* * * * *"Weel," my mother would conclude, "may be it wasna juist richt—but I couldna resist the lass. So Willie did as she said, and naething was kenned. But I garred him gie in his notice the next day, and I took him hame, for it was clear as day that the lad was deein' on his feet. And I brocht the lass hame wi' me too. And if Willie had leeved—but it wasna to be. We juist keepit him till November. And the last nicht we sat yin on ilka side o' the bed, her haudin' a hand and me haudin' a hand, neither jealous o' the ither, which was a great wonder. An' I think he kind o' dovered an' sleepit—whiles wanderin' in his mind and syne waukin' wi' a strange look on his face. But ower in the sma' hours when the wind begins to rise and blaw caulder, and the souls o' men to slip awa, he started up. It was me he saw first, for the candle was on my side."'Mither,' he said, 'where's Lizzie?'"And when he saw her sit by him, he drew away the hand that had been in mine and laid it on hers."'Lizzie,' he said, 'dinna greet, my bonnie: I promise! I will be your ain guid lad!'"* * * * *"And the lass?" I queried."Oh, she gaed back to the shop, and they say she has chairge o' a hale department noo, and is muckle thocht on. But she has never mairried, and, though we hae askit her every year, she wad never come back to Drumquhat again!""And that," said my mother, smiling through her tears, "is the story how my Willie was led astray by the Lass in the Shop."THE RESPECT OF DROWDLEMost folk in the West of Scotland know the parish of Drowdle, at least by repute. It is a great mining centre, and the inhabitants are not counted among the peaceable of the earth."If ye want your head broken, gang doon to Drowdle on a Saturday nicht" is an advice often given to the boastful or the bumptious. Drowdle is a new place too, and the inhabitants, instead of being, like ordinary Scottish Geordies, settled for generations in one coal-field and with whole streets of relatives within stonethrow, are composed of all the strags and restless ne'er-do-weels of such as go down into the earth, from Cornwall even to the Hill-o'-Beith.Most, I say, know Drowdle by repute. I myself, indeed, once acted aslocum tenensfor the doctor there during six hot and lively summer weeks, and gained an experience in the treatment of contusions, discolorations, and abrasions of the skull and frontal bones which has been of the greatest possible use to me since. The younger Drowdleites, however, had at that time a habit of stretching a cord across the threshold about a foot above the step, which interfered considerably with professional dignity of exit—that is, till you were used to it. But after one has got into the habit of scouting ahead with a spatula ground fine and tied to a walking-stick on darkish nights, Drowdle began to respect you. Still better if (as I did) you can catch a couple of the cord-stretchers, produce an occipital contusion or two on your own account, and finish by kicking the jesters bodily into Drowdle Water. Then the long rows of slated brick which constitute the mining village agree that "the new doakter kens his business—a smart lad, yon! Heard ye what he did to thae twa deils, Jock Lee an' Cockly Nixon? He catchit them trippin' him wi' a cairt rape at Betty Forgan's door, and, faith, he threw them baith into Drowdle Water!"Such being the way to earn the esteem of Drowdle, it would have saved the telling of this story if, when young Dairsie Gordon received a call to be minister of the recently established mission church there, he had had any one to enlighten him on the subject.He was so young that he was ashamed when any one asked him his age. They had called him "Joanna" at college, and sent him recipes along the desk for compelling a beard and moustache to grow under any conditions of soil and climate, however unfavourable.Dairsie Gordon was very innocent, very learned, very ignorant, and—the only son of a well-to-do mother, who from a child had destined him for the ministry. The more was the pity!As a child he was considered too delicate for the rough-and-tumble of school. He had a tutor, a mild-faced young man who seldom spoke above his breath, and never willingly walked more than a mile at a time, and then with a book in his hand and a flute in his tail pocket. Under his instruction, however, Dairsie became an excellent classic, and his verse gained the approval of Professor Jupiter Olympus when he went up to the University of Edinburgh, where Latin verse was a rare accomplishment in those days, and Greek ones as extinct as the dodo.When her son went to college, Mrs. Gordon came up herself from the country to settle Dairsie in the house of a friend of her own, the widow of a deceased minister who had married an old maid late in life. This excellent lady possessed much experience of bazaars and a good working knowledge of tea-meetings, but she knew nothing of young men.So, being placed in authority over Dairsie, she insisted that he should come straight back to Rose Crescent from his classes, take dinner in the middle of the day alone with his hostess, and then—as a treat—accompany her while she made a call or two on other clerical widows who had married late in life. Then she took him home to open his big lexicons and pore over crabbed constructions till supper-time. This feast consisted of plain bread and butter with the smallest morsel of cheese, because much cheese is not good for the digestion at night. A glass of milk accompanied these delicacies. It also was plain and blue, because the cream (a doubtful quantity at best) had been skimmed off it for Mrs. McSkirmish's tea in the morning.After that Dairsie was sent to bed. He was allowed ten minutes to take off his clothes and say his prayers. Then the gas was turned out at the meter. If he wanted time for more study and reading he could have it in the morning. It is good for youth to rise betimes and study the Hebrew Scriptures with cold feet and fingers that will not turn the leaves of Gesenius till they are blown upon severally and individually. In this fashion, varying in nothing, save that on alternate Sundays there was something hot for supper, because Mrs. McSkirmish's minister—a severe and faithful divine—came to interview Dairsie and report on his progress to his mother, the future pastor passed seven winter sessions.Scholastically his victories were many. Bursaries seemed purposely created for him to take—and immediately resign in favour of hisproxime accessit, who needed the money more. The class never queried as to who would be first in the "exams.," but only wrangled concerning who would come next after Gordon—and how many marks below.In summer Dairsie went quietly down to his mother's house in the country, where his neck was fallen upon duly, and four handmaids (with little else to do) worshipped him—especially when for the first time he took the "Book" at family worship. There was a wood before the door, in which he passed most of his time lying on his back reading, and his old tutor came to stay with him for a month at a time.Thus was produced the Reverend Dairsie Gordon, B.D., without doubt the first student of his college, Allingham Fellow, and therefore entitled to go to Germany for a couple of years by the terms of his Fellowship.But by one of these interpositions of Providence, which even the most orthodox denominate "doubtful," there was at this time a vacancy in the pastoral charge of the small Mission Church at Drowdle. The late minister had accepted a call to a moorland congregation of sixty members, where nothing had happened within the memory of man, more stirring than the wheel coming off a cart of peats opposite the manse.Dairsie Gordon preached at Drowdle. His voice was sweet and cultivated and musical, so that it fell pleasantly on the ears of the kirkgoers of Drowdle, over whose heads had long blared a voice like to the trumpets at the opening of the seventh seal in the book of the Revelation.So they elected him unanimously. Also he was "well-to-do," and it was understood in the congregation that his salary would not be a consideration. The minister elect immediately resigned his fellowship, considering this a direct call to the work.In this fashion Dairsie Gordon went to his martyrdom. Ignorant of the world as a child of four, never having been elbowed and buffeted and brow-beaten by circumstances, never cuffed at school, snubbed at college, and so variously and vicariously licked and kicked into shape, he found himself suddenly pitchforked into the spiritual charge of one of the most difficult congregations in Scotland.The new minister was introduced socially at a tea-meeting on the evening of the ordination, and then and there he had his first taste of the Drowdelian quality. There were plenty of douce and sober folk in the front pews of the little kirk, but at the back reckless, unmarried Geordies were sandwiched between a militant and ungodly hobbledehoyhood. Paper bags that had contained fruit exploded in the midst of the most solemn addresses. Dairsie's own remarks were fairly punctuated with these explosions, and by the flying shells of Brazil nuts. Bone buttons at the end of knitting needles clicked and tapped at windows, and a shutter fell inward with a crash. It was thus that Dairsie returned thanks."My dear people," (a penny trumpet blew an obligato accompaniment under the bookboard of a pew,) "I have been led to the oversight of this flock" (pom-pom-pom) "after prayer and under guidance. I shall endeavour to teach you—" ("Catch-the-Ten!" "All-Fours!" "Quoits!") "some of those things which I have devoted my life to acquiring. I am prepared for some little difficulty at first, till we know one another——"The remainder of the address was inaudible owing to cries of, "Rob Kinstry has stole my bag!" "Ye're a liar!" All which presently issued in the general turmoil of a free fight toward the rear of the church.Mrs. Gordon had come up to be present on the occasion of her son's ordination, and that night in the little manse mother and son mingled their tears. It all seemed so wrong and pitiful to them.But Dairsie, with a fine