Duncan Polite Part 4

The door slammed and the sewing machine buzzed wrathfully, and c.o.o.nie sent Bella scrambling down the hill, his drooping shoulders heaving with convulsive laughter. To put 'Liza Cotton into a rage, while Sim Basketful, in a similar condition, was popping in and out of his store door like a jack-in-the-box, was worth the whole day's drive. He meandered along chuckling loudly, but suddenly checked his mirth as he espied Maggie Hamilton standing at the gate beneath the oaks and holding a bundle under her arm. This was evidently intended for him, so he drove to the opposite side of the road and crawled along with drooping shoulders and abstracted mien.

But this particular Miss Hamilton understood c.o.o.nie's dark ways and knew how to deal with him. She darted across the road and caught old Bella by the head.

"Hold on now, smarty!" she said. "You needn't pretend you've turned deaf and blind all at once, you're stupid enough without. Here's a parcel for Aunt Mary McLean, c.o.o.nie, and mother wants you to take it to her, please, like an old duck. You know Aunt Mary thinks you're the handsomest fellow in Oro."

But c.o.o.nie was not be flattered into obliging anyone. "Look here, you," he growled, "what d'ye think I run this mail for, anyhow? Think it's a charitable inst.i.tution? You tell your Aunt Mary Maria stick-in-the-mud that if she thinks the Almighty created me to cart truck over the country for lazy lumps like you that thinks they're too good to walk, she'd better go an' get informed all over again."

But Maggie had expected this and was prepared. "Jess! Sarah! Bell!"

she cried, "come out here quick and settle this old donkey! He's gone balky again!"

There was a chorus of shrieks, a swish of skirts down the garden path, and reinforcements in the shape of three more young ladies emerged from the gate and fell upon the rebellious mail-carrier. They climbed into the shaking old buckboard and Maggie seized the reins and turned old Bella up the hill again.

"Now, we'll drive you clean back to Lakeview, if you don't speak up smart and say you'll take it!" she cried.

But c.o.o.nie did not mind. Mr. Basketful was by this time in the middle of the road, so he prolonged the encounter as long as possible.

"Go ahead," he said, settling himself comfortably in his seat; "you'll soon be at the Oa, if you keep on. I bet that's where Jessie wants to go to see what's the latest news from Don Neil."

"Yes, and you want to go up the hill and talk to 'Liza Cotton,"

retorted Jessie.

"That's it," laughed Maggie, pulling the old horse almost into the ditch, "you'd trot off with a bundle quick enough if she asked you."

c.o.o.nie roared. "Well, that's true. Haw! Haw! I'd start off that quick I'd never git stopped. Gos.h.!.+ but ain't she the old scorpion!" he exclaimed with feeling, "Say, if her an' me was the only folks left in the world, I'd kill her an' live alone. See here, you scalawags, clear out an' leave that poor brute alone, an' I'll take your trash."

It was a surrender. The victorious quartette leaped from the buckboard and retired, with many admonitions for his guidance in his future dealings with them, warnings which c.o.o.nie pretended not to hear.

His shoulders sagged again as he slowly approached the post-office. He paused a few moments on the bridge, to gaze meditatively into the water, then he spent some time gesticulating to an imaginary person down at the mill-dam, and at last, slowly and with every appearance of insupportable weariness, dragged up to the post-office door.

"Kind of hot," he remarked genially, noticing the perspiring countenance of the indignant postmaster.

Mr. Basketful took the mail-bag with a withering air. "Kind o'," he remarked sarcastically. "Guess your 'orse 'ad a sunstroke on the road.

'Ere 'Syl, tend to that hanimal, will you?"

A stylishly dressed young man came down with elegant leisure from his position on a cracker barrel and proceeded to water c.o.o.nie's horse.

