Books: The Little Minister
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J.M. Barrie >> The Little Minister
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No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to
love, for then God has her by the hand. There is no love but this.
She may dream of what love is, but it is only of a sudden that she
knows. Babbie, who was without a guide from her baby days, had
dreamed but little of it, hearing its name given to another thing.
She had been born wild and known no home; no one had touched her
heart except to strike it, she had been educated, but never tamed;
her life had been thrown strangely among those who were great in
the world's possessions, but she was not of them. Her soul was in
such darkness that she had never seen it; she would have danced
away cynically from the belief that there is such a thing, and now
all at once she had passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not
love God's doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself, and
the moment she saw it the flash lit her own soul.
It was but little of his Master that was in Gavin, but far smaller
things have changed the current of human lives; the spider's
thread that strikes our brow on a country road may do that. Yet
this I will say, though I have no wish to cast the little minister
on my pages larger than he was, that he had some heroic hours in
Thrums, of which one was when Babbie learned to love him. Until
the moment when he kissed her she had only conceived him a quaint
fellow whose life was a string of Sundays, but behold what she saw
in him now. Evidently to his noble mind her mystery was only some
misfortune, not of her making, and his was to be the part of
leading her away from it into the happiness of the open life. He
did not doubt her, for he loved, and to doubt is to dip love in
the mire. She had been given to him by God, and he was so rich in
her possession that the responsibility attached to the gift was
not grievous. She was his, and no mortal man could part them.
Those who looked askance at her were looking askance at him; in so
far as she was wayward and wild, he was those things; so long as
she remained strange to religion, the blame lay on him.
All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past night, and to her it
was the book of love. What things she had known, said and done in
that holy name! How shamefully have we all besmirched it! She had
only known it as the most selfish of the passions, a brittle image
that men consulted because it could only answer in the words they
gave it to say. But here was a man to whom love was something
better than his own desires leering on a pedestal. Such love as
Babbie had seen hitherto made strong men weak, but this was a love
that made a weak man strong. All her life, strength had been her
idol, and the weakness that bent to her cajolery her scorn. But
only now was it revealed to her that strength, instead of being
the lusty child of passions, grows by grappling with and throwing
them.
So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that she had ever
seen in man. I shall be told that she thought far more of him than
he deserved, forgetting the mean in the worthy: but who that has
had a glimpse of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth
on earth? Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is
an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see
the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.
Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin preached a sermon
in praise of Woman, and up in the mudhouse in Windyghoul Babbie
sat alone. But it was the Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in
her life. Her discovery had frozen her mind for a time, so that
she could only stare at it with eyes that would not shut; but that
had been in the night. Already her love seemed a thing of years,
for it was as old as herself, as old as the new Babbie. It was
such a dear delight that she clasped it to her, and exulted over
it because it was hers, and then she cried over it because she
must give it up.
For Babbie must only look at this love and then turn from it. My
heart aches for the little Egyptian, but the Promised Land would
have remained invisible to her had she not realized that it was
only for others. That was the condition of her seeing.
CHAPTER XXIV.
NEW WORLD, AND THE WOMAN WHO MAY NOT DWELL THEREIN.
Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have straggled
home, there comes to me at times, and so sudden that it may be
while I am infusing my tea, a hot desire to write great books.
Perhaps an hour afterwards I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging
all I have written into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on
second thought), and curse myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see
that one can only paint what he himself has felt, and in my
passion I wish to have all the vices, even to being an impious
man, that I may describe them better. For this may I be pardoned.
It comes to nothing in the end, save that my tea is brackish.
Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating me of many
experiences, more helpful to a writer than to a Christian, it has
not been so tame but that I can understand why Babbie cried when
she went into Nanny's garden and saw the new world. Let no one who
loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its
rainbow, and Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in
woe among the stiff berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her
hands to Love and sees him looking for her, and knows she must
shrink from the arms she would lie in, and only call to him in a
voice he cannot hear. This is not a love that is always bitter. It
grows sweet with age. But could that dry the tears of the little
Egyptian, who had only been a woman for a day?
Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that must keep her and
Gavin ever apart she knew, and he did not; but had it been removed
she would have given herself to him humbly, not in her own
longing, but because he wanted her. "Behold what I am," she could
have said to him then, and left the rest to him, believing that
her unworthiness would not drag him down, it would lose itself so
readily in his strength. That Thrums could rise against such a man
if he defied it, she did not believe; but she was to learn the
truth presently from a child.
To most of us, I suppose, has come some shock that was to make us
different men from that hour, and yet, how many days elapsed
before something of the man we had been leapt up in us? Babbie
thought she had buried her old impulsiveness, and then remembering
that from the top of the field she might see Gavin returning from
church, she hastened to the hill to look upon him from a distance.
Before she reached the gate where I had met her and him, however,
she stopped, distressed at her selfishness, and asked bitterly,
"Why am I so different from other women; why should what is so
easy to them be so hard to me?"
"Gavin, my beloved!" the Egyptian cried in her agony, and the wind
caught her words and flung them in the air, making sport of her.
She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a
great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit
and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys--a kind
of horse--and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged
laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in
the dyke that separates the hill from a fir wood, and it is the
fairy-book of Thrums. If you would be a knight yourself, you must
sit on it and whisper to it your desire.
Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a little boy
astride it. His hair stood up through holes in his bonnet, and he
was very ragged and miserable.
"Why are you crying, little boy?" Babbie asked him, gently; but he
did not look up, and the tongue was strange to him.
"How are you greeting so sair?" she asked.
"I'm no greeting very sair," he answered, turning his head from
her that a woman might not see his tears. "I'm no greeting so sair
but what I grat sairer when my mither died."
"When did she die?" Babbie inquired.
"Lang syne," he answered, still with averted face.
"What is your name?"
"Micah is my name. Rob Dow's my father."
"And have you no brothers nor sisters?" asked Babbie, with a
fellow-feeling for him.
"No, juist my father," he said.
"You should be the better laddie to him then. Did your mither no
tell you to be that afore she died?"
"Ay," he answered, "she telled me ay to hide the bottle frae him
when I could get haed o't. She took me into the bed to make me
promise that, and syne she died."
"Does your father drina?"
"He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums," Micah replied,
almost proudly.
"And he strikes you?" Babbie asked, compassionately.
"That's a lie," retorted the boy, fiercely. "Leastwise, he doesna
strike me except when he's mortal, and syne I can jouk him."
"What are you doing there?"
"I'm wishing. It's a wishing stane."
"You are wishing your father wouldna drink."
"No, I'm no," answered Micah. "There was a lang time he didna
drink, but the woman has sent him to it again. It's about her I'm
wishing. I'm wishing she was in hell."
"What woman is it?" asked Babbie, shuddering.
"I dinna ken," Micah said, "but she's an ill ane."
"Did you never see her at your father's house?"
"Na; if he could get grip o' her he would break her ower his knee.
I hearken to him saying that, when he's wild. He says she should
be burned for a witch."
"But if he hates her," asked Babbie, "how can she have sic power
ower him?"
"It's no him that she has haud o'," replied Micah. still looking
away from her.
"Wha is it then?"
"It's Mr. Dishart."
Babbie was struck as if by an arrow from the wood. It was so
unexpected that she gave a cry, and then for the first time Micah
looked at her.
"How should that send your father to the drink?" she asked, with
an effort.
"Because my father's michty fond o' him," answered Micah, staring
strangely at her; "and when the folk ken about the woman, they'll
stane the minister out o' Thrums."
The wood faded for a moment from the Egyptian's sight. When it
came back, the boy had slid off the Standing Stone and was
stealing away.
"Why do you run frae me?" Babbie asked, pathetically.
"I'm fleid at you," he gasped, coming to a standstill at a safe
distance: "you're the woman!"
Babbie cowered before her little judge, and he drew nearer her
slowly.
"What makes you think that?" she said.
It was a curious time for Babbie's beauty to be paid its most
princely compliment.
"Because you're so bonny," Micah whispered across the dyke. Her
tears gave him courage. "You might gang awa," he entreated. "If
you kent what a differ Mr. Dishart made in my father till you
came, you would maybe gang awa. When lie's roaring fou I have to
sleep in the wood, and it's awful cauld. I'm doubting he'll kill
me, woman, if you dinna gang awa."
