Chapter 3
"Let us forget the things which are behind," he said, "if we only can," and there was a wealth of agony in his words, "and let us press forth unto those things which are before. We greet you, moderator, as the messenger of peace, for we are all but sinful men and unworthy of the trust we hold. I hope you will preach to us the grace of God, for we have learned ourselves the terrors of the law."
"I move that we adjourn," interjected Ronald M'Gregor, alarmed for the retirement of Sinai, and fearful of a too early spring.
"I second that," said a rugged patriarch, hitherto silent.
"But I hope the moderator 'll permit me to express the hope that he'll no' shorten up the services, and that he'll gie the young fowk mair o' the catechism than we hae been gettin', and mak' the sacraments mair searchin' to the soul," said Saunders M'Tavish.
"Ye're oot o' order," interrupted the clerk; "there's a motion to adjourn afore the Chair."
"But I maun tak' ma staun," exclaimed Saunders.
"Ye mauna," retorted the clerk, "ye maun tak' yir seat," and Saunders dropped where he stood, while his fellow-elders looked into each other's faces as if to say that this thing might have befallen any one of them.
VI
_The FIRST PARISH ROUND_
I soon began, of course, the visitation of my flock. Although my title to youth was at that time undisputed, and although the unreflective would have labelled me "new school," the importance of faithful visiting was ever before my mind.
The curate's place (unhappiest of men) had more than once been offered me at the hands of portly ministers, prepared to deny themselves all the visiting, they to take all the preaching and nearly all the salary, while their untitled slave was to deny himself the high joy of the pulpit, to starve on the salary's dregs, and to indulge himself royally in a very carnival of unceasing visitation. These overtures I had had little hesitation in declining, for observation had taught me that the slave's place soon makes the slave's spirit, unless that slavery be an indenture unto God, which is but the sterner name for liberty.
Moreover, curates (especially Presbyterian, which implieth the greater perversion) seemed to lack the breath of the uplands which the pulpit breathes, and too often degenerate into society favourites, whose flapping tails of black may be seen as these curates ring at fashionable doors, where "five-o'clocks" within await the kid-gloved ministers of men who are supposed to be the stewards of eternal life. I had once overheard an enamelled queen of fashion declare, with much emotion, that their curate was indispensable to a high-class "at home," and even panegyrize his graceful transportation of cups of tea, however full.
Whereupon I forever swore that I would frizzle upon no such heathen altar; I vowed to be either a minister or a butler--one thing or the other--but never a Right Reverend Butler, which is a monster and a tongue-cheeked comedy to both God and man.
As the minister of a vast congregation like St. Cuthbert's, I might on the other hand have requested an assistant who should relieve me of the visiting, leaving me only the duties of the pulpit, oceanic enough for any man. Indeed, one of the stalwarts had suggested this to me, averring that I needed more time for my sermons, whereat I looked at him sharply; but his face was placid as a sea of milk, which is the way of Scotsmen when they mean to score. But this dual ministry was ever the object of my disfavour, for he preaches best who visits best, and the weekly garner makes the richest grist for the Sunday mill. True and tender visiting is the sermon's fuse, and what God hath put together no man can safely put asunder.
One of my first visits was to the farmhouse of Donald M'Phatter, a belated member of the fold, for he and his wife Elsie had not beshadowed St. Cuthbert's door for many a year. This parochial policy had been suggested to me by the beadle:
"Ye maun luik to the driftwood first--pit oot the laggin' log frae the shore, ye ken," he said to me, following this up with an exhaustive narrative of the raftsman's life which had once been his.
I found Donald dour but deferential, full-armed against every appeal for his reform.
"I willna gang," he exclaimed, "till ony kirk that pits oot the token[1] at the sacrament, and taks up wi' they bit cairds they're usin' the noo. Cairds at the sacrament! it's fair insultin' to the Almichty."
[Footnote 1: A small piece of metal with the words "This do in remembrance of Me," given in Scottish churches, before the Sacrament of The Supper, to those entitled to participate.]
I parried the blow as best I could, and was on the verge of winning in the argument when he suddenly took another tack.
