Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers

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"Don't you think there is something in that?" and the General tried to
explain his honest mind, in which lived no unworthy or uncharitable
thought. "I have not one word to say against Carmichael; he 's
good-looking, and monstrous clever, and he has always made himself very
agreeable, very, and the people swear by him in the Glen; but . . . you
must understand what I mean, Davidson," and the General was in despair.

"You mean that though he 's a first-rate young fellow for a clergyman,
he does not belong to your world--has a different set of friends, has
different habits of living, has a different way of thinking and
speaking--is, in fact, an outsider."

"That's it--just what I was 'ettling' after--lucky fellows we Scots
with such words," and the General was immensely delighted to be
delivered of his idea in an inoffensive form.

"It is my own belief, Carnegie--and you can laugh at me afterwards if I
be wrong--that this will be the end of it, however. Yes, putting it
plainly, that Kate is in love with Carmichael, as he is certainly with
her; and you will have to make the best of the situation."

"You don't like the idea any more than I do, Davidson?"

"Speaking in perfect confidence and frankness, I do not. I look at the
matter this way"--the Doctor stood on the hearth-rug in a judicial
attitude, pulling down his waistcoat with his two hands, his legs
apart, and his eye-glass on his nose--"Carmichael has been brought up
among . . . plain, respectable people, and theological books, and
church courts, and Free Kirk society, all of which is excellent,
but . . . secluded"--the Doctor liked the word, which gave his mind
without offence--"secluded. Kate is a Carnegie, was educated in
France, has travelled in India, and has lived in the most exciting
circumstances. She loves soldiers, war, gaiety, sport, besides many
other . . . eh, good things, and is a . . . lovely girl. Love laughs
at rules, but if you ask me my candid opinion, the marriage would not
be . . . in fact, congruous. If it is to be, it must be, and God bless
them both, say I, and so will everybody say; but it will be an
experiment, a distinct and . . . interesting experiment."

"Kate is not to marry any one for my sake, to save Tochty, but I do
wish she had fancied Lord Hay," said the General, ruefully.

"The Free Kirk folk in the depths of their hearts consider me a worldly
old clergyman, and perhaps I am, for, Jack, I would dearly like to see
our Kate Viscountess Hay, and to think that one day, when we three old
fellows are gone, she would be Countess of Kilspindie." That was the
first conference of the day on Kate's love affairs, and this is how it
ended.

Meanwhile the young woman herself had gone up the road to the high Glen
and made her way over dykes and through fields to Whinny Knowe, which
she had often visited since the August Sacrament. Whinny came out from
the kitchen door in corduroy trousers, much stained with soil, and grey
shirt--wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after a hearty
dinner--and went to the barn for his midday sleep before he went again
to the sowing. Marget met her at the garden gate, dressed in her
week-day clothes and fresh from a morning's churning, but ever refined
and spiritual, as one whose soul is shining through the veil of common
circumstances.

"It's a benison tae see ye on this bricht day, Miss Carnegie, an' ye
'll come tae the garden-seat, for the spring flooers are bloomin'
bonnie and sweet the noo, an' fillin' 's a' wi' hope.

"Gin there be ony sun shinin'," as she spread a plaid, "the heat fa's
here, an' save when the snow is heavy on the Glen, there 's aye some
blossoms here tae mind us o' oor Father's love an' the world that isna
seen."

"Marget," began Kate, not with a blush, but rather a richening of
colour, "you have been awfully good to me, and have helped me in lots
of ways, far more than you could dream of. Do you know you 've made me
almost good at times, with just enough badness to keep me still myself,
as when I flounced out from the Free Kirk."

[Illustration: "You have been awfully good to me."]

Marget only smiled deprecation and affection, for her heart went out to
this motherless, undisciplined girl, whom she respected, like a true
Scot, because, although Kate had made her a friend, she was still a
Carnegie; whom she loved, because, although Kate might be very
provoking, she was honest to the core.

"To-day," Kate resumed, after a pause, and speaking with an unusual
nervousness, "I want your advice on a serious matter, which I must
decide, and which . . . concerns other people as well as myself. In
fact, I would like to ask a question," and she paused to frame her case.

It was a just testimony to Marget Howe that Kate never thought of
pledging her to secrecy, for there are people whom to suspect of
dishonour is a sin.

"Suppose that a man . . . loved a woman, and that he was honourable,
brave, gentle, true, in fact . . . a gentleman, and made her a proposal
of marriage."

Marget was looking before her with calm, attentive face, never once
glancing at Kate to supplement what was told.

"If . . . the girl accepted him, she would have a high position, and be
rich, so that she could . . . save her . . . family from ruin, and
keep . . . them in the house they loved."

