A Minister's Day

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Title:     A Minister's Day
Author: S. R. Crockett [More Titles by Crockett]

On either side the great and still ice sea
Are compassing snow mountains near and far;
While, dominant, Schreckhorn and Finsteraar
Hold their grim peaks aloft defiantly.

Blind with excess of light and glory, we,
Above whose heads in hottest mid-day glare
The Schreckhorn and his sons arise in air,
Sink in the weary snowfields to the knee;

Then, resting after peril pass'd in haste,
We saw, from our rock-shelter'd vantage ledge,
In the white fervent heat sole shadowy spot,

Familiar eyes that smiled amid the waste--
Lo! in the sparsed snow at the glacier edge,
The small blue flower they call Forget-me-not!

The sun was glinting slantwise over the undulating uplands to the east. Ben Gairn was blushing a rosy purple, purer and fainter than the flamboyant hues of sunset, when the Reverend Richard Cameron looked out of his bedroom window in the little whitewashed manse of Cairn Edward. His own favourite blackbird had awakened him, and he lay for a long while listening to its mellow fluting, till his conscience reproached him for lying so long a-bed on such a morning.

Richard Cameron was by nature an early riser, a gift to thank God for. Many a Sabbath morning he had seen the sun rise from the ivy-grown arbour in the secluded garden behind the old whitewashed kirk. It was his habit to rise early, and, with the notes of his sermon in hand, to memorise, or "mandate," them, as it was called. So that on Sabbath, when the hill-folk gathered calm and slow, there might be no hesitation, and he might be able to pray the Cameronian supplication, "And bring the truth premeditated to ready recollection"--a prayer which no mere "reader" of a discourse would ever dare to utter.

But this was not a morning for "mandating" with the minister. It was the day of his pastoral visitation, and it behoved one who had a congregation scattered over a radius of more than twenty miles to be up and doing. The minister went down into the little study to take his spare breakfast of porridge and milk. Then, having called his housekeeper in for prayers--which included, even to that sparse auditory, the exposition of the chapter read--he took his staff in hand, and, crossing the main street, took the road for the western hills, on which a considerable portion of his flock pastured.

As he went he whistled, whenever he found himself at a sufficient distance from the scattered houses which lined the roads. He was everywhere respectfully greeted, with an instinctive solemnity of a godly sort--a solemnity without fear. Men looked at him as he swung along, with right Scottish respect for his character and work. They knew him to be at once a man among men and a man of God.

The women stood and looked longer after him. There was nothing so striking to be seen in Galloway as that clear-cut, clean-shaven Greek face set on the square shoulders; for Galloway is a country of tall, stoop-shouldered men--a country also at that time of shaven upper lips and bristling beards, the most unpicturesque tonsure, barring the mutton-chop whisker, which has yet been discovered. The women, therefore, old and young, looked after him with a warmth about their hearts and a kindly moisture in their eyes. They felt that he was much too handsome to be going about unprotected.

Notwithstanding that the minister had a greeting in the bygoing for all, his limbs were of such excellent reach, and moved so fast over the ground, that his pace was rather over than under four miles an hour. Passing the thirteen chimneys of the "Lang Raw," he crossed Dee bridge and bent his way to the right along the wide spaces of the sluggish river. The old fortress of the Douglases, the castle of Thrieve, loomed up behind him through the wavering heat of the morning. Above him was the hill of Knockcannon, from which Mons Meg fired her fatal shots. The young minister stood looking back and revolving the strange changes of the past. He saw how the way of the humble was exalted, and the lofty brought down from their seats.

"Some put their trust in horses, and some in chariots," said the minister, "but we will trust in the Lord."

He spake half aloud.

"As ye war sayin', sir, we wull trust the Lord--Himsel' wull be oor strength and stay."

The minister turned. It was a middle-aged man who spoke--David M'Kie, the familiar good spirit of the village of Whunnyliggate, and indeed of the whole parish. Wherever sickness was, there David was to be found.

"I was thinking," said the minister sententiously, "that it is not the high and lofty ones who sit most securely on their seats. The Lord is on the side of the quiet folk who wait."

"Ay, minister," said David M'Kie tentatively.

It was worth while coming five miles out of a man's road to hear the minister's words. There was not a man who would have a word to say, except himself, in the smiddy of Whunnyliggate that night--not even the autocratic smith.

