The Stickit Minister's Wooing/The Respect of Drowdle
THE RESPECT OF DROWDLE
Most folk in the West of Scotland know the parish of Drowdle, at least by repute. It is a great mining centre, and the inhabitants are not counted among the peaceable of the earth.
"If ye want your head broken, gang doon to Drowdle on a Saturday nicht" is an advice often given to the boastful or the bumptious. Drowdle is a new place too, and the inhabitants, instead of being, like ordinary Scottish Geordies, settled for generations in one coal-field and with whole streets of relatives within stonethrow, are composed of all the strags and restless ne'er-do-weels of such as go down into the earth, from Cornwall even to the Hill-o'-Beith.
Most, I say, know Drowdle by repute. I myself, indeed, once acted as locum tenens for the doctor there during six hot and lively summer weeks, and gained an experience in the treatment of contusions, discolorations, and abrasions of the skull and frontal bones which has been of the greatest possible use to me since. The younger Drowdleites, however, had at that time a habit of stretching a cord across the threshold about a foot above the step, which interfered considerably with professional dignity of exit—that is, till you were used to it. But after one has got into the habit of scouting ahead with a spatula ground fine and tied to a walking-stick on darkish nights, Drowdle began to respect you. Still better if (as I did) you can catch a couple of the cord-stretchers, produce an occipital contusion or two on your own account, and finish by kicking the jesters bodily into Drowdle Water. Then the long rows of slated brick which constitute the mining village agree that "the new doakter kens his business—a smart lad, yon! Heard ye what he did to thae twa deils, Jock Lee an' Cockly Nixon? He catchit them trippin' him wi' a cairt rape at Betty Forgan's door, and, faith, he threw them baith into Drowdle Water!"
Such being the way to earn the esteem of Drowdle, it would have saved the telling of this story if, when young Dairsie Gordon received a call to be minister of the recently established mission church there, he had had any one to enlighten him on the subject.
He was so young that he was ashamed when any one asked him his age. They had called him "Joanna" at college, and sent him recipes along the desk for compelling a beard and moustache to grow under any conditions of soil and climate, however unfavourable.
Dairsie Gordon was very innocent, very learned, very ignorant, and—the only son of a well-to-do mother, who from a child had destined him for the ministry. The more was the pity!
As a child he was considered too delicate for the rough-and-tumble of school. He had a tutor, a mild-faced young man who seldom spoke above his breath, and never willingly walked more than a mile at a time, and then with a book in his hand and a flute in his tail pocket. Under his instruction, however, Dairsie became an excellent classic, and his verse gained the approval of Professor Jupiter Olympus when he went up to the University of Edinburgh, where Latin verse was a rare accomplishment in those days, and Greek ones as extinct as the dodo.
When her son went to college, Mrs. Gordon came up herself from the country to settle Dairsie in the house of a friend of her own, the widow of a deceased minister who had married an old maid late in life. This excellent lady possessed much experience of bazaars and a good working knowledge of tea-meetings, but she knew nothing of young men.
So, being placed in authority over Dairsie, she insisted that he should come straight back to Rose Crescent from his classes, take dinner in the middle of the day alone with his hostess, and then—as a treat—accompany her while she made a call or two on other clerical widows who had married late in life. Then she took him home to open his big lexicons and pore over crabbed constructions till supper-time. This feast consisted of plain bread and butter with the smallest morsel of cheese, because much cheese is not good for the digestion at night. A glass of milk accompanied these delicacies. It also was plain and blue, because the cream (a doubtful quantity at best) had been skimmed off it for Mrs. McSkirmish's tea in the morning.
After that Dairsie was sent to bed. He was allowed ten minutes to take off his clothes and say his prayers. Then the gas was turned out at the meter. If he wanted time for more study and reading he could have it in the morning. It is good for youth to rise betimes and study the Hebrew Scriptures with cold feet and fingers that will not turn the leaves of Gesenius till they are blown upon severally and individually. In this fashion, varying in nothing, save that on alternate Sundays there was something hot for supper, because Mrs. McSkirmish's minister—a severe and faithful divine—came to interview Dairsie and report on his progress to his mother, the future pastor passed seven winter sessions.
Scholastically his victories were many. Bursaries seemed purposely created for him to take—and immediately resign in favour of his proxime accessit, who needed the money more. The class never queried as to who would be first in the "exams.," but only wrangled concerning who would come next after Gordon—and how many marks below.
