by Unknown
“He gae me sic a look,” a woman said, “‘at I was fleid an’ ran hame,” but she did not tell the story until Jamie’s homecoming had become a legend.
There were many women hanging out their washing on the commonty that day, and none of them saw him. I think Jamie must have approached his old home by the fields, and probably he held back until gloaming.
The young woman who was now mistress of the house at the top of the brae both saw and spoke with Jamie.
“Twa or three times,” she said, “I had seen a man walk quick up the brae an’ by the door. It was gettin’ dark, but I noticed ‘at he was short an’ thin, an’ I would hae said he wasna nane weel if it hadna been at’ he gaed by at sic a steek. He didna look our wy — at least no when he was close up, an’ I set ‘im doon for some ga’en aboot body. Na, I saw naething aboot ‘im to be fleid at.
“The aucht o’clock bell was ringin’ when I saw ‘im to speak to. My twa-year-auld bairn was standin’ aboot the door, an’ I was makkin’ some porridge for my man’s supper when I heard the bairny skirlin’. She came runnin’ in to the hoose an’ hung i’ my wrapper, an’ she was hingin’ there, when I gaed to the door to see what was wrang.
“It was the man I’d seen passin’ the hoose. He was standin’ at the gate, which, as a’body kens, is but sax steps frae the hoose, an’ I wondered at ‘im neither runnin’ awa nor comin’ forrit. I speired at ‘im what he meant by terrifyin’ a bairn, but he didna say naething. He juist stood. It was ower dark to see his face richt, an’ I wasna nane ta’en aback yet, no till he spoke. Oh, but he had a fearsome word when he did speak. It was a kind o’ like a man hoarse wi’ a cauld, an’ yet no that either.
“‘Wha bides i’ this hoose?’ he said, ay standin there.
“‘It’s Davit Patullo’s hoose,’ I said, ‘an’ am the wife.’
“‘Whaur’s Hendry McQumpha?’ he speired.
“‘He’s deid,’ I said.
“He stood still for a fell while.
“‘An’ his wife, Jess?’ he said.
“‘She’s deid, too,’ I said.
“I thocht he gae a groan, but it may hae been the gate.
“‘There was a dochter, Leeby?’ he said.
“‘Ay,’ I said, ‘she was ta’en first.’
“I saw ‘im put up his hands to his face, an’ he cried out, ‘Leeby too!’ an’ syne he kind o’ fell agin the dyke. I never kent ‘im nor nane o’ his fowk, but I had heard aboot them, an’ I saw ‘at it would be the son frae London. It wasna for me to judge ‘im, an’ I said to ‘im would he no come in by an’ tak a rest. I was nearer ‘im by that time, an’ it’s an awfu’ haver to say ‘at he had a face to frichten fowk. It was a rale guid face, but no ava what a body would like to see on a young man. I felt mair like greetin’ mysel when I saw his face than drawin’ awa frae ‘im.
“But he wouldna come in. ‘Rest,’ he said, like ane speakin’ to ‘imsel, ‘na, there’s nae mair rest for me.’ I didna weel ken what mair to say to ‘im, for he aye stood on, an’ I wasna even sure ‘at he saw me. He raised his heid when he heard me tellin’ the bairn no to tear my wrapper.
“‘Dinna set yer heart ower muckle on that bairn,’ he cried oot, sharp like. ‘I was aince like her, an’ I used to hing aboot my mother, too, in that very roady. Ay, I thocht I was fond o’ her, an’ she thocht it too. Tak’ a care, wuman, ‘at that bairn doesna grow up to murder ye.’
“He gae a lauch when he saw me tak haud o’ the bairn, an’ syne a’ at aince he gaed awa quick. But he wasna far doon the brae when he turned an’ came back.
“‘Ye’ll, mebbe, tell me,” he said, richt low, ‘if ye hae the furniture ‘at used to be my mother’s?’
“‘Na,’ I said, ‘it was roupit, an’ I kenna whaur the things gaed, for me an’ my man comes frae Tilliedrum.’
“‘Ye wouldna hae heard,’ he said, ‘wha got the muckle airm-chair ‘at used to sit i’ the kitchen i’ the window ‘at looks ower the brae?’
“‘I couldna be sure,’ I said, ‘but there was an airm-chair at gaed to Tibbie Birse. If it was the ane ye mean, it a’ gaed to bits, an’ I think they burned it. It was gey dune.’
“‘Ay,’ he said, ‘it was gey dune.’
“‘There was the chairs ben i’ the room,’ he said, after a while.
“I said I thocht Sanders Elshioner had got them at a bargain because twa o’ them was mended wi’ glue, an’ gey silly.
