The Little Minister
Chapter Thirty-Six.
STORY OF THE DOMINIE.
When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house, sitting there withmy bonnet on my head, Gavin looking at me. We had forgotten the cannonat last.
In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than once of late. Ihad seen that a time might come when Gavin would have to be told all,and I had even said the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite me.So now I was only repeating the tale, and I could tell it withoutemotion, because it was nigh nineteen years old; and I did not look atGavin, for I knew that his manner of taking it could bring no changeto me.
"Did you never ask your mother," I said, addressing the fire ratherthan him, "why you were called Gavin?"
"Yes," he answered, "it was because she thought Gavin a prettier namethan Adam."
"No," I said slowly, "it was because Gavin is my name. You were calledafter your father. Do you not remember my taking you one day to theshore at Harvie to see the fishermen carried to their boats upon theirwives' backs, that they might start dry on their journey?"
"No," he had to reply. "I remember the women carrying the men throughthe water to the boats, but I thought it was my father who--Imean----"
"I know whom you mean," I said. "That was our last day together, butyou were not three years old. Yet you remembered me when you came toThrums. You shake your head, but it is true. Between the diets ofworship that first Sabbath I was introduced to you, and you must havehad some shadowy recollection of my face, for you asked, 'Surely I sawyou in church in the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?' I said 'Yes,' but I hadnot been in the church in the forenoon. You have forgotten even that,and yet I treasured it."
I could hear that he was growing impatient, though so far he had beenmore indulgent than I had any right to expect.
"It can all be put into a sentence," I said calmly. "Margaret marriedAdam Dishart, and afterwards, believing herself a widow, she marriedme. You were born, and then Adam Dishart came back."
That is my whole story, and here was I telling it to my son, and not atear between us. It ended abruptly, and I fell to mending the fire.
"When I knew your mother first," I went on, after Gavin had said someboyish things that were of no avail to me, "I did not think to end mydays as a dominie. I was a student at Aberdeen, with the ministry inmy eye, and sometimes on Saturdays I walked forty miles to Harvie togo to church with her. She had another lover, Adam Dishart, a sailorturned fisherman; and while I lingered at corners, wondering if Icould dare to meet her and her mother on their way to church, he wouldwalk past with them. He was accompanied always by a lanky black dog,which he had brought from a foreign country. He never signed for anyship without first getting permission to take it with him, and inHarvie they said it did not know the language of the native dogs. Ihave never known a man and dog so attached to each other."
"I remember that black dog," Gavin said. "I have spoken of it to mymother, and she shuddered, as if it had once bitten her."
"While Adam strutted by with them," I continued, "I would hang back,raging at his assurance or my own timidity; but I lost my next chancein the same way. In Margaret's presence something came over me, a kindof dryness in the throat, that made me dumb. I have known divinitystudents stricken in the same way, just as they were giving out theirfirst text. It is no aid in getting a kirk or wooing a woman.
"If any one in Harvie recalls me now, it is as a hobbledehoy whostrode along the cliffs, shouting Homer at the sea-mews. With all mylearning, I, who gave Margaret the name of Lalage, understood womenless than any fisherman who bandied words with them across a boat. Iremember a Yule night when both Adam and I were at her mother'scottage, and, as we were leaving, he had the audacity to kissMargaret. She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and when Irecovered from my horror, I apologized for what he had done. I shallnever forget how her mother looked at me, and said, 'Ay, Gavin, I seethey dinna teach everything at Aberdeen.' You will not believe it, butI walked away doubting her meaning. I thought more of scholarship thenthan I do now. Adam Dishart taught me its proper place.
"Well, that is the dull man I was; and yet, though Adam was alwayssaying and doing the things I was making up my mind to say and do, Ithink Margaret cared more for me. Nevertheless, there was somethingabout him that all women seemed to find lovable, a dash that made themsend him away and then well-nigh run after him. At any rate, I couldhave got her after her mother's death if I had been half a man. But Iwent back to Aberdeen to write a poem about her, and while I was at itAdam married her."
I opened my desk and took from it a yellow manuscript.
"Here," I said, "is the poem. You see, I never finished it."
I was fingering the thing grimly when Gavin's eye fell on somethingelse in the desk. It was an ungainly clasp-knife, as rusty as if ithad spent a winter beneath a hedge.
"I seem to remember that knife," he said.
"Yes," I answered, "you should remember it. Well, after three monthsAdam tired of his wife."
I stopped again. This was a story in which only the pauses wereeloquent.
