Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he saw her though she did not see him. He was stepping into the middle of the road to wave his hand to her, when some sudden weakness made him look towards the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded thanks for his interest in her, but he scowled and pretended to be studying the sky. Next moment he saw her running back to him.
"There are soldiers at the top of the field," she cried. "I cannot escape that way."
"There is no other way," Gavin answered.
"Will you not help me again?" she entreated.
She should not have said "again." Gavin shook his head, but pulled her closer to the manse dyke, for his mother was still in sight.
"Why do you do that?" the girl asked, quickly, looking round to see if she were pursued. "Oh, I see," she said, as her eyes fell on the figure at the window.
"It is my mother," Gavin said, though he need not have explained, unless he wanted the gypsy to know that he was a bachelor.
"Only your mother?"
"Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than you for your behaviour to-night!"
"How can she?"
"If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I helped you to escape?"
"But you said you did not."
"Yes, I helped you," Gavin admitted. "My God! what would my congregation say if they knew I had let you pass yourself off as— as my wife?"
He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety to blush.
"It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of," Gavin said, bitterly, "but from my conscience. No, that is not true. I do fear exposure, but for my mother's sake. Look at her; she is happy, because she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials as you cannot know of, and now, when at last I seemed able to do something for her, you destroy her happiness. You have her life in your hands."
The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped angrily on the dry ground. Then, child of impulse as she always was, she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the road.
"Where are you going?" he cried.
"To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I will clear you."
There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking back.
"Stop!" Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched her shoulder.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Why—" whispered Gavin, giddily, "why—why do you not hide in the manse garden?—No one will look for you there."
There were genuine tears in the gypsy's eyes now.
"You are a good man," she said; "I like you."
"Don't say that," Gavin cried in horror. "There is a summer-seat in the garden."
Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took his advice, hastened to the manse. Once inside, he snibbed the door.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE—ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.
About six o'clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing. The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might make up on the clock.
Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered her vow, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.
On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist. It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might have been awaiting her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums. From the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some people at the Tenements run to their houses at sound of the drum. Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake in the manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight by thin spars.
Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with his own hand. Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick socks in the place of thin ones, and, it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his belongings in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and the secret places at the back of drawers, occasionally led to their being lost when wanted. "They are safe, at any rate, for I put them away some gait," was then Magaret's comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper the next instant, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his room he would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for self- neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.
On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin's door to stand and look, for she was fearful of awakening him after his heavy night. Even before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise that, for the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters. She concluded that he had done this lest the light should rouse him. He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put his open hand before his face, as if to guard himself, and again he frowned and seemed to draw back from something. He pointed his finger sternly to the north, ordering the weavers, his mother thought, to return to their homes, and then he muttered to himself so that she heard the words, "And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Then suddenly he bent forward, his eyes open and fixed on the window. Thus he sat, for the space of half a minute, like one listening with painful intentness. When he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the night over again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of the woman in the garden.
Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from Margaret's room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to her mistress. Jean's cheerfulness would have told him that her father was safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I suppose he was at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the shutters and looking out as cautiously as a burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.
But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer of water when these words from the kitchen capsized it:—
"Ay, an Egyptian. That's what the auld folk call a gypsy. Weel, Mrs. Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums as would baffle description, though I kent the fits and fors o't as I dinna. Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is—"
Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing, of course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless queerer things about this hussy and her "husband" were being bawled from door to door. To the girl's probable sufferings he gave no heed. What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to yield to the machinations of a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw his folly in the face.
The tray in Jean's hands clattered against the dresser, and Gavin sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front door.
In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates had been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a means of helping her with her work. But with such a to-do in Thrums, and she the possessor of exclusive information, Jean's reverence for Gavin only took her to-day as far as the door, where she lingered half in the parlour and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from the minister, but her ears his entirely.
"I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture of the—of an Egyptian woman," Gavin said to his mother, nervously.
"Did you cry to me?" Jean asked, turning round longingly. "But maybe the mistress will tell you about the Egyptian hersel."
"Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?" Gavin asked in a hollow voice.
"Sup up your porridge, Gavin," Margaret said. "I'll have no speaking about this terrible night till you've eaten something."
"I have no appetite," the minister replied, pushing his plate from him. "Jean, answer me."
"'Deed, then," said Jean willingly, "they hinna ta'en her to
Tilliedrum."
"For what reason?" asked Gavin, his dread increasing.
"For the reason that they couldna catch her," Jean answered. "She spirited hersel awa', the magerful crittur."
"What! But I heard you say——"
"Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her. It's like a witch story. They had her safe in the townhouse, and baith shirra and captain guarding her, and syne in a clink she wasna there. A' nicht they looked for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot- print ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi' their tap in their lap and march awa without her."
Gavin's appetite returned.
"Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?" he asked, laying down his spoon with a new fear. "Where is she now?"
"No human eye has seen her," Jean answered impressively. "Whaur is she now? Whaur does the flies vanish to in winter? We ken they're some gait, but whaur?"
"But what are the people saying about her?"
"Daft things," said Jean. "Old Charles Yuill gangs the length o' hinting that she's dead and buried."
"She could not have buried herself, Jean," Margaret said, mildly.
"I dinna ken. Charles says she's even capable o' that."
Then Jean retired reluctantly (but leaving the door ajar) and
Gavin fell to on his porridge. He was now so cheerful that
Margaret wondered.
"If half the stories about this gypsy be true," she said, "she must be more than a mere woman."
"Less, you mean, mother," Gavin said, with conviction. "She is a woman, and a sinful one."
"Did you see her, Gavin?"
"I saw her. Mother, she flouted me!"
"The daring tawpie!" exclaimed Margaret.
"She is all that," said the minister.
"Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body? But you don't notice clothes much, Gavin."
