The Standard Bearer

“Why, Jonita, he has all his life been in love with the Lady Mary – the Bull of Earlstoun’s daughter.”

Alexander-Jonita nodded pensively.

“Even so I thought,” she said, “but, as I guess, Mary Gordon has sent him about his business, and so he has been taken with our poor Jean’s puling pussydom. God forgive me that I should say so much of a dying woman.”

“A dying woman!” cried I, “there is nothing the matter with Jean.”

Alexander-Jonita shook her head.

“Jean is not long for this world,” she said, “I bid you remember. Saw you ever the red leap through the white like yon, save when the life burns fast to the ashes and the pulse beats ever more light and weak?”

“And how long hath this thing been afoot?”

“Since the day of your brother’s first preaching, when to save her shoon Jean must needs go barefoot and wash her feet in the burn that slips down by the kirkyard wall.”

“That was the day Quintin first spoke with her, when she gave him her nooning piece of bread to stay his hunger.”

“Aye,” said Alexander-Jonita; “better had he gone hungry all sermon-time than eaten of our Jean’s piece.”

“For shame, Alexander-Jonita!” I cried, “and a double shame to speak thus of a lassie that is, by your own tale, dying on her feet – and your sister forbye. I believe that ye are but jealous!”

She flamed up in sudden anger. If she had had a knife or a pistol in her hand, I believe she would have killed me.

“Get out of our ewe-buchts before I twist your impudent neck, Hob MacClellan!” she cried. “I care not a docken for any man alive – least of all for you and your brother. Yet I thought, from what I heard of his doings at the Presbytery, that he was more of a man than any of you. But now I see that he is feckless and feeble like the rest.”

“Ah, Jonita, you snooded folk tame us all. From David the King to Hob MacClellan there is no man so wise but a woman may tie him in knots about her little finger.”

“I thought better of your brother!” she said more mildly, her anger dying away as suddenly as it had risen, and I think she sighed.

“But not better of me!” I said.

She looked at me with contempt, but yet a contempt mightily pleasant.

“Good e’en to ye, Hob,” she cried. “I was not so far left to myself as to think about you at all!”

And with that she took her light plaid over her arm with a saucyish swirl, and whistling on her dogs, she swung down the hill, carrying, if you please, her shoulders squared and her head in the air like a young conceited birkie going to see his sweetheart.

And then, when the thing became public, what a din there was in the parish of Balmaghie! Only those who know the position of a young minister and the interest in his doings can imagine. It was somewhat thus that the good wives wagged their tongues.

“To marry Jean Gemmell! Aye, juist poor Jean, the shilpit, pewlin’ brat that never did a hand’s turn in her life, indoor or oot! Fegs, a bonny wife she will mak’ to him. Apothecaries’ drugs and red claret wine she maun hae to leeve on. A bonnie penny it will cost him, gin ever she wins to the threshold o’ his manse!

“But she’s no there yet, kimmer! Na – certes no! I mind o’ her mither weel. Jean was her name, too, juist sich anither ‘cloyt’ – a feckless, white-faced bury-me-decent, withoot as muckle spirit as wad gar her turn a sow oot o’ the kail-yard. And a’ the kin o’ her were like her – no yin to better anither. There was her uncle Jacob Ahanny a’ the Risk; he keepit in wi’ the Government in the auld Persecution, and when Clavers cam’ to the door and asked him what religion he was o’, he said that the estate had changed hands lately, and that he hadna had time to speer at the new laird. And at that Clavers laughed and laughed, and it wasna often that Jockie Graham did the like. Fegs no, kimmers! But he clappit Jacob on the shooder. ‘Puir craitur,’ quo’ he; ‘ye are no the stuff that rebels are made o’. Na, there’s nocht o’ Richie Cameron aboot you.’”

“Aye, faith, do ye tell me, and Jean is to mairry the minister, and him sae bauld and croose before the Presbytery. What deil’s cantrip can hae ta’en him?”

“Hoot, Mary McKeand, I wonder to hear ye. Do ye no ken that the baulder and greater a man the easier a woman can get round him?”

“Aweel, even sae I hae heard. I wish oor Jock was a great man, then; I could maybe, keep him awa’ frae the change-hoose in the clachan. But the minister, he had far better hae ta’en yon wild sister – ”

“Her? I’se warrant she wadna look at him. She doesna even gang to Balmaghie Kirk to hear him preach.”

