Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush Part 4

"Marget Hoo, this is no the day for mony words, but there's juist ae heart in Drumtochty, and it's sair."

No one spoke to Domsie as we went down the cart track, with the ripe corn standing on either side, but he beckoned Chalmers to walk with him.

"Ye hae heard him speak o' me, then, Maister Jamieson?"

"Ay, oftentimes, and he said once that ye were hard driven, but that ye had trampled Satan under yir feet."

"He didna tell ye all, for if it hadna been for George Howe I wudna been worth callin' a man this day. One night when he was workin'

hard for his honours examination and his disease was heavy upon him, puir fellow, he sought me oot where I was, and wouldna leave till I cam' wi him.

"'Go home,' I said, 'Howe; it's death for ye to be oot in this sleet and cold. Why not leave me to lie in the bed I hae made?'

"He took me by the arm into a pa.s.sage. I see the gaslicht on his white face, and the shining o' his eyes.

"'Because I have a mother...'

"Dominie, he pulled me oot o' h.e.l.l."

"Me tae, Andra, but no your h.e.l.l. Ye mind the Roman Triumph, when a general cam' hame wi' his spoils. Laddie, we're the captives that go with his chariot up the Capitol."

Donald Menzies was a man of moods, and the Doctor's prayer had loosed his imagination so that he saw visions.

"Look," said he, as we stood on a ridge, "I hef seen it before in the book of Joshua."

Below the bearers had crossed a burn on foot, and were ascending the slope where an open s.p.a.ce of deep green was fringed with purple heather.

"The ark ha.s.s gone over Jordan, and George will have come into the Land of Promise."

The September sunshine glinted on the white silk George won with his blood, and fell like a benediction on the two figures that climbed the hard ascent close after the man they loved.

Strangers do not touch our dead in Drumtochty, but the eight of nearest blood lower the body into the grave. The order of precedence is keenly calculated, and the loss of a merited cord can never be forgiven. Marget had arranged everything with Whinnie, and all saw the fitness. His father took the head, and the feet (next in honour) he gave to Domsie.

"Ye maun dae it. Marget said ye were o' his ain bluid."

On the right side the cords were handed to the Doctor, Gordon, and myself; and on the left to Drumsheugh, Maclean, and Chalmers. Domsie lifted the hood for Marget, but the roses he gently placed on George's name. Then with bent, uncovered heads, and in unbroken silence, we buried all that remained of our scholar.

We always waited till the grave was filled and the turf laid down, a trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even Posty asked the reason so much as by a look, and Drumtochty, as it pa.s.sed, made as though it did not see. But I marked that the Dominie took Chalmers home, and walked all the way with him to Kildrummie station next morning. His friends erected a granite cross over George's grave, and it was left to Domsie to choose the inscription.

There was a day when it would have been "Whom the G.o.ds love die young." Since then Domsie had seen the kingdom of G.o.d, and this is graven where the roses bloomed fresh every summer for twenty years till Marget was laid with her son:

GEORGE HOWE, M.A., Died September 22nd, 1869, Aged 21.

"They shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it."

It was a late November day when I went to see George's memorial, and the immortal hope was burning low in my heart; but as I stood before that cross, the sun struggled from behind a black watery bank of cloud, and picked out every letter of the Apocalypse in gold.

A HIGHLAND MYSTIC

I

WHAT EYE HATH NOT SEEN

Strange ministers who came to a.s.sist at the Free Kirk Sacrament were much impressed with the elders, and never forgot the transfiguration of Donald Menzies, which used to begin about the middle of the "action" sermon, and was completed at the singing of the last Psalm.

Once there was no glory, because the minister, being still young, expounded a new theory of the atonement of German manufacture, and Donald's face was piteous to behold. It haunted the minister for months, and brought to confusion a promising course of sermons on the contribution of Hegel to Christian thought. Donald never laid the blame of such calamities on the preacher, but accepted them as a just judgment on his blindness of heart.

"We hef had the open vision," Donald explained to his friend Lachlan Campbell, who distributed the responsibility in another fashion, "and we would not see--so the veil ha.s.s fallen."