"I noticed hers," Gavin said, slowly, "she was in a green and red,
I think, and barefooted."
"Ay," shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both of them; "but she had a lang grey-like cloak too. She was seen jouking up closes in't."
Gavin rose, considerably annoyed, and shut the parlour door.
"Was she as bonny as folks say?" asked Margaret. "Jean says they speak of her beauty as unearthly."
"Beauty of her kind," Gavin explained learnedly, "is neither earthly nor heavenly." He was seeing things as they are very clearly now. "What," he said, "is mere physical beauty? Pooh!"
"And yet," said Margaret, "the soul surely does speak through the face to some extent."
"Do you really think so, mother?" Gavin asked, a little uneasily.
"I have always noticed it," Margaret said, and then her son sighed.
"But I would let no face influence me a jot," he said, recovering.
"Ah, Gavin, I'm thinking I'm the reason you pay so little regard to women's faces. It's no natural."
"You've spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring for another woman. I would compare her to you, and then where would she be?"
"Sometime," Margaret said, "you'll think differently."
"Never," answered Gavin, with a violence that ended the conversation.
Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing down the garden walk cast a guilty glance at the summer-seat. Something black was lying in one corner of it. He stopped irresolutely, for his mother was nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared into the little arbour. What had caught his eye was a Bible. On the previous day, as he now remembered, he had been called away while studying in the garden, and had left his Bible on the summer-seat, a pencil between its pages. Not often probably had the Egyptian passed a night in such company.
But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself the question. The gypsy's cloak was lying neatly folded at the other end of the seat. Why had the woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put this question when another stood in front of it. What was to be done with the cloak? He dared not leave it there for Jean to discover. He could not take it into the manse in daylight. Beneath the seat was a tool-chest without a lid, and into this he crammed the cloak. Then, having turned the box face downwards, he went about his duties. But many a time during the day he shivered to the marrow, reflecting suddenly that at this very moment Jean might be carrying the accursed thing (at arms' length, like a dog in disgrace) to his mother.
Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll for taking the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the cloak. Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her master in the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and when he saw her he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her openly she would have suspected nothing, but this made her look at him.
"Why do you stare so, Jean?" Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in bewilderment.
"I have noticed her watching me sharply all day," he said to himself, though it was only he who had been watching her.
Gavin carried the cloak to his bed-room, thinking to lock it away in his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed to see it after the lid was shut.
The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest and was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She had been employed very innocently in his mother's room, but he said tartly—
"Jean, I really cannot have this," which sent Jean to the kitchen with her apron at her eyes.
Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour afterwards was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard some one in the garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was not Jean; it was Margaret.
"Mother," he said in alarm, "what are you doing here?"
"I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin."
"Yes, but—it is too cold for you. Did Jean—did Jean ask you to come up here?"
"Jean? She knows her place better."
Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak from its lurking place, and took it into the garden. He very nearly met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.
In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even now he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of scraping in the garden, and his first thought was "Jean!" But peering from the window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog which already had its teeth in the cloak.
That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped the parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home, nevertheless, he was overtaken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins. Fittis had seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin, returned it to him. Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat down gloomily on the cemetery dyke. Half an hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss garden.
In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.
"Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every one is still speaking of, wore a long cloak? Well, would you believe it, the cloak was Captain Halliwell's, and she took it from the town-house when she escaped. She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He did not discover that it was gone until he was leaving Thrums."
"Mother, is this possible?" Gavin said.
"The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was ordered, it seems, to look for the cloak quietly, and to take any one into custody in whose possession it was found."
"Has it been found?"
"No."
The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could not trust his face. What was to be done now? The cloak was lying in mason Baxter's garden, and Baxter was therefore, in all probability, within four-and-twenty hours of the Tilliedrum gaol.
"Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?" Femie Wilkie asked
Sam'l Fairweather three hours later.
"Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum hat," answered
Sam'l; "and richtly, for it's the crowning stone o' the edifice."
"Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o' Tillyloss the now," said Femie, "though like him it was. He joukit back when he saw me."
While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements, mason Baxter, standing at the window which looked into his garden, was shouting, "Wha's that in my yard?" There was no answer, and Baxter closed his window, under the impression that he had been speaking to a cat. The man in the cap then emerged from the corner where he had been crouching, and stealthily felt for something among the cabbages and pea sticks. It was no longer there, however, and by- and-by he retired empty-handed.
"The Egyptian's cloak has been found," Margaret was able to tell
Gavin next day. "Mason Baxter found it yesterday afternoon."
"In his garden?" Gavin asked hurriedly.
"No; in the quarry, he says, but according to Jean he is known not to have been at the quarry to-day. Some seem to think that the gypsy gave him the cloak for helping her to escape, and that he has delivered it up lest he should get into difficulties."
"Whom has he given it to, mother?" Gavin asked.
"To the policeman."
"And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?"
"Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the information that the masons had found it in the quarry."
The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to be told, awaited Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing to do with the cloak, of which I may here record the end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its owner; Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its reappearance in Thrums, several months after the riot, as two pairs of Sabbath breeks for her sons, James and Andrew.
CHAPTER X.
FIRST SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.
On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have said, something strange happened in the Auld Licht pulpit. The congregation, despite their troubles, turned it over and peered at it for days, but had they seen into the inside of it they would have weaved few webs until the session had sat on the minister. The affair baffled me at the time, and for the Egyptian's sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it not one of Gavin's milestones. It includes the first of his memorable sermons against Woman.
I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I heard of the sermon before night, and this, I think, is as good an opportunity as another for showing how the gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to the manse I had kept the vow made to myself and avoided Thrums. Only once had I ventured to the kirk, and then, instead of taking my old seat, the fourth from the pulpit, I sat down near the plate, where I could look at Margaret without her seeing me. To spare her that agony I even stole away as the last word of the benediction was pronounced, and my haste scandalised many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire quickly from the church after the manner of the godless U. P.'s (and the Free Kirk is little better), who have their hats in their hand when they rise for the benediction, so that they may at once pour out like a burst dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us, clear our throats and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put our hats into them. In time we do get out, but I am never sure how.
