by Unknown
In the past few years, up to this night, my lot had thrown me mostly among my seniors, and a glow that once I knew seemed to be just a memory warning me that ministers must be done quickly with the clutches of youth.
I am no hand at describing the garb of beauty, and the nearest I can get to her, after much communing, is that she is a long stalk of loveliness. She carried a muff of fur, and at times would raise it to her face as if she knew no better than to think it was a scent-bottle, or peep over it like a sitting bird in the bole of a tree.
The upper part of her attire was black and the rest green.
There was a diverting mutch on her head which, for some reason I cannot as yet determine, you could have got on smiling terms with though you had met it hanging on a nob.
She is from Edinburgh, and it was to get her that I saw the Grand House carriage fighting its way to Branders yesterday.
I have only seen her for twenty minutes. There is such a beloved huskiness in her voice that she should be made to say everything twice. She glides up a manse stair with what I take to be the lithesomeness of a panther. I like her well when she is haughty, and even better when she is melting, and best of all when she is the two together, which she often is.
I was all throughither when she sat down on the one of my chairs that I have hitherto held to be of the least account. She looked as meek at that moment as if a dove was brooding in her face.
It is not beauty of person that I heed but internal beauty, which in her is as plain to read as if she wore it outside.
What I would last part with is the way her face sparkles, not just her eyes but her whole face. This comes and goes, and when it has gone there is left the sweet homeliness that is woman’s surest promise to man. Fine I knew for ever that I needed none but her.
Fain would I have made observations to her that put a minister in a favourable light. I am thinking that the Old Lady spoke at times, for she is a masterpiece at conversation, but all I remember of her is that she soon fell asleep in the grandy chair, which is a sudden way she has. This disregard of her company has sometimes annoyed me at kirk meetings (where we have to pause till she wakes up), but not on this occasion.
In my lecture I had spoken about humour which is profound and humour which is shallow, such as pulling away your chair. Miss Julie Logan said to me in the manse that she was only interested in the profound kind, with its ramifications and idiosyncrasies. She said she found it a hard kind to detect, and wished she could be so instructed as to recognise profound humour, whether written or spoken.
When she said this there was something so pleading in her shining eyes that, instead of replying in a capable manner, I offered to explain the thing with a bit of paper and a pencil.
I drew a note of exclamation, and showed her how they were put into books, at the end of sentences, to indicate that the remark was of a humorous character. She got the loan of the pencil and practised making notes of exclamation under my instruction.
She said she questioned whether profound humour would not still baffle her in the spoken word, and I agreed that here it was more difficult, but told her that if you watched the speaker’s face narrowly you could generally tell by a glint in it; and if there was no glint his was the mistake and not yours.
She asked me to say something humorous to her, the while she would watch for the glint, which I did, and she saw it.
She said she feared it would be a long time before she could do my glint, and asked me to watch her face while she practised it; and I was very willing.
She said she would like to have my opinion on the statement of an Englishman about the bagpipes, namely that they sound best if you are far away from them, and the farther away the better. Other people present had laughed at that, and could I tell her why?
I said that no doubt what they laughed at was at the man’s forgetting that if you were too far away from the pipes you would not hear them at all.
Even in those moments I was not such a gowk as to be unaware that I was making a deplorable exhibition of myself. Whatever she seemed to want me to say I just had to say it, for the power had gone from me to show her that I was not mentally deficient. However, when it came to this about the pipes I broke up and laid my face on the table, and she raised my head, and was woebegone when she saw the ruin she had made.
‘Have I hurt you?’ she asked, and I could just nod. ‘Why did you let me?’ she said with every bit of her, and I answered darkly, ‘I cannot help saying or doing whatever Miss Julie Logan wants.’
The wet glittered on her eyes in a sort of contest as you can sometimes hear them do on the strings.
I said, ‘It is bitter mortifying to me to be seen in such disadvantageous circumstances by Miss Julie Logan at the very time of all others when I should have liked to be better than my best.’
I stroked her muff and, somehow, the action made me say, ‘This is a very unhomely manse,’ though I had never thought that before.
She held out her hand to me, with the palm upwards like one begging for forgiveness, and I have been wondering ever since what she meant me precisely to do with it. I pressed it on my heart, and I filled at long last with what becomes a man in his hour and I said, ‘I love you, Miss Julie Logan,’ and she said as soft as a snowflake, ‘Yes, I know.’ Then Christily came in with the blackberry wine on a server, and when Miss Julie Logan drank it I could see her throat flushing as it went down, which they say also happened with Mary Stewart. Then the Old Lady woke up and said that the ponies must be yoked by this time, so I took the ladies across to the carriage, Christily going in front with the lamp. I could hear Miss Julie Logan talking sweetly to her, though it was the Old Lady who was on my arm.
