Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  Mr. Fordyce came over from Cauldshaw in the evening. He spoke to David but got no answer — it may be doubted if his words were understood. But an invitation to follow him in prayer was rejected, so Mr. James prayed alone—”for Thy handmaiden who is in the pangs of a great sickness — and for him Thy servant to whom her welfare is especially dear.” The prayer seemed to David to make an enclosure for Katrine and himself apart from the world. . . .

  Mark took him to his room and made him lie down on his bed. He gave him a bowl of spiced ale, which David drank greedily, for he was very thirsty. Maybe the posset contained some innocent drug, for he slipped into dreams. They were pleasant dreams, shapeless and aimless, but with a sense of well-being in them which soothed him, so that he woke to Mark’s pressure on his arm with a vacant smile. But one glimpse of the real world — the corner of a four-post bed, torn arras, and the skirts of Mark’s frieze coat — brought down on him the dark battalion of his cares. He had no need to wait for the spoken word; Mark’s eyes were message enough.

  “Come! The fever has abated,” were the words.

  David’s brain was sluggish: the words seemed to be at variance with the speaker’s face; for a moment he had a bewildered spasm of comfort.

  “She is recovered?”

  “She is dying,” said Mark. “It is now the afternoon. She is going out with the daylight.”

  The small lozenged windows, though there were two of them, lit the room faintly, for the sky was lowering and grey. Mr. Fordyce had returned, and poured out his soul at the bed-foot, but presently he grew silent like the others, for there was a hush in the room which made even the words of prayer a sacrilege. . . . The flush had gone from the girl’s face, and the waxen cheeks and the blanched lips told of a mortal weakness. Her hand was in David’s, as passive as a plucked flower. The lashes were quiet on her cheeks, and her faint, difficult breathing scarcely stirred the coverlet.

  In that final hour peace of a kind entered into David’s soul. He was truly humble at last, for all the flickerings and unrest of human desires were stilled. The joy which he had scarcely dared to hope for, the possession of that bright and rare thing, was now confirmed to him. Katrine was securely his for ever. . . . At the very end her eyes opened, and if they looked a little blindly at the others they seemed to enfold him in a passion of love. There was even the glimmer of a smile. And then the gloaming crept round them, and, as Mark had foretold, she went out with the daylight.

  The quiet was broken by the loud wailing of the two women, for the composure of even the iron-Lipped Mistress Grizel now failed her. Mr. Fordyce stilled it with an uplifted hand. “The lamb is safe folded,” he said.

  Mistress Grizel, after the fashion of her kind, must speak. “She was a kind lassie, and had nae thochts but guid thochts, and if she was maybe no that weel instructed in sound doctrine, it was nae faut in her . . . she was aye blithe to hearken to Mr. James—” She stopped short at the sight of David’s face.

  “She is now at the right hand of the Throne,” he said, “and I say that in the face of every minister that ever perverted the Word. She was made in the image of her Lord, and she has gone to meet Him.”

  Later in the evening the mind of the practical Mistress Grizel turned to the dismal apparatus of death. “She’ll better lie in Cauldshaw in the Hawkshaw buryin’ ground. There’s room in the auld vault, the mair as it’s no likely Nicholas will lay his banes there.”

  “Nay, but she will not lie in Cauldshaw. “David’s face had a strange calm in it and his voice was toneless and steady. “She will he in the part of the greenwood which was her own, in the place she called Paradise. I know her wishes as if she had told them to me. I will not have her laid in any kirkyard vault. . . . She is too young. . . . She is not dead but sleeping.”

  Mistress Grizel protested, but half-heartedly. Mr. Fordyce had little objection to raise. “It is not the way of our Kirk,” he said, “to consecrate ground for the dead. All earth is hallowed which receives Christian dust. But lest the graves of the departed be forgotten, it has been the custom to gather them together in some spot under the kirk’s shadow. In a wild wood, among bracken and stones, it will be ill to keep mind of a place of sepulchre.”

