“WEE DAVIE.”
CHAPTER I.
“And a little child shall lead them.”
“Wee Davie” was the only child of William Thorburn, blacksmith. The child had reached the age in which he could venture, with prudence and reflection, on a journey from one chair to another, his wits kept alive by maternal warnings of “Tak’ care, Davie; mind the fire, Davie.” And when his journey was ended in safety, and he looked over his shoulder with a cry of joy to his mother, he was rewarded, in addition to the rewards of his own brave and adventurous spirit, by such a smile as equalled only his own, and by the well-merited approval of “Weel done, Davie!”
Davie was the most powerful and influential member of the household. Neither the British fleet, nor the French army, nor the Armstrong gun, nor the British Constitution had the power of doing what Davie did. They might as well have tried to make a primrose grow or a lark sing! He was, for example, a wonderful stimulus to labour. His father, the smith, had been rather disposed to idleness before his son’s arrival. He did not take to his work on cold mornings as he might have done, and was apt to neglect many opportunities which offered themselves of bettering his condition; and Jeanie was easily put off by some plausible objection when she urged her husband to make an additional honest penny to keep the house. But “the bairn” became a new motive to exertion; and the thought of leaving him and Jeanie more comfortable, in case sickness laid the smith aside, or death took him away, became like a new sinew to his powerful arm, as he wielded the hammer, and made it ring the music of hearty work on the sounding anvil. The meaning of benefit-clubs, sick-societies, and penny-banks was fully explained by “wee Davie.”
Davie also exercised a remarkable influence on his father’s political views and social habits. The smith had been fond of debates on political questions, and no more sonorous growl of discontent than his could be heard against the powers that be, the injustice done to the masses, and the misery which was occasioned by class legislation. He had also made up his mind not to be happy or contented, but only to endure life as a necessity laid upon him, until the required reforms in Church and State, at home and abroad, had been attained.
“Isn’t he a bonnie bit bairn?”
See [page 100].
But his wife, without uttering a syllable on matters which she did not pretend even to understand, and by a series of acts out of Parliament, by reforms in household arrangements, by introducing good bills to her own House of Commons, and by a charter, whose points were chiefly very commonplace ones, such as a comfortable meal, a tidy home, a clean fireside, a polished grate, above all, a cheerful countenance and womanly love—these radical changes had made her husband wonderfully fond of his own house. He was, under this teaching, getting every day too contented for a patriot, and too happy for a man in such an ill-governed world. His old companions could not at last coax him out at night. He was lost as a member of one of the most philosophical clubs in the neighbourhood. His old pluck, they said, was gone. The wife, it was alleged by the patriotic bachelors, had “cowed” him, and driven all the spirit out of him. But “wee Davie” completed this revolution.
One failing of William’s had hitherto resisted Jeanie’s silent influence. The smith had formed the habit, before he was married, of meeting a few companions, “just in a friendly way,” on pay-nights at a public-house. It was true that he was never “what might be called a drunkard,” “never lost a day’s work,” “never was the worse of liquor,” etc. But, nevertheless, when he entered the snuggery in Peter Wilson’s whisky shop, with the blazing fire and comfortable atmosphere; and when, with half a dozen talkative and, to him, pleasant fellows and old companions, he sat round the fire, and the glass circulated, and the gossip of the week was discussed, and racy stories were told, and one or two songs sung, linked together by memories of old merry meetings; and current jokes were repeated, with humour, of the tyrannical influence which some would presume to exercise on “innocent social enjoyment”—then would the smith’s brawny chest expand, and his face beam, and his feelings become malleable, and his sixpences begin to melt, and flow out in generous sympathy into Peter Wilson’s fozy hand, and there counted beneath his sodden eyes. And so it was that the smith’s wages were always minus Peter’s gains.
His wife had her fears—her horrid anticipations—but did not like to “even” her husband to anything so dreadful as what she in her heart dreaded. She took her own way, however, to win him to the house and to good, and gently insinuated wishes rather than expressed them. The smith, no doubt, was only “merry,” and never was ill-tempered or unkind; “yet at times—” “and then, what if—” Yes, Jeanie, you are right! The demon sneaks into the house by degrees, and at first may be dispelled, and the door shut upon him; but let him only once take possession, then he will keep it, and shut the door against everything pure, and lovely, and of good report, and bar it against thee and “wee Davie,” ay, and against better than thee and than all else, and fill the house with sin and shame, with misery and despair! But “wee Davie,” with his arm of might, drove the demon out.
It happened thus. One evening when the smith returned home so that “you would know it on him,” his child toddled to him, and, lifting him up, he made him stand before him on his knee. The child began to play with the locks of the Samson, and to pat him on the cheek, and to repeat with glee the name of “dad-a.” The smith gazed at him intently, and with a peculiar look of love, mingled with sadness.
“Isn’t he a bonnie bit bairn?” asked Jeanie, as she looked over her husband’s shoulder at the child, nodding and smiling to him.
The smith spoke not a word, but gazed still upon his boy, while some sudden emotion was strongly working in his countenance. “It’s done!” he at last said, as he put his child down.
“What’s wrang? what’s wrang?” exclaimed his wife, as she stood before him, and put her hands round his shoulders, bending down until her face was close to his.
“Everything is wrang, Jeanie!”
“Willie, what is’t? are ye no’ weel?—tell me what’s wrang wi’ you?—oh, tell me!” she exclaimed in evident alarm.
“It’s a’ richt noo!” he said, rising up, and seizing his child, lifted him up to his breast, and kissed him. He then folded him in his arms, clasped him to his heart, and looking up in silence, said, “Davie has done it, along wi’ you, Jeanie. Thank God, I am a free man!”
His wife felt awed, she knew not how.
“Sit doon,” he said, as he took out his handkerchief and wiped away a tear from his eye, “and I’ll tell you a’ aboot it.”
Jeanie sat on a stool at his feet, with Davie on her knee.
Her husband seized his child’s little hand with one of his own, and with the other took his wife’s. “I havena been what ye may ca’ a drunkard,” he said, “but I hae been often as I shouldna hae been, and as, wi’ God’s help, I never, never will be again!”
“Oh!” exclaimed Jeanie.
“Let me speak,” said William. “To think, Jeanie”—here he struggled as if something was choking him—“to think that for whisky I might beggar you and wee Davie; tak’ the claes aff your back; drive ye to the workhouse; break your heart; and ruin my bonnie bairn, that loves me sae weel, in saul and body, for time and for eternity! God forgie me! I canna stand the thocht o’t, let alane the reality!” and the strong man rose, and little accustomed as he was to show his feelings, he kissed his wife and child. “It’s done, it’s done!” he said; “dinna greet, Jeanie. Thank God for you and Davie, my best blessings.”
