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J.M. Barrie >> The Little Minister
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THE LITTLE MINISTER
BY
J. M. BARRIE
AUTHOR OF
"WINDOW IN THRUMS," "AULD LIGHT IDYLLS," "WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE."
ETC.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. The Love-Light
II. Runs Alongside the Making of a Minister
III. The Night-Watchers
IV. First Coming of the Egyptian Woman
V. A Warlike Chapter, Culminating in the Flouting of the
Minister by the Woman
VI. In which the Soldiers Meet the Amazons of Thrums
VII. Has the Folly of Looking into a Woman's Eyes by Way of Text
VIII. 3 A.M.--Monstrous Audacity of the Woman
IX. The Woman Considered in Absence--Adventures of a Military Cloak
X. First Sermon against Women
XI. Tells in a Whisper of Man's Fall during the Curling Season
XII. Tragedy of a Mud House
XIII. Second Coming of the Egyptian Woman
XIV. The Minister Dances to the Woman's Piping
XV. The Minister Bewitched--Second Sermon against Women
XVI. Continued Misbehavior of the Egyptian Woman
XVII. Intrusion of Haggart into these Pages against the Author's Wish
XVIII. Caddam--Love Leading to a Rupture
XIX. Circumstances Leading to the First Sermon in Approval of Women
XX. End of the State of Indecision
XXI. Night--Margaret--Flashing of a Lantern
XXII. Lovers
XXIII. Contains a Birth, Which is Sufficient for One Chapter
XXIV. The New World, and the Women who may not Dwell therein
XXV. Beginning of the Twenty-four Hours
XXVI. Scene at the Spittal
XXVII. First Journey of the Dominie to Thrums during the Twenty-four Hours
XXVIII. The Hill before Darkness Fell--Scene of the Impending Catastrophe
XXIX. Story of the Egyptian
XXX. The Meeting for Rain
XXXI. Various Bodies Converging on the Hill
XXXII. Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage
XXXIII. While the Ten o'Clock Bell was Ringing
XXXIV. The Great Rain
XXXV. The Glen at Break of Day
XXXVI. Story of the Dominie
XXXVII. Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums during the Twenty-four Hours
XXXVIII. Thrums during the Twenty-four Hours--Defence of the Manse
XXXIX. How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth
XL. Babbie and Margaret--Defence of the Manse continued
XLI. Rintoui and Babbie--Break-down of the Defence of the Manse
XLII. Margaret, the Precentor, and God between
XLIII. Rain--Mist--The Jaws
XLIV. End of the Twenty-four Hours
XLV. Talk of a Little Maid since Grown Tall
CHAPTER I.
THE LOVE-LIGHT.
Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's
soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to
Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something
happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he
passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and
her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting
had only one witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards,
"They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I
saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these
two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in
the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever.
It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know
that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many
readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul
was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can
have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.
Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to
Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits
him at the bend of the road. It was the time of year when the
ground is carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, when
split-nuts patter all day from the beech, and children lay yellow
corn on the dominie's desk to remind him that now they are needed
in the fields. The day was so silent that carts could be heard
rumbling a mile away. All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes--
a few of the weavers still in knee-breeches--to look at the new
Auld Licht minister. I was there too, the dominie of Glen
Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums; and heavy was my heart
as I stood afar off so that Gavin's mother might not have the pain
of seeing me. I was the only one in the crowd who looked at her
more than at her son.
Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had
lost the brightness of its youth, and she seemed to me smaller and
more fragile; and the face that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy,
and loved when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always
shall love till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old
woman, and she was only forty-three: and I am the man who made her
old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face out at the carriage
window, many saw that he was holding her hand, but none could be
glad at the sight as the dominie was glad, looking on at a
happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret was crying
because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons to
be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have you dry those
tears.