  “I will not forget it.”

  “But when you yourself are dead and gone . . . ?”

  “What matters it then?” He could have laughed at the meaninglessness of human fashions. He felt that Katrine and he were in a sphere of their own, safe for ever from intrusion, a sphere independent of time and space, even of life and death. But Paradise had been the spot where their love had first been born; it had become in the mind a symbol and a mystery; let Paradise, therefore, receive the earthly covering of the blessed spirit, for even the blessed have their terrestrial shrines.

  So it came about that by night — for Mistress Grizel would not permit a ceremony so unconventional in daylight — and by the light of the torches of Jock Dodds and Edie the falconer, the girl was buried near the spring in Paradise, with David and Mr. Fordyce at the grave’s head and foot.

  To the former it was all a waking dream. The solid earth had become for him bodiless; the sun’s progress, human speech, rain, wind, the ritual of daily life, no more than a phantasmagoria: reality lay only in that inner world where Katrine still lived for him. He abode solitary in the manse, and refused to let Isobel return. Indeed he begged Mistress Saintserf to keep her and be kind to her.

  “‘Deed, I will do that, and be glad to do it, for she’s a skilly auld body and a great stand-by in the house. But, Davie, my man, what is to come o’ you? I was lookin’ to get ye as a guidson, and the Lord kens Calidon needs a man about the place — what wi’ the forty thousand merks to be paid for Nicholas’s fine. . . .”

  But she saw that her words fell on unheeding ears. David’s eyes seemed to be looking beyond her to an infinite distance.

  CHAPTER XX. THE JUDGMENT

  David rode to Kirk Aller to face the Presbytery in a blustering day of April rains. The wind blew high from the south-west in the leafless branches, and tossed the rotting leaves which should long ago have been powdered by frosts and snows. Aller was red with spate, and in the haughs the flood-water lay in leaden shallows. The birds, who should have been riotous in the bent, were few and silent; scarcely a plover or a curlew piped; only from the gnarled firs of the Wood came the croak of a nesting raven. It was a day to deaden a man’s spirits, but David regarded it not. He was still in his secluded world, a chamber barred to all memories but one. He had no clear vision of the home of the blessed dead, and what he had would have been held unorthodox by the Kirk. Now he thought of her in a Platonic mood as inhabiting all things lovely and pure, a spirit as rare as the lingering light of sunset. But more often he pictured her as an embodied saint admitted into the fellowship of Christ, wrapped round with a richer love than mortals knew, but reaching out warm hands to his loneliness. And the words that came to his tongue were the lines of Peter Abelard:

  “O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata

  Quæ semper celebrat superna Curia;”

  but the sabbaths he dreamed of were not the sabbaths of the Kirk.

  The world, the tangible world, was broken for him in fragments. His chamber was not only shut to its winds, but it seemed set in a high tower from which common realities showed infinitely small and distant. The Presbytery — the General Assembly — the Kirk — seemed tiny things vanishing down the perspective of an inverted spy-glass. He was armoured against censure, for it was idle to censure one who was overwhelmed by his own unworthiness and who at the same time saw all human authorities diminished to cockle-shells. He had no fears and no hates: God had smitten him, and, humble under that awful rod, he could view with indifference the little whips of his fellows. He did not blame them — why should dust accuse dust?

  In his detachment only one thought affected him with any passion. He retained his horror of the Wood. If he were to fall he would fain have brought down with him that unholy temple. For Chasehope
he felt no hatred except as its high-priest; the man himself, with his crazy twisted soul, was rather a mark for pity. But he would fain have rid Woodilee of that incubus. . . . He had failed, and Chasehope was the victor — Chasehope and the Wood. For a moment his mind returned to realities, and he questioned himself if he had left anything undone. This day his original libel would come before the Presbytery, and he had the right to call his witnesses. But where were they? Reiverslaw had been absent two months from the parish and had not yet returned, and without his testimony Richie Smail and Rab Prentice were meaningless voices. He could give his own witness, but that the Presbytery had already officially rejected. Let it go — the Almighty in His own time would be his vindication — he who was filthy let him be filthy still. . . .

