The Stickit Minister's Wooing/Lowe's Seat
LOWE'S SEAT
Elspeth did not mean to go to Lowe's Seat. She had indeed no business there. For she was the minister's daughter, and at this time of the day ought to have been visiting the old wives in the white-washed "Clachan" on the other side of the river, showing them how to render their patchwork quilts less hideous, compassionating them on their sons' ungrateful silence (letters arrive so seldom from the "States"). Yet here was Elspeth Stuart under the waving boughs, seated upon the soft grassy turf, and employed in nothing more utilitarian than picking a gowan asunder petal by petal. It was the middle of an August afternoon, and as hot as it ever is in Scotland.
Why then had Elspeth gone to Lowe's Seat? It seemed a mystery. It was to the full as pleasant on the side of the river where dwelt her father, where complained her maiden aunt, and where after their kind racketed and stormed her roving vagabond bird-nesting brothers. On the Picts' Mound beside the kirk (an ancient Moothill, so they say, upon which justice of the rudest and readiest was of old dispensed) there were trees and green depths of shade. She might have stayed and read there—the "Antiquary" perhaps, or "Joseph Andrews," or her first favourite "Emma," all through the long sweet drowsing summer's afternoon. But somehow up at Lowe's Seat, the leaves of the wood laughed to a different tune and the Airds woods were dearer than all sweet Kenside.
So in spite of all Elspeth Stuart had crossed in her father's own skiff, which he used for his longer ministerial excursions "up the water," and her brothers Frank and Sandy for perch-fishing and laying their "ged" lines. There was indeed a certain puddock in a high state of decomposition in a locker which sadly troubled Elspeth as she bent to the oars. And now she was at Lowe's Seat.
It is strange to what the love of poetry will drive a girl. Elspeth tossed back the fair curls which a light wind persisted in flicking ticklingly over her brow. With a coquettish, blushful, half-indignant gesture she thrust them back with her hand, as if they ought to have known better than to intrude upon a purpose so serious as hers in coming to Lowe's Seat.
"Here was the place," she murmured to herself, explanatorily, "where the poor boy hid himself to write his poem—a hundred years ago! Was it really a hundred years ago?"
She looked about her, and the wind whispered and rustled and laughed a little down among the elms and the hazels, while out towards the river and on a level with her face the silver birches shook their plumes daintily as a pretty girl her wandering tresses, bending saucily toward the water as they did so. Then Elspeth said the first two verses of "Mary's Dream" over to herself. The poem was a favourite with her father, a hard stern man with a sentimental base, as is indeed very common in Scotland.
"The moon had climbed the highest hill
That rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree.
When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea,
There soft and low a voice was heard,
Saying, 'Mary, weep no more for me!'"
Elspeth was young and she was not critical. Lowe's simple and to the modern mind somewhat obvious verse, seemed to her to contain the essence of truth and feeling. But on the other hand she looked adorable as she said them. For, strangely enough, a woman's critical judgment is generally in inverse ratio to her personal attractions—though doubtless there are exceptions to the rule.
As has been said, she did not go to Lowe's Seat for any particular purpose. She said so to herself as many as ten times while she was crossing in the skiff, and at least as often when she was pulling herself up the steep braeface by the supple hazels and more stubborn young oaks.
So Elspeth Stuart continued to hum a vagrant tune, more than half of the bars wholly silent, and the rest sometimes loud and sometimes soft, as she glanced downwards out of her green garret high among the leaves.
More than once she grew restive and pattered impatiently with her fingers on her lap as if expecting some one who did not come. Only occasionally she looked down towards the river. Indeed, she permitted her eyes to rove in every direction except immediately beneath her, where through a mist of leaves she could see the Dee kissing murmuringly the rushes on its marge.
A pretty girl—yes, surely. More than that, one winsome with the wilful brightness which takes men more than beauty. And being withal only twenty years of her age, it may well be believed that Elspeth Stuart, the only daughter of the parish minister of Dullarg, did not move far without drawing the glances of men after her as a magnet attracts steel filings.
