Chapter X: How It All Ended

Ah! now my story draws to a close. I am very sorry because I have quite enjoyed writing it.

The reader may never know how much of my own young life is depicted in these pages. Many a time and often have I laughed as recollections of schoolboy or student pranks have risen up before my mind’s eye, but more than once as I wrote a mist bedimmed my sight, and something fell--it might have been a tear.

Life, dear reader, is all like a dream; but we never realise this until grey hairs appear around our temples, and there are silver threads in the dark brown of our beards.

But come, I must pull myself up with a round turn, as we sailors say. Moping never did any good in this world, that I am aware of; grief is more ageing than time itself. There is nothing so healthful as cheerfulness and good temper. “A merry heart goes all the day.” Let us laugh, then. There isn’t the slightest fear of getting too fat. I don’t believe in the silly old saying, “Laugh and grow fat.” I’ve been laughing all my life, when I haven’t been whistling or humming a tune, but I’m not fat yet, and what is more, I don’t want to be. But a merry heart strengthens every muscle and organ in the body, and prevents chilblains. A ridiculous thing to say, is it? Oh, perhaps, but it is true. That disagreeable winter complaint belongs to the sad and the phlegmatic morose sort of people. But a merry heart means a well-balanced circulation, and so, if you want to be healthy, you’ve got to cultivate cheerfulness.

All this is digression? Well, I don’t care, I shall do what I like in my last chapter.

* * * * *

In course of years, Mrs. M‘Crae and Elsie both got to like the little cottage. It was cosy and homely and snug. They had their regular visitors, too, and never cared to add many to them.

When in harbour, both Captain D’Acre and his mate used to be constant visitors, and the mate never failed to bring his fiddle. Then a regular musical evening was sure to follow, much to Mrs. M‘Crae’s delight, for she was passionately fond of melody.

Summer after summer, Sandie continued coaching his pupils, remunerating to both teacher and students, and winter after winter he plodded back and fore to the Divinity Hall. He was a pet student with all the professors, because he was a very promising one. Whatever study he took in hand, he went into thoroughly, and was not content until he had mastered it. That is the sort of man Sandie was.

But the winters and the summers too wore away at last,--Sandie’s divinity studies were over. He had passed every examination with honour, and was now the Rev. Alexander M‘Crae, M.A.

What joy!

All his toils were over--so he thought; he would soon get a church--so he believed; and he would take his mother away to his beautiful home in the cool green country, far away from the madding crowd, from the bustle and din, from the grime and the gride of city life. As hope told him this flattering tale, he could not help repeating to himself those charming lines of Horace, beginning

“Beatus ille qui preul negotiis,

* * * * *

Paterna rura bubus exercit suis
Solutus omni fenore,”

which may be paraphrased: “Happy is the man who, far from the busy haunts of life, far from care and worry, ploughs with his own oxen the paternal acres.”

But Sandie’s life while at the Divinity Hall had not been all bliss unalloyed. There was one drawback to his happiness. Let me explain it, if I can. Sandie, then, was constitutionally shy.

Now shyness is about the worst fault a public orator or preacher can have, though I must not omit to mention that the cleverest men are usually the shyest.

In the privacy of his own study, which was right away up at the top of Kilbuie Cottage, an attic, in fact, Sandie, when all alone, could declaim triumphantly, and many a rousing extempore sermon he here preached. Again, he could preach a sermon anywhere, and with confidence, if he had written it out beforehand, and might have the manuscript on the pulpit desk in front of him. But well he knew that many old people in country parishes had a decided objection to written sermons. They liked their ministers to walk into the pulpit, to take a text, and trust to the Spirit of God to give them language and words.

Now, after all, extempore preaching is merely a matter of habit and experience.

Strangely enough, assistance came to Sandie from quite an unexpected quarter.

It was while he was in his third year, that one Thursday evening he was told by Elsie, who could hardly keep from smiling, that a lady and gentleman wanted to see him on a matter of business.

“Where are they, Elsie?”

“In the drawing-room, Sandie.”

“Say, I’ll be down in a moment.”

He dashed his fingers through his hair, smoothed down his dark brown beard, pulled up his collar, cleared his throat, and descended.

When he opened the drawing-room door, he was certainly somewhat surprised and taken aback at the youth and diminutive stature of the lady and gentleman. The boy was about eight, the girl barely ten.

But she opened negotiations with a promptitude that did her credit.

“Oh, if you please, Mr. M‘Crae, long, long ago when father first comed to this country from the Norf, he builded a school, and every Sunday night now there is preachin’ in the school, ’cause the people likes it, an’ every Fursday night little wee Williamie Gordon here, my bludder, and myse’f comes in to get a minister. But, oh, if you please, sir, we can’t get one to-night, and oh, would you come?”

“And where is the school, my dear?”

“Oh, if you please, it is four miles from here at Bellfield. And you has through the dark Hazelhead woods to go, where sometimes the robbers kills folks. Williamie Gordon and I isn’t afraid, ’cause we is too small to bother killing, and we have nothing to rob. But you wouldn’t be afraid, ’cause you’s a big fine man, and could kill them back again.”

Sandie laughed at the droll conceit. But he promised he would come in spite of the robbers. Then he rung the bell, and five minutes after that the two children were doing justice to a hearty supper.

Then the wee toddlers started back on their long and dreary journey, arriving home safe and sound.

After they had gone, Sandie went straight up-stairs, chose a text, and never lifted his head from over his desk until he had written a good long sermon.

With this in his pocket--as he thought--he started on the Sunday afternoon for Bellfield school. His child friends were there to give him a hearty welcome, and an invitation to supper after the sermon.

