The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

"But I told the girl that I knew where I could get her another pair and also a rough-legged buzzard's nest, and that did a lot to comfort her. She was a pretty girl, though I don't believe she had ever given it a thought; and she was dead on to getting enough birds' eggs to beat her brother, who had said that a girl could never get as good a collection as a boy, because of her petticoats!"

"And where are you going to get those eggs?" I said to Paterson. "If you think that hunting falcons' eggs for roving schoolgirls comes within your duties as my assistant – well, I shall have to explicate your responsibilities to you, that's all, young man!"

Peterson laid his finger lightly on his cheek, not far from the bridge of his nose.

"You know old Davie Slimmon, the keeper up at the lodge? You remember I doctored his foot when he got it bitten with an adder. Well, anyway, he would do anything for me. I've had Davie on the egg-hunt ever since."

"And the girl thinks you are getting them all yourself," I said, with some severity. "Peterson, this is both unbecoming and unscientific. More than that, you are a blackguard."

"Oh," said Peterson, lightly, "it's all right. I go regularly to see the old boy. He is a patient properly on the books, and when all is over, you can charge him a swingeing fee. Well, to begin at the beginning, each time I saw the girl I took her all the eggs I could pick up in the interval. I got them properly blown and labelled – particulars, habitat, how many in the clutch, whether the nest was oriented due east and west, whether made of sticks or weeds or curl-papers, the size of the shell in fractions of a millimetre – "

"Peterson," I said, sternly, "I don't believe you have the remotest idea what a millimetre is!"

"No more I have," answered Peterson, stoutly, not in the least put out; "but then, no more has she. And it looks well – thundering well!" he added, after a ruminant consideration of the visionary labelled egg. "You've no idea what a finish these tickets give to the collection."

"So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"

Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the sternness in my eye checked him.

"Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in. You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened that Truda – "

"It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson took no notice, going composedly on with his story.

"… Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton wool."

"What!" I cried, "the birds?"

"No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the shrubbery. Give me your hand!'

"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house."

"Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's assistant?"

"I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"

Now this was a most uncalled-for remark, and I answered: "That may be true or not, as the case may be. But, at all events, I was no one's locum tenens at that time."

"Oh," he said, "it's no use making a fuss now, McQuhirr. Nobody saw us, and as soon as we got to the open part near the house, Truda said: 'Now I'm going to get these eggs fixed into their cases. So you trot round and physic up the old man. And mind and ask to see his collection of dog-whips. It is the finest in the world. We all collect something here. Pa is crazy about dog-whips. And if you can't find anything else wrong with him, tell him that his corns want cutting. They always do!'

"'But I haven't a knife with me,' I objected.

"'I'll lend you a ripper.' (Truda had an answer ready every time.) 'I keep it edged like a razor. It is a cobbler's leather knife. It will make the shavings fly off dad's old corns, I tell you!'

"'But I never pared a corn in my life,' I said.

"'Then you've jolly well got to now, my friend,' she said, 'for I've yarned it to him that his life may depend on it, and that only a trained surgeon can operate on his sort. So don't you give me away, or he may let you have the contents of a shot-gun as you go out through the front window. And what will happen to me, I don't know. Now go on!'

"And with that she vanished in the direction of the stables."

"A most lively young lady!" I cried, with enthusiasm.

"Um-m," grunted Peterson (I have often had cause to remark Peterson's gruffness). "Lively, you think? Well, she nearly got me into a pretty mess with her liveliness. The butler put me into a waiting-room out of the hall. It was all sparred round with fishing-rods, and had crossed trophies of dog-whips festooned about the walls. I waited here for a quarter of an hour, listening to the rumbling bark of an angry voice in the distance, and wondering what the mischief Truda had let me in for.

"Presently the girl came round to the open window, and as the sill was a bit high she gave a sort of sidelong jump and sat perched on the ledge outside.

"'You are a great donkey,' she said, looking in at me; 'both the kestrels' are set as hard as a rock – here, take them!'

"And with that she threw the eggs in at me one after another through the open sash of the window. One took me right on the pin of my tie and dripped on to my waistcoat. Smell? Well, rather! Just then the old butler came in, looking like a field-marshal and archbishop rolled in one, and there was I rubbing the abominable yolk from my waistcoat. Truda had dropped off the window-sill like a bird, and the old fellow looked round the room very suspiciously. I think he thought I must have been pocketing the spoons or something.

"'Mr. Bliss Bulliston waits!' he said, as if he were taking me into the presence-chamber of royalty. And so he was, by George! I was shown into a large library-looking room where two men were sitting. One was a little Skye-terrier of a man, with bristly grey hair that stood out everyway about his head. He was lying in a long chair, half reclining, a rug over his knees though the day was warm. The other man sat apart in the window, a quiet fellow to all appearance, bald-headed, and rather tired-looking.

