Part 13

“While she prayed, Posty was coming down the footpath behind, and he heard her cry.”

“Posty was the instrument,” and Elijah rapped the floor with his stick. “He obeyed the Divine command within, and he cannot go without some reward.”

“He tore off his coat in an instant, and then--I suppose if you had been there you would have besought him to bethink himself: and to remember that he was a man unfit to die! Is not that so?”

“Sir,” said Elijah, “you do me less than justice, and... insult me. What right have you to ask me such a question? I have preached, and I will preach again; but there's a time for preaching, and a time to refrain from preaching. I can swim, and I have saved two lives in my time. I am a fool for boasting, but I would...”

“I believe you would, Mr. Higginbotham”--I saw an able-bodied man without fear--“and I beg your pardon...”

Elijah waved his hand. I was to go on to the end without delay.

“It seemed fifteen minutes, it was only one, while the mother hung over the edge of the black seething whirlpool, and then he came up, bleeding from a wound in the forehead, without Elsie.”

“I take you to witness,” declared Elijah solemnly, “that I said he was a brave man. Yes, he had the natural virtues, and some who make a profession have none.”

“For a few seconds he hung on to the edge to get breath, and Mrs. Macfadyen herself besought him not to risk his life, for he was a husband and father; but he only answered: 'I'll hae Elsie oot'.”

“They forgot themselves,--do you mark that?--both of them,” cried Elijah. “Whose Spirit was that? Didn't they keep the commandment of Love, which is the chief commandment? and--answer me--can any one keep that commandment without grace?”

It was not with me but with himself the evangelist was arguing, and I went on:

“He came up again, this time with Elsie in one arm, a poor, little limp bundle of clothes, her yellow hair spread over her face, and her eyes closed, I was afraid, for ever.”

“But she lived, didn't she?” There was no Elijah Higginbotham anywhere to be found now, only an excited man, concerned about the saving of a little maid. “Excuse me, I didn't read that part about the saving so carefully as I ought I was more concerned about... the judgment.”

“Yes, Elsie was all right in a day or two, but Posty had not strength to do more than hand her to her mother, and then, exhausted by the struggle with the water, he fell back, and was dead when he was found.”

“What were you doing that you did not lay hold of Posty and pull him out?” thundered Elijah; “you seem to have been there.”

“Only in a literary sense,” I hastened to explain, for it now seemed likely that the evangelist having come to condemn Posty, was about to take up the cudgels on his behalf.

“I wish to Heaven you had been there in a physical sense; you would have been far more useful!” replied Elijah. “And so he died and Elsie was saved?”

“Yes, Posty died and went to his account; that was how he lived, and that was how he died.” And I waited.

Elijah sprang out of his seat and stood on the hearthrug, his face flushed, and his eyes shining.

“It's a pity that he tasted; I wish he hadn't It's a pity he did not think more about his own soul; I wish he had. But Posty was a hero, and played the man that day. Posty will have another chance. Posty loved, and God is Love; if there's such a thing as justice, it's all right with Posty.”

We did not look at one another for a full minute--a print of Perugino's Crucifixion over the mantelpiece interested me, and Elijah's eye seemed to be arrested by the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ on the other side of the room--a minute later we shook hands upon the basis of the Divine Love and our common humanity, and nothing more passed between us.

From my window I could see him go along the street He stopped and slapped his leg triumphantly. I seemed to hear the evangelist say again with great joy: “It's all right with Posty!” I said, “And it's all right with Elijah Higginbotham.”

