A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

But before the winter was over, life had naturally asserted its rights in the mind of the young minister. He had begun to stretch out his hands for his tools almost without knowing it, and to find that after all, a man in a pulpit, although he has two flights of stairs to ascend to it, has a certain power in his hand. Colin found eventually, that he had after all a great deal to say, and that even in one hour in a week it was possible to convey sundry new ideas into the rude, but not stupid, minds of his parishioners. A great many of them had that impracticable and hopeless amount of intelligence natural to a well brought-up Scotch peasant, with opinions upon theological matters and a lofty estimate of his own powers; but withal there were many minds open and thoughtful as silence, and the fields, and much observation of the operations of nature could make them. True, there were all the disadvantages to be encountered in Afton which usually exist in Scotch parishes of the present generation. There was a Free church at the other end of the parish very well filled, and served by a minister who was much more clear in a doctrinal point of view than Colin; and the heritors, for the most part—that is to say, the land-owners of the parish—though they were pleased to ask a Fellow of Balliol to dinner, and to show him a great deal of attention, yet drove placidly past his church every Sunday to the English chapel in St. Rule’s; which is unhappily the general fortune of the National Church in Scotland. It was on this divided world that Colin looked from his high pulpit, where, at least for his hour, he had the privilege of saying what he pleased without any contradiction; and it is not to be denied that after a while the kingdom of Fife grew conscious to its other extremity that in the eastern corner a man had arrived who had undoubtedly something to say. As his popularity began to rise, Colin’s ambitions crept back to his heart one by one. He preached the strangest sort of baffling, unorthodox sermons, in which, however, when an adverse critic took notes, there was found to be nothing upon which in these days he could be brought to the bar of the presbytery. Thirty years ago, indeed, matters were otherwise regulated; but even presbyteries have this advantage over popes, that they do take a step forward occasionally to keep in time with their age.

This would be the proper point at which to leave Colin, if there did not exist certain natural, human prejudices on the subject which require a distinct conclusion of one kind or another. Until a man is dead, it is impossible to say what he has done, or to make any real estimate of his work; and Colin, so far from being dead, is only as yet at the commencement of his career, having taken the first steps with some success and éclat, and having recovered the greater part of his enthusiasm. There was, indeed, a time when his friends expected nothing else for him than that early and lovely ending which makes a biography perfect. There is only one other ending in life, which is equally satisfactory, and, at least on the face of it, more cheerful than dying; and that, we need not say, is marriage. Accordingly, as it is impossible to pursue his course to the one end, all that we can do is to turn to the other, which, though the hero himself was not aware of it, was at that moment shadowing slowly out of the morning clouds.

It is accordingly with a feeling of relief that we turn from the little ecclesiastical world of Scotland, where we dare not put ourselves in too rigorous contact with reality, or reveal indiscreetly, without regard to the sanctity of individual confidence, what Colin is doing, to the common open air and daylight, in which he set out, all innocent and unfearing, on a summer morning, accompanied as of old by Lauderdale, upon a holiday journey. He had not the remotest idea, any more than the readers of his history have at this moment, what was to happen to him before he came back again. He set out with all his revolutionary ideas in his mind, without pausing to think that circumstances might occur which would soften down all insurrectionary impulses on his part, and present him to the alarmed Church, not under the aspect of an irresistible agitator and reformer, but in the subdued character of a man who has given hostages to society. Colin had no thought of this downfall in his imagination when he set out. He had even amused himself with the idea of a new series of “Tracts for the Times,” which might peradventure work as much commotion in the Church of Scotland as the former series had done in the Anglican communion. He went off in full force and energy with the draft of the first of these revolutionary documents in the writing-case in which he had once copied out his verses for Alice Meredith. Poor Alice Meredith! The bridle which Colin had once felt on his neck had worn by this time to such an impalpable thread that he was no longer aware of its existence; and even the woman in the clouds had passed out of his recollection for the moment, so much was he absorbed with the great work he had embarked on. Thus he set out on a pedestrian excursion, meaning to go to the English lakes, and it is hard to say where besides, in his month’s holiday; and nothing in the air or in the skies gave any notice to Colin of the great event that was to befall him before he could return.

CHAPTER XLVII.

It was, as we have said, a lovely summer morning when Colin set out on his excursion, after the fatigues of the winter and spring. His first stage was naturally Ramore, where he arrived the same evening, having picked up Lauderdale at Glasgow on his way. A more beautiful evening had never shone over the Holy Loch; and, as the two friends approached Ramore, all the western sky was flaming behind the dark hills, which stood up in austere shadow, shutting out from the loch and its immediate banks the later glories of the sunset. To leave the eastern shore, where the light still lingered, and steal up under the shadow into the soft beginning of the twilight, with Ramore, that “shines where it stands,” looking out hospitably from the brae, was like leaving the world of noise and commotion for the primitive life, with its silence and its thoughts; and so, indeed, Colin felt it, though his world was but another country parish, primitive enough in its ways. But then it must not be forgotten that there is a difference between the kingdom of Fife, where wheat grows golden on the broad fields, and where the herrings come up to the shore to be salted and packed in barrels, and the sweet Loch half hidden among the hills, where the cornfields are scant and few, and where grouse and heather divide the country with the beasts and the pastures, and where, in short, Gaelic was spoken within the memory of man. Perhaps there was something of the vanity of youth in that look of observation and half amused, half curious criticism which the young man cast upon the peaceful manse, where it did not seem as if anything could ever happen, and where the minister, who had red hair, had painfully begun his career when Colin himself was a boy. The manse of Afton was not nearly so lovely, but—it was different; though perhaps he could not have told how. And the same thought was in his mind as he went on past all the tranquil houses. How did they manage to keep existing, those people for whom life was over, who had ceased to look beyond the day, or to anticipate either good or evil? To be sure all this was very unreasonable; for Colin was aware that things did happen now and then on the Holy Loch. Somebody died occasionally, when it was impossible to help it, and by turns somebody was born, and there even occurred, at rare intervals a marriage, with its suggestion of life beginning; but these domestic incidents were not what he was thinking of. Life seemed to be in its quiet evening over all that twilight coast; and then it was the morning with Colin, and it did not seem possible for him to exist without the hopes, and motives, and excitements which made ceaseless movement and commotion in his soul. He was so full of what had to be done, even of what he himself had to do, that the silence seemed to recede before him, and to rustle and murmur round him as he carried into it his conscious and restless life.