The mail-carrier's helpless condition called for a.s.sistance which was always freely rendered. The person to whom the task generally fell was Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Todd, who, by reason of his leisurely habits, found plenty of time, when not a.s.sisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge around the post-office and look up the street to see what the Hamilton girls were doing. Sylva.n.u.s always a.s.sisted c.o.o.nie most willingly; he was a young man who was noted all over the towns.h.i.+p of Oro for his obliging ways and his mannerly deportment. Indeed, Mr. Todd posed as an authority on all matters of etiquette. He even went so far once as to admonish Wee Andra on the errors of his pedestrianism. "When you're walkin' with a lady, Andra," Sylva.n.u.s had said kindly, "you'd ought to let her walk up agin' the buildin's." But so far from improving the giant's manners this good advice only caused him to place his adviser in a tank of cheese factory whey and to continue thereafter to walk as seemed right in his own eyes.

c.o.o.nie did not care for Syl Todd; he had much of the simple guilelessness of his parents and did not take teasing with any pleasurable degree of asperity. So the mail-carrier generally treated him with silent contempt. He swung himself from the buckboard and hobbled painfully to the store veranda.

"Business seems pressin' with you, Mr. Todd," he remarked as he lit his pipe. "You're always in an awful rush."

Mr. Todd gave a doubtful grin. "Well say, c.o.o.nie, this here's the backwoodsest place I ever seen; us Americans can't stand it."

Sylva.n.u.s had spent six months in the United States, managing a gigantic business firm, he had hinted, from which enterprise he had returned to the parental roof, a sadder if not a wiser man, to take up the more lucrative employment of making cheese. He never quite outlived the glory of his travels, however.

c.o.o.nie grunted. "You should a' stayed over there an' been President.

They must be awful lonesome since you left. Any noos?"

"Well, I should snicker if there wasn't! The master's got into an awful row!"

His listener sighed deeply. What an opportunity this would have been to set his version of the story going!

"What's eatin' him?" he asked with wonderful self-control. "Neil kids been lickin' him again?"

"Worse nor that; he's got into a row with Splinterin' Andra!"

"Gos.h.!.+" c.o.o.nie's amazement would have deceived a much more astute individual than Sylva.n.u.s Todd. "What's that old wind-mill got himself flappin' about now?"

"About gettin' the organ for the Presbyterian church. Watson spoke to Splinterin' Andra about it an' the old fellow gave him Hail Columbia, as they say in the States."

Mr. Basketful was coming out with the mall-bag.

"It's true, every word of it, c.o.o.nie," he said, his wrath having vanished. "That's the way with them Presbyterians; they're that stiff they can't 'elp 'avin' trouble."

c.o.o.nie scrambled into his buckboard, feeling doubly crippled in the galling restriction that had been put upon his unruly member. He drove off without a word, not even stopping at Mrs. Fraser's gate at the top of the hill. Syl Todd sat upon the veranda of the store, watching until his old buckboard sank behind the south hill, wondering if he were ill.

Duncan had never before tried to exercise a restraining influence upon c.o.o.nie's tongue, though as he watched his old buckboard straying down into the valley, crossing and recrossing the road, to allow its owner to joke and gossip with this one and that, the Watchman often thought what a power for good c.o.o.nie might be in Glenoro if only his heart were touched by the grace of G.o.d. His first attempt at stemming the tide of the mail-carrier's gossip met with wonderful success, however. People discovered that for some inexplicable reason, c.o.o.nie seemed to have no interest whatever in Splinterin' Andra's behaviour over the proposal of an organ, and with the chief stoker idle, the fire of gossip soon died for want of fuel. The young people postponed their project indefinitely, and gradually the affair dropped out of the public interest, making way for a much more important matter.

IV

THE SECOND JOHN McALPINE

Donald's first year at college pa.s.sed uneventfully. He returned the next spring to his work on the farm, covered with honours, full of tales of his studies or his freshman adventures, but never a word of his final destiny, though Duncan Polite anxiously awaited it. He was in some trouble about Donald. He had set up a high standard for his boy and was pained and surprised when he failed to attain it. If only Mr. Cameron were living, he often reflected with a sigh, he would soon set Donald's feet in the right path. The lack of a pastor was a great grief to Duncan Polite. What would happen to his covenant if the flock were left so long shepherdless?

