Part 7

It was not only Isobel Swan now, but the whole congregation. Here and there, back and forth subdued, repressed, ashamed, but irresistible, the murmur ran; but the doctor's voice did not shake.

"Fifty-one years of unworthy service, my friends--what of that?--a moment in the eternity of God. Never again shall I meet you here as your minister; but I charge you that when we meet in That Day you will bear me witness whe her I have loved houses or lands, or father or mother or wife or children better than you! And now, fare you well. The memory of bygone communions, of hours of refreshment and prayer in this sacred place, of death-beds blessed and unforgotten in your homes shall abide with me as they shall abide with you. The Lord send among you a worthier servant than Marcus Lawton, your fellow-labourer and sometime minister. Again, and for the last time, fare you well!"

* * * * *

It was a strange communion. The silver cups still stood on the table, battered, but glistening. The plates of bread that had been blessed were beside them. The elders sat around. A low inarticulate murmur of agony travelled about the little kirk as the Doctor sat down and covered his face with his hands, as was his custom after pronouncing the benediction.

Then in the strange hush uprose the tall angular form of William Gilmour from the midst of the Session, his bushy eye-brows working and twitching.

"Oh, sir," he said, in forceful jerks of speech, "dinna leave us. I signed the paper under a misapprehension. The Lord forgive me! I withdraw my name. Jacob Gullibrand may dischairge me if he likes!"

He sat down as abruptly as he had risen.

Then there was a kind of commotion all over the congregation. One after another rose and spoke after their kind, some vehemently, some with shamed faces.

"And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried a dozen at a time. "Bide with us, Doctor! We cannot want you! Pray for us!"

Then Henry Walker, the white-haired, sharp-featured treasurer and precentor of Nixon's Wynd, stretched out his hand. The Doctor had been speaking, as is the custom, not from the pulpit, but from the communion table about which the elders sat. He had held the Gullibrand manifesto in his hand; but ere he lifted them up in his final blessing he had dropped it.

Henry Walker took it and stood up.

"Is it your will that I tear this paper? Those contrary keep their seats--those agreeable STAND UP!"

As one man the whole congregation stood up.

All, that is, save Jacob Gullibrand. He sat a moment, and then amid a silence which could be felt, he rose and staggered out like a man suddenly smitten with sore sickness. He never set foot in Nixon's Wynd again.

Henry Walker waited till the door had closed upon the Troubler of Israel, the paper still in his hand. Then very solemnly he tore it into shreds and trampled them under foot.

He waited a moment for the Doctor to speak, but he did not.

"And you, also, will withdraw your resignation and stay with us?" he said.

The Doctor could not answer in words; but he nodded his head. It was, indeed, the desire of his heart. Then in a loud and surprising voice--jubilant, and yet with a kind of godly anger in it, Henry Walker gave out the closing psalm.

"All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; Him serve with mirth, His praise forthtell, Come ye before Him and rejoice!"

*CARNATION'S MORNING JOY*

This is the story of the little white-washed cottage at the top of the brae a mile or so before you come into Cairn Edward. It is a love story, a simple and uneventful one, quickly told.

The cottage is not now what it was--I fear to say how many years ago--when I was wont to drive in to the Cameronian Kirk on summer Sabbaths in the red farm cart. Then not only I, but every one used to watch from far for the blue waft of reek going up as we sighted the white gable-end far away.

"Carnation's Cottage!" we used to call it, and even my father, Cameronian elder as he was, smiled when he passed it.

It was so named because a girl once lived there whose fame for worth and beauty had travelled very far. Her name was Carnation Maybold, a combination which at once tells its tale of no countryside origin. Carnation's father was a railroad engineer who had come from England and married a farmer's daughter in a neighbouring parish. Then when Carnation's mother died in childbirth, he had called his one daughter by the name of his wife's favourite flower.

"What for do ye no caa' her Jessie like her mither?" said the ancient dame who had come to keep his house.

"Because I never want to hear that name again!" Engineer Maybold had said. For he had been wrapped up in his wife.

Carnation Maybold lost her father, the imaginative man and second-rate engineer, when she was thirteen, a tall slim slip of a girl, with a face like a flower and a cheek that already had upon it the blush of her name. Old Tibbie Lockhart dwelt with her, and defenced the orphan maid about more securely than a city set with walls. The girl went a mile to the Cairn Edward Academy, where she was already in the first girls' class, and John Charles Morrison carried the green bag which held her books. In addition to this, being strongly built, he thrashed any boy who laughed at him for doing so. John Charles was three years older than his girl friend, and had the distinct beginnings of a moustache in days when Carnation still wore her hair in a long plaited tail down her back--for in those days Gretchen braids were the fashion.

