St. Cuthbert's Part 8

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 G.o.d!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 a.s.sent.

"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 hards.h.i.+p, 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate entreaty.

"Oh, Donald," I cried at last, forgetting his seventy years and the t.i.tle 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sed 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 la.s.sie that's gone to bide wi' G.o.d.

"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 pa.s.sionately 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. 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 va.s.sal throng. But she knew it not--knew nothing, indeed, but that she was again in the unforgotten house of G.o.d, 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."