The Stickit Minister's Wooing/The Man of Wrath

of wrath was my grandfather, Yabel McQuhirr, from his youth up. And I am now going to tell the story of how by a strange providence he was turned aside from the last sin of Judas, and how he became in his latter days a man of peace and a lover of young children.

He was my father's father, and I have already told how that son of his to whom I owe my life, went forth to make a new hearthstone warm and bright for the girl who was to be my mother. But after the departure of that third son, darker and darker descended the gloom upon the lonely uplying farm. Fiercer and ever fiercer fell the angers of Yabel McQuhirr upon his remaining children, Thomas and Abel—the latter named after his father, but whose Christian name never acquired the antique and preliminary "Y" that marks the border-line between the old and the new.

One dismal Monday morning in the back-end of the year there were bitter words spoken in the barn at the threshing, between Thomas and his father. Retort followed retort, till, with knotted fist, the father savagely felled the youth to the ground. There was blood upon the clean yellow straw when he rose. Thomas went indoors, opened his little chest, took from it all the money he had, shook hands silently with his mother, and took his way over the Rig of Bennanbrack, never to be heard of more.

And after this ever closer and closer Yabel McQuhirr shut the door of his heart. He hardened himself under the weight of his wife's gentle sufferance and reproachful silences. He gripped his hands together when, with the corner of an eye that would not humble itself to look, he saw the tear trickling down the wasted cheek. He uttered no word of sorrow for the past, nor did the name of either of his departed sons pass his lips.

Nevertheless, he grew markedly kinder in deed to Abel, the one son who remained—not much kinder in word perhaps, for still that loud and angry voice could be heard coming from field and meadow, barn or byre, till the fearful mother would steal silent-footed to the kitchen-door lest the last part of her threefold sorrow should indeed have come upon her. But not in this manner was the blow to fall.

Abel was the least worthy but greatly the handsomest of the sons of Yabel McQuhirr. He had a large visiting acquaintance among the farm-towns, and often did not seek his garret-bed till the small hours of the morning. Then his mother, awake and vigilant, would incline her ear on the pillow to hear whether her husband was asleep beside her.

Now, oftentimes Yabel, her husband, slept not, yet for his wife's sake, and perhaps because Abel, with his bright smile and clean-limbed figure, reminded him of a wild youth he had long put behind him, he bore with the lad, even to giving him in one short year more money to spend than had been his brothers' portion during all the time they had faithfully served their father.

And this was not good for a young man.

So that early one spring, the wild oat crop that Abel had been sowing began to appear with braird and luxuriant shoot. A whisper overran the parish swifter than the moor-burn when the heather is dry on the moors. Two names were coupled, not unto honour. And on a certain wild March morning, Yabel McQuhirr, having called his son three times, clambered fiercely up to the little garret stair to find an open skylight, a pallet-bed not slept in, and a home that was now childless from flagged hearth to smoke-browned roof-tree.

Yabel rode to market upon Mary Grey, his old rough-fetlocked mare, once badger-grey, but now white as the sea-gulls that fluttered and settled upon his springtime furrows. He heard no word of the story of Abel his son and the gypsy lass, for none durst tell him—till one Rob Girmory of Barscob, bolder or drunker than the rest, blurted it out with an oath and a scurvy jest. The next moment he was smitten down, and Yabel McQuhirr stood over him with his riding-whip clubbed in his hand, the fierce irascible eyebrows twitching, and wide nostrils blown out with the breath of the man's wrath.

But certain good friends, strong-armed men of peace, held him back, and got Girmory away to a quiet cartshed, where, on a heap of straw, he could sleep off his stupor and awake to wonder what had given him that lump, great as a hen's egg, over his right eye.

