Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers

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Saunderson's reputation for unfathomable learning and saintly
simplicity was built up out of many incidents, and grew with the lapse
of years to a solitary height in the big strath, so that no man would
have dared to smile had the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie appeared in
Muirtown in his shirt sleeves, and Kilbogie would only have been a
trifle more conceited. Truly he was an amazing man, and, now that he
is dead and gone, the last of his race, I wish some man of his
profession had written his life, for the doctrine he taught and the way
he lived will not be believed by the new generation. The arrival of
his goods was more than many sermons to Kilbogie, and I had it from
Mains's own lips. It was the kindly fashion of those days that the
farmers carted the new minister's furniture from the nearest railway
station, and as the railway to Kildrummie was not yet open, they had to
go to Stormont Station on the north line; and a pleasant procession
they made passing through Pitscowrie, ten carts in their best array,
and drivers with a semi-festive air. Mr. Saunderson was at the
station, having reached it by some miracle without mistake, and was in
a condition of abject nervousness about the handling and conveyance of
his belongings.

"You will be careful--exceeding careful," he implored; "if one of the
boxes were allowed to descend hurriedly to the ground, the result to
what is within would be disastrous. I am much afraid that the weight
is considerable, but I am ready to assist;" and he got ready.

"Dinna pit yirsel' intae a ferry tarry (commotion)," but Mains was
distinctly pleased to see a little touch of worldliness, just enough to
keep the new minister in touch with humanity. "It 'll be queer stuff
oor lads canna lift, an' a 'll gie ye a warranty that the' 'll no be a
cup o' the cheeny broken," and then Saunderson conducted his
congregation to the siding.

"Dod, man," remarked Mains to the station-master, examining a truck
with eight boxes; "the manse 'll no want for dishes at ony rate; but
let's start on the furniture; whar hae ye got the rest o' the
plenishing?

"Naething mair? havers, man, ye dinna mean tae say they pack beds an'
tables in boxes; a' doot there 's a truck missin'." Then Mains went
over where the minister was fidgeting beside his possessions.

"No, no," said Saunderson, when the situation was put before him, "it's
all here. I counted the boxes, and I packed every box myself. That
top one contains the fathers--deal gently with it; and the Reformation
divines are just below it. Books are easily injured, and they feel it.
I do believe there is a certain life in them, and . . . and . . . they
don't like being ill-used," and Jeremiah looked wistfully at the
ploughmen.

"Div ye mean tae say," as soon as Mains had recovered, "that ye 've
brocht naethin' for the manse but bukes, naither bed nor bedding?
Keep's a'," as the situation grew upon him, "whar are ye tae sleep, and
what are ye to sit on? An' div ye never eat? This croons a';" and
Mains gazed at his new minister as one who supposed that he had taken
Jeremiah's measure and had failed utterly.

"_Mea culpa_--it's . . . my blame," and Saunderson was evidently
humbled at this public exposure of his incapacity; "some slight
furnishing will be expedient, even necessary, and I have a plan for
book-shelves in my head; it is ingenious and convenient, and if there
is a worker in wood . . ."

"Come awa' tae the dog-cart, sir," said Mains, realising that even
Kilbogie did not know what a singular gift they had obtained, and that
discussion on such sublunary matters as pots and pans was useless, not
to say profane. So eight carts got a box each; one, Jeremiah's ancient
kist of moderate dimensions; and the tenth--that none might be left
unrecognised--a handbag that had been on the twelve years' probation
with its master. The story grew as it passed westwards, and when it
reached us we were given to understand that the Free Kirk minister of
Kilbogie had come to his parish with his clothing in a paper parcel and
twenty-four packing cases filled with books, in as many languages--half
of them dating from the introduction of printing, and fastened by
silver clasps--and that if Drumtochty seriously desired to hear an
intellectual sermon at a time, we must take our way through Tochty
woods.

