Afterwards, and Other Stories

by Ian Maclaren

What exactly the great man collected, or what functions and powers might be included in his office, were not matters Muirtown pretended to define or dared to pry into. It was enough that he was, in the highest and final sense of the word, Collector—no mere petty official of a local body, but the representative of the Imperial Government and the commissioned servant of Her Majesty the Queen, raised above principalities and powers in the shape of bailies and provosts, and owning no authority save, as was supposed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. For any one to confound him with the collector of, say, water rates was either abysmal ignorance or, it might be, although one hoped not, a piece of Radical insolence and a despising of dignities. It was good manners to call him by his title—many would have had difficulty in mentioning his private name, which was, I believe, Thomas Richard Thome, just as the Queen's, I believe, is Guelph—and it was pleasing to hear a porter at the station shout, amid a crowd of tourists going to the Kilspindie Arms, “Collector's cab”; or Bailie MacCallum on the street, “Fine morning, Collector”; and one did not wonder that the session of the “North Free” exalted its head when this kind of thing went on at its meetings: “Moderator, with your permission, I would like to have the mind of the Collector”; and then in reply, “Moderator, my views practically coincide with those of the Fiscal” And there were dinner tables, such as old Peter MacCash's, the manager of the Muirtown Bank, where conversation reached a very high level of decoration, and nothing could be heard save “Sheriff,” “Provost,” “Collector,” “Town Clerk,” “Fiscal,” “Banker,” “Doctor,” “Dean of Guild,” and such like, till an untitled person hardly dared to defend his most cherished opinion.

As the movements of Government officials were always mysterious, no one could tell whence the Collector had come, but it was known to a few that he was not really of Scots blood, and had not been bred in the Presbyterian Kirk. When his hand in the way of Church rule was heavy on the “North Free” and certain sought anxiously for grounds of revolt, they were apt to whisper that, after all, this man, who laid down the ecclesiastical law with such pedantic accuracy and such inflexible severity, was but a Gentile who had established himself in the true fold, or at most a proselyte of the gate. They even dared to ask what, in the matter of churches, he had been before he was appointed to Muirtown; and so unscrupulous and virulent are the mongers of sedition, as every student of history knows, that some insinuated that the Collector had been a Nonconformist; while others, considering that this violence could only overreach itself, contented themselves with allusions to Swedenborg. Most of his brethren treated him as if he had been within the covenant from the beginning, and had been granted the responsible privilege of Scots birth either because in course of time they had forgotten the fact of alien origin in face of every appearance to the contrary, or because, as we all need mercy, it is not wise to search too curiously into the dark chapters of a man's past.

Upon his part the Collector had wonderfully adapted himself to the new environment, and it defied the keenest critic to find in him any trace of a former home. It is true that he did not use the Scots dialect, merely employing a peculiarly felicitous word at a time for purposes of effect, but he had stretched his vowels to the orthodox breadth, and could roll off the letter “r” with a sense of power. “Dour” he could say in a way that deceived even the elect Sometimes he startled the Presbytery with a sound like “Yah, yah,” which indicates the shallow sharpness of the English, instead of “He-e-er, he-e-er,” which reveals as in a symbol the solidity of the Scot; but then one cannot live in London for years—as an official must—and be quite unscathed; and an acute observer might mark a subdued smartness in dress—white tie instead of stock on sacrament Sabbaths—which was not indigenous; but then it must be allowed that one in his position was obliged to be, to a certain degree, a man of the world. No one ever caught him quoting a clause from the Prayer-Book on the rare occasions when he was heard at his family devotions, or breaking into a riotous “Hallelujah” in the midst of a sermon. If misfortune had thrown him into Episcopalian or Methodist folds in earlier years, he had since been thoroughly purged and cleansed. He had a way of alluding to “the Disruption principles laid down in 1843,” or “my younger brethren will allow me to say that the Disruption,” which was very convincing; and on the solitary occasion when he made a set speech in public—for his strength lay in silence rather than eloquence—he had a peroration on our “covenanted forefathers” which left an indelible impression. It was understood that he spent his holidays in visiting remote districts of the Highlands where the people took strong peppermints in church without scruple or apology, and preserved the primeval simplicity of Presbyterian worship entire; and it was supposed that he was looking for a birthplace which would finally establish his position as an elder of the Kirk.

