Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 35

But we take no heed. The case is too serious. Then we go into the kitchen and discuss it with the landlady.

We do this with solemn pauses, indicative of deep thought. We go back into the sitting-room. Mac has been to look at the paper where my nail scored it. We knew he would, and he is now lying on the sofa rather pale. He even groans a little. The symptoms work handsomely. It is small wonder we are alarmed.

We ring for the landlady, and she comes in hastily and with anxiety depicted on her countenance. She asks him where he feels it worst. Teena runs for Quain, and, being the least suspect of the party, she reads, in a low, hushed tone, an account of the symptoms of enteric fever (previously inserted in ma.n.u.script) which would considerably astonish Dr. Quain and the able specialist who contributed the real account of that disease to the volume.

It seems that for the disease specified, castor-oil and a mustard blister, the latter applied very warm between the shoulders, are the appropriate and certain cures. There is nothing that Mac dislikes so much as castor-oil. He would rather die than take it--so he says. But a valuable life, which might be spent in the service of the highest art, must not be permitted to be thus thrown away. So we get the castor-oil in a spoon, and with Teena coaxing and Almond acting on the well-known principle of twenty years' resolute government--down she goes.

Instantly Mac feels a little better, for he can groan easier than before. That is a good sign. The great thing now is to keep up the temperature and induce perspiration. The mustard approaches. The landlady cries from the kitchen to know if he is ready. Teena retires to get more blankets. The patient is put to bed, and in a little the mustard plaster is being applied in the place indicated by Quain. We tell one another what a mercy it is that we have all the requisites in the house. (There is no mustard in the plaster, really--only a few pepper-corns and a little sand sc.r.a.ped from the geological hammer.) But we say aloud that we hope Mac can bear it for twenty minutes, and we speculate on whether it will bring _all_ the skin with it when it comes off.

This is too much, and the groaning recommences. The blankets are applied, and in a trice there is no lack of perspiration. But within three minutes Mac shouts that the abominable plaster is burning right down through him. It is all pure mustard, he says. We must have put a live coal in by mistake. We tell him it will be all right--in twenty minutes. It is no use; he is far past advice, and in his insanity he would tear it off and so endanger the success of the treatment. But this cannot be permitted. So Almond sits on the plaster to keep it in its place, while I time the twenty minutes with a stop-watch.

At the end of this period of crisis the patient is p.r.o.nounced past the worst. But, being in a state of collapse, it becomes necessary to rouse him with a strong stimulant. So, having sent the ladies to a place of safety, we take off the plaster tenderly, and kindly show Mac the oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that there was never anything the matter with him at all. We express a hope that he will find that the castor-oil has done him good. A little castor-oil is an excellent thing at any time. And we also advise him, the next time he feels inclined to work off a sell on us or play any more of his pranks, to have a qualified medical man on the premises. Quain is evidently not good enough. He makes mistakes. We show him the pa.s.sage.

Then we advise him to put on his clothes, and not make a fool of himself by staying in bed in the middle of the day.

Whereupon, somewhat hurriedly, we retreat to our bedrooms; and, locking the doors, sit down to observe with interest the bolts bending and the hinges manfully resisting, while Mac with a poker in either hand flings himself wildly against them. He says he wants to see us, but we reply that we are engaged.

III

THE COLLEGING OF SIMEON GLEG

_Forth from the place of furrows To the Town of the Many Towers; Full many a lad from the ploughtail Has gone to strive with the hours_,

_Leaving the ancient wisdom Of tilth and pasturage, For the empty honour of striving, And the emptier name of sage_.

"_Shadows_."

Without blared all the trumpets of the storm. The wind howled and the rain blattered on the manse windows. It was in the upland parish of Blawrinnie, and the minister was preparing his Sabbath's sermon. The study lamp was lit and the window curtains were drawn. Robert Ford Buchanan was the minister of Blawrinnie. He was a young man who had only been placed a year or two, and he had a great idea of the importance of his weekly sermons to the Blawrinnie folk. He also spoke of "My People"

in an a.s.sured manner when he came up to the a.s.sembly in May:

"I am thinking of giving my people a series of lectures on the Old Testament, embodying the results of--"

"Hout na, laddie," said good Roger Drumly, who got a D.D. for marrying a professor's sister (and deserved a V.C.), "ye had better stick to the Shorter's Quastions an' preach nae whigmaleeries i' the pairish o'

Blawrinnie. Tak' my word for it, they dinna gie a last year's nest-egg for a' the results of creeticism. I was yince helper there mysel', ye maun mind, an' I ken Blawrinnie."

There is no manner of doubt that Dr. Drumly was right. Since he married the professor's sister, he did not speak much himself, except in his sermons, which were inordinately long; but he was a man very much respected, for, as one of his elders said, "Gin he does little guid in the pairish, he is a quate, ceevil man, an' does just as little ill."

And this, after all, is chiefly what is expected of a settled and official minister with a manse and glebe in that part of the country.

Too much zeal is not thought to become him. It is well enough in a mere U.P.