"Yes, David, it was grand, no doubt, to hear Clavers clattering down the Lawnmarket and turning the West Port like a whirlwind, with all his pennons fluttering; but it was the Westland Levies, with their pikes and their Bibles, that won the day at Dunkeld in the hinder-end. The king and his men were a bonnie sicht, with their lace collars and their floating love-locks; but the drab-coats beat him out of the field, because the Lord was on their side, at Naseby and Marston Moor."

The two men were now on the final rise of the hillside. The whole valley of the Dee lay beneath them, rich with trees and pasture-lands, waving crops and the mansions of the great. The minister shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked beneath the sun. He pointed with his finger to Thrieve, whose tall keep glimmered up from its island amid the mists of the river.

"There is the castle where the proud once dwelt and looked to dwell for ever, having no fear of God or man. The hanging-stone is there that never wanted its tassel, the courtyard where was the ready block, the dungeon for the captive, the banquet-hall and the earl's chamber. They are all there, yet only the owl and the bat dwell in them for ever."

"There is a boy that makes poetry aboot the like o' that," said David M'Kie, who loved to astonish the minister.

"And who, pray, is the boy who makes poetry? I would like to see him."

"'Deed, minister, gin ye're gaun up to Drumquhat the day, as I jalouse ye are, ye may see him. They ca' him Walter Carmichael. He's some sib to the mistress, I'm thinkin'."

"Yes, I have seen him in church, but I never had speech with the lad," said the minister.

"Na, I can weel believe that. The boy's no' partial-like to ministers--ye'll excuse me for sayin'--ever since he fell oot wi' the minister's loon, and staned him aff the Drumquhat grund. Saunders lickit him for that, an' so he tak's the road if ever a minister looks near. But gin ye come on him afore he can make the Hanging Shaw, ye may get speech o' him, and be the means o' doing him a heap o' guid."

At this point their ways parted. The minister held on up the valley of the Ken, curving over the moorland towards the farm of Drumquhat. He went more leisurely now that he had broken the back of his morning's walk. The larks sprang upward from his feet, and their songs were the expression of an innocent gladness like that which filled his own heart.

He climbed the high stone dykes as they came in his way, sometimes crossing his legs and sitting a while on the top with a sort of boyish freedom in his heart as though he too were off for a holiday--a feeling born in part of the breezy uplands and the wide spaces of the sky. On his right hand was the dark mass of the Hanging Shaw, where it began to feather down to the Black Water, which rushed along in the shadow to meet the broad and equable waters of the Ken.

As the minister came to one of these dykes, treading softly on a noiseless cushion of heather and moss, he put his foot on a projecting stone and vaulted over with one hand lightly laid on the top stone. He alighted with a sudden bound of the heart, for he had nearly leapt on the top of a boy, who lay prone on his face, deeply studying a book. The boy sprang up, startled by the minister's unexpected entrance into his wide world of air, empty of all but the muirfowls' cries.

For a few moments they remained staring at each other--tall, well-attired minister and rough-coated herdboy.

"You are diligent," at last said the minister, looking out of his dark eyes into the blue wondering orbs which met his so squarely and honestly. "What is that you are reading?"

"Shakespeare, sir," said the boy, not without some fear in telling the minister that he was reading the works of the man who was known among many of the Cameronians as "nocht but the greatest of the play-actors."

But the minister was placable and interested. He recognised the face as that of the boy who came to church on various occasions; but with whom he had found it so difficult to come to speech.

"How many plays of Shakespeare have you read?" queried the minister again.

"Them a'--mony a time," said the boy. The minister marvelled still more. "But ye'll no' tell my gran'mither?" said the boy beseechingly, putting the minister upon his honour.

Mr. Cameron hesitated for a moment, and then said--

"I will not tell your grandmother unless you are doing something worse than reading Shakespeare, my boy. You are from Drumquhat, I think," he continued. "What are you doing here?"

The boy blushed, and hung his head.

"Cutting thistles," he said.

The minister laughed and looked about. On one hand there was a mown swathe of thistles, on the other they still grew luxuriantly all down the slope to the burnside.

"I suppose you are cutting down the thistles in Shakespeare? There are a good many of them," he said; "but is that what your master keeps you for?"

The boy looked up quickly at this imputation on his honesty.

"I'm on piecework," he said, with a kind of defiance in his tone.

"On piecework?" asked the minister, perplexed; "how is that?"

