The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

"It is surely raining without," said the Doctor, and lighted the gas with a shaking hand. He looked down the list of names of members and adherents appended to the request that he should retire. The written letters danced a little before his eyes, and he adjusted his glasses more firmly.

"William Gilmour, elder," he murmured; "ah, his father was at school with me; I mind that I baptised William the year I was ordained. He was a boy at my Bible-class, a clever boy, too. I married him; and he came in here and grat like a bairn when his first wife died, sitting on that chair. I called on the Lord to help William Gilmour – and now – he wants me away."

"Jacob Gullibrand, elder."

The Doctor passed the name of his persecutor without a comment.

"Christopher Begbie, manager. He was kind to me the year the bairns died."

(Such was Christopher's testimony. The year before I went to Edinburgh the Doctor had lost a well-beloved wife and two children, within a week of each other. He preached the Sabbath after on the text, "All thy waves have gone over me!" Christopher Begbie, manager, had been kind then. Pass, Christopher!)

"Robert Armstrong, manager. Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted," said the Doctor, and stared at the lozenges of the window till coloured spots danced before his kind old eyes. "Robert Armstrong, for whose soul I wrestled even as Jacob with his Maker; Robert Armstrong that walked with me through the years together, and with whom I have had so much sweet communion, even Robert also does not think me longer fit to break the bread of life among these people!"

Pass, Robert! There is that on the blue foolscap which the Doctor hastened to wipe away with his sleeve. But it is doubtful if such drops are ever wholly wiped away.

"John Malcolm – ah, John, I do not wonder. Perhaps I was over faithful with thee, John. But it was for thy soul's good. Yet I did not think that the son of thy father would bear malice!"

"Margaret Fountainhall, Elizabeth Fountainhall – the children of many prayers. Their mother was a godly woman indeed; and you, too, Margaret and Elizabeth, would sit under a younger man. I mind when I prepared you together for your first communion!"

The Doctor sighed and bent his head lower upon the paper. "Ebenezer Redpath, James Bannatyne, Samuel Gardiner" – he passed the names rapidly, till he came to one – "Isobel Swan."

The Doctor smiled at the woman's name. It was the first time he had smiled since they gave him the paper and he realised what was written there.

"Ah, Isobel," he murmured, "once in a far-off day you did not think as now you think!"

And he saw himself, a slim stripling in his father's pew, and across the aisle a girl who worshipped him with her eyes. And so the Doctor passed from the name of Isobel Swan, still smiling – but kindly and graciously, for our Doctor had it not in him to be anything else.

He glanced his eye up and down the list. He seemed to miss something.

"Henry Walker, treasurer – I do not see thy name, Henry. Many is the hard battle I have had with thee in the Session, Henry. Dost thou not want thine old adversary out of thy path once and for all? And Mary, thy wife? Tart is thy tongue, Mary, but sweet as a hazel-nut in the front of October thy true heart!"

"Thomas Baillie – where art thou, true Thomas? I crossed thee in the matter of the giving out of the eleventh paraphrase, Thomas. Yet I do not see thy name. Is it possible that thou hast forgotten the nearer ill and looked back on the days of old when Allan Symington with Gilbert his brother, and thou and I, Thomas Baillie, went to the house of God in company? No, these things are not forgotten. I thank God for that. The name of Thomas Baillie is not here."

And the Doctor folded up the blue crackling paper and placed it carefully between the "leds" of the great pulpit Bible.

"It is the beginning of the week of Communion," he said; "it is not meet that I should mingle secular thoughts with the memory of the broken body and the shed blood. On your knees, Marcus Lawton, and ask forgiveness for your repining and discriminating among the sheep of the flock whom it is yours to feed on a coming Lord's day; and are they not all yours – your responsibility, your care, aye, Marcus – even – even Jacob Gullibrand?"

* * * * *

It was the Sabbath of High Communion in the Kirk of the Covenants. Nixon's Wynd, ordinarily so grim and bare, so gritty underfoot and so narrow overhead, now seemed to many a spacious way to heaven, down which walked the elect of the Lord in a way literally narrow, and literally steep, and literally closed with a gate at which few, very few, went in.