What gave the Collector his supreme influence in the session of the Free North, and extended his sphere of ecclesiastical influence to the Presbytery of Muirtown, was an amazing knowledge of Church law and a devouring love for order. The latter may have been the natural outcome of his professional training, wherein red-tape has been raised to a science, but the former was an acquired accomplishment Dr. Pittendriegh remembered almost painfully that on the day of his election to the eldership the Collector enquired the names of the most reliable authorities on Church law, and that he (Dr. Pittendriegh) had not only given him a list, but had urged him to their study, judging from past experience that no man was likely to go too far in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge. For a while the Collector sat silent and observant at the meetings of Session, and then suddenly one evening, and in the quietest manner, he inquired whether a certain proceeding was in order.

“Well, at any rate, that is how we have done here for twenty years,” said the Doctor, with just a flavour of indignation, and the startled Fiscal confirmed the statement.

“That may be so, Moderator, and I am obliged to Mr. Fiscal for his assurance, but you will pardon me for saying, with much respect, that the point is not whether this action has been the custom, but whether it is legal. On that, Moderator, I should like your deliverance.”

He took the opportunity, however, of showing that only one deliverance could be given by long quotations from Church law, supported by references which extended back to the seventeenth century. Every one knew that, unlike his distinguished colleague in Muirtown Dr. Dowbiggin, the minister of the Free North was more at home in Romans than in Canon Law; but, like every true Scot, he loved a legal point, and he not only announced at next Session meeting that the Collector was quite right, but expressed his satisfaction that they had such a valuable addition to their number in the Collector. His position from that evening was assured beyond dispute; and when the Clerk of Session resigned on the ground of long service, but really through terror that there might be a weak place in his minutes, the Collector succeeded, and made the proceedings of the Free North Session to be a wonder unto many. It was a disappointment to some that, when the Collector was sent to the Presbytery, he took no part for several meetings; but others boldly declared that even in that high place he was only biding his time, which came when the Presbytery debated for one hour and ten minutes whether a certain meeting had been pro re nata or in hunc effectum, while the learned Clerk listened with delight as one watches the young people at play.

“Moderator,” said the Collector, “I have given the most careful attention to the arguments on both sides, and I venture to suggest that the meeting was neither pro re nata nor in hunc effectum, but was a meeting per saltum”; and, after referring to Pardovan's Institutes, he sat down amid a silence which might be felt Several ministers openly confessed their ignorance one to another with manifest chagrin, and one young minister laughed aloud: “Per saltum, I declare—what next?” as if it were a subject for jesting.

“The Collector is quite right, Moderator,” said the Clerk with his unspeakable air of authority; “the meeting referred to was undoubtedly per saltum, but I did not wish to interfere prematurely with the debate”; and from that date the Clerk, who used to address his more recondite deliverances to Dr. Dowbiggin as the only competent audience, was careful to include the Collector in a very marked and flattering fashion.

While it was only human that his congregation should be proud of the Collector, and while there is no question that he led them in the paths of order, they sometimes grumbled—in corners—and grew impatient under his rule. He was not only not a man given to change himself, but he bitterly resented and resisted to the uttermost any proposal of change on the part of other people. What was in the Free North, when he, so to say, mounted the throne, was right, and any departure therefrom he scented afar off and opposed as folly and mischief. There are men whom you can convince by argument; there are others whom you can talk round on trifles; but whether the matter were great or small—from Biblical criticism, on which the Collector took a liberal line, to the printing of the congregational report, where he would not allow a change of type—once his mind was made up he remained unchangeable and inaccessible. He prevented the introduction of hymns for ten years, and never consented to the innovation on the ground of the hold which the metrical psalms had upon Presbyterians from their earliest days, and he did succeed in retaining that remarkable custom of the Scots Kirk by which a communicant cannot receive the Sacrament without first presenting a leaden token, and his argument was again the sacred associations of the past He did certainly agree to the recovering of the pulpit cushions, which the exposition of Romans had worn bare, only however on the assurance of Bailie MacCallum, given officially, that he had the same cloth in store; but a scheme for a ventilating chamber in the roof—an improvement greatly needed in a church which was supposed to have retained the very air of the Disruption—he denounced as an irresponsible fad.