Malcolm Part 11

"Feelin's!" exclaimed Miss Horn, in a tone of indignant repudiation; "I'm gauin' to du what's richt. I s' gang, and gien ye dinna like my company, Mr Cairns, ye can gang hame, an' I s' gang withoot ye.

Gien she sud happen to be luikin doon, she sanna see me wantin'

at the last o' her. But I s' mak' no wark aboot it. I s' no putt mysel' ower forret."

And. ere the minister could utter another syllable, she had left her place to go to the rear. The same instant the procession began to move, corpse marshalled, towards the grave; and stepping aside, she stood erect, sternly eyeing the irregular ranks of two and three and four as they pa.s.sed her, intending to bring up the rear alone. But already there was one in that solitary position: with bowed head, Alexander Graham walked last and single. The moment he caught sight of Miss Horn, he perceived her design, and, lifting his hat, offered his arm. She took it almost eagerly, and together they followed in silence, through the gusty wind and monotonous drizzle.

The school house was close to the churchyard. An instant hush fell upon the scholars when the hea.r.s.e darkened the windows, lasting while the horrible thing slowly turned to enter the iron gates,-- a deep hush, as if a wave of the eternal silence which rounds all our noises had broken across its barriers. The mad laird, who had been present all the morning, trembled from head to foot; yet rose and went to the door with a look of strange, subdued eagerness. When Miss Horn and Mr Graham had pa.s.sed into the churchyard, he followed.

With the bending of uncovered heads, in a final gaze of leave taking, over the coffin at rest in the bottom of the grave, all that belonged to the ceremony of burial was fulfilled; but the two facts that no one left the churchyard, although the wind blew and the rain fell, until the mound of sheltering earth was heaped high over the dead, and that the hands of many friends a.s.sisted with spade and shovel, did much to compensate for the lack of a service.

As soon as this labour was ended, Mr Graham again offered his arm to Miss Horn, who had stood in perfect calmness watching the whole with her eagle's eyes. But although she accepted his offer, instead of moving towards the gate, she kept her position in the att.i.tude of a hostess who will follow her friends. They were the last to go from the churchyard. When they reached the schoolhouse she would have had Mr Graham leave her, but he insisted on seeing her home.

Contrary to her habit she yielded, and they slowly followed the retiring company.

"Safe at last!" half sighed Miss Horn, as they entered the town-- her sole remark on the way.

Rounding a corner, they came upon Mrs Catanach standing at a neighbour's door, gazing out upon nothing, as was her wont at times, but talking to some one in the house behind her. Miss Horn turned her head aside as she pa.s.sed. A look of low, malicious, half triumphant cunning lightened across the puffy face of the howdy. She c.o.c.ked one bushy eyebrow, setting one eye wide open, drew down the other eyebrow, nearly closing the eye under it, and stood looking after them until they were out of sight. Then turning her head over her shoulder, she burst into a laugh, softly husky with the general flabbiness of her corporeal conditions.

"What ails ye, Mistress Catanach?" cried a voice from within.

"Sic a couple 's yon twasum wad mak!" she replied, again bursting into gelatinous laughter.

"Wha, than? I canna lea' my milk parritch to come an' luik."

"Ow! jist Meg Horn, the auld kail runt, an' Sanny Graham, the stickit minister. I wad like weel to be at the beddin' o' them.

Eh! the twa heids o' them upon ae bowster!"

And chuckling a low chuckle, Mrs Catanach moved for her own door.

As soon as the churchyard was clear of the funeral train, the mad laird peeped from behind a tall stone, gazed cautiously around him, and then with slow steps came and stood over the new made grave, where the s.e.xton was now laying the turf, "to mak a' snod (trim) for the Sawbath."

"Whaur is she gane till?" he murmured to himself--He could generally speak better when merely uttering his thoughts without attempt at communication.--"I dinna ken whaur I cam frae, an' I dinna ken whaur she's gane till; but whan I gang mysel', maybe I'll ken baith.

--I dinna ken, I dinna ken, I dinna ken whaur I cam frae."

Thus muttering, so lost in the thoughts that originated them that he spoke the words mechanically, he left the churchyard and returned to the school, where, under the superintendence of Malcolm, everything had been going on in the usual Sat.u.r.day fas.h.i.+on--the work of the day which closed the week's labours, being to repeat a certain number of questions of the Shorter Catechism (which term, alas! included the answers), and next to b.u.t.tress them with a number of suffering caryatids, as it were--texts of Scripture, I mean, first petrified and then dragged into the service. Before Mr Graham returned, every one had done his part except Sheltie, who, excellent at asking questions for himself, had a very poor memory for the answers to those of other people, and was in consequence often a keepie in. He did not generally heed it much, however, for the master was not angry with him on such occasions, and they gave him an opportunity of asking in his turn a mult.i.tude of questions of his own.

When he entered, he found Malcolm reading The Tempest and Sheltie sitting in the middle of the waste schoolroom, with his elbows on the desk before him, and his head and the Shorter Catechism between them; while in the farthest corner sat Mr Stewart, with his eyes fixed on the ground, murmuring his answerless questions to himself.