“Except Himsel’!” said Jeanie, as she hung on her husband’s neck.
“Amen!” said the smith; “and noo, woman, nae mair aboot it; it’s done. Gie wee Davie a piece, and get the supper ready.”
“Wee Davie” was also a great promoter of social intercourse, an unconscious link between man and man, and a great practical “unionist.” He healed breaches, reconciled differences, and was a peace-maker between kinsfolk and neighbours. For example: Jeanie’s parents were rather opposed to her marriage with the smith; some said because they belonged to the rural aristocracy of country farmers. They regretted, therefore, the day—though their regret was expressed only to old friends—when the lame condition of some of the horses had brought Thorburn into communion with their stable, and ultimately with their house. Thorburn was admitted to be a sensible, well-to-do man; but then he was, at best, but a smith, and Jeanie was good-looking, and “by ordinary,” with expectations of some “tocher,” and as her mother remarked, “though I say it, that shouldna say it,” etc., and so, with this introduction, she would proceed to enlarge on Jeanie’s excellences, commenting on the poor smith rather with pauses of silence, and expressions of hope “that she might be mistaken,” all of which, from their very mystery, were more depreciatory than any direct charges. But when “wee Davie” was born, the old couple deemed it proper and due to themselves—not to speak of the respect due to their daughter, whom they sincerely loved—to come and visit her. Her mother had been with her, indeed, at an earlier period; and the house was so clean, and Thorburn so intelligent, and the child pronounced to be so like old David Armstrong, Jeanie’s father, especially about the forehead, that the two families, as the smith remarked, were evidently being welded, so that a few more gentle hammerings would make them one.
“Wee Davie,” as he grew up, became the fire of love which heated the hearts of good metal so as to enable favourable circumstances to give the necessary finishing stroke which would permanently unite them. These circumstances were constantly occurring until, at last, Armstrong called on every market-day to see his daughter and grandson, and he played with the boy (who was his only grandson), and took him on his knee, and put a “sweetie” into his mouth, and evidently felt as if he himself was reproduced and lived in the boy. This led to closer intercourse, until David Armstrong admitted that William Thorburn was one of the most sensible men he knew, and that he would not only back him against any of his acquaintances for a knowledge of a good horse, but for wonderful information as to the state of the country generally, especially of the landed interest and the high rent of land. Mrs. Armstrong finally admitted that Jeanie was not so far mistaken in her choice of a husband. The good woman always assumed that the sagacity of the family was derived from her side of the house. But whatever doubts still lingered in their minds as to the marriage, these were all dissipated by one look of “wee Davie.” “I’m just real proud aboot that braw bairn o’ Jeanie’s,” she used to say to her husband. She added one day, with a chuckling laugh and smile, “D’ye no’ think yersel’, gudeman, that wee Davie has a look o’ auld Davie?”
“Maybe, maybe,” replied auld Davie; “but I aye think he’s our ain bairn we lost thirty years syne.”
“That has been in my ain mind,” said his wife; “but I never liked to say it. But he’s no’ the waur o’ being like baith.”
Again: There lived in the same common passage, and opposite to William Thorburn’s door, an old soldier, a pensioner. He was a bachelor, and by no means disposed to hold much intercourse with his neighbours. The noise of the children was obnoxious to him. He maintained that “an hour’s drill every day would alone make them tolerable. Obedience to authority; right about, march! That’s the thing,” the Corporal would say to some father of a numerous family in the “close,” as he flourished his stick with a smile rather than a growl. Jeanie pronounced him to be “a selfish body.” Thorburn had more than once tried to cultivate acquaintance with him, as they were constantly brought into outward contact. But the Corporal was a Tory, and more than suspected the smith of holding “Radical” sentiments. To defend things as they were was a point of honour with the pensioner—a religion. Any dislike to the Government seemed a slight upon the army, and therefore upon himself. Thorburn at last avoided him, and pronounced him proud and ignorant. But one day “wee Davie” found his way into his house, and putting his hands on his knees as he smoked his pipe at the fireside, looked up to his face. The old soldier was arrested by the beauty of the child, and took him on his knee. To his surprise, Davie did not scream; and when his mother soon followed in search of her boy, and made many apologies for his “impudence,” as she called it, the Corporal maintained that he was a jewel, a perfect gentleman, and dubbed him “the Captain.”
Next day, tapping at Thorburn’s door, the Corporal gracefully presented a toy in the shape of a small sword and drum for his young hero. That night he smoked his pipe at the smith’s fireside, and told such stories of his battles as fired the smith’s enthusiasm, called forth his praises, and, what was more substantial, a most comfortable tea by Jeanie, which clinched their friendly intercourse. He and “the Captain” became constant associates, and many a loud laugh might be heard from the Corporal’s room as he played with the boy, and educated his genius. “He makes me young again, does the Captain!” remarked the Corporal to his mother.
Mrs. Fergusson, another neighbour, was also drawn into the same net by “wee Davie.” She was a fussy, gossiping woman, noisy and disagreeable. She found Jeanie uncongenial, who “kept herself to herself,” instead of giving away some of her good self to her neighbour, and thus taking some of her neighbour’s bad self out of her. But her youngest child became seriously ill, and Jeanie thought, “If Davie was ill I would like a neighbour to speir for him,” and so she went upstairs to visit Mrs. Fergusson, and begged pardon, but “wished to know how Mary was?” and Mrs. Fergusson was bowed down with sorrow, and thanked her, and bid her “to come ben.” And Jeanie did so, and spoke kindly to the child, and told her, moreover, what pleasure it would give her to nurse her baby occasionally; and she invited the younger children to come down to her house and play with “wee Davie,” and thus keep the sick one quiet; and she helped also to cook some nutritive drinks, and got nice milk from her father for the sick one, and often excused herself for apparent meddling by saying, “When one has a bairn o’ their ain, they canna but feel for other folk’s bairns.”
Mrs. Fergusson’s heart became subdued, softened, and friendly, and she said, “We took it as extraordinar’ kind in Mrs. Thorburn to do as she has done. It is a blessing to have sic a neighbour.”
But it was “wee Davie” did it.
