Quaint Courtships Part 18

The Devil chuckled. "Janet's so bonny. Fancy her on the pillow beside, ye--scraggy--bones--freckles. Hoots, man! a nightmare!"

Shuddering, Saunders reconsidered proceedings of ejectment. "But the thing is no posseeble?"

"You know your men," the Devil answered. "Close in the mouth as they are in the fist. McCakeron will never get wind o' the business till they spring it on him in meeting."

"That is so," Saunders acknowledged. "'Tis surely so-a."

"Then why," the Devil urged,--"then why not rig the same game on him?"

"Bosh! He wouldna think o't."

"Loving Dunlop as himself?" The Devil was apt at paraphrasing Scripture.

"Imph!"

"It _would_ let me out?" Saunders mused.

"Ye can but fail," argued the Devil. "Try it."

"I wull."

"This very night!" It is a wonder that the sparks did not fly, the Devil struck so hard on the hot iron. "To-night! Ye ken the election comes off next week."

"To-night," Saunders agreed.

Throughout that week the din of contending factions resounded beneath brazen harvest skies; for if there was a wink behind the clamor of any faction, it made no difference in the volume of its noise. Wherever two men foregathered, there the spirit of strife was in their midst; the burr of hot Scot's speech travelled like the murmur of robbed bees along the Side Lines, up the Concession roads, and even raised an echo in the hallowed seclusion of the minister's study. And harking back to certain eldership elections in which the breaking of heads had taken the place of "anointing with oil," Elder McIntosh quietly evolved a plan whereby the turmoil should be left outside the kirk on election night.

But while it lasted no voice rang louder than that of Saunders McClellan's devil. Not a bit particular in choice of candidates, he roared against Dunlop, Duncan, or "Twenty-One" according to the company which Saunders kept. "Ye havna the ghaist of a show!" he a.s.sured Cap'en McKay, chief of the Dunlopers. "McCakeron drew three mair to him last night." While to the elder he exclaimed the same day: "Yon crazy sailorman's got all the Duncanites o' the run. He has ye spanked, Elder.

Scunner the deil!" So the Devil blew, hot and cold, with Saunders's mouth, until the very night before the election.

The morning of the election the sun heaved up on a bra.s.sy sky. It was intensely hot through the day, but towards evening gray clouds scudded out of the east, veiling the sun with their twisting ma.s.ses; at twilight heavy rain-blots were splashing the dust. At eight o'clock, meeting-time, rain flew in glistening sheets against the kirk windows and forced its way under the floor. There was but a scant attendance--twoscore men, perhaps, and half a dozen women, who sat, in decent Scotch fashion, apart from the men--that is, apart from all but Joshua Timmins. Not having been raised in the decencies as observed in Zorra, he had drifted over to the woman's side and sat with Janet McCakeron and Jean McClellan, one on either side.

But if few in number, the gathering was decidedly formidable in appearance. As the rain had weeded out the feeble, infirm, and pacifically inclined, it was distinctly belligerent in character. Grim, dour, silent, it waited for the beginning of hostilities.

Nor did the service of praise which preceded the election induce a milder spirit. When the precentor led off, "Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let the Heathen Rage and Cry!" each man's look told that he knew well whom the psalmist was. .h.i.tting at; and when the minister invoked the "blind, stubborn, and stony-hearted" to "depart from the midst," one-half of his hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told that all were bracing for battle when the minister stepped down from the pulpit, and noting it, he congratulated himself on his precautions against disturbance.

"For greater convenience in voting," he said, reaching paper slips and a box of pencils from behind the communion rail, "we will depart from the oral method and elect by written ballot."

He had expected a protest against such a radical departure from ancestral precedent, but in some mysterious way the innovation seemed to jibe with the people's inclination.

"Saunders McClellan," the minister went on, "will distribute and collect balloting-papers on the other aisle."

"Give it to him, Cap'en!" Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip.

"He's glowering at ye."

The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. "See what I'm aboot!" his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into Saunders's hat.

"The auld deevil!" McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first ballot. "He'll soon slacken his gills."

"That'll be one of oor ballots," the cap'en hoa.r.s.ely confided.

The minister was vigorously rubbing his gla.s.ses for a second perusal of the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.

Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.

"McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?"

"Ah," Neil muttered. "An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the reptile. See the glare o't."

They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the "glare." "Got the Duncanites, did ye?" the elder was thinking. "Bide a wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last."

Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the kirk. "You may be ugly, but ye've served me well," Saunders began.

The Devil answered with extreme politeness: "You are welcome to all ye get through me. If no honored, ye are at least aboot to become famous in your ain country."

"Infamous, I doobt, ye mean," Saunders corrected. Then, glancing uneasily toward the door, he added, "I think as we'd better be leaving."

"Pish!" the Devil snorted. "They are undone by their ain malignancy. See it oot."

"That's so," Saunders agreed. "That is surely so-a. Hist! The meenister's risen. Man, but he's tickled to death over the result. His face is fair shining."

The minister did indeed look pleased. Stepping down to the floor that he might be closer to these his people, he beamed benevolently upon them while he made a little speech. "People of Scottish birth," he said, closing, "are often accused of being hard and uncharitable to the stranger in their gates, but this can never be said of you who have extended the highest honor in your gift to a stranger; who have elected Brother Joshua Timmins elder in your kirk by a two-thirds majority."

The benediction dissolved the paralysis which held all but Saunders McClellan; but stupefaction remained. Astounding crises are generally attended with little fuss, from the inability of the human intellect to grasp their enormous significance. As John "Death" McKay afterward put it, "Man, 'twas so extraordin'ry as to seem ordin'ry." Of course neither Dunlopers nor "Twenty-One's" were in a position to challenge the election, and if the Duncanites growled as they pawed over the ballots, their grumbling was presently silenced by a greater astonishment.

For out of such evenings history is made. While the minister had held forth on the rights and duties of eldership, Saunders McClellan's gaze had wandered over to Margaret McDonald--a healthy, red-cheeked girl--and he had done a little moralizing on his own account. In the presence of such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, he might as weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts.

Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins--meek, mild, and unenc.u.mbered--there could be no choice. Still there was nothing like certainty; 'twas always best to be off wi' the old, an' so forth!

Rising, he headed for Janet, who, with her father, Jeannie, Timmins, and the minister, stood talking at the vestry door. As he made his way forward, he reaped a portion of the Devil's promised fame. As they filed sheepishly down the aisle, the Dunlopers gave him the cold shoulder, and when he joined the group, Elder McCakeron returned a stony stare to his greeting.

"But ye needna mind that," the Devil encouraged. "He daurna tell, for his own share i' the business."

So Saunders brazened it out. "Ye ha' my congratulations, Mr. McCakeron.

I hear you're to get a son-in-law oot o' this?"

If Elder McCakeron had given Saunders the tempter the glare which he now bestowed on Saunders the successfully wicked, he had not been in such lamentable case.

"Why, what is this?" the minister exclaimed. "Cause for further congratulation, Brother Timmins?"

Saunders now shone as Cupid's a.s.sistant. "He was to ha' Janet on condeetion that he made the eldership," he fulsomely explained.

The minister's glance questioned the elder.

"Well," he growled, "I'm no going back on my word."

Saunders glowed all over, and in exuberance of spirit actually winked at Margaret McDonald across the kirk. Man, but she was pretty!

"It's to your credit, Mr. McCakeron, that you should hold til a promise," Jeannie was saying. "But ye'll no be held. A man may change his mind, and since you refused Joshua, he's decided to marry on me."