Books: The Little Minister

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Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he saw her though
she did not see him. He was stepping into the middle of the road
to wave his hand to her, when some sudden weakness made him look
towards the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded thanks
for his interest in her, but he scowled and pretended to be
studying the sky. Next moment he saw her running back to him.

"There are soldiers at the top of the field," she cried. "I cannot
escape that way."

"There is no other way," Gavin answered.

"Will you not help me again?" she entreated.

She should not have said "again." Gavin shook his head, but pulled
her closer to the manse dyke, for his mother was still in sight.

"Why do you do that?" the girl asked, quickly, looking round to
see if she were pursued. "Oh, I see," she said, as her eyes fell
on the figure at the window.

"It is my mother," Gavin said, though he need not have explained,
unless he wanted the gypsy to know that he was a bachelor.

"Only your mother?"

"Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than you for your
behaviour to-night!"

"How can she?"

"If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I helped you to
escape?"

"But you said you did not."

"Yes, I helped you," Gavin admitted. "My God! what would my
congregation say if they knew I had let you pass yourself off as--
as my wife?"

He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety to blush.

"It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of," Gavin said,
bitterly, "but from my conscience. No, that is not true. I do fear
exposure, but for my mother's sake. Look at her; she is happy,
because she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials as
you cannot know of, and now, when at last I seemed able to do
something for her, you destroy her happiness. You have her life in
your hands."

The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped
angrily on the dry ground. Then, child of impulse as she always
was, she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly
down the road.

"Where are you going?" he cried.

"To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I will clear you."

There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking
back.

"Stop!" Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched
her shoulder.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Why--" whispered Gavin, giddily, "why--why do you not hide in the
manse garden?--No one will look for you there."

There were genuine tears in the gypsy's eyes now.

"You are a good man," she said; "I like you."

"Don't say that," Gavin cried in horror. "There is a summer-seat
in the garden."

Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took
his advice, hastened to the manse. Once inside, he snibbed the
door.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE--ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.

About six o'clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the
conviction that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the
day: a dire thing. The last time it happened Gavin, softened by
her distress, had condensed morning worship into a sentence that
she might make up on the clock.

Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean,
for Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and
remain there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life,
however, to early rising, her feet were usually on the floor
before she remembered her vow, and then it was but a step to the
window to survey the morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out,
the weather was not of great moment, while it mattered much to
Gavin, yet she always thought of it the first thing, and he not at
all until he had to decide whether his companion should be an
umbrella or a staff.

On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain
since Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the
outlook was on the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it
away with her fist. It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They
might have been awaiting her appearance at the window as their
signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the blind when they
began their march out of Thrums. From the manse she could not see
them, but she heard them, and she saw some people at the Tenements
run to their houses at sound of the drum. Other persons, less
timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway to Tilliedrum.
Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake in the
manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the
garden, however, there was another listener protected from her
sight by thin spars.

Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to
rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her
father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at
him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had
slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer
for a clean collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with
his own hand. Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick
socks in the place of thin ones, and, it must be admitted that her
passion for keeping his belongings in boxes, and the boxes in
secret places, and the secret places at the back of drawers,
occasionally led to their being lost when wanted. "They are safe,
at any rate, for I put them away some gait," was then Magaret's
comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if he upbraided her in
his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper the next instant,
and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that
we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his room he
would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for self-
neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness
for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be
to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often
knows him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be
slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and
certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to
be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own
character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin's door to stand and
look, for she was fearful of awakening him after his heavy night.
Even before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise
that, for the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on
his shutters. She concluded that he had done this lest the light
should rouse him. He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put
his open hand before his face, as if to guard himself, and again
he frowned and seemed to draw back from something. He pointed his
finger sternly to the north, ordering the weavers, his mother
thought, to return to their homes, and then he muttered to himself
so that she heard the words, "And if thy right hand offend thee
cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell." Then suddenly he bent forward, his eyes
open and fixed on the window. Thus he sat, for the space of half a
minute, like one listening with painful intentness. When he lay
back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the night over
again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of the
woman in the garden.

Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from Margaret's
room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to
her mistress. Jean's cheerfulness would have told him that her
father was safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I
suppose he was at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the
shutters and looking out as cautiously as a burglar might have
looked in. The Egyptian was gone from the summer-seat. He drew a
great breath.

But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer of
water when these words from the kitchen capsized it:--

"Ay, an Egyptian. That's what the auld folk call a gypsy. Weel,
Mrs. Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums
as would baffle description, though I kent the fits and fors o't
as I dinna. Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer
thing is--"

Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing,
of course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and
doubtless queerer things about this hussy and her "husband" were
being bawled from door to door. To the girl's probable sufferings
he gave no heed. What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to
yield to the machinations of a woman who was so obviously the
devil? Now he saw his folly in the face.

The tray in Jean's hands clattered against the dresser, and Gavin
sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front
door.

In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates
had been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On
ordinary occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean,
so that she could only gaze at him without shaking when in church,
and then because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a
glance at sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable
woman may once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the
pasteboard box as a means of helping her with her work. But with
such a to-do in Thrums, and she the possessor of exclusive
information, Jean's reverence for Gavin only took her to-day as
far as the door, where she lingered half in the parlour and half
in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from the minister, but her
ears his entirely.

"I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture of the--of
an Egyptian woman," Gavin said to his mother, nervously.

"Did you cry to me?" Jean asked, turning round longingly. "But
maybe the mistress will tell you about the Egyptian hersel."

"Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?" Gavin asked in a hollow voice.

"Sup up your porridge, Gavin," Margaret said. "I'll have no
speaking about this terrible night till you've eaten something."

"I have no appetite," the minister replied, pushing his plate from
him. "Jean, answer me."

"'Deed, then," said Jean willingly, "they hinna ta'en her to
Tilliedrum."

"For what reason?" asked Gavin, his dread increasing.

"For the reason that they couldna catch her," Jean answered. "She
spirited hersel awa', the magerful crittur."

"What! But I heard you say----"

"Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her. It's like a
witch story. They had her safe in the townhouse, and baith shirra
and captain guarding her, and syne in a clink she wasna there. A'
nicht they looked for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot-
print ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi'
their tap in their lap and march awa without her."

Gavin's appetite returned.

"Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?" he asked, laying
down his spoon with a new fear. "Where is she now?"

"No human eye has seen her," Jean answered impressively. "Whaur is
she now? Whaur does the flies vanish to in winter? We ken they're
some gait, but whaur?"

"But what are the people saying about her?"

"Daft things," said Jean. "Old Charles Yuill gangs the length o'
hinting that she's dead and buried."

"She could not have buried herself, Jean," Margaret said, mildly.

"I dinna ken. Charles says she's even capable o' that."

Then Jean retired reluctantly (but leaving the door ajar) and
Gavin fell to on his porridge. He was now so cheerful that
Margaret wondered.

"If half the stories about this gypsy be true," she said, "she
must be more than a mere woman."

"Less, you mean, mother," Gavin said, with conviction. "She is a
woman, and a sinful one."

"Did you see her, Gavin?"

"I saw her. Mother, she flouted me!"

"The daring tawpie!" exclaimed Margaret.

"She is all that," said the minister.

"Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body? But you don't
notice clothes much, Gavin."

"I noticed hers," Gavin said, slowly, "she was in a green and red,
I think, and barefooted."

"Ay," shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both of them; "but
she had a lang grey-like cloak too. She was seen jouking up closes
in't."

Gavin rose, considerably annoyed, and shut the parlour door.

"Was she as bonny as folks say?" asked Margaret. "Jean says they
speak of her beauty as unearthly."

"Beauty of her kind," Gavin explained learnedly, "is neither
earthly nor heavenly." He was seeing things as they are very
clearly now. "What," he said, "is mere physical beauty? Pooh!"

"And yet," said Margaret, "the soul surely does speak through the
face to some extent."

"Do you really think so, mother?" Gavin asked, a little uneasily.

"I have always noticed it," Margaret said, and then her son
sighed.