Mrs. Pitillo took the minister into her hands, and compelled him to
accompany her to Muirtown, where she had him at her will for some time,
so that she equipped the kitchen (fully), a dining-room (fairly), a
spare bedroom (amply), Mr. Saunderson's own bedroom (miserably), and
secured a table and two chairs for the study. This success turned her
head. Full of motherly forethought, and having a keen remembrance that
probationers always retired in the afternoon at Mains to think over the
evening's address, and left an impress of the human form on the bed
when they came down to tea, Mrs. Pitillo suggested that a sofa would be
an admirable addition to the study. As soon as this piece of
furniture, of a size suitable for his six feet, was pointed out to the
minister, he took fright, and became quite unmanageable. He would not
have such an article in his study on any account, partly because it
would only feed a tendency to sloth--which, he explained, was one of
his besetting sins--and partly because it would curtail the space
available for books, which, he indicated, were the proper furniture of
any room, but chiefly of a study. So great was his alarm that he
repented of too early concessions about the other rooms, and explained
to Mrs. Pitillo that every inch of space must be rigidly kept for the
overflow from the study, which he expected--if he were spared--would
reach the garrets. Several times on their way back to Kilbogie,
Saunderson looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo, and once opened his mouth
as if to speak, from which she gathered that he was grateful for her
kindness, but dared not yield any farther to the luxuries of the flesh.

What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
housekeepers for Mr. Saunderson and overseeing the interior of that
remarkable home, she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
Church manse of Kilbogie. Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to
have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her
name to Carmichael in feeling terms. There had been some delay in
providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles'
walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to
take his meal standing for want of a chair.

"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree,
and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.

"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
them after an artificial fashion. This she called tidying, and, in its
most extreme form, cleaning."

[Illustration: "She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my
books."]

"With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed
in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I
was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of
comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the
garden and dusted. It was the space of two years before I regained
mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on
the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second
edition, to say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's _Lex
Rex_.

"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that
worthy matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could
be saved by good works, her place is assured. I was with her before
she died, and her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes
aince in the sax months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin'
on.' It was not the testimony one would have desired in the
circumstances, but yet, Mr. Carmichael, I have often thought that there
was a spirit of . . . of unselfishness, in fact, that showed the
working of grace." Later in the same evening Mr. Saunderson's mind
returned to his friend's spiritual state, for he entered into a long
argument to show that while Mary was more spiritual, Martha must also
have been within the Divine Election.

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE GLOAMING.

August is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it
pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie. The softness of the
gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the
honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the
fields--for harvest is earlier down there than with us--and the cattle
chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed
peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination. Fancies
he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except
his mother and his aunt. There had been times when he and his set
declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to
be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union. It was
never completed--and therefore never signed--because the brotherhood
could not agree about the duration of the vows--the draftsman, who has
been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity,
while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in
the Moderator of Assembly.

This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure
boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk,
but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter. There was in him an
ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost
convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the
celibate state. As an only child, and brought up by a mother given to
noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves,
and considered marriage for ordinary men to flavour of sacrilege. His
mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his
tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her
embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior.
Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a
Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature. Some were
abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints.
Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than
saints. Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the
shameful things they said. One middle-aged female, whose conversation
oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to
sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak
about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described
him as a prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some
women because he thought more highly of them than they thought of
themselves.

Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students,
especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who
neither had endured hardship to get to college, nor did any work at
college. They were described in reports as the "fruits of the
revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the
University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's
lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by
the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they
would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could
gain by their own merits. As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more
charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world
and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in
very coarse and common souls. When he was a young judge--from whom may
the Eternal deliver us all--he was bitter against the "fruits," as he
called them, because they did their best to escape examinations, and
spoke in a falsetto voice, and had no interest in dogs, and because
they told incredible tales of their spiritual achievements. But
chiefly did Carmichael's gorge rise against those unfortunates because
of the mean way they spoke of marriage, and on this account, being a
high-spirited young fellow, he said things which could hardly be
defended, and of which afterwards he honestly repented.

