The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

But with a great effort the Stickit Minister set the tall narrow dram-glass on the table and ceremoniously filled out to his brother the stranger's "portion," as was once the duty of country hospitality in Scotland.

But the Doctor interrupted.

"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed, when he saw what his brother was doing, "for heaven's sake not that thing – give me a tumbler."

And without further ceremony he went to the cupboard; then he cried to Bell Gregory to fetch him some hot water, and mixed himself a steaming glass.

But the Stickit Minister did not sit down. He stood up by the mantelpiece all trembling. I noted particularly that his fingers spilled half the contents of the dram-glass as he tried to pour them back into the decanter.

"Oh, haste ye, Henry!" he said, with a pleading anxiety in his voice I had never heard there in any trouble of his own; "take up your drink and drive as fast as ye can to succour the poor woman's bairns. It is not for nothing that she would come here seeking you at this time of night!"

His brother laughed easily as he reseated himself and drew the tumbler nearer to his elbow.

"That's all you know, Robert," he said; "why, they come all the way to Cairn Edward after me if their little finger aches, let alone over here. I daresay some of the brats have got the mumps, and the mother saw me as I drove past. No, indeed – she and they must just wait till I get through my business at Whinnyliggate!"

"I ask you, Henry," said his brother eagerly, "do this for my sake; it is not often that I ask you anything – nor will I have long time now wherein to ask!"

"Well," grumbled the young doctor, rising and finishing the toddy as he stood, "I suppose I must, if you make a point of it. But I will just look in at Whinnyliggate on my way across. Earmark is a good two miles on my way home!"

"Thank you, Henry," said Robert Fraser, "I will not forget this kindness to me!"

With a brusque nod Dr. Henry Fraser strode out through the kitchen, among whose merry groups his comings and goings always created a certain hush of awe. In a few minutes more we could hear the clear clatter of the horse's shod feet on the hard "macadam" as he turned out of the soft sandy loaning into the main road.

The Stickit Minister sank back into his chair.

"Thank God!" he said, with a quick intake of breath almost like a sob.

I looked down at him in surprise.

"Robert, why are you so troubled about this woman's bairns?" I asked.

He did not answer for a while, lying fallen in upon himself in his great armchair of worn horse-hair, as if the strain had been too great for his weak body. When he did reply it was in a curiously far-away voice like a man speaking in a dream.

"They are Jessie Loudon's bairns," he said, "and a' the comfort she has in life!"

I sat down on the hearthrug beside him – a habit I had when we were alone together. It was thus that I used to read Homer and Horace to him in the long winter forenights, and wrangle for happy hours over a construction or the turning of a phrase in the translation. So now I simply sat and was silent, touching his knee lightly with my shoulder. I knew that in time he would tell me all he wished me to hear. The old eight-day clock in the corner (with "John Grey, Kilmaurs, 1791" in italics across the brass face of it), ticked on interminably through ten minutes, and I heard the feet of the men come in from suppering the horse, before Robert said another word. Then he spoke: "Alec," he said, very quietly – he could hardly say or do anything otherwise (or rather I thought so before that night). "I have this on my spirit – it is heavy like a load. When I broke it to Jessie Loudon that I could never marry her, as I told you, I did not tell you that she took it hard and high, speaking bitter words that are best forgotten. And then in a week or two she married Gib Barbour, a good-for-nothing, good-looking young ploughman, a great don at parish dances – no meet mate for her. And that I count the heaviest part of my punishment.

"And since that day I have not passed word or salutation with Jessie Loudon – that is, with Jessie Barbour. But on a Sabbath day, just before I was laid down last year – a bonnie day in June – I met her as I passed though a bourock fresh with the gowden broom, and the 'shilfies' and Jennie Wrens singing on every brier. I had been lookin' for a sheep that had broken bounds. And there she sat wi' a youngling on ilka knee. There passed but ae blink o' the e'en between us – ane and nae mair. But oh, Alec, as I am a sinful man – married wife though she was, I kenned that she loved me, and she kenned that I loved her wi' the love that has nae ending!"

There was a long pause here, and the clock struck with a long preparatory g-r-r-r, as if it were clearing its throat in order to apologise for the coming interruption.

"And that," said Robert Fraser, "was the reason why Jessie Loudon would not come up to the Dullarg this nicht – no, not even for her bairns' sake!"