Marget listened with earnest intelligence.

"She respects this man, and is grateful to him. She is certain that he
would be . . . kind to her, and give her everything she wanted. And
she thinks that he . . . would be happy."

Marget waited for the end.

"But she does not love him--that is all."

As the tale was being told in, brief, clear, slow sentences, Marget's
eyes became luminous, and her lips opened as one ready to speak from an
inner knowledge.

"Ye hev let me see a piece o' life, an' it is sacred, for naethin' on
earth is sae near God as luve, an' a 'll no deny that ma woman's heart
is wi' that honest gentleman, an' a' the mair gin he dinna win his
prize.

"But a man often comes tae his heicht through disappointment, and a
woman, she hes tae learn that there is that which she hes the richt tae
give for gratitude or friendship's sake, and that which can only be
bestowed by the hand o' luve.

"It will maybe help ye gin a' tell ye anither tale, an' though it be o'
humble life, yet oor hearts are the same in the castle and the cottar's
hoose, wi' the same cup o' sorrow tae drink an' the same croon o' joy
tae wear, an' the same dividin' o' roads for oor trial.

"There wes a man showed a wumman muckle kindness, and to her fouk also,
an' he wes simple an' honest, an' for what he hed done an' because
there wes nae evil in him she married him."

"And what has happened?" Kate, being half Highland, had less patience
than Marget.

"He hes been a gude man tae her through the dark an' through the licht,
an' she hes tried tae repay him as a puir imperfect wumman can, an' her
hert is warm to him, but there hes aye been ae thing wantin'--an' it
hes been that wife's cross a' her life--there wes nae ither man, but
her husband wesna, isna, canna be her ain a'thegither an' for ever--for
the want o' luve--that luve o' luve that maks marriage."

Her voice was laden with feeling, and it was plain that she had given
of her own and deepest for the guiding of another.

"Marget, I can never be grateful enough to you for what you have shown
me this day." As she passed Whinny with his bag of seed, he apologised
for his wife.

"A 'm dootin', Miss Carnegie, the gude-wife hes keepit ye ower lang in
the gairden haiverin' awa' aboot the flooers an' her ither trokes. But
she 's michty prood for a' that aboot yir comin' up tae veesit us."

Such was the second conference on Kate's affairs on that day.

No place could be more thoroughly cleansed from vulgar curiosity than
our Glen, or have a finer contempt for "clatters," but the atmosphere
was electrical in the diffusion of information. What happened at
Burnbrae was known at the foot of Glen Urtach by evening, and the visit
of spiritual consolation which Milton, in the days of his Pharisaism,
paid to Jamie Soutar on his deathbed was the joy of every fireside in
Drumtochty within twenty-four hours. Perhaps it was not, therefore,
remarkable that the arrival of Lord Kilspindie's groom at Tochty Lodge
post haste with two letters on Saturday morning--one for the General
from his Lordship, and one from his son for Miss Kate--should have been
rightly interpreted, and the news spread with such rapidity that
Hillocks--a man not distinguished above his fellows for tact--was able
to inform Carmichael in the early afternoon that the marriage between
the young lord and the "Miss" at Tochty was now practically arranged.

"It's been aff and on a' winter, an' the second veesit tae the Castle
settled it, but a 'm hearin' it wes the loss o' the Lodge brocht the
fast offer this mornin'. She 's an able wumman, an' cairried her gear
tae the best market. Ma certes," and Hillocks contemplated Kate's
achievement with sympathetic admiration, "but she 'll set her place
weel, an' haud her ain wi' the Duchess o' Athole."

Carmichael ought perhaps to have taken his beating like a man, and said
nothing to any one, but instead thereof he betook himself for
consolation to Marget, a better counsellor in a crisis than Janet, with
all her Celtic wiles, and Marget set him in the very seat where Kate
had put her case.

"It has, I suppose, been all a dream, and now I have awaked, but it
was . . . a pleasant dream, and one finds the morning light a little
chill. One must just learn to forget, and be as if one had never . . .
dreamed," but Carmichael looked at Marget wistfully.

"Ye canna be the same again, for a' coont, gin ony man loves a wumman
wi' a leal hert, whether she answer or no, or whether she even kens, he
's been the gainer, an' the harvest will be his for ever.

"It hes seemed to me that nae luve is proved an' crooned for eternity
onless the man hes forgotten himsel' an' is willin' tae live alane gin
the wumman he luves sees prosperity. He only is the perfect lover, and
for him God hes the best gifts.

