The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

"Did ye, sir? That's past a' thinkin'! A' Machermore was juist mournin' and lamentin'. What micht the points be that ye liket? I will tell the elders. It micht do some guid to the puir lad!"

Mr. Erskine was a little taken aback. He could not say that what pleased him most in the service had sat in the manse-seat beside him, had worn a plain black dress, and possessed a pair of eyes that reminded him of a certain young girl who had taken walks with him over the hills of Surrey, when the blackbirds were singing in the spring.

Nevertheless, he managed to convey to John a satisfaction and a hopefulness that were all the more helpful for being a little vague. To which he added a practical word.

"If you think it would do any good, John, I might see one or two of the members of Session themselves."

"Ye needna trouble yoursel', thank ye kindly, sir," said John, "I will undertak' the job. Though my infirmity at orra times keeps me frae acceptin' the eldership (I hae been twice eleckit), I may say that John McWhan's influence in the testifyin' and Covenant-keeping Kirk o' the Marrow at the Cross-roads o' Machermore has to be reckoned wi' – aye, it has to be reckoned wi'!"

* * * * *

Nevertheless, the agitation for a change of ministry continued to increase rather than to diminish. It took the form of a petition to the Rev. Hugh Peebles to consider the spiritual needs of the congregation and forthwith to remove himself to another sphere of labour.

Now, John McWhan's Zion was not one of the greater and richer denominations into which Presbytery in Scotland is unhappily divided. It was but a small and poor "body" of the faithful, and such changes of ministry as that proposed were frequent enough. The operative cause might be inability to pay the minister's "steepend" if it happened to be a bad year. Or, otherwise, and more frequently, a "split" – a psalm tune misplaced, an overplus of fervour in prayer for the Royal Family (a very deadly sin), or a laxity in dealing with a case of discipline – and, lo! the minister trudged down the glen with his goods before him in a red cart, to fight his battle over again in another glen, and among a people every whit as difficult and touchy. But one day there was an intimation read out in the Machermore Kirk of the Marrow to the following effect: "The Annual Sermon of the Stewartry Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society will be preached in the Townhill Kirk at Cairn Edward, on Sabbath next, at 6 p.m., by the Rev. Hugh Peebles of the Marrow Kirk, Machermore."

Mr. Peebles read this through falteringly, as if it concerned some one else, and then added a doubtful conclusion: "In consequence of this honour which has been done me, I know not why, there will be no service here on the evening of next Lord's Day!"

It was observed by the acute that Mrs. Peebles put her face into her hands very quickly as her husband finished reading the intimations.

"Praying for him, was she?" said the Marrow folk, grimly, as they went homeward; "aye, an' she had muckle need!"

To say that the congregation of Machermore was dumfounded is wholly to underestimate the state of their feelings. They were aghast. For the occasion was a most notable one.

All the wale of the half-dozen central Galloway parishes, which were canvassed as one district by the agents of the Bible Society, would be there – the professional sermon-tasters of twenty congregations. At least a dozen ministers of all denominations (except the Episcopalian) would be seated in an awe-inspiring quadrilateral about the square elders' pew. The Townhill Kirk, the largest in Galloway, would be packed from floor to ceiling, and the sermon, published at length in the local paper, would be discussed in all its bearings at kirk-door and market-ring for at least a month to come.

And all these things must be faced by their "reed shaken with the wind," their feckless shadow of a minister, weak in doctrine, ineffective in application, utterly futile in reproof. Hughie Peebles, and he alone, must represent the high ancient liberties of the Marrow Kirk before Free Kirk Pharisee and Erastian Sadducee.

Considering these things, Machermore hung its head, and the wailing of its eldership was heard afar. Only John McWhan, as he had promised, kept his counsel, and went about with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. He continued to bring in the soup at Barlochan – indeed, he now waited all through dinner, and, though there was nothing said that he could definitely take hold upon, John had a shrewd suspicion that it was not for nothing that the young minister had been closeted with his master for two or three hours, six days a week, for the last month. But though it went sorely to his heart that he could not even bid Machermore and the folk thereof – "Wait till next Sabbath at six o'clock, an' ye'll maybes hear something!" he loyally refrained himself.

