The Little Minister

  Chapter Twenty.

  END OF THE STATE OF INDECISION.

  Long before I had any thought of writing this story, I had told it sooften to my little maid that she now knows some of it better than I.If you saw me looking up from my paper to ask her, "What was it thatBirse said to Jean about the minister's flowers?" or, "Where wasHendry Munn hidden on the night of the riots?" and heard her confidentanswers, you would conclude that she had been in the thick of theseevents, instead of born many years after them. I mention this nowbecause I have reached a point where her memory contradicts mine. Shemaintains that Rob Dow was told of the meeting in the wood by the twoboys whom it disturbed, while my own impression is that he was awitness of it. If she is right, Rob must have succeeded in frighteningthe boys into telling no other person, for certainly the scandal didnot spread in Thrums. After all, however, it is only important to knowthat Rob did learn of the meeting. Its first effect was to send himsullenly to the drink.

  Many a time since these events have I pictured what might have beentheir upshot had Dow confided their discovery to me. Had I suspectedwhy Rob was grown so dour again, Gavin's future might have been verydifferent. I was meeting Rob now and again in the glen, asking, withan affected carelessness he did not bottom, for news of the littleminister, but what he told me was only the gossip of the town; andwhat I should have known, that Thrums might never know it, he kept tohimself. I suppose he feared to speak to Gavin, who made severalefforts to reclaim him, but without avail.

  Yet Rob's heart opened for a moment to one man, or rather was forcedopen by that man. A few days after the meeting at the well, Rob wasbringing the smell of whisky with him down Banker's Close when he ranagainst a famous staff, with which the doctor pinned him to the wall.

  "Ay," said the outspoken doctor, looking contemptuously into Rob'sbleary eyes, "so this is what your conversion amounts to? Faugh! RobDow, if you were half a man the very thought of what Mr. Dishart hasdone for you would make you run past the public houses."

  "It's the thocht o' him that sends me running to them," growled Rob,knocking down the staff. "Let me alane."

  "What do you mean by that?" demanded McQueen, hooking him this time.

  "Speir at himsel'; speir at the woman."

  "What woman?"

  "Take your staff out o' my neck."

  "Not till you tell me why you, of all people, are speaking against theminister."

  Torn by a desire for a confidant and loyalty to Gavin, Rob was alreadyin a fury.

  "Say again," he burst forth, "that I was speaking agin the ministerand I'll practise on you what I'm awid to do to her."

  "Who is she?"

  "Wha's wha?"

  "The woman whom the minister----?"

  "I said nothing about a woman," said poor Rob, alarmed for Gavin."Doctor, I'm ready to swear afore a bailie that I never saw themthegither at the Kaims."

  "The Kaims!" exclaimed the doctor suddenly enlightened. "Pooh! youonly mean the Egyptian. Rob, make your mind easy about this. I knowwhy he met her there."

  "Do you ken that she has bewitched him; do you ken I saw him trying toput his arms round her; do you ken they have a trysting-place inCaddam wood?"

  This came from Rob in a rush, and he would fain have called it allback.

  "I'm drunk, doctor, roaring drunk," he said, hastily, "and it wasnathe minister I saw ava; it was another man."

  Nothing more could the doctor draw from Rob, but he had heardsufficient to smoke some pipes on. Like many who pride themselves onbeing recluses, McQueen loved the gossip that came to him uninvited;indeed, he opened his mouth to it as greedily as any man in Thrums. Herespected Gavin, however, too much to find this new dish palatable,and so his researches to discover whether other Auld Lichts sharedRob's fears were conducted with caution. "Is there no word of yourminister's getting a wife yet?" he asked several, but only got foranswers, "There's word o' a Glasgow leddy's sending him baskets o'flowers," or "He has his een open, but he's taking his time; ay, he'slooking for the blade o' corn in the stack o' chaff."

  This convinced McQueen that the congregation knew nothing of theEgyptian, but it did not satisfy him, and he made an opportunity ofinviting Gavin into the surgery. It was, to the doctor, the cosiestnook in his house, but to me and many others a room that smelled ofhearses. On the top of the pipes and tobacco tins that littered thetable there usually lay a death certificate, placed there deliberatelyby the doctor to scare his sister, who had a passion for putting thesurgery to rights.

