Duncan Polite Part 2

The two went out into the sunlight.

"Surely he wouldna' mean----" suggested Andrew Johnstone, afraid to say more.

But Duncan Polite could not answer; in the midst of his happiness, when his hopes were at their height, he had been stricken with a great fear.

He understood too well the significance of his pastor's words, the farewell of Elijah, and, like Elisha, the old man could have cried out from his very soul, "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee!" But he knew that this was a Jordan that must be crossed alone.

The two friends walked up the hill in silence, one filled with a foreboding, the other with a dread certainty of impending trouble.

"If Maister Cameron's ever ta'en awa frae us, Duncan," said the elder gloomily, "mark ma word, there'll be trouble in the kirk. We ha'e a pack o' G.o.dless young folk growin' up that need the blue beech gad, every one o' them, an' if Maister Cameron was ta'en Ah'm no sayin' what they'd do!"

Duncan had turned and was looking down the hill at a rapidly approaching figure. His companion followed the direction of his gaze.

"Man, is yon Peter McNabb?" he inquired in amazement.

The feeling was quite natural. To see an elder of the Presbyterian Church rus.h.i.+ng along the public highway without his coat, on the Sabbath day, was sufficient to raise consternation in the breast of any Glenorian. Duncan's heart contracted with fear. "Is it the minister?"

he asked tremulously, as the blacksmith came up to them, breathless.

Peter's ruddy face was pale beneath the tan. His eyes fell before the question as though he were guilty. "Aye, it's jist that," he said with simple sorrow; "I came for ye both."

The two turned and retraced their steps at his side. Andrew Johnstone was the first to speak. "He's no gone, Peter?" he asked, with more than his usual sternness.

"Aye," said the other in a whisper, "that's jist it, Andra, he's gone."

III

A WAR-MAKER AND A PEACE-MAKER

Duncan Polite's valley was slowly disappearing in the shadows of evening when he stepped from his gate and somewhat hesitatingly turned down into its purple depths. He was experiencing a strange, almost uncanny feeling, for, not only was he going to church alone, but he was actually on his way to wors.h.i.+p with the Methodists! He had a vague fear that he must be doing wrong. But indeed, he was going merely in the hope that he might hear some comforting words from the Methodist minister; and Duncan was sadly in need of comfort.

In the long months since Mr. Cameron's death, his days had been filled with anxiety and fear for his covenant. When the first sharpness of grief at the loss of his old friend had pa.s.sed, the Watchman slowly awakened to the knowledge that he was living among a strange people.

Under Mr. Cameron's wise, loving rule all cla.s.ses in the congregation had been unanimous; the elder folk believed him perfect and the younger respected him too deeply to disagree with him. But when the bond of union was severed, a new party with alarmingly progressive ideas, suddenly came to life. They were fain to introduce many improvements into the church service which the fathers of the sanctuary considered unsound and irreverent. They wanted a choir and an organ like the Methodists; they desired to sing hymns as did their sister congregation over on the Tenth; and, most of all, they considered it imperative that they should stand to sing and sit to pray, as did all respectable people.

Andrew Johnstone, who represented the old school and its traditions, stood at the head of the ancient party as immovable as the church foundations. Some of the elders might counsel yielding, or at least compromising, but not Splinterin' Andra. He regarded all these youthful aspirations as signs of the degeneracy of the times and a decay of spiritual life and, therefore, to be immediately quenched.

So the two parties stood arrayed against each other and the chief cause of their dissension was the choice of a new minister. The more youthful party wanted a young man, or at least one who was "lively,"

while old Glenoro held to its ideal--a man as much as possible like Hector Cameron, or, if it were not looking for too much on this earth, a second John McAlpine. But the young people of the congregation had never heard Mr. McAlpine preach, and, like the Egyptians, who did not know Joseph, they had not the proper respect for that great leader, and they also considered Gaelic sermons, two-hour discourses and half-hour prayers as belonging to a past generation.

