Part 12

Both he and his companion had commodious, clean-shaven "horse" faces, with an abundance of gray hair standing out in a straggling semi-circular aureole underneath the chin. Cameronian was stamped upon their faces with broad strong simplicity. The blue bonnet, already looking old-world among the universal "felts" common to most adult manhood--the deep serious eyes, as it were withdrawn under the penthouse of bushy brows, and looking upon all things (even lamb sales) as fleeting and transitory--the long upper lip and the mouth tightly compressed--these marked out John Allanson of Drows and Matthew Carment of Craigs as pillars of that Kirk which alone of all the fragments of Presbytery is senior to the Established Church of Scotland.

On the other side of the boat and somewhat apart stood Dr. Hector Stuart, gazing gloomily at the black water as it rippled and clappered under the broad lip of the ferry-boat. A proud man, a Highland gentleman of old family, was the minister of Dullarg. He kept his head erect, and for any notice he had taken of the Cameronian elders, they might just as well not have been on the boat at all. And in their turn the elders of the Cameronian Kirk compressed their lips more firmly and their eyes seemed deeper set in their heads when their glances fell on this pillar of Erastianism. For nowhere is the racial antipathy of north and south so strong as in Galloway. There, and there alone, the memory of the Highland Host has never died out, and every autumn when the hills glow red with heather from horizon to horizon verge, the story is told to Galloway childhood of how Lag and Clavers wasted the heritage of the Lord, and how from Ailsa to Solway all the west of Scotland is "flowered with the blood of the Martyrs."

The thin nervous woman kept close to the minister's elbow.

"I tell you I saw her cross the water, Hector," she was saying as Dr. Stuart looked ahead, scanning keenly the low sandy shores they were nearing.

"The boat is gone and she has not returned. It is a thing not proper for a young lady and a minister's daughter to be so long absent from home!"

"My daughter has been too well brought up to do aught that is improper!" said Dr. Stuart, with grave sententious dignity. "You need not pursue the subject, Mary!"

There was just enough likeness between them to stamp the pair as brother and sister. As the boat touched the edge of the sharply sloping shingle bank, the hinged gang-plank tilted itself up at a new angle. The passengers paid their pennies to Bess MacTaggart and stepped sedately on shore. The boat-house stands in a water-girt peninsula, the Ken being on one side broad and quiet, the Black Water on the other, sulky and turbulent. So that for half a mile there was but one road for this curiously assorted pair of pairs.

And as they approached them the woods of Airds laughed even more mockingly, with a ripple of tossing birch plumes like a woman when she is merry in the night and dares not laugh aloud. And the beeches responded with a dryish cackle that had something of irony in it. Listen and you will hear how it was the next time a beech-tree shakes out his leaves to dry the dew off them.

The two elders came to a quick turn of the road. There was a stile just beyond. A moment before a young man had overleaped it, and now he was holding up his hands encouragingly to a girl who smiled down upon him from above. It was a difficult stile. The dyke top was shaky. Two of the bottom steps; were missing altogether. All who have once been young know the kind of stile--verily, a place of infinite danger to the unwary.

So at least thought Elspeth Stuart, as for a long moment she stood daintying her skirts about her ankles on the perilous copestone, and drawing her breath a little short at the sight of the steep descent into the road.

The elders also stood still, and behind them the other pair came slowly up. And surely some wicked tricksome Puck laughed unseen among the beech leaves.

Elspeth Stuart had taken the young man's hand now. He was lifting her down. There--it was done. And--yes, you are right--something else happened--just what would have happened to you and me, twenty, thirty, or is it forty years ago?

Then with a clash and a rustle the beeches told the tale to the birches over all the wooded slopes of the hill of Airds.

* * * * *

"Elspeth!"

"Elspeth Stuart!"

"_Maister Syme!_"

The names came from four pairs of horrified lips as the parties to the above mentioned transaction fell swiftly asunder, with sudden stricken horror on their faces. The first cry came shrill and keen, and was accompanied by an out-throwing of feminine hands. The second fell sternly from the mouth of one who was at once a parent and a minister of the Establishment outraged in his tenderest feelings. But indubitably the elders had it. For one thing, they were two to one, and as they said for the second time with yet deeper gravity "_Maister Syme!_" it appeared at once that they, and only they, were able adequately to deal with the unprecedented situation. But the others did what they could.

Mistress Mary Stuart, the minister's maiden sister, flew forward with an eager cry, the "scraich" of a desperate hen when she is on the wrong side of the fence and sees the "daich" disappearing down a hundred hungry throats.

