The Stickit Minister's Wooing/Two Humourists
TWO HUMOURISTS
Our gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan, even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service" to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny bap and a warm drink." In former days, within the memory of my father, he had a friend and fellow-humourist in the village, one "Doog" (that is, Douglas) Carnochan.
The contrast between the two companions was remarkable. They both lived in the same street of our little country hamlet. Indeed, necessarily so, for Whinnyliggate has but one street, strictly so called. The few cottages along the "Well-road," and the more pretentious cluster of upstarts which keeps the Free Kirk in countenance on the braeface, have never arrogated to themselves the name of a street.
So at one end of the Piccadilly-cum-Regent-street of Whinnyliggate—the upper end—lived Nathan Monypenny, and at the other end dwelt his rival, Doog, also, though less worthily, denominated "humourist." They were thus separated by something considerably less than a quarter of a mile of honest unpavemented king's highway. But, though they were personally friends, green oceans and trackless continents lay between their several characters and dispositions.
Nathan, at the upper end, was a bachelor, hale, fresh, and hearty as when he had finished his 'prenticeship. Doog at forty possessed several children, all that remained of a poor, overworked, downtrodden wife, and a countenance so marled and purpled with drink, that he looked an old man before his time. Nathan's shop was his own, and he was understood to have already a "weel-filled stocking-fit up the lum," or, in the modern interpretation, a comfortable balance down at Cairn Edward Bank, and a quiet old age assured to him by a life of industrious self-denial.
Doog never had a penny to bless himself with, later in the week than Tuesday; and, indeed, often enough very few to bless his wife withal even on Saturday nights, when, as was his custom, he staggered homewards with the poor remnants of his week's wage in his pocket.
Nathan's wit was of the kind which goes best with the sedate tapping of a snuffmull, or the tinkling of brass weights into counter-scales—Doog's rang loudest to the jingling of toddy tumblers. Nathan loved to gossip doucely at the door of eventide with the other tradesmen of the village, with Bob Carter the joiner, his apron twisted about his scarred hands, with bluff prosperous Joe Mitchell the mason, and with Peter Miles the tailor, as he sat on the low seat outside his door picking the last basting threads out of a new waistcoat.
Doog's witticisms, on the other hand, were chiefly launched in the "Golden Lion," amid the uproarious laughter of Jake McMinn, the "cattle dealer frae Stranraer," Leein' Tam, the local horse-doctor (without diploma), and "Chuckie" Orchison, the village ne'er-do-weel and licensed sponger for drinks upon the neighbourhood.
Yet there existed a curious and inexplicable liking between the two men. There was never a day that Nathan, the douce and respectable, did not leave his quiet white cottage at the head of the brae, where he dwelt all alone with his groceries, and step sedately down, stopping every twenty yards to gossip, or drop a word, flavoured with one of his kindly smiles, with every passer-by. He never seemed to be going anywhere in particular, yet he always visited Doog Carnochan's house before he returned. And many a night did Nathan, finding the husband not at home, pursue and recapture the truant, and bring him back to the tumble-down shanty, where the five ill-fed children and the one weary-faced woman furnished a tragic comment upon the far-renowned convivial humours of the husband and father.
The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life, awakes to find herself beautiful.
There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled from it; but she only accepted the inevitable, and, like one who knows beforehand that her task is hopeless, she did what she could with silent resignation, waiting clear-eyed for that death which alone would bring her to the end of her pain.
Yet at the time it had seemed natural enough that Dahlia should prefer the handsome debonair Douglas Carnochan, to quiet Nathan Monypenny, who had so little to say for himself, and so seldom said it. Besides, Dahlia had always known that she could with a word send Nathan to the ends of the earth, whilst there were certain wild ways about the other even then, which had, for a foolish ignorant maid, all the attraction of the unknown. She was a little afraid of Doog Carnochan, and there is no better subsoil whereon to grow love in a girl's heart, than just the desire of conquest mixed with a little fear.
So it came to pass that, though Nathan had carried little Dahlia's school-bag and fought her battles ever since she could toddle across from one cottage to the other, it was not he who, in the fulness of time, when the blossom came to its brightest and most beautiful, gathered it and set it on his bosom. It ought to have been, but it was not.
As a young man Doog Carnochan was bright and clever. Most people in the village prophesied a brilliant future for him—that is, those who knew not the "unstable as water" which was written like a legend across his character. He was the son of a small crofter in the neighbourhood, but he companied habitually with those above him in rank, with the sons of large farmers and rich stock-breeders. Some of these, his cronies and boon companions, would be sure to assist him, so every one said. They would set him up as a "dealer"—they would put him in charge of a "led" farm or two. Doog's fortune was as good as made.
