FOOTNOTES:
[1] Disgusted.
CHAPTER VII.
A SUNDAY IN GLASGOW.
‘Well, Alec, how did you get on last night?’ asked Duncan Cameron of his friend, when they met as usual the day after the dinner at Blythswood Square.
‘Oh, all right. It was rather a stupid affair.’
‘Rather stupid—not quite worth the trouble of attending? And yet you were half afraid of going! Don’t deny it.’
‘I said it was stupid; and so it was,’ said Alec, reddening. ‘Nobody said anything worth listening to, so far as I heard.’
‘That means nobody took much notice of you, eh?’
‘What an ill-conditioned, sneering fellow you are, Cameron,’ replied Alec tranquilly. ‘You’ll never get on in the world unless you learn to be civil.’
‘It isn’t worth my while to be civil to you,’ said Cameron. ‘Wait till I’m in practice and have to flatter and humour rich old women. What did your uncle say to you?’
‘Hardly anything—just a word or two, as I was coming away.’
‘You ought to cultivate him, Alec.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t speak like that, Duncan,’ said Alec roughly. ‘Do you think I’m the sort of fellow to flatter and fawn upon an old man I don’t like, simply because he is rich?’
‘There’s no need for flattering and fawning,’ replied Cameron; ‘but you’ve no right to throw away such a chance at the very outset of your life.’
‘Do you think, then, that it’s manly or honourable to visit a man as it were out of pure friendship, when your only object is to make him useful to you?’
‘There’s no question of friendship, ye gowk; he’s your relation, and the head of your house. It’s your duty to pay him your respects occasionally.’
‘Paying my respects wouldn’t be of much use,’ retorted Alec. ‘You’re shirking the question. Is it honourable to—I don’t know the right word—to try to ingratiate yourself with anyone in the hope of getting something out of him?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not honourable; and I would not respect myself if I were to do such a thing,’ said Alec, with much dignity.
Cameron laughed inwardly, but he made no response, and there was silence for a few minutes between the two friends. The older man was thinking how absurd the boy was, and how a little experience of life would rub off his ‘high-fantastical’ notions. Then he wished that he had a grand-uncle who was a millionnaire. And then he fell to wondering whether, on the whole, it was best to despise wealth, as Alec Lindsay did, or to acquire it.
‘I suppose it is too late now to take another class?’ said Alec, half absently.
‘I should think so,’ responded his friend. ‘What class did you think of taking? Mathematics?’
‘No; History.’
‘History! That isn’t wanted for a degree. What put that into your head?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I only thought of it.’
Cameron did not know that the learned Professor of History had a niece named Laura Mowbray.
That evening about ten o’clock, when the medical student went down to his friend’s room, as was his custom at that hour, he found Alec poring over some papers, which he pushed aside as Cameron entered.
‘Come in,’ he cried, as the other paused in the doorway. ‘I’m not working.’
The Highlander took up his usual position, standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and proceeded to light his pipe.
‘They tell me you’re doing very well in the Latin class—sure of a prize, if you keep on as you’re doing,’ he said, after smoking for a minute in silence.
‘Oh, it’s no use; I can’t do Latin prose,’ answered Alec discontentedly. ‘How can I? I’ve never had any practice. Just look at this—my last exercise—no frightful blunders, but, as the Professor said, full of inelegancies;’ and he handed his friend a sheet of paper from his table as he spoke.
Cameron took the paper, and regarded it through a cloud of smoke.
‘What’s this?’ he exclaimed. ‘Poetry, as I’m a livin’ Heelandman! Just listen!’ and he waved his hand, as if addressing an imaginary audience.
Alec’s face burned, as he rose and hastily snatched the paper from his friend’s grasp. Cameron would have carried his bantering further, but he saw that in the lad’s face which restrained him.
‘Already!’ he muttered, as he turned away to hide his laughter.
