Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 45

The new minister came. He was placed with a great gathering of the clans. The Kirk in the Vennel was full to overflowing the night of his first sermon. Fergus Teeman 'was there with his notebook, and before the close of the service more than two pages were filled with the measure of the new minister's iniquity. Then, on the Tuesday after, young Duncan Stewart, seeking to know all his office-bearers, entered like the innocentest of flies the plate-gla.s.s-fronted shop where Fergus Teeman lay in wait. There and then, before half a score of interested customers, the elder gave the young minister "sic a through-pittin' as he never gat in his life afore." This was the elder's own story, but the popular opinion was clearly on the side of the minister. It had to be latent opinion, however, for the names of most of the congregation stood in the big books in Fergus Teeman's shop.

The minister commended himself to his Maker, and went about his own proper business. Every Sabbath, after the sermon, often also before the service, Fergus Teeman was on hand to say his word of reproof to the young minister, to interject the sneering word which, like the poison of asps, turned sweet to bitter. Had Duncan Stewart been older or wiser, he would have showed him to the door. Unfortunately he was just a simple, honest, well-meaning lad from college, trying to do his duty in the Kirk in the Vennel so far as he knew it.

There was an interval of some months before the minister could bring himself to visit again the shop and house of his critical elder. This time he thought that he would try the other door. As yet he had only paid his respects at a distance to Mrs. Teeman. It seemed as if they had avoided each other. He was shown into a room in which a canary was swinging in the window, and a copy of Handel's _Messiah_ lay on the open piano. This was unlike the account he had heard of Mrs. Teeman. There was a merry voice on the stairs, which said clearly in girlish tones--

"Do go and make yourself decent, father; and then if you are good you may come in and see the minister!"

Duncan Stewart said to himself that something had happened. He was right, and something very important, too. May Teeman was "finished."

"And I hope you like me," she had said to her father when she came home.

"Sit down, you disreputable old man, till I do your hair. You're not fit to be seen!"

And, though it would not be credited in the Port, it is a fact that Fergus Teeman sat down without a word. In a week her father was a new man. In a fortnight May kept the key of the cupboard where the square decanter was hidden.

A tall, slim girl with an eager face, and little wisps of fair hair curling about her head, came into the room and frankly held out her hand to the minister.

"You are Mr. Stewart. I am glad to see you."

Whereupon they fell a-talking, and in a twinkling were in the depths of a discussion upon poetry. Duncan Stewart was so intent on watching the swift changes of expression across the face of this girl, that he made several flying shots in giving his opinions of certain poems--for which he was utterly put to shame by May Teeman, who instantly fastened him to his random opinions and asked him to explain them.

To them entered another Fergus Teeman to the militant critic of the Sabbath morning whom Duncan knew too well.

"Sit down, father. Make yourself at home," said his daughter. "I am just going to play something." And so her father sat down not ill-pleased, and, according to her word, tried to make himself at home, till the hours slipped away, and Duncan Stewart was induced to stay for tea.

"He's mellowin' fine, like a good blend o' Glenlivet!" said the grocer next day, in his shop. (He did not speak nearly so loud as he used to do.) "He's comin' awa' brawly. I'll no' say but what I was owre sharp wi' the lad at first. He'll mak' a sound minister yet, gin he was a kennin' mair s.p.u.n.ky. Hear till me, yon was a graun' sermon we got yesterday. It cowed a'! Man, Lochnaw, he touched ye up fine aboot pride and self-conceit!"

"What's at the bottom o' a' that, think ye, na?" asked Lochnaw that night as his wife and he dodged home at the rate of five miles an hour behind the grey old pony with the s.h.a.ggy fetlocks.

"Ye cuif," said his wife; "that dochter o' his 'ill be gaun up to the manse. That boardin'-schule feenished her, an' she's feenished the minister!"

"Davert! what a woman ye are!" said Lochnaw, in great admiration.

III

THE LITTLE LAME ANGEL

_In the field so wide and sunny Where the summer clover is, Where each year the mower searches For the nests of wild-bee honey, All along these silver birches Stand up straight in shining row, Dewdrops sparkling, shadows darkling, In the early morning glow; And in gleaming time they're gleaming White, like angels when I'm dreaming_.

_There among its handsome brothers Was one little crooked tree, Different from all the others, Just as bent as bent could be.

First it crawl'd along the heather Till it turn'd up straight again, Then it drew itself together Like a tender thing in pain; Scarce a single green leaf straggled From its twigs so bare and draggled-- And it really looks ashamed When I'm pa.s.sing by that way, Just as if it tried to say-- "Please don't look at such a maim'd Little Cripple-d.i.c.k as I; Look at all the rest about, Look at them and pa.s.s me by, I'm so crooked, do not flout me, Kindly turn your head awry; Of what use is my poor gnarl'd Body in this lovely world?_"

Once I wrote[10] about two little, boys who played together all through the heats of the Dry Summer in a garden very beautiful and old. The tale told how it came to pa.s.s that one of the boys was lame, and also why they loved one another so greatly.

[Footnote 10: Jiminy and Jaikie (_The Stickit Minister_).]