THE COLLECTOR'S INCONSISTENCY

There were many capable men in the session of the North Free Kirk, Muirtown--such as Bailie MacCallum, from whom Drumsheugh bought Kate Carnegie's wedding present after a historical tussle--but they were all as nothing beside the Collector, and this was so well known in Muirtown that people spoke freely of the Collector's kirk. When he arrived in Muirtown, it was understood that he sampled six kirks, three Established and three Free--the rumour about the Original Seceders was never authenticated--and that the importance of his visits was thoroughly appreciated. No unseemly fuss was made on his appearance; but an ex-bailie, or the Clerk to the Road Trustees, or some such official person, happened to meet him at the door, and received him into his pew with quiet, unostentatious respect; and when he left, officious deacons did not encompass his exit, rubbing their hands and asking how he liked their place, but an elder journeying in the same direction entered into general conversation and was able to mention with authority next day what the Collector had said. Various reasons were canvassed for his settlement in the North Kirk, where old Dr. Pitten-driegh was then drawing near to the close of his famous exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, published after the Doctor's death, and sold to the extent of fifty-seven copies among the congregation. It was, for one thing, a happy coincidence that on that occasion the Doctor, having taken an off day from Romans, had preached from the text “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,” and had paid a high tribute to the character of a faithful servant of the Crown. Some importance, no doubt, also attached to the fact that the Procurator Fiscal sat in the “North Free,” austere and mysterious, whose power of detecting crime bordered on the miraculous, and whose ways were veiled in impenetrable darkness, so that any one with a past felt uncomfortable in his presence; and it was almost synonymous with doom to say of a man, “The Fiscal has his eye on him.” Perhaps it was not without influence that the Supervisor, who was the Collector's subordinate, with power also of official life and death, had long sat under Dr. Pittendriegh--the Doctor and the Collector were indeed the only persons the Supervisor did sit under. He had admirable opportunities of enlarging to the Collector on the solid and edifying qualities of Dr. Pittendriegh's ministry, and the unfortunate defects in the preaching and pastoral gifts of neighbouring ministers, in the intervals of business, when the two of them were not investigating into the delinquencies of some officer of excise, who had levied a tax on the produce of Dunleith Distillery not only in money but also in kind; or concocting cunning plans for the detection of certain shepherds who were supposed to be running an entirely unlicensed still in the recesses of Glen Urtach. It was at least through this official, himself an elder, that the Collector's decision was intimated to the Doctor and the other authorities of the North Kirk, and they lost no time in giving it proper and irrevocable effect The Supervisor set an example of patriotic sacrifice by surrendering his pew in the centre of the church and retiring to the modest obscurity of the side seats, so that the Collector could be properly housed; for it was not to be thought of for a moment that he should sit anywhere except in the eye of the public, or that ordinary persons--imagine for instance young children--should be put in the same pew with him. So he sat there alone, for he had neither wife nor child, from January to December, except when on his official leave--which he took not for pleasure but from a sense of duty--and he gave a calm, judicial attention to all the statements put before him by the preacher. Very soon after this arrangement the Doctor discovered that the Deacons' Court required strengthening, and, as a man of affairs, the Collector was added at the head of the list; and when a year later a happy necessity compelled an election of elders, the Collector was raised to this higher degree, and thereafter was “thirled” to the North Free, and the history of that kirk and of the Collector became one.

What exactly the great man collected, or what functions and powers might be included in his office, were not matters Muirtown pretended to define or dared to pry into. It was enough that he was, in the highest and final sense of the word, Collector--no mere petty official of a local body, but the representative of the Imperial Government and the commissioned servant of Her Majesty the Queen, raised above principalities and powers in the shape of bailies and provosts, and owning no authority save, as was supposed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. For any one to confound him with the collector of, say, water rates was either abysmal ignorance or, it might be, although one hoped not, a piece of Radical insolence and a despising of dignities. It was good manners to call him by his title--many would have had difficulty in mentioning his private name, which was, I believe, Thomas Richard Thome, just as the Queen's, I believe, is Guelph--and it was pleasing to hear a porter at the station shout, amid a crowd of tourists going to the Kilspindie Arms, “Collector's cab”; or Bailie MacCallum on the street, “Fine morning, Collector”; and one did not wonder that the session of the “North Free” exalted its head when this kind of thing went on at its meetings: “Moderator, with your permission, I would like to have the mind of the Collector”; and then in reply, “Moderator, my views practically coincide with those of the Fiscal” And there were dinner tables, such as old Peter MacCash's, the manager of the Muirtown Bank, where conversation reached a very high level of decoration, and nothing could be heard save “Sheriff,” “Provost,” “Collector,” “Town Clerk,” “Fiscal,” “Banker,” “Doctor,” “Dean of Guild,” and such like, till an untitled person hardly dared to defend his most cherished opinion.

As the movements of Government officials were always mysterious, no one could tell whence the Collector had come, but it was known to a few that he was not really of Scots blood, and had not been bred in the Presbyterian Kirk. When his hand in the way of Church rule was heavy on the “North Free” and certain sought anxiously for grounds of revolt, they were apt to whisper that, after all, this man, who laid down the ecclesiastical law with such pedantic accuracy and such inflexible severity, was but a Gentile who had established himself in the true fold, or at most a proselyte of the gate. They even dared to ask what, in the matter of churches, he had been before he was appointed to Muirtown; and so unscrupulous and virulent are the mongers of sedition, as every student of history knows, that some insinuated that the Collector had been a Nonconformist; while others, considering that this violence could only overreach itself, contented themselves with allusions to Swedenborg. Most of his brethren treated him as if he had been within the covenant from the beginning, and had been granted the responsible privilege of Scots birth either because in course of time they had forgotten the fact of alien origin in face of every appearance to the contrary, or because, as we all need mercy, it is not wise to search too curiously into the dark chapters of a man's past.