Yet a second marvel appeared beneath. There was a young man moving along by the water's edge and he did not look up. To all appearance Lowe's Seat might just as well not have existed for him, and its pretty occupant might have been reading Miss Austen under the pines of the Kirk Knowe on the opposite side of Dee Water.
Elspeth also appeared equally unconscious. Of course, how otherwise? She had plucked a spray of bracken and was peeling away the fronds, unravelling the tough fibres of the root and rubbing off the underleaf seeds, so that they showed red on her fingers like iron rust. Wondrous busy had our maid become all suddenly. But though she had not smiled when the youth came in sight, she pouted when he made as if he would pass by without seeing her. Which is a strange thing when you come to think of it, considering that she herself had apparently not observed him.
Suddenly, however, she sang out loudly, a strong ringing stave like a blackbird from the copse as the sun rises above the hills. Whereat the young man started as if he had been shot. Hitherto he had held a fishing-rod in his hand and seemed intent only on the stream. But at the sound of Elspeth's voice he whirled about, and catching a glimpse of bright apparel through the green leaves, he came straight up through the tangle with the rod in his hand. Even at that moment it did not escape Elspeth's eye that he held it awkwardly, like one little used to Galloway burn-sides. She meant to show him better by-and-by.
Having arrived, the surprise and mutual courtesies were simply overpowering. Elspeth had not dreamed—the merest impulse had led her—she had been reading Lowe's poem the night before. It was really the only completely sheltered place for miles, where one could muse in peace. He knew it was, did he not?
But we must introduce this young man. If he had possessed a card it would have said: "The Rev. Allan Syme, B.A."
He was the new minister of the Cameronian Kirk at Cairn Edward. He has just been "called," chiefly because the other two on the short leet had not been considered sufficiently "firm" in their views concerning an "Erastian Establishment," as at the Kirk on the Hill they called the Church of Scotland nationally provided for by the Revolution Settlement.
In his trial discourses, however, Mr. Syme had proved categorically that no good had ever come out of any state-supported Church, that the ministers of the present establishment were little better than priests of the Scarlet Woman who sitteth on the Seven Hills, and that all those who trusted in them were even as the moles and the bats, children of darkness and travellers on the smoothly macadamised highway to destruction.
Nevertheless, at that free stave of Elspeth's carol Allan Syme went up hill as fast as if he had never preached a sermon on the text, "And Elijah girded up his loins and ran before Ahab unto the entering in of Jezreel."
At half-past eleven by the clock the minister of the Cameronian Kirk sat down beside this daughter of an Erastian Establishment.
Have you heard the leaves of beech and birch laugh as they clash and rustle? That is how the wicked summer woods of Airds laughed that day about Lowe's Seat.
*******
Half a mile down the river there is a ferry boat which at infrequent intervals pushes a flat duck's bill across Dee Water. It is wide enough to take a loaded cart of hay, and long enough to accommodate two young horses tail to tail and yet leave room for the statutory flourishing of heels.
Bess MacTaggart could take it across with any load upon it you pleased, pushing easily upon an iron lever. They use a wheel now, but it was much prettier in the old days when all for a penny you could watch Bess lift the toothed lever with a sharp movement of her shapely arm, wet and dripping from the chain, as it slowly dredged itself up from the river bed.
It was half-past four when, in reply to repeated hails, the boat left the Dullarg shore with a company of three men on board, and in addition the sort of person who is called a "single lady."
Two of the men stood together at one end of the ferry-boat, and after Bess had bidden one of them sharply to "get out of her road," she called him "Drows" to make it up, and asked him if he were going over to the lamb sale at Nether Airds.
"If it's the Lord's wull!" Drows replied, with solemnity.