‘Are you going home for the New Year?’ asked Alec, when his embarrassment had subsided.
‘Me? No! We have only a week’s vacation, or ten days at most. The Dunolly Castle sails only once a week in winter; and if the sailings didn’t suit, I should have hardly time to go there before I had to come away again. And if a storm came on I should be weather-bound, and might not get south for another week.’
‘It must be very dreary in the north in winter,’ said Alec.
‘Ay—but you must come and see for yourself some day.’
Alec was silent; he was thinking that he should like to ask his friend to spend the vacation week with him at the Castle Farm; but he did not care to take the responsibility of giving the invitation.
The following Sunday was one of those dismal days which are common in the west of Scotland during the winter months. It was nearly cold enough for snow, but instead of snow a continuous drizzle fell slowly throughout the day. There was no fog; but in the streets of Glasgow it was dark soon after midday.
Alec Lindsay went to church in the forenoon as usual; then he came home and ate a cold dinner which would have been very trying to any appetite less robust than that of a young Scotchman.
Finding that he had a few minutes to spare before setting out for the afternoon service (which takes the place of an evening service in England), he ran upstairs to his friend’s room.
‘I wish you would come to church with me, Duncan,’ he said, as he seated himself on the medical student’s trunk.
The invitation implied a reproach; but Cameron was not offended at this interference with his private concerns. In the north a man who ‘neglects ordinances’ is supposed to lay himself open to the reproof of any better-disposed person who assumes an interest in his spiritual welfare. For reply he muttered something in Gaelic, which Alec conjectured, rightly enough, to be an exclamation too improper to be said conveniently in English.
‘Fat can ye no leaf a man alone for?’ he said aloud, reverting, as he did when he was excited, to his strong Highland accent.
Alec said no more; but Cameron, whose conscience was not quite at rest, chose to continue the subject.
‘I go to the kirk when I’m at home,’ he said, ‘an’ that’s enough. I go to please my mother, an’ keep folk from talking—but it’s weary work. I often ask myself what is the good of it?—the whole thing, I mean. There’s old Mr. Macfarlane, the parish minister of Glenstruan—we went to live on the mainland two years ago, you know. He’s a decent man—a ferry decent man. He ladles oot castor oil an’ cod-liver oil as occasion requires, to the haill parish, an’ the next ane tae, without fee or reward. He’s a great botanist, and spends half his time in his gairden—grows a’ sorts o’ fruit—even peaches, I’ve been told. When the weather’s suitable he gangs fishin’. On Sabbath he has apoot forty folk in his big barn o’ a kirk. He talks tae them for an oor, an’ lets them gang. He’s aye ready to baptize a wean, or pray wi’ a deein’ botoch,[2] but it’s seldom he has the chance. I’m no blamin’ the man. It’s no his faut that the folk gaed ower bodily to the Free Kirk at the Disruption, an’ left him, a shepherd wi’ ne’er a flock, but a wheen auld rams, wha——’
‘But there’s the Free Kirk,’ interrupted Alec, ‘and it’s your own kirk, I suppose.’
‘No,’ said Cameron. ‘If anything, I belong to the Establishment. Save me, is my daily an’ nichtly prayer, frae the bitter birr o’ the Dissenters.’
Alec laughed, and the other went on:
‘There’s Maister MacPhairson, the Free Kirk minister. He’s a wee, soor, black-avised crater, wi’ a wife an’ nine weans. Hoo he manages to gie them parritch an’ milk I can not imagine. He’s jist eaten up wi’ envy an’ spite that the parish minister has the big hoose, and he has the wee ane. He mak’s his sermons dooble as lang to let folk see that he does a’ the wark——’
‘A very good reason for not belonging to the Free Church,’ interposed Alec; ‘but I don’t see what all this has got to do with the question.’
‘I’m only showing that the religious system of this country is in a state of petrifaction,’ said Cameron, abandoning the Doric—‘fossilization, if you like it better.’
