Books: The Little Minister

J >> J.M. Barrie >> The Little Minister

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"Ay, wha is she?" repeated several.

"I see you ken nothing about her," said Rob, much relieved; and he
then lapsed into silence.

"We ken a' about her," said Snecky, "except just wha she is. Ay,
that's what we canna bottom. Maybe you could guess, Tammas?"

"Maybe I could, Sneck," Haggart replied, cautiously; "but on that
point I offer no opinion."

"If she bides on the Kaims road," said Tibbie Craik, "she maun be
a farmer's dochter. What say you to Bell Finlay?"

"Na; she's U. P. But it micht be Loups o' Malcolm's sister. She's
promised to Muckle Haws; but no doubt she would gie him the go-by
at a word frae the minister."

"It's mair likely," said Chirsty, "to be the factor at the
Spittal's lassie. The factor has a grand garden, and that would
account for such basketfuls o' flowers."

"Whaever she is," said Birse, "I'm thinking he could hae done
better."

"I'll be fine pleased wi' ony o' them," said Tibbie, who had a
magenta silk, and so was jealous of no one.

"It hasna been proved," Haggart pointed out, "that the flowers
came frae thae parts. She may be sending them frae Glasgow."

"I aye understood it was a Glasgow lady," said Snecky. "He'll be
like the Tilliedrum minister that got a lady to send him to the
college on the promise that he would marry her as soon as he got a
kirk. She made him sign a paper."

"The far-seeing limmer," exclaimed Chirsty. "But if that's what
Mr. Dishart has done, how has he kept it so secret?"

"He wouldna want the women o' the congregation to ken he was
promised till after they had voted for him."

"I dinna haud wi' that explanation o't," said Haggart, "but I may
tell you that I ken for sure she's a Glasgow leddy. Lads,
ministers is near aye bespoke afore they're licensed. There's a
michty competition for them in the big toons. Ay, the leddies just
stand at the college gates, as you may say, and snap them up as
they come out."

"And just as well for the ministers, I'se uphaud," said Tibbie,
"for it saves them a heap o' persecution when they come to the
like o' Thrums. There was Mr. Meiklejohn, the U. P. minister: he
was no sooner placed than every genteel woman in the town was
persecuting him. The Miss Dobies was the maist shameless; they
fair hunted him."

"Ay," said Snecky; "and in the tail o' the day ane o' them snacked
him up. Billies, did you ever hear o' a minister being refused?"

"Never."

"Weel, then, I have; and by a widow woman too. His name was
Samson, and if it had been Tamson she would hae ta'en him. Ay, you
may look, but it's true. Her name was Turnbull, and she had
another gent after her, name o' Tibbets. She couldna make up her
mind atween them, and for a while she just keeped them dangling
on. Ay, but in the end she took Tibbets. And what, think you, was
her reason? As you ken, thae grand folk has their initials on
their spoons and nichtgowns. Ay, weel, she thocht it would be mair
handy to take Tibbets, because if she had ta'en the minister the
T's would have had to be changed to S's. It was thoctfu' o' her."

"Is Tibbets living?" asked Haggart sharply.

"No; he's dead."

"What," asked Haggart, "was the corp to trade?"

"I dinna ken."

"I thocht no," said Haggart, triumphantly. "Weel, I warrant he was
a minister too. Ay, catch a woman giving up a minister, except for
another minister."

All were looking on Haggart with admiration, when a voice from the
door cried--

"Listen, and I'll tell you a queerer ane than that."

"Dagont," cried Birse, "it's Wearywarld, and he has been
hearkening. Leave him to me."

When the post returned, the conversation was back at Mr. Dishart.

"Yes, lathies," Haggart was saying, "daftness about women comes to
all, gentle and simple, common and colleged, humourists and no
humourists. You say Mr. Dishart has preached ower muckle at women
to stoop to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous
thing hae I said about women, and yet Chirsty has me. It's the
same wi' ministers. A' at aince they see a lassie no' unlike ither
lassies, away goes their learning, and they skirl out, 'You
dawtie!' That's what comes to all."

"But it hasna come to Mr. Dishart," cried Rob Dow, jumping to his
feet. He had sought Haggart to tell him all, but now he saw the
wisdom of telling nothing. "I'm sick o' your blathers. Instead o'
the minister's being sweethearting yesterday, he was just at the
Kaims visiting the gamekeeper. I met him in the Wast town-end, and
gaed there and back wi' him."