Both he and his companion had commodious, clean-shaven "horse" faces, with an abundance of gray hair standing out in a straggling semicircular aureole underneath the chin. Cameronian was stamped upon their faces with broad strong simplicity. The blue bonnet, already looking old-world among the universal "felts" common to most adult manhood—the deep serious eyes, as it were withdrawn under the penthouse of bushy brows, and looking upon all things (even lamb sales) as fleeting and transitory—the long upper lip and the mouth tightly compressed—these marked out John Allanson of Drows and Matthew Carment of Craigs as pillars of that Kirk which alone of all the fragments of Presbytery is senior to the Established Church of Scotland.
On the other side of the boat and somewhat apart stood Dr. Hector Stuart, gazing gloomily at the black water as it rippled and clappered under the broad lip of the ferry-boat. A proud man, a Highland gentleman of old family, was the minister of Dullarg. He kept his head erect, and for any notice he had taken of the Cameronian elders, they might just as well not have been on the boat at all. And in their turn the elders of the Cameronian Kirk compressed their lips more firmly and their eyes seemed deeper set in their heads when their glances fell on this pillar of Erastianism. For nowhere is the racial antipathy of north and south so strong as in Galloway. There, and there alone, the memory of the Highland Host has never died out, and every autumn when the hills glow red with heather from horizon to horizon verge, the story is told to Galloway childhood of how Lag and Clavers wasted the heritage of the Lord, and how from Ailsa to Solway all the west of Scotland is "flowered with the blood of the Martyrs."
The thin nervous woman kept close to the minister's elbow.
"I tell you I saw her cross the water, Hector," she was saying as Dr. Stuart looked ahead, scanning keenly the low sandy shores they were nearing.
"The boat is gone and she has not returned. It is a thing not proper for a young lady and a minister's daughter to be so long absent from home!"
"My daughter has been too well brought up to do aught that is improper!" said Dr. Stuart, with grave sententious dignity. "You need not pursue the subject, Mary!"
There was just enough likeness between them to stamp the pair as brother and sister. As the boat touched the edge of the sharply sloping shingle bank, the hinged gang-plank tilted itself up at a new angle. The passengers paid their pennies to Bess MacTaggart and stepped sedately on shore. The boat-house stands in a water-girt peninsula, the Ken being on one side broad and quiet, the Black Water on the other, sulky and turbulent. So that for half a mile there was but one road for this curiously assorted pair of pairs.
And as they approached them the woods of Airds laughed even more mockingly, with a ripple of tossing birch plumes like a woman when she is merry in the night and dares not laugh aloud. And the beeches responded with a dryish cackle that had something of irony in it. Listen and you will hear how it was the next time a beech-tree shakes out his leaves to dry the dew off them.
The two elders came to a quick turn of the road. There was a stile just beyond. A moment before a young man had overleaped it, and now he was holding up his hands encouragingly to a girl who smiled down upon him from above. It was a difficult stile. The dyke top was shaky. Two of the bottom steps; were missing altogether. All who have once been young know the kind of stile—verily, a place of infinite danger to the unwary.
So at least thought Elspeth Stuart, as for a long moment she stood daintying her skirts about her ankles on the perilous copestone, and drawing her breath a little short at the sight of the steep descent into the road.
The elders also stood still, and behind them the other pair came slowly up. And surely some wicked tricksome Puck laughed unseen among the beech leaves.
Elspeth Stuart had taken the young man's hand now. He was lifting her down. There—it was done. And—yes, you are right—something else happened—just what would have happened to you and me, twenty, thirty, or is it forty years ago?
Then with a clash and a rustle the beeches told the tale to the birches over all the wooded slopes of the hill of Airds.
*******
"Elspeth!"
"Elspeth Stuart!"
"Maister Syme!"
The names came from four pairs of horrified lips as the parties to the above mentioned transaction fell swiftly asunder, with sudden stricken horror on their faces. The first cry came shrill and keen, and was accompanied by an out-throwing of feminine hands. The second fell sternly from the mouth of one who was at once a parent and a minister of the Establishment outraged in his tenderest feelings. But indubitably the elders had it. For one thing, they were two to one, and as they said for the second time with yet deeper gravity "Maister Syme!" it appeared at once that they, and only they, were able adequately to deal with the unprecedented situation. But the others did what they could.