The street in which the smith lived was as uninteresting as any could be. A description of its outs and ins would have made a “social science” meeting shudder. Beauty or even neatness it had not. Every “close” or “entry” in it looked like a sepulchre. The back courts were a huddled confusion of outhouses; strings of linens drying; stray dogs searching for food; pigeons similarly employed with more apparent success and satisfaction; and cats creeping about; with crowds of children, laughing, shouting, and muddy to the eyes, acting with intense glee the great dramas of life, marriages, battles, deaths, and burials, with castle-building and extensive farming and commercial operations. But everywhere smoke, mud, wet, and an utterly uncomfortable look. And so long as we in Scotland have a western ocean to afford an unlimited supply of water, and western mountains to condense it as it passes in the blue air over their summits, and western winds to waft it to our cities, and so long as it will pour down, and be welcomed by smoke above and earth below—then consequently so long we shall find it difficult to be “neat and tidy about the doors,” or to transport the cleanliness of England into our streets and lanes. But, in spite of all this, how many cheerful homes, with bright fires and nice furniture, and rows of books, and intelligent, sober, happy men and women, with healthy, nice children, are everywhere to be found in those very streets, that seem to the eye of those who have never penetrated farther than their outside, to be “dreadful-looking places;” and who imagine that all their inhabitants must be like pigs in pigstyes, steeped in wretchedness and whisky; and infer that every ignorant and filthy and drunken Irish brawler and labourer is a fair type of the whole of our artisans.
There is, I begin to suspect, a vast deal of exaggerated nonsense written about the working classes. Be that as it may, I feel pretty certain of this, that there is no country on earth in which the skilled and well-conducted artisan can get so much for his money, socially, physically, intellectually, and morally, as in our own Britain, and none in which there are to be found so many artisans who take advantage of these benefits. But for the ignorant and ill-disposed, the idle and the drunken, there is no country where their degradation is more rapid, and their ruin more sure. The former can easily rise above the mud, and breathe a free and happy atmosphere; but if he falls into it, it is likely he will be sooner smothered and buried than anywhere else on earth.
A happier home could hardly be found than William Thorburn’s, smith, as he sat, after coming home from his work, at the fireside, reading his newspaper, or some book of weightier literature, Jeanie sewing opposite to him, and, as it often happened, both absorbed occasionally in the rays of that bright light, “wee Davie,” which filled their dwelling, and the whole world, to their eyes; or listened to the grand concert of his happy voice, which mingled with their busy work and silent thoughts, giving harmony to all. How much was done for his sake! He was the most sensible, efficient, and thoroughly philosophical missionary of social science in all its departments who could enter that house.
CHAPTER II.
My heart is sore as I write it, that “wee Davie” got ill. He began to refuse his food, and nothing would please him; then to get peevish and cross, so that he would hardly go to his father, except to kiss him with tearful cheeks, and then stretch out his hands with a cry for his mother. His mother nursed him on her knee, and rocked him, and walked with him, and sang to him her own household lullabies; and put him to bed, and lifted him up, and laid him down, and “fought” with him day and night, caring for neither food nor sleep, but only for her child’s ease and comfort. What lessons of self-sacrificing love was she thus unconsciously taught by her little sufferer! The physician was at last called in, who pronounced it “a bad case—a very serious case.” I forget the specific nature of the illness. The idea of danger to Davie had never entered the minds of his parents. The day on which William realized it, he was, as his fellow-workmen expressed it, “clean stupid.” They saw him make mistakes he had never made before, and knew it could not be from drink, but could not guess the cause. “I maun gang hame!” was his only explanation, when, at three o’clock, he put on his coat and stalked out of the smithy, like one utterly indifferent as to what the consequences might be to ploughs or harrows, wheels or horse-shoes. Yet taking an old fellow-workman aside, he whispered to him, “For auld friendship sake, Tam, tak’ charge this day o’ my wark.”
“What ails Willie?” was the only question put by him and others, to which no reply could be given.
It was on the afternoon of next day that “the minister” called. It must here be confessed that William was a rare attender of any church. The fact was, he had been hitherto rather sceptical in his tendencies; not that his doubts had ever assumed a systematic form, or had ever been expressed in any determined or dogmatic manner. But he had read Tom Paine, associated the political rights of man with rebellion against all old authorities, all of whom seemed to him to have denied them, and he had imbibed the idea at the old “philosophical” club, that ministers, especially those of the Established Church, were the enemies of all progress, had no sympathy with the working classes, were slaves to the aristocracy, preached as a mere profession and only for their pay, and had, moreover, a large share of hypocrisy and humbug in them. The visit of Dr. M‘Gavin was, therefore, very unexpected.
When the Doctor entered the house, after a courteous request to be allowed to do so, as it was always his principle that the poorest man was entitled to the same respect as the man of rank or riches, he said, “I have just heard from some of your neighbours, whom I have been visiting, that your child is seriously unwell, and I thought you would excuse me intruding upon you to inquire for him.”
William made him welcome and begged him to be seated. The call was specially acceptable to Jeanie. Old David, I should have mentioned, was an “elder” in a most worthy dissenting congregation, and his strong religious convictions and church views formed in his mind a chief objection to the marriage of his daughter with a man “who was not,” as he said, “even a member of any kirk.” Jeanie had often wished her husband to be more decided in what she felt herself to be a duty and a privilege. The visit of the Doctor, whose character was well known and much esteemed, was therefore peculiarly welcome to her. In a little while the Doctor was standing beside the little bed of the sufferer, who was asleep, and gently touching “wee Davie’s” hand, he said, in a quiet voice, to the smith, “My brother, I sincerely feel for you! I am myself a father, and have suffered losses in my family.”
At the word losses, William winced, and moved from his place as if he felt uneasy.
The Doctor quickly perceived it, and said, “I do not, of course, mean to express so rash and unkind an opinion as that you are to lose this very beautiful and interesting boy, but only to show you how I am enabled, from experience, to understand your anxiety, and to sympathize with you and your wife.” And noiselessly walking to the arm-chair near the fire, he there sat down, while William and Jeanie sat near him. After hearing with patience and attention the account from Jeanie of the beginning and progress of the child’s disease, he said, “Whatever happens, it is a comfort to know that God our Father is acquainted with all that you suffer, all you fear, and all you wish; and that Jesus Christ, our Brother, has a fellow-feeling with us in all our infirmities and trials.”
“The Deity must know all,” said William, with a softened voice; “He is infinitely great and incomprehensible.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor; “and so great, that He can attend to our smallest concerns; yet not so incomprehensible but that a father’s heart can truly feel after Him, so as at least to find Him through His Son. Ah! my brother,” continued the Doctor, “what a comfort and strength the thought is to all men, and ought to be to you working men, and to you parents, especially with your dear child in sickness, that He who marks a sparrow fall, smitten by winter’s cold, and who feeds the wild beasts, is acquainted with us, with our most secret affairs, so that even, as it were, the hairs of our heads are numbered; that He who is the Father, Almighty Maker of the heavens and the earth, knows the things which we need; that He has in us, individually, an interest which is incomprehensible, only because His love to us is so in its depth; that He considers each of us, and weighs all His dealings towards us with a carefulness as great as if we alone existed in His universe; so that, as a father pitieth his children, He pitieth us, knowing our frames, and remembering we are dust.”