It is curious to remember that, while all the other girls were Megs and Katies, Madges and Jennies, Carnation Maybold's first name knew no diminutive. She was, and has remained, just Carnation. That is enough. She was fifteen when John Charles was sent to college. After that she carried her own books both ways. She had offers from several would-be successors to the honourable service, but she accepted none. Besides, she was thinking of putting her hair up.

When John Charles came home in the windy close of the following March, the first thing he did was to put the little box which contained his class medal into his vest pocket, and hasten down the road to meet Carnation. His father was at market. His mother (a peevish, complaining, prettyish woman) was in bed with sick headache, and not to be disturbed. But there remained Carnation. The returned scholar asked no better.

The heart of John Charles beat as he kept the wider side of the turns of the road that he might the sooner spy her in front of him. She was only a slip of a school girl and he a penniless student--but nevertheless his heart beat.

Did he love her? No, he knew that he had never uttered the word in her hearing, and that if he had, she was too young to know its meaning. She was just Carnation--and--and, how his heart beat!

But still the wintry trees stood gaunt and spectral on either hand. He passed them as in a dream, his soul bent on the next twist of the red-gray sandy ribbon of road, that was flung so unscientifically about among the copses and pastures.

There she was at last--taller, lissomer than ever, her green bag swinging in her hand and a gay lilt of a tune upon her lips.

"Carnation!"

She did not answer him by any word. Instead, she stood silent with the song stilled mid-flight upon her lips. She smiled happily, however, as he came near.

"Carnation!" he cried again. And there was something shining in the lad's eyes which she had never seen there before.

She held out the green bag. Then she turned her elbow towards him with a certain defensive instinct.

"Here, take my books, John Charles!" she said, as if he had never been away; and with no more than that they began to walk homeward together.

"Are you not glad to see me?" he asked presently.

"Oh, yes, indeed--very glad!" she answered, looking at the ground; "you will be able to carry my books again, you see!"

"Who has carried them while I have been away?"

"Carried them myself!"

"For true?"

"Honour!"

John Charles breathed so long a breath that it was almost a sigh. Carnation looked at him curiously.

"Why, you have grown a moustache," she said, smiling a quick, radiant smile.

"And you--you are different too. What is it?" he returned, gazing openly at her, as indeed he had been doing ever since they met. She turned her face piquantly towards him. It was like a flower. A faint perfume seemed to breathe about the boy, making his brain whirl.

"Not grown a moustache, anyway," Carnation said, tauntingly.

And she roguishly twirled imaginary tips between her finger and thumb.

"Let me see!" said John Charles, drawing nearer as if to examine into the facts.

"Oh, no," said Carnation hastily, fending him off with a glance, "I'm grown up now, and it's different! Besides----"

And she glanced behind her along the red-gray ribbon of dusty road, along which for lack of company the March dust was dancing little jigs of its own.

"Why different?" began John Charles, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

"Well, don't you see, stupid?" she gave her head a pretty coquettish turn, "I've got my hair up!"

* * * * *

After this they walked somewhat moodily along a while. Or, at least the young man was moody and silent, while Carnation only smiled sedately, and something, perhaps a certain bitter easting in the wind, made her cheeks more fiowerlike and reminiscent of her name than ever.

"Carnation," he said at last, "why are we not to be friends any more? Why have you grown away from me? You are three years younger--and yet--you seem older somehow to-day--years and years older."

"Well, what more do you want--aren't you carrying my bag?"

"Tell me about yourself--what have you been doing?" He changed the subject.

"Going to school--let me see, six twenties are a hundred and twenty. Coming back another hundred and twenty times. Two hundred and forty trudges, and the bag growing heavier all the time! It is quite time you came back, John Charles!"

"Carnation, dear," with trepidation he ventured the adjective, "I have something to show you that nobody has seen--what will you give me if I show it you?"

"I shan't give you anything; but you can show me and see," was the somewhat inconsequent reply.

"Come here then, by the end of the house."

They had arrived at Carnation's cottage, and the consciousness of the eye of Tibbie Lockhart out of the kitchen window was upon the youth.

"I shan't--show it to me here!" said Carnation, swinging the bag of books through the open front door in a casual and school-girlish manner.

"I can't. I don't want Tibbie to know about it--nobody but you must see it!"

"Are you sure nobody has seen it--no girl in Edinburgh--nobody in Cairn Edward?"

"No one at all--not even my mother, not since I got it. I kept it for you, Carnation."

"Is it _very_ pretty?"

"Yes, very pretty! Come in here; you will be sorry if you don't!"

"Well, I will come--just for a moment!"