One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town, without losing his character, and I used to await the return of my neighbour, the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a man whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from his wife his great pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright what he thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding it as it deserved, and I have seen him when completely baffled by the brute, sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue: "You think you're clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer, that's what you are. You think you have blood in you. You hae blood! Gae away, and dinna blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man yestreen that kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie fushionless besom. What do you say to that?"
As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter topic was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had none. "aye implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."
On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife and three children, holding each other's hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by shouting. All were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having started half a minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on them.
"It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just as I was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before me.
"You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at the Glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is Established, and so neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to know what their long faces meant, and so asked at once—
"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?"
"Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round his wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk this day, sic as—"
"Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply; "have you on your
Sabbath shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?"
"Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny things on," retorted the farmer.
"Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day."
"Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them till he takes them aff. Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma?"
"It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable."
I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr. Dishart.
"We was saying," began the post briskly, "that—"
"It was me that was saying it," said Waster Lunny. "So, dominie—"
"Haud your gabs, baith o' you," interrupted Elspeth, "You've been roaring the story to ane another till you're hoarse."
"In the forenoon," Waster Lunny went on determinedly, "Mr. Dishart preached on the riot, and fine he was. Oh, dominie, you should hae heard him ladling it on to Lang Tammas, no by name but in sic a way that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at, Sal! oh losh! Tammas got it strong."
"But he's dull in the uptake," broke in the post, "by what I expected. I spoke to him after the sermon, and I says, just to see if he was properly humbled, 'Ay, Tammas,' I says, 'them that discourse was preached against, winna think themselves seven feet men for a while again.' 'Ay, Birse,' he answers, 'and glad I am to hear you admit it, for he had you in his eye.' I was fair scunnered at Tammas the day."
"Mr. Dishart was preaching at the whole clanjamfray o' you," said
Elspeth.
"Maybe he was," said her husband, leering; "but you needna cast it at us, for, my certie, if the men got it frae him in the forenoon, the women got it in the afternoon."
"He redd them up most michty," said the post. "Thae was his very words or something like them. 'Adam,' says he, 'was an erring man, but aside Eve he was respectable.'"
"Ay, but it wasna a' women he meant," Elspeth explained, "for when he said that, he pointed his finger direct at T'nowhead's lassie, and I hope it'll do her good."
"But I wonder," I said, "that Mr. Dishart chose such a subject to- day. I thought he would be on the riot at both services."
"You'll wonder mair," said Elspeth, "when you hear what happened afore he began the afternoon sermon. But I canna get in a word wi' that man o' mine."
"We've been speaking about it," said Birse, "ever since we left the kirk door. Tod, we've been sawing it like seed a' alang the glen."
"And we meant to tell you about it at once," said Waster Lunny; "but there's aye so muckle to say about a minister. Dagont, to hae ane keeps a body out o' langour. Ay, but this breaks the drum. Dominie, either Mr. Dishart wasna weel, or he was in the devil's grip."
This startled me, for the farmer was looking serious.
"He was weel eneuch," said Birse, "for a heap o' fowk speired at
Jean if he had ta'en his porridge as usual, and she admitted he
had. But the lassie was skeered hersel', and said it was a mercy
Mrs. Dishart wasna in the kirk."
"Why was she not there?" I asked anxiously.
"Oh, he winna let her out in sic weather."
"I wish you would tell me what happened," I said to Elspeth.
"So I will," she answered, "if Waster Lunny would haud his wheesht for a minute. You see the afternoon diet began in the ordinary way, and a' was richt until we came to the sermon. 'You will find my text,' he says, in his piercing voice, 'in the eighth chapter of Ezra.'"
"And at thae words," said Waster Lunny, "my heart gae a loup, for
Ezra is an unca ill book to find; ay, and so is Ruth."
"I kent the books o' the Bible by heart," said Elspeth, scornfully, "when I was a sax year auld."
"So did I," said Waster Lunny, "and I ken them yet, except when I'm hurried. When Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra he a sort o' keeked round the kirk to find out if he had puzzled onybody, and so there was a kind o' a competition among the congregation wha would lay hand on it first. That was what doited me. Ay, there was Ruth when she wasna wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it looked as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the Bible."
"You wasna the only distressed crittur," said his wife. "I was ashamed to see Eppie McLaren looking up the order o' the books at the beginning o' the Bible."
"Tibbie Birse was even mair brazen," said the post, "for the sly cuttie opened at Kings and pretended it was Ezra."
"None o' thae things would I do," said Waster Lunny," and sal, I dauredna, for Davit Lunan was glowering over my shuther. Ay, you may scrowl at me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind, Ezra has done me. Mony a time afore I start for the kirk I take my Bible to a quiet place and look Ezra up. In the very pew I says canny to mysel', 'Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job,' the which should be a help, but the moment the minister gi'es out that awfu' book, away goes Ezra like the Egyptian."
"And you after her," said Elspeth, "like the weavers that wouldna fecht. You make a windmill of your Bible."
"Oh, I winna admit I'm beat. Never mind there's queer things in the world forby Ezra. How is cripples aye so puffed up mair than other folk? How does flour-bread aye fall on the buttered side?"
"I will mind," Elspeth said, "for I was terrified the minister would admonish you frae the pulpit."
"He couldna hae done that, for was he no baffled to find Ezra himsel'?"
"Him no find Ezra!" cried Elspeth. "I hae telled you a dozen times he found it as easy as you could yoke a horse."
"The thing can be explained in no other way," said her husband, doggedly, "if he was weel and in sound mind."
