"I canna jist answer the argyments o' Mr. Strachan, but I maun pit
forrit my idea that oor wives and bairns haena the luxuries o' them as
owns the works. I canna but mind that Robbie Burns said, 'A man's a man
for a' that,' an' I thocht the present a fittin' occasion to mind ye o'
the words, bein' as we're met the nicht to speak oot against slavery o'
ilka kind."
"No man who knows me," replied Angus, "will say that I will either yield
to slavery or assist it in any form. But the man who calls himself a
slave because his employer has more money than he, is no friend to
honest labour. We would all like wealth, but wealth is neither happiness
nor liberty. After all, the men whom we envy have not so much more than
we; they can only lie on one pillow at a time, can only eat one mouthful
at a time, can only smoke one cigar at a time, and as for the kind of
couch a man sits down upon, it matters little so that he has earned his
rest by honest toil.
"My Scottish friend hardly realizes what he says. I know he has a wife
and a sweet little lassie. There is Mr. Blake, the richest of our
manufacturers, and he has neither the one nor the other. Now I ask my
compatriot, would he trade his lot for that of Mr. Blake with all his
money? He answers no. Then who is the richer man--Mr. Blake, or our
fellow-workman from auld Scotland?
"Speaking of Scotland, let me say this one word. I lived there till I
was a well-grown lad, as did scores of you, and I defy you to contradict
me when I say that we are a hundred times better off here than we were
among the sheep or behind the ploughs in the old land, neither of which
we could hardly ever hope to call our own. Were we not there accounted
almost as sheep for the slaughter? How much better were we than the kine
we tended? Were not we even driven from the land we rented at a cruel
price, that some haughty lord might make a deer-run of the place? What
were we there but grovelling vassals, and what hope had we ever to be
independent, or to own even a house in which to die?
"I do not need to tell you of the difference here, of how the most of us
have our own little homes, and count our friends among the best people
in New Jedboro; and three-fourths of the aldermen in our council, and
the trustees of our schools, and the elders of our kirks, are from the
ranks of honest labour.
"Let us thank God we have escaped from the class tyranny and the peasant
bondage of the land beyond the seas."
A new and different light was now upon the rapt faces of the men--and
the end of it all was that they turned the diamond-ringed gentlemen from
their doors.
XIV
_WITH The EMPLOYERS_
Nor was this the last of Angus's eloquence. A few days later the
manufacturers, being met in conclave at Mr. Blake's office, sent for the
young Scotsman and personally thanked him for his good offices in
settling the strike. Both sorts were there--the kind and the unkind, the
gentleman and the churl--but all alike united in grateful praise for the
mediation which Angus had accomplished. Many unctuous things were said,
but when one tyrant arose to speak his gratitude, Angus's face bore a
look which boded ill.
"We're glad," said Mr. M'Dougall, swelling with vulgar pompousness, "to
see that you recognize the rights of property and the claims of vested
interests. And we trust," he added, "that Labour has learned a lesson it
will not soon forget." Then he sat down with the majesty of a balloon
descending.
"I am glad, sir," replied Angus, "to have been of service in quelling a
movement led by selfish and grasping strangers, but I may at the same
time say that it would be well for Mr. M'Dougall and his kind to pay
more heed himself to the rights of property. For skill and industry and
faithfulness are property just as much as Mr. M'Dougall's vested
interests. And he may as well be warned that Labour will not forever
tolerate the selfishness and the pride with which he treats his hands."
"I move," interrupted Mr. Thoburn, himself a gifted tyrant, "that this
meeting do now adjourn."
"This meeting will do nothing of the sort." This time it was Mr. Blake
who spoke, and there was iron in his voice. "None of us thought Mr.
Strachan spoke too long when he was dealing with the agitators from
Chicago, and let us hear him out, unless we are bigger cowards than the
men who work for us."
The meeting endorsed these sentiments, and Angus resumed--
"I speak in the interests of Capital," he said, "when I declare that the
fault is not all on the side of the working man. Many of our employers
are kind and sympathetic men, but others of them are not. I envy no man
among you the wealth he has gathered, but the selfishness of some of our
manufacturers is maddening to the working man.
"Some of you know nothing of our trials and our difficulties, and, what
is worse, you do not want to know. You pass by the men who are making
you rich as though they were the dogs of the street. You sit next pew to
them in the kirk, and yet treat them like the dirt beneath your feet. It
is doubtless your conviction that you have discharged your whole duty to
us when you pay our wages every fortnight. I tell you," he cried
passionately, "that is the great fallacy which is yet to prove the
undoing of the employers of labour.
"You forget we are men, as well as you, and have higher claims upon you
than your pay sheet acknowledges. If our employer dies, we follow him in
a body to his grave. If one of us dies, you drive past his hearse with
your haughty carriages, or bolt down a side street to avoid the
association.
"Tom Lamplough, who has worked for Mr. Thoburn twenty years, buried his
only child last Thursday, and his employer spent the afternoon speeding
his thoroughbred on the race-track beside the cemetery. At the very
moment when Tom was groping about the open grave, struggling with his
broken heart and following his daughter with streaming eyes, Mr. Thoburn
was bawling out that his filly had done it in two and a quarter--and the
clods were falling on the coffin all the while."
At this juncture Thoburn arose, his face the very colour of the corpse
he had disdained.
"Will no man throttle this fanatic?" he hoarsely craved. "Must we be
insulted thus by a mere working man?"
"I insult no man," retorted his accuser, "when I tell him but the truth.
It was you who insulted the dead, and outraged her desolate father
because he was but your servant. Is what I say the truth?"
"I decline to answer that," said Thoburn.
"You will not decline to answer before the throne of God. For you and
Tom will meet yonder. Good God, man, did you ever think of that? Did it
ever occur to you that you and Tom will take your last ride in the same
conveyance, and have the same upholstery in the tomb? And somebody
else's filly will be making its mile in less time than yours when the
clods are falling on your coffin."
I have often marvelled at this strange power of rhetoric in an untutored
man; but it only confirmed what I am more and more inclined to
believe--that emotion and intellect are twins, and that the soul is
oratory's native home.
There was a pause, but it was brief. For there flew to the rescue of his
beleaguered brother Mr. Hiram Orme, the millionaire proprietor of the
great Acme works. Vulgar and proud, he lived a life of ostentatious
luxury.
No thought of the poor or the suffering ever disturbed the shallow tenor
of his enamelled existence Secure in the fortress of wealth, which is a
lie! he cared nothing for such wounded soldiers as had helped to build
it, or for their widows or their orphans. With all sail set, he careened
on his inconsiderate way, and the vessels whose side he sought were
never those bearing the signals of distress.
Mr. Hiram Orme had a high contempt for all working men, and a keen
suspicion of every attitude which smacked of liberty. The working man,
like the negro, was happier far in a state of semi-slavery--such was the
honest view of the honest man.
And now he was upon his feet, glaring with wrath, profoundly complacent
in the assurance of superior wealth, and prepared to demolish both Angus
and the King's English at a blow.
"Them's nice words," he broke forth, "for a working man to be using to
the man what he's dependent on for to get his bread and butter. And I
want for to tell this man Strachan that beggars can't be choosers. A
pretty preachment he's givin' us about coffins and them like things.
There's one thing certain, and that is, me and the rest of my brother
manufacturers will have a sight finer coffins than him and his sort will
have." The manufacturers shuddered, like men sitting in some deadly
draught.
"We've had jist about enough sass from our young friend, I think; he's
nothin' but a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for us anyhow.
Doesn't the Bible tell servants like him for to be obedient to their
masters?"
Then Angus's Scotch blood leaped, protesting, to his face, and his soul
tore open his burning lips as the tide bursts a dam built by children's
hands.
