St. Cuthbert's Part 6

"No, he's no' deid, he's alive," replied the lad, with the exact.i.tude which marks his race; "but I dinna care to speak aboot him."

"Very well, very well, boy," I rejoined hastily; "spends his time and his money and your mother's money, when he can get it, at the Red Cow, or the c.o.c.k and Hens, a drunken wastrel and cruel too; for I have been enough in Scotland to know that such hens lay deadly eggs and such red cows' milk is red with blood." All this latter part, of course, I said to myself, but no word of it to the lad before me, for no honest youth can bear any lips to miscall his father save his own.

"You will come to the manse with us and stay the night; it is too late to seek other lodging now."

"Thank ye kindly, sir, but I hae a wee pickle siller in my pocket," he replied, with modest independence. I verily believe that in heaven all Scotsmen (and even Scotch Freemasons) will be found wi' a wee pickle siller in their pockets when they receive that great degree.

But I insisted, and I won; for he who wages the campaign of hospitality hath G.o.d for his ally, and no heart can finally resist that siege.

IX

"_ANGELS UNAWARES_"

I presented him to my wife and to my host, whose cordiality was worthy of his wealth and his success. Perhaps he was thinking of an hour like unto this when, so many long years before, he too had reached New Jedboro by night, friendless and poor, also craving work, beginning that steady climb which had brought him to the dizzy heights of wealth and influence.

For memories of poverty, like poor relations, should not be thrust out at wealth's back gate, but should have a choice room in the mansion at whose door the sated heart will often knock, seeking rest.

My wife has frequently told me that she liked Angus from the start because he seemed so robed in health and draped in a kind of pathetic modesty, with eyes whose colour she was certain would not fade. How women do love the metaphors of millinery! How better than the sage of Chelsea they understand the philosophy of clothes! But she also added that she was charmed by the way he spoke his mother's name, for in his tone she caught the flavour of a quick caress; and woman is more facile far than man in her translation of these Hebraic breathings. Besides all this, he held the gate open as she pa.s.sed through into our manse estate; she still remarks that this was a little thing, but contends that he did it in a great way.

We showed the tired stranger to his room. Distinguished guests we have had beneath the roof of St. Cuthbert's manse. We once had Major Pond, the great cicerone of great lecturers; he had brought Ian Maclaren to our town, who in turn brought the spring to all of us, beguiling moisture even from long-sullen clouds.

He had stayed with Mr. Blake, which was but fair, for these are wealth's real prerogatives; but the genial Major stayed with us. We were greatly charmed, for he charmed us till two o'clock in the morning; and my wife, fearful that she might stampede him to his bed, rose at intervals and hid her face in the geranium window when she had to yawn. But it was the clock and not the Major that provoked these mild convulsions. He rehea.r.s.ed to us his glorious achievements with his "stars." Some few plaints he had, wherein he "wept o'er his wounds," but almost all his tales were "tales of valour done." He told the number of his "stars,"

vividly described how he held them in his right hand, pointed out to us how one "star" differeth from another "star" in glory, and went to bed at last with the air of a man who had gilded the Pleiades, brushed up Castor and Pollux, and house-cleaned the heavens generally.

Stanley, Farrar, Beecher, and a score of others filtered through him as he sat by our humble fire, turning his telescope this way and that as a sportsman turns his gun, while the very clock ticked slow to listen. My wife became quite confused, probably sun-struck, for she has since affirmed that the Major claimed to have been present at the birth of every one of these famous men on whom he early resolved to confer immortality. My recollection of his night's autobiography is rather that of a lane of dazzling light, in which there stood now one and now another giant, but all alike clinging to the Major's hand.

But this does not exhaust our list of the famous men whose ponderous heads have pressed the pillow whereon the exiled Angus now laid his own to rest. For we once had the Moderator. The Moderator of what? some unsophisticated gentile will wish to know. Of the General a.s.sembly, of course, for that is the Westminster a.s.sembly of Divines in recurring resurrection, and it hath its unadjourning court in heaven, as the ambushed correspondent of the Hebrews doth inform us. Which proves, my precentor tells me, that the New Jerusalem is a Presbyterian city and singeth nothing but the psalms.