"Weel, sir, it's this way, ye see. Gran'faither used to pay me a penny an hour for cuttin' the thistles. He did that till he said I was the slowest worker ever he had, an' that by the time that I was done wi' ae side o' the field, the ither was ready to begin owre again. I said that I was quite willin' to begin again, but he said that to sit doon wi' a book and cut as far roon' ye as the hook could reach, was no' the kind o' wark that he had been accustomed to on the farm o' Drumquhat. So he took me off working by time and put me on piecework. I dinna get as muckle siller, but I like it juist as weel. So I can work and read time aboot."

"But how do you know how the time goes?" asked the minister, for watches were not at that date to be found in the pockets of herdboys on the Galloway hills.

The boy pointed to a peeled willow-wand which was stuck in the ground, with a rough circle drawn round it.

"I made that sun-dial. Rab Affleck showed me," he said simply, without any of the pride of genius.

"And are ye sure that the working hour is always the same length as the reading time?" asked the minister.

Walter looked up with a bright twinkle in his eye.

"Whiles when I'm workin' at the thistles, she may get a bit kick forrit," he said.

The minister laughed a low, mellow laugh. Then he quoted a text, as was customary with him:

"'And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees in the dial of Ahaz.'"

The minister and Walter sat for a long time in the heat of the noonday regarding one another with undisguised interest. They were in the midst of a plain of moorland, over which a haze of heat hung like a diaphanous veil. Over the edge there appeared, like a plain of blue mist, the strath, with the whitewashed farmhouses glimmering up like patches of snow on a March hillside. The minister came down from the dyke and sat beside the boy on the heather clumps.

"You are a herd, you tell me. Well, so am I--I am a shepherd of men, though unworthy of such a charge," he added.

Walter looked for further light.

"Did you ever hear," continued Mr. Cameron, looking away over the valley, "of One who went about, almost barefoot like you, over rocky roads and up and down hillsides?"

"Ye needna tell me--I ken His name," said Walter reverently.

"Well," continued the minister, "would you not like to be a herd like Him, and look after men and not sheep?"

"Sheep need to be lookit after as weel," said Walter.

"But sheep have no souls to be saved!" said Richard Cameron.

"Dowgs hae!" asserted Walter stoutly.

"What makes you say so?" said the minister indulgently. He was out for a holiday.

"Because, if my dowg Royal hasna a soul, there's a heap o' fowk gangs to the kirk withoot!"

"What does Royal do that makes you think that he has a soul?" asked the minister.

"Weel, for ae thing, he gangs to the kirk every Sabbath, and lies in the passage, an' he'll no as muckle as snack at a flee that lichts on his nose--a thing he's verra fond o' on a week day. An' if it's no' yersel' that's preachin', my gran'faither says that he'll rise an' gang oot till the sermon's by."

The minister felt keenly the implied compliment.

"And mair nor that, he disna haud wi' repeating tunes," said Walter, who, though a boy, knew the name of every tune in the psalmody--for that was one of the books which could with safety be looked at under the bookboard when the minister was laying down his "fifthly," and when some one had put leaden clogs on the hands of the little yellow-faced clock in the front of the gallery--a clock which in the pauses of the sermon could be heard ticking distinctly, with a staidness and devotion to the matter in hand which were quite Cameronian.

"Repeating tunes!" said the minister, with a certain painful recollection of a storm in his session on the Thursday after the precentor had set up "Artaxerxes" in front of him and sung it as a solo without a single member of the congregation daring to join.

"Ay," said Walter, "Royal disna hand wi' repeats. He yowls like fun. But 'Kilmarnock' and 'Martyrs' fit him fine. He thumps the passage boards wi' his tail near as loud's ye do the Bible yersel'. Mair than that, Royal gangs for the kye every nicht himsel'. A' that ye hae to say is juist 'Kye, Royal--gae fetch them!' an' he's aff like a shot."

"How does he open the gates?" queried the minister.

"He lifts the bars wi' his nose, but he canna sneck them ahint him when he comes back."

"And you think that he has a soul?" said the minister, to draw the boy out.

"What think ye yersel', sir?" said Walter, who at bottom was a true Scot, and could always answer one question by asking another.

"Well," answered the minister, making a great concession, "the Bible tells us nothing of the future of the beasts that perish--"

"Who knoweth," said Walter, "the soul of the beast, whether it goeth upward or whether it goeth downward to the ground?"

The minister took his way over the moor, crossing the wide peat-hags and the deep trenches from which the neighbouring farmers of bygone generations had cut the peat for their winter fires. He went with a long swinging step very light and swift, springing from tussock to tussock of dried brown bent in the marshy places.