"That's proof it's a Glasgow leddy," said Snecky.

"I tell you there's no leddy ava!" swore Rob.

"Yea, and wha sends the baskets o' flowers, then?"

"There was only one flower," said Rob, turning to his host.

"I aye understood," said Haggart heavily, "that there was only one
flower."

"But though there was just ane," persisted Chirsty, "what we want
to ken is wha gae him it."

"It was me that gae him it," said Rob; "it was growing on the
roadside, and I plucked it and gae it to him."

The company dwindled away shamefacedly, yet unconvinced; but
Haggart had courage to say slowly--

"Yes, Rob, I had aye a notion that he got it frae you."

Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and a woman unknown
had broken out in Thrums, was gazing, sometimes lovingly and again
with scorn, at a little bunch of holly-berries which Jean had
gathered from her father's garden. Once she saw him fling them out
of his window, and then she rejoiced. But an hour afterwards she
saw him pick them up, and then she mourned. Nevertheless, to her
great delight, he preached his third sermon against Woman on the
following Sabbath. It was universally acknowledged to be the best
of the series. It was also the last.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CADDAM--LOVE LEADING TO A RUPTURE.

Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on the following
Monday; but he went. The distance is half a mile, and the time he
took was two hours. This was owing to his setting out due west to
reach a point due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none
save himself. His reason had warned him to avoid the Egyptian, and
his desires had consented to be dragged westward because they knew
he had started too soon. When the proper time came they knocked
reason on the head and carried him straight to Caddam. Here reason
came to, and again began to state its case. Desires permitted him
to halt, as if to argue the matter out, but were thus tolerant
merely because from where he stood he could see Nanny's doorway.
When Babbie emerged from it reason seems to have made one final
effort, for Gavin quickly took that side of a tree which is loved
of squirrels at the approach of an enemy. He looked round the
tree-trunk at her, and then reason discarded him. The gypsy had
two empty pans in her hands, For a second she gazed in the
minister's direction, then demurely leaped the ditch of leaves
that separated Nanny's yard from Caddam, and strolled into the
wood. Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking
behind the tree, Gavin came into the open. How good of the
Egyptian, he reflected, to go to the well for water, and thus save
the old woman's arms! Reason shouted from near the manse (he only
heard the echo) that he could still make up on it. "Come along."
said his desires, and marched him prisoner to the well.

The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry leaves
now, and my little maid and I lately searched for an hour before
we found the well. It was dry, choked with broom and stones, and
broken rusty pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had
talked, and I stirred up many memories. Probably two of those
pans, that could be broken in the hands to-day like shortbread,
were Nanny's, and almost certainly the stones are fragments from
the great slab that used to cover the well. Children like to peer
into wells to see what the world is like at the other side, and so
this covering was necessary. Rob Angus was the strong man who bore
the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard before him at a time. The
well had also a wooden lid with leather hinges, and over this the
stone was dragged.

Gavin arrived at the well in time to offer Babbie the loan of his
arms. In her struggle she had taken her lips into her mouth, but
in vain did she tug at the stone, which refused to do more than
turn round on the wood. But for her presence, the minister's
efforts would have been equally futile. Though not strong,
however, he had the national horror of being beaten before a
spectator, and once at school he had won a fight by telling his
big antagonist to come on until the boy was tired of pummelling
him. As he fought with the stone now, pains shot through his head,
and his arms threatened to come away at the shoulders; but remove
it he did.

"How strong you are!" Babbie said with open admiration.

I am sure no words of mine could tell how pleased the minister
was; yet he knew he was not strong, and might have known that she
had seen him do many things far more worthy of admiration without
admiring them. This, indeed, is a sad truth, that we seldom give
our love to what is worthiest in its object.

"How curious that we should have met here," Babbie said, in her
dangerously friendly way, as they filled the pans. "Do you know I
quite started when your shadow fell suddenly on the stone. Did you
happen to be passing through the wood?"

"No," answered truthful Gavin, "I was looking for you. I thought
you saw me from Nanny's door."

"Did you? I only saw a man hiding behind a tree, and of course I
knew it could not be you."

Gavin looked at her sharply, but she was not laughing at him.

"It was I," he admitted; "but I was not exactly hiding behind the
tree."

"You had only stepped behind it for a moment," suggested the
Egyptian.

