Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Here is your silver piece."]

"'But what about your bed?'

"'Tuts, tuts, that will be all right, for I hef maybe got some six or five notes of my own that were profit on the beasties; but it iss a pity not to be taking anything that iss handy when a body happens to be in the south.'"

"Capital." Kate laughed merrily, and her too rare laugh I used to think the gayest I ever heard. "It was the only opportunity left him of following his fathers. What a fine business it must have been, starting from Braemar one afternoon, a dozen men well armed, and getting down to Strathmore in the morning; then lying hid in some wood all day, and collecting a herd of fat cattle in the evening, and driving them up Glen Shee, not knowing when there might be a fight."

"Hard lines on the Scottish farmers, Kit, who might be very decent fellows, to lose their cattle or get a cut from a broadsword."

"Oh, they had plenty left; and seriously, dad, without joking, you know, what better could a Presbyterian Lowlander do than raise good beef for Highland gentlemen? Mr. Carmichael, I beg pardon; you seem so good a Celt, that I forgot you were not of our faith."

"We are not Catholics," the General explained, gravely, "although many of our blood have been, and my daughter was educated in a convent. We belong to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and will go into Muirtown at a time, but mostly we shall attend the kirk of my old friend Dr.

Davidson. Every man is ent.i.tled to his faith, and Miss Carnegie rather . . ."

"Forgot herself." Kate came to her father's relief. "She often does; but one thing Miss Carnegie remembers, and that is that General Carnegie likes his cheroot after tiffin. Do you smoke, Mr. Carmichael?

Oh, I am allowed to stay, if you don't object, and have forgiven my rudeness."

"You make too much of a word, Miss Carnegie." Carmichael was not a man to take offence till his pride was roused. "Very likely my drover was a true blue Presbyterian, and his minister as genuine a cateran as himself.

"Years ago I made the acquaintance of an old Highland minister called MacTavish, and he sometimes stays with me on his way north in the spring. For thirty years he has started at the first sign of snow, and spent winter spoiling the good people of the south. Some years he has gone home with three hundred pounds."

"But how does he get the money?" inquired the General, "and what does he use it for?"

"He told me the history of his campaigns when he pa.s.sed in March, and it might interest you; it's our modern raid, and although it's not so picturesque as a foray of the Macphersons, yet it has points, and shows the old spirit lives.

"'She wa.s.s a goot woman, Janet Cameron, oh yes, Mr. John, a fery exercised woman, and when she wa.s.s dying she will be saying peautiful things, and one day she will be speaking of a little field she had beside the church.

"'"What do you think I should be doing with that piece of ground," she will be saying, "for the end iss not far off, and it iss not earth I can be taking with me, oh no, nor cows."

"'"No, Janet," I said, "but it iss a nice field, and lies to the sun.

It might be doing good after you are gone, if it wa.s.s not wasted on your mother's cousins twice removed in Inverness, who will be drinking every drop of it, and maybe going to the Moderate Kirk."

"'It wa.s.s not for two months or maybe six weeks she died, and I will be visiting her every second day. Her experiences were fery good, and I hef told them at sacraments in the north. The people in the south are free with their money, but it iss not the best of my stories that I can give them; they are too rich for their stomachs.

"'Janet will often be saying to me, "Mister Dugald, it iss a thankful woman that I ought to be, for though I lost my man in the big storm and two sons in the war, I hef had mercies, oh yes. There wa.s.s the Almighty and my cow, and between them I hef not wanted, oh no: they just did."

"'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced woman, and ha.s.s nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the Disruption."

"'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will be read that piece of ground wa.s.s left to the Free Kirk, which wa.s.s fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the text of the "elect lady."

"'It wa.s.s a good field, but it needed a d.y.k.e and some drains, and it wa.s.s not our people that had the money. So I made another sermon on the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south. It wa.s.s not a d.y.k.e and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came back with. That wa.s.s in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people. But it wa.s.s ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in Crianshalloch.

"'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time. There will be no Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.'

"There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too. It's not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil. Would you like to see MacTavish next time he pa.s.ses up with the cattle?" for Carmichael was emboldened by the reception of his sketch.

"Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured the Highlanders? Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about religion."

"There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion. Sometimes I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire."