So, at least, injudicious flatterers assured him. So he himself believed. So he told the innocent, lily-like Dahlia Ogilvy at the time of year when the Sweet William gave forth his evening perfume, when the dew was on the latest wall-flowers, and the scarlet lightning spangled the dusky places beneath the hedgerows where the lovers were wont to sit. But the blue cowled bells of the poisonous monkshood in the cottage flower-beds they did not see, though with some premonition of fate, Dahlia shivered and nestled to her betrothed as the breeze swept over them chill and bitter from the east.
And Nathan Monypenny, leaning on the gate-post that he might sigh out his soul towards the cottage of his beloved, by chance heard their words; and, therewith being stricken well-nigh to the death, softly withdrew, and left them alone.
After that night Nathan sought the company of Doog Carnochan more than ever.
Friends warned him that Doog was no fit companion for such as he. They insisted that he was neglecting his business. They said all those useful and convincing things which friends keep in stock for such occasions. Yet Nathan did not desist, till he had arranged the marriage of Dahlia Ogilvy and Douglas Carnochan beyond all possibility of retractation.
He it was who accompanied the swain to put up the banns. He it was who paid the five-shilling fee that the pair should be thrice cried on one Sabbath day, and the wedding hastened by a whole fortnight.
Perhaps he wished to shorten his own pain. Perhaps, he told himself, when once Dahlia was Douglas Carnochan's wife, he would think no more of her. At any rate, something strong and moving wrought in the reticent heart of the young tradesman. He approved the house which Doog took for his bride. He also guaranteed the rent. He lent the money for the furniture, and looked after Doog on the day of the marriage, that he might be brought soberly and worthily to the altar.
It was a plain-song altar indeed, for, of course, the pair were married in the little white cottage next to Nathan's, where Dahlia had lived all her life. When he saw her in bridal white, Nathan remembered with a sudden gulp a certain little toddling thing in white pinafores, whom he used to lift over the hedge that he might feed her with the earliest ripe gooseberries.
Every one said that they made a handsome pair as they stood up before the minister, who, with his back to the fire, did not know that he was singeing his Geneva gown. For, being yet young to these occasions, he wore that encumbrance because it gave him an opportunity of displaying the hood of his college degree.
The young women smiled covertly at the contrast afforded by the bridegroom and his "best-man," as they stood up together. They did not wonder at Dahlia's preference. Any of them would have done the same thing, if she had had the chance.
"What a fine gray suit!—how well it fits!"
"Yes, and that pale blue tie, how it matches the flower in his coat!"
Thus they gossiped, all unaware that it was the hard-earned money of the plain-favoured and shy "best-man" which had bought all that wedding raiment, paid for that sky-blue tie, and that even the flower in the bridegroom's button-hole had grown in Nathan Monypenny's garden, and had been plucked and affixed by his hands.
Thus it was that the story began, and this was the reason why Nathan sought carefully day by day, if by any means he might yet withdraw his friend's erring feet out of fearful pit and miry clay.
Never a morning dawned for Nathan, waking, as he had done all his life, with the hum of the ranged bee-hives under his window in his ear, or else listening to the pattering of the winter storms on his lattice, that he did not bethink himself: "It is I who am responsible. I must help him." Then he would add with a sigh: "And her."
And so help he did, for the most part in ways hidden and secret. For he dared not give money to Doog. He knew all too well where that would have gone. Neither for very pride's sake, and in reverence for the secret of his heart, could he bring himself to give money to Dahlia. Nevertheless, as by some unseen hand, the tired heartsick woman found her burden in many directions marvellously eased.
Sticks were stacked in the little wood-shed which Doog had set up in the first virtuous glow of husbandhood—and never been inside since. No hens laid like Dahlia's—and the strange thing was that they invariably laid in the night, sometimes a dozen at a time, all in one nest. Her children, playing in the hot dusk of her little garden, had more than once turned up a sovereign or a crownpiece wrapped in paper and run with it to their mother.
From Nathan's shop, also, there came flitches of bacon which were never ordered by Dahlia Carnochan—flour and meal, too, in times of stress. And it nearly always was a time of stress with Doog.
Twice a year Nathan, with much circumlocution, would extract a reluctant shilling or two from Doog on a flush pay-night, taking care that some of his cronies should hear the colloquy. Then in the morning he would send round the six months' account duly and completely receipted.