"Yes, religion is profitable for both worlds," one of them would exhort
by the junior common-room fire, "and if you doubt it, look at me;
five-and-twenty shillings a week as a draper's assistant was all I had,
and no chance of rising. Now I 'm a gentleman"--here Carmichael used
to look at the uncleanly little man and snort--"and in two years I
could ask any girl in religious society, and she would take me. A
minister can marry any woman, if he be evangelical. Ah," he would
conclude, with a fine strain of piety, "the Gospel is its own reward."

What enraged Carmichael as he listened in the distance to these paeans
of Pharisaism was the disgusting fact that the "fruits" did carry off
great spoil in the marriage field, so that to a minister without
culture, manners, or manliness, a middle-class family would give their
pet daughter, when they would have refused her to a ten times better
man fighting his way up in commerce. If she died, then this
enterprising buccaneer would achieve a second and third conquest, till
in old age he would rival the patriarchs in the number of his wives and
possessions. As for the girl, Carmichael concluded that she was still
under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a
very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion. This particular
"fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness
especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more
illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made
man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat
disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry--a
mysterious providence, as he often explained--but allowed him to enjoy
life with a guarded satisfaction. What Carmichael said to him about
his ways and his Gospel was very unpleasant and quite unlike
Carmichael's kindly nature, but the only revenge the victim took was to
state his conviction that Scotland would have nothing to do with a man
that was utterly worldly, and in after years to warn vacant churches
against one who did not preach the Cross.

After one of those common-room encounters, Carmichael used to fling
himself out into the east wind and greyness of Edinburgh, fuming
against the simplicity of good people, against the provincialism of his
college, against the Pharisaism of his church, against the Philistinism
of Scottish life. He would go down to Holyrood and pity Queen Mary,
transported from the gay court of France to Knox's Scotland, divided
between theology and bloodshed. In the evening he would sweep his
table clean of German books on the Pentateuch, and cover it with prints
of the old masters, which he had begun to collect, and ancient books of
Catholic devotion, and read two letters to his mother from her uncle,
who had been a Vicar-General, and died in an old Scottish convent in
Spain. There was very little in the letters beyond good wishes, and an
account of the Vicar-General's health, but they seemed to link a Free
Kirk divinity student on to the Holy Catholic Church. Mother Church
cast her spell over his imagination, and he envied the lot of her
priests, who held a commission no man denied and administered a
world-wide worship, whom a splendid tradition sanctioned, whom each of
the arts hastened to aid; while he was to be the minister of a local
sect and work with the "fruits," who knew nothing of Catholic
Christianity, but supposed their little eddy, whereon they danced like
rotten sticks, to be the main stream. Next day a reaction would set
in, and Carmichael would have a fit of Bohemianism, and resolve to be a
man of letters. So the big books on theology would again be set aside,
and he would write an article for _Ferrier's Journal_, that kindliest
of all journals to the young author, which he would receive back in a
week "with thanks." The Sunday night came, and Carmichael sat down to
write his weekly letter to his mother--she got notes between, he found
them all in her drawers, not a scrap missing--and as he wrote, his
prejudices, and petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away.
Before he had told her all that happened to him during the
week--touching gently on the poor Revivalist--although his mother had a
saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic--and saying
nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales--for this would have
alarmed her at once--he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a
Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly
cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty commotion of youth and its
censoriousness, he had a shrewd idea that a man is likely to do his
life-work best in the tradition of his faith and blood. Next morning
his heart warmed as he went in through the college gates, and he would
have defended Knox unto the death, as the maker of Scotland. His
fellow-students seemed now a very honest set of men, as indeed they
were, although a trifle limited in horizon, and he hoped that one of
the "fruits" was "satisfied with his Sunday's work," which shows that
as often as a man of twenty-one gets out of touch with reality, he
ought straightway to sit down and write to his mother. Carmichael
indeed told me one evening at the Cottage that he never had any
mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall
instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's
desire, and he loved her. As a layman it perhaps did not become me to
judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided
by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory
the better he would do his work. After which both of us smoked
furiously, and Carmichael, two minutes later, was moved to remark that
some Turkish I had then was enough to lure a man up Glen Urtach in the
month of December.

