Part 5

But Dr. Girnigo knew better. Underneath that awkward exterior, in spite of those embarrassed manners, that air of anxious self-effacement, Dr. Girnigo was well aware that there abode inflexible determination, shrewd common sense and abounding humour--chiefly, however, of the ironic sort.

"Are ye all agreed on this?" he asked.

"I speak in name of the Session!" said Upper Balhaldie succinctly, looking around the circle. And as he looked each man nodded slightly, without, however, raising his eyes from the pattern on the worn study carpet.

The Doctor sighed a long sigh. He knew that at last his trial was come upon him, and nerved himself to meet it like a man.

"It is well," he said; "I shall offer no objection to the congregation calling Mr. Denholm, and I can only hope that he will serve you as faithfully as I have done! I wish you a very good day, gentlemen!"

And with these words the old minister went out, leaving the Session to find their way into the cold air as best they might.

The day after the interview between the Session and the Doctor, Gilbert Denholm called at the manse. He came bounding up the little avenue between the lilac and rhododendron bushes. Jemima Girnigo heard his foot long ere he had reached the porch. Nay, before he had set foot on the gravel she caught the click of the gate latch, which was loose and would only open one way. This Gibby always forgot and rattled it fiercely till he remembered the trick of it.

Then when she heard the _rat-tat-tat_ of Gibby's ash-plant on the panels of the door, she caught her hand to her heart and stood still among her plants.

There was a bell, but Gibby was always in too great a hurry to ring it.

"Perhaps he has come to----" She did not finish the sentence, but the blood, rising hotly to her poor withered cheeks, finished it for her.

"Oh, Miss Jemima!" cried Gibby, bursting in; "I came up to tell you first. I owe it all to you--every bit of it. They are going to call me to be colleague--and--and--we can botanise any amount. Isn't it glorious?"

He held her hand while he was speaking; and Jemima had been looking with hope into his frank, enkindled, boyish eyes. Her eyelids fell at his announcement.

"Yes," she faltered after a pause, "we can botanise!"

"And they wanted to know if I would like to have the manse--as if I would turn you out, who have been my best friend here ever since I came to Rescobie! Not very likely!"

Gilbert had an honest liking for Jemima Girnigo, a feeling, however, which was not in the least akin to love. Indeed, he would as soon have thought of marrying his grandmother or any other of the relationships in the table of prohibited degrees printed at the beginning of the Authorised Version, which he sometimes looked at furtively when Dr. Girnigo was developing his "fourteenthly."

"You are happy where you are?" said Jemima, smiling a little wistfully.

"Oh, yes," cried Gibby enthusiastically; "my landlady makes me perfectly comfortable. She thinks I am a lost soul, I am afraid, but in the meantime she comforts me with apples--first-rate they are in dumplings, too, I can tell you!"

While he spoke Jemima Girnigo was much absorbed over a plant in a remote corner, and more than one drop of an alien dew glistened upon its leaves ere she turned again to the window. Gibby's enthusiasm was a little damped by her seeming indifference.

"Are you not glad?" he asked anxiously; "I came to tell you first. I thought what good times we should have. We must go up Barstobrick Hill for the parsley fern before it gets too late."

"Oh, yes," said Jemima Girnigo, holding out her hand, "I am very glad. No one is as glad as I--I want you to believe that!"

"Of course I do!" cried Gibby; "you always were a good fellow, Jemima! We'll go up to Barstobrick to-morrow. Mind you are ready by nine. I have to be back for a meeting in the afternoon early. It is a hungry place. Put some 'prog' in the _vasculum_!"

And as from the parlour window she watched him down the gravel, he turned around and wrote "9 A.M." in large letters on the gravel with his ash-plant, tossed his hand up at her in a gay salute, and was gone.

* * * * *

But Gilbert Denholm and Jemima Girnigo did not climb Barstobrick for parsley fern on the morrow, and the "9 A.M." stood long plain upon the gravel as a monument of the frail and futile intents of man.

For before the morrow's morn had dawned there had fallen upon Rescobie the dreaded scourge of all paper-making villages. Virulent small-pox had broken out. There were already four undoubted cases, all emanating from the rag-house of Coxon's mills.

About the streets and close-mouths stood awe-struck groups of girls, uncertain whether to go on with their work or return home. There was none of the usual horse-play among the lads of the day-shift as they went soberly mill-ward with their cans. Grave elders, machinemen and engineers, shook their heads and recalled the date at which (a fortnight before) a large consignment of Russian rags had been received and immediately put in hand.

It was whispered, on what authority did not appear, that the disease was of the malignant "black" variety, and that all smitten must surely die. Fear ran swift and chilly up each outside staircase and entered unbidden every "land" in Rescobie. It was the first time such a terror had been in the village, and those who had opposed the settlement of the mills, staid praisers of ancient quiet, lifted their hands with something of jubilation mixed with their fear. "Verily, the judgment of God has fallen," they said, "even as in a night it fell on Babylon--as in fire and brimstone it came upon the Cities of the Plain."