Poor Babbie put her hand to her heart, but the innocent lad
continued mercilessly--
"If ony shame comes to the minister, his auld mither'll die. How
have you sic an ill will at the minister?"
Babbie held up her hands like a supplicant.
"I'll gie you my rabbit." Micah said, "if you'll gang awa. I've
juist the ane." She shook her head, and, misunderstanding her, he
cried, with his knuckles in his eye, "I'll gie you them baith,
though I'm michty sweer to part wi' Spotty."
Then at last Babbie found her voice.
"Keep your rabbits, laddie," she said, "and greet no more. I'm
gaen awa."
"And you'll never come back no more a' your life?" pleaded Micah.
"Never no more a' my life," repeated Babbie.
"And ye'll leave the minister alane for ever and ever?"
"For ever and ever."
Micah rubbed his face dry, and said, "Will you let me stand on the
Standing Stane and watch you gaen awa for ever and ever?"
At that a sob broke from Babbie's heart, and looking at her
doubtfully Micah said--
"Maybe you're gey ill for what you've done?"
"Ay," Babbie answered, "I'm gey ill for what I've done."
A minute passed, and in her anguish she did not know that still
she was standing at the dyke. Micah's voice roused her:
"You said you would gang awa, and you're no gaen,"
Then Babbie went away. The boy watched her across the hill. He
climbed the Standing Stone and gazed after her until she was but a
coloured ribbon among the broom. When she disappeared into
Windyghoul he ran home, joyfully, and told his father what a good
day's work he had done. Rob struck him for a fool for taking a
gypsy's word, and warned him against speaking of the woman in
Thrums.
But though Dow believed that Gavin continued to meet the Egyptian
secretly, he was wrong. A sum of money for Nanny was sent to the
minister, but he could guess only from whom it came. In vain did
he search for Babbie. Some months passed and he gave up the
search, persuaded that he should see her no more. He went about
his duties with a drawn face that made many folk uneasy when it
was stern, and pained them when it tried to smile. But to
Margaret, though the effort was terrible, he was as he had ever
been, and so no thought of a woman crossed her loving breast.
CHAPTER XXV.
BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
I can tell still how the whole of the glen was engaged about the
hour of noon on the fourth of August month; a day to be among the
last forgotten by any of us, though it began as quietly as a
roaring March. At the Spittal, between which and Thrums this is a
halfway house, were gathered two hundred men in kilts, and many
gentry from the neighboring glens, to celebrate the earl's
marriage, which was to take place on the morrow, and thither, too,
had gone many of my pupils to gather gossip, at which girls of six
are trustier hands than boys of twelve. Those of us, however, who
were neither children nor of gentle blood, remained at home, the
farmers more taken up with the want of rain, now become a
calamity, than with an old man's wedding, and their women-folk
wringing their hands for rain also, yet finding time to marvel at
the marriage's taking place at the Spittal instead of in England,
of which the ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate of the bride's.
For my own part I could talk of the disastrous drought with Waster
Lunny as I walked over his parched fields, but I had not such
cause as he to brood upon it by day and night; and the ins and
outs of the earl's marriage were for discussing at a tea-table,
where there were women to help one to conclusions, rather than for
the reflections of a solitary dominie, who had seen neither bride
nor bridegroom. So it must be confessed that when I might have
been regarding the sky moodily, or at the Spittal, where a free
table that day invited all, I was sitting in the school-house,
heeling my left boot, on which I have always been a little hard.
I made small speed, not through lack of craft, but because one can
no more drive in tackets properly than take cities unless he gives
his whole mind to it; and half of mine was at the Auld Licht
manse. Since our meeting six months earlier on the hill I had not
seen Gavin, but I had heard much of him, and of a kind to trouble
me.
"I saw nothing queer about Mr. Dishart," was Waster Lunny's
frequent story, "till I hearkened to Elspeth speaking about it to
the lasses (for I'm the last Elspeth would tell anything to,
though I'm her man), and syne I minded I had been noticing it for
months. Elspeth says," he would go on, for he could no more
forbear quoting his wife than complaining of her, "that the
minister'll listen to you nowadays wi' his een glaring at you as
if he had a perfectly passionate interest in what you were telling
him (though it may be only about a hen wi' the croup), and then,
after all, he hasna heard a sylib. Ay, I listened to Elspeth
saying that, when she thocht I was at the byre, and yet, would you
believe it, when I says to her after lousing times, 'I've been
noticing of late that the minister loses what a body tells him,'
all she answers is 'Havers.' Tod, but women's provoking."
