The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories. Crockett Samuel Rutherford
who waves farewell through a mist of tears as the pier slides back and the sundering water seethes and widens about the ship.
"You are better, Robert!" I said, smiling too. Dully, and yet with dogged cheerfulness, I said it, as men lie to the dying – and are not believed.
He stretched out his thin hand, the ploughman's horn clean gone from it, and the veins blue and convex upon the shrunk wrist.
"Ave atque vale, Alec, lad!" he answered. "That is what it has come to with Robert Fraser. But how are all at Drumquhat? Ye will be on your road ower to the Nether Neuk?"
This he said, though he knew different.
"I have brought you this from Edinburgh," I said, giving him the little, thin, green volume of Tennyson. I had cut it to save him trouble, and written his name on the blank page before the title.
I shall never forget the way he looked at it. He opened it as a woman unfolds a new and costly garment, with a lingering caress of the wasted finger-tips through which I could almost see the white of the paper, and a slow soft intake of the breath, like a lover's sigh.
His eyes, of old blue and clear, had now a kind of glaze over them, a veiling Indian summer mist through which, however, still shone, all undimmed and fearless, the light of the simplest and manfulest spirit I have ever known. He turned the leaves and read a verse here and there with evident pleasure. He had a way of reading anything he loved as it listening inly to the cadences – a little half-turn of the head aside, and a still contented smile hovering about the lips, like one who catches the first returning fall of beloved footsteps.
But all at once Robert Fraser shut the book and let his hands sink wearily down upon his knee. He did not look at me, but kept his eyes on the red peat ash in the "register" grate.
"It's bonnie," he murmured softly; "and it was a kind thing for you to think on me. But it's gane frae me, Alec – it's a' clean gane. Tak' you the book, Alec. The birdies will never sing again in ony spring for me to hear. I'm back upon the Word, Alec. There's nocht but That for me noo!"
He laid his hand on a Bible that was open beside him on the stand which held his medicine bottles, and a stocking at which his wearied fingers occasionally knitted for a moment or two at a time.
Then he gave the little green-clad Tennyson back to me with so motherly and lingering a regard that, had I not turned away, I declare I know not but that I had been clean done for.
"Yet for a' that, Alec," he said, "do you take the book for my sake. And see – cut out the leaf ye hae written on and let me keep it here beside me."
I did as he asked me, and with the leaf in his hand he turned over the pages of his Bible carefully, like a minister looking for a text. He stopped at a yellowing envelope, as if uncertain whether to deposit the inscription in it. Then he lifted the stamped oblong and handed it to me with a kind of smile.
"There, Alec," he said, "you that has (so they tell me) a sweetheart o' your ain, ye will like to see that. This is the envelope that held the letter I gat frae Jessie Loudon – the nicht Sir James telled me at the Infirmary that my days were numbered!"
"Oh, Robert!" I cried, all ashamed that he should speak thus to a young man like me, "dinna think o' that. You will excite yourself – you may do yourself a hurt – "
But he waved me away, still smiling that slow misty smile, in which, strangely enough, there was yet some of the humoursomeness of one who sees a situation from the outside.
"Na, Alec, lad," he said, softly, "that's gane too. Upon a dark day I made a pact wi' my Maker, and now the covenanted price is nearly paid. Hismessenger wi' the discharge is already on the road. I never hear a hand on the latch, but I look up to see Him enter – aye, and He shall be welcome, welcome as the bridegroom that enters into the Beloved's chamber!"
I covered my brows with my palm, and pretended to look at the handwriting on the envelope, which was delicate and feminine. The Stickit Minister went on.
"Aye, Alec," he said, meditatively, with his eyes still on the red glow, "ye think that ye love the lass ye hae set your heart on; and doubtless ye do love her truly. But I pray God that there may never come a day when ye shall have spoken the last sundering word, and returned her the written sheets faithfully every one. Ye hae heard the story, Alec. I will not hurt your young heart by telling it again. But I spared Jessie Loudon all I could, and showed her that she must not mate her young life with one no better than dead!"
The Stickit Minister was silent a long time here. Doubtless old faces looked at him clear out of the red spaces of the fire. And when he began to speak again, it was in an altered voice.
"Nevertheless, because power was given me, I pled with, and in some measure comforted her. For though the lassie's heart was set on me, it was as a bairn's heart is set, not like the heart of a woman; and for that I praise the Lord – yes, I give thanks to His name!
"Then after that I came back to an empty house – and this!"
He caressed the faded envelope lovingly, as a miser his intimatest treasure.
"I did not mean to keep it, Alec," he went on presently, "but I am glad I did. It has been a comfort to me; and through all these years it has rested there where ye see it – upon the chapter where God answers Job out of the whirlwind. Ye ken yon great words."
We heard a slight noise in the yard, the wheels of some light vehicle driven quickly. The Stickit Minister started a little, and when I looked at him again I saw that the red spot, the size of a crown-piece, which burned so steadfastly on his check-bone had spread till now it covered his brow.
Then we listened, breathless, like men that wait for a marvel, and through the hush the peats on the grate suddenly fell inward with a startling sound, bringing my heart into my mouth. Next we heard a voice without, loud and a little thick, in heated debate.
"Thank God!" cried the Stickit Minister, fervently. "It's Henry – my dear brother! For a moment I feared it had been Lawyer Johnston from Cairn Edward. You know," he added, smiling with all his old swift gladsomeness, "I am now but a tenant at will. I sit here in the Dullarg on sufferance – that once was the laird of acre and onstead!"
He raised his voice to carry through the door into the kitchen.
"Henry, Henry, this is kind – kind of you – to come so far to see me on such a night!"
The Stickit Minister was on his feet by this time, and if I had thought that his glance had been warm and motherly for me, it was fairly on fire with affection now. I believe that Robert Fraser once loved his betrothed faithfully and well; but never will I believe that he loved woman born of woman as he loved his younger brother.
And that is, perhaps, why these things fell out so.
I had not seen Henry Fraser since the first year he had come to Cairn Edward. A handsome young man he was then, with a short, supercilious upper lip, and crisply curling hair of a fair colour disposed in masses about his brow.
He entered, and at the first glimpse of him I stood astonished. His pale student's face had grown red and a trifle mottled. The lids of his blue eyes (the blue of his brother's) were injected. His mouth was loose and restless under a heavy moustache, and when he began to speak his voice came from him thick and throaty.
"I wonder you do not keep your people in better order, Robert," he said, before he was fairly within the door of the little sitting-room. "First I drove right into a farm-cart that had been left in the middle of the yard, and then nearly broke my shins over a pail some careless slut of a byre-lass had thrown down at the kitchen-door."
Robert Fraser had been standing up with the glad and eager look on his face. I think he had half stretched out his hand; but at his brother's querulous words he sank slowly back into his chair, and the grey tiredness slipped into his face almost as quickly as it had disappeared.
"I am sorry, Henry," he said, simply. "Somehow I do not seem to get about so readily as I did, and I daresay the lads and lasses take some advantage."
"They would not take advantage with me, I can tell you!" cried the young doctor, throwing down his driving-cape on the corner of the old sofa, and pulling