Dr. Girnigo retired to his study, feeling that if the Session had allowed him his own way, things would not have been as they were. He had a sermon to write. So he mended a quill pen, took out his sermon-paper (small quarto ruled in blue), and set to work to improve the occasion. He said to himself that since the parish had now a young and active minister, it was good for Gilbert Denholm to bear the yoke in his youth.

And, indeed, none was readier for the work than that same Gilbert. He was shaving when his landlady, the doctor's widow, cried in the information through the panels of his closed door.

"Thank God," murmured Gibby, "that I have none to mourn for me if I don't get through this!"

Then he thought of his father, but, as he well knew, that fine old Spartan was too staunch a fighter in the wars of grace to discourage his son from any duty, however dangerous. He thought next of--well, one or two girls he had known--and was glad now that it had gone no further.

He did not know yet what was involved in the outbreak or what might be demanded of him. Gilbert Denholm may have had few of the peculiar graces of spiritual religion, but he was a fine, manly, upstanding young fellow, and he resolved that he would do his duty as if he had been heading a rush of boarders or standing in the deadly imminent breach. More exactly, perhaps, he did not resolve at all. It never occurred to him that he could do anything else.

As soon as he had snatched a hasty breakfast and thrown on his coat, he hurried up to the house of Dr. Durie. A plain blunt man was John Durie--slim, pale, with keen dark eyes, and a pointed black beard slightly touched with gray. The doctor was not at home. He had not been in all night and the maid did not know where he was to be found.

To the right-about went Gilbert, asking all and sundry as he went where and when they had seen the doctor. Thomas Kyle, with his back against the angle of the Railway Inn, averred that he had seen him "an 'oor syne gangin' gye fast into Betty McGrath's--but they say Betty is deid or this!" he added, somewhat irrelevantly. Chairles Simson, tilting his bonnet over his brows in order to scratch his head in a new and attractive spot, deponed that about ten minutes before he had noticed "the tails o' the doctor's coat gaun roond the Mill-lands' corner like stoor on a windy day."

Gibby tried Betty McGrath's first. Yes, Dr. Durie had ordered everybody out except the sick woman, who was tossing on her truckle bed, calling on the Virgin and all the saints in a shrill Galway dialect, and her daughter Bridget, a heavy-featured girl of twenty, who stood disconsolately looking out at the window as if hope had wholly forsaken her heart.

Gibby inquired if the doctor had been there recently.

"Oh, yes," said Bridget; "as ye may see if ye'll be troubled lookin' in the corner. He tore down all thim curtains off the box-bed. It'll break the ould woman's heart, that it will, if ever the craitur gets over this."

At the door Gibby met Father Phil Kavannah, a tall young man with honest peasant's eyes and a humorous mouth.

"You and I, surr, will have to see this through between us," said Father Phil, grasping his hand.

"It is a bad business," responded Gilbert; "I fear it will run through the mills."

"Worse than ye think," said the priest very gravely, "ten times worse--three-fourths of the workers have no relatives here, and there will be no one to nurse them. They've talked lashin's about the new village hospital, and raised all Tipperary about where it is to stand and what it is to cost, but that's all that's done about it yet."

Gilbert whistled a bar of "Annie Laurie," which he kept for emergencies.

"Well," he said slowly, "it will be like serving a Sunday-school picnic with half a loaf and one jar of marmalade--but we'll just need to see how far we can make ourselves go round!"

"Right!" said Father Phil with a wave of his hand as he stood with his fingers on the latch of Betty McGrath's door.

Gilbert found the doctor in the great "saal" at the mills. He had his coat off and was scraping at bared arms for dear life. At each door stood a pair of stalwart sentinels, and several hundred mill workers were grouped about talking in low-voiced clusters. Only here and there one more diligent than the rest, or with quieter nerves, deftly passed sheets of white paper from hand to hand as if performing a conjuring trick.

The doctor spied Gilbert as he entered. They were excellent friends. "Man," he cried across the great room, looking down again instantly to his work, "run up to the surgery for another tube of vaccine like this. It is in B cabinet, shelf 6. And as you come back, wire for half-a-dozen more. You know where I get them!"

And Gilbert sped upon his first errand. After that he deserted his own lodgings, and he and Dr. Durie took hasty and informal meals when they could snatch a moment from work. Sundry cold edibles stood permanently on the doctor's oaken sideboard, and of these Gilbert and his host partook without sitting down. Then on a couch, or more often on a few rugs thrown on the floor, one or the other would snatch a hurried sleep.

