The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

But I never knew or suspected Willie's secret till that awful Sabbath day, when the cross that he had borne so long hidden from the eyes of men, was suddenly lifted high in air.

Then all at once Willie towered like a giant, and the bowed shoulders seemed to support a grey head about which had become visible an apparent aureole.

It was the day of High Communion, and the solemn services were drawing to a yet more solemn close. The elements had been dispensed and the elders were back again in their places. Mr. Osbourne had Dr. Landsborough of Portmarnock assisting him that day – a tall man with a gracious manner, and the only man who could give an after-communion address without his words being resented as an intrusion.

"It is always difficult," he said, "to disturb the peculiarly sacred pause which succeeds the act of communion by any words of man – "

He had got no farther when he stopped, and the congregation regarded him with the strained attention which a beautiful voice always compels. The beadle was sitting in all the reasonable pride of his dignity in the first pew to the right of the Session. When Dr. Landsborough stopped, the congregation followed the direction of his eyes.

The door at the back of the kirk was seen to be open and a woman stood there, dishevelled, wild-eyed, a black bottle in her shaking hand, a red shawl about her head.

It was Betty McNair.

"Willie!" she cried aloud in the awful silence, "Willie, come forth – you that lockit me in the back kitchin, an' thocht to stop me frae the saicrament – I hae deceived ye, Willie McNair, clever man as ye think yersel'!"

I was in the corner pew opposite Willie (being, of course, a non-communicant at that date), so that I could see his face. At the first sound of that voice his countenance worked as if it would change its shape, but in a moment I saw him grip the book-board and stand up. Then he went quietly down the aisle to where his wife stood, gabbling wild and wicked words, and laughing till it turned the blood cold to hear her in that sacred place, and upon that solemn occasion.

Firmly, but very gently, Willie took the woman by the arm, and led her out. She went like a lamb. He closed the door behind him, and after a quaking and dreadful pause, Dr. Landsborough took up the interrupted burden of his discourse.

I was a great lad of twelve or thirteen at the time and unused to tears for many years. But I know that I wept all the time till the service was ended, thinking of Willie and wondering where he was and what he would be doing.

That same night I heard my father telling my mother about what came next.

The Session were in their little square room after the service, counting the tokens. The minister was sitting in his chair waiting to dismiss them with the benediction, when a rap came to the door. My father opened it, being nearest, and there without stood Willie McNair.

"I wish to speak with the Session," he said, firmly.

"Come in – come your ways in, William," said the minister, kindly, and the elders resumed their seats, not knowing what was to happen.

"Moderator and ruling elders of this congregation," said Willie, who had not served tables so long without knowing the respect due to his spiritual superiors, "I have come before you in the day of my shame to demit the office I have held so long among you. Gentlemen, I do not complain, I own I am well punished. These twenty years I have lived for my pride. I have lied to each one of you – to the minister, to you the elders, and to the hale congregation, making a roose of my wife, and sticking at nothing to hide the shame of my house.

"Sirs, for these lying words, it behoves that ye deal strictly with me, and I will submit willingly. But believe me, sirs, it was through a godly jealousy that I did it, that the Kirk of the New Testament might not be made ashamed through me and mine. But for a' that I have done wrong, grievous wrong. I aye kenned in my heart that it would come – though, God helping me, I never thocht that it would be like this!

"But noo I maun gang awa'," here he broke into dialect, "for I could never bear to see anither man carry up the Buiks and open the door for you, sir, to enter in. Forty years has William McNair been a hewer of wood and a drawer of water in this tabernacle. Let there be pity in your hearts for him this day. He hath borne himself with pride, and for that the Lord hath brought him very low. And, oh! sirs, pray for her – flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone, come to what ye saw this day! Tell me that He will forgie – be sure to tell me that He will forgie Betty – for what she has dune this day!"

The minister reassured him in affectionate words, and the whole Session tried to get Willie to withdraw his decision. But in vain. The old man was firm.

"No," he said, "Betty is noo my chairge. The husband of a drunkard is not a fit person to serve tables in the clean and halesome sanctuary. I will never leave Betty till the day she dees!"