"'You are the doctor from Cairn Edward my daughter has been pestering me to see,' snapped the elder man. 'My case is a very difficult and complicated one, and quite beyond the reach of an average local practitioner, but I understand from my daughter that you have very special qualifications.' Whereupon I bowed, and said that I was your assistant."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Peterson, had you no sense? Why on earth did you bring my name into the affair? I shall never get over it!"

"Oh," he answered, lightly; "wait a bit. I cleared you sufficiently in the end. Just listen.

"I was in a tight place, you will admit, but I thought it was best to put on my most impressive manner, and after a look or two at the old fellow, I resolved to treat him for nervous exhaustion. It was a dead fluke, but I had been reading Webb-Playfair's article on Neurasthenia just before I went out, and though men don't often have it, I thought it would do as well for old Bulliston as anything else.

"So I yarned away to him about his condition and symptoms, emaciated physical state, and so forth. Well, when I was getting pretty well warmed up I saw the young man with the hair thin-sown on top rise and go quietly over to another window. I put this down to modesty on his part. He wished to leave me alone with my patient. So I became more and more confidential to old Bulliston."

("Peterson," I moaned, "all is over between us from this moment!")

"But the old ruffian would not allow Mr. Baldhead to remove himself quietly," said Peterson, continuing his tale calmly.

"'James,' he cried, sharply, 'stop where you are. All this should be very interesting to you.'

"'So it is,' said the young man, smiling in the rummest way, 'very interesting indeed!'

"So, somewhat elated, I went on prescribing rest, massage, the double-feeding dodge, and, above all, no intercourse with his own family. When I got through my rigmarole, the old fellow cocked his head to the side like a blessed dicky-bird, and remarked: 'It shows what wonderful similarity there is between the minds of you men of science. Talk of the transference of ideas! Why, that is just what my nephew was saying before you came in – almost in the same words. Let me introduce you to my nephew, Dr. Webb-Playfair, of Harley Street.'

"You could have knocked me down with a straw. I could hardly return the fellow's very chilly nod. I heartily confounded that little bird-nesting minx who had got me into such a scrape. But I had an idea.

"'Perhaps, sir,' I said, 'if you would allow me to consult Dr. Webb-Playfair we might be able to assist one another.'

"'Certainly,' cried the little old man, speaking as sharply as a Skye-terrier yelps; 'be off into the library. Jem, you know the way!'

"I tell you what, McQuhirr, I did not feel particularly chirpy as I followed that fellow's shiny crown into the next room. He sat down on a table, swinging one leg and looking at me without speaking. For a moment I could not find words to begin, but his eyes were on me with a kind of twinkle in them.

"'Well?' he said, as if he had a right to demand an explanation. That decided me. I would make a clean breast of it.

"So I told him the whole story – how I had first met Truda, of our bird-nesting, and how Truda wanted me to be able to come often to the house – because of the eggs.

"The bald young man began to laugh as I went on with my narrative, though it was no laughing matter to me, I can tell you. And especially when I confessed that I did not think there was anything the matter with his uncle, and that Neurasthenia was the first thing that came into my head, because I had been reading his own article in the Lancet before I came out. He thought that was the cream of the joke. He was all of a good fellow, and no mistake.

"'So,' he said, 'to speak plainly, you are in love with my cousin, and you plotted to keep the father in bed in order that you might make love to the daughter! That is the most remarkable recent application of medical science I have heard of!'

"'Oh no,' I cried, 'I assure you it was Truda who – !

"'Ah,' he said, quietly, 'it was Truda, was it? I can well believe that.'

"Then he thought a long while, and at last he said, 'Well, it will do the old man a great deal of good to stay in bed and not worry his own family and the whole neighbourhood with his whimsies. Moreover, milk diet is a very soothing thing. We will let it go at that. You can settle your own affairs with my cousin Gertrude, Dr. Peterson; I have nothing to do with that. Indeed, I would not meddle with that volcanic young person's private concerns for all the wealth of the Indies! Let us go back to my uncle.'

"So," concluded Peterson, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the bars of the grate, "the old fellow has been in bed ever since and has drunk his own weight in good cow's milk several times over. He is putting on flesh every day, and his temper is distinctly improving. He can be trusted with a candlestick beside him on the stand now, without the certainty of his throwing it at his nurse."

"And Truda?" I suggested, "what did she say?"

"Well, of course I told her how her cousin had said that I had ordered the father to bed, in order that I might make love to the daughter. She and I were in the waterside glade beyond the pond at the time. You know the place. We were looking for dippers' nests. She stopped and said:

"'Jem Playfair said that, did he?'