There were twenty-six cases on Saturday--fifty-eight by the middle of the following week. Within the same period nine had terminated fatally, and there were others who could not possibly recover. Nurses came in from the great city hospitals, as they could be spared, but the demand far exceeded the supply, and Gilbert was indefatigable. Yet his laugh was cheery as ever, and even the delirious would start into some faint consciousness of pleasure at the sound of his voice.

But one day the young minister awoke with a racking head, a burning body, a dry throat, and the chill of ice in his bones.

"This is nothing--I will work it off," said Gibby; and, getting up, he dressed with haste and went out without touching food. The thought of eating was abhorrent to him. Nevertheless, he did his work all the forenoon, and went here and there with medicine and necessaries. He relieved a nurse who had been two nights on duty, while she slept for six hours. Then after that he set off home to catch Dr. Durie before he could be out again. For he had heard his host come in and throw himself down on the couch while he was dressing.

As he passed the front of Rescobie Manse, he looked up to wave a hand to Jemima, as he never forgot to do. Her father was still "indisposed," and Miss Girnigo was understood to be taking care of him. Yes, there she was among her flowers, and Gibby, hardly knowing what he did--being light-headed and racked with pain--openly kissed his hand to her within sight of half-a-score of Rescobie windows.

Then, his feet somehow tangling themselves and his knees failing him, he fell all his length in the hot dust of the highway.

* * * * *

When Gilbert Denholm came to himself he found a white-capped nurse sitting by the window of a room he had never before seen. There was a smell of disinfectants all about, which somehow seemed to have followed him through all the boundless interstellar spaces across which he had been wandering.

"Where am I?" said Gibby, as the nurse came toward the bed. "I have not seen Betty McGrath this morning, and I promised Father Phil that I would."

"You must not ask questions," said the nurse quietly. "Dr. Durie will soon be here."

And after that with a curious readiness Gibby slipped back into a drowsy dream of gathering flowers with Jemima Girnigo; but somehow it was another Jemima--so young she seemed, so fair. Crisp curls glanced beneath her hat brim. Young blood mantled in changeful blushes on her cheeks. Her pale eyes, which had always been a little watery, were now blue and bright as a mountain tarn on a day without clouds. He had never seen so fair and joyous a thing.

"Jemima," he said, or seemed to himself to say, "what is the matter with you? You are different somehow."

"It is all because you love me, Gilbert," she answered, and smiled up at him. "Ever since you told me that, I have grown younger every hour; and, do you know, I have found the Grass of Parnassus at last. It grows by the Gate into the Upper Garden?"

* * * * *

"Hello, Denholm, clothed and in your right mind, eh? That's right!"

It was the cheerful voice of his friend, Dr. Durie, as he stood by Gibby's bedside.

"What has been the matter with me, Durie?" said Gilbert, though in his heart he knew.

"You have had bad small-pox, my boy; and have had a hot chance to find out whether you have been speaking the truth in your sermons."

Gibby could hardly bring his lips to frame the next question. He was far from vain, but to a young man the thought was a terrible one.

"Shall I be much disfigured?"

"Oh, a dimple or two--nothing to mar you on your marriage day. You have been well looked after."

"You have saved my life, doctor."

And Gibby strove to reach a feeble hand outward, which, however, the doctor did not seem to see.

"Not I--you owe that to some one else."

"The nurse who went out just now?" queried Gibby.

"No, she has just been here a few clays, after all danger had passed."

Gilbert strove to rise on his elbow and the red flushed his poor face.

The doctor restrained him with a strong and gentle hand.

"Lie back," he said, "or I will go away and tell you nothing."

He sat down by the bedside, and with a soft sponge touched the convalescent's brow. As he did so he spoke in a low and meditative tone as though he had been talking to himself.

"There was once a foolish young man who thought that he could take twenty shillings out of a purse into which he had only put half a sovereign. He fell down one day on the street. A woman carried him in and nursed him through a fortnight's delirium. A woman caught him as he ran, with only a blanket about him, to drown himself in the Black Pool of Rescobie Water. Night and day she watched him, sleepless, without weariness, without murmuring----"

"And this woman--who saved my life--what was--her name?"

Gibby's voice was very hoarse.

"Jemima Girnigo!" said the doctor, sinking his voice also to a whisper.

"Where is she--I want to see her--I want to thank her?" cried Gibby. He was actually upon his elbow now.

Dr. Dune forced him gently back upon the pillows.

"Yes, yes," he said soothingly, "so you shall--if all tales be true; but for that you must wait."

"Why--why?" cried impatient Gibby. "Why cannot I see her now? She has done more for me than ever I deserved----"

"That is the way of women," said the doctor, "but you cannot thank her now. She is dead."

"Dead--dead!" gasped Gilbert, stricken to the heart; "then she gave her life for me!"

