The Standard Bearer

The mowers took their scythes over their shoulders and set off all coatless and bonnetless from the water-meadows. The herds left their sheep to stray masterless upon the hill, and came with nothing but their crooks in their hands. The farmers hastily ran in for Brown Bess and a horn of powder. So that ere the first furrow was turned from end to end the glebe was black with people, swarming like an angry hive whose defences have been stormed.

So the invaders could not stand, either in numbers or anger, against the honest folk who had sworn to keep sacred the home of the man of their choice.

Even as I came to the entering in of the Kirk loaning, I saw the ending of the fray. The invaders were fleeing down the water-side; the poor lad McKie, who in his anger had stricken a woman to the ground and stamped upon her, had a wound in his hand made by a reaping-hook. The ploughs had been thrown into the Dee, and the folk of Balmaghie were pursuing and beating stray fugitives, like school laddies threshing at a wasps’ nest.

Then I, who had striven so lately with the powers of evil in high places, was stricken to the heart at this unseemly riot, and resolved within me that there should be a quick end to this.

Who was I that I should thus be a troubler of Israel, and make the hot anger rise in these quiet hearts? Could I stand against all Scotland? Nay, could I alone be in the right and all the others in the wrong? There was surely work for me to do outside the bounds of one small parish – at least, in all broad Scotland, a few godly folk of the ancient way to whom I could minister.

So I resolved then and there, that after the Sabbath service at which I had bidden Earlstoun to purge himself by oath and public confession, I would no longer remain in Balmaghie to stir up wrath, but depart over Jordan with no more than my pilgrim-staff in my hand.

So, when at last the people had vanquished the last invader and come back to the kirk, I called them together and spoke quietly to them.

“This thing,” said I, “becomes a scandal and a shaming. This is surely not the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace. True, not we, but those who have come against us, began the fray. But when men stumble over a stone in the path, it is time that the stone be removed.

“Now I, Quintin MacClellan, your minister, am the stone of stumbling – I, and none other, the rock of offence. I will therefore remove myself. I will cease to trouble Israel.”

“No, no,” they cried; “surely after this they will leave us alone. They will never return. Bide with us, for you are our minister, and we your faithful and willing folk.”

And this saying of theirs, in which all joined, moved me much; nevertheless I was fixed in my heart, and could make no more of it than that I must depart.

Which, when they heard, they were grieved at very sorely, and appointed certain of them, men of weight and sincerity, to combat my resolution.

But it was not to be, for I made up my mind.

I saw that there might be an open door elsewhere, and though I would not abandon my work in Balmaghie, yet neither would I any more confine my ministrations. I would go out to the Hill-folk, who before had called me, and if they accepted of me, well! And if not – why, there were heathen folk enough in Scotland with none to minister to them; and it would be strange if He who sent out his disciples two by two, bidding them take neither purse nor script, would not find bread and water for a poor wandering teacher throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.

CHAPTER XXXVII

FARE YOU WELL!

The fateful Sabbath came – a day of infinite stillness, so that from beside the tombs of the martyr Hallidays in the kirkyard of Balmaghie you could hear the sheep bleating on the hills of Crossmichael a mile away, the sound breaking mellow and thin upon the ear over the still and azure river.

To me it was like the calm of the New Jerusalem. And, indeed, no place that ever I have seen can be so blessedly quiet as the bonnie kirk-knowe of Balmaghie, mirrored on a windless day in the encircling stillness of the Water of Dee.

The folk gathered early, clouds upon clouds of them, so that I think every man, woman, and child in the parish must have save the children that could not walk, and the aged who dwelt too far away to be carried.

Alexander Gordon sat at my right hand, immediately beneath the pulpit.

There seemed an extraordinary graciousness in the singing that day, a special fervour in the upward swell of the voices, a more excellent, sober sweetness in the Sabbath air. And of that I must not think, for I was to leave all this – to leave for ever the vale of blessing wherein I had hoped to spend my days.

Yes, I would adventure forth alone rather than that a loyal folk should suffer any more because of me. But first, so far as in me lay, I would set right the matter of Alexander Gordon and his trouble.

It was the forty-sixth Psalm that they were singing, and as they sang the people tell that herds on the hill stood still to listen to the chorus of that mighty singing, and, without knowing why, the water stood in their eyes that day. There seemed to be something by-ordinarily moving in all that was done. Thuswise it went:

God is our refuge and our strength,
In straits a present aid,
Therefore although the earth remove,
We will not be afraid.