The young minister was stirred on the way to Kilbogie, and began to
dream dreams in the twilight. Love had come suddenly to him, and after
an unexpected fashion. Miss Carnegie was of another rank and another
faith, nor was she even his ideal woman, neither conspicuously
spiritual nor gentle, but frank, outspoken, fearless, self-willed. He
could also see that she had been spoiled by her father and his friends,
who had given her _carte blanche_ to say and do what she pleased. Very
likely--he could admit that even in the first blush of his emotion--she
might be passionate and prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater.
This he had imagined in the Tochty woods, and was not afraid, for her
imperfections seemed to him a provocation and an attraction. They were
the defects of her qualities--of her courage, candour, generosity,
affection. Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of
her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the
fascination of her manner. She was free from the affectations,
gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known.
St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his
heart, but life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man were married
to a saint. The saints have no humour, and do not relax. Life with a
woman like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and stimulating, full of
surprises and piquancy. No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an
instinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at the core. She was
a gallant lass, and . . . he loved her.

[Illustration: Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination.]

What an absurdity was this revery, and Carmichael laughed aloud at
himself. Twice he had met Miss Carnegie--on one occasion she had found
him watering strange dogs out of his hat, and on the other he had given
her to understand that women were little removed from fools. He had
made the worst of himself, and this young woman who had lived with
smart people must have laughed at him. Very likely she had made him
into a story, for as a raconteur himself he knew the temptation to work
up raw material, or perhaps Miss Carnegie had forgotten long ago that
he had called. Suppose that he should call to-morrow on his way home
and say, "General Carnegie, I think it right to tell you that I admire
your daughter very much, and should like your permission to pay my
addresses. I am Free Church minister in Drumtochty, and my stipend is
200 pounds a year" . . . his laugh this time was rather bitter. The
Carnegies would be at once admitted into the county set, and he would
only meet them at a time . . . Lord Hay was a handsome and pleasant
young fellow. He would be at Glen Urtach House for the shooting in a
few days . . . that was a likely thing to happen . . . the families
were old friends . . . there would be great festivities in the
Glen . . . perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's
health . . . It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come
along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if
any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister of
Kilbogie.

Carmichael was standing in the shadow as Saunderson came along the
road, and the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the dear old
bookman. Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but
with much poring over books and meditation he had descended some three
inches. His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to
genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, and with his flowing,
untrimmed beard, was now quite grey. Within his clothes he was the
merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in
sharp outline, and his hands were almost transparent. The redeeming
feature in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal. Whether
he was expounding doctrines of an incredible disbelief in humanity or
exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a divine love in which he did
not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon
his knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic.
Young ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new
views were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and
came in a year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson,
curiously compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness
were quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part. For
years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael" and even "MacWheep," though he
was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
ministry--so much reverence at least was in the lads--and "Mister"
attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
Eastern sage. Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day of
his death Kilbogie was so called. He made protest against the title as
being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on
the ground of his slender attainments. The lads saw the force of this
objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to
MacWheep, but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson--whereat
Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so
called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness.
When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to
confer the degree of D. D. on him for his distinguished learning and
great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was
delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an
ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone
out in a body and compelled him to accept. They also purchased a
Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of
Kilbogie two days before the capping. One of them saw that he was duly
brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those
days took place. Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to
British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled
half a column of the _Caledonian_, and drew forth a complimentary
article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost
all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption,
and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much
frankness. The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a
great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in
which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his
neighbour, a successful West-end clergyman, the author of a Life of
Dorcas and other pleasing booklets. For some time after his boys said
"Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common
title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of
his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.

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