The Little Minister

“She is a woman,” said Gavin, hesitating, though preparing to go, “of whom any minister might be proud.”

“She is a woman,” the doctor roared, “that no congregation would stand. Oh, if you will go, there is your hat.”

Perhaps Gavin’s face was whiter as he left the house than when he entered it, but there was no other change. Those who were watching him decided that he was looking much as usual, except that his mouth was shut very firm, from which they concluded that he had been taking the doctor to task for smoking. They also noted 185 that he returned to McQueen’s house within half an hour after leaving it, but remained no time.

Some explained this second visit by saying that the minister had forgotten his cravat, and had gone back for it. What really sent him back, however, was his conscience. He had said to McQueen that he helped Babbie to escape from the soldiers because of her kindness to his people, and he returned to own that it was a lie.

Gavin knocked at the door of the surgery, but entered without waiting for a response. McQueen was no longer stamping through the room, red and furious. He had even laid aside his pipe. He was sitting back in his chair, looking half-mournfully, half-contemptuously, at something in his palm. His hand closed instinctively when he heard the door open, but Gavin had seen that the object was an open locket.

“It was only your reference to the thing,” the detected doctor said, with a grim laugh, “that made me open it. Forty years ago, sir, I – Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet.” He closed the locket with a snap. “I hope you have come back, Dishart, to speak more rationally?”

Gavin told him why he had come back, and the doctor said he was a fool for his pains.

“Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to you?”

“Quite useless, doctor,” Gavin answered, promptly. “My mind is made up at last.”

Chapter Twenty-One.

NIGHT – MARGARET – FLASHING OF A LANTERN

That evening the little minister sat silently in his parlour. Darkness came, and with it weavers rose heavy-eyed from their looms, sleepy children sought their mothers, and the gate of the field above the manse fell forward to let cows pass to their byre; the great Bible was produced in many homes, and the ten o’clock bell clanged its last word to the night. Margaret had allowed the lamp to burn low. Thinking that her boy slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl over his knees. He had forgotten her. The doctor’s warnings scarcely troubled him. He was Babbie’s lover. The mystery of her was only a veil hiding her from other men, and he was looking through it upon the face of his beloved.

It was a night of long ago, but can you not see my dear Margaret still as she bends over her son? Not twice in many days dared the minister snatch a moment’s sleep from grey morning to midnight, and, when this did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to revile himself for an idler and ask his mother wrathfully why she had not tumbled him out of his chair? To-night Margaret was divided between a desire to let him sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke; and so, perhaps, the tear fell that roused him.

“I did not like to waken you,” Margaret said, apprehensively. “You must have been very tired, Gavin?”

“I was not sleeping, mother,” he said, slowly. “I was only thinking.”

“Ah, Gavin, you never rise from your loom. It is hardly fair that your hands should be so full of other people’s troubles.”

“They only fill one hand, mother; I carry the people’s joys in the other hand, and that keeps me erect, like a woman between her pan and pitcher. I think the joys have outweighed the sorrows since we came here.”

“It has been all joy to me, Gavin, for you never tell me of the sorrows. An old woman has no right to be so happy.”

“Old woman, mother!” said Gavin. But his indignation was vain. Margaret was an old woman. I made her old before her time.

“As for these terrible troubles,” he went on, “I forget them the moment I enter the garden and see you at your window. And, maybe, I keep some of the joys from you as well as the troubles.”

Words about Babbie leaped to his mouth, but with an effort he restrained them. He must not tell his mother of her until Babbie of her free will had told him all there was to tell.

“I have been a selfish woman, Gavin.”

“You selfish, mother!” Gavin said, smiling. “Tell me when you did not think of others before yourself?”

“Always, Gavin. Has it not been selfishness to hope that you would never want to bring another mistress to the manse? Do you remember how angry you used to be in Glasgow when I said that you would marry some day?”

“I remember,” Gavin said, sadly.

“Yes; you used to say, ‘Don’t speak of such a thing, mother, for the horrid thought of it is enough to drive all the Hebrew out of my head.’ Was not that lightning just now?”

“I did not see it. What a memory you have, mother, for all the boyish things I said.”

“I can’t deny,” Margaret admitted with a sigh, “that 188 I liked to hear you speak in that way, though I knew you would go back on your word. You see, you have changed already.”

“How, mother?” asked Gavin, surprised.

“You said just now that those were boyish speeches. Gavin, I can’t understand the mothers who are glad to see their sons married; though I had a dozen I believe it would be a wrench to lose one of them. It would be different with daughters. You are laughing, Gavin!”

“Yes, at your reference to daughters. Would you not have preferred me to be a girl?”

“’Deed I would not,” answered Margaret, with tremendous conviction. “Gavin, every woman on earth, be she rich or poor, good or bad, offers up one prayer about her firstborn, and that is, ‘May he be a boy!’”

“I think you are wrong, mother. The banker’s wife told me that there is nothing for which she thanks the Lord so much as that all her children are girls.”

“May she be forgiven for that, Gavin!” exclaimed Margaret; “though she maybe did right to put the best face on her humiliation. No, no, there are many kinds of women in the world, but there never was one yet that didn’t want to begin with a laddie. You can speculate about a boy so much more than about a girl. Gavin, what is it a woman thinks about the day her son is born? yes, and the day before too? She is picturing him a grown man, and a slip of a lassie taking him from her. Ay, that is where the lassies have their revenge on the mothers. I remember as if it were this morning a Harvie fishwife patting your head and asking who was your sweetheart, and I could never thole the woman again. We were at the door of the cottage, and I mind I gripped you up in my arms. You had on a tartan frock with a sash and diamond socks. When I look back, Gavin, it seems to me that you have shot up from that frock to manhood in a single hour.”

“There are not many mothers like you,” Gavin said, laying his hand fondly on Margaret’s shoulder.

“There are many better mothers, but few such sons. It is easily seen why God could not afford me another. Gavin, I am sure that was lightning.”

“I think it was; but don’t be alarmed, mother.”

“I am never frightened when you are with me.”

“And I always will be with you.”

“Ah, if you were married – ”

“Do you think,” asked Gavin, indignantly, “that it would make any difference to you?”

Margaret did not answer. She knew what a difference it would make.

“Except,” continued Gavin, with a man’s obtuseness, “that you would have a daughter as well as a son to love you and take care of you.”

Margaret could have told him that men give themselves away needlessly who marry for the sake of their mother, but all she said was —

“Gavin, I see you can speak more composedly of marrying now than you spoke a year ago. If I did not know better, I should think a Thrums young lady had got hold of you.”

It was a moment before Gavin replied; then he said, gaily —

“Really, mother, the way the best of women speak of each other is lamentable. You say I should be better married, and then you take for granted that every marriageable woman in the neighbourhood is trying to kidnap me. I am sure you did not take my father by force in that way.”

He did not see that Margaret trembled at the mention of his father. He never knew that she was many times pining to lay her head upon his breast and tell him of me. Yet I cannot but believe that she always shook when Adam Dishart was spoken of between them. I cannot think that the long-cherishing of the secret 190 which was hers and mine kept her face steady when that horror suddenly confronted her as now. Gavin would have suspected much had he ever suspected anything.

“I know,” Margaret said, courageously, “that you would be better married; but when it comes to selecting the woman I grow fearful. O Gavin!” she said, earnestly, “it is an awful thing to marry the wrong man!”

Here in a moment had she revealed much, though far from all, and there must have been many such moments between them. But Gavin was thinking of his own affairs.