The Little Minister

“Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she didna fall I just waited langer, thinking she was slow in taking it a’ in.

“‘I see you ken wha she is,’ she said, looking at me, ‘and yet I canna credit your news.’

“‘They’re true,’ I cries.

“‘Even if they are,’ says she, considering, ‘it may be the best thing that could happen to baith o’ them.’

“I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I didna ken at that time, as we a’ ken now, that she was 349 thinking o’ the earl when I was thinking o’ her son. Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had opened a door to me, and syne shut it in my face.

“Syne wi’ me sitting there in a kind o’ awe o’ the woman’s simpleness, she began to tell me what the minister was like when he was a bairn, and I was saying a’ the time to mysel’, ‘You’re chief elder o’ the kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the next time she stops to draw breath.’ They were terrible sma’, common things she telled me, sic as near a’ mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o’ holy way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some infidel man trying to break out wi’ blasphemy in a kirk.

“‘I’ll let you see something,’ says she, ‘that I ken will interest you.’ She brocht it out o’ a drawer, and what do you think it was? As sure as death it was no more than some o’ his hair when he was a litlin, and it was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae thocht it was some valuable thing.

“‘Mr. Whamond,’ she says solemnly, ‘you’ve come thrice to the manse to keep me frae being uneasy about my son’s absence, and you was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ll gie you a little o’ that hair.’

“Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to see her fondling it! I says to mysel’, ‘Mrs. Dishart,’ I says to mysel’, ‘I was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ve come here to tell you that I’m to be the chief instrument under God in driving him out o’t.’ Ay, but when I focht to bring out these words, my mouth snecked like a box.

“‘Dinna gie me his hair,’ was a’ I could say, and I wouldna take it frae her; but she laid it in my hand, and – and syne what could I do? Ay, it’s easy to speak about thae things now, and to wonder how I could hae so disgraced the position o’ chief elder o’ the kirk, but 350 I tell you I was near greeting for the woman. Call me names, dominie; I deserve them all.”

I did not call Whamond names for being reluctant to break Margaret’s heart. Here is a confession I may make. Sometimes I say my prayers at night in a hurry, going on my knees indeed, but with as little reverence as I take a drink of water before jumping into bed, and for the same reason, because it is my nightly habit. I am only pattering words I have by heart to a chair then, and should be as well employed writing a comic Bible. At such times I pray for the earthly well-being of the precentor, though he has been dead for many years. He crept into my prayers the day he told me this story, and was part of them for so long that when they are only a recitation he is part of them still.

“She said to me,” Whamond continued, “that the women o’ the congregation would be fond to handle the hair. Could I tell her that the women was waur agin him than the men? I shivered to hear her.

“‘Syne when they’re a’ sitting breathless listening to his preaching,’ she says, ‘they’ll be able to picture him as a bairn, just as I often do in the kirk mysel’.’

“Andrew Luke, you’re sneering at me, but I tell you if you had been there and had begun to say, ‘He’ll preach in our kirk no more,’ I would hae struck you. And I’m chief elder o’ the kirk.

“She says, ‘Oh, Mr. Whamond, there’s times in the kirk when he is praying, and the glow on his face is hardly mortal, so that I fall a-shaking, wi’ a mixture o’ fear and pride, me being his mother; and sinful though I am to say it, I canna help thinking at sic times that I ken what the mother o’ Jesus had in her heart when she found Him in the temple.’

“Dominie, it’s sax-and-twenty years since I was made an elder o’ the kirk. I mind the day as if it was yestreen. Mr. Carfrae made me walk hame wi’ him, and 351 he took me into the manse parlor, and he set me in that very chair. It was the first time I was ever in the manse. Ay, he little thocht that day in his earnestness, and I little thocht mysel’ in the pride o’ my lusty youth, that the time was coming when I would swear in that reverenced parlor. I say swear, dominie, for when she had finished I jumped to my feet, and I cried, ‘Hell!’ and I lifted up my hat. And I was chief elder.

“She fell back frae my oath,” he said, “and syne she took my sleeve and speired, ‘What has come ower you, Mr. Whamond? Hae you onything on your mind?’

“‘I’ve sin on it,’ I roared at her. ‘I have neglect o’ duty on it. I am one o’ them that cries “Lord, Lord,” and yet do not the things which He commands. He has pointed out the way to me, and I hinna followed it.’

“‘What is it you hinna done that you should hae done?’ she said. ‘Oh, Mr. Whamond, if you want my help, it’s yours.’

“‘Your son’s a’ the earth to you,’ I cried, ‘but my eldership’s as muckle to me. Sax-and-twenty years hae I been an elder, and now I maun gie it up.’

“‘Wha says that?’ she speirs.

“‘I say it,’ I cried. ‘I’ve shirked my duty. I gie up my eldership now. Tammas Whamond is no langer an elder o’ the kirk;’ ay, and I was chief elder.