hopefulness on his delicate face, lifted his head from his mother's shoulder, smiling like a girl through his own tears."But after all, this is the work to which I have been called, mother. And you know if it is His will that I am to labour here, in time He will give the increase."So somewhat heartened, mother and son kneeled down together, prayed, and went to bed.On the forenoon of the next day two of the elders, decent pitmen, who happened to be on the night-shift, called in to give their verdict and to drop a word of advice."A graund meetin'," said Pate Tamson, the oversman of No. 4; "what for didna ye tak' your stick and gie some o' the vaigabonds a clour on the lug? It wad hae served them weel!""I could not think of doing such a thing," said Dairsie. "I desire to wield a spiritual, not a carnal influence!""Carnal influence here, carnal influence there," cried Robin Naysmith, stamping his foot till the little study trembled, "if ye are to succeed in this village o' Drowdle, ye maun pit doon your fit—like that, sir, like that!"And he stamped on the new Brussels carpet till the plaster began to come down in flakes from the ceiling. Dairsie tried to imagine himself stamping like that, but could not. For one thing, he had always worn single-soled shoes, with silk ties and woollen 'soles' (which he had promised his mother to take out and dry whenever he came in), a fact which has more bearing on the main question than appears on the surface."A man has to assert hissel' in this toon, or he is thocht little on," said Pate Tamson, the oversman. "Noo, there's MacGrogan, the Irish priest—I dinna agree wi' his releegion, an' dootless he will hae verra little chance at the Judgment. But, faith, when he hears that there's ony o' his fowk drinkin' ower lang aboot Lucky Moat's, in he gangs wi' a cudgel as thick as your airm, and the great solemn curses, fair rowlin' aff the tongue o' him—and faith, he clears Lucky's faster than a hale raft of polissmen! Aye, he does that!""Aye," assented the junior elder, Robin Naysmith, he whose feet had put the plaster in danger, "what we need i' Drowdle is a man o' poo'er—a man o' wecht——!""'Quit ye like men—be strong!' saith the Scriptures," summed up the oversman. Then both of them waited for Dairsie, to see what he had got to say."I—I am sure I shall endeavour to do my best," said the young minister, "but I fear I have underestimated the difficulties of the position."The oversman shook his head as he went out through the manse gate."And I am some dootfu' that we hae made a mistak'!""If we hae," rejoined Naysmith, the strong man, "we maun keep it frae the knowledge o' Drowdle. But the lad is young—young. And when he has served his 'prenticeship to sorrow, he will maybes come oot o' the furnace as silver that is tried!"* * * * *Now, neither Drowdle nor its inhabitants meant to be unkind. In case of illness or accident among themselves, none gave material help more liberally. What belonged to one was held in a kindly communism to be the right of all. But Drowdle was not to be handled delicately. It was a nettle to be grasped with gloves of untanned leather.Dairsie Gordon opened his first Sunday-school at three in the afternoon. At a quarter to four as he stood up on the platform to give his closing address, he found boys scuttling and playing "tig" between his legs. He laid down his hymn-book, and on lifting it to read the closing verses, discovered that a certain popular bacchanalian collection entitled "Songs of the Red, White, and Blue," had mysteriously taken its place.The young minister had other and graver trials also. The pitmen passed him on the road with a surly grunt, and he did not know it was only because they were trudging home dog-tired from their long shift. The hard-driving managers and sub-managers, men without illusions and as blatantly practical as a Scottish daily paper, passed him by contemptuously, as if he had been a tract thrust under their doors. The schoolmaster, a cleverish machine-made youth of inordinate conceit, openly scoffed. He was a weakling, this minister, and he had better know it.And, indeed, in these days, Dairsie gave them plenty of scope for complaint. His sermons might possibly have edified a company of the unfallen angels, if we can fancy such being interested in heathen philosophy and the interpretation of the more obscure Old Testament Scriptures. But to this gritty, ungodly, crass-natured, rasp-surfaced village of Drowdle, the young man merely babbled in his pulpit as the summer brooks do over the pebbles.An itinerant evangelist, who shook the fear of hell-fire under their noses with the fist of a pugilist, and claimed in ancient style the power to bind and the power to loose, might conceivably have succeeded in Drowdle, but as it was, Dairsie Gordon proved a failure of the most absolute sort. And Drowdle, having no false modesty, told him plainly of it. At informal meetings of Session the question of their minister's shortcomings was discussed with freedom and point, only the overs-man and Robin Naysmith pleading suspension of judgment on account of the young man's years.For there were sympathetic hearts here and there among the folk of Drowdle. Women with the maternal instinct yet untrampled out of them, came to their doors to look after the tall slim "laddie" who was so like the sons they had dreamed of when the maiden's blush still tinged their cheeks."He's a bonnie laddie to look on," they said to each other as, palm on hip, they stood looking after him. "It's a peety that he is sae feckless!"Yet Dairsie was always busy. He was no neglecter of duty. He worked with eager strained hopefulness. No matter how deep had been his depression of the evening, the morning found him contemplating a day of work with keen anticipation and unconquerable desire to succeed.To-day, at last, he would begin to make an impression. He would visit the remainder of Dickson's Row, and perhaps—who knew?—it might be the turning of the tide. So he sat down opposite his mother at breakfast, smiling and rubbing his hands."To-day I am going to show them, mother," he would say."Show them what, Dairsie dear?""That I am a man!"But within him he was saying, "Work while it is day!" And yet deeper in his heart, so deep that it became almost a prayer for release, he was wont to add—"The night cometh when no man can work!" Then to this he added, as he took his round soft hat and went out, "O Lord, help me to do something worthy before I die—something to make these people respect me."* * * * *It was a hot September afternoon. Drowdle was a-drowse from Capersknowe to the Back Raw. Here and there could be heard a dull recurring thud, which was thedunt duntof the roller on the dough of the bake-board as some housewife languidly rolled out her farles of oatcake. For the rest, there was no sound save the shout of a callant fishing for minnows in the backwaters of Drowdle, and the buzz of casual bluebottles on the dirty window-panes.Suddenly there arose a cry, dominant and far-reaching. No words were audible, but the tone was enough. Women blenched and dropped the crockery they were carrying. The men of the night-shift, asleep on their backs in the hot and close-curtained wall-beds, tumbled into their grimy moleskins with a single movement."Number Four pit's a-fire! The pit's a-fire! Number Fower!"It was a mile to the particular colliery where the danger was. The rows of houses emptied themselves simultaneously upon the white dusty road, women running with men and barefooted children speeding between, a little scared, but, on the whole, rather enjoying the excitement.As they came nearer, the great high-mounted head-wheels of pit Number Four were spinning furiously, and over the mounds which led to it little ant-like figures were hurrying. A thin far-spreading spume of brownish smoke rose sluggishly from the pithead. At sight of it women cried out: "Oh God, my Jock's doon there!" And more than one set her hand suddenly upon her side and swung away from the rush into the hedge-root.A hundred questions were being fired at the steadfast engineer, men and women all shouting at once. He answered such as he could, but with his hand ever upon the lever and his eye upon the scale which told at what point the cage stood in the long incline of the "dook.""The fire's in the main pit-shaft," he said. "They are trying to get doon by the second exit; but it's half fu' o' steam pipes to drive the bottom engine.""Wha's gane doon?""Pate Tamson and Muckle Greg are in the cage tryin' to put the fire oot wi' the hose——""They micht as weel spit on't if it's gotten ony catch!""And Robin Naysmith and the minister are tryin' the second exit——""The minister——"The cry was very scornful. The minister, indeed—what good could "a boy like him" do down there where strong men were dying helplessly?So for half-an-hour Walter McCartney the pithead engineer stood at his post watching the cage index, and listening for the tinkle of the bell which signalled "up" or "down."Suddenly the faces of such as could see the numbers blanched. And a murmur ran round the crowd at the longt-r-r-r-r-r-rwhich told that the cage was coming to the surface.Had all hope been abandoned, that the rescue party were returning so unexpectedly? A woman shrieked suddenly on the edges of the crowd."Who's that?" queried the manager, turning sharply. And when he was answered, "Take her away—don't let her come near the shaft!" was his order.Out of the charred and dripping cage came Pate Tamson and his mate, blackened and wet from head to foot."The cage is to be sent empty to the dook-bottom!" they said. "Somebody has managed to get doon the second exit."With a quick switch of levers and a humming hiss of woven wire from the headwheels, down sank the cage into the belching brown smother of the deadly reek.Then there was a long pause. The index sank till it pointed to the pit-bottom. The cage had passed through the fire safely. It had yet to be proved that living men could also pass."Tinkle—tink!"It was the bell for lifting. Walter McCartney compressed his lips on receiving the signal, and pulled down the shiny cap over his