"Come up, Sheltie," said Mr Graham, anxious to let the boy go.

"Which of the questions did you break down in today?"

"Please, sir, I cudna rest i' my grave till the resurrection,"

answered Sheltie, with but a dim sense of the humour involved in the reply.

"'What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?'" said Mr Graham, putting the question with a smile.

"'The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pa.s.s into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection,'"

replied Sheltie, now with perfect accuracy; whereupon the master, fearing the outbreak of a torrent of counter questions, made haste to dismiss him.

"That'll do, Sheltie," he said. "Run home to your dinner."

Sheltie shot from the room like a sh.e.l.l from a mortar.

He had barely vanished when Mr Stewart rose and came slowly from his corner, his legs appearing to tremble under the weight of his hump, which moved fitfully up and down in his futile attempts to utter the word resurrection. As he advanced, he kept heaving one shoulder forward, as if he would fain bring his huge burden to the front, and hold it out in mute appeal to his instructor; but before reaching him he suddenly stopped, lay down on the floor on his back, and commenced rolling from side to side, with moans and complaints. Mr Graham interpreted the action into the question-- How was such a body as his to rest in its grave till the resurrection --perched thus on its own back in the coffin? All the answer he could think of was to lay hold of his hand, lift him, and point upwards. The poor fellow shook his head, glanced over his shoulder at his hump, and murmured "Heavy, heavy!" seeming to imply that it would be hard for him to rise and ascend at the last day.

He had doubtless a dim notion that all his trouble had to do with his hump.

CHAPTER XI: THE OLD CHURCH

The next day, the day of the Resurrection, rose glorious from its sepulchre of sea fog and drizzle. It had poured all night long, but at sunrise the clouds had broken and scattered, and the air was the purer for the cleansing rain, while the earth shone with that peculiar l.u.s.tre which follows the weeping which has endured its appointed night. The larks were at it again, singing as if their hearts would break for joy as they hovered in brooding exultation over the song of the future; for their nests beneath h.o.a.rded a wealth of larks for summers to come. Especially about the old church-- half buried in the ancient trees of Lossie House, the birds that day were jubilant; their throats seemed too narrow to let out the joyful air that filled all their hollow bones and quills: they sang as if they must sing, or choke with too much gladness. Beyond the short spire and its s.h.i.+ning c.o.c.k, rose the b.a.l.l.s and stars and arrowy vanes of the House, glittering in gold and suns.h.i.+ne.

The inward hush of the Resurrection, broken only by the prophetic birds, the poets of the groaning and travailing creation, held time and s.p.a.ce as in a trance; and the centre from which radiated both the hush and the carolling expectation seemed to Alexander Graham to be the churchyard in which he was now walking in the cool of the morning. It was more carefully kept than most Scottish churchyards, and yet was not too trim. Nature had a word in the affair-- was allowed her part of mourning, in long gra.s.s and moss and the crumbling away of stone. The wholesomeness of decay, which both in nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was not unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous attempt to hide death in the garments of life. The master walked about gently, now stopping to read some well known inscription and ponder for a moment over the words; and now wandering across the stoneless mounds, content to be forgotten by all but those who loved the departed. At length he seated himself on a slab by the side of the mound that rose but yesterday: it was sculptured with symbols of decay-- needless surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every newly opened grave, and as surely ill befitting the precincts of a church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death!

"What are these stones," he said to himself, "but monuments to oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to send a poor forsaken name, like the t.i.tle page of a lost book, down the careless stream of time! Let me serve my generation, and let G.o.d remember me!"

The morning wore on; the sun rose higher and higher. He drew from his pocket the Nosce Teipsum. of Sir John Davies, and was still reading, in quiet enjoyment of the fine logic of the lawyer poet, when he heard the church key, in the trembling hand of Jonathan Auld, the s.e.xton, jar feebly battling with the reluctant lock. Soon the people began to gather, mostly in groups and couples. At length came solitary Miss Horn, whom the neighbours, from respect to her sorrow, had left to walk alone. But Mr Graham went to meet her, and accompanied her into the church.

It was a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monastery, and the burial place of generations of n.o.ble blood; the dust of royalty even lay under its floor. A knight of stone reclined cross legged in a niche with an arched Norman canopy in one of the walls, the rest of which was nearly encased in large tablets of white marble, for at his foot lay the ashes of barons and earls whose t.i.tle was extinct, and whose lands had been inherited by the family of Lossie.