"I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superst.i.tions were lovely. You remember, dad, the MacIvers."

"That was all well enough, Kit, but none of them could get the length of corporal; they were fearfully ignorant, and were reported at intervals for not keeping their accoutrements clean."

"That only showed how religious they were, did n't it, Mr. Carmichael?

Hadn't the early Christians a rooted objection to the bath? I remember our Padre saying that in a lecture."

"There are a good many modern Christians of the same mind, Miss Carnegie, and I don't think our poor Highlanders are worse than Lowlanders; but Catholic or Protestant, they are all subject to the gloom. I cannot give the Gaelic word.

"What is that? Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and a.s.sign it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source. But there is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English experience. My mother fell under it at times, and I saw the effect."

"Tell us, please, if all this description does not weary you?" and Kate shone on Carmichael, who would have talked on the Council of Nice or the rotation of crops to prolong his privileges.

"It comes on quite suddenly, and is quite a spiritual matter--a cloud which descends and envelops the soul. While it lasts a Highlander will not laugh nor sing; he will hardly speak, and he loses all hope about everything. One of our men has the gloom at a time, and then he believes that he is . . . d.a.m.ned. I am speaking theologically."

"The regiment must have been fond of theology, dad. Yes, we understand."

"Once he went out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and agonising to be sure whether there was a G.o.d. You know he 's just a small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give himself to the big problems of the universe. Do you know," and Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I believe that is the reason the Highlanders are such good fighting men.

They fear G.o.d, and they don't fear any other person."

"I 'll vouch for one thing," said the veteran with emphasis; "our men put off the gloom, or whatever you call it, when they smelt powder; I never saw a panic in a Highland regiment in more than forty years'

soldiering."

"What's the reason of the gloom? I believe that I have a touch of it myself at times--don't stare at me, dad, it's rude--just a thin mist, you know, but distinctly not indigestion. Is it a matter of race?"

"Of course, but that's no explanation." Carmichael had fallen into his debating society style. "I mean one has to go further back; all our habits are shaped by environment."

"One moment, please. I have always wanted to ask some clever person what environment meant. I asked Colonel MacLeod once, dad, and he said it was out of the new book on tactics, and he was thankful he had retired. Now Mr. Carmichael will make it plain," and Kate was very demure.

"It is rather stupid to use the word so much as people do now," and Carmichael glanced dubiously at Kate; "scientific men use it for circ.u.mstances."

"Is that all? then do pray say environment. Such a word introduces one into good society, and gives one the feeling of being well dressed; now about a Highlander's environment, is it his kilt you are thinking of, or his house, or what?"

"His country"--and Carmichael's tone had a slight note of resentment, as of one ruffled by this frivolity--"with its sea lochs, and glens, and mists. Any one who has been bred and reared at the foot of one of our mountains will have a different nature and religion from one living in Kent or Italy. He has a sense of reverence, and surely that is a good thing."

"Nothing more needed nowadays," the General broke in with much spirit; "it seems to me that people nowadays respect n.o.body, neither the Queen nor Almighty G.o.d. As for that man Brimstone, he will never cease till he has ruined the Empire. You need n't look at me, Kate, for Mr. . . .

Carmichael must know this as well as any other sensible man.

"Why, sir," and now the General was on his feet, "I was told on good authority at the club last week by a newspaper man--a monstrously clever man--that Mr. Brimstone, when he is going down to the House of Commons to disestablish the Church, or the army, or something, will call in at a shop and order two hundred silk hats to be sent to his house. What do you call that, sir?"

"I should call it a deliberate--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I should call it a deliberate--"]

"_Jeu d'esprit_. Of course it is, dad," and Kate threw an appealing glance to Carmichael, who had sprung to his feet and was standing stiffly behind his chair, for he was a fierce Radical.

"Perhaps it was, la.s.sie--those war correspondents used to be sad rascals--and, at any rate, politics are bad taste. Another cheroot, Mr. Carmichael? Oh, nonsense; you must tell my daughter more about your Highlanders. They are a loyal set, at any rate, and we all admire that."

"Yes, they are," and Carmichael unbent again, "and will stick by their side whether it be right or wrong. They 're something like a woman in their disposition."