The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

There were twenty-six cases on Saturday – fifty-eight by the middle of the following week. Within the same period nine had terminated fatally, and there were others who could not possibly recover. Nurses came in from the great city hospitals, as they could be spared, but the demand far exceeded the supply, and Gilbert was indefatigable. Yet his laugh was cheery as ever, and even the delirious would start into some faint consciousness of pleasure at the sound of his voice.

But one day the young minister awoke with a racking head, a burning body, a dry throat, and the chill of ice in his bones.

"This is nothing – I will work it off," said Gibby; and, getting up, he dressed with haste and went out without touching food. The thought of eating was abhorrent to him. Nevertheless, he did his work all the forenoon, and went here and there with medicine and necessaries. He relieved a nurse who had been two nights on duty, while she slept for six hours. Then after that he set off home to catch Dr. Durie before he could be out again. For he had heard his host come in and throw himself down on the couch while he was dressing.

As he passed the front of Rescobie Manse, he looked up to wave a hand to Jemima, as he never forgot to do. Her father was still "indisposed," and Miss Girnigo was understood to be taking care of him. Yes, there she was among her flowers, and Gibby, hardly knowing what he did – being light-headed and racked with pain – openly kissed his hand to her within sight of half-a-score of Rescobie windows.

Then, his feet somehow tangling themselves and his knees failing him, he fell all his length in the hot dust of the highway.

* * * * *

When Gilbert Denholm came to himself he found a white-capped nurse sitting by the window of a room he had never before seen. There was a smell of disinfectants all about, which somehow seemed to have followed him through all the boundless interstellar spaces across which he had been wandering.

"Where am I?" said Gibby, as the nurse came toward the bed. "I have not seen Betty McGrath this morning, and I promised Father Phil that I would."

"You must not ask questions," said the nurse quietly. "Dr. Durie will soon be here."

And after that with a curious readiness Gibby slipped back into a drowsy dream of gathering flowers with Jemima Girnigo; but somehow it was another Jemima – so young she seemed, so fair. Crisp curls glanced beneath her hat brim. Young blood mantled in changeful blushes on her cheeks. Her pale eyes, which had always been a little watery, were now blue and bright as a mountain tarn on a day without clouds. He had never seen so fair and joyous a thing.

"Jemima," he said, or seemed to himself to say, "what is the matter with you? You are different somehow."

"It is all because you love me, Gilbert," she answered, and smiled up at him. "Ever since you told me that, I have grown younger every hour; and, do you know, I have found the Grass of Parnassus at last. It grows by the Gate into the Upper Garden?"

* * * * *

"Hello, Denholm, clothed and in your right mind, eh? That's right!"

It was the cheerful voice of his friend, Dr. Durie, as he stood by Gibby's bedside.

"What has been the matter with me, Durie?" said Gilbert, though in his heart he knew.

"You have had bad small-pox, my boy; and have had a hot chance to find out whether you have been speaking the truth in your sermons."

Gibby could hardly bring his lips to frame the next question. He was far from vain, but to a young man the thought was a terrible one.

"Shall I be much disfigured?"

"Oh, a dimple or two – nothing to mar you on your marriage day. You have been well looked after."

"You have saved my life, doctor."

And Gibby strove to reach a feeble hand outward, which, however, the doctor did not seem to see.

"Not I – you owe that to some one else."

"The nurse who went out just now?" queried Gibby.

"No, she has just been here a few clays, after all danger had passed."

Gilbert strove to rise on his elbow and the red flushed his poor face.

The doctor restrained him with a strong and gentle hand.

"Lie back," he said, "or I will go away and tell you nothing."

He sat down by the bedside, and with a soft sponge touched the convalescent's brow. As he did so he spoke in a low and meditative tone as though he had been talking to himself.

"There was once a foolish young man who thought that he could take twenty shillings out of a purse into which he had only put half a sovereign. He fell down one day on the street. A woman carried him in and nursed him through a fortnight's delirium. A woman caught him as he ran, with only a blanket about him, to drown himself in the Black Pool of Rescobie Water. Night and day she watched him, sleepless, without weariness, without murmuring – "

"And this woman – who saved my life – what was – her name?"

Gibby's voice was very hoarse.