* * * * *

At last the hour came and the man. Mr. Erskine, having ordered a carriage from the town, drove the minister and his wife down to Cairn Edward in style. John McWhan held the reins, the urban "coachman" sitting, a silent and indignant hireling, on the lower place by his side.

On the front seat within sat Mr. Peebles, very pale, and with his hands gripping each other nervously. But when he looked across at the calm face of Mr. Erskine, a sigh of relief broke from him. The Townhill Kirk was densely crowded. There was that kind of breathing hush over all, which one only hears in a country kirk on a very solemn occasion. Places had been kept for young Mrs. Peebles and Mr. Erskine in the pew of honour near the elders' seat, but the ex-minister of State, after accompanying Mrs. Peebles to her destination, went and sat immediately in front of the pulpit.

"Wondrous weel the laddie looks," said one of the judges as Hugh Peebles came in, boyish in his plain black coat, "though they say he is but a puir craitur for a' that!"

"Appearances are deceitful – beauty is vain!" agreed her neighbour, in the same unimpassioned whisper.

There was nothing remarkable about the "preliminaries," as the service of praise and prayer was somewhat slightingly denominated by these impatient sermon-lovers.

"Sap, but nae fushion!" summed up Mistress Elspeth Milligan, the chief of these, after the first prayer.

The preliminaries being out of the way, the great congregation luxuriously settled itself down to listen to the sermon. Machermore, which had hidden itself bodily in a remote corner of one of the galleries, began to perspire with sheer fright.

"They'll throw the psalm-buiks at him, I wadna wunner – siccan grand preachers as they hae doon here in Cairn Edward!" whispered the ruling elder to a friend. He had sneaked in after all the others, and was now sitting on one of the steps of the laft. It was John McWhan who occupied the corner seat beside him.

"Maybe aye, an' maybe no!" returned John, drily, keeping his eye on the pulpit. The hush deepened as Hugh Peebles gave out his text.

"And he built Tadmor in the Wilderness."

Whereupon ensued a mighty rustling of turned leaves, as the folk in the "airy" and the three "galleries" pursued the strange text to its lair in the second book of Chronicles. It sounded like the blowing of a sudden gust of wind through the entire kirk.

Then came the final stir of settling to attention point, and the first words of Hugh Peebles' sermon. Machermore, elder and kirk-member, adherent and communicant, young and old, bond and free, crouched deeper in their recesses. Some of the more bashful pulled up the collars of their coats and searched their Bibles as if they had not yet found the text. The seniors put on their glasses and stared hard at the minister as if they had never seen him before. They did not wish it to appear that he belonged to them.

But when the first notes of the preacher's voice fell on their astonished ears, it is recorded that some of the more impulsive stood up on their feet.

That was never their despised minister, Hughie Peebles. The strong yet restrained diction, the firmness of speech, the resonance of voice in the deeper notes – all were strange, yet somehow curiously familiar. They had heard them all before, but never without that terrible alloy of weakness, and the addition of a falsetto something that made the preacher's words empty and valueless.

And the sermon – well, there never had been anything like it heard in the Ten Parishes before. There was, first of all, that great passage where the preacher pictured the Wise King sending out his builders and carpenters, his architects and cunning workmen – those very men who had caused the Temple to rise on Moriah and set up the mysterious twin pillars thereof – to build in that great and terrible wilderness a city like to none the world had ever seen. There was his gradual opening up of the text, and applying it to the sending of the Word of God to the heathen who dwelt afar off – without God and without hope in the world.

Then came the searching personal appeal, which showed to each clearly that in his own heart there were wilderness tracts – as barren, as deadly, as apparently hopeless as the ground whereon Solomon set up his wonder-city – Tadmor, Palmyra, the city of temples and palaces and palm-trees.

And above all, the preacher's application was long remembered, his gradual uprising from the picture of the earthly king, "golden-robed in that abyss of blue," to the Great King of all the worlds – "He who can make the wilderness, whether that of the heathen in distant lands and far isles of the sea, or that other more difficult, the wilderness in our own breasts, to blossom as the rose!" These things will never be forgotten by any in that congregation.

