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.

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1

These stories have been edited chiefly from manuscripts supplied to me by my friend Mr. Alexander McQuhirr, M.D., of Cairn Edward in Galloway, of whose personal adventures I treated in the volume called "Lad's Love," I have let my friend tell his tale in his own way in almost every case.

2

These studies I wrote down during certain winters, when, to please my mother, I made a futile attempt to prepare myself "to wag my head in a pulpit." Saving a certain prolixity of statement (which the ill-affected call long-windedness), they were all I carried away with me when I resolved to devote myself to the medical profession. – A. McQ.