The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
poured in a cataract of folded paper and close-knit writing which
looked like his own self of long ago, upon the table before him.
He was condemned out of his own mouth.
Winsome sat with her face turned to the window, from which she
could see the heathery back of a hill which heaved its bulk
between the manse and the lowlands at the mouth of the Dee. There
was a dreamy look in her eyes, land her heart was far away in that
Edinburgh town from which she had that day received a message to
shake her soul with love and pity.
The minister of the Dullarg looked up.
"Do you love him?" he asked, abruptly and harshly.
Winsome looked indignant and surprised. Her love, laid away in the
depths of her heart, was sacred, and not thus to be at the mercy
of every rude questioner. But as her eye rested on Allan Welsh,
the unmistakable accent of sincerity took hold on her--that accent
which may ask all things and not be blamed.
"I do love him," she said--"with all my heart."
That answer does not vary while God is in his heaven.
The eye of Allan Welsh fell on the miniature. The woman he had
loved so long ago took part in the conversation.
"That is what you said twenty years ago!" the unseen Winsome said
from the table.
"And he loves you?" he asked, without looking up.
"If I did not believe it, I could not live!"
Allan Welsh glanced with a keen and sudden scrutiny at Winsome
Charteris; but the clearness of her eye and the gladness and faith
at the bottom of it satisfied him as to his thought.
This Ralph Peden was a better man than he. A sad yearning face
looked up at him from the table, and a voice thrilled in his ears
across the years--
"So did not you!"
"You know," said Allan Welsh, again untrue to himself, "that it is
not for Ralph Peden's good that he should love you." The formal
part of him was dictating the words.
"I know you think so, and I am here to ask you why," said Winsome
fearlessly.
"And if I persuade you, will you forbid him?" said Allan Welsh,
convinced of his own futility.
Winsome's heart caught the accent of insincerity. It had gone far
beyond forbidding love or allowing it with Ralph Peden and
herself.
"I shall try!" she said, with her own sweet serenity. But across
the years a voice was pleading their case. As the black and faded
ink of the letters flashed his own sentences across the minister's
eye, the soul God had put within him rose in revolt against his
own petty and useless preaching.
"So did not you" persisted the voice in his ear. "Me you
counselled to risk all, and you took me out into the darkness,
lighting my way with love. Did ever I complain--father lost,
mother lost, home lost, God well nigh lost--all for you; yet did I
even regret when you saw me die?"
"Think of the Marrow kirk," said the minister. "Her hard service
does not permit a probationer, before whom lies the task of
doctrine and reproof, to have father or mother, wife or
sweetheart."
"And what did you," said the voice, "in that past day, care for
the Marrow kirk, when the light shone upon me, and you thought the
world, and the Marrow kirk with it, well lost for love's sake and
mine?"
Allan Welsh bowed his head yet lower.
Winsome Charteris went over to him. His tears were falling fast on
the dulled and yellowing paper.
Winsome put her hands on his shoulder.
"Is that my mother's picture?" she said, hardly knowing what she
said.
Allan Welsh put his hand greedily about it, he could not let it
go.
"Will you kiss me for your mother's sake?" he said.
And then, for the first time since her babyhood, Winsome
Charteris, whose name was Welsh, kissed her father.
There were tears on her mother's miniature, but through them the
face of the dead Winifred seemed to smile well pleased.
"For my mother's sake!" said Winsome again, and kissed him of her
own accord on the brow.
Thus Walter Skirving's message was delivered.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE MEETING OF THE SYNOD.
With the vestry of the Marrow kirk in Bell's Wynd the synod met,
and was constituted with prayer. Sederunt, the Reverend Gilbert
Peden, moderator, minister of the true kirk of God in Scotland,
commonly called the Marrow Kirk, in which place the synod for the
time being was assembled; the Reverend Allan Welsh, minister of
the Marrow kirk in Dullarg, clerk of the synod; John Bairdieson,
synod's officer. The minutes of the last meeting having been read
and approved of, the court proceeded to take up business. Inter
alia the trials of Master Ralph Peden, some time student of arts
and humanity in the College of Edinburgh, were a remit for this
day and date. Accordingly, the synod called upon the Reverend
Allan Welsh, its clerk, to make report upon the diligence,
humility, and obedience, as well as upon the walk and conversation
of the said Ralph Peden, student in divinity, now on trials for
license to preach, the gospel.
Allan Welsh read all this gravely and calmly, as if the art of
expressing ecclesiastical meaning lay in clothing it in as many
overcoats as a city watchman wears in winter.
The moderator sat still, with a grim earnestness in his face. He
was the very embodiment of the kirk of the Marrow, and though
there were but two ministers with no elders there that day to
share the responsibility, what did that matter?
He, Gilbert Peden, successor of all the (faithful) Reformers, was
there to do inflexible and impartial justice.
John Bairdieson came in and sat down. The moderator observed his
presence, and in his official capacity took notice of it.
"This sederunt of the synod is private," he said. "Officer, remove
the strangers."
In his official capacity the officer of the court promptly removed
John Bairdieson, who went most unwillingly.