Once only Hugh Peebles faltered. It was but for a moment. He gasped and glanced down to the first seat in the front of the church. Then in another moment he had gripped himself and resumed his argument. Some there were who said that he did this for effect, to show emotion, but there were two men in that congregation who knew better – the preacher and Mr. Erskine.

All Machermore went home treading on the viewless air. They hardly talked to each other for sheer joy and astonishment. "Dinna look as if we were surprised, lads! Let on that we get the like o' that every day in oor kirk!"

That was John McWhan's word, which passed from lip to lip. And Machermore and the Marrow Kirk thereof became almost insufferably puffed up.

"I'll no say a word mair," said the ruling elder, "gin he never preaches anither decent word till the day o' his death."

This was, indeed, the general sense of the congregation. But Hugh Peebles, though perhaps he never reached the same pinnacle of fame, certainly preached much better than of old. With his wonderful success, too, he had gained a certain confidence in himself; added to which he was almost as often at Barlochan as before the missionary sermon.

His wife came with him sometimes in the evenings to dinner, and then Mr. Erskine's eyes would dwell on her with a kind of gladness. For now she had a colour in her cheek and a proud look on her face, which had not been there on the day when he had first heard her pray: "O God, help my Hughie!" in the square manse pew.

God had indeed helped Hughie – as He mostly does, through human agency. And Mr. Erskine was happier too. He had found an object in life, and, on the whole, his pupil did him great credit.

He also inserted a clause in his will, which ensures that Hugh and his wife shall not be dependent in their old age upon the goodwill of a faithful but scanty flock.

And as for Hugh Peebles, probable plagiarist, he writes his own sermons now, though he always submits them before preaching to his wise friend up at Barlochan. But it is for his first success that he is always asked when he goes from home. There is a never-failing postscript to any invitation from a clerical brother upon a sacramental occasion: "The congregation will be dreadfully disappointed if you do not give us 'Tadmor in the Wilderness.'"

And Hugh Peebles never disappoints them.

PETERSON'S PATIENT

When I go out on the round of a morning I generally take John with me. John is my "man," and of course it is etiquette that he should drive me to my patients' houses. But sometimes I tell him to put in old Black Bess for a long round-about journey, and then, in that case, I can drive myself.

For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post – that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. I honestly believe Bess is more than half a cow, and chews the cud on the sly. So whenever I feel a trifle lazy, I take the outer round and Black Bess, leaving the town and what the ambitious might call its "suburbs" to Dr. Peterson, my assistant. Not that this helps me much in the long run, because I have to keep track of what is going on in Peterson's head and revise his treatment. For, though his zeal and knowledge are always to be counted on, Peterson is apt to be lacking in a certain tact which the young practitioner only acquires by experience.

For instance, to take the important matter of diagnosis, Peterson used to think nothing of standing silent five or ten minutes making up his mind what was the matter with a patient. I once told him about this.

"Why," he replied, with, I must say, some slight disrespect for his senior, "you often do that yourself. You said this very morning that it took you twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to treat Job Sampson's wife for scarlet fever or for diphtheria!"

"Yes," I retorted, "I told you so, but I didn't stand agape all the time I was thinking it out. I took the temperature of the woman's armpits, and the back of her neck, and between her toes. I asked her about her breakfast, and her dinner, and her supper of the day before. Then I took a turn at her sleeping powers, and whether she had been eating too many vegetables lately. I inquired if she had had the measles, and the whooping-cough, and how often she had been vaccinated. I was just going to begin on her father, mother, and collateral relatives in order to trace hereditary tendencies, when I made up my mind that it would be safest to treat the woman for scarlet fever."

"Yes," said Peterson, drily, "Job was praising you up to the skies this very day. 'There never was sic a careful doctor,' he swears; 'there wasna a blessed thing that he didna speer into, even unto the third and fourth generation.'"

"There, you hear, Peterson," I said, with sober triumph, "that is the first step in your profession. You must create confidence. Never let them think for a moment you don't know everything. Why, old Ned Harper sent for me to-day – said you didn't understand the case, because you declined to prescribe."

