The Lilac Sunbonnet Part 41

"And if I persuade you, will you forbid him?" said Allan Welsh, convinced of his own futility.

Winsome's heart caught the accent of insincerity. It had gone far beyond forbidding love or allowing it with Ralph Peden and herself.

"I shall try!" she said, with her own sweet serenity. But across the years a voice was pleading their case. As the black and faded ink of the letters flashed his own sentences across the minister's eye, the soul G.o.d had put within him rose in revolt against his own petty and useless preaching.

"So did not you" persisted the voice in his ear. "Me you counselled to risk all, and you took me out into the darkness, lighting my way with love. Did ever I complain--father lost, mother lost, home lost, G.o.d well nigh lost--all for you; yet did I even regret when you saw me die?"

"Think of the Marrow kirk," said the minister. "Her hard service does not permit a probationer, before whom lies the task of doctrine and reproof, to have father or mother, wife or sweetheart."

"And what did you," said the voice, "in that past day, care for the Marrow kirk, when the light shone upon me, and you thought the world, and the Marrow kirk with it, well lost for love's sake and mine?"

Allan Welsh bowed his head yet lower.

Winsome Charteris went over to him. His tears were falling fast on the dulled and yellowing paper.

Winsome put her hands on his shoulder.

"Is that my mother's picture?" she said, hardly knowing what she said.

Allan Welsh put his hand greedily about it, he could not let it go.

"Will you kiss me for your mother's sake?" he said.

And then, for the first time since her babyhood, Winsome Charteris, whose name was Welsh, kissed her father.

There were tears on her mother's miniature, but through them the face of the dead Winifred seemed to smile well pleased.

"For my mother's sake!" said Winsome again, and kissed him of her own accord on the brow.

Thus Walter Skirving's message was delivered.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE MEETING OF THE SYNOD.

With the vestry of the Marrow kirk in Bell's Wynd the synod met, and was const.i.tuted with prayer. Sederunt, the Reverend Gilbert Peden, moderator, minister of the true kirk of G.o.d in Scotland, commonly called the Marrow Kirk, in which place the synod for the time being was a.s.sembled; the Reverend Allan Welsh, minister of the Marrow kirk in Dullarg, clerk of the synod; John Bairdieson, synod's officer. The minutes of the last meeting having been read and approved of, the court proceeded to take up business. Inter alia the trials of Master Ralph Peden, some time student of arts and humanity in the College of Edinburgh, were a remit for this day and date. Accordingly, the synod called upon the Reverend Allan Welsh, its clerk, to make report upon the diligence, humility, and obedience, as well as upon the walk and conversation of the said Ralph Peden, student in divinity, now on trials for license to preach, the gospel.

Allan Welsh read all this gravely and calmly, as if the art of expressing ecclesiastical meaning lay in clothing it in as many overcoats as a city watchman wears in winter.

The moderator sat still, with a grim earnestness in his face. He was the very embodiment of the kirk of the Marrow, and though there were but two ministers with no elders there that day to share the responsibility, what did that matter?

He, Gilbert Peden, successor of all the (faithful) Reformers, was there to do inflexible and impartial justice.

John Bairdieson came in and sat down. The moderator observed his presence, and in his official capacity took notice of it.

"This sederunt of the synod is private," he said. "Officer, remove the strangers."

In his official capacity the officer of the court promptly removed John Bairdieson, who went most unwillingly.

The matter of the examination of probationers comes up immediately after the reading of the minutes in well-regulated church courts, being most important and vital.

"The clerk will now call for the report upon the life and conduct of the student under trials," said the moderator.

The clerk called upon the Reverend Allan Welsh to present his report. Then he sat down gravely, but immediately rose again to give his report. All the while the moderator sat impa.s.sive as a statue.

The minister of Dullarg began in a low and constrained voice. He had observed, he said, with great pleasure the diligence and ability of Master Ralph Peden, and considered the same in terms of the remit to him from the synod. He was much pleased with the clearness of the candidate upon the great questions of theology and church government. He had examined him daily in his work, and had confidence in bearing testimony to the able and spiritual tone of all his exercises, both oral and written.

Soon after he began, a surprised look stole over the face of the moderator. As Allan Welsh went on from sentence to sentence, the thin nostrils of the representative of the Reformers dilated. A strange and intense scorn took possession of him. He sat back and looked fixedly at the slight figure of the minister of Dullarg bending under the weight of his message and the frailty of his body. His time was coming.

Allan Welsh sat down, and laid his written report on the table of the synod.

"And is that all that you have to say?" queried the moderator, rising.

"That is all," said Allan Welsh.

"Then," said the moderator, "I charge it against you that you have either said too much or too little: too much for me to listen to as the father of this young man, if it be true that you extruded him, being my son and a student of the Marrow kirk committed to your care, at midnight from your house, for no stated cause; and too little, far too little to satisfy me as moderator of this synod, when a report not only upon diligence and scholarship, but also upon a walk and conversation becoming the gospel, is demanded."

"I have duly given my report according to the terms of the remit,"

said Allan Welsh, simply and quietly.

"Then," said the moderator, "I solemnly call you to account as the moderator of this synod of the only true and protesting Kirk of Scotland, for the gravest dereliction of your duty. I summon you to declare the cause why Ralph Peden, student in divinity, left your house at midnight, and, returning to mine, was for that cause denied bed and board at his father's house."

"I deny your right, moderator, to ask that question as an officer of this synod. If, at the close, you meet me as man to man, and, as a father, ask me the reasons of my conduct, some particulars of which I do not now seek to defend, I shall be prepared to satisfy you."

"We are not here convened," said the moderator, "to bandy compliments, but to do justice--"

"And to love mercy," interjected John Bairdieson through the keyhole.

"Officer," said the moderator, "remove that rude interrupter."

"Aye, aye, sir," responded the synod officer promptly, and removed the offender as much as six inches.

"You have no more to say?" queried the moderator, bending his brows in threatening fashion.

"I have no more to say," returned the clerk as firmly. They were both combative men; and the old spirit of that momentous conflict, in which they had fought so gallantly together, moved them to as great obstinacy now that they were divided.

"Then," said the moderator, "there's nothing for't but another split, and the Lord do so, and more also, to him whose sin brings it about!"

"Amen!" said Allan Welsh.

"You will remember," said the moderator, addressing the minister of Dullarg directly, "that you hold your office under my pleasure.

There is that against you in the past which would justify me, as moderator of the kirk of the Marrow, in deposing you summarily from the office of the ministry. This I have in writing under your own hand and confession."

"And I," said the clerk, rising with the gleaming light of war in his eye, "have to set it against these things that you are guilty of art and part in the concealment of that which, had you spoken twenty years ago, would have removed from the kirk of the Marrow an unfaithful minister, and given some one worthier than I to report on the fitness of your son for the ministry. It was you, Gilbert Peden, who made this remit to me, knowing what you know. I shall accept the deposition which you threaten at your hands, but remember that co-ordinately the power of this a.s.sembly lies with me--you as moderator, having only a casting, not a deliberative vote; and know you, Gilbert Peden, minister and moderator, that I, Allan Welsh, will depose you also from the office of the ministry, and my deposition will stand as good as yours."