"I eat honest bread, earned by honest toil," he hotly cried, "and that
is more than Mr. Orme can say. I would beg from door to door before I
would munch, as he does, the crusts that are stained with blood. We all
know how he has ground his working girls to the earth, how he has
refused to ventilate his factories, and even to heat them decently in
the winter time. We all know how he has spurned the poor and the needy
with his foot, and how he has crawled upon his belly before the rich and
great. I will tell you something about Mr. Orme. It does not apply to
all of you. Some of you, thank God! have remembered that your working
men were human beings like yourselves--you have helped and befriended
the sick and the poor, you have pensioned the closing years of faithful
men. You have called yourselves to ask for our sick and dying, and we
have blessed you for it. What poor burdened hearts want is the warm
heart touch from your own hands or lips, but Mr. Orme has given neither
the one nor the other.
"Mr. Orme, do you remember Dick Draper, who was your boss carder, and
who lives in a little house behind your mansion? Do you remember that he
worked for you ten or fifteen years, and that you discharged him because
he would not leave the Union?"
"Yes, I remember him. Why?" answered Orme huskily.
"I will tell you why. A few months after you discharged him, partly
because his health failed and partly because you blackballed him at all
other shops, he was still out of work, his money all gone, his pantry
bare, and his youngest boy dying of a slow disease of the spine. Some of
us went to you and asked you to help us raise enough to send him to
Montreal for treatment that might save his life. You showed us the door,
and told us to tell him he could make his money like you made yours. You
said if the boy died it would be one mouth less for Dick to feed, and
told us there was a grand old maxim about every man for himself and the
devil have the hindermost. As we were going down your splendid avenue,
you shouted that Dick's spine was stiff enough when he joined the Union.
Then you asked us if spines were hereditary. Then you laughed and your
barns and your grand driving sheds echoed back its cruel mockery."
Orme arose and started towards the door.
"Mr. Chairman, I protest," he began.
"Sit doon," thundered Angus, lapsing into his native tongue, "sit doon
till I tell ye a'. The nicht Dick's boy was deein', we went to ye and
begged ye to stop yir music and yir dancin'. For ye had some graun' fowk
at yir pairty, an' the flowers for it cost ye mair nor wad hae sent the
laddie to Montreal. An' the noise fashed an' fretted the deein' bairn.
But ye bade us begone, an' said ye'd invite us to yir pairty when ye
wanted us--an' the puir laddie dee'd in his faither's airms to the cruel
music o' yir fiddles an' yir reels, an' his faither sat wi' him a' the
nicht, croonin' wi' sorrow, an' yir graun' guests' laughter breakin' on
him like a blizzard frae the north."
"Is the sermon nearly done?" said Mr. Orme, with a sneer. "You missed
your calling; you're a preacher." The hot tears were in Angus' eyes and
he seemed to have forgotten that Orme was present, the taunt lost upon
him.
"I will say no more," turning now to the others, "and I have perhaps
spoken over warmly. But I have uttered no word other than the truth. And
I will only make my last appeal, which I know will have some weight,
with most of you, at least. The remedy for all this threatening trouble
lies in mutual sympathy, for I doubt not you have your own difficulties,
even as we have ours. I am glad to have helped to allay this recent
trouble, and my best service shall never be denied you in the future.
But I pray you to consider the words of a man who wishes you nothing
else but good. Pardon what of violence and ponder what of reason has
been mixed with what I said. Capital has its labour, and labour has its
capital--and we are all toilers together."
He bowed to the employers and withdrew, but the seed his hand had cast
was fallen, some no doubt on rocky ground, but some also on good and
honest soil.
And Angus had won a victory; but his greatest triumph was unseen, for he
had ruled his own spirit, which high authority assures us is greater
than the taking of a city.
Not inconsiderable, too, were the outward pledges of his victory. For,
as we said, the sleek agitators had been dismissed, the mills and
factories were running again, and the industrial tides of life in New
Jedboro gradually subsided into their old channels.
And now those unseen forces that are ever silently working to upset old
standards and to displace old ways, broke out in a new form, this time
threatening the very centre of one of St. Cuthbert's most established
customs.
XV
_A BOLD PROPOSAL_
The old precentor's box beneath the pulpit was still St. Cuthbert's only
choir loft. Many years back, the iconoclasts among them had managed to
gather a few of the most songful ones together in a front pew, demurely
sitting as part of the congregation, but concentrated for purposes of
leadership. This proved, however, more than St. Cuthbert's could abide,
and its mal-odour of "High Church" alarmed the Scottish Presbyterians.
Going down the aisle, Saunders M'Tavish voiced the general alarm in
sententious tones--
"The thin end o' the wedge," he warningly exclaimed, "and it's no' a far
cry noo to the candles an' the incense. They'll be bringin' ower the
pope next," and the kirk session, convening the next night, soon stopped
that leakage in their ancestral dyke.
Since then the precentor's box had preserved its lonely splendour.
Within it, in the far-back thunderous days of their great Boanerges, the
precentor stood to lead the swelling psalm as it rose from the seated
multitude--for they stood to pray, but sat to sing. From the
fast-gathering mists that now threaten those receding years, surviving
ones still rescue images of the precentor's ruffled locks, swept by the
pentecostal swirl--so seemed it to his worshippers--of Dr. Grant's
Geneva gown. And in this same box Sabbath after Sabbath appeared the
stalwart form of Archie M'Cormack, modern in nothing but his years.
His was a conservatism of the intense and passionate sort; not the
choice of his judgment, but the deepest element of his life. He no more
chose old ways, old paths, or the spirit of earlier times, than the
trout chooses water or the Polar bear its native snows. He was born not
among them, but of them, and remained till death their incarnate
descendant. No mere Scotch kirkman was Archie, but a prehistoric
Calvinist, a Presbyterian by the act of God and an elder from all
eternity. Even his youthful thoughts and imaginations adjusted
themselves to the scope of the Westminster Confession, abhorring any
horizon unillumined by the gray light which flowed in mathematical
exactitude from a hypothetical heart in the Shorter Catechism.
Although, strangely enough, Archie could never master the catechism. A
random question was his doom. Catechise him straight through, and his
response was swift and accurate. No thrust availed against him, a
knight invincible in his well-pieced coat of mail, a very dragon of
orthodoxy from whose lips there issued clouds of Calvinism, till the
minister himself was often well-nigh obscured thereby. But once dip
Archie into the middle of its mighty bosom to search an answer there,
and he would never reappear, or, if he haply might, it would be with
sorry fragments of divers answers in his hands, incongruous to
absurdity. Is not the same true of babbling guides in old cathedrals?
"What is sin?" the minister once suddenly asked Archie in the course of
catechetical visitation, the district being assembled at one central
house. Archie's answer, being a mosaic, is still quoted by those who
heard it, terror-stricken where they sat.
"Sin," replied the wide-gleaning man, "is an act of God's free grace,
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in its full purpose of and endeavour
after new obedience."
This terrible and miscellaneous eruption was the more lamentable from
the fact that his poor wife heard this blare of discordant dogmas with
unbelieving ears, while even little Kirsty gasped, exclaiming above her
breath, "Ye're sair muddled, faither."
Archie looked vacantly from wife to daughter, like one who has let
something drop. Then gazing despondently at the minister's struggling
face, he said, "I'm feart that's no' jist richt in a' its parteeklars."
The epilogue was worse than the tragedy. A grim Presbyterian smile went
round, more vocal than the echoing laughter of less silent sects, and it
smote on Archie's ears like the scorners' bray. Forward went the
catechism, a penitential gloom succeeding the sinful indulgence. The
Scottish sun dips suddenly.
Sober enough now are the faces from which all merriment has fled,
forgetting the precentor's discomfiture, and looking only to their own
deliverance from the guns now turned against themselves. But Archie did
not forget--into a secret Scottish place he had retreated, his hot,
burning heart forging some weapon of revenge. It was ready in due time.
An hour after, just before the armistice which the benediction alone
made sure, he turned upon the honest rustics with a look of belated
triumph in his face, and slew them with the retort which long travail
had brought forth.
"A'm no' sae gleg on the subject o' sin as some fowk I ken."