"But I would let no face influence me a jot," he said, recovering.

"Ah, Gavin, I'm thinking I'm the reason you pay so little regard
to women's faces. It's no natural."

"You've spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring for another
woman. I would compare her to you, and then where would she be?"

"Sometime," Margaret said, "you'll think differently."

"Never," answered Gavin, with a violence that ended the
conversation.

Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing down the
garden walk cast a guilty glance at the summer-seat. Something
black was lying in one corner of it. He stopped irresolutely, for
his mother was nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared
into the little arbour. What had caught his eye was a Bible. On
the previous day, as he now remembered, he had been called away
while studying in the garden, and had left his Bible on the
summer-seat, a pencil between its pages. Not often probably had
the Egyptian passed a night in such company.

But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself the question. The
gypsy's cloak was lying neatly folded at the other end of the
seat. Why had the woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put
this question when another stood in front of it. What was to be
done with the cloak? He dared not leave it there for Jean to
discover. He could not take it into the manse in daylight. Beneath
the seat was a tool-chest without a lid, and into this he crammed
the cloak. Then, having turned the box face downwards, he went
about his duties. But many a time during the day he shivered to
the marrow, reflecting suddenly that at this very moment Jean
might be carrying the accursed thing (at arms' length, like a dog
in disgrace) to his mother.

Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll for
taking the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the
cloak. Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her
master in the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and
when he saw her he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her
openly she would have suspected nothing, but this made her look at
him.

"Why do you stare so, Jean?" Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and
he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in
bewilderment.

"I have noticed her watching me sharply all day," he said to
himself, though it was only he who had been watching her.

Gavin carried the cloak to his bed-room, thinking to lock it away
in his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed
to see it after the lid was shut.

The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest
and was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She
had been employed very innocently in his mother's room, but he
said tartly--

"Jean, I really cannot have this," which sent Jean to the kitchen
with her apron at her eyes.

Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour
afterwards was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard
some one in the garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow
for Jean, but it was not Jean; it was Margaret.

"Mother," he said in alarm, "what are you doing here?"

"I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin."

"Yes, but--it is too cold for you. Did Jean--did Jean ask you to
come up here?"

"Jean? She knows her place better."

Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the
garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak
from its lurking place, and took it into the garden. He very
nearly met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she
fled precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.

In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even
now he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of
scraping in the garden, and his first thought was "Jean!" But
peering from the window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog
which already had its teeth in the cloak.

That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a
brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped
the parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home,
nevertheless, he was overtaken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting
down whins. Fittis had seen the parcel fall, and running after
Gavin, returned it to him. Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat
down gloomily on the cemetery dyke. Half an hour afterwards he
flung the parcel into a Tillyloss garden.

In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.

"Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every one is still
speaking of, wore a long cloak? Well, would you believe it, the
cloak was Captain Halliwell's, and she took it from the town-house
when she escaped. She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He
did not discover that it was gone until he was leaving Thrums."

"Mother, is this possible?" Gavin said.

"The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was ordered, it seems,
to look for the cloak quietly, and to take any one into custody in
whose possession it was found."

"Has it been found?"

"No."

The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could not trust his
face. What was to be done now? The cloak was lying in mason
Baxter's garden, and Baxter was therefore, in all probability,
within four-and-twenty hours of the Tilliedrum gaol.

"Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?" Femie Wilkie asked
Sam'l Fairweather three hours later.

"Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum hat," answered
Sam'l; "and richtly, for it's the crowning stone o' the edifice."

"Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o' Tillyloss the
now," said Femie, "though like him it was. He joukit back when he
saw me."

While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements, mason Baxter,
standing at the window which looked into his garden, was shouting,
"Wha's that in my yard?" There was no answer, and Baxter closed
his window, under the impression that he had been speaking to a
cat. The man in the cap then emerged from the corner where he had
been crouching, and stealthily felt for something among the
cabbages and pea sticks. It was no longer there, however, and by-
and-by he retired empty-handed.

"The Egyptian's cloak has been found," Margaret was able to tell
Gavin next day. "Mason Baxter found it yesterday afternoon."