"Forbye, I hae dune ma duty. Didna I gang steady when the Doctor was oor meenister? Ilka Sabbath day I gaed an' hearkened till the graun' sermons twa oors at a time, an' God grippit me thae days, an' He hasna loosened His haud o' me yet. Ance saved, aye saved. That's ma doctrine. Wha can slip awa frae grace, forbye it be thae Methody buddies an' ither Armenian fowk, an' there was na ane o' them in the parish in the doctor's day. The fields was fine an' fu' o' wheat thae days, but there's muckle mustard noo, I tell ye that."
"But you will surely admit, Mr. M'Phatter, that the nourishment of years ago will not suffice for to-day. Yesterday's dinner will not forestall the necessity of the day that follows," I urged, inwardly ashamed of the threadbare argument.
He saw its threadbareness too, for he retorted--
"That's a verra auld argyment; in fac', it's clean stale, if it's no' rotten. Doctor Grant wud hae sniffit at it. And what's mair, it's no' an argyment ava', for I hae mony a dinner o' the sermons that I gathered in thae far back days. I aye eat and sup off that when ye an' yir fowk's fummlin' wi' yir cairds at the kirk. Bide a meenit."
He hurried into an adjoining room, and soon returned with a sheaf of rusty notes, clearing his throat awhile with the sound of a trumpeter calling to the fray.
"I wasna ane o' the sleepin' kind; I aye paid attention in the hoose o' God. I only sleepit ance an' I cudna help it, for oor Jeanie was born that mornin'--an' that was a work o' needcessity. An' what's mair, I aye took notes o' the discoorse, an' I hae them yet.
"They's ma dinners noo, tae use yir word, minister--they's ma dinners, an' they hunger nae mair wha tak's them--saxteen or seventeen coorses, ilka ane o' them; nane o' yir bit lunches wi' napkins an' flowers and finger bowls like ye hae the noo, no' worth the bit grace ye say ower them--they's nane o' yir teas, tastin' an' sniffin', wi' sweeties an' sic like--they's meat, sir, strong meat for strong men, an' the bane's in the baith o' them like."
He stopped, as a cannon stops after it has fired, the aroma of battle still pouring from its lips.
"What are these papers in your hand?" I asked, not for information, but for breath. (You have seen a caged canary leap from its perch to its swing, and back again, when sorely pressed.) He speedily closed that door.
"They, sir? Div ye no' ken what's they? They's Doctor Grant's heids and pertikklers. Doctor Grant's heids and pertikklers, I'm tellin' ye. A' o' them but ane is the heids an' pertikklers o' sermons that made St. Cuthbert's ring like the wood on an August nicht when the thunder roams it. That ither ane he preach't in a graun city kirk wha soucht to get him, and they cudna--an' it was croodit like the barn mou' when harvest's dune, an' I was there masel', an' he kent me--an' I'm the man that held his cane in ma haun the time he preach't, I'm tellin' ye." And Donald's withered face was now aglow with such a tenderness as only bygone years can loan to age; his eyes were ashine with tears, each one the home of sheeted days that had come back from the dead, and his parted lips were drinking deep of the mystic tides of memory.
* * * * *
A rich mosaic was the visitation of this sterling race. The lovely valleys and the picturesque hills of their ancestral sires I have often roamed since then, but never have I seen the Scottish character in its homely beauty as it appeared to me in their happy Canadian life among the cozy farmhouses of this fruitful countryside. The traditions of their native land were tenderly cherished by them all, and many were the stories they related of the old days in Scotland and of the day whereon they looked their last upon the unforgotten heather.
One of my first visits was to Mrs. Gavin Toshack, whom I found in a reminiscent mood.