They went round to the gable of the cottage where, being sheltered from the wind, a couple of sentinel Irish yews grew tall and erect. Between them there was a little bower. John Charles took the little flat box out of his pocket and opened it.

A gold class medal lay within, not fitting very well on account of a thin blue ribbon which the proprietor had strung through a clasp at the top.

"Oh," said Carnation with a gasp, "it _is_ lovely. Is it gold? Why, it has your name on. It is the medal of the class. How proud your father and mother will be!"

And she clasped her hands and gazed, but did not offer to take it in her fingers.

"No, indeed, that they won't," said John Charles grimly; "they won't ever know, and if they did they wouldn't care. I am not going to tell them or any one. I won it for you. All the time I was working I kept saying to myself, 'If I win the medal I shall give it to Carnation to wear round her neck on a blue ribbon--because blue is her colour----'"

"Oh, but I could not!" cried the girl, going back a step or two, "I dare not! Any one might see and read--what is written on it."

"You needn't wear it outside, Carnation," he pleaded, in a low tone; "see, I put the ribbon through it that you might."

"It _is_ pretty"--her face had a kind of inner shining upon it, and her eyes glittered darkly--"it was very nice of you to think about me--not that I believe for a moment you really did. But, indeed, indeed, I can't take it----"

The face of John Charles Morrison fell. His jaw, a singularly determined one, began to square itself.

"Very well," he said, flirting the ribbon out of the clasp and throwing the box on the ground, "do you see that pond down there? As sure as daith" (he used the old school-boy oath of asseveration) "I'll throw it in that pond if ye dinna tak' it!"

Something very like a sob came into the lad's throat.

"And I worked so hard for it. And I thought you would have liked it!"

"I do like it--I do--I do!" cried Carnation, agonised and affrayed.

"No, you don't!"

"Give it me, then--don't look!"

She turned her back upon him, and for a long moment her fingers were busy about her neck.

"_Now!_"

She faced about, the light of a showery April in her eyes. She was smiling and blushing at the same time. There was just a faint gleam of blue ribbon where the division of the white collar came in front of her throat.

John Charles recognised that the moment for which he had striven all through the winter had come. He stooped and kissed her where she stood. Then he turned on his heel and walked silently away, leaving her three times Carnation and a school-girl no more.

She watched him out of sight, the vivid blush slowly fading from her face, and then went demurely within.

"Where gat ye that ribbon wi' the wee guinea piece at the end o't?" said guardian Tibbie that night, suggestively.

"I know; but I promised not to tell!" quoth the witch, who indeed, twisted the shrewish-tongued old woman round her finger.

"But I think I can guess," said Tibbie shrewdly; "gin that blue ribbon wasna coft in Edinbra toon, I'se string anither gowden guinea upon it!"

But Carnation Maybold only smiled and pouted her lips, as if at a pleasant memory.

* * * * *

From sixteen to twenty-six is more than a full half of the period of life to which we give the name of girlhood. But at twenty-six Carnation Maybold was Carnation Maybold still. Yet there had been no breaking off, no failure in the steadfastness of that early affection which had sent John Charles along the dusty road to carry the school-bag of green baize.

But the medallist never returned to college. During the early falling twilight of the next Hint-o'-Hairst (or end of harvest), his father, Gawain Morrison, driving homeward from market all too mellow, brake neck-bone over the crags of the Witch's pool.

So, his mother being a feeble woman, though still young and buxom, John Charles had perforce to bide at home and shoulder the responsibilities of a farm of two thousand pastoral acres and a rent of L800, payable twice a year in Cairn Edward town.

It was a sore burden for such young shoulders, but John Charles had grit in him, and, what made his heart glad, he could do most of his work, by lea rig and pasturage, within sight of a certain cottage where dwelt the maid with a ribbon of blue about her neck.

There was no possibility of any marriage, nor, indeed, talk of any between them, and that for two good reasons: Gawain Morrison had died in debt. He was "behindhand at the Bank," and his farm and stock were left to his widow at her own disposition, unless she should marry again, in which case they were willed to his son John Charles Morrison, presently student of arts in the University of Edinburgh. The will had been made during the one winter that son had spent away from home.

John Charles' bitter hour in the bank at Cairn Edward was sweetened by the sympathy and kindliness of Henry Marchbanks, who, being one of the best judges of character in Scotland, saw cause to give this young man a chance to discharge his father's liabilities.

At twenty-five John Charles was once more a free man, and there was a substantial balance to his mother's credit in the bank of Cairn Edward. Penny of his own he had not received one for all his five years' work.

But Mrs. Morrison was that most foolish of womankind--an old woman striving to appear young. She had taken a strong dislike to the girl mistress of the white cottage at her gates, and was never tired of railing at her pretensions to beauty, at her lightheadedness, and at the suitors who stayed their horses for a word or a flower from across the cropped yew hedge of Carnation Maybold's cottage.