But the Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan had not so settled on his lees as to accept such a negative view of his duties. He must try to help his people singly and individually, and this he certainly did to the best of his ability. For he neither spent all his time running after Dissenters, as the manner of some is; nor yet did he occupy all his pastoral visits with conversations on the iniquity of Disestablishment, as is others'

use and wont. He went in a better way about the matter, in order to prove himself a worthy minister of the parish, taking such a vital interest in all that appertained to it, that no man could take his bishopric from him.

Among other things, he had a Bible-cla.s.s for the young, in which the hope of the parish of Blawrinnie was instructed as to the number of hands that had had the making of the different prophecies, and upon the allusions to primitive customs in the book of Genesis (which the minister called a "historical synopsis"). There were three la.s.sies attending the cla.s.s, and three young men who came to walk home with the la.s.sies. Unfortunately, two of the young men wanted to walk home with the same young la.s.s, so that the minister's Bible-cla.s.s could not always be said to make for peace. As, indeed, the Reverend Doctor Drumly foretold when the thing was started. He had met the professor's sister first at a Bible-cla.s.s, and was sore upon the subject.

But it was the minister's Bible-cla.s.s that procured Mr. Ford Buchanan the honour of a visit that night of storm and stress. First of all there was an unwonted stir in the kitchen, audible even in the minister's study, where he stood on one leg, with a foot on a chair, consulting authorities. (He was an unmarried man.)

Elizabeth Milligan, better known as "the minister's Betsy," came and rapped on the door in an undecided way. It was a very interesting authority the minister was consulting, so he only said "Thank you, Elizabeth!" in an absent-minded way and went on reading, rubbing his moustache the while with the unoccupied hand in a way which, had he known it, kept it perpetually thin.

But Betty continued to knock, and finally put her head within the study door.

"It's no' yer parritch yet," she said. "It's but an hour since ye took yer tea. But, if ye please, minister, wad ye be so kind as open the door? There's somebody ringing the front-door bell, an' it's jammed wi'

the rain forbye, an' nae wise body gangs and comes that gait ony way, binna yersel'."

"Certainly, certainly, Elizabeth; I will open the door immediately!"

said the minister, laying down his book and marking the place with last week's list of psalms and intimations.

Mr. Buchanan went to the seldom-used front door, turned the key, and threw open the portal to see who the visitor might be who rang the manse bell at eight o'clock on such a night. Betsy hung about the outskirts of the hall in a fever of antic.i.p.ation and alarm. It might be a highwayman--or even a wild U.P. There was no saying.

But when the minister pulled the door wide open, he looked out and saw nothing. Only blackness and tossing leaves were in front of him.

"Who's there?" he cried, peremptorily, in his pulpit voice--which he used when "my people" stood convicted of some exhibition of extreme callousness to impression.

But only the darkness fronted him and the swirl of wind slapped the wet ivy-leaves against the porch.

Then apparently from among his feet a little piping voice replied--

"If ye please, minister, I want to learn Greek and Laitin, an' to gang to the college."

The minister staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other world--that is, of course, the world of spirits and churchyard ghosts.

But gradually there grew upon him a general impression of a little figure, broad and squat, standing bareheaded and with cap in hand on his threshold. The minister came to himself, and his habits of hospitality a.s.serted themselves.

"You want to learn Greek and Latin," he said, accustomed to extraordinary requests. "Come in and tell me all about it."

The little, broad figure stepped within the doorway.

"I'm a' wat wi' the rain," again quoth the elfish voice, more genially, "an' I'm no' fit to gang into a gentleman's hoose."

"Come into the dining-room," said the minister kindly.

"'Deed, an' ye'll no," interposed Betsy, who had been coming nearer.

"Ye'se juist gang into the study, an' I'll lay doon a ba.s.s for ye to stand an' dreep on. Where come ye frae, laddie?"

"I am Tammas Gleg's laddie. My faither disna ken that I hae come to see the minister," said the boy.

"The loon's no' wise!" muttered Betsy. "Could the back door no' hae served ye?--Bringing fowk away through the hoose traikin' to open the front door to you on sic a nicht! Man, ye are a peetifu' object!"

The object addressed looked about him. He was making a circle of wetness on the floor. He was taken imperatively by the coat-sleeve.

"Ye canna gang into the study like that. There wad be nae dryin' the floor. Come into the kitchen, laddie," said Betsy. "Gang yer ways ben, minister, to your ain gate-end, an' the loon'll be wi' ye the noo."

So Betsy, who was accustomed to her own way in the manse of Blawrinnie, drove Tammas Gleg's laddie before her into the kitchen, and the minister went into the study with a kind of junior apostolic meekness. Then he meditatively settled his hard circular collar, which he wore in the interests of Life and Work, but privately hated with a deadly hatred, as his particular form of penance.

It was no very long season that he had to wait, and before he had done more than again lift up his interesting "authority," the door of the study was pushed open and Betsy cried in, "Here he's!" lest there might be any trouble in the identification. And not without some reason. For, strange as was the figure which had stepped into the minister's lobby out of the storm, the vision which now met his eyes was infinitely stranger.