"Something like it," said the doctor, a trifle grimly. For though he was a wise man, the ways of women were dark to him. He thought that Gilbert, though a fine lad, was not worth all this.

"Dead," muttered Gibby, "and I cannot even tell her--make it up to her----"

"She left you a message," said the doctor very quietly.

"What was it?" cried Gibby, eagerly.

"Oh, nothing much," said Dr. Durie; "there was no hope from the first, and she knew it. Her mind was clear all the three days, almost to the last. She may have wandered a little then, for she told me to tell you----"

"What--what--oh, what? Tell me quickly. I cannot wait."

"That the flowers were blooming in the Upper Garden, and that she would meet you at the Gate!"

* * * * *

The Reverend Gilbert Denholm never married. He bears a scar or two on his open face--a face well beloved among his people. There is a grave in Rescobie kirkyard that he tends with his own hands. None else must touch it.

It is the resting-place of a woman whom love made young and beautiful, and about whose feet the flowers of Paradise are blooming, as, alone but not impatient, she waits his coming by the Gate.

*THE TROUBLER OF ISRAEL*

Unless you happen to have made one of a group of five or six young men who every Sunday morning turned their steps towards the little meeting-house in Lady Nixon's Wynd, it is safe to say that you did not know either it or the Doctor of Divinity. That is to say, not unless you were born in the Purple and expert of the mysteries of the Kirk of the Covenants.

The denomination was a small one, smaller even and poorer than is the wont of Scottish sects. By the eternal process of splitting off, produced by the very faithfulness of the faithful, and the remorseless way in which they carried out their own logic, by individual pretestings and testifyings, by the yet sadder losses inflicted by the mammon of unrighteousness, when some, allured by social wealth and position, turned aside to worship in some richer or more popular Zion, the Kirk of the Covenants worshipping in Lady Nixon's Wynd had become but the shadow of its former self.

Still, however, by two infallible signs you might know the faithful. They spoke of the "Boady" and of the "Coavenants" with a lengthening of that _O_ which in itself constituted a shibboleth, and their faces--grim and set mostly--lit up when you spoke of the "Doctor."

But one--they had but one--Dr. Marcus Lawton of Lady Nixon's Wynd. He was their joy, their pride, their poetry; the kitchen to their sour controversial bread, the mellow glory of their denomination. (Again you must broaden the _a_ indefinitely.) He had once been a professor, but by the noblest of self-denying ordinances he had extruded himself from his post for conscience sake.

There was but one fly in their apothecary's ointment-pot when my father grew too stiff to attend the Kirk of the Covenants even once a year, and that was that the Doctor, unable to live and bring up a family on a sadly dwindling stipend (though every man and woman in the little kirk did almost beyond their possible to increase it), had been compelled to bind himself to spend part of the day in a secular pursuit.

At least to the average mind his employment could hardly be called "secular," being nothing more than the Secretaryship of the Association for the Propagation of Gospel Literature; but to the true covenant man this sonorous society was composed of mere Erastians, or what was little better, ex-Erastians and common Voluntaries. They all dated from 1689, and the mark of the beast was on their forehead--that is to say, the seal of the third William, the Dutchman, the revolutionary Gallio. Yet their Doctor, with his silver hair, his faithful tongue, his reverence, wisdom, and weight of indubitable learning, had to sit silent in the company of such men, to take his orders from them, and even to record their profane inanities in black and white. The Doctor's office was at the corner of Victoria Street as you turn down towards the Grassmarket. And when any of his flock met him coming or going thither, they turned away their heads--that is, if he had passed the entrance to Lady Nixon's Wynd when they met him. So far it was understood that he _might_ be going to write his sermon in the quiet of the vestry. After that, there was no escape from the damning conclusion that he was on his way to the shrine of Baal--and other Erastian divinities. So upon George Fourth Bridge the Covenant folk turned away their heads and did not see their minister.

Now this is hardly a story--certainly not a tale. Only my heart being heavy, I knew it would do me good to turn it upon the Doctor. Dr. Marcus Lawton was the son of Dr. Marcus Lawton. When first he succeeded his father, which happened when he was little more than a boy, and long before I was born, he was called "young Maister Lawton." Then it was that he lectured on "The Revelation" on Sabbath evenings, his father sitting proudly behind him. Then the guttering candles of Lady Nixon's looked down on such an array as had never been seen before within her borders. College professors were there, ministers whose day's work was over--as it had been, Cretes and Arabians, heathen men and publicans. Edward Irving himself came once, in the weariful days before the great darkness. The little kirk was packed every night, floor and loft, aisle and pulpit stairs, entrance hall and window-sill, with such a crowd of stern, grave-visaged men as had never been gathered into any kirk in the town of Edinburgh, since a certain little fair man called Rutherford preached there on his way to his place of exile in Aberdeen.