As for Yabel McQuhirr he saddled Mary Gray and took the road homeward lest any should bring the story first to his wife. For Jen, his Jen, was the kernel of that rough-husked, hard-shelled heart. And as he rode, he cursed Girmory with the slow studied anathema of the Puritan which is not swearing, but something sterner, solemner, more enduring. Sometimes he would cheat himself by saying over and over that there was nothing in the story. Abel had gone in his best clothes to a neighbouring town—he knew the lad had a pound or two that burnt a hole in his spendthrift pocket. He would return penitent when it was finished. And the old man found himself already "birsing" with anger, and thinking of what he would say to the returned prodigal when he caught sight of him—a greeting which would certainly not have run upon the lines of the parable.

Yet, as he went on and on, fear began to enter in, and he set his spurless heels grimly to Mary Gray's well-padded ribs. Never had that sober steed gone home at such a pace, and on brown windy braefaces ploughmen stood wiping their brows and watching and wondering. Shepherds, high on the hills, set their palms horizontally above their brows and murmured, "What's takin' auld Yabel hame at sic a pelt this day, as if the Ill Yin himsel' were after him?"

But for all his haste, some one had forestalled him. The busybody in other men's matters, the waspish gossip to whom the carrying of ill tidings is a chief joy, had been before him. Mary Gray had sweated in vain. There was no one to be heard stirring as he tramped eagerly in—no one flitting softly to and fro in milk-house or dairy.

But within Yabel McQuhirr found his wife fallen by the bake-board near the window, where she had been at work when the Messenger of Evil entered to do her fell work. Her eyes were closed, her hands limp and numb. With a hoarse inarticulate cry of rage Yabel raised his wife and carried her to the neatly-made bed with the patchwork quilt upon it. There he laid her down.

"Jen," he said, more gently than one could have believed the rough harsh man of wrath could have spoken, "Jen, waken, lassie. It's maybe no true. I tak' it on my soul it's no true!"

But on his wife's face there remained a strange fixed smile, and her eyes, opening slowly, began to follow him about wistfully, and seemed somehow to beckon him. Then with infinite care Yabel removed his wife's outer garments, cutting that which would not loosen otherwise, till the stricken woman reposed at ease beneath the coverlet.

"Now, Jen," he said, "I maun ride to the town for a doctor. Will I tell Allison Brown to come and look after you?"

The wistful following eyes expressed neither yea nor nay.

"Then will I send in Jean Murray frae the Boreland?"

The eyes were still indifferent. There was no desire for the help of any of human kind in the stricken woman's heart.

Her husband watched her keenly.

"Or wad ye like Martha Yeatman ower frae the Glen?"

Then all suddenly the dull eyes flashed, glowed, almost flamed, so fierce was the "No" that was in them.

Yabel shut down his upper lip upon his nether. He nodded his head.

"Then I will bring the doctor, and nurse you mysel'," he answered. But within him he said: "So it was Martha o' the Glen. For this thing will I reckon with Martha Yeatman."

It was fortunate for Mary Gray that the distance was not long, for, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, Yabel McQuhirr drave furiously. But at the bend of the highway called the Far-away Turn, just at the point at which the road dives down under a tangle of birch and alder, the old white mare was pulled suddenly up. For there was Dr. Brydson, riding cautiously on his little round-barrelled sheltie, his saddle-bags in front of him, and a silver-headed Malacca cane held in his hand like a riding-whip.

It was no long time before the good old doctor was raising the lax head of Yabel McQuhirr's wife. The strange distant smile was still in her eyes, and the left corner of her mouth twitched.

"She has had a shock," said Dr. Brydson, slowly, when Yabel and he had withdrawn a little. He was pulling his chin meditatively, and not thinking much of the husband.

"A stroke!" said Yabel, and the tone of his voice was so strange and terrible that the doctor turned quickly—"but not unto death! You can cure her—surely you can cure her?"

And he caught the doctor by the arm and shook it vehemently.

"Take your hands away, sir, and calm yourself!" said the physician. "If I am to do anything, we must have none of this."