The minister, by aid of special grace, said nothing. Archie, although he
held solemnly on his way through the benediction, as became a precentor,
yet chuckled exultantly all the homeward road. At evening worship he
selected the Twenty-seventh Psalm and sang the second verse with
rejoicing unction--
"Whereas mine enemies and foes,
Most wicked persons all,
To eat my flesh against me rose,
They stumbled and did fall,"
and the honest rustics, as they sought the cover of their homes with
emancipated feet, pronounced one to the other that most Scotch of all
Scottish verdicts, half of eulogy and half of condemnation: "He's a lad,
is Airchie. Ay, Airchie's a lad to be sure."
* * * * *
What sleuth-hounds women are in matters of the heart! How quickly they
take the scent of any path, virgin though it be, if that path hath been
touched by the very feet of love, tracing its devious course with
passionate inerrancy.
I thought the news trifling, when I told my wife that Angus and our
Margaret had appeared before St. Cuthbert's session to present a certain
prayer. My mind was taken up exclusively with the request they
proffered. But Margaret's mother was unconcerned with their plea. Of the
pleaders she thought alone. Divers questions she flung forth at me,
furtive all, their author in ambush all the while.
"Did they seem interested in each other?" was the burden of them all;
for, though she avoided plainness of speech, I could yet detect her
hidden fear.
But I must turn from this and tell of the enterprise in whose interest
Margaret and Angus bearded the lions of St. Cuthbert's in their den.
They represented the Young People's Guild, and presented the startling
request that the old kirk should henceforth employ an organ to aid the
service of praise on the Sabbath day. And they further asked for the
introduction of the hymns. This implied a revolution, for St.
Cuthbert's, up to this time, had resolutely resisted all attempts to
hallow such profanities.
For the youthful pair of revolutionists I felt a decided sympathy, such
as pervades every generous heart when it beholds the dauntless approach
of David towards Goliath. Such citadels of orthodoxy, such Gibraltars of
conservatism as Archie was, were almost all the elders of St.
Cuthbert's. And against them all united did Angus and Margaret dare to
turn their poor artillery of persuasion.
The session received them cordially, having all goodwill towards them
personally, hating the sin but loving the sinners, to employ a good old
theological phrase. Angus began, adroitly enough, with a eulogy of the
psalms and paraphrases, defining them as the mountain peaks of song in
all ages and in every tongue.
"In far-distant Scotland my mother is singing them to-night," he said,
"and I catch the glow and the sweetness of the heather when the kirk
rings with their high refrain ilka Sabbath day. But we feel that the
hymns, even if they be inferior, will add richness and variety to the
service of our beloved kirk."
As for the organ, he contended that it was only a means towards an end,
man-made though it was; for these stern men were rigid in their
distinction between things made with hands and things inspired.
Angus quoted Scripture on behalf of the organ plea, recalling David's
use of instrumental music and quoting the Ninety-second Psalm--
"Upon a ten-stringed instrument
And on the psaltery,
Upon the harp with solemn sound
And grave, sweet melody."
I then called upon Margaret, and my heart misgave me as I spoke her
name, for she was full of pathetic hopefulness, and seemed to think that
Angus's argument had settled things beyond appeal. But I knew better
than she what spray could do with frowning rocks. The elders, too,
smiled tenderly upon her, for they were chivalrous in their solemn way,
and besides, she was what you might call the church's first-born child,
the story of which I have already told. But theirs was a kind of
executioners' smile, for they were iron-blooded men, who felt that they
had heard but now the trumpeting of the enemy at the gate.
Margaret timidly expressed the view that she need, and would, add
nothing more, "for," she concluded, "Mr. Strachan has covered the ground
completely." This phrase "covered the ground" I do not believe she had
ever used before, but every true child of the manse and the kirk is born
its legitimate heir. "The previous question" is another matter, and can
be acquired only through laborious years. It takes even a moderator all
his time to explain it; before most Presbyteries quite master it, death
moves it--and then they understand.
Poor Margaret seemed to think that Angus had made out a case which no
elder could successfully assail. She knew not that there are some
matters which Scotch elders consider it impious even to discuss, holding
in scorn the flaccid axiom that there are two sides to every question.
The youthful petitioners withdrew, and the session indulged itself in a
long silence, their usual mode of signifying that important business was
before them.
The first to speak was Ronald M'Gregor: "We'll no' be needin' a motion,"
he said, by way of indicating that there could be no two opinions on
the matter in hand.
"We'll hae to move that the peteetion be rejeckit," said Elder M'Tavish,
nodding his head to signify his agreement with Ronald's main contention.
"The puir bodies mean richt," he added, being distinguished for
Christian charity.
The motion was as good as agreed to, silent consent appearing upon every
face, when Michael Blake arose.
"I move in amendment, that the young people's request be referred to a
committee, with a view to its favourable consideration."
"I second that," said Sandy Grant, the session clerk, "not thereby
committin' masel' to its spirit, but to bring it afore the court in
regular order."
"What for div we need anither motion?" said Thomas Laidlaw, evidently
perplexed. "There's nane o' us gaun to gie in to thae man-made
hymes--an' their kist o' whustles wad be fair redeek'lus."
"Let us hear what they have to say in its behalf," said Mr. Blake.
"Every honest man should be open to conviction."
"We're a' honest men," replied Thomas, "an' we're a' open to conviction,
but I houp nane o' us'll be weak eneuch to be convickit. Oor faithers
wadna hae been convickit."
"It'll dae nae harm to hear the argyments," said Andrew Hogg, the silent
member of the session.
At this juncture, fearing what Saunders M'Tavish had long ago called the
thin edge o' the wedge, Archie M'Cormack, the precentor, came forward in
hot alarm, championing the hosts of orthodoxy.
"The session'll mebbe listen to me, for I've been yir precentor these
mony years. We'll hae nae mair o' thae havers. Wha wants their hymes?
Naebody excep' a wheen o' gigglin' birkies. Gie them the hymes, an'
we'll hear Martyrdom nae mair, an' Coleshill an' Duke Street'll be by.
For what did oor faithers dee if it wasna for the psalms o' Dauvit? An'
they dee'd to the tunes I've named to ye."
"But Mr. M'Cormack will admit," said Mr. Blake, "that many of God's
people worship to profit with the hymns. There is the Episcopal church
across the way. Last Sabbath I am told their soprano sang 'Lead, kindly
Light,' and it was well received."
"Wha receivit it?" thundered Archie. "Tell me that, sir. Wha receivit
it? Was it Almichty God, or was it the itchin' lugs o' deein' men, aye
hearkenin' to thae skirlin' birkies wi' their men-made hymes?"
"Mr. M'Cormack is severe," replied Michael Blake serenely, "but I think
he is unnecessarily alarmed; we must keep our service up to date. As the
session knows, I have always been in favour, for instance, of the
modern fashion of special services at Christmas, Eastertide, and kindred
seasons. And at such times we ought to have a little special music."
"Up to date!" retorted Archie scornfully; "it's a sair date an' a deein'
ane. It'll dee the nicht, an' there'll be a new ane the morn, an' wha
ever heard tell o' an Easter Sabbath in the Kirk o' Scotland? It'll dae
weel eneuch for thae dissentin' bodies, wi' their prayer-books, but what
hae we, wi' the psalm-buik, an' a regular ministry, an' a regular kirk,
to dae wi' siclike follies? Ilka Sabbath day is Easter day, I'm tellin'
ye. Is oor Lord no' aye risin' frae the dead? Gin a soul braks intil new
life, or a deein' man pillows his weary heid on Him, or the heavy-herted
staun' up in His michty strength, ye hae yir Easter Sabbath; an' that's
ilka Sabbath, I'm sayin'. Nane o' yir enawmelled bit toys for
Presbyterian fowk."
"I do not want to interfere with the good old Presbyterian ways,"
responded Mr. Blake; for the elders seemed to have committed the entire
debate to those two representatives of the old school and the new. "But
it seems to me the whole Christian religion is a religion of change," he
continued; "the new path, the new and living way, the new covenant, the
new name, the new song--and the new heart," he concluded fervently.
Then a moment later he added, "Thank God for that!" and the elders
looked at him in astonishment, for his face bore again that look of
anguish and remorse to which I have referred before, the oft-recurring
evidence of some bitter secret, deep hidden in his heart.