William bent his head and was silent, while Jeanie listened with her whole soul.
“It is not easy, minister,” said William, breaking silence, “for hard-wrought and tried men to believe that.”
“Nor for any man,” replied the Doctor. “I find it very difficult to believe it myself as a real thing, yet I know it to be true; and,” he continued, with a low and affectionate voice, “perhaps we never could have known it and believed it at all, unless God had taught it to us by the life of His own Son, who came to reveal Him. But as I see Him taking up little children into His loving arms, when others would keep them away who did not understand what perfect love was, and as I see in such doings how love cannot but come down and meet the wants of its smallest and weakest object, oh! it is then I learn in what consists the real greatness of God, ‘whose name is Love.’” The Doctor paused for a moment, and then went on: “Because, my brother, I see in this love of Christ more than the love of a good man merely; I see revealed in it the loving tenderness towards us and ours of that God whom no eye hath seen or can see, but whom the eye of the spirit can perceive; for, as Jesus said, ‘He who seeth Me, seeth the Father.’”
“I believe a’ ye say, Doctor,” said Jeanie meekly. “I wadna like to keep my bairn frae Him; but, oh! sir, I hope—I hope He wull lift him up, and do to us now as He did to many distressed ones while on earth!”
“I hope,” said the Doctor, “God will spare your boy; but you must ask Him sincerely so to do, and you must trust Him, and commit your child into His hands without fear, and acquiesce in His doing towards you and your boy as He pleases.”
“That is hard!” remarked William.
“Hard?” mildly replied the Doctor. “What would you choose else, had you the power of doing so, rather than of acquiescing in the will of God? Would you trust your own heart, for instance, more than the heart of God? or would you rather have your child’s fate decided by any other on earth than by yourself?”
“No, for I know how I love the boy.”
“But God loves him much more than you do; for he belongs to God, and was made by Him and for Him.”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but yet I canna thole the thocht o’ parting wi’ him!” said Jeanie.
“May God spare him to you, my friends!” replied the minister, “if it be for your good and his. But,” he added, “there are worse things than death.”
This remark, made in almost an under voice, was followed by silence for a few moments. The Doctor’s eyes were cast down as if in meditation or prayer.
“Death is hard enough!” said the smith.
“But hard chiefly as a sign of something worse,” continued the minister. “Pardon me for asking you such questions as these:—What if your child grew up an enemy to you? What if he never returned your love? What if he never would trust you? What if he never would speak to you? What if he always disobeyed you? Would this not bring down your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?”
“Eh! sir,” said Jeanie, “that would be waur than death!”
“But excuse me, Doctor, for just remarking,” interrupted William, “that I never knew any child with a good parent who would so act. I really don’t think it possible that our ain wee Davie, even with our poor bringing up, would ever come to that. It would be so unnatural.”
“God knows, Thorburn,” said the Doctor. “There are many unnatural things in this world. Listen to me kindly; for I sincerely thank you for having allowed one who is a stranger to speak so frankly to you, and for having heard me with such considerate patience.”
“Oh, gang on, gang on, Doctor; I like to hear you,” said Jeanie.
“Certainly, sir,” added the smith.
“Well, then,” said the Doctor, “I have no wish to appear even to find fault with you at such a time. I feel more disposed to weep with you in your sorrow than to search your heart or life for sin. But I feel at such solemn times as these, solemn to you and to your wife, that the voice of a Father is speaking to you in the rod, and it ought to be heard; and that His hand is ministering discipline in time, and you ought to give Him reverence, and be in subjection to the Father of our spirits that you may live; and therefore, in order to impart to you more strength and comfort in the end, let me beseech of you, after I am gone, to consider candidly whether you have not perhaps been acting towards your Father in heaven in the very way in which did your child grow up and act towards you would be reckoned as worse than death. Therefore honestly ask yourselves whether there has been from you love to God your Father in return for His love to you. Has there been cordial friendship or the reverse? Confidence or distrust? Disobedience or rebellion? Communion in frank, believing, and affectionate prayer, or silence? I do not ask you to reply to me; but I wish you and myself, as loving fathers of our children, to ask whether we have felt and acted towards the best and most loving of fathers as we wish our children to feel and act towards ourselves.” The Doctor paused for a moment. Jeanie shook her head slowly, and the smith stared with her at the fire. “My friends, we have all sinned, and this is our sin of sins, that we have not known nor loved our Father, but have been forgetful of Him, strange, shy to Him; yes, we have been cold, heartless, prodigal, disobedient children.” Another short pause, and the Doctor then spoke on in the same quiet and loving voice—“But whatever we are or have been, let us hope in God, or we perish. Every sinner is doomed, but no man is doomed to be a sinner. God is our Father still; and just as you both have nourished and cherished your dear boy, and have been loving when he knew it not, nor could understand that great love in your hearts which, sure am I, will never grow cold but in the grave, so has it been with God to us His children. Open your hearts to His love, as you would open your eyes to the light which has been ever shining. Believe it as the grand reality, as you would have your boy open his heart to and believe in your love when he awakens from his sleep. Your love, as I have said, is deep, real to your boy, irrespective of his knowledge or return of it. But what is this to the love of God? ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.’ Let us, my friends, never rest till we are enabled in some degree to see and to appreciate this, and to say, ‘We have known and believed the love which God has to us.’”
“Dr. M‘Gavin,” said William, “you have spoken to me as no man ever did before, and you will believe me, I am sure, when I say that I respect you and myself too much to flatter you. But there is surely a meaning in my love to that boy which I never saw before. It begins to glimmer on me.”
“Thank God if it does! But I do not speak to you—and this you must give me credit for—as if it were my profession only; I speak to you as a man, a father, and a brother, wishing you to share the good which God has given to me and gives to you. So I tell you again, and would repeat it and repeat it, that if we would only have to God that simple confidence, hearty love, frank, cheerful communion, peace and joy, which we wish our children to have towards us, we would experience a true regeneration. And what was the whole life of Jesus Christ save a life of this blessed, confiding, obedient, childlike sonship? Oh, that we would learn of Him, and grow up in likeness to Him! But this ignorance of God is worse than death. For if knowledge be life, spiritual ignorance is death. My good friends, I have been led to give you a regular sermon!” said the Doctor, smiling; “but I really cannot help it. To use common everyday language, I think our treatment of God has been shameful, unjust, and disgraceful on the part of men with reason, conscience, and heart. I do not express myself half so strongly as I feel. I am ashamed and disgusted with myself, and all the members of the human family, for what we feel, and feel not, to such a Father. If it were not for what the one Elder Brother was and did, the whole family would have been disgraced and ruined most righteously!”