Now, it happened that some loved what was told, and perhaps even more that which was not told, but only hinted. For that is the secret of being loved--not to tell all. At least, from over-seas there came letters one, two, and three, asking to be told what these two did in the beautiful garden of Long Ago, what they played at, where they went, and what the dry summer heats had to do with it all.

Perhaps it is a foolish thing to try to write down in words that which was at once so little and so dear. Yet, because I love the garden and the boys, I must, for my own pleasure, tell of them once again.

It was Jiminy's garden, or at least his father's, which is the same thing, or even better. For his father lived in a gloomy study with severe books, bound in divinity calf, all about him; and was no more conscious of the existence of the beautiful garden than if it had been the Desert of Sahara.

On the other hand, Jiminy never opened a book that summer except when he could not help it, which was once a day, when his father instructed him in the Latin verb.

The old garden was cut into squares by n.o.ble walks bordered by boxwood, high like a hedge. For it had once been the garden of a monastery, and the yews and the box were all that remained of what the good monks had spent so much skill and labour upon.

There was an orchard also, with old gnarled, green-mossed trees, that bore little fruit, but made a glory of shade in the dog-days. Up among the branches Jiminy made a platform, like those Jaikie read to him about in a book of Indian travel, where the hunters waited for tigers to come underneath them. Ever since Jaikie became lame he lived at the manse, and the minister let him read all sorts of queer books all day long, if so he wished. As for Jiminy, he had been brought up among books, and cared little about them; but Jaikie looked upon each one as a new gate of Paradise.

"You never can tell," said Jaikie to Jiminy; "backs are deceivin', likewise names. I've looked in ever so many books by the man that wrote _Robinson Crusoe_, and there's not an island in any of them."

"Books are all stuff," said Jiminy. "Let's play 'Tiger.'"

"Well," replied Jaikie, "any way, it was out of a book I got 'Tiger.'"

So Jaikie mounted on the platform, and they began to play 'Tiger.' This is how they played it. Jaikie had a bow and arrow, and he watched and waited silently up among the green leaves till Jiminy came, crawling as softly beneath as the tiger goes _pit-pat_ in his own jungles. Then Jaikie drew the arrow to a head, and shot the tiger square on the back.

With a mighty howl the beast sprang in the air, as though to reach Jaikie. But brave Jaikie only laughed, and in a moment the tiger fell on his back, pulled up its trouser-legs, and expired. For that is the way tigers always do. They cannot expire without pulling up their trouser-legs. If you do not believe me, ask the man at the Zoo.

Now, as the former story tells, it was Jaikie who used always to do what Jiminy bade him; but after Jaikie was hurt, helping Jiminy's father to keep his church and manse, it was quite different. Jiminy used to come to Jaikie and say, "What shall we do to-day?" And then he used to wheel his friend in a little carriage the village joiner made, and afterwards carry him among the orchard trees to the place he wanted to go.

"Jiminy," said Jaikie, "the flowers are bonnie in the plots, but they are a' prisoners. Let us make a place where they can grow as they like."

Perhaps he thought of himself laid weak and lonely, when the green world without was all a-growing and a-blowing.

"Bring some of the flowers up to this corner," said Jaikie, the lame boy. And it was not long till Jiminy brought them. The ground was baked and dry, however, and soon they would have withered, but that Jaikie issued his commands, and Jiminy ran for pails upon pails of water from the little burn where now the water had stopped flowing, and only slept black in the pools with a little green sc.u.m over them.

"I can't carry water all night like this," said Jiminy at last. "I suppose we must give up this wild garden here in the corner of the orchard."

"No," said Jaikie, rubbing his lame ankle where it always hurt, "we must not give it up, for it is our very own, and I shall think about it to-night between the clock-strikes."

For Jaikie used to lie awake and count the hours when the pain was at the worst. Jaikie now lived at the manse all the time (did I tell you that before?), for his father was dead.

So in the little room next to Jiminy's, Jaikie lay awake and hearkened to the gentle breathing of his friend. Jiminy always said when he went to bed, "I'll keep awake to-night sure, Jaikie, and talk to you."

And Jaikie only smiled a wan smile with a soul in it, for he knew that as soon as Jiminy's head touched the pillow he would be in the dim and beautiful country of Nod, leaving poor Jaikie to rub the leg in which the pains ran races up and down, and to listen and pray for the next striking of the clock.

As he lay, Jaikie thought of the flowers in the corner of the orchard thirsty and sick. It might be that they, like him, were sleepless and suffering. He remembered the rich clove carnations with their dower of a sweet savour, the dark indigo winking "blueys" or cornflowers, the spotted musk monkey-flowers, smelling like a village flower-show. They would all be drooping and sad. And it might be that the ferns would be dead--all but the hart's-tongue; which, though moisture-loving, can yet, like the athlete, train itself to endure and abide thirsty and unslaked.

But the thought of their pain worked in Jaikie's heart.

"Maybe it will make me forget my foot if I can go and water them."

So he arose, crawling on his hands and knees down-stairs very softly, past where Jiminy tossed in his bed, and softer still past the minister's door. But there was no sound save the creak of the stair under him.

Jaikie crept to the water-pail, and got the large quart tankard that hung by the side of the wall.