Colin had even such a wealth of existence to dispose of that it kept flowing on in two or three distinct channels, a thing which amused him when he thought of it. For underneath all this sense of contrast, and Lauderdale’s talk, and his own watch for the Ramore boat, No. 1 of the “Tracts for the Times” was at the same time shaping itself in Colin’s brain; and there are moments when a man can stand apart from himself, and note what is going on in his own mind. He was greeting the old friends who recognised him in the steamboat, and looking out for home, and planning his tract, and making that contrast between the evening and the morning all at the same moment. And at the same time he had taken off the front of his mental habitation, and was looking at all those different processes going on in its different compartments with a curious sense of amusement. Such were the occupations of his mind as he went up to the Loch, to that spot where the Ramore boat lay waiting on the rippled surface. It was a different homecoming from any that he had ever made before. Formerly his prospects were vague, and it never was quite certain what he might make of himself. Now he had fulfilled all the ambitions of his family, as far as his position went. There was nothing more to hope for or to desire in that particular; and, naturally, Colin felt that his influence with his father and brothers at least would be enhanced by the realization of those hopes, which, up to this time, had always been mingled with a little uncertainty. He forgot all about that, it is true, when he grasped the hands of Archie and of the farmer, and dashed up the brae to where the Mistress stood wistful at the door; but, notwithstanding, there was a difference, and it was one which was sufficiently apparent to all. As for his mother, she smoothed down the sleeve of his black coat with her kind hand, and examined with a tender smile the cut of the waistcoat which Colin had brought from Oxford—though, to tell the truth, he had still a stolen inclination for “mufti,” and wore his uniform only when a solemn occasion occurred like this and on grand parade; but, for all her joy and satisfaction at sight of him, the Mistress still looked a little shattered and broken, and had never forgotten—though Colin had forgotten it long ago—the “objections” of the parish of Afton, and all that her son had had “to come through,” as she said, “before he was placed.”

“I’m awfu’ shaken in my mind about a’ that,” said the Mistress; “there’s the Free Kirk folk—though I’m no for making an example of them—fighting among themselves about their new minister, like thae puir senseless creatures in America. Thamas, at the Millhead, is for the ae candidate, and his brother Dugald for the tither; and they’re like to tear each other’s een out when they meet. That’s ill enough, but Afton’s waur. I’m no for setting up priests, nor making them a sacerdotal caste as some folk say; but will you tell me,” said Mrs. Campbell, indignantly, “that a wheen ignorant weavers and canailye like that can judge my Colin? ay, or even if it was thae Fife farmers driving in their gigs. I would like to ken what he studied for and took a’ thae honours, and gave baith time and siller, if he wasna to ken better than the like of them? I’m no pretending to meddle with politics that are out of my way—but I canna shut my een,” the Mistress said, emphatically. “The awfu’ thing is that we’ve nae respect to speak of for onything but ourselves; we’re so awfu’ fond of our ain bit poor opinions, and the little we ken. If there was ony change in our parish—and the minister’s far from weel, by a’ I can hear—and that man round the point at the English chapel wasna such an awfu’ haveril—I would be tempted to flee away out of their fechts and their objections, and get a quiet Sabbath day there.”

“I’m no for buying peace so dear, for my part,” said Lauderdale; “they’re terrible haverils, most of the English ministers in our pairts, as the Mistress says. We’re a’ in a kind of dissenting way now-a-days, the mair’s the pity. Whisht a moment, callant, and let a man speak.—I’m no saying onything against dissent; it’s a wee hard in its ways, and it has an awfu’ opinion of itsel’, and there’s nae beauty in it; but, when your mind’s made up to have popular rights and your ain way in everything, I canna see onything else for it, for my part.”

“Weel, we’ll a’ see,” said big Colin, who in his heart could not defend an order of ecclesiastical economy which permitted his son to be assaulted by the parish of Afton, or any other parish, “if it’s the will of God. We’re none of us so awfu’ auld; but the world’s aye near its ending to a woman that sees her son slighted; there’s nae penitence can make up for that—no that he’s suffered much that I can see,” the farmer said with a laugh. “There’s enough of the Kirk for one night.”

“Eh, Colin, dinna be so worldly,” said his wife; “I think whiles it would be an awfu’ blessing if the world was to end as you say; and a thing be cleared up, and them joined again that had been parted, and the bonnie earth safe through the fire—if it’s to be by fire,” she added with a questioning glance towards her son; “I canna think but it’s ower good to be true. When I mind upon a’ we’ve to go through in this life, and a’ that is so hard to mend;—eh, if He would but take it in His ain hand!” said the Mistress with tears in her eyes. No one was so hard-hearted as to preach to her at that moment, or to enlarge upon the fact that everything was in His hand, as indeed she knew as well as her companions; but it happens sometimes that the prayers and the wishes which are out of reason, are those that come warmest, and touch deepest, to the heart.