"Jemima Girnigo!" said the doctor, sinking his voice also to a whisper.

"Where is she – I want to see her – I want to thank her?" cried Gibby. He was actually upon his elbow now.

Dr. Dune forced him gently back upon the pillows.

"Yes, yes," he said soothingly, "so you shall – if all tales be true; but for that you must wait."

"Why – why?" cried impatient Gibby. "Why cannot I see her now? She has done more for me than ever I deserved – "

"That is the way of women," said the doctor, "but you cannot thank her now. She is dead."

"Dead – dead!" gasped Gilbert, stricken to the heart; "then she gave her life for me!"

"Something like it," said the doctor, a trifle grimly. For though he was a wise man, the ways of women were dark to him. He thought that Gilbert, though a fine lad, was not worth all this.

"Dead," muttered Gibby, "and I cannot even tell her – make it up to her – "

"She left you a message," said the doctor very quietly.

"What was it?" cried Gibby, eagerly.

"Oh, nothing much," said Dr. Durie; "there was no hope from the first, and she knew it. Her mind was clear all the three days, almost to the last. She may have wandered a little then, for she told me to tell you – "

"What – what – oh, what? Tell me quickly. I cannot wait."

"That the flowers were blooming in the Upper Garden, and that she would meet you at the Gate!"

* * * * *

The Reverend Gilbert Denholm never married. He bears a scar or two on his open face – a face well beloved among his people. There is a grave in Rescobie kirkyard that he tends with his own hands. None else must touch it.

It is the resting-place of a woman whom love made young and beautiful, and about whose feet the flowers of Paradise are blooming, as, alone but not impatient, she waits his coming by the Gate.

THE TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

Unless you happen to have made one of a group of five or six young men who every Sunday morning turned their steps towards the little meeting-house in Lady Nixon's Wynd, it is safe to say that you did not know either it or the Doctor of Divinity. That is to say, not unless you were born in the Purple and expert of the mysteries of the Kirk of the Covenants.

The denomination was a small one, smaller even and poorer than is the wont of Scottish sects. By the eternal process of splitting off, produced by the very faithfulness of the faithful, and the remorseless way in which they carried out their own logic, by individual pretestings and testifyings, by the yet sadder losses inflicted by the mammon of unrighteousness, when some, allured by social wealth and position, turned aside to worship in some richer or more popular Zion, the Kirk of the Covenants worshipping in Lady Nixon's Wynd had become but the shadow of its former self.

Still, however, by two infallible signs you might know the faithful. They spoke of the "Boady" and of the "Coavenants" with a lengthening of that O which in itself constituted a shibboleth, and their faces – grim and set mostly – lit up when you spoke of the "Doctor."

But one – they had but one – Dr. Marcus Lawton of Lady Nixon's Wynd. He was their joy, their pride, their poetry; the kitchen to their sour controversial bread, the mellow glory of their denomination. (Again you must broaden the aindefinitely.) He had once been a professor, but by the noblest of self-denying ordinances he had extruded himself from his post for conscience sake.

There was but one fly in their apothecary's ointment-pot when my father grew too stiff to attend the Kirk of the Covenants even once a year, and that was that the Doctor, unable to live and bring up a family on a sadly dwindling stipend (though every man and woman in the little kirk did almost beyond their possible to increase it), had been compelled to bind himself to spend part of the day in a secular pursuit.

At least to the average mind his employment could hardly be called "secular," being nothing more than the Secretaryship of the Association for the Propagation of Gospel Literature; but to the true covenant man this sonorous society was composed of mere Erastians, or what was little better, ex-Erastians and common Voluntaries. They all dated from 1689, and the mark of the beast was on their forehead – that is to say, the seal of the third William, the Dutchman, the revolutionary Gallio. Yet their Doctor, with his silver hair, his faithful tongue, his reverence, wisdom, and weight of indubitable learning, had to sit silent in the company of such men, to take his orders from them, and even to record their profane inanities in black and white. The Doctor's office was at the corner of Victoria Street as you turn down towards the Grassmarket. And when any of his flock met him coming or going thither, they turned away their heads – that is, if he had passed the entrance to Lady Nixon's Wynd when they met him. So far it was understood that he mightbe going to write his sermon in the quiet of the vestry. After that, there was no escape from the damning conclusion that he was on his way to the shrine of Baal – and other Erastian divinities. So upon George Fourth Bridge the Covenant folk turned away their heads and did not see their minister.