A full hour too soon they began to arrive, strange quaint figures some of them, gathered from the nooks and corners of the old town. They arrived in twos and threes – the children's children of the young plants of grace who saw Claverhouse ride down the West Bow on his way to Killiecrankie. As far as Leith walk you might know them, bent a little, mostly coopers in the Trongate, wrights in the Kirk Wynd, ships' carpenters at the Port. They had their little "King's Printer" Bibles in the long tails of their blue coats – for black had not yet come in to make uniform all the congregations of every creed. But the mistress, walking a little behind, carried her Bible decently wrapped in a white napkin along with a sprig of southern-wood.

All that Sabbath day there hung, palpable and almost visible, about Nixon's Wynd a sweet savour as of "Naphtali," and the Persecutions, and Last Testimonies in the Grassmarket; but in the shrine itself there was nothing grim, but only graciousness and consolation and the sense of the living presence of the Hope of Israel. For our Doctor was there sitting throned among his elders. The sun shone through the narrow windows, and just over the wall, it it were your good fortune to be near those on the left-hand side, you could see the top of the Martyrs' monument in the kirkyard of Old Greyfriars.

It was great to see the Doctor on such days, great to hear him. Beneath, the white cloths glimmered fair on the scarred bookboards, bleached clean in honour of the breaking of holy bread. The silver cups, ancient as Drumclog and Shalloch, so they said, shone on the table of communion, and we all looked at them when the Doctor said the solemn and mysterious words, "wine on the lees well refined."

For there are no High Churchmen so truly high as the men of the little protesting covenanting remnants of the Reformation Kirk of Scotland; none so jealous in guarding the sacraments; none that can weave about them such a mantle of awe and reverence.

The Doctor was concluding his after-table address. Very reverend and noble he looked, his white hair falling down on his shoulders, his hands ever and anon wavering to a blessing, his voice now rising sonorous as a trumpet, but mostly of flute-like sweetness, in keeping with his words. He never spoke of any subject but one on such a day. That was, the love of Christ.

"Fifty-one summer communions have I been with you in this place," so he concluded, "breaking the bread and speaking the word. Fifty-one years to-day is it since my father took me by the hand and led me up yonder to sit by his side. Few there be here in the flesh this day who saw that. But there are some. Of such I see around me three – Henry Walker, and Robert Armstrong, and John Malcolm. It is fitting that those who saw the beginning should see the end."

At these words a kind of sough passed over the folk. You have seen the wind passing over a field of ripe barley. Well, it was like that. From my place in the gallery I could see set faces whiten, shoulders suddenly stoop, as the whole congregation bent forward to catch every word. A woman sobbed. It was Isobel Swan. The white faces turned angrily as if to chide a troublesome child.

"It has come upon me suddenly, dear friends," the Doctor went on, "even as I hope that Death itself will. Sudden as any death it hath been, and more bitter. For myself I was not conscious of failing energies, of natural strength abated. But you, dear friends, have seen clearer than I the needs of the Kirk of the Covenants. One hundred and six years Marcus Lawtons have ministered in this place. From to-day they shall serve tables no more. Once – and not so long ago, it seems, looking back – I had a son of my body, a plant reared amid hopes and prayers and watered with tears. The Lord gave. The Lord took. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

There ensued a silence, deep, still – yet somehow also throbbing, expectant. Isobel Swan did not sob again. She had hidden her face.

"And now my last word. After fifty-one years of service in this place, it is hard to come to the end of the hindmost furrow, to drop the hand from the plough, never more to go forth in the morning as the sower sowing precious seed."

"No – no – no!"

It was not only Isobel Swan now, but the whole congregation. Here and there, back and forth subdued, repressed, ashamed, but irresistible, the murmur ran; but the doctor's voice did not shake.

"Fifty-one years of unworthy service, my friends – what of that? – a moment in the eternity of God. Never again shall I meet you here as your minister; but I charge you that when we meet in That Day you will bear me witness whe her I have loved houses or lands, or father or mother or wife or children better than you! And now, fare you well. The memory of bygone communions, of hours of refreshment and prayer in this sacred place, of death-beds blessed and unforgotten in your homes shall abide with me as they shall abide with you. The Lord send among you a worthier servant than Marcus Lawton, your fellow-labourer and sometime minister. Again, and for the last time, fare you well!"