  "By the way," McQueen said, after he and Gavin had talked a littlewhile, "did I ever advise you to smoke?"

  "It is your usual form of salutation," Gavin answered, laughing. "ButI don't think you ever supplied me with a reason."

  "I daresay not. I am too experienced a doctor to cheapen myprescriptions in that way. However, here is one good reason. I havenoticed, sir, that at your age a man is either a slave to a pipe or toa woman. Do you want me to lend you a pipe now?"

  "Then I am to understand," asked Gavin, slyly, "that your locket cameinto your possession in your pre-smoking days, and that you merelywear it from habit?"

  "Tuts!" answered the doctor, buttoning his coat. "I told you there wasnothing in the locket. If there is, I have forgotten what it is."

  "You are a hopeless old bachelor, I see," said Gavin, unaware that thedoctor was probing him. He was surprised next moment to find McQueenin the ecstasies of one who has won a rubber.

  "Now, then," cried the jubilant doctor, "as you have confessed somuch, tell me all about her. Name and address, please."

  "Confess! What have I confessed?"

  "It won't do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays you. No, no, Iam an old bird, but I have not forgotten the ways of the fledgelings.'Hopeless bachelor,' sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man's mouthuntil of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns. When isit to be?"

  "We must find the lady first," said the minister, uncomfortably.

  "You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not fixed on her?"

  "The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her to fix on me."

  "Not a bit of it. But you admit there is some one?"

  "Who would have me?"

  "You are wriggling out of it. Is it the banker's daughter?"

  "No," Gavin cried.

  "I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her three times thisweek. The town is in a ferment about it."

  "She is a great deal in the back wynd."

  "Fiddle-de-dee! I am oftener in the back wynd than you, and I nevermeet her there."

  "That is curious."

  "No, it isn't, but never mind. Perhaps you have fallen to MissPennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we passed the house?"

  "She seems always to be playing on her piano."

  "Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and so when she sees youfrom her window she begins to thump. If I am in the school wynd andhear the piano going, I know you will turn the corner immediately.However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick. Then it is thefactor at the Spittal's lassie? Well done, sir. You should arrange tohave the wedding at the same time as the old earl's, which comes offin summer, I believe."

  "One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor."

  "Eh? You call him a fool for marrying a young wife? Well, no doubt heis, but he would have been a bigger fool to marry an old one. However,it is not Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart. I supposeyou know that the factor's lassie is an heiress?"

  "And, therefore, would scorn me."

  "Try her," said the doctor, drily. "Her father and mother, as I know,married on a ten-pound note. But if I am wrong again, I must adopt thepopular view in Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, youneedn't look indignant at hearing that the people are discussing yourintended. You can no more stop it than a doctor's orders could keepLang Tammas out of church. They have discovered that she sends youflowers twice every week."

  "They never reach me," answered Gavin, th
en remembered the holly andwinced.

  "Some," persisted the relentless doctor, "even speak of your havingbeen seen together; but of course, if she is a Glasgow lady, that is amistake."

  "Where did they see us?" asked Gavin, with a sudden trouble in histhroat.

  "You are shaking," said the doctor, keenly, "like a medical student athis first operation. But as for the story that you and the lady havebeen seen together, I can guess how it arose. Do you remember thatgypsy girl?"

  The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he suddenly wheeledround and fired his question in the minister's face. Gavin, however,did not even blink.

  "Why should I have forgotten her?" he replied, coolly.

  "Oh, in the stress of other occupations. But it was your getting themoney from her at the Kaims for Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurdthough it seems, I think some dotard must have seen you and her at theKaims, and mistaken her for the lady."

  McQueen flung himself back in his chair to enjoy this joke.

  "Fancy mistaking that woman for a lady!" he said to Gavin, who had notlaughed with him.

  "I think Nanny has some justification for considering her a lady," theminister said, firmly.

  "Well, I grant that. But what made me guffaw was a vision of theharum-scarum, devil-may-care little Egyptian mistress of an Auld Lichtmanse!"