forehead, as if he himself were about to face that whirlwind of fire six hundred feet down in the bowels of the earth. He drew a long breath and opened the lever for "Full Speed Up." The cage must have passed the zone of flame like a bird rising through a cloud. The folk silenced themselves as it neared the surface. Then a great cry arose.The minister sat in the cage with a couple of boys in his arms. The rough wet brattice cloths that had been placed over them were charred almost to a cinder. Dairsie Gordon's face was burnt and blackened.He handed the boys out into careful hands."I am going down again," he said; "unless I do the men will not believe that it is possible to come alive through the fire. Are you ready, Walter? Let her go!"So a second time the young minister went down through the furnace. Presently the men began to be whisked up through the fire, and as each relay arrived at the pit-bank they sang the praises of Dairsie Gordon, telling with Homeric zest how he had crawled half-roasted down the narrow throat of the steam-pipe-filled shaft, how he had argued with them that the fire could be passed, and at last proved it with two boys for volunteer passengers. Dairsie Gordon, B.D., was the last man to leave the pit, and he fainted with pain and excitement when all Drowdle cheered him as they carried him home to his mother.And when at last he came to himself, swathed in cotton wool to the eyes, he murmured, "Do you not think they will respect me now, mother?"TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESSThe calm and solemn close of a stormy day—that is the impression which the latter years of the life of Bertram Erskine made on those who knew him best. Though I was young at the time, I well remember his solitary house of Barlochan, a small laird's mansion to which he had added a tiny study and a vast library, turning the whole into an externally curious, but internally comfortable conglomerate of architecture. The house stood near a little green depression of the moorland, shaped like the upturned palm of a hand. In the lowest part was the "lochan" or lakelet from which the place had its name, while the mansion with its white-washed gables and many chimneys rose on the brow above—and, facing south, overlooked well nigh a score of parishes. There was also a garden, half hidden behind a row of straggling poplars. A solitary "John" tended it, who, in the time of Mr. Erskine's predecessor, had doubled his part of gardener with that of butler at the family's evening meal.Few people in the neighbourhood knew much about the "hermit of Barlochan." Yet he had borne a great part in the politics of twenty years before. He had been a minister of the Queen, a keen and vehement debater, a dour political fighter, as well as a man of some distinction in letters; he had suddenly retired from all his offices and emoluments without a day's warning. The reason given was that he had quite suddenly lost an only and much beloved daughter.After a few years he had bought, through an Edinburgh lawyer, the little estate of Barlochan, and it was reported that he meant to settle in the district. Upon which ensued a clatter of masons and slaters, joiners and plasterers, all sleeping in stable-lofts, and keeping the scantily peopled moorland parish in a turmoil with their midnight predatory raids and madcap freaks.Then came waggon-load after waggon-load of books—two men (no less) to look after them and set them in their places on the shelves. After that, the advent of a housekeeper and a couple of staid maid-servants with strange English accents. Last of all arrived Bertram Erskine himself, a tall figure in grey, stepping out of a high gig at his own door, and the establishment of an ex-minister of the Crown was complete.That is, with one exception—for John McWhan, gardener to the ancient owners of Barlochan, was digging in the garden when Mr. Erskine went out on the first morning after his arrival."Good-morning!"John looked up from his spade, put his hand with the genuine Galloway reluctance to his bonnet, and remarked, "I'm thinkin' we'll hae a braw year for grosarts, sir!"The new proprietor smiled, and as John said afterwards, "ThenI kenned I was a' richt!""You are Mr. McCulloch's gardener?""Na, na, sir; I am your ain gardener, sir," answered John McWhan promptly. "Coarnel (Colonel) McCulloch pat everything intil my hand on the day he gaed awa' to the wars—never to set fit on guid Scots heather mair!"Mr. Erskine nodded quietly, like one who accepts a legal obligation."I have heard of you, John," he said. "I will take you with the other pendicles of the estate. You are satisfied with your former wages?""Aye, sir, aye—a bonny-like thing that I should hae been satisfied wi' thretty pound and a cot-hoose for five-and-forty year, and begin to compleen at this time o' the day.""But I am somewhat peculiar, John," said Mr. Erskine, smiling. "I see little company: I desire to see none at all. If you remain with me, you must let nothing pass your lips regarding me or my avocations.""Ye'll find that John McWhan can haud his tongue to the full as well as even a learned man like yoursel', sir!""I have an uncertain temper, John!""Faith, then ye hae gotten the verra man for ye, sir," cried John, slapping his knee delightedly. "Lord keep us, ye will be but as a bairn at the schule to what Maister McCulloch was. I tell ye, when the Coarnel's liver was warslin' wi' him, it was as muckle as your life was worth to gang within bowshot o' him. But yet he never hairmed John. He miscaaed him—aya, he did that—till the ill names cam' back oot o' the wood ower bye, as if the wee green fairies were mockin' the sinfu' angers o' man. But John never heeded. And in a wee, the Coarnel wad be calm as a plate o' parritch, and send me into the hoose for his muckle pipe, saying, 'John, that has dune me guid, I think I'll hae a smoke.' Na, na, ye may be as short in the grain as ye like, but after Coarnel McCulloch——"At this point of his comparison John felt the inadequacy of further words and could only ejaculate, "Hoots awa, man!"So in this fashion John McWhan stayed on as "man" upon the policies of Barlochan.That night at dinner it was John who carried in the soup tureen and deposited it before his new master, a very much scandalised table-maid following in the wake of the victor."I hae brocht ye your kail, Maister Areskine," he said, setting the large vessel down with a flourish, "as I hae dune in this hoose for five-and-forty year. This trimmie (though Guid forgie me, I doubt na that she is a decent lass, for an Englisher) may set the glesses and bring ben the kickshaws, but the kail and the roast are John McWhan's perquisite—as likewise the cleanin' o' the silver. And I wad thank ye kindly, sir, to let the hizzie ken your mind on that same!"With these words, John stood at attention with his hands at his sides and his lips pursed, gazing solemnly at his master. Mr. Erskine turned round on his chair, his napkin in his hand. His eyes encountered with astonishment a tall figure, gaunt and angular, clad in an ancient livery coat of tarnished blue and gold; knee breeches, black stockings, and a pair of many-clouted buckled shoes completed an attire which was certainly a marvellous transformation from John's ordinary labouring moleskins.With a word quiet and sedate, Mr. Erskine satisfied John's pride of place, and with another (the latter accompanied with a certain humorous twinkle of the eye) he soothed the ruffled Jane.After that the days passed quietly and uneventfully enough at Barlochan. Mr. Erskine's habits were regular. He rose early, he read much, he wrote more. The mail he received, the book packets the carrier brought him, the huge sealed letters he sent off, were the wonder of the countryside—for a month or two. Then, save for the carters who drove the coal from the town, or brought in the firewood for Mr. Erskine's own library fire (for there he burned wood only), and the boxes of provisions ordered from Cairn Edward by his prim housekeeper Mrs. Lambert, Barlochan was silent and without apparent distraction.All the same there were living souls and busy brains about it. The massive intellect of the master worked at unknown problems in the library. Busy Mrs. Lambert hurried hither and thither contriving household comforts, and developing the scanty resources of a moorland cusine to their uttermost. Jane and Susan obeyed her beck, while out in the garden John McWhan dug and raked, pruned and planted, his hand never idle, while his brain busied itself with his master."It's a michty queer thing he doesna gang to the kirk," said John to himself, "a terrible queer thing—him bein' itherwise sic a kindly weel-learned gentleman. I heard some word he was eddicated for the kirk himsel'. Oh, that we had amang us a plant o' grace like worthy Master Hobbleshaw doon at the Nine-Mile-Burn, that can whup the guts oot o' a text as gleg and clever as cleanin' a troot. Faith, I wad ask him to come wi' me to oor bit kirk at Machermore, had we a man there that could do mair than peep and mutter. I wonder what we hae dune that we should be afflicted wi' siccan a reed shaken wi' the wun' as that feckless bit callant, Hughie Peebles. He can preach nae mair than my cat Tib—and as for unction——"Here again John's words failed him under the press of his own indignant comminations. He could only drive the "graip" into the soil of the Barlochan garden, with a foot whose vehemence spoke eloquently of his inward heat. For the pulpit of the little Dissenting kirk which John McWhan supported by his scanty contributions (and abundant criticisms), was occupied every Sabbath day by that saddest of all labourers, a minister who has not fulfilled his early promise, and of whom his congregation desire to be rid."No but what we kind o' like the craitur, too," John explained to his master, as he paused near him in one of his frequent promenades in the garden. "He has his points. He is a decent lad, and wi' some sma' gift in intercessory prayer. But he gangs frae door to door amang the fowk, as if he were comin' like a beggar for an awmous and were feared to daith o' the dog. Noo what the fowk like is a man that walks wi' an air, that speaks wi' authority, that stands up wi' some presence in the pulpit, and gies oot the psalm as if he war kind o' prood to read words that the guid auld tune o' Kilmarnock wad presently carry to the seeventh heevens!""And your minister, John, with whom you are dissatisfied—how came you to choose him?""Weel, sir," said the old man, palpably distressed, "it was like this—ye see fowk are no what they used to be, even in the kirk o' the Marrow. In auld days they pickit a minister for the doctrine and smeddom that was in him. 