CHAPTER XI: THE OLD CHURCH
The next day, the day of the Resurrection, rose glorious from its
sepulchre of sea fog and drizzle. It had poured all night long,
but at sunrise the clouds had broken and scattered, and the air was
the purer for the cleansing rain, while the earth shone with that
peculiar lustre which follows the weeping which has endured its
appointed night. The larks were at it again, singing as if their
hearts would break for joy as they hovered in brooding exultation
over the song of the future; for their nests beneath hoarded a wealth
of larks for summers to come. Especially about the old church--
half buried in the ancient trees of Lossie House, the birds that
day were jubilant; their throats seemed too narrow to let out the
joyful air that filled all their hollow bones and quills: they sang
as if they must sing, or choke with too much gladness. Beyond the
short spire and its shining cock, rose the balls and stars and
arrowy vanes of the House, glittering in gold and sunshine.
The inward hush of the Resurrection, broken only by the prophetic
birds, the poets of the groaning and travailing creation, held time
and space as in a trance; and the centre from which radiated both
the hush and the carolling expectation seemed to Alexander Graham
to be the churchyard in which he was now walking in the cool of the
morning. It was more carefully kept than most Scottish churchyards,
and yet was not too trim. Nature had a word in the affair--
was allowed her part of mourning, in long grass and moss and the
crumbling away of stone. The wholesomeness of decay, which both
in nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was not
unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous attempt to hide
death in the garments of life. The master walked about gently, now
stopping to read some well known inscription and ponder for a moment
over the words; and now wandering across the stoneless mounds,
content to be forgotten by all but those who loved the departed. At
length he seated himself on a slab by the side of the mound that
rose but yesterday: it was sculptured with symbols of decay--
needless surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every
newly opened grave, and as surely ill befitting the precincts of
a church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death!
"What are these stones," he said to himself, "but monuments to
oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the
forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to send a poor forsaken
name, like the title page of a lost book, down the careless stream
of time! Let me serve my generation, and let God remember me!"
The morning wore on; the sun rose higher and higher. He drew from
his pocket the Nosce Teipsum. of Sir John Davies, and was still
reading, in quiet enjoyment of the fine logic of the lawyer poet,
when he heard the church key, in the trembling hand of Jonathan Auld,
the sexton, jar feebly battling with the reluctant lock. Soon the
people began to gather, mostly in groups and couples. At length
came solitary Miss Horn, whom the neighbours, from respect to her
sorrow, had left to walk alone. But Mr Graham went to meet her,
and accompanied her into the church.
It was a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monastery, and
the burial place of generations of noble blood; the dust of royalty
even lay under its floor. A knight of stone reclined cross legged
in a niche with an arched Norman canopy in one of the walls, the
rest of which was nearly encased in large tablets of white marble,
for at his foot lay the ashes of barons and earls whose title was
extinct, and whose lands had been inherited by the family of Lossie.
Inside as well as outside of the church the ground had risen with
the dust of generations, so that the walls were low; and heavy
galleries having been erected in parts, the place was filled with
shadowy recesses and haunted with glooms. From a window in the
square pew where he sat, so small and low that he had to bend his
head to look out of it, the schoolmaster could see a rivulet of
sunshine, streaming through between two upright gravestones, and
glorifying the long grass of a neglected mound that lay close to
the wall under the wintry drip from the eaves: when he raised his
head, the church looked very dark. The best way there to preach
the Resurrection, he thought, would be to contrast the sepulchral
gloom of the church, its dreary psalms and drearier sermons, with
the sunlight on the graves, the lark filled sky, and the wind blowing
where it listed. But although the minister was a young man of the
commonest order, educated to the church that he might eat bread,
hence a mere willing slave to the beck of his lord and master, the
patron, and but a parrot in the pulpit, the schoolmaster not only
endeavoured to pour his feelings and desires into the mould of his
prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that revealed
no distaste for the weak and unsavoury broth ladled out him to
nourish his soul withal. When however the service--though whose
purposes the affair could be supposed to serve except those of Mr
Cairns himself, would have been a curious question--was over,
he did breathe a sigh of relief; and when he stepped out into the
sun and wind which had been shining and blowing all the time of
the dreary ceremony, he wondered whether the larks might not have
had the best of it in the God praising that had been going on for
two slow paced hours. Yet, having been so long used to the sort of
thing, he did not mind it half so much as his friend Malcolm, who
found the Sunday observances an unspeakable weariness to both flesh
and spirit.