When the little minister looked out at the carriage window, many
of the people drew back humbly, but a little boy in a red frock
with black spots pressed forward and offered him a sticky parly,
which Gavin accepted, though not without a tremor, for children
were more terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy's mother,
trying not to look elated, bore him away, but her face said that
he was made for life. With this little incident Gavin's career in
Thrums began. I remembered it suddenly the other day when wading
across the wynd where it took place. Many scenes in the little
minister's life come back to me in this way. The first time I ever
thought of writing his love story as an old man's gift to a little
maid since grown tall, was one night while I sat alone in the
school-house; on my knees a fiddle that has been my only living
companion since I sold my hens. My mind had drifted back to the
first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together, and what set it
wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate shaking in
the wind. At a gate on the hill I had first encountered these two.
It rattled in his hand, and I looked up and saw them, and neither
knew why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the gate
swung to. It had just such a click as mine.
These two figures on the hill are more real to me than things that
happened yesterday, but I do not know that I can make them live to
others. A ghost-show used to come yearly to Thrums on the merry
Muckle Friday, in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a
glass between the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny that the
comings and goings of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the
farmer of T'nowhead only laughed because he had paid his money at
the hole in the door like the rest of us. T'nowhead sat at the end
of a form where he saw round the glass and so saw no ghost. I fear
my public may be in the same predicament. I see the little
minister as he was at one-and-twenty, and the little girl to whom
this story is to belong sees him, though the things I have to tell
happened before she came into the world. But there are reasons why
she should see; and I do not know that I can provide the glass for
others. If they see round it, they will neither laugh nor cry with
Gavin and Babbie.
When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now, for the pages lay
before him on which he was to write his life. Yet he was not quite
as I am. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to
write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when
he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. But
the biographer sees the last chapter while he is still at the
first, and I have only to write over with ink what Gavin has
written in pencil.
How often is it a phanton woman who draws the man from the way he
meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is
above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the
eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he
himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their
love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is
the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be
bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from his dream. The
nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the
wrong way, for those who only run after little things will not go
far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its
wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.
Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write these things? I
am not your judge. Shall we not laugh at the student who chafes
when between him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with
whom, on the mad night you danced into Gavin's life, you had more
in common than with Auld Licht ministers? The gladness of living
was in your step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what
love might be.
You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds
are free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to
dazzle the eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken
by you into his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice
that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be
young. Even those who called you a little devil, of whom I have
been one, admitted that in the end you had a soul, though not that
you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a
woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I
picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing up
Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a
jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of
toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot wonder that Gavin
loved you.
Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin's story, not mine.
Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and of myself I shall
sometimes have to speak; not willingly, for it is time my little
tragedy had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so long that
now I would stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard
who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that the life
broken in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two minutes' talk
with Gavin showed me that Margaret had kept from him the secret
which was hers and mine and so knocked the bottom out of my vain
hopes. I did not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall
anyone who blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was
bitter to look at the white manse among the trees and know that I
must never enter it. For Margaret's sake I had to keep aloof, yet
this new trial came upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought
that in those eighteen years my passions had burned like a ship
till they sank, but I suffered again as on that awful night when
Adam Dishart came back, nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all
my ambitions by the root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums
until I had looked again on Margaret, who thought me dead, and
Gavin, who had never heard of me, and then I trudged back to the
school-house. Something I heard of them from time to time during
the winter--for in the gossip of Thrums I was well posted--but
much of what is to be told here I only learned afterwards from
those who knew it best. Gavin heard of me at times as the dominie
in the glen who had ceased to attend the Auld Licht kirk, and
Margaret did not even hear of me. It was all I could do for them.
CHAPTER II.
RUNS ALONGSIDE THE MAKING OF A MINISTER.
On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a quarry, at the
foot of cliffs that may one day fall forward, is a village called
Harvie. So has it shrunk since the day when I skulked from it that
I hear of a traveller's asking lately at one of its doors how far
he was from a village; yet Harvie throve once and was celebrated
even in distant Thrums for its fish. Most of our weavers would
have thought it as unnatural not to buy harvies in the square on
the Muckle Friday, as to let Saturday night pass without laying in
a sufficient stock of halfpennies to go round the family twice.
Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early age that he
could only recall thatched houses with nets drying on the roofs,
and a sandy shore in which coarse grass grew. In the picture he
could not pick out the house of his birth, though he might have
been able to go to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he
learned that his mother did not care to speak of Harvie, and
perhaps he thought that she had forgotten it too, all save one
scene to which his memory still guided him. When his mind wandered
to Harvie, Gavin saw the door of his home open and a fisherman
enter, who scratched his head and then said, "Your man's drowned,
missis." Gavin seemed to see many women crying, and his mother
staring at them with a face suddenly painted white, and next to
hear a voice that was his own saying, "Never mind, mother; I'll be
a man to you now, and I'll need breeks for the burial." But Adam
required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the sea.
Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother's life, and
the most memorable event of his own childhood. But it was neither.
When Margaret, even after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie,
it was not at Adam's death she shuddered, but at the recollection
of me.
It would ill become me to take a late revenge on Adam Dishart now
by saying what is not true of him. Though he died a fisherman he
was a sailor for a great part of his life, and doubtless his
recklessness was washed into him on the high seas, where in his
time men made a crony of death, and drank merrily over dodging it
for another night. To me his roars of laughter without cause were
as repellent as a boy's drum; yet many faces that were long in my
company brightened at his coming, and women, with whom, despite my
yearning, I was in no wise a favorite, ran to their doors to
listen to him as readily as to the bell-man. Children scurried
from him if his mood was savage, but to him at all other times,
while me they merely disregarded. There was always a smell of the
sea about him. He had a rolling gait, unless he was drunk, when he
walked very straight, and before both sexes he boasted that any
woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this beard he took
prodigious care, though otherwise thinking little of his
appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I
did, who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be
said that he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women
strangely, that, I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and
so no more to be marvelled at than a stake in a fence. Foreign
oaths were the nails with which he held his talk together, yet I
doubt not they were a curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains
of shells, more for his own pleasure than for others' pain. His
friends gave them no weight, and when he wanted to talk
emphatically he kept them back, though they were then as
troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who has to
speak with his spoil in his mouth.
Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to
leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not
reach the rope his partner flung him. "It's no go, lad," he
shouted; "so long, Jim," and sank.
A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was
all Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She
took Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a
housekeeper, and there mother and son remained until Gavin got his
call to Thrums. During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of
them as completely as Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On
hearing of Adam's death I went back to Harvie to try to trace her,
but she had feared this, and so told no one where she was going.
According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was
still a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed
her from the first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret
herself was no scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at
turning bannocks on the girdle, she decided, when his age was
still counted by months, that the ministry had need of him. In
those days the first question asked of a child was not, "Tell me
your name," but "What are you to be?" and one child in every
family replied, "A minister." He was set apart for the Church as
doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent, and the rule held
good though the family consisted of only one boy. From his
earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the ministry
as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced and
marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An
enthusiastic mother may bend her son's mind as she chooses if she
begins it once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a mother
in Thrums who loves "features," and had a child born with no chin
to speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust,
but it only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that
child had a chin with the best of them.
Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and,
ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived
to keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do
Margaret's did better than most, and among the wealthy people who
employed her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of
such as were good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner
was spoken of. For though Margaret had no schooling, she was a
lady at heart, moving and almost speaking as one even in Harvie,
where they did not perhaps like her the better for it.
At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as
ever medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the
gallery Gavin watched the minister's every movement, noting that
the first thing to do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your
face with your hands, as if the exalted position affected you like
a strong light, and the second to move the big Bible slightly, to
show that the kirk officer, not having had a university education,
could not be expected to know the very spot on which it ought to
lie. Gavin saw that the minister joined in the singing more like
one countenancing a seemly thing than because he needed it
himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and again after the
congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It was
noteworthy that the first prayer lasted longer than all the
others, and that to read the intimations about the Bible-class and
the collection elsewhere than immediately before the last Psalm
would have been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication to
King James at the end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister
justly honoured in his day, the boy was often some words in
advance of him, not vainglorious of his memory, but fervent,
eager, and regarding the preacher as hardly less sacred than the
Book. Gavin was encouraged by his frightened yet admiring mother
to saw the air from their pew as the minister sawed it in the
pulpit, and two benedictions were pronounced twice a Sabbath in
that church, in the same words, the same manner, and
simultaneously.