* * * * *

And neither he did. It was not long. Willie nursed his wife with unremitting tenderness, breaking himself down as he did so. I did not see him again till the day of Betty's funeral. I went with my father, feeling very important, as it was the first function I had been at in my new character of a man.

When they were filling in the grave, Willie stood at the head with his hat in his hand, and his grey locks waving in the moderate wind. His lips were tremulous, but I do not think there were tears in his eyes.

I went up to try to say something that might comfort him. I knew no better then. But I think he did not wish me to speak about Betty, for with a strange uncertain kind of smile he lifted up his eyes till they rested upon the golden fields of ripening corn all about the little kirkyard.

"I think it will be an early harvest," he said, in a commonplace tone.

Then all suddenly he broke into a kind of eager sobbing cry – a heart-prayer of ultimate agony.

"Oh, my God! my God! send that it be an early harvest to puir Willie McNair."

* * * * *

And it was, for before a sheaf of that heartsome yellow corn was gathered into barn, they laid Willie beside the woman he had watched so long, and sheltered so faithfully behind the barriers of his love.

THE BLUE EYES OF AILIE

When first I went to Cairn Edward as a medical man on my own account, I had little to do with the district of Glenkells. For one thing, there was a resident doctor there, Dr. Campbell – Ignatius Campbell – and in those days professional boundaries were more strictly observed than they have been in more recent years. But in time, whether owing to the natural spread of my practice, or through some small name which I got in the countryside, owing to a successful treatment of tubercular cases, I found myself oftener and oftener in the Glenkells. And, indeed, ever since I began to be able to keep a stated assistant, it has been my custom to take day about with him on the Glenkells round.

But in what follows I speak of the very early years when I had still little actual connection with the district. The Glenkells folk are always in the habit of referring to themselves as a community apart. They may, indeed, in extreme cases include the rest of the United Kingdom – but, as it were, casually. Thus, "If the storm continues it will be a sair winter in Glenkells, and the rest o' the country!"

Or when some statesman conspicuously blundered, or a foreign nation involved themselves in superfluous difficulties, you could not go into a farmhouse or traverse the length of the main street of the Clachan without hearing the words: "The like o' that could never hae happened i' the Glenkells!"

So there arose a proverb which, though of local origin, was not without a certain wider acceptation: "As conceity as Glenkells," or, in a more diffuse form: "Glenkells cocks craw aye croosest an' on a muckler midden!"

But Glenkells wotted little of such slurs, or if it minded at all took them for compliments with a solid and irrefutable foundation. On the other hand, it retorted upon the rest of the world in characteristic fashion, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. As thus: "Tak' care o' him. He's no to be trustit. His grandfaither cam' frae Borgue!" Or, more allusively: "Aye, a Nicholson aye needs watchin'. They a' come frae Kirkcudbright, where the jail is!"

One peculiarity of the speech of this country within a country struck me more than all the others – perhaps because it came in the line of my own profession.

More than once an applicant for my services would say, in answer to my question: "Have you called in the doctor?" "Oh, no, it has no been so serious as that!" Succeedantly I would find that Dr. Ignatius Campbell had been in attendance for some time, and that I ought to have consulted with him before, as it were, jumping his claim.

Dr. Campbell was a queer, dusty, smoky old man who, when seen abroad, sat low in a kind of basket-phaeton – as it were, on the small of his back, and visited his patients in a kind of dreamy exaltation which many put down to drink. They were wrong. The doctor was something much harder to cure – an habitual opium-eater. Somehow Dr. Campbell had never taken the position in the Glenkells to which his abilities entitled him. He came from the North, and that was against him. More than that, he sent in his bills promptly, and saw that they were settled. Worst of all, he took no interest in imaginary diseases.

He openly laughed at calomel – which in the Glenkells was looked upon as a kind of blaspheming of the Trinity. But he was a duly certified graduate of Edinburgh like myself. His name was on the Medical List, and only his unfortunate habit and the dreamy idleness engendered by it kept him from making a very considerable name for himself in his profession. I found, for instance, after his death (he left his books, papers, and instruments to me) that he had actually anticipated in his vague theoretical way some of the most applauded discoveries of more recent times, and that he was well versed in all the foreign literature of such subjects as interested him.