“Doctor,” said William, with a trembling voice, “thank ye, thank ye, from my heart. I confess I have been very careless in going to the church, but—”
“We may talk of that again, if you allow me to return to-morrow. Yet,” continued the Doctor, pointing to the child, “God in His mercy never leaves Himself without a witness. Look at your child, and listen to your own heart, and remember all I have said, and you will perhaps discover that though you tried it you could not fly from the Word of the Lord. A father’s voice by a child has been preaching to you. Yes, Thorburn, when in love God gave you that child, He sent an eloquent and holy missionary to your house to preach the gospel of what our Father is, and what we as children ought to be. Only listen to that sermon, and you will soon be prepared to listen to others.”
The Doctor rose to depart. Before doing so, he asked permission to pray, which was cheerfully granted. Wishing to strengthen the faith of those sufferers in prayer, he first said, “If God cannot hear and answer prayer, He is not supreme; if He will not, He is not our Father. But blessed be His name, His own Son, who knew Him perfectly, who Himself prayed, and was heard in that He prayed, has enabled our parental hearts, from our love to our own children, to feel the beauty and truth of this His own argument, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him!’” And then the Doctor poured forth a simple, loving, and most sympathizing prayer, in which he made himself one with his fellow-worshippers, and expressed to a common Father the anguish of the hearts around him. When it ended, he went to the bed, and looked at the sleeping child, touched its white hand, and said, “God bless your little one! May this sleep be for health!”
“It’s the first sleep,” said Jeanie, “he has had for a lang time. It may be a turn in his complaint.”
Without waiting to force the parents to give him an immediate reply to what he had taught them, the Doctor shook them warmly by the hand, and gazed on them with a world of interest in his eyes, asking them only kindly to consider what he had said. The silence which ensued for a few minutes after his absence, as William and Jeanie returned from the door and stood beside the bed, was broken by the smith observing, “I am glad that man came to our house, Jeanie. Yon was indeed preaching that a man can understand and canna forget. It was wee Davie did it.”
“That’s true,” said Jeanie; “thank God for’t!” And after gazing on the sleeping child, she added, “Is he no’ bonnie? I dinna wunner that sic a bairn should bring gude to the house.”
That night William had thoughts in his heart which burned with a redder glow than the coals upon the smithy fire! I am much mistaken if he did not begin to feel that God had sent him a home missionary in “wee Davie.”
CHAPTER III.
It was a beautiful morning in spring, with blue sky, living air, springing grass, and singing bird; but William Thorburn had not left his house that morning, and the door was shut.
Mrs. Fergusson trod the wooden stair that led to the flat above his with slow and cautious step; and as she met her boy running down whistling, she said, “What d’ye mean, Jamie, wi’ that noise? Do ye no’ ken wee Davie is dead? Ye should hae mair feeling, laddie!”
The Corporal, whose door was half open, crept out, and in an under-breath beckoned Mrs. Fergusson to speak to him. “Do you know how they are?” he asked in a low voice.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I sat up wi’ Mrs. Thorburn half the night, and left Davie sleeping, and never thocht it would come to this. My heart is sair for them. But since it happened the door has been barred, and no one has been in. I somehow dinna like to intrude, for, nae doot, they will be in an awfu’ way aboot that bairn.”
“I don’t wonder—I don’t wonder!” remarked the Corporal meditatively; “I did not believe I could feel as I do. I don’t understand it. Here am I, who have seen men killed by my side. I have seen a single shot cut down half our company.”
“Is it possible?”
“It is certain,” said the Corporal; “and I have charged at Pampeluna—it was there I was wounded—over dead and dying comrades, yet, will you believe me? I never shed a tear—never; but there was something in that Captain—I mean the boy”—and the Corporal took out his snuff-box, and snuffed vehemently. “And what a brave fellow his father is! I never thought I could love a Radical; but he was not what you call a Radical; he was—I don’t know what else, but he is a man, an out-and-out man, every inch of him; I’ll say that for him—a man is William Thorburn! Have you not seen his wife?”
“No, poor body! It was six o’clock when she ran up to me, no’ distracted either, but awfu’ quiet like, and wakened me up, and just said, ‘He is awa’;’ and then afore I could speak she ran doon the stair, and steekit the door; and she has such a keen speerit, I dinna like to gang to bother her. My heart is sair for her.”
They both were silent, as if listening for some sound in William Thorburn’s house, but all was still as the grave.
The first who entered it was old David Armstrong and his wife. They found Jeanie busy about her house, and William sitting on a chair, staring into the fire, dressed with more than usual care. The curtains of the bed were up. It was covered with a pure white sheet, and something lay upon it which they knew.
Jeanie came forward, and took the hand of father and mother, without a tear on her face, and said quietly, “Come ben,” as she gave her father a chair beside her husband, and led her mother into an inner room, closing the door. What was spoken there between them I know not.
William rose to receive old David, and said, “It was a fine spring day.” David gave a warm squeeze to his hand, and sat down. He rose and went to the bed. William followed him, and took the cloth off the boy’s face in silence. They both gazed on it. The face was unchanged, as in sleep. The flaxen curls seemed to have been carefully arranged, for they escaped from under the white cap, and clustered like golden wreaths around the silvery forehead and cheeks. William covered up the face, and both returned to their seats by the fireside.
“I never lost ane since my ain wee Davie dee’d, and yours, Willie, was dear to me as my ain,” exclaimed the old man, and then broke down, and sobbed like a child.
William never moved, though his great chest seemed to heave; but he seized the poker and began to arrange the fire, and then was still as before. By-and-by, the door of the inner room opened, and Jeanie and her mother appeared, both of them composed and serene. The same scene was repeated as they passed the bed. Mrs. Armstrong seated herself beside her husband, and Jeanie placed a large Bible on the table, and, pointing to it, said, “Father,” and then drew her chair near the smith.
William never moved, though his great chest seemed to heave.
David Armstrong put on his spectacles, opened the Bible, and selecting a portion of Scripture, reverently said, “Let us read the Word of God.” The house was quiet. No business on that day intruded itself upon their minds. It was difficult for any of them to speak, but they were ready to hear. The passages which old David selected for reading were 2 Samuel xii. 15-23, Matthew ix. 18-26, and John xi. 1-44. Having closed the book, he said, with a trembling but solemn voice, “God, who doeth all things according to the counsel of His own will, has been pleased to send us a heavy affliction. ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away!’ May He enable us to say at all times, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ For whether He gives or takes away, He is always the same in love and mercy. If He takes away, it is but to give something better, for He afflicts us to make us partakers of His holiness. Our wee one is not dead; he only sleepeth.” Here David paused, but recovering himself, said, “Yes, his body sleepeth in Jesus till the resurrection morning. He himself is with Christ. He is alive, in his Father’s bosom. Oh, it is strange to think o’t, and hard to believe! but, blessed be God! it’s true, that—that—Jesus Christ, who sees us, sees him, and sees us thegither, ay, enoo!—” continued David thoughtfully, like one pondering on a new truth; “this very minute we are all in His sight! Oh, it’s grand and comforting; our wee Davie is in the arms of Jesus Christ!” A solemn silence ensued. “The bonnie bairn will never return to us, but we shall go to him, and some o’ us ere lang, I hope. Let us pray.” And they all knelt down, and a true prayer, from a true heart, was spoken, from suffering parents, to Him “of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.”