"I allow," Birse said, "that on the first Sabbath o' June month,
and again on the third Sabbath, he poured out the Word grandly,
but I've ta'en note this curran Sabbaths that if he's no michty
magnificent he's michty poor. There's something damming up his
mind, and when he gets by it he's a roaring water, but when he
doesna he's a despizable trickle. The folk thinks it's a woman
that's getting in his way, but dinna tell me that about sic a
scholar; I tell you he would gang ower a toon o' women like a
loaded cart ower new-laid stanes."
Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods one day, pelting me with
remarks, though I was doing my best to get away from him. "Even
Rob Dow sees there's something come ower the minister," he bawled,
"for Rob's fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr.
Dishart, that he aye gies me a civil word," I thought I had left
the policeman behind with this, but next minute he roared, "And
whatever is the matter wi' him it has made him kindlier to me than
ever." He must have taken the short cut through Lunan's close, for
at the top of the Roods his voice again made up on me. "Dagone
you, for a cruel pack to put your fingers to your lugs ilka time I
open my mouth."
As for Waster Lunny's daughter Easie, who got her schooling free
for redding up the school-house and breaking my furniture, she
would never have been off the gossip about the minister, for she
was her mother in miniature, with a tongue that ran like a pump
after the pans are full, not for use but for the mere pleasure of
spilling.
On that awful fourth of August I not only had all this confused
talk in my head but reason for jumping my mind between it and the
Egyptian (as if to catch them together unawares), and I was like
one who, with the mechanism of a watch jumbled in his hand, could
set it going if he had the art.
Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen that night, yet
what more was there to learn? I was aware that she loved Gavin and
that he loved her. A moment had shown it to me. Now with the Auld
Lichts, I have the smith's acquaintance with his irons, and so I
could not believe that they would suffer their minister to marry a
vagrant. Had it not been for this knowledge, which made me fearful
for Margaret, I would have done nothing to keep these two young
people apart. Some to whom I have said this maintain that the
Egyptian turned my head at our first meeting. Such an argument is
not perhaps worth controverting. I admit that even now I
straighten under the fire of a bright eye, as a pensioner may
salute when he sees a young officer. In the shooting season,
should I chance to be leaning over my dyke while English sportsmen
pass (as is usually the case if I have seen them approaching), I
remember nought of them save that they call me "she," and end
their greetings with "whatever" (which Waster Lunny takes to be a
southron mode of speech), but their ladies dwell pleasantly in my
memory, from their engaging faces to the pretty crumpled thing
dangling on their arms, that is a hat or a basket, I am seldom
sure which. The Egyptian's beauty, therefore, was a gladsome sight
to me, and none the less so that I had come upon it as
unexpectedly as some men step into a bog. Had she been alone when
I met her I cannot deny that I would have been content to look on
her face, without caring what was inside it; but she was with her
lover, and that lover was Gavin, and so her face was to me as
little for admiring as this glen in a thunderstorm, when I know
that some fellow-creature is lost on the hills.
If, however, it was no quick liking for the gypsy that almost
tempted me to leave these two lovers to each other, what was it?
It was the warning of my own life. Adam Dishart had torn my arm
from Margaret's, and I had not recovered the wrench in eighteen
years. Rather than act his part between these two I felt tempted
to tell them, "Deplorable as the result may be, if you who are a
minister marry this vagabond, it will be still more deplorable if
you do not."
But there was Margaret to consider, and at thought of her I cursed
the Egyptian aloud. What could I do to keep Gavin and the woman
apart? I could tell him the secret of his mother's life. Would
that be sufficient? It would if he loved Margaret, as I did not
doubt. Pity for her would make him undergo any torture rather than
she should suffer again. But to divulge our old connection would
entail her discovery of me. and I questioned if even the saving of
Gavin could destroy the bitterness of that.
I might appeal to the Egyptian. I might tell her even what I
shuddered to tell him. She cared for him, I was sure, well enough
to have the courage to give him up. But where was I to find her?