* * * * *

It was a strange communion. The silver cups still stood on the table, battered, but glistening. The plates of bread that had been blessed were beside them. The elders sat around. A low inarticulate murmur of agony travelled about the little kirk as the Doctor sat down and covered his face with his hands, as was his custom after pronouncing the benediction.

Then in the strange hush uprose the tall angular form of William Gilmour from the midst of the Session, his bushy eye-brows working and twitching.

"Oh, sir," he said, in forceful jerks of speech, "dinna leave us. I signed the paper under a misapprehension. The Lord forgive me! I withdraw my name. Jacob Gullibrand may dischairge me if he likes!"

He sat down as abruptly as he had risen.

Then there was a kind of commotion all over the congregation. One after another rose and spoke after their kind, some vehemently, some with shamed faces.

"And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried a dozen at a time. "Bide with us, Doctor! We cannot want you! Pray for us!"

Then Henry Walker, the white-haired, sharp-featured treasurer and precentor of Nixon's Wynd, stretched out his hand. The Doctor had been speaking, as is the custom, not from the pulpit, but from the communion table about which the elders sat. He had held the Gullibrand manifesto in his hand; but ere he lifted them up in his final blessing he had dropped it.

Henry Walker took it and stood up.

"Is it your will that I tear this paper? Those contrary keep their seats – those agreeable STAND UP!"

As one man the whole congregation stood up.

All, that is, save Jacob Gullibrand. He sat a moment, and then amid a silence which could be felt, he rose and staggered out like a man suddenly smitten with sore sickness. He never set foot in Nixon's Wynd again.

Henry Walker waited till the door had closed upon the Troubler of Israel, the paper still in his hand. Then very solemnly he tore it into shreds and trampled them under foot.

He waited a moment for the Doctor to speak, but he did not.

"And you, also, will withdraw your resignation and stay with us?" he said.

The Doctor could not answer in words; but he nodded his head. It was, indeed, the desire of his heart. Then in a loud and surprising voice – jubilant, and yet with a kind of godly anger in it, Henry Walker gave out the closing psalm.

"All people that on earth do dwell,Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;Him serve with mirth, His praise forthtell,Come ye before Him and rejoice!"

CARNATION'S MORNING JOY

This is the story of the little white-washed cottage at the top of the brae a mile or so before you come into Cairn Edward. It is a love story, a simple and uneventful one, quickly told.

The cottage is not now what it was – I fear to say how many years ago – when I was wont to drive in to the Cameronian Kirk on summer Sabbaths in the red farm cart. Then not only I, but every one used to watch from far for the blue waft of reek going up as we sighted the white gable-end far away.

"Carnation's Cottage!" we used to call it, and even my father, Cameronian elder as he was, smiled when he passed it.

It was so named because a girl once lived there whose fame for worth and beauty had travelled very far. Her name was Carnation Maybold, a combination which at once tells its tale of no countryside origin. Carnation's father was a railroad engineer who had come from England and married a farmer's daughter in a neighbouring parish. Then when Carnation's mother died in childbirth, he had called his one daughter by the name of his wife's favourite flower.

"What for do ye no caa' her Jessie like her mither?" said the ancient dame who had come to keep his house.

"Because I never want to hear that name again!" Engineer Maybold had said. For he had been wrapped up in his wife.

Carnation Maybold lost her father, the imaginative man and second-rate engineer, when she was thirteen, a tall slim slip of a girl, with a face like a flower and a cheek that already had upon it the blush of her name. Old Tibbie Lockhart dwelt with her, and defenced the orphan maid about more securely than a city set with walls. The girl went a mile to the Cairn Edward Academy, where she was already in the first girls' class, and John Charles Morrison carried the green bag which held her books. In addition to this, being strongly built, he thrashed any boy who laughed at him for doing so. John Charles was three years older than his girl friend, and had the distinct beginnings of a moustache in days when Carnation still wore her hair in a long plaited tail down her back – for in those days Gretchen braids were the fashion.

It is curious to remember that, while all the other girls were Megs and Katies, Madges and Jennies, Carnation Maybold's first name knew no diminutive. She was, and has remained, just Carnation. That is enough. She was fifteen when John Charles was sent to college. After that she carried her own books both ways. She had offers from several would-be successors to the honourable service, but she accepted none. Besides, she was thinking of putting her hair up.