Alec laughed.
‘A pretty proof,’ he cried.
‘Oh, of course, the state of religion in one corner of the Hielans is only an illustration; but it’s much the same everywhere. I don’t see, to put the thing plainly, that we should be very much worse off without any kirks, and what we want with so many is a mystery to me. What was the use of building a new one in every parish at the Disruption, I should like to know?’
‘You know as well as I do,’ answered Alec. ‘A great principle was at stake.’
‘“The sacred right o’ the nowte[3] to chuse their ain herd,” as Burns puts it,’ interposed Cameron.
‘Not only that; the question was whether the Church should submit to interference on the part of the State,’ said Alec.
‘And by way of showing that she never would submit, she rent herself in twa, and one half has spent the best part of her pith ever since in keeping up the fight wi’ the tither half. What sense is there in that, can ye tell me?’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Alec, ‘but it seems to me that if a man finds a poor religion around him, he ought to stick to it as well as he can till he finds a better one.’
‘There’s sense in that, Alec,’ said Cameron; ‘and I’ll no just say I’ve no had my endeavours to find a better.’
‘Where can ye find a better?’ asked Alec, shocked at this latitudinarianism.
‘I didna say I had succeeded, did I? But I’ve tried. I went a good deal among the Methodists in my first year at College. I was wonderfully taken with them at first—thought them just the very salt of the earth. But in six months, I found they groaned and cried “Amen” a little too often—for nothing at all. Then, my next session, I wandered about from one kirk to another, and then I stayed still. Sometimes I’ve even gone to the Catholics.’
‘The Catholics!’ exclaimed Alec, with horror. If his friend had said that he had occasionally joined in the rites of pagans, and had witnessed human sacrifices, he could hardly have shocked this son of the Covenanters more seriously.
‘Hoots, ay!’ said the Highlander, with a half-affected carelessness. ‘There’s a lot o’ them in Glenstruan.’
‘At home? In the north?’ asked Alec, in astonishment.
‘Yes; in out-of-the-way corners there are many Catholics. In some parishes there are but few Protestants.’
‘How did they come there?’
‘They have always been there.’
It was news to Alec, Scotchman as he was, that there are to this day little communities of Catholics hidden among the mountains of Ross and Inverness, living in glens so secluded that one might almost fancy that the fierce storms of the sixteenth century had never reached them.
Wondering in his heart how it was possible that even unlettered Highlanders should have clung so long to degrading superstitions, Alec descended from his friend’s garret, and set off alone for St. Simon’s Free Church. The Free Churchmen in the Scotch towns frequently name their places of worship after the Apostles, not with any idea of honouring the Apostles’ memory, but solely by way of keeping up a healthful and stimulating rivalry with the Establishment. Thus we have ‘St. Paul’s,’ and ‘Free St. Paul’s’—‘St. John’s,’ and ‘Free St. John’s’—and so forth.
Alec set out alone, and he felt very lonely as he made his way over the sloppy pavements. Among all these crowds of respectably-dressed people, there was not one face he knew, not the least possibility that anyone would give him a greeting. He would much rather have stayed at home over a pipe and a book, like Duncan Cameron; but his conscience would have made him miserable for a month if he had been guilty of such a crime. The jangling of bells filled the murky air. Most places of worship in Scotland have a bell, but very few have more than one. There is, therefore, no reason why each church should not have as large and as loud a bell as is consistent with the safety of the belfry.
In a short time Alec reached ‘Free St. Simon’s,’ a building which outwardly resembled an Egyptian temple on a small scale, and inwardly a Methodist chapel on a large scale. In all essential points the worship was exactly a counterpart of that to which he had always been accustomed at Muirburn; but the details were different. Here the passages were covered with matting, and the pews were carpeted and cushioned. Hassocks were also provided, not for kneeling upon, but for the greater comfort of the audience during the sermon.