To David’s surprise and great satisfaction, he heard William utter Amen to his prayer, which included honest confession of sin; expressions of thankfulness for mercies, enumerating very many mercies, among others, the great gift of their child, thus taken away, with thanks for all he had been, and for all he then was; with trustful petitions for grace to help them in their time of need.
That afternoon Dr. M‘Gavin called, and manifested quiet, unobtrusive, but most touching sympathy. His very silence was eloquent affection.
“I’m proud to meet wi’ you, sir,” said old Armstrong, after the Doctor had been seated for a while. “Although I’m no’ o’ your kirk, yet we’re baith o’ ae Kirk for a’ that.”
“With one Father, one Brother, one Spirit, one life, one love, one hope!” replied the Doctor.
“True, sir, true, sir, our differences are nothing to our agreements, Doctor.”
“Our non-essential differences arise out of our essential union, Mr. Armstrong. If we differ honestly and conscientiously as brethren, I hope it is because we differ only in judgment as to how to please our Father, and our Eldest Brother. Our hearts are one in our wish to do Their will. For none of us liveth, or dieth even, to himself.”
“Ay, ay, Doctor. So it is, so it is! as the auld saying has’t, ‘The best men are but men at the best.’ We maun carry ane another’s burdens; and ignorance, or even bigotry, is the heaviest ony man can carry for his neebour. Thank God, brighter and better times are coming! We here see through a glass darkly; but then face to face. We know only in pairt; then shall we know even as we are known. We must be faithful to our given light, and serve Him, and not man.”
“There are differences among living men,” replied the Doctor, “but none among the dead. We shall only agree perfectly when we know and love as saints, without error and without sin.”
“I mind,” said David, warming with the conversation, and the pleasure of getting his better heart out—“I mind two neighbours of mine, and ye’ll mind them too, gudewife? that was Johnnie Morton and auld Andrew Gebbie. The tane was a keen Burgher, and the tother an Antiburgher. Baith lived in the same house, though at different ends, and it was the bargain that each should keep his ain side o’ the house aye weel thatched. But they happened to dispute so desperate about the principles o’ their kirks, that at last they quarrelled, and didna speak. So ae day after this, as they were on the roof thatching, each on his ain side, they reached the tap, and sae looking ower, face met face. What could they do? They couldna flee. So at last Andrew took aff his Kilmarnock cap, and, scratching his head, said, ‘Johnnie, you and me, I think, have been very foolish to dispute as we hae done as to Christ’s will aboot our kirks, till we hae forgot His will aboot ourselves; and so we hae fought sae keen for what we ca’ the truth that it has ended in brither fechting against brither. Whatever’s wrang, this canna be richt, if we dinna love. Noo, it strikes me that maybe it’s wi’ the Kirk as wi’ this hoose: ye’re working on ae side and me on the other, but if we only do our wark weel, we wull meet at the tap at last. Gie’s your han’!’ And so they shook han’s, and were the best o’ freens ever after.”
“Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, for the story,” said the Doctor. Then looking to the bed, he remarked, “Oh, if we were only simple, true, and loving, like little children, would we not, like that dear one, enter the kingdom of heaven, and know and love all who were in it, or on their way to it?”
“I’m glad I have met you, Doctor,” resumed the old elder. “It does ane’s heart good to meet a brother who has been a stranger. But if it hadna been for his death noo, we might never have met. Isna that queer? God’s ways are no’ our ways.”
“God brings life out of death,” replied the Doctor, “and in many ways does He ordain praise from babes and sucklings, whether living or dead.” Was not “wee Davie” a home missionary to the dissenting elder and Established Church minister? “And now,” continued the Doctor, “with your permission, good friends, I will read a short psalm and offer up a short prayer before I go.”
They thanked him, and he read the 23rd Psalm. His only remark was, as he closed the Bible, “The Good Shepherd has been pleased to take this dear lamb into His fold, never more to leave it.”
“And may the lamb be the means of making the auld sheep to follow!” added the elder.
When the prayer was over, Jeanie, who had hardly spoken a word, said, without looking at the Doctor, “Oh, sir, God didna hear our prayer for my bairn!”
“Dinna speak that way, Jeanie woman!” said old David softly, yet firmly.
“I canna help it, father; I maun get oot my thochts that are burning at my heart. The minister maun forgie me,” replied Jeanie.
“Surely, Mrs. Thorburn,” said the Doctor; “and it would be a great satisfaction to me if I could, from what God has taught me from His Word, and from my experience of sorrow, be able to solve any difficulty, or help you to acquiesce in God’s dealings with you; not because you must, but because you ought to submit; not because God has power, and therefore does as He pleases, but because He is Love, and therefore pleases always to do what is right.”
“But, oh, He didna hear our prayer; that’s my battle! We were maybe wrang in asking what was against His wull.”
“Not in the way, perhaps, in which you expected, Mrs. Thorburn; yet every true prayer is verily heard and answered by Him. But He is too good, too wise, too loving, to give us always literally what we ask; if so, He would often be very cruel, and that He can never be. You would not give your child a serpent, if in his assurance he asked one, mistaking it for a fish; nor would you give him a stone for bread?”
The Doctor paused.
“When Nathan, the Lord’s prophet, telt King David that his child must die,” said Armstrong, “yet David even then prayed to the Lord to spare his life, and I dinna doot that his Father in heaven was pleased wi’ his freedom and faith.”
“Right,” continued the Doctor, “for I am sure we cannot trust Him too much, or open our human hearts to Him too freely; let us always remember, too, that when God refuses what we ask, He gives us something better—yea, far more than we can ask or think. He gave your dear child for a time; and if He has taken him away, can you, for example, tell the evil, the misery, which may have been prevented? How many parents would give worlds that their children had died in infancy! And you could not wish for more than your child’s good, and so God has thus far literally heard that prayer. He has done so by taking your child to Himself. Your precious jewel is not lost, but is in God’s treasury, where no thief can break through and steal; that is surely something.”