"Maybe the dominie can clear it up," suggested the post, "him being a scholar."
"Then tell me what happened," I asked.
"Godsake, hae we no telled you?" Birse said. "I thocht we had."
"It was a terrible scene," said Elspeth, giving her husband a shove. "As I said, Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra eighth. Weel, I turned it up in a jiffy, and syne looked cautiously to see how Eppie McLaren was getting on. Just at that minute I heard a groan frae the pulpit. It didna stop short o' a groan. Ay, you may be sure I looked quick at the minister, and there I saw a sicht that would hae made the grandest gape. His face was as white as a baker's, and he had a sort of fallen against the back o' the pulpit, staring demented-like at his open Bible."
"And I saw him," said Birse, "put up his hand atween him and the
Book, as if he thocht it was to jump at him."
"Twice," said Elspeth, "he tried to speak, and twice he let the words fall."
"That," says Waster Lunny, "the whole congregation admits, but I didna see it mysel', for a' this time you may picture me hunting savage-like for Ezra. I thocht the minister was waiting till I found it."
"Hendry Munn," said Birse, "stood upon one leg, wondering whether he should run to the session-house for a glass of water."
"But by that time," said Elspeth, "the fit had left Mr. Dishart, or rather it had ta'en a new turn. He grew red, and it's gospel that he stamped his foot."
"He had the face of one using bad words," said the post, "He didna swear, of course, but that was the face he had on."
"I missed it," said Waster Lunny, "for I was in full cry after
Ezra, with the sweat running down my face."
"But the most astounding thing has yet to be telled," went on Elspeth. "The minister shook himsel' like one wakening frae a nasty dream, and he cries in a voice of thunder, just as if he was shaking his fist at somebody—"
"He cries," Birse interposed, cleverly, "he cries, 'You will find the text in Genesis, chapter three, verse six.'"
"Yes," said Elspeth, "first he gave out one text, and then he gave out another, being the most amazing thing to my mind that ever happened in the town of Thrums. What will our children's children think o't? I wouldna hae missed it for a pound note."
"Nor me," said Waster Lunny, "though I only got the tail o't.
Dominie, no sooner had he said Genesis third and sixth, than I
laid my finger on Ezra. Was it no provoking? Onybody can turn up
Genesis, but it needs an able-bodied man to find Ezra."
"He preached on the Fall," Elspeth said, "for an hour and twenty- five minutes, but powerful though he was I would rather he had telled us what made him gie the go-by to Ezra."
"All I can say," said Waster Lunny, "is that I never heard him mair awe-inspiring. Whaur has he got sic a knowledge of women? He riddled them, he fair riddled them, till I was ashamed o' being married."
"It's easy kent whaur he got his knowledge of women," Birse explained, "it's a' in the original Hebrew. You can howk ony mortal thing out o' the original Hebrew, the which all ministers hae at their finger ends. What else makes them ken to jump a verse now and then when giving out a psalm?"
"It wasna women like me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways."
"Tod," said her husband, "if they try their hands on Mr. Dishart they'll meet their match."
"They will," chuckled the post. "The Hebrew's a grand thing, though teuch, I'm telled, michty teuch."
"His sublimest burst," Waster Lunny came back to tell me, "was about the beauty o' the soul being everything and the beauty o' the face no worth a snuff. What a scorn he has for bonny faces and toom souls! I dinna deny but what a bonny face fell takes me, but Mr. Dishart wouldna gie a blade o' grass for't. Ay, and I used to think that in their foolishness about women there was dagont little differ atween the unlearned and the highly edicated."
The gossip about Gavin brought hitherto to the schoolhouse had been as bread to me, but this I did not like. For a minister to behave thus was as unsettling to us as a change of Government to Londoners, and I decided to give my scholars a holiday on the morrow and tramp into the town for fuller news. But all through the night it snowed, and next day, and then intermittingly for many days, and every fall took the school miles farther away from Thrums. Birse and the crows had now the glen road to themselves, and even Birse had twice or thrice to bed with me. At these times had he not been so interested in describing his progress through the snow, maintaining that the crying want of our glen road was palings for postmen to kick their feet against, he must have wondered why I always turned the talk to the Auld Licht minister.
"Ony explanation o' his sudden change o' texts?' Birse said, repeating my question. "Tod, and there is and to spare, for I hear tell there's saxteen explanations in the Tenements alone. As Tammas Haggart says, that's a blessing, for if there had just been twa explanations the kirk micht hae split on them."
"Ay," he said at another time, "twa or three even dared to question the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to the kirk-officer. Weel, Tammas, being precentor, has a richt, as you ken, to leave the kirk by the session-house door, just like the minister himsel'. He did so that afternoon, and what, think you, did he see? He saw Mr. Dishart tearing a page out o' the Bible, and flinging it savagely into the session-house fire. You dinna credit it? Weel, it's staggering, but there's Hendry Munn's evidence too. Hendry took his first chance o' looking up Ezra in the minister's Bible, and, behold, the page wi' the eighth chapter was gone. Them that thinks Tammas wasna blind wi' excitement hauds it had been Ezra eighth that gaed into the fire. Onyway, there's no doubt about the page's being missing, for whatever excitement Tammas was in, Hendry was as cool as ever."
A week later Birse told me that the congregation had decided to regard the incident as adding lustre to their kirk. This was largely, I fear, because it could then be used to belittle the Established minister. That fervent Auld Licht, Snecky Hobart, feeling that Gavin's action was unsound, had gone on the following Sabbath to the parish kirk and sat under Mr. Duthie. But Mr. Duthie was a close reader, so that Snecky flung himself about in his pew in misery. The minister concluded his sermon with these words: "But on this subject I will say no more at present."