  “Ubi molestiis finitis omnibus

  Securi cantica Sion cantabimus.”

  But even in his secret world regret penetrated and irked him, for Melanudrigill was nigh to the greenwood and to Paradise.

  The old kirk on the brae above the Aller bridge was crowded to its full. Never had been so large a meeting of Presbytery, both lay and clerical, for the case of the minister of Woodilee had made a great talk all winter in the glens. Woodilee itself, now purged of its taint, was strongly represented by four members of Session, and in a prominent place at the Moderator’s elbow sat Ephraim Caird. As David entered heads were averted, but as he advanced to the seat prescribed for him he found that Mr. Fordyce was his neighbour — Mr. Fordyce heavily muffled in his ancient plaid, and with a face whose ordinary sick pallor seemed to be flushed with a timid excitement. He seized David’s hand, and his own was hot and nervous, and his lips moved as if he were praying under his breath.

  The forty-third Psalm was sung, there were two lengthy readings of Scripture, and then Mr. Muirhead, the Moderator, constituted the Court and prayed for guidance. David’s attention wandered, though he tried to supplement the public supplication with his own. . . . His eyes seemed to have become distorted and the whole assembly have gone crooked. The fathers and brethren were no more than a gathering of death’s heads, their voices were like the creaking of wheels and the scraping of boughs and the grinding of stones. The Moderator’s massive visage was the mask behind which his brain ticked small and foolish like a clock. The minister of Bold was only a child, a petted, noisy child. The grave countenances around him seemed shot with fear and confusion: almost it seemed he could look into their hearts and see terrors and jealousies writhing like coils of worms. . . . He rubbed his eyes and forced himself to attention. The Moderator was speaking of the charge against Chasehope and others anent the Wood.

  “We have your written libel, Mr. Sempill,” he said. “It is your right to implement it by the calling of witnesses. Have you them here?”

  “My principal witness, Andrew Shillinglaw in Reiverslaw, has left the parish because of the pest and is not yet returned. Without him I can do nothing.” David’s voice, to his own surprise, came out full and clear.

  “Do you seek a postponement?”

  David shook his head. “What boots it? The Lord will judge the wickedness in His own time and in His own way. But I would ask that the matter be put to him whom I have accused as principal, and that he deny or affirm it on his solemn oath.”

  “You hear that, Ephraim,” said Mr. Muirhead. “I’m loth to put such a task on one of your noted godly walk, but it would maybe conduce to the satisfaction of the Court if you would formally and finally give these monstrous charges a solemn denial.”

  Chasehope rose and called his Maker to witness that there was no word of truth in the accusation. His voice was steady, his expression of a decent gravity. He looked towards David, and there was not a quiver in the large placidity of his face.

  “The Court is content,” said Mr. Muirhead. “Have you anything to add, Mr. Sempill?”

  “The Lord will yet judge between us,” said David.

  “That matter can therefore be dismissed,” said the Moderator, in a voice in which solemnity wrestled with satisfaction. “We proceed to the charges against our unhappy brother.”

  He set forth — not unfairly — the counts against David. The principal was that abetting of malignancy with which the Court was already familiar, and which David had admitted and justified. But he added new matter.

  “It has come to my knowledge,” he said, “through the praiseworthy vigilance of our friend Chasehope, that there is further incriminating evidence on this score. In the recent melancholy visitation at Woodilee, our brother was guilty of strange deeds and in strange company. It seems that he harled the poor folk out of their bits of dwellings, on the plea that when they crept together they fomented the pest. Thereby it is alleged he spread the taint of the malady, and sorely troubled many a death-bed. Further, he violently and wrongfully broke open doors that were barred to him and set fire to cot-houses where the sick had lain, thereby destroying gear which was not his and depriving the folk of their lawful habitations. I have here an attested statement setting forth the wrongs complained of. What answer do you make to that, Mr. Sempill?”