“Oh yes, sir, it is!” said Jeanie; “but yet it’s an awfu’ blank! Ilka thing in the world seems different.”
“I’m jist thinking, Jeanie,” said Mrs. Armstrong, “that it’s a comfort ye ever pit yer een on Davie, for there’s puir Mrs. Blair—John Blair’s blin’ wife, ye ken—when she lost her callant, May was a year, she cam’ to me in an awfu’ way aboot it, and what vexed her sae muckle was, that she never had seen his wee face, and that she could only touch and han’le him, and hear him greet.”
“Puir body,” remarked Jeanie, “it was a sair misfortun’ for ony mither that—an’ yet—But I’ll no’ think aboot it; ilk ane has their ain burden to carry. Noo, minister, let me speir at you, sir: Will I never see my bairn again? and if I see him, will I no’ ken him?”
“You might as well ask whether you could see and know your child if he had gone to a foreign country instead of to heaven,” replied the Doctor. “Alas! if we did not know our beloved friends in heaven, earth in some respects would be dearer to our hearts! But then, ignorance is not possible in such a place of light and love.”
“It wadna be rational to think so,” remarked William, speaking for the first time, though he had been listening with great interest to the Doctor.
“But,” continued Jeanie, with quiet earnestness, “will our bairn aye be a bairn, Doctor? Oh, I hope so!”
“Dinna try, Jeanie dear,” said David, “to be wise aboon what is written.”
The Doctor smiled, and asked, “If your child had lived, think you would you have rejoiced had he always continued to be a child and never grown or advanced? and are you a loss or a gain to your father and mother, because you have grown in mind and knowledge since you were an infant?”
“I never thocht o’ that,” said Jeanie thoughtfully.
“Be assured,” continued the Doctor, “there will be no such abortions there as infants in intellect and sense for ever. All will be perfect and complete, according to the plan of God, who made us for fellowship with Himself and all His blissful family. Your darling has gone to a noble school, and will be taught and trained there for immortality by Him who was Himself a child, and who knows a mother’s love and a mother’s sorrow; and you too, parents, if you believe in Christ, and hold fast your confidence in Him, and become to Him as little children, will be made fit to enter the same society; and thus you and your boy, though never, perhaps, forgetting your old relationship on earth, will be fit companions for one another for ever and ever. Depend upon it, you will both know and love each other there better than you ever could have done here.”
“My wee pet!” murmured Jeanie, as the tears began to flow from a softened, because happier, heart.
William hid his face in his hands. After a while, he broke silence and said, “These thoughts of heaven are new to me. But common sense tells me they maun be true. Heaven does not seem to me noo to be the same strange place it used to be. My loss is not so complete as I once thought it was. Neither we nor our bairn have lived in vain.”
“Surely not,” said the Doctor—
“‘Better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all!’
You have contributed one citizen to the heavenly Jerusalem; one member to the family above; one happy spirit to add his voice to the anthem before the throne of God!”
“Lord, help our unbelief!” said Mr. Armstrong; “for the mair I think o’ the things which I believe, the mair they seem to me owre gude news to be true!”
“The disciples, when they first saw Christ after His resurrection,” said the Doctor, “did not believe from very joy.”
“We think owre muckle o’ our ain folk, Doctor, and owre little o’ Him. But it’s a comfort that He’s kent and loved as He ought to be by them. I thank Him, alang wi’ them that’s awa’, for all He is and gies to them noo.”
“And for all He is and does, and will ever be and do, to every man who trusts Him,” added the Doctor; “our friends would be grieved, if grief were possible to them now, did they think our memory of them made us forget Him, or that our love to them made us love Him less. Surely, if they know what we are doing, they would rejoice if they also knew that, along with themselves, we too rejoiced in their God and our God. What child in heaven but would be glad to know that its parents joined with it in the prayer of ‘Our Father’?”
“If wee Davie could preach to us, I dare say, sir, that micht be his text.”
“Though dead, he yet speaks,” replied the Doctor.
Yes, the boy was yet a home missionary, drawing the hearts of that household to God.
The Doctor rose to depart. “By-the-bye,” he said, “let me repeat a verse or two to you, Thorburn, from a poem which I am sure you will like. It expresses the thoughts of a parent about his dead girl, and which have already in part been poorly expressed by me when your wife asked me if she would know her boy:—
‘She is not dead—the child of our affection,
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule.
‘In that great cloister’s stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.
‘Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;
‘But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace,
And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion
Shall we behold her face.’”
“Thank ye, sir, thank ye,” said Thorburn; “and ye’ll no’ be offended if I ax ye to gie me a grip o’ yer han’.” And the smith laid hold of the Doctor’s proffered hand, so small and white, with his own hand, so large and powerful—“God reward ye, sir, for we canna! And noo, Doctor,” the smith continued, “I maun oot wi’t! Since ye hae been so kind as gie us that fine bit o’ English poetry, I canna help gieing you a bit o’ Scotch, for Scotch poetry has been a favourite reading o’ mine, and there’s a verse that has been dirling a’ day in my heart. This is it:—
‘It’s dowie at the hint o’ hairst,
At the wa’-gang o’ the swallow,
When the winds blaw cauld,
And the burns run bauld,
And the wuds are hanging yellow;
But oh! it’s dowier far to see
The wa’-gang o’ ane the heart gangs wi’,
The dead set o’ a shining e’e,
That closes the weary warld on thee!’
Fareweel, sir! I’ll expect ye the morn at two, if convenient,” the smith whispered to the Doctor as he opened the door to him.
“I’ll be sure to come,” he replied. “Thank you for those verses; and think for your good about all I have said.”
That evening, there was a comfortable tea prepared by Jeanie for her friends, and the Corporal was one of the party. Had a stranger dropped in upon them, he would not have supposed that there was sorrow in the house. There is a merciful reaction to strong feeling. The highest waves, when they dash against the rock, flow farthest back, and scatter themselves in their rebound into sparkling foam and airy bubbles. The Corporal told some of his old stories of weariness and famine, of wounds and sufferings, and marches over the fields of Spain from victory to victory. Old Armstrong could match these only by Covenanter tales from The Scots Worthies, of battles long ago, but was astonished to find the Corporal a staunch Episcopalian, who had no sympathy with “rebels.” Yet so kind and courteous was the pensioner, that the elder confessed that he was “a real fine body, withoot a grain o’ bigotry.” William, too, had his talk on “the times,” and his favourite topic of reform; while Jeanie and her mother spoke of the farm, and of old friends among the cows, with many bygone reminiscences of persons and things. And thus the weight of their hearts was lightened, and made stronger, along with higher and better thoughts, to carry their burden; but ever and anon there came one little presence before them, causing a sinking of the heart.