"Perhaps I have no right to say he tired of her. One day, however, hesauntered away from Harvie whistling, his dog at his heels as ever,and was not seen again for nearly six years. When I heard of hisdisappearance I packed my books in that kist and went to Harvie, whereI opened a school. You see, every one but Margaret believed that Adamhad fallen over the cliffs and been drowned."
"But the dog?" said Gavin.
"We were all sure that, if he had fallen over, it had jumped afterhim. The fisher-folk said that he could have left his shadow behind aseasily as it. Yet Margaret thought for long that he had tired ofHarvie merely and gone back to sea, and not until two years had passedwould she marry me. We lived in Adam's house. It was so near thelittle school that when I opened the window in summer-time she couldhear the drone of our voices. During the weeks before you were born Ikept that window open all day long, and often I went to it and wavedmy hand to her.
"Sometimes, when she was washing or baking, I brought you to theschool. The only quarrel she and I ever had was about my teaching youthe Lord's Prayer in Greek as soon as you could say father and mother.It was to be a surprise for her on your second birthday. On that day,while she was ironing, you took hold of her gown to steady yourself,and began, '~Pater emon ho en tois ouranois~' and to me, behind thedoor, it was music. But at ~agiastheto~, of which you made twosyllables, you cried, and Margaret snatched you up, thinking this wassome new ailment. After I had explained to her that it was the Lord'sPrayer in Greek, she would let me take you to the school-house nomore.
"Not much longer could I have taken you in any case, for already weare at the day when Adam Dishart came back. It was the 7th ofSeptember, and all the week most of the women in Harvie had beensetting off at dawn to the harvest fields and straggling home atnights, merry and with yellow corn in their hair. I had sat on in theschool-house that day after my pupils were gone. I still meant to be aminister, and I was studying Hebrew, and so absorbed in my book thatas the daylight went, I followed it step by step as far as my window,and there I read, without knowing, until I chanced to look up, that Ihad left my desk. I have not opened that book since.
"From the window I saw you on the waste ground that separated theschool from our home. You were coming to me on your hands and feet,and stopping now and again to look back at your mother, who was at thedoor, laughing and shaking her fist at you. I beckoned to you, andtook the book back to my desk to lock it up. While my head was insidethe desk I heard the school-house door pushed open, and thinking itwas you I smiled, without looking up. Then something touched my hand,and I still thought it was you; but I looked down, and I saw AdamDishart's black dog.
"I did not move. It looked up at me and wagged its tail. Then it drewback--I suppose because I had no words for it. I watched it runhalf-round the room and stop and look at me again. Then it slunk out.
"All that time one of my hands had been holding the desk open. Now thelid fell. I put on
my bonnet and went to the door. You were only a fewyards away, with flowers in your fist. Margaret was laughing still. Iwalked round the school and there was no dog visible. Margaret noddedto me, meaning that I should bring you home. You thrust the flowersinto my hand, but they fell. I stood there, dazed.
"I think I walked with you some way across the waste ground. Then Idropped your hand and strode back to the school. I went down on myknees, looking for marks of a dog's paws, and I found them.
"When I came out again your mother was no longer at our door, and youwere crying because I had left you. I passed you and walked straightto the house. Margaret was skinning rushes for wicks. There must havebeen fear in my face, for as soon as she saw it she ran to the door tosee if you were still alive. She brought you in with her, and so hadstrength to cry, 'What is it? Speak!'
"'Come away,' I said, 'come away,' and I was drawing her to the door,but she pressed me into a chair. I was up again at once.
"'Margaret,' I said, 'ask no questions. Put on your bonnet, give methe boy, and let us away.'
"I could not take my eyes off the door, and she was walking to it tolook out when I barred the way with my arm.
"'What have you seen?' she cried; and then, as I only pointed to herbonnet, she turned to you, and you said, 'Was it the black dog,father?'
"Gavin, then she knew; and I stood helpless and watched my wife growold. In that moment she lost the sprightliness I loved the morebecause I had none of it myself, and the bloom went from her facenever to return.
"'He has come back,' she said.
"I told her what I had seen, and while I spoke she put on her bonnet,and I exulted, thinking--and then she took off her bonnet, and I knewshe would not go away with me.
"'Margaret,' I cried, 'I am that bairn's father.'
"'Adam's my man,' she said, and at that I gave her a look for whichGod might have struck me dead. But instead of blaming me she put herarms round my neck.