"Ay," she said, "we're a' Scotch aboot thae pairts; an' God keep us sae. There's been scarce a fly in the ointment, forbye Sandy Trother's wife, who gied him, an' gied us a', a heap o' tribble; but she was Irish, ye ken. An' oor ministers hae a' been frae Scotland; but we had ane for mebbe twa month or mair--nae oor ain minister, but only a kin' o' evangelist buddy. He was an Irish buddy tae, but there were severals converted. That was nae Irish wark whatever, but the grace o' God. We were na lang oot frae the auld country when he cam'; I mind fine. It was in the year '37. We sailed frae Annan Water Foot in July, an' eight weeks or mair it took us afore we landit in Quebec. Then by canal and wagon till we reach't New Jedboro; 'twas a sair, weary ride. But the breath o' freedom an' o' promise was in the air--an' we hae oor ain hame noo an' twa hunner acres o' the finest land in a' the country. An' we're independent noo, wi' eneuch for a bite an' a sup till we hunger nae mair nor thirst ony mair. An' oor bairnies is a' daein' fine: Jamie's a doctor i' Chicago; an' oor Jeanie's mairrit on Allan Sutherland, him as will be the new Reeve o' the coonty; an' Chairlie has a ranch i' Alberta like the Duke o' Roxburgh's estate; an' Willie'll hae oor ain land here, when we sleep aneath it.
"I aften sit an' think we micht hae been aye herdin' sheep on the Dumfries hills, wi' scarce eneuch to eat, wi' this man 'my Laird' an' yon man 'yir Grace' an' oor ain bairns little mair nor slaves. The duke we knelt doon afore in Scotland aften paid mair for a racin' filly nor we paid for a' this bonnie land we ca' oor ain the day. Canada's nae sae guid for earls an' lairds, but it's graun' for puir honest fowk. An' what's mair," continued Mrs. Gavin, "we didna hae the preachin' i' the auld country we hae in Canada--leastwise, no' as graun' as we used to hae i' the time o' Doctor Grant. Div ye ken, sir, the grandest thing I ever heard come oot o' his mooth? No? Weel, it was this. He aye preach't fearfu' lang, as ye've nae doot heard, an' at times the men fowk wad weary an' gang oot, some to tak' a reek wi' their pipes an' mair to gang ower the way an' hae a drap juist to liven the concludin' heids o' the discoorse (for they aye steppit back); but the Doctor didna seem to understaun'. Weel, ae day some o' them was stampin' doon the aisle, an' the Doctor, he juist stoppit an' sat doon, an' then he says, 'Ma freens, we'll bide a wee till the chaff blaws awa'.' Losh, hoo they drappit whaur they stood! There was nae mair gaun oot that day, I tell ye, nor mony a day. But mind ye, 'twas fearsome the time atween when he sat doon in the pulpit an' when he speakit oot like I telt ye; it was clean fearsome."
VII
"_The CHILD of The REGIMENT_"
My labours in St. Cuthbert's had covered but a few fleeting years (oh, relentless ticking of the clock! at once the harbinger and the echo of eternity), when there came into our lives life's greatest earthly joy. Serene and peaceful our lives had been, every hour garlanded with love and every year festooned by the Hand Unseen.
Trials and difficulties there had been indeed, but they were as billows which carried in their secret bosom the greeting of the harbour and the shore. Even the roots of sorrow had been moistened by the far-off wells of joy. To many a guest of God, disguised in the habiliments of gloom, we had turned a frowning face and had bidden such begone. But such guests heeded not, pressing relentlessly in upon our trembling hearth, when lo! the passing days revealed their mission; we saw the face hidden beneath the sombre hood, and prayed the new-discovered guest to abide with us unto the end. For God loveth the masquerade, and doth use it everywhere.
The way to hell appeareth glorious oftentimes, but the pathway unto life is robed in shadows and its sign-post is the cross--which things are a masquerade and to be witnessed every day; for in one single day all God's great drama is rehearsed in miniature.
Our manse was a pleasant place, and its site had been selected by some one with the nursery-heart. Spacious and genial was the old homely house, with its impartial square. Rooms there were, and halls, waiting to echo back some voice uncoarsened by the clang of time and uncorroded by the salt of tears. Rich terraces flowed in velvet waves down to the waiting river, murmuring its trysting joy; a full-robed choir of oak and elm and maple kept their eternal places in a grander loft than man could build them, while pine and spruce and cedar, disrobing never, but snatching their bridal garments from the winter storm, swelled the sylvan harmony.
Here came the crocuses and the snowdrops, trembling like the waifs of winter, and hither came the violet and the dandelion to reassure these daring pioneers; later on, the pansy and the rose utterly convinced them that they had not lost their way, but had been guided by the pilgrims' Friend.