“Mary McKeand, hae ye come to your age withoot kennin, that the woman that wad refuse the minister o’ a parish when he speers her, hasna been born?”

“Aweel, maybe no! But kimmer harken to me, there’s mony an egg laid in the nest that never leeved to craw in the morn. Him and her are no married yet. Hoot na, woman!”

…

And so without further eavesdropping I took my way out of the clachan of Pluckamin, and left the good wives to arrange my brother’s future. I had not yet spoken to him on the subject, but I resolved to do so that very night.

It was already well upon the grey selvage of the dark when I strode up the manse-loaning, intent to have the matter out with my brother forthwith. It was not often that I took it on me to question him; for after all I was but a landward lout by comparison with him. I understood little of the high aims and purposes that inspired him, being at best but a plain country lad with my wits a little sharpened by the giff-gaff of the pedlar’s trade. But when it came to the push I think that Quintin had some respect for my opinion – all the more that I so seldom troubled him with it.

I found my brother in the little gable-room where he studied, with the window open that he might hear the sough of the soft-flowing river beneath, and perhaps also that the drowsy hum of the bees and the sweet-sour smell of the hives might drift in to him upon the balmy air of night.

The minister had a great black-lettered book propped up before him, which from its upright thick and thin letters (like pea-sticks dibbled in the ground) I knew to be Hebrew. But I do not think he read in it, nor gathered much lear for his Sabbath’s sermon.

He looked up as I came in.

“Quintin,” said I, directly, lest by waiting I should lose courage, “are you to marry Jean Gemmell?”

He kept his eyes straight upon me, as indeed he did ever with whomsoever he spake.

“Aye, Hob,” he said, quietly; “have ye any word to say against that?”

“I do not know that I have,” I answered, “but what will Mary Gordon say?”

I could see him wince like one that is touched on an unhealed wound.

But he recovered himself at once, and said calmly, “She will say nothing, feel nothing, care nothing.”

“I am none so sure of that,” said I, looking as straightly at him as ever he did at me.

He started up, one hand on the table, his long hair thrown back with a certain jerk he had when he was touched, which made him look like a roused lion that stands at bay. “By what right do ye speak thus, Hob MacClellan?”

“By the right of that which I know,” said I; “but a man who will pull up the seed which he has just planted, and cast it away because he finds not ripened ears, deserves to starve all his life on sprouted and musty corn.”

“Riddle me no riddles,” said my brother, knocking on the table with his palm till the great Hebrew book slid from its prop and fell heavily to the floor; “this is too terrible a venture. Speak plainly and tell me all you mean.”

“Well,” said I, “the matter is not all mine to tell. But you are well aware that Hob MacClellan can hold his peace, and is no gossip-monger. I tell you that when you went from Earlstoun the last time the Lady Mary went to the battlement tower to watch you go, and came down with her kerchief wringing with her tears.”

“It is a thing impossible, mad, incredible!” said he, putting his elbow on the table and his hand to his eyes as if he had been looking into the glare of an overpowering sun. Yet there was hardly enough light in the little room for us to see one another by. After a long silence Quintin turned to me and said, “Tell me how ye came to ken this.”

“That,” said I, bluntly, “is not a matter that can concern you. But know it I do, or I should not have troubled you with the matter.”

At this he gave a wild kind of throat cry that I never heard before. It was the driven, throttled cry of a man’s agony, once heard, never forgotten. Would that Mary Gordon had hearkened to it! It is the one thing no woman can stand. It either melts or terrifies her. But with another man it is different.

“Ah, you have troubled me – you have troubled me sore!” he cried. And with no more than that he left me abruptly and went out into the night. I looked through the window and saw him marching up and down by the kirk, on a strip of greensward for which he had ever a liking. It was pitiful to watch him. He walked fast like one that would have run away from melancholy thoughts, turning ever when he came opposite the low tomb-stone of the two martyr Hallidays. He was bareheaded, and I feared the chilling night dews. So I lifted down his minister’s hat from the deer’s horn by the hallan door and took it out to him.

At first he did not see me, being enwrapped in his own meditations, and it was only when a couple of blackbirds flew scolding out of the lilac bushes that he heard my foot and turned.