"After that we said very little. We sat at opposite sides of the fire,waiting for him, and you played on the floor. The harvesters troopedby, and there was a fiddle; and when it stopped, long stillness, andthen a step. It was not Adam. You fell asleep, and we could hearnothing but the sea. There was a harvest moon.
"Once a dog ran past the door, and we both rose. Margaret pressed herhands on her breast. Sometimes she looked furtively at me, and I knewher thoughts. To me it was only misery that had come, but to her itwas shame, so that when you woke and climbed into her lap she shiveredat your touch. I could not look at her after that, for there was ahorror of me growing in her face.
"Ten o'clock struck, and then again there was no sound but the seapouring itself out on the beach. It was long after this, when to methere was still no other sound, that Margaret screamed, and you hidbehind her. Then I heard it.
"'Gavin,' Margaret said to me, 'be a good man all your life.'
"It was louder now, and then it stopped. Above the wash of the sea weheard another sound--a sharp tap, tap. You said, 'I know what soundthat is; it's a man knocking the ashes out of his pipe against hisboot.'
"Then the dog pushed the door off the latch, and Adam lurched in. Hewas not drunk, but he brought the smell of drink into the room withhim. He was grinning like one bringing rare news, and before she couldshrink back or I could strike him he had Margaret in his arms.
"'Lord, lass,' he said, with many jovial oaths, 'to think I'm backagain! There, she's swounded. What folks be women, to be sure.'
"'We thought you were dead, Adam," she said, coming to.
"'Bless your blue eyes,' he answered gleefully; 'often I says tomyself, "Meggy will be thinking I'm with the fishes," and then Ichuckles.'
"'Where have you been all this time?' I demanded sternly.
"'Gavin,' he said effusively, 'your hand. And don't look so feared,man; I bear no malice for what you've done. I heard all about it atthe Cross Anchors.'
"'Where have you been these five years and a half?' I repeated.
"'Where have I no been, lad?' he replied.
"'At Harvie,' I said.
"'Right you are,' said he good-naturedly. 'Meggie, I had no intentionof leaving you that day, though I was yawning myself to death inHarvie; but I sees a whaler, and I thinks, "That's a tidy boat, andI'm a tidy man, and if they'll take me and the dog, off we go."'
"'You never wrote to me,' Margaret said.
"'I meant to send you some scrapes,' he answered, 'but it wasna till Ichanged ships that I had the chance, and then I minds, "Meggy kens I'mno hand with the pen." But I swear I often thought of you, lass; andlook you here, that's better than letters, and so is this and everypenny of it is yours.'
"He flung two bags of gold upon the table, and the chink brought youout from behind your mother.
"'Hallo!' Adam cried.
"'He is mine,' I said. 'Gavin, come here.' But Margaret held youback.
"'Here's a go,' Adam muttered, and scratched his head. Then he slappedhis thigh. 'Gavin,' he said, in his friendliest way, 'we'll toss forhim.'
"He pulled the knife that is now in my desk from his pocket, spat onit, and flung it up. 'Dry, the kid's ours, Meggy,' he explained; 'wet,he goes to Gavin.' I clinched my fist to----But what was the use? Hecaught the knife, and showed it to me.
"'Dry,' he said triumphantly; 'so he is ours, Meggy. Kiddy, catch theknife. It is yours; and, mind, you have changed dads. And now that wehave settled that, Gavin, there's my hand again.'
"I went away and left them, and I never saw Margaret again until theday you brought her to Thrums. But I saw you once, a few days afterAdam came back. I was in the school-house, packing my books, and youwere playing on the waste ground. I asked you how your mother was, andyou said, 'She's fleid to come to the door till you gang awa, and myfather's buying a boat.'
"'I'm your father,' I said; but you answered confidently:
"'You're no a living man. You're just a man I dreamed about; and Ipromised my mother no to dream about you again.'
"'I am your father,' I repeated.
"'My father's awa buying a fishing-boat,' you insisted; 'and when Ispeir at my mother whaur my first father is, she says I'm havering.'
"'Gavin Ogilvy is your name,' I said. 'No,' you answered, 'I have anew name. My mother telled me my name is aye to be Gavin Dishart now.She telled me, too, to fling awa this knife my father gave me, andI've flung it awa a lot o' times, but I aye pick it up again.'
"'Give it to me,' I said, with the wicked thoughts of a fool in myhead.
"That is how your knife came into my possession. I left Harvie thatnight in the carrier's cart, but I had not the heart to return tocollege. Accident brought me here, and I thought it a fitting place inwhich to bury myself from Margaret."