Donald sat before the pulpit and filled the hearts of nervous probationers with dismay, not because his face was critical, but because it seemed non-conducting, upon which their best pa.s.sages would break like spray against a rock. It was by nature the dullest you ever saw, with hair descending low upon the forehead, and preposterous whiskers dominating everything that remained, except a heavy mouth and brown, lack-l.u.s.tre eyes. For a while Donald crouched in the corner of the pew, his head sunk on his breast, a very picture of utter hopelessness. But as the Evangel began to play round his heart, he would fix the preacher with rapid, wistful glances, as of one who had awaked but hardly dared believe such things could be true. Suddenly a sigh pervaded six pews, a kind of gentle breath of penitence, faith, love, and hope mingled together like the incense of the sanctuary, and Donald lifted up his head.

His eyes are now aflame, and those sullen lips are refining into curves of tenderness. From the manse pew I watched keenly, for at any moment a wonderful sight may be seen. A radiant smile will pa.s.s from his lips to his eyes and spread over his face, as when the sun shines on a fallow field and the rough furrows melt into warmth and beauty. Donald's gaze is now fixed on a window above the preacher's head, for on these great days that window is to him as the gate of heaven. All I could see would be a bit of blue, and the fretted sunlight through the swaying branches of an old plane tree. But Donald has seen his Lord hanging upon the Cross for him, and the New Jerusalem descending like a bride adorned for her husband more plainly than if Perugino's great Crucifixion, with the kneeling saints, and Angelico's Outer Court of Heaven, with the dancing angels, had been hung in our little Free Kirk. When he went down the aisle with the flagon in the Sacrament, he walked as one in a dream, and wist not that his face shone.

There was an interval after the Sacrament, when the stranger was sent to his room with light refreshments, to prepare himself for the evening, and the elders dined with the minister. Before the introduction of the Highlanders conversation had an easy play within recognized limits, and was always opened by Burnbrae, who had come out in '43, and was understood to have read the Confession of Faith.

"Ye gave us a grawnd discoorse this mornin', sir, baith instructive and edifyin'; we were juist sayin' comin' up the gairden that ye were never heard to mair advantage."

The minister was much relieved, because he had not been hopeful during the week, and was still dissatisfied, as he explained at length, with the pa.s.sage on the Colossian heresy.

When these doubts had been cleared up, Burnbrae did his best by the minister up stairs, who had submitted himself to the severe test of table addresses.

"Yon were verra suitable words at the second table; he's a speeritually minded man, Maister Cosh, and has the richt sough."

Or at the worst, when Burnbrae's courage had failed:

"Maister McKittrick had a fine text afore the table. I aye like tae see a man gang tae the Song o' Solomon on the Sacrament Sabbath. A'

mind Dr. Guthrie on that verra subject twenty years syne."

Having paid its religious dues, conversation was now allowed some freedom, and it was wonderful how many things could be touched on, always from a sacramental standpoint.

"We've been awfu' favoured wi' weather the day, and ought to be thankfu'. Gin it hads on like this I wudna say but th'ill be a gude hairst. That's a fine pucklie aits ye hae in the laigh park, Burnbrae."

"A've seen waur; they're fillin' no that bad. I wes juist thinkin'

as I cam to the Kirk that there wes aits in that field the Sacrament after the Disruption."

"Did ye notice that Rachel Skene sat in her seat through the tables?

Says I, 'Are ye no gain forrit, Mistress Skene, or hae ye lost yir token?' 'Na, na,' says she, 'ma token's safe in ma handkerchief; but I cudna get to Kirk yesterday, and I never went forrit withoot ma Sait.u.r.day yet, and I'm no to begin noo.'"

"She was aye a richt-thinkin' woman, Rachel, there's nae mistake o'

that; a' wonder hoo her son is gettin' on wi' that fairm he's takin'; a' doot it's rack-rented."

It was an honest, satisfying conversation, and reminded one of the parish of Drumtochty, being both _quoad sacra_ and _quoad civilia_.

When the Highlanders came in, Burnbrae was deposed after one encounter, and the minister was reduced to a state of timid suggestion. There were days when they would not speak one word, and were understood to be lost in meditation; on others they broke in on any conversation that was going from levels beyond the imagination of Drumtochty. Had this happened in the Auld Manse, Drumsheugh would have taken for granted that Donald was "feeling sober" (ill), and recommended the bottle which cured him of "a hoast" (cough) in the fifties. But the Free Kirk had been taught that the Highlanders were unapproachable in spiritual attainments, and even Burnbrae took his discipline meekly.

"It wes a mercy the mune changed last week, Maister Menzies, or a'm thinkin' it hed been a weet sacrament."