On the present occasion, however, Malcolm did not find the said
observances dreary, for he observed nothing but the vision which
radiated from the dusk of the small gallery forming Lossie pew,
directly opposite the Norman canopy and stone crusader. Unconventional,
careless girl as Lady Florimel had hitherto shown herself to him,
he saw her sit that morning like the proudest of her race, alone,
and, to all appearance, unaware of a single other person's being
in the church besides herself. She manifested no interest in what
was going on, nor indeed felt any--how could she? never parted
her lips to sing; sat during the prayer; and throughout the
sermon seemed to Malcolm not once to move her eyes from the carved
crusader. When all was over, she still sat motionless--sat until
the last old woman had hobbled out. Then she rose, walked slowly from
the gloom of the church, flashed into the glow of the churchyard,
gleamed across it to a private door in the wall, which a servant
held for her, and vanished. If a moment after, the notes of a merry
song invaded the ears of those who yet lingered, who could dare
suspect that proudly sedate damsel thus suddenly breaking the ice
of her public behaviour?
For a mere school girl she had certainly done the lady's part well.
What she wore I do not exactly know; nor would it perhaps be well
to describe what might seem grotesque to such prejudiced readers
as have no judgment beyond the fashions of the day. But I will not
let pass the opportunity of reminding them how sadly old fashioned
we of the present hour also look in the eyes of those equally
infallible judges who have been in dread procession towards us ever
since we began to be--our posterity--judges who perhaps will
doubt with a smile whether we even knew what love was, or ever had
a dream of the grandeur they are on the point of grasping. But at
least bethink yourselves, dear posterity: we have not ceased because
you have begun.
Out of the church the blind Duncan strode with long, confident
strides. He had no staff to aid him, for he never carried one when
in his best clothes; but he leaned proudly on Malcolm's arm, if
one who walked so erect could be said to lean. He had adorned his
bonnet the autumn before with a sprig of the large purple heather,
but every bell had fallen from it, leaving only the naked spray,
pitiful analogue of the whole withered exterior of which it formed
part. His sporran, however, hid the stained front of his kilt,
and his Sunday coat had been new within ten years--the gift of
certain ladies of Portlossie, some of whom, to whose lowland eyes
the kilt was obnoxious, would have added a pair of trowsers, had
not Miss Horn stoutly opposed them, confident that Duncan would
regard the present as an insult. And she was right; for rather than
wear anything instead of the philibeg, Duncan would have plaited
himself one with his own blind fingers out of an old sack. Indeed,
although the trews were never at any time unknown in the Highlands,
Duncan had always regarded them as effeminate, and especially in
his lowland exile would have looked upon the wearing of them as a
disgrace to his highland birth.
"Tat wass a fery coot sairmon today, Malcolm," he said, as they
stepped from the churchyard upon the road.
Malcolm, knowing well whither conversation on the subject would
lead, made no reply. His grandfather, finding him silent, iterated
his remark, with the addition--"Put how could it pe a paad one,
you'll pe thinking, my poy, when he'd pe hafing such a text to keep
him straight."
Malcolm continued silent, for a good many people were within hearing,
whom he did not wish to see amused with the remarks certain to follow
any he could make. But Mr Graham, who happened to be walking near
the old man on the other side, out of pure politeness made a partial
response.
"Yes, Mr MacPhail," he said, "it was a grand text."
"Yes, and it wass'll pe a cran' sairmon," persisted Duncan.
"'Fenchence is mine--I will repay.' Ta Lord loves fenchence.
It's a fine thing, fenchence. To make ta wicked know tat tey'll pe
peing put men! Yes; ta Lord will slay ta wicked. Ta Lord will gif
ta honest man fenchence upon his enemies. It wass a cran' sairmon!"
"Don't you think vengeance a very dreadful thing, Mr MacPhail?"
said the schoolmaster.
"Yes, for ta von tat'll pe in ta wrong--I wish ta fenchence was
mine!" he added with a loud sigh.
"But the Lord doesn't think any of us fit to be trusted with it,
and so keeps it to himself, you see."
"Yes, and tat'll pe pecause it 'll pe too coot to be gifing to
another. And some people would be waik of heart, and be letting
teir enemies co."
"I suspect it's for the opposite reason, Mr MacPhail:--we would
go much too far, making no allowances, causing the innocent to
suffer along with the guilty, neither giving fair play nor avoiding
cruelty,--and indeed"
"No fear!" interrupted Duncan eagerly,--"no fear, when ta wrong
wass as larch as Morven!"