In summer Dairsie went quietly down to his mother's house in the country, where his neck was fallen upon duly, and four handmaids (with little else to do) worshipped him—especially when for the first time he took the "Book" at family worship. There was a wood before the door, in which he passed most of his time lying on his back reading, and his old tutor came to stay with him for a month at a time.
Thus was produced the Reverend Dairsie Gordon, B.D., without doubt the first student of his college, Allingham Fellow, and therefore entitled to go to Germany for a couple of years by the terms of his Fellowship.
But by one of these interpositions of Providence, which even the most orthodox denominate "doubtful," there was at this time a vacancy in the pastoral charge of the small Mission Church at Drowdle. The late minister had accepted a call to a moorland congregation of sixty members, where nothing had happened within the memory of man, more stirring than the wheel coming off a cart of peats opposite the manse.
Dairsie Gordon preached at Drowdle. His voice was sweet and cultivated and musical, so that it fell pleasantly on the ears of the kirk-goers of Drowdle, over whose heads had long blared a voice like to the trumpets at the opening of the seventh seal in the book of the Revelation.
So they elected him unanimously. Also he was "well-to-do," and it was understood in the congregation that his salary would not be a consideration. The minister elect immediately resigned his fellowship, considering this a direct call to the work.
In this fashion Dairsie Gordon went to his martyrdom. Ignorant of the world as a child of four, never having been elbowed and buffeted and browbeaten by circumstances, never cuffed at school, snubbed at college, and so variously and vicariously licked and kicked into shape, he found himself suddenly pitchforked into the spiritual charge of one of the most difficult congregations in Scotland.
The new minister was introduced socially at a tea-meeting on the evening of the ordination, and then and there he had his first taste of the Drowdelian quality. There were plenty of douce and sober folk in the front pews of the little kirk, but at the back reckless, unmarried Geordies were sandwiched between a militant and ungodly hobbledehoyhood. Paper bags that had contained fruit exploded in the midst of the most solemn addresses. Dairsie's own remarks were fairly punctuated with these explosions, and by the flying shells of Brazil nuts. Bone buttons at the end of knitting needles clicked and tapped at windows, and a shutter fell inward with a crash. It was thus that Dairsie returned thanks.
"My dear people," (a penny trumpet blew an obligato accompaniment under the book-board of a pew,) "I have been led to the oversight of this flock" (pom-pom-pom) "after prayer and under guidance. I shall endeavour to teach you—" ("Catch-the-Ten!" "All-Fours!" "Quoits!") "some of those things which I have devoted my life to acquiring. I am prepared for some little difficulty at first, till we know one another"
The remainder of the address was inaudible owing to cries of, "Rob Kinstry has stole my bag!" "Ye're a liar!" All which presently issued in the general turmoil of a free fight toward the rear of the church.
Mrs. Gordon had come up to be present on the occasion of her son's ordination, and that night in the little manse mother and son mingled their tears. It all seemed so wrong and pitiful to them.
But Dairsie, with a fine hopefulness on his delicate face, lifted his head from his mother's shoulder, smiling like a girl through his own tears.
"But after all, this is the work to which I have been called, mother. And you know if it is His will that I am to labour here, in time He will give the increase."
So somewhat heartened, mother and son kneeled down together, prayed, and went to bed.
On the forenoon of the next day two of the elders, decent pitmen, who happened to be on the night-shift, called in to give their verdict and to drop a word of advice.
"A graund meetin'," said Pate Tamson, the oversman of No. 4; "what for didna ye tak' your stick and gie some o' the vaigabonds a clour on the lug? It wad hae served them weel!"
"I could not think of doing such a thing," said Dairsie. "I desire to wield a spiritual, not a carnal influence!"
"Carnal influence here, carnal influence there," cried Robin Naysmith, stamping his foot till the little study trembled, "if ye are to succeed in this village o' Drowdle, ye maun pit doon your fit—like that, sir, like that!"
And he stamped on the new Brussels carpet till the plaster began to come down in flakes from the ceiling. Dairsie tried to imagine himself stamping like that, but could not. For one thing, he had always worn single-soled shoes, with silk ties and woollen "soles" (which he had promised his mother to take out and dry whenever he came in), a fact which has more bearing on the main question than appears on the surface.
