The Setons Part 43

To-day, as he stood with his wife by the low fence at the foot of the gardens and looked across the fields to the hills, he took a long breath of the clean cold air, and said:

"This--after ten years of lodging in Garnethill! Our lives have fallen to us in pleasant places, Kirsty."

"Yes," she agreed contentedly. "I never thought the country could be so nice. I like the feel of the big stacks, and to think that the stick-house is full of logs, and the apples in the garret, and everything laid in for winter. Andrew, I'm glad winter is coming. It will be so cosy the long evenings together--and only one meeting in the week."

Her husband put out his hand to stop her. "Don't, Kirsty," he said, as if her words hurt him.

In answer to her look of surprise, he went on:

"Did you ever think, when this war was changing so much, that it would change things for us too? Kirsty, my dear, I have thought it all out and I feel I must go."

Kirsty was apt to get cross when she was perturbed about anything, and she now said, moving a step or two away, "What in the world d'you mean?

Where are you going?"

"I'm going to enlist, with as many Langhope men as I can persuade to accompany me. It's no use. I can't stand in the pulpit--a young strong man--and say Go. I must say Come!"

Now that it was out, he gave a sigh of relief.

"Kirsty," he pleaded, "say you think I'm right."

But Kirsty's face was white and drawn.

"I thought you were happy," she said at last, with a pitiful little sob on the last word.

"So happy," said her husband, "that I have to go. Every time I came in and found you waiting for me with the kettle singing, when I went out in the morning and looked at the hills, when I walked in the garden and knew that every bush in it was dear to me--then I remembered that these things so dear were being bought with a price, and that the only decent thing for me to do was to go and help to pay that price."

"But only as a chaplain, surely?"

Andrew shook his head.

"I'm too young and able-bodied for a chaplain. I'm only thirty-two, and though I'm not big I'm wiry."

"The Archbishop of Canterbury says the clergy _shouldn't_ fight,"

Kirsty reminded him.

Andrew took her arm and looked very tenderly at her as he answered, laughing, "Oh! Kirsty, since when did an Anglican bishop direct your conscience and mine?" They walked slowly towards the house.

On the doorstep Kirsty turned.

"Andrew," she said, "have you thought it all out? Have you thought what it may mean? Leaving the people here--perhaps they won't keep your place open for you, for no man knows how long the war'll last--leaving your comfortable home and your wife who--who loves you, and going away to a life of hardship and exposure, and in the end perhaps--death. Have you thought of this sacrifice you are making?"

And her husband answered, "Yes, I have thought of all it may mean. I don't feel I am wrong leaving the church, because Mr. Smillie is willing to come back and look after the people in my absence. He will stay in the Manse and be company for you." Here poor Kirsty sniffed.

"Oh! my dear, don't think I am going with a light heart. 'Stay at home, then,' you say. 'Better men than you are will stay at home.' I know they will, and I only wish I could stay with them, for the very thought of war makes me sick. But because it is such a wrench to go, makes me sure that I ought to go. Love and sacrifice--it's the way of the Cross, Kirsty. The 'young Prince of Glory' walked that way, and I, one of His humblest ministers, will find my way by His footprints."

Kirsty said no more. Later, when Andrew was gone, her father came to Langhope and in no uncertain voice expressed his opinion of his son-in-law. That a man would leave a good down-sitting and go and be private soldier seemed to him nothing short of madness.

"Andrew's a fool," he said, with great conviction.

"Yes," said Kirsty, "Andrew's a fool--a fool for Christ's sake, and you and I can't even begin to understand what that means in the way of n.o.bility and courage and sacrifice, because we were born crawling things. Andrew has wings, and my only hope is that they will be strong enough to lift me with him--for oh! I couldn't bear to be left behind."

She ran from the room hurriedly, and left a very incensed gentleman standing on the hearth-rug.