  "She is neither harum-scarum nor devil-may-care," Gavin answered,without heat, for he was no longer a distracted minister. "You don'tunderstand her as I do."

  "No, I seem to understand her differently."

  "What do you know of her?"

  "That is just it," said the doctor, irritated by Gavin's coolness. "Iknow she saved Nanny from the poorhouse, but I don't know where shegot the money. I know she can talk fine English when she chooses, butI don't know where she learned it. I know she heard that the soldierswere coming to Thrums before they knew of their destinationthemselves, but I don't know who told her. You who understand her candoubtless explain these matters?"

  "She offered to explain them to me," Gavin answered, still unmoved,"but I forbade her."

  "Why?"

  "It is no business of yours, doctor. Forgive me for saying so."

  "In Thrums," replied McQueen, "a minister's business is everybody'sbusiness. I have often wondered who helped her to escape from thesoldiers that night. Did she offer to explain that to you?"

  "She did not."

  "Perhaps," said the doctor, sharply, "because it was unnecessary?"

  "That was the reason."

  "You helped her to escape?"

  "I did."

  "And you are not ashamed of it?"

  "I am not."

  "Why were you so anxious to screen her?"

  "She saved some of my people from gaol."

  "Which was more than they deserved."

  "I have always understood that you concealed two of them in your ownstable."

  "Maybe I did," the doctor had to allow. "But I took my stick to themnext morning. Besides, they were Thrums folk, while you had never seteyes on that imp of mischief before."

  "I cannot sit here, doctor, and hear her called names," Gavin said,rising, but McQueen gripped him by the shoulder.

  "For pity's sake, sir, don't let us wrangle like a pair of women. Ibrought you here to speak my mind to you, and speak it I will. I warnyou, Mr. Dishart, that you are being watched. You have been seenmeeting this lassie in Caddam as well as at the Kaims."

  "Let the whole town watch, doctor. I have met her openly."

  "And why? Oh, don't make Nanny your excuse."

  "I won't. I met her because I love her."

  "Are you mad?" cried McQueen. "You speak as if you would marry her."

  "Yes," replied Gavin, determinedly, "and I mean to do it."

  The doctor flung up his hands.

  "I give you up," he said, raging. "I give you up. Think of yourcongregation, man."

  "I have been thinking of them, and as soon as I have a right to do soI shall tell them what I have told you."

  "And until you tell them I will keep your madness to myself, for Iwarn you that, as soon as they do know, there will be a vacancy in theAuld Licht kirk of Thrums."

  "She is a woman," said Gavin, hesitating, though preparing to go, "ofwhom any minister might be proud."

  "She is a woman," the doctor roared, "that no congregation wouldstand. Oh, if you will go, there is your hat."

  Perhaps Gavin's face was whiter as he left the house than when heentered it, but there was no other change. Those who were watching himdecided that he was looking much as usual, except that his mouth wasshut very firm, from which they concluded that he had been taking thedoctor to task for smoking. They also noted that he returned toMcQueen's house within half an hour after leaving it, but remained notime.

  Some explained this second visit by saying that the minister hadforgotten his cravat, and had gone back for it. What really sent himback, however, was his conscience. He had said to McQueen that hehelped Babbie to escape from the soldiers because of her kindness tohis people, and he returned to own that it was a lie.

  Gavin knocked at the door of the surgery, but entered without waitingfor a response. McQueen was no longer stamping through the room, redand furious. He had even laid aside his pipe. He was sitting back inhis chair, looking half-mournfully, half-contemptuously, at somethingin his palm. His hand closed instinctively when he heard the dooropen, but Gavin had seen that the object was an open locket.

  "It was only your reference to the thing," the detected doctor said,with a grim laugh, "that made me open it. Forty years ago, sir,I----Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet." Heclosed the locket with a snap. "I hope you have come back, Dishart, tospeak more rationally?"

  Gavin told him why he had come back, and the doctor said he was a foolfor his pains.

  "Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to you?"

  "Quite useless, doctor," Gavin answered, promptly. "My mind is made upat last."