All these trials, youthful frivolity, the lack of a Gaelic service and old Andrew Johnstone's storms, Duncan Polite had borne patiently; but to-day's sermon had been almost too much for even his optimism, for that morning a smart probationer had stood up in Mr. Cameron's sacred pulpit and delivered a twenty-minute address on the Beauties of Nature!

Even the young people had been shocked, and Andrew Johnstone had, for once, voiced the sentiments of the whole congregation as he gave his opinion of the young man to Duncan Polite on their homeward walk.

"It's a guid thing Maister Cameron's gone till his rest," he remarked sombrely. "If he'd a lived to see his pulpit filled by a bit buddie that couldna' hang on till his taxt for half an' 'oor, he'd never a held up his heid again!"

And so Duncan had been driven to the extremity of seeking comfort in the Methodist Church and was on his way thither, in some doubt as to the wisdom of such a strange proceeding, and in much fear that Andrew would disapprove.

The Methodist Church was a substantial brick building, set picturesquely on the slope of the northern hill. Duncan went hesitatingly in and took a seat near the door. He found it quite a roomy place and well filled. There was much more ornamentation here than in his own place of wors.h.i.+p; the walls were papered, the pulpit platform was covered with a gay carpet, two s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling, the windows were frosted gla.s.s with a row of lurid blue and red panes around each, and behind the minister was the centre of attraction and cynosure of all eyes, the choir and the organ.

Duncan felt a return of his misgivings when he recognised many members of his own church in that inst.i.tution; for, such was the chaos of these new times that the Methodist services were attended regularly by nearly all the young Presbyterians. And, indeed, matters had come to such a pitch that the choir was conducted by no less a person than young Andrew Johnstone himself, much to the wrath and shame of his pious father.

That choir was at once the delight and torment of its members. The hopes and fears, the triumphs and despairs that surged within the little railing, would have been sufficient to swamp the congregation, could they have broken loose. But the enjoyment outweighed the pain; there was choir practise once a week and sometimes they were invited to furnish the music at a neighbouring tea-meeting and both these were unmixed joys. Then, too, they were permitted to sing quite alone at the regular church services, while the collection was being taken up; and sometimes they even ventured to sing an anthem, though the evening they sang one with a tenor solo by Sylva.n.u.s Todd, they were considered to have gone a little too far, by even the most liberal minded, and the offence was not repeated until more enlightened times.

Mr. Ansdell, the Methodist minister, was a benign old gentleman with an angelic face and a heart to match. He noted the mingling of the different religious sects in Glenoro with humble joy, and regarded the fact that a Presbyterian elder's son should lead the singing in the Methodist church as a mark of the broad and kindly spirit of the age and one of the potent signs of the millennium.

He was just the sort of man to appeal to Duncan Polite's heart. His sermon was like himself, gentle, loving and overflowing with goodwill to all men. Duncan sat and drank it in with deepest joy; surely his covenant was in no great danger with such a man as Mr. Ansdell in his glen!

Thereafter, in spite of old Andrew's opposition, he could not resist the pleasure of an occasional Sabbath evening service. He did not always have the privilege of listening to his new friend, however. Mr.

Ansdell had another field and preached only on alternate Sabbaths in his Glenoro pulpit. On the occasions of his absence the service was generally taken by a student or a lay preacher from some place in the vicinity. Sometimes the preacher was anything but a man of parts, and was too often a source of merriment to the frivolous row of young men in the back seats. The big college student with the long, fair hair, who raved and foamed and battered all the fringe off the pulpit cus.h.i.+on in a gallant attempt to prove that the Bible is true, a fact which, until then, no Glenorian would have dreamed of calling in question; the poor, halting farmer who tacked a nervous syllable to occasional words, making his text read: "All-um we like sheep-um have gone astray-um;"

the giant from the Irish Flats who roared out a long prayer in a manner that terrified his hearers and set all the babies crying and then ended his bellowings with "Lord, hear our feeble breathings," all these were a joy to the back row and the cause of much irreverent giggling in the choir.