"We understaun' fine," the session clerk appended. "Mr. Blake is only
contending that there are two sides to every question."
"Twa sides!" shouted the precentor, now on his feet again, "there's mair
nor twa. There's three sides to ilka question: there's yir ain side, an'
there's my side, an' there's God's side," he added almost fiercely; "an'
when I ken God's side, there's nae ither side ava."
The debate was not continued long, and closed with the compromise that
Mr. Blake's motion should prevail, the whole matter to be referred to a
committee composed of Mr. Blake, the precentor, the moderator, and the
clerk, no report to be made to the kirk session unless the committee was
unanimous in its finding. This committee was instructed to meet and
confer with the representatives of the Young People's Guild.
While this resolution was being recorded, Archie was still indulging in
smothered protests, the dying voice of the thunder-storm; and as the
session dispersed he was heard to say, "Committee or no committee, as
lang as I'm in the kirk they'll sing the psalms o' Dauvit--an' the tunes
o' Dauvit tae."
The next evening I informed Angus of the session's action, and told him
the names of the committee. When I mentioned that of Mr. Blake, his eyes
flashed fire, and in bitter tones he said, "I will meet no committee of
which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the
devil as with him."
This staggered me. I knew no cause for an outburst so passionate, nor
any provocation for a resentment so savage and so evidently real. My
attempt to question him concerning either met with an abrupt but final
refusal. Concerning these things I said nothing to Margaret or her
mother, but kept them all and pondered them in my heart.
XVI
_GEORDIE'S OOT-TURN_
It was Geordie Lorimer who first taught me to curl. This I still reckon
a great kindness, for I have gone from strength to strength till I am
now upon the verge of tankard skiphood. Besides, Geordie's besetting sin
still clinging close, I had hoped in this social way the more readily to
win his friendship, with a view to his deliverance.
Some of the old elders looked askance at my frivolity, for Sanderson's
"Mountain Dew" flowed freely at every bonspiel, and it was generally
understood that all bigoted teetotalism was justly suspended till the
ice vanished in the spring. These aforesaid elders had no sympathy with
men who tasted standing up, or who took their "Mountain Dew" unwarmed.
They would gravely quote the scriptural admonition that all things
should be done decently and in order, adding the exposition, logically
deduced, that the more important the transaction, the more imperative
that order and decency should be observed. For which reason they took
their whisky hot, and hallowed by the gentler name of "toddy." At
eventide they took it, within the sacred precincts of their own
firesides, and immediately after family worship. Many a time and oft the
very lips which fervently sang the psalm--
"Like Hermon's dew, the dew that doth,"
were the same that sampled Sanderson's with solemn satisfaction.
The session clerk once presented to the court a letter from a worthy but
wandering temperance orator, craving permission to give his celebrated
"dog talk" in St. Cuthbert's on a Sabbath afternoon.
"I move that the kirk be no' granted," said Archie M'Cormack. "He'll be
revilin' the ways o' men far abune him. Ma faither aye took a drappy
ilka nicht, haudin' his bonnet in his haun' the while. He wad drink the
health o' Her Majesty ('God bless her,' he aye said), and mebbe ane to
the auld kirk in bonnie Scotland, an' mebbe ane to the laddies wha used
to rin wi' him aboot the braes, an' mebbe then he wad hae jist ane mair
to Her Majesty, for ma faither was aye uncommon loyal at the hinner end.
But atween him an' ma mither he aye kent fine when to stop.
"An' a' oor faithers tasted afore they gaed to bed, an' they a' dee'd
wi' their faces to the licht; an' I wadna gie ane o' them for a wheen o'
yir temperance haverers wi' their dog talks on the Sabbath day."
"I second that," said Ronald M'Gregor. "The injudeecious use o'
speerits, or o' ony ither needcessity, is no' to be commendit, but the
Sabbath he's askin' 'll be the sacrament, and that's no day for dog
talkin', I'm thinkin'"--and the motion carried unanimously.
* * * * *
"How's the ice to-day?" I asked Thomas Laidlaw, one winter's afternoon.
"Fair graun'," replied the solemn Thomas. "Ye'll never throw a stane on
better till ye draw by yir last gaird; 'twad dae fine for the New
Jerusalem."
"You don't think there'll be curling there, Thomas?" I said.
"I dinna ken," he answered, "but I'm no' despairin'. They aye speak o't
as a land where everlasting spring abides; but I hae ma doots. There'll
be times when the ice'll hold, I'm thinkin'. Yon crystal river's no' for
naethin'."
Geordie Lorimer was my skip that day, and soon the armoured floor was
echoing to the "roarin' game," the largest, noblest, brotherliest game
known to mortal men. The laird and the cottar were there, the homely
shepherd and the village snab who cobbled his shoes, the banker and the
carter, the manufacturer and the mechanic--all on that oft-quoted
platform which is built alone of curlers' ice.
"Lay me a pat-lid richt here, man. Soop her up--soop, soop, man. Get her
by the gaird. Let her be. I'm wrang, bring her ben the hoose.
Stop--stop, I'm tellin' ye. Noo, soop, soop her in, man."
"Noo, minister, be up this time," cries Geordie. "Soop, soop her up.
That's a graun' yin, minister. Shake ye yir ain haun'. Gin yir sermons
were deleevered like yir stanes, there wadna be an empty seat i' the
kirk. Lat her dee, she's ower fiery. That'll dae fine for a gaird, an'
Tam'll be fashed to get roun' ye."
Thus roared the game along, and at its close Geordie and I were putting
our stones away together, flushed with victory. The occasion seemed
favourable for the moral influence which it was my constant aim to
exercise.
"By the way, Geordie," I began, "I have not seen you in the kirk of
late."
"What's that?" said Geordie, his invariable challenge, securing time to
adjust himself for the encounter.
"I have missed you nearly all winter from the church on the Sabbath
day," I replied, leaving no room for further uncertainty.
Geordie capitulated slowly: "I'll grant ye I've no' been by-ord'nar
regglar," he admitted, "but I hae a guid excuse. I haena been ower weel.
Ma knee's been sair. To tell ye the truth, minister, half the time
'twas a' I could dae to get doon to curl."
I sighed heavily and said no more, for Geordie was hopelessly sincere in
his idea of first things first.
The very next night I was sitting quietly in my study, talking to
Margaret and Angus, though I was beginning to suspect already that they
had come to endure my absence with heroic fortitude.
About eleven o'clock the door-bell rang, and I answered it myself. It
was Geordie's distracted wife. Leading her to the drawing-room, I asked
her mission, though her pale and care-rung face left little room for
doubt.
"Wad ye think it bold o' me, sir, gin I was to ask you to find Geordie
an' fetch him hame? He's off sin' yestere'en."
"Why, it was only yesterday evening I saw him on the ice."
"Ay, sir, but he winned the game, an' that's aye a loss for Geordie; he
aye tak's himsel' to the tavern when he wins. Oh, sir, ma hairt's fair
broken; it's a twalmonth this verra nicht sin' oor wee Jessie dee'd, an'
I was aye lippenin' to that to bring him till himsel'; but he seems waur
nor ever--he seeks to droon his sorrow wi' the drink."
I had often marvelled at this; for Geordie's last word to his little
daughter had been a promise to meet her in the land o' the leal. But it
is not chains alone that make a slave.
After a little further conversation, I sent the poor woman home,
assuring her that I would do the best I could for Geordie. Which promise
I proceeded to fulfill. Two or three of his well-known resorts had been
visited with fruitless quest, when I repaired to the Maple Leaf, a
notoriously sunken hole, which thus blasphemed the name of the fairest
emblem of the nations. I observed a few sorry wastrels leaning in
maudlin helplessness upon the bar as I pressed in, still cleaving to
their trough--but Geordie was not among them. I was about to withdraw,
when I heard a familiar voice, above the noise of a phonograph, from one
of the rooms just above the bar. It was Geordie's.