And as she sang I saw Mary Gordon looking past me with the glory of the New Song in her eyes. And I knew that her heart, too, was touched.

By the pillar in the arched nook at the door stood Hob my brother, and by him Alexander-Jonita. They looked sedately down upon one psalm-book. And in that day I was glad to think that one man was happy.

Poor lad! That which it was laid upon me to do came as a sad surprise to him. Out of the window, as I stood up to the sermon, I could see the river slowly take its way. It glinted back more blue and sparkling than ever I had seen it, and my heart gave a great stound that never more was I to abide by the side of that quiet water, and in the sheltered nook where I had known such strange providences. Once I had thought it would be gladsome for me to leave it, but now, when the time came, I thought so no more.

Even the little glimpses I had of that fair landscape through the narrow kirk windows brought back a thousand memories. Yonder, by the thorn, I had seen a weak one made nobler than I by the mighty power of love.

Down there beside the dark still waters I had watched the lights glimmer in the Kirk of Crossmichael, where sat my foes, angry-eager to make an end. But the psalm again seized my heart and held it.

A river is, whose streams do glad
The city of our God,
The Holy Place wherein the Lord
Most High hath His abode.

And in a moment the Dee Water and its memories of malice were blotted out. The ripples played instead over the River that flows from about the Throne of God. I saw all the warrings of earth, the heart-burnings, the strifes, the little days and evil nights washed away in a broad flood of grace and mercy.

I was ready to go I knew not whither. It might be that there was a work greater and more enduring for me to do, my pilgrim staff in my hand, among the flowe-mosses and peaty wildernesses of the South-west than here in the well-sheltered strath of Dee.

Now, at all events, I must face the blast, the bluster and the bite of it. But though I was to look no more on these well-kenned, kindly faces as their minister, I knew that their hearts would hold by me, and their lips breathe a prayer for me each day at eventide.

And so I bade them farewell. What I said to them is no man’s business but theirs and mine, and shall not be written here. But the tears flowed down and the voice of mourning was heard.

Then, ere I pronounced the benediction, I told them how that one dear to me and well known to them had a certain matter to set before them.

With that uprose Alexander Gordon in the midst, looming great like a hero seen in the morning mist.

I put him to the solemn oath, and then and there he declared before them his innocence of the greater evil, purging himself, as the manner was, by solemn and binding oath, which purgation had been refused him by the Presbytery.

“By the grace and kindness of your minister, I, Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, being known to you all, declare myself wholly innocent of the crime laid to my charge by the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. May the Lord in whom I believe have no mercy on my soul if I speak not the truth.

“But as for the lesser shame,” so he continued, “that I brought on myself and on the cause for which I have been in time past privileged to suffer, in that I was overcome with wine in the change-house of St. John’s, Clachan – that much is true. With contrition do I confess it. And I confess also to the unholy and hellish anger that descended on my spirit, from which blackness of darkness I was brought by your minister. For which I, unworthy, shall ever continue to praise the Lord of mercies, who did not cut me off with my sin unconfessed or my innocence unproclaimed.”

Alexander Gordon sat down, and there went a sigh and a murmur over all the folk like the wind over ripe wheat in a large field.

Then I told them how that my resolve was taken, and that it was necessary that I should depart from the midst of them in order that there might be peace.

But one and another throughout the kirk cried, “Nay, we will not let you go! We have fought for you; desert us not now. The bitterness of the blast is surely over; now they will let us alone!”

Thus one and another cried out there in the kirk, but the most part only groaned in spirit and were troubled.

“Ye shall not be less my people that another is set in my place. I go indeed to seek a wider ministry. I have been called by the remnant of the Hill-folk that have so long been without a pastor. Whether I am fitted to be their minister I do not know, but in weakness and the acknowledgment of it there is ever the beginning of strength. I have loved your parish and you. Dear dust lies in that kirkyard out there, and when for me the Angel of the Presence comes who calls not twice, that is where I should like to lie, under the blossoming hawthorn trees near by where the waters of Dee flow largely and quietly about the bonny kirk-knowe of Balmaghie.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

“I LOVE YOU, QUINTIN!”

There was little more to do. The scanty stock of the glebe was, by Hob’s intervention, sold in part to Nathan Gemmell, of Drumglass, and the remainder driven along the Kenside by the fords of the Black Water to Ardarroch, where my mother received it with uplifted, querulous hands, and my father calmly as if he had never expected anything else.