"Say that she will not die!" he cried. And the deep-set angry eyes flamed down upon the physician, the great fists of iron were clenched.

Dr. Brydson was a little man, but a long course of being deferred to had given him great local dignity.

"I will say nothing of the kind, sir," he retorted. "I will do what I can; but this thing is the visitation of God, and human skill avails but little. Stand away from my patient, sir."

But at that moment a sudden and wondrous change passed over the face of Yabel McQuhirr. The physician was startled. It was like an earthquake rifting and changing a landscape while one looks. In the twinkling of an eye the fashion of Yabel's countenance was altered. He would have wept, yet stood gasping like one who knows not the way to weep. Instead he uttered a hoarse and terrible cry, and flung himself upon his knees by the bed.

"Jen," he cried, "Jen—speak to me, Jen—to your ain man Yabel! Say that this man lies! Tell me ye are no gaun to dee, Jen—Jen, my Jen!"

And at the voice of that strange crying the doctor stood back, for he knew that no earthly physician had power to stay a soul's agony.

Then, like a tide that wells up full to the floodmark, the slow love rose in the eyes of his wife. Her lips moved. He bent his head eagerly. They seemed to form his name.

"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, "'Yabel, Yabel,' I hear that! What mair? Tell me—oh, tell me, ye are no gaun to leave me!"

He bent his head lower, holding his breath and laying his hand on his own heart as if to still its dull, thick beating. But though the pallid lips seemed to move, no words came, and Yabel McQuhirr heaved up his head and struck his palm upon his brow.

"I canna hear!" he wailed. "She will dee, and no speak to me!" Then he turned fiercely upon the doctor, as if he did not know him. "Who are you that spies on my grief, standing there and doing nothing? Get oot o' my hoose, lest I do ye a hurt."

And the indignant little man went at the word, mounting his sheltie and riding away across the moors without once turning his head, the "Penang lawyer" tapping unwontedly upon the rounded indignant flank of his little mare.

When Yabel turned again to his wife there were tears in her eyes, and the heart of the Man of Wrath was softened within him.

"I am a fool," he said, "an angry fool. I have driven him away that came to do her good. I will call him back."

But though he made the hills to echo, and the startled sheep to run together into frightened bunches, the insulted little doctor upon the sheltie never turned in his saddle.

"Vain is the help of man," said Yabel, as he turned to go in, "and if God will not help me, I will renounce Him also."

He sat awhile by Janet's side, and it was very quiet, save for the clock ticking out the moments of a woman's life. A hen cackled without in the yard with sudden joy over an egg safely nested. Yabel started up angrily and laid his hand on his gun in the rack above the smoked mantel-board. But the woman's eyes called him to desist, and he sat down again beside her with a sigh.

"What is it, Jen? Can ye no speak to me?" The eyes seemed to compel him yet lower—upon his knees.

"To pray—I canna pray, Jen; I winna pray. If the Lord tak's you, I will arise and curse Him to His face."

The direction of the gaze changed. It was upon the family Bible on the shelf, where it lay with Boston's Fourfold State and a penny almanack, the entire family library.

"Am I to read?" said Yabel, reaching it down. "What am I to read?" He ran down the table of contents with his great stub-nailed fingers, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus." But the speaking eyes did not check him till he came to the Psalms.

He turned them over till he came to the twenty-third. The will in his wife's glance stopped him again. He read the psalm slowly, kneeling on his knees by the bedside.

At the fourth verse his voice changed. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me"

And at the sound of these words the unstricken left hand of his wife wavered upward uncertainly. It lay a moment, with something in its touch between a caress and a blessing, upon his head. Then it dropped lightly back upon the coverlet.

Yabel McQuhirr sat till the gloaming by the side of his dead wife, a terrible purpose firming itself in his heart. His children had risen up against him. God had cast him off. Well, he, Yabel McQuhirr, would cast Him off. At His very Judgment Seat he would dare Him, and so be thrown unrepenting into the pit prepared for the impenitent.

