St. Cuthbert's Part 26

"His ordination vows?" I exclaimed, "what do you suppose he means?

Surely he is not trifling with all that unhappy occurrence?"

"I don't think so. There was no trifling tone about his letter. I asked Margaret about that very thing, but she wouldn't tell me, only she said there was no elder in St. Cuthbert's more ordained to G.o.d's service than Angus is."

"Did she say anything about their love affairs?" said I, after a man's poor bungling fas.h.i.+on.

"Not a word--but she wouldn't let me see the letter," this with a little womanly sigh: for women, like children, have griefs that appear trifling to grown men, but are very real to them.

After a pause my wife ventured: "Don't you think that perhaps we are just a little unrelenting about Margaret and Angus?"

"What?" I said.

"Oh, I don't mean that she should marry him, of course, but it does seem hard, father--and it really wasn't his fault--and perhaps we will regret it some day."

"But, my dear, you know it is impossible--think of the humiliation of it, the shame of it, I might say."

"Yes, I know," she answered, "but I do admire Angus more and more. He seems to be trying to staunch his sorrow, only he does it by love and service. Everybody is talking about how useful and unselfish he is, in the church, and among the poor--and everywhere."

"I know it," admitted I, "I know it, and there is no reason why we should not always be friends--but the other is an entirely different matter. It cannot be."

"Well," went on my wife, "I do not think I want to stay here; I don't suppose the people understand everything, but I feel sure many of them think we are dealing harshly with Margaret. And yet they would nearly all do the same. What kind of a manse have they in Charleston?" she concluded eagerly--for a woman's gift of transition is marvellous.

Whereupon I told her all about my Southern experiences and impressions.

There was no tumult in St. Cuthbert's. A man who knows nothing of the under-currents in the heart's great ocean would have said that my people were serenely indifferent as to whether I should stay in New Jedboro or go to Charleston. There was no open attempt to influence the outcome, for they believed in the sovereignty of G.o.d and would not interfere--at least not till that very sovereignty so constrained them. Of course, they held prayer to be a legitimate interference. This is a great mystery, but it is cherished by the soul as persistently as it is challenged by the reason. Mysterious though this union must ever be, the Scottish spirit takes full advantage of it, and enjoys its fruit, let the root be hidden as it may.

"Ye'll be givin' us yir decision some o' these days," was about as far as the most emotional would go, some even adding: "Charleston's a graun city, nae doot, an' I'm hopin' ye'll like it fine if you leave us,"

which last proved to me that such an one secretly prayed for my remaining. The true Scotchman is like the Hebrew language--to be understood, he must be read backwards.

"It's a graun chance ye're gettin', to be called to sic a kirk as that,"

said Wattie Gardner one day. "I'm fearin' ye'll rue it if ye bide wi' us here."

This was far from the language of ardent wooing; yet I noticed that this same Wattie sought to reform his ways, that they might tend to the increase of my comfort. He had been an incorrigible sleeper in the kirk, surrendering to sweet repose with the announcement of the text, and emerging therefrom only to join the closing paraphrase with unembarra.s.sed unction. For no man was more ready with a verdict on the sermon than was Wattie, as he walked down the aisle; he never failed to demand the "heads and particulars" from his family at the dinner table, resenting all imputation of somnolence for himself.

His defense was plausible, since he never slept exposed; but always with his head bowed upon the book-board, esteemed by the uncharitable as the att.i.tude of slumber, but explained by Wattie as the posture of undistracted thought and pious meditation.

Shortly after my call to Charleston, however, Wattie abandoned this pious and reflective posture, sitting bolt upright, beating back his tendency to thoughtful retirement with the aid of cloves and peppermints. I knew the meaning of this reform, for I knew Wattie's love for me, clandestine though it was; he and I had watched death together once--and after the wave had overswept us, the ground beneath our feet was firm as rock forever.

By and by St. Cuthbert's began to move. It was known that I purposed announcing my decision on the approaching Sabbath day, and I was informed that one or two deputations wished to wait upon me at the manse. The first was from the women of the church, who had had a meeting of their own.

To my amazement the spokeswoman was Mrs. Goodall. Now it must be told that this same Mrs. Goodall, in all sincerity of conscience, had violently withstood my advent to the pastorate of St. Cuthbert's years before. The ground of her opposition was that I plied the festive pipe.

Never was there n.o.bler Christian womanhood than hers, never a more devoted life, never a more loving heart. But no man's character could be fragrant, so she thought, if it ripened amid the rich aroma of tobacco; and good old Virginia leaf was to her the poison-ivy of mankind. That life was indeed beclouded which found shelter in the genial clouds of the aforesaid leaf. But with all this heroic hostility to our little weaknesses, there dwelt a sweet strain of innocence in which we had come to glory.

"Ye needn't tell me," said the good Mrs. Goodall once to a sympathetic circle, "that they dinna play poker at the taivern--an' in the daytime too--for I pa.s.sed by this verra day, an' they were pokin' away, wi'

their coats off, wi' lang sticks in their hands, pokin' at the wee white b.a.l.l.s," and her listeners needed no other proof.

The dear old saint made her plea for those she represented, and it greatly pleased me, for I loved her well; and I remembered the scores and hundreds who had felt the power of her G.o.dly life. Besides, it confirmed me in this a.s.surance, that, after all is said and done, if a man is honestly trying to do his Master's work, even those most sternly set against the pipe will care but little whether or not he seeks the comfort it undoubtedly affords. Which very thing had been proved by my great predecessor, Dr. Grant, half a century agone.