But whether the sermon was delivered by minister, layman or divinity student, Duncan Polite always found something spiritually uplifting in the service; and, indeed, so did many another, for if the preacher sometimes lacked in oratory, he made up for it in piety, and if he failed to s.h.i.+ne in the pulpit, his life was nearly always a sermon strong and convincing.

Even on the rare occasions when old Silas Todd led the service, the time was not misspent, in the opinion of the Watchman. Silas Todd was one of the pillars of the church and when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. He was a pious little man, bent and thin, with a marked c.o.c.kney accent. He had mild pale blue eyes and a simple, almost seraphic smile which scarcely ever left his countenance and which was the index to his character.

His wife was small and pious like himself, and had the same accent and the same benevolent expression. They always sat close together on the front seat like a pair of shy children, he in his rough, loose homespun, she in her grey wincey, a neatly folded Paisley shawl and a brown bonnet with a pink feather--this last ornament being the pride of Silas' heart and the one bit of finery his wife permitted herself.

They shared one hymn book and Bible, no matter how many there might be scattered around them, and both sang in a high ecstatic key, a measure behind the choir. They swayed to and fro, quite carried away by the music, and as Silas stood with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, and his wife kept her eyes modestly upon her book, they very often collided, to the great detriment of the singing and the disturbing of the pink feather. But the only sign their frequent collisions called forth was a smile of perfect accord and redoubled energy in the singing and swaying.

Silas was modest and never shouldered the task of leading the service until all hope of the preacher's appearing had been given up. On such occasions the congregation would a.s.semble and sit quietly expectant; even the back row, who waited at the church shed until they were in sufficient numbers to brave an entry into the church, having flopped noisily into their places. The choir would whisper and the organist nervously turn over the leaves of the hymn book. Then the fathers of the church would confer, look through the window or tip-toe to the door, confer again, and once more gaze anxiously in the direction from which the preacher was expected to appear.

At this point there would arise from the Todd pew such a fluttering and twittering as can be heard in the nest when the mother-bird is encouraging her little ones to fly. Mrs. Todd, acting as monitor, would give Silas many pushes and nudges which he modestly resisted, until her efforts were augmented by those of his brother officials, when, yielding at last to their importunities, he would slowly rise and go shyly and lingeringly up to the pulpit desk. And the congregation would settle back with a resigned air to listen to the simple, good old fellow give a long and tedious recital of his spiritual experiences, punctuated by many sighs and tearful "Amens" from beneath the sympathetic Paisley shawl.

But in spite of much comfort afforded by the Methodists, Duncan Polite's heart was often heavy with foreboding. He could not help seeing that Andrew Johnstone must soon come to open war with the new party in the church. In his well-meant and vigorous efforts to make everyone tread the old paths the ruling elder produced a great amount of friction; for, though he feared G.o.d, he did not regard man, and woe betide the reckless youth who made himself too conspicuous in the reform movement.

The Sabbath school was his stronghold, for there he was superintendent and monarch absolute, and there he seized every opportunity to publicly rebuke anyone who dared transgress his rigid laws.

But the rising generation was not to be wholly deterred from rising by even the terrors of Splinterin' Andra; and, as Duncan Polite feared, the inevitable conflict ensued.

The immediate cause of the rupture was a church organ, merely a myth as yet, but real enough to arouse the apostle of ancient customs to his best fighting mood. The very mention of an instrument made by man to be used in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, was to the ruling elder the extreme of sacrilege. But in spite of his disapproval, the young people went so far as to hold a meeting at which to discuss the possibility of their purchasing the coveted instrument.

Miss Cotton, the chief dress and mischiefmaker in the village, although no longer absolutely young, was the leader of the rising generation, and she counselled just going ahead without Splinterin' Andra's advice.