Upon his part the Collector had wonderfully adapted himself to the new environment, and it defied the keenest critic to find in him any trace of a former home. It is true that he did not use the Scots dialect, merely employing a peculiarly felicitous word at a time for purposes of effect, but he had stretched his vowels to the orthodox breadth, and could roll off the letter “r” with a sense of power. “Dour” he could say in a way that deceived even the elect Sometimes he startled the Presbytery with a sound like “Yah, yah,” which indicates the shallow sharpness of the English, instead of “He-e-er, he-e-er,” which reveals as in a symbol the solidity of the Scot; but then one cannot live in London for years--as an official must--and be quite unscathed; and an acute observer might mark a subdued smartness in dress--white tie instead of stock on sacrament Sabbaths--which was not indigenous; but then it must be allowed that one in his position was obliged to be, to a certain degree, a man of the world. No one ever caught him quoting a clause from the Prayer-Book on the rare occasions when he was heard at his family devotions, or breaking into a riotous “Hallelujah” in the midst of a sermon. If misfortune had thrown him into Episcopalian or Methodist folds in earlier years, he had since been thoroughly purged and cleansed. He had a way of alluding to “the Disruption principles laid down in 1843,” or “my younger brethren will allow me to say that the Disruption,” which was very convincing; and on the solitary occasion when he made a set speech in public--for his strength lay in silence rather than eloquence--he had a peroration on our “covenanted forefathers” which left an indelible impression. It was understood that he spent his holidays in visiting remote districts of the Highlands where the people took strong peppermints in church without scruple or apology, and preserved the primeval simplicity of Presbyterian worship entire; and it was supposed that he was looking for a birthplace which would finally establish his position as an elder of the Kirk.

What gave the Collector his supreme influence in the session of the Free North, and extended his sphere of ecclesiastical influence to the Presbytery of Muirtown, was an amazing knowledge of Church law and a devouring love for order. The latter may have been the natural outcome of his professional training, wherein red-tape has been raised to a science, but the former was an acquired accomplishment Dr. Pittendriegh remembered almost painfully that on the day of his election to the eldership the Collector enquired the names of the most reliable authorities on Church law, and that he (Dr. Pittendriegh) had not only given him a list, but had urged him to their study, judging from past experience that no man was likely to go too far in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge. For a while the Collector sat silent and observant at the meetings of Session, and then suddenly one evening, and in the quietest manner, he inquired whether a certain proceeding was in order.

“Well, at any rate, that is how we have done here for twenty years,” said the Doctor, with just a flavour of indignation, and the startled Fiscal confirmed the statement.

“That may be so, Moderator, and I am obliged to Mr. Fiscal for his assurance, but you will pardon me for saying, with much respect, that the point is not whether this action has been the custom, but whether it is legal. On that, Moderator, I should like your deliverance.”

He took the opportunity, however, of showing that only one deliverance could be given by long quotations from Church law, supported by references which extended back to the seventeenth century. Every one knew that, unlike his distinguished colleague in Muirtown Dr. Dowbiggin, the minister of the Free North was more at home in Romans than in Canon Law; but, like every true Scot, he loved a legal point, and he not only announced at next Session meeting that the Collector was quite right, but expressed his satisfaction that they had such a valuable addition to their number in the Collector. His position from that evening was assured beyond dispute; and when the Clerk of Session resigned on the ground of long service, but really through terror that there might be a weak place in his minutes, the Collector succeeded, and made the proceedings of the Free North Session to be a wonder unto many. It was a disappointment to some that, when the Collector was sent to the Presbytery, he took no part for several meetings; but others boldly declared that even in that high place he was only biding his time, which came when the Presbytery debated for one hour and ten minutes whether a certain meeting had been _pro re nata_ or _in hunc effectum_, while the learned Clerk listened with delight as one watches the young people at play.

“Moderator,” said the Collector, “I have given the most careful attention to the arguments on both sides, and I venture to suggest that the meeting was neither _pro re nata_ nor _in hunc effectum_, but was a meeting _per saltum_”; and, after referring to Pardovan's Institutes, he sat down amid a silence which might be felt Several ministers openly confessed their ignorance one to another with manifest chagrin, and one young minister laughed aloud: “_Per saltum_, I declare--what next?” as if it were a subject for jesting.

“The Collector is quite right, Moderator,” said the Clerk with his unspeakable air of authority; “the meeting referred to was undoubtedly _per saltum_, but I did not wish to interfere prematurely with the debate”; and from that date the Clerk, who used to address his more recondite deliverances to Dr. Dowbiggin as the only competent audience, was careful to include the Collector in a very marked and flattering fashion.