"Gie us 'Nearer, my God, to Thee,'" I heard him cry, with drunken
unction. "Gin ye haena ane o' the psalms o' Dauvit i' yir kist o' tunes,
mak' the creetur play 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"
Here was Geordie's evil genius in evidence again, his profligacy and his
piety hand in hand. Ascending the stairs, I reached the door just in
time to see the landlord, manipulator of the musical machine, forcing
Geordie to the door, one hand gripping his throat, the other buffeting
the helpless wretch in the face. Two or three of his unspeakable
kindred were applauding him.
"Get out of here, you beast," he muttered savagely, "and let decent folk
enjoy themselves. You'll not get no music nor no whisky either, hangin'
round an honest man's house without a penny in your pocket--get out, you
brute." And he struck him full in the face again.
It were wrong to say that I forgot I was a minister; I think I recalled
that very thing, and it gave more power to my arm, for I knew the
poverty amid which Geordie's poor wife strove to keep their home
together; and the pitiful bareness of wee Jessie's death-chamber flashed
before me. This well-nourished vampire had sucked the life-blood from
them all, and remembering this, I rushed into the unequal conflict and
smote the vampire between his greedy eyes with such fervour that he fell
where he stood. In a moment he was on his feet again, but my ministry
with him was not complete, and I seized him where he had gripped his own
victim, by the throat.
"Let me be. Remember you're a minister," he gasped.
"God forbid I should forget," I thundered back, for my blood was hot. I
remembered just then that wee Jessie had been dependent on charity for
the little delicacies that go with death; "and if God helps me you
won't forget it either," with which addition I hurled him down the
stairs, his final arrival signalled back by the sulphurous aroma of
bruised and battered maledictions.
It may be incidentally inserted here that this unclerical encounter of
mine was afterwards referred to at a meeting of St. Cuthbert's session.
One of the elders, never very friendly to me, preferred the charge of
conduct unbecoming a minister. Only two of his colleagues noticed the
indictment, and they both were elders of the old Scotch school.
"Oor minister's fine at the castin' doon o' the strongholds o' Satan,"
said the one; "it minds me o' what the beasts got i' the temple."
"It's mebbe no' Solomon's exact words, but it's gey like them: 'A time
to pit on the goon an' a time to tak' aff the coat'--an' it's the yae
kin' o' proheebeetion that's ony guid forbye," said the other.
The groaning landlord was soon removed by the loving hands of his wife
and the hostler; and as I convoyed Geordie out past their family
sitting-room, tenderly so called, the phonograph breathed out the last
expiring strains of "Wull ye no' come back again?" which the aforesaid
landlord had selected in preference to Geordie's pious choice.
Measures for the sufferer's relief had been swift; the air was already
rich with the fumes of high wines, the versatile healer of internal
griefs and external wounds alike.
When Geordie and I were well upon the street a new difficulty presented
itself.
"It's a sair shock, an' it'll kill the wife," I heard him muttering
beneath his breath.
This gave me some little hope, for I detected in it the beauty of
penitence.
"Your wife will forgive you, Geordie," I began; "and if this will only
teach----"
But he stopped me; his face showed that he had been sorely
misunderstood.
"Forgie me--forgie me! It's no' me she'll hae till forgie. Are ye no'
the minister o' St. Cuthbert's? Ah, ye canna deny that. I ken that fine.
I kent ye as sune as ye cam' slippin' ben the taivern. It'll fair kill
the wife."
"What are you talking about?" I said testily.
"To think I wad live to see my ain minister slippin' by intil a taivern
at sic a time o' nicht," he groaned despondingly.
Then he turned upon me, his voice full of sad reproof: "I'm no' what I
micht be masel', but I dinna mak' no profession; but to think I'd catch
my ain minister hangin' roon' a taivern at this time o' nicht. It'll
kill the wife. She thocht the warld o' ye."
What the man was driving at was slowly borne in upon me.
"But you do not understand, Geordie," I began.
He stopped me again: "Dinna mak' it waur wi' yir explanations. I
un'erstaun' fine. I un'erstaun' noo why they ca' ye a feenished
preacher--ye're damn weel feenished for me an' Betsy. An' gin I tell hoo
I fun' ye oot (which I'm no' sayin' I'll dae), ilka sate i' the kirk
will be empty the comin' Sabbath day. Ye're a wolf in sheep's claes, an'
I'm sair at hairt the nicht."
I saw the uselessness of any attempt to enlighten him, for he was
evidently sincere in his illusion, and the spirit of real grief could be
detected, mingling with another which poisoned the air at every breath.
Whereupon I left him to himself as we walked along, Geordie swaying
gently, overcome by the experiences of the departed hour.
"It maun hae a fearfu' haud o' ye when ye cam' oot at sic an oor," he
said at length, half to himself. "But it clean spiled a graun' nicht for
me to see ye slippin' ben. It was a graun' nicht up till that. I canna
jist mind if it was a funeral or a weddin'--but it was fair graun'. We
drinkit the health o' ane anither till there wasna ache or pain amangst
us, but this spiles it a' for me. An' it'll kill the wife."
"You will see it differently," I could not help but say; "you know well
how I have tried to help you and tried to comfort your poor wife."
"That's what I aye thocht till noo," he responded plaintively. "I was
sayin' that same thing this verra nicht to ane o' my freens at the
taivern afore ye cam'. It was auld Tam Rutherford, wha's gaun to be
mairrit again, and him mair nor auchty years o' age. I warnt him against
it, an' I telt him his ither wumman was deid but sax months. But Tam
said as hoo a buddy at his age canna afford to wait ower lang, an' I
didna ken what answer to gie to that."
Then Geordie stopped, evidently resuming the quest for an appropriate
reply; for Scotch wit is usually posthumous, their responses serial and
their arguments continued in their next.
I was naturally curious as to what part I could have had in this
discussion, and since Geordie seemed to have forgotten the original
subject, I asked, "What has that to do with my trying to help or comfort
anybody?"
"Ou ay," he resumed. "Tam was sayin' as hoo he'd no' hae yirsel' to
mairry them, for he said ye're ower affectionate wi' the brides. But I
stuck up for you. I telt him yir sympathies was braid, but ye didna pick
oot the lassies for it a'. I was at Wullie Lee's the nicht Wullie dee'd;
an' I was fair scunnert at the elders. There was twa o' them, an' they
prayed turn aboot.
"When Wullie slippit awa, at midnight his twa dochters, Kirsty an' Ann,
took on redeek'lus, an' the auld wumman was waur. But the twa elders sat
an oor, comfortin' the twa lassies, ane to ilka ane, an' baith o' them
no' bad to luik at. They comfortit them muckle the same as I comfortit
Betsy when we did oor coortin', but the puir auld buddy was left her
lane wi' naebody to comfort her ava. I did it masel' a wee while. That's
what I telt Tam, an' I pinted oot the difference atween you an' the
elders. I said as hoo ye wad hae pickit oot the auld buddy first---- But
to think ma ain een saw ye comin' ben the taivern ayont twal o'clock at
nicht."
With such varied discourse did Geordie beguile our homeward way, which
at last brought us to his dwelling-place.
"I want ye to promise me ae thing afore we pairt," said Geordie. "It's
for yir ain guid I'm askin' it."
"What is it?" I asked curiously.
"I want ye to sign the pledge," he responded, with a tearful voice, "for
it maun hae a sair hand o' ye or ye wadna be prowlin' aboot a taivern at
sic a time o' nicht."
"I will talk to you some other time about that."
"Weel, weel, jist as ye wull--it'll dae again--but man, hoo'll ye
square it wi' the wife when ye gang hame to the manse the nicht? We'll
baith hae oor ain times, I'm dootin'. Here's a sweetie for ye; it's a
peppermint lozenge, an' it's a graun' help. Guid-nicht."
I had taken but forty steps or so when a solicitous voice called out,
"Lie wi' yir back to the wife--an' sip the sweetie--an' breathe in to
yersel'."