'Was he soond on the fundamentals?' 'Had he a grip o' the fower Heads?' 'Was he faithfu' in his monitions?' Thae were the questions they askit. But nooadays they maun hae a laddie fresh frae the college, that can leather aff a blatter o' words like a bairn's lesson. I'm tellin' ye the truth, sir—Sant Paul himsel', after he had had the care o' a' the churches for a generation, wadna hae half the chance o' a bare-faced, aipple-cheekit loon in a black coatie and a dowg-collar. An' as for Peter, he wad hae had juist nae chance ava. He wad never hae gotten sae muckle as a smell o' the short leet.""And how would Saint Peter have had no chance? Wherein was his case worse than Paul's?" said Mr. Erskine, smiling."Because he was a mairriet man, sir. It's a' thae feckless weemen fowk, sir. A man o' wecht and experience has little chance, though he speak wi' the tongue o' men and o' angels—a mairriet man has juist nae chance ava.' It's my solemn opeenion that, when it comes to electin' a new minister, only respectable unmairriet men o' fifty years an' upwards should be allowed to vote. It's the only thing that will stop thae awfu' weemen frae ruling the kirk o' God. Talk o' the Session—faith, it's no the Session that bears rule ower us in things speeritual—na, na, it's juist thae petticoated randies that got us turned oot' o' Paradise at the first, and garred me hae to grow your honour's veegetables in the sweet o' my broo!""But why only unmarried men of over fifty?" said Mr. Eskine, humouring his servitor."For this reason,"—John laid down the points of his argument on the palm of one hand with the crooked forefinger of the other, his foot holding the "graip" steady in the furrow all the while. "The young unmairriet men wad be siccan fules as to do what the young lasses wanted them to do, and the mairriet men o' a' ages (as say the Scriptures) wad necessarily vote as their wives bade them, for the sake o' peace and to keep doon din!""Well, John," said Mr. Erskine, "I will go down to the kirk with you next Sunday morning, and see what I can advise. It is a pity that in this small congregation and thinly-peopled district you should be saddled with an unsuitable minister!""Eh, sir, but we wad be prood to see ye at Machermore Marrow Kirk," cried John, dusting his hands with sheer pleasure, as if he were about to shake hands with his master on the spot. "I only wish it had been Maister MacSwatter o' Knockemdoon that was gaun to preach. He fairly revels in Daniel and the Revelations. He can gie ye a screed on the ten horns wi' faithfu' unction, and mak' a maist affectin' application frae the consideration o' the wee yin in the middle. But oor Maister Peebles—he juist haes nae 'fushion' in him, ony mair than a winter-frosted turnip in the month o' Aprile!"In accordance with his promise to his factotum, on the following Sabbath morning, Mr. Erskine walked down to the little Kirk of Machermore. It was a fine harvest day and the folk had turned out well, as is usually the case at that season of the year. John McWhan was too old a servant to dream of walking with his master to the kirk. He had "mair mainners," as he would have said himself. All the same, he had privately communicated with several of the elders, and so ensured Mr. Erskine a reception suited to his dignity.The ex-minister of State was received at the little kirk door by Bogrie and Muirkitterick, two tenants on a large neighbouring property. These were the leading Marrow men in the district, and much looked up to, as both coming in their own gigs to the kirk. Bogrie it was who opened the inner door for him, and Muirkitterick conducted him to the seat of honour in the mountain Zion, being the manse pew, immediately to the right of the pulpit.It was not for some time that Mr. Erskine perceived that he did not sit alone. Being a little short-sighted until he got his glasses adjusted, the faces of any audience or congregation were always a blur to him. Then all at once he noticed a slim girlish figure in a black dress almost shrinking from observation in the opposite corner. The service began immediately after he sat down.The minister was tall, of good appearance and presence, but Mr. Erskine shuddered at the first grating notes of the clerical falsetto, which Mr. Peebles had adopted solely because it had been the fashion at college in his time; but it was not until the short prayer before the sermon that anything occurred to fix the politician's wandering attention.Then, as he bent forward, he heard a voice near him saying, in an intense inward whisper: "O God, help my Hughie!"He glanced about him in astonishment. It was the girl in the black dress. She had knelt in the English fashion when all the rest of the congregation were merely bending forward "on their hunkers," or, as in the case of not a few ancient standards of the Faith, standing erect and protestant against all weak-hammed defection.When the girl arose again Mr. Erskine saw that her lips were trembling and that she gazed wistfully about at the set and severe faces of the congregation. The minister began his sermon.It was not in any sense a good discourse. Rather, with the best will in the world, the hearer found it feeble, flaccid, unenlivened by illustration, unfirmed by doctrine, unclinched by application. Yet all the time Mr. Erskine was saying to himself: "What a fool that young man is! He has a good voice and presence—how easily he might study good models, and make a very excellent appearance. It cannot be so difficult to please a few score country farmers and ditchers!" But he ended with his usual Gallio-like reflection that "After all, it is none of my business;" and so forthwith removed his mind from the vapidity of the discourse, to a subject connected with his own immediate work.But as he issued out of the little kirk, he passed quite close to the vestry door. The girl who had sat in the pew beside him was coming out with the minister. He could not help hearing her words, apparently spoken in answer to a question: "It was just beautiful, Hughie; you never preached better in your life." And in the shadow of the porch, before they turned the corner, Mr. Erskine was morally certain that the young minister gave the girl's arm an impulsive little hug.But his own heart was heavy, for as he walked away there came a thought into his heart. A resemblance that had been haunting him suddenly flashed up vividly upon him."If Marjorie had lived she would have been about that girl's age—and like her, too, pale and slim and dark."So all the way to his lonely mansion of Barlochan the ex-minister of the Crown thought of the young girl who had faded from his side, just as she was becoming a companion for the man who, for her sake, had put his career behind him.In the afternoon Mr. Erskine sat in the arbour, while John in his Sunday best tried to compromise with his conscience as to how much gardening could be made to come under the catechistic heading, "Works of Necessity and Mercy." He solved this by watering freely, training and binding up sparingly, pruning in a furtive and shamefaced manner (when nobody was looking), but strictly abstaining from the opener iniquities of weeding, digging, or knocking in nails with hammers. In the latter emergency John kept for Sunday use the ironshod heel of an old boot, and in no case did he ever so far forget himself as to whistle. On that point he was adamant.At last, after hovering nearer and nearer, he paused before the arbour and addressed his master directly."Thonjuist settles it!"Mr. Erskine slowly put down his book, still, however, marking the place with his finger."I do not understand—what do you mean bython?""The sermon we had the day, sir. It was fair affrontin'. The Session are gaun up to ask Maister Peebles to consider his resignation. The thing had neither beginning o' days nor end o' years. It was withoot form and void. It's a kind o' peety, too, for the laddie, wi' that young Englishy wife that he has ta'en, on his hand. I'm feared she is no the kind that will ever help to fill his meal-ark!""I am very sorry to hear you say so, John," said Mr. Erskine; "can nothing be done, think you? Why don't they give the young man another chance? Can no one speak to him? There were some things about the service that I liked very much. Indeed, I found myself feeling at home in a church for the first time for years.""Did ye, sir? That's past a' thinkin'! A' Machermore was juist mournin' and lamentin'. What micht the points be that ye liket? I will tell the elders. It micht do some guid to the puir lad!"Mr. Erskine was a little taken aback. He could not say that what pleased him most in the service had sat in the manse-seat beside him, had worn a plain black dress, and possessed a pair of eyes that reminded him of a certain young girl who had taken walks with him over the hills of Surrey, when the blackbirds were singing in the spring.Nevertheless, he managed to convey to John a satisfaction and a hopefulness that were all the more helpful for being a little vague. To which he added a practical word."If you think it would do any good, John, I might see one or two of the members of Session themselves.""Ye needna trouble yoursel', thank ye kindly, sir," said John, "I will undertak' the job. Though my infirmity at orra times keeps me frae acceptin' the eldership (I hae been twice eleckit), I may say that John McWhan's influence in the testifyin' and Covenant-keeping Kirk o' the Marrow at the Cross-roads o' Machermore has to be reckoned wi'—aye, it has to be reckoned wi'!"