The Moderator, as I have already said, abode with us over night, and we almost begrudged the sleeping hours, for, if you will waste sleep upon a Moderator, let it be when he is preaching and not when he is filling your house with dignity and smoke. For the Moderator loved his pipe, and so did I, and together we revelled in those clouds before which all other clouds retreat. What a great leveller is that democrat, tobacco.

For while we smoked we were both moderators, and even an a.s.sembly clerk could not have told which was which. Twice, too, the Moderator filled from my pouch, with no air of patronage, and I shall never forget it of him. When he went to his bed, still redolent of Virginia, he asked me for a little soda water, very little, he said emphatically. I brought it to him, and pa.s.sing by his door a moment later, I heard a low gurgling sound like that of an infant brook, then silence, then an honest smack--soon after there emerged a festive flavour, a healing aroma, sweetly distilling. As I went back to our room, I said to my wife, "What a fine spirit a Moderator can shed through a house," in which opinion she agreed, though she knew not what I said. I was all but asleep when she aroused me with--

"Tom, why is a Moderator called a Moderator?"

"Because he takes it moderately, dear," I answered, being only in the twilight of intelligence.

"Takes what, Tom?" she asked.

"His honours, sweetheart--go to sleep."

But although we have had great guests like these, I do not know that I was ever more glad with the thought of a sleeping stranger than with the knowledge that this homeless lad was beneath our roof that night. For he who homes the honest poor has borrowed the guests of G.o.d, and a mother's wandering son is His peculiar care.

I knew that the great Executor of all praying mothers leaves them not long indebted to any man; He Himself shall speak with their creditors in the gate.

X

_My PIOUS PROFLIGATE_

My wandering but faithful pen, whose every child, though homely, is its legitimate own, must now forsake Angus and his fortunes for a season. It shall again return to him, _if it be spared_. For the good folk of St.

Cuthbert's have taught me to insert this phrase at every seasonable opening--indeed, they deem it fitting for every season, and the very first marriage in New Jedboro at which I officiated afforded a vivid proof of this.

The young couple were just emerging from the heavenly operation, still somewhat under the celestial chloroform, when Ronald M'Gregor admonished them. His admonition was after a fashion almost ministerial, for Ronald had once culled himself from out the common herd as meant for a minister, and had abandoned his pursuit only when he found that he had every qualification except the gifts.

"Ye maun bear in mind," he said, "that ye're nae mair twa, but ae flesh; an' ye'll bide wi' ane anither till deith shall ye pairt--that is, gin ye're spared."

Meantime, this friendly pen must record this news of Angus, that the very morning he left St. Cuthbert's manse he entered upon his apprentice term in the great iron manufactory of which Mr. Blake was the head and the propelling power; for behind every engine is the ingenuity, not of many men, but of one.

And leaving him there to ply his fortune and to confront that unseen antagonist against whom every ambitious man plays move and move about, I betake myself again to the records of St. Cuthbert's.

Yet I find it hard to dismiss the lad, for his is a besetting face, and besides, it stubbornly appears above the main current of all the story I have yet to tell.

My fortunes with these strange Scotch folk must be recorded, and chief among my handiwork I think of Geordie Lorimer. For he was a typical Scot, and supremely so in this, that he could be both very religious and very bad. Of which the remarkable thing lies here, that he was both of these at one and the self-same time.

Now, although I am an Irishman, and boast the most romantic blood of time, yet must I frankly admit that few countrymen of mine have such facility. Many of them there are who could be religious, and more who could be bad, with spontaneous ease, but few there be who know how to be both at once. But Geordie did. He was a profligate, but a pious profligate; a terror he was, but he was a holy terror. Mind you well, I do not mean to impugn Geordie's sincerity in the last appeal; not for one moment, for I believe implicitly that Geordie, in the very heart of him, meant to do well. Indeed, I will go further, and say that in his very soul he wished to be closer to G.o.d; for he could not well help that wish--it was his inseparable heritage from a saintly father, long a beloved elder in St. Cuthbert's, whose sacred suit of "blacks" Geordie had inherited, himself wearing them to the sacrament till the session denied him his token, and shut him out, blacks and all. The memory of his mother's life was still fragrant to hundreds, fresh and dewy in love's unwithering morn; upon the tide of prayer had Geordie's infant life been launched, and its gentle waves, faint but palpable, still sought to lave his soul.