Inside as well as outside of the church the ground had risen with the dust of generations, so that the walls were low; and heavy galleries having been erected in parts, the place was filled with shadowy recesses and haunted with glooms. From a window in the square pew where he sat, so small and low that he had to bend his head to look out of it, the schoolmaster could see a rivulet of suns.h.i.+ne, streaming through between two upright gravestones, and glorifying the long gra.s.s of a neglected mound that lay close to the wall under the wintry drip from the eaves: when he raised his head, the church looked very dark. The best way there to preach the Resurrection, he thought, would be to contrast the sepulchral gloom of the church, its dreary psalms and drearier sermons, with the sunlight on the graves, the lark filled sky, and the wind blowing where it listed. But although the minister was a young man of the commonest order, educated to the church that he might eat bread, hence a mere willing slave to the beck of his lord and master, the patron, and but a parrot in the pulpit, the schoolmaster not only endeavoured to pour his feelings and desires into the mould of his prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that revealed no distaste for the weak and unsavoury broth ladled out him to nourish his soul withal. When however the service--though whose purposes the affair could be supposed to serve except those of Mr Cairns himself, would have been a curious question--was over, he did breathe a sigh of relief; and when he stepped out into the sun and wind which had been s.h.i.+ning and blowing all the time of the dreary ceremony, he wondered whether the larks might not have had the best of it in the G.o.d praising that had been going on for two slow paced hours. Yet, having been so long used to the sort of thing, he did not mind it half so much as his friend Malcolm, who found the Sunday observances an unspeakable weariness to both flesh and spirit.

On the present occasion, however, Malcolm did not find the said observances dreary, for he observed nothing but the vision which radiated from the dusk of the small gallery forming Lossie pew, directly opposite the Norman canopy and stone crusader. Unconventional, careless girl as Lady Florimel had hitherto shown herself to him, he saw her sit that morning like the proudest of her race, alone, and, to all appearance, unaware of a single other person's being in the church besides herself. She manifested no interest in what was going on, nor indeed felt any--how could she? never parted her lips to sing; sat during the prayer; and throughout the sermon seemed to Malcolm not once to move her eyes from the carved crusader. When all was over, she still sat motionless--sat until the last old woman had hobbled out. Then she rose, walked slowly from the gloom of the church, flashed into the glow of the churchyard, gleamed across it to a private door in the wall, which a servant held for her, and vanished. If a moment after, the notes of a merry song invaded the ears of those who yet lingered, who could dare suspect that proudly sedate damsel thus suddenly breaking the ice of her public behaviour?

For a mere school girl she had certainly done the lady's part well.

What she wore I do not exactly know; nor would it perhaps be well to describe what might seem grotesque to such prejudiced readers as have no judgment beyond the fas.h.i.+ons of the day. But I will not let pa.s.s the opportunity of reminding them how sadly old fas.h.i.+oned we of the present hour also look in the eyes of those equally infallible judges who have been in dread procession towards us ever since we began to be--our posterity--judges who perhaps will doubt with a smile whether we even knew what love was, or ever had a dream of the grandeur they are on the point of grasping. But at least bethink yourselves, dear posterity: we have not ceased because you have begun.

Out of the church the blind Duncan strode with long, confident strides. He had no staff to aid him, for he never carried one when in his best clothes; but he leaned proudly on Malcolm's arm, if one who walked so erect could be said to lean. He had adorned his bonnet the autumn before with a sprig of the large purple heather, but every bell had fallen from it, leaving only the naked spray, pitiful a.n.a.logue of the whole withered exterior of which it formed part. His sporran, however, hid the stained front of his kilt, and his Sunday coat had been new within ten years--the gift of certain ladies of Portlossie, some of whom, to whose lowland eyes the kilt was obnoxious, would have added a pair of trowsers, had not Miss Horn stoutly opposed them, confident that Duncan would regard the present as an insult. And she was right; for rather than wear anything instead of the philibeg, Duncan would have plaited himself one with his own blind fingers out of an old sack. Indeed, although the trews were never at any time unknown in the Highlands, Duncan had always regarded them as effeminate, and especially in his lowland exile would have looked upon the wearing of them as a disgrace to his highland birth.

"Tat wa.s.s a fery coot sairmon today, Malcolm," he said, as they stepped from the churchyard upon the road.

Malcolm, knowing well whither conversation on the subject would lead, made no reply. His grandfather, finding him silent, iterated his remark, with the addition--"Put how could it pe a paad one, you'll pe thinking, my poy, when he'd pe hafing such a text to keep him straight."

Malcolm continued silent, for a good many people were within hearing, whom he did not wish to see amused with the remarks certain to follow any he could make. But Mr Graham, who happened to be walking near the old man on the other side, out of pure politeness made a partial response.

"Yes, Mr MacPhail," he said, "it was a grand text."

"Yes, and it wa.s.s'll pe a cran' sairmon," persisted Duncan.

"'Fenchence is mine--I will repay.' Ta Lord loves fenchence.

It's a fine thing, fenchence. To make ta wicked know tat tey'll pe peing put men! Yes; ta Lord will slay ta wicked. Ta Lord will gif ta honest man fenchence upon his enemies. It wa.s.s a cran' sairmon!"

"Don't you think vengeance a very dreadful thing, Mr MacPhail?"

said the schoolmaster.

"Yes, for ta von tat'll pe in ta wrong--I wish ta fenchence was mine!" he added with a loud sigh.

"But the Lord doesn't think any of us fit to be trusted with it, and so keeps it to himself, you see."

"Yes, and tat'll pe pecause it 'll pe too coot to be gifing to another. And some people would be waik of heart, and be letting teir enemies co."