But Dr. Ignatius Campbell with his great pipe, his low-crowned hat, his seedy black clothes with the fluff sticking here and there upon them, was not the man to impress the Glenkells. For in Galloway the minister may go about in fishing-boots, shooting-jacket, and deerstalker if he will – nobody thinks the worse of him for it. The lawyer may look as if he bought his clothes from a slopshop. The country gentleman may wear a suit of tweeds for ten years, till the leather gun-patch on the shoulder threatens to pervade the whole man, back and front. But the doctor, if he would be successful, must perforce dress strictly by rule. Sunday and Saturday he must go buttoned up in his well-fitting surtout. His hat must be glossy, no matter what the weather may be (for myself I always kept a spare one in the box of the gig), and the whole man upon entering a sick-room must bring with him the fragrance of clean linen, good clothes, and personal exactitude. And though naturally a little rebellious at first, I hereby subscribe to the Galloway view of the case.

Nance converted me.

"Is that a clean collar? – no, sir, you don't! Take it off this instant! I think this tie will suit you better. It is a dull day and something light becomes you. I have ironed your other hat. See that you put it on! Let me look at your cuffs. Mind that you turn down your trousers before you come in sight of the house. John" (this to my driver), "see that Dr. McQuhirr turns down his trousers and puts on his hat right side first. There is a dint at the back that I cannot quite get out!"

It is no wonder that I succeeded in Galloway, having such a – I mean being endowed with such professional talents!

I had not, however, been long in Glenkells before I found out that there was another medical adviser on the scene – a kind of Brownie who did Dr. Campbell's work while he slept or dreamed his life away over his pipe and his coloured diagrams, whose very name was never mentioned, to me at least – perhaps from some idea that as an orthodox professional man I might resent the Brownie's intrusion.

But matters came to a head one day when I found the bottle of medicine I had sent up from the Cairn Edward apothecary standing untouched on the mantelpiece, while another and wholly unlicensed phial stood at the bed-head with a glass beside it, in which lingered a few drops of something which I knew well that I had not prescribed.

"What is this?" I demanded. "Why have you not administered the medicine I sent you?"

The woman put her apron to her lips in some embarrassment.

"Oh, doctor – ye see the way o't was this," she said. "Jeems was ta'en that bad in the nicht that I had to caa' in – a neebour o' oors – an' he brocht this wi' him."

I lifted my hat.

"Good morning, Mrs. Landsborough," I said, with immense dignity; "I am sorry that I must retire from the case. It is impossible for me to go on if you disregard my instructions in that manner. No doubt Dr. Campbell – "

The good woman lifted up her hands in amazement and appeal. Even Jeems turned on his bed in quick alarm.

"'Deed, Dr. Ma Whurr!" she cried, "it wasna Dr. Cawmell ava. We wadna think on sic a thing – "

"Your faither's son will never gang oot o' a MacLandsborough's hoose in anger, surely?" said Jeems, making the final Galloway appeal to the clan spirit.

This was conjuring with a name I could not disavow, and strongly against my first intentions I continued to attend the case. Jeems got rapidly better, and my bottle diminished steadily day by day. But whether it went down Jeems's throat or mended the health of the back of the grate, it was better, perhaps, that I did not inquire too closely. On my way home I considered my own prescription, and recalled the ingredients which by taste and smell I discovered in the intruding bottle.

"I am not sure but what – well, it might have been better. I wonder who the man is?" This was as much as I could be brought to admit in those days, even to myself. The doctor, who in the first years of his practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is not fit to be trusted – not so much as with the administering of one Beecham's pill.

Yet I own the matter troubled me. I had a rival who – no, he did not understand more of the case than myself. But all the same, I wanted to find him out – in the interests of the Medical Register.

But the riddle was resolved one day about a week afterwards in a rather remarkable manner. I was proceeding up the long main street of the Clachan, looking for a house in which Dr. Campbell (with whom of late I had grown strangely intimate) had told me that he would be found at a certain hour.