Her gravity gave way to laughter under Gavin's suspicious looks,
but the laughing ended abruptly. She had heard a noise in the
wood, Gavin heard it too, and they both turned round in time to
see two ragged boys running from them. When boys are very happy
they think they must be doing wrong, and in a wood, of which they
are among the natural inhabitants, they always take flight from
the enemy, adults, if given time. For my own part, when I see a
boy drop from a tree I am as little surprised as if he were an
apple or a nut. But Gavin was startled, picturing these spies
handing in the new sensation about him at every door, as a
district visitor distributes tracts. The gypsy noted his
uneasiness and resented it.

"What does it feel like to be afraid?" she asked, eyeing him.

"I am afraid of nothing," Gavin answered, offended in turn.

"Yes, you are. When you saw me come out of Nanny's you crept
behind a tree; when these boys showed themselves you shook. You
are afraid of being seen with me. Go away, then; I don't want
you."

"Fear," said Gavin, "is one thing, and prudence is another."

"Another name for it," Babbie interposed.

"Not at all; but I owe it to my position to be careful. Unhappily,
you do not seem to feel--to recognise--to know--"

"To know what?"

"Let us avoid the subject."

"No," the Egyptian said, petulantly. "I hate not to be told
things. Why must you be 'prudent?'"

"You should see," Gavin replied, awkwardly, "that there is a--a
difference between a minister and a gypsy."

"But if I am willing to overlook it?" asked Babbie, impertinently.

Gavin beat the brushwood mournfully with his staff.

"I cannot allow you," he said, "to talk disrespectfully of my
calling. It is the highest a man can follow. I wish--"

He checked himself; but he was wishing she could see him in his
pulpit.

"I suppose," said the gypsy, reflectively, "one must be very
clever to be a minister."

"As for that--" answered Gavin, waving his hand grandly.

"And it must be nice, too," continued Babbie, "to be able to speak
for a whole hour to people who can neither answer nor go away. Is
it true that before you begin to preach you lock the door to keep
the congregation in?"

"I must leave you if you talk in that way."

"I only wanted to know."

"Oh, Babbie, I am afraid you have little acquaintance with the
inside of churches. Do you sit under anybody?"

"Do I sit under anybody?" repeated Babbie, blankly.

Is it any wonder that the minister sighed? "Whom do you sit
under?" was his form of salutation to strangers.

"I mean, where do you belong?" he said.

"Wanderers," Babbie answered, still misunderstanding him, "belong
to nowhere in particular."

"I am only asking you if you ever go to church?"

"Oh, that is what you mean. Yes, I go often."

"What church?"

"You promised not to ask questions."

"I only mean what denomination do you belong to?"

"Oh, the--the--Is there an English church denomination?"

Gavin groaned.

"Well, that is my denomination," said Babbie, cheerfully. "Some
day, though, I am coming to hear you preach. I should like to see
how you look in your gown."

"We don't wear gowns."

"What a shame! But I am coming, nevertheless. I used to like going
to church in Edinburgh."

"You have lived in Edinburgh?"

"We gypsies have lived everywhere," Babbie said, lightly, though
she was annoyed at having mentioned Edinburgh.

"But all gypsies don't speak as you do," said Gavin, puzzled
again. "I don't understand you."

"Of course you dinna," replied Babbie, in broad Scotch. "Maybe, if
you did, you would think that it's mair imprudent in me to stand
here cracking clavers wi' the minister than for the minister to
waste his time cracking wi' me."

"Then why do it?"

"Because--Oh, because prudence and I always take different roads."

"Tell me who you are, Babbie," the minister entreated; "at least,
tell me where your encampment is."

"You have warned me against imprudence," she said.

"I want," Gavin continued, earnestly, "to know your people, your
father and mother."

"Why?"

"Because," he answered, stoutly, "I like their daughter."

At that Babbie's fingers played on one of the pans, and, for the
moment, there was no more badinage in her.

"You are a good man," she said, abruptly; "but you will never know
my parents."

"Are they dead?"

"They may be; I cannot tell."

"This is all incomprehensible to me."

"I suppose it is. I never asked any one to understand me."

"Perhaps not," said Gavin, excitedly; "but the time has come when
I must know everything of you that is to be known."

Babbie receded from him in quick fear.

"You must never speak to me in that way again," she said, in a
warning voice.

"In what way?"

Gavin knew what way very well, but he thirsted to hear in her
words what his own had implied. She did not choose to oblige him,
however.