It is now on the chap of midnight, and since I wrote the above I have been down to my kirk and unlocked the door and lit a candle and stood looking for a long time at the manse pew. It is in a modest position on the right of the pulpit, disdaining to call attention to itself. For my part, I could never walk down the aisle of any kirk without being as conscious of which was the manse pew as of which was the pulpit. I do not look, I just feel it.
Usually there is only Christily in my pew, and she sits at the far end. Not all manse pews have a door, but mine has, and I would sit next it if I were out of the pulpit, which can only be if another minister is officiating for me. When a minister is a married man, as all ministers ought to be, it is the lawful right of his wife to sit next the door, with a long empty space between her and the servant, unless they be blessed with children. I stood by my manse pew picturing Miss Julie Logan sitting next the door. She is a tall lady, and I wondered whether the seat was too low for her; and such is my condition that, if I had brought nails and a hammer with me, I would have raised it there and then.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHRISTILY GOES QUEER
Dec. 30. In the midst of my exaltation come disquieting symptoms in Christily. I think, now I look back, that she has been unsettled these past few days and that occasionally she has glanced covertly at me as if she feared I suspected her of something. Whether this was so or not, she is in a bad state now, and I am very ravelled in my mind about her.
It showed itself this morning when I made a remark to her about Miss Julie Logan. I knew it would be more befitting not to bring that name into everyday conversation, but something within me hankered to hear how it sounded on other lips. Nothing could have been more carefully casual than the way I introduced the subject, and yet the dryness came into my mouth that makes it so desirable for a public speaker to have a glass of water handy.
‘And so,’ I said, ‘there is a young lady at the Grand House now, Christily.’
‘Is there?’ said she, like one cheering up for a gossip.
‘Did you not know,’ I enquired, ‘that it is there Miss Julie Logan is staying?’
‘What Miss Julie Logan?’ she asked.
‘The young lady,’ I said patiently, ‘whom Mistress Lindinnock brought to the manse the night before last.’
‘I saw no young lady,’ she said; ‘there was just the two of you came in, you and Mistress Lindinnock.’
‘Is this temper, Christily,’ I demanded, ‘or what is it? You helped Miss Julie Logan to a glass of blackberry wine; also you carried the lantern when I escorted them back to the carriage, and you were in front conversing with her.’
Her eyes stood out as in some sudden affliction, and, when I stepped toward her, asking if she was ill, she cried ‘God help me!’ and rushed out of the study.
What did it portend? Had I unwittingly opened the door to some secret the poor soul had been keeping from me? I was very riven and I followed on her heels to the kitchen, but she had locked the door and no answer could I get when I spoke through the keyhole to her. This was very disturbing from such an excellent woman, and I went on my knees, with the door between us, and called in a loud voice to the malevolent one to come out of her. I could hear her wailing sore.
In much perturbation I got across to the Five Houses on the chance of finding Dr John, as Posty’s wife is down with a complaint that beats the skill of her neighbours; the silly tod has found out that she is four years older than she thought, and though until that moment in robust health she at once took to her bed.
Fortunately I got the doctor, and on our way across I told him of what had happened. I was relieved to find that he did not take the matter with my seriousness; indeed he was more interested in Miss Julie Logan, of whom he had not heard till now, than in Christily’s case, which he foretold would turn out to be tantrums brought on by my writing so many loveletters. It seems, though news to me, that Christily is responsible for tattle about my sitting for hours writing loveletters, these being what she has made of my Diary. However meddlesome this is, it took a load from my mind, and I was feeling comfortable when he went off to the kitchen, grinning, and declaring that he would shake her like a doctor’s bottle.
He was gone for a long time, and it was a very different Dr John who came back. I have seen him worry his way through some rasping ordeals, but never showing the least emotion. Now, however, he was in such a throb that at sight of him I cried out, ‘Is it as bad as that?’
‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘Man, it is so bad and so unexpected that for the first time in my practice I cannot even pretend to know how to act; let me be for a minute.’ He paced the floor, digging his gnarled fists into his eyes, a way he has when in pursuit of a problem, as if the blackness thus created helped him to see better.
‘There is one of two things that must be done,’ he said, ‘and I have got to choose, but the responsibility is very terrible.’
I waited, thinking he was to take me into his confidence, but, instead, he just fell to staring in a kind of wonderment at me. I began to assure him that every help I could give would be forthcoming, and at that he gave a jarring laugh. I was offended, but he was at once contrite and asked for my advice.
‘We could ask the young lady to come down with Mis tress Lindinnock and show herself,’ I suggested.
‘No, we could not,’ he said, so sharply that I got stiff again. He put the matter right, though, when he told me of the two courses he had to decide between, for, after all, what I had proposed was one of them; namely to confront the poor sufferer with the two ladies, which he called the kill or cure step. The second course was to go canny for a few days in the hope that the hallucination might pass of itself. She might even wake up on the morrow without it, which at the worst would be a more gentle wakening than the other.