Mr. Christie was accustomed to the adulation of females. He was a most welcome guest at the "At Home" days of his flock. He would drop in and ask in his jovial way for "a cup of your excellent tea, Mrs.

So-and-so," make mild ministerial jokes, and was always, in his own words, "the purfect gentleman."

And his daughter had called him "a crawling thing!" He was very cold to Kirsty for the rest of his visit, and when he went home he told his wife that marriage had not improved Christina.

His little invalidish wife looked at him out of her shrewd childish eyes and said, "That's a pity, now," but asked no questions.

The old minister, Mr. Smillie (who was not so very old after all), left his retirement and came back to Langhope, and preached with more vigour than he had done for ten years. Perhaps he had found Edinburgh and unlimited committees rather boring, or perhaps he felt that only his best was good enough for this time.

"Ay," said the village folk, "we've gotten the auld man back, and dod!

he's clean yauld! Oor young yin's fechtin', ye ken"; and they said it with pride. It was not every village that had a minister fighting.

The arrangement at the Manse worked very well. Kirsty, too, tried to do her best, and Mr. Smillie, who had been all his life at the mercy of housekeepers, felt he had suddenly acquired both a home and a daughter.

When Andrew got his commission, Mr. Smillie went into every house in the village to tell them the news, and was almost as pleased and proud as Kirsty herself.

The Sabbath before he went to France Andrew Hamilton preached in his own pulpit. His text was, "Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee."

Two months later, Kirsty got a letter from him. He said: "I played football this afternoon in a match 'Officers _v._ Sergeants.' Perhaps you won't hear from me very regularly for a bit, for things may be happening; but don't worry about me, I shall be all right.... I am going to a Company concert to-night to sing some Scots songs, and then, with their own consent, I am going to speak to my men alone of more serious things."

The next day he led his men in an attack, and was reported "Missing."

His colonel wrote to Kirsty: "I have no heart to write about him at this time. If he is gone, I know too well what it means to you, and I know what it means to the regiment. His ideals were an inspiration to the men he led...."

The rest was silence.

Mr. Smillie still preaches, and Kirsty still sits in the Manse waiting and hoping. Her face has grown very patient, and I think she feels that if Andrew never comes back to her, she has wings which will some day carry her to him.

Alan Seton got leave at Christmas for four days.

The excitement at Etterick pa.s.sed description. Marget cooked and baked everything she could think of, and never once lost her temper.

Provisions were got out from Edinburgh; some people near lent a car for the few days; nothing was lacking to do him honour. The house was hung with holly from garret to bas.e.m.e.nt, and in the most unexpected places; for Buff, as decorator, was determined to be thorough.

Everything was Christmas-like except the weather. Buff had been praying very earnestly for snow and frost that they might toboggan, but evidently his expectations had not been great nor his faith of the kind that removes mountains, for when he looked out on Christmas Eve morning he said, "I _knew_ it--raining!"

They had not seen Alan for three years, and four days seemed a deplorably short span of time to ask all they wanted to know.

Buff was quite shy before this tall soldier-brother and for the first hour eyed him in complete silence; then he sidled up to him with a book in his hand, explaining that it was his chiefest treasure, and was called _The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book_. It told you everything you wanted to know if you were a frontiersman, which, Buff pointed out, was very useful. Small-pox, enteric, snake-bite, sleeping-sickness, it gave the treatment for them all and the cure--if there was one.

"I like the note on 'Madness,'" said Elizabeth, who was watching the little scene. "It says simply, 'Remove spurs.' Evidently, if the patient is not wearing spurs, nothing can be done."

Alan put his arm round his small brother. "It's a fine book, Buff. You will be a useful man some day out in the Colonies stored with all that information."

"Would--would you like it, Alan?" Buff asked; and then, with a gulp of resignation, "I'll give it you."

"Thanks very much, old man," Alan said gravely. "It would be of tremendous use to me in India, if you'll let me have it when I go back; but over in France, you see, we are simply hotching with doctors, and very little time for taking illnesses."