"In his garden?" Gavin asked hurriedly.

"No; in the quarry, he says, but according to Jean he is known not
to have been at the quarry to-day. Some seem to think that the
gypsy gave him the cloak for helping her to escape, and that he
has delivered it up lest he should get into difficulties."

"Whom has he given it to, mother?" Gavin asked.

"To the policeman."

"And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?"

"Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the information
that the masons had found it in the quarry."

The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to be told,
awaited Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing to do with the
cloak, of which I may here record the end. Wearyworld had not
forwarded it to its owner; Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It
made its reappearance in Thrums, several months after the riot, as
two pairs of Sabbath breeks for her sons, James and Andrew.

CHAPTER X.

FIRST SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.

On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have said,
something strange happened in the Auld Licht pulpit. The
congregation, despite their troubles, turned it over and peered at
it for days, but had they seen into the inside of it they would
have weaved few webs until the session had sat on the minister.
The affair baffled me at the time, and for the Egyptian's sake I
would avoid mentioning it now, were it not one of Gavin's
milestones. It includes the first of his memorable sermons against
Woman.

I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I heard of the
sermon before night, and this, I think, is as good an opportunity
as another for showing how the gossip about Gavin reached me up
here in the Glen school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to
the manse I had kept the vow made to myself and avoided Thrums.
Only once had I ventured to the kirk, and then, instead of taking
my old seat, the fourth from the pulpit, I sat down near the
plate, where I could look at Margaret without her seeing me. To
spare her that agony I even stole away as the last word of the
benediction was pronounced, and my haste scandalised many, for
with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire quickly from the
church after the manner of the godless U. P.'s (and the Free Kirk
is little better), who have their hats in their hand when they
rise for the benediction, so that they may at once pour out like a
burst dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us, clear our
throats and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put our
hats into them. In time we do get out, but I am never sure how.

One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town,
without losing his character, and I used to await the return of my
neighbour, the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the
Glen Quharity post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster
Lunny was a man whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from
his wife his great pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other
hand, he told outright what he thought of it, praising it to its
face and blackguarding it as it deserved, and I have seen him when
completely baffled by the brute, sit down before it on a stone and
thus harangue: "You think you're clever, Catlaw, my lass, but
you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer, that's what you are. You
think you have blood in you. You hae blood! Gae away, and dinna
blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man yestreen that kent
your mither, and he says she was a feikie fushionless besom. What
do you say to that?"

As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter
topic was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him
graciously when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he
had none. "aye implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."

On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place
awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had
something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife and three
children, holding each other's hands, stretched across the road.
Birse was a little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by
shouting. All were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having
started half a minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on
them.

"It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just
as I was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before
me.

"You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at
the Glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is
Established, and so neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to
know what their long faces meant, and so asked at once--

"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?"

"Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round
his wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in
the kirk this day, sic as--"

"Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply; "have you on your
Sabbath shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?"

"Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny things on,"
retorted the farmer.

"Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day."

"Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear
genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them till he takes them
aff. Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower
sma?"

"It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's
kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna
expect to be baith grand and comfortable."

I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr. Dishart.

"We was saying," began the post briskly, "that--"

"It was me that was saying it," said Waster Lunny. "So, dominie--"

"Haud your gabs, baith o' you," interrupted Elspeth, "You've been
roaring the story to ane another till you're hoarse."

"In the forenoon," Waster Lunny went on determinedly, "Mr. Dishart
preached on the riot, and fine he was. Oh, dominie, you should hae
heard him ladling it on to Lang Tammas, no by name but in sic a
way that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at, Sal! oh
losh! Tammas got it strong."

"But he's dull in the uptake," broke in the post, "by what I
expected. I spoke to him after the sermon, and I says, just to see
if he was properly humbled, 'Ay, Tammas,' I says, 'them that
discourse was preached against, winna think themselves seven feet
men for a while again.' 'Ay, Birse,' he answers, 'and glad I am to
hear you admit it, for he had you in his eye.' I was fair
scunnered at Tammas the day."

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