Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 51

The early days of the future minister were therefore pa.s.sed in the acquisition of the Latin rudiments, a task which he performed to the satisfaction of the dominie who taught him. He became letter-perfect in repet.i.tion of all the rules, and pridefully glib in reeling off the examples given in the text. He was the joy of the memory-lesson hour, and the master's satisfaction was only damped when this prodigy of accurate knowledge applied himself to the transference of a few lines of English into a dead language. The result was not inspiring, but by perseverance Ebenezer came even to this task without the premonition of more egregious failure than was the custom among pupils of country schools in his day.

Ebenezer went up to Edinburgh one windy October morning, and for the first time in his life saw a university and a tramcar. The latter astonished him very much; but in the afternoon he showed four new comers the way to the secretary's office in the big cavern to the left of the entrance of the former, wide-throated like the portal of Hades.

He took a lodging in Simon Square, because some one told him that Carlyle had lodged there when he came up to college. Ebenezer was a lad of ambition. His first session was as bare of interest and soul as a barn without the roof. He alternated like a pendulum between Simon Square and the Greek and Latin cla.s.s-rooms. He even took the noted Professor Lauchland seriously, whereupon the latter promptly made a Greek pun upon his name, by which he was called in the cla.s.s whenever the students could remember it. There was great work done in that cla.s.s-room--in the manufacture of paper darts. Ebenezer took no part in such frivolities, but laboured at the acquisition of such Greek as a future student of theology would most require. And he succeeded so well that, on leaving, the Professor complimented him in the following terms, which were thought at the time to be handsome: "Ye don't know much Greek, but ye know more than most of your kind--that is, ye can find a Greek word in the dictionary." It was evident from this that Ebenezer was a favourite pupil, but some said that it was because Lauchland was pleased with the pun he made on the name Skinner. There are always envious persons about to explain away success.

Socially, Ebenezer confined himself to the winding stairs of the University, and the bleak South-side streets and closes, through which blew wafts of perfume that were not of Arcady. Once he went out to supper, but suffered so much from being asked to carve a chicken that he resolved never to go again. He talked chiefly to the youth next to him on Bench Seventeen, who had come from another rural village, and who lived in a garret exactly like his own in Nicolson Square.

Sometimes the two of them walked through the streets to the General Post Office and back again on Sat.u.r.day nights to post their letters home, and talked all the while of their landladies and of the number of marks each had got on Friday in the Latin version. Thus they improved their minds and received the benefits of a college education.

At the end of the session Ebenezer went back directly to his village on the very day the cla.s.ses closed and he could get no more for his money; where, on the strength of a year at the college, he posed as the learned man of the neighbourhood. He did not study much at home but what he did was done with abundant pomp and circ.u.mstance. His mother used to take in awed visitors to the "room," cautioning them that they must not disturb any of Ebenezer's "Greek and Laitin" books, lest in this way the career of her darling might be instantly blighted. Privately she used to go in by herself and pore over the unknown wonders of Ebenezer's Greek prose versions, with an admiration which the cla.s.s-a.s.sistant in Edinburgh had never been able to feel for them.

Such was the career of Ebenezer Skinner for four years. He oscillated between the dinginess and dulness of the capital as he knew it, and the well-accustomed rurality of his home. For him the historic a.s.sociations of Edinburgh were as good as naught. He and Sandy Kerr (Bench Seventeen) heard the bugles blaring at ten o'clock from the Castle on windy Sat.u.r.day nights, as they walked up the Bridges, and never stirred a pulse! They never went into Holyrood, because some one told Ebenezer that there was a s.h.i.+lling to pay. He did not know what a quiet place it was to walk and read in on wet Sat.u.r.days, when there is nothing whatever to pay. He read no books, confining himself to his cla.s.s-books and the local paper, which his mother laboriously addressed and sent to him weekly. Occasionally he began to read a volume which one of his more literary companions had acquired on the recommendation of one of the professors, but he rarely got beyond the first twenty pages.

Yet there never was a more conscientious fellow than Ebenezer Skinner, Student in Divinity. He studied all that he was told to study. He read every book that by the regulations he was compelled to read. But he read nothing besides. He found that he could not hold his own in the give-and-take of his fellow-students' conversation. Therefore more and more he withdrew himself from them, crystallising into his narrow early conventions. His college learning acted like an unventilated mackintosh, keeping all the unwholesome, morbid personality within, and shutting out the free ozone and healthy buffeting of the outer world. Many college-bred men enter life with their minds carefully mackintoshed.

Generally they go into the Church.

But he found his way through his course somehow. It was of him that Kelland, kindliest and most liberal of professors, said when the co-examiner hinted darkly of "spinning": "Poor fellow! We'll let him through. He's done his best." Then, after a pause, and in the most dulcet accents of a valetudinarian cherub, "It's true, his best is not very good!"