"He is malingering," cried Peterson, hotly; "he only wants to draw full pay out of his two benefit societies. The man is a fraud, open and patent. I wouldn't have anything to do with him."

"Now, Peterson," I said, very seriously, "once for all, this is my practice, 'not yours. You are my salaried assistant. That is what you have to attend to. You are not revising auditor of the local benefit societies. If you do as you did with old Harper a time or two, you will lose me my appointment as Society's doctor, and not that one appointment alone. They all follow each other like a flock of sheep jumping through a slap in a dyke. Besides, the Benefit Society officials don't thank you, not a bit! They expect Harper to do as much for them the next time they feel like taking a holiday between the sheets!"

"What would you do then?" cried this furious young apostle of righteousness. "You surely would not have me become art and part in a swindle."

I patted him on the shoulder.

"Temper your zeal with discretion, my friend," I said. "I have found a rising blister between the shoulder-blades very efficacious in such cases."

Yet my immaculate assistant, had he only known it, was to go further and fare worse.

* * * * *

Meanwhile to pass the time I told him the story of old Maxwell Bone. Peterson was clearly getting restive, and it is not good for young men of the medical profession to think that they know everything at five-and-twenty. Maxwell was an aged hedger-and-ditcher, who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the upper end of Whinnyliggate. Of that parish I was (and still am) parish doctor, and Maxwell being in receipt of half-a-crown a week as parochial supplement to his scanty earnings, I was, ipso facto, responsible for Maxwell's state of health, and compelled in terms of my contract to obey any reasonable summons I might receive from him.

Upon several occasions I had prescribed for the old ruffian, chiefly for rheumatism and the various internal pains and weaknesses affected by ancient paupers. When I was going away on one occasion Maxwell asked me for an order on the Inspector of Poor for a bottle of brandy "for outward application only." I refused him promptly, telling him with truth that he was far better without it.

"Weel, doctor," he said, shaking his head, "dootless ye ken best. But there's nocht like brandy when thae stammack pains come on me. It micht save ye a lang journey some cauld snawy nicht. The guard o' the late train will tak' doon ony message frae the junction, and if I dinna get the brandy to hae at hand to rub my legs wi' ye micht hae a lang road to travel! But gin ye let me hae it, doctor, it micht save ye a heap o' trouble – "

"The old wretch!" cried Peterson. "Of course you did not let him have it?"

"Peterson," I replied, sententiously, "I decline to answer you. Wait till you have been a winter here and know what a thirty-mile drive in a raging snowstorm to the head-end of the parish of Whinnyliggate means. Then you will not have much doubt whether Maxwell got his brandy or not."

Now Peterson was really a very excellent fellow, and when he had run his head against the requisite number of stone walls, and learned to bite hard on his tongue when tempted to over-hasty speech, he made a capital assistant. I shall be sorry to lose him when the time comes.

For one thing Nance is fond of him, especially since he fell in love, and that goes for a great deal in our house. Peterson performed the latter feat quite suddenly and unexpectedly, as he did everything. It happened thuswise.

I had had a hard winter, and Nance was needing a change, so, about Easter, I took her south, for a few weeks in the mild and recuperative air of the Regent Street bonnet shops. I have noted more than once that in Nance's case the jewellers' windows along Bond Street possess tonic qualities, quite unconnected with going inside to buy anything, as also the dark windows of certain merchant tailors in which the patient can see her new dress and hat reflected as in a mirror. As for me, I enjoyed the British Medical Club and the Scientific Museums – which, of course, was what I came for.

But when we went back home we found that Peterson's daily report of cases had not conveyed all the truth. Peterson himself was changed. So far as I could gather, he seemed to have done his work very well and to have given complete satisfaction. He had even added the names of several new patients to my list. One of these was that of a somewhat large proprietor in a neighbouring parish, who was said to be exceedingly eccentric, but of whom I knew nothing save by the vaguest report.

"How did you get hold of old Bliss Bulliston?" I asked my assistant, as I glanced over the list he handed me. We were sitting smoking in the study while Nance was unpacking upstairs and spreading her new things on the bed, amid the rapturous sighs and devotionally clasped hands of Betty Sim, our housemaid.