Now this is hardly a story – certainly not a tale. Only my heart being heavy, I knew it would do me good to turn it upon the Doctor. Dr. Marcus Lawton was the son of Dr. Marcus Lawton. When first he succeeded his father, which happened when he was little more than a boy, and long before I was born, he was called "young Maister Lawton." Then it was that he lectured on "The Revelation" on Sabbath evenings, his father sitting proudly behind him. Then the guttering candles of Lady Nixon's looked down on such an array as had never been seen before within her borders. College professors were there, ministers whose day's work was over – as it had been, Cretes and Arabians, heathen men and publicans. Edward Irving himself came once, in the weariful days before the great darkness. The little kirk was packed every night, floor and loft, aisle and pulpit stairs, entrance hall and window-sill, with such a crowd of stern, grave-visaged men as had never been gathered into any kirk in the town of Edinburgh, since a certain little fair man called Rutherford preached there on his way to his place of exile in Aberdeen.

So my father has often told me, and you may be sure he was there more than once, having made it a duty to do his business with my lord's factor at a time when his soul also might have dealings with the most approven factors of Another Lord.

These were great days, and my father (Alexander McQuhirr of Drumwhat), still kindles when he tells of them. No need of dubious secretaryships then, or of the turning away of faithful heads at the angle of the Candlemaker-row. No young family to be provided for, Doctorate coming at the Session's close from his own university, Professorship on the horizon, a united Body of the devout to minister to! And up there in the pulpit a slim young man with drawing power in the eyes of him, and a voice which even then was mellow as a blackbird's flute, laying down the law of his Master like unto the great of old who testified from Cairntable even unto Pentland, and from the Session Stane at Shalloch-on-Minnoch to where the lion of Loudon Hill looks defiant across the green flowe of Drumclog.

But when I began to attend Lady Nixon's regularly, things were sorely otherwise. The kirk was dwindled and dwindling – in membership, in influence, most of all in finance. But not at all in devotion, not in enthusiasm, not in the sense of privilege that those who remained were thought worthy to sit under such faithful ministrations as those of the Doctor. There was no more any "young Maister Lawton." Nor was a comparison pointed disparagingly by a reference to "the Auld Doctor, young Dr. Marcus's faither, ye ken."

From the alert, keen-faced, loyal-hearted precentor (no hireling he) to the grave and dignified "kirk-officer" there were not two minds in all that little body of the faithful.

You remember MacHaffie-a steadfast man Haffie – no more of his name ever used. Indeed, it was but lately that I even knew he owned the prefatory Mac. He would give you a helpful hint oftentimes (after you had passed the plate), "It's no himsel' the day!" Or more warningly and particularly, "It's a student." Then Haffie would cover your retreat, sometimes going the length of making a pretence of conversation with you as far as the door, or on urgent occasions (as when the Doctor was so far left to himself as to exchange with a certain "popular preacher") even taking you downstairs and letting you out secretly by a postern door which led, in the approven manner of romances, into a side street down which, all unseen, you could escape from your fate. But Haffie always kept an eye on you to see that you did not abstract your penny from the plate. That was the payment he exacted for his good offices; and as I could not afford two pennies on one Sunday morning, Haffie's "private information" usually drove me to Arthur's Seat, or down to Granton for a smell of the salt water; and I can only hope that this is set down to Haffie's account in the books of the recording angel.

But all this was before the advent of Gullibrand. You have heard of him, I doubt not – Gullibrand of Barker, Barker, & Gullibrand, provision merchants, with branches all over the three kingdoms. His name is on every blank wall.

Gullibrand was not an Edinburgh man. He came, they say, from Leicester or some Midland English town, and brought a great reputation with him. He had been Mayor of his own city, a philanthropist almost by profession, and the light and law-giver of his own particular sect always. I have often wondered what brought him to Lady Nixon's Wynd. Perhaps he was attracted by the smallness of our numbers, and by the thought that, in default of any congregation of his own peculiar sect in the northern metropolis, he could "boss" the Kirk of the Covenants as he had of a long season "bossed" the Company of Apocalyptic Believers.