When John Charles came home in the windy close of the following March, the first thing he did was to put the little box which contained his class medal into his vest pocket, and hasten down the road to meet Carnation. His father was at market. His mother (a peevish, complaining, prettyish woman) was in bed with sick headache, and not to be disturbed. But there remained Carnation. The returned scholar asked no better.

The heart of John Charles beat as he kept the wider side of the turns of the road that he might the sooner spy her in front of him. She was only a slip of a school girl and he a penniless student – but nevertheless his heart beat.

Did he love her? No, he knew that he had never uttered the word in her hearing, and that if he had, she was too young to know its meaning. She was just Carnation – and – and, how his heart beat!

But still the wintry trees stood gaunt and spectral on either hand. He passed them as in a dream, his soul bent on the next twist of the red-gray sandy ribbon of road, that was flung so unscientifically about among the copses and pastures.

There she was at last – taller, lissomer than ever, her green bag swinging in her hand and a gay lilt of a tune upon her lips.

"Carnation!"

She did not answer him by any word. Instead, she stood silent with the song stilled mid-flight upon her lips. She smiled happily, however, as he came near.

"Carnation!" he cried again. And there was something shining in the lad's eyes which she had never seen there before.

She held out the green bag. Then she turned her elbow towards him with a certain defensive instinct.

"Here, take my books, John Charles!" she said, as if he had never been away; and with no more than that they began to walk homeward together.

"Are you not glad to see me?" he asked presently.

"Oh, yes, indeed – very glad!" she answered, looking at the ground; "you will be able to carry my books again, you see!"

"Who has carried them while I have been away?"

"Carried them myself!"

"For true?"

"Honour!"

John Charles breathed so long a breath that it was almost a sigh. Carnation looked at him curiously.

"Why, you have grown a moustache," she said, smiling a quick, radiant smile.

"And you – you are different too. What is it?" he returned, gazing openly at her, as indeed he had been doing ever since they met. She turned her face piquantly towards him. It was like a flower. A faint perfume seemed to breathe about the boy, making his brain whirl.

"Not grown a moustache, anyway," Carnation said, tauntingly.

And she roguishly twirled imaginary tips between her finger and thumb.

"Let me see!" said John Charles, drawing nearer as if to examine into the facts.

"Oh, no," said Carnation hastily, fending him off with a glance, "I'm grown up now, and it's different! Besides – "

And she glanced behind her along the red-gray ribbon of dusty road, along which for lack of company the March dust was dancing little jigs of its own.

"Why different?" began John Charles, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

"Well, don't you see, stupid?" she gave her head a pretty coquettish turn, "I've got my hair up!"

* * * * *

After this they walked somewhat moodily along a while. Or, at least the young man was moody and silent, while Carnation only smiled sedately, and something, perhaps a certain bitter easting in the wind, made her cheeks more fiowerlike and reminiscent of her name than ever.

"Carnation," he said at last, "why are we not to be friends any more? Why have you grown away from me? You are three years younger – and yet – you seem older somehow to-day – years and years older."

"Well, what more do you want – aren't you carrying my bag?"

"Tell me about yourself – what have you been doing?" He changed the subject.

"Going to school – let me see, six twenties are a hundred and twenty. Coming back another hundred and twenty times. Two hundred and forty trudges, and the bag growing heavier all the time! It is quite time you came back, John Charles!"

"Carnation, dear," with trepidation he ventured the adjective, "I have something to show you that nobody has seen – what will you give me if I show it you?"

"I shan't give you anything; but you can show me and see," was the somewhat inconsequent reply.

"Come here then, by the end of the house."

They had arrived at Carnation's cottage, and the consciousness of the eye of Tibbie Lockhart out of the kitchen window was upon the youth.

"I shan't – show it to me here!" said Carnation, swinging the bag of books through the open front door in a casual and school-girlish manner.

"I can't. I don't want Tibbie to know about it – nobody but you must see it!"

"Are you sure nobody has seen it – no girl in Edinburgh – nobody in Cairn Edward?"

"No one at all – not even my mother, not since I got it. I kept it for you, Carnation."

"Is it very pretty?"