XVII
"_NOO, The IN-TURN_"
The Apostles' Creed should be revised. One great article of faith it
lacks. "I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting"--thus peal its
bells of gold. But where is the faithful and observant minister who
would not add, "I believe in the change of the leopard's spots and of
the Ethiopian's skin"? Nowadays, we speak of conversion with pity and
amusement, but it is the greatest word the Christian Church can boast,
and the Scripture miracles were long ago entombed had they not lived
again in their legitimate descendants.
We are prone to think that men believe in modern miracles because of
those of long ago--but the reverse is true: the modern miracles are the
attestation of those early wonders; and I myself believe the Galilean
records because of His credentials in this Western World and in this
present day.
The very morning after the eventful night described above, I was busy at
my desk, travailing in birth with my sermon for the next Sabbath
morning. Strangely enough, it was from the words, "Why should it be
thought a thing incredible?" which is at heart no interrogative at all,
but the eternal affirmative of all religion, the basis of all faith, the
inevitable corollary of God.
I was casting about for a fitting illustration, fumbling in imagery's
twilight chamber and ransacking the halls of history, when lo! God sent
one knocking at the door. I responded to the knock myself, and Geordie
Lorimer stood before me. His face seemed strangely chastened, and the
voice which craved a private interview filled me somehow with subtle
hope and joy. For the voice is the soul's great index; and this of
Geordie's spoke of a soul's secret convalescence. The breath of spring
exuded from his words.
I locked my study door as we passed in together; for a Protestant
confessional is a holy place, excelling far the Catholic, even as a
love-letter excels a bill of lading.
"What is it, Geordie?" I asked, with tender eagerness.
"I dinna ken exactly, but I think it's life," he answered with new-born
passion, "and eternal life at that. I canna tell it an' I canna thole it
till I do tell it. I maunna mak' ower free wi' God; but it's my soul,
minister, it's my soul, an' I'm a new creature. I'm new in the sicht o'
God an' He's new in mine--an' I prayed this mornin', a thing I haena
dune for mair than twenty years--an' the auld burn was sweet an' clear,
like when my laddie's lips sippit there lang syne--I daurna speak His
name ower often, but God is gey guid to the sinfu' an' the weary."
"None but they can know how good," was my response.
My remark seemed to pass unnoticed, for Geordie had more to say.
"Hark ye, an' I'll tell ye hoo God cam' to me. 'Twas near the dawn this
verra mornin' I had a dream, an' wee Jessie cam' to me. An' that was
God, nae ither ane but God. 'Oot o' the mooth o' babes,' is that no' i'
the Buik? For wee Jessie stood beside the bed, an' I luikit at her an' I
said, 'My little dochter.' 'Twas a' I could say, an' she pit her saft
haun' on my heid sae gentle, an' sae blessed cool, for my heid was
burnin' hot. She luikit lang, an' her een was fu' o' love: 'Faither,'
she said, 'did ye no' promise yir lassie to meet her in the Faither's
hoose? Oh, faither, I've come to mind ye o' yir promise an' to set yir
puir feet upon the path ance mair. God loves ye, faither; I hae it frae
Himsel'; an' there's mony a ane wi' Him noo in white wha wandered
farther bye nor you. An' God 'll try, gin ye'll try yirsel', an' yir wee
Jessie 'll no' be far frae ye. Wull ye no' come, faither? for yir ain
lassie, an' mither, an' God, a' want ye.'
"I luikit lang intil her angel face, but I was feart to speak, for I
wasna worthy. The road was bricht eneuch, but I wasna fit to gang.
"'I ken what yir thinkin' o', faither. I ken yir enemy--an' God kens.
It's the drink. But it'll pass yir lips nae mair. I'll kiss them,
faither, an' they'll burn wi' the awfu' thirst nae mair.'
"An' she stoopit doon an' kissed my burnin' lips; an' I waukit up, an'
the fever was a' past an' by. I tell't Betsy, an' she grat wi' joy.
'It's i' the Buik,' she said.
"'What's i' the Buik?' I speirt.
"'A little child shall lead them,' Betsy said."
I talked a little while with Geordie as one talks with a shipwrecked
sailor who has gained the shore. He asked me to pray.
"Mak' it easy," he said, "I'm no' far ben the Mystery yet. I'm but a
bairn; but my lips are pure, an' the fever's by."
We knelt together, and I prayed: "O Friend of sinners, help us both, for
we are both sinners. Keep us, blessed Lord, and let his little daughter
be near us both to help us on the way. We will both try our best, and
Thou wilt too. Amen."
My half-written sermon never has been finished. I was constrained to
take another text, and the next Sabbath morn I saw Betsy Lorimer bow her
head in reverent adoration when I gave it out--
"Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister?"
XVIII
_HOW ELSIE WON The GATE_
The forest's glory is departed when its giant trees lie low. And, stroke
by stroke, my St. Cuthbert's Kirk was thus bereft of its outstanding
glories. For great men are like great trees, the shelter of all others
and the path-finders towards the sky.
My sun is westering now, and the oft-repeated crash as these mighty
stalwarts fall keeps my heart in almost abiding sadness. For the second
growth gives no promise of a stock which shall be worthy successors to
these noble pioneers, the conquering gladiators of Canada's shadowy
forests, the real makers of her great and portentous national life. And
yet, strange to say, I never knew their real greatness while I lived
among them, sharing in the varied chase, but only when they came to die.
This was especially true of those who boasted far-back highland blood,
for their depths of tenderness and heights of faith and scope of
spiritual vision were sternly hidden till the helplessness of death
betrayed them. Then was the key to their secret life surrendered; then
might all men see the face at the pane. But not till then; for every
stolid feature, every stifled word or glance of tenderness, every
muffled note of religious self-revealment, swelled their life's noble
perjury. To their own hurt they swore, changing not. But at their real
best he saw them who saw them die.
In that ingenuous hour they spoke once more their mother tongue of love
and faith with an accuracy which told of lifelong rehearsal within their
secret hearts. When the golden bowl was broken, its holy contents,
flowing free, poured forth the long-imprisoned fragrance.
How many a day, cold and gray, flowers at sunset into rich redemptive
beauty, cheerless avenue leading to its grand Cathedral West! Thus have
I seen these Scottish lives, stern and cold and rayless, break into
flame at evening, in whose light I caught the glory of the very gates of
the City of God.
It was the winter of the strike, whose story I have already told, that
Elsie M'Phatter heard the Voice which calls but once. Long and gentle
had been the slope towards the river, and I held Elsie's hand every step
of the way, myself striving to hold that other Hand which is truly
visible only in the darkness; but the last stage of the journey came
swift and suddenly. About two in the morning I was awakened by the loud
alarm of my door-bell.
The minister knows well that at such an hour his bell is rung only by
eternal winds, and the alarm is an almost certain message that the
rapids are near and that he is wanted at the helm. On Atlantic liners I
have never heard the ominous note that calls the captain from his cabin
to the bridge without thinking of my midnight bell, and that deeper
darkness, and that more awful channel.
It was the doctor's boy who thus summoned me, bidding me hurry to
Elsie's bedside, for the tide was ebbing fast, he said. I was soon on my
way through the frosty night, silently imploring the unseen Pilot that
He would safe into the haven guide. To His great wisdom and His
sheltering love I committed all the case, making oath beneath the silent
stars that I had myself no other hope than this with which I hurried to
yonder dying one. For a man's own heart must swear by the living Lord,
or else he will find no path through the dread wilderness of death for
the unreturning feet.
When the outskirts of the town were but well behind me, I saw in the
distance a solitary light which I knew at once to be the death-chamber
lamp; at sight whereof my heart has never outgrown a strange leap of
trembling fear, like a scout when he catches the first warning gleam of
the enemy's campfire. Yonder, I said to myself, is the battle-field of
a soul, struggling with its last great foe; yonder the central crisis
of all time and all eternity; yonder the heaving breast, the eager,
onward look, the unravelling of mystery, the launching of a soul upon
eternal seas.
No life is ever commonplace when that lamp burns beside it, and no
wealth, or genius, or greatness can palliate its relentless gleam.