* * * * *
"Weel," my mother would conclude, "may be it wasna juist richt—but I couldna resist the lass. So Willie did as she said, and naething was kenned. But I garred him gie in his notice the next day, and I took him hame, for it was clear as day that the lad was deein' on his feet. And I brocht the lass hame wi' me too. And if Willie had leeved—but it wasna to be. We juist keepit him till November. And the last nicht we sat yin on ilka side o' the bed, her haudin' a hand and me haudin' a hand, neither jealous o' the ither, which was a great wonder. An' I think he kind o' dovered an' sleepit—whiles wanderin' in his mind and syne waukin' wi' a strange look on his face. But ower in the sma' hours when the wind begins to rise and blaw caulder, and the souls o' men to slip awa, he started up. It was me he saw first, for the candle was on my side.
"'Mither,' he said, 'where's Lizzie?'
"And when he saw her sit by him, he drew away the hand that had been in mine and laid it on hers.
"'Lizzie,' he said, 'dinna greet, my bonnie: I promise! I will be your ain guid lad!'"
* * * * *
"And the lass?" I queried.
"Oh, she gaed back to the shop, and they say she has chairge o' a hale department noo, and is muckle thocht on. But she has never mairried, and, though we hae askit her every year, she wad never come back to Drumquhat again!"
"And that," said my mother, smiling through her tears, "is the story how my Willie was led astray by the Lass in the Shop."
THE RESPECT OF DROWDLE
Most folk in the West of Scotland know the parish of Drowdle, at least by repute. It is a great mining centre, and the inhabitants are not counted among the peaceable of the earth.
"If ye want your head broken, gang doon to Drowdle on a Saturday nicht" is an advice often given to the boastful or the bumptious. Drowdle is a new place too, and the inhabitants, instead of being, like ordinary Scottish Geordies, settled for generations in one coal-field and with whole streets of relatives within stonethrow, are composed of all the strags and restless ne'er-do-weels of such as go down into the earth, from Cornwall even to the Hill-o'-Beith.
Most, I say, know Drowdle by repute. I myself, indeed, once acted aslocum tenensfor the doctor there during six hot and lively summer weeks, and gained an experience in the treatment of contusions, discolorations, and abrasions of the skull and frontal bones which has been of the greatest possible use to me since. The younger Drowdleites, however, had at that time a habit of stretching a cord across the threshold about a foot above the step, which interfered considerably with professional dignity of exit—that is, till you were used to it. But after one has got into the habit of scouting ahead with a spatula ground fine and tied to a walking-stick on darkish nights, Drowdle began to respect you. Still better if (as I did) you can catch a couple of the cord-stretchers, produce an occipital contusion or two on your own account, and finish by kicking the jesters bodily into Drowdle Water. Then the long rows of slated brick which constitute the mining village agree that "the new doakter kens his business—a smart lad, yon! Heard ye what he did to thae twa deils, Jock Lee an' Cockly Nixon? He catchit them trippin' him wi' a cairt rape at Betty Forgan's door, and, faith, he threw them baith into Drowdle Water!"
Such being the way to earn the esteem of Drowdle, it would have saved the telling of this story if, when young Dairsie Gordon received a call to be minister of the recently established mission church there, he had had any one to enlighten him on the subject.
He was so young that he was ashamed when any one asked him his age. They had called him "Joanna" at college, and sent him recipes along the desk for compelling a beard and moustache to grow under any conditions of soil and climate, however unfavourable.
Dairsie Gordon was very innocent, very learned, very ignorant, and—the only son of a well-to-do mother, who from a child had destined him for the ministry. The more was the pity!
As a child he was considered too delicate for the rough-and-tumble of school. He had a tutor, a mild-faced young man who seldom spoke above his breath, and never willingly walked more than a mile at a time, and then with a book in his hand and a flute in his tail pocket. Under his instruction, however, Dairsie became an excellent classic, and his verse gained the approval of Professor Jupiter Olympus when he went up to the University of Edinburgh, where Latin verse was a rare accomplishment in those days, and Greek ones as extinct as the dodo.
When her son went to college, Mrs. Gordon came up herself from the country to settle Dairsie in the house of a friend of her own, the widow of a deceased minister who had married an old maid late in life. This excellent lady possessed much experience of bazaars and a good working knowledge of tea-meetings, but she knew nothing of young men.
So, being placed in authority over Dairsie, she insisted that he should come straight back to Rose Crescent from his classes, take dinner in the middle of the day alone with his hostess, and then—as a treat—accompany her while she made a call or two on other clerical widows who had married late in life. Then she took him home to open his big lexicons and pore over crabbed constructions till supper-time. This feast consisted of plain bread and butter with the smallest morsel of cheese, because much cheese is not good for the digestion at night. A glass of milk accompanied these delicacies. It also was plain and blue, because the cream (a doubtful quantity at best) had been skimmed off it for Mrs. McSkirmish's tea in the morning.
After that Dairsie was sent to bed. He was allowed ten minutes to take off his clothes and say his prayers. Then the gas was turned out at the meter. If he wanted time for more study and reading he could have it in the morning. It is good for youth to rise betimes and study the Hebrew Scriptures with cold feet and fingers that will not turn the leaves of Gesenius till they are blown upon severally and individually. In this fashion, varying in nothing, save that on alternate Sundays there was something hot for supper, because Mrs. McSkirmish's minister—a severe and faithful divine—came to interview Dairsie and report on his progress to his mother, the future pastor passed seven winter sessions.
Scholastically his victories were many. Bursaries seemed purposely created for him to take—and immediately resign in favour of hisproxime accessit, who needed the money more. The class never queried as to who would be first in the "exams.," but only wrangled concerning who would come next after Gordon—and how many marks below.
In summer Dairsie went quietly down to his mother's house in the country, where his neck was fallen upon duly, and four handmaids (with little else to do) worshipped him—especially when for the first time he took the "Book" at family worship. There was a wood before the door, in which he passed most of his time lying on his back reading, and his old tutor came to stay with him for a month at a time.
Thus was produced the Reverend Dairsie Gordon, B.D., without doubt the first student of his college, Allingham Fellow, and therefore entitled to go to Germany for a couple of years by the terms of his Fellowship.
But by one of these interpositions of Providence, which even the most orthodox denominate "doubtful," there was at this time a vacancy in the pastoral charge of the small Mission Church at Drowdle. The late minister had accepted a call to a moorland congregation of sixty members, where nothing had happened within the memory of man, more stirring than the wheel coming off a cart of peats opposite the manse.
Dairsie Gordon preached at Drowdle. His voice was sweet and cultivated and musical, so that it fell pleasantly on the ears of the kirkgoers of Drowdle, over whose heads had long blared a voice like to the trumpets at the opening of the seventh seal in the book of the Revelation.
So they elected him unanimously. Also he was "well-to-do," and it was understood in the congregation that his salary would not be a consideration. The minister elect immediately resigned his fellowship, considering this a direct call to the work.
In this fashion Dairsie Gordon went to his martyrdom. Ignorant of the world as a child of four, never having been elbowed and buffeted and brow-beaten by circumstances, never cuffed at school, snubbed at college, and so variously and vicariously licked and kicked into shape, he found himself suddenly pitchforked into the spiritual charge of one of the most difficult congregations in Scotland.
The new minister was introduced socially at a tea-meeting on the evening of the ordination, and then and there he had his first taste of the Drowdelian quality. There were plenty of douce and sober folk in the front pews of the little kirk, but at the back reckless, unmarried Geordies were sandwiched between a militant and ungodly hobbledehoyhood. Paper bags that had contained fruit exploded in the midst of the most solemn addresses. Dairsie's own remarks were fairly punctuated with these explosions, and by the flying shells of Brazil nuts. Bone buttons at the end of knitting needles clicked and tapped at windows, and a shutter fell inward with a crash. It was thus that Dairsie returned thanks.
"My dear people," (a penny trumpet blew an obligato accompaniment under the bookboard of a pew,) "I have been led to the oversight of this flock" (pom-pom-pom) "after prayer and under guidance. I shall endeavour to teach you—" ("Catch-the-Ten!" "All-Fours!" "Quoits!") "some of those things which I have devoted my life to acquiring. I am prepared for some little difficulty at first, till we know one another——"
The remainder of the address was inaudible owing to cries of, "Rob Kinstry has stole my bag!" "Ye're a liar!" All which presently issued in the general turmoil of a free fight toward the rear of the church.
Mrs. Gordon had come up to be present on the occasion of her son's ordination, and that night in the little manse mother and son mingled their tears. It all seemed so wrong and pitiful to them.
But Dairsie, with a fine hopefulness on his delicate face, lifted his head from his mother's shoulder, smiling like a girl through his own tears.
"But after all, this is the work to which I have been called, mother. And you know if it is His will that I am to labour here, in time He will give the increase."
So somewhat heartened, mother and son kneeled down together, prayed, and went to bed.
On the forenoon of the next day two of the elders, decent pitmen, who happened to be on the night-shift, called in to give their verdict and to drop a word of advice.