He had done that which was needful to the body of his helpmeet of many years. There was no more to do—save one thing. He rose and was going out, when his bloodshot eye fell on the great family Bible from which he had read eve and morn for forty years. A spasm of anger fierce as a blast from a furnace came over the man. That Book had lied! It had deceived him. He lifted it in one strong hand and threw it upon the fire.

Then he walked across the yard to the stable to get a coil of cart rope. He stumbled rather than stepped as he went, the ground somehow meeting his feet unexpectedly. He could not find the rope, and found himself exclaiming savagely at the absent and outcast Abel who had mislaid it.

At last he found it among some stable litter, lying beneath the peg on which it ought to have hung. Gathering the coils up in his hand, he crossed the straw-strewn yard again to the barn. There were sound open beams in the open space between mow and mow.

"It had best be done there," he muttered.

There was a rustling among the straw as he pushed back the upper half of the divided door—rats, as he would have thought at another time. Now he only wondered if he could reach the beams by standing on the corn bushel.

As he made the knot firm and noosed the rope through the loop, his eyes fell on the further door of the barn—the one through which, in bygone golden Septembers, he had so often pitchforked the sheaves of corn.

There was something moving between him and the orchard door. In the dull light it looked like a young child. And then the heart of Yabel McQuhirr, who was not afraid to meet God face to face, was filled with a great fear.

A faint moaning whimper came to his ear. He dropped the coil of rope and ran back to the house for the stable lantern. He lighted the candle with a piece of red peat-ash, tossing the unconsumed Bible off the fire. Only the rough calf-skin cover was singed, and its smouldering had filled the house with a keen acrid smell.

Yabel went out again with the lantern in his hand. Without entering, he held it over the lower half of the barn door which had swung to after him. A young woman, clad in the habit of a "gypsy" or "gaun body," lay huddled on the straw, while over her, whimpering and nosing like a puppy, crawled the most beautiful child Yabel had ever seen. As the light broke into the darkness of the barn the little fellow stood up, a golden-haired boy of two years of age. He smiled and blinked, then, with his hands outstretched, he came running across the floor to Yabel.

"Mither willna speak to Davie," he said. "Up—up, Mannie, tak' wee Davie up!"

A sob, or something like it, rose in the stern old man's throat. He could forfeit life, he could defy God, he could abandon all his possessions; but to leave this little shining innocent to starve—no, he could not do it.

He opened the door and went in. The child insisted fearlessly on being taken in his arms. He lifted him up, and the boy hid his face gladly on his shoulder. Yabel put his hand on the woman's breast; she was stone-cold, and had been so for hours. Death had been busy both without and within the little hill-farm that snell March afternoon.

He covered her decently up with a pair of corn-sacks, and as he did so a scrap of paper showed between her fingers, white in the light of the lantern.

"Mither will soon be warm noo," said the child, from the safe covert of Yabel's shoulder. And in the clasping of the baby fingers the evil spirit passed quite out of the heart of Yabel McQuhirr.

And when by the open door of the lantern he smoothed out the paper that had been in the dead woman's fingers, he read these words:—

"This is to bear testimony that I, Abel McQuhirr the younger, take Alison Baillie to be my wedded wife. Done in the presence of the undersigned witnesses

So in the day when Yabel McQuhirr defied his Maker and hardened his heart, God sent unto him His mercy in the shape of a young child. Then, after the grave had claimed its dead, the heart of Yabel was wondrously softened, and these two dwelt on in the empty house in great content. And in the rescued Book, with its charred calf-skin cover, the old man reads to the boy morning and evening the story of One Other who came to sinful men in the likeness of a Young Child. But though his heart takes comfort in the record, Yabel never can bring himself to read aloud that verse which says: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these ... ye did it unto Me."

"I am not worthy. He can never mean Yabel McQuhirr," he says, and shuts the Book.