But more often than not the crony would put it all round the village that Nathan Monypenny had been dunning poor Doog Carnochan the night before; and so, among the unthinking, Nathan got the reputation of being a hard man.
"He doesna do onything for nocht! Na, sune or syne, Nathan likes to see the colour o' his siller," was said of him behind his back. And Doog's generous kindness of heart was dwelt upon as a foil to his friend's niggardliness.
"He micht hae letten puir Doog owe him the bit shillin' or twa and never missed it!" represented the general sense of the community.
But Doog himself, be his faults what they might, allowed none to speak ill of Nathan Monypenny.
Did he not half choke the life out of Davie Hoatson for some hinted comment (it was never clearly understood what), till they had to be separated by kindly violence, Doog being yet unappeased? Furthermore, did he not seek the jester for three whole days, all the time breathing fire and fury, with intent to choke the other half of a worthless life out of him?
This was the state of the case when Nathan Monypenny's life temptation came upon him. It was a grim and notable January night—the fourth day of the great thaw. The rain had gusted and blown and threshed and pelted upon those window-panes of Whinnyliggate which looked towards the west, till there was not a speck of dirt upon them anywhere, except on the inside. The snow had melted fast under the pitiless downpour, and the patient sheep stood about behind dyke-backs, or with the courage of despair pushed through holes in bedraggled hedges, to take a furtive nibble at the brown stubble of last year's cornfields.
It was half-past nine when Nathan went to his door to look out. Nathan Monypenny had built himself a lobby, and so was thought to be "upsetting." At that time for a man to wear a white collar on weekdays, or to walk with his hands out of his pockets, for a woman to be "dressed" in the forenoon, or to wear gloves except when actually entering the kirk door, for a householder to whitewash his premises oftener than once in five years, or to erect a porch to his dwelling, was held to be "upsetting"—that is, he (or she) was evidently setting up to be better than their neighbours—an iniquity as unpopular in Whinnyliggate as elsewhere in the world.
From this "upsetting" porch, then, Nathan looked out. A dash of rain, solid as if the little house had shipped a sea in a perilous ocean passage, took Nathan about the ankles and rebuked him in a very practical fashion for coming to the door, as is Galloway custom, in his "stocking-feet." It had blown in from a broken "roan" pipe, which Nathan had been intending to mend as soon as the snow went off the root.
Nathan shut the door and went within. He had seen little through the blackness save the bright lights of the "Golden Lion," and heard nothing above the long-drawn whoo of the storm save the noisy chorus of the drinking song which Doog Carnochan was singing. Nathan knew it was Doog's voice. About this he could make no mistake. Had he not listened to it long ago, when Doog sang in the village choir, knowing all the while, full well, that he was singing his Dahlia's heart out of her bosom? Nathan Monypenny sighed and thought of that desolate house down at the other end of the street where that same Dahlia would even then be putting her children to bed. He knew just the faintly wearied look there would be on the face from which the youthful roses had long since faded. He would have given all he possessed in the world to sit and watch her thus, to comfort her in her loneliness; but, resolutely putting the temptation aside, he drew the great Bible that had been his father's off its shelf and laid it on the table.
Then he brought a new candle from the shop and lighted it. But, so great was the storm without that even in that comfortable inner room the draught blew the flame about and the words seemed to dance on the printed page.
Again and again during his reading Nathan lifted his head and listened. The "wag-at-the-wa'" clock struck ten with enormous birr and clatter, beginning with a buzz of anticipation five minutes too soon, and continuing to emit applausive "curmurrings" of internal satisfaction for full five minutes after the actual stroke of the hour had died on the ear.
Nathan paused in his reading to listen for the sound of the roisterers' feet going homeward from the "Golden Lion." Doog would be one of those, most likely the drunkest and the noisiest. He must be half-way down the street by now, stumbling along with trippings and foul, irresponsible words. Now Dahlia would be opening the door to him—Nathan knew the look on her face. When he shut his eyes he could see it even more clearly. In the middle dark of the night, when he lay sleepless, staring at the ceiling, he could see it most clearly of all.