It was said, with I know not what truth, that the first time Mr. Gullibrand came to the Kirk of the Covenants, the Doctor was lecturing in his ordinary way upon Daniel's Beast with Ten Horns. And, if that be so, our angelical Doctor had reason to rue to the end of his life that the discourse had been so faithful and soul-searching. Though Gullibrand thought his interpretation of the ninth horn very deficient, and told him so. But he was so far satisfied that he intimated his intention of "sending in his lines" next week.

At first it was thought to be a great thing that the Kirk of the Covenants in Lady Nixon's Wynd should receive so wealthy and distinguished an adherent.

"Quite an acquisition, my dear," said the hard-pressed treasurer, thinking of the ever increasing difficulty of collecting the stipend, and of the church expenses, which had a way of totalling up beyond all expectation.

"Bide a wee, Henry," said his more cautious wife; "to see the colour o' the man's siller is no to ken the colour o' his heart."

And to this she added a thoughtful rider.

"And after a', what does a bursen Englishy craitur like yon ken aboot the Kirk o' the Co-a-venants?"

And as good Mistress Walker prophesied as she took her douce way homeward with her husband (honorary treasurer and unpaid precentor) down the Middle Meadow Walk, even so in the fulness of time it fell out.

Mr. Jacob Gullibrand gave liberally, at which the kindly heart of the treasurer was elate within him. Mr. Jacob Gullibrand got a vacant seat in the front of the gallery which had once belonged to a great family from which, the faithful dying out, the refuse had declined upon a certain Sadducean opinon calling itself Episcopacy; and from this highest seat in the synagogue Mr. Jacob blinked with a pair of fishy eyes at the Doctor.

Then in the fulness of time Mr. Jacob became a "manager," because it was considered right that he should have a say in the disposition of the temporalities of which he provided so great a part. Entry to the Session was more difficult. For the Session is a select and conservative body – an inner court, a defenced place set about with thorns and not to be lightly approached; but to such a man as Gullibrand all doors in the religious world open too easily. Whence cometh upon the Church of God mockings and scorn, the strife of tongues – and after the vials have been poured out, at the door One with the sharp sword in His hand, the sword that hath two edges.

So after presiding at many Revival meetings and heading the lists of many subscriptions, Jacob Gullibrand became an elder in the Kirk of the Covenants and a power in Lady Nixon's Wynd.

He had for some time been a leading Director of the Association for the Propagation of Gospel Literature; and so in both capacities he was the Doctor's master. Then, having gathered to him a party, recruited chiefly from the busybodies in other men's matters and other women's characters, Jacob Gullibrand turned him about, and set himself to drive the minister and folk of the Kirk of the Covenant as he had been wont to drive his clerks and shop-assistants.

He went every Sabbath into the vestry after service to reprove and instruct Dr. Marcus Lawton. His sermons (so he told him) were too old-fashioned. They did not "grip the people." They did not "take hold of the man on the street." They were not "in line with the present great movement." In short, they "lacked modernity."

Dr. Marcus answered meekly. Man more modest than our dear Doctor there was not in all the churches – no, nor outside of them.

"I am conscious of my many imperfections," he said; "my heart is heavy for the weakness and unworthiness of the messenger in presence of the greatness of the message; but, sir, I do the best I can, and I can only ask Him who hath the power, to give the increase."

"But how," asked Jacob Gullibrand, "can you expect any increase when I never see you preaching in the market-place, proclaiming at the street-corners, denouncing upon a hundred platforms the sins of the times? You should speak to the times, my good sir, you should speak to the times."

"As worthy Dr. Leighton, that root out of a dry ground, sayeth," murmured our Doctor with a sweet smile, "there be so many that are speaking to the times, you might surely allow one poor man to speak for eternity."

But the quotation was thrown away upon Jacob Gullibrand.

"I do not know this Leighton – and I think I am acquainted with all the ministers who have the root of the matter in them in this and in other cities of the kingdom. And I call upon you, sir, to stir us up with rousing evangelical addresses instead of set sermons. We are asleep, and we need awakening."

"I am all too conscious of it," said the Doctor; "but it is not my talent."