But Ebenezer escaped from the logic cla.s.s-room as a roof escapes from a summer shower, and gladly found himself on the more proper soil of the philosophy of morals. Here he did indeed learn something, for the professor's system was exactly suited to such as he. In consequence, his notebooks were a marvel. But he did not s.h.i.+ne so brightly in the oral examinations, for he feared, with reason, the laughter of his fellows.

In English literature he took down all the dates. But he did not attend the cla.s.s on Fridays for fear he should be asked to read, so he never heard Ma.s.son declaim,

"Ah, freedom is a n.o.ble thing!"

which some of his contemporaries consider the most valuable part of their university training.

After Ebenezer Skinner went to the Divinity Hall, he brought the same excellent qualities of perseverance to bear upon the work there. When the memorable census was taken of a certain exegetical cla.s.s, requesting that each student should truthfully, and upon his solemn oath, make record of his occupation at the moment when the paper reached him, he alone, an academic Abdiel,

"Among the faithless, faithful only he,"

was able truthfully to report--_Name_, "Ebenezer Skinner"; _Occupation at this Moment_, "Trying to attend to the lecture." His wicked companions--who had returned themselves variously as "Reading the _Scotsman_," "Writing a love-letter," "Watching a fight between a spider and a bluebottle, spider weakening"--saw at once that the future of a man who did not know any better than to listen to a discourse on Hermeneutics was entirely hopeless. So henceforth they spoke of him openly and currently as "Poor Skinner!"

Yet when the long-looked-for end of the divinity course came, and the graduating cla.s.s burst asunder, scattering seed over the land like an over-ripe carpel in the September sun, Ebenezer Skinner was one of the first to take root. He preached in a "vacancy" by chance, supplying for a man who had been taken suddenly ill. He read a discourse which he had written on the strictest academical lines for his college professor, and in the composition of which he had been considerably a.s.sisted by a volume of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons which he had brought home from Thin's wondrous shop on the Bridges, where many theological works await the crack of doom. The congregation to which he preached was in the stage of recoil from the roaring demagogy of a late minister, and all too promptly elected this modest young man.

But when the young man moved from Simon Square into the Townend manse, and began to preach twice a Sunday to the clear-headed business men and the sore-hearted women of many cares who filled the kirk, his ignorance of all but these theological books, as well as an innocence of the motives and difficulties of men and women (which would have been childlike had it not been childish), predoomed him to failure. His ignorance of modern literature was so appalling that the youngest member of his Bible-cla.s.s smiled when he mentioned Tennyson. These and other qualities went far to make the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner the ministerial "inefficient" that he undoubtedly was.

But in time he became vaguely conscious that there was something wrong, yet for the life of him he could not think what it was. He knew that he had done every task that was ever set him. He had trodden faithfully the appointed path. He was not without some ability. And yet, though he did his best, he was sadly aware that he was not successful. Being a modest fellow, he hoped to improve, and went the right way about it. He knew that somehow it must be his own fault. He did not count himself a "Product," and he never blamed the Mill.

PART II

[_Reported by Saunders M'Quhirr of Drumquhat_.]

SKINNER--HALDANE.--On the 25th instant, at the Manse of Kirkmichael, by the Rev. Alexander Haldane, father of the bride, the Rev. Ebenezer Skinner, minister of Townend Church, Cairn Edward, to Elizabeth Catherine Haldane.--_Scotsman_, June 27th.

This was the beginning of it, as some foresaw that it would be. I cut it out of the _Scotsman_ to keep, and my wife has pasted it at the top of my paper. But none of us knew it for certain, though there was Robbie Scott, John Scott's son, that is herd at the Drochills in the head-end of the parish of Kirkmichael--he wrote home to his father in a letter that I saw myself: "I hear you're to get our minister's dochter down by you; she may be trusted to keep you brisk about Cairn Edward."

But we thought that this was just the lad's nonsense, for he was aye at it. However, we had news of that before she had been a month in the place. Mr. Skinner used to preach on the Sabbaths leaning over the pulpit with his nose kittlin' the paper, and near the whole of the congregation watching the green leaves of the trees waving at the windows. But, certes, after he brought the mistress home he just preached once in that fas.h.i.+on. The very next Sabbath morning he stood straight up in the pulpit and pulled at his cuffs as if he was peeling for a "fecht"--and so he was. He spoke that day as he had never spoken since he came to the kirk. And all the while, as my wife said, "The mistress sat as quate as a wee broon moose in the minister's seat by the side wall. She never took her een aff him, an' ye never saw sic a change on ony man."

"She'll do!" said I to my wife as we came out. We were biding for a day or so with my cousin, that is the grocer in Cairn Edward, as I telled you once before. The Sabbath morning following there was no precentor in the desk, and the folk were all sitting wondering what was coming next, for everybody kenned that "Cracky" Carlisle, the post, had given up his precentors.h.i.+p because the list of tunes had come down from the manse to him on the Wednesday, instead of his being allowed to choose what he liked out of the dozen or so that he could sing. "Cracky" Carlisle got his name by upholding the theory that a crack in the high notes sets off a voice wonderfully. He had a fine one himself.