"Yes, a 've seen it wi' ma ain eyes,"--for indeed this seemed to
Carmichael an impossible height of self-abnegation,--"a man who loved
an' served a wumman wi' his best an' at a great cost, an' yet for whom
there cud be no reward but his ain luve." Marget's face grew so
beautiful as she told of the constancy of this unknown, unrewarded
lover that Carmichael left without further speech, but with a purer
vision of love than had ever before visited his soul. Marget watched
him go down the same path by which Kate went, and she said to herself,
"Whether or no he win is in the will of God, but already luve hes given
his blessin' tae man and maid."

Kate did not go to kirk on Sunday, but lived all day in the woods, and
in the evening she kissed her father and laid this answer in his
hands:--

DEAR LORD HAY,--You have done me the greatest honour any woman can
receive at your hands, and for two days I have thought of nothing else.
If it were enough that your wife should like and respect you, then I
would at once accept you as my betrothed, but as it is plain to me that
no woman ought to marry any one unless she also loves him, I am obliged
to refuse one of the truest men I have ever met, for whom I have a very
kindly place in my heart, and whose happiness I shall always
desire.--Believe me, yours sincerely,

KATE CARNEGIE.

"You could do nothing else, Kit, and you have done right to close the
matter . . . but I 'm sorry for Hay."

CHAPTER XXIV.

LOVE IS LORD.

It could not be said with a steady face that the proceedings of the
Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown increased the gaiety of nations, and
there might be persons--far left to themselves, of course--who would
describe its members as wearisome ecclesiastics. Carmichael himself,
in a mood of gay irresponsibility, had once sketched a meeting of this
reverend court, in which the names were skilfully adapted, after the
ancient fashion, to represent character, and the incidents, if not
_vero_, were certainly ben trovato, and had the article ready for
transmission to _Ferrier's Journal_. 'A Sederunt' did not, however,
add to the miseries of a most courteous editor, for Jenkins, having
come up for an all-night conference, and having heard the article with
unfeigned delight, pointed out that, if it were accepted, which
Carmichael's experience did not certify, the writer would be run down
within fourteen days, and that, so unreasonable a thing is human
nature, some of the Presbytery might be less than pleased with their
own likenesses. "It 's in the waste-paper basket," Carmichael said
next morning, which, as the author was twenty-five years of age, and
not conspicuously modest, is a conclusive testimonial to the goodness
of one Presbytery, and its hold on the affection of its members.

Scots take their pleasures sadly, and no one can imagine from what arid
soil they may not draw their nutriment, but it was not for motions of
ponderous ambiguity and pragmatical points of order, that the minister
of Kincairney rose before daybreak on a winter's morning, and worked
his way to the nearest station, with the stars still overhead, and the
snow below his feet, so that when the clerk made a sign to the
Moderator punctually at one minute past eleven to "constitute the
Presbytery," he might not be missing from his place. It was the
longing of a lonely man, across whose front door no visitor had come
for weeks, for friendly company; of a weary minister, discouraged by
narrow circumstances, monotonous routine, unexpected disappointments
among his people, for a word of good cheer. A cynical stranger might
discover various stupidities, peculiarities, provincialisms in the
Presbytery--he knew himself who had a temper, and who was a trifle
sensitive about his rights--but this middle-aged, hard-working,
simple-living man saw twenty faithful brethren--the elders did not
count in this connection, for they did not understand--who stood beside
him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his
perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and
fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due.
His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an
interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him,
and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at
Kincairney?"--Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership--or when the
clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box
across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his
box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:--"You suppose that I am
lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I
do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the
obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong. You have a very warm
corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box." And the said
minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn
of the road by his wife--sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter
of a century's toiling and preaching--would enlarge on Doctor
Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when
they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him--incredible to
our cynic--and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good
work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on
the Ephesians next morning with new spirit. Such is the power of
comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no
dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and
go down the street afterwards with better heart.

The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of
Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour. When
the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the
congregation, the clerk--who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies
from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the
Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the
English language"--arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to
their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when
at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the
clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the
court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter
"proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of
the clerk's masterly official genius. It was he also--expressing the
mind of the Presbytery--who proposed that the Court should send
Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year
of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael,
according to "reliable information at his disposal," was rendering
important service to the Free Church in his sphere at Drumtochty.
Carmichael was very happy in those days, and was so petted by his
ecclesiastical superiors that he never missed a meeting of court, where
he either sat in a demure silence, which commended him greatly to the
old men, or conversed with his friends on a back bench about general
affairs.