And then into the midst of his doubts and fears, his anxiety for the future and his regrets for the past, there came such a rich and abounding blessing, such an abundant answer to all his prayers, that for a season the Watchman was overwhelmed with contrite joy. For, after nearly a year of dissension, the congregations of Glenoro and the Tenth concession of Oro at last made choice of a minister, a choice which won the unanimous approval of both churches and suited everyone from old Andrew Johnstone to the Hamilton girls. He seemed to possess every requisite to suit the varied tastes of the varied people of Glenoro church. The old folk overlooked his youth, and the Oa forgot his lack of Gaelic in the light of his great achievement, for he possessed one quality that made it possible for him to bind together in peace and harmony the different factions of the church. It was not that he was very handsome, that he had a free, winning manner, it was not that he had had a brilliant career at college or that his professors prophesied a great future for him, it was not that he was an eloquent preacher and was filled with zeal for his Master. All these were important; but they sank into insignificance before his cardinal virtue, that which placed him immeasurably above all other probationers and made Duncan Polite look upon him as the embodiment of all his hopes, for was he not a grandson of Glenoro's hero, and himself John McAlpine Egerton?

What more could Glenoro hope for on this earth? What more could be desired? Mr. McAlpine come back to them! It seemed too good to be true. He did not even need to preach for a call. In fact, he had had no intention of doing so, but Peter Farquhar and Donald Fraser had heard him preach one Sabbath in Toronto when they went to the Exhibition, and they brought home such a glowing report of this second John McAlpine that at the close of his college term they all with one consent invited him to come and be their pastor. Even the Oa went for him solidly; a Gaelic preacher seemed an impossible luxury in these degenerate times, anyway, and, as Peter Farquhar said, "Mr. McAlpine's grandson without the Gaelic was better than any other man with it."

There had not been such a congregation in the Glenoro church since the days of the first John McAlpine as there was the Sabbath after the young man's induction. All the old people who had not come out to church since Mr. Cameron's death were there. Many of them remembered their young pastor's grandfather, whose fiery zeal and burning eloquence melted the hearts of those who had gone astray and shook to the very foundations of their being the most hardened sinners,--and here was his counterpart raised up to take his place!

As the young man stood up during the singing of the first psalm, many aged eyes noted with loving eagerness certain resemblances in voice and gesture to their hero. His face was handsome and clear-cut and lit by a pair of kindly, frank, blue eyes, a face which betokened a generous and amiable disposition. And the way he held up his fine head and straightened his broad shoulders was so like the first John McAlpine that many an old couple nudged each other with delight.

Miss Cotton had never seen the first McAlpine, but as she sat at the end of the Hamilton pew she could not resist giving Maggie a nudge when the handsome young man's eyes travelled in their direction, a nudge so pregnant of meaning that Maggie giggled and transferred the same to Sarah, whence it pa.s.sed down the long row, setting ribbons and flowers quivering, all to the extreme disapproval of Mrs. Fraser, who was not too much occupied with the new minister to overlook any of the misdemeanours of the Hamilton pew.

John Hamilton, himself, was in a state of dazed joy and quite oblivious of his daughters. Any sort of a minister was an object of reverent delight to the pious old man, but this one was so much better than he had ever dreamed, that he looked at him with something akin to awe.

Andrew Johnstone sat at the end of his pew as straight and forbidding as ever, but the gleam of his eyes, from underneath his bristling brows, showed that his spirit was rejoicing.

Back in the last row, the young men of the church sat regarding the new minister with approval and some envy. Syl Todd, who did not follow after his parents' form of religion, but went now to the Presbyterian Church and now to the Methodist, with impartial irregularity, emphatically declared Mr. Egerton the most stylish looking fellow he had seen since he left the States, and during the sermon silently registered a vow that he would part his hair in the middle, too, just as soon as he got home.

Peter McNabb's voice seemed charged with the universal rejoicing. Not since he had missed Mr. Cameron behind him had the precentor let his notes roll out so tumultuously glorious as when he led the first psalm,

"Oh come let us sing to the Lord, Come let us everyone A joyful noise make to the Rock Of our Salvation!"