"'Yes, these were his very words,' I said, with a due sense of their heinousness.

"'He said you sent my father to bed that you might make love to me?'

"'Yes.'

"She looked all about the glade, and then up at me.

"'Well, did you?' she said."

* * * * *

This is Peterson's story exactly as he told it to me on my return. That is some time ago now, but there is little to add. Mr. Bliss Bulliston is now much better both in health and in temper, and there is every reason to believe that I shall lose my assistant some of these days. The young couple are talking of going out to British Columbia. No complete collection of the eggs of that Colony has ever been made, and Peterson says that the climate is so healthy there, that for some years there will be nothing for him to do but to help Truda with her collecting.

This is all very well now, in the first months of an engagement, but as a family man myself, I have my doubts as to the permanence of such an arrangement.

TWO HUMOURISTS

Our gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan, even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service" to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny bap and a warm drink." In former days, within the memory of my father, he had a friend and fellow-humourist in the village, one "Doog" (that is, Douglas) Carnochan.

The contrast between the two companions was remarkable. They both lived in the same street of our little country hamlet. Indeed, necessarily so, for Whinnyliggate has but one street, strictly so called. The few cottages along the "Well-road," and the more pretentious cluster of upstarts which keeps the Free Kirk in countenance on the braeface, have never arrogated to themselves the name of a street.

So at one end of the Piccadilly-cum-Regent-street of Whinnyliggate – the upper end – lived Nathan Monypenny, and at the other end dwelt his rival, Doog, also, though less worthily, denominated "humourist." They were thus separated by something considerably less than a quarter of a mile of honest unpavemented king's highway. But, though they were personally friends, green oceans and trackless continents lay between their several characters and dispositions.

Nathan, at the upper end, was a bachelor, hale, fresh, and hearty as when he had finished his 'prenticeship. Doog at forty possessed several children, all that remained of a poor, over-worked, downtrodden wife, and a countenance so marled and purpled with drink, that he looked an old man before his time. Nathan's shop was his own, and he was understood to have already a "weel-filled stocking-fit up the lum," or, in the modern interpretation, a comfortable balance down at Cairn Edward Bank, and a quiet old age assured to him by a life of industrious self-denial.

Doog never had a penny to bless himself with, later in the week than Tuesday; and, indeed, often enough very few to bless his wife withal even on Saturday nights, when, as was his custom, he staggered homewards with the poor remnants of his week's wage in his pocket.

Nathan's wit was of the kind which goes best with the sedate tapping of a snuffmull, or the tinkling of brass weights into counter-scales – Doog's rang loudest to the jingling of toddy tumblers. Nathan loved to gossip doucely at the door of even-tide with the other tradesmen of the village, with Bob Carter the joiner, his apron twisted about his scarred hands, with bluff prosperous Joe Mitchell the mason, and with Peter Miles the tailor, as he sat on the low seat outside his door picking the last basting threads out of a new waistcoat.

Doog's witticisms, on the other hand, were chiefly launched in the "Golden Lion," amid the uproarious laughter of Jake McMinn, the "cattle dealer frae Stranraer," Leein' Tam, the local horse-doctor (without diploma), and "Chuckie" Orchison, the village ne'er-do-weel and licensed sponger for drinks upon the neighbourhood.

Yet there existed a curious and inexplicable liking between the two men. There was never a day that Nathan, the douce and respectable, did not leave his quiet white cottage at the head of the brae, where he dwelt all alone with his groceries, and step sedately down, stopping every twenty yards to gossip, or drop a word, flavoured with one of his kindly smiles, with every passer-by. He never seemed to be going anywhere in particular, yet he always visited Doog Carnochan's house before he returned. And many a night did Nathan, finding the husband not at home, pursue and recapture the truant, and bring him back to the tumble-down shanty, where the five ill-fed children and the one weary-faced woman furnished a tragic comment upon the far-renowned convivial humours of the husband and father.

The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life, awakes to find herself beautiful.

There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled from it; but she only accepted the inevitable, and, like one who knows beforehand that her task is hopeless, she did what she could with silent resignation, waiting clear-eyed for that death which alone would bring her to the end of her pain.

Yet at the time it had seemed natural enough that Dahlia should prefer the handsome debonair Douglas Carnochan, to quiet Nathan Monypenny, who had so little to say for himself, and so seldom said it. Besides, Dahlia had always known that she could with a word send Nathan to the ends of the earth, whilst there were certain wild ways about the other even then, which had, for a foolish ignorant maid, all the attraction of the unknown. She was a little afraid of Doog Carnochan, and there is no better subsoil whereon to grow love in a girl's heart, than just the desire of conquest mixed with a little fear.