Mistress Mary Stuart, the minister's maiden sister, flew forward with an eager cry, the "scraich" of a desperate hen when she is on the wrong side of the fence and sees the "daich" disappearing down a hundred hungry throats.
She clutched her niece by the arm.
"Come away this moment!" she cried, "do you know who this young man is?"
But Elspeth did not answer. She was looking at her father, Dr. Stuart, whose eyes were bent upon the young man. Very stern they were, the fierce sudden darkness of Celtic anger in them. But the young Cameronian minister knew that he had far worse to face than that, and met the frown of paternal severity with shame indeed mantling on his cheek and neck, but yet with a certain quiet of determination firming his heart within him.
"Sir," he said, "that of which you have been witness was no more than an accident—the fault of impulse and young blood. But I own I was carried away. I ask the young lady's pardon and yours. I should have spoken to you first, but now I will delay no longer. Sir, I love your daughter!"
Then came for the first time a slight smile upon the pale face of his fellow-culprit. She said in her heart, "Ah, Allan, if ye had spoken first to my father, feint a kiss would ye ever have gotten from Elspeth Stuart!"
But at the manful words of the young Cameronian the face of her father grew only the more stern, the two elders watching and biding their time by the roadside.
They knew that it would come before long.
At last after a long silence Dr. Stuart spoke.
"Sir," he said grimly, "I do not bandy words with a stranger upon the public highway. I myself have nothing to say to you. I forbid you ever again to speak to my daughter. Elspeth, follow me!"
And with no more than this he turned and stalked away. But his daughter also had the high Highland blood in her veins. She shook off with one large motion of her arm the stringy clutch of her aunt's fingers.
"Heed you not, Allan," she said, speaking very clearly, so that all might hear, "when ye want her, Elspeth Stuart will come the long road and the straight road to speak a word with you."
It was a bold avowal to make, and a moment before the girl had not meant to say anything of the kind. But they had taken the wrong way with her.
"Oh, unmaidenly—most unmaidenly!" cried her aunt, "come away—ye are mad this day, Elspeth Stuart—he has but a hunder a year of stipend, and may lose that ony day!"
But Elspeth did not answer. She was holding out her hand to Allan Syme. He bent quickly and kissed it. This young man had had a mother who taught him gracious ways, not at all in keeping with the staid manners of a son of the covenants.
*******
"And now, sir," said John Allanson of Drows, turning grimly upon his minister, who stood watching Elspeth's girlish figure disappear round the curve of the green-edged track, "what have you to say to us?"
Then Allan Syme's pulses leaped quick and light, for he knew that of a surety the time of his visitation was at hand. Yet his heart did not fail within him. At the last it was glad and high. "For after all" (he smiled as he thought it), "after all—well, they cannot take that from me."
"Sir," said Matthew Carment, in a louder tone, "heard ye the quastion that your ruling elder hath pitten till ye?"
"John and Matthew," said the young man, gently, "ye are my elders, and I will not answer you as I did Dr. Stuart."
"The priest of Midian!" said Matthew Carment.
"The forswearer of covenants!" said John Allanson.
"But I will speak with you as those who have been unto me as Aaron and Hur for the upholding of mine hands"
"Say, rather," said John Allanson, sternly, "as Phineas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest who thrust through the Midianitish woman in sight of all the congregation of Israel, as they stood weeping before the door of the tabernacle!"
"So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel," quoted Matthew Carment, gravely, finishing his friend's sentence.
Allan Syme winced. The words had been his Sunday's text.
"I tell you, gentlemen," he said quickly, "since God gave Eve to Adam there has not been on earth a sweeter, truer maid than this. You have heard me declare my love for her. Well, I love her more than I dare trust my tongue to utter!"