"A graund meetin'," said Pate Tamson, the oversman of No. 4; "what for didna ye tak' your stick and gie some o' the vaigabonds a clour on the lug? It wad hae served them weel!"
"I could not think of doing such a thing," said Dairsie. "I desire to wield a spiritual, not a carnal influence!"
"Carnal influence here, carnal influence there," cried Robin Naysmith, stamping his foot till the little study trembled, "if ye are to succeed in this village o' Drowdle, ye maun pit doon your fit—like that, sir, like that!"
And he stamped on the new Brussels carpet till the plaster began to come down in flakes from the ceiling. Dairsie tried to imagine himself stamping like that, but could not. For one thing, he had always worn single-soled shoes, with silk ties and woollen 'soles' (which he had promised his mother to take out and dry whenever he came in), a fact which has more bearing on the main question than appears on the surface.
"A man has to assert hissel' in this toon, or he is thocht little on," said Pate Tamson, the oversman. "Noo, there's MacGrogan, the Irish priest—I dinna agree wi' his releegion, an' dootless he will hae verra little chance at the Judgment. But, faith, when he hears that there's ony o' his fowk drinkin' ower lang aboot Lucky Moat's, in he gangs wi' a cudgel as thick as your airm, and the great solemn curses, fair rowlin' aff the tongue o' him—and faith, he clears Lucky's faster than a hale raft of polissmen! Aye, he does that!"
"Aye," assented the junior elder, Robin Naysmith, he whose feet had put the plaster in danger, "what we need i' Drowdle is a man o' poo'er—a man o' wecht——!"
"'Quit ye like men—be strong!' saith the Scriptures," summed up the oversman. Then both of them waited for Dairsie, to see what he had got to say.
"I—I am sure I shall endeavour to do my best," said the young minister, "but I fear I have underestimated the difficulties of the position."
The oversman shook his head as he went out through the manse gate.
"And I am some dootfu' that we hae made a mistak'!"
"If we hae," rejoined Naysmith, the strong man, "we maun keep it frae the knowledge o' Drowdle. But the lad is young—young. And when he has served his 'prenticeship to sorrow, he will maybes come oot o' the furnace as silver that is tried!"
* * * * *
Now, neither Drowdle nor its inhabitants meant to be unkind. In case of illness or accident among themselves, none gave material help more liberally. What belonged to one was held in a kindly communism to be the right of all. But Drowdle was not to be handled delicately. It was a nettle to be grasped with gloves of untanned leather.
Dairsie Gordon opened his first Sunday-school at three in the afternoon. At a quarter to four as he stood up on the platform to give his closing address, he found boys scuttling and playing "tig" between his legs. He laid down his hymn-book, and on lifting it to read the closing verses, discovered that a certain popular bacchanalian collection entitled "Songs of the Red, White, and Blue," had mysteriously taken its place.
The young minister had other and graver trials also. The pitmen passed him on the road with a surly grunt, and he did not know it was only because they were trudging home dog-tired from their long shift. The hard-driving managers and sub-managers, men without illusions and as blatantly practical as a Scottish daily paper, passed him by contemptuously, as if he had been a tract thrust under their doors. The schoolmaster, a cleverish machine-made youth of inordinate conceit, openly scoffed. He was a weakling, this minister, and he had better know it.
And, indeed, in these days, Dairsie gave them plenty of scope for complaint. His sermons might possibly have edified a company of the unfallen angels, if we can fancy such being interested in heathen philosophy and the interpretation of the more obscure Old Testament Scriptures. But to this gritty, ungodly, crass-natured, rasp-surfaced village of Drowdle, the young man merely babbled in his pulpit as the summer brooks do over the pebbles.
An itinerant evangelist, who shook the fear of hell-fire under their noses with the fist of a pugilist, and claimed in ancient style the power to bind and the power to loose, might conceivably have succeeded in Drowdle, but as it was, Dairsie Gordon proved a failure of the most absolute sort. And Drowdle, having no false modesty, told him plainly of it. At informal meetings of Session the question of their minister's shortcomings was discussed with freedom and point, only the overs-man and Robin Naysmith pleading suspension of judgment on account of the young man's years.
For there were sympathetic hearts here and there among the folk of Drowdle. Women with the maternal instinct yet untrampled out of them, came to their doors to look after the tall slim "laddie" who was so like the sons they had dreamed of when the maiden's blush still tinged their cheeks.
"He's a bonnie laddie to look on," they said to each other as, palm on hip, they stood looking after him. "It's a peety that he is sae feckless!"
Yet Dairsie was always busy. He was no neglecter of duty. He worked with eager strained hopefulness. No matter how deep had been his depression of the evening, the morning found him contemplating a day of work with keen anticipation and unconquerable desire to succeed.
To-day, at last, he would begin to make an impression. He would visit the remainder of Dickson's Row, and perhaps—who knew?—it might be the turning of the tide. So he sat down opposite his mother at breakfast, smiling and rubbing his hands.
"To-day I am going to show them, mother," he would say.
"Show them what, Dairsie dear?"
"That I am a man!"
But within him he was saying, "Work while it is day!" And yet deeper in his heart, so deep that it became almost a prayer for release, he was wont to add—"The night cometh when no man can work!" Then to this he added, as he took his round soft hat and went out, "O Lord, help me to do something worthy before I die—something to make these people respect me."
* * * * *
It was a hot September afternoon. Drowdle was a-drowse from Capersknowe to the Back Raw. Here and there could be heard a dull recurring thud, which was thedunt duntof the roller on the dough of the bake-board as some housewife languidly rolled out her farles of oatcake. For the rest, there was no sound save the shout of a callant fishing for minnows in the backwaters of Drowdle, and the buzz of casual bluebottles on the dirty window-panes.
Suddenly there arose a cry, dominant and far-reaching. No words were audible, but the tone was enough. Women blenched and dropped the crockery they were carrying. The men of the night-shift, asleep on their backs in the hot and close-curtained wall-beds, tumbled into their grimy moleskins with a single movement.
"Number Four pit's a-fire! The pit's a-fire! Number Fower!"
It was a mile to the particular colliery where the danger was. The rows of houses emptied themselves simultaneously upon the white dusty road, women running with men and barefooted children speeding between, a little scared, but, on the whole, rather enjoying the excitement.
As they came nearer, the great high-mounted head-wheels of pit Number Four were spinning furiously, and over the mounds which led to it little ant-like figures were hurrying. A thin far-spreading spume of brownish smoke rose sluggishly from the pithead. At sight of it women cried out: "Oh God, my Jock's doon there!" And more than one set her hand suddenly upon her side and swung away from the rush into the hedge-root.
A hundred questions were being fired at the steadfast engineer, men and women all shouting at once. He answered such as he could, but with his hand ever upon the lever and his eye upon the scale which told at what point the cage stood in the long incline of the "dook."
"The fire's in the main pit-shaft," he said. "They are trying to get doon by the second exit; but it's half fu' o' steam pipes to drive the bottom engine."
"Wha's gane doon?"
"Pate Tamson and Muckle Greg are in the cage tryin' to put the fire oot wi' the hose——"
"They micht as weel spit on't if it's gotten ony catch!"
"And Robin Naysmith and the minister are tryin' the second exit——"
"The minister——"
The cry was very scornful. The minister, indeed—what good could "a boy like him" do down there where strong men were dying helplessly?
So for half-an-hour Walter McCartney the pithead engineer stood at his post watching the cage index, and listening for the tinkle of the bell which signalled "up" or "down."
Suddenly the faces of such as could see the numbers blanched. And a murmur ran round the crowd at the longt-r-r-r-r-r-rwhich told that the cage was coming to the surface.
Had all hope been abandoned, that the rescue party were returning so unexpectedly? A woman shrieked suddenly on the edges of the crowd.
"Who's that?" queried the manager, turning sharply. And when he was answered, "Take her away—don't let her come near the shaft!" was his order.
Out of the charred and dripping cage came Pate Tamson and his mate, blackened and wet from head to foot.
"The cage is to be sent empty to the dook-bottom!" they said. "Somebody has managed to get doon the second exit."
With a quick switch of levers and a humming hiss of woven wire from the headwheels, down sank the cage into the belching brown smother of the deadly reek.
Then there was a long pause. The index sank till it pointed to the pit-bottom. The cage had passed through the fire safely. It had yet to be proved that living men could also pass.
"Tinkle—tink!"
It was the bell for lifting. Walter McCartney compressed his lips on receiving the signal, and pulled down the shiny cap over his forehead, as if he himself were about to face that whirlwind of fire six hundred feet down in the bowels of the earth. He drew a long breath and opened the lever for "Full Speed Up." The cage must have passed the zone of flame like a bird rising through a cloud. The folk silenced themselves as it neared the surface. Then a great cry arose.