While it was only human that his congregation should be proud of the Collector, and while there is no question that he led them in the paths of order, they sometimes grumbled--in corners--and grew impatient under his rule. He was not only not a man given to change himself, but he bitterly resented and resisted to the uttermost any proposal of change on the part of other people. What was in the Free North, when he, so to say, mounted the throne, was right, and any departure therefrom he scented afar off and opposed as folly and mischief. There are men whom you can convince by argument; there are others whom you can talk round on trifles; but whether the matter were great or small--from Biblical criticism, on which the Collector took a liberal line, to the printing of the congregational report, where he would not allow a change of type--once his mind was made up he remained unchangeable and inaccessible. He prevented the introduction of hymns for ten years, and never consented to the innovation on the ground of the hold which the metrical psalms had upon Presbyterians from their earliest days, and he did succeed in retaining that remarkable custom of the Scots Kirk by which a communicant cannot receive the Sacrament without first presenting a leaden token, and his argument was again the sacred associations of the past He did certainly agree to the recovering of the pulpit cushions, which the exposition of Romans had worn bare, only however on the assurance of Bailie MacCallum, given officially, that he had the same cloth in store; but a scheme for a ventilating chamber in the roof--an improvement greatly needed in a church which was supposed to have retained the very air of the Disruption--he denounced as an irresponsible fad.

He gave much watchful attention to the Sabbath schools--“Sunday” was a word he abhorred--and between the Collector and the younger people engaged in that work there was almost constant conflict, which extended to every detail, and came to a head over the matter of entertainments. It was their belief that once a year it was necessary for the success and well-being of a Sabbath school that the children should be gathered on an evening and fed with tea and buns, and afterwards elevated by magic slides representing various amusing situations in life and concluding with a vivid picture of rats disappearing into a gaping man's mouth, which opened to receive them with a jerk. The fact that this festivity was opened and closed with a hymn in no way sanctified it in the eyes of the Collector, who declared it to be without any Scripture warrant and injurious to true religion, as well as--and this was hardly less important--quite without sanction by the laws of the Kirk. By sheer force of will--the weight of a silent, obstinate uncompromising nature, he brought the “treats”--very modest, innocent, if not particularly refined efforts to give some brightness to the life of the poor children in Muirtown--to an end, and in place thereof he provided, at his own expense, views of the mission stations of the world, with a gratuitous distribution of missionary literature. This was endured for three years with much discontent and with sudden and disorderly demands for the rats in place of the interesting although somewhat monotonous faces of Chinese Christians, and then the rebellion was organized which had so unexpected and felicitous a result The party of the Juniors, some of them approaching forty years of age, took a covenant that they would stand by one another, and they made their plan that upon a certain evening in March they would gather together their corps of Muirtown Arabs and feed them with dainties even unto the extent of raisins and oranges. They were not unconscious that oranges, on account of their pronounced colour, would be an offence to the Collector, and that that estimable man had already referred to this fruit, as a refreshment at a religious meeting, in terms of deep contempt; and there would not only be a magic lantern with scenes of war and sport, to say nothing of amusement, but also a sacred cantata to be sung by the children. When the Collector heard of the programme, he grasped the situation at once, and knew that in the coming battle quarter could not be given--that the “Reds” would be completely reduced to subordination, or that a severely constitutional monarchy would be finally closed. This was indeed the general opinion; and when the Juniors appeared before the Session to present their ultimatum, nothing but a sense of decency prevented the Free North attending in a body, and Bailie MacCallum took a gloomy view of the issue.

“Oranges and the what-ye-call-it,” alluding to the cantata, “the Collector 'll never stand, and ye couldna expect him.”

Dr. Pittendriegh was now _emeritus_3, which means that he had retired from the active duty of the ministry and was engaged in criticising those who were still in the yoke; and many pitied young Mr. Rutherford, brother of Rutherford of Glasgow, who had to preside over so critical a meeting. His prayer was, however, favourably received by both sides, and his few remarks before calling on the leader of the “Reds” were full of tact and peace. As for that intrepid man--grocer by trade and full of affability, but a Radical in politics and indifferent to the past--he discharged a difficult duty with considerable ability. For himself and his friends he disclaimed all desire to offend any one, and least of all one whom every one respected so much for his services both to Church and State--both the Bailie and Fiscal felt bound to say “hear, hear,” and the Collector bowed stiffly--but they must put the work they had carried on in the Vennel before any individual: they were dealing with a poor and neglected class of children very different from the children in grand houses--this with some teethiness. They must make religion attractive, and show that they were interested in the children's lives as well as their souls. None of them could see anything wrong in a cup of tea or a bit of music; and if the Session was to forbid this small pleasure, he and his friends would respectfully resign the position they had held for many years, and allow the elders to carry on the work on any plan they pleased.