Geordie did appear in the kirk with the bairn the next morning, unmarked, except by unusual solemnity. He did not take the vows, of course—these were assumed by his long-suffering and devoted wife; but Geordie felt he should be there as collateral security.
I coveted Geordie's soul, and longed to add his regeneration to the new Acts of the Apostles. No opportunity to speak with him was ever allowed to slip, and one came to me whose details I must recount. There had been an election for the town council, which had, half in joke and half in jealousy, returned Geordie as the councillor of his ward; for our glorious manhood suffrage, as some one has pointed out, makes Judas Iscariot as influential at the polls as the Apostle Paul.
Returning, the night of the election, from a sickbed visit, I overtook the jubilant Geordie, full of emotion and other things. His locomotion was irregular and spasmodic, his course original, picturesque, and variable. Geordie was having it out with the law of gravitation.
He was as a ship returning from Jamaica, a precious cargo of spirits in its hold, and labouring heavily in the trough of the sea. I essayed to take his arm, intending to be his wheelsman home, but it was like trying to board a vessel in a storm; for Geordie had at least a hundred routes which he must traverse with impartial feet. After I had somewhat managed to adopt his swing, I sought to deal faithfully with him, though it was like preaching from the plunging deck of a ship at sea, while the breath of my swaying auditor suggested that the aforesaid cargo had sprung a leak.
He was raising a double pæan to voice a twofold joy: the first, the joy of triumph in the recent contest; the second, the historic and imperishable joy that he was a Scotsman born.
"Yon whelp I skelpit the day was naething but an Irishman," he cried loftily. "I canna get Robbie Burns' graun' words oot o' my heid: 'The Scotsmen staun' an' Irish fa'—let him on wi' me,'" and on this wave of martial spirit Geordie took another plunge at right angles from our previous course, bearing me after him like a skiff tied to a schooner amid stormy seas.
After we had put about and regained our bearings, I nimbly took advantage of this patriotic opening, having ever a quick mind for the transition of ideas.
"Yes, Geordie, many good things are Scotch, and many Scotch things are good. Some misguided persons think even that Scotch liquor is good. Now, George——" But I got no further. This time Geordie swung around before me, like a boat that trusts its moorings—
"Ye're richt, minister; wha wad hae thocht ye kent the difference? But ye're richt—a' whusky is guid, but some's mair guid nor ithers, an' Scotch is mair guid nor ony ithers. Those feckless Irish fowk aye tak' the speerits o' oor native land gin they hae the siller, which isna likely. An' I dinna blame them muckle."
I now saw that there was no opening along this line, favourable at first sight as it had appeared. The attack must be plain and straight.