The second, and larger, deputation was composed of ten or more, appointed to represent the kirk session and the Board. Of this latter body, the princ.i.p.al spokesman was its chairman, William Collin, an excerpt from Selkirks.h.i.+re and one of my chiefest friends. He was long, very long, almost six feet three, with copious hair that never sank to rest, and habitually adorned with a cravat that had caught the same aspiring spirit. This was a rider perpetually attached.

One suit of clothes after another, as the years pa.s.sed by, bore witness to the loyalty of his heart; for he would not abandon the pre-historic tailor who was a sort of heirloom in the Collin family. In consequence, the rise and fall of William's coat, in its caudal parts, as he walked down the aisle with the plate on the Sabbath day, had become part of St.

Cuthbert's ritual--and we all thought it beautiful. He was one of the two, referred to in the opening of our story, who had been sent to spy out the land, and to report upon the propriety of my conjugal enterprise. The fluent panegyric in which his report was made is already recorded and need not be here repeated.

William had a talent for friends.h.i.+p beyond that of any man I ever knew, and this talent flowered into genius only after the clock struck midnight. Never yet was there friend who would stay with you to the last like William Collin, his shortcomings few, his long-stayings many and delicious.

For never yet was friend so welcome, never speech more sane and stimulating; never farewell so sweetly innocent when the clock struck two. May the G.o.d of friends.h.i.+p bless thee, William Collin, for all that thy friends.h.i.+p hath been to me! And if these lines outlive thee, let them bear witness to that joy which is not denied to the humblest man, who hath but a fireplace and a friend and a pipe--and four feet on the fender, while the storm howls without. For, with alternate zeal, we cast the blocks upon the blaze--and its flame never faltered till thou wert gone.

William, as chairman, was the first to speak. He presented St.

Cuthbert's case with dignity and force, beginning with the tidings that the Board wished me henceforth to take two months' holidays instead of one. This started in my mind a swift reflection upon the native perversity of the Scotch. To prove that they cannot do without you, they banish you altogether for an extra month, but William Collin gave the thing a more graceful turn:

"We love you weel eneuch to do without you--but no' for lang," he said.

Then he concluded, as was his inviolate custom, with a reference to Burns, in whom he had sat down and risen up for forty years:

"I canna better close what I hae to say," he a.s.sured me, "than by the use o' the plowboy's words, slightly changed for the occasion:

"'Better lo'ed ye canna be Will ye no' abide at hame?'"

With this he reached behind him (this too, a time-honoured custom), seized the aforesaid caudal parts of his coat, removed them from the path of descending danger, and lowered his stalwart form with easy dignity, his kindly eyes aglow with friends.h.i.+p's light.

David Carrick was the next to speak. Cautious and severe, his chief aim was to express the hope that I was sincere in my indecision.

"We had a sair shock wi' a former minister long years ago," he said, "he had a call, like yirsel', but he aye kept puttin' us off, tellin' us he was aye seekin' licht frae above; but Sandy Rutherford saw an or'nary licht in the manse ae nicht after twal o'clock. He peekit in the window, an' he saw the minister wi' his coat off, packin' up the things. The twa lichts kind o' muddled him, ye ken."

His colleagues may have thought David unnecessarily severe. In any case several of them began signalling to Geordie Bickell to take the floor.

Geordie responded with much modesty and misgiving, for he was the saintliest man amongst us; and his own estimate of himself was in direct antagonism to our own.

"We willna urge ye, sir," he said, with a winsome smile, "but I'm sure the maist of us hae been pleadin' hard afore a higher court than this.

A' I want to tell ye is this--there hasna been wound or bruise upon yir relation to yir people. An' there's but ae hairt amongst us, an' we're giein' ye anither call this day--an' we're hopin' it's the will o' G.o.d."

The interview was almost closed, when a voice was heard from the back of the room, a very eager voice, and charged with the import of its message:

"It's mebbe no' worth mentionin'," said Archie Blackwood, a fiery Scot whose father had fought at Balaclava, "but it's gey important for a'

that. Gin ye should gang to Charleston ye'll hae to sing sma' on their Fourth o' July, for that's their screechin' time, they tell me; an' ye wudna hae a psalm frae year's end to year's end to wet yir burnin'

lips--an' ye wadna ken when it was the Twenty-fourth o' May. They tell me they haena kept the Twenty-fourth o' May in Ameriky since 1776."

Archie knew his duty better than his dates.

I a.s.sured him of the importance of his warnings, and acknowledged the various deprivations he had foretold.

"Juist ae word afore we pairt," suddenly interjected a humble little elder who had never been known to speak before. "It's in my conscience, an' I want to pit it oot. We a' ken fine we haena been ower regular at the prayer meetin'; but we'll try to dae better in the time to come.

It's death-bed repentance, I ken, but it's better than nane."

One by one the delegates shook hands with me and withdrew, after I had promised them as early a p.r.o.nouncement as my still unsettled mind could hope to give. After they had gone, I sat long by myself, pondering all that had been said, looking for light indeed, but striving to quench all other beams than those whose radiance was from above.

While thus employed, a feeble footfall was heard upon the steps, and a gentle knocking called me to the door. It was no other than little Issie's grandfather who stood before me.