"I'll no' sing what ony woman bids me," said the post, putting the saddle on the right horse at once.

"But hoo do ye ken it was her?" he was asked that night in Dally's smiddy, when the Laigh End folk gathered in to have their crack.

"Ken?" said Cracky; "brawly do I ken that he wad never hae had the presumption himsel'. Na, he kenned better!"

"It was a verra speerited thing to do, at ony rate, to gie up your precentors.h.i.+p," said Fergusson, whose wife kept the wash-house on the Isle, and who lived on his wife's makings.

"Verra," said the post drily, "seein' that I haena a wife to keep me!"

There was a vacancy on the seat next the door, which the shoemaker filled. But, with all this talk, there was a considerable expectation that the minister would go himself to Cracky at the last moment and beseech him to sing for them. The minister, however, did not arrive, and so Cracky did not go to church at all that day.

Within the Laigh Kirk there was a silence as the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner, without a tremor in his voice, gave out that they would sing to the praise of G.o.d the second Paraphrase to the tune "St. Paul's." The congregation stood up--a new invention of the last minister's, over which also Cracky had nearly resigned, because it took away from his dignity as precentor and having therefore the sole right to stand during the service of song. The desk was still empty. The minister gave one quick look to the manse seat, and there arose from the dusky corner by the wall such a volume of sweet and solemn sound that the first two lines were sung out before a soul had thought of joining. But as the voice from the manse seat took a new start into the mighty swing of "St.

Paul's," one by one the voices which had been singing that best-loved of Scottish tunes at home in "taking the Buik," joined in, till by the end of the verse the very walls were tingling with the joyful noise. There was something ran through the Laigh Kirk that day to which it had long been strange. "It's the gate o' heeven," said old Peter Thomson, the millwright, who had voted for Ebenezer Skinner for minister, and had regretted it ever since. He was glad of his vote now that the minister had got married.

Then followed the prayer, which seemed new also; and Ebenezer Skinner's prayers had for some time been well known to the congregation of the Laigh Kirk. The worst of all prayer-mills is the threadbare liturgy which a lazy or an unspiritual man cobbles up for himself. But there seemed a new spirit in Ebenezer's utterances, and there was a thankful feeling in the kirk of the Townend that day. As they "skailed," some of the young folk went as far as to say that they hoped that desk would never be filled. But this expression of opinion was discouraged, for it was felt to border on irreverence.

Cracky Carlisle was accidentally at his door when Gib Dally pa.s.sed on his way home. Cracky had an unspoken question in his eye; but Gib did not respond, for the singing had drawn a kind of spell over him too. So Cracky had to speak plain out before Gib would answer.

"Wha sang the day?" he asked anxiously, hoping that there had been some sore mishap, and that the minister, or even Mrs. Skinner herself, might come humbly chapping at his door to fleech with him to return. And he hardened himself even in the moment of imagination.

"We a' sang," said Gib cruelly.

"But wha led?" said the ex-precentor.

"Oh, we had no great miss of you, Cracky," said Gib, who remembered the airs that the post had many a time given himself, and did not incline to let him off easily in the day of his humiliation. "It was the minister's wife that led."

The post lifted his hands, palm outwards, with a gesture of despair.

"Ay, I was jalousing it wad be her," said he sadly, as he turned into his house. He felt that his occupation and craft were gone, and first and last that the new mistress of the manse was the rock on which he had split.

Mrs. Ebenezer Skinner soon made the acquaintance of the Cairn Edward folk. She was a quick and dainty little person.

"Man, Gib, but she's a feat bit craitur!" said the shoemaker, watching her with satisfaction from the smiddy door, and rubbing his grimy hands on his ap.r.o.n as if he had been suddenly called upon to shake hands with her.

"Your son was nane so far wrang," he said to John Scott, the herd, who came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

"Na," said John; "oor Rob's heid is screwed the richt way on his shoothers!"

Now, in her rambles the minister's wife met one and another of the young folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time to come up to the manse for a cup of tea. Then there was singing in the evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not even their parents knew what was coming. But at the first hymn the reason was very obvious. The singing was grand.

"It'll be what they call a 'koyer,' nae doot!" said the shoemaker, who tolerated it solely because he admired the minister's wife and she had shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor's desk had departed and all the glory of it. But n.o.body knows for certain, for the minister's wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she had a long talk with him. At first Cracky said that he must go home, for he had to be at his work. But, being a minister's daughter, Mrs. Skinner saw by his "blacks" that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and promptly marched him to the manse to tea. Cracky gives out the books in the choir now, and sings ba.s.s, again well pleased with himself. The Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver tea-set by the congregation. He has just been elected Clerk of Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her father was Clerk, to the great advantage of the Kirk of Scotland in these parts.

[My wife, Mary M'Quhirr, wishes me to add to all whom it may concern, "Go thou and do likewise."]