There was a black year when the things of this world, especially
its pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret
he would rather be good at the high jump than the author of "The
Pilgrim's Progress." That year passed, and Gavin came to his right
mind. One afternoon Margaret was at home making a glen-garry for
him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when
the boy bounded in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and
you'll see him." Margaret reached the door in time to see a street
musician flying from Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of
him, mother?" the boy asked when he reappeared with the mark of a
muddy stick on his back. "He's a Papist!--a sore sight, mother, a
sore sight. We stoned him for persecuting the noble Martyrs."
"When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a
place in a shop as errand boy. He used to run through the streets
between his work and his classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which
could then be got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-
hundred weight, were his food. There was not always a good meal
for two, yet when Gavin reached home at night there was generally
something ready for him, and Margaret had supped "hours ago."
Gavin's hunger urged him to fall to, but his love for his mother
made him watchful.
"What did you have yourself, mother?" he would demand
suspiciously.
"Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you."
"What had you?"
"I had potatoes, for one thing."
"And dripping?"
"You may be sure."
"Mother, you're cheating me. The dripping hasn't been touched
since yesterday."
"I dinna--don't--care for dripping--no much."
Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.
"Do you think I'll stand this, mother? Will I let myself be
pampered with dripping and every delicacy while you starve?"
"Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping."
"Then I'll give up my classes, and we can have butter."
"I assure you I'm no hungry. It's different wi' a growing laddie."
"I'm not a growing laddie," Gavin would say, bitterly; "but,
mother, I warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I
see you eating too."
So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said
"I can eat no more," Gavin retorted sternly, "Nor will I, for fine
I see through you."
These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just
as Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected
him. The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with
them that had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she Was
only keeping pace with Gavin. When she was excited the Harvie
words came back to her, as they come back to me. I have taught the
English language all my life, and I try to write it, but
everything I say in this book I first think to myself in the
Doric. This, too, I notice, that in talking to myself I am broader
than when gossiping with the farmers of the glen, who send their
children to me to learn English, and then jeer at them if they say
"old lights" instead of "auld lichts."
To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long evenings
sewing, and look over her work at Gavin as he read or wrote or
recited to himself the learning of the schools. But she coughed
every time the weather changed, and then Gavin would start.
"You must go to your bed, mother," he would say, tearing himself
from his books; or he would sit beside her and talk of the dream
that was common to both--a dream of a manse where Margaret was
mistress and Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was
at his mother's bedside to wind her shawl round her feet, and
while he did it Margaret smiled.
"Mother, this is the chaff pillow you've taken out of my bed, and
given me your feather one."
"Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the feather pillow."
"Do you dare to think I'll let you sleep on chaff? Put up your
head. Now, is that soft?"
"It's fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on feathers. Do
you mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow for me the moment you got
your bursary money?"
The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish poor had
been broken down by these two. When he saw his mother sleeping
happily, Gavin went back to his work. To save the expense of a
lamp, he would put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and,
taking the place of the fender, read till he was shivering with
cold.
"Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed yet! What are
you thinking about so hard?"
"Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever come when I
would be a minister, and you would have an egg for your breakfast
every morning."
So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister. He had
now sermons to prepare, and every one of them was first preached
to Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how
stern were his admonitions.
"Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you.
I'm ashamed you should have me for a mother."
"God grant, mother," Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to
happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, "that you
may never be ashamed to have me for a son."
"Ah, mother," he would say wistfully, "it is not a great sermon,
but do you think I'm preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I'm
carried away and forget to watch myself."
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