"A man has to assert hissel' in this toon, or he is thocht little on," said Pate Tamson, the oversman. "Noo, there's MacGrogan, the Irish priest—I dinna agree wi' his releegion, an' dootless he will hae verra little chance at the Judgment. But, faith, when he hears that there's ony o' his fowk drinkin' ower lang aboot Lucky Moat's, in he gangs wi' a cudgel as thick as your airm, and the great solemn curses, fair rowlin' aff the tongue o' him—and faith, he clears Lucky's faster than a hale raft of polissmen! Aye, he does that!"
"Aye," assented the junior elder, Robin Naysmith, he whose feet had put the plaster in danger, "what we need i' Drowdle is a man o' poo'er—a man o' wecht!"
"'Quit ye like men—be strong!' saith the Scriptures," summed up the oversman. Then both of them waited for Dairsie, to see what he had got to say.
"I—I am sure I shall endeavour to do my best," said the young minister, "but I fear I have underestimated the difficulties of the position."
The oversman shook his head as he went out through the manse gate.
"And I am some dootfu' that we hae made a mistak'!"
"If we hae," rejoined Naysmith, the strong man, "we maun keep it frae the knowledge o' Drowdle. But the lad is young—young. And when he has served his 'prenticeship to sorrow, he will maybes come oot o' the furnace as silver that is tried!"
*******
Now, neither Drowdle nor its inhabitants meant to be unkind. In case of illness or accident among themselves, none gave material help more liberally. What belonged to one was held in a kindly communism to be the right of all. But Drowdle was not to be handled delicately. It was a nettle to be grasped with gloves of untanned leather.
Dairsie Gordon opened his first Sunday-school at three in the afternoon. At a quarter to four as he stood up on the platform to give his closing address, he found boys scuttling and playing "tig" between his legs. He laid down his hymn-book, and on lifting it to read the closing verses, discovered that a certain popular bacchanalian collection entitled "Songs of the Red, White, and Blue," had mysteriously taken its place.
The young minister had other and graver trials also. The pitmen passed him on the road with a surly grunt, and he did not know it was only because they were trudging home dog-tired from their long shift. The hard-driving managers and sub-managers, men without illusions and as blatantly practical as a Scottish daily paper, passed him by contemptuously, as if he had been a tract thrust under their doors. The schoolmaster, a cleverish machine-made youth of inordinate conceit, openly scoffed. He was a weakling, this minister, and he had better know it.
And, indeed, in these days, Dairsie gave them plenty of scope for complaint. His sermons might possibly have edified a company of the unfallen angels, if we can fancy such being interested in heathen philosophy and the interpretation of the more obscure Old Testament Scriptures. But to this gritty, ungodly, crass-natured, rasp-surfaced village of Drowdle, the young man merely babbled in his pulpit as the summer brooks do over the pebbles.
An itinerant evangelist, who shook the fear of hell-fire under their noses with the fist of a pugilist, and claimed in ancient style the power to bind and the power to loose, might conceivably have succeeded in Drowdle, but as it was, Dairsie Gordon proved a failure of the most absolute sort. And Drowdle, having no false modesty, told him plainly of it. At informal meetings of Session the question of their minister's shortcomings was discussed with freedom and point, only the overs-man and Robin Naysmith pleading suspension of judgment on account of the young man's years.
For there were sympathetic hearts here and there among the folk of Drowdle. Women with the maternal instinct yet untrampled out of them, came to their doors to look after the tall slim "laddie" who was so like the sons they had dreamed of when the maiden's blush still tinged their cheeks.
"He's a bonnie laddie to look on," they said to each other as, palm on hip, they stood looking after him. "It's a peety that he is sae feckless!"
Yet Dairsie was always busy. He was no neglecter of duty. He worked with eager strained hopefulness. No matter how deep had been his depression of the evening, the morning found him contemplating a day of work with keen anticipation and unconquerable desire to succeed.
To-day, at last, he would begin to make an impression. He would visit the remainder of Dickson's Row, and perhaps—who knew?—it might be the turning of the tide. So he sat down opposite his mother at breakfast, smiling and rubbing his hands.
"To-day I am going to show them, mother," he would say.
"Show them what, Dairsie dear?"
"That I am a man!"
But within him he was saying, "Work while it is day!" And yet deeper in his heart, so deep that it became almost a prayer for release, he was wont to add—"The night cometh when no man can work!" Then to this he added, as he took his round soft hat and went out, "O Lord, help me to do something worthy before I die—something to make these people respect me."