For this reason he was in no hurry to finish and put out the light; but it had to be done at last. And then with his head on the pillow Nathan Monypenny bethought himself with small satisfaction of his wasted life. Of what use was his house, his money in the bank, his eldership, the praise of men, the satisfactory state of his ledger? After all, he was a lonely man, and out there in the rain, dank and dripping, leafless and forlorn, shivered the hedge over which in golden weather he had lifted Dahlia Ogilvy. At the rose-bush in the corner she had once let him kiss her. Ah! but he must not think of that. She was Dahlia Carnochan, and her drunken husband had just reeled home to her. Yet as he sat and stared at the red peats on the hearth Nathan Monypenny could think of nothing else, and how her hair had had a flower-like scent as he drew her to him that night when (for once in his gray and barren life) the roses bloomed red and smelled sweet.
But there was something else which kept Nathan's nerves on the stretch, something that was not summed up in his thoughts of Dahlia—an apprehension of impending disaster. Even after he had gone to bed he lifted his head more than once from the pillow, for his heart, stounding and rushing in his ears, shut out all other noises. Then he sat up and listened. He seemed to hear a cry above the roar and swelter of the storm—a man's cry for help in mortal need.
Nathan rose and drew on his clothes hurriedly, yet buttoning with his accustomed carefulness an overcoat closely about him. Then, leaving a lighted candle on the table, he opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. The wind met him like a wall. The rain assailed his cheeks and stunned his ears like a volley of bullets. For a full minute he stood exposed to the broad fury of the tempest, slashed by the driving sleet, beaten and deafened into bewilderment by a turmoil of buffeting gusts. Then, recovering himself a little, he turned aside the lee of the gable of his cottage, which looked towards the north-east. Here he was more sheltered, and though the winds still sang stridently overhead, and the swirls of lashing rain occasionally beat upon him like "hale water," he could listen with some composure for a repetition of the sound which had disturbed him.
There—there it was again! A hoarse cry, ending in a curious gasp and gurgle of extinction. Nathan almost thought that he could distinguish his own name.
He put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, to form a sort of rough-speaking trumpet. "Halloo!" he shouted. "Where are you?"
But it was an appreciable interval before any voice replied, and then it seemed more like a dying man's moan of anguish than any human tones.
"It's somebody in the water!" Nathan cried, and rushed down the little strip of garden which separated his cottage from the Whinnyliggate Burn. This was ordinarily a clear little rivulet, running lucidly brown and pleasantly at prattle over a pebbly bed. Boys fished for "bairdies" in its three-foot-deep pools. Iris and water-lily fringed the swamps where it expanded into broad sedgy ponds. But in spite of its apparent innocence, Whinnyliggate Lane was a stream of a dangerous reputation. Its ultimate source was a deep mountain lake high among the bosoming hills of Girthon, and when the rains descended and the floods came, it sometimes chanced that the inhabitants of the village awoke to find that their prattling babe had become a giant, and that the burn, which the night before had scarce covered the pebbles in its bed, was now roaring wide and strong, thirty feet from bank to bank, crumbling their garden walls, and even threatening with destruction the sacred Midtoon Brig itself, from time immemorial the Palladium of the liberties and the Parliament House of the gossip of the village.
The part of the bank down which Nathan ran was used by the village smith for the important work of "hooping wheels," or shrinking the iron "shods" on the wheels of the red farm-carts. There were always a few rusty spare "hoops" of solid iron scattered about, while a general débris of blacksmithery, outcast and decrepit, cumbered the burnside.
Before Nathan had gone far he found himself splashing in the rising water.
"Loch Girthon has broken its dam!" he murmured; "God help the puir soul that fa's intil Whinnyliggate Lane this nicht!"
It was nearly pitch dark, and Nathan Monypenny, standing up to his knees in the swirl of the flood, called aloud, but got no reply from any human voice. The forward hurl of the storm whooping overhead, the roar of the icy torrent fighting with the caving banks beneath, were the only sounds he could distinguish.
He was indeed on the point of leaving the water edge and regaining his comfortable cottage, when, wading through a shallow extension of the stream near the bridge, his foot struck something soft, which carried with it a curiously human suggestion. He stopped and laid his hand on the rough cloth and sodden sock which covered a man's ankle.
Though not great of stature, Nathan Monypenny was both strong and brave. He stooped and endeavoured to disentangle the boot from the iron hoop in which it was caught. Succeeding in this, he next endeavoured to pull the drowning man out of the water. But the head and upper part of the body hung over the bank, and were drawn down by the whole force of the torrent.
Again and again Nathan strove with all his might, but the water wrenched and wrestled till the body was almost snatched from his grasp. More than once, indeed, Nathan came very near going over the verge himself and sharing the fate of the unfortunate whom he was endeavouring to rescue.