But John Charles, steadfast in all things, was particularly admirable in his silences. He let his mother rail on, and then, at the quiet hour of e'en stole down to the dyke-side for a "word." He never entered Carnation's dwelling, nor did he even pass the girdling hedge of yew and privet. But there was one place where the defences were worn low. Behind the well curb occurred this breach of continuity in the dead engineer's hedges, and to this place night after night through the years, that quiet steadfast lover, John Charles Morrison, came to touch the hand of his mistress.

She did not always meet him. Sometimes she had girl friends with her in the cottage, sometimes she had been carried off to a merry-making in Cairn Edward, to return under suitable escort in the evening.

But even then Carnation had a comfortable sense of safety, for ever since one unforgotten night, Carnation knew that in any danger she had only to raise her voice to bring to her rescue a certain tall broad-shouldered ghost, which with attendant collies haunted the gray hillsides.

That night was one on which a tramp, denied an alms, had seized the girl by the arm within half a mile of her home. And at the voice of her sharp crying, a different John Charles from any she had ever seen had swung himself over the hillside dyke, and descended like an avenging whirlwind upon the assailant.

Yet so secretive is the country lover, that few save an odd shepherd or two of his own suspected the comradeship which existed between these two. Carnation was in great request at concerts and church bazaars in the little neighbouring town; she even went to a local "assembly" or two every winter, under the sheltering wing of a school friend who had married early.

John Charles did not dance, so he was not asked to these. He was thought, indeed, to be rather a grave young fellow, busied with his farm and his books. No one connected his name with that of his fair and sprightly neighbour.

Yet somehow, in spite of many opportunities, Carnation Maybold did not marry. She was bright, cultivated, winsome, and certainly the prettiest girl for miles around.

"Are you waiting for a prince?" little Mrs. George Walter, her friend of the assemblies, had said to her more than once.

"Yes," smiled Carnation, "the true Prince!"

"I suppose that is why you always wear a ribbon of true blue?" retorted her friend. "Do let me see what is at the end of it--ah, you will not. I think you are very mean, Carnation. All is over between us from this moment. I'm sure I came and told _you_ as soon as ever George spoke!"

"But perhaps," said Carnation quietly, "_my_ George has not yet spoken!"

"Well, if he hasn't, why don't you make him," said her friend with vehemence, "or else why have eyes like those been thrown away upon you?"

"I have worn this nearly ten years!" said Carnation, a little wistfully.

"Carnation Maybold," said her friend indignantly, "you ought to be ashamed! And so it was for the sake of that school-girl's split sixpence that you refused Harry Foster, whose father has an estate of his own, and Kenneth Walker, the surveyor, as well as--oh, I have no patience with such silly sentiment!"

Carnation smiled even more quietly than usual.

"Gracie," she said, "if I am content, I don't see what difference it can make to you."

"You ought to be married--you oughtn't to live alone with only an old woman to look after you. You are wasting the best years of your life----"

"Gracie, dear," said Carnation, "you mean to be kind; but I ask you not to say any more about this. There are worse things that may happen to a woman, than that she should wait and wait--aye, even if she should die waiting!"

* * * * *

It was the evening of the August day on which Mrs. Walter had spoken thus to Carnation that John Charles came cottagewards slowly and gloomily. He had been thinking bitter thoughts, and at last had taken a resolve that was likely to cost him dear.

In the warm light of evening the girl, who stood at the farther side of the gap, seemed wondrously beautiful. The school-girl look had long since passed away. Only the fresh rose on the cheeks, the depths in the eyes (as if a cloud shadowed them), the lissom bend of the young body towards him were the same. But the hair was waved and plaited about the head in a larger and nobler fashion. The contours were a little fuller, and the lips, perfect as ever in shape, were stiller, and the smile on them at once more assured and more sedate.

"Carnation, I cannot hold you any longer to your promise!"

"And why not, John; are you tired of me?"

"I am not one of those who grow tired, dear," the young man's voice was so low none could hear it but the one listener. "I will never grow tired--you know that. But I waste the best years of your life. You are beautiful, and the time is passing. You might marry any one----"

"Have you any particular one in your mind?"

The question at once spurred and startled him. He moved his feet on the soft grass of the meadow with a certain embarrassment.

"Yes, Carnation; my mother was speaking to me to-night of Harry Foster of Carnsalloch. His father has told her of his love for you. She says I am keeping you from accepting him. I have come to release you from any promise, Carnation, spoken or implied."

"There is no promise, John--save that I love you, and will never marry any one else."