Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers

by Ian Maclaren

It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month of June—when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his coat—and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of his work, of his people, of himself. The reasons were obvious. Was it not a sin that thirty Christian men should be cooped up in a room passing schedules when the summer was young and fresh upon the land? Could any one of the Rabbi's boys sit in that room and see his accustomed place—a corner next the wall on a back seat—empty, and not be cast down? Besides, does not a minister's year begin in September and end in July, and before it closes is not the minister at his lowest, having given away himself for eleven months? "One begins to weary for a rest," he whispered to Kincairney, and that worthy man explained that he and his wife had been planning their triennial holiday, and hoped to have a fortnight in Carnoustie. Carmichael realised his hypocrisy in that instant, for he knew perfectly that he had lost touch with life because of a hopeless love, and a proud face he had not seen a year ago. He flung himself out of the court with such impatience that the clerk stayed his hand in the midst of the sacred words pro re nata, and Kincairney mentioned to his wife in the evening that Carmichael had never got over Doctor Saunderson's death.

Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned. Opposite him began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that Kate … Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week, on Lord Kilspindie's birthday. A distant whistle came on the clear air from Muirtown station, where … and all this turmoil of hope and fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months. There is a bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank. With a thrill of sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of silver and plunged into the river. He had also been caught quite suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds. Why should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away? He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada and take charge of a parish fifty miles square. The idea had for a little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions. It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands—riding, camping, shooting, preaching—a free man and an apostle to the Scottish Dispersion.

With this bracing resolution, that seemed a call of God to deliver him from bondage, came a longing to visit Kilbogie Manse and the Rabbi's grave. It was a journey of expiation, for Carmichael followed the road the Rabbi walked with the hand of death upon him after that lamentable Presbytery, and he marked the hills where the old man must have stood and fought for breath. He could see Mains, where he had gone with Doctor Saunderson to the exposition, and he passed the spot where the Rabbi had taken farewell of George Pitillo in a figure. What learning, and simplicity, and unselfishness, and honesty, and affection were mingled in the character of the Rabbi! What skill, and courage, and tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and humility there had been also in William MacLure, who had just died! Carmichael dwelt on the likeness and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with the Rabbi in his long vigils. It was a singular means of grace to have known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and impressionable. A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael. He lifted his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way. The district was full of the Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any moment—buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong direction. The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and facts count for nothing. This was how the Idyll went. From the moment of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite unheard of fashion—love wrought a miracle—and with Kate's nursing and his he speedily recovered. Things came right between Kate and himself as they shared their task of love, and so … of course—it took place last month—and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate. He would be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the crunch of the gravel—he did know his footstep—and so he would take the old man by surprise. Alas! he need not take such care, for the walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him not. The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once more—no need to beware of parcels on the floor now—and turned to the familiar room. The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair.…

"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 're getting on wi' the repairs"—it was the joiner of Kilbogie; "it's no a licht job, for there 's nae doot the hoose hes been awfu' negleckit. The Doctor wes a terrible scholar, but he wudna hae kent that the slates were aff the roof till the drap cam intae his bed.

"Ou aye, the manse is tae be papered an' pented for the new minister; a' cud show ye the papers; juist as ye please; they're verra tasty an' showy. He's tae be married at once, a 'm hearin', an' this is tae be the drawin'-room; he wes here ten days syne—the day after he wes eleckit: they 're aye in a hurry when they 're engaged—an' seleckit a sma' room upstairs for his study; he didna think he wud need as lairge a room for bukes, an' he thocht the auld study wud dae fine for pairties.

"There 's juist ae room feenished, an' ye micht like tae see the paper on 't; it's a yellow rose on a licht blue grund; a 'm jidgin' it wes the Doctor's ain room. Weel, it's a gude lang wy tae Drumtochty, an' ye 'll no be wantin' tae pit aff time, a' daresay."

It was a terrible douche of prose, and Carmichael was still shivering when he reached the kindly shade of Tochty woods. He had seen the successful candidate at the Presbytery arranging about his "trial discourses" with the clerk—who regarded him dubiously—and he had heard some story about his being a "popular hand," and bewitching the young people with a sermon on the "good fight," with four heads "the soldier," "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"—each with an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry. Carmichael recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage inscription. There would be a soirée in the kirk, where the Rabbi had opened the mysteries of God, and his successor would explain how unworthy he felt to follow Doctor Saunderson, and how he was going to reorganise the congregation, and there would be many jocose allusions to his coming marriage; but Carmichael would by that time have left the district.

No one can walk a mile in Tochty woods, where there are little glades of mossy turf, and banks of violets and geraniums, and gentle creatures on ground and branch, and cool shade from the summer sun, and the sound of running water by your side, without being sweetened and comforted. Bitter thoughts and cynical criticisms, as well as vain regrets and peevish complaints, fell away from Carmichael's soul, and gave place to a gentle melancholy. He came to the heart of the wood, where was the lovers' grave, and the place seemed to invite his company. A sense of the tears of things came over him, and he sat down by the river-side to meditate. It was two hundred years and more since the lassies died, who were never wedded, and for him there was not even to be love. The ages were linked together by a long tragedy of disappointment and vanity, but the Tochty ran now as in the former days. What was any human life but a drop in the river that flowed without ceasing to the unknown sea? What could any one do but yield himself to necessity, and summon his courage to endure? Then at the singing of a bird his mood lightened and was changed, as if he had heard the Evangel. God was over all, and life was immortal, and he could not be wrong who did the will of God. After a day of conflict, peace came to his soul, and in the soft light of the setting sun he rose to go home.