It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month
of June--when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown
lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every
man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his
coat--and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of
his work, of his people, of himself. The reasons were obvious. Was it
not a sin that thirty Christian men should be cooped up in a room
passing schedules when the summer was young and fresh upon the land?
Could any one of the Rabbi's boys sit in that room and see his
accustomed place--a corner next the wall on a back seat--empty, and not
be cast down? Besides, does not a minister's year begin in September
and end in July, and before it closes is not the minister at his
lowest, having given away himself for eleven months? "One begins to
weary for a rest," he whispered to Kincairney, and that worthy man
explained that he and his wife had been planning their triennial
holiday, and hoped to have a fortnight in Carnoustie. Carmichael
realised his hypocrisy in that instant, for he knew perfectly that he
had lost touch with life because of a hopeless love, and a proud face
he had not seen a year ago. He flung himself out of the court with
such impatience that the clerk stayed his hand in the midst of the
sacred words _pro re nata_, and Kincairney mentioned to his wife in the
evening that Carmichael had never got over Doctor Saunderson's death.

Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of
Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep
and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded
banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a
river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if
such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned. Opposite him
began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that
Kate . . . Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal
announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week,
on Lord Kilspindie's birthday. A distant whistle came on the clear air
from Muirtown station, where . . . and all this turmoil of hope and
fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months. There is a
bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped
their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank. With a thrill of
sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his
heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of
silver and plunged into the river. He had also been caught quite
suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds. Why
should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have
with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away?
He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada
and take charge of a parish fifty miles square. The idea had for a
little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions.
It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and
he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands--riding,
camping, shooting, preaching--a free man and an apostle to the Scottish
Dispersion.

With this bracing resolution, that seemed a call of God to deliver him
from bondage, came a longing to visit Kilbogie Manse and the Rabbi's
grave. It was a journey of expiation, for Carmichael followed the road
the Rabbi walked with the hand of death upon him after that lamentable
Presbytery, and he marked the hills where the old man must have stood
and fought for breath. He could see Mains, where he had gone with
Doctor Saunderson to the exposition, and he passed the spot where the
Rabbi had taken farewell of George Pitillo in a figure. What learning,
and simplicity, and unselfishness, and honesty, and affection were
mingled in the character of the Rabbi! What skill, and courage, and
tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and humility there had been also in
William MacLure, who had just died! Carmichael dwelt on the likeness
and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew
and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found
himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with
the Rabbi in his long vigils. It was a singular means of grace to have
known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and
impressionable. A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael. He lifted
his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship
he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any
intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see
the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way. The district was full of the
Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any
moment--buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong
direction. The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into
that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and
facts count for nothing. This was how the Idyll went. From the moment
of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite
unheard of fashion--love wrought a miracle--and with Kate's nursing and
his he speedily recovered. Things came right between Kate and himself
as they shared their task of love, and so . . . of course--it took
place last month--and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who
somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride
would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate. He would
be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the
grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the
crunch of the gravel--he did know his footstep--and so he would take
the old man by surprise. Alas! he need not take such care, for the
walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and
the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him
not. The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once
more--no need to beware of parcels on the floor now--and turned to the
familiar room. The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace
their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for
the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the
wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst
of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair. . . .

"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 're getting on wi' the repairs"--it was the
joiner of Kilbogie; "it's no a licht job, for there 's nae doot the
hoose hes been awfu' negleckit. The Doctor wes a terrible scholar, but
he wudna hae kent that the slates were aff the roof till the drap cam
intae his bed.

"Ou aye, the manse is tae be papered an' pented for the new minister;
a' cud show ye the papers; juist as ye please; they're verra tasty an'
showy. He's tae be married at once, a 'm hearin', an' this is tae be
the drawin'-room; he wes here ten days syne--the day after he wes
eleckit: they 're aye in a hurry when they 're engaged--an' seleckit a
sma' room upstairs for his study; he didna think he wud need as lairge
a room for bukes, an' he thocht the auld study wud dae fine for
pairties.

"There 's juist ae room feenished, an' ye micht like tae see the paper
on 't; it's a yellow rose on a licht blue grund; a 'm jidgin' it wes
the Doctor's ain room. Weel, it's a gude lang wy tae Drumtochty, an'
ye 'll no be wantin' tae pit aff time, a' daresay."

It was a terrible douche of prose, and Carmichael was still shivering
when he reached the kindly shade of Tochty woods. He had seen the
successful candidate at the Presbytery arranging about his "trial
discourses" with the clerk--who regarded him dubiously--and he had
heard some story about his being a "popular hand," and bewitching the
young people with a sermon on the "good fight," with four heads "the
soldier," "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"--each with
an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry. Carmichael
recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug
and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old
study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea
from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage
inscription. There would be a _soiree_ in the kirk, where the Rabbi
had opened the mysteries of God, and his successor would explain how
unworthy he felt to follow Doctor Saunderson, and how he was going to
reorganise the congregation, and there would be many jocose allusions
to his coming marriage; but Carmichael would by that time have left the
district.

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