"Because you canna," Snecky roared, and strutted out of the church. Comparing the two scenes, it is obvious that the Auld Lichts had won a victory. After preaching impromptu for an hour and twenty-five minutes, it could never be said of Gavin that he needed to read. He became more popular than ever. Yet the change of texts was not forgotten. If in the future any other indictments were brought against him, it would certainly be pinned to them.
I marvelled long over Gavin's jump from Ezra to Genesis, and at this his first philippic against Woman, but I have known the cause for many a year. The Bible was the one that had lain on the summer-seat while the Egyptian hid there. It was the great pulpit Bible which remains in the church as a rule, but Gavin had taken it home the previous day to make some of its loose pages secure with paste. He had studied from it on the day preceding the riot, but had used a small Bible during the rest of the week. When he turned in the pulpit to Ezra, where he had left the large Bible open in the summer-seat, he found this scrawled across chapter eight:—
"I will never tell who flung the clod at Captain Halliwell. But why did you fling it? I will never tell that you allowed me to be called Mrs. Dishart before witnesses. But is not this a Scotch marriage? Signed, Babbie the Egyptian."
CHAPTER XI.
TELLS IN A WHISPER OF MAN'S FALL DURING THE CURLING SEASON.
No snow could be seen in Thrums by the beginning of the year, though clods of it lay in Waster Lunny's fields, where his hens wandered all day as if looking for something they had dropped. A black frost had set in, and one walking on the glen road could imagine that through the cracks in it he saw a loch glistening. From my door I could hear the roar of curling stones at Rashie- bog, which is almost four miles nearer Thrums. On the day I am recalling, I see that I only made one entry in my diary, "At last bought Waster Lunny's bantams." Well do I remember the transaction, and no wonder, for I had all but bought the bantams every day for a six months.
About noon the doctor's dog-cart was observed by all the Tenements standing at the Auld Licht manse. The various surmises were wrong. Margaret had not been suddenly taken ill; Jean had not swallowed a darning-needle; the minister had not walked out at his study window in a moment of sublime thought. Gavin stepped into the dog- cart, which at once drove off in the direction of Rashie-bog, but equally in error were those who said that the doctor was making a curler of him.
There was, however, ground for gossip; for Thrums folk seldom called in a doctor until it was too late to cure them, and McQueen was not the man to pay social visits. Of his skill we knew fearsome stories, as that, by looking at Archie Allardyce, who had come to broken bones on a ladder, he discovered which rung Archie fell from. When he entered a stuffy room he would poke his staff through the window to let in fresh air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the breakage. He was deaf in the right ear, and therefore usually took the left side of prosy people, thus, as he explained, making a blessing of an affliction. "A pity I don't hear better?" I have heard him say. "Not at all. If my misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed, you can't conceive how I should miss my deaf ear." He was a fine fellow, though brusque, and I never saw him without his pipe until two days before we buried him, which was five-and-twenty years ago come Martinmas.
"We're all quite weel," Jean said apprehensively as she answered his knock on the manse door, and she tried to be pleasant, too, for well she knew that, if a doctor willed it, she could have fever in five minutes.
"Ay, Jean, I'll soon alter that," he replied ferociously. "Is the master in?"
"He's at his sermon," Jean said with importance.
To interrupt the minister at such a moment seemed sacrilege to her, for her up-bringing had been good. Her mother had once fainted in the church, but though the family's distress was great, they neither bore her out, nor signed to the kirk-officer to bring water. They propped her up in the pew in a respectful attitude, joining in the singing meanwhile, and she recovered in time to look up 2nd Chronicles, 21st and 7th.
"Tell him I want to speak to him at the door," said the doctor fiercely, "or I'll bleed you this minute."
McQueen would not enter, because his horse might have seized the opportunity to return stablewards. At the houses where it was accustomed to stop, it drew up of its own accord, knowing where the Doctor's "cases" were as well as himself, but it resented new patients.
"You like misery, I think, Mr. Dishart," McQueen said when Gavin came to him, "at least I am always finding you in the thick of it, and that is why I am here now. I have a rare job for you if you will jump into the machine. You know Nanny Webster, who lives on the edge of Windyghoul? No, you don't, for she belongs to the other kirk. Well, at all events, you knew her brother, Sanders, the mole-catcher?"
"I remember him. You mean the man who boasted so much about seeing a ball at Lord Rintoul's place?"
"'The same, and, as you may know, his boasting about maltreating policemen whom he never saw led to his being sentenced to nine months in gaol lately."
"That is the man," said Gavin. "I never liked him."
"No, but his sister did," McQueen answered, drily, "and with reason, for he was her breadwinner, and now she is starving."
"Anything I can give her—"
"Would be too little, sir."
"But the neighbours—"
"She has few near her, and though the Thrums poor help each other bravely, they are at present nigh as needy as herself. Nanny is coming to the poorhouse, Mr. Dishart."
"God help her!" exclaimed Gavin.
"Nonsense," said the doctor, trying to make himself a hard man. "She will be properly looked after there, and—and in time she will like it."
"Don't let my mother hear you speaking of taking an old woman to that place," Gavin said, looking anxiously up the stair. I cannot pretend that Margaret never listened.
"You all speak as if the poorhouse was a gaol," the doctor said testily. "But so far as Nanny is concerned, everything is arranged. I promised to drive her to the poorhouse to-day, and she is waiting for me now. Don't look at me as if I was a brute. She is to take some of her things with her to the poorhouse, and the rest is to be left until Sanders's return, when she may rejoin him. At least we said that to her to comfort her."
"You want me to go with you?"
"Yes, though I warn you it may be a distressing scene; indeed, the truth is that I am loth to face Nanny alone to-day. Mr. Duthie should have accompanied me, for the Websters are Established Kirk; ay, and so he would if Rashie-bog had not been bearing. A terrible snare this curling, Mr. Dishart"—here the doctor sighed—"I have known Mr. Duthie wait until midnight struck on Sabbath and then be off to Rashie-bog with a torch."
