The Stickit Minister's Wooing and Other Galloway Stories

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 a chair in to the fire. He bent forward and chafed his hands before the glowing peats, and as he did so I could see by a slight lurch and quick recovery that he had been drinking. I wondered if Robert Fraser noticed.

Then he leaned back and looked at the Stickit Minister.

"Well, Robert, how do you find yourself to-night? Better, eh?" he said, speaking in his professional voice.

His brother's face flushed again with the same swift pleasure, very pitiful to see.

"It is kind of you to ask," he said; "I think I do feel a betterness, Henry. The cough has certainly been less troublesome this last day or two."

"I suppose there are no better prospects about the property," said Dr. Fraser, passing from the medical question with no more than the words I have written down. I had already risen, and, with a muttered excuse, was passing into the outer kitchen, that I might leave the brothers alone.

So I did not hear Robert Fraser's reply, but as I closed the door I caught the younger's loud retort: "I tell you what it is, Robert – say what you will – I have not been fairly dealt with in this matter – I have been swindled!"

So I went out with my heart heavy within me for my friend, and though Bell Gregory, the bonniest of the farm lasses, ostentatiously drew her skirts aside and left a vacant place beside her in the ingle-nook, I shook my head and kept on my way to the door with rib more than a smile and "Anither nicht, Bell."

"Gie my love to Nance ower at the Nether Neuk," she cried back, with challenge in her tone, as I went out.

But even Nance Chrystie was not in my thoughts that night. I stepped out, passing in front of the straw-thatched bee-hives which, with the indrawing days, had lost their sour-sweet summer smell, and so on into the loaning. From the foot of the little brae I looked back at the lights burning so warmly and steadily from the low windows of the Dullarg, and my mind went over all my father had told me of what the Stickit Minister had done for his brother: how he had broken off his own college career that Henry might go through his medical classes with ease and credit; and how, in spite of his brother's rank ingratitude, he had bonded his little property in order to buy him old Dr. Aitkin's practice in Cairn Edward.

Standing thus and thinking under the beeches at the foot of the dark loaning, it gave me quite a start to find a figure close beside me. It was a woman with a shawl over her head, as is the habit of the cotters' wives in our parish.

"Tell me," a voice, eager and hurried, panted almost in my ear, "is Dr. Fraser of Cairn Edward up there?"

"Yes," I said in reply, involuntarily drawing back a step – the woman was so near me – "he is this moment with his brother."

"Then for God's sake will ye gang up and tell him to come this instant to the Earmark cothouses. There are twa bairns there that are no like to see the mornin' licht if he doesna!"

"But who may you be?" I said, for I did not want to return to the Dullarg. "And why do you not go in and tell him for yourself? You can give him the particulars of the case better than I!"

She gave a little shivering moan.

"I canna gang in there!" she said, clasping her hands piteously; "I darena. Not though I am Gilbert Harbour's wife – and the bairns' mither. Oh, sir, rin!"

And I ran.

But when I had knocked and delivered my message, to my great surprise Dr. Henry Fraser received it very coolly.

"They are only some cotter people," he said, "they must just wait till I am on my way back from the village. I will look in then. Robert, it is a cold night, let me have some whisky before I get into that ice-box of a gig again."

The Stickit Minister turned towards the wall-press where ever since his mother's day the "guardevin," or little rack of cut-glass decanters, had stood, always hospitably full but quite untouched by the master of the house.

I was still standing uncertainly by the door-cheek, and as Robert Fraser stepped across the little room I saw him stagger; and rushed forward to catch him. But ere I could reach him he had commanded himself, and turned to me with a smile on his lips. Yet even his brother was struck by the ashen look on his face.

"Sit down, Robert," he said, "I will help myself."