How many a Northern island-life, bleak and wild, is redeemed from utter destruction by that great gulfstream, the prayers of a mother who was in league with G.o.d! Thus it came about that Geordie Lorimer's life was a muddy stream, still tinged with the crystal waters of its hill-born spring. He had made the ghastly find, that when he would do good, evil was present with him; to will was present with him, but how to perform that which was good he found not. For Geordie had, alas! a stronger thirst than that for righteousness. He was given to "tasting," a homeopathic word which Scotsmen use to indicate a trough. I soon heard of him as incorrigibly religious but incorrigibly dry.

Geordie was the best-known character in New Jedboro, as well known as the town pump, the one famed for its outgiving, the other for its intaking powers, but both alike for liquid prowess. His princ.i.p.al occupation was in his wife's name, being a boarding-house whose inmates were secretly and shamefully proud of Geordie's unique superiority in his own particular line, for he could outdrink the countryside.

The very Sat.u.r.day which preceded my Sunday as a candidate of St.

Cuthbert's (they afterwards told me) Geordie was in the kindly grip of the town constable, who was bearing him towards the jail, his victim loudly proclaiming to the world that the guardian of the law had arrested him only when he, Geordie, had refused to treat for the eleventh time.

"He tret the ainst, an' I tret ten times or mair," Geordie was vehemently affirming to a sympathetic street. Turning a corner, they met no less a personage than Sandy Weir, the session clerk.

"Sandy, dinna let him tak' me to the lock-up. There's to be a new minister i' the kirk," he cried, "an' I maun gang to hear him preach the morn. Sandy, wull ye no' bid him no' to tak' me to the lock-up?"

But Sandy was a man under authority, having elders under him, and he refrained, knowing the boundaries of his power.

Pa.s.sing along a quiet street some years after this, I beheld the unreforming Geordie in a savage fight with a kindred spirit, who drew his inspiration from the same source as his antagonist; for many a cork they had released together. The two men fought like tigers, abandoning themselves the more cheerfully to the combat they both knew would end in a renewal of brotherhood and beer. This thought lent a sanguine enthusiasm to their every effort, for each felt it a point of honour to make the engagement worthy of the "treaty" (a fitting word) that awaited them at the Travellers' Rest.

Above the din of battle I heard a voice emerging from Geordie's head, which head emerged from his opponent's oxter--

"Dinna mark me, Jock, dinna mark me; for we're gaun to hae the bairn baptized i' the kirk the morn," and I knew not which to admire more, Geordie's moral versatility, or the beautiful comity of war.

Geordie did appear in the kirk with the bairn the next morning, unmarked, except by unusual solemnity. He did not take the vows, of course--these were a.s.sumed by his long-suffering and devoted wife; but Geordie felt he should be there as collateral security.

I coveted Geordie's soul, and longed to add his regeneration to the new Acts of the Apostles. No opportunity to speak with him was ever allowed to slip, and one came to me whose details I must recount. There had been an election for the town council, which had, half in joke and half in jealousy, returned Geordie as the councillor of his ward; for our glorious manhood suffrage, as some one has pointed out, makes Judas Iscariot as influential at the polls as the Apostle Paul.

Returning, the night of the election, from a sickbed visit, I overtook the jubilant Geordie, full of emotion and other things. His locomotion was irregular and spasmodic, his course original, picturesque, and variable. Geordie was having it out with the law of gravitation.

He was as a ship returning from Jamaica, a precious cargo of spirits in its hold, and labouring heavily in the trough of the sea. I essayed to take his arm, intending to be his wheelsman home, but it was like trying to board a vessel in a storm; for Geordie had at least a hundred routes which he must traverse with impartial feet. After I had somewhat managed to adopt his swing, I sought to deal faithfully with him, though it was like preaching from the plunging deck of a ship at sea, while the breath of my swaying auditor suggested that the aforesaid cargo had sprung a leak.