"I will go with you," Gavin said, putting on his coat.
"Jump in then. You won't smoke? I never see a respectable man not smoking, sir, but I feel indignant with him for such sheer waste of time."
Gavin smiled at this, and Snecky Hobart, who happened to be keeking over the manse dyke, bore the news to the Tenements.
"I'll no sleep the nicht," Snecky said, "for wondering what made the minister lauch. Ay, it would be no trifle."
A minister, it is certain, who wore a smile on his face would never have been called to the Auld Licht kirk, for life is a wrestle with the devil, and only the frivolous think to throw him without taking off their coats. Yet, though Gavin's zeal was what the congregation reverenced, many loved him privately for his boyishness. He could unbend at marriages, of which he had six on the last day of the year, and at every one of them he joked (the same joke) like a layman. Some did not approve of his playing at the teetotum for ten minutes with Kitty Dundas's invalid son, but the way Kitty boasted about it would have disgusted anybody. At the present day there are probably a score of Gavins in Thrums, all called after the little minister, and there is one Gavinia, whom he hesitated to christen. He made humorous remarks (the same remark) about all these children, and his smile as he patted their heads was for thinking over when one's work was done for the day.
The doctor's horse clattered up the Backwynd noisily, as if a minister behind made no difference to it. Instead of climbing the Roods, however, the nearest way to Nanny's, it went westward, which Gavin, in a reverie, did not notice. The truth must be told. The Egyptian was again in his head.
"Have I fallen deaf in the left ear, too?" said the doctor. "I see your lips moving, but I don't catch a syllable."
Gavin started, coloured, and flung the gypsy out of the trap.
"Why are we not going up the Roods?" he asked.
"Well," said the doctor slowly, "at the top of the Roods there is a stance for circuses, and this old beast of mine won't pass it. You know, unless you are behind in the clashes and clavers of Thrums, that I bought her from the manager of a travelling show. She was the horse ('Lightning' they called her) that galloped round the ring at a mile an hour, and so at the top of the Roods she is still unmanageable. She once dragged me to the scene of her former triumphs, and went revolving round it, dragging the machine after her."
"If you had not explained that," said Gavin, "I might have thought that you wanted to pass by Rashie-bog."
The doctor, indeed, was already standing up to catch a first glimpse of the curlers.
"Well," he admitted, "I might have managed to pass the circus ring, though what I have told you is true. However, I have not come this way merely to see how the match is going. I want to shame Mr. Duthie for neglecting his duty. It will help me to do mine, for the Lord knows I am finding it hard, with the music of these stones in my ears."
"I never saw it played before," Gavin said, standing up in his turn. "What a din they make! McQueen, I believe they are fighting!"
"No, no," said the excited doctor, "they are just a bit daft. That's the proper spirit for the game. Look, that's the baron- bailie near standing on his head, and there's Mr. Duthie off his head a' thegither. Yon's twa weavers and a mason cursing the laird, and the man wi' the besom is the Master of Crumnathie."
"A democracy, at all events," said Gavin.
"By no means," said the doctor, "it's an aristocracy of intellect.
Gee up, Lightning, or the frost will be gone before we are there."
"It is my opinion, doctor," said Gavin, "that you will have bones to set before that game is finished. I can see nothing but legs now."
"Don't say a word against curling, sir, to me," said McQueen, whom the sight of a game in which he must not play had turned crusty. "Dangerous! It's the best medicine I know of. Look at that man coming across the field. It is Jo Strachan. Well, sir, curling saved Jo's life after I had given him up. You don't believe me? Hie, Jo, Jo Strachan, come here and tell the minister how curling put you on your legs again."
Strachan came forward, a tough, little, wizened man, with red flannel round his ears to keep out the cold.
"It's gospel what the doctor says, Mr. Dishart," he declared. "Me and my brither Sandy was baith ill, and in the same bed, and the doctor had hopes o' Sandy, but nane o' me. Ay, weel, when I heard that, I thocht I micht as weel die on the ice as in my bed, so I up and on wi' my claethes. Sandy was mad at me, for he was no curler, and he says, 'Jo Strachan, if you gang to Rashie-bog you'll assuredly be brocht hame a corp.' I didna heed him, though, and off I gaed."
"And I see you did not die," said Gavin.
"Not me," answered the fish cadger, with a grin. "Na, but the joke o't is, it was Sandy that died."
"Not the joke, Jo," corrected the doctor, "the moral."
"Ay, the moral; I'm aye forgetting the word."
McQueen, enjoying Gavin's discomfiture, turned Lightning down the Rashie-bog road, which would be impassable as soon as the thaw came. In summer Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not sink unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with here and there a spring where dead men are said to lie, There are no rushes at its east end, and here the dog-cart drew up near the curlers, a crowd of men dancing, screaming, shaking their fists and sweeping, while half a hundred onlookers got in their way, gesticulating and advising.
"Hold me tight," the doctor whispered to Gavin, "or I'll be leaving you to drive Nanny to the poorhouse by yourself."
He had no sooner said this than he tried to jump out of the trap.
"You donnert fule, John Robbie," he shouted to a player, "soop her up, man, soop her up; no, no, dinna, dinna; leave her alane. Bailie, leave her alane, you blazing idiot. Mr. Dishart, let me go; what do you mean, sir, by hanging on to my coat tails? Dang it all, Duthie's winning. He has it, he has it!"
"You're to play, doctor?" some cried, running to the dog-cart. "We hae missed you sair."
"Jeames, I—I—. No, I daurna."
"Then we get our licks. I never saw the minister in sic form. We can do nothing against him."
"Then," cried McQueen, "I'll play. Come what will, I'll play. Let go my tails, Mr. Dishart, or I'll cut them off. Duty? Fiddlesticks!"