THE STICKIT MINISTER WINS THROUGH

Yet Jessie Loudon did come to the Dullarg that night – and that for her children's sake.

Strangely enough, in writing of an evening so fruitful in incident, I cannot for the life of me remember what happened during the next two hours. The lads and lasses came in for the "Taking of the Book." So much I do recall. But that was an exercise never omitted on any pretext in the house of the ex-divinity student. I remember this also, because after the brief prelude of the psalm-singing (it was the 103rd), the Stickit Minister pushed the Bible across to me, open at the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. The envelope was still there. Though it was turned sideways I could see the faintly written address:

MR. ROBERT FRASER,

Student in Divinity,

50, St. Leonard's Street,

Edinburgh.

Even as I looked I seemed to hear again the woman's voice in the dark loaning – "I canna gang in there!" And in a lightning flash of illumination it came to me what the answer to that letter had meant to Jessie Loudon, and the knowledge somehow made me older and sadder.

Then with a shaking voice I read the mighty words before me: "When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy"… But when I came to the verse which says: "Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?" I saw the Stickit Minister nod his head three times very slightly, and a strange subtle smile came over his face as though he could have answered: "Yea, Lord, verily I have seen them – they have been opened to me!"

And as the lads and lasses filed out in a kind of wondering silence after Robert Fraser had prayed – not kneeling down, but sitting erect in his chair and looking out before him with wide-open eyes – we in the little sitting-room became conscious of a low knocking, persistent and remote, somewhere about the house of Dullarg. We could hear Bell Gregory open and then immediately close the kitchen door, having evidently found no one there. The knocking still continued.

"I believe it is somebody at the front door," I said, turning in that direction.

And then the Stickit Minister cried out in a curious excited voice: "Open to them – open, Alec! Quick, man!"

And his voice went through me with a kind of thrill, for I knew not who it was he expected to enter, whether sheriff's officer or angry creditor – or as it might be the Angel of the Presence Himself come to summon his soul to follow.

Nevertheless, with quaking heart enough, and resolving in future to be a more religious man, I made bold to undo the door.

The woman I had seen in the lane stood before me, as it were, projected out of the dense darkness behind, her shawl fallen back from her face, and her features all pale and changeful in the flicker of the candle I had snatched up to take with me into the little hall. For the front door was only used on state occasions, as when the parish minister came to call, and at funerals.

"He has not come – and the bairns are dying! So I had to come back!" she cried, more hoarsely and breathlessly than I had ever heard woman speak. But her eyes fairly blazed and her lips were parted wide for my answer.

"Dr. Fraser left here more than an hour ago," I stammered. "Has he not been to see the children?"

"No – no, I tell you, no. And they are choking – dying – it is the trouble in the throat. They will die if he does not come – "

I heard a noise behind me, and the next moment I found myself put aside like a child, and Robert Fraser stood face to face with her that had been Jessie Loudon.

"Come in," he said. And when she drew back from him with a kind of shudder, and felt uncertainly for her shawl, he stepped aside and motioned her to enter with a certain large and commanding gesture I had never seen him use before. And as if accustomed to obey, the woman came slowly within the lighted room. Even then, however, she would not sit down, but stood facing us both, a girl prematurely old, her lips nearly as pale as her worn cheeks, her blown hair disordered and wispy about her forehead, and only the dark and tragic flashing of her splendid eyes telling of a bygone beauty.

The Stickit Minister stood up also, and as he leaned his hand upon the table, I noticed that he gently shut the Bible which I had left open, that the woman's eye might not fall upon the faded envelope which marked the thirty-eighth of Job.

"Do I understand you to say," he began, in a voice clear, resonant, and full, not at all the voice of a stricken man, "that my brother has not yet visited your children?"

"He had not come when I ran out – they are much worse – dying, I think!" she answered, also in another voice and another mode of speech – yet a little stiffly, as if the more correct method had grown unfamiliar by disuse.

For almost the only time in his life I saw a look, stern and hard, come over the countenance of the Stickit Minister.

"Go home, Jessie," he said; "I will see that he is there as fast as horses can bring him!"

She hesitated a moment.

"Is he not here?" she faltered. "Oh, tell me if he is – I meant to fetch him back. I dare not go back without him!"

The Stickit Minister went to the door with firm step, the woman following without question or argument.