Peterson turned away towards the mantelpiece for another spill. He appeared to have a difficulty with his pipe.

"Well, I don't exactly know," he said at last, when the problem was solved; "it just came about somehow. You know how these things happen."

"They generally happen in our profession by the patient sending for the physician," I remarked, drily. "I hope you have not been poaching on anyone else's preserves, Peterson. Did Bulliston send for you?"

Peterson stooped for a coal to light his pipe. It had gone out again. Perhaps it was the exertion that reddened his handsome face.

"No," he said, slowly, "he did not send for me. I went of my own accord."

I started from my seat.

"Why, man," I cried, "you'll get me struck off the register, not to speak of yourself. You don't mean to say that you went to the house touting for custom?"

"Now don't get excited," he said, smoking calmly, "and I'll tell you all about it."

I became at once violently calm. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it took some time to get him under way.

"Well," he said at last, "Bulliston has got a daughter."

"Oh," said I, "so you were called in to attend on Mrs. Bulliston."

"When I say he has a daughter, I mean a grown-up daughter, not an infant!"

Peterson seemed quite unaccountably ruffled by my innocent remark. I thought of pointing out to him the advantages of habitual clearness of speech, but, on the whole, decided to let him tell his story, for I was really very anxious about Bulliston.

"Well," I said soothingly, "did Miss Bulliston call you in?"

"It might be looked at that way," he said.

"What was the case?"

"A nest of peregrine's eggs near the top of Carslaw Craig."

"Peterson!" I exclaimed, somewhat sternly, "don't forget that I am talking to you seriously!"

But he continued smoking.

"I am perfectly serious," he said, and stopped. After he had thought a while he continued: "It happened at the end of the first week you were away. I had left John at home. I had old Black Bess with me – you know she will stand anywhere. I took the long round, and was coming home a little tired. As I drove past the end of Carslaw Hill, happening to look up I saw something sticking to the sheer face of the cliff like a fly on a wall. At first I could not believe my eyes, for when I came nearer I saw it was a girl. She seemed to be calling for help. So of course I jumped down and tied old Bess to a post by the roadside. Then I began to climb up towards her, but I soon saw that I could not help the girl that way – to do her any good, that is. So I shouted to her to hold on and I would get at her over the top.

"I ran up an easier place, where the hill slopes away to the left, and came down opposite where the girl was. She had got to within ten feet of the top, but could not get a bit higher to save her life. It looked almost impossible, but luckily, right on top there was a hazel-bush, and I caught hold of the lower boughs – three or four of them – and lowered my legs down over the edge.

"'Catch hold of my ankles,' I shouted, 'and I'll pull you up.'

"'Can't; they're too thick!' the girl cried; and from that I judged she must be a pretty cool one.

"'Then catch hold of one of them in both hands!' I shouted.

"'Right!' she said, and gripped.

"And it was as well that she did not take my first offer, for, as it turned out, I had all I could do to get her up, jamming the toe of my other boot in the crevices and barking my knee against the hazel roots. Still, I managed it finally."

"Whereupon she promptly fainted away in your arms," I interjected, "and you recovered her with some smelling-salts and sal volatile you happened to have brought in your tail-coat pockets in view of such emergencies."

"Not at all," said Peterson, quite unabashed; "she didn't faint – never thought of such a thing. Instead, she got behind the hazel-bush I had been hanging on to.

"'Stop where you are a moment,' she spluttered; 'till I get rid of these horrid eggs. Then I'll talk to you.'"

"Tears of beauty!" I cried; "emotion hidden behind a hazel-bush. 'Alfred, you have saved my life – accept my hand.' That was what she really said to you – you know it was, Peterson."

"Not much," said Peterson. "She was back again in a trice, and, if you'll believe me, started in to give it me hot and strong for smashing her blissful birds' eggs.

"'Here I've been watching this peregrine for weeks, and I'd got two beauties, and just because I got stuck a bit on the cliff you must come along and jolt me so that I have broken both of them – one was in my mouth, and the other I had tied up in a handkerchief.