“‘Ay, that’s them,’ he said, ‘they were richt neat mended. It was my mother ‘at glued them. I mind o’ her makkin’ the glue, an’ warnin’ me an’ my father no to sit on them. There was the clock too, an’ the stool ‘at my mother got oot an’ into her bed wi’, an’ the basket ‘at Leeby carried when she gaed the errands. The straw was aff the handle, an’ my father mended it wi’ strings.’
“‘I dinna ken,’ I said, ‘whaur nane o’ thae gaed; but did yer mother hae a staff?’
“‘A little staff,’ he said; ‘it was near black wi’ age. She couldna gang frae the bed to her chair withoot it. It was broadened oot at the foot wi’ her leanin’ on’t sae muckle.’
“‘I’ve heard tell,’ I said, ‘‘at the dominie up i’ Glen Quharity took awa the staff.’
“He didna speir for nae other thing. He had the gate in his hand, but I dinna think he kent ‘at he was swingin’t back an’ forrit. At last he let it go.
“‘That’s a’,’ he said, ‘I maun awa. Good-nicht, an’ thank ye kindly.’
“I watched ‘im till he gaed oot o’ sicht. He gaed doon the brae.”
We learnt afterwards from the gravedigger that some one spent great part of that night in the graveyard, and we believe it to have been Jamie. He walked up the glen to the schoolhouse next forenoon, and I went out to meet him when I saw him coming down the path.
“Ay,” he said, “it’s me come back.”
I wanted to take him into the house and speak with him of his mother, but he would not cross the threshold.
“I came oot,” he said, “to see if ye would gie me her staff — no ‘at I deserve ‘t.”
I brought out the staff and handed it to him, thinking that he and I would soon meet again. As he took it I saw that his eyes were sunk back into his head. Two great tears hung on his eyelids, and his mouth closed in agony. He stared at me till the tears fell upon his cheeks, and then he went away.
That evening he was seen by many persons crossing the square. He went up the brae to his old home, and asked leave to go through the house for the last time. First he climbed up into the attic, and stood looking in, his feet still on the stair. Then he came down and stood at the door of the room, but he went into the kitchen.
“I’ll ask one last favour o’ ye,” he said to the woman: “I would like ye to leave me here alane for juist a little while.”
“I gaed oot,” the woman said, “meanin’ to leave ‘im to ‘imsel’, but my bairn wouldna come, an’ he said, ‘Never mind her,’ so I left her wi’ ‘im, an’ closed the door. He was in a lang time, but I never kent what he did, for the bairn juist aye greets when I speir at her.
“I watched ‘im frae the corner window gang doon the brae till he came to the corner. I thocht he turned round there an’ stood lookin’ at the hoose. He would see me better than I saw him for my lamp was i’ the window, whaur I’ve heard tell his mother keepit her cruizey. When my man came in I speired at ‘im if he’d seen onybody standin’ at the corner o’ the brae, an’ he said he thocht he’d seen somebody wi’ a little staff in his hand. Davit gaed doon to see if he was aye there after supper-time, but he was gone.”
Jamie was never again seen in Thrums.
THE LITTLE MINISTER
Published in 1891, this is the third of the three "Thrums" novels, set in Barrie’s hometown of Kirriemuir. Preceded by Auld Licht Idylls (1888) and A Window in Thrums (1890), these works brought Barrie his first fame, with The Little Minister being the author’s most successful novel after Peter and Wendy.
Set
in rural 1840s Scotland, the plot focuses on labour and class issues while telling the story of Gavin Dishart, a staid cleric, who is newly assigned to Thrums' Auld Licht church. The novel also involves Babbie, a member of the nobility, who disguises herself as a gypsy girl in order to interact freely with the local villagers and protect them from her guardian, the domineering Lord Rintoul. Initially, the conservative Dishart is appalled by the feisty girl, but he soon comes to appreciate her innate goodness. Their romantic liaison scandalises the townspeople and the minister's position is seriously questioned, until Babbie's true identity is revealed.
The first single volume edition
CONTENTS
Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
Chapter Three.
Chapter Four.
Chapter Five.
Chapter Six.
Chapter Seven.
Chapter Eight.
Chapter Nine.
Chapter Ten.
Chapter Eleven.
Chapter Twelve.
Chapter Thirteen.
Chapter Fourteen.
Chapter Fifteen.
Chapter Sixteen.
Chapter Seventeen.
Chapter Eighteen.
Chapter Nineteen.
Chapter Twenty.
Chapter Twenty-One.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
Chapter TwentyFive.
Chapter Twenty-Six.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Chapter Thirty.
Chapter Thirty-One.
Chapter Thirty-Two.
Chapter Thirty-Three.