The minister sat in the cage with a couple of boys in his arms. The rough wet brattice cloths that had been placed over them were charred almost to a cinder. Dairsie Gordon's face was burnt and blackened.
He handed the boys out into careful hands.
"I am going down again," he said; "unless I do the men will not believe that it is possible to come alive through the fire. Are you ready, Walter? Let her go!"
So a second time the young minister went down through the furnace. Presently the men began to be whisked up through the fire, and as each relay arrived at the pit-bank they sang the praises of Dairsie Gordon, telling with Homeric zest how he had crawled half-roasted down the narrow throat of the steam-pipe-filled shaft, how he had argued with them that the fire could be passed, and at last proved it with two boys for volunteer passengers. Dairsie Gordon, B.D., was the last man to leave the pit, and he fainted with pain and excitement when all Drowdle cheered him as they carried him home to his mother.
And when at last he came to himself, swathed in cotton wool to the eyes, he murmured, "Do you not think they will respect me now, mother?"
TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESS
The calm and solemn close of a stormy day—that is the impression which the latter years of the life of Bertram Erskine made on those who knew him best. Though I was young at the time, I well remember his solitary house of Barlochan, a small laird's mansion to which he had added a tiny study and a vast library, turning the whole into an externally curious, but internally comfortable conglomerate of architecture. The house stood near a little green depression of the moorland, shaped like the upturned palm of a hand. In the lowest part was the "lochan" or lakelet from which the place had its name, while the mansion with its white-washed gables and many chimneys rose on the brow above—and, facing south, overlooked well nigh a score of parishes. There was also a garden, half hidden behind a row of straggling poplars. A solitary "John" tended it, who, in the time of Mr. Erskine's predecessor, had doubled his part of gardener with that of butler at the family's evening meal.
Few people in the neighbourhood knew much about the "hermit of Barlochan." Yet he had borne a great part in the politics of twenty years before. He had been a minister of the Queen, a keen and vehement debater, a dour political fighter, as well as a man of some distinction in letters; he had suddenly retired from all his offices and emoluments without a day's warning. The reason given was that he had quite suddenly lost an only and much beloved daughter.
After a few years he had bought, through an Edinburgh lawyer, the little estate of Barlochan, and it was reported that he meant to settle in the district. Upon which ensued a clatter of masons and slaters, joiners and plasterers, all sleeping in stable-lofts, and keeping the scantily peopled moorland parish in a turmoil with their midnight predatory raids and madcap freaks.
Then came waggon-load after waggon-load of books—two men (no less) to look after them and set them in their places on the shelves. After that, the advent of a housekeeper and a couple of staid maid-servants with strange English accents. Last of all arrived Bertram Erskine himself, a tall figure in grey, stepping out of a high gig at his own door, and the establishment of an ex-minister of the Crown was complete.
That is, with one exception—for John McWhan, gardener to the ancient owners of Barlochan, was digging in the garden when Mr. Erskine went out on the first morning after his arrival.
"Good-morning!"
John looked up from his spade, put his hand with the genuine Galloway reluctance to his bonnet, and remarked, "I'm thinkin' we'll hae a braw year for grosarts, sir!"
The new proprietor smiled, and as John said afterwards, "ThenI kenned I was a' richt!"
"You are Mr. McCulloch's gardener?"
"Na, na, sir; I am your ain gardener, sir," answered John McWhan promptly. "Coarnel (Colonel) McCulloch pat everything intil my hand on the day he gaed awa' to the wars—never to set fit on guid Scots heather mair!"
Mr. Erskine nodded quietly, like one who accepts a legal obligation.
"I have heard of you, John," he said. "I will take you with the other pendicles of the estate. You are satisfied with your former wages?"
"Aye, sir, aye—a bonny-like thing that I should hae been satisfied wi' thretty pound and a cot-hoose for five-and-forty year, and begin to compleen at this time o' the day."
"But I am somewhat peculiar, John," said Mr. Erskine, smiling. "I see little company: I desire to see none at all. If you remain with me, you must let nothing pass your lips regarding me or my avocations."
"Ye'll find that John McWhan can haud his tongue to the full as well as even a learned man like yoursel', sir!"
"I have an uncertain temper, John!"
"Faith, then ye hae gotten the verra man for ye, sir," cried John, slapping his knee delightedly. "Lord keep us, ye will be but as a bairn at the schule to what Maister McCulloch was. I tell ye, when the Coarnel's liver was warslin' wi' him, it was as muckle as your life was worth to gang within bowshot o' him. But yet he never hairmed John. He miscaaed him—aya, he did that—till the ill names cam' back oot o' the wood ower bye, as if the wee green fairies were mockin' the sinfu' angers o' man. But John never heeded. And in a wee, the Coarnel wad be calm as a plate o' parritch, and send me into the hoose for his muckle pipe, saying, 'John, that has dune me guid, I think I'll hae a smoke.' Na, na, ye may be as short in the grain as ye like, but after Coarnel McCulloch——"
At this point of his comparison John felt the inadequacy of further words and could only ejaculate, "Hoots awa, man!"
So in this fashion John McWhan stayed on as "man" upon the policies of Barlochan.
That night at dinner it was John who carried in the soup tureen and deposited it before his new master, a very much scandalised table-maid following in the wake of the victor.
"I hae brocht ye your kail, Maister Areskine," he said, setting the large vessel down with a flourish, "as I hae dune in this hoose for five-and-forty year. This trimmie (though Guid forgie me, I doubt na that she is a decent lass, for an Englisher) may set the glesses and bring ben the kickshaws, but the kail and the roast are John McWhan's perquisite—as likewise the cleanin' o' the silver. And I wad thank ye kindly, sir, to let the hizzie ken your mind on that same!"
With these words, John stood at attention with his hands at his sides and his lips pursed, gazing solemnly at his master. Mr. Erskine turned round on his chair, his napkin in his hand. His eyes encountered with astonishment a tall figure, gaunt and angular, clad in an ancient livery coat of tarnished blue and gold; knee breeches, black stockings, and a pair of many-clouted buckled shoes completed an attire which was certainly a marvellous transformation from John's ordinary labouring moleskins.
With a word quiet and sedate, Mr. Erskine satisfied John's pride of place, and with another (the latter accompanied with a certain humorous twinkle of the eye) he soothed the ruffled Jane.
After that the days passed quietly and uneventfully enough at Barlochan. Mr. Erskine's habits were regular. He rose early, he read much, he wrote more. The mail he received, the book packets the carrier brought him, the huge sealed letters he sent off, were the wonder of the countryside—for a month or two. Then, save for the carters who drove the coal from the town, or brought in the firewood for Mr. Erskine's own library fire (for there he burned wood only), and the boxes of provisions ordered from Cairn Edward by his prim housekeeper Mrs. Lambert, Barlochan was silent and without apparent distraction.
All the same there were living souls and busy brains about it. The massive intellect of the master worked at unknown problems in the library. Busy Mrs. Lambert hurried hither and thither contriving household comforts, and developing the scanty resources of a moorland cusine to their uttermost. Jane and Susan obeyed her beck, while out in the garden John McWhan dug and raked, pruned and planted, his hand never idle, while his brain busied itself with his master.
"It's a michty queer thing he doesna gang to the kirk," said John to himself, "a terrible queer thing—him bein' itherwise sic a kindly weel-learned gentleman. I heard some word he was eddicated for the kirk himsel'. Oh, that we had amang us a plant o' grace like worthy Master Hobbleshaw doon at the Nine-Mile-Burn, that can whup the guts oot o' a text as gleg and clever as cleanin' a troot. Faith, I wad ask him to come wi' me to oor bit kirk at Machermore, had we a man there that could do mair than peep and mutter. I wonder what we hae dune that we should be afflicted wi' siccan a reed shaken wi' the wun' as that feckless bit callant, Hughie Peebles. He can preach nae mair than my cat Tib—and as for unction——"
Here again John's words failed him under the press of his own indignant comminations. He could only drive the "graip" into the soil of the Barlochan garden, with a foot whose vehemence spoke eloquently of his inward heat. For the pulpit of the little Dissenting kirk which John McWhan supported by his scanty contributions (and abundant criticisms), was occupied every Sabbath day by that saddest of all labourers, a minister who has not fulfilled his early promise, and of whom his congregation desire to be rid.
"No but what we kind o' like the craitur, too," John explained to his master, as he paused near him in one of his frequent promenades in the garden. "He has his points. He is a decent lad, and wi' some sma' gift in intercessory prayer. But he gangs frae door to door amang the fowk, as if he were comin' like a beggar for an awmous and were feared to daith o' the dog. Noo what the fowk like is a man that walks wi' an air, that speaks wi' authority, that stands up wi' some presence in the pulpit, and gies oot the psalm as if he war kind o' prood to read words that the guid auld tune o' Kilmarnock wad presently carry to the seeventh heevens!"