"You never will understand me," she said. "I daresay I might be
more like other people now, if--if I had been brought up
differently. Not," she added, passionately, "that I want to be
like others. Do you never feel, when you have been living a
humdrum life for months, that you must break out of it, or go
crazy?"

Her vehemence alarmed Gavin, who hastened to reply--

"My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement, anxieties,
pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures. Perhaps it is
because I have more of the luxuries of life than you that I am so
content with my lot."

"Why, what can you know of luxuries?"

"I have eighty pounds a year."

Babble laughed. "Are ministers so poor?" she asked, calling back
her gravity.

"It is a considerable sum," said Gavin, a little hurt, for it was
the first time he had ever heard any one speak disrespectfully of
eighty pounds.

The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.

"I shall always remember your saying that," she told him, "after
we have quarrelled."

"We shall not quarrel," said Gavin, decidedly.

"Oh, yes, we shall."

"We might have done so once, but we know each other too well now."

"That is why we are to quarrel."

"About what?" said the minister. "I have not blamed you for
deriding my stipend, though how it can seem small in the eyes of a
gypsy--"

"Who can afford," broke in Babbie, "to give Nanny seven shillings
a week?"

"True," Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed
with her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and
then, and suddenly she said, "You have looked at this ring before
now. Do you know that if you had it on your finger you would be
more worth robbing than with eighty pounds in each of your
pockets?"

"Where did you get it?" demanded Gavin, fiercely.

"I am sorry I told you that," the gypsy said, regretfully.

"Tell me how you got it," Gavin insisted, his face now hard.

"Now, you see, we are quarrelling."

"I must know."

"Must know! You forget yourself," she said haughtily.

"No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that
ring?"

"Good afternoon to you," said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.

"It is not good afternoon," he cried, detaining her. "It is good-
bye for ever, unless you answer me."

"As you please," she said. "I will not tell you where I got my
ring. It is no affair of yours."

"Yes, Babbie, it is."

She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she
made no answer.

"You are no gypsy," he continued, suspiciously.

"Perhaps not," she answered, again taking the pans.

"This dress is but a disguise."

"It may be. Why don't you go away and leave me?"

"I am going," he replied, wildly. "I will have no more to do with
you. Formerly I pitied you, but--"

He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the
Egyptian's ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once
did she look back, and it was to say--

"This is prudence--now."

CHAPTER XIX.

CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE FIRST SERMON IN APPROVAL OF WOMEN.

A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious to love,
and so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of
his own mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone.
Did Gavin make this discovery when the Egyptian left him?
Apparently he only came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had
driven her from him for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute
that his soul cried out for the cure rather than for the name of
the malady.

In time he would have realised what had happened, but time was
denied him, for just as he was starting for the mud house Babbie
saved his dignity by returning to him. It was not her custom to
fix her eyes on the ground as she walked, but she was doing so
now, and at the same time swinging the empty pans. Doubtless she
had come back for more water, in the belief that Gavin had gone.
He pronounced her name with a sense of guilt, and she looked up
surprised, or seemingly surprised, to find him still there.

"I thought you had gone away long ago," she said stiffly.

"Otherwise," asked Gavin the dejected, "you would not have come
back to the well?"

"Certainly not."

"I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment I should have been
gone."

This was said in apology, but the wilful Egyptian chose to change
its meaning.

"You have no right to blame me for disturbing you," she declared
with warmth.

"I did not. I only--"

"You could have been a mile away by this time. Nanny wanted more
water."

Babbie scrutinised the minister sharply as she made this
statement. Surely her conscience troubled her, for on his not
answering immediately she said, "Do you presume to disbelieve me?
What could have made me return except to fill the pans again?"

"Nothing," Gavin admitted eagerly, "and I assure you--"

Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness, but it merely
set her mind at rest.

"Say anything against me you choose," she told him. "Say it as
brutally as you like, for I won't listen."

She stopped to hear his response to that, and she looked so cold
that it almost froze on Gavin's lips.

"I had no right," he said, dolefully, "to speak to you as I did."

"You had not," answered the proud Egyptian. She was looking away
from him to show that his repentance was not even interesting to
her. However, she had forgotten already not to listen.

"What business is it of mine?" asked Gavin, amazed at his late
presumption, "whether you are a gypsy or no?"

"None whatever."

"And as for the ring--"

Here he gave her an opportunity of allowing that his curiosity
about the ring was warranted. She declined to help him, however,
and so he had to go on.

"The ring is yours," he said, "and why should you not wear it?"