“Dominie, I think she began to say that when the minister came hame he wouldna accept my resignation, but I paid no heed to her. You ken what was the sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the sound o’ a machine coming yont the Tenements. You ken what was the sicht that made me glare through the window instead o’ looking at her; it was the sicht o’ Mr. Dishart in the machine. I couldna speak, but I got my body atween her and the window, for I heard shouting, and I couldna doubt that it was the folk cursing him.

“But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed 352 by me to the window. I couldna look out; I just walked saft-like to the parlor door, but afore I reached it she cried joyously —

“‘It’s my son come back, and see how fond o’ him they are! They are running at the side o’ the machine, and the laddies are tossing their bonnets in the air.’

“‘God help you, woman!’ I said to mysel’, ‘it canna be bonnets – it’s stanes and divits mair likely that they’re flinging at him.’ Syne I creeped out o’ the manse. Dominie, you mind I passed you in the kitchen, and didna say a word?”

Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen, with such a face on him as no man ever saw him wear again. Since Tammas Whamond died we have had to enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter not at all to him, and but little to me, what you who read think of him. All his life children ran from him. He was the dourest, the most unlovable man in Thrums. But may my right hand wither, and may my tongue be cancer-bitten, and may my mind be gone into a dry rot, before I forget what he did for me and mine that day!

Chapter Forty-Three.

RAIN – MIST – THE JAWS

To this day we argue in the glen about the sound mistaken by many of us for the firing of the Spittal cannon, some calling it thunder and others the tearing of trees in the torrent. I think it must have been the roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill, of which a corner has been missing since that day. Silver Hill is all stones, as if creation had been riddled there, and in the sun the mica on them shines like many pools of water.

At the roar, as they thought, of the cannon, the farmers looked up from their struggle with the flood to say, “That’s Rintoul married,” as clocks pause simultaneously to strike the hour. Then every one in the glen save Gavin and myself was done with Rintoul. Before the hills had answered the noise, Gavin was on his way to the Spittal. The dog must have been ten minutes in overtaking him, yet he maintained afterward that it was with him from the start. From this we see that the shock he had got carried him some distance before he knew that he had left the school-house. It also gave him a new strength, that happily lasted longer than his daze of mind.

Gavin moved northward quicker than I came south, climbing over or wading through his obstacles, while I went round mine. After a time, too, the dog proved useful, for on discovering that it was going homeward it took the lead, and several times drew him to the right road to the Spittal by refusing to accompany him 354 on the wrong road. Yet in two hours he had walked perhaps nine miles without being four miles nearer the Spittal. In that flood the glen milestones were three miles apart.

For some time he had been following the dog doubtfully, for it seemed to be going too near the river. When they struck a cart-track, however, he concluded rightly that they were nearing a bridge. His faith in his guide was again tested before they had been many minutes on this sloppy road. The dog stopped, whined, looked irresolute, and then ran to the right, disappearing into the mist in an instant. He shouted to it to come back, and was surprised to hear a whistle in reply. This was sufficient to make him dash after the dog, and in less than a minute he stopped abruptly by the side of a shepherd.

“Have you brocht it?” the man cried almost into Gavin’s ear; yet the roar of the water was so tremendous that the words came faintly, as if from a distance. “Wae is me; is it only you, Mr. Dishart?”

“Is it only you!” No one in the glen would have addressed a minister thus except in a matter of life or death, and Gavin knew it.

“He’ll be ower late,” the shepherd exclaimed, rubbing his hands together in distress. “I’m speaking o’ Whinbusses’ grieve. He has run for ropes, but he’ll be ower late.”

“Is there some one in danger?” asked Gavin, who stood, he knew not where, with this man, enveloped in mist.

“Is there no? Look!”

“There is nothing to be seen but mist; where are we?”

“We’re on the high bank o’ the Quharity. Take care, man; you was stepping ower into the roaring water. Lie down and tell me if he’s there yet. Maybe I just think that I see him, for the sicht is painted on my een.”

Gavin lay prone and peered at the river, but the mist came up to his eyes. He only knew that the river was below from the sound.

“Is there a man down there?” he asked, shuddering.

“There was a minute syne; on a bit island.”

“Why does he not speak?”

“He is senseless. Dinna move; the mist’s clearing, and you’ll see if he’s there syne. The mist has been lifting and falling that way ilka minute since me and the grieve saw him.”

The mist did not rise. It only shook like a blanket, and then again remained stationary. But in that movement Gavin had seen twice, first incredulously, and then with conviction.

“Shepherd,” he said, rising, “it is Lord Rintoul.”

“Ay, it’s him; and you saw his feet was in the water. They were dry when the grieve left me. Mr. Dishart, the ground he is on is being washed awa bit by bit. I tell you, the flood’s greedy for him, and it’ll hae him – Look, did you see him again?”

“Is he living?”

“We saw him move. Hst! Was that a cry?”