In the sermon there had not been one word as to St Paul's design
in quoting the text. It had been but a theatrical setting forth
of the vengeance of God upon sin, illustrated with several common
tales of the discovery of murder by strange means--a sermon
after Duncan's own heart; and nothing but the way in which he now
snuffed the wind with head thrown back and nostrils dilated, could
have given an adequate idea of how much he enjoyed the recollection
of it.
Mr Graham had for many years believed that he must have some
personal wrongs to brood over,--wrongs, probably, to which were
to be attributed his loneliness and exile; but of such Duncan had
never spoken, uttering no maledictions except against the real or
imagined foes of his family.*
*[What added to the likelihood of Mr Graham's conjecture was the
fact, well enough known to him, though to few lowlanders besides,
that revenge is not a characteristic of the Gael. Whatever instances
of it may have appeared, and however strikingly they may have been
worked up in fiction, such belong to the individual and not to
the race. A remarkable proof of this occurs in the history of the
family of Glenco itself. What remained of it after the massacre in
1689, rose in 1745, and joined the forces of Prince Charles Edward.
Arriving in the neighbourhood of the residence of Lord Stair, whose
grandfather had been one of the chief instigators of the massacre,
the prince took special precautions lest the people of Glenco should
wreak inherited vengeance on the earl. But they were so indignant
at being supposed capable of visiting on the innocent the guilt
of their ancestors, that it was with much difficulty they were
prevented from forsaking the standard of the prince, and returning
at once to their homes. Perhaps a yet stronger proof is the fact,
fully asserted by one Gaelic scholar at least, that their literature
contains nothing to foster feelings of revenge.]
The master placed so little value on any possible results of
mere argument, and had indeed so little faith in any words except
such as came hot from the heart, that he said no more, but, with
an invitation to Malcolm to visit him in the evening, wished them
good day, and turned in at his own door.
The two went slowly on towards the sea town. The road was speckled
with home goers, single and in groups, holding a quiet Sunday pace
to their dinners. Suddenly Duncan grasped Malcolm's arm with the
energy of perturbation, almost of fright, and said in a loud whisper:
"Tere'll be something efil not far from her, Malcolm, my son! Look
apout, look apout, and take care how you'll pe leading her."
Malcolm looked about, and replied, pressing Duncan's arm, and
speaking in a low voice, far less audible than his whisper,
"There's naebody near, daddy--naebody but the howdie wife."
"What howdie wife do you mean, Malcolm?"
"Hoot! Mistress Catanach, ye ken. Dinna lat her hear ye."
"I had a feeshion, Malcolm--one moment, and no more; ta darkness
closed arount it: I saw a ped, Malcolm, and--"
"Wheesht, wheesht; daddy!" pleaded Malcolm importunately. "She hears
ilka word ye're sayin'. She's awfu' gleg, and she's as poozhonous
as an edder. Haud yer tongue, daddy; for guid sake haud yer tongue."
The old man yielded, grasping Malcolm's arm, and quickening his
pace, though his breath came hard, as through the gathering folds
of asthma. Mrs. Catanach also quickened her pace, and came gliding
along the grass by the side of the road, noiseless as the adder
to which Malcolm had likened her, and going much faster than she
seemed. Her great round body looked a persistent type of her calling,
and her arms seemed to rest in front of her as upon a ledge. In one
hand she carried a small bible, round which was folded her pocket
handkerchief, and in the other a bunch of southernwood and rosemary.
She wore a black silk gown, a white shawl, and a great straw bonnet
with yellow ribbons in huge bows, and looked the very pattern of
Sunday respectability; but her black eyebrows gloomed ominous, and
an evil smile shadowed about the corners of her mouth as she passed
without turning her head or taking the least notice of them. Duncan
shuddered, and breathed yet harder, but seemed to recover as she
increased the distance between them. They walked the rest of the
way in silence, however; and even after they reached home, Duncan
made no allusion to his late discomposure.
"What was't ye thocht ye saw, as we cam frae the kirk, daddy?" asked
Malcolm when they were seated at their dinner of broiled mackerel
and boiled potatoes.
"In other times she'll pe hafing such feeshions often, Malcolm,
my son," he returned, avoiding an answer. "Like other pards of her
race she would pe seeing--in the speerit, where old Tuncan can
see. And she'll pe telling you, Malcolm--peware of tat voman;
for ta voman was thinking pad thoughts; and tat will pe what make
her shutter and shake, my son, as she'll pe coing py."