At the great barn-door he came upon Saunders M'Quhirr, master of the farm of Drumquhat, whose welcome to his minister it was worth coming a hundred miles to receive.

"Come awa', Maister Cameron, and the mistress will get you a drink o' milk, an' ye'll hae a bite o' denner wi' us gin ye can bide half an hour!"

The minister went in and surprised the goodwife in the midst of the clean and comely mysteries of the dairy. From her, likewise, he received the warmest of welcomes. The relation of minister and people in Galloway, specially among the poorer congregations who have to work hard to support their minister, is a very beautiful one. He is their superior in every respect, their oracle, their model, their favourite subject of conversation; yet also in a special measure he is their property. Saunders and Mary M'Quhirr would as soon have contradicted the Confession of Faith as questioned any opinion of the minister's when he spoke on his own subjects.

On rotation of crops, and specially on "nowt" beasts, his opinion was "no worth a preen." It would not have been becoming in him to have a good judgment on these secularities.

The family and dependants were all gathered together in the wide, cool kitchen of Drumquhat, for it was the time for the minister's catechising. Saunders sat with his wife beside him. The three sons--Alec, James, and Rob--sat on straight-backed chairs; Walter near by, his hand on his grandmother's lap.

Question and answer from the Shorter Catechism passed from lip to lip like a well-played game in which no one let the ball drop. It would have been thought as shameful if the minister had not acquitted himself at "speerin"' the questions deftly and instantaneously as for one of those who were answering to fail in their replies. When Rob momentarily mislaid the "Reasons Annexed" to the second commandment, and his very soul reeled in the sudden terror that they had gone from him for ever, his father looked at him as one who should say, "Woe is me that I have been the responsible means of bringing a fool into the world!" Even his mother looked at him wistfully, in a way that was like cold water running down his back, while Mr. Cameron said kindly, "Take your time, Robert!"

However, Rob recovered himself gallantly, and reeled off the Reasons Annexed with vigour. Then he promised, under his breath, a sound thrashing to his model brother, James, who, having known the Catechism perfectly from his youth up, had yet refused to give a leading hint to his brother in his extremity. Walter had his answers as ready as any of them.

Walter had, on one occasion, begun to attend a Sabbath school at the village, which was started by the enthusiastic assistant of the parish minister, whose church lay some miles over the moor. Walter had not asked any permission of his seniors at the farm, but wandered off by himself to be present at the strange ceremonies of the opening. There the Drumquhat training made him easily first of those who repeated psalms and said their Catechism. A distinguished career seemed to be opening out before him, but a sad event happened which abruptly closed the new-fangled Sunday school. The minister of the parish heard what his young "helper" had been doing over in Whunnyliggate, and he appeared in person on the following Sabbath when the exercises were in full swing. He opened the door, and stood silently regarding, the stick dithering in both hands with a kind of senile fury.

The "helper" came forward with a bashful confidence, expecting that he would receive commendation for his great diligence. But he was the most surprised "helper" in six counties when the minister struck at him suddenly with his stick, and abruptly ordered him out of the school and out of his employment.

"I did not bring ye frae Edinburgh to gang sneaking aboot my pairish sugarin' the bairns an' flairdyin' the auld wives. Get Oot o' my sicht, an' never let your shadow darken this pairish again, ye sneevlin' scoondrel!"

Then he turned the children out to the green, letting some of the laggards feel his stick as they passed. Thus was closed the first Sabbath-school that was ever held in the village of Whunnyliggate. The too-enthusiastic "helper" passed away like a dream, and the few folk who journeyed every Sabbath from Whunnyliggate to the parish kirk by the side of the Dee Water received the ordinances officially at noon each Lord's Day, by being exhorted to "begin the public worship of God in this parish" in the voice which a drill-sergeant uses when he exhorts an awkward squad. Walter did not bring this event before the authorities at Drumquhat. He knew that the blow of the minister's oaken staff was a judgment on him for having had anything to do with an Erastian Establishment.

After the catechising, the minister prayed. He prayed for the venerable heads of the household, that they might have wisdom and discretion. He prayed that in the younger members the fear of the Lord might overcome the lust of the eye and the pride of life--for the sojourners, that the God of journeying Israel might be a pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day before them, and that their pilgrimage way might be plain. He prayed for the young child, that he might be a Timothy in the Scriptures, a Samuel in obedience, and that in the future, if so it were the will of the Most High, he might be both witness and evangelist of the Gospel.

[The end]
S. R. Crockett's short story: Minister's Day

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