But no child's voice had waked these sombre echoes, no child's gentle feet had pressed this velvet sward; no radiant shadow such as childhood alone can cast had flitted here and there beneath these lonely trees, nor had these flowers felt their life's great and only thrill in the touch of a baby's dimpled hand. But that golden door at last swung gently open. That hour of ecstasy and anguish brought us life's crown and joy, and the hills of time, erstwhile green and beautiful, were now radiant with a light kindled from afar.
St. Cuthbert's rejoiced exceedingly when our little Margaret was given unto us, but we knew it not at first, for Scotch joy is a deep and silent thing, a fermentation at the centre rather than an effervescence at the surface. For our Margaret was as one born out of due time, the first child whose infant cry had awakened the echoes of their ancient manse, though seventy long years had flown since their first minister had come among them. Thus she became the child of the regiment and they silently exulted. Jubilant, one hour after this new star had swung into the firmament, I hoisted the Union Jack to the topmost notch of our towering flag-pole, and never has it flaunted its triumph more jubilantly since.
The beadle reported to me afterwards that the other churches were mightily jealous of our late autumn bloom, and one of their devotees, an Episcopalian, had asked him sneeringly--
"What's that flag doing there?"
"It's blawin' i' the wind," retorted my diplomatic beadle.
"It's nothing to be so joyful over," urged the Episcopalian brother.
"It's mair nor ever happened in yon kirk o' yours; an' it's mair nor could happen to the Pope o' Rome, wha's a true freen o' yours, I'm jalousin'," snorted my beadle back triumphantly; for William was uncharitable, and despaired of all ritualists, the iron of covenanting protest running hot within his blood.
Nor were these the only swords that flashed above our Margaret's cradle; for a Methodist mother in Israel, hopeful of a sympathetic response from Elsie M'Phatter (the non-churchgoing one), ventured the comment that similar events in her own brilliant maternal record had provoked no unseemly joy; to which Elsie responded tartly--
"I ken that fine, and it's very nat'ral, for ye've had mair nor maist; but gin ye hadna had ane for a maitter o' seventy year or mair, like us, wad ye no' hae been clean daft aboot it?" and the field thereafter was Elsie's own.
* * * * *
The Sabbath morning after Margaret's dawn St. Cuthbert's was full to overflowing, as seemed to be every heart, especially every aged heart, finding its morning anew in the life of a little child. For the morning and the evening are wondrously alike. In summer especially, the sun-bathed mountains, the pendant dewdrop, the melodious silences--all these belong so much to both alike that I find it hard to distinguish the matins and the vespers of God's cathedral days.
My voice trembled just a little as I gave out the psalm--
"Such pity as a father hath Unto his children dear,"
but we sang it to the tune of "Dunfermline," and soon I was borne out to sea upon its far-flung billows; for of a truth these old Scottish tunes have the swing of eternity in them, and seem to grandly overlap the bourne of time and space. And when we prayed the only liturgy which Presbyterians will own, I could not forbear to say "Our Father" twice, and lo! a strange thing happened unto me. For a great light seemed to shine upon the words, and that little helpless life at home within the manse, and its thrice-blessed cry, and its yearning look of wonder, and its hand whose only prowess was to lie in some stronger hand of love--all these became a commentary, illustrating God, and in their cordial light I beheld Him as mother, or professor, or minister had never shown Him to me before, bending over the souls of men, otherwise orphaned evermore. That vision has tarried with me ever since, and my people have been the better of it; for he alone can caress his people's souls who has felt the caress of His father's love. God's tenderness is the great contagion for the healing of life's long disease.
VIII
"_A NEW FOOT on The FLOOR_"
When our daughter (are there any two other words so well-wed as these? What music their union makes!) was only about ten years old, her mother, which is my wife writ large and heavenly, and I were taking tea at Inglewood, which my long-suffering readers will remember as the home which first welcomed me to New Jedboro and the residence of Mr. Michael Blake. When our meal was over, Mr. Blake and I were enjoying a quiet game of billiards, which was a game I loved. But I may have more to say about this later on, for so had some of my pious people, though I am inclined to think that they objected not so much because they thought the game was wrong as because they feared I was enjoying it. For, to some truly good Scotch folk the measure of enjoyableness is the measure of sin, and a thing needeth no greater fault than to be guilty of deliciousness. But the converse of this they also hold as true, namely, that what maketh miserable is of God, and to be wretched is to be pious at the heart. For which reason, I have observed oftentimes, they deem that to be a truly well-spent Sabbath day which had banished all possible happiness from their children's lives, bringing them to its close limp and cramped and sore, but catechism-full and with a good mark in the book of life for every weary hour.