"Why, indeed?"

"I am afraid I have a very bad temper."

He paused for a contradiction, but she nodded her head in
agreement.

"And it is no wonder," he continued, "that you think me a--a
brute."

"I'm sure it is not."

"But, Babbie, I want you to know that I despise myself for my base
suspicions. No sooner did I see them than I loathed them and
myself for harbouring them. Despite this mystery, I look upon you
as a noble-hearted girl. I shall always think of you so."

This time Babbie did not reply.

"That was all I had to say," concluded Gavin, "except that I hope
you will not punish Nanny for my sins. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said the Egyptian, who was looking at the well.

The minister's legs could not have heard him give the order to
march, for they stood waiting.

"I thought," said the Egyptian, after a moment, "that you said you
were going."

"I was only--brushing my hat," Gavin answered with dignity. "You
want me to go?"

She bowed, and this time he did set off.

"You can go if you like," she remarked now.

He turned at this.

"But you said--" he began, diffidently.

"No, I did not," she answered, with indignation.

He could see her face at last.

"You--you are crying!" he exclaimed, in bewilderment.

"Because you are so unfeeling," sobbed Babbie.

"What have I said, what have I done?" cried Gavin, in an agony of
self-contempt "Oh, that I had gone away at once!"

"That is cruel."

"What is?"

"To say that."

"What did I say?"

"That you wished you had gone away."

"But surely," the minister faltered, "you asked me to go."

"How can you say so?" asked the gypsy, reproachfully.

Gavin was distracted. "On my word," he said, earnestly, "I thought
you did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were
anybody but myself; I am a hopeless lout."

"Now you are unjust," said Babbie, hiding her face.

"Again? To you?"

"No, you stupid," she said, beaming on him in her most delightful
manner, "to yourself!"

She gave him both her hands impetuously, and he did not let them
go until she added:

"I am so glad that you are reasonable at last. Men are so much
more unreasonable than women, don't you think?"

"Perhaps we are," Gavin said, diplomatically.

"Of course you are. Why, every one knows that. Well, I forgive
you; only remember, you have admitted that it was all your fault?"

She was pointing her finger at him like a schoolmistress, and
Gavin hastened to answer--

"You were not to blame at all."

"I like to hear you say that," explained the representative of the
more reasonable sex, "because it was really all my fault."

"No, no."

"Yes, it was; but of course I could not say so until you had asked
my pardon. You must understand that?"

The representative of the less reasonable sex could not understand
it, but he agreed recklessly, and it seemed so plain to the woman
that she continued confidentially--

"I pretended that I did not want to make it up, but I did."

"Did you?" asked Gavin, elated.

"Yes, but nothing could have induced me to make the first advance.
You see why?"

"Because I was so unreasonable?" asked Gavin, doubtfully.

"Yes, and nasty. You admit you were nasty?"

"Undoubtedly, I have an evil temper. It has brought me to shame
many times."

"Oh, I don't know," said the Egyptian, charitably. "I like it. I
believe I admire bullies."

"Did I bully you?"

"I never knew such a bully. You quite frightened me."

Gavin began to be less displeased with himself.

"You are sure," inquired Babbie, "that you had no right to
question me about the ring?"

"Certain," answered Gavin.

"Then I will tell you all about it," said Babbie, "for it is
natural that you should want to know."

He looked eagerly at her, and she had become serious and sad.

"I must tell you at the same time," she said, "who I am, and then-
-then we shall never see each other any more."

"Why should you tell me?" cried Gavin, his hand rising to stop
her.

"Because you have a right to know," she replied, now too much in
earnest to see that she was yielding a point. "I should prefer not
to tell you; yet there is nothing wrong in my secret, and it may
make you think of me kindly when I have gone away."

"Don't speak in that way, Babbie, after you have forgiven me."

"Did I hurt you? It was only because I know that you cannot trust
me while I remain a mystery. I know you would try to trust me, but
doubts would cross your mind. Yes, they would; they are the
shadows that mysteries cast. Who can believe a gypsy if the odds
are against her?"

"I can," said Gavin; but she shook her head, and so would he had
he remembered three recent sermons of his own preaching.

"I had better tell you all," she said, with an effort.

"It is my turn now to refuse to listen to you," exclaimed Gavin,
who was only a chivalrous boy. "Babbie, I should like to hear your
story, but until you want to tell it to me I will not listen to
it. I have faith in your honour, and that is sufficient."

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