There, continued I, stands the dread unseen Antagonist, asking no chair,
demanding no courtesy, craving no welcome, resenting no frowning and
averted face; calmly does he brook the terror and the hatred excited by
his uninvited advent, serene in the confidence that his is the central
figure, that the last word is his, though all pretend to ignore his
presence. Like a sullen creditor he stands, careless that every man's
hand is against him, relentlessly following his prey, willing that all
others should wait his time and theirs, intent only that this night
shall have its own.
And yet, I thought, what a false picture is this that my coward heart
hath drawn! There is Another in that room, I cried half loud, Another
there before me, whose swift feet have outrun my poor trudging through
the snow. For He is there who lit that feeble lamp itself, and it burns
only by His will. Death-lamp though it be, it is still a broken light of
Him, witness, in its own dark way, to the All-kindling Hand. The Lover
of the soul is yonder, and will share His dear-bought victory with my
poor dying one.
Whereat I pressed on eagerly, for I love to witness a reprieve, such as
many a time it hath been mine to see when the Greater Antagonist
prevails.
The death damp was on Elsie's brow when I knelt beside her bed, but her
eyes were kindled from afar, and a great Presence filled the room.
Donald was bowed beside her, his wife's wasted hand clasped passionately
in his own.
I knelt over the dying woman and softly repeated the swelling anthem
which no lips can sing aright till the great Vision quickens them:
"These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Elsie's voice blended with the great words, and turning her lustrous
eyes full on my face, she murmured--
"It's a' bricht and blythesome whaur I'm walkin' noo--there's no valley
here nor nae glen ava, but the way is fu' o' licht and beauty."
Her eyes sought her husband's face: "Oh, Donal'! To think we canna walk
this way thegither! We've clomb the hill thegither, Donal', mony a time
sair an' weary, but oor hairts were stoot when the brae was stae; but
noo I've reached the bonnie bit ayont the brae, an' ye're a' 'at's
wantin', Donal', to mak' it fair beautiful! But ye'll no' be lang ahint
me, wull ye, Donal'?--an' the Maister 'll come back to guide ye, gin I'm
gone bye the gate. An' we'll aye walk thegither in the yonner-land."
Donald's face was dry, but drawn in its agony. Its ache passed on into
my soul. He bent over her like some bowing oak, and the rustle of love's
foliage was fairly audible to the inward ear, though the oak itself
seemed hard and gnarled as ever. He whispered something, like a mighty
organ lilting low and sweet some mother's lullaby, and no tutor except
Great Death could have taught Donald that gentle language. For I caught
the word "darling," and again "oor Saviour," and once "the hameland,"
and it was like a lark's gentlest note issuing from a mighty mountain's
cleft.
O Death, how unjustly thou hast been maligned! Men have painted thee as
cruel, monstrous, hateful, the enemy of love, the despoiler of the home,
the spirit of harshness, the destroyer of all poesy and romance. And yet
thou hast done more to fill life with softness and with gentle beauty
than all the powers of life and light whose antagonist thou hast been
called. Thou hast heaped coals of fire on thy traducers' heads. For hast
thou not made the heaviest foot fall lightly with love's considerate
tread? Hast thou not made the rough, coarse palm into a sanctuary and
pavilion wherein the dying hand may shelter? Hast thou not taught the
loud and boisterous voice the new song of tenderness and pity,
whispering like a dove? Within thy school the rude and harsh have
learned the nurse's gentle art, and the world's swaggering warriors
serve as acolytes before thy shadowy altar. The peasant's cottage owes
to thee its transformation to cathedral splendour, the censers gently
swinging when thou sayest the soul's great mass, at even, or at
midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning. Thou hast classed
together the hovel and the palace, glowing with equal solemn grandeur,
so that no man can tell the one from the other when the crape upon the
door betokens that thou tarriest there. Thou hast promoted sodden sleep
to be the most awful metaphor of time. Thou hast stripped wealth and
grandeur, leaving them but a shroud, and hast clothed obscurity and
poverty with their eternally suggestive robe; thou hast affirmed, and
thou preserved, that grim average of life which greatness refuses, which
littleness fears, to realize. Romance and Poetry and Fancy are thy
wards, making as thou dost the most holden eyes to overleap time's poor
horizon, following departed treasure with wistful and unresigning love,
as birds follow their ravaged nests, crying as they go. Oh, sombre
chantress! Thou hast filled the world with song, plaintive and piteous
though it be.
"What is it, mother?" I heard Donald whisper; and the answer evidently
came back to him from the dying lips. For he turned to me, his face full
of tragedy: "She's talkin' aboot Robin," he said hoarsely; "but ye dinna
ken. Robin was oor laddie--an' he's oor laddie yet, though we've had nae
word o' him for mony a year. Him an' me pairted in wrath, an' he went
oot intil the dark nicht. I was ower prood tae ca' him back, but his
mither followed him to the moor, cryin' after him--an' she cam' back
alane."
Donald stopped suddenly, for the mother's struggling voice was heard:
"Come hame, Robin, for it's cauld an' dark, an' ye've been ower lang
awa; but there's a place at the ingle for ye yet, my bairn. I've aye
keepit it for ye, an' I keepit the fire burnin' ever sin' ye left us. I
wadna let it oot. An' ilka nicht I pit the lamp i' the window, for I aye
thocht, 'He'll mebbe come the nicht.'"
"She's wanderin'," Donald said to me, awe mingling with his voice.
"She's found the wanderer," I said; and we both moved nearer, each
signalling the other to be still.
Elsie's gaze passed us by, outgoing far into the darkness.
"Na, na, Robin; yir faither'll no' be angry. I ken fine a' ye say is
true, but he's yir faither for a' that. An' he loves ye maist as weel as
me; but oh, my bonnie, there's nane loves ye like yir mither! His
hairt's fair broken for ye, Robin. I'll tell ye something, but ye maunna
tell yir faither. I heard him pray for ye all alane by himsel'. He
prayed to God to bring ye back--he ca'd ye Robin richt to God. An' I
never heard yir faither greet afore or syne. The Buik, tae, it wad open
o' itsel' at the prodigal, an' it was his daein', an' he didna think I
kent; but I kent it fine, an' I thankit the Heavenly Faither mony a
time."
She stopped, exhausted, her soul flickering in her voice. Donald moved,
his great form coming athwart her eager, kindling eyes. She stirred, her
vision evidently hindered, and Donald stepped quickly from before her,
gazing with passionate intentness, his eyes shaded by his hand like one
who peers into a lane of light.
"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will--" I began.
"Hush!" said Donald sternly, "she's wi' him yet. Hark ye!"
Her strength seemed now returning, for she went on--
"Ay, Robin, I'm tellin' ye the truth. Yir faither's thocht o' ye is the
thocht he had when ye were a bit bairn in his airms."
The anguished father flung himself upon his knees beside the bed, his
hand gently stroking his wife's withered cheek.
"Tell him that again, mither; tell him my thocht o' him was aye the same
as yir ain, when I thocht o' him atween God an' me. Tell him me an' you
baith thocht the same. Bid him hame, Elsie. Oh, mither, I've been the
wanderer masel', an' I'm weary."
My heart melted in me at this, for the eternal fatherly was sobbing
through his voice.
The familiar tones seemed to call Elsie back from her delirium, for she
suddenly looked upon us as if we had not been there before.
"Oh, faither, Robin's comin' hame the nicht. Is the lamp kindled in the
window? We've baith been wae these mony years, but the mirk'll be past
an' by when oor laddie's safe hame wi' us again."
A strange sense of the nearness of the supernatural took possession of
me, for Elsie's voice was not the voice of fevered fancy; the fast
ebbing tide of life seemed to flow back again, her strength visibly
increased, as if she must remain till her Robin had been welcomed home.
In spite of reason, I fell to listening eagerly, wondering if this were
indeed the act of God. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with
us that the Rebuilder of Bethany's desolated house should still ply His
ancient industry?
"Raise me up a little, faither, for I maun watch the gate."
Donald lifted his dying wife with caressing easiness.
"That'll dae; ay, we've baith been wae these mony years, but the mirk is
bye.
"'Long hath the night of sorrow reigned,
The dawn shall bring us light.'