*******
It was a hot September afternoon. Drowdle was a-drowse from Capersknowe to the Back Raw. Here and there could be heard a dull recurring thud, which was the dunt dunt of the roller on the dough of the bake-board as some housewife languidly rolled out her farles of oatcake. For the rest, there was no sound save the shout of a callant fishing for minnows in the backwaters of Drowdle, and the buzz of casual bluebottles on the dirty window-panes.
Suddenly there arose a cry, dominant and far-reaching. No words were audible, but the tone was enough. Women blenched and dropped the crockery they were carrying. The men of the night-shift, asleep on their backs in the hot and close-curtained wall-beds, tumbled into their grimy moleskins with a single movement.
"Number Four pit's a-fire! The pit's a-fire! Number Fower!"
It was a mile to the particular colliery where the danger was. The rows of houses emptied themselves simultaneously upon the white dusty road, women running with men and barefooted children speeding between, a little scared, but, on the whole, rather enjoying the excitement.
As they came nearer, the great high-mounted head-wheels of pit Number Four were spinning furiously, and over the mounds which led to it little ant-like figures were hurrying. A thin far-spreading spume of brownish smoke rose sluggishly from the pithead. At sight of it women cried out: "Oh God, my Jock's doon there!" And more than one set her hand suddenly upon her side and swung away from the rush into the hedge-root.
A hundred questions were being fired at the steadfast engineer, men and women all shouting at once. He answered such as he could, but with his hand ever upon the lever and his eye upon the scale which told at what point the cage stood in the long incline of the "dook."
"The fire's in the main pit-shaft," he said. "They are trying to get doon by the second exit; but it's half fu' o' steam pipes to drive the bottom engine."
"Wha's gane doon?"
"Pate Tamson and Muckle Greg are in the cage tryin' to put the fire oot wi' the hose"
"They micht as weel spit on't if it's gotten ony catch!"
"And Robin Naysmith and the minister are tryin' the second exit"
"The minister"
The cry was very scornful. The minister, indeed—what good could "a boy like him" do down there where strong men were dying helplessly?
So for half-an-hour Walter McCartney the pithead engineer stood at his post watching the cage index, and listening for the tinkle of the bell which signalled "up" or "down."
Suddenly the faces of such as could see the numbers blanched. And a murmur ran round the crowd at the long t-r-r-r-r-r-r which told that the cage was coming to the surface.
Had all hope been abandoned, that the rescue party were returning so unexpectedly? A woman shrieked suddenly on the edges of the crowd.
"Who's that?" queried the manager, turning sharply. And when he was answered, "Take her away—don't let her come near the shaft!" was his order.
Out of the charred and dripping cage came Pate Tamson and his mate, blackened and wet from head to foot.
"The cage is to be sent empty to the dook-bottom!" they said. "Somebody has managed to get doon the second exit."
With a quick switch of levers and a humming hiss of woven wire from the head-wheels, down sank the cage into the belching brown smother of the deadly reek.
Then there was a long pause. The index sank till it pointed to the pit-bottom. The cage had passed through the fire safely. It had yet to be proved that living men could also pass.
"Tinkle—tink!"
It was the bell for lifting. Walter McCartney compressed his lips on receiving the signal, and pulled down the shiny cap over his forehead, as if he himself were about to face that whirlwind of fire six hundred feet down in the bowels of the earth. He drew a long breath and opened the lever for "Full Speed Up." The cage must have passed the zone of flame like a bird rising through a cloud. The folk silenced themselves as it neared the surface. Then a great cry arose.
The minister sat in the cage with a couple of boys in his arms. The rough wet brattice cloths that had been placed over them were charred almost to a cinder. Dairsie Gordon's face was burnt and blackened.
He handed the boys out into careful hands.
"I am going down again," he said; "unless I do the men will not believe that it is possible to come alive through the fire. Are you ready, Walter? Let her go!"
So a second time the young minister went down through the furnace. Presently the men began to be whisked up through the fire, and as each relay arrived at the pit-bank they sang the praises of Dairsie Gordon, telling with Homeric zest how he had crawled half-roasted down the narrow throat of the steam-pipe-filled shaft, how he had argued with them that the fire could be passed, and at last proved it with two boys for volunteer passengers. Dairsie Gordon, B.D., was the last man to leave the pit, and he fainted with pain and excitement when all Drowdle cheered him as they carried him home to his mother.
And when at last he came to himself, swathed in cotton wool to the eyes, he murmured, "Do you not think they will respect me now, mother?"