"Shame on you, sir," said Gavin; "yes, and on you others who would entice him from his duty."
"Shame!" the doctor cried. "Look at Mr. Duthie. Is he ashamed? And yet that man has been reproving me for a twelvemonths because I've refused to become one of his elders. Duthie," he shouted," think shame of yourself for curling this day."
Mr. Duthie had carefully turned his back to the trap, for Gavin's presence in it annoyed him. We seldom care to be reminded of our duty by seeing another do it. Now, however, he advanced to the dog-cart, taking the far side of Gavin.
"Put on your coat, Mr. Duthie," said the doctor, "and come with me to Nanny Webster's. You promised."
Mr. Duthie looked quizzically at Gavin, and then at the sky.
"The thaw may come at any moment," he said.
"I think the frost is to hold," said Gavin.
"It may hold over to-morrow," Mr. Duthie admitted; "but to- morrow's the Sabbath, and so a lost day."
"A what?" exclaimed Gavin, horrified.
"I only mean," Mr. Duthie answered, colouring, "that we can't curl on the Lord's day. As for what it may be like on Monday, no one can say. No, doctor, I won't risk it. We're in the middle of a game, man."
Gavin looked very grave.
"I see what you are thinking, Mr. Dishart," the old minister said doggedly; "but then, you don't curl. You are very wise. I have forbidden my sons to curl."
"Then you openly snap your fingers at your duty, Mr. Duthie?" said the doctor, loftily. ("You can let go my tails now, Mr. Dishart, for the madness has passed.")
"None of your virtuous airs, McQueen," said Mr. Duthie, hotly. "What was the name of the doctor that warned women never to have bairns while it was hauding?"
"And what," retorted McQueen, "was the name of the minister that told his session he would neither preach nor pray while the black frost lasted?"
"Hoots, doctor," said Duthie, "don't lose your temper because I'm in such form."
"Don't lose yours, Duthie, because I aye beat you."
"You beat me, McQueen! Go home, sir, and don't talk havers. Who beat you at—"
"Who made you sing small at—"
"Who won—"
"Who—"
"Who—"
"I'll play you on Monday for whatever you like!" shrieked the doctor.
"If it holds," cried the minister, "I'll be here the whole day.
Name the stakes yourself. A stone?"
"No," the doctor said, "but I'll tell you what we'll play for. You've been dinging me doited about that eldership, and we'll play for't. If you win I accept office."
"Done," said the minister, recklessly.
The dog-cart was now turned toward Windyghoul, its driver once more good-humoured, but Gavin silent.
"You would have been the better of my deaf ear just now, Mr. Dishart," McQueen said after the loch had been left behind. "Aye, and I'm thinking my pipe would soothe you. But don't take it so much to heart, man. I'll lick him easily. He's a decent man, the minister, but vain of his play, ridiculously vain. However, I think the sight of you, in the place that should have been his, has broken his nerve for this day, and our side may win yet."
"I believe," Gavin said, with sudden enlightenment, "that you brought me here for that purpose."
"Maybe," chuckled the doctor; "maybe." Then he changed the subject suddenly. "Mr. Dishart," he asked, "were you ever in love?"
"Never!" answered Gavin violently.
"Well, well," said the doctor, "don't terrify the horse. I have been in love myself. It's bad, but it's nothing to curling."
CHAPTER XII.
TRAGEDY OF A MUD HOUSE.
THE dog-cart bumped between the trees of Caddam, flinging Gavin and the doctor at each other as a wheel rose on some beech-root or sank for a moment in a pool. I suppose the wood was a pretty sight that day, the pines only white where they had met the snow, as if the numbed painter had left his work unfinished, the brittle twigs snapping overhead, the water as black as tar. But it matters little what the wood was like. Within a squirrel's leap of it an old woman was standing at the door of a mud house listening for the approach of the trap that was to take her to the poorhouse. Can you think of the beauty of the day now?
Nanny was not crying. She had redd up her house for the last time and put on her black merino. Her mouth was wide open while she listened. If yon had, addressed her you would have thought her polite and stupid. Look at her. A flabby-faced woman she is now, with a swollen body, and no one has heeded her much these thirty years. I can tell you something; it is almost droll. Nanny Webster was once a gay flirt, and in Airlie Square there is a weaver with an unsteady head who thought all the earth of her. His loom has taken a foot from his stature, and gone are Nanny's raven locks on which he used to place his adoring hand. Down in Airlie Square he is weaving for his life, and here is Nanny, ripe for the poorhouse, and between them is the hill where they were lovers. That is all the story save that when Nanny heard the dog-cart she screamed.
No neighbour was with her. If you think this hard, it is because you do not understand. Perhaps Nanny had never been very lovable except to one man, and him, it is said, she lost through her own vanity; but there was much in her to like. The neighbours, of whom there were two not a hundred yards away, would have been with her now but they feared to hurt her feelings. No heart opens to sympathy without letting in delicacy, and these poor people knew that Nanny would not like them to see her being taken away. For a week they had been aware of what was coming, and they had been most kind to her, but that hideous word, the poorhouse, they had not uttered. Poorhouse is not to be spoken in Thrums, though it is nothing to tell a man that you see death in his face. Did Nanny think they knew where she was going? was a question they whispered to each other, and her suffering eyes cut scars on their hearts. So now that the hour had come they called their children into their houses and pulled down their blinds.
"If you would like to see her by yourself," the doctor said eagerly to Gavin, as the horse drew up at Nanny's gate, "I'll wait with the horse. Not," he added, hastily, "that I feel sorry for her. We are doing her a kindness."
They dismounted together, however, and Nanny, who had run from the trap into the house, watched them from her window.
McQueen saw her and said glumly, "I should have come alone, for if you pray she is sure to break down. Mr. Dishart, could you not pray cheerfully?"