So it came to pass that, though Nathan had carried little Dahlia's school-bag and fought her battles ever since she could toddle across from one cottage to the other, it was not he who, in the fulness of time, when the blossom came to its brightest and most beautiful, gathered it and set it on his bosom. It ought to have been, but it was not.

As a young man Doog Carnochan was bright and clever. Most people in the village prophesied a brilliant future for him – that is, those who knew not the "unstable as water" which was written like a legend across his character. He was the son of a small crofter in the neighbourhood, but he companied habitually with those above him in rank, with the sons of large farmers and rich stock-breeders. Some of these, his cronies and boon companions, would be sure to assist him, so every one said. They would set him up as a "dealer" – they would put him in charge of a "led" farm or two. Doog's fortune was as good as made.

So, at least, injudicious flatterers assured him. So he himself believed. So he told the innocent, lily-like Dahlia Ogilvy at the time of year when the Sweet William gave forth his evening perfume, when the dew was on the latest wall-flowers, and the scarlet lightning spangled the dusky places beneath the hedgerows where the lovers were wont to sit. But the blue cowled bells of the poisonous monkshood in the cottage flower-beds they did not see, though with some premonition of fate, Dahlia shivered and nestled to her betrothed as the breeze swept over them chill and bitter from the east.

And Nathan Monypenny, leaning on the gate-post that he might sigh out his soul towards the cottage of his beloved, by chance heard their words; and, therewith being stricken well-nigh to the death, softly withdrew, and left them alone.

After that night Nathan sought the company of Doog Carnochan more than ever.

Friends warned him that Doog was no fit companion for such as he. They insisted that he was neglecting his business. They said all those useful and convincing things which friends keep in stock for such occasions. Yet Nathan did not desist, till he had arranged the marriage of Dahlia Ogilvy and Douglas Carnochan beyond all possibility of retractation.

He it was who accompanied the swain to put up the banns. He it was who paid the five-shilling fee that the pair should be thrice cried on one Sabbath day, and the wedding hastened by a whole fortnight.

Perhaps he wished to shorten his own pain. Perhaps, he told himself, when once Dahlia was Douglas Carnochan's wife, he would think no more of her. At any rate, something strong and moving wrought in the reticent heart of the young tradesman. He approved the house which Doog took for his bride. He also guaranteed the rent. He lent the money for the furniture, and looked after Doog on the day of the marriage, that he might be brought soberly and worthily to the altar.

It was a plain-song altar indeed, for, of course, the pair were married in the little white cottage next to Nathan's, where Dahlia had lived all her life. When he saw her in bridal white, Nathan remembered with a sudden gulp a certain little toddling thing in white pinafores, whom he used to lift over the hedge that he might feed her with the earliest ripe gooseberries.

Every one said that they made a handsome pair as they stood up before the minister, who, with his back to the fire, did not know that he was singeing his Geneva gown. For, being yet young to these occasions, he wore that encumbrance because it gave him an opportunity of displaying the hood of his college degree.

The young women smiled covertly at the contrast afforded by the bridegroom and his "best-man," as they stood up together. They did not wonder at Dahlia's preference. Any of them would have done the same thing, if she had had the chance.

"What a fine grey suit! – how well it fits!"

"Yes, and that pale blue tie, how it matches the flower in his coat!"

Thus they gossiped, all unaware that it was the hard-earned money of the plain-favoured and shy "best-man" which had bought all that wedding raiment, paid for that sky-blue tie, and that even the flower in the bridegroom's button-hole had grown in Nathan Monypenny's garden, and had been plucked and affixed by his hands.

Thus it was that the story began, and this was the reason why Nathan sought carefully day by day, if by any means he might yet withdraw his friend's erring feet out of fearful pit and miry clay.

Never a morning dawned for Nathan, waking, as he had done all his life, with the hum of the ranged bee-hives under his window in his ear, or else listening to the pattering of the winter storms on his lattice, that he did not bethink himself: "It is I who am responsible. I must help him." Then he would add with a sigh: "And her."

And so help he did, for the most part in ways hidden and secret. For he dared not give money to Doog. He knew all too well where that would have gone. Neither for very pride's sake, and in reverence for the secret of his heart, could he bring himself to give money to Dahlia. Nevertheless, as by some unseen hand, the tired heartsick woman found her burden in many directions marvellously eased.

Sticks were stacked in the little wood-shed which Doog had set up in the first virtuous glow of husbandhood – and never been inside since. No hens laid like Dahlia's – and the strange thing was that they invariably laid in the night, sometimes a dozen at a time, all in one nest. Her children, playing in the hot dusk of her little garden, had more than once turned up a sovereign or a crownpiece wrapped in paper and run with it to their mother.