"Yes, very pretty! Come in here; you will be sorry if you don't!"

"Well, I will come – just for a moment!"

They went round to the gable of the cottage where, being sheltered from the wind, a couple of sentinel Irish yews grew tall and erect. Between them there was a little bower. John Charles took the little flat box out of his pocket and opened it.

A gold class medal lay within, not fitting very well on account of a thin blue ribbon which the proprietor had strung through a clasp at the top.

"Oh," said Carnation with a gasp, "it is lovely. Is it gold? Why, it has your name on. It is the medal of the class. How proud your father and mother will be!"

And she clasped her hands and gazed, but did not offer to take it in her fingers.

"No, indeed, that they won't," said John Charles grimly; "they won't ever know, and if they did they wouldn't care. I am not going to tell them or any one. I won it for you. All the time I was working I kept saying to myself, 'If I win the medal I shall give it to Carnation to wear round her neck on a blue ribbon – because blue is her colour – '"

"Oh, but I could not!" cried the girl, going back a step or two, "I dare not! Any one might see and read – what is written on it."

"You needn't wear it outside, Carnation," he pleaded, in a low tone; "see, I put the ribbon through it that you might."

"It is pretty" – her face had a kind of inner shining upon it, and her eyes glittered darkly – "it was very nice of you to think about me – not that I believe for a moment you really did. But, indeed, indeed, I can't take it – "

The face of John Charles Morrison fell. His jaw, a singularly determined one, began to square itself.

"Very well," he said, flirting the ribbon out of the clasp and throwing the box on the ground, "do you see that pond down there? As sure as daith" (he used the old school-boy oath of asseveration) "I'll throw it in that pond if ye dinna tak' it!"

Something very like a sob came into the lad's throat.

"And I worked so hard for it. And I thought you would have liked it!"

"I do like it – I do – I do!" cried Carnation, agonised and affrayed.

"No, you don't!"

"Give it me, then – don't look!"

She turned her back upon him, and for a long moment her fingers were busy about her neck.

"Now!"

She faced about, the light of a showery April in her eyes. She was smiling and blushing at the same time. There was just a faint gleam of blue ribbon where the division of the white collar came in front of her throat.

John Charles recognised that the moment for which he had striven all through the winter had come. He stooped and kissed her where she stood. Then he turned on his heel and walked silently away, leaving her three times Carnation and a school-girl no more.

She watched him out of sight, the vivid blush slowly fading from her face, and then went demurely within.

"Where gat ye that ribbon wi' the wee guinea piece at the end o't?" said guardian Tibbie that night, suggestively.

"I know; but I promised not to tell!" quoth the witch, who indeed, twisted the shrewish-tongued old woman round her finger.

"But I think I can guess," said Tibbie shrewdly; "gin that blue ribbon wasna coft in Edinbra toon, I'se string anither gowden guinea upon it!"

But Carnation Maybold only smiled and pouted her lips, as if at a pleasant memory.

* * * * *

From sixteen to twenty-six is more than a full half of the period of life to which we give the name of girlhood. But at twenty-six Carnation Maybold was Carnation Maybold still. Yet there had been no breaking off, no failure in the steadfastness of that early affection which had sent John Charles along the dusty road to carry the school-bag of green baize.

But the medallist never returned to college. During the early falling twilight of the next Hint-o'-Hairst (or end of harvest), his father, Gawain Morrison, driving homeward from market all too mellow, brake neck-bone over the crags of the Witch's pool.

So, his mother being a feeble woman, though still young and buxom, John Charles had perforce to bide at home and shoulder the responsibilities of a farm of two thousand pastoral acres and a rent of £800, payable twice a year in Cairn Edward town.

It was a sore burden for such young shoulders, but John Charles had grit in him, and, what made his heart glad, he could do most of his work, by lea rig and pasturage, within sight of a certain cottage where dwelt the maid with a ribbon of blue about her neck.

There was no possibility of any marriage, nor, indeed, talk of any between them, and that for two good reasons: Gawain Morrison had died in debt. He was "behindhand at the Bank," and his farm and stock were left to his widow at her own disposition, unless she should marry again, in which case they were willed to his son John Charles Morrison, presently student of arts in the University of Edinburgh. The will had been made during the one winter that son had spent away from home.