"You don't look very cheerful yourself," Gavin said sadly.
"Nonsense," answered the doctor. "I have no patience with this false sentiment. Stand still, Lightning, and be thankful you are not your master today."
The door stood open, and Nanny was crouching against the opposite wall of the room, such a poor, dull kitchen, that you would have thought the furniture had still to be brought into it. The blanket and the piece of old carpet that was Nanny's coverlet were already packed in her box. The plate rack was empty. Only the round table and the two chairs, and the stools and some pans were being left behind.
"Well, Nanny," the doctor said, trying to bluster, "I have come, and you see Mr. Dishart is with me."
Nanny rose bravely. She knew the doctor was good to her, and she wanted to thank him. I have not seen a great deal of the world myself, but often the sweet politeness of the aged poor has struck me as beautiful. Nanny dropped a curtesy, an ungainly one maybe, but it was an old woman giving the best she had.
"Thank you kindly, sirs," she said; and then two pairs of eyes dropped before hers.
"Please to take a chair," she added timidly. It is strange to know that at that awful moment, for let none tell me it was less than awful, the old woman was the one who could speak.
Both men sat down, for they would have hurt Nanny by remaining standing. Some ministers would have known the right thing to say to her, but Gavin dared not let himself speak. I have again to remind you that he was only one-and-twenty.
"I'm drouthy, Nanny," the doctor said, to give her something to do, "and I would be obliged for a drink of water."
Nanny hastened to the pan that stood behind her door, but stopped before she reached it.
"It's toom," she said. "I—I didna think I needed to fill it this morning." She caught the doctor's eye, and could only half restrain a sob._ "I couldna help that," she said, apologetically. "I'm richt angry at myself for being so ungrateful like."
The doctor thought it best that they should depart at once. He rose.
"Oh, no, doctor," cried Nanny in alarm.
"But you are ready?"
"Ay," she said, "I have been ready this twa hours, but you micht wait a minute. Hendry Munn and Andrew Allardyce is coming yont the road, and they would see me."
"Wait, doctor," Gavin said.
"Thank you kindly, sir," answered Nanny.
"But Nanny," the doctor said, "you must remember what I told you about the poo—, about the place you are going to. It is a fine house, and you will be very happy in it."
"Ay, I'll be happy in't," Nanny faltered, "but, doctor, if I could just hae bidden on here though I wasna happy!"
"Think of the food you will get: broth nearly every day."
"It—it'll be terrible enjoyable," Nanny said.
"And there will be pleasant company for you always," continued the doctor, "and a nice room to sit in. Why, after you have been there a week, you won't be the same woman."
"That's it!" cried Nanny with sudden passion. "Na, na; I'll be a woman on the poor's rates. Oh, mither, mither, you little thocht when you bore me that I would come to this!"
"Nanny," the doctor said, rising again, "I am ashamed of you."
"I humbly speir your forgiveness, sir," she said, "and you micht bide just a wee yet. I've been ready to gang these twa hours, but now that the machine is at the gate, I dinna ken how it is, but I'm terrible sweer to come awa'. Oh, Mr. Dishart, it's richt true what the doctor says about the—the place, but I canna just take it in. I'm—I'm gey auld."
"You will often get out to see your friends," was all Gavin could say.
"Na, na, na," she cried, "dinna say that; I'll gang, but you mauna bid me ever come out, except in a hearse. Dinna let onybody in Thrums look on my face again."
"We must go," said the doctor firmly. "Put on your mutch, Nanny."
"I dinna need to put on a mutch," she answered, with a faint flush of pride. "I have a bonnet."
She took the bonnet from her bed, and put it on slowly.
"Are you sure there's naebody looking?" she asked.
The doctor glanced at the minister, and Gavin rose.
"Let us pray," he said, and the three went down on their knees.
It was not the custom of Auld Licht ministers to leave any house without offering up a prayer in it, and to us it always seemed that when Gavin prayed, he was at the knees of God. The little minister pouring himself out in prayer in a humble room, with awed people around him who knew much more of the world than he, his voice at times thick and again a squeal, and his hands clasped not gracefully, may have been only a comic figure, but we were old- fashioned, and he seemed to make us better men. If I only knew the way, I would draw him as he was, and not fear to make him too mean a man for you to read about. He had not been long in Thrums before he knew that we talked much of his prayers, and that doubtless puffed him up a little. Sometimes, I daresay, he rose from his knees feeling that he had prayed well to-day, which is a dreadful charge to bring against anyone. But it was not always so, nor was it so now.
I am not speaking harshly of this man, whom I have loved beyond all others, when I say that Nanny came between him and his prayer. Had he been of God's own image, unstained, he would have forgotten all else in his Maker's presence, but Nanny was speaking too, and her words choked his. At first she only whispered, but soon what was eating her heart burst out painfully, and she did not know that the minister had stopped.
They were such moans as these that brought him back to earth:—
"I'll hae to gang… I'm a base woman no' to be mair thankfu' to them that is so good to me… I dinna like to prig wi' them to take a roundabout road, and I'm sair fleid a' the Roods will see me… If it could just be said to poor Sanders when he comes back that I died hurriedly, syne he would be able to haud up his head … Oh, mither! … I wish terrible they had come and ta'en me at nicht… It's a dog-cart, and I was praying it micht be a cart, so that they could cover me wi' straw."
"This is more than I can stand," the doctor cried.
Nanny rose frightened.
"I've tried you, sair," she said, "but, oh, I'm grateful, and I'm ready now."
They all advanced toward the door without another word, and Nanny even tried to smile. But in the middle of the floor something came over her, and she stood there. Gavin took her hand, and it was cold. She looked from one to the other, her mouth opening and shutting.
"I canna help it," she said.
"It's cruel hard," muttered the doctor. "I knew this woman when she was a lassie."