As I went I noticed, what I had never seen before, a little house, white and clean without, the creepers clambering all over it. This agreed, so far, with the doctor's description. I turned aside and went up two or three carefully reddened steps. A brass knocker blinked in the evening sunshine. I lifted it and knocked.

"Is the doctor in?" I said to a tall gaunt woman who opened the door an inch or two. As it was I could only see a lenticular section of her person, so that in describing her I draw upon later impressions. She hesitated a second or two, and then, rather grudgingly as I thought, opened the door.

"Come in," she said.

With no more greeting than that she ushered me into a small room crowded with books and apparatus. The table held a curious microscope, evidently home-made in most of its fittings. Pieces of mechanism, the purpose of which I could not even guess, were strewn about the floor. Castings were gripped angle-wise in vices, and at the end of an ordinary carpenter's bench stood a small blacksmith's furnace, with bellows and anvil all complete. In the recess, half hidden by a screen, I could catch a glimpse of a lathe. There was no carpet on the floor.

The door opened and a small spare man stood before me, the deprecation of an offending dog in his beautiful brown eyes. He did not speak or offer to shake hands, but only stood shyly looking up at me. It was some time before I could find words. Nance often tells me that I need a push behind to enable me to take the lead in any conversation – except with herself, that is, and then I never get a chance.

"I beg your pardon, doctor," said I, "I was seeking my friend Campbell. I did not know you had settled amongst us, or I should have been to call on you before this."

I held out my hand cordially, for the man appealed to me somehow. But he did not seem to notice it.

"No, not 'doctor,'" he said, speaking in a quick agitated way. "Mister – Roger is my name."

"I beg your pardon, I am sure," I stammered; "in that case I do not know how to excuse my intrusion. I asked for the doctor, meaning Dr. Campbell, and your servant – "

"My mother, sir!"

There was pride as well as challenge in the brown eyes now, and I found myself liking the young man better than ever.

"I beg your pardon – Mrs. Roger showed me in by mistake, I fear."

"It was no mistake – I am sometimes called so in this place, though not by my own will; I have no right to the title!"

"Well," I said, as I looked round the room. "won't you shake hands with me? You don't know what a pleasure it is to meet a man of science, as it is evident you are, here in these forlorn uplands!"

"Will you pardon me a moment till I inform you exactly of my status?" he said, "and when you clearly understand, if you still wish to shake my hand – well, with all my heart."

He stood silent a moment, and then, suddenly recollecting himself, "Will you not sit down?" he said. "Pray forgive my discourtesy."

I sat down, displacing as I did so a box of tools which had been planted on the green rep of the easy-chair cover.

"You may well be astonished that I wish to speak to you, Dr. McQuhirr," he said, beginning restlessly to pace the room, mechanically avoiding the various obstacles on the floor as he did so; "but I have long wished to put myself right with a member of the profession, and now that chance has thrown us together, I feel that I must speak – "

"But there is Dr. Campbell – surely it cannot be that two men of such kindred tastes, in a small place like this, should not know each other!"

He flushed painfully, and turning to a stand near the window, played with the flywheel of a small model, turning it back and forward with his finger.

"Dr. Campbell is the victim of a most unfortunate prejudice," he murmured softly, and for a space said no more. It was so still in the room that through the quiet I could hear the tall eight-day clock ticking half-way up the stairs.

He resumed his narrative and his pacing to and fro at the same moment.

"I am," he went on, "at heart of your profession. I have attended all the classes and earned the encomiums of my professors in the hospitals. I stood fairly well in the earlier written examinations, but at my first oral I broke down completely – a kind of aphasia came over me. My brain reeled, a dreadful shuddering took hold of my soul, and I fell into a dead faint. For months they feared for my reason, and though ultimately I recovered and completed my course of study, I was never able to sit down at an examination-table again. After my father's death my mother settled here, and gradually it has come about that in any emergency I have been asked to visit and prescribe for a patient. I believe the poor people call me 'doctor' among themselves, but I have never either countenanced the title, or on any occasion failed to rebuke the user. Neither have I ever accepted fee or reward, whether for advice or medicine!"