The matter of the examination of probationers comes up immediately
after the reading of the minutes in well-regulated church courts,
being most important and vital.
"The clerk will now call for the report upon the life and conduct
of the student under trials," said the moderator.
The clerk called upon the Reverend Allan Welsh to present his
report. Then he sat down gravely, but immediately rose again to
give his report. All the while the moderator sat impassive as a
statue.
The minister of Dullarg began in a low and constrained voice. He
had observed, he said, with great pleasure the diligence and
ability of Master Ralph Peden, and considered the same in terms of
the remit to him from the synod. He was much pleased with the
clearness of the candidate upon the great questions of theology
and church government. He had examined him daily in his work, and
had confidence in bearing testimony to the able and spiritual tone
of all his exercises, both oral and written.
Soon after he began, a surprised look stole over the face of the
moderator. As Allan Welsh went on from sentence to sentence, the
thin nostrils of the representative of the Reformers dilated. A
strange and intense scorn took possession of him. He sat back and
looked fixedly at the slight figure of the minister of Dullarg
bending under the weight of his message and the frailty of his
body. His time was coming.
Allan Welsh sat down, and laid his written report on the table of
the synod.
"And is that all that you have to say?" queried the moderator,
rising.
"That is all," said Allan Welsh.
"Then," said the moderator, "I charge it against you that you have
either said too much or too little: too much for me to listen to
as the father of this young man, if it be true that you extruded
him, being my son and a student of the Marrow kirk committed to
your care, at midnight from your house, for no stated cause; and
too little, far too little to satisfy me as moderator of this
synod, when a report not only upon diligence and scholarship, but
also upon a walk and conversation becoming the gospel, is
demanded."
"I have duly given my report according to the terms of the remit,"
said Allan Welsh, simply and quietly.
"Then," said the moderator, "I solemnly call you to account as the
moderator of this synod of the only true and protesting Kirk of
Scotland, for the gravest dereliction of your duty. I summon you
to declare the cause why Ralph Peden, student in divinity, left
your house at midnight, and, returning to mine, was for that cause
denied bed and board at his father's house."
"I deny your right, moderator, to ask that question as an officer
of this synod. If, at the close, you meet me as man to man, and,
as a father, ask me the reasons of my conduct, some particulars of
which I do not now seek to defend, I shall be prepared to satisfy
you."
"We are not here convened," said the moderator, "to bandy
compliments, but to do justice--"
"And to love mercy," interjected John Bairdieson through the
keyhole.
"Officer," said the moderator, "remove that rude interrupter."
"Aye, aye, sir," responded the synod officer promptly, and removed
the offender as much as six inches.
"You have no more to say?" queried the moderator, bending his
brows in threatening fashion.
"I have no more to say," returned the clerk as firmly. They were
both combative men; and the old spirit of that momentous conflict,
in which they had fought so gallantly together, moved them to as
great obstinacy now that they were divided.
"Then," said the moderator, "there's nothing for't but another
split, and the Lord do so, and more also, to him whose sin brings
it about!"
"Amen!" said Allan Welsh.
"You will remember," said the moderator, addressing the minister
of Dullarg directly, "that you hold your office under my pleasure.
There is that against you in the past which would justify me, as
moderator of the kirk of the Marrow, in deposing you summarily
from the office of the ministry. This I have in writing under your
own hand and confession."
"And I," said the clerk, rising with the gleaming light of war in
his eye, "have to set it against these things that you are guilty
of art and part in the concealment of that which, had you spoken
twenty years ago, would have removed from the kirk of the Marrow
an unfaithful minister, and given some one worthier than I to
report on the fitness of your son for the ministry. It was you,
Gilbert Peden, who made this remit to me, knowing what you know. I
shall accept the deposition which you threaten at your hands, but
remember that co-ordinately the power of this assembly lies with
me--you as moderator, having only a casting, not a deliberative
vote; and know you, Gilbert Peden, minister and moderator, that I,
Allan Welsh, will depose you also from the office of the ministry,
and my deposition will stand as good as yours."
"The Lord preserve us! In five meenetes there'll be nae Marrow
Kirk" said John Bairdieson, and flung himself against the door;
but the moderator had taken the precaution of locking it and
placing the key on his desk.
The two ministers rose simultaneously. Gilbert Peden stood at the
head and Allan Welsh at the foot of the little table. They were so
near that they could have shaken hands across it. But they had
other work to do.
"Allan Welsh," said the moderator, stretching out his hand,
"minister of the gospel in the parish of Dullarg to the faithful
contending remnant, I call upon you to show cause why you should
not be deposed for the sins of contumacy and contempt, for sins of
person and life, confessed and communicate under your hand."
"Gilbert Peden," returned the minister of the Dullarg and clerk to
the Marrow Synod, looking like a cock-boat athwart the hawse of a
leviathan of the deep, "I call upon you to show cause why you
should not be deposed for unfaithfulness in the discharge of your
duty, in so far as you have concealed known sin, and by complicity
and compliance have been sharer in the wrong."