Every one was struck with the young man’s appearance and manner. He gave out a psalm and conducted the singing. He prayed long and fervently. Then he opened the Book, and after giving out his text, placed his hand in his pocket to produce his manuscript.

It was gone!

His heart seemed to leap clean out of him; his head swam, and he almost fell. Then he bent his brow reverently over the Bible and prayed for strength.

Slowly and in short constrained sentences he began to speak, but he gathered strength as he went on, he waxed eloquent, impassioned; he could scarcely believe it was he himself who was talking.

And never, I ween, was sermon listened to with more marked and solemn attention.

“Thank God,” said Sandie to himself when at last he closed the Book.

Sandie preached at this school every fortnight after this, but neither here nor anywhere else did he ever again use a manuscript.

A letter came from Sandie’s friend Mackenzie a few weeks after he had been ordained minister.

The clergyman of Drumlade, the very parish in which Sandie was born, and in which stood the farm of Kilbuie, was very old and wanted a helper. He (Mackenzie) had proposed Sandie. Would he come?

This was glorious news!

Sandie became such a favourite with the parishioners, that, six months afterwards, when the poor old minister died, he received a universal and unanimous call to take the office.

And so it came to pass that ere long our hero became minister of the fine old parish of Drumlade.

The church itself was a large one, and stood on an eminence overlooking a curve of the winding Don, and surrounded by its God’s acre of green, green graves.

At a distance of about an eighth of a mile, and nestling near the river-side, in a bosky dell, stood the fine old manse, with its rich old walled gardens, its grass lawns and rose terraces, on one of which stood an ancient dial-stone.

There was a wilderness of trees all about, bird-haunted trees. Surely not a feathered songster that ever trilled a note in the far North that did not sing in those copses and groves, while high aloft, in the swaying pine-trees, lived hawk and crow and magpie.

All the place, in the sweet summer-time, was a poem, a romance, a dream.

Of course Kilbuie Cottage was now given up, and Sandie’s mother and Elsie came to reside at the manse, and sit Sunday after Sunday in the manse pew, near to the pulpit.

Sandie’s living was a good one, and there was, in addition to the stipend, a large and rich farm of glebeland, which soon became the young minister’s chief delight.

* * * * *

I must tell you something else, as long as I think of it. Jamie Duncan had a rich uncle, who was good enough to shuffle off this mortal coil for the benefit of Jamie. He left him quite a haul of money.

Then Jamie took Kilbuie farm and stocked it, and elevated Geordie Black--the quondam orra man--to the proud position of first horseman, and lived happy ever afterwards, so far as I know.

I did hear lately that Geordie Black had married Tibbie, but it may be mere rumour.

* * * * *

One beautiful summer’s day Willie called at the manse. He had come to stay for a whole fortnight.

And he meant to enjoy himself, so he said. Yes, Willie meant to enjoy himself, and he did. But, going into her room one day, Sandie found his mother sitting on the sofa weeping bitterly.

Somewhat alarmed, he seated himself beside her, and put an arm around her waist in the old tender fashion.

“Mother, mother, what is the matter? You frighten me!”

“Oh,” she sobbed, “he--your friend Willie--is going to deprive me of--of my child.”

More tears and sobbing.

“I am--going to lose my daughter.”

“Mother, mother,” pleaded Sandie, caressing her, “you must not give way like this. It is nature--nay, more, marriage is Heaven’s ordination.”

She got quieter after a time, and even smiled through her tears.

“But,” she said, after a thoughtful pause, “I shall almost break my heart to be deprived of my daughter.”

“Oh! no, you won’t, mother dear. Because, listen! I am going to bring you home another daughter.”

Sandie got straight up now from his mother’s side and walked out.

Presently he returned, leading by the hand--why, whom do you think?

Bonnie blushing Maggie May.

“Mother, your daughter that is to be!”

Sandie’s mother opened her arms, and next moment Maggie May was nestling on her breast.

And this is how it all ended, reader mine.

And surely we could hardly have wished it otherwise. Could we?

THE END.

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. _Edinburgh and London_

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The blaeberry is the English hert.

[2] My English readers ought to know that a bursary is a kind of scholarship, which not only entitles the holder to free education at the University, but to a sum of money paid annually during the whole four years’ curriculum.

[3] Now Sir W. D. Geddes of the Aberdeen University.

[4] Pronounced “shees.”

[5] This story is not imagination, but truth.

[6] A kind of floury Scotch roll.

[7] Dulse is an edible seaweed much used in the North, and pepper dulse is a smaller seaweed with pleasant pungent flavour, that is eaten as a relish along with it.

[8] “How do all these vessels become derelicts, because I thought a ship was never deserted while she would float?”--“No. When a ship has rolled her masts over the side, or gets leaking badly, or has a heavy list, or from a thousand and one other causes gets dangerous, her crew are frequently only too ready to leave her. There are some notable cases, and only just within the last week or two the _Bahama_, a fine large steel sailing vessel on her first voyage, was deserted in the Atlantic, and was sighted afterwards in an apparently seaworthy condition. But there is to be an inquiry into her case, so I will say nothing more about her, except that she is not yet charted, and is knocking about without lights, without foghorn, without anything--in fact, a tremendous danger to navigation. Over and over again a crew has left a ship when another crew from the relieving vessel has stayed behind and brought the otherwise derelict safely into port. Many of these derelicts, I should tell you, are waterlogged timber ships; and it may interest you to learn, while I think of it, that one of the United States vessels engaged in sinking derelicts is the old _Kearsarge_, who fought and sunk the _Alabama_ in the English Channel.”--_Pall-Mall Gazette._

Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:

“your a thrifty lad."=> “you’re a thrifty lad.” {pg 218}