"Oh, dad," and Kate kissed her father, "I wish I had known my mother; it had been better for me, and … happier for you."
CHAPTER XV.
JOINT POTENTATES.
mong all the houses in a Scottish parish the homeliest and kindliest is the manse, for to its door some time in the year comes every inhabitant, from the laird to the cottar woman. Within the familiar and old-fashioned study, where the minister's chair and writing-table could not be changed without discomposing the parish, and where there are fixed degrees of station, so that the laird has his chair and the servant lass hers, the minister receives and does his best for all the folk committed to his charge. Here he consults with the factor about some improvement in the arrangements of the little commonwealth, he takes counsel with a farmer about his new lease and promises to say a good word to his lordship, he confirms the secret resolution of some modest gifted lad to study for the holy ministry, he hears the shamefaced confession of some lassie whom love has led astray, he gives good advice to a son leaving the Glen for the distant dangerous world, he comforts the mother who has received bad news from abroad. Generations have come in their day to this room, and generations still unborn will come in their joys and sorrows, with their trials and their affairs, while the manse stands and human life runs its old course. And when, as was the case with Dr. Davidson in Drumtochty, the minister is ordained to the parish in his youth, and, instead of hurrying hither and thither, preaching in vacancies, scheming and intriguing, he dwells all his days among his own people, he himself knows three generations, and accumulates a store of practical wisdom for the help of his people. What may be the place of the clergyman in an English parish, and what associations of sympathy and counsel the rectory may have for the English farm-labourer, it is not permitted to a northern man to know, but it is one good thing at least in our poor land that the manse is another word for guidance and good cheer, so that Jean advises Jock in their poor little perplexity about a new place to "slip doon an' see the Doctor," and Jock, although appearing to refuse, does "gie a cry at the manse," and comes home to the gude-wife mightily comforted.
The manse builders of the ancient days were men of a shrewd eye and much wisdom. If anywhere the traveller in the north country sees a house of moderate size peeping from among a clump of trees in the lap of a hill where the north-easter cannot come and the sun shines full and warm, then let him be sure that is the manse, with the kirk and God's acre close beside, and that the fertile little fields around are the glebe, which the farmers see are ploughed and sown and reaped first in the parish. Drumtochty Manse lay beneath the main road, so that the cold wind blowing from the north went over its chimneys, and on the east it was sheltered by the Tochty woods. Southwards it overlooked the fields that sloped towards the river, and westwards, through some ancient trees, one study window had a peep of the west, although it was not given to the parish manse to lie of an evening in the glory of the setting sun, as did the Free Kirk. Standing at the gate and looking down beneath the beeches that stood as sentinels on either side of the little drive, one caught a pleasant glimpse of the manse garden, with its close-cut lawn and flower-beds and old summer-house and air of peace. No one troubled the birds in that place, and they had grown shameless in their familiarity with dignities—a jackdaw having once done his best to steal the Doctor's bandana handkerchief and the robins settling on his hat. Irreverence has limits, and in justice to a privileged friend it ought to be explained that the Doctor wore on these occasions an aged wide-awake and carried no gold-headed stick. His dog used to follow him step by step as he fed the birds and pottered among the flowers, and then it always ended in the old man sitting down on a seat at the foot of the lawn, with Skye at his feet, and looking across the Glen where he had been born and where for nearly half a century he had ministered. Kate caught him once in this attitude, and was so successful in her sketch that some have preferred it to the picture in oils that was presented to the Doctor by the Presbytery of Muirtown, and was painted by an R. A. who spent a fortnight at the manse and departed with some marvellous heads, still to be identified in certain councillors and nobles of the past. Both are hanging in the same house now, far from Drumtochty, and there they call one "Public Capaucity" and the other "Private Capaucity," and you require to have seen both to know our kindly, much-loved Moderate.