"Then if you do know it, if your conscience tells you of your failure, why not get in some such preachers as Boanerges Simpson of Maitland, or even throw open your pulpit to some earnest merchant-evangelist such as – well, as myself?"

But Mr. Gullibrand had gone a step too far. The Doctor could be a Boanerges also upon occasion, though he walked always in quiet ways and preferred the howe of life to the mountain tops.

"No, sir," he said firmly; "no unqualified or unlicensed man shall ever preach in my pulpit so long as I am minister and teaching elder of a Covenant-keeping Kirk!"

"We'll see about that!" said Jacob Gullibrand, thrusting out his under lip over his upper half-way to his nose. Then, seizing his tall hat and unrolled umbrella, he stalked angrily out.

* * * * *

And he kept his word. He did see about it. In Lady Nixon's Wynd there was division. On the one side were ranged the heads of families generally, the folk staid and set in the old ways – "gospel-hardened" the Gullibrandites called them. With the Doctor were the old standards of the Kirk, getting a little dried, maybe, with standing so long in their post-holes, but, so far as in them lay, faithful unto death.

But the younger folk mostly followed the new light. There were any number of Societies, Gospel Bands, Armies of the Blue Ribbon, and of the White – all well and better than well in their places. But being mostly imported wholesale from England, and all without exception begun, carried on, and ended in Gullibrand, they were out of keeping with the plain-song psalms of the Kirk of the Martyrs. There were teas also at "Mount Delectable," the residence of Gullibrand, where, after the singing of many hymns and the superior blandishments of the Misses Gullibrand, it was openly said that if the Kirk in Lady Nixon's Wynd was to be preserved, the Doctor must "go." He was in the way. He was a fossil. He had no modern light. He took no interest in the "Work." He would neither conduct a campaign of street-preaching nor allow an unordained evangelist into his pulpit. The Doctor must go. Mr. Gullibrand was sure that a majority of the congregation was with him. But there were qualms in many hearts which even three cups of Gullibrand's Coffee Essence warm could not cure.

After all, the Doctor was the Doctor – and he had baptised the most part of those present. Besides, they minded that time when Death came into their houses – and also that Noble Presence, that saintly prayer, that uplifted hand of blessing; but in the psychological moment, with meet introduction from the host, uprose the persecuted evangelist.

"If he was unworthy to enter the pulpits of Laodicean ministers, men neither cold nor hot, whom every earnest evangelist should" (here he continued the quotation and illustrated it with an appropriate gesture) "he at least thanked God that he was no Doctor of Divinity. Nor yet of those who would permit themselves to be dictated to by self-appointed and self-styled ministers."

And so on, and so on. The type does not vary.

The petition or declaration already in Gullibrand's breast pocket was then produced, adopted, and many signatures of members and adherents were appended under the influence of that stirring appeal. Great was Gullibrand. The morning light brought counsel – but it was too late. Gullibrand would erase no name.

"You signed the document, did you not? Of your own free will? That is your handwriting? Very well then!"

* * * * *

The blow fell on the Sabbath before the summer communion, always a great time in the little Zion in Lady Nixon's Wynd.

A deputation of two, one being Jacob Gullibrand, elder, waited on Dr. Marcus Lawton after the first diet of worship. They gave him a paper to read in which he was tepidly complimented upon his long and faithful services, and informed that the undersigned felt so great an anxiety for his health that they besought him to retire to a well-earned leisure, and to permit a younger and more vigorous man to bear the burden and the heat of the day. (The choice of language was Gullibrand's.) No mention was made of any retiring allowance, nor yet of the manse, in which his father before him had lived all his life, and in which he himself had been born. But these things were clearly enough understood.

"What need has he of a manse or of an allowance either?" said Gullibrand. "His family are mostly doing for themselves, and he has no doubt made considerable savings. Besides which, he holds a comfortable appointment with a large salary, as I have good reason to know."

"But," he added to himself, "he may not hold that very long either. I will teach any man living to cross Jacob Gullibrand!"

* * * * *

The Doctor sat in the little vestry with the tall blue scroll spread out before him. The light of the day suddenly seemed to have grown dim, and somehow he could hardly see to smooth out the curled edges.