Were she and Gavin meeting still? Perhaps the change which had
come over the little minister meant that they had parted. Yet what
I had heard him say to her on the hill warned me not to trust in
any such solution of the trouble.
Boys play at casting a humming-top into the midst of others on the
ground, and if well aimed it scatters them prettily. I seemed to
be playing such a game with my thoughts, for each new one sent the
others here and there, and so what could I do in the end but fling
my tops aside, and return to the heeling of my boot?
I was thus engaged when the sudden waking of the glen into life
took me to my window. There is seldom silence up here, for if the
wind be not sweeping the heather, the Quharity, that I may not
have heard for days, seems to have crept nearer to the school-
house in the night, and if both wind and water be out of earshot,
there is the crack of a gun, or Waster Lunny's shepherd is on a
stone near at hand whistling, or a lamb is scrambling through a
fence, and kicking foolishly with its hind legs. These sounds I am
unaware of until they stop, when I look up. Such a stillness was
broken now by music.
From my window I saw a string of people walking rapidly down the
glen, and Waster Lunny crossing his potato-field to meet them.
Remembering that, though I was in my stocking soles, the ground
was dry, I hastened to join the farmer, for I like to miss
nothing. I saw a curious sight. In front of the little procession
coming down the glen road, and so much more impressive than his
satellites that they may be put of mind as merely ploughman and
the like following a show, was a Highlander that I knew to be
Lauchlan Campbell, one of the pipers engaged to lend music to the
earl's marriage. He had the name of a thrawn man when sober, but
pretty at the pipes at both times, and he came marching down the
glen blowing gloriously, as if he had the clan of Campbell at his
heels. I know no man who is so capable on occasion of looking like
twenty as a Highland piper, and never have I seen a face in such a
blaze of passion as was Lauchlan Campbell's that day. His
following were keeping out of his reach, jumping back every time
he turned round to shake his fist in the direction of the Spittal.
While this magnificent man was yet some yards from us, I saw
Waster Lunny, who had been in the middle of the road to ask
questions, fall back in fear, and not being a fighting man myself,
I jumped the dyke. Lauchlan gave me a look that sent me farther
into the field, and strutted past, shrieking defiance through his
pipes, until I lost him and his followers in a bend of the road.
"That's a terrifying spectacle," I heard Waster Lunny say when the
music had become but a distant squeal. "You're bonny at louping
dykes, dominie, when there is a wild bull in front o' you. Na, I
canna tell what has happened, but at the least Lauchlan maun hae
dirked the earl. Thae loons cried out to me as they gaed by that
he has been blawing awa' at that tune till he canna halt. What a
wind's in the crittur! I'm thinking there's a hell in ilka
Highlandman."
"Take care then, Waster Lunny, that you dinna licht it," said an
angry voice that made us jump, though it was only Duncan, the
farmer's shepherd, who spoke.
"I had forgotten you was a Highlandman yoursel', Duncan," Waster
Lunny said nervously; but Elspeth, who had come to us unnoticed,
ordered the shepherd to return to the hillside, which he did
haughtily.
"How did you no lay haud on that blast o' wind, Lauchlan
Campbell," asked Elspeth of her husband, "and speir at him what
had happened at the Spittal? A quarrel afore a marriage brings ill
luck."
"I'm thinking," said the farmer, "that Rintoul's making his ain
ill luck by marrying on a young leddy."
"A man's never ower auld to marry," said Elspeth.
"No, nor a woman," rejoined Waster Lunny, "when she gets the
chance. But, Elspeth, I believe I can guess what has fired that
fearsome piper. Depend upon it, somebody has been speaking
disrespectful about the crittur's ancestors."
"His ancestors!" exclaimed Elspeth, scornfully. "I'm thinking mine
could hae bocht them at a crown the dozen."
"Hoots," said the farmer, "you're o' a weaving stock, and dinna
understand about ancestors. Take a stick to a Highland laddie, and
it's no him you hurt, but his ancestors. Likewise it's his
ancestors that stanes you for it. When Duncan stalked awa the now,
what think you he saw? He saw a farmer's wife dauring to order
about his ancestors; and if that's the way wi' a shepherd, what
will it be wi' a piper that has the kilts on him a' day to mind
him o' his ancestors ilka time he looks down?"
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