  “I admit the acts, and reply that by their means and by God’s mercy the pest was stayed.”

  There was a murmur of disapproval throughout the gathering, and Mr. Muirhead cast up his eyes to Heaven.

  “More of this sinful pride! As if the hand of the Lord was stayed by breaking in the doors and burning the thack of honest folks’ houses! But these are matters which are properly for the civil courts, and do not come within the cognizance of this Presbytery. What deeply concerns us is the company in which it is alleged that these acts were done. Mr. Sempill had as his helper one Amos Ritchie, a dweller in Woodilee, of whom I had hoped better things, and one Mark Riddel, a new-come tenant of the mailing of Crossbasket. We have had news of this Riddel before. He took a leading part in defending a woman accused of witchcraft in the back-end, and — though it seems that the witch-pricker was a poor creature with some irregularities in his conduct — yet it cannot be denied that the words and doings of the man Mark Riddel on that occasion gave great offence to godly folk in Woodilee, and led to the just suspicion that he himself had meddled with unlawful matters. . . . Who think you that this Riddel turns out to be? Who but that Mark Kerr that was a colonel with Montrose and a notorious malignant and has been sought all winter by the arm of the law. Chasehope has riddled out the whole black business, and has those that will swear to the man. Information has been dispatched to the Procurator-Fiscal, and it’s like that by this time hands will have been laid on him.”

  “I fear that he has gotten clean away,” said Chasehope. “The word this morn was that there was no reek in the Crossbasket lum.”

  “He’ll no gang far,” said the Moderator, “for the countryside will be up against him. Now, Mr. Sempill, what say you on this count? Did you ken the true nature of this man Mark Riddel?”

  “I knew that he had been a soldier of Montrose. What mattered his past if he were willing to help in a work of Christian duty?”

  “Christian duty!” The Moderator’s face crimsoned with wrath. “The words should choke in your throat, sir. You dare to call it Christian duty to harry the living and perplex the dying for some whim of your own ignorant heart? You found a yoke-fellow worthy of you. It is borne in on me that you and your presumption and your slackness of walk and doctrine have been the cause of this sore dispensation in Woodilee. Upon your head, sir, lie the deaths and sufferings of your afflicted people.”

  He checked himself with an effort and proceeded in a calmer tone.

  “No evidence need be called on the main counts, for they have been admitted by the panel. By his own confession David Sempill, lately ordained minister of the Gospel in Woodilee, is guilty of the grievous sin of consorting with and abetting the declared enemies of Christ’s Kirk in Scotland. Under the specious plea of charity — whilk is a favourite device of the Enemy to delude mankind — he has given shelter to one whose hands were red with the blood of the saints, and has endeavoure
d to cumber the work of purging the accursed thing from our midst. Moreover, he has lately shown what was in his heart by further and intimate converse with the ungodly. I do not speak of other errors, of harsh and un-Christian conduct towards his congregation, of lack of judgment, and of a weakness in doctrine, whilk, if not actual heresy, is its near neighbour. I deal with the gravamen of the matter, a sin openly committed and indeed acknowledged and gloried in.”

  Mr. Muirhead pursed his lips, and a sigh of approval rose from his hearers.

  “But it is needful at all times,” he went on, “to temper mercy with justice. Our brother is young and has no doubt been led astray by evil conversation and by over-much carnal learning. There is yet room for repentance, and the Kirk is merciful to the penitent. If he will make full confession of his sins and renounce and abhor them and humbly seek forgiveness from an offended Jehovah, this Court will doubtless be prepared to deal tenderly with him. It would not consist with decency that he continue in the charge of Woodilee, but the matter of excommunication might be dispensed with. For let him understand clearly that if he persists in his contumacy he will be outcast not only from the ministry of Woodilee but from membership of the Kirk of Christ.”