"And your minister, John, with whom you are dissatisfied—how came you to choose him?"
"Weel, sir," said the old man, palpably distressed, "it was like this—ye see fowk are no what they used to be, even in the kirk o' the Marrow. In auld days they pickit a minister for the doctrine and smeddom that was in him. 'Was he soond on the fundamentals?' 'Had he a grip o' the fower Heads?' 'Was he faithfu' in his monitions?' Thae were the questions they askit. But nooadays they maun hae a laddie fresh frae the college, that can leather aff a blatter o' words like a bairn's lesson. I'm tellin' ye the truth, sir—Sant Paul himsel', after he had had the care o' a' the churches for a generation, wadna hae half the chance o' a bare-faced, aipple-cheekit loon in a black coatie and a dowg-collar. An' as for Peter, he wad hae had juist nae chance ava. He wad never hae gotten sae muckle as a smell o' the short leet."
"And how would Saint Peter have had no chance? Wherein was his case worse than Paul's?" said Mr. Erskine, smiling.
"Because he was a mairriet man, sir. It's a' thae feckless weemen fowk, sir. A man o' wecht and experience has little chance, though he speak wi' the tongue o' men and o' angels—a mairriet man has juist nae chance ava.' It's my solemn opeenion that, when it comes to electin' a new minister, only respectable unmairriet men o' fifty years an' upwards should be allowed to vote. It's the only thing that will stop thae awfu' weemen frae ruling the kirk o' God. Talk o' the Session—faith, it's no the Session that bears rule ower us in things speeritual—na, na, it's juist thae petticoated randies that got us turned oot' o' Paradise at the first, and garred me hae to grow your honour's veegetables in the sweet o' my broo!"
"But why only unmarried men of over fifty?" said Mr. Eskine, humouring his servitor.
"For this reason,"—John laid down the points of his argument on the palm of one hand with the crooked forefinger of the other, his foot holding the "graip" steady in the furrow all the while. "The young unmairriet men wad be siccan fules as to do what the young lasses wanted them to do, and the mairriet men o' a' ages (as say the Scriptures) wad necessarily vote as their wives bade them, for the sake o' peace and to keep doon din!"
"Well, John," said Mr. Erskine, "I will go down to the kirk with you next Sunday morning, and see what I can advise. It is a pity that in this small congregation and thinly-peopled district you should be saddled with an unsuitable minister!"
"Eh, sir, but we wad be prood to see ye at Machermore Marrow Kirk," cried John, dusting his hands with sheer pleasure, as if he were about to shake hands with his master on the spot. "I only wish it had been Maister MacSwatter o' Knockemdoon that was gaun to preach. He fairly revels in Daniel and the Revelations. He can gie ye a screed on the ten horns wi' faithfu' unction, and mak' a maist affectin' application frae the consideration o' the wee yin in the middle. But oor Maister Peebles—he juist haes nae 'fushion' in him, ony mair than a winter-frosted turnip in the month o' Aprile!"
In accordance with his promise to his factotum, on the following Sabbath morning, Mr. Erskine walked down to the little Kirk of Machermore. It was a fine harvest day and the folk had turned out well, as is usually the case at that season of the year. John McWhan was too old a servant to dream of walking with his master to the kirk. He had "mair mainners," as he would have said himself. All the same, he had privately communicated with several of the elders, and so ensured Mr. Erskine a reception suited to his dignity.
The ex-minister of State was received at the little kirk door by Bogrie and Muirkitterick, two tenants on a large neighbouring property. These were the leading Marrow men in the district, and much looked up to, as both coming in their own gigs to the kirk. Bogrie it was who opened the inner door for him, and Muirkitterick conducted him to the seat of honour in the mountain Zion, being the manse pew, immediately to the right of the pulpit.
It was not for some time that Mr. Erskine perceived that he did not sit alone. Being a little short-sighted until he got his glasses adjusted, the faces of any audience or congregation were always a blur to him. Then all at once he noticed a slim girlish figure in a black dress almost shrinking from observation in the opposite corner. The service began immediately after he sat down.
The minister was tall, of good appearance and presence, but Mr. Erskine shuddered at the first grating notes of the clerical falsetto, which Mr. Peebles had adopted solely because it had been the fashion at college in his time; but it was not until the short prayer before the sermon that anything occurred to fix the politician's wandering attention.
Then, as he bent forward, he heard a voice near him saying, in an intense inward whisper: "O God, help my Hughie!"
He glanced about him in astonishment. It was the girl in the black dress. She had knelt in the English fashion when all the rest of the congregation were merely bending forward "on their hunkers," or, as in the case of not a few ancient standards of the Faith, standing erect and protestant against all weak-hammed defection.
When the girl arose again Mr. Erskine saw that her lips were trembling and that she gazed wistfully about at the set and severe faces of the congregation. The minister began his sermon.
It was not in any sense a good discourse. Rather, with the best will in the world, the hearer found it feeble, flaccid, unenlivened by illustration, unfirmed by doctrine, unclinched by application. Yet all the time Mr. Erskine was saying to himself: "What a fool that young man is! He has a good voice and presence—how easily he might study good models, and make a very excellent appearance. It cannot be so difficult to please a few score country farmers and ditchers!" But he ended with his usual Gallio-like reflection that "After all, it is none of my business;" and so forthwith removed his mind from the vapidity of the discourse, to a subject connected with his own immediate work.
But as he issued out of the little kirk, he passed quite close to the vestry door. The girl who had sat in the pew beside him was coming out with the minister. He could not help hearing her words, apparently spoken in answer to a question: "It was just beautiful, Hughie; you never preached better in your life." And in the shadow of the porch, before they turned the corner, Mr. Erskine was morally certain that the young minister gave the girl's arm an impulsive little hug.
But his own heart was heavy, for as he walked away there came a thought into his heart. A resemblance that had been haunting him suddenly flashed up vividly upon him.
"If Marjorie had lived she would have been about that girl's age—and like her, too, pale and slim and dark."
So all the way to his lonely mansion of Barlochan the ex-minister of the Crown thought of the young girl who had faded from his side, just as she was becoming a companion for the man who, for her sake, had put his career behind him.
In the afternoon Mr. Erskine sat in the arbour, while John in his Sunday best tried to compromise with his conscience as to how much gardening could be made to come under the catechistic heading, "Works of Necessity and Mercy." He solved this by watering freely, training and binding up sparingly, pruning in a furtive and shamefaced manner (when nobody was looking), but strictly abstaining from the opener iniquities of weeding, digging, or knocking in nails with hammers. In the latter emergency John kept for Sunday use the ironshod heel of an old boot, and in no case did he ever so far forget himself as to whistle. On that point he was adamant.
At last, after hovering nearer and nearer, he paused before the arbour and addressed his master directly.
"Thonjuist settles it!"
Mr. Erskine slowly put down his book, still, however, marking the place with his finger.
"I do not understand—what do you mean bython?"
"The sermon we had the day, sir. It was fair affrontin'. The Session are gaun up to ask Maister Peebles to consider his resignation. The thing had neither beginning o' days nor end o' years. It was withoot form and void. It's a kind o' peety, too, for the laddie, wi' that young Englishy wife that he has ta'en, on his hand. I'm feared she is no the kind that will ever help to fill his meal-ark!"
"I am very sorry to hear you say so, John," said Mr. Erskine; "can nothing be done, think you? Why don't they give the young man another chance? Can no one speak to him? There were some things about the service that I liked very much. Indeed, I found myself feeling at home in a church for the first time for years."
"Did ye, sir? That's past a' thinkin'! A' Machermore was juist mournin' and lamentin'. What micht the points be that ye liket? I will tell the elders. It micht do some guid to the puir lad!"
Mr. Erskine was a little taken aback. He could not say that what pleased him most in the service had sat in the manse-seat beside him, had worn a plain black dress, and possessed a pair of eyes that reminded him of a certain young girl who had taken walks with him over the hills of Surrey, when the blackbirds were singing in the spring.
Nevertheless, he managed to convey to John a satisfaction and a hopefulness that were all the more helpful for being a little vague. To which he added a practical word.
"If you think it would do any good, John, I might see one or two of the members of Session themselves."
"Ye needna trouble yoursel', thank ye kindly, sir," said John, "I will undertak' the job. Though my infirmity at orra times keeps me frae acceptin' the eldership (I hae been twice eleckit), I may say that John McWhan's influence in the testifyin' and Covenant-keeping Kirk o' the Marrow at the Cross-roads o' Machermore has to be reckoned wi'—aye, it has to be reckoned wi'!"