"And how about your love for the Covenants? And for the Faithful Remnant of the persecuted Kirk of the Martyrs?" said Drows, with a certain dreary persistence that wore on Allan Syme like prolonged toothache.
Then Matthew Carment, who, though slower than the ruling elder, but was not less sure, gave in his contribution.
"'Like unto Eve,' said ye? A true word—verily, a most true word! For did not we with our own eyes see ye with her partake of the forbidden fruit? But there is a difference—your eyes, young man, have not yet been opened!"
Allan Syme began to grow angry.
"I am a free agent," he said fiercely. "I am not a child under bonds. You are not my tutors and governors by any law, human or divine. Nor am I answerable to you whom I shall woo, or whom I shall wed!"
"Ye are answerable to God and the Kirk!" cried the two with one voice.
And to this Matthew Carment again added his say. The three were now walking slowly in the direction of the lamb sale.
"Sir, I mind how ye well described the so-called ministers of the establishment—'locusts on the face of our land,' these were your words, 'instruments of inefficiency, the plague spot upon the nation, the very scorn of Reformation, and a scandal to Religion!' Ye said well, minister; and the spawn of Belial is like unto Belial!"
Allan Syme was now angry exceedingly.
"God be my judge," he cried, "she whom I love is more Christian than the whole pack of you. Never has she spoken an ill word of any, ever since I have known her!"
"And wherefore should she?" said John Allanson of Drows, as dispassionately as a clerk reading an indictment. "Hath she not been clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day? Hath she not eaten of the fine flour and the honey and the oil? Hath she not been adorned with broidered work and shod with badger skin, and, even as her sisters Aholah and Aholibah of old, hath not power been given unto her to lead even the hearts of the elect captive?"
Then Allan Syme broke forth furiously.
"Your tongues are evil!" he said, "ye are not fit to take her name on your lips. She is to me as the mother of our Lord—yes, as Mary, the wife of Joseph, the carpenter!"
"And indeed I never thocht sae muckle o' that yin either," said Matthew of Craigs,—"the Papishes make ower great a to-do about her for my liking!"
"Matthew Carment and John Allanson, I bid you hearken to me," cried the young minister.
"Aye, Allan Syme, we will hearken!" they answered, fronting him eye to eye.
"God judge between you and me," he said. "He hath said that for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Now, I know well that if ye like, you two can take from me my kirk and all my living. But I have spoken, and I will adhere. I have promised, and I will keep. Take this my parting message. Do your duty as it is revealed to you. I will go forth freely and willingly. Naked I came among you—naked will I go. The hearts of my people are dearer to me than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from my kirk, send me forth of my manse—cast me upon the world as a man disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature upon earth."
And with these words he turned on his heel and strode straight uphill away from them in the direction of his distant home.
The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At last the two turned and looked at each other.
"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in debate.
There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by nature and slower by habit.
"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.
Drows broke a twig elaborately from the hedge and chewed the ends.
"So I was thinkin'!" he answered.
"I had it in my mind at the time he was speakin'," began Matthew, and then hesitated.
"Aye, what was in your mind?"
"I was thinkin' on the days when I courted Jean!"
"Aye, man!"
There was another long silence.
It was Draws who broke it this time, and he said, "I—I was thinkin' too, Mathy! Aye, man, I was thinkin'!"
"Aboot Marget?" queried Matthew Carment.
"Na, no aboot Marget!"
They were silent again. The ruling elder settled to another green sprig of hedge-thorn. It seemed palatable. He got on well with it.
"Man," he said at last, "do ye ken, Mathy—when he turned on us like yon, I was kind o' prood o' him. My heart burned within me. It was maybe no verra like a minister o' the Kirk. But, oh man, it was awesome human!"
"Then I judge we'll say nae mair aboot it!" said Matthew Carment, turning towards the farm where the lamb sale was by this time well under weigh. "Hoo mony are ye thinkin' o' biddin' for the day, Drows?"