No sooner had their friends left the house for the night than the smith did what he never did before. He opened the Bible, and said to Jeanie, “I will read a chapter aloud before we retire to rest.”
Jeanie clapped her husband fondly on the shoulder, and in silence sat down beside him while he read again some of the same passages which they had already heard. Few houses had that night more quiet and peaceful sleepers than that house, under whose roof, beneath the shining stars of God, those parents and their child reposed.
The little black coffin was brought to the smith’s the night before the funeral. When the house was quiet, Davie was laid in it gently by his father. Jeanie stood by and assumed the duty of arranging with care the white garments in which her boy was dressed, wrapping them round him, and adjusting the head as if to sleep in her own bosom. She brushed once more the golden ringlets, and put the little hands in their right place, and opened out the frills in the cap, and removed every particle of sawdust which soiled the shroud. When all was finished, though she seemed anxious to prolong the work, the lid was put on the coffin, but so as to leave the face uncovered. Both were as silent as their child. But ere they retired to rest for the night, they instinctively went to take another look. As they gazed in silence, side by side, the smith felt his hand gently seized by his wife. She played at first nervously with the fingers, until, finding her own hand held by her husband, she looked into his face with an unutterable expression, and meeting his eyes so full of unobtrusive sorrow, she leant her head on his shoulder and said, “Willie, this is my last look o’ him on this side the grave. But, Willie dear, you and me maun see him again, and, mind ye, no’ to part—na, I canna thole that! We ken whaur he is, and we maun gang till him. Noo, promise me! vow alang wi’ me here, that, as we love him and ane another, we’ll attend mair to what’s gude than we hae dune, that—oh, Willie! forgie me, for it’s no’ my pairt to speak, but I canna help it th’ noo, and just, my bonnie man, just agree wi’ me—that we’ll gie our hearts noo and for ever to our ain Saviour, and the Saviour o’ our wee Davie!”
These words were uttered without ever lifting her head from her husband’s shoulder, and in low, broken accents, half choked with an inward struggle, but without a tear. She was encouraged to say this—for she had a timid awe for her husband—by the pressure ever and anon returned to hers from his hand.
The smith spoke not, but bent his head over his wife, who felt his tears falling on her neck, as he whispered, “Amen, Jeanie! so help me, God!”
A silence ensued, during which Jeanie got, as she said, “a gude greet,” for the first time, which took a weight off her heart. She then quietly kissed her child and turned away.
Thorburn took the hand of his boy and said, “Fareweel, Davie, and when you and me meet again, we’ll baith, I tak’ it, be a bit different frae what we are this nicht!” He then put the lid on mechanically, turned one or two of the screws, and then sat down at the fireside to chat about the arrangements of the funeral as on a matter of business.
After that, for the first time, William asked his wife to kneel down, and he would pray before they retired to rest. Poor fellow! he was sincere as ever man was, and never after till the day of his death did he omit this “exercise,” which once on a day was universal in every family whose head was a member of the church, and I have known it continued by the widow when her head was taken away. But on this the first night when the smith tried to utter aloud the thoughts of his heart, he could only say, “Our Father—!” There he stopped. Something seemed to seize him, and to stop his utterance. Did he only know how much was in these words, he possibly might have said more. As it was, the thoughts of the father on earth so mingled, he knew not how, with those of the Father in heaven, that he could not speak. But he continued on his knees, and spoke there to God as he had never spoken before. Jeanie did the same.
After a while they both rose, and Jeanie said, “Thank ye, Willie. It’s a beautifu’ beginning, and it wull, I’m sure, hae a braw ending.”
“It’s cauld iron, Jeanie woman,” said the smith, “but it wull melt and come a’ richt.”
The day of the funeral was a day of beauty and sunshine. A few fellow-tradesmen and neighbours assembled in the house, dressed in their Sunday’s best, though it was visible in one or two that the best was the worse of the wear. The last thing a Scotch workman will part with, even to keep his family in food, is his Sunday clothes; and the last duty he will fail to perform, is following the body of a neighbour or acquaintance to the grave. All were dressed with crape on their hats, and had weepers on their coats—the Corporal wore, besides, a medal on his. The smith, according to custom, sat near the door, and shook each man by the hand as he pointed to a seat. Not a word, of course, was spoken.
When all who were expected had assembled, the Doctor, who occupied a chair near the table on which the Bible lay, opened the Book, and after reading a portion of it without any comment, he prayed with a fervour and suitableness which touched every heart. This is our only Scotch burial service. The little coffin was then brought out, and was easily carried. The Corporal was the first to step forward, and saluting the smith by putting his hand to his hat, soldier fashion, he begged to have the honour of assisting. Slowly the small procession advanced towards the churchyard, about half a mile off; and angels beheld that wondrous sight, a child’s funeral—wondrous as a symbol of sin and of redemption; of the insignificance of a human being as a mere creature, and of his magnificence as belonging to Christ Jesus.
As they reached the grave, the birds were singing, and a flood of light steeped in glory a neighbouring range of hill; while overhead, the sky had only one small, snow-white cloud reposing in peace on its azure blue.
When the sexton had finished the grave and smoothed it with his spade, William quietly seized it, saying, “Gie me the shool, John, and I’ll gie him the last clap mysel’,” and he went over again the green turf carefully with gentle beats, and removed with his hand the small stones and gravel which roughened its surface. Those who stood very near, had they been narrowly watching him, which they had too much feeling to do, might have observed the smith give a peculiar, tender pressure and clap on the grave with his hand, as on a child’s breast, ere he returned the spade, and with a careless air said, “Here, John, thank ye; it’s a’ richt noo.” Then lifting up his hat, and looking round, added, “Thank ye, freens, for your trouble in coming.” And so they left “wee Davie” more precious and more enduring than the everlasting hills!
* * * * *
Several years after this, Dr. M‘Gavin, then a very old man, as he sat at his study fire, was conversing with a young preacher, who seemed to think that nothing could be accomplished of much value for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom, unless by some great “effort,” or “movement,” or “large committee,” which would carry everything at once by a coup de main. The Doctor quietly remarked, “My young friend, when you have lived as long in the ministry as I have done, you will learn how true it is, that ‘God fulfils Himself in many ways,’ He is in the still, small voice, and often, too, when He is neither in the earthquake nor in the hurricane. One of the most valuable elders I ever had—and whose admirable wife and daughters and well-doing, prosperous sons are still members of my church, and much attached friends—told me on his dying bed that, under God, he owed his chief good to the death of his first child, the circumstance which accidentally made me acquainted with him. On the last evening of his life, when enumerating the many things which had been blessed for his good, he said to me, ‘But under God it was my wee Davie that did it a’!’”
Transcriber Note:
Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. No changes were made to misplaced punctuation.