He asked me, not like a consultant but as one who needed a stronger man to lean on, which line of action I would prefer to be taken if I was in Christily’s place, and on consideration I admitted that the first one seemed to carry the more grievous shock.
After some discussion we decided to give the softer plan a short trial. I said there could be no harm in it at any rate.
He said, still very worried, indeed he was shaking, that there might be great harm in it, but that he would risk it.
We agreed that, as on all subjects save the one she was as right as I was, it would be best for me in our daily intercourse to be just my usual, but not to talk to her as if I knew she was possessed by an evil spirit.
As the doctor was anxious she should be kept from brooding I also agreed to a proposal from him that her brother, Laurie, who is at present at a loose end in Branders, should pay a visit to the manse for a few days, ostensibly to brighten her, but really of course to watch her on the quiet.
This gives small promise for the time being of a comfortable manse; but what is running in my head even now is that tomorrow afternoon I go, be the weather what it likes, to the Grand House to see Miss Julie Logan again. It will be the last day of the year, but Laurie should be here by then, and Christily will be safe in his care.
Today I am keeping an observant eye on her myself. She has brought up my meals in her old exemplary way and we have exchanged a few cautious words about household affairs, but her face is sore begrutten, and if I try to be specially kind to her she knows the reason and there is more than a threatening of a breakdown.
Poor woman, it is like to be a sad New Year’s Eve to her, and a heavy one too for Dr John, who left the manse, very broken. As I let him out I said, ‘It is as if the Spectrum had come back to this house.’
‘Wheesht, man,’ he said.
CHAPTER IX.
THE END OF A SONG
Dec. 31. I will try to put down the events of this terrible night with clearness and precision.
It was in the early afternoon, the snow shimmering like mica, which is sheeps-silver, that I set out for the Grand House, buttoned very thick. Despite the darkness that encompassed Christily I was in an awful and sublime state of happiness.
This may have got into my very appearance and made it unusual, for I met some of the smith’s bairns, who generally run to me, but they hinted back, and when I asked what fleyed them one said, ‘Your face has come so queer.’ I could have danced to them in the snow from sheer joy. I am not sure but what I did dance, though I never learned it.
Some of the windows in the Five Houses already showed a glime of light, not that it was needed yet, but my folk were practising precautions against my seeing them presently, for it is always a night of solemn gallanting. These precautions largely consisted in hanging heavy cloths, such as human habiliments, behind the blinds, so as to deaden the light to me should I be watching from the manse. There was no music as yet, and I was wondering where Posty and my fiddle were, when I fell in with them on the way. Though he has forgotten who the broken men were about whom he likes to play, I notice that one little bit from his forebears, as I take it, still clings to him; he walks up and down, while he is playing the fiddle, as if it were the pipes. On this occasion, however, I expect he was on the march for seasonable largess at the Grand House, which I am sure he always receives with complete surprise.
A thing commonly said about the Grand House is that it should be called the Grand Houses, there being in a manner two of them: though the one is but a reflection of the other in a round of water close by.
This lochy is only a kitten in size but deep; and I know not whether its unusual reflective properties are accidental, or, as some say, were a device of olden times to confuse the enemy when in liquor. At any rate one cannot easily tell in certain lights, unless you are particular about things being upside down, which is the house and which the reflection.
There is an unacceptable tale of the lord of the glen having been tracked to the house after Culloden, and of the red-coats being lured by a faithful retainer into the water, where they tried doors and windows till they drowned, the lord and his faithful retainer keeking over the edge at them and crying ‘Bo.’
The house is of many periods, but its wonder is the banqueting hall, or rather a window therein.
They never banquet now in the hall, not even the English, and indeed it is nigh empty of gear except for tapestries on the walls, which the ignorant take to be carpets damaged in the ‘
45. The great bowed window is said by travelled persons to stand alone among windows, for it is twenty-eight feet in height and more than half as wide. All who come to look at it count its little lozens, as we call the panes, which are to the number of two hundred and sixteen. These panes are made of some rare glass that has a tint of yellow in it, so that, whatever the weather is, to any one inside the hall it looks to be a sunny day. In the glen this glass is not thought much of and they say it should be renewed. The house is a bit old and weary, and I dare say these lozens are the only part of it that would shame renewal.
It was not here but in a bien little chamber where however indiscriminately you sit down you sit soft, that Mistress Lindinnock received me. She was tatting (but that cannot be the right word) at a new tapestry, or mending an old one, which was so voluminous that she rose out of it as from the snow. She is such a little old person that when she stands up you may think she has sat down; nevertheless she is so gleg at coming to the boil that contradictious men have stepped back hurriedly from the loof of her hand, and yet not been quick enough. She has always, as I have said, been a fine friend to me till this unhappy day.
She was the same woman though unusual quiet while we were talking of the ravel Christily was in, which I did not have to stress, as I found Dr John had obligingly gone straight to her with the story from the manse yesterday. I could not help enquiring, with all the look of its being an orra question, how he had taken to Miss Julie Logan.