The tall windows on either side of the pulpit were composed of painted glass. There were no idolatrous representations in the windows; only geometrical figures—Alec knew their number, and the colour of each one of them, intimately.
At Free St. Simon’s the modern habit of standing during psalm-singing had been introduced. The attitude to be observed at prayer was as yet a moot question. Custom varied upon the point. The older members of the congregation stood up and severely regarded their fellow-worshippers, who kept their seats, propped their feet on their hassocks, put their arms on the book-boards, and leant their heads upon their arms. This posture Alec found to be highly conducive to slumber; and he had much difficulty in keeping awake, but he did not care to proclaim himself one of the ‘unco guid’ by rising to his feet, and protesting in that way against the modern laxity of manners.
The prayer was a very long one, but at last it was over; and then came a chapter read from the Bible, another portion of a psalm, and the sermon. The preacher was both a good man and a learned one, but oratory was not his strong point; and if it had been, he might well have been excused for making no attempt to exert it at such a time and under such circumstances. The text, Alec remembered afterwards, was ‘One Lord, one Father of all,’ and the sermon was an elaborate attempt to prove that the Creator was in no proper sense the ‘Father’ of all men, but of the elect only. The young student listened for a time, and then fell to castle-building, an occupation of which he was perilously fond.
When the regulation hour-and-a-half had come to a close, the congregation was dismissed; and Alec Lindsay went back to his lodgings, weary, depressed, and discontented. After tea there was absolutely nothing for him to do. He did not feel inclined to read a religious book; and recreations of any kind were absolutely forbidden by the religion in which he had been brought up. After an hour spent in idling about his room, he set out to find a church at which there was evening service, thinking that to hear another sermon would be less wearisome than solitude.
Wandering through the streets, which at that hour were almost deserted, he at last heard a church bell begin to ring, and following the sound he came to a stone building, surmounted by a belfry. After a little hesitation, Alec Lindsay entered, and was conducted by the pew-opener to a seat. The area of the building was filled with very high-backed pews, set close together, and a large gallery ran round three of the walls; but the chapel was evidently not a Presbyterian place of worship, for on either side of the lofty pulpit was a reading-desk, nearly as high as the pulpit itself.
Presently the bell stopped, and an organ placed in the gallery opposite the pulpit began to sound. Then a clergyman in white surplice and black stole ascended to the reading-desk on the right of the central pulpit, and Alec Lindsay knew that he was, for the first time in his life, in an ‘Episcopal’ chapel.
The service was conducted in the plainest manner possible. The psalms were read, the canticles alone being chanted; and the clergyman, as he read the prayers, faced the congregation. The hymns were of a pronounced Evangelical type, and the sternest Calvinist could have found no fault with the sermon. But to Alec all was so entirely new and strange that he sometimes found it difficult to remember that he was supposed to be engaged in worship.
The prayers were over, and the sermon had begun, when Alec noticed, at some little distance, a face, the sight of which made his hand tremble and his heart beat. It was Laura Mowbray. She was sitting alone in her corner, her only companion being a maidservant, who sat at the door of the pew. Her profile was turned towards Alec, its clear white outline showing against the dark panelling behind her. Almost afraid to look in her direction, for fear of attracting her attention, or of allowing those sitting near him to guess what was passing in his mind, he took only a glance now and then at the object of his worship. It was worship, rather than love, with Alec Lindsay. Courtship, and marriage, and the practical considerations which these things entail, never entered the boy’s mind. He had seen his ideal of beauty, of refinement, of feminine grace; and he was content, for the present at least, to worship her at a distance, himself unseen.
When the service was over, he left the chapel, and placed himself at an angle outside the gateway, where he could see her as she passed out. He recognised her figure as soon as it appeared, but to his great disappointment her face was turned from him. By chance, however, she looked back to see if the maid were following her, and for one instant he had a full view of her face. It was enough, and without a thought of accosting her, Alec went home satisfied.