There were not many, however, who were possessed of either her courage or her indiscretion. They all agreed, though, that Andrew Johnstone was the one insurmountable barrier to their hopes. Most of the other elders had been approached in a tentative way. Peter McNabb was a broad-minded man with such a pa.s.sion for music that, though he looked askance at any innovation, yet he would have welcomed anything that would help the singing. Old Donald Fraser considered an organ an unmixed evil and remarked, when asked for his opinion on the subject, that it would be "clean defyin' o' the Almighty" to introduce one into the church. But he had a very ambitious wife and daughter, and as the latter had been taking music lessons and cheris.h.i.+ng rosy dreams of one day playing in church, the organ party felt that Mr. Fraser would not be quite immovable. Old John Hamilton, of course, scarcely counted.

He said "aye, aye," in a dazed way when his daughters clamoured for his consent, adding that "he'd see what Andra said." Peter Farquhar, they knew, might be difficult, as he belonged to the Oa and was, therefore, very old-fas.h.i.+oned; but they all agreed that if Andrew Johnstone could be moved, all the others would follow; so some one must ask his permission.

Miss Cotton suggested that Wee Andra, the son of old Andra, would be the proper person to carry their request to the elder. "Wee Andra" the young man had been called in his babyhood, to distinguish him from his father, and he still bore the anomalous t.i.tle though he stood six-feet-four in his moccasins and was disproportionately broad. But in spite of these physical securities, the young giant flatly refused the doubtful honour of approaching his father on the sore subject; so, after much discussion, the delicate task devolved upon Mr. Watson, the schoolmaster. The master had "tack" and education, Miss Cotton explained, and was just the man for the position. So, fortified by this flattery, the young man went up over the hills one morning on his dangerous quest.

The schoolmaster was a young man who was born for agitation; he loved to throw himself heart and soul into some new enterprise, and upon this occasion he had the satisfaction at least of getting up plenty of excitement. What transpired in that fatal interview between him and the ruling elder could never be accurately learned from the former.

When questioned upon the subject, he confined his remarks to dark hints regarding antediluvian pig-headedness and backwoods ignorance, but Wee Andra, who in his heart was rather proud of his sire's fighting qualities, spread the account of the schoolmaster's defeat over the whole neighbourhood, with the result that for a season the agitators left their common enemy to turn upon and rend each other.

On the evening after the encounter, Duncan Polite sat expectantly on his door-step. He knew that Andrew would be sure to come down to tell him of the affair, and he was waiting in some trepidation, hoping that his fiery old friend had not said something which would wreck forever the peace of Glenoro church.

Duncan scarcely felt equal to shouldering any more burdens that day, for only the morning before Donald had left for college. The old man had sent him away with high hopes for his future; but he missed his boy more than he could tell. For Donald had been as his own son ever since the Neil boys had been left fatherless. "The Neil boys" they were always called, for their father, as well as their mother, had been a McDonald and, of necessity, his sons used his first name only. Neil McDonald had died when Archie was an infant, and had left Donald at the head of the family, a circ.u.mstance which might have proved disastrous to both Donald and the family had it not been for Duncan Polite. For in his boyhood Donald had bade fair to inherit his father's fame, and in the good old fighting days when men used their axes in argument, Neil More was the fiercest warrior between the two lakes. But as manhood approached, discretion had tempered young Donald's valour; he had grown up under the gentle but potent influence of his uncle and had developed a character of which Duncan Polite was justly proud.

But now Donald was gone; and Duncan was sitting thinking sadly of his loss and of this coming trouble, when a st.u.r.dy, square figure came down the darkening road.

"Come away in, Andra," said Duncan Polite rising, while Collie bowed his respectful welcome, "come away in, for you will be finding it cool on the step, whatever."

But Andrew preferred to sit out of doors.

Duncan divined at once from his manner that he was in a very bad frame of mind, and so attempted to lead the conversation into a safe channel.

"I hear we will be having a fine young man next Sabbath," he commenced hopefully, "Mr. Murray. I would be hearing Mr. Cameron speak of him often."