She clutched her niece by the arm.

"Come away this moment!" she cried, "do you know who this young man is?"

But Elspeth did not answer. She was looking at her father, Dr. Stuart, whose eyes were bent upon the young man. Very stern they were, the fierce sudden darkness of Celtic anger in them. But the young Cameronian minister knew that he had far worse to face than that, and met the frown of paternal severity with shame indeed mantling on his cheek and neck, but yet with a certain quiet of determination firming his heart within him.

"Sir," he said, "that of which you have been witness was no more than an accident--the fault of impulse and young blood. But I own I was carried away. I ask the young lady's pardon and yours. I should have spoken to you first, but now I will delay no longer. Sir, I love your daughter!"

Then came for the first time a slight smile upon the pale face of his fellow-culprit. She said in her heart, "Ah, Allan, if ye had spoken first to my father, feint a kiss would ye ever have gotten from Elspeth Stuart!"

But at the manful words of the young Cameronian the face of her father grew only the more stern, the two elders watching and biding their time by the roadside.

They knew that it would come before long.

At last after a long silence Dr. Stuart spoke.

"Sir," he said grimly, "I do not bandy words with a stranger upon the public highway. I myself have nothing to say to you. I forbid you ever again to speak to my daughter. Elspeth, follow me!"

And with no more than this he turned and stalked away. But his daughter also had the high Highland blood in her veins. She shook off with one large motion of her arm the stringy clutch of her aunt's fingers.

"Heed you not, Allan," she said, speaking very clearly, so that all might hear, "when ye want her, Elspeth Stuart will come the long road and the straight road to speak a word with you."

It was a bold avowal to make, and a moment before the girl had not meant to say anything of the kind. But they had taken the wrong way with her.

"Oh, unmaidenly--most unmaidenly!" cried her aunt, "come away--ye are mad this day, Elspeth Stuart--he has but a hunder a year of stipend, and may lose that ony day!"

But Elspeth did not answer. She was holding out her hand to Allan Syme. He bent quickly and kissed it. This young man had had a mother who taught him gracious ways, not at all in keeping with the staid manners of a son of the covenants.

* * * * *

"And now, sir," said John Allanson of Drows, turning grimly upon his minister, who stood watching Elspeth's girlish figure disappear round the curve of the green-edged track, "what have you to say to us?"

Then Allan Syme's pulses leaped quick and light, for he knew that of a surety the time of his visitation was at hand. Yet his heart did not fail within him. At the last it was glad and high. "For after all" (he smiled as he thought it), "after all--well, they cannot _take_ that from me."

"Sir," said Matthew Carment, in a louder tone, "heard ye the quastion that your ruling elder hath pitten till ye?"

"John and Matthew," said the young man, gently, "ye are my elders, and I will not answer you as I did Dr. Stuart."

"The priest of Midian!" said Matthew Carment.

"The forswearer of covenants!" said John Allanson.

"But I will speak with you as those who have been unto me as Aaron and Hur for the upholding of mine hands----"

"Say, rather," said John Allanson, sternly, "as Phineas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest who thrust through the Midianitish woman in sight of all the congregation of Israel, as they stood weeping before the door of the tabernacle!"

"So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel," quoted Matthew Carment, gravely, finishing his friend's sentence.

Allan Syme winced. The words had been his Sunday's text.

"I tell you, gentlemen," he said quickly, "since God gave Eve to Adam there has not been on earth a sweeter, truer maid than this. You have heard me declare my love for her. Well, I love her more than I dare trust my tongue to utter!"

"And how about your love for the Covenants? And for the Faithful Remnant of the persecuted Kirk of the Martyrs?" said Drows, with a certain dreary persistence that wore on Allan Syme like prolonged toothache.

Then Matthew Carment, who, though slower than the ruling elder, but was not less sure, gave in his contribution.

"'Like unto Eve,' said ye? A true word--verily, a most true word! For did not we with our own eyes see ye with her partake of the forbidden fruit? But there is a difference--_your_ eyes, young man, have not yet been opened!"

Allan Syme began to grow angry.

"I am a free agent," he said fiercely. "I am not a child under bonds. You are not my tutors and governors by any law, human or divine. Nor am I answerable to you whom I shall woo, or whom I shall wed!"

"Ye are answerable to God and the Kirk!" cried the two with one voice.

And to this Matthew Carment again added his say. The three were now walking slowly in the direction of the lamb sale.