I held out my hand.

"I care not a brass farthing about professional etiquette," said I; "it is my opinion that you are doing a noble work. And I know of one case, at least, where your diagnosis was better than mine!"

More I could not say. He flushed redly and took my hand, shaking it warmly. Then all at once he dropped the somewhat strained elevation of manner in which he had told his story, and began to speak with the innocent confidence and unreserve of a child. He was obviously much pleased at my inferred compliment.

"Ah!" he said, "I know what you mean. But then, you see, you did not know James MacLandsborough's life history. He was my father's gardener. I knew his record and the record of his father before him. It was nothing but an old complaint, for which I had treated him over and over again – working, that is, on the basis of a recent chill. In your place and with your data I should have done what you did. In fact, I admired your treatment greatly."

We talked a long while, so long, indeed, that I forgot all about Dr. Campbell, and it was dusk before I found myself at Mr. Roger's door saying "Good-night."

"If I might venture to say so," he stammered, holding my hand a moment in his quick nervous grasp, "I would advise you not to mention your visit here to your friend, Dr. Campbell."

"I am afraid I must," I replied; "I had an appointment with him which I have unfortunately forgotten in the interest of our talk!"

"Then I much fear that it is not 'Good-night' but 'Good-bye' between us!" he murmured sadly, and went within.

And even as he had prophesied so it was.

* * * * *

"Sir," said Dr. Campbell, "I shall be sorry to lose your society, but you must choose between that house and mine. I have special and family reasons why I cannot be intimate with any visitor to Mr. – ah, Roger!"

I had found the doctor lying on his couch, as was his custom, his curious Oriental tray beside him, and an acrid tang in the air; but at my first words about my visit he shook off his dreamy abstraction and sat up.

"To tell you the truth, Campbell," I said, as calmly as possible, for, of course, I could not allow any one (except Nance) to dictate to me, "I was singularly interested in the young man, and – he told his tale, as it seemed to me, quite frankly. If I am not to call upon him, I must ask you as to your reasons for a request so singular."

"It is not a request, McQuhirr," said the doctor, passing his hand across his brow as if to clear away moisture. "It is only a little information I give you for your guidance. If you wish to visit this young man – well, I am deeply grieved, but I cannot receive you here, or have any intercourse with you professionally."

"That is saying too much or too little," I replied; "you must tell me your reasons."

Then he hesitated, looking from side to side in a semi-dazed way.

"I would rather not – they are family reasons!" he stammered, as he spoke.

"There is such a thing as the seal of the profession," I reminded him.

"Well," he said at last, "I will tell you. That young man is my nephew, the son of my elder brother. His name is not Roger, but Roger Campbell. His mother was my poor brother's housekeeper. He married her some time after his first wife's death. This boy was their child, and, like a cuckoo in the nest, he tried from the first to oust his elder brother – the child of the dead woman. Indeed, but for my interference his mother and he would have done it between them; for my brother was latterly wholly in their hands.

"Finally this lad went to college, and coming here one summer after the breaking up of the classes he must needs fall in love with Ailie – my daughter, that is. What? – You never knew that I had a daughter! Ah, Alec, I was not always the man you see me – I too have had ambitions. But after – well, what use is there to speak of it? At any rate, young Roger Campbell fell in love with my Ailie, and she, I suppose, liked it well enough, but like a sensible girl gave him no immediate answer. Then after that came his half-brother, who was heir to the little property on Loch Aweside, and he too fell in love with Ailie. There was no girl like her in all the Glen of Kells; and as for him, he was a tall, handsome, fair lad, not crowled and misshapen like this one. Well, Ailie and he fell in love, and then Roger's mother moved heaven and earth to disinherit Archie. It was for this cause that I went up to Inchtaggart and watched my brother during the last weeks of his life. The woman fought like a wild cat for her son, but I and Archie watched in turns. It was I who found the will by which Archie inherited all. In three months Ailie and he were married. Roger Campbell failed in his examinations the same year, and the next mother and son came back here to her native village to live on their savings.