Chapter Thirty-Four.
Chapter Thirty-Five.
Chapter Thirty-Six.
Chapter Thirty-Seven.
Chapter Thirty-Eight.
Chapter Thirty-Nine.
Chapter Forty.
Chapter Forty-One.
Chapter Forty-Two.
Chapter Forty-Three.
Chapter Forty-Four.
Chapter Forty-Five.
The 1934 film adaptation
NOTE
The illustrations in this book have been made especially for this edition of The Little Minister by arrangement with Mr. Charles Frohman, through whose courtesy they are here reproduced. Many of them were drawn by C. Allen Gilbert, while others are from photographs which appear here for the first time.
Chapter One.
THE LOVE-LIGHT.
Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king’s soldier without whistling impudently, “Come ower the water to Charlie,” a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, “They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een.” No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever.
It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding goodbye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.
Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits him at the bend of the 2 road. It was the time of year when the ground is carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, when split-nuts patter all day from the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie’s desk to remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was so silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes — a few of the weavers still in knee-breeches — to look at the new Auld Licht minister. I was there too, the dominie of Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums; and heavy was my heart as I stood afar off so that Gavin’s mother might not have the pain of seeing me. I was the only one in the crowd who looked at her more than at her son.
Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had lost the brightness of its youth, and she seemed to me smaller and more fragile; and the face that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy, and loved when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shall love till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only forty-three; and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as the dominie was glad, looking on at a happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret was crying because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons to be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have you dry those tears.
A STREET IN THRUMS.
When the little minister looked out at the carriage window, many of the people drew back humbly, but a little boy in a red frock with black spots pressed forward and offered him a sticky parly, which Gavin accepted, though not without a tremor, for children were more terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy’s mother, trying not to look elated, bore him away, but her face said that he was made for life. With this little 3 incident Gavin’s career in Thrums began. I remembered it suddenly the other day when wading across the wynd where it took place. Many scenes in the little minister’s life come back to me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love story as an old man’s gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one night while I sat alone in the schoolhouse; on my knees a fiddle that has been my only living companion since I sold my hens. My mind had drifted back to the first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together, and what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate shaking in the wind. At a gate on the hill I had first encountered these two. It rattled in his hand, and I looked up and saw them, and neither knew why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the gate swung to. It had just such a click as mine.
These two figures on the hill are more real to me than things that happened yesterday, but I do not know that I can make them live to others. A ghost-show used to come yearly to Thrums on the merry Muckle Friday, in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a glass between the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny that the comings and goings of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the farmer of T’nowhead only laughed because he had paid his money at the hole in the door like the rest of us. T’nowhead sat at the end of a form where he saw round the glass and so saw no ghost. I fear my public may be in the same predicament. I see the little minister as he was at one-and-twenty, and the little girl to whom this story is to belong sees him, though the things I have to tell happened before she came into the world. But there are reasons why she should see; and I do not know that I can provide the glass for others. If they see round it, they will neither laugh nor cry with Gavin and Babbie.
When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now, for the pages lay before him on which he was to write 4 his life. Yet he was not quite as I am. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. But the biographer sees the last chapter while he is still at the first, and I have only to write over with ink what Gavin has written in pencil.
How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wa
kens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.
Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write these things? I am not your judge. Shall we not laugh at the student who chafes when between him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with whom, on the mad night you danced into Gavin’s life, you had more in common than with Auld Licht ministers? The gladness of living was in your step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what love might be.
“BABBIE.”
You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds are free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to dazzle the eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken by you into his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be young. Even those who called you a little devil, of 5 whom I have been one, admitted that in the end you had a soul, though not that you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you first, a barelegged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot wonder that Gavin loved you.
Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin’s story, not mine. Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and of myself I shall sometimes have to speak; not willingly, for it is time my little tragedy had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so long that now I would stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that the life broken in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two minutes’ talk with Gavin showed me that Margaret had kept from him the secret which was hers and mine, and so knocked the bottom out of my vain hopes. I did not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall any one who blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was bitter to look at the white manse among the trees and know that I must never enter it. For Margaret’s sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial came upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought that in those eighteen years my passions had burned like a ship till they sank, but I suffered again as on that awful night when Adam Dishart came back, nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions by the root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums until I had looked again on Margaret, who thought me dead, and Gavin, who had never heard of me, and then I trudged back to the schoolhouse. Something I heard of them from time to time during the winter — for in the 6 gossip of Thrums I was well posted — but much of what is to be told here I only learned afterwards from those who knew it best. Gavin heard of me at times as the dominie in the glen who had ceased to attend the Auld Licht kirk, and Margaret did not even hear of me. It was all I could do for them.