"Sir, I mind how ye well described the so-called ministers of the establishment--'locusts on the face of our land,' these were your words, 'instruments of inefficiency, the plague spot upon the nation, the very scorn of Reformation, and a scandal to Religion!' Ye said well, minister; and the spawn of Belial is like unto Belial!"

Allan Syme was now angry exceedingly.

"God be my judge," he cried, "she whom I love is more Christian than the whole pack of you. Never has she spoken an ill word of any, ever since I have known her!"

"And wherefore should she?" said John Allanson of Drows, as dispassionately as a clerk reading an indictment. "Hath she not been clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day? Hath she not eaten of the fine flour and the honey and the oil? Hath she not been adorned with broidered work and shod with badger skin, and, even as her sisters Aholah and Aholibah of old, hath not power been given unto her to lead even the hearts of the elect captive?"

Then Allan Syme broke forth furiously.

"Your tongues are evil!" he said, "ye are not fit to take her name on your lips. She is to me as the mother of our Lord--yes, as Mary, the wife of Joseph, the carpenter!"

"And indeed I never thocht sae muckle o' that yin either," said Matthew of Craigs, "the Papishes make ower great a to-do about her for my liking!"

"Matthew Carment and John Allanson, I bid you hearken to me," cried the young minister.

"Aye, Allan Syme, we will hearken!" they answered, fronting him eye to eye.

"God judge between you and me," he said. "He hath said that for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Now, I know well that if ye like, you two can take from me my kirk and all my living. But I have spoken, and I will adhere. I have promised, and I will keep. Take this my parting message. Do your duty as it is revealed to you. I will go forth freely and willingly. Naked I came among you--naked will I go. The hearts of my people are dearer to me than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from my kirk, send me forth of my manse--cast me upon the world as a man disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature upon earth."

And with these words he turned on his heel and strode straight uphill away from them in the direction of his distant home.

The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At last the two turned and looked at each other.

"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in debate.

There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by nature and slower by habit.

"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.

Drows broke a twig elaborately from the hedge and chewed the ends.

"So I was thinkin'!" he answered.

"I had it in my mind at the time he was speakin'," began Matthew, and then hesitated.

"Aye, what was in your mind?"

"I was thinkin' on the days when I courted Jean!"

"Aye, man!"

There was another long silence.

It was Draws who broke it this time, and he said, "I--I was thinkin' too, Mathy! Aye, man, I was thinkin'!"

"Aboot Marget?" queried Matthew Carment.

"_Na, no aboot Marget!_"

They were silent again. The ruling elder settled to another green sprig of hedge-thorn. It seemed palatable. He got on well with it.

"Man," he said at last, "do ye ken, Mathy--when he turned on us like yon, I was kind o' prood o' him. My heart burned within me. It was maybe no verra like a minister o' the Kirk. But, oh man, it was awesome human!"

"Then I judge we'll say nae mair aboot it!" said Matthew Carment, turning towards the farm where the lamb sale was by this time well under weigh. "Hoo mony are ye thinkin' o' biddin' for the day, Drows?"

*THE SUIT OF BOTTLE GREEN*

At the Manse of Dullarg things did not go over well. Dr. Stuart, being by nature a quick, passionate, and imperious Celt, had first of all ordered his daughter to promise never again to hold any communication with the young Cameronian minister of Cairn Edward. It was thus that he himself had been taught to understand family discipline. He was the head of the clan, as his father had been before him. He claimed to be Providence to all within his gates. His hand of correction was not withheld from his boys, Frank and Sandy, until the day they ran away from home to escape him. He could not well adopt this plan to the present case, but when Elspeth refused point blank to give any promise, her father promptly convoyed his daughter to her own room and locked her up there. She would stay where she was till she changed her mind. Her aunt would take up her meals, and he himself would undertake to inform her as to her duties and responsibilities at suitable intervals. There was not the least doubt in the mind of Dr. Stuart as to the result of such a course of treatment. Had he not willed it? That was surely enough.

But his sister was not so sure, though she did not dare to say so to the Doctor more than once.

"She is a very headstrong girl, Murdo," she said, tremulously, as she gathered Elspeth's scanty breakfast on a tray next morning, "it might drive her to some rash act!"

"Nonsense," retorted her brother, sharply, "did not our father do exactly the same to you, to keep you from marrying young Campbell of Luib?"

Mary Stuart's wintry-apple face twitched and flushed.