Was it Johnson who ventured the opinion that the Puritans put bear-baiting under the ban, not because it was painful to the bears but because it was pleasant to the people? Whether it was or no, I shall not discuss it. Neither shall I discuss the ethics of billiards, unless it be to say this much, that if there be games in heaven, I do not doubt it will have an honoured place, for it is an ivory game and truthful, abhorring vagrant luck and scoring only by eternal laws which Euclid made his own. And I make no doubt that many a hand hath plied the billiard cue which long ere this hath touched with its finger-tips the ivory gates and golden.
But to return. We were in the very midst of our game, of which I remember very little, often and often though I have tried to recall every feature of that eventful night. But I do recall that we spoke about our Margaret, and there was a deep strain of wistful envy in Mr. Blake's voice. I remember well his saying that God's richest earthly gift was that of wife and child and hearth.
"Though I speak," he added almost bitterly, "as I might speak of distant stars, for I have no one of the three," and his lips closed tightly while he drove his ball with a savage hand.
"You have not wife or child," I said, "but no man who has been sheltered by your friendship can agree with you about your hearth. It has warmed my heart too many times when that heart was cold."
"There is no hearth where there is neither wife nor child," he answered almost passionately. "Hearths are not built with hands. Do you not know, sir, that if a man would have a fireside he must begin to kindle it when youth is still throbbing in his heart? From boyhood up he is preparing it, or else he is quenching it in darkness. Do you know, sir, if I were a preacher I would burn that into young men's hearts till they would feel that heaven or hell were all bound up with how they reverence or despise their future fireside. I would tell them that no man can lay his hearth in ashes in the hot days of youth, and then build it up again in the rainy days of age.
"I would tell every wastrel, and every man who is rehearsing hell with his youthful follies, that he cannot eat his cake and have it. For hearth and wife and child are not for him. I would tell him that he cannot breed a cancer in his heart while he is young and cure it with some pious perfume brewed by the hand of age. I would tell them that till my lips blistered, and then they should hear of the grace of God till those same lips were rosy with its healing."
Amazed, I stood and gazed at him, for there was a fearful fascination in his face. The face of a saint it was, with that warlike peace which only a battling and victorious life can give, but it had for the time the half-hunted look of one who trembles at the sound of footsteps he had hoped were forever still, of one whose soul was overstormed by surging waves of memory. There is sometimes a dread ghastliness in the thought that out of the abundance of a man's heart his mouth is speaking, though he declares it not. It is like the procession of a naked soul; or, to change the figure, it is like beholding a man unearth some very corpse he had long sought to hide.
It was his turn to play--ah me! the grim variety of life--and his ball failed but narrowly of a delicate ambition.
"If I could but have it back and play it over," I heard him rather sigh than say, whereat I bethought myself of the high allegory of a game.
Musing still, I stood apart, gazing as one gazes at a fire, which in very truth I was.
"It is your shot, sir," he said, in a voice as passionless as when I first heard it years before.
My ball had but left my cue when the door opened and a servant said--
"There's a young man doon the stair, sir, and he says he wants to speak wi' the minister."
I descended, hearing as I went a rattling fusilade of ivory, which I knew was the echo of a soul's thunder-storm.
* * * * *
How often do we meet new faces, little recking their relation to coming years! Yet many an unfading light and many an incurable eclipse has come with a transient meeting such as this! How many a woman of Samaria goes to draw water from the well, and sees--the Lord! For I met only a boy, or better, a laddie--boyhood-breathing word!--about sixteen years of age, openly poor but pathetically decent. His clothes were coarse and cheap and even darned, bearing here and there the signatures of poverty and motherhood.