The morn is wi' us, Donal', an' Robin's at the gate."
Far past the flickering lamp she gazed, and her eyes' light rose and
fell in unison with approaching steps.
"He's bye the gate," she cried; and joy held death at bay, for the words
chimed like cathedral bells.
Fearsome to behold was the awestruck face which Donald turned to mine,
and full of questioning dread, I doubt not, were the eyes that met his
own. Was this the doing of the Lord, or was it but the handiwork of
death, that wizard oculist, so often lending mystic vision to pilgrims
setting under darkness out to sea?
Leaving death and Elsie to their unequal conflict, we started with one
impulse to the window; but Donald was there before me, his eyes shaded
by his hands, burning through the dark a pathway to the gate.
"God be mercifu'," he muttered, and then turned swiftly towards the
stairs, for a hand was fumbling at the latch. I waited trembling, and I
heard no word; but the aroma of a soul's second spring stole sweet and
unafraid into the chamber of death.
* * * * *
I met them at the door as Donald said, "Yir mither's deein'," and there
broke from the rugged man beside him a low moaning sound, like to many
waters when some opposing thing hath at length been overswept. It was
quickly checked, and the silence of love and anguish took its place.
I drew Donald gently back and closed the door upon them twain, the
waiting mother and the wandering son, for there was never bridal hour
like to this.
"My mither, oh, my mither!" I heard him say; and Elsie spoke no word,
but the long ache was ended and the great wound was well.
'Twas but a moment again when a trembling voice called, "Faither, she's
wantin' ye."
We entered the love-lit room, and Elsie beckoned him swiftly to her
side.
"I maun be gaun sune," she whispered, and then followed some words too
low for my ears to catch.
Donald turned to me: "She wants to hae the sacrament dispensit till us
a'," and his face was full of dubious entreaty, for the kirk session of
St. Cuthbert's was sternly set against private administration.
The session and its rules were in that moment to me but as the dust.
Beyond their poor custody was a holy hour such as this. The little table
was quickly spread, the snow-white bread and the wine pressed by a
mother's priestly hands. I was about to proceed with the holy ordinance
when Elsie stopped me.
"Bide a meenit. Donal', get ye the token, the ane wee Elsie loved. My
hairt tells me she's no' far awa the noo. She'll e'en show forth the
Lord's deith alang wi' us. The Maister o' the feast is here, and why wad
He no' bring oor Elsie wi' Him? Wha kens but I'll gang hame wi' them
baith?"
Her husband, obedient to the seer's voice, passed quickly to an
adjoining room, and in an instant reappeared, bearing the well-worn
token in his hands, the same his dying child had fondly held; and I
heard again the low refrain which grief had taught him years ago:
"Christ an' oor Elsie--an' her mither." This last was new, learned in
sorrow's latest hour.
He handed it to his wife, who took it, turning her wan face to mine.
"There's only ane, but it'll dae us a'--let Robin haud it. Tak' it,
laddie; it's warm frae yir sister's haun'."
The wanderer's reverent hand received it, and holy memories, long
banished, flowed back into the heart that had not been their home since
the golden days of boyhood. Of his mother and his sister were they all,
and they laved that heart till it was almost clean, for they were in
disguise but memories of God, foreshadowing the Greater Incarnation.
"Noo we're ready, an' we're a' here. Raise the psalm, faither, the
sacrament ane," she said faintly--"tak' St. Paul's," and Donald's
quavering voice essayed--
"I'll of salvation take the cup,
On God's name will I call;
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.
* * * * *
Dear in God's sight is His saints' death,
Thy servant, Lord"--
but the faltering voice refused.
I broke the bread and poured the wine, handing the sacred emblems first
to the dying one, so soon to take them new in the kingdom of God. Then
Donald partook, and buried his face in his hands. To Robin next I
proffered the holy symbols, but he drew back, stretching forth his hands
towards the bed.
"I daurna--I've wandered ower far," he said. "I hear the russlin' o' the
husks."
"Dinna fear, Robin," whispered his mother's lips. "We're a' but bairns
comin' back to oor Faither's hoose; God loves ye mair than either yir
faither or me,--I'm near the kingdom, an' I ken."
"My son, my laddie,"--it was his father's broken voice,--"let us tak'
the feast thegither. I'm a puir prodigal masel'--but the door is open
wide, an' we'll baith come hame to God."
"I'll tak' it frae ma mither's hands," said Robin.
I handed the elements to her, ordained from all eternity to minister to
the son she bore; with trembling hands she dispensed them to him, high
priestess unto God, her dying eyes distilling the very love which shed
its fragrance when the all but dying Saviour first brake the holy bread.
When we were through, Elsie's voice was heard saying to herself "Unto
Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood," which
was followed by a long silence.
"Wull ye no' pronounce the benediction?" Donald said at last, for he was
by nature an ecclesiastic.
"Did you not hear it?" I replied.
The silence deepened, the breathing grew heavier, and we two stood
together looking down upon her face. Robin's was by his mother's.
Suddenly her eyes opened wide, fastening themselves upon her son.
"I'll sune win hame," she murmured gladly, "an' I want ye to say yir bit
prayer to me, Robin, afore I gang, the way ye did when ye were a
bairnie. Kneel doon, Robin, an' say it to me, an' we'll baith say it to
God, for I'm weary tae. 'Noo I lay me,' ye ken."
The strong man bowed beside his mother's bed, and the great anthem
began, the sobbing bass of the broken heart mingling with the feeble
dying voice--
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray Thee Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee Lord my soul to take."
Suddenly she pointed with uplifted hand: "Oh, faither, I see oor Elsie's
face--an' the token's in her haun', an' it's a' bricht wi' gowden licht.
She's biddin' us a' hame--me, an' faither, an' Robin----" and she passed
into the homeland bearing the prodigal's name with her up to God.
I gently closed her eyes. Donald stood long beside the bed; then, taking
his son into his arms, he said--
"Yir mither's bye the gate."
XIX
_A MAIDEN'S LOVE_
What self-contradicting things we are! The very joys we crave bring
sorrow when they come; for they crowd out some only lesser joy, which,
rejected, turns to bitterness and takes its long revenge. It is one of
the blessed laws of life that no heart, however hospitable, can
entertain more than one sorrow at one time, how many so ever be waiting
at the door. Each must wait its turn.
But alas! Joy has its corresponding law; every heart's pleasure is an
alternative, and if much we would enjoy, much also we must renounce. Joy
usually comes as twins, and the great perplexity is to discern which the
first-born is, that our homage may not return unto us void.
Of many of our deepest longings may it not be said that their
fulfillment would be our keenest disappointment? For instance, the wife
of our family physician is forever lamenting that no spouse in all New
Jedboro sees as little of her husband as does she, forever longing that
he might be released to the enjoyment of his own fireside. Yet should a
fickle or convalescent public suddenly so release him, our doctor's
wife would be of all women most miserable.
Even as I write, I am disturbed by a lad of twenty who starts to-day on
his long journey to Athabasca and the waiting prairies of our great
Canadian West.
Full of pathetic joy is his youthful face; but his mother is bowed
beside the bed whereon she gave him birth--her cup, she thinks, would be
full to overflowing if her first-born son were suddenly to dispack his
box and take up the old nestling life again. The sun would have turned
back to its undimmed meridian, she weens; and yet she knows full well
that this very longing, were it gratified, would poison her overflowing
cup and tarnish her mother's pride. If she were asked to choose between
these two, womanlike, she would elect to have them both--but God
forbids.
The youth's father says: "Let the lad go forth"--and God is a Father,
though He takes counsel of a mother-heart.
All this reflective vein flows from this poor heart of mine, the truth
whereof that heart hath sorrowfully proved.
For my daughter Margaret holds within it a place of solitary tenderness,
more exclusively her own as the years go by. And I too was forced to the
great alternative, the same which hath wrung uncounted parents' hearts
before I saw the light, the same as will rend thousands more when that
poor light has filtered through darkness into Day.
What father is there who can contemplate without dismay the prospect of
his only daughter surrendered to a
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