Mr. Barrie and she talked the matter fully over, looking at it on all sides, and she entered patiently and minutely into all the pros and cons, sometimes considerably to his confusion. For whilst she gave a comprehensive statement of the arguments for going and staying, she did this so evenly that it merely assisted his judgment, but it did not at all influence his decision.
About this time the “Ecclesiastical Titles Bill” was absorbing public attention, and the Churches in Scotland entered on a feverish crusade against the Church of Rome. The deputation which appeared at the presbytery to prosecute the call to Mr. Barrie dwelt largely on this subject. I have already referred to Mr. Barrie’s deeply-rooted aversion to a matter of this kind. On this occasion he spoke out very strongly, much to the surprise, if not to the dissatisfaction, of the Edinburgh representatives.
He declared it was his conviction that spasmodic agitation of this kind was of no practical use. It oftener resulted in harm than good. There was much in the Romish Church which he disliked and condemned, but there was also much that he respected,—its zeal, its energy, its stand for liberty and learning in the Dark Ages, and its success in reaching the very poorest and keeping hold of them. Rank injustice was often done by ignorant tirade, or exaggerated misrepresentation of certain tenets. To enter into either an explanation or a refutation, or, worse still, a denunciation of Mariolatry, Transubstantiation, etc., to a Protestant audience was unedifying, to say the least of it. If the fiery zeal directed against Popery were applied to preaching and living the gospel, it would be better for the minister, the people, and the world; and unless he greatly changed his mind, he would not meet the wishes of the deputation in that matter. He, however, reserved his decision till next meeting of presbytery.
One reverend Edinburgh brother was present, on whom the no-Popery cry had taken an excessively firm hold; it was the only subject which warmed him up at all, but it made him furious, and formed part of every discourse he preached, until many of his hearers said, “they couldna sleep in the kirk noo;” and one of his elders affirmed that “he was aye pop-pop-poperyin’ away; if he pop-poperied mickle mair, I’ll no’ pop back to hear him.”
This deputy tried to reply to Mr. Barrie, but Mr. Taylor said “it was like a Dandie Dinmont laying about him wi’ a flail on thrashed straw—plenty o’ exercise an’ stour, but nae wark dune; muckle cry an’ little woo’ [wool], as the,” etc. At next meeting of presbytery Mr. Barrie accepted the call to Edinburgh.
“COMING EVENTS CAST.”
In contemplating the Edinburgh call, it is possible to conceive that Bell might have been one of Mrs. Barrie’s difficulties, for life in a town would not suit her at all. What would she do without Daisy? for so all her cows were named, prefixed in order to distinguish them by the colour of each, so that Bell had had during her stay in Blinkbonny a brown Daisy, a black Daisy, etc., and now she had a ginger Daisy. Could she do without the garden, and especially the hens? No.
But Bell had been rather a thought to Mrs. Barrie for some time past. Not that she had failed or flagged—she was as “eident” [industrious], honest, and excellent as ever; but Mrs. Barrie had observed, that after the meetings of the elders at the manse were over, David Tait of Blackbrae took the kitchen lobby, not the front door one, as the others did; and she also noticed, after this had gone on for a while, that if any of the other elders took the same road, Bell did not talk with them so much as she used to do, but found some sudden engagement outside the manse, and that David and she generally re-entered the kitchen together, as soon as the others were fairly on their way.
David had a small farm about a mile and a half from Blinkbonny. His widowed mother had died lately. He was a canny, intelligent man, in good worldly circumstances, or, to use the Scotch phrase, “a bien man, but very blate [diffident].”
Betwixt Mrs. Barrie and Bell there were no secrets, and she often asked Bell if Mr. Tait and she were making any progress in the way of marriage. “None whatever,” was Bell’s general reply. “He’s a nice man an’ a gude cracker, but he never ‘evened’ [hinted at] marriage to me.”