At last, however, by dint of exertions almost superhuman, he succeeded in getting the man to the edge of the water, and immediately sank exhausted on the sodden grass. By-and-bye, however, he staggered up, and without ever thinking of going to seek for help, he succeeded in balancing the unconscious burden upon his shoulders and carrying it staggeringly to his own door.
The candle he had lighted was still burning, though it seemed to Nathan that he must have been a very long time away. He let the body fall upon the settle bed, and then, catching sight of the pale features, dripping ghastly under the flicker of the farthing dip, he sank dismayed on a chair.
It was Doog Carnochan—Dahlia Carnochan's husband. The story was plain enough. Stumbling homeward from the "Golden Lion," he had missed his drunken way, and wandered down by the "hooping" place to the water's edge.
Nathan stared open-mouthed. What should he do?—go for assistance? That perhaps had been wisest—yet, to leave a man in whom there might be some faint spark of life! He rose and stretched Doog's arms out over his head and back again time after time, as he had once seen a doctor do on the ice after a curling accident.
But there was no drawing of breath, nor could he distinguish the least beating of the heart. He took down the little hand-mirror, which had satisfied the frugal demands of his toilet all these years, and put it close to the drowned man's lips.
Yes—no—it could not be, yet it was just possible that there might be a faint dimming of the surface of the mirror.
Then a hot wondrous thought leaped up in Nathan Monypenny's heart—the devil in the garb of an angel of light.
What if he were simply to hold his hand—the man was as good as dead already.
And what then? There rose up before Nathan Monypenny a vision of the woman whom he had loved more than life, of a pale and weary face upon which he would rejoice to bring out the roses as in the days of old. Happiness would do it, he knew. And, like all true lovers, he believed that he alone could make that one woman happy. Douglas Carnochan? What was he but a drunkard who had blighted two lives? If a hand were stirred to help him now, he would simply go on and finish the fell work of the years. His Dahlia's face would grow yet more weary, her shoulders more bent, and her eyes would less seldom be raised from the ground till on a thrice-welcome day the grave should be opened before her. Nathan knew it all by heart.
And this man—why did he deserve to live? Had not he (Nathan) afforded him every chance? Had he not obtained situation after situation for him? Had he not, in fact, kept Doog Carnochan and his family for years? Surely God did not require from him this great final sacrifice. It was certainly a chance to do lasting good—a happy woman, a happy man, a happy home! Better, too, (so Nathan told himself) for Douglas Carnochan's children. He would be a father to them—that which this their own father had never been. He would train, instruct, place them in the world. But—he would be a murderer!
*******
After an hour's hard work Doog Carnochan sighed. Five minutes more and he opened his eyes. They twinkled blackly up at his preserver with a kind of ironical appreciation of the situation, and he smiled.
"Ah, Nathan," he murmured, "sae it's you that has drawn me oot o' the black flood water! Man, ye had better hae let weel alane!"
On this occasion Doog was not a humourist only. He was also a true prophet. For, from every point of view save that of the Eternal Decrees, it would indeed have been infinitely better if Nathan had let well alone, and not wrested back the unstable and degraded spirit of Douglas Carnochan from the rushing waters of Whinnyliggate Lane, that January night when Loch Girthon burst its bounds.
For, as Nathan had forecast, even so it was. Doog promptly returned to his wallowing in the mire, without even making a pretence of amending his restored life. Duly he brought down his wife's too early gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. His children, left to run wild, divided their time between the "Golden Lion" and the country gaol. Doog drank himself into an unhonoured grave. Only Nathan Monypenny remains, an old man now, yet holding firm-lipped to a conviction that God has explanations of the working of His laws which He refuses to us on this Hither Side, but which will be granted in full to us when we "know as also we are known."
After Doog's death Nathan bought and immediately razed to the ground the cottage at the foot of the street where Dahlia Carnochan's life tragedy had been enacted. He has planted a garden of flowers there, to the scorn and scandal of the whole village, which is cut to its utilitarian heart to see so much good potato land wasted—simply wasted.
And every night before Nathan goes to bed he steps quietly to the low place in the privet hedge, over which he lifted little Dahlia Ogilvy more than fifty years ago. He does nothing when he gets there. He does not even pray. He has none to pray for, and he wants nothing for himself save God's ultimate gift, easeful death, and that, he knows, cannot long be delayed.
But if you watch him closely, you may see him lift his hand and rest it gently upon the stem of an ancient rose-tree, as if he had laid it in benediction upon a young child's head.