"Yes--yes," she fluttered, with a quaver in her voice, as if deprecating further allusion to herself, "but Elspeth is not like me, Murdo. She has more of your spirit."

"Let me hear no more of the matter," said her brother, turning away, "_I_ wish it, and besides, I have my sermon to write."

But when the maiden aunt knocked at the door and entered with Elspeth's breakfast, she was astonished to find the girl sitting by the window dressed exactly as she had been on the previous evening. Her face was very pale, but her lips were compressed and her eyes dry.

"Elspeth," she said uncertainly, her woman's intuition in a moment detecting that which a man might not have discovered at all, "you have not had off your clothes all night. You have never been to bed!"

"No, Aunt Mary!"

"But what will the Doctor say--think of your father----"

"I do not care what he will say. Let him come and compel me if he can. He can thrash me as he does Frank."

"But--oh, Elspeth--Elspeth, dear," the old lady trembled so much that she just managed to lay the tray down on the untouched bed opposite the window, "what will God say?"

"'Like as a father pitieth his children,' isn't that what it says?" The words came out of the depths of the bitterness of that young heart, "well, if that be true, God will say nothing; for if He is like my father, He will not care!"

The old lady sat down on an old rocking-chair which Elspeth liked to keep in the window to sit in and read, half because it had been her mother's, and half (for Elspeth was not usually a sentimental young woman) because it was comfortable.

She put her hands to her face and sobbed into them. Then for the first time Elspeth looked at her. Hitherto she had been staring straight out at the window. So she had seen the day pass and the night come. So she had seen and not seen, heard and not heard the shadow of night sweep across the broad river, the stars come out, the cue owls mew as they flashed past silent as insects on the wing, and last of all, the rooks clamour upwards from the tall trees at break of day.

Now, however, she watched her aunt weeping with that curious sense of detachment which comes to the young along with a first great sorrow.

"Why should _she_ weep?" Elspeth was asking herself, "she had nothing to cry for. There can be no sorrow in the world like my sorrow and shame--and _his_, that is, if he really cares. Perhaps he does not care. They say in books that men often pretend. But no--he at least never could do that. He is too true, too simple, too direct--and he loves me!"

So she watched her aunt rock to and fro and sob without any pity in her heart, but only with a growing wonderment--much as a condemned man might look at a companion who was complaining of toothache. The long vigil of the night had made the girl's heart numb and dead within her. At twenty sorrow and joy alike arrive in superlatives.

Then quite suddenly a spasm of pity of a curious sort came to Elspeth Stuart. After all, it was worth while to love. _He_ was suffering too. Aunt Mary had no one to love her--to suffer with her. Poor Aunt Mary! So she went quickly across and laid her hand on the thin shoulder. It felt angular even through the dress. The sobs shook it.

"Do not cry, auntie," she said, softly and kindly. "I am sorry I vexed you. I did not know."

The old lady looked up at her niece. Elspeth started at the sight of a tear stealing down a wrinkle. Tears on young faces are in place. They can be kissed away, but this seemed wrong somehow.

She patted the thin cheek which had already begun to take on the dry satiny feel of age, which is so different from the roseleaf bloom of youth.

"Then you will obey your father?"

The words came tremulously. The pale lips "wickered." The tear had trickled thus far now, but Aunt Mary did not know it. It is only youth that tastes its own tears. And generally rather likes the flavour.

Elspeth did not stop petting her aunt. She stroked the soft hair, thinning now and silvering. Then she smiled a little.

"No," she said, "I will _not_ obey my father, Aunt Mary. I am no child to be put in the corner. I am a woman, and know what I want."

Yet it was only during the past night watches that she had known it for certain. But yesterday her desire to see Allan Syme had been no more than a little ache deep down in her heart. Now it had become all her life. So fertile a soil wherein to grow love is injudicious opposition.

"But at any rate you will take your breakfast?"

"To please you I will try, aunt!"

Aunt Mary plucked up heart at once. This was better. She had made a beginning. The rest would follow.

When she went downstairs her brother came out of his study to get the key of his daughter's room. She told him how that Elspeth had never gone to bed, and had barely picked at her breakfast.

Dr. Stuart made no remark. He turned and went into his study again to work at his sermon. He too thought that all went well. He held that belief which causes so much misery in the world, that woman's will must always bend before man's.

So it does--provided the man is the right man